The Seeds of Doom (Thank you, Vancouver Public Library!)
Okay, so it's not "Genesis of The Daleks". I'm still going to speak of it in the same glowing terms. Tons of fun, from beginning to end. The story of killer alien plants has serious potential to be mucked up completely, but fortunately everyone involved is at the top of their game. Characters like Scorby and Chase who could have been one-dimensional caricatures are written cleverly enough and admirably performed to make them much more interesting (Scorby in particular rises above the typical thug). Douglas Camfield, who I now consider to have been one of this show’s best directors, keeps the pace moving across six episodes tremendously well--and I had even thought going in that it was going to be a four-parter, so you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when, having discovered it was six, I subsequently found that it fits its runtime.
And Tom Baker. Man alive, he’s a good actor. There’s a scene in Part Two when Sarah is dragged out of the room by Scorby and Keeler with the Doctor left helpless and tied up; he screams out her name, and Baker puts an incredible amount of anxiety into the line. That got me. And the rest of the story is just like that: even with the sometimes-ridiculous sight of plants gobbling people up, he sells the danger right from the get-go by showing you how agitated, worried, and really just simply panicked the Doctor is. If
he’s that scared, what does that mean for the rest of us?
The Hand of Fear
Another great story. I loved the weird creepiness in the earlier parts, and there was still an uneasy mysterious feeling that was kept up well in the latter half. It also felt like a very original adventure, though I have to be honest in saying that I don’t know if something like it was done before in
Doctor Who. Tom Baker is again at the very top of his game. He impressed me a lot before with his comic timing, and now I’m beginning to have respect for him in those dramatic moments. Sad to see Sarah Jane leave, but it was also very well done. Nothing but compliments for this story, and the one above. Sorry if that’s a bit tedious for anyone to read.
Unfortunately, the library didn’t have “The Deadly Assassin” on the shelf where it was supposed to be when I went to pick up “The Seeds of Doom”; they put it on ‘Trace’, which means I’ll probably never get to see just why the Time Lords were calling the Doctor until the DVD release.
