Doctor Who: Jodie Whittaker

I’ve waited a while before imposing my opinion about the upcoming changes for Doctor Who. Knee jerk internet jerks are no doubt still frothing and bubbling in their mother’s basements about the fact that the Thirteenth Doctor is to be played by a woman. Or, worse, rubbing their knees and nethers in disgusting boyticipation. Mostly they are decrying what to them is a step too far for a science fiction show.

Science fiction, lest anyone has forgotten, is all about fantasy, imagination and the possibilities at the edge of probability. In the shape of Doctor Who science fiction has always, absolutely always, been about breaking rules, imagining the impossible and making fantasy seem so almost-real that young kids who get hooked on it are still obsessed when they are approaching their dotage.

As one such uber-nerd I should like to point to the very first edition of the show, all the way back in 1963: An Unearthly Child. And who was that child? It was the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, a woman, no less. A Time Lady, dontcha know. I'd wager that while she was mostly a damsel in distress sort of character, as was common back then for most females in action-driven shows aside from the odd possessor of her own agency such as Honor Blackman, she was also canonical proof that Timelords do both genders.

And when the Doctor eventually visited his homeland onscreen in the seventies Time Ladies were in evidence, despite the ‘Lords’ still being more front and centre. Until Romana, that is, the second longer-term Time Lady incumbent in the Tardis. Both male and female characters, even The Brigadier, played second fiddle to Tom Baker’s Puckish Fourth Doctor, so it's no surprise Romana was often also somewhat damselly and distressy.

All of this long before Who was rebooted by a generation of screenwriters infected by a more modern ‘political correctness gone mad’, as some are still assuming is the reason for casting a woman in the role of the Doctor for the first time. It's as if those who most loathe the idea of a female Doctor are privileged white male misogynists who may well suffer with varying degrees of homophobia and racism, isn't it? 

Hmm, whatever. If they don't like the direction the show is going in they could always choose not to watch it and save themselves from some kind of seizure.

Jodie Whittaker, like Matt Smith before her and even David Tennant to a degree, is a moderately well known purveyor of the acting arts yet to make the step up into being a big name. Like both of them, Peter Capaldi and Christopher Eccleston, she is also a brilliant purveyor of said arts, despite only being moderately well known thus far. She has range, she has a unique energy, she can totally inhabit the roles she plays: all perfect qualifications for being the Doctor. Does the lack of a penis create a demerit so enormous that those facts about her as an actor are irrelevant? No, knee jerk internet jerks, it does not.

I'm going to miss Capaldi. But I was also going to miss Smith. And Tennant. And Eccleston. And McGann. And…skips a bit here to the next one I really, really was going to miss…Tom Baker. And Jon Pertwee. I’m not quite ancient enough to remember watching Troughton and possibly never did more than hear Hartnell’s bumblesome tones from my pram. The point is, virtually every actor who has played the Doctor made the role their own; Jodie Whittaker will do exactly that too and not because she’s a woman but because she’s brilliant.

And when she leaves the show to be replaced by a robot fish I will miss her like heck too. Until halfway through the first episode of the Fourteenth Doctor’s adventures.

Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls

It is the end, but the moment has been prepared for. 

Tom Baker’s final words as he began to morph into Peter Davison have been quoted a fair deal in the run-up to Peter Capaldi’s last season finale before he regenerates in this year’s Christmas special. However, as he lay on the floor of the Tardis towards the end of the episode, apparently dead beyond regenerative trickery, it was Jon Pertwee’s last scene I was most reminded of. From the dandified cuffs of Capaldi’s shirt to the bat-splayed red lining of his ragged jacket to the creased face and bedraggled silver locks, the Twelfth Doctor mirrored the Third with Moffat-fuelled accuracy.

That he later quoted his more immediate predecessor’s last words would have been no whimsical notion nor a spot of nostalgic fanboy onanism from the outgoing show-runner. The moment when it is (of course) revealed that he's not dead after all harked back to the flashbacks Davison had when it was his turn to hand over the sonic screwdriver but let's not dwell on that as the Sixth Doctor was a multi-chrome clown in all the wrong ways.

The Doctor Falls deliberately draws on iconic imagery from Moffat’s own tenure too but more in the spirit of a greatest hits package than the feel of the regeneration echoes (I will grant him kudos for inverting Eleven carrying Amy during Asylum of the Daleks and having CyberBill hold the failing Twelve in the same tragic pose). By alerting long-time fans of the show to the ripples of so many other Doctors running through the energy of Capaldi’s oncoming regeneration it led us to the final twist of the season: Twelve looks to be spending Christmas with the first incarnation of The Doctor.

If you want to nitpick it's the third incarnation of the first incarnation of The Doctor: William Hartnell and Richard Hurndall being far too real-life dead to appear so David Bradley has stepped into the role. It's only fair, he did play Hartnell and thus Hartnell’s Doctor brilliantly in the 2013 anniversary drama about the genesis of the show itself.

My reaction is mixed. It is a thrilling prospect indeed for the Christmas special to feature the original Doctor as well as a soon to golden-glow his way into somebody else Twelve. But the prospect of incoming show-runner Chris Chibnall deciding to reset the entire programme by somehow having Capaldi regenerate as Bradley’s version of Hartnell lurks at the back of my mind like the stench of a rotten cucumber lingers in a refrigerator.

The concept is fine but I pray it's not one that Chibnall has given any serious thought to. Anniversaries are one thing, a great excuse to gather up a couple of previous Doctors and let them squabble their way to harmonious solutions to some devilish alien plot, but a Marvel Spider-Man style reset would most likely lose fans rather than push the show onwards towards 2023’s 60th jubilee.

I've loved every minute of Capaldi as The Doctor and applaud Moffat for bucking the previous trend of recruiting younger and younger actors to the role, seemingly to ensure fangirls came along with the fanboys, but the best regenerations and smoothest transitions in the show’s history work when a proper contrast of personalities (rather than vomit-hued jackets) is set up. Since returning to our screens no Doctor has been too similar to the previous one; there would be a danger of chiming many familiar Capaldi notes if Bradley becomes the next Doctor full time.

I don't know that anybody else is squawking about this or even considering it a possibility. I may be putting Twelve and One together and not coming up with Thirteen. A cryptic Moffat statement about this regeneration being rather different to those we’ve seen before and the continuing lack of announcement about Capaldi’s successor are the fragmentary foundations of my thesis, not really enough to give credence to the idea, right?

Or maybe that's exactly what Chibnall hopes geeks like me will be imagining, the better to help us accept a female Doctor this time? Personally I've been fine with the idea of a woman taking on the role for most of my adult life (once I'd got past the prepubescent ‘girls are pooey’ stage) so I don't really need subterfuge to help me cope with gender changes in a science fiction series.

Hey ho, on with the show. Only it seems like on with the show minus Pearl Mackie, John Simm, Michelle Gomez and Peter Capaldi as the Master/Missy double act reversed the polarity of multiple Doctors by killing one another towards the end, and Bill Potts looks like she’s off to snog around the universe with her romantic interest from the first episode of the season. Talk about regime change.

Doctor Who Season Ten: Half-Time Report

Halfway through Season 10 of Doctor Who (the modern, circa 2005 revamped version, no idea how many seasons there have been altogether since 1963) and things are beginning to take shape in terms of various plot strands. Pearl Mackie has bedded seamlessly into place as new companion Bill Potts and even the mystery of why Matt Lucas is aboard the Tardis has become less a vexation and more the possibility of his character Nardole stamping himself into Whovian folklore as a secret badass.

Hanging over everything this year is the fact that it is public knowledge Peter Capaldi is leaving the show. Internet theories abound as to his replacement, theories I have little response to other than to hope the Kris Marshall fans are disappointed when the announcement is finally made. Other theories skitter across the web too, such as the possibility that Capaldi might not last until the end of the season. The first show of the series included a look ahead clip package at the end which showed the Twelfth Doctor in the now classic regeneration pose, something akin to Christ on the cross only with more golden light and no halo.

Tradition tends to insist that the Doctor becomes a brand new version of himself (or herself) in the final show of a season or, more, frequently, at the conclusion of a slightly oversentimental Christmas special. But there is a precedent for replacing a Doctor within the season itself, albeit not an especially encouraging one for older fans. Back in the mid 1980s when another Peter, Mr Davison, had announced he was to step down the role, his replacement came along at the tail end of the penultimate storyline that series, The Caves of Androzani. The season rounded off with The Twin Dilemma, Colin Baker's first full appearance as the Sixth Doctor. Yes THAT Baker, the ridiculous costume one, the portly one, the worst actor of the lot with some of the worst storylines and lowest effects budgets. That went well, then.

In its present form Doctor Who is twelve years old which is pretty good going for any prime time show. Altogether it has been around for fifty four years although of course there was nothing but a wonderful Doctor in a poor TV special to keep us going between 1989 and 2005. The freshness of the Russell T Davies era, the cocksure swagger of the opening couple of seasons under Steven Moffat, these have faded a little yet Capaldi has been given some of the best genuine science fiction stories of all the Doctor's incarnations. As well as a few duffers such as In The Forest Of The Night. Hey, Tenant has Fear Her on his Timelord CV don't forget, and Matt Smith somehow chewed his way through the dialogue of The Power Of Three.

Along with a new Doctor will come a new show runner in Chris Chibnall. He has Who previous: sadly The Power of Three was his work but he was largely responsible for the tour de force power of the first season of spin-off show Torchwood. Apparently he's been doing some detectivey thing with David Tenant in the main role more recently. So how is this season shaping up to hand over to Chibbers (as nobody calls him)?

So far so awesome. The fallibility of The Doctor is not always properly explored but seeing as he's spent two full episodes blind as a bat and was unable to prevent Bill from making a potentially disastrous decision on behalf of the planet at the end of the most recent episode it's fair to say that Capaldi's Doctor will in part be remembered for the times he did not just waltz in and save the day with a wave of his sonic screwdriver (a huge criticism of the Tenant and Smith eras). Uncertainty and vulnerability were an integral part to the role as portrayed by William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton so this might be a chance to re-establish the character as well-meaning but not always triumphant.

Too much failure, however, and you're in Fifth Doctor territory. We forget, given how great a job Matt Smith did of making his youth irrelevant in terms of how we saw the Tenth Doctor, that Davison struggled throughout his tenure to stamp authority on a role previously associated with the brusque bossiness of Jon Pertwee and the maverick genius of Tom Baker. The Thirteenth Doctor will need to hit the ground running and establish themselves as firmly as Smith managed to do on the heels of Tenant or the next series might be the show's last in its current guise.

Which would be a shame as the scope of the premise is, as always, limitless. Alien nutjob with a penchant for doing good owns a space-time travelling device so s/he can literally rock up anywhere, anywhen and anyhow in search of adventure and televisual feast. Bill's story arc is more subtle, perhaps, than the days of Rose or Amy but she's strong, funny and unique. If they decide she should stay to help bed in the next Doctor it can only be a bonus. After all, Clara's main detractors forgot their trolling when she was shown in new lights playing against Capaldi's version of the main character.

Still to come this season we have two versions of The Master/Missy colluding to do whatever vile things they can come up with together and we have Hartnell-era Cybermen returning, possibly to wear Capaldi a little thin and cause his regeneration. I've got a boner the size of all space and time just thinking about it. Haven't you, madam?

Doctor Who - Smile

Future cities, The Doctor likes taking his fresh companions to future cities so it's no surprise that Bill gets the same treatment from Number Twelve in her first proper Tardis outing. Viewers have already seen that all is not well in the apparent paradise they find themselves in and it doesn't take the time travellers long to suss this out for themselves.

Swarms of flying nano bots are apparently linked to emoji-faced base-station droids, and their insistence on happiness from human occupants of the city would add sinister overtones to everything if it wasn't so reminiscent of both The Beast Below's 'smilers' and the 'this is a kindness' robots from The Girl Who Waited. I wasn't a huge fan of Frank Cottrell-Boyce's first Doctor Who script (In The Forest of the Night) and am not entirely convinced by this follow up. 

I do, however, like the intention of making it largely a double-hander to more fully embed Pearl Mackie into the role and into public consciousness but there is a danger of straying too far towards the late excesses of Tom Baker's time at the helm when wordy exposition regularly supplanted action. Not to worry, action does happen once the duo begin to integrate with the robots and the newly awakening citizens of the colony.

It's a morality tale disguised as a thriller, just like Cottrell-Boyce's previous fare: the robots have achieved a degree of sentience that entitles them to be considered a new species. Not only that but, as they have constructed and maintained the city out of themselves (literally, they form the buildings and break out of the walls only to deal with crop necessities or damage control) the city is arguable more theirs than it is owned by the emergent humans.

Yes it is true that damage control to these new life forms somehow translates into killing off unhappy humans but once The Doctor turns them off and on again (I'm still hoping the Kris Marshall rumours are untrue and that Richard Ayoade can be persuaded to take over when Capaldi regenerates) they have no memory of that unpleasant murdery business and seem willing to tend to the needs of the newcomers. Peace in our time.

In the bigger scheme of things this is all about as likely to affect the story arc of the season as little as Rose's first trip with the newly regenerated Doctor Ten affected season Two's grand narrative but buried right at the start of the episode an exchange between Nardole and The Doctor may prove more meaningful. Whatever vow the time lord has made to stay on Earth and guard the mysterious vault in the basement of St Luke's, Nardole appears to be integral to holding The Doctor to his promise. He also appears to be crap at his job and easily distracted with tea making errands.

Bill continues to ask the questions nobody ever seems to have asked. She continues to get few direct answers but that's ok as we love it when companions work stuff out for themselves. I'd now like to see both her and The Doctor given a meatier story to chew on: we've met her, we like her, it's time she was thrown properly into the deep end. London frost fairs anyone?

Doctor Who -The Pilot

Doctor Who is back. Peter Capaldi's final season kicked off with a new companion, a fairly rubbish alien lifeform, a robot other companion who has robot alopecia, apparently, and some bonus stuff thrown in for the fans. Well, it wouldn't be Easter without Easter eggs, eh?

The fan stuff included Daleks fighting Movellans (very Fourth Doctor); photos of River and of Susan on display in The Doctor's office (he has an office now, offices are cool); many sonic screwdrivers; montage of Bill's days echoing the montage of Rose's life before she met the Ninth Doctor in the first episode of the rebooted series; Leela running around naked in the background.

No, that last didn't happen but I wasn't sure you were paying attention.

Reboot. An interesting concept. Effectively Steven Moffat rebooted Doctor Who for the second time in five years in 2010 with the Eleventh Doctor and Amy meeting in her garden when she was a tiny. And now he's once again provided a season opener that could serve as a kicking off point for brand new fans. There is often a hint of the new every time a fresh companion hooks up with our favourite time travelling nutjob and through Bill we get to remind ourselves how out of this world the Doctor truly is. 

Only Bill isn't quite like most of the other newbies we've met down the years. No, I don't mean because of her ethnicity or sexual persuasion, those are just her being her. I mean the questions she asks that somehow nobody has quite got round to asking in 54 years of the show. Like, if he's from another planet why does the acronym which gives his time machine its name work in English, not Gallifreyan? No, you can't go back to the real first ever episode and say Susan came up with it because that ignores the fact that every Time Lord we've ever encountered refers to the machines as Tardis too. Tardises? Tardi? 

Bigger questions not yet answered mostly revolve around why Doctor Twelve is loitering with very obvious intent at St Luke's college. There is a vault he's guarding in the basement. What's in it, why is he guarding it and why did he locate it at the university (if indeed he did)? Will the answers to such questions have anything to do with Hartnell style cybermen or double incarnations of The Master/Missy later in the season? 

As I said, this week's alien was pretty rubbish, a sentient puddle that took on the form of a girl Bill fancied in such a way as to remind me of the scary aqueous life forms in The Waters of Mars from 2009. The aliens can often be lame when the season starts with a new companion being bedded in (Prisoner Zero was fairly shit, the Adipose were terrible, The Judoon looked scarier with their space helmets on). The big bads come later. The more we get to know a companion the more we truly feel the jeopardy their travels with The Doctor place them in.

For now we have a madman with a box, a robot Matt Lucas whose purpose has yet to be defined or justified and a crazy-haired new girl. And all of time and space. Good enough for me.

John Hurt

Sometimes it is difficult to convey the scope or impact of an actor's career but there's no doubting the range and consistent cultural relevance of John Hurt's life and work. Just naming some of the many films and television productions he was involved in reveals the diversity and significance of his performances.

When your first major role is in the sixties big hitter A Man For All Seasons it's a safe bet that you will be able to hold your head high amongst the highest echelons of the profession thereafter. Which is exactly what Hurt did in a career spanning six decades. He first made a name for himself playing outsiders and idiosyncratic characters, many of them real life figures such as Quentin Crisp, John Merrick (The Elephant Man), Caligula and Bob Champion. Over the course of his life he also appeared in some of the biggest and most iconic franchises of his times: Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Alien, Hellboy and Doctor Who.

Almost forty years ago his death scene in the first Alien film became an instant classic, one parodied and emulated to this day. His portrayal of Winston Smith in the 1984 production of, er, Nineteen Eighty-Four, brought Orwell's revolutionary protagonist so perfectly to life that his depiction of the Fascist dictator Adam Sutler in 2005's V For Vendetta seems like a second betrayal of Winston's original intent to expose the totalitarian violence of Big Brother.

With his gravelly tones, Hurt possessed a voice most of us emulate when we're phoning work pretending to be unwell when in fact we want to stay home and watch daytime television in our pants. Having such a distinctive set of pipes never prevented him from taking on a cornucopia of different characters. If younger audiences will largely think of him as wand maker Olivander or the previously unseen 'War Doctor' in the BBC's greatest ever science fiction series he is unlikely to have cared too much nor demanded they investigate his more challenging work such as Krapp's Last Tape or his original portrayal of Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant.

The world has lost not just a consummate actor but also a dedicated professional and a disarmingly nice, normal human being, a rare instance indeed in a career often dominated by self-important show-offs. I bet he did know what Cup-a-Soup is.

Sherlock: The Lying Detective

How do you solve a problem like John Watson not wanting to have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes any more because of that business with Watson's wife taking a bullet for the detective and being all dead afterwards? Apparently you solve it by going back on hardcore drugs, if you're Sherlock. Apparently.

Many things are revealed in this episode. Mrs Hudson has a smoking hot car and can drive like a madwoman. Mycroft Holmes might even stoop into human behaviour enough to consider illicit liaisons now and then. Watson talks to the visible apparition of his dead wife. This last is a plot device. It's not something he did when she was alive, obviously. It's a way of enabling the audience to keep up with nuances of the storyline even in the absence of the traditional conversations where Watson is perplexed and Holmes shows off by explaining how incredibly boring it is that no one else understands what he does.

Watson isn't perplexed. He's angry. Holmes isn't showing off. He's stoned out of his fucking mind. And taking to Twitter to accuse Toby Jones of being a serial killer. Jones plays a character not entirely unlike Jimmy Savile in some respects - creepy, philanthropic, fingers in many pies, high profile public figure, up to no good and some people know about it - but he's also the Dream Lord from Matt Smith's first season as Doctor Who. And Dobby's voice. And a detectorist. Only he's none of those other things in this, he's just some greasy millionaire businessman Sherlock wants to take down. Despite being stoned out of his fucking mind.

It all gets a bit out of hand. Watson and Holmes are reunited and hang out with Dobby, I mean Mr Smith (not Matt Smith, Toby Jones's character with a posh, implausible first name) but it's not a very comfortable time, what with Sherlock being all 'you're a serial killer' in Smith's grill and Smith being all "bitch I'm not" and Watson being all "Sherlock you're stoned out of your fucking mind" and punching him a lot. A real heck of a lot.

Which means Sherlock is in this odd hospital that Smith has fingers in (now that's very Savile, eh?) being treated for drug addledness and the results of punchings. And this is where Smith wants him as he can now try to kill him. Because guess what bitches, he IS a serial killer. And Sherlock records his confession with a walking stick. Honest, he does. And John saves him because he's now seen the same DVD of Mary telling Sherlock to save John from himself that ended last week's episode and realises Holmes was trying to make the Doctor save him to save himself. Confused? You won't be. I wasn't.

Loose ends. The bus woman from last week. Turns out that John didn't do the wild thing with her, just texted her and thought about doing the wild thing with her. Which he confesses to the not actually there apparition of Mary in front of Sherlock. Like you do. And then he goes back to his new therapist who turns out to be various other people from both episodes. Oh and Mycroft and Sherlock's sister. Then she shoots John in the face. And credits happen so we don't know if he's dead and have to watch next week. Clever that.

Doctor Who - The Return of Doctor Mysterio

The BBC are mean. They are cruel and heartless and they smell bad. They didn't commission a Doctor Who series for 2016. Of all the years to need a Doctor Who series, 2016 is up there with 1990 for definitely needing one (but for quite different reasons). The Doctor would have saved Prince and Alan Rickman and Bowie and, and, and...

Or Moffat is mean. Maybe he was busy with Sherlock. Someone was mean and they smell bad.

Hey ho. Christmas special which makes 2016 a not entirely devoid of Doctor Who year. Yay!

Matt Lucas is back from last year's Christmas special too. Ha, they didn't ask David Walliams back for more, did they? Lucas will be fun in the Tardis but I can't help wanting him to romp around it in his onesie, banging on drums and insisting his name is George Daws.

A real life superhero, in Doctor Who? Sort of. A real life comic book superhero style boy who eats a thing he shouldn't eat and becomes the Clark Kent of the nannying world. And fancies the woman he nannies for. Well, he nannies for her baby, not for her. She can burp herself.

And the splitty head freaks also return from last year's Christmas special. Lots of references to that episode if we're honest which allows for plenty of Doctory emotion. Capaldi can leap from terrible puns to manic activity to deep-eyed sadness in a heartbeat. As regenerations go he somehow manages to channel pretty much all of his previous incarnations yet remain entirely unique.

Forget the plot, it's a Christmas special (did I mention that?) and what matters most is that the spirit of an intergalactic pantomime is invoked and some snow happens at some point. What, no snow? The BBC are mean. They are cruel and heartless and they smell bad. They didn't let Moffat include snow in the budget. Possibly. Or he forgot to ask. He's mean.

Charity Wakefield is a lot more fun than her turn as Mary Boleyn in Wolf Hall led me to believe. Justin Chatwin didn't try to sell anyone drugs like he does in Orphan Black. And Moffat clearly hates hospitals as this is the second time he's made masked medical folk in scrubs get all silent and dangerous on us (The Power of Three, in case you were wondering - actually written by Chris Chibnall who will be taking over as show runner after next year's Christmas special so the surgeons can't relax even though I've got my facts wrong.)

Between now and next year's Yuletide offering is a brand new series coming in the Spring. With a new companion in Pearl Mackie and more Matt Lucas (see that, Walliams, they really like Lucas, don't they?). And I can't wait. So I'm not going to; let me just fix this chameleon circuit first then I'll pop ahead and see what Doctor Twelve is up to with Bill from the chippy.

Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD

Released on 5^th August 1966, a year after Dr. Who and the Daleks, this sequel is probably slightly superior to the first Regal Films production yet fared less well at the box office. Again based on a Terry Nation storyline which had already appeared on television in the canonical world of Doctor Who, Milton Subotsky’s screenplay was also worked on by David Whitaker who, like Nation, had himself written several Hartnell era stories for the show. Gordon Flemyng was again directing and musical lessons had possibly been learnt from the first film as the incidental music is less frantic and supports the action more successfully although there is still a tendency towards the twee rather than truly dramatic instrumental interludes.

Peter Cushing returns as Dr. Who, the human clever clogs who has built the Tardis. Roberta Tovey is back playing Susan but her older sister is nowhere to be seen. Instead a niece of the Dr. is on board, Louise(Jill Curzon). Joining them, after a failed attempt at foiling a robbery from a jewellery, is Bernard Cribbins as Special Constable Tom Campbell. Yes, Bernard Cribbins who would stamp himself all over the revived TV show between 2007-10 as Wilfred Mott, grandfather of Donna Noble.

Happily the producer has clearly realised that the slapstick interludes given to Roy Castle’s character in the first film were incongruous and Cribbins is not burdened with such light relief duties, instead largely being allowed to play a more straightforward action hero. There are quite a few heroic types: Ray Brooks handles the role of David, the young man with whom Susan stays at the end of  the TV version of this plotline. Dortmund, the leader of the human underground resistance shows great courage in sacrificing himself to save others mid-movie.

If Dr. Who and the Daleks plays on Nazi tropes, Invasion can be read as a version of the French Resistance while Hitler’s soldiers were occupying their country. Which also means the evils of collaboration for some characters, as evidenced by two women in a lonely cottage who betray Susan to the Daleks and the supercilious Philip Madoc playing an opportunistic swine with no discernible allegiance to either humans or Daleks. Yes, Philip Madoc who would later appear in the real Doctor Who on four separate occasions, most notably in classic Tom Baker serial The Brain of Morbius.

Beyond the theme of occupation the main premise of the film is that the Daleks are using human slaves to dig down into the centre of the Earth in order to set an explosion which will strip the planet of its magnetic core. Once this is done the planet can act as a spacecraft which the Daleks intend to fly off towards Skaro and live on, presumably because their home planet is becoming uninhabitable even for them.

There are plenty of flaws, not least of which is a terrible lack of continuity. Cribbins, spontaneously searches for Louise aboard the Dalek ship despite not having been informed by anyone that she had been part of the party attempting to rescue Cribbins and the Doctor, who had just narrowly avoided being turned into robomen slaves. The Daleks can apparently pinpoint a single truck driving across country and yet are incapable of working out where the human resistance groups might be hiding. Dortmund’s bombs are supposed to be ineffective against the Daleks yet several Daleks are seen to explode once they’ve been attacked with just these devices. 

The Dalek spaceship is good though, even accounting for the scene in which the strings holding the model in the air are embarrassingly visible. The Dalek voices are more intimidating than in the previous film too, the vocoder obviously having been set at the right rate of modulation. It helps that the word ‘exterminate’ is as conspicuous by its overuse as it was by its absence in Dr. Who & the Daleks. Peter Hawkins and David Graham again provide the voices for the metal dustbins (as Dortmund calls them).

The suits worn by the robomen make them look like nothing so much as Dalek gimps. All they need is a ball gag and for the Daleks to make them writhe around on the floor begging to be hurt and the movie could have found itself a cult BDSM following.

The denouement is somewhat rushed. The main protagonists, having been separated into little clusters throughout the film, regroup at the mine where the Daleks are digging down towards the Earth’s core. Amidst reunions Cribbins is instructed to climb into the deep shaft and somehow divert the Dalek’s bomb down into an older shaft. Here, apparently, the bomb will set off a magnetic reaction which will do for them pesky Daleks good and proper. Which begs the question, why wouldn’t the magnetic core of the planet have caused them problems in the first place? This is a flaw which has not been resolved from the TV series so they just carry on regardless. It does allow for some fantastic Dalek deaths, however, with one or two metal pepperpots being sucked into the shaft in a fashion that will be very familiar to those who watched Daleks and Cybermen being pulled into the void at the end of 10^th Doctor story, Doomsday.

As a nice twist and a decent use of the time travel aspect of the Tardis, the film ends with Cushing returning Bernard Cribbins to his own timeline but a few minutes before the robbery in the jeweller’s shop. This lets Special Constable Tom Campbell render the getaway driver unconscious and then knock out the other two robbers when they climb into the car. He drives them off to the station daydreaming about promotions and OBEs.

Had the movie fared better at the box office there were plans to film another Terry Nation Dalek story, The Chase. It was not to be, thankfully. Despite having learnt lessons from the first film, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 AD, is still a substandard B-movie. The effects are slightly improved, the acting better but  Cushing is almost a co-star in his own movie. Some would argue that the Daleks themselves are the stars and they come across better here than the other film. Even so, they still seem less menacing than they do on the small screen. Not even trundling along some familiar landmarks can increase the scare factor. Luckily the adventures of a time traveller in his police box would remain on the television where they belonged and nobody would ever again make the mistake of trying to turn Doctor Who into a film format. Oh damn, except for that McGann movie, of course.