http://fantasticpulp.com/ The latest in articles, fiction, audio and art! Mon, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:00 GMT en-us http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=104http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=104Mon, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:00 GMTNotable for being the final serial to feature Jo Grant as a companion, but there is rather a lot more to talk about in this story rather than just that. It also serves two other purposes, in that it is the beginning of a trilogy of tales that centre around a character that until now, has come across (at least to me) as little more than wallpaper; Present, but sort of in the background. I'll explain this in much greater detail during my review of the second part of the trilogy in question. The other purpose is that this story is the beginning of the end for the Third Doctor, and by extension another step towards the close of the UNIT era. http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=103http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=103Mon, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:00 GMTPlanet of the Daleks starts off moments after Frontier in Space ended, which is something that hasn't really happened between now and the Sixties where it was much more common. Throughout the Sixties, serials were often very directly connected together with one leading directly into the next, a practise that died out wholesale when Doctor Who went into colour. This was about to change, but only slightly. The Twelfth Season is a particularly good example of serials that are quite obviously directly connected with one another through a single and easily identified chain of events. However, it's not hard to believe that viewers coming in to see Planet of the Daleks that have missed Frontier in Space may be confused by the beginning. Fortunately for this story there's little to connect it to the previous one beyond what I am about to state regarding the single link between the two. Towards the end of Frontier in Space, The Doctor and Jo discover that the Daleks are planning to mount a full scale invasion, and has identified their likeliest base. The story ends with him contacting the Time Lords with an expression of agonised exhertion, and Planet of the Daleks picks up from there. http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=102http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=102Mon, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:00 GMTTo begin with, a little bit of backstory for this one. The following spoiler is rather inevitable, because it's something I would have to mention in next week's review anyway. The longest single Doctor Who serial is generally recognised as The Dalek's Master Plan (an argument can be made for the season spanning Trial of a Time Lord, though I think of it as a season arc split into four different stories) at twelve parts. However, Barry Letts (producer at the time) wanted to challenge that record and produce something longer still. Fortunately he was dissuaded by Douglas Camfield (Frontier in Space's director) because retaining an audience's attention weekly over three months was a daunting challenge. Instead there would be two six part adventures which were connected. The first part was this week's focus, Frontier in Space. http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=101http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=101Mon, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:00 GMTCarnival of Monsters may seem like a bit of an odd story - and I suppose it is, in a few ways - to those viewing it to the first time. Here are two seemingly disconnected scenes. One with The Doctor and Jo upon a boat in the middle of the Indian ocean, the other on an alien world populated by blue skinned aliens as three of their officials greet two performers and their mysterious device. On the surface the two seem completely disconnected, but as the first episode continues the connection between the two becomes increasingly apparent until the cliffhanger draws it all into focus with a rather memorable shot, even if it doesn't quite look as impressive today as it did in the 70s. The first episode does a rather good job of maintaining the mystery. First it introduces a seemingly benign situation, then it gives us a little bit of a twist and draws in further intrigue as both The Doctor and Jo make observeations of yet further strange and seemingly inexplicable events. Even if the answer is known in advance, the dialogue, performance and direction does a rather brilliant job of maintaining viewer interest. In particular the aforementioned cliffhanger! http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=100http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=100Mon, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:00 GMTFor quite a while fans had been sending requests for multiple Doctor stories, which were dismissed because it was felt that this idea was "too fannish" a notion to seriously entertain. This outlook altered drastically when the tenth season of the show was produced, because how could this milestone possibly pass by without having some sort of special story to commemorate it? Suddenly the fannish notion becomes a lot more appropriate. From this was born The Three Doctors, the first multiple Doctor story. It would go on to serve as a foundation and guidelines by which future similar stories would operate. Combine this with the fact that The Doctor's exile ends at the conclusion of this story and it's easy to see that it is tremendously important to Doctor Who canon... But is it any good on its own merits? http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=99http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=99Mon, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:00 GMTWhat's this? Did we step back in time a few weeks to the beginning of season nine? Well, no obviously not. This is a little bit different from my usual between season reviews, as I will be looking over a re-edited version of Day of the Daleks made available on the DVD release, with the original on the first disc and the new version on the second. It features new special effects, new sequences and replacement Dalek voices that are performed by the current Dalek voice actor, Nicholas Briggs. Given that the story is exactly the same as Day of the Daleks, I shall not be discussing any element of that and instead will focus on whether or not I feel this is an improved version over the original. http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=98http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=98Mon, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:00 GMTThe ninth season is rounded off with the second last story to feature the original Master, and his final onscreen confrontation with UNIT. The Time Monster is one of those stories which makes a lot of use out of time travel, though the title may have already given this fact away. It bears some superficial similarities to the previous season closer, in part because much as in the case of The Daemons the major inspiration for this story was mythology. In this case, Greek mythology. http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=97http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=97Mon, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:00 GMTIt is rather something of a trend for the Time Lords to deliberately send The Doctor to a given location to resolve some problem without telling him what the nature of the problem is. This unusual policy extends into mild absurdity during the course of The Mutants, where they send The Doctor a special message capsule that can only be opened by the one it is intended for, and then do not tell him who that happens to be. The only other thing they do is direct his TARDIS to the approximate time and place of the individual, and leave it at that. Not bad, except for one small matter. The TARDIS arrives at a meeting between humans and Solonians, on board a Skybase in orbit around the planet Solos. This makes it difficult to tell who precisely the pod is intended for, and then of course there is also the matter of security to deal with. http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=96http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=96Mon, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:00 GMTI pointed to last week's Curse of Peladon as the very beginning of the slow death of the UNIT era, but this particular story is much more obvious about the matter when inspected. Much like Curse of Peladon, it is a story in which UNIT is mentioned, but never appears onscreen. Not too unusual since the next story didn't either, but in the cases for the stories before and after this one it's quite understandable. Both take place during visits to alien worlds in the future. Of course UNIT isn't likely to appear in such a location! Now contrast this to the setting for this one, which is set in the exotic science fiction location of England, located at some period within the mid to late twentieth century, presumably some months following the events of The Daemons. In short UNIT could have easily appeared in this story given the time and place it was set, but they did not. http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=95http://fantasticpulp.com/unpub/testing/articles.php?id=95Mon, 12 Sep 2010 18:37:00 GMTThe UNIT era of Doctor Who died a slow, lingering death that lasted many years as the organisation increasingly faded into the background. It is my opinion that The Curse of Peladon was the very beginning of that demise, for one simple reason. For the first time in Doctor Who, we had a colour story which did not feature the Brigadier or any UNIT employee save Jo Grant. Unlike Colony in Space - which was also set on an alien world - the TARDIS is not shown leaving the earth in any capacity, and instead arrives on Peladon in much the same manner as it would in any non-UNIT tale.