Quick reminder:
For previous posts, you can scroll around this site, or go to my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ExcitingGuide) which will link only to those parts of my blog devoted to the Exciting Guide. If you need to understand what I'm doing, there's a link to my intro here: http://chapwithwings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/watching-every-tv-adventure-of-doctor.html
Story Eleven
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Story Code
L
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spoiler Alert! If you don’t want to know
the true nature of Koquillion, as revealed in this story’s final episode, skip
this one.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title
The
Rescue
“Friends” Title
The
One With The Pet Sand Beast
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Titles
The
Powerful Enemy
Desperate
Measures
Current availability
Both
episodes exist.
Source
UK
Gold omnibus repeat transmission.
The cliffhanger at the
story’s end is again omitted.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date
2493.
Vicki’s
ship left Earth in 2493. By all
inferences, that is still the year.
Genre
Mystery/Whodunnit
Plot synopsis
1. The TARDIS lands in a cave on the
planet Dido. Ian and Barbara explore,
and find a crashed Earth ship. They are
confronted by the bizarre semi-humanoid creature Koquillion, who persuades Ian
to return to the Ship to fetch the Doctor.
The creature pushes Barbara from the ledge, and causes a rockfall to
block the cave. Barbara is rescued by
Vicki, one of only two survivors from the crashed ship. According to her story, she was ill in the
ship when the entire crew were invited to a meeting by the local inhabitants,
only for an explosion to wipe out all of them.
Only Bennett survived, but was robbed of the ability to walk. Koquillion now controls their lives, in
return for protection from the rest of his people, but Vicki believes he does
not know about the rescue ship due in 69 hours.
Meanwhile, Ian and the Doctor are finding their way out of the caves,
but accidentally set off a mechanism which causes spears to emerge from the
wall, edging Ian towards a hideous creature waiting below.
2. Ian manages to dodge around the spears,
and they deactivate the trap. The creature
moves on towards the Earth ship - Barbara sees it approaching Vicki, and kills
it with a gun from the ship.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the creature - “Sandy” - was harmless,
and effectively Vicki’s pet. At this
point, the Doctor and Ian reach the ship to a less than rapturous welcome from
Vicki. When she calms down, the Doctor
goes to Bennett’s room to find it empty.
He follows his trail through a trap door to the natives’ hall of
judgement, where he unmasks Koquillion as Bennett. He had killed a crewmember from the ship, and
was under arrest, so arranged the deaths of the entire crew and the local
inhabitants as a cover-up. The Doctor is
losing the ensuing struggle, but two of the natives unexpectedly turn up, and
Bennett is killed fleeing. Vicki is
asked to join the time-travellers, and accepts.
The Dido natives disable the communications equipment on the Earth
ship. The TARDIS leaves Dido, and next
materialises on the edge of a cliff, promptly tumbling off.
Pitch
Agatha
Christie with no suspects.
The Money Shot
Koquillion
is revealed by the TARDIS (episode 1).
The Doctor and his kind
•
Susan’s departure certainly seems to have affected the Doctor. He sleeps through the Ship’s materialisation
for the first time, and is more than ready to invite Vicki on board - Barbara
shrewdly recognises his need to replace Susan.
On the other hand, he doesn’t seen overly tetchy or prone to brooding,
both of which one might have expected.
In fact, he seems positively jaunty!
•
The Doctor says that he never got a degree in medicine.
•
He remains a patronising arse, as proved in his attitude towards Vicki on the
Earth ship.
The TARDIS log
•
The Doctor states that “materialise” is a better word for the TARDIS than
“land.”
•
The wheezing, groaning sound is all present and correct here. Here’s a thought - what if that noise is
another of the TARDIS’ faults, and the occasions where it arrives or departs
silently were rare occasions when the Ship has worked properly? This would explain not only that conundrum,
but also suggest that the ridiculously bumpy dematerialisation witnessed in
episode one of An Unearthly Child was
a further flaw.
•
The Doctor makes a point of turning the power off once the Ship has
materialised.
•
Apparently, No.4 switch opens the door.
•
Ian uses the Doctor’s key to get into the TARDIS. How is it that he managed this, considering
how complex the lock is supposed to be?
One can only presume that (a) since The
Daleks, the Doctor has simplified the lock, or (b) he has taken time out to
instruct Ian and Barbara in how to use the key properly. Unless anyone’s got any better suggestions, I
am going to plump for (a).
Past Journies
•
The Doctor has visited Dido before, and can tell where he is by examining rock
samples.
The history of Earth
•
Manned space flights are apparently fairly standard in the late twenty-fifth
century, although time travel is not.
Bennett, as Koquillion, asks Ian and Barbara where their “rocket ship”
is, but this somewhat primitive terminology was probably supposed to be in
character.
Alien Worlds
•
From what we have seen of it, the planet Dido is rocky and not very
hospitable-looking, with a network of caves.
•
It gets dark early on Dido.
•
The inhabitants of Dido are humanoid, with a rich ceremonial tradition. They are a friendly race, and violence is
completely alien to their natures. When
the Doctor first visited Dido, their population numbered barely a hundred. There is no way of knowing whether this
second visit has occurred before or after the first, or what the population of
Dido was before the Earth ship crashed, but thanks to Bennett, it is now
considerably less.
•
Dido is also host to large, ugly, vegetarian beasts with green eyes.
Script Heaven
•
Vicki “Yes! You’re right! I’ve been here a long time! I know what it’s like here! You’ve only just come and you’re trying to
ruin things! It was all right before, it
was! The rescue ship’s coming
and...nobody asked you to come here, nobody!...Go away!” And what’s so good about it is, she’s so
right!
Villainous Plotting
•
In order to cover up his murder, Bennett takes advantage of the ship’s crash,
and of the subsequent meeting between the ship’s crew and the local
inhabitants, to engineer an explosion to wipe the lot out. By blaming the whole thing on the locals, and
using Koquillion to keep Vicki in line, he’ll be rescued in a few days with a
star witness and be completely off the hook.
Nice plan. Here’s a better one. Kill Vicki as well, then you won’t have to
dress up as a monster or pretend to be a paraplegic for the rest of your
life. Cunning, eh?
The Doctor’s Achievement
He
unmasks Bennett’s little scheme and puts an end to it, although arguably
there’s no reason why those two natives couldn’t have stepped forward and had a
go at him anyway. He also gives Vicki a
home and a family again, which is nice.
Body Count
Despite
the large body count in the backplot, only Bennett and Sandy die during the
course of the story:
2.
Screams / Twists Ankle
•
Vicki is not short for Victoria.
•
Vicki is now an orphan. Her mother died
a while ago, and she and her father boarded a ship bound for Astra, only to
crash. Her father was then killed by
Bennett. Even her pet monster was shot
by Barbara. A ripe candidate, then, for
adoption by the time travellers.
Checkov’s Plot Device
Checkov’s
Supposedly Dead Natives? No, doesn’t
wash with me, either.
EffectsWatch
•
For the second story in a row, the dodgiest effect is the big ‘orrible monster.
Notes
•
I believe this is the first story since An
Unearthly Child not to start with the regulars in the Ship.
•
In the end credits to episode one (which I have not, of course, been privileged
to see), Koquillion is credited as “Sydney Wilson.” This is a pseudonym so as not to give away
the character’s true identity. The name
derives from two of the series’ creators - Sydney Newman and Donald Wilson.
•
There is a nice - and very telling - moment near the beginning when the Doctor
starts to address Susan before realising she isn’t there any more.
•
The basic plot of this episode - where
an unconvincing monster terrorises the central cast, only to be de-masked in
the closing moments and promptly apprehended by the authorities - was later
turned into a long-running TV cartoon series, entitled Scooby Doo. (NB. I would like to point out that I wrote this months
before DWM said exactly the same
thing in Issue 286. Humph.)
Queries
•
If the inhabitants of Dido are so friendly, where do the Indiana Jones-style spears sticking out of the wall come from?
•
If the only exit from Bennett’s room is via a secret trap door, how did Vicki
think Koquillion left the ship in the first episode?
•
Why did the ship crash?
•
Why did Bennett kill the crewmember?
•
How did the natives survive?
•
How many of the natives have survived?
•
Where have they been all this time?
•
How are these peaceful people going to prevent that rescue ship from
landing? And how will sabotaging the
crashed ship help in this?
•
How the hell did Bennett hope to keep up the illusion of being crippled when he
had his first medical examination on the rescue ship?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On-screen Credits
Taken from end credits to
Desperate Measures.
CAST
Dr.
Who - William Hartnell, Ian Chesterton - William Russell, Barbara Wright -
Jacqueline Hill, Vicki - Maureen O’Brien, Bennett & Koquillion - Ray
Barrett, Space Captain - Tom Sheridan.
CREW
Written
by David Whitaker. Title Music by Ron
Grainer with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Incidental Music by Tristram Cary.
Costumes supervised by Daphne Dare.
Make-up supervised by Sonia Markham.
Designer - Raymond P Cusick.
Associate Producer - Mervyn Pinfield.
Producer - Verity Lambert.
Directed by Christopher Barry.
Review
It’s
difficult to know what to make of this story.
It does show a great deal of promise, and then rushes to an end after
only two episodes. Now, this could be a
good thing - The Daleks, The Keys Of Marinus and The Dalek Invasion Of Earth have all
shown that when Doctor Who tries to
over-extend its stories, they have a tendency to become bitty and lack
continuity. But two episodes is pushing
it a bit. In fact, this two-parter -
written by the series’ story editor - is blatantly a vehicle to introduce the
new regular character, Vicki. And boy
aren’t we glad of it. Now I shall
reserve judgement upon this character for the moment, until we’ve seen a bit
more of her - it could go either way.
But she’s already a damn sight preferable to Susan - get that delicious
moment when she has a go at the perpetually well-meaning travellers: this scene would have been just annoying with
Carole Ann Ford doing her “emotional” bit, but with Maureen O’Brien it’s great. It also shows the travellers up for what they
are. Look at Barbara - she’s got so
cocky with this space travel lark now she think she can show up, take stock of
the situation at a glance, and open fire on anything that looks ugly. It’s about time they all got taken down a peg
or two, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even if Vicki was made to apologise to
everyone afterwards. The plot is a nonsense, the
two-episode format meaning that so many questions are left unanswered (see
above) that it’s perfectly obvious that it just wasn’t thought through well
enough. I think this could have made a
decent four-parter, but the concepts are wasted on what is effectively a basic
introduction story. Still, if that’s
what it is, at least it takes the opportunity to give her background, a
personality and a few good, weighty scenes to chew on. I think the new improved TARDIS crew is going
to be enjoyable.
Rating
5 / 10
