September 14, 2020

Fury from the Deep review

The new animated version of `Fury from the Deep` arrives with a big reputation. Word of mouth from those who saw it fifty two (!) years ago suggest it’s one of the scariest adventures but we’ve been here before. `Tomb of the Cybermen` enjoyed similar reverence until it was actually found and revealed to be nowhere near as amazing as we’d expected. Sure it was good but had a major narrative flaw that was impossible to reconcile. After struggling with `The Faceless Ones`, dipping out during the interminable scenes with Scouser Pauline Collins, I was certainly hoping for more inspiring material because however good the animation is it can’t really alter the story significantly. On the surface `Fury` fits the late Sixties model of a place under siege with a variety of characters defined more by their job than their personality. They shout and argue a lot about procedure, ignore any obvious warnings that things are going wrong allowing the Doctor to lurk in the background till he pulls a solution out of the hat early in the last episode. However what unfolds is much more interesting, that rarity of a second Doctor story that gets better as it progresses.

 


September 04, 2020

Terror of the Zygons@45

Doctor Who never scared me - it thrilled me! Even as a child I watched it without feeling the need to leap behind the sofa. Instead I revelled in all those monsters and slime and robots and everything else. Yet I think that one of the scariest moments in any iteration of the programme is the end of episode one of this story when we see a Zygon for the first time. It is something to do with the fact that, as well as  the appearance of the creature being grotesque anyway – a cross between an embryo and a sea horse- it has its mouth wide open and Sarah’s scream is given a slight echo and mixed into the end sting when the theme music starts. Somewhere in the land of What-if there is a period of Doctor Who called the Banks Stewart Era when the writer Robert Banks- Stewart took over the series and every story was delivered with same brio as `Terror of the Zygons` and `Seeds of Doom`. It would be full of hard action, vicious antagonists, quirky characters and lashings of richly swirling Geoffrey Burgon incidental music. In the event though we have just ten episodes with these ingredients but they do stand out even from their much admired fellow stories this season. Unbelievably `Terror` was supposed to end season twelve - can you imagine this story being shown in the summer?