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The Krotons
I only got the Krotons because the video I’d bought the week before was
faulty. It was the early years of the “Secret Policeman’s Ball” and it
kept going fast and slow, fast and slow, fast and slow. The little lights
on the video kept showing it jump from SP to LP, SP to LP, SP to LP. It
was ruined. So I took it back to the Virgin Megastore in Manchester and
swapped it for the only Doctor Who video they had which I didn’t – the
Krotons. I'd heard all the complaints about the Krotons - it was boring,
silly and rubbish. I've never understood why people say that. I've never
thought the Krotons look silly. They look sort of functional which is what
robots should look like. And their voices are fantastic - loud and
powerful which is what the story demands. These are bully robots who go
round shouting at dim natives. The only real weakness in the story is that
they only take two Gonds to brain-power their big machine. If you had a
race who were a bit thick and two of their brains weren't enough to make
your ship work, would you -
(a) spend generations
trying to make them cleverer or
(b) use more than two of
them.
Personally I'd pick option
(b) though I'd be wary of the Big Brother effect which states that it
doesn't matter how many you choose, the total IQ will never increase due
to a theoretically impossible bending of pure mathematics which can only
occur when that much denseness is packed into so small a place. The BB
house is the closest we can get to creating a singularity on Earth and I
like to think that is why so many people watch it. They are anthropo-physicists
tuning in for their daily dose of near-black-hole fun.
"Och - in forty years time someone will think yer shaggin' me"
The Seeds of Death
The Seeds of Death is one of my absolute favourites. Originally I bought
it second hand on video from the shop I mentioned earlier. It was only six
pounds back then. It was a Sunday morning and I started watching it while
eating pancakes. That’s why I still think of the Seeds of Death as a lemon
flavoured story. Lemon and sugar but mostly lemon. I’m sure there was
something wrong with the video – when I watch the DVD and can’t be
bothered to switch it from 16:9 to 4:3 everything is stretched sideways.
This isn’t as bad as it sounds because I’m sure the video was like that.
Everyone’s faces stretched wider than they ought to have been. That wasn’t
the video’s big problem though – the lack of cliffhangers was its big
problem. The pancakes had long since been finished and the story dragged
on and on. It simply couldn’t be done in one sitting. Sometimes you’ll
hear someone in a DVD commentary say that they don’t understand why the
DVDs are episodic. Surely, they reason, it would make more sense to turn
them into feature length adventures. They were only episodic in the first
place because that was the slot they had to fill. This is so much arse and
the video of the Seeds of Death is proof it is arse. A lovely, charming,
fun story is turned into a slog by the editor’s scissors. Episodic Doctor
Who is not necessary because fans are anally retentive morons (insert your
own quip about someone you know or have heard about from chums), episodic
Doctor Who is necessary because it isn’t possibly to watch it any other
way. Not the sixties stuff at any rate.
So it didn’t come into its own until the DVD gave it to us as nature
intended. And it was vidFIREd too. Apparently the Aztecs was the first
Doctor Who DVD to be given this process in its entirety. That’s not how I
remember it so maybe I didn’t get the Aztecs until later. No, the Seeds of
Death was the story which utterly bowled me over with its shiny new look
and if it wasn’t in black and white you’d swear it was made yesterday. You
could almost smell the paint which badly marked Wendy’s leather outfit.
Which brings me to the commentary. Normally I stick to memories from long
ago but the commentary of Seeds of Death must be mentioned for this
footling project to have any value at all. It is simply my most watched
piece of Doctor Who over the past five or so years. More than any story,
more than any other feature, more than anything. I find it strangely
comforting – it’s like I press the audio button on my remote control and
suddenly I’ve got another teddy bear. I mean I’ve got a teddy bear. For
example, a few months ago when I was having major anxiety about my upcoming laser op,
I resorted to the Seeds of Death commentary to pass a couple of evenings.
I ran through it two or three times. I can’t explain why what is
essentially a bunch of old people talking about something they did forty
years ago has this effect on me but it does. No other commentary comes
close. There are funnier ones, more informative ones, more entertaining
ones. But nothing seems to act on me the same way as the Seeds of Death. I
keep meaning to copy the audio track onto my iPod so I can actually listen
to it away from the TV. I actually worry that I’m going to wear out of DVD
by playing it so often. It’s a long way from being normal I’ll admit but
that’s the truth of it.
I’ve even got the episode soundtracks on my phone so I can listen to it in
cases of emergency. You may laugh but when I picked up my rental car last
year and had nothing to put in the CD player it came in very handy.
Video restoration is the new sorcery
The Space Pirates
The Space Pirates always makes me think of Jeeves and Wooster because Jack
May was in both and he has one of the most distinctive voices in the
world. He played a country vicar in Jeeves and Wooster. Just the sort who
would’ve been involved with the great sermon handicap had they not
inexplicably decided not to film my favourite Wodehouse short story. He’s
the top white hat in the Space Pirates and barks out orders to his
sidekicks. One of his sidekicks is George Layton with a moustache. Layton
was a regular in the Doctor series (as in “…in the House” rather than
“…Who”) and wrote the Nigel Havers classic “Don’t Wait Up”. But that’s too
factual. It’s the other sidekick I want to mention because he’s Donald Gee
from Monster of Peladon and he achieved something special. Until recently
the Space Pirates meant absolutely nothing to me. I remember it getting a
roasting in the Discontinuity Guide (a bible back in the day even if most
of its jokes haven’t aged well – something it accused Destiny of the
Daleks of), especially because of the Scooby Doo ‘everyone laughs at the
final joke’ ending. The surviving episode is forgettable, there is much
about it which can only have slipped past a busy production crew and
everyone in the story knows everyone else and has so many agendas and
prejudices and feuds that we the audience feel like we’re in the way.
We’re eavesdropping on someone else’s business.
So the most memorable thing about it is in one of the featurettes produced
for the Loose Canon recon. These are made by dedicated fans, for dedicated
fans. And yet Donald Gee was allowed to do something extraordinary. His
main interest fact was that he appeared in the penultimate story of the
Patrick Troughton era and the penultimate story of the Jon Pertwee era.
Only he didn’t say “Trought-on” and “Pert-wee”, he said “Tror-ton” and “P’twee”.
In thirty seconds he mispronounced both names and no one did a retake. I
can’t take him seriously any more.
Can't pronounce a single name properly
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