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Robot
Robot was yet another Sunday morning omnibus. Towards the end – when the
Robot is massive and everyone is standing around shooting at it – father
came into the lounge and had a look. He saw the Brigadier and said ‘Ah –
my hero’ and went out again. I don't think he meant it.
The other thing I remember
from that first viewing was how much I disliked Sarah Jane’s dress. She
must go down as the companion with the worst dress sense of the 1970s.
Since they’d abandoned her tomboyish look from season 11 (which was a
shame even though 1974 wasn’t a good year for tomboys) they could at least
have reverted to type and put her in miniskirts. Liz Shaw had proven you
could have a brain and a pair of legs. Not necessarily in that order
though. Instead we get a 1920s outfit which makes Sarah Jane look like a
woman whose entire wardrobe consists of clothes she’s inherited from
elderly relatives. Time has played a cruel trick on Sarah Jane - when she
was in her 20s she dressed like she was in her 60s and these days it's the
other way round. Now that I think about it, I’m fairly sure Kettlewell’s
betrayal (I laugh in the face of spoilers) came as a complete surprise to
me.
I’ll always think of Robot as the first story in the Tom Baker Years video
to get the Tom Baker Grin™. He liked it. He may even have debuted the
phrase “cass-ette-tape” with Robot. I sold that video yonks ago so I can’t
check but it got the tape off to a good start. He liked the bit where we
see things from the Robot's point of view. Some boffin thought it would be
best if the Robot saw everything as if looking through the decorative
glass in someone's front door and Tom Baker approved. I would never have
ok'd that. If you're going to build a machine that can kill, it has to
know when there is a front door in the way. Under the current system it
would have no idea.
The video of Robot was one
of the first I got during my 2004-ish quest to own every single Doctor Who
video (without paying more than RRP). It was an odd mission as almost my
first action upon completing the set was to start selling the rarer titles
for more than I’d paid for them. I’ve just looked in my email archives and
I still have the email confirming my purchase of Robot and Masque of
Mandragora from eBay in February 2004. I’ve never been one for eBay
auctions. I am the least competitive person in the world and have always
preferred Buy It Now sales to auctions. But I won’t deny a certain thrill
when I win. I had a spreadsheet of the videos I needed to get (because
otherwise I would almost certainly have ended up with two of one thing and
none of another) and one by damned one they were ticked off.
Granny clothes
The Ark in Space
The homo sapiens speech was something I’d seen many times. It’s one of the
iconic moments of Tom’s tenure. So I was waiting for it and when it came I
realised it was the bit I’d seen before. All fine and large but a bit
silly to look forward to. The rest of it felt tired and a bit predictable
– not ideal for the second story of a new Doctor and I’d not seen much Tom
Baker by that point even via the miracle of videos. I should perhaps take
this opportunity to confess that I’m not much of a Tom Baker fan. There is
something about his era which I feel entirely neutral towards. I’ve never
done a 24 Things… piece about a Tom Baker story because there aren’t any
I’ve watched often enough or care enough about to dissect. I can see why
people like him and as a character I find Tom Baker to be wonderful. But
his era lacks the charm and warmth of Pertwee-UNIT-Katy-Uncle-Terrance-and-Uncle-Barry.
There was certainly a change of philosophy with the new production team
favouring gothic adventures over comfy lefty political tales. Whatever it
was and whatever it is, I just don’t feel any great connection to the Tom
Baker era. These days it doesn’t help that Lis Sladen – who I don’t want
to come across as bashing because I did like her – is one of my least
favourite commentators. Everything she says sounds like a prepared
statement. Even Tom is a disappointment on commentaries. I bet Pertwee
would’ve been the best commentator ever. Tom just sits back and lets
people that remember the 1970s do most of the work.
I remember being in Manchester’s Virgin Megastore and – for reasons which
escape me – having a look in the tiny Laser Disc section. I don’t think I
really knew what a Laser Disc was in those days. I’ve read about them on
the internet – my favourite Laser Disc fact is that the format was
originally called "Disco-vision" which I think is a much better name. Ark
in Space was the first and to date the only Laser Disc I’ve ever held. I
was drawn to it because (a) it was Doctor Who and (b) the cover was the
same as the video one only much, much bigger. I pondered on how pointless
this seemed – even in the days when I hadn’t really heard of Laser Disc I
knew it was a dinosaur of a format just waiting to become extinct. What
was wrong, I asked, with good old video? A couple of years later that
question was well and truly answered.
DISCO-VISION~!
(and nothing like the video cover actually)
The Sontaran Experiment
When I first saw this I felt it was so slight. Remember, I was coming off
what felt like months of 6-parters which would take up an entire Sunday
morning. Now it was all over in an hour and felt short changed. Though I
did spend the episode trying to spot the bits where Tom Baker was working
with a broken collar bone. Years later I discovered that one of the humans
is played by the guy who wrote the Space Museum. That wouldn’t have meant
anything to me at the time but these days it is still faintly boggling. I
expect my obscure 1960s writers to disappear without trace (Peter R
Newman?) not turn up, covered in BBC dirt, frolicking around Dartmoor.
The video of the Sontaran Experiment was the great unobtainable story. It
wasn’t that it was rare like the Hand of Fear, it was paired up with
Genesis of the Daleks and cost twenty pounds. Genesis had been on TV the
year before so I didn’t need or want to buy it. This meant I would have to
wait for the Sontaran Experiment to be on TV if I wanted to see it. Years
later I got Genesis of the Daleks in the Davros (video) boxed set which
meant my video hunt of 2004 included spending far too much for a slight
two parter which I didn’t like much. Such is the lot of the addict.
A post script was seeing a clip of the Sontaran Experiment on Confidential
after the second half of the 2008 Sontaran two parter. Back in 1994 I knew
enough to know that Kevin Lindsay was wearing a very different mask to the
previous season and that Sarah Jane was a fool for saying they looked
identical (which reminds me of a bit of commentary at the WWF’s Summerslam
1990 when Vince McMahon – then a babyface announcer in a polyester jacket
– bizarrely claimed that Ax and Smash of Demolition were impossible to
tell apart. This despite one having long hair and the other having short
hair. Or that one was in his 30s and muscular while the other was in his
50s and not so muscular. Or that one had a large pad on his arm to hide
the tattoo he had done when playing a communist sympathiser in a rival
promotion while the other had bare arms.) What I saw on Confidential was
that the Sontaran doing the experiments had a huge grin on his face. I
used to think a woman I worked with had the ultimate in
a-very-wide-mouth-on-a-very-big-face but this Sontaran tops it easily.
Well, maybe not easily but enough to win anyway.
Imagine sitting opposite this plus a maroon pudding bowl haircut
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