The latest Blu-Ray box set arrived in the middle of last week, understandably delayed slightly due to the on-going disruption of Covid-19. This time it's Season 14, the third and final season for producer Philip Hinchcliffe, who features prominently across the whole set.
It's also the season which sees the departure of Lis Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, and the arrival of Louise Jameson as Leela, with a companion-free story in between. This season also sees the only use of the wood-panelled Jules Verne-style TARDIS console room.
The season opens with The Masque of Mandragora, a story which has grown on me over the years. Very high production values in terms of costumes and sets (some of the costumes came from a 1950's Italian produced film version of Romeo & Juliet). Great location work at Portmeirion in Wales (home of The Prisoner), and Norman Jones and Jon Laurimore make for a fine pair of villains as Hieronymous and Count Federico respectively.
Next we have The Hand of Fear, which is one of the weakest of the season. The Earth-set part is good but things fall apart a little when we get to Kastria and Stephen Thorne's rather OTT performance as the Kastrian Eldrad. Fortunately Lis Sladen gives a great farewell performance as Sarah, and the final episode is raised considerably by her departure scenes with Tom Baker.
The Deadly Assassin is regarded as a bit of a classic, with the surreal, nightmarish Matrix scenes hugely popular with fans. The story sparked a lot of controversy at the time - the upper echelons of the DWAS hating how it presented the Time Lords, and Mary Whitehouse singling out the cliffhanger to Episode 3 for complaint. Of course it isn't really a companion-free story at all, as we have excellent surrogates in the form of Castellan Spandrell and Coordinator Engin.
The Face of Evil then introduces Leela. For me it's the weakest story of the season (but still very watchable, with some great Sci-fi concepts - just shows the strength of the stories during this era of the show). I think one of the reasons that I've never really loved this story is a resentment that Sarah has gone.
The Robots of Death is another classic. It could have been one of the weaker stories, a rather formulaic whodunnit, but is raised by the fantastic guest cast and the art deco inspired design work.
Finally we have The Talons of Weng-Chiang - another classic. Obviously controversial now for its use of "yellow face" and general negative and stereotyped portrayal of London's Chinese community, only the violence was criticised at the time - and the dodgy giant rat. I was there in 1976, and can assure you, sadly, that casual racism and sexism were not unusual in TV and film. The Benny Hill Show was one of the biggest programmes on ITV (it didn't get taken off the air until 1989), and you can view repeats of On The Buses on ITV3 to see what sitcoms looked like in the 70's.
John Bennett's Li H'Sen Chang actually comes across as a rather sympathetic character in the end, duped and ultimately betrayed by his "god". He even acknowledges Victorian England's racism towards his people.
The rat actually gets a CGI upgrade for this release, along with Chang's mesmeric gaze and the dragon statue laser fire. The Doctor's homemade gas bomb in the final episode also gets enhanced flame effects.
The CGI effects for this story are just one of many extra features.
On the sofa this time we have two panels - Tom Baker, Louise Jameson and Philip Hinchcliffe on one, and Peter Purves and Sophie Aldred on the other. I don't always like the secondary panel of people who weren't involved with the actual episodes being shown, but Purves and Aldred make a fine appreciative team and I'd like to see more of them together in these segments.
Philip Hinchcliffe is also the subject of Matthew Sweet's in-depth interview. These are highlights of the box sets.
Toby Hadoke's contribution is a follow-up documentary about Doctor Who's first ever documentary - the Lively Arts piece called Whose Doctor Who, first broadcast the day after Talons ended and featuring behind the scenes footage from it, as well as various clips from Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee and early Tom Baker stories. The focus, however, was on the impact the programme had on viewers, young and old. The original doc is present in a tidied up form (clips from Pertwee stories which were B&W in the original version are now shown in colour, and it's obvious they have replaced other clips with cleaned up versions). Hadoke tracks down the producer Tony Cash, some of his production assistants, DWAS pioneers and - most importantly - some of the children who participated all those years ago. Hinchcliffe also features. Poignant at times - one of the children passed away at a very young age - it's a lovely piece.
Talking of poignant, an extra accompanying The Hand of Fear is a feature-length tribute to Lis Sladen. Actually, poignant is far too weak a word. I'm not ashamed to say that I was in tears watching this. I defy anyone not to tear up when you see the indomitable Tom Baker on the point of tears himself remembering Lis. Buy this set just for this tribute to the greatest ever Doctor Who companion.
Rounding the set off we have the extras imported from the original DVD releases, plus a couple of audio items (an entertaining local radio interview with Tom, the school's radio programme Exploration Earth, and the complete LP adventure The Pescatons). There's also an archive episode of the BBC2 panel game Call My Bluff, featuring Tom as a guest, plus a convention panel for The Robots of Death, featuring Jameson, Russell Hunter, and Davids Bailie and Collings, plus writer Chris Boucher.
Once again, all of this is contained in a beautifully put together box, with wonderful artwork courtesy of Lee Binding. I can't wait to see which season will be next (please let it be a 1960's one). Naturally, opportunities to film new extras are very limited at the moment, which may delay future releases, but they must have a lot of material already in the can.
No comments:
Post a Comment