What's Wrong With... Inferno

In Professor Stahlman we get the latest in the increasingly long list of "people who should never be put in charge of important projects".

We've been meeting these regularly since General Cutler in The Tenth Planet, and they were especially common in the Troughton "base under siege" era. 

So far Season 7 has delivered two notable examples in Dr Lawrence and in General Carrington.

The issue here in Inferno is the question of why Stahlman is even here. What sort of scientist is he? 

He has come up with the idea that there is a new type of gas present deep beneath the Earth's surface, very close to the boundary with the molten core. This gas should be a highly efficient energy source.

To get to the gas, a drilling project is required. This should involve an entirely different set of skills to the Professor's chemistry background. A drilling technical expert ought to be the person in charge here - not a chemist.

Sir Keith does bring in a drilling expert - but only in the last few days of the project.

A very big question is, of course, how does the Professor know that the gas exists, let alone where it can be found, if no-one has ever drilled that deep? Even if there is a substance there, no-one can possibly known its composition or properties - so how would they know that it would be more efficient than coal or North Sea gas?

When green slime does start bubbling up from the depths, people just touch it with their bare hands. The Doctor quickly knows that it causes people to mutate into Primords, but doesn't do anything about Stahlman / Stahlmann when he knows that he came into contact with the breaking glass flask.

He doesn't force the issue when Stahlmann has obviously simply covered his infection up with a bandage (and you can see green skin underneath). 

The Doctor also allows the Professor plenty of time to get rid of the computer component he has removed. He allows him to empty his own pockets, rather than having them searched by a neutral third party.

Primord Slocum collapses immediately the nuclear reactor is shut down - suggesting cause and effect. The reactor is nowhere near the room where Slocum is, so how could he be instantly affected in this way.

One minute the Primords are vulnerable to bullets, the next they're not. One minute a fire extinguisher can stun them, the next it kills.

It is a government sanctioned project, and presumably funded by them, and they have placed Sir Keith Gold on the staff to act as their liaison - but he has absolutely no authority to do anything. To get anything done he has to go in person to London to ask for it. You have to ask what is the point of him being there?

When everything is going to hell, Sir Keith still flaps about, unwilling to go against the Professor despite the sudden presence of hairy monsters created by the drilling, and UNIT's scientific adviser warning that the planet will be destroyed if the proceed.

When Sir Keith goes missing, no-one knows what the outcome of his meeting with the minister was. Why does the Brigadier not simply pick up a phone?

Even when Sir Keith does return to the project, he is still coming out with nonsense like only Stahlman being allowed to give the shut-down order.

In The Underwater Menace - the last time we had a mad scientist trying to drill down to the planet's molten core - the plan would never have worked to blow apart the Earth. The sea would have evaporated the moment in came near the magma, leading to a continuous jet of steam - not the splitting apart of the Earth. We have a similar issue here. The writer seems to think that breaking through a certain subterranean layer will lead to a hole that can never be plugged. What you would get would be a volcanic eruption, of which there have been millions throughout history without the planet being destroyed. We saw this in The Daleks Invasion of Earth.

We can understand UNIT being called in to Wenley Moor as this comes after strange things have already started to happen. Likewise with the UK Space Agency in the last story, but why are UNIT involved at the drilling project in the first place? Strange things only start to happen after they have arrived, so it can't be this that has brought them here. If the drilling project is for the benefit of the UK government, who will be competing with foreign powers for energy resources, then surely the British army should have been called in for security - not an organisation which owes allegiance to the United Nations.

Why do the shelving units which are closer to the TARDIS console not get transported to the parallel universe along with Bessie?

Why is Stahlman's name different here, when no-one else's is?

The reactor power unit in the main control room of the parallel universe has the same small additional unit that the Doctor fitted in our universe, in order to run his own experiments. How can this be if the Doctor does not exist here?

The Brigade-Leader and Section Leader Shaw never ask the Doctor about the strange machine in the storeroom, despite suspecting him of being a saboteur: why has the TARDIS console not been taken apart to ensure it isn't a bomb?

Primord Bromley can bend metal bars, but he lies around his cell until he has someone to chase. (The bars are clearly bendy).

Finally, the Doctor is UNIT's scientific adviser. If he advises his old friend the Brigadier that the drilling must stop immediately or the world will be destroyed, surely that should be enough for him?

Instead of calmly notifying the Brigadier of the imminent danger, the Doctor acts like a madman and starts smashing the place up - making everyone doubt him and achieving the opposite of what he wants.

And surely if he was wanting to stop the drilling he would know exactly what equipment to smash to achieve this, rather than just randomly breaking things that don't seem to do anything.

Two significant things which went wrong behind the scenes on Inferno were Jon Pertwee striking one of the HAVOC stuntmen with Bessie, badly gashing his leg. Stunt performer Alan Chuntz had misjudged his leap to safety due to the unfamiliar heavy boots he was wearing.

Even more serious was the collapse of director Douglas Camfield, due to side effects from new heart medication. He had already filmed the location work and was handling rehearsals when he was taken ill. Producer Barry Letts, who had considerable director experience, stepped in and completed the story using Camfield's plans. Camfield's wife Sheila was working on this story - playing Petra Williams. Knowing how stressful the series was to work on, she forebade him from doing anymore Doctor Who. He wouldn't return to the show until Terror of the Zygons six years later.