What's Wrong With... The Claws of Axos

Chinn was actually right all the time...

When Axos first appears on radar heading for England, obnoxious civil servant Chinn (first name Horatio, in the novelisation) decides to have it shot down by missiles.

Later, once he has heard about the wonderful properties of Axonite, he attempts to keep it secret from the rest of the world and confine it to the UK.

In both these instances he is actually doing the right thing, albeit for the wrong reasons. The Doctor wants Axos to be allowed to arrive safely, as he thinks it might be friendly. He turns out to be wrong - though it is only to be expected that he would initially want to assume that aliens aren't always aggressive.

Axos intends to drain the Earth of all of its energy, and to do this it needs Axonite to be distributed across the entire globe within a short space of time, so Chinn's underhand tactics were actually preventing this from happening.

Chinn is conducting an admin exercise at UNIT - basically checking up on their HR it seems. Why would he be placed in charge of a First Contact situation. It is not as if he is at the landing site of the UFO when it arrives. UNIT have to travel down to Nuton from their HQ, so the UK Government could easily have identified a much more experienced politician or civil servant to handle what is likely to some incredibly complex and sensitive negotiations and sent them down. It is clear that the Minister does not rate Chinn's abilities very much from the outset, and he's quick to get his resignation typed up.

The army commander is told by the Brigadier that he and the others from UNIT are now free, and he should go and get fresh orders. He simply accepts this. Would it not be best to check on these new orders first, before letting your prisoners go free?

The Axons have the Master - so why do they wait until the Doctor arrives on the scene to suddenly be interested in getting time travel capability? Why didn't they sort this out with the captive Master, bearing in mind they also have his TARDIS?

How exactly did Axos manage to jump a few seconds in time, if it doesn't yet have any time travel capability?

Later on, the Master will try to leave Earth by stealing the Doctor's TARDIS. He already knows all about the Doctor's exile to Earth, and surely must have guessed that the ship would have been physically incapacitated by the Time Lords - not just mental blocks placed in the Doctor's mind. 

If he does think he can get it working, why move it down to Nuton? Couldn't he get it working just as easily back at UNIT HQ? If the nuclear reactor is essential for him, why not go to another one that isn't crawling with UNIT soldiers?

Would a piece of equipment from a 1970's nuclear power station really be compatible with a TARDIS - to the extent that it could make good a broken one?

We hear that Nuton provides electricity for most of Southern England, yet the Doctor (who is technically under arrest by the army) is left all alone to tinker with the reactor and other vital equipment whilst he is messing about with the Axonite.

How to deal with an exploding nuclear power station: 

1. Drive a couple of miles away.

2. Hide behind a car or other object that can be blown away by a blast.

3. Wait thirty seconds.

4. Hurry back to the scene of the explosion.

5. Hold a meeting in the radioactive ruins.

When the power station begins to collapse we can clearly see the TARDIS standing in the background, minutes after it has supposedly left for Axos.

What happened to the Axonite that was in the TARDIS as it left Axos?

A time loop is a supposedly impossible thing to escape from - which is why the Doctor puts Axos in one in the first place - yet the Doctor manages to leave simply by "boosting the circuits".

Mind you, Axos did absolutely nothing to stop the Master escaping. One minute there's a force-field around his ship, the next it's gone.

How blind is Sergeant Benton to have been taken in by the Master's army officer disguise?

Then again, he and Yates thought that the body of a bearded man dressed like a tramp is that of clean-shaven, besuited Bill Filer.

Why did Axos dump Pigbin Josh's body on its own doorstep, to be found by UNIT, it if wants to fool the authorities into thinking it friendly?

When Yates and Benton are attacked by Axons whilst driving in a land rover, there is an odd background to the scene. It looks like a blue CSO screen that hasn't had its image superimposed on top.

Just who is Bill Filer? His role is never explained. Is he a US UNIT operative, or is he CIA? Why is he copied, when Axos sends Axons to abduct the Doctor anyway?

Filer claims to have read the file on the Master. Pity it didn't have any photographs in it.

Finally, critics of Doctor Who often used to talk about wobbly sets, as well as spaceships made out of washing-up liquid bottles, etc. This used to really anger producer Barry Letts, who maintained that sets only ever wobbled on soap operas. I'm afraid to say that there are two very noticeable occasions when the walls do wobble in a Doctor Who story - and they are both stories from his era. This is the first - the wall shakes when the Brigadier exits an office.