For the ninth season of Doctor Who it was decided to bring back a few monsters from previous years. The Daleks were coming back, in colour for the first time, as were the Ice Warriors.
A creature from the more recent past was also to make a return - the Silurian. Malcolm Hulke elected to do something new with them, however, and so came up with a story tentatively titled "The Sea Silurians".
This would feature their marine cousins, and in the end they went with an entirely new design, based on sea turtles.
Hulke was aware that people had spotted that the name "Silurian" had been wrong. He had just liked the sound of it, but claiming that the reptile people originated in the Silurian era was just not possible. There certainly wasn't any crossover then of small ape-like creatures with dinosaurs, as The Silurians implies.
Hulke chose to deal with this mistake head on, by actually talking about it in this new story.
The Doctor tells Jo that the man who discovered the Silurians (Dr Quinn as you'll recall) had simply made a mistake, and the creatures should more accurately be called Eocenes.
Trouble is, this is just as wrong.
The Eocene epoch lasted from 56 to 34 million years ago. The name derives from the Greek for "new dawn" as many animals and plants which are still around today made their first appearance.
There were primates in this era, but the age of the dinosaurs was long over (as everyone knows, a space freighter from the 26th Century crashed into Earth around 65 million years ago and wiped them out).
We shouldn't knock Dr Quinn for his initial mistake - he was a physicist working in an experimental power generating plant, not a palaeontologist - and I'm sure Hulke would have done better too, had he had access to Wikipedia in 1972.
I've generally ignored coincidences in these What's Wrong... posts, as they are a necessary evil when it comes to writing half-hour TV drama series. The coincidence here, however, is too big not to let pass.
There just happens to be a great big Sea Devil shelter right off shore from the prison that the Master has been sent to - and he just happens to know all about Sea Devils.
He got his information about them from some files he stole from the Time Lords. Presumably these files also covered the land-based Silurians, so why did they not tell the Doctor about them when they exiled him to Earth?
As with the previous story, the Doctor attempts to make peace between human and reptile. Surely he would be aware if this came to pass or not. He has visited the Earth's future many, many times, and there have been no signs of cohabiting Silurians. Either he must know that his efforts are doomed to failure, or he is about to make a drastic change to Earth's future timeline.
(This issue has come up again more recently during Steven Moffat's tenure. He tries to have it both ways - with the Silurians popping up whenever he feels like it, yet they never seem to co-exist with humans in the future. Either they're still hibernating or they aren't).
The Sea Devils have been woken up by some refurbishment that's going on at the sea fort. If that's the case, why were they not awakened when the fort was first built, when far greater disturbance would have been created?
We get a nice clear view of the map in Captain Hart's office, with the ship sinkings clustered neatly around the fort - yet it doesn't dawn on him that there might be a connection between it and the incidents.
To make matters worse, the dialogue actually states that some 70 ships have gone down in the same area over the last 10 years. It isn't clear if this was all the work of the Sea Devils, as the implication is that they have only just been woken up.
If they are behind these sinkings - why? All they're doing is drawing attention to themselves (so it's very fortunate that it's Captain Hart who is in charge of the navy base).
This is a man who leaves a vital piece of forensic evidence - the lifeboat - sitting unguarded on the beach without any sort of covering.
Something stupid which actually gets picked up on in the dialogue - Colonel Trenchard just has to go and talk about the mysterious ship sinkings to the Doctor.
We've talked a lot before about people getting positions of great responsibility when they are plainly not suited to them, and Trenchard probably takes the biscuit. I would love to have seen how the Master came to wrap him round his little finger without recourse to hypnotism, and how the nation's No.1 criminal was permitted to take over the prison when the Doctor and UNIT would surely have been keeping a very close eye on him.
Trenchard doesn't seem to have been told anything about his own prisoner - and he's only got the one to worry about.
When the Doctor does finally decide to pay the Master a visit, he and Jo are only there for a couple of minutes before they announce they have to leave again.
Trenchard says that the Master can't get the exercise these days, just before the Doctor and Jo go to his room and see him on a rowing machine.
On escaping on the beach later, the Master has a high vantage point, and would see that the Doctor and Jo are stuck between armed guards with a shoot to kill policy and a minefield. Why then does he call forth a Sea Devil - other than it might make for a good cliff-hanger? Its appearance gives the game away to Trenchard that they aren't really dealing with foreign saboteurs as he claimed.
In production terms we know why UNIT are absent from this story - the Royal Navy are being very helpful, have supplied all sorts of facilities, and want to be shown in a good light, so Captain Hart takes on the role that the Brigadier would have had. In story terms, however, it is just plain wrong that UNIT aren't called in straight away.
At no point does Hart ever seem to contact the Brigadier to ask about the business in the caves a couple of years ago. He plays golf with Trenchard, yet doesn't seem to know anything about what Trenchard actually does at the prison.
The English Channel no doubt gets some nice sunny weather, but are there really enough hot dry days to justify ripping all the doors and windows off the prison vehicles?
And whose idea was it to have swords hanging on the walls of a prison?
Since when do civil servants, senior or otherwise, have the authority to order nuclear attacks? Is launching nuclear weapons only a few miles off Portsmouth ever going to be a clever idea - especially if you look as if you are planning to hang around and not flee to the hills?
The helicopter which takes off to search for the Doctor and Jo is a different one to the one that actually finds them - noticeably so as it has a different colour scheme.
In the final episode, the Doctor carries out some sabotage on a device he is helping build in the base's spares store. It makes a noise which overpowers the Sea Devils. This sound goes on for several minutes, with the Master just standing there. It's not that he is unaware of what is going on, as there's a Sea Devil clutching its head and dancing about in front of him the whole time.
If the Master needed the Doctor's help with this device, why has he been trying to kill him up to this point?
In the spares room earlier the Doctor has told an officer to "keep an eye" on the Master and "watch him" - advice best not given when you're dealing with an expert hypnotist.
Finally - not so much a mistake as something that just looks silly: all the guards have Freddie Mercury moustaches (Clones, in more ways than one..?) and look like comedy French Gendarmes. You keep expecting them to introduce themselves with "Good moaning...".
No comments:
Post a Comment