It is very much a "Marmite" story - in that you either love it or hate it - but in terms of plotting it actually holds up for the most part. The problems are minor compared to some.
For a start, how can you have a Late Show at the Forum, when there's a curfew in place? We hear that attendance is compulsory, so not sure how that works in practice.
Additionally, when we do get to see inside, there's hardly ever anyone there.
Failure to be happy earns you a death sentence, yet Gilbert M is grumpy all the time, and the doorman at the Forum even more so. You can understand why Gilbert M might be tolerated, but surely the doorman could be easily replaced.
Actually, some of the worst offenders are the Patrol members themselves, who hardly ever smile and are usually squabbling.
If making people happy is the prime driver on Terra Alpha, how does the creation of thousands of widows and orphans help achieve that?
Silas P is employed to root out Killjoys by pretending to be one of their number - handing over a card that claims to offer a support group for them. On the reverse, however, is his true identity as a member of the Patrol. Problem is, he hands over the cards with the real ID face upwards, and the Killjoys in each case have to turn it over to show the fake side - without spotting the Patrol ID.
And if he is such a prominent member of the Patrol, ensnaring many Killjoys, why does Priscilla P shoot him down without first checking that he's okay. He's simply acting groggy after being knocked out, so not his usual self. Has she carried a grudge against him for a while and was looking to get rid of him, possibly to get his role? If that's the case, there's nothing to suggest it on screen.
Trevor Sigma is conducting a galactic census, and seems to suggest that he is doing this entirely on his own, on foot - which seems more than a little unlikely.
One production error that makes it into the finished episode is when a Patrol member appears on screen a little too early, whilst the Doctor is messing about with the go-kart.
And what is the point of these vehicles if you can overtake them easily at a brisk walking pace. (We saw a similar problem with the buggies in the Varosian punishment dome).
There's also the business with the Kandy Man's head. It was altered part way through production to add the metal mouth piece and so looks different when we see him in the pipes in the final episode, recorded earlier.
We know that scripts were generally running overlong during this period of the show, with a lot of cutting going on to make episodes fit the time slot (either in the script editing, or in the actual recording edit). This may be why Gilbert M seems to pop up out of nowhere then vanish again at times. On one occasion his disappearance from the Kandy Kitchen actually allows the Doctor to re-stick the feet of the Kandy Man and so escape.
Finally, I suppose we need to talk about that bizarre villain. In the original scripts, the Kandy Man was supposed to look human in a lab coat but with a shiny glazed face, and with belongings like spectacles and pencils which proved to be made of sweets. A decision was then taken to have him made entirely of different sweets, but they elected to go for ones that made him look almost identical to a long established commercial character - Bertie Bassett. This drew a complaint form the company. Surely they must have known that there would be copyright issues here? There are lots of sweet varieties they could have used that would have served the purpose but left him looking unique, and not some copycat. When you consider the issues of product placement at the BBC, it is especially strange that this decision was made. (This was the era when Blue Peter presenters couldn't call it Sellotape, and brand names on things like washing up liquid bottles - ideal for Apollo rockets - were taped over).
Knowing how much he craved publicity for the series, one suspects that JNT provoked this controversy deliberately.
He had to promise that the character would never be returning to the series - so maybe not something wrong after all...
No comments:
Post a Comment