Temporary hiatus...

 Unfortunately I'm a little under the weather this week, so am taking a short break. Hopefully back with you at the weekend.

I is for... Ixta

Ixta was the warrior captain who had been chosen to lead the Aztec warriors into battle, and to represent their army in various civic duties and ceremonies. Only one warrior was selected for this role, and Ixta had to fight and defeat many challengers to attain it.

When the TARDIS arrived in the Aztec city, cut off from the Doctor and his companions after becoming trapped in a sealed tomb, Barbara Wright was hailed as the reincarnation of the town's occupant - a High Priest named Yetaxa. Ian Chesterton, meanwhile, was invited to challenge for Ixta's role, and was sent to stay at the warriors' dwelling. This had been suggested by the High Priest of Sacrifice, the sadistic Tlotoxl. He was a friend and ally of Ixta, and hoped to see him defeat and kill Ian as part of his efforts to undermine Barbara. Ian was able to overpower Ixta using just his thumb, applied to a pressure point at his neck. Shamed, Ixta sought the help of the Doctor in winning a rematch. His father had been the architect of Yetaxa's tomb. 

He visited the Doctor one evening, wearing his jaguar mask to conceal his identity, and making sure not to reveal that Ian was to be his opponent. The Doctor told him about a plant sap with soporiphic properties, which could be delivered with a thorn. During the subsequent combat Tlotoxl encouraged Ixta to make it a duel to the death once Ian was scratched by the thorn. Barbara was able to prevent this.

Later, Ixta attacked Autloc, High Priest of Knowledge and close ally of Barbara, in an attempt to frame Ian and further discredit Barbara. As the time travellers made their escape into the tomb to retrieve the TARDIS, Ixta and Ian fought for a final time. Ixta fell from the summit of the tomb to his death.

Played by: Ian Cullen. Appearances: The Aztecs (1964).

I is for... Ivo

Headman of a village on an obscure planet in the pocket universe of E-Space. Ivo and his wife ran a tavern, where they lived with their son. Above the village stood a tall tower, which was the seat of power of the "Three Who Rule". Ivo was forced to cooperate with the Captain of the Guards in the frequent selections which took place, when a number of the younger and fitter villagers were picked out to go to the tower to serve the lords. However, those selected were never seen again. Ivo understood that his son would be exempt from the process, but one day he was taken.

Ivo was secretly involved with a rebel group who were determined to overthrow the Three. He would pass on information to them about what the lords were up to. This group was led by an old man named Kalmar. He had amassed various pieces of technology which had been found in the area, and was attempting to get it all to work.

When the Doctor and Romana arrived on the planet, they helped with this - discovering that it belonged to a crashed spaceship from Earth named the Hydrax. At first suspecting that the Three were the crew's descendants, they discovered that they were in fact the original people, their lives prolonged as they were vampires. Ivo's son, and many other villagers, had been taken so that their blood would feed the Great Vampire which had hijacked the spaceship generations ago, and which now lay dormant beneath the tower (really the Hydrax itself). It was soon to arise, however.

The death of his son prompted Ivo to take more positive action and to join Kalmar's attack on the tower. The Doctor offered K9 to help with this, but Ivo was rather scathing of its abilities. He was proved wrong when it helped defeat the Three, and was forced to make a grovelling apology.

Played by: Clinton Greyn. Appearances: State of Decay (1980).

• Greyn returned to the show during Colin Baker's tenure, playing Sontaran Group Marshal Stike in The Two Doctors. Soon after he portrayed another Sontaran, Grand Marshal Nathan, in the Jim'll Fix It sketch 'A Fix With Sontarans'.

I is for... Ital, Tarak

Karachi-born Tarak Ital was a crewmember of Bowie Base One, the first human settlement on the planet Mars. He was the base medic. On 21st November, 2059, he was called to the base's biodome after fellow crewmember Maggie Cain raised an alarm. She was found unconscious, her colleague Andy Stone missing. Looking for him, Ital was attacked by him and deliberately infected with a virulent water-borne parasite known as the Flood. Ital and Stone then attacked the others. As more and more of the crew were taken over, Commander Adelaide Brooke elected to activate the base's self-destruct mechanism - determined to prevent the infection ever escaping back to Earth. Ital and the other infected crew were destroyed in the explosion.

Played by: Chook Sibtain. Appearances: The Waters of Mars (2009).

• Sibtain had previously played the villainous Mark Grantham in The Warriors of Kudlak, one of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

I is for... Issigri, Dom & Madeleine

Dom Issigri was one of the founders of a hugely successful mining operation in the outer galaxies. He set up business in partnership with another miner named Milo Clancey, basing themselves on the planet Ta, which was rich in a metal called argonite.

A few years later Issigri and Clancey had a falling out, which led Clancey to set up his own operation on the planet Lobos. Issigri disappeared soon after and his daughter Madeleine, who took over the running of the business, suspected Clancey of being involved. She was encouraged in this belief by a man named Caven, who led a ruthless pirate gang. Ta was beginning to run out of argonite supplies, but Caven proposed to Madeleine a scheme whereby they could capture and break up space navigation beacons, which were constructed from the metal. To anyone on the outside it would simply look like new seams of argonite were being mined.

Madeleine was happy to form a partnership with Caven, and go along with efforts to have Clancey framed as the pirate leader.

The Doctor and Clancey, along with Jamie and Zoe, were captured by the pirates and locked up in an ornate room in the bowels of Ta. Here they found an old man also being held prisoner, and he was recognised by Clancey as his one-time partner Dom Issigri.

Caven had abducted him as he knew that would never cooperate with piracy, whilst his daughter might be duped into doing so. Once she discovered that her father was still alive she turned against Caven and helped the Space Corps defeat him. She then accepted arrest and whatever punishment might follow for her collusion with the pirates.

Played by: Esmond Knight (Dom) and Lisa Daniely (Madeliene). Appearances: The Space Pirates (1969).

• Very few images exist for The Space Pirates. There are only a handful of publicity stills, and no telesnaps covering the five missing episodes have ever come to light. Dom Issigri only features in the latter part of the story, for which no images exist.
• Esmond Knight was a sailor on HMS Prince of Wales when it was attacked by the Bismark. He was hit in the face by shrapnel, losing one eye and badly damaging the other. For two years he was totally blind, yet continued his acting career. In 1943 he underwent an operation and regained partial sight in his surviving eye. He carried on working right up until just before his death in 1987.

The Deadly Ally / DALEKS!

 

The fourth instalment of the DALEKS! animated adventure is "The Deadly Ally".

Last week's episode had ended with a rather underwhelming cliff-hanger, as the Dalek Emperor told the Mechonoid leader that it knew that the big green lighting effect had followed them to Mechanus. It was all a ploy to get the Mechonoids to help them. They deliberately wrecked the planet's defences last week just so, er, they could help them create planetary defences this week...

Getting your entire force wiped out just to get help to create something which you already had seems to me like a very stupid idea by the Daleks - or just very bad plotting by the writer. "We need an extra episode, so let's waste some time here".

The idea of the Mechonoids having personalities, talking like human beings, just seems totally odd. They may have done it in the comic strips years ago, but this bears no relation to the robots which actually appeared in the TV programme. 

The Strategist and the red Mechonoid scientist turn the defence grid into a device for sending the big green lighting effect back to where it came from. The Mechonoids then kick the two surviving Daleks off their planet, threatening that someday soon they will come and destroy them...

Some of the animation in these episodes is actually quite good, but this is balanced with some very basic, cheap video game quality work.

There's only one more instalment to go in this series, so it will either be very rushed or simply leave things set up for other parts of the Time Lord Victorious saga. Will I be tempted to find out? No way. Anyone planning to experience TLV in its entirety will need to spend a few hundred pounds, what with all the books, comics and audios (and there are action figures, T-shirts and other merchandise). All this for something which has very little to do with the TV series.

What's Wrong With... The Underwater Menace

The Underwater Menace remains one of Doctor Who's least loved stories. Very few people have anything nice to say about it - and that includes the people who made it. Even the discovery of a missing episode, which is far better than the existing terrible one, has failed to lift its reputation.

It had a troubled genesis.

Troughton's third story was at one point going to be a contribution by William Emms (Galaxy 4) called "The Imps", about strange goings-on at a space-port. Geoffrey Orme's "Doctor Who Under The Sea" was being developed at the same time, but the production team favoured Emms' story. 

Hugh David, who had been a successful actor but who now wanted to work behind the camera, was offered this slot as its director. (David had been approached to play the Doctor back in 1963 by the series' temporary producer Rex Tucker, but didn't want another long-running role).

When "The Imps" collapsed, "Under The Sea" was promoted to replace it. David took a look at the script and decided that he'd prefer not to do it. Noting the maritime setting, he had spoken to a friend who had worked on the James Bond movie Thunderball, and was told that, on a BBC budget, the Doctor Who story just couldn't be done.

Refusing to direct the Orme story - which became The Underwater Menace - he was instead offered the earlier story The Highlanders.

Director duties were then passed to Julia Smith. One of Story Editor Gerry Davis' first tasks was to include the new character of Jamie into the proceedings. His addition as a regular cast member had come late in the day on the Culloden story, and the next few stories didn't include him. Dialogue and plot roles intended for Ben had to be shared with Jamie, which annoyed Michael Craze.

Troughton hated the script, and made his feelings known. He also failed to hit it off with Smith. The companion actors followed his lead and were also openly negative about the story and its production, which upset Smith and reduced her to tears at times.

As far as the story goes, the biggest problem with the plot is... the plot. Or rather Professor Zaroff's plan. He plans to blow the up the planet for the sole reason that he can - even though it will mean his own fiery destruction. There's absolutely no reason given for this, like some sort of suicide-inducing trauma. He is just mad. His plan involves digging down towards somewhere beneath Atlantis, to reach molten magma. Whether this is the Earth's core, or just the magma chamber beneath the island's volcano is never specified. There's no evidence on screen for either of these options. Once he's drilled his hole, he will drain the ocean into it, and this will supposedly crack the planet in two. This simply wouldn't happen. You'd just create the world's biggest steam whistle.

To demonstrate what the Professor is intending, the Doctor gives the example of a sealed vessel full of water being heated. This is a bad example, as the Earth would not behave like a sealed vessel.

Then we have Joseph Furst's performance. This is the story where the cliffhanger to an episode is Zaroff exclaiming: "Nuzzink in ze vorld can shtop me now!". Zaroff also gets to deliver the following lines:

"So, you are just a little man after all, Doctor, like all ze rest", and "Help me stand at your sides so that I can feel ze aura of your goodness". The dialogue is pretty atrocious throughout.

Opinions are split on the underwater ballet of the Fish Workers in Episode 3. You'll either love it as a bit of 1960's surrealism, or stare fixedly at the various wires holding the performers up. (Personally I love it. Dudley Simpson's electronic score is wonderful).

Zaroff gets hit by an absolutely massive boulder, but just goes "Ooh!", then gets up moments later as if nothing happened.

The temple set is so small that it looks impossible that the Doctor and Ramo could just get up and walk away when they are about to be sacrificed, and the congregation have their heads bowed. They even talk while they're doing it. Yet High Priest Lolem thinks they've been supernaturally spirited away.

One criticism I've read is that Jamie seems to know the words to "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond", when it post-dates him. It wasn't published until well after his time, and the song dates to the 1840's, but the original poem does date to the Jacobite era from which Jamie comes.

One of the biggest mysteries is how Atlantis - an island - can run out of food so quickly when it's surrounded by ocean, full of fish. Even with the Fish Workers on strike, what's to stop everyone else getting their fishing rods out and popping up to the surface? Zaroff is about to blow up the planet, so why is he bothered?