It’s not just the heroes that the Secret Invasion targets…

The last few summers, Marvel returned to the idea of the summer event in massive limited series story arcs with major impact across their entire comic line.  House of M, Civil War and last year’s World War Hulk all changed the Marvel universe in so many ways that most fans are still reeling from the changes, only to have the culmination of these events, Secret Invasion, land on their doorstep.  With all of these massive life-altering events, the little changes sometimes might end up overlooked.  One of these great changes came for Ben Ulrich, the most ‘famous’ reporter in the Marvel universe.

Back at the beginning of the Civil War, Ulrich decided he could no longer abide J. Jonah Jameson’s tyrannical ways and struck out and with the help of another reporter, Sally Floyd, and create their own newsprint Front Line.  The Front Line comic series takes the unique look of how normal people deal with the insanity of living in a super-powered universe during these incredible events.  During World War Hulk, we saw Ben and Sally refuse to leave New York City as Manhattan crumbled beneath the Hulk’s Warbound and the heroes barely managed to pull out a win.  Now as the Secret Invasion begins in earnest, once again Ben Ulrich finds himself in the middle of the lives of several ordinary men and women, ready to tell their story.

Brian Reed takes on the chore of telling the story of the ‘average Joe’ this time around.  Reed, best known currently for his action packed work on Ms. Marvel, really provides that sense of the human touch.  The story completely cuts you off from the super-heroes while resonating a world filled with them.  I feel despite the insanity you know looms on the horizon, Reed takes a much gentler handling of the characters compared to the wacky punch-fest that Ms. Marvel trends toward.

GG Studio’s Marco Castiello handled the art chore for this issue.  The art comes across as smooth and clean.  The flow of the art to the story moves well and never really jars you out of it.  I think more than the penciling though, Barbara Ciardo and Amerigo Pinelli’s coloring really impressed me.  The lighting was perfect throughout the book.  The play of shadows across different aspects of the city gives a real ground level impression to the story.  It also reinforces an attention to detail you do not always seen in comics.  The change in the lighting once the massive explosions begin gives you the sense of dirt and ash that should accompany a war story.  I think it is this aspect of the art that really makes the book stand out.

Front Line: WWH and Front Line: Civil War proved that some of the best stories in the Marvel universe are about the heroes seen from a non-superhero point of view.  Secret Invasion: Front Line #1 steps up to that plate as well and seem to be on the right track to hitting another homer for the Front Line series.  Reed’s engrossing story mixed with a fabulous art team make this book a definite read if you are following Secret Invasion.

Secret Invasion: Front Line #1
“Chapter One: The End of the World”
Writer: Brian Reed
Art: GG Studios
Team Coordinator: Giuliano Monni
Penciler: Marco Castiello
Colorist: Barbara Ciardo
Assistant Colorist: Amerigo Pinelli
Letterer: Chris Eliopoulos
Cover: Juan Doe

A visit to Arkham with your guide, The Joker!

I know that this is going to shock many of you, but there’s this little teeny tiny indie film called “The Dark Knight” coming out in less than two weeks. I know. Just take a breath and lie down. Anyway, with the coming of such a film, the people at DC have to come up with some kind of marketing tie-in, preferably a new limited series that will showcase the main villain. For “Batman Begins”, they did a Ra’s Al Ghul Year One series, which was actually pretty cool. And since this upcoming film features Batman’s opposite number/arch-enemy The Joker, naturally they must have a Joker comic. And for this, they have come out with Joker’s Asylum, in which The Joker himself serves as narrator from his cozy cell in Arkham and talks about some of the other inmates, as well as himself. Essentially, they’ve taken the most terrifying character in the DCU and reduced him to the level of horrific insanity one would normally associate with The Cryptkeeper. Not terribly exciting.

In the first issue of this series, we are treated to The Joker walking us through one of his own insane adventures. A game-show called Hold ‘Em or Fold ‘Em, which is like Jeopardy meets The Joker’s Wild (I’m talking about the game show here), where the host, announcer and presenter have fun names like Flip Felchensteiner, Gaylord Spiceland, and my personal favorite, Condoleezza Jellyhole, and the contestants are competing for a 1977 Chevy Chevelle (which makes me wonder if writer Arvid Nelson was drinking absinthe straight-up or on the rocks when he was conceiving this). Well, The Joker appears on the show in the disguise of the host, with two henchmen in tow (one with a Hawkman mask and the other with a Wonder Woman mask) who threaten to kill the audience and promises to kill the contestants if they get an answer wrong. And behind the scenes of this all is the greedy, selfish producer who is thrilled at the possibility that someone might get killed. Well, no one does get killed, but the producer is revealed for being the total jerkwad that he is. Batman shows up, and the day is saved. But in the interim, we are treated to a little morality play.

People go to Boxing matches to watch people get the snot beat out of them. Many people watch NASCAR hoping to see a horrific crash. As long as the people watching aren’t getting hurt, they don’t really mind seeing it happen to someone else. I am not exempt from this. There is a certain vicarious release of fear and excitement in watching something dangerous. I think that, especially over the last several years, society has spawned billions of voyeurs. We spend thousands of hours searching the web for videos of… well, several different things. The story that is within the pages of this comic is one that we’ve seen several times before, and in better ways. This is nothing new, nor is it anything truly disturbing, which is what we want to see from The Joker. The thing that does spin my wheels is how much of this, if any of it, is real, or if it’s just The Joker’s imagination? And maybe that’s what they’re trying for here. If it was just communicated a little more effectively, then perhaps this issue would have been a little more interesting. Also, artist Alex Sanchez does some interesting visuals here, but nothing really exciting.

The title of this tale is “The Joker’s Mild”. Extraordinarily appropriate.

Joker’s Asylum #1
“The Joker’s Mild”
Written by Arvid Nelson
Art by Alex Sanchez
Colors by Jose Villarrubia
Letters by Rob Leigh

Ellis and Bianchi take over from Whedon and Cassaday. Do they rise to the challenge?

Astonishing X-Men. To me, this title has meant so much over the last several years. It was consistently and supremely entertaining, with great plots and unforgettable dialogue from the genius of Joss Whedon, as well as the truly amazing art of John Cassaday. Together they created the best comic title of the last decade by Marvel, as well as one of the best X-titles ever. Sadly, they left us… and so did Kitty Pryde… with their final issue Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men #1, but their legacy continues on with the new creative team of writer Warren Ellis and artist Simone Bianchi as they take over with issue #25. And in opposition to this legacy, they will be keeping up with the current state of the X-Universe, as opposed to ignoring it, as Whedon and Cassaday rightly did.

This takes place after Uncanny X-Men #499, where the X-Men are offered permanent residence and a base of operations in San Francisco after saving many of its citizens from the new female Mastermind. It also seems to take place several months after the last issue of this title, because they are comfortable in their new headquarters and dealing with more mundane issues. Hisako is being hassled by Logan to come up with a new codename other than Armor; Hank is being hassled by Hisako for singing in the morning; Scott is being hassled by Emma for not allowing her to sleep later; Logan is just… being Logan. But their digs are pretty fancy along with a new “car” that looks like something out of Robotech, and apparently, Storm is tired of ‘guilt-free shopping and constant love-making’ and wants to get some team time in. They are soon called by the SFPD to investigate a floating, burning corpse. Through further investigation, they find out that this corpse belonged to a mutant. But not just any kind of mutant. One that couldn’t be detected by Cerebra, and it also would have survived the mutant strip-down performed by Wanda Maximoff. So, in order to find the killer, the team decides to go to the killer’s supposed destination: a place called Chaparanga Beach, or ‘The place where spaceships go to die’.

One of the things that I loved so much about the Whedon/Cassaday run was that it focused on the characters and what made them all unique. It interlaced with thoughtful stories, and a barrage of cliffhanger endings. Now, admittedly, this duo is a VERY tough act to follow. But I knew that I was going to give Ellis and Bianchi a chance. After reading this issue though, I might not. Basically, I really didn’t enjoy it. Firstly, where the hell is Colossus? Has so much time elapsed that no one seems to mourn Kitty’s loss anymore? What kind of strange fetish does Warren Ellis have for pseudo-science? Why is Simone Bianchi’s art so damn dark? This is Astonishing X-Men, not Batman, for God’s sakes! Every element from Whedon and Cassaday‘s run, aside from Emma’s wit and Ellis having someone admit that Cyclops is the ‘world’s best superhero’ (it’s about damn time someone else did!), has been stripped bare and left to hang. It’s just another case of Ellis boring the crap out of me with his faux superhero science, and Bianchi’s art and Simone Peruzzi’s colors so dark that you need a flashlight to see it. Although there is at least a reference to the current affair between Hank and Abigail Brand. That was a nice touch.

If I sound biased… maybe it’s because I am. I really tried not to be. I really wanted to dig the new creative team. I’m not so blindly allegiant to Whedon and Cassaday that it would be impossible to enjoy a new creative team. But this just didn’t work on so many levels for me. This could have been worse, but not by much.

Astonishing X-Men #25
“Ghost Box”
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Simone Bianchi
Colors by Simone Peruzzi
Letters by Joe Caramagna

Is it wrong to criticize a collection because it feels like six smaller stories strung together?  Atomic Robo Volume One isn’t a bad book, but it is a collection that just doesn’t read well. 

What happens to a book trapped between two events?

“There should have been another way.”

In the annals of Doctor Who, there are good stories, there are bad stories, and then there is “Warriors of the Deep.” True, there are stories that are actually worse, but once seen, “Warriors” is something you never forget, a particularly embarrassing blemish on the face of British television. Even the new showrunner of Doctor Who, Steven Moffat - an avowed fan of the Peter Davison era - admits this as one of just two failures from those years.

So what makes this one so strangely attractive? Many older fans recall the story with a wry chuckle, while new ones are eager to see what the fuss is all about. The truth is, “Warriors of the Deep” is the Doctor Who equivalent of a car wreck on the highway: you don’t know why or how it happened, you just have to get a look. Yet at the same time, you somehow understand this is not the worst to which Doctor Who can sink. It serves, instead, as an example of what might be called ”perfect failure,” a unique recipe where all the elements are in a symbiotic accord to bring the result crashing down. There’s a boring script, flat direction, bad lighting, terrible guest stars…

...Oh, and there’s the Myrka, too. No one can forget the Myrka.

The story - such as it is - finds the TARDIS forced to land on the underwater Seabase 4 in the year 2084, where a cold war has made missile launch simulations a way of life. The fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough, for fairly little apparent reason, manage to stick their noses in where they don’t belong and become (surprise!) mistaken for enemy agents. Meanwhile, a trio of vengeful Silurians, having woken a small army (or at least six) of their Sea Devil cousins from cryogenic sleep, are preparing to take over the Seabase and trigger a nuclear war; as a result, humanity will be obliterated and the Earth left to the reptiles. To this end, they set up a two-pronged attack: at one airlock, Commander Sauvix and his Sea Devils, while at the other, the mighty, unstoppable bio-mechanical creation they call the Myrka. The Doctor, desperate for peace with the noble Silurian race, appeals to Icthar, the Silurian of his personal acquaintance, and…

...Wait a minute, what? (That might almost be part of the plot description, I might add. Any viewer is likely to chip in with “Wait a minute, what?” at various points.) I can accept after ten years and a new writer that the Silurians and Sea Devils now refer to each other by those names - after all, the Ice Warriors managed it in just seven, and under their original creator’s pen - but this “noble Silurian” business is frankly ridiculous, even within the context of “Warriors of the Deep” itself. Not once do the Silurians here ever show a desire for anything but the death of humankind; nobody is offered an alternative, nobody tries to take the higher ground, and what it leads to is a complete lack of dramatic conflict. In their original appearance in “The Silurians,” even the aggressive members of the species had a debate over how the “apes” should be handled. Here, they just march in with their lackeys and start shooting.

The problem is that writer Johnny Byrne is trying very, very hard to mimic the structure of “Earthshock,” the story which successfully - and surprisingly - brought the Cybermen back less than two years earlier. Byrne’s Silurians talk like Cybermen, right down to the cries of “Excellent!”, and their siege of the base is almost exactly the attack on “Earthshock“‘s freighter. Byrne tries to work around that by stating how “noble” and “honorable” the Silurians are, but like so many attempts at past continuity in 1980s stories, it just doesn’t hold any water. The Doctor mentions that the Silurians have twice made attempts at peace...well, it just isn’t true. In “The Silurians,” exactly one Silurian tried to make peace with the Doctor before he was killed. In “The Sea Devils,” the attempt was never made at all - the Master was too busy whipping the reptiles up into a frenzy. (And if Icthar is meant to be one of the original 1970s Silurians, well, it’s never made clear at all.) Without an appropriate link to the past, and no example of either civility or diplomacy in the actual story, the Silurians and Sea Devils of “Warriors of the Deep” just become the latest in a long line of hulking, shuffling monsters. And I’m not touching the Myrka; that thing just speaks for itself.

The other fatal flaw is that in the course of the story, almost nothing happens. In his earlier scripts, “The Keeper of Traken” and “Arc of Infinity,” Byrne was always fond of ‘advanced’ alien societies that have moved beyond...ooh...quick movement...but here, the human staff of Seabase 4 simply stand around and do a lot of militaristic posing. Aside from ordering various security measures, most of the characters simply walk around their little bridge set, expressing surprise at events or annoyance at other people or generally wondering just what they’re going to do. There is nothing here of Malcolm Hulke’s wonderful, theatrical moral debate from the 1970s; nope, this is just padding, and boring padding at that. Director Pennant Roberts, never that strong after his first run on the series with “The Face of Evil,” doesn’t help make anything more lively, either. You almost can’t wait for the Myrka to show up and start killing people with its Flailing Flippers of Death.

Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep has been released on DVD by 2entertain and BBC Video (through Warner). As with most Doctor Who of the 1980s, the video quality is strong and crisp, and in this particular story the only film material is a few seconds of model shots. Colors are very rich, with perhaps a touch too much red - for some reason, many of the skin tones look a bit orange, although that might be the ‘futuristic’ make-up. The original mono is available as the default audio track, along with an optional isolated music track of Jonathan Gibbs’ score...perhaps the story’s one saving grace. (I always did like the Davison-era scores.) Subtitles have been included for the four parts of the story and all of the video supplements.

As usual, information subtitle text has been provided, and as with its two predecessors “Warriors of the Deep” benefits from the contributions of Martin Wiggins. Wiggins’ subtitles cover everything from script development to story production - and along the way, he points out when the Silurian headpieces have come untucked.

Okay, so the actual story’s rubbish, but thankfully the DVD does include a nice selection of special features. The commentary track is provided by stars Peter Davison and Janet Fielding, along with script editor Eric Sward and visual effects designer Mat Irvine. As usual, Davison and Fielding quickly and entertainingly digress, and actually, I found Fielding far more good-humored than many of her earlier commentary appearances. She seems to have found a little affection for the show in amongst all that criticism, and it’s finally balancing out. With Eric Saward unnaturally quiet, however, the real star of the track is Mat Irvine, who jumps enthusiastically into discussion of the story, its flaws, his own role in production, and how it could be bettered. He’s actually very critical, but manages to be upbeat all the way through. Even Davison thanks him for keeping them on track at the end.

The Depths (32 mins.) is the disc’s major making-of documentary, built around contributions from Davison, Fielding, Irvine, writer Johnny Byrne, guest actors Ian McCulloch, James Coombes and John Asquith, continuity advisor and mega-fan Ian Levine and DVD extras producer Ed Stradling (phew, thatsa lotsa peoples!). Hey, wait a minute - I thought Janet Fielding was only going to appear on camera once, back on “Time-Flight”? Oh well, she looks really good here, appearing as a double-act with Davison. What’s far more strange is Ed Stradling appearing to take script editor Eric Saward’s place - and point-of-view. (Where is Saward? Why did he appear on the commentary but not here?) It is rather fun watching the documentary swap between the more earnest contributors, like Pennant Roberts, and the more conversational, like...well...Davison and Fielding; I must say, however, the narration can be annoyingly arch at times. Overall, this is a really interesting, diverse, and fun documentary. One of the very rare making-of documentaries that doesn’t feel like it overlaps the commentary track.

They Came from Beneath the Sea (13 mins.) is a secondary documentary focusing on the ‘realization’ - such as it is - of the story’s (in)famous monsters. Irvine is the obvious core of this piece, even showing us a dilapidated Silurian mask, but there are also interviews with Davison, Roberts, Byrne, and Myrka actors William Perrie and John Asquith. The last two even give a small demonstration because, yes, a bulk of the discussion herein is about everyone’s favorite pantomime horse-lizard. Fun stuff.

Science in Action (6 mins.) is a small extract from the eponymous program, clearly designed to interest British schoolkids in science. Visual effects designer Mat Irvine is interviewed, with such hard-hitting questions as, “How do you decide which polymer to use?” The clip clearly post-dates “Warriors from the Deep,” including glimpses of monsters made for Doctor Who‘s 24th season, but opens with a shot of Irvine in a Silurian mask...clearly the reason it’s been included here instead of, say, “Dragonfire.”

Trails and Continuities (4 mins.) includes some a trailer for part one and bloody boring continuity links for all four parts of “Warriors of the Deep.” However, much more interesting are the two trailers for the start of season 21, the first incorporating clips from “Warriors,” The Awakening,” “Frontios,” “Resurrection of the Daleks” (briefly) and...er..."Planet of Evil” (look and see). These have all been taken from off-air recordings, with appropriate reduction in picture quality, but they really are neat for an American fan to see.

Photo Gallery (8 mins.) includes a selection of production and publicity photos set to Jonathan Gibbs’ score. Finally, for fans with DVD-Rom capability, a brief PDF document includes the four Radio Times listings for the story.

For fans of Mat Irvine and his work, there’s also a nicely-sized easter egg (5 mins.) that really should have been an actual featurette. It’s not quite in the usual spot on the menus, but it shouldn’t be hard to find, either.

The disc opens with the trailer for Doctor Who: The Complete Third Series on DVD. As if you hadn’t guessed.

For all its faults, “Warriors of the Deep” isn’t the absolute worst of Doctor Who. There are some stories, particularly in the later ‘80s, which almost beggar belief. This is, however, an example of how to do Doctor Who in completely the wrong way, and about the only way to get through all four episodes is to break down, invite in a couple of fellow fans, and give it a full-on Mystery Science Theater 3000 roast. Therefore, it’s probably to everyone’s benefit that while Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep is available individually for $24.95, you can also get it with its far better predecessors, “The Silurians” and “The Sea Devils,” as part of the Doctor Who: Beneath the Surface set, which is available online for as little as $40. That would make “Warriors of the Deep” not just free, but more than free - and despite the quality of the story, there really are some nice special features. I recommend picking up the box set and giving “Warriors” its appropriate due: as a flawed, and rather hysterical, footnote in the legacy of two far better 1970s stories. 

“This is our planet. We were here before man. We ruled this world millions of years ago.”

A friend of mine recently asked me which of the original 26 seasons I felt represented Doctor Who at its finest. Without hesitation, I replied, “Season seven,” and I think that surprised him. Small wonder! In 1970, Doctor Who had just seen the departure of my favorite Doctor, Patrick Troughton, and was just starting on its way toward the muddy morass I have often felt is one of the most boring periods in the show’s history: the early-70s, mostly-stuck-on-Earth, high-color, high-action Jon Pertwee era, with flashy vehicles and shiny gadgets and karate chops to spare. The show’s descent into juvenile James Bond territory was just a bit tiresome, nostalgic only for those who grew up with it, and not standing up to much in the way of serious examination. Doctor Who wasn’t quite a kids’ show anymore, but it hadn’t transitioned into the spookier show of the early Tom Baker era, so for three or four seasons the most you could hope for was an on-the-nose environmental parable to break up the glam rock invasions of Earth.

But for one brief, shiny period, through 1970 and on about halfway into the 1971 season, Doctor Who tried something different. For about six stories, it completely abandoned space-age hi-jinks, Cybermen and bright swathes of silver and gold for something a little grimmer, a little more meditative, and altogether more eerie. The change was intentional: with budget concerns keeping the brand new, third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) stuck on Earth as scientific adviser to the peacekeeping force of UNIT, the show stopped being science-fantasy and focused, for one of the only times in its history, on truly being science-fiction. And it told some of the best stories it ever dared.

The inspiration for the new “feel” of Doctor Who was the famous trilogy of Quatermass serials, broadcast on the BBC in the 1950s and later adapted into Hammer Horror films for the world market. These were tough, serious science fiction stories for adults that followed the British scientist, Professor Bernard Quatermass, as he investigated a failed rocket mission with just one survivor, an astronaut slowly transforming into an alien creature; a series of meteorite showers that spearheaded a takeover attempt by an otherworldly intelligence; and a long-buried, extra-terrestial craft that awoke humanity’s most primal fears. Although the Quatermass serials continue to inspire the show to this day - the 2008 season’s own “Midnight” owes more than a nod to The Quatermass Experiment - this was the beginning of a period where some Quatermassian element would find its way into each and every script, and the story on this DVD is no exception.

Doctor Who and the Silurians - so named thanks to a technical error in on-screen titles - is the second of four stories from Doctor Who‘s seventh season, and takes its cue from Quatermass and the Pit, where men are driven insane from “race memories” of ancient, Martian visitors. Here, though, Martians aren’t the problem, but a species native to Earth: the so-called Silurians, a race of reptile men from before the ascendancy of man, who put themselves into cryogenic sleep to avoid destruction by an ecologic disaster. A group of Silurians have re-awakened in some English caves, and found an ally in Dr. Quinn, a top scientist at the Wenley Moor nuclear power facility. With Quinn’s aid, they are draining energy from the plant to revive their fellow Silurians, and although one old Silurian scientist hopes for peace between species, the younger, more aggressive males are set on destroying the human race for good. Those who venture into the caves are driven mad by the experience, and found scribbling cave drawings on the walls. It’s only when UNIT is called in to investigate the power drains, and the Doctor starts to snoop around, that the young Silurians find themselves faced with a real threat…

“The Silurians” is a wonderful story, for my money the best of the season and a personal favorite. Its immediate predecessor, “Spearhead from Space,” has a wealth of atmosphere, but “Silurians” finds new Doctor Jon Pertwee, along with his co-stars Caroline John (as Dr. Liz Shaw) and Nicholas Courtney (as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), hitting the ground running. At seven episodes - far too long for a typical Doctor Who - “Silurians” threatens to lose its momentum, but right at the middle it switches gears and sets the plot in an entirely new direction: The Silurians decide to release a deadly contagion upon mankind. Can the Doctor and Liz stop it in time? It’s this kind of invention by writer Malcolm Hulke that sets the story up above its peers. Hulke is always concerned to show the viewpoints of all the different characters - the Doctor, the military, the scientists, the Silurians - and how they counterpoint each other. He is quick to point out that from the Silurians’ point of view, it is we humans who are the alien invaders, and the Doctor’s desperate attempts to find a peaceful solution are shown to be not just morally superior, but tragically naive. The Brigadier, a character who would later descend into pompous comic stereotype, has one of his finest moments as a man trying to fulfil his job as the first line of defense for mankind, even if that means making hard decisions. This is 1970s writing-by-archtype, certainly - the Doctor taking filling his prescribed role as the intellectual, the Brigadier as defender, other characters as reactionary, mercenary, victim, aggressor - but it is strong, mature writing, all the same. The actors, including guests Fulton Mackay, Peter Miles and Geoffrey Palmer, play up to the qualities of the script and the result has all the verisimilitude and drive of a well-performed theatrical play.

Even with all the qualities I have ascribed to it, though, some will certainly find “The Silurians” slow going; seven 25-minute episodes is an awfully long time to tell a story, and I would never suggest anyone sit through more than two or three at once. Those who aren’t interested in the more theatrical aspects of moral debate may find whole sections of the story tedious, and while the Silurians’ costumes and voices are very nice for the standards of 1970, “convincing” doesn’t really enter into the argument (even less so for their pet dinosaur!). Additionally, some issues with the color quality of “The Silurians” (see below) may serve to put off even a dedicated Who fan. So depending on your individual taste, your mileage could certainly vary, but for my money, this is top stuff. Doctor Who should be aiming for the level of “The Silurians” every single time. 

Doctor Who and the Silurians has been brought to DVD as a two-disc set by 2entertain and BBC Video (through Warner). The story has been split over both discs, four episodes on one and three on the other, with a smattering of special features on each. First and foremost, we should talk about video quality. Thanks to BBC policy of the day, this story was only retained in the archives as a black-and-white film copy (for overseas sales), not a color video master. Through the magic of VidFIRE, used so successfully for the 1960s stories on DVD, the “look” of the original video has been re-instated for all of the applicable sequences (the majority of the story) - but the result is still only a clean, crisp black-and-white transfer. The only existing color copy comes from a fan in North America, who recorded the story with an early Betamax machine. This somewhat dicey color signal has been re-converted to European standards and overlaid on top of the black-and-white episodes. The result is...fairly smudgy, but certainly watchable. Episode one is actually quite serviceable indeed, and it’s only when you get down to about episodes five and six that you might start to feel as if you’re watching an old VHS (thankfully, things improve once more for the final episode). Due to the sub-standard quality of that fan recording, the color becomes progressively grainier, bleeding a bit more and definitely exhibiting stronger and stronger examples of “rainbow banding” (where skin tones break into blotches of pinks and yellows, for instance). Despite the fine work of the Restoration Team, this is not the cleanest-looking product ever released to DVD, and probably amongst the worst of how any Doctor Who will look on DVD. (There’s also about a minute’s worth of footage that doesn’t exist at all in color, which has been colorized by computer...it shows, and that’s probably the true nadir of the disc.)

...There is, however, one alternative. If you’re not particularly fussed about the color - and as I’ve always said, season seven looks like it was shot in various shades of brown, anyway - I highly recommend simply turning the chroma down on your TV and watching the story in black-and-white. The occasional shot will look a little dark, but overall the viewing experience should be pleasant and atmospheric, without the aesthetic limitations of the color element. After all, there are an awful lot of British households - and foreign countries - that saw this story in black-and-white when it was originally broadcast.

Sound options include the original mono sound and a isolated music track featuring Corey Blyton’s...er...unique musical score. Considering large portions of the score sound like the same lilting melody performed again and again on a child’s kazoo, I don’t think I’ll be subjecting myself to the experience any time soon, but it’s a good addition for those who like it (and, indeed, one of the earliest existing incidental scores for the show). English subtitles have been provided not just for the episodes, but for all the special features (hooray!), and a separate information subtitle track has been compiled by Dr. Martin Wiggins. This features all kinds of information, from shooting schedules, to changes in the script, to behind-the-scenes information and problems, to alterations made by Malcolm Hulke for the ultimate novel adaptation of the story. It’s an exhaustive track, and I highly recommend it for any fan of “The Silurians.”

The commentary track for this story is a rotating panel including producer Barry Letts, director Timothy Combe, stars Caroline John and Nicholas Courtney, guest actors Peter Miles and Geoffrey Palmer, and script editor Terrance Dicks. Unfortunately, two of the better contributors - Combe and Courtney - were only available for half of the commentary each (recorded on separate days), and are not heard together. The resulting track isn’t bad, but it’s nothing that great: Caroline John has some interesting things to say, and it’s great to hear from Combe, but they are overshadowed by the well-known anecdotes of Terrance Dicks and general weirdness of Peter Miles. I have never felt comfortable with actors who refer to their characters as themselves (as in, “I had to protect my nuclear plant from those terrible Silurians!"), and Miles takes it uncomfortably far. You can tell he’s putting the others off, too, and I was so happy when he was moved out of rotation for episodes 3 and 7. In general, you’d probably be safe just listening to the commentary on the first disc - very little of substance really gets added during the second disc’s episodes.

In terms of more visual special features, disc one includes What Lies Beneath (35 mins.), what may be the single most interesting documentary to be made for a Doctor Who DVD yet. I loved it. Taking us back to 1970, it sets up the climate - both behind the scenes, and more generally in terms of culture - that led to the revamp of the show for its seventh season, and the influences that fed into the development of “The Silurians” as a story. All of the commentary participants return to contribute, along with New Who writer Paul Cornell and former MP Roy Hattersley. The Quatermass serials get their due, along with Cold War tensions, racial violence, and even writer Hulke’s own political tendencies. This is a much more in-depth piece than I ever would have expected on a new DVD title - as, nowadays, they are supposed to appeal as much to casual child viewers as hardened fans - and is invaluable to anyone interested in the social or political makeup of early 1970s Britain, and how its entertainment was influenced. As an American born in the early 1980s, this is the kind of thing that practically invites me to go back and re-evaluate old Doctor Who afresh.

Moving on to disc two, with the groundwork in place, Going Underground (19 mins.) follows the production of “The Silurians.” The usual suspects from the commentary are back, this time joined by designer Barry Newbery and several of his design sketches - which are pretty cool. Some of the information is definitely duplicated from the commentary and information subtitle track, but there’s more than enough original material here. It may not be anything revelatory, but it’s a solid making-of featurette.

Now & Then: The Locations of Doctor Who and the Silurians (10 mins.) is the latest in the recurring series of featurettes dedicated to examining filming locations as they appear today. Clips from the film sequences of the story are compared to modern video footage of the locations, with a little on-screen map and running narration by actor Geoffrey Palmer. Certain fans will find this very interesting.

Musical Scales: An Era of Experimentation (14 mins.) examines the evolution of Doctor Who‘s specially-composed incidental music, with special emphasis on the early seventies and their...um...more unique scores. Comments from late ‘80s composer and sound guru Mark Ayres form the backbone of the piece, with additional input from producer Barry Letts, directors Christopher Barry, Michael Briant and Timothy Combe, and archive interview material from composer Malcolm Clarke. They focus specifically on “Doctor Who and the Silurians,” “The Sea Devils” and “The Mutants” alongside a more general overview of the early seventies and their ...erm...unique scores. Combe rather quaintly refers to Blyton’s score as “music you notice” - yes, yes it is. Overall, this is a neat featurette, even if, like me, you find some of that early music a bit...trying.

Colour Silurian Overlay (5 mins.) rather charmingly plays on the initials of color separation overlay (chroma-key), but in point of fact it is a brief featurette describing how “The Silurians” was restored from black-and-white archive film to its present quality. I would’ve preferred a little more personal content, like an interview with some of the Restoration Team, but however brief, it’s nice to have something to help explain the quality issue to viewers.

Photo Gallery (6 mins.) displays production and publicity photographs for this story, most of them black-and-white, set to a suite of Corey Blyton’s music. “Coming Soon: The Time Meddler” (1 min.) is an extremely fast-cut trailer for the eponymous 1965 adventure starring William Hartnell, expected this August on Region 1 DVD; I have no idea why they make these trailers so apoplectic, as it’s rarely representative of the story in question.  Finally, for viewers with a DVD-Rom drive, disc two also includes a PDF of material from Radio Times (Britain’s TV Guide), including the original listings for “Doctor Who and the Silurians,” and a brief article on Jon Pertwee and his Doctor’s new car, Bessie, which was printed the week of episode one’s transmission.

There is a rather obscure easter egg on disc two, a quiet little gem in its own right, that deserves to be found: suffice to say, you’ll be rewarded for watching “The Silurians” in individual episodes instead of all at once.

Both discs open with the trailer for Doctor Who: The Complete Third Series on DVD. Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of that one, lately, too.

I think Doctor Who and the Silurians is nothing short of a masterpiece, one of the really great stories in the program’s long history, coming at a time of change and a brief period of real innovation. Unfortunately, the quality of the color episodes is somewhat lacking, but this is more than made up for by the excellent special features content. At an individual SRP of $34.98, as with all of the two-disc Doctor Who sets, “The Silurians” is certainly a touch expensive. However, it is also available in the new Doctor Who: Beneath the Surface box set, which also includes the single-disc releases of its sequels, “The Sea Devils” (again starring Jon Pertwee) and “Warriors of the Deep” (starring Peter Davison). Available variously online for around $40-$45, the box set is - in my opinion - a real steal, even if you only like two of the three stories. Treat yourself and enjoy a classic slice of British science-fiction from the good old days...that is, the very, very old days, before the dawn of man! 

“I am a Sontaran officer. My name is Linx. I hereby claim this planet, its moons and satellites, for the greater glory of the Sontaran Empire.”

I have a friend who believes you can split the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who neatly in half: in his estimation, the first twelve stories, up to and including “The Sea Devils,” are almost entirely high-quality Who; the second twelve stories, in contrast, are weak, underdeveloped, and boring. As artificial as the division line may be, I actually don’t think he’s far wrong. Yet we both agree on just one classic emerging from the wasteland of the later Pertwee years: 1973/4’s “The Time Warrior,” the first story of Pertwee’s final season.

“The Time Warrior” doesn’t really boast a different set-up from most early ‘70s Who. Some months after the departure of his companion, Jo Grant, the Doctor is brought in by UNIT to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a group of scientists. During his investigation, he meets a “plucky” and “aggressively feminist” young journalist, Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), who is posing as a more experienced relative to get her big scoop. When the Doctor manages to trace the location of the scientists, she stows aboard his TARDIS, and finds herself in what she believes to be a medieval reenactment. As you might expect, the Doctor and Sarah have landed in true medieval times, where they independently discover a local robber baron has a new and powerful ally - a goblinesque alien Sontaran called Linx, who is using the kidnapped scientists to repair his damaged spacecraft.

“The Time Warrior” is sandwiched neatly between two longer stories, both (in)famous in their own right, which I actually do enjoy ("The Green Death” and “Invasion of the Dinosaurs"). However, those stories are fun in spite of certain elements: one has an appallingly stereotypical set of Welsh stereotypes and an instant romance, while both are at least an episode too long and “boast” some of the most atrocious model effects ever seen in the history of the program. “The Time Warrior” has no such caveats. It’s just a good, taut story from writer Robert Holmes, one of the rare Pertwee four-parters, with a unique and memorable setting. It also happens to feature a small set of ‘firsts’: yes, this is the first story of season 11, and the first story with a new title sequence in four years, but it also sees the introduction of the Sontarans, an alien race the Doctor describes as “nasty, brutish, and short.” Although they’ve only appeared sporadically since - most recently in this current season - the Sontarans have become the war-faring, militant heavies of Doctor Who, never quite reaching the level of Daleks or Cybermen, but still residing in the top five most famous alien threats.

Perhaps more importantly, however, “The Time Warrior” sees the introduction of Elisabeth Sladen as journalist Sarah Jane Smith, who must surely count as the Doctor’s most popular companion ever. Traveling regularly with two Doctors over three and a half years, she has the longest tenure of any female associate, and has headlined not one but two spin-offs (well, one was an attempt). What Sladen has become known for is her character’s easy camaraderie with the Doctor, and especially her wonderful chemistry with fourth Doctor Tom Baker, while elevating the character of Sarah beyond her meagre script of questions and unlucky curiosity into someone...well, that you might actually want to get to know. So it’s a little peculiar to actually see, in “The Time Warrior,” a genuine scripted character: a proper journalist, with journalistic goals, and a pointedly feminist perspective, to boot. It’s a touch on the nose, but it seems right for 1973, and a streak of this tougher characterization would have been very welcome in later stories. Sadly, it is greatly diminished just two stories later, and entirely disappears after Tom Baker’s introduction the following year. Good thing she’s got that new spin-off to show off her journalistic skills...er...leading a Scooby Doo squad of teens.

I jest, of course. I really like The Sarah Jane Adventures and its cast, excepting that noxious ‘Mr. Smith’ K-9 replacement thing. But that’s a subject for another review…

Doctor Who: The Time Warrior is distributed on DVD by 2entertain and BBC Video (through Warner). Famously, this is the last story of the original series to have never been released in its original, episodic form in any territory; as one of the earliest home video releases, “The Time Warrior” has only been available as a compilation “movie format” VHS up to this point. (And here in North America, another handful of Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker titles remain in that situation...for now.) Video quality on the DVD is both consistent and relatively high, since all four parts exist as PAL videotape masters. However, as with all ‘70s television, the image tends to be a little soft, with some colors lookingwashed out, and the 16mm film sequences are unsurprisingly grainy. It’s probably as good as a Pertwee-era story will ever look, though. Audio is available in the original mono, with English subtitles available for both the feature story and all of the video supplements.

The information subtitle track for this release has been compiled by Richard Molesworth, and it’s actually one of his more solid entries. Yes, he still goes on at too much length about shooting locations and dates, but there are also some interesting sections of cut dialogue, as well as observations on the casting of Elisabeth Sladen.

“The Time Warrior“‘s commentary track has been recorded by everyone’s favorite Pertwee mainstays, producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks, joined for the first time by actor Elisabeth Sladen. Since Sladen’s character debuts in the story, her casting and early experiences working on Doctor Who form a large portion of the discussion. For her part, she seems to be a bit more at ease than when she appears alongside Tom Baker on a commentary track; I always get the impression that she’s affectionately fretting over her old friend and co-star, trying to make sure he doesn’t say anything too crazy and force his audience to stop adoring him. Freed from such concerns, she just seems happier on this track, and falls into easy conversation with Letts and Dicks.

Beginning the End: Making ‘The Time Warrior (30 mins.) is the expected behind-the-scenes documentary for this release. The beginning is a little goofy, opening abruptly and resembling the title sequence on a show about ancient castles and cathedrals, and the continuing effect of framing archive clips in stone arches and windows is a bit...unfortunate. (Yes, I understand that it’s meant to present 4:3 clips in an anamorphic 16:9 documentary, but it’s still distracting and weird.) However, the overall featurette is actually very enjoyable, covering everything from Jon Pertwee’s announced departure to Elisabeth Sladen’s casting, with a lot of background information on the actual writing and production of the story - and yes, a few anecdotes that are repeated from the commentary. Letts and Dicks carry the bulk of the program, joined by Sladen, guest actors Jeremy Bulloch and Donald Pelmear, and designer Keith Cheetham.

Trails and Continuity (1 min.) features a reconstructed trailer for the Radio Times (Britain’s TV Guide equivalent) cover story that highlighted the start of season 11 and “The Time Warrior,” as well as the continuity announcements that preceded part one and followed part four of the story. These clearly feature DVD-quality images set to rather ropey, fan-recorded, off-air audio. (You can clearly hear a voice go “Yeah!” during the trailer.) Where would we be without fans and their dedication!

CGI Effects are an optional set of new, computer-generated effects you can choose to turn on for the entire, four-part story (the default option is to watch the original, broadcast effects). These have been featured on a number of earlier Who releases, but are often limited to improved laser beam effects and occasional model ships. These are perhaps the most overt yet, including a really showy new opening shot of Linx’s ship falling into Earth’s atmosphere. Personally, I think they’re pretty neat, especially the various new shots for part one; the castle explosion from part four is still a bit weak, but it beats the existing (non-)effect. A neat alternative option for fans who already know “The Time Warrior” back-to-front.

Photo Gallery (9 mins.) is a selection of color and black-and-white production and publicity photographs, often focusing on the Sontaran Linx and the introduction of Sarah Jane, set first to the theme tune and then to various sound effect atmospheres. A small set of pictures toward the end were specially shot for Radio Times. Some of these pictures will be quite familiar to fans, while others have never been publicly seen before.

For fans with DVD-Rom access, the disc features a PDF of the 1974 Doctor Who annual, a hardbound book of stories, fun facts, comics and games for kids. Although dated to 1974, when season 11 was broadcast, this would have been available in the shops for the Christmas shopping season of 1973; therefore, the third Doctor is accompanied in all the stories and comic strips by his last companion, Jo, who departed at the end of season 10. There are also some truly wacky “scientific” articles, including a lovely set of predictions for what kind of Christmas gifts we might receive in 2003. (Well? Did you get your day-trip in orbit around Earth?)

Additionally, a separate PDF contains the Radio Times listings for “The Time Warrior.” A few extra treats have also been included, such as the aforementioned Radio Times cover story for the December 15, 1973 issue, and a large cartoon by artist Frank Bellamy, both of which originally accompanied the listing for part one.

There are also two easter eggs on this disc: one in the usual location (you know where!), the other in a slightly more unusual place. Both are cute but slight, more trivia for newer fans than anything else.

The disc opens with a trailer for Doctor Who: The Complete Third Series on DVD - yes, that trailer. You’d think everyone would have gone ahead and bought the blasted thing by now if they were planning on it.

I like “The Time Warrior” a lot. It’s a great story - easily the best from the second half of Jon Pertwee’s era - and both the companion and villain introduced here have proven so popular as to be brought back, time and again, in both the new series as well as the original. Thankfully, Doctor Who: The Time Warrior also happens to be a solid little DVD; for my money, the first such Pertwee release in terms of both story, video and extras content. This title can be found online for less than $20 and comes easily recommended. If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you owe it to yourself to have this one in your collection. 

Disappointing History Channel show that takes a look at legendary and not-so-legendary things that go bump in the night.

Remember back when the History Channel produced programming dealing with actual history? Granted, 90% of it was about Hitler and World War II, but at least it fit the channel’s name. These days, as with just about any specialty channel, there are no rules, and thus we get shows from the History Channel like this one. Monster Quest is somewhat interesting, but where can it really go after this first season?

I decided to give this show a try, as I’m a casual fan of cryptozoology. Delving into the history of legendary creatures should be fun, right? Well, it might be, except that isn’t exactly the focus of this show. Thirteen episodes comprise season one, each one directed at a unique myth or legend or...well, sometimes they’re kind of stupid.

We get no less than three episodes devoted to various sasquatch and bigfoot creatures, as well as a creature in the U.S. Resembling the Loch Ness Monster. That’s all well and good, but then some episodes go off into left field. One is about Russia’s attempts to breed human/ape hybrids. Another is about mutant dogs.

Mutant dogs, folks.

The most head-scratching episode is titled “Unidentified Flying Creatures” and deals with little streaks of...something...that sometime appear in videos and photographs. Now, all this is well and good if the show focused on the history and backstory of these phenomena. Instead, they’re mostly the crew trying to set up ways to catch video evidence of the beings for the show, or prove/disprove the ability for them to exist. Kind of boring.

In the Unsolved Mysteries vein, these are done in the cheapest possible way and come off amateurish. Sure, they aren’t as silly as the old In Search Of series, but they just don’t have the quality to keep them interesting. Killer commie ape-men? Seriously?

The four-disc set is contained in a really nice collector’s tin, so there’s that at least. And there are interesting moments in some of the episodes that focus on things like giant squid, but overall I see a missed opportunity here. A more serious approach focusing on truly interesting creatures like the Jersey Devil or the Dover Demon or even Mothman would have been fun to watch. Instead we get a show about escaped lions prowling smalltown USA and the discovery of the remains of a “real Hobbit.”

Monster Quest has a lot of potential, but it needs to shake the freshman problems it has with this season. Hopefully, season two will feature more truly interesting episodes.

“Save your breath for the Timelash, Doctor. Most people depart with a scream!”

“On Karfel the Borad rules but all is far from OK.” That line is how part 1 of “Timelash” was promoted in the Radio Times (Britain’s equivalent to TV Guide) in March 1985, and it matches the story perfectly: a single, badly-composed line which would never induce anyone to actually watch the program. Perhaps, in some small way, the listings writer for Radio Times was trying to give viewers a break and spare them from a stilted 45 minutes of drama. On Karfel, the Borad rules...but everything about “Timelash” is as far from “OK” as it gets.

The obvious culprit is the script. First-time writer Glen McCoy’s story might work in the hands of a more experienced talent, but it’s a negligible point; at its best, the plot and its various details are no more than base-level traditional Who. The TARDIS is drawn off-course, and the Doctor (Colin Baker) and his companion Peri (Nicola Bryant) find themselves on the planet Karfel. The Doctor is welcomed as an old friend, having visited in his third incarnation, but they quickly discover all is not well: the egotistical leader of the Karfelons, the Maylin (Paul Darrow), is working to quell a rebellion under instructions from his master, the enigmatic, largely unseen Borad. To this end, rebels are thrown into a “Timelash,” a one-way time corridor to...who knows where? As the Doctor discovers first-hand, the Timelash ends in Earth’s past (highly convenient), and when he goes to investigate he inadvertently takes on a new and inquistive passenger in the form of Herbert, a young man from 1885. Together, they return to Karfel to take on the evil Borad...who is far more than he seems.

Actually, strike that. He’s less than he seems. He’s an insane scientist who has managed, thanks to experiments with the indigenous Morlox reptiles, to make himself into a deranged, half-man, half-lizard creature. Now he wants to take Peri as his mate and release his mutated progeny on a war-torn and devestated Karfel. So...clearly lost a few marbles, there.

I’ve gone to the trouble of “spoiling” one of “Timelash“‘s big secrets, not just because it’s laughably stupid, but because the disc menus will do it for you the moment you start the disc. In fact, someone on the disc production staff has been kind enough to reveal the entire story through the clips selected for the main and special features menus, which I think makes for some rather good comedy, actually. (They’ve done this once before: the menus on “The Web Planet” seemed designed to point out how outrageous the whole thing was, but even those were done in a giddily loving way. I dare you to count the number of variations on the statement “I am the Borad!” within the menu clips and not think someone was trying to warn us.) I won’t bother to spell out the other big reveal, but suffice to say, it involves time travel, invisibility, war between planets, the Morlox, half-man/half-animal experiments, and a young writer named Herbert. Take a moment, work it out, feel free to groan aloud.

At this point, it is received fan knowledge that “Timelash” is one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever. Memorably, the letters of the title can be rearranged to make a two-word descriptive beginning with “lame.” The truth, however, isn’t actually so giggle-worthy; “Timelash” may be one of the weakest Doctor Whos, structurally, but it lacks that extra zing of crazy-go-nuts to place it amongst the absolute worst. As Maylin Tekker, Blake’s 7‘s Paul Darrow takes an admirable stab at chewing all the scenery in sight, but he succeeds only in being the sole entertaining figure on the screen. No, in point of fact, “Timelash” is merely badly-conceived and intensely boring...and, frankly, that makes it almost impossible to sit through. I can think of three or four stories that are more entertainingly terrible, and I’d rather be laughing along with those.

Doctor Who: Timelash is released to DVD - much like a laboratory animal gone rabid - by 2entertain and BBC Video (through Warner). As with most of the Doctor Who releases representing 1980s stories, the quality of the restored video is crisp and clear. The entire story was shot on video, so there are no pesky film sequences to worry about; everything is cheap, cheerful, and overly bright, as befits a second-rate production from 1985! Sound is provided in the original mono, with English subtitles available for the entire disc’s contents.

Information subtitles are also provided as a separate track, compiled by Richard Molesworth. Focusing on actor CVs and shooting dates, these are largely forgettable, but one or two gems are to be found: I got a certain glee from knowing that “a BAFTA award-nominated actress” (almost certainly Geraldine James) turned down the two-dimensional role of rebel Vena after appearing in the seminal miniseries The Jewel in the Crown, and Molesworth dryly notes how many of the actors in “Timelash” later left their acting careers to become writers (if Glen McCoy could do it, they could do it, perhaps?).

The first of the two main special features is the commentary track with stars Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant and guest star Paul Darrow. None of them seems to have too much love for “Timelash,” but they gamely attempt to be as positive as possible, occasionally getting a jab in at the story and revealing the behind-the-scene tensions of the time (both Baker and Bryant were working double-time by playing the leads in a Cinderella pantomime for then-producer John Nathan-Turner). Darrow tries to get the others to go along with his interpretation of Maylin Tekker as a “sort of Richard III,” but occasionally falls quiet when he seems unsure of whether the others are joking or being truly critical. It’s not a bad track, but you won’t learn all that much, and it’s not exactly a laugh-a-minute Mystery Science Theater 3000 send-up.

The other big special feature, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (25 mins.), examines the making of “Timelash” through interviews with Baker, Bryant, Darrow, fellow actors Robert Ashby and David Chandler, writer Glen McCoy, script editor Eric Saward and Doctor Who Adventures kids’ magazine designer Paul Lang. In a real first for a DVD making-of featurette, the general tone here is one of resigned acceptance that the subject of discussion is actually not very good. As a result, it’s a little bit of a slog to get through - and it doesn’t help that a lot of the information is duplicated from the commentary and information track. Late producer John Nathan-Turner comes in for more than his share of blame, which is perhaps a bit unfortunate when he isn’t here to tell his side, but it’s hard to disagree with what gets said, either.

Photo Gallery (9 mins.) includes color and black-and-white publicity and production photographs set to Elizabeth Parker’s incidental music score, including a few Polaroids of the Borad makeup process. Additionally, for fans with a DVD-Rom drive, the disc includes a PDF of the two Radio Times listings. And there’s a very easy-to-find easter egg that highlights another element of the story’s original broadcast (think about it).

(For those wondering, the “Time-Flight"/"Arc of Infinity” coming soon trailer that featured on the R2 release is nowhere to be seen here...because those two releases came out in Region 1 last November.)

The disc opens with the standard trailer for Doctor Who: The Complete Third Series. Since it’s seen on a bunch of recent titles, however, that’s really not so exciting. Fairly good trailer, though.

In Britain, this is one of the budget releases of the Doctor Who line, and carries a reduced price tag to complement the reduced special features platter. But not so here! Warner seems to determine the price of a Doctor Who DVD by the length of the story, so while the similarly budget release of “The Sontaran Experiment” - with only two half-hour episodes - received an SRP of $14.98, “Timelash” - at a traditional 90-minute length - is rewarded with the traditional SRP of $24.98. That, my friends, is called a bad joke. Unless you’re a completist, avoid this one; it’s not “so bad it’s good,” it’s just dull. Now, thanks to Warner’s pricing guidelines, it’s also overpriced - and no, the special features don’t make it any more worthwhile. 

If friendship were like baseball, then this show would be relevant. 

It’s cheesy. It’s pointless. It’s not funny. It’s TBS’s show, My Boys, and it’s out on DVD.

Twenty-something sports writer P.J. Franklin only has men for friends, and in the big game that is life, they’re her baseball team. She’s cute and perky, and her boys are very typical men. Which, when you think about it, is boring – if I want to see very typical men in action, I’ll have my man call over his guys.

Episodes include such boring plots as hooking up with friends and the complications that arise, how boyfriends get in the way of your poker game, and what to do when your buddy has a girlfriend you all hate. Again, boring. There’s no spark here, no feistiness.

Some of the cast members are cute, some are not. Some are mildly funny, and some are awful. It doesn’t help that all the characters are written with nonexistent depth. There is no overlying seasonal plot (of interest), and the will they won’t they thing was exhausted by every other sitcom from Whose the Boss to Friends. This show is just tired and unoriginal.

The DVD comes with a good group of extras, only they’re just as boring as the show. You know a show is bad when its blooper reel is dull. Four featurettes, some deleted scenes, and previews round out the collection, along with a feature that I’ve seen pop up on a few DVDs lately – minisodes. I find these things to be extremely irritating, as they have nothing to do with the DVD I’m watching, which means that generally, I don’t care.

There’s really not a whole lot more to say. If I’m watching TV and it comes down to this show or Everybody Loves Raymond re-runs, I might watch My Boys. Maybe.

“History books? Captain Hart, Horatio Nelson was a personal friend of mine.”

There was a time, early on in my own personal obsession with Doctor Who – which is to say, before I hooked up with any kind of collective fandom, organized or otherwise – that the Jon Pertwee era of the 1970s seemed very exotic, at least from a distance. This was the early ‘80s, long before the internet of course, and I was getting most of my information from the quaintly odd fanzine Fantasy Empire, and particularly the year-by-year episode guide written by the late John Peel. (Peel was ultimately a bit of a controversial figure in Who fandom; he wrote two barking mad Dalek novels for the early BBC line that did some ret-conning of the classic series, and his very vocal opinions often flew in the face of accepted fan-lore, including [but not limited to] citing the legendary “Genesis of the Daleks” as a travesty.) Peel was obviously a huge fan of the Pertwee era, and seemed to praise each serial even more highly than the last; plus, there were grainily intriguing photos of Silurians, Deamons, Drashigs, Ice Warriors, and Sea Devils.

But, perhaps most importantly, they were elusive and unseen. As with most PBS stations of the era, Channel 9 out of St. Louis, MO (where I watched and taped the show religiously) had been running the Tom Baker serials in a fairly endless stream for several years, with “Logopolis” looping back into “Robot” at least three times before the Peter Davison catalog was finally acquired, stretching the run to the almost-contemporary “Caves of Androzani.” But Jon Pertwee, Baker’s predecessor, and the third actor to play the Doctor, remained only a pre-regenerate face glimpsed briefly at the beginning of “Robot,” and a curiously avuncular figure, rescuing Sarah Jane Smith from gentle slopes in “The Five Doctors.” The actual adventures of the Third Doctor did not debut in my area until several years into the show’s PBS run, and by that time, my excitement was palpable.

Alas, as with so many things, the actual reality did not meet my over-built expectations, and the Pertwee epoch – in which the Doctor is stranded on Earth, grounded by the Time Lords as punishment for his meddlings in time and space – proved to be a series of overlong and overly-familiar serials (as “Sea Devils” writer Malcolm Hulke had once predicted, the run broke down mainly into “alien invasion” and “mad scientist” stories in various combinations) that kept the most flexible format in science fiction history earthbound and routine. Sort of like the current BBC Wales series. But don’t get me started.

Nothing is absolute, however, and the Pertwee era does have some things to recommend it: it was here (in “Terror of the Autons” to be precise) that the Doctor’s arch-nemesis the Master debuted, played in this era by the elegant and wonderful Roger Delgado. And even though the stories tended to be hopelessly padded (decisions on story length were often made on the basis of cost, rather than organic storytelling; since “The Sea Devils” would require six brand-new monster costumes, it had to be a six-parter rather than four, in order to absorb the cost of the extra foam rubber), there are some gems scattered through Pertwee’s five year tenure. Thankfully, today’s offering, “The Sea Devils” (9.3, 1972) is one of those gems, albeit a minor one.

Incarcerated since the events of “The Daemons” (8.5, 1971), renegade Time Lord the Master (Roger Delgado) is now interned in a small island castle, under the command of Trenchard (Clive Morton). The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and Jo Grant (Katy Manning) come to visit him, but also to investigate the disappearance of several ships in the area. They enlist the aid of Capt. Hart (Edmund Richfield) at the nearby naval base, and it soon becomes apparent that the Master has Trenchard under his thrall, and has managed to set up contact with undersea creatures that are related to the Silurians the Doctor encountered two years earlier. These so-called Sea Devils want the Earth for themselves, and are plotting with the Master to wipe humanity from the face of the planet.

Coming almost exactly at the mid-way point in the Pertwee run, “The Sea Devils” has many classic elements of this era, including a contemporary Earthbound story (the TARDIS is never shown, and barely mentioned), the Master misleading an alien (or at least nonhuman) force in an attempt to enslave/destroy humanity, and lots of chase scenes featuring exotic modes of transport. Famously, producer Barry Letts enlisted the aid of the Royal Navy in making the story, and the verisimilitude this lends cannot be overstated; there’s a definite grit to this tale that is lacking in more studio-bound stories, and the sheer number of people on-screen (many sailors were enlisted as unpaid extras) gives “The Sea Devils” a certain scope that early-70s Doctor Who rarely managed.  The story is, of course, a semi-sequel to “Doctor Who and the Silurians” (and was originally titled “The Sea Silurians”) from Pertwee’s first year, although returning writer Malcolm Hulke has eschewed much of the political subtext that laced the earlier story. This was perhaps a reaction to comments about the slow pace and preponderance of talking-head stuff in “The Silurians,” but here he seems content to craft a rather sprawling adventure. Sure, the Doctor makes his usual plea for the Sea Devils and humans to Live In Peace, but for the most part this is a straight-ahead action romp, and a pretty entertaining one. It’s said by many (and usually by me as well) that six-part Who stories are at least 33% too long, but “The Sea Devils” works because of the variety of cool stuff on display, most of it provided by the Navy. Director Michael Briant keeps the action moving briskly, shifting between multiple interesting locations. And the parts that do drag – such as the Doctor’s descent in a diving bell – have a nuts-and-bolts “procedural” quality that probably fascinated the UK tykes of 1972, and you can hardly blame the show for that. Even the stock footage is pretty well-integrated; the restoration of the image quality makes it more obvious, but it generally works. Plus, any story that features Roger Delgado’s Master is guaranteed to have a top villain. He is simply superb. Oh, and one bit of geeky trivia: the catchphrase “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow” is often associated with the Third Doctor, but this is the only story in which he actually says it.

One aspect of the story that has not aged well (and frankly, most people thought it was crap back in the ‘70s as well) is the bizarre musical score by Malcolm Clarke. Clarke had apparently been asked to deliver something “different,” and he did that, in spades. Less incidental music than a series of bizarre synthesizer gurglings which twitter and chirrup and oscillate, and which rarely seem to connect to anything that’s happening visually, this is certainly the oddest of all Doctor Who scores. The closest antecedent I can think of would be the “electronic tonalities” of the classic Forbidden Planet (1956), but with less cohesion; the amorphous “Sea Devils” score was once described as sounding like an outer space laser dogfight happening just off-screen. (At one point, in the audio commentary, producer Barry Letts relates that he had to ask director Michael Briant to remove some aspects of the score because they sounded like footsteps and gunfire that didn’t correspond to anything on-screen, and were utterly confusing!) It’s a fairly legendary misstep among hard-core Who fans, though it is distinctive (it got it’s own CD release for crying out loud!) and at least varied enough that it is a minor improvement over the vaguely similar but repetitive music used on “The Silurians.” However, I must admit that, after a couple of episodes, you sort of get used to the weird music, and it becomes progressively less distracting.

As for the Sea Devils themselves… well, it must be said, they aren’t particularly convincing. The head sculpt – based on a sea turtle – is fairly detailed, but utterly expressionless with glassy cartoonish eyes, and doesn’t seem particularly threatening. Worse is the fact that the heads are quite obviously mounted on top of the performers heads (worn like a hat), while the extended necks are all too obviously hiding the actor’s own faces; this was done to give the Sea Devils more height, but the ruse is all too obvious and a little silly-looking. Ironically enough, they actually look better in bright daylight, where the details of the sculpture can be seen, whereas when bathed in shadows, they tend to congeal into darkish blobs which somehow seem even less realistic, and more plastic-y. Those odd mesh “dresses” they wear don’t help matters either, but as director Briant is fond repeating, he didn’t think it proper to have a band of naked Sea Devils running around. Children of the day apparently found them terrifying, but they don’t hold up well to modern scrutiny. Briant does the best he can in not holding shots on them for too long, but there’s still altogether too much evidence of their shabby appearance. Still, they have a certain charm, something that can be said of much of vintage Doctor Who’s production values.

The British Restoration Team have done their usual sterling job in sharpening up the image quality and sound; as opposed to “Doctor Who and the Silurians” (see review), they at least had color materials to work with (although only epsidoes 3-6 were the original PAL masters, unfortunately; the rest are reversed-standards NTSC prints recovered from North America), and while the image quality is a bit soft generally, and not quite up to the standards of ‘80s Who on DVD, it is more than acceptable, and occasionally quite pleasingly crisp, especially in the later episodes.

Given that “The Sea Devils” is a six-episoder on a single disc, the special features are going to necessarily be limited by encoding space, but they’re not bad at all. As follows:

Hello Sailor: Making “The Sea Devils” is a pleasant little featurette (36 minutes) about how the gang all went down to the coastal city of Portsmouth and filmed this little adventure. The usual suspects are here, including producer Barry Letts, script editor Terrance Dicks, and the still-adorable Katy Manning, supplemented by comments from very enthusiastic director Michael Briant (seriously, with this and the commentary track, you gotta love this guy for being so gung-ho on making good Who), stuntman Stuart Fell, and others, including some of the seamen that were assigned to help the BBC get this thing in the can. Everyone seems to have good memories of the experience, and some amusing anecdotes are related.

8mm is easily the most delightful extra included here, just under four minutes of amateur film footage shot by Navy gob Dave King while the cast was on the Naval base. This remarkably sharp-looking footage (which was likely polished a bit by the Restoration Team, but simply wouldn’t look this good without a strong source image) features Pertwee clowning with sailors and being interviewed by the local paper, as well as copious footage of the Sea Devil charge on the beach, and of various Devils milling around while waiting to be filmed. Narrated by Briant (and, briefly, Dicks), this is quite simply one of the niftiest “non-official” bits to be included only any Who disc.

The Audio Commentary features Briant, Dicks, and Letts, and is moderated by McCoy-era script editor Andrew Cartmell, who has very little to do, and in fact makes some bizarre comments, such as asking if the first five episodes were shot entirely on film (rather than the traditional mix of primarily video with some filmed inserts, which they quite obviously were). No moderator is actually needed here—Letts and especially Dicks have never been at loss for words in the past, but both are left in the dust by director Michael Briant, who gushes throughout, has plenty to say about the story, and is refreshingly forthright about his occasional weaknesses as a young director. Briant’s enthusiasm, along with Letts’ extensive and impressive knowledge of Naval procedures, and Dicks’ usual candor make this possibly the very best Pertwee commentary ever.

Production Trivia Subtitle Track is by the illustrious Dr. Martin Wiggins, and is up to his usual high standards, offering tons of interesting information about the show, and carefully timing certain tidbits so that they have the most impact in concert with what’s being shown on-screen. As with most of these releases, there’s a certain amount of repetition between the featurette, audio commentary and subtitle track, but it seems less so with this disc, thankfully.

Trails and Continuities are the usual collection of vintage lead-ins (with amusingly deadpan BBC announcers), but also includes an extended montage from episode one, which was broadcast at the beginning of episode two, since the first installment was little-seen by the British public due energy blackouts caused by a utilities strike. Unfortunately, due to a shortage of encoding space, the trailers for the 1992 compilation rerun of “The Sea Devils” could not be included, as originally planned.

DVD Rom Content is not something I usually pay a whole lot of attention to (despite some fun entries on past releases, like the color comic strips), but this time they’ve gone the extra mile and included something quite intriguing, especially for American fans: the complete text of the original edition of The Making of Doctor Who paperback by Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke, originally issued in the UK in 1972. Much of the material in the book relates to the making of “The Sea Devils,” and a lot of it looks very odd to modern eyes: much of the information about the series (including an episode guide of sorts, without story titles) is presented as “evidence” in the Doctor’s Time Lord trial, and there’s some downright surreal religious content – the kind of thing you’d never get away with today. Dicks ultimately revised the book in 1976, eliminating most of Hulke’s material in favor of behind-the-scenes bits on Dicks’ own debut Tom Baker script “Robot,” and including a rather more traditional episode guide. This noticeably slimmer edition is the one that most U.S. fans own or have seen; it’s so ubiquitous one can’t help but wonder if the print run was in the trillions. The vintage version as presented here, is one of the coolest extras “The Sea Devils” has to offer. In addition to the book, the usual Radio Times listings (supplemented with a couple of other nifty news clippings, including the winners of a Dalek contest) are also included.

On tap as well is the usual Photo Gallery (a decent collection of color and b/w stills from the show, set to that gurgly incidental music), a rather overamped Coming Soon to DVD trailer for William Hartnell classic “The Time Meddler,” and an Isolated Music Track, as if anyone on earth would subject themselves to that wonki-fonic score without the benefit of the dialogue in-between laser skirmishes. And, as with virtually all the recent releases, the disc defaults to a Doctor Who Series 3 DVD trailer, which was fun the first six hundred times, and is at least skippable.

Subtitles are provided for all elements of the DVD, always a welcome commodity.

“The Sea Devils” is available as a separate release, or as part of the Beneath the Sea box set; with most on-line retailers, the box set is by far the better deal, offering four discs for essentially the price of two; think of it as getting “Doctor Who and the Silurians” for free.

While it will rarely be listed among the very top Third Doctor stories, “The Sea Devils” is a solid, colorful entertainment that makes for a pretty good representation of the Jon Pertwee era. It has helicopters, hovercraft, big artillery, diving bells, atomic submarines, and six goofy monsters who rise up out of the salty sea. It’s a million miles from David Tennant and his CGI wonderlands, but as a fairly vigorous bit of vintage Doctor Who, it is more than satisfying.

“It’s all worth it to have her notice me”

Like many other documentaries before it, Tai Uhlmann’s For The Love Of Dolly explores the extremes some fans will go to in an effort to show their love for a particular person or hobby.  The object of their affection this time is country musician Dolly Parton, famous singer of hits like Jolene and I’ll Always Love You, star of such films as 9 To 5 and The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, owner of the Dollywood theme park in her hometown of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and all around gracious lady if this film and her fans accounts tell any kind of truth.

The film tells the story of five of her fans as the town gears up for the opening of Dollywood and the parade that Dolly grand marshal’s through town.  The fans stories are told in asides from the rainy parade route as they wait to see their beloved singer.

We first meet Harrel and Patric, a gay couple from Texas who have their home packed with Dolly memorabilia, even going so far as to make their own hand-crafted dolls of her.  Jeanette is a middle aged woman who is good friends with a younger woman named Melisa; they’ve bonded over their shared love of the country icon and are on the parade route dressed in matching outfits and wigs, emblazoned in loud butterfly colors in hopes of catching Dolly’s attention.  Finally, we meet David, a physically challenged young man who has met Dolly on several occasions and hopes to give a small gift to her at the parade today.

The film gives glimpses into the lives of these fans, which are all painfully honest about their devotion to the star, which can be at first a little wince-inducing to the uninitiated who might want to write them off as nutty fringe types.  But as David’s parents tell about how his interest in the singer has given him something to focus on, something to be inspired by, going from a boy the doctors told them would never walk to a young man with a job in spite of his disabilities and an ever-growing shrine to his idol, you might change your tune a bit.  Melisa reveals how her abusive childhood at the hands of an older brother has driven a wedge between her and her family, and that she’s moved to the area in hopes of drumming up Dolly sightings.  She also confesses to fantasies as a child of having Dolly take her away from the horrible circumstances in which she was being raised, which is sand and touching at the same time.

Harrel and Patric live inside their house-wide shrine to the woman, and Harrel tells about how Dolly helped him get through the death of his wife as he and Patric were first getting together, the words from her songs taking on special meaning to him.  Patric’s dolls are a two-fold investment: they showcase his love of the woman that inspired them, and he hopes to possibly curry her favor and have them sold in the gift shops in Dollywood.  The final fan featured is Jeanette, who has created a replica of Dolly’s oft sung about Tennessee Mountain Home in her backyard, even going so far as to color-match it with a small chip of wood taken from the original home when she visited it as a tourist. 

Interestingly, the fans tell of how the Dolly fanclub was disbanded in 1997, due to complaints from some more demanding fans that Dolly wasn’t prepared to deal with anymore.  This has cut out a lot of the one on one interaction that some of the more devoted were accustomed to, so now the Dollywood opening is more of a free for all as the devoted scramble and vie for attention.

I have to say that For The Love Of Dolly made me laugh several times, because it’s hard to take this type of devotion to any pop star serious, but one thing that came across was the kindness that Dolly obviously feels towards her fans, as she knew most of these people by name when she saw them on the parade route, quite a feat when you consider the number of hands the woman has to have shaken over the years.

The screener of For The Love Of Dolly that I watched featured no bonus material except for the trailer for the film.  The feature itself runs just under an hour.

I’d recommend this to fans of Dolly herself or to the curious who want to know why some folks go so overboard in their devotion to pop stars, this film will give you some interesting clues.