The Tenth Planet episode 1 discussion:
Cz: Space Fatigue!
P: Weather vane not moving in the wind.
R: I thought I was the only one who noticed that.
P: No, and I’ve got more. The periscope was square.
M: No, it’s a squariscope.
P: And also those door they came out of would have been buried in about half an hour.
K: They were heated.
M: I thought that the physical acting was very nice.
Sp: Yes, I thought so too.
H: The weightlessness?
Sp & M: Yes, that and struggling against the wind and the snow.
M: And thank goodness for stereotypical Italians.
P: And stereotypical Americans
Cz: When was this made? There was a black guy commanding a space ship!
H: 1966. And yes, progressive. It took place in 1986.
Sp: That was your first hint that this was in the future.
M: When phones looked like… inappropriate objects.
SG: Personal massagers.
Sp: So, Mysterious People. You’ve landed out in the middle of the South Pole, we’re going to make fun of you, be suspicious of you, and then take you straight through the heart of the facility, leave you completely unguarded and let you interrupt us with plot information at any time, simultaneous believing you and interrogating you.
K: They weren’t unguarded.
H: As I’ve been trying to say, welcome to the first modern Doctor Who story. This is in a lot of ways more of a template as the show is going to develop. Base under siege, interrogation, all the stuff Spoo has been talking about.
M: So these guys are proto-UNIT?
H: I wouldn’t go that far. I guess they are – not really the UNIT stories, but similar stories. Like “Colony in Space,” a Jon Pertwee story that is not part of the Project. It’s the introduction of a new bad guy just at the end of the story. Mini-Spoo, what did you think of the new aliens?
MS: AW-SOOOOME. That’s all I have to say.
H: Do you know what they are?
MS: They’re basically robots but a lot cooler.
A: It’s really hard to comment on them without thinking about how they’ve changed. Looking at them from the point of view as someone who’s seeing them this way for the first time.
Sp: Why were they carrying 40-lb engine blocks?
M: It looks like the Nutcracker on Ice.
Sp: So the Doctor knew what they were, or what the planet was. Yet he did not tell them to batten down hatches and get large guns?
Cz: Twin Earth?
M: The upside down Earth where the day lasts 17 seconds.
Cz: That’s why they’ve got the 40-lbs.
M: Ah, those were gravitic enhancers!
Sc: What did you think of Hartnell’s performance?
R: I liked it.
M: I loved the “I don’t like your attitude” and “Well, I don’t like your face.”
R: “I don’t like your hair!”
H: Yeah, General Cutler is great. I think Hartnell is just really throwing himself into it.
Sp: Yeah, he had humor. He had concern. Even back to the grandfatherly tut-tuting, getting everyone dressed better to be warm.
Cz: They were trying to keep him warm.
H: Yeah, it’s sort of a reciprocal thing. They were trying to take care of him – he’s an old man who needs taking care of.
Sp: Ground Control to Major Coot!
K: For now.
P: I thought that the music really stepped up a notch this episode. There was good interstitial music.
H: They used a lot of music from libraries, and they definitely had to save money from somewhere this episode, as you could see where they spent it.
R: “I got to figure out how to suspend that plate without anyone seeing a wire!”
H: I thought the model work was quite good.
K: I thought the snow work was quite terrible.
Sp: I thought it was funny.
H: Oh, come on!
Cz: It was cute.
K: It was sideways. In clumps!
H: You’ve never seen snow that…?
K: In CLUMPS!
R: You could see where the jet was off camera that the snow was coming out of.
Sp: The ground control chatter was convincing without being cold, technical and boring. Course corrections and “can you read me” and all that.
P: There was no feedback for the communication. For example, you would hear them say “Course change to 00123” and you would hear them reply with the same line.
Sc: It’s 1986 – they changed it in the future!
Sp: The Doctor writing down what’s going to happen, giving it to the scientist, and then he refers to it later and was like “He knew, he knew ahead of time” that was basically a template for the next 40 years of Doctor Who stories.
MS: DUN DUN DUN!
P: Okay, Cybermen have human hands. Just sort of felt wrong. At least they should have been wearing mittens.
H: Actually, the fact that they weren’t wearing mittens is even scarier because they don’t need them – they weren’t cold.
P: And also what are the odds that they landed exactly there.
H: Indeed. Perhaps that would be a plot point?
M: Were they tracking the radio communications? Were they tracking the TARDIS perhaps? And what’s with the welding torch? “You go get it, I’ll stay out here in the cold!”
Cz: Plot plot plot plot plot…
M: Yes, they were trying to setup the suspense moment, but it was a little clumsy.
Sp: Well, it’s consistent. He was a little bloody minded. Bull dog with single minded “arrgrrbrrgrr.”
H: Final thoughts?
R: I don’t really have anything. I tried to come up with something snarky, but it held together pretty well. There were a couple of goofy moments, but they were excusable. About the only thing I can say is that the Cybermen action figures will have that “judo chop” action.
Cz: One thing I noticed was the guy who had the ski mask on – it looked like it had snow in the right places if it had snow stuck to it if he was actually wearing it in the cold. At least it looked that way in black and white. And I was thinking “Wow, it’s cold. It actually looks cold. That’s cool.”
K: Or cold.
P: First of all, I thought the credits were interesting and cool.
K: Reminded me a little of the credits from the War Machines.
P: Second of all, I was really thrown off by the spinning globe. My physics knowledge made me think the planets were going to collide because you can’t stop the other planet. Also it’s spinning so fast that corealis force would be tremendously destructive.
H: Keep watching! For at least some of that.
P: Okay. I also thought that the Americanized accent that they had for, I believe the Sargent was heavy handed, but I guess it was fair enough for that time.
Sp: It was an elegant balance with the Italian accent, which came and went with the snow.
H: You can see it as revenge for Dick Van Dykes cockney accent.
Sp: And Dick Van Dyke danced with penguins in Mary Poppins, and penguins was used as an insult in this episode. And there it is, the Doctor Who – Dick Van Dyke connection.
H: I will kill you.
Sc: I liked the scene with the secretary general at the ISC, and all his flunkies and secretaries.
H: All in Native Dress. It was trying to convey a United Nations sort of thing.
Sp: It was an international thing. Not just a spot of trouble in Britain.
M: Snarkyness aside, I enjoyed this. I was looking forward to the appearance of the Cybermen, although in retrospect the whole episode was just one big setup to “oh, there they are!”
H: Well, it is the first episode of a story. And at the time the Cybermen were just these guys.
P: So, we saw there’s another planet. The Doctor said there’ll be visitors and 10 seconds later they were landing. It was just a huge compression of plot in my opinion.
R: Well, rather that than the alternative which we’ve seen so often in the past. “Eventually sometime some day something will happen.”
H: I LIKED the Sensorites.
<laughter>
Sp: This was actually really good. I’m still a little hung up on the base personnel not making up their minds whether to interrogate our heroes or ask them to save them. But it was a nice little episode, moved right along. And I’m really trying not to look at this with meta knowledge with historical perspective of which characters aren’t going to continue after this episode.
H: To be fair, it was in the press already that this is Hartnell’s last story.
Cz: Oh no, do the Cybermen go “pew pew” or “whaa” judo chop to the Doctor?
H: You’ll have to wait and see.
K: So, where in orbit were the astronauts. Because they were in site of Mars, right? But then this other planet gets in the way that is pulling them in with it’s gravity. And yet they were close enough to earth to do start an emergency splash down.
M: They were 1,100 miles above the earth in orbit. On an orbit that took them over Australia and San Francisco.
K: Yeah, I get. But they were close enough to see Mars.
H: They were taking their bearing from Mars. It’s like taking a bearing from a star.
Sc: You would want to use an actual star.
H: Because if they use Mars they can do the whole thing about another planet between Mars and Venus!
M: Oh yeah!
R: Okay, it’s no more dorky that the three separate times that the USS Enterprise encountered a planet exactly like Earth. It’s no more ridiculous than that.
M: I do think the astronauts would have freaked out more seeing a planet like that.
K: Astronauts are trained not to ever freak out.
H: I guess that’s why Buzz Aldrin never said “Oh my god, there’s moon men here, help me help me help me!” So, my final thoughts. As I have mentioned it was getting a copy of this video tape 3 plus years ago that gave me the idea of doing the TARDIS project in the first place.
Sp: Thank you video tape.
H: So, I am just incredibly excited that we made it this far. I always hoped we would. It’s kind of cool seeing this episode for only the second time in my life. And I’m just really excited to be watching it with all of you guys.
Sp: That was beautiful man. <hugs>
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