The Moonbase episode 4 discussion:
P: Wow, 11 costumes man! <referring to number of Cybermen costumes>
E: You counted?
P: I always count.
H: So, fun fact: About someone who was in one of those costumes, last episode, and this episode, one of the Cybermen was portrayed by someone who would become very important in Doctor Who future.
P: Should it be a man later portrayed in a scarf?
H: Not that important.
P: Was it K9?
H: Somewhat more important. No, portraying one of the Cybermen was our very own John Levine, later to play Sgt. Benton.
P: But, has he worn a scarf?
H: At some point I’m sure.
P: I’m right.
K: This entire conversation sounds scripted, you know… 😛
H: I’m that good.
K: So, right off the bat I noticed the wiggling set under the sand.
R: Yeah, the lunar regolith was very flexible today.
K: Several set gaffs in this episode that we actually go to see because there were moving pictures!
H: Other than the lunar surface, because that was in Ealing Studios, I can explain the other set problems.
K: Oh? <this really is scripted, isn’t it?>
R: It’s Jamie’s fault, isn’t it?
H: No, it’s the BBC’s fault. Remember a couple of seasons ago they moved production from that crappy little tiny studio in Lime Grove to a nicer facility in Television Center? Well, for this episode, yes the last episode in the story, they were forcibly moved back into a tiny, tiny studio in Lime Grove. So a larger set had to reconstructed into a much smaller studio with crappier equipment, which also explains why, if you listen closely, you can hear occasional directions from the crew because the studio radio system accidentally got picked up by the mics.
K: I thought that was kids playing outside. I heard voices.
P: I hear voices.
K: That’s different.
H: I think it’s been mixed down in the “Lost and Time” DVD, but if you listen closely in the medbay, you can hear someone given them their cue to sit up. They had this problem once before in 1963 in the first episode of The Daleks. They made the entire first episode, and on the playback you could hear the entire studio, so they had to rerecord the entire episode.
P: It may have gone smoother.
H: It might have.
P: Or they may have shot it at 2AM.
H: No, because…
<BBC unions are discussed briefly>
R: In some ways this actually reminded me of a much more modern episode, like from the ’05 series. There was really relentless action, very little let up, and larger scale conflict. Rather than just “run away from the one monster.” There was this group doing this, three other people of there doing that, etc.
H: I’d say that’s just strengthens the argument that the new serious is just a contination of the old series. I think you’re going to see a lot more of that in the next 20 seasons (60’s – 80’s). Doctor Who uses that idea a lot. I would argue that the NEW series has a lot of just running away from one monster.
K: Anyway. Back to Patrick?
P: So, first of all the moon photography was really good.
R: Despite the really weak set.
P: This story is a story in that they’re showing us multiple locations inter-woven throughout the show. I think that’s what really stands out as to compared to earlier Doctor Who episodes where they used one set as part of the show.
H: That’s funny, because originally when the scripts were being written was one bit and a couple of ansinarly set. Which is why the Graviton and the Control Room is all one set. And the only other sets were the med bay, the hallway, and the interior of the Cybermen space ship. Everything else was done in the film studio. So it’s interesting that you felt like it was so expansive. It says a lot of who into the story you were.
P: Or how well they did. But I was into the story. Think back to the story where we had the ship in the Highlanders – it was a nice set, but all they had was the ship, the dock, and a building.
H: They had the tavern, the cabin…
R: The pit!
H: Yes, the pit. And a few other places, and lot of location shooting.
P: Okay, I stand corrected.
K: It think think maybe what you’re noticing is the cuts between the various locations. It didn’t tend to linger long in one location, and we saw a bunch of different views and angles of the control room, which made it seem bigger and more engaging.
<Mr. Mother walks in…>
M: It was a great episode. I was so enthralled and in the moment that I don’t even remember what happened.
K: That’s because you just got here, smart ass.
M: Oh… right.
P: The episode began with 11 Cybermen walking on the moon. As a cliffhanger goes it was pretty effective, as a great starting point for this episode.
K: Better cliffhanger than lobster claw, anyway.
<derailed by lobster jokes>
P: So, I was perplexed as to why they didn’t just kill everybody and operate the machine. But then I remember the Cybermen cannot operate the machine directly.
K: They sort of explained that last week.
H: It’s interesting that The Doctor figured something out, but it ended up not having to do with anything, but it didn’t make sense. Thinking it had something to do with gravity. It planted a seed with how they were defeated, but it didn’t really have anything to do with why they couldn’t actually operate the Gravitron.
K: I liked seeing the Cybermen flying into space at the end. I imagine them orbiting around the moon years later.
E: I will never not laugh at flying Cybermen. I realize it was supposed to be a victorious moment, but it just struck me as hilarious.
H: Yes, the Cybermen flying off the moon looked great. As opposed to the Cybermen landing on the moon, which has been called the worst model effect of Doctor Who history.
P: I was picturing ballerina music as they were taking off.
A: I was picturing them saying “0h Sh*t” in their metallic voices.
E: I kind of like the older Cybermen a bit better. But I did notice some significant costume improvements in these. The way the mouths in particular moved, there was something in the helmets for these, which I could easily pick out.
K: They weren’t consistent in this one with the mouth movement though.
H: They were as consistent as Dalek lights are. It’s down to the actor / operator.
M: I liked the voices and they way that they physically did the talking in The Tenth Planet.
E: I really liked The Tenth Planet.
H: I like them both for completely different reasons.
M: Yeah, but I felt that in this one they tried too far. They tried too much to make them robotic, and it was hard to understand them sometimes. And I’m not sure if that served the story well.
K: They were easier to understand well this week.
M: Well, if in the original broadcast they were easier to understand than in the recon, then I agree that they are awesome Cybermen voices.
H: EXCELLENT.
K: <Cybervoice> Resistance is useless!
H: Since no one has brought it up yet, although Ketina started to sing it, I found out something about the soundtrack. It’s all stock music. It wasn’t composed as all. The Cybermen theme – entirely stock music.
P: Good selection to choose from.
E: Good ear.
R: Did anyone else notice how sad Evans looked in the control room?
H: Did anyone else notice the continuity error with Evans?
A: Do you mean the hat?
K: I thought it was intentional, since he was being controlled like a robot. But then it got flipped around.
R: I did notice one thing about Evans. Which was NOBODY NOTICED ABOUT EVANS! <robot voice> “Do not mind me. I feel much better now that I’m being controlled by my alien overlords.”
H: Polly gave coffee to everyone except Evans. You’d think she’d notice!
A: No wonder he was so sad.
H: And he couldn’t even have it with sugar.
P: It makes the cyborgs jittery.
H: Another thing that I found out. An explanation from Roger’s neckerchief other than the fact that he is so French. At the last minute his character’s name was changed from Jules to Roger and his nameplace says “Benoit, J.” instead of “R.” So they gave him the neckerchief to cover it up. And if you were watching closely this week it didn’t work. You could still clearly see the J.
A: They couldn’t have just gotten some masking tape and a sharpie?
M: Why did they change the character’s name?
H: It has something to do with the production.
P: How about the great shoot the window out scene? I love the fact that they shot a clear piece of glass with a laser, and the only thing that was harmed was a clear piece of glass. Which would have been cleanly edged instead of shattered.
R: Retort the first, if the window is designed to screen out certain types of radiation is it necessary opaque to those types of radiation. Therefore the glass would have absorbed a laser style beam within those frequencies, even if it was not within the visible spectrum. Retort the second, thermal damage to glass tends to uneven, because even though you can’t see them, there are microscopic bubbles of air an impurities in the glass. These cause surprisingly bullet hole-like formations when glass breaks down for thermal reasons. That said, it’s still dumb.
M: Retort the third, suspension of disbelief, biotches.
P: So would you have argued that if it had made a perfectly round hole when they displayed the light beam? No. I think this argument was made up to cover the fact that they did it differently.
R: Yup.
P: I knew it.
K: What Mr. Mother said. Who didn’t even see the episode.
M: It helps with the suspension of disbelief.
<laughter>
M: And it my version of the episode Polly was amazing, saved everyone, and didn’t make coffee.
E: I would have told her to bring tea instead.
K: It’s British, why didn’t they serve tea?
H: They drink coffee too!
P: Yes, but us Yanks don’t realize that.
M: And even more shocking, Americans drink plenty of tea.
<Revolutionary War tea jokes ensue.>
K: Are we ready for final thoughts?
Cz: <finger up> That horrible loud pitched buzzing… thought I was going to die.
H: When the Cybermen activated the possessed guys.
Cz: Yes. It was horrible. <whispers> hor-ri-ble.
A: I liked the episode. I enjoyed it. Honestly, I don’t have anything specific to say. I look forward to when Jamie really gets to be Jamie.
H: He starts to shine soon.
P: So, lots of gun gadgets that are cool. I think I counted at least three.
K: At least one of which didn’t work.
H: But in a cool way.
P: I was kind of wondering why people didn’t go into the gravitron room more frequently.
K: Because they only had one hat.
P: But they went in the room before putting on the hat.
H: They sort of explained that when Hobson said to Benoit “you are the only other one that’s trained.” Maybe it has to do that they didn’t have anyone else to train.
K: Evan’s wasn’t trained – he was a doctor.
H: He was being controlled by the Cybermen who were giving him instructions.
P: I didn’t say go in there to operate the machine. I meant go in there to get the Cybermen controlled guy out of there.
K: Because he had a gun. In the end they finally decided to rush him anyway.
H: And then he got knocked out by the lack of O2.
P: On that – explosive decompression. Period.
H: Yeah, they short of treated it like an airplane when a cabin loses air-pressure. They had the oxygen things come out like on a plane.
K: I thought that was kind of cute. Especially when the Doctor put his on before helping Polly with hers, just like they explain on a plane.
E: I think ever since I joined the Project, I believe this is my first non-reconstructed episode. <she’s missed quite a few> All the other ones I’ve been to were partially reconstructed, so that might have factored into my “I am impressed with this episode”ness.
K: Don’t get used to it.
E: But I enjoyed it and I thought that this episode was pretty good. I felt more like the modern episodes a bit. I can kind of feel that from this episode. I’d also like to say I will endlessly be amused by those spaceships. The Cybermen flying off the moon was enough, but the spaceships were even funnier than the Cybermen.
P: I did like the “saved by the coffee tray”, which means in a round about way, Polly saved the day.
H: In a VERY round about way.
R: She’ll take whatever cheap ass victory she can get.
H: The sad thing is, the story has been one episode Polly gets this awesome idea of how to defeat the Cybermen, and in the next one she’s this helpless woman getting the coffee.
M: Happy birthday, Ezio.
H: And that’s your final thought?
M: Well, I didn’t actually see the episode.
H: When has that… well, you could talk about the full story?
M: Alas, I didn’t really see enough of it to comment on it as a whole.
R: <slow voice> Worlds… slowest… judo… chop
H: Can I ask people who might have a better knowledge of this than I do? What was the deal with the 60’s two-handed Kirk chop? Is it anything?
M: If you don’t have a weapon in your hand, there is absolutely no advantage of doing that.
P: In those days, where censors are removing violence, it is a way to knock people out without getting it edited.
H: They did that in both Doctor Who and Star Trek a lot in the 60’s. Some kind of fight choreography thing.
R: <looks it up on Internet> They call it Kirk Fu. Apparently it’s part of Star Fleet basic training, and meant to make Jon Pertwee look good in a cloak.
H: Fair enough.
<Ronelyn describes the scene where Evan’s attacks the guard in the sickbay in detail. And the scene makes little sense.>
H: Fair enough.
R: Overall I enjoyed the story. I thought this episode moved along at a really good pace. There wasn’t a time when people sat sitting around discussing the only thing that they could do. They discussed what tool they had, and how to use them to do the obvious thing. But never whether or not to do the only thing that was possible to do to get out of the situation.
K: I like the way they were like “oh, turn off the safety first.”
H: I liked the fact that it was The Doctor and Hobson working together to solve it at the end. It wasn’t like the Tenth Planet where General Cutler went all crazy and wanted to kill the Doctor.
K: I went from suspecting the Doctor to accepting help from him. Oh, my turn. I think I said everything I wanted to get across this week – I typed “me” more often than usual. I’m good.
H: I think this story was a lot stronger than the 10th Planet in a lot of ways. I actually felt like this final episode was the weakest of the four. I just felt, in some ways, like stuff happened and it was over. I just… I think the story as a whole was great. It’s just the last episode was a little weak. I’m not entirely sure what they could have done to strengthen it. It felt a lot to me like “we have to end the story now.” I feel like there was a lot of promise, and some of it felt through. That being said there was a lot of great things. The laser beam reflected off the dome looked cool. I liked the Cybermen floating off – it looked neat. I think that’s part of the issue – I didn’t think the story really came together very well. I enjoyed it. It certainly wasn’t bad Doctor Who, and pretty good Doctor Who is still better than a lot of what’s out there. And next week be ready for something COMPLETELY different.
E: Robster Craw!
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