The Macra Terror episode 3 discussion:
R: <singing> Voices inside myyyy head. Tell me no Macra dre-eeead.
<Historian explains how they used fan taped footage for the moving pictures scenes in the recon.>
R: So, Officia… there’s a kid who’s destiny is determined at birth.
K: I think it’s a title, not a name.
H: It’s really not clear. After all they don’t call Ola guard captain. Although they do call Pilot the pilot.
R: Yeah, but he’s famous.
H: Actually, if I remember correctly, wasn’t it implied in the previous episode that he’s of the family of the pilots? I could be wrong.
K: Anyway, I thought Officia was a title. Longest cliffhanger EVAR.
R: I think you’re forgetting a few.
K: Well it was still a good 5-10 minutes of Jamie running after Macra.
H: Where are you starting the cliffhanger from? There was a bunch of stuff going on there and the captions made it clear that Jamie was having some issues.
K: I was starting it from Jamie stuck in cave.
H: Oh, well that’s not just a cliffhanger, that was an entire development. The Doctor and Polly trying to divert the gas. The Cliffhanger was only when the Macra started to actually chase him.
K: But the resolution was still the same. Not since he got stuck, but since they started poring the gas into the cave – that’s what I mean by the start of the cliffhanger. When Jamie was in danger of both suffocating and being crushed by Macra. I checked the clock and that was well over 5 minutes.
H: I think we’re having a disagreement of what cliffhanger means. There’s a difference of putting people in danger and final cliffhanger.
K: Also I was really bummed when Medoc died. <sniff>
R: Me too. What a crap way for him to go.
H: It’s nice that they made you care about the character, for sure. Sort of gave a feeling of stakes.
K: Less that then he was the only character on the planet I cared at all about, besides the main cast.
R: I liked the Doctor’s sudden burst of cleverness.
H: I liked the bit as well where he wasn’t clever and someone had to point it out to him. “No, I know you want to save Polly, but if you stay you can do things.” It’s cool that he had to have that pointed out to him. I liked that. Characterization.
R: I enjoyed his dialog a lot in this one too. That great line “given the answer, what’s the question.” to me summarizes a lot of the way the Doctor thinks.
H: I summarizes a lot of this story in general. They know about the gas, they know it’s being mined for control. They have that answer. But they don’t have the question why. So it’s sort of a theme kind of thing.
K: I liked the backward equation analysis.
R: Did anyone else notice that the escape alarm sounded remarkably similar, some might say, identical to the gas leak alarm?
P: Yup.
H: Well, Officia did say something about it being the emergency alarm. Maybe there’s a limitation in budget.
R: <accent> “We can only afford one siren, alrigh’.”
H: So, that brings me to my other point. Let’s talk about Ben. I thought Michael Craze was excellent. Really, really good at both portraying the brainwashness and the confusion of the character as he’s trying to break out of it.
R: Yeah, not bad.
P: I can’t recall them exploring that aspect of Doctor Who so far. Where they’ve been exploring conditioning.
H: They did it once before in on of the first parts of the Keys of Marinus. But definitely not as developed or as well done as this story, for sure.
R: <Doctor accent> “Repeat after me Ben, I am not a pleasure unit.”
<That was an “In Like Flint” reference, just FYI>
H: I loved when the Doctor was talking to Ben and we actually got moving pictures. Watching Pat Troughton’s eyebrows. When he starts out “But you better watch out for Jamie” his eyebrows arch down, and it just was really expressive and cool.
R: So when the gas leak happened, and Medoc is choking and trying to explain to everybody what to do, I immediately thought back to those seat back cards on airplanes. “Make sure you put on your own mask before helping others.”
K: I was thinking the same thing.
P: I thought there were a lot of interesting shapes in this episode, where there were a lot more pipes and technology that were not similar throughout the area. And they were different in the mining areas verses the living areas. I think that it showed a lot of forethought.
R: That was definitely the cleanest mine that I have seen anywhere.
P: I think that the Horta mine in original Star Trek was even cleaner.
R: But they actually had wall panels and stuff in a cave. I this it looked more to me like a hallway with some gas in it than a mine.
K: There were gas tubes?
H: That’s interesting, because something just occurs to me. I can’t remember if this is in the next episode or not, but the idea that they yes, are hallways and they lead down. There’s a reason it’s all abandoned. But that might just be a connection I’m making.
K: We’ll find out next episode maybe. So, I was mildly entertained by the “Oz” city music.
R: The exquisitely inappropriate music.
H: Appropriate inappropriate music.
R: Exactly. Going perfectly and intentionally against the mood that they’re setting.
H: Again it’s the contrast of the holiday camp with what is really going on.
R: Holiday labor camp.
P: Nice.
K: Another thought when Jamie initially entered the cave, I thought he’d stepped into a Dig Dug game console. It sounded the like music from an old 1980’s era arcade game.
H: Whereas at the time, in 1966, that was incredibly disturbing avant guard and extremely cool. Dudley Simpson is the man. It’s interesting to see how video game music, which admittedly was limited by technology, was influenced by this kind of thing.
R: Well, scifi has had a long history of trying to do avaunt guard music.
H: Theremins.
R: Yup.
H: I think we’re ready for final thoughts.
P: Partially predictable, and partially not looking at the screen has made me a quiet person in this commentary.
H: Okay.
A: I really enjoyed all the moving pictures we got to see this time, courtesy of some kid. It’s fun to see what’s going on with Ben. I don’t know where various companions leave, so I don’t know if he’s going to stay brainwashed and get stuck there. But it sounds like he’s starting to fight it.
R: “We have always been at peace with Crustasia!”
<laughter>
R: I still can’t get over the hilarity of watching an old man being attacked by a giant crab.
H: It’s supposed to be scary, man!
R: I know, and maybe if we saw the whole thing, the original episode instead of the recon, it would have come across that way. But as it is, it comes across as something from Pee Wee’s Fun House. <old man voice> “Meeh, get off my lawn, you crabs!”
H: Now I keep picturing the Brigadier as an old man saying “Meeh, get off my planet!”
R: The overall episode hung together pretty well. The cliffhanger, I definitely saw it coming. But it did not seem to me to be tedious. I thought they built up reasonably well to it.
H: Another thing about the cliffhanger that it interesting to think about, is the way it had to be shot. Three things to remember. One, it was shot essentially as live. Everything was pretty much shot in order, pretty much. Two, they were making this a week before transmission it had to be finalized. Three, because it was so hawnking huge and expensive there was only one Macra prop. Think of how this had to be filmed because Jamie was being menaced by two Macras on each side of the set.
R: Lot of jump cuts.
H: Exactly. That would be one of the reasons why they had to put off the actual cliffhanger and keep going back to other things – so they could move the damn prop.
K: Slow night? I don’t know. It didn’t feel like a lot happened in this particular episode to me. The typical slow down of episode three. I guess because nothing new was really revealed. Just there’s other pipes. I guess we learned a little more about the gas…
H: And the Doctor started putting the pieces together. And we got a lot of character stuff with Ben, which I think was the main focus of the episode, really.
K: Yeah, but Ben’s my least favorite. So I didn’t get much out of it. And I MISS Medoc! <pout> He was cool and crazy and made the story interesting. I’m just worried episode four is not going to be as fun without him.
H: Okay. I really enjoyed this episode. Again, a lot of it because of the interactions between the Doctor and Ben and Ben in general. I think the mental confusion was really well acted and fun to watch. <thinks> I thought the story development moved on at a decent pace for an episode three. It’s certainly bringing us to a conclusion in episode four. You’re right that not a lot happened, but I never felt that the episode was going on too long. I felt it moved at a decent clip. And I’m looking forward to the resolution next week.
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