The TARDIS Project

Hello all, the Historian here. Joining me this week for our LAST RECONSTRUCTION FOR QUITE SOME TIME (yes, you can stop cheering now, Ketina) is the aforementioned Ketina, Ronelyn, Spoo, Photobug, Altair and the ever silent (unless we can coax him to talk?) Schmallturm.

As always, our extreme thanks go to Loose Cannon Productions for the fantastic reconstructions–we’ll see you late in the year for a few more reconstructed episodes, guys! But for now, here we go! This episode first aired on 25 May, 1968.

 
Sc: That’s the most awesome – the lava lamps in the power supply room.

R: Well, how would you setup your dials?

H: Well, that’s the last of the recons for a while.

K: Out of “Recon Hell” officially, I’d say. Only 2 more stories left in The Project with reconstructions. Whoohoo!

<general applause and cheering. Small group today though, so it’s not very loud.>

P: Well that wasn’t much of a beginning cliff hanger. They escaped by hiding and it took all of 10 seconds to resolve.

R: You have been watching Doctor Who, right? “Look out!” “Oh, thank you.”

Sp: I will say if that’s how they resolve the cliff hanger next week I’ll be a little disappointed, seeing as their throwing the planet’s from the opening sequence of MST3K at both companions.

K: Zoe is not a companion ye…

P: She’s not a companion.

<discussion of silly meteor effect>

K: So I still have a lingering headache from the “kill the Cybermats” sonic thing.

Sp: There was an awful lot of “tech the tech” this week. But it worked.

R: Most of it, yeah.

K: Long sequence of “aim this way. Test the guns. Full power. Blah blah blah.”

R: Yeah, that got old. “Take a power reading on this.” “What do you think I’ve been doing. ‘Take a power reading on this. Take a power reading on that.’ Take a power reading on this!” <upper cut fist>

Sp: I make the distinction between the Doctor setting out “tech the tech” barriers as fast as he can, verse the whole laser firing sequence, which on the one hand I sort of tuned out, and on the other hand it really worked in a sort of submarine combat drama sort of vibe. Or at least all the laser firing technobabble had the same kind of pace as your classic submarines maneuvering sort of movies. So both of those things work.

K: I just think it went on a little long. Testing the gun… twice no less… kind of removed the suspense for me of nick of time saving everyone type of thing with laser gun. Seriously they tested the gun TWICE. And I was a software tester, so I get testing!

P: The notion of radar I thought was a little off.

H: You mean the holes with the Christmas lights. I noticed that previously but didn’t want to say anything.

R: It would have been rude. You don’t want to kick a guy when he’s down.

K: It just… with an effect that sad, why did they show it so many times?

H: I bet that it looked much more clear to us than it ever did to folks at the time on their TVs. I bet they couldn’t see the little holes when the lights were behind them like we could.

P: Really we’re going to treat Jarvis with shock therapy?

R: At the time? Yes, yes they were. Science at the time.

H: Shock therapy was the psychological panacea.

K: That seemed out of character for the Doctor to agree to that. I’m glad they didn’t go there. I was waiting for the Doctor to respond something along the lines of “that’s barbaric” and was disappointed.

Sp & H: No, that would be McCoy.

R: Speaking of Star Trek. Welshy!!

H: He was Irish, not Welsh.

K: I considered it an upgrade for the Cybermen. He holds his own with two guys for quite a quite a while in that fight…

P: Yeah. Boinking his head off the wall.

K: So when one of them is killed, and the Cybermen hypnotize the badass guy, they got quite a minion upgrade there. Or so I thought.

R: Yeah. I was really bummed. I was hoping he was going to go on a sneaky engineer rampage or something.

K: I was hoping he had a plate in the back of his head and he was faking it.

Sp: Well, not nearly as bummed as losing the newly promoted Gemma. I rather liked her. She was refreshingly level headed.

K: Yeah. Usually the crazy commander dies leaving us with the good. Not the good one dies.

H: To be fair, we were left with the backup good commander, Leo.

Sp: I had no hope with the Cybermen voices this week. I was really hoping that the recon guys would do us a courtesy and subtitle them.

K: That would have been really nice. The Cyberleader was really hard to understand this week.

Sp: Hopeless.

H: So, I want to note that not only are we now on phase six, but we’re on plan three. Which is an alternative plan to complete phase six. And we still don’t really know what the Cybermen’s ultimate objective is.

P: “That we’re going to toilet paper the whole thing.”

<laughter>

Sp: This has about the level of planning as a drunken frat prank. So sure. <Cybermen voice> “Gamma Fie. Gamma Fie forever! Let’s go to prom.”

P: What if we find out eventually the Cybermen are just really angry at us for inventing cigarettes.

H: <laughs.>

Sp: So the closest we have to a Cybermotivation is the reference in dialog by the Doctor about the Cybermen wanting to take over the earth to harvest its minerals.

H: Which he mentioned last week as well.

Sp: So I think? They are trying to have the humans test the laser so they can swipe the laser so they can use it on the earth so they can scoop up the power so they can get its minerals. Maybe? And if that’s the point isn’t it simpler for them to just go to a mining company and mind control some miners.

R: Yeah. So according to your logic they blew up a sun to break down a planet into meteors to scare a space station crew into letting Cybermen on the station by disabling a laser so the Cybermen could fix the laser so they could steal the laser and blow up a planet with it.

H: When they already have the capability of blowing up a star.

R: Well, I was going to let remain unsaid. But yes, no Spoo’s humiliation is complete.

Sp: My humiliation has only just begun! See, blowing up a sun is very straight forward if you don’t have a use for all of the left over bits. They need to blow up an earth in a very specific harvestable way. Right? Right? Cause, ha ha, otherwise there’s there’s been NO POINT for about four episodes. I’m trying to make this work. Electroshock me! I can’t take it.

P: They wanted water. How’s that sound for a counterpoint? But I will shock you.

R: I’m not doing another “there was an old lady” song.

P: Maybe they couldn’t figure out the passcode to get in the planet.

H: Honest to god, I can’t actually remember. But I am hopeful that this will make slightly more sense after next week.

K: My theory is, we’ll never. The Doctor and all will defeat the Cybermen before we ever learn…

H: What phase seven is?

K: Their actual full plan.

R: The last thing we’ll see as the Wheel goes down in a giant explosion one of the Cybermen we’ll see over the comlink “there never was a phase eight. Was there?!”

Sp: See, I hope it actually goes this way.

K: That we never know?

Sp: That we never know. Because that would be the perfect plot counterpoint to Zoe’s realization this week that there were all kinds of things in the world that were not logical!

K: Cool.

Sp: Isn’t it. Zoe discovers there’s mystery and inexplicable things about the same time that we do.

H: Honestly, I think Zoe’s speech there was one of the highlights of the episode for me.

Sp: Hear hear!

H: This was basically a middle of the story episode, but bits like that and Gemma’s death, made it… I don’t want to say made it less dull…

K: No, no! Say made it less dull! I think it did.

P: I kind of think the fight scene made it less dull too.

H: That’s another good bit. I really want to see that full fight scene.

K: Yeah. If we could have seen that fight seen it would have been a lot less dull. The only thing that really made it super dull for me was the long zap zap laser gun segment that seemed to go on for half of the episode.

H: Hey. How about the Doctor sending his young friends into ridiculous danger because the logician calculated that it would be okay. The one that just last week he dismissed by saying that logic merely allowed you to be incorrect with authority. But he needs the TARDIS thingy back, so go kids. Go out where the meteors and radiation are. You’ll be fine.

R: Come on. A little space won’t hurt anybody.

<Spoo makes a Katarina joke.>

Sp: Well, either way Zoe’s going to learn a darn good lesson.

H: So, are we at final thoughts?

P: Ish. Tell me again how you are going to convert the oxygen to ozone? Nevermind.

H: Add another… wait… just… wait….

Sp: <Cyberman voice> “We have pills. Shut up and insert the plot into these holes!”

R: Also anybody notice that the highly scientific unobtainium rods for the laser come in wooden crates? It hadn’t really struck me until this episode. I guess maybe it’s artisanal unobtainium hand forged by tradition Pennsylvania radiation Quakers.

H: So… continuing into final thoughts?

P: Sure. Well, it’s pretty logical that they actually have a force field controlled by the people who are inside of it. Hurray they finally got it right.

R: It’s a fort. Lock the door.

P: We lost the TARDIS part and NOW you’re going to send him out to find it? I know we covered it, but that’s such a huge plot point.

H: I thought of something to explain it. I don’t know if this is correct, but the meteor storm could damage or destroy the rocket.

P: And the TARDIS. So bring the little bit back and the TARDIS.

H: Jamie can’t fix the TARDIS. And the Doctor is way to unexpend… busy to do so.

P: That and we actually did get a literal attack of the soundtrack. There you go.

K: Still have a bit of a headache from that.

H: Spoo?

Sp: Sure is too bad that the Doctor can’t pilot the TARDIS very precisely. So much of this episode would be negated if he could… oh.. I don’t know… matrialize in the control room. Gather all of the humans together in the TARDIS. Whisk away to safety. Just flat leave!

K: And leave the Cybermen with the laser gun, or whatever the crap it is they want with the Wheel?

Sp: They could the laser with them too. It occurs to me, in a lot of the base under siege or similar sorts of stories that I don’t mind the TARDIS being there because there’s other plot reasons that it can’t be used. Someone else is in peril or missing or the Doctor needs to resolve something or what have you. But so much of this story could be solved by just using the TARDIS as a… hum… I don’t know… space ship!

H: Well, where I thought you were going with that was that it would be easier if he could just get the TARDIS off the rocket to the Wheel without going somewhere completely different because he can’t control the steering.

Sp: I sort of roll with that part of it because plot got us there and you need to disable the TARDIS just enough to have some kind of challenge. But the level of challenge of go back and forth between rocket and Wheel is about as much plot hand wave I can take with the TARDIS. So much else of this story just seems to be solved by having another SPACE SHIP available.

R: That’s what the “S” is for!

H: Something that I’m going to point out that bends the rules of the discussion a little bit is that’s a big criticism of the new series. The fact that the Doctor seems to really be able to hyper control steering on the TARDIS a bunch of the time. Which means it can be used as a plot point to get out of trouble, rather than as a transport that just gets them into trouble. And seems to be over relied on timey wimey kind of way.

Sp: I like that end of the spectrum when it’s done well better than having this end of the spectrum where it seems like a possible large solution is right there in front of them.

H: To be fair, the same could be said of the Ark or all kinds of other stories as well.

<Discussion of when and how the Doctor can control the TARDIS better in both time travel and as a space ship.>

K: Anything else Spoo?

Sp: There’s about four minutes of plot and then…

H: Fire!

<laughter>

Sp: And then about 2-3 minutes of… not quite some other story… but just not well put together. It’s kind of… like this sentence really. As we allude to earlier, there’s bits and pieces to really like about individual characters and some character moments and some of the plot mechanics. But it really doesn’t flow well. It’s almost as if it’s written by committee even though I know it wasn’t. It had that kind of “one too many times through the wash” sort of feeling when you try to go through the story straight through beginning to end. It wasn’t bad. I just needed to kind of sample the good bits and ignore the rest.

H: Ronelyn?

R: “This week on 60 minutes: Cybermats. Unsafe at any speed.”

<laughter>

Sp: <Cybermen voice as Andy Rooney> “You ever notice that your Cybermats never work when you really need them to. It’s almost like they’re just waiting for you to need them, and then they break down. God I’m old. Kill me.”

<Bad Andy Rooney impressions fly around the room.>

H: We apologize to anyone under 37 who does not know who Andy Rooney was. No wait, we don’t apologize. We appreciate.

K: Look it up on Wikipedia, kids.

R: That’s pretty much got it covered there. It was just kind of sad seeing that Cybermat doing that slow-mo mobile into the wall.

P: One of those mobility scooters spinning around.

K: So, my turn? We covered most of what I would have talked about…

H: The last episode of the War Games we’re going to do this in opposite order so you go towards the start, Ketina.

K: Yeah, but then I’ll have to say things. And I’m too busy typing to say things. No one wants to wait for me to finish talking to myself. Anyway, the gist of it is, I like a bunch of this episode, but it definitely ran hot and cold. Good bits – Jamie and Zoe stuff, Gemma sneaking and sadly dying, the potential of the fight that we couldn’t really see. Funny stuff – Cybermen plots. And then just boring stuff – Laser guns, long extended Cybermat spinning death. But overall… the lava lamps made it all worth it.

H: Schmallturm snuck away before we could make him get in a final thought, even though he said something at the start this week. Don’t worry readers, we’ll try to get him next week. Muahaha.

K: So, your final thought, boss?

H: I think Gemma’s death would have been shocking and disturbing for a lot of the children in the audience at the time. As we talked about earlier, she seems like she’ll be one of the survivors, according to “standard base under siege protocol” which makes her death even more effective. And gives you the notion that no one is safe. I think that it was a particularly good bit of writing to have that writing to have that happen. Other than that, and some of the Zoe – Jamie – Doctor interaction, and presumably the Flannigan fight scene, this really felt like a… dullish middle of the story episode. We’ve got to kill time until the climax. Hopefully we’ll find out what the hell the Cybermen are doing…

R: <Cyberman voice> “As soon as we know, you’ll know.”

<laughter>