Hello everyone, the Historian here, trying to remain optimistic after the upswing in fun of last week’s episode. We’re back to reconstructions this week (courtesy of Loose Cannon Productions), so…we’ll see how this goes. Now, let’s get to the episode!
This episode first aired on 22 March 1969.
H = Historian
K = Ketina
R = Ronelyn
P = Photobug
A = Altair
E = Ezio
Cz = Cz
Pe = Penuche
—-
E: I knew he wasn’t dead.
P: He is now.
E: You’re a liar!
P: They just fell down a hole. They’re going to be squishy bits. Except the Doctor, who will regenerate.
<Cz’s packing to go>
K: Do you want to get in your thoughts before you leave?
Cz: That mumbly guy. I thought I was going crazy, until Jamie was like “Say again?” and I was like “oh, he’s supposed to be that mumbly.” So it wasn’t just me.
<general mumbles from the group>
P: Okay, I liked the additional shots we have seen of Milo Clancy’s ship.
K: I thought it was kind of square and uninteresting.
P: By square you mean round? And by uninteresting, you mean the back looked pretty cool? Are we talking about the same ship?
K: Maybe not.
<Penuche leaves as well. She basically slept through most of it, so she has nothing to contribute this week.>
H: There were bits of it that I found hard not to sleep through. This was definitely an attempt to tell a different kind of story, and a much more conventional science fiction one, but I’m just not finding it compelling or interesting. Part of it might be the reconstruction, because I did enjoy last week’s more. Part of it might be because I’m just tired this week.
K: No. I had no trouble staying awake. But I sure had trouble paying attention.
R: You mean you don’t find interplantary tax and salvage laws simply facinating.
K: I don’t even remember that part.
H: See, that’s the thing. I’ve read a lot of pulpy science fiction of this type, and normally I do. But I don’t know. I mean the general is an idiot. Milo is kind of a fun character, but not enough to carry the rest of it. The villain is obvious.
Pe: It is?
Everyone: Oh yeah.
Pe: Her again? She was there, but they don’t show the space ship or the pirates.
H: The pirates were in it at the end. You were asleep during that bit. But, I mean, it’s really clear that she’s the master mind behind the pirates, and she’s setting up Milo Clancy. It’s really clear to the viewers. There’s no mystery at all.
K: Only one problem with that.
H: Yeah.
K: Milo did decide to go to that planet, completely by his own decision. She didn’t taunt him there, or anything. So if she’s setting him up… this is too much of a coincience for that.
H: She’s totally setting him, and I’ll explain why.
K: She’s just getting lucky that he’s turned up on her planet?
H: No. She doesn’t know that he’s on her planet. She has no idea. But, the general said, if he catches the pirates near Milo’s planet, he’ll know Milo is guilty and shoot him on site. The only person the general said that too was Madaline. Yet, suddenly the pirates are sending someone to Milo’s planet. How did they know? She’s clearly setting Milo up to be blamed for being a leader of the pirates. It’s got nothing to do with where he is now. Does that make sense?
K: Except I missed the bit about the pirates going to his planet, but sure. So Milo and the Doctor and all being an evil corporate villain lady’s headquarters is just a “lucky” move on their part? My point, that they are there is clearly going to be how the resolve this.
P: If Madaline and Milo are working together to cause the price of the ore to go up, and they’re about to be discovered, she’s setting him up for the fall.
H: Wow. That’s so much more interesting than the story we’re getting. I would be you that’s more complicated than what we’re going to wind up seeing. But that would be really cool.
K: We’ve seen plots that interesting before the project.
P: Certainly not by Cybermen.
K: Arguably not since the William Hartnell stories. So… maybe Milo Clancy isn’t just a Prospector Wierdo Good Guy. Maybe he is more clever than he appears to be. Although we’ve seen him on his own, and he didn’t do anything duplicitous then. So…
P: So, everything you know about Clancy has pretty much been fed to you by him. However, his ship is way more than he’s letting on. He says “Oh, I’m just a simple miner.” but we don’t really know that.
K: We’ve seen him by himself for a few scenes now. Making breakfast. Deciding to go find the Doctor and company at the end of this episode.
H: Did anyone else find it amusing that someone else complained that the Doctor wandered off on his own, and that no one ever stays put when they get told to?
P: We always call that the plot.
K: It advanced the plot, anyway. And nothing else advanced the plot this week.
H: A couple of things advanced the plot. The evil corporate villain lady set the trap for Clancy. And the Doctor and company found the pirates.
K: But the Doctor found the pirates as a result of leaving the ship and advancing the plot.
H: Fair enough. But the evil corporate lady thing did happen. Episode 3.
K: <sigh> of Six.
H: Three more to go. Oh my god.
K: I can’t believe we’re actually agreeing on the badness of this one.
H: Maybe I’d feel different if we had the actual episodes. Because, like I said, last week’s was kind of fun. Kind of. In a way. Sort of.
K: <glances at the Historian sideways> Are we ready for final thoughts?
R: I have some other stuff. First of all “it’s disabled my radar!”
H: Radio.
R: No, he said radar and sonar.
H: I could have sworn he said radio.
R: No, the guy in the minnow. I’ve got news for you dude. That sonar, once you’re outside of a planet’s atmosphere, that sonar, not much use. In space, no one can hear you ping.
Pe: I did laugh when I heard the name Minnow. I thought of…
H: Gilligan’s Island?
Pe: Yes.
R: “Gilligan, did you fly the ship through a copper needle cloud?”
H: “I’m sorry, skipper!”
Pe: Which means, for us, Gilligan’s Island has more relevance to us than Doctor Who.
H: It wasn’t the first thing that occurred to me. Second or third, maybe.
K: I thought of our pet fish, Minnow. But, that’s unusual.
R: For some reason, this week, the hairmets to me looked like giant big toes.
<laughter>
K: I agree. <laugh>
R: Annnnd, now I’m done.
H: Alright. Final thoughts. Penuche, do you have a final thought, given that you were asleep for most of it?
Pe: Actually, I wasn’t sleeping.
H: Resting your eyes?
Pe: Yes, I couldn’t leave them open. If you didn’t hear me snoring I wasn’t sleeping.
K: So, what did you think?
Pe: Same as last week. It just didn’t hold mine, or anyone else’s interest. Minimal plot.
E: There was a plot?
Pe: And making it so obvious who the villain was. It would have been better that they didn’t. Or it is just us becoming to cynical, and thus it was too obvious.
K: Possibly. It’s a bummer that your joining us on such a lame? Pathetic? Sad?
P: Lackluster.
H: That’s it. That’s the word.
K: Story.
R: Remember, not all that glitters is unobtainium.
K: I thought it was…
H: <Prospector voice> Argonite!
<side discussion of Avatar>
K: Anyway. Ezio?
E: <looked up> Jamie’s not dead!
P: He is now.
E: No, he’s not. We’re not going through this again. Jamie’s not dead.
K: We already had this discussion. Photobug? Something new to discuss?
P: <thinks> Well, maybe it’s me, but I did really detect any music at all this episode.
K: I did. The audio was really bad quality.
H: Which did not help, for sure.
K: But there was a little bit of spacy music, especially in evil corporate villain scenes.
P: Still liking all the models. Obviously tripping on Milo’s ship.
H: LIZ something.
P: BN?
R: <laugh>
P: I’m not very satisfied with the magnetic repulsion plot. It just didn’t carry over to this episode. It was more like a trick that they used.
H: The did mention it once, when Zoe was doing her calculations. And it did serve to take them further away from the TARDIS. So I think it’s a plot point, to do just that, to take them further away from the TARDIS.
P: It seems to me that my experience with chemistry has taught me that, at no point is copper going to be attracted to another metal. I think I can understand that it’s the 60’s, and they didn’t teach that stuff.
K: Actually <says the person with a chemistry degree> copper, while not really magnetic, is highly conductive. And argonite is a totally made up thing. So I think it’s interesting to choose an interaction with a metal that is very reactive to mess up argonite. I didn’t think the copper “smoke screen” was supposed to be magnetic. Just something that screws up argonite.
P: And your sensors.
R: No, they did say it was magetically attracted.
K: They did? The audio was so poor I couldn’t tell.
H: I also wonder, if the soundtrack had been better, whether I might have been a little more involved.
P: I enjoyed the Doctor’s concern about potentially this meter reading atomic radiation might having a problem.
R: “So, the part where the engine might explode? Could we maybe deal with that?”
H: “Nah. It does it all the time. Don’t worry about it.”
P: Let’s see. So, I would imagine that the radiation in the tunnels would be significant, like it wouldn’t escape like it was on the surface. He said radioactivity was a side effect of the mining.
K: Why are people expecting like physics and logic in this story?
P: Good point. Because we’re teaching children the right thing?
H: We did learn about magnetism.
R: <sings> “Teach your children well… with some freaking science!”
P: Well, the Doctor and Zoe are learning about wells right now, since they’re hurdling down one!
H: No, it’s not a well, it’s a fissure. They’re different.
P: Well, they still got the shaft.
<allowing Photobug his annual pun>
H: Rrrrooneeeeelyyyyyn?
R: <Doctor as neanderthal voice> “Ah. Woman. Smart. Make numbers piles. Dancing. Zoe good. Me keep.”
K: Jamie almost puked this episode.
H: He did indeed. “Will power, Jamie”
K: Are you done, Ronelyn.
R: I think everybody hopes I am.
K: Jamie not puking. Zoe math. Doctor pretending to get math that he clearly didn’t get, or at least didn’t have time to think about all that carefully. Yeah, the crew, for what little we saw them, were mildly entertaining this week. And, that was about it. The rest of the episode was mumbly, random, and as a result hard to follow, and overall uninteresting. Need more Doctor. Need less boring NPCs. Historian?
H: Um… I’m really starting to feel like, if this wasn’t a reconstruction I might have enjoyed it more.
K: I think we all might have enjoyed it more.
H: Because you’re totally right about the soundtrack quality. I think that, had we been able to hear and see Milo in action, it would have been more fun, like last week’s was.
R: Yeah. Watching him get his “coot” on was definitely entertaining.
H: That being said, the bits with the general and “hem” corporate villain lady, were boring as heck.
K: Moving pictures wouldn’t have fixed that.
H: No. The actor playing the general just doesn’t work.
R: “Yes, Blackadder!”
H: Worse. Worse than Melchit. Stephen Fry was funny. I just, yeah. The actor playing the general is just abrasive and boring.
R: Quite a feat really.
H: Agreed. Not a good one though. So, I’m finding it hard to assess the story as a story, other than being incredibly simplistic plot. I will say the reconstructions have been dull. And I just don’t know how I would feel about it if I could actually see it.
R: At least in the Who universe they seem to have solved the problem of women in science in math.
E: Oooh!
H: True that. True that.
—
Since I’m writing this before we watch and before our discussion, I can still be optimistic! Hooray! We’ll see how I feel in the intro for next week…Until then, I remain
THE HISTORIAN
NEXT WEEK: THE SPACE PIRATES EPISODE 4
