Hello everyone, the Historian here, welcoming you back after our three week break! Fortunately or unfortunately (feel free to decide for yourselves in the comments), I’m welcoming everyone back with episode four of the Dominators. Joining me this week were, as always, Ketina, the ever-silent Schmallturm, Spoo, MiniSpoo, Photobug, Altair, Ezio and Cz. Now, let’s get to the episode. This episode first aired 31 August, 1968.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
H = Historian
\nK = Ketina
\nSp = Spoo
\nMS = MiniSpoo
\nP = Photobug
\nA = Altair
\nE = Ezio
\nCz = Cz<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
Cz: I thought it was really cute that the quarks were just letting the Doctor run around the ship… just sort of staring at him.<\/p>\n
P: I was amazed the Doctor was walking around with a Geiger counter. It was sort of more Batman than Doctor Who.<\/p>\n
A: Doesn’t he pretty much have whatever he needs in his pockets?<\/p>\n
H: Except when he doesn’t. Yes.<\/p>\n
Sp: Powered by PLOT.<\/p>\n
E: Well, they’re bigger on the inside, right?<\/p>\n
Sp: So, chief Dominator dude was having a heck of a time with his sight lines this week.<\/p>\n
K: Yeah!<\/p>\n
Sp: Originally I thought that it was just for that one scene and that there was something really fascinating on the other Dominator’s forehead…<\/p>\n
<laughter><\/p>\n
Sp: But then he kept doing it. Staring at foreheads… looking into the middle distance… I… don’t know where he thought he was… but I don’t think it was on the those sets.<\/p>\n
K: Neither of the Dominators could look each other in the eye.<\/p>\n
H: I think that was intentional. While I agree that the sight lines were weird, I think that was an intentional acting or directing choice. I don’t think that was the actors making an error. I think it was to emphasize how alien and superior the Dominators thought they were.<\/p>\n
P: There’s also the primitive \u201cif you stare at me then you are a threat\u201d reaction that dogs use.<\/p>\n
Sp: Alright. I’m starting to buy it.<\/p>\n
H: Bad joke warning… So hey, I finally figured out what that weird sculpture in the council room must be.<\/p>\n
P: The one with the round bottom with the stick top?<\/p>\n
H: It was clearly a prototype of an invention of that younger councilor. Obviously it was \u201cTensa’s Floating Disc.\u201d <the character’s name is Tensa… that’s a BAD D&D joke, folks><\/p>\n
Sp: How did you know his name?<\/p>\n
H: They kept CALLING him Tensa!<\/p>\n
Sp: I thought he was under stress!<\/p>\n
<laughter><\/p>\n
K: So… uh… now we’re \u201cshipping\u201d Jamie and Cully after that up-skirt scene.<\/p>\n
A: He was just doing what we all woulda.<\/p>\n
P: We viewers got a shot of it when Jamie was running towards the camera later.<\/p>\n
H: Just a little bit… above the knee really.<\/p>\n
Sp: Somewhere deep in an Australian censors archives…<\/p>\n
H: I don’t know if the kilt was weighted down this time. There will come another time where I will point out specifically where they put weights on the bottom of his kilt. It’s coming… watch for it in a few months.<\/p>\n
E: I’d like to imagine the decision making process that went into that.<\/p>\n
H: Apparently it was Frazer Hines’s idea.<\/p>\n
K: Anywho… what else was funny?<\/p>\n
H: Well, there was great brushwork on the sky. In the studio scenes.<\/p>\n
Sp: And in the location shots too! It was all worth it for that slow motion Styrofoam boulder.<\/p>\n
H: Honestly, the episode wasn’t bad… it just wasn’t… really good. It was just kinda there.<\/p>\n
Sp: <to the theme of Flipper> They call it filler… filler… filler.<\/p>\n
K: It was well paced, I think. I was surprised when we reached the ending… it seemed to come quickly. The episode seemed pretty packed with stuff for me.<\/p>\n
P: I’m fairly amazed that the travel vehicle could still be operated.<\/p>\n
Sp: I’m fairly amazed that second in command dude didn’t sabotage the travel vehicle to get rid of in command dude.<\/p>\n
P: I was thinking the same.<\/p>\n
E: He’s probably too preoccupied trying to find new ways to destroy things.<\/p>\n
P: I’m surprised he broke the orders by killing someone else. But on the other hand the same number of survivors exist if one more appears…<\/p>\n
K: Well, he’ll probably get in trouble for that in the last episode then.<\/p>\n
H: We’ll have to find out. <announcer voice> \u201cStay tuned for the next vaguely exciting episode.\u201d<\/p>\n
<derailment for a bit><\/p>\n
H: Are we at final thoughts?<\/p>\n
MS: Maybe.<\/p>\n
Sp: I think we’re kinda sleepy. Time to recharge…<\/p>\n
Everyone: <arm recharge gestures><\/p>\n
MS: Whyyyyy?<\/p>\n
Sp: I think we’re kinda sore.<\/p>\n
H: Okay. So final thoughts?<\/p>\n
E: I think any final thought I might have had…<\/p>\n
Sp: Was beaten out of you?<\/p>\n
E: I think all I have is the Indiana Jones theme in my head from the boulder rolling scene.<\/p>\n
H: Moving on then.<\/p>\n
A: It was awesome.<\/p>\n
<laughter… that joke apparently doesn’t get old><\/p>\n
P: I thought the drilling operation was interesting… we got to look at why they needed the quarks to be out in the field.<\/p>\n
H: I was confused by something about that. The head Dominator specifically said, various times, that they wouldn’t be using the quarks for drilling. He didn’t say we’re not going to use them to clear the area and then we’ll use them for drilling. He said they wouldn’t be used for the drilling to conserve power…<\/p>\n
Sp: Which is why they brought out the big old drill.<\/p>\n
H: Which was powered by the quarks.<\/p>\n
MS: They made a boo-boo.<\/p>\n
<laughter><\/p>\n
Sp: I didn’t think the quarks were powering it… I thought they were guiding it, or manipulating it, or something with their little pincers. I thought they had the drill to do the drilling rather than the quarks drilling by themselves. Or something.<\/p>\n
K: So what did they need the slaves for?<\/p>\n
P: That works for me. Although the quarks can still be destroyed by 5 feet of Styrofoam.<\/p>\n
MS: Ah! My only weakness. Big gigantic Styrofoam boulders. <hero voice> \u201cMy only weakness! Big! Gigantic! Styrofoam! Boulders!\u201d<\/p>\n
P: Actually, I’m pretty amazed that they had a 5 foot Styrofoam ball. I really appreciated when Jamie was actually throwing rocks down there. That was pretty cool.<\/p>\n
K: I’m not sure if Jamie was stupid or brave.<\/p>\n
H: The answer to your question Ketina… is yes.<\/p>\n
P: There’s a fine line between stupid and brave, and that’s merely the outcome.<\/p>\n
Sp: I dunno. I kinda dug it, in a Scottish Ewok kind of way. \u201cAye… yub yub!\u201d<\/p>\n
K: \u201cAieeeyaaah!\u201d<\/p>\n
<devolves into Ewok war cries… or something… I don’t know><\/p>\n
P: It’s a good example of where pacifism does not really work in the short haul.<\/p>\n
K: Or any hall.<\/p>\n
H: I think it’s that pure pacifism with no flexibility doesn’t work. I think that’s what they’re trying to say.<\/p>\n
P: Also, you gotta admit that the smoking death is pretty cool.<\/p>\n
K: Why do people always grab their backs like that during those death scenes.<\/p>\n
P: Have you ever been hit by a car…<\/p>\n
K: <glare… this is one reason why we skipped a couple weeks, folks… I was indeed… hit by a car. I’m okay now.><\/p>\n
H: Somebody punch him out.<\/p>\n
Sp: Yeah… death by dry ice is a little more original than yet another laser blast effect.<\/p>\n
P: Yeah, the actor did look pretty cool doing it.<\/p>\n
K: I should not have allowed that pun after the car remark.<\/p>\n
H: I think we’re going to move on…<\/p>\n
MS: <quark voice> Destroy?<\/p>\n
H: Note that Mini-Spoo does not really have to change his voice to do quark voice.<\/p>\n
Cz: Are we on final thoughts already?<\/p>\n
H: Yes.<\/p>\n
Cz: Yeah. That was an episode. I have absolutely no thoughts. <flat voice> Can’t wait to see the Dominators defeated next episode.<\/p>\n
Sp: Spoilers!<\/p>\n
P: Maybe they’ll get shoulder pad disease.<\/p>\n
Sp: Alright… so… we covered boulders going down. Skirts going up. Pacifists going down.<\/p>\n
P: Ships going up?<\/p>\n
Sp: Ships going up. And the Doctor and his companion have been left largely alone for close to an entire episode, which means the Doctor’s just about to spring into action and we’ve only got one more episode of the story. And I… I don’t really understand the direction that the second in command Dominator was given by the episode director when throwing around and threatening various people. I mean, he would yank on the girl’s arm one way, and she would fall in pain a completely different way, and much the same was going on with the guy that he was sort of threatening to kill… and it just… I don’t know even physics wants to skip this one and go straight to episode 5, I guess.<\/p>\n
K: Wow. How do I follow up on that. We didn’t talk about the silly Styrofoam over the hatch above the underground shelter…<\/p>\n
Sp: The safety shelter that I do not remember being mentioned or used at all in the previous episodes. I know it’s been a few weeks, but come on!<\/p>\n
K: Nope. I’m pretty sure the shelter came out of nowhere. I like \u201coh crap, we wrote ourselves in a corner…\u201d<\/p>\n
P: No, we’ve wrote ourselves into a hole.<\/p>\n
K: There’s no way they could have really pushed up actual fallen concrete with a pole like that. So… that scene was kinda stupid. But then again, most of the story has been kind of stupid. I still have no idea what they’re drilling or why. Or why they need slaves.<\/p>\n
H: That last thing seems to keep changing. Originally they said it was just to help with the drilling, and now they’re talking about taking the slaves off planet to their home planet to work with them or something.<\/p>\n
Sp: I do dimly remember them mentioning at the very beginning that they wanted to evaluate the natives of the planet to see what they were suitable for.<\/p>\n
P: I recall a discussion of slave labor needed for the ongoing war effort in the first episode.<\/p>\n
Sp: So they had wiggle room.<\/p>\n
K: But I do like the Dominator’s whole attitude about not doing ANYTHING for themselves. You never even see them pick things up. The leader makes the subordinate do everything… and the subordinate makes the quarks or slave do it. They probably can’t even tie their own shoes.<\/p>\n
A: To be fair, they can barely move in those suits.<\/p>\n
<laughter><\/p>\n
P: Quark! Wipe!<\/p>\n
Sp: Destroy! Destroy!<\/p>\n
K: That’s it, I think.<\/p>\n
H: Alright, first of all, I don’t think this is a bad story…<\/p>\n
Sp: Of course not.<\/p>\n
H: Let me finish. I think the problem with it is it’s a generic story. It’s kind of dull. It’s not interesting enough to be bad.<\/p>\n
Sp: Which is a side effect of a bazillion rewrites.<\/p>\n
H: Yeah, partially. But second of all, one thing that I did enjoy in this episode that we didn’t talk about at all, is the Doctor and Zoe’s interactions with each other. I love the bit where Zoe explains something technical and the Doctor sums it up in a few words, making her feel foolish. That was just wonderful. Basically everything between Patrick Troughton and Wendy Padbury was wonderful.<\/p>\n
Sp: Like the two of them plotting their escape immediately in front of a quark. <Doctor voice> \u201cSo, now Zoe, what we need to do, oh excuse me, is we need to find a way to… um… I say little fellow, could you move back a little. Yes, that’s right. What we need to find a way to do, is distract these quarks. Could you stop doing that? it’s really distracting me… distract these quarks so that we can escape.\u201d<\/p>\n
P: Well, I mean… the quarks are clearly ignoring the people because they’re not to take orders from people. And they don’t have the higher logic to reason about what’s going on around them because they’re order receivers. They receive orders and they carry them out. Period. They’re really no different than Yeti in that regard.<\/p>\n
K: But much cuter.<\/p>\n
H: Not as fuzzy.<\/p>\n
Sp: I agree they’re pretty binary critters. They’re either doing exactly what they were just told, or they’re just there. Or, they would love to do something about the Doctor and Zoe, but they don’t have a subordinate to pass the work off to.<\/p>\n
<laughter><\/p>\n
K: I thought it was funny that the quark needed to be reminded who the commander was, what the chain of command was.<\/p>\n
H: That was sort of a generic kind of control of the robots interaction. \u201cRobot, do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sp: \u201cOverride! Override!\u201d<\/p>\n
H: Exactly. Again, it’s just kind of generic.<\/p>\n
K: So it’s not that this story is bad, it’s just boring.<\/p>\n
H: You said it, I didn’t.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
And there you have it. As you can see, we’re finding this story a little….underwhelming. But what do you, the readers at home, think? (Yes, this is me asking for comments! I know some people are out there–we handed out a bunch of fliers at the convention last weekend!) Next week, the stunning (?) conclusion to this epic (?) story…thank goodness. Until then, I remain<\/p>\n
THE HISTORIAN<\/p>\n
NEXT WEEK: THE DOMINATORS EPISODE 5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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