Doctor Who: 'Earthshock'

From the blog...
 
 
Philip Sandifer:
"the superficially obvious problem that the snake is rubbish helpfully distracts from the scripting problem underneath it."

Gee, isn't that like the whole of "ATTACK OF THE CYBERMEN"??


Scott:
"it's fair to say most probably didn't like the character anyway"

I found him incredibly annoying in every single scene n tis entire story. Like when The Doctor's trying to do something desperately urgent and incredibly complex, and he KEEPS interrupting with "Can't you just tell me what you're doing?" Or how he keeps getting in everyone's face, really loudly, including The Cyberleader. How did he ever live long enough to die at the end?


Exploding Eye:
""I have a friend who's never seen Doctor Who, which story would you recommend I start with?"

You could try my choices: "THE ANDROID INVASION", or, "INVASION EARTH: 2150 A.D."


Andrew Hickey:
"PAUL! DA! RROW! is terrible, but he's terrible in precisely the way the part requires. Had he shown less contempt for the role, Timelash would have been even worse."

I think what bothers me the most about his character is, he spends the entire story sucking up to the monster, trying to kill The Doctor, and really enjoying himself while doing it, until, abruptly, he realized his own planet will be destroyed, and then, suddenly, he does a 180 turn and tries to "do the right thing", in a very arrogant, egotistical fashion, as if it's all about HIM, and promptly gets killed for it. Idiot.


Alan:
"Tegan arrogantly insists on accompanying the Space Marines even though she has absolutely no combat experience whatsoever and has never even fired a gun. And what happens? Within five minutes she's captured without ever firing a shot and then delivered to the Cyberleader, who, delighted that he has two hostages, taunts the Doctor over the fact that he can now leave Adric behind to die and still enforce the Doctor's compliance!"

Another story where I'd have been much happier if both Adric and Tegan had never been regulars on the show at all.


WGPJosh:
"I know a lot of you looked up to Adric as children because he was an awkward teenage boy who was great at math and science and a lot of you related to that."

NO. I looked up to Will Robinson on LOST IN SPACE. And I still do. He was a NICE kid. and he had the family I always wished I did. (Well, except for the weird "uncle".)
 
 
 
WGPJosh:
"The plan I believe changed at the last minute at least in part because of Lalla Ward announcing her resignation."

I'm afraid your memory incorrect here. It was JNT's intention from the beginning to GET RID OF Romana, and K-9, and the Sonic Screwdriver, and 6-parters, and humor, and Dudley Simpson. And then Tom Baker was inspired to QUIT, which may have been what he hoped, anyway.

So the long-term plan, if there was one at all, would have been Tom Baker & Adric, which, if you watch "TRAKEN", could have worked. But then Baker decided to quit, and a replacement had to be found at a very late moment, and JNT didn't even bnother having a search, he just hired a guy from another show he'd already worked on. Lazy, and nepotism. And clearly, the Peter Davison-Adric team NEVER worked.

"SEALED ORDERS" failed to happen because of problems the writer was having, not because Lalla Ward decided to quit. It was INTENDED to be her swan song! Let's not keep this sort of confusion going a moment longer.


PsiTrey:
"You know...my issue with Earthshock is that it has nothing to do with the concept of the Cybermen. Now, with the military presence, imagine Earthshock but with Sontarans instead. That would make sense, and the Cyberleader's gung-ho attitude would work so much better."

LOVE it!!! Isn't it sad that the entire JNT era evokes so many far-better ideas from fans than what actually got broadcast?


Now, a couple of points... HOW can Cybermen possibly trail the TARDIS' flight-path thru hyperspace? WHEN did they first see the TARDIS to recognize it later? And doesn't "REVENGE" take place many centuries after this one?

I thought James Warwick was top-notch as Commander Scott. Once he realized The Doctor was on his side, he was perfectly reasonable the rest of the story. He really reminded me of a 26th-Century version of The Brigadier! And after looking him up a the IMDB... damn. I never connected him in any way at all with his role on PARTNERS IN CRIME (a really FUN show!!).

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  • Watched this again last night, a few thoughts below:

     

    1)Another good DVD commentary from the regulars -  I suppose it says something about this stretch of stories that the most entertaining way to watch them is by listening to the people that made them dump all over them.

     

    2)Apparently the troopers' helmets were inspired by the Bronze Age Galactica Viper pilots' helmets.

     

    3)I do like the music in this, I thought it was very well done.

     

    4)I liked the new look for the Cybermen in this, and I liked David Banks and Mark Hardy as the Cyberleader/Cyberlieutenant team, even if Banks' Cyberleader had a tendency to be an excitable, two-faced jackass. At least they managed not to give them away in the title.  It's also amusing when they decide to start watching clips from older, better-written Cyberstories.  For years, these clips were the only place I'd seen Hartnell or Troughton outsid eof "The Three Doctors". Anothe interesting moment - there's a scene where we see two Cybermen on guard, who are obviously having a casual conversation.  I wonder what Cybermen b.s. about?

     

    5)Beryl Reid does reasonably well considering that she apparently didn't have the slightest clue what was going on.

     

    6)In Part Three, about 1 hour and 4 minutes in, when Tegan and Scott are going up the stairs, if you look really closely, in the background you can see a trainee holding a script who somehow wandered into shot and wasn't discovered until the show was aired.

     

    7)So much for the business of the TARDIS interior being a "state of grace" where no weapons can be fired!  Guess the "State of grace" circuit was on the blink.

     

    8)You can see at the end, Waterhouse is anticipating the explosion of the keyboard.

     

    9)It was so tense filming that last scene, that apparently Davison, Fielding and Sutton had trouble not giggling. That'd be an interesting out-take to see: "Adric! BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!"

     

    10)The silent credits on Part Four were an interesting idea that didn't quite work for me. Apparently, JNT was inspired by something similar that had been done for an episode of Coronation Street. On one of the extras, some writer/fanboy called Steven Moffat (this is from before the new show debuted) comments on this, saying that he thinks they had three options, either the regular music, "sad" music or the silence, and that all of these would've seemed off, so they were screwed no matter what they did.

     

    11)Some fun quotes:

    • "But only of mammals, everything else is excluded."  Sure hope no Terileptils show up.
    • "Just as you gave your word to Tegan."  Ooh, burn.
    • "I want to go back to my own people." Whether they want you back is another issue.
    • "I'm not waiting around while you plot the course to your own destruction." 
    • "Do you know, I think since his regeneration he's become decidedly immature." Heh.
    • "I've always meant to slip back and find out." Foreshadowing!
    • "Poor old dinosaur!"
    • "Too many people have died for you to play the fool!"  How many would have been acceptable?
    • "Brave heart, Tegan."  Apparently, that was an ad lib by Davison that caught on.
    • "Excellent."
    • "This one calls himself the Doctor and does nothing but interfere."
    • "You could hide an army down here, and no one'd find it!"  More foreshadowing!
    • "He must suffer for our past defeats!"
    • "I'm just a mouth on legs!"
    • "We could pump all the air out of the hold." "Unfortunately, Cybermen don't need it."  Then what's all this business about gold plating their breathing apparatuses?
    • "You never change. Always the perfect guests."
    • "Are they all so dedicated?" "Compared to some, this one is positively flippant."
    • "For some people, small, beautiful events are what life is all about."
    • "Now I'll never know if I was right." It would have been an interesting choice to have him enter the last code, realize he'd gotten it wrong, and spend his last seconds knowing he'd died to no good purpose.

     

    12)Cliffhangers:

    • Part One: "Destroy them! Destroy them at once!"
    • Part Two: "On this ship, we execute murderers!"
    • Part Three: "My army awakes, Doctor!" And has the worst breath of the day!
    • Part Four: "Adric!"

     

    Overall:

    Well, it was good to see the Cybermen updated, and poor Adric got about as good of a death as he was going to get. I've mellowed a bit over the years, I used to loathe the character with the burning fire of a million burning suns. Now, I just sor tof feel bad for poor Waterhouse, who got shoved into a situation he he just wasn't prepared for. Anyway, even if there's no other reason for the story to exist, it justified itself by inspiring this.

  • Amazon says I ordered the DVD almost 8 years ago, so I suppose it's about time to listen to the commentary again.  Fielding participated in that, right?

  • Yes. Davison, Fielding, Sutton and Waterhouse.

  • I love The Mouth with Legs, I really do.

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