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"It feels different this time..." - The new Doctor Who Thread

The Brain of Morbius

"You can't really go on calling yourself Morbius. There's very little of Morbius left! Why don't you think of another name? 'Potpourri' would be appropriate!"

The Doctor and Sarah land on the desolate planet of Karn, which the Doctor strongly suspects is the work of the Time Lords. Looking for shelter, they arrive at a decrepit old castle where scientist Dr. Solon and his one-armed assistant Condo live. Solon is actually a mad scientist who plans to resurrect the mad Time Lord war criminal Morbius, reduced to a brain in a jar. And the Doctor's head is perfectly shaped to house it. He knocks the Doctor unconscious with a drug drink but Sarah secretly spilled her drink and plays possum. When she escapes, she discovers a living headless body Solon is planning to use for Morbius. The Doctor is then kidnapped by the native spiritual order known as the Sisterhood of Karn who wish to execute him, believing he is planning to rob them of the elixir that grants them eternal life. The Doctor tries to warn them of Morbius (having felt his psychic presence) but it falls on deaf ears as their leader Maren witnessed Morbius' execution.

Solon arrives to bargain for the Doctor's head but the plan doesn't take. However, Sarah manages to rescue him. In the process Sarah is blinded and with no where else to go (the Sisterhood also stole the TARDIS) and in need of medical advice, the Doctor pays a visit to Solon. Solon looks at Sarah and asserts she is blinded for life and only the Elixir of Life and restore her. This is in fact a trick, which the Doctor learns when he is captured by the Sisterhood when he tries to sneak in to take some and the blindness is temporary. The Doctor manages to convince the Sisterhood to release him and he returns to Solon's Castle. Solon, meanwhile, is convinced by Morbius to put him into his monstrous body with an untested artificial head. Condo sees Morbius and realizes one of the arms used is his, and rebels. With Sarah's forced help, Morbius is resurrected and begins reeking havoc. Solon recaptures him with the Doctors help but while the Doctor tries to force him to disassemble the monster, he instead "fixes" it, trapping the Doctor in one of the rooms. Knowing the layout of the space, the Doctor floods Solon's lab with makeshift cyanide but Morbius is immune. The Doctor convinces Morbius to a literal battle of psychic skill and power, resulting in the near death of both. Morbius is chased off a cliff by the Sisterhood and Maren saves the Doctor by giving him her Elixir.

I left a lot out of here but I think I got the important stuff. Overall, this is the kind of story I think of when I think of the Baker era. Well, I think of two types; more comical stories where the Doctor overthrows a dystopia with good cheer (the latter day Baker stories) and classic horror pastiches. Even more than Pyramids of Mars, Brain of Morbius makes it's homage very clear; it's a Frankenstein story. The villagers are basically the Bene Gesserit from Dune, the monster is Morbius but also the monster (sympathetic version) is Condo, who is also Igor. Solon is the mad scientist and there's an old castle on a planet eternally going through a lightning storm. In terms of tone, this one has got it all down and feels like a fun throwback to Hammer horror but with a spaceship graveyard.

As for the Doctor, in terms of wit, there are some great Bakerisms in this one. Even Solon gets one. I wish Solon had more "couldn't resist the pun" moments because it would have made him more than a stock character. To be clear, Philip Madoc is good but that moment made me think "oh, this character could have been more fun if they made him a bit loopier." But as for the Doctor, he is a delight. The story is overtly a horror story but Baker plays it a little more playful in this one and there's an element of farce to it (again, I kind of wish they leaned into it harder). Sarah Jane is very much a damsel but she also gets a lot of other things to do and Sladen really gets to play here, which is fun. The chemistry is very high at this point.

I like it overall but I think there are elements I wish were a little bit better. They try to waffle between Condo being a mean brute and sympathetic but I think by the end it doesn't mean much except playing with an archetype. I wish he actually connected in some way with Sarah or the Doctor and was more sympathetic because the moments they give him aren't that interesting to me. Solon comes across OK but the story is very overall character light and more of a light adventure yard with a dark, spooky setting. There is some good stuff here, though. I think Maren's death is kind of sweet and ties together the themes of characters desperately grasping for some form of immortality. Overall, The Brain of Morbius is a lot of fun, the story is very well paced, there are lots of great Doctor moments. I love the sense of fun that the mad scientist wants to lop off the Doctors head are the main stakes. There's some lip service to more consequences down the line but this feels less like an "end of the world" story than we've had in a while. I will say, the Doctor letting Solon do whatever he wants in the last act feels like he is extra dumb and even he lampshading it doesn't seem to make sense. I'm OK with him having a dumb oversight but somehow this feels less based in character and more based in "this will help get the story to the next part."

Overall, a fun story.

Best Cliffhanger: Probably the first one, where the headless monster is found. They are all solid though, particularly using Sarah Jane's blindness and unawareness of the monster to make it extra scary.

Next time:

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Glad you liked it! Sarah Jane's blindness is well used here, and Lis Sladen knocks it out of the park. I also love Philip Madoc and his performance in this - he makes a great straight man to Baker's goofy Doctor. Morbius is not my favorite Tom Baker serial but it's up there!
 
The Seeds of Doom

"What do you do for an encore, Doctor?"
"I win."

In this serial, the Doctor is called in by UNIT to investigate a strange case in the Antarctic. There the Doctor finds mysterious and deadly plant life - The Krynoid, a species capable of surviving interstellar travel and becomes a carnivorous species that dominates whatever planet it lands on. One Krynoid pod (of two) that has been brought back to life has turned a scientist into a plant monster. Meanwhile, a mad plant-obsessed millionaire named Harrison Chase is determined to obtain the Krynoid pods and sends a mercenary named Scorby and a plant scientist named Keeler to steal it. Between Chase's men and the Krynoid, the Doctor and Sarah barely escape but the Doctor manages to defeat the Krynoid. But not before Keeler and Scorby obtain the second Krynoid pod. The Doctor tries to warn the government but an inside man sends an assassin to deal with him. The Doctor defeats the assassin and finds a clue that leads him to plant artist Susan Ducat, who in turn leads them to Chase.

The duo infiltrate Chase's mansion and are soon captured. The Doctor tries to warn Chase that the plant could conquer the Earth but it falls on deaf ears. The Doctor and Sarah find themselves escaping and trying to stop the sprouting of the second pod but it infects Keeler, much to the delight of Chase. Chase decides to "nurture" Keeler's transformation and eventually it grows large and escapes. The Doctor manages to escape and it is discovered that the Krynoid is starting to control all plant life, turning it murderous toward humans. Chase has an encounter with the Krynoid and the Krynoid begin to act through him, though Chase's philosophy of hatred towards plant means there is very little change in the man save insight. Scorby forms a reluctant alliance with the Doctor, though eventually panics and flees into the arms of murderous plants. Chase tries to feed Sarah Jane into a giant composter, though after the Doctor saves Sarah, Chase finds himself mulched. The Doctor has UNIT order a aerial strike while he and Sarah escape from the Krynoid.

The Seeds of Doom is an episode I ended up enjoying far more than I expected. And I expected to like it. But being a 6 episode arc, I also expected a lot of padding. I won't say there's padding but it's one of those stories that keeps repeating the beat of "The Doctor or Sarah Jane is capture/The Doctor or Sarah Jane get away". It reminds me of reading Tin Tin for the first time about a decade ago. The art is great and the storytelling only gets better as it turns on but the early stories feel like a repeated pattern of capture and escape as is the nature of serial stories of a certain era. But that and the resolution ("the Doctor calls in an air strike" is probably one of the least clever solutions the character has had to a problem) don't dampen my overall enthusiasm for this one. I really liked it.

I think part of that is that despite the constant "captured/freed" push and pull, the story actually does really move. 6 parters can have problems with that but the first two episodes' setting is different than the latter four probably helps prevent it from being too samey. I also think tone counts for a lot. The first third feels very much an homage to Howard Hawks' The Thing from Another World, with men trapped by a vegetable monster in Antarctica. I was never the biggest fan of the movie despite the remake, the Thing, being one of my favourite films. But it had some amazing sequences and while this story doesn't have that, it overall has the right creepy tone. Then it has a creepy but different tone in the last two thirds, mostly limited to a creepy mansion where the situation gets worse and worse.

But the real strength is the characters in writing and performance. Baker and Sladen have some of their best chemistry yet and they really feel like a full team here in complete sync. But villain Tony Beckley from The Chimes at Midnight, the Italian Job and When a Stranger Calls (HE PLAYED THE TITULAR STRANGER?!) is such a highlight. He's a full Batman villain and yet he's played with wit but also finds a balance by being completely... unbalanced but having a weird calm, despite being a weirdo who wants to entertain his murder victims with experimental Brian Eno tunes for plants. He isn't quite the perfect match as the villain in City of Death but he's a top tier plain clothes villain for the show. He has unique motive and we know eventually he won't compare about control so much as letting the apocalypse happen. His speech as he transforms into a direct pawn is just right.

Even Scorby is interesting, though I was hoping they'd do a bit more with him than "gets what he deserves". They do one of the better versions of that since this is a man who is convinced he's reasonable and brave, if practical, only to crack under the apocalyptic threat. But I guess I thought he might get a more unique arc when the alliance happened (though I suppose considering what happened, the only other option is the redemptive self-sacrifice which is also a big obvious). Meanwhile, I think the reason I don't find the story gets too repetitive is the Susan Ducat character. The story didn't "need" her from a plot perspective but she adds so much when she comes back, a little Miss Marple-type who is just as clever as the Doctor and has a mix of sweetness and spiciness that makes me wish not only did she stick around but she'd be a recurring character. Somehow.

Overall, the Seeds of Doom is a delight and I think the character work in the writing and the acting is paramount. It has some top tier witticism, Baker is hitting some of his best notes (being a complete weirdo, being at the end of his rope, being "oh no he stopped joking things are that bad"). And the the plot mechanics are mostly fine, I find it is this and the dark (holy shit, they didn't just threaten to grind someone up, they did it, albeit off-camera) and scary tone brings a really well-balanced story that feels like the ideal representation of what this series is supposed to look like. I don't think it is my favourite Baker arc but I like it a lot and I feel like it's a great introduction if you want to bring someone into the classic era.

Best cliffhanger: Sarah's threatened with touching a plant.

Next episode:

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Maybe I just need to watch it in isolation or something. Seeds of Doom has just never interested me all that much. I don't hate it or anything - it's far, far better than Pyramids of Mars, for example - but those captures and escapes really wear on me, and this one is weirdly violent (the guy going through the plant processing machine, the Doctor ordering an air strike, etc). Agreed with you on the acting, though, and Scorby is fun (I always love a smarmy bastard villain lmao).

Season 14 has some absolute bangers. Couple of meh serials but no duds, imo. Season 15, on the other hand...
 
Yeah, I'm not a fan of Pyramids of Mars. A whole lot of padding happens while Sutekh sits in a chair. One of the best titles of a story ever that it completely fails to deliver on.

I'm watching Horror Of Fang Rock now, and you're right, Kazin, it's the most Hallowe'en suitable story from Doctor Who.
 
Start killing everyone off in a single location and have Tom Baker be in an extremely bad mood (even for him), and, while the production team had a hellish time making it dealing with Baker, the final product is pretty damn good (and, The War Games aside, I think is probably my favorite Terrance Dicks script in his entire run. Morbius feels like more of a Holmes script, anyway, and in any case, Dicks didn't want credit for it).
 
I don't know why I keep doing this to myself but I checked in on the Missing Episodes thread over at Gallifrey Base. This is from September, from a group of film preservationists in the UK:

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And it's like, sure, this is probably the case. We've heard about private collectors having missing stuff for a long time now. But active negotiating with them? As usual, my hopes are up. Ugh

EDIT: God it's like they're telling me exactly what I want to hear

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Reign of Terror 4 or 5 by MILES for me. I wouldn't be super thrilled about more of Galaxy Four so that'd be second worst, but pretty much anything else would be pretty dang great. Best would be anything from Power of the Daleks, followed by anything completely missing such as Marco Polo or Fury From the Deep.

Heck, I don't think we're missing much in the way of visuals for The Crusade, but having a full season of 1960s Doctor Who would be neat.

It's wild we don't have anything from Marco Polo, though. They sold a ton of copies of that story.
 
I got super excited the last time there was a round of news about possible recovered episodes (the hoarder in Australia, I think), which obviously didn't pan out. For my own sanity I'm going to assume this is also nothing. I'd love to be wrong.
 
Yeah I'm there as well. Negotiating with private collectors feels like such a crapshoot. Sorry if me posting gets your hopes up, I've been reading that missing episode thread over there for over a decade at this point and yeah, nothing...
 
No no, you didn't do anything wrong! It's interesting news and I'm glad to be kept abreast of it. Just not going to lean into it emotionally, haha.
 
I'd think after the Roger K Barrett debacle the British side would know better than to advertise something that isn't a done deal. I probably have too much faith in excited people

Based on Horror Of Fang Rock they should shoot things with the star in a vile mood more often!
 
Kazin said:
Reign of Terror 4 or 5 by MILES for me. I wouldn't be super thrilled about more of Galaxy Four so that'd be second worst, but pretty much anything else would be pretty dang great. Best would be anything from Power of the Daleks, followed by anything completely missing such as Marco Polo or Fury From the Deep.

Heck, I don't think we're missing much in the way of visuals for The Crusade, but having a full season of 1960s Doctor Who would be neat.

It's wild we don't have anything from Marco Polo, though. They sold a ton of copies of that story.
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I think Power Of The Daleks, The Tenth Planet episode 4 followed by The Massacre Of St Bartholomew's Eve would be the most exciting. The first "regeneration" (though it wasn't that then) with the handover which sounds excitingly unsettling is something we need to have. I'd love to see what people sat though in the Sixties without explanation, closely followed by a serial that is really ambiguous with what we have.
 
I would be utterly thrilled with any of those.

Although, over the years, I have come around on Marco Polo. The first time I watched it, I found it a dreadfully dull slog. After a few more watches, though, it's one of my favorite Hartnells. So any of that back would be fantastic as well.
 
from GallifreyBase said:
Posted yesterday on Facebook

Reply to FIF - Please comment on the news that you've found missing episodes of Doctor Who! Can you confirm?
Reply from FIF - Thanks for your post. We’ll be providing an update on the most recent recoveries, and recording a podcast on the subject of recent recoveries, in the next few days. Please be patient.
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I know, right? I'm not trying to, I have quite literally fallen for this before more than once, but COME ON it's a Doctor Who fan. You shoot that shit the fuck down if it's not Doctor Who, not whatever that is. We're nuts lmao
 
It sounds like they almost definitely have something, or else all this coyness is just malicious on their part. While it's tempting and fun to imagine they've stumbled on a treasure trove, it's also very possible they just have a scattershot handful of episodes that do not complete any currently-incomplete serial (disappointing), or whatever they have recovered is damaged or deteriorated due to age and/or poor storage conditions (despair-inducing). Or they found the original master tapes of Doctor in Distress (potentially world-ending).

Obviously you already know all this, I'm just thinking out loud.
 
I certainly would not be disappointed, per se, with any missing episode return - there are more that I want than others, sure, but if they found episode 5 of Reign of Terror I'd quite happily watch that dumpster fire again.

But, ugh. I'm basically your avatar at this point

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I'm with you, Ian. I'm with you.
 
Hell, I've barely watched any Old Who, and I'm still excited to see what's happening here. Always a big fan of things being Not Lost Forever Actually.
 
Reminder (to basically just @Vaeran, most likely lol) that the Jubilee book is available in hardcover now. The Chimes of Midnight appears to be available digitally but not physically? I'm not sure if it's just sold out at the moment, but I wasn't able to find it from an American store (because, of course, that's something I have to fucking worry about now with tariffs).
 
Oh thanks! I'm on a spending embargo right now so it'll have to wait until later, but I appreciate the heads-up.
 
Today's trip got The Enemy Of The World*, The Green Death and Delta And The Bannermen. Excited for some Doctor Who times!

*On the subject of things that were lost for a very long time
 
Oh nice! Let me know what you think of Enemy if you haven't seen it before - pretty sure it's my favorite Troughton (if only we had Power of the Daleks...)
 
Josh Snares did a video on the Missing Episodes situation:


I appreciate this video because I haven't listened to the Missing Episodes podcast yet (it's two hours long and I listen to podcasts to fall asleep and I know I won't be able to sleep listening to that lmao). They are aware of missing episodes of Doctor Who (and other missing material) in the hands of multiple former industry professionals. They are working with the families of collectors that have passed and think they are likely to obtain the rights to that missing material and get it returned to the BBC. To be clear: there is one missing episode of Doctor Who that is currently going through the legal process to be returned right now. This does not guarantee it's return to the BBC, but the fact that they're acknowledging the situation says to me they're probably going to succeed.

That said - and this is why I said above it's not a good idea to tell us frickin Doctor Who fans about this stuff until it's returned - some fucking nutjob Doctor Who fan tried to access the Film is Fabulous facilities, for fucks sake. I hope idiots like that don't ruin it for everyone.

The Film is Fabulous donation page is here. I just sent them £5. Even if we get nothing out of this, they are doing good work and I'm happy to throw them a few bones.
 
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I love Josh Snares' content so I'll be watching that when I get home tonight.

Glad to know ahead of time that it's just a single episode that's in question at the moment.
 
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