Yeah, you knew I had to come back to this well. Doctor Who, in its 55 (and counting) year run, has made scaring the piss out of the children of England and everyone beyond into a form of art. They've done it in almost every way imaginable that's suitable for an all-ages audience, and tonight's story of focus is really pushing the envelope in regards to that suitability. We are once again back in the favorite stomping ground of spooky Doctor Who, the mid-to-late 70's. Tom Baker's on, Sarah Jane is here, we've got Phillip Hinchcliffe in the driver's seat and a shitload of horror tropes to dig through to find the most macabre teatime sci-fi entertainment. All of this is to say that The Seeds Of Doom, the final story of Season 13 and the one I viewed tonight for the blog, is hardcore pushing it. Let's dive in to Seeds Of Doom, just for a hot minute or so.What immediately strikes me is how clever this set of scripts is with its six part structure. Doctor Who has a lot of six parters, and they tend to drag in places more often than not. You get the same setting, you run out of ways to delay the plot, so you have to spin your wheels for an episode or so just so the damn story doesn't end 50 minutes early. This can be as infuriatingly simple as having the guy in charge not believe the Doctor for four fucking episodes because if he did the plot would be over, or locking people up and separating them for an episode or so. By the Tom Baker era, they were getting better at monkeying around with the six-part structure to alleviate this sort of thing. Seeds Of Doom solves it by having a completely different setting for its first two parts, and the events that happen there dovetailing into the lavish mansion setting of the rest of the story. The first setting, for the record, is an Antarctic base where a weird new life form has been discovered that ends up infecting people and turns them into monsters. Oh, and it's plant-based. At first I thought this story was being prescient and emulating John Carpenter's The Thing a good half-decade before he did it. Then I remembered that movie was a remake, and wasn't the monster in Thing From Another World some kind of vegetable man? Hmm. I like these opening two episodes, quite a lot. The worldbuilding is on point, showing a globetrotting sense of scale, and then when shit hits the fan it really hits the fan. Episode Two even ends with the whole thing blowing up, which is usually the money shot of these episodes... and we're not even a third of the way through!
Well, things do kind of drag out in some way when we get to Harrison Chase's mansion. For its part, though, the show tries to make things as exciting as possible. The Doctor is far more in an action hero mode than usual this time; he's jumping off of tall things to tackle dudes, smashing through FUCKING WINDOWS, punching and stunning people, and he even waves a gun around for a bit. He also gets quite cross at times, something which is a rarity for Tom Baker, I feel. It all adds to the grim and visceral nature of this story. Things are especially more violent than your usual Doctor Who. We've got lots of guns, plants choking people to death, and the goddamned mulcher. At multiple points Harrison Chase tries to feed people to his compost mulcher, a gigantic fuckoff bladed grinder at the end of a conveyor belt. Oh and he does it while they're still alive. Oh and he does kill a guy with it, albeit offscreen. Oh and he ends up getting churned alive in his own mulcher at the end. Not a drop of blood is shown, but at the same time the power of the human imagination does all the work for you with only a sight of the blades and the actor's screams. Jesus Christ the poor kids of England. As I said, it's a story that's pushing the envelope, and a few stories later that envelope-pushing would lead to consequences. Here and now, though, we're at the height of visceral hubris. I haven't said too much about the story, but it's fine. It shifts from Thing pastiche to sort of an Avengers (the British one) story to a movie with a giant plant monster, the effects of which sometimes work quite well actually! As far as Tom Baker tales go, it doesn't crack the top 10 or anything but it's no stinker by a long shot. It's fine, pretty grim in spots, and a good fit for the marathon. Well then. On with the show.
kaiju
oh hey i rewatched this for a spooky halloween treat (in black and white, because i'm a hipster) and it's surprisingly nicely paced. episodes doing very different things, or introducing new things. it's not until episode 4 that the proper krynoid is properly a thing, and not until episode 5 that it's huge and running around the property. so episodes 1 and 2 are the most Thing-y, episode 3 perhaps the most Avengers-y, episode 4 is more of a runaround the mansion while the sick man is fed meat, and then the final two episodes are more big honking plant kaiju time
ReplyDeleteI think I've heard that the script evolved out of a treatment that had in fact originally been pitched for The Avengers, which goes some way to explain the peculiarities in its style.
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