Urban's 'Doctor Who' Thing

[Tristesse]

Originally Posted by Trollheart

Yeah, but you didn't have to say it. That's what spoiler tags are for.
And as new viewers get into the series the significance of what you let slip is going to start becoming apparent. So it certainly is a spoiler, whether you like it or not. It will become one.

Fair enough. Please forgive me.

[Trollheart]

Originally Posted by Tristesse

Fair enough. Please forgive me.

You're forgiven No offence intended. Let's let Urban get back to what he does best.

This hijack is over!

[Neapolitan]

Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?

In fact go watch Westworld instead of this, it's about a theme park where a bunch of androids go haywire and start killing people. Much better than this story anyway.

Their is another similarity between the two, Westworld and 221 – "The Girl Who Waited." That's the episode when the Eleventh Doctor takes Rory and Amy to Apalapucia - the second most popular planet destination in the universe for a vacation/holiday spot after the planet of the coffee shops.

Spoiler for what's in common?:

The main technician in Westworld has a companion android he re-programs to plays cards with, and Amy re-programs a Handbot, and affectionately names it Rory.

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by djchameleon

Fringe gave me my supernatural fix that I was missing out on. I loved the show being a reverse of the X-files. Also, Fringe had a way better over arching plot than the ****ing smoking man bull****.

First of all, the Cigarette Smoking Man was perfect. He made the conspiracy seem human, yet still faceless and menacing. And he was bad-****ing-ass to boot.

And secondly, get out of my house!

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

214: Arc Of Infinity

Doctor : 5th (Peter Davison)
Companions : Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding) Nyssa (Sarah Sutton)
Series : 20
Originally Transmitted: 3rd - 12th January 1983

Originally I was going to do Timelash next but having done Time Flight this pitiful excuse of a story was bundled with Time Flight as a DVD double pack. After a quick look through it I thought 'Yeah, let's do this one next' It was due to come up sooner rather than later anyway.

So at the end of Time Flight we get a lame kind of cliffhanger where Tegan runs out of Heathrow Airport just in time to look on disappointedly as The Doctor and Nyssa leave in the Tardis without her Which is all the more ironic when you consider than she spent the entire previous series moaning and complaining that The Doctor couldn't get her to Heathrow so she could start her new job as an air hostess. What's even funnier is neither The Doctor nor Nyssa even bother to say goodbye to her.

So we have the Doctor & Nyssa travelling in the Tardis both doing some repair work when suddenly a strange energy force attacks the Tardis & tries to bond with The Doctor.



The Doctor concludes that this could only be possible by someone who has access to his Bio-data (Kind of like a Time Lord DNA) and heads for Gallifrey. The Time Lords are already aware of this already and have decided that The doctor is a threat to Gallifrey and on his arrival is shot by the head of the Gallifreyan guard Commander Maxil, played by Colin Baker.



Now you may be wondering why Maxil spends the whole story carrying his hat around under his arm, that's because they made it too big for him to be able to walk through doors. Baker would walk around the set stroking it pretending it was a chicken called Esmerelda and make chicken noises wondering why Peter Davison was giving him funny looks.



Meanwhile in Amsterdam two backpackers Colin Stuart & Robin Frazer decide that rather than stay in a backpacking hostel the best place to spend the night is a creepy old crypt which just happens to be the base of the source of the beam of energy that attacked the Tardis made by a renegade Time Lord.
During the night Colin is captured by The Ergon, a creature created by The Renegade that can only be described as looking like the worst chicken you've ever had the misfortune of meeting. He is turned into a zombie like state to work for the Renegade.



Anyway it turns out the Doctor was only stunned so that he could be bought in front of the High Council of Time Lords. It's established that the energy comes from a renegade Time Lord from another universe made from Anti Matter and that he is being shielded in this universe by the Arc Of Infinity. Unbeknownst to The Doctor one of the high council is in collusion with The Renegade secretly. It's not hard to work out which of the Time Lords this is as although they hide his face they make no effort whatsoever to disguise his voice.

After discussing the issue the Time Lords then decide rather than let The Doctor do something about it that the best thing to do is execute him by hairdryer before the bond is complete.



Back in Amsterdam Robin decides to go to the airport and meet up with Colin's cousin. who just happens in a bizarre twist of fate to be Tegan Jovanka. He tells her that Colin has gone missing and they go to the crypt. they find Colin but the chicken captures and stuns them before they can do anything.

The Time Lords then discover than The Doctor isn't dead after all and he is having a game of Pong with The Renegade in The Matrix, a kind of super computer made up of all the brains of dead Time Lords. The Renegade decides to show The Doctor that he's also playing Pong with Tegan. She yells out that The Renegade's base is in Amsterdam



The Doctor pops up again and tells the Time Lords that The Renegade has control of The Matrix and can take over Gallifrey. The Time Lord in collusion with The Renegade reveals himself to be the traitor to everybody, and then reveals who The Renegade is.... Omega, the man who gave the ability of time travel to the Time Lords but was blasted to an anti matter universe during the process.

The Doctor slips away from Gallifrey, goes to Amsterdam and tracks down Omega's base and frees Colin & Tegan. However the Doctor is too late to stop Omega and the bonding is now complete. Omega reveals that he has taken form of the Doctor in a new body so that he can leave his anti matter universe.



The Doctor tells Omega that the Arc is not stable and his body will not last long. Omega runs away. The Doctor picks up Omega's anti matter gun in pursuit. We then get a long drawn out chase through the streets of Amsterdam with Peter Davison chasing Peter Davison with green slime & rice krispies all over his face as Omega's body decays. Eventually they catch up with him, shoot him with the anti matter gun and this sending him back to his anti matter universe.



The Time Lords celebrate, Tegan checks on her cousin in hospital and then tells the Doctor she was fired from her job and would like to carry on travelling with him, as if the poor sod hasn't suffered enough already.

............

Arc of Infinity was a part of the series 20th anniversary year. During that years it was decided that each story during the 20th series would have a returning monster from doctor Who's past finishing at the end of the year with The Five Doctors special anniversary show.

The First Monster to be bought back in the series for this story was the renegade Time Lord Omega, last seen during the 10th Anniversary story The Three Doctors back in 1973.
While it seemed a good idea in practice none of the appearances really ever went anywhere save for that of the Black Guardian (Last seen during Tom Baker's series long Key To Time adventure) who was used as a tool to bring in a companion who wanted to kill the Doctor (Turlough), and even then that got dull rather quickly.

Arc of Infinity could have been a good story but it's just too slow paced and suffers from the usual Doctor Who trait of having people being captured, then escape, run along a load of corridors and then get captured again whilst not progressing the story one iota. The Time Lords just sort of sit around talking and not doing very much other than sentencing the Doctor to death and just generally being stupid. If you watch this story you could well understand why Russell T Davis wanted the kill the whole bloody lot of them off. They're boring. And damn you Moffat for bringing them back.

There's also the annoying level of coincidence. A couple of backpackers just happen to enter the one place where Omega's base is and one of them just happens to be related to a friend of the guy that he's trying to use. Oh and she just happened to leave the Doctor in the previous story. It's just lazy lazy plotting.

Also if you decide you want to read the Target novelisation of this story rather than watch the episode, don't bother as shows you who the traitor in the High Council is on the front cover pulling a gun on the Doctor.

Stupid Stupid Stupid

[Tristesse]

Your description of that episode actually makes it sound excellent to me

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

I thought that before I saw it too.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

Journal on hold until my bastard Timelash DVD turns up.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

Sod that, while my copy of Timelash is MIA here's a little something extra.

We Could Have Been Bigger Than The Daleks

Ever since the Daleks became a worldwide smash around 50 years ago to the day both the BBC and the writers have been trying to find the next Daleks.
The next robot that would rake in a fortune with merchandise sales and have kids running around playgrounds pretending to be them.
Sadly nobody ever matched that popularity, but here are some of their attempts anyway.

.........

The Mechanoids



The Mechanoids only ever appeared in one story, 'The Chase' in June 1965 and even then they only ever appeared in the final episode. Written by Terry Nation, the writer that had created the Daleks he was looking to find a way of cashing in on another robot so for this story he created the Mechanoids.

Sadly their appearance in that story was overshadowed slightly by some of the other appearances in that story. Such as Queen Elizabeth I, Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Empire State building, The Marie Celeste & The Beatles. As well as the Daleks.

The Mechanoids were from the planet Mechanus, were about twice the size of a Dalek, were spherical, covered in triangular segments topped off by what looks like buddhist prayer wheel. Instead of a sink plunger they had two rather pathetic looking arms that look like a couple of bits of bent metal tubing, mostly used for gesticulating wildly and hugging daleks, although they did have another arm with a disc on the end that would shoot out fire.



When they spoke they basically sounded like slowed down stoned Daleks meaning that the climactic battle with the Daleks at the end of the story had some of the clunkiest slowest dialogue for an 'exciting battle scene' I think I've ever seen.

The Mechanoids were given a slight chance to match the Daleks popularity, a handful of Mechanoid action figures were made in the 60s and they also appeared in some comic strips shortly after the episode aired but they never really took off in popularity. Also after this story aired Terry Nation never wrote for Doctor Who again until 1972's Day Of The Daleks after he spent several years in the United States trying to launch a Dalek TV Series. So I guess he gave up on the poor Mechanoids too.

......

The Chumblies



The Chumblies were the robot servents of the reptile like Rills. The Rills were confined to their crashed spaceship due to them breathing ammonia instead of air so the Chumblies would scoot off onto the planet's surface and do the tasks that the Rill's were unable to do themselves.

Due to the BBC losing all 4 episodes of their one and only story 'Galaxy 4', originally broadcast in September 1965 the Chumblies bleeping & blooping on audio track was most Doctor Who fans only exposure to them. However in late 2011 Episode 3 turned up from a private film collector and the whole world got to see The Chumblies in all their crapness.

The Chumblies weren't actually named that by the Rills, the Doctor's companion Vicki names them that when she first sees them and once the Rill's translation devices start working they just go along with it.

The Chumblies don't actually do much other than follow you around, occasionally nudging you in the direction they want you to walk in. Basically they just follow you around bleeping like R2D2's retarded clingy younger brother.

When fame never came knocking and they were never used again they went on to form their own steam cleaning company to pay the bills



.........

The War Machines



Now the War Machines were impressive, or at least they were supposed to be anyway. Their only appearance happened during the story The War Machines in June of 1966.

The War Machines were the tool of the giant super computer Wotan, which stood for Will Operating Thought ANalogue which meant that it was a computer than can think for itself. Wotan was either pronounced 'wo-tan' or 'vo-tan' depending on whichever actor was saying it at the time.

The computer was the brainchild of one Professor Brett. Being a thinking computer Wotan decides that he doesn't need humans after all and so brainwashes a bunch of people to get them to build the War Machines. So
in a dingy warehouse in London an army of War Machines are built mostly by a bunch of 60s London spivs who wear flat caps & would say something like 'It's a fair cop, guv' if they ever got caught.

The War Machines had a gas jet thing just like the Daleks, but at well as they they had two massive mallet like crushing arms that could...... um menacingly knock over a pile of empty boxes and very little else.
They would make this whirring noise at you like every single computer you have ever seen with massive tape spools in any movie from back then.

Sadly all you needed to defeat them was a couple of skipping ropes and they would get confused, lose power and then they were done.



OK so it's electrical cable not skipping ropes, but the point still stands.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

The Quarks




The Quarks were the deadly (cough) robots used by The Dominators, a race of evil beings who liked to um, dominate, wear fancy outfits with giant shoulder pads and harass planets full of hippies.



The Quarks were devised by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln who had previously successfully created the Yeti as an iconic Doctor Who monster the year before. Unfortunately a walking giant rug that's roar is the sound of a slowed down flushing toilet isn't really marketable in the toy world unless you're George Lucas. So they created the Quarks for the story The Dominators in August 1968.

The Quarks problem was they were just not threatening, sure they had guns but because of their little legs you could probably outrun them by breaking into a gentle stroll. They also made extremely non threatening high pitched bleeping noises. In fact you can pretty much sum up the Quarks as being a toddler.

Whenever they were dispatched by The Dominators to do anything, they would just tend to wander around aimlessly occasionally firing at things and then run out of power after about 10 minutes, just like a toddler who's give you the runaround for a while and then fall asleep.

In fact this episode was so bad that the production team cut the number of episodes from 6 to 5 and wrote the ending themselves, which annoyed Haisman and Lincoln who asked for their name to be taken off the script. They were also pretty annoyed when they found out the BBC were going to bring out a load of Quark toys & merchandise without their knowledge. Needless to say the general public couldn't care less about the Quarks, the BBC never made a penny in merchandise sales, Haisman and Lincoln refused to work for Doctor Who ever again and so the Quarks were consigned to the dustbin of history.

..........

The Security Robot



Terry Nation is back, and this time he has his own series. After trying to flog the Daleks to the Americans & Hollywood (And failing) Terry Nation comes back to the BBC, writes a few Doctor Who scripts (Genesis Of The Daleks being the standout), then writes the hit series 'Survivors' about a plague wiping out most of the human life on Earth. Because of the success of these he is allowed to start his pet project. A TV show based on the movie the Dirty Dozen only set in space where a band of various criminals would battle against the corrupt Earth federation. It's name ... Blakes 7.

What Nation decided was that for this series to get the attention it warranted it needed something as big as the Daleks to make the series take off. With Blakes 7 being about criminals against a corrupt government it made race of robotic aliens that would destroy everything in it's path rather unworkable so he came up with the Security Robot.

The Security Robot would just hang around a few military bases defending them from intruders. It had a really powerful flamethrower, not like a short burst of flame but a real life flamethrower although not as powerful.The biggest problem with them was they made so much noise, you could probably hear one whirring towards you 10 minutes before it actually arrived meaning by the time it got there everybody had either hidden or legged it.

They appeared in a couple of early episodes of the series run but they were slow, cumbersome and a bit silly. When it was decided that having a couple of actors play guards it made the scenes so much easier to shoot and they were dropped for good.

........

The Cybermen



It took them a while to get it right but finally someone succeeded.