Classic Who: The Daemons (1971), The Awakening (1984)

2020-05-09T20:35:17Z

I had initially intended to follow up my little trip out to greet the sunrise on May morning with a ritual viewing of The Wicker Man, but I have seen that film quite a few times now, and the more I thought about it the more I realised that actually I had a copy of the classic Doctor Who story The Daemons recorded on my Sky box (from back when the Horror channel was showing it), which is also set on and around May Day. Furthermore, I had been meaning for ages to track down and revisit The Awakening, which I remember vividly from my childhood for involving one of the Doctor's companions (I'd misremembered Peri, but it is actually Tegan) being about to be sacrificed as a Queen of the May. So a May Day double bill was born.

( Third Doctor: The Daemons )

( Fifth Doctor: The Awakening )

All in all a good way to mark May Day, and perhaps also a timely reminder to myself that lockdown poses an excellent opportunity to fill in some more of the Classic Who stories which I've either never seen, or not for too long.

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New Who 12.3 Orphan 55

2020-01-12T20:46:49Z

I really enjoyed this episode. I mean, massively more than Spyfall parts 1 and 2, actually. They were fine and enjoyable, but this one had me really rapt with the story structure and contents.

It was a genre of story I utterly love (base under siege / bottle episode / cabin fever story), and absolutely delivered on the things I want from that kind of narrative - people rising to the occasion, discovering their courage, and revealing their core priorities. The moment when Bella suddenly and unexpectedly turned on the rest of the group was mint. (She was also absolutely red hawt, which did not hurt.)

It also had two nice clear themes - just the right amount to give the story direction and structure without overloading it. One was the eco-horror, complete with the reveal that It Was Earth All Along - and I am guessing miss_s_b in particular appreciated the way that the Russian subway sign which attested to that referenced Six's The Mysterious Planet. My mind went to climate change as soon as the Doctor started talking about how there is always an elite who evacuate out in 'societies that let this happen', and then got confused when people later started talking about nuclear winters, thinking it had all gone a bit old-school. But of course, as her speech about how the food chain collapses and then there is mass migration and war spelt out, it's all linked together. I also really appreciated the fact that the closing note for the episode was an explicit exhortation not to let this happen in our Earth's future. That felt in the spirit of the Pertwee era to me, and part of what I think Doctor Who jolly well should be doing.

The second big theme was family relationships. This popped up in the very first few lines of dialogue, about how the companions didn't know it was 'the mating season' for whatever they were having to clear up in the TARDIS, and then bubbled gently along throughout. It's in the episode name, Benni's belated marriage proposal, Ryan and Bella swapping their experiences of parental death, the relationship between Sylas and his father, and the evolution from humans to Dregs, and of course pays off in plot terms in this episode in the central conflict and then resolution between Bella and Kane. But it was such a Thing that I wonder whether it might not prove to extend beyond this episode alone, and be related to the Big Secret which the Master found in Gallifrey's history.

I also felt it was visually well designed. I thought the early shots of the Dregs, when they first appeared in the Spa and were threatening Ryan and Bella in particular, were very nicely done - good use of mists, silhouettes and partial glimpses to make them really scary. I also noticed at this stage that they were visually likened to another human character trying to escape them and running his hand along the wall in the same way as they did - a link which retrospectively proved to have been deliberately set up for us, once the reveal came about who they 'really' were.

Wikipedia tells me that the writer for this story was somebody called Ed Hime, who has only previously contributed one other Doctor Who story, It Takes You Away (the one with the hypno-toad in an isolated Norwegian cabin), which I also really liked. So that's a name to keep an eye out for in future - though we won't see his work again in this series, apparently.

Footnotey disclaimer - I've no idea how anyone other than the main characters' names were spelt, as there is no Wikipedia page up for this episode yet and the end credits went too fast for me. I reserve the right to amend my current guesses as and when there's better information available.

Edit - the Wikipedia page is up now, and I've corrected some names accordingly (Cain > Kane, Silas > Sylas).

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In this strange complex of time and space anything can happen

Classic Who: The Daemons (1971), The Awakening (1984)

New Who 12.3 Orphan 55