8x01. Terror of the Autons
Writer: Robert Holmes
Director: Barry Letts
Script Editor: Terrance Dicks
Producer: Barry Letts
Synopsis: The Master, another
renegade Time Lord, arrives on Earth and steals the Nestene
intelligence, which he uses to relaunch the failed Nestene invasion,
with the help of the Autons and new lethal plastic products from a
factory over which he has assumed control. The Doctor, who has been
alerted to the Master's presence by the Time Lords, soon finds himself
in a game of cat-and-mouse with his elusive adversary.
Review: The prevailing opinion
among some Doctor Who fans
seems
to be
that, after the edgy and often dark seventh season, a decision was made
to shift the series to a less ambiguous and more "cozy" style of
storytelling, with a companion less matched to the Doctor in intellect
and further additions to the recurring UNIT cast. As someone who
greatly enjoyed the seventh season, I'm hoping that this will prove not
to be the case as I continue with the Pertwee era, but I'm sorry
to say that "Terror of the Autons" does seem like a step in that
direction.
In "Spearhead from Space," Robert Holmes used the relatively sparse
plot
of the Nestene/Auton invasion as a vehicle to establish Pertwee's
Doctor and the UNIT-centered, Earth-bound formula that was to be the
series' new template. In a sense, he's doing the same thing again here,
in that the real purpose of "Terror of the Autons" is to introduce an
arch-nemesis, the Master, who serves as a personal rival to the Doctor
in a way that other villains haven't, as well as other new characters
such as Captain Mike Yates and Jo Grant. The Master is a rather
peculiar character: as a friend of mine once remarked, he seems to have
simply woken up one day and decided to be intensely and unambiguously
evil. He and the Doctor apparently know each other already, which is
apparently his reason for coming to Earth, but that doesn't really
explain why he's such a snake in the first place. Indeed, he seems to
thrive on his own nastiness: the doll he uses to kill the senior
Farrel, for example, is a horrific-looking little piece of work that
could have easily attracted suspicion, and he has a classic
Bond-villain moment when he confronts the Doctor in Episode 4 and
pauses to explain his entire scheme when he could easily just kill him.
This is the sort of thing that can often make a villain seem
ridiculous, but Roger Delgado effectively portrays the Master with a
unique mix of malice, intelligence, and ego, and we can
easily believe that he cares more about humiliating his enemies
than he does about the actual success of the invasion.
The Master has enough of a personality to be successful as a villain,
even if his motivation is a bit thin. Unfortunately, the Nestenes and
the Autons are still fairly dull. Holmes does at least manage to make
them slightly more menacing than last time. The Master uses them to
create a whole line of deadly plastic products, and he effectively
disguises Autons as actual human beings, the result being that there's
at least a little more variety to the threat than just a bunch of
mannequins with guns inside their hands. At the end of the day,
however, they're still the same flat concept that they were in
"Spearhead": a collective alien intelligence which seems to have no
underlying purpose for its ongoing colonization project and which, by
definition, lacks any real character. The ending also does not serve
the Nestenes or the Master very well. Faced with an impending attack,
the Doctor convinces the Master that the Nestenes will undoubtedy kill
him too, and so he helps short-circuit the invasion. It's interesting
to see the Doctor and the Master work together momentarily, and while I
have no idea what the technobabble was that they were spouting, Pertwee
and Delgado deliver it convincingly enough that we believe we're
watching two men of considerable intelligence. But it just feels too
easy, and I couldn't help but be left with the sense of, "Eighty-five
minutes of build-up for *that*?"
As for the other new characters, Mike Yates is a sufficiently likeable
and competent military officer, though we haven't really gotten to know
much about him yet. Jo Grant, however, is something of a disappointment
after a season with the highly intelligent and capable Liz Shaw. She's
helpful on a couple of occasions, but she also drops the ball quite a
bit and she is clearly in over her head (the Brigadier even says that
her family pulled strings to get her into UNIT). I'm also not too
thrilled about where the Doctor/Brigadier relationship seems to be
going. After a season that portrayed them as two smart, strong-willed
individuals who both have good intentions but don't always see
eye-to-eye, they behave more like bickering siblings in "Terror of the
Autons," with the Doctor constantly complaining and insulting the
Brigadier. They have the obligatory argument over whether or not to
bomb the Autons' circus trailer, but in general they seem to be simply
getting on each others' nerves rather than having substantive
disagreements. I guess the writers are going for the "loveable
eccentric surrounded by well-meaning bumblers" formula here, but the
Doctor borders on just being an overbearing jerk at times, especially
since most of the UNIT staff are, for the most part, doing a fairly
reasonable
job in handling the situation. Similarly, the Doctor's parting comment
that he's looking forward to another confrontation with the Master
comes off as another inappropriate attempt to lighten the atmosphere. I
can understand that he relishes the intellectual rivalry at some level,
but this is an extremely callous way to express it when you consider
that (a) the Master did kill an awful lot of people, and (b) the Doctor
doesn't seem to have a plan to pursue him more actively.
There are some decent bits of characterization to be found in "Terror
of the Autons." The relationship between Rex Farrel and his father
carries some interest: Rex is clearly resentful of having to walk in
his father's footsteps as head of the company, and when his father
tries to engineer the Master's removal, he sees it as a challenge to
his competence and resists. There's also some subtle commentary in the
notion that the Master's hypnosis eventually wears off, at which point
the victim's reaction depends on his or her moral character. Jo is in a
state of shock after having tried to set off a bomb at UNIT
headquarters; Farrel, perhaps accustomed to being ordered around, has a
less extreme reaction but does seem to snap out of it and resist the
Autons at the end; Rossini, the circus master, seems to go along with
the Master willingly even after the hypnosis presumably would have lost
its effect, unless we're to assume that he's re-hypnotized off-screen.
The Brigadier doesn't get much development in this serial, as he's
mostly limited to arguing with the Doctor, but we do see that he's
willing to face danger himself rather than order a subordinate to do it
when he curtly observes that he's not entirely "desk-bound" yet and
heads out into the field.
In another context, "Terror of the Autons" would not be so
disappointing: as an hour and a half of breezy sci-fi entertainment, it
gets the job done. But the new characters are not up to the standard
set by season seven, the Doctor/Brigadier dynamic has changed in what
seems to be a self-conscious decision to alter the style rather than a
natural development of the characters, and even the Master is more a
success of acting than one of writing.
Rating: ** (out of four)
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