In an effort to find something quick that can be written as part of Daily Doctor Who, we are continuing with Say Something Nice, where I look back at each of the Doctor Who stories and pull out one or two cool things about it.
(Daily Doctor Who #349)
Read the previous entry here. Today, we continue with the first story of the show’s sixth season…
The Dominators
The story stars Patrick Troughton as the Doctor and Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon, and Wendy Padbury as new companion Zoe Herriot.
The serial is written by Norman Ashby (in reality, Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, along with input from script editor Derrick Sherwin, especially in the last episode), and directed by Morris Barry.
Say Something Nice…
(Named for Missy–aka the Master–and her catchphrase from her first full appearance in Dark Water).
The story features the Quarks, which while non-threatening are kind of cute. Jamie gets some fun action scenes in the story where he gets to knock Quarks off ledges, and so on. The Doctor pretending he’s stupid shows his playful glee in outwitting his enemies, something which carries through to the end of the story when he defeats the Dominators by putting their explosive device on their own ship.
But because we’re equal-opportunity fans here, we’re not going to only be sycophantically complimentary.
You craven-hearted spineless poltroon!
(Another cry from the Master, but not exactly a catch-phrase, this time from The Deadly Assassin)
The Dominators do an awful lot of arguing with each other, which is an effort at character development but becomes tedious quickly. At the same time, the Dulcians are a really dull collection of space-hippies with no will to defend themselves. The whole plot is in fact kind of just drags along over the whole five episodes.
Catch you next time!
Blue Towel Productions 