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Doctor Who: The Seeds of Doom (1976) It's annoying that this title is so easily mixed up with a Troughton serial (The Seeds of Death) - otherwise, it's pretty solid, with a good alien menace, human villain and clever solution to the problem of keeping a plot going over six episodes. The first two episodes are set in Antarctica, drawing on The Thing, as alien seed-pods (Krynoids) are discovered in ancient ice, and one sprouts to infect a researcher - turning him into a baggy green vegetable man (the Quatermass influence is obvious) who stalks around the base being murderous while the Doctor intones that on the planets where this interstellar weed takes root, 'the plants eat the animals'. Added complication, which propels into the next four shows, comes from a couple of mercenaries in the employ of an obvious madman plant collector (Tony Beckley) who are here to steal the pod (well, the unsprouted one). The next four episodes are set back in England, mostly in the country pile of Harrison Chase, the plant-obsessive who lobbies the Department of Ecology against the practice of bonsai (Japanese tree-torturing) and rather likes the idea of a silent, green planet ruled by the Krynoid (which later turns out to be able to speak - one of several ideas raised and then dropped). Beckley's black-gloved, sharp-suited, soft-spoken, slightly fey villain is unusually motivated not by power or profit (he's already rich and powerful enough) but a perverse veneration of plantlife (like some versions of DC's Poison Ivy) - though the Robert Banks Stewart script forgets about species interconnectivity: without animals and insects, plants would have a hard time propagating. John Challis has more meat than usual in the stock role of chief minion, a merc who gets enough shocks to realise his boss is mad and that he's in danger too - though he runs true to baddie form and makes an escape attempt without the others that leads to him being swallowed by rebel pondweed. Though fun, it has a few odd, lazy elements - as if scripted in a hurry: the finale finds the RAF just bombing the plant monster out of existence, reducing the Doctor to the role of innocent bystander, and the last gasp of UNIT comes with some anonymous walk-ons since the regulars have been written out. This thread, central to the show for years, really needed to be wound up in a serial of its own: as it stands, the Doctor just walks away from the job and home he has had since Spearhead From Space, with no sense that he's abandoning responsibilities; it works in terms of the alienness of Baker's Doctor (who had always shown a callous streak), but not in the drama of a continuing series (perhaps we needed to see the Doctor fired or forced to resign). The Krynoid is an old Axon costume sprayed green in its first incarnation,
then a new blobby thing which grows to the size of a house - the aliens'
habit of traveling in pairs 'like policemen' is referred to, but never
explained (it's a plot convenience, of course). This comes from the
show's most violent and gruesome period: the Doctor is threatened with
a big grinding machine that will turn him into compost, and later -
not wanting to waste the prop - a walk-on soldier is given the treatment
(offscreen, but hardly less horrid for that); the Antarctic guest cast
of the first two episodes are killed off rapidly and unmourned, perhaps
because their contracts weren't carried over; and there's enough shooting,
thumping, chasing and bombing for a Professionals season. Sylvia Coleridge
has a funny bit as a dotty but avaricious plant artist who nags Chase
about an unpaid-for painting, then soaks him for a thousand pounds. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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