Colony in Space is the Doctor’s first venture into space in his third incarnation. After a season and a half of being restricted to Earth bound stories, Barry Letts has decided to liven things up by moving the action off to another world. Sadly its a fairly barron wasteland that looks exactly like a quarry. After stealing the so called Doomsday files, the Timelords decide that only the Doctor can help try and locate the files and so whilst messing around with the TARDIS, the Doctor and Jo gets taken to Uxarieus where there is a dispute between a group of colonists who are trying to get life started up and the IMC which are a group of miners who pretend to be concerned about finding some rare minerals that this planet has loads of and we are instantly drawn to dislike them even though one of them is Tony Caunter who played Roy Evans in the soap Eastenders. This story is written by Malcolm Hulke who is a writer that does political type stories and actually does them quite well. His previous stories ‘Dr Who and the Silurians’ (1970) and had a hand in ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ (1970). Now these two stories aren’t the political ones but the future stories definetly are and I will come to that in future reviews.
Now this being the Master series it was clear that at this point that Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks wanted to delay the moment when the Master turns up. This means that the main conflict between the colonists and the IMC guys can take centre stage and this goes on with both sides bleating on about why they should have the right of the planet with no-one asking for the audiences benefit if there are any inhabitants because that would spoil the surprise before it was ready to be revealed. When the Master does arrive it is as the adjudicator who’s spaceship that we see arrive on the planet is actually his TARDIS. So the story moves along and the Master awards the planet to the IMC crew like its the X-Factor that they are on and its not until one of the colonists pipe up with this thing about a primitive tribe that the story really gets interesting because at last we know why the Master is pretending to be the adjudicator and why the Doctor has been sent to stop him. If only they had started with this then the story would have been better. As it is by the time that the secret/primitive city has been discovered, my enthusiasm has somewhat disappeared and I look at some of these colonists who are trying to fight back as irritating twirps. Only the fact that one of them played by Helen Worth makes the story more fun. We get two former soap stars for the price of one.
I did like the IMC lot because the colonists were so wet, that I was rooting for the baddies which is a sign that the story is lost on me. I thought that Morris Perry was the shine out star because as Captain Dent he was the apitame of someone who will do whatever it takes and doesn’t care who he has to step over to get to it. I thought that Tony Caunter was also very good as his number two and one of the things that was so good about the IMC bunch was the internal conflict between Dent/Morgan and Caldwell (played by Bernard Kay - previously in The Dalek Invasion of Earth). This was a source of must interest and was only ruined by the colonists stuff. For the regulars it was business as usual. Even though he wasn’t in it for the entire duration, the moment when Roger Delgado turns up he commands the viewers attention and is instantly enjoyable. However I am starting to find the regular appearance of Delgado is starting to get a bit tiresome. I do think that Delgado's performance is very good and the performances from Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning are also strong though Manning isnt given the best first alien world as she spends the opening moments of the first episode whining and complaining about wanting to go back. Thankfully as we all know this changes and it actually happens in this episode.
I did find the bit inside the Master’s TARDIS to be highly amusing because there were about three or four filing cabinets and I know that it was 1971 and filing cabinets like these would have been fairly uncommon things (for someone who works in a stationery store its a regular thing). But you would have thought that the Timelords would have have more computerised ways of storing the information. When they said that the Master had took the files they really did mean the files. But that is for nought when we see the Guardian who is the most ridiculous thing that I have ever seen. It’s fairly easy to defend Doctor Who to people who laugh at the costumes of some monsters but even I had to put my hands up and say that this is undefenable. Someone should have stopped it from appearing before a camera and re-written the lines for the other odd looking creature.
There are things to like about the Colony but sadly this is a fairly bland story and it isn’t helped that its six episodes long. It’s a shame that I have to say this about Malcolm Hulke because he is one of the top writers that Doctor Who have ever had but I would say that you should listen/read the Target novelisation because its far more interesting and ultimately more satisfying.
Now this being the Master series it was clear that at this point that Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks wanted to delay the moment when the Master turns up. This means that the main conflict between the colonists and the IMC guys can take centre stage and this goes on with both sides bleating on about why they should have the right of the planet with no-one asking for the audiences benefit if there are any inhabitants because that would spoil the surprise before it was ready to be revealed. When the Master does arrive it is as the adjudicator who’s spaceship that we see arrive on the planet is actually his TARDIS. So the story moves along and the Master awards the planet to the IMC crew like its the X-Factor that they are on and its not until one of the colonists pipe up with this thing about a primitive tribe that the story really gets interesting because at last we know why the Master is pretending to be the adjudicator and why the Doctor has been sent to stop him. If only they had started with this then the story would have been better. As it is by the time that the secret/primitive city has been discovered, my enthusiasm has somewhat disappeared and I look at some of these colonists who are trying to fight back as irritating twirps. Only the fact that one of them played by Helen Worth makes the story more fun. We get two former soap stars for the price of one.
I did like the IMC lot because the colonists were so wet, that I was rooting for the baddies which is a sign that the story is lost on me. I thought that Morris Perry was the shine out star because as Captain Dent he was the apitame of someone who will do whatever it takes and doesn’t care who he has to step over to get to it. I thought that Tony Caunter was also very good as his number two and one of the things that was so good about the IMC bunch was the internal conflict between Dent/Morgan and Caldwell (played by Bernard Kay - previously in The Dalek Invasion of Earth). This was a source of must interest and was only ruined by the colonists stuff. For the regulars it was business as usual. Even though he wasn’t in it for the entire duration, the moment when Roger Delgado turns up he commands the viewers attention and is instantly enjoyable. However I am starting to find the regular appearance of Delgado is starting to get a bit tiresome. I do think that Delgado's performance is very good and the performances from Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning are also strong though Manning isnt given the best first alien world as she spends the opening moments of the first episode whining and complaining about wanting to go back. Thankfully as we all know this changes and it actually happens in this episode.
I did find the bit inside the Master’s TARDIS to be highly amusing because there were about three or four filing cabinets and I know that it was 1971 and filing cabinets like these would have been fairly uncommon things (for someone who works in a stationery store its a regular thing). But you would have thought that the Timelords would have have more computerised ways of storing the information. When they said that the Master had took the files they really did mean the files. But that is for nought when we see the Guardian who is the most ridiculous thing that I have ever seen. It’s fairly easy to defend Doctor Who to people who laugh at the costumes of some monsters but even I had to put my hands up and say that this is undefenable. Someone should have stopped it from appearing before a camera and re-written the lines for the other odd looking creature.
There are things to like about the Colony but sadly this is a fairly bland story and it isn’t helped that its six episodes long. It’s a shame that I have to say this about Malcolm Hulke because he is one of the top writers that Doctor Who have ever had but I would say that you should listen/read the Target novelisation because its far more interesting and ultimately more satisfying.
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