Saturday 9th May 1964 - Doctor Who - Sentence of Death

 

 

DOCTOR: Well, you, my child, and Barbara, can be my detectives. And you, my friend.  
IAN: Yes. What can I do, Doctor?  
DOCTOR: Trust me.

This episode suffers from having no sense of establishing the city (country?) in which events happen. It starts in the locked room where Ian is knocked unconscious and the key stolen. We are shown a few other locations: a courtroom, a reception area and the home of one of the villains, Ayden. If only the model of a futuristic city state was shown. Other than the first episode, The Sea of Death,  we've not had any exterior establishing shots and, for me, it affects my belief in Marinus being a coherent world. I suppose after the lengthy journey across China depicted in maps, the producers wanted something different so we get transmat wrist-devices and absolutely no sense that this is all one planet.

Ian is the victim here and, for the first time, we see the Doctor effectively taking charge and running to Ian's rescue. The script does a good job of portraying Ian's naivety in assuming that the legal system in this place is that of mid-twentieth century Britain. He's shocked when Tarron, one of the guardians (presumably military police) tells hime: "I mean that you are already guilty of this crime. The burden of defence is entirely yours. You must prove without any shadow of doubt that you are innocent, otherwise... you will die."

We also see Terry Nation presenting another story (after Daleks) involving a visibly authoritarian quasi-fascist regime. It's something that he'll develop most fully in Blake's 7. Here we have Nazi-like insignia and sinister military outfits (even worn by the "good" characters like Tarron). The judges of the tribunal are less militaristic and have more of a "futuristic" vibe.

I'm not sure about the slightly-futuristic nature of the world this episode takes place in. It's all a little 1960s bureaucratic office-world with some fancy pretend-scientific stylings. Phones look like microphones. There's an "authro-ray" scanner that checks identities, a weapon that kills with a flash and something called psychometry which Tarron helpfully explains as: "Experts are able to divine from an object the characteristics of the person who last had contact with that object." In this sort-of futuristic setting, we do have a lingering shot of a keyholes and handle of a very ordinary doorhandle.

My chief complaint with this episode is the awful performances of some of the actors. Altos, for instance, is told that his friend, Eprin, was the person murdered at the start of the episode. Althos has no emotional reaction and willingly follows the Doctor's instructions with a smile. The villian, Ayden, twice makes the same mistake of blurting out in a way that makes him look not only guilty but also incredibly stupid.

What IS delightful is the return of the Doctor. He commands every scene he's in. (From a narrative point of view, it shows how far he's developed his relationship with Ian and Barbara.) The Doctor revels in being not only legal defence for Ian but also guiding the investigation into the murder and theft of they key. The scene in which the Doctor reenacts the muder with Susan and Barbara is, in my opinion, the best we've seen. (Though, again narratively we have no idea what the Doctor's been up to while his companions have been having their adventures. Barbara and Susan are in the city(?) for two days during Ian's arrest before the Doctor appears. No one seems to wonder where he's been.)

In case the viewers have forgotten the purpose of this adventure (it was a month ago that this started), a random character (Kara, the wife of the villainous Ayden) reminds why the Keys of Marinus are important: "Because there are only five of them in the entire universe. It was brought to the city years ago by a man called Arbitan. It was the sworn duty of the Elders to protect it."

I wasn't expecting the sudden left-turn in the story when Ian is still found guilty and sentenced to death. And I didn't notice that Susan had disappeared at the end which set up the cliff-hanger where Barbara receives a note warning her of another death followed by Susan's phone call. Susan's been kidnapped and tells Barbara: "They're going to kill me."

Next episode: The Keys of Marinus

 

Saturday 2nd May 1964 - Doctor Who - The Snows of Terror

 

 

"Are you afraid of me?"

 

A claustrophobic, threatening episode that has a fairy-tale, nightmarish quality. An episode full of snow, woods, wolves, frozen caves and ice soldiers. Events take place in darkness of the course of a few hours. 

 

It is the character of Vasos who seemingly rescues Barbara and Ian that dominates this episode. A large, bearded hunter clad in furs, Vasos uses the situation the in which the travellers find themselves for his own advantage - to aquire the valuable their valuable belongings and for sexual gratification. (Although the show has so far hinted at sexual threats towards Barbara in particular, here we have here explicitly having to defend herself with a knife from Vasos' assault.) He is monstrous and menaces throughout until he is eventually killed by the "demons" he fears.

The plot is quite limited: Ian goes in search of Althos, returns to save Barbara from Vasos, searches for Susan and Sabetha, finds the next key they are searching for, fights the frozen ice soldiers and escapes. I doubt I'm the first person to notice a similarity with the Crystal Maze. The production team make a good effort of using their limited budget into building sets that are effective. I'm not sure that a hot water pipe would resurrect the frozen ice soldiers. (And I'm not even going to question why an alien world has medieval knights and wolves.)

Once again, the Doctor is missing (gone ahead in the story) and the episode suffers from not having him present. Everything is a little rushed and frantic.

The cliff-hanger has Ian discovering a body and knocked unconscious while a mysterious figure steals what looks like the final key.

Much like the last episode, The Screaming Jungle, there's a sense here that the storytelling is too condensed. Rather than rush through some very interesting characters and situations, it's almost that a multiple-episode adventure would have been better.  

 

Next episode: Sentence of Death 

Saturday 25th April 1964 - Doctor Who - The Screaming Jungle

"It's coming again. The jungle is coming. When the whispering starts, it's death, I tell you. Death!"

A completely Doctor-less episode. 

We're after the third of five keys needed by Arbitan, the keeper of a mind-controlling device. This episode is has Ian and Barbara beset by accelerated-growth vegetation that whispers and screams psychically.  As an episode, its a little manic: full of screaming, revolving statues, moving vegetation and suddenly-dying monks. As Barbara observes, the whole place is a booby-trap.

We're also at the point where we can identify patterns in the storytelling: No one believes Susan when she encounters something; Ian tells Barbara to stay put and she goes exploring a tunnel and gets captured; Susan screams at the slightest things and requires comforting by Barbara; Ian ignores Barbara.

Somewhere in this episode is a story about how Darrius, the old man they encounter, has experimented with nature causing the aggressive, accelerated growth we witness. So much is happening that I didn't catch his name until the closing credits. There's an "escape-from-the-series of-locked-rooms" about this episode and - once again - budget doesn't allow any sense of establishing where we are: how extensive is the jungle? is the location behind the wall a city? a castle? a house?

Early in the episode Sabetha realises that the third key found by Barbara is fake. The dying Darrius tells Barbara and Ian that the fake key was used as "A system of mirrors. When the false key was taken I put my traps in motion. Only those warned by Arbitan could avoid them." It's a pity that Arbitan failed to tell anyone about this before he sent them on their quest.

I'm a little alarmed how easily Ian allowed Susan to use the transmat device and travel to the next location in the company of Altos and Sabetha, who they had only just met and had been mind-controlled for most of the episode. I could be kind and say that it's a result of Ian disraught over the loss of Barbara - and, indeed, Ian does some "Wlliam Hartnell darting-eyes" action to show his acute distress.

Next episode: The Snows of Terror.

Saturday 18th April 1964 - Doctor Who - The Velvet Web

 

Saturday 18th April 1964 - Doctor Who - The Velvet Web

 

 

"You are in the city of Morphoton. Our people are perhaps the most contented in the universe. Nothing they desire is denied them."

This was actually quite fun. There’s a dream-like quality to this episode that works really effectively (and manages to overcome the obvious deficiencies with the set) - with the caution that what we see on screen can't really be trusted.

After being concerned about Barbara’s blood on the (transmat) device, the Doctor, Susan and Ian find her in a luxurious palace being attended upon by servants. (It’s one of those Dionysian worlds that original Star Trek would later perfect.) Some sort of alarm goes off when the travellers enter the place that Barbara is which is later revealed to affect their perceptions.

In the very short few minutes that Barbara is separated from the others, she changes clothes and is pampered while reclining on a chase longue. The travellers are offered food such as pomegranates and truffles which are foods clearly hallucinated (who knows what they were really eating!).

They've arrived in the city of Morphoton, where their every wish is seemingly fulfilled. At first Ian and the Doctor are skeptical but the promise of a cutting-edge laboratory win them over. Susan is easily seduced by a silk dress.

Behind the deception are brains with eyes on stalks in bell jars who use a power they call mesmeron. These brains have evolved beyond their bodies but need to ensnare visitors to serve as slaves ("We are the masters of this place. Our brains out-grew our bodies. It is our intelligence that has created this whole city, but we need the help of the human body to feed us and to carry out our orders."). Somno-discs are placed on the foreheads of sleeping travellers which cause them to be hypnotised into perceiving the city as beautiful when it's much the opposite.   

Not much is made of the quest that the travellers are on for Arbitan until the very end when the Doctor decides to split from the others and jump ahead (presumably, in real life, Hartnell was off on holiday and looks pretty happy about it, too). The Doctor must - after the months that they spent together travelling with Marco Polo - have finally developed enough trust in Ian and Barbara to let Susan stay with them. Up until now, the Doctor would have been protective of his grand-daughter and kept her close.

The travellers pick up Altos, Artiban's courier and Sabetha (Arbitan's daughter who had the second key in the form of a medallion... I think; you have to assume this as we're not told anything about the key explicitly) to accompany them. This time, Susan (transmats) goes ahead and the episode ends with her screaming her head off in the... Screaming Forest!

It would have been good to see establishing shots of Morphoton in order to get an idea of where they were. We rely on what the characters tell us and some diegetic sounds of disorder when the influence of the brains is removed. Even a model of the city from distance (both illusory and then as it actually looks). I like the attempts that are made to show things from Barbara's point of view when she is no longer under the influence of the brains - especially the creepy way that Altos comes to speak to her and the way she sees herself and the others. I'm also shocked by the violence she shows in attacking and, presumably, killing the brains. Perhaps the trauma of being captured in the Cave of Five Eyes finally shows itself.

Next episode: The Screaming Jungle

 

 May 1999 - Planetary 02 - Island

Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner and The Drummer investigates an island containing the remains of great kaiju monsters.

 

The Jurassic Park  front cover is quite misleading - so we'll ignore it (though it's quite spectacular). While the issue is engaging in its portrayal of the Mishima-like cult leader and his followers and the appearance of dead famous movie kaiju, the story is quite slight. We're still in the early days of Snow's membership of the Planetary organisation so we're still getting to grips with the organisation and its members. It's obvious that Planetary is a global organisation with offices operating all around the world. Once again, the Planetary team seem to do little other than arrive at a location where they observe something unusual and then retrieve "secret history". At this point in the series, they aren't active protagonists. Much of the early scenes involving the Planetary team are used to restate their characters. The Drummer - once again! - sits out most of the issue. Snow and Wagner show off some of their powers.

The issue in detail

There's no statement of how much time has passed since the events of issue #1 though, from Snow's comments on page 12, he's still quite new to Planetary. This issue begins with the arrival of a small boat on an island somewhere cold. A group of Japanese men disembark. The leader, wearing a hachimaki bearing the symbol of the red rising sun makes what seems to be a joke about how cold it is. The leader, Ryu, insists on being referred to as "Master Storyteller" and that his novels are now to be considered as "scripture". The Master Storyteller locates the setting: an island between Japan and Siberian Russia. He says that he claims the island on behalf of Japan. The arrival of the Master Storyteller and his followers appears to be a rite before they attempt a coup (involving taking cocaine and storming the Japanese parliament). They climb a small mountain and see the remains of a gigantic flying kaiju in the valley below. The kaiju seems based on Mothra. Ryu - the Master Storyteller - is likely to be based on the novelist Yukio Mishima, who attempted a coup in 1967 before committing seppuku.

 

• In Tokyo, the Planetary team are let into their Japanese office and are welcomed by a punk-looking Shinya Fekuda, the Tokyo station chef (who Jakita Wagner gives a friendly kiss). Elijah Snow speaks Japanese and says that he learned to speak the language in 1925. Fekuda reveals that he has summoned them because of Zero Island. He says: Zero Island is off-limits and contested territory; Jakita Wagner has been there before; and the "mildly infamous" novelist and his five acolytes are on the island and must not be allowed to discover what is on the island (oops, too late!). Drummer - dramatically (with the aid of a polaroid-type camera photo stuck to his head) - tells Snow that the island contains monsters.

  
  
  
  
• 
  

  Meanwhile the Master Storyteller and his followers see the skeletal remains of a King Ghidorah-like kaiju embedded in rock. The Master Storyteller says that they are in Hell and takes a pistol out of his pocket.

•  

  Onboard the helicopter travelling to Island Zero, Snow reminds the reader that he is employed by Planetary and being paid a million dollars. Snow smokes a cigarette. He says that he smokes every couple of years and that he knows that Jakita Wagner does this - but doesn't reveal how he knows. Drummer is cold but Snow says that he's unaffected by the cold. Wagner shows Snow the corpse of the flying kaiju and tells him that they need to prevent Ryu and his followers seeing anything else. Snow is startled by the sight of the kaiju.

•  

  Meanwhle Ryu stands inside the remains of a Godzlla-type kaiju. Some of the followers are vomiting and one, Jun, complains of the stench. Ryu declares that the remains are "holy". When Jun challenges Ryu, the Master Storyteller rants and, at gunpoint, insists that his followers eat the rotting flesh of the kaju. Wagner sees what's happening from far off. Snow can't which indicates one of her abilities is enhanced vision. Jun continues to disagree with Ryu and the Master Storyteller shoots Jun's head off. Wagner runs at great speed (another power) to catch up with the men.

•  

  Ryu declares they will eat the kaiju's flesh for dinner and reveals that he ate the flesh of his girlfriend in a sex club in Osaka in 1989. A group of soldiers with guns (later we see they wear USA, Japan and Russian badges) arrive and tell Ryu that he will not be able to leave the island (alive). Ryu shoots a bag containing nerve gas and it kills them all.

• Wagner runs from the gas cloud and warns Snow that the cloud is blowing towards him. Snow behaves cooly and uses his power (of "heat subtraction") to freeze the gas. Wagner says that the Fourth man didn't tell her about Snow's abilities. (She seems fine with not knowing things.)

•  

  Wagner reveals to Snow the history of the island:

  • • The monsters on Zero Island appeared the day after Hiroshima (7th August 1945).
  • • She speculates about what actually caused the monsters (mutagen test, door from parallel Earth, alien).
  • • By 1950, the island was filled with giant monsters. The monsters never left the island or bred.
  • • The monsters died off in the 1970s.
  • • A small guard were stationed on the island to protect its secrets.
•  

  Zero Island is a stand-in for Monster Island from the Toho Godzilla series and the giant creatures are clear analogues of famous kaiju. Their appearance in after Hiroshima and dying-out in the 1970s follows the rise and decline of the Japanese monster movies.
  

   

  Wagner plans to remove whatever secret information is on the base on the island before replacement guards are dispatched. They see a flying kaiju - Rodan - which both Snow and Wagner find awesome. It's a Jurassic Park ending that also infers the continuation of kaiju cinema.
  

   

  Questions and Mysteries
  

 

• • What was Snow doing in Japan in 1925?
  • How does Snow know things about Jakita Wagner?
  • Why didn't the Fourth Man explain Snow's abilities to Wagner and Drummer?
  • What was Wagner doing on Zero Island?
  • Why does Drummer so obviously avoiding frontline activities and waits in the helicopter?
  • How did the kaiju actually come to Zero Island - is it connected to the operation of the "quantum brain" from issue #1?
    

Star Wars - The Han Solo Trilogy (1997-1998)

 Star Wars - The Han Solo Trilogy (1997-1998)

The Han Solo Trilogy consists of three novels first published between 1997-1998 by A.C. Crispin. They are well-regarded by fans and cover some of the same ground as the Solo movie.

In The Paradise Snare (1997), nineteen-year-old Han Solo escapes from the control of villainous Garris Shrike who found him on Corellia as a street urchin and used him in scams. Solo is cared for by an older female wookiee called Dewlanna. Solo goes on to be hired to transport spice by the priests of the planet Ylesia. Here he meets Bria Tharen, another Corellian, with whom he falls in love - but loses. A great deal of the novel involves Solo turning against the priests and incurring a bounty on his head. Solo has cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance and graduates from the Imperial Academy as a pilot. This all takes place over a period of five months.

At the start of The Hutt Gambit (1997), Solo has been discharged from the Imperial Navy and Chewbacca the Wookiee has sworn a life-debt to him. Solo and Chewbacca travel to Nar Shaddaa, the Smugglers' Moon where he operates as a smuggler - eventually being hired by Jabba the Hutt and Jiliac the Hutt to smuggle spice. It is at this point that Solo makes the Kessel Run. The novel follows Solo's adventures involving the Hutts and encountering both Boba Fett and Lando Calrissian. There's a great deal of gangster to and fro, a re-encounter with is first love, Bria Tharen, and a sub-plot involving the Imperials (at one point Solo sees Darth Vader!).

After a gap - supposedly in which the 1979-80 Han Solo Adventures by Brian Daley take place - in Rebel Dawn (1998) Solo wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian in a sabbacc game on Bespin. Chewbacca gets married on his homeworld of Kashyyyk. Solo meets Bria Tharen, who now s part of the Rebel Alliance and planning an attack on the slave colonies of Ylesia. This adventure ends up with Tharen double-crossing Solo and Lando punching him. Solo and Chewbacca return to working for Jabba and loses a shipment of spice. Bria Tharen goes on to be involved in actions that transmit the plans for the Death Star to Princess Leia - and is killed. On Tatooine, Solo encounters Dash Rendar from Shadows of the Empire as well as Boba Fett (who informs Solo of the death of Bria Tharen and that Greedo is looking for him and might try to kill him). At the end of the novel, Solo meets Ben Kenobi and Luke Skywalker in a Mos Eisley cantina.

While there's a lot to enjoy about The Han Solo Trilogy, it isn't part of my reconstructed timeline. This is for the following reasons:

• We have an unnecessary origin story for Han Solo in The Paradise Snare. Solo is better having a shadowy past.
• Important background references are depicted. For instance, the Kessel Run. It's not possible to describe or show what the Kessel Run is without disappointment. Similarly, we witness the scenes where Solo wins the Millennium Falcon from Lando, Lando's punch, etc - for some reason we don't see Chewbacca's first encounter with Han Solo.
  
• There are too many coincidences that feel contrived and awkward: Boba Fett, Darth Vader, Bria Tharen involved in stealing the Death Star plans.
• There are awkward elements like the marriage of Chewbacca to Malla - presumably to tie into The Star Wars Holiday Special.

Saturday 11th April 1964 - Doctor Who - The Sea of Death

 "Yes, and all our knowledge culminated in the manufacture of this. At the time, it was called the Conscience of Marinus. Marinus, that is the name of our planet. At first, this machine was simply a judge and jury that was never wrong, and unfair. And then we added to it, improved on it, made it more and more sophisticated so that finally it became possible to radiate its power and influence the minds of men throughout the planet. They no longer had to decide what was wrong or right. The machine decided for them."

"Who stabbed the Voord?" rather than "What's happened to Barbara?" is what I was asking at the end of this episode. This is our second alien planet adventure after Skaro and Marinus, a planet with an acid sea, and beaches of glass with crystalline rocks makes an engaging setting, though eerily similar to the start of The Dead Planet. As does the immense, foreboding building at the centre of the island. (I'm going to say that the miniatures used in this episode look rubbish and then pass quickly on.)

The Voord are the series second alien race and very different from the robot-like daleks. arrive at the island in a sea of acid in torpedo-like vehicles. They are human-like, clad in acid-proof diving suits with large helmets sporting an antenna. In this episode we don't see they out of the diving suits so we have no idea whether they are human or - as I suspect - insect-like creatures. Though Arbitan does refer to Yartek, the leader of the Voords as a man. Although they travel together in a group to the island, the Voord split up and try to gain access to the building. We find out later it's because they want access to the "Conscience" a machine at the heart of the building that, when working, controls the minds of everyone on Marinus.

Was it the ostensibly peaceful Arbitan who killed the Voord? Doesn't he pretend NOT to see Susan when he's weirdly wandering the corridors.

There's the usual splitting up, getting lost/captured and being held captive. The travellers encounter the monk-like Arbitan who shows them the Conscience and implores them to begin a quest on his behalf to recover the missing parts of the Conscience so it can operate once more. (Sounds like a video game to me.) When the travellers refuse, Arbitan traps the TARDIS inside a force field and demands that they undertake the quest in order to be allowed to leave Marinus. It's interesting that regaining access to the TARDIS becomes dominant in this adventure. Very much like Marco Polo. (I wonder how many "future" early adventures will do the same?) I'm not sure I trust Arbtan and - yes, of course - his mention of a missing daughter presumably is to set up a meeting in a future episode,

Arbitan provides the travellers with a wrist-worn portable transmat (though just referred to an a "device" onscreen) and the cepisode's cliffhanger comes when Barbara travels using the device and, when the others appear, has disappeared.

I guess that by the time The Keys of Marinus was written and went into production, the BBC knew that they had a hit show on their hands and wanted to re-capture some of the excitement of the Doctor's encounter with the daleks. I enjoyed this (with the caveat that much of my enjoyment with the episode came from it not being a reconsctruction from telesnaps.)

So... who did stab that Voord?

Next episode: The Velvet Web.

Saturday 4th April 1964 - Assassin at Peking

"But what is the truth? I wonder where they are now? The past or the future?"

It's all a little hectic and rushed.

Bah! The sword fight between Tegana and Ian which looked like it would happen at the end of last episode is broken up by the arrival of Ling-Tau and the Khan's soldiers. We have to wait to the end of this episode to see a fight between Tegana and Marco Polo.

It's the role of the Doctor that is interesting in this episode. We see him being manipulative and cunning but without any of the sinister, malicious edge evident in earlier stories - or even the bad-temper he showed at the start of this adventure. When he loses the game of backgammon to the Khan he is sanguine about the loss of the TARDIS and accepts defeat with a smile (I wonder, too, whether he allowed the Khan to beat him - or, alternatively, that the Khan allowed the Doctor to amount sizeable winnings in order to legitimately win the TARDIS from him). The Khan is a useful character as he displays many of the Doctor's qualities. I like the Khan a great deal: he has a sense of humour, intelligence and much self-knowledge. His cheerful reply to Polo's apology for giving the Doctor they key to the TARDIS at the end - "If you hadn't, the old man would have won it at backgammon" - shows his wisdom and grace which was distinct from his declarations about "humbling" his enemies.

This final episode is a rushed series of scenes that cover old ground - Tegana's treachery, Polo's longing to go home, Polo's trust in the Doctor and his companions, Ping-Chu's enforced marriage - that are brought to a climax in the assassination attempt on the Khan (the first we have heard of this plan) and the duel between Tegana and Polo. In the confusion at the end, the companions escape in the TARDIS.

There's an odd, caustic humour evident in this episode shown especially in the scene where the Khan tells Ping-Chu: "Your beloved husband-to-be, so anxious to be worthy of your love, drank a potion of quicksilver and sulphur, the elixir of life and eternal youth, and expired." For Ping-Chu's situation to be resolved off-screen so suddenly probably has more to do with the realisation the writer had that there was no more time in which to properly resolve this story thread.

I 've mixed feelings about this story and happy to be moving on to a new adventure. While there are scenes that I like, I haven't enjoyed it as a whole adventure. Maybe seven episodes is too long. My opinion hasn't been helped by watching the episodes as Loose Cannon reconstructions. Loose Cannon have done a marvellous job with recreating episodes out of photos and audio - seen especially in the reconstruction of the sword fight between Tegana and Polo - but I feel that the strengths of this story were in the sets and costumes plus the epic sense of journey across a vast distance. I'm reading the Target novelisation of Marco Polo at the moment and I'm enjoying that mode of experiencing this adventure far more. I'm more than willing to accept that I'm just wrong about this.

Marco Polo has been held in high esteem by long-time fans of the show. John Peel described it as "Gorgeous, fast, tense, funny and filled with character and feel for the period - Marco Polo is one of the true classics of television."

Next episode: The Sea of Death.

Saturday 28th March 1964 - Doctor Who - Mighty Kublai Khan

"You are asking me to believe that your caravan can defy the passage of the sun? Move not merely from one place to another, but from today into tomorrow, today into yesterday? No, Ian. That I cannot accept."

More travelling, more female characters wandering off into danger alone, more of Tegana's treachery.

An attempted escape by the Doctor and his companions is foiled once again and the episode considers how a desire to get home is a motivator for most of the characters: for the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara the TARDIS is their home (or way home), for Marco Polo the gift of the TARDIS is a means of escaping his service to the Khan and returning home to Venice and, now, Ping-Chu's attempted escape from an arranged marriage by journey home to Samarkand.

Ian returns to Cheng-Ting to retrieve Ping-Chu. She implores him not to take her back and I found myself wondering whether Ian would actually do so (fortunately he's beset by the issue of the stolen TARDIS).  Has Ian's idealism been tempered by the months of travelling across Cathay and failed attempts at escape? Would he actually hand Ping-Chu over to be forced into an arranged marriage. Elsewhere in the episode, Barbara talks about trusting Ian - but I'm not so sure. We see a lot of scenes in which Marco Polo and Ian show a similarity in situation and outlook. One difference is clearly noted by Polo when he says "What is important is the fact that you are capable of lying".

After so many episodes, the travellers FINALLY arrive at their destination: the summer palace of the Khan. All the pomp and ceremony of the audience with the Khan becomes bathos when the Doctor is unable to kowtow because of his painful back (from riding a horse) and the small, hobbling Khan who suffers from gout. The Khan takes a liking to the Doctor - a fellow elderly man suffering with pain - and we have the start of a comic double-act which is emphasised by the off-camera groans that Hartnell and Martin Miller (Kublai Khan) make. Helpfully, Susan laughs to ensure that the viewers at home know this is intentionally funny.

Ian's and Ping-Chu's side-quest to retrieve the TARDIS is quickly resolved when they discovers the eye-patched, Kuiji at campfire on the Karakorum Road and come face-to-face with a sword-wielding Tegana. Having the companions on their own, joining other characters in adventures away from the Doctor is something I'd like to see more.

The climax of this episode is great: Tegana's FINALLY been definitively exposed as a villain and we're going to FINALLY see a fight between him and Ian.

Next episode: Assassin at Peking

April 1999 - Planetary 01 - All Over The World

April 1999 - Planetary #1 - All Over The World

Planetary recruit Elijah Snow and investigate a cave system in the Adirondacks where they find Doc Brass, a member of a secret society of superheroes and a quantum computer that creates universes.

Pacing is fast. Four pages in and Elijah Snow has been recruited by Jakita Wagner and helicoptered out of the desert he'd been living in for 10 years. Five pages later and the Planetary team are flying to the Adirondack Mountains to investigate a cave complex. Four pages later they've found a bizarre trophy room and encountered Doc Brass and a quantum computer in the form of a giant (holographic?) snowflake. Along the way we find out just enough about each of the characters to establish them and a series of mysteries that encouraged

As straightforward as it is, this is compressed storytelling. Ellis' analogy of it being like a 3-minute pop song is apt. It's dizzying by the time you finish the issue - but, if you step back and think about what has happened, all that takes place is a series of movements between places: 1) desert diner to 2) Planetary HQ (in New York?) to 3) a cave system in the Adirondacks. The Planetary team don't actually do very much and the second half of the issue is Doc Brass recounting what happened in the 1940s. Nevertheless, this is a fantastic first issue. 

The issue in detail

Jakita Wagner finds Elijah Snow in a desert diner. Whenever he eats there, the air conditioning malfunctions. Wagner reveals that she knows that Snow is 100 years old and that he "haunted" the 20th Century. For some reason Snow has spent 10 years in the desert. Wagner has a job for Snow that will pay $1 million for the rest of his life and that the organisation she works for will wipe any remaining records of Snow. Wagner wants "the exclusive use of you. Your talents. Your memories. Your experience. The helicopter that transports Wagner and Snow has the Planetary logo pointed on the side.

Two days later in the Planetary HQ, Snow is cleaned up. Wagner tells him that the organisation, Planetary - or more precisely a mysterious "Fourth Man" - pays for everything. Planetary is always a three-person team and the Fourth Man funds everything "without question". Wagner says - ominously - that they haven't yet worked out what happened to the last Third Man

Snow is introduced to The Drummer. Visually this team is white (Snow), black (Wagner) and now the multicolour of The Drummer. He's carrying drumsticks and he's the youthful rocker of the team. The Drummer "talks to machines" and "Machines do as he says". As a means of testing Snow, The Drummer throws a bottle of Whak Cola at him - who catches it without looking.

The Drummer has discovered a man-made cave complex in the Adirondack Mountains in Northeastern New York. The entrance to the caves is a hologram. The Drummer reminds Wagner that they had discovered from diaries stolen from a KGB vault that the Adirondacks was the last "destination" of Doc Brass. (This is clever storytelling and cuts down the time needed when Doc Brass is introduced.)

Planetary fly to the Adirondacks in three helicopters. (Obviously the organisation is bigger than the three main characters.) Wagner tells Snow what she knows about Brass: he was born on 1st January 1900 (like Snow and others) and disappeared in 1945.

WAGNER: By the Thirties, he was your genuine Renaissance man; great scientist, gifted inventor, something of a visionary... We'd never heard of Brass until we read the books. Turns out Brass was also an adventurer. Also, there's evidence that he'd retarded his own aging, and possibly no longer needed to eat.

For some reason, Snow is annoyed by Wagner's explanation (other than he just doesn't get on with other people - he does call The Drummer "you little bastard"). The Drummer warns Snow not to annoy her as she's physically powerful.

Wager jumps out of the helicopter - presumably to show off her physical power. Snow asks Wagner how long Planetary had existed and she says she has no idea - she joined four years ago. Wagner says that she's a member of Planetary because she gets bored easily and Planetary stops that.

Inside the mountain Wagner and Snow walk through smashed glass cases containing the remains or recreations:

•    the skeleton of The Vulcania Raven God
•    The Hull of the Charnel Ship
•    Vestments of the Black Crow King
•    a group of five figures called The Murder Colonels

Wagner suggests this is a trophy room.

In another cavern they find Doc Brass still alive. (Brass is a Doc Savage analogue.) His legs are withered and broken. There's also the holographic projection of the multiverse. Brass says that he stopped needing sleep and food in 1942, stopped ageing in 1943 and learned to close wounds in 1944. Brass recounts that the base had been built in the mid-1930s as a headquarters for the organisation he belonged to. We see his arrival at a meeting. The characters around the table (left to right):

•    Hark (a Fu Manchu analogue)
•    Jimmy (a Spirit analogue)
•    The Aviator (an ace-pilot/spy; G-8?)
•    Edison (a Flash Gordon analogue?)
•    Lord Blackstock (a Tarzan analogue)
•    The Dark Millionaire (a Shadow/Green Hornet analogue)

Edison and Brass had build the others "simple" electronic computers. Now they have built "an extrapolation of the computer", described as a "quantum brain" by Hark:

HARK: A multitude of possible alternatives, none of them quite real. All of them contributing towards the actual reality... This quantum brain would perform each calculation across universes, each possible answer being processed in a different world -- each alternative universe vanishing, one by one, until the answer made itself real.

The computer reveals the shape of reality describing the multiverse. Hark says that "Each rotation makes a New Earth". The snowflake (hologram?) of the multiverse. As they use the computer is used to generate the snowflake, the calculations cause new universes to "decohere and vanish". Hark says that he could use the computer to create a "corrected version of Earth". Their intention is to save the world. (Here there has to be a pause to consider the moral implications of what they tried to undertake). Brass reveals that the program would work out how to change "geopolitics, psychology, weather systems, the procession of the stars". They wanted to use the computer to end the World War Two in the quickest, least costly way.

When they used the computer it generated universes that came into being, decohered and vanished. A group of superheroes - analogues for the Justice League (Flash, Swamp Thing, Green Lantern, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter) fight Brass and his associates. The fight is brutal and only Brass, terribly wounded survives.

Brass is unable to switch the computer off and has remained in the caves for over 50 years in case any other threats came through. Clearly, the computer is still operating. Snow realises that the room they are in is inside the physical computer that generates the snowflake. At the end, Brass is taken away for medical treatment and Snow and Wagner reflect on their success.

Questions and Mysteries

This issue generates lots to think about:

• Snow is a mystery: he's over 100 and trying to hide from something? Is Snow immortal?
• Why was Snow living in the desert, seemingly reluctantly, for a decade?
  
• Who is the Fourth Man? Why does he fund the investigations of Planetary "without question"?
• What happened to the last "Third Man" before Snow?
• How old is Planetary as an organisation?
• The Drummer doesn't go into the cave complex. Is that because he could affect the quantum brain in some way? (And does that suggest that Planetary knew what they were going to find?)
  
• What was taken away in the third Planetary helicopter? The quantum brain? Something else?
• Brass' associate, Jimmy refers to Chicago as "strange" and Snow echoes this at the end when he says "It's a strange world." Is there a significance?

Saturday 21st March 1964 - Doctor Who - Rider from Shang-tu

"IAN: Marco, I wish I could explain to you how important the Tardis is to us.  
POLO: And I wish I could explain to you, Ian, how important it is to me."

After a couple of episodes with a more purposeful plot, we're back to more travelling. Nothing has altered: the Doctor and his companions are still prisoners, Tegana is still plotting to kill everyone and steal the TARDIS, they are still journeying to meet Kublai Khan.

At the start, Ian alerts Marco Polo to the impending bandit attack and fights bravely which restores some trust in the Doctor and his companions. After more travelling - broken by the arrival of a messenger who has ridden on horseback 300 miles in a single day - the episode ends with an attempt to escape in the TARDIS which results in Susan being captured by Tegana.

There are some moments that add a little (unnecessary?) texture to the episode: a touching scene between Susan and Ping-Chu watching goldfish and an oddly humorous scene involving the inn-keeper, Wang-Lu, who has the TARDIS stored in the stables rather than spoil the gardens.

After a couple of episodes where the Doctor has played an energetic leading role, he's back to sleeping again. Barbara barely says or does anything (maybe she's still traumatised by being held by the mongol bandits in the Cave of 500 Eyes?).

I'm not sure what Susan was doing at the end which caused her to be caught by Tegana. The Loose Cannon telesnaps made it hard to understand why she was wandering around. Was she following Tegana? Hiding from him? (I also wonder if it's because I'm watching a series of stills that I'm prevented from enjoying this story more.)

Next episode: Mighty Kublai Khan.