From Newsgroup: rec.arts.drwho
Not as bad as I thought it was originally.
The main problems with this story include primarily the 2 or 3 minute
long opening sequence with the camera panning across a line of bathing
huts along a bleak and deserted Brighton Beach until it reaches the
Doctor asleep snoring on a deckchair and Romana holding a discussion
with K9.
I can see why the ratings immediately fell after this, though The
Leisure Hive was mostly a very decent story.
The rot in production which had set in with The Horns of Nimon, which
did not affect Shada, affects The Leisure Hive too.
Who is going to endure a pointless and boring 3 minute panning shot with nothing happening to get to the action, which there is little of?
It was already bad enough with the title sequence being changed, the
theme music being changed to a new arrangement, and the Doctor being
given a new burgundy costume which wasn't as good as the original fourth Doctor outfit, and you have to endure this vein attempt to be artistic?
More vein attempts at artistic directing follow throughout the
production with the use of dark lighting, which, since the cameras of
the time had insufficient dynamic range, make it impossible to see any contrast in any of the shots. Unlike most people, I didn't have any
problem seeing what was happening in episode 3 of season 8 of Game of
Thrones which was all darkly lit. My monitor set to Dynamic Contrast
mode was able to handle it. With this episode there wasn't anything
there for it to do anything with.
On top of the terrible lighting the episodes were padded out with over
long establishing shots setting up each scene and dialogue and character interaction which could have been more tightly cut or replaced with choreographed action sequences.
Due to budget restraints the scripts contained less story material to be filmed, compared to previous series, and John Nathan-Turner obviously
decided to pad them out with over long panning and tracking shots.
Scenes which could have created or set up a better air of mystery were
not present.
The costumes for the monsters and aliens looked good enough, but the
sets, props, scenery, and effects looked 1980s BBC instead of trying to
look authentic and timeless.
The scene at the end with the baby, which was obviously a doll, crying
its head off while the other characters were speaking, also made it
difficult to make out what they were saying.
So here is the plot.
The indigenous population of planet of Argolis has almost completely
been wiped out after it started a war against the Foamasi forty years
earlier. All but one of the survivors have almost reached the end of
their lifespans and are dying one by one.
The atmosphere of the planet is completely radioactive and the Alglins
have built a huge dome to keep the radioactive air and dust from coming
in. To revive the planet's economy, which unlike that of the Foamasi has collapsed, the Company has turned to tourism from other planets
including Earth, using the interior of the dome, the Leisure Hive, to
carry out leisure activities, sports, and games.
In order to bring in more tourists experiments have been carried out
over in tachyonics, with the help of Earth scientists, led by Hardin, to enable theatrical illusions and anti-gravity sports to be performed, but
all of the promotional material is a fraudulent facade created by the
humans using special effects, since the Tachyon Recreation Generator is functionally incomplete.
The Doctor and Romana arrive on the planet after a trip to Brington
Beach which is in the midst of a winter storm since the Doctor has
arrived at the wrong time for the opening of Brighton Pavilion. K9 short circuits after going into the water to fetch a beach ball for Romana and Romana blames the Doctor for it despite K9 obeying her orders to bring
the ball back to her.
The Doctor decides to take them to the Leisure Hive on Argolis and gets
caught up in Company politics.
A group of humans have made a proposition to the Company to sell Argolis
to the West Lodge, comprising of a group of dissident Foamasi, in order
to stave off bankruptcy. This is opposed by Pangol the only Argolin
still in his youth and apparently the son of the new Argolin leader Mena
after her predecessor reached the end of his life.
While the Doctor is questioned after he and Romana cannot prove that
they arrived on the planet legally, Pangol being an ultra nationalist,
Romana is instructed to help the Earth scientist Hardin, who developed
the Tachyon Recreation Generator to get it working properly.
It turns out that the Argolins are now all sterile because of the war
and Pangol their only offspring is actually a clone, the only one to
survive out of a thousand or so experiments.
To try and reverse their ageing and extend their lives the Arglins
intend to use the The Tachyon Recreation Generator to de-age themselves,
thus instead of recreation it will be used for re-creation, the
re-creation of their species.
Someone is strangled using the Doctor's scarf and the Doctor is put on
trial for murder and declared guilty by Pangol before he has even had
the chance to defend himself.
In lieu of his execution Pangol forces the Doctor to be used as a
guinea-pig in the Tachyon Recreation Generator after Romana manges to
get it to stop and then reverse the flow of time, which would enable the Doctor to be de-aged by up to 20 years. But after Romana discovers that
her initial experiment became unstable and failed, and the generator is
also interfered with by a malevolent agent, it causes the Doctor to age
by 500 years before she can stop it.
The now 1200 year old Doctor and Romana are then placed under
confinement and only allowed to roam to certain locations by being
forced to wear an electronic collar.
The Earth scientist developing the generators needs their help to
complete his machine so, in defiance of the Argolins, removes the
collars and frees the Doctor and Romana to aid him.
After being approached by a Foamasi government agent that has entered
the Leisure Hive from the planet's surface, since Foamasi being
reptilian are immune to the radiation, the Doctor and Romana, along with Hardin, discover that the humans that were attempting to buy the planet
on behalf of the West Lodge are actually masked Foamasi from the West
Lodge themselves, who the Foamasi government agent unmasks and arrests.
Pangol in defiance of his mother sends all the Foamasi back to their
space ship which he then blows up as it takes off.
He then takes the helmet of the Argolin leader who started the war with
the Foamasi and enters the Tachyon Recreation Generator, while the
Doctor is still in there making modification, and attempts to use it to
make multiple copies of himself.
Pangol and the helmeted copies of Pangol walk out of the machine one by
one and a group of them take hold of Romana and drag her away.
More copies of Pangol walk out of the generator to form a new army and
restart the war with the Foamasi.
Meanwhile one of the helmeted copies holding Romana takes his helmet off
and it turns out the be the Doctor. Then it vanishes.
At the machine itself the copies it produces also start vanishing.
Another copy holding Romana reveals its face and it's the face of the
Doctor again and then it vanishes. All the copies do the same and vanish because they are unstable, except one, which turns out to be the
original Doctor who has also been de-aged by 500 years.
Pangol's mother Mena lies dying on the floor of her office and she is
picked up and carried by the Earth scientist Hardin and placed into the Tachyon Recreation Generator, to Pangol's annoyance, in order to
rejuvenate her.
Pangol finding out that all of his copies are actually copies of the
Doctor, because the machine operates on a First In First Out or FIFO
basis according to Romana, enters the machine to make new copies, but
the Doctor has set it to de-age rather than to make copies, and Pangol's mother emerges de-aged carrying Pangol who is now a baby.
It turns out that the Foamasi government agent and his subordinates
didn't enter the ship which blew up, but it was the renegade members of
the West Lodge who had escaped and commandeered it, giving them just
deserts for their crimes, according to the Foamasi government agent who appears in the auditorium.
The Foamasi government agent then declares that he has matters to
discuss with Mena and the Argolin leaders and the Doctor and Romana
return to the TARDIS and it dematerialises.
Tom Baker was good as always. I still prefer Mary Tamm as Romana
compared to Lalla Ward. John Leeson is the best K9. In general all the performances were good up until the mess the audio department made with
the crying baby.
There was too much electronic incidental music which used to pad out the episodes rather than filling the time with more story exposition.
The new script editor Christopher H. Bidmead has cut the humour of the previous series down to barely anything and replaced it with
pseud-scientific technobabble such as tachyons, which even if they did
exist would not have any of the properties to do anything suggested in
this story, but since no one has ever detected on you can get away with
making such claims. Unfortunately contrary to the claims made in the
script reptiles are not immune to radiation. If you're going to make scientific claims then make sure they are correct or about something
which is purely theoretical which cannot be empirically disproven.
9/10
--
The True Doctor
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCngrZwoS0n21IRcXpKO79Lw
"To be woke is to be uninformed which is exactly the opposite of what it stands for." --William Shatner
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