The Randomizer: The Seeds of Doom
Mar. 2nd, 2014 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatThe randomiser seems to have become fixated upon Tom Baker again. Not that we're really complaining. Like, Robots of Death, this is another of the big classic stories which must inhabit the top 20 Doctor Who stories somewhere, though probably doesn't quite squeak the top five.
"I think we've watched this together before," I mentioned to tame layman as we sat down (he'd just negotiated a "no rewatching Doctor Who stories we've seen in the past 5 years" policy).
"That's OK. It's a good one," he said.
The Seeds of Doom is a tale of a mad plant collector and the alien plant that intends to take over the world. It is an example of Doctor Who at its most shameless aping of the gothic horror genre - complete with country house and organ playing (though, in this case, it is some kind of synthesiser).
Harrison Chase, the main villain, is actually a bit different from a lot of Who villains of the Baker era. He has the standard hand-wave excuse for his actions ("he's mad") however Tony Beckley (or possibly director, Douglas Camfield) choses not to portray him in the standard eye-rolling and scenery chewing style. This makes him appear more dangerous and frightening. He is a long way from the pantomime villain, and yet this is a man who will give you a guided tour of his greenhouse and play you his electronic symphony to plants as a prelude to having you executed. The way Scorby and Hargreaves defer to him, even when his decisions appear unnecessarily self-indulgent also emphasises Chase's absolute power within the grounds of his own home, and makes him seem a far more real threat. The fact that Chase appears even more unhinged and frightening after his moment of communion with the krynoid is definitely a testament to the combination of acting, script and direction. Chase's gloves are an interesting touch, never commented upon within the story. They are clearly intended to evoke Chase's distaste for humanity but, of course, they also reference OCD. One hopes that the modern show would be more careful about such a direct link between an actual condition and a villain, but one rather suspects not.
One can't really discuss The Seeds of Doom without at least a nod to Sylvia Coleridge's Amelia Ducat, who effectively steals every scene she is in. She even upstages Tom Baker, though this early in his run, his acting is more restrained than it was later to become.
The Seeds of Doom is also famously more or less two stories run into one. We have two krynoid pods, the first of which blooms in the Antarctic before the second is brought back to Chases's manor. The antarctic sections are more or less entirely separate with John Challis' Scorby taking the role of the main villain, before becoming the henchman in the later episodes. Events proceed at a more rapid pace, with the progression from finding the pod, to infection, to the escape of the krynoid, and finally the death of the remaining base staff all occurring in quick succession. That said, tame layman did have time to muse upon whether he, as a zoologist, would be able to amputate an arm in extremes (answer, yes, apparently - but only because he's spent a lot of time moonlighting as an anatomist). The antarctic sections are let down a little by rather poor snow effects, and clearly very little idea about the actual effects of antarctic temperatures on the part of the production team. However, it does form an effective prelude to the main story.
I was interested to note, on checking Howe and Walker's Television Companion for this story that they claim the Doctor plays no real role in events. That seems an odd claim to me. At the very least, he is instrumental in chivvying authority into action and alerting them in a timely fashion to the nature and gravity of the threat. This is the final story in which the Doctor is acting as UNIT's scientific advisor. It is a strangely low-key affair in that regard, featuring none of the regular UNIT cast that had been established over the previous six years. UNIT functions as an effective mechanism for inserting the Doctor into the action, and for smoothing his interactions with the Antarctic base staff and the powers that be in the UK, and was occasionally used to that effect in later stories. More recently, of course, telepathic paper seems to have taken on that role.
This is, deservedly, another classic Doctor Who story. It rises above its many potential limitations (e.g., the fact that many effects are clearly created by stage hands shaking pot plants) to tell a gripping story with a compelling central villain that never loses sight of the gothic horror roots.
"I think we've watched this together before," I mentioned to tame layman as we sat down (he'd just negotiated a "no rewatching Doctor Who stories we've seen in the past 5 years" policy).
"That's OK. It's a good one," he said.
The Seeds of Doom is a tale of a mad plant collector and the alien plant that intends to take over the world. It is an example of Doctor Who at its most shameless aping of the gothic horror genre - complete with country house and organ playing (though, in this case, it is some kind of synthesiser).
Harrison Chase, the main villain, is actually a bit different from a lot of Who villains of the Baker era. He has the standard hand-wave excuse for his actions ("he's mad") however Tony Beckley (or possibly director, Douglas Camfield) choses not to portray him in the standard eye-rolling and scenery chewing style. This makes him appear more dangerous and frightening. He is a long way from the pantomime villain, and yet this is a man who will give you a guided tour of his greenhouse and play you his electronic symphony to plants as a prelude to having you executed. The way Scorby and Hargreaves defer to him, even when his decisions appear unnecessarily self-indulgent also emphasises Chase's absolute power within the grounds of his own home, and makes him seem a far more real threat. The fact that Chase appears even more unhinged and frightening after his moment of communion with the krynoid is definitely a testament to the combination of acting, script and direction. Chase's gloves are an interesting touch, never commented upon within the story. They are clearly intended to evoke Chase's distaste for humanity but, of course, they also reference OCD. One hopes that the modern show would be more careful about such a direct link between an actual condition and a villain, but one rather suspects not.
One can't really discuss The Seeds of Doom without at least a nod to Sylvia Coleridge's Amelia Ducat, who effectively steals every scene she is in. She even upstages Tom Baker, though this early in his run, his acting is more restrained than it was later to become.
The Seeds of Doom is also famously more or less two stories run into one. We have two krynoid pods, the first of which blooms in the Antarctic before the second is brought back to Chases's manor. The antarctic sections are more or less entirely separate with John Challis' Scorby taking the role of the main villain, before becoming the henchman in the later episodes. Events proceed at a more rapid pace, with the progression from finding the pod, to infection, to the escape of the krynoid, and finally the death of the remaining base staff all occurring in quick succession. That said, tame layman did have time to muse upon whether he, as a zoologist, would be able to amputate an arm in extremes (answer, yes, apparently - but only because he's spent a lot of time moonlighting as an anatomist). The antarctic sections are let down a little by rather poor snow effects, and clearly very little idea about the actual effects of antarctic temperatures on the part of the production team. However, it does form an effective prelude to the main story.
I was interested to note, on checking Howe and Walker's Television Companion for this story that they claim the Doctor plays no real role in events. That seems an odd claim to me. At the very least, he is instrumental in chivvying authority into action and alerting them in a timely fashion to the nature and gravity of the threat. This is the final story in which the Doctor is acting as UNIT's scientific advisor. It is a strangely low-key affair in that regard, featuring none of the regular UNIT cast that had been established over the previous six years. UNIT functions as an effective mechanism for inserting the Doctor into the action, and for smoothing his interactions with the Antarctic base staff and the powers that be in the UK, and was occasionally used to that effect in later stories. More recently, of course, telepathic paper seems to have taken on that role.
This is, deservedly, another classic Doctor Who story. It rises above its many potential limitations (e.g., the fact that many effects are clearly created by stage hands shaking pot plants) to tell a gripping story with a compelling central villain that never loses sight of the gothic horror roots.