The Randomiser: The Mysterious Planet
May. 27th, 2019 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatI introduced The Mysterious Planet to Tame Layman in somewhat disparaging terms. Perhaps as a result of this he spent much of the first episode pointing out its good points to me, but by the third episode the discussion had turned to "what went wrong". Because The Mysterious Planet really ought to be much better than it is.
Its problems have sometimes been blamed on the fact that Robert Holmes was ill when he wrote it and died only a few months later. But actually there are flashes of Holmes on good form here - particularly the "double act" of Dibber and Glitz who are entertaining but with enough of an edge that you don't forget they are actually rather unpleasant criminals. The warrior queen Katryka also has a lot of good dialogue and certainly one of the things that went wrong seems to be that Joan Simms is completely bemused by the part rather than relishing in it. The set up is interesting, the world-building has a lot of nice touches, I'm not at all certain that the script is the core of the problem here.
Well, I will qualify that, I don't think the script in terms of events on Ravolox is the problem. I think almost everything to do with the Doctor's trial is dire. It breaks up the action to deliver nothing of real consequence. It makes the Doctor look stupid. It makes the Valeyard look little better. And it makes no sense. Tame layman kept asking why the Valeyard was presenting this as evidence against the Doctor since, contrary to the Valeyard's claims, the events mostly unfolded because Dibber and Glitz were present, not because the Doctor was present. Obviously something like 10 episodes later it is revealed that the whole trial is in part a front to cover up the Doctor's discoveries on Ravolox but even that doesn't make much sense - why present as evidence the events you are trying to cover up?
It also suffers from many of the 1980s problems of over-lighting, variable effects (some great, some good, some poor), and poor performances from some of the supporting cast. But other stories manage to rise above such things. In the end I think its biggest problems are the, in retrospect, poor decision to use a trial framing device for the whole season and one of the few occasions where John Nathan-Turner's desire to cast high profile guest actors back-fired.
Its problems have sometimes been blamed on the fact that Robert Holmes was ill when he wrote it and died only a few months later. But actually there are flashes of Holmes on good form here - particularly the "double act" of Dibber and Glitz who are entertaining but with enough of an edge that you don't forget they are actually rather unpleasant criminals. The warrior queen Katryka also has a lot of good dialogue and certainly one of the things that went wrong seems to be that Joan Simms is completely bemused by the part rather than relishing in it. The set up is interesting, the world-building has a lot of nice touches, I'm not at all certain that the script is the core of the problem here.
Well, I will qualify that, I don't think the script in terms of events on Ravolox is the problem. I think almost everything to do with the Doctor's trial is dire. It breaks up the action to deliver nothing of real consequence. It makes the Doctor look stupid. It makes the Valeyard look little better. And it makes no sense. Tame layman kept asking why the Valeyard was presenting this as evidence against the Doctor since, contrary to the Valeyard's claims, the events mostly unfolded because Dibber and Glitz were present, not because the Doctor was present. Obviously something like 10 episodes later it is revealed that the whole trial is in part a front to cover up the Doctor's discoveries on Ravolox but even that doesn't make much sense - why present as evidence the events you are trying to cover up?
It also suffers from many of the 1980s problems of over-lighting, variable effects (some great, some good, some poor), and poor performances from some of the supporting cast. But other stories manage to rise above such things. In the end I think its biggest problems are the, in retrospect, poor decision to use a trial framing device for the whole season and one of the few occasions where John Nathan-Turner's desire to cast high profile guest actors back-fired.