We all have our favorite Doctor Who stories that we love and look forward to rewatching, knowing that it's going to be a perfect experience. We start to watch them and the love begins to flow from the very first frame. "Earthshock" is one of those stories for me. I'm not sure when I last watched "Earthshock", but it was as familiar as if I'd watched it last week. At the same time, I remember so well the first time I watched it in the early 80s on PBS -- it was the first time Doctor Who made me cry.
Harry -
It's been a few years since I watched "Earthshock", but I know what you mean. So often with a Doctor Who story, we find ourselves having to slog through several scenes of filler and pointless padding. They got the pacing perfect with this one. The whole story hurtles along with barely a pause, with the Doctor and his friends experiencing ever-increasing levels of tension until the final terrible moment, and the silence that follows.
Sarah -
It's all so tight, isn't it? Eric Saward's script keeps the story moving along and Peter Grimwade's direction is spot-on.
Speaking of Grimwade, on the commentary track, the cast discusses how difficult he was to work with. He would walk around the set doing that director-making-a-box-with-his-hands-and-looking-through-it thing. He'd grab actors and physically move them to where he wanted them. And, counter to BBC tradition, he would direct from the floor and not the control room. Still, it worked here.
Back to the story, I love that we don't even see the TARDIS Crew until several scenes in.
Harry -
Very long opening sequence. It breaks the Season 19 mold of having each story start with our lead characters jumping right into things. Lovely wide quarry there.
Sarah -
We start with a group of soldiers climbing up a rope with Professor Kyle, whose entire team disappeared while they were excavating a system of caves for fossil remains. The soldiers are led by the Lieutenant Scott, who appears to be quite the man of action.
Harry -
Dishy!
Sarah -
Janet Fielding keeps calling him butch on the commentary. She seems a bit preoccupied by him, in fact.
Harry -
My eyes tended to follow him.
Sarah -
When the missing scientists don't show up on their scanner, Scott decides it's time to investigate the caves, with Professor Kyle going along to guide them. The caves scenes are so effective that they make me claustrophobic every time I see them. The tension is so palpable that I kept holding my breath.
Harry -
When we finally get to the TARDIS, there's more turmoil afoot, only this time it's sparked by Adric. Listless and frustrated at bearing the brunt of everyone's taunts, he wants to go home. The Doctor immediately rejects the idea of returning to E-Space. Tensions flare and another row ensues. The TARDIS lands and the Doctor skulks outside, with Tegan and Nyssa eventually following.
Sarah -
Ah, teenagers. We even get a glimpse of Adric's room. How adorable is it that he has a space chart up on the wall?
Harry -
It was such a sad opening to what becomes one of Adric's best stories, as he and the Doctor eventually make up and spend most of the adventure side by side.
Sarah -
He finally gets something to do, while Nyssa ends up spending most of the story tucked away in the TARDIS.
Harry -
This was definitely a "holiday" story for Nyssa. She literally had nothing to do.
It turns out the TARDIS has landed in the same caves that are being investigated by Scott and his party. Soon enough, the two groups meet up.
Sarah -
And, to the surprise of exactly no one, the TARDIS crew is accused of having killed the scientists.
Harry -
All the while, two dark and silent figures creep through the caves mysteriously.
Sarah -
How cool are the androids?
Harry -
Silent, faceless, all-black androids that shoot lasers out of their hands? Pretty damn cool!
There are several minutes of back and forth shooting, with the Doctor and friends pinned down with Scott and his team. The androids' controllers suddenly lock onto the Doctor. It's the Cybermen!
Sarah -
It's almost hard believe the series went seven years without a Cyberman story. John Nathan-Turner was so anxious about keeping their appearance a secret that he passed on a Radio Times cover for "Earthshock". My favorite aspect of the introduction of the Cybermen in Earthshock is seeing the clips of their previous encounters with the Doctor. I'm fairly certain these would have been my first glimpses of Hartnell and Troughton in action!
Harry -
I like that they continued with the "flash back to past Doctors" thing in the new series. Reinforces the continuity of it all.
Sarah -
It always makes me happy.
Harry -
But this is a very different group of Cybermen. They are aggressive, vengeful, dare I say emotional? They order the androids to destroy the Doctor, but Scott's team manages to destroy the androids instead.
Sarah -
They're certainly more cunning than their previous incarnations.
Harry -
Investigating what it was that the androids were protecting, an opened hatch reveals a bomb placed deep in the caves. Tegan logically asks why everyone can't pile into the TARDIS and escape, but the Doctor insists on defusing it and finding out who was behind it. Tracking a signal from the bomb, the TARDIS follows it to its source: a gigantic space freighter heading for Earth.
Sarah -
The space freighter of destiny! I love the establishing scenes on the freighter -- morale is low and the conflicts are high. Ringway is disturbed by the disappearance of several crew members, Berger is clearly sick of Ringway, and Captain Briggs -- played by none other than the legendary Beryl Reid -- just wants him to shut up so they can get their bonus.
Harry -
Beryl Reid! The stuntiest example of stunt casting in the JNT era. I can never decide whether casting the classic comedienne as a cantankerous space captain was bad or brilliant.
Sarah -
It's so bad I find it almost brilliant.
Harry -
Sometimes I think it was the worst example of Turner hiring a famous name to boost interest in the show. But this time around, I loved her. The scenes where she keeps fussing about her bonus lend an air of dark comedy to the story. It's not hard to believe that an entire army of Cybermen could be loaded onto the freighter right under her nose, as her short-sightedness is astonishing.
Sarah -
She doesn't appear to be the strongest leader, does she? Still, she is rocking that leather look.
Harry -
Rather than make a grand entrance, the Doctor materializes somewhere inside the ship's vast hold. Having made up with Adric, the two of them set off to explore. These scenes with Adric harkened back to when Matthew Waterhouse and Tom Baker first teamed up. Adric has matured since then, and I really liked seeing him and the Doctor working together again. There's so much foreshadowing going on in the first half of the story, it makes these moments all the more bittersweet.
Sarah -
These scenes really emphasize the disservice done to the companions in this era. Adric, Tegan, and Nyssa were all victims of poor writing and being shuttled off to the side while the Doctor cavorts with a guest character. Adric, like both Tegan and Nyssa, can be quite good when he's actually given something to do and is written in a consistent manner.
Harry -
Yeah, while it was great to see Adric feature prominently, and Tegan get to do some alien hunting aboard the ship, Sigourney Weaver-style, it was Nyssa's shunting to the side that disappointed.
Sarah -
Even worse, she was stuck in the TARDIS with the whinging Professor Kyle. That would put anyone in a foul mood, although it's always a bit shocking when she's killed by a Cyberman.
Harry -
But there really wasn't time to dwell on that too much. After the Doctor and Adric are apprehended and taken to the bridge to be questioned by Briggs, the Cybermen storm in and reveal themselves.
"So, we meet again, Doctor." Another hallmark of the JNT era is the transformation of the Cybermen from frightening body-horror monsters into stomping, fist shaking, space stormtroopers. Here, it works. I like to think that this particular group of Cybers was led by a rogue or flawed Cyberleader, who pulled hard on the last vestiges of his humanity to inject his actions with very human malice and melodrama. We don't find out until late in the story what their plot was, but this Cyberleader is all too happy to unleash his troops all over the ship and enjoy watching the havoc they wreak. And it's really not a proper Cyberman story without a mass Cyberman activation scene, is it?
Sarah -
It would be disappointing if we didn't have the shots of all the Cybermen activating and marching down the corridors -- even if it is the same shot used three times. These Cybermen really are different, using the Doctor's compassion to manipulate him by threatening to kill Tegan. David Banks' performance as the Cyber-Leader is chilling.
Harry -
Banks was the definitive 80s Cyberman. He even wrote a book about them. It's somewhere under the sofa, I'll have to dig it out so we can take a look.
Sarah -
Probably behind a cushion somewhere.
Harry -
Anyway, by the time we get to part four, the story is careening towards its explosive finish. The Doctor is almost overwhelmed by what's happening. Here's where some of the old bastard qualities of previous Doctors would have helped him immensely. Instead, events are getting away from him. Will the Cyber-plot to destroy an interplanetary conference by crashing the freighter into the Earth actually succeed? For a long while, it seems so.
Sarah -
I'm really starting to miss the old bastard Doctor. Things move fast in episode four. The Cyber-Leader decides to use the freighter as a weapon to destroy Earth in place of the bomb the Doctor diffused in the caves. He leaves the ship in the TARDIS with the Doctor and Tegan, while Adric, Briggs, and Berger are left behind to have their deaths observed by the remaining Cybermen. Scott and his troopers manage to retake the bridge and defeat the Cyber-guards. Briggs is ready to abandon ship when Adric suggests that they may be able to override the device controlling the computer and keep the ship from crashing into Earth. He starts to solve a series of logic puzzles, which allows Briggs to disarm the first segment -- and the freighter jumps 65 million years back in time. (Sorry, what?) And the TARDIS follows.
Harry -
I couldn't follow the logic that turned the freighter into a time machine, and things are always happening so fast at this point that I never stop to question it. Something something science.
Sarah -
I have an image of my head of Christopher Bidmead watching this story go out and shouting at the television, "That can't happen! That's not science!" Accompanied by much fist shaking, of course.
Harry -
Hah! He must have hated this story.
The most painful moment was when the Doctor and Tegan were bundled into the TARDIS and Adric says "Goodbye Tegan. I'll see you soon." Rrrrrr....
Sarah -
That is the moment that kills me every time. He just looks so impossibly young in that shot and it breaks my heart -- even more so now that I am the parent of a teenage boy.
The rush to disarm the remaining segments continues, until Scott forces everyone to abandon ship. Just as the door on the escape pod is about to close, Adric realizes how he can solve the final puzzle and jumps out of the pod. All of which leads, of course, to Adric's untimely death.
Harry -
Even though we know it's coming, and it's been foreshadowed through the entire story, it's always a horrible moment. While everyone around him was forced out of character, shooting guns and killing Cybermen, Adric returned to what he did best: mathematics. He just couldn't resist solving the final logic puzzle. Worst of all, he'd never find out if he was right.
Sarah -
It's satisfying to see him with something to DO for a chance of pace.
Harry -
Oh Adric. Gone, never to return. The moment was so heavy that the producers rolled the end credits in silence -- the only such memorial that a Doctor Who character has ever received.
Sarah -
I remember so vividly the first time I saw "Earthshock". I was absolutely devastated and couldn't stop sobbing. The silence under the credits is still a controversial ending, but I've always liked it.
Harry -
It's brilliant, and for me there's a major reason why this is so.
When we first met awkward, brainy Adric in this marathon, I couldn't help compare him to a similarly awkward, brainy character in the new series: Osgood of UNIT. Interestingly, both characters ended up dead.
Or did they? In some shape or form, it looks like Osgood will be returning in the coming season of Doctor Who. I'll be honest, that's disappointing, because it underscores one of the huge problems I have with the new series: no one ever dies. We see characters appear to die (Kate Stewart hurled from an airplane, for example), but Stephen Moffat just can't kill anyone off. Time and again, he saves a character he killed off two scenes before (Kate Stewart caught in mid-air by her dead, Cyber-converted father who was capable of flight). Apart from the ridiculessness of the moment, it takes away all the emotional impact of seeing a character die. If I know it's just a matter of time before a dead character comes back to life, I won't be too fussed if they get zapped by the Master or otherwise. Fans might like seeing a favourite figure return to the show, but for me it cheapens the viewing experience. I'm not being morbid when I say I'd like someone to stay dead, I just think the Moff is turning everyone into a Loony Toons character who can be re-set right after we've watched them die. And it's not good TV. And I don't like when Doctor Who is not good TV.
End of rant.
Sarah -
Preach it, Brother!
I am right there with you. Knowing a character could die absolutely raised the stakes for me. I saw this story early enough in my Doctor Who viewing that it made a huge impression. If it turns out Osgood isn't really dead there will be much fist shaking on my part -- and a few rants about science to make it all a bit more Bidmead-y.
So that's it. Adric is dead.
Harry -
Very much so.
Sarah -
You and I run counter to received fan wisdom in that we don't hate Adric, and he's really not as bad as we're supposed to believe. To my mind, he's firmly in the poorly served companion camp -- along with Dodo (she's mad, leave her be), Liz Shaw, and Martha Jones. They're all companions who started out with potential, but were poorly served by the series.
Harry -
I agree with all of these examples.
Sarah -
As I mentioned when we first met Adric in "Full Circle", my theory (ahem!) is that his greatest crime is being an annoying teenage boy in a series where a significant percentage of the viewership has always been made up of annoying teenage boys. He hits too close to home. Of course, the fact that his character was neglected for most of his time on the series didn't help either. Neither did the fact that Matthew Waterhouse wasn't going to win any acting awards.
That said, Adric had some excellent moments. His chemistry was much stronger with Tom Baker than it ever was with Peter Davison. He and Nyssa also had some good moments. I liked it when they paired off as a team -- two brainy kids geeking out together. Having been a teenager when I watched these stories for the first time, I was always put off by the paternal nature of the Fifth Doctor's relationships with these companions.
Harry -
I can't remember a story where the Doctor and companions were so directly responsible for killing so many enemies. If Cybermen could bleed it would have been a hell of a bloodbath.
Sarah -
Before we bid a final farewell to Adric, I'll mention that I had a cat named Adric back in the day. He was a bit of a scamp who often got into trouble and, alas, also died. To be fair, it wasn't while attempting to save the Earth and inadvertently causing the dinosaurs to become extinct, but he was an excellent cat.
My cousin had a cat named Tegan around the same time and she was quite bossy. Speaking of Tegan, "Earthshock" give us the classic Tegan line, "I'm just a mouth on legs" and marks the first appearance of "Brave heart, Tegan."
Harry -
Lots of landmark moments in this one.
Sarah -
If I ever get another pet, I plan to call it Mr. Fibuli, or perhaps Packer, which will delight me every time I call its name!
Harry -
If I ever get a dog, a large one like a greyhound for example, I'd definitely name him Brigadier. I can't imagine either of us getting pets without Who-related names.
Well, we made it through "Earthshock". I thought we might be might be gibbering wrecks by now, but we've managed to hold it together! With minimal drinking!
Best Line:
Captain Briggs upon hearing that Ringway is still alive: "Pity. I've just composed a particularly nasty epitaph for him."
Favourite Moment: the Doctor and Adric exploring the freighter together.
Lasting Image: Adric's badge for mathematical excellence, broken into pieces. Rrrrrr......
9/10
Sarah -
Best Line: "Now I'll never know if I was right."
Favorite Moment: The Cybermen reviewing their past encounters with the Doctor.
Lasting Image: Adric holding his brother's belt in his final shot.
9/10
Our marathon continues with Story #122: Time-Flight...
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