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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Doctor Who Rewind - Inferno




Those blasted scientists are at it again with there infernal experiments. This time it's a project to drill down into the centre of the earth and tap something called Stahlman's Gas, which is supposed to be able to provide endless amounts of cheap energy.

It's a bloody good job that UNIT are there overseeing security as things are about to get very very hot, especially as the Doctor is using the nuclear reactor from the project to perform experiments on the TARDIS console, in hope that he might end his exile on Earth.

Prof Stahlman is a cantankerous old sod who wants everything his own way and doesn't like it when the Doctor starts sticking his nose in, when things turn a tad odd.

A green gooey toxic substance leaks out of the drill pipe and poisons a worker to such an extent that he turns into a primitive subhuman monster who terrorises the rest of the workers. Even Stahlman himself gets infected and takes to trying to hide the transformation he is undergoing, by wearing a pair of gloves to conceal his green fingers!

If all that isn't enough, the Doctors TARDIS experiments go horribly wrong and he ends up sliding sideways in time into a parallel universe.

In this universe (a fascist regime has been allowed to take power in Earth, the royal family having long been executed) the project has been allowed to progress quite a bit and things have turned dire. Plus, due to a different course of history, characters have turned out very different than in the Universe the Doctor came from. The Brigadier is now the Brigade Leader, a ruthless tyrant who wears an eye patch. Liz Shaw has become the Brigade leaders Section Leader, a shadow of the person she is in the other reality. Both Liz and the Brigade leader work for Director Stahlman.

Despite trying to convince these alternative versions of his friends that he has come from a parallel time, they do not believe him. Things go from bad to worse and before you can say Green Snot, Earth tremors caused by the deep drilling of the project, are destroying the planet and green slime is infecting everyone and turning them into primordial zombies.

It's then a race against time for the Doctor to get his "other friends" to help him with their only option of escape, to use the nuclear reactor to send him back to his proper dimension and stop the catastrophe from ever happening.

At seven episodes, this story is one of the longer ones and it definitely needed a twist in order to get the viewer safely to the conclusion without having to perform a lobotomy on themselves. Luckily it delivers, and the alternative timeframe really shakes things up.

From the very first time we see brigade Leader Leftbridge Stewart turn to face the camera in close up, with his hideous looking scar covered by a pirate sized patch, we know this is going to be a lot of fun.

I'm sue there must be realms out takes of the cast rolling about in fits of laughter, realising how preposterous the whole thing is, but boy it's great TV. And both Nicholas Courtney and Caroline John rise to the challenge of sending themselves up and becoming their anti-selves.

The effects are of course cheesy by todays standards but you kind of forget that as you are watching. The zombie primordial wolf-like creatures are reminiscent of the apes in planet of, and you kind of feel sorry for them as they lumber about hopelessly while the Doctor runs circles around them.

I think truthfully an episode or two could have fallen by the wayside in order to tighten things up a bit, but beyond that, this is a real gem of a period piece of vintage Doctor Who.

Next time on Doctor Who rewind Its double trouble as we get two enemies for the price of one.

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