Doctor Who: The Seeds of Death

'nuff said.

If you don't have this gem in your Who collection, you're nutso!!

One way you could look at the structure of much of this story is as a reworking of the basic base-under-siege pattern that was so prevalent and successful. However, instead of a base, we're presented with a small storeroom; the Ice Warriors effortless capture the entire outpost within minutes rather than (as in the past) not managing it until later episodes, or, indeed, ever. But this actually works, as the storeroom is a convincingly confined set, and you can really believe they these people are pinned in here hiding from great danger lurking in the corridors.

As with many serials from the era, the production is a mixture of silliness and splashes of surprisingly effectiveness. The sets are quite good, and the director successfully makes it appear that there's more than one corridor on the moonbase. As for the silliness, well, other reviewers have mocked the characters' "nappy-wear" costumes, but it looked to me more like some joker had darkened their visible panty lines with permanent marker. I concur with the opinion stated many times on the DVD commentary track: "Not really flattering, no."

One of the major negatives is the story rests so heavily on a hokey piece of fictional technology. T-Mat is the equivalent of Star Trek's transporter, allowing anyone in the world to beam to anywhere else in the world by bouncing a signal off the moon (presumably it only works on half the planet at a time, but this isn't addressed). The world's supply of hamburgers and Chicken McNuggets are delivered via this medium, so a slight delay means starvation for millions. So naturally, this vital, irreplaceable technology is all controlled through one sloppily organized (the opening scene shows the world's food supply delayed by five minutes because of one mistake) point, a relay station. This design flaw becomes most apparent when the aliens invade and start stomping through it.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the directing in this episode. On one hand, Michael Ferguson does a great job with some short individual scenes. There are set pieces with a lot of tension. That parallel zoom-in thing he does is very effective. But the overall story never feels real or dangerous. The threat from the Ice Warrior's oh-so-dastardly plan remains a little too abstract in tone. There's no real tension from it; I never felt the characters or the world were seriously in jeopardy. Yet I was able to easily accept that they were in immediate danger from, say, the soldier shooting at them. That stated, I did like the way the plot (where there is of it) unfolds. The Ice Warriors plan is multi-staged, and we get to see them constantly one step ahead of everyone.

The places where the story works best are where focus is placed on its human components. The regular cast and the guest actors play it all very nicely and believably (a few wooden extras aside). Terry Scully as Fewsham gets a lot of deserved credit for playing the collaborator whose conscience is slowly eating away at him. Harry Towb steals the show quite nicely... until he's killed off after a scant ten minutes. The Earth-based characters play off each other well, too. I really like the scene where Phillip Ray's Professor Eldred fusses over the would-be-Astronauts while the Doctor gently humors him.

Speaking of the Doctor, I think a large part of what makes SEEDS watchable is that I simply love this Doctor-companion combination. I'd watch them in anything. A little remarked upon scene comes near the end, where the defeated Ice Lord orders his heavy to destroy the Doctor. Patrick Troughton calmly closes his eyes, his character peacefully preparing for death. Until he suddenly spots Jamie in harm's way and leaps across a table to spoil the warrior's aim. It's nicely underplayed, which is classic Troughton.

THE SEEDS OF DEATH isn't terribly good. But ironically, the DVD of it is, simply because of the wealth of material on it that isn't THE SEEDS OF DEATH. The SSSOWING THE SSSEEDSS documentary is relatively interesting, although if one were being unkind, one could simply sum up the 25 minutes with the sentence: "The costumes were uncomfortable." The Censor Clips and The Last Dalek thing are diverting enough, though I'm not sure if I'll ever feel the need to watch them again without a story to go around them.

While watching the main story, I wrote down many jokes and then had to erase them when I listened to the commentary track, because Terrance Dicks had already made them. I have no bad things to say about this commentary. All you need to know is that good old Uncle Terry is on it, which automatically places it in the top-tier.