The Key to Time: Spotlight on "The Stones of Blood"

The problem I knew I was going to have with doing posts about the stories that I saw after The Invasion of Time, namely just the first six stories that followed The Invasion of Time (which were, The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Stones of Blood, The Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll and The Armageddon Factor) was that I could only remember seeing the first two episodes of The Ribos Operation, therefore I could do a proper post about the first time that I saw it. With The Pirate Planet I remember seeing parts 1, 2 and 3 but I missed seeing part 4 the first time round. Then there's The Androids of Tara and The Power of Kroll. The Androids of Tara, I missed completely the first time round and with The power of Kroll I only saw the last eight minutes or so. With The Armageddon Factor, I can’t remember if I saw all of it, some of it or just the last seven or so minutes of The Armageddon Factor part six. That why for this post I have chosen to focus on the third story out of six Key to Time stories, The Stones of Blood as it was the only story out of the six Key to Time stories that I can remember seeing all of.


When I first saw The Stones of blood I thought at first that I was about to be treated to another historical Doctor Who story, it starts with an satanic looking sacrifice at night and then moves to the next day when the Tardis materialises near a stone circle, which quite naturally The Doctor and Romana then proceed to investigate. They then meet present day (at the time) elderly archaeologist Professor Emilia Rumford and her assistant Vivien Fay, who are surveying the stone circle. if you've never seen The Stones of Blood before, you will probably assume that the story is going to be a completely Earth-bound horror story with human sacrificing druids who think their working for a goddess and blood drinking moving rock monsters but in fact it turns out that the goddess that the druids are worshipping in fact of course really an alien and so are the blood drinking rocks and at a certain point in the story (I won’t tell you when) the action then shifts to a spaceship suspended in hyperspace. All in all when I first saw this story I loved it, it had everything that I had loved about the past several story that I had seen by this point rolled in to one, horror, monsters, sudden/unexpected twists in the plot, great characters and a great story. Even after having bought and seen the whole of this season a lot later after seeing it many times, The Stones of Blood is still my favourite story out of this season. The Stones of Blood is classic Doctor Who.

In my next post I'll be talking about the next story I saw after The stones of Blood, which was City of Death.

Gallifrey:

The invasion of time

"The first time around I saw this story I had seen seven Doctor Who stories by this point and I was making sure by this point to not miss any of it if I could help it(I had only missed Image of the Fendahl at this point)." when I watched this story the first time around, two moments stuck out, well three really." First the bit in part one when it looks the the matrix is attacking the Doctor, the fact that The Doctor is actually made president of the Time Lords and the fact that this was the very first story to feature the Sontarans that I saw, although I did hear them mentioned in Horror of Fang Rock, when The Doctor is talking to the Rutan." Over the course of the last few stories that I saw, I had learned a descent bit about the Time Lords, why they didn't interfere in the affairs of others (Underworld), their time machines(Robots of Death), the fact that The Doctor was one of them(Robots of Death,Horror of Fang Rock, The Invisible Enemy, The Sun Makers and Underworld) and in this story I learnt about Gallifrey." I think you could show this story to a ten year old today and they would get why The Doctor ran away from his home world in the Tardis which he "borrowed" from his people." Because you see in this story that the Time Lords can be treacherous, backstabbing, secretive and just how naive they are about the wider universe, which makes it pretty easy for the Sontaran's allies the Vardans to make the way ready for the Sontarans invasion of Gallifrey." In The Invasion of Time, The Doctor appears to turn traitor and open the way for the Vardans to invade, but this is all a ruse as we later find out." Because the Vardans can read minds, The Doctor has no choice but to appear to turn traitor so he can find out about their true intentions and find out find a why to get rid of them for good, which he does in the end by trapping the Vardans in a time loop but fails to realise that this will leave Gallifrey open to invasion because in order to trick the Vardans in to showing their true forms (so that he could get K-9 to time loop the Vardans and their home world), he hard to made a sizable hole in the force field protecting Gallifrey." I really liked The Invasion Of Time, the first time around that I saw it, I really didn't know what The Doctor was up to in this one and because of that I stuck through the whole of this apart from missing a bit of part one and the first few minutes of part six but all in all I enjoyed watching it (I latter saw the whole thing on video), for ten year old me it was awesome, what came as a surprise was at the end when Leela and K-9 stayed behind on Gallifrey, Leela stays because she's fallen in love and K-9 stays to look after Leela." However as I found out at the end of story story as The Doctor leaves Gallifrey in the Tardis, a robot dog really is a Time Lords best friend as The Doctor wheels out a box, which says K-9 MK-2 on the side." The story ends with The Doctor grinning just as the credits roll, I couldn't wait to see what happened next.

Underworld:

The impact of Star Wars on Doctor Who

"The very first Star Wars movie came out on the 25th of May 1977 and its impact on the world of Science fiction on both the big and small screen was huge as it set a new standard for science fiction special effects work. "After Graham Williams (the then producer of Doctor Who),Tom Baker (the then Doctor at the time), Anthony Read (the then script editor) went to see Star Wars, Anthony Read and Tom Baker came out feeling pretty good, while Graham Williams came out feeling woeful and frustrated as he felt if only Doctor Who had the same budget as Star Wars what could they not do." The first Doctor Who story to be influenced by Star Wars was Underworld, which had a troubled production."Because of the economic inflation going on at the time it meant that the stories at the latter end of each season suffered because of this and the pressure to deliver each story on time and on budget was a constant struggle." Because there was very little money left by the end of this season it meant that the guys working on Underworld, the second to last story of Tom Baker's fourth season as The Doctor had to be very creative indeed." This meant relying heavily on colour separation overlay (CSO) to save on building expensive sets and location work." Today, the idea of using blue screen or green screen and creating digital shots is quite normal, thanks to movies like Avatar but in the 1970s the technology was still in its infancy." it was a bold but extremely challenging decision for the production, Often leaving the director restricted to static camera shots and created a stressful working environments for the actors." One of the biggest influences on Underworld was the Greek legend of Jason and the Argonauts, this influence can be best seen in the names of the characters in the story (watch it you'll see what I mean)." What was great about this story when I first saw it was the fact that I got to learn more about the history of the Time Lords which was great." When I first saw this story, the fact that Underworld was so experimental didn't faze me at all. "I remember really enjoying the story and I think it may have even been my first expose to the Greek myths." All in all I enjoyed the story the first time round and I still enjoy it now.

 

The Sun Makers

"I started watching Doctor Who when ABC 1 in Australia were doing a massive rerun of all the surviving black and white Doctor Who episodes and all of the colour episodes."although I didn't know this at the time, I thought I was the seeing the show from square one at part 1 of The Face of Evil, oh how naive I was back then." I didn't know that when I began watching episode 1 of The Sun Makers, that I'd missed all four episode of Image of The Fendahl, I didn't find out about that fact until I found the BBC's classic Doctor Who website." When I first saw The Sun Makers, a lot of the jokes to do with banks and taxation went over my head, I can't remember if anyone had even told me what taxation was back then." looking at it from the perspective of a twenty year old, I get a lot of the jokes now and I share the writer of this story, the great Robert Holmes's frustration when it comes to taxes and raising prices."I can see why he would want to write a Doctor Who story which has a go at the banks."Henry Woolf's collector character was quite funny but quite a sinister kind of character as well, the kind of villain that would do anything to do get what he want's."I really enjoyed this story the first time round I saw it, I cant think why, back then I didn't get all of the jokes but looking at it now I can clearly see why, this is a fun, witty, nicely paced story, the kind of story you would expect from Robert Holmes." The characters are great, the villains memorable." I really like the bit were the rebels threw Gatherer Hade off of a sky scrapper and the rebels laugh like its a joke, only Robert Holmes could get away with a scene like that."This was the first Doctor Who story I saw more than once, literally the Saturday after I saw this story, while I was at my local library I (purely by chance) stumbled upon a VHS copy and got it out, this is a story that I have seen heaps of times and it continues to be one of my favourite Robert Holmes Doctor Who stories, a pleasure to watch time and time again.



The Invisible Enemy:

and the arrival of a certain tin dog

I think I can say that by the time I got up to The Invisible Enemy I was starting to get my head around the mad universe of Doctor Who, I had gotten an explanation from none other than The Doctor himself as to why the Tardis is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside (here's the clip http://youtu.be/pvnKXOGYKM8). It hadn't taken me long to realise that the Tardis was a time machine after having seen two stories set in the future and two in the past. So as far as the Tardis, I was starting to understand what it was, however, when it came to The Doctor I still wasn't aware of who he was, what he was or were he came from. The Invisible Enemy was the fifth Doctor Who story I'd seen and looking back at it I think it was the first average story that I saw. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are as good as ever but the story feels like it's aimed more at younger viewers than the previous four stories that I'd seen. The first time around that I saw it I had nothing against it, I enjoyed it but looking at it ten years latter, I can't help but notice that this "was" the first average story that I saw. I've got nothing against the swarm, on paper the concept of this new Doctor Who monster must have sounded like a good idea but I think that it could have been realised better. Now, for K-9, I still think looking back at K-9 now that the designer Barry Newbery did a pretty good job with designing K-9 and that they couldn't have chosen better than John Leeson for the voice of K-9. As a ten year old I liked K-9 but as a twenty year old, I've sort of divided the Doctor Who stories that I've seen K-9 in into ones that he was written for well in and the ones were he wasn't but on the whole I think I've still got a soft spot for the character, definitely a memorable creation. I think in the end that I can say The Invisible Enemy wasn't an excellent Doctor Who story but it wasn't a bad one either.

Horror of Fang Rock: 

First encounters

 

Heavy fog, a creepy lighthouse combined with the first notes of incidental music from the sound track compliments of series regular composer Dudley Simpson, sets the scene for what is still one of the eeriest Doctor Who stories I think that I've seen. I still think that the set designer for this story, did a really good job with the lighthouse and with the attention to period detail. Another thing I liked about Horror of Fang Rock was the fact the story made the most of its limited number of characters and cut off location, far from help. This was the first Doctor Who story I saw that had a proper non human (or for another matter Robot) looking alien. The Rutans are a brilliant idea. I like the idea of the Sontarans's greatest enemies being a race of amorphous blobs that can shape-shift into any life form. It seems like the only thing that both have in common is that they are both highly arrogant. This is a Doctor Who story that entertains and scares not because it  has the best effects of all time but because of it's tight setting and limited cast, and if there's one story that you can shove in the faces of all those people that say Doctor Who has only been well made since it came back, it's this one.

My favourite Doctor Who story: The Talons of Weng-Chiang

The Talons of Weng-Chiang wasn't just my third Doctor Who story but the first period Doctor Who story that I saw, the first two (The Face of Evil and The Robots of Death) where both set in the future. The reason that The Talons of Weng-Chiang is my favourite Doctor Who story isn't just because it's written by one of the series's best writers and script editors Robert Holmes or that it was made by one of the shows best Directors David Maloney but that it has some of the best performances in the whole of the three years that Philip Hinchcliffe produced Doctor Who. The whole of the Victorian, Sherlock Homes, Phantom of the Operaness (http://youtu.be/X7ycuQ43seo)(http://youtu.be/WdwtZpg-rF0) of this story is what makes this story so good, add the supporting cast playing the period characters and you have a classic of a Victorian yarn." I think Michael Spice who plays the story's Villain Weng-Chiang is excellent, you never doubt his performance for a second that he is on screen."This story manages to be terrifying, horrific,sinister and laugh- out-loud funny all at the same time." I could talk about what I love about this particular Doctor Who story for hours and if anyone asked me which Doctor Who story made me a fan for life it would be this one.(http://youtu.be/KUTx1dN-FRo).

feel free to tell me in the comments which Doctor Who story was the one that made you a fan