Monday, April 6, 2009

D3 - Five Hundred Eyes



The Doctor makes his triumphant return after spending the last two episodes either behaving grumpy and indolent, or having his grumpy and indolent implied whilst off camera. Here, his first appearance involves him discovering condensation on the walls of the TARDIS, in which Marco Polo allowed The Doctor and Susan to sleep during the night. After managing to capture the condensation, he presents it to rest of the caravan, thus saving their lives and thwarting Tegana's plan to kill the members of Marco's caravan (or, at the very least, his plan to have their lack of water be their demise).

What else has The Doctor been doing through the course of the night? Why, he's only been fashioning a second TARDIS key to use in a potential escape attempt further down the road.

Later on, when the damsel-on-distress (who this week is played by Barbara) disappears after following Tegana into the Cave of Five Thousand Eyes, one would think, based on what one has seen previously, that Ian would be the natural person to step up and search for her. But it's The Doctor who, together with Susan and her new BFF Ping-Cho, venture into the cave to try and find Barbara.

It's a refreshing change for The Doctor's character development, and while I've been enjoying watching Hartnell's performance thus far, this episode contains the first real seeds of The Doctor as the hero, a trait which would carry on for the rest of the series.

1 comments:

James said...

The story continues at a nice leisurely pace. Unlike the Daleks however I am liking the nice slow build up, there is always something happening to keep the viewers attention and the sense that the crew are physically on the move all of the time helps as well. There were only two scenes which left me a little unsure, the first where the Doctor finds condensation in the TARDIS is a little jarring with the idea that the inside exists in another dimension and even at this stage wouldn't seem terribly consistent. The second is with Ping-Cho's story which is just awful. I agree it is nice to see the Doctor back on form though.

Post a Comment