Season 13, January to March 1976

‘I could play all day in my green cathedral’

I bet you could, duckie.

'The Seeds Of Doom' is hard as nails. It’s often regarded as a ‘classic’ Doctor Who. I would argue that it’s not a classic ‘anything’ as such, and in fact, it could be argued that it’s not really Doctor Who either.

It has been intimated that Robert Banks Stewart thought he was writing a script for ‘The Avengers’ rather than a six part Who. Based on a number of scenes you could come to that conclusion. Key to this view is the Amelia Ducat character. She’s the only other female character apart from Sarah and they both represent different versions of feminist principles in the story. We learn that Amelia is thoroughly enjoying the turn of events she’s involved in and hilariously reminds us that she manned ack-ack guns in Folkestone during the war whilst Sarah is not averse to tearing strips off ‘real man’ Scorby and running rings round his henchmen. Both characters are pro-active, resourceful and don’t stand any messing around from their masculine counterparts. Sort of Emma Peel but without the judo and throwing stunt men across the set. Amelia is also a rather smashing Wildean influence in the story which again nods to the sort of wit you would find in a typical Avengers episode. The delightful scene in which she and the Doctor discuss her painting is more of an homage to Wilde than to the Steed and Emma capers but the absurdist British wit is much the same.

‘We found it in a car boot’
‘A car boot?’
‘Yes, a Daimler car boot’
‘The car is immaterial!’

It’s real flash of playfulness in an otherwise terribly grim affair and as a sliver of Wildean wit it also counterpoints with the effete Harrison Chase who is not averse to sprouting camp quips along the way. Beats everyone else sprouting green tendrils, I suspect.

Personally, I think the way the story has been produced has more in common with ‘The Sweeney’ or ‘The Professionals’ than ‘The Avengers’. I’m sure Camfield thinks he directing a gritty Regan and Carter episode with a dash of ‘Day Of The Triffids’ thrown in. He even has John Challis as Scorby and Tony Beckley as Chase. Both of them were in the ‘The Sweeney’ and the series itself was revolutionary in the way it portrayed ‘hard men’ - policemen, their informers and the criminals they were after. It blurred the boundaries and also was an interesting observation of ‘real men’ under pressure. Just like this then.

Camfield seems to have a penchant for essaying such men – whether it’s the Brigade-Leader in ‘Inferno’ or Scorby in this. Both flex their muscles repeatedly only to be seen cracking under the pressure towards the end of the story. If this is ‘The Sweeney’ via Doctor Who then it may go some way in explaining many of the brutally violent set-pieces. There’s an awful lot of gun-weilding, the Doctor included, and much fisty-cuffs, again even the Doctor punches an assailant in the face twice. To quote Rose, ‘You can really smell the testosterone’.

Along with the macho posing, we also get the extreme body horror of the man-Krynoid transformations. They're pretty visceral and effective, full of well-played suffering and quite disturbing. And if you notice, the men who are transformed are passive, non-aggressive types. Keeler (a wonderfully nervy performance from Mark Jones ) is only a mercenary by proxy. He’s a scientist just like Winlet and both are victims of a rampant mercenary masculinity – the humans and the alien. Does the Krynoid therefore behave as a transformative catalyst, changing reasonable and intelligent men into aggressive, world dominating galactic weeds? Is the Krynoid machismo on a grand scale?

For me, Camfield is here obsessed with ‘what makes a man a man’. On the one hand he has mercenary, macho males like Scorby and strangely, and rather uncharacteristically, the Doctor and has a fine time trying to decipher what makes men like Scorby tick but on the other he has passive, sensitive types like Keeler and ultimately, the villain, Harrison Chase.

Chase is a very interesting character. Is he perhaps the first obviously ‘gay’ villain in the series thus far? The brilliant Tony Beckley ushers in several additional influences, having played Camp Freddie in ‘The Italian Job’ and a villain in another film that also permeates this story with its influence, ‘Get Carter’ (the fight between the Doctor and the chauffeur in the deserted sand pit/quarry is a visual echo). Chase is obsessed about his own nature and this is expressed through his fetish about plant-life. Towards the end of the story, when finally possessed by the Krynoid, he literally comes out of the closet and says, ‘At last I can join a world I’ve always wanted to join. One of beauty, colour and sensitivity’. If that isn’t a coming out speech, then Scorby’s a big girl’s blouse after all. One can also take a similar view to that postulated by Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ in which the forces of nature (the birds) are seen as explosions of aggressive feminity (the mother-in-law psychically attacking the Tippi Hedren character, Melanie, for even daring to take her son away from the family unit). Is Chase, as a closeted gay man, using the Krynoid to activate his fear/disgust at the macho men he has surrounded himself with and that he has hidden behind and to become the ultimate wall flower?

The plants are symbolic of roots and primal forces, plunging into the Underworld, where the dead and the past are buried in layer upon layer. This eruption of forces is akin to unconscious drives bursting to the surface of reality and a flowering of creative energy. The two pods could be seen as sperm drops that fertilise the unconscious realms and throw light on the true nature of Scorby and of Chase. Both seem to go through a rite of passage as a result of the Krynoid’s development.

You could also compound the eruption of primal forces with Chase's knob twiddling on the synthesiser. One would expect something pastoral and soothing to serenade the plant world with but Chase gives them a discordant, atonal symphony. No wonder they get stroppy.

Finally, what of the Doctor? The Doctor (in his current persona) acts atypically here. He thumps people, brandishes a gun, leaps through skylights and tears a strip or two off several civil servants. But he also tends to stand back and quite merrily allows UNIT to get in there and bomb the Krynoid out of existence. It is the Doctor’s ambivalence, his sense of the inevitable, that’s hard to reconcile here. Sarah is always busy defending him as an exemplar of the heroic to the cynical Scorby but he’s being so atypical here that it’s hard to agree with her.

Overall, we have a real curate’s egg of ideas, themes and actions that really shouldn’t work. But Camfield deftly manages it all, makes it look grim and gritty with it all being shot on OB video and just when the man in the rubber suit threatens to bring the whole lot toppling down, he gets Geoffrey Burgon to ram home the conviction of the actors and shores it all up with haunting incidental music. The miniatures are really good too, the opening shot of the helicopter at the Antarctic base through to the Krynoid sitting on top of Chase’s mansion are well executed. They even get away with the CSO shots of the Krynoid suit with the OB exteriors of the mansion.

It’s clearly Robert Banks Stewart’s idea of Doctor Who with some obvious input from Holmes and Hinchcliffe. At the time it contributed to Mary Whitehouse’s concerted attack on the programme and she might have had a point – the notorious ‘how to make a Molotov cocktail’ scene and the Doctor’s sudden penchant for breaking the necks of thugs could be seen as imitative behaviour. Plus add in the machismo, the guns, the nasty body horror transformations, that composting machine and it’s a relief when Amelia Ducat does camp it up for ten minutes!

It might not be what we’d like to think of as Doctor Who but it’s gripping, grim and played to the hilt with conviction. It sticks out as being much grimmer from the rest of the season and the series won’t be as grim as this for a long time. At least until Camfield protégé Graeme Harper makes ‘The Caves Of Androzani’.

THE SEEDS OF DOOM BBC Video VHS (BBCV 5377 Cert U -deleted)
Doctor Who is copyright BBC. No infringement intended.

She of 'Moloko'. Y'know, remember 'The Time Is Now' and 'Sing It Back'? Well, 'Overpowered' is her second solo album and is gathering a fair few positive reviews. I happened to be in a store last week and heard a number of tracks playing and as is my predeliction I picked up a copy on the strength of what I heard.

It's not the entire triumph that some reviewers are crowing about. It has a number of utterly brilliant tracks that are diminished by some rather routine, average electro-jazz funk numbers. The opening track 'Overpowered' starts the album well. If you're wondering what to expect then think of this lineage - 70s and 80s electronica, nods to disco hits like 'Supernature', the orphan child of Electribe 101, Jean Michel Jarre, Goldfrapp and a massive swipe from Eurythmics circa 'Sweet Dreams'. Great, eh? And Roisin has a terrific voice too so she's in good company with Alison and Annie there.

'You Know Me So Well' is a single in waiting and is so 'pop hit' circa 1981 that it hurts. It is a simple pop construction with lovely fat bass synths and clapping drums and a killer, killer chorus. A Sheffield lass, she's most certainly the latest in the 'Human League/Heaven 17/ABC' pop family tree by turning out songs like this.

'Checkin' On Me' unfortunately, for me, turns it all into Lisa Stansfield type pap despite some nice strings and brass. She is certainly channelling Stansfield and Green Gartside on this and the current single 'Let Me Know'. It's too self-consciously late 80s pop funk and like the later Scritti Politti obsession with pristine jazz funk it sets my teeth on edge and there's nothing remarkable about these tracks for me. Whereas Goldfrapp are equally ironic about their influences they don't use those influences in such a bleedin' obvious way.

'Movie Star' is a Goldfrapp rip-off via Eurythmics. It's lovely but highly derivative. Great driving walls of synths, neat chorus and good vocals. Annie should sue just for the backing vocal techniques alone. Is this 1981 I've suddenly time warped back to? 'Primitive' is the highlight of the album for me. It at least takes the influences and does something really quite sublime with them. Great song, 'Yello' style backing vocals, spare and atmospheric instrumentation and a top vocal from Roisin.

I'm afraid 'Footprints' is Scritti Politti sleek jazz-funk. Yuk. It even chucks in some 'Imagination' twiddly synth lines. It's so saccharine I can feel my teeth rot as I listen to it. 'Dear Miami' fares much better and again is spare and atmospheric with a hooky melody and chorus. It isn't overdone, thankfully. And then we're plunged into HiNRG, Bobby O territory with 'Cry Baby' which isn't too bad and will hopefully go down well in clubs, but hey what do I know as I'm hardly at the age of geddin' down with the kids? It grows and builds rather nicely even if it isn't entirely memorable. Some rather passe disco drums, a la 'It Feels Like I'm In Love' contrive to drag it down into the self-conscious. Again, a good vocal saves it from mediocrity.

'Tell Everybody' raises the game again and showcases Roisin's vocals extremely well. It does remind me of Electribe 101 but it's only good memories this time. Lovely.
'Scarlet Ribbons' slows it all down with a introverted paen to the relationship between a daughter and a father. Great vocal work but it doesn't quite come off in the middle of all the four to the floor disco stuff.

The final two tracks 'Body Language' and 'Parallel Lives' round it all up with the latter concluding the album in suitable fashion with plenty of rave style bleeps and sequencers.

Overall, it has a number of quite excellent electronica pieces that are worth listening to but it could have been twice the album it turned out to be if Roisin hadn't churned out dreadful pastiches of Stansfield, Scritti et al for half of the tracks. When it works as an homage to 80s electronic music it is sublime but the twee jazz-funkers such as 'Let Me Know' and 'Footprints' instantly had me reaching for the remote. However, Roisin Murphy remains distinctive in a music chart that is fast becoming so bland that the more interesting material is now more often found on the fringes rather than at the centre of British popular music.

Overpowered - Roisin Murphy (EMI 5070902)

I bet you're enjoying 'Heroes' on the telly at the moment? No? Oh, please yourselves. If you are then you might be interested in Austin Grossman's novel 'Soon I Will Be Invincible'. Imagine 'Heroes' but done slightly differently. This is 'Heroes' where all the super heroes and villains DO wear outlandish costumes but, taking a leaf from Alan Moore's 'Watchmen', they're all deeply insecure, cynical, arrogant, dysfunctional and often downright unappealing.

Oh, the life of a super-hero or super-villain...not always a bed of roses is what Grossman's line seems to be. The best thing about the book is that it's done with tongue very firmly in cheek. The story centres on cyber super heroine Fatale signing up to join the Champions, a group of infuriatingly pompous super beings suffering from the demise of their leader CoreFire, in a bid to help them quash the machinations of uber-villain Doctor Impossible who is plotting, once more, to take over the world.

The story is told from the first person point of view of both Fatale and Impossible. So you get the main narrative but with both characters taking you back and forth into their respective histories and the super-hero dominated universe in which they exist. And it is set on a familiar Earth but one that has had to come to terms with the existence of these strange meta-humans. And naturally, society has turned them all into celebrities - super heroes and villains cast as re-hab Britney or drink-drive Keifer.

The prose is spare and economical, mainly navel-gazing internal monologues from Impossible and Fatale but often Grossman's descriptive powers really kick in and the chapter where the Champions break into Impossible's derelict island base or the piece where they fight him on a Manhattan street are both evocative and pacy and encourages you to turn the pages and find out what happens next to our hapless bunch.

There are probably lots of in-jokes to certain comic books and characters that will please the geeks but don't let that put you off. I'm no expert and I still found much of the satire and wit directed at the tropes of super-heroes painfully funny and frighteningly accurate. And the chapter headings sum up this attitude to the genre with a litany of cliches from the world of these heroes and villains that will be so very familiar even to the casual reader.

Ultimately, I don't think there is any one character that is totally likeable. One tends to feel sorry for most of them as they seem so crippled by their inability to cope with their various meta-human states and powers, their all too human emotions, and ensuring their spandex costumes and tights don't end up in tatters. Impossible's obsession with cunning plans and the use of technology to gain mastery over all is really just him screaming out to be loved I'm sure.

So I say, don't hug a hoodie, hug a hero AND a villain. They need to be wanted. Oh, and check out the cool Bryan Hitch artwork on the cover and inside. Lovely. And there's a smashing website too: www.sooniwillbeinvincible.com

Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman (Penguin/Michael Joseph ISBN-13: 978-0718152918)