TV Review: Doctor Who: The Sun Makers

This is a four-part series which first aired on BBC in 1977.  Tony watched parts of this with me.  He thought it was just too cheesy.  The guns looked like wooden guns for child's play, and then they had laser rays coming out of them.  Also they kept using different words for His Eminence which was almost comical.  The story is based on Pluto.  The Company has  built artificial suns.  However they control them and tax for heat.  You are taxed for being alive.  You are taxed for dying because it takes heat to cremate you.  As a result the workers have to work over time, and have very little free time to sleep.  Finally a worker breaks, and is attempting to commit suicide, on the roof where he can feel the heat and is now subject to a fine.  The Doctor (Tome Baker) arrives at this point and they rescue him from suicide.  The Doctor is joined by Leela (Louise Jameson).  K-9 is also a featured character helping The Doctor.  The Doctor puts a bug in the people's ears which leads to general revolt.  There is a sizable underground community, and they join with the workers.  As trouble brews, Him Eminence gets smaller and smaller.  Several times both The Doctor and Leela are close  to death, or reprograming.
I can't say this is my favorite Doctor Who series.  However it gives us an interesting take on Pluto.  In this film, the inhabitants are form earth, via Mars; both planets have been overused and no longer support life.

TV Movie Review: ***^The Silver Chair

This is the 1990 BBC version.  So the special effects are poor and some of the characters in their costumes look silly.  Aslan appears to be a big stuffed stuff animal with someone manipulating the mouth.  This movie does however tell the story, which is very compelling.  Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb want to get away from boarding school, and Eustace calls to Aslan to take them to Narnia, and they are because they are needed.
Prince Caspian now king, has become old.  He has no one to inherit his kingdom, because his son has been lost many years, and everyone who tries to find him disappears.  Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum (Tom Baker) who is a Marshwiggle, sot of a man with mud in his veins and who enjoys the marshes, set off on the rescue.  Jill must remember the instructions given her by Aslan.  Travel north to a city abandoned by giants.  The find an inhabited city, where the giants are preparing to have them for dinner, literally.  The make their escape, and follow the next instruction to go under the ancient city which is next to the inhabited city.  There they are taken prisoner, and lead to the room of the second in command, a dark knight.  The Green Lady, ruler of the underworld is out.  The dark knight is chained to a silver chair.  He warns his companions not to free him.  However he is transformed, and begs them for release.  Finally he begs in the name of Aslan (the last clue) so they release him.  He destroys the chair which has been keeping him under a curse for many years.  He is the lost prince.
Then enters the green lady (Barbara Kellerman who also played the white witch.)  She tries to lull them to sleep with incense.  However Puddleglum breaks the spell, by putting his hand in the fire.  Everyone comes to their senses, and a battle ensues.  The green lady transforms into a green serpent (who killed the queen many years before) but the prince is able to kill the serpent.  The Green Lady's hold on the underworld is released, and they return to the surface and Narnia.
I like the ending.  Aslan sends Jill and Eustace home.  But he tells them he is known by a different name their world, and they must know Him better.

Doctor Who: Horror of Fang Rock

The Tardis takes the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson) to a remote light house island.  Their are three employees.  A mysterious comet lands in the water, and the area suddenly turns foggy and cloudy.  One of the crew is electrocuted.  This is unusual as he has used the equipment many times.  The Doctor and Leela show up at the light house just after this.  The Doctor is suspicious, and even more so when the body disappears.  A but runs aground, going too fast in the fog.  It holds several British aristocrats, one of whom is trying to get to London in time for the stock market the next day.  He has inside information to use.  He is a rich brat.  The Doctor becomes convinced something is going to mount an attack.  He locks the doors and the whole in.  One of the seamen brings the third member of the light house crew.  His body has been mutilated.  One by one the people in the light house pass away, electrocuted.  What makes things more difficult, the alien body is a shape shifter, and having studied the human anatomy, he is well prepared to change shapes.  The Doctor figures out the species, Rutan.  They are at war, and plan to use Earth because of its convenient location, to mount an attack against their enemy.  Who cares if all the humans would be killed in counter attack.  The main ship is due to arrive shortly, as the first alien has been sending a signal.  Rutans are hard to kill, but they don't like heat.  They device a cannon type weapon.  However the mother ship is coming.  A diamond is used to magnify the light beam of the light house.  Game over.
This is the fifteenth season of the Doctor, and Tom Baker is the fourth Doctor.  Leela is not from England as most of the Doctor's companions.  She is actually not even from Earth.  This show has plenty of tension, and intrigue, The Doctor trying to think things through.  It also has plenty of screaming and people being electrocuted.  This is an enjoyable series. 

TV Review: Doctor Who: ***The Ark in Space

This is a 1975 episode of Doctor Who with Tom Baker as the Doctor and Elizabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith.  It pits The Doctor on an ark 4000 years into the future.  The humans on the ark have frozen themselves in sleep as a way of saving the human race, projecting themselves into the future as the Earth is no longer sustainable.  This idea worked well, except that a space fly has gotten into the works.  The queen fly accidentally electrocutes herself, but not before giving birth to her larvae, which are set to inhabit the human bodies.  The timing mechanism for the humans to reemerge has been triggered, and several come back to life.  The commander however touches a larvae, and turns into a fly.  The new commander (ex commanders mate) takes over, and they determine to try to electrocute the rest of the flies, except the lead fly who was the commander, has turned off the power.  This episode only has a happy ending because of the sacrifice of some of the crew, including the commander who has just enough humanity left to safe his mate.
Special effects aren't near as good as current series, and The Doctor and the commander both seem rather stiff and unemotional, while Sarah Jane Smith is too emotional.  But it is Doctor Who.

TV Review: Doctor Who: ***^The Pyramids of Mars

This is from the Tom Baker (1975) era as The Doctor with Sarah Jane (Elizabeth Sladen) as his companion.  It is available through instant Netflix.  I remember this show from when I use to stay up late and watch it on PBS in Utah--television style.  You had to stay up late sometimes to catch all the episodes in a series.  This has four episodes.  The Doctor lands on Earth in the past because of a temporal shift.  This shift is caused by an ancient monster/god of some power named Sutekh who was imprisoned by the other gods of the time on Mars.  There is somehow a connection between Sutekh and and Egyptian pyramid.  He inhabits an archaeologist, at least mentally, when he discovers the ancient tomb in Egypt.  This puts in motion a series of events in which Sutekh plans to fee himself by firing from Earth a rock at Mars to destroy the mechanism which is keeping him captive.  The doctor has to thwart this plan as Sutekh hopes to enslave everyone and take over the universe.  He apparently has power to do so if he were free.  The Doctor is able to destroy the rocket, but only by confronted Sutekh directly, who takes him prisoner and discovers he has a TARDIS which will easily help him in escape.  However the Doctor thwarts him with the control mechanism to the TARDIS which he attaches to the temporal shift machine Sutekh is using to travel to Earth to take control of the TARDIS.  An intriguing story.  Sutekh has some mean robot mummies, and the original archaeologist makes a good monster, looking like Boris Karloff.