Doctor Who - Earthshock

Rating:
Summary: One of Davison's best.
Review: "Earthshock" was, for me, the high point of Peter Davison's first season as the fifth Doctor. This 4-part adventure ranks behind only "The Caves of Androzani" among Davison's greatest stories. Set in the 26th century and opening on Earth, "Earthshock" marks the return of the Cybermen to "Doctor Who" after an 8-year absence from the show. Producer John Nathan-Turner had the return of the Cybermen kept secret until the program aired. The public remained unaware of the Cybermen's involvement until the end of Episode One, when the CyberLeader commands the sentinel androids on Earth to take out the Doctor, his companions and the soldiers who are attempting to open the steel hatch which conceals a bomb. This bomb could, as the Doctor points out, "make life intolerable" for those who survive the explosion. The script is well-written by Eric Saward, who took the reins as DW's script editor following this story. And director Peter Grimwade manages to get some great performances from his cast. The bonus features include a making of featurette ("Putting the 'Shock' into 'Earthshock'"), a 1982 BBC review program looking at some of DW's most memorable monsters ("Did You See?") and a CGI effects option. In additon to being one of Peter Davison's best stories as the Doctor, "Earthshock" is possibly the best Cyber-story, and it is definitely of my all-time favorite "Doctor Who" stories.

Rating:
Summary: "What are they?" "Cybermen!"
Review: A great return for these foes of the Doctor. Emotionless, relentless and determined to destroy all life on Earth (surprise, they succeed). Yes, you need to get over the bad effects and sometimes horrific acting-- much like the old serials of the 30s and 40s, your imagination does a lot of work. This is a fast-paced and exciting story with a lot of memorable moments-- the Cybermen revealed, Cyber Leader in the Tardis, the race to save Adric. Best line: "It might interest you to know we've traveled backwards in time some 65 million years. Think about it."

Rating:
Summary: If you liked this epi, get the DVD
Review: DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a review of the "Earthshock" episode. Rather, this is a review of the DVD.

This DVD of one of the most memorable episodes of Doctor Who is fantastic. It's worth the purchase price for the special features alone.

The special features include:
- Subtext with "did you know"-style facts about the show
- CGI graphics for the lasers and the crashing into Earth.
- A well-produced documentary about the making of "Earthshock", which included interviews from the cast members (except Janet Fielding) and celeb Doctor Who fans that discussed the process of making this episode and the process of keeping the two major incidents in the show a secret from the public.
- A segment from the BBC show "Did You See?" discussing the Cybermen.
- A funny (in a twisted sort of way) "Episode 5" claymation.
- Commentary from Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, and Matthew Waterhouse that is HILARIOUS (especially Janet Fielding's commentary). Although some of it is informative, the commentary makes it feel like one is watching an episode of "Mystery Science Theatre 3000". As many of the reviewers have already stated, some of the jokes are at Matthew Waterhouse's expense (Janet Fielding's hilarious observation about "hands in pockets" is an example), but he seems to take it in fun.

If that's not enough, there is an Easter Egg on the DVD featuring a segment from a Jamaican (or BBC produced?) comedy show with a parody of dubbing Doctor Who in Jamaican dialect.

Overall, a really good DVD to have for the Doctor Who fan.

Rating:
Summary: Two of the best!
Review: Dragged from the BBC archives comes another pair of classic Doctor Who releases on DVD from two different eras of the show. "Pyramids of Mars" and "Earthshock" are only six years apart in broadcast terms, but seem much more distant when viewed back to back. They're cracking tales nonetheless.

"Pyramids of Mars," the earlier story, broadcast in March 1976, stars Tom Baker in the role of the fourth Doctor alongside his travelling companion Sarah-Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen. Arguably one of the most successful pairing's of actors in the long running show's history, the chemistry between the two leads is at its peak, helped along largely by the incredible production skills of Philip Hinchcliffe and the scripting of Robert Holmes. This story takes them back to Earth, but this time into the near distant past of Edwardian England for a period piece exploring Egyptian mythology with sci-fi overtones. It's not only a cracking yarn and splendidly acted by a very, very strong cast, but designed and plotted to the hilt. It also presents one of the most chilling opponents the Time Lord has ever faced, Sutekh, played wonderfully by Gabriel Woolf. There is very little to criticize here, although detractors will try, unlike the companion release "Earthshock."

Produced in1981 for Peter Davison's first season as the fifth Doctor, "Earthshock" had a huge impact on the viewing public at the time of it's broadcast due to the reappearance after a seven year absence of the Doctor's second most popular enemy: The Cybermen. Kept a secret from everyone outside of the production, with red herring's set aplenty by the producer John Nathan-Turner to make sure it remained so, their sudden appearance at the end of episode one was a true classic moment of great TV. It comes at the end of a very atmospheric and chilling first episode, but alas, the pace isn't maintained in the remaining three. Written by the show's script editor, Eric Saward, it is very indicative of his style and that of the production team as a whole that guest stars, special effects and lavish sets were promoted to the detriment of plot and scripting. The plot to this story has so many holes and inconsistencies it all unravels into something of a mess. But having said that, it still works and if you don't pay too close attention, it's very enjoyable romp. Marking the first long time companion of the Doctor to meet a grisly end, the story finishes on a muted note that had a profound impact on the show and indeed the ratings; more so even than the Cybermen's return to TV screens.

As always, it's the extras on the discs that make the entrance price worth every penny. The BBC always does a tremendous job with the picture quality, commentary tracks, the subtitles and production notes and all sorts of bonus material. The bonuses here include two absolute gems that had me in fits of laughter. "Pyramids of Mars" contains a mock documentary about the villain Sutekh's life after the story and "Earthshock" has an additional "episode 5." Terrific stuff. The commentaries are also wonderful. Elisabeth Sladen and Philip Hinchcliffe are joined by recurring guest actor Michael Sheard with occasional comments from director Paddy Russell for a truly interesting commentary on "Pyramids." The commentary for "Earthshock" is even more fun with the full regular cast (Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Matthew Waterhouse and Sarah Sutton) having a wonderful time coming together once more. Their on screen relationships were never very close or harmonious so it's great to hear that the four actors really were a very close team of pals.

Two terrific releases, despite weaknesses in the later story, which would be entertaining to non Doctor Who fans as well as the more seasoned viewer. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: best story ever
Review: Earth, 2526. Following an argument with Adric, who's tired of being teased, made fun of, not taken seriously, and who wants to go back to his home planet, the Doctor goes out to a cave full of fossilized dinosaurs in the walls.

Meanwhile, soldiers under Lieutenant Scott enter the caves investigating the deaths of seven paleontologists and geologists, led by Professor Kyle, the survivor, who says the expedition was beset by faults and sabotage. However, some troops become casualties of two shadowy and sleek androids whose weapons turn their victims into organic puddles.

The Doctor is accused of being the murders of Kyle's colleagues, but then the androids attack. They're defeated, but the Doctor traces their controllers to a freighter, whose captain, the irascible Briggs, is anxious to reach Earth to deliver a cargo of 15,000 silos and get a bonus. But the Doctor and Adric are accused of murdering two crewmembers and sent to the bridge. There, they discover that there have been brief power losses aboard the ship, and later, the controller of the androids. Look at the video cover for the answer.

The Cyberleader and the Doctor get into an interesting discussion on the weakness and strengths of emotions, and in my current state, I find myself siding with the CyberLeader.

Cyberleader: I see Time Lords have have emotional feelings. Surely a great weakness in one so powerful.
Doctor: Emotions have their uses.
Cyberleader: They restrict and curtail the intellect and logic of the mind.
Doctor: They also enhance life! When did you last have the pleasure of smelling a flower, watching a sunset?
Cyberleader: These things are irrelevant.
Doctor: For some people, small beautiful events is what life is all about.

The Cyberleader ruthlessly demonstrates that the Doctor's concern for Tegan is a weakness and that he can bend the Doctor to his will by simply threatening to kill her.

Many things succeed in this story, as the scene of Cybermen bursting out of their metal silos, the shot of them marching in unison at the cliffhanger of Episode 3, accompanied by a musical synthesizer march. This redesign of the Cybermen has them in the silver fighter pilot-like outfits, which marks the debut of the contemporary Cybermen, and the portrayal of the CyberLeader and CyberLieutenant by David Banks and Mark Hardy. Another is the way the Doctor immobilizes a Cybermen in a door like a fly caught in amber.

Some flaws include the Cybermen's jaws, which are transparent and one can see the actors' mouths moving beneath. Another is a scene in Episode 3, where Scott examines the dead freighter crew. Down below, a woman can be seen reading the script! Also, when Scott is contemplating which of two Cybermen to kill in Episode 3, his targets can be seen talking to each other, using chatty hand gestures. So unlike rational Cybermen!

This was the third and last time a companion was killed off in the series history, the first two being Katarina and Sara Kingdom in the no-longer complete Dalek Master Plan (1965). Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) was so upset that he refused to speak to producer John Nathan-Turner for a few weeks. Adric has been considered the worst Doctor Who companion, but that's hardly Waterhouse's fault. It has to be said that Adric's character was poorly written and developed and Waterhouse did his best. Waterhouse does have cameo appearances in two other Peter Davison stories.

Despite the flaws and it being a simple action-adventure story, Earthshock works due to the return of the snazzily designed Cybermen and the unexpected death of Adric.

Rating:
Summary: Now I'll never know if I was right.
Review: Earthshock features the return of the Cybermen, but you wouldn't tell from the way they behave. While the producers of the series went to a great deal of trouble to update the look of the Cybermen, bringing them into the 80's, they forgot all the things that made them great. There was no cold logic to their methods in this story, in fact, as the Doctor remarks, "This one is quite flippant." The Cybermen are to Doctor Who what the Borg are to Star Trek. And the universe knows them to be a great threat. Thus the story involves the Cybermen disrupting a meeting of a number of other worldly dignataries on Earth. The story is so full of plot holes and the pacing so slow, it's kinda painful to watch. I give the story three stars simply because of the handling of the death of Adric. Never a favorite with the fans, Adric's death was realistic and gave Matthew Waterhouse a chance to go out with a bang, so to speak. An important piece of Who history, but not a vital story to have in one's collection.

Rating:
Summary: SMASHING! One of the top Cyber-stories ever!
Review: Earthshock has to be one of my favorite Peter Davison (maybe even Doctor Who) episodes ever. The cast is really working well together, and the story rocks! The Cybermen want to destroy earth (again!) and have divised a devious plan the all but ensures they will succed....The arrogant small-talk between the Cybermen about the Doctor when they discover he has regenerated, is among the best written. Probably the best cyber story other then TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN. And a must see for any fans of the Cybermen.

Rating:
Summary: Good episode, great DVD!
Review: Earthshock is a memorable serial from the 5th Doctor era, remembered for both the Cybermen returning to the series and for the climactic ending. The DVD preserves the episodes crisply, while adding a lot of fun with the many extras.

Earthshock starts like many Doctor Who stories, with the TARDIS appearing in the middle of a growing danger zone, in this case yet another mysterious cave. But when the Cybermen are revealed to be the masterminds of the plot, the story gets moving.

Not unusual in Who stories, there are a few plot holes, aged special effects, and the Cyberleader likes to spout off, "Excellent!" like a robotic Mr. Burns. But this is classic Who, with a number of tight squeezes, laser battles, an ever-increasing body count, and dynamic confrontations between the Doctor and his companions and the Cybermen. With the reapperance of these classic villains and the dramatic ending, Earthshock is an important episode to the history of Who.

The DVD extras include fun commentary by the cast of heroes, a documentary about the making of the episode, a special claymation "5th episode", ennhanced special effects that can be turned on for the episodes (the best of which is the ending scenes touched up by the new effects), an episode of a British TV show about the monsters of Doctor Who, and a couple of other neat little extras. This really made the experience of watching the DVD much cooler and brings the value, and my review, to 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: CLASSIC! Considering who wrote it, this one really is good.
Review: Episode 1 alone is overall terrific. Mysterious caves being guarded for some important reason, Adric bickering, the androids' way of killing people, this is a very taut and exciting episode. There is some rubbish technobabble about the device used to track the people in the caves, but otherwise this episode hangs together extremely well. As for the cliffhanger, it was a jaw-dropper in 1982 and still holds up exceptionally well.

Episode 2 isn't quite as tense, but still easily manages to retain excitement and interest despite a silly claim about the TARDIS' capabilities and how the main enemies in this story can see into the future where they go over the Doctor's bio/history record. But that is a small point. The moment leading to the cliffhanger is reasonably excellent as well.

Episode 3 is now a full shift away from the wonderful claustrophobia of the caves of the first 1.5 episodes. The freighter's interior is extremely well realized considering the show's budget (or even on a big movie budget, they got everything RIGHT) and provides some great tension for more than one gripping scene. The cliffhanger, despite using a prismatic lens to make one row of enemies look like 3 rows, packs a decent punch as well. I won't mention how kewl it was to see how the Doctor deals with the enemy force about to break into the freighter's bridge... So far, the story is worth all of the praise it gets.

Episode 4 is awesome, though the ending is flaky. The ending involves the freighter entering time travel, which seems to be cheaply written in as an afterthought. The reasons behind the ability of the freighter to do this don't cut it and they could have used some flimsy technobabble about the warp engines being the cause instead of the enemy machinery locking the ship's directional control panel. But that's one small point.

Episode 4 does end with another big surprise that you, depending on your point of view, will like...

The story was augmented with modern computer effects. I prefer the original effects, even if they are different than what was intended to be (for example, a spaceship exploding instead of crashing, though it can be said the spaceship exploded in the planet's atmosphere...).

I expect that the video and audio quality will be comparable to the other Dr Who releases (except "The Key to Time", which the UK Restoration Team did not work on). I gather the soundtrack is isolated, which is another BIG plus.

One of my big problems with 80s Dr Who is not as much JNT but Saward. Even from his earliest penned story "The Visitation", Saward loves using gore. Indeed, in "The Visitation" he wanted to have the remains of the smouldering murdered family to be shown, but the director had enough guts to show well orchestrated fade-in clips of the empty house's interior that was far more effective... Fortunately, we're still in the 5th Doctor's early run so it's not so pronounced (by Davison's final year, Saward - both as writer and script editor - went out his way to ensure pointless gore was used. But that's another story...) The only real gore in this episode is how the androids kill people (the people turn into a liquified state which is horrific yet doesn't go out of its way to be shock value. In other words, it's appropriate and maturely handled and properly tells us that the androids doing the killing shouldn't be reckoned with... (in later years (Davison's final year and to an extent Colin Baker's first year), the gore was haphazardly thrown in, with any true atmosphere chucked out the window in name of sleazy shock value. Colin's era did match gore with a coherent intent, but the purpose seemed to be excessive, resulting in the gore being just as pointless as in the prior season...)

But I digress. This is a WONDERFUL story, worthy of 5 stars and is ideal for showing to any potential fan. Also, the enemy I spoke of is the Cybermen. They were created in 1966 and had been disused since 1974. As the story was made 7 years later, it was deemed that they should be re-introduced with as little fanfare as possible. And it worked. and it worked so well that subsequent viewings don't wear the concept down. For a producer maligned with the stigma that he loved using continuity, the continuity works well in this story as it reminds of previous Cybermen history to whet our appetites (later stories merely use continuity to bury storylines, but Earthshock tells a story and uses references in a way that expands one's interest to become a fan, and doesn't pander to fans (who'd only nitpick any inaccuracies in continuity).

The Cybermen were organic creatures who replaced more of their limbs and organs with technology. They're like the Borg, only they'd been around long before the Borg were. And "Earthshock" is possibly the best story they're used in, apart from "The Tomb of the Cybermen". ("Tomb"'s plot is superlative but I don't think it was carried out well, apart from episodes 1 and 4. There are some great performances, but the technobabble is grating, episode 3 is pure pointless padding, and the inclusion of Toberman as an indentured servant of all things is boggling, why couldn't he be an equal? On the other hand, his contributions to the end of that story prove he is the most human of them all... and as "Tomb" had also been released on DVD, it's worthy of pick-up as well.)

Rating:
Summary: Great Eppisode with Great Extras
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this Disc, the option to watch updated CGI graphics for some scenes worked really well. The additional "marines" Footage filmed but not included gives you an Idea of what acting with special effects images works like. and the making of vignette and interview are very good I highly recommend