"The time has come. Animals have ruled this planet for millions of years. Now it is our turn."
Here's another classic story which I first encountered through my abortive randomized marathon. My opinion of this story hasn't dimmed at all since the first viewing, although having a somewhat better sense of the context this story came out in has given me some new thoughts. Stay tuned...
Notably, this is the first time since Hinchcliffe's and Holmes' overhaul of the season formats that we actually get one of our six-episode finale stories. I'm interested to point out that rather than one six-part story, with all the longueurs that would imply, in this instance we have two serials stapled together. There's our first two episodes, a chilling introduction to the Krynoids in the Antarctic base, and then the remaining four episodes with the struggle against Harrison Chase. This seems like a natural usage of six episodes to me, and it helps to keep this story from feeling like it goes on too long.
I do love a good Antarctica plot. Our seventh continent is a subject that's always fascinated me; the few hardy creatures that can survive the harsh conditions, the human expeditions, and the lengthy geological history are all quite intriguing. I think a part of the appeal is the mystery, the idea that there's a whole continent on the other end of the world with no people, and untold secrets buried under ice sheets millions of years old. This is great horror fodder, which is of course why John W. Campbell, Jr. set his landmark horror novella Who Goes There? in the icy wastes of the last continent. More famously, of course, this novella was adapted into the 1982 movie The Thing, but we aren't quite there yet.
Although it's not a patch on John Carpenter's grotesque masterpiece, this is still a delightfully horrifying experience. Much like the Varga planets from Mission to the Unknown many years ago, the Krynoids are pure body horror, and certainly one of the scariest monsters the show has had so far. I'm really surprised that they've never come back; I bet you could do something fun with them today now that ecological collapse is such a big issue.
It's as much the side characters as the monsters who make this story. The self-centered but ruthless mercenary Scorby is an amusing foil for the Doctor and Sarah, Harrison Chase is the best sort of over-the-top villian, and Amelia Ducat is just a bundle of laughs. It's really the Doctor that troubles me the most. Both of the stories that Robert Banks Stewart wrote are very good, but I sort of get the sense that he didn't have a firm grasp on the Doctor as a character. Sure, the Doctor wouldn't actually snap someone's neck or shoot at someone, but seeing him feign doing both is just wrong, especially played straight like this.
Dovetailing into that, as good as this story is, in its context it makes me realize that Season Thirteen has seen not just a shift in the tone of the series, but the core message. That is to say, there really isn't one. Almost every story this season has been about there being relentlessly inhuman monsters, and someone needing to stop them. This isn't really a demerit on any of the stories individually, least of all this one (one of my favorites so far, for the record), but it undeniably feels like a step back after the more sophisticated themes of the Pertwee era. Having that great spirit of adventure from the 1960s back is great - but did we have to get the monster morality back, too?
We'll be wrapping up this brilliant but slightly troubling season in the next post. See you then.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 27 April 2021.)
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