Holistic Review: Several interesting and well-written ideas, but the overall story is let down by the scripting.

As I was watching Colony in Space, my mind was constantly working to decide how I felt about it. It's never been a favorite story of mine, but I felt obliged to give it the benefit of the doubt as much as possible. During the first couple of episodes, I noticed quite a few times that I was enjoying a lot of aspects about the plot, so I started mentally making a note of the things I found appealing and the things I didn't. Would you like to see my list? Of course you would. Let's go through it point by point.

Good Plot Elements:

The colonists' sympathetic plight. This interested me for two reasons. First, the cause of their problems was wonderfully mysterious - why are their crops failing? what are the lizards that continue to attack them? And second, their antagonistic relationship with the thoroughly evil IMC corporation makes them very sympathetic, as they struggle valiantly against a legal system corrupted by greed. All they want to do is exist, and IMC is absolutely determined to get rid of them, and kill them in the process if need be (or, depending on their mood, if possible).

The scenes set in the Primitive city. Going along with the previous point, the Primitive city is mystery incarnate. It's full of aliens who are uncommunicative and one step away from hostile, and who have a superstitious religion involving sacrifice. All this conspires to make the city a very forbidding place that should be escaped as soon as possible.

The scenes set in the Master's TARDIS. These are frightening in a similar way - with booby traps scattered around, mainly involving lethal gas, and the ever-present threat of discovery and reprisal, these scenes are wonderfully tense.

Less Good Plot Elements:

The lackluster script. The plot itself is actually not bad (with a few irksome exceptions; see the last point). The problem with it is that it's just not all that exciting, at least in a dialogue way. This story is hardly quotable at all. The dialogue seems perfunctory, and on several occasions, embarrassingly bad. One of the best (worst?) examples is:

Mary: "There's no animal life, just a few birds and insects."

Since when does the term "animal" exclude birds? (and arguably insects too, but I'm willing to be lenient.) So, the end result is that although the plot is interesting, and at times exciting, there aren't really many scenes that really stand out as being great in and of themselves.

The lackluster sets. The exception to this one is the Primitive city - I really like all the dark rocky hallways, accented with brightly colored blinking lights and glowing doors. These are all very cool sets. And the Master's TARDIS is nice too - I especially like the comic-book-looking cylinders that Jo and the Doctor are kept in. But the rest are blah, blah, blah. The colony is all brown and grey - which is understandable, since it's probably all pre-fab stuff that they just set up upon arrival - but that doesn't make it interesting to look at. Since around 70% of the story takes place in various parts of the colony, it would be nice if it were a little more memorable. The IMC ship, likewise, is just dull featureless corridors and a couple of rooms (although the bulkheads are pretty cool). Even the location filming is in a boring sandy quarry. (justified, at least, by the script as radiation poisoning.) There's also an embarrassing black-and-white roundelled backdrop posing as one of the TARDIS walls in episode one!

Disparate plotlines. Most of the plot elements work together pretty nicely, but the two broadest plot strands - the IMC vs colonists battle, and the Primitive city with its doomsday weapon - just don't gel very nicely. Most of the links are trivial (the Primitives working for the colonists, the abandoned dwellings where IMC takes Jo and Winton), and one is highly contrived (I'll mention that momentarily). The only one that really works is that the radiation from the weapon is the cause of the colony's crops failing to grow. Aside from that, it's difficult to see how the colonists' plight ties into the doomsday weapon storyline, thematically or otherwise, which makes it hard to decide which plotline is supposed to be the main one - and either way, it gives the impression of vast, albeit interesting, padding.

The Master. Okay, I'm torn on this one. Part of me is just wholesale tired of the Master's ubiquitousness during the Pertwee era. But then, this story does contain a scheme that's actually worthy of his presence. And by the time he appeared on the scene, I was ready for something new and interesting to happen. Unfortunately, and the thing that sways me toward not being pleased about his inclusion here, his overall scheme is pretty ridiculous. It would appear that the Master has stolen information about the doomsday weapon from the Time Lords, but their information - despite providing a map of the Primitive city - did not deign to mention what planet it was on, or even where on the planet the city could be found. Hmmmm. So the Master visits a few planets, finally tracks down the right one... then goes to all the trouble of establishing fake credentials as an Adjudicator, so that he can manoeuvre himself into the middle of the dispute between the colonists and IMC, in the hopes that one of the colonists can tell him where the Primitive city is located! This seems utterly ridiculous, seeing as how the Primitives aren't exactly hermits, and not only go in and out of their city all the time, but routinely take captives there. How difficult would it have been for the Master to land on Uxarieus, wander around until he found some Primitives, and then get them to take him to their city?

The unengaging characters. We've basically got three groups here: the regulars, the colonists and the IMC crew. I take no issue with either the first group or, perhaps surprisingly, the last. I'll talk more about them later. No, one of the problems with this episode is the colonists. There are really only three that make any impression: quiet and noble Ashe, his young daughter Mary, and the hotheaded Winton. The rest of the colonists are basically forgettable. Unfortunately, so are the main three. Don't get me wrong, they're all competently acted, I just never found myself particularly attached to any of them, despite feeling sympathetic to their general situation. I have a feeling that the problem is a combination of scripting (since none of them really seem to have that much depth besides the character briefs I mentioned above) and acting (while the actors are all perfectly good, none of them go that extra mile to make their characters distinctive). I might not have even been bothered by the latter point except that John Herrington as Holden actually does give a memorable performance. The only reason he doesn't rate more highly is that his character doesn't even last for a full episode. Actually, I think that's a third problem with the characters - some of them might have been interesting, but quite a lot of them only pop in for an episode or two, so we have no time to get to know them.

The interminable fight scenes. For the first few episodes, I was okay with the fighting. But by the time episode 4 rolled around, I was starting to tire of them. Now, I can enjoy a good fight scene just as much as the next guy. (Well, maybe not just as much, but I can enjoy them when done right.) Look at Buffy - that show thrived on fight scenes, and you'll probably never see me complaining about them, because they were cleverly done. They're choreographed well, they use interesting weapons, and they're generally exciting. That's not the case here. Some of the fight scenes are of the "a bunch of people hide behind rocks or boxes and spend a few minutes firing guns at each other" variety. It's really hard to make that fun. Of the ones that don't involve hiding places and guns, most of them just aren't that well arranged. Look at the fight between the Doctor and the Primitives - it's a whole lot of close-ups where you can't really see what they're doing, plus some obvious "you run at me and I'll flip you over my shoulder" staging (most awful when the Primitive holding a long-range rock weapon runs close enough to the Doctor to be tossed aside by a spear butt). It's just a good thing their rock bolos are cool; that does help to maintain some interest in their fights. I should also point out that the mud-fight toward the end between Winton and Rogers is a good example of a well-done fight... it's both well-choreographed and visually interesting, given that it takes place in very wet, clay-colored mud.

Giant plot holes. The Master's odd scheme above is one of them. There are several more, which I will discuss below as they crop up. For now, let's move on to a more general discussion...

I can't say that I'm terribly fond of most of the cliffhangers, either. The cliffhanger to episode one is particularly underwhelming (suddenly, a machine that looks rather tame - and which we have no reason to fear, particularly - enters the dome and advances upon the Doctor). Fortunately, this is helped by the super cliffhanger to episode 5, as the Master prepares to gas Jo to death.

I've already talked a bit about set design, so let's do costume design. Jo has an interesting purple outfit here; I can't decide if I like it or not. At one point I thought I might like it better in black-and-white! I think the thing I don't love about it is that it's muted. A slightly brighter purple might suit her better. And the belt buckle is kinda gigantic. But the overall effect is striking, so... There's also the IMC uniform, which I definitely like. It feels both corporate (it's simple, unadorned and practical) and unique (interesting pattern and a nice contrast between black and bright red). For some reason, I also found myself liking Winton's red outfit. I'm not sure why... maybe just because it stood out from the other colonists' clothes.

Makeup lets the show down a bit - it's hard to accept any of the aliens as real in close-ups. The Primitives have odd lumpy plastic faces and skin that bunches up in ways that only a shirt would; the Guardians have lifeless wrinkled faces and human eyes that blink away behind the thin eyeholes in the mask; and the priest looks similarly unreal, plus a bit more shrivelled. But if you don't look too closely, the overall effect is nice; the Primitives are threatening and the Guardians are actually kind of scary / cute.

There aren't actually a whole lot of effects to discuss here, surprisingly. There is one very strange one, though - when the TARDISes dematerialize, they vanish in a split second rather than fading away. I was willing to suspend disbelief at first, under the assumption that it was a result of the Time Lords commandeering the Doctor's ship, but then even the Master's TARDIS did it, so I feel the need to wag my finger at the production team. The Vortex is represented oddly, too, as a bunch of twirling colored lines. This effect later reappears when the machine is being destroyed - is that supposed to be significant? This isn't strictly an effect, but the robot-with-claws that attacks the Doctor really doesn't look capable of hurting people. Much like the Cleaners in Paradise Towers, they're too bulky and their arms have a very restricted range of movement. You have to assume that its victims stood directly in front of a claw and screamed and screamed, perhaps turning their body to present various favorable angles, while the claw slashed downward repeatedly. To make matters worse, just before the Doctor leaves, the right claw looks like it's about to fall off! One effect that I do like, though, is the modelwork. In particular, there's a very nice POV shot through the monitor of the IMC ship as it lands near the colonists' dome. The "Adjudicator's ship" also looks pretty good, notably the shadows it casts on the hills as it flies low over them. I should also commend them for the explosion of the Primitive city at the end - Doctor Who explosions have their high points and their low points, but this one was definitely impressive.

Dudley Simpson's music is variable; most of the time I actually find it a bit annoying (he does like to rely on the "blare one note" technique, doesn't he?) but it's actually quite good in the Primitive city scenes, where it manages to sound quite alien and eerie.

Pertwee and Manning are both good here, but neither particularly noteworthy. Pertwee gets some good scenes showcasing his authority, and his respectful attitude toward the Guardians is nice, but I wouldn't call either classic scenes for him. He does, at least, get to show off some impressive Venusian aikido moves, and he also does a good coughing fit in episode 6 - it even made me start coughing! Poor Katy gets a pretty raw deal here when Jo, on her first trip into space, is alternately sent off to the kitchens or captured by IMC, the Master and the Primitives. It's really only when she teams up with Caldwell that she gets anything to do, and that doesn't happen until the very end of the story. She does, however, get to show off her acting skills inside the Primitive city.

Of the other actors, I mainly feel the need to praise Bernard Kay. He delivers a great performance as Caldwell, who is stricken by his conscience to do the right thing, but bound to follow orders because of his threatening employers and the lure of money. I particularly liked his performance when he's patching Winton up - the way he notices the blood on his hand, and subsequently holds that hand, feels very true to life. (Kudos to the makeup department for that, too; it was very convincing blood, and I was pleased that it didn't coat his fingers like fake blood usually does.) The nice thing is, his two IMC comrades are also well-portrayed, even though they're neither as memorable nor as interesting as Caldwell. Morris Perry presents a chilling depiction of Dent, a man so self-absorbed, greedy and corrupt that he thinks nothing of casually murdering a planetfull of colonists if it suits his interests. Perry verges on ranting-lunatic talk from time to time, but overall he's quite good. Then there's Tony Caunter as Morgan, who isn't quite as interesting as the other two, but is nevertheless an interesting counterpoint to Caldwell - Morgan is what Caldwell could easily have been, if he prioritized his bonus over his virtue. He acts like Dent's lap dog, never questioning orders and seeming vaguely disgusted by Caldwell for doing so.

Minor points:

• The little expositionary prologue is a nice way to remind viewers that the Doctor is actually stuck on Earth. Bet it was confusing for the folks who missed episode 1, though, especially since the Time Lords never reappear, or are even mentioned, during the rest of the story.

• Amusing dialogue, on Jo's first foray into the TARDIS:

  Jo: "I don't believe it! It's bigger inside than out!"
  Doctor: "Yes. That's because the TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental."
  Jo: "What does that mean?"
  Doctor: "It means that it's bigger inside than out."

• It's funny how frightened TARDIS travel makes Jo at first, especially considering how much she gets used to it by the end. No sooner have the doors closed than Jo sighs and asks the Doctor to let her out!

• I'm impressed. The Doctor glimpses a faint hazy image of a planet on the scanner, and immediately declares it to be Uxarieus. (Oddly, despite this certainty - which would suggest that he's been there before, or at least knows something about it - he then has no idea whether or not the atmosphere is safe.)

• The TARDIS in this story feels very old-fashioned - it's got a bank of computers, the doors make a noise straight out of the Hartnell era when they open, and they lead straight out onto the surface of the planet. Nice to see that they at least took the time to paint the console white. No more pea-green!

• Jo gets some cringingly-embarrassing dialogue, first when getting dinner:

  Jo: "Is that the first course?"

  Jo, honey, presenting yourself as a rich spoiled brat is not the best way to make a good first impression. This is rapidly followed up by this discussion with Mary:

  Jo: "You left in 1971?"

  Um, Jo... sweetie... did you hear about anybody colonizing other planets in 1971?! Okay, sure, I can totally understand why she said it, and in her position I might have spoken before I thought too, but when Mary tells her the date (seeming rather blasé about Jo's peculiar mistake), Jo actually seems shocked that they've travelled so far into the future. As if she had expected extraterrestrial colonization in 1971 to have been perfectly reasonable. Sigh.

• Check out Mary ladling soup into her bowl - either she's concerned about depleting the colony food supplies, or that girl is on a highly restrictive diet for no apparent reason, because she barely even takes a ladleful of broth!

• The giant "lizard" (an iguana?!) is also pretty cringeworthy - fortunately it's explained away in the plot!

• Ahh, more good dialogue, as the Doctor meets Caldwell in the Leesons' dome.

  Caldwell: "Are you some kind of scientist?"
  Doctor: "I'm every kind of scientist!"

• As the buggy approaches the IMC ship, Morgan - who has just seen it come into view on the monitor - expresses surprise at the Doctor's fancy dress. But, good heavens, the image of the buggy is so small, you can't even tell anybody's driving it, much less what the passenger is wearing!

• In an astonishingly anti-Doctorish moment, the Doctor suggests that, rather than using the hostile animal life as an excuse to deport the colonists, the colonists could simply destroy the hostile animal life!!! Um... Doctor... key word there being life?! I mean, I know he's not against eradicating the occasional homicidal monster, but these are giant indigenous lizards we're talking about.

• Happily, he redeems himself a bit in the following to-the-point exchange:

  Dent: "You know how the Earth needs that mineral."
  Doctor: "Earth, or your company's profits?"

• Dent tells the Doctor "I'll detail someone to escort you to your friends" - so why, when Morgan shows up to take him back to the colony, does the Doctor act surprised and upset that Dent isn't the one taking him?

• It strikes me that, if you're starting up a colony, it's not a very good idea to bring only one person who knows how to repair the systems. Granted, maybe the others were killed by the Primitives or the lizards (although it sounds like there were only a few casualties there), but in that event, don't you think you'd teach someone else how to do it?

• Oopsie - when Jo's battering away at the chain holding Winton to the bomb, it snaps at a different point from where she struck it.

• Note to Winton: when attempting to escape homicidal bureaucrats, do not shamble along the main road back to the colony!!! He really should have guessed they'd see him sooner or later.

• Another Major Hole in the Plot: The Primitives can't talk to you, but they can understand you, ostensibly because they're telepathic. So... why exactly is it that both the Doctor and the Master basically throw up their hands in defeat, as if they won't ever really be able to talk to them? Guys, you're both telepathic too! Ever think of that?! And along those lines, when the Doctor does his little magic trick to fool the Primitive, it's treated as a simple and easily-fooled creature rather than the telepath that it is. Surely it should have been aware that the Doctor was trying to trick it?

• In the sacrifice panel of the Primitive frieze, the Primitives depicted look quite a lot like Cybermen!

• One thing I do like a lot about this story is that it does at least avoid the cliche of the Doctor always being around to head off problems. Here, the Doctor's off exploring the Primitive city both when the Master arrives (the "It's the Master!" scene doesn't come until it's already far too late to do any good) and when the colonists are force-deported. It makes a nice change, having the plot advance even when the Doctor isn't around.

• I was appalled that, when the Guardian first spared the Doctor's life, he was prepared to just walk away without even saying thank you! It isn't until the Guardian warns him not to come back unless he wants to be killed that he expresses gratitude.

• Winton warns the IMC folks that unless they take off immediately, he will set off the explosives that he's put under their ship. But, won't they explode anyway when the ship launches and inflames the area beneath it?

• When the Doctor and Jo enter the Master's TARDIS, there's an odd bleeping noise when the doors open, as if to say "Look down here! There's an alarm beam here!" And indeed, it seems to attract his attention and he starts scanning the doorway for the beam, at which point the odd noise stops and never starts up again. So what exactly was it? It would surely be foolish of the Master to put an alarm alarm on his TARDIS doors.

• Amusingly misheard dialogue:

  Dent: "Caveman retro-rockets steady."

• How is it that IMC is able to initiate a visual link with the colony ship without their permission? (at least, Ashe doesn't seem to be aware that Dent is watching until he begins to speak.)

• When the Master zooms in on Earth's sun in the weapon control centre, why does the sun look blue?

• Worse yet, why does the Doctor even consider sharing the universe with the Master?! I'd have thought he would immediately dismiss it out of hand, but no, he appears to ponder it, and then thoughtfully says "No..."

• A nice line from him, though:

  Doctor: "I want to see the universe, not rule it!"

• Bizarrely, the Master's plans do not seem to have extended to how exactly he was going to get control of the weapon. It looks like he was banking on being able to charm the priest into giving it to him, and if that failed, blasting him to smithereens! How exactly did he figure he was going to win the support of the Primitives?

• The super-race built a self-destruct into their super-weapon. This super-weapon, once completed, all but destroyed their race and poisoned the soil. But, you know, they keep it around for centuries (or longer?) until a madman tries to take it away from them, at which point, they think, hmmm, maybe we should ask this other nice man to destroy it for us. If they weren't ever going to be able to use it, why not destroy it from the beginning? Or, if self-destructing it destroys their city, could they just dismantle it?

  More burning questions: Why does the destruction of this massively powerful super-weapon only destroy their city? And why, if their city is about to be destroyed, do all the Primitives and Guardians stay there, blundering around the corridors? (Maybe there wasn't time to warn everybody, so they didn't know what was going on... but aren't they telepathic?!) Does that mean that all the natives of Uxarieus have been destroyed? And, worst of all, if the radiation from this weapon has poisoned the soil of potentially the entire planet, why does the radiation poisoning vanish as soon as the weapon is destroyed? Would not blowing up the weapon actually cause vastly more radiation poisoning?

• Having trounced IMC while the Doctor was off blowing up the Primitive city, the colonists apparently decide to spend some time wandering around the planet's surface, where they just happen to run into a Primitive dwelling they've never before seen, which just happens to contain a lot of things that have been stolen from them - including the Doctor's TARDIS. How convenient! How lovely! And a bit of explanation for how and why they ran across it would have been nice!

• This story does, however, boast a very nice double ending. First, Caldwell's character arc comes to a lovely close, as he agrees to join the colonists - a move that will not only benefit his conscience and state of mind, but also the colonists, who have just lost several valuable people and are probably in need of more experts. Then we've got the really cool scene with the Brigadier, in which we learn that from his perspective, their entire adventure only took a few seconds. Lovely! And this time I really mean it.

So, this story works out to be a pretty average one. It's definitely got some fun plot elements, and some good characterization, but this is dragged down by dull dialogue, unexciting sets and some plot holes that make you want to cry. It's not bad, but it could have been much better.