Fun thing about The Invasion: it was originally scripted as a six-parter, then was chopped down to four because Terence Dicks didn't think it had enough story to fill so many episodes. Then another four-parter, that was supposed to come afterward, fell through, forcing them to spread the story across eight episodes. Thus the weird device with the completely different enemy base that looks exactly the same, and all of the episode-long goose chases.
To make it more amazing, the episodes took so long to shoot that they didn't have time or budget to film a bunch of the important scenes in the second half of the story. So really dramatic, interesting things will happen off-camera, and be explained with a line. "Oh, we rescued him with a helicopter, and there was a shoot-out. You should've been there!"
So after seven episodes of plodding capture-escape, capture-escape, plot dead end, capture escape, the story is resolved so quickly that it's difficult to follow what just happened.
Oh well. At least the animation is atmospheric. I like the way, given the limitations, they focused on interesting angles and compositions instead of trying for a kind of action that they couldn't achieve. All things considered, my only real complaint is that Troughton looks far more dour than he sounds. Based on his voice, I keep imagining his familiarly droll expressions and mannerisms, while his animation model stands still and squints.
One of the things I like best about Inferno is its structure. You get an introduction episode, then a four-episode serial set in Eyepatch World, then a two-parter back here, dealing with the results of that adventure. In the middle are a few flash-sidewayses, whenever the Doctor is knocked unconscious or whatever, to give us a chance to catch up on what everyone else is up to just about when we're starting to wonder, keeping the pace trucking right along.
Both Inferno and The Silurians use their length really well, I think, as an opportunity to do something a little more interesting -- which stands in contrast not just to The Invasion or many of the six-parters throughout the 1970s, but to a heck of a lot of the four-parters, where the problem seems to be figuring out how to pad out a stock idea (a planet... of human-aliens... whose fleaspeck culture is exactly like feudal Europe... which has a political problem... held in place by one rotten individual (Curse of Peladon? Monster of Peladon? Half of the Key to Time season? Most of the Big Finish audios?)) to fill a month of airtime.
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Date: 2008-02-25 09:15 pm (UTC)To make it more amazing, the episodes took so long to shoot that they didn't have time or budget to film a bunch of the important scenes in the second half of the story. So really dramatic, interesting things will happen off-camera, and be explained with a line. "Oh, we rescued him with a helicopter, and there was a shoot-out. You should've been there!"
So after seven episodes of plodding capture-escape, capture-escape, plot dead end, capture escape, the story is resolved so quickly that it's difficult to follow what just happened.
Oh well. At least the animation is atmospheric. I like the way, given the limitations, they focused on interesting angles and compositions instead of trying for a kind of action that they couldn't achieve. All things considered, my only real complaint is that Troughton looks far more dour than he sounds. Based on his voice, I keep imagining his familiarly droll expressions and mannerisms, while his animation model stands still and squints.
One of the things I like best about Inferno is its structure. You get an introduction episode, then a four-episode serial set in Eyepatch World, then a two-parter back here, dealing with the results of that adventure. In the middle are a few flash-sidewayses, whenever the Doctor is knocked unconscious or whatever, to give us a chance to catch up on what everyone else is up to just about when we're starting to wonder, keeping the pace trucking right along.
Both Inferno and The Silurians use their length really well, I think, as an opportunity to do something a little more interesting -- which stands in contrast not just to The Invasion or many of the six-parters throughout the 1970s, but to a heck of a lot of the four-parters, where the problem seems to be figuring out how to pad out a stock idea (a planet... of human-aliens... whose fleaspeck culture is exactly like feudal Europe... which has a political problem... held in place by one rotten individual (Curse of Peladon? Monster of Peladon? Half of the Key to Time season? Most of the Big Finish audios?)) to fill a month of airtime.