I was with some friends today who requested a recommendation for a classic Doctor Who story. They were in the humour for anything cheesy and camp.
Well. There was only one option, really, wasn't there?
After watching all five episodes back to back (we'd planned only to watch the first two), they were in full agreement that I had delivered exactly the kind of story they were looking for.
This predates The Wicker Man by two years and Hot Fuzz by 36 years, but I think it benefits from having seen both of them, and therefore being predisposed to have sinister associations with Morris dancers.
Not much actually happens - there's a lot of people being captured/knocked out, escaping/recovering and then being captured/knocked out again - but this zips along. Only in the final episode does the back and forth with the Brigadier and the energy barrier start to get a bit slow and even then it's still heaps of fun.
This is close to Doctor Who at its most conservative with UNIT looking very like the British Army as the good guys, Jo showing the Power of a Woman's Love but very little of the Power of a Woman's Brainpower, plus a lot of twee rural England stuff.
... which makes the Doctor's moralising that we always seem to get in the final episode of Pertwee-era stories particularly tedious. "Man can now blow up the world and he probably will" is an excellent point at a time when the UK had a stockpile of 394 nuclear warheads and rising, but it doesn't sit that well with five episodes of jolly soldiers trying to do the right thing.
Roger Delgado never gives less than 100%.
So despite misgivings, I still enjoyed this hugely.
