Doctor Who fans another Wednesday is here upon us and that does mean that i'm here to present my next review in this season 23 look back. I have to say that prior to watching this episode I got some comments on one of the previous two on the main Doctor Who amino saying that I wasn't going to like how they introduce Mel and well i'm going to be getting into that later since it needs to be addressed and so here is my review of the penultimate season 23 episode Terror Of The Vervoids enjoy.
The plot in this episode is The Doctor and his sudden new companion Mel find themselves answering an call for help which takes them to a spaceliner where they must solve a set of murders. Yeah I have alot of issues with this episode but the story isn't one of them in fact I thought that they story was rather enjoyable but what I didn't like about the story was the fact that there wasn't any stakes at all and so there was no reason for the murders to be solved outside of the fact that murder is bad.
Starring in the episode is Colin Baker as The Doctor and Bonnie Langford as his new companion Mel Bush. As for the guest cast we have Lynda Bellingham as The Inquisitor , Michael Jayston as The Valeyard , Pussy Galore (yes i'm a James Bond fan so sue me for making a Goldfinger reference) as Professor Sarah Lasky , Malcolm Tierney as Doland , David Allister as Bruchner , Michael Craig as Commodore Travers , Denys Hawthorne as Rudge , Yolande Palfrey as Janet and Arthur Hewlett as Kimber.
Trust me I will be talking about Mel's introduction very soon but as for Bonnie's performance given that she has very little to go of she's not that bad but I will say that her voice does get a little annoying at times. AS for the other actors Colin is not that bad in this episode which given how good he was in the last episode isn't a good thing and Honor Blackman is just simply a delight like I said i'm a James Bond fan and she's in my all time favourite James Bond film and so to see her in this was not only a surprise but it was also welcome.
Oh boy oh boy do I have some thoughts about the introduction of Mel in short how they introduced her while it does work for the story of the season it only helps confuse the audience. Since yeah we're not introduced to Mel she just shows up in the opening scene in the TARDIS and the doctor already knows who she is meanwhile the audience myself included are sat there asking "who's that?" which is something that we should never be asking.
Her introduction also doesn't work because we don't know the character and so we don't really want to her with the doctor because we don't know her character. Since we don't know her character alot of the dialog that involves her is basically explaining who her character is and where she came from but it's done in such a bad way that it's almost laughable how badly done it is and all of these issues could have been fixed if she was given a proper introduction on screen and not in audio form.
Now then let us talk about the so called monsters of the episode the vervoids and I say so called because they add nothing to the plot what so ever. I'm not even kidding they add nothing to the plot of the episode nor are they a threat for a large portion of the story they do nothing so I have to wonder why do they even have there name in the title of the episode since that gives the impression that there going to actually do something in the episode.
Now what many people might not know is that producer John Nathan-Turner actually served as the script editor for this episode and I believe the second part of the final serial as well. So basically he had final say over everything that goes in this episode and that might explain why alot of the things in this episode just aren't that good again looking at Mel the introduction of a new companion should be treated as a big deal but it's not being treated as one here.
I hate to keep on hating on this episode just because the idea of the episode is honestly rather solid but I hated the voice they gave the vervoids. All it is is just the actors speaking normally and that's it nothing is done to make them sound alien or unique and so all the time I was watching them all I can think was a man in suit just saying those lines normally because they have no distinct voices , if you think of the creatures like the Daleks , the Cybermen and the Ice Warriors they all have very distinct alien sounding voices but here there just speaking normally and it doesn't work at all.
Now onto something actually positive about the episode which is the fact that I liked the trial scenes in this episode. They are advancing the overall story of the season really well with each ending for a serial adding in something new and while I will go into more detail about the trial in the next season 23 review I do like the idea that someone is possibly messing with both past and future events for some unknown reason.
Now rather shockingly for a Doctor Who episode there is a heavy mystery element to this story and that does mean we have to talk about it. In short I thought that the mystery could have been handled alot better since they don't give any clues as to who the killer is which is something a good mystery should do but on the other hand given the time restraints they did pull of a really intriguing mystery with plenty of twists and turns.
I also found the music for the episode done by Malcolm Clarke to be either at best just average or flat out bad at worst. There's no middle ground here and I don't know why that is there's no scene where the music is great but there are plenty of scenes where the music is just bad I honestly lost count of how many times I said to myself "that's a bad piece of music" or "that's a bad music cue" which is a shame because the music in Doctor Who is nearly always a joy to listen to.
Overall in terms of companion introduction episodes it's pretty bad since like I said they don't set up Mel at all and every bit of dialog we get revealing bits of her character just feels forced. On the other hand tho there is an interesting mystery which while it does make up for some of the episodes short coming it doesn't make up for all of them and so I have to give this episode a solid 5.5 out of 10 from me join me next week for the season 23 finale The Ultimate Foe.