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auntiemeeshI know I've searched YouTube for "The Face of Evil" before because I remember seeing some of the other things that came up with that search, but no Doctor Who. It's a mystery to me, how YouTube works, however, and last night I found all twelve sections of the episode.
This was a long one, about 100 minutes all told, and I was very sleepy for the last half hour or so, but it was also a good one. The Doctor shows up on some random planet that he doesn't remember ever being to before, but everyone he meets recognizes him and calls him the Evil One. Cue heavy, dramatic music. This episode, it seems to me, is the Doctor being at his most Doctorishness. I loved his first exchange with Leela, a primitive exile he meets within minutes of disembarking from the TARDIS.
Leela: You're the Evil One.
Doctor: *a bit taken aback* Oh, no, I'm not really. Here, have a jelly baby.
Leela: *gasp* Then it's true, what they say.
Doctor: Erm, what do they say?
Leela: That the Evil One eats babies.
The main tension in the ep is provided by two warring tribes, the Sevateem and the Tesh, one primitive and barbaric, with strong bodies and passionate but not terribly well controlled minds, the other with strong telepathic abilities and rigid behavioral controls. The Sevateem wore skimpy clothes and shot crossbows. The Tesh were all about silly hats and even sillier posturing. Meanwhile the Doctor is trying to figure out the mystery of Xoanon, the Sevateem's god, who looks and sounds just like the Doctor, who refers to him as Us, but wants to kill him.
The Doctor is very morally high-minded in this episode. Certainly not the first or last time that happens, he is a Time Lord after all, and renegade or not, there are certain things that stick. When Leela kills a guard in her attempt to rescue the Doctor, he scolds her and tells her she must never do such a thing again. Star Trek this is not. The Doctor has no non-interference directive. To be fair, he is at least not hypocritical; he was quite upset with himself when he was put into a situation where it became necessary to kill an attacker in order to save his own life.
I loved the imagery of the Doctor having to crawl through his own mouth and throat (immortalized in stone) in order to reach the Tesh and the computer that was wreaking havoc with the two tribes and trying to kill the Doctor. I also liked the Doctor gradually puzzling out a small piece of his own history that he'd forgotten, that he had been to this planet before at a crucial moment, and made a misinterpretation of events at that time, and caused the current situation through that mistake.
In the end, everything is fixed and the Doctor is ready to slip away and find some new mischief to engage in. Leela, like so many companions before and after her, isn't content to let that happen and asks to be taken along. The Doctor says no, Leela slips ahead of him into the TARDIS anyway, and apparently does something to trigger the ship to leave this particular time/space. Now, I find that a little confusing, but I don't know if it's an inconsistency or just my lack of thorough grounding in how things work. But I was under the impression that the TARDIS wouldn't work for anyone but a Time Lord. Can companions in the normal course of things run the TARDIS themselves?
I clearly need to find some slightly more appropriate Doctor Who icons. It pains me to use a Nine icon when I'm reviewing an adventure of Four.
This was a long one, about 100 minutes all told, and I was very sleepy for the last half hour or so, but it was also a good one. The Doctor shows up on some random planet that he doesn't remember ever being to before, but everyone he meets recognizes him and calls him the Evil One. Cue heavy, dramatic music. This episode, it seems to me, is the Doctor being at his most Doctorishness. I loved his first exchange with Leela, a primitive exile he meets within minutes of disembarking from the TARDIS.
Leela: You're the Evil One.
Doctor: *a bit taken aback* Oh, no, I'm not really. Here, have a jelly baby.
Leela: *gasp* Then it's true, what they say.
Doctor: Erm, what do they say?
Leela: That the Evil One eats babies.
The main tension in the ep is provided by two warring tribes, the Sevateem and the Tesh, one primitive and barbaric, with strong bodies and passionate but not terribly well controlled minds, the other with strong telepathic abilities and rigid behavioral controls. The Sevateem wore skimpy clothes and shot crossbows. The Tesh were all about silly hats and even sillier posturing. Meanwhile the Doctor is trying to figure out the mystery of Xoanon, the Sevateem's god, who looks and sounds just like the Doctor, who refers to him as Us, but wants to kill him.
The Doctor is very morally high-minded in this episode. Certainly not the first or last time that happens, he is a Time Lord after all, and renegade or not, there are certain things that stick. When Leela kills a guard in her attempt to rescue the Doctor, he scolds her and tells her she must never do such a thing again. Star Trek this is not. The Doctor has no non-interference directive. To be fair, he is at least not hypocritical; he was quite upset with himself when he was put into a situation where it became necessary to kill an attacker in order to save his own life.
I loved the imagery of the Doctor having to crawl through his own mouth and throat (immortalized in stone) in order to reach the Tesh and the computer that was wreaking havoc with the two tribes and trying to kill the Doctor. I also liked the Doctor gradually puzzling out a small piece of his own history that he'd forgotten, that he had been to this planet before at a crucial moment, and made a misinterpretation of events at that time, and caused the current situation through that mistake.
In the end, everything is fixed and the Doctor is ready to slip away and find some new mischief to engage in. Leela, like so many companions before and after her, isn't content to let that happen and asks to be taken along. The Doctor says no, Leela slips ahead of him into the TARDIS anyway, and apparently does something to trigger the ship to leave this particular time/space. Now, I find that a little confusing, but I don't know if it's an inconsistency or just my lack of thorough grounding in how things work. But I was under the impression that the TARDIS wouldn't work for anyone but a Time Lord. Can companions in the normal course of things run the TARDIS themselves?
I clearly need to find some slightly more appropriate Doctor Who icons. It pains me to use a Nine icon when I'm reviewing an adventure of Four.
