The Krotons

Episode 1

Hannah: "The Krotons"? They sound like croutons.
Me: Never heard that one before.
Hannah: I'm excited for the soup toppings.

Now that we've got that out of the way, it's time to meet the Gonds.

Hannah: (sighing) It's just more people with shoulder pads.
Me: Do you know who that is, on the right?
Hannah: (after a long pause) It looks like Jack Nicholson.
Me: Not Andrew Scott, then?
Hannah: Was I looking at the wrong one?
Me: When this actor appeared in the second Peter Cushing film, Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., you thought he looked like Andrew Scott.
Hannah: Did I? Who is it, then?
Me: Our favourite Welsh thespian.
Hannah: I don't know who that is.
Me: It's Philip Madoc!
Hannah: Who?
Me: The U-boat captain from Dad's Army!
Hannah: Oh, okay. Can we go back now and actually listen to what they were saying? Don't expect me to recognise people unless it's a particularly good day and my eyes are working properly.
Me: I know, but I have to ask anyway, just in case you say something interesting or bizarre. Like "Jack Nicholson".
Hannah: One of them does look like Jack Nicholson! Look, him! The one who's putting the robe on people! Doesn't he? He's got that same hairstyle from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The Gonds are under the rule of the alien Krotons.

Hannah: So there are some other beings, or something, that choose people to come and serve them, and it's an honour, but at the same time it's a "we'll probably never see them again" kind of honour. That's what it looks like to me.
Me: Pretty much. It's a little bit Hunger Games at this stage, I'll grant you.

The TARDIS materialises nearby. At first glance we're in yet another quarry, but there's something special about this one.

Hannah: (unimpressed) Which quarry are they in this time?
Me: This is Tank Quarry.
Hannah: What? I didn't think anyone had ever actually filmed up th-- oh, it looks a lot bigger than I remember! Is that actual Tank Quarry? In Malvern?
Me: Yes, and it was still being used for quarrying when this was filmed.
Hannah: A long, long time before I lived there. Yeah, it would have been different; I remember it being much greener than that. I can't... actual Tank Quarry? In actual Malvern?
Me: No, the other one.
Hannah: Why did they go all the way to Malvern to film in a quarry? Don't they usually just stick around London? Why would they go all the way up there?
Me: It's not always London.
Hannah: We used to go up there if we didn't want to go anywhere too far away; we'd just nip up there for a picnic on a weekend. I'm really excited that it's something from where I grew up! Something that I know really well. There are picnic benches there, and there's one of those nature reserve information boards with all the butterflies you can see in the area, and notices that say "take your dog poo home or we'll break your wrists" and things like that. It's called Tank Quarry because there used to be a big water tank there, just round the corner, and you can actually get up into the hills the other side of that; it's a nice picnic site, because it's a bit that's been opened out to nature now. And this is North Hill of the Malvern Hills, in case you care. It was only about three roads away from our house. Also, did Jamie say that the quarry smells of eggs? I find that rude; it's a very lovely quarry.

She enjoys seeing the Doctor prancing around with his umbrella, but seems to have mixed feelings about Zoe's PVC outfit.

Hannah: She's got a very short skirt on.
Me: Has she? I've never noticed.
Hannah: People are allowed to wear whatever they want to, but it needs to be practical for the situation. Wear a short skirt if you want, but only if you're happy to be flashing your pants while you're climbing ladders and things. If she's happy with that, I'm happy with that; it's just that it happens far too often. There's nothing wrong with seeing pants, they're just pants, but if you're running around and cutting your legs on things it's probably better to be wearing trousers.

As our heroes make their way down to the city (which Hannah at first mistakes for a couple of stones on the ground, thanks to a slightly awkward camera angle), they come across a dead Gond lying outside. Meanwhile, Philip Madoc is being magnificent as usual.

Hannah: I recognise him now.
Me: "I don't want any nasty, soggy chips."
Hannah: He's got stripy socks on. Oh, here comes the Doctor to upset generations of tradition and tell them that bloke is dead. He's come just in time to save one person's life but upset an entire civilisation, as usual.

Unfortunately, the previous story is proving to be a tough act to follow.

Hannah: The writing on this is so much worse, having just watched a 10 out of 10.
Me: This is the first story written by Robert Holmes, the most prolific writer of the original series and arguably the most popular.
Hannah: Well, the idea seems interesting, but the script and direction are awful. The acting and dialogue feel very stilted, and it's jarring to watch after such a smooth-flowing and well-acted story as The Invasion.

To save another of the Gonds from dying, the Doctor put her into a hypnotic trance.

Hannah: At what point does the Doctor gain his telepathic powers?
Me: His what?
Hannah: He can do things, like touch a person's head and share his mind, and things like that. Is that very "new Who"-ish?
Me: I don't think you're going to see that before the David Tennant era.
Hannah: Yeah, it definitely doesn't fit with the old Doctor. But it would really come in handy for a lot of these stories.

The Doctor learns that the Krotons always choose the two most promising students to be their companions shortly before killing them, but he's hard-pressed to explain why.

Hannah: Either to cap the intelligence level of the community and stop them breaking out, or to harvest their intelligence in their own machine by sucking it out of their brain or something. Those are my thoughts.

The Krotons send in a snake-like probe to attack the Doctor, although as far as Hannah's concerned it barely constitutes a cliffhanger.

Hannah: It's just a light on the end of a long wiggly stick.

But at least she's mildly interested when our old friend Roy Skelton appears in the closing credits.

Hannah: I know him.
Me: Go on, then.
Hannah: He's a man that does voices.
Me: Well, yes, obviously; he's credited as "Kroton voices".
Hannah: He's also the voice of... something else.
Me: Yes...?
Hannah: Is he the voice of the Daleks?
Me: Well, he has done Daleks before, but that's not what he's famous for.
Hannah: What is he famous for?
Me: Zippy and George in Rainbow.
Hannah: (sighing) No, not that.
Me: What?
Hannah: I mean to me.
Me: God knows. He was the voice of the Monoids in The Ark, if that rings any bells?
Hannah: When they had voices?
Me: Yes. Amazingly enough, he didn't do their voices in the episodes where they didn't have voices yet.

Episode 2

We both love the scene where the Doctor and Zoe are competing to get the highest academic score, but Hannah is slightly apprehensive.

Hannah: He thinks he's more intelligent than her? What if he's not? It's going to be really annoying if he's not as intelligent as her.

When they enter the Krotons' machine (or "Dynatrope") and sit down amongst vats of bubbling, smoking liquid, the Doctor describes the slurry as "primeval soup".

Me: Oh look, they've got soup to go with the croutons.
Hannah: This is a very weird scene! It's like the most uninviting Jacuzzi I've ever seen.

Something solid starts to form in the soup; the Gonds' mental power has been insufficient, but the mental energy of the Doctor and Zoe is enough to revive the Krotons, who turn out to be crystalline beings rather than buoyant soup cubes.

Hannah: If the Krotons need a mind like Zoe's or the Doctor's to complete their plans, they're definitely not pushing the Gonds anywhere near hard enough.

As for their appearance...

Hannah: They're living crystal beasts? Oh no, they've got tiny little hands! All of their voices sound the same. Those two are having a conversation and it just sounds like someone talking to themselves.

Incredibly, she also accidentally refers to them as "Krynoids" at one point, thus anticipating a Tom Baker story by more than seven years.

Hannah: You know what the Krotons look like?
Me: Probably not.
Hannah: Those little lollipops that you get on rings. Ring Pops. But they're cut to look like an exaggerated diamond shape.

Episode 3

Things are starting to pick up for Hannah with this instalment; after Jamie briefly questions whether the Doctor and Zoe would leave without him ("Aw! He thinks maybe they are"), Philip Madoc completely steals the show yet again.

Hannah: Maybe the story's not as bad as I'm making it out to be; I feel like things have improved a little since the last one. I'm not judging it so harshly in all aspects. Maybe it's because there's now more distance between this and The Invasion, so I'm looking on it a little more kindly.
Me: Or it could just be that Philip Madoc is so good that he's elevating the whole thing.
Hannah: I mean, we've still got these giant faceless robots, using their little claw things and trying to operate switches and dials that are clearly designed for human hands. And the dialogue is still a little stilted, but actually it's not all that bad because this guy's such a good actor. The rest of the acting still feels very unnatural, though.

As much as we'd rather watch Philip Madoc for the entire episode, it's time to check in with the Krotons again.

Hannah: Okay, let's see what the salt and pepper shakers have to say for themselves. (laughing) You can see the legs moving underneath the metal-painted sack!

The Krotons are planning to kill Jamie, but at least they have the good grace to soften the blow with an elegant euphemism.

Hannah: "You will be dispersed." Never heard it called that before. "Revoked", yes, but "dispersed"?
Me: Is that a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference?
Hannah: Of course. "K-I-L-L-E-D, revoked."

Then she studies the textures on their crystalline bodies, and perpetrates an unforgivable pun.

Hannah: Guess what?
Me: What?
Hannah: Krotons are groovy.

She's got a nerve, taking the piss when I do that.

One of the Krotons fires at the TARDIS, and Hannah is surprised when it appears to have been destroyed. (Again.)

Hannah: I didn't think the TARDIS would be affected.
Me: Why?
Hannah: Because nothing ever affects it.
Me: It blew up two stories ago.
Hannah: But that wasn't real!

But the Doctor has remembered to set the Hostile Action Displacement System, and the TARDIS re-materialises further up the cliff.

Hannah: Oh, did it just evade capture? Aw, sneaky TARDIS! See, I knew the TARDIS would be alright.
Me: He only remembers to set the HADS in one other story, and that's not until the Matt Smith era.
Hannah: So the rest of the time people can just pick it up and move it? And steal it?
Me: Yep. It's an amazingly useful thing to have, and for some reason he barely ever uses it.
Hannah: Surely that's something that should be right next to the handbrake, so that you always remember to set it.

She's having a little trouble with the Kroton voices, particularly when one of them says "Balance four."

Hannah: Salads for what? Salads for the croutons?
Me: I can't even tell if you're being serious anymore.
Hannah: (laughing) Their heads spin around far too much; they're far too spinny. Maybe they're salad spinners?

The episode concludes with the Doctor getting buried under a pile of falling rubble.

Hannah: Obviously the Doctor's dead now. Does that mean I don't have to watch this one any more?
Me: You wish.
Hannah: This story's going places now. I mean, I'm glad it's only four episodes long, but there are a lot of unanswered questions here, which either indicates a plot full of unplumbed depths or a plot full of holes. I'm not sure which this is.

Episode 4

With the roof falling in and the Doctor buried alive, Hannah's attention is naturally drawn to the pattern at the bottom of the Gonds' clothing.

Hannah: Stupid stripy things. It looks like they've got duct tape round their trousers.
Me: Look, you can see Zoe's bra.
Hannah: Was her costume supposed to split like that?
Me: Seems unlikely, doesn't it?
Hannah: It's not that bad. At least you can't see her boobs or anything.

I say nothing.

Hannah: I don't like that wall; it looks like a solid sheet.
Me: More like a treacle tart.
Hannah: Also, I can't see how it helps the Krotons when they keep spinning their heads around. It's a pretty good effect, though.
Me: Maybe it just means they're flustered. Like that twerpy robot from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
Hannah: I never watched it.
Me: Are you sure you grew up in the nineties?

By the time the Doctor and Zoe finally realise that Jamie has followed them into the Dynatrope and decide to do something about it, he's already crawling out to meet them. What are the odds?

Hannah: There are too many things here that aren't believable; they've left it an hour before going to find Jamie, and that's exactly the moment that he chooses to crawl out. What a massive coincidence. He should have died, really. Why should he have come out at the exact moment that they decide to actually bother looking for him?

Hannah barely has time to mourn the death of Selris ("Oh no! He was so brave and helpful") before the Doctor tells us that, if the Dynatrope's power runs down, it will release enough energy to destroy most of the planet.

Hannah: Oh, so they've just randomly introduced that fact all of a sudden. It hasn't been established at any point! The Krotons kept saying that they'll exhaust and fade away back into goo, and have to wait until they can revive themselves again, but now the Doctor's thrown in this extra twist so that you can't just run around until they tire themselves out and fade away, which would be the logical thing to do, because everything will die in a massive explosion of energy.
Me: Don't you think it would be a bit of an anti-climax? Defeating the monsters by running away from them until they tire themselves out?
Hannah: But why have they suddenly decided that the reason for it being a bad idea is that there'll be a massive explosion, which has come from literally nowhere? You can't just make energy.

The Doctor and Zoe play for time so that Jamie can cook up some sulphuric acid, but the Krotons put a stop to their line of questioning after Zoe asks them to fill in one of the plot holes.

Hannah: The author couldn't think of an answer.

The Dynatrope is destroyed when Jamie and the Gonds start dropping acid (a common occurrence in the sixties) and everyone watches as the machine melts.

Hannah: So there's not going to be a giant explosion, then? It's just going to dissolve? So what happened to all the energy that was going to explode? I know sci-fi science is different from real-world science, but there's a line.

With the Krotons defeated and the Gonds liberated, our heroes leave in the TARDIS. Cue the credits.

Hannah: Oh, there's no lead-in to the next story! They don't seem to be doing a lot of that anymore.

Our discussion turns to the subject of the Krotons themselves.

Me: On the DVD commentary, Toby Hadoke says that Roy Skelton gave the Krotons a South African accent as a protest against apartheid.
Hannah: I hadn't noticed that; I thought they were just slow and weird. They didn't sound South African to me, they just sounded like Vogons from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Slightly northern.
Me: Northern Johannesburg?
Hannah: No.
Me: A couple of months ago, Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat were on Graham Norton's radio show to promote their new Doctor Who novelisations; one of the listeners emailed in and asked which classic monster they would like to see back on the show one day. Steven Moffat chose the Wirrn from Tom Baker's second story, because the special effects at the time hadn't really done them justice, and Russell T. Davies chose the Krotons.
Hannah: Why? Because he thought he could do better?
Me: Because they're crystalline, and he thought they would look impressive with modern CGI.
Hannah: Well, yeah, that's what I think; they're a really cool idea. It would be nice to see them done properly.

The Score

Me: How many Troughton stories have you given 9 out of 10? I can't remember.
Hannah: I don't know, and you're not about to get one. But there's a lot to like in this story. It's an excellent idea for an alien; it's not carbon-based and it looks like a machine, but it's not, it's alive. Biological, yet mineral. It's a great design, and I like the fact that it's farming people's brains. So there are a lot of excellent ideas, but really badly executed.

It could have been a lot worse; this story was a replacement for the abandoned Dick Sharples script "The Prison in Space" in which men are forced to wear dresses and serve evil dolly birds in an "unnatural" matriarchal society, with Zoe getting brainwashed until a jolly good spanking brings her back to her senses. Hannah clearly approves of this idea, partly out of a morbid curiosity but also because it sounds a lot more lively than what we got instead.

Hannah: I wanted it to be good, and there are lots of funny bits, but it's just so lacking in the execution; I really wish they could have used even half of these ideas and done something amazing with them.

5/10

Hannah: The Krotons are a really good idea. Please emphasise that. But unfortunately they've made a really bad story with it.
Me: Not a fan of Robert Holmes, then?
Hannah: I think its saving grace is that it's not longer. Unkillable aliens is a cool concept; it's just a shame it was wasted on this story.