"You can't go on being lucky; things catch up with you."
It just struck me that the episode that we watched on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 was "A Land of Fear." A little odd that.
This episode marks a significant first for the series; the first use of exterior footage. They put somebody into the Doctor's outfit, put a wig on him and trundled him off with a camera crew to film the Doctor walking to Paris.
 | |
| The Doctor trekking to Paree. |
Alright, location work would get better. Eventually they found a quarry which was all manner of strange alien worlds and eventually they filmed in Paris, Spain and the Netherlands. Then the new series came around and they shot in Wales, Italy and the United States.
But for now we'll have to settle for this.
The first episode got the TARDIS crew into a mess and this episode gets the plot rolling.
The Doctor was rescued from the burning farm house by the boy the travelers encountered last episode. He gets the Doctor up to speed on the things that have happened while he was out cold.
The boy, Jean-Pierre, offers to help get the Doctor away. His mother can give him some help and it's implied that his father worked with the resistance before getting taken away.
The Doctor insists on going to Paris to rescue his friends.
While this is going on the other three are brought to Conciergerie Prison. There are two old ladies shown knitting as they are dragged into the prison. There is an old myth that the old ladies used to dip their knitting yarn in the blood of the victims of the guillotine. Just having those two old ladies there knitting, without a word of dialog was enough to evoke that old myth for me.
The travelers were found in the presence of known subversives so they themselves must be subversives so they get sentenced to death without being able to speak in their own defense. Pretty much sums up how things were done in the years just after the French Revolution. "Justice" was rough, quick and frequently ill aimed.
Barbara fends off the advances of her jailor who makes it perfectly clear that some doors don't have to be locked if Barbara will help him with his loneliness problem. Barbara gives him a good slap.
Ian is put into a cell with a man dieing of a gun shot wound suffered during his capture. Ian says that he thinks that he can escape. His cellmate, Webster (not the Emmanuel Lewis version), makes Ian promise to escape and find James Sterling, a man who has information vital in stopping another English-French war.
In their cell Barbara immediately goes into escape mode while Susan whines a lot.
The Doctor runs into a bit of a problem about half way to Paris. He encounters a work gang made up of tax dodgers being overseen by a loud mouthed dickweed. The Doctor tells the man that he could make his schedule if he picked up a shovel and helped instead of standing around yelling.
That doesn't go over well with the gang boss who promptly asks the Doctor for traveling papers and any proof that the Doctor paid his taxes. Having neither, the Doctor is put to work on the road gang.
The gang boss calls the Doctor "Skinny." I like it.
Back in Conciergerie Prison Lamaitre, the head of the prison, goes into Ian's cell and tries to question him about his deceased cellmate. Ian is defiant and deceitful. The way Ian said the word "Citizen" spoke volumes of the man's opinion about this place and the man before him. Ian claims that Webster died without telling him anything.
Lamaitre has a word with the warden and discovers that Ian and Webster talked for a short time, but the warden was unable to hear any details. Lamaitre removes Ian's name from the list of those to be executed.
Meanwhile Skinny has had enough forced manual labor. He feigns seeing an eclipse and uses the distraction to pick the purse of the boss of three coins. The Doctor then plants the coins in the ground where he is digging. He "finds" one and declares that he must have stumbled upon a hidden treasure. The gang boss is skeptical until he himself uncovers a second coin. The prisoners make to dig for the treasure, but the greedy boss forces them back so that he can have it all. The boss is so engrossed in his digging that he doesn't notice Skinny coming up behind him with a shovel.
And then the gang boss took a nap.
I love when the Doctor plays trickster.
Back at the prison Susan and Barbara are being dragged off to meet their fate while Ian watches impotently from his cell.
All-in-all a good outing for everyone except Susan. Spooner likes to leaven his drama with a healthy dose of humor and this one shows how well he can pull it off.
Next up: A Change of Identity
No comments:
Post a Comment