DOCTOR WHO MARATHON 35th MEET-UP - THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN

Sunday 24th May 2015

Hello Cheeky?  How have you been?  Okay?  Well that's nice.  Here's a story about 5 chaps and their continuing adventures in Dr Who Marathon Land!

The week in question saw us gather around Leigh's house to watch the 6 part story "The Abominable Snowmen"!

Once again it was mostly re-cons (5 parts re-con - 1 part real) but from now on the amount of re-cons left to watch is getting quite small!  Only 1 more story left which is totally re-cons and only a couple with over half as re-cons.

Anyhow what can I tell you about this week's story?  Well Part 1 (re-con) starts off with the TARDIS landing in the Himalayas (actually the Welsh Mountains, but they looked impressive)!  Here we find an explorer, Professor Edward Travers,who is awoken from his sleep when he hears the screams of his companion!  He is horrified to see a lumbering, hairy creature standing over his friend's lifeless body - The Abominable Snowman - aka The Yeti!

Elsewhere The Doctor is happy at where they've landed and tells Jamie and Victoria to start searching for a 'Holy Ghanta' in his chest of treasures/junk.  He tells them that they have landed in Tibet, and the Detsen Monastery will "give them a welcome of a lifetime" if they arrive with the Ghanta: a bell and holy Buddhist relic the Doctor took three hundred years ago for safe-keeping.  Whilst his companions search, the Doctor steps outside but finds the dead body.  He picks up the rucksack that the man dropped and travels up to the nearby Monastery to prepare the way for his companions.  It seems the Doctor has been here before and cannot wait to go to the Monastery and get a heroes welcome!  However he comes against a lot of angry suspicious monks who think he's up to no good.  This leads once again the Doctor being locked up in a cell!

Photo 1: Leigh, Shaun (holding the mock DVD Cover),
 Mark (holding the sign) and Jason
(holding the Lost In Time DVD Cover)
around Leigh's house!

Travers goes to visit the Doctor in his cell and says he's been looking for the Yeti - which the Monks say are a race of peaceful, shy creatures.  And yet these ones are attacking people.  Naturally suspicion falls upon the Doctor - especially as his big furry coat makes him look a little bit Yeti-like.  Oh, did I mention the furry coat?  Ah well, he's wearing one.  That bit was important!  Still the Doctor manages to get free by showing the Monk's (specifically their leader - the easily named Padmasambhava!) the Holy Ghanta (that Bell!).  Once free he starts investigating!

Meanwhile Jamie and Victoria have been terrorised on the hills by the Yeti.  The find a cave with a huge pyramid of shiny metal balls. The Yeti however finds them and attacks - causing a cave-in!  Our plucky companions escape (with a shiny ball!) and take it back to show the Doctor at the Monastery.  We view all this as it all happens in the existing Episode 2!  So that's nice.

Photo 2: MJ, Shaun (holding the mock DVD Cover),
 Mark (holding the sign) and Jason
(holding the Lost In Time DVD Cover)
around Leigh's house!

Well as I said I won't bang on about the plot - it seems silly when you can watch it yourself!

Instead let's look at what I liked.  Well firstly Padmasambhava was fantastic!  The poor chap HAD been an old friend of the Doctor's but he'd been possessed by "The Great Intelligence" - an alien being with no form of it's own.  I think Padmasambhava had encountered the formless alien when he was meditating and had been travelling outer space in a sort if out-of-body experience.  It was here that The Great Intelligence had overtaken his body and come back to earth.  The actor, the gloriously named "Wolfe Morris" was great, both playing the gentle, but slightly creepy sounding, weary Monk who had been forced to live hundreds of years!  The Schizophrenic performance reminded me of Gollum from Lord of The Rings - one moment calm - the next rasping with hatred!

As with Marco Polo, most of the oriental people were played by English white chaps with make-up.  Though I thought the Abbot played it quite English like!

Photo 3: Close up of Leigh (very happy)
and Shaun (holding the mock DVD Cover) 
around Leigh's house!

The Yeti's weren't bad - they did have huge bottoms which they didn't shake to music - so that was disappointing!  They turned out to be robots - created by Padmasambhava with guidance from the Great Intelligence.  The metal balls turned out to be important - they were like a battery that, once slotted into a hole in the Yeti Robot's (not like that!), turned them on (again, not like that...!)

Oh I've had to copy and paste "Padmasambhava" every time I've used it!  You try remembering that damn spelling!


Overall it was quite enjoyable - I thought the sets and locations were good.  Some good actors and the Yeti's were quite cute!  Oh and we do get to see a "real one" right at the end - which pleases Travers.  He was a bit down having spent all that time looking for them - only to have them to have been robots!Well that's it - next time we're back in the snow!  So until then, I shall return, yes I shall return!

MJ - 29-05-15

DOCTOR WHO MARATHON 34th MEET-UP - THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN

Sunday 10th May 2015

Well once again we met on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  Once again we were Jim-less but this time we had a GIRL in our midst!  Shaun (or "Added Shaun" as he's known) invited his sister Toni to come along and sit in a darkened room with five guys to watch black and white 1960's Doctor Who.

Luckily for her she joined us to watch "The Tomb of the Cybermen"!  Not only does it feature the return of a recurring villain (The Cybermen, but you guessed that) but it exists - completely!
 
No re-cons, no animation.  Four complete episodes - found in Hong Kong back in 1991!  What a great way to kick of Doctor Two's second season.

Photo 1: Mark, Toni (holding the sign),
Shaun, Jason (holding the DVD Cover)
 and Leigh around Mark's house!

So we start with the TARDIS crew still on Skaro with new companion Victoria in tow - she can't believe they are about to travel through time and space).
However she soon starts to believe when the TARDIS takes off from Skaro and then lands on the planet Telos/usual quarry pit!

It's on Telos we find an expedition who are trying to find the tombs of the legendary Cybermen.  After setting some explosives they blast away part of a cliff face which reveals the entrance to the Cybermen's tombs.
 
They all cheer and are ecstatic - and quite right as well - it's a very good model shot!  However there cheers are soon muted when the Doctor turns up (having been found by another member of the expedition and brought to the main team at gunpoint) as they assume he's part of a rival expedition!  Still they don't have time to fret as they need to get into the Tombs via the main doors.  One guy tries (ignoring the Doctor's warning) and ends up being electrocuted!  Thankfully, although the guy is dead, the doors have lost all their electrical charge and so Kaftan (a lady on the expedition who is the female villain of the piece) gets her manservant (the giant Toberman) to open the doors!
Toberman is great - a giant, black actor with muscles as large as Birmingham!  He doesn't say much just grunts and shouts odd words - much like The Hulk might say "HULK SMASH"!  His mistress, Kaftan, is a member of the Brotherhood of Logicians.  Along with her colleague, Eric Klieg, she financed Professor Parry's expedition to Telos.  The Logicians secretly hoped to find the Cybermen and re-animate them so that they could form an alliance to rule the Earth.

Photo 2: Mark, MJ, Shaun (holding the DVD Cover),
Jason (holding the sign) and Leigh around Mark's house!

The Cybermen do get found, frozen in suspended animation inside catacombs.  However they don't stay frozen for long as Klieg re-activates them and they quickly thaw out.  It's a really impressive scene to see them slowly thaw and break out of their holes before releasing the Cybercontoller!  He's a tall fellow, with no handles on his head - but he does have a cyber brain on show!

Photo 3: Shaun (being a robot),
Jason (holding AND pointing to the DVD cover) and
a bit of Leigh around Mark's house!

Well I for one really enjoyed watching the story - it zipped along nicely and had a nice mix of stuff that made sense and stuff that was outrageous!  Again we had a nice mix of accents and nationalities (though I wasn't sure on the accent of the American pilot who kept calling Victoria "Vic"!).  I think the Cybermen's design was impressive again, but I still find you really have to concentrate hard to understand what they are saying!  The supportive cast were strong and seemed to be quite fun - oh and of course we have the first appearance of the Cybermen's pet robots - The Cybermats!  They may be small but they can inflict some damage - well unless you trap them within a loop of electrical cable - which seems to fry their brains!

I think the highlight for me, was a quieter moment between Victoria and the Doctor in which they talk about how Victoria's feeling.  I mean let's not forget, she been yanked out of her own time after having had her father brutally killed.  So it's nice that they acknowledge this and we even get the Doctor talking about his own family - and revealing his age, which I think was the first time we heard it - though I might be wrong!

I think the gang (and the new girl) enjoyed the story - a strong start to the Trout-Mans second season.  Next time we're off to the Himalayas!

So until then, I shall return, yes I shall return!

MJ - 18-05-15