We return to the Third Doctor to finish his first season with a bang!  The Doctor battles nuclear werewolves, evil counterparts, and evil scientists in this classic serial.

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

The Doctor goes to ANOTHER nuclear facility, this one powering a drill attempting to pierce the earth’s crust so that they can access a mythical magic gas that would provide essentially free energy for the world. (Bull butter.)

Stahlman, the scientist in charge of the project, is the obvious bad guy and is maniacal about getting through the crust ASAP regardless of safety. Hot green goo starts coming up during the drilling; a guy touches it and starts turning greenish-blue and growing hair, like some kind of Dracula in a low-budget foreign film. He kills someone and acts like an animal.

The Doctor tries to get the Tardis console to work with the power from the reactor, and argues with Stahlman when the power is taken away from him, then fixes it on the sly. During his second attempt to use the console it takes him to an alternate universe where the Brigadier DOESN’T have facial hair but an eyepatch and a scar, and where Liz has a dark bob and isn’t a scientist. Also fascists, they are all fascists.

In the evil mirror universe the drilling is further along and they pierce the earth’s core despite the Doctor’s attempts to stop them. This begins a chain reaction of lava or something that will inevitably destroy the world. The Doctor can’t save it but persuades some of the survivors of the Turkish Dracula Disease (which has become the Turkish Werewolf Disease) to help him get back to the other world to save THEM.

He gets back and averts the disaster (barely). Then he tries to use the Tardis console again to escape, but ends up in the garbage dump. WHAT IS DIGNITY

CHARACTERS

1. The Doctor, as usual, is great in this one. He’s arrogant and rude to Stahlman, who deserves it, but it bites him in the butt when Stahlman reacts by pulling his power. He’s still trying to use the Tardis to escape Earth, so he hasn’t given up on that.
2. The Doctor does say that he has heard the weird sound the creatures make early on at the eruption of Krakatoa, but this doesn’t really ever get explained. Probably for the best.
3. He gets to make some great faces in this one, particularly when he kind of has a bad “splinching” experience early on trying to use the Tardis.
4. Liz is great in this one and it’s a real bummer that this is her last serial. Though the real Liz spends a lot of her time running a couple spurious errands for the Doctor intended to get her out of the way, Caroline John also gets to play Evil Liz, who has a short, dark haircut and is in the fascist military of her world. She’s still scientific minded, though, and studied physics in college–she comes to believe what the Doctor says and is good enough to help him get back to the other world to save it, knowing she and all her world is doomed.
5. Briggie also really shines in this episode. He’s his stuffy, mostly-harmless-seeming self in the normal world, showing the Doctor a picture of himself without a mustache which comes back later when his evil self is mustacheless. Evil Briggie is a great villainous type–he’s still brave and stalwart and does not flinch when he has to defend the others against the Turkish werewolves. However, he’s super fashy and shouty and also looks exactly like Arnold Rimmer. He also tries to force the Doctor to take him and Liz with when he goes back to the real world, likely because he doesn’t trust that the Doctor is telling the truth about the other world being destroyed if they go.
6. Benton! Is a character here at last. He’s kind of just a UNIT mook, but he has a name and he does some stuff, and his evil counterpart is brutally turned into a Turkish werewolf.
7. Bessie exists in the alternate universe. Is she any different, I really couldn’t tell.
8. The Tardis console is still dismembered and unfed but she still tries, poor girl. At least she’s in a garage now and not that HIDEOUS room of grandma’s awfullest knicknacks.

THE OTHERS

1. Stahlman, the very obvious villain, who is obvious. He’s hellbent on getting the drill through the crust. Why is never really explained other than that it’s his project. He’s even worse in the evil world, and beardless there just like Briggie. Both versions turn into Turkish werewolves and die.
2. Petra, the assistant director of the drilling project, a pretty blonde girl who is extremely competent, professional and loyal to Stahlman. When Sutton hits on her she enforces her boundaries with no equivocation, but after that he starts treating her with respect and she ‘s into him. The evilverse Sutton also hits on her, she enforces her boundaries there too and they also are super into each other.
3. Sutton, an oil guy brought in on the project who wears a horrible ascot and hits on Petra. I thought he was just going to be a pig and that the story would be OK with it, but he isn’t. He helps out at one point and then tells Petra there is SOMETHING she can do for him… and we all went OH NO, but he follows it up by 1. call me by my first name, and 2. help me convince Stahlman about safer drilling procedures. His evil version is actually also good and helps the Doctor escape to save the other world.
4. Sir Keith, the bureaucrat who’s barely in the show. He tries to reign Stahlman in but isn’t successful; his evil world version dies before we see him.
5. The Turkish Draculas, who then evolve into Turkish Werewolves. They are hilarious, with greenish-blue faces and loads of hair. They’re bestial so they’re not really characters, just menaces. It’s not really explained what the hell is going on with them and it’s also just assumed they can’t be fixed or cured.

THE SETTING

1. Earth of the 1970s, specifically a nuclear facility drilling down through the earth’s crust.
2. The lab is a garage now, MUCH better than the hideous granny knicknack room.
3. THE EVIL WORLD. We don’t see a ton of it, but it’s clearly fascist. There are some nice nods immediately that tip us off we’re in a different world, with barrels being in different places. It has a dictator–who is it? UNIT goose-steps in it, and is if anything slightly less quick to shoot people here. People have fashier titles too. Love that!
4. The Tardis console ends up on a trash heap. 😦

THE PRODUCTION

1. Caroline John’s last episode. We’ve talked about it a little before but what happened?
2. Venusian Karate, what prompted that? It’s pretty hilarious looking but it works and it’s not as overtly violent as… most of the rest of the show at this point honestly! Is it inspired by anything real?
3. I see a lot of Third in Eight–from the outfit to the actiony orientation to the VIBE to even the doctor Companion.
4. The science is hilariously garbage on this, and mostly that’s OK, the magic slime doesn’t bug me. But people at a nuclear facility find an object that’s hot and don’t reach for a Geiger counter? Really??? They don’t check ANYTHING for radioactivity, not even once!
5. Generally I’m noticing a pattern here too, there’s a “science” facility powered by nuclear stuff and something goes wrong, sometimes because Man Should Not Meddle (this one) and sometimes because Man Sucks (Ambassadors of Death) and sometimes we Dug Too Deep (this one and Silurians). Is that going to keep being a thing? Is that the show now?

General

• http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/ddd.html 

• https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Inferno_(TV_story)

• https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0562854/

• https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/DoctorWhoS7E4Inferno

Other stories considered as season finale

• http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/lost/lostlm.html#Mists 

• http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/lost/lostst.html#Shadow 

• http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/lost/lostgh.html#Harvesters 

Project Mohole

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mohole

• https://www.vox.com/unexplainable/22276597/project-mohole-deep-ocean-drilling-unexplainable-podcast

• http://www.nasonline.org/about-nas/history/archives/milestones-in-NAS-history/project-mohole.html 

Cast and crew interviews

• https://drwhointerviews.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/caroline-john-1987/

• https://drwhointerviews.wordpress.com/category/douglas-camfield/

Caroline John/Liz Shaw retrospectives

• https://thedoctorwhocompanion.com/2019/04/11/calling-the-doctor-a-celebration-of-liz-shaw/

Jon Pertwee as radio announcer cut scene from British broadcast

Pertwee Intelligence agent meeting Churchill and Ian Fleming

• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2283542/Double-O-Who-Jon-Pertwees-secret-life-wartime-agent–years-did-battle-Daleks.html

Reviews

• https://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/to-inferno-with-love-45385.htm

When the World Screamed by Arthur Conan Doyle

• http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100031h.html 

A look at the Third Doctor’s third episode.  An investigation into a failed space rescue takes a turn when the returned astronauts seem to be something quite different than they were before. 

How does the Daleks Aren’t Robots team react to it?  Find out!

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

An astronaut is being sent up to retrieve the astronauts of Mars Probe 7, which has been silent for more than 7 months, but the rescuer hears a nasty noise up there and then goes silent himself. Because we are not on our earth, this is an AU.

The Doctor sees it on the TV and goes to help. It turns out it’s a message and a group of people on Earth is replying to the messages; when Briggy sends guys there there’s a huge gunfight and half of UNIT dies.

Eventually we retrieve 3 guys from space, but it turns out they’re radioactive aliens that can kill with a touch and NOT the astronauts. The astronauts are being held hostage by aliens who want their ambassadors back–it turns out that a bunch of crappy humans kidnapped their ambassadors and mindcontrolled said ambassadors into committing crimes for them.

The ringleader is Carrington, a military bad guy who is basically a xenophobe and wants to nuke the aliens, and his dragon, metaphorically, Reegan, is a frighteningly competent asshole helping for the paycheck. Carrington wants to fake an alien attack so that earth’s governments all nuke the aliens, but the Doctor and Liz rescue the aliens and then it ends and YES IT IS ACTUALLY THAT ABRUPT.

OUR TEAM

1. The Doctor is great in this one. He Karens his way into the bowels of the space center right off the bat, traps a bunch of baddies by somehow magnetizing their hands to Betsy (I mean it’s magic but whatever) and even actually goes to space to talk to the alien leader. He is short with people and at one point he gets knocked out, which was hilarious, so it’s nice that he’s not immune to things happening to him.
2. Liz is kidnapped in this one, but she’s still actually pretty great. She struggles to escape physically and then when she DOES escape, only to be recaptured, that doesn’t stop her from trying to get out yet AGAIN. And she actively helps the Doctor make a signal device to get help from UNIT when he too gets captured, as well as a gadget for being able to actually talk to the Ambassadors of Death. At one point she sarcastically promises the baddies not to hurt them, which was hilarious.
3. Briggy can’t hit the broad side of a barn and leads from the front, which is pretty stupid since he’s probably the only one who knows what’s going on. That said he does OK in this episode mostly, and backs up the Doctor when given the chance. So far he does always act within the constraints of his role in the military, i don’t know if that will continue.
4. The TARDIS has been FUCKING DISMEMBERED. Not that we are explicitly told that in this episode. I thought that he and Liz were IN the Tardis as there’s a scene with them at the console, but apparently the Doctor REMOVED THE CONSOLE. LIKE A GODDAMN MANIAC. YOU DISMEMBERED HER YOU GODDAMN VIVISECTIONIST PRICK!

THE OTHERS

Loads of one-hit wonder characters in this one, most of whom don’t really have personalities.

Carrington, Evil Military Guy: He’s basically a caricature, and he’s doing this because the aliens accidentally killed his coworker when he went on an earlier Mars mission. He’s explicitly called out as being mad in the show, and claims that it was his moral duty to nuke the aliens. Sure, Jan, nuke the scary brown I mean blue people who literally came here as ambassadors. You bet.

Reegan, Terrifying Competent Dragon of the Big Bad: This guy was actually pretty spooky. He absolutely does not care about alien life but he also doesn’t care about human life or anything, apparently, other than money. He was almost certainly planning to screw Carrington over and use the Ambassadors to commit robberies, and he’s not even ruffled when he gets caught at the end.

Cornish, Competent Bureaucrat: This guy is just like the bureaucrat in the Silurians except he’s not evil, he doesn’t suck at his job and he’s totally cool under pressure. So basically exactly the opposite of that guy. This guy had a lot of charisma for kind of a thankless part, he did a good job.

Taltalian, AKA Evil Beardo: Bad guy scientist, turns out to be a mook and is then blown up by his own boss.

Lennox, AKA Wormy Scientist: Scientist who tries to care for the Ambassadors as much as he can, even though he’s working for the baddies technically. He tries to help Liz escape, escapes himself and is then horribly murdered by radiation.

There are some other guys, like a reporter who’s got 80s style a few years before the 80s, but I don’t really care about them.

The Ambassadors themselves? They’re not characters, and neither is their alien captain. They are just plot devices. Only for a very little portion of the show are they able to act under their own power and they don’t really talk about how traumatic it’s been to be forced to murder people or anything. There is SO LITTLE RESOLUTION after this show. It’s even more abrupt than the Silurians, who at least got blown up. These people are gonna be super traumatized! They were mind controlled and dazed and zombielike for a long time! They were forced to murder people on a weird planet! They’re gonna need SO MUCH THERAPY.

Also they are tinsel mummies.

THE SETTING

1. Earth of the 1970s.
2. Also they dismembered the Tardis and put her controls in the UGLIEST ROOM EVER CREATED, GOOD GAD. Everyone went spontaneously blind in the 1970s, I’m pretty sure.
3. There are some cool location shots, like some sort of factory with many pipes and walkways and stuff, that are nicely used.
4. The space scenes actually looked pretty good. The alien ship had some greenscreening which was VERY unconvincing but not unusually so for the time and budget, but the design of the human spacecraft and control room was pretty good, considering it was probably mostly sheet metal and paper clips.
5. The alien spaceship looked OK. Not super distinct, but there was a scene where the astronauts were watching an alien TV showing light blobs but they saw a football game, which was satisfyingly creepy and well-executed.

THE PRODUCTION

1. That’s the most 1970s music I’ve ever heard. That sir is no krumhorn, thank god. It’s GOOD music and once we figured out what was going on with the ambassadors, their eerie, slow harp-like music fit really well. I liked it, but O M G SO SEVENTIES.
2. The 80s news guy is weirdly ethically void. Like, he doesn’t even argue about what he should do, just shrugs and whatevers his way into almost being responsible for genocide.
3. When do we find out that the Doctor dismembered the Tardis?
4. Why are we on an alternate earth? What’s the deal with that? Is NuWho in the same alternate earth?
5. There’s a whole part where the Doctor sends himself and then Liz 15 seconds forward in time, and then it comes up again when he hides a macguffin from a baddie that way. CAN HE JUST DO THAT NOW??? I had to literally stop the show to WTF over that, does that literally EVER come up again?!
6. Is UNIT based on a real thing? They don’t seem like it.
7. UNIT likes to shoot but they also GET SHOT like a looooot. How many UNIT guys get shot or get dead in this one?
8. Were there rewrites in this? There were some loose plot threads, like we never did find out where the Doctor had heard the Ambassadors’ signals before this episode. And the episode ended SO SUDDENLY.

General

• https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ambassadors_of_Death_(TV_story)
• http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/ccc.html 
• https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/DoctorWhoS7E3TheAmbassadorsOfDeath

Novelization

• https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ambassadors_of_Death_(novelisation)

Reviews

• https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-guide/the-ambassadors-of-death/
• http://www.lyratek.com/bg/dwida053.htm 
• http://www.pagefillers.com/dwrg/amba.htm 

Locations

• https://www.doctorwholocations.net/locations/lafargecementnorthfleet
• https://www.doctorwholocations.net/stories/ambassadorsofdeath

Restoration

• http://www.impossiblethings.net/restorationteam/ambassadors_of_death.htm 

Doctor Who Kits carcinogenic

• https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Danger_check_on_toy_Dr_Who_kits
• https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/MP_Attacks_%27Dr_Who%27_Kits
• https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Toy_risk:_Commons_question
• https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Dr._Who_sets–_%27not_Ministry%27s_fault%27

How they reconstructed the episodes for what we see today

UNIT

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIT#Creation

Episode death count

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jawr256/Stuff/Deaths_2

BTS photos

• https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/entertainment/doctor-who-1970-how-radio-times-went-behind-the-scenes-50-years-ago/

On this episode of Daleks Aren’t Robots!? we meet another of the Doctor’s famous adversaries, the sympathetic Silurians.

This episode opens us up to such topics as genocide, misinformation during an epidemic, the hazards of nuclear power…and an adorable pet dinosaur.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentrobots

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Find us on Buzzsprout: https://daleksarentrobots.buzzsprout.com/

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Look for us where you get your podcasts!

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

Two guys in spelunking gear are attacked by Godzilla. It turns out an “atomic research center” is experiencing power losses described as “leaks” and UNIT, including LBS, Liz and the Doctor, are brought in to find out why.

They eventually find out that the Silurians are the culprits–they are lizard people that resemble the Gill Man, native to Earth, that put themselves into suspended animation a long time ago because they believed an asteroid was going to hit earth, and now that they know it didn’t they want to wake up their whole population and take over the earth, as they were legitimately here first.

The Doctor spends most of the episode trying to convince the Silurians not to murder all the humans and trying to convince the humans not to murder all the Silurians.

Unfortunately, the Silurians have an internal power struggle a lot like that of the Sensorites, but it ends in a Silurian murdering the peaceful Silurian leader and releasing a plague on the humans that seems to have a 100% kill rate and an incredibly rapid spread. Literally incredible, as we see a TON of people die and the disease spreads to France and likely the whole world.

The Doctor finds a cure to the “bacteria” that cause the disease but it’s not penicillin or some other antibiotic. Nothing about producing enough of it for everyone quickly enough or distributing it, and apparently UNIT managed to cover all this up SOMEHOW even though a massive number of people in London and elsewhere have DIED, which is absurd.

There’s some power jockeying with the Silurians, they take over the atomic research center, the Doctor manages to scare them all back into hibernating by convincing them the whole area will be irradiated and he expects to come back and study their setup.

Then LBS commits genocide by blowing up the Silurian compound and sealing the door shut. And the Doctor and Liz are sad and I’m confused about why a kids’ show just showed the good guys genociding some lizard people, and sad and angry that we just watched The Sensorites but with a really depressing ending that again, is the GOOD GUYS GENOCIDING SOME PEOPLE with no consequences shown and barely any discussion of the fact that the GOOD GUYS GENOCIDED SOME PEOPLE.

THE GENOCIDE

0. I’m actually not sure on a second watchthrough that it WAS genocide. Maybe he just bombed the entrance to close it off? It doesn’t sound like it.
1. I just… what… THIS IS A CHILDREN’S SHOW.
2. WHAT THE HELL SHOW. I’M TRYING TO LIKE YOU. STOP MAKING IT DIFFICULT.
3. Here’s the thing. The episode ENDS with the genocide and it’s BARELY addressed. Does the Doctor stop working with UNIT after this? Does Liz? Does LBS get called up on war crimes? Does ANYONE?

OUR TEAM

1. The Doctor gets a lot of great moments here, trying to convince both sides to not murder each other. He also makes it clear that he’s not a human, though he claims to be several thousand years old (I think he’s lying but it’s not totally plain). At one point he does hide information and it does come back to bite him in the butt. Also the doctor wears a spelunking ascot and it’s adorable.
2. Liz gets some good moments too, helping with the scientific stuff but also some of the skullduggery. She gets attacked (pushed gently) by a Silurian and has a pretty sensible reaction to it, particularly compared to the reactions of others.
3. LBS commits genocide and also acts like an asshole throughout a lot of this one. Sometimes he’s reasonable but he’s also very jerky in a lot of it for no obvious reason. Also he should pay for his war crimes.
4. Bessie is cute and cool and I like her. Tell us about Bessie.
5. The TARDIS is nowhere to be seen and I hope someone is feeding her. Maybe she could eat LBS.

THE OTHERS

So many characters.

• Combover: The lead scientist of the facility, he’s also an antivaxxer and doesn’t believe in the Silurians. He gets the plague and dies yelling at people about how the plague is totally fake you guys, which is hauntingly on point.
• Martin Freeman: Another scientist who tries to use the Silurians to get scientific advances, ends up holding one captive and then is kind of killed by them, but actually had a heart attack.
• Martin Freeman’s secretary: She helps Martin Freeman and after he is killed she advocates for murdering all the Silurians before they murder us.
• Baker: A nut who wants to kill all the Silurians and also is patient zero of the plague. He dies.
• Politician: He comes to figure out wtf is going on in the facility and basically spreads the plague to London when he tries to go home. and dies.
• Silurian Leader: A decent person who is concerned about the humans but becomes convinced we’re intelligent and doesn’t want to genocide us. Then he’s murdered by another Silurian.
• Mean Silurian: He wants to kill all the humans so the Silurians can have the whole world, even though they probably don’t want all of it because it’s too damn cold.
• Fido: The dinosaur pet of the Silurians, who looks like a man in a godzilla suit, but is supposed to be bigger. It’s adorable.

Lots of others we don’t really care about.

THE SETTING

1. Earth in the 70s. There are lots of caves and a research facility. The facility looks pretty sciency and the caves look pretty cavey.
2. The Silurian area of the caves looks pretty neat, with green slabs of material made to a proportion humans wouldn’t make things, to accomodate their dino pets.
3. There’s NO WAY the public doesn’t know about the plague with a death count that high. How the HELL do they cover this up?

THE PRODUCTION

1. The plague. How did they come up with that and what was it based on? I knew the antivax movement was old but I didn’t know it was that old.
2. The sets look really good here, are they sets or real?
3. More about Bessie?
4. Music.

Sources Include

General Sources

• https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Doctor_Who_and_the_Silurians_(TV_story)
• http://www.shannonsullivan.com/doctorwho/serials/bbb.html
• https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/DoctorWhoS7E2DoctorWhoAndTheSilurians
• DVD Text Commentary.

Contemporary reviews

• https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Fine_display_of_craftsmanship

Fan discussions and analysis

• https://www.reddit.com/r/gallifrey/comments/z5vd2/the_silurians_and_sciencehistory_how_do_you/

Bessie

• http://sivaedwardian.co.uk/bessie_2.html
• https://www.beaulieu.co.uk/news/time-warp-bessie-brings-doctor-beaulieu/
• https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Two_Edwardian_chassis#tab=Text
• https://doctorwhocar.co.uk/who1/bessieinformation.htm?i=1

BTS pictures and articles on production

• https://twitter.com/drwhocastcrew/status/1126917712121405442
• https://the-impossible-blog.com/2018/09/09/doctor-who-and-the-silurians/

Nicolas Courtney Acting

• https://mckellen.com/stage/00040c.htm

Carey Blyton Composer

• https://careyblyton.com/??=Silurians

Moon Origin theories

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Moon
• https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-did-the-moon-form.html
• https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2013.0249
• https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question38.html

Silurian Hypothesis

• https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2020/03/the-silurian-hypothesis/
• https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/01/23/the-silurian-hypothesis/

Silurian Book adaptation Written by Malcolm Hulke

• https://drwhonovels.wordpress.com/2017/01/01/doctor-who-and-the-eocenes/
• https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Cave-Monsters-Malcolm-Hulke/dp/1849901945