Doctor Who (1963) 25-08: Silver Nemesis, Part One

Episode:

675

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Serial:

150

|

Writer:

Kevin Clarke

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Director:

Chris Clough

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Air Date:

23-Nov-1988

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Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching Silver Nemesis, Part One, the first episode of Doctor Who's silver anniversary story. In fact, it's not just the show's 25th anniversary celebration, but it's also its 150th serial. The latest Doctor Who story to air, The Power of the Doctor, was the 300th story, so this is exactly halfway through!

Plus it's the 675th episode, which isn't actually significant, except for being a bloody huge number. To put that into some perspective, the 675th episode of Star Trek was the 3rd season Enterprise episode Impulse. (And the 150th Trek story was the second season TNG episode Manhunt.)

It's a bit weird though that this is the anniversary story and not Remembrance of the Daleks, which... has certain connections to a past serial. Also, this is the first anniversary story to not list the number of Doctors it contains in the title. We're up to seven now, so it's probably for the best that they don't all show up.

There will be SPOILERS here for the episode and presumably earlier stories too if it really is an anniversary special like it claims. I won't give away anything that comes later though.

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This is the first episode of the McCoy era I've written a full article on, which means I get to show pictures of his intro. You can tell this was deep into the 80s as it's fully computer-animated 3D, with a CGI TARDIS spinning around inside a CGI bubble onto top of a tiny purple CGI galaxy. For some reason.

It was pretty ahead of its time, as none of the other major sci-fi franchises had switched to CGI effects yet. Well, Star Trek: The Next Generation had its CG crystalline entity a few months after this debuted, but it would be years before we got a CG Enterprise, or Millennium Falcon, or Babylon 5 station.

Oh wait, I was wrong, it's not fully computer-animated...

... as there's a shiny Sylvester McCoy winking at the audience! He really was shiny as well, as they had to paint the actor silver to achieve this effect.

This era came with its own version of the theme music and... it's okay. I might be more fond of it than most though, as this is probably the first version of the Doctor Who theme I ever heard. Unless I heard the theme made for the Amiga game first. Honestly, there's probably not much difference between the two.

22nd November 1988, that's the day before the episode aired. It had taken them three tries but with this they finally got an anniversary episode to air on the day of the anniversary!

This image has a noticeably different look to it than the location shots in the previous anniversary story, The Five Doctors, and there's a technical reason for that. Back in the day, Doctor Who would typically use videotape for interiors, as it was cheap, and then switch to 16mm film for location filming, as the camera was smaller and they didn't need an outside broadcasting van. But technology moved on, and by season 23 they were recording onto 1" Type 3 videotape for every scene in every episode, inside or out.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 2-01 - The Child

You'd think that would make the series look significantly worse than Star Trek: The Next Generation, which had debuted the previous year and was shooting with beautiful 35mm film like a Hollywood movie. But Next Gen's footage was always transferred to video for editing, so the episodes came out looking pretty bad as well until its 2012 HD remaster revealed the detail that was always there.

There's no extra detail to pull out of video, so Silver Nemesis is doomed to look the same forever, barring any miraculous AI reimagining.

Red Dwarf 2-06 - Parallel Universe

At least it looks better than Red Dwarf did in late 1988! Arguably.

This was a bit of a transitional time for TV space opera, with Doctor Who coming to an end after 25 years while Captain Picard and Dave Lister were just beginning their 30-year voyages. Okay to be fair they took the occasional break and sometimes those breaks lasted 18 years, but the magnificent fleet of '90s sci-fi series that flew in alongside them would prove to be a lot more resilient than 70s and 80s shows like Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Space 1999 or even Blake's 7. And it's not like Doctor Who is in any position to judge other series for taking a decade or two off.

Sorry, I got a bit off track there. Unfortunately, it seems that I've hit my picture limit, so I'll have to stop here for now.

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COMING SOON

Thanks for dropping by to read my thoughts about the first episode of Silver Nemesis. Come back next time for Silver Nemesis, Part Two!

You are very welcome, as always, to leave a comment and share your own observations and opinions on this story.


By Ray Hardgrit at 22:02
Labels: 1988, chris clough, doctor who, doctor who 1963, doctor who 1963 season 25, kevin clarke, seventh doctor


1 comment:

Ray Hardgrit 23 November 2023 at 22:36

Okay fine, I promised I'd write about Silver Nemesis, even though fans have rated it one of the worst serials in the whole Seventh Doctor era, so I'll just power through and get it over with.

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Alright, this is South America, it's the 22nd of November, 1988, and a bunch of soldiers have just driven up to this very nice house in a jeep.

Inside there are a bunch of ancient-looking documents piled up on a table, next to an antique phone and a what looks like a trophy for getting first place in a shuriken-throwing contest. There are some golden eagle statues as well, some kind of skull ornament, and a painting of...

... okay, the episode's being really subtle about it, but I'm starting to pick up hints that the people who live here might be Nazis.

It seems like this guy's using the ancient documents to calculate something on his PC. The text on the screen says:

November 23! It's bloody lucky they got this worked out today as any later would've been too late.

The episode cuts to this guy trying to kill a parrot with the most high-tech bow imaginable. The only way it could be more advanced is if it shot lasers instead of arrows. But he's distracted from committing parrotricide when computer guy comes over to give him the good news.

It turns out that he's called De Flores and he was played by Anton Diffring, who'd been typecast for his whole career as Nazis. So he wasn't 100% enthusiastic about this job, but he did appreciate how it brought him to London in time to catch the Wimbledon tennis championship.

The episode cuts to an archer and her sidekick in Windsor, 350 years earlier. Right place, wrong time. Hey, I just noticed that they switched to a different font too because we're in the past now!

It's also switched to a far more primitive bow, but she's still trying to kill a bird with it. She's gotten a few pigeons so far it seems, but this one she misses.

She doesn't miss by much however! I wonder how they pulled off that effect. An arrow running down a thread maybe? Or did they composite it in? Perhaps they really did just fire an arrow at a pigeon, it certainly looks convincing (though the bird doesn't seem to notice or care about the near miss).

That's some beautiful cut grass by the way. Did they have lawnmowers back in 1638? No seriously, I'm actually curious.

Okay, it turns out that the lawnmower was invented in 1830, 200 years later.

The two of them head indoors, where a man is busy working. In fact, he's so busy that he ignores them, so they get on with giving us cryptic hints about what they're up to. She got poisoned gold arrows and a special silver arrow, and they've got the potion mixed. Now they await but the calculation.

One problem that Doctor Who had as it went into the '80s, is that they weren't allowed to go dark, and I mean that literally. Scenes had to be lit extremely bright, getting rid of all the atmosphere and making the cinematography very flat. That doesn't seem to be a problem they had here though!

350 years later, in present-day South America, De Flores has gotten a few of his paramilitary friends together in his living room to toast the Fourth Reich! They'll be leaving at once.

Back in the past, we learn that the archer is called Lady Peinforte and their mathematician has completed his calculations. He's deduced somehow that the comet Nemesis circles the sun every 25 years but it'll return to its point of origin on... November 23rd 1988. Hey, he's doing he same calculations that the Nazis did on their computer! Maybe these are the same documents that they were working from... will be working from.

Though hang on, he says that the comet's origin is the meadow outside Lady Peinforte's house, and this is apparently something that everyone knows about already and is fine with. Comets don't take off from meadows, I've checked Wikipedia and I know what I'm talking about here.

The mathematician was played by Leslie French, who was one of the people considered for the role of the Doctor back in 1963. So there's a tiny anniversary connection. The actress playing Lady Peinforte actually was in Doctor Who's first season however. Fiona Walker's first TV role was Kala in the First Doctor serial The Keys of Marinus.

Suddenly jazz!

The Doctor and Ace are out on a warm November day listening to an outdoor concert. They're big fans of jazz, it turns out! I'm getting a feeling somehow that this is another one of producer John Nathan-Turner's celebrity cameos. Or someone's celebrity cameo anyway, maybe the writer was into jazz.

Aha, I looked it up and this is Courtney Pine, who's well known for... well, being a jazz musician. I have to admit that I've never heard of him, as jazz isn't really my thing. This is the problem when writers or producers bring their love of a music genre into an episode; it's not going to be for everyone.

It's nice to see these two again. Seven and Ace has always been one of my favourite Doctor-companion teams. Granted that's mostly because they were the only team I knew about before the 2005 series, but I did like them a lot when I watched their run during that marathon on Twitch a few years back.

The Doctor's watch goes off to remind of something, but he's forgotten what it was. I remember him having the same problem back in The Face of Evil, so I guess there's nothing wrong with my recall. Ace checks the back of her Daily Mirror newspaper, revealing the headline "METEOR APPROACHES ENGLAND" on the cover, but that doesn't seem to ring any bells.

They're going to have to skip the rest of the gig to go figure out what the alarm's about, but as they head off a silenced pistol is raised into the frame...

Damn, this guy can't shoot straight at all. At least when UNIT fires their useless guns they hit the target. This guy's mostly taking out the foliage. Well I suppose those leaves should've fallen by now anyway, this late into Autumn.

I'm really impressed by Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred's ability to stroll towards the squibs they know are in the trees and make it seem like they're completely unaware that they're about to get tiny explosions in their face. They were perfect for this stuff.

Unfortunately the Doctor and Ace are both dead, so that's a bit of a shame. The Chessmaster Doctor who plans five steps ahead got gunned down by an opponent he couldn't have predicted. He was right outside his TARDIS as well!

It wasn't actually Sylvester McCoy who did the stunt, as he was sick, but Sophie jumped in the river for real.

Oh, there were two people shooting at them? That makes it even worse that they missed and let the heroes slip away.

I like their matching headphones... and matching faces?

The Doctor wants to use Ace's tape deck's holographic display, but she wants to listen to her jazz tape. I forgot how much of a kid Ace is in these stories. She's like a young teenager in an older teenager's body played by a 26-year-old actor.

They both seem remarkably unconcerned about someone trying to assassinate them, partly because they've got more important problems. A planet somewhere faces imminent destruction... and it looks a lot like it's Earth.

It's funny how they're sitting outside to do this, when the TARDIS is right there. I don't think the console room set got a lot of use at this point in the series. In fact, I don't they used many sets at all in this serial.

Damn, this episode jumps around. It's very fast paced.

It seems that thse two are about to make a trip to the future, with the aid of the potion they mixed (the final ingredient: mathematician blood). The guy (Richard) is freaking out, even though he assures his employer that he's a hardened criminal, found guilty for all kinds of offences.

This time-whirlwind effect looks absolutely abysmal in motion, but the episode does a pretty great job of transitioning from her house...

...to the tearoom it becomes in the future.

Now I'm wondering what would've happened if either of them had been standing where one of the tables is... or one of the people sitting down. I guess the time-whirlwind would've swept them out of the way or something.

The Doctor takes Ace to a vault under Windsor Castle and there's a 40 second unbroken take that follows them across the room, with the Doctor playing with stuff along the way. One second he's got his hat on, then he walks behind a pillar and suddenly he's wearing a fez and waving a mop around. He's a very unique incarnation of the Doctor. It's a shame it's so bloody dark in here that you can barely see him.

It turns out he's come here to borrow a silver bow (there are so many bows in this episode), but he can't find it. Maybe he could try turning the lights on.

Just then the 'comet' Nemesis comes down in what used to be the meadow next to Lady Peinforte's house, just as predicted. This is right next to the cafe, trust me.

The effect of the comet doesn't actually look too bad in this still image, maybe because the comet itself is only a still image. They just dragged a picture across the screen and in motion it looks about as terrible as you'd expect for Doctor Who.

Damn! That explosion looks about as good as you'd expect from Doctor Who.

It was so big that the Doctor heard it all the way over in Windsor Castle. He tells Ace that it's Nemesis coming back and he knows because he's the one that launched it into orbit 350 years ago.

Richard and Peinforte are watching this from the cafe. But then the police turn up and Peinforte starts getting a bit agitated about them getting to it before her.

In fact, she goes and launches a chair through the window to get out! I did not see that coming and I've watched this episode before. They could've just used the door, it would've been fine!

The episode jumps back to the vault, where Ace reads a sign saying that a silver statue will return to destroy the world. They also learn that the silver bow they're looking for, the bow of Nemesis, went missing in 1788, exactly 200 years ago. That shouldn't be an issue for someone with a time machine but in the classic series the Doctor doesn't like time-travelling once the story's started. Of course, there are exceptions, like in The Chase, The Time Monster and City of Death, but typically the blue box is there to get him into adventures, not help him solve them.

Instead the Doctor decides to take Ace to Lady Peinforte's empty house in 1638!

He covers up the poor dead mathematician and mentions that he's been here before, a few months ago. That's how he knows that the silver bow they're looking for belongs to a statue that Lady Peinforte had made from metal that fell out of space. The episode's like a sequel to an episode that never happened.

There's a scene in 1988 with Lady Peinforte and Richard getting frustrated with all the police around Nemesis, and then the Doctor gets to continue his exposition, elaborating that she time travelled using the silver arrow and black magic. Oh, alright then, I'm glad this all has a plausible and scientific explanation!

Okay so the comet Nemesis just landed in 1988, but it originally landed in 1638, and Peinforte made a statue from the living metal inside, and there's a silver bow, and... what is even going on? And why is the Doctor suddenly fascinated by a chess set?

Suddenly the police investigating Nemesis get gassed by pipes popping out from the ground! See, this is why you don't send the police to deal with mysterious comets. This is a job for UNIT.

Meanwhile, the Doctor's next stop turns out to be Windsor Castle again. The main bit, not the vault this time.

There were apparently a lot of people associated with the series in this tour group. Like the Brig actor Nicholas Courtney, completing his anniversary episode hat trick. Though it's hard to know for sure who's actually there from the back of their heads.

The Doctor tells Ace to walk around like she owns the place, as that typically works for him. It often does as well; he's managed to pull off some hilariously cheeky deceptions. It's not likely to work this time though, as the first person they run into is the Queen.

Well, they see her from a distance anyway.

That's Queen Elizabeth II impersonator Mary Reynolds, not the monarch herself. Because they obviously weren't going to be adding "Doctor Who" to the Queen's IMDb page (though the producer did ask Prince Edward if he wanted to be involved). The castle is also an impersonator, as this is Arundel Castle they're filming in, not Windsor Castle. They filmed more here than was used in the final episode, as there's a deleted scene where they find a painting of Ace, or someone who looks just like her.

The Seventh Doctor is a mysterious mischievous mastermind so it's hard to say exactly what his reason for coming to Windsor Castle actually was, but once he spots the Queen he decides it's his mission to go talk to her, and get the police and armed forces on their side. I guess he must have lost UNIT's phone number. This plotline goes nowhere as they're immediately caught trespassing, and I suppose security must just kick the two of them out afterwards for being harmless.

Back at the crash site, Richard's not coping well with the noise and the smell of the modern world.

Personally, I think it's great that the series has brought someone from 1638 into the present day, and they've even made him a companion! He's not the Doctor's companion, but close enough. In fact, I reckon the series has had a severe lack of companions from other time periods and it's weird because they usually work really well. Jamie McCrimmon was from 1746, and he's one of the best companions the series has ever had. Leela was from the future and she was great too.

Peinforte mentions that once she gets the Nemesis she will have her revenge on "that predictable little man" and give away his secret, hinting at that off-screen adventure again. In fact, at this point I can imagine viewers wondering if they'd missed an episode.

But is she saying 'little' as in he's beneath her, or is she saying 'little' as in he's 5'5", carries an umbrella and wears a sweater covered in question marks? I'm leaning towards it being the first one, as this seems like something the Doctor set in motion so long ago in his own timeline that he can barely remember it.

De Flores's Fourth Reich squad has made it to Nemesis and he's surprisingly unconcerned about all the dead or unconscious cops they had to step over to reach it. I suppose he would feel a bit overconfident after successfully bringing a Nazi army to the Queen's back yard and smuggling over enough Uzis for everyone.

Hey, there's the silver bow! De Flores had it.

The bow has started glowing in a really terrible-looking effect. Well, maybe 'unnatural-looking' would be a better way to describe it, as the bow actually was glowing in real life. It was painted in Front Axial Projection material, so when they that they turned on the lights around the camera lens it lit up far brighter than anything around it. It's similar to the technique they used in the first Star Wars movie for the lightsabers.

The Doctor and Ace park the TARDIS nearby and run over, assuring the Nazis that they won't hurt them. Then De Flores demands that they give him the arrow of Nemesis! I guess it was a fair assumption that they'd have a piece of the puzzle, but they actually don't. They were still looking for the stolen silver bow and Lady Peinforte disappeared with the silver arrow.

We finally get a bit of an explanation for why the bow and arrow are so important. Nemesis (the statue inside the comet) is made of validium, which will give someone the power of life and death over any planet in existence... as long as there's the right amount of it. The statue doesn't contain enough validium and even adding the bow isn't enough, they need the arrow as well. So hang on, Peinforte had the whole thing and then got beaten by the Doctor anyway?

De Flores decides to test the Doctor's honesty by ordering his men to shoot Ace if he doesn't tell them where the arrow is. It's starting to seem like running right up to a squad of literal Nazis carrying actual Uzis was perhaps a tactical miscalculation on the Doctor's part.

Suddenly a spaceship flies down!

I have to admit, I honestly didn't see this coming. You'd think I'd remember a giant silver spaceship appearing at the end, but I did not. It's got a nice design, though the effect looks a bit ropey.

The ship lands nearby and the door opens up to reveal who's come to visit.

Oh, it's the bloody Cybermen again!

They look very similar to how they did in the previous anniversary episode, The Five Doctors, but this time they've got a chrome finish for an appropriately silver appearance.

Their arrival here means that the Seventh Doctor can cross another classic villain off his list, after battling the Daleks at the start of the season and I guess the Rani in his first episode. Plus Nazis, they're a classic villain too. And they're both after Nemesis, along with Lady Peinforte, who's a returning foe we've never met before. This is turning into the weirdest Guy Ritchie movie.

TO BE CONTINUED IN SILVER NEMESIS, PART TWO

CONCLUSION

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Straight away I can tell you that this is the worst multi-Doctor story yet. For one thing, it doesn't have the Brig in it, or any other Doctors. Though it does feature the back of Nicholas Courtney's head and the actions of one of the Doctor's past selves is very relevant... for the second time this season The Doctor already had to deal with a powerful weapon he'd stashed around Earth two stories ago in Remembrance of the Daleks, and to be honest that was kind of a better 25th anniversary story. This is set on the 23rd of November, but other than that there's nothing giving away that it's an anniversary celebration. It's more of a jazz celebration.

Speaking of music, the Keff McCulloch soundtrack continues to give this era a distinct identity that's completely of its time while also having a style of its own. By which I mean it sounds like late 80s video game music, the 16-bit kind. Classic VG music can be absurdly catchy, but you can't have a Nazis paramilitary squad arriving in a van to the sound of the Sega Mega CD boot-up theme. It does contribute to making the episode come off as a bizarre comedy though, which it definitely is.

The plot can be summarised as: the Doctor looks all over the place for his car keys (silver bow) while trying to remember the plot of an old episode. Every stop he makes gives us a little more exposition and if you've got a notepad handy you can start to piece it together. I'm not sure it makes any damn sense though. There's living metal with immense destructive powers, and Lady Peinforte made a statue out of it. But then the Doctor sent it into space inside a comet, on an orbit that'll make it crash back down on the exact same spot in 350 years. Uh, okay.

It's a really hyperactive episode that jumps around all over the place, sometimes for no reason! The trip to Windsor Castle is only there for its own sake and could be cut entirely. In fact, some of it already was. And I still have no idea why the Nazis sent assassins to kill the Doctor at the start, especially as they don't seem to know who he is.

But I actually kind of liked this, and I think that's mostly down to the two pairs of time travellers being fun to hang out with. The Seventh Doctor and Ace might be the best pairing since the Fourth Doctor and Romana, and they come across like two really good friends... who may not have been given enough time to rehearse their lines for this story. Meanwhile, Lady Peinforte and Richard seem like they've walked straight out of a Shakespearian play, and the actors played their roles with a suitable amount of conviction. Richard claims to be a hardened criminal, but the poor guy's so out of his depth in every situation that I mostly just felt sorry for him.

So after one episode I'm very confused, but I'm interested.

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COMING SOON

Doctor Who will return with Silver Nemesis, Part Two, just as soon as I finish writing about it.

I suggest reading the comments while you wait, and if there are no comments there I suggest writing some.