ClaRK! Kent

Benji stunted my gimmick.

Bah, that was easy. I just had whoever had the appropriate GF (Leviathan?) do Revive, and use the always-awesome Meltdown-Aura-Renzokuken combination 'til it bit the dust. Easy as lying.

That 'tache was awesome. The best thing about Jumbo Cactuar is that if you have the guide book, like I did, and you look him up in the bestiary, he's right next to the standard Cactuars and shown at the same size/scale as them. So, until I actually did the fight, I was convinced that the only different thing about Jumbo Cactuar was the 'tache.

Yeah, that really was rather good. The adaptation from the novel was superb, they took everything that was integral to the novel's plot and transferred it well, and did some great work in streamlining/altering the less-than-essential stuff into the series' chronology. Great writing as always from Paul Cornell, who is probably the best writer they have working on that series. David Tennant continues to provide more evidence for his candidacy for not only best actor in Britain, but as the man who will have my super-talented, super-sexy, half-Scottish love children as soon as genetics advance far enough for this to be plausible. Excellent performance all around throughout, really nice to see him get to do some stuff he's not been doing much of since he got the part - emoting, for instance! Love him to bits. Martha improves exponentially in every episode, doesn't she? She was really awesome in this, Cornell did a good thing in making her the centre of a lot of episode 1 and she stood up to the challenge. I was a little curious to see how well she'd fit into Benny's role from the book, she did so marvellously - albeit with quite a lot of shifting and rewriting. Great guest cast! Fantastic acting from all of them, especially Jessica Stevenson, who we're all a little bit in love with, let's face it. She was so lovely, you really felt for her and John Smith's plight, and I'm going to echo everybody in saying that it was absolutely fantastic to see the Doctor's character being examined by John Smith. My personal favourite is when he demands to know why the Doc needs Martha, she replies he's lonely, and you get Tennant's beautiful crackling voice and disbelieving face - "and that's what you want me to be?" Excellent episodes, all around. Dark, atmospheric, involving, and utterly sublime. Even timmayy can't dislike these.

And Kefka's in FF6 Bloody rebranded US issue... grr.

Group A: City Of God vs Pulp Fiction Sunset Blvd. vs Rear Window Group B: Psycho vs Casablanca Lawrence Of Arabia vs Seven Samurai Group C: Goodfellas vs Godfather Fight Club vs Star Wars Group D: Once Upon A Time In The West vs Schindlers List Amelie vs Raiders Of The Lost Ark Group E: Usual Suspects vs Empire Strikes Back Memento vs One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest Group F: North By Northwest vs The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Two Towers vs 12 Angry Men Group G: Doctor Strangelove vs Shawshank Redemption Silence Of The Lambs vs Return Of The King Group H: Citizen Kane vs Godfather II It's A Wonderful Life vs Fellowship Of The Ring

Group A: Rear Window vs City Of God - Rear Window's a load of crap. CoG, meanwhile, is fucking ace. Sunset Blvd. vs Pulp Fiction - Pulp Fiction > *. So yeah, this is an easy one. Group B: Seven Samurai vs Psycho - Never seen Seven Samurai, so I'm going with what I know. Lawrence Of Arabia vs Casablanca - Ditto. Group C: Star Wars vs Goodfellas - Tough one, as Goodfellas is ace, but this is fucking Star Wars we're talking about here. Fight Club vs Godfather - Another fairly tough one, but Hell, the Godfather is almost the perfect movie. Group D: Raiders Of The Lost Ark vs Once Upon A Time In The West - Indy kicks tail. That is all. Amelie vs Schindlers List - If you don't like Schindler's List, you're officially a Nazi. So, just for that really. Group E: One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest vs Usual Suspects - Tough one, but the movie with the coolest villain ever takes it. Memento vs Empire Strikes Back - Another really tough one, but Empire is the high-water mark of the Star Wars series, so yay. Group F: 12 Angry Men vs North By Northwest - My God, how I love this film. It's fucking awesome. I defy people to not like it. Two Towers vs The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - Nothing will ever, ever induce me to vote for LOTR. Group G: Return Of The King vs Doctor Strangelove - See above. Silence Of The Lambs vs Shawshank Redemption - One of the best films of the 90s. Totally made Tom Hanks in terms of escaping typecasting. Group H: Fellowship Of The Ring vs Citizen Kane - Man, that was easy. It's A Wonderful Life vs Godfather II - Difficult, but nostalgia/feel-good factor win it for good ol' Wonderful Life. Also, the disappointing showing for Westerns makes me a sad panda. IMDB people are fucking retards. Where's The Wild Bunch?! And the lack of Breakfast at Tiffany's is a fucking travesty.

Well, to be fair, they've all been asleep for the past 6 hours. Wait 'til C4 gives them a bootload of alcohol and some free porn.

Final Fantasy bosses are the coolest bosses, they rule. The comedy bosses are amongst my favourites, as are the 'optional extra' ones. FF7 - The Turks. Any time you fight any of the Turks. The Turks kick ass. Ruby Weapon is also nice. FF8 - Omega Weapon, or when you fight Sorceress Adel. Clearly, it was supposed to be well hard, all "don't kill Rinoa!" so I just said okay, raped the bitch with Meltdown, then did Limit Breaks 'til it keeled over. FF9 - Garland. He was fun. Also that weird book thing in Alexandria library. FF10 - The occasional Seymour fights here and there. Not the last one, he was rubbish. Also, Sin. Sin ruled. FFX-2 - Vegnagun. And Leblanc's goons. They were easy. FF12 - Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh kicks ass.

Well... this is weird. Seriously. I was totally wiped yesterday, so I went to bed like 6pm. Missed the launch, woke up 20 minutes ago, flicked the live thing on C4 on... what the fuck?! Okay, so there's no men, that's their 'big twist' for this year... but they're all fucking nuts. Seriously, they're all wide awake at 4am and they don't have abnormal sleep patterns as an excuse like me, and they just showed the two twin girls running around in circles in the living room... FOR 15 MINUTES. And apparently "mad" and "hippy" are the new words for "retard" in young person speak.

Hammy nails the supposed strata of British society on the head there. Every year it gets more mental, though. I always watch the first night, just so when anybody I know brings it up, I can nod along whilst secretly planning where to put their mass idiot grave. Somewhere in Epping, maybe. Also, the first night is actually incredibly interesting. I read quite a lot of psychology, especially social psychology and such, and the first night is the only time in recent years when the reason the first series was so interesting comes across - it's amazing to watch people organise themselves into groups at the drop of a hat. When any group of people interact, they automatically and mostly unconsciously form a hierarchy, from A-D. A's at the top, D's at the bottom and B's and C's in between. Also you get the occasional Z in certain groups, who operates outside of the hierarchy because they're in some way different enough to fall outside of this - the only woman in a group of men, or a gay person, are classic examples. What's amazing about Big Brother is that they pick so many Z types, and a lot of A and B types, but rarely Cs and Ds because they're often quite dull, comparatively. So it's cool to watch the A's fight for control, to see if the Z's become integrated into the hierarchy, and so on and so forth. Of course, after the first few days, it all becomes about the fucking.

Logopolis is the last Tom Baker serial, you get Peter for maybe 8 seconds at the end. Human Nature was dead good. Dead good indeed. Me likey much. I'm awaiting timmayy's hatred with interest.

The Stones? Last time I saw them, they were too busy worrying about the giant inflatable lips and stuff to actually play any songs. Dylan's great when he's on form, although half of the times I've seen him he's been basically going through the motions and having the band carry him to an average night, which isn't what you want out of the coolest man in rock. Davies' live show far outstripped the last couple of times I've seen Bob, which really pains me to admit as everybody knows what a massive hard-on I have for the guy at the worst of times. Me and my dad saw Roger Waters live last year, he was really good actually. Much better than Pink Floyd's cacker-than-cack reunion thing at Live8 a couple of years back. That was just silly.

Yeah. So, last night I caught Ray Davies and his band live in Brighton, thanks to a friend who accidentally double-ordered tickets on the interweb, and I've got to say it was fucking amazing. The man was onstage for nearly 3 hours all told, and apart from a lot of stuff from his recent solo album Other People's Lives (which is damn good and well worth a look) and some unreleased new stuff, he basically played every Kinks hit you can think of. I mean all of them. Even the ones you don't know that well, really. The band were tip-top, in great form, and Ray himself was probably the best live act I've seen in a good few years. I guess it may be the nostalgia factor, but seeing All Day and All of the Night live sent the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end for about half an hour. Not to mention that the man holds an audience in the palm of his hand effortlessly, and his rock'n'roll anecdotes are fucking hilarious. "I wrote this song last time I was in America. I got shot. It's about getting shot." Anyway, all of this has gotten me thinking about just which of the 'ageing rockers' still have it, either live or in the studio. So yeah, share your opinions, live experiences, disappointments, and those which exceeded your expectations or whatever.

Logopolis owns your soul, apart from all of the continual references to maths.

The next 2-parter appears to be based on, from what's been said and that preview, the novel Human Nature. Considering it's being written by the self-same Paul Cornell, you'd hope so at least. That was one of my favourite novels from that series, up there with The Also People and Lungbarrow for my money. It featured the Doctor living on Earth as a human in the pre-war years, supposedly to understand the human condition, although seeing as he's Time's Champion, there was a lot more to it than that. Should be nice.

I've currently got Vaan swinging the Ragnorak, which is hella useful because it does Immobilise on hit, and my main party also consists of a Fomalhaut-toting Balthier, and Fran who is using whichever bow is best at the moment. Meanwhile, the B-team of Basch, Ashe and Penelo is roughly level 72-73 right now, featuring Basch with a Golden Axe, Ashe with the Deathbringer sword, and Penelo using either the Masamune or the Save the Queen depending on my mood. Although the Masamune tends to get tossed around in very long battles when somebody has very few MP, as in conjunction with the Genji Gloves and the 'recharge MP by doing damage' augment it's one of the best combinations around. A note for Fafnir, Ruki - its 1,400,000 HP may fuck you over, just because it takes a long time to bite the dust and you'll run out of MP almost surely. The white breath attack it does is also major rapeage, unless you can make yourself immune to Stop (Ribbon FTW). Also, Renew is your friend. Does anybody know where I can get the black magic spell Ardour? It's the only spell I haven't got yet... grr.

I was informed that the Shadowseer, Pylraster, and Fafnir were hard to kill. I want my fucking money back. That is all.

The Tomb of the Cybermen Starring Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor Ah, now this is more like it. The effects are still ropey from time-to-time, but it's amazing how far the storytelling has come in two years, as well as the budget, and Lord knows that Patrick Troughton was a far better actor than the loveable but very unwell William Hartnell. I'm going to say this now - Patrick Troughton > Tom Baker. No, really. Think about it - if they'd given the role to a less talented actor after Hartnell left, the series would've gone south and died right there. I love Tom as much as the next person, but when he took over he had far less pressure than Pat, who dealt with it admirably and created probably the most well-rounded and interesting of the early Doctors, and he's up there with Sylvester McCoy for deviousness at times. Anyway, onto the story. We have a nice little prelap with Victoria, Jamie, and the Doctor in the TARDIS. Victoria, who is from Victorian times (get it?) and rather primitive, cannot believe that the ship travels in space and time. She's even more stunned when the Doctor turns out to be 450 years old, and more surprised by far when the Doctor tells her that her dress will be unsuitable if she's to join him and Jamie in their adventures (he actually uses the word adventures, too, which is just quite neat) and is whisked off to change. Jamie asks for a smooth takeoff, and the Doctor's response is a nice flash of the old Hartnell character. When we join the story proper, some archeologists are poking about the planet Telos, blowing some holes in a gravel quarry. New. Anyway, they manage to uncover a set of very large doors and apparently there's been a huge recession by whenever this is, as the workmen are offered £50 if they can get the door open. One poor sap tries it and gets electrocuted, and the Doctor arrives just in time to help them de-electrify the door. Nobody can open it, because it's heavy, so the large black servant Toberman (probably the most racist character since Mickey Rooney played a Japanese guy in Breakfast at Tiffany's) opens it instead. He grunts and is otherwise stoic, so he's probably evil. As is his handler, the sexy-in-an-older-woman-type-of-way Kaftan, and her buddy Klieg. The Doctor decides that, since these silly people are trying to find out why the Cybermen all died out, they'd better tag along to make sure they don't all get themselves killed. Nobody can work out the computer system in the main chamber, except the Doctor, who is just cleverer than you. There's a few nice touches here as Klieg, who proclaims himself to be a master logician, works out several symbolic logic gates and tries them - only for the Doctor to sneakily adjust them behind his back and the door opens, to Klieg's triumphant shout of "I did it!" as the Doc just smiles and says "I love to watch the experts at work, don't you?" Oh Pat, you sneaky devil. They all decide to split off into parties and investigate different rooms. Victoria discovers that the Cybermen must have been giants, and is 'accidentally' trapped in a random alcove by Kaftan, whilst Jamie and a Redshirt investigate a room with a seemingly inocuous computer. Pressing buttons at random is never a wise move, and results in the Redshirt being shot and a Cyberman appearing! DUN DUN DUN! It's only a fake Cyberman, for target practice, though. D'oh. Anyhow, the delightfully American rocket ship captain returns, announcing that nobody can leave because his ship's been sabotaged! DUN DUN DUN! Everybody decides to stay overnight and not abandon the trip after all, as had been suggested after the Redshirt deaths. The Doctor has a nice scene with Victoria here at night time, talking about her dead father and his own family, and it's nice to see a sensitive, fatherly side to a character who was getting a reputation for being simply a cosmic buffoon by this time with his blundering and silliness. We finally head down through the ominous-looking hatch in the main room, only Victoria and Kaftan stay behind. They eat space food, which predictably comes in pill form, and Kaftan drugs Victoria in order to seal everybody in the undercity! DUN DUN DUN! Whilst they're down there, Klieg reveals his devious plot - his group of logicians are the greatest intelligence on Earth, but in order to bring that intelligence to power they need to strike a deal with the notoriously evil and inflexible Cybermen, who have invaded Earth no less than 4 times by this timeline if my calculations are correct. Yeah. Anyway, he unfreezes the Cybermen - who, by the way, look far cooler here than they do at any time until roughly 1983, despite their numerous redesigns by various producers - despite the Doctor's protestations, and the terrible Cybercontroller is unleashed. Complete with massive brain. You can tell he's the leader because of the massive brain. And because he's the only one who has lines. And he finishes episode 2 with the classic, and now famous line, said in the most terrible voice they've ever had - "You belong to us. You shall be like us." DUN DUN DUN! At this point, it's worth taking a moment to espouse the virtues of Patrick Troughton's portrayal of the Doctor. All the while, he's wanted to get down into the undercity and see what's up with the Cybermen, to seal them down there forever, and it's his well-timed insistences of "you'd best be careful!" and his seeming idiocy, along with his rewriting of Klieg's calculations and flipping the odd switch, that have gotten them all here. He's a very manipulative character, and it's so subtle that you barely notice it the first time around. Of course, when danger strikes, as it does right now, he instantly looses all sense of everything. Patrick Troughton is the best person in the world to have the words "put your hands up!" said in the vicinity of, because he really does. Put your hands up now, go on. Naturally, mind. Your hands are sort of hovering by your head, right? Not Pat, his hands are touching the ceiling and there's a look of utterly hilarious terror on his face, all in the space of 0.3 seconds. Anyway, I digress and enthuse. The Cybermen recognise the Doctor and threaten him, whilst he realises that the tombs are just an elaborate trap (but not before utterly my favourite line ever - "Why did you submit yourselves to freezing?" *Cyberman turns to him menacingly, Doctor starts stammering* "Y-You don't have to answer that, if you don't want to!") designed to find people clever enough to work out the logic gates. They're to be turned into a new race of Cybermen, because apparently a race of people is an expedition party of maybe 9 people all told. Well, to be fair, you never really see more than 7 Cybermen so who are we to judge how big their society really was? They all escape to the top, where the Americans have opened the hatch and incapacitated Kaftan, whilst Klieg clings to the belief that he can bargain with the Cybermen, if only he was in a stronger position to bargain. For a part of "the greatest mass intelligence ever assembled," he's pretty fucking stupid. He's dumped into the testing room with Kaftan to keep them out of trouble, but the Cybermen have other weapons! Giant metal caterpillars to be precise! Cybermats attack! DUN DUN DUN! The Doctor comes to the rescue after much running and screaming, using a length of wiring to electrify the creatures and overload them - "you might almost say", he tells Jamie, "that they've had a complete metal breakdown." D'oh. But unfortunately, nobody remembered to check the room they were keeping Klieg in for guns, and he emerges with a Cybergun and shoots! DUN DUN DUN! He only hits one of the American people, who isn't that important, and Klieg opens the hatch, calling up the Cybercontroller. Unfortunately, he brings Toberman with him, who has been partially Cyberfied, but hides his new metal arms with a cloak. Clever. The Cybercontroller is rather weak as power is running low - evidently they forgot to pay the bill before entering deep freeze - and Klieg orders for it to be revitalised in the random alcove. It breaks out, fully charged, and attacks everybody, killing Kaftan. Now, of course, Toberman seems to come around - he was probably in love with her and we were supposed to get it from his wooden glances - and attacks the Cybercontroller, killing him, as Jamie attacks other Cybermen with the Cybergun. The Doctor rushes down with Toberman to freeze the Cybermen, and after a brief tussle with Klieg - who is killed by a Cyberman - they manage to do so. Everybody goes to leave until the Cybercontroller reveals itself not to be dead and attacks the Doctor and Jamie, who run. They all try to close the doors, but only Toberman is strong enough and seals them - the resulting electric shock kills everyone. Surely the Cybermen are at least partially resistant to electricity? I mean, they seem to shoot the stuff out of their hands at some points in this story, I figured they'd be at least able to channel the stuff. Alas. Everybody leaves, happy that it is over, but nobody notices a lone Cybermat moving along the floor! DUN DUN DUN! This is really an absolute classic as far as the old Who is concerned, it really is. A fantastic plot, some great characters and good dialogue, mixed with the best Cybermen the series ever came up with, and they were really trying their damndest to be as good as these ones ever since. The Doctor is marvellously manipulative as the cosmic Chaplin who acts the fool to get everybody to do what he wants, and Victoria settles into her role nicely and seems to have more to say other than the occasional scream. Yay for her. Plus, Jamie > your best mate. Probably. As the DVD goes, it's one of the older ones so there's less special stuff, but there's a really good commentary from Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling, the companions, who are far better than their counterparts on the Dalek Invasion of Earth DVD by actually being able to remember stuff. Apart from that, there's some footage of a Q&A session at the screening of the episode when it was found after being lost for ages, and a little documentary about the efforts that were undertaken to find it when it went missing. Nice, but nothing special really, especially in comparison to some of the more recent stuff. RK's RATING - 9/10. You need this story in your collection, it's that simple. An absolute classic, the best Cyberman story they ever did, and a thoroughly great romp from start to finish. The 2 hours will literally fly by, you'll be enjoying yourself so much. This is the ultimate collection-starter, and an absolute must for the serious fan. Oh, and here's a picture of Victoria... Next Time on THE DOCTOR WHO PROJECT - Inferno Parallel universes! Nazi parodies! Large drills! Romantic subplots! The Brigadier with an eyepatch! Jon Pertwee!

I've had a lot on this week. Don't judge me. I'll update it when I have my last second year essay in, tomorrow, which is actually about a week after the first one anyway. So it's just a week behind.

Anybody feeling withdrawl symptoms this past week, due to the lack of Who for the charade that was Eurovision, should check out to possibly the funniest Who-related video I've seen on YouTube in some time. Chuckles all around. In other, entirely self-motivated news, I'm going to be in a sketch show at Uni next week that'll include a sketch where, amongst other sketches, I play the Doctor, with a nubile young thing in a bikini as my "glamorous female assistant #38." I get to wear a big coat.

The sewer one was The Invasion I believe, and The Tenth Planet was old Bill's final one. This one is set on Telos, the Cybermen's second home planet, with a survey team trying to discover why the Cybermen died out hundreds of years back. Predictably, they're just hibernating in these big honeycomb things in the walls.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth Starring William Hartnell as the First Doctor Okay, let's get the easy stuff out of the way first - the effects are fucking silly, and anybody familiar with the 'established' continuity of the Daleks from Genesis of the Daleks onwards will be left scratching their heads, because let's face it, Terry Nation had no idea it'd take off like he did. Effects-wise, we've got wobbly Daleks, spaceships clearly held up by pieces of wire and 'flown' over a drawing of Big Ben, backgrounds painted onto stage flats (and a few Daleks too, to make the 6 working Dalek props stretch a bit and look like an actual invasion force) and a creature in episode 4 that seems to have no apparent purpose other than to scare Ian and a local for a bit, and then fall into a well. And it's made out of bubble wrap, apparently. Aside from the crappy effects, this is actually a really good story. If you don't own any William Hartnell stories, or if you've only seen the emo Daleks from the new series, this is well worth checking out to see where the Daleks came from, and for the slightly morbid humour of watching an actor succumb to arteriosclerosis on screen. Well, I laughed. There's a real sense of fear from the outset, the TARDIS lands under a bridge with a huge poster proclaiming "It is ILLEGAL to dump bodies into the river" which just creeps you out, although does raise the question of how the Daleks can put posters up with sink plungers. I digress. Also cool are the numerous scenes of Daleks in London, buzzing about the Thames bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral, all of them using the plungers to make psuedo-Nazi gestures, which feeds into Genesis of the Daleks quite well and would also have been a pretty convincing visual cue for 'evil' in 1964. 3:10 in, Susan sprains her ankle, which is one of the longest times she's been present on any planet before injuring herself. You can see why Carole Ann Ford wanted to leave after a lack of character development, because from very promising beginnings as an 'unearthly child' she rapidly became 'second screamer' behind Barbara, and mostly was there to look sexy and swinging. Which she does very well, of course, and her performance in this episode was actually outstanding once she met love interest David Campbell, a gruff but sensitive young resistance fighter who helps her survive while she teaches him about fun and stuff. They even kiss at one point, but the Doctor walks in and they spring apart as if he'll tan her hide. Which Hartnell's Doc probably would've done. By this story, much of the original characterisation of the Doctor, which I remember from watching An Unearthly Child and 100,000 BC on VHS, has gone. Originally, he was a sinister anti-hero with uncertain motives, but by now he's mellowed into a slightly irascible old grandfather who knows lots of interesting things about magnets and stuff, which is nice too. He gets Ian's surname wrong no less than 3 times in this story, which would be a record until he started to really suffer from his illness the following season. Speaking of suffering, Hartnell is entirely absent from episode 4 after ill-advisedly allowing an extra to carry him down the entrance ramp of the Dalek ship in an escape scene, only to be dropped and bump his hip. So, David gets most of the Doctor's lines, which is slightly unusual for a 'nice but uneducated' human living in post-invasion London. How the bloody Hell does he know what melts polycarbide anyway, he's the one making the tea! Actually, he's not, the women do that, but you know what I mean. Sexism is rife at first here, as Ian goes off to explore with the Doctor, leaving the infinitely more mobile Barbara dealing with Susan's sprained leg. They are, predictably, whisked away by the secondary characters for exposition and emoting, whilst the Doctor comes up with theories and Ian fights Robomen, which is far more interesting to watch. Anyway, they head back off to find the girls, who are by now hearing all about the resistance without knowing who it's against. Surely that'd be the first thing they got told? Back at the riverside, Ian and the Doc are confused about what happened here, only for a Dalek to come up out of the river in a HUGELY ICONIC SHOT, and make it all very clear. The plot gets very silly after episode 2, really. Everybody's split up and given lots to do, as Ian thinks everybody's dead and journeys to Bedfordshire to find out why it's such a big mine nowadays, Barbara looks after the wheelchair-bound resistance leader with another girl, because they're women you know, whilst the Doctor and Susan investigate some sewers for shits and giggles. They probably had a good reason, but you never know because they're too busy with silly camera angles and stock footage of alligators. Anyway, the Doc gets a bump on his head and disappears, until near the end of episode 5 when everybody decides to go off to Bedfordshire too. They're all there by episode 6, which makes one wonder just what Ian was doing as it took him most of episode 4 to get there. It turns out - in the most scientifically-bankrupt plot hole of all time - that the Daleks are planning to mine out the magnetic core of Earth, replace it with an engine, and pilot it around the galaxy. Because clearly, those flying saucers are less convenient than a planet full of armed and angry natives. Oh well, the Doctor saves the day and bamboozles the Daleks, whilst some miners (led by a young Mr. Rumbold out of Are You Being Served?, no less) rebel against the Daleks. They're really far less impressive than the Doctor always gives 'em credit for, you know. Ecclestone said that a single Dalek could kill 12,000,000 people in Salt Lake City on its own, but these ones get thrown around like footballs by a load of malnourished, angry Northerners. Bah. Speaking of the Daleks, they're actually quite bizarre here. The original voice artist, Peter Hawkins, is on fine form and probably does the voices better than anybody else - he's the only one who really thought about what it'd be like to be trapped in a metal box all one's life, and the angry cries are masking a deep layer of panic and fear which is beautiful. By contrast, Roy Skelton just sounded like Zippy when he was doing it. The Slither (the bubble-wrap creature) is revealed to be an escape pet of the Black Dalek... which is just fucking confusing. Although it does conjour up a nice image of the Dalek coming home from a hard day's killing and wearily feeding the Slither, before curling up on the couch to watch Neighbours or something. Another weird thing is the presence of chairs here and there on the Dalek ship, long before they resorted to human allies (a fact satired in the BBC Comic Relief spoof The Curse of the Fatal Death of course. I'll explain later) and that they all seem to be a bit drunk, sometimes bumping into doors and veering around, but this was very early in the series' run and the props were notoriously difficult to deal with, so I can let it slide. And, at the end of the story - Susan leaves! Wail! Weep! Say it ain't so! This one is quite weird, because she doesn't choose to stay. Instead, Hartnell locks her out of the TARDIS and speaks to her on the intercom, claiming that he's been very selfish by keeping her with him, failing to notice she's become a young woman, and can't offer her a real life. David, a broke revolutionary with the odd scar who's only real skill so far has been shooting at stuff, seems like good marriage material to the Doc, so he leaves his granddaughter with him on a war-torn, ravaged planet to rebuild it from scratch. Still, they play it emotionally with no hint of paedophilia, so that's a bonus. The Doctor claims he'll come back for her one day, but he hasn't yet and it's been like 30 years and counting, not even taking into account that the Doc's age jumps from 450 in the Troughton years to 900+ by McCoy. He's left her for over 500 years relative time! When the Hell was he planning to go back?! Either way, despite the dodgy effects and sometimes-bizarre plot, this is a really good story. Lots of excitement, the original Doctor in good form, screaming galore from the girls, and some really good character development that probably would've convinced Carole Ann Ford to stay on if she'd been getting those kind of lines since day one. As far as the DVD edition of this story goes, it's not bad. It has an option to watch it with improved CGI effects, which is nice although I think it takes away from some of the charm of the story really. Also featured are the usual links and bits from other shows (including a Blue Peter where you get to learn how to make Dalek cakes!!!) a documentary about making the episode from everybody who's still alive, except any of the main cast, producers, or crew. Basically, it's the supporting cast talking about how nice Verity Lambert was and that Bill Hartnell was grumpy. The commentary is pretty poor, because they're all quite old and much of the time, any question that might lead to an interesting or amusing anecdote is answered by 5 seconds of talk and then "...gosh, do you know, I can't remember?" Also, people keep disappearing and re-entering between episodes, presumably to go to the bathroom. Old people, weak bladders you know. RK's RATING - 7/10. Buy it if you're a fan or you're lacking Hartnell from your collection, but it's probably not the best place to start a collection or to try and get into the show if you're a newb. Anyway, here's a picture of Susan... I'll be sticking up a review of The Lazarus Experiment soon, maybe tomorrow morning though. But... Next time on THE DOCTOR WHO PROJECT - The Tomb of the Cybermen Silver foil! Cosmic hoboes! Scotsmen! Short skirts! Even shorter skirts! Cybermen (obviously)!