Doctor Who: The Deadly Assassin: Part Two starts as the Doctor (Tom Baker) is arrested for the assassination of the retiring Time Lord President, before he was killed the President never named his successor & the one & only candidate is Chancellor Goth (Bernard Horsfall) who wants the Doctor tried, convicted & executed as soon as possible. The Doctor uses Article 17 of the Timelord constitution & nominates himself as a presidential candidate which gives him immunity until after the election, this tactic of using a legal technicality gives him 48 hours to prove his innocence. Chancellor Goth orders Castellan Spandrell (George Pravda) to accompany the Doctor wherever he goes, the Doctor manages to piece some of the clues together & comes to the conclusion that the answer lies within the Matrix & that he has been framed...
Episode 10 from season 14 this Doctor Who adventure originally aired here in the UK during November 1976, directed by David Maloney I actually thought this episode was better than Part One, not that Part One was exactly bad in itself. The script by Robert Holmes was heavily influenced by the Frank Sinatra thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962) in which someone is turned into a political assassin & while Part One set the scene & the situation the Doctor finds himself in Part Two is all about who he can trust, his allies & enemies & finding out the truth with the end of the episode turning into some sort of surreal nightmare inside the Matrix computer. There's a whole assassination of JFK feel to The Deadly Assassin & the parallels are obvious, we are talking political cover ups, trial by media, the assassination of a president & sweeping facts under the carpet. We also learn that the Master is responsible for the sinister goings on who was last seen in Frontier in Space (1973) some three years earlier. The Timelord race is obviously based on human civilisation which is what disappoints me about The Deadly Assassin, from trials & legal technicalities to bickering to self serving ambition to corrupt officials & falsified records that can be tampered with to an over reliance on old tradition & stuffy pomp & circumstance. I just never felt Gallifrey was a truly alien planet & I thought it destroyed some of the Doctors mystique as a character.
With the return of the Master & the actor Roger Delgado's death who played him during the Jon Pertwee ear a new actor had to be found, Peter Pratt got the job & he is stuck under a fairly stiff & restrictive skull like mask since the Master doesn't seem to have nay skin anymore & is decayed. He seems to have huge eyeballs as well that he can't blink & a very stiff jaw he can't move. The make-up & mask is alright actually & I could see his skinless skull type visage maybe being uneasy viewing for young children. The climax of Part Two features a very surreal visit by the Doctor into the Matrix where he meets a Japanese Samurai warrior, an evil surgeon with a huge syringe, a 'frightening' plastic crocodile & a silly little train!
The Deadly Assassin: Part Two is very good Doctor Who, there's a much better written, stronger & a more intriguing story here than usual with the added bonus of a rotten skull faced Master with ping-pong eyeballs although there are still aspects of it that I don't like. Having said that the good more than outweighs the bad & fans of the series should like it.
Episode 10 from season 14 this Doctor Who adventure originally aired here in the UK during November 1976, directed by David Maloney I actually thought this episode was better than Part One, not that Part One was exactly bad in itself. The script by Robert Holmes was heavily influenced by the Frank Sinatra thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962) in which someone is turned into a political assassin & while Part One set the scene & the situation the Doctor finds himself in Part Two is all about who he can trust, his allies & enemies & finding out the truth with the end of the episode turning into some sort of surreal nightmare inside the Matrix computer. There's a whole assassination of JFK feel to The Deadly Assassin & the parallels are obvious, we are talking political cover ups, trial by media, the assassination of a president & sweeping facts under the carpet. We also learn that the Master is responsible for the sinister goings on who was last seen in Frontier in Space (1973) some three years earlier. The Timelord race is obviously based on human civilisation which is what disappoints me about The Deadly Assassin, from trials & legal technicalities to bickering to self serving ambition to corrupt officials & falsified records that can be tampered with to an over reliance on old tradition & stuffy pomp & circumstance. I just never felt Gallifrey was a truly alien planet & I thought it destroyed some of the Doctors mystique as a character.
With the return of the Master & the actor Roger Delgado's death who played him during the Jon Pertwee ear a new actor had to be found, Peter Pratt got the job & he is stuck under a fairly stiff & restrictive skull like mask since the Master doesn't seem to have nay skin anymore & is decayed. He seems to have huge eyeballs as well that he can't blink & a very stiff jaw he can't move. The make-up & mask is alright actually & I could see his skinless skull type visage maybe being uneasy viewing for young children. The climax of Part Two features a very surreal visit by the Doctor into the Matrix where he meets a Japanese Samurai warrior, an evil surgeon with a huge syringe, a 'frightening' plastic crocodile & a silly little train!
The Deadly Assassin: Part Two is very good Doctor Who, there's a much better written, stronger & a more intriguing story here than usual with the added bonus of a rotten skull faced Master with ping-pong eyeballs although there are still aspects of it that I don't like. Having said that the good more than outweighs the bad & fans of the series should like it.
