Doctor Who - The Claws Of Axos (DVD)

Way back in 1970, Doctor Who, a show that was already a respectable six years old, went through the most significant changes in its history so far. Not only was there another change of actor in the title role, but the Doctor was no longer able to wonder through time and space and instead exiled to Earth, and, for the first time, the show was to be broadcast in colour. The changes were a success and there was a surge in the popularity of the programme. ...
...Jon Pertwee's reign as the Doctor and is supremely typical of the times.

The story is straightforward and of the sort that is classically associated with Doctor Who. An alien spaceship has landed on Earth and UNIT, the secret military organisation that the Doctor now works for, has been sent to investigate. At first regarding the aliens as a threat, they now reveal themselves as refugees and offer humanity a gift in exchange for their ... more

Way back in 1970, Doctor Who, a show that was already a respectable six years old, went through the most significant changes in its history so far. Not only was there another change of actor in the title role, but the Doctor was no longer able to wonder through time and space and instead exiled to Earth, and, for the first time, the show was to be broadcast in colour. The changes were a success and there was a surge in the popularity of the programme. The Claws of Axos hails from the second year of Jon Pertwee's reign as the Doctor and is supremely typical of the times.

The story is straightforward and of the sort that is classically associated with Doctor Who. An alien spaceship has landed on Earth and UNIT, the secret military organisation that the Doctor now works for, has been sent to investigate. At first regarding the aliens as a threat, they now reveal themselves as refugees and offer humanity a gift in exchange for their hospitality. The gift is Axonite, an element with the ability to control energy; it will give whoever controls it a tremendous amount of power.

Naturally, the Axons are not as benevolent as they appear, and the Axonite is a trap for human greed. Once it's spread across the Earth it will begin to consume all life on the planet. Equally naturally, it's up to the Doctor to stop this dastardly plan and once again save humanity before it's too late.

Despite the plot appearing deceptively bog-standard, there're a lot of nice themes running throughout the story, and you can tell that Bob Baker & Dave Martin were trying to make a point when they wrote this. The Axons appear as beautiful beings, but what they offer is death. They do not attack humanity, but trust to the flaws that are inherent within it for their plan to succeed. And, for a while, it is the selfish motives of one civil servant that are keeping the planet safe, not the heroics of the better-intentioned.

Indeed, some of the visuals manage to live up to these ideas, presenting a rather dark, often adult picture. An unfortunate tramp has the life sucked out of him by Axos and when his corpse appears it crumbles away into dust when touched by a soldier. On the original broadcast, this was considered too horrific to be shown at Saturday tea-time and was whited out, but the unedited footage can be seen on this DVD release.

In fact, the story is packed with original design and imaginative visuals. The interior of the Axon spaceship makes excellent use of the fact that the show was now made in colour, offering some fantastic psychedelic visuals that manage to look fairly decent even thirty-five years later. The Axons themselves, in both their golden humanoid form - despite very obvious zips up the back of the costumes - and their tentacled alien ones, showcase some nice work by the design team. Sadly, there is one particularly laugh out loud moment where a certain form of the Axon alien can best be described as a guy covered in a sheet writhing on the floor. Best to just ignore that.

The performances by the regulars are uniformly good. Katy Manning, as the likable but somewhat useless Jo Grant, does what she can with very little material, while Nicholas Courtney turns in another marvellous performance as the wonderful Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Jon Pertwee, always deadly serious in his role as the Doctor, gives the viewer a moment of doubt as he convinces UNIT that he intends to save himself and escape Earth with his fellow renegade, the Master, instead of staying on the doomed world. It's early enough in his association with UNIT for this to still be believable, and it adds a nice layer of tension to the final episode.

This leads to some of the best scenes of the episode with Pertwee playing of Roger Delgado - always sublime as evil renegade Time Lord, the Master - as the two form their unlikely alliance to repair the Doctor's TARDIS and get away from Earth. The very best moments of the story, however, are when the Master temporarily takes the place of the Doctor and becomes UNIT's scientific advisor, offering an interesting look at what it could have been like had the Master been the one to be exiled to Earth.

The DVD package, as is typical of the Doctor Who releases, comes with plenty of extras as well as the picture and sound of the story itself all cleaned up and digitally restored by the Restoration Team. For me, as a fan, the most interesting extra was the raw studio footage from the first recording block offering a fascinating insight into what it was actually like to be on the studio floor at the time of recording. It includes a few extended scenes, but the real interest is in seeing what the director's instructions were and those little moments between filming and what the actors themselves were saying.

The info text, offering trivia that pops up on-screen at the appropriate moment in the story is interesting, and the commentary is a worthy but rather dull affair featuring Katy Manning, Barry Letts (the producer) and Richard Franklin (who played Captain Mike Yates). It's informative, but horribly lacking in humour and is perhaps a little too self-congratulatory. Then there's the usual documentaries on the work of the Restoration Team, the locations in the story and a photo gallery. All worth a look if you're interested, but none stand out as being particular stand-outs.

So this story, for me, is quintessential Doctor Who and one that I have a great deal of fondness for. The guest stars offer up some memorable characters, and the best civil servant ever to appear in the series in the form of the aptly named Mr Chinn, whilst the aliens vary from being convincingly scary to laugh-out-loud funny. But it's certainly not to everyone's tastes and can feel very slow-moving at times as well as featuring some atrociously bad science concerning nuclear power plants and returning to them as soon as they've blown-up. Nevertheless, it's pack full of imagination and excellent design work and the cast do a lovely job. So if you've any fond memories of the Pertwee era of Doctor Who, I don't think this release would disappoint. 

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