The Singing Sands

"We should be up there."

Susan says wistfully looking towards the stars from outside Polo's tent on the Gobi desert in a touching scene with Ping-Cho. Another high quality episode of thoughtful dialogue and imaginative plotting. The tension comes from knowing that Tegana is about to sabotage the expedition together with the oncoming storm, the 'Singing Sands' of the title, which is cleverly explained and realised, culminating in Ian's real voice calling for Susan. The approaching sandstorm is preminiscent of the 'Robots of Death' thirteen years later. Very clever, and very educational. As was 'Shah-K-Mate' - the King [the Shah] is dead [Mate as in Matador - killer]. The Doctor is strangely absent in this episode, sleeping a lot and generally being rude according to Polo and Susan. Barbara intuitively interprets this as feeling powerless at having his TARDIS taken off him by a 'primative'. He'll bounce back like a rubber ball, full of ideas, she thinks and I was reminded of David Tennant's Doctor.

A great cliffhanger as Tegana stands astride the oasis, gourd in hand, 'Here's water, Marco Polo. Come for it!'



An erroneous caption at the end shows 'Next episode - The Cave of Five Hundred Eyes'

But really, we know it's

Next Episode: Five Hundred Eyes

I can't wait.

The Brink of Disaster

"We had time taken away from us, and now it's being given back to us... because it's running out!"

So says Barbara and she's right in many more senses than one. This is still a very strange Dr Who story. I decided to watch the DVD on the big screen rather than YouTube after all, to give the story its best chance. Even so it reels about all over the place though it does come good in the last ten minutes when we get back to I suppose what we consider now to be 'proper' Dr Who. The four incumbents (is this word ever used anywhere else other than to describe the people who travel in the TARDIS?) start to co-operate and begin to trust each other. Ian accepts the Doctor's apology readily, but I love when Barbara sits tight, unwilling to forgive him. The scene where the Doctor apologises is very touching and they both show incredible strength of character; he by apologising and she by accepting. They could so easily have been enemies forever. After all the tension I love the playfulness with Gilbert and Sullivan's cloak (it seems that the Doctor has visited Earth on several occasions already) and Susan in the snow. The cliffhanger is great, giants! Perhaps banging their heads on the roof of the world.

Next episode: The Roof of the World

Article: Baker's Dozen
My thoughts on the first 13 episodes