4.11: The Seeds of Doom

In which we say goodbye to UNIT… again! Oh, also some stuff with terrifying giant plants.

Broadcast: January-March 1976

Watched: June 2020

The Seeds of Doom, Part One

Soooo this is the last UNIT story but we don’t think of it as such because none of the UNIT regular cast are in it? But that’s the capacity in which the Doctor is called in?

Also we probably don’t think of it ast he last UNIT story because honestly when did anyone ever express a view on The Seeds of Doom.

Anyway, the body horror is quite upsetting – people turning into plants and that – and the script genuinely tense, in large part thanks to the music again. Hang on, this is Robert Banks Stewart again, isn’t it – is he the only writer to top and tail a season before RTD?

Can’t help but wonder if the reason the guy who gets attacked by the pod is the only one in the Antarctic base who doesn’t have a beard is because it makes the green make up easier.

Boycie is good at being creepy. [John Challis, who plays the villain’s henchman Scorby, would later go on to find fame as the Trotter brother’s untrustworthy used car dealing Boycie in Only Fools and Horses. Even later than that he’d develop an unlikely Twitter friendship with rapper Ice-T.]

The Seeds of Doom, Part Two

Odd structure this – a two parter with a four parter immediately afterwards. The Antarctic setting and cast are completely wiped out, including the Krynoid, and then we follow the surviving pod to the next story.

It’s sort of funny how so much of Doctor Who is spent trying to find ways of making six part stories work, before coming to the conclusion that actually just not doing six part stories might be the most sensible option.

Anyway, this is quite effective as a thriller. Tom is at his most physical and least comic, very not to the Tom who lives in the public memory. Although having said that, literally as I was typing that sentence, he started hopping around and headbutted a door open.

Harrison Chase is basically a camp English Christopher Walken. Or, to put it another way: an English Christopher Walken.

By giving in when Scorby threatens her, The Doctor basically endangers the world to save Sarah Jane Smith, which would be quite hard to justify morally even if Sladen wasn’t a bit rubbish. 

The Seeds of Doom, Part Three

This is one of those that’s both intensely Doctor Who without being particularly like any previous story.

Although having said that, the Doctor jumps on someone’s back and then punches them in the face. Later he nearly breaks Scorby’s neck with his bare hands. Which is not very typical at all.

Amelia Ducat is the first in a long line of batty old women who are going to be ruining Who for years isn’t she.

Not bad effects when the base blows up.

Keeler is oddly sympathetic with his constant hang dog expression and the tragic inevitability of him turning into a plant monster.

The Seeds of Doom, Part Four

“I still can’t think of anything to say.”

The Doctor’s enthusiasm for violence in this one is very, very strange.

Keeler asking Chase, who is clearly delighted he’s turning into a plant, for help is oddly bathetic.

“The recycling experiment” is a great euphemism for turning people into compost.

Huh, the batty old women is a secret agent for the World Ecology Bureau, did not see that one coming.

The Seeds of Doom, Part Five

“All the vegetation on this planet is about to turn hostile!” This would be BRILLIANT, it’s a real shame we don’t get RTD-style cutaways. The scene where they’re frantically carrying pot plants outside is hilarious.

The Krynoid is basically an evil cabbage isn’t it? And the cliffhanger, of a big cabbage while Chase smiles blankly, is not up to much.

There’s a Brig shaped hole in this. His absence is noted, at least.

The Seeds of Doom, Part Six

So, question – why, in all the endless scribbling to plug the holes in continuity, has nobody ever done The Last UNIT story, in which the Doctor definitively decides to bugger off? As an organisation they’re much more present in season 13 than I’d appreciated. [After some chat, the main explanation seems to be “Paul Cornell sort of did it as a 7th Doctor story in his nearly-the-30th-anniversary New Adventure No Future” so nobody ever thought to again. Given the enthusiasm with which every other continuity gap has been filled over and over again, I am not entirely convinced by this.]

Anyway, that was quite fun, if ultimately empty. The sequence in which Scorby gets himself killed is kind of cool. The one in which Chase feeds poor Not Sgt Benton into the threshing machine is horrible. Can’t BELIEVE there’s a story in which the Doctor feeds someone into a threshing machine, though.

The steam which gets them out of this mess doesn’t obviously affect the plant in the slightest.

Can’t believe we were all denied Sir Colin of the World Ecology Bureau as a middle aged male companion.

Why does the TARDIS end up in Antarctica at the end given it never went in the first place? And why did they fly to Antarctica, rather than taking the time machine? [There is no better explanation than “everyone involved in making this had forgotten how the story started.]

Also that’s two stories this season about old houses being blown up, to go with the two about alien invasions involving identity theft. Also two about elemental forces taking people over.