5.6: Earthshock

In which Adric will never know if he was right.

Broadcast: March 1982

Watched: November 2020

Earthshock, Part One

“Too many people have died for you to play the fool.” The character of Scott is clearly there to answer the question, “What if the Brigadier was real and an arsehole.”

That episode is really, really good. It’s tenser than the show has managed in years, if not ever: you know something horrible is going to happen, you don’t know what or when. The faceless androids, and the way their kills are shown as a flare on a scanner screen and then with nothing more than the odd scream or bit of bubbling flesh, is really nerve-wracking. I’ve never really bought the idea that Doctor Who is scary. This episode is.

Moffat channels this in Time of Angels, doesn’t he? The army, the caves with monsters in them, the slow build towards the inevitable twist... he makes his army vicars rather than gender balanced, but nonetheless, when he wants tension this is what he reaches back to.

And then that cliffhanger! It’s sort of mindblowing, from a modern point of view, that they’d throw away “CYBERMEN!” as the twist... but then again, RTD basically did this at the end of Army of Ghosts, and again in The Stolen Earth, so maybe they would.

Other things: Adric almost gets character development here: he’s finally sick of everyone being mean to him, he misses being the Doctor’s only friend/pupil, he basically throws a tantrum because he wants to be taken seriously. Why he wants to return to Terradon, a planet his ancestors never stepped foot on, is unexamined in such a way I suspect the script editor has forgotten what happened in Full Circle.

Tegan again surprises, by being kindly and conciliatory towards Adric. I quite like the educational remit bit, where we learn about phosphorescence and the dinosaurs.

Walters is one of the great single episode bit parts: all he gets to do is look at a screen in increasing panic, but he’s great.

Britbox describes them as the “silent but deadly” androids. Hmmm. 

Earthshock, Part Two

More tension, firstly because we can see the androids shooting at people, then because of the bomb, then because of the creepy silent freighter.

It’s weird that the androids have genders, but the bit about confusing them by making them choose between duty and survival is quite cool (or at least, as cool as anything in Destiny of the Daleks). “The TARDIS has infinite power!” “But the transmitter doesn’t!” is very weird.

Oh this is the third story running in which the Doctor cheerily invites a bunch of randoms into the TARDIS. Very odd feature of this era.

The Doctor making an effort with Adric in this episode is oddly sweet. The latter calculating a path through the CVE even though he doesn’t want to go any more is a great character note. Davison is brilliant in this one properly intense and funny and energetic. The Cybermen are not so much emotionless as “very, very emotional indeed”.

When we move to the freighter, it is hilariously obvious that Ringway is a creep. I think RTD may have lifted Beryl Reid BRILLIANT casting, obviously being needlessly shitty to him for Waters of Mars.

I felt oddly emotional at seeing Hartnell again.

Kyle is played by the same actress as the lesbian who keeps trying to seduce Anna in This Life, btw.

Earthshock, Part Three

“I will not risk losing my bonus for a few miserable stowaways.” I love that Beryl Reid plays the fact two of her crew are dead as an irritating administrative inconvenience. She’s basically Carolyn Knapp-Shappy. [From John Finnemore’s Cabin Pressure.]

The Cybermen appear on the ship earlier than I’d remembered which is good, as it means the tension keeps rising, there isn’t the normal episode 3 dip. Oh Ringway’s a traitor there’s a surprise. The casual way the cybermen dispose of him is wonderfully brutal.

Huh, the thermal lance turns metal hot pink, how very 1982. Just realised my idea of how anti-matter works comes entirely from this story. The bit where the cyberman gets stuck in the door is one of those images that’s seared into my memory. Ditto the bit at the end, where they’re breaking out of the silos this is probably the first really good cybermen moment since Tomb.

It’s nice that Adric’s last story doesn’t just give him a big role, but sort of finishes his arc. The Doctor’s treating him as not far off an equal here.

The model work for the freighter hold is genuinely quite good.

“I’m exhausted” oh right here Tegan is a bit whiny yes. Although her shooting a cyberman in the chest for kicks is pretty cool, and the bit where she drags Kyle off so she can steal her overalls is weirdly funny.

Earthshock, Part Four

“Compared to some, this one’s positively flippant.”

Let’s talk about the idea that the fifth Doctor is a bit ineffectual. He entirely fails to save Adric. The freighter crashes into the Earth. The Doctor loses: okay, 26th century Earth is fine, but only because the cybertechnology, bafflingly, turns out to be capable of time travel (maybe the fact their computers remember Revenge, which happens in the future, is a hint).

What’s more, at the point Adric chooses to jump out of the escape pod to prove to himself he can still do maths, the audience already knows the freighter is destined to crash. He dies nobly, but completely pointlessly.

It’s not really the Doctor, of course, it’s [writer and script editor Eric] Saward. The Doctor can’t think of a winning argument in favour of emotions either, and “No, the web of time means that thing is supposed to explode,” is the same twist he uses in The Visitation and Slipback. His Doctor doesn’t really save the day in any of his other stories that I can remember.

Earthshock is great... But I can’t help but think this is not a very sensible way to run Doctor Who.

Other things. The weird effect that shows a single line of cybermen like three next to each other at the start is very odd. There is clearly no state of grace in the TARDIS as this episode it’s like the OK Corral. I had entirely forgotten Kyle died.

A lot of stuff in this one is weirdly unspoken. Not just the time travel stuff, but the use of logic puzzles (presumably they’re easy for cybermen to crack and near impossible for humans, so make great locks, but we’re left to infer that); the fact Scott starts building a barricade without bothering to explain why; Nyssa trying to protect Tegan from the sight of her own planet being destroyed (presumably because she knows what it’s like)... I can’t work out if this is very clever or just bad writing.

This is another story where they clearly have too many companions as it’d be incredibly easy to lose Nyssa entirely. Why the cybermen don’t kill Tegan the second they have her is a bit unclear though the bit where the leader threatens her life, and Adric refuses to move away from her, is a nice, under-stated moment. The bit where Nyssa loses it immediately the freighter explodes (why? why does it explode, not crash? why?) and Tegan comforts her, and then Tegan only loses it once she’s seen the Doctor’s face and then Nyssa has to comfort *her* is nicely done.

The silent credits with the broken badge are objectively hilarious but weirdly effective at the same time. I did end up just watching the bloody credits.

Why do they decide to kill Adric anyway?