Three members of the Woolstencroft family are contributors to BC Magazine. Each discovered the BBC's Doctor Who at a different point: Tony goes all the way back to Hartnell, Ian started with Pertwee, and Daniel came on board during Davison's stay in the Tardis.
The Script
Tony: Solid but clichéd. What more can you say about yet another “mad scientist turns himself into monster” story?
Ian: Sometimes it pays to keep things simple. There isn’t a lot of plot here – mad scientist builds a machine to make him young, things don’t work out as planned and mad scientist turns into a monster who feeds on people, the Doctor has to stop him – but it’s a well-written story that gives both the regular cast and the guest stars plenty to work with.
Tony: And at least Stephen Greenhorn is sensible enough to keep the Jones family involvement reasonably brief.
Ian: I thought Martha’s family were far less annoying than anticipated, and that has as much to do with the writing as the performances. There is also some intriguing foreshadowing of events to come, just who was the mystery man and what did he whisper to Martha’s mum? This is Greenhorn’s first Doctor Who script but hopefully it won’t be his last.
Daniel: Yes, it's a cliché - this is pretty much a Doctor Who tribute to The Fly - but there's some excellent dialogue here, mainly from the Doctor and Lazarus. The performances - as we'll mention in a moment - help a lot, but if the script sucked initially they'd have nothing to work with.
The Effects
Ian: The visual effects team have come up with one ugly-looking beastie. They may have borrowed parts from elsewhere (the creatures “mouth” brings to mind the bad guy in Blade II) but it works and while you’re never really convinced it’s anything but a CGI creation some nice interaction with the environment helps.
Article comments