| TV-Commentary - Doctor Who |
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Best Episodes: Earthshock
This was a Peter Davidson episode where the Tardis lands in some deep mines on Earth and they encounter androids who are killing off miners. The Doctor discovers that they are protecting a bomb which is about to blow up. With the help of some blue collar miners he destroys the androids and succeeds in deactivating the bomb at the last minute.
The Doctor traces the detonation signal for the bomb to a cargo ship heading to earth. He pokes around the ship a bit and discovers that there are cybermen on board--a LOT of cybermen. They take over the ship with the help of a human traitor (the cybermen always seem to have a human traitor working for them), and set the ship, loaded with explosives, on a collision course with Earth.
The cyberleader and the Doctor watch this spectacle from the Tardis while Adric, the Doctor's current hippie assistant, is trapped on the ship which is about to crash. Blue collar miners free Adric and abandon ship, but Adric stays behind to try to free the controls from the lock the cybermen have put on it.
Unfortunately in tinkering with the controls he causes the ship to somehow travel backwards in time. This elates the cyberleader, who thinks the earth will prematurely cease to exist, but the Doctor bursts his bubble by telling him the ship is simply the "asteroid" that slammed into the earth and eliminated the dinosaurs. He then rubs out the cyberleader using Adric's gold star (exactly why did he wear that star anyway?).
Adric meanwhile fails to deactivate the helm control and blows up, the first and only companion to be rubbed out. Nyssa whines that the Doctor should go back in time to save Adric, but the Doctor says that would violate temporal laws, or something.
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David Hartness
posts on 5/21/2007 2:19:52 AM
I agree that Adric was the most interesting of the companions, from both a psychological and sexual point of view. At least as far as the concept of his character goes, his personality and sexuality were far more developed than any other companion. The earlier episodes with Adric were very good in their own right, but were made fascinating by homosexual subthemes. This worked well with Tom Baker, but not with Peter Davidson. I was shocked when Adric died, and will never forget the expression on his face right before the end, as he mumbled his last words. Matthew Waterhouse generally did a fine job portraying Adric, but in Earthshock, he was genuine and brilliant. Exactly the right combination of stoic courage and teenage pathos. One of my favorite episodes, even though it still makes me choke up as no other DR. Who episode does.
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Hans Knudsen Stovlbaek
posts on 4/9/2007 10:17:04 PM
I cried like a baby when Adric died. It was a really traumatic experience for me, because I had such a hopeless crush on him. He was the cutest boy I had ever seen. After Earthshock, I never watched another episode of DW, except reruns with Adric, of course. What is the point? I loved the gay sexplay between Waterhouse and Tom Baker, too. I don't think it is pedophilia, though, Adrian, because Adric was after puberty, so technically not a child anymore. And anyway, he was the top, so it's not like the Doctor was exploiting him.
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The commentator Adrian Rother
posts on 1/10/2007 4:32:46 AM
The sad thing about Earthshock was that this was the end of Adric, the youngest, sexiest and most interesting of the Doctor's companions in the history of the show. Adric shined as the Doctor's gay toy boy in the episodes with Tom Baker. Their over the top gay-to-the-max shenanigans were far ahead of their time, and unfortunately, went over the top of the head of many British viewers of the time. Here on the Continent, pedophilia has a longer tradition and is much more accepted than in the U.K. The Adric/Fourth Doctor combination is very much alive today in the popular mind, and most people who know about Doctor Who associate it immediately with Full Circle, State of Decay and Keeper of Traken. Even my grandmother has commented more than once that Matthew Waterhouse and Tom Baker "make a sweet couple". If you ask any schoolchild here what happened to the dinosaurs, the answer will always contain a reference to Adric.
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The commentator Adrian Sherlock
posts on 12/17/2006 5:53:37 AM
This was a staggeringly good story when it was new. I think the things which make Doctor Who stories stand apart from the crowd are ones where famous baddies return or a companion leaves or the Doctor regenerates. In this case, not only did the Cybermen return but it was a total surprise and not only did a companion leave, he actually died. What's more this was a new Doctor's first season. At the time, we'd had Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee for years so the arrival of a new guy was a really big deal, not something people take for granted like it is now. And in this case, the Doctor actually tries to save the companion, Adric and fails, and this was like saying to the audience, this Doctor is way less superman-like than his predecessors, he can fail and anything can happen now. At the time, it was a huge success and what's more, we can see Davison's Doctor is motivated by this tragedy when he goes all out to rescue Peri and even sacrifices himself for her in his other big powerhouse story, Caves of Androzani. That's why Earthshock is a big deal for a lot of fans.
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posts on 7/19/2006 8:51:08 PM
Best episode was the movie "Abducted by the Daleks" where the Daleks chased around nekkid women on their spaceship and did all sort of probing.
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posts on 7/19/2006 8:37:38 PM
Nope you are wrong. Earthshock was the best of the Cybermen stories, and in 1982 was coinsidered a modern classic, something the Cybermen would never be afterwards. They were ruined by later stories including the recently broadcast 2006 season which featured the alternate earth versions.
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posts on 5/2/2006 4:34:02 PM
Sorry but Earthshock was really bad nothing compeared to the Movie and some of the brand new episodes, I love the daleks, exept the one which chases Sly MaCcoy around the school its voice was terrible combered to Nic briggs new daleks.
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the posters.
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