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| MEGLOS :: VHS REVIEW by
Stephen Mills
Added Thursday,
May 82003
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» THE PLOT ... |
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| The Doctor (Tom
Baker) is invited to visit the planet Tigella by its leader, Zastor,
who has become concerned about disputes between his people's two opposing
factions, the religious Deons and the scientist Savants. The TARDIS
is intercepted by the megalomaniac xerophyte Meglos, last survivor
of the planet Zolfa-Thura, and trapped in a chronic hysteresis - a
time loop - but the Doctor and Romana manage to free it. Meglos, using the body of a kidnapped Earthling, transforms himself into a duplicate of the Doctor and steals the Tigellans' power source - a mysterious dodecahedron. He plans to use this to power an apocalyptic device with which he intends to destroy Tigella. The Doctor, although hindered by the activities of a group of Gaztak mercenaries hired by Meglos, ultimately brings about the xerophyte's destruction by tampering with the dodecahedron's controlling computers. |
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| » THE COVER ... | ||||||||||||||||||||
[Click the cover for a larger version] |
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| » THE STORY ... | ||||||||||||||||||||
Meglos, the second story of Season 18 is often seen as one of the weakest stories and it’s not really that difficult to see why. After the fresh look of The Leisure Hive, Meglos has to be an incredible disappointment. Many have argued that it highlights the differences between religion and science, but this is a clichéd idea which had even been done to death in Doctor Who even this early in it’s history (all right, 17 years is a small time, relative to the rest of Doctor Who history). In fact, the whole thing is a poor cliché, with the Savants looking like they’ve been time-warped from Galaxy Four (without a change of gender in some of the men’s cases), while the Deons look like they’ve escaped from the set of K9 and Company.
Unfortunately, as Hill is the best, when it’s bad, it’s atrocious and it almost seems to be a competition going on between the actors to see who could make the material look even worse than it’s written. The main competitors are Federik Treves as General Brotodac (there would be a joke about the anagram being `bad actor`, but it’s too obvious) and Edward Underdown as the supposedly brilliant Zastor. Treves just about wins for the gurneying impressions, which destroys the only suspenseful moment in Part 1, that’s not to say that Underdown is much better. As I said earlier, the script is generally appalling, not only in terms of awfully clichéd characters, but also the plot isn't watertight, particularly in terms of its structure. For instance, the whole of the first episode is spent arguing about whether the Doctor should arrive on Tigella, while a cactus plant tries to take over a human and the Doctor and Romana spend their time repeating bad jokes (another thing that Flanagan and McCulloch are guilty of). Romana’s first line when they are in the chronic hysteresis (which is Latin for we need to pad out Part 1) `Oh blast, here we go again` is exactly how the audience is feeling after the 7th repetition of one of the most awful scenes in Doctor Who’s history. Even Part 2 & 3 suffer, with Romana been attacked by some silly looking plants while K9’s repairs last all of two minutes as his batteries run down (or Flanagan & McCulloch saying, `Oh bollocks! We’ve got to write this fecking robot dog into the script`).
Unfortunately, as the script is bad, the plotting isn’t much better, as no one really knows why Meglos needs to take over an earthling for him to be able to merge into the Doctor. It doesn’t really help that there isn’t enough suspense in the story to keep people entertained. As mentioned, Part 1 does barely anything in that respect and we have to wait until the 4th episode for the first death. Especially a story where Meglos is supposed to be a megalomaniac.
Overall, despite Meglos having some good points with the argument about science and religion and the idea of a doppleganger, the weaknesses far outweigh the positives. |
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| » OVERALL SUMMARY ... | ||||||||||||||||||||
A nice crisp picture has managed to survive the process of duplication. Not quite up to DVD standard, but the quality’s excellent for a video release. A fun (ish) story combined with a decent picture quality makes this a nice product, particularly if you enjoy Tom Baker as an actor. |
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| » TECHNICAL DETAILS ... | ||||||||||||||||||||
All screen grabs and images appearing
in the above review are Copyright (C) BBC Worldwide Ltd 2003 and
are taken from the DWIA. |
When
you have clichés like this, it can be made to work if the
actors make the material look better than it does on the page, but
unfortunately, outside of the regulars, only Jacqueline Hill manages
to believe in the material. Even then, compare Hill’s performance
in this to a similar role she had in The Aztecs, and you can see
that Hill’s acting ability is sadly underused.
Thankfully
though, Tom Baker’s duel role as the Doctor and Meglos is
excellent, and helped by make up so ahead of it’s time it
makes modern US sci-fi look dated. He not only manages to play the
role of the Doctor with the same quirky style that we all love,
but he also manages to add a real threat to Meglos,
which is especially pleasing as there doesn’t seem to be one
on the page. As well as Lalla Ward making the best of some poor
material (the moment where she gets separated from the Doctor in
Part 2), being at her wittiest. 
Outside
of the script, the production isn’t wonderful. The Tigellan
wildlife is distinctly unthreatening despite the Savants and the
Deons saying that they are. As well as some very dodgy special effects.
A new advanced form of CSO is used called Scene-sync, which the
Doctor Who team were given free of charge as a test, so that it
could be used on a program called The Borgias, but unfortunately,
it’s rather blatantly obvious which are the CSO sets and which
is a proper set. You can see the fringing around all the actors’
figures, which would spoil any illusion.» All reviews are © to their respective authors and may not be reproduced elsewhere without prior permission