233 The Seeds of Death: Episode Two

EPISODE: The Seeds of Death: Episode Two
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 233
STORY NUMBER: 048
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 01 February 1969
WRITER: Brian Hayles
DIRECTOR: Michael Ferguson
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
RATINGS: 6.8 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who Revisitations Box Set - Volume 2 (Seeds of Death, Carnival of Monsters & Resurrection of the Daleks)

"Hello, Earth Control this is Moonbase. Emergency, Emergency!"

Hahahaha. I pressed the Play All option on the DVD for episode 1, but I've dropped into the Select Episode menu to pick episode two. There's the audio for a trailer for the story playing over the selection screen.

The Ice Warriors force technician Fewsham to fix the damaged emergency T-Mat link. Eldred says he's too old to go up in his rocket so the Doctor, Jamie & Zoe volunteer. The rocket is prepared for launch. The Ice Warriors on the moon hunt the missing technician Phipps. The Ice Warriors tell Fewsham they do not need an army to take Earth and it will be there's for the taking very soon. The rocket launches, but the video communication link cuts out. The Doctor temporarily restores communication before smoke fills the cabin. The emergency T-Mat link is reactivated: Miss Kelly and a technician team use it to go to the moon. Phipps attempts to contact Earth control. Phipps kills an Ice Warrior using solar power but in the process cuts out the homing beam that the Doctor's rocket is homing in on leaving them unable to land....

Another slow episode here. There's more Doctor, but he's separated from the main action for most of the episode. Even when he travels to the moon someone else from Earth gets there first. But the Ice Warriors have more of a screen presence here even if they do look like they're waddling down the corridors of the moonbase. Like the Ice Warriors point of view shots in episode one, there's a couple of nice little touches here. I liked the round monitor screen showing the action as the countdown occurred.

However some of the other screen effects are a trifle odd and I swear one of them looks like a QR code/Datamatrix, one of those black & white squares you can read with a mobile, pop up on the screen (thanks to Mohamed Ansar and Tim Walker for reminding me what they were called when I couldn't remember!)

I quite like spotting reused props in the series, and there's a few oddities in Eldred's museum that LOOK like they should be from something but I can't identify.

The first are the two models on the tabletop. They look very well made so I'm thinking Thunderbirds/Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons or Out of the Unknown

The second is a robot in the corner of the room! No idea where that might be from!

Episode 2 of the Seeds of Death exists as a high quality fine grain 16mm print. When Seeds of Death was released as a compilation video in the 1980s the jump in quality from episode 1 to 2 was huge and noticed by almost everyone who watched it.

Ronald Leigh-Hunt plays Commander Radnor here and will be back as Commander Stevenson in Revenge of the Cybermen. He plays Attlebish in the Out of the Unknown episode The Naked Sun, which although missing is reconstructed on the Out of the Unknown DVD Set. You can also see him in The Professionals episode Stake Out as Doctor Binney and Blake's 7 Children of Auron as C. A. One.

Professor Eldred is played by Philip Ray who was born in 1897 and so is one of the earliest born actors to appear in Doctor Who! his onscreen career goes all the way back to 1935 when he made an appearance in a film called 1935!

Louise Pajo plays Gia Kelly. She's got two episodes of UFO to her name appearing as a nurse in Kill Straker! and as Miss Scott in Court Martial.

Monique Bryant appears throughout this story, uncredited as a Technician. She was in the previous Ice Warriors story in a similar role and returns as a Woman Watching Show in Snakedance. she's also been in Blake's 7 as a Mutoid in Project Avalon and Moonbase 3 as a Technician in Achilles Heel, Castor and Pollux & View of a Dead Planet. IMDB think she's Michael E Briant's wife.

Providing the voice of the T-Mat computer is John Witty who seem to specialise in similar voice roles. He was in Out of the Unknown 1+1=1.5 as a Computer voice and Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em as the Computer Voice in The Labour Exchange.

Two technicians are listed on this episode. Royston Farrell was a Guardian in The Return & The Bomb, the third & fourth episodes of The Ark. He'll be back as a Technician in The Claws of Axos and a Guard in The Curse of Peladon. Eric Kent is making his Doctor Who debut as another Technician. He returns in The Time Monster as a Roundhead Soldier. He's got 3 Doomwatch to his name appearing as a Man in The Islanders, a Passer-by in The Human Time Bomb and a Detective Constable in Fire and Brimstone. He appears three times in The Sweeney tv series as a Man Playing Slot Machine in Jigsaw, Haskins' driver in In from the Cold and a Flying Squad Officer in Victims plus is Eric in the film Sweeney 2. He's a prison inmate in the first series of Porridge appearing in The Harder They Fall, A Night In and The Hustler and a Prisoner in Blake's 7. On the big screen he's a Dig Site Worker in the dreadful The Terrornauts and was in the film version of Quatermass and the Pit as a Sapper.

But possibly the biggest named debut in this story goes to an uncredited voice: Michael Wisher! It's not 100% clear which voice he's doing here but, knowing they're dubbed in later stories, I think it could be the individual Ice Warriors. He'll return as John Wakefield in The Ambassadors of Death, Rex Farrel in Terror of the Autons, Kalik in Carnival of Monsters and a Dalek Voice in Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks and Genesis of the Daleks where he plays his career defining role as Davros, the Daleks' creator. He returns in the next story, but filmed prior, Revenge of the Cybermen, as Magrik and then plays Morelli in the first three episodes of Planet of Evil before voicing Ranjit in the fourth. Elsewhere he was in Moonbase 3 Departure and Arrival as Harry Sanders and voiced Daleks for their 1973 Blue Peter and 1975 Jim'll Fix It appearances.