One fat geek's SUCCESSFUL attempt to regenerate into a not-so-fat geek by watching the entirety of Doctor Who while walking on a treadmill

I'd Piss On A Spark Plug If I Thought It'd Do Any Good

Apr 29 2017
I'd Piss On A Spark Plug If I Thought It'd Do Any Good

Poor Dodo. Sent off to the country to rest towards the end of episode two, and never given a proper goodbye. Nothing more than a quick note sent at the end of episode four saying she is feeling better, has decided to stay in London, and she sends the Doctor her love. That's about as unceremonious a dumping as you can get on this show. She's the first companion to ever just wander off halfway through a story and never bother to come back. I'd say she will be missed but... really, she won't.  But hey, lots of other cool stuff happened by the end of The War Machines.

Let's talk about that.

The War Machines - Episodes 3 & 4

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

Episode three has Polly hypnotized into slavery by the evil supercomputer WOTAN, and Ben initially captured and set to work. He later manages to escape and warn the Doctor about what is going on, which leads to the mobilization of the Army and then a massive battle inside the warehouse that has been building one of the titular war machines. When I say massive battle, I mean that nearly half the running time of the third episode was the prolonged combat between the military and the minions of WOTAN that ultimately spills out into the street before War Machine #9 comes face to face with the Doctor.

In the fourth episode, War Machine #9 breaks down due to incomplete programming, and War Machine #3 from another location goes on a rampage due to faulty programming. The Doctor devises a trap for the robot tank, luring into a magnetic loop to disrupt its communication with central control. Ultimately the Doctor reprograms War Machine #3 and sets it off to battle WOTAN directly at the top of the new Post Office Tower.


Seen here under construction. It was pretty hard to miss in 1966.

Not pictured in the run up to the climax: how a robotic tank the size of a delivery van made it up to the top floor of that building. Presumably they have a freight elevator? I don't know. It must have been hard for the tank to push the elevator buttons with its sledgehammer hands...

In the end, Ben rescues Polly from WOTAN's command center just before War Machine #3 bursts in to blow stuff up. The Doctor, being a waspish prick, had sent the tank on ahead to do its thing despite there being any number of human slaves that might be killed in the crossfire (and indeed, at least one major guest character dies in the raid). Once WOTAN is destroyed and the surviving human slaves are freed from its control, the Doctor just kind of wanders away from the chaos left behind - content to let the locals clean up the mess as usual.

The last scene has the Doctor waiting impatiently in front of the TARDIS, where Polly and Ben inform him of the message from Dodo. When the Doctor enters the TARDIS, Polly and Ben follow him inside to return a key the Doctor had dropped earlier in the episode, and so the two are swept away as the TARDIS dematerializes for the next adventure. One presumes that in tomorrow's story, The Smugglers, we will get the obligatory "It's bigger on the inside" reveal.

One quick story about this episode that made me laugh: During filming, the TARDIS prop got a full rehab between the time it appeared in the first episode and when it departs in the fourth. The white windows were repainted blue, the Yale lock was repositioned, and the St John's Ambulance badge was painted over. Also during the rehab, a structural change made the exterior walls form into a slight rectangle instead of a square, and as such the roof no longer fit properly. And so it is that, for the next ten years, whenever the TARDIS was set up for filming the roof would have to be balanced delicately on top. Eventually the dang thing fell onto Elizabeth Sladen's head while they were filming The Seeds of Doom, and that version of the TARDIS prop was finally retired and a new one constructed. So you know I am going to be watching for a wobbly TARDIS roof from now on...

STATS:

Doctor(s): First
Companion(s): Ben Jackson, Polly Wright
Episode(s): The War Machines - Episodes 3 & 4
Steps Walked: 6,871 today, 433,178 total
Distance Walked:  3.39 miles today, 202.66 miles total
Weight: 288.70 lbs (five day moving average), net change -18.60 lbs


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