From a 2021 rewatch....
The Savages Episode 1:
(Using Loose Cannon Recon on Dailymotion)The first I really remember of this tale was some rather prominent photos in the book
"Doctor Who: The Early Years", back when we hadn't seen pretty much every photo in existence from every Classic show ever.
The next time I bumped into this story was the novelisation and I remember it being a nice, brisk read and certainly engaging enough, but visually the story stayed much of a mystery to me.
But now we are in the land of telesnap reconstructions and are blessed to have a full set for this tale.
Poor Ian Stuart Black though; much of his work decimated.
And, as another aside, this episode was mentioned by Mark Gattis in a tongue in cheek tweet, alongside "The Smugglers" Episode 4.....
... leading to some speculation that these were the "two missing Hartnells on a collector's shelf" and Gattis was being knowingly cheeky. :?
The "Two Missing Hartnell's On a Collector's Shelf"....If the speculation were true and this episode were to be returned to us eventually, what would we be seeing/getting?
Technically a nice surviving clip starts the episode, although it's ported over from the end of "The Gunfighters" of course.
That distant shot of the TARDIS looks lovely, particularly with the wind howling over it. Or is it a little model TARDIS on the ground? Am not sure at this point.
Have read that Dodo's question of Steven in this first scene: "You're a grown man - or are you?" is a foreshadowing of Steven's leaving at the end of this tale, where he has indeed grown to the point where he can make his own decisions regardless of the Doctor. Or maybe the commentator was over-analysing some breezy dialogue; a peril with rewatching Doctor Who with an over-thinking fan-head sometimes. :death:
Hartnell seems to be enjoying himself strutting through the woods. It was a photo of this scene that I remember most from the above mentioned book.
When they landed they seemed to be purely in a quarry, but now Steven is wandering through a quarry with anorexic Triffids in.
The Doctor has bumped into a couple of local guards who know him only as "The Traveller from Beyond Time", which is a bit vague, considering the many rogue Time Lords of that description that could have turned up.
While Matt Smith dropped a lovely reference to the H.A.D.S. once, I don't think the Doctor's "Reacting Vibrator" will ever be mentioned again.
Nice "spears-landing-in-a-telesnap" effect on the recon.
Nice music too, reminding me, probably wrongly, of the sort of music you might hear from a segment of "The House That Dripped Blood" or some other Amicus effort.
Why do so many races wear impractical looking helmets? That headgear is not going to stop a well-aimed spear.
Jano and the others appear to be "blacked-up". If this episode were to be found would the BBC be fearful of putting it out in case of any resulting headlines in the current climate - and as this story was originally called "The White Savages" is this a tale that might be quietly excluded from being animated - even though a full animation would allow them to reinterpret and side-step this thorny issue?
Hartnell the actor - and his character - seem to be loving being the centre of attention and adulation in this lovely scene of him being welcomed by the Inner Council. :lol:
That may be Avon, but Paul Darrow sure looks different.
Both Steven and Dodo and the Doctor are asking awkward questions of how the technological advances have been achieved.
Something for the Dads with Nanina predating the Raquel Welch look by six months, according to the Radio Times review of this story.....
Radio TimesAh, it turns out that Clare Jenkins, the actress playing Nanina, was also Tanya Lernov in "The Wheel in Space".....
IMDBThe quarry location and people wandering around with guns makes me think of "The Caves of Androzani" a bit (although not too much).
I think that cry of "NANINA!" at 14:24 could easily be sampled into a funky music track. It might even chart?
I see that they are using a tabletop model at 16:12 of the energy draining laboratory to explain things to the Doctor. What a lovely detailed model, showing how professional people behind the scenes were. Doubtless it will be used to represent certain shots of the actual laboratory later on too.
Thinking on it, this is, of course, a vampire story. A clever one too imo, although I doubt if that word will be uttered on screen at any point during the episodes.
Occasionally a companion is forced to act dim in order to make a story point. It's poor Steven's turn here as he doubts what Dodo has seen, although as a seasoned traveller he should know better and be less sceptical.
Dodo's having none of it and has struck out on her own, walking slap-bang into a cliffhanger. Could be a rather well-directed cliffhanger too, if only we could see it.
If Gattis' mutterings are true, this would be a lovely episode to have back. It sets the tale up nicely and leaves the viewer wanting more. And Nanina for the Dads too. Despite that, I have already voted for Episode 4, solely for Steven's leaving scene.