The Seeds of Death Episode Five

The one where Fewsham finally does something selfless...

Terry Scully really doesn't get enough recognition for his performance as Fewsham. Scully's face has a natural look of exhaustion, resignation and defeat - which means he is well cast for this part - but he also manages to say so much about his character's state of mind without speaking a word. Fewsham is finally spurred into action here, leaping rather ineffectually on the Ice Warrior in order to save Zoe, and he's thrown to the floor for his efforts. After four episodes of cowardice and complicity in order to preserve his own skin, he finally thinks and acts for somebody else.

It's hardly the actions of a hero though, and Fewsham remains one of the most complex characters in 1960s Who simply because he is a coward, and he does terrible things against the good of his own planet and people simply to survive. I mentioned my theory about Fewsham in episode 1 - that there's something going on in his head before the story even begins - and I'm even more convinced of that now. Fewsham is seen as a weak link by his colleagues (Gia Kelly thinks very little of him), and I really don't think he believes very much in himself either. He is a tragic figure from the start.

In the end, of course, Fewsham tries to redeem himself by relaying events on the moon to Earth Control via video link, but it's too little too late. His betrayal of Slaar gets him killed, which means his newfound loyalty to mankind and the greater good is his downfall. You can't help feeling for Fewsham, but neither can you sympathise with him too much. Scully later had mental health problems of his own - leading to his role as Vic Thatcher in Survivors being recast - and quit acting in 1981. Scully also suffered from ulcers, which may in some way account for his uncanny ability to tap in to a character's inner pain and distress. Either way, he did a damn fine job on The Seeds of Death and deserves more recognition.

Hold on, what's happened to Phipps? At the end of episode 4 he was accompanying Zoe to the control room through the maintenance ducts (having briefly suffered a bout of claustrophobia), but as episode 5 gets underway, he's totally disappeared, and Zoe claims (rather dismissively) that he's been killed by an Ice Warrior! After four episodes of playing a pretty key role in events, Christopher Coll is just dumped out of the story - off-screen - because Brian Hayles can't think of anything else to do with him? Maybe there's more to it than that, some contractual cock-up, but writing out a character between episodes is pretty disrespectful to the actor and the audience! Mind you, Blake's 7 seemed to do it all the time with their lead characters...

So it seems the Ice Warriors are affected by heat, so when Zoe turns the heating up from 30 degrees Centigrade to as much as 60 degrees, the Martians collapse in a heap of exhaustion. But if the lunar base's thermostat was on 30 degrees to start with, that's pretty damn warm already! Uncomfortably so for humans, never mind Martians. By the time the thermostat reaches 60 degrees, that's hotter than the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth (56.7 degrees Celsius in Death Valley, California), so why absolutely everybody isn't collapsing with heat exhaustion I don't know!

The sudden arrival of Radnor's boss Sir John Gregson seems rather pointless, as all he does is stand around asking a lot of questions (helping to summarise the story so far!) and tying people up in meetings when they should really be trying to defeat the alien invasion. The fact he looks very much like a Sensorite is neither here nor there...

Michael Ferguson finally gets round to using the giant wall of lights on the lunar control set to its fullest, with an extraordinarily lit scene between Slaar and Fewsham (no doubt perfected with help from lighting supervisor Howard King). The pulsating lights throw the actors into stark silhouette, and the effect is reused throughout the episode with an Ice Warrior standing against the lights in the background. I truly think it's impossible for Michael Ferguson to have a poorly framed shot, although the bit at 20mins 50secs, where we get a rare view of Slaar's face, lets him down a bit - you can clearly see Alan Bennion's neck beneath the make-up!

Now, that bit where the Doctor pours a load of random acids over the seed pod... We're not told what the first solution he uses is, but the second is sulfuric acid and the third is hydrochloric acid, which, when I Google it, would result in the emission of a white gas being released. So that obviously didn't help matters! In the end it's discovered that simple water will combat the fungus, so all they need to do is make it rain - nothing too difficult for England in the winter!

The Earthbound Warrior makes his merry way to the Weather Control Bureau, which proves to be the least secure government facility ever, staffed as it is by one technician and no guards whatsoever. We're treated to an amusing reprise of Eric Kent's very silly death scene from episode 3 when extra Peter Whitaker (the weather control operator) manages to use the entire expanse of the set to try and avoid the inevitable death by Mirrorlon.

The fact there's a weather control station on Earth is puzzling, as it wasn't too long ago that Earth had a Gravitron controlling the weather from the moon. The Moonbase is apparently set in 2070, while The Seeds of Death is set in the less precise "late 21st century", but even that rough timing would probably place it after 2070. So did the disastrous events of The Moonbase make Earth rethink its strategy for weather control, and locate it back on Earth? If so, perhaps the T-Mat lunar control station we see here is a refitted facility from The Moonbase?

As the episode ends, the Doctor is caught in a ridiculous amount of seed pod foam, hinting at how silly the missing Fury from the Deep might have looked. Patrick Troughton gurns his way into the cliffhanger, having already done the embarrassing Run of Shame by pretending to jog on the spot (echoes of Susan in The Daleks!). This type of material really was beneath such a fine actor.

First broadcast: February 22nd, 1969

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Terry Scully's performance as the tragic Fewsham.
The Bad: The disappearance of Phipps.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

NEXT TIME: Episode Six...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Six

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-seeds-of-death.html

The Seeds of Death is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Seeds-Patrick-Troughton/dp/B01I076ZYO.