The Seeds of Doom Part Five

The one where the Krynoid starts to take over all plant life...

Following the death of Dunbar - whose death is retribution for starting this catastrophe in the first place - everybody scarpers back to the cottage, where they are barricaded in by the ever-growing Krynoid mass ("It used to be called Keeler"). It's in this episode that Scorby, previously so loyal to his suave employer, begins to realise the scale of the problem, and that his beloved Mr Chase is far from sane. Even before he encounters the Krynoid face to leaf, Chase is irretrievably lost it. "I don't care who it's killed," he says. "People are replaceable. The Krynoid is unique."

I'm not a big fan of the elephant-sized Krynoid monster, so I'm glad director Douglas Camfield is careful to shoot it close-up, and never in wide shot, and I also have to admit that my heart sank when the tentacle smashed through the window, because giant tentacles are never convincing (I'm giving a little wave to The Power of Kroll there). However, the worst of it is when the Krynoid learns to speak, and that booming voice fills the air, despite it not having a larynx or vocal cords. I just don't think the Krynoid should speak, it makes the creature even sillier (it chuckles to itself too!). The Krynoid should remain a vegetative marauding carnivore, we don't need it to reason with us in well-spoken English. I just want it to kill people silently. Isn't that what monsters do?

Tom Baker continues to play the Doctor as a man teetering on the edge of rage. He's so angry in this episode, almost to the point of being over the top, spitting out his lines like he's completely lost it. I hope that wasn't the vibe on set when they said "cut", because if Tom was in a bad mood that day, it can't have been fun for anyone!

Scorby concocts a Molotov cocktail (yes, this is still Doctor Who you're watching) which is used to distract the Krynoid while everybody flees the cottage. Scorby, Sarah and the guards make for the house, while the Doctor hops in the Daimler and heads back to the World Ecology Bureau, which I think is a bit foolish as I'd expect the Krynoid to follow him all the way to London (but it doesn't).

There's a delightful scene between Amelia Ducat and Sir Colin in the meantime, where Sylvia Coleridge gives the most convincing audition yet for a Doctor Who spin-off: 'Amelia Ducat, P.I'! Wouldn't it be marvellous to see Miss Ducat, an elderly eccentric watercolourist, investigating strange goings-on in the Home Counties? She's so wonderful in her scene here, telling Sir Colin to "invent a codeword, they love that", then suggesting Operation: Nuthouse! Amelia was a sergeant in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, so she's got experience ("I manned an ack-ack gun at Folkestone" - boy, would I love to see that!). Amelia Ducat never returns after this scene, sadly, but I'd love for her to have been a semi-regular, popping up to help the Doctor in his Earthbound adventures. Imagine her instead of (the otherwise excellent) Martha Tyler in Image of the Fendahl, or replacing her legendary namesake in The Stones of Blood. Coleridge didn't die until 1986, and already my imagination's running riot placing her in stories like Mawdryn Undead, The Five Doctors and The Awakening!

The Doctor's unbridled anger brims over frequently once he reaches the Bureau, physically pushing Thackeray's secretary out of the office ("Out! Out! OUT!"), telling Major Beresford he's talking "Waffle! Waffle, waffle, waffle!", and answering Sir Colin's ringing phone with a petulant "He's busy!", before hanging up. The Doctor is most definitely in charge, and in a mood! I have to admit that Beresford and Thackeray aren't taking the Doctor as seriously as they should, as seriously as the Brigadier would. They josh about aggressive rhubarb and homicidal gooseberries, when in truth, people are being strangled to death in rose arbors, kale fields and garden mazes!

The fact the Doctor seems happy to bomb the living daylights out of the Krynoid is another questionable motivation. Plenty of Doctor Who adventures have ended with big explosions wiping out the threat (particularly in the Troughton era), but here the Doctor automatically chooses the laser gun option, rather than what I would think was a much more fitting method of concocting some kind of killer virus, using science, not violence (you'd never get the Third or Thirteenth Doctors using lasers and bombs in this case - they'd be on the case in the laboratory).

Harrison Chase goes out to take snaps of his beloved Krynoid, which appears to make some sort of contact with him, integrating his consciousness with its own. Mentally, Chase is becoming a Krynoid, although he was halfway there already. He foresees "a new world, silent and beautiful", one that will be given back to the indigenous plant life after thousands of years under the control of human "parasites". By the time Scorby and Sarah find him in the lotus position at the heart of his green cathedral, he's really lost it ("A harmony of root, stem, leaf, flower..."). Tony Beckley continues to play it straight, staring wild-eyed like a man possessed. If Beckley had played this for laughs (which would have been so easy to do), Harrison Chase wouldn't have been nearly as dangerous or memorable.

The Krynoid can now control all plant life around it, everything from allotments to domestic pot plants, and uses the greenery to attack the house. Ivy breaks the telephone cable, and Chase's greenhouse turns against Sarah, Scorby and Hargreaves in a scene which, again, could have looked really silly, but Camfield directs it tightly, using shadow and light to add to the actors' energetic attempts to make the vegetation look alive. And they succeed. I love the slow-motion rollback shots of the creeping plants, which put me in mind of that unheimlich scene in Jonathan Miller's Whistle and I'll Come to You with the moving bedclothes.

A few more points:

• The confrontation between Sarah and Scorby - unlikely allies - is wonderful, with Elisabeth Sladen holding her own against John Challis's overbearing, snarling presence. Her speech about Scorby treating it all as a big game and threatening his masculinity is pure Sarah Jane Adventures. Watch Sladen deliver those lines and you cannot deny simultaneously seeing the same face saying the same lines 30 years later, but with just a little bit more confidence.
• It's a shame Nicholas Courtney was unavailable to play the Brigadier in this story, because (as with Colonel Faraday in The Android Invasion), John Acheson fails to make any impact as Major Beresford. And why have we got Sergeant Henderson and not RSM Benton?
• The sudden appearance of the "latest military defoliant, still on the secret list" is a bit too convenient, and only emphasises my point about the Doctor's preference for bombing the Krynoid rather than using a scientific method. Most other Doctors would be experimenting in a lab to try and come up with some kind of super-weedkiller, and the existence of this defoliant just proves that it could be done.

First broadcast: February 28th, 1976

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Sarah's defiance in the face of Scorby's testosterone-fuelled masculinity is timeless.
The Bad: Don't give the Krynoid a voice, and don't make it chuckle.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 05

NEXT TIME: Part Six...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part 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/2014/07/the-seeds-of-doom.html

The Seeds of Doom is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Seeds-Doom-DVD/dp/B003Y3BEZA