The Claws of Axos

"You cannot defy the laws of time! Give me a chance and I'll prove it to you."

Writer: Bob Baker & Dave Martin

Format: TV

Broadcast: 13th March - 3rd April 1971

Season: 8.03

Featuring: Third Doctor, Jo

Synopsis 

A mysterious object approaches Earth, alerting the Doctor and UNIT that they face another possible threat from outer space. Are the gold-skinned aliens who claim to bring great gifts to humanity as peaceful and benevolent as they first appear? And why is the Doctor's arch-enemy the Master on board their spaceship?

Verdict 

The Claws of Axos was an excellent serial of Doctor Who and another watch with my young cousin that I throughly enjoyed. Following on from our watching of Love and Monsters last night, we spent the afternoon watching this popular story and it was certainly different to what we had yesterday. As I mentioned in my blog entry yesterday for the aforementioned Tenth Doctor story, I was pleasantly surprised that my cousin named the Third Doctor as his second favorite incarnation of our heroic Time Lord as he has been watching numerous Classic stories on the Horror channel and he's taken a liking to ol' Jon Pertwee so it wasn't a tough choice for him to make between this and City of Death in deciding what story we would watch. He seemed to enjoy from the get go even if I thought that things started a little slowly. I think this serial certainly improves as it goes on which I don't think is a bad thing at all as that means the story advancement is going at a good pace and that my interest in what is going on is on the increase. There's nothing at all wrong with that, in fact it's something that I would like to see more of. I hope some of the numerous Classic stories I'm yet to blog, but have watched, follow suit when it comes to it. I'm sure it will. The arrival of Axos was very good and considering this story is over four decades old I thought the special effects were very impressive. The design of the Axons, in both forms, was really good in my opinion and I particularly liked them when they were golden and humanoid. They looked superb to be fair. Their role as enemies in the story was good and I liked how despite working with the Master, they would take no nonsense from him and kept his TARDIS as insurance on his return and maintaining his side of the deal they had struck. I liked how the Master's arrival in this serial was quite subtle and it's good that in each of the five stories this season, all of which the Master appears in, his arrival is always different yet somehow unexpected as well. To be honest though, I thought this was Roger Delgado's weakest performance as the Master that I can remember which was a huge shame and something I did not expect to be writing. I'm not sure the Master works all that well when he's not the main villain and he did kind of get overshadowed by the Axons in that role. That was highlighted by the fact that he actually ended up joining forces with the Doctor but that was a part of the story I actually loved. With a nice reference to The War Games, the Doctor expressed his desire to get off Earth and be gone with his exile and if that meant joining forces with the Master then he was prepared to do it. I loved that and his hastily goodbyes were quite funny, as was his unintended return to UNIT. Chinn was quite a humorous character and I loved his relationship with the Brigadier and the rest of UNIT. There was a lot of back and forth over who was in charge and it was a nice little subplot surrounding the distribution of the Axonite. The Doctor's comment about his selfishness actually working out well was sublime. Filer was an excellent character as well and I loved how he just seemed to be there to cause a nuisance to those in authority! He was really good. Jo didn't really have much to do in this story which was a shame for her so early on in her run as companion. I thought her attire was pretty awful as well and not necessary at all. The Doctor managing to send Axos and the Axons into a time loop was an excellent ending and I also liked the ambiguity surrounding the Master and whether he would be returning. I think we all knew he would be. Overall though, a very good story with a decent plot, some great characters and also some satisfactory cliffhangers! Another one ticked off the list for my cousin and some good time spent together. 

Rating: 8/10