Hooray, Jacqueline Hill's back! And strangely she begins by making one
of the very few stumbles of her entire run on the show. It's slight
enough that I might not have mentioned it for anyone else, but she has
been so remarkably consistent that it made an impact. The price of
excellence, I suppose.
This is another episode that advances the plot at the expense of
atmosphere, though not so severely as last time. The camera direction is
improved, too, though still below its peak. Everything begins well with
the collapsing tunnel at the start working better than it did in the
cliffhanger, and I liked the idea of listening to Ian's coughing while
the camera pans across, giving us an impression of the place where he
has landed. Generally there is good placement of actors in shot, and
some good movement (for example drawing back as Barbara walks towards
the camera, and the sweeping shot when she falls). There is also some
effective cutting, such as the slow zoom on the Doctor which switches to
a faster zoom on Barbara. But overall the effect is too static, and
sometimes reveals too much (the Optera's feet, for instance).
Another problem is that there is a lot of fighting in this episode.
1960s fights are often a bit dodgy for me. The finale has a surprising
number of cuts, since they were able to film it at Ealing and not have
the limitations of editing videotape, so these are about as good as can
be expected; but they still don't quite hold up. Oh, the crushing of the
venom grub against the wall is really good, and the stabbing of Zarbi
adds a bit of teatime brutality for the tots; but it just looks too
stagy to really convince.
The balletic flight of the Menoptera is also not exactly convincing, but
in this case it doesn't matter. It's more symbolic than visceral, and
it gives the right impression. The costume was redesigned slightly
between Ealing and the studio, but to be honest I didn't notice this at
all (though I could see it when pointed out). Daphne Dare on costumes
and Sonia Markham on makeup did a good job on realising the ecology of
Vortis, supporting John Wood's work (this episode shows how good the
Zarbi look in closeup, as well as giving us our best view of Menoptera
wings in the vaseline-free tunnels). And speaking of Wood, he gives us
another fine set with the Crater of Needles; though the tunnels are no
more than functional.
The script progresses. The Doctor and the Animus get more opportunities
to spar, and Vicki also has some good moments despite spending most of
her time under control. One thing that wasn't clear to me was whether
the Animus psychically activated the Doctor's device broadcasting the
Menoptera's invasion plans, or whether he did it by accident. The former
works better from a story point of view, but the latter seems more
likely from the way it is portrayed. Like the moment when the gun fired
at the TARDIS last time, this really irritated me.
This is, of course, also the episode that introduces the Optera. These
were devised by Martin and script editor Dennis Spooner to provide
another thread to the plot. In a sense this is padding, but it is at
least padding that gives us something interesting to watch! I'll have
more to say about the addition next time.
Since this is the shortest review so far in this story, I'll take the
opportunity to say a little about the sound in this serial. To prevent
the budget exploding completely, Richard Martin used available
recordings of music by Les Structure Sonores, a French duo who had
earlier been considered for production of the theme music. It is
ethereal, and really adds to the atmosphere throughout. Curiously, it
wasn't used for the next episode (The Invasion); but the sound effects there also fit in well with the feel.
Overall, then, Crater of Needles is a bit better than Escape to Danger, but still a below-par episode. Hopefully the recovery will accelerate soon!
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 6th March 1965
Viewers: 13.0 million
Chart Position: 9
Appreciation Index: 49
Rating:
4/10.
Next Time:
Invasion.
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