Curse of Peladon
Discovered a great blog, Rob Massey’s guide to all things Modernist:
And treated myself to the following CD from Amazon:
This is the soundtrack to the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story from the 1970s, with a linking narration from Katy Manning, who played the companion Jo Grant in the series. The story exists on DVD, but I think it works better aurally. The broadcast version was a good story, more than a little camp, with some variable special effects.
Curse of Peladon is an interesting story. Not the most exciting, or the funniest, definitely not the scariest. But it’s solidly plotted, and with a variety of bizarre alien life forms in it. The plot is reminiscent of many an old dark house tale, such as The Cat and the Canary or The Hound of the Baskervilles. The series was now beginning to steal in earnest. Peladon is a medieval planet trying to modernize, which it wants to do by joining the Galactic Federation (it was partly a satire about the UK trying to join the Common Market, a topical subject at the time); but there is, apparently, a ghostly creature, Aggedor, trying to kill off the Federation’s delegates. The Doctor and Jo are not immediately put in prison as soon as the TARDIS lands, for a change. Instead, they are mistaken for ambassadors from Earth, and there are some great scenes with Jo impersonating a princess. The story also features the Ice Warriors, an enemy that the writer, Brian Hayles, created for the Patrick Troughton Doctor; but here, they are the good guys, also under threat from Aggedor. It gives the Ice Warriors a nice depth, making them one of the most intriguing races ever to feature in the series. One day, perhaps in a Matt Smith story, we might see them return.
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