Doctor Who: Inferno

A little more than forty-five years ago, Doctor Who aired one of the most unique stories in its history. Coming at the end of Season Seven, Jon Pertwee's first year as the Third Doctor, Inferno in many ways is that season's ultimate triumph. Not only that, it is perhaps not only amongst the best stories in all of Doctor Who but the best story of the entire Pertwee era.Perhaps the big question to ask about this “special edition” DVD release of the story is if it's worth purchasing given that it was already released several years ago. As the owner of both editions, my answer is a definite yes. The Restoration Team went back and took another crack at restoring the story and their efforts are plainly visible. Watching the story with this release was akin to watching the story again for the first time with huge improvements in the picture quality especially that made the colors more vivid and the picture far smoother. While the original DVD release looked good under the circumstances, this release is well worth the price tag just for these improvements.Then there's the special features. As well as keeping the various features from the original DVD release including an excellent audio commentary and the nicely assembled making of documentary Can You Hear the Earth Scream?, there's some new features added for this release. The most notable is Hadoke versus HAVOC, in which the man behind the excellent Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf meets up with the members of the Pertwee era stunt team and reunites them to demonstrate one of the stunts they frequently used on the show with Mr. Hadoke performing the stunt in question. The other notable addition is an entry in the Doctor Forever series focusing on the aborted 1993 special Lost In The Dark Dimension which features interviews with a number of people involved with it as well as looking at some of the other aborted attempts to get the show off the ground during the Wilderness Years. The combination of improved restoration work and these new special features makes the potentially double dipping well worth it.What about the story itself though? Well at its heart perhaps, Inferno follows the formula established in earlier stories such as Silurians and The Ambassadors Of Death. UNIT and the Doctor are yet again at a government funded scientific project that is attempting to drill through the Earth's crust to penetrate pockets of Stahlman's Gas, which is theorized to be able to provide nearly cheap endless energy. The project, nicknamed “the Inferno” by the technicians working upon it, is headed by a brilliant but egotistical Professor Stahlman who views virtually everyone around him with suspicion due to his belief they are trying to slow or stop him and the project.While the Doctor and Liz are there working on the TARDIS console in an attempt to get in working, the Brigadier and UNIT are investigating a series of strange events and deaths. Despite growing concerns, the project proceeds on even when a mysterious green substance begins to ooze out of one of the drill's output pipers from deep within the Earth itself. Unable to stop the project and becoming increasingly confrontational with Stahlman, the Doctor's attempts to fix the TARDIS land him in a parallel universe where the project not only exists in a Fascist Britain along with familiar faces, but is actually considerably ahead of the one he left behind.It's when the story reaches the parallel Fascist Britain that the story really picks up. Like the Star Trek episode Mirror, Mirror (which had yet to air in the UK at the time), the story takes familiar characters and settings and gives them a delightful twist. Everyone but the Doctor is represented here raging from an even more egotistical Professor Stahlman, Sergeant Benton as a despicable thug and Liz not as a brilliant scientist but the assistant to the worst one of all: the Brigadier (known in this world as the Brigade Leader). It is a world stripped of morality and these seemingly familiar characters embody that fact.It's in the parallel world as well that we see some of the best work out of the regular cast. Pertwee's Doctor is often noted for being assertive and authoritative but, in an interesting precursor to what would happen to Tennant's Tenth Doctor in Midnight decades later, he seems unable to convince anyone to believe him upon his arrival. Indeed, part of what makes the middle episodes of the story so interesting is watching the Doctor try and deal with the situation, often struggling to do so as his usual combination of charm and authority fails miserably. All of which leads to some great moments both serious and comedic from Pertwee.The real star of the story though might be Nicholas Courtney. Up until his passing in 2011, he would always cite this story as his favorite and it isn't hard to see why. While he's legendary to Doctor Who fans for playing the Brigadier, it's really here that we get to see the man's acting chops. The Brigade Leader might look like the Brigadier but he certainly isn't him: behind the eye-patch is a bully who is really nothing more then a coward at heart who struggles to deal with the situation once things go wrong and his troops all but desert him. As the Brigade Leader, Courtney loses all the charm and dry humor he brought to the Brigadier and plays a thoroughly nasty and likeable piece of work which helped to make the story all the more iconic.The story also benefits from its extra episodes in other ways. The story has time to unfold and remains tense thanks to Don Houghton's script and the combined direction of Douglas Camfield and Barry Letts. Houghton's script uses the extra episodes to its advantage, throwing the parallel universe plot into the middle of the story (something that, as Letts and Dicks admit elsewhere on the DVD, was initially meant to bring the story up to length) and actually being better for it since it allows us to see the consequences of the project in a parallel world which hightens the tension once the story shifts back to the “normal” universe. The story's direction both from Camfield (who did the first two episodes and all the exterior film sequences before becoming ill) and Letts (who directed all the interior scenes in the rest of the story) give the story an almost filmic quality despite it being set largely within a couple of buildings though it's perhaps the filmed sequences which standout the best.The production values of the story are strong as well. There's some excellent excellent set design to the costumes, especially when the story shifts over to the fascist parallel world. The Primords, the monsters of the story, prove the old saying that “less is more” as the designers go for a simpler approach to them, using the fact that they're played by actors in make-up to their advantage. Last but not least is the music which isn't much a score as a collection of stock music, some of which was composed by Delia Derbyshire. The music though was well picked as it adds tension and atmosphere when it's used, which is sparingly used. All of which makes Inferno one of the best looking and least dated Doctor Who stories of its time.All told, Inferno's Special Edition release is well worth the price. The new restoration work and added documentaries more than make the potential “double dip” purchase worth it, the former especially improves on the original release. Then there's the story itself which stands as one of the most unique stories in all of Doctor Who but also as the best story of the Pertwee era. For those who have seen and does who haven't, this is a must have for any serious Doctor Who fan.

This series is a 7-parter with a lot going on, so it's hard to make a brief synopsis. It starts with Harry Slocum, cheerful mechanic, arriving at a bunker control room. He reports to Sir Keith Gold, Executive Director of the government-funded project, nicknamed "Inferno", to drill through the Earth's crust. The No. 2 coolant pipe for the drill-head in the next room needs servicing, and Slocum gets to work. The sarcastic Professor Stahlman.arrives, and takes Sir Keith to task for taking No. 2 off-line. This project is his baby and nothing, and he means nothing, should slow its progress.In the meanwhile, poor Slocum is at No. 2 when green goo starts bubbling up through the grid. When he touches it, it burns. Then his whole hand turns green. The next we see Slocum, walking with unfocused gaze and stilted gait, he makes his way unnoticed out of the bunker. To kill the first man he meets.Fortunately, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Sergeant Benton are there, as UNIT is in charge of project security. Even more fortunately, the Doctor and Liz Shaw have just arrived as a consultants, though the real reason the Doctor has finagled his position is so he can tap into the drill's dedicated nuclear reactor to fix his TARDIS console.By the time they catch up with Slocum, his fingers have turned to hairy claws, his whole skin is green and he's sprouted wild hair and fangs. Two bullets to the heart slow him down, but it's a fire extinguisher which kills finally kills him. The Doctor tells the Brigadier that he recognizes the sounds Slocum was making, "Krakatoa... the volcanic eruption of 1883." What happened to Slocum's body, as he turned into a Primord, was "retrogression of the body cells".Now it gets really interesting. The Doctor starts the TARDIS and he and the console disappear. From then on, we see alternating scenes of Liz et al trying to stop Stalhman's drilling in the real world (Warp 1), and the Doctor trying to survive in a parallel world where England is a fascist state (Warp 2).Curiously, they are also drilling through the crust in Warp 2, though they are hours ahead of the drilling back home. Twelve seconds from breakthrough in Warp 2 the earth starts to shake and a terrible sound comes from the drilling rig. "Listen to that!", the Doctor cries, "It's the sound of this planet screaming out its rage."Can planet Earth be saved in either universe?"Inferno" first aired in May/June 1970. This review is for the 2006 2-disc DVD release. A Special Edition DVD will be released in June, 2013.For a 7 part series, there is little down time in the plot, and the action keeps going. There's lots of varied characters, all well-drawn, and it is a hoot to see the Warp 2 Brigadier with a dashing scar and eyepatch, not to mention a sneer.Though I like this episode, the main plot-point is not resolved to my satisfaction. That is, if drilling down through the crust lets loose a green goo, then if they stop drilling, the green goo is still there - and it's unexplained. Is it alien? Is it Mother Earth? Is it destroyed at the same time as the planet when the crust bursts open and lava flows over all man has made? Or, after the surface is cleansed by the lava, does the goo start all over again in creating life on this planet? Perhaps the inconclusiveness is deliberate.Extras for the 2006 2-disc set:Disc 1 Extras:1. Information Text. As usual, I enjoyed the extra tidbits given in the Info Text. Such as, in episode 2, the Doctor climbs up on high towers, and this was problematic, because Pertwee was afraid of heights.Another comment: " `Inferno' was partially inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story, `When the World Screamed' (1928), in which... Professor Challenger tunnels through the crust of the Earth.... His theory is that Earth is a living organism, with a protective outer shell, the crust."2. Commentary Track. Commentators are Barry Letts (producer), Nicholas Courtney (plays Brigadier), Terrance Dicks (script editor) and John Levene (plays Benton).Courtney calls "Inferno" a "cracking good story". He's said many times before that it's his favorite serial because it was such fun playing a bad guy. "I love curling a lip."Levene, who has a lovely velvety voice and is a notoriously nice person, says, "Trying to look tough when you're not is actually quite a stretch." He was trying to limit his smoking, and, regarding the scenes where he's in Primord make-up, "I told my children that's what would happen to them if they smoked cigarettes."Disc 2 Extras:1. "Can You Hear the Earth Scream?" (45 minutes) This is a Making-Of featurette, narrated by David Harley. Commentators include Terrance Dicks, Barry Letts, Caroline John (plays Liz Shaw), John Levene, Nicholas Courtney, Derek Ware (plays private Wyatt, one of the founders of Havoc, the stuntman company used), Ian Fairbairn (plays Bromley) and Alan Chuntz (stuntman, from a 1970 feature).Terrance Dicks says, "Derek was a very good stunt man. He had a very good team working for him. So we just quite ruthlessly, with the writer, put in all kinds of things on the assumption they'd be able to cope."2. "The UNIT Family - Part 1" Commentators include Terrance Dicks, Derrick Sherwin (script editor/producer 1967-69), Nicholas Courtney, Derek Ware, John Levene, Caroline John and Barry Letts.Levene's first job on Dr. Who was an extra playing a Yeti!Caroline John had been working in National Theatre under the direction of Laurence Olivier for 4 years, and wanted to break into TV. She couldn't even get an interview. "So I went and got a photograph taken of me in a bikini", sent it around, and got the job.3. "Visual Effects in Television: An Introduction to the Devices, Techniques and Operational Methods of the Visual Effects Department of BBC TV" (6 minutes) This covers a few things, such as the space module models in Dr. Who's "Ambassadors of Death" and other BBC TV shows.4. Deleted Scene.(2 minutes) From episode 5 of "The Inferno".5. Pertwee Years Intro (4 minutes) Jon Pertwee introduces and narrates several clips.6. Photo Gallery (6 minutes)7. Doctor Who Annual. DVD-Rom for your computer has the PDF file, "Doctor Who Annual 1971"8. Radio Times Listing. DVD-Rom PDF9. Subtitles available in EnglishHappy Reader

John Pertwee has always been one of the best portrayals of the Doctor and this story is no exception. Always a pleasure to see him and this story is definitely one of his best.

This story has been one I wanted check out for a very long time and after viewing it definitely worth checking out. Recommended. 5 out of 5

Remastered, nice looking video.

What can I say...This is one of the strongest stories that doctor number three ever did. Even though most 6 or 7 part stories usually get weak by episode 5, this is not the case in this story. Do yourself a favor and spend a little extra and get the 2 did version. The extras are top shelf! ! I'm not going to spoil it..just get it.