Episode 16
Too Many Cooks
Sunday 7 December 2014
We’ve reached the end of Season 5, so pull up a bernalium rod, switch on the sexual air supply, and get ready to discuss the last two stories of the season, Fury from the Deep and The Wheel in Space. And just you watch your lip or I’ll put you across my knee and larrup you.
Buy the stories!
No full episodes of Fury from the Deep survive. Which is terribly sad, obviously. Still, you can get the soundtrack, narrated, as always, by Frazer Hines. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
The two surviving episodes of The Wheel in Space, Episodes 3 and 6, are available on the Lost in Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). An audio version is also available, beautifully narrated by the delightfully pert Wendy Padbury. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
Fury from the Deep
Richard mentions Adult Swim’s Too Many Cooks. I can’t tell you anything about it. Just watch it.
Richard and Brendan both use Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971) to illustrate what TV Tropes calls the Muck Monster trope.
Fury from the Deep is based on ideas from Victor Pemberton’s own 1966 radio drama, The Slide, starring future Time Lords Maurice Denham and Roger Delgado, as well as Pemberton’s long–time partner and one–time Buddhist monk David Spenser. You can read a review of it here. And you can even buy it! (Audible US) (Audible UK)
Fans of murderous gay couples should check out Diamonds are Forever (1971), Rope (1948), and Truman Capote’s 1966 novel In Cold Blood.
H. P. Lovecraft is a twentieth-century racist and horror writer, who is a huge influence on Doctor Who, particularly in the Hinchcliffe Era. His most famous short story is The Call of Cthulhu.
Fans of people walking out in to the sea should check out the last episode of Series 1 of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, and the second episode of the TV series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Victor Pemberton also wrote The Pescatons, an audio drama starring Tom Baker and Lis Sladen, which was released as an LP in 1976. Here’s Elizabeth Sandifer’s review.
The Wheel in Space
Iz Skinner (aka TardisTimegirl) created some beautiful animations which were used in the Loose Cannon reconstructions of these episodes. Here is her Ridley Scott–style trailer for The Wheel in Space. It’s beautiful. She also animated a version of a special trailer broadcast the week before The Web of Fear starring Patrick Troughton.
Brendan theorises that Star Trek was a possible influence on Wheel. But, fascinatingly, Richard mentions two possible influences on Star Trek itself. The first is Raumpatrouille Orion, a German science-fiction precursor to Trek from the 1960s. You can watch the entire first episode online. It’s in German. It’s fabulously modernist and spectacular. The second is Conquest of Space (1955).
Victoria Waterfield meets the Doctor again in the crazy multicoloured form of Colin Baker in the Big Finish audio Power Play.
Picks of the week
Brendan
Iz Skinner’s wonderful series of Doctor Who–related animations.
Nathan
FACT FANS! If there’s anything at all you need to know about Doctor Who in any of its incarnations, consult the TARDIS Data Core. There’s even an app for it on the iOS App Store, and an Android app on Google Play. (Sadly, these apps no longer exist.)
Richard
Victor Pemberton’s novelisation of Fury from the Deep is out of print, and mysteriously unavailable as an e-book on Amazon. However, there is an audio version, read by David Troughton, who does a lovely impression of his father’s Doctor Who. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
Nathan again
An audiobook of Carnival of Monsters has recently been released, read by television’s Katy Manning. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
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If you would like to win one of three 1970s Target novelisations from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode.
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