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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

9 Comments

  1. danrachelcleasby
    June 1, 2011 @ 10:46 am

    Kudos for mentioning John Levene. I'm a big fan of Sergeant Benton.

    Reply

  2. Elkins
    June 3, 2011 @ 3:32 pm

    "Also, at some point the norm here is to mention that the character of Silverstein is an offensively stereotypical Jew. Yeah. He is. But look, he appears in the first ten minutes of the story at most.

    True. However, it's also the case that that ten minutes happens to be nearly half of the one episode of this story that still properly exists. The upshot of this is that for people who will watch orphan episodes but have no patience for recons, the way this story often gets remembered is as "That one where Shylock gets attacked by a Yeti."

    That's not to say that it's a terribly important aspect of the story as a whole, obviously. But the vagaries of which episodes survived really do influence how many people mentally file away these incomplete serials. By the same token, The Underwater Menace is "that one where union agitators rile up some fish people and Nothing in the world can stop me now!"

    Reply

  3. Elizabeth Sandifer
    June 3, 2011 @ 3:52 pm

    A fair point. I'm so used to reconstructions at this point that I inconsistently remember to think about orphan episodes as things that people might read as stories unto themselves.

    In any case, when the Dominators post goes up a week from Monday, this aspect of the story will be looked at again. 🙂

    Reply

  4. 7a1abfde-af0e-11e0-b72c-000bcdcb5194
    July 16, 2011 @ 10:45 pm

    "I don’t like the military, but I have so many friends in it. I say I do not kill, but then I exterminate thousands." — Scream of the Shalka

    "Nice hair, clever, has own gun, and unlike me, she really doesn't mind shooting people. I shouldn't like that. Kind of do." – Day of the Moon

    Reply

  5. TheEditor
    November 23, 2011 @ 11:58 pm

    I always took Pertwee's continued references to the Yeti to stem from his press call introducing him as the new Doctor, where he poses with a Yeti (presumably a fairly memorable moment for the actor) and went as far as wearing their hands for some photos.

    Reply

  6. orfeo
    April 9, 2013 @ 2:35 am

    I must be weird, because I fingered the potential traitor long before the reveal (although, it must be said, I had several other suspects as well, and keeping the audience guessing on this is one of the great successes of the story). As soon as Arnold reappeared, I had my suspicions.

    Everyone seems to act as if he was only controlled from the time he disappeared. That's a massive assumption which the plot doesn't actually require. It seemed perfectly plausible to me that he'd been controlled all along.

    Reply

  7. David Ainsworth
    April 27, 2014 @ 6:04 am

    Finally watched the recovered version and I have to say, Arnold is explained at the end (he was one of the first to die after the MIST appeared on the surface at the very start of it all, well before the episode) and I notices multiple clues as to his identity. Most of the good ones come early in the story, before the possibility of a traitor/mole has been floated. Arnold makes several comments about the Yeti suggesting he knows more about their motives and limitations than anyone else in the story, and he signals fairly early on that he knows the GI wants the Doctor.

    Also, the story is pretty careful about having him around to hear all the plans which get leaked. Unfortunately, the logistics of his acts of sabatoge aren't established with the same care.

    Reply

  8. ferret
    April 27, 2014 @ 5:59 pm

    Having now seen it I'd also re-evaluate the assertion that "the Doctor's plan is foiled by the fact that every single supporting character downs Leader Clent's stupid pills early in episode six and becomes oblivious to the Doctor's repeated assurances to everybody that he's got this under control".

    I can see how this would play out on audio alone, but with the visuals it seems more like he's trying to comfort/reassure the others as he's slowly marched past them to the machine (even though we the audience know better as we alone observed the Doctor silently rewire his headset).

    True enough when they're trying to physically drag him from the machine and he implores them not to it gets a bit silly, but by then (stretching things only a little) they may assume he's under the Intelligence's control by then.

    As a side note, the Doctor's plan is fraught with danger: rather than have his mind absorbed by the Intelligence, he plans to absorb the Intelligence's mind into his own… he's very much assuming he'll be able to control/isolate the Intelligence once it's in his brain. Could have made for an interesting wrinkle in the plot of Fury of the Deep if the Doctor was actually under control of the Intelligence for the first few episodes and the cause of the monstrous foam (seeing as foam was frequently used for the 'fungus' in Web of Fear). It would certainly have given Victoria additional trauma to decide to leave the TARDIS behind at that point.

    Reply

  9. ferret
    May 5, 2014 @ 4:35 pm

    To make my point clearer: The Doctor is definitely trying to warn the others to leave him alone, but he can't freely communicate with them: he's being escorted by Yeti, and the Intelligence itself seems to be present in the strange, sterile room housing the memory-draining machine that the scene takes place in as it whispers to them from the loudspeakers.

    The Doctor does his best, but as he is slowly marched past the frightened survivors it comes across more as a defeated man that doesn't want anyone getting themselves killed for his sake.

    Reply

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