Thursday, April 11, 2013

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary: The Face of Evil





Doctor Who: 
The Face of Evil 
By Chris Boucher
  
“Destroy and be free! Destroy and be free!”

The Doctor lands on a planet that has two tribes that are at war with each other.  There he meets Leela who says he is the Evil One.  The Doctor has a strange feeling he has been here before as he is recognized by the Sevateem as being Xoanon.   The Sevateem call The Doctor the evil one also as it appears The Doctor is a dead ringer for their god.  

The Doctor and Leela head to the clearing beyond and they happen to see The Doctor’s likeness carved into the mountain.  It appears The Doctor has been here before and he apparently was with the Tesh inside that mountain where The Doctor must have left his personality in the computer Xoanon and it has caused it to be confused and homicidal and its up to The Doctor to set Xoanon right.


The Face of Evil is an interesting story even if it is terribly boring.  It is a story that I do not care for all that much.  I myself find it boring, dull and very hard to watch in one sitting.   It is interesting that the story is about what happened when The Doctor was there before but before we get to the part with Xoanon and The Doctor confronting it and trying to repair it the story is just pretty blah.


I do like the introduction of Leela.  I always liked her as a companion and a character and thought it was pretty good to have someone from a primitive time trying to make sense of all that The Doctor does and learning all the modern technology stuff.  Plus she was a warrior and often gave as much as she was given.  Plus Leela questioned The Doctor’s motives sometimes making him think about what he is going to do. 



What is pretty disappointing is that The Face of Evil was written by Chris Boucher who wrote the next story the brilliantly done The Robots of Death and a majority of the better Blake’s 7 stories.   I guess every writer can call a mulligan and thankfully his next story redeems him as unfortunately The Face of Evil is a boring story with not much quality in it even though the idea was pretty good. 
Grade C -

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