Tuesday 28 December 2010

Doctor Who The Planet of the Daleks (1973)

Directly following on from The Frontier in Space, The Doctor and his assistant Jo Grant land on the jungle planet of Spiridon where they meet up with a group of Thal commandos on a secret mission to prevent the Daleks mastering invisibility.
Its only one scene in the first episode but when Jo discovers the dead pilot of the Thal space ship, he’s wearing  a helmet that is exactly the same design as the Earth helmet worn by the Doctor in the previous story although it’s a white one now.  We’re probably not meant to notice production details like that but there you go; the past is now trapped in digital amber.
Interestingly before watching this a couple of months back, I had always taken the Thal suits to be military fatigues or general survival suits but seeing the pilot with the helmet in place I find myself revaluating them now because you can see the ribbed bands in the arms, wrists, ankles and neck resemble so many previous space suit designs.

Steve

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