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The Deadly Assassin was the one where we finally got to see Gallifrey properly. We’d only had very little hints about it before. And many people were not entirely happy with the place when they saw it. The great Time Lords were presented as a sort of galactic House of Lords full of doddering old men. The first time I saw it, I didn’t really think of that. I just thought it looked amazing. On second look, the Panopticon doesn’t quite seem grand enough, but all the same it is rather a special episode. 9/10
Commentary Commentary is by Tom Baker, Philip Hinchcliffe and Bernard Horsfall, who played Chancellor Goth, the villain of the story. Hinchcliffe is the main anchor, with most of the technical explanations and the anecdotes about the episode. There’s no keeping Tom Baker down, of course. He has plenty to say. Horsfall mostly talks about his own scenes, which might seem a tad self-centred of him, but since Goth is such a significant villain in this story, what he has to say is worth hearing. Which, sadly, is more than can be said of some of Tom’s input. He really does seem to be turning into an old codger by now and he doesn’t seem to realise that we’ve heard most of his anecdotes before. He can sound just a little bit boring, even to a listener who adored him as The Doctor in his day. 9/10
Extras
The little dedication to the late David Maloney at the end is a nice little touch 10/10
7/10 The Frighten Factor is a look at the issues Mary Whitehouse habitually
complained about. Was Doctor Who too scary? It interestingly takes
in not only the classic series but the new series and its own approach
to what is scary and what isn’t. It intelligently addresses
the fact that people, including children, like to be scared in a safe
television watching environment. It would fall on deaf ears as far
as those people who complain about TV violence are concerned. Mary
Whitehouse and her successors are too set in their ways to understand
it. The best commentators in this documentary are Jimmy Sangster,
a professional TV critic who cut his teeth on Doctor Who as a boy,
and Moray Laing and Annabel Gibson who both work for the children’s
magazine Doctor Who Adventures, who are well aware of what children
think of Doctor Who through their feedback into the magazine. An interesting aspect was the focus on everyday objects or people turning out to be evil, in particular the policeman Autons from Terror of the Autons or the scarecrows from Human Nature and the statues from Blink, as well as that god-foresaken troll doll from the Autons. This is universally agreed to be more scary than unfamiliar objects from outer space, because you can see shop window dummies and statues in the high street whereas you don’t usually see Daleks and Cybermen! They also cover the question of whether The Doctor himself could be a bit scary, citing the first Doctor’s aloofness from his Human companions, Tom Baker’s abruptness, and David Tennant when he was taken over by an alien entity. And finally they decide that the theme tune to Doctor Who is actually the scariest thing about it. This, everyone agrees, is psychosomatic. We associate that tune with scares! Funnily enough, Mary Whitehouse never got upset about the theme tune. 9/10 Coming Soon presents the Seventh Doctor story, Delta and the Bannerman in a series of very fast clips. 8/10 Photo Gallery isn’t especially illuminating. It is mostly stills from the episodes, especially crowd scenes from the Panopticon. The design shots don’t really make this view of Gallifrey look any more attractive than the episodes. 6/10 It’s a very interesting episode, despite those reservations about the presentation. The commentary and documentaries complement it. The extras seem light compared to other DVD presentations, but on the other hand it isn’t padded out with rubbish like Blue Peter and Swap Shop. 9 out of 10
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‘The
Matrix’ was invented by them in 1976, long before Hollywood
got the idea. The section with Roger Murray Leach, designer, is interesting.
I always suspected that the seal of Rassilon was inspired by celtic
designs, and he confirms that it is derived from the Book of Kells.
The section which included stock footage of Mary Whitehouse complaining
about the story is as annoying as she ever was, and her gripe about
Doctor Who just as groundless now as it was then. Funnily enough,
the same silly complaints were recently raised against Doctor Who.
But they don’t seem to be getting the same credence as they
did in the 1960s. Interestingly, when I listen to Jan Vincent Rudzki,
the then president of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society complaining
about the way Gallifrey was presented in this story I can’t
agree with him at all. I think he was being a stroppy fan boy. The
view of Gallifrey and the Time Lords presented here doesn’t
contradict the given facts in any way. His argument that ‘these
were just a bunch of humans’, not aliens, is fatuous. Of course
they have some Human like qualities. What else should they be? The
Doctor, after all, is a humanoid who can fit in with Human societies.
In fact, I think the fact that Time Lords can resemble faded old members
of the House of Lords and dodgy tabloid journalists makes them more
endearing. They needed to be given a touch of familiarity in that
way. 
The
Gallifreyan Candidate is a comparison between the Deadly Assassin
and the film that inspired it, The Manchurian Candidate. This comparison
was probably much more obvious in 1976 when it was made, only thirteen
years after the Kennedy Assasination and in the same decade as Watergate.
From the perspective of 2009, it is probably less obvious to anyone
other than students of film studies or American political history.
The young American woman who does much of the talking, Stacy Gillis
of Newcastle University, frankly comes across as a bit full of herself.
I’m not sure that average Doctor Who fans are going to care
very much about the 1950s and 60s American paranoia about communism
and the threat to their way of life. I don’t actually think
that, apart from the one scene when the president is assassinated,
there is much of a connection between The Deadly Assasin and The Manchurian
Candidate, so this kind of in depth discussion of the book or film
isn’t really necessary as an extra on a Doctor Who DVD. As a
short documentary about an aspect of 20th century American literature
I could sit through it and followed the points made. But I really
couldn’t get too enthusiastic about it. 
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