Six episodes
Aired between 31st January 1976 and 6th March 1976
Written by Robert Banks Stuart
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Douglas Camfield
Synopsis
Two scientists named Winlett and Moberley discover a seed pod frozen under layers of ice in Antarctica.
After analysis by the base Botanist, Stevenson, they reckon it's about 20,000 years old.
A day or so later, the word of this find gets to London and the Doctor is called in on behalf of UNIT to the World Ecology Bureau. He meets a guy called Richard Dunbar who gives him the info on the pod and agrees to have the Doctor flown all the way to Antarctica.
The Doctor is very serious and in an ominous way, tells Dunbar to get word to Antarctica not to touch that pod under any means.
Even though the Doctor's message gets to the base, Stevenson decides to meddle with the pod anyway, putting it under ultra violet light to thaw it out. To his amazement, it grows a little. Winlett is a little perturbed by this and tries to convince Stevenson to leave it alone, but the Botanist is convinced that this should be their big discovery, not some crank from London's.
Unbeknownst to the Doctor and the Antarctic base, Dunbar goes to see Mr Harrison Chase, an eccentric millionaire who is obsessed with plants to the point that he thinks creating Bonzai trees is torture.
He sells the location of this possible extraterrestrial pod to Chase, who is most excited about it. Once Dunbar's left, Chase sends two of his henchmen off to the Antarctic.
That night, the pod opens up and stings" Winlett's arm as he lays sleeping near it.
His screams alert Stevenson and Moberley but they are too late. He has collapsed and is covered in green marks.
The Doctor and Sarah Jane arrive just a few hours afterwards, in the midst of a blizzard.
The team fill the Doctor in on the situation and remark how unusual it is that the Doctor's not wearing any cold weather clothing. He presses them to see the body asap. Winlett's body temperature is dropping, as is his pulse. His body is plagued by some kind of green fungus that's growing at an alarming rate.
The team tell the Doctor that a medical team are on their way, but the Doctor fears that may be too late. He asks Moberley to get a sample of Winlett's blood and he goes outside with Sarah and Stevenson.
He gets Stevenson to take him to where the pod was found and after a bit of digging, he comes up with another pod. He seems to know what he's dealing with and mysteriously says that they always come in two's like policemen.
They return to the base and put the new pod in the freezer, then the Doctor examines the blood sample.
It seems that the blood has no platelets to it, and is replaced by schizophyres - organisms like plant bacteria.
The group are suddenly surprised by the sound of engines roaring overhead. They go and see, expecting it to be the medical team. As the others are gone, Sarah asks the Doctor what they're dealing with. He tells her the creature that once was Winlett is now a Krynoid a form of deadly plant life that settles on planets and devours the mammals it finds. He's not sure how they came to be on Earth, but suspects some kind of explosion that shot them into space.
Stevenson and Moberley return, bringing with them two men, Scorby and Keeler. They claim they took a private plane but got lost and wound up at the base. Now the base crew are back, the Doctor impatiently tells them to come with him and check on Winlett, leaving the men behind.
Winlett's condition is critical as he's almost consumed by the plant bacteria.
The Doctor suggests the only way is for Moberley to amputate Winlett's arm. Moberley is hesitant but agrees. they all go off to get the supplies but Winlett rises from his bed and attacks Moberley in the corridor, killing him.
Whilst the Krynoid wanders about outside, we discover that Scorby and Keeler are the men Mr Chase sent after the pod. Scorby finds the bases rifle and disables it. Keeler naively thinks that they're just there to find the pod, but Scorby explains that they're there to take the pod and kill the men with it, making it look like an accident. Keeler's unhappy about it but is forced to obey or else Scorby will kill him too.
Sarah finds the dead Moberley in the corridor, prompting her, the Doctor and Stevenson to go out looking for the Krynoid. They wander about for a bit and check the generator hut, purposefully built a little way from the base because of a powerful new fuel cell they are using. They don't find the Krynoid and are forced to return to base. Unknown to them however, the Krynoid saw them coming and hid until they'd gone, then it made its way into the generator hut.
With everyone gone, Scorby and Keeler go looking for the pod. They find the open one and hear over the radio that the weather has cleared and a medical team is on its way. Scorby tries to bluff his way, telling them not to bother, but ends up tearing the wires out of the set when they don't buy it.
Keeler explains that the pod has germinated and Scorby is insistent that they get the plant. They capture the Doctor, Sarah Jane when the group return to base and tie them up. Scorby questions them about the plant and the Doctor tries to tell them about Winlett becoming a Krynoid.
Scorby thinks he's playing daft and almost kills them until he captures Stevenson too. Stevenson tries to fire with the base rifle and realises it's empty. Scorby captures him too and under questioning, Stevenson eventually tells them about the second pod.
With the second pod in hand, Scorby insists that Sarah takes them to the generator hut and leaves the Doctor and Stevenson tied up. He lets them know he intends to leave them to die. Once they've gone, the Doctor manages to knock over a lamp and use the glass to cut Stevenson's ropes.
Sarah is forced to take Scorby and Keeler to the Generator hut where Scorby plants an explosive and ties Sarah up.
The bomb will cause a chain reaction that will destroy the entire base. Keeler can't sanction this murder and attacks Scorby but the man is stronger and easily subdues Keeler, forcing him to leave with the pod.
Now free, the Doctor instructs Stevenson to contact someone and send a medical team whilst he goes and stops Scorby. As the Doctor leaves, the Krynoid turns up and kills Stevenson whilst he's on the radio.
The Doctor sees Scorby and Keeler's plane take off, and he rushes to the hut, finding Sarah tied up with the bomb on a countdown. He manages to free her, but the Krynoid finds them. They manage to escape and lock the thing into the hut, running clear just as the entire base explodes.
The Doctor and Sarah make it back when the rest of the base's personnel find them and help them get back to England.
Dunbarr goes to Chase's mansion and confronts him about the lethal tactics he's used to get hold of the pod. He explains that the Doctor and Sarah have survived and are planning to meet with Dunbarr and Sir Colin Thackery in two hours. Chase tells him to keep his cool and everything will be fine.
At the said meeting with Dunbar and Sir Colin, the Doctor explains again what a danger this pod poses, and makes an accusation that Scorby and Keeler were somehow tipped off about the pod. The Doctor demands that Dunbar helps him get to the Botanic Institute as the Doctor is sure the pod is somewhere in England. Dunbar agrees and calls for a chauffeur to take them.
Once they get near a deserted quarry however, the driver stops and points a gun at them.
The driver tells them to get out so he can take them into the quarry and kill them. As the Doctor gets out, he manages to knock the gunman over and he and Sarah run off into the quarry, managing to lure the chauffeur into the place and knocking him unconscious.
The Doctor and Sarah make their way back to the car and look in the boot, finding a rare painting from a Mrs Amelia Ducat, a leading flower artist. They take the car and go and find Mrs Ducat who tells them she sold that particular painting to Harrison Chase, a millionaire who loves plants.
He never actually paid her for it though.
Over at the mansion, Chase orders Keeler to try and get the pod to germinate by injecting it with some fixed nitrogen. Keeler is reluctant but knows that Chase is a dangerous man, so does as he's told.
The Doctor and Sarah end up bluffing their way into the grounds of Chase's mansion, but get chased and captured by armed guards working in the grounds. In a typical Bond Villain style, Chase meets the Doctor and is rather charming with him. He even shows them round the grounds, and his laboratory.
Chase's butler, Hargreaves, interrupts the tour and tells Chase that the pod is germinating. Chase orders Scorby to take them away and kill them.
Scorby does as he's told, but again, the Doctor manages to assault Scorby and make a break for it.
He lowers Sarah Jane over the mansion wall and tells her to go get help whilst he tries to find the pod. It's not long however before Sarah is captured again by guards and taken to Chase.
The Doctor manages to climb onto the roof and finds the skylight to the secret lab where Chase is working with Keeler.
Chase, feeling particularly evil, holds Sarah's arm next to the pod and refuses to listen to Keelers calls to stop. He doesn't care if Sarah dies, he must know what happens with the pod when it opens.
With little choice, the Doctor jumps through the skylight and down into the room, fighting off Scorby and rescuing Sarah Jane. They lock the door as they rush out and run off into the grounds. In all the distraction, the pod opens and stings Keeler in the arm.
He begs Mr Chase to call for an Ambulance, but Chase is far more interested in watching the effect it has on his unfortunate henchman.
Once free of the guards, the Doctor tells Sarah to hide whilst he goes back and tries to get the pod.
Eventually unlocked from the room, Chase gets his butler, Hargreaves, to take Keeler to an old cottage on the grounds. As they do so, Chase observes that the bacteria seem to be eating all the protein from Keelers body, so orders him fed with meat.
The Doctor gets back to the lab but now finds it deserted, containing only the shell of the second pod. Scorby finds him again and with a couple of guards, takes the Doctor down to the composting room where a huge grinder is used to recycle dead plant matter back into Chase's greenhouse.
It's also fantastic for getting rid of bodies. Luckily, the Doctor is kept alive in there until Chase can see him again.
It just so happens that Ms Ducat calls to Chase's mansion and insists on seeing him about payment for her portrait. Chase is annoyed but agrees to see her, delaying the Doctor's execution.
Sarah Jane meanwhile goes out and finds the cottage that Keeler was taken to. By the time she gets there, he's tied to a bed and almost totally green.
He rants at her when she refuses to free him. She is forced to hide in the wardrobe when she hears Hargreaves bringing the meat for Keeler, and luckily, Keeler is in too much of a state to reveal her presence. Once Keeler has eaten, he drops into a coma, allowing Sarah to slip out of the cottage quietly. She goes up to the house to find the Doctor but instead fins Ms Ducat as she's being shown out of the grounds by Scorby. She manages to snatch a couple of seconds with the old woman to ask her to contact UNIT as soon as she can.
Ms Ducat is shown out of the compound and enters a car with Dunbar and Sir Colin. She explains to them that it's as they feared, the Doctor and Sarah Jane are in trouble and the pod is in there. Dunbar tells them to wait a few more minutes whilst he goes in and tries to talk Chase out of anything foolish, seeing as he's made a huge mistake.
In the meanwhile, Chase has had a chance to go see the Doctor whom they've tied up and placed on the feeder for the compost machine.
Foolishly though, they've left him to get composted alone, so Sarah is able to shut the machine off just in the nick of time when she stumbles upon the room.
Out at the cottage, Hargreaves brings more meat but runs away in terror as Keeler has now transformed into something wholly inhuman and frees himself from the straps holding him to the bed.
Chase is met by Dunbar who tries to get him to see reason but Chase thinks everything's under control. Hargreaves enters a split second later and tells them that Keeler's free, which causes Dunbar to leave, threatening to get help to kill the Krynoid. Chase calls for Scorby to "get Dunbar!"
Now free, Sarah takes the Doctor to the cottage but they find Keeler gone. The Doctor grabs a sword from above the fireplace and they go out searching for the Krynoid.
As Dunbar is being chased by Scorby and the remaining guards, he runs into the creature that now resembles more of a tree than a man. He is killed and his screams attract both Scorby and his goons, as well as the Doctor and Sarah.
The Krynoid advances on the Doctor whose sword is next to useless. Luckily, Chase's guards panic and fire their guns, distracting the plant enough for the Doctor and Sarah Jane to escape to the cottage. They're joined not long after by Scorby and a couple of men.
Scorby is sceptical that the Krynoid was once Keeler, but does believe that it's a dangerous thing. He calls Chase at the main house to tell him to get help but Chase orders that the plant is to be unharmed. The Doctor tries one last time to talk sense into Chase, but he hangs up.
Suddenly, a booming voice speaks from outside. it's the Krynoid. It says that if the Doctor will allow himself to be infected, it will let all the others go free. Scorby is happy to consider this, but the Doctor violently points out that without him there's no chance of them surviving at all. He gets Scorby to go and make some molotov cocktails so they can try to get away.
Meanwhile, Sir Colin has gone back to his office with Amelia Ducat and tries to contact UNIT but the Brigadier is away. He eventually gets hold of Major Beresford who agrees to help. With little else to offer, Ms Ducat is sent off home.
Back at the mansion, Chase goes down to the cottage with a camera to take some pictures of the Krynoid.
It turns on him but he manages to convince it that he's always been on its side and only wants it to flourish.
As the Doctor and co see Chase outside, they decide to strike. Scorby throws the molotov outside, distracting the plant enough for the Doctor to run out and get to the limo, driving off. Sarah and Scorby manage to leg it to the main house Once there, they begin barricading the house from the plant life that also seems to be coming to life.
The Doctor once out of the estate, goes to Sir Colin's office where he meets him and Major Beresford. The Doctor once again tries to explain and get people to help, but UNIT commander says he can't do anything without proof. The Doctor is soon able to show him proof as reports begin to flood in of people getting killed by vegetation near Chase's estate.
Once he's got UNIT convinced, he calls Sarah Jane at the house and explains that they are planning to attack the Krynoid with a high powered laser. The animated plants cut the conversation short by tearing out the phone lines.
The siege at the house goes on for a bit, with the plants getting thicker and thicker. Chase eventually turns up, having had some kind of awakening from his encounter with the Krynoid. He says that the plants will come to rule the earth as they should. He ends up in his greenhouse, sat on the floor, talking to his plants.
Scorby, Sarah Jane and Hargreaves all try to talk sense into him, but he believes that humans are just parasites and plants should be the real rulers. It turns out that the greenhouse plants are also animated and they surround the survivors as they try to talk to Chase.
The plants ensnare them and begin to strangle them, but luckily, the Doctor turns up with a UNIT Sgt. carrying some experimental defoliant. They spray the plants and kill them off, freeing the others (Hargreaves isn't so lucky). Chase is outraged but manages to escape.
The defoliant kills the greenhouse plants but it all gets used up in the process. The Doctor leads them all back to the lab where they can remove the remaining plants. Everyone takes them outside but Chase turns up again and locks them all outside where the Krynoid finds them, as it towers over the house.
With another stroke of luck, the rest of UNIT turn up and shoot the Krynoid with the laser. It doesn't kill the thing, but it's enough of a distraction for the group to get back into the house through another door.
They are set in for another siege but this time, Chase keeps wandering around messing up things and manages to knock the UNIT Sgt. unconscious and feeds him to his plants through the compost machine.
As the Krynoid tries to break its way in again, Scorby ends up succumbing to despair and makes a blind run for it, fighting his way through the jungle of animated plants. He makes it a fair distance into the grounds before he falls into a pond and the pond weed pulls him under, drowning him.
As the Doctor repairs a loudspeaker that Chase trashed, Sarah goes off to look for the missing UNIT soldier. She encounters Chase at the composting machine and gets knocked out too.
The Doctor finishes his repairs and contacts Major Beresford, telling him they've about fifteen minutes left before the Krynoid shoots out pods all over the place and puts the entire Earth in peril. He tells them their only chance is to order an air strike on the thing, forsaking the Doctor and the rest as necessary casualties. Beresford reluctantly agrees and orders the strike.
With nothing left to do, the Doctor realises that Sarah Jane is missing and goes to look for her, eventually finding her in the compost machine, tied up as the conveyor pushes her closer to the blades. As the Doctor struggles with Chase, he manages to free Sarah Jane and shut the machine off, but Chase starts it again and pulls the doctor onto the conveyor belt with him. The Doctor eventually fights his way off the conveyor and Chase is pulled into the machine, despite the Doctor trying to rescue him.
Together, they try to get out of the house but the plant life is too thick. They use a steam pipe to scald the vegetation enough to get out and run just as the jet fighters come in and destroy both the Krynoid and the house.
Some time later, the Doctor and Sarah Jane debrief Sir Colin who asks the Doctor to make a speech at the Horticultural Society. The Doctor declines and instead offers to take Sarah Jane to Cassiopeia. They get in the TARDIS and Sarah Jane dresses ready for the beach but when they run out of the doors, it turns out they've gone to Antarctica as the Doctor forgot to reset the coordinates. They both laugh and exclaim "have we been here before, or are we yet to come?"
Trivia
- The original title of this story would have been the Seeds of Death but thankfully fan societies pointed out that title had already been used!
- The final story for Season 13 was supposed to be The Hand of Fear, Lis Sladen's final story, but the scripts weren't ready. She agreed to hang around a tiny bit longer because she wanted to give her character a proper send off and there was talk of a Doctor Who movie
- The movie idea was floated by Tom Baker and Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan). It was to be called Doctor Who and the Scratchman. It ended up being part crowd funded thanks to Tom but the BBC weren't keen on this so Tom was made to give all the money back again to the fans who'd donated.
- In the first true indication of how difficult he would become, Tom Baker showed very plainly that he hated the script for this story partially because he said the dialogue was very corny. Robery Holmes had to negotiate with Tom, who eventually agreed to play it mean to add gravitas to the lines
- This is the last time Douglas Camfield would direct for Doctor Who
- This story's horror movie themed inspiration is Thing from Another World but you could also maybe argue Day of the Triffids
- Part of the Krynoid forms was an Axon re-painted green
What worked
- The Arctic scenes are reasonably experimental. It's nice to see something other than a quarry or a sleepy English village
- The Doctor's angry approach does indeed add gravitas to the situation, making you believe the threat is as big as what he's suggesting
- There's lots of deaths in this that also help build the stakes on this
- I've got to say it, Chase is wonderfully insane too. There's tension in his unpredictability
- Even though she is a bit of dotty comic relief, Ms Ducat is fun
- Keeler's initial state after the pods sting is a bit worrying actually
What didn't work
- There's parts of a quarry where fake snow hasn't been stuck on it
- There's a lot of back and forth in this story, especially towards the end when there's lots of siege's in the same places
- Half of the special effects for the plants look alright and half look absolutely terrible
- The end bit of Chase pottering about is really annoying as nobody just finds him and sorts him out
- How come whenever anyone is killed in the composter, there's no blood on the blades?
- How can the TARDIS go to Antarctica when they were taken there by aircraft?
Overall Feelings
The Seeds of Doom starts out looking like an international political romp trying to get back alien pods. The start of it, just like the horror movie it's based on is great at setting up a claustrophobic tension. Tom Baker's playing it straight helps a lot with this, as does Scorbiy's love of violence and intent to kill everyone. Indeed, the body count is high in this one, and although that's not a good thing for a family programme in 1976, I think it does add a level of maturity to it. Kids aren't being talked down to on this one. They're expected to watch from between their fingers as horrible death by horrible death, we're shown just how much of a madman Chase is and the consequences of failure. That is great. I mean, even the Doctor hospitalises the chauffeur by smashing his face in!
Without a doubt, this is one of the best of Tom Baker's run, and possibly worthy of a top ten spot in the entire run of Doctor Who. What this lofty title doesn't take wholly into account is that it degenerates into bond villain death traps and lots and lots of besieged scenes. Chase is a smart man, Scorby less so but there's got to be a point where even he realises he calls for the Doctor's death in one breath then captures him the next. It does get a little tiring, but there's no denying the tension, horror and downright eccentricity of Chase more than make up for its shortfalls.
Rating
9 out of 10
Rewatchability Factor
7 out of 10
Watch this if you liked...
- Black Orchid (Well, it's got plants in it!)
- Terror of the Vervoids
- The Thing from Another World
- The Day of the Triffids
Consulting the Matrix
Do you think Scorby should have survived and redeemed himself?
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