Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Target: The Giant Robot

A fair bit of work has been done on this to give the story some more substance.

Jellicoe is described as dressing too young for his age. I didn't pick that up on screen but I'm not an expert on 1974 men's fashion.

Sarah is much more the journalist here than she ever was in the TV series (see also Planet of the Spiders). In the Targets her profession was entirely believable.

Harry comes up with the idea of a spy inside Thinktank (one word), because he spends a lot of time reading 'lurid thrillers'. Strangely though, he doesn't see himself in the role. The Doctor - showing an odd grasp of Earth bureaucracy - is the one who thinks of the Ministry of Health.

Sarah wants the Brigadier to raid Thinktank - 'the thought of Miss Winters in handcuffs gave her considerable pleasure'. He tells her off, saying that Britain isn't a military dictatorship.

Jellicoe doesn't go up a ladder to work on the Robot, it lies down on an operating table, which makes a lot more sense when you think about it.

The Doctor's tour of Thinktank is more fully shown. Afterwards he and the Brigadier travel back in a staff car. There's no amusing speed typing when he gets the call from Kettlewell, he just writes a rapid note.

There's no mention, that I can see, of the SRS wearing uniforms at the rally. Also, Miss Winters expects the Robot to find Sarah, and she gloats over her as the crowd attack her. On screen, Miss Winters and Jellicoe look surprised when the Robot starts seeking her out - which makes me wonder why Kettlewell lured Sarah to the meeting in the first place without mentioning it to his co-conspirators.

Harry's spy work is expanded - and after the SRS meeting, UNIT go to Thinktank in search of him. The Brigadier knows where the bunker is, and it's 'at the bottom of the garden.'

The UNIT attack on the bunker is done at greater length - it takes quite a while to eliminate all the automatic defence devices. A tank commander is created only to be immediately destroyed. When the the Brigadier grabs the disintegrator, he thinks 'A gun was a gun - cocking mechanism here, a trigger here...' I wish he'd shown a bit more professional interest in other alien and futuristic weapons, like the guerrillas' gun in Day of the Daleks.

Sarah is unnerved by the realisation that she really would have shot Miss Winters, and wanders away from the 'noisy, jubilant men' to be captured by the Robot, which is hiding behind a secret panel in a sort of emergency VIP-only inner bunker. Tinned lobster and champagne fail to cheer her up.

The Bunker has a tower, on top of which Sarah is placed by the Robot, which then wreaks havoc on the UNIT convoy, stamping on the vehicles and throwing a lorry hundreds of yards into a tree. The RAF then arrive in fighter jets, which the Robot tries to swat; it hits one of them and it crashes in flames. It's a wave of bombers which the Doctor says he hopes won't be necessary.

The Doctor and Harry use a landrover, not Bessie, for the attack on the Robot. I thought at first this was because Terrance didn't want to use Bessie with the Fourth Doctor (the combination has an odd, Ongar tube station flavour) but then I remembered that the Doctor goes to Kettlewell's place in Bessie.

Sarah hesitates before accepting the Doctor's invitation to another TARDIS tour:

The very idea was ridiculous, of course. She had deadlines to meet, commitments to honour. If she went off in the TARDIS there was no telling where or when she'd end up. Or what kind of terrifying danger she'd run into.


This makes up for the loss of the Brigadier's evident disappointment at finding the Doctor gone - a poignant moment is turned into a funny one.

No comments:

Post a Comment