Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Target: The Androids of Tara

The view of Tara on the scanner sounds like a wide panorama - rolling hills, neatly-fenced fields - rather than the tighter shot seen on screen.

Among the junk in the console room cupboard is a partially-dismantled Martian sonic cannon.

There's an odd passage when Romana is being stalked through the woods:

She ran faster, and faster forcing her way through obstructing branches and bushes, her fear growing at each second then.


Is it poetry, or is the full stop a mistake?

The Count says that the woods are part of what's left of the Estate of Gracht after his father's debts were paid.

Having seen the Count's electro-sword, Romana wonders if the horse is a real animal or actually a robot. Either way, the situation reminds her of the romantic videonovels she used to watch when she was very young. As they gallop off, she has the decency to regret telling the Doctor off for getting involved in local complications.

Madame Lamia is beautiful in an 'intense almost angry way.' Nicely put sir. Romana can tell that she and the Count are 'more to each other than master and servant.'

The initial encounter between the Doctor and the swordsmen is enlivened by a bit where the Doctor expects to be fined for poaching, and demonstrates that he hasn't caught anything. When he examines his smouldering hat he makes a comment about 'incendiary moths'.

There's no reverse bargaining about the android repair fee, which is 500gp from the start, but we do get the Doctor thinking that he refused the money, they'd just offer more, and if that didn't work, they'd just go back to threatening him - simpler to take the money.

It's Farrah who bars the way when the Doctor thinks he's free to go, not a mugging extra. Prince Reynart's comment about wishing he'd been allowed to learn peasant skills leads to more Docthink, this time about the nature of Taran society and parallels therewith in Earth history (Engineers in the Victorian navy...).

When he hears the need for the Prince to be punctual at the ceremony, the Doctor says 'I thought Kings were allowed to be late?' Not on Tara, he's told.

How did 'George' come to be damaged in the first place? The android took the Prince's place in a hunting party, which was attacked in the forest by an assassin.

When Zadek says that he and Farrah will take on Grendel's men, he adds that the Prince has an additional 'handful' of followers (his House is impoverished and he can't afford to hire mercenaries like Grendel).

Romana can't help feeling sorry for Madame Lamia after the 'certain courtesy' speech.

We actually see the reverse shot of the Palace of Tara that the Doctor and Farrah are looking at while they wait for Zadek to find the tunnel entrance.

the enormous white building below them, its innumerable towers and turrets crowded inside an encircling wall. Flags were flying, guards patrolled the ramparts and an endless line of people on horseback and on foot, wound its way through the main gates.


(and the BBC couldn't even afford a model).

The 'peasant's weapon' crossbow is brought to the Doctor's attention by its owner firing it as he dies, and blowing up a tree.

K9 takes care to stay out of sight on the way to Castle Gracht - fortunately, everyone's gone to the Palace of Tara for the coronation, so the countryside's deserted.

The Doctor thinks that the great plague accounts for the the 'curiously deserted feeling of Tara.' Farrah tells him that androids work in the fields, mines and factories (I suppose Tara must have factories if it has technology) though there's still a lot of prejudice against them. The noble families won't even have them as servants - Prince Reynart is presumably happy to put any such feelings aside in the interests of being crowned.

When Count Grendel's men arrive at the tunnel mouth, they note the guard by his absence, and find his body in a bush. Meanwhile, in the tunnel 'George' does not bang his head on the ceiling.

The complex chronometer seen in the Throne Room is the Great Clock of Tara, hundreds of years old, but still accurate to a micro-second. The Archimandrite of Tara is head of the Church of Tara, and is the leading religious figure on the planet, as well as a 'tough and wily old politician, with a strongly developed sense of survival'.

At the ceremony, the person about to step forward in response to the call for the first lady of Tara is a 'plump and matronly Grand Duchess', but she's pre-empted by the android Strella (presumably the Duchess had been promoted to no.1 after Strella's disappearance).

Grendel recognises the Doctor from the hunting lodge - he'd assumed he was 'some mountebank friend of Prince Reynart' - and is annoyed that he didn't kill him when he had the chance.

Kurster (the Count's sidekick) is a 'giant' (actually appears shorter than him on screen).

Lamia's feeling that the Segment is part of a very important whole is made more of. It's nice to see this interesting character being given the distinction of being the only person in season 16, other than Cessair of Diplos, to get an inkling of what's going on.

When K9 arrives at the Palace (having located Romana) Zadek brings the news of his arrival to the Doctor, saying that K9 caused quite a stir at the palace gates.

The punt in which the Doctor and K9 cross the moat of Castle Gracht was brought overland from the river by some of Reynart's men.

The chair in which Grendel is sitting when he throws the wine at Till is a throne, which he's had made a while back: 'it would come in handy when Castle Gracht was a Royal Residence.'

The gown Romana wears at the abortive wedding is one of Princess Strella's, taken taken from the baggage captured with her.

When Kurster comes to kill Strella, she isn't working on the tapestry frame, but is embroidering a handkerchief, because she thinks she won't live long enough to finish the tapestry.

Grendel does not do the 'lenient' line, instead saying 'Nothing like a midnight swim. I'll finish giving you that fencing lesson, Doctor - one day.' It's suitably suave and villainous, but I much prefer the original. The Doctor doesn't throw him the hat, either, instead raising his blade in a salute of reluctant admiration for Grendel's consistency. 'All in all, he'd seldom met a more thoroughgoing villain in all his lives.'

While Reynart and Strella are kissing in the cell, Romana goes next door to change her clothes, while the Doctor waits in the corridor.

There's an extra final scene where the Doctor fetches a rope and grappling hook from the castle gatehouse, and, after several tries, pulls K9 in to the bank of the moat. Romana then jokes that he managed to catch a fish on Tara after all. I mean, really.

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