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"Doctor Who"
Earthshock: Part 2 (1982)

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Great story... so far..., 25 October 2007

Author: Paul Andrews (poolandrews@hotmail.com) from UK

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Doctor Who: Earthshock: Part 2 starts as the Doctor (Peter Dvaison), Lieutenant Scott (James Warwick) & his men manage to destroy the two androids & open the metal hatch they were guarding, unfortunately inside there is a bomb capable of destroying Earth which is activated by remote which the Doctor manages to disarm. Using equipment on the TARDIS the Doctor is able to trace where the remote signal to active the bomb was sent from, a cargo freighter in deep space heading towards Earth. The Doctor & companions arrive on board the huge space freighter with the hope to discover who planted the bomb & why...

Episode 20 from season 19 this Doctor Who adventure originally aired here in the UK during March 1982, directed by Peter Grimwade I have to say Earthshock is one of my favourite Doctor Who stories & Peter Davison's best. The script by Eric Saward has shifted from the tense claustrophobic horror of Part 1 to a more mystery orientated sci-fi adventure as the Doctor has to discover who planted the bomb & why & finds himself aboard a huge intergalactic space freighter. It's no less entertaining than Part 1 & the shift in styles & tone is quite good actually & helps maintain ones interest. At least Earthshock is pretty serious in tone & it doesn't have much humour in it which comes as a nice change. Compared to the Part 1 not that much actually happens & this one feels like scene setting that could explode into life at any moment. This one perhaps features a little padding but I didn't mind & still throughly enjoyed it.

Shifting from the plastic caves to a space freighter this episode still has good production values with decent spaceship sets & some OK model work. The Cybermen still look great but when I think about it they haven't done anything at all over the first two episodes other than stand at a computer terminal thing & talk to each other, hopefully they'll have more to do in the last two episodes. There are a couple of pretty bad goofs in this episode, near the end a few minutes before the cliffhanger there is a close-up of a computer terminal & the Cyber leader is supposed to push a button to active a communication device so he can speak to someone but he clearly misses it yet there is still an electronic 'beep' sound like he did & he starts his sentence 'Report'. To be honest that sort of tells you the sort of tight schedule the makers were on when they couldn't even remount a simple three second shot of a Cyberman pressing a button! Also very near the end when the Doctor & Adric find the two dead bodies if you look at the guy lying on the floor on the right with his head & upper chest in view you can clearly see his chest moving up & down, now correct me if I'm wrong but I always thought dead bodies don't breathe!

Earthshock: Part 2 is a great episode in a great story, I liked it & I found the two goofs more funny than distracting, in fact I find bad special effects more distracting but that's just me. A must for fans, buy the DVD now!

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