Inferno

It's hard to find any fault with Inferno. The plot is tense and engaging from start to finish. The acting is top notch, especially considering that most of the cast is performing double duty with their normal roles and a parallel universe version of themselves. Most of the effects, costumes, and effects are high quality for the time and most of it has held up surprisingly well over the decades. Easily a top 10 all time story that must be watched by fans of new or classic Who.

Inferno has a tremendous reputation and that is very well deserved, it is fabulous in almost every way. The brilliance of the story, script and acting is clear throughout and particularly in the famous portion of the story which involves an alternative reality with fascist versions of the Brigadier, Liz, Benton and guest characters. This highly entertaining aspect of the story brings out fantastic performances from Nicholas Courtney and Caroline John as villainous versions of their regular characters. When this alternative reality is brought in, it is Doctor Who at its truly magnificent best.

The story involves a scientific project lead by Professor Stahlman to drill through the earth's crust which runs into trouble due to Stahlman's refusal to slow down or take precautions and due to a mysterious green substance coming from underground which causes physical and mental changes to those who touch it. The Doctor throws in a whole new dimension - literally - when he accidentally causes the TARDIS console to transport him to a parallel universe where the same scenario is occurring but in a fascist Britain.

The entire script is superb, intelligent and believable with great dialogue delivered perfectly by the whole cast. Pertwee, Courtney and Caroline John are at their very best throughout whilst John Levene not only fully establishes Benton as an extremely good regular character he also plays the fascist version of Benton with gusto. There are great realistic guest characters played to perfection. Olaf Pooley (Stahlman), Christopher Benjamin (Sir Keith), Sheila Dunn (Petra Williams) and Derek Newark (Greg Sutton) could not be better. The story has a nice gritty, grown up science fiction feel but also has bags of action, stunts, thrills and fun.

The plot thread where people touch a substance emanating from beneath the Earth's crust and turn into werewolf-like creatures known as 'primords' is the least impressive aspect of the story in my opinion and even that is very entertaining. At first I disliked the primords subplot but after repeated viewings I realised it makes more sense than it first appeared. The substance affects the people physically and mentally at different rates depending on how much they touch. It drives them to seek extreme heat and to try to achieve the penetration of the earth's crust. They use the knowledge they had before being affected to help them. It is actually a fun idea providing a lot of thrills but the make-up effects were limited by the age and budget. That does not detract from the quality of this really fantastic story which I would put in my top 10 or 15 stories of all time. It is a true classic.

The vast majority of this 7 parter is truly special and it deserves the huge praise it receives.

My Ratings: All 7 Episodes - 10/10

Inferno is for many reasons my favourite Pertwee adventure.
Season 7 is incredible and even it’s weakest title ambassadors of death is worthy of a near classic rank. But here is the strongest entry of the strongest season of this doctors line.

A rather over ambitious deep drilling project is looking risky and unit and of course our doctor are on the look out for tell tales of disaster but when the doctor is a bit detoured he decides to hell with it and gets back to working on his Tardis.
He struggles for permission of power in order to get it running but eventually does a sneaky to get his way.

It works ! Badly...

He gets stuck in a parallel version of his current surroundings were a rather faciast like England (maybe in Nazi rule) is set a slight date ahead of the present worlds circumstances.
Not only is everyone horrible including his usual allies who now hung him down. But it looks like the deep drilling might cause a global catastrophe wiping out much of the world. Also there are blueish radioactive chaps going a bit bonkers to keep things from being to campy.

This is a very traumatic experience for this doctor and one of his more brutal and unforgiving adventures!

Ps Nicholas Courtney makes a great villain !

Inferno was the fourth and final serial in my favourite season, season 7 which is already brimming with brilliance at this point but then proceeded to put the icing on the cake with this masterpiece. Now it is 7 parts long but don't let that put you off, if you get embroiled in its thick atmosphere as intended the time fly's by.

So what's the episode about then? Well there's a project funded by the British government to drill in to the Earths crust where allegedly lay pockets of Stahlmans gas which is said to be a superb source of energy. However the Doctor while using the projects power supply to try and repair the TARDIS slips into a parallel universe where Britain is a fascist state and the project is run by slave Labour. Seeing the disastrous results of the project, the Doctor has to escape back to our universe and stop it happening here.

Sounds like a great concept huh? It's genius really lies in the addition of a parallel universe where people are indoctrinated into a fascist ideology which has significant effects on the regular characters. They are all much more ruthless and seem to show no sympathy, especially the Brigidear or Brigade Leader as hes known there as he is a callous bully who is closed minded and allows us to see the Brigidears dark side especially after he murdered The Silurians just two stories earlier and shows that with an altered upbringing, the Brig wouldn't be a hero.

All the other characters are great too with stand out performances from all the cast which makes it even more enjoyable. And to add to that is superb direction, atmospheric incidental music and just a thoroughly enjoyable dark story which takes time to reflect on its own characters.

So as you might of worked out I absolutely love this story and while I have mainly talked about characters, the plot is amazing as well with the monsters in this episode being the primords are threatening too and help add to the sense of helplessness seen in episodes 4, 5 and 6.

If I was to think of flaws I could only come up with one and that would be the ending, it is a little jarring and doesn't fit in with the tone of the episode at all, especially as the Doctor seems uneffected by the events that took place, however that part is made up for in the story "The Mind Of Evil" which has the most amazing reference in Doctor Who ever to this story which maybe shows at the end of Inferno he was just putting on a brave face not wanting to discuss it.

Overall, the absolute masterpiece known to us as Inferno gets a score which I do not award to many episodes as ones like this are the ones that are truly worthy of it.