“Earthshock” is an adventure of the nineteenth season of “Doctor Who” classic series which aired in 1982. It follows “Black Orchid” and it’s a four parts adventure written by Eric Saward and directed by Peter Grimwade.

The story

Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) is arguing with the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) because he feels neglected so he wants to return to his home planet. For once, Tegan (Janet Fielding) tries to act as a peacemaker along with Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) and the Doctor agrees to bring Adric back to E-Space if the boy will be able to calculate a route.

The Tardis materializes on Earth in the future, in a cave. The travelers take a look at the fossils in the rocks when they are confronted by an armed group and accused of killing some explorers. While the Doctor tries to explain the situation, two androids attack them but there are the Cybermen controlling them.

Extras

This DVD contains a fair amount of extras. There are typical contents such as production subtitles, the Radio Time Listings and a gallery of pictures from this adventure.

There are comments in the adventure alternative audio track by protagonists Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton and Matthew Waterhouse.

Putting the ‘Shock’ into Earthshock. A 30-minute documentary on the production of this adventure that includes the reactions of the audience.

CGI Effects. The option to see this adventure with some new special effects made in CGI. There are no major changes, just a few improvements here and there.

Location Film Sequences. Some extra footage cut from the final version.

Music-only Option. The option to include the soundtrack composed by Malcolm Clarke.

Did You See? To celebrate the return of the Cybermen the show “Did You See?” had given a look at some of the “Doctor Who” monsters in the episode aired on March 14, 1982.

Episode 5. A short video containing a kind of tongue-in-cheek epilogue to this adventure.

There’s also an “Easter egg” containing a comedy sketch.

The character of Adric wasn’t a great success and producer John Nathan-Turner decided to eliminate it. Originally, he planned to produce an adventure written by Christopher Priest, who at the time was already famous as a science fiction writer. The proposed screenplay needed to be changed, also to include the Adric’s departure, but at that point a disagreement emerged between Nathan-Turner and Priest concerning the payment of such changes and it degenerated to a break-up between them and the cancellation of that adventure.

John Nathan-Turner asked Eric Saward to write a replacement screenplay and this was made possible by solving the problem of the script editor. Saward was to become the new script editor but that and writer were incompatible roles so Antony Root had agreed to appear as a script editor for another adventure before leaving that job, though he actualy did little or no work  on that screenplay.

The final title of the adventure, “Earthshock”, is appropriate. John Nathan-Turner kept the secret about the return of the Cybermen, who hadn’t appeared in “Doctor Who” since 1975, and the Adric’s exit. Today it’s impossible to see this adventure knowing nothing about it so we can’t experience the whole emotional impact the audience had when it was broadcast for the first time.

It’s thanks to the emotional impact that “Earthshock” has built an outstanding reputation, which probably for many fans covers the story’s flaws. The Cybermen look has changed throughout the story of the show and for this adventure some improvements were added to make them look more threatening but otherwise they don’t work as well as in the past.

The Cybermen were born as sort of techno-vampires: their costumes cheap but the fact that you could see that once they were human beings helped to make them scary. Just like vampires, the Cybermen were stripped of their humanity in the conversion, in this case eliminating emotions and feelings as well as most of the organic parts of their bodies.

In “Earthshock” the Cybermen are really emotional and the fact that their voices will sound very human doesn’t help. In some adventures of the ’60s they exaggerated with the sound effects, making the Cybermen voices difficult to understand, on this occasion they made the opposite mistake.

The guest actors performances aren’t all of a high standard. Beryl Reid, who plays the freighter captain, was a good actress but by her own admission in “Earthshock” she didn’t know what she was saying. You can see that she’s acting but sometimes you don’t understand what she’s playing.

Probably a problem that influenced the performances was the large amount of scenes that make up “Earthshock” and the consequent need to proceed with the filming very quickly. The goal was to produce an adventure with a very high pace, like a movie, but the time allocated to the recording was too limited to rehearse them in an optimal schedule. However, the project was at least partly successful getting an adventure with a pace really fast compared to the average in “Doctor Who” original series .

“Earthshock” ends with Adric’s departure and it seems appropriate that he did it causing a catastrophe. 😀 This character has always been criticized but it seems that there were no very clear idea of what his characteristics were supposed to be and, paradoxically, he had more development in this last adventure than in the past ones.

Despite its flaws, I think “Earthshock” is still a good adventure. Among the extras on the DVD especially the documentary about its production is interesting. For the importance it has in the show it’s a must-have DVD for “Doctor Who” fans but it may be of interest to anyone who is curious about this show.