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A
strange alien craft crashes into the Earth, its occupants
seemingly friendly. However, what initially appears to be
an unthreatening alien community - its members first offer
mankind unimaginable wealth - soon reveals itself to be a
deadly threat to humanity that intends to drain the planet
of all its energy and then steal the Doctor's knowledge of
time travel...
The
Claws of Axos is a good example of what can be achieved
when you start the story running and maintain that breathless
pace for four episodes - you can get away with murder and
no one notices. At no point in the story does it occur to
the writers or production staff to try and establish any internal
logic - from start to finish everything on screen is in the
service of the moment rather than the narrative.
The
first hint of this approach appears within seconds of the
start of episode one. We're given a glimpse of the Axon monsters
even before they've arrived on Earth. This immediately ruins
the moment when the Doctor and his companions realise that
the human-like creatures that first walked from the alien
craft have a secret identity - we already know that.
The
tramp sequence, featuring the bizarrely named Pigbin Josh,
may have been intended as a moment of comic relief but is
so over the top it ruins any underlying atmosphere. In looking
for a quick laugh the production loses sight of the longer-term
objective of slowly building the tension to the first cliff
hanger.
Before
too long the whole story is a revolving door of chase sequences,
military machinations and scientific gobbledegook that mask
the story's single interesting element - the greed of politicians
and the associated moral naivety that accompanies it when
offered unimaginable power. Sadly, by making the sole representative
of the UK government such a buffoon it is impossible to imagine
the level of political scheming that appears to be driving
his actions.
But
it's not all bad. We get a goodly helping of The Master (although
his appearance in the story adds little), UNIT, a great-looking
alien threat, some fine action sequences, and best of all,
we get the Doctor acting in what appears to be a morally ambiguous
way. This all adds up to a story that is very colourful and
rattling good fun but there's no chance of The Claws of
Axos standing up to close inspection.
The
same, thankfully, can't be said of this DVD - it withstands
the closest inspection and is never found wanting. There's
a great feature on the restoration of the story, a slew of
outtakes and missing scenes, some excellent photographs, a
very tidy set of production subtitles and a commentary track
that is also pretty good. So while the story doesn't score
top marks, its presentation on disc certainly does.
Anthony
Clark
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