The Pertwee era was known for its straight up, no nonsense action adventures, with very little of the weirdness and whimsy that had perforated the eras of Messers Hartnell & Troughton. But this months Short Trips story does something rather clever – it is recognisably a Pertwee era story, but it has a sense of weirdness – a sort of surreal dreamlike Lewis Carol like quality that makes it a very very different Pertwee era story.
To begin with it has all the UNIT tropes – strange goings on in a home counties village, Jo & the Doctor rushing off to investigate, The Doctor moaning about the military mind & Jo asking lots of questions – but hidden beneath this is a whole world of oddity…..
Tim Treloar (he who gives good Pertwee) narrates the story and indeed he does give good Pertwee in the 36 minutes of the stories length, he is also engaging as Jo, Mike Yates & the lady at the centre of the whole set of weird goings on Meredith Bright. Meredith likes to cultivate roses, no ordinary roses, these are special silver roses that grant her every wish if she just talks to them – they have made her husband successful in his career, her children do well at school – but now the roses are getting out of control and taking over her garden, and there are strange mechanical pests who swarm and feed on them too AND post boxes are going missing, a Celtic Cross has appeared in the village square and Captain Yates has ceased to exist.
Yes indeed, very odd, very weird, very dreamlike with a heap of whimsy not unlike season 24 – it has some lovely imagery of The Doctor pruning roses and just getting on with the job of being The Doctor in a situation he did not expect to find himself in – whats more, despite the “threat” being just some flowers, these flowers could inadvertently end the world as we know it – think Inferno but with petals and thorns and you wont be too far from the mark…..
You really have to admire Tim Treloar and his performance as Doctor Number 3 – not quite an impersonation, but capturing Pertwee’s very essence and keeping the story moving at quite a pace, again a lot happens in the short 36 minutes and Treloar pitches it just right.
Not a conventional story by any means but a very Pertwee-esque story told from a slightly skewed perspective, a rose in bloom at 8/10.
Written By Ed Watkinson
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