Behind the Sofa: Earthshock

Just drop him on the nearest airless planet...

Tachyon TV rubs its hands with glee as it prepares to wave goodbye to Adric. Topics up for discussion this week include: John's tragic and homicidal childhood, TARDIS bickering, Matthew Waterhouse's CV, and tiny dinosaurs.
Note: the theme toon from 'Gangsters' was inserted on the advice of our lawyers.

Oh, and it was raining outside (but it's still less noisy than a BSG podcast).
I'm going to cut right to the chase - I love Adric's death. I bloody love it!

But then again, I'm only human.

But why, oh why, oh why are they traveling backwards in time? Eh?

Anyone? Considering that Eric Saward thought that wiping out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was a pretty neat idea (the Great Fire of London again, just on a bigger scale), why didn't he bother to come up with a decent way of getting us there? Adric's throwaway explanation that anything is possible if you hook your BBC Micro up to an Atari is just laughable.

Waterhouse leaves the series with a emblematic scene that sums up everything that is wrong about his performance. For example, how does he know that the keyboard is going to blow up seconds before it does? Look at him - he's trying to key in the numbers on the other side of the room!

Then there's the pout, the camera mugging and the nasal whine. 100% concentrated Adric.
But what is truly great about this moment is the realisation that Adric has to die if we, as a species, are going to survive.

In fact, if he did succeed in breaking the Cybermen's logic codes then the human race would have been completely screwed.
And there's also a lesson to be learnt: if he hadn't been such a git in episode one then he might have realised that the freighter was destined to smack into the dinosaurs and none of this would have happened (I mean, they were only wondering about that an hour ago; seriously, what are the chances?).

You could make a case that Adric nobly sacrifices himself for the greater good but it isn't altruism that gets him killed - it's arrogance, petulance, stupidity and fate. The poor bastard never stood a chance.
It's just a shame that I can't appreciate the harrowing scene where the Doctor realises that he's dropped a bollock, because I'm far too busy noticing that Sarah Sutton is trying not to laugh.

..
The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Earthshock Part Four: The regular cast were laughing so hard during Adric's death scene it took five whole days to shoot it.

The resulting overtime came out of 'Time-Flight's' FX budget.
This is piracy! Long John Cyberman and his scurvy first mate have taken over the freighter and turned it into a flying bomb.

Remember, turn down the sound and play when the Cybermen are on the march. Hey presto! Instant none shitness.

Frumpy: What was that?
Andrew Pixley, whilst digging through Sarah Sutton's bins to gather as much evidence for an Earthshock Archive, discovered that it took 35 retakes to get the required level of disinterest into that short scene.
Tegan's still playing hide'n'seek with some Cyberchumps but eventually gets caught and the Cyberman now indicates that she's it and should count to 100 before coming to get him.

And what happened to the TARDIS' state of temporal grace? Or whatever the hell it was meant to be. Thought that was supposed to prevent weapons from going off in the TARDIS?

But at least Frumpy gets it so it's not all a waste of time. Russell T., in the latest DWM Special, proposes that continuity started in the bright lights and garish colours of 70's Who - before then, anything went, anything was possible and didn't need to all add up.

Better that then getting so anal about things like a state of temporal grace...

The soppy incidental music every time Adric takes centre stage merely emphasizes the sheer dopiness and uselessness of this tosser. Even mathematicians would be repulsed by this sad excuse for an idiot savant. Thank god we're inches of videotape away from his more than timely demise.

We're still focusing a little too much on the Cyberarse, reminds me of the furore there was when we got to see the Bat-butt in the George Cloony version. Turning attention to the Cybermen who have escorted the Doctor and Tegan back to the TARDIS, one of them seems to be having a de-misting problem inside the helmet, with his chin plate misting up. I've only recently noticed their eyebrows and the money-box slot on the top of their heads.

By comparison with the 2006 versions these look really shoddy.
And Matthew Waterhouse. Such bad acting at the end as he knows there's going to be an explosion but is too scared to actually tap the keyboard with any force.

You can tell he's gingerly pressing the keys because he knows what's coming. It's not as if, if he sustained serious injury, he wouldn't be able to work for a while. It's been 23 years and counting and he's not worked since.

..
Then we come to one of the most po-faced and ridiculous bits of Doctor Who's entire canon - silent credits as the annoying little turd plummets towards the Earth to die in the wreckage of the freighter.

And a nation celebrates. Every time I watch this I feel the need to have a copy of an instrumental version of on stand by to play over the end credits.
Go on.

Do it. I guarantee that it'll add the requisite gravitas to the closing moments. And will also make you fancy a tequila.

The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about part 4 of Earthshock: Early plans to show Adric's burning and broken corpse mashed into freighter debris during the end credits were dropped from the production. So you'll just have to go on trying to imagine that wonderful sight.