A perfectly fine Doctor Who serial. Worst I can say about it is maybe it’s a little long.
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I am suitably chastened for reaching for a cheap joke.
There are worse serials than Monster, certainly, and I might rate it more highly if it had two episodes fewer.
But, come on, it had the production code YYY! Am I supposed to just ignore that?
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And the old joke that Planet of the Spiders is called ZZZ.
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The Reign of Terror has been watched. And well… it was pretty good in my opinion. I liked the setting, Hartnell is absolutely brilliant and the way he goes from what is basically a commoner to supposedly a high-ranking official just using his wits is delightful to watch. I enjoyed Lemaitre, Jules was alright and I thought the jailer was alright enough comic relief (minus his comments toward Barbara, ew). I know this serial doesn’t give much context to the French Revolution but it didn’t trouble me since I have quite a bit of knowledge on it (not basic but not advanced either). I also liked the events showing that there was practically no one who could be entirely trusted, and the Doctor’s conversation with Robespierre is great, so is Barbara’s short speech on the people of the Revolution.
I think the biggest issues are that it’s not entirely clear what Jules’ group is fighting for, and then Barbara and Susan (mainly Susan) and what their whole subplot is. To address the first thing: D’Argenson and Rouvray are called royalists, but that needn’t been entirely true. Since this was such a turbulent period, their opposition to Robespierre may have resulted in them being accused of wanting to restore the Bourbon dynasty and the monarchy. From what Jules says, it seems he’s something like that of a middle class person, not an aristocrat. So it seems his group wants to depose Robespierre, but not bring back the king, but it’s not clear.
In regards to Barbara and Susan’s subplot, Barbara is still great as a character. She doesn’t take any crap and even when imprisoned, tries to get out by using her brain. Unfortunately, Susan is very helpless which is a shame. She can be good as seen in The Daleks when she has to go get medicine. But here, she tries to help with escaping the prison but gives up seconds later. And is then spooked by rats. I get it, filthy prisons aren’t nice and rats can carry diseases, but she’s been poisoned with radiation before and travelled to lots of other dangerous places, I feel like she would know better. Then later on the cart she seems to be willing to run with Barbara but gives up again. I know it’s because she is ill, but that subplot is basically just there so that she can be taken to the physician and for the resistance to be infiltrated by said treacherous physician and then she just recovers…
There are a few other smaller issues, like how the last episode is a bit detached from the rest and as much as the history nerd in me was happy to see a cameo from Napoleon, it really has barely anything to do with the overall story, and Robespierre should have been in it more. Overall though, I think it’s a solid story. It was up to an 8 for me but the last episode unfortunately sank it a bit. Still though, 7/10 ain’t bad.
Also Hartnell rocks that outfit.
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Oh yeah also I forgot to talk about the animation in Episode 4 and 5. It was… weird. Not awful, I think it looked good at some parts and I appreciate the attempt at making the characters more 3D. Problem is that, it was basically just the characters’ heads so it looked off at times. Additionally, sometimes there were just cuts left and right that were confusing. Overall it does its job at giving visuals to the missing episodes, but it doesn’t look all that great.
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That visual style is my favorite approach to the animations, and I think the ones from that era are still the best. But, Reign is easily the roughest, and makes some iffy choices, especially the cuts between shots.
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This episode is by far my least favourite pure historical I’ve seen so far (maybe except for Black Orchid, but to be fair I forget it exists more often than not so it doesn’t really count) but that doesn’t mean it’s terrible. I thought it was mostly slow, a little repetitive and boring. The Doctor is clearly having a lot of fun, though, which was a delight to watch.
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