Doctor Who Claws of Axos
Special Edition

Do we need more Axos?

I hate to say it, but The Claws of Axos is one of those stories who’s quality is mostly myth. That’s not to say that there aren’t good things about “Claws” but all in all the bad outweighs the good.

So what’s to like?

For years Doctor who fans had to overlook doggy visuals and make do with fairly good acting a brilliant premise and solid scripting it’s a cruel irony then that Claws is a sumptuous visual feast from the “breathing” spaceship to the psychedelic interiors, of said ship to the Axons themselves and the plethora of melting faces, even the use of a real Nuclear facility brings the production up from the standard fair of running down a wobbly corridor. And yet to watch it you have to contend with poor acting and a confusing script.

To be fair it’s not a bad premise, the Axons land on earth and declare friendly intentions despite someone firing a missile at them. They just need some resources and in return for these naturally abundant resources that they are going to take they will give earth a gift Axonite, it’s great, it slices, dices, makes frogs bigger. You’ll love it. And sure they might not be who they appear to be and they might be in fact horrible creatures who will eat you at every given opportunity…..wait isn’t that the plot from all three versions of “V”? Except for the frogs thing of course. The master is in it doing his “Hey I made a deal with a powerful alien force that I can’t possibly hope to control, I sure hope that doesn’t come back to bite me and I have to join forces with my sworn enemy to defeat it” Stick.

If there’s anybody out there who drops acid this is the Doctor who do watch whilst you do it.

Audio: Audio is good, dialogue is clear.

Video: It has to be said that the video is really nice, crisp and clear. However unless you were terribly dissatisfied with the quality of the video of the initial release, it would seem to be an unnecessary purchase.

Special features:

Axon Stations Now & Then: Groan yet another terrible pun from BBC worldwide. It’s an ok documentary on the making of the program and it’s nice to hear how Bob Baker and Dave Martin became writers for Doctor Who but it’s a fairly thin as a document of the period.

Directing Who: Michael Ferguson who also directed The War Machines (1966), The Seeds of Death (1969), The Ambassadors of Death (1970) reminisces about what it was like to direct doctor who. It’ ok apparently but not terribly exciting.

Living with Levene: The maddest member of the doctor who cast (and considering he’s up against Tom Baker and Philip Madoc that’s really saying something) sits down and makes food for his mother and the interviewer. The interviewer basically spends two days with him and finds out he’s daft as a brush but it makes for by far the most interesting special feature on here.