Doctor Who/Recap/S14/E06 The Talons of Weng Chiang: Difference between revisions

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
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{{quote| '''Doctor:''' "You know he's not a god, don't you?"<br />
{{quote| '''Doctor:''' "You know he's not a god, don't you?"<br />
'''Chang:''' "He came to me like a god, in his cabinet of fire!" }}
'''Chang:''' "He came to me like a god, in his cabinet of fire!" }}
* [[Hoist By His Own Petard]]: {{spoiler|Greel ends up killed by his own life-extraction chamber.}}
* [[Hoist by His Own Petard]]: {{spoiler|Greel ends up killed by his own life-extraction chamber.}}
* [[Instant Sedation]]: Possible subversion - the title villain uses an unspecified knockout drug on a cloth to capture Leela, and she goes down fast ... but she has enough time to [[Nightmare Face|tear the villain's mask off]].
* [[Instant Sedation]]: Possible subversion - the title villain uses an unspecified knockout drug on a cloth to capture Leela, and she goes down fast ... but she has enough time to [[Nightmare Face|tear the villain's mask off]].
** Given the time period, it was probably either chloroform or ether.
** Given the time period, it was probably either chloroform or ether.
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* [[Opium Den]]
* [[Opium Den]]
* [[Pig Man]]: the Peking Homunculus is a murderous midget robot made from the cerebral cortex of a pig.
* [[Pig Man]]: the Peking Homunculus is a murderous midget robot made from the cerebral cortex of a pig.
* [[Raised By Natives]]: The Doctor's cover story for Leela.
* [[Raised by Natives]]: The Doctor's cover story for Leela.
* [[Rodents of Unusual Size]]: The rat.
* [[Rodents of Unusual Size]]: The rat.
* [[See You in Hell]]
* [[See You in Hell]]
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* [[Title Drop]]
* [[Title Drop]]
* [[Those Two Guys]]: Jago & Litefoot.
* [[Those Two Guys]]: Jago & Litefoot.
* [[The Triads and The Tongs]]: Greel's mooks are members of the Tong of the Black Scorpion.
* [[The Triads and the Tongs]]: Greel's mooks are members of the Tong of the Black Scorpion.
* [[Victorian London]]
* [[Victorian London]]
* [[What Could Have Been]]: Procuder Philip Hinchcliffe revealed that this serial was originally planned to be a Master story
* [[What Could Have Been]]: Procuder Philip Hinchcliffe revealed that this serial was originally planned to be a Master story

Revision as of 21:08, 9 April 2014
"Doctor, you make me wear strange clothes, you tell me nothing: you are trying to annoy me."
—Leela

Doctor Who goes all Sherlock Holmes-Meets-Hammer Horror in this tale set in Victorian London. Police pathologist Professor Litefoot is investigating a body found floating in the Thames, and, with help from the Doctor, determines that hairs found on the body come from a giant rat.

Moving into the sewers to investigate, the Doctor, Leela and Litefoot discover giant rats on the loose and follow the trail to the Palace Theatre. Stage magician Li H'sen Chang has been kidnapping young girls for his master, the ancient Chinese god Weng-Chiang - in reality the 51st century war criminal Magnus Greel, who feeds on the girls' lifeforce to stabilise his molecular structure, which was ravaged by the trip through time.

Greel's "Time Cabinet" was lost in London and has been found by Litefoot, so Greel sends Chang's ventriloquist's doll, "Mr Sin" - a computerised homonculus with a pig's brain - to infiltrate Litefoot's house and retrieve it. Mr Sin succeeds, but the Doctor and friends manage to intervene before Greel can escape. He falls into his own lifeforce-extracting machine and is disintegrated, before the Doctor manages to deactivate Mr Sin.

The characters of Jago and Litefoot, along with a few others from the serial, now have their own Big Finish spinoff.

Watch it here

Tropes

  "When we are both in the Great Hereafter, I will hunt you down, Bent-Face! And put you through my agonies a thousand times!"

  • Filipinos With Firearms: Apparently the Philippines is a world power in the 51st century as the Doctor mentions marching with the Filipino Army as they advanced on a Supreme Alliance stronghold of Reykjavik. This is endlessly amusing to the few Filipinos who've heard about this episode (or this show, for that matter).
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar -- Leela has a Wet Sari Scene moment just after the giant rat sequence that apparently has not been edited out in over 30 years...
  • God Guise: Magnus Greel posing as Weng-Chiang, though he doesn't try to hide his identify from Chang to whom it makes no difference anyway, as Greel has raised him up from his humble life as a peasant to a man who performs before royalty.

 Doctor: "You know he's not a god, don't you?"

Chang: "He came to me like a god, in his cabinet of fire!"

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