Working on behalf of World Ecology Bureau (?), the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Slader) are sent to a remote research station in Antarctica where an expedition has unearthed two mysterious plant pod. The Doctor recognizes the pod as a Krynoid, an alien that survives by laying its seeds in a host organism who is then slowly and painfully transformed into a plant. One of the members of the expedition, Winlett (John Gleeson), has already been infected. The infection is so bad that the Doctor is forced to say that there is nothing that can be done to save Winlett, other than amputating his arm to try to slow the infection.
While the Doctor and Sarah Jane try to deal with the Krynoid, a pant-obsessed millionaire named Harrison Chase (Tony Beckley) learns of the pod’s existence. He sends two of his henchmen, Scorby (John Callis) and Keeler (Mark Jones) to collect it for him. While the now fully mutated Winlett kills the other members of the expedition, Scorby and Keeler steal one of the pods. Scorby blows up the base, killing Winlett and nearly killing the Doctor and Sarah Jane as well.
That’s all in the first two episodes of this six-episode serial. The remaining four episodes find the Doctor and Sarah Jane (and eventually UNIT) invading Chase’s estate and trying to destroy the Krynoid before it grows big enough to destroy all animal life on Earth. Chase becomes possessed by the Krynoid, Keeler turns into fungus, and several people are strangled by plants. There’s even a death by mulcher.
The Seeds of Doom is one of those serials that has really stuck with me. I think it’s because of how desperate the Doctor gets once he realizes that he’s failed in his mission to keep the Krynoid from escape Antarctica. Tom Baker was usually known for being the funny Doctor but, in this episode, he’s almost an action hero, smashing through windows, beating up numerous henchpeople, and maybe snapping one man’s neck. (It’s hard to tell if the Doctor killed him or just rendered him unconscious.) It’s a different side of the Doctor but it’s appropriate because, for once, the Doctor isn’t one step ahead of everyone else. There’s no time for fun and games when the Krynoid has already taken over Chase’s entire estate.
Harrison Chase was one of the best of the Doctor Who one-off villains. Tony Beckley gave a great performance as Chase, playing him as someone who was an evil fanatic even before his mind was taken over by the Krynoid. By the end of the serial, as he rants while bullet fly around his estate, Chase has become a truly wonderfully loathsome character. Watching him, it’s easy to imagine Tony Beckley playing a minor villain in a James Bond movie. (Sadly, Tony Beckley died just four years after playing Harrison Chase.)
Still, the moment that has always stuck with me is Sarah Jane discovering Keeler, covered in spores and grasping onto his last strands of humanity before becoming a Krynoid. There was always considerable debate over whether or not Doctor Who was too scary for its target audience. That debate usually seems pretty dumb but I imagine The Seeds of Doom inspired more than a few nightmares.
The Seeds of Doom brought the 13th season of the classic series to an impressive end. The Doctor and Sarah Jane decided to take a vacation. They had earned it.
Teenage Tory (Jennifer Aniston) is visiting her family’s new North Dakota farmhouse when the dimwits hired to paint the place accidentally set free the Leprechaun (Warwick Davis), who had been trapped in the basement ten years earlier by the former owner. The Leprechaun wants all of his gold. It’s too bad the painters already found the gold and one of them somehow swallowed a piece. This Leprechaun gets all of his gold back except for that one piece. Leprechauns don’t stop until they get all the gold. It’s the Leprechaun code.
