The Dominators (1968) Review

Dominator: "I dare your show to last longer than Star Trek!"

The Dominators is a return to the Hartnell-style "Flawed Race vs Evil Race" stories. It's quite creative and has more substance than many of the Troughton "classics", but it's let down by a thin plot and awful work by the clothing department.

PLOT

The crew plan to take a holiday on the pacifistic planet of Dulkis at the same time as it's being sabotaged by the eponymous Dominators, a fearsome warmonger race with some battery issues. Since the Dulcians are useless at fighting, it's up to our heroes to outwit them.

It's great stuff, to be honest. The Dominators are captivating foes with a rather unique motivation(the very clever can spot a reference to this story in Aliens In London/World War Three) and funny 1960s box-shaped robots who make Zarbi noises.
The entire story(with a few exceptions) takes place on a deserted island that was previously used for bomb testing. 
As I said before, though, the costuming is the worst I've ever seen. I could have survived the Dominators' super mega ultra uber shoulder pads, but the Dulcians' skirts are... well, stupid. Criminal, if you consider the fact that Zoe is in a swimsuit.

CHARACTERS

I love the Dominators. The leader(Rago) is an overly cautious individual who doesn't understand the threat of the "primitives" while Toba(Rago's number one... guy) just wants things to go boom. They represent two extremes and play off each other in spectacular fashion.

The Doctor does a lot of comic relief, which is both endearing, but gets kind of annoying after a while(I would've loved the scene where the Doctor realises the island is about to blow up with them if they hadn't had the scene where he realises there's a Quark on the other side of the capsule trip). Troughton makes the most of this serial, but I have a nasty feeling that we've seen the last of his manipulative side. Oh well, at least he's a brilliant comedian too. I can live with that.

Jamie is extremely active in this story, which I enjoyed. He and a Dulcian, Cully team up to battle the Quarks and he manages to support the Doctor right when he needs him. See, Moff-no, no, I have to get over it.

Zoe, on the other hands, just sort of goes around and says the technobabble. Shame. She's one of my favourites already. Can't wait for her to do something. Did I mention The Mind Robber is next? I barely know what the story is, but I have heard of a famous pose on the TARDIS console...

The Dulcians themselves are... well, imagine Ashton Kutcher levels of entertaining... with the possible exception of Cully, but he's a middle-aged man in a skirt. Not a lot you can do with that.

NOTES

*Why did the Dominators think Zoe was one of the stupid ones? As far as they were concerned, she was a Dulcian!

*Hey, Arthur Cox appeared in The Eleventh Hour! That's cool.

*I'd say the Quarks were unintimidating, but I did hear the part about their power being very low. Also, at least it's an interesting design. Nice Lego legs. The costuming designer obviously had a kid, judging from this and the Ice Warriors' hands.

*To go off-topic a little, Santa Claus is coming to Doctor Who! If RTD had done that, there would've been a riot. Moffat has desensitised the public to crap like that and Listen.

*I wonder what the last episode would've been about if the BBC hadn't cut it out. Personally, I think they cut the wrong episode. The stories usually sag in the middle(like, cut out Episode 3 or 4, not 6!) and dump actual plot in the end. 

BEST LINE

"Well, this goes in here, I think and it comes out of here..." The Doctor explaining how laser guns operate to Rago.

CONCLUSION

They spend most of the time running around the island, but it's a solid adventure at worst.