Review of the Complete Story:
THE TALONS OF WENG CHIANG is a well-remembered serial from the Tom Baker era of DR WHO, and for good reason: in the long history of the show, this one is completely unique. It's a wonderfully Gothic pulp adventure that feels like something Sax Rohmer would have scripted for the show: the Doctor and Leela are up against the most sinister kind of Yellow Peril in the dimly-lit streets of East End London...
What's extraordinary about this story is how well they manage to evoke Victorian London on what would have been a very low budget. The streets are wonderfully atmospheric and the settings range from dank sewers to cobwebby alleyways and run-down music halls. You can almost see Jack the Ripper creeping around in the background!
Baker adopts a Sherlock Holmes-style personality in this one and even wears a deerstalker to hammer home the similarities. The story has lots of fantastic elements and if the special effects aren't up to scratch, then that's part of the charm. John Bennett is a delight, yellowed-up as the sinister Chang, but it's the creepy homunculus (played by dwarf actor Deep Roy) who everybody remembers as one of the most sinister life-size dolls put on film or TV. Watch out for a delightfully hammy Christopher Benjamin as the proprietor who becomes drawn into the mystery. My only real complaint is that the final identity of the masked villain turns out to be so ordinary and familiar from other DR WHO stories - something more uniquely horrific would have been more appropriate, I feel...
THE TALONS OF WENG CHIANG is a well-remembered serial from the Tom Baker era of DR WHO, and for good reason: in the long history of the show, this one is completely unique. It's a wonderfully Gothic pulp adventure that feels like something Sax Rohmer would have scripted for the show: the Doctor and Leela are up against the most sinister kind of Yellow Peril in the dimly-lit streets of East End London...
What's extraordinary about this story is how well they manage to evoke Victorian London on what would have been a very low budget. The streets are wonderfully atmospheric and the settings range from dank sewers to cobwebby alleyways and run-down music halls. You can almost see Jack the Ripper creeping around in the background!
Baker adopts a Sherlock Holmes-style personality in this one and even wears a deerstalker to hammer home the similarities. The story has lots of fantastic elements and if the special effects aren't up to scratch, then that's part of the charm. John Bennett is a delight, yellowed-up as the sinister Chang, but it's the creepy homunculus (played by dwarf actor Deep Roy) who everybody remembers as one of the most sinister life-size dolls put on film or TV. Watch out for a delightfully hammy Christopher Benjamin as the proprietor who becomes drawn into the mystery. My only real complaint is that the final identity of the masked villain turns out to be so ordinary and familiar from other DR WHO stories - something more uniquely horrific would have been more appropriate, I feel...