I picked up Network's BD collection of this series in a sale and I've started watching it, having only ever seen a few of the episodes on original transmission, thanks to STV's erratic scheduling. First thought is it looks absolutely gorgeous on Blu Ray and many of the SFX are still quite impressive 45 years on. Second thought is that the BD set doesn't seem to be in the same order as the episode guide I was looking at, not that it seems to matter. Third thought is fuck me this is boring! Dull characters, tedious and repetitive scripts and surprising amount of thoroughly unjustified pretentiousness. I've just watched Christopher Lee being completely wasted, tomorrow I expect to be watching Peter Cushing being completely wasted (I've seen that one, but not for years). Series 2 is less boring if I remember correctly.
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Taken as it it, S2 is pretty enjoyable all round, with only the occasional clunker. The two part story The Bringers of Wonder is probably the most overly horrific, with its unpleasant aliens who look like giant pot noodles impersonating the Alphan's loved ones to nefarious ends. A far better bet is the following The Lambda Factor, which has the usual sort of whirly space phenomenon giving some of the Alphans psychic abilities and powers. Needless to say, one of them goes nutty as a result, and uses her powers to firstly kill a love rival (by psychokinetically mashing up her innards - very nasty!) and then to take over Alpha itself. Deborah Fallender's performance is quite intense and sadistic, especially in the scene where she forces Tony to crawl over and kiss her boot, and then forcibly transforms Maya into a caterpillar and traps her in a box with no air holes. It's also got a fantastic performance from Martin Landau, who is being harassed by the imagined ghosts of some former colleagues whom he left to die after contracting a space plague on a mission to Venus.