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I have to say the criticisms of this episode that I've read seem silly to me. Bad special effects? When were the effects in this series ever good? In my view it has only two flaws -- it's too long to watch comfortably in one sitting and there are way too many escapes and recaptures, the Doctor & Sarah spend half the episode getting tied up and the other half escaping, and there is a ridiculous Dr. Evil moment where the villain, Chase, devises an elaborate and horrible death for the Doc and then leaves the room, allowing him to escape, instead of just shooting him....sigh...don't these crazy bad guys ever learn?) -- but they are pretty minor in compared to what works.
"Seeds" begins at a lonely scientific research station in the Antarctic, a la "The Thing." And just like "The Thing" the bumbling scientists unearth something from the ice that would better have been left alone. In this case, a large seed pod. They send pics back to London, where the Doctor identifies the pod as a sentient alien plant called the Krynoid, which has unlimited growth potential and a big appetite for human flesh. He and Sarah make tracks for the South Pole to make sure the ticking green bomb stays frozen and harmless. Unfortunately, the bumbling scientists put the thing under a lamp, and before you can say "Good god, what is that thing?" one of them is infected.
More unfortunately, a flora-crazed English millionaire named Harrison Chase (beautiful performance by the late Tony Beckley) has also learned of the pod's existence and sends a sneering mercenary named Scorby (another terrific turn by big John Challis) and a biologist named Keeler to collect it by force.
"Who" always excelled at loosing multiple plot elements at each other like bumper cars, and the crash-bang of the first two episodes of "Seeds" is great, creepy fun, as the good and bad guys square off while the infected scientist, now essentially a large angry yucca plant, wanders around strangling people and not caring whether they are good or bad. And just when you think it's over -- bingo, another pod appears. D'oh!
Eventually the action shifts back to England, where Scorby has delivered the second pod to the crazy Chase. He orders Keeler to feed it, and poor Keeler ends up doing just that, in a nasty case of "being consumed by your work." Meanwhile, the Doctor and Sarah blunder around the huge mansion and grounds, getting captured and escaping so many times, you wonder why Scorby doesn't just shoot them. Eventually, however, the Krynoid (nee Keeler) gets loose, grows to gigantic proportions, and starts eating Chase's employees en route to germinating hundreds of pods which will destroy the world (or at least everything not made of salad materials). The climax comes with the Doc, Sarah & Scorby trapped inside the crumbling mansion being hunted by the completely loco Chase, while UNIT soldiers fight the Krynoid outside. One small drawback is that while this is another UNIT episode, once again, there's no Brigadier and no Benton -- that's kind of like a peanut butter sandwich with no jelly. You can do it, but why?
"Seeds" is a great episode with some tremendously wonderful dialogue ("Don't be silly, Sarah -- of course he has to kill us, we keep interfering!") that also brings up nostalgia/horror for 1970s fashion -- c'mon, where else can you see a bad guy in zippered platform boots, a turtleneck shirt and a jacket with a butterfly collar....without a time machine, that is?
DVD Description
When scientists unearth two seed pods deep in the arctic permafrost, the Doctor and Sarah Jane rush to... Read more
