The Claws of Axos - Broadcast and Reception

Broadcast and Reception

David J Howe and Stephen James Walker, in their 1998 book Doctor Who: The The Television Companion, described The Claws of Axos as "a story that manages to combine an effective alien menace with some excellent location work to present a seamless tale of invasion by stealth". Despite noting that some aspects were unoriginal, they felt that the story was overall "highly imaginative and inventive", with the Axons well-realised in production. In 2009, Mark Braxton of Radio Times praised the action, production values, and Delgado's Master, though he noted that there were some "lapses of judgement and quality", and that he was not a fan of Dudley Simpson's electronic score. The A.V. Club reviewer Christopher Bahn wrote that the serial was "entertaining and far from terrible" and the Axons worked in terms of "conceptual horror", but the story suffered from "the badly mishandled subplot about Chinn" and Filer was a "superfluous" character who would have been better if a character who was already established was used in his place. DVD Talk's John Sinnott gave the serial four out of five stars, highlighting the "tight" four-part structure and the rapport between Pertwee and Delgado. He noted that the choice to make the villains "more subtle and devious" was a good departure and the Axons looked "great". Russell Lewin of SFX gave The Claws of Axos three out of five stars, describing the script as "choppy" and with production that struggled to realise its ideas. However, he noted that it would have looked modern when first broadcast and the last episode went in "some interesting directions". In 2010, the magazine named the comedic tramp stumbling upon the Axons as one of the silliest moments in Doctor Who's history.

The Lovely Invasion, an episode of the BBC Radio 4 series Nebulous, parodies this story: the world falls in love with the Lovely, a naked alien trio offering to "Lovelify" the Earth until they are nuked by Professor Nebulous (who had unfortunately just learned after setting the bomb, too late to disarm it, that the Lovely really were seeking nothing more than Earth's friendship).