An Hour of Who a Day: 10/02/14

October 2: Warriors' Gate Parts Three & Four

This story continues to impress, both in terms of the script and the visuals. It looks gorgeous, with the inspired use of Tharils and Time Lords moving through black-and-white photographs, and the script is incredibly clever -- the scenes near the end of part three, which show the Tharils' empire at its height, mixed with their cobwebbed decline, are an intelligent example of scripted interlocking scenes brought to life by dynamic direction (and the touch of the Doctor in part three knocking over the over-flowing goblet that he had previously righted in the future is a fabulously subtle one) -- plus it gives us that great cliffhanger where the Doctor, who'd been previously with the Tharils just before the Gundans had attacked, suddenly finds himself back in the present, surrounded by Rorvik and his men.

The script also does clever things by making the wounded Tharil (Lazlo, according to the credits) friendly towards Romana, and by using the mirror as a gateway only for the Tharils (who've learned how to "travel on the time winds") and those they allow to pass with them. Thus it's not a gateway that Rorvik can use, even though he's seen the Doctor pass through. The portrayal of Rorvik's people (where he has to keep yelling at them to pay attention to him, while they're more focused on lunch) is also really well done; none of your well-oiled Star Trek-esque crews here, but a somewhat unruly bunch of slavers.

And it all comes together so well in part four, as the Doctor and Romana try repeatedly to stop Rorvik from destroying everything (which he's already doing by having an incredibly dense ship in the gateway), only to be repeatedly told by Biroc to do nothing ("It is done"). This means that we get some great scenes, such as the Doctor taunting Rorvik's crew with the MZ and the Doctor and Romana's futile efforts to stop Rorvik from initiating a backblast (because, as Romana puts it, "The backblast backlash will bounce back and destroy everything!"), which even allow Rorvik to get in some mad ranting ("I'm finally getting something done!"). Then there's the moment where Lazlo rescues all the imprisoned Tharils after killing Sagan -- who really has been quite ruthless in his attempts to revive a Tharil for navigational purposes, but who nevertheless dies in a surprisingly shocking way: it might be the open-mouthed scream left unvoiced, but it's quite a brutal death. And, atypically for Doctor Who but entirely in keeping with this story, the Doctor and Romana finally realize that the solution really is to do nothing -- "if it's the right sort of nothing", as the Doctor puts it.

And at the very end, Romana decides not to travel on with the Doctor, but to help the Tharils free their enslaved brethren instead. It's a bit sudden a departure (although there is some set-up in the story, particularly in part one), but it feels right, and the dialogue we get is so much better and neater than any more emotional, drawn-out scene would have been. "What a moment to choose!" the Doctor cries. "But it is, isn't it?" Romana replies. "A moment to choose." And so the Doctor gives her K-9 (who will presumably be repaired on the other side of the mirror) and the TARDIS leaves as Rorvik's backblast does indeed destroy everything. "Will Romana be all right?" Adric asks afterwards. "All right? She'll be superb," the Doctor replies with a grin. And farewell to K-9, a prop that the show has clearly become increasingly less fond of (witness K-9's treatment throughout season 18, and note that Warriors' Gate -- a story that includes him failing to shoot Rorvik and has Packard chucking him bodily out of the slaver ship -- is his best story of the season), but which is nevertheless still endearing. Doctor Who has clearly moved on and outgrown the tin dog, but for much of the audience it just won't be the same without him.

It's a script that sparkles with class and wit (some great lines from parts three and four: "One solid hope's worth a cartload of certainties"; "Soon we won't be better off than that chap over there [indicating an ancient skeleton]. When the pickles run out"; "You've seen our past, you've seen our present. You were right. We abused our power. But judge whether we've not suffered enough." "As you said, the weak enslave themselves." "The time of our enslavement is over"; and so many more), and it's beautifully directed by Paul Joyce (his only directorial job of Doctor Who, largely for the same reasons Lovett Bickford only directed The Leisure Hive¹¹³). Chris Bidmead must have been thrilled to get a story like this, both poetic and scientific, as it's everything he's been trying to achieve this season. It's frankly astonishing that this story isn't more highly regarded in fandom (115th out of 241 in the most recent Doctor Who Magazine poll), but that's okay; it will just take time, as more people discover (or rediscover) this gem of a tale. The rest of us already know that Warriors' Gate is utterly fantastic.

¹¹³ Which, as my brother pointed out, I didn't actually explain. Both Lovett Bickford and Paul Joyce, interested in providing a new dynamic look for the show, ended up falling behind schedule as a result of their directorial choices -- in Bickford's case, an additional (and expensive) studio block had to be booked. This didn't happen on Warriors' Gate (possibly because it had happened on The Leisure Hive), but the result instead was, it seems, an increasingly tense production that was visibly taking its toll on Joyce -- and at one point apparently production assistant Graeme Harper took over a great deal of the work. The visuals on both stories would seem to justify the problems (Nathan-Turner was pleased with how they both turned out), but nonetheless neither director was asked to return to the show.