March 6: The Smugglers Episodes 1 & 2
So we're starting season 4 (though The Smugglers is actually the last story filmed as part of season 3), but we're picking up where we left off at the end of The War Machines, with Ben and Polly pushing their way into the TARDIS. The telesnaps hint that the last scene of The War Machines might have been played in over the theme music before going back to the titles -- obviously it's hard to tell, but, at least as they're displayed in Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #34: The Missing Episodes - The First Doctor (to give the publication its full title), the impression is one of title sequence, scene, title sequence (and certainly the theme music runs much longer than normal, supporting this).
It's got to be said, Ben and Polly sure do adjust to having been taken back in time rather quickly. There's no extended period of disbelief, like Steven had. Instead it's "Well, guess we really did travel to the past, then." This means that they can launch themselves into the proceedings without too much angst; indeed, Polly seems to treat it as a big lark, while Ben seems more concerned about making it back to his ship on time. But it doesn't take long for the Doctor to be captured by pirates who are convinced he knows something about a hidden treasure, and for Ben and Polly to be framed for the murder of the churchwarden. They're thrust into a terrifying situation, cut off from their own time and place, and the only person who can get them back home has been taken to who-knows-where. Ben and Polly cope with this, er, quite well, actually. They don't seem terribly concerned about the murder charge, and they're more interested in finding the Doctor so they can leave.
Episode 2 shows the Doctor in charge, wrapping Captain Pike (leader of the pirates and owner of a metal pike in place of a hand) around his finger. Well, maybe. There's a suggestion that Pike's toying with the Doctor as much as the Doctor is toying with him, but before Pike can begin to lay into the Doctor, he's interrupted by a new arrival. It seems there's an opportunity for some smuggling to be done...
Meanwhile, Ben and Polly, displaying a surprising amount of resourcefulness, trick their jailer into thinking they're witches who've taken over his soul and will kill him unless he lets them go. Then they go back to the church to look for clues into the warden's murder. They don't find any clues, but they do find a revenue man named Josiah Blake, who has tracked the smugglers to the church crypt. They tie him up, thinking he might be connected to the murder, and Polly goes to tell the Squire. Only it turns out the Squire is in on the smuggling, and isn't going to let a stranger tell her that his new-found compatriots Pike and his crew are involved in anything dodgy (as Polly recognizes Cherub as the man who kidnapped the Doctor). But he will lock Polly and Ben back up in jail...
So the thing about these first two episodes is how entertainingly unsophisticated they are. There's none of the nuance of The Massacre to be found here, nor much of the humor of The Gunfighters. Instead this is more a literary pastiche, recalling the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as J. Meade Falkner's novel Moonfleet. This means it moves along at a relatively fast clip, wasting no time exploring the morality of Captain Pike or of the Squire. Pike and his men are pirates, so therefore they're not to be trusted, and the Squire is in league with them, so he's no more trustworthy than anyone else. The only one who seems to have a glimmer of morality is Joseph Longfoot, and he's killed for his sins by Cherub in the first episode (in one of the few remaining clips from this serial -- funny how some of the most violent and terrifying moments that were deemed unsuitable for broadcast in Australia and New Zealand are now all that remain of these episodes). Ok, and maybe the innkeeper's helper Tom, but he's portrayed as fairly thick and thus a figure of fun at Ben and Polly's expense. No, this is an uncomplicated tale (despite all the treachery on display thus far), and there's nothing wrong with that. It makes for entertaining listening at the very least.
March 7: The Smugglers Episodes 3 & 4
Having spent the first two episodes acquainting us with the various players of his piece, writer Brian Hayles now begins to really set things moving. The Doctor and Kewper trick their captor Jamaica by reading fortunes from playing cards, while the revenue officer, Blake, takes Ben and Polly into his custody -- but not to arrest them. No, he believes their story, and needs their help against the Squire and his smuggling ring.
Episode 3 is more bloodthirsty than the last two, it must be said. Captain Pike kills Jamaica for allowing the Doctor and Kewper to escape, and the moment where he wipes Jamaica's blood off his pike hand with a handkerchief before dropping the bloodied cloth onto Jamaica's sightless, staring corpse is quite horrific (so horrific, in fact, that it survives as one of the Australian censor clips). And Jacob Kewper is killed by Cherub at the cliffhanger, a knife thrown in his back. But these moments punctuate the main decision: now that the Doctor has been reunited with Ben and Polly, he decides to find Avery's treasure, thus giving him a bargaining chip with Pike that will hopefully delay him, giving Blake time to bring the militia back. The Doctor partly works out the clue given to him by Joseph Longfoot in the first episode26, but realizes there should be a fourth name in the rhyme. (And does the meter of the rhyme bother anyone else? It goes, "This is Deadman's secret key: Smallbeer, Ringwood, and Gurney", but everyone says "GURney", with stress on the first syllable. I really want it to be "GurNEY" though, to match the meter of the first line's "SECret KEY". But anyway.) But Cherub's overheard enough, and he's come to claim Avery's treasure for himself.
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| Pike kills Cherub for his treachery. (The Smugglers Episode 4) ©BBC |
It's sort of hard to come to a firm conclusion about The Smugglers: on the one hand it's quite entertaining while it lasts, but there's not much of a lasting impact -- little of what happened remains in the memory afterwards. It's a relatively simple, uncomplicated tale. Not that that's a problem, but it does make this one of the more forgettable stories we've had so far. Still, it's not trying to be anything deep; as I said last time, it wants to be a literary pastiche, and at this it succeeds well enough (even if the lack of a young boy pressed into service by pirates means it's not quite as close a match as might be hoped for). Not every story has to be Marco Polo.
And then, in the cliffhanger into the next episode, the Doctor notes that the TARDIS has arrived "at the coldest place in the world", and you suddenly realize that Hartnell's time is almost up...
March 8: The Tenth Planet Episodes 1 & 2
And so here we are: William Hartnell's final story as the Doctor. You can't help but feel a little saddened by that. And look, another story with special credits, with this time the opening and closing credits getting special "computerized" treatment (albeit different from the version in The War Machines). And there's apparently something incredibly difficult about spelling writer Kit Pedler's name: having spent all of The War Machines as "Kit Pedlar", here episode 1 sees him become "Kitt Pedler". But anyway.
For being the first "base-under-siege" story, though, it's surprising how many of the soon-to-be-familiar features are already in play: isolated base with little to no help of outside support, check; international crew, check; commander of the base accustomed to doing things his way and unwilling to listen to anyone else, check. Really, where The Tenth Planet differs is how it shows us things happening beyond the base. We get a little look into the headquarters of International Space Command in Geneva, where the Secretary General of ISC tries to deal with this new planet in his own way, even if that primarily means trying to get a hold of the Polar Base. We also get a newsreader keeping us up to date on the latest events (played by, entertainingly, one Glenn Beck -- presumably not the same one as the American conservative pundit). And we get a look into the space ship that the South Pole is trying to guide down, with Zeus 4 being flown by an Australian and a black Englishman, a sign of how forward thinking the production team is trying to be. It's the second time in as many stories that a black actor gets a prominent role, and Glyn Williams seems to be a more thankful role than Jamaica was.
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| The Cybermen announce that the people on the base will become like them. (The Tenth Planet Episode 2) ©BBC |
So other than the Doctor being largely sidelined from the action, so far this has been an entertaining and memorable story. Let's hope they can keep it up.
March 9: The Tenth Planet Episodes 3 & 4
The credit gremlins are back; having previously called Kit Pedler "Kitt" in Episode 1, now Gerry Davis becomes "Gerry Davies" in Episode 3...
This is the first episode of The Tenth Planet credited to both Pedler and Davis; it's also the episode in which we suddenly learn that Snowcap Base has a doomsday device called the Z-Bomb (and note that's an American "Zee-Bomb", rather than a British "Zed-Bomb") that General Cutler wants to fire at Mondas, even though it might mean also destroying the side of the Earth that happens to be facing Mondas at the time. You can tell Cutler's coming unhinged (which wasn't the case in episode 2, aka five minutes earlier from the story's point-of-view), particularly because the following conversation takes place:
CUTLER: Request permission, sir, to take defensive action against this planet... The Z-Bomb, sir. Mounted in the warhead of a Demeter rocket and fired at Mondas, it could destroy it.This is apparently grounds for Cutler to go ahead and use the Z-Bomb, despite being specifically told not to. And so the rest of the episode consists of Ben and Polly trying to stop Cutler from launching the Demeter rocket -- which he apparently only wants to do to save his son from Mondas's power drain (his son having been sent up to rescue Zeus 4 at the end of episode 2). It feels more like the story is marking time than actually advancing forward -- and again, note that this is the first episode of the serial for which Gerry Davis receives a co-writer's credit.
WIGNER: We can't take the risk. This might have disastrous effects, both on Earth and the atmosphere. We would have to consult our top scientists.
CUTLER: But there isn't time for consultation. This is an emergency! ...
WIGNER: No, General. You must take no precipitous action. This is quite out of the question.
CUTLER: Yes, sir. But do you do give me authority to take any action necessary against the Cybermen?
WIGNER: Yes, of course. You must do all you can.
CUTLER: Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.
Of course, that could also be because William Hartnell has taken suddenly ill with bronchitis, and so the episode has had to be hurriedly rewritten around the Doctor's absence. This does also mean that, as the next episode is currently missing from the archives, the last existing Hartnell episode is one that Hartnell's not actually in. Of course, the Doctor's been playing such a limited role in the story that his absence doesn't derail things too much; his important lines of dialogue are redistributed (noticeably with Ben's comment that "He said eventually it [Mondas] would absorb too much energy and burn itself out -- well, shrivel up to nothing. So all we've got to do is wait!" -- referring to a conversation that we never witness), and everything seems to proceed as normal. As I said, marking time. There's some stuff with sabotaging the rocket, and that's about it.
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| William Hartnell changes into Patrick Troughton. (The Tenth Planet Episode 4) ©BBC |
The Cybermen are unsuccessful in their efforts, and when Mondas ends up melting away, the Cybermen go with them, shriveling away into empty suits. But, as the Doctor says, "It's far from being all over." The Doctor has been taken to the Cybership, where Ben rescues him and Polly after Mondas is destroyed, but the Doctor isn't himself. He seems worn out and humorless; none of his usual vocal tics are present (the "hmm"s and "eh"s), and he's much more concerned with getting to the TARDIS. And it's a good thing, too; when we head back inside the Ship, things are going crazy, with controls moving by themselves and flashing lights everywhere. And then the Doctor collapses to the floor and changes...
The Tenth Planet isn't a terrible story. It has a reputation for not being very good, but this is a bit unfair. As I said before, much of what it's doing simply hasn't been done before, and while there will soon be plenty of opportunities for them to refine the basic plot structure, here we see their first effort at it, and there's nothing really wrong with it. It does admittedly lose its way in episode 3 and doesn't really regain its focus until Cutler is killed early in episode 4, but everything else is done in a convincing manner, and you can see the effort that's gone into the production, both with the casting and the design (seriously, the design of the control room in the Snowcap base is really something wonderful). It feels important and memorable, even before the climactic final scene.
But that scene is important for a reason, and so it's with a heavy heart that we bid farewell to William Hartnell. He may have occasionally been lumbered with some awkward scripts, but he himself always found a way to make the most of the material, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that, regardless of the Daleks cementing the show's popularity, Doctor Who would never have survived without William Hartnell and his key role in making the Doctor an odd yet relatable figure. You can't help but feel a little bad for him, forced out of a role he loved so much, and you know that the show will never be the same without him, as the final person to be there since the beginning moves on. So hooray for William Hartnell, one of the finest and most underrated actors to ever play the Doctor. He shall be missed.
March 10: The Power of the Daleks Episodes One & Two
And then they take this strange new character and insert him into a story about an isolated Earth colony. But unlike the previous story, this isn't a base under siege from outside forces; this is a colony with its own internal struggles (there are mentions of rebels and political factions), and one into which a dangerous element has been introduced: the colony's scientist, Lesterson, has discovered a space capsule in the mercury swamps. The Doctor gets mistaken for an official from Earth called the Examiner, and so he discovers what Lesterson has found: a capsule containing Daleks -- Daleks which might not be as dead as initially thought...
This leads to the climax of the episode, when a Dalek glides into the meeting room where the Doctor is talking to Governor Hensell. The Dalek seems to recognize the Doctor, focusing in on him, and we finally believe that yes, this is in fact the Doctor, the same basic man as William Hartnell. But then, as the Doctor tries to convince the colonists of the Daleks' nature ("The thing it does most efficiently is exterminate human beings. It destroys them, without mercy, without conscience"), the Dalek begins chanting, "I am your servant" over and over, drowning the Doctor's warnings out, and you realize how devious these Daleks are...
March 11: The Power of the Daleks Episodes Three & Four
It's interesting; we've seen Daleks be deadly, and we've seen them be heartless, conquering dictators, but we've never seen them behave this deviously before. These two episodes show us the Daleks acting with great cunning, seemingly helping the human colonists, but really just trying to get them to give the Daleks power and materials to use for their own ends.
But what's perhaps more fascinating is how David Whitaker manages to keep the Daleks in the front of the audience's mind while focusing on the human interactions and the power struggles going on in the colony. The rebels, being led ostensibly by Lesterson's assistant Janley (who makes herself thoroughly unlikeable by the end of episode four), are much more concerned with seizing control of the colony (for reasons never made explicit beyond power for power's sake), while Lesterson wants to be left out of the politics. Bragen, the colony's security chief, has his own agenda. And meanwhile the Daleks are gathering strength...
Another interesting thing to note comes in episode three. Once the Doctor realizes that no one is going to listen to his order to destroy the Daleks, he decides to take matters into his own hands and creates a device to kill them off. He's unsuccessful, of course (or else this story would be over), but it shows how this new Doctor is more concerned with doing what he thinks is best without trying to convince others of his position, as one might imagine William Hartnell's Doctor doing. And the end of that scene, where the Dalek futilely clicks the spot where its gun was, is quite powerful.
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| The Doctor realizes the Daleks must be reproducing. (The Power of the Daleks Episode Four - from Doctor Who Photonovels: The Power of the Daleks - Episode Four) ©BBC |
March 12: The Power of the Daleks Episodes Five & Six
The Daleks are reproducing, making new Daleks from the materials the colonists have provided them. Witnessing this process sends Lesterson over the edge, and he spends episode five in hysterics, desperately trying to cut the power to the Daleks and to have them destroyed; but no one will listen to him, and the Doctor is currently in prison, put there by Bragen to stop him exposing Bragen as the true leader of the rebels. And in fact Janley is against the idea of destroying the Daleks, as she thinks the Daleks will aid the rebels in their revolution and is ruthless in her commitment to that goal.
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| Governor Hensell is exterminated on Bragen's orders. (The Power of the Daleks Episode Five - from Doctor Who Photonovels: The Power of the Daleks - Episode Five) ©BBC |
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| "Daleks conquer and destroy!" (The Power of the Daleks Episode Five) ©BBC |
The Power of the Daleks is an exercise in mood. It sets up the Daleks in the first episode, but it waits until the last to finally set them upon the unsuspecting colonists. This means that their presence dominates the intervening episodes, even though they're doing little more than insinuating themselves into the colony's workings and routines. It's therefore the human drama that drives this story forward, and fortunately this is one of David Whitaker's strengths. He makes the conflicts interesting, so that you can't help but be drawn in, even while you know that the Daleks are dangerous and can't they see that? Whitaker sets up the contrast between the Daleks and the colonists in such a way that the pointlessness of the politicking is made eminently clear.
And it's into this environment that the new Doctor Who is dropped. I've mentioned a couple of differences between Troughton's Doctor and Hartnell's earlier (such as Troughton's decision to get on with destroying the Daleks without convincing the authorities he's right), but what's most striking is how quickly we come to accept this new man as the same as the old. By putting the new Doctor up against the Daleks, we're shown how, even though he may look different and act different, at heart he's the same man, dedicated to fighting injustice and stopping an evil force like the Daleks. (Although stop and ponder for a moment how the show's focus has changed since its beginning; there's nothing to suggest in An Unearthly Child that the Doctor wants to stop evil, but by this point it's a natural aspect of the Doctor's character -- and it'll be overtly stated as such in just a few episodes' time, in The Moonbase.) Like Polly and then Ben, we come to accept that this new man is the same Doctor as before, so that by the end of the story, Patrick Troughton is the Doctor.
So The Power of the Daleks is a wonderful story, full of strong characterization and a sense of impending doom. This story remains high on my wish list of "stories I'd like to see returned to the archive" (even if it's very low on the list of "stories likely to be returned to the archive", with only two copies of the prints known to have been sold overseas, one of which was returned to London and (presumably) destroyed). A fabulous story to introduce the new Doctor with.
March 13: The Highlanders Episodes 1 & 2
Er. Well, Patrick Troughton was the Doctor...
Meanwhile, Polly becomes decidedly mean-spirited, repeatedly berating the girl Kirsty for crying and calling her a "stupid peasant" after she refuses to go along with Polly's half-cooked scheme about getting money to bribe guards. It's not very pleasant. And yes, maybe Kirsty is a bit weepy, but given that this story takes place during the immediate aftermath of Culloden, I think it's safe to say she's had a harder day than Polly has.
And I should probably mention Jamie McCrimmon, seeing how important he'll become to Doctor Who, but to be honest here he's just one of a cast of guest characters designed to take up (story) space while the Doctor and Polly get on with the real story -- Ben's stuck with them, but he's mainly an eyewitness rather than a proactive player in these first two episodes.
But it's not just odd characterization; you get the sense that the production team don't actually believe in the idea of an historical story. Traveling back in time isn't about learning things any more; it's about a place where you can have an adventure romp, because watching Troughton clown around for a while is apparently intrinsically more entertaining than actually exploring history. The days of The Massacre are long gone.
You can sum up this attitude with the fact that it's not The Smugglers, a story about 17th-century pirates, that has a pirate captain walking around actually saying "Arrrrrrr": it's The Highlanders.
March 14: The Highlanders Episodes 3 & 4
These two episodes are better than the last two. Polly's less horrible to Kirsty and the Doctor seems more interested in helping out the Highlanders than last time. And the Highlanders themselves get the chance to be more than just cyphers. Ben also has more to do, with his tearing up of the indentured servitude contracts being a highlight.
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| The Doctor and Ben encourage Lieutenant Ffinch to help them. (The Highlanders Episode 4 - from Doctor Who Photonovels: The Highlanders - Episode Four) ©BBC |
Actually, that may get at the heart of the problem with The Highlanders. The fact is, there actually was an issue of Highlanders being sold into slavery in the Americas, just like Solicitor Grey's plan here, but this serial barely touches upon the problem, other than as a reason for events to happen. This is more a pantomime than anything else, and most of the characters are simply two-dimensional, with nothing for the viewer (well, listener now) to really get to grips with. At least The Smugglers (an oddly similar story to this in some ways) had William Hartnell to concentrate on; Patrick Troughton is being a deliberate antihero here, to create a contrast with his predecessor, but it just means that it's difficult to let him be the focus of the story.
The Highlanders would end up being the last "pure" (i.e., no aliens) historical story for fifteen years, and Innes Lloyd suggested it was because the audience wasn't as interested in those stories, and ratings would suffer. An examination of the facts reveals this wasn't actually the case, but the fact is that Lloyd was justifying a decision after the fact to eliminate a type of story he didn't believe in, convinced that there was nothing worthwhile about journeying back into recorded history. The Highlanders is a better example of the contemporary production team's attitude than any number of interviews. It does its job (and even introduces new companion Jamie!30), but there's no ambition here beyond that.
March 15: The Underwater Menace Episodes 1 & 2
It's not just comics influencing this story though; as the story progresses it becomes clear that, as guides like The Discontinuity Guide and About Time 2 have pointed out, this is the Doctor Who equivalent of a '30s adventure serial like Flash Gordon or (more pertinently, given that it, like The Underwater Menace, takes place in the sunken ruins of Atlantis) Undersea Kingdom. The dangers the TARDIS crew encounters in episode 1 (such as passing out from the increased pressure -- the Doctor calls it "caisson disease", but that's actually decompression sickness, the opposite effect) feel like the cliffhangers of an old-style serial. It's particularly hard not to make the comparison when our heroes are being slowly tilted into a well as a sacrifice to the fish goddess Amdo, and only the Doctor's note to a mad scientist (which he signs "Dr W" -- fortunately this is the last time this occurs) saves them from sacrificial death by shark. And then we see the Fish People, and...well, we'll talk more about them tomorrow, when episode 3 comes around. This episode ends with Polly being prepped to be turned into one of these Fish People, which is actually quite horrific in general but particularly so given the style this story has adopted (and we know this because it survives as a censor clip) -- watching Polly cry out and struggle in desperation while two white-coated assistants hold her down is quite disturbing.
Episode 2 of The Underwater Menace was, until October 2013, one of the most recent recoveries, having been returned in 2011.31 This means that The Underwater Menace is now 50% complete, and thus a ripe candidate for animating the missing two episodes. The downside is that there have been delays with the animation (and the current word is that it won't be completed at all), which means that episode 2 still isn't available commercially. However, an unrestored copy (with the censor clips inserted back in) is available online, so that's what I've ended up watching -- the first time I've ever seen this episode.
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| The Doctor demonstrates to Ramo how Zaroff intends to destroy the world. (The Underwater Menace Episode 2) ©BBC |
March 16: The Underwater Menace Episodes 3 & 4
So episode 3 of The Underwater Menace is one of those episodes that the BBC always retained, which means that for the longest time this was the main impression people had of this story. Out of the context of the rest of the serial, episode 3 is a weird affair, with bizarre moments interspersed with the children's television version of melodrama. In context it's still a strange episode, but at least it makes a little more sense following on from episode 2.
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| The Fish People listen to Sean and Jacko's exhortation to go on strike. (The Underwater Menace Episode 3) ©BBC |
But once the Doctor announces his intention to kidnap Professor Zaroff, the episode goes to pot. There's a ludicrous chase through an Atlantean bazaar as the Doctor runs around half-disguised to try and lure Zaroff away so they can kidnap him, which ends in the Doctor blowing some sort of powder through his recorder into Zaroff's face. Meanwhile Sean and Jacko, two of the miners that Ben and Jamie befriended, convince the Fish People to go on strike, thus providing more chaos in Atlantis as the food supplies run out. The Fish People are actually a rather good design (although the different "stages" of Fish People are a little odd, as some appear to be wearing diving masks rather than having fish eyes), but then we're treated to a long sequence of Fish People floating through the water, accompanied by a soundtrack that seems to presage the more experimental scores of the early '70s. Again, it's actually quite an impressive-looking sequence (and allegedly was so expensive to film that it's the reason why episode 3 was never junked) -- it just has nothing to do with the ongoing storyline.
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| "NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN STOP ME NOW!" (The Underwater Menace Episode 3) ©BBC |
Episode 4 is back to the soundtrack and telesnaps, which is a shame since it seems like, after episode 3's efforts to mark time in as outrageous a way as possible, this is concerned with actually wrapping up the storyline. One does wonder about the Doctor's plan to destroy Atlantis by letting the sea in as a means of stopping Zaroff, which seems a bit like overkill, but desperate times and all that, I suppose. Even this doesn't seem to slow down Zaroff though, and it's only a bit of trickery from the Doctor and Ben that prevents him from getting to the controls to detonate the explosion that will end the world. He's still trying until the very end, when he drowns from all the water rushing into Atlantis. The Doctor, to his credit, does actually try to go back and save Zaroff, but Ben won't let him on account of the rapidly-rising sea. And thus the world is saved.
Make no mistake: The Underwater Menace is frequently silly and has little in the way of nuance or subtlety. But because it made it clear from the onset that it was going to be a cheesy old-style film serial, I find that I don't mind it as much as The Highlanders. That too ended up being a silly and unthreatening romp, but it looked like it might become something more serious; there are no such illusions about The Underwater Menace. It's set in a stagey-looking Atlantis because that's how these things go, and Zaroff wants to destroy the world simply because he's a mad scientist, with no further explanations necessary. But crucially, it manages to be entertaining throughout; Jamie is settling in naturally, Ben and Polly are giving fun performances, and the Doctor is becoming the figure we're familiar with from later stories -- and even his awful disguise in episode 3 feels more "right" than the disguises he wore in The Highlanders. It shouldn't be taken too seriously, and I'm not sure you'd ever want another story like this again, but in its own decidedly B-movie way The Underwater Menace succeeds.
March 17: The Moonbase Episodes 1 & 2
The animation here is quite good -- a significant improvement over The Reign of Terror by the same people, as the editing here isn't nearly as distracting. It'll never replace the real thing, but it sure beats peering at telesnaps.
It's an entertaining first episode; there's some fun larking about in spacesuits on the moon before the Doctor and his companions head inside the eponymous moonbase, the crew of which is suffering from a mysterious illness that seems to strike at random. Somewhat surprisingly, the Doctor isn't instantly under suspicion for this, and he gets to spend the first episode filling in the audience on the basic facts: "Every school kid knows about the Gravitron in there," Hobson says. "Ah, yes," the Doctor replies, "it must be about the year 2050, Ben." It's actually 2070, but only twenty years off isn't bad. And it turns out that this is another remote base crewed by an international staff (although, as About Time 2 points out, with Americans curiously absent) -- at which point we note that writer Kit Pedler's last story was The Tenth Planet, which also had an isolated international base and Cybermen.
To his credit, director Morris Barry seems to be holding back the big reveal (based on both the telesnaps and the animation), showing us hints of Cybermen (including, memorably, a jug-handled shadow) without giving away the whole thing until the cliffhanger -- at which point we see that the Cybermen have been massively redesigned. They're a lot sleeker than the Tenth Planet version, with solid metal faces, three-fingered gloves, and cables running along their limbs (actually this was present in the originals too, but it took a bit of faith to see them as such).
Episode 2 has always existed in the archives, so we're back to the real thing. It becomes clear that the moonbase is under attack by the Cybermen for some reason, but via stealth rather than force -- which means that Hobson, the leader of the base, refuses to believe Polly's story that there are Cybermen around. "There were Cybermen, every child knows that, but they were all destroyed ages ago." Instead Hobson's finally decided that the Doctor and company are worthy of suspicion for this inexplicable disease, but the Doctor denies being responsible and declares his intention to help find the real cause, because "there are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything that we believe in. They must be fought" -- as good a summation of this phase of the show as any other (and a significant departure from the ethics of the show when it began).
So to help find the cause he naturally causes as much havoc as he can, interrupting people while they're working by taking their shoes off and snipping bits of fabric from their clothing. Yet he can't find any cause, and it's only pure chance that he learns it's the sugar that it's infected -- because apparently "pok[ing] into everything" didn't include the sugar. (This isn't the only bit of silliness on display, by the way; we also learn the fact that the Cybermen can seal up a giant hole in the side of the moonbase with a few sacks of food, but when they go in and out there's a momentary drop in air pressure.)
And then, because Hobson didn't believe the stories about Cybermen, that means that this episode's cliffhanger also gets to be a dramatic reveal of a Cyberman. You start to get the feeling that maybe the current production team don't have that much faith in their audience's ability to notice they're getting the same thing twice...
March 18: The Moonbase Episodes 3 & 4
Back to animation for episode 3, which on the one hand is rather a shame, as there's a lot of Cyberman action in this one, but on the other hand, it's also the episode with the Cybermen denying emotion while taunting the humans. "Only stupid Earth brains like yours would have been fooled," they say, and then they seem to mock the base crew, as the crew realize that the drops in pressure are related to the Cybermen entering the base: "Clever, clever, clever." It also doesn't help that the Cybermen's plan to devastate the surface of the Earth makes no sense. Hobson suggests they're just taking revenge, but the Cybermen disagree; no, they're just wiping out anything that might be a danger -- as if that makes any sense. But unfortunately it's the closest thing we get to motivation here.
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| Jamie and Ben attack the Cybermen. (The Moonbase Episode 3 Animation) ©BBC Worldwide |
Episode 4 is back to video, and we get to see the Cybermen march for real and attack the base. Their first blast punctures a hole in the base, which the crew is fortunately able to plug with a plastic tea tray. It's a nice idea, but where was this thinking when we saw the gaping hole into the base back in episode 2?
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| The Gravitron sends the Cybermen into space. (The Moonbase Episode 4) ©BBC |
It's not that The Moonbase is a bad story; there are moments that are quite nice, in fact. But we can't ignore the fact that we already essentially had this story this season with The Tenth Planet -- this is a bit more claustrophobic affair, since there aren't any shots of Geneva, and it's nice to see Hobson, the leader of the base, actually survive the story with both his skin and his sanity intact, but other than that this is just a remake of that story. We even have a spacecraft sent into the sun and Ben defeating the Cybermen in the middle of the story, requiring them to have to come attack again. And when you factor in the other bits of silliness in this serial (the Doctor's haphazard analysis of the base, the Cybermen's inconsistent emotional qualities, that hole blocked by sacks of flour), you can't help but feel that there's a contempt for the audience here: if they liked The Tenth Planet, they'll like it again, just redressed slightly with better-looking monster costumes, and they won't demand anything more than that.
March 19: The Macra Terror Episodes 1 & 2
No episodes of The Macra Terror exist, so back to the soundtracks...
So writer Ian Stuart Black has given us a similar sort of set-up here as in The Power of the Daleks: we have an isolated Earth colony with something horrible lurking at its heart. But while The Power of the Daleks had its enemy in plain view, here there's just a suggestion of something horrible. On the surface in fact the colony seems quite pleasant, with people acting contentedly. There are some awful cheery songs playing to motivate people (drawn, it seems, from British holiday camps, where holidaygoers would go on a strict regimented vacation run by relentlessly cheery hosts). But there's one person, Medok, who's not buying into things, because he's seen something horrible ("Have fun while you can, before they crawl all over you!" he memorably yells at one point). What's interesting is that the Doctor is immediately drawn to Medok and seems to find him more trustworthy than those running the colony -- perhaps not surprising, given how thuggish chief of police Ola is, but on the other hand the Pilot is perfectly friendly and reasonable; yet it's Medok that the Doctor believes. It turns out he's right to, as there is something horrible lurking at the heart of things: something terrible with glowing eyes. And here we have to wonder if the actual video was as dark and murky as the telesnaps, or whether you could actually kind of make out what you were looking at.
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| A Macra attacks Polly. (The Macra Terror Episode 2) ©BBC |
March 20: The Macra Terror Episodes 3 & 4
So how do you get out of a cliffhanger where everyone's seen that the Controller of the colony is himself being controlled by an alien creature? Why, just order the people to forget what they've seen!
This episode doesn't have much happen, but there's quite a bit of Troughton flexing his mental muscles; he works out a complicated formula regarding the gas and he also tries to work out the purpose of the gas. He, Jamie, and Polly have been sent to work in the mines, which pump a huge amount of gas for an unknown purpose. Ben is still working for the colony under hypnosis, but he's starting to break free of their influence a bit. And Jamie manages to find a way out of the mine into a disused shaft, where he encounters some Macra. And that's basically it; it doesn't sound like much, but it is an entertaining episode -- hearing Troughton at work is a delight, and you wish you could see it. Here, more than anything that's come before, is the first real instance of Troughton's Doctor as we know him, where he finds the right balance between quiet humor and quiet investigation. No slamming heads on tables or dressing up as old beggars here.
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| The Doctor and Polly find the Macra in the control room of the colony. (The Macra Terror Episode 4 - from Doctor Who Photonovels: The Macra Terror - Episode Four) ©BBC |
Still, this is a story that seems very visual -- there are lots of sequences of throbbing heartbeats and quiet music with no dialogue to illuminate what's going on, which suggests that this is another one of those stories that we really need to see to evaluate. But unlike, say, The Celestial Toymaker, what we have on the soundtrack inspires confidence. In a story about paranoia and possession that's also about giant crabs, there's an element of subtlety that's rather lacking, but what we get instead sounds like a solid, entertaining tale.
March 21: The Faceless Ones Episodes 1 & 2
Episode 1 exists! Hooray!
This story sees Troughton's first real direct conflict with authority figures. He's had some conflict before, particularly in the last story, but there the Pilot was rather ineffectual as a leader. Here he's up against the Commandant, who can more than hold his own. We also see the first real interplay between Jamie and the Doctor, as the Doctor repeatedly elbows Jamie as he blurts out things about the TARDIS. And set against this, the murder mystery with the airline pilots from Chameleon Tours who are definitely not of this Earth is proceeding nicely, as they first kidnap Polly and then bring a strange being to the medical facility: an eponymous "faceless one"...
Episode 2 continues the fun, as Polly reappears but apparently knows nothing of the Doctor or Jamie. So we get another possession of a companion, but this one doesn't even have something for Polly to struggle against, since it seems to be Polly but not Polly. Then there's some fun in a photo booth, as the Doctor and Ben flash cheesy grins at the camera while they work out their next move; Jamie looks completely confused, wonderfully. Meanwhile the "faceless one" gains a face, as it appears to take on the appearance and identity of one of the air traffic controllers -- a creepy idea, especially when you realize this must be what happened to Polly as well...
Then the Doctor goes to clash with the Commandant some more about Chameleon Tours, while Jamie meets up with plucky Liverpudlian Samantha Briggs, who's investigating the disappearance of her brother on Chameleon Tours. And then Ben is kidnapped by the Chameleon Tours people too! It's a fun, exciting episode, with an intriguing mystery and enough incident along the way to keep the audience tuning in. So far so good.
March 22: The Faceless Ones Episodes 3 & 4
Episode 3 was returned in 1987, so we can also watch this.
There's not much that actually happens in this episode, but it's filled with enough incident along the way to stay entertaining. We do learn a little more about Chameleon Tours, and the Doctor gets a chance to do more investigating. Ben and Polly are still missing, which means the Doctor and Jamie get more opportunities to really bounce off each other, and they make a splendid double act. The Doctor also comes in contact with a new authority figure, Detective Inspector Crossland, who, it turns out, was the partner of the man murdered in episode 1 -- and unlike the Commandant, he's willing to believe the Doctor's story. This means the Doctor gets to go back into air traffic control with the Commandant.
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| The Doctor demonstrates an alien freezing pen for the Commandant, DI Crossland, and Jean Rock. (The Faceless Ones Episode 3) ©BBC |
And then DI Crossland heads onto one of the Chameleon Tours airplanes and learns that the people onboard are being kidnapped and disappearing on the plane...
Episode 4 is another enjoyable episode, even if it does have a silly "set up a slow moving laser beam to kill our heroes and then leave the room" action from the villain (and here we note that Goldfinger came out only three years earlier). Sam then goes off to get onto a Chameleon Tours flight, and Jamie doesn't want to let her, so he steals her ticket while giving her a kiss -- the telesnaps don't tell us how chaste the kiss was, but it sounds like it was more than just a peck on the cheek...
And the other events are nice; the Doctor investigates the medical facility and discovers the real nurse in a cupboard, and Jean Rock learns that Chameleon Tours picks up people at airports around Europe, but it never drops off passengers -- while the Doctor seems to have already worked out what's happening. "How high can fighters go these days, Commandant?" he asks. When told the answer is "ten miles plus," he's dismissive: "How futile." And indeed, we learn that the airplanes are actually spaceships, heading up to a station in orbit. But what the Doctor doesn't know is that Jamie is on board (albeit not miniaturized like the other passengers since he was sick in the bathroom at the time). It's a good story, paced and written well -- let's hope they can finish strong.
March 23: The Faceless Ones Episodes 5 & 6
Episode 5 sees things starting to fall into place; the Doctor gets a lead as he proves that Meadows has been replaced by a Chameleon, and Meadows shows his willingness to cooperate -- self-preservation is clearly a higher priority for him than loyalty. Although this is the part where we learn that the Chameleons lost their identities in a "gigantic explosion." I'm not sure how that works, but I guess we can give them the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, Jamie sneaks aboard the Chameleon space station but is soon caught, and Sam is at the mercy of the Chameleon nurse. It's quite entertaining, and things progress as the Doctor enters and the nurse is killed when the white armband is ripped off her double (although oddly, the Doctor asks Meadows where the nurse keeps her original despite having discovered it last episode -- maybe he's just making sure Meadows isn't lying).
And then Jamie's identity is taken over by a Chameleon too! That's very effective, not just because it means the Doctor has now lost all three of his companions to the Chameleons, but also because possessed Jamie talks in a standard Received Pronunciation accent instead of his usual Scottish one; a nice subtle way to make it clear that Jamie's also not Jamie. But we're moving into the final phase, as the Doctor heads on board the final Chameleon flight, posing as a Chameleon himself. Except the Chameleons haven't been fooled, and he's captured basically right after he arrives on their space station...
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| Captain Blade informs the Doctor that they know he's not a Chameleon. (The Faceless Ones Episode 6 - from Doctor Who Photonovels: The Faceless Ones - Episode Six) ©BBC |
And finally, on film, we get to see Ben and Polly again (having been gone since episode 2), only for them to say goodbye. It turns out that it's the same day Ben and Polly left (which suggests that War Machines were terrorizing London while Chameleons were kidnapping people across Europe), and so they want to resume their own lives. Farewell then to Ben and Polly, who were also seemingly written out of a story halfway through like Dodo -- but at least this time we got a final goodbye scene with them.
The Faceless Ones is a good, enjoyable tale. You get a sense of the show finding a viable direction, as the idea of people putting their lives into the hands of the people operating the planes mixes with the fear of loss of identity. There are also some good authority clashes with the Doctor that turn into a grudging trust, and really the first Jamie/Doctor interplay we see. It's also paced well, which helps no end. The final result is the best story since Troughton made his debut in The Power of the Daleks.
March 24: The Evil of the Daleks Episodes 1 & 2
The identity of that person is ultimately one Edward Waterfield, who seems to be going out of his way to demonstrate that he's not from around here: he has no knowledge of contemporary slang and generally has the manner of an awkward Victorian gentleman. He's also supplying what appear to be excellent replicas of Victoriana, which seem to come from a strange machine in his back room -- which is where he speaks to his unseen and unheard bosses. Gee, I wonder who they'll turn out to be?
The Doctor successfully follows the trail of breadcrumbs left for him and meets up with Waterfield's assistant Perry, who lets him know that Mr. Waterfield would like to meet with him at 10 pm. Meanwhile, Waterfield's hired goon Kennedy goes snooping, and comes face to eyestalk with a Dalek...
Episode 2 is yet another one that exists as the result of a return from a private collection (and thus gives hope that there are other episodes out there from stories with only a few prints struck -- The Evil of the Daleks appears to have only had three copies made for international sales, yet one of the episodes managed to survive), and so we can see what's going on. This means we see Kennedy's extermination at the top of the episode, and we see the Doctor and Jamie fall into the trap that Waterfield has laid. The rest of the episode takes a bit of a turn, as we move from Chelsea 1966 to outside Canterbury 1866 and the home of Theodore Maxtible. It seems he and Waterfield were conducting experiments with mirrors and electricity; when they tried static electricity, they attracted the attention of the Daleks, who have forced the two to work for them in trapping the Doctor. The Daleks are being quite devious here; they've kidnapped Waterfield's daughter Victoria in order to get his cooperation, and they seem to have some sort of hold over Maxtible as well. Maxtible surmises that the Daleks want to isolate the Human Factor, to work out what it is that humans have that allows them to defeat the Daleks and then use that knowledge against them. And it seems that they want Jamie to be the test subject to help isolate that factor. Only it seems that someone has kidnapped Jamie...
These two episodes are a bit pacy, but they're also effective in setting up the mood of the piece. There's a sense of danger even before the Daleks make their appearance, with a few bits of mystery added in to help keep things interesting. It's a good start -- we'll have to see what happens next...
March 25: The Evil of the Daleks Episodes 3 & 4
So. The Evil of the Daleks is a seven episode serial for some reason35, and the upshot of this is that episodes 3 and 4 seem to be largely padding. Of course, this being a David Whitaker story, it's at least largely entertaining padding, but padding nevertheless.
The best bits of episode 3 involve the Doctor manipulating Jamie into rescuing Victoria Waterfield from the Daleks so that he can be studied and the Human Factor derived from his actions. We've never seen the Doctor be this devious before, and especially not with his friends, so it's an interesting development. The Doctor is apparently only cooperating with the Daleks because they have his TARDIS in their custody, and he's willing to place his TARDIS above all else, even though his actions will lead to the creation of a race of super Daleks. There's also a moment where the Doctor tries to have himself used for the tests instead of Jamie, only to be told by the Daleks, "You have traveled too much through time. You are more than human", which is a fascinating spin on the Doctor.
The rest of the episode primarily involves Maxtible bringing in a mute Turk named Kemel to be opposed to Jamie during his rescue effort, and an odd subplot with a man named Arthur Terrall, who apparently paid Toby to kidnap Jamie but then remembers nothing about it. The implication seems to be that he's under the control of the Daleks but is fighting it, but it's handled so oddly that we're never certain what Terrall's motivations are.
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| The Doctor programs the Human Factor while a Dalek looks on. (The Evil of the Daleks Episode 4 - from Doctor Who Photonovels: The Evil of the Daleks - Episode Four) ©BBC |
There's also a bit of stuff with Waterfield and Maxtible as they remove Toby's body from the house (exterminated last episode while looking for things to steal), where Waterfield announces his intention to "confess my part in all that has happened" once Victoria is safe. It helps humanize Waterfield and also show that Maxtible is a bit of a snake, as he's ready to kill Waterfield until Terrall prevents him. And we learn why Maxtible is going along with the Daleks: not because they have some hold over him as they do Waterfield, but because of simple greed; the Daleks are apparently going to tell him how to transmute metal into gold.
But yes, episode 4 is mainly about Jamie and Kemel's slow journey through Maxtible's house of horrors (and just how big is this house anyway?), with occasional prefilmed inserts of the Doctor deciding what parts of Jamie's reactions should make up the Human Factor (prefilmed because Troughton's on vacation this week). These two episodes could have been condensed down into one without any problems, but as it is, we get a journey that was probably a lot more tense and dramatic when seen rather than when heard.
March 26: The Evil of the Daleks Episodes 5, 6, & 7
Episode 5 is also padded, albeit not as padded as the last episode -- but really episodes 3, 4, and 5 could have been condensed into two episodes without any real problems. We do get some interesting moments with the Doctor and Arthur Terrall (where we learn that Terrall seems to be incapable of drinking, and that he also has magnetic properties, apparently because the Dalek control box is flooding his system with static electricity), and we also learn that Maxtible is an accomplished hypnotist, and that he used this skill to get Victoria to go to the Daleks.
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| The humanized Daleks play a game with the Doctor. (The Evil of the Daleks Episode 5 - from Doctor Who Photonovels: The Evil of the Daleks - Episode Five) ©BBC |
Skaro's certainly a more abstract-looking place than the last time we visited, way back in The Daleks. There's a lot more black space and sharp angles to be seen here, which gives the place a rather German Expressionist look. Into this city enter Victoria and Kemel, Maxtible, and later the Doctor, Jamie, and Waterfield. This episode's about moving the pieces into their final positions, but it does so very well. And then, at the end, we meet the big daddy of them all: the Emperor Dalek. This is clearly a huge creature, ten feet high at least, that the telesnaps only begin to hint at. It turns out, under the Emperor's orders, that the Daleks have been more devious than the Doctor thought; instead of isolating the Human Factor, the Doctor has allowed them to isolate the Dalek Factor, which they will use to spread Dalek-ness through all of human history, forcing the Doctor to use his TARDIS to do so...
What's this? That's right, three episodes today! (Otherwise episode 1's would be the second episode of a given day until Colin Baker's era.) So let's finish off this story -- and season 4 -- by listening to episode 7 of The Evil of the Daleks...
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| The Emperor Dalek. (The Evil of the Daleks Episode 6 - from Doctor Who Photonovels: The Evil of the Daleks - Episode Six) ©BBC |
The Evil of the Daleks is quite an accomplished piece of Doctor Who. Yes, some of the science is ludicrous (though no more than any other Whitaker script), but there's a confidence on display here that more than makes up for this. The Evil of the Daleks was intended to be a "final end" for the Daleks (Terry Nation intending to take his creations to America for a TV series that never happened), and there's clearly a desire to send them out in style. And in this, they succeed admirably. It's padded fairly obviously in the middle, but it's also a suitably epic confrontation between the Doctor and the Daleks, one that starts small but grows larger and larger until the fate of an entire planet is affected. An impressive achievement.
Yet it's a bit of an oddity for season 4. Season 2 saw Doctor Who push the boundaries of its format, and season 3 saw more of the same, just in new and different directions. Yet season 4 sees the series start to play it safe. After the newness of the base-under-siege format in The Tenth Planet, and the hand-off from one lead actor to another in the same story (handled in admittedly an impressively creative way), there's a feeling here of a lack of ambition. Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis are content to keep telling the same basic storyline from here on out -- there may be some alterations from story to story, but the basic concept of a crusader who repels aliens attempting to attack/infiltrate/kidnap us remains the same from story to story. And note that word "crusader"; the Doctor began this series as an explorer and a scientist, one who wanted to learn about the universe rather than shape it, but now he's simply there to fight "evil", because that's what he does now. The exploration and discovery is a sideshow to repelling the Alien Threat of the Month.
But it's clear that this is the show Lloyd and Davis want to make, and that anything outside that remit isn't worth doing in their eyes (stand up, The Highlanders). This method is a success, with ratings remaining steady throughout this period -- and the next season, which is arguably even more limited in its scope, is frequently hailed as one of the finest seasons of the entire series -- but that sense of wonder that characterized the early years is gone, and one gets the sneaking suspicion that the stories this season that are successful are successful in spite of this new direction, rather than because of it.
Footnotes
26 Yes, the names have changed slightly, going from "Smallwood" to "Smallbeer" -- this is because Terence De Marney, playing Longfoot, got the line slightly wrong in Episode 1.
27 And the possible exception of Episode 1 of The Ambassadors of Death, where (jumping ahead here) the Doctor's approach is pitched in such a way that it might be considered foreknowledge, but it could equally be logical thinking, knowing that the alien message will be repeated -- except then you have to explain why the sound of the message is familiar to the Doctor. But he spends the rest of the story as if he doesn't know how events are going to turn out, so we can probably safely rule out the "it's history to him" theory.
28 Actually, there's also an animated reconstruction on the disc, which is leaps and bounds ahead of the animation on The Reign of Terror -- but it obviously doesn't include any of the existing clips from episode 4, which is why I decided to go with the telesnap version.
29 Or so we're told. There's no evidence of this in the telesnaps, but presumably it's mentioned in the scripts.
30 A last minute decision of Innes Lloyd's, apparently, based on Frazer Hines' rapport with the cast and crew. According to Hines, they'd already recorded the scene on location where Jamie waves goodbye to the departing TARDIS and had to remount it to have him join up instead.
31 Along with "Air Lock" (Galaxy 4 episode 3). Honestly, pay attention.
32 Personal anecdote time: when I first started dating my now-wife, I changed the start-up sound on her computer to this line, so every time she turned on her computer Joseph Furst yelled triumphantly at her.
33 Public service announcement: the region 1 version of The Moonbase was mastered incorrectly as progressive video, accidentally eliminating the VidFIRE process that gives them that "studio video" look, as well as making the episodes run about a minute longer than they're supposed to. If you care about such things (and you should), the region 2 DVD doesn't have this problem.
34 Unlike the Cybermen from The Tomb of the Cybermen, the Moonbase Cybermen don't have cables coming out of the bottom of their chest unit. And yes, I'm the sort of person who knows these things.
35 Actually, is there a satisfying answer as to why season 4 has an odd number of episodes? Season 2 had an odd number because of the Planet of Giants incident, and season 3 has an odd number as a result of needing to make up that "lost" episode. But season 4 seems to have an odd number just because the last two seasons did, rather than for any specific production-related reason.