December 27: Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death Parts One, Two, Three, & Four / Scream of the Shalka Episodes One & Two

North American VHS
release (from the
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So after the TV Movie came to nothing¹⁶¹, Doctor Who started to fade from the public consciousness -- not completely, as sales of the video versions had always been healthy and you might find some of the novels in a bookstore, but without a continuing programme the show started to become a memory.  And it was largely as a bit of nostalgia that the show returned for a comedy sketch in 1999, this time for a different charitable cause from Dimensions in Time.  That had been for Children in Need; this was for something called Comic Relief.

But unlike some of the spoofs that had gone before, with lame jokes about wobbly sets and Daleks that can't climb stairs (because no one saw Remembrance of the Daleks), Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death (to give it its original broadcast title) is an affectionate parody from a fellow fan and professional television sitcom writer named Steven Moffat.  And you can sense the love Moffat has for the show.

It's set after the TV Movie -- Rowan Atkinson is explicitly the ninth Doctor -- and in twenty minutes it both makes some pointed jokes and reminds you why the show was so popular in the first place.  Atkinson looks like he's playing out a dream role; his Doctor is played with serious intent and he comes across as a very credible choice for the Doctor -- which makes all his deadpan jokes even funnier.  Julia Sawalha is fun and charming as the Doctor's companion Emma, and Jonathan Pryce steals the screen by playing the Master incredibly OTT, trying to retain his dignity every time the Doctor punctures his self-inflated ego.

It's full of jokes (including a time travel one that in hindsight looks like Moffat flexing his muscles) and some fabulous performances -- including some wonderful cameos as the Doctor keeps regenerating.  So we get Richard E. Grant as the tenth Doctor, Jim Broadbent as the eleventh Doctor, Hugh Grant as the twelfth, and Joanna Lumley as the thirteenth (in a nod to the suggestions that the Doctor could be a woman), and each of them make their mark in only a relatively short time, establishing each as different but the same.  It's really wonderful to see.  And then we get Daleks too!  (Probably because Terry Nation's agent at the time he created the Daleks, Beryl Vertue, is Steven Moffat's mother-in-law.)

It's a cheeky but loving poke at a nostalgic favorite, pitched at just the right level, with jokes for both casual viewers and hardcore fans.  Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death is wonderful.

But obviously that wasn't meant to start a series up, and nothing seemed forthcoming for the next couple years.  There had apparently been a proposal or two in the meantime (a rising television writer named Russell T Davies pitched a low-budget version of the show around 2000 or so, and a producer named Dan Freedman had created an online audio story called Death Comes to Time in 2001-2002 and was clearly angling to start making real Who in the near future), but nothing had really come of any of it.  So, with the show continuing to fade, the BBC website (called BBCi at that time) decided to create the official ongoing adventures of the Doctor as a webcast.  Their debut story, scheduled to take advantage of the 40th anniversary in 2003, was called Scream of the Shalka.  But unlike the previous webcasts (Death Comes to Time, Real Time, and Shada with Paul McGann), which had been audio stories with still pictures, Scream of the Shalka was a fully animated story (from Cosgrove Hall, who you may remember from the animated episodes of The Invasion).

In some ways Scream of the Shalka seems to be avoiding mistakes made by the TV Movie -- we get a brand-new Doctor (this time played by Richard E. Grant -- yes, the same one as in The Curse of Fatal Death -- but sounding an awful lot like Paul McGann for some reason) but no time is wasted with regeneration sequences or anything like that; instead new elements (like the TARDIS mobile and the new look of the console room) are introduced as they come up, tantalizing the viewer rather than clubbing them over the head with it.

They're also really trying to make this Doctor seem as different as possible from any others.  He seems incredibly sarcastic and extremely unwilling to help -- he repeatedly rails at the sky about being forced to assist the humans and tries to only do the bare minimum.  It's something of an off-putting characterization, but deliberately so -- one wonders if they'll soften this at all in the subsequent episodes.

The actual storyline feels generic (alien invasion) but with interesting bits (the Shalka are a special type of "goo" that live in volcanic rock and can control people with sound -- the eponymous scream), but with two short episodes it's hard to get a good grip on it yet.  Still, there are tantalizing bits and enough unanswered questions (such as, most obviously, why are the Doctor and the Master now friends and traveling together?) to keep you intrigued.  I'm curious to see where they go from here.







¹⁶¹ Well, nothing in TV terms.  In the world of merchandise the TV Movie led to the establishment of the eighth Doctor as the current one, which meant that he was now the Doctor featured in Doctor Who Magazine's comic strip and was also the star of his own line of novels published by BBC Books (having taken the licence away from Virgin Publishing right around the time the McGann film came out).  But those weren't the sort of things the general public were really aware of.

December 26: Dimensions in Time Parts One & Two / Doctor Who [The TV Movie]

And so now we've moved on to 1993.  Doctor Who has been off the air for four years now, but the show's thirtieth anniversary is coming up.  An effort to make a direct-to-video episode failed (for reasons not worth going into -- but there's a nice documentary on the Inferno Special Edition DVD if you're interested), but John Nathan-Turner (still nominally in charge of the show, as he's been responsible for clearing various video releases and putting together some compilations as well) doesn't want to let this anniversary go without some sort of commemoration.  The result is Dimensions in Time: take a two-part mini-episode with as many returning Doctors, companions, and monsters as they could throw in, mix them all up with popular BBC soap EastEnders, and see what comes out -- all under the pretext of charity.  (Indeed, one of the agreements for this special was that everyone would give their time for free so long as this special wasn't exploited commercially -- which is why you'll never see an official video release (though it's not hard to find online, if you're curious).)

Dimensions in Time is notorious in fandom, and if you want to take it seriously as part of Doctor Who (though no one has ever wanted to) then it's an incredibly frustrating piece of nonsense -- one that manages to be silly and rather pointless (the resolution is particularly dumb, as it depends upon the Rani (the main villain) being stupid and grabbing the Doctor's companion (who's also switching between different companions, somehow) when she's Romana and thus another Time Lord, and then allowing some flagrant technobabble to save the day) at the same time.  To the people who were hoping for the show to come back in some form, this must have seemed like a flagrant slap in the face.

The sixth Doctor with the Brigadier. (Dimensions in Time
Part Two) ©BBC

Now, though, with Doctor Who firmly reestablished as one of the BBC's flagship shows, this looks more like a strange curiosity in hindsight.  It looks like a testbed for some new 3-D technology involving how the brain perceives movement -- which means that the camera is constantly spinning around the performers (sometimes inducing a feel of dizziness for the viewer) -- more than a serious effort to bring the show back in any form, but the basic idea (the Rani is messing up the Doctor's time-stream to stop him from interfering with her plans to put him in a time loop forever) actually isn't that bad.  And there is something rather wonderful in seeing all the old Doctors back in some form, along with some companions -- McCoy and Aldred in particular seem like they've never been away, so effortlessly do they slip into their old relationship.  And so the first four minutes or so are generally entertaining -- it only starts to go horribly wrong when the Rani introduces a bunch of enemies of the Doctor (err, including some that shouldn't be enemies -- there's an Argolin, the Dragon from Dragonfire, and a really unhappy-looking Time Lord among all the other costumes they've pulled out of storage), at which point it just turns into a stupid runaround where they just try to match up Doctors and companions in classic and/or interesting ways (perhaps most notably, the sixth Doctor finally gets to share some screen time with the Brigadier) until the episode's over and the Rani is defeated.

It's incredibly silly and it has some atrocious dialogue ("Pickled in time, like gherkins in a jar!"), but at least it's short -- and now that this isn't the BBC's final word on Doctor Who, it's less of a bitter pill to swallow.  It's awkward in many places and daft in many others, but if you can just sit back and accept that this was for charity, as a way to raise some money while seeing some old friends, then there's actually a bit to enjoy about Dimensions in Time.  Seeing Jon Pertwee back in action alone almost (almost) makes this worth it.

But that was all the Doctor Who we got...until 1996, when a brand-new made-for-TV movie graced our screens -- the final product of a long gestation period.¹⁵⁹  And not only is this movie explicitly a continuation of the show we last saw in 1989, but it's also designed to be a pilot for a new series -- one that would be made in America.  Obviously that series never materialized, but we did get this -- technically called just Doctor Who but usually referred to by various nicknames (one of my favorites being "Grace: 1999").  I'll just be calling it the TV Movie.

It's a really strange beast though, the TV Movie.  It wants to be a brand-new, fresh start for the show -- but it also wants to acknowledge the past.  No, more than that; it explicitly wants to wallow in in-jokes, in references and little "kisses to the past" (as producer Philip Segal called them).   This is sort of fine when it's just sonic screwdrivers, jelly babies, and Seals of Rassilon (although one wonders what that fresh American audience made of those things), but whenever they want to do something a little further it seems to go wrong.  It's perhaps most obvious in the utterly bizarre opening, where high-pitched Daleks sentence the Master to death by extermination (complete with a shot of cat eyes, which might be foreshadowing his "goo snake" form but is probably intended to be a reference to Survival) and then invite the seventh Doctor to come get him (and let's set aside the problem of how Skaro can exist when it blew up in Remembrance of the Daleks, as life is too short).  And he does!  Without any problems, it seems!

Sylvester McCoy regenerates into Paul McGann. (Doctor Who)
©BBC Worldwide/Universal

It's also really strange how they introduce an old Scottish gentleman as the apparent hero but then only keep him around for about fifteen minutes before they kill him and turn him into Paul McGann.  It's nice to see Sylvester McCoy back (and no longer in that damn question mark pullover!), but it does give things a disjointed feel -- just as that American audience were starting to get the hang of things, they pull the rug out from under them and cast some new guy in the same role.  This is because the production team have decided that they need to have a regeneration sequence (so, a lot like Time and the Rani there), no matter what it might mean for the storyline.

To be fair, they do try to make a virtue of this.  Director Geoffrey Sax cleverly juxtaposes the changeover in Doctors with the Master-worm taking over the body of Bruce the ambulance driver, suggesting that these two are linked in some way (even beyond the "they're both Time Lords" connection).  Not only that, but the use of Frankenstein (from Universal Pictures, so they had the rights) to show what's happening to the Doctor's body is also nicely done.  It's just questionable whether this should have been there in the first place.

So we've got things included to make this more palatable for the fan audience.  But then they've also thrown in things to make this more palatable to an American audience -- or rather what network executives think will be more palatable for an American audience.  And so the Doctor is half-human, just like Spock from Star Trek (although this actually seems to be an artifact from an earlier draft, where the Doctor and the Master are brothers, their grandfather is Cardinal Barusa [sic], and their father was Ulysses, who came to Earth and married a human woman -- see, things could have been much worse¹⁶⁰); the TARDIS is disguised with a "cloaking device"; the world's most accurate clock is located in San Francisco (with banners that proclaim the beginning of San Francisco Mean Time -- let's hope this is a slogan rather than a genuine scientific move)... and the whole thing looks a lot like any other SF or drama show on Fox in 1996, and it's scored in a straightforward orchestral style -- the works of Tristram Cary and Delia Derbyshire are a long way from John Debney's Jerry Goldsmith-esque score.

It's not all bad, though, and in fact for the first half it's frequently enjoyable.  Minus the reservations about some of the decisions at the script level, this has moments that sparkle -- having Paul McGann pull the surgical wiring out of his chest to prove he's the same person as Sylvester McCoy is a good move, the way the Master gets Chang Lee to trust him is really nicely done, and the Doctor grabbing the police officer's gun and threatening to shoot himself is an incredibly Doctor-ish moment.  It's also well-directed by Sax -- no, scratch that; it's directed surprisingly well, with lots of interesting angles and shots to make this as dynamic a production as they can.  And Sax has gotten some good performances out of people: Paul McGann is pretty much on form from the get-go, with a sense of breathless energy that serves the character well; Eric Roberts has decided to play the Master as flamboyantly OTT, which makes him incredibly watchable (and threatens to steal the show from the hero when they're both on screen together); and while Daphne Ashbrook has decided to play Grace with a slightly kooky sense, as if she knows she's on Doctor Who, Yee Jee Tso as Chang Lee surprises by being incredibly charming, even when he's aiding the Master -- and so although he's ostensibly a villain it doesn't really feel that way.

The Doctor thumps the TARDIS console. (Doctor Who) ©BBC
Worldwide/Universal

But ultimately this story falls well short of the mark.  The problems it faces are rooted in the script, and while writer Matthew Jacobs does his best with the material he's given (with lots of quotable lines: "I love humans.  Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there"; "These shoes!  They fit perfectly!"; "This. Is. An ambulance!"; "I always drezzz for the occasion"; and many more), when it comes to working with all the nonsense inflicted upon him from earlier drafts he simply can't come up with a reason to make this work, either for the first-time audience (who presumably were confused by the technobabble and massive infodumps -- including, infamously, the speech to Grace in the park that starts with "He's planning to take my body" and ends with "...and he will take my body!") or for long-time fans (who just wondered what had happened to the show).  It's a script that has to satisfy so many different masters that the end result frequently lacks heart -- it's full of set-pieces without any understanding as to why those set-pieces should be there.

It's a lot better than it could have been (seriously, check out the Leekley Bible in the book Doctor Who: Regeneration if you want to know about some of the horrors that could have been inflicted), and there are some good performances here -- Paul McGann was a great choice of Doctor (as anyone who's listened to his Big Finish audios can easily attest) and it's sad he didn't get another real shot at the role on-screen (other than a quick episode that manages to be better in 7 minutes than the 86 minutes they aired in 1996).  It looks really good, thanks to Sax and his crew, and there's nothing it does that's horrifically vile or offensive.  Of course, it needed to be a lot more than that, and both as a pilot and as an episode of Doctor Who it's frustrating -- you can see that many of the right pieces were there, but they can't make them cohere into something worthwhile.  More than anything, the TV Movie suffers a death by committee -- no one singular authorial vision shines through (despite Sax's best efforts), and the result is a leaden mishmash.







¹⁵⁹ The TV Movie spent an incredibly long time in gestation -- its roots actually predate the end of the series.  Entire books have been written on the subject, but here's a brief synopsis of events (and this is putting it very crudely):
     There were a number of companies competing to make a feature film version of Doctor Who.  One of the ones that actually got some traction was Amblin Entertainment (yes, the Spielberg company), although this appears to have at various points been both a movie and a full-fledged series.  One of the biggest proponents of a deal on the American side was Philip Segal.  An agreement was reached, and while the production changed companies (Spielberg apparently gave the project to Segal when he got a new job elsewhere) the show was still a go -- only this time it would air on the American Fox network.  All of the negotiations and moves and script drafts dragged on such that it took until 1996 before they finally had something to show for it.  But in the meantime, rather than commit to a full series, Fox decided to just go with a pilot and see what the reaction was.  That reaction was strong in Britain but weak in America, and so the series was a no-go.
¹⁶⁰ And if this had been the case, you'd think it would have come up during The Myth Makers.

December 25: Survival Parts Two & Three

The Master is feeling the effects of the planet. (Survival
Part Two) ©BBC

The pointed critique of the "might makes right" culture continues in these last two episodes.  Sgt. Paterson talks a big game about being trained and knowing how to survive, but when push comes to shove he's useless.  Midge tries to become the stronger person by trying to kill Derek on the Cheetah World but ends up essentially enslaved by the Master.  And when Midge fails to kill the Doctor outright, the Master tells him to die ("Survival of the fittest.  The weak must be eliminated so that the healthy can flourish.  You know what to do, Midge").  It's not a story that has any sympathy for testosterone-fueled displays of force.

What Survival does have time for is a more overtly female approach.  Ace gets in touch with her feminine side and feels free as she starts to turn into a Cheetah Person (and the scene in part two, with the red moon reflected in the water, makes this connection clear), rejecting male ideas about what it means to survive.  From Karra the Cheetah Person's point of view, it's not about surviving or winning -- it's about the hunt, feeling the blood, satisfying the hunger.  But go too far the other way and you run the risk of turning into a Cheetah Person, of giving in to your base urges completely, of fighting with each other even though you're linked somehow with the planet and the fighting causes the planet to disintegrate -- and this risk seems to be heightened if you then turn those Cheetah Person tendencies toward male-dominated activities like war.  "If we fight like animals, we die like animals!" the Doctor shouts, refusing to give in (although the sight of the Doctor with cat eyes, as he prepares to kill the Master before he realizes what he's doing, is striking).

All right, so maybe this is taking things a bit too far, but the subtext is clearly there, even if it tends to remain a subtext.  But writer Rona Munro (the fourth woman to write for the series, after Barbara Clegg, Paula Woolsey (maybe), and Jane Baker), like all the best writers of the last few years, is using Doctor Who to explore topics that are meaningful to her while wrapping it up in an SF context.  The critique about "survival of the fittest" is definitely there, and in fact drives the whole episode.  The references to womanhood (the moon bit, the fact that the women turn into cats -- and note how Karra turns back into a human woman when she dies) are also definitely there.  Connecting the two themes takes a bit more work on the viewers' side.

But what's wonderful about Survival is that you can do this.  The pieces are there for you to interact with.  And what better way to explore these ideas of fighting and survival than with the Master?  This is probably Anthony Ainley's best performance in the role, and it's easily the best characterization of the character since his return.  Instead of giving him elaborate schemes to entrap the Doctor or take over the world, he's redesigned here to be the Doctor's opposite, with no more motivation needed than to use the Doctor to help him escape.  And if the Doctor dies or succumbs to the effects of the planet, so be it.  This is a Master operating on instinct.  The best thing about this is that the Master doesn't end up distorting the story around him; instead he enhances the themes, showing that using the Cheetah powers for selfish reasons is just as bad as giving into them completely.

Survival's an impressively layered story, and its strengths lie in challenging the audience while still providing an entertaining tale.  It confidently reasserts the basic principles of the show (as Terrance Dicks might say, "Never cruel or cowardly") and rejects the ideas of every man for himself.  It provides a new dimension for the show's ideas about the function of the companion -- no other story yet has brought the companion back to their home just to see what the old gang is up to, but that's a driving force here -- which will become a key part of the 21st-century version.  It provides us with reasons to think and reasons to cheer, all in a slick, self-assured package.  (And it manages to do this in three episodes, without the feeling that there are necessary explanations omitted in the interests of time.)  What better story is there for Doctor Who to bow out on?

The Doctor and Ace head off to new adventures. (Survival
Part Three) ©BBC

Because yes, this is the final story of Doctor Who's original run.  It's rather sad, that; this is a show that could have kept going for a good deal longer (particularly in its current incarnation, no longer slavishly deferring to the idea of "continuity" and what fandom at the time thought made a good story), and you get the sense that they could have gone anywhere from here.  Alas, it wasn't to be.

They had an inkling at the time that they weren't going to get a 27th season.  The reasons for this are a bit more complicated than you might think -- not only did BBC management not care for Doctor Who, but no one really wanted to produce it either (one of the reasons Nathan-Turner was producer as long as he was is because no one else was willing to be the producer).  Then add in the fact that a recent directive decreed that 25% of all BBC output had to be made by outside companies -- a situation which seemed to the BBC to be ideal for Doctor Who but which would take time to work out the details -- and you can see why the wind was blowing against another season of Doctor Who.   This is why Survival ends with that lovely little Cartmel-written speech from the Doctor (augmented by Dominic Glynn's gorgeously wistful little tune), because they thought it might be a while before the show was back:

There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream.  People made of smoke, and cities made of song.  Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, somewhere else the tea's getting cold.  Come on, Ace, we've got work to do.

It's a shame that they stopped when they did, though.  Season 26 has provided us with a run of stories even more confident and ambitious than last season's -- even Battlefield (the worst story of the season, which gives you some idea of how strong this year's stories have been) is full of good ideas and lovely moments, hanging on a narrative framework that's wonderfully overambitious.  Obviously the BBC's management weren't too keen on the series (or else they wouldn't have kept scheduling it opposite Coronation Street), and the ratings had been down, but in some ways that didn't matter.  John Nathan-Turner and Andrew Cartmel especially seem to have been delighting in telling audacious stories with complicated themes -- confident in the knowledge that they can be more adventurous and outrageous because no one in charge is paying them any attention.  (Cartmel once famously said after the fact that his goal as script editor was to bring down the government -- which gives you some idea of the sorts of things he was looking for and the commitment he was willing to give.)  They knew their days were numbered, but that didn't dissuade them.  It helped that they were aided by Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred, providing us with one of the best Doctors and one of the best companions (respectively) ever -- it's a shame they didn't really get to leave on their own terms.  The result was a show that was back on the top of its game and ready to take on the world.  It's hardly their fault the world wasn't that interested anymore.<sup>158







158</sup> After Survival Part Three I watched the 1990 edition of Search Out Science -- an educational show -- that features the Doctor, Ace, and K-9 (and can be found on the Survival DVD if you're interested).  To paraphrase About Time, it's proof, if nothing else, that children still wanted the Doctor around even if no one else did.

December 24: The Curse of Fenric Part Four / Survival Part One

This might be one of the best episodes Doctor Who's ever turned out.  The first three parts of The Curse of Fenric have been leading up to this climactic episode, when Fenric is finally set free, using the body of Dr. Judson and ready to unleash his evil upon the world.  "When it comes to death, quantity is so much more satisfying than quality," Fenric remarks.  To that end Fenric wants to release Millington's toxin into the waters and pollute the entire planet, killing everyone.  He's even brought the Ancient One (who appears to be the chief Haemovore) back in time from the distant future to help him achieve his goal.

Fenric agonizes over the puzzle the Doctor has set for him.
(The Curse of Fenric Part Four) ©BBC

This is a tense episode, as the soldiers fight a desperate battle first against the other soldiers (British vs. Soviet) and then together against their common enemy.  I also really like the scene where, after the Haemovores have broken into the room where the Wrens are hiding, soldiers come in to evacuate them, only to find that they've all been turned into Haemovores -- and they all descend on one hapless soldier who's apparently paralyzed with fear.  And meanwhile Fenric can't help but be pulled into the Doctor's trap: the same one that trapped him seventeen centuries ago.

But the best part is the ending sequence, where Ace inadvertently provides Fenric with the solution to the chess puzzle and then we get a taste of how long Fenric's been trying to manipulate the Doctor, by bringing one of his "wolves" (people descended from the Vikings who brought Fenric's flask to England) into contact with him.  It's actually a really brutal sequence for Ace, as the Doctor systematically tears her down in front of Fenric:

SORIN: Kneel if you want the girl to live!
DOCTOR: (quietly) Kill her.
SORIN: (laughing) The Time Lord finally understands.
DOCTOR: Do you think I didn't know?  The chess set in Lady Peinforte's study?  I knew.
SORIN: Earlier than that, Time Lord.  Before Cybermen.  Ever since Iceworld, where you first met the girl.
DOCTOR: I knew.  I knew she carried the evil inside her.  Do you think I'd have chosen a social misfit if I hadn't known?  She couldn't even pass her chemistry exams at school, and yet she manages to create a time storm in her bedroom.  I saw your hand in it from the very beginning.
ACE: Doctor, no.
DOCTOR: She's an emotional cripple.  I wouldn't waste my time on her, unless I had to use her somehow.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Curse of Fenric)

Turns out the Doctor's just trying to tear down Ace's psychic barrier so that the Ancient One can attack Fenric, but it still doesn't do much for Ace's psyche -- even if he does apologize afterwards ("I'd have done anything not to hurt you, but I had to save you from Fenric's evil curse.  Your faith in me was holding the Haemovore back").  But what's really nice about this scene is how it seems to tie together a number of disparate elements, to make them seem bigger and more important than they initially appeared.  (It also explains how both Ace and Lady Peinforte were able to travel from their own times to different ones.)

But then that's the real strength of this entire story.  The Curse of Fenric manages to take a number of different elements (vampires, early computers, British and Soviet soldiers in World War II, and eeevil evilsincethedawnofTime) and put them together to create a compelling, weighty story.  And not only that; it tackles things like the nature of faith (and how it doesn't have to be religious) and the futility of war ("War, a game played by politicians," one of the Soviet troops, Vershinin, says.  "We were just pawns in the game, but the pawns are fighting together now.  Eh, comrade?"), and it does it in a wonderfully subtle manner.  All this and some fabulous acting and direction to boot (and full marks to director Nicholas Mallett for convincing John Nathan-Turner to let him film this all on location).  Really, the DVD special edition is the way to go with this story (it adds in some needed scenes, reorders things, and regrades the visuals to make it look more consistent) -- one of the few DVD special editions that is actually worthwhile (as opposed to, say, the recut versions of Enlightenment or Planet of Fire, which are both entirely dispensable).  But even the episodic version is a tremendous success.  The Curse of Fenric is deservedly known as one of the best stories of the 1980s.

And now it's on to part one of Survival -- the final story in Doctor Who's original run.  It's something of a bittersweet moment; even though we know the show will eventually return, this still feels like an ending.  But, if this episode is anything to judge by, the show will be going out on a high note.

Even in this first episode Survival makes some of its themes clear.  There's definitely a number of criticisms directed at the "dog eat dog"/"every man for himself" culture of the late '80s.  Here it's stated (repeatedly) as "survival of the fittest", with the implications that you'd better be the fittest -- a position the Doctor clearly doesn't agree with.

The other interesting thing about this episode is the juxtaposition of the normal (contemporary Perivale) with the bizarre.  It starts out with some odd shots and disappearing people, and it ends with strange cheetah-like people transporting people to another planet (which looks surprisingly alien, dry, and dusty -- they've done an excellent job of differentiating the two settings) -- and yet this combination never feels forced or unnatural.  It's a logical progression of what we've seen: the Territorial Army sergeant is trying to teach survival of the fittest, but there's a species that's mastered this and the hunt, making them formidable.

Let's be honest; the cliffhanger's not that surprising, given that they've been showing us Anthony Ainley's distinctive eyes for much of the episode.  The surprise isn't that the Master's back (and it has been a couple years, at least, so there's not the sense of inevitability about this appearance that there might have been a few seasons earlier) -- the surprise is that he appears to have cat eyes and some form of limited control over the Cheetah People (as the Doctor will call them in part two).  And in a story with the theme of survival of the fittest, one wonders if the Master has become like the Cheetah People to become the fittest...

December 23: The Curse of Fenric Parts Two & Three

In many ways part two is just as much of a set-up episode as part one was -- it's just setting up different things.  Millington is willing to use a truly horrendous poison to kill the Russians once the war is over and they're no longer allies, but he also seems to see things in terms of Norse mythology -- it's a mention of Hvergelmir in relation to the poison that convinces Millington that the Doctor can be trusted.  Judson is obsessed with translating the runes in the church crypt (but somehow doesn't seem to have noticed that a new batch has sprung up overnight), and Reverend Wainwright is having a crisis of faith at the thought of the British bombing German cities and causing innocents to die.

The two main things to happen story-wise are that Phyllis and Jean, the two teenage girls who've been evacuated from London, head into the sea and are turned into vampires (excuse me, Haemovores) that start terrorizing the locals, and that Ace tells Dr. Judson that the runes are actually a sort of logic diagram -- which leads to Ultima spewing out tons and tons of names, despite the efforts of the Doctor to stop it.

So there's not much in the way of action in part two, but what it's very effective at is creating an atmosphere of tension and dread.  (Much like part one in that regard.)  So although no one's really being attacked yet (other than Miss Hardaker, who's not exactly a sympathetic character, and Rev. Wainwright -- but he's saved by the Doctor), there's a sense of a gathering storm that's soon going to be unleashed.

The Doctor creates a psychic barrier to drive away the Haemovores.
(The Curse of Fenric Part Three) ©BBC

That storm looks like it begins in part three, as Ultima runs out of control, processing the runic logic diagram, while the Haemovores rise out of the sea (and, it seems, out of the cemetery) and begin to attack.¹⁵⁷  Faith can repel them so long as that faith is absolute -- otherwise you'll be killed.  Close examination reveals that the Doctor's unshakable faith is in his companions (though you can't really make it out in the broadcast version -- Steven is the only name that's somewhat audible), while the Russian leader Captain Sorin has unshakable faith in the Russian Revolution.  Rev. Wainwright, sadly, doesn't have enough faith in the Bible, and thus the Haemovores are able to kill him.

So there's a storm being unleashed as the Haemovores (which are really nicely designed, by the way; the blue skin and barnacle-like deposits all over are strikingly memorable) attack, and while the Doctor seems to know what's going on (he wasn't surprised by the Viking runes, and he understood the translations enough to know that they'd be looking for an Oriental treasure -- a flask -- that the Vikings brought), he doesn't want to explain until Ace forces him to, in what's a rather wonderful scene:

ACE: You know what's going on, don't you?
DOCTOR: Yes.
ACE: You always know.  You just can't be bothered to tell anyone.  It's like it's some kind of game, and only you know the rules.  You knew all about that inscription being a computer programme, but you didn't tell me.  You know all about that old bottle, and you're not telling me.  Am I so stupid?
DOCTOR: No, that's not it.
ACE: Why then?  I want to know.
DOCTOR: Evil, evil since the dawn of time.
ACE: What do you mean?
DOCTOR: Will you stop asking me these questions?
ACE: Tell me!
DOCTOR: The dawn of time.  The beginning of all beginnings.  Two forces only, good and evil.  Then chaos.  Time is born, matter, space. The universe cries out like a newborn.  The forces shatter as the universe explodes outwards.  Only echoes remain, and yet somehow, somehow the evil force survives.  An intelligence.  Pure evil!
ACE: That's Fenric?
DOCTOR: No, that's just Millington's name for it.  Evil has no name.  Trapped inside a flask like a genie in a bottle.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Curse of Fenric)

Of course, that leads to the rather bizarre scene where Ace tries to distract a soldier by seducing him so that the Doctor can free Captain Sorin.  It's trying to be all mysterious and clever, and while it sort of works the conversation does sometimes feel strange and ungainly.

But really, that's the only duff moment so far in three compelling episodes.  They're tense, gripping, and engaging -- and that third cliffhanger, as the paralyzed Dr. Judson stands up, his eyes glowing green, and says, "We play the contest again, Time Lord," is really impressive, promising good things from the conclusion of this serial.








¹⁵⁷ Actually there seems to be some slight confusion regarding the Haemovores (or perhaps it's better characterized as insufficiently explained).  The Doctor describes them as "what Homo sapiens evolve into thousands of years in the future.  Creatures with an insatiable hunger for blood", but it's not clear why they're around now and have been for centuries (judging from some of the period clothing they're wearing) if they're from the future.  Is this because of Fenric's baleful influence, possibly related to the natural toxin that Millington is collecting?  Or did he bring them forward from the future and they've been waiting for the right moment to strike, converting others into Haemovores along the way?

December 22: Ghost Light Part Three / The Curse of Fenric Part One

It is rather unfortunate that you have to assume that Light is some sort of simpleton in order for his reactions to make sense; they could have run with the fact that he's been asleep so long that his catalog of Earth is completely out of date and therefore useless, and while this does seem to be in there somewhere it looks more as if he's completely shocked that things changed, as if this thought had never occurred to him -- although if this is the case then why would Josiah be around at all?  What use would a survey creature be if you never expected him to change?

Redvers Fenn-Cooper, Josiah Samuel Smith, and Ace at dinner.
(Ghost Light Part Three) ©BBC

Speaking of Josiah, his plan to rule the British Empire by assassinating Queen Victoria is rather daft, isn't it?  It makes sense from an internal plot point of view (Josiah needs to evolve into the dominant species, and what's more dominant than being a king?), but there's no clue at all as to how he would actually achieve this goal, as the stated explanation is ludicrous.

So those are the clumsy bits.  Fortunately everything else in part three (all right, with the exception of McCoy's clenched hand acting early in part three) is just as outstanding as the first two parts were.  The Victorian theme continues (particularly with Light in the role of cataloger, trying to pin everything down into neat little categories -- rather like all the insects on display in Gabriel Chase), and it's interesting to see how the evolution theme plays out and is then inverted with Josiah and Control.  Ace gets to let out some more angst ("No, Control, don't do it!  Please don't [burn the house down]!  That's what I did!"  "In 1983?  Ace, you didn't tell me that."  "You're not my probation officer.  You don't have to know everything"), and the ways the Doctor both arranges the downfall of Josiah's plans -- just by turning Control into a "lady-like" -- and convinces Light to destroy himself are quite masterful.  And that layer of allusions is still present too, just to make everything seem even better than it already is.

As it turned out, Ghost Light was the last story ever filmed in the original run (though obviously not the last screened -- that seems to have always been intended to have been Survival).  It's a fascinating story, one that rewards repeated viewings that allow for more character moments and allusions to be noticed each time.  It has interesting things to say about evolution and Victorian values, and it's fabulously written, acted, designed, and directed.  Not a bad story to finish up on then, eh?

But obviously we're not done with the season yet.  Now it's on to The Curse of Fenric and Doctor Who's first foray, after 26 seasons, into the second World War.  The Curse of Fenric also bears the distinction of being the only Doctor Who story that genuinely scared me as a child (something about the idea of vampires that would kill you if your faith wasn't strong enough).

Not quite at the scary bits in the first episode though, which is mainly a setting-up one.  Even though this is a story about the war, the actual fighting seems distantly removed from this setting.  No, here we have the efforts of a codebreaker named Dr. Judson at an isolated base in the north of England while Russian soldiers land on the beach nearby, apparently with the intent of kidnapping Judson.  All this and some stuff about ancient Viking runes and something Base Commander Millington calls "the curse of Fenric".

It's certainly an entertaining episode, with some intriguing moments (such as how something's in the water that's apparently killing Russian troops) and some amusing ones as well (the way the Doctor forges official paperwork for both him and Ace).  But at this point, all we know is that something sinister is going on -- what that sinister thing actually is will be for later episodes to reveal.  But this is certainly a good start.

December 21: Ghost Light Parts One & Two

Somehow I've gotten this far without really talking about Ace.  That's a gross oversight on my part; Sophie Aldred has been one of the best things about these last few stories, as she makes Ace seem like a real person and a genuinely likable companion.  The character herself also works by being flawed -- she's not a perfect person the way Mel often seemed to be, but rather a teenager, prone to bouts of surliness and with a predilection for explosives.

Obviously I'm bringing this all up here because in many ways Ghost Light is Ace's show.  The Doctor brings her to the site of one of her more traumatic memories, a hundred years before she burned the place down, because he's intrigued by the feelings she felt while in the abandoned building.  There's definitely something alien at work here, even if it's not immediately clear what's happening -- and Ace is justifiably angry at the Doctor for bringing her here without telling her ahead of time (in fact, he sets things up as a puzzle for Ace to solve, which probably didn't make her feel any better when she learned the truth).  And while the Doctor might be running things, instigating events to see what happens, it's Ace that we tend to follow through this story -- note how we experience almost nothing while she's asleep in part two, but instead hear some of the things that the Doctor's been up to after the fact.

And look, I've gotten this far without discussing Ghost Light's (in)famous reputation regarding its story.  This story is well known as one that requires repeated viewings to fully comprehend (David J Howe described it as "Doctor Who for the video generation" in The Handbook: The Seventh Doctor) -- although to be perfectly honest I've never found the basic plot that difficult to grasp.  No, what repeated viewings do is give a greater insight into what's happening, as additional pieces fall into place to give a more complete picture of events.  Then the whole thing is wrapped in a dense layer of allusions, which both give a sense of pleasure when you catch them (so even if everything else is escaping you there's that at least) and contribute to the feeling that there's a lot going on here.

Like I said, the basic plot isn't too hard to follow: someone/something is running an experiment on evolution on Earth.  Josiah Samuel Smith is the experimental subject, who seems to be continually evolving into a version of the dominant lifeform on the planet (let's just set aside the human-centric idea that we're the most advanced species on the planet).  Control is (presumably) the control subject, but it's fed up with being locked away for such a long time, and it's ready to be released.  Meanwhile the story has a lot to say about arguments between evolution and creationism (for lack of a better word).  Or as Reverend Matthews puts it, "Mr Smith disputes man's rightful dominion over the forces of nature. ... Instead he maintains that mankind itself should adapt to serve nature or become extinct."  The whole story wants to be an examination of evolution in some form -- although at this stage there are still anomalous details (such as why all the insects start moving around -- this will explained (sort of) in part three).

Really, though, these two episodes are filled with enough to charm and entertain the viewers that even if you can't follow the story, there's still plenty to enjoy (anything with Nimrod or Redvers Fenn-Cooper, the way the TARDIS has materialized with the door against a wall -- a gag they'd somehow never done before, the intensely creepy way Gwendoline is ready and willing to send the Reverend Matthews to Java (aka do something horrible to him)...).  That said, it feels like there's still a lot to get through, and only one episode left to do it -- how will they manage?