November 25: Timelash Part Two

Let's start with what works in this episode.  The explanation of the burning android that we saw in part one is rather nifty, even if that explanation is a bit labored in its efforts to ensure the audience understands what's happening.  The interior of the Timelash, with the crystals jutting out, is nicely done (tinsel notwithstanding).  The actual Borad, once he's fully revealed, is an impressive make-up job, and Robert Ashby does an excellent job with his performance -- no mean feat when the majority of his face is covered by a latex mask.  Herbert in general continues to charm, and while he may become irritating from time to time, he almost always recovers to be generally worth watching.  Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are both up to their usual standards in this -- even if Timelash calls for a very generic Doctor, rather than something tailored to the sixth -- and Paul Darrow continues to be just about the best thing on screen, even if he's dead before the halfway point.

So those are the good bits; what about the rest?

The Doctor confronts Tekker and the Borad. (Timelash Part
Two) ©BBC

Far and away the biggest problem with Timelash Part Two (well, with all of Timelash, but it's even more of a problem here) is that it's really quite tediously dull.  There's hardly any action in it, and any momentum that the action scenes do happen to have is squandered by long drawn-out talking scenes.  Most of those involved in these talking scenes aren't worth watching, either -- most of the cast seems to be at a loss as to what they're really meant to be doing there.  And so there's lots of unnatural dialogue delivered unnaturally, punctuated with scenes that are supposed to look clever (the Doctor's fooling around with the Kontrol crystal device) but are immensely tedious instead.  And it doesn't help that the sets are boring too (by design, as it's a plot point, but it still doesn't help).

Then, to make matters worse, the natural climax of the episode (the death of the Borad) comes slightly past the halfway point, but as that still leaves almost twenty minutes to fill there's a lot of rushing around dealing with other problems that don't seem as consequential as the Borad was -- the Bandrils (Karfel's neighbors) are determined to attack the planet that they need to get their food from (um...) and are completely unwilling to call off the attack unless someone drags the body of the Borad in front of a camera to show them (um...), which leads to the Doctor doing some last-minute preparations in the TARDIS -- although this includes a scene of pure padding lasting over five minutes, mainly between the Doctor and Herbert, that somehow manages to be just about the most entertaining thing in the whole episode.  Then the Borad shows up again, somehow, because there's still time to kill.  Or maybe they just really wanted an excuse to smash that Pertwee painting, but then he's knocked into the Timelash to become the Loch Ness Monster.  Hilarious.  (And how did continuity adviser Ian Levine let this one through?)

There are moments where you can almost see how Timelash could have been worth doing, but more often than not those moments are overtaken by tedium and artificiality.  There seems to be a sense that no one here is sure what sort of show Timelash is supposed to be -- not Pennant Roberts, who appears to have decided to just shoot the thing and not worry about the result; not the majority of the cast, who frequently look like they're attending a camera rehearsal rather than the actual recording; and certainly not author Glen McCoy, who appears to be under the impression that a generic story with a few allusions here and there will work just fine.  The tag at the end, where we learn that Herbert is in fact H.G. Wells, is supposed to make us think this is all clever.  If they'd actually run with this idea and made things more overtly like Wells's stories, or if anyone had bothered to do some research into Wells himself, it might have actually been clever.  But they didn't, and so Timelash isn't.

November 24: Timelash Part One

"Most people depart with a scream," Maylin Tekker tells the Doctor at the end of part one, as the Doctor is faced with being thrown into the Timelash -- a special kind of time corridor.  It's just a line I can't get out of my head for some reason; I'm not sure why.

The introductory scene in the TARDIS starts well -- there is a sense of bantering going on between Peri and the Doctor.  Unfortunately, it goes on too long, and the bantering starts to look more like a genuine argument -- at least until the action gets going.  And the action on Karfel isn't too bad -- some nice setup, and the stuff with the Borad leaves us intrigued by what's going on.

The problems set in, though, when we get to the main Karfelon council, and Karfel becomes a place where a handful of actors awkwardly insert exposition into all their conversations.  "We are under imminent threat of invasion from our former allies, the Bandrils"; "I hope you're taking great care of my only daughter."  "Of course.  As my future wife, I could hardly do anything else"; "If we don't get the amulet back, he will destroy every Karfelon in the Citadel."  "All five hundred of us?"; and many more examples like this.  It's not the most graceful writing, and for the most part the actors involved don't do much to convince us that this is how they might normally talk to each other -- they're just words on a page to get through.  And it's also early on in one of these scenes that we get the moment where Maylin Renis pulls a control off the board he's playing with and has to gracelessly put it back -- a feat he manages just subtly enough to not have Pennant Roberts call for a retake.

Things get marginally better when the Doctor and Peri arrive (and while the idea of control console harnesses to stop them flying around the console room when the TARDIS experiences turbulence is a rather nice idea, the actual straps look long enough that there's still a good deal of potential for injury as they're buffeted about), having traveled up the Kontron corridor (aka the time corridor).  Somewhat unexpectedly, the Karfelons treat the Doctor as something of an old friend, since the third Doctor visited Karfel before and helped them out with some things.  (But don't bother looking back at your Pertwee DVDs to work out when this was -- Timelash is a sequel to an unseen adventure.  An admittedly interesting idea, although it does mean that the audience spends a lot of time wondering what happened the first time around.)  "Only the two of you?" the new Maylin, Tekker, asks the Doctor as he arrives, which makes you wonder who exactly was traveling with the third Doctor during his last visit.  (The Virgin Missing Adventure Speed of Flight suggests it was Jo and Mike Yates -- although no one seems to want to actually chronicle the third Doctor's visit to Karfel...)  And thank goodness for Paul Darrow as Tekker (who not long ago in contemporary terms completed his time as Avon on Blake's 7) -- he may be acting somewhat over the top, but he's a hell of a lot more watchable than anyone else inhabiting this planet.  Everyone else is just delivering unnatural dialogue in the most unexciting way imaginable, which does make watching this episode a bit of a chore at times.

It's not all bad, though; I actually rather like the androids (well, android, as they're all played by Dean Hollingsworth).  It's a striking design and while the singsong voice is a bit irritating, it shows that at least someone is trying with this story.  The android suddenly on fire in the caves is also a good moment, even if it's not explained.  And there are some moments on 1885 Earth that are rather charming: Herbert may be somewhat unenlightened but he is rather likeable, even if he's intended to be comic relief.  Plus Nicola Bryant gets to remark that "all these corridors look the same to me" on her guided tour of Karfel.

But despite nice moments here and there, Timelash has so far been a rather unengaging story, filled with unrealistic characters and dialogue.  Maybe things will pick up in part two.

November 23: The Two Doctors Part Three

51 years ago today An Unearthly Child premiered.  Happy birthday, Doctor Who!  And at least the way I'm watching things, The Two Doctors gets to be part of an anniversary, even if it wasn't anything special at the time.

But in contemporary terms, a lot has happened between parts two and three of this story.  The Tuesday following the broadcast of part two (so 26 February 1985), it was announced that the BBC was temporarily suspending production of Doctor Who for monetary reasons -- they had a lot of expensive shows in the pipeline, and they needed to make up the money somewhere (About Time submits that Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective was the primary destination for the BBC's money, while The Handbook: The Sixth Doctor speculates that needing to produce 104 episodes (aka two episodes a week) of the BBC's new soap opera EastEnders was the culprit).  However, this was portrayed in the papers as the first step toward dropping Doctor Who completely, a situation which the BBC (initially) denied, citing the monetary reasons -- Doctor Who had essentially been delayed from a spring 1986 premiere to an autumn '86 one.

As time went on, though, there began to be rumblings that this wasn't a purely financial decision -- by 6 March, the first hint that this was also a creative decision on the part of the BBC's upper management surfaced (and as an aside, anyone interested in this period of the show's history would do well to check out Chapter 7 -- "Cancellation Crisis" -- of The Handbook: The Sixth Doctor by Howe-Stammers-Walker).  Certainly by the end of March BBC1 Controller Michael Grade started making noises that the decision was more about the content of the show than because of money.  (About Time suggests that this may have in part been an act of revenge by Grade, whose reputation as TV's miracle worker was allegedly tarnished when his revamping of ITV's Saturday night schedule almost completely failed to make a dent in Doctor Who's ratings in 1978 -- there's no real evidence for this, but it might help explain why Grade was so antagonistic toward the show.)  This also led to discussion about how Doctor Who was becoming too violent -- a discussion almost certainly informed by Mary Whitehouse's attacks on what were termed "video nasties" (excessively violent footage being sold on this newfangled video tape format) that were roughly concurrent with season 22.

But the content-based reasons for the 18-Month Suspension are still in the future (which really began shortly after transmission of season 22 concluded); at this point in time, all the British public know is that the show is taking a longer-than-usual break, and many (almost a million, in fact, if the ratings jump between parts two and three can be attributed to this) are curious as to what they've missed in the interim.  And so Part Three of The Two Doctors is what they saw.

The second and sixth Doctors look as Dastari taunts them with
the keys to their manacles. (The Two Doctors Part Three) ©BBC

It's certainly the most incident-packed episode of the three.  Now that the villains know about another Time Lord's presence that could potentially mess up their plans, they start making their own plans to counter this.  Plus there are a number of double-crosses between Chessene/Dastari and the Sontarans that add to the entertainment value. But there are a couple oddities as well; it's not really clear why Chessene wants to turn the second Doctor into an Androgum -- will that mean he'll be willing to just give the biological secret of time travel to Chessene?  Or it will make it easier to isolate the symbiotic nuclei?  Because as is, it just looks like an excuse for the second Doctor and Shockeye to play hookey and have fun in Seville rather than for any real reason.

This story is occasionally referred to as a black comedy, and it's probably the second Doctor/Shockeye scenes that are the most obviously intended to be comedic.  It's certainly a bleak form of humor though -- the scenes where the Androgumized Doctor is explaining human customs and cuisine are probably the most successful, but Oscar's death, which seems to also be played for laughs, is wide of the mark.  This is partly because James Saxon does such a good job that Oscar is probably the most likeable character in the entire production, but also because the actual murder of Oscar is quite shocking, particularly as it comes right after a moment of comedy regarding the bill -- and then they immediately try to follow it up with a laugh (to put it generously -- it could also just be a poorly acted and directed moment).  The whole sequence is misjudged as a result.

And, because this is a script edited by Eric Saward, basically everyone ends up dead by the end.  The Sontarans are betrayed by Chessene -- which leads to a lot of green gunge as some sort of acid kills them.  (The severed Sontaran leg that Shockeye finds is probably the most successful blackly comic moment in the whole piece.)  Dastari is killed by Chessene, who dies when their time travel capsule fails.  The most controversial moment is probably Shockeye's death at the hands of the sixth Doctor; the Doctor is admittedly in a fight for his life, basically, as Shockeye intends to butcher him with a knife, but it does look a tad planned.  But like Vengeance on Varos, the real issue is the Doctor's subsequent "bad taste" remarks: "Your just desserts" is awkward enough, but the later remark of how Shockeye has been "mothballed" is in particularly poor taste, and it does leave a bad taste in the mouth.

But the problems with The Two Doctors began long before Shockeye was killed.  The underlying central concern with the story is how intolerant it is -- the problems start because Chessene has been elevated above her station, and this is a bad thing because it's just in the nature of Androgums, as a species, to be savage and cruel.  There's never a suggestion that not all Androgums are like that, and in fact the script goes out of its way, near the end of part three, to show that even though Chessene has been augmented, she'll still revert to those base instincts that Dastari attempted to suppress/overwhelm.  The takeaway message is, "you just can't change those people", which is just about the worst message the show has ever produced.

Now combine that with an overlong story that's been stretched to almost breaking, rather than padded with extra incidents, and one that's squandered its actors.  It's admittedly fun to see Frazer Hines effortlessly slip back into the role of Jamie and interact with Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant, but what's the point of putting Patrick Troughton in a story where he's unconscious or restrained for two-thirds of it?  And Nicola Bryant doesn't even get to include her usual joke.  The most successful part might be the vegetarian message, and even that feels squandered in a rather distasteful way.  The Two Doctors somehow manages to be both unpleasant and rather dull -- no mean feat.

November 22: The Two Doctors Part Two

There continues to be a sense throughout this episode that nothing's really happening, and I'm not quite sure why.  Certainly things are actually happening, as the sixth Doctor and Peri pick up Jamie and head to Seville, while the second Doctor is strapped down to a makeshift operating table so that the villains can extract a special genetic component from him to let them time travel, but there never really feels like there's a serious or genuine threat at work here.

It's possible that this is because of the direction; there's definitely an unhurried sense to what we're shown, with lots of people pontificating in largely unchanging shots, rather than a number of quick cuts to provide energy or a sense of movement.  Some of the speeches are quite nice (Colin Baker's little soliloquy on the impending death of the universe being a nice highlight), while some are purely there for exposition (such as almost anything Dastari is involved with).  But this isn't really an action story, so that's not a criticism; no, the issue is that the two main opposing parties don't encounter each other until the cliffhanger, so there aren't any points-of-view being exchanged.  (Well, except for a handful of moments with the second Doctor, where he continues to be unpleasant toward the Androgums; the sixth Doctor also agrees, later in the episode, although he provides the fig leaf that the problem is that they have no emotional capacity.  If we assume that he's speaking scientifically, this miiiight get us away from the distastefully racist undertone running through this conversation, although even then it feels like a gross generalization.)

The sixth Doctor and Jamie discuss Kartz and Reimer's prototype
time machine behind them. (The Two Doctors Part Two) ©BBC

That in turn points at Robert Holmes's script -- Peter Moffat can't film scenes that aren't there, after all.  And while some of the interactions we get are entertaining -- particularly Jamie's relationship with both this new Doctor and with Peri -- there is a sense that we're missing the important ones.  We still haven't had any real discussion about what's going on, and the rationale behind the villains' plot seems a bit thin on the ground -- Dastari telling the second Doctor how they're going to slice him up to find the biological aspect of time travel doesn't really cut it.  Shockeye gets some on-the-nose scripting about how people treat animals bred for consumption that's not bad, but it's not really related to the main plot.  The Sontarans just stand around demanding things and being generally ignored by everyone around them, which does make them look rather impotent.  (And as long as we're talking about the Sontarans...Stike sure seems tall for a Sontaran, doesn't he?  He's even towering over Colin Baker (who's not exactly short at 6 feet).  There's also the problem that the masks don't look as mobile as they did in the past (particularly around the eyes and mouth), which means that they're less convincing.)  There's really no sense of urgency at all from anyone on screen.

But that I think gets at the larger problem this story has so far.  It's been an hour and a half, and while we're slowly learning about what's actually at stake here, all we're really getting is setup -- there haven't really been any complications thus far, beyond the little puzzles here and there (like defeating the homicidal computer).  The villains haven't suffered any sort of problems at all up to this point or are even aware that the sixth Doctor and his compatriots are out there.  It's almost like Holmes took one of this season's two-part stories and made the first part twice as long -- a move which doesn't do this story any favors.  Let's hope the last part is up to snuff -- particularly as real-life events are about to overtake the show in a dramatic way...

(And a side-note to say that (out of some misguided sense of completism) I did subsequently watch A Fix with Sontarans, which was broadcast later the same night as The Two Doctors Part Two.  It's rather meh though, as it's more a quick little sketch than anything else (and what's up with Janet Fielding's hair?), so don't bother -- although it's really creepy watching Jimmy Savile interact with Fielding, especially given what we now know.  (Fortunately, Gareth Jenkins has subsequently said that Jimmy Savile had no interest in him and thus he wasn't one of Savile's victims.))

November 21: The Two Doctors Part One

Putting the opening moments in black and white is a nice touch, as we see not the sixth Doctor and Peri but rather the second Doctor and Jamie.  They both appear to have aged since the last time we saw them, though -- Troughton's hair in particular appears to have gone silver since 1983.  There's also something deeply weird about listening to Troughton casually talk about the Time Lords to Jamie (and the suggestion that this is during season 5, as the Doctor's dropped off Victoria somewhere, makes it doubly strange -- note how Jamie has no idea who the Time Lords are in The War Games¹³⁹).  The second Doctor's conversations with Dastari don't really help with this feeling of strangeness either.  There's also the rather unpleasant speech from the Doctor after he learns about Dastari's augmentation experiments with Chessene, where he outright states that it's wrong for people to go beyond where they're "supposed" to be: "She's still an Androgum.  You can't change nature. ... You give a monkey control of its environment, it'll fill the world with bananas," the Doctor insists with a close-minded attitude, bordering on racist ("Oh really, Doctor.  I expected something more progressive from you," Dastari replies).  There's also some stuff between Chessene and Shockeye along the same lines, but as neither is supposed to be a terribly sympathetic character, it doesn't have the same distasteful feel as when the Doctor spouts such things.

There also seems to be some commentary from writer Robert Holmes about how we treat meat animals, with Shockeye treating the humans (well, Tellurians -- this is a Robert Holmes script) in much the same way -- interested more in how they taste than in what their feelings might be about it.

But after a certain point this episode feels like it's just spinning its wheels.  The sixth Doctor and Peri investigate Space Station Camera after it's been attacked by Sontarans and spend their time outwitting the computer, which wants them dead as part of a defense mechanism, while Chessene, Shockeye, and the Sontarans set up camp near Seville -- yes, the show's filming abroad again (for what would be the last time in 23 years -- there are no more major overseas film shoots until 2008¹⁴⁰).  The long shot reveal of the Sontarans in Spain is a bit undramatic (particularly as all we saw was a hand when they captured the second Doctor), but to be fair, we did know it was Sontarans when that station technician saw their ships coming in.  The Spanish bits look nice, but they also feel rather undramatic at this point -- after the assault on the station, everything is setup, with little payoff.  But as this is a three-part story, I suppose they can afford to take their time.  And it is a decent cliffhanger -- the Doctor gassed by the station while Peri is attacked by some beast lurking in the station's infrastructure...







¹³⁹ You might be able to get around some of these problems if you assume that it's actually the Time Lords from Colin Baker's era who've fished back through his timeline and pulled the second Doctor out of his timestream, using him as a representative (they can't really use the current incarnation, as he's sort of the President of the High Council at the moment); this would explain why it's the sixth Doctor (rather than any of the intervening incarnations) who feels the second Doctor being attacked (in what appears to be a new event, rather than as part of his personal history).  This might also explain why the second Doctor isn't immediately alarmed when he sees that there's been Time Lord interference with his TARDIS, and why the Time Lords don't just bring him back to Gallifrey.  Then you just have to postulate some sort of mindwipe afterwards as to why Jamie subsequently doesn't know anything about the Time Lords.
     Alternatively, you can postulate that Troughton had adventures after The War Games, where he went on a number of secret missions for the Time Lords before his exile actually began -- this is the so-called "Season 6B theory".  That does lead to wondering why Colin Baker is affected though (does he feel bad every time a previous incarnation gets knocked out or is made to suffer?), if it's Troughton's Time Lords that are getting him involved with Space Station Camera.  (And it should be noted that, other than the general problem of trying to find spots during Troughton's run to put these adventures and why he occasionally looks older, there's not really any on-screen evidence to support the season 6B theory.)
¹⁴⁰ Well, except for the TV Movie, which was shot in Vancouver -- but that wasn't really abroad for them, was it?

November 20: The Mark of the Rani Part Two

Oh look, it's one of those cliffhanger resolutions where they insert scenes, so that the last-minute rescue of the Doctor doesn't look completely implausible...

The first half of part two is a bit more interesting because it's less about the Master and the Rani (though they do show up from time to time to cause havoc) and more about the Doctor's interactions with George Stephenson (who, in case you didn't know, was a pioneer of locomotive design and thus can be considered one of the architects of the Industrial Revolution).  These are on the whole quite entertaining, lending a charm to the story and also making it seem less Time Lord-centric.  (Although George's son Robert is nowhere in sight.)

The Rani and the Master in the Rani's TARDIS. (The Mark of the
Rani Part Two) ©BBC

But, somewhat inevitably, we return to the machinations of the Master and the Rani (who's now fully on board with the Master's plan of taking over all the Industrial Revolution geniuses (all conveniently coming to a meeting in Killingworth) and thus ruling the world, somehow), which means it's time to talk about That Tree, the one that used to be Stephenson's assistant Luke Ward until he stepped on one of the Rani's landmines.

To be completely honest, I don't mind the design of it that much.  When it's just standing there being a tree, it actually looks reasonably convincing.  No, the problem is when it tries to protect Peri by bending a huge branch down in a weird hug, at which point it becomes very clear that it's just a guy in a weird suit -- no effort is made to think about how a tree might plausibly react (look, just go with this for a minute) if it were trying to save someone from danger.  It doesn't fall over or shed any branches or quickly grow some branches to enclose Peri (it's an alien tree, it could maybe happen); no, it just bends a rubber arm down to awkwardly embrace Nicola Bryant.  Still, that's probably the most objectionable moment on display here (well, that and the awful baby T. rex in the Rani's TARDIS at the end), so I guess that's something -- certainly the two villagers-turned-into-trees holding up Colin Baker look decent enough.

But the tree minefield section takes up a decent chunk of the running time for part two, and it's endemic of the larger problem with The Mark of the Rani -- they're using history as a backdrop for Time Lord shenanigans, rather than as an interesting place in its own right (so, rather like The King's Demons then).  It's fortunate that those shenanigans are reasonably entertaining -- the Rani in particular shines as someone who only barely tolerates the feud between the Master and the Doctor, and only then because the Master has the neurochemical she's been harvesting.  And, pleasingly, the Doctor snaps into focus in the presence of these other two Time Lords, becoming the moral center of the show in a way that hasn't really happened for the sixth Doctor yet.  There's little beyond this, which does make The Mark of the Rani a bit unsatisfying, but at least it's fun enough while it lasts.

(This story's Nicola Bryant in-joke: "All these mines look the same to me."  Not bad for only spending something like two minutes in those mines.)

November 19: The Mark of the Rani Part One

It's a very picturesque opening -- lots of long lingering shots of an early-19th century coal-mining village, underscored by pastoral music as filtered through an '80s synthesizer.  But soon we see some of the miners acting like jerks: the result of some sort of sinister process that's left a red mark on the miners' necks.  It seems we're going to get Doctor Who's take on the Luddite riots.

Except not really, because it turns out that the Master is back.  No explanation is given as to how he survived the events on Sarn -- allegedly writers Pip and Jane Baker included one, but Eric Saward cut it, in a fit of pique over the return of the Master yet again (can you tell he's starting to get frustrated with this job?).  There's also no explanation as to why he's pretending to be a scarecrow out in the middle of nowhere...

Of course, the presence of the Master ends up distorting the entire story around him.  We're no longer interested in what's going on in Killingworth; we want to know what the Master's up to.  But this time, it seems he's not the only Time Lord around.  We're also introduced to a renegade Time Lord called the Rani, who appears to be an amoral scientist, extracting a chemical from humanity for her own purposes -- the violent behavior is an "unfortunate side effect".  The Rani, played with great superiority by Kate O'Mara, is clearly meant to be neither explicitly "good" nor "evil", but rather a scientist with no compassion or morality.  It's a nice little twist on the sort of characters we normally get on the show.

However, if the Master was distorting things before, now that we've got the Rani involved, events truly get bent out of shape.  The entire episode becomes little more than a backdrop to their arguments, and while the squabbling is certainly entertaining (particularly the Rani's comments on the Master: "You're unbalanced; no wonder the Doctor always outwits you", and "What's he up to now?  It'll be something devious and overcomplicated.  He'd get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line" being two highlights), it does unbalance things.  And so it really doesn't help when the Doctor is also introduced and all three start sniping at each other.

And of course, this is our first Pip and Jane Baker script, which means there are lots of examples of florid dialogue to join in with at home (the favorite probably being "Fortuitous would be a more apposite epithet!").  Pip and Jane clearly love language, but it does make a lot of the dialogue very unnatural-sounding (and that's before it gets put through a broad Geordie accent for all the locals).  But, contrasting this, their characterization is very good, and the Doctor is probably the most like the traditional Doctor -- which is to say, not deliberately alien -- he's been this incarnation (although the joke about a "hyperactive Peri" does seem a particularly sixth Doctorish thing to say).  This does make this story a lot more fun to watch, and it helps set him apart from the Rani and the Master.  (That said -- and it's definitely not Pip & Jane's fault -- who thought it would be a good idea to make the sixth Doctor's signature verbal trait to repeat a word three times at increasing volumes?)

There are some good moments here and there (the stuff with Lord Ravensworth is quite nice -- and you can see, as the Doctor takes off his coat and puts on a dirty one (around the 30 minute mark), the cats that have been added to the coat's lining for each completed sixth Doctor story), and the arguing is rather entertaining, but so far, the interaction of the three Time Lords swamps everything else in this story.