December 15: The Happiness Patrol Part Three / Silver Nemesis Part One

The Doctor and Ace confront the Kandy Man in the Kandy Kitchen.
(The Happiness Patrol Part Three) ©BBC

And so, in a single night, the Doctor topples the Terra Alphan government, bringing an end to Helen A's policies and disappearances.  It's interesting how the Doctor goes about it; the way he both saves the protesting factory workers and gets the Happiness Patrol to turn on each other in Forum Square is rather inspired, and while his performance feels incredibly forced as he taunts the Patrol ("They can't shoot me because they see before them a happy man!"), one wonders if that's the point -- that even obviously fake jollity is still acceptable enough, so long as the facade is still there.

This episode really just shows us the result of all the things the Doctor has put into motion; the factory workers start revolting and taking over other factories, the Happiness Patrol seems to be ineffectual, and even Helen A contemplates fleeing the planet -- only to be thwarted by her husband Joseph C and Gilbert M having taken the presidential shuttle and left before she could.  And the Kandy Man meets his end in his own pipes when the native Alphans turn on the fondant surprise.  But the crucial moment for this story is when Helen A discovers the dying Fifi outside as she leaves (after a confrontation with the Doctor: "I'll go somewhere else," she tells him.  "I'll find somewhere where there is no sadness.  A place where people know how to enjoy themselves. ... A place where people are strong, where they hold back the tears.  A place where people pull themselves together") and bursts into tears.  Helen A, it seems, finally realizes that happiness is nothing without sadness.

The first couple times I watched The Happiness Patrol I didn't really like it, but this is a story that really grows on you.  The bizarre costumes and situations can be jarring the first time (not to mention the Kandy Man), but as you grow accustomed to them, the allegorical, angry side of this story is revealed.  And make no mistake: this is an angry story (in a way that a similar allegorical tale, Vengeance on Varos, wasn't), which makes no pretense of supporting or understanding this enforced happiness.  Happiness will indeed prevail, but not in the version we see on Terra Alpha.  It's a bizarre premise, to be sure, but it's one in which the characters all act how we might expect real people would act in a situation like this.  The more one watches The Happiness Patrol and absorbs its message, the better it gets.

But now it's time, at last, for Doctor Who's official 25th anniversary story -- Silver Nemesis, part one of which was broadcast on 23 November (the only anniversary story of the original run to get a broadcast on the actual anniversary day).  It's not a bad opening episode, even if it doesn't seem terribly anniversary-ish, but it is a little disjointed.  We have groups of people in different locations and time zones who are converging on 1988 Windsor, all to get some sort of special statue that's super-powerful when it reaches critical mass -- South American Nazis, a 17th-century villainess, and some blokes with guns wearing silver earmuffs.  This disjointed feel is present throughout the piece, as the Doctor moves from 1988 to 1638 just to explain some bits of the plot to Ace, and the end result of this constant switching between times and places is cosmopolitan (as Doctor Who usually isn't so open in scope in a single serial) but also unfocused.

Still, there are some good moments in this ("You mean the world's going to end and you've forgotten about it?"  "I've been busy", Leslie French, the bit with the Queen) as well as some daft moments (why does the Doctor think talking to the Queen is the best way to go about dealing with this sort of threat, and how exactly does Lady Peinforte travel into the future?¹⁵³).  But the goodwill engendered so far means that Silver Nemesis is erring on the positive side, and even gags like the aforementioned Queen bits aren't too wide of the mark.  Plus we get to see Sylvester McCoy wearing a fez and wielding a mop (see 2010's "The Big Bang" if the significance of this eludes you) -- a coincidence to be sure, but an entertaining one all the same.  And we get a great cliffhanger reveal, as a spaceship flies in to reveal newly redesigned, gleaming silver Cybermen...







¹⁵³ Actually, this second point will be explained in The Curse of Fenric -- although, as this isn't Moffat-era Who, this looks more like a lame attempt to explain a problem after the fact rather than a preplanned clue.