December 20: Battlefield Parts Three & Four

All right, so these concluding installments aren't quite as good as the first two.  There's a bit of a muddled feeling about them, as if writer Ben Aaronovitch doesn't quite know how to tie all the disparate elements he's introduced together, and the ending is notably flawed as a result.

But there's so much that this story gets right (even if you have to look past a superficiality or two) that it's hard to be too upset about this.  The scene where Morgaine¹⁵⁶ empties Flight Lieutenant Lavel's mind of information and then burns her body to ash is disturbing, and then when she immediately pays Mordred's bar tab by restoring the sight of the landlord's wife Elizabeth is rather magical -- thus providing us with an unusual juxtaposition for a villain and thus a more complex characterization for Morgaine.  Ace's emerging from the lake with Excalibur is well done (and look, you can see the cracks on the glass in the chamber she's in that almost led to a nasty accident -- they pulled her out just before the glass shattered and dumped hundreds of gallons of water onto a floor covered with electrical cables), and the Brigadier's first encounter with the Doctor is charming ("I just can't let you out of my sight, can I, Doctor?"  "Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.  So you recognise me, then?"  "Yes. Who else would it be?").

The Brigadier threatens Mordred's life. (Battlefield Part Four) ©BBC

And that's just in part three.  Part four has just as many good moments -- the Brigadier's defeat of the Destroyer ("Pitiful," the Destroyer tells him.  "Can this world do no better than you as their champion?"  "Probably.  I just do the best I can," the Brigadier replies, before killing the Destroyer with silver bullets), Mordred's taunting of the Doctor as the Doctor threatens to kill him (one senses the hand of script editor Andrew Cartmel here, as Mordred's taunt -- "Look me in the eye.  End my life" -- directly echoes the challenge the Doctor issued to the snipers in The Happiness Patrol), the way the Doctor walks between Mordred and Ancelyn as they fight (daft but charming)... there's so much right that it's difficult to be upset about what's wrong.

Battlefield is probably the least successful story this season, much how Silver Nemesis was the weakest last season -- although frankly that says more about how strong the rest of season 26 is than anything else.  And unlike Silver Nemesis, there does seem to be a larger point behind Battlefield's story; the problem is that that point (which appears to be equating unleashing the Destroyer to unleashing nuclear missiles) is somewhat confused -- there's no clear direct parallel, and while the Doctor is able to convince Morgaine that the use of nuclear weapons is horrifying and without honor ("Not a war between armies nor a war between nations, but just death, death gone mad.  The child looks up in the sky, his eyes turn to cinders.  No more tears, only ashes.  Is this honour?  Is this war?  Are these the weapons you would use?"), she seems to have no qualms about unleashing the Destroyer upon this world.  This argument seems to be at the heart of the story (else why bother having a nuclear missile convoy in this serial in the first place?), but it just doesn't come off.

Still, at least the argument's sort of there (even if it's rather jumbled), and once again, this story scores by presenting future events for the Doctor as something he has to deal with in his past -- most overtly in the note he leaves his past self (aka our Doctor) with Arthur: "Dear Doctor, King died in final battle.  Everything else propaganda. ...[signed] The Doctor.  P.S. Morgaine has just seized control of the nuclear missile."  And by bringing in elements of the past, in the form of the Brigadier, we get a feeling of a continuity between past, present, and future, and thus a sense of history (if you know what I mean).  In addition, the idea that the Doctor is Merlin feels inherently right somehow, and the way Morgaine speaks to him suggests a long-running conflict that other shows would have taken and run with for ages -- but here it's a background detail that adds to the feeling of some unknown history linking these two characters.  The whole idea is a fabulous conceit, and one that really makes this story work.  The failure of the nuclear analogy to click at the end is thus forgivable, because it's not the focus of the piece: this story is about the Doctor's future, in a way we haven't seen before, and that's what makes Battlefield succeed.

It's actually probably Ben Aaronovitch himself who's one of Battlefield's harshest critics, and while you can see how the suggestions he makes with hindsight as how the script could have been better would have improved things, the fact remains is that for three-quarters of the story Battlefield is a charming and imaginative piece.  It's only in the final resolutions that things start to fall apart, and it's hardly the first Doctor Who story to suffer from a problematic dénouement.  There's so much about this story that works, and so much that's clever and ingenious, that the final result is, on the whole, a success.  It may not be perfect, but it's definitely entertaining.







¹⁵⁶ I mentioned under Meglos that that story was the only time John Nathan-Turner had ever brought back someone who had played a companion in another role, but I'd forgotten about Jean Marsh, who'd previously been Sara Kingdom in The Daleks' Master Plan, playing Morgaine here.  Although let's sidestep the rather tedious "but does Sara really count as a companion?" debate and note that at this stage in the programme, she's on the official list.  (That said, if you do want to have said debate, you should start by noting that she shows up on UNIT's Black Archive companion bulletin board in "The Day of the Doctor", in a photo with Mike Yates of all people.)