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.

The Doctor and Ben encourage Lieutenant Ffinch to help them.
(The Highlanders Episode 4 - from Doctor Who Photonovels:
The Highlanders - Episode Four) ©BBC

But the thing is, it's hard to get a grip on The Highlanders, because as innocuous as it may be (and let's be clear: I may criticize the Doctor and Polly's characterizations, but there's not actually anything fundamentally wrong or offensive about them -- it's more a curious emphasis on the wrong aspects), as entertaining it may be while it's running, it's hard to work up any enthusiasm about the project.  The character interplay is there (the stuff with Lieutenant Ffinch, Polly, and Kirsty is quite charming), and there're even a couple villains to hate: a leering pirate-y captain and a slippery crooked lawyer.

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.







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.

March 13: The Highlanders Episodes 1 & 2

Er.  Well, Patrick Troughton was the Doctor...

It's a bit odd; The Power of the Daleks did its best to establish that this strange man was in fact still the Doctor, but now The Highlanders seems to delight in taking the character and pushing it as far as they can.  So Troughton here portrays a character who seems to be interested in causing trouble just for the hell of it.  He tries to get the Highlanders on his side before denouncing them loudly (yes, it's a ruse to get out of the prison, but still), he goes around slamming clerks' heads on the desk under the pretense of medicine, and he dresses up as a woman to move about unnoticed.  That's after he pretends to be a German doctor named "von Wer" (and anyone who knows German will see that Gerry Davis has struck again) but with only a passing attempt at any sort of Teutonic accent.  It's a wonder Ben still has any faith in him.

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 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.

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

So although the Daleks have been making new Daleks, as one of them says, they "are not yet ready to teach these human beings the law of the Daleks!"  So they continue to bide their time, letting the humans continue their power struggles. And things are changing: having gotten Quinn out of the way, Bragen proceeds to usurp Governor Hensell's position, which he then consolidates by having a Dalek kill Hensell.  "Why do human beings kill human beings?" the Dalek asks Bragen, and Bragen doesn't answer it.  As About Time 2 points out, this is an important moment for the story: the humans are engaged in petty power struggles with each other, unable to provide a unified front; the Daleks, on the other hand, work together as a unit and are only concerned with exterminating all lesser creatures, rather than fellow Daleks.  And that's what makes the Daleks so dangerous; they won't turn on each other, and they're all dedicated to the cause of Dalek supremacy.  Combine that with the deviousness of the Daleks on display here -- they've even got people helping them set up a new source of power, under the pretense that with their own power the Daleks "will be twice as...useful."  Although you get the impression that the Daleks aren't actually that great at being this cunning, but the humans are so thick that they never notice anything amiss.

"Daleks conquer and destroy!" (The Power of the Daleks
Episode Five) ©BBC

It's episode six that sees Whitaker finally unleash the Daleks upon the colony.  There seems to have been a successful revolution while the Daleks are chanting at each other, oddly; Janley runs into Bragen's office to tell him that "We've won!  The revolution's over!" despite the fact that there was no evidence that the revolution had even begun.  (Apparently the revolution wasn't televised.) But Bragen's not done; he orders Janley to wipe out the rebels as well.  It's into this scene that the Daleks finally show their true colors, exterminating the populace of the colony indiscriminately.  It's a brutal affair; from the telesnaps alone you can see at least a dozen bodies lying in the corridors.  The Power of the Daleks sees the Daleks not only at their most devious, but also at their most deadly; although we've been told before how ruthless the Daleks are, we've never actually seen them quite this lethal, as seemingly almost the whole colony is wiped out by their guns.  It's only a plan by the Doctor which defeats them -- a plan which not only involves sending Bragen's guards to be killed as a delaying action, but also seems to involve destroying the colony's main power supply in the process.  Yes, the colony is safe from the Daleks (albeit with only two of the guest cast surviving to the end), but they don't seem happy about it.  "It'll be months before we can get things back to normal," Valmar complains.  The Doctor takes this as his cue to leave, and the TARDIS dematerializes next to a melted Dalek -- whose eyestalk twitches upward as the TARDIS departs...²⁹

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. 







²⁹ Or so we're told.  There's no evidence of this in the telesnaps, but presumably it's mentioned in the scripts.

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.

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

Really though, it's to Whitaker's credit that he manages to keep the Daleks as a ticking bomb in the background of this story while making the human characters' interactions sufficiently compelling to sustain interest. Lesterson undergoes the best development, as he begins to get nervous about what he's done at the end of episode three, only to descend into a full-blown panic by the end of episode four.  He does consider destroying the Daleks sooner, but Janley blackmails him, telling him that Resno was killed by the Daleks and that she'll say Lesterson murdered him.  She wants the Dalek project to continue, so that the rebels can take over the colony.  It's a petty, human reason, but it ends up being a driving force behind the subsequent events.  But it's what Lesterson witnesses at the end of episode four that ends up being the most important factor, as he sees the Daleks' production line, creating more and more fully operational Daleks.  Their chant of "We are the new race of Daleks!" ends up being a chilling one, and one can only imagine how Lesterson must feel, as his world crumbles around him and he knows it's his fault.

March 10: The Power of the Daleks Episodes One & Two

So we've just witnessed an impossible event, as the Doctor we knew and loved appeared to change in front of our eyes.  The Power of the Daleks picks up right where we left off, and even though we know that William Hartnell isn't coming back, we're still uncertain just as to who this strange new man is.  And the story, rather than trying to reassure us that no, this is the same man, seems to gleefully make us doubt even more.  Other than a moment with a mirror, where Patrick Troughton momentarily sees his previous version, and a bit of dialogue here and there, there's a concerted effort to wrongfoot the audience, as well as the Doctor's companions.  They make it a point to show that the Doctor's old things don't fit the new Doctor anymore: his cloak threatens to strangle the new man, and the Doctor's ring is much too big.  And this new version keeps referring to the Doctor in the third person, with lines like, "The Doctor was a great collector, wasn't he?" and "The Doctor kept a diary, didn't he?"  It's a bold move, making the audience as uncertain of what's going on as the characters in the story, and even the provided explanation isn't as much help as it seems: "I've been renewed.  It's part of the TARDIS; without it I couldn't survive."

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...

Episode two finds us moving a little further along.  The presence of the Daleks throws things into sharp relief: we may not know for sure if this is still the Doctor, but he stands opposed to the Daleks just like the old Doctor would, so we can't help but trust in him.  But what's fascinating about writer David Whitaker's approach here is that, unlike in previous stories where the Daleks are introduced at the end of the first episode and then fully unleashed, here the Daleks remain both in the background and the focal point of the episode.  The Daleks seen here don't have any power, so we see instead Lesterson's efforts to bring them back to life.  The Doctor, in his assumed role as the Examiner, demands that the Daleks be destroyed, but no one is willing to listen to him: "You're exceeding your authority," Lesterson says.  And so while the Doctor is trying to get someone to order the destruction of the Daleks, Lesterson manages to bring one back to life.

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 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.
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.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - The Tenth Planet)

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.

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.

William Hartnell changes into Patrick Troughton. (The Tenth
Planet Episode 4) ©BBC

Episode 4, as I mentioned earlier, is missing from the archives (and in fact marks the beginning of the longest stretch of missing episodes: 12 episodes in a row, from The Tenth Planet episode 4 to The Underwater Menace episode 1 inclusive, currently no longer exist).  However, the DVD has a telesnap reconstruction of the fourth episode which I've viewed instead.²⁸  It turns out that Ben's sabotage was successful, and the Earth is temporarily saved from General Cutler's madness.  But the Cybermen have returned, and they are intent on destroying the Earth before Mondas absorbs too much energy.  The Doctor is back to stand against them, but Ben is the one who actually works out how to fight them: he figures out that the Cybermen are weak against radiation, and so he's able to help fend off the Cybermen before they use the Z-Bomb on Earth to destroy it.  Because apparently Mondas's power sucking device doesn't have an off-switch?  Anyway.

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.







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.

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.

The Tenth Planet is business as usual in many ways.  There's no sign of anything untoward as the TARDIS lands at the South Pole in 1986, and the Doctor seems just as spry as ever.  But that said, there are a couple wrinkles on display here.  The first is that this is the first  "base-under-siege" story, where an isolated place is attacked from the outside by alien invaders.  Get used to this; it's going to become a common plot for the next couple years.  But the more interesting twist is how, despite being set twenty years in the future, The Tenth Planet is treated more like an historical story than a "future" story.  The Doctor already seems to know what's going to happen -- he knows about Mondas, and he tells them to expect visitors as if it's an obvious fact.  It's an unusual take, but it's actually quite pleasing -- after all, why should the Doctor's knowledge of events be limited to our knowledge?  Past and future should be the same to him.  It really helps sell the point that the Doctor is indeed a time traveller, and it's such a neat story trick that it's rather surprising that it doesn't really pop up again until 2009, with The Waters of Mars.²⁷  This has the additional side effect of making the Doctor an observer of this event, rather than an active participant: indeed, other than telling the base's crew what it is they're going to see and to expect visitors, the Doctor does nothing but watch things unfold.

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.

The Cybermen announce that the people on the base will become
like them. (The Tenth Planet Episode 2) ©BBC

And now we come to the Cybermen, who show up at the end of episode 1 and become prominent in episode 2.  This is their first appearance, of course, and they're significantly less sleek-looking than in any future story.  Here they look more cobbled together, yet that's actually a strength: Kit Pedler was exorcising some personal demons as he wrote this, concerned by the idea of people slowly replacing body parts with artificial limbs and organs -- at what point is the result no longer a human being?  The Cybermen are that idea taken to an extreme, and it looks like they've slowly replaced their body parts a bit at a time, such that, other than the general shape, the only human features are the vaguely human face, and the obviously human hands.  (The exposed hands, by the way, were apparently an accident, as costume designer Sandra Reid was going to give them silver gloves but forgot/ran out of time/ran out of money (delete according to which version of the story you prefer), but it's a happy accident as it really helps drive home Pedler's idea.)  Occasionally in episode 2 you can see the actor's eyes glinting underneath the Cyberman's mask -- you're probably not supposed to be able to, but it's nevertheless a creepy effect, seeing a human eye vaguely inside this very not-human face.  They would look more sophisticated in the future, but these Cybermen are really quite wonderful -- even if their "jug handles" are clearly held on with clear tape.  And I haven't even mentioned the eerily inflected robotic voices, made to sound as if they'd learned English from a series of recordings but haven't quite got the stress patterns down.  It's very cool, and very effective -- especially coming from a mouth that just opens, without any visible articulation to show how the sounds are being produced.  And finally, we can't talk about sounds without mentioning the incidental music -- I think this is the first time "Space Adventure" by Martin Slavin is used; it'll keep cropping up in Cyberman stories (and also The Web of Fear), so much so that it's sometimes referred unofficially as the "March of the Cybermen".

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.







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.