An Hour of Who a Day

March 19: The Macra Terror Episodes 1 & 2

No episodes of The Macra Terror exist, so back to the soundtracks...

Look! A new title sequence! Still howlround graphics, but now Patrick Troughton's face is included -- along with a new serif-font version of the show's name. Exciting stuff!

So writer Ian Stuart Black has given us a similar sort of set-up here as in The Power of the Daleks: we have an isolated Earth colony with something horrible lurking at its heart. But while The Power of the Daleks had its enemy in plain view, here there's just a suggestion of something horrible. On the surface in fact the colony seems quite pleasant, with people acting contentedly. There are some awful cheery songs playing to motivate people (drawn, it seems, from British holiday camps, where holidaygoers would go on a strict regimented vacation run by relentlessly cheery hosts). But there's one person, Medok, who's not buying into things, because he's seen something horrible ("Have fun while you can, before they crawl all over you!" he memorably yells at one point). What's interesting is that the Doctor is immediately drawn to Medok and seems to find him more trustworthy than those running the colony -- perhaps not surprising, given how thuggish chief of police Ola is, but on the other hand the Pilot is perfectly friendly and reasonable; yet it's Medok that the Doctor believes. It turns out he's right to, as there is something horrible lurking at the heart of things: something terrible with glowing eyes. And here we have to wonder if the actual video was as dark and murky as the telesnaps, or whether you could actually kind of make out what you were looking at.

A Macra attacks Polly. (The Macra Terror Episode 2) ©BBC

Episode 2 shows the colony attempting to assert control over the Doctor and his friends. He's arrested with Medok and forced to explain his actions. Medok covers for him (although the Doctor doesn't seem thrilled by this -- it looks like he wanted to have a direct confrontation with the Pilot about what he'd seen), so the Doctor is set free. But the Controller of the colony (issuing orders from a video screen with a still image) doesn't want dissent, so he orders that the Doctor and company be hypnotized into supporting the colony and not asking questions -- after all, "There is no such thing as Macra! Macra do not exist!" The treatment doesn't work on Jamie, and the Doctor is able to stop it before Polly succumbs, but it's too late for Ben. So one of the regulars has been hypnotized and is working against the Doctor -- something that hasn't happened since The War Machines (also by Ian Stuart Black). But he doesn't get much of a chance to betray his friends; he gets Ola to come and lock the Doctor up for tampering with the colony's equipment, but then Polly runs off to find him with Ben chasing after, and they encounter the Macra -- and we get a full view of these strange crab-like monsters (assuming the end of episode 1 really was as unilluminating as it seemed). But when Polly tries to explain what she's seen, Ben can't quite bring himself to back her up. This leads to the Doctor accusing the Pilot of having a fake Controller, and they insist upon seeing him -- after which we see an old, uncertain man menaced by a giant claw... You'd think the Macra would know better than to show themselves so blatantly (or even let the real Controller be seen at all), but I guess when you need a cliffhanger, logic is thrown to the winds.

March 18: The Moonbase Episodes 3 & 4

Back to animation for episode 3, which on the one hand is rather a shame, as there's a lot of Cyberman action in this one, but on the other hand, it's also the episode with the Cybermen denying emotion while taunting the humans. "Only stupid Earth brains like yours would have been fooled," they say, and then they seem to mock the base crew, as the crew realize that the drops in pressure are related to the Cybermen entering the base: "Clever, clever, clever." It also doesn't help that the Cybermen's plan to devastate the surface of the Earth makes no sense. Hobson suggests they're just taking revenge, but the Cybermen disagree; no, they're just wiping out anything that might be a danger -- as if that makes any sense. But unfortunately it's the closest thing we get to motivation here.

Jamie and Ben attack the Cybermen. (The Moonbase Episode 3
Animation) ©BBC Worldwide

Of course, this is also the episode where Polly makes a plastic-dissolving cocktail to take out the Cybermen, so there's a nice action scene where Polly, Ben, and Jamie attack the Cybermen's chest units, causing them to die (quite horribly in the animation, with copious amounts of foam spurting out of their chests and their mouths -- and while we're on the subject of the animation, it looks like they used the telesnaps as reference more often this time around). This means that the Cybermen no longer have control of the Gravitron, so they have to march on the base to attack it from the outside...

Episode 4 is back to video, and we get to see the Cybermen march for real and attack the base. Their first blast punctures a hole in the base, which the crew is fortunately able to plug with a plastic tea tray. It's a nice idea, but where was this thinking when we saw the gaping hole into the base back in episode 2?

The Gravitron sends the Cybermen into space. (The
Moonbase Episode 4) ©BBC

This episode is primarily a tense standoff between the Cybermen and the crew, but once the Doctor figures out that they dislike gravity (which he actually worked out in episode 3), it's just a matter of pointing the Gravitron at the moon's surface and sending the Cybermen flying off into space. And, well, that's it. Hobson announces that they need to get the Gravitron back under control while the Doctor and company slip away.

It's not that The Moonbase is a bad story; there are moments that are quite nice, in fact. But we can't ignore the fact that we already essentially had this story this season with The Tenth Planet -- this is a bit more claustrophobic affair, since there aren't any shots of Geneva, and it's nice to see Hobson, the leader of the base, actually survive the story with both his skin and his sanity intact, but other than that this is just a remake of that story. We even have a spacecraft sent into the sun and Ben defeating the Cybermen in the middle of the story, requiring them to have to come attack again. And when you factor in the other bits of silliness in this serial (the Doctor's haphazard analysis of the base, the Cybermen's inconsistent emotional qualities, that hole blocked by sacks of flour), you can't help but feel that there's a contempt for the audience here: if they liked The Tenth Planet, they'll like it again, just redressed slightly with better-looking monster costumes, and they won't demand anything more than that.

March 17: The Moonbase Episodes 1 & 2

Thanks to the joys of animation we can actually watch a full story -- The Moonbase is only missing episodes 1 and 3, so for the DVD release³³ they've been animated (although only occasionally, it seems, using the telesnaps as a reference, but that was probably too much to hope for). Although am I the only one who's noticed it's actually a Tomb Cyberman on the front, not a Moonbase one?³⁴

The animation here is quite good -- a significant improvement over The Reign of Terror by the same people, as the editing here isn't nearly as distracting. It'll never replace the real thing, but it sure beats peering at telesnaps.

It's an entertaining first episode; there's some fun larking about in spacesuits on the moon before the Doctor and his companions head inside the eponymous moonbase, the crew of which is suffering from a mysterious illness that seems to strike at random. Somewhat surprisingly, the Doctor isn't instantly under suspicion for this, and he gets to spend the first episode filling in the audience on the basic facts: "Every school kid knows about the Gravitron in there," Hobson says. "Ah, yes," the Doctor replies, "it must be about the year 2050, Ben." It's actually 2070, but only twenty years off isn't bad. And it turns out that this is another remote base crewed by an international staff (although, as About Time 2 points out, with Americans curiously absent) -- at which point we note that writer Kit Pedler's last story was The Tenth Planet, which also had an isolated international base and Cybermen.

To his credit, director Morris Barry seems to be holding back the big reveal (based on both the telesnaps and the animation), showing us hints of Cybermen (including, memorably, a jug-handled shadow) without giving away the whole thing until the cliffhanger -- at which point we see that the Cybermen have been massively redesigned. They're a lot sleeker than the Tenth Planet version, with solid metal faces, three-fingered gloves, and cables running along their limbs (actually this was present in the originals too, but it took a bit of faith to see them as such).

Episode 2 has always existed in the archives, so we're back to the real thing. It becomes clear that the moonbase is under attack by the Cybermen for some reason, but via stealth rather than force -- which means that Hobson, the leader of the base, refuses to believe Polly's story that there are Cybermen around. "There were Cybermen, every child knows that, but they were all destroyed ages ago." Instead Hobson's finally decided that the Doctor and company are worthy of suspicion for this inexplicable disease, but the Doctor denies being responsible and declares his intention to help find the real cause, because "there are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything that we believe in. They must be fought" -- as good a summation of this phase of the show as any other (and a significant departure from the ethics of the show when it began).

So to help find the cause he naturally causes as much havoc as he can, interrupting people while they're working by taking their shoes off and snipping bits of fabric from their clothing. Yet he can't find any cause, and it's only pure chance that he learns it's the sugar that it's infected -- because apparently "pok[ing] into everything" didn't include the sugar. (This isn't the only bit of silliness on display, by the way; we also learn the fact that the Cybermen can seal up a giant hole in the side of the moonbase with a few sacks of food, but when they go in and out there's a momentary drop in air pressure.)

And then, because Hobson didn't believe the stories about Cybermen, that means that this episode's cliffhanger also gets to be a dramatic reveal of a Cyberman. You start to get the feeling that maybe the current production team don't have that much faith in their audience's ability to notice they're getting the same thing twice...

³³ Public service announcement: the region 1 version of The Moonbase was mastered incorrectly as progressive video, accidentally eliminating the VidFIRE process that gives them that "studio video" look, as well as making the episodes run about a minute longer than they're supposed to. If you care about such things (and you should), the region 2 DVD doesn't have this problem.
³⁴ Unlike the Cybermen from The Tomb of the Cybermen, the Moonbase Cybermen don't have cables coming out of the bottom of their chest unit. And yes, I'm the sort of person who knows these things.

March 16: The Underwater Menace Episodes 3 & 4

So episode 3 of The Underwater Menace is one of those episodes that the BBC always retained, which means that for the longest time this was the main impression people had of this story. Out of the context of the rest of the serial, episode 3 is a weird affair, with bizarre moments interspersed with the children's television version of melodrama. In context it's still a strange episode, but at least it makes a little more sense following on from episode 2.

The Fish People listen to Sean and Jacko's exhortation to go on
strike. (The Underwater Menace Episode 3) ©BBC

Actually, for the first few minutes this is still quite good, as Zaroff enters and orders that the Doctor and Ramo be killed. There's a sense of real tension, and a lovely moment as Thous, having been told by the Doctor that Zaroff's eyes have an insane light when he talks about raising Atlantis, looks intently into Zaroff's eyes: "What are you staring at?" Zaroff demands. "Nothing at all," Thous replies, but you can tell he's worried.

But once the Doctor announces his intention to kidnap Professor Zaroff, the episode goes to pot. There's a ludicrous chase through an Atlantean bazaar as the Doctor runs around half-disguised to try and lure Zaroff away so they can kidnap him, which ends in the Doctor blowing some sort of powder through his recorder into Zaroff's face. Meanwhile Sean and Jacko, two of the miners that Ben and Jamie befriended, convince the Fish People to go on strike, thus providing more chaos in Atlantis as the food supplies run out. The Fish People are actually a rather good design (although the different "stages" of Fish People are a little odd, as some appear to be wearing diving masks rather than having fish eyes), but then we're treated to a long sequence of Fish People floating through the water, accompanied by a soundtrack that seems to presage the more experimental scores of the early '70s. Again, it's actually quite an impressive-looking sequence (and allegedly was so expensive to film that it's the reason why episode 3 was never junked) -- it just has nothing to do with the ongoing storyline.

"NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN STOP ME NOW!" (The
Underwater Menace Episode 3) ©BBC

But then Zaroff escapes by faking a heart attack and decides to take over Atlantis completely, shooting down Thous in his throne room. This then leads to one of the most famous lines in Doctor Who fandom, as an exultant Zaroff shouts, "Nothing in the world can stop me now!!!"³² (The reprise of this line in episode 4 is a little less over-the-top.) One does wonder if Zaroff is feeling all right, given that all he's done is escape from the Doctor's friends and shot Atlantis's beloved leader, but I guess the rush of adrenaline from his fight with Jamie has gone to his head.

Episode 4 is back to the soundtrack and telesnaps, which is a shame since it seems like, after episode 3's efforts to mark time in as outrageous a way as possible, this is concerned with actually wrapping up the storyline. One does wonder about the Doctor's plan to destroy Atlantis by letting the sea in as a means of stopping Zaroff, which seems a bit like overkill, but desperate times and all that, I suppose. Even this doesn't seem to slow down Zaroff though, and it's only a bit of trickery from the Doctor and Ben that prevents him from getting to the controls to detonate the explosion that will end the world. He's still trying until the very end, when he drowns from all the water rushing into Atlantis. The Doctor, to his credit, does actually try to go back and save Zaroff, but Ben won't let him on account of the rapidly-rising sea. And thus the world is saved.

Make no mistake: The Underwater Menace is frequently silly and has little in the way of nuance or subtlety. But because it made it clear from the onset that it was going to be a cheesy old-style film serial, I find that I don't mind it as much as The Highlanders. That too ended up being a silly and unthreatening romp, but it looked like it might become something more serious; there are no such illusions about The Underwater Menace. It's set in a stagey-looking Atlantis because that's how these things go, and Zaroff wants to destroy the world simply because he's a mad scientist, with no further explanations necessary. But crucially, it manages to be entertaining throughout; Jamie is settling in naturally, Ben and Polly are giving fun performances, and the Doctor is becoming the figure we're familiar with from later stories -- and even his awful disguise in episode 3 feels more "right" than the disguises he wore in The Highlanders. It shouldn't be taken too seriously, and I'm not sure you'd ever want another story like this again, but in its own decidedly B-movie way The Underwater Menace succeeds.

³² Personal anecdote time: when I first started dating my now-wife, I changed the start-up sound on her computer to this line, so every time she turned on her computer Joseph Furst yelled triumphantly at her.

March 15: The Underwater Menace Episodes 1 & 2

There's a scene early in the first episode of The Underwater Menace where, after the Doctor announces that the TARDIS is landing, we get a peek into each of the four main characters' thoughts via voiceover: Jamie doesn't know what he's gotten himself into, Polly wants it to be Chelsea 1966, Ben hopes it isn't the Daleks, while the Doctor, with childlike glee, is looking forward to prehistoric monsters. It's very different from the style of the show so far, and then you realize: this is a comic strip adventure that they actually filmed.

It's not just comics influencing this story though; as the story progresses it becomes clear that, as guides like The Discontinuity Guide and About Time 2 have pointed out, this is the Doctor Who equivalent of a '30s adventure serial like Flash Gordon or (more pertinently, given that it, like The Underwater Menace, takes place in the sunken ruins of Atlantis) Undersea Kingdom. The dangers the TARDIS crew encounters in episode 1 (such as passing out from the increased pressure -- the Doctor calls it "caisson disease", but that's actually decompression sickness, the opposite effect) feel like the cliffhangers of an old-style serial. It's particularly hard not to make the comparison when our heroes are being slowly tilted into a well as a sacrifice to the fish goddess Amdo, and only the Doctor's note to a mad scientist (which he signs "Dr W" -- fortunately this is the last time this occurs) saves them from sacrificial death by shark. And then we see the Fish People, and...well, we'll talk more about them tomorrow, when episode 3 comes around. This episode ends with Polly being prepped to be turned into one of these Fish People, which is actually quite horrific in general but particularly so given the style this story has adopted (and we know this because it survives as a censor clip) -- watching Polly cry out and struggle in desperation while two white-coated assistants hold her down is quite disturbing.

Episode 2 of The Underwater Menace was, until October 2013, one of the most recent recoveries, having been returned in 2011.³¹ This means that The Underwater Menace is now 50% complete, and thus a ripe candidate for animating the missing two episodes. The downside is that there have been delays with the animation (and the current word is that it won't be completed at all), which means that episode 2 still isn't available commercially. However, an unrestored copy (with the censor clips inserted back in) is available online, so that's what I've ended up watching -- the first time I've ever seen this episode.

I have to admit, it certainly makes a difference being able to actually see what's going on. Episode 1 seemed like an old school film serial, but this is a more sedate affair. Once Polly escapes from the operating theatre (thanks to a power cut orchestrated by the Doctor), the focus is less on jeopardy here and more on exploration, both of the plot and Atlantis itself. But being able to see the mad gleam in Professor Zaroff's eyes as he cheerfully admits to the Doctor that he fully intends to destroy the world ("Why? You, a scientist, ask me why? The achievement, my dear Doctor! The destruction of the world. The scientist's dream of supreme power!") is wonderful, as is the chance to finally see Troughton in action (this is, after all, his earliest surviving episode). Troughton (or the script) has reined in some of the worst excesses, with this version of the Doctor somewhat less interested in trouble for trouble's sake, as he was in The Highlanders -- and the ability to see his mind working through the implications of events is also a previously unknown delight. And it's Jamie's first story as a companion, but this episode gives him some fine material, as he works with Ben to escape from the mines they've been sent to work in. As I said before, it's a fairly workman-like episode, as it's more concerned with setting up the plot and subplots than anything else, but fortunately it does so in an entertaining way.

³¹ Along with "Air Lock" (Galaxy 4 episode 3). Honestly, pay attention.

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.