Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Invasion (Revisited)

A warm welcome to Nostalgia Filter on this special day! What makes it so special, you ask? Well, if I've got my sums right, this is the 1000th Post on this blog! I'm so grateful to be here writing for you all after six years and countless changes, and I'm also really glad that this anniversary has fallen on a corker of an episode...

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See here for my previous look at this story.

An iconic image, for sure. Which is why it's been reproduced
with every other design since.

Doctor Who - Season Six, Story Three - The Invasion
Written 2/10/15

We've finally reached the end of Cyberman Month, and we end it on a bang - The Invasion is a blistering eight episodes long, and is the home of a number of important Doctor Who firsts. Despite being remembered as the story where the Cybermen march on St. Paul's, the story actually spends half of its 200 minute runtime as a slow-burning conspiracy thriller, the Cybermen not being revealed until the cliffhanger of Episode Four. This is not a bad thing though, as it's this quality which makes it stand out, and which would lead it to have a profound effect on the show come next season.
     Upon landing in 1970s England, The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe discover that their old friend Professor Travers has gone off to America, with Professor Watkins and his niece Isobel taking their place. Watkins has been kidnapped by International Electromatics, a mysterious and powerful company owned by the mysterious Tobias Vaughn. Vaughn is colluding with an alien force in order to rule the world, but when The Doctor and Jamie discover that said alien race is the Cybermen, they realise far sooner than he does that they will simply toss him aside once their invasion begins. With the help of Vaughn and The Doctor's old friend Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, founder of UNIT, The Doctor foils the Cybermen's plot to kill all life on Earth.
     I am of the opinion that the vast majority of the longer stories in the Classic Series could be shortened or broken up into smaller, more compact affairs - this is mainly due to the way I started with the shorter serials in the 80s and how used I am to the way TV is today. The same is true of The Invasion, although I don't think you could scrape more than an episode from its runtime when you really break it down. The first four episodes, in which the Cybermen only appear for a few seconds, works as a standalone story with a cliffhanger at the end, in which two characters get kidnapped, and rescued. Episode Four feels climactic in that way, and this aides the pacing no end. It also unfortunately leaves all the padding to the fifth and sixth episode, meaning that the Cybermen's reveal isn't really capitalised on.

The reveal of the first Cyberman in the story is
arguably better animated.

     And that's true of the Cybermen throughout this story. Their redesign is great, even if it seems a little weird to stick the huge rectangular earmuffs onto the side of the Cybermen's heads. The Cybermen here don't really have their own agency within the story, spending the vast majority of it as footsoldiers for either Vaughn or their Cyber-Planner, an obscure computer brought forward from The Wheel In Space. It's because of this that this doesn't really stand out as a Cyberman story, with the far more interesting (and relevant) villain being Vaughn himself. Played by Kevin Stoney (who last appeared as the traitorous Mavic Chen in The Daleks' Master Plan), Vaughn is a wonderful calculating villain, methodical and intelligent, his only failings being his incredible hubris in thinking he could control the Cybermen and his over-reliance on his underlings to do all the important things for him.

     Seeing as we have been addressing some of the sexism present in these stories, let us now turn to the biggest bit of padding in this story, an attempt at addressing sexism which ends up falling on its arse. Soon after the reveal, photographer Isabel insists that she wants to go and see these Cybermen, wishing to go wandering in the sewers to take photographs of them. This escapade, which Zoe ends up supporting, inevitably goes wrong when a group of Cybermen attack them in the sewers, leading to UNIT having to engage the Cybermen directly. It's a dual blow to the entire purpose of the scene, because ultimately Isabel is made to look a fool when it all goes awry, and Isabel's attempt to point out the Brigadier's sexist attitude doesn't work when the thing she's suggesting is ridiculously dangerous and irresponsible for two lone people to go and do.

     This episode sees the return of The Brigadier, previously a colonel, from The Web of Fear. Since his escapade with The Doctor in the London Underground, he's set up the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, known to us and to Doctor Who history as UNIT. The organisation, with and without its founder, would continue from this point to make appearances even to the present day, with their last appearance being in the Series Nine premier. The first appearance of UNIT shapes the story - The Doctor now has assistance to his endeavors, be they through the use of superior infrastructure or simply through the precise application of military force. This created a whole new dynamic for the show which the Third Doctor would come to rely on almost exclusively in his first few years, with The Doctor and companions both working with and having moral complaints with UNIT and its members.

PACKERRR!!

     Cybermen Month has seen me watch several pieces of animated Doctor Who, and I'll be doing the same thing next week when I review The Ice Warriors. This was, in fact, the first serial to be given this treatment, with episodes 1 and 4 being animated by famous British animation company Cosgrove Hall. It's surprising it took this long for this to have become a thing. The animated episodes are of course not perfect substitution for the original, and it can be argued that there is a lot of detail in the direction lost with the move towards animation. But the animation also allows a lot of the feel of each episode to be set by Cosgrove Hall's expert art design, and it really makes the beginning of the serial that much more tense for it.
     The Invasion is not a story which particularly highlights the Cybermen in terms of their mythology or history, beyond being their earliest chronological appearance within the show's universe. It is, however, an excellent Doctor Who story, a brilliant tense thriller with minimal padding, a really enjoyable villain and a story format which would go on to transform the show and bring it into the world of colour. I hoped with Cybermen week to give a thorough idea of where the Cybermen came from, as well as to go back and learn more about the Troughton years. If I can have anything happen for you, dear reader, as a result of this, it's that you go and see The Invasion. You really won't regret it.

Thanks.

NEXT TUESDAY: We shuffle back a season as we begin looking at stories starring The Ice Warriors.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Tomb of the Cybermen (Revisited)

See here for my previous look at this story.

Despite the phallic design, the Cyber Controller adds an
interesting face to the Cybermen.

Doctor Who - Season Five, Story One - The Tomb of the Cybermen
Written between 27th and 28th September 2015

A question often arises when discussing The Tomb of the Cybermen - what makes this story so special? There are some who believe that the story's recovery in 1991 in its entirety was the miraculous reappearance of a bona fide classic, while others say that its reappearance is the only reason why people focus on it, and it's no different to any other Cyberman story from this era. There are elements of truth in both camps, as is often the case, and the reality is somewhere in the middle. It's true that Tomb has a great deal of similarities to the other Base-Under-Siege staples, but it also has a number of moments which raise it to another level.

Kit Pedler's last story had a black astronaut, so this comes
a little out of left-field.

     The Doctor has just picked up Victoria Waterfield, a now orphaned child of a Victorian scientist who fought against the Daleks. The Doctor and Jamie take her on her first trip, and end up landing on the planet Telos, where an expedition is attempting to excavate and find the legendary Tombs of the Cybermen, who at this point in history have been missing for several hundred years. The expedition is backed by the suspicious Klieg, his assistant Kaftan and her hulking slave Toberman. The Doctor is cautious about exploring the Tombs, but eventually leads the group the sleeping Cybermen. Klieg awakens them, revealing that he wishes to use them to rule the Earth. However, the newly awakened Cyber-Controller soon sets about the agenda of restarting Cyber-conversion. Klieg is defeated, and despite the efforts of the Cybermen and their adorable rodent-like servants the Cybermats, Toberman sacrifices himself to shut them away once more,
     The Cybermen here retain their design from The Moonbase, with a few extra additions made to their general lore. The Cybermen's use of refrigeration devices and their second home on Telos went on to become a key part of their mythology, as was the existence of the Cybermats (retired in Revenge and brought back in Closing Time), cute little creatures apparently capable of killing. Their threat here feels a lot more tangible than in the Moonbase, as they're present as a great evil locked away than as an outside invader. The harsh, cold architecture of the Tomb, coupled with the death traps and puzzles, do a lot to beef up the Cyber threat, and their desire to convert people is specifically pushed and discussed as the danger behind them. (Even if we won't see the Conversion process until the 1980s.)
     Most episode guides classify this as a Base-Under-Siege story, and it's not hard to see why. The character archetypes of the tough leader, the voice-of-reason scientist and the traitor are all there, as is the claustrophobia that comes with fighting the Cybermen in such a small, inescapable space. However, I think that there is a major difference - whose base is under siege, here? Usually the Base-Under-Siege story features a group of humans minding their own business before being attacked, and yet this time these explorers have sought the Cybermen out to their base. The Control Rooms of the Snowcap and The Moonbase were fairly mix and match, but the central vestibule in this serial is cramped and metallic and more innately inhospitable than simply bland.

There are some sweet moments with Victoria, and her
screaming isn't grating... yet.

     Of course this is the Sixties, so I have to discuss some of the less favourable aspects of the serial. All of the human villain characters have thick accents and darker skin, even though they are (with the exception of Toberman) played by white actors. Klieg and Kaftan are not exactly trustworthy in their initial appearance, but the episode builds around their villainous nature by having The Doctor be suspicious of them. Toberman was originally meant to be mute and deaf, with his hearing aid being a nod to the Cybermen's origins, but this was left out and so the only black character in the serial is portrayed as a noble, if terrifying, savage. Elsewhere, and both female characters are actually banned by the male exhibition leaders from even entering deep into the Tombs, and there are several similar comments made throughout. Victoria at least fights against a few of these jabs, and her characteristic screaming is actually used as a clever diversion, but it's still jarring to see this in a story supposedly set hundreds of years in our future.
     So, to answer my original question - what makes Tomb so memorable? It's certainly not some narrative masterpiece, and it's not very progressive with its characters, most of whom are either vaguely racist or are taken from previous Base-Under-Siege stories. But the story's setting, mythology, and expert sense of tension helps to sell a setup which without that would be rather menial. It is true that a lot of the focus on this story comes from its status as one of the seven complete Second Doctor stories, and one whose appearance seemed to arrive most miraculously, but that's almost incidental when you actually compare this episode to the stories that came before and after in this era. It doesn't just stand out, it shines. And that's why it's so cherished.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: A serial which now exists as 1/3rd actual episode and 2/3rds static images and dodgy CGI from 2010. It's The Wheel In Space.

Review: Doctor Who Classic: The Moonbase (Revisited)

See here for my previous look at this story. Although, tbh, I'm not sure I'd actually watched the serial when I wrote that. I literally don't understand where I was coming from.

The Moonbase's DVD replaces the missing episodes with
animation, like last week.

Doctor Who - Season Four, Story Six - The Moonbase
Written between 21st and 23rd September 2015

It is not surprising that a show spanning 26 years of continuous programming through three distinct decades managed to end up following certain archetypes when it came to writing stories. What is surprising about the Second and Third Doctor's era is how often the same one comes up. Yes, I am indeed talking about "Base-Under-Siege", a plot template with the same circumstances and character archetypes which defines many of the stories across Doctor Who - but especially in the Second Doctor's era. Troughton didn't, of course, originate this - The Tenth Planet from last week was one of these stories. But it's more important here because last week, the whole world was being invaded, while this week we're focusing on a small tiny base. On the Moon.
     While attempting to land on Mars, something drags the TARDIS off-course and they end up on Earth's moon in the year 2070. There they enter the Moonbase, staffed by a small scientific team in charge of the Gravitron, a device used in the future to control the Earth's weather. The Doctor and his three companions (Ben and Polly from last week, and Two's favourite companion, Jamie McCrimmon) discover that the base has been inundated with an epidemic, causing staff members to become comatose with black veins. The director, Hobson, is immediately suspicious of The Doctor and his friends - especially when people start going missing. As we see, this is down to the Cybermen, something which The Doctor immediately suspects. Soon the base is being sieged by an Army of Cybermen, intent on using the Gravitron to kill everyone on Earth. Using the help of the remaining crew, The Doctor manages to direct the Gravitron towards the Cybermen and their ships, expelling them from the moon, as Polly and Ben despatch the remaining few with a solvent cocktail.
     This is the fourth story of Troughton's era, but, thanks to the missing episodes, it contains only his third and fourth surviving episodes. Half of The Moonbase is missing and has been for years - this is another DVD release (brought out in 2014) where the remaining episodes have been animated. I really like this selection of stories because it shows both sides of the problem - next week's Tomb of the Cybermen was recovered in its entirety and didn't live up to expectations, but The Wheel In Space the week after contains only two of its six episodes. When I first watched The Moonbase and reviewed it (as can be read in the link at the top of this article) those animations hadn't been done, and I distinctly didn't remember the first episode being gone. I must have started on the second episode, not had a clue what was going on, and judged it from there.

These Cybermen are much more into subterfuge.

     So, what is "Base-Under-Siege"? The Doctor and companions enter a remote, claustrophobic base. It's being run by a small (emphasis on small) team of people who usually follow a set of archetypes. Among others, there's the suspicious and hardline leader, the medic who speaks as the voice of reason, and the plucky one with lots of technical knowledge. People start being picked off when the alien enemies slowly start to pick people off, making their way closer and closer to our heroes and their defences. What story am I describing? It's definitely a description of The Moonbase. It's also a description of dozens of other Doctor Who stories. Dalek is Base Under Siege. Flatline is Base Under Siege. It is ubiquitous. The problem with Troughton's Base Under Siege stories being a lack of variety caused by repetition of the plot and not a lot of budget to separate them from one another.
     The turnaround between the broadcast of The Tenth Planet and filming for The Moonbase was apparently only two weeks. Despite this hasty schedule, the new Cyberman design is both simpler and slightly more effective, and the fact that a hefty accordion has been replaced by a boiler suit with handles means that they were able to create a fairly convincing "army". As I put rather nicely in my previous review, the new design is a trade-off which would go on to define the design of the Cybermen in all later incarnations. The robotic boiler suit men have much less of the humanoid design of their predecessor - their hands are three-fingered pincers, their voices now a harsh electronic buzz that requires subtitles to understand. Although The Doctor does mention their history, it's not immediately obvious that these things are human beings - but when that history is brought up, their inhumanity becomes all the more terrifying.
     Of course, like last week, and like some time to come, there is an air of pronounced sexism which often gets brought up around The Moonbase. Polly is given quite a nice scene where she works out a way of discovering a way to defeat these Cybermen - using a combination of solvents to erode the plastic coating on the Cybermen's chest apparatus. But apart from that, she doesn't get much else to do but scream at the Cybermen, be disbelieved about having seen the Cybermen, and be told by three different people to make coffee. Often there's a counter-argument that The Doctor asking her to make coffee is an attempt to diffuse the tense situation that had arisen amongst the staff of the base. But one thing that is never brought up is the fact that at one point Ben literally says, "Not you Polly, this is Men's work." I suppose it's historical accuracy, however unpleasant it may be.

Two's characterisation takes it's most well-known form here.

     The Moonbase ends up being lot more interesting than I gave it credit for. It doesn't have to spend as much time explaining itself as its predecessor did, and so it gets to add a bit more tension and suspense. The story was meant to capitalise on the new Cybermen, and it did that, while at the same time finally calming Troughton's more clownish tendencies and allowing the more serious side of his character to come out. Despite how we may be able to categorise and scrutinise it, and despite some of the more distasteful idiosyncrasies of its era, The Moonbase is a very enjoyable story for fans of this era.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: The Boy Wonder of the Troughton era, which just happens to be a Cyberman story. Join with us as we defrost The Tomb of the Cybermen.

Review: Submarine

For another look at this film, why not read my friend Josh's review here?

Submarine - Directed by Richard Ayoade (2010)
Written 24/10/15.

I tried my absolute best to despise this film for five years. My impression from promotional images was that this was a piece of twee, misguided faux-Andersonian dreck plastered across a British background and filled to the brim with the pretentious, "quirky" mannerisms and stupid quotes to be mass-produced on moody Tumblr posts. And, for my part, I was more or less completely correct. Now now, don't go away. I was far too harsh on Submarine - I judged the book by the cover, and I was mad to do so, because this film is one of the most refreshingly realistic romantic comedies I've seen in a long time. Simultaneously managing to be sweet, witty, and just a little bit weird, Submarine uses art-film techniques for a remarkably accessible experience.
     Directed by comedian Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd, Was It Something I Said?), the film follows Swansea teenager Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts, Being Human) and his strange, creepy obsessions with both his parents' love life and with Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige, The Sarah-Jane Adventures), a cold pyromaniac that he is desperately in love with. Tate narrates the film with a fast-paced string of sometimes-witty sometimes-cringey teenage observances about the world he lives in, and charts his efforts to both save his parents' flagging marriage and to woo Jordana. Obstensibly opening as a quirky romantic comedy, the film wanders through several shades of surrealism before settling in on our own reality, where Oliver must take responsibility for the stupid decisions he made trying to achieve both of his goals.
     The film's Welsh aesthetic is breathtaking and feeds into the overall feel of the film, tying in loose, Andersonian references to French New Wave and classic Hollywood into maritime folklore. Ayoade spends a great deal of time deliberately muddying the waters between love and grief, and there are a few scenes which deal with certain characters' experiences with depression and hopelessness. Despite this bleakness, the film also feels quite warm - stoked with nostalgia of our own childhood mistakes, and eventually triumphant when despite cocking up massively, Oliver is implied to get everything he wanted. It's a bittersweetness which ends up falling very much on the side of sweet, and the film takes you through so many peaks and troughs of feeling that it really earns that final one-sidedness.

I mean... you can tell why I thought this film was hipster trash,
right? Look at this stuff. It's not, though, you should totally go
and see it.

      A lot of this is down to the likability of the leads. Craig Roberts, at this point trying to move away from his time in Tracey Beaker and that one Being Human episode with a gimp in it, manages to create a wonderful duality within Oliver Tate - a character who is clearly selfish and pretentious, but whom you end up loving regardless because of the genuine good intent behind a great deal of what he does. Despite sporting a dodgy accent, the same is also true of the wonderful Yasmin Paige, presenting Jordana as effortlessly cool and distant one moment and gentle and fragile the next. It really pisses me off that the most work she's had since this film is effing Pramface (although I have yet to see Glue, so there's always time).
       One thing that makes Submarine work is that it isn't trying to be clever with its direction - it occasionally uses title cards and other stylistic flourishes, but these are all heavily functional and serve to enhance the film's mood. It's a story of two strange but highly identifiable characters, engaging with the rest of the world and attempting to find solace in their idea of "okay". I've been tempted throughout writing this review to call Submarine, "the British Moonrise Kingdom". But I've got a much different idea now, one that surprised even me when I decided I was going to write it.
       Submarine is better. And that's the best accolade I can give.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: We discuss the artsy-fartsy Jim Jarmusch film, Broken Flowers.

FTA: Doctor Who: A Town Called Mercy and Hide

This tenth and final volume of articles from Celebrate, Regenerate! covers stories from Series 7, which was the most recently aired season when these articles were written. I hope you've enjoyed these articles. (See here for more on this project's origins.)

A Town Called Mercy
(Main article.)

Not since the McCoy era has the show tackled moral questions like we saw in A Town Called Mercy. While it did remind me a lot of Star Trek in its composition, I saw that as no bad thing – it’s a very Doctor-Who-y format. Certain parts of Fandom often like to analyse episodes to their very deepest minutiae, and this was certainly one for them. The Doctor and Amy both meet their mirror images – The Doctor in the war criminal trying to atone for his atrocities and Amy in the Cyborg experimented upon and changed into something less human.
     The pace was slower, but I liked that very much – it gave the story time to ferment, for the actors to work their piece, for the setting to get under the skin. I’m unashamedly biased towards the Classic Series, and I felt that like those old stories, this slower pace gave the time to actually think about the story’s messages and dilemmas instead of speeding through at a million miles an hour and not knowing really what just happened at the end of it. Call me a pensioner, whatever you like, but A Town Called Mercy is the first story in a while that’s given me the chance to breathe.
     And breathe I did, and what I got was a brilliantly shot Western town that, like Enlightenment and The Greatest Show before it, managed to combine an imaginative and thought-provoking script with a beautiful backdrop. In a way, the Western setting provided a medium for all of the story’s arguments to transpire in – a land of freedom, of choice, of second chances, of second airings. Mercy gave Jex a second chance as their Doctor, The Doctor one as their Marshall, and the Gunslinger one as their Protector. It was about re-muddying the lines between black and white, not just making The Doctor darker but making his world more ambiguous as well. No more swinging in to save the day from the dreadful villains who don’t know how evil they’re being, no. The Doctor is dealing with actual people, with consciences and guilt and pride and honour and desperation.
     And what people they are. This episode’s cast is vital in helping it along, especially veteran Adrian Scarborough, who practically sells the episode on his performance alone. When the truth about his history was revealed, I initially groaned at what I thought would be a typical “twist” that saw us switch sides and watch as Jex became a maniacal scheming villain. I was incredibly, incredibly pleased to see what came instead – a pair of characters, both damaged by the things they’ve done, both seeking justice – either through redemption or retribution. The Doctor, since the Time War, can identify with both, and this episode more than most managed to press his buttons in an enlightening and entertaining way.

Hide
(Main article.)

Neil Cross is a writer for whom I have a large amount of admiration. In two episodes he’s shown what NuWho has the potential to be – a magnanimous force for good. His only ideology seems to be that love and happiness saves the day, with enough scientific realism to stop that falling into the slushy mess that the beginning of this sentence would make it out to be. I had planned to start this article talking about ghost stories, but as the Doctor himself says, this isn’t a ghost story – it’s a love story.
     Although there’s no love lost between Clara and the TARDIS, who after spending a season being rather less talkative than she was in Neil Gaiman’s The Doctor’s Wife seemed to gain a rather snarky streak this week. At times Clara threatens to become little more than a mystery and a puzzle – an enigma wrapped up in a pretty Blackpudlian girl. Neil Cross isn’t gonna have any of that – he’s made the storyline around her into something more subtle, and has more than any writer at this point made a deliberate effort to develop her into something completely different to her predecessors.
     And talking about completely, how about this story, eh? No real villains, just star-crossed lovers who, despite their garish appearances, are no different to our guest stars, Alec Palme (Dougray Scott) and Emma Grayling (Jessica Paine). The two are some of my favourite guest stars from this series, and their sweet little love story (with a Professor and his assistant) also feels strangely like a parallel for our two main leads.
     I’m not going to deny it – I really like the chemistry between Eleven and Clara, and in certain circles I’d be called a “shipper” – but it’s not like the series hasn’t presented me with some serious evidence. In this episode alone, we have the fact that the TARDIS seems jealous of how much The Doctor is attached to her, and the way that he tries to keep her out of harms way when he goes investigating through time.
     Hide had everything that I love about Doctor Who in spades, and wasn’t afraid to push a few of the boundaries to make it happen. Episodes like Hide are ones that make me glad to still be a Doctor Who fan, that reward me for all of those times where I’ve gone off on fanboyish rants about episodes and still tuned in the next week. I loved it, and I really do hope that Neil Cross writes more episodes in the future.

Thanks.

FTA: Doctor Who: Dalek and Boom Town

This ninth, penultimate volume of articles from Celebrate, Regenerate! covers stories from the Ninth Doctor. (See here for more on this project.)

Dalek
(Main article.)

Picture the scene. It’s the 30th April 2005, and you’re a nine-year-old boy whose only previous experience with the Daleks was seeing one of them blow up in The Five Doctors. I had spent the entire week prior being incredibly excited, discussing with my not-we friends what was to come. When the time arrived, and I saw this wonderful new design, I really felt that New Who was here. Not only did Robert Shearman’s script return the Daleks to our screen, but it also managed to make up for 16 years of public mockery. In short, he managed to make Daleks cool again.
      At the story’s heart, it’s a very basic base-under-siege setup. The museum is the high-security base, Henry Van Statten is the project’s misguided leader, Diana Goddard is the smarter underling and the lone Dalek is the monster attacking them. But this is no ordinary Dalek. Shearman’s script not only reintroduces the Daleks and makes them cool again. He manages to take the most genocidal species in the Universe and makes them sympathetic.
     Dalek provides Eccleston’s most powerful performance in his painfully brief time as The Doctor. The first interaction between the Doctor and the Dalek showcases not only the Time-War backstory that Russell T Davies had woven into the series, but also the depth of the Ninth Doctor’s characterisation and the levels of hatred and anger still locked away inside. It also contrasts Rose’s infectious humanity, and it the first time that we really see the Nine/Rose companionship work in a way that compliments them both.
     The character of Adam Mitchell does seem like it doesn’t really belong in the story, but in reality Bruno Langley’s character feels like a clever parody of 80s companion Adric – a young boy genius with a penchant for ruining the Doctor’s plans through his own incompetence. Adam Mitchell is a statement by RTD: he’s not going to make the mistakes of the past, and especially those made in the JNT era.
     Dalek isn’t just entertaining, but it’s also RTD’s mission statement for the new series. He’s gonna bring back those old monsters, he’s gonna make them awesome, and he’s not gonna mess it up. And what a mission statement that is, because it works, and Dalek is one of the best stories in Season 27. I think that today and, more importantly, I thought that as an excited nine-year-old boy waiting for his first Dalek story.

Boom Town

(Main article.)

Written in place of a Cartmel-esque story about how Rose was a custom-made companion, Boom Town is often put down by fandom simply for how unassuming it is. It may at first glance appear to be a rather dull story, seeing the return of an unpopular villain lambasted for being too silly. But the story of Blon Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen is one that proves, in its way, that RTD was better than his detractors gave him credit for. Instead of an adventure written for the kids, Boom Town presents us with a surprisingly adult examination of how the show treats morality, looking not only at the effect that companions have on those left behind, but also at the nature of heroes and villains.

      My favourite scene in all of NuWho is this episode’s café scene. Filmed on the quick, due to Annette Badland’s other filming commitments, the scene not only cuts into the core of Blon Fel Fotch’s motivations, but also looks at why The Doctor does what he does and why this incarnation in particular feels such a weight of guilt. Even though he is easily able to shoot down Blon’s transparent attempts at moralising, he is affected by her accusations against his character. Even though we know that he is a far superior being morally, his own guilt from the Time War arc prevents him from believing it. Eccleston and Badland manage to portray two conflicted alien beings, both of them grappling one another morally and spiritually.

     Elsewhere, the characters get a chance to do a Black Orchid and just goof around for a bit. After the absolute scare-fest of Moffat’s Empty Child two-parter and the devastating series finale, Boom Town is the perfect break to give our Tardis team (plus Mickey) a chance to get their character development in before the end. The episode is a concession, an admission that character and story have to sometimes take precedence over action and romance. Boom Town is 45 minutes of character drama that both lets our characters breathe and puts them in greater personal pressure than they’d seen for the entire twenty-seventh season.

Thanks.

FTA: Doctor Who Classic: Time and the Rani, The Happiness Patrol and The Greatest Show In The Galaxy

This eighth volume of articles from Celebrate, Regenerate! covers stories from the Seventh Doctor.(See here for more on this project.)

Time and the Rani
(Main article.)

When I first sat down to watch Time and the Rani, I was caught up in the fan opinion that it was one of the worst things this side of the Iraq War, but like my reaction to the Sixth Doctor’s stories, I was pleasantly surprised. So surprised, in fact, that I would go so far as to call Time and the Rani one of my favourite stories of the Seventh Doctor’s era, behind only the wonderful The Happiness Patrol. The reason? Time and the Rani doesn’t just break the So Bad It’s Good barrier in the way that a story like Time-Flight does. It smashes that barrier into bits, and leaves you to try and rebuild it while throwing all it can at you. Time and the Rani is not in any way a story; rather, it is an exhilarating and endlessly entertaining experience that never gets old.
     Sylvester McCoy’s early portrayal of the Seventh Doctor is very different to his later more manipulative persona, but that doesn’t make it worse by default. Instead, it’s fresh, vibrant, and unassumingly mad – it takes the bravado of Colin Baker’s Doctor and channels it into a fluid wit. The Rani, while not as unique in her performance as in her introductory story, still balances the new Doctor perfectly. Her scheme is completely mad and fifty shades of scientifically impossible, but it’s the sheer convoluted lengths to which she goes (kidnapping Albert Einstein, etc.) that make the story what it is.
     Fans lambaste Time and the Rani for being too silly, putting an emphasis on goofy humour over plot, characterisation and common sense. But the rejection of the latter is what makes it unique. Doctor Who’s primary feature is variety, and it’s a simple law of probabilities that a story this silly would pop up sometime. And what do the fans do? They have the guile to complain, to complain about this beautiful, nonsensical thing. Time and the Rani doesn’t try to preoccupy itself with the serious stuff, and instead simply tries to let the audience have fun. And at the end of the day, isn’t that just what Doctor Who is about?

The Happiness Patrol

(Main article.)

Despite trying to not get involved with politics, my kinder friends have called me “a liberal”. This, perhaps, is the catalyst to my incredible enjoyment of The Happiness Patrol, a story which takes a metaphor for Margaret Thatcher’s regime and twists it in a deliciously demented way. Even though the Iron Lady herself was described by Sylvester McCoy as “far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered”, Sheila Hancock’s Helen A is a portrayal that is both hilarious in its send-up of the former Prime Minister and frightening in the way it represents certain aspects of Conservative policy.

     It could have been awfully dry, but the addition of just a few ounces of absurdism makes The Happiness Patrol into a complete and total classic. Most memorably, The Kandyman is a villain that does exactly what good Doctor Who villains do best – they scare the kids, and make the adults think. On the one hand, it’s been suggested that the sucrose-composed robot was designed as an attack on the indulgence and power of the capitalist system, while others simply regard it as a demonstration of just how insane Helen A is.

    And sometimes the story actually puts you under the regime’s spell. So many detractors tell of how they can’t take the villains seriously: they paint the Tardis pink, walk around with frilly hairdos and drown people in strawberry sauce. That’s the whole point! The Happiness Patrol isn’t just a satire of a specific political regime, it’s also a wider warning about the power of appearance over ideology in politics. Of course you couldn’t take Helen A’s happy clappy approach seriously at first, in the same way that people voted for good old Maggie because she looked better than Jim Callahan. 

     Plus, this is where we really see the peak of the Seventh Doctor’s powers of manipulation. Sure, we’d seen him plot to blow up Skaro in the previous story, but that had been set up back in the Pilot episode; here, the Doctor waltzes onto a planet and deposes a tyrannical regime in a single night. He seems to understand everyone he meets instantly; he talks down the Sniper who’s never had to face a man’s eyes, defeats the Happiness Patrol by showing them a smile and then introduces Helen A to the concept of negative emotions. He is not just a faceless hero, but a character in his own right, and one that is prepared to go to any lengths to defend justice, truth and freedom. 

     The Happiness Patrol isn’t just a silly exercise in 80s camp. It’s one that has a dark political undertone that has a lot to say to both the kids of the era and their parents. It's scary, disturbing, funny, melancholy, and exciting. And it’s my favourite story of the entire Seventh Doctor era.

The Greatest Show In The Galaxy

(Main article.)

The much-mocked BBC Quarry has had to stand in for a whole variety of planets, with varying results. In the McCoy era there was a move away from the bland rocky faces of Destiny of the Daleks and Time and the Rani to what has been referred to as “a high-class quarry.” Segonax, the planet currently being inhabited by the Psychic Circle, does as Enlightenment does and provides a visual treat to go alongside one of the most metaphorically profound scripts in McCoy’s era. The Circus has many guests of many different flavours, and the secret at the heart of its’ core reflects the state of the program at that late time in its existence.

       The Circus, having moved about a bit but now firmly in one spot, is the perfect metaphor for Doctor Who. Desperately reaching out to foreign markets, it tries to attract writers and fans to please their audience, the British public (here lovingly rendered as the Gods of Ragnarok.) The Whiz Kidd represents the core fanbase, with their constant admiration for stories broadcast before their birth (“I’ve never seen the old stuff, but I know it’s not as good as it used to be.”) and how their interaction with the show only caused more problems than it solved. The three who run the circus represent various figures in the show’s production team, all of them desperately trying to pull together a show so they’re not devoured by the public’s disinterest. The Doctor, stepping in and destroying the Gods of Ragnarok (or at least ending their influence), is a profound statement by the show. It is the statement that it is ready to move on and do whatever it wants to do, no matter what the executives say. 

     Of course, the joy of the story comes not only with the various metaphorical readings, but also with the story’s aesthetic, which helps to satisfy the children blissfully ignorant of the serial’s undertones. The clowns and robots in black limousines, skating across a acrid desert; Mags transforming in the arena; Ace being locked in the robot room – this is the stuff of nightmares. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is intelligent, and manages to say a lot more than other stories can without spoiling it for the kids. And that’s just how we like it.

Thanks.

FTA: Doctor Who Classic: Revelation of the Daleks and Mindwarp

This seventh volume of articles from Celebrate, Regenerate! covers stories from the later Sixth Doctor.(See here for more on this project.)

Revelation of the Daleks
(Main article.)

Even by the standards of Dalek stories, Revelation is just weird. Named after the frankly insane final book of the New Testament, the final story of Season 22 puts the focus on Davros for the first time since Genesis, giving Terry Molloy's version of the character the room to breathe. The result is a performance that invokes the power of the original, and is infinitely more fun and slimy. The same can be said for the rest of the story, which is brave in the way that it celebrates the grotesque parts of human nature. If Genesis of the Daleks was a BBC documentary, then Revelation of the Daleks is Horrible Histories.
      And yet it’s still funny, in a really sick way. Saward manages to perfectly balance a mix of horror, disgust and dark humour, making us reflect upon the less palatable aspects of human nature. Particularly striking is the scene in which Natasha has to kill her father -  a scene where music, lighting and the script come together to create a moment of genuine tragedy. (Made worse, in fact, by the realisation that she shares her name with Saward’s own daughter.)  And then there’re the little things; Jobel’s dismissal of the President’s wife as a foaming nuisance, the guard who picks his nose, Jobel’s death due to injection of embalming fluid.
     Sure, it’s not something that you perhaps want over your Saturday teatime, but the story itself is undoubtedly a work of genius. By sticking the Sixth Doctor and Peri on the outskirts, it gives the impression that the world of Who works fine without them, that there are forces of good and of evil, that this is a living world rather than one that only comes alive whenever the Good Doctor makes an appearance. We get colourful characters like the exceptional Orcini, or the creepy Jobel, or the tragic Tasambeker. Revelation is in itself a revelation, a revelation that a story doesn’t have to be focused on the Doctor to be good as long as the writing is up to scratch. Perhaps no one expected it to be Eric Saward that was delivering this message, but regardless of the writer, Revelation of the Daleks is a story to be celebrated – not just for its quality, but for its creative audacity too.

Mindwarp
(Main article.)

The second part of the Trial of a Timelord season, Mindwarp’s four episodes are characterised not only being very confusing, but for being deliberately. Where its spiritual prequel Vengeance On Varos sought to attack the use of excessive horror in television, Mindwarp takes it one step further by being deliberately manipulative in itself. On its own, its plot and story may make very little sense, but in the context of the Trial arc and considering the Valeyard’s manipulations, it quickly becomes one of the cleverest stories of the season.
     The standout of the cast is BRIAN BLESSED’s first and sadly only appearance in Who. While Blessed can do subtle performances, such as in the lauded I Claudius, I think he simply enjoys the more boisterous roles that he’s famous for. Mindwarp is no exception to this; Blessed gets to scream, shout and monologue, and he provides the story’s best line by far – “"Ok. Today prudence shall be out watchword; tomorrow we will soak the land in blood." He also allows the story to cement its theme of human brutality in all its different forms – the scientifically-driven evil of Dr. Crozier; the physical beast of Dorf; the banal commercialism of the Mentors; the uncontrollable actions of the cave-creature and the blood-thirst of Yrcanos. It’s all about the difference between evil actions committed because one wants to commit them, or as part of their immediate nature, and it asks the audience the simple question: which scenario describes The Doctor’s actions here?
     And, for the first time, Doctor Who uses the Unreliable Narrator trope. It’s actually really interesting to see the way in which the serial lets the Valeyard play to the audience’s expectations; we know now that The Sixth Doctor’s portrayal in the flashback as a heartless torturer was a manipulation of the evidence on the Valeyard’s part, but to an unforgiving public who already disliked the character, this would be perfectly believable. The serial, through the Valeyard’s manipulation, challenges the audiences’ view of the Sixth Doctor, ultimately trying to send him on the road to public acceptance. Not that Mindwarp succeeds in that aim. What it does do, however, is provide a really interesting piece of TV, and a brilliantly tragic end for one of my favourite companions.

Thanks.

FTA: Doctor Who Classic: Attack of the Cybermen, Vengeance on Varos and The Two Doctors

This sixth volume of articles from Celebrate, Regenerate! covers stories from the early Sixth Doctor.(See here for more on this project.)

Attack of the Cybermen
(Main article.)

A lot of my other articles in this book have waxed lyrical about my history when it comes to Who – how I came to the show from old DVDs and repeats and was already versed by the time the New Series came to cement my love. Attack of the Cybermen represented something of a new stage in my appreciation of Who that came about two or three years ago when I decided that this New Series wasn’t keeping me topped up and that I really should go back to my roots in the Classic Series. The first Classic Who DVD that I went out and bought was one that I remembered from when I was a kid – Attack of the Cybermen, a tale that is the epitome of what I love about the series.
      I’ll not beat about the bush and assume, due to all of his hallmarks being present, that we can call this a Saward story. Saward’s multi-strand dynamic allows most of the plot to happen outside of the realm of our two squabbling main characters – at least for the first half of the story. Those squabbling protagonists are somewhat of an acquired taste for many Who fans, often making them dismiss Six’s era completely. Me? I like them, and they’re the highlight of the era – I just really enjoy seeing the two characters bouncing off of one another and I really, really like it when Six’s enjoyable arrogance is counteracted by Peri’s wit. Of course, this doesn’t happen very often… but it’s worth the wait when it does.
      The ineffable Maurice Colburne also gets a chance to really stretch his wings after playing a very supportive role in the previous season’s Resurrection of the Daleks. Lytton is slimy and charming, strong and yet vulnerable – you never quite know where you stand, and that means that Lytton becomes the singular attraction whenever he’s on screen. The Doctor’s final declaration that he had misjudged Lytton, when the characters spent the best part of five seconds together in Ressurection, is a bit silly, but that’s what it’s all about, in the end.
      I know that Attack of the Cybermen is in most quarters considered “bad” but in my experience… there’s just something there, a charm, a flick of the tongue, something that keeps me coming back. Unlike Time and the Rani, which I know is hilarious, the reason why I like Attack so much so far eludes me… but it’s probably a mixture of heady nostalgia, my favourite villains and a Doctor whose performance gets me interested every single time. It’s not perfect, but I don’t think Attack ever really wanted to be.

Vengeance On Varos

(Main article.)

One of my favourite films is 1999’s The Truman Show, and one of the main reasons for that the way that it managed to predict and fully take apart the concept of Reality TV several years before it arrived on our screens. Little did I know that Vengeance On Varos manages exactly the same feat 15 years prior, all the while infusing it with the 80’s trademark satire and horror. Vengeance doesn’t so much attack 80’s TV so much as it brings it to its knees, by not only criticising the creators of video nasties but also the audience willing to watch them.

      The story is famous amongst detractors of Colin Baker’s Doctor for the scene in the second episode where the Varos facility’s guards end up falling into the acid bath. It’s an interesting cultural phenomenon in its own right that some disliked the character so much that they actually remembered the scene to implicate the Sixth Doctor in their deaths. As strange and fascinating as it is, it’s one small scene in a much bigger picture. Every step of the way, video nasties are criticised in a variety of ways, from their purely profit-driven nature (in Sil and his cronies) to the way in which they influenced the market. It was also a jab at the expanding role of the media in politics, to the point where “democracy” is dealt out from the living room.

      The story’s best feature though has got to be Arak and Etta. While their scenes were tacked onto the end of production, they still have a profound effect on the story’s potency, helping to reflect the attitudes of the people of Varos; without them, we would be left with trying to find a compromise between the rebellionist views of Jondar and the madness of the Mentors. They are a direct lifeline to the audience at home, calling out to them to have some standards. And they’re funny, too. 

      The most important thing in Vengeance on Varos is not the gore, or the silliness of people transforming into birds, although that does form part of it. It’s about the way that ideas influence people; and it tries to promote an awareness of those ideas in the viewer. And, as we can see by the controversy it created, it’s an aim that the writers very much succeeded at.

The Two Doctors

(Main article.)

I’m a bit of an anomaly when it comes to your average Who fan. Most fans my age started with the new series in 2005, and explored the Classic Series from there. Well, I didn’t. I started with two stories; a DVD of The Five Doctors, and the VHS of this story, The Two Doctors. In hindsight, this explains a hell of a lot about the areas of the series that I like, as The Two Doctors contains almost everything that I love about the series – expansive continuity, fun monsters, complex villains and political messages that never really know what they’re doing. Oh, and running. Lots of running. 

      Colin Baker is on top form as his arrogant and somewhat abrasive Doctor, but at every stage of the way he shows just how awesome he is. From the waterside recollection of tasty gumblejacks, to his fear that the death of his younger self would destroy the Universe, to the despair at the lengths that his old friend Dastari has gone to gain favour with his own creation. If there’s any story from Season 22 (which I love, if no-one else does) that I would use to introduce someone to the series, it would definitely be this one. Why? A few reasons. For one, it’s got the best use of the Sontarans since their first story, with creator Robert Holmes returning to write for them after their embarrassing use in Season 15’s Invasion of Time. For two, it’s by far the most normal and certainly accessible multi-Doctor story, and it requires pretty much zero knowledge of previous stories; it’s one of the only stories from this era that doesn’t have a lot of continuity.

     And sure, the story doesn’t really fill its runtime, but even the filler scenes (the trip to Seville, especially) only serve to highlight not only how damn beautiful the setting is, but also how fun the series can be when simply walking around in its world. So what if the story’s messages are a bit brutally expressed? This is a world full of intriguing characters – Dastari, the Androgums, the Sontarans, Oscar Botcherby – and it never fails to entertain despite not really doing anything. And in my eyes, any story capable of doing that is worthy of great praise. And a good chuckle or too. 

Thanks.

FTA: Doctor Who Classic: The Five Doctors, Warriors of the Deep and The Twin Dilemma

This fifth volume of articles from Celebrate, Regenerate! covers stories from Season 21. (See here for more on this project.)

The Five Doctors
(Main article.)

The Five Doctors was where I started with Who, all the way back in 2003 when I first watched the Special Edition DVD and fell head over heels in love with Doctor Who. I was running around the playground pretending to be a Dalek two years before any of my friends had heard of them, and one of my favourite playground games was “Raston Warrior Robot.” I did what all children tend to do with DVD and video at that age; I watched it again, and again, and again until the disk itself was so out of commission that I had to order the 2008 release just to be able to see it again. It’s a story that stands at the centre of my love of Doctor Who, and I cherish it like no other.
     As a starter story, it’s got everything. The concept of regeneration is explained so fluently, and you get to sample the second-to-fifth Doctors (and an approximation of the first) without breaking a sweat. As a child, I was drawn to everything – the trek through the Death Zone, the ancient myths of Rassilon, the hallucinations in the corridors, the swooshy CGI time-scoop taking away old companions, and most of all I loved the Cybermen; their deep booming voices and their few vestiges of humanity peeking through their spandex. (Ooh, sounds rude.)
      What did The Five Doctors tell me about this strange new “Doctor Who”? It told me that this was a show with a lot of great ideas and a rich history filled with a wide variety of monsters, heroes and companions. It was tense, it was scary, but it was also a hell of a lot of fun. The Five Doctors did what it was intended to do, and in a really profound way it is to date the greatest celebration of Doctor Who’s rich and varied history.
    Until the 50th, that is. We hope.

Warriors of the Deep
(Main article.)

In the past, I've realised that I’ve been very kind to a gamut of Doctor Who stories that many would consider… less than adequate. My optimism when it comes to Who has been challenged many times, but none more so than the 1981 story, Warriors of the Deep. The story is a rare example in Doctor Who of when The Doctor has a bit of an off-day. Here, there is no doubt that the Doctor’s is a Pyrrhic victory; everyone bar the main cast is dead by the end, some in incredibly gruesome ways. After Johnny Byrne’s other stories, which celebrated human kindness and ingenuity, it’s a bit of a shock that the attempt to channel Cold War themes translates roughly into a theme of, “Sentient beings have the capacity to do horrible things, and you shouldn't trust anyone.”
     Now that doesn’t make the story bad, necessarily, but it does make it a bit of a downer. I can celebrate the beauty of a tragic opera just as well as I can the rhythm of a Madness song. What I’m essentially saying, and I don’t mean to sound pretentious here, is that Warriors of the Deep is a piece of high-class art. Stop snickering. What Warriors attempts, and ultimately succeeds, in representing, is that the state of paranoia caused by the Cold War only causes us to lose our humanity. The Silurians’ motives, while perhaps alien to us, are completely in line with the frighteningly paranoid people on both sides of their futuristic war. These people have become so consumed by war and death that their motivations are now as alien as those of our reptilian brethren. The guard who refuses to open the door to allow Tegan and The Doctor escape from the Myrka; the bomb controller, whose reluctant actions under hypnosis represent man under the Cold War, and the Sea Devils, whose presence reinforces the absurdity of each side’s power blocs.
     Warriors of the Deep isn’t much to look at, and if you want to try to treat it like a traditional Doctor Who adventure then you’re not going to get much out of it. But take it as a metaphor, as a warning, and then perhaps it’s possible to ignore the special effects failures, ignore the wet paint of the costumes, and see it for the masterpiece it really is.

The Twin Dilemma

(Main article.)

I found myself in what I then considered to be a very perilous position when I first sat down to watch The Twin Dilemma. The end-credits rolled after episode four, and… and… I liked it. I bloody loved it, and I could see absolutely no reason (beyond the whole momentary-strangling thing) why it was the subject of such venomous assaults as I had seen in Fandom. It was then that I and fandom decided that for the most part, we had a serious disagreement. 

     The best thing about the story, when you get past the run-of-the-mill story with its traditional villain, setup and nods to the past, is by far Colin Baker’s performance as the unstable and out-of-control early Sixth Doctor. His spasmodic episodes of villainy tow a line between frightening and funny, and especially towards the end of the episode one begins to wonder whether The Doctor is in on the act, and is simply using his condition in order to get away with doing whatever he damn well wants. It’s incredibly refreshing and it embodies what I love about the Sixth Doctor – he doesn’t care about what others think of him as long as he manages to both enjoy himself and save the day. 

     And everyone remembers the story for the strangling bit, yes. It is a bit over the top, and I would have toned it down a bit, but I don’t object to it in principle. The New Series is all about showing us how dark The Doctor can be, and this is just an extension of that. Instead of showing him brooding over an act of slight moral ambiguity, The Twin Dilemma takes the bulls by the horns and exposes a raw part of The Doctor’s id, taking the audience into the potential evil that lies within him – as we see later in The Valeyard and The Dream Lord. 

     What does The Twin Dilemma ultimately do? It introduces a new Doctor and does it in style. So what if the story’s a bit one-note, when the main character is this good so early on in his career? Of course, some people aren’t going to agree with me. But when it comes to this story, I have no dilemma at all. It’s underrated, fun and I love it.

Thanks.

FTA: Doctor Who Classic: Mawdryn Undead, Terminus and Enlightenment

This fourth volume of articles from Celebrate, Regenerate! covers the Black Guardian Trilogy. (See here for more on this project.)

Mawdryn Undead
(Main article.)

In 2003, channel UKTV Gold broadcast all of the Classic Series, in detail, to celebrate the show’s 40th Anniversary. At the time, I was around six or seven, and I lapped it up. One of the earliest stories I remember from those reruns was the fascinating Mawdryn Undead, a story whose checklist approach could have ended up badly but instead revealed a brilliantly twisting tale of treachery, deception and time-travel. Peter Grimwade’s way of apologising for writing the previous season’s Time-Flight, it was written with the prerequisite that it must introduce new companion Turlough, start the Black Guardian Trilogy and feature show-favourite Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
     Turlough’s character was unfortunate in that his execution throughout the series didn’t live up to his premise. But what a great premise that was. Turlough was the first companion who had worked his way onto the TARDIS for nefarious purposes, and the first who actively tried to kill The Doctor. As a villain, Turlough wasn’t just cackling evil – he was also incredibly frightened, both of his own actions and of the wrath of The Black Guardian. It was his fear, as well as his origins as an exile of a corrupt society, that drove his actions and his villainy.
     The Brigadier’s return, despite throwing up all sorts of issues due to dating, is very welcome, with Nicholas Courtney arriving in the place of the planned return of Ian and Barbara, the Doctor’s first companions. Despite his last-second inclusion, Courtney is still excellent in the role, and subtlety alters the way he plays the character between the two time zones. The 80s Brigadier is older and wearier, while the 70s Brigadier is much more alert and to action. Although it would have been great to see those old companions again, The Brigadier is a welcome substitute and more than makes the role his.
     The story can possibly be best remembered for its use of the Two-Streams story technique, with Nyssa, Tegan and Mawdryn running around in 1977 and The Doctor and Turlough using The Brigadier’s memory in 1983. It’s something that wouldn’t be done again until the Moffat era, and it’s a great use of a time-based dynamic that was strangely rare within the Classic Series. Add that dynamic to the weirdness of the Mawdryn mutants, the wonderfully hammy performance of Valentine Dyal and the return of the Brigadier, and you’ve got a recipe for a bona fide Who classic.

Terminus

(Main article.)

Apart from old stories like The Sensorites and The Web Planet, there is no Who story in my mind that gets as much flack for being “boring” than Terminus, the second part of the Black Guardian Trilogy. The same allegations, unfortunately, that go out against its companion focus, Nyssa of Traken, introduced in 1981 as a guest character who was then added to the companion roster for no apparent reason. However, I must make an admission here: I really got to like Nyssa when I first saw Five’s era, and so her departure in this serial had me in tears.

      And that’s all anyone seems to remember about it, really. Nyssa in this story does come under the shadow of the Fanservice monster, strutting about in a transparent nightgown that leaves very little to the imagination, but that I feel doesn’t end up detracting from the characterisation that goes on here. Nyssa, having spent a season and a half in the shadow of the Doctor’s louder companions, finally steps out and finds some purpose in her life. Unlike a lot of other companions in this era, she leaves The Doctor not because she’s found a better offer, because she’s upset with him or even because she had to. She left because she had the opportunity to help people, and because it was the right thing to do.

     There’s a lot more to this story, though, than the loss of Nyssa. Steven Gallagher returns as writer from Warrior’s Gate in Season 18, and the general tone of the story is deliciously thick; as atmospheric as a Jovian storm cloud and just as filled with jeopardy and paranoia. The use of the plague analogue is perfect, especially for me who finds stuff like that incredibly unsettling. (Let’s just say that I bought a few facemasks in the summer of 2009). There’s also the use of several Norse themes, which are fun, and the timely tradition of being of a Who story that can be struck into different metaphors. In the beginning, Terminus is the Barge on the River Styx, ferrying souls to the afterlife. By the end, the serial takes a turn for the positive, and Terminus becomes a wonderful metaphor for the NHS, with the Vanir (NHS staff) no longer slaves to Hydromel (money) and allowed to focus on healing their patients.

     I think the thing that makes so many dismiss Terminus is that not a lot of people liked Nyssa’s character and thus weren’t engaged with her story. Me? I think that it’s a wonderfully complex and thematic masterpiece, wherein both Nyssa’s and the Vanir’s fight for freedom and expression compliment one another, all the while set to a backdrop of The Doctor saving the Universe once more.

Enlightenment

(Main article.)

Fans who’ve grown up on the standards of the new series are sometimes far too quick to attack the production values of the Classic Series, going on tirades about wobbly sets, tin-foil monsters and shoddy CSO. Whenever my friends say such things, I point them here, towards Enlightenment, one of the Classic Series’ most visually impressive stories. There are no wobbly sets here, and the highly conceptual script matches up to the brilliant visuals. Here we find a race more long-lived than the Time Lords; a race whose longevity has robbed them of all imagination and emotion, and who must parasitically live off us inferior “Ephemerals” in order to satiate their boredom. Unlike the end of the series’ other major arc up to that date, The Key To Time, this story also provides an excellent end for the experimental Black Guardian Trilogy.

    The entire first episode takes place below decks, leaving the ship’s true nature as a space-faring vessel for the episode’s cliffhanger. Indeed, this story has some quite good cliffhangers: the nature of the ship, Turlough diving off into the vacuum of space and Lynda Baron hypnotising Tegan into becoming her weapon. Baron’s performance as Captain Wrack always slightly weirds me out, because Baron was a big part of my childhood in her Come Outside series. Her performance then, for me, becomes strangely hypnotising; a kind of cackling evil that really says how much she was enjoying the role. The same is true of the celebrity cameo Leee John (not a typo) who is delightfully camp. 

     Turlough’s final introductory story sees him betray both The Doctor and The Black Guardian in various ways, as his fear and madness drive him to various different aims. One moment he’s desperate to get rid of the Black Guardian’s influence, until he concedes to him and tries to work his way into Captain Wrack’s affections. Like the rest of the script, the incredibly clever twist lies in the question of what Enlightenment really is – the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. It’s implied that immortality by its very nature encourages amorality, and that our short time on this Earth is the very reason why we should be nice to one another. With all of the modern fuss about dodgy morals in Doctor Who, I can’t think of a better one, more intelligently conveyed. Enlightenment, appropriate to its name, is one of the most cerebral stories in the entire JNT era, and is an absolute delight.

Thanks.

FTA: Doctor Who Classic: Four to Doomsday, Black Orchid and Time-Flight

This third volume of articles from Celebrate, Regenerate! covers stories from Season 19.(See here for more on this project.)

Four To Doomsday
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I love Peter Davison’s era; it was the era that I grew up on, if only through the realm of the DVDs. The era has some triumphant highs and some hilarious lows, but on a purely conceptual level none of them interest me more than Davison’s first recorded story, Four To Doomsday. On a first watching, the serial is patently ridiculous; frog men from outer space are coming to invade Earth! This does reflect in some of the lines - there’s a certain gimmickyness to the serial that it never really escapes from – but when you get down to it Johnny Byrne’s script provides some funky sci-fi ideas.
       Now if you haven’t seen the story, I’d recommend you go do so before I spoil the surprise. The biggest plot twist is that the villains of the story, the Urbankans, and their ship filled with humans in period costumes, are in fact all androids. Despite the dodgy effects, this means that the half-way cliffhanger (made more important to reflect the new bi-weekly broadcasting schedule) is an absolute smasher. My reaction on first viewing sums up why I love this story so much. After laughing at Tegan knowing some obscure aboriginal language, and at her suddenly impressing artistic skills, I was blown away by that completely unexpected layer of sci-fi, which made villain Monarch’s plan that more brilliant.
     And what a villain. Stratford Johns, known for crime dramas like Z-Cars, may be hidden under a pile of makeup, but it’s his performance that ultimately shines through. The image of the megalomaniac who almost innocently believes himself to be a god, struck with the impression that he can break the laws of physics and go back to meet himself at the dawn of time. But he’s that great kind of affable evil; he’s like that weird Uncle who only comes down for weddings who’s probably been inside a few times, or so I heard, who will still give you a pat on the head. Even Adric can’t help but like him.
     But it is the initial subtleties of those sinister undertones that really allow the story to build in the way it does. One of my favourite lines is when The Doctor identifies Monarch’s “Minister of Persuasion”; in that one line-read, Davison banishes any inklings of doubt about the Urbankans’ intentions, and any doubt that he is the right man for the lead role. Sure, the story may have some goofy line reads here or there, but if you let the story speak for itself, then you’ll find a more captivating hundred minutes than you could ever have imagined.

Black Orchid

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Ah, the Pure Historical. It’s a well-worn staple of Doctor Who, especially in the 60s. Someone along the line decided that they weren't fun enough, and so we’re left with the Dark-Times-sized 16 year gap between William Hartnell’s The Gunfighters  and Peter Davison’s Black Orchid, a story set in the Roaring Twenties that comes as a breath of fresh air after a few seasons of Serious Business. It’s also a glorious two parts long, which means that I can pop it on whenever I’ve got an hour to kill.

     Here, our TARDIS team of Nyssa, Tegan and Adric are seen to simply be having fun for the most part; Adric and Tegan don’t actually get involved with the story’s murder-mystery plot at all, and The Doctor only stumbles into it because someone stole his costume. It’s that which donates to the story’s sense of levity, really, coupled with that quaint Interbellum British attitude that you see in places like Jeeves and Wooster and even other Who stories, like 2008’s Unicorn and the Wasp. 

     The most standout scene is near the beginning, which follows a rather unconventional path; the gang are taken from a train station to a field, where Peter Davison gets to show off his cricket skills and Nyssa gets mistaken for her identical body double. It sounds and feels like an episode of Heartbeat, but it’s also got a deformed aristocratic explorer, a South American speaking with an Indian accent, and, the most important thing for Adric, an extensive buffet. On the DVD commentary, the actors complain that the story isn’t fun enough; bully them, I say! Black Orchid is a barrel of fun, whether it’s the little idiosyncratic character ticks that allow our characters to actually be themselves, or the expansive period costumes that the BBC does so well. It’s a big relief before the darkness of the following story, and I wouldn’t be without it. 

Time-Flight

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There’s got to be a reason why Doctor Who has such a long-lasting appeal, and at least part of that reason is that no matter how wrong an episode’s production goes, there’s always something fun. If a story like The Invasion of Time is the introductory thesis, then Season 19’s Time-Flight is the dissertation. There are so many various things that turn people away from this story, but it’s all of those things that draw me to it. You may not be able to root for the heroes or try and work out the Master’s plan, but you can certainly have a good laugh.

     Anthony Ainley’s third appearance shows just how much he enjoys the role, and he appears in yet another one of his disguises. The brilliance of the Khalid disguise is exactly in how useless it is; The Master has displayed just how Crazy Prepared he really is by making sure that if The Doctor does somehow appear, then he’ll be ready for him. And it works, for the first episode at least. The other villains, the Xeraphin, are an awesome concept that despite a neglected execution still manages to be one of the serial’s more interesting and long-lasting ideas. They also gave us one of Davison’s best lines in the entire season; “I think The Master has finally defeated me!”

      By far the most memorable thing about the serial is simply the setting. The first few shots of Heathrow Airport in the first episode are actually really well done. The backdrop for Prehistoric Earth, which is an expansive matte painting clearly a few metres behind out actors, is almost necessary in breaking the boundary between simple bad and this story’s glorious shade of So Bad It’s Good charm. Had they gone to some far off desert, shot it on film and given us wide, sweeping landscapes, then the script would have been inexcusable. Instead, it all fits together in one quirky mess that just gets funnier and funnier with every viewing.

     

Thanks.