Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) (30 page)

The Exploding Planet (Galaxy Four episode four)

R:
What’s to like about The Exploding Planet? That’s honestly a tough one. It’s as if William Emms gave up writing after episode three, and decided to wait out the 25 minutes until the story was over – it’s pretty much what the characters do. The Doctor spends the time siphoning energy from the TARDIS into the Rill ship, whilst constantly getting time updates from his companions, and reassuring them they’re under no particular pressure to do this any more speedily. And he’s right: watching this is a bit like pretending that someone fixing your car is high drama. The Drahvins know that unless they attack the Rill spaceship in a desperate attempt to get off the planet, they’ll die – and yet, somehow, they don’t quite get around to doing anything more urgent than bashing a single Chumbley on the bonce with a bit of metal piping.

I was at a convention in the mid-80s, where William Emms sat on the stage with the likes of JN-T and Eric Saward, and spoke of how the current production team, sitting only inches away from him, wouldn’t read the scripts he submitted to them. And he grumpily concluded that was because “modern” TV was all about sparkly special effects, and not about intelligent drama. (I was 14, but even I could tell at that age this wasn’t the best way to endear yourself to people you were trying to get work from.) After relistening to Galaxy Four, I’m still waiting for Emms’ intelligent drama. Actually, I’d even put up with a few lowbrow brain-dead special effects.

Peter Purves complained of this story that he’d simply been given lines written for Jacqueline Hill, and that Steven didn’t come across as a character at all. I’d disagree, actually; he gets the one interesting scene in the episode, in which – cynical space pilot that he is – Steven refuses to believe that the Rills are quite as selfless and altruistic as they claim, and demands to know their real agenda. It’s like a breath of fresh air through all the moral homilies. And it’s only a shame that he’s wrong, because it might have made the episode a little more dramatic.

And I do quite like the end. In these days of modern Who, when one story every season has to find a way of writing out the Doctor, they haven’t yet hit upon this idea: simply having our heroes point at the scanner, pick out a planet, and wonder what’s going on there. As it is, the brief lead-in to the next story entails Barry Jackson being rather brilliant, remembering that he should kill – and saying so in such a reasoned and affable manner that it sounds rather chilling. It’s a lot more interesting than what happened on the exploding planet, at any rate.

I’m sorry, Toby. I really tried hard to find something good to say. I was defeated. It’s up to you to rescue this baby. I’m now off to the hotel bar downstairs to talk with fans about some
good
Doctor Who. You salvage this Galaxy Four review – do it well, and there’s a nice shiny glass of wine in it for you.

T:
I saw William Emms at a convention too – although not the one you mentioned – on a very grumpy panel about the Hartnell years that bemoaned the current state of the series. Along with countless others who – like myself – hadn’t actually seen any of these 60s “classics”, I applauded heartily. We’d never watched the work in question, and so perhaps weren’t in the best place to judge, but by Heaven – we knew
for certain
that Doctor Who wasn’t as good as it used to be!

Fortunately, times have changed – not only are
we
now working professionals and convention guests (I find this somewhat impossible to believe, and am a bit daunted by it all), but also, the new series is in such rude health that fandom is very proud of it and isn’t quite as strident and defensive about bygone eras of Doctor Who as it once was. I very much doubt that we’ll see panels in which people previously associated with the show will take shots at the current production team. (Well, maybe a little, but not very much.)

As for the final instalment of Galaxy Four... hmm, as you say, it’s less a “race against time” and more a “saunter against time”. It begins with a certain amount of incident, though – a bomb gets chucked through a window, Steven is freed and our heroes escape from the Drahvins with lots of breathlessness and urgency. It’s only afterwards that things start slowing down, but I don’t seem to mind this as much as you – there’s lots of build-up to the planet disintegrating, and events keep upping the dramatic ante. It’s a bit like the constant eruptions in the TARDIS in The Edge of Destruction. And the Drahvins work better than you might think – there’s an interesting scene in their spaceship as Maaga falls back on shallow military catchphrases to calm the nerves of her soldiers.

All in all, this is a reasonable stab at doing something different. I like the Rills’ dignified nature, and feel sorry for the poor old Chumbley who sacrifices himself to get the travellers back to the TARDIS. To put it another way, Doctor Who is such a strange series that I’m here made to admire a noble warthog and get emotionally attached to a twittering dustbin.

And now, as I didn’t whine, I think I’ve earned some, er, wine. Time to hit the bar and take you up on your offer... if, of course, I can prise you away from your adoring fans.

February 13th

Mission to the Unknown

R:
Aha! Now that’s more like it. We all think of this, of course, as being the only classic Doctor Who story that has neither the Doctor nor any of his companions in it. But structurally, it’s a lot weirder than that. You could call this the first of a 12-part adventure... which then unexpectedly has a couple of comedy stories (The Myth Makers and The Feast of Steven) in the middle of it. But this gives us a sense of the genuinely epic; it’s a story that
can’t
be told in one go, and needs a couple of breathers put in. And if we were talking about how you could play around with audience expectations in Season One by simply never letting them know how long a story was going to last, then they’ll be confounded absolutely by this. Everyone watching would be sitting there waiting for the sound of the TARDIS to cut through the weird alien shrieks of the jungle – and waiting in vain. And because the regulars never show up,
everyone
here dies. You get the feeling not only that the Doctor is a genuine saviour, and that his presence alone can make things better, but that the world is a far more brutal place without him. So, who do we look to in his stead? Space security agent Marc Cory, that’s who – he’s clearly smart and resourceful, but he’s also an emotionless killer who’ll get his mission accomplished at the cost of his own life and anybody else’s.

As in Turn Left so many years later, the absence of the Doctor – the fact that the most the regular cast can do at this stage is to point at Kembel on the scanner screen – defines how powerful he is. Without him, the Daleks run riot and seem like a credible political force. The Nazi allusions are at last complete; Cory’s associate Gordon Lowery (and by implication, humanity in general) can’t see the harm in the Daleks occupying lots of other planets, so long as they’re far away from home. And the Varga plants are horrific too; the very idea that they turn people into savage plant-creatures – meaning that even after you’re dead, you lose your humanity completely and become a walking vegetable – is a terribly repulsive one. It’s the perfect synthesis of the Robomen and the Fungoids, and a good deal more unpleasant than either. So the “heroes” in this story face destruction of their very identities, as an alliance forms behind them to destroy the entire galaxy...

... seems to me like it’s time for the TARDIS to touch down in ancient Troy.

T:
For all that Mission to the Unknown might seem like a “filler” story, it’s a gutsy melodrama. The stock music ups the tempo, and Edward de Souza, playing Marc Cory, gives a biting and unsentimental depiction of a pragmatic professional. (It’s a bit over the top, though, when Cory says that he’s “Licensed To Kill” – come on!) And the Varga plants
are
a chilling concept, evoking those horrid wasps that later inspired the Wirrn in that they consume your body and use that succour to propagate themselves. It’s such a frightening proposition, it overcomes the way the Vargas themselves look like a massive candyfloss.

But you’ll have to forgive me if I indulge in a bit of high geekery, because Mission to the Unknown features that marvellous array of alien delegates – a group made all the more tantalising because despite all the documentation we have on the 60s stories, it remains one of the Great Doctor Who Mysteries as to which delegate has which name. It’s a question that has vexed all sorts of Doctor Who historians over the years, and re-experiencing this story now, the anal-retentive side of me has to speculate on this a bit, as I’m still not convinced by the most popular hypotheses about the delegates’ identities...

We know from the paperwork that the uncredited performers are Ronald Rich as Trantis, Sam Mansary as Sentreal and Len Russell, Pat Gorman and Johnny Clayton (he was Reg Cox, the guy who dies in the first episode of EastEnders, you know!) as the Planetarians. Now, it’s generally accepted that Trantis is the small spiky delegate who looks like the character with the same name in The Daleks’ Master Plan, but... we’ve already seen Ronald Rich on screen when he was Gunnar the Giant in The Time Meddler, and he’s massive, whereas Mr Spiky is clearly the tiniest delegate of the bunch. I’d therefore venture a guess that Rich must be the tall white spacesuit man or the big black Christmas tree. (Perhaps Douglas Camfield rejected the latter costume for Trantis because it looked like an overgrown chess piece, and used one of the other design ideas instead; only Malpha is formally identified at this point, so it’s not like Camfield was tinkering with established continuity.) Also, given that Len Russell was a diminutive Optera a few weeks back, I’d suggest that
he
is Mr Tiny Spikeface. And surely, Sentreal is the space-helmet chap, as Sam Mansary is the only black actor in the cast.

I realize that not every fan cares as much about this as I do, but I do love that there are a few issues about Doctor Who that we’ll never have a definitive answer for, no matter how much Who scholars debate them. (Even if this episode were recovered and we could finally
see
it, it’s doubtful that we’d be much more clear on which delegate is which.) Piecing things together and postulating is so much more fun and engaging than just being handed answers on a plate (it’s what makes history and archaeology so fascinating), and it just reinforces my belief that Doctor Who is so complex and has so many forms, it’s so very, very hard to get bored with it.

Temple of Secrets (The Myth Makers episode one)

R:
Donald Cotton’s script for Temple of Secrets is
very
clever. It starts off sounding earnest and melodramatic enough, aping the ancient classics – and then, the characters begin to drop their battle cries and posturing, and reveal themselves as ordinary bored people with the same irritations about love and life as the rest of us. Achilles may know the right lingo when he’s waving a sword about, but he’s really just a man desperate to prove he’s worth taking seriously. No-one does, though, with Odysseus clearly believing the only way Achilles could have defeated Hector in battle would be had he worn him out by running away for long enough. And the scenes between brothers Menelaus and Agamemnon are especially rewarding – they behave not as great kings from Greek literature, but as brothers getting on each other’s nerves; the way that Menelaus keeps on whining about the ten-year war, and how he’s glad to be shot of Helen in the first place, brings a modern outlook upon ancient history that pre-empts Blackadder by over 15 years. And William Hartnell, of course, always relaxes when he gets to play with comic lines – we can’t
see
his reaction to Achilles worshipping him in the guise of an old beggar, or to Agamemnon inviting him to eat a ham bone, but we can still hear that his timing is spot on.

If there’s a problem, it’s only that all of Cotton’s wit doesn’t yet give the rest of regulars an awful lot to do – after the pedestrian plotting of Galaxy Four, and their absence from Mission to the Unknown altogether, it does feel rather a long time since Steven and Vicki got a moment in the spotlight. Vicki doesn’t even get to leave the TARDIS at all, still nursing a bad ankle she picked up two weeks ago! (Ailments lingering on between stories is something of a theme this year, with sword wounds and toothaches still to come.) But it’s hardly a crime that a writer has come onto the scene who is so clearly delighted with his background characterisation – we haven’t seen anything as rich as this since The Crusade.

And I love the gag about Odysseus interpreting Cyclops’ mute gestures to him in such accurate detail. I only hope that the rest of the cast reacted to it in suitable deadpan.

T:
It’s wonderful how Doctor Who keeps reinventing itself so often. Last week, we had a rather grim space adventure, with everyone behaving with requisite gravitas. Now, the crew witness a fight and the Doctor is whimsically blasé about it, noting that the jousters are doing more talking than fighting (which is to say: the Doctor’s as in on the joke as we are). And it’s particularly interesting that in some ways, this is a reversal of what happened in The Aztecs – in that story, Barbara being mistaken for a god was handled very dramatically, and you were never in doubt that her mere presence was a matter of life and death for those around her. But here, Donald Cotton’s tongue is firmly in his cheek as plays on the Doctor’s vanity, with the old chap rather chuffed when he’s assumed to possess divinity. The suggestion that he’s Zeus is justified, hilariously, by Achilles mentioning that the father of Mount Olympus once disguised himself as an old beggar – which to look at the Hartnell Doctor is a priceless thing to say. The secret of great comedy interaction is to have at least one good straight man, and so credit must be given to Cavan Kendall for not lampooning Achilles, but instead playing him as the sincere soldier he thinks he is, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Much of this story’s charm, though, lies in the fact that Cotton doesn’t seem to favour either side in this conflict. It looks initially as if he’s more accommodating to the Greeks, in that Hector is cocky, patronising and a hammy posturer whilst Achilles seems to be quite brave. But then Achilles’ famous victory over Hector is depicted as the result of cowardly opportunism, and it’s clear – as you’ve mentioned, Rob – that Achilles’ allies see his heroic bluster as the braggadocio of a self-promoting halfwit. Such a stunning manipulation of dramatic mores would be completely lost on any kids in the audience (who, in all likelihood, would be happy enough with lots of fighting and shouting), but this turnabout is there to allow the adults their own take on the story. You mentioned Blackadder, and I’ll raise you The Simpsons.

All of which means that Temple of Secrets couldn’t be further from Wolfgang Peterson’s Troy if it tried – and that it’s about ten times more entertaining. Peterson’s version was awash with humourless musclebound hunks being drearily honourable, but this episode entails the likes of a bellicose Ivor Salter (as Odysseus) guffawing his way through proceedings with a drunken swagger and a fantastically dirty laugh. Doctor Who is all about creating worlds, and I feel as though ancient Troy in Donald Cotton’s hands has been made by taking fragments from classical literature and applying a contemporary eye for characterisation, thereby creating a comedic tour de force. The guest cast very much seems on the same page as this – as Hector, Alan Hayward gives what I presume is a deliberately OTT performance that mocks the conventions of the historical epic (which is a pretty sophisticated acting choice for someone who’s on screen just long enough to get slaughtered). And back in Agamemnon’s tent, Jack Melford’s put-upon Menelaus is delightful, and Francis De Woolf (as Agamemnon) is far more subtle and deadpan than the mad growling he doled out as the would-be rapist Vasor in The Keys of Marinus.

And yet, for all that this episode might
seem
like a comedy – for all the opening sword fight, for instance, is accompanied by parping music to let us know straightaway that this is a bit of a romp – the setting itself provides a bit of necessary jeopardy. Call this a “comedy” if you like, but there’s also a gory on-screen death (that we can’t see because the video is lost, sadly) and threats of tongue removal – so it’s not
all
frivolity on the fields of Troy, is it? It’s best to keep this in mind as we consider the next three episodes.

This is bloody fantastic, and quite unlike anything the show has yet served us. The production team weren’t wrong when their press release heralded these scripts as the most sophisticated yet seen in the series – I had a ball “watching” this episode.

February 14th

Small Prophet, Quick Return (The Myth Makers episode two)

R:
Isn’t Barrie Ingham fantastic? I found him rather anaemic in Dr Who and the Daleks as Alydon, but here he gives a performance that’s laugh out loud funny, doing his turn as Paris by way of Bertie Wooster. His (whispered) calls to Achilles so he can do the proper thing and take revenge for Hector, his eagerness for praise when he brings to the Trojan camp both the TARDIS and then Steven, and his boyish attempts to chat up Vicki are all utterly delightful.

It’s a very funny episode altogether – but the tone is only deceptively light. There is a flippancy towards death which is quite striking; Priam treats the power he has over Vicki’s life so affably, as does Odysseus with his over Steven, and both regulars give a similar response: “That’s very comforting!” This new, jaded look the TARDIS crew take to their life-threatening adventures is something we shan’t see again until Tom Baker. What makes it quite chilling is that the soldiers in both armies share this jaded reaction; it’s been a ten-year war, and matters of life and death have become trivial. Paris is surprised when Steven suggests he be taken prisoner rather than killed after he loses a duel: “But that isn’t done!” Odysseus’ macabre speculation that the Trojans may or may not take prisoners of war depending what mood they’re in is extremely funny, but also says a lot about the way both sides regard the other as being essentially without values or humanity.

Max Adrian is lovely as Priam, playing him at once as a doddery old father who despairs of his children, and also as a king who is perfectly at peace with his ability to command death. And Frances White is great fun as the doomsaying Cassandra, pitching it just enough over the top that the bored reactions of the Trojans who listen to her are hilarious.

This historical is one of the most intriguing experiments of the third season. For the first time, the TARDIS lands in a historical era where it is impossible to distinguish legend from fact, making the Doctor’s knowledge of the time unreliable at best. Ordered to find a way to end the siege of Troy, he dismisses the Trojan horse as a fanciful invention of Homer’s. It’s a far cry from The Time Meddler, where William Hartnell is able to reel off in detail the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings. And it’s an experiment which will be used to more dramatic effect later in the season, where both the characters’ and the audience’s unfamiliarity with the events of The Massacre only contributes to the suspense.

T:
The title of this episode is a great gag. It’s so great, in fact, that I mention it in Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf – which, by a curious coincidence, I’m performing at the convention tonight. I’ve found that this joke provides a nice bit of funny info for my audiences, which ordinarily aren’t composed of hardcore Doctor Who fans. But tonight it’ll be different, and I’m interested to see what happens if I tell about 600 fans something they already know. Will they laugh anyway?

Turning our attention back to ancient Troy, we continue to get a comedy of manners that’s juxtaposed with the trappings of a completely different genre. It’s almost entirely dependent upon the dialogue, and the actors all rise to the challenge with aplomb. You’ve mentioned Barrie Ingham, who strikes me as Hugh Laurie in Blackadder – he’s the jolly public schoolboy you can laugh at and still love. But I also enjoy Frances White as Cassandra – her colourful foreboding is a dramatic device, but the story’s knowing treatment of her inherent ridiculousness serves a comedic need as well (just look at Priam’s assessment that Cassandra’s doom-mongering, for all its lofty dramatics, is really just a means of her hedging her bets).

But as with the previous episode, there’s some jeopardy in spite of all the hi-jinks. The cliffhanger entails some Trojan guards advancing on Vicki and Steven, whom they believe are spies for the Greeks. As the “next episode” header promises “Death of a Spy”, surely one of them is due for the chop? Unless, of course, the writer does something very clever – and on the evidence of what we’ve seen thus far, I have no doubt that he will.

Death of a Spy (The Myth Makers episode three)

R:
In future years, we’re going to get a lot of this – the Exiting Companion Suddenly Falling In Love motif. If you thought Susan taking a shine to David Campbell was a bit out of the blue, that’s nothing to this – which is based on Vicki going goo-goo eyed at Troilus within a few minutes of airtime! (And you can tell it’s important, because in her neighbouring cell, even Steven has noticed she’s got a boyfriend – relationship stuff must be written in big lettering if another regular acknowledges it; even Barbara’s dalliances were never deemed worthy enough of actual comment.)

This ought to be rubbish, of course – but it really truly isn’t, because Donald Cotton is playing a clever game with his audience. For a start, anyone watching when Priam renamed Vicki “Cressida” last week should have felt their inner alarm go off – and once more, as Toby would say, there’s an expectation that the viewing public will have heard of Troilus and Cressida and know what that represents. It’s impossible to imagine that taken on trust nowadays. But although Cotton seems to be setting up a relationship, because he’s subverting the audience’s understanding of who all these classical characters are – Odysseus as a boor, Achilles as a loser – it’s just as likely that when Troilus pitches up in the story, he’ll be as attractive as a Drashig.

So we get this lovely scene of flirtation between Troilus and our new Cressida. And it teases the audience, that we
know
how this love story is supposed to work out, but we also realise that nothing that we think we know about these legends is working out as we’d expect. To underline the point, we’ve got the Doctor rubbishing the Trojan horse gambit, and then resorting to it when he needs to break the siege and can’t come up with anything better. As a result, we don’t need to be moved or touched by the romance taking place here – we’re asked instead to consider whether or not it’ll be resolved as an intellectual puzzle. It’s as abrupt as Leela, say, running off to have Time Tots with Andred – but it’s far from being as stupid. It’s brilliant sleight of hand plotting. We accept what’s happening because it’s playing off the myth – but we’re not obliged to see Vicki’s exit next week as inevitable, and by the time it happens, it’s not a bit of awkward plotting but the resolution to a literary joke.

Still, with romance in the air for Vicki, it’s ideal to be listening to this on Valentine’s Day. (Hmph. I miss Janie. You’ve got your K with you here at the convention, but I’m lacking my J.) Not that the literary jokes involved are all that sophisticated, of course – this is probably the only time in the series’ history that we’re catapulted into a cliffhanger by the threat of a groan-inducing pun, as Paris says, “I’m afraid you’re a bit late to say
whoa
to the horse, I’ve just given instructions to have it brought into the city.”

T:
It
is
Valentine’s Day – the very day that I’ve been booked to do my show. A cynic might say that my performance was slated for tonight because most Doctor Who fans won’t have an awful lot else to do – but that would be cruel (not to mention very unfair). Anyway, you may not have your beloved here, but I’m a bit nervous, and so can’t pay mine much attention as the hours tick away towards the gig.