Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) (41 page)

T:
If I previously thought that The War Machines was a ho-hum affair, I now have to confess that if Innes Lloyd’s intention was to give the series an injection of vitality, it seems to be working. The newcomers shine here – debut director Ferguson finds ways to keep all the bits of business in the warehouse (tossing and lining up guns, filling crates with ammo, etc.) interesting, and there’s a great moment where Major Green whacks a worker unconscious and the War Machine tidies him up. But Anneke Wills and Michael Craze are continuing to impress too – there’s a lovely connection between them when the brainwashed Polly lets Ben go, and the look she gives him suggests a lingering humanity beneath the robotic conformity. Ben himself is all fired up, full of impetuosity and urgency, and striking the right dramatic note. And while we will eventually take the military for granted on Doctor Who, in this context their presence seems exciting, modern and grown-up.

And while you’ve rightfully given credit to Michael Ferguson for the battle sequences, we should also give a little nod to the Doctor Who Restoration Team – they’ve seamlessly woven many recovered clips into the action, and have used clever zooms and other techniques to create footage where the pictures are missing. In fact, the sharpness and clarity with which these old prints are presented on DVD is sometimes extraordinary, and the quality of the film footage of the war machine in the alleyway is breathtaking too.

Finally, I should mention that this is a great episode for playing Spot the Extra (baldy Hugh Cecil and the estimable Pat Gorman both feature heavily) – which makes for a useful diversion, because if you give the script any attention whatsoever, it’s clear that much of it is nonsense. The triumvirate of baddies shout the plot out in a most uninteresting fashion, and even the enthralled Polly gets in on the act, inexplicably telling Ben everything she knows, even though she acknowledges he hasn’t been programmed. (Even stranger, she admits that there’s no guard because nobody would want to escape – which Ben obviously does.) Still, should Wotan ever want to conquer a planet where the main industry and technology is crate based, he’s onto a winner.

March 5th

The War Machines episode four

R:
It’s trying very, very hard – and it mostly succeeds. There’s not an awful lot of story, really – one War Machine just sort of fizzles out, another gets reprogrammed and blows up Wotan – but it’s the stuff
around
the plot, all the frills and fripperies, which are what make this episode interesting. The use of real TV newsreaders popping up to alert the viewers that there’s a menace on the streets of London is actually rather startling. The story has very consciously avoided using real landmarks of the city, almost exactly the opposite of the way The Dalek Invasion of Earth gloated over its famous monuments; the most iconic thing seen here has been a man gunned down in a recognisable phone box. There’s a reason for that, of course – in the Dalek story the aliens had already won, so there wasn’t a need for a huge number of extras slowing down the filming and incurring cost. But in spite of radio messages instructing the population to stay indoors, it’d be unreasonable to suppose that a sequence in which a War Machine came gliding over Trafalgar Square would work without a
lot
more budget.

So how does the series get around this? It shows the scale, rather brilliantly, through use of the media. It’s telling that one of the very first things we see in the episode is the famous face of broadcaster Kenneth Kendall. It’s not the best place in the
story
for the cameo, because the crisis hasn’t started yet, and indeed Kendall’s message is largely one of reassurance. But it’s the best place for the episode as a whole; from this point on, you imagine the events are being played out on every TV and in every newspaper, that this is a situation really affecting the entire world stage. By halfway through the episode, you can resort to an actor on the phone pretending to be an American journalist, and a few voiceovers as people listen to the radio – it doesn’t matter, because the job is done, and we’ve been given enough to
imagine
a scale the BBC simply can’t afford.

Michael Craze is really throwing himself into the role of Doctor Who companion, even though the character has no idea that’s what he’s already become. He’s brave and loyal and charmingly self-sacrificial. His willingness to take the risk of capturing a War Machine off the Doctor’s shoulders is terrific – mostly because he tactlessly offends the Doctor in the process by saying he’s too old to perform such a stunt. And it’s touching the way he obsesses about Polly’s safety all the time – not because he fancies her or nuffing (of course not), but because that’s the bird that saved his life. He’ll be great fun in the TARDIS, I think. On the face of it, Anneke Wills hasn’t had much to do except get hypnotised – but again, it’s the way she acts like a companion, the way she
fights
against her mind control (even though no-one else has that ability), which mark her out as something special. And it’s quite clear that Innes Lloyd has no compunction about dropping Jackie Lane. There’s not a single companion departure yet which hasn’t tried to pluck at the heart strings – not even Adrienne Hill’s, and she was only there for five episodes! But here, the Doctor is clearly hurt by Dodo not even bothering to say goodbye to his face, he remarks upon her ingratitude... and that’s it, we never hear her even mentioned again. (Well, not until the fifth Doctor has his brain sucked out by the Daleks and she pops up in a little clip. So, he hadn’t forgotten her after all! Bless.)

T:
The visuals of this story continue to be stunning. I love the zapping of the very British phone box, and a couple of shots featuring the war machine are superb – one that’s speeded up shows it moving along at a fair lick, and there’s an even better one when it’s reflected in a puddle beneath the spinning wheel of a recently abandoned bicycle. And if the presence of the military wasn’t enough to conjure up memories of Quatermass and the Pit, the pub scene – complete with the public watching the sci-fi events unfold on television – really does. The use of the media that you’ve rightly highlighted is an old Nigel Kneale trick; it grounds the unbelievable in a recognisable context, and lends it scale. And not only does Kenneth Kendall add verisimilitude to the proceedings, he’s joined by broadcaster Dwight Whylie – who I believe is the first black person to have a speaking part on the show.

There are a few things about this episode that I don’t entirely understand – why, for instance, do the highly trained and paid military personnel defer an extremely dangerous job (albeit one that hardly requires specialist skill) to an old man and a young sailor? The real-life answer is, obviously, because the soldiers are just extras, and the Doctor and his incoming companion need more screen time, but within the fiction itself, it’s harder to justify. Also, it seems odd that the War Machine enters the trap rather than just extinguishing the soldiers (and Ben) who are each seen a mere foot or so away from it. As killing machines go, Wotan’s troops leave something to be desired.

Can I stop for a moment, though, and mention that something I’ve seen listed time and again as a goof isn’t one? It’s claimed that Michael Craze hauls the Doctor’s cloak over the War Machine, but then knocks the end of its gun off and has to cover his tracks by bending down, picking it up and replacing it. Nope! That’s done very deliberately (after all, the camera would hardly go out of its way to highlight an error) – the clatter is the TARDIS key falling out of the Doctor’s cloak, whereupon Ben has to pick it up so he and Polly can later gain access to the Ship! It’s amazing how these myths get accepted so effortlessly!

And so, Dodo does indeed get barged away off screen. Welcome aboard, Ben and Polly! I just hope that for your sakes, the producer doesn’t get tired of you...

Daleks Invasion Earth: 2150 AD

R:
Let’s be honest. On any reasonable level, this is a lot better than the TV version which inspired it. It obviously looks better for a start – the special effects, the explosions, the action sequences, they’re all top notch. Gordon Flemyng is directing this as an exciting feature film, and Richard Martin is nowhere in sight. The acting is far superior across the board. Ray Brooks turns David (appearing here without the surname he had in the TV story) into a moody freedom fighter who’s clearly survived so far because he’s bold and brutal; Andrew Keir actually gives resistance-man Wyler the sort of character journey clearly earmarked for Jenny in the original version, so he becomes a man who is humanised by his adventures with Susie; Philip Madoc is extraordinary in only a few minutes’ screen time, making his black marketeer someone very credible and very dangerous by downplaying every line he’s given. And the plot is better too – it’s lean and tight, it actually makes more sense, and in spite of the fact that it’s less than half the running time of the original, it still finds a way of elongating the story’s climax so that it feels more epic. (This results in lots of smashing scenes where Daleks are pulled magnetically through walls or down mine shafts. Great stuff.) There’s an attention to detail here that’s missing from The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and makes the ruined London seem much more believable: all those peeling advertisements for Sugar Puffs suggest a society which is dead, but which no-one has bothered to clean away yet.

And Bernard Cribbins is funny and heroic and likeable in a way that, bless his heart, Roy Castle simply couldn’t be in the first movie. He’s a bit of a bungler is Constable Tom Campbell, it’s true – but the comedy sequences he’s involved in portray him as an ordinary man struggling out of his depth, not as a klutz there as light relief for the little ‘uns. The food-machine scene is a development of the bit in Dr Who and the Daleks where Castle couldn’t make sense of the electronic doors – both show the male hero get into scrapes with future technology. The difference with Cribbins’ take on it is that it’s only funny accidentally – it’s Tom’s desperate attempts to imitate the Robomen, and in doing so save his life, which provide the laughs. The stakes are higher, so the comedy is less forced.

But I’m going to be unreasonable anyway. I can’t help it – I do rather prefer the original, clumsy and dated as it is. The Robomen on TV look crap compared to these ones, who marching along in perfect time in PVC, and blast away with their explosive ray guns – but it’s that very crapness which reminds us that these are just uncared-for corpses being used as an easy work force. It’s cheaper and rougher and dirtier in Hartnell’s Who, and that’s mostly because they couldn’t afford anything better – but it also meant that the ruined Earth was an expression of real despair, not just a background for an exciting action adventure.

And I cared more for the characters in the original. I can’t help it – I miss Barbara and Ian and Susan, and seeing these paler counterparts (Louise?... even Peter Cushing seems to forget about his niece, and hardly bothers to express concern for her during the whole movie!) only reminds us that there isn’t time in a movie like this to give them any background. It’s typified by a scene in which Tom is relieved to see his fellow captive from the Dalek spaceship, and calls out to him as “Craddock” – but there hasn’t been more than a few lines between the pair nearly an hour earlier into the film, and certainly they never exchanged names on screen. When you see the end credits, with characters like “Man with carrier bag” popping up amidst all the unidentifiable surnames, you really need a few “Man left to be robotised on spaceship” or “Man who makes a break for it and gets shot”s to give you any idea who they are.

I’m being churlish. It’s a good, spectacular movie – and it utterly fills its remit, to give us a taste of a big-screen Dalek adventure on a scale and with a budget we’d never have seen on television. It’s hardly surprising there’s a bit of a trade-off with character depth. It’s charming the way the original TV adventure made so much of seeing Daleks on location parading around famous landmarks – the movie doesn’t even
try
to do a sequence at Trafalgar Square, because its visuals are already in a different league to anything Verity Lambert could impress us with. (It’s interesting perhaps that the only big visual image it replicates, that of the Dalek rising out of the Thames, counts for nothing in the movie – the big reveal on the TV screen is such small fry, it’s as if Gordon Flemyng doesn’t even realise it’s meant to be so iconic.) It’s ultimately a matter of personal taste that I find myself hankering after the black and white original, Slyther and all – but I can’t deny that the Aaru movie is genuinely very good.

It’s such a shame that this wasn’t a hit. I’d have loved to have seen what they’d have done with The Chase. (I’d bet they’d have cast Ronnie Corbett this time, maybe as Abraham Lincoln.)

T:
Rewatching this movie is very nostalgic for me – I saw it many times on TV, usually after realising I’d just missed a broadcast of the first Peter Cushing film. Then a friend of mine opened a video shop and got hold of this, long before the TV series started being released commercially, I think (or certainly, before they were affordable). This movie is now so cosily familiar, I can even anticipate some of the music cues. And I’m not a late clamberer onto the Cribbins bandwagon either – he’d always been a favourite in our household, long before he won our hearts as Wilfred Mott. He pitches his comedy and his drama just right in this, and proves why he’s a national treasure. In fact, I might watch his Fawlty Towers episode later – he’s bloody marvellous in that too. Thinking of Cribbins’ performances just makes my heart warm, and puts a gentle smile on my face.

My limited ability to watch Doctor Who growing up caused some re-evaluation of this film, though – I distinctly remember when a friend of mine saw The Dalek Invasion of Earth at Longleat, and was so excited to tell me that the “proper” Robomen didn’t have black uniforms, but were just ordinary people with robotic headgear. It deferred some retrospective class onto something that actually predated the assumed images we already had in our minds (both from this movie and the Target novelisation of the TV story, which misleadingly had what looked like a Blake’s 7 Federation trooper on its cover). What never paled for me, however, was the way the Cushing film mounted effects shots, exteriors and action sequences so much more successfully than the TV version could ever hope to do – there’s a tracking shot in the Dalek base in Bedford that’s giddily impressive, the fights and stunts are very well done, and the Dalek spaceship is incredible (especially the way its two sections spin in different directions). The Dalek rising from the Thames does so at one hell of a lick, and is undermined only by the fact that the score begins to sound, at this point, uncannily like the theme to Police Squad!

By no means is this movie perfect – the intelligence test is hardly The Krypton Factor, and Tom runs through the spaceship looking for “the girl” (Louise), despite the fact that he’s no reason to know that she’s there in the first place. And whilst I adore the music, the opening title sequence is a huge contrast to the eerie, experimental TV-series blobbyness as it amounts to, in all its glory, some coloured water swirling down a plughole!

But I do love almost everything about this film – it’s exciting, well staged, funny and economical, and it reminds me of winter afternoons in front of a warm log fire. I could simply list the brilliant moments that stick in my head – the rebel getting tugged back as a Roboman whip wraps itself around his face, the low-angled shot of the imposing Dalek frighteningly looking down at Tom Campbell as he escapes from the mine, and even the crap Roboman with the wonky mask, who sits next to Cribbins in the comedy lunchtime scene.

As you can doubtless tell, I’ll probably never be able to view this movie with anything approaching objectivity, as it makes my heart beat faster just to think about it. So I’ll just close here by saying that for all the happiness this movie gives me, I’ve never considered it to be proper Doctor Who, and still don’t. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an impressive achievement (it’s Doctor Who – in the cinema!), but the people making it weren’t versed in the history, continuity and essential ingredients that made my favourite programme so special. They actually refer to him as “Doctor Who”, for starters. And they’d
never
do that in the TV series, would they?

By the way, I just realised – you’re right, Rob! A movie version of The Chase would have been brilliant! Imagine the trailer: “Robin Askwith is Malsan – the Aridian with a confession to make!”