Tag Archives: time lords

Heroes, gods and The Three Doctors (1972/3)

2 Comments

Folks, join me in considering the near complete pointlessness of Mr Ollis (Laurie Webb). He exists to be accidentally transported to a distant world and thus to kick start the events of anniversary shindig, The Three Doctors. His face screams out of an X-ray giving the Doctor (dandyish Jon Pertwee) a clue as to what’s happening and a way into the story. Then, his usefulness is at an end.

Nevertheless, he’s hangs around. Ollis turns up on the barren world to carry a rifle, look unfazed by events and follow everyone else around until he’s returned home at the end of the story. By rights, the trip through the heavens to the world within the black hole should have killed him. But as it didn’t, he just kind of hangs around for the rest of the story.

Noticing Ollis and his superfluousness is a dangerous thread to pull at. Suddenly you realise that none of the supporting characters are needed. Certainly not Dr Tyler (Rex Robinson), once his plot function to bring Ollis’s disappearance to the attention of UNIT is achieved. He too is transported to this neverworld, and once there, he also has nothing to do but splutter bewildered statements and make conversation with the Doctor and Jo (ever devoted Katy Manning). But when you think about it, Jo has no significant contribution to make either. Nor do UNIT men the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney, at prime pompousness) and Sergeant Benton (John Levene, at prime gormlessness).

That’s all of this story’s supporting cast – save for a nagging wife and a flummoxed corporal – accounted for. And none of them are really necessary. They’re there simply to keep our leading men company – to pass the silicon rods and tell them how brilliantly infuriating they are. Which is understandable, because the main event is the Doctor meeting his former incarnations. A situation we’re used to after years of such match ups, but which at the time of The Three Doctors, must have felt a giddyingly exciting treat.

****

Who is the hero of this story? It’s a contentious point.

Patrick Troughton is on hand to steal the show away from Pertwee. Many tales have been told of the initial tension between them, generated by their contrasting approaches to the part; one serious and methodical, the other playful and instinctive. If Troughton was trepidatious about returning to the role, there’s no sign of it here. Instead he seems re-energized by the role and more than happy to let Pertwee carry the plot and think he’s the star. Troughton is content to be a constantly distracting presence, reminding the audience that the Doctor can be funny and naughty and whimsical. But this time in colour.

Pertwee sends four episodes trying not to notice. He’s behaving as if Troughton’s another supporting artist in his show, in an attempt to counteract Troughton’s pulling focus. But to no avail. Troughton’s presence pulls the show out of shape. Look, for instance, at his effect on the Brigadier. With Troughton around, the Brigadier becomes slightly unhinged, failing to believe the evidence of his own eyes and making post hoc rationalisations about Cromer. This is really the first story that turns him into a figure of fun, with comedy double takes and wry one liners. Because suddenly we have a Doctor cracking jokes again and he needs a straight man.

Then there’s poor William Hartnell. Hardly old at 64, but clearly very ill, so he needs to be confined to a space infirmary. He’s a shadow of his former Doctory self, his voice uncertain and unfamiliarly light. It’s not just difficult to watch, but also difficult to see – the combination of that strange pyramidal frame he’s perched in, plus the replaying of his footage onto the glarey TARDIS monitor screen. In all, there’s no tangible sense of the first Doctor being present, not just because he only appears in pre filmed segments, but because Hartnell has changed so much since he gave up the role. Given the dubious decision to put such a sick man onscreen in the first place, you have to ask if it was really worth it.

****

Then there’s Omega (Stephen Thorne), a kind of lonely god, sitting in a world incompatible with our own. With that booming voice and his platform boots, he clearly thinks he’s the story’s hero and these Doctors mere distractions.

Around this time Doctor Who built stories around a number of these demigod like super beings: your Azal, your Kronos, your Queen Spider and Omega form a little pantheon that stretches back to the Toymaker and forward to Sutekh. In each case, these beings are so powerful the Doctor cannot hope to defeat them with might. He must use some guile or trickery to defeat them. In this sense, the two Doctors’ approaches to fighting Omega are telling. The Third Doctor tries to mentally battle Omega (which means wrestling with Stuart Fell in a dream sequence) to no avail. The Second prefers a psychological approach; he needle away at Omega with trivialities to test his self control. It’s this method that eventually works.

It makes sense because as the story reveals, Omega has no physical presence; he exists only through force of his own will. He’s pure thought, so it’s fitting that he’s defeated by not being able to see through a trick designed to exploit his emotional instability. No mistake then that his Greek theatre style mask is shaped into a permanent wail of despair.

That mask, apart from being a great piece of design, is significant. It gives The Three Doctors its most effective moment, when the Doctors remove Omega’s mask to reveal that nothing but air fringed by a yellow CSO halo lies beneath. Masks are a common feature of Doctor Who, and usually a signal of villainy at the highest level. They hide a character’s true nature, often, disappointingly, the deformed features of a monster. In Omega’s case, though, it hides a man who’s not there, eaten away by the world which has kept him alive. It’s poetic, but it does suffer a bit from Guy Crawford syndrome, characterised by never thinking to look in a mirror.

Still, it turns Omega into that rarest of things in old Who, a villain who is also a figure of sympathy. The Doctor is remorseful at story’s end that he couldn’t save his people’s mythic hero, not even when multiplied by three. Though as later events will prove, it’s pretty hard to kill someone who exists only as a kind of robed stubbornness, so he needn’t have worried.

****

And how does this momentous story end? With multiple Doctors and Time Lord gods or the renewed TARDIS flying triumphantly off into the vortex?

No, of course not. It ends with inconsequential old Mr Ollis! He returns home to his long suffering wife who understandably wants to know where he’s been. And here’s the most amazing thing of all, he can’t be bothered telling her! That’s because he knows he’s actually the hero of this story! And from his point of view… not much really happened.

LINK TO: Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. Both feature not-quite-as-we-remember-them first Doctors.

NEXT TIME: We meet The Husbands of River Song. I hear they automatically believe any story they’re the hero of.

Inflexibility, impossibility and The Day of the Doctor (2013)

2 Comments

Fans sometimes talk about Doctor Who‘s infinitely flexible format. This is the show which can go anywhere and do anything. When an anniversary year comes around though, we discover this isn’t as true as we might like to think.

It’s all the fault of The Three Doctors really. It laid down a template for anniversary stories which ever since has been too good to resist. Multi Doctors, uniting against one enormous threat. Then The Five Doctors took it even further. Returning Doctors plus returning companions and lots of returning monsters.

The reunion episode is a TV staple, and on any other show, you could do it as often as you like. On ordinary shows, characters can age, and you can pick up with them years after their last TV appearance. You find out what ever happened to them, you try to guess which ones have had plastic surgery, it’s all good fun.

But Doctor Who can’t do that because each of the Doctors is meant to be ageless. We saw each of them turn into another of them, before they got old and creaky. Reunion shows doomed forever. Flexible format, my foot! The Day of the Doctor is bogged down in a format it inherited from Old Who and which was, by 2013, almost impossible to use.

Because here’s the problem. What other possible shape could the show’s 50th anniversary episode take? It’s very difficult to imagine it not being a multi Doctor story, because that’s what Doctor Who anniversaries are. And it’s inconceivable that it wouldn’t at least acknowledge each actor to play the title role.

Steven Moffat knew this. More than that, he wanted this – and more. He wanted every single Doctor joining forces to save Gallifrey from the Daleks. It’s testament to his ingenuity and determination that he made this happen. Despite three Doctors being dead, four looking significantly different to their Doctorly prime and one flatly refusing to participate.

But that Moff is clever. He takes an impossible format and makes it work. How did he do it?

First, he makes this a story about the Doctor and the biggest day of his life. Think of how different an approach this is to The Three and Five Doctors, where the multiple Doctors simply come out to play, just to have an adventure. Setting this story on the last day of the Time War, gives it an event worth watching, not just a chance to rival Doctors squabble. It’s an event big enough for this biggest of episodes.

Secondly, John Hurt. Every anniversary story’s been short its full quota of Doctors, and each has come up with inventive ways around the problem. But Moffat’s is the most audacious. Without Christopher Eccleston, he needs a Doctor upon whom to shoulder the story’s moral core – the redemption of the Doctor post his Time War atrocity. At a pinch, it could have been Paul McGann. But in search of a marquee name to hang out the front his 50th anniversary, the Moff creates an entirely new and hitherto unheard of Doctor and has him played by a movie star.

Think the Doctor is a tough role to play? Pah, step aside children. Hurt is instantly right in the part, creating, as McGann did 17 years earlier, a fully formed Doctor in about an hour. There’s a lovely bit somewhere in all the associated behind the scenes material about this story, where Doctors Smith and Tennant giggle like naughty schoolboys about their own acting deficiencies compared to Hurt. Smith says he’s busy pulling faces like mad, when all John Hurt has to do is look, and the shot’s in the can.

It would have been great to have Eccleston back. But if he hadn’t said no, we wouldn’t have got Hurt. And it gives The Day of the Doctor the chance to say something new about its lead character; that there was a time when he strayed from the path and became everything a Doctor shouldn’t be.  It’s another way in which Moffat breathes life back into the anniversary show format, by asking that question he loves to ask: Doctor Who? Who is this man and what has shaped him? It’s more introspective than any other multi-Doctor stories to date.

Finally, he plays fast and loose with the structure of a Doctor Who story. You’d be well within your rights to expect a villain of some sort to turn up in the biggest Doctor Who story ever. You might be wondering where the final showdown is, with the Doctors squaring off with some big arse Time Lord baddy, as per Three and Five. Instead Moffat gives us two alien invasions – the Zygons on Earth and the Daleks in the skies above Gallifrey- but boldly keeps these on the sidelines. The main question posed is not, “will the Doctors win?”, but “can the Doctor heal himself?”

The answer turns out to be, “yes, but only if we completely retcon the new series”. Moffat is unafraid of such bold, sweeping moves. In The Big Bang, he completely reverses the whole of Series 5. In The Wedding of River Song, he negates an alternative timeline. He’s used to travelling back to a crucial point in history, and just changing it. Time, remember, can be rewritten.

So in one fell swoop, he changes the outcome of the Time War, saves Gallifrey from destruction and absolves the Doctor of his crimes. It’s a resetting of the show along the lines of the classic series. The Doctor’s no longer a war criminal, Gallifrey’s in the heavens and all’s right with the world. Plus he manages to rope in all thirteen of the Doctor’s to help, in a smorgasbord of archive footage, vocal impersonations and impressive eyebrows.

Oddly enough though, here he’s on much more traditional anniversary story ground. The Three Doctors ended with the end of the Doctor’s earthly exile. Reset! The Five Doctors ended with the Doctor on the run from his own people again. Reset! And here, a new start, unburdened by the weight of the Time War, which the series has dragged around since 2005.

All delivered in 3D, in cinemas and a guest appearance by Tom Baker. So hats off to the Moff. Upon being told there were no toys left in the toybox, he held a kickass party anyway. And rewrote Doctor Who along the way. Yeah, that’s how he did it.

LINK TO Resurrection of the Daleks: the Dalek invasion of Gallifrey threatened in Resurrection finally happens.

NEXT TIME: The Beast and his armies shall rise from the Pit to make war against God. We do the Devil’s work with The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit.

Moments, memories and The End of Time (2010)

Leave a comment

Moment 1: When The End of Time Part Two was shown, there was a plaintive update from one of my Facebook friends. She just said:

“I don’t want you to go either.”

***

Back in the here and now, I’m thinking of what to say about The End of Time. It’s too obvious, I think, to talk about how this is all about Tennant and showrunner Russell T Davies leaving the show. It might be interesting to talk about how this is a story about veterans being dragged back into war. Or it might be interesting to talk about some of Davies’ favourite tropes: prophesies, people turned into super beings, things which are ‘lost‘ and things which ‘return’.

But I keep coming back to Tennant and what it means to have him leave the series. On one hand, The End of Time is a vehicle for that departure, certainly one that celebrates and honours him too. So far, so every regeneration story.

Except that Tennant is not just any Doctor. He’s the one who spearheaded the show’s growth in popularity in the noughties. He’s the one who attracted a sizeable female audience to the program, including Mrs Spandrell. He’s the only Doctor to rival the mighty Tom Baker’s claim to being everyone’s favourite Doctor. So Tennant leaving is huge and risky.

I don’t want you to go either, said my Facebook friend. Not just because she’ll miss his handsome face. But also because of an unspoken fear, that things will never be the same again.

***

Moment 2: At the Sydney Opera House for the Symphonic Spectacular (oh.. so much fun) in 2012. There’s a hero piece which features each Doctor’s regeneration, on a giant screen while an orchestra plays. Each Doctor gets their applause, with a spike for Tom Baker.

Eventually, David Tennant, and the place goes nuts. Matt Smith’s the incumbent Doctor at this stage. But it’s clear that Ten rules that room.

****

What is it that makes a room full of Who fans, young and old, new and classic, dragging along their mums, their kids and their long suffering spouses, go nuts for a big screen full of David Tennant regenerating? Why does he get the biggest, longest cheer? What endears him to them so?

Tennant was not widely known before Doctor Who. When he took it on, the role seemed to fit him like a glove. Perhaps because as a childhood fan he’d spent so much time preparing for the part. For male fans, he seems like one of us, the one who actually got to fulfil his boyish fantasies about playing the Doctor.

Oddly enough, this inspires no jealousy. Instead, we cheer him on. How could you not? He’s too bloody good, like that kid you played football with, who went on to play for (insert name of impressively grand football team here), while you gave up and went home to eat biscuits.

For female fans (who like boys, and for boys who like boys) he’s clearly a dish, and funny and charming to boot. But he’s the first Doctor to take an interest in girls. To want to court girls, and to acknowledge that girls like him. He’s the first Doctor it seems possible to date. Likes to dress up, likes a bit of a laugh. And he’s a bit damaged, but not so much that he’s cruel or nasty. Just a bit sad now and then. Plus brave and daring… What’s not to fall in love with?

That’s why an opera house full of people cry out for Ten. Because he’s got something for everyone.

****

Moment 3: Watching late series 3 on broadcast with Mrs Spandrell. I can’t remember which ep, but there’s a swagger in the Doctor’s step.

ME: Tennant’s changed since his first year, but I can’t quite work out how.

Mrs Spandrell thinks for a moment.

MRS: Before, he didn’t know he was sexy. Now he does. And he’s loving it.

****

When The Waters of Mars ended with the Doctor realising the folly of his attempt to cheat history, it was unclear to me what his final line of “No!” meant. Perhaps, I thought, it was uttered in defiance of the laws of time and he’d keep on with his meddling ways. Then I had a great idea for what Tennant’s finale might be about.

I thought that Tennant might be playing a Doctor gone bad, one who had continued to indulge his newfound power for changing events, but had now left Earth a twisted mess of timelines. He’d be left to rule over the chaos, a moody, unpredictable despot. In an attempt to defeat him and set time to rights, the Master is resurrected to bring down the Doctor, thereby reversing the familiar roles of good and bay guy.

Of course it wasn’t to be. But it would have a interesting end to the Tenth Doctor, who ended up too big for his dusty old sandshoes. Because the hubris he displayed in The Waters of Mars would have been thoroughly answered for. As would have that broader arrogance which had developed in the Doctor throughout his tenure. That swaggering brashness. The Tenth Doctor started out as a chic geek, but throughout the years he became sexy and he knew it. And there’s still a hint of that ego in The End of Time.

About which more after…

***

Moment 4: Dinner out with Mrs Spandrell and a old friend who’s an avid watcher, but not quite a fan, of Doctor Who. Somehow, the conversation turns to David Tennant and his departure from the show and specifically the 10min+ sequence where he visits all his former companions. Indulgent, says our friend. Gushy, says Mrs Spandrell. They are in agreement. Self serving, shmaltzy… and then the entrees arrive.

***

It’s an epic story this. The Master (John Simm) on full tilt, turning a whole planet into duplicates of himself in the ultimate ego trip (don’t ask how they’re going to reproduce). The return of Gallifrey and of Rassilon (Timothy Dalton), leaving no scenery unchewed. A dogfight with spaceships and missiles. And the Doctor falling from the sky, crashing into a building and um, somehow surviving.

The end for Ten, when it comes, is the cleverest thing in the story. Poor old Wilf (Bernard Cribbins) tapping meekly on that glass door, making good on the much threatened “he will knock four times” warning, as smart a misdirection as the show has ever got away with. Before he saves his life, the Doctor’s furious. He wants to live. “I could do so much more!” he yells, but he’s forfeited that right. His hubris is what’s brought him down. He has to die, and the regeneration starts.

But then there’s the long goodbye. Nearly 15 minutes of it, visiting companions past, seeing who got married to this and who nearly got run over by that and who he can pimp out to the other. Schmaltzy and indulgent, yes. If this were the Davison era, we’d make do with a sepia flashback sequence. If it was the Pertwee era, we’d just unsentimentally roll back and mix. But this is the Tennant era, so it’s bold, brash and just that little bit full of itself. So it kind of works.

Then the TARDIS catches fire, and new Doctor arrives, screaming like a newborn. Things are never the same again.

LINK TO Face the Raven: The faux death of a regular, again.

NEXT TIME: Best news all day. It’s Resurrection of the Daleks.

Establishment, anti-establishment and The Curse of Peladon (1972)

4 Comments

cpel1

Is Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor, he of the sweeping capes, velvet jackets and patrician tone, anti-establishment or deeply embedded in it? Some people (late producer Verity Lambert among them) have argued that by aligning himself with UNIT and setting up base on Earth, the Doctor became part of our society’s power structures and quite different to the anarchic force for change he had been previously.

Others (like writer Gareth Roberts) have argued that he’s utterly anti-establishment, that barely a story goes by without him clashing with bureaucrats and soldiers and anyone who represents the powers-that-be. I’m not sure that being anti-authority precludes you from being part of the establishment, but I think the Doctor’s flamboyant presence among the suits and uniforms around him is a potent contrast. If the Doctor has sold out, it doesn’t sit comfortably with him.

You could read it either way. But it surprises me to find on this random trip through Who that the more I see of him, the more it’s clear that the Third Doctor is a tricky character to pigeon hole.

Most recently, I’ve accompanied him and dolly bird assistant Jo Grant (played by dolly bird Katy Manning) to the stormy planet of Peladon. It’s only the second time the Doctor has managed to slip the Time Lord shackles which have grounded him on planet Earth, so it’s a rare trip to another world. But while in the confines of a UNIT laboratory the Doctor may have sneered at enough civil servants to convince us he’s still a maverick at heart, I have to report that once on Peladon, he becomes a resounding advocate for the establishment.

Peladon is a rustic kind of place. Its cavernous citadel is lit by fiery torches and its soldiers dress like Romans and carry swords. It’s governed by a King, who’s advised by long robed lords. Like its mascot, the furry fanged beast Aggedor, Peladon’s an untamed beast. But civilisation beckons, in the form of a Galactic Federation of planets. To assess Peladon’s application to join the Federation, representative delegates have been sent, all of them green: Ice Warriors, Arcturus (an alien head in a mobile jukebox) and Alpha Centauri (a phallic hexapod).

(A quick diversion – Alpha Centauri, WTF? It is the oddest thing: it looks like a cock, sounds like a woman and is labelled a hermaphrodite. It’s every gender you can think of, with six tentacles and wrapped in a cloak. It pulls focus in every scene it’s in: Katy Manning even throws in a cheeky ad lib about it upstaging everyone. But putting aside its sheer mind boggling weirdness, I wonder if there’s an argument for Alpha Centauri being the first queer character in Doctor Who. After all, actor Ysanne Churchman was instructed to give it the voice of ‘a homosexual civil servant’. And is there something uncomfortable in positioning gays as bizarre, unearthly creatures?)

The Earth delegate is missing, but the Doctor is on hand to adopt the role. And he’s clearly a method actor, because he utterly embeds himself in the part. So much so, that he adopts an unquestioning support for Peladon joining the Federation. So fervent is his belief in this cause, he seems to forget that he’s not actually there to ensure it happens.

In Episode Three, this unusually committed impostor talks to chief recalcitrant Hepesh (Geoffrey Toome):

DOCTOR: You slap the Federation in the face by sabotaging the commission. Why?
HEPESH: Because I’m afraid.
DOCTOR: Afraid? Afraid of what? The Federation is your safeguard.
HEPESH: That is not true! I know the Federation’s real intent.
DOCTOR: The Federation’s real intent is to help you.
HEPESH: No! They’ll exploit us for our minerals, enslave us with their machines, corrupt us with their technology. The face of Peladon will be changed, the past swept away, and everything that I know and value will have gone.
DOCTOR: The progress that they offer, that we offer, isn’t like that.

How does he know? Does he know about the Federation from some previous adventure? If not, how can he be so sure it’s the benign force for progress he paints it as? Hepesh’s argument, though paranoid and fear-driven, might have some merit. Unusually for the Doctor, he doesn’t give the other side of the argument any consideration.

Compare this to Curse‘s Season Nine stablemate,The Mutants. In that story, the planet Solos is fighting for its independence from an imperialist regime. In that adventure, the Doctor is firmly on the side of self-determination. Sure we’re dealing with two different allegories here; The Mutants rails against colonialism, whereas Curse reflects tensions about the UK joining the European economic community. Peladon is making a choice of its own, whereas Solos is occupied. But still, it’s odd to see the Doctor urging one society of strength in unity, while pointing out to another the strength of standing alone.

I suppose though it depends what we’re calling ‘the establishment’. The Doctor is certainly against Hepesh’s attempts to keep Peladon shackled to tradition and the old power structures. In this sense, he’s a true advocate for change and firmly questioning the wisdom of sticking with the status quo.

But I can’t help wondering how Peladon’s going to fare in this galactic federation. It’s a feudal society, lacking in technological sophistication but rich in natural resources. Surely there’s a possibility it’s going to extorted and bullied by its more advanced co-signatories. Hmm Doctor? Hmm?

Curse has a sequel, the quite similar, but two episodes longer, The Monster of Peladon. It concerns itself with rebellious miners mostly, so perhaps writer Brian Hayles missed a trick. What if 50 years later, Peladon finds itself wanting out of the Federation? What if Hepesh’s fears were borne out? The Doctor would have to face the consequences of his actions and perhaps strive for the opposite outcome he sought in Curse. There’d have to be Ice Warriors and Aggedor and funny hairstyles, natch.

At the end of the adventure the Doctor tells Jo that he suspects their arrival on Peladon was no coincidence. He reckons it was those wily old birds the Time Lords sending him on another mission. What possible benefit they see in Peladon joining the Federation remains unknown, but they had their man in the field go and sort things out. Once again, the Doctor’s on hand to do the establishment’s bidding. Whether he likes it or not.

LINK to Blink. Both feature deadly statues. And as it happens…

NEXT TIME… You might want to find something to hang on to. It’s back to not blinking for The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone.

AND ONE LAST THING… The Curse of Peladon means that Season 9 is the first season to be completed on Randomwhoness! You can find links to its stable mates, and indeed all my posts, right here.

Crisis, chaos and The Ultimate Foe (1986)

Leave a comment

ultimate foe 1

1.

It’s a Monday morning in 1986. Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner, aged 38, sits restlessly in his office, smoking not-his-first cigarette of the day. Also in his office, a lawyer who’s been seconded from some dry and dusty corner of the BBC to witness the forthcoming meeting. The lawyer looks around JN-T’s office, filled with Doctor Who paraphernalia and wallpapered with showbizzy photos, and imagines that this is not going to be an ordinary day at the office. An awkward silence ensues as they wait for the meeting’s other attendees to arrive.

JN-T has been producing Doctor Who for six seasons, and he’s used to crises. He’s pulled stories out of oblivion, he’s saved doomed shoots, he’s made the unworkable work. Last year when his series was effectively cancelled, he resorted to leaking torrentially to the newspapers and whipping up a media outrage to force his bosses to back down and reinstate the show. But nothing compares to the mess he finds himself in as the last episodes of Season 23 loom.

His script editor, Eric Saward – the only other ongoing staffer on the program – has resigned in acrimony. JN-T is now doing his job as well as his own. Over the last year, he and Saward have been supervising the making of the longest Doctor Who story in history; fourteen episodes of The Trial of a Time Lord. But the two have clashed over the story’s climax and Saward, who was writing the final episode, has withdrawn permission for its use.

JN-T needs a new script which concludes the longest and most complicated narrative the show has ever seen, at a time when its survival has never been more precarious. And he needs it in a week.

As he stubs out one fag and lights another, perhaps he wonders how he got to this predicament. The show’s hiatus was a blow, but at least it offered the production team time, a luxury they rarely had in the past. Plus they had 12 fewer episodes to produce this year. Where had all that time gone? How had it all fallen apart?

(And perhaps the lawyer wonders how soon this will be over so he can get to morning tea.)

In this sort of crisis, a producer usually turns to his script editor. But that’s no longer an option. What JN-T needs is someone who can work fast, who knows the program, who knows the Trial and who’s crazy enough to take the brief. Writers are few and far between. The great Robert Holmes who wrote Parts 1-4, has died. Philip Martin, writer of Parts 5-8, could be around. After that, the ranks are thin. But JN-T has a writer in mind. In fact he has two.

‘John, are you there…?’

A knock at the door!

The meeting’s hitherto absent participants had at last arrived. The producer’s face flushed, matching his Hawaiian shirt.

He rushed to answer the door.

There stood an elderly looking couple.

Pip and Jane Baker!

‘Where the hell have you been?’ John cried. ‘I need a script!’

From Doctor Who: A Script in Time (unpublished), Target books, 1987.

So JN-T explains the situation to the Baker Twins. Part 13 is written and ready to go, but he can’t use Saward’s Part 14. In fact they can’t even discuss it for fear of being accused of plagiarism, hence the presence of the lawyer. Locations are secured, cast are booked. Shooting starts next week. Can they write a new Part 14?

To their merit, Pip and Jane don’t run from the room. Nor do they refuse what sounds like an impossible task. They say yes. And off they scurry to do the work. The lawyer heads off for a coffee and a cake. JN-T allows himself a brief sigh of relief, lights another ciggie and starts script editing Parts 9-12. Written by Pip and Jane Baker.

And as far away as Australia, news of the production debacle is spreading. Young Spandrell reads an issue of fanzine Data Extract with a lyrical headline: Holmes dies, Saward quits, Brigadier returns. Like most fan news of the time, it proves to be partially correct.

2.

Born out of chaos, The Ultimate Foe feels chaotic. How could it not? This 55 minutes of television has a total of four writers between it. Holmes wrote the first half of Part 13, and it’s solid enough, delivering the season’s two big revelations: that the Time Lords destroyed Earth and that the Valeyard’s a future version of the Doctor. Saward wrote the rest of that episode, plunging the Doctor into the nightmare world of the Matrix. And it’s good stuff, producing some of the most memorable images of Colin Baker’s tenure, such as the set piece where he’s sucked into a beach.

P&J attack Part 14 with gusto. Their solution to the problem presented is incident. Part 14 has its characters embroiled in incident after incident before it ends with the Valeyard attempting to let off a big bomb. Inspired it’s not. What’s most obviously missing is a big confrontation between Doctor and Valeyard, with all those future regenerations at stake. Perhaps it ends with a moment of ruthlessness from the Doctor which shows us that his journey towards becoming the Valeyard has begun. But anyway, Pip and Jane delivered an episode which has never ranked among the series’ worst (they saved that for their next story), nor its best. But sadly that’s what the series really needed at this point.

Still completing that episode with all its predetermined strictures in record time, is a considerable achievement, one the Bakers are rarely given credit for. Years ago, someone interviewed them for DWM and in a smarmy little trick to end his piece with, asked the bemused pair was a ‘megabyte modem’ was, throwing a particularly lame piece of dialogue from this episode back at them. The elderly couple of course, had no idea what he was talking about, having no doubt long forgotten the exact wording they misused in a script decades ago. What a cheap, rude way to treat these people. Yes, they indulged in awkwardly pretentious dialogue and preposterous concepts, but on this occasion they saved the show’s bacon and produced, I think, their best work on the show. So credit where it’s due, and come back with your cheap jibes when you can write your way out of a mess like Trial.

Saward wanted a cliffhanger ending to their epic serial, where the Doctor and his dark alter ego the Valeyard fell struggling into a time vent. JN-T, it is said, wanted a happy ending to lessen the chance of his bosses taking the show off air again. This could be true, but on the making of documentary on the DVD of this story, he gives a slightly different reason that makes more sense. He said that after 14 weeks of this story he wanted a definitive conclusion. An end to the story, which the Bakers delivered. JN-T was often accused of not understanding stories, but on this occasion he was spot on. Imagine getting to the end Part 14 of The Trial and thinking, ‘Blimey, it’s still not finished!’

LINK to Robot: Holmes worked on both, script editing one and co-writing the other. That works for our next story too.

NEXT TIME… It will be the end of everything, even your pension! We germinate The Seeds of Doom.

Colour, change and The Mutants (1972)

3 Comments

mutants1

Doctor Who – now in colour! And how. In the early 1970s, the Pertwee years didn’t just move into colour, they dived into it. Suddenly, the future looked garish. Stories like The Claws of Axos and Carnival of Monsters were kaleidoscopes of colour. You literally couldn’t have made a story called The Green Death pre-1970. Colour quickly became fundamental to the series.

Similarly multicoloured is The Mutants. Metaphorically in its multi-racial casting and themes of racial segregation. But literally too, particularly in its middle episodes when we spelunk into the radioactive caves of the otherwise grey planet Solos, where blobs of multicoloured light thrash about for supremacy. And in Part Six when rebel leader Ky (the wonderfully named Garrick Hagon) transforms into a beautiful space butterfly. Add to this Tristram Cary’s um, challenging, electronic score of beeps and gurgles and you have a particularly Pertwee attack on the senses.

It strikes me that The Mutants  is about change, and different reactions to it. The Solonians are changing into grotesque insect creatures and are blaming it on disease. In fact it turns out to be part of an evolutionary life cycle, linked to the planet’s seasons. The imperialist humans are ready to embrace change too, and give Solos its independence. Only the villainous Marshal (Paul Whitson-Jones, giving a bombastic performance) wants to maintain the status quo and keep the Overlords in control of Solos, and even he has a scheme to change Solos’ atmosphere so that it’s breathable for humans.

Solos’ quest for independence is a clear allegory for that of 20th century British imperial territories. Many such territories, particularly in Africa, gained their independence in the 1960s, so this was a live and topical issue for Doctor Who to tackle. British foreign policy is something of a theme in Season Nine, with this story and The Curse of Peladon both critiquing how Britain interacted with the world around it. Even The Sea Devils, sandwiched in between these two stories, has Colonel Trenchard, a prison overseer who used to be the governor of a small colony. The bleak future career prospects of people like him and the Marshal are referred to again in The Mutants, when the Administrator (Geoffrey Palmer, doomed never to get out of a Doctor Who story alive), suggests that post-Solos they can find him ‘something clerical’ to do.

(I like that idea. It’s as cutting an insult as could be administered to a career bully like the Marshal to suggest that he’s been promoted beyond his skills merited. I can see him being in charge of council rates. “Will you get this into your maundering egghead?! I want your deeds of title notarised and I want it done now!” Or perhaps he could be in charge of domesticated animals. Then he could still go on his mutt hunts. Mutt mad, he is.)

So the independence stuff seems like a product of its time, and yet even in 2014 we saw the Scottish vote for independence take place. And with a Scot as showrunner (not to mention a Scot as the Doctor), we irregularly get references to Scottish independence. We heard that Scotland wanted their own escape ship in The Beast Below (how did they manage it without a star whale?), for instance, and weren’t Peter Capaldi’s eyebrows seceding from his face in Deep Breath?  So far from being a product of its time, breaking free of colonialism is an ongoing political theme for the program.

It’s not that The Mutants was the first political Doctor Who story; we recently randomed The Macra Terror, for example, and noted its fears of totalitarianism. But perhaps The Mutants is the most overtly political story up to that point. It’s clearly criticising imperialism and advocating for leaving other civilisations untouched. The fact that Ky turns into a superbeing and flies about saving the day (and let’s pause here to say hello to The Parting of the Ways, The Last of the Time Lords and Journey’s End) seems to suggest that the better path is to let cultures develop naturally. In effect, to do nothing and let nature take care of business.

Before he becomes SuperKy Guy, Ky fills the role of young firebrand nicely. He’s all dark and brooding and dressed in native tribal chic. It’s a wonder he doesn’t fall for Jo, as most young bucks in Who of this era tend to. He’s important enough to get a message from the Time Lords too, although they send it in a very convoluted way.

Firstly they send a sort of squared off black soccer ball to the Doctor, and get him to take it to Solos (why didn’t they just send it to Ky?). The black soccer ball will only open for its intended recipient, but the Doctor doesn’t know it’s Ky (why didn’t the Time Lords tell him?). When he does get it to Ky, the soccer ball cracks open to reveal some stone tablets covered in unintelligible scribblings (how did the Time Lords get these? And why didn’t they just write Ky a note?). Ky can’t read them, so he takes them to earthman gone native Professor Sondergaard to be translated (why was the package for Ky and not Sondergaard? And, our old favourite, which professorial chair does Sondergaard hold exactly?). Time Lords, eh? Always doing things the hard way.

And striding through all this is the Pert, just beginning the second half of his tenure. By Season Nine, a template is emerging for third Doctor stories. Give him a lab to tinker in to show he’s a scientist. Give him a couple of fights to show his physical prowess. Give him a bureaucrat to belittle and a moral issue to fire up his outrage. Above all, make him looks great; a different coloured jacket each ep, a swooshing cape and frilly shirt. Rings on his fingers and boots on his toes. Patronising and preachy, sure, but a TV series in colour needs a colourful hero and that’s just what the Pert is. And The Mutants is precisely his kind of story.

Adventures in subtitling: Stubbsy becomes ‘scolsie’ at one point. The Marshal’s angry cry of ‘Later. Jaegar!’ promotes the scientist to ‘Major Jaegar!’.

LINK to The Massacre: Both stories feature Marshals.

NEXT TIME: You’re not funny, or clever and you’ve got tiny little legs! Time waits for The Snowmen.

Script meeting, speculation and Arc of Infinity (1983)

Leave a comment

arc

ERIC SAWARD: Johnny! Thanks for coming in.
JOHNNY BYRNE: My pleasure, Eric. How’s the new job coming along?
SAWARD: Oh fine, fine. Just settling in, really.
BYRNE: How are you getting on with the producer?
SAWARD: Oh very well. I’m sure we’ll be the best of friends. Right now though, I’m looking for scripts for the new season.
BYRNE: Oh yes?
SAWARD: And I enjoyed that Traken one you did for Tom. And seeing as we’re paying you every time we use Nyssa, I thought might as well put you to work, eh? Eh? (Awkward silence) Anyway, did you have any ideas?
BYRNE: Well, yes as it happens. I’ve been thinking of a story about a creature from another dimension, who’s trying to force its way into our universe. Have you read The Mist?
SAWARD: No. But your idea sounds great! Before you go too far with it, there are a few bits and pieces we’d like you to… incorporate.
BYRNE: Such as?
SAWARD: Well, you did such a great job of bringing back the Master, and it is the show’s twentieth anniversary, how about bringing back Omega?
BYRNE: Who’s Omega?
SAWARD: Omega is a kind of Time Lord demi-god who exists only in a universe of anti-matter and who appeared in the tenth anniversary show.  Have you seen The Three Doctors?
BYRNE: No. But I can see how that will fit into my story. An immensely powerful being, but poison to his own kind. He’d be a kind of lonely outcast once he got into our world… Maybe he’d meet a little boy, and rather than kill him, be entranced by his innocence… have you seen Frankenstein?
SAWARD: No. But that all sounds terrific. Of course, it will need to be set in Amsterdam.
BYRNE: Right. Why exactly?
SAWARD: The producer wants to shoot overseas somewhere. And we get the cast and crew to buy their own meals and travel everywhere by bicycle we can just about afford to go to Amsterdam.
BYRNE: Hmm, OK.
SAWARD: No honestly, it’ll be great! They went to Paris a couple of years back and it was brilliant. The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower. Much better than some old country manor or disused warehouse. Have you seen City of Death?
BYRNE: No. But Amsterdam, doesn’t have those iconic fixtures like the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. What has it got?
SAWARD: Legal grass?
BYRNE: Not really Doctor Who territory is it? Tulips?
SAWARD: Organs?
BYRNE: I seem to remember that it’s below sea level. Maybe that becomes important to this Omega chap because it’s somehow necessary to his plan for emerging into this universe.
SAWARD: Great! Use that! It will need a monster of course.
BYRNE: Will it? Won’t Omega do?
SAWARD: Oh no, no no! He’s just the villain. We’ll need a monster too.
IAN LEVINE (OOV): Omega can conjure up monsters simply using his own will!
BYRNE: What was that?
SAWARD: Nothing, just ignore it. But yes, Omega can create his own monster.
BYRNE: Hmm, maybe a henchman type of thing. Created from the raw matter of the universe. All flesh and sinew but covered in an exoskeleton. Have you seen Alien?
SAWARD: No. But that sounds just the ticket.
BYRNE: Can the budget manage it? We don’t want it to look like, oh I don’t know, a big rubber chicken. Ha ha.
SAWARD: Ha ha. No, that’ll never happen.
LEVINE (OOV): Gallifrey!
BYRNE: Is there someone behind that door?
SAWARD: No, of course not. But that’s the other thing – we want to set some of it on Gallifrey. That’s the planet of the Time Lords.
BYRNE: What’s that like then?
SAWARD: Oh, it’s terrific. All gothic chambers and big impressive cathedral-like spaces. Have you seen The Deadly Assassin?
BYRNE: No.
SAWARD. Just as well, because we won’t have any money for any of that after we go to Amsterdam. A few corridors, some space boardrooms and a few lounges will do.
BYRNE: Sounds lovely. Well, we can do some court intrigue stuff there. The Doctor summoned home to be executed. A traitor in their midst, that kind of thing. Have you seen I, Claudius?
SAWARD: No.
(Door bursts open)
LEVINE: Don’t forget the temporal grace!
BYRNE: Excuse me?
LEVINE: In Earthshock, guns were fired in the console room, but it’s meant to be in a state of temporal grace! We need a line to cover it!
SAWARD: No problem, we’ll do something about that.
LEVINE: And if the Doctor’s going home to be executed, we should say that’s only the second time that’s happened! ‘Cause it is y’know!
SAWARD: OK, thanks Ian.
LEVINE: And you should call one of the characters Colin! That will give you a handy LINK to the 1966/7 story The Highlanders!
BYRNE: What an odd thing to say.
LEVINE: Have you seen The Highlanders?
BYRNE: No.
LEVINE: Of course you haven’t! How could you? It was junked years ago!
SAWARD: (leading him to the door). OK, thanks Ian.
LEVINE: And mention Romana! And Leela’s wedding!
SAWARD: Yes, we’ll mention them all. Thanks again. (Closes door)
BYRNE: What an extraordinary fellow. Who is he?
SAWARD: He’s our unpaid series continuity adviser.
BYRNE: You have an unpaid series continuity adviser?
LEVINE (OOV): And bring back Tegan!
SAWARD: Oh, that’s right. We need to bring back Tegan. She’s a companion we don’t pay a regular fee to use. She’s coming back after we dropped her off in the last year’s finale. Have you seen Time-Flight?
BYRNE: No.
SAWARD: It’s, um… Well it’s really something. And the same director’s going to do your story.
BYRNE: Oh that is good news.
SAWARD: Great. Well, I’m sure you’ll do a terrific job on it. Thanks for coming in, look forward to the script and I’ll see you NEXT TIME.
BYRNE: Super. How do I get out again?
SAWARD: Straight out this door – mind our unpaid series continuity adviser – and Turn Left.