Darn. I was really hoping to be positive about this episode after last time's change of heart, but it's more on a par with The Expedition. Everything about it feels tired. There's no energy from the actors, the choreography of the final battle is lacklustre, the direction's full of static shots (and sometimes when the camera moves the shot doesn't quite come off anyway), we're offered blind, deaf Daleks who don't notice people in plain sight or hear a yell of "get back!" from a few feet away... No wonder it's the shortest episode so far, less than 22½ minutes. I certainly wouldn't have wanted any more of it.
To be honest, everyone probably was tired at this point - it's notable that the worst episode from each director in this story is his last, and the regulars have been working for three months with only a week off for Christmas. What everyone needs (if they can't get a holiday) is a change, perhaps something wild and wacky so they can stretch different muscles. But more on that in a few entries' time.
Unfortunately, understanding the pressures the production team were under doesn't actually make this any more enjoyable. There's some wooden acting from a couple of Thals that I was less tolerant of this time around, simply because there was too little good stuff for me to cut it any slack.
Still, at least there was some good stuff. I was amused by the comment about all the corridors looking the same, and some of the best shots were of corridor scenes. The Doctor being blasé about the fluid link, together with Ian's reaction, was a great moment. In fact, the whole section after the climactic battle was probably my favourite part of the episode - we also had the revelation that the Doctor was a pioneer among his own people (a claim to take with a pinch of salt given his past form) and the natural conclusion to Barbara's "holiday romance" with Ganatus, something I meant to mention last time and which was handled in a much more believable fashion during these last few episodes than similar incidents later in the show. Then it's back to the ship for some more falling about acting in a console room that seems curiously smaller than hithertofore and yon.
And that's all I want to say about this episode, which gives me an opportunity to include a topic I've had hanging around for some time:
Monsters!, Part 3: Origin of the Daleks
I mentioned a while back that 1963-4 was the cusp of a generational shift between the births of Baby Boomers and Generation Xers. There's another shift going on at the same time. The Second World War ended 18 years ago, which means that up to now all adults had been alive during the war, and a year or two earlier they would all have had memories of it; Terry Nation certainly did. This is not true of the current teens, whose earliest memories will be from the postwar period. Youth culture is about to make the jump from the quieter rebellion of the 1950s to the full-blown "60s experience;" but it is not yet this generation that is running the show.
I hesitate to bring up 60s culture or politics because I don't want this blog to turn into an inferior copy of Elizabeth Sandifer's, but I can't really talk about the origin of the Daleks without it. Everyone working on the show has that wartime background, and is living at the height of the Cold War (along with the audience). It's only a year or so since the Cuban Missile Crisis and the threat of nuclear destruction is a part of everyone's lives, so there's a lot of speculation about what would happen in the aftermath of such an event.
The Daleks takes these two experiences - one from the past, one a current fear - and blends them into something designed to hit the buttons of the entire audience, children and adults. Nation succeeds beyond all expectation; the result weathers uneven production to produce something iconic, and in the process ensures the future of Doctor Who.
Of course, he didn't do this alone. Without Raymond Cusick's visual design, those voices, and even the other actors going all-out to sell their terror, I doubt the Daleks would have been such a hit; and it's handy that Christopher Barry was on form for their initial introduction. Still, hit they were, and the BBC, unprepared at first, went with the flow. Before the story had even finished airing, Walter Tuckwell had struck up a deal with for merchandising rights (despite the BBC declaring the Daleks to be a one-off monster in a limited-lifespan series).
Collaborative development is a funny thing. A couple of months before the Cuban Missile Crisis a new comic book hero appeared across the pond: Spider-Man. Most people consider him to have been created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, but Lee's personal opinion is that while Ditko undoubtedly did a lot to make the character a success, Lee was sole creator. Over here, Nation received the bulk of the credit for the Daleks. In particular, he (along with his agent and the BBC) took a cut of all merchandising, while Cusick received nothing. Sometimes there's no justice.
Before I go I'd like to sum up my feelings about The Rescue. Last time I raised the spectre of Warriors of the Deep when talking about lighting, and (again by chance) the final words of that story - spoken by the Doctor and used by countless fans and documentary-makers to express their opinion of that ill-fated production - are a distant echo of something Ganatus says here after the battle:
"If only there'd been some other way."
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 1st February 1964
Viewers: 10.4 million
Chart Position: 25
Appreciation Index: 65
Rating:
3/10.
Next Time:
A look at the story as a whole... whatever it's called.
No comments:
Post a Comment