Virgin Missing Adventure 12: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, by Christopher Bulis

I mentioned a few entries ago that the TARDIS travels not just in time and space but also in genre. This novel is a fine example, set in what appears to be a sub-Tolkienian fantasy world.

Published in 1995, it's appropriate that this is in book form. This was a drought period for the high fantasy genre in (English-language) visual media; in film the last of the Neverending Story sequels had just come out and nothing else was on the cards, while on TV the first series of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys signalled the earliest days of the fantasy revival. Meanwhile, we saw a continual torrent of novels featuring Middle-earthlike settings, mostly fairly mindless.

It's not just fantasy, though, despite the setting (which has elements of L. Frank Baum and Terry Pratchett as well as Tolkien). The book takes a fairly standard fantasy quest story and intertwines it with a fairly standard SF story, and it is in the collision of the two worlds that interesting stuff happens. What makes this work is the way that the inhabitants of Avalon whole-heartedly believe they are in one type of novel, whereas the agents of the Empire are equally adamant that they are in another. This is brilliant because it is, of course, a very Who thing to do, but taken to the next level. Instead of having the science-fantasy TARDIS crew invading another genre, they are observers of (and unwilling participants in) a clash between two different genres.

When it comes to the writing, the first thing I notice in a Who book is whether the voices of the characters fit. Here they do, very well - I can hear William Hartnell, Jacqueline Hill, Ian Russell and Carole Ann Ford speaking the lines, which is important for my enjoyment. The descriptive style is very visual, with detailed descriptions of the setting, and it's an easy read with just enough meat to keep me interested without becoming an effort to get through.

An aspect of the writing which takes on a bigger importance when reading this as part of a marathon is how it fits with the style of the period, and here Christopher Bulis has mixed success. The character roles are well-fitted, perhaps even clichéd, with Susan getting captured and Barbara left in a supposedly safe place to think while Ian and the Doctor go into action. On the other hand, Susan is very clear that she and her grandfather are not human, whereas this was ambiguous in 1964, so it clashes. Similarly, Iananbarbara seem too familiar with spacecraft, especially since they have never encountered any.

Of course, the intent might not be to fit with the TV adventures of the featured TARDIS crew. The book is much closer in both time and tone to Sylvester McCoy's final season, and in particular Battlefield, with its re-imagining of Arthurian myth and talk of "sufficiently advanced magic." There's even a scene here where they find a "magical" artifact with a long-dead body that mirrors a scene from the Seventh Doctor story.

I've recently finished watching season 26 for the first time (in reverse order, quite by chance), and to me it feels like a throwback to the experimental nature of season 1. It even counts down in parallel episodes: Survival, like An Unearthly Child, is in part about the contrast between the modern London home of a companion (or two) and a savage world; The Curse of Fenric and The Daleks are large-scale epics about ancient evil, set in or referencing the Second World War, with set-piece battles and a high body count; Ghost Light and The Edge of Destruction are claustrophobic, small-set pieces of weirdness. Only the Battlefield/Marco Polo analogy broke the pattern, and for those who don't mind "cheating" a little, this book goes some way towards repairing it.

An Expanding Universe, Part 2: The Missing Adventures
Speaking of spanning the gap between 1963 and 1989, I need to say something about the series of which this book is a part. Following the success of their New Adventures (featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace on their travels after Survival concluded), Virgin decided to start a parallel line with stories about previous Doctors. All the books were aimed at older readers than the TV series' core audience, which made sense given that the TV viewers were growing up and fewer youngsters were coming in. 33 Missing Adventures were published before the BBC withdrew the license in 1996, five of them featuring the First Doctor. I am hoping to be able to cover all of these.

Published:
Date: 1995
ISBN: 0-426-20447-6

Rating:
Mine: 8/10.
2011 Gallifrey Base Non-Dynamic Rankings: 8.08, 3rd out of 33 Missing Adventures, 25th out of 286 overall.

Next Time:
The Sea of Death.

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Serial D: Marco Polo - A Journey to Cathay

So, there we have it - the fourth serial. Once again it's been rather an up-and-down experience, with my episode ratings all over the shop and the averaged ratings coming out, er, average. And that really does sum up my opinion of the story as a whole. There's a lot to like in it but it doesn't advance the story of the travellers like serial C, or excite like serial B. Most of the time we're just wandering along admiring the (admittedly fine) scenery. The story really takes off in the final episode, but that's a bit too late.

OK, confession time: I said when I started this serial that "I've never properly experienced this story before". The word "properly" was important, because in one sense I had seen it! Before I say more, I'll just take a brief diversion to talk about the currently preferred medium for the distribution of the classic series:

DVDs, Part 1: The Beginning
Not, in fact, the beginning of the DVD range, but rather of the program. In fact, this box set of the first three serials came out in January 2006, nearly halfway through the release schedule (which began with The Five Doctors in November 1999 and is due to end before the 50th anniversary in November 2013).

We Whovians are lucky with our particular hobby because the DVDs are packed with more extras than the average release. There's a lot of stuff on these discs - documentaries, production subtitles, sketches, photo galleries, Radio Times billings, commentaries - as well as restored versions of the programs. My grumble about this particular set is that most of the episodes lack commentary, something almost unique in the range. Still, it's a minor complaint.

2006 was my first year of buying the TV stories in any form (I skipped VHS, for reasons I will get to much later), and this was one of my earliest purchases. I hadn't yet figured out that the best way to appreciate them was to spread them out over a decent period, and I gorged myself on early Who. By the time I got to the final substantial extra on the DVD of The Edge of Destruction, I wasn't really taking much in. And that extra is the reason I'm bringing up this DVD set now:

The BBC 30 Minute Reconstruction of Marco Polo
I've now watched this again, and I have to say I don't know who it's aimed at. The casual DVD viewer is unlikely to sit through half an hour of telesnaps and would probably have preferred a photo gallery, while the completist is going to want the full story. Actually, I'd have preferred a photo gallery too, since the images are higher quality than in the full recon I've just finished writing about.

I'd thought the fact that I could remember virtually nothing about Marco Polo despite having watched this was due to the gorging mentioned above. That is a factor, but actually the story as presented is pretty incoherent. Too much has been cut out to get any real sense of what's going on, or of the mood invoked. The map is also pretty rudimentary, and more importantly lacking that pulp feel. It's far less impressive than the "amateur" Loose Cannon version. In some ways, this recon is worse than nothing.

Finally, I'd like to thank Play.com. They put the 1964-5 Lost TV Episodes Collection on their website for the wrong price (£8.79). Originally they said they couldn't honour the deal - understandable given that they would have made a loss - but then they changed their mind and sent it to me anyway! Excellent customer service, and worth advertising. I have bought from them since then despite finding a slightly cheaper price elsewhere, and will continue to do so; they may even get their money back on the deal eventually. Anyway, without them, this marathon would not have taken place. I doff my cap.

Rating:
Abridged, Single Sitting: 1/10.
Episodic: 6/10.
DWM Mighty 200: 74.01%, 65th.
2011 Gallifrey Base Non-Dynamic Rankings: 8.54, 17th out of 222.

Next Time:
A diversion into print with The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

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Episode 20 (D7): Assassin at Peking

Wow. Now, that's a turnaround, and I have no shortage of things to talk about this time. My only problem is in trying to organise my thoughts into something coherent. What the heck - I'll try stream of thought, and see how it looks.

First off, a warning. All these entries contain spoilers. I've been reckoning that people can work this out for themselves and read responsibly, but because fewer people have seen (or otherwise experienced) Marco Polo I will say up front that I recommend doing so before reading this entry. Go on - come back to this in a week or two when you're done.

Have they gone? Good. Or maybe - if you're reading this later - welcome back!

Right. Let's start with the resolution of the cliffhanger, where I was pleased to discover that Ian doesn't get to beat Tegana. I deliberately left in my prediction last time - even though I knew I was wrong by the time I wrote up my notes - since I'm trying to record my thoughts as I go. In fact, Ian has done very little of the "action man" stuff in this serial, dealing with some guards and bandits but not much more; even at the end it's Polo who faces the warlord, and I find this more realistic portrayal suits me well. This is not an episode that focuses on Ian, though, and his main contribution is helping Barbara to figure out what Tegana is up to. Which is Barbara's main contribution, too, now I think about it. And Susan takes a back seat as well.

The Doctor is the only regular with a significant role, the first time in a while he's been in the spotlight, and the rapport between William Hartnell and Martin Miller as Kublai Khan comes through much better than in their first meeting. The Doctor's cunning - and his reaction when he loses - are spot on, but still it's the Khan who is the more interesting character. This story definitely upholds the idea that wisdom comes with age, despite the ruler's gambling addiction; and he proves himself a very shrewd judge of character. Which makes sense for a successful overlord. Tegana's plans, meanwhile, are gradually unravelled both by chance and by the Khan's clear sight, so that the revelation of his original scheme - a straightforward assassination, unaffected by any of the preceding events - is a gripping moment.

What I like even more about this episode is the way it changes my perceptions of what has been going on, especially the actions of our eponymous Venetian narrator. I left my inaccurate comments about Polo's story-led stupidity in the last entry as it is important to understand the turnabout that John Lucarotti has scripted. In the light of Polo's revelation about his remorse over taking the TARDIS, it makes perfect sense for him to give the travellers opportunities to get away. In his position he can't openly change his mind and return it to them, but he can look the other way - unless someone like Tegana interferes. Here he finally admits his subterfuge, and it's a great moment as things click into place.

This is a risky script strategy, though. I marked the last episode down because of what seemed like poor character writing, and the fact that I've now seen what was going on can't change that. So, although this aspect of the writing is very clever, in one sense it's also a failure: until the end, the characterisation looks less coherent than it actually is. It was expected that people would watch the serial only once so this is a definite flaw in Lucarotti's script, though one that would make me enjoy a second watch/listen. The resolution of Polo's story - admitting his crisis of conscience to the Khan, defeating Tegana, returning the key to the travellers and being released to go home to Venice anyway - is satisfying.

In fact, all the named characters except Tegana get what they want - including Ping-Cho, who Susan was most worried about. And her story deserves a little more attention.

It all changes for Ping-Cho, of course, when she learns that her husband-to-be has died. The canny Khan uses the opportunity to test the girl's honesty, deciding if he can trust her based on her reaction to the news. How clever! And the scene is played for laughs to take the sting out of the death for the young audience. But: isn't it remarkably convenient that the old man passes away just then? By poison, no less? The Khan could be ruthless, as he makes very clear to Tegana. Isn't it possible that he arranged the death so that he could test Ping-Cho? When we consider this interpretation the scene becomes ambiguous, flipping between the luck comedy of the overacting Empress and a darker version where off-screen lives are of no consequence. Whatever was in Lucarotti's mind, I am forced to confront the fact that I am complicit in the callousness of this attitude: why should I care about characters I've never seen and that the narrative obviously disregards? It makes for uncomfortable viewing, but in a good way (unlike the amount of yellowface on show in the telesnaps for this episode, which demonstrates that it would have been uncomfortable to watch in another way if it still existed).

Wait - there's more. The poison was a concoction of quicksilver (mercury) and sulphur that the poor old man took to give himself eternal youth. This is pure alchemical thinking - mercury is cold and wet, sulphur hot and dry, so combining the two in just the right way creates pure gold. And this transformation was symbolic of the elixir of life. Script editor David Whitaker was very interested in alchemy; as Elizabeth Sandifer explains in the TARDIS Eruditorum - particularly here - he identified the Doctor with Mercury. I don't want to go into that too much (you can follow the link if you're interested), but I will point out one thing: this means that, symbolically, the Doctor saved Ping-Cho. By killing someone. Shades of his time with Za in the forest, perhaps? Or is that getting too far from what was actually broadcast? Probably.

There's more I could say about other parts of this episode, and I admit spending over 300 words on a single scene was perhaps profligate, but I think I've covered the most important aspects. So instead I'll wish you all a good night.

Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 4th April 1964
Viewers: 10.4 million
Chart Position: 22
Appreciation Index: 59

Rating:
9/10.

Next Time:
Serial D as a whole.

Episode 19 (D6): Mighty Kublai Khan

Hm. I find myself with worryingly little to say about this episode. I very much hope that this is a one-off situation or the blog may not last much longer!

Marco Polo's actions are starting to look very confused. Trusting Ian to go off and fetch Ping-Cho when the TARDIS is in the same direction seems a step too far, a case of acting stupid for the sake of the story. The travellers have already refused to give their word that they won't try to escape, after all.

Barbara and Susan don't get much to do this episode. The section where the Doctor meets Kublai Khan is obviously intended to introduce some comedy, but for me it falls a little flat. William Hartnell is usually good at this sort of thing, so the fact that he doesn't rise to the occasion makes me think the novelty of the new story is wearing thin and he's getting too tired again despite being given some very light episodes.

Apart from the two old men, the focus is on Ian and Ping-Cho. The shenanigans at Cheng-Ting and on the Karakorum road work well, with Wang-Lo less annoying than last time, and it's an exciting cliffhanger to end. How will a schoolteacher fare in combat against a warlord? The answer may be surprising.

What else? I've already talked about the economic advantages of longer stories, so maybe - in a not-at-all-self-referential way, of course - it's time to talk about padding.

Let's be honest: seven episodes is too long for most Who serials, and even the four-to-six-parters sometimes suffer. There are a few tricks to get around this, and over the years the script writers and production team have used all of them. The first is simply to reduce the number of episodes, either by knocking one off and tacking it onto another serial instead (as with The Dominators and The Mind Robber) or by splitting it into two stories {The Ark in Space and The Sontaran Experiment). The second is to weave two stories together. Often this happens when a subplot grows to become a significant part of the serial, as with the parallel world in Inferno. Probably the most common, though, is the escape-recapture loop.

I've talked about this a bit before, but just to recap: the idea is that the TARDIS crew escape imprisonment, run around for a bit, and then get recaptured. Plenty of excitement (hopefully), but the story pauses. How successful this is depends on how cleverly it's done, and success can be a little subjective. Frontier in Space, for example, is packed full of these cycles and the plot only edges forward as the Doctor and Jo are moved to different prisons; but this is done with such style that, although many people find it tedious, I think it's a classic. Episode 3, The Forest of Fear, avoids being boring because the relationships between the characters develop. Marco Polo has had a couple of these cycles (most recently last episode), but the variety has mostly kept it fresh. I thought this episode was going to be another, but it went in a different direction instead, which is a plus in a fairly ho-hum outing.

A bit like this entry, really, which I will now abandon. Fingers crossed for something more next time!

Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 28th March 1964
Viewers: 8.4 million
Chart Position: 49
Appreciation Index: 59

Rating:
4/10.

Next Time:
Assassin at Peking.

Episode 18 (D5): Rider from Shang-Tu

A couple of entries ago, I commented that the off-air recordings had allowed the Restoration Team to produce "acceptable" soundtracks. While I still hold that this is generally the case, the sound quality at the beginning of this episode is poor. I had trouble hearing what most of the actors were saying (bless William Russell for speaking loudly and clearly while showing Ian's sense of urgency), and it did affect my enjoyment. This is an episode where the reconstruction wins out over the narrated soundtrack.

Okay... take a deep breath. I need to tackle a subject I was hoping I could brush past in this serial, but I might as well get on with it.

Racism, Part 1: Yellow Faces
First, a necessary statement of identity. I am white, middle-class and male, born and raised in a predominantly white area of suburban Southern England. This upbringing naturally colours my perceptions, and while I am arrogant enough to believe I have some understanding of racism I will always bow to the superior experience of those on the sharp end. What follows, therefore, is all In My More Humble Than Usual Opinion...

Doctor Who has a mixed record when it comes to race. This is 1964, when The Black and White Minstrel Show was regularly pulling in audiences of 18 million or more, and I think our show deserves credit for what it does right; but not everything it does is right.

In the 1960s it was common for white actors to be cast in non-white parts, often in makeup ("blackface" or "yellowface"). The lack of suitable non-white actors was often used as an excuse; there is some argument over this, but even if true the shortage would have been the result of racism. Anyway, while I don't like to see it happen these days I accept it as a feature of the times. What makes the difference for me, whether it's something that I note and then ignore or whether it truly affects my enjoyment, is how those parts are played.

Marco Polo got off to a relatively good start. The story being set in Cathay is itself positive, of course, when representations of European history usually dominate. One of the main characters, Ping-Cho, is played by Burmese actress Zienia Merton (better known for Space:1999 - I knew I'd seen her somewhere), and Derren Nesbitt as Tegana plays the character straight. Some of the minor characters are maybe a little dodgy, but nothing extreme.

Then we get to this episode, and Wang-Lo. Gábor Baraker plays him as a bumbling Chinese bureaucrat, wide-eyed and kowtowing (in the metaphorical sense), with a classic cartoon accent and comedy manner. Individually these could all be accepted; combined, they are wince-worthy. It was so bad that I was in the mood to read the role of Kuiju as a stereotypical "shifty Chinee", which is actually unfair as on reflection I don't see a racial intent, even subconscious. I took advantage of the scripts being provided with the audio, and read Wang-Lo's dialogue. There's nothing there to show that he has to be played in this way, so I'm letting John Lucarotti off the hook. That leaves the actor and director.

At that time it was the director's responsibility to choose the cast. Interestingly we have a non-white director, India-born Waris Hussein, who chose Baraker and (presumably) didn't disapprove of his portrayal. This was his last Who serial; he decided he would rather work on individual plays afterwards. I do wonder what his thoughts on this episode are now; unless it is discovered somewhere and he records a commentary for the DVD I guess we'll never know.

I mentioned the pulps last time. Racism was casual and ubiquitous in these works, and one common theme was the Yellow Peril threatening the supremacy of the white race. Marco Polo avoids this, because almost all the guest parts - good and bad - are from Cathay. This is a better setup than having only non-white parts who are "whiter than white", as it were, which is just a kinder reflection of the Yellow Peril idea - one aspect of the pulps I'm glad the story didn't take up.

Another plus is the way racism itself (and, perhaps, "chronologism") is depicted within the story. This episode, for example, has Ian believing that exploding bamboo will scare off the cowardly, superstitious bandits - and actually thinking it has worked until the Doctor points out the more plausible explanation that they are running because their leader has just been killed. He's also wrong about Tegana's designs on the TARDIS because he believes the warlord is frightened of their "magic box". Meanwhile the Doctor looks down on everyone. This is great! It doesn't entirely make up for Wang-Lo, but it certainly helps.

Okay, that's the thorny bit out of the way. Before I go, I just want to say a bit about the ending. Good grief, how stupid is Susan?!! There is no trace of the unearthly child's genius in her actions here, as she throws away their freedom to say goodbye to Ping-Cho. It is touching to see how well the girls get on together, and you can see just how much they don't want to be parted, but really! If you want to teach kids not to break promises, this is not the way to do it. All I can say is, poor Carole Ann Ford. No wonder she was fed up with the part already.

Hey ho, roll on next episode...

Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 21st March 1964
Viewers: 9.4 million
Chart Position: 37
Appreciation Index: 59

Rating:
3.5/10.

Next Time:
Mighty Kublai Khan.

Episode 17 (D4): The Wall of Lies

A great title for a good episode - I've always liked puns and double meanings. Finally the travellers are sure about Tegana and all working off the same page, but he has had time to plan his defence and firm up his position with Polo. Ping-Cho knows about the TARDIS key, and we're set for interesting contretemps.

The characterisation is spot on, if you ignore the excessive screaming near the start. Barbara shows how perceptive she can be, and the Doctor's attitude to the "natives" is quite shockingly dismissive. Ian - comfortable in the role of action hero - finds himself instead having to manipulate and deceive, and turns out to be rather inept at this. Susan and Ping-Cho affirm their friendship and try to think their way out of the situation, but without luck. Tegana plots and schemes coolly; Polo tries to follow his best reasoning. In fact, given his background, I can see why he would take the word of a respected warlord over that of an irresponsible girl and some proven liars. The travellers really have made things worse for themselves.

This episode rattles along at a good pace, and gives us the payoff we've been hoping for from all the pussyfooting of the past few episodes. The cliffhanger is excellent, not because anyone is in immediate danger but because it could go in a number of directions (including Polo blaming Ian for the guard's death).

This episode was directed by John Crockett rather than Waris Hussein. It's hard to tell how much of the increased pace is due to this and how much to John Lucarotti's script - I suspect mostly the latter - but one unfortunate result of the change is that we have no telesnaps. Loose Cannon did such a good job that I failed to spot this until afterwards, but it's another one that works well with just audio anyway.

And that's all I really want to say about the episode, so there's plenty of space to include something that's been hanging about since The Roof of the World:

Look and Feel, Part 1: Pulp Adventure
One of the great things about Doctor Who is that it can be almost anything. The TARDIS travels not only in time and space but also in genre - this is more obvious in some stories than others, The Gunfighters being particularly blatant. The pulp serials of the early twentieth century - both in magazines and film - provide a particularly easy fit, sharing features such as cliffhangers, screaming women and a focus on exotic locations. With Marco Polo, though, John Lucarotti and Waris Hussein have taken on some more of the trappings. The way the map is used is a classic pulp serial technique to show the passage of time and geography, particularly in travelogue-based stories such as this. Similarly, Polo's journal is used to give the story more authority, a device I first encountered in books by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

In the 1930s when my mum was a teenager she used to read Burroughs (along with H. Rider Haggard, and others). Her favourites were the Tarzan stories, but she also enjoyed John Carter of Mars. When it came to books she was as much of a hoarder as my dad; she still had some of them in the 1970s, and I read them. My preference was for the Mars books (though I did enjoy Tarzan films, particularly Johnny Weissmuller's), and I hunted down the ones she didn't have. Now, those of you who read science fiction in the 1970s will remember that there were only two types of paperback book cover: spaceships by Chris Foss and his imitators, and women in déshabillé. This was true even for books that featured no spaceships and no women. You can guess which category planetary romances like the John Carter books fell into. I found them embarassing to buy, though fortunately because of the subject matter I didn't feel an urge to hide them from my mother, who also read them.

My mum was not, in the main, a fan of science fiction. She observed that when she was young it was still just about possible to imagine strange civilizations in uncharted reaches of Africa and the Amazon, whereas by my time we had to go to other planets for the same effect. A smart woman.

Anyway, the technique I'm talking about is used in the books as a framing device: quite simply, John Carter has given the story to Burroughs to publish. This distances the author from the story and gives it an added layer of realism. In Marco Polo, of course, we have the added benefit that it is from Polo's own account that we know of his journeys - The Travels of Marco Polo was written by someone who shared a cell with the explorer when he was imprisoned in Genoa and listened to his stories - but it is still a deliberate use of the device. It also means that the narrated soundtrack actually has two narrators!

There are some aspects of the pulps that are absent from the story. There is no emphasis on violence as a solution to problems, for example, and I for one am glad of it as what we have is much more interesting.

I'll have more to say about the pulp influence when I tackle the serial E. But that won't be for a while yet...

Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 14th March 1964
Viewers: 9.9 million
Chart Position: 31
Appreciation Index: 60

Rating:
7.5/10.

Next Time:
Rider from Shang-Tu.

Episode 16 (D3): Five Hundred Eyes

I'm finding these reviews hard to divide up by episode. I don't know whether it's because I'm coming to the story relatively fresh, with little idea of what's still to come, or if the serial is actually more of a coherent whole than the first three. There's a few things I wanted to say last time that I postponed, since the entry was already quite long; fortunately a couple of them apply just as well to this entry, and the last can wait.

First there's the point on which I finished: the thorny subject of education. Particularly thorny for early Doctor Who, in fact, because it meant that the show was pulled in two directions. Since - as a family drama - the show was aimed partly at children, Head of Drama Sydney Newman considered that the BBC's educational remit applied. The show should entertain but also inform, and this was why the two teachers were included (and why Ian was originally going to be a scientist). It was also part of his reason for disliking the inclusion of "bug-eyed monsters" such as Daleks. Producer Verity Lambert and script editor David Whitaker were more concerned with the day-to-day running and making sure the show survived; and what was the most popular inclusion to date?

Marco Polo is, perhaps, the best example of Newman's Who. It was the last script to be commissioned before the public saw a Dalek, and the first to take that educational remit seriously (as The Tribe of Gum so thoroughly failed to do). So far it's been packed full of information, not just on the historical setting but also on such diverse subjects as chess, assassins, condensation and quartz. I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable in a broad range of subjects because of both opportunity and interest, but I learned something new - the origin of the term 'checkmate'. Mostly it's been worked into the narrative well, though the explanation of condensation is a little heavy-handed. I'll comment on further inclusions as I go, if they are particularly well- or poorly-done.

Moving swiftly on, this is the episode that - so far - works best without visuals, so it's appropriate to tackle the other half of audio-visual survival:

Missing from the Archives, Part 3: Narrated Soundtracks
Back in 1964 we didn't have video recorders, let alone PVRs, Sky+, DVD-Rs and all the other paraphernalia that clutter our living rooms and make it so easy to reschedule TV viewing today. It may sound like I'm gearing up for a Monty Python "when I were a lad" moment, but it really does make a difference. In a sense, all TV was "event TV" in those days. By way of comparison, last Saturday we got in later than planned and then I had to cook. I knew I wouldn't be finished in time for Doctor Who, but it didn't matter. We ate at the table (something we only did on Sundays and for guests When I Were A Lad, because it meant reorganising the living room to get the table out); got the washing up done so we could all relax; then went and watched it about 8:15. Sorted.

Anyway, if you wanted to experience an episode of Who again after broadcast back then, the weapon of choice was a tape recorder. Not even a cassette recorder - they had only just been introduced, and hadn't taken off yet - but a reel-to-reel recorder. At one stage we had at least five in our house thanks to the inveterate hoarding instinct of my dad, who "rescued" damaged ones that had been chucked out at the hospital where my parents worked. Occasionally he even managed to get them going again, but I don't think that was the important thing to him; he kept them all.

Anyway (again), many people recorded the show, usually by pointing a microphone at the telly. Although this generally gave poor quality results it was good enough for home use; and, when interest in recovering missing episodes grew, the existence of multiple off-air recordings allowed the BBC's unofficial Restoration Team (including composer Mark Ayres) to "remaster" the audio and produce acceptable versions. Hooray!

Except... well, sometimes you need a little more to understand what's going on. These episodes weren't designed for audio only, after all. Imagine listening to the fight scene between Kal and Za in The Firemaker - you'd have no chance of working out what was going on. So the BBC got some of the actors to record linking narration. In this case, William Russell.

Russell is the oldest actor to do this. His voice shows his age, but like David Attenborough's it has matured well and he's a pleasure to listen to. An oddity (but one I didn't notice at first) is that he opens the narration with "Marco Polo by John Lucarotti" and then, following the recap, announces "Episode Three: Five Hundred Eyes". Which is how we think of it now, of course, but back then it was just "Five Hundred Eyes by John Lucarotti". A minor point, but perhaps worth raising.

This is a particularly slow episode, but fun. I can't imagine modern Who stopping the action for three minutes while one of the characters tells a story, yet here it works. The music helps; I noticed it this time and last. It's used sparingly but effectively, capturing the mood well.

This entry's getting long again, but I've just time to mention one more oddity: we get to see the inside of the TARDIS in the middle of a story! This is a first (unless you count the initial flight from 1963 London), and made stranger by the way the inside is so closely connected to the outside. Close enough to create the condensation mentioned earlier.

You try and tell the young people of today that; they won't believe you.

Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 7th March 1964
Viewers: 9.4 million
Chart Position: 34
Appreciation Index: 62

Rating:
6/10.

Next Time:
The Wall of Lies.

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Episode 15 (D2): The Singing Sands

The Doctor is notably absent from most of this episode, with just a single line of dialogue. While it wasn't actually a holiday for William Hartnell, it must have given him a bit of relief from the weekly grind. Meanwhile Susan gets to play a major part, and with Ping-Cho as a foil acts like a more normal teenager. Of course, she's still a "peril monkey" (to steal a phrase from Elizabeth Sandifer), but to be fair it was sheer bad luck that the two youngsters got caught in that sandstorm.

Shortly after listening to and watching this I saw the first couple of episodes of the 1976 serial The Seeds of Doom, for the first time since original broadcast. There's a snowstorm in that story - not brilliantly done by modern standards but still quite effective - and it made me wonder how the sandstorm had been achieved in 1964. The reconstruction I was watching added effects to the still shots to make it seem that they were obscured by moving sand; not ideal, but better than nothing. Which brings me on to the reason I can talk about the visuals at all:

Missing from the Archives, Part 2: Telesnaps and Reconstructions
From 1947 to 1969 a man named John Cura took high-speed photos of television broadcasts, which he then sold to the creators of the programs for use in publicity or as a record of their work. As you might imagine this raised some thorny copyright issues, but for many broadcasts they now provide the only visual record in existence. Most of the 108 missing episodes of Doctor Who have telesnaps; many were published in Doctor Who Magazine, and the BBC have used them to publish a number of photonovels on their website.

Different groups of people have combined the soundtracks (recorded off-air by fans) with these telesnaps to produce reconstructions of the lost episodes. Technically this is illegal, but it is tolerated by the BBC provided certain conditions are met. One such group is Loose Cannon, who made the "recon" I am using for these reviews.

Telesnaps for serial D were not available for many years. In 2004 Derek Handley of Loose Cannon obtained copies for six of the episodes from director Waris Hussein following a meeting the previous year, with DWM paying for the usage rights.

This is the third Loose Cannon reconstruction I've seen and they did something a little different with it. There were a number of colour photographs taken during shooting; using these for reference LC have colourised the telesnaps, producing what is in effect the earliest colour story. They usually try to provide some "extras", including an introduction from one of the original actors; and here again they have gone the extra mile (if you'll pardon the pun). As well as a brief introduction, Mark Eden provides a new pre-titles sequence for the first episode, with an older Marco Polo still updating his journal and looking back on events 35 years in the past. This is a nice addition; although the scripted monologue doesn't quite match John Lucarotti's originals it fits well with the feel of the serial - about which, more in a future instalment.

What immediately strikes me is how Hollywood it looks! William Russell, Derren Nesbitt and (particularly) Mark Eden all look as if they've stepped out of an Errol Flynn movie - handsome, clean-cut and brightly dressed. A second glance reveals the bags under Russell's eyes, a sign of the pressure the regular cast was under, but this doesn't detract from the look. It is certainly a lavish production, and I can understand why some consider Marco Polo the greatest loss of the videotape junkings. At some point I would like to see Russell's earlier series, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, when he was at his action hero height; but that will have to wait, since there's still too much Who for me to spend my money on at present.

What, then, of the plot? In some ways Lucarotti has provided us with an odd sort of setup. The story's structured like a travelogue, but the Doctor and his friends don't actually care where they're going. Unlike the first two serials the Ship is with them the whole time, so the goal isn't to get back there. Rather, they just want a chance to repair it and leave; everything else is just distraction. Still, it's an interesting distraction, with good settings, smart dialogue and enough going on to keep it entertaining. It's only when I sit to write this that I notice how little of what happens is relevant to the Doctor and his friends.

This episode brought home to me how far the series has come. The TARDIS is referred to by name more often, rather than being just "the Ship"; and it has become a home, a safe haven, even for Iananbarbara. They might still want to get back to 1960s London but the TARDIS is now a happy place for them to be, and being shut out has a different significance. It might be a case of Stockholm syndrome but they are now firmly on the Doctor's side.

And as the sun sinks slowly in the West, we wave goodnight to our wanderers in the fourth dimension as they wander instead through the Gobi Desert. Or not, since if we're being geographically accurate it's actually the Taklamakan desert. Except it isn't even that; it's a mixture of Ealing Studios stage 3B and the tiny Lime Grove Studio D. And so, once again, I have fulfilled my blog's educational remit - about which, more next time...

Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 29th February 1964
Viewers: 9.4 million
Chart Position: 33
Appreciation Index: 62

Rating:
5/10.

Next Time:
Five Hundred Eyes.

Episode 14 (D1): The Roof of the World

There are two things new about this review. For one there's the fact that we have hit our first missing episode - indeed, our first missing story, since no episodes survive. This is quite frustrating for all the expected reasons, but also because I usually spend some time talking about the direction and I can't do that so much without the visuals. On top of which it's Waris Hussein's second (and final) story so I would have liked to compare the two. Hey ho, if I run short of things to say I'll just talk about why the story's missing instead. We'll see how it goes.

The second new thing is that I've never properly experienced this story before. I'll be reviewing it as I go, making notes on each episode before watching the one that follows. I'm not as ignorant as a viewer from 1964, sadly, but I don't know a lot about it. Again, we'll have to see how this affects things.

The episode opens well, with a TARDIS crew much more relaxed with each other. The Doctor is as grumpy as ever, but this is no longer directed at Ian (whose name he gets wrong again, in what has already become a tradition). William Hartnell makes some other mistakes that are almost certainly genuine fluffs, but nothing that can't be put down to the vagueness of the Doctor. In fact his personality displayed here - as a grumpy, slightly doddering yet brilliant old man who is out of touch with every place he visits but observes more carefully than other people realise - really sums up the Doctor for me. Hartnell may be tired, but he seems like he's enjoying himself anyway. His scene with Ping-Cho shows his softer (but still calculating) side, and when he collapses into fits of giggles at the idea of not knowing what to do I was reminded just how much I like Hartnell's portrayal.

Susan gets some good moments as well. We see her enthusiasm, quickly reined in by both Ian and the Doctor (whose request for help is an obvious excuse to keep her out of harm's way), and her easy friendship with Ping-Cho, which is lightly handled. Iananbarbara don't have so much to do, but the only off-key note is the latter's insistence that the mongols weren't human.

I've mentioned how opening episodes are a good opportunity to present a mystery, but for the first time that isn't done here. There's some discussion about where they've landed, but Ian mentioning that the Himalayas are known as "the Roof of the World" when that's the title of the episode is a bit of a giveaway. I suppose it's possible that some people thought Barbara might have seen a yeti, but it wasn't built up that way. It even seems obvious from the start that Tegana is the shifty one, and not just for racial reasons (although at this period in TV history it would have been possible for such an assumption to have been made). It's more Columbo than Poirot, but I find I don't mind at all.

And actually, this very obviousness sets up the big surprise of the episode. It's not Tegana that causes the travellers problems; it's Marco Polo, who impounds their ship. Our heroes have two sides to contend with, neither of whom has their welfare at heart, though at the moment they only know about Polo. Meanwhile Tegana twirls his moustache and plots...

Missing from the Archives, Part 1: Experiencing the Absent
So, given that (so far as we can tell) this episode doesn't exist any more, how come I've written so much about it? I actually own it in three forms, and tried out two for this review. First I listened to the narrated soundtrack CD. This is how I most often choose to experience missing episodes, but reviewing is a bit different and I wanted something more. I then sought out the Loose Cannon reconstruction and watched that (Other Reconstructions Are Available). I could have read the script, which was provided as an extra with the soundtrack, or listened to the soundtrack without narration. I could have bought the novelisation (by original writer John Lucarotti); with some stories there are also talking book readings of the novelisations, though that's not yet true for Marco Polo.

That's a lot of ways to experience something that "doesn't exist"! None of them are the original, of course; but on the other hand, even to view existing episodes as originally intended is impossible now because we aren't living in the right timeframe. Still, we can at least gain some appreciation of the missing stories - which will become more important in a couple of series' time...

Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 22nd February 1964
Viewers: 9.4 million
Chart Position: 33
Appreciation Index: 63

Rating:
6.5/10.

Next Time:
The Singing Sands.

Wanderers in the Fourth Dimension: Episodes 14-42

Well, I'm back from my summer break and feeling refreshed, so I'm glad I decided to do that. And hey, with a spontaneous bonus review it wasn't a summer completely free of my ramblings! Even though I didn't get as far ahead as I hoped thanks to the pressures and joys of parenthood - I haven't written up all of Marco Polo yet - I'm feeling bullish.

My current plan is to keep going until the end of the first series then take a Christmas break; If I've counted correctly, that should be 38 entries in 15½ weeks. That's not quite five posts per fortnight, which should be doable.

And if it isn't I'll retroactively decide that by "bullish" I meant "stupid" rather than "hopeful"...

Next Time:
The Roof of the World.