When we last left Dr Who, he and his granddaughters, along with Barbara's clumsy boyfriend Ian, had escaped the Daleks but ended up nearly trampled by Roman soldiers. I don't know what happens next, but after leaving ancient Rome they try to get home, and end up on a fog-shrouded moor - listening to the baying of a distant hound...
Richards has captured the character of the Amicus movie cast beautifully here. I can see Roy Castle pratfalling his way through the story and Peter Cushing as Dr Who doddering along, while Roberta Tovey's Susy Who calmly holds it all together. As usual Jennie Linden's Barbara gets to stand around modelling 1960s fashion and be ineffectually concerned about people, but at least she does it in a way that is consistent with the film!
Sticking with the visual analogy - and this is a very visual story - it seems that Cushing gets to play two roles, since he also appears as Count Tarkin. The name may be a bit of a clue to what is going on here: this is a tribute to Cushing, referencing his appearances in film over his career. And what a career it was! How many actors can claim to have appeared as Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes and Baron von Frankenstein, as well as having significant roles in Star Wars and Dracula films? His main staple was horror, but he'd lend his talents to a far wider range of films and hated the idea of being typecast.
As you might expect, though, this story is primarily a pastiche of Hammer horror; even the Sherlock Holmes story referenced is The Hound of the Baskervilles, probably the closest to traditional horror. As such, it is more the sort of thing you might expect from the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era. Which suits me, to be honest.
It's Thingy, from That Other Program, Part 2: Roy Castle
Because I'm unlikely to get another opportunity I'd also like to say a little about the actor who plays parallel Ian. As a child I remember Castle mainly from The Record Breakers, a long-running Friday night show. The best bit of the programme for me was when there was a live attempt at breaking a record (I have actually taken part in one successful world record attempt, but since it was of the "most people doing X at the same time" sort there's not much kudos). He presented the show from its inception in 1972 until shortly before his death from lung cancer in 1994, less than a month after Cushing died from prostate cancer. Castle's illness was caused by passive smoking during his career as a jazz trumpet player; he became a strong advocate of clean air, and I remember clearly when he refused to shake Maggie Thatcher's hand because of her involvement with tobacco company Philip Morris. It made a big impression on me, even though I was never a tobacco smoker myself. My mum had great difficulty giving up when she was pregnant with me, and although she accepted that cigarettes were what got her through the war she made it very plain that she thought they were terrible things. Never much of a rebel, I happily went along with this until I could make my own mind up.
Published:
Date: March 2000
ISBN: 0-563-55599-8
Rating:
7.5/10.
Next Time:
And that's enough reading for now. Let's leave the Cushingverse for a while and switch on the audio as we take a trip to The Hanging Gardens of Babylon...
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