And so we reach the finale, which - as I'd hoped - is a sweeping tragedy: there is little action, but it's nothing less than brilliant. Not everything is perfect, of course; the music in this episode stood out as being not of the time, and there are some other details I'll come to in what is perhaps the most linear of my reviews for this story, and certainly the longest; but overall a worthy conclusion.
To begin, the fight between Ian and Seleucus is good, well-choreographed - and no doubt filmed at Ealing. Seleucus is pretty stupid to show such bad grace in defeat, and Antipater is sensible to worry about what else the big man might have revealed.
And then Alexander asks the travellers to stay a little longer - and Barbara doesn't want to. This is a tiny scene, but full of significance. It's typical that Barbara's desire to leave is overridden without discussion - some things never change - but her desperation marks the culmination of a gradual alteration in her perception of her travels. In The Aztecs she found out the hard way that history cannot be changed; and during The Reign of Terror she learned to see the ordinary people of the past as real, while still engaging in a little historical tourism with Napoleon. Now she can finally feel in her heart that famous figures are human, too. She is completely involved, with no trace of her original detachment - and she doesn't like it. She wants to run away from the death of someone she has grown to think of as a friend (a feeling that I can relate to, for reasons that you will hear a lot about if I keep going into the Fourth Doctor's time). Some might call it moral cowardice, but to me it's just human.
Pulling back the focus, we move on to Antipater's show trial. John Dorney's performance here is notable because of the way he allows Alexander to weaken gradually, and not evenly - the great man rallies when he is fired up, and slumps in the more extended, intellectual monologues. Still, the king manages to put forward quite a case against his prime suspect, and I was looking forward to Antipater's riposte. Seleucus's move to cut short the proceedings surprised me, but this is one time the reluctant conspirator made a sensible decision. With his options running out it was pretty much the only hope he had.
And that's really the end of the conspiracy. Oh, Seleucus will be one of the generals squabbling over the empire by the end of the episode, but from now on it's down to history and the travellers' part in it.
In the time since Barbara's plea to leave was ignored she has expended some effort in explaining why she wanted to go, and the differing reactions of her companions are telling. Susan argues that "history protects itself, we can no more change the past than we can the future" - which not only smacks of predestination, but also provides precious little comfort! Ian, on the other hand, doubts both the women, and dreams of a better future (or should I say a better past?) - like Barbara, because he's become involved. The Doctor's reaction is the most telling of all: we learn that he actually took the Hippocratic Oath when he was a medical student, before he became more interested in science, and that overrules his prohibition on trying to change history. In fact, Barbara and the Doctor have reversed their roles since the time of Yetaxa.
As usual, the Doctor is the one who gets to do what he wants, and as a result I found out how an iron lung works; but it is on the conversations with the dying Alexander that the focus now lies. His description of his dream of the marriage of East and West made me think of Martin Luther King - and in particular the Strawbs' song, Martin Luther King's Dream. The Doctor declares that mankind will not achieve unity for 3000 years, which is around 2,700AD - when on the verge of exterminating each other. Checking out Ahistory I think he's a couple of centuries late there, but who's gonna quibble? The point is that the king's new friends bring him down at the end; dramatically appropriate, but horrendously thoughtless. I'm not surprised that Alexander takes a leaf from Calanus's book and decides to die.
Everything from this point on is, effectively, tying things up. We get to meet Roxane at last, and in doing so I can finally banish the echo of Police front man Sting from my mind, though as a final insult to my ears Big Finish turn the volume right up on the line "You have left the world TO THE VULTURES!"; too loud, man.
Then there's a nice little scene with Alexander's faithful guard which made me say, "oh, that Ptolemy!"; a smart man, who I imagine (semi-appropriately) portrayed by Roy Stewart in a speaking role at last. And then there's the reference to the Library of Alexandria while standing in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which is another neat touch.
But it's getting very close to the end of the story so we're off again, and our heroes decide to examine the scanner. In transit. How weird is that, and how can it possibly work? Even ignoring the technical details, I can't help but think that the well-described view of Alexander's funeral would have been a disappointment on screen. Still, 48 years on, that's an irrelevant detail; and on audio, it's a great way to go out.
Development of a Script, Part 6: Publishing the Unproduced
I love Doctor Who fans, don't you? Always keen to extract the maximum they can from the show that obsesses them. Well, that describes me, anyway, and it explains why there is a market for the script to an unmade fortysomething-year-old TV drama. The publishers of the Nothing at the End of the Lane magazine made the script available in print, along with a number of accompanying articles, here - I haven't bought it, but I have read the sample PDF and it seems very well put together. If I didn't have so much other Who stuff to buy I'd be tempted.
Rating:
9/10.
Next Time:
The serial as a whole.
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