In late June, during rehearsals for A Battle of Wits, filming was also taking place for Galaxy 4
at Ealing Studios with Mervyn Pinfield, who was to direct the serial.
In the event Pinfield was taken ill, and never had another opportunity
to direct the show; drafted in to replace him was Derek Martinus, who
had just completed his directorial training. He probably had little idea
of the minefield into which he was being parachuted.
Writer William Emms has gone on record as being very happy with the way
his script was accepted largely unchanged, in contrast to many he had
submitted for other programs. William Hartnell and his co-stars were
less happy. Maureen O'Brien complained that some of her dialogue did not
sound like Vicki, while Peter Purves - stuck with many of Barbara's
lines - considered his character to have been emasculated. Hartnell also
wanted changes, and ended up in a loud argument with Emms. This was
effectively the first serial produced by Verity Lambert's replacement,
John Wiles, while Lambert concentrated on her final episode; Wiles
stepped into the fracas, supporting Emms and telling the cast to perform
it as written. When Hartnell still objected, Wiles threatened to sack
him.
The fallout from all this is going to have consequences quite a way into
the future of this marathon, but one immediate consequence is the
decline in Hartnell's performance I noted last time. He's pulled himself
together a little for this episode, but listening to it I realised that
I have never heard him say "hm" so often!
Still, for me Hartnell is probably the highlight of an episode where the
plot largely consists of people walking from place to place. The way he
tells Maaga "I never kill anything" is great - he's such a liar! Tell
that to the Daleks, Doctor.
Maureen O'Brien gets some time in the spotlight, but I do think what
she's given is not quite Vicki-like. Her deduction that the Chumblies
can only hear in front of them - and how does that work, exactly? -
comes out of nowhere, much like the distrust of the Drahvins last time.
As for Peter Purves... well. This is where the fact that he's stuck with
Barbara's lines starts to bite. Purves has said that he wishes they'd
played up the sexism angle further, that Steven should have wanted to be
captured because the Drahvins were attractive women; and you can hear
him trying to put a little of that into his performance. It's not
enough, though.
This is the first of two episodes which are entirely absent, and that
definitely affects my enjoyment. Loose Cannon put a lot of effort into
the reconstruction - they had to, because there are no telesnaps
available for this serial. The landscapes and cast are composited from
various photos (the recon having been completed long before the
discovery of the third episode), and a loving recreation of the
Chumblies provides much of the motion. This completely distorts the
balance of shots, though; if you can create interesting images of cute
robots chuttering, chumbling, and jinking about the place, of course
you're going to use that instead of the umpteenth repeat of a still
showing the actors in not quite the right pose! It's indisputably the
right decision, as well as evidence of why I don't personally get on
very well with recons. For such a visual story as this, though, I still
find them superior to my (generally preferred) narrated soundtracks.
Ironically, Galaxy 4 is probably the last serial to be junked before the BBC changed their policy in 1978...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 18th September 1965
Viewers: 9.5 million
Chart Position: 22
Appreciation Index: 54
Rating:
3/10.
Next Time:
Airlock.
No comments:
Post a Comment