What went wrong with Galaxy 4? Part of it is certainly down to
circumstance. Given that Airlock is by far my favourite episode mainly
due to the direction I suspect that the rest of the serial would benefit
similarly from not having been junked. This was John Wiles' first story
as producer (although Verity Lambert was still technically in charge,
her attention was elsewhere) and the first script-edited by Donald Tosh
that wasn't written by a former script editor who knew the ropes. Nobody
could have predicted director Mervyn Pinfield falling ill, creating
disruption (although the direction itself benefits), and writer William
Emms had to rework the script for a different TARDIS team at quite short
notice.
Nevertheless, there's also some blame to be apportioned. William
Hartnell acted very childishly, taking out his genuine upset over
Lambert's departure on the production team, and the inexperienced Wiles
badly mishandled the conflict. Tosh should have done more to rescue the
script (particularly The Exploding Planet, where boosting the
Drahvins as a threat - for instance, by letting them find a way to
neutralise the Chumblies - could have made all the difference and been a
relatively easy change).
Because it's the script that is the biggest problem. There are some
fascinating and worthwhile ideas here, not least the demolishing of the
way that ugliness generally equals evil - a fallacy that Doctor Who has struggled with throughout its history, from The Daleks
right through to the current Capaldi season. But these ideas needed a
framework in which to flourish, and what we got barely worked as an
adventure serial.
Of course, I am not the target audience. Back in 1965, this was better received than The Time Meddler, with a higher average AI and better viewing figures for every episode - in fact, Airlock reached more people than any episode since The Web Planet!
Let's talk about the DVD release. This was an odd one. A cut-down version of the Loose Cannon recon had been prepared for The Time Meddler DVD, appropriately, but in the end it wasn't used. The discovery of Airlock
meant the BBC wanted to get the new episode out there, and it was
spliced into the recon; but what DVD could it go on? The only sensible
possibility was The Aztecs Special Edition. Because of the
lateness of the decision, artwork had already been prepared; so the only
indication that it also contained Galaxy 4 was a sticker.
Even ignoring the fact that we have an existing episode, this is a much better effort than the Marco Polo
reconstruction in The Beginning box set. There is enough, here, to get a
good feel for the story; and if I want to experience it again I'll
certainly be happy with it.
Right, I should also say something about the tie-in to The Suffering.
Ignoring real-world broadcast and release dates, it does seem odd that
neither Steven nor Vicki note the likelihood that the Drahvins came
about because of events recapped in the audio, especially since they
were thinking about it (and recounting it) just before Steven's haircut.
Still, it does fit well, and Jacqueline Rayner's story adds some depth
to the villains of the TV serial.
It's Thingy, from That Other Program, Part 5: Angelo Muscat
One name jumped out at me from the credits: Angelo Muscat, playing one
of the Chumblies. I didn't recognise him, of course; but I knew who he
was, because I'm a fan of The Prisoner, where he played the butler. Galaxy 4 was his first TV credit and he was fairly successful for a few years thereafter, also appearing in Alice in Wonderland and The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour; but after The Prisoner
work dried up. Maureen O'Brien said that she spent a lot of time with
the actors who were inside the Chumblies, and that because of their
height they were treated as youngsters, much as she herself was.
Muscat's last role was as an Oompa-Loompa in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; he died poor, five years later.
Isaac's Corner
We've all been struggling with bugs this half term; and, although his
most recent virus has now passed, Isaac has been left with limited
breath. He needs to use an inhaler and spacer device for the moment,
otherwise he has virtually no energy. I'm grateful the holidays are
coming to give everyone a chance just to rest! Anyway, he wasn't feeling
up to writing Isaac's corner this time, but told me a few thoughts
which I shall try to get down faithfully (as always, he focused mainly
on the positive, a trait I really like):
The different societies presented in Galaxy 4 were interesting,
and it was particularly good to see differing points of view on the same
situation. Having said that, the story wasn't clear enough in showing
people's motivations - for instance, why did Maaga shoot one of her own
soldiers? It came across as something she did just because she was EVIL. Overall it was a nice, simple story - I wasn't wowed by it, but I did like it. And the Chumblies were cute!
Rating:
Mine: 3/10.
DWM Mighty 200: 55.51%, 172nd.
DWM 50th Anniversary: 57.98%, 210th.
2012 Gallifrey Base Non-Dynamic Rankings: 5.15, 210th out of 234.
Next Time:
Mission to the Unknown.
Showing posts with label William Hartnell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Hartnell. Show all posts
Friday, 23 October 2015
Tuesday, 20 October 2015
Episode 85 (T4): The Exploding Planet
Something bizarre and annoying happened during the writing of my
previous review. I had three issues of DWM out on the bed for reference,
but needed to go off and do some housework and cook supper. When I came
back they were gone, and nobody knew where they were. We have since
looked fairly thoroughly - I even checked that they hadn't been put in
the recycling by accident! - but they haven't turned up. One was the
issue about the return of Airlock, which is a fairly minor loss
now; one detailed the sale of 60s serials abroad and (I think) the
resultant recovery of some episodes, which is more annoying. Worst,
though, is my copy of The Complete First Doctor, which has been
my constant companion during the TV portions of this marathon and helps
set the scene in my mind, even when none of the info gets into the
review. That I will struggle to do without.
Speaking of struggles: as someone who is not comfortable watching recons, we are really entering a barren stretch. This is the first of an unbroken run of seven missing episodes, matching the earliest ever gap - Marco Polo. Worse than that, however, is the realisation that of the next 22 episodes, only three survive. There were only eleven missing in total over the previous two seasons, and two of those have been animated! Thank goodness for other media, is all I can say.
So, what of this episode? Unfortunately, the phrase that springs to mind is "a bit pants". I didn't bother watching the full recon this time, because (a) it wasn't based on stills from the episode anyway; (b) Peter Purves' narration on the audio release is enough to let me know what's going on when it's not obvious from the soundtrack; and (c) I couldn't be bothered.
There's so much wrong with the script here. Let's take the Drahvins first. OK, so they are a threat to the travellers when they catch our heroes on their own, but are so vastly outmatched by the Rills that they cannot pose a credible threat now that the Doctor-Rill alliance is in place. So that's one source of tension removed. Steven is rescued in the first couple of minutes, and after that nobody is ever really in immediate danger; which just leaves the countdown to destruction. Now, countdowns can work - even though we know they are going to make it, especially in the first serial of a new season - but the interest and tension comes not from the countdown itself but from figuring out how they are going to solve it, and/or watching them overcome obstacles. Here, the Doctor figured out what to do in the previous episode, the Rills make it plain that they want the travellers to abandon them and leave if time runs out, and there is no significant opposition. We are left simply watching them clock-watching, and only Steven's first encounter with the Rills even provides meaty dialogue.
Right, that's the script. Visually we know what most of it looks like, and my guess is that the destruction of the planet and departure of the Rill ship would not have been "oh wow" moments, even with the obviously competent direction of Derek Martinus. The Chumblies make their usual cute noises, so that only leaves the acting.
It's possible I'm projecting when I say this, but based on the soundtrack William Hartnell is really not on good form here. My guess is that his heart wasn't in it, and who can blame him? He's fluffing, and he's falling back on a set of stock Doctor mannerisms to an extent I've not noticed before. Meanwhile, Maureen O'Brien gets hardly anything to say; she's probably doing some interesting things with her facial expressions, but sadly we are now past our last view of her on-screen before her departure. Purves puts effort in, but then he's the new boy and it's likely he still has enough enthusiasm to carry him through a poor script. Stephanie Bidmead steals every scene she's in, but isn't as centre stage as before, while Robert Cartland provides a fairly nondescript booming voice for the Rills.
I normally complain about cut-down recons, but the twelve-minute version of this episode on the DVD is actually a much more appropriate length for this - and that includes the trailer for next time...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 2nd October 1965
Viewers: 9.9 million
Chart Position: 20
Appreciation Index: 53
Rating:
1/10.
Next Time:
Serial T as a whole.
Speaking of struggles: as someone who is not comfortable watching recons, we are really entering a barren stretch. This is the first of an unbroken run of seven missing episodes, matching the earliest ever gap - Marco Polo. Worse than that, however, is the realisation that of the next 22 episodes, only three survive. There were only eleven missing in total over the previous two seasons, and two of those have been animated! Thank goodness for other media, is all I can say.
So, what of this episode? Unfortunately, the phrase that springs to mind is "a bit pants". I didn't bother watching the full recon this time, because (a) it wasn't based on stills from the episode anyway; (b) Peter Purves' narration on the audio release is enough to let me know what's going on when it's not obvious from the soundtrack; and (c) I couldn't be bothered.
There's so much wrong with the script here. Let's take the Drahvins first. OK, so they are a threat to the travellers when they catch our heroes on their own, but are so vastly outmatched by the Rills that they cannot pose a credible threat now that the Doctor-Rill alliance is in place. So that's one source of tension removed. Steven is rescued in the first couple of minutes, and after that nobody is ever really in immediate danger; which just leaves the countdown to destruction. Now, countdowns can work - even though we know they are going to make it, especially in the first serial of a new season - but the interest and tension comes not from the countdown itself but from figuring out how they are going to solve it, and/or watching them overcome obstacles. Here, the Doctor figured out what to do in the previous episode, the Rills make it plain that they want the travellers to abandon them and leave if time runs out, and there is no significant opposition. We are left simply watching them clock-watching, and only Steven's first encounter with the Rills even provides meaty dialogue.
Right, that's the script. Visually we know what most of it looks like, and my guess is that the destruction of the planet and departure of the Rill ship would not have been "oh wow" moments, even with the obviously competent direction of Derek Martinus. The Chumblies make their usual cute noises, so that only leaves the acting.
It's possible I'm projecting when I say this, but based on the soundtrack William Hartnell is really not on good form here. My guess is that his heart wasn't in it, and who can blame him? He's fluffing, and he's falling back on a set of stock Doctor mannerisms to an extent I've not noticed before. Meanwhile, Maureen O'Brien gets hardly anything to say; she's probably doing some interesting things with her facial expressions, but sadly we are now past our last view of her on-screen before her departure. Purves puts effort in, but then he's the new boy and it's likely he still has enough enthusiasm to carry him through a poor script. Stephanie Bidmead steals every scene she's in, but isn't as centre stage as before, while Robert Cartland provides a fairly nondescript booming voice for the Rills.
I normally complain about cut-down recons, but the twelve-minute version of this episode on the DVD is actually a much more appropriate length for this - and that includes the trailer for next time...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 2nd October 1965
Viewers: 9.9 million
Chart Position: 20
Appreciation Index: 53
Rating:
1/10.
Next Time:
Serial T as a whole.
Thursday, 15 October 2015
Episode 84 (T3): Airlock
My regeneration into a 'proper' Doctor Who fan didn't begin until
2006. As a result the fact that some episodes of the show were missing
had passed me by, and when I finally learned of it I was saddened. I did
read with interest about the discoveries of the past, but it was all on
an intellectual level.
Until December 2011, when I heard about the return of two episodes, Airlock and an early Patrick Troughton. I literally shouted in glee, then rushed around the house telling everybody (including a 'not-we', who was somewhat bemused but glad I was happy). I would never have predicted the strength of my reaction - if it had been something iconic like The Power of the Daleks or The Myth Makers, sure; but for a couple of individual episodes from minor, relatively unloved serials?
So, what's it like? Well, the plot's no improvement: space pilot Steven tries to escape but fails due to being scared by a Chumbley and ends up trapped in an airlock, before forgetting how differences in air pressure work; the Doctor spends ages trying to figure out how to sabotage an atmospheric converter; and Vicki learns that (gasp!) the Rills are good and the Drahvins evil. Oh, what a surprise.
Fortunately, it's a lot of fun to watch. The moving lights in the Chumblies weren't visible in the clip from the first episode (and so weren't included when they were reconstructed); this adds to their weirdness. Similarly, the Rills had previously only been glimpsed in a couple of poor quality photos, and we finally have a chance to see what they were actually like. The results are mixed: they look impressively alien, but their only animation is to rock back and forth, which ironically would have made them a great subject for the limited sort of animation Loose Cannon uses elsewhere! Both these character designs add atmosphere.
Seeing more of the set design also helps. The expansive Rill ship set is fairly unique - and a genuinely wobbly set to add to Toby Hadoke's short list! The Doctor's cry of "I can't move it, it's immovable!" is particularly ironic. We also get a better view of the relatively cramped Drahvin spaceship - which looks like Maaga has set out her garden furniture on the decking to enjoy the limited British summer weather. OK, so I mock; but I would much rather this than something generic. Even the (fairly bare) planetary surface is more reminiscent of The Web Planet than The Chase.
Still, the biggest asset this episode has, visually, is Derek Martinus. This is his third ever episode directing anything, and already he seems more ambitious than he did during Four Hundred Dawns (though there are also certain aesthetic choices there that stand out more in retrospect). Would the Rill spaceship have made such an impression without the shot down through the top panels? Probably not. And I am confident that we wouldn't have got that with the serial's intended director, Mervyn Pinfield, who mainly shot television as if it were theatre. Similarly, the Drahvins making very little eye contact, and the movement and positioning of actors inside the Drahvins' ship being so carefully choreographed, produces some quite unsettling effects.
And speaking of unsettling, Stephanie Bidmead is the other key component of the visual team. She puts in a stellar performance here, full of little facial movements that are so understated she needs to stand very close to the camera so we can see them. The way she expresses her frustrations over the limitations of her troops almost made me feel slightly sympathetic towards her, before this is turned right around the next instant. Steven's look of horror at Maaga's speech says it all.
The Doctor Who Restoration Team have done their usual meticulous job of cleaning up the episode. When it was returned to the BBC, there were a number of problems including a break in the film near the end which meant that almost half a minute of action was missing (as well as the credits); and a large, vertical scratch across Maaga's face during some of her speeches to camera. I couldn't spot either.
If it weren't for a casual conversation between Ralph Montagu of the Radio Times and former TVS engineer Terry Burnett - who had no idea that the couple of Doctor Who episodes he had in his film collection were significant - we would never have seen this. And before that, if someone hadn't rescued the cans from a skip when they were being junked - technically illegal salvage - they would have been lost in the 1970s.
Fingers crossed for many more such unlikely chains of events!
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 25th September 1965
Viewers: 11.3 million
Chart Position: 13
Appreciation Index: 54
Rating:
5/10.
Next Time:
The Exploding Planet.
Until December 2011, when I heard about the return of two episodes, Airlock and an early Patrick Troughton. I literally shouted in glee, then rushed around the house telling everybody (including a 'not-we', who was somewhat bemused but glad I was happy). I would never have predicted the strength of my reaction - if it had been something iconic like The Power of the Daleks or The Myth Makers, sure; but for a couple of individual episodes from minor, relatively unloved serials?
So, what's it like? Well, the plot's no improvement: space pilot Steven tries to escape but fails due to being scared by a Chumbley and ends up trapped in an airlock, before forgetting how differences in air pressure work; the Doctor spends ages trying to figure out how to sabotage an atmospheric converter; and Vicki learns that (gasp!) the Rills are good and the Drahvins evil. Oh, what a surprise.
Fortunately, it's a lot of fun to watch. The moving lights in the Chumblies weren't visible in the clip from the first episode (and so weren't included when they were reconstructed); this adds to their weirdness. Similarly, the Rills had previously only been glimpsed in a couple of poor quality photos, and we finally have a chance to see what they were actually like. The results are mixed: they look impressively alien, but their only animation is to rock back and forth, which ironically would have made them a great subject for the limited sort of animation Loose Cannon uses elsewhere! Both these character designs add atmosphere.
Seeing more of the set design also helps. The expansive Rill ship set is fairly unique - and a genuinely wobbly set to add to Toby Hadoke's short list! The Doctor's cry of "I can't move it, it's immovable!" is particularly ironic. We also get a better view of the relatively cramped Drahvin spaceship - which looks like Maaga has set out her garden furniture on the decking to enjoy the limited British summer weather. OK, so I mock; but I would much rather this than something generic. Even the (fairly bare) planetary surface is more reminiscent of The Web Planet than The Chase.
Still, the biggest asset this episode has, visually, is Derek Martinus. This is his third ever episode directing anything, and already he seems more ambitious than he did during Four Hundred Dawns (though there are also certain aesthetic choices there that stand out more in retrospect). Would the Rill spaceship have made such an impression without the shot down through the top panels? Probably not. And I am confident that we wouldn't have got that with the serial's intended director, Mervyn Pinfield, who mainly shot television as if it were theatre. Similarly, the Drahvins making very little eye contact, and the movement and positioning of actors inside the Drahvins' ship being so carefully choreographed, produces some quite unsettling effects.
And speaking of unsettling, Stephanie Bidmead is the other key component of the visual team. She puts in a stellar performance here, full of little facial movements that are so understated she needs to stand very close to the camera so we can see them. The way she expresses her frustrations over the limitations of her troops almost made me feel slightly sympathetic towards her, before this is turned right around the next instant. Steven's look of horror at Maaga's speech says it all.
The Doctor Who Restoration Team have done their usual meticulous job of cleaning up the episode. When it was returned to the BBC, there were a number of problems including a break in the film near the end which meant that almost half a minute of action was missing (as well as the credits); and a large, vertical scratch across Maaga's face during some of her speeches to camera. I couldn't spot either.
If it weren't for a casual conversation between Ralph Montagu of the Radio Times and former TVS engineer Terry Burnett - who had no idea that the couple of Doctor Who episodes he had in his film collection were significant - we would never have seen this. And before that, if someone hadn't rescued the cans from a skip when they were being junked - technically illegal salvage - they would have been lost in the 1970s.
Fingers crossed for many more such unlikely chains of events!
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 25th September 1965
Viewers: 11.3 million
Chart Position: 13
Appreciation Index: 54
Rating:
5/10.
Next Time:
The Exploding Planet.
Friday, 9 October 2015
Episode 83 (T2): Trap of Steel
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.
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.
Monday, 5 October 2015
Episode 82 (T1): Four Hundred Dawns
[Apologies for the delay - it's been longer than I thought, mainly
because of trying to find a time to watch it with my son, added to which
the fact that the official recon combines the first two episodes meant
some untangling was required. Also, life.]
Back to television at last - albeit with the first ever non-historical episode to be missing from the archives. It's not quite missing, of course, as there's a six-minute stretch of actual footage. This exists thanks to its being requisitioned for Whose Doctor Who, a 1977 instalment of the documentary series Lively Arts (which ended up using about half a minute) and then being rescued by Jan Vincent-Rudzki, president of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, who was acting as an advisor to the show. I'd still call this a "missing episode", though; but I'll postpone saying more about that until next time, as I've a lot of other topics to cover here.
Starting with the episode's status as the beginning of a new season. Last time - with Planet of Giants - the story carried on pretty much directly from the end of season one, making me wince slightly for all those stories shoehorned in between. This time it seems pretty obvious that there is a gap. Steven appears more settled, and the tense mood of the travellers doesn't quite match with the end of The Time Meddler; in addition, the Doctor's comment about 'past experience' adds to the sense that this team has been together for a while. As a polymedial (multimedial?) fan, I give this a thumb's up.
This is pure chance, really. When the script for Galaxy 4 was first written Iananbarbara were still on the team, and mostly for reasons of time (exacerbated by the ongoing change of production personnel) the rewrites made to accommodate Steven's presence were minimal. Of course it's written as if this team has been together for a long time! (Other aspects of this weren't so serendipitous, but we'll get to them later.)
There are a number of continuity references which seem to be included largely to remind viewers of the previous season: in particular, Vicki comparing this planet to Xeros (the setting for The Space Museum), and the return of the astral map. We also have the next instance of Vicki picking a cute name - the Chumblies, this time. (I think this is also the last occasion on TV, though I've only heard The Myth Makers once.) The Doctor also has a signature character moment when he is talking about the impenetrability of "his force barrier", in a lovely, low-key humourous exchange between him and Steven.
When we concentrate on William Hartnell's performance here, it is hard to remember that this is still part of the second production block and being recorded a week after Checkmate. He comes across as particularly prickly, and is getting far more lines wrong than he did last episode - the classic being their "long-deserved, undeserved" break. This has more than a little to do with the troubled recording history of this serial - which I'm also going to leave until next time, since I want to save a modicum of space to talk about the actual content of the episode.
Steven is pretty darn sexist here, referring to the Drahvins as a delightful surprise and commenting that their spaceship has "a few good features" - with the double meaning obviously intentional. As well as explaining what Jacqueline Rayner was drawing on for his characterisation in The Suffering, this is actually really appropriate because of his backstory as a space pilot. In the 1960s, US astronauts were drawn from the high flyers of the USAF, and came from an intensely macho culture. Many (though by no means all) bought into that culture wholeheartedly; and this is the real-life background to contemporary images of "space pilots", while Dan Dare's attitude to Peabody provides an example from popular fiction that is no better.
So, the characterisation is fine, which is actually a pleasant surprise. Less well handled is the central issue of the villains' identity. The TARDIS team are instantly suspicious of the Drahvins for no good reason that I can see (or rather hear), with Steven apparently the only one who is even prepared to consider that they might be telling the truth (Vicki's body language in the main clip is telling, here). Maaga is also presented as almost entirely unsympathetic, so where is the mystery?
On the plus side, there is a pleasing symmetry to the two sides in the conflict. Maaga's Drahvin soldiers being vat-grown and lacking initiative - "not what you would call human" - makes them excellent mirrors of the Rill-controlled Chumblies. And the cliffhanger is both effective and of a style I don't remember seeing so far in this marathon.
I've rattled on for a while. Hopefully the next review will be up in not four hundred dawns, not even fourteen dawns - but four dawns.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 11th September 1965
Viewers: 9.0 million
Chart Position: 23
Appreciation Index: 56
Rating:
4/10.
Next Time:
Trap of Steel.
Back to television at last - albeit with the first ever non-historical episode to be missing from the archives. It's not quite missing, of course, as there's a six-minute stretch of actual footage. This exists thanks to its being requisitioned for Whose Doctor Who, a 1977 instalment of the documentary series Lively Arts (which ended up using about half a minute) and then being rescued by Jan Vincent-Rudzki, president of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, who was acting as an advisor to the show. I'd still call this a "missing episode", though; but I'll postpone saying more about that until next time, as I've a lot of other topics to cover here.
Starting with the episode's status as the beginning of a new season. Last time - with Planet of Giants - the story carried on pretty much directly from the end of season one, making me wince slightly for all those stories shoehorned in between. This time it seems pretty obvious that there is a gap. Steven appears more settled, and the tense mood of the travellers doesn't quite match with the end of The Time Meddler; in addition, the Doctor's comment about 'past experience' adds to the sense that this team has been together for a while. As a polymedial (multimedial?) fan, I give this a thumb's up.
This is pure chance, really. When the script for Galaxy 4 was first written Iananbarbara were still on the team, and mostly for reasons of time (exacerbated by the ongoing change of production personnel) the rewrites made to accommodate Steven's presence were minimal. Of course it's written as if this team has been together for a long time! (Other aspects of this weren't so serendipitous, but we'll get to them later.)
There are a number of continuity references which seem to be included largely to remind viewers of the previous season: in particular, Vicki comparing this planet to Xeros (the setting for The Space Museum), and the return of the astral map. We also have the next instance of Vicki picking a cute name - the Chumblies, this time. (I think this is also the last occasion on TV, though I've only heard The Myth Makers once.) The Doctor also has a signature character moment when he is talking about the impenetrability of "his force barrier", in a lovely, low-key humourous exchange between him and Steven.
When we concentrate on William Hartnell's performance here, it is hard to remember that this is still part of the second production block and being recorded a week after Checkmate. He comes across as particularly prickly, and is getting far more lines wrong than he did last episode - the classic being their "long-deserved, undeserved" break. This has more than a little to do with the troubled recording history of this serial - which I'm also going to leave until next time, since I want to save a modicum of space to talk about the actual content of the episode.
Steven is pretty darn sexist here, referring to the Drahvins as a delightful surprise and commenting that their spaceship has "a few good features" - with the double meaning obviously intentional. As well as explaining what Jacqueline Rayner was drawing on for his characterisation in The Suffering, this is actually really appropriate because of his backstory as a space pilot. In the 1960s, US astronauts were drawn from the high flyers of the USAF, and came from an intensely macho culture. Many (though by no means all) bought into that culture wholeheartedly; and this is the real-life background to contemporary images of "space pilots", while Dan Dare's attitude to Peabody provides an example from popular fiction that is no better.
So, the characterisation is fine, which is actually a pleasant surprise. Less well handled is the central issue of the villains' identity. The TARDIS team are instantly suspicious of the Drahvins for no good reason that I can see (or rather hear), with Steven apparently the only one who is even prepared to consider that they might be telling the truth (Vicki's body language in the main clip is telling, here). Maaga is also presented as almost entirely unsympathetic, so where is the mystery?
On the plus side, there is a pleasing symmetry to the two sides in the conflict. Maaga's Drahvin soldiers being vat-grown and lacking initiative - "not what you would call human" - makes them excellent mirrors of the Rill-controlled Chumblies. And the cliffhanger is both effective and of a style I don't remember seeing so far in this marathon.
I've rattled on for a while. Hopefully the next review will be up in not four hundred dawns, not even fourteen dawns - but four dawns.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 11th September 1965
Viewers: 9.0 million
Chart Position: 23
Appreciation Index: 56
Rating:
4/10.
Next Time:
Trap of Steel.
Tuesday, 30 June 2015
Sneak Preview: The Three Doctors
This isn't going to be a proper review, but I felt it worth inserting
something for two reasons. First, the book covered in my next post, The Empire of Glass, explicitly follows on immediately from The Three Doctors;
so this is the right place for the original Doctor's involvement.
Second, this was the first time I ever saw William Hartnell playing the
Doctor, back when I was eight years old.
I already knew Patrick Troughton's Doctor - he was my first - and understood the concept that would later come to be known as regeneration. But the man in the triangle on the monitor was another matter. He seemed impossibly ancient, impossibly far away, nothing like the Peter Cushing Doctor who I had pictured as the original thanks to the Dalek movies.
Of course, in one sense he was impossibly far away. Hartnell was very ill by the time this was made, more ill than he himself knew. When the production staff contacted him to see if he was up for taking part in the tenth anniversary story he enthusiastically agreed; but when they called back some time later, after work on the scripts was underway, and spoke to his wife, she had to explain that there was no way he could learn lines or stand up to the rigours of shooting. They spent some time rethinking during which they figured out what would be possible; a major rewrite followed.
The end result gives very little of the flavour of Hartnell's Doctor, beyond a certain grouchiness, and to anyone who knew what he had been like during his tenure it must have been a bittersweet experience to see him again after six years but so unwell. Few would hold this up as one of his finer performances in the role - he had to sit and read his lines, either from cards or from an autocue (a device invented by original associate producer Mervyn Pinfield) - but it was certainly a worthwhile exercise, regardless. It honoured one of the men who had made Doctor Who (and the Doctor himself) great, it demonstrated that the show was able to work as 'event TV', and for millions of children who weren't around from the beginning it opened a window on the past, extending the Doctor's history back into myth.
Of course, we were never going to see any of that myth. Old black and white episodes didn't get repeated, and anyway, nice as it was to see Troughton again, Jon Pertwee was now the Doctor. I didn't notice when Hartnell's death was announced a couple of years later, but it would have had little impact on me anyway.
The world turns, certainties change. Nine years later, when I had stopped watching new episodes, I did get the opportunity to see Hartnell in action. I remembered the feelings I had watching The Three Doctors and made sure I saw The Five Faces of Doctor Who season, starting with An Unearthly Child...
A Confused Chronology, part 13: Revisiting the Show's Past
One question that has to be asked is this. If the Time Lords of Pertwee's era can find his first incarnation, why, diegetically, do they not enact the denouement of The War Games almost four years early? And I think my own answer has to do with Gallifreyan Mean Time.
The only reason the Time Lords can find the first and second Doctors during the Omega incident is because of the summoning during The War Games. If they then go back and arrest the Doctor earlier in his timeline they are messing with cause and effect. Just gathering the three incarnations of the Doctor together breaks the First Law of Time, regardless of memory wipes, and that's a much simpler temporal twist. This is part of why Time Lords hate to meet each other out of order: it can mess things up good and proper. There is, effectively, a metatime clock on Gallifrey by which Time Lords measure their own chronology, and they have to keep in synch.
And besides, the Doctor has already been punished.
A harder question is, why do the second and third Doctors look up to the first Doctor as the one with the wisdom? Despite appearances they are older than he, after all, and have more experience. The reasons in our world are clear to see, of course: Hartnell being older makes his Doctor a natural for the sage role, and the fact that he's unable to do more than speak means he is pretty much limited to giving advice; so writing good advice for him to deliver is only respectful. Maybe, in-universe, it's a matter of personality combined with current events rather than a respect for wisdom.
Hartnell's Doctor is certainly more authoritarian than Troughton's, and while this would usually rub the anarchic second incarnation up the wrong way, the latter has already been at loggerheads with the third. Perhaps he sees his predecessor as the lesser of two bossy evils, recognising that - despite the insults - he is the only one of the three to keep his temper in check.
As for Pertwee's Doctor...well. He has been exiled to Earth, and is annoyed at the incarnation who got him put there. When another Doctor - unable to physically interact and so less of a threat to his ego - offers words of reason without putting him down, it gives him an opportunity to de-escalate a childish confrontation without losing face to his Troughtonic rival.
If I do a Pertwee marathon I'll be revisiting this one again, but for now it's time to return to the earliest aftermath of that story...
Next Time:
The Empire of Glass.
I already knew Patrick Troughton's Doctor - he was my first - and understood the concept that would later come to be known as regeneration. But the man in the triangle on the monitor was another matter. He seemed impossibly ancient, impossibly far away, nothing like the Peter Cushing Doctor who I had pictured as the original thanks to the Dalek movies.
Of course, in one sense he was impossibly far away. Hartnell was very ill by the time this was made, more ill than he himself knew. When the production staff contacted him to see if he was up for taking part in the tenth anniversary story he enthusiastically agreed; but when they called back some time later, after work on the scripts was underway, and spoke to his wife, she had to explain that there was no way he could learn lines or stand up to the rigours of shooting. They spent some time rethinking during which they figured out what would be possible; a major rewrite followed.
The end result gives very little of the flavour of Hartnell's Doctor, beyond a certain grouchiness, and to anyone who knew what he had been like during his tenure it must have been a bittersweet experience to see him again after six years but so unwell. Few would hold this up as one of his finer performances in the role - he had to sit and read his lines, either from cards or from an autocue (a device invented by original associate producer Mervyn Pinfield) - but it was certainly a worthwhile exercise, regardless. It honoured one of the men who had made Doctor Who (and the Doctor himself) great, it demonstrated that the show was able to work as 'event TV', and for millions of children who weren't around from the beginning it opened a window on the past, extending the Doctor's history back into myth.
Of course, we were never going to see any of that myth. Old black and white episodes didn't get repeated, and anyway, nice as it was to see Troughton again, Jon Pertwee was now the Doctor. I didn't notice when Hartnell's death was announced a couple of years later, but it would have had little impact on me anyway.
The world turns, certainties change. Nine years later, when I had stopped watching new episodes, I did get the opportunity to see Hartnell in action. I remembered the feelings I had watching The Three Doctors and made sure I saw The Five Faces of Doctor Who season, starting with An Unearthly Child...
A Confused Chronology, part 13: Revisiting the Show's Past
One question that has to be asked is this. If the Time Lords of Pertwee's era can find his first incarnation, why, diegetically, do they not enact the denouement of The War Games almost four years early? And I think my own answer has to do with Gallifreyan Mean Time.
The only reason the Time Lords can find the first and second Doctors during the Omega incident is because of the summoning during The War Games. If they then go back and arrest the Doctor earlier in his timeline they are messing with cause and effect. Just gathering the three incarnations of the Doctor together breaks the First Law of Time, regardless of memory wipes, and that's a much simpler temporal twist. This is part of why Time Lords hate to meet each other out of order: it can mess things up good and proper. There is, effectively, a metatime clock on Gallifrey by which Time Lords measure their own chronology, and they have to keep in synch.
And besides, the Doctor has already been punished.
A harder question is, why do the second and third Doctors look up to the first Doctor as the one with the wisdom? Despite appearances they are older than he, after all, and have more experience. The reasons in our world are clear to see, of course: Hartnell being older makes his Doctor a natural for the sage role, and the fact that he's unable to do more than speak means he is pretty much limited to giving advice; so writing good advice for him to deliver is only respectful. Maybe, in-universe, it's a matter of personality combined with current events rather than a respect for wisdom.
Hartnell's Doctor is certainly more authoritarian than Troughton's, and while this would usually rub the anarchic second incarnation up the wrong way, the latter has already been at loggerheads with the third. Perhaps he sees his predecessor as the lesser of two bossy evils, recognising that - despite the insults - he is the only one of the three to keep his temper in check.
As for Pertwee's Doctor...well. He has been exiled to Earth, and is annoyed at the incarnation who got him put there. When another Doctor - unable to physically interact and so less of a threat to his ego - offers words of reason without putting him down, it gives him an opportunity to de-escalate a childish confrontation without losing face to his Troughtonic rival.
If I do a Pertwee marathon I'll be revisiting this one again, but for now it's time to return to the earliest aftermath of that story...
Next Time:
The Empire of Glass.
Thursday, 21 May 2015
Episode 78 (S1): The Watcher (May's view)
(And eventually, May also decided to do episode reviews! Over to her.)
I have to say I'm slightly daunted by writing this. I feel like I've got a lot to live up to. Particularly with this story actually, considering the monster review that my father has written. Really dad! You could have left at least a few points for your poor children to cover! Most of this will therefore be repeats of what dad's already said, just from the perspective of a fifteen-year-old girl.
Well, let's start at the beginning, with the very first scene. There's some good acting from Maureen O'Brien and William Hartnell. I feel like they got the grandfather/granddaughter dynamic really well (even though Vicki is not Susan, she's slotted into the hole she left quite neatly). There was also a definite air of suppressed sadness from both of them (particularly Vicki, she seemed like she was putting on a brave face for the Doctor), which seemed realistic, given Ian and Barbara's departure.
Then, of course, there's Steven's entrance. Which I think is marvellous. This scene just feels so Hartnell era, Vicki's cry of "oh, do be careful Doctor! It's obviously a dalek!", and their choice of weapons (shoe and coat). It's hard to put it into words, but it just seems like it belongs in that era of Who, and it wouldn't fit anywhere else.
In the next scene, Peter Purves' acting is really very good, he has the right balance of seriousness and comedy that is required for Doctor Who - I especially liked the bit where he calls the Doctor 'Doctor' for the first time (or, as he actually said it, 'Doc...tor!'). And, of course, there's the Doctor's 'chair with a panda on it' speech. Steven and Vicki's little conflab about acronyms is also golden!
The monk is instantly presented as someone we need to watch out for. He observes the TARDIS from the cliff without batting an eyelid, and he does not seem at all unsettled when he listens to the Doctor explaining about the TARDIS. When I first watched this episode, I remember thinking "this guy's not a monk!".
Skipping ahead a bit because, while I adored the scene on the beach, this piece of writing is going be bloody long even if I do cut ruthlessly. The Doctor's first scene with Edith is really quite sweet. Edith is such a kindly character, just a genuinely nice person! Plus, there's the Doctor giving an aside about history, which was the shows purpose, to educate the young viewers. A couple of times Hartnell slips up on his lines, which is quite sad to see.
It's very clear that Steven has kind of forgotten how to interact with people. His first interaction with a Saxon is a very clear contrast to the Doctor's, all the more so when the scenes are placed next to each other. Although the fight was crappily choreographed, it does give us a bit of an insight into how Steven has been affected by his time with the Mechanoids.
In the final scene, all the modern stuff scattered through the episode is made clear by the reveal of the gramophone. The monk is not what he seems! And he has captured the Doctor! Dun, dun, DUH!
Next Time:
The Meddling Monk.
I have to say I'm slightly daunted by writing this. I feel like I've got a lot to live up to. Particularly with this story actually, considering the monster review that my father has written. Really dad! You could have left at least a few points for your poor children to cover! Most of this will therefore be repeats of what dad's already said, just from the perspective of a fifteen-year-old girl.
Well, let's start at the beginning, with the very first scene. There's some good acting from Maureen O'Brien and William Hartnell. I feel like they got the grandfather/granddaughter dynamic really well (even though Vicki is not Susan, she's slotted into the hole she left quite neatly). There was also a definite air of suppressed sadness from both of them (particularly Vicki, she seemed like she was putting on a brave face for the Doctor), which seemed realistic, given Ian and Barbara's departure.
Then, of course, there's Steven's entrance. Which I think is marvellous. This scene just feels so Hartnell era, Vicki's cry of "oh, do be careful Doctor! It's obviously a dalek!", and their choice of weapons (shoe and coat). It's hard to put it into words, but it just seems like it belongs in that era of Who, and it wouldn't fit anywhere else.
In the next scene, Peter Purves' acting is really very good, he has the right balance of seriousness and comedy that is required for Doctor Who - I especially liked the bit where he calls the Doctor 'Doctor' for the first time (or, as he actually said it, 'Doc...tor!'). And, of course, there's the Doctor's 'chair with a panda on it' speech. Steven and Vicki's little conflab about acronyms is also golden!
The monk is instantly presented as someone we need to watch out for. He observes the TARDIS from the cliff without batting an eyelid, and he does not seem at all unsettled when he listens to the Doctor explaining about the TARDIS. When I first watched this episode, I remember thinking "this guy's not a monk!".
Skipping ahead a bit because, while I adored the scene on the beach, this piece of writing is going be bloody long even if I do cut ruthlessly. The Doctor's first scene with Edith is really quite sweet. Edith is such a kindly character, just a genuinely nice person! Plus, there's the Doctor giving an aside about history, which was the shows purpose, to educate the young viewers. A couple of times Hartnell slips up on his lines, which is quite sad to see.
It's very clear that Steven has kind of forgotten how to interact with people. His first interaction with a Saxon is a very clear contrast to the Doctor's, all the more so when the scenes are placed next to each other. Although the fight was crappily choreographed, it does give us a bit of an insight into how Steven has been affected by his time with the Mechanoids.
In the final scene, all the modern stuff scattered through the episode is made clear by the reveal of the gramophone. The monk is not what he seems! And he has captured the Doctor! Dun, dun, DUH!
Next Time:
The Meddling Monk.
Monday, 18 May 2015
Episode 78 (S1): The Watcher (Isaac's view)
(Isaac got quite enthusiastic reviewing this story, and ended up
covering each episode separately. Since this happened after I'd already
posted a couple, I decided to save them all for the end and do a quick
run through, in order to keep the momentum up. Over to him!)
A very good episode, with wonderful acting - the only character where in my opinion the acting wasn't great was the Saxon hunter in the woods. The Doctor's moment of sadness at the start was very convincing. The humour in the episode was done well - I especially like the Doctor's funny moments with Steven (I've often quoted his 'space helmet for a cow' bit these last few days). Maureen O'Brien did a good job of the sad aspect at the start, and did well at portraying Vicki's realisation when she is explaining to Steven about the TARDIS that she is the new most senior TARDIS crew member (excluding the Doctor, of course). Steven is very forward (well, you would be after being kept prisoner by the Mechanoids for a while) and his disbelief is portrayed by Peter Purves very well.
The aura of mystery around the Meddling Monk is done well, with the viewer just seeing his body language and facial expressions (well done Peter Butterworth! He got a lot of information in those!). The Doctor's little walk takes us to meet Edith, a nice character who seems quite real. She gives the doctor something to drink, and he verbally blunders around until he finds the date and informs the viewer on a bit of history (a nod to the shows original intention). This scene was quite nice, with good acting on both William and Alethea's part, which would not worked well in another era of the show but fits nicely in this serial.
Jumping back to Vicki and Steven we come across an exhausted Vicki - it's quite nice because it shows the fact that younger people aren't just downsized adults (something which happens quite a bit in fiction). Then the Saxon hunter came along, and as a result we have a badly done fight scene - where all they seem to be doing is rolling around with their hands locked together. That bit is my least favourite part of the episode, but we did have a nice bit of more Steven stuff, which is needed a little since this is his first story as a companion.
Finally we have a smug Doctor being trapped, which adds a bit more drama in the episode, which is nice at the end of an episode mostly composed of humour and scene setting.
Next Time:
May's review of The Watcher!
A very good episode, with wonderful acting - the only character where in my opinion the acting wasn't great was the Saxon hunter in the woods. The Doctor's moment of sadness at the start was very convincing. The humour in the episode was done well - I especially like the Doctor's funny moments with Steven (I've often quoted his 'space helmet for a cow' bit these last few days). Maureen O'Brien did a good job of the sad aspect at the start, and did well at portraying Vicki's realisation when she is explaining to Steven about the TARDIS that she is the new most senior TARDIS crew member (excluding the Doctor, of course). Steven is very forward (well, you would be after being kept prisoner by the Mechanoids for a while) and his disbelief is portrayed by Peter Purves very well.
The aura of mystery around the Meddling Monk is done well, with the viewer just seeing his body language and facial expressions (well done Peter Butterworth! He got a lot of information in those!). The Doctor's little walk takes us to meet Edith, a nice character who seems quite real. She gives the doctor something to drink, and he verbally blunders around until he finds the date and informs the viewer on a bit of history (a nod to the shows original intention). This scene was quite nice, with good acting on both William and Alethea's part, which would not worked well in another era of the show but fits nicely in this serial.
Jumping back to Vicki and Steven we come across an exhausted Vicki - it's quite nice because it shows the fact that younger people aren't just downsized adults (something which happens quite a bit in fiction). Then the Saxon hunter came along, and as a result we have a badly done fight scene - where all they seem to be doing is rolling around with their hands locked together. That bit is my least favourite part of the episode, but we did have a nice bit of more Steven stuff, which is needed a little since this is his first story as a companion.
Finally we have a smug Doctor being trapped, which adds a bit more drama in the episode, which is nice at the end of an episode mostly composed of humour and scene setting.
Next Time:
May's review of The Watcher!
Monday, 4 May 2015
Episode 81 (S4): Checkmate
And unexpectedly, I managed to write up my review of A Battle of Wits the following morning and watch this one later in the day! Now that's a turnaround. And hopefully a sign of things to come.
Unfortunately this episode is the weakest of the serial, though still reasonably strong overall; and the first part of this review is little more than a random collection of thoughts. So I'll keep it short, before moving onto what it represents for the series.
One of the things that makes this feel weaker is that there seems to be less attention to detail from all parties. The pacing is slightly off, with some well-performed discussions nevertheless moving too slowly; Eldred's injury seems to come and go; William Hartnell makes some more obvious slips; and the camerawork is not quite as sharp.
There's a lot to love too, though. The comedy continues to be well done - I love the scenes where the Monk persuades the (very stupid) Vikings to help him, and the one with the Saxons running into and then out from the monastery. Peter Butterworth's expressions continue to provide good value for money, particularly as he reads the letter from the Doctor; and the final resolution is both clever and funny. I thought the clifftop scene with the Doctor emphasising how happy he is with his new team was heartwarming, and the final credit sequence is very effective.
A final word on Edith. There is little indication that she is recovering from trauma this time, though the fact that she insists on accompanying the men in the attack is significant. She remembers her English middle-class manners, and invites the travellers back for tea and gives them a smile. I'm inclined to be charitable and read this as a sign she is on the road to recovery and will be OK.
Let's turn to the science fiction elements of the story. A few minor points first. Vicki and Steven's discussion of how history can change is interesting, and possibly the clearest so far; though keeping the Doctor out of the discussion is, perhaps, a cunning ploy to allow for the production team to change their mind at a later date. The business with the Doctor's TARDIS being an earlier model than the Monk's Mark IV can be reconciled with the later Type 40 designation if you squint, though it's hardly worth bothering with; and the whole sequence with the dimensional stabiliser, while slightly too drawn out, is a great way of making use of the show's mythology to affect the plot.
And now, on to the main feature:
The Beginning of the End for 'Pure' Historicals?
So, we reach the era of the 'pseudo-historical', with a story where a time traveller attempts to use their knowledge of the future to change and improve the past. The Doctor expresses his disapproval and anger, the nature of history is discussed, and there is violence (although none of the time travellers are harmed); the changes are averted. What am I describing? The Aztecs, of course.
People always point to The Time Meddler as the birth of the pseudo-historical, but in terms of science fiction interfering with history there is very little it does that is new. The anachronistic has been there ever since a caveman watched a man step out of a police box and light a pipe.
So what makes the difference? For there surely is one! I believe the explanation belongs in the extradiegetic realm, in the fact that this is a television drama and not a news report. The Doctor and his companions occupy a privileged position: in a sense, their SF influence doesn't count because they are the window through which we get to see the drama happening in the past. When we marvel at a TV presenter in an inaccessible place and ignore the fact that there must be a camera operator there too, so we fail to register the difference the mere presence of the TARDIS crew makes on the past. The Monk externalises that influence so that we can see it.
There were good, solid reasons for fiddling with the historical format. Just as the idea of 'one serial backward in time, one forward, one sideways' had been quietly dropped when it became apparent there wasn't enough mileage in sideways stories to do them more than occasionally, it had become obvious over the second season that historicals were just not as popular as SF stories. The first season's "drop them down in history and see what happens" methodology had already been replaced with "drop them into a historical genre such as Up Pompeii or Shakespeare", but it wasn't enough. More had to be done.
There are only five more 'pure' historicals in the 1960s, and then nothing until a single outlier in the '80s; the revived series has not done any to date. Ironically, these (and the ones that came before) are some of the best-loved stories of the era.
Which just goes to show that there is no accounting for taste.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 24th July 1965
Viewers: 8.3 million
Chart Position: 24
Appreciation Index: 54
Rating:
7.5/10.
Next Time:
Serial S as a whole.
Unfortunately this episode is the weakest of the serial, though still reasonably strong overall; and the first part of this review is little more than a random collection of thoughts. So I'll keep it short, before moving onto what it represents for the series.
One of the things that makes this feel weaker is that there seems to be less attention to detail from all parties. The pacing is slightly off, with some well-performed discussions nevertheless moving too slowly; Eldred's injury seems to come and go; William Hartnell makes some more obvious slips; and the camerawork is not quite as sharp.
There's a lot to love too, though. The comedy continues to be well done - I love the scenes where the Monk persuades the (very stupid) Vikings to help him, and the one with the Saxons running into and then out from the monastery. Peter Butterworth's expressions continue to provide good value for money, particularly as he reads the letter from the Doctor; and the final resolution is both clever and funny. I thought the clifftop scene with the Doctor emphasising how happy he is with his new team was heartwarming, and the final credit sequence is very effective.
A final word on Edith. There is little indication that she is recovering from trauma this time, though the fact that she insists on accompanying the men in the attack is significant. She remembers her English middle-class manners, and invites the travellers back for tea and gives them a smile. I'm inclined to be charitable and read this as a sign she is on the road to recovery and will be OK.
Let's turn to the science fiction elements of the story. A few minor points first. Vicki and Steven's discussion of how history can change is interesting, and possibly the clearest so far; though keeping the Doctor out of the discussion is, perhaps, a cunning ploy to allow for the production team to change their mind at a later date. The business with the Doctor's TARDIS being an earlier model than the Monk's Mark IV can be reconciled with the later Type 40 designation if you squint, though it's hardly worth bothering with; and the whole sequence with the dimensional stabiliser, while slightly too drawn out, is a great way of making use of the show's mythology to affect the plot.
And now, on to the main feature:
The Beginning of the End for 'Pure' Historicals?
So, we reach the era of the 'pseudo-historical', with a story where a time traveller attempts to use their knowledge of the future to change and improve the past. The Doctor expresses his disapproval and anger, the nature of history is discussed, and there is violence (although none of the time travellers are harmed); the changes are averted. What am I describing? The Aztecs, of course.
People always point to The Time Meddler as the birth of the pseudo-historical, but in terms of science fiction interfering with history there is very little it does that is new. The anachronistic has been there ever since a caveman watched a man step out of a police box and light a pipe.
So what makes the difference? For there surely is one! I believe the explanation belongs in the extradiegetic realm, in the fact that this is a television drama and not a news report. The Doctor and his companions occupy a privileged position: in a sense, their SF influence doesn't count because they are the window through which we get to see the drama happening in the past. When we marvel at a TV presenter in an inaccessible place and ignore the fact that there must be a camera operator there too, so we fail to register the difference the mere presence of the TARDIS crew makes on the past. The Monk externalises that influence so that we can see it.
There were good, solid reasons for fiddling with the historical format. Just as the idea of 'one serial backward in time, one forward, one sideways' had been quietly dropped when it became apparent there wasn't enough mileage in sideways stories to do them more than occasionally, it had become obvious over the second season that historicals were just not as popular as SF stories. The first season's "drop them down in history and see what happens" methodology had already been replaced with "drop them into a historical genre such as Up Pompeii or Shakespeare", but it wasn't enough. More had to be done.
There are only five more 'pure' historicals in the 1960s, and then nothing until a single outlier in the '80s; the revived series has not done any to date. Ironically, these (and the ones that came before) are some of the best-loved stories of the era.
Which just goes to show that there is no accounting for taste.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 24th July 1965
Viewers: 8.3 million
Chart Position: 24
Appreciation Index: 54
Rating:
7.5/10.
Next Time:
Serial S as a whole.
Friday, 24 April 2015
Episode 78 (S1): The Watcher
I'm back from a fantastic time in Northumbria, and almost over the
post-holiday reality shock, so I think it's time to get going again.
Occasionally I think I'm not really the right person to be doing this. I enjoy writing but I don't have any background in media studies or production, which sometimes makes talking about the visuals (and the direction in particular) tricky. I know what I like, but not always why.
This episode is a case in point. Visually it feels like a big step up from last time, but all I can do is pick out a few details that don't really add up to all that much (though being linked to a better script always helps, of course). Given my difficulties I'm not going to try and be too analytical, instead just pointing out some of the things I reacted to. Imagine you are in 1965, and I'm a friend telling you about an episode you missed (which is, of course, unlikely ever to be repeated); but without the obligatory summary of the plot.
To start at the beginning, then, we have the aftermath of Iananbarbara's departure at the end of The Chase. The first TARDIS scene is quite theatrical, and the episode uses asides to the audience throughout (such as "how does he know that?") and careful positioning (such as the early shot with Vicki behind the clock and the Doctor behind the console). William Hartnell uses his own sadness to play a sad Doctor, which tugs at the heartstrings. There's a lot of warmth here, with Vicki seeing Iananbarbara as old but not the Doctor because he's different - her faith in him is obvious. The pair have different reactions to the noise coming from the TARDIS interior, a small but effective note; and then as they arm themselves with shoe and jacket, the humour comes to the fore. It's an elegant transition.
What follows contains a great deal of humour, in fact. The Doctor has some wonderful speeches - the 'chair with a panda on it' one and the 'space helmet for a cow' one, in particular (though the horns are, of course, a historical inaccuracy). And the whole situation with the monk is humorous, though with an edge to it as well; and that mix is part of what makes this script work so well for me.
The other part is the characterisation. Steven is very intense, which you might expect from a space pilot after years as a captive of the Mechanoids - though he gets to vent some of his frustration in his tussle with an innocent peasant. Vicki tries to keep things light, teasing him and the Doctor, which is how she deals with the world; but eventually even she loses patience. The Doctor is thoughtful (and Hartnell puts a lot of subtlety into his expressions). Meanwhile, Alethea Charlton puts a lot of warmth into Edith (admittedly in a bizarre kind of RP Northern accent, possibly because she was told to tone it down, given what happened later with Jackie Lane). And the monk... well, he's supposed to be the enigma, so we can forgive them keeping him at a distance.
Turning to other aspects of the production, Douglas Camfield gives us plenty of variety in the camera shots - nothing too ambitious but all well planned, for example when the monk is hiding behind the rock. This is combined with good use of music, of sound effects (such as waves and animals), and of stock footage (such as skies, gulls, waves crashing on the shore and cliff), all of which add to the feeling of being there.
Barry Newbery generally provides great sets as well, the main exception being the outside of the monastery. After listening to the commentary, though, I can see that this is more a problem with the lighting than the set itself.
What about the plot? This is an episode that has to deal with a sudden change in the TARDIS crew - the biggest so far - so that takes up quite a bit of screen time. The pacing is carefully handled, though, and we get a liberal sprinkling of hints about the monk throughout: his ring, him looking at his wrist in a familiar way, the monks' chanting winding down, and ultimately the reveal of the gramophone.
When I first saw this I didn't know what to expect, not being the sort of fan who checked out the details of stories (indeed, I was barely a fan at all at the time); but I had been watching through the '70s, when all historicals had aliens or other anachronistic elements. What impact would this have had coming from only pure historicals? Did it throw people, other than one confused housewife who failed to realise that the anachronisms were deliberate? Was it a positive change? I don't know, but this serial held on to more of its viewers than The Romans or The Crusade (and with generally better AIs) so I'm guessing it was. Whatever, the important thing here is that I really enjoyed it.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 3rd July 1965
Viewers: 8.9 million
Chart Position: 15
Appreciation Index: 57
Rating:
9/10.
Next Time:
The Meddling Monk.
Occasionally I think I'm not really the right person to be doing this. I enjoy writing but I don't have any background in media studies or production, which sometimes makes talking about the visuals (and the direction in particular) tricky. I know what I like, but not always why.
This episode is a case in point. Visually it feels like a big step up from last time, but all I can do is pick out a few details that don't really add up to all that much (though being linked to a better script always helps, of course). Given my difficulties I'm not going to try and be too analytical, instead just pointing out some of the things I reacted to. Imagine you are in 1965, and I'm a friend telling you about an episode you missed (which is, of course, unlikely ever to be repeated); but without the obligatory summary of the plot.
To start at the beginning, then, we have the aftermath of Iananbarbara's departure at the end of The Chase. The first TARDIS scene is quite theatrical, and the episode uses asides to the audience throughout (such as "how does he know that?") and careful positioning (such as the early shot with Vicki behind the clock and the Doctor behind the console). William Hartnell uses his own sadness to play a sad Doctor, which tugs at the heartstrings. There's a lot of warmth here, with Vicki seeing Iananbarbara as old but not the Doctor because he's different - her faith in him is obvious. The pair have different reactions to the noise coming from the TARDIS interior, a small but effective note; and then as they arm themselves with shoe and jacket, the humour comes to the fore. It's an elegant transition.
What follows contains a great deal of humour, in fact. The Doctor has some wonderful speeches - the 'chair with a panda on it' one and the 'space helmet for a cow' one, in particular (though the horns are, of course, a historical inaccuracy). And the whole situation with the monk is humorous, though with an edge to it as well; and that mix is part of what makes this script work so well for me.
The other part is the characterisation. Steven is very intense, which you might expect from a space pilot after years as a captive of the Mechanoids - though he gets to vent some of his frustration in his tussle with an innocent peasant. Vicki tries to keep things light, teasing him and the Doctor, which is how she deals with the world; but eventually even she loses patience. The Doctor is thoughtful (and Hartnell puts a lot of subtlety into his expressions). Meanwhile, Alethea Charlton puts a lot of warmth into Edith (admittedly in a bizarre kind of RP Northern accent, possibly because she was told to tone it down, given what happened later with Jackie Lane). And the monk... well, he's supposed to be the enigma, so we can forgive them keeping him at a distance.
Turning to other aspects of the production, Douglas Camfield gives us plenty of variety in the camera shots - nothing too ambitious but all well planned, for example when the monk is hiding behind the rock. This is combined with good use of music, of sound effects (such as waves and animals), and of stock footage (such as skies, gulls, waves crashing on the shore and cliff), all of which add to the feeling of being there.
Barry Newbery generally provides great sets as well, the main exception being the outside of the monastery. After listening to the commentary, though, I can see that this is more a problem with the lighting than the set itself.
What about the plot? This is an episode that has to deal with a sudden change in the TARDIS crew - the biggest so far - so that takes up quite a bit of screen time. The pacing is carefully handled, though, and we get a liberal sprinkling of hints about the monk throughout: his ring, him looking at his wrist in a familiar way, the monks' chanting winding down, and ultimately the reveal of the gramophone.
When I first saw this I didn't know what to expect, not being the sort of fan who checked out the details of stories (indeed, I was barely a fan at all at the time); but I had been watching through the '70s, when all historicals had aliens or other anachronistic elements. What impact would this have had coming from only pure historicals? Did it throw people, other than one confused housewife who failed to realise that the anachronisms were deliberate? Was it a positive change? I don't know, but this serial held on to more of its viewers than The Romans or The Crusade (and with generally better AIs) so I'm guessing it was. Whatever, the important thing here is that I really enjoyed it.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 3rd July 1965
Viewers: 8.9 million
Chart Position: 15
Appreciation Index: 57
Rating:
9/10.
Next Time:
The Meddling Monk.
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