A couple of entries ago, I commented that the off-air recordings had allowed the Restoration Team to produce "acceptable" soundtracks. While I still hold that this is generally the case, the sound quality at the beginning of this episode is poor. I had trouble hearing what most of the actors were saying (bless William Russell for speaking loudly and clearly while showing Ian's sense of urgency), and it did affect my enjoyment. This is an episode where the reconstruction wins out over the narrated soundtrack.
Okay... take a deep breath. I need to tackle a subject I was hoping I could brush past in this serial, but I might as well get on with it.
Racism, Part 1: Yellow Faces
First, a necessary statement of identity. I am white, middle-class and male, born and raised in a predominantly white area of suburban Southern England. This upbringing naturally colours my perceptions, and while I am arrogant enough to believe I have some understanding of racism I will always bow to the superior experience of those on the sharp end. What follows, therefore, is all In My More Humble Than Usual Opinion...
Doctor Who has a mixed record when it comes to race. This is 1964, when The Black and White Minstrel Show was regularly pulling in audiences of 18 million or more, and I think our show deserves credit for what it does right; but not everything it does is right.
In the 1960s it was common for white actors to be cast in non-white parts, often in makeup ("blackface" or "yellowface"). The lack of suitable non-white actors was often used as an excuse; there is some argument over this, but even if true the shortage would have been the result of racism. Anyway, while I don't like to see it happen these days I accept it as a feature of the times. What makes the difference for me, whether it's something that I note and then ignore or whether it truly affects my enjoyment, is how those parts are played.
Marco Polo got off to a relatively good start. The story being set in Cathay is itself positive, of course, when representations of European history usually dominate. One of the main characters, Ping-Cho, is played by Burmese actress Zienia Merton (better known for Space:1999 - I knew I'd seen her somewhere), and Derren Nesbitt as Tegana plays the character straight. Some of the minor characters are maybe a little dodgy, but nothing extreme.
Then we get to this episode, and Wang-Lo. Gábor Baraker plays him as a bumbling Chinese bureaucrat, wide-eyed and kowtowing (in the metaphorical sense), with a classic cartoon accent and comedy manner. Individually these could all be accepted; combined, they are wince-worthy. It was so bad that I was in the mood to read the role of Kuiju as a stereotypical "shifty Chinee", which is actually unfair as on reflection I don't see a racial intent, even subconscious. I took advantage of the scripts being provided with the audio, and read Wang-Lo's dialogue. There's nothing there to show that he has to be played in this way, so I'm letting John Lucarotti off the hook. That leaves the actor and director.
At that time it was the director's responsibility to choose the cast. Interestingly we have a non-white director, India-born Waris Hussein, who chose Baraker and (presumably) didn't disapprove of his portrayal. This was his last Who serial; he decided he would rather work on individual plays afterwards. I do wonder what his thoughts on this episode are now; unless it is discovered somewhere and he records a commentary for the DVD I guess we'll never know.
I mentioned the pulps last time. Racism was casual and ubiquitous in these works, and one common theme was the Yellow Peril threatening the supremacy of the white race. Marco Polo avoids this, because almost all the guest parts - good and bad - are from Cathay. This is a better setup than having only non-white parts who are "whiter than white", as it were, which is just a kinder reflection of the Yellow Peril idea - one aspect of the pulps I'm glad the story didn't take up.
Another plus is the way racism itself (and, perhaps, "chronologism") is depicted within the story. This episode, for example, has Ian believing that exploding bamboo will scare off the cowardly, superstitious bandits - and actually thinking it has worked until the Doctor points out the more plausible explanation that they are running because their leader has just been killed. He's also wrong about Tegana's designs on the TARDIS because he believes the warlord is frightened of their "magic box". Meanwhile the Doctor looks down on everyone. This is great! It doesn't entirely make up for Wang-Lo, but it certainly helps.
Okay, that's the thorny bit out of the way. Before I go, I just want to say a bit about the ending. Good grief, how stupid is Susan?!! There is no trace of the unearthly child's genius in her actions here, as she throws away their freedom to say goodbye to Ping-Cho. It is touching to see how well the girls get on together, and you can see just how much they don't want to be parted, but really! If you want to teach kids not to break promises, this is not the way to do it. All I can say is, poor Carole Ann Ford. No wonder she was fed up with the part already.
Hey ho, roll on next episode...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 21st March 1964
Viewers: 9.4 million
Chart Position: 37
Appreciation Index: 59
Rating:
3.5/10.
Next Time:
Mighty Kublai Khan.
Sunday, 18 September 2011
Thursday, 15 September 2011
Episode 17 (D4): The Wall of Lies
A great title for a good episode - I've always liked puns and double meanings. Finally the travellers are sure about Tegana and all working off the same page, but he has had time to plan his defence and firm up his position with Polo. Ping-Cho knows about the TARDIS key, and we're set for interesting contretemps.
The characterisation is spot on, if you ignore the excessive screaming near the start. Barbara shows how perceptive she can be, and the Doctor's attitude to the "natives" is quite shockingly dismissive. Ian - comfortable in the role of action hero - finds himself instead having to manipulate and deceive, and turns out to be rather inept at this. Susan and Ping-Cho affirm their friendship and try to think their way out of the situation, but without luck. Tegana plots and schemes coolly; Polo tries to follow his best reasoning. In fact, given his background, I can see why he would take the word of a respected warlord over that of an irresponsible girl and some proven liars. The travellers really have made things worse for themselves.
This episode rattles along at a good pace, and gives us the payoff we've been hoping for from all the pussyfooting of the past few episodes. The cliffhanger is excellent, not because anyone is in immediate danger but because it could go in a number of directions (including Polo blaming Ian for the guard's death).
This episode was directed by John Crockett rather than Waris Hussein. It's hard to tell how much of the increased pace is due to this and how much to John Lucarotti's script - I suspect mostly the latter - but one unfortunate result of the change is that we have no telesnaps. Loose Cannon did such a good job that I failed to spot this until afterwards, but it's another one that works well with just audio anyway.
And that's all I really want to say about the episode, so there's plenty of space to include something that's been hanging about since The Roof of the World:
Look and Feel, Part 1: Pulp Adventure
One of the great things about Doctor Who is that it can be almost anything. The TARDIS travels not only in time and space but also in genre - this is more obvious in some stories than others, The Gunfighters being particularly blatant. The pulp serials of the early twentieth century - both in magazines and film - provide a particularly easy fit, sharing features such as cliffhangers, screaming women and a focus on exotic locations. With Marco Polo, though, John Lucarotti and Waris Hussein have taken on some more of the trappings. The way the map is used is a classic pulp serial technique to show the passage of time and geography, particularly in travelogue-based stories such as this. Similarly, Polo's journal is used to give the story more authority, a device I first encountered in books by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
In the 1930s when my mum was a teenager she used to read Burroughs (along with H. Rider Haggard, and others). Her favourites were the Tarzan stories, but she also enjoyed John Carter of Mars. When it came to books she was as much of a hoarder as my dad; she still had some of them in the 1970s, and I read them. My preference was for the Mars books (though I did enjoy Tarzan films, particularly Johnny Weissmuller's), and I hunted down the ones she didn't have. Now, those of you who read science fiction in the 1970s will remember that there were only two types of paperback book cover: spaceships by Chris Foss and his imitators, and women in déshabillé. This was true even for books that featured no spaceships and no women. You can guess which category planetary romances like the John Carter books fell into. I found them embarassing to buy, though fortunately because of the subject matter I didn't feel an urge to hide them from my mother, who also read them.
My mum was not, in the main, a fan of science fiction. She observed that when she was young it was still just about possible to imagine strange civilizations in uncharted reaches of Africa and the Amazon, whereas by my time we had to go to other planets for the same effect. A smart woman.
Anyway, the technique I'm talking about is used in the books as a framing device: quite simply, John Carter has given the story to Burroughs to publish. This distances the author from the story and gives it an added layer of realism. In Marco Polo, of course, we have the added benefit that it is from Polo's own account that we know of his journeys - The Travels of Marco Polo was written by someone who shared a cell with the explorer when he was imprisoned in Genoa and listened to his stories - but it is still a deliberate use of the device. It also means that the narrated soundtrack actually has two narrators!
There are some aspects of the pulps that are absent from the story. There is no emphasis on violence as a solution to problems, for example, and I for one am glad of it as what we have is much more interesting.
I'll have more to say about the pulp influence when I tackle the serial E. But that won't be for a while yet...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 14th March 1964
Viewers: 9.9 million
Chart Position: 31
Appreciation Index: 60
Rating:
7.5/10.
Next Time:
Rider from Shang-Tu.
The characterisation is spot on, if you ignore the excessive screaming near the start. Barbara shows how perceptive she can be, and the Doctor's attitude to the "natives" is quite shockingly dismissive. Ian - comfortable in the role of action hero - finds himself instead having to manipulate and deceive, and turns out to be rather inept at this. Susan and Ping-Cho affirm their friendship and try to think their way out of the situation, but without luck. Tegana plots and schemes coolly; Polo tries to follow his best reasoning. In fact, given his background, I can see why he would take the word of a respected warlord over that of an irresponsible girl and some proven liars. The travellers really have made things worse for themselves.
This episode rattles along at a good pace, and gives us the payoff we've been hoping for from all the pussyfooting of the past few episodes. The cliffhanger is excellent, not because anyone is in immediate danger but because it could go in a number of directions (including Polo blaming Ian for the guard's death).
This episode was directed by John Crockett rather than Waris Hussein. It's hard to tell how much of the increased pace is due to this and how much to John Lucarotti's script - I suspect mostly the latter - but one unfortunate result of the change is that we have no telesnaps. Loose Cannon did such a good job that I failed to spot this until afterwards, but it's another one that works well with just audio anyway.
And that's all I really want to say about the episode, so there's plenty of space to include something that's been hanging about since The Roof of the World:
Look and Feel, Part 1: Pulp Adventure
One of the great things about Doctor Who is that it can be almost anything. The TARDIS travels not only in time and space but also in genre - this is more obvious in some stories than others, The Gunfighters being particularly blatant. The pulp serials of the early twentieth century - both in magazines and film - provide a particularly easy fit, sharing features such as cliffhangers, screaming women and a focus on exotic locations. With Marco Polo, though, John Lucarotti and Waris Hussein have taken on some more of the trappings. The way the map is used is a classic pulp serial technique to show the passage of time and geography, particularly in travelogue-based stories such as this. Similarly, Polo's journal is used to give the story more authority, a device I first encountered in books by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
In the 1930s when my mum was a teenager she used to read Burroughs (along with H. Rider Haggard, and others). Her favourites were the Tarzan stories, but she also enjoyed John Carter of Mars. When it came to books she was as much of a hoarder as my dad; she still had some of them in the 1970s, and I read them. My preference was for the Mars books (though I did enjoy Tarzan films, particularly Johnny Weissmuller's), and I hunted down the ones she didn't have. Now, those of you who read science fiction in the 1970s will remember that there were only two types of paperback book cover: spaceships by Chris Foss and his imitators, and women in déshabillé. This was true even for books that featured no spaceships and no women. You can guess which category planetary romances like the John Carter books fell into. I found them embarassing to buy, though fortunately because of the subject matter I didn't feel an urge to hide them from my mother, who also read them.
My mum was not, in the main, a fan of science fiction. She observed that when she was young it was still just about possible to imagine strange civilizations in uncharted reaches of Africa and the Amazon, whereas by my time we had to go to other planets for the same effect. A smart woman.
Anyway, the technique I'm talking about is used in the books as a framing device: quite simply, John Carter has given the story to Burroughs to publish. This distances the author from the story and gives it an added layer of realism. In Marco Polo, of course, we have the added benefit that it is from Polo's own account that we know of his journeys - The Travels of Marco Polo was written by someone who shared a cell with the explorer when he was imprisoned in Genoa and listened to his stories - but it is still a deliberate use of the device. It also means that the narrated soundtrack actually has two narrators!
There are some aspects of the pulps that are absent from the story. There is no emphasis on violence as a solution to problems, for example, and I for one am glad of it as what we have is much more interesting.
I'll have more to say about the pulp influence when I tackle the serial E. But that won't be for a while yet...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 14th March 1964
Viewers: 9.9 million
Chart Position: 31
Appreciation Index: 60
Rating:
7.5/10.
Next Time:
Rider from Shang-Tu.
Monday, 12 September 2011
Episode 16 (D3): Five Hundred Eyes
I'm finding these reviews hard to divide up by episode. I don't know whether it's because I'm coming to the story relatively fresh, with little idea of what's still to come, or if the serial is actually more of a coherent whole than the first three. There's a few things I wanted to say last time that I postponed, since the entry was already quite long; fortunately a couple of them apply just as well to this entry, and the last can wait.
First there's the point on which I finished: the thorny subject of education. Particularly thorny for early Doctor Who, in fact, because it meant that the show was pulled in two directions. Since - as a family drama - the show was aimed partly at children, Head of Drama Sydney Newman considered that the BBC's educational remit applied. The show should entertain but also inform, and this was why the two teachers were included (and why Ian was originally going to be a scientist). It was also part of his reason for disliking the inclusion of "bug-eyed monsters" such as Daleks. Producer Verity Lambert and script editor David Whitaker were more concerned with the day-to-day running and making sure the show survived; and what was the most popular inclusion to date?
Marco Polo is, perhaps, the best example of Newman's Who. It was the last script to be commissioned before the public saw a Dalek, and the first to take that educational remit seriously (as The Tribe of Gum so thoroughly failed to do). So far it's been packed full of information, not just on the historical setting but also on such diverse subjects as chess, assassins, condensation and quartz. I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable in a broad range of subjects because of both opportunity and interest, but I learned something new - the origin of the term 'checkmate'. Mostly it's been worked into the narrative well, though the explanation of condensation is a little heavy-handed. I'll comment on further inclusions as I go, if they are particularly well- or poorly-done.
Moving swiftly on, this is the episode that - so far - works best without visuals, so it's appropriate to tackle the other half of audio-visual survival:
Missing from the Archives, Part 3: Narrated Soundtracks
Back in 1964 we didn't have video recorders, let alone PVRs, Sky+, DVD-Rs and all the other paraphernalia that clutter our living rooms and make it so easy to reschedule TV viewing today. It may sound like I'm gearing up for a Monty Python "when I were a lad" moment, but it really does make a difference. In a sense, all TV was "event TV" in those days. By way of comparison, last Saturday we got in later than planned and then I had to cook. I knew I wouldn't be finished in time for Doctor Who, but it didn't matter. We ate at the table (something we only did on Sundays and for guests When I Were A Lad, because it meant reorganising the living room to get the table out); got the washing up done so we could all relax; then went and watched it about 8:15. Sorted.
Anyway, if you wanted to experience an episode of Who again after broadcast back then, the weapon of choice was a tape recorder. Not even a cassette recorder - they had only just been introduced, and hadn't taken off yet - but a reel-to-reel recorder. At one stage we had at least five in our house thanks to the inveterate hoarding instinct of my dad, who "rescued" damaged ones that had been chucked out at the hospital where my parents worked. Occasionally he even managed to get them going again, but I don't think that was the important thing to him; he kept them all.
Anyway (again), many people recorded the show, usually by pointing a microphone at the telly. Although this generally gave poor quality results it was good enough for home use; and, when interest in recovering missing episodes grew, the existence of multiple off-air recordings allowed the BBC's unofficial Restoration Team (including composer Mark Ayres) to "remaster" the audio and produce acceptable versions. Hooray!
Except... well, sometimes you need a little more to understand what's going on. These episodes weren't designed for audio only, after all. Imagine listening to the fight scene between Kal and Za in The Firemaker - you'd have no chance of working out what was going on. So the BBC got some of the actors to record linking narration. In this case, William Russell.
Russell is the oldest actor to do this. His voice shows his age, but like David Attenborough's it has matured well and he's a pleasure to listen to. An oddity (but one I didn't notice at first) is that he opens the narration with "Marco Polo by John Lucarotti" and then, following the recap, announces "Episode Three: Five Hundred Eyes". Which is how we think of it now, of course, but back then it was just "Five Hundred Eyes by John Lucarotti". A minor point, but perhaps worth raising.
This is a particularly slow episode, but fun. I can't imagine modern Who stopping the action for three minutes while one of the characters tells a story, yet here it works. The music helps; I noticed it this time and last. It's used sparingly but effectively, capturing the mood well.
This entry's getting long again, but I've just time to mention one more oddity: we get to see the inside of the TARDIS in the middle of a story! This is a first (unless you count the initial flight from 1963 London), and made stranger by the way the inside is so closely connected to the outside. Close enough to create the condensation mentioned earlier.
You try and tell the young people of today that; they won't believe you.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 7th March 1964
Viewers: 9.4 million
Chart Position: 34
Appreciation Index: 62
Rating:
6/10.
Next Time:
The Wall of Lies.
First there's the point on which I finished: the thorny subject of education. Particularly thorny for early Doctor Who, in fact, because it meant that the show was pulled in two directions. Since - as a family drama - the show was aimed partly at children, Head of Drama Sydney Newman considered that the BBC's educational remit applied. The show should entertain but also inform, and this was why the two teachers were included (and why Ian was originally going to be a scientist). It was also part of his reason for disliking the inclusion of "bug-eyed monsters" such as Daleks. Producer Verity Lambert and script editor David Whitaker were more concerned with the day-to-day running and making sure the show survived; and what was the most popular inclusion to date?
Marco Polo is, perhaps, the best example of Newman's Who. It was the last script to be commissioned before the public saw a Dalek, and the first to take that educational remit seriously (as The Tribe of Gum so thoroughly failed to do). So far it's been packed full of information, not just on the historical setting but also on such diverse subjects as chess, assassins, condensation and quartz. I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable in a broad range of subjects because of both opportunity and interest, but I learned something new - the origin of the term 'checkmate'. Mostly it's been worked into the narrative well, though the explanation of condensation is a little heavy-handed. I'll comment on further inclusions as I go, if they are particularly well- or poorly-done.
Moving swiftly on, this is the episode that - so far - works best without visuals, so it's appropriate to tackle the other half of audio-visual survival:
Missing from the Archives, Part 3: Narrated Soundtracks
Back in 1964 we didn't have video recorders, let alone PVRs, Sky+, DVD-Rs and all the other paraphernalia that clutter our living rooms and make it so easy to reschedule TV viewing today. It may sound like I'm gearing up for a Monty Python "when I were a lad" moment, but it really does make a difference. In a sense, all TV was "event TV" in those days. By way of comparison, last Saturday we got in later than planned and then I had to cook. I knew I wouldn't be finished in time for Doctor Who, but it didn't matter. We ate at the table (something we only did on Sundays and for guests When I Were A Lad, because it meant reorganising the living room to get the table out); got the washing up done so we could all relax; then went and watched it about 8:15. Sorted.
Anyway, if you wanted to experience an episode of Who again after broadcast back then, the weapon of choice was a tape recorder. Not even a cassette recorder - they had only just been introduced, and hadn't taken off yet - but a reel-to-reel recorder. At one stage we had at least five in our house thanks to the inveterate hoarding instinct of my dad, who "rescued" damaged ones that had been chucked out at the hospital where my parents worked. Occasionally he even managed to get them going again, but I don't think that was the important thing to him; he kept them all.
Anyway (again), many people recorded the show, usually by pointing a microphone at the telly. Although this generally gave poor quality results it was good enough for home use; and, when interest in recovering missing episodes grew, the existence of multiple off-air recordings allowed the BBC's unofficial Restoration Team (including composer Mark Ayres) to "remaster" the audio and produce acceptable versions. Hooray!
Except... well, sometimes you need a little more to understand what's going on. These episodes weren't designed for audio only, after all. Imagine listening to the fight scene between Kal and Za in The Firemaker - you'd have no chance of working out what was going on. So the BBC got some of the actors to record linking narration. In this case, William Russell.
Russell is the oldest actor to do this. His voice shows his age, but like David Attenborough's it has matured well and he's a pleasure to listen to. An oddity (but one I didn't notice at first) is that he opens the narration with "Marco Polo by John Lucarotti" and then, following the recap, announces "Episode Three: Five Hundred Eyes". Which is how we think of it now, of course, but back then it was just "Five Hundred Eyes by John Lucarotti". A minor point, but perhaps worth raising.
This is a particularly slow episode, but fun. I can't imagine modern Who stopping the action for three minutes while one of the characters tells a story, yet here it works. The music helps; I noticed it this time and last. It's used sparingly but effectively, capturing the mood well.
This entry's getting long again, but I've just time to mention one more oddity: we get to see the inside of the TARDIS in the middle of a story! This is a first (unless you count the initial flight from 1963 London), and made stranger by the way the inside is so closely connected to the outside. Close enough to create the condensation mentioned earlier.
You try and tell the young people of today that; they won't believe you.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 7th March 1964
Viewers: 9.4 million
Chart Position: 34
Appreciation Index: 62
Rating:
6/10.
Next Time:
The Wall of Lies.
Friday, 9 September 2011
Episode 15 (D2): The Singing Sands
The Doctor is notably absent from most of this episode, with just a single line of dialogue. While it wasn't actually a holiday for William Hartnell, it must have given him a bit of relief from the weekly grind. Meanwhile Susan gets to play a major part, and with Ping-Cho as a foil acts like a more normal teenager. Of course, she's still a "peril monkey" (to steal a phrase from Elizabeth Sandifer), but to be fair it was sheer bad luck that the two youngsters got caught in that sandstorm.
Shortly after listening to and watching this I saw the first couple of episodes of the 1976 serial The Seeds of Doom, for the first time since original broadcast. There's a snowstorm in that story - not brilliantly done by modern standards but still quite effective - and it made me wonder how the sandstorm had been achieved in 1964. The reconstruction I was watching added effects to the still shots to make it seem that they were obscured by moving sand; not ideal, but better than nothing. Which brings me on to the reason I can talk about the visuals at all:
Missing from the Archives, Part 2: Telesnaps and Reconstructions
From 1947 to 1969 a man named John Cura took high-speed photos of television broadcasts, which he then sold to the creators of the programs for use in publicity or as a record of their work. As you might imagine this raised some thorny copyright issues, but for many broadcasts they now provide the only visual record in existence. Most of the 108 missing episodes of Doctor Who have telesnaps; many were published in Doctor Who Magazine, and the BBC have used them to publish a number of photonovels on their website.
Different groups of people have combined the soundtracks (recorded off-air by fans) with these telesnaps to produce reconstructions of the lost episodes. Technically this is illegal, but it is tolerated by the BBC provided certain conditions are met. One such group is Loose Cannon, who made the "recon" I am using for these reviews.
Telesnaps for serial D were not available for many years. In 2004 Derek Handley of Loose Cannon obtained copies for six of the episodes from director Waris Hussein following a meeting the previous year, with DWM paying for the usage rights.
This is the third Loose Cannon reconstruction I've seen and they did something a little different with it. There were a number of colour photographs taken during shooting; using these for reference LC have colourised the telesnaps, producing what is in effect the earliest colour story. They usually try to provide some "extras", including an introduction from one of the original actors; and here again they have gone the extra mile (if you'll pardon the pun). As well as a brief introduction, Mark Eden provides a new pre-titles sequence for the first episode, with an older Marco Polo still updating his journal and looking back on events 35 years in the past. This is a nice addition; although the scripted monologue doesn't quite match John Lucarotti's originals it fits well with the feel of the serial - about which, more in a future instalment.
What immediately strikes me is how Hollywood it looks! William Russell, Derren Nesbitt and (particularly) Mark Eden all look as if they've stepped out of an Errol Flynn movie - handsome, clean-cut and brightly dressed. A second glance reveals the bags under Russell's eyes, a sign of the pressure the regular cast was under, but this doesn't detract from the look. It is certainly a lavish production, and I can understand why some consider Marco Polo the greatest loss of the videotape junkings. At some point I would like to see Russell's earlier series, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, when he was at his action hero height; but that will have to wait, since there's still too much Who for me to spend my money on at present.
What, then, of the plot? In some ways Lucarotti has provided us with an odd sort of setup. The story's structured like a travelogue, but the Doctor and his friends don't actually care where they're going. Unlike the first two serials the Ship is with them the whole time, so the goal isn't to get back there. Rather, they just want a chance to repair it and leave; everything else is just distraction. Still, it's an interesting distraction, with good settings, smart dialogue and enough going on to keep it entertaining. It's only when I sit to write this that I notice how little of what happens is relevant to the Doctor and his friends.
This episode brought home to me how far the series has come. The TARDIS is referred to by name more often, rather than being just "the Ship"; and it has become a home, a safe haven, even for Iananbarbara. They might still want to get back to 1960s London but the TARDIS is now a happy place for them to be, and being shut out has a different significance. It might be a case of Stockholm syndrome but they are now firmly on the Doctor's side.
And as the sun sinks slowly in the West, we wave goodnight to our wanderers in the fourth dimension as they wander instead through the Gobi Desert. Or not, since if we're being geographically accurate it's actually the Taklamakan desert. Except it isn't even that; it's a mixture of Ealing Studios stage 3B and the tiny Lime Grove Studio D. And so, once again, I have fulfilled my blog's educational remit - about which, more next time...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 29th February 1964
Viewers: 9.4 million
Chart Position: 33
Appreciation Index: 62
Rating:
5/10.
Next Time:
Five Hundred Eyes.
Shortly after listening to and watching this I saw the first couple of episodes of the 1976 serial The Seeds of Doom, for the first time since original broadcast. There's a snowstorm in that story - not brilliantly done by modern standards but still quite effective - and it made me wonder how the sandstorm had been achieved in 1964. The reconstruction I was watching added effects to the still shots to make it seem that they were obscured by moving sand; not ideal, but better than nothing. Which brings me on to the reason I can talk about the visuals at all:
Missing from the Archives, Part 2: Telesnaps and Reconstructions
From 1947 to 1969 a man named John Cura took high-speed photos of television broadcasts, which he then sold to the creators of the programs for use in publicity or as a record of their work. As you might imagine this raised some thorny copyright issues, but for many broadcasts they now provide the only visual record in existence. Most of the 108 missing episodes of Doctor Who have telesnaps; many were published in Doctor Who Magazine, and the BBC have used them to publish a number of photonovels on their website.
Different groups of people have combined the soundtracks (recorded off-air by fans) with these telesnaps to produce reconstructions of the lost episodes. Technically this is illegal, but it is tolerated by the BBC provided certain conditions are met. One such group is Loose Cannon, who made the "recon" I am using for these reviews.
Telesnaps for serial D were not available for many years. In 2004 Derek Handley of Loose Cannon obtained copies for six of the episodes from director Waris Hussein following a meeting the previous year, with DWM paying for the usage rights.
This is the third Loose Cannon reconstruction I've seen and they did something a little different with it. There were a number of colour photographs taken during shooting; using these for reference LC have colourised the telesnaps, producing what is in effect the earliest colour story. They usually try to provide some "extras", including an introduction from one of the original actors; and here again they have gone the extra mile (if you'll pardon the pun). As well as a brief introduction, Mark Eden provides a new pre-titles sequence for the first episode, with an older Marco Polo still updating his journal and looking back on events 35 years in the past. This is a nice addition; although the scripted monologue doesn't quite match John Lucarotti's originals it fits well with the feel of the serial - about which, more in a future instalment.
What immediately strikes me is how Hollywood it looks! William Russell, Derren Nesbitt and (particularly) Mark Eden all look as if they've stepped out of an Errol Flynn movie - handsome, clean-cut and brightly dressed. A second glance reveals the bags under Russell's eyes, a sign of the pressure the regular cast was under, but this doesn't detract from the look. It is certainly a lavish production, and I can understand why some consider Marco Polo the greatest loss of the videotape junkings. At some point I would like to see Russell's earlier series, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, when he was at his action hero height; but that will have to wait, since there's still too much Who for me to spend my money on at present.
What, then, of the plot? In some ways Lucarotti has provided us with an odd sort of setup. The story's structured like a travelogue, but the Doctor and his friends don't actually care where they're going. Unlike the first two serials the Ship is with them the whole time, so the goal isn't to get back there. Rather, they just want a chance to repair it and leave; everything else is just distraction. Still, it's an interesting distraction, with good settings, smart dialogue and enough going on to keep it entertaining. It's only when I sit to write this that I notice how little of what happens is relevant to the Doctor and his friends.
This episode brought home to me how far the series has come. The TARDIS is referred to by name more often, rather than being just "the Ship"; and it has become a home, a safe haven, even for Iananbarbara. They might still want to get back to 1960s London but the TARDIS is now a happy place for them to be, and being shut out has a different significance. It might be a case of Stockholm syndrome but they are now firmly on the Doctor's side.
And as the sun sinks slowly in the West, we wave goodnight to our wanderers in the fourth dimension as they wander instead through the Gobi Desert. Or not, since if we're being geographically accurate it's actually the Taklamakan desert. Except it isn't even that; it's a mixture of Ealing Studios stage 3B and the tiny Lime Grove Studio D. And so, once again, I have fulfilled my blog's educational remit - about which, more next time...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 29th February 1964
Viewers: 9.4 million
Chart Position: 33
Appreciation Index: 62
Rating:
5/10.
Next Time:
Five Hundred Eyes.
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Episode 14 (D1): The Roof of the World
There are two things new about this review. For one there's the fact that we have hit our first missing episode - indeed, our first missing story, since no episodes survive. This is quite frustrating for all the expected reasons, but also because I usually spend some time talking about the direction and I can't do that so much without the visuals. On top of which it's Waris Hussein's second (and final) story so I would have liked to compare the two. Hey ho, if I run short of things to say I'll just talk about why the story's missing instead. We'll see how it goes.
The second new thing is that I've never properly experienced this story before. I'll be reviewing it as I go, making notes on each episode before watching the one that follows. I'm not as ignorant as a viewer from 1964, sadly, but I don't know a lot about it. Again, we'll have to see how this affects things.
The episode opens well, with a TARDIS crew much more relaxed with each other. The Doctor is as grumpy as ever, but this is no longer directed at Ian (whose name he gets wrong again, in what has already become a tradition). William Hartnell makes some other mistakes that are almost certainly genuine fluffs, but nothing that can't be put down to the vagueness of the Doctor. In fact his personality displayed here - as a grumpy, slightly doddering yet brilliant old man who is out of touch with every place he visits but observes more carefully than other people realise - really sums up the Doctor for me. Hartnell may be tired, but he seems like he's enjoying himself anyway. His scene with Ping-Cho shows his softer (but still calculating) side, and when he collapses into fits of giggles at the idea of not knowing what to do I was reminded just how much I like Hartnell's portrayal.
Susan gets some good moments as well. We see her enthusiasm, quickly reined in by both Ian and the Doctor (whose request for help is an obvious excuse to keep her out of harm's way), and her easy friendship with Ping-Cho, which is lightly handled. Iananbarbara don't have so much to do, but the only off-key note is the latter's insistence that the mongols weren't human.
I've mentioned how opening episodes are a good opportunity to present a mystery, but for the first time that isn't done here. There's some discussion about where they've landed, but Ian mentioning that the Himalayas are known as "the Roof of the World" when that's the title of the episode is a bit of a giveaway. I suppose it's possible that some people thought Barbara might have seen a yeti, but it wasn't built up that way. It even seems obvious from the start that Tegana is the shifty one, and not just for racial reasons (although at this period in TV history it would have been possible for such an assumption to have been made). It's more Columbo than Poirot, but I find I don't mind at all.
And actually, this very obviousness sets up the big surprise of the episode. It's not Tegana that causes the travellers problems; it's Marco Polo, who impounds their ship. Our heroes have two sides to contend with, neither of whom has their welfare at heart, though at the moment they only know about Polo. Meanwhile Tegana twirls his moustache and plots...
Missing from the Archives, Part 1: Experiencing the Absent
So, given that (so far as we can tell) this episode doesn't exist any more, how come I've written so much about it? I actually own it in three forms, and tried out two for this review. First I listened to the narrated soundtrack CD. This is how I most often choose to experience missing episodes, but reviewing is a bit different and I wanted something more. I then sought out the Loose Cannon reconstruction and watched that (Other Reconstructions Are Available). I could have read the script, which was provided as an extra with the soundtrack, or listened to the soundtrack without narration. I could have bought the novelisation (by original writer John Lucarotti); with some stories there are also talking book readings of the novelisations, though that's not yet true for Marco Polo.
That's a lot of ways to experience something that "doesn't exist"! None of them are the original, of course; but on the other hand, even to view existing episodes as originally intended is impossible now because we aren't living in the right timeframe. Still, we can at least gain some appreciation of the missing stories - which will become more important in a couple of series' time...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 22nd February 1964
Viewers: 9.4 million
Chart Position: 33
Appreciation Index: 63
Rating:
6.5/10.
Next Time:
The Singing Sands.
The second new thing is that I've never properly experienced this story before. I'll be reviewing it as I go, making notes on each episode before watching the one that follows. I'm not as ignorant as a viewer from 1964, sadly, but I don't know a lot about it. Again, we'll have to see how this affects things.
The episode opens well, with a TARDIS crew much more relaxed with each other. The Doctor is as grumpy as ever, but this is no longer directed at Ian (whose name he gets wrong again, in what has already become a tradition). William Hartnell makes some other mistakes that are almost certainly genuine fluffs, but nothing that can't be put down to the vagueness of the Doctor. In fact his personality displayed here - as a grumpy, slightly doddering yet brilliant old man who is out of touch with every place he visits but observes more carefully than other people realise - really sums up the Doctor for me. Hartnell may be tired, but he seems like he's enjoying himself anyway. His scene with Ping-Cho shows his softer (but still calculating) side, and when he collapses into fits of giggles at the idea of not knowing what to do I was reminded just how much I like Hartnell's portrayal.
Susan gets some good moments as well. We see her enthusiasm, quickly reined in by both Ian and the Doctor (whose request for help is an obvious excuse to keep her out of harm's way), and her easy friendship with Ping-Cho, which is lightly handled. Iananbarbara don't have so much to do, but the only off-key note is the latter's insistence that the mongols weren't human.
I've mentioned how opening episodes are a good opportunity to present a mystery, but for the first time that isn't done here. There's some discussion about where they've landed, but Ian mentioning that the Himalayas are known as "the Roof of the World" when that's the title of the episode is a bit of a giveaway. I suppose it's possible that some people thought Barbara might have seen a yeti, but it wasn't built up that way. It even seems obvious from the start that Tegana is the shifty one, and not just for racial reasons (although at this period in TV history it would have been possible for such an assumption to have been made). It's more Columbo than Poirot, but I find I don't mind at all.
And actually, this very obviousness sets up the big surprise of the episode. It's not Tegana that causes the travellers problems; it's Marco Polo, who impounds their ship. Our heroes have two sides to contend with, neither of whom has their welfare at heart, though at the moment they only know about Polo. Meanwhile Tegana twirls his moustache and plots...
Missing from the Archives, Part 1: Experiencing the Absent
So, given that (so far as we can tell) this episode doesn't exist any more, how come I've written so much about it? I actually own it in three forms, and tried out two for this review. First I listened to the narrated soundtrack CD. This is how I most often choose to experience missing episodes, but reviewing is a bit different and I wanted something more. I then sought out the Loose Cannon reconstruction and watched that (Other Reconstructions Are Available). I could have read the script, which was provided as an extra with the soundtrack, or listened to the soundtrack without narration. I could have bought the novelisation (by original writer John Lucarotti); with some stories there are also talking book readings of the novelisations, though that's not yet true for Marco Polo.
That's a lot of ways to experience something that "doesn't exist"! None of them are the original, of course; but on the other hand, even to view existing episodes as originally intended is impossible now because we aren't living in the right timeframe. Still, we can at least gain some appreciation of the missing stories - which will become more important in a couple of series' time...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 22nd February 1964
Viewers: 9.4 million
Chart Position: 33
Appreciation Index: 63
Rating:
6.5/10.
Next Time:
The Singing Sands.
Monday, 5 September 2011
Wanderers in the Fourth Dimension: Episodes 14-42
Well, I'm back from my summer break and feeling refreshed, so I'm glad I decided to do that. And hey, with a spontaneous bonus review it wasn't a summer completely free of my ramblings! Even though I didn't get as far ahead as I hoped thanks to the pressures and joys of parenthood - I haven't written up all of Marco Polo yet - I'm feeling bullish.
My current plan is to keep going until the end of the first series then take a Christmas break; If I've counted correctly, that should be 38 entries in 15½ weeks. That's not quite five posts per fortnight, which should be doable.
And if it isn't I'll retroactively decide that by "bullish" I meant "stupid" rather than "hopeful"...
Next Time:
The Roof of the World.
My current plan is to keep going until the end of the first series then take a Christmas break; If I've counted correctly, that should be 38 entries in 15½ weeks. That's not quite five posts per fortnight, which should be doable.
And if it isn't I'll retroactively decide that by "bullish" I meant "stupid" rather than "hopeful"...
Next Time:
The Roof of the World.
Thursday, 18 August 2011
Out of Step #1 - Telos Novella 1: Time and Relative
Doctor Who has been running for a long time now, and every period of its history has been revisited in at least one medium. It's not surprising, therefore, that stories have been written that predate An Unearthly Child (in the Doctor's own chronology); but this does present a problem to the marathon reviewer. If I don't start with the first TV episode I lose a sense of the development of the show, but if I do there's no obvious place to review the stories that are set earlier.
Fortunately this wasn't really a concern for me when I started my marathon, because I'd only read a few short stories set in this period and I didn't plan on reviewing them. Now I've read a more substantial piece, and luckily it's happened while I'm on my summer break. This provides me with an answer: I'll slot them in when nothing else is happening. That way, it'll also act as a bonus to tide you over until I start up properly again in September.
On to this book, then. Telos Publishing (who presumably take their name from the Cybermen's adopted homeworld rather than the Greek word for "purpose") began releasing a series of hardback novellas in 2001. Rather than getting a Who luminary such as Terrance Dicks to write the first one (and in fact this remains the only significant book line that Dicks hasn't written for), they turned to established horror and film writer Kim Newman.
If Telos' goal (or purpose) was to distinguish the line from the mountains of Who books already published, choosing Newman was a good move. My overall impression reading this was that it isn't so much a Who book as an SF horror story that happens to be about Susan and feature the Doctor. I don't mean that the characters are shoehorned into a story that isn't theirs - quite the reverse, in fact, as it is a very personal story that could only be about them. No, the difference is that it ignores the huge amoount we learn about Time Lords and the Doctor post-1963, and instead gives us glimpses of an alternate version.
I found this slighly off-putting at first but it's actually quite neat, fitting in well with the experimental nature of the first season. The story goes a fair way towards explaining why the Doctor and Susan are the way they are when we first meet them at the beginning of the TV show. It's a good explanation, and the fact that it doesn't fit with our view of Gallifrey post-1975 is a loss for the general canon more than a problem with this book. This aspect is also made an integral part of the story rather than a piece of tacked-on fanwank.
So, what of the rest of the story? The setting is Coal Hill in March of 1963. In our world London was coming out of its coldest Winter for more than two centuries, presumably the inspiration for the main threat in the novella; but in the Whoniverse (is that a useful word? I think it is) the temperatures are still plummeting. The Cold is an interesting enemy, one that could not have been realised effectively on-screen at the time. It reminds me a little of the Flood from The Waters of Mars, and both stories take a ludicrous idea and make it scary anyway. The violence levels are high with some gory passages; having recently rewatched the early episodes this seems entirely fitting, but being a bit squeamish this did affect my enjoyment slightly.
Time and Relative was never intended for the screen, of course, and the novella would be nothing special without our privileged viewpoint into Susan's head. We are reading her journal, seeing how she settles in to life at school (or rather doesn't); and it is people's reactions to the threat (and to Susan's way of dealing with it) that bring the story to life. There are also a lot of nice period touches, many of which I remember from my childhood (including a few I was surprised to discover stretched back that far) and some I'd forgotten until prompted. I'm five years younger than Newman so I imagine some of this was drawn from his early memories, and it certainly enhances the experience of reading it.
Overall, then, a thoroughly enjoyable read, and a great start to a new line.
Enjoy the rest of your summer!
Published:
Date: 23rd November 2001
ISBN: 978-1903889022
Rating:
Mine: 9/10.
2011 Gallifrey Base Non-Dynamic Rankings: 8.17, 4th out of 14 Telos Novellas, 19th out of 286 overall.
Fortunately this wasn't really a concern for me when I started my marathon, because I'd only read a few short stories set in this period and I didn't plan on reviewing them. Now I've read a more substantial piece, and luckily it's happened while I'm on my summer break. This provides me with an answer: I'll slot them in when nothing else is happening. That way, it'll also act as a bonus to tide you over until I start up properly again in September.
On to this book, then. Telos Publishing (who presumably take their name from the Cybermen's adopted homeworld rather than the Greek word for "purpose") began releasing a series of hardback novellas in 2001. Rather than getting a Who luminary such as Terrance Dicks to write the first one (and in fact this remains the only significant book line that Dicks hasn't written for), they turned to established horror and film writer Kim Newman.
If Telos' goal (or purpose) was to distinguish the line from the mountains of Who books already published, choosing Newman was a good move. My overall impression reading this was that it isn't so much a Who book as an SF horror story that happens to be about Susan and feature the Doctor. I don't mean that the characters are shoehorned into a story that isn't theirs - quite the reverse, in fact, as it is a very personal story that could only be about them. No, the difference is that it ignores the huge amoount we learn about Time Lords and the Doctor post-1963, and instead gives us glimpses of an alternate version.
I found this slighly off-putting at first but it's actually quite neat, fitting in well with the experimental nature of the first season. The story goes a fair way towards explaining why the Doctor and Susan are the way they are when we first meet them at the beginning of the TV show. It's a good explanation, and the fact that it doesn't fit with our view of Gallifrey post-1975 is a loss for the general canon more than a problem with this book. This aspect is also made an integral part of the story rather than a piece of tacked-on fanwank.
So, what of the rest of the story? The setting is Coal Hill in March of 1963. In our world London was coming out of its coldest Winter for more than two centuries, presumably the inspiration for the main threat in the novella; but in the Whoniverse (is that a useful word? I think it is) the temperatures are still plummeting. The Cold is an interesting enemy, one that could not have been realised effectively on-screen at the time. It reminds me a little of the Flood from The Waters of Mars, and both stories take a ludicrous idea and make it scary anyway. The violence levels are high with some gory passages; having recently rewatched the early episodes this seems entirely fitting, but being a bit squeamish this did affect my enjoyment slightly.
Time and Relative was never intended for the screen, of course, and the novella would be nothing special without our privileged viewpoint into Susan's head. We are reading her journal, seeing how she settles in to life at school (or rather doesn't); and it is people's reactions to the threat (and to Susan's way of dealing with it) that bring the story to life. There are also a lot of nice period touches, many of which I remember from my childhood (including a few I was surprised to discover stretched back that far) and some I'd forgotten until prompted. I'm five years younger than Newman so I imagine some of this was drawn from his early memories, and it certainly enhances the experience of reading it.
Overall, then, a thoroughly enjoyable read, and a great start to a new line.
Enjoy the rest of your summer!
Published:
Date: 23rd November 2001
ISBN: 978-1903889022
Rating:
Mine: 9/10.
2011 Gallifrey Base Non-Dynamic Rankings: 8.17, 4th out of 14 Telos Novellas, 19th out of 286 overall.
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