Farewell, Great Macedon [Doctor Who, Diversion 1]

Farewell, Great Macedon by Moris Farhi

1964/2010

And so we slip through time to the far-off year of 2010, an age of smartphones and laptops light years away from Lime Grove. It’s a funny place to zip off to this early in my marathon, I know, but once I was clued into the existence of the Lost Stories range on Big Finish, I got really curious about just what it boasted. One I had on my “want” list just so happened to fit neatly after Marco Polo, which was broadcast at the time this audio was written as a prospective TV script. It’s serendipity.

So, what shall we make of Farewell Great Macedon? It’s obviously a highly competent story with only a few awkward moments (particularly at the very start, with Susan’s inexplicable worries about the afterlife) and I could easily imagine this slotting into the time period we’re traversing right now. Honestly, with as many awkward moments as I’ve spotted so far (and why do they all seem to involve poor Susan?) it fits in all the better for them. Raising paeans asking why this didn’t make it to television is probably a waste of time, because it’s been said before. I’d rather spend this space exploring just where it fits into the canon that’s swiftly unfolding before us.

It’s interesting that this story’s conception came at the time of Doctor Who’s first Hartnell historicals. It is very much of the mould that was only just being set by Marco Polo, and all the more impressive for matching its type so soon. Whatever anyone might think of them now, these types of stories were clearly making an impression, something owed perhaps in part to the BBC’s immaculate work on historical sets and costumes. This story is distant in time and space from the last, showing us the dying days of Alexander the Great’s world-empire. (And wasn’t the great Macedonian himself briefly mentioned in Marco Polo? I wonder.) Throughout this story, the Doctor and his companions watch Alexander’s last days unfold, mostly unwitting of the fact that they were so near the end. The tale moves in the fashion of a Shakespearean tragedy, Alexander’s allies dropping off one by one until only the king himself remains to waste away in the aftermath.

I could spend this whole post taking my first chance at spinning my opinions as an LGBT person on the themes present in this story (and especially the subtext between Alexander and Hephaestion) into the first step on a longer trek about that subject in this marathon. But... I'll save my energy for the televised stories on that front. There's a different long winded spiel I want to go on this time around.

It’s a nice story. A gorgeous one, even, which provided upwards of three hours of happy entertainment while I was busy working, my earbuds popped in. William Russell and Carole Ann Ford are spot-on in their evocation of Bill Hartnell and Jacqueline Hill in a way that was really very heartwarming. I wish I could have stopped my nitpicking. Antiquity is a period of history that I’m reasonably familiar with, and I was certain almost from the start that embellishments were being made. This really shouldn’t be a shocker; every fictionalized historical story does the same thing. Here it’s done to maneuver the pieces of the play into place for the tragedy it wants to spin. Although all of the historical figures portrayed in this story really existed and (for the most part) really died in the manner they did, the timeframe is heavily compressed to move it into the scope of the story. Alexander’s chums Cleitus, Calanus, and Hephaestion all died before this story was set, some of them even several years prior. For his own part, Antipater lived some years longer and served as regent of Alexander’s empire for a time. This is all perfectly forgivable, I think. After all, it would have been a bummer to reach the end of this story and not have the chief antagonist see his comeuppance.

Simple allowances like these don’t really bug me. What stuck with me through this was the mythologizing of history which this story partakes in. The greatest example of this here is in the characterization of Alexander. He comes across in this story as being very easy-going, a true idealist who believes in his vision of uniting East and West, and being particularly skeptical of the divine claims of the likes of Iollas. Farewell Great Macedon plainly goes to considerable lengths to idealize Alexander and almost hold him up to the standard of the Enlightenment-era morals which Ian and Barbara futilely try to introduce to his court. His lapses in character in this story, from his violent temper to his sulkiness to his wartorn track record, are all portrayed chiefly as small foibles possessed by an otherwise great man.

Don’t think that I’m about to launch into some sort of polemic against a man who’s been dead for over two thousand years; there’s no point. It’s not like I even dislike Alexander, because he is a fascinating figure in history. But it very much rubbed me the wrong way to see him idealized in this manner, made part of a mythological Babylon that comes across as more of a fairy tale than a real historical. Even the beautifully rendered Hanging Gardens which dominate the scenery of this story didn’t really exist. This story takes an even bleaker spin on the line from The Aztecs, insisting that “one can no more change the past than you can change the future”. And yet this story that in another time and place might have made it onto a family sci-fi program in the UK’s twentieth century very much does change the past, by presenting it to us in a way that simply makes for a good story. The real Alexander, the man who sought to rule the world and who honestly believed himself to be a son of Zeus, died on a muggy Mesopotamian evening in 323 BCE. But in the form of stories like this, he lives on - and wouldn’t he be proud of how some look up to him?

Farewell, great Macedon.

Unforgettable Dialogue

"Take me into your garden, O Babylon..."

"A man becomes a god by doing the impossible."

"Do you mind, I'm talking!" (Oh, I'd give my left foot to have heard Jacqueline Hill read that line...)

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 11 October 2017.)

Marco Polo [Doctor Who, Story 4]

Marco Polo by John Lucarotti

22 February - 4 April 1964

Episode One - [breathlessly] The Roof of the World!

And so, we speedily arrive at Doctor Who's first lost story. Marco Polo comes with something of an intimidating reputation, a big enough one, in fact, to make me wish I'd known nothing about this story going in. But before we get to the whys and the hows, I'll detour into another point: this is also Doctor Who's first historical! No, the last three episodes of An Unearthly Child don't count - as I said, there's no basis in actual geography, personages, or historical events involved there, it's pure allegory. Marco Polo kicks off the "Hartnell historicals" or "pure historicals" which will, in one way or another, be with us until the midpoint of this thread in 1966. I'll make no secret of being strongly biased towards this genre. I'm a history nerd of the largest and most squeaky variety, and visiting historical places and events is never not a draw factor for me when they feature in the series.

Now, the lead we got at the end of the previous episode, The Brink of Disaster, is actually quite misleading - winding up in the mountains and finding a giant footprint makes us believe that we're on the verge of a story about the Yeti or something. As it turns out, that's not due for another few years. I'm not sure if I should make this out to be a clever subversion or a relic of a story idea that didn't end up panning out. When we get into the story proper, we find Ian quickly dismissing it as having grown as a result of melting in the sun, and learn not too long after that we aren't even in the Himalayas. Figures. Where we do wind up is in the Pamir range, or as the characters keep reminding us in their most breathless tones, the roof of the world!

Their welcoming party to this remote landscape is a pack of Mongol warriors who suspect them to be evil spirits. I’m not sure how to feel about our first meeting with non-European earthfolk being with shifty, superstitious, violent types, but I can only chalk it up to accident for now and move along. There will be more even-handed portrayals later in this story anyway. Their hands are stayed by the calm tones of the square-jawed, forthright adventurer, Marco Polo, here played rather darned well by Mark(o) Eden. His counterpart through this journey is The Warlord Tegana, an instantly untrustworthy character who, nevertheless, won’t have his true colors revealed to Marco for a few episodes yet. Also in their entourage, the quite likeable Ping-Cho, on who more in a bit.

As the group travels out of the Pamirs and into the deserts of western China, Marco tells our plucky protagonists that he is taking the TARDIS for himself as a gift for the Khan. This obviously causes some consternation among the regulars. Things, we learn, are about to get more complicated still as Tegana steals away, plotting against Marco and the TARDIS crew in exactly the way we probably expected him to from the start. But in any case, for all the playful poking I have to give the idiosyncrasies of The Roof of the World, it does a marvelous job of laying out a world for us. There is very much the sense that a fantastic journey is starting here...

Episode Two - The Singing Sands

Was Bill Hartnell on vacation during production of this episode? He vanishes only to have a single line of dialogue towards the very end. All power to him, I guess; having heard all I have about production conditions back then, he deserved it. The episode doesn’t suffer unduly for it at any rate. Title placement notwithstanding, the Doctor is simply not the leading man yet. Even in the other episodes of this serial, Susan, Barbara, and Ian all do a perfectly good job of tugging along the plot when the guest cast isn’t.

Speaking of Susan, in The Singing Sands she finally has a much-needed chance to shine. Putting her opposite Ping-Cho was an inspired choice. Around a character her own age instead of a bunch of adults telling her to calm down, Susan actually gets a chance to express her thoughts and concerns in a relatable way, and to enjoy a rather sweet friendship besides. That said, Susan also gets a very good conversation with Barbara in this episode, so what we really seem to be looking at is a high point of sorts. Thank goodness.

The other points of note in this episode are the desert, and the titular sands there. It’s hard to get a feel for with still images, but the desert sets definitely look sweeping and beautiful, and the sandstorm itself is absolutely creepy, with the howling sound effects and all. I’m not sure when Doctor Who’s reputation for dodgy special effects is going to start coming in; everything I’ve seen so far has been serviceable at worst and pretty impressive at best.

Episode Three - Five Hundred Eyes

Sandstorms thus behind us and the Doctor up and about from his nap, we turn the proverbial corner into Five Hundred Eyes and smack into a wall. This wall is called “EDUCATIONAL MANDATE”. Having taught a 13th century traveller about condensation (sation, sation, sation…) the actual action can commence after this strange detour. Tegana returns from his latest bout of brooding. Barbara, bless her, is immediately suspicious of the bunk story he gives to explain his absence, but it doesn’t amount to much yet. The entourage must move along.

When they do, they finally leave the wilderness settings of the first two episodes and into the land of gorgeous BBC historical sets. Skaro had an iconic look about it in places, but this is what attractive scenesetting should look like - plenty of rich detail for the viewer to check out, even in still motion. We get to stay a while in Lop and appreciate it while Ping-Cho engages in some worldbuilding, telling the story of Aladdin and the Assassins, which ties in, ultimately, with the titular location of this episode. It’s - joy! - another cave. If there’s a cave in The Keys of Marinus too, I’m going to go bonkers. Three of the four stories so far have one - they really had to get some mileage out of that set, huh? The story is nice at any rate. It inspires Barbara to check the place out, much to her own detriment, forcing the others to come looking once they discover her absence...

Episode Four - The Wall of Lies

A duplicitous Tegana tries to trick our heroes off of the trail by hamming out a paean to the spirits haunting the cave. All it wins is a wonderfully bemused “Is it safe to look now?” from Ian. So snide, Mr. Chesterman! Some canny observation reveals the hidden room where two bandits are holding Barbara captive, and they’re (conveniently) dispatched before either can out Tegana. Thus reunited, but no closer to pointing out the obvious to Marco, Tegana instead pulls the Venetian aside to whisper in his ear. “Only a fool protects his enemies” indeed!

I don’t know. This is the least remarkable of the seven episodes to me. Tegana is less convincing than ever, and most of the runtime is spent moving the gang into position for the next bit of action - a bandit raid on their way to Lan-Chow (Lanzhou in Pinyin, I presume) which will be along presently...

Episode Five - Rider from Shang-Tu

It’s touching that Ian feels compelled to spoil his own chance at escape for the purpose of saving Marco and his fellows. The fight sequence that ensues is… pretty alright? Again, this is one of those things that suffers for not being seen in proper motion. Still, one has to be impressed by the coldbloodedness it takes for Tegana to run one of his own buddies through to keep him quiet. A titular rider shows up once they’ve moved on to deliver both a history lesson and a message with instructions from the Khan. Following those to a waystation, Tegana somehow finds another ally despite his track record so far with the others. Heavens.

I should stop a moment and remark on historical accuracy, which I know is a silly thing to nitpick over where Doctor Who is concerned. This story does a splendid job of creating atmosphere and presenting the world its characters travel through as real. I can’t help but to think, though, that most of the image it creates is that of a somewhat later China - the Manchu braids some of the extras are seen wearing weren’t in fashion for another four hundred years as far as I know, for example. I also think that Nogai was busy invading Poland at the time of this serial, and never came as far east as Samarqand, let alone Karakorum. But I can hardly complain. At least it’s rich and interesting.

This bit of the journey ends when, caught by Tegana while thanking Ping-Cho for finding the TARDIS keys while the group is on the verge of escaping, Susan, on cue, screams...

Episode Six - Mighty Kublai Khan

The attempt thus foiled, Ian tries to smooth things over with Marco and explain just where (and when) the TARDIS actually comes from. The whole conversation is quite good - even though it is starting to get incredible just how much Polo refuses to believe Ian and the others. The question of Ping-Cho’s arranged marriage resurfaces as she flees Polo’s entourage back to the waystation in search of a way back home to Samarqand. After being duped by Tegana’s buddy and scolded by the (really quite awful) waystation official, Ian brings her back to safety. It is a bit odd how the issue basically disappeared there for a few episodes, only to resurface twice in this one. It must be hard setting up these serialized stories.

Soon comes the time for the rest of the party bar Ian and Ping-Cho to at last meet with the famous Khan. His court is perhaps the most sumptuous set of this whole production so far, which makes sense. There’s a definite sense that we have built up to keep the best place for last, and it comes across splendidly. The Khan himself is played in an interesting way, and his quick rapport with the Doctor despite his irascible nature is sort of funny.

Far away from the palace, meanwhile, Tegana at last realizes his metamorphosis from shifty stock villain to proper menace. Cornering Ian and Ping-Cho in a campsite in the woods, the moment when he draws his sword and invites Ian to fight back with a “Come… come!” is the most properly chilling villain moment we’ve had in the series yet.

Episode Seven - Assassin at Peking

Tegana doesn’t have a chance to run Ian through. The timely arrival of the rider from earlier and some other soldiers stays the confrontation and at last brings the entire group together at Kublai’s palace. There the Doctor has been trying his hand at backgammon, and has seemingly shown an early sign of his chessmaster’s guile by winning all games but one. It’s nice to see him really having fun for the first time since the program kicked off.

Marco seems to have at last had a change of heart, fessing up to the Khan over the circumstances in which he took the TARDIS. Like the regulars, it seems that his own chances of getting home are now jeopardized. For Ping-Cho’s part, her own plot thread which came up again in the last episode is… quite suddenly resolved. Conveniently, her betrothed died before her arrival. I can’t really call that a satisfying payoff, but at least she gets a happy ending.

As for Tegana, his sly work has gotten him exactly where he means to be. Mercifully, Marco is finally roused into action by the TARDIS gang, rushing into the throne room just in time to redeem himself in the Khan’s eyes. What follows is actually really wonderful. Even in telesnaps, the swordfight between Tegana and Marco is a really cool denouement to the story, and all in Peking seems well as the way to the stars opens up for the Doctor and his companions at last.

Overview

For all its meandering and the occasional frustrating plot allowance, I never found myself getting bored of Marco Polo. I shouldn’t have been so worried about going in with inflated expectations; it definitely deserves its mantle as one of the classics. This is Doctor Who’s first great epic, the first story of its lineup to exist entirely for the journey, not to tell a parable like the first two offerings or to cap off an arc like the third. The show has proven that these sprawling seven-parters really can hold one’s attention without necessarily tapering off badly like The Daleks did. Whether this lesson will be held up by this season’s remaining six-parters remains to be seen. I hope a little apprehension is forgivable?

Anyway, before we move on to The Keys of Marinus, there is a little diversion I would like to take, into another historical from this period that never made it to the silver screen...

Unforgettable Dialogue

"And that's Charleston!"

"One day, we'll know all the mysteries of the skies and we'll stop our wandering."

"When the Warlord Tegana says it is so, Marco, it is so."

"What does he think it is, a potting shed or something?!"

"But what is the truth? I wonder where they are now... the past, or the future?"

Dialogue I wish I could forget

"You foolish child, you've been robbed!"

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 25 September 2017.)

The Edge of Destruction [Doctor Who, Story 3]

The Edge of Destruction by David Whitaker

8 February - 15 February 1964

Episode One - The Edge of Destruction

I've heard some people allege that the first thirteen episodes of Doctor Who form something of a self-contained arc. The shoe fits; the next episode marks the end of the original production block, and possibly would have marked the end of Who altogether if the Daleks weren't presently taking Britain by storm. Thanks, Terry. If it weren't for these circumstances, it's easy to imagine Barbara and Ian walking off the ship not into a tantalizing glimpse of a story that doesn't exist anymore, but back into contemporary London, having just endured the climax of the otherworldly torment the TARDIS has to offer.

It's odd to see the TARDIS turn into a place of menace, given that in the previous two stories it has been shown as a place of refuge or means of escape. Recall, though, just how terrifying Barbara and Ian find it in the very first episode. The TARDIS isn't just a ship - it's a nigh-eldritch entity, refusing to take directions properly, ignoring everything 20th century people know about physics and geometry, and now, we see, potentially treacherous when in technical fault. The TARDIS is the gateway to infinite worlds and infinite possibilities, but there can never be discovery without danger, and never wonder without a price.

Oh, and David Whitaker wrote this one! I loved The Evil of the Daleks when I came to it in my attempt at a randomized marathon. This is visibly an earlier example of his work, but I'll make no secret of the fact that I enjoyed it pretty well. In later years something like this would be panned as a "budget episode", employing as it does only an existing set and the four main cast members. It's a claustrophobic little affair, but it does give us a chance to finally focus on our cast members. Conveniently, that's something I've been (more or less) purposefully neglecting. Let's have a look.

The Doctor has been irascible and untrusting since we first met him, and under the circumstances we see here, he turns worse, openly accusing his passengers of sabotage and threatening to jettison them. Ian turns on the Doctor in turn, desperate to look out for himself and Barbara, even if it means having a scrap. His straightforward "action hero" persona which we've seen thus far turns into something quite self-destructive here, considering the Doctor's threats. Susan turns into some sort of delirious nightmare child, as seen in the famous scissors bit, but aside from falling apart amidst the chaos, doesn't really get many specific character moments. Barbara, lastly, manages to hold onto her cool, looking for answers even as the others turn on one another. When the Doctor tries to turn his invective on her, she gives him a pointed tongue-lashing that manages leave even him looking chastened - I'm pretty sure this was the moment when I decided that I really like her.

It is interesting how the random memory loss and mood swings seem to befall our quartet of heroes. It seems to imply that the ship itself is messing with their brains, even if it's never actually explained in these episodes. I'm not sure whether to take this as an early sign of the TARDIS's telepathic capabilities or just as a storytelling device.

This was quite an interesting character piece for sure. We're led to sympathize with Ian and Barbara's plight more, and the Doctor is definitely not framed as being trustworthy here.

Episode Two - The Brink of Disaster

Things in the TARDIS continue to get dodgier. The Cloister Bell hasn't been invented yet, so a grating klaxon is what reminds us that, as the Doctor tells us, we're hurtling towards the brink of destruction! The precipice of disintegration! The event horizon of sad-time-ification! Heavens, they really didn't name these two episodes too creatively, did they? It seems as if the ship will destroy itself soon if its occupants can't put aside their own self-destruction long enough to find an answer. Mercifully Barbara turns up with an answer that, uhm... approximates something that actually makes sense. Whatever it is, it puts them on the right tack. Soon, the Doctor manages to discover the mechanical fault which caused the ship to go into lockdown to start with, a broken spring that would someday be the forerunner of dozens of other Who stories in which a mechanical error leads into the action. A sigh of relief. The trouble has passed.

It's charming to see that the TARDIS crew is stronger for going through all this. The Doctor finally seems to have found an appreciation for the talents of his stowaways, and appears to have especially taken a shine to Barbara. (Relatable.) For the first time, they appear to really be a team, one which can focus on external conflicts as they make their way through time and space instead of locking horns with each other.

This was quite a strong little two-episode piece, I thought, not as compelling as some other stories further down the line, but providing a pleasing capstone to the program's first run of episodes.

Onwards to Marco Polo!

Unforgettable Dialogue

"One man's law is another man's crime. Sleep on it, Chesterton. Sleep on it."

"As we learn about each other, so we learn about ourselves"

"I acquired that from Gilbert and Sullivan." "Really? I thought it was made for two!"

Dialogue I wish I could forget

"We had time taken away from us, and now it's been given back to us because it's running out" (???)

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 16 September 2017.)

Cities Made of Song, 1963

Blowin' in the Wind by Peter, Paul and Mary

"How many times can a man turn his head / Pretending he just doesn't see?"

The chronological peculiarity of Doctor Who having its genesis so near the end of the year means I get to unveil the first of many digressions I mean to undertake over the course of the marathon series. Once I come to the end of a calendar year in the Who releases I cover, I'll take a step back and put a spotlight on my personal favorite song that happened to have been released during it. Music history is a bit of a fascination of mine, and one which, in indulging, I hope to emphasize the cultural atmospheres in which Doctor Who has lived (and died) over the course of its long life.

So we arrive at Blowin' in the Wind. This is a cover, of course - the release of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan", six months before the broadcast of An Unearthly Child, marks the premiere release of this song, as well as the point where its author, Bob Dylan, began his upward swing in popularity. As a further note, he was even a BBC alumnus, appearing on 13 January 1963 in the television play Madhouse on Castle Street and performing Blowin' in the Wind at its close. In perhaps a cruel reflection of Who itself, all known recordings of this performance were trashed by the BBC five years later, and only a patchy audio track exists.

Peter, Paul and Mary were really no newer on the scene than Dylan himself, so it is perhaps a testimony to the link between the artists, and their mutual admiration, that they released their own rendition of Blowin' in the Wind almost straight after his. The trio shared a manager with Dylan at the time, who happily introduced it to them for their own take. It's a pure matter of personal preference, but I'm more partial to Peter, Paul and Mary's recording, the harmonies and melodic guitar of their rendition suiting the essential gentleness of the song a little better than Dylan's rough-hewn voice. Many seemed to agree, seeing the cover version of the song jump to number two on the Billboard charts, which itself gave a significant boost to Dylan's album release. The song's proudest and most enduring moment would come with its performance on 28 August 1963 at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom - indeed, fittingly, its melody was supposedly inspired by the old African-American spiritual We Will Overcome, one of the marching anthems of the civil rights movement.

It's tempting to draw a link between the birth of this protest song and the Cuban Missile Crisis, given the specific callouts about weapons bans it gives, but that event postdates the song's original conception by several months. Perhaps it's more useful to step back and regard the general atmosphere that prevailed all throughout 1962, and which only came to an uneasy head that October, coloring the cultural scene onto which Doctor Who soon emerged. The Cold War was at its frostiest, the Kennedy administration in the United States ramping up for America's disastrous involvement in the war in Vietnam, and the lingering spectre of nuclear war still sat on the horizon. My mother was born in 1962. When Kennedy made dire warnings of a "full retaliatory response" over the situation in Cuba and she was six months old, my grandparents watched with worry as tanks rolled down the street by their house on their way to the nearby Air Force base. This was a climate of paranoia.

The lingering pangs of this fear come to the forefront a couple of times in The Daleks. The titular tinpots are a paranoid bunch themselves, and for all the fascist iconography with which they were decked, their squawking about uniformity echoes more closely Cold War anxieties about communism. Nuclear war itself hangs over the story's iconography in the neutronic war which devastated Skaro, and which the Daleks threaten to unleash again to ensure their survival. When Ian tells the Thals that "pacifism only works when everyone feels the same," the story bows to the possible eventuality that a peaceful solution to this threat cannot be entertained.

Folk anthems like Blowin' in the Wind refuse to accept that possibility, emerging defiant from one of the most terrifying times in world history to present the olive branch as something worth valuing. A bit woolly and overly optimistic though they may be, in times of terror, hope can be a revolutionary thing. The Summer of Love may be a long way off, but the winds of change are blowing - the Sixties counterculture is already budding here, when Doctor Who is just in its infancy. As it grasps for a clear idea of what it is and how it fits into the cultural world, it's worth keeping an eye on this line of questioning. How will this curious British family series adapt to the world of the 1960s, and how will it respond to this great historical moment?

"The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind / The answer is blowin' in the wind."

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 1 September 2017.)

The Daleks [Doctor Who, Story 2]

The Daleks by Terry Nation

21 December 1963 - 1 February 1964

Episode One - The Dead Planet

Hesitantly, the TARDIS crew shuffles out of the ship and into a world they don't recognize, under the misapprehension that conditions outside are hospitable. As they look away, the needle on the radiation meter swings into the red, and things get a lot worse...

It's probably not possible for me to speak a word about The Daleks without sparing a thought to just how stupendously important it was in the history of the show. The story of the ratings bonanza that let Doctor Who keep going through the 1960s and further still to the present day in some form or another is already well known. (Not to mention the story of how Terry Nation was set for life off the back of one story and Raymond Cusick, erm, wasn't.) So hey. There's that.

I'm more interested in talking about the story itself since its cultural relevance has already been belabored by more gifted writers than I. At the very least, I have something novel to give in the form of my own opinions. Where was I then? Something about the TARDIS crew trundling into a curiously familiar-looking forest. No boars this time, just metal chameleon sculptures livening up the place. The atmosphere is appreciably creepy from the start, but not without moments of levity, such as when poor Susan, who unlike the Doctor seems able to stop and appreciate the beauty of the places they visit, has the flower she finds inadvertently crushed when Ian rushes off to become the square-jawed hero he so clearly desires to be.

The Doctor is content to manipulate the rest of the cast into indulging his scientist's curiosity, something which would jar for sure with the character as we know him today, but seems entirely believable in the context of the mere four episodes that have come before this one. At the very least, through this story he seems to grudgingly fall into the role of an adviser to the locals (the tall ones, not the tin cans) mostly helped along by that same scientist's curiosity. It's tempting to see in this another fleeting glimpse of the hero the Doctor may someday grow to be, but I'm hesitant to apply hindsight too much to these old stories.

At any rate, once the four reach the echoey, creepy halls of the abandoned city below, the forces of Plot contrive to split them up, leaving Barbara to frantically search for her fellows alone, hopelessly lost in the maze of endless sameness. She sees something coming that we don't - an inhuman thing reaching for her as she screams in terror...

Episode Two - The Survivors

Maybe that last segment seemed a little paint-by-the-numbers. I don't think this is misplaced. The Dead Planet exists entirely as setup to maneuver the main characters into the story's central conflict. I'd maybe go so far as to call its job of setup strong, even if it feels a little stiff and mechanical. The best moments of the story are yet to come. A couple of them are even in this episode. The first that pops out to me is Ian's shouting match with the Doctor. His and Barbara's joking about the Doctor's behavior is more light-hearted, but once Barbara goes missing, Ian is leaning into him, exasperated, and demanding answers. As well as being wonderfully acted by Russell, it shows just how little the Doctor has done to earn the trust of his passengers thus far.

Oh, and those weird robots who were menacing Barbara last we saw her appear fully on-screen, at last. I think they're called R2-D2s or something.

In my last review post I remarked on the juxtaposition of the otherworldly and the ordinary which formed the core of An Unearthly Child (the episode, not the story). Something in the inexplicably charming design of the Daleks hearkens back to this, I think, namely the oft-belittled plunger and egg whisk. Maybe part of their ineffable appeal is that same quality that made the show's first episode so magical - taking an everyday object and turning it into something unreal, and in this case, something evil. The fluctuating light in the eyepieces, missing from later models, sort of evokes a blinking eye, which is a properly creepy touch.

It isn't only in the aesthetics that these Daleks are unlike the ones we know now. Far from rampaging war machines, these Daleks are sniveling, underhanded tinpot dictators who only go on the attack when they can execute an ambush, and try to trick others into doing their bidding. If these guys are allegorical for Nazis (though direct parallels in at least this first story are few and far between) then they are appropriately cowardly, shifty ones indeed. Their most chilling moments are ahead of them - sometimes far, far ahead of them.

Before I depart this corner of the serial, I want to comment on the final scene, which stuck with me for a while after it ended. Susan tears off through the jungle toward the TARDIS in search of the anti-radiation gloves which were left behind. This is one of the most phenomenally shot sequences so far, claustrophobic, plants whipping around as a storm rages. Susan's flailing around does leave, uhm... a bit to be desired. But in sheer terms of composition it's worth admiring, particularly the ending shot when, clutching the box close, she steps back out into the thunder and rain of the jungle before the credits fade in.

Episode Three - The Escape

At last, we meet the Daleks' counterparts on this supposedly dead planet - the Thals. A uniformly tall, picturesque group of blonds, their appearance is doubtless meant as a cheeky subversion of the fictional Aryans of Nazi lore. (Admittedly, this does make Susan's exclamation of "But you're perfect!" when she meets Alydon just a little bit awkward.) Unaware that the Daleks think of them are mutants, the Thals are indeed surprised to even learn that they still exist, having thought them to have been destroyed in the neutronic war between their peoples hundreds of years earlier. Once he's done handing a shower curtain over to Susan, Alydon confers with his people about what to do next. Their leader Temmosus, bless him, shows a remarkable lack of wariness despite the bloodied history between the Thals and Daleks, and the treacherous existence his tribe likely leads. Somehow failing to spot the title of the next episode, they agree to head for the city of the Daleks as directed in the letter Susan was carrying.

Back at the ranch, the shower curtain proves of great use to the TARDIS gang once reunited, having devised a way to fool the Daleks and escape their cell. When they open a Dalek casing to squeeze one of their number inside for a disguise, we don't get much of a look at just what the human-like Daleks have mutated into, but the looks that Hartnell and Russell give one another more than communicate just how grotesque they find it. Wrapping it in Alydon's cloak, they set it aside and wheel the casing off, something hideous half-crawling out from underneath when their backs are turned.

This is the peak of the serial for me, between the fine acting turns most of the cast gives, and a further evolution of the plot in the form of the Thals and their inevitably grisly rediscovery of the Daleks. The downside of a peak, of course, is that what comes after can sometimes underwhelm.

Episode Four - The Ambush

Thankfully, that effect isn't really immediate. The Ambush is fairly pacey, too. We get the funny beat early on of hearing Ian's voice through the ring modulator as he takes the Dalek disguise for a spin. Susan actually gets a good moment, too, and it's sort of charming when she turns to send her fellows a conspiratorial wink while they're bluffing their way past the real Daleks. The ruse doesn't go on for long, a small squad of Daleks just barely missing them on their way up to a higher level. I rather like the effect of the door being cut through - it's obviously tin foil or something, but the transition to when the heavy block of steel falls in as a result sells it quite well.

Alas, the heroes are still too late to help poor, trusting Temmosus, who's shot in the back by the Daleks when he arrives to claim the food they promised. Still, Ian's warning shout is enough to save the rest, with whom they retreat to the jungle. It would have been easy to end things here after a fun little history lesson from the Thals, but as they're about to enter the TARDIS, Ian remembers an inconvenient plot extender - the fluid link he snatched from the Doctor earlier is back in the city. Oh dear.

Episode Five - The Expedition

And so things rumble on. Managing to convince the Thals that "pacifism only works when everybody thinks the same," they take advantage of their local knowledge to take a route that the Daleks won't expect - through a fetid swamp at the back of the city. I can't decide whether I like the design of the place or not - it doesn't look awfully different from the rest of the jungle, and the noises are a bit overpowering. Still, when one Thal's sucked into the water, the bubbling effect does come across as rather menacing. I can't exactly remember whether that moment comes during this episode or at the start of the next, since in my recollection until the end of episode six the serial just kind of blends together in my mind with more Daleks plotting behind the scenes, the Doctor and Susan being captured again, and a bunch of hapless Thals wandering through the wilderness. Can you tell it's getting late at night as I write?

Digression: those cardboard cutout Daleks are a well-known example of a prop that doesn't quite work, but I think they look fine. It's hard to see that their depth isn't all there on the black-and-white picture, especially if you aren't focusing on them, which is exactly what you're not supposed to do. They make a decent piece of backdrop.

Episode Six - The Ordeal

At the risk of sounding unoriginal, never has an episode title been more depressingly accurate. This is when The Daleks hits full slump, and when I started to lose focus mid-viewing, which really isn't conducive toward paying close enough attention to write these little excerpts well. While the Doctor and Susan continue to languish in Dalek captivity throughout this episode, menaced by prodding plungers, Barbara, Ian, and the Thals spend the whole time trudging through a chasm. This doesn't really qualify as gripping drama for me, especially when its chief effect on me is to make me glance at the clock. Padding is, I'm told, something I'll just need to get used to. C'est la vie.

All I have to say is that if we end up in another cave anytime soon, I'm going to have myself a good groan.

Episode Seven - The Rescue

So in this one, we meet a young girl named Vicki...

Eh, what? My mistake. In this one the least impressive of the Thals so far at least gets the distinction of a heroic death, cutting the rope to save Ian but doom himself. A more important symbolic victory is won when the group leaves the chasm behind for good shortly after. Huzzah. Thus succeeding in their scheme to take the back way into the Dalek city, the mazelike corridors pose the next challenge, including a wonderfully tense scene where Barbara is nearly crushed by a dead-locked door. At last, their wandering comes to an end and they find their way into the command center, subduing the Daleks and saving their captives.

As a last coda, the TARDIS crew and the Thals reconvene back in the jungle, spending some pleasant words before it's time to go. Ganatus, who I've somehow failed to mention in all the paragraphs previous, shares a sigh with Barbara that their promising rapport can't develop any further. I suppose TARDIS travel just isn't conducive for finding romance along the way. After a kiss, Barbara joins the others as the ship lurches off to yet another tense-looking scrape with death...

Overview

So there was Doctor Who's first breach of its stated mission - no bug-eyed monsters, no tin robots. In the future, trips to alien worlds and brushes with destruction at the appendages of all the strange, strange creatures of the universe will become the bread and butter of the series, but here I'm forced to look at it as a new phenomenon, one which took Britain by storm and ensured that such a future would even come to pass. Maybe I got a little hard on its flab by the end - on the whole, at least The Daleks is a solid story, but nothing more than solid. It hit all the right beats, but only in the same way that a piece of clockwork does. I'm more interested to look at it for its innovative place in the show's formative days and tip my hat to it for that alone.

The Edge of Destruction is up next.

Unforgettable Dialogue

[Susan laughs.] "Stop that nooooise!"

"My truth is in the stars, and yours is here."

Dialogue I wish I could forget

Again, it has to be "But you're perfect!"

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 1 September 2017.)

An Unearthly Child [Doctor Who, Story 1]

An Unearthly Child by Anthony Coburn

23 November - 14 December 1963

Episode One - An Unearthly Child

A junkyard, a foggy night in 1963.

It's impossible for someone like me, with 54 years of Who history stretching behind me, to approach this with anything like objectivity. This is the start of the myth, the story that made all the others possible. You and I and everyone who ever loved (or in the case of some, took some perverse glee in hating) Doctor Who owes the creative forces that came together to make this serial an immeasurable debt. That alone tints everything in these four episodes with a curious shade that one can't quite excise.

Of course, it helps that it's also really rather good.

Things which I'd take for granted in any other context - the otherworldly theme and the first glimpse of the police box - stand out for the fact of this being their debut. It's so hard to divorce the quintessential imagery of the series from my own experiences with it, to try and think how it must have caught the eye at the time. We quickly pass from the psychedelic opening and the hypnotic, otherworldly hum of the TARDIS (which we hear for the first time here and, incidentally, is a tremendously underrated audio effect) to the far more mundane setting of a nearby school. The bizarre next to the everyday is a juxtaposition which we'll see hundreds of times from here on out - this is just the first time we get to enjoy it.

How out of place our main characters are made to become exemplifies this theme. And make no mistake; in the title though he may be, it is not through the Doctor, but through Barbara and Ian whom we're meant to look into this story. It's the tale of two English schoolteachers who happen to become swept up in "something that is best left alone", and act as a framing device for the program's original mandate to operate in an educational capacity. The point at which the focus shifts onto the Doctor as a main character is one which I'll be watching for with interest, because I'm not convinced it has happened by this point. Perhaps it'll come with The Dalek Invasion of Earth, or perhaps it won't be until The Chase when the Doctor and his ship will become the only elements from the pilot serial that we still have. Who nose?

But enough about the narrative status of our, oh... let me coin a term here... companions? I won't belabor this wonderful first episode any more than to say that despite (occasionally) received wisdom that one should skip the cavemen bits, the central moral dilemma of the remaining three episodes of this serial is set up in the first encounter between Barbara and Ian and the Doctor at Totter's Lane. The Doctor reacts to the 20th century pair with barely tolerant amusement, hardly worth his time, and turns more acerbic once they burst their way onto the TARDIS (which, incidentally, is a fantastically framed and executed scene). He turns to Susan and blithely talks up how they are simply too primitive to understand its dimensional properties, and then talks down to the pair as if they were somehow less evolved than he. Then the TARDIS rips off toward parts unknown for the first time, to put the lie to the Doctor's superiority...

Episode Two - The Cave of Skulls

A lonely English police telephone box sits amidst drifts of snow. Er, sand. A figure in shadow looms nearby, looking on, before we snap to a very human face of surprise and confusion, covered in grime, and freeze there.

Some people like to call this segment of three episodes 100,000 BC. Fair dinkum. The ways "stories" are delineated at this formative stage in the program's histories is terribly nebulous at best. I'm sure to drone about it again once The Daleks' Master Plan comes around in a hundred years. I've taken the path of least resistance and defined stories by the way they're delineated on Wikipedia's list of all the serials and stories. Simple, no? Either way, the content of these episodes stays the same as it has for the last 54 years, and their content is firmly linked to the previous episode in a way that shouldn't be overlooked.

So, perhaps it's just a matter of me being fairly illiterate where black-and-white television is concerned, but the ambiguity over whether the TARDIS has landed in snow or sand is at the very least something I've heard other people talk about with respect to this story. Further glimpses from this episode show that it is, in fact, a dry landscape of some sort, with distinctly American saguaros rising in the distance. It's easy to poke fun at this, given that human beings didn't reach America for another 75,000 years at least (and the ones who did certainly didn't look British) but I found it more interesting to turn it around and consider that casting the setting as "generic caveman land" is something of a deliberate stroke on the writer's part. This story isn't supposed to take place anywhere in particular - it's just supposed to take place anywhere. 100,000 BC (oops, convention) is the furthest thing from a treatise on anthropology. Indeed, every piece of evidence we have indicates that our early ancestors were far more gentle and moral than you might suspect. These episodes stand as a remark upon modern humankind with a comfortably distant framework through which to view it. That's all.

So what's our first look at humanity as shown through this lens? Dirty, huddled, and superstitious, praying to a primitive sky-god that a half-remembered attempt at firemaking will save them from the ruthless forces of nature on all sides. Heavens, it's just zero to fifty with this stuff, isn't it? We're presented with a pretty bleak take on the foundations of humanity's moral character straight off, but at least a couple of humorous jabs remind us that all isn't alien here. The old woman groans about a simpler time before the invention of fire, and the power struggle between Za and Kal is transparent from the start as any old human political altercation writ at its simplest level, false campaign promises and all. With the TARDIS crew captured by this sorry lot, we're left at the midpoint of this serial with the distinct impression that the Doctor was right about our 20th century humans after all.

Episode Three - The Forest of Fear

I have comparatively less to say about this segment. When compared with the madcap exposition of the first episode and the speedy deterioration of the situation in the second, the third episode feels a little plodding by comparison, with not a whole lot of dramatically new developments occurring aside from our heroes escaping and then being captured again. (I'm told this becomes something of a theme.) Nevertheless, the quiet moment amidst all this becomes a good opportunity for the implications of what's already happened to catch up with both us and the characters.

Doctor Who has been sort of whimsical for as long as I've known it personally, so it's jarring indeed to see that the first time someone is whisked away for an adventure in the TARDIS, it's nothing so much as a kidnapping - and a traumatic one, we see, as it finally catches up to Barbara in this episode as she sobs in exhaustion at their ordeal. It's an emotionally affecting moment, for sure, one which illustrates for the first time (though not the last) the human toll which the Doctor's travels exact. Despite the terror and confusion, though, Barbara shows a wonderful moment of moral steel by turning back to aid a wounded Za, despite his pursuing her and her comrades just a moment before. "Fear makes companions of us all." A not so subtle commentary on the motley crew of protagonists itself.

Notably, even Za, hardly the most sympathetic of supporting characters, shows a capacity to grow and change in his moral character, particularly through this episode, so the bleak image of human nature on display here becomes muddled a little. Personally I find refusing to cave to total cynicism a refreshing thing. The world could use a bit more wide-eyed earnestness.

Episode Four - The Firemaker

The old woman plays an interesting role here in drastically altering the flow of the plot by freeing the TARDIS crew, and then by dint of the manner of her death, in spite of her professed desire for things to stay the same - indeed, apart from the Doctor himself and perhaps Barbara, she becomes the single greatest agent of change in this whole story. Thanks to her intrigues, Za and Kal's confrontation now hurdles towards its terrible conclusion. The real event horizon past which this can only end in violence comes when the Doctor gives us the first taste of his showman's flair in dramatically exposing Kal for the murder of the old woman. ("This knife shows what is has done.") Sealed in the Cave of Skulls again for their ability to make fire, our heroes are helpless to do anything but watch as Kal confronts Za to see this conflict out to the end.

The following sequence is actually really interesting. Forget the silly caveman wrestling; the camerawork flashes between their faces in interestingly revelatory fashions, telling us a little something about each of our main characters. The Doctor looks on, stony, distant. Ian watches with horrified fascination. Barbara can't quite keep her eyes on the fight, seeming uncomfortable. And Susan, in a prelude of what's surely to come, appears on the verge of tears. The moment when Za crushes Kal's head with an enormous rock has no business being so grim when it looks as silly as it does. But that's the magic of Doctor Who at work - here, as it turns out, in quite a grisly way.

And so, left alone in the wake of that, Susan at least gets one moment of wonderful ingenuity to bear out the promise of the child genius we saw glimpses of in the first episode, providing the party with their means to escape. One last time, they race through the forest, hounded and afraid, the Doctor stepping over a fallen Barbara on the way. By the time that they reach the TARDIS, haggard, dirty, chased like wild animals, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between any of them and the cavemen whom they have spent the last few days dreading. The ship fades away with its unmistakable, unearthly groan, leaving the Tribe of Gum to stand, slackjawed, perhaps wondering just who they had been keeping prisoner.

Overview

On this note, then, our story ends, sans a small coda leading into the next installment. As much as the first episode stands alone in a timeless, extraordinary way, the next three set the foundations for something truly great. When we see Barbara tend to a wounded Za, we realize that the essence of humanity, something which is here equated with civilization, is compassion. Between the infamous skull-bashing scene and his seeming indifference to his human stowaways, we're led to wonder if the Doctor is really as far above Barbara and Ian in terms of civilization as he seems to believe. He certainly has a long way to go before he becomes the magical, mercurial, and above all likable character he will someday grow to be.

I look forward to it.

The Daleks is up next.

Unforgettable Dialogue

"Have you ever thought what it's like, to be wanderers in the fourth dimension?"

"Fire will kill us all in the end."

"Tomorrow, I kill many bears!"

Dialogue I wish I could forget

"Remember, Susan, the red Indian..."

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 23 August 2017.)

Inauguration - Monochrome Malarkey

Doo we-oooo...

And here we are.

For the last two months and change, I've been embroiled in a fun little project over on Gallifrey Base's "Long Game" forum, the home of all marathoning efforts on that fansite. As a Doctor Who fan of a mere(ish) six years, I'm woefully uninitiated in most of the classic series. I hear it's something of a rite of passage to make it through the entire program in order, from the start to the finish. Having now speedily started my way into the show's first years, I have decided to host my little reviews on an off-Base platform to make them a little more available to outside readers, as well as to group them somewhere with a more logical content cataloging setup. From here on out, everything that I publish there will also be published here. Joy!

What's Valentime and Space?

Aside from a really nauseating pun, it's a dedicated space for whatever Doctor Who content I might feel inclined to spit out, including this and all future marathon attempts, and probably (inevitably) for other TV and movie reviews and analysis somewhere on down the line. I have been pondering about where to try a similar marathoning effort for The X-Files for months, and eventually came to accept that a personal blog would probably be best. Multitasking is a beautiful thing - and like most beautiful things, dangerous, too.

What's Monochrome Malarkey?

The first of my in-order Doctor Who marathon's six parts, naturally. For convenience's sake on this marathon's message board home, I'm planning to split the whole project into six discrete threads, each one covering a certain era in the program's history, and with uniformity in mind I'm keeping the basic skeleton of these segments delineated here too. Just call it a nod to my compulsive interest in organization and leave it at that. Monochrome Malarkey, the first of these, could be subtitled variously with 60s Who, or the black-and-white years, for these are what it covers. From 1963's An Unearthly Child to 1969's The War Games, Doctor Who's early years run the gamut from great classics to justifiably derided garbage and everything in between. It's a weird, eclectic period where the program only just begins to discover what it wants to do with itself, and in which it reacts in fits and starts to the social climate of its time. Just based on what little I've seen and heard so far, I'm totally stoked to discover what else is waiting for me in this period.

What's next?

Some review posts, obviously. Shortly, I'll be copying over the ones I have already put together to bring this space up to speed. Future updates will arrive as they're posted on the forum thread. Cheers!