The Rescue [Doctor Who, Story 11]

The Rescue by David Whitaker

2 - 9 January 1965

So after a quick yeah-yeah-yeah comic-musical digression, we tuck into 1965 proper with something of an appetizer. Or do we? I feel as if I might have jumped past 25 seasons by accident, because this feels an awful lot like a story of the New Who vein for a few reasons, chiefly its bite-sized length and its plot being centered around the introduction of a new companion.

I’m under the distinct impression (spoilers, spoilers) that most companion introductions in the classic series will be pretty incidental from here on out, so getting this little pair of episodes to really ease us into Vicki’s presence on the team is quite welcome. I imagine it was necessary to have something like this, by dint of the simple fact that they’d never replaced a member of the core cast before. Admittedly, I don’t feel that we get much of a look at what separates Vicki from Susan in these two episodes, but Maureen O’Brien acquits herself well and gets to enjoy some banter with Barbara that gives us some idea of what her time on the TARDIS will be like.

The plot itself isn’t an overly intricate affair, its chief concern being the menace and unmasking of Koquillion (or in William Russell terms, cocky-lickin’). I had unfortunately been spoiled on this, but it was still fun to see exactly how it played out. There’s not much reason to suspect Bennett until the penny drops, but when you consider that he’s really the only other guy on the planet, he has to be at least a little suspicious from the start. The scene where the Doctor confronts him in the hall of justice is the best of the story. The set itself is fairly nice, and we’re treated to a long tracking shot of the Doctor as he enters at the start. His chinwagging with Bennett as he exposes his duplicity is wonderful. Equally wonderful is the sudden switch from fearless truth-telling to nervous backpedaling when the Doctor recalls that, oh yes, he’s stuck in a claustrophobic room with a proven murderer. A wonderful set piece.

Barbara is (as usual) quite splendid here. The touching moment at the start where she helpfully asks the Doctor to teach her how to open the TARDIS doors is much remarked upon. After we get the requisite stupid moment out of the way early on when she takes a quick tumble down a sizable cliff (and is somehow only knocked out), she also gets some time having fun with Vicki, and also killing her pet. Oh dear… poor Sandy. I’m not sure what that bit is meant to contribute aside from a good jolt to the viewer, since Vicki’s over it in a flash and it doesn’t come up again. The sand monster looks great, though.

Ian is also in this one.

Aside from this, I feel there’s not much to milk out of this one. It is a fairly simple fifty-minute insert to bring Vicki into the fold, filled with some fun scenes and a quick mystery to fill the time. It certainly promises some more fun stories ahead, so I think I’ll look forward to those.

Sera’s Say:

Sera couldn’t really get herself into this one by virtue of what a flash in the pan story it was; not quite enough of actual consequence happened to afford her more than a lukewarm impression. She liked the same moments which I thought were nice, and also spotted Bennett as Koquillion from a mile away, so good on her for that one.

Maybe we’ll have more fun getting thrown to the lions. The Romans is up next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 27 June 2018.)

Cities Made of Song, 1964

A Hard Day’s Night by the Beatles

“But when I get home to you I find the things that you do / Will make me feel alright”

I’m not too proud to admit it. Long before I first saw a TARDIS on-screen, my British import of choice was the Beatles. I was quite the little fanatic, memorizing the discography and all, at least until embarrassment and teenagehood prevailed and sent me on my merry way, trying to forget I ever liked them at all. In adulthood I find that embarrassment is overrated, so pshaw to that. It turns out that I still like them after all.

I cheekily avoided mentioning the group at all for the first “Cities Made of Song” entry, even though they were all over the place in 1963. On 22 November of that year, the day Kennedy died and the day before Who premiered, they dropped their second major album, “With the Beatles”, whose popularity would at last make them a hit across the Atlantic. They landed at recently renamed JFK Airport in New York City on 7 February 1964, the day before The Edge of Destruction aired, to record crowds, and soon brought 73 million viewers (!) to the Ed Sullivan Show to see them perform live.

Needless to say, they were a hit, taking the world by storm in a way which no British pop band had before. Beatlemania and Dalekmania coincided, though the former involved a good deal more screaming fans than the latter. And in the midst of all this, the Beatles dropped their third LP, A Hard Day’s Night, which frankly blows the last out of the water. Recorded only a few months after their last studio album, A Hard Day’s Night immediately has a different sound to With the Beatles, a more slick pop-music tint to the tracks than the more straightforward rock and roll on the last. This rapid maturation of the Beatles’ music would continue; bear in mind that only 17 months after this release, they were recording Rubber Soul.

This LP is interesting in the fact that it’s actually a soundtrack for the movie of the same name, at least on its ‘A’ side. Filmed concurrently with the production of Marco Polo and The Keys of Marinus, and released during the broadcast of The Sensorites, the film quickly earned considerable critical praise as well as financial success, and for pretty good reason. Because it’s totally hilarious. One gets the sense that the screenplay writer spent a lot of time around the Beatles, because the jokes match their individual senses of humor very closely. John’s “snorting a bottle of Coke” gag had me in stitches. Wilfrid Brambell as Paul’s grandfather is a riot in pretty much every scene he’s in, too.

All throughout, too, there’s a wonderful sense of self-awareness not unlike the honesty with its limitations that Doctor Who seems to display during this period too, a simple self-effacing humor which makes the film a lot more than just a pop music money grab. All throughout the Beatles are portrayed faithfully as a quartet of young men who can’t quite understand how they got so big, and prefer having fun to the harrying adulation of fans and the harsh demands of their schedule. Small wonder that, within two years of this, they’d stopped touring altogether. When a contemporary critic calls A Hard Day’s Night the “Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”, it’s only slightly hyperbolic. It comes with my recommendation. Try as I did, though, my straw-grasping didn’t identify anyone working on the film, whether cast or crew, as anyone who ended up working on Doctor Who. If anyone else can, I’ll happily resign and turn in my nerd card. As interesting asides, though, Patty Boyd, future wife of George Harrison and Eric Clapton, who inspired “Something” and “Layla”, two of the greatest love songs ever written, appears as an extra. So does Phil Collins, whose career with Genesis will probably prompt me to revisit him a few “Cities Made of Song” installments down the line.

In turning to the music itself here (how I yammer on), I actually cheat a little in technically focusing on one song as is this segment’s remit, but at the same time covering the entirety of the album too. Because it’s hard to just love one song here; side ‘A’ of the LP is packed with instant classics, from the title track to “I Should Have Known Better”, “If I Fell”, “And I Love Her”, and “Can’t Buy Me Love”. I’m also quite partial to “Tell Me Why”, since I’m a sucker for anything in which all three of the Beatles’ best voices harmonize; sorry, Ringo. The obverse side, i.e. that which isn’t the soundtrack for the film, doesn’t really match the first. It has, erm, “Any Time at All”? I like “Things We Said Today” and “I’ll Be Back” well enough, but neither are classics, and a lot of side ‘B’ is just filler.

When the time came to pick just one to headline this installment, though, I settled on the namesake track, because A.) it’s in the title and B.) it’s flippin’ fantastic. The famous opening chord is a great stinger to open the song, which swift proves to be a real toe-tapper. There’s nothing quite like the bizarre, sped-up guitar solo backed by piano near its middle, either. In its lyrics, it’s about relief from weariness, an expression of simple joy and catharsis. And aside from that, it’s really not that deep. I can’t make a commentary on the Cold War politics of the day like I did with the last, because it’s not that type of song. It’s pop music at its simplest and most enjoyable, and listening to it still helps to take a load off, 54 years later.

Rock on.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 20 June 2018.)

The Dalek Invasion of Earth [Doctor Who, Story 10]

The Dalek Invasion of Earth by Terry Nation

21 November - 26 December 1964

It’s been a long time coming, this’un. It’s not as if it was a chore, really, though the story is on the longer side and thus a little tougher to write up. What am I ever going to do with next season’s Dalek epic when I get there? Question for another day.

The Daleks’ inaugural outing was fine generally, but it left me a little cold, as readers might recall. The fact that The Dalek Invasion of Earth was heralded a classic in the same way left me suspecting that I was due for a repeat and I didn’t greet the idea warmly. Imagine my delight when the story rolled along at a fine pace and genuinely thrilled at some points. Huzzah!

The obvious thing to remark upon is the fact that the Second World War allegories I noted last time are now far more explicit. The story resembles not a few speculative histories I’ve read of an Allied defeat, from the propaganda broadcasts to the rubble-strewn streets reminiscent of the Blitz. Considering how much closer this serial is in time to the Second World War than it is today brings home the poignancy of the comparison, to the point where it almost feels gauche to slap the (literal) tin-pot robots into the image. But it works; just. Taking the hugely popular Daleks and moving them to a more familiar setting is a really clever (if staggeringly obvious) move and definitely displays some savvy audience pandering on the program’s part.

It is a stylish story from the start, the suspenseful direction in World’s End selling for us the grimness of this world from the instant the Roboman drowns himself in the Thames and we cut to the rather morbid sign which the TARDIS lands next to. The first cliffhanger with the Dalek emerging from the river is famous for a reason, even if it is kind of goofy. We’re swift introduced to the brave human freedom fighters, a couple of whom leave an impact. Dortmun is probably the best among these. His almost childish fascination with his pet project does much to endear, and his brave last stand against the Daleks tugs at the heartstrings. Though considering that the freed prisoners and Robomen at the end of the serial seem to have no trouble clobbering Daleks with rocks, one’s left wondering what the point of the bombs was to begin with.

Jenny and Larry are fine enough, too, though they mostly shine due to their accompanying Barbara and Ian respectively. Jenny’s quite feisty, and it’s a regretful moment when she seems to crumble so easily while briefly in Dalek captivity. Barbara flattening a pack of Daleks with a truck with Jenny at her side was a good moment for a fist-pump. Larry’s sad demise at the hands of his lobotomized brother was one of the more touching moments in this story, one that sticks in the mind for a while. David Campbell, sad to say, leaves far less of an impression. It’s hard to sell Susan’s departure with an unremarkable beau like this one, and more on that in a bit.

Talking of humankind, it’s a poignant and realistic touch that, though humanity generally is shown rather positively here, the serial doesn’t shy away from the inevitability that some people will always try to profit off of hardship and disaster in showing us the sniveling Dalek collaborators as well as Ashton the black market dealer. Ashton gets an untimely end at the claws of the rather silly-looking Slyther, but the two women who turn Barbara and Jenny over to the Daleks never have their comeuppance. Not all collaborators do.

The Daleks themselves are a little more menacing this time around; in their first outing they’re underhanded, skulking around semi-helplessly inside their city. Here they are the masters of Earth, and are sure to make us hear all about it. Their voices are totally off, though. It barely sounds like they’re being altered at all so much as the actors voicing them are just raising and lowering their pitch unconvincingly. Their “plan” is pretty ridiculous, but we’re forced to take it in stride in light of the surrounding drama. The “static electricity” dishes look a bit silly, though it is thoughtful of the writer to offer at least a token explanation for why they can move off of metal surfaces this time. Still, it does beg the question of why the Daleks in the original serial didn’t just use these dishes too, if they’re “a million years” in the future and existed “late” in Dalek history. I’m beginning to suspect already that trying to read continuity between these early Dalek stories is a bit like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up a hillside. If we substitute boulder for “Dalek” and hillside for “a flight of stairs”. Hm. That joke doesn’t really work. Moving on.

Now our regulars! As mentioned passingly above, Barbara is as splendid as usual, very earnestly trying to fit into the resistance and help where she can. Her joyride out of the museum is one of my favorite Barbara moments so far. Ian also does well with his time in the spotlight when he has it, even if it’s not really his show. And Susan, poor old Susan. I’m not tremendously impressed with how she’s written out here, even if I am at least happy she gets to do things before she’s dropped off. Goodbye, star child. See you in the review threads.

Last, the Doctor, with whom I was somewhat more impressed. Hartnell seems to have transitioned comfortably into the “leading man” role by this point, for once not just looking after his companions or trying to retrieve the TARDIS safely, but trying earnestly to stop the bad guys and do good by others. His cheek when one Dalek remarks that they control the Earth and he says “Not for long,” almost as an aside, is really wonderful. And he means it, too. This is the first time that the Doctor sets himself up as “the man who stops the monsters”. And it’s great.

Sera’s Say:

Joining me from here onward is my girlfriend, Sera. A one-time regular viewer of the New Series, we recently caught up on the Capaldi years, which emboldened her sufficiently to the idea of joining me for the remainder of my marathon. After catching her up on Season 1 (but judiciously skipping The Keys of Marinus and The Sensorites for now if only because I can’t be bothered watching them again so soon) she sat down with me for Season 2 and we’re currently up to The Web Planet. Say “Hello, Sera.”

Anyway, she rather enjoyed this one for the most part, and particularly thought that the segment without dialogue where Barbara and company run through the abandoned London avoiding Daleks was particularly stylish and interesting. Larry’s death affected her as much as it did me, though we both somehow missed Phil the Roboman’s last word. We were probably chattering a little; oops. While on the topic, she was also amused by the Robomen’s obvious resemblance to the Cybermen, down to the headpieces. One does have to wonder if there was some sort of subconscious echo in the Cybermen’s design two years on from this.

Sera was even more put out with Susan’s departure than I was, since she was more attached to the character. The issue with Susan getting the home that she so desires, Sera says, is that the home she’s given is on a shattered planet with some dude she barely seems to know a thing about. It seemed like a disservice to Susan in her eyes, and had the knock-on effect of making the Doctor’s iconic speech (which she had heard before) a little less affecting than it might have been otherwise.

Let’s hope The Rescue leaves her a bit less cold!

Memorable Dialogue:

“You poor pathetic creatures.”

“You’re a genius!” “Yes, there are very few of us left.”

“Just the beginning,” to the evocative chimes of Big Ben

“One day, I shall come back…”

Miserable Dialogue:

Insert any time the Daleks talk over one another here.

Also insert snortling about “oral control” and the “bomb shaft” here.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 19 June 2018.)