The Power of the Daleks [Doctor Who, Story 30]

The Power of the Daleks by David Whitaker and Dennis Spooner

5 November - 10 December 1966

​Now this is certainly one heck of a way to kick things off. I won't lie to you, I found this a tremendous story, and it's done a lot already to get me excited for the rest of this run. The creepy, well-developed setting, the tense atmosphere, and the performances of the main cast all come across magnificently. Ben and Polly finally started to "click" for me with this one, much to my relief. There is a lot more warmth between them and the new lead than there was with Hartnell, which helps quite a bit (I was particularly charmed by the Doctor and Polly's little Lesterson listen chant), and I've started to grow accustomed to their skeptical one/open-minded one dynamic. The Doctor is a little harder to pin down. He does immediately come across as a more quiet, reactive Doctor than the First, which I know will stick, but his curious behavior and seemingly distracted air are most definitely against the grain and put us at a deliberate distance from the new guy. I found myself warming to him by the end, though. If nothing else, it's a performance that inspires curiosity.

David Whitaker's thumbprint is all over this thing. The intention behind having the newly-changed Doctor's first adventure be on a planet full of mercury is dead obvious, but it is a nice touch that the Daleks prove to be immune to mercury's effect. Their utter conceptual opposition to the Doctor is driven home once more as the Daleks somehow recognize the Doctor long before Ben and Polly themselves are even sure of his identity. (This recognition seemingly defining the Doctor will be brilliantly reflected in the otherwise quite underwhelming Victory of the Daleks many years from now when the Doctor defines the Daleks in turn, giving them life.) Whitaker seems to understand what makes the Daleks tick just as well as their creator did, because they are absolutely creepy in this story, with their underhanded tactics coming at odds with their previous bombastic attempts to conquer the universe. Because they are underplayed in this manner at first, they seem far more dangerous than when they were drilling out planets' cores or gunning down ancient Egyptians by the cryptload. Their constant recitation of "I am your SERvant" becomes more sarcastic and cruel as the serial goes on, while the humans, too wrapped up in their own concerns, blithely continue to think they're telling the truth.

I think it's understandable to be frustrated at the stupidity of the human beings populating planet Vulcan as they fail to realize the danger inherent in the Daleks, but the whole point is that they're so busy with their petty power struggle that they're too blinkered to notice the threat that's right under their noses. Keeping in mind that the Daleks are essentially an allegory for fascism, this is sadly apposite, as the rise of hate and extremism is often ignored until it's too late. The more the Vulcan colonists plot and scheme against one another, the more the Daleks start to propagate themselves, increasing in number. There is a bleak scene in the final episode where we see countless colonists from all sides of the conflict lying dead, all killed by the same evil, their squabbles now meaning nothing. It's telling that in an earlier episode, even the Daleks are surprised by Bragen's murder of Hensell, with one making the chilling remark:

"Why do human beings kill human beings?"​

It's a very good question. That is the power of the Daleks. Just like the Cybermen, they're a dark reflection of our own worst tendencies, and when played well (like this) they can make for some truly powerful stories. To descend even deeper into nerd territory, I'm made to think of Theoden's despairing line from the defense of Helm's Deep: "What can men do against such reckless hate?" That's easy: they can fight it. Or they can make stories about fighting it, which is as suitable of a substitute as I can think of. Having stories about it, even when steeped as firmly in allegory as this one, is a good reminder that the worst monsters are the ones of our own making, and it's up to us to defeat them.

I'll make no bones about saying that this is absolutely the best Dalek story yet. A few days ago I opined that Dalek fatigue had started to exact its toll on Doctor Who, but then this came along so soon after, proving that there were still new things to be done with them.

It's almost fitting that this is all being done as preparation to kill them off for good.

Anyway, more on the new Doctor himself next, and a hard swerve into psychedelia, as I search for some gentle people in Wonderland.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 13 May 2020.)

A Word on William Hartnell

A Word on William Hartnell

In keeping with the tradition I established when Verity left, cast and crew of particular importance will get one of these “A Word on” posts. Actors who play the Doctor are a no-brainer inclusion, of course, and for them these posts will double as a long-winded retrospective and round-up of the era.

Where to start? First, with a doff of my cap to a man who gave everything he had to a role that he loved, and more than that, one which he defined and which has kept going strong for almost sixty years now. That’s no mean feat, and it’s all owed to Hartnell’s dedication and skill as a character actor. His ability to infuse the Doctor with charm, whimsy, mystery, and occasionally menace, is something to behold, and it set a high bar for all who followed in his footsteps. He also had an impressive knack for bringing out the best in other gifted actors while on screen with them, and upping his own game in turn. For all that he was evidently a difficult person to work with, he does seem to elevate the whole production every time he’s on screen.

I watched An Adventure in Space and Time for this marathon just after finishing The Tenth Planet, and had originally intended to do a full write-up post, but after a bit of rumination I decided that anything of worth I had to say about it could be boiled down to a paragraph or two, and would be appropriate to include in this wrap-up anyway. It is a lovely piece of drama, and I’m not too proud to admit I misted up. I do have to say that it is a rather sanitized depiction of the era, and it does seem to imply that everything after Verity left was crap… The whole truth is a lot messier, and Bill Hartnell’s story was nowhere near this clean. As much as I can laud his skill as an actor, his problems with people of color are now well-known, and he could be beastly to his fellow cast members. He was a complicated man, and this is a complicated story; it’s hard knowing an actor you admire was not altogether a good human being, but that’s life.

To move the focus from the man to the episodes, then, I have to say that my overall impression of this era was strongly positive. The variety, the sheer fun, and the magic of it all kept me in high spirits every time I sat down to watch, and while a number of individual episodes weren’t good, I was very rarely bored. The trial and error, the sense of invention, and the gradual sense of the program finding its place have all proved fascinating to behold, and a number of classic stories have been sprinkled in along the way.

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Here is how I would rank all of the stories, in terms of the scores I gave while viewing them. Keep in mind that some of these serials were given their ratings two years ago. In the interest of integrity, I have chosen not to adjust any scores once I reach the end of a given season, even if my opinions have shifted a little, just to keep things nice and simple. Accordingly, a few stories like The Daleks would have gone up a little, and I would have been somewhat more charitable to The Space Museum in light of the actually-probably-worse The Celestial Toymaker, but there’s no use going the route of Light in Ghost Light and blowing myself up over it.

1. The Aztecs - 10.00
2. The Myth Makers - 9.75
3. The Time Meddler - 9.50
4. The War Machines - 9.00
5. Marco Polo - 9.00
6. An Unearthly Child - 9.00
7. The Dalek Invasion of Earth - 8.83
8. The Savages - 8.75
9. The Massacre - 8.75
10. The Edge of Destruction - 8.50
11. The Daleks' Master Plan - 8.08
12. The Rescue - 8.00
13. The Romans - 8.00
14. Mission to the Unknown - 8.00
15. The Tenth Planet - 7.75
16. Planet of Giants - 7.67
17. The Crusade - 7.50
18. The Daleks - 7.14
19. The Gunfighters - 7.00
20. Galaxy 4 - 6.25
21. The Web Planet - 6.17
22. The Keys of Marinus - 6.17
23. The Sensorites - 6.17
24. The Chase - 6.00
25. The Ark - 6.00
26. The Reign of Terror - 5.83
27. The Smugglers - 5.75
28. The Celestial Toymaker - 4.25
29. The Space Museum - 3.75

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I’ve also been considering my estimation of the Doctor’s companions so far. It is still early days, so the top ten list format which I’ll be using is not yet all that illustrative, but I hope it will serve me well in the times to come. Fittingly, as there are a whopping ten companions for this period, here are the Hartnell companions, ranked as they stand after The Tenth Planet:

1. Barbara Wright
2. Steven Taylor
3. Vicki Pallister
4. Ian Chesterton
5. Susan Foreman
6. Polly Wright
7. Sara Kingdom
8. Ben Jackson
9. Dodo Chaplet
10. Katarina

I find this ordering pretty easy to rationalize. Barbara seems to top this sort of list for almost everybody, and justifiably so, as she is brilliant. A bright and witty character played by the absolutely inimitable Jacqueline Hill, nobody else even came close to troubling her positioning on my list. She’s in a league of her own.

Trailing, then, we find Steven, played by Peter Purves, who I consider to be massively underrated. Possibly this is on account of so many of his episodes being missing, but he’s dependable and likable, and charmed me quite a bit. His role in challenging and butting heads with the Doctor from time to time always kept my interest, and he has had a very interesting afterlife in the expanded universe.

Just slightly behind him is Vicki, played by the irrepressibly charming Maureen O’Brien. Vicki has a youthful, 1960s vitality about her that makes her impossible to forget. She blazed the trail for so many other young woman companions to follow, and as I pointed out a few times in Season Two, I enjoy her role as the Doctor’s apprentice, of sorts. It’s a pity her time on the show was so rudely truncated.

I feel a little guilty rating Ian below Barbara, as the two are inseparable and exist only as a unit. When pressed to rank them individually, though, Ian does lack some of Barbara’s magic in my mind. Like Steven he plays the likable, dependable role well, and William Russell is good, but he lacks a lot of Jacqueline Hill’s range and (in my humble estimation) would have worked better in a “companion’s companion” role such as modern characters like Mickey or Rory.

Ringing up the last of the three original companions of the Doctor, we find Susan, played by Carole Ann Ford. While her brightness and the mysterious “unearthly” qualities she shows off at first are very arresting, I was disappointed to find that the scripts Susan was given very rarely lived up to that promise, and she left the show without ever really realizing her potential. This uneven treatment is a shame, as Susan might have wound up higher in my estimation otherwise.

It’s very early days for Polly and Ben, so their positions may yet shift. For now, I’m comfortable putting Anneke Wills’ Polly here, as while she shows a lot of promise and is immensely vivacious and likable, she has yet to make enough of an impression for me to place her much higher.

Sara Kingdom surprised me somewhat, as despite being present for less than an entire serial and not given very much breathing room for characterization, Jean Marsh acts her well, and she, like Steven, has also had an interesting afterlife. She doesn’t get enough time in the sun to justify a place much higher than this, but I do like her quite a bit.

As with Ian, it’s a little silly to separate Ben from Polly as they are a unit, but for the moment Michael Craze’s Ben lags somewhat behind Polly for me. Not enough to really be explained by any specific flaw, but until we get more episodes with him he won’t quite break into the big leagues.

Poor Dodo. Jackie Lane is not a poor actress by any means, but as I’ve gone into at length by this point, her character was not served well by nearly any of the scripts she was given. At least she’s earned the dignity of not quite dropping into last place.

Does Katarina even count? It could be argued six ways to Sunday, and I doubt any consensus would ever be reached. Like Jackie Lane, Adrienne Hill was certainly not a poor actress, but it really feels like they did not give any thought or effort to Katarina before it was time to kill her. It’s sort of distasteful, really. No one should be very surprised when Katarina and Dodo drop off this list once I do this again at the end of Troughton.

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Lastly, I thought it would be a nice idea at the close of each era to highlight just five of that Doctor’s best moments. This is a challenge given that every Doctor will have so very many, but it will be interesting trying to pinpoint the ones that stuck the most in my mind, and which distill the things that make that era of the show so special. Here are my picks for the Hartnell era in chronological order:

Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? (An Unearthly Child)

One day, I shall come back. (The Dalek Invasion of Earth)

[The Doctor fools the Monk, trapping him in 1066.] (The Time Meddler)

Perhaps I should go home, back to my own planet. But I can't. I can't. (The Massacre)

There's something very satisfying in destroying something that's evil, don't you think? (The Savages)

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I have gone on and on, but that’s all I have for now. It’s been a blast, but now that I’ve tipped my hat to the Hartnell era, it’s time to usher in the next. This chapter may be over, but the adventure goes on and on, forever.

“Our destiny is in the stars, so let's go and search for it.”

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 11 May 2020.)

The Tenth Planet [Doctor Who, Story 29]

The Tenth Planet by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis

8 - 29 October 1966​

It’s the end, and I’m not totally prepared… Ever since resuming my marathon when the lockdown began in March, I have been moving at a fair clip, motivated by the desire to distract myself from a dreary world with the adventures of Doctor Who. I flew through Season Three, drinking everything in, always eager for the next episode. The inevitable consequence was that I landed here at The Tenth Planet sooner than I ever expected. Intellectually I knew that the end of the Hartnell era was coming on fast, but that still didn’t prepare me emotionally for it. I just sat there in silence while he turned into Patrick Troughton in the last moments of the last episode, wondering at how surreal it all was. It took two and a half years, but I made it. That’s something worth celebrating.

It’s almost unfair to the story itself, however, to burden it with the weight of this monumental change, as well as the mythological significance of the Cybermen first coming into being. Like I said last time, event television does not yet exist. This is a serial like any other in the season before it, though in terms of layout (being one of the first real Bases under Siege) it more resembles the Troughton era… It is only through the lens of the future that it transcends past its serialized status and becomes something more uncommon: a milestone.

It’s important to recognize that the Cybermen aren’t iconic monsters yet. Accordingly, it comes as no surprise that the show doesn’t treat them with the awe that a viewer spoiled by the future (like me) might expect. In fact, they’re almost totally missing from the third episode of the serial, just like the Doctor, leaving Ben and Polly with the unenviable job of carrying the show and butting heads with the ur-base commander, General Cutler. However, it speaks to the lasting strength of the Cybermen’s core concept that this brief appearance led to them being the second longest recurring monster in the show’s history. They are deliciously creepy, with the body horror inherent to them being offered mostly through suggestion rather than through any blatant means. They’re also startlingly polite, and in fact very rarely seem to directly menace the humans they’re holding captive. It’s an odd portrayal to modern eyes, but is nevertheless compelling.

Cutler works well as a secondary antagonist; although his stubbornness occasionally beggars belief, the actor plays the role well enough that it lands. His single-minded focus on getting his son down from space adds a human edge to the character. I’d never apply the adjective “convincing”, but “entertaining” fits just fine…

Ben and Polly both come across a little better here than they did in The Smugglers, working together behind Cutler’s back while the Doctor is out of commission to help prevent the General from sterilizing half of the Earth’s surface with the Z-bomb. Barclay is also a nice side character, fulfilling a bit of the Doctor’s role while he’s out of commission in Episode 3. I wish the Doctor came out of this looking as good as the other characters did, but Hartnell isn’t at his best in these episodes, and it’s sad to see. He does get a few standout lines (particularly his mysterious remarks to Ben and Polly when the Mondasian ship is disabled and they’re freed) but he still barely gets to star in his own farewell story.

Overall, this is a fairly strong story, but one that wouldn’t be particularly remarkable if it weren’t for its own mythological importance. While I’ll stand by my remarks that this story should be judged on its own merits rather than on its relevance to the evolution of Doctor Who, I have to admit that this relevance helps its standing rather than hinders it.

We’ll get to The Power of the Daleks soon, but first we have to take a pause and give this era a proper wrap-up. See you soon.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 10 May 2020.)

The Smugglers [Doctor Who, Story 28]

The Smugglers by Brian Hayles

10 September - 1 October 1966

​

Well, they can't all be winners, can they? I didn't go into this with the highest expectations, and accordingly was not particularly disappointed that The Smugglers never quite transcends its limitations to somehow become something very interesting. It is quite interesting, however, that all the first serials of Seasons Two, Three, and now Four have all been curiously low-key affairs. While I liked Planet of Giants quite a bit, it wasn't exactly a blockbuster either. This is, I think, partly because the notion of "event television" has not yet taken hold, and with seasons spanning the better part of the year, nobody yet seems to have decided that the beginning and end of a season ought to be treated as any different from the rest of it. This means that it's difficult getting excited about this in most respects.

As a first adventure for Polly and Ben on the TARDIS team, I have to say that I might have wished for more. While their central dynamic together is developed here to a degree, it's still hard to say that I have a clear idea of either's personality yet, or what their relationship to the Doctor will be like. Polly in particular takes a bit of a backward step here; between spraining her ankle and getting freaked out about a rat, she comes dangerously close to reenacting a Susan worst hits compilation, with her best moment probably being her peevish remark about everyone calling her a "lad". (Though how anyone could mistake Anneke Wills for a boy, I could never guess.) She can also magically discern whether any given coastal landscape is Cornwall, so I guess that's nice, too.

As a pirate story set in Cornwall, of course, this story owes no small debt to The Pirates of Penzance, which wedged this historical epoch firmly in the public consciousness in the late 19th century and never quite left. This seems like it was an inevitability, as a continuation of Doctor Who's theatrical inheritance, given that the Doctor mentioned knowing Gilbert and Sullivan as long ago as The Edge of Destruction. It's remarkable, then, that the vibrancy of that production is totally missing from a serial so obviously inspired by it, and of course there's a complete lack of music... Doctor Who will finally make up for this oversight many years in the future, when Doctor Who and the Pirates comes along, but more on that in about a trillion years. There's also the obvious connection with The Curse of the Black Spot, the most unlikely prequel imaginable, but more on that too in about a trillion years + 1.

This all came out sounding a little more negative than I intended, as this story is only rather middling and not what I'd call bad, but through it all I really was just tapping my foot and waiting for The Tenth Planet to come along...

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 10 May 2020.)

Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. [Doctor Who, Diversion 8]

Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. by Milton Subotsky

5 August 1966

​

A year on, much has changed in the TV version of Doctor Who. By the time we got to Dr. Who and the Daleks, sure, Susan had already been gone for a while, and Ian and Barbara had left, but only just. By the time we reach this sequel, however, the program has gone through two changes of producer, everyone but Hartnell who was on at the time that the first movie came out has gone from the main cast, and the show has started to experiment with new styles of story in preparation for its biggest change yet. But here's Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. with the same aura of charming anachronism, utterly unchanged even after all that's happened. There's almost something delightful about that, though at the same time it is a bit of a reminder that these changes are only accelerating, and it isn't long at all before Doctor Who is going to change forever...

So, I'm not one to beat around the bush. Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. is quite good. I'd say better than the first movie. This is owed in part to it simply being based on a superior serial, but it does also feel like the production team has learned from making the first movie and applied these lessons to make a smoother finished product. The eye candy is once again front and center, the technicolor Daleks this time accompanied by some brilliant sets of a ruined London. Little things like the flying saucer being somewhat better than a pie tin on a string once again let us know that we now dwell in a world where money exists. I was particularly impressed with the stunt work when that poor bastard tries to escape from the Dalek saucer and totally collapses through an awning and into a pile of rubble, a stunt that would never have made it into the TV show in this period. The Daleks are stuck with fire extinguisher guns again, but nobody's perfect...

Character-wise, Peter Cushing's Dr. Who takes on more of a leading hero role than in the last film, and seems to have developed some charming new habits like needing to put on Special Gloves every time he's going to inspect something. Roberta Tovey's Susan - or Susie, to my perpetual bafflement - returns but seems much the same as before. Curiously, Ian and Barbara are nowhere to be seen, likely owing to scheduling conflicts, and are replaced by a young Bernard Cribbins as the delightful Tom, and Dr. Who's niece (!!!) Louise. Appropriately, my first outburst upon hearing her introduced was to exclaim Louise who?! (Well yes, quite.)

Cribbins was far and away my favorite part of this movie. He's a skilled comic actor and has a lot of physicality in this movie that I found amusing, as best seen in the (frankly misjudged overall, but still entertaining) scene where he's imitating the Robomen to get off of the Dalek saucer. It's a weird kind of reverse nostalgia, since I was thinking of his future appearances in the BBC Wales iteration of the show all the while. Speaking of actors who have been in the TV series, there are loads of them. I had to look up most after the fact, though I recognized Old Mother from An Unearthly Child/100,000 BC and Daxtar from The Daleks' Master Plan. Obviously, Philip Madoc needs no introduction. His character here is fantastically slimy. I'm looking forward to additional appearances from him.

Thematically, the movie preserves the original's anti-fascist allegory, which is admirable in and of itself, even if the central message is sometimes buried under all the spectacle. Notably, the end of the movie seems to have no issue whatsoever with rewriting Tom's recent personal history, something which would never fly in the proper show. That definitely threw me, even though his takedown of the robbers was quite funny.

It's a real pity that they never got around to a third movie in this vein, as it feels like they were growing more confident in making these, and Cushing's Dr. Who was starting to take on a life of his own as something more than just a Hartnell impersonation. Alas, this one was a box office flop, which made plans for a third flick based on The Chase almost immediately dead in the water. For the public, it seems, the luster of Dalekmania had finally worn off, with two movies, thirty-six TV episodes, countless licensed toys, and an honest to god Christmas single depicting them having been produced for the public from 1964 to 1966. The well is tapped, the cash cow milked utterly dry, and Dalek fatigue has set in for the the average viewer, as it now almost has for me. Since all this success has revolved around them rather than the title character himself, I'm almost led to ask, as time for the Daleks is running out, is time for the Doctor running out as well?

The Smugglers will kick us off with Season Four next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 9 May 2020.)

Dr. Who and the Daleks [Doctor Who, Diversion 7]

Dr. Who and the Daleks by Milton Subotsky

25 June 1965

​

The attentive reader will remember that I originally intended to place the first Peter Cushing movie between Seasons Two and Three, in keeping with its chronological release. My little hiatus thwarted that, so instead I've been forced to time-travel back to visit this particular curiosity. Even if I had reviewed it in its intended slot, this would have already felt like a curious hangover of the earliest days of the program. Little quirks like Dr. Who's name and the lack of a definite article for Tardis mean that for a long-time fan, watching this makes it feel as though everything has been shifted a foot to the left. It's also a little uncanny seeing Cushing in such a professorial, grandfatherly role, as I'm only really familiar with him for his turn as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars. It's still a charming performance, which makes the fact that Ian and Barbara are reduced to such non-entities rather more painful by contrast.

The chief justification for this exercise (except for making oodles of cash on the Daleks' likeness) seems to be the eye candy, and there is plenty of that. The eye-popping set design, more flexible camerawork, and genuine pyrotechnics all show off the power of having a real budget. That said, there are more than a few confusing design decisions. The Dalek city being cast mostly in shades of pink doesn't make it feel much like the abode of a bunch of tinpot fascists, and I can't say I can understand why the Daleks would have need of so many lava lamps... The omnipresence of the cameras that did briefly appear in the TV version is cool, though, and the scene where Barbara is followed by dozens of cameras as she walks down a hall is brilliant. On the topic of shocking design decisions, the Thals are absolutely overpowering in their glam-itude. I just about choked with laughter when we got our first glimpse of one.

Tonally, it preserves most of the central themes of the original while losing some of the edge - see Antodus surviving his drop where he did not in the TV serial. Otherwise, after the initial shock of the obvious differences wore off, I found myself with very little to seize upon, as it is a very close adaptation of the original script. I have to say, it is most certainly a triumph for Doctor Who that it obtained the sort of star power necessary to make a big-budget film adaptation like this happen to start with, but as the contemporary advertising for this feature would suggest, it isn't on Dr. Who's merits that the film is marketed, but rather its main enemy. This is even more obvious in the sequel. As good as it was to watch, I mostly just found myself wishing to watch the original serial again, as some of the magic is just missing from this. Like his ship, Tardis, Dr. Who is not the Doctor; he is missing the definite article... Not the original, you might say.

Next, a brief look at Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

Doctor Who, Season Three

Far shorter than the space between my Season One and Season Two roundups, we arrive at our next big milestone. Season Three was a difficult season in many ways, with the large volume of missing episodes making it difficult to assess at times. It also seemed to have more peaks and troughs than the previous season, with higher highs and lower lows making for a less consistent viewing experience. Just the same, those highs were among the best of this era so far, and looking out for them made this season an enjoyable experience overall.

From this vantage, it's starting to become easier to scope out what shape the program will take over the coming years, with a lot of the awkward experimentation of the Verity Lambert seasons fading into a pattern which perhaps has less vibrancy and curiosity, but certainly more confidence. Whether this trade-off is going to be a good thing in the long run is still unclear, but it was always clear that Verity would be irreplaceable in many ways, even though John Wiles and Innes Lloyd have both proved to have their own qualities of production worth admiring.

The revolving door of companions this season has also proved difficult, with the relative stability of the first two seasons being very much a thing of the past. This has hurt the show in some ways, but the leading man is going strong as ever. Although it's often said that cracks in Hartnell's performance show in Season Three, I honestly haven't noticed any, and knowing what he was going through behind the scenes makes the effort he puts in all the more admirable.

Galaxy 4 kicked the season off, like the last, with an apparent holdover from the previous production block that as a result felt much more like part of Season Two. It is unique as one of only three adventures where we see the First Doctor/Vicki/Steven TARDIS team together, though Vicki is far better served by the script, as Peter Purves has been vocal about in the past. Though not a bad story, I found the central moral heavy-handed and the last episode fairly dull, so I can't find it in me to give it either a particularly high or a particularly low score.

It is only out of deference to convention that I mark Mission to the Unknown separately, as my instincts compel me to consider it a part of The Daleks' Master Plan both on account of it not having a proper production code, and on its clear status as a prequel to that serial. That being said, I'll note it's a capable episode that starts that story off strong, but only grudgingly rank it among the full serials of this season.

I was much enamored with The Myth Makers and would happily praise it as one of my favorite historicals in the history of the program. Although entirely missing, the dialogue still handily carries this four-part farce and keeps things entertaining all the way through. Only the sudden tone shift at the end breaks the flow a bit, but this is still a classic Hartnell story in my estimation.

The Daleks' Master Plan is the 700 lb gorilla of Season Three, with its considerable size and epic scope making it dominate the season by sheer quantity alone. It's to the story's credit that it has merits in both quantity and quality. It would almost be a classic, if it weren't so very long, though its high points are easily some of the highest of this era.

Continuing the apocalyptic theme of the last serial, The Massacre joins The Myth Makers as a strong historical serial, though it is a little too serious to hit all the right notes for me. The slow pace of most of the serial gives way to the bizarre whiplash at the end, with the Doctor's heartbreaking soliloquy interrupted rather jarringly by Dodo's arrival in the TARDIS. Peculiarities and tonal issues aside, I do feel like this one would rate even higher if it weren't missing.

I had fewer issues with The Ark than some might, but my remarks that it has a far stronger front half still stand. It is most interesting for its examination of what happens after the Doctor helps and then leaves, with the fairly dull villains in the latter half bringing my total estimation down a bit.

The Celestial Toymaker handily claims bottom place out of this particular season. I feel a little guilty judging a story that leaned so heavy on its visuals when almost none of them have survived, though I sense that even were the story complete it would still be a little bit boring. With a concept like the Toymaker it should really be more interesting, so it comes across as a letdown.

Although the weakest of this season's three historical stories, The Gunfighters is still a fun experience and fairly good overall. As much as I didn't enjoy the shift in focus away from the main characters for the latter two episodes, I do find it hard to believe this was ever considered a "worst ever" story by fandom.

The Savages surprised and impressed me, its strong message and many entertaining moments ensuring that I had a good experience despite its missing status. I'd love if this one got a little more attention among the fanbase, so if anyone would like to join me in calling for a Savages renaissance, then please be my guest...

Finally, The War Machines ended this season on a high note, giving us an exciting technological thriller with plenty of action and some great moments for both the Doctor and his two new companions. The clumsiness of Dodo's departure is the one bad note and it isn't enough to bring it down for me.

It's unbelievable how far I've come. We're very nearly at the end of Hartnell's tenure suddenly, but even though its last full season is done, it's far from being all over... until we have a look at a certain pair of films, anyway. Lest we forget that 1966 was a year of three Doctors.

Here's the score breakdown:

Galaxy 4 - 6.00

Four Hundred Dawns - 6.00

Trap of Steel - 6.00

Air Lock - 7.00

The Exploding Planet - 5.00

Mission to the Unknown - 8.00

The Myth Makers - 9.75

Temple of Secrets - 10.00

Small Prophet, Quick Return - 10.00

Death of a Spy - 10.00

Horse of Destruction - 9.00

The Daleks' Master Plan - 8.08

The Nightmare Begins - 10.00

Day of Armageddon - 9.00

Devil's Planet - 7.00

The Traitors - 7.00

Counter Plot - 8.00

Coronas of the Sun - 7.00

The Feast of Steven - 7.00

Volcano - 8.00

Golden Death - 6.00

Escape Switch - 8.00

The Abandoned Planet - 10.00

The Destruction of Time - 10.00

The Massacre - 8.75

War of God - 9.00

The Sea Beggar - 8.00

Priest of Death - 9.00

Bell of Doom - 9.00

The Ark - 6.00

The Steel Sky - 7.00

The Plague - 7.00

The Return - 6.00

The Bomb - 4.00

The Celestial Toymaker - 4.25

The Celestial Toyroom - 4.00

The Hall of Dolls - 4.00

The Dancing Floor - 3.00

The Final Test - 6.00

The Gunfighters - 7.00

A Holiday for the Doctor - 8.00

Don't Shoot the Pianist - 7.00

Johnny Ringo - 6.00

The O.K. Corral - 7.00

The Savages - 8.75

Episode One - 9.00

Episode Two - 9.00

Episode Three - 8.00

Episode Four - 9.00

The War Machines - 9.00

Episode One - 10.00

Episode Two - 8.00

Episode Three - 9.00

Episode Four - 9.00

Best episode: The Destruction of Time (The Daleks' Master Plan, Episode Twelve) - 10.00

Runner-up: The War Machines, Episode One - 10.00

Worst episode: The Dancing Floor (The Celestial Toymaker, Episode Three) - 3.00

Season Three average: 7.62

Best guest performance: Kevin Stoney as Mavic Chen (The Daleks' Master Plan)

Best special effect: The Dalek pyro-flames (The Daleks' Master Plan)

Best musical score: The Gunfighters (Tristram Cary)

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 6 May 2020.)

The War Machines [Doctor Who, Story 27]

The War Machines by Ian Stuart Black

25 June - 16 July 1966

​

It is rather interesting to see two stories from the same author in a row like this. Evidently, Ian Stuart Black was not the first pick to author The War Machines, which sprung from an idea by newly minted "scientific adviser" Kit Pedler, but just the same I'm glad that Black got the job. Between The Savages and this, I'm already impressed with his Doctor Who pedigree and am quite looking forward to The Macra Terror next season. He seemed to have a knack for adding a sociological dimension to his scripts which has been uncommon thus far. Fears of technology predominate this one, which tracks with Pedler's creation of the Cybermen not too far in the future... This time, the technological terror in question most certainly feels very forward-thinking. As has been pointed out before, WOTAN is basically the Internet before the Internet.

The startlingly modern feel of this story is also aided by its being set in then-contemporary London, under the shadow of the Post Office Tower, a brand-new monument at the time. It's amazing to think that we started this same season with Galaxy 4, as this feels so utterly different. It's also totally brilliant, though not in the sense that the themes are particularly intellectually exciting, aside from the startlingly accurate forecast of the future of computing. It's owed more to the exciting pace of the story and the feeling of having so many brand new things to gawp at. All throughout, The War Machines is quite the pacey affair, with my only complaint about its timing being that the resolution of the story in Episode 4 eventuates a little too fast.

The titular machines themselves aren't nearly as iconic as the Daleks they were implicitly trying to ape, but are still well-realized (except for maybe the rather silly smashing hammer). WOTAN itself is also delightfully creepy but perhaps doesn't get enough dialogue or screen time. Though some might groan, I got a big kick out of WOTAN and its lackeys referring explicitly to "Doctor Who". Given he's credited that way, I don't see what the fuss could possibly be about. I only wish they'd start crediting her that way again to really get the rabble to make some noise. ;)

To talk companions briefly, this is where we see Dodo off, and as Jackie Lane is one of the few remaining classic companions who never reprised her role for television or audio, it's really goodbye this time. I haven't disguised my dismay with the lack of time and thought Dodo has been given during her time on the show, but none of this can be directed at Lane herself, who continuously injects a sort of charm and likability into a role that's barely written at all. After 18 episodes with her, it still feels as if she just got here, which speaks both to the relatively short tenure she had as well as how underutilized she was by the writers of this period. Even latter-day stories haven't really treated her well; there are few of them, and some of the most notable ones treat her absolutely appallingly and all contradict each other to varying degrees. Wasted potential isn't a nice thing, but alas. She still gets the silver participation medal.

We are introduced to Polly Wright and Ben Jackson here, of course. They both get far more to do than Dodo, and are both immediately likable, though Polly spends far too much of the story hypnotized. Anneke Wills is a fantastic actress, though; hypnotized Polly is properly spooky, and when not hypnotized she is a total delight. Ben is a little rough-and-tumble, but charming as well. I look forward to seeing more of these two.

The Doctor is great in this story from the off, with his enthusiasm (and then trepidation) coming across well in the first scene where he exits the TARDIS with Dodo. Hartnell is a natural at slotting into this narrative role as a sort of eccentric scientific adviser even though it's not one he's really done during his tenure as the Doctor, and the cliffhanger where he confronts the War Machine is rightfully one of the most noteworthy from his time in the role. It's shocking how ruthless he can get here, though. He doesn't seem to mind the fact that one or more of WOTAN's thralls might die when he sends the War Machine to take the computer down, though the suggestion of this fact is vague enough that it doesn't reflect all that badly upon the character. Just after this, his sudden swanning off out of the Post Office Tower once the problem is handled is very Doctor-ish, though the memory of The Ark is still making me think twice about the Doctor's tendency not to stick around and help just a little longer leading to further issues. Unless I'm missing something, this problem won't really be addressed again in the narrative until The Long Game and the Bad Wolf two-parter in 2005.

Despite a few pacing and character issues, I did love The War Machines, and this one has quickly graduated to the realm of my favorites. It's a nice note to leave the season off on. And on that subject, my next post will be a round-up of the season, with plenty of fan-pleasing numbers for you guys. Stay tuned...

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 6 May 2020.)

The War To End All Wars, The Founding Fathers, and The Locked Room [Doctor Who, Diversion 6]

The War To End All Wars, The Founding Fathers, and The Locked Room by Simon Guerrier

2014 - 2015

​

I swear, it was actually unintentional that all the Hartnell-period audios I covered but one ended up being by the same author... When selecting my picks for this era, my only conscious decision was that the ones I had a look at should fit into the stories around them and fill in narrative or character gaps that I thought would benefit from it. It's a testament to Guerrier's talent in emulating this era that such a high proportion were more or less randomly selected by me, so hats off.

Compared with the previous two character-focused trilogies of his that we've covered here, though, I have to say that this one is the weakest, albeit not by a colossal margin or anything. The first story, The War To End All Wars, is a fairly strong one, with the central mystery of why Steven would have abdicated his throne being a quite compelling one. Of course, it makes sense to us as the listeners that Steven might not have had long-term success as monarch of an entire planet - after all, it's not as if he had any particular qualifications for leadership aside from having a lot of machismo and a great jawline. Heavy lies the crown, especially for a fellow who I'm pretty sure just wanted a quiet retirement...

The planet Comfort and its main computer throwing generations of people into an endless war are a classic example of a "broken spring" story, as lampshaded by Guerrier himself in the commentary at the end of the audio, but it works. The subversion of what seems like a "war is a racket" plot at the start into being caused by a faulty machine is an intriguing one, as is seeing Steven and Dodo try (and fail) to game the system. Sida, Steven's granddaughter, is also likable from the beginning, though a slightly flatter character than the comparable role of Robert from the Sara Kingdom audios. Her better moments come in the third audio of the story.

Interestingly, due to the shift from regular Companion Chronicles releases to box sets between The War To End All Wars and The Founding Fathers, the latter two parts of this trilogy were released together as part of The First Doctor: Volume One in 2015, meaning there's essentially no gap between the last two parts. As for their relative merits, The Founding Fathers is alright. It's good to see the Steven and Vicki team together again even if in an abstract form, as the two really didn't have anywhere near enough time as a team on-screen. The subverted expectations that Abigail might be a fellow time traveler are also fun. Generally though, it doesn't do a particularly strong job of stitching its central story (a celebrity historical featuring Benjamin Franklin) to the overarching theme of the trilogy. The Doctor's proverbial brain in a jar, though, is a neat evolution of the imprint of his consciousness that affected Jano in The Savages and does feel like a part of the same narrative universe.

The strongest of the three, though, is the last, set years after the first two during the completion of Steven's pet project, a powerful radio telescope that succeeds in "rescuing" the Doctor from his death in Antarctica in 1986, at least temporarily... This "flash forward" to The Tenth Planet works well at this position of my marathon, and seeing Steven's reaction to the Doctor's impending regeneration is a nice, fan-pleasing little moment. The shock revelation that the Vardan who Oliver gave his life to dispel in The First Wave has used this occasion to reconstitute herself is also a fantastic twist. It's nice seeing Sida (now president of the planet Steven once ruled) take charge of the situation, as well as the replica Doctor's gambit to trick and trap the Vardan once and for all. Although the individual parts of this trilogy aren't as strong, seeing all their elements come together, along with the callback to the Oliver audios, is still satisfying, so I would personally give these my recommendation.

Well, with all that said and done, all that's left of Season 3 for us is The War Machines, coming soon.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 5 May 2020.)

The Savages [Doctor Who, Story 26]

The Savages by Ian Stuart Black

28 May - 18 June 1966

​

I feel like there's a lot here to sink my teeth into! After the interminable Celestial Toymaker and somewhat insubstantial Gunfighters, this story feels like another noticeable shift, part of the sea change that is rapidly sweeping over the series in Hartnell's last few serials. The Savages feels not quite modern - but it does feel three years ahead of its time. Unless I'm mistaken, it is in this story that we are treated with our very first alien quarry, and one of the first stories to have a significant amount of on-location shooting as well. It's been said many times (here and elsewhere) that this story seems a lot like a preview of the Troughton era, and I can see what those reviewers mean. It really is astonishing just how rapidly this has all fallen into place. As recently as early in this season, I was questioning with some regularity about whether we were actually watching "Doctor Who" yet, as it felt at times as if the central essence of the show (as I would know it in its 21st century incarnation) was struggling to break out past a lot of strange dead ends and experiments. I've enjoyed a lot of these dead ends, obviously... It's just reassuring now and then to get a reminder of familiarity.

The central theme of this story is enjoyable, too, and it tickles my anti-authoritarian sensibilities. The ruling class of this society is literally sapping the talent and vitality of countless people who eke out a living without enjoying any of the fruits of their exploitation. The ending of the story where the machinery of the state is literally smashed to bits by the people it harmed had me grinning ear to ear. It's delightful when the Doctor remarks, "You know, my dear, there's something very satisfying in destroying something that's evil, don't you think?" I'm inclined to think that the titular "Savages" are implicitly meant to be the cruel Elders and their enforcers, not the poor outcasts living in the caves. Though the fact that the Elders were originally all meant to be in brown/blackface like Jano and that the story's working title was "The White Savages" throws a spanner into this idea. God, what a bullet we dodged.

The Doctor comes down strongly on the side of right in this story, particularly in a well-acted moment between the Doctor and Jano toward the end of Episode 2 where they get into a shouting match over the treatment of the Savages. This has to be one of my favorite Hartnell moments thus far, and Jano's petulant complaint that the Doctor's attitude is "most unscientific" really highlights the tragic reality that the notion of "progress" has been misused so many times in our own history to oppress and demean the downtrodden. Ultimately, an infusion of conscience from absorbing some of the Doctor's own life force turns Jano away from this idea, which is quite interesting. It really does feel all along like the Doctor knew this would happen and so manipulated events to this end. This isn't something he's done all that often in the program thus far (though I highlighted instances in both The Daleks' Master Plan and The Massacre which seemed to imply some sneaking around behind the scenes on his part) but it is something that will become more common over the tenure of his successor.

This is also, of course, the last outing for Steven Taylor. He's proved a surprisingly strong companion in my opinion, despite inconsistent characterization. Peter Purves is an underrated actor, for sure. I'll have more to say on the standing of the companions generally when I do my roundup for the Hartnell era, but suffice it to say he's grown into one of my favorites. It's a pity that his last story doesn't serve him as well as it might (though he does look smart in that turtleneck). His mean-spirited remarks to Dodo in the first two episodes are head-scratchers, for sure, though he calms down again later. He gets one last big hero moment when he and Dodo trick and capture Exorse in the Savages' cave before deciding to make a home among the people he saved to become their leader. It's far from an underwhelming departure, though it's only with the benefit of excerpts from The Perpetual Bond and Salvation and the like that his decision really makes sense. Just like the Doctor will, I'll surely miss him too.

Overall then, I came away from this story with a positive impression that surprised even me with its strength. I really do feel that The Savages would be a highly-regarded Hartnell story, maybe even a classic, had it survived. Even as a reconstruction it was great fun. Before we make it to The War Machines, we'll take a detour for our very last Hartnell audio, another trilogy starring Steven Taylor.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 5 May 2020.)

The Gunfighters [Doctor Who, Story 25]

The Gunfighters by Donald Cotton

30 April - 21 May 1966

​

Before talking about The Gunfighters, I'd like to take a moment to doff my hat to the individual episode titles, as this is the last time in the classic series that we shall see them. Though changing very little about the day-to-day facts of the show, it is still noteworthy that this marks a departure from the original format of the series as an ever-evolving serial made up of many episodes, like the golden age science-fiction of yesteryear, and into a subtly different format where discrete stories are told across multiple parts every few weeks. This change has been happening since Season One, with the fully serialized format only really being obvious in the initial run of 13 episodes. It is still noticeable as a break with the past in a period where these breaks are coming faster and more often. It wasn't at all obvious in The Daleks' Master Plan, just a few months ago, that we were getting into the final days of the Hartnell era, but it is starting to become more so here, as the episodes which don't feature or which marginalize the Doctor are beginning to become more obvious. The new production team has a vision, and unfortunately it's rather clear that this vision, ultimately, does not include William Hartnell.

About The Gunfighters specifically, then. This is a little less funny than Cotton's previous effort (The Myth Makers), but still has more than a few amusing moments, particularly the one where Steven and Dodo are forced at gunpoint to play the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon. And ugh, that song! I wasn't that annoyed with it as I watched, but now that it's been stuck in my head for days it's starting to wear on me. Please send help.

The first two episodes are very fun and mix the TARDIS crew's antics with the Old West farce quite well, but I was a little let down in the latter half of the serial when the focus turned to the titular gunfighters themselves and the main cast stopped mattering to the ongoing story. It swiftly turned from "Doctor Who parodies Old Westerns" to something more like Doctor Who standing by the sidelines while a somewhat lackluster Old Western just plays out around them. It's a little disappointing that this serial couldn't have been just a little more, but The Gunfighters remains fun and entertaining, albeit not entirely substantial. I don't have any more to add for now, so The Savages is next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 3 May 2020.)

The Celestial Toymaker [Doctor Who, Story 24]

The Celestial Toymaker by Brian Hayles

2 - 23 April 1966

​

Well, I'm at least relieved that I know I've crossed the low point of this season by now. The Ark left me underwhelmed, but The Celestial Toymaker left me outright disappointed. It would be overly reductive to say that this whole serial is just Steven and Dodo playing silly games with pantomime dollhouse characters, while the Doctor's silent disembodied hand stacks triangles, but I still found it terribly dull. There were a few highlights, and it is at least interesting to see the noticeable signs of a new production team falling into place. Innes Lloyd's Doctor Who, it seems, is a more sprightly and lighthearted take than that of John Wiles, which I certainly can't take any issue with.

The minimalistic backdrops are eyecatching even with no motion in the first three episodes. I was actually surprised to learn that episodes one through three were not tele-snapped (as I've discovered it's meant to be spelled) by John Cura, since I barely noticed any visual deficiencies in these episodes of the Loose Canon recon I watched. Closer recollection suggested to me that these were in fact mostly publicity shots repurposed to provide visual reference for a set of episodes for which there is basically none. So instead of belaboring how dull I found the serial (or groaning over particular moments like the King of Hearts' nursery rhyme) I thought it would be more interesting to turn to a general discussion about the subject of tele-snaps.

This serial marks the end of an incredible dry spell of thirty-three episodes for which tele-snaps were never commissioned. Out of this number, we have nine episodes which survive in their entirety; one more has an extended surviving clip of a few minutes in length (Four Hundred Dawns) and another few have a handful of brief clips from an 8mm home camera (from The Myth Makers), some short clips which I seem to recall were donated to Blue Peter (from parts of The Daleks' Master Plan), and a smattering of home photos (from The Feast of Steven and others). Otherwise, what I have just emerged from is the longest period in the show's history for which basically no visual reference survives. Part of the onus for this lack can be laid at the feet of John Wiles, who declined to commission Cura for his entire tenure as producer. I'm grateful that fate has made me quite well-disposed to recons, even fairly threadbare ones, so this absolute desert has not been quite the dismaying experience I might have feared going into it. So the worst of it has come and gone, but it's hard not to imagine what might have been.

Although I haven't been enamored with his vision for the show (to say nothing of his feuds with the cast), I can't entirely begrudge Wiles for not commissioning Cura, as the fee of commissioning tele-snaps for a given episode was rather steep. It's sometimes easy to forget that John Cura was already in the sunset years of his career by the time he started taking tele-snaps of Doctor Who, and that he had been performing this service for numerous programs since 1946. The expansion of both ITV and the BBC over the previous decade had forced Cura to purchase additional equipment and increase the complexity of his operation. Heightened fees were the necessary consequence of this, but sadly it does mean that his work started to dry up. It's a true pity, as it seems that he was a man with both a significant technical expertise, and a great passion for his craft. I was appalled to learn that when his widow contacted the BBC with an offer of his complete tele-snap archive after his death in 1969, they shortsightedly turned her offer down and she ended up junking the whole thing. Such a loss of television history is unthinkable today, but alas we can only look back on the past and shake our heads at this.

From the vantage of our time in history, it's now easy to see that much is owed to people like Cura. It's likewise owed to the amateurs who recorded audio and video of their own from the episodes as they aired, to various lost episode hunters, and to the Loose Canon and Planet 55 staff among others who have worked on restoring missing episodes into a watchable form. Without them, all this Monochrome Malarkey would probably not ever have been attempted. We as Doctor Who fans should be well aware that we are extraordinarily lucky, given the sheer number of junked tapes, a BBC of that time which was at best indifferent to preserving televisual history, and the mere fact of the passage of time, to have even as much as we do now. We could, for example, have no visual record of The Aztecs, had the tapes not survived, as no tele-snaps were commissioned for that serial, or even just one missing episode could have had no surviving audio track recorded by fans at home.

So despite the discouraging gulf of 97 episodes which still remain missing, Doctor Who is not impoverished by the bits of its history which are no longer here. Rather, the gaps enrich what remains in our hands by reminding us how very lucky we are to still have The Aztecs, or An Unearthly Child, or even stinkers like the one remaining episode of The Celestial Toymaker, added onto the fact that there is at least some audio or visual record of every episode in this period. Given all this, it really is impossible to complain. So tonight, I won't. I'll just smile and think of The Gunfighters instead.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 3 May 2020.)

The Ark [Doctor Who, Story 23]

The Ark by Paul Erickson

5 - 26 March 1966

​The Ark is a thing of two halves, in more ways than one. Obviously, there is a gulf of about seven hundred years in between episodes two and three, stitched together by the frankly amazing cliffhanger of the statue honoring humanity being discovered to have a Monoid head instead. This two halves phrase also holds true in that, while the first half of the story has some good story beats and some interesting concepts to it, the second half bored me to death. The Doctor getting to practice medicine for once is cool, and the concept of the Ark itself is fairly novel for the show. The Monoids are well-realized as a costume, as seen in the opening shot of the first episode, and I liked seeing all the critters in the jungle. In fact, none of this serial is what I would call bad and I generally enjoyed myself, but it really did lose me, and lose me hard, in the last two episodes. I think this story would have benefited from being split, with another adventure in between, sort of like how The Myth Makers separated Mission to the Unknown from the rest of The Daleks' Master Plan. The delayed gratification on the statue reveal would have been magnificent. But it's hard to say whether the Monoids in control would have been any more exciting, or if the Refusians would have been any less rubbish. Either way, the production values and the direction are good, so the episodes are visually arresting all the way through.

The one big thing everyone seems to remark upon while reviewing this story is the recurring debate over whether the portrayal of the Monoids is racist or not. Many platoons of pixels have bravely given their lives over the years to this topic online, so I'll stay brief. Though this particular theme of the story is undoubtedly not executed very well, and as such the implications of the Monoids turning around and oppressing the humans after being oppressed themselves are pretty grimace-worthy, I will say that I'm almost positive that this is just a case of well-intentioned writing going a bit off the tracks. The fact that the Doctor blames the humans in part for their own predicament, and that the Refusians insist that the two species coexist in harmony at the end of the serial, suggests that there is probably a good message somewhere under here, it's just buried by bad writing decisions. The noticeable fact that the cast is entirely white despite representing the remnants of the whole human race, ostensibly, is still an ugly actuality, though might be more to do with casting issues. Any further analysis of the problem is way over my head.

I'll change tacks and point out a strange fact I discovered while researching this serial. While Lesley Scott has a writing credit on this story, the first woman to have such a credit for Doctor Who, it doesn't appear that she actually did any writing on the scripts. Evidently, per Paul Erickson who was her husband at the time, it was a personal arrangement. Just another odd quirk to tack onto this episode. I always write the headers of these posts with the actual authors and will avoid crediting pseudonyms for the duration of the marathon. Just in case anyone was wondering.

There's not much more I can find to say about The Ark. Next we'll look at The Celestial Toymaker and see how it stacks up.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 30 April 2020.)

Salvation [Doctor Who, Diversion 5]

Salvation by Steve Lyons

4 January 1999

​I'm a little surprised that it took me two years to actually do a novel for this marathon. I'm not altogether sure if Big Finish audios have surpassed them in quantity these days or not, but there are still a whole heap of licensed books for Doctor Who, and yet I covered eight audios before I even managed one book! I've already passed the point of opportunity for a lot of First Doctor novels, most notably Empire of Glass which I had to axe after my long hiatus, but I expect them to be a more regular occurrence from this point onward. Still, this remains the only First Doctor novel in the queue, and as such is an outlier.

As I've mentioned before, this is a difficult era to write for, and new additions to the realm of Doctor Who prose (as also mentioned previously) seem to run the risk of trying too hard to be "mature". This is seen most plainly in this book during the appalling scene where Joseph tries to force himself on Dodo, but fortunately the book doesn't hit quite the same point of crassness again. Though that scene annoyed me for a while, I was back on board again once we reached the part where the Doctor and Dodo sit in Battery Park on the grass together, chatting and eating hot dogs. I thought that bit was a brilliant piece of character work which would have slotted right into the modern series. It's easy to see how a lot of the DNA of the novels published in the 1990s eventually made its way into the show proper when it was revived in 2005.

The book also deserves major props for trying to make an actual character of Dorothea Chaplet. As of this writing, I have already watched The Ark and I cannot say that I'm overly impressed with her so far. I could blame John Wiles for this, but something had to have gone wrong at multiple levels to turn out such a non-character as Dodo, especially given that foreknowledge tells me that she doesn't improve much before her departure. I'll try to form my own opinions, but first impressions seem not very promising. Despite that, Salvation actually managed to make me care. Lyons does a fine job of sketching a Dodo who's a naive but sympathetic young girl, desperate for escape after the death of her parents. Time is even given to explain her mysteriously changing accent, noting how she had to learn how to switch to RP after moving to the London area and being mocked by her peers. This is someone who could have actually lived in 1960s Britain, and it's nice to see her being portrayed with significantly more life to her character.

The central conceit of the novel is an eye-catching one, with latter-day gods walking the streets of 1960s New York. Just getting to see New York of this period in Doctor Who is a treat, as aside from the brief Empire State Building segment of The Chase, contemporary America is mostly ignored throughout the classic run of Who. The cultural differences noticed by the characters are quite fun, particularly the bit where Dodo is gobsmacked by seeing a color TV! The gods themselves (actually aliens, shocking millions of readers) are the most interesting concept put forward by Salvation. In a real sense, the story doesn't even really have an antagonist, and as the Doctor points out, the gods are victims just as much as the people they inadvertently kill. As a species, they have no thought or form of their own and instead react to the perceptions and expectations of others. When caught by army personnel after landing on Earth, one takes the form of a little gray alien. The rest begin to take the shape and powers of gods when reading the collective subconscious of a population desperately hoping for order and stability in a world torn apart by the social conflicts of the 1960s. The Patriarch even briefly becomes a bog-standard menacing Doctor Who villain when perceived as such by the Doctor! (I choose to be charitable by thinking this is intentional...) It's a wonderfully meta idea - a species of beings who only think, who only really exist when they are perceived.

The culmination of this is their own world, a place which the human followers sent there believe to be Heaven, an entire world of such beings where the dreams of humanity are made manifest. Joseph, who has been becoming steadily more and more human for the whole story unlike the others of his race who have been trying to match the human idea of gods, eventually starts to influence this world with his own thoughts and desires. Dodo, who has been having a frankly rather sad dream where her parents are alive and she is a princess, even starts to become affected by Joseph's perceptions, and almost marries him before he realizes this is wrong and puts a stop to it. He's even "excommunicated" by the Patriarch and becomes essentially a real human before the end of the story.

This is an interesting idea. A creature who essentially does not exist becomes so "real" because of the expectation of the humans around him that he not only becomes functionally human himself, but even starts to shape those humans in turn. There is a point to be made here in that fictional characters can be startlingly real depending on the perspective of the viewer, reader, or listener, and that just as these characters are shaped by an author, they can affect real people right back.

Conversely, it also puts into focus how, as soon as I stopped reading, Dodo as presented in this story ceased to exist, replaced by her vastly inferior counterpart from thirty-four years before. Although I'll keep this characterization of her in mind, I can't help but to feel that these post-mortem rewrites of her character are the best we'll ever get. It's a pity, but even though we've been rewriting the past for the last several reviews, this art has its limits. To mangle two quotes at once, I guess we're all stories in the end, companions of a Time Lord even more so.

That's all I have for tonight. We're set to explore many, many more stories written by Steve Lyons in the medium-to-distant future of this marathon. In fact, I was surprised by just how many, as I didn't know what he had written until I checked his bibliography earlier. I liked this book, on the whole, so I'm interested to see what else he's cooked up. For now, it's back to 1966, and The Ark is next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 29 April 2020.)

The Massacre [Doctor Who, Story 22]

​The Massacre by John Lucarotti and Donald Tosh

5 - 26 February 1966

It didn't occur to me until I sat down to write this review that it had been such a long time since I'd written about the work of John Lucarotti. The last occasion was when I wrote my review of The Aztecs, two and a half years ago. This is also to be the final such occasion, as notwithstanding a partial script submitted for 1975 and some work on the Target novelization range in the 1980s, this is his last contribution to the series. Although his tenure as a writer is not quite long enough to justify a "word on" post like Verity Lambert, nor were his innovations long-lasting enough, it is fitting to take a moment and acknowledge his work on the earliest years of Doctor Who. All three of his serials are (spoilers) among the best of their period, and have proved highlights of this marathon. It is sad to know that there won't be any more of his scripts to look forward to, but as more and more essential aspects of "Who-ness" have started to accrue around the program, it's hard to argue that this style of story hasn't had its day. There will be two more of its ilk from other writers (The Smugglers and The Highlanders) but after that, they will disappear from Doctor Who forevermore - on TV, anyway.

As skillful as Marco Polo, The Aztecs, and (albeit to a lesser extent) The Massacre might be, it's impossible to shake the feeling that we aren't actually watching Doctor Who here. Very little of the essence of these three stories actually lives on in future ones, even excepting the general lack of pure historicals from here on out. Even modern historical stories owe far more of their DNA to The Time Meddler, ultimately, than The Aztecs or The Massacre. Marco Polo, being the prototypical celebrity historical, is the outlier of the three, but even then it barely resembles more modern iterations. It's a bizarre avenue - another alternate history. But it's difficult to argue that the show wasn't better off jettisoning this format eventually. As intriguing as it can be to observe how alien the past is, there are only so many ways that the show can have this same formula play out. Put plainly, it is a little depressing when the Doctor and company are forced into a situation where they can't fix anything. There's only so many ways that you can play the trick of "at least you saved one person" (in the case of Autloc and, dubiously, Anne Chaplet), and it will frankly take until 2008 for the show to pull off such a plot right. So although we enjoy the pure historical, it must be said that I find few reasons to miss them.

Not to get too far ahead of myself, but this is one area in which I find it easy to credit the current iteration of the program. Series 11 had two pseudo-historicals, each so light on their science fiction elements that they were almost pure historicals in their own right (Rosa and Demons of the Punjab), but which still had a fantastic amount of nuance, gravitas, and maturity that made them highlights of that season for me. It could have been a return to form for a genre of Doctor Who story which had its heyday so long ago, but with the apparent return of the somewhat formulaic Davies-era celebrity pseudo-historical in Series 12, it seems that this was only a brief aberration in and of itself, just like the original pure historical. More's the pity.

To focus specifically on The Massacre, I think it does suffer, like most of the Wiles era, for being too dark. The darkness of it is done splendidly, lending to great moments such as Steven's (brief) departure from the TARDIS and the Doctor's soliloquy, but on the back of The Daleks' Master Plan and the ending of The Myth Makers, it has started to feel like a little much. I'm glad that some lighter stories are on the near horizon, though it does also have to be pointed out that the abrupt about-face from this darker direction and into Dodo's arrival on the set feels very strange.

I would be more annoyed if I thought it was some sort of backing down from wherever the storyline was going - even when I don't particularly like a story direction, I always prefer to see it play out rather than get axed halfway. I'm a strange creature like that, there really is no winning with me. But I do happen to know that the oncoming tonal shift is more to do with changes in the production staff. Although we've only had his production team, including Donald Tosh (who authored some of this story) since The Myth Makers, a span of four serials as of The Ark, this small number of stories is deceptive due to the mammoth size of DMP. Still, it's a blink of an eye next to Verity's tenure. Like Lucarotti, Wiles won't get a post of his own, but I thought I'd segue into it now, as despite remaining on for the next serial, his vision for the show ends, for all intents and purposes, here. I'm too charitable to quite say "good riddance", but I agree with the chorus of voices that has said over time that his vision for Doctor Who was unsustainable in the long run, so it's probably for the best, even though many of his episodes were great.

For the reasons stated above, Steven's sudden decision not to leave, after it's been built up so expertly, rubs me the wrong way, though it is understandable that they'd want to keep Peter Purves on a little longer to lend a bit more stability as the show begins to enter a rocky period. And I'm hardly about to complain, because once again, Steven is great in this story. With the Doctor off screen for almost the whole serial, he becomes the leading man. I think it was a deft trick leaving a man from the distant future as our eyes in this historical landscape, as its remoteness to him leaves him totally lost, which makes us empathize with him. He still tries his best, but out of his depth as he is, he's forced to move with the story instead of shaping it, forced by the machinations of the nobles ruling France at this time.

William Hartnell, of course, still gets a lot of good stuff to work with during this serial, notably his scenes as the Abbot of Amboise. The ambiguity over whether this is the Doctor or not is an interesting dimension to add to the story, though based on textual and non-textual clues, I'd say that he is probably not. Although the local Catholic nobles seem suspicious of him, this could just as easily be a result of the paranoia and fear running rampant in Paris at the time this story is set. The fact that he drops stone cold dead before the end, as witnessed by innumerable people, suggests that actually being the Abbot would have been beyond even the Doctor's powers of disguise. It's just another curious lookalike, something which will happen more than once in the show's future.

Even when he isn't having fun getting to play another character for once, Hartnell is on form in what little of the serial he is actually the Doctor for. His excitement to meet a local alchemist is infectious and reminds us, once more, that the Doctor is first and foremost a man of science. The fact that he is as excited to meet an obscure 16th century alchemist as most people would be to meet a great celebrity, is immensely endearing. His hidebound refusal to give in to Steven's reasoning at the end of the story puts a light on this Doctor's inflexibility, but unlike in previous stories (The Aztecs, The Sensorites) where his stubbornness is ultimately shown to be correct, or at least not challenged, once Steven leaves the strain finally breaks the Doctor. The incredible vulnerability of his scene alone in the TARDIS shows that being forced to safeguard history isn't something he takes pleasure in. Instead, it's a terrible burden, one which, he tells us, time and time again forces him to leave behind those he cares about. For the first time, one of the central tensions of the Doctor's character is laid bare, and the lonely god we know from some later stories begins to take shape.

Aside from shockingly good character moments, the subject matter is pretty daring in and of itself. Religious conflict is never a politically neutral subject even in the best of times, much less so in a Britain where the scars of the Troubles had not yet been opened. Although an effort is made to be even-handed and show the humanity of both sides of this Massacre, it's hard to dispute that the Huguenots come out in the more sympathetic light, which makes sense given that they were the ones being Massacred and not the other way around. There are still absolutists on the Huguenot side (like Gaston), but we're made to feel for de Coligny most of all, who seems like a decent fellow, while the royalists are backed by coldblooded creatures like Catherine de' Medici. This Protestant leaning might be a reflection of Great Britain's historical values, and it might not. I'm not really qualified to say. What I can say is that this is the sort of theme to inspire deep thought, and it lends The Massacre with a lot of weight.

Overall, despite suffering greatly from being the most missing Doctor Who story and from a baffling final few minutes, The Massacre is a worthy addition to complete the John Lucarotti hat trick, and definitely another enjoyable outing in my eyes. Before proceeding with the rest of Season Three, we'll make a literary pit stop for the first novel of the marathon, Salvation.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 27 April 2020.)

The Perpetual Bond, The Cold Equations, and The First Wave [Doctor Who, Diversion 4]

The Perpetual Bond, The Cold Equations, and The First Wave, by Simon Guerrier

February - November 2011

​

I have to say, it is totally fascinating how well-established the idea of a post facto companion is in Doctor Who media. Fans of most long-running series would revolt, I think, if an officially licensed entry tried to "retcon" in a new main character into an epoch that's already long over, but in our funny little section of the universe, barely anyone seems to bat an eye. Oliver Harper isn't exactly the first, but he is, nevertheless, the first we'll actually have a look at. I find myself returning again to the recurring idea of rewriting the past. For a series that said you can't do such a thing in its first season, Doctor Who still seems to do it quite a bit! A companion like Oliver could never have existed during the time period in which his stories are set.

There is, of course, the fact that in 1966, the Sexual Offences Act which legalized male homosexuality in England and Wales had not yet been passed, and so there wasn't a prayer that a character like Oliver could be written into a BBC program. It wouldn't be until after the series' revival in 2005 that an explicitly LGBT character would be included in the show. But that's just the obvious one. It's worth pointing out that he also differs from the other companions we've had so far in having a discrete character arc that's delineated from the moment he's introduced. His end informs his beginning, and everything in between. This in and of itself would likewise be revolutionary for this period, where serialization (and most likely the lack of six decades of progress in the medium of television writing at large) means that the characterization of companions is startlingly ad hoc and treated almost as an afterthought.

We saw a little bit of course correction on this in, for example, the Sara Kingdom audios (also authored by Guerrier of course), where a past companion was given a little more material to work with. This gives old characters a new life and new ways to grow, but there are limitations on what you can do without creating a new character entirely. The natural consequence: more post facto companions. Sorry, I do go on, I just find this phenomenon totally fascinating.

Bringing it all back now. Does having the benefit of originating in writing of the 21st century mean that Oliver Harper is necessarily a more successful character than his costar, Steven Taylor? Considering the short tenure he actually gets (only these three audio stories), Oliver doesn't get the screentime (or speakertime) necessary to really grow on you like he would have, had he been a season-long regular like other companions. Thus while he isn't that memorable as a character, I can still call his presence in this trio of audios a success, as he enables the central narrative thread of the trilogy, one which in my opinion does fit in quite well with the Wiles era. Steven and the Doctor's angst over living on "borrowed time" is surely felt after the rapid-fire departure of Vicki, Katarina, and Sara, with all the mortal peril still endangering our two leads on screen at this time, and particularly so knowing the behind-the-scenes drama including Wiles' desire to push Hartnell out.

But, put into so few words, no, I still think Peter Purves is the star of this trilogy. He and the "new guy" have some decent chemistry and a number of great scenes together. As is usual for Companion Chronicles starring Purves, he voices the Doctor as well. This means that Oliver suffers a little for never getting to actually interact with "his" Doctor, and even the Doctor as impersonated by Peter Purves is relatively less prominent in these stories than he would have been in a televised serial from this period. Thus, while Oliver is good, he's gone too soon to make much of an attachment to. I do think this was intentional in a way, but it did make it difficult to get invested.

The final scene of The First Wave where the Doctor and Steven finally get tired of running and, believing they are on "borrowed time", give themselves up to be killed by the Vardan, is quite chilling. It's easy to believe that the two of them would feel this way after having lost so much and dealt with so much death, such that Oliver subverting it by sacrificing himself is a great twist. Considering that the story belabored how their deaths were a fixed point in time, though, I'm confused that the deaths being prevented isn't treated as a bigger deal. And in the very next story chronologically (The Massacre) the Doctor still insists that you can't change history! I'm sure there's more to be read into this, but that's all I have for now.

Overall I did like this trilogy, with the last part being by far the best and the middle part the weakest. I'll have a lot more of import to say about The Massacre, which is next.

(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 27 April 2020.)