Wowee, that's certainly one way to end a season.
I've become quite the fan of David Whitaker's work on Doctor Who over the course of this marathon. He more than anyone else has been the most willing to depict the Doctor as a consciously magical character. It's a strange sort of contradiction that gets highlighted by this. The Doctor has historically rejected paranormal and magical explanations for phenomena - and is usually vindicated by the revelation that it was aliens all along. While inversely, on the face of the whole thing, it's about a shapeshifter who travels through time and space in their magical bleeping wardrobe. It's a funny thing, this show.
So here we have a story about alchemy, human nature, and just while we're at it, we'll be killing off the show's most popular antagonists "for good" in the biggest bang imaginable. It's so mad that I kind of have to love it on principle.
Let's back up a little, though, to have a better look at this story in context of the program so far, and this season in particular. As we all remember, the first Dalek serial gave Doctor Who the nudge it needed to keep commissioning seasons and become a cultural fixture. Just last season, I was talking about the peak of Dalekmania in the midst of the Peter Cushing movies. It's safe to say that the Daleks were a pretty big deal.
I must emphasize then, that it was ballsy of the production team to look the problem of writing them out of the show right in the eye, and do it in the most spectacular way they could. There had to have been serious doubts about whether Doctor Who would even survive for very long without its most iconic baddies. This seems like a declaration of intent as much as it is a farewell to the Daleks, a statement that the program is capable of getting on just fine without them. I wonder if viewers at the time were convinced. I know I sure am.
Within the scope of Season Four, it's also interesting to reflect on how Troughton's first season is bookended by two remarkable Dalek stories by Whitaker. On one side, the new Doctor has a trial by fire at the hands of his worst enemies; at the other, he stands triumphant after defeating them once and for all. It's very stirring in a way. And despite the vast differences in setting between the two, I have to take note of some parallels. Alchemical themes are obviously present in both (the mercury swamps of planet Vulcan, and basically everything in Maxtible's mansion), but this thread seems to run a bit deeper than just the set dressing.
Where The Power of the Daleks uses the Daleks as a point of contrast to highlight the essential Doctor-ness of our main character (and in so doing, primes the audience to believe that we are still watching the same beloved character as before), Evil shifts that comparison toward a broader look at humanity as a whole. The human traits of curiosity, mercy, and wonder are shown to be inimical to the single-minded fascism of the Daleks. It's telling that Evil goes out of its way to remind us of the otherness of the Doctor, first by telling us that the Daleks would be unable to extrapolate the Human Factor from him, and later showing him to be immune to the Dalek Factor altogether. We've heard mentions of the Doctor coming from another planet before, but it is a little odd hearing it twice in one serial. The impression we get is that the Doctor is, like us, fundamentally opposed to the brutish violence and blind hatred of the Daleks. But even though he is with us, he is not like us.
"I am not a student of human nature. I am a professor of a far wider academy, of which human nature is merely a part."
Now that I've picked at the philosophical underpinnings, let's start the dissection. I was interested on this viewing, now that I'd actually seen The Faceless Ones, how this serial flows seamlessly out of the previous. The modern view of the 60s we get is a little more lovingly rendered than in the previous story. It's such a cool piece of whiplash going from the pop tunes playing in the Tri-Colour to Waterfield's antique shop, which immediately feels like a different world. Thence to one of the BBC's countless beautiful period sets. If I had to compare it to a similar piece of intentionally crafted setting dissonance in the show so far, the best example I can think of is An Unearthly Child.
Of the characters we meet in the mansion, I find Molly likable, Terrall tragic, Ruth Maxtible mostly forgettable, and Toby a bit puzzling. Terrall's condition is probably the most interesting part of this supporting cast, the realization that the Daleks are controlling his mind to the point where he doesn't know what's real anymore, being quite chilling. I can't say I know why he had Toby thump Jamie on the head in any case, and the blackguard's speedy dispatch an episode later just made my scratch my head.
The depiction of Kemel is the one real stain on this story. He's steadfastly in the "protagonist" camp and thus doesn't fall into the same regrettable "shifty foreigner" archetype as some of the characters from the next story after this. But I was absolutely cringing again when Maxtible called his mind "undeveloped", and the fact that he spends the whole story mute and is unceremoniously killed off at the eleventh hour is honestly just insulting. I certainly wish the actor who portrayed him had gotten a little more respect than this.
On the opposite side of the spectrum we find Waterfield and Maxtible, who honestly make this story. They're both very different kinds of characters, but both wonderfully rendered; one convincingly sympathetic, the other entertainingly mad. Waterfield's attack of conscience in the lab just as the Doctor is about to apply the Human Factor to the test Daleks is one of the best moments of the serial, and I was suitably moved by his sacrifice at the end. "A good life to save" indeed, and a fitting end for a man who struggled so much to do the right thing. As for Maxtible, he's about as good of a secondary villain as you can ask for in a story like this. For all that the Victorian age was one of rapidly advancing science, Maxtible's outdated belief in alchemy and his dismissive attitude toward Kemel certainly serve as a reminder that it was still a backward time in many ways. The contrast between these two figures is possibly the best example we get in this serial of the difference between the good side and the dark side of human nature, highlighting the conflict between the Human Factor and the Dalek Factor (which I guess we could really just call the Inhuman Factor).
With Ben and Polly out of the picture, Jamie finally gets his chance to shine. In the large ensemble cast of this season, Jamie was always notable, but never central. Now his relationship with the Doctor comes to the fore, and it's a surprisingly fraught one! It has been a rather long time at this point since Steven left - I think that was the last time we saw proper narrative tension between the Doctor and one of his companions. Jamie is principled and slots well into the "hero" role for part of this story, which clashes with the Doctor's more staid and calculating approach. Indeed, the Doctor comes off looking pretty badly when he lies to Jamie early on, and the strain on their relationship from him putting Jamie in harm's way is absolutely believable. Played with total class by these two actors, too.
Here we start to see shades of the sort of manipulative Doctor that would come to the fore in the 1980s, though we have of course been getting flashes of that for this whole season. Here the results are more spectacular than ever, the booming and stentorian Dalek Emperor standing almost no chance against the tide of change the Doctor has unleashed. It's the most powerful we've seen him so far, really, and it marks an interesting turning point.
All in all, this is an absolutely fascinating story. Stronger at both ends, like most stories of its length, you feel the lag around episodes three and four. But for all that, it is for my money still one of the best the program has had up to this point.
Before beginning Season Five, I will detour, as usual, to do the traditional season roundup. Stay tuned.
(Modified from the original posted at Gallifrey Base on 5 March 2021.)
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