Happy Birthday, Billy (and Abnormal Service May Be…?)

Happy 103rd birthday, today, to the Doctor – William Hartnell. And isn’t it odd to think that he was barely past his half-century when he was on our screens the first time around?

Having successfully managed to post absolutely nothing here at all last year, due on top of my habit of putting things off to having been very much more ill than usual last year (and, though still not being at all well, casting the dubious hope that 2011 can’t possibly be worse than 2010), seeing this morning that it was Billy’s birthday on Nicholas Whyte’s marvellous running digest of Doctor Who anniversaries made me think, oh, if anyone’s still reading this, I really ought to say hello. Several times, I’ve watched / listened to an episode or three of Marco Polo, but not got further in making notes, though I did watch the gorgeous full-colour Recon all the way through simply to enjoy it at about this time last year, which may be something of a cautionary tale. I’d like to carry on here, though, so perhaps I will.

There have been two straws in the wind in the last few days.

First, on my other blog, Love and Liberty (and, in the evening, on my Twitter stream), I had an unusual day last Wednesday: I was typing from before seven in the morning until after nine at night, which is by far the most I’ve done for several years. One of my favourite artists, Gerry Rafferty, had died the day before, and I wanted to say what I felt about him… Then, I happened to see that there would be a mass Tweet-along that evening watching the rather-later-than-Billy Doctor Who story Earthshock, which as luck would have it I’d been intending to write about for some weeks. So I did, taking me to about 7,000 words posted that day. Then watched it, firing off possibly my largest number of Tweets in one evening, too, though that’s harder to check (and, you know, it takes longer to write something short).

Obviously, the next day I was so exhausted that I slept for most of it, except when my right arm, wrist and hand were waking me with the severe pain they were all in. Still, a good sign.

The Horror of Running Through Corridors

Then a new book arrived, with uncanny timing for today’s festival. I’ve been looking forward to it for months, as it’s written by Rob Shearman (who writes awfully well, and who I’ve met several times and is lovely – and when not lovely, interesting) and Toby Hadoke (who I’ve seen do brilliant stand-up, and probably met in the bar afterwards in more of a blur) and is very much my sort of thing. So much my sort of thing, in fact, that it might as well be 323 pages printed with ‘GET YOUR ARSE IN GEAR’ printed over and over again in exceedingly large type, like an abusive flickbook (of which more later).

Running Through Corridors Volume 1: The 60s is the first of three books watching the whole of Doctor Who, in which two talented and highly readable chaps, both amusing and immensely Who-literate, do a sort of Time Team thing, in which they’ve written up their reactions to watching the whole of Doctor Who from An Unearthly Child to The End of Time during the “gap year” of 2009. While paying especial attention to the positive aspects of each story, because too few fans focus on why even the not so great Doctor Who is still brilliant.

“I wasn’t expecting that.”

My regular readers, of whom I have none, may recognise that I started off trying to do my own Time Team thing, and that I also set out to answer for every story “Why Is This Brilliant?” – because I thought too many ’guides’ only ever looked at the negative side. Good grief, nearly four and a half years ago. And yet two people did the whole lot in one year, while I… Haven’t, and am unlikely to before a more literal End of Time. At this rate, my only hope of even finishing as far as Doctor Who’s got so far in my lifetime is for me to be frozen, revived every Christmas Eve (what a horrible thought – always Winter, and never Christmas), then prodded with a stick to spend all day making Who notes and posting them, then being shown the previous year’s ‘new’ Christmas Special and grumbling, ‘Humbug! It’s not as good as The Web Planet.’ In short (too late), Running Through Corridors may as well have floated dimly above me at midnight, croaking ‘Marco was dead: to begin with…’

Today being what it is, I’ve read the opening of the book, in which Rob has a brilliant idea at 6.30am on New Year’s Day, and his wife is unaccountably unenthused by it. So he shares it with Toby instead, who swears a lot (off). Both are fluent and funny as ever, while I found myself laughing at Rob’s report that Toby isn’t doing anything much in 2009, which Toby expands into “I’m getting married this year.” I’m also amused when Toby talks about his “fiancé”. Not that he’s getting married to a man; this is neither a bad thing, nor anything to be surprised about from a Doctor Who fan. The surprise and amusement is when he then reveals that his fiancé’s name is Katherine. At this point, it becomes clear that for all Toby’s protestations that his impending wedding should be far more important than watching Doctor Who, he’s only gone and proven that the series is far more important: I bet it’ll be far, far further into the book before he allows that sort of mistake in a Doctor Who detail. Some things are unthinkable.

I’ve read what they have to say about An Unearthly Child, and am relieved both that it’s entertaining and thought-provoking, and that it still leaves a few things that I can still point to as unique to mine. Phew. They elaborate on moral subtleties; on the cusp of everyone suddenly knowing who Matt Smith is, there’s a startling anecdote about Waris Hussein; and Rob meditates on death in Doctor Who, comparing the dance around it in An Unearthly Child (though with surprisingly little attention to skulls) to the nervousness the writers had about the subject before they brought the series in 2005. Like the Waris Hussein story, this has a peculiarly serendipitous timing; just last week, Richard and I set out to start watching the whole of David Tennant’s adventures, his now being an ‘old Doctor’ a year past, and New Earth inspired us to discuss exactly the same thing that Rob brings up. When Cassandra reappeared in 2006, you see, we found it deeply ironic, as her ‘death’ in 2005 had been an enormous relief to us, being the first explicit, visible sign that the new series wouldn’t be afraid to be as “steeped in death” – in Russell’s words – as the old, and then she turns out to have survived her flesh exploding in front of our eyes when all the bashfully off-screen dead stayed dead. But that’s for another day (or year. Or century).

I’m now in a quandary. I’ve always consumed Doctor Who guides whole, particularly the good ones (and this looks very much that way), but this is so very much the same sort of thing I’ve, er, started here that I worry that once I plunge over The Edge of Destruction, it’ll be dispiriting for its industry, or daunting for its quality, or simply so comprehensive that I won’t be able to avoid ripping it off when I try to record my own reactions and think my own thoughts. I suspect I won’t be able to resist, but I’m not sure with that intimidating me that I’ll enjoy it.

I did enjoy, however, the gag. Not the written one; the drawn one. If you flick through Running Through Corridors Volume 1: The 60s, you’ll see a little figure running along the top of the pages (see, I said I’d come back to the flickbook), which is very entertaining, if a little lop-sided. Here’s a funny thing; he – and I can’t help assigning the authors’ gender – runs along happily if you’re flicking forward, but go back in time, and it’s just the same figure, throughout, never moving a millimetre. That strikes me as very mean to Rob. He’s the one who appears first in each of the exchanges, so you assume he’s the stick-man standing on the left-hand pages, while Toby’s on the right – and yet, Rob must have been doing a lot of running, as the last couple of times I bumped into him he’d lost a huge amount of weight (while I’ve gained it. I suspect he has a picture of me in his attic).

Anyway, I take this book as a sign from – well, it’s Mad Norwegian, so possibly Odin – that I should get back into it, and I’m very tempted.

On the other hand, I’ve not finished that piece I was writing for The Avengers’ Fiftieth Anniversary yesterday, have I?

So, watch this space. But probably not very often.

Doctor Who Magazine’s Golden Treasure

If you’re like me, you’ll probably need cheering up after the European Elections (though the locals were pretty good). If you’re even more like me, one way is to dip into Doctor Who Magazine’s latest special, 200 Golden Moments, featuring absolutely wonderful scenes from every single Doctor Who story. It is, quite simply, a joy. It answers the question I wish fans would ask more often – ‘Why is this brilliant?’ – across the whole TV series from 1963 to this Easter, and rivals the Radio Times’ legendary Tenth Anniversary Special as the most marvellous Doctor Who magazine ever printed.

Strike a pose! 

Back in 1973, years before Doctor Who Magazine began, before any of the mass of guidebooks (still less websites) naming every Doctor Who story were published, the Radio Times celebrated ten years of the series with a special glossy full-colour magazine, back when the Radio Times itself was printed on loo-roll. It boasted a mini-guide to every story (sometimes accurate), plans to build your own Dalek (with the measurements wrong), a Dalek story by Terry Nation (who decided it didn’t count, so used the same idea for a Blake’s 7 episode) and, above all, it was packed with thrilling photos, both from the stories themselves and specially staged ones with many of the actors who’d played the Doctor’s companions. I probably wasn’t walking yet by then, still less watching Doctor Who or arguing with other fans, but a few years later a family friend gave me the slightly battered copy he’d bought at the time, and it instantly became (and has remained) one of my most treasured possessions. For many years, it was a window into the series’ prehistory – anything from before I started watching was, of course, ancient, and anything from before I was born practically mythological – that you simply couldn’t get in any other way. It still looks terrific today, and is so iconic that drawing a variation of the cover (starring the two of us) was the natural choice for Richard and my tenth anniversary.

So in terms of affection and excitement, and with well over 400 Doctor Who Magazines since then, the bar is set pretty high. Well, 200 Golden Moments pretty much clears it. It’s the ideal celebration, and if I were you I’d go out and buy a copy before they all sell out. Though I’m half-American I’m incapable of a convincing American accent, so it’s a good job I’m only writing a booming advertiser’s voice: ‘If you only buy one Doctor Who magazine, make it this one’.

My scanner doesn’t like the gold foil, but it’s prettier in real life 

I love reading – and writing – in-depth articles on Doctor Who, something thought-provoking and with a bit of punch. I love laughing at the bits that don’t work (though – as with any tribe – only with another Who-lover, defending the series against all comers from ‘outside’). And I love watching some stories an awful lot more than I love watching certain others. But, above all, I love Doctor Who, and sometimes it’s a little wearing when all a particular fan or book or site seems to do is be negative. Four or five years ago, Richard and I were reading a particularly in-depth, insightful and comprehensive book on the series and greatly enjoying its ideas, its turns of phrase, and ganging up on it together when we thought it had got something hilariously wrong. But although it and its companions are probably the best set of books ever written on the series, we often felt that at times they lost sight of why they were into Doctor Who in the first place. So from then on, when Richard and I watch Who together, even a story we really don’t think much of, we’ve always tried to ask that question that was missing from these books – why is this story brilliant? Whether it’s a chorus of praise or just a saving grace, the idea of the series is so magnificent that every part of it has something worth treasuring. And that’s why I love this new special: at last, someone’s produced the very thing I want to read to cheer myself up about any of Doctor Who you care to name.

Why Is This Brilliant?

It’s immensely readable. It’s made up of a couple of hundred little nuggets, all beautifully illustrated, by dozens of different authors in dozens of different styles and finding something memorable for many dozens of different reasons. It focuses on great drama, funny one-liners, special effects wonders, scary cliffhangers, gorgeous music, fantastic acting, long, short, sad, happy, old, new… Like the series itself, each piece is something new. If you know every story, you can look at it through someone else’s eyes; if you’re a more casual watcher, it’s like 200 trailers or bite-sized insights, something that might make you think, ‘Ooh, I’d like to try that one’. You can read it from cover to cover, or back to front, or pop in and out at your leisure – it’s ideal to dip into, and like a particularly good chocolate selection box, you can just take one at a time, or you can swallow 200 at a sitting.

Now, obviously I’m a Doctor Who fan, so naturally I could pick at this. I could point out that, as some stories get more than one “golden moment,” there are actually not 200 but 222 of them here. But what sort of pedant would you have to be not to see that as a bonus? I could complain that when I picked out 46 stories to illustrate Why Doctor Who Is Brilliant last year I roamed across the whole glorious panoply of Doctor Who, from TV to novels to comics to radio plays, and this sets its sights too narrowly to do the whole marvellous concept. But then, I only picked one story from each year, and they’re doing the lot – just how many pages would it take to cover “A Few Thousand Golden Moments”? So, you know, they’ve got it as near to just right as it could ever be. And, like that fabled Tenth Anniversary Special, open it up and it looks gorgeous.

A Peek Inside…

I’m not going to offer a critique of every single piece in there, because – well, obviously, because I don’t want to take up 146 pages (and probably 146 days to write). But I’d like to pull out a little of the best of it, and raise the odd eyebrow. The first thing, of course, is that they haven’t – they can’t have – chosen all the same moments that I would. So with some stories you turn the page to find exactly the famous scene that’s always praised, while with others there’s an iconoclastic focus on something you wouldn’t expect at all, with the one everyone raves about suddenly missing. I set myself to scribble down the half a dozen scenes from the entire series that I thought were the most indispensable, and when I flipped through to check, they had three of them. But, you know, most of the time it’s just as joyous to find yourself looking at a little-thought-of scene in a new light as it is to bask in the comforting glow of something you’ve always ‘known’ was magnificent. And if you’re too upset about your favourite being ignored, Philip MacDonald’s evocative introductions for each Doctor pick out a brace of brilliant moments each sketched in a few words, just a selection of some of the bits they didn’t choose, and chances are you might find it mentioned there anyway.

I’ll take you on a trip through my favourite Doctor, then skip more swiftly through the others. The magazine starts perfectly – the first choice, for the first story, is exactly the one I’d have made, as Ian, Barbara and all of us first enter the TARDIS. I look at my scrawled six and, yes, that’s just about the most indispensable of the lot. And when I wrote the other week about why The Edge of Destruction was brilliant, the moment quoted here is one of the scenes that gripped me, too. We come to the earliest-broadcast story I don’t think too much of and, hurrah, Jonny Morris has gone for exactly the nightmarish moment I always think of as its finest. Matt Michael picks a scene that I wouldn’t for The Sensorites, but captures it beautifully, and links the marvellous William Hartnell all the way to Christopher Eccleston in a flick of a phrase – then his next choice includes the lines I used when, ten years into making political speeches, I first flourished a quotation from Doctor Who to a packed room. Andrew Pixley, known for his learned, detailed archive work, is a revelation, making me smile throughout with sheer, infectious joy, then Gareth Roberts – known for his fine comic writing – leaps in with one of the most searingly dramatic arguments the series has ever known, even if he falls for the Earl of Leicester’s spin-doctoring. Jonny Morris reveals Billy’s lolcats; Nev Fountain thanks the stars that Doctor Who always managed to avoid (sometimes by a whisker) such ghastly sci-fi clichés as the Planet of Women. Paul Cornell shares the “sheer magic” of Billy’s most moving soliloquy; Mark Wright picks out what, if Bill Hartnell was the star of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – what a marvellous, marvellous idea – would be his ‘hero moment’ for the titles. And Patrick Mulkern picks out some eye candy, then later on plays what I’m certain is a Hampstead euphemism. I know where he’s coming from.

Rob Shearman, ah, the lovely Rob Shearman, superb writer, incisive critic, swoops in on just how utterly brave and brilliant was the way they changed the Doctor for the first time. Stuart Manning takes a minor scene from one of my favourite little-known stories to illustrate in a couple of hundred words exactly the ideological point I made in several thousand. Philip MacDonald, in The Tomb of the Cybermen, hits on another of those magic six I’d scribbled down, and makes a lovely case for The Abominable Snowmen – and he’s right, you know. Between them, on one of those stories that get two golden moments, Keith Topping and Jonathan Morris capture exactly the most horribly memorable scenes… Though I’d have been torn in making it three, and added the terrible, fearful, hideous glee that comes in torturing a Cyberman.

Probably the biggest shock in the entire magazine is that a scene so memorable it’s been remade three times in Doctor Who TV, for pop videos and even for Pringles, killer shop window dummies smashing through the high street in Spearhead From Space, is ostentatiously missing as a scene I’d never have thought of takes what everyone would assume was its place. Which is why it’s so perfect that the pull-out quote for the scene which every fan will frown at for being the wrong one is, “Is this someone’s idea of a joke?” Priceless! Then, for the sequel, Scott Handcock makes me see the brilliance in a cliffhanger that, I’ll confess, I’d always thought a bit rubbish. And Dave Owen nails the relationship at the heart of The Three Doctors, while Philip MacDonald treasures a tiny, exquisite moment from the next story along.

After an ad for Big Finish’s Short Trips books, now at the end of the line and flying off at half-price – you know you want to – there’s Tom Baker. Gosh. What a lot of Tom. And every little bit marvellous. There’s a lovely little moment by Paul Vyse from The Sontaran Experiment, then Gary Russell and David A McIntee between them zero in on the central drama of Genesis of the Daleks (even without the scenes I’d have picked – the Doctor and Davros’ philosophical debate for sheer electricity, and Ronson’s screaming death for memories of boyhood bloodlust). But while Gary’s piece nails Davros’ fatal flaw, I have a problem with David’s. Even though (thanks, Jennie) he did vote Lib Dem in the Euros. You see, he’s both absolutely right and dead wrong on the Doctor’s moral quandary over whether to destroy the Daleks. Where David goes wrong is in his shortcut to answering the Doctor’s question, where he rephrases Sarah’s comparison of the Daleks to a virus into “a genetically modified mould in a dodgem car” and that, because of the dehumanising words “genetically modified,” it’s fine to kill them… Which, rather than listening to the Doctor’s argument that this is an intelligent species, ironically takes the Daleks’ side that you can say another form of life isn’t like us, and so destroy it. Where he’s right, and impeccably liberal, is in seeing what’s so important about a hero that asks questions:

“This is a hero, a role model, who, when faced with a difficult decision and unpleasant options thinks about them… The nature of the question, or the answer, doesn’t matter; it’s the concept of asking that’s so fabulous.”

Nev Fountain then earns incredible brownie points for pointing out just what an incredible cliffhanger Part One of The Deadly Assassin has – yep, it’s my favourite cliffhanger, and my favourite story. So I’ll ignore the choice he makes for one later story of one of the few scenes in the special I still think’s rotten… Love to Philip MacDonald again, too, for finding a moment in The Face of Evil that says exactly how vitally important Tom Baker could be. Readers who know The Robots of Death well will understand just why it’s disturbing that “David Bailey” writes about it, and hooray for Marcus Hearn, who spots one of the most marvellous things about Robert Holmes’ writing, as well as Kate Orman, who knows exactly why the last Doctor Who story to really, really scare me was so scary.

You can tell I love this period, can’t you? Because I’ll never finish at this rate. I’d better skip most of Tom and tell you just to get the magazine itself, which is much more fun to read, after all. Look out, along the way, for top Gary Russellness on The Invasion of Time, Peter Anghelides hitting one of the tiniest, most perfectly crafted things about The Androids of Tara (albeit making the mistake that everyone makes about the story, and not picking the line I borrowed for a certain blog), Gareth Roberts filling me with enthusiasm for The Power of Kroll, which is no mean feat, and Dave Owen, hurrah, knowing that the music is the most gorgeous thing in City of Death. Plus lots and lots of Jonny Morris (and more for free), who always comes up with something new – even if I don’t think he gives enough credit to the brilliantly talented David Fisher.

Rob Shearman doesn’t write many of the pieces here, but they’re some of the best. He’s spot-on – and, unexpectedly, very funny – for Full Circle, and supplies two brilliant moments for the early Peter Davison era. Also unexpectedly, that period gets perhaps the most impressive run of nuggets in the magazine; if you want quality writing, the middle’s a good place to start. Scott Handcock again sees right into the Master in Castrovalva, Gareth Roberts finds a premonition of death, and Rob, again, takes an opening scene I’d always thought of as perfunctory and shows the unsettling effect it’s there to create. It’s probably the most memorable moment in the magazine for making me see a scene from an entirely new angle. Jonathan Morris gets it right again and again on Snakedance and Frontios, Ian Farrington summons up Sgt Pepper, and Matt Michael has a marvellous moment of childhood terror – a piece of personal memory that even beats Gareth Roberts and Bonnie Langford.

I know David Darlington, but I can assure you he’s not bribed me to say that I loved his celebration of Colin Baker in The Twin Dilemma. Oh, it made me smile. And at the other end of Colin, Cavan Scott picks something way cool. New Grand Mekon of All Doctor Who Steven Moffat writes about Dragonfire; you know, I don’t really agree with him, but he writes it jolly well. And Mark Wright’s dead right on Paradise Towers. I know Joe Lidster a bit, too, and when I saw him on Saturday I really should have told him how perfectly he conjures a moment of The Curse of Fenric. I don’t know James Moran, but I also met him on Saturday and he seemed terribly nice; I should have told him, too, that he was lovely on Survival. Because I knew, of course, it had to be that scene, but I don’t think I’ve ever read anyone evoke it so well. Bless Kate Orman, next, for what she says about kissing, and Dave Owen on just how funny the Master is. He is, you know.

Gosh, only nine paragraphs into the three I meant to write about the magazine itself, and I’m into this century. Yay for Matt Michael on The End of the World; I love it too. There’s Jonathan Blum on Doctor Who making you cry – the story he writes about did for me, too – and Scott Handcock, on it scaring you all over again. Then David Tennant thunders into Doctorness with a fabulous scene brought to us by Peter Anghelides, and it’s that Jonathan Morris again, not making the choice I’d have made but drawing me into his view of New Earth. And what scene’s a Dalek’s favourite? I’ll let you read it and find out, but it’s brilliant, too. And thank you, Gary, for hitting what might just be my favourite David Tennant moment in one of his finest little stories, while Jason Arnopp picks probably the mesmerising “moment” I’ve watched more than any other from this century’s Who. Though he lifts out seven minutes, and I just can’t stop before I’ve watched the episode’s whole last sixteen. And what could be a better end – to the beginning – than Andrew Pixley making me utterly thrilled when reading about Planet of the Dead?

Go on, go on. Buy it. Their snippets are much better than my snippets about their snippets.

Other Marvellous Moments

The lovely Tom Spilsbury’s Editorial opening the magazine mentions the inspiration for it all, DWM’s 1996 article 20 Moments When You Know You’re Watching the Greatest Television Series Ever Made. That evocation of Doctor Who’s That Certain Something stirred a lot of imaginations at the time, followed by ten more suggested by readers, another ten of the best cliffhangers – bizarrely excluded from the ‘main’ set – and one ‘best moment’ each for the Master and the Cybermen. That’ll be 42, then. Strangely, given that those were DWM’s indispensable moments for the series thirteen years ago, only 19 of them made it into the 222 (the ‘extras’ suggested by readers turn out to be the most successful). Then the flurry of favourite snippets died down until DWM published its list of the series’ greatest deaths last year, and even the top one of those doesn’t make it here. Inspired like many people back in 1996, though, and by my childhood marvelling at clips and comment documentary Whose Doctor Who, I edited together my own 50 favourite scenes – don’t worry, I won’t list them all – of which 20 appear in 200 Golden Moments.

I’m going to finish by writing about just one scene I’d like to pick as a magic moment. In the spirit of the special magazine, it’s finding something absolutely glorious nestling in a story that’s perhaps not one of the best. 40 years ago yesterday, a BBC press conference presented Jon Pertwee as the new Doctor. My feelings about his Doctor have been complicated over the years, and I’d say now that, while I love him, he’s the Doctor I find it most difficult to like. Slight update: I was getting rather sleepy by this point in the article (having had just two hours’ sleep amidst grumbling at the election results the night before) and entirely forgot that this was the point at which I meant to unmask the identity of the outstanding but aggravating book series about Doctor Who alluded to above, one volume of which inspired my whole ‘Why is this brilliant?’ concept through being detailed, thought-provoking but persistently sour. It is, of course, Lawrence Miles’ and Tat Wood’s About Time collection. By a stroke of serendipity, Tat’s vastly expanded second edition of Volume 3 (covering the Third Doctor, though that’s less of a given than you might think) has just been published, and I started reading it yesterday. I had no idea until I read in that very book, 40 years to the day later, of the date on which Mr Pertwee’s casting had been announced. Then, irresistibly, another anniversary presents itself today, this time serendipitously chiming in with the blue giant spider on the cover of About Time 3…

Skip forward, and 35 years ago today his Doctor suffered fatal radiation poisoning and regenerated into Tom Baker, at the end of a story that was something of a Pertwee megamix, flourishing many of the era’s greatest strengths and weaknesses. Planet of the Spiders is even one of those few Doctor Who stories which I have major ideological arguments with. With all that, you wouldn’t think I love it, but I do – and a large part of my love for that story, and the love I have for Pertwee’s Doctor too, comes with the climactic scene from 35 years ago today.

Back when I was five years old, I wasn’t allowed to stay up for Melvyn Bragg’s Arena arts special Whose Doctor Who, so my Dad recorded the sound from it on open-reel tape. Though now the whole thing’s easily available on the marvellous The Talons of Weng-Chiang DVD, for several decades I pored over the soundtrack, taking years to identify where some of the clips came from. Among them, though, there were three scenes that I could always identify and which I absolutely adored and always held me spellbound. The one which I hadn’t seen on TV on first transmission (and didn’t until the story was released on VHS in the early ’90s, with a fantastic cover based on this very scene) was taken from the final episode of Planet of the Spiders, a story where the action centres on – as you might guess – giant spiders seeking a blue crystal with the power to expand your mind to an incredible degree. Yes, it was made in 1974, since you ask.

“Now listen to me. Listen. I haven’t got much time left. What you’re trying to do is impossible – if you complete that circuit, the energy will build up and up until it cannot be contained. You will destroy yourself.”

At the story’s climax, the Doctor walks into the heart of the Spiders’ domain, facing his fear and the Great One, the huge, demented god-empress of the Spiders. Knowing that even to walk into her crystal-powered cave will kill him, he still goes in and offers her the final crystal in the hope that she’ll leave the humans alone. Maureen Morris voices the Great One in a tour de force of power and madness, confronted by Pertwee’s bravery and desperation. The blazing blue of it all, and the giant spider, socks you in the eyes, but the most striking ‘effect’ aiding this extraordinary face-off is the huge, eerie music. It might just be composer Dudley Simpson’s finest moment, and probably Jon Pertwee’s, too.

What’s so magnificent about this scene isn’t just the performances, or the music underscoring them. It’s that the Doctor sacrifices himself to bring the ultimate villain the crystal – but still begs her not to take it. His desperation isn’t for himself, and his pleading isn’t for himself; it’s initially for the people he’s dying to save, but during this scene it changes to a desperate pleading to save the villain. He holds off actually giving her the crystal out of fear for her – and she uses her mind to snatch it out of her hand, thirsting and aching to impose her will on the entire Universe, believing that the last crystal will give her limitless power. He’s aghast not for the Universe, but because he knows she won’t be able to contain it. He pleads, he protests, and is quite frantic to save her even as she’s crying her triumph. The Doctor with the biggest ego confronts the very personification of ego and, dying, tries desperately to save even an evil megalomaniac. He fails. The Great One’s terrific gloating power becomes agonized screams, and they’re the most chilling sound ever heard in the series.

The giant spider thrills the boy in me, the awesome music makes my spine tingle and the dying screams make the hairs on my neck rise, but what really makes this a golden moment for me is the sheer Doctorishness of Pertwee risking his last minutes of life to save his enemy. He’s heartbreaking.


Cross-posted to Love and Liberty, my main blog.

The Edge of Destruction

The third Doctor Who story is an experimental tale unlike any other, but it does set one standard that an awful lot of other stories would follow – it divides opinion. It’s fair to say that this is the first ‘Marmite’ story, with those who are into it finding it compelling, and those who don’t thinking it’s a total waste of time. I remember seeing it twenty years ago on crummy 27th-generation VHS from a dodgy backstreet Doctor Who dealer (no, really; I had to traipse the seedy alleys of Manchester before widespread availability on VHS, DVD and YouTube) and being absolutely hypnotised. I still am. And if you’re not, it’s one of the shortest of all Twentieth Century Doctor Who TV stories – just two twenty-five minute episodes, making it the same length as the standard adventure today. At the very least, a useful breather between two seven-part epics, then.

Again, I’ve found a creation from Colin Brockhurst that showcases the story, a thrilling cross between a Hitchcock film poster and a pulp sci-fi comic. Oddly, while Susan has probably the most disturbing scenes in the story, here she looks the least demented of the characters – but watch out for those scissors…

 

An Outer-Space Psychological Thriller In Two Weekly Parts

My ‘The Review all Doctor Who Challenge’ posting in an online discussion, January 2004:

A great first episode with lots of mystery, a rather silly resolution at the end, but what a fun little story. Surprisingly creepy. Reminds you how good all the regulars are – Barbara has a great shouting match with the Doctor, and even Susan’s quite scary. In a good way.

And I Said…

This has a very odd feel when watched in a rush after the first eleven episodes; continuing the story in some ways, a breathing space in others, but harsher, and unsettling everything you’ve just got – nearly – used to. There’s very little music, and no other setting, so we just concentrate on the actors we know. And with everyone acting so strangely, it’s as if we don’t know them at all…

Barbara’s the most normal, but even she’s lost her memory a little; the Doctor’s scheming and suspicious; Susan frighteningly psychotic, with huge shaggy hair and knife-like scissors; and Ian in some ways the most disturbing, first amnesiac, next cold where you’d expect him to be concerned, then laughing and smiling at misfortune. By just a few minutes into the first episode, we’re alienated from all of them.

It’s often very stylised, and very intense – and with the two rooms and just four actors shouting at each other, it’s like the Pilot episode mixed with an experimental play. Shame the ‘climax’ is a bit of a let-down after the TARDIS’s psychodrama, but the last few minutes as they finally mellow to each other and the Doctor does his best to make it up with Barbara is rather lovely, too.

Yay for the first near-ideal Doctor Who title – welcome to “The Something of Something”. And, according to taste, you need only wait for the next story’s first episode or for Patrick Troughton’s arrival for the form to reach perfection with that all-important second “the”.

Despite our having seen it the previous week, the opening explosion is presented with shocking suddenness, shifting to brief darkness then harsh lights as the Doctor lies at a crazed angle. The music may be stock, but it’s very effective here – keening, up-swinging weird shit that makes us think, ‘OK, this is nothing as normal as Daleks…’

Disconcertingly, Susan doesn’t know who Ian is, but still wants to help him – while Barbara is more concerned with the Doctor. When Ian does come round, he’s cold and strange, alienated and alienating. I’m glad that doesn’t last too long; he’s usually such a reassuring presence that he’d probably have been the most disturbing of the lot (Richard adds, “Isn’t the idea that their personalities have become mixed up? Carole Ann Ford is playing ‘Barbara’; William Russell is playing ‘The Doctor’?”).

It’s a very staged moment when Susan confronts Ian with her scissors – she’s so starkly posed that it’s almost a tableau – but her not recognising him and then stabbing the mattress again and again makes the scene horribly strange and powerful.

The story’s most memorable scene comes when Barbara finally loses her temper with the Doctor and turns him to toast, but her anger flares up earlier, too; the Doctor tells Barbara the Ship must have landed somewhere and, fed up, she snaps, “You don’t know, do you! You’re just guessing!”

Susan, becoming hysterical – as she would be, with her home haunted – guesses that there’s something inside the Ship, which sets Barbara thinking (and makes the Doctor unreasonably defensive)… Then, with brilliant circularity, Ian’s warning not to share that theory with Susan for fear of scaring her is overheard by her, which only reinforces the paranoia that came up with it in the first place.

The ironic thing is, despite the idea that there’s something inside the spaceship being a product of Susan’s fears and the Doctor and Ian scoffing at the very idea of a man or an animal getting in when Barbara tentatively raises it, it turns out in the end that Barbara’s suggestion of “Another intelligence?” is right all along, just not in the way any of them imagined.

After we’ve already seen Susan’s violence with the scissors when Ian went in to her, we can empathise with Barbara’s nervousness as Susan sits in her dark robe and almost-wimple, asking cold questions – but that very nervousness just makes Susan more convinced that the teacher’s lying. Even Barbara seizing the scissors doesn’t relive the tension, as Susan carries on creeping Babs out about the silence, the shadows and then, with a note of triumph, possession.

The story’s most disturbing moment – of many – comes with Susan looking like a sweaty, evil nun under her ‘wimple’, apparently getting malicious satisfaction in worrying Barbara. Her suggestion that something’s hiding “In one of us” is as unsettling to the viewer as it is to Babs, then Ian’s “You must be clairvoyant” hints at Susan being not just suddenly nasty but a poltergeist medium.

One of the eeriest threats in this story is the series’ first hint of possession – though it turns out to be a red herring this time, it soon won’t be, and Doctor Who will never look back!

The best scene in the show is that magnificent face-off between the Doctor and Barbara when he, fuelled by his fears for his Ship and Susan, accuses the teachers of sabotage – but Barbara, furious, slices his argument and authority to pieces over his ingratitude for their having saved his life several times over. Just as importantly as the scene itself, it’s less than half-way through the story: it doesn’t resolve their differences; he takes a while to climb down and swallow his pride, just as in real life someone ripping you a new one doesn’t instantly win you over.

Barbara is fantastic, and fiery – so it’s a shame that she goes straight from giving the Doctor the tongue-lashing of his life to screaming at the melted clock. Otherwise, it’s one of the strongest scenes for any companion. And she’ll get a stronger one…

All the characters are all over the place here under the extreme conditions, but Barbara is the most plausible: unnerved by all the weirdness, but given strength by her fury! Her shouting the Doctor out in the first episode is a stunning moment, and if that sort of thing happened more often, it would do him a power of good. It probably inspired Donna…

The melted clock-faces are a great concept, but while I can ignore their logical failings, it’s difficult to forgive the director for making such a mess of them; there’s a belated close-up of the big clock and an indistinct one of Ian’s watch, yet the biggest reaction to them is of Barbara in long-shot, pulling off a watch we can just about see on a big modern telly and throwing down first it then herself. Has he heard of moving the camera?

Do the melting clocks prefigure the fast return switch for Dalí aficionados? What else does going back, and back, and back again signify but The Persistence of Memory?

The story’s most disturbing moment comes with Susan looking like a sweaty, evil nun and getting malicious satisfaction in worrying Barbara with her suggestion that something’s hiding “In one of us” – then Ian’s “You must be clairvoyant” hints at Susan being not just suddenly nasty but a poltergeist medium.

Billy looks great sitting in his chair, close to the camera (all the more effective for being almost the only close-up in the first episode), face half-shadowed, surrounded by huge concentric circles of light of light amid the shadows and deeply suspicious in both senses of the word.

The Doctor has some great plotting moments towards the end of the first episode, acting the devious butler after debating with Ian – who he thinks is trying to get the better of him – while Ian is still suspicious of the cleverer man’s motives. Both the trick with the drinks and that argument are direct echoes of their conversation over the Geiger counters in The Daleks, again with Susan as spectator (lurking by the food machine), though this time the Doctor’s deception is a response to clashing with Ian rather than the cause of it.

Susan tries to be the peacemaker with an unrelenting Barbara, like patching up a quarrel between parents – at once the youngest and the most mature of the party.

There’s a superb cliffhanger, with the Doctor prowling round his drugged companions to eerie, oscillating, high-pitched music, giggling nastily and waving his hand in front of them before going through to the console and stretching his fingers over it like a concert pianist – only for hands to appear round his neck. Next week, of course, you realise that this ‘strangulation’ is the series’ first really forced cliffhanger, with its first deeply unconvincing resolution. There’ll be much less plausible to come, though…

There’s a fascinating contrast between the two episodes, breaking noticeably into two acts through both the script and a sharp change in direction. The first looks occasionally shaky, but has great performances and powerful material, making it off-putting and compelling at the same time. The second makes far better use of close-up, light and shadow, but has uneven scripting and a very different threat – while initially we’re afraid that something has crept into the TARDIS while they were all unconscious and of what the Doctor will do as a result, by mere minutes after half-way he’s making up and leading rather than splitting the crew under the danger of disintegration…

We’re so used to Ian being buttoned up, metaphorically and literally, that it’s startling to see him apparently attack the Doctor, then collapse, twitching and raving. Almost as disturbing is his robe falling open all the way up to his boxers. No, no, he’s a teacher! Put it away! Avert your eyes and pretend he’s Arthur Dent.

Susan’s the one who seems the most changeable this story – varying from hysterical to coldly judgemental to the crew’s sole peacemaker at a bat of her huge eyes – but when the Doctor hints at putting the humans off the Ship, that threat seems to make sense of snapping her out of hostility and into concern. And though his manner doesn’t suggest a climbdown, after Susan pleads with him the Doctor tries to prompt a confession rather than promising expulsion, as if – as ever – looking for a way both to save face and to give in to his granddaughter.

It’s fascinating that, for the Doctor, a load of lights flashing is a more impossible trick for the teachers to arrange than melting every clock on the Ship. Still, once the whole fault locator goes off, the Doctor decides on the spot to stop diddling about and pull together.

I love how the Doctor reassures Ian and Barbara about his intentions by warning them that the Ship is on the point of disintegration! Kudos to him, though, for throwing away his prejudices – at least when the facts become overwhelming – and admitting he’s misjudged them both.

The Doctor’s sudden turn from scheming threat to the hero taking charge is abrupt, yet convincing and utterly compelling. Though William Hartnell hesitates over the odd line, he’s gripping, his authority sells the character completely, and the new director’s sudden switch to using close-ups and deeper shadows complements him perfectly just as the story really wants us to sit up and take notice.

“We had time taken away from us,” Barbara ponders, “and now it’s being given back to us… Because it’s running out!” Look, I know it makes no sense, but it sounds brilliant, doesn’t it?

That deep ‘thoom’ of power and flare of light as the force beneath the Ship’s console surges to agree with Barbara – making the four travellers stagger away from the straining column in a cross pattern – is a simple but brilliant effect, like the world’s loudest séance tap.

With the first episode centring on the clash between the Doctor and Barbara, here the Doctor’s been tempered by that chastening experience only to come out stronger, because now he’s willing to take others’ ideas and run with them, too.

Billy excels with his re-emphasised leading role, coming up to the camera with his hands on his lapel as he wonders if this is the end, working it all out in soliloquy against the TARDIS console as the camera slowly zooms in, then endearingly nervous and hesitant as he tries to make things right with Barbara once the danger’s past. It’s an outstanding performance.

“If only I had a clue,” exclaims the Doctor, exasperated, prompting Barbara, brilliantly, to suggest that “I think, perhaps, we’ve been given nothing else but clues.” And, of course, she’s right. What a fantastic team they make.

Billy gives a powerhouse performance here, but if you’re in the right mood, he’s also very entertaining at times without quite meaning to be – “You’d be blown to atoms by a split second!” at a deadly serious moment is one of his finest fluffs.

The Doctor’s soliloquy as he stands in front of the console, he and it lit in the dark, the camera slowly closing on them as if they’re part of each other, his seriousness and then delight as he realises that they’re at “A new birth of a sun and its planets,” something wonderful as well as destructive to them… A magnificent scene.

Unusually, William Russell’s been the least of the performances this time, but after Barbara and the Doctor have worked out all the difficult bits between them, Ian’s the one who asks the key question – where was the Doctor sending them? And, despite all his grumpy intransigence, it turns out he really had been trying to take them back, and that’s what got them into all that trouble. As he finds what’s gone wrong and fixes the spring, the power rises, the lights rise, the camera rises and your heart rises in what’s a glorious moment, ideally without listening to the dialogue.

The resolution seems at odds with itself, both ‘failure of limited computer literalism’ and ‘this isn’t just a machine – it’s alive!’ The ‘it can’t show us on the fault locator because there isn’t a fault (er, except for the broken spring)’ is familiar, now, as an example of ‘the computer can only say exactly what it’s programmed to say’; but all the weird shit is saying that, actually, the TARDIS can say all sorts of other stuff. Is this the TARDIS struggling towards sentience, finding roundabout ways to overcome its limitations, or is the fault locator an entirely separate machine which is dumb, while the TARDIS has a language all of its own, deeper and stranger?

The Doctor explains the anticlimactic climax to Susan in mid-hug, congratulating her on her bravery, only for her to prompt him about the others. Enchantingly, he hems and stammers, is instantly forgiven by Ian but, gathering himself, pays fulsome praise to Barbara – only for her to walk off. As he speaks admiringly of her to “Charterhouse” and tries to work out which control to try next, Ian laughs. And we realise that, in the crisis, he not only knew exactly which control was which but also got Ian’s name right…

The Doctor and Ian making up, one embarrassed and the other magnanimous, is lovely. And he pays a generous tribute to Barbara who, realistically (and as she did last week) finds it very difficult to forgive immediately. But both in his praise and in his genuine nervousness in approaching her, he’s utterly charming, charming us as well as her.

“As we learn about each other, we learn about ourselves.” And it’s all in Billy’s delivery – delivered less engagingly, he’d just have been summarising the point of the plot!

After being sinister and threatening for most of the story, it’s lovely to have the Doctor bashful, generous and charming at the end, desperately wanting Barbara to forgive him. With the help of a little homespun wisdom, some definitely not homespun fashion items from Susan, and at last the Doctor calling Barbara “very valuable” – that’s exactly what he said about the Ship! Bless him – she cracks into a smile, letting him genteelly hold out a coat and offer his arm. He really does apologise beautifully, and you can see the respect they have for each other from that point on.

Is this the TARDIS struggling towards sentience, finding roundabout ways to overcome its limitations, or is the fault locator an entirely separate machine which is dumb, while the TARDIS has a language all of its own, deeper and stranger?

Wonderfully, even the cliffhanger into the next story is just a minor part of another character piece. The Doctor and Barbara emerge arm in arm to find Ian in yet another enormous coat and to see rock and snow through the TARDIS doors with, blissfully, Susan chucking a snowball at them. Barbara rushes out to join in, and the Doctor links arms with Ian instead. How fab is that? Who needs Susan to find a giant’s footprint to tune in the next week? I would anyway with that lot.

That was absolutely gripping – I’m glad it was so short, though. The tension would have collapsed if it really *had* gone on as long as a night at the theatre. At such a perfect little length, I enjoyed it tremendously.

Brilliant as the New Adventures were, this story reaches a crisis for the TARDIS crew and resolves their relationships in much the same way the novels repeatedly did then, er, un-did. It’s much more settled here (though the forced beginning of The Reign of Terror is a bit of a drop back, isn’t it?).

After this, they all get on – when on occasion the Doctor’s paranoia and determination to put them off the Ship suddenly resurfaces in more shallow scripts, it just seems silly.

Sure, the explanation at the end is bafflingly mundane, but what ending could have justified all the weird shit? Isn’t it more disturbing that even a broken spring could trigger so much strangeness? Imagine what something really going wrong could do.

Richard asks: “It’s never really developed in the series, but is the ‘console’ the machine for communication with the TARDIS rather than the TARDIS itself – though in one sense you could end up thinking of that as a horse’s bridle or a ox’s goad? Then the bit of broken spring isn’t so glaring, as the ‘bridle’ is a considerably less complex machine than the ‘horse’.”

Whatever I think of the ending, I love the twists along the way. The threat moves from possession, to the Doctor’s plotting, then it seems certain that the Ship is threatening our heroes, and all the while it’s screaming at them in its own language that there’s an unimaginably big threat outside and it’s really not happy about it.

What suspense! How many ‘stuck in a lift / bottle’ shows have lighting that wants to be Hitchcockian, a Twilight Zone concept and acting for experimental theatre?

This is so often dismissed or overlooked, yet it’s the overlooked link between J. B. Priestley and Sapphire and Steel.

It’s a good job they decide to do this story while the console room is still huge! It looks how it always is in my head, less from being a small boy captivated by a smallish black and white telly with poor reception than from reading those marvellous descriptions and poring over those fabulous photos in The Doctor Who Monster Book.

Whether this was a planned piece of character development, a cost-saver to counter the overruns on stories either side, a rush-job to fill in when the next story wasn’t ready, or commanded by the BBC high-ups while they made up their minds whether to continue the series beyond its initial quarter-year, by accident or design it ended up like no other piece of Doctor Who. And I always side with an experiment.

It takes a long time before there’s anything quite as experimental as this again, but in Twenty-first Century Who there are similar forty-five-minute slices of formula-breaking oddity, and hurrah for that (“Don’t Brink!” shouts Millennium). But, still, imagine them doing anything like this today! …That’d look a bit like Midnight, wouldn’t it?

What a masterstroke to take the time travellers to prehistory, then a half-ruined, half-shiny future world, their threats lulling us into seeing the strangest space in the universe as our safe place – then make it haunted, surreal and just plain weird. It is not a space rocket with Batman at the controls.

Marco Polo will in some ways be the first ‘ordinary’ adventure, once the series has found its feet (or giant snowshoes); it’s easy to see the first thirteen episodes as one big story, the story of how our heroes come together, through time and space travel, and how they come to realise that even what they travel in is stranger than anything they know.

Nonsense though some of the end may be, it’s hugely influential on some terrific later stories: Logopolis making the TARDIS a strange and scary place again; Christmas On A Rational Planet showing the TARDIS’ deep intelligence; right through to this century, where Boom Town and The Parting of the Ways finally deliver on how dangerous the power under the console could be.

On this day thirteen years ago, Time Waits For No Man (oh, all right, the TV Movie) was first broadcast. And that has far less drama along the way, despite being nicked from this and The Deadly Assassin, and an infinitely less well-established and more rubbish TARDIS deus ex machina, where rather than the Ship being unfathomable, it’s soppy.

The Doctor’s Story

Reinforced as the undoubted lead by setting the whole story inside his Ship, the Doctor’s the focus of this story, and William Hartnell gets to showcase many facets of his character: first helpless, then deeply sinister, then brilliantly working it all out, before showing a side that we haven’t seen before – humility, generosity, and charm. After this, the Doctor’s much more willing to listen to other people. I say more willing… Perhaps the moments most to look out for are his utter discombobulation at being chewed up by Barbara, his fascinated concentration as soliloquises his way to working out what the threat must be, and his irresistible offering his arm to Barbara at the end. Perhaps the moment most to avoid is his confiding in Ian that they’re all going to die sooner than he’d told the women, to protect their girly heads, though the two men act ‘unconvincing’ rather delightfully. Still, at the end of this story, it’s clear that Barbara’s the member of the crew for whom the Doctor has the greatest respect. After this, the Doctor and other characters are that much more vanilla, but the series’ future – and formula – is more assured.

For those who’re obsessed with Billy Fluffs, of which there are several here – some evidently scripted, like his endearing stammering when trying to apologise, some evidently not – DWM’s Special Edition #7, from 2004, tells us that William Hartnell, rather marvellously, ad-libbed his line to Susan that “You know, my dear child, I think your old Grandfather is going a tiny little bit round the bend.” He’s only as bonkers as his Ship.

What They Said…

Time Team, Doctor Who Magazine 280, July 1999:

“‘It’s rather like a Samuel Beckett version of Doctor Who,’ observes Richard. ‘Everyone seems to be viewing the situation in a different way and although they’re talking to each other the flow seems very disjointed – almost as if they’re living in their own little world, unaware of the others around them. It’s all rather confusing.’”

“‘It’s terrible,’ says Jac calmly. ‘It’s certainly done like a stage play – but a terribly boring one. It reminds me of improvisation classes at school drama club – not too bad for the participants, but hell for anyone forced to watch.’”

“The malfunctioning time machine takes our travellers to The Brink of Disaster, which is apparently a more unpleasant place to be than merely The Edge of Destruction. The panel seem to agree.”

Hurrah! It’s only three stories in, and already I’m disagreeing with them entirely.

“You attacked us. And when we were lying helpless on the floor, you tampered with my controls.”

“But why would we? For what reason?”

“Blackmail, that’s why. You tried to force me to return you to England.”

“How dare you! Do you realise, you stupid old man, that you’d have died in the Cave of Skulls if Ian hadn’t made fire for you?
“And what about what we went through against the Daleks? Not just for us, but for you and Susan too, and all because you tricked us into going down to the city.
“Accuse us? You ought to go down on your hands and knees and thank us! Gratitude’s the last thing you’ll ever have, or any sort of common sense either.”

Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles’ About Time 1:

“And, joy, oh rapture unconfined; it’s the debut of Barbara’s ‘battle-dress’ of big jumper, capri-pants and court shoes (this isn’t just us being facetious. The production team called it that, and Ian says so on screen in The Chase).”

And it’s unsurprising that the author of Christmas On A Rational Planet should zero in on the role of the Ship:

“The ending seems risible because we’re looking at the wrong thing; the twist isn’t, ‘d’oh, the fast return switch was stuck’, the twist is that the Ship has been communicating. For anyone who grew up in the ’70s, the idea that the TARDIS might be conscious is natural and normal, yet here… We’re not supposed to notice that the Ship itself is a suspect.”

A Review by Geoffrey Glass

“Nothing can be taken for granted -- not the nature of the menace, not the decency of the characters, and certainty not their sanity. That is what gives the story its edge: this seems more like an excerpt from Psycho than a Doctor Who story.”

Paul Clarke’s Review

“Susan does well here – the scene with the scissors is both disturbing and dramatic and is well-acted by Ford; she has never seemed so unearthly. Her paranoia is more unsettling than the Doctor’s, precisely because she has been so trusting of Ian and Barbara up until this point and it is interesting that she seems more sensitive to the TARDIS than he does at this point – possibly part of the same theme developed further in ‘The Keys of Marinus’ and ‘The Sensorites’. She is also generally surprisingly likeable and is instrumental in cementing this first TARDIS crew together, as the natural link between her grandfather and her teachers (it is she, remember, who prompts the Doctor to apologize properly to Barbara, and he always seems more stung by her disapproval than that of others).”

Radio Times teasers for The Edge of Destruction

The Edge of Destruction
“A new adventure begins for the mysterious doctor and his companions.”

The Brink of Disaster
“Further adventures aboard the strange spaceship.”

Available In All Good Shops?

The Edge of Destruction has previously been released on VHS and published in an expanded and rather fun Target novelisation by Nigel Robinson which is worth looking out if you can find it (despite being a little too prosaic in terms of the characters at times, and sheepishly glossing over the spring), but the best way to enjoy it is on the DVD release, spruced up and with plenty of extras. On the downside, it’s the only complete story with no commentary, which is irritating, but it’s packaged along with two other stories as part of the splendid box set Doctor Who – The Beginning, and together those first thirteen episodes make up a larger story in some ways unmatched in the rest of Doctor Who. You can sample the story via a trailer that someone's put together for YouTube – I love the closing credits, though I'd put at least Verity Lambert, David Whitaker and the directors in big letters at the end…

Why Is This Brilliant?

• It’s quite unlike anything else; Doctor Who as an experimental stage play.

• Every one of the time travellers alienates us at some point, but Susan gets the prize disturbing moments – getting the series into trouble (for the first time?) by going crazy with the scissors, and looking like an evil nun as she does her best to creep Barbara out.

• Barbara’s magnificent face-off with the Doctor, where she slices his argument and authority to pieces but, like any humiliation, that doesn’t really solve anything straight away.

• William Hartnell and the brilliant use of light and shadow make the Doctor seem more alien and more compelling than ever – then he stammers bashfully when trying to apologise.

• The TARDIS coming ‘back to life’ as the sound and light rises makes your heart soar.

“Dr. Who and the Daleks”

There was a time when Bank Holiday Mondays always seemed to see a dodgy Dalek movie stuffed into the schedules of BBC2 or Channel 4 so, in the strange absence of a showing today and having written about the original The Daleks last week, here’s a holiday treat. Don’t say I haven’t warned you. While I won’t pay this quite as much attention as the TV stories, there’s still something hypnotic about “Dr. Who and the Daleks” – with its slightly better sequel, perhaps the sort-of-Doctor Who seen more often than any other, and isn’t it interesting that the first two stories got about two goes each, in very different ways?

This film is now extraordinarily easy to track down on DVD, having been released in multiple editions, in multiple countries, and with the reels in multiple order (though less noticeably than the second Dalek movie). It’s best to pick up one of the ones that package both films with the lively Dalekmania documentary and groovy trailer narrated by Earthbound “science professor” Dr Who, with its big glowing letters that are SO CLOSE, you can feel their fire, and which blatantly gives away the end in case by some miracle you’d not seen it all before. When I was a boy, though, I’d been thrilled by the novel and had seen the sequel – Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. – several times, so when each time I managed to miss a showing of this one on TV it grew in stature in my imagination. By the time I eventually got to see it, we’d even got a colour telly, so I’d been waiting years and years. And I have to admit, the whole farrago and the green Thals in particular were the first time that Doctor Who(ish) seriously disappointed me. These days, of course, I have no problem with camp men in the woods, and I can appreciate it for what it is: rubbish. On the bright side, the TV series since 2005 has made kids across the world thrilled by great big Daleks with great big ‘ears’ more than this film ever did.

But enough grumping. Though they’re not a patch on the telly versions, I’m very fond of warm, friendly Dr Who and Barbara Who, and of Susie Who (who gets all the best bits), though a pit of starving alligators would be too good for Ian Not-Who. As far as DWM goes, Time Team put off having to confront the movies for a while, but enjoyed them when they did; rather than covering them immediately after the originals, or with the 1965 and 1966 stories that were airing when the films were released, they were well into Patrick Troughton’s stories before doing these as a special. So, jumping ahead to that issue, they’d gone from one page of Time Team to two some time before, and they’d long been printing a selection of readers’ views at the side. By then, I’d started sending in my own contributions – though they didn’t pick any for this particular movie – so the one-liners below were the ones I actually fired off at the end of 2000 (I’ll be travelling back in time again for my next post), along with a handful of others from watching it today. See if you can spot how I cobbled together my 2004 review by the brilliant notion of sticking some of my (de-bowdlerised) Time Team one-liners together with daytime TV-style links! Enjoy.


My ‘The Review all Doctor Who Challenge’ posting in an online discussion, January 2004:

Yes, it’s my first DVD-style special feature, IN COLOR…

All right, this film remake of The Daleks isn’t ‘proper’ Doctor Who, but a lot of people will know it much better than the ‘real’ version. On the surface, the vastly larger budget and colour film instead of monochrome telerecording mean it both looks and sounds far better than the original, so a lot of people would watch it that wouldn’t touch the old black and white one with a barge pole. And it deserves kudos for its constant screenings helping to keep the series in the public eye. The trouble is, if ever there was one piece of “Doctor Who” that gave people the impression that it was a load of silly running about in corridors, this is it…

It’s both over-coloured and a pale imitation; it badly needs a theme with the punch of the fantastic TV version and an exciting look instead of a blurry mishmash, though the rest of the score is as memorable in its own bombastic way as the disturbing music concrete of the telly. The leads are very odd – Cushing is definitely a cuddly human inventor called Dr Who, and marvellous actor as he was, he just didn’t give it the same edge as Billy the Brilliant Bastard. Barbara is just a ‘dolly bird’ whose only common feature with her TV counterpart is big hair, though Jennie Linden is quite good – just given nothing to do. Roberta Tovey’s Susan gets a role that TV’s Carole Ann Ford would probably have killed for, mainly at the expense of Ian, who’s downgraded to lobotomy victim and comic relief, responsible for all the worst scenes.

The TARDIS set, meanwhile, achieves the extraordinary achievement of looking an absolute mess and much cheaper than the TV version. Sets in general are a huge problem – they’ve clearly been built bigger, and had money flung at them, and some of them (the Dalek control room) actually look terrific. They just don’t have much imagination – TV’s budget meant models, design and careful camerawork all contrived to give the impression of small sets aiming high, trying to trick you that they’re big. The film has comparatively enormous sets that only try to look as big as they are, from the ‘part of the city’ exterior that’s all you see to the Daleks’ ‘Nazi rally’, which has a lot more Daleks than the telly, but is still trying to do Nuremberg in… a room. There’s just no sense of scale. Even the Daleks themselves are bigger and thus less effective, as it makes it easier to notice there are people inside them – though it makes more sense of the weakest part of the original script, where Nation undermined his aliens by having the tallest member of the cast climb inside one! Here, at least, the Daleks are bigger and Ian smaller.

There are just so many things that go wrong. I’m less horror-struck by the camp green Thals than I was as a boy, but I still think the short-range clouds of vapour the Daleks shoot out are rubbish (what are they trying to do, freeze off their enemies’ verrucas?). At half the original length, there are huge cuts, but not enough to the pointless clamber through the mountains, and we get the ghastly soft-centre of the cowardly Thal’s sacrifice turning into a “What a relief” cop-out. It would be a shoe-in for worst scene, were it not for the closing scene in the TARDIS, not just slapstick but totally inept slapstick, with Ian at the centre of it so the film ends not with a bang, but with a wanker. Ian’s attempt to convince the Thals to abandon their pacifism certainly works; I’m a non-violent man, but Roy Castle’s so irritating here I’d have struck him.

OK, some bits are good; there are sinister moments in subdued lighting, and the spectacle of big rocks splitting and Daleks shouting is great, if completely barmy. The climax still doesn’t really work, but that looks far better than the TV version, despite relying on eye-poppingly stupid, suicidal Daleks. It ends up entertaining and irritating in almost equal measures, but far more blatantly talking down to the kiddies than the series ever did on TV, and pretty colours aren’t a patch on cheap, scary black and white.

The trailer is the grooviest thing about it. Who could resist those big, glowing letters – “SO THRILLING you must be there!” But for me, it remains a warning that Doctor Who is much better off with an imagination and no budget than the other way around, while the definitive version of this story remains the book by David Whitaker…

And I Said…

The trailer is the grooviest thing about it. Who could resist those big, glowing letters – “SO THRILLING you must be there!”

From Ian’s opening pratfalls, it’s instantly clear which character has suffered the biggest downgrade from TV, and despite appearances, it isn’t “Susie”.

Ian has devolved from brave science teacher to idiot, slightly cowardly comic relief (ironically the only lead with no apparent interest in science at all), and is responsible for all the worst scenes.

Barbara is just a ‘dolly bird’ whose only common feature with her TV counterpart is big hair; a shame, as Jennie Linden is quite good – just given nothing to do (her first scene reading The Science of Science is her only sign of intelligence in the film).

Roberta Tovey’s Susan is the real eye-opener, gaining from the deficiencies of the other leads to be actually rather strong – in some ways, stronger than on TV – and an unusually watchable and unpatronised child actor. Cushing plays very well along with her, constantly encouraging her, too.

When they arrive in the petrified forest, things finally look good; the blue ‘night’ lighting is quite eerie, and for the first time “Dr Who” in colour really works. Why does Susan recognise a “lily amphiladelphicum” on an alien planet, though?

Oddly enough, as the set is clearly much larger, the Dalek City appears much smaller. Perhaps the larger-scale sets like the City and cliffs look more like sets with fixed limits and edges. Without claustrophobia inside, too, the sets aren’t able to be big enough to be really grand. Oh, and Ian has more desperate slapstick with the doors. How very entertaining.

For no apparent reason, the dastardly Daleks choose the Doctor to search, and so, of course, they immediately find the fluid link in his pocket and confiscate it (but not Babs’ lipstick, or Ian’s string?).

These Men of Steel have a major tendency to talk amongst themselves to show us they’re evil – discussing the drug, ooh, Mr Callous Dalek exclaims, “Let them die.” Then they decide, again for no apparent reason, to search our heroine by sticking her on the plinth under the big light, and find the extra drugs. But now she can keep them anyway. Make your mind up, can’t you?

The Daleks’ rally is well-staged, but as with the big-with-edges City set, and the high-with-edges mountain set, the relatively bigger budget exposes its own limitations. By trying to look bigger with more money rather than more imagination, it looks better-made but more blatantly small – it’s not an army of Daleks, just a roomful.

Throughout the film, Daleks always plot out loud, and they can’t help blabbing. They tell Susan that now they’ve got her note – to say nothing of English, why would the Thals know her writing? – they’ll kill the Thals anyway, so nerrr!

The high shots of the Thals entering the City are very effective, and at last there’s a really good bit of music. Very grand and ponderous! Shame it all peters out slightly as the Thals run in every direction, but at last there’s been an impressive bit of melodrama.

Cushing plays Dr Who not as a grandfather but a sort of kindly uncle, with that reckless schoolboyish quality – endearing, but no presence. There’s no way he could ever convince in the “Take her to the Daleks!” scene, even without another big panto wink. Someone should have told him.

The Daleks’ rally to “Destroy the Thals!” is rather well-staged, but as with the big-with-edges City set, and the high-with-edges mountain set, the relatively bigger budget actually exposes its own limitations. It tries to look bigger with more money rather than more imagination, and so looks better quality, but more blatantly small – it’s not an army of Daleks, just a roomful.

The movie works much better in subdued lighting, as really quite sinister shadowy Thals creep up to the City walls with their silly mirrors. It also helps make the blazing lights as the big rocks split to reveal the front of the City looks very impressive, as are the shouting Daleks, shot from below. Shame it’s completely barmy, but hey, don’t knock the film’s best spectacle!

Drama in the mountains of terror is cruelly undermined by Antodus’ plunge to his death being called off. After his heroic slice of the knife, his cry from the ledge of “Hey! Get me out of here!” is a terrible anti-climax. “What a relief,” says Barbara. No, we don’t think so. It’s probably the worst cop-out until The Trial of a Time Lord 14.

The climax still isn’t as good as it could be, but much better than the TV version, with Daleks shooting each other and some satisfying bangs. Shame the Daleks have all turned fantastically stupid, though, not spotting the Thals (I mean, how could you miss them in those outfits?), constantly shooting each other and even ganging up to destroy their own controls – though that console blows up jolly nicely.

The closing scene provides more of Ian’s woeful slapstick with a stupidly waggling lever, but the real let-down is the careless selection of a completely different film grain, angle and general appearance for the Roman soldiers seen through the doors, which I knew looked very bad even on a little TV as a child. So, the film ends not with a bang, but with a waggle.

It’s entertaining and irritating in almost equal measures, but far more blatantly talking down to the kiddies than the series ever did on TV – even if the most ‘childish’ part goes to the ‘male lead’, while the usually sidelined girl part is serious and effective. Not a bad stab at colour, at least when it’s dark, but not a patch on cheap, scary black and white.

And I Didn’t Say…
(but would have done if I’d thought of it at the time)

Perhaps the terrible TARDIS set is meant to be an endearingly ramshackle contrast with the highly organised Dalek control room, but while the Dalek City has a certain tacky grandeur, you can’t help noticing that the fluid links are just hung on hooks on a board, and don’t actually link anything to anything.

Some of this version is impressive, but too often bigger seems smaller: showing everything rather than hinting with close-ups and the TV series’ ‘bigger, further away’ model makes the movie compare surprisingly poorly for sense of scale. On TV, the sets were small, but trying to trick you that they look big. In the movie, the sets are bigger, but they only try to look as big as they are.

It’s hysterical that they only realised after shooting Dalek scenes that their ‘indicator lights’ were supposed to flash in time with speech – sit back and gape as the bored Dalek operators flash very slowly indeed, then decide to flick their finger on the button really quickly for a bit, so that the dialogue attempting to fit the pattern paces out as “One… of… you… four… must… go… out… side… the… ci… ty… Whichwillitbe?”

Susan in the big, dark, scary forest builds quite an effective atmosphere… Until that pan up from Alydon’s split elfin boots to his outrageous make-up. Barrie Ingham, bless him, tries to recover a little dignity by playing it dead straight. Or as straight as you can in that eyeshadow.

While Ian and Babs go off on a bit of a trek (which seems to take no time at all in this version), Dr Who does some entertaining. He burns the cakes, nabs the silly jagged mirrors (they’ve invented a polishing machine for getting a reflective surface, but no heavy-duty sanders to file off the sharp bits, eh?) and cries “Madam!” in a hugely amusing way. It’s fun, but it doesn’t exactly pile up the tension.

You just know that the Thal cloaks the time travellers are given at the end will only be worn if the Thals come for tea.

What They Said…

Time Team, Doctor Who Magazine 300, February 2001:

“The lights are already low as Peter struggles to his seat. The air is crackling with anticipation and the floor is crackling with spilled popcorn. Clayton is sucking on a beaker of Fanta roughly the size of delegate Beaus, while Richard is cradling a hot dog so large that Vicki would probably have given it a nickname and adopted it as a pet.”

“‘They’re superb, aren’t they?’ agrees Richard. ‘So imposing, and the tone of the voices is deep, echoey and menacing. They’re actually scary!’”
“‘Their voices are very slow, though,’ adds Clayton. ‘You wouldn’t want to be cornered by that Red Dalek at a party.’”

Unsung ‘compiler’ Gary Gillatt has really got into the swing of things by this point. Track down a copy of that issue’s Time Team for the full context of his mention of Ann Widdecombe.

“The film does demonstrate that the strength of the BBC broadcast was in the characterisations of the regulars… The most intelligent of the TARDIS crew is young Susie, played by Roberta Tovey as smug and humourless and far too bloody clever for her own good. Not so much an unearthly child as an ungodly one.”
Rob Shearman, London

Rob was for a long time the undisputed king of the Time Team readers’ comments – for some reason, they stopped printing what he said when his own Dalek stories started being made – and I have a suspicion that he didn’t warm to Susie.

“Hey! Get me out of here!”

The Daleks

The second Doctor Who story becomes the series’ archetype – not least because, like any good archetype, it’s a story told over and over again, in homages, in novelisation, on the big screen, and in so many of the author’s later scripts. It’s shallow at times, but I still think it’s terrific, and if it hadn’t looked and sounded so amazing – well, we’d none of us be here writing about Doctor Who four and a half decades later, would we? Still less writing dozens of bizarre one-liners that I might have written a decade ago if the magazine I would have sent them into was asking for them back then (yes, this blog is as strange as that sounds).

Like many others, I first got to know the story through David Whitaker’s fantastic book, so I was delighted to find this striking piece inspired by the novel from a very talented chap called Colin Brockhurst, who’s kindly allowed me to display it here. Take a look at his site, and especially his sublime mash-up (after my previous entry) of The Dead Planet and Planet of the Dead… And, given that four years ago today the Radio Times had Daleks on the front for what’s been voted the best magazine cover of all time (heh), Colin’s also created a very special Radio Times cover of his own.

 

Ian Chesterton In An Exciting Adventure With A Glass Dalek

My ‘The Review all Doctor Who Challenge’ posting in an online discussion, January 2004:

The Doctor gradually evolves into a moral hero, opposing the Daleks’ genocidal plans, and the whole thing looks extraordinary. Designer Ray Cusick does amazing things creating the petrified forest, the city, corridors for once that don’t look built for humans and, of course, the Daleks themselves.

The plot, on the other hand, starts off intriguing but runs out about three episodes early, and the climax is a mess. The dialogue and characterisation also seem very clunky after the previous story.

And I Said…

Today’s the fourth anniversary of Dalek (even that seems old, now) – is this the story that Christopher Eccleston watched when he talked about how scared the Daleks were inside their shells?

Of all the reasons to pay eternal homage at the shrine of St Verity, the BBC’s youngest producer defying the one high-up who actually wanted her there in order to keep the Daleks ranks with casting Bill Hartnell as a decision that would make the programme last for ever.

Even more than the first story, how do you approach reviewing this one? By introducing the Daleks and rocket-boosting the ratings, it’s just about the most important Doctor Who story ever made. And we all know it so well, though not usually from actually watching it but by reading the book and watching the film instead…

Hooray! It’s the Doctor as a young man again. Makes a change from that old git we saw running around with Michelle Ryan the other week.

An Unearthly Child is great drama and expands your mind, but this story expands the canvas – it says, ‘The first time wasn’t a fluke, and wasn’t the limit. There’s much more weird shit to go.’

Though the characterisation is considerably shallower here, this still continues the first story as an ongoing narrative to a remarkable extent – thank goodness the regulars are still developing, as the conflict between them is much more interesting than the Thals. Then we get echoes of An Unearthly Child in a tribe, a forest, a dead animal, a monster’s-eye-view – and, perhaps most strikingly, mass killing being the thing that brings the Doctor out of his detachment to make a moral judgement.

Did David Whitaker carefully plan ahead for the second story in the first by breaking the Doctor’s hand-held Geiger counter?

Though the first story had perhaps the most brilliant first episode the show has ever created, The Dead Planet is the perfect template for a part one – miss the scary details on arrival, go exploring, see all kinds of strange things and hear all kinds of strange noises, build tension, throw a monster at the cliffhanger and, ideally, show us the TARDIS crew and nobody else (which isn’t the same as having fake arguments in the TARDIS while the story goes on without you)…

The newly formed TARDIS crew are still fighting each other, but throwing an almighty threat against them helps; the cavemen showed the Doctor that Ian and Barbara aren’t so primitive, while the Daleks show the teachers that the Doctor’s not so disagreeable.

Barbara’s not nearly such a strong character this story – except, curiously, when feeling vindictive towards the Doctor. She turns from nervous subservience to Ian to exploding, “Don’t you ever think he deserves something to happen to him?” She clearly feels like they’ve been with the Doctor ages.

Like the first story, this has at its heart one genius concept and design – though the genius here is tilted more towards the latter. But bless writer Terry Nation and designer Ray Cusick for showing what amazing things this show could do!

The most immediately impressive thing about this story is how completely it takes you to another world. The sweeps of electronic ‘music’ are eerily effective in getting you off-kilter and building tension, but the visual design – good as Barry Newbery was – is an incredible step up. The petrified jungle is superb, and the City, extraordinary. For really striking worlds, forty-five years later, there’s Planet of Evil, and… Very few others compete.

I know if you notice the scenery a show’s meant to be lost… But what fantastic scenery! Surely it’s all right to admire something that’s not ‘a nice office’ but a whole alien vista. In this show, the scenery can be a star, too.

This story’s Terry Nation at his best, with so, so many of his favourite elements already in place yet with some freshness to them here, action, adventure and above all a strong central concept… But already much more interested in a travelogue than in characters.

Here, Susan is absolutely confident that the Ship can go where they want it – they just need information. And Grandfather’s so forgetful, you see… I used to believe that, to start with at least, the Doctor was just missing data rather than unable to direct the Ship, but it becomes ever clearer that Susan’s regurgitating his excuses rather than making statements of fact.

This week, it’s Susan who’s being dismissed as an hysterical fantasising female. She’s right, of course, just as Barbara was in prehistory.

While the Doctor’s suddenly vulnerable pleading is endearing, Barbara’s manner on going in to see Susan on his behalf is distinctly schoolmarmish.

Ian bombarding the Doctor with awkward questions and the Doctor choosing just to answer “What are we going to eat?” out of the barrage with “That’s a very good idea – I’m hungry” is great. He’s very endearing, with Ian rolling his eyes, then getting his own back as the Doctor gets testy over his jokey complaint that the bacon’s a bit salty – but all that just gets you relaxed enough to miss the portent of Barbara’s headache…

Somehow the two eyes on stalks of the Magnodon – can you believe it, the series’ actual first monster – look a bit silly, while a single one for the Daleks isn’t. Is it because a pair looks more B-Movie? And did all the Dals and Thals, like other Skaroine life, have eyes on stalks before they mutated?

The City looks extraordinary from that first long-view from the cliff edge – thank goodness the first episode had to be re-shot, and they took the time to improve the model! The doomy chord as we see it, wreathed in mist, is hugely effective and rather creepy, followed as they make their way down by the different angles and distances until they’re into those curved, short doors of the set itself.

Of all the reasons to pay eternal homage at the shrine of St Verity, the BBC’s youngest producer defying the one high-up who actually wanted her there in order to keep the Daleks ranks with casting Bill Hartnell as a decision that would make the programme last for ever.

The Doctor, noticeably, only lies because he doesn’t want to argue with Susan – that way, he can both appear to accede to her pleas, and get his own way. His obvious darting under the console to fix it and playing innocent while Ian glares, plainly not believing a word, is a scream. Particularly when the Doctor, affecting concern at his stranded Ship, can’t help but giggle.

The Doctor’s just like a stroppy kid coming up with any wheeze to get his own way – he must have given the children watching fabulously unsuitable ideas!

Barbara lost and increasingly desperate in the City is harrowing precisely because she’s both been so strong, and because it could be any one of us – the way that the walls themselves seem to be spying on her, from her own distorted reflections to her putting her hand across the camera as if it’s within the wall, makes it chillingly claustrophobic. Herded by doors, forced down in a lift as if the City’s coming alive, no wonder that something closing in is the final straw…

The lights are turned way down in the radiation meter room, with just that low lighting from below and their sweat on their faces. It’s a horribly real griminess as the atmosphere takes its toll on them.

Though the Doctor and Ian clash throughout this story, perhaps the most interesting point is on the form that that the City people’s intelligence will take – “Oh, as if that matters!” exclaims the Doctor testily, and the question remains open as to whether they’re talking about physical or moral forms, and perhaps each lead’s answer would be the same in each case: one emotionally involved, the other an academically interested observer, more open-minded but perhaps not seeing the potential for evil.

Though the Doctor does the right thing in confessing about the fluid link to protect Susan, it’s shocking that that same urge suggests abandoning Barbara. “It’s time you faced up to your responsibilities!” thunders Ian. So, Russell T Davies wasn’t quite the first person to introduce that concept to the series… You can see where he gets his love of vertical storytelling with lifts, too.

When the Doctor hears the word “Dalek” as they talk of their forefathers, Richard watches his expression – it could easily be one of alarm, not as something he’s never heard of closes in, but as something he’s heard of all too terribly does.

It strikes me that kids watching the black and white here won’t be imagining the Daleks in silver and blue, but brass and gold…

We see Barbara huddled on the floor of the cell in long shot; it’s to make her look as small and vulnerable as possible. But, if physically more helpless, it’s Barbara’s keen mind that first hypothesises that there’s something inside the Daleks.

Exhausted, ill, thrust into the Daleks’ interrogation light, the Doctor’s still extraordinary to watch, his eyes darting as he races through deductions about drugs and the history of Skaro. He’ll answer a question, then mutter another to himself as an aside; his body may be weak, but his mind’s working hard (and, Richard points out, every bit of that is Billy’s doing).

Cornered by the Daleks, it’s the scientific observer the Doctor who makes the proposal to send one of his party out, with the emotional guarantee that the others will be surety for their return. He’s already learning to put aside his detachment.

Blimey, Alydon does declaim. It’s because all the acting’s been relatively naturalistic so far in the series; is the series’ first ‘bland alien’ also the first example of incredibly posh ‘Doctor Who acting’?

That dirty load of cave people couldn’t last, could they? It’s only the second story, and suddenly it’s a nice received pronunciation BBC tribe in the jungle!

“I’m not quite so blind,” says Alydon of Dyoni’s attraction to him. “Though you do look like you’ve got dressed in the dark,” says Richard of his lack of attraction to Alydon.

How does Susan signing her name work? Even if the TARDIS enables you to read alien languages, it can’t work on the Thals when the message is simply sent along to them – it’d have to translate for everyone on every planet where there’s a TARDIS, and wouldn’t we all notice if we could suddenly read Chinese when the Doctor’s about?

The first near-appearance of the Daleks’ catchphrase comes in the third episode, and it’s doubly jarring in retrospect: not only is it “Extermination” rather than “Exterminate!” but it’s actually a question, “Extermination, then?” Ever since, you’d expect a Dalek talking about death to make it a demand or a decree, not a mere possibility that they turn down.

Kids used to flying Daleks must be very surprised by ones that have to stay stuck to the floor. And infra-red that can’t see through mud.

Though the ‘womenfolk’ are ‘protected’ from seeing the Dalek’s interior, though Ian climbs inside despite complaining that it’s cramped, though we get the first bad nasal impression of a Dalek… None of that really matters when you have such a cracking cliffhanger of bubbling noise, horrified reactions and a crawling claw.

Why on Skaro does Ian – the largest member of the party – get into the Dalek? Is it because he’s the man and has to do all the action, reflecting more of the sexism that’s much more noticeable here than in An Unearthly Child? And even if they’d more sensibly tucked Susan inside, isn’t it stupidly early to lose the illusion that there can’t be a man in there?

There’s not a lot of characterisation in the Thals – Alydon is stiff and very posh, Temmosus laid-back and even more posh – but at least there are a couple of flutterings of rivalry. Dyoni is spiky about Susan, which Alydon doesn’t notice or understand until he has it pointed out to him, while Ganatus is rather fey and cynical, lounging about laughing at Alydon. Which is exactly what the man needs!

Most of this looks brilliant, and far more successful than almost any other alien world and alien race in Doctor Who. The Thals, unfortunately, are pants: their ‘characters’; the episodes where we’re supposed to care about their adventures in the tunnels; and, perhaps most of all, their pants.

There’s a slight problem with the moral that “dislike for the unlike” is bad when the whole story relies on the viewer going ‘Uurghh! Ugly means evil!’ The anti-fascist message is undermined by the ‘good’ race being blond and ‘perfect’ while we know the others are evil because they’re mutated horrors with funny voices.

Temmosus spouts home-made wisdom about fate and not struggling against the inevitable, but interestingly for the leader of the pacifists uses the metaphors of victory and defeat. I’d still rather watch him being beastly to Robin Hood, though.

Ganatus and Alydon are suspicious of the Daleks, suggesting that some of the Thals’ old warrior attitudes still remain; Temmosus hopes that “Perhaps we can exchange ideas with them, learn from them…” It’s a very Liberal free trade of ideas, as opposed to the Daleks’ (and some Thals’) xenophobic insularity. The Doctor, more scientifically bent than in almost any other story, seems like the Daleks if they had Temmosus’ attitude.

Ironically, Alydon is thinking like a Dalek when he fears and hates the unknown, after the Thals, too, have just found themselves no longer alone on the planet. “Or are they shocked and horrified? Perhaps insanely jealous?” He has no reason to think that, says Temmosus. And it’s true: this is the first Doctor Who story like that, so the formula is only being made as they speak.

The Daleks are callous and unpleasant, they wound Ian and keep our heroes prisoner, but it’s the TARDIS crew who kill a Dalek by cutting off its power and then blat another down a lift shaft – that’s two Daleks dead before they’ve actually killed anyone…

The lift floor indicator’s on a sort of binary-related notation of ones and zeroes, establishing a suitably strange and hi-tech ambience. Shame the Geiger counter was in English, really.

Two Daleks have died, but there’s no emotional connection to that when they announce that our heroes are to be exterminated: it’s seemingly because they’ve escaped out of Dalek control and are of no further use, rather than because they’ve killed.

When it’s Susan who won’t desert the Thals rather than Ian refusing to leave Barbara, Ian suddenly arbitrates and makes the decision. It’s as if Terry Nation thinks he’s the leader for this story – his first, but not his last, misunderstanding of the series!

They may both have been part of a terrible war that laid waste to their planet, but on the nicer side, both races are shit-hot at gardening.

Temmosus’ death is an extraordinary moment – his speech demands attention, the Daleks massing behind the doors with those gun-sticks twitching eagerly are horribly malevolent, and the eerie scrapes and low booms of the music heighten the tension brilliantly.

The Daleks are brilliant architects, have striking technology, can watch what everyone else is up to and can change their plans each time they’re foiled to come up with something better. Which makes it all the more extraordinary that their carefully-arranged ambush against the whole Thal people, who they have surrounded within an unfamiliar City, kills a whole two Thals. That makes the TARDIS crew far more successful mass murderers against the Daleks.

In response to Alydon wondering why the Daleks hate them so much, Ian brutally tells him “they just aren’t human” – begging a question – and it must be a dislike for the unlike, afraid because they’re different, this is presented as a moral that singles the Daleks out as evil, yet it’s exactly how Alydon had judged the Daleks before seeing them.

The racial morality of war and reform is tangled all over the place. Aggression is a choice, but evolution is an inevitable destiny. Judging people by their race is evil, except for the race that you can judge as a whole because every one of them’s evil. The former aggressors become nice, so you should be on their side – but the only way to deal with the current aggressors is to destroy them utterly! It’s as if Terry Nation couldn’t decide whether to forgive the Germans or damn them to eternity, so he did both.

Terry Nation would go on to tell us all that ‘We Are the Daleks!’ but here the connection is much more specific. While the Thals used to be warriors, the Daleks used to be Skaro’s teachers – yes, kids, years before The Dr Who Annual asked ‘Is Your Teacher An Alien?’ it’s they who’ve inevitably become genocidal monsters here. Ian and Barbara are the Daleks.

There’s a slight problem with the moral in that we’re told “dislike for the unlike” is bad, yet the whole story relies on the viewer going ‘Uurghh! Ugly has to mean evil!’ The strong current against fascism is just a little undermined by the ‘good’ race being blond and ‘perfect’ while we know the others are evil because they’re mutated horrors with funny voices.

When the TARDIS crew make for the Ship at the end of The Ambush, nowadays it feels like unfinished business and we can tell it won’t end there, but after the first story ended with ‘what a horrible situation – let’s run away’, viewers would expect that to be the finish. This is where the series suddenly becomes more than that.

Right from the start, the Daleks are the personification of war in Doctor Who: the Cold War nightmare of nuclear apocalypse underlies this story, but there’s no doubt that they’re fascists, too – their desperate xenophobia, their desire for extermination, Ian’s suggestion of experimentation and, most startlingly, their stiff-suckered salutes are all immediate Nazi allusions.

It’s all very watchable, but it does feel very like the first half’s one story – ‘The Dead Planet and the Metal City’ – that comes to a natural end, but is resurrected for an immediate sequel, ‘Attack Against the Daleks (In the Most Roundabout Way Possible)’, which runs out of all steam save the swamp mist.

It’s rare for one of the Doctor’s companions to show any sexual interest unless her contract’s expired and she’s about to be improbably married off, but here both Barbara and Susan suddenly get the hots for Thals. Babs has some understated, grown-up flirting with Ganatus – but, on first seeing Alydon, Susan’s eyes go wide as saucers and she gets to her knees in front of him. Strewth!

Why does Babs hit it off with Ganatus? Because she’s stuck on a hellish other world that she can get no handle on and, as she says of dating in the first story, “It would be so wonderfully – normal.” Mind you, in the caverns Ian appears to be managing any incipient jealousy by chatting Ganatus up too when they’re jumping the rocks, all “coming” and “quite firm”.

Though this story is both more sexist and has more of a hint of sex than most, the very set-up of the TARDIS crew still defies any comfy ’50s sexism or heterosexism – they might be called a family, but they’re not a traditional one, are they? A mixture of chosen and thrown together, a potential couple that flirts with others, and a single grandparent. So even a Doctor who on the face of it seems heterosexual never seems ‘just like everybody else’.

The Doctor prompts the Daleks to conquer, and they prompt him to resist. With him characterised by his scientific intelligence before his moral outrage, here their utter faith in their own technological ability over all other life makes them seem devised as evil versions of the Doctor.

To this day, the Daleks set the standard for Doctor Who aliens – breaking up the human form rather than making them just like us, but green or a bit pointy. Here, though, they’re much more like people than ever afterwards – having discussions, getting worried, even growing food. These Daleks are people in tanks rather than tanks with gloop inside. The Daleks as we know them really start in their next story.

The Daleks are hugely resourceful here, constantly switching to another plan or piece of technology when one fails – you can’t help feeling the Thals are a bit rubbish by comparison. Their solutions to problems are first ‘go on a very long walk,’ then ‘die’. You can see how the original script was meant to bring them together, but I’m glad it didn’t. That would have been an even bigger mistake than killing the Daleks off – making them suddenly nice, going all Planet of the Ood!

The Daleks’ “Control” springs straight from Daleks unable to work to deciding they must be dying, and straight from their reaction to the drug to their being dependent on radiation. It turns out he’s right, but a couple of leaps, there! And shouldn’t they have spotted that they’re weakening as the radiation dies away?

Ganatus says they always do what the leader decides, but he never decides without their full approval. No wonder they never make a decision.

It’s a shame that the Doctor’s walking straight into the City with a technological distraction is, by its very nature, so swift – “Well, we mustn’t diddle about here!” His beaming that “We’ll show them a thing or two…” is so much more diverting to watch then endless clomping about in caves.

This is perhaps the most thoroughly imagined alien planet design in the show’s history, so it seems churlish to point out the few points when it looks a little iffy. But if I didn’t warn you that when they talk about the forest being “like stone” and not moving in the wind, you can see the petrified fronds waving gently, or that when Ian helps Barbara cling to the smashing rock face, not all of it remains in place, you’d only be disappointed that I’ve oversold it, wouldn’t you?

Having been absolute pacifists for generations, the Thals really take to fighting. They’re rubbish at it, admittedly, but suddenly they’ll throw a punch at the drop of an improbable plastic hat – even Antodus and Ganatus have a very small punch-up in the caves.

The Doctor’s vandalism at the Daleks’ junction box is hugely entertaining, not least for him, but after what we’ve heard about the Ship’s insanely complex locking process, isn’t he nutty as a fruitbat to use the TARDIS key to cause the short circuit?

Blowing the Daleks’ fusebox, the Doctor’s taken with his few simple tools and superior brain. Unfortunately, both are then taken by the Daleks.

The Doctor defines himself against extermination, the first stage towards later opposing oppression – he pleads with the Daleks to use their brains to find a way for both races to live, but is horrified to find that intelligence can also mean wilful slaughter: “That’s sheer murder.” “No. Extermination.” Though Billy doesn’t have anything like as much of a role as Ian does in these episodes, he still steals the show: no other moment has the force of his brilliant, passionate close-up against “This senseless, evil killing…”

The Daleks draw from the Doctor a moral outrage against killing, but our heroes remind the Daleks there’s more out there by simply showing up, inspiring, too, their desire to stretch across Skaro – the Doctor prompts them to conquer, and they prompt him to resist! With him characterised by his scientific intelligence, here their utter faith in their own technological ability over all other life makes them seem devised as evil versions of the Doctor.

“I have some experience with these corridors… They all look alike,” says Barbara. Crikey, that line came in early!

Lifts! Daleks! Travelogues! Cardboard characters! Sexism! Radiation! The TARDIS immobilised! The Second World War! Countdowns! Monsters! Everything! I’m not the world’s biggest admirer of Terry Nation’s writing, but he brings a huge amount to the series. There’s very little of it he exactly invents – HG Wells, Dan Dare, war stories – but most of it sticks, doesn’t it?

After so many episodes, the ‘climax’ is all over the place. With most of the Thals stuck way back down the corridor, they just rush in with, what, a stick and a bit of rope? Is that supposed to defeat the Daleks? Somewhat astoundingly, it does. Oh, my mistake – Babs has a rock to bung!

Oh dear. A Dalek is trapped just by grabbing it, and they’re rubbish at using their superior weapons; Ian pulls a magnet off the Doctor and throws it at a Dalek just for some action. Then the Dalek counting down handily stops at four, as – with the power not cut by what appears to be a Dalek bumping into a wall for another 32 seconds – continued narration would have called attention to an unfortunate timing malfunction.

A Thal abseils in from the roof, hilariously, and is shot. Then gets up and hits the Dalek that shot him. Equally hilariously, ‘dead’ Daleks lie on their backs, like beetles or dogs with their legs in the air, except the last one, which raises its eye-stalk.

“It’s finished – the final war. Five hundred years of destruction end in this,” declaims Alydon. “No doubt you will have other wars to fight,” says the Doctor cheerily, while poor Ganatus sighs, “Yes. If only there’d been – some other way.” Did you hear that, Johnny Byrne? I bet you did.

Ganatus gives Barbara a bolt of cloth to make a dress. That happens a lot in the early stories, and is perhaps more dated than anything else in the series.

The closing cliffhanger, with some sort of an explosion and the TARDIS crew falling away from the gleaming console, is brilliant – you immediately assume that the fluid link’s blown up.

Despite this being the first William Hartnell story I could re-watch on proper video, other versions keep competing in my head. But, then, with the magnificent book, and the not-so magnificent film, and all those images in your head, there was more of this to play with than any other story. In whatever version, I always remember the dead world, the Dalek City, and the Doctor’s lie…

“I’m trying to imagine what sort of people these are.”

“They’re intelligent, anyway, very intelligent.”

“Yes, but how do they use their intelligence – what form does it take?”

“Oh, as if that matters!”

The Doctor’s Story

He’s slightly less centre-stage here, and perhaps for that reason William Hartnell’s performance is slightly less blazingly memorable; he’s given much less to do. Despite that, his desire to explore sparks off the whole story, he’s as wicked at the start as he ever is – and, imprisoned by the Daleks, his studied neutrality cracks wide open and his moment of moral horror at the previous story’s slaughter flourishes into full-scale outraged confrontation. It’s one of the Doctor’s finest moments, and the most gripping scene in this whole story.

For those of you who go on about “Billyfluffs,” when Mr Hartnell occasionally seems to stumble over his lines, there’s a famous early example here when the Doctor momentarily confuses the words “gloves” and “drugs” – but, as he’s meant to be delirious at that point, and as he also gets Ian’s surname wrong in this story for the first (and second) time yet that’s clearly scripted, I wonder just how much of it’s deliberate. Not all, by any means, but I suspect rather more than we tend to think.

Dalek Wannabes

This is the one everyone wanted to be. Particularly throughout the ’60s, you can find any number of Doctor Who stories trying to tell the same story – not least those by Terry Nation – and even more that devise a monster that’s destined to be ‘the next Daleks’. Unlike evolution in a Terry Nation story, though, that destiny turns out to be very evitable indeed. Just watch them as they come up.

What They Said…

Time Team, Doctor Who Magazine 279-280, June-July 1999:

“Peter is distracted by his eight-month-old son Harry, who is teething – his anxious bawling rings through the house. But then a strange thing happens. As the Doctor Who theme echoes back to the baby, he falls instantly and deeply asleep. Peter notes this development with interest.”

“‘Then again,’ Clayton adds, ‘Why are the Thals attacking the Daleks with planks? And why is it working?’”

“‘Can we rewind that bit?’ asks Peter. ‘I blinked and missed the moment that the Daleks were defeated.’”

Peter’s son Harry and his other children are, ten years later, now well-established as the junior version of the Time Team, previewing every new Doctor Who episode for the BBC website’s Fear Factor.

“But if we need radiation, we can never rebuild the world outside.”

“We do not have to adapt to the environment. We will change the environment to suit us.”


“Nothing can live outside if you do that. Nothing!”

“Except the Daleks.”

A Review by Richard Radcliffe

“There is also a very strange and unsettling sound effect running through the story. It’s as if the Dalek city is alive, the hum of the electricity coursing through its veins. Such is the power of great sound effects though that you are pulled into the mystery of it all.”

Not only is that Dalek ‘heartbeat’ still being used today, but that idea of the whole City being alive makes The Daleks all the better a follow-up to the story which introduced the TARDIS. The Doctor and the Daleks really are symbiotic, aren’t they?

Gareth Roberts in DWM’s 2004 Special The Complete First Doctor:

“The movie softens and sanitises all the more harrowing aspects of the story; the Doctor’s malicious sabotage of the TARDIS, the effects of the radiation sickness on the crew, even the pacifist stance of the Thals, making it a sort of Who-lite – Chitty Chitty Bang Bang played against a post-holocaust background. No, the original is still the best… Terry Nation’s lack of faith in the series that was to make him millions is legendary, but if this is hackwork, he’s a top drawer hack.”

“In fact, a happy accident makes this adventure echo the themes of the previous story. ‘Fire will kill us all in the end,’ warns Old Mother, and if she were to see Skaro she’d think she was proved right.”

Radio Times teasers for The Daleks

The Dead Planet
“The space-ship travels to ‘The Dead Planet’.”

The Survivors
“This week’s story is ‘The Survivors’.”

The Escape
“This week’s adventure is ‘The Escape’.”

The Ambush
“This week’s story is ‘The Ambush’.”

The Expedition
“This week’s story is ‘The Survivors’.”

The Ordeal
“This week’s adventure is ‘The Ordeal’.”

The Rescue
“‘The Rescue’ brings another adventure to an end.”

Look, they’ll get the hang of this next time, OK…

Available In All Good Shops?

Well, gosh. The Daleks has been published as a Script Book, released on VHS twice (the cliffhangers were so exciting that it was the first story they brought out unedited on video) and, remarkably, even made into a movie, of which more later. And that became a comic adaptation, and a colouring book, probably. If you want to experience it at its best, though, there are two options to choose between.

I’d certainly recommend the DVD release, cleaned up to look the best it ever will, and that means pretty extraordinary. You’ll also get a partial commentary and rather a good documentary on the creation of the Daleks, but you’ll get more, too – it’s packaged along with two other stories as part of the splendid box set Doctor Who – The Beginning.

This is also, though, one of those stories where the novel is almost as remarkable as watching it – David Whitaker’s brilliant first-person novelisation, giving the series an alternate beginning and making Ian solidly the hero, was the very first Doctor Who novel, first published in 1964 by Frederick Muller and launching the Target range in 1973. It’s been published by many companies, in many editions, many languages, and even several titles – usually Doctor Who and the Daleks or Doctor Who – The Daleks, but originally and most thrilling as Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With The Daleks. And why not?

These days, you can even get it on CD, evocatively read by William Russell – Ian Chesteron himself – with, appropriately, the first Target cover, some of Chris Achilleos’ most iconic work. Technically, it’s not a very accurate TARDIS. Or Dalek. Or even a great likeness of William Hartnell. So what? It’s still one of the most striking covers in the range, eye-catching, highly stylised, with thrilling flaming guns, and while it may not look exactly like the actor, it’s a great picture of the Doctor, making him mysterious, dangerous and unforgettable. The illustrations within the book are a different matter; in the Target and most other editions, they’re clearly based on publicity stills and are reasonably accurate if dull, making the Doctor sometimes look more like a nice old lady. If you can find the 1965 Armada edition, that has a unique set of internal illustrations where artist Peter Archer lets his imagination run riot, clearly having had reference photos of the Daleks but none of the actors – so Temmosus, reeling back in a blaze of light, dies a muscled hottie, and the climax with Mr Whitaker’s famous glass Dalek gets a vivid action shot brought startlingly to life by Colin’s work above.

Why Is This Brilliant?

• The impeccable first episode, from the opening threat, through the exploration, to that scream.

• The most extraordinary design, building a world through an unearthly soundscape and simply astonishing feats of visual imagination – the haunting jungle, the magnificent City and, of course, the Daleks themselves.

• The Doctor still being a wonderful git, but discovering his morals despite himself – memorably railing in brilliant, passionate close-up against “This senseless, evil killing…”

• And the runaway success of this story gave the series a boost with the public that, more than any other, ensured it kept going.