Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) (24 page)

Even better, the scenes between Richard, the Doctor and Leicester – and then Richard and Joanna – are the best written and acted we’ve seen in the series thus far. Bernard Kay got my vote for “best performance” in episode one, but here we’re given such incredible ensemble pieces. Jean Marsh bristles with righteous anger as Richard’s sister, whilst Glover’s impotence, and exasperation at his inability to bend Joanna to his will, seize every fibre of his being. And yes, our loyalties are severely tested as we hurtle from one moral grey area to another – the Doctor is great in facing down Leicester, yet the latter is clearly a brave man. Joanna is absolutely entitled to feel like a pawn in a game of politics, but her assertion that all of England reside in the heathen land to fight and kill and butcher sits uncomfortably with her moral outrage. Richard struggles to find a way to avoid confrontation, but is still a wilful bully. And the Shakespearian dialogue is delivered with such aplomb, it’s in no way forced or unrealistic. Douglas Camfield could have picked a British thesp to play Leicester, yet he oddly went for an American – fortunately, John Bay plays the part well. And then there’s George Little as Haroun, his voice quavering as he prepares us for how cruel and callous El Akir will be when Barbara is captured. Oh, it’s hard to imagine a finer cast.

As part of this, neither Richard nor Saladin are depicted as being the goody or the baddy – they’re both men burdened with enormous responsibility, and while they’re honourable on one hand, they’re pragmatic about awful bloodshed on the other. It’s a clever study on the responsibilities of power and the human being beneath the crown (or turban). Saladin only appears in one short scene, but he’s weary and wily, playing with his brother by alluding to his ambition. Bernard Kay’s face only registers the barest flicker of emotion, but those tiny little nuances speak volumes about this shrewd, utterly believable character.

And even though El Akir is hardly in this episode, we’ve heard so much about his sadism (the way that people keep telling of his cruelty and butchery is far more effective than depicting it on screen) that the cliffhanger – as El Akir tells Barbara, “The only pleasure left for you is death. And death is very far away...” – is genuinely horrifying. I’ll take that approach over the likes of “Kill them, kill them now!” or “Crikey, it’s a monster!” any day. Whilst it’s again frustrating that half of the best story of this season is missing from the archives, we should be grateful that the wheel of fortune (and, I suppose, the BBC Film Library) somehow kept this episode safe from the purge.

February 3rd

The Warlords (The Crusade episode four)

R:
So – what happens to Fatima? This episode is missing from the archives, and the telesnaps of it are frustratingly vague. Fatima is the Judas of the harem, the woman who sells out Barbara to El Akir for the price of a shiny ruby. The last we see of her, after El Akir has been successfully foiled, is when all the other members of the harem surround her without saying a word... and Fatima starts to scream. (I don’t imagine viewers in 1965 saw
anything
of what happened to her, but the suggestion is very unpleasant.)

This is the story’s final episode, and it all ends happily, with our heroes laughing at puns in the TARDIS. But it’s the
suggestion
of a darkness under the surface that makes this episode interesting. Maimuna – Haroun’s other daughter – is moved to hear from Barbara that her father wants to rescue her. She says that she’d have expected he would be unable to forgive her – because, although it’s not spelled out, she’s clearly no longer a virgin and has been defiled by El Akir. And, of course, historically Maimuna would be right; Haroun could never have taken her back. This being an episode of children’s television, of course, Haroun’s views are much more enlightened. But Whitaker darkly suggests what the real-world consequences of her capture would be. In a similar way, Julian Glover speaks in interviews about how the script could never have made reference to the incestuous relationship between Richard and his sister Joanna, but how he and Jean Marsh alluded to it anyway in their performances – and there’s certainly something cooking between them in episode two. All of this makes The Crusade a curious beast – it acknowledges in a very subtle way the adult themes, then with a wink heads off in another direction. An illustration of this is how, in the novelisation of this story, Richard never forgives the Doctor for the supposed treachery of his telling Joanna about the marriage plans – whereas here in the broadcast version, he pops in for a final scene to reassure the kids at home that he knows the Doctor wasn’t to blame.

That’s what is so remarkable about The Crusade – the way that it plays off a darker storyline whilst accepting it needs to give a happy ending. In its own clever way, this is as unrealistic a historical adventure as The Romans. Where Spooner’s story buried its crueller excesses beneath black comedy, Whitaker does so with pageantry. It’s why we get glimpses of these characters, no more – by episode four, the story has moved away from Richard and Saladin altogether (indeed, Bernard Kay doesn’t even feature in this episode, and Jean Marsh vanishes as well), and we’re concerned with the revenge story of Haroun (introduced only last week), and the menace of the Earl of Leicester (ditto), whilst building up one-episode wonders such as Maimuna or Ibrahim. It means that everyone is simplified, but by being so allow
hints
of the reality that Whitaker bounces off. We accept Haroun’s decency towards his daughter, because we barely know them as characters, so accept without question what they represent.

Why is Doctor Who doing this? Well, because it’s already finding itself at something of a crossroads. The writers can easily control the tone of the sci-fi adventures and turn them into morality plays with whatever level of sophistication they like; they can have happy endings in which the villains are bested and the heroes triumph unequivocally. The historical stories are already to be found in schoolbooks, and have an ambiguity to them that contrasts rather wildly. To fit in with the tone of the series Dennis Spooner is aiming for, there has to be a “take” on history – just as Russell T Davies offers in the twenty-first century. And it’s telling, I think, that for the rest of Spooner’s tenure on the series as script editor, we’ll never get another “pure” historical, and he’ll allow the sci-fi stories to collide with them completely.

T:
And herein lies the problem: as you say, the Richard/Saladin story fizzles out – because historically speaking, what role
could
the travellers have played in it without stretching our credulity? The political gamesmanship between them has been a brilliantly written and acted non sequitur, but now the individual storylines that seemed as if they were there just to generate random thrills (Ian’s journey, Barbara’s capture) become the focus of the story. For any viewer not familiar with what the history books say about these events, there’s no resolution at all to the Joanna/Saphadin proposal, and the Doctor’s not even that explicit about what becomes of Richard, apart from mentioning that he won’t make it to Jerusalem.

But I’m fine with this – the plotting may not be rigorous, but I’ll excuse it because of the brilliance of the script in other areas. I find it harder to forgive a loosely structured script if the writer is just being lazy, but if it’s the result of their having other priorities, then more power to his/her elbow. And there
is
a resolution here (just not with the most prominent historical figures), as Haroun gets to indulge in a spot of (very swiftly dealt) poetic justice when he dispatches El Akir.

Woven into all the drama of this climactic episode are some great laughs – the bandit Ibrahim is bananas (and Tutte Lemkow is having a whale of a time in the role), even though he’s a most unlikely ally for Ian. (Let’s face it, we’re having fun here with a character who has probably tortured and killed people for tuppence.) And it’s entertaining how the telesnaps show the sequence with the ants’ nest as being shot through the carcass of a cow – it suggests that, even this early in his career, this was directed with Douglas Camfield’s trademark visual flare.

Even though it’s hard to make a proper judgment unless a story exists in full in the archives, everything that
does
exist of The Crusade is so marvellous, I would venture to say that this is one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time. However, I’m afraid to tell you, Rob, that Fatima is toast. History is a cruel place to hang about in, but one of the many things that’s great about the series at this stage is that it’s not afraid to confront us with that unpleasant fact.

The Space Museum (episode one)

R:
A space museum is rather a good idea. If I ever write an episode of Doctor Who, I think I’ll nick it!... oh, hang on. I did.

The last time Mervyn Pinfield directed a story it was Planet of Giants, in which the regulars didn’t interact with the rest of the cast. This time the same thing happens, in spite of Vicki’s most hysterical sneezing trying to force them into the narrative. As associate producer, Pinfield was always most interested in the odder, “sideways” stories that the series could tell – so it’s highly appropriate he was allocated to this, as it’s as determinedly odd as it can get. Doctor Who has done odd before, of course – The Edge of Destruction is still a chilling memory – and the reason why this is so much better is because the regular cast are a solid rock against all the deliberate inconsistencies. Indeed, it’s perhaps telling that within seconds of the episode starting, they are magically popped back into their default costumes. With all the mysteries on offer, the story needs to present the leads as identifiable and dependable (which is why Hartnell pops back into the familiar grumpy version of his Doctor characterisation, and O’Brien plays up the clumsy girl).

And what’s brilliant is that the more the mysteries pile up, the more the TARDIS crew are forced to try to work out what’s going on – and by doing so, invite the audience to do so as well. At the very start the Doctor, rather wonderfully, takes the first oddity purely on face value – rather delightedly, he tells his friends that now they’re all in their familiar garb, it’ll save them all the effort of having to get changed. Pretty soon, though, everyone is coming up with theories which get ever more elaborate. From supposing they’ve landed on a dead world (they haven’t), to wondering whether everyone’s voices are on a higher frequency (they aren’t), they eventually come to the simple conclusion they
simply aren’t there.

As writer, Glyn Jones builds up the clues so skilfully – once our heroes alight upon an answer, it’s as if he cruelly rewards them with the evidence of their own dead bodies. What’s so clever is that he makes the audience so intent on what the puzzles can mean, he makes us take our eyes off any possible threat – he even gives us a harmless Dalek to reinforce the point – and then shocks us with one of the most striking images the show has yet given us. And the final five minutes – as the crew are genuinely helpless for the first time, unable to connect with a story they haven’t yet taken part in but in which they finish up as corpses – has a wonderful clarity to it. At last the footprints appear, the bodies vanish, and the Doctor acknowledges they’re ready to start the story... with none of the complacency with which we’re by now used to, and with all the dread which comes of knowing that this adventure is destined to be his last. It’s the best cliffhanger the series has yet shown.

T:
This is a decent episode, but it’s not quite as bonkers or surreal as its reputation. Much like The Dead Planet, it’s a good, old-fashioned 25 minutes of being presented with a set of clues, and having to work out what type of story we’re dealing with. These days, it’s the sort of preamble that would be dispensed with before the opening credits roll, but here the creepy way it takes longer to play out, layering mystery upon mystery, is very intriguing. I believe Mervyn Pinfield was assigned to direct this because of the various bits of trickery required (his role as executive producer, I think, had been primarily the result of his nous with all things experimental), and there certainly is a lot of technical virtuosity on display.

While I don’t know how many “sideways” stories the series could have done before they overstayed their welcome, I don’t resent this one at all – it uses the fact that we’re in a sci-fi universe to explore all sorts of possibilities we couldn’t get in a normal setting. The travellers are here faced with an
entirely
fictitious problem (as far as I know, there’s no such thing as a “time track”, but perhaps the likes of Stephen Hawking know better), so we’re thrust into very imaginative realms, and can’t second guess how our heroes will survive.

Two other things about this story stand out for me... I was delighted to hear some stock music that I’ve only previously heard in the Quatermass serials; they have an especially spooky effect on me, as I associate those sounds with the dark, foreboding horror of Nigel Kneale’s wonderful work. And while I’d never really liked Maureen O’Brien’s performance prior to starting this exercise of ours, I’m starting to find her invaluable. No matter how peripheral she is to any given scene, she just keeps on acting – and yet she doesn’t overdo it at all. Her commitment to keeping her character doing interesting things is to be applauded.

Eventually, we arrive at that great final sequence where the travellers – having seen the doom that awaits them – “arrive” in the museum, accompanied by some stirringly melodramatic music. Hartnell’s apprehensive face fills the screen – and is it wrong of me to notice his very expressive teeth? Those two fangs bestriding his truncated upper middles really add to his beguiling, characterful visage.

February 4th

The Dimensions of Time (The Space Museum episode two)

R:
Okay, this is inevitably something of a disappointment. We go from one of the strangest episodes in the canon to... well, 20-odd minutes of our regular cast walking up and down sterile corridors. But there’s still much to find interesting.

To kick off with: the Moroks are rubbish. Really, rubbish. But that is the whole point. We’re encountering an aggressive race of alien conquerors past their prime. Once, they conquered galaxies. Now, they sit around and moan about the hours they work, like bored bureaucrats – and, in their boredom, perk up with childish enthusiasm when a handful of aliens wander around their museum in need of being captured. The dialogue therefore must either be perfectly awful or is secretly rather clever – Lobos, a governor so dull that no-one can respect him, spends his first scene talking exposition so long-winded and obvious, it surely
must
be a joke. (Glyn Jones clearly thought it was – in his Target novelisation, he repeatedly depicts Lobos’ underlings as staring at the ceiling in embarrassment whenever he opens his mouth.) We’ve seen the outcome of alien invasion explored to great dramatic effect in The Dalek Invasion of Earth; now we see the flipside of totalitarianism, the tedious pointlessness of it, the museums erected in honour of victories won long ago that no-one any longer cares about. In a way, I feel, it’s the more realistic depiction. And if you can be judged by the quality of your enemies... well, it’s telling that the only species on the planet more inept than the Moroks are the Xerons. You can tell they’re inept because even the Moroks can’t be bothered to subjugate them properly. The Xerons dress around in black polo neck sweaters and trainers, like first-year students in the university coffee bar, and seem to have elected as leader a boy purely based upon his ability to put his hands on his hips in any given number of situations. Their big plan this episode to free their planet is to capture the Doctor. This they do, only promptly to lose him again. The Moroks have nothing to fear from this bunch.

The Space Museum has a very bad reputation, and it’s based upon the idea that after a brilliant opening instalment, the successive runaround episodes are cheap and formulaic. Cheap they certainly are, there’s no denying that. But the “formulaic” part is surely deliberate. Here we are, exactly halfway through the Hartnell era, and we’re presented with something which parodies the structure of one. It’s a comedy. The only problem is, no-one making the story really seems to understand that. You can hardly blame them – there’s nothing within the first episode, which was so atypical, to suggest that what would follow would be a send-up of the series’ conventions. Only William Hartnell really rises to the occasion; the Doctor has a great time this episode, hiding inside a Dalek and giggling all the while, and making light work of the Morok mind-probe during his interrogation.

T:
I like your reinvention of this as a comedy (and the novelisation, which is very funny in places, does indeed back you up on that). How else can you explain a story where the travellers are scuppered not by gun-wielding psychopaths or horrible monsters, but by getting lost in a building and spending a whole episode trying to find the exit? (After a first instalment that’s “way out”, the second sees the TARDIS crew unable to find one.) Why else would the show invoke the myth of the minotaur, and then re-enact it using, of all things, a cardigan? Even when events get spooky, and Hartnell is bathed in evocative lighting while he’s trapped in the interrogation chair, it’s not long before we’re back into comedic territories – it’s difficult to make out, but I sincerely hope that Hartnell himself is the bloke in a bodystocking (or whatever it is) who appears on Governor Lobos’ monitor. That would have made for a terrifying moment for the PA on this episode: “Here are your call times, Mr Hartnell. We’ll need you half an hour earlier tomorrow for the photo session with you in a Victorian swimsuit.”

There’s also a bit of seriousness here, though, in the way that Richard Shaw – who plays the governor (and of whom I’ll talk more about later) – goes to the effort of putting on a South African accent. Let’s take this as sign (rightly or wrongly) that he’s delivering a little bit of subtext, which makes his muted performance seem more like a deliberate choice rather than lazy acting. As for the Xerons – hmm, well, anyone who thinks that Doctor Who only got camp when JN-T climbed aboard should have a butchers at this lot! I note they’re wearing converse trainers too (so, David Tennant got his wardrobe choice from these lovely lads did he?).

But the ongoing dilemma makes me want to ask: why, exactly, would the Moroks
want
the TARDIS crew as exhibits? It’s not as if they look manifestly different to everyone else on the planet, so as items preserved in glass cases, they’d hardly be worth a gawp. If the Moroks had been purple octopi, I could understand them being fascinated by humans, but I can’t really envisage a typical Morok family being all that interested in the Doctor’s party. “Look dear, they don’t have spiky hair and have only one set of eyebrows – how fascinating!”

Despite all the nice things I can say, though, there’s no avoiding the fact that this is clearly a downturn in quality from last week. Perhaps this should stand as a warning to future production teams: never put the words “Dimensions” and “Time” together in an episode title ever again. Whew! Glad that’s sorted.

The Search (The Space Museum episode three)

R:
Ever since Doctor Who began, the writers have been pondering the ramifications of putting time travel at the very core of the series. At what point do the lead characters need to stand back and be observers, and when are they allowed to muck right in and be dynamic? So far, all the shifting arguments about that have taken place in historical adventures – The Aztecs clearly stated that any attempt to interfere with destiny is doomed to fail, The Romans suggested that the TARDIS crew are maybe
responsible
for making the history they’re trying to preserve. The Crusade had the most muddled position of all: the Doctor sadly tells Vicki in the final episode of Richard the Lionheart’s failures in future, and that events cannot be altered, and yet has spent the preceding episode and a half advocating a war-ending marriage that he knows full well didn’t take place.

But the sci-fi adventures are fair game, aren’t they? It’s as if the worlds of Skaro and the Sense-Sphere don’t actually
have
a history the Doctor need worry about preserving – or so we thought. What’s fascinating about The Search is the way that the TARDIS crew are made so very aware that their own future deaths have become history on Xeros – and that whatever they try to do, whether they resist the guards or hide in the shadows, whether they let events take their course or try to overthrow the government, might very well be the very steps that get them embalmed in glass cases. It’s really rather an existential argument – the freedom we take for granted to make decisions is all an illusion.

Fortunately, the TARDIS crew are a fairly pro-active bunch, and decide to resist the inevitable anyway. Ian gets to fight a lot – rather impressively, since he’s so outnumbered – and even makes an unwilling friend in the form of a cowardly Morok. (He’s really very amusing, this Morok – I’ve no idea who plays him, but I bet Toby does.) And Vicki starts a revolution. You almost get the sense she starts a revolution solely because she’s so sick of the inertia – and because the Xerons are so woefully colourless beside her that she wants to change their entire society just to make them wake up and take notice. She gains access to the armoury so wonderfully easily, it seems that even the computer has been waiting all this time for someone to have the gumption to override it.

T:
Of course I know who your favourite Morok is! It’s Peter Diamond – latterly Delos in The Romans, and stuntman extraordinaire. In the novelisation his character gets a name (“Pluton”), and has a much more impressive story arc. Diamond, who died in 2004, can also be found in documentary footage on the Star Wars DVDs – where, amongst other things, he’s the Tusken Raider who looms over Luke.

As we continue with this story, I’m more and more aware of Pinfield’s directing style. He’s got something of a trademark for spooky lighting – there’s the recap (Hartnell is hauled to his feet as Lobos orders the Doctor be taken to the “preparation room”), but also the unnerving scene when Barbara nervously hides in a storeroom with two mannequins. One does wonder if Pinfield was as good working with actors, however, as the cast overall seem pretty limp. That said...