Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) (45 page)

The Power of the Daleks episode four

R:
Influence on my Dalek episode? Oh, I’m not telling. Yet.

Truth to tell, the rebel storyline isn’t really as interesting as the Dalek one. But that’s rather the point. We watch these arrogant little humans plot against each other, and all the time there are Daleks
there –
serving drinks, trundling down corridors. The gall of these colonists, to think that they’re the ones who are the main plot! The scene where Bragen establishes himself in the Governor’s office as a master criminal, only to be surprised by a Dalek ever so politely inquiring whether he’s finished with his liquid refreshment, is chilling and very, very funny.

It’s all quite clever, and the first time the series has unleashed on us so much subplot just to test our patience. We
know
the Daleks are marking time. We
know
that the rebel storyline is very soon going to be irrelevant. Director Christopher Barry and writer David Whitaker are playing a game of nerves with us. They’re giving us padding, and lots of it – just so that sooner or later, the Daleks can start firing a blast a hole clean right through it.

That sequence in the Dalek capsule, where Lesterson sees Skaro’s finest reproduce themselves, sounds absolutely extraordinary. On the one hand, it looks like a parody of all that merchandising the audience are well used to from a couple of Christmases ago – see the happy little Daleks pour down the conveyor belt! On the other, it’s the only time in the show’s history we see Daleks being born, scraped off bits of foam and goo and stuck inside metal containers. It’s horrific and utterly alien. No wonder Robert James begins to lose his mind.

T:
To talk of the slow pace that you mention isn’t to damn this story with faint praise... Ben and the Doctor wander down a corridor, and we realise when they do that there might be an extra Dalek; Lesterson’s doubts increase, but Janley manipulates him; Janley herself shows she isn’t just a clichéd villain by bravely offering to be the guinea pig when the rebels test the Dalek. There are so many subtle moments of colour here, which are augmented by carefully placed shades of grey, and it’s all the more remarkable how the programme-makers flesh out the society of this colony without benefit of the vast canvas afforded to modern television. I particularly like the fact that Hensell is away because he’s doing a bit of work outside of the few sets we’re obliged to see; it helps to provide a sense of real people doing real jobs with real, mundane obligations.

Meanwhile, it’s wonderful how Troughton brilliantly undermines the pathetic trappings of power on display here, especially with his childish glee as he says “I would like a hat like that.” Just as he’s playfully prodding at authority though, a Dalek enters with a tea tray and the special sounds creepily erect the hairs on the back of our necks. The whole situation is played brilliantly, hinting that everything’s just a little bit... wrong. The sense of impending doom is probably more palpable than in
any
other story up to this point.

What I’m getting at is that it’s remarkable how this show, which is understandably so unaware of its mythic status at this point, still manages to make its first new leading man’s debut so astonishingly special – not by doing anything terribly grandiose, but by establishing a realistic setting, and then having the man-who-claims-to-be-the-Doctor confront a situation with the Daleks that’s
unlike
any he’s faced with his old adversaries before. It wouldn’t have been out of order for us to expect Troughton’s debut to have been an inconsequential four-parter with some aliens called Steve and Trevor trying to invade Grimsby. But for all that Hartnell’s departure seemed abrupt and low key – and for all that the series of late has been declining to mark its “big moments” (such as having companions depart halfway through a story) – the production team has really put the effort into making Troughton’s debut adventure something extraordinary. We’re only to episode four, and you can tell that The Power of the Daleks was, and remains, one of the most crucial and successful revamps in Doctor Who’s history.

March 12th

The Power of the Daleks episode five

R:
One of the Daleks asks: “Why do human beings kill human beings?” Good question.

Quick digression. The night that my Dalek episode went out on the BBC, I had a few friends over to celebrate – most of them other people who’d been working alongside me on the revival. After the end credits, and a few glasses of champagne had been drunk, I had a phone call. When I answered, a female voice on the end enthusiastically told me how much she’d loved the story, well done, and welcoming me to the Doctor Who family. She was so bubbly it took me a little while to get a word in edgeways and ask who she was. “Oh, sorry!” she laughed. “I should have said! I’m Anneke Wills!” It turned out that she was at a convention, had watched Dalek go out live with some fans – and one of them had my phone number. I was thrilled, obviously – I’d never spoken to Polly before. And I began to tell her that it was all because of the work she’d done with Patrick Troughton. That my episode had been inspired by The Power of the Daleks, that it was the best Dalek story written, and I was just trying to pay homage to all their efforts. It was great. I actually out-enthused Anneke.

What I tried to capture in Dalek – not nearly so well as David Whitaker did, I know – was that sense that however evil a Dalek might be, it has at least its own moral code and personal integrity. In contrast to all those wonderful scenes of efficient Dalek unity on the conveyor belts, you get mankind here at its most base and mendacious. When a Dalek asks Bragen why as a fellow human he would want to kill Hensell, it suggests that we’re baser. It’s a far cry from the last story, in which the Cybermen were offered as an alternative to all that characterised Man; when at the cliffhanger the Daleks announce they’re now ready to wipe out the colonists you feel some sort of relief, because these human beings
deserve
all that’s coming to them. The scene where Bragen has Hensell exterminated is quite superb. It’s so wonderfully petty; it starts out as a bit of an office argument, with Bragen refusing to stand up when talking to the boss. Ultimately, Bragen only gives up Hensell’s chair so that Hensell can be killed in it. It’s very tense, and blackly comic – and the Dalek servant ends up looking as the most mature character in the room. I only wish I could have written a scene in my episode that was halfway as profound as this one.

T:
Ooh – can I come and watch your next episode at your house? I’ll bring champagne! And Anneke’s wonderful isn’t she? She once stroked my face and called me cute, and (I thought) pretended to be interested in seeing my stage show, requesting a copy. I sent her a DVD, and to my surprise by return of post got a wonderful, enthusiastic and jolly letter back, with some signed piccies for my boys. Moments like that still make me pinch myself!

I have an anecdote about this episode too, but it’s slightly more bittersweet. We’ve been discussing how Robert James is astonishing as Lesterson – and it happens that when he died in 2004, I got commissioned to write his obituary for The Guardian. When it failed to appear, I began to make enquiries, and they kept telling me it was going in – only to rescind after about a month. I subsequently offered it to The Independent (who at that time had more space and a broader remit), and frustratingly was told that they
would
have run it, but that too much time had now passed since his death. The most galling aspect of this was that I’d spoken to James’ wife, Mona Bruce, and read her the piece, and it never materialised. She died a short time ago too, and I feel like I let her down (it was a nice article too, but I lost it when my computer committed suicide). I can’t help but think about this while re-experiencing this story, because James gives one of the best guest turns we’ve yet seen in the show; the script demands excellence in so many areas, and he delivers in every one.

For a story that reformats Doctor Who in so many ways, it’s the little things – the little choices – that continue to elevate this to greatness. Governor Hensell’s popularity among the mine workers on the perimeter is something we’re only told about, but lends some texture to a world that we couldn’t actually see (even if the video existed) beyond a few rooms. Later, Quinn’s reaction to Hensell’s death (in a programme where murder is an everyday event) helps to sell the importance of the governor’s killing on both a human and political level. Top marks though, go to Bernard Archard as Bragen – having ordered and witnessed Hensell’s death in a cool, villainous manner, he sounds audibly shaken after the event, so much so that he hurriedly shoos the Dalek away. It’s a very credible moment, and an unusually psychologically sophisticated acting choice.

And is it wrong of me that I adore that Bragen’s got himself a uniform and hat? It’s always the meaningless pomp that seems to turn on the power crazed; that the Doctor looks like he’s raided a jumble sale and kipped on a bench is the ultimate antidote to such sartorial posturing.

The Power of the Daleks episode six

R:
And, really, this is much better than it
needed
to be. After five episodes of ratcheting up the tension to breaking point, all this episode actually had to do was set the Daleks loose on a rampage and I’d have been satisfied. And it certainly does that, of course. In fact, this does what as a kid I always imagined all Dalek stories did – it has the pepperpots exterminating every human in sight, chasing people up and down corridors, and killing without warning or mercy. After the slow build-up, the carnage is overwhelming, and even in telesnap form you can see that Christopher Barry spends a fair bit of time emphasising the dead bodies. It’s all very grim. We have sequences where, to foil the Daleks, the Doctor and Quinn have to lie still amongst all the corpses. And there’s an extraordinarily callous scene in which the Doctor seems quite happy that all Bragen’s guards get slaughtered just to buy him some time doing something clever with a plug.

And I know that I’ve been moaning on a bit recently about things getting a bit too brutal in the world of Who – but I do think that this has been so well set up, it’s justified. The Doctor has spent five episodes marching about telling people that there would be atrocities. And the story doesn’t shirk whatsoever from demonstrating that he was absolutely right. It makes the Daleks more powerful than ever before – they’re cunning and sly, but because they’ve also been playing
against
their true natures, to see them as they really are depicts their evil more vividly than we’ve yet seen. And it does its job and makes the Doctor someone we can believe in. He may wear a silly hat, he might do irritating things with a recorder – but he has stayed his ground and warned a community that his voice is the only authority, and if he’s ignored they will die. The brilliance of all this is, of course, that his moment of victory plays
against
that – he appears so delighted that he’s done something clever that he makes the audience suspect it may all be accidental. No other Doctor would assume power so easily, and then fritter it away once the crisis is over, to the point that the colony suddenly turn on him and complain about the damage he’s caused.

As I say, a bloodbath is all it needed to be. But it keeps the power games between the humans going so well – Janley changes allegiances so often in this one episode alone that by the time she’s killed, even
she
probably doesn’t know which side she’s on. The depiction of Bragen as governor of colonists who can’t respond to his orders because they’ve all been killed is very clever. The best bit, though? Lesterson trying to imitate the same sing-song refrain to a Dalek, “I am your servant,” quite amiably believing that they are the higher order and that mankind’s time has passed. He tells a Dalek it wouldn’t want to shoot him, because he gave it life. “Yes,” considers a Dalek. “You gave us life.” And then, without a word, as nonchalantly as you please, kills him anyway.

T:
I’ve been waiting for this story to let me down, to run out of steam, to cop out or to just get a bit messy – and it hasn’t. As ever, I know it’s difficult to tell because we can’t actually see it, but it
sounds
fantastic. The whole thing has rumbled along menacingly, and – as advertised – now really kicks off with horrible, bloody consequences. The sound of gunfire permeates the action throughout – which works, because automatic weaponry always seems more believable and dangerous than lasers. Towards the end, there’s what seems to be a lingering pan over all of the dead bodies, replete with funereal music. Make no mistake, the goodies may win, but the cost has been unpleasantly high. The use of the Dalek POV has been consistently well employed in this story, and is again here, as one of them surveys the carnage, finally resting on Janley’s prone corpse.

It helps immensely that we’ve been able to invest so much in the inhabitants of Vulcan – even minor characters such as Janley’s associate Kebble do enough to arouse our interest. Prior to Janley’s demise, we’re never quite sure whether we should like her or not, but she does seem convincing as someone with wavering morals and loyalties. At the very least, she’s not a one-note baddie, and her close personal relationship with the rebel Valmar seems as textured as her mendacious behaviour – even the way she addresses him as “Val” lends a pleasing note of casual realism. Bragen also seems very humanistic as he keeps using the word “governor” in the scenes where he loses control of both the colony and the Daleks; it’s as if he pathetically believes that by affirming his title often enough, it will somehow maintain his command of a situation that’s now completely beyond him. And Robert James, whom I’ve praised before, adds a beautifully wistful note to Lesterson’s insane assertion that Man has had his day and is “finished now”. His appeal to the Daleks with the phrase “I am your servant” is amazingly done, and (despite his actions having caused all of this carnage) makes you cheer for him a little. It’s this act of distracting the Daleks – the last thing Lesterson ever does, as they gun him down – that allows the Doctor to succeed in defeating them.