Timeless Adventures (24 page)

Big science-fiction ideas feature in
Terminus and Enlightenment
.
Terminus
sees the Doctor save the entire universe by ensuring the Big Bang happens in a story that draws heavily from Norse creation myths (mythology that would recur twice more during Sylvester McCoy’s time), while
Enlightenment
has the immortal ‘Eternals’ amuse themselves by racing spaceships disguised as old-fashioned sailing ships. The anniversary season ended with something of a whimper – thanks to the cancellation (due to strike action) of
Warhead/The Return
– with
The King’s Demons
, an old-fashioned historical tale in
which the Master attempts to disrupt the signing of Magna Carta. Ratings had averaged seven million viewers for the season, an improvement on Tom Baker’s final year, but still falling behind the series highs of the 1970s.

The
Doctor Who
nostalgia boom culminated in a giant, over-subscribed convention at Longleat (see chapter six) in March 1983 and the broadcast, in November 1983, of the celebratory anniversary story
The Five
Doctors
. This TV movie was screened as part of 1983’s
Children in
Need
charity telethon night, two days after the actual twentieth anniversary on 23 November. This was the height of
Doctor Who
’s growing self-awareness, uniting three Doctors (Davison, Pertwee and Troughton), with a stand-in for the late William Hartnell (Richard Hurndall). The Fourth Doctor (Baker) featured in previously unseen material recycled from the incomplete story
Shada
. Opening with a clip of William Hartnell from
The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Five
Doctors
encapsulates all the signature traits of
Doctor Who
in the 1980s. The plot – in which various Doctors and companions have to make their way to the Dark Tower in Gallifrey’s Death Zone to defeat renegade Time Lord Borusa in his attempts to achieve immortality – comes across as a variation on the Marvel comic-book team-up and a riff on the growing popularity of
Dungeons and Dragons
adventure gaming. It is simply an excuse to pack in as many references to the show’s past as possible, and feature characters that ordinary viewers may or may not recognise, but each of whose fleeting returns would be applauded by fans. Various faces from the past were shoe-horned into Terrance Dicks’ busy script, with guest villain appearances from a lone Dalek, an army of Cybermen and the Master.

The tendency to recycle and reuse characters and story elements continued into season 21. Facile political commentary crept into underwater, base-under-siege story
Warriors of the Deep
. Pertwee foes the Sea Devils and the Silurians returned in a heavy-handed Cold War analogy thrust forward to the year 2084 (one hundred years after the year in which it was broadcast). Less sophisticated than much of the political content of the show during the early-1970s, it was nonetheless a late – and rare – attempt to re-engage with wider, real-world issues that connected to the larger viewing public.
Warriors of the
Deep
was
Doctor Who
’s reaction to the rise of Ronald Reagan, his ‘star wars’ missile-defence policy, and the Greenham Common protests against the arrival of US nuclear missiles in the UK.

The apparent destruction of the TARDIS in
Frontios
was part of Nathan-Turner’s ongoing event-television agenda. The production office had publicly hinted that the police-box shape of the TARDIS might be abandoned and, with the seeming destruction of the ship by a Tractator-manipulated meteor storm, it was plausible that the plan was being enacted. Nathan-Turner would often float these high-concept ideas in press conferences, thereby generating publicity. The idea of an actress playing the Doctor had been used when Baker quit the role, and resurfaced when it was announced that Davison was leaving. The TARDIS replacement idea was given another workout in the opening to
Attack of the Cybermen
when the Doctor (Colin Baker) gets the chameleon circuit working briefly. Despite its originality,
Frontios
also reveals a growing trend in
Doctor Who
stories of the 1980s: it amalgamates elements from various stories from the past. The insect civilisation of the Tractators echoes that of
The Web Planet
, while their plot to pilot the planet of
Frontios
is drawn directly from the Daleks’ plan in
The Dalek Invasion of Earth
, and the far-future civilisation seems based upon that shown in
The Ark
.

The next story,
Resurrection of the Daleks
, featured the annual flashback sequence made up of clips from old episodes. The focus this time was on a series of images of the Doctor’s companions as the Daleks probe the Doctor’s mind (although a production oversight missed out Louise Jameson’s Leela). Narratively, however, Saward’s script was once again a combination of
Alien
and
Star Wars
, drawing on popular cinematic SF rather than creating any real-life allegory. The nearest
Resurrection of the Daleks
comes to social comment is a Dalek’s parting threat that Dalek-hidden duplicates still occupy positions of power in the British Government. The Doctor describes the duplicates as ‘less than stable’. Here it is a throwaway line, but Russell T Davies would make aliens-in-government the central conceit of a witty two-part story (
Aliens in London/World War Three
). The story also sees Tegan leave the TARDIS in an abrupt manner when she decides the death and destruction she experiences travelling with the Doctor have become too much. In reality, Fielding, Strickson and Davison were all leaving the show in 1984, so their departures were staggered across several stories. By
The Twin Dilemma
, the entire lead cast of the series had changed.

Nathan-Turner continued playing with icons of the series in
Planet
of Fire
. It climaxed with the Master in a no-escape situation (once again), burning in the numismaton flame. He utters the unfinished line (to the Doctor): ‘Won’t you show mercy to your own…?’ Fan speculation had long proposed that the Doctor and the Master were not just Holmes and Moriarty or contemporaries at the Academy on Gallifrey (as the series had established), but might actually be related, even brothers. The line seems to play into that speculation, especially as the story has Turlough discovering his own lost brother. Russell T Davies would play with this speculation in
The Sound of
Drums
in 2007, when the Master (John Simm) returns and Martha speculates about his relationship to the Doctor (a family connection dismissed by the Doctor, accusing Martha of watching too many soap operas).

Davison exited the show on a high in Robert Holmes’
The Caves
of Androzani
, a morality tale in which the Doctor tries to save his poisoned companion at the expense of his own life, while around him an interplanetary war reaches its climax. While the gunrunning and corporate scheming neatly reflected growing 1980s concerns, even Holmes finds himself falling into the postmodern trap of playing with icons of the past. The semi-sympathetic villain of the piece is Sharaz Jek, a scarred, masked figure who lurks in caves, and is another reprise of
The Phantom of the Opera
(as was Holmes’ own
The Talons
of Weng-Chiang
).

Unfortunately, the full reveal of Sixth Doctor Colin Baker the following week in
The Twin Dilemma
was a huge step backwards. The regeneration was another big event and, to make it different from any of the previous colour series, Nathan-Turner had the new Doctor debut in the final story of the season.
The Twin Dilemma
was a poorly written and poorly realised adventure, resulting in a controversial debut for a new Doctor whom a lot of viewers professed to dislike. It would be a while before Baker had an opportunity to develop his Doctor and
The Twin Dilemma
left a bad taste with many viewers, one that would be long lasting.

John Nathan-Turner’s event-television and publicity strategies came to dominate
Doctor Who
by the middle of the 1980s. Approaching his fifth year in charge – almost all previous producers had moved on by then – Nathan-Turner and his script editor Eric Saward had an uneasy working relationship. While Saward struggled to compile a coherent narrative, Nathan-Turner was on trips to conventions in the UK and US, authorising
Doctor Who
merchandise and creating ‘shopping lists’ of elements that future stories should include.

The twenty-second season continued to be influenced by big-screen science fiction, but there was at least a theme running through it: loss of identity and physical transformation. New advances in cosmetic plastic surgery and unnecessary operations (especially cosmetic breast enlargements) were often featured in the news or in the growing consumer and ‘lifestyle’ sections of Britain’s expanding newspapers. Each story saw a major character undergo significant physical change, some more permanent than others. About the only character who wasn’t physically altered was the one whose physiology regularly allowed for just such transformation: the Doctor.

In
Attack of the Cybermen
, a convoluted, continuity-ridden adventure, the mercenary Commander Lytton (Maurice Colbourne) returns from
Resurrection of the Daleks
, forms an alliance with the Cybermen and is partially Cyber-converted.
Vengeance On Varos
, a smart critique of video violence, saw companion Peri (Nicola Bryant) transformed into a birdlike creature as part of a mad scientist’s experiments, while
The Mark of the Rani
had the Master teaming up with villainous Time Lady the Rani (Kate O’Mara) to alter history in nineteenth-century Britain. This tale saw a character transformed into a tree, thanks to a bio-mine.
The Two Doctors
had Troughton’s Second Doctor changed into an Androgum, one of a race of hungry carnivores. In
Timelash
, HG Wells joined the Doctor and picked up various story ideas (the very stories that partly influenced the development of
Doctor Who
). The villain was the Borad, a hideous fusion of man and monster. Finally,
Revelation of the Daleks
featured a well-executed scene that saw the father of a young rebel encased in a transparent Dalek frame, mid-conversion, pleading with his daughter to kill him.

The series’ format had been transformed, too, from (mostly) serials comprising four episodes of 25 minutes each to two-part stories where each segment lasted 45 minutes (more suitable for transmission on US TV). Previously,
Resurrection of the Daleks
, made as a four-episode tale, had been forced into a 45-minute format due to scheduling problems caused by the BBC’s coverage of the 1984 Winter Olympics. In an attempt to update the series to the mid-1980s, it was decided that the entire twenty-second season would be in the 45-minute episode format, so
Attack of the Cybermen
was the first story to be written specifically to this style. It was the first story since
Logopolis
to air on a Saturday, with the BBC abandoning the twice-weekly screenings that had run throughout Peter Davison’s three years.

By now, continuity was threatening to swamp original storytelling, and would prove to be a major off-putting factor for the audience as
Doctor Who
entered its declining years. The confusing storytelling of
Attack of the Cybermen
lost the show almost two million viewers between episodes. Serving as a sequel to several stories, notably the Cybermen’s debut,
The Tenth Planet
, and
The Tomb of the Cybermen
,
Attack of the Cybermen
was action packed and stylish. However, it was impossible to understand without a crib sheet detailing
Doctor
Who history
. Cannibalising its own past, the show featured redone set pieces from previous decades, recast with a glamorous 1980s sheen. Ostensibly set in environments first seen in long-deleted stories like
The Tomb of the Cybermen
, little effort was expended on remaining faithful to the original designs (many reference photos existed, even if the actual episodes were lost).

Attack of the Cybermen
was criticised for its gratuitous violence (with many Cybermen dismembered and Lytton’s gory conversion). Ironically,
Vengeance on Varos
– the following story – was a critique of video violence and its effects on society (a hot-topic debate in the British media in the early-to-mid-1980s). The ‘video nasties’ controversy saw movies for home rental subjected to prosecution and eventual classification. This was the subject matter for Philip Martin’s tale of a society addicted to watching torture on TV and voting on the outcome. Well in advance of the rise of reality TV and the interactive, participatory television culture of the 1990s and twenty-first century,
Doctor Who
presented a cliff-hanger that relied on a knowing pastiche of television technique. As the Doctor appears to be dying on a video screen, the Varos Governor orders the vision controller to ‘cut it, now!’ as the episode cuts to the closing titles. The story ends with the Greek-chorus characters of Arak and Etta (who’ve been watching – and voting on – the action of the story, without ever meeting anyone else involved) deprived of their entertainment and lamenting, ‘What shall we do now?’

Rather than feeding off its own narrative past by restaging its greatest hits, or creating sequels and overusing returning monsters, finally the show used its own off-air past and current news headlines (as it had always done previously) to create a truly innovative story. Drawing on the 1970s attacks by Mary Whitehouse (who’d continued to campaign to ‘clean up TV’ into the 1980s), Martin created a society that used violent imagery to keep the population entertained and sated, thus reducing the likelihood they’d revolt. This was the first
Doctor Who
story for a long time to directly comment on the news headlines. Martin had experienced censorship directly himself when his late-1970s series
Gangsters
was attacked for being too violent. That series also featured several postmodern touches that would recur in
Vengeance on Varos
, including characters commenting on the fiction they were participating in and the creation of the drama being witnessed by the audience (Martin was seen in later episodes of
Gangsters
writing that particular episode’s script, while in
Vengeance
on Varos various TV tricks are used to structure the narrative – an idea Steven Moffat would adapt into the ‘narrative edits’ sequence of
Forest of the Dead
in 2008).