Season 21 Marathon (2) The Awakening

written by Eric Pringle

directed by Michael Owen Morris

Continuity Announcement

Two episodes originally broadcast on BBC One on the 19th and 20th January 1984 featuring Peter Davison as the Doctor, Janet Fielding as Tegan and Mark Strickson as Turlough. Aside from that the story has no continuity with Doctor Who's past or future except for a passing reference to the Terileptils and their tinclavic mines on Raga from The Visitation (1982).

Boxing Clever

Doctor Who DVD box sets are an exercise in compensation. This was released in the almost theme-free box set Earth Story alongside the Gunfighters, the logic going something like this: neither story is a classic, one of them has a particularly poor reputation (The Gunfighters, undeservingly) so slap them together on some pretext and release them together, offering fans a nice discount on the pair. Earth Story is an extreme example but most of the themed box sets work like this.

Thoroughly Modern Who

I watched this DVD one evening straight after the new series episode The Bells Of Saint John and it struck me that, adjusting for the production values of the era, this story would sit pretty well in modern Doctor Who. The most obvious point of comparison is that an old two-parter, minus the credits and titles in the middle, runs to roughly 45 minutes. The comparisons to New Who goes rather deeper than that.

For a start the explanation behind the supernatural Malus is that it's an alien probe that crashed in the village in the 1640s whose purpose was to psychically stir up violence to soften up the population for invasion. The consequence of this was that the village was levelled in the Civil War and the probe somehow damaged so it stopped functioning until Sir George Hutchinson decides to re-enact the battle in 1984. For those playing along at home this is the stereotype Steven Moffat plot of “alien computer pursues its original programming causing dire unintended consequences”.

Our entry point into the story is that Tegan's grandfather lives in the village of Little Hodcombe and she wants to visit. This is, of course, an utterly typical plot device nowadays with whole episodes having been written about Rose's mum, Rory's dad and Martha's whole family amongst others. True, Andrew Verney's disappearance is a minor plot element in the story and is used pretty much just to provide an info-dump at the beginning of the second episode but by classic series standards this gives unusual depth to the life of a companion.

The emotional through-line of the story comes not from Tegan and her grandfather but from a supporting character: Colonel Ben Wolsey. Wolsey is basically a henchman for Sir George Hutchinson. He's played as a reasonable man in counterpoint to Sir George's increasing mania but, crucially, he continues to go along with the games. He voices muted protests now and again in the first episode but takes no action until Sir George orders Tegan burnt at the stake as Queen Of The May.

In the second episode he changes: admits his misgivings, joins the Doctor's side, frees Tegan and in the end takes responsibility for his complicity in the games and confronts Sir George. Crucially, it is this confrontation that puts Sir George in a position to be defeated. Again, we're looking at unusual levels of emotional content here, especially for a supporting character.

The final point of comparison is that there are continuity errors you don't notice because the story moves so fast as Turlough and Jane both comment on conversations they couldn't possibly have overheard (see also the disappearing pirate in The Curse Of The Black Spot).

Who on Earth is Vislor Turlough?

Okay, so next to all this praise for the writing I should mention the one point where the script (and script editing) falls down: Turlough. This is Turlough's seventh story and the first one to be set on contemporary Earth since his introduction in Mawdryn Undead. Turlough is an alien exiled to Earth from an unknown planet for unknown reasons and reacts not at all to being back on the world of his imprisonment, let alone that the agent who used to keep an eye on him might find him. In fact, in the final scene he joins in the chorus of wanting to stay in Little Hodcombe for a while.

It's a small failing in an otherwise very good script, speaking of which...

A Lady of a Certain Age (and a Young Man from Another One)

Mention should be made of two other supporting characters: Jane Hampden and Will Chandler. Jane is the local school teacher and Peter Davison's effective companion for much of the story. She's played as a sceptic in the first episode: she's the only opposition we see to Sir George's war games and she disbelieves the Doctor until she's confronted by the appearance of the Malus. Just as with Todd in Kinda we see how well Peter Davison plays off a more mature female character better than he does with the younger women usually playing his companions. There's an absolutely wonderful scene where the Doctor reaches for the TARDIS door control and Jane casually beats him to it with a smug smile.

The other character is less successful: Will Chander, a man transported forward in time by the Malus from 1643 (not quite sure why, I'll be honest). He's there for info-dump purposes and to resolve the Sir George plot but he and the Doctor have some scenes together. The character was apparently considered as a companion, which might have been interesting if not for the awful Mummerset accent the character is lumbered with as a concession to being from the past, one of the odder BBC tropes. There is also gurning, which is even less fortunate.

They are both well-realised characters who seem to have life beyond their plot functions. There isn't much room to explore that life but you do get a sense of it

Malus Aforethought

Okay, so the Malus itself is pretty poorly realised. It is very static: apart from moving forwards slowly it can only move its lower lip up and down and its eyes from side to side. In the final episode it seemingly kills a man by blowing smoke onto him when the man falls down in front of it. It has a second manifestation as an emaciated looking rubber prop stuck to the wall of the TARDIS whose sole point of articulation is its neck and that dies oozing green fluid but otherwise not moving.

Last time I went to town on the Myrka as a crap effect that acted as the living embodiment of everything that was wrong with the production. The Awakening, by contrast, is a pretty good production so it just about pulls off the trick of having the Malus in it and still being good.

It isn't possible for the script to make the Malus a good effect but it does make it salvageable and that's an important distinction. Special effects date so whether they were good or not on first transmission they'll always need to be saved by the other production values in the end.

Next Episode

The TARDIS faces the only enemy that could possibly destroy it: woodlice from SPAAAAACE!

Season 21 Marathon (1) Warriors of the Deep

written by Johnny Byrne

directed by Pennant Roberts

Continuity Announcement

Four episodes originally broadcast on BBC One from 5th - 13th January 1984 featuring Peter Davison as the Doctor, Janet Fielding as Tegan and Mark Strickson as Turlough. The story is a sequel to Doctor Who And The Silurians (1970) and The Sea Devils (1972).

Then And Now

It's not a new observation that we don't watch these stories the way they were originally intended. Whole fan projects have been based on this observation: TARDIS Eruditorum and Running Through Corridors being the cream of the crop. This story was originally shown over the course of a fortnight and was a sequel to two stories much of the audience would not have seen, which weren't commercially available and so the producers could readily assume no one would accurately remember them.

This DVD, which I watched straight through in a quiet afternoon, was sold in a box set with the two 70s' stories.

So there are two versions of Warriors Of The Deep: the 1984 version that stood on its own supported in some cases by fuzzy memories and the 2013 version where I know every detail that came before in digitally remastered clarity. Even Johnny Byrne didn't have that luxury: he was provided with markedly inferior copies of the two Pertwee stories that he found exceptionally hard to follow.

So, which version is better?

The Bête Vert

Whatever version we eventually settle on the Myrka is not going to come out smelling of roses. The Myrka isn't just a bad special effect, it's a famously bad special effect and as such exerts a gravity on all criticism of the serial. A cut in pre-production time (due to the surprise 1983 General Election) meant it was made in a rush, famously the green paint rubs off on several other actors.

And it is bad, there's no denying it. It is wobbly, it has googly eyes, it sways dizzily from side to side as it walks, it has humanoid arms for no discernible reason and there is an absolutely hilarious scene of Ingrid Pitt fighting it karate style where the cumbersome costume stops the Myrka from reacting to her at all.

In short the Myrka is rushed, poorly designed and a staggering misjudgement of what the series could do with the time and budget available. In many ways there couldn't be a better metaphor for Warriors Of The Deep as a whole.

Just Like Old Times (Only Different)

There can be no mistaking that this story was made for fans: who else could be expected to appreciate a sequel to two stories from over a decade ago? The continuity at least we can assume worked better then: without a DVD to hand probably no one would spot that Ichtar wasn't a character in The Silurians or that there was no Myrka in The Sea Devils and so wouldn't ask how the Doctor recognises both. This is the 1984 version of the story.

Here in 2013 I have shiny DVDs of both original stories. I know full bloody well that Ichtar doesn't appear in The Silurians and nor did “the Silurian Triad” of which he is apparently the last survivor. This is not a problem, I'd like to make that clear. This is how monsters come back now: the central concept is dusted off and retooled with new ideas grafted on. Sontarans might gain football chants but they still have the potato head design and clone warrior background, in short all the iconic cues everyone remembers spruced up with modern technology.

The problem with this resurrection is that the iconic elements of the concept is almost invisible. Malcolm Hulke's two stories positioned these creatures as the aboriginal inhabitants of the Earth. They were sympathetic, written as individuals (more so in The Silurians than The Sea Devils) and with a genuine prior claim to the planet and forced to drastic action by human xenopobia. Half the drama of both stories comes from the Doctor having a genuine chance at negotiating peace before an outside influence (the Brigadier in one, the Master in the other) scuppers his chances and a bloodbath ensues.

The Silurians in this story are plotting genocide, will not listen to any of the Doctor's peacenik claptrap and the Sea Devils are portrayed as identical soldier drones like any other monstrous minions.

So this story doesn't work as a sequel but does it stand on its own?

Doctor Who and the Massacre

The whole structure of the story is a base under siege plot building towards a big set piece ending: the Doctor standing over the bodies of everyone (human and reptile) that he has met over the last 100 minutes and saying “There should have been another way.”.

The problem with this is, despite the Doctor continually talking about the honourable and advanced society of the Silurians, they don't want peace. This honourable and advanced society has apparently outlawed all war except in self-defence, which one would assume would prohibit genocide. Their way around this is to take over a human undersea base which has a bunch of nuclear missiles pointed at the unnamed enemy in a future cold war. They are going to fire the missiles, trigger the nuclear holocaust and then sit back to rule the Earth after all the pesky “ape primitives” have killed one another.

Why would anyone try to make peace with these peoples? The ending makes no thematic sense because at no point was an alternative seriously possible.

All that said the base that is under siege has some good stuff going on inside it. It's 2084, there's another Cold War (or the same one, they weren't too optimistic on this issue in the early Eighties). There are secret military bases under the ocean, of which this is one, and the crew live in constant tension because of a series of random unannounced drills to make sure they really will push the button when it comes down to it. Even better the final failsafe on this system is the “synch operator”: a human being mentally linked to the targetting computer without whom the missiles cannot be fired.

On this base there is a conspiracy going on: two enemy agents embedded as the base's first officer and doctor (the latter played with a wonderfully over the top accent by Ingrid Pitt) have killed the synch operator and now the post is being covered by an inexperienced and psychologically unstable student. They fully intend for this poor young man to have a breakdown from the stress so they can move in and use the technology in his head to reprogramme him and use him to take out the base.

The base has a pretty good crew: well-cast, well-realised characters. There's some odd dialogue, not least in the self-consciously apolitical decision not to name either of the parties in this war, but by and large the base scenes work very well. Unfortunately this isn't what the story is about. The base and the conspiracy are window dressing. Notably the conspiracy goes nowhere and the conspirators are amongst the first casualties in the early stages of the climatic slaughter.

What the story is about, what the series will increasingly be about over the next two seasons, is the return of old monsters to please the fans and not about creating a dramatic setting and exploring it. A compelling story could be made from the base personnel and their world, a statement I'm confident in making because for much of the first two episodes that is exactly what happens.

In conclusion, neither version of the serial is entirely satisfying on its own merits and the serial I like is the one that gets walloped over the head late in the second episode when the Silurians fully intrude on the plot.

Next Episode

A bijou adventurette in which Lovecraftian weirdness brings the English Civil War to rural England in 1984.

Oh yes, that Doctor Who marathon thing...

Old Sixie handles the disappointment manfully.

Yes, I was going to marathon the Colin Baker era but two things occurred to me about halfway through The Twin Dilemma Part Two.

Thing 1: I only recently got over a period of harrowing bleakness and loss of faith in the world in general and the human race in particular. Watching 31 straight episodes of one of my absolute favourite things in the world violently imploding might not be the best thing to do at this moment.

Thing 2: The Twin Dilemma is a stupid place to start in any case. Its one of the series' most tragically misjudged moments but it didn't happen in isolation. Hard as it is to believe from watching it the story was a season finale. When I talk about the new series it tends to be in reference to seasons because they're a body of work. So if I want to understand The Twin Dilemma in all its awfulness (or even, Heaven forbid, to come to an appreciation of it) I really should start at the beginning of Season 21, not the end.

I'll readily admit that starting with Warriors Of The Deep may not be much of an improvement in the “maintaining faith in humanity” stakes but at least I can laugh at the Myrka and there are genuinely good stories to look forward to between the two (Caves and Frontios, I'm looking at you).

So, next episode: A pantomime brontosaurus, Ingrid Pitt doing ill-advised kung fu and a secret military base staffed entirely by New Romantics.

Doctor Who Marathon 1: Colin Baker

The Colin Baker era is not well-loved, in fact it is remembered chiefly for its flaws and disasters. The full catalogue could take up half a dozen posts so let's just deal with the edited highlights:

The era opens with a serial twice voted the worst Doctor Who story ever made; picks up nine months later with a piece of continuity porn so bad it drove off a quarter of the audience; lurches through a season composed mainly of excessive violence and more excessive sequels; the show is then put on hiatus for eighteen months; returns with an epic season-long storyline that falls apart when the man writing the finale dies without having submitted a first draft or even storyline notes to the script editor; and then the BBC fires Colin Baker.

The Sylvester McCoy version of the show never recovers from the mortal wounds of the Colin Baker era and cancellation becomes inevitable. The Sixth Doctor becomes a byword amongst fans for the worst aspects of the series from production values to production personnel.

Blame for his mess is impossible to apply to any single figure because everyone involved has their own account, usually in total contradiction of everyone else. Unfinished masterplans are invoked but never explained, leading one to believe they were never actually seriously considered. Even the authorship of the aforementioned continuity porn shipwreck is contested by two people seemingly intent on incriminating themselves rather than blaming each other.

I've always rather liked the Sixth Doctor but it took a long time for the larger fan consensus to catch up with me on that one. It's easy to be a Colin Baker fan now: we've got Big Finish now, who have given us Jubilee, The Doomwood Curse, Medicinal Purposes and dozens of other great stories proving that Colin Baker can act and that his version of the Doctor can work.

But what was it I liked as a kid? Was it just the bright colours (I do like the coat, I won't lie)? The shouting? The classic monsters? Peri's unbelievably exploitative wardrobe?

Time for a marathon, methinks. Twelve stories (including Slipback and counting The Trial Of A Time Lord as four stories) doesn't seem too long. I've always wanted to do one of those epic watch throughs from An Earthly Child to present but I don't have the attention span so let's just do this Doctor by Doctor and start with the series' most-maligned era. If nothing else, after this things can only improve.

NEXT EPISODE: The Twin Dilemma: democratically the worst Doctor Who story ever.