The Curse of Fenric

It’s hard to believe that, just two seasons ago, I was watching the Rani in a wig and a space bus full of rock ‘n’ roll tourists. Somebody obviously woke up and realised Doctor Who needed to be a bit more serious and sophisticated, and The Curse of Fenric is the high point so far. Well, it’s as sophisticated as a TV show can be when it features vampires, ancient viking curses and a man who travels in a police box, while still being accessible family viewing.

Dr. Judson and his ULTIMA machine are clearly based on Alan Turing and the Enigma machine. I’m not sure the Enigma machine ran on poisonous green gooey artifacts, though.

The cast is mostly terrific. Nicholas Parsons is great as the reverend struggling with his faith amidst the violent backdrop of World War II. Alfred Lynch plays Millington, a slightly unhinged naval commander, and although he comes across as a bit “Poundland Gary Oldman”, it’s a classy performance anyway. Some of the extras are cringeworthy, but Ace is definitely improving and her scenes with the Doctor are, hands down, the best so far.

In a sci-fi twist on a legend, it’s not the crucifix that keeps vampires away, it’s the psychic barrier caused by unwavering faith. Sure, why not?

There’s some solid drama and emotion here. It’s as if the writers have suddenly realised Ace should be an actual character rather than a box to tick and could have important parts of the plot dedicated to her. The revelations about her mother, about her past and the time storm that stranded her on another world are, admittedly, a little messy, but they’re appreciated. Her rant about the Doctor not telling anybody what he knows is absolutely superb and completely true, and the whole exchange is really well done by both McCoy and Aldred. It’s the best scene in years, frankly; I even mouthed “wow” when it was over. Ace is growing up.

I almost expected her to stay behind with the Russian bloke, but that would have been a poor conclusion.

The WWII setting is great; it’s not an overused era on this show, surprisingly, and I enjoy all the code-breaking enigma machine type stuff. Even the “vampires” are more interesting than usual, being “haemovores” from Earth’s far future, and the prosthetics on the uglier ones are really excellent. It’s well-made, it looks good, it seems to be shot on location and, as expected, there are plenty more explosions.

It’s not the first Doctor Who story to feature creatures rising from the water, but it is the best.

The only real problems I had with this one are in the choppy plotting and editing. Too many pointless things happening for no real reason. Ace climbing down a ladder to escape a haemovore attack, only to have to climb back up again. Reverend Wainwright finding his faith for all of five seconds, then losing it again. Fenric’s inability to resist a chess puzzle for some reason. The ancient haemovore deciding to side with the Doctor in a scene that feels like it was written in and inserted later. It’s not a problem exclusive to this serial – it happens a lot through the long running of this show – but it’s more apparent here where everything else is at a much higher standard. And if this is the standard that Doctor Who had reached in 1989, it’s even more of a shame that it wasn’t allowed to continue. Or, then again, maybe that was for the best in the end.

One more left.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

Circuses are kind of creepy, but if I had watched this serial when I was six years old, I would NEVER want to go to one ever again. The most memorable Doctor Who episodes have a way of taking something ordinary and twisting it into something terrifying, giving kids nightmares in the process, and this does exactly that.

I could have done without the rapping.

Even now, as a grown adult, I have to admit that many of the scenes in this serial verge on the disturbing, such as when Ace is locked inside the workshop, and the bits of robot clowns start moving behind her. Brrr!! And those audience members with their lifeless faces and glowing eyes! And Mags turning into a werewolf! It’s got some good direction and lighting, and makes excellent use of some very limited sets.

Wonderfully creepy.

But it’s also full of really great performances. Ian Reddington as the ‘chief clown’ does so much with so little. A simple hand gesture, a creepy smile, and he’s created a frightening foe. T. P. McKenna as ‘Captain Cook’ is a scary look into what might happen to the Doctor if he ever became selfish and complacent enough, putting others’ lives, even his own travelling companion, before his own. The other circus performers are a varied bunch and you really feel for their plight. And as for the Doctor, he is very quickly rising up the ranks of my favourites. He’s brilliant in this, and if those magic tricks at the end of part 4 are really all performed by him, I have a newfound respect for Mr. McCoy.

Cook and Mags, galactic travellers. Like holding up a mirror into a dark alternate universe.

There are still hints of hokiness, some of the characters don’t quite work, and some of the production can’t avoid looking too cheap for what it’s trying to portray, but what this serial manages to do is turn its recent silly elements into creepy ones. Lighthearted humour becomes dark and twisted menace, and it succeeds by showing just enough to set the imagination at work. Its combination of direction, performance and production doesn’t have many of the weak links I usually expect from Doctor Who, and the musical score manages to maintain the creepy mood throughout.

Who let Harry Potter onto the show?

While it’s not the greatest show in the galaxy, it’s easily the best serial since… oh, Caves of Androzani, certainly. That deserves a round of applause at least.

Remembrance of the Daleks

There has been an enduring image in my mind since age six, which is brought into focus whenever the word ‘Dalek’ is spoken. This is an image of the Doctor peering into the open top of a Dalek casing and a clawed hand or beak reaching out and grabbing him by the neck. This is my earliest memory of Doctor Who, an image that has stayed with me for 25 years, and I’ve finally found where it was from! Wednesday, October the 19th, 1988.

A strange sensation. The fine details have faded over the years, but I distinctly recall watching this scene 25 years ago (probably from behind the sofa).

Remembrance of the Daleks has its own historic date, set as it is in 1963, taking place around the time and place of the very first episode, the school and junk yard in Shoreditch. There are plenty of references to An Unearthly Child, as well as an in-joke while Ace is watching a television broadcast, and the announcer almost says Doctor Who is about to start. It’s cute, but perhaps that’s taking an homage too far! The pre-UNIT military taskforce is investigating a Dalek incursion, and it turns out to be one of the best Dalek stories in quite some time.

A Dalek hovers up some stairs, dispelling the myth that stairs can thwart them! Funny, I wrongly assumed this didn’t happen until the 2005 series.

Remembrance is quite ‘plotty’, but not overly so. There’s the central focus on the two Dalek factions looking for the Hand of Omega to control time, and within the ruckus is the Doctor taking charge of the military and causing an awful lot of explosions. There’s some great misdirection, as we’re led to believe the renegade Daleks are commanded by Davros and the Imperial Daleks by the Emperor. There’s the mysterious little girl who seems to know more than she should. There’s the military man on the inside giving information to the traitorous group working for the Daleks. There’s even actual themes explored, like using the Dalek segregation as an allegory for racism. It’s a very smartly written story, all told.

That Dalek armour is no match for Ace’s turbo-powered baseball bat.

It’s also the first chance Sylvester McCoy has had to properly get into the character of the Doctor. He’s actually really good in this. Curious, cunning, quick-witted and commanding. He’s got the right balance of respect and annoyance for humanity and gets to give a good talking to Davros at the end. There’s a scene where he mentions to Ace about previous monster invasions (Yetis, Loch Ness monster), and the human capacity to deceive themselves, which is a knowing wink to the way everything on Earth seems to return to normal (a habit unbroken by the modern series). Ace is also turning out to be a capable and worthwhile character. She’s given a lot of the action roles in this, smashing up Daleks with a various weapons (baseball bat, rocket launcher) and diving through windows.

The Daleks bring in the heavy guns. A ‘special weapons’ variant. Nice.

A lot of the production is set outdoors or in real locations, which does lend an appealing sense of realism. The visual effects are quite ambitious and the amount of explosions is insane. The “oh, I reprogrammed the McGuffin” resolution is perhaps a bit cheap, but wiping out Skaro is a dramatic conclusion, fitting for the Daleks’ final appearance in the classic era, making sure they go out with a bang (or several!). Remembrance starts to feel modern, in production, direction and writing, but it’s also my earliest (and perhaps only) memory of the classic era show. The title is appropriate, then, and the story is a good one. I enjoyed this a lot.

Vengeance on Varos

Vengeance on Varos is probably one of the grimmest Doctor Who stories so far. Much like The Sun Makers, it pushes contemporary concepts to farcical extremes to create a darkly comic dystopian future. In this case, it’s a society that oppresses its people while publicly televising torture and death for their entertainment, dangling the carrot of freedom in front of them by letting them vote on their governor’s policies. I suppose it’s also a commentary on reality TV, albeit a bit before its time.

The Chief Officer and Sil plot to extort underpriced ore from Varos.

The plot is kept simple, but is punctuated by some distinctive imagery. The slug-like alien, Sil, and his evil gurgling laugh is particularly memorable. Quillam’s scarred face, Peri growing feathers over her skin, the Doctor being subjected to heat exhaustion, an acid bath and a gallows. It’s almost relentlessly bleak.

Furries around the world drool as Peri is nearly turned into a bird creature.

It has some comedic elements, some of which work as satire, like the couple watching and commenting on the TV at home, while some of it feels very badly judged in tone. The Doctor is supposed to care about life, but he has no problem with causing a few deaths here. Firstly, the security guard who gets zapped by the torture beam that he intentionally sets up as a trap, and later the two who get knocked into the acid vat. This wouldn’t be so bad, but the Doctor then makes a witty quip afterwards (“you’ll forgive me if I don’t join you”) – he’s not James bloody Bond! He hasn’t got the dress sense, for a start.

I couldn’t help but think of The Truman Show as the TV cameras are getting the best angle of the Doctor struggling for his life in the Punishment Dome.

The Governor is the sympathetic character, bravely going against the grain of the public vote, and is generally likable even when he’s giving questionable orders in the line of duty. No-one is a saint, there are only shades of grey. The Doctor continues to improve as a character I can actually care about, which I guess means he just needed a decent script, and on the whole I did enjoy this one a lot.

The Caves of Androzani

It’s been a while since Robert Holmes wrote a Doctor Who script; it’s almost like he’d been saving this one up. It’s an uncharacteristically sophisticated story, mature and quite dark, dealing with themes of corporate corruption, terrorism, betrayal, greed, violence and sacrifice.

The unnecessary monster. Seriously, what was the point of this thing?

That being the case, the silly-looking man-in-a-rubber-suit monster is rather perfunctory. The story doesn’t need the added threat of a creature when the various sides are already ruthlessly butchering each other. Caves of Androzani doesn’t pull any punches; it’s violent when it needs to be, and its large cast of characters are largely dead by the end. If anything, the story is a little too complicated – with everyone backstabbing each other, it took me a while to work out what was going on!

Morgus “witnesses” the president’s death in an unfortunate lift “accident”.

At the heart of the story is Sharaz Jek, who is using his supply of spectrox drug to seek revenge on the man who left him horribly scarred. It would have been more effective if we never got to see his face, just the reaction to it – no amount of makeup can match one’s imagination, after all. Jek is quite a dramatic character, very intense and threatening but, like all good villains, he has a tender side, and seems to develop affection towards Peri, although I’m not quite sure why; did I miss something?

In these tenderer moments, he’s like a clown in bondage gear. Now there’s a chilling thought.

Caves of Androzani is also well made, with some interesting camera angles. I suspect some of it must have been shot handheld to get the dramatic close-ups and awkward angles that you don’t usually see in a video production. The androids’ thermal vision is also a good-looking visual effect, and the Doctor’s two visible hearts a nice touch of detail. Another nice detail is that we finally learn what the Doctor’s piece of celery is for! Poison detection, Gallifrey style. It didn’t save him from the spectrox spores, though.

The stand-out moment for me is during the ship’s descent towards Androzani Minor. Davison’s Doctor is desperate, panic-stricken and clearly over his head, but pulls off a miraculous turnaround.

This was a very good ending for the fifth Doctor, and a thorough test bed for his best qualities to shine through. It’s a shame that this version comes to an end, but I will have some more to say on the fifth Doctor’s character and adventures shortly.

Moments before “death”, the Doctor remembers his former companions. You just can’t get rid of that kid Adric, can you?

The Five Doctors

Following on from the 20th season is this remarkable anniversary special, originally broadcast to celebrate the show’s 20th year on the air. To replicate the original experience, I would have preferred to have seen the originally broadcast version, but circumstances led me unwittingly to the special edition released much later, with some of the visual and audio effects updated, so I can only comment on this version.

The Doctors meet!

Much like The Three Doctors, the story is little more than an excuse to get the previous incarnations of the Doctor together, plucked out of time and placed inside an elaborate ancient war game. It’s a shame that Tom Baker decided to opt out and that William Hartnell was no longer alive, as this special really ought to be called “The three and a Half Doctors (plus friends)”, but that’s not as catchy. Nevertheless, it’s a delight to see Patrick Troughton (does that man not age?!), and Jon Pertwee back again, while Richard Hurndall takes over as the first Doctor, and some previously unseen footage from Shada is used to explain the fourth Doctor’s absence. Clever!

Trapped within a maze of mirrors, the first Doctor and his granddaughter Susan are reunited. How’s that non-existent pocket of 22nd century post Dalek-invaded Earth been keeping you, Sue?

Despite the absentees, The Five Doctors is a glorious celebration of the show’s history, using every available cast member, reference and villain it can reasonably squeeze into its 100 minute runtime. I genuinely had no idea that a 20-year older Carole Ann Ford would return to play Susan, nor the cameos by Jamie, Zoe, Liz and Yates. And that’s on top of a bright yellow Bessie, Lethbridge-Stewart, The Master, Yetis, Cybermen and a Dalek all running around the battlefield (there’s even time to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!). It’s a smorgasbord of nostalgia, a who’s who of Who, and it’s quite amazing that it all works so well.

Turlough doesn’t have much to do in this story, but Tegan accompanies the first Doctor into the tower, while Susan remains in the Tardis.

Essentially, the story splits and jumps back and forth to follow each Doctor and a companion as they each take a different route up to the tower of Rassilon. This allows them some breathing space (as well as time to reminisce with old friends), but it does make the story a little scattershot, never settling in one place for very long, until a satisfying culmination towards the end. The lack of arbitrarily dramatic cliffhangers is a blessing; this is just one epic feature without cuts.

Sarah Jane is still Sarah Jane, panicked and often hyperventilating. The third Doctor is still the third Doctor, determined and confident. I swear he cops a feel of her boob at one point.

The fifth Doctor is the anchoring point, but he spends much of the story on Gallifrey, outside of the Death Zone, where he uncovers the President’s secret plans for immortality. Yes, sadly, there is corruption on Gallifrey yet again. This is becoming an embarrassing cliché and I can’t blame the Doctor for not wanting to stick around as President. He does get a brief moment to meet his past selves, which is nicely done. You can get a good sense of how the different versions of the Doctor vary. Davison is definitely the least eccentric of the bunch, a normal and level-headed type by comparison. Pertwee and Troughton play their roles much as they ever did, despite the years in between, and Richard Hurndall does a reasonable job of approximating some of Hartnell’s performance, although it would have been more authentic if he’d fluffed his lines a few times and ended all his sentences with “hmm?”.

Lord President Borusa gets more than he bargained for when Rassilon grants him immortality.

The Five Doctors is hardly a masterpiece of imagination, then, but it’s nevertheless well made and a lovely tribute to the history of the show. The sort of silly-but-fun “why the hell not” exercise I can easily get behind. As it’s a one-off special, the budget would appear to have allowed for better production and visuals. One scene in particular is genuinely great, as a robot ninja busts up a legion of cybermen, teleporting around and lobbing arrows at them, causing them to explode and fall to pieces, arms and heads everywhere. Earlier, a rogue Dalek shoots itself in a hall of mirrors and within its exploded remains is its rarely-sighted grotesque embryo. Marvelous!

Total carnage. I bet Hideo Kojima was a fan.

Sometimes logic has to fly out of the window, though. For instance, the second Doctor tricks the illusion of Jamie and Zoe by recalling that they shouldn’t know who he is, since their memories were wiped when they were returned to their time zones. But by the same reasoning, how would the Doctor have remembered that, as it happened almost immediately prior to his regeneration and exile on Earth. He would have had to have been pulled from the past moments before this, but there’s no indication this is the case when he turns up to visit the Brigadier. Similarly, why exactly is K-9 with Sarah Jane? Mk.I was left on Gallifrey with Leela and Mk.II was left with Romana (in a black-and-white photograph). I suppose it doesn’t matter, really; some questions are best left unanswered for the sake of a bit of fun, and this was a lot of fun. Job done.

Enlightenment

Enlightenment brings the Black Guardian ‘trilogy’ to an imaginative and surprisingly satisfying close. What first appears to be a simple Edwardian sailing ship is actually a space vessel that’s been modelled after one, as part of a space race around the solar system against others ships crewed by people pulled from Earth’s history by a group of bored ‘eternals’.

The space race, redefined! The ships are equipped with solar sails and vacuum shields, so although it’s fanciful, it’s not completely magical. How cool is that?

The Eternals might as well be gods, since they usually exist outside of time and space, can read the minds of mortals and create anything from nothing. What the Doctor quite rightly reveals is that being all-powerful isn’t actually all that, and mocks the Eternals for their reliance on mortals to keep them amused, to give their lives meaning and purpose, even while they consider themselves superior beings. But we are made to feel sympathetic towards them, as the First Officer develops feelings towards Tegan, becoming enthralled by her mind but failing to understand why.

In spite of everything else, I couldn’t help wonder how Tegan grew her hair. Did she put a wig on? Did an Eternal magic some new hair for her? This is clearly of vital importance.

With the Black and White Guardians pulling the strings, we have a rather high concept situation here, not unlike something Douglas Adams might come up with. The gods controlling the mortals, while the gods of gods control them. The Doctor is just a small part of a bigger picture, and yet his involvement is humble and believable. The resolution, although a bit schlocky, is quite sweet, with Turlough earning his ‘enlightenment’ through making the right choice, and seeing the Black Guardian off into a burst of flame.

Winner takes all.

Speaking of Turlough, he does spend a lot of the story either sucking up to win favour or crying to the Black Guardian for help, but there’s something rather entertaining about how over-the-top he is. He’s far more engaging than Nyssa was, although it remains to be seen if he mellows out now that he’s free of his contract. The Black Guardian continues to be a bad pantomime villain, but somehow this fits in with the godly chess game theme. The Eternals range from emotionless to crazy, with the pirate captain Wrack overacting in all of her scenes. It’s never less than fun, though.

Turlough is picked up by the pirate ship after a spectacular space jump.

Mawdryn Undead

I’ll be honest: after part 1, I had decided this story was going to be rubbish. The annoying schoolkids stealing a car, the cheesy villain and awful-looking video effects, Lethbridge-Stewart working at a school for some reason..? What’s going on?! Thankfully, the story does develop and it turns out to be one of the most interesting I’ve seen so far.

Dance, boy. Dance!

Certainly, Doctor Who doesn’t deal with local time phenomena very often, and the revelation that Nyssa and Tegan are six years back in the past is a good one. Of course, the Brigadier is always great to have on screen, and two of them is twice as nice. His memory loss seemed like a lazy conceit at first, but it makes sense in the end and the story comes together well. He’s a terrific character to have alongside the Doctor, and it almost made me nostalgic for the Pertwee years again (heaven forbid!).

The timeframes aren’t quite right, but that’s mostly because the 1970s pretended to be the 1980s. Now that is really is the 1980s, the Brigadier retired in the 1970s. Perhaps they should have set the present day bits in the future to avoid this whole mess!

It’s the nastiness and horror that is most surprising, though. Mawdryn and his brothers in exile, doomed to torturous immortality, is a tragic tale in itself, but the make-up designs are something else. Heads split open, pulsating brains poking out, not to mention the horribly burned skin earlier on – it’s all rather grotesque. Excellently grotesque! I liked how he pretended to be a regenerated Doctor as well. This one really surprised me, I had no idea what to expect, and that’s a good thing.

Mawdryn, posing as the regenerated Doctor, is treated with suspicion.

I suppose the weak link is really the Black Guardian. He’s played like a pantomime villain stuck in a pop video, and even after it’s all finished, I don’t entirely know what he was after, whether he just wanted the Doctor dead or if he was in on Mawdryn’s plan to drain his regenerations first. Turlough is even more confusing, with seemingly none of the crew bothering to question what an alien is doing posing as a schoolboy on Earth. Since he’s sticking around on the Tardis for a while, I suspect we’ll learn a lot more about his plan in the next story. It makes a change to have a secondary character with an ulterior motive, at least.

The Brigadier nearly runs into his other self, an act that would turn out to be not as catastrophic as first feared.

This was surprisingly good, then. One of the most memorable, unusual and intriguing stories so far; well paced, horrific and humoured in equal doses, and complemented by a distinctive synthy soundtrack. And from the looks of things, it’s far from over.

Time-Flight

The Tardis finally lands at Heathrow airport, but it’s entirely by accident, as a timewarp from millions of years in the past has snagged a passing concorde, causing it to vanish. It isn’t long before the Doctor is involved in solving the mystery (with a nice reference to UNIT confirming his credentials), with a second concorde flight plotted along the same course sending them all back through time.

A group illusion makes our heroes think they haven’t left Heathrow airport. In fact, they are 140 million years in the past. And standing in front of a blue screen.

Intriguing as this setup is (and lovely as it is to see concorde in flight!), the plot takes a turn into the convoluted. Admittedly, I liked that they kept the identity of the Master a secret – Kalid is a strange and unusual villain, and his ‘death’ brilliantly grotesque – but for a lot of this story, I was was just left thinking… “what?”. Essentially, the Master is after another Great Power, needing to fix his Tardis and escape the past, but the details go by in a blur.

A master of pointless disguises, The Master as ‘Kalid’.

An ancient race fleeing their world, crashing on Earth and forming an amalgamous consciousness, is a big idea that needs a bit more time to settle in. But we don’t get that much time to dwell on it, because there’s also psychic hallucinations, creatures made from psychokinetic soapsuds, a dead man that comes back to life, a Tardis in a plane, a plane in a Tardis, and a power struggle between the Doctor and Master involving various bits of equipment that block this, inhibit that, redirect this, counteract that. Frankly, it’s a mess. They might as well have just said “a wizard did it”, stuff the dramatic tension.

Although many of the visual effects are ambitious, the concorde take-off sequence is decidely shonky. Bluergh.

Peter Davison has to carry all of this burden, and to his credit, he does so very entertainingly, even while the plot is whooshing past at the speed of light. The supporting cast of concorde crew and passengers are unfortunately quite poor. Even Tegan, who should be in her element here, is underwritten and blandly performed. I wasn’t surprised to see her left behind at the end, but if this is her actual departure, it’s incredibly low-key! Even that brat Adric can’t stay away for long, appearing briefly as a hallucination (along with some previous monsters). It all comes down to the Master and Doctor facing off, and this forms the only really solid bit of drama in the story. What a shame. There could have been something good here, but it didn’t work for me.

Earthshock

I wasn’t sure what to make of Earthshock by about half-way through. The trouble with the Cybermen is, since Tom Baker encountered them in Revenge of the Cybermen, they’ve been a bit rubbish. For all their talk of lacking emotional weakness, they clearly display emotions themselves, from sadistic glee at watching others die, to frustration at being foiled. They’re just regular evil villains with a regular evil villain boss, and voices that somehow lack the creepy synthetic monotone of the 60s versions. Ironically, then, a downgrade.

The Cybermen watch clips of the previous Doctors’ encounters with them. This was a nice touch. How things have changed!

But in this case, I can forgive the slightly rubbish Cybermen, as the setup is one of the best. Unlike The Invasion, where Cybermen are already overrunning the Earth, here we have a classic isolated environment, a ship full of dormant Cybermen on a collision course. This potential doomsday scenario raises the stakes without over-egging the threat. Part 1 is a creepy little adventure in itself, as two of the android servants skulk around in a dark cave, picking off the squad of troopers, before the adventure is whisked off into space, troopers in tow. This is quite neatly written, with those fossils in the caves foreshadowing the explosive events at the conclusion, and the argument with Adric foreshadowing his ultimate demise.

The Doctor is letting the public into the Tardis a little too casually lately. Admittedly, the Cybermen forced their way in.

This is not the first time a companion has been offed, but I wouldn’t count Katarina as a “main character”, so this is definitely a bold move. Admittedly, I never liked Adric, but I honestly didn’t expect him to die. The Doctor could be planning to go back in time and rescue him or something, but that would be pretty cheap. Besides, the silent end credits kind of said “this is final, be sad”. I applaud the bravery of finally doing this, of not simply concocting a last-minute rescue like every other story seems to do.

As is often the case in Doctor Who, the action scenes are poor. The lasers look particularly bad.

That’s one of the good things about Earthshock, how utterly powerless the Doctor is. He is completely at the mercy of the Cybermen, forced to do their bidding as officers and crew are killed around him. The conclusion is particularly clever, then; it’s not that the Cybermen failed to wipe out life on Earth, it’s just that they chose the wrong time to do it. Or the right time, depending on how you look at it. The rise of mammals are all thanks to them. Not content with simply burning down London, the Doctor is now responsible for sentient life developing on Earth. That’s pretty cool.

See ya, Adric.