Author: archivetvmusings

Wait, watch and learn. Doctor Who – Attack of the Cybermen

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attack

Attack of the Cybermen (lousy title by the way) seems to have been born out of a fannish desire to recreate some of the Cybermen’s greatest moments.  With Tomb of the Cybermen apparently lost forever, there was a certain sense in creating a new story which revisited the Tombs on Telos (although the dinky cubicles in Attack lack a certain style – Tomb did it much better).

For those playing continuity bingo, Mondas and its destruction gets a mention (The Tenth Planet) and the Cybermen once more have a liking for the sewers and also keep their ship hidden on the dark side of the Moon (The Invasion).  And Michael Kilgarriff reprises his role as the Cyber Controller, eighteen years after Tomb.

"It is a fat controller"
“It is a fat controller”

The authorship of Attack has always been a slightly thorny issue.  Some maintain that Paula Moore (alias Paula Woolsey) never wrote a word of the script and that it was all Eric Saward’s (with suggestions from Ian Levine).  Although there are contrary opinions (Levine had greater input, Woolsey did contribute to the script, etc) for the sake of argument we’ll assume that the bulk was written by Saward, as it certainly bears his hallmarks (high body-count and violence, for example).

Lytton (Maurice Colbourne) who had been created by Saward in Resurrection of the Daleks returns. It’s tempting to think that Saward decided to reuse the character after watching Colbourne’s performance in Resurrection.  His first appearance was a fairly nothing part, but Colbourne (by the sheer dint of his personality) certainly made something out of it.

The Lytton in Attack is a subtly different character – for example he has a sharp sense of humour, which is seen in his exchanges with Russell, Griffiths and Payne in the first episode.  These early scenes are some of the best in the story and feel quite out of place in Doctor Who (although in a good way).  They could have quite easily come from a contemporary police series, like Strangers, and it’s a shame that they didn’t remain on Earth for the rest of the story – as a story with the Doctor and Peri tracking Lytton and his merry men through London’s underworld could have been a decent yarn.

Plot hole number one.  If Lytton’s two bogus policemen are still around, why does he need Russell, Griffiths and Payne?  It’s established later that a crew of three is needed to pilot the Timeship, so Lytton plus his two phony coppers would seem to be more than adequate.

"You said you came from Fulham".
“You said you came from Fulham”.

There’s one good reason for having Griffiths around, and that’s Brian Glover.  A familiar face (and voice) on British television for a number of years prior to this appearance, he’s terribly good value.  He often finds himself the butt of Lytton’s acid remarks, and this adds an unexpected twist of humour to the story.  Lytton’s unique take on employer-employee relations is best illustrated when he deals with some dissent from newcomer, Russell –

LYTTON: You are new to this group and have yet to gain my confidence, that’s why I tell you nothing. These two are muscleheads and wouldn’t understand what I said anyway.
GRIFFITHS: You’ve got a rough tongue, Mister Lytton.
LYTTON: Which you will learn to live with, Griffiths, otherwise you’re out. And as your earnings have never been better, that would be rather foolish, wouldn’t it? Let’s go. Come on, Payne, there’s work to be done.
PAYNE: Right.
(Payne gets down into the narrow access tunnel.)
PAYNE: Oh. Hey, how thick is the sewer wall?
LYTTON: Oh, nothing you can’t handle.
(Payne takes the heavy lump hammer.)
PAYNE: I used to use one of these when I worked for the council.
LYTTON: This time it’s for swinging, not leaning on

It turns out that Russell (Terry Molloy) is an undercover policeman, sent to investigate the mysterious Lytton.  Russell is a chance for Molloy to make a Doctor Who appearance as himself, rather than encased in latex as Davros.  He’s rather good, and as Russell he underplays very well, a sharp contrast to the creator of the Daleks.

Whilst all this is going on, what’s happened to the Doctor and Peri?  Well, they spend the early part of episode one not achieving very much – mainly dashing from place to place attempting to answer an intergalactic distress call.  This has little overall relevance to the plot and mainly seems to be designed to keep the Doctor out of the loop until Lytton has allowed himself and Griffiths to be captured by the Cybermen.

nicola

One side-effect of the move to 45 minute episodes, is that for a 90 minute story there would now only be one cliffhanger.  It’s a pity that the one in Attack is rather inept (“No, no, noooooooooooo!”) and the resumption in episode two is also slightly iffy.  The Cyberleader (for no apparent reason) orders the death of Peri and a Cyberman steps up to deal with her.  The Doctor, of course, pleads for her life, but there’s a long gap until the CyberLeader agrees.  Why did the Cyberman not kill Peri straight away?  Why listen to what the Doctor said?  He’d been given a clear order by the CyberLeader.

So we’re off to Telos, where all the characters meet up with the Cryons, who are a bit of a rum lot.  Sarah Berger, Sarah Greene and Faith Brown are amongst their number and they certainly are a memorable creation – I think it’s the long fingernails that does it.  The masks do look a little cheap, but overall they work quite well as an alien species with their own unique take on events.

Lytton and Griffiths, along with two escapees from the Cybermen’s work party (Stratton and Bates) attempt to steal the Cyber Controller’s Timeship.  Plot hole number two.  How did the Cryons and Lytton know that Stratton and Bates were at large on the surface of Telos and also planning to steal the ship?  Also, it’s fair to say that Stratton and Bates have to be the most pointless characters in the story.  We spend a long time with them as they make their attempt to escape from the work party, ambush a Cyberman, etc, but in the end this plot-thread doesn’t go anywhere.  And even when they team up with Lytton and Griffiths, they achieve nothing.

This being (probably) a Saward script, people start to die – Griffiths, Stratton and Bates are all quickly killed off, whilst Lytton is captured and taken to be turned into a Cybermen.  First, though, Lytton’s hands are crushed to a bloody pulp – one of the most infamous scenes of the story.

Although I haven’t mentioned him much, Colin Baker is already (in just his second outing) very assured as the Doctor.  There’s still a trace of the erratic behaviour of The Twin Dilemma but he’s much more in command here and more than able to hold his own against both the Cybermen and Lytton.  The best of his scenes in episode two come when he’s locked up with the Cryon, Flast (Faith Brown) who describes the Cybermen’s plans for Earth.

DOCTOR: How do they intend to destroy Earth?
FLAST: It would only be necessary to disrupt it.
DOCTOR: It would still take rather a large bomb.
FLAST: They have one. A natural one. In fact, it’s heading towards Earth at this very moment.
DOCTOR: Halley’s comet?
FLAST: That’s right. They plan to divert it, cause it to crash into Earth. It’ll make a very loud bang.
DOCTOR: Indeed it will. It’ll also bring about a massive change in established history. The Time Lords would never allow it.
FLAST: Who knows? Perhaps their agents are already at work.
DOCTOR: Well, if they are, they’re taking their time about it. For a start, why? Wait a minute. No! No, not me! You haven’t manoeuvred me into this mess just so I can get you out of it! It would have helped if I had known what was going on!
FLAST: You are a Time Lord?
DOCTOR: Yes. And at the moment, a rather angry one.

Although there’s a lot to enjoy about Attack (Baker and Bryant, Maurice Colbourne, Brian Glover) the ending does leave a little bit of a nasty taste.  It’s not the first Doctor Who story to end in violence and it won’t be the last, but there’s something a little off in seeing the Doctor blasting down the Cybermen.  The Doctor’s used a gun before (for example, the third Doctor in Day of the Daleks was quite happy to gun down Ogrons) but it’s a pity that the resolution of the story couldn’t have been a touch more imaginative.

Still, following the fairly calamitous opening stories of the previous two seasons (both courtesy of Johnny Byrne) as a season opener Attack is a definite step up in quality and a good marker for the type of stories to come during the rest of S22.

I am the Doctor, whether you like it or not. Doctor Who – The Twin Dilemma

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twin

Perhaps the greatest problem with The Twin Dilemma is the sheer sense of anti-climax.  Any story following The Caves of Androzani would have had a difficult job anyway, but the sheer half-hardheartedness of Twin is very surprising.  As the debut story of a new Doctor, you would expect maximum effort – but there’s certainly something lacking here.

If Androzani was a story where nearly everything went right – helped by an enthusiastic first time Who director – then Twin is the diametric opposite.  Peter Moffatt was seen as a safe pair of hands – he would get the show made on time and on budget, but he wasn’t someone you would expect to deliver a great deal of visual flair.  Although to be fair, it does appear that the budget had pretty much run out (a regular occurrence for the final story of the season – see Time-Flight for example) which may explain the sight of computer terminals covered in tin-foil and other production shortcomings.

Twin’s other problems, like Womulus and Wemus, are well known, so there’s no point in dwelling on them.  A few words must be saved for Mestor though, an incredibly inept monster design.  After the perfection of Sharez Jek, it’s a bit of a shock for the Doctor’s next adversary to be a giant slug – and even more when a good actor like Edwin Richfield is totally wasted behind such an immobile mask, which negates all subtlety in performance.  So Richfield (excellent as Captain Hart in The Sea Devils) is forced to rant and rave in order to be heard (and the fact that Mestor’s cross-eyed is a problem too).

Sometimes, words just fail me.
Sometimes, words just fail me.

There are some decent performers on Jaconda though.  Maurice Denham brings a much-needed touch of class to proceedings, even if he sometimes seems to struggle with the banalities of the script.  Olivier Smith (Drak) manages to make something out of nothing and Barry Stanton (Noma) is also able to bring a certain gravitas to proceedings.  Seymour Green (who had previously appeared in The Seeds of Doom) has some nice comic touches as the Chamberlain, whilst Kevin McNally relishes his role as Hugo Lang.

If you haven’t heard it, then the commentary track with McNally, Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant is well worth a listen.  McNally is quite the Who fan and there’s a refreshing enthusiasm from him when discussing his brief brush with the series.  His interview with Toby Hadoke, as part of Hadoke’s Who’s Round is also warmly recommended.

Of course, Twin is really about one thing and one thing only – the debut of Colin Baker’s Doctor.  He certainly makes an impact and is immediately very different from Davison’s Doctor.  Just as Davison’s Doctor was clearly designed not to be as dominating as the Tom Baker incarnation, so the pendulum swings again with Colin Baker.

The Sixth Doctor (like the Fourth) is happy to be the centre of attention and is capable of instantly dominating proceedings.  He’s far from stable here, of course, and this helps to fuel the drama as well as pushing the spotlight onto Nicola Bryant.  Apart from The Edge of Destruction, it’s hard to recall the Doctor ever being quite so unapproachable (although Pertwee’s Doctor could be a grumpy old so-and-so from time to time).

I’ve always enjoyed Colin’s take on the Doctor and look forward to revisiting his stories over the coming weeks.  It’s fair to say that he was short-changed during his time on the series (although the previous Doctors, bar Davison, had maybe left reluctantly, at least they all had a decent run in the series) and he never got to develop the character that would later blossom with Big Finish.  However there’s enough little touches throughout his two and a bit years on the show to hint at what he might have done with the part, had he had the time.

PERI: Did you have to be so rude?
DOCTOR: To whom?
PERI: Hugo. You could at least have said goodbye. Are you having another of your fits?
DOCTOR: You may not believe this, but I have fully stabilised.
PERI: Then I suggest you take a crash course in manners.
DOCTOR: You seem to forget, Peri, I’m not only from another culture but another planet. I am, in your terms, an alien. I am therefore bound to different values and customs.
PERI: Your former self was polite enough.
DOCTOR: At such a cost. I was on the verge of becoming neurotic.
PERI: We all have to repress our feelings from time to time. I suggest you get back into the habit.
DOCTOR: And I would suggest, Peri, that you wait a little before criticising my new persona. You may well find it isn’t quite as disagreeable as you think.
PERI: Well, I hope so.
DOCTOR: Whatever else happens, I am the Doctor, whether you like it or not. 

This last scene seems to be aimed not only at Peri, but also the viewers at home. As to whether they’d warm to the abrasive new Doctor, only time would tell.

You have the mouth of a prattling jackanapes but your eyes tell a different story. Doctor Who – The Caves of Androzani

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caves

The Caves of Androzani is one of those rare Doctor Who stories where virtually everything – script, direction, acting, music, etc – is as good as it possibly can be.  The result is a story that’s nearly perfect.  The Magma Beast, of course, is a sign that nothing can ever be quite perfect – but given the rest of the story, a few shots of a rubbery monster is a small price to pay.

It had been five years Robert Holmes had contributed a script to Doctor Who and his previous one (The Power of Kroll) hadn’t been a happy experience for him.  Also, he hadn’t been able to get a script together for The Five Doctors (in retrospect, this was the worst thing to ask Homes to do as he never worked well with “shopping list” stories, he much preferred to create his own story from scratch).

So, Caves was the ideal commission.  He had to write out the 5th Doctor, but apart from that he had a free hand to fashion whatever plot took his fancy.  Holmes always liked to borrow from his favourite novels and Caves is no exception.  He’d already played with the concept of The Phantom of the Opera in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, but it’s even more explicit here, as Sharaz Jek – like the Phantom – kidnaps a beautiful young woman and takes her back to his underground lair.  Greel also liked to kidnap women, but he had quite another use for them!

This is the first time, but certainly not the last, that Peri will be the object of somebody’s lust.  Clearly Eric Saward thought it was a storyline that had legs, so poor Peri found herself mauled by the likes of Shockeye, the Board, Jobel and Yrcanos.  Although, to be fair, Shockeye was more interested in how she tasted, rather than how she looked.

What really brings the story to life is Graeme Harper’s direction.  Due to the nature of the programme (i.e. the very short time available to tape the story) few directors ever attempted to do anything particularly different.  There were exceptions, like Paul Joyce on Warriors’ Gate, who also pushed the series as far as it could go and produced a very stylish story – but there’s evidence to show that this was unpopular with both the crew and the cast.  And he certainly exceeded the budget, which ensured he was never asked back.

Harper was also imaginative and prepared to innovate, but he was able to do so within the time he was given – and he also managed to carry the cast along with him.  There seemed to be a general feeling during rehearsals and recording that this story was something unusual and special, so everybody seemed to pull together.  His style favours fades, jump cuts, dissolves and hand-held shots – all of which weren’t common to Doctor Who at the time.

Harper couldn’t possibly have cast this any better.  Key to the success of Caves are three actors – Maurice Roëves as Stotz, John Normington as Morgus and Christopher Gable as Sharez Jek.

It’s quite possible to believe in Roëves as a mercenary, as he certainly proves throughout the story exactly how mercenary Stotz is – ready to sell out anybody for personal gain.  Normington is nothing less than totally compelling.  His asides to camera (an accident that was kept in) add a certain frisson to his performance.  He’s also incredibly subtle at times – watch the scene where the President complains that gun-runners should be shot in the back.  Normington doesn’t reply, there’s just a twitch of a facial muscle to register what he’s thinking.

"The spineless cretins"
“The spineless cretins”

Elsewhere, Holmes gives him some wonderful material, such as –

TIMMIN: Trau Morgus?
MORGUS: Yes, what is it?
TIMMIN: The Northcawl copper mine, sir. There’s been a disaster. I thought you should know.
MORGUS: What kind of disaster?
TIMMIN: An explosion, sir, early this morning. The mine has been completely destroyed.
MORGUS: How sad. However, the loss of Northcawl eliminates our little problem of over-production. The news should also raise the market price of copper.
TIMMIN: Undoubtedly, sir.
MORGUS: As they used to say on Earth, every cloud has a strontium lining, Krau Timmin.
TIMMIN: Yes, indeed.
MORGUS: As a mark of respect for one of our late executives, I want every employee to leave his place of work and stand in silence for one minute.
TIMMIN: I’ll network that order immediately, sir.
MORGUS: No, on second thoughts, make that half a minute.
TIMMIN: Half a minute?

It’s reported that David Bowie was considered for the part of Sharez Jek, but nobody could have played it better than Christopher Gable.  It has to rank amongst the very best performances in Doctor Who, sitting comfortably alongside the likes of Kevin Stoney (Tobias Vaughn), Harrison Chase (Tony Beckley) and Scaroth (Julian Glover).

Sharez Jek has several electrifying speeches, the first coming 16 minutes into episode two.  It’s interesting to see how this was shot as Harper elected to record most of it “as live” on just one camera.  There’s not a cut until 1:55 into the scene, on the line “hanging from the bone”.  It’s tempting to suppose that Harper had planned to record the whole scene in one take and on one camera, but there was possibly a stumble which meant a brief cutaway had to be patched in.

This is part of the scene, and the dialogue is worth reproducing –

PERI: Why does he always wear that hood?
JEK: You want to know why? You, with your fair skin and features, you want to see the face under here? Do you!
(Peri squeals and runs into the Doctor’s arms.)
JEK: You’re wise. Even I can’t bear to see or touch myself. I, who was once, once comely, who was always a lover of beauty. And now I have to live in this exile. I have to live amongst androids because androids do not see as we see.
DOCTOR: What happened?
JEK: Morgus. Why I ever trusted that Fescennine bag of slime. I built an android workforce to collect and refine the Spectrox. We’d agreed to share the profits, but he’d already planned my death. When the mud burst caught without warning, how he must have gloated. But I tricked him. I reached one of the baking chambers and I survived, just.
PERI: You were burned?
JEK: Scalded near to death. The flesh boiled, hanging from the bone, but I lived. I lived so that one day I could revenge myself on that inhuman monster. And I shall.

During this monologue, Jek seems to turn into a character from a Victorian melodrama – “I, who was once comely” – which is possibly another nod by Holmes to The Phantom of the Opera.  It’s certainly an odd choice of words, and in the hands of another actor it could so easily have fallen flat, but Gable is outstanding here, as he is throughout the story.

"Do you think bullets could stop me now? You stinking offal, Morgus!"
“Do you think bullets could stop me now? You stinking offal, Morgus!”

I’ve previously touched upon how Eric Saward favoured a nihilistic view of the Universe.  It certainly comes across in Saward’s own Resurrection of the Daleks and it’s even more evident here.  There are no heroes (apart from the Doctor and Peri).  Krau Timmin (Barbara Neil) deposes the corrupt Morgus, but only so that she can take his place.  And Chellak (Martin Cochrane) is quite happy for the Doctor and Peri to be shot, even though he belives they are probably innocent.

As for the Doctor, although Davison doesn’t have a lot to say in the last episode (he’s mainly running about and crawling through unconvincing CSO caves looking for the Queen Bat) overall it’s a strong story for him and he rises to the occasion to give a really good performance.  He’s said that Caves was one where he actually had to do a bit of acting – witness his scenes with Gable, where he’s more than holding his own.

Caves is a story that never disappoints, has never been out of fashion and will surely always be around the top of any poll of favourite Doctor Who stories.  Classic is an overused word in Doctor Who circles, but Caves certainly deserves it.

UFO watch (Episode 25 – Mindbender)

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mindbender

Written by Tony Barwick
Directed by Ken Turner

Mindbender might be my favourite UFO episode.  It’s certainly the most daring, as it comprehensively breaks the fourth wall.

A UFO crashes on the Moon and astronaut Andy Conroy (Al Mancini) retrieves a strange rock from the wreckage.  Once back at Moonbase, he starts to lose his grip on reality.  He’s an avid fan of Westerns, which may explain why he sees all of his colleagues turn into Mexican bandits.

Initially, he sees the bandits roaming Moonbase, which is odd enough but as he descends further into madness, to him Moonbase has become a dangerous Mexican town full of outlaws who he has to fight to the death.  During the scenes both Ken Turner’s direction and Barry Gray’s music offer numerous nods to the Spaghetti Westerns so beloved by Conroy.

UFO is the last place you’d expect to see a Western (except on the back-lot) and it’s this juxtaposition which is so startling.  Conroy is killed, but the mystery behind his madness remains unsolved.  The rock ends up back at SHADO HQ where it infects Beaver James (Charles Tingwell) who becomes convinced that SHADO has been infiltrated by the aliens.

It then finds its way into Straker’s office, and this is where the heart of the episode lies.  Straker and Henderson are having one of their usual arguments.  “Let’s get back to realities” says Henderson and immediately afterwards, somebody says “Cut and print”.

The camera pulls back to reveal that SHADO HQ is nothing more than a film set and Straker is actually Howard Byrne, the leading actor.  A dazed Straker exits onto the studio grounds and makes his way over to Theatre 7, where the rough-cut of his “show” is being screened.

There then follows a series of clips from Identified and A Question of Priorities.  This could be seen as a way of saving some money by recycling footage, but it’s a key part of the episode.  Straker is forced to watch the death of his son, whilst his co-star Mike (Michael Billington) leans over and tells him how it’ll make a great episode.

One recurring theme of UFO is how emotionally damaged Straker is, from both the break-up of his marriage and the death of his son, so it’s heartbreaking to see him have to relive those moments again.  Ed Bishop is wonderful here – he says very little, but you’re left in no doubt as to the impact these shots have.

But even when he’s driven to the point of madness, the steel-trap of Straker’s mind still functions and he works out a way to get back to reality.  He goes back into the office and repeats his argument with Henderson.  As he begins to take control over the situation, things start to return to normal and, in effect, the fourth wall (which was shattered) now reforms, ensuring that he’s back where he belongs.

It takes a certain amount of nerve to do a story like Mindbender, but it certainly pays off.  There’s a danger inherent in showing us “behind the scenes” as the camera reveals to us just how flimsy and small the sets are – Skydiver, Moonbase control, etc.  Of course, it’s also lovely to have this peek behind the scenes and understand a little about how the series was made.

Possibly there might have been a feeling that UFO probably wouldn’t be renewed, so they might as well go for broke story-wise.  Whatever the reason, I’m glad they did, as Mindbender not only works as a character piece for Straker, it also offers an ironic comment on the artifice of programme making.  Wonderful stuff.

Look after him, won’t you? He gets into the most terrible trouble. Doctor Who – Planet of Fire

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fire

Although the main plot of Planet of Fire is a little dull (as it’s very difficult to care about the inhabitants of Sarn) there’s still plenty of interest – location filming on Lanzarote, the return of the Master, the departure of Turlough & Kamelion and the introduction of Peri.

Doctor Who had gone abroad twice before (Paris in City of Death and Amsterdam in Arc of Infinity) but both of those were still fairly close to home.  Lanzarote was a lot further away and this helps to give the planet of Sarn an epic look that the series had never had previously.  Today, of course, it’s nothing special, as Doctor Who often ventures abroad – but thirty years ago it was fairly eye popping.  The bulk of the location filming occurs in the first two episodes and it certainly helps to liven up what otherwise would be a fairly static story.

Peter Wyngarde is, of course, great value and very watchable as Timanov, chief elder of Sarn, but elsewhere the pickings are less fruitful.  Worst of all is Edward Highmore as Malkon, with a performance so wooden it’s probably just as well he never went too close to the fire.

"It can be a rewarding experience for those consumed in the flames. Unbelievers are such, such unhappy souls. "
“It can be a rewarding experience for those consumed in the flames. Unbelievers are such unhappy souls. “

Things pick up when the Master (or rather Kamelion as the Master) appears at the end of the first episode.  Anthony Ainley looks rather good in the black suit and he also gets to say Delgado’s classic line – “I am the Master and you will obey me”.  Great stuff, and this must rank as some of Ainley’s best work on Doctor Who, possibly because for once he doesn’t have a convoluted plan to enslave the Universe and destroy the Doctor – instead he’s motivated purely by survival.

Nicola Bryant (Peri) debuts here.  She wasn’t the first companion to have a fairly sketchy character which required some input from the actor in order to make it work, but she certainly does her best with what she’s been given.  It’s interesting that Peri doesn’t spend a lot of time with the Doctor in this story – the majority of her scenes are with the Master.   And it’s very clear that Peri doesn’t rate the Master at all, so there’s a certain amount of humour generated from their mismatched partnership.

MASTER: Give me that component immediately!
PERI: This thing belongs to the Doctor, so it’s the Doctor I give it to and no one else.
MASTER: You will obey me.
PERI: No.
MASTER: I am the Master!
PERI: So what? I’m Perpugilliam Brown and I can shout just as loud as you can!

master peri
Kamelion/The Master suffers labour/management problems

We bid farewell to Mark Strickson and learn a little more about Turlough along the way.  After the Black Guardian trilogy, Strickson has had few opportunities to shine, so his departure was always inevitable.  And with the departure of Turlough we are left with just a single companion to accompany the Doctor.  This was always Davison’s preference, so it’s somewhat ironic that it didn’t happen until his 20th, and final, story!

The reveal of the mini-Master at the end of episode three provides us with a wonderful cliff-hanger and the revived Master’s “death” in episode four was apparently – albeit briefly – to have been his final exit.  It didn’t end up that way of course, which is a shame as it would have been a good story for the Master to bow out on.

So the Doctor and Peri leave Sarn, bound for new adventures.  But their time together is strictly limited as a date with destiny awaits the Time Lord in the caves of Androzani.

UFO watch (Episode 24 – Timelash)

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timelash

Written by Terence Feely
Directed by Cyril Frankel

It’s tempting to draw parallels between the final episodes of UFO and the final episodes of The Prisoner.  Although hopes were high at the time that another series of UFO would be made (eventually the concept of UFO series 2 mutated into Space 1999) there must have been some inkling that the series’ days were numbered.

Is this the reason why we had episodes like Timelash and Mindbender, which both pushed the series format in ways we’d never seen before?  This also happened on The Prisoner, where the final few episodes (The Girl Who Was Death, Fall Out) were very strange indeed.

Whatever the reason, Timelash has one of the most arresting openings of any the UFO story.  It seems to be a normal, humdrum day at SHADO HQ, but out of nowhere a disheveled Straker appears and starts smashing the equipment.  He then beats up a dozen or so SHADO personnel (it’s amusing that Foster seems to be cowering the corner, unwilling to take a pasting!) before running onto the studio backlot.  Foster and company eventually corner him, just as he discovers the unconscious form of Colonel Lake.

Taken back to SHADO HQ, Straker is injected with a drug which starts to bring him back to normality and since we’ve now seen the conclusion, we rewind back to the start of the story.  Straker and Lake had been returning to headquarters when they noticed a UFO on their tail.  Attempts to raise the alarm with SHADO get no response.  The reason why becomes obvious when they enter the grounds of the Harlington-Straker film studios.  Somehow, the aliens have managed to time freeze the whole area.

Every person is completely immobile and unresponsive (some lovely camera tricks here – a chair suspended in the air, smoke from a cigarette, etc) with Straker and Lake seemingly the only people not affected.  Watching the two of them in action, had UFO gone to another series they could have formed a very impressive partnership.  Ed Bishop and Wanda Ventham worked very well together and it’s a pity we didn’t get to see more stories with them paired up.

As they explore, Lake notices that one person has moved.  Turner (Patrick Allen) is a traitor who has sold out to the aliens.  Straker and Lake tool up with some impressive hardware and hunt him down through the studio backlot.  This is where the story takes on even more of a surreal edge, as Turner has the ability to move in time and therefore is able to stay a couple of steps ahead of them.

He also has a nice line in mocking taunts as he attempts to pay Straker back for every slight, either real or imagined, he’s suffered over the years as one of SHADO’s foot-soldiers.  And when Turner and Straker chase each other around the lot in children’s sports-cars you definitely know this isn’t a typical episode!

Eventually Straker works out a way to stop Turner and also manages destroy the UFO (although this is where there’s a little lack of logic – if the aliens are so powerful that they can freeze time, why send only one UFO?  In Reflections in the Water, also written by Terence Feely, they had a fleet of 25!).

This niggle apart, everything ties up by the end of the episode as we understand exactly why Straker was smashing up the equipment at the start of the story.  A complex, imaginative and ultimately satisfying tale, Timelash is a cracking episode.

And Wanda Ventham looks absolutely gorgeous, which is the icing on the cake!

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Captain Scarlet, Stingray and Joe 90 titles in HD

archivetvmusings ITV Children's Programmes - 1960's, YouTube , ,

FIS

As a teaser for the forthcoming Filmed in Supermarionation releases, Network have released HD versions of the titles of various Gerry Anderson series on their YouTube account.

Filmed in Supermarionation is a new two hour documentary from Stephen La Riviere and looks to be a must watch for all Anderson fans. There are various different purchasing options, more details can be found here.

The YouTube compression means that obviously some quality is lost, so we won’t be able to see the full HD quality of the selected episodes until later this month. Time will tell whether complete HD series releases will follow in the future.

BFI DVD of Nineteen Eighty Four (BBC 1954) now cancelled

archivetvmusings BBC Drama - 1950's , , , , ,

1984

It’s disappointing that the BFI DVD of Nineteen Eighty Four, adapted by Nigel Kneale, produced by Rudolph Cartier and starring Peter Cushing, is still in limbo.  The original release date was planned for the end of 2014, then it was pushed back to March 2015.  At the time of writing this update (07/03/15) the DVD is no longer listed on the BFI’s website and the provisional release date has vanished from e-tailers such as Amazon, which indicates that it’s not going to appear any time soon.

This isn’t the first time that a DVD has been mooted only for it to never materialise.  The story starts in 2004, when it was announced that it would be released by DD Video.  This was exciting news and when DD issued a press release it became clear that considerable effort had been expended in order to present the programme in the best possible quality.  Their 2004 press release is reproduced below –

BBC CLASSIC SF DRAMA PAINSTAKINGLY RESTORED

Classic TV specialist DD Home Entertainment claims to have set a new quality benchmark on its restoration work for the 1954 BBC drama Nineteen Eighty-Four.

This early landmark of British television, which will be available for the first time ever on DVD and video on November 8th, required extensive work on it, but viewers will – according to DD – find the restored picture even better than when it was first transmitted.  In December 1954 videotape recorders (even for broadcast use) were two years away and existed, if at all, only in prototype form in research laboratories.

Since 1947 BBC engineers had been able to make crude recordings of TV pictures simply by pointing a film camera at a monitor screen.  However, dramas were not recorded until 1953 and Nineteen Eighty-Four remains one of the earliest surviving examples of the art-form. It was recorded at the time using an ingenious system of modified telecine machines.

New transfers of the film recording were commissioned from BBC Resources using its highest quality Spirit datacine equipment. Special arrangements were made with the BBC Film and Videotape Library for access to the archive master material, which cannot normally be used.

The new copies of the play were graded. This is the process of taking each shot (or even part shot) and adjusting the brightness and contrast. Dirty cuts (where a frame is made of superimposed and distorted pictures from two cameras) were removed or, where possible, repaired using paintbox techniques.

Next, every frame of the play was examined and film dirt, scratches and other defects were laboriously re-touched and pointed out by hand. Finally a video process was applied to give the studio sequences the fluid motion appearance that they would have had on original broadcast.

The result – one of the earliest surviving examples of British television has been restored to exceptional quality.

Nineteen Eighty-Four will be available from November 8th 2004

But the DVD was never released in November 2004, instead it was announced that it had been postponed due to a dispute with the Orwell estate.  The 1984 film of Nineteen Eighty Four, starring John Hurt and Richard Burton, had been released on DVD in 2004 and it appears the Orwell estate didn’t want the BBC version to be available at the same time.

After this, everything went quiet until the BFI’s press release in July 2014 announced they would release it as part of their Days of Fear and Wonder SF season.  And the even better news was that they intended to use the restored master prepared in 2004.

It could be that it’s been delayed in order for the BFI to source more special features.  There’s some interesting material that could be added, most especially the 1965 version starring David Buck (a remake of the 1954 script).  Although it’s missing a few minutes, it would still be a very worthwhile (and long!) special feature. Further information about this production can be found here, in an article written by Kim Newman.

Or it could be that the Orwell estate are once again flexing their muscles.  If so, it’s their last opportunity, since in a few years their copyright claim to this production will have expired and they’ll no longer be able to block it.

It does seem bizarre that the BFI would announce the release without ensuring that all the necessary clearances had been obtained (but then the same thing seems to have happened a decade ago, with DD Video having spent money on a restoration that remains unseen).  Whilst it’s hardly difficult to source a copy of the unrestored print via the internet, it was the restored programme (along with some decent special features to place it in context – like the Out of the Unknown and the forthcoming Douglas Wilmer Sherlock Holmes DVDs) that the majority of us were keen to see.

For now, we’ll just have to wait and see if any more hopeful news surfaces in the future.  Anybody who is interested in more detail about the production may find this of interest.

Edit (Jan 2016).  Unfortunately the BFI DVD has now been cancelled.  The reason why isn’t known (possibly problems with the Orwell estate).  It does seem remarkable that both DD and the BFI prepared DVD releases which stumbled due to unspecified complications.  It possible that someone will try again in a few years time, but for now the restored version remains locked in the vaults.

It’s stopped being fun. Doctor Who – Resurrection of the Daleks

archivetvmusings Doctor Who , , , , , ,

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Back in 1984, there was somewhat of a buzz about this one.  Apart from a cameo in The Five Doctors we hadn’t seen the Daleks in a new story for five years and their previous appearance, in Destiny of the Daleks, had been a disappointment to many.

Thirty years on, Destiny is probably better regarded today than it was back then whilst Resurrection has lost a little of its lustre.  But although Eric Saward’s script has its faults, there are some things it does do right and it’s a clear pointer to the style the series would take in S22.

It’s fair to say that Resurrection is a bleak tale.  This nihilistic view of the universe reflects the direction in which Eric Saward wanted to take Doctor Who and he wasn’t the only writer to favour this style.  Robert Holmes penned very much the same type of story with The Caves of Androzani, but it has to be said somewhat better.  Therefore it’s not difficult to see that Holmes would from now on strongly influence Saward’s writing (Revelation of the Daleks with its Holmesian double-acts is surely the sincerest form of flattery).

But back with Resurrection, Saward wanted to tie up the loose ends from Destiny and resolve the Dalek/Movellan war.  He probably would have been better off ignoring this and starting afresh, as it does constrict the story (as do some of the other plot threads which go nowhere – such as the Daleks’ plan to duplicate the Doctor so he can go back to Gallifrey and assassinate the High Council).

The main part of the story revolves around the Daleks’ desire to find their creator, Davros, and use his skills to solve their current problems.  This is a re-tread from Destiny, but Saward does one important thing right here that didn’t happen in Destiny.  One of the clearest character traits of the Daleks is how single-minded they are, so it defied belief that they wouldn’t attempt to use Davros in Destiny for their own ends before discarding him.  But this never seemed to occur to Terry Nation.

In Resurrection, the Daleks are quick to realise that Davros is more trouble than he’s worth and they attempt to exterminate him.  But by then he’s already re-conditioned several Daleks, which establishes the general plot-thread of Dalek civil war which we see in Revelation and Remembrance.

As for the Daleks themselves, they do look a little worse for wear, it has to be said.  They’ve been given a fresh coat of paint, but since they’re a mixture of casings from the 1960’s and 1970’s they naturally do look like they’ve been around the block a few times.  For anybody who wants to delve further into the history of the Dalek casings, then Dalek 6388 is a fascinating website.

Michael Wisher was unable to reprise his role as Davros, so Terry Molloy stepped into the breach.  Molloy ended up playing the role three times and would go on to make it his own, managing to emerge from Wisher’s substantial shadow.  There’s less character for him to latch on here than he would enjoy in Revelation (which was much more of a Davros story than a Dalek one) but he still has some nice, ranting moments.

As for the humans, there’s an interesting ethnic mix on the space-station which is unusual for the series at the time.  There’s also signs of the increased gore that would appear during S22 (the Daleks’ disfiguring gas is pretty unpleasant and it’s debatable whether the close-ups should have been transmitted).

One problem with Saward’s scripts up to this point was that characters could often seem like cardboard cut-outs, existing just as long as they formed some plot function.  Once that ended, they would be quickly killed off (in order not to clutter up the screen).  Styles (Rula Lenska) and Mercer (Jim Findley) are good examples of this.  Rodney Bewes as Stein fares somewhat better and has the chance to play the hero at the end.

The Army bomb disposal squad, headed by Del Henney as Colonel Archer are also characters that don’t really go anywhere and it’s unfortunate that Tegan spends most of the story with them.  As a final story for Janet Fielding, Resurrection is a poor effort, as Tegan does little of consequence – but as is probably well known, the story was originally planned to close S20 (a BBC strike put paid to that) so her leaving scene had to be tagged onto the already-written story.

Turlough and the Doctor fare little better.  Turlough teams up with Styles and Mercer, although he does nothing to advance the plot.  The Doctor has one key scene (confronting Davros and proving that he’s unable to kill in cold blood) but apart from that there’s very few of the character traits that Davison so clearly enjoyed in Frontios.

Also skulking about is Lytton (Maurice Colbourne) who will return next season, although it’s worth pondering exactly how the Doctor in Attack of the Cybermen knows all about him, as here they only share one scene and never speak to each other.

After the mass slaughter, it’s difficult not to agree with Tegan that it’s all been a bit too much.  But it’s probably aged better than Earthshock and for better or worse, points clearly to the direction the series would take during S22.

UFO watch (Episode 23 – Reflections in the Water)

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reflections

Written and Directed by David Tomblin

It seems an unwritten law that every science fiction/fantasy series has to have a doppelganger episode – and Reflections in the Water is UFO’s contribution to this genre.  But though it’s a decent run-around, there are some whacking plot holes which are difficult to ignore.

When a freighter in the Mid-Atlantic is destroyed by an underwater UFO, Straker sends Skydiver to investigate.  They discover the aliens have established a substantial underwater base (although why it’s underwater is a bit of a mystery).  Straker and Foster fly out to investigate personally (which is something else that’s difficult to find entirely credible.  Straker’s the head of SHADO, why does he need to endanger himself on a reconnaissance mission?).

Anyway, Straker and Foster pop on some diving suits and go for a swim.  While they can’t find a way into the dome on their first attempt, they are able to see inside and observe Lt Anderson (James Cosmo).  The pair head back to SHADO HQ to interrogate Anderson, which gives us yet another example of how ruthless Straker is.  He has no qualms in authorising Anderson to be injected with drugs in order to establish the truth and interestingly Anderson doesn’t argue about this too much.

Even after the truth drug, Anderson continues to protest his innocence so Straker and Foster go back and manage to infiltrate the dome.  Once inside, Straker and Foster split up and shortly afterwards Straker is attacked by Foster.  But it’s not Foster, it’s a double!

One of the main attractions of a doppelganger story is when the two identical parties meet, but we never see it here.  After Straker defeats the faux-Foster, the real Foster appears and is shown his duplicate.  We linger a little too long on a shot of Foster looking at someone that clearly isn’t him, which makes you wonder why they didn’t use a little split screen filming to have the two of them on screen at the same time.

We now come to the part of the episode which stretches credulity to breaking point. The aliens have recreated SHADO HQ (how?) and recruited look-alikes for all the main SHADO personnel (plastic surgery apparently).  Although the aliens have clearly spent a packet on getting the likenesses spot on, they obviously couldn’t afford a voice coach, so we see the doubles practicing by miming to the real voices of the SHADO staff which have been recorded on tape.

The aliens’ plan is to try and fool Moonbase into thinking this is the real SHADO HQ and then order them not to destroy the massed UFOs which are poised to attack.  It’s clever that the aliens have somehow been able to sample the voices and produce exactly the words they need to say, but what would happen if Moonbase asked a question that wasn’t recorded?  They’d be a little stuck.

A whopping explosion destorys the dome, so there’s just the 25 or so UFOs to worry about.  And via a load of stock footage (Interceptors, Moonbase rocket-launchers, Sky One) they are all dealt with.  This is the last thing that’s difficult to swallow.  We’ve seen SHADO struggle to stop one or two UFOs getting through in plenty of episodes so far, so could they really have shot down all 25?

Although the story makes little sense, it’s still as watchable as most episodes in the series.  It’s just that you have to disengage your critical facilities somewhat before starting.

The Professionals – Mk II – Network Blu-ray review

archivetvmusings ITV Drama - 1970's , , , ,

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The Professionals – Mk II is now available on Blu-ray from Network. The reason why they haven’t branded these releases as series is probably due to the somewhat haphazard way the programme was shot – with certain episodes made during one production block and then not transmitted until several years later!

There were five series broadcast on LWT in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, but it does seem that Network will follow the path trodden by Contender’s DVD releases by releasing four sets in production, rather than broadcast, order.

Anybody who has previously bought the Contender DVDs or has ever caught a re-run on ITV4 will be well aware just how poor the episodes looked. This was because the previous home video releases and tv broadcasts were derived from twenty year old duplicated prints, which weren’t in the best of shape to begin with.

For many years it seemed that this would be the best we could possibly have, as the location of the camera negatives was something of a mystery. To cut to the chase, Network have been able to locate the negs and strike new prints – and the difference in picture quality is simply night and day.

Whether you buy the BR or the DVD (the DVD of Mk II has been delayed, but will be released early next year) for anybody familiar with the washed-out prints which have done the rounds for decades, the improvement here is nothing short of staggering. The Professionals was only shot on 16mm, so obviously there’s not the same level of detail that 35mm would have offered, but it’s still such a major upgrade in picture quality that it’s an essential purchase.  And if you’ve never seen the series before, then these releases are the ideal way to start.

Whilst The Professionals hit the ground running in series one, it certainly picked up more momentum with the episodes in this set. There’s plenty of good stories here, but if I had to pick one, then First Night is a cracker, full of the moments that made the series what it was – Bodie and Doyle’s banter, Cowley’s withering put-downs and some top-notch action.

As with MK I, there’s exhaustive production notes from Andrew Pixley that help to place these programmes in context and they contain a great deal of information that was new to me.

Warmly recommended.

UFO watch (Episode 22 – The Psychobombs)

archivetvmusings UFO , ,

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Written by Tony Barwick
Directed by Jeremy Summers

I’ve previously mentioned how a number of UFO stories have the same basic premise – the aliens take over a human being and force them to do their biding.  It seemed to be a particularly popular story device during production block two, as we’ve seen it occur in The Man Who Came Back, Destruction and The Cat With Ten Lives.

Is The Psychobombs any different from these and other stories?  Well, one innovation is that there are three human agents, rather than the more normal one, so this allows several different threats to be carried out at once.  And all three of the controlled humans are played by decent actors, so this is a plus point.

A UFO lands in a deserted woodland and sends out a hypnotic signal.  Three people answer the call – Linda Simmonds (Deborah Grant), Clem Mason (Mike Pratt) and Daniel Clark (David Collings).

Clark is straight into the action and flags down Straker’s car.  Given that the aliens have attempted to kill Straker before they miss a golden opportunity here.  Instead, Clark knocks Straker unconscious and puts a note into his pocket.  The note is an ultimatum – all SHADO operations must cease, otherwise Fairfield Tracker Station, Skydiver 3 and finally SHADO Control will be destroyed.

Clark manages to destroy the tracker station and Mason deals with Skydiver 3.  That leaves Linda Simmonds and SHADO HQ.  Whilst SHADO attempts to track Linda down, Dr Jackson shares a theory with Straker –

Dr. Jackson: I have a theory. But I must warn you, it’s pretty wild. A human body – muscles, brain – operates in a series of minute electrical charges, flowing around a complex of low voltage electrical circuits – the nervous system. Sometimes the electrical balance is disturbed. Imagine the situation where, for some reason, the balance swings violently off centre. The body becomes supercharged. Like a thunder cloud before a storm. If such a charged being could exist, it may be able to draw on all the primitive forces of the universe, attract them to itself. Space, time, light… electric potential, energy… they are all related. The result …

Straker: A human bomb.

Foster locates the girl and Straker orders that she be brought to SHADO HQ.  A rather rash act, you might think – and it seems to have backfired after she escapes from custody and is poised to blow up the building.  However, Sky 4 manages to destroy the UFO controlling Linda, though given the way previous stories have gone, I’ll leave you to decide if there’s a happy ending.

As I’ve said, there’s nothing particularly original here, but the number of threats posed by different people is an intriguing twist.  There’s also interest in spotting some faces that would become familiar television faces years later (Peter Blythe, Christopher Timothy and Oscar James, for example).

Trivia fans may notice that the rather nice red dress worn by Deborah Grant is also worn by Susan Jameson in The Sound of Silence.  It makes another appearance in the upcoming Timelash, so they certainly got their money’s worth from it!

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The earth is hungry. It waits to eat. Doctor Who – Frontios

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One of the most obvious things to note about Frontios is that Christopher H. Bidmead really knew how to write for Peter Davison’s Doctor.  Given this, it’s a pity that Bidmead didn’t contribute more scripts for the fifth Doctor (Frontios was his second and last).

I’ve touched on this before, but Peter Davison wasn’t a personality actor like, say, Tom Baker.  Baker could take an average script and by the sheer force of his personality make something unique out of it.  Davison didn’t have that skill, but provide him a well written script and he could certainly make the most out of what he was given.

Frontios is a wonderful vehicle for Davison and so many of his lines zing.  Picking some favourite Davison dialogue from this story is difficult, since there are so many examples, but I do love this –

DOCTOR: Look, I’m not really here at all, officially. And as soon as I’ve helped Mister Range with the arrangements, I’ll be on my way.
PLANTAGENET: Do you feel free to come and go as you please?
DOCTOR: Going, yes, coming, no. We were forced down.
PLANTAGENET: I see. You landed during the bombardment and yet you appear unharmed.
DOCTOR: I’m sorry, we didn’t know there was a war on. At first we thought it was some sort of meteorite storm.
PLANTAGENET: And what do you think now?
DOCTOR: I think your shelters are totally inadequate and your warning system does nothing but create panic.
PLANTAGENET: I did not ask
DOCTOR: Your population has already fallen below critical value required for guaranteed growth and you’re regularly losing new lives. I think, and you did ask what I think, I think your colony of Earth people is in grave danger of extinction.

There’s a bite and attack to Davison’s performance of these lines, which we haven’t seen nearly enough of during his time on the show.  Elsewhere, he has a lovely line in vagueness, somewhat Troughtoneque in style, like this –

DOCTOR: Well, that’s it. Now, this should either sort out this whole Tractator problem and repair the TARDIS.
TEGAN: Or?
DOCTOR: Or it won’t

The Gravis is going to have problems operating the controls with his little flappy arms
The Gravis is going to have problems operating the controls with his flappy little arms

Sadly, one of the best moments of the story was rather curtailed due to episode four overrunning.  We see the Doctor attempt to convince the Gravis that Tegan is an android that he picked up cheap –

TEGAN: Doctor, you can’t let them do this to me.
DOCTOR: I’m terribly embarrassed about all this.
GRAVIS: Not at all, Doctor.
DOCTOR: It must be the humidity causing the malfunction. These serving machines are perfectly reliable on Gallifrey.
GRAVIS: The guard Tractator here will restrain it while I show you more of our work here. It is certainly a very convincing replica of the humanoid life form.
DOCTOR: Oh, you think so? I got it cheap because the walk’s not quite right. And then there’s the accent, of course. But, when it’s working well, it’s very reliable. Keeping track of appointments, financial planning, word processing, that sort of thing.

What was cut was more detail as to why the Doctor undertook this ruse – if the Gravis realised that Tegan was human he might have decided to add her to his excavating machine.  The excised material is part of the special features on the DVD thankfully, including the moment where the Doctor puts a screwdriver into Tegan’s ear!

Mark Strickson (after largely sitting out the last few stories) gets to froth at the mouth and drive part of the plot, whilst Janet Fielding is teamed up with Davison for the last few episodes, which is great fun.  Just as Bidmead was spot on with Davison’s Doctor, so he was able to get the best out of the Doctor/Tegan relationship.  They do spend most of episode three not achieving very much, simply walking round the tunnels.  But it’s so entertaining, you don’t really notice that the plot isn’t advancing very much.

On Frontios itself, there’s a decent collection of guest stars.  Peter Gilmore is the bluff Brazen, not a subtle performance maybe, but there’s the odd glimpse of hidden depths.  Jeff Rawle is good as the out-of-his-depth Plantagenet, whilst William Lucas as Range has a nice line in weary resignation.  Norna, played by Lesley Dunlop, isn’t a very developed part – existing mainly to elicit information from other characters – but Dunlop is very appealing and makes the character worth watching.

The rather appealing Lesley Dunlpp, as Norna
The rather appealing Lesley Dunlop, as Norna

The odd structural flaw and plot-hole apart, this is an entertaining story that puts the Doctor right in the centre of the action.  True, the Tractators (particularly their flapping arms) look a little silly, but the story is hardly unique for having slightly duff monsters.

If you want an example of Davison’s Doctor at his best, then this must rank somewhere at the top, along with Kinda and The Caves of Androzani.

UFO watch (Episode 21 – The Man Who Came Back)

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Written by Terence Feely
Directed by David Lane

Craig Collins (Derren Nesbit) is one of SHADO’s top astronauts and a close friend of Ed Straker (they trained together as astronauts).  After his ship is targeted during a UFO attack, which also damages SID, Collins is posted as missing, believed dead.

However, by a miracle he’s somehow survived and several weeks later is rescued from a distant island.  Amongst Collins’ various skills is an intimate knowledge of SID, so Straker assigns him to repair the computer.  But as soon as he returns to Moonbase, others notice a change in his behavior – notably Colonel Grey, Paul Foster and Virginia Lake.  Collins and Lake had been intimate, but Lake brings their relationship to an end.

All three are sure there is a problem, but Straker isn’t convinced.  Collins persuades Straker to join him on the SID repair mission, but once out in space he realises the others were right – Collins is under alien control and has orders to kill him!

The Man Who Came Back is another cracking episode which is dominated by Derren Nesbit, who’s great value as the unstable Collins.  Nesbit made a career out of playing somewhat manic characters in the various ITC series of the time, so his appeance is almost enough on its own for the viewer to guess how the story will pan out.

True, if you examine the plot a little too closely then it doesn’t make much sense.  Was Straker really the only person equipped to repair SID?  And it was very convenient that Collins was able to nobble the only two people (Grey and Jackson) who knew for sure that something was wrong.  Wouldn’t either of them have raised their concerns with Straker?

But if we ignore these flaws, then there’s a lot to enjoy here, particularly the tense finale.  The confrontation between Collins and Straker takes place when both are floating in space, close to SID, and director David Lane is able to ramp up the tension, even when the two of them are moving very slowly.  As might be expected, this is another downbeat ending.  Straker has no choice but to kill one of his oldest friends, which no doubt helps to crush a little more humanity from his soul.

On a more frivolous note, Colonel Lake looks very fetching in the Moonbase garb.  And the sight of the injured SID, spinning around in space, is another memorable moment.  We’ve seen a few episodes previously with characters being controlled by the aliens, but there’s enough in The Man Who Came Back to make it stand up in its own right, and not feel too much like a retread.

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UFO watch (Episode 20 – Destruction)

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dest

Written by Dennis Spooner
Directed by Ken Turner

Straker is intrigued when a UFO targets a Naval vessel in the Atlantic.  But when he presses for further details from the Admiralty he gets stonewalled, so he has to find out what he needs to know another way.

Although he has the latest cutting-edge technology at his disposal, he decides to obtain the information in the old-fashioned way – with a mole.  He asks Paul Foster to seduce the Admiral’s secretary and find out everything that he can.  And even more eye-opening than this, Straker asks Foster to do it after he’s taken him out for a round of golf.  I never pictured Straker as a golfer, I have to say.

The Admiral’s secretary, Sarah Bosanquet (Stephanie Beacham), is rather gorgeous so this isn’t Foster’s most demanding mission.  But things get more complicated when he realises Sarah is passing information to the aliens.  And eventually the full story comes out – the Navy are dumping barrels of highly toxic nerve gas, which for some reason the aliens have decided to destroy.  If they succeed, then the gas is capable of wiping out all life on the planet!

Dennis Spooner was a new writer to UFO, and it’s possible that he hadn’t studied the programme format too closely, as it’s totally out of character for the aliens to want to destroy all life on Earth.  Up until know, all the evidence has pointed to the fact that they need to harvest humans for body parts in order to survive, so why the drastic change?

As so often, there’s no answer given, but notwithstanding this, Destruction is a very decent episode with a strong guest cast.  Apart from Stephanie Beacham, there’s also Edwin Richfield as Admiral Sheringham and Philip Madoc as Captain Steven.  There’s possibly a little too much stock footage of naval vessels, but that’s only a minor niggle.

This story is also notable for being the second in this production block to feature Wanda Ventham as Colonel Virginia Lake.  She had appeared in the first story, Identified, and after George Sewell was unavailable for the second recording block it seems his lines were ported directly over to Colonel Lake.

No mention is made of Freeman’s absence or Lake’s sudden appearance, because these episodes were dropped into the whole run of 26 at various points. This must have been somewhat confusing for viewers at the time, as characters would appear and disappear at regular intervals.

The somewhat haphazard transmission order has meant that over the years many fans have debated the best order to watch the series in. I’ve followed the order on the Carlton DVDs, which was suggested by Fanderson and is generally held to be as good as any other. For anyone who wants to look into this thorny issue further, then this is a good place to start.

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Edwin Richfield and Philip Madoc

Comedy Playhouse – Steptoe and Son – The Offer

archivetvmusings BBC Comedy - 1960's , , ,

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After Ray Galton and Alan Simpson found their successful working relationship with Tony Hancock had been abruptly terminated (they had written six radio and seven television series for the Lad Himself) the pair were at something of a loose end.

The BBC were keen to keep them working and so made them an attractive offer – a series called Comedy Playhouse in which Galton and Simpson had carte blanche to write whatever they wished.  Out of a variety of different playlets came Steptoe and Son.  When they wrote The Offer it was purely a one-off, but the BBC were keen to develop it into a series, and eventually Galton and Simpson agreed.

The late 1950’s and early 1960’s had seen something of a social revolution in television drama, often dubbed as the “kitchen sink” movement.  It was pioneered by series such as Armchair Theatre (1956-1974) which explored areas previously undocumented on television.  Comedy was also to see similar ground-breaking series produced during the 1960s such as The Likely Lads (1964-1966) and Till Death Us Do Part (1965-1975) which featured working class themes and characters in a much more realistic way than had ever been seen before.

The first of the comedy series to break the mould was Steptoe and Son, although Galton and Simpson would no doubt deny that their intention was to innovate or start a new trend – they were simply attempting to fill a half an hour slot.  Their method of working was to kick around various ideas until something stuck.  One important rule they had was that it had to feature two characters, which had served them well with the television version of Hancock’s Half Hour (it generally revolved around the relationship between Hancock and Sid James).

Once the idea of two rag and bone men was decided on, they then had to agree what their relationship was.  Brothers maybe?  Eventually, father and son seemed to offer the most comic potential as it offered a good chance to explore the generation gap.

Steptoe and Son would run for eight series between 1962  – 1974 and by the 1970’s it would be very much a mainstream sitcom.  However in revisiting the black and episodes (the first four series, made between 1962 and 1965) we find a much darker and sadder character piece that often (in the best way) isn’t funny at all.

Harold Steptoe is 37, unmarried and dreams of a life away from his father and the family rag and bone business.  Albert Steptoe is an old man and apparantly in ill health, although this seems to be mostly faked in order to keep Harold at home.  He clearly doesn’t want to be left alone, so he’ll use any trick at his disposal to thwart Harold’s dreams of bettering himself.

In The Offer (purely a two-hander between Harry H. Corbett and Wilfred Brambell) we see Harold’s first attempt to leave Albert behind and forge a new future for himself.  Harold is sick and tired of being a rag and bone man, sick of the horse and sick of Albert’s constant criticisms.  Albert spends the opening part of the story belittling the stuff that Harold’s collected, before scavenging all the best things for himself.  As Harold says, “If anything ‘alf decent comes along you wanna keep it to yerself!  That’s no way to run a business.”

The tragic side of this is that the bric-a-brac so beloved by Albert is worthless junk, but he simply can’t see it.  And the further tragedy is that Harold is no better.  Harold shares some traits with the persona Galton and Simpson created for Tony Hancock, namely the attempts to “better himself” which never really pay off.  But whilst there was a certain warmth to Hancock’s failed attempts to be an intellectual, there’s a harsher feeling to Harold’s failures.

His desire to move up the social scale is palpable, but he has little to show for it.  His “library” is a collection of four books tied up with string and his “wine cellar” is made up from pouring the small remains of the virtually empty bottles he’s collected into his nearly full ones at home.  And this is partly sabotaged when he realises someone has stored paraffin in a bottle of non-vintage Beaujolais just after he’s poured it into his almost complete bottle.  “The rotten, lousy, stinkin’ gits!  Paraffin! They’ve gone and put paraffin in it!  They ruined me bottle of Beaujolais! It’s taken me a year to fill that up!”

Eventually all these frustrations build up and Harold decides to take up a mysterious offer and leave.  Albert tries everything to make him stay, but to no avail.  He loads his possessions onto the cart, but as Albert won’t let him use the horse Harold has to push the cart by himself.  Here we come to probably the most interesting part of the story – the cart won’t move.  Is this because it’s genuinely too heavy or because even when he has the chance to leave, Harold can’t bring himself to actually do it?

This scene is incredibly powerful and is so well acted by both Corbett and Brambell.  As Harold breaks down and is led back into the house by Albert, who tells him that “you can go another day, or you can stay with yer old dad and wait till a better offer comes along” you could have heard a pin drop in the audience.  It doesn’t seem to be that Corbett was attempting to gain the auidence’s sympathy, rather he was just acting to the script.  That’s the notable thing about Steptoe and Son – before this, sitcoms had tended to star comedians and therefore were vehicles written for their talents (such as Hancock’s Half Hour).  But Steptoe and Son was performed by actors rather than comedians, an important distinction.

When Harold attempts, unsuccessfully, to move the cart, Alan Simpson was amazed to see real tears in Corbett’s eyes: “We watched that closing scene as Harry literally crumbles. He’s trying to push his meagre belongings away and start a new life, and he can’t do it. We were watching this scene and Harry actually broke down and cried and I thought, real tears! This is what it’s all about… this is acting! We weren’t used to it with writing for comedians. Usually it would be stylised, shoulder-lurching sobs when comics cried. Harry really got hold of that final scene. It was real drama to him”.

The realisation that Corbett and Brambell could give their scripts a deeper, more nuanced reading than anything they’d previously produced would clearly influence their writing from this point on.

Therefore we have a downbeat ending to a remarkable half hour.  There’s no winners or losers here.  Over the course of the story our sympathies have swung from one character to the other.  We can sympathise with Harold for wanting to leave (particularly at the start, when Albert seems such an unpleasant character).  But over the half hour we’ve come to understand that Albert is a lonely old man who simply couldn’t function on his own and that Harold deep down seems to understand this.

The same basic template would often be played out during the following 56 episodes, but it would be rarely be better than this one.  Impressively written and acted, this is a true classic of British television.

Something is coming to our village. Something very wonderful and strange. Doctor Who – The Awakening

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malus

Although The Awakening, like the other Davison two-parters, feels a little disposable, it’s still an decent enough story, helped no end by a larger-than-life performance from Denis Lil (Sir George Hutchinson).

Sir George has somehow (and like a lot of the story we’re somewhat vague on specifics) found himself under the thrall of the Malus, a malevolent alien entity who has lain dormant since the 17th century.  The Malus feeds on violent emotions and therefore has had little to feast on since the English Civil War came to this part of the world in 1643.

The ever dependable Denis Lil gives his all
The ever dependable Denis Lil gives his all

So, Sir George decides that a Civil War re-enactment would be just the thing to restore the Malus to full strength.  The concept of a whole village under the thrall of an alien being is a good concept, but it’s not really followed through in the story as he seems to be the only one who is actually under the Malus’ control.

True, Willow (Jack Galloway) is happy to carry out Sir George’s bidding, but that may be because he’s a bit of a bully anyway and there’s nothing to support the claim from Jane that the final battle will be fought for real.  The problem with this lack of development could be due to the two part format, which doesn’t allow too much time to develop the various story threads.

If Sir George (and maybe Willow) are on the side of chaos, then the voices of reason are provided by Jane Hampton (Polly James) and Ben Wosley (Glyn Houston).  Following the somewhat wooden turns of Warriors of the Deep, their more naturalistic performances are very welcome.

The TARDIS has landed in Little Hodcombe so that Tegan can visit her grandfather, Andrew Verney.  This is another part of the plot that doesn’t really go anywhere since Verney is totally redundant to the plot.  There’s no reason why the TARDIS couldn’t have simply turned up at random, with the Doctor being naturally drawn into the mystery of the closed village and the strange happenings in the church.

"The toast of Little Hodcombe"
“The toast of Little Hodcombe”

With the concept of two periods connected in time and psychic projections from the past appearing in the present, there’s something of a Sapphire and Steel vibe about this story, which is no bad thing.  A refugee from the past, Will Chandler (Keith Jayne) teams up with Davison for part of the story and it’s possible to understand why he was briefly considered as companion material.

The Malus, who has been resident in the local church for three hundred years or so looks very impressive, but it’s somewhat limited, action wise.  Once you’ve heard it go “rooooooooaaaaaaarrrrrrrr” a few times then it’s not got much more to offer, with the genuine scares coming from the various projections it can conjure up – particularly the ghostly Roundheads who behead an unfortunate extra.

The location of the Malus does lead one to suppose that the church was built around it, which is an interesting thought.  If so, then presumably it was felt that the sanctity of the church would nullify the Malus’ baleful influence.  Or maybe they didn’t notice its big head?  Who can say?

One other notable point about The Awakening is that it was Barry Newbery’s final Doctor Who story as a designer and also his last work for the BBC (he took early retirement almost immediately afterwards).  His most active period on the programme was during the Hartnell era, where to begin with he alternated with Raymond Cusick on each serial.  Both Cusick and Newbery performed miracles with the non-existent budgets of the early 1960’s and whilst the success of Doctor Who is due to many people, both of them must take some of the credit as without good visuals, the stories would have foundered.  And The Awakening was a decent story to bow out on as it featured some impressive sets – particularly the ruined church.

Although somewhat rushed and with the odd loose end, this is an enjoyable story boasting decent location filming, some good performances and a few scares along the way.

UFO watch (Episode 19 – The Cat With Ten Lives)

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cat

Written and Directed by David Tomblin

In my post on The Sound of Silence I mentioned how the second production block of UFO saw stories that sent the series in new directions, and this is certainly the case with The Cat With Ten Lives.

Writer/Director David Tomblin had previously worked on The Prisoner and he brought something of the style of that series (along with guest star Alexis Kanner) to The Cat With Ten Lives.  It’s very much Kanner’s episode (possibly not surprising since he and Tomblin had a lengthy working relationship – stretching back to the film Reach For Glory in 1962, where Tomblin was the assistant director).

Jim Reegan (Kanner) is an Interceptor pilot back on Earth for 48 hours leave.  Along with his wife Jean (Geraldine Moffatt) he’s driving home after a dinner party (which involved a rather strange sequence with a oujia board) when they spot a cat in the middle of the road.  Jean takes a fancy to it and asks to adopt it, but before Reegan can answer they both spot a UFO close by.  They are overpowered and taken to the UFO (Tomblin has some nice shots here from their point of view as they are carried to the alien’s ship).  Reegan awakes to find himself back in his car, along with the cat, but there’s no sign of Jean.

Straker is interested in his story but tells Reegan to report to Moonbase for duty the next day.  He doesn’t seem in any fit state, but Straker is adamant.  Reegan has taken the cat to SHADO HQ and this is where things start to get really odd.  Somehow, the cat is being controlled by the aliens and in turn the cat is controlling Reegan.  And by having free range of SHADO HQ, the cat is able to observe everything that takes place.

Jackson (Vladek Sheybal) has another theory about the aliens – he believes that they may not have any physical form at all, as a recently recovered alien body turned out to be completely human.  He surmises they may be able to “re-program” human brains, thereby providing them with physical vessels to pilot the UFO’s to Earth.  Like all the information that’s drip-fed abuot the aliens it never really goes anywhere, but whilst this could be seen as a weakness it’s also one of the series’ strengths.  UFO poses many questions about the aliens and their intentions but never provides any answers.  Maybe a second series would have come closer to providing some solid facts, but there’s something more frightening about an adversary who is unknowable and intangible,

Reegan is unable to destroy the UFO carrying Jean (thanks to the cat telling him not to!) and Straker recalls him to Earth for a medical assessment.  It has to be said that it’s impressive that the cat was able to control him when Reegan was orbiting the Moon and the cat was on Earth, but distance seems to be no objective.  When he’s back on Earth, the cat has the same amount of control over hm and under its influence Reegan attacks Foster and returns to Moonbase.

By a somewhat tenuous bit of theorising, Straker and Foster decide that Reegan’s being controlled by the cat.  Yes, really.  Straker is able to deal with the moggy and this breaks the control it has over Reegan.  Although this isn’t necessarily good news for him.

The Cat With Ten Lives is, as I’ve said, an odd one.  You can either sit back and enjoy the ride or decide it’s too silly for words.  I favour the former and there’s plenty of other incidental pleasures along with way.  Kanner was always a strange, idiosyncratic actor and this is very much in evidence here.  He’s always compelling though and it’s difficult not to feel sorry for Reegan.  It’s a pity that he wasn’t in more episodes, as the opening section of the story is quite interesting as we see the exhausted Interceptor pilots relaxing in-between engagements.  A few more scenes like this, which have a similar vibe to WW2 pilots resting between missions, would have been welcome.

A purrfect episode, you might say.