carole ann ford

Doctor Who – The Web Planet. Part Three – Escape to Danger

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Ah, Escape to Danger.  I wonder if Terrance Dicks tuned into this episode and mentally filed away the title for later use, as it often turned up as a chapter heading in his Target Doctor Who novelisations.  Indeed, just to read those three words transports me back to the 1970’s and that strange world where old Doctor Who was only accessible via the Target book range.  But that’s a blog post (or series of posts) for another time.

Back to this Escape to Danger, the Doctor finds himself quizzed by the Animus who is convinced that the Doctor and his friends are the Menoptra.  This instantly begs the question, does the Animus not know what the Menoptra look like?  Is the Animus blind or might the script implying that all humanoid shapes look the same to it?  In another story it may be reasonable to assume that this was just a case of sloppy scripting, but on the bizarre world of Vortis nothing can ever be taken for granted.

Speaking of sloppy scripting, a moment later Vicki stumbles on a control panel which, according to the Doctor, realigns the fluid link and thereby restores the TARDIS’ power.  Eh?  This is obviously a nod back to The Daleks – although had the fluid link been removed from the ship this would have made more sense (although the image of the Zarbi, with their flapping arms, burrowing under the TARDIS console doesn’t bear thinking about!).

We have to assume that the Animus is so powerful that it can disable a vital function of the ship from a distance.  It’s very convenient that Vicki’s blundering reverses this action, but that’s hardly the worst flaw in the story.

The Doctor’s pleased as punch about this and moves to the front of shot to deliver the following short speech.  “Trying to destroy my ship, you will achieve nothing. Nothing! I have great secrets in my ship. We could help you.”  After more than a few wobbles earlier in the story Hartnell is on much firmer ground here and – with his hands clasped – shows the Doctor at his imperious best.  With Vicki and Ian framed in the background it’s a nice, still, moment.

We then see the first flying Menoptra and also witness the Zarbi’s puzzlement as to where they might have gone.  They look at the ground rather than up in the sky, but due to their restrictive fibreglass costumes that’s hardly surprising!  This episode also has the immortal moment where one of the Zarbi rushes headlong into a camera, making an audible thump (although the noise was sadly toned down a little for the DVD release).

Whilst Ian nips off to look for Barbara, the Doctor and Vicki remain behind at Zarbi HQ.  Ian’s fight with a Zarbi has to be seen to be believed – and although brief it was obviously uncomfortable for poor Robert Jewell, stuck within the unforgiving Zarbi costume.

According to contemporary reports, after the scene was completed he was left in considerable pain following the moment when Ian knocks the Zarbi to the floor.  Ian’s escape is also the cue for the remaining Zarbi to rush about like headless chickens, beeping all the time.  As I’ve said before, a little of this goes a long way, but unfortunately  we’re only about halfway through the story.

Ian makes the acquaintance of Vrestin (who refers to him as Heron for the rest of the story).  Vrestin is able to fill in the backstory for the audience. “The Zarbi are not an intelligent species, but they were essential to the life pattern here. We lived at peace with them, until they were made militant by the dark power. The Animus. At that time, the Carsinome appeared. Grew like a fungus. We had no weapons. We had not had the need. And by the time we sensed the danger, the Zarbi were too strong.”

Had The Web Planet been a four-parter it might possibly be better regarded as I’m still just about hanging on in there.  But things might get rougher over the next few episodes …..

Doctor Who – The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Episode Six – Flashpoint

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Flashpoint is an episode of two halves – the Daleks are defeated and the Doctor bids farewell to Susan.

After five episodes (and countless unseen years prior to the events of World’s End) it’s undeniable that the Daleks are dealt with rather quickly.  But the major niggle I have is how the destruction of the mine is assumed to signify the end of the Daleks’ rule.  This was an invasion of Earth, remember, nor just Britain.  So are there no Daleks in any other country?

It’s hard to be too critical of Nation though, since this would be a problem the series would encounter again and again over the years.  Subsequent invaders, be they Cybermen, Autons, etc would (for all their meticulous planning and strength in numbers) always have to be vanquished totally just before the end of the final episode.

When done badly it can feel like the Doctor’s simply flicked a switch to turn the story off.  Perhaps DIOE would have felt more satisfying had the Doctor left Earth with the humans holding the upper hand but still facing a long struggle to completely irradiate the Dalek menace.  But due to the way that stories tended to be neatly wrapped up by the concluding episode it’s not a surprise this option wasn’t taken.

There are a few bright spots during the first half though.  I love Barbara’s attempt to bamboozle the Black Dalek with news of a non-existent rebellion led by numerous famous figures from history!  She’s been rather sidelined during the last few episodes, so this was a nice moment.

A realistic touch is how shabby Ian’s clothes have become.  We’ve seen this before, An Unearthly Child for example, but it’s not something that would happen very often – later Doctors and companions would tend to look spotless, irrespective of the traumas they’d been through.

The Doctor’s in a proactive mood which is best demonstrated when he penetrates Dalek control.  His stand-off with a Dalek – seen from the eye-stalk of the metal meanie – is an impressive directorial flourish.  Hartnell, clutching his lapels, strikes a typically iconic pose.

The Dalek voices are rather inconsistent throughout the serial – at times it sounds like there’s little ring modulation used at all.  Most bizarrely, several times in this episode we hear Dalek voices over the tannoy and they sound for all the world like Peter Hawkins and David Graham have simply clamped a hand over their mouths!

The destruction of the mine is shown via stock footage, which is as convincing as stock footage usually is.  But the shot of Jenny, Tyler and the Doctor looking down on the devastation does almost makes up for this.  Both Ann Davies and Bernard Kay are immobile and expressionless as Jenny and Tyler begin to process the news that the war is over.  The joy of victory can come later, for now there’s just a weariness as they reflect how many lives have been lost over the years.

This still leaves ten minutes, which is a generous chunk of time to devote to Susan’s departure.  It’s interesting that neither Susan or David featured in the attack on the Dalek mine (was this an intentional sidelining of Susan?).  Given Ford’s unhappiness with the way Susan had been underused since the start of the series it’s ironic she wasn’t given a chance to shine against the Daleks in her last episode.

But at least she’s given a decent send-off (something that several future companions will be denied).  Grubby and tear-stained, we come to see that Susan loves David but can’t bear the thought of leaving her grandfather.  So the Doctor makes the decision for her and locks her out of the TARDIS.  Hartnell’s close relationship with Ford was well known (he’d come to look on her almost as his real granddaughter) and it’s plain that Hartnell, just as much as the Doctor, feels the pain of their separation.  Fifty plus years later it’s still touching stuff.

One day I shall come back. Yes I shall come back. Until then there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties.  Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I’m not mistaken in mine.

Doctor Who – The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Episode Five – The Waking Ally

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We see a little more of the Slyther at the start of The Waking Ally, but not for long as Ian bashes it with a rock and sends it plummeting to its death down the mineshaft.  As it falls, it makes a rather pitiful cry.  Am I the only one to have a tinge of regret at the Slyther’s passing?

After spending the early episodes as exterminating baddies, the Daleks we see at the mines are slightly less exciting.  They come across as a group of middle-managers, worrying about work parties and the like.  It’s interesting that eight years later, in Day of the Daleks, they’re very similar.  Had Day been written by Nation it would have been an obvious retread, but that one was scripted by Louis Marks.  Possibly Marks had been influenced by these episodes or maybe he was just drawing on a similar theme.  After all, you can only exterminate so many people – if you kill them all then you’ll have no labour force left to carry out your nefarious plans.

Hartnell’s back and he’s in fine form – we see the Doctor give one of the Robomen a damn good thrashing.  For those who believe the Doctor is a pacifist it might be somewhat unexpected, but in reality he’s never been averse to using force.  It’s rarer that he actually gets physical (unless he’s being played by Jon Pertwee) but there’s countless occasions when the Doctor is shown to be quite happy to wipe out large numbers of whoever he considers to be the enemy that week.

Barbara and Jenny, whilst looking for shelter, find a tumbledown house in the middle of the woods.  The original plan had been for the house to contain three old women who would have resembled the witches from Macbeth (was it budget problems that ensured only two made it to screen?!)

One of the women reacts with polite pity to the news that London is no more.  “Destroyed? Well I never. Oh, when I went it was beautiful. There was the moving pavements and the shops and the astronaut fair.”  This sort of world-building via dialogue would later be a hallmark of Robert Holmes and although Nation’s brief effort is somewhat cruder it does give us a brief glimpse of 22nd Century life.  The women betray Barbara and Jenny to the Daleks.  In Nation’s first draft, one of them tells Barbara that “we’re old, child. Times are difficult. There’s only one law now – survive.”

Larry injures himself after he and Ian reach the bottom of the mine.  This is a sure sign that he won’t be around much longer, which is a shame as I’ve enjoyed Graham Rigby’s performance.  He manages to deliver lines like “who knows what the Daleks are up to? I told you what my brother Phil said – all they want is the magnetic core of Earth” with aplomb.  I like the contradiction inherent in this statement – who knows what they want? Oh, it’s the magnetic core of Earth that they want …

His death is so bleak.  He finds his brother, but discovers that he’s been turned into a Roboman.  Larry’s efforts to find some spark of humanity still remaining in his sibling (“Phil…it’s Larry, your brother Larry. Think Phil! Remember me! Angela…Your wife, Angela! I’ll take you to her”) comes to nothing and Robo Phil kills him.  As Larry dies, so does Robo Phil and the final (unscripted) recognition of Larry by Robo Phil just before he draws his final breath simply adds another level of tragedy to this scene.

How does the Doctor work out that the Daleks’ mine-works in Bedfordshire are the centre of their operations?  For all we know there could be similar Dalek mines dotted all around the globe.  The others ask the Doctor what the Daleks’ intention could be. He’s not sure, but the cat’s already been let out of the bag by Larry – his assertion that the Daleks are keen to extract the Earth’s core turns out to be 100% accurate. Perhaps it would have been better to snip this earlier line out, that way the mystery would have lasted a little longer.

Later on, the Black Dalek helpfully explains exactly what their ultimate plan is via the intercom. “This is the Supreme Controller. Our mission to Earth is nearly completed. We were sent here to remove the core of this planet. Once the core is removed, we can replace it with a power system that will enable us to pilot the planet anywhere in the universe.”  This is breathtakingly bonkers.

The scene with the Black Dalek is a good example of the chaos that can occur when you choose to pre-record Dalek dialogue. This didn’t happen that often – probably for the reasons you see here.  Mid-way through the scene, the cues begin to go hopelessly out of sync which gives us a bizarre moment when three Daleks are all taking at once and making very little sense!

Doctor Who – The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Episode Four – The End Of Tomorrow

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As previously discussed, Hartnell wasn’t able to take part in the recording of this episode, so his handful of lines had to be farmed out.  This occurs when David steps up to dismantle the Daleks’ firebomb (this would have been the Doctor’s only contribution to the episode).  It’s presumably a sign of the times that no thought was given to the possibility of Susan becoming the bomb expert.  It would have been a good reminder that whilst she looked like a fifteen-year old girl she possessed experience which belied her appearance.  But no, it has to be the man who takes charge, while Susan hovers anxiously in the background.

There’s a first in The End of Tomorrow – it’s the first time that Doctor Who filmed in a quarry (and this was one of those rare times when the location was actually shown to be a quarry and not an alien planet!)  John’s Hole at Stone, Kent has this singular honour.  And how well do the Daleks work in the quarry?  Answer, not very well.  We see one trundle a short distance rather slowly, but otherwise they wisely stay immobile.

The unmistakable Nicholas Smith, sporting an unexpected Mummerset accent, pops up as Wells.  He racked up numerous credits during the 1960’s but he’ll always be best remembered as Mr Rumbold from Are You Being Served?

Terry Nation has often been accused of being little more than a hack writer, churning out formulaic scripts at great speed.  His very brief original description of the Daleks is used as an example of this, but it’s fair to say that there were other times when he took more of an interest in detailing how his creations should be visualised.  His description of the Robomen is a good case in point.

“They are dressed in black from head to foot, high-necked, very utilitarian garb made from rough cloth. There is no expression on the face. The eyes stare unblinking. Their movements are a a little stiff, but not over-emphasized. They seem to have a slight mechanical quality about them.  Their voices are very mechanical and slow, like a child deaf from birth learning to make sounds.”

Maybe one of the reasons why Nation didn’t spend too long on descriptive passages is that he knew his ideas might not be adopted.  With the Robomen, some of his concepts were taken on board, but it’s notable that Nation didn’t specify that they should wear what appears to be wastepaper baskets on their heads.  The movie managed something more sleeker, but the concept of miniaturisation doesn’t seem to have been considered here.

With the Doctor unconscious, Susan and David are exploring the sewers.  In Nation’s original draft, David mentions that people moved underground to avoid the plague.  Their descendants are still there, but they’re no longer quite human.  Having adapted to living in total darkness, their “hair is matted and shoulder length and, like the face, it is totally white. Only the eyes make black circles. They are larger than human eyes, bulging and dark like those of a night creature. Canine teeth project over the lower lip.”  Instead we see Susan tangle with a friendly alligator.  Oh well, it was cheaper I guess.

We catch a brief glimpse of the Slyther.  It’s the sort of thing that defies description and you have to be impressed at how seriously William Russell reacts to it.  Later on there would have been the temptation to send it up (goodness knows what would have happened had Tom Baker met it – something along the lines of The Creature from the Pit no doubt) but Russell is rock solid.  The bizarre sounds it makes are also memorable.

There can be few odder cliffhangers than the sight of the Slyther advancing on Ian and Larry whilst it slowly waves a portion of itself.  Richard Martin might not be Doctor Who’s most highly-rated director, but at least he wisely chose to keep this shot as a close-up.

Doctor Who – The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Episode Three – Day Of Reckoning

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The relationship between Susan and David begins to deepen. In part this is due to their shared experiences – in this episode, the pair (in hiding) hear the Daleks exterminate a poor unfortunate.  “You killed my wife and my brothers, now you want to kill me, argh, get away from me! No, no, no…argh!”  Ford’s reaction sells the horror of the moment more powerfully than if we’d actually seen the man killed.  Following this disturbing moment, Susan wishes that they could simply leave.

SUSAN: If only we could go to the ship and get away from here.
DAVID CAMPBELL: Well, I couldn’t go anyway.
SUSAN: Oh, David, David! Perhaps you could! I…I..could ask Grandfather and I’m sure he’d let you come. Oh, we could go to place where they’d never even heard of Daleks.
DAVID CAMPBELL: And what happens if there’s something unpleasant in the new place?
SUSAN: We move on somewhere.
DAVID CAMPBELL: No Susan, that’s not for me.
SUSAN: Why not?
DAVID CAMPBELL: Look, things aren’t made better by running away.
SUSAN: Well its suicide to stay here.
DAVID CAMPBELL: This is my planet! I just can’t run off and see what it’s like i
SUSAN: I never felt that there was any time or place that I belonged to. I’ve never had any real identity.

The Doctor of S1 would have agreed with her and no doubt would have been just as keen to hot-foot it out of there, but Susan should know by now that the new, improved S2 Doctor is not going to leave until the Daleks are defeated.  It’s also notable that in the last few episodes Susan has begun to express a little dissatisfaction with life aboard the TARDIS.  This is something we’ll see repeated over the years and it usually happens just before a companion is due to leave.  Anytime a companion starts to complain more than they normally do (another obvious example is Victoria in Fury from the Deep) you know they’re heading for the exit door.

The various team-ups that will endure over the next few episodes are now falling into place.  Barbara and the balaclava-loving Jenny begin to head for the mines in Bedfordshire.  Coincidentally, Ian is trapped on the Daleks’ saucer which is also heading for the mines in Bedfordshire.  Also hiding on the saucer is Larry (Graham Rigby) who wants to get to the mines in order to find his brother.  Larry is one of those characters who appear again and again in Doctor Who – they exist partly to line feed other characters (in this case Ian) and once their usefulness comes to an end they tend to be killed off.  The Doctor is reunited with Susan and together with David they decide to head … north (I’ve got a feeling they’ll end up at the mines at Bedfordshire, don’t you?)

Day of Reckoning is notable for a major location sequence in which Barbara, Jenny and the doomed Dortmunn flee from the Daleks whilst passing as many well-known London locations as they can fit in.  Accompanied by Francis Chagrin’s unusual percussion-based incidental music it’s an iconic few minutes – not least for the Daleks waving their suckers in a Nazi-salute style.

Hartnell doesn’t have a great deal to do in this episode, which is just as well as he was injured during rehearsals (as he was being carried down the Dalek saucer’s ramp he was dropped on the floor).  This could have been a lot more serious – Hartnell was temporarily paralyzed – but he recovered well enough to record the episode in the evening.  But it was recommended that he spend a few subsequent days recovering in bed, so he was hastily written out of the following episode (although luckily he wasn’t a major figure in that one either).

Doctor Who – The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Episode Two – The Daleks

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After the Doctor and Ian (and no doubt the audience) were surprised by the Dalek emerging from the Thames, they’re taken to the Dalek saucer at Chelsea.  Another prisoner, Craddock (Michael Goldie) explains how the Daleks invaded.

CRADDOCK: Well, the meteorites came first. The Earth was bombarded with them about…ten years ago. ‘Cosmic storm’ the scientists called it! Well, the meteorites stopped, everything settled down, and then … people began to die of this new kind of plague.
DOCTOR: Yes, that explains your poster, dear boy. Germ bombs, hmm?
CRADDOCK: Yeah, the Daleks were up in the sky just waiting for Earth to get weaker. Whole continents of people were wiped out. Asia, Africa, South America. They used to say the Earth had a smell of death about it.
IAN: Why Craddock? What were the doctor’s and the scientists doing about it?
CRADDOCK: Ah, well, they came up with some new kind of drug, but it was too late then.

This scene intercuts with David Campbell (Peter Fraser) telling Susan and Barbara the same story.

SUSAN: What happened next?
DAVID CAMPBELL: Well, the plague had split the world into tiny little communities. Too far apart to combine and fight and too small individually to stand any chance against invasion.
BARBARA: Divide and conquer?
DAVID CAMPBELL: Mmm. About six months after the meteorite fall, that’s when the saucers landed.

Nation’s draft scripts gave a different version of events. In the late twentieth century, the world was at war – China, Russia and America were at loggerheads whilst Britain was in conflict with Europe. But the arrival of the Daleks meant that the world united to face this common threat and a world government was formed in Japan.  The main problem with this scenario is that it would have begged the question as to exactly what the Daleks had been up to on Earth for the past two hundred years!

When Nation started crafting a sequel to The Daleks, his first thought was about how he could raise the stakes.  Showing the Daleks as the masters of Earth was an obvious choice – Jon Pertwee’s oft repeated comment about finding a Yeti using a public convenience in Tooting Bec demonstrates how mixing the everyday with the unknown can be a powerful one.  The Dalek/Thal conflict on Skaro worked well, but juxtaposing the Daleks with the familiar Earth landscape offered many more dramatic possibilities.  Of course you have to find a good reason as to why the Daleks would travel across the universe to invade the Earth.  Did Nation succeed? Mmmm.

Over the decades Earth would find itself under attack from a whole host of marauding aliens – but it’s rather fitting that the Daleks, given their status in the series, were the first.  They’re also by far the most successful, since subsequent invasions almost always happen when the Doctor is around, meaning that he’s able to save the day before things get too far out of hand.  Here, the invasion’s over and the Daleks have achieved a complete victory.  Humanity has been decimated and the survivors have been reduced to living underground or on the run, waging a seemingly hopeless struggle against an all-powerful enemy.

Nation’s memories of WW2 come to the fore in this episode, especially with the Daleks’ radio broadcast. “Rebels of London. This is our last offer. Our final warning. Leave your hiding places. Show yourselves in the open streets. You will be fed and watered. Work is needed from you but the Daleks offer you life.”

Susan and Barbara have made contact with the rebels. They’re all fairly broad character types, but luckily Richard Martin found good actors who were able to put a little meat on their bones.  Dortmunn (Alan Judd) is the wheelchair bound inventor who’s convinced he’s developed a bomb to destroy the Daleks – we’ll shortly see how terribly wrong he is.  Jenny (Ann Davies) is a hard as nails survivor who, no surprise, becomes more human as the serial develops.  Tyler (Bernard Kay) doesn’t have a great deal to do in this episode, except argue with Dortmunn, but Kay (who would return to the several several times in the future) is always watchable.  And David Campbell will serve a very definite purpose in the story, although there’s no sign of that yet.

A late revision to the script concerned the intelligence test that the Daleks use to decide which humans are fit to be converted into Robomen.  In the first draft, the Daleks simply turned up and took their prisoners to be Robotised one by one.  This obviously wasn’t deemed to be satisfactory, so something more elaborate was created.  But it does beg the question as to why the Daleks bother with all this palaver – since the Robomen are seen to have no free will of their own, why do the Daleks need to select those of a certain intelligence?  This also means that a Dalek has to be present outside every cell, waiting for the prisoners to work out how to escape.  Surely this would tie up a lot of Daleks?  The Peter Cushing movie streamlined things considerably by showing Cushing’s Doctor using a comb to escape!

Technically, this episode is a little messy.  A member of the production team wanders in shot at one point and David Graham’s pre-recorded Dalek lines are cued in too early in one scene.  The rebels’ attack on the saucer doesn’t really convince either – had it been shot on film rather than VT then it could have been cut together more convincingly.

Doctor Who – The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Episode One – World’s End

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​The Dalek Invasion of Earth was where everything changed.  It’s the first time that an element from a previous story returned, so it can be said to be the beginning of Doctor Who continuity.  Whether you call it “continuity” or “kisses to the past” or something else, it’s a dirty word for some people.  Many considered 1980’s Doctor Who to be far too obsessed with its own past (and just to show that nothing changes, the modern series is the same for some people).

Maybe one of the reasons why I love 1960’s Doctor Who is because it’s fairly light on continuity.  There are returning monsters (Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti, Ice Warriors) but they’re the exceptions rather than the norm – a returning baddy was more of an event then, as it didn’t happen all the time.  The Doctor’s place in the universe is another reason why I like 1960’s Who.  He’s able to travel around in almost complete anonymity – compare this to the series from the 1970’s onwards, where he increasingly became someone that everyone in the universe seemed to know (and if they didn’t know him personally, they’d probably have heard of the Time Lords at least).  The trend continues to this very day, and modern Who feels even more constricted than the original series ever did.

True, we see a few examples of the Doctor’s fame during the Hartnell and Troughton eras (for example, there’s the frankly bizarre notion that the Doctor’s travels have been monitored in The Savages, making Jano and his friends the very first Doctor Who fans) but they’re rather an exception.  Hartnell’s Doctor never arrives somewhere and announces that he’s a Time Lord, or the most powerful being in the universe, or the thing that monsters are afraid of, etc, etc.  He has to gain people’s trust by his actions rather than simply relying on his reputation.

Turning back to DIOE,  Terry Nation had to do some frantic re-tooling in order to present the Daleks as a galactic force.  In The Daleks they seemed to have no ambition for conquest – they merely wanted to survive.  Later in this story we see the Doctor blithly tell Ian that the Daleks they encounter on Earth come from an earlier period, which suggests that Skaro’s Daleks had devolved (the Skaro Daleks couldn’t move outside of their city, whilst the Earth Daleks have no such trouble).  This might lead us into the murky world of Dalek continuity, so I think it’s best to leave it there.

As will be traditional with most Dalek stories, they only pop up right at the end of episode one.  It’s an obvious trick – hook the viewer in and then reward them with just a taste, thereby forcing the audience to return next week.  So if we don’t have the Daleks here, what do we have?

For starters, it’s the series’ first major location shoot and also the first time that the regulars were seen on location.  Having spent nine stories confined in the studio it’s a considerable novelty to see Billy and co. out in the open.  As with most stories to this point, Nation elects to block the entry to the TARDIS – this time via a collapsing girder – which forces the Doctor and his friends to venture further afield.  Given that the raison-d’etre of the series had subtly changed (the Doctor was now becoming more proactive in his desire to combat evil) it probably wasn’t required, but it’s always nice to see old plot favourites (Susan’s sprained ankle is another).

It slowly becomes clear that they haven’t returned to Ian and Barbara’s time (notices which state “It is forbidden to dump bodies in the river” are something of a giveaway).  The mystery is settled when Ian finds a calendar for 2164 (Doctor Who often liked to set stories exactly a few hundred years in the future).  Quite why 2164 looks a lot like 1964 is a mystery that’s never explained on screen (although in Terry Nation’s original drafts it was revealed that the Daleks had invaded in the 1970’s – so any technological or architectural progress would have been drastically curtailed from that point onwards).

The paper plate Dalek spaceship is priceless!  The CGI replacement on the DVD is very nice, but as with all the replacement effects I rarely use them – and if you’re the sort of person to be worried by the original effect you probably shouldn’t be watching the series anyway.  It’s not a case of being blind to the series’ numerous production faults and missteps, rather you just have to accept the production for what it was (true, sometimes you have to be very accepting!)

As we get further into the story, I’m sure we’ll find time to discuss the Daleks’ bizarre reasons for invading Earth, but for now let’s restrict ourselves to the underwater Dalek.  Why was it underwater?  Apart from providing a decent cliffhanger I can’t think of any other credible reason.  But that’s been a good enough reason for many Doctor Who cliffhangers down the ages, so let’s not carp too much.

Doctor Who – Planet of Giants. Episode Three – Crisis

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As is well known, Planet of Giants was originally a four part story before producer Verity Lambert, apparently on the orders of the head of serials Donald Wilson, opted to combine the last two episodes (Crisis, The Urge To Live) into one. It’s always slightly amazed me that this happened – for financial reasons, if nothing else. Merging two episodes together effectively meant that the budget for the transmitted Crisis doubled (in today’s terms it’s not a great deal of money, but Doctor Who, like every other BBC series of the time, was closely monitored to ensure that their budgets were adhered to).

The reason for the editing was twofold – it was believed that the four-parter was too slow and also that it wasn’t a sufficiently impressive season opener. Whether it’s slower than, say, The Sensorites is open to debate (and just consider if every Doctor Who producer who followed Lambert had been as ruthless – just how many more episodes would we have lost over the years?).

The notion that it would make a poor debut serial for Doctor Who‘s second season is a little odd – episode one was transmitted on the 31st of October 1964, whilst the last episode of season one was aired on the 12th of September 1964, a mere six weeks earlier. Since very little time had elapsed between Reign and Planet, most viewers probably wouldn’t have considered Planet to be the start of a new season anyway (back then, it was common for long-running series to take occasional breaks of a few weeks or months – it didn’t always signify that a new production block had started).

Douglas Camfield (who had directed the original Crisis, Mervyn Pinfield directed The Urge To Live) was given the task of editing the two episodes together. Overall he does pretty well, although there are a few signs that it’s something of a bodge-job (a handful of sudden fade to blacks, plus the odd scene ends fairly abruptly). Nothing too vital was lost (unless you’re a fan of Hilda and Bert) and there’s no doubt that the transmitted Crisis zips along nicely.

But even the more streamlined transmitted episode can’t hide the basic weakness of the story – the Doctor and his friends remain impotent characters, unable to prevent Forester and Smithers from carrying out their plans to introduce DN6 to an unsuspecting world. All their attempts to warn the authorities – using the phone, starting a fire – achieve nothing and it falls to the nosy telephone exchange operator Hilda (Rosemary Johnson) and her police-officer husband Bert (Fred Ferris) to save the day.

You have feel a little sorry for Forester – a master criminal he was not. After ringing up Whitehall and pretending to be Farrow by using the classic trick of placing a handkerchief over the receiver (he would have been better off attempting to imitate Farrow’s whistling speech impediment!) he immediately catches the interest of Hilda, who realises that the man on the phone wasn’t Farrow. Clearly, Hilda must spend all her time listening in on calls! It’s also a little bizarre that Forester made no attempt to change his voice when he pretended to be Farrow, obviously he felt that the handkerchief was doing all the work for him.

Hugh Greene, director general of the BBC, reported at the BBC’s regular programme review board that he felt Planet of Giants didn’t really work and also that he was looking forward to the return of the Daleks. No doubt his anticipation concerning the the Daleks was shared by most of the viewers at home, so it’s tempting to view Planet of Giants as little more than “filler” – just something to kill time before the next story. That’s a little unfair, as whilst Giants has some narrative problems it’s also a visual treat.

Doctor Who – Planet of Giants. Episode Two – Dangerous Journey

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At the start of Dangerous Journey there’s no real reason why the Doctor and his friends don’t return to the TARDIS and leave. Although they were concerned about Farrow’s dead body in the previous episode, the Doctor accepted that given their current size there’s nothing they can do to help. But the arrival of Forester and Smithers panics them and Ian and Barbara run straight into Farrow’s briefcase (another nicely designed prop). They could have hardly picked a worse place to hide in as it’s then taken into the house.

Smithers might be a blinkered scientist, but he’s not a a complete fool. He quickly ridicules Forester’s claim that Farrow was killed in self defence, pointing out that the unfortunate man was shot through the heart at point blank range. Smithers, unlike Forester, isn’t interested in profit – he’s motivated purely from a desire to save lives. “I’ve seen more death than you could imagine. People dying of starvation all over the world. What do you think I started on research for?”

But whilst he may have the best of intentions, he’s blinded to the issues with his formula. The misguided scientist would be a character who would feature numerous times in subsequent Doctor Who stories. Normally the Doctor would have a scene where he could explain to him or her the error of their ways. But due to the Doctor’s small stature this can’t be done here, so Smithers remains unenlightened until he reads Farrow’s notes in the next episode and finally understands just how flawed his work is.

One thing that’s always slightly irritated me about the story is the moment when Barbara touches some seeds which are coated with DN6. She mentions this in passing to Ian (who ignores her) but when she realises that she’s been infected, why doesn’t she tell Ian? Ian doesn’t come out of this very well either as he’s shown to be, once again, rather slow on the uptake.

But although the story isn’t quite gelling you can always just sit back and enjoy the visuals. The sink, complete with plug and plughole, is yet another wonderfully designed Raymond Cusick set and the animated fly is also stunning. Doctor Who had its fair share of design disasters (the paper-plate Dalek flying saucers in the very next story, say) but when things work they really work.

There’s a faint touch of the series’ original educational remit as the Doctor tells Susan that since they’re in the sink their voices will be magnified. Ian also explains why communication with the people in the house would be impossible. “Imagine a record played at the wrong speed. We’d sound like a little squeak to them and they’d sound like a low growl to us”.

The cliffhanger is a decent one – the Doctor and Susan shelter in the sink’s pipe as Smithers washes his hands. That such a mundane action could be fatal – they risk being swept away by the deluge of water – is one of the main strengths of the story.

Doctor Who – Planet of Giants. Episode One – Planet of Giants

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Planet of Giants opens with the Doctor fretting over the fact that the TARDIS doors opened just before the ship materalised.  He’s clearly extremely worried about this and it’s possible that the scripted anxiety seeped into Hartnell’s performance as he’s rather incoherent during the scene.  But once the Doctor calms down, Hartnell also seems to recover somewhat.

When they venture outside, the four split up (bad move, you’d think they’d have learned by now!) to explore and begin to puzzle over the strange things they see (such as giant earthworms and ants).  The audience, thanks to the episode title, is slightly ahead of the TARDIS crew but it takes the reveal of items like a huge matchbox to provide the final clues.  The Doctor has finally managed to steer the TARDIS back to Earth in the 1960’s but they’ve all been reduced to the size of an inch.

Ian’s slow to accept this, preferring to believe that what they’ve found are nothing more than advertising props, built for an exhibition.  Given all that he’s seen over the course of the first season it’s a little jarring that the rational Ian fails to grasp the truth.  However this does, for once, enable Susan to be shown to be the sensible one (although she still has her fair share of hysterical outbursts).

A minuscules story had been planned right from the beginning (originally it would have followed on directly from the first episode).  It’s a clear technical/design triumph – Raymond Cusick, on the show’s usual tight budget, works wonders (the glass-shot of the house is a stand-out shot).  The various dead insects are also impressive.

But the story tends to fall down with the sub-plot of the giants.  The trials and tribulations concerning the TARDIS crew’s attempts to return to the ship are fine, but they wouldn’t have been substantial enough to carry a four-parter by themselves.  So in this first episode we meet the single-minded businessman Forester (Alan Tilvern).  Forester has invested a great deal of money in a new insecticide called DN6 and he’s perturbed to learn that the man from the ministry, Arnold Farrow (Frank Crawshaw), is recommending that it doesn’t go into production.  The reason is quite simple – DN6 is an indiscriminate killer and wherever it’s applied nothing (not even insects) will survive.

Because the Doctor and his friends never directly interact with Forester and later on the deluded creator of DN6 (Smithers), there’s a disconnection between the two main plot-threads which is one reason why the story never quite satisfies.  But on a positive point, Tilvern is a suave villain who thinks nothing of shooting the unfortunate Farrow dead (which could be said to be a mercy killing, thanks to Crawshaw’s distracting speech impediment).

Doctor Who – The Reign of Terror. Episode Six – Prisoners of Conciergerie

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The final episode of The Reign of Terror is somewhat disconnected from the rest of the serial. There’s a couple of possibilities to consider – either Dennis Spooner ran out of plot and had to bolt this epilogue on or maybe it was felt that after five episodes of capture/escape/capture there should be an ending that looked ahead to France’s future.

Lemaitre reveals that he’s the English spy, James Stirling. Or at least he says he is – it’s rather remarkable that everybody takes this statement at face value without asking for any sort of proof. After the moral complexities of the previous episode it’s a little unimpressive – what better way could there be for an agent of the Revolution to infiltrate the rebels than by claiming he’s one of them? But thankfully Stirling is who he claims to be and quickly ropes Ian and Barbara into assisting him with a dangerous mission.

This is another strange development – out of all the people that he could have been chosen, why pick Ian and Barbara? But these scenes – the pair go undercover at a tavern to spy on a meeting between Paul Barrass and Napoleon Bonaparte – do help to give the story a wider scope (even if they’re historically very dubious). Still, we get to see Barbara as a serving wench, so it’s not all bad.

Robespierre’s final appearance is brief. He’s shot in the jaw (off-screen) and later finds himself incarcerated at the Conciergerie, where the jailer gleefully receives him. The turncoat nature of the jailer – he’s now happy to share in the derision heaped on Robespierre, whereas an hour earlier he had been his most loyal servant – stands in sharp contrast to the unswerving viewpoints held by the likes of Jules and Leon.

Even if this episode closes the story with something of a whimper rather than a bang, the final scene, set in the TARDIS, is interesting as it offers another restatement of the belief that Earth’s history is unalterable.

IAN: Supposing we had written Napoleon a letter, telling him, you know, some of the things that were going to happen to him.
SUSAN: It wouldn’t have made any difference, Ian. He’d have forgotten it, or lost it, or thought it was written by a maniac.
BARBARA: I suppose if we’d tried to kill him with a gun, the bullet would have missed him.
DOCTOR: Well, it’s hardly fair to speculate, is it? No, I’m afraid you belittle things. Our lives are important, at least to us. But as we see, so we learn.

It’s easy to believe that this scene was the handiwork of David Whitaker, as Dennis Spooner would soon gleefully prove that history could very easily be changed. In retrospect it’s clear to see why this was untenable – the concept that history (or at least, Earth history) was fixed whilst the future (or at least, the future as seen from a 1960’s Earth perspective) could be altered at will was a rather bizarre one.

Doctor Who – The Reign of Terror. Episode Five – A Bargain of Necessity

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At the end of the previous episode Ian was captured by Leon, who reveals that he’s an agent of the Revolution. “I’ve been loyal to the Revolution from the beginning. If you’d known what France was like six years ago, before the Bastille, you’d understand. France will never be anything until we’re rid of these high-born leeches who’ve been sucking the life-blood of France for so long.”

Although Leon could viewed as a villain, like Robespierre he’s convinced of the right of his actions. And whilst he chains and threatens Ian, there’s the sense that he does so reluctantly. This scene is open to various interpretations though – maybe Leon is a skilled manipulator and tells Ian exactly what he thinks he wants to hear. Or is his desire to spare his life genuine?

It’s no surprise that although Ian is restrained and several menacing guards are present, there’s no attempt to torture him for the information which Leon is convinced he has (Jules appears and kills Leon before this happens). Saturday tea-time back in 1964 wouldn’t have been the place for explicit scenes of suffering (which makes the subject matter of this serial an odd one to have chosen).

The dramatic highlight of the episode, indeed the entire serial, occurs when Barbara is told of Leon’s death.

IAN: It was the only way, Barbara.
JULES: He deserved to die. He was a traitor.
BARBARA: What do you mean, he was a traitor?
IAN: When I got to the church, he turned on me. He was going to kill me.
JULES: He betrayed us, Barbara.
BARBARA: He was a traitor to you. To his side he was a patriot.
IAN: Barbara, we’ve taken sides just by being here. Jules actually shot him. It could just as easily have been me.
JULES: And what about Robespierre? I suppose you think ….
BARBARA: Well just because an extremist like Robespierre
IAN: Oh, Barbara, Jules is our friend. He saved our lives!
BARBARA: I know all that! The revolution isn’t all bad, and neither are the people who support it. It changed things for the whole world, and good, honest people gave their lives for that change.
IAN: Well, he got what he deserved.
BARBARA: You check your history books, Ian, before you decide what people deserve.

It’s a sparkling scene for both William Russell and Jacqueline Hill and offers a rare opportunity to see Ian and Barbara at loggerheads. Although Barbara’s view of Leon is no doubt coloured by her appreciation of him as a man, the point she makes (Leon would have been viewed as a patriot by his own people) is a valid one. But Ian’s retort that they’ve chosen sides and Leon had to be viewed as an enemy is equally valid. By showing Leon to be a cultured, well-educated man who also happened to believe that the overthrow of the ruling elite was morally justified, Spooner’s script has a level of complexity which wasn’t always present in Doctor Who. Generally, during this era of the series goodies and baddies tended to be painted in broader brushstrokes (although the historical stories did seem to offer more scope for nuanced character studies).

The Doctor spends the episode manipulating the hapless jailer in order to obtain Barbara and Susan’s release from prison. It provides a spot of comic relief which counterpoints the darker theme of Leon’s death. But it looks as if the Doctor hasn’t quite been as clever as he thinks – as we see that Lemaitre is still the one pulling the strings ……

Doctor Who – The Reign of Terror. Episode Four – The Tyrant of France

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In 1990 I acquired pirate copies of the four existing episodes of The Reign of Terror on VHS and happily watched them for many years. Back then I didn’t have a great deal of interest in the  audios of the missing episodes. This was understandable in one way as I was keener to track down copies of all the episodes that did still exist (meaning that the audios were a much lower priority).

It wasn’t until the remastered soundtracks started to appear on CD that I began to plug the gaps (later on these missing episodes would be enhanced by various recons – both official and unofficial). With some stories, like The Invasion, I never felt that I’d missed too much by not having audios of the missing episodes back in the 1990’s, but it wasn’t until I had the chance to listen to the audios of episodes four and five of The Reign of Terror that I finally realised what I’d been missing all those years.

These two episodes contain the dramatic heart of the story. The first three episodes contain a great deal of interest, but in many ways they’re simply designed to get us to this point (episode six is a coda which has very little connection to the rest of the story).

The Doctor’s meeting with Robespierre (Keith Anderson) is a fascinating one. Robespierre isn’t presented as a cackling villain, but rather as a weary administrator who – whilst authorising carnage on a grand scale – is convinced that he’s doing it for the greater good. This is a much more interesting portrait than had he simply been shown as a stock, “evil”, character. Beware the man who knows he’s right.

ROBESPIERRE: I could, and I shall, do great things for France. For too long the Nobility have kept our people to heel. And now finally, my world is at power, what happens? My colleagues, my trusted friends, plot for power.
THE DOCTOR: Do they? Or is it just their wish to keep their heads, hmm?
ROBESPIERRE: Danton planned to restore the monarchy. I had the proof, I knew! I had to dispose of him. And the Girondins. Even now, convention members are at work, plotting my downfall. But I will triumph, even if I have to execute every last one of them! Death, always death. Do you think I want this carnage? Three hundred and forty two executions in nine days in Paris alone. What a memory I shall leave behind if this thing lasts.

Elsewhere, the spark that seems to exist between Barbara and Leon deepens a little (this pays off in spectacular fashion next time) and Ian finds himself reunited with Barbara and Susan, although in the capture/escape/capture nature of this serial it’s not for long as the girls once again find themselves back in the prison (and once again under the unforgiving eye of the jailer). Ian continues his hunt for the English spy called James Webster whilst Lemaitre has definite proof that the Doctor is an impostor. But still he doesn’t act on this information.

There’s at least three different ways to enjoy episodes four and five – the audios, the DVD animations or the Loose Cannon recons. I tend to favour the Loose Cannon recons, as the animations are rather too hyperactive for my tastes. It seems that the animation company, Planet 55, learnt a great deal from this commission as their later efforts (The Tenth Planet and The Moonbase) were much, much better.

Doctor Who – The Reign of Terror. Episode Three – A Change of Identity

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Given the cramped studios they had to record in, it’s remarkable just how much was achieved in the early years of Doctor Who.  A good example of the quality of Roderick Lang’s design work can be seen in the opening minutes of this episode – as Barbara and Susan are transported in a horse-drawn cart through the streets of Paris (all of which was created in the studio).  The fact they have a real horse – as well as small touches like the cackling women at their windows – helps to sell the illusion.

Barbara and Susan are rescued from the guillotine by Jules Renan (Donald Morley) and his friend Jean (Roy Herrick).  Many of the historical stories from this point on would freely plunder popular fiction and it’s easy to make a link between Jules and Jean and the adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel.   Their arrival helps to move the story in a slightly different direction – we leave behind the squalor of the Conciergerie and the uncouth antics of the soldiers.

Meanwhile the Doctor has reached Paris and has gone shopping for some new clothes.  This is another scene that seems tailored (if you’ll excuse the pun!) to Hartnell’s comic strengths.  He sets his eye on a very impressive uniform and is informed by the shopkeeper that it signifies the position of regional officer of the provinces.

DOCTOR: Yes, I’m quite aware of that. Yes, quite aware. Yes. In fact, it’s a post that I myself personally occupy.
SHOPKEEPER: I see. I’m sorry, citizen.
DOCTOR: Don’t apologise. I want to try that on.
SHOPKEEPER: Certainly, citizen. The quality is unmatched, and in comparison, the price
DOCTOR: The price is of no matter. I haven’t any money.
SHOPKEEPER: No money?
DOCTOR: No. No, I though possibly we could arrange an exchange.
SHOPKEEPER: For this?
DOCTOR: What’s wrong with it?
SHOPKEEPER: Nay, it’s little better than a fancy dress outfit.
DOCTOR: A fancy dress? My dear sir, I doubt that you’ve seen a coat like it.
SHOPKEEPER: I agree.
DOCTOR: Am I correct to assume that you’re not interested?
SHOPKEEPER: You realise there is not much call for a
DOCTOR: Have you had a similar coat like this in your shop?
SHOPKEEPER: Never.
DOCTOR: Then I can understand why there has been no call.

You have to love the Doctor’s cheek, although we’ll later learn that he didn’t quite convince the shopkeeper of his bona fides. Which if you think about it isn’t that surprising – had the Doctor really had been a regional officer then surely his uniform would have been provided by the state.  And why was one hanging up in the tailor’s shop anyway?

The dashing Leon Colbert (Edward Brayshaw), a friend of Jules, is introduced to Barbara and makes an immediate impression.  If you’re a fan of 1970’s and 1980’s BBC children’s television it’s impossible to see Brayshaw as anybody other than the harassed Mr Meaker from Rentaghost.  But if you can push that to the back of your mind then you can enjoy Brayshaw’s fine performance.  It’s just a pity that all of his key scenes were in the forthcoming wiped episodes.

The Doctor (complete with the sort of hat that would have turned Troughton’s Doctor green with envy) makes his way to the prison and has his first meeting with the jailer.  It’s yet another dialogue-heavy scene that Hartnell and Cunningham play to perfection.   This is a good example of the first Doctor at his imposing best.

As I’ve touched on before, Hartnell was excellent at reacting to other actors. He never needed to overplay – he was able to express a world of emotions with just a few expressions.  This is notable at the point when the jailer tells him that Barbara and Susan have been taken for execution.  A spasm of pain crosses his face – which is quickly gone – and the news that they were rescued (and that Ian has also escaped) is quickly processed and digested before he moves on to the next topic.

But although Ian, Barbara and Susan are free, the Doctor now finds himself a prisoner of sorts.  Lemaitre (James Cairncross) is a key figure in the Revolution and after he meets the Doctor suggests that he joins him in a meeting with Robespierre.  This is the start of some cat-and-mouse games which play out over the following episodes. Is Lemaitre aware that the Doctor is an impostor, and if so what is his gameplan?

That the Doctor appears to be on shaky ground is strengthened when the shopkeeper comes to the prison to denounce him.  Quite why he would decide to come to the prison isn’t clear (except in story terms of course) but it sets us up nicely for the next episode.

Doctor Who – The Reign of Terror. Episode Two – Guests of Madame Guillotine

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Guests of Madame Guillotine neatly splits the narrative into three parts. Ian, Barbara and Susan have been taken to the Conciergerie Prison in Paris – Ian is put into one cell and Barbara and Susan are deposited in another. William Russell was the last of the four regulars to take his two-week holiday, so Ian only appears briefly on film for the next two episodes. Although his mission (entrusted to him by a dying prisoner) to find an English spy called James Stirling will prove to be significant later on.

Barbara and Susan are placed in the dingiest, most rat-infested cell, all because Barbara refused the lecherous attentions of the Jailer (Jack Cunningham). The Jailer is generally regarded as a humourous character (he’s later comprehensively bamboozled by the Doctor) but he’s a little more sinister and threatening to begin with. These early scenes at the Conceirgerie are a little grim anyway, since there seems to be no way that Barbara and Susan can avoid losing their heads.

SUSAN: Oh, what’s the use? We’ll never get out of this dreadful place.
BARBARA: Oh, you mustn’t lose heart, Susan.
SUSAN: I’m not going to fool myself.
BARBARA: Well, think of the times we’ve been in trouble before. We’ve always managed to get out of it in the end.
SUSAN: Oh, we’ve been lucky. We can’t go on being lucky. Things catch up with you.
BARBARA: I’ve never heard you talk like this before. You’re usually so optimistic.

Given that Susan is the much more experienced traveller it seems strange that she’s presented as the defeated one. Later on she reacts with terror at the sight of some rats – which stops Barbara from attempting to dig her way out of the cell. Although given the tools they had, it would have probably taken her years! These are further moments which probably wouldn’t have been viewed favourably by Carole Ann Ford, as they reinforce the notion that Susan is easily the least resourceful of the TARDIS crew.

Whilst the others face an anxious time in prison, the Doctor attempts to make his way to Paris. He’s rescued from the farmhouse by a young boy called Jean-Pierre (this is a touching scene with Hartnell and Peter Walker. As they part, the Doctor asks the boy his name. “I shall remember. Yes. Jean-Pierre. Au revoir, Monsieur Captain”).

We then see the first bit of location filming used in the series. It’s only a few scenes of Hartnell’s double strolling down some country lanes but it really helps to open things out. This then leads into one of the comic highlights of the story. Although Hartnell often referred to himself as a straight actor, he had a great flair for comedy (not really surprising since he started his career playing in stage farces). Spooner had obviously been quick to recognise this and gives him some first-rate material here.

The Doctor runs into a party of men toiling on the road, supervised by a brutal Overseer (Dallas Cavell). No surprise that the Doctor can’t resist sticking his oar in. “If you were to expend your energy helping with the road, instead of bawling and shouting at them every few seconds, you might be able to get somewhere. Good day to you, sir!” But when the Doctor is unable to produce any papers to prove his identity, he finds himself press-ganged into the working party.

The Doctor manages to effect his escape by convincing the Overseer that there’s buried treasure close at hand. When the Overseer bends down to take a closer look, the Doctor bashes him over the head with a shovel! The rest of the men are shocked (“sacre blue” they naturally say) and run off. As does the Doctor, once he’s mischievously put two gold pieces on the unconscious Overseer’s eyes. It’s highly entertaining stuff and was obviously a stepping-stone to the even broader comedy of Spooner’s next script, The Romans.

The time-scale for this episode is a little odd though. The others appear to arrive in Paris at the same time that the Doctor is extracted from the burning house. This clearly makes no sense, so it appears that Guests of Madame Guillotine is hopping backwards and forwards through time. Well, this is a time-travel series I guess ….

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Doctor Who – The Reign of Terror. Episode One – A Land of Fear

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The Doctor’s in a right old strop at the start of this episode (his bad mood carries over from the previous cliffhanger).  This feels a touch artificial and seems to have been done for two reasons – not only does it create a good hook into A Land of Fear (otherwise the last episode might have ended with the Doctor saying “oh look, a forest”) it also gives the regulars, especially Hartnell, some nice character moments in the opening few minutes of the story.

William Russell has spoken in the past about how the arrival of Dennis Spooner was greeted with enthusiasm by the main cast.  Spooner had a good ear for naturalistic dialogue and also liked to pepper his stories with humour.  And following the earnest and rather stilted dialogue which sometimes cropped up in The Sensorites, The Reign of Terror does come as a breath of fresh air.  However, it’s notable that Spooner’s scripts do feature various Americanisms, which feel strange coming from the mouths of the TARDIS crew, simply because they’ve never spoken like this before (Hartnell, for example, says “you don’t say” later this episode.  This feels jarring after watching the series in order).

The Doctor is convinced that he’s landed Ian and Barbara back in England 1963 and is keen drop them off and move on.  Not surprisingly, Ian and Barbara aren’t prepared just to take the Doctor’s word for it.  This infuriates the Doctor.  “I’m rather tired of your insinuations that I am not master of this craft. Oh, I admit, it did develop a fault, a minor fault on one occasion, perhaps twice, but nothing I couldn’t control.”

This is lovely stuff and Hartnell plays it to the hilt.  As we’ll see time and time again over the years, the joke’s on the Doctor since his confidence does turn out to be entirely misplaced.  They’re in France, not England, and a couple of hundred years back in time.  The TARDIS has set them down during the French Revolution (“the reign of terror”) which according to Susan is the Doctor’s favourite period in Earth history.  I wonder why. Does he enjoy the sight of all those French aristocrats being sent to the guillotine?  The Doctor never explains why he enjoys this time so much, so we’re left guessing.

The TARDIS crew meet Rouvray (Laidlaw Dalling) and D’Argenson (Neville Smith) at an abandoned farmhouse.  Both Frenchmen are on the run from the authorities and it seems  probable that they’ll be significant figures in the story.  Whilst D’Argenson is nervous and apprehensive, Rouvray is calm and still in total command.  He may be a hunted man but possesses an unbelieving belief in his own authority.  He bluntly tells Ian and Barbara that “in France now there are only two sides. You’re either with us or against us. Our sympathies are obvious. We want to know yours.”

The arrival of a group of soldiers immediately darkens the tone.  They’re depicted as a barely controllable rabble, with the common soldiers openly contemptuous of the Sergeant’s authority. The Sergeant (Robert Hunter) cleverly doesn’t attempt to browbeat his men into obeying his orders, instead he suggests that if they watch the back of the house they might have a chance to kill some royalists.  This meets with their approval and they move into position.

Whilst Robespierre might later claim this is a glorious and just revolution, the behavour of the soldiers is clearly designed to indicate otherwise.   And when Rouvray and D’Argenson are both brutally murdered it helps to reinforce the concept that life is now very cheap.  Since both characters seemed to have been set up to play a major part in the narrative, their sudden deaths are quite shocking.  It also serves as an early demonstration that the Doctor and his friends could also face death at any time.

Rouvray’s death is a noteworthy moment. He disarms one of the soldiers just by asking for his rifle and then comments that “you can give them uniforms, Lieutenant, but they remain peasants underneath.”  This is another example of Rouvray’s unshakable belief in his own authority, but it’s also a demonstration of the ruling elite’s unspoken arrogance.  Did this exchange led directly to his death?  It seems more than likely.

With the Doctor unconscious in the upstairs part of the house, the soldiers decide to take Ian, Barbara and Susan to Paris. Their motivation is not out of a sense of duty though – they believe there might be a reward and are keen to collect.  They torch the house before they depart, which means we conclude with a strong cliffhanger – the Doctor awakes to find himself trapped in a raging inferno ….

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Doctor Who – The Sensorites. Episode Six – A Desperate Venture

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The Doctor and Ian are in trouble. They’ve gone down to explore the aqueduct, but aren’t aware that their map has been doctored (plus their guns are useless). I like the way that when they hear a noise they roll up the map to use as a weapon. Quite how effective a few pieces of paper would have been as a club is something of a moot point.

There’s a characteristic moment when the Doctor burbles on, not heeding Ian’s warnings that they’ve been surrounded! The Doctor and Ian are captured by the survivors of the spaceship which landed ten years ago. They’re a rum lot, to say the least. They’ve spent all this time down in the aqueduct, poisoning the water and patiently waiting for every last Sensorite to die. This single-minded course of destruction has driven them all quite mad, but even though they’ve regressed to a somewhat primitive state (they wield pointed sticks as weapons) it’s interesting that they still retain a rigid hierarchy with a clear chain of command that’s run along military lines.

John Bailey, as the Commander, is able to invest his character with a rather pathetic sense of honour and duty, and he makes quite an impression during the brief time he’s on screen. But Bailey was always a class actor (he returned twice to the series – first as Edward Waterfield in The Evil of the Daleks and then later as Sezom in The Horns of Nimon, where his dignified turn was in sharp contrast to the panto antics from most of the other cast members).

Susan gets a final chance to demonstrate her telepathy and also shares a scene with the First Elder where she reveals a sliver more about her home planet.

1ST ELDER: When I listen to you, you who are so young among your own kind, I realise that we Sensorites have a lot to learn from the people of Earth.
SUSAN: Grandfather and I don’t come from Earth. Oh, it’s ages since we’ve seen our planet. It’s quite like Earth, but at night the sky is a burned orange, and the leaves on the trees are bright silver.
1ST ELDER: My mind tells me that you wish to see your home again, and yet there is a part of you which calls for adventure. A wanderlust.
SUSAN: Yes. Well, we’ll all go home some day. That’s if you’ll let us.

The oddest thing about the conclusion of the story is that we don’t see the City Administrator receive his comeuppance. He just fades away as we’re told that he’ll be banished to the outer wastes. It’s one of those moments, and there are several others during the story, where it’s surprising that David Whitaker didn’t tweak the script a little in order to produce something a tad more dramatically satisfying.

But whilst there are various niggles, overall this is a pretty solid serial. It’s not the most sophisticated or layered tale, but anything with the original TARDIS crew (and indeed, anything with Hartnell) is always going to appeal to me.

Doctor Who – The Sensorites. Episode Five – Kidnap

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Ian and Susan rescue the Doctor from the mysterious creature in the aqueduct. The Doctor implies that there’s something strange about the monster (otherwise how could it have ripped his coat to shreds but not touched his skin?). You have to assume that the monster, like the poisoned water, has been arranged by the (as yet) unseen survivors from the human spaceship which landed ten years ago. Quite how they were able to create the illusion of this monster is a mystery though (and if they are responsible, don’t the Sensorites think it’s strange that mysterious creatures suddenly appeared in the aqueduct some years ago? Where had they been before that?)

The Sensorites continue to maintain that they have a perfect society. “Our society is based upon trust. Treason or secret plotting is impossible.” But the continuing plots of the City Administrator (and the fact that he is able to recruit willing helpers) sharply contradicts this. It’s possible to argue that it’s only the arrival of the humans which has caused the Administrator to go off the rails, but this doesn’t quite hold up to scrutiny. Because he reacts so strongly (and with very little provocation) it does seem probable that he would have snapped soon anyway. And if the Sensorite nation is so peaceful and well-ordered, why do they need a Warrior class?

I like the way that that Sensorites are able to run the Doctor up a lovely cloak to replace his ruined coat. It’s hard to imagine that Sensorites themselves wearing cloaks, but maybe they do – otherwise surely they’d get a little chilly in the winter time?!

There’s a few line fluffs in this episode, but Hartnell’s not to blame for once. This is my favourite, courtesy of one of the Sensorites. “I heard them over, over, talking”.

Carol gets a decent share of the action in this episode. She shares some key scenes with the Sensorites, is overjoyed when John is returned to normality (which is a well-acted scene by Stephen Dartnell) and finds herself kidnapped at the end of the episode.

It’s unusual for a non-regular to be the focus of the cliff-hanger, especially as Susan could easily have been substituted for Carol. Maybe it was felt that since Susan was kidnapped at the end of episode five of The Keys of Marinus it would have felt too much like deja-vu had it happened again so quickly.

Doctor Who – The Sensorites. Episode Four – A Race Against Death

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Hartnell’s in fine form in this episode. He’s gloriously tetchy when railing against the Sensorites (who refuse to give him the lock of the TARDIS back, which he wants so he can access his equipment to find a cure for Ian). They offer him their own laboratory facilities, which he accepts with very ill grace, but he can’t help himself and raises his voice on several occasions – even though he knows it causes the Sensorites pain.

Therefore it falls to Susan to act as the peacemaker between the Doctor and the Sensorites. It’s a nice, albeit brief, character moment for Carole Ann Ford who is clearly attempting to make the most of the thin material she has (after a strong start to the story, Susan is fading into the background again).

The Doctor’s in his element as he attempts to find a cure (surrounded by test-tubes you feel he’s very much in his natural environment). But the ease at which he does so is another weakness of the story. With six episodes to fill you’d have assumed they could have stretched it out a little longer and even when the City Administrator intercepts the antidote it doesn’t really matter, since Susan simply obtains another dose. Doctor Who and the Silurians has a better example of this type of plot-thread – after the Doctor is kidnapped by the Silurians his formula to stop the plague goes with him, so Liz has to frantically attempt to reassemble it from his notes.

The Doctor’s very pro-active in this episode and therefore quite different from the more self-centered character we saw earlier in the season. He travels down to the aqueduct in order to examine the source of the poison and, leaving his Sensorite guide at the entrance, ventures inside. When the First Elder and the others learn of this, there is general consternation.

1ST ELDER: Other expeditions have tried and failed. Most of our men do not return, and those that do speak of terrible things.
IAN: Well, I’ll have to go myself.
SUSAN: No you won’t.
IAN: We can’t stay here, Susan.
SUSAN: You’re too ill, Ian.
IAN: I’m not that ill.
SUSAN: All right. We’ll need someone to show us the way.
1ST ELDER: I beg you to change your minds. You cannot save your friend.
IAN: We’ll never know till we try, will we?
1ST ELDER: These people have fine qualities. The Second Elder and I have misjudged them, and I will tell him so.

The closing moment of the episode, as the Doctor hears the roar of a mysterious creature is an iconic one and also serves as a good example of Hartnell’s acting abilities. Later Doctors might have used the opportunity of an end-of-episode closeup as a chance to play to the camera, but Hartnell is very restrained. He keeps his face immobile whilst his eyes dash from right to left. It’s a very good indication that less is more and a small example of Hartnell’s class.

Doctor Who – The Sensorites. Episode Three – Hidden Danger

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Whilst Barbara remains on the spaceship, the Doctor, Ian and Susan travel down with with John and Carol to the Sense-Sphere. John receives treatment from the Sensorites (helping to undo the damage they’ve created) whilst the Doctor agrees to investigate a mysterious plague which is killing an increasing number of Sensorites.

One of the main problems with The Sensorites is how simplistic some of the plotting is. We’re asked to accept that the Sensorites are a technically advanced race, but they’ve spent the last ten years dying from a mysterious disease for which they’ve been unable to either identify or find a cure for. The First Elder (Eric Francis) mentions that the Elders enjoy special spring water, but Ian, who’s very thirsty, doesn’t want to wait for it to arrive and drinks some of the normal water. He then keels over, which leads the Doctor to deduce that the water supply is poisoned.

If one wanted to be generous then we could assume that, due to the Sensorites different physiognomy, the symptoms of the poisoned water don’t manifest themselves so quickly. Otherwise, if a Sensorite toppled over immediately after drinking the water you’d have thought they would have twigged by now! Even so, testing the air, water, food, etc should have been amongst the first things to have been checked.

Again, if you wish to take a more sympathetic reading of the text, it could be that Newman was attempting to show how an isolationist nation like the Sensorites had partly brought this problem on themselves. Although they are technologically advanced, it’s only the input of an outsider which provides them with a solution – therefore their fear of aliens had prolonged their suffering.

But if this section of the story doesn’t quite convince, we also have some interesting exchanges between the Sensorites themselves. Although rudimentary, this dialogue serves to remind us that whilst they are nominally the “monster” of the story, in their own eyes they regard themselves as the heroes and it’s the humans who are the potentially threatening force.

2ND ELDER: In one degree I confess I am anxious. These creatures, these Earth people, are loud and ugly things. Why could we not have met them in the desert or in the mountains?
1ST ELDER: It is a failure of all beings that they judge through their own eyes. To them, we may appear to be ugly. What we must create between us is trust. That is why I have invited them to my palace.
2ND ELDER: But are we sure these Earth creatures are beings as you say? There are animals in the deserts and mountains, but we do not invite them in to our palaces. Perhaps these Earth creatures are animals too?

There’s also a brief insight into how their nation is ordered. “The Elders think and rule, the Warriors fight, the Sensorites work and play.” The Sensorite goes on to tell the Doctor, Ian and Susan that all are happy, but Ian’s ironic misquoting of Orwell (“some are happier than others, eh?”) helps to suggest that there may be chinks in their well-ordered society.

And although the Sensorites may look alike, they don’t possess a hive mind. This is made clear by the bitter words of the City Administrator (Peter Glaze) who regards the outsiders with resentment and fear. And it’s his low-level villainy that will provide the jeopardy over the final three episodes.