ian stuart black

Doctor Who – The Macra Terror

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There was clearly something in the air back in 1967. Predating The Prisoner by several months, The Macra Terror – an everyday tale of brainwashing and control set in a seemingly idyllic paradise – certainly seemed to be tapping into the general sense of unease that Patrick McGoohan was also feeling.

In a way, it’s easy to see certain parallels with George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, although The Macra Terror swops grime and despair for a glossy utopia where drum majorettes are always in action, meaningless platitudes (“Nothing succeeds like success. If at first you don’t succeed –  try, try, try again!”) are endlessly trotted out and everyone wanders around with a smile on their face. Which of course, feels deeply disturbing.

At first, Ben and Polly see nothing wrong with this – they dive into the world of the Colony with enthusiasm, so it’s left to Jamie and the Doctor to be more cautious. It’s easy to understand why the Doctor, given his experience, isn’t prepared to accept anything at face value but Jamie’s a different matter.  This is a good move though, as it helps to flesh out his character (which in the preceding three stories has only been lightly sketched).

A number of familiar faces guest star. Peter Jeffrey as the Pilot is, as you’d expect, first rate as the man who looks after the day-to-day running of the Colony. If Jeffrey’s Pilot has the practiced slick skill of a politician, then Gertan Klauber’s Ola (the Chief of Police) is his diametric opposite – he’s the one who has to catch any miscreants and ensure they have the treatment they need.

One such miscreant is Medok (Terence Lodge) whom the Doctor and his friends meet at the beginning of episode one. Later the Pilot tells the Doctor what Medok’s fate will be.

PILOT: Oh, well, he’ll be taken back to the hospital for correction. He’ll be given another course of treatment. And when he returns to the Colony, Medok will be a changed man. He will cooperate and he will obey orders. He’ll be just like the rest of us.

DOCTOR: Why do you want everyone to be the same?

PILOT: Doctor, this Colony was founded many centuries ago by our ancestors who came from the Earth planet, like your young friends. Our ancestors believed in the virtues of healthy happiness and we have tried to keep their ideals alive. Sometimes, alas, it is necessary to use force.

The parallels with The Prisoner are obvious, and whilst it’s plain that, given the timescale, there’s no way that The Prisoner could have been directly influenced by The Macra Terror, it’s still interesting that both are pushing very similar buttons (but no doubt if one were to dig through the film and television archives of this era you’d find similar, earlier, examples of the same thing).

As seen in the dialogue quote above, the Doctor, even more than usual, is positioned as an individual – resisting any attempt to make him conform. This is expressed in the script in both humorous ways (in the first episode he reacts with horror when a machine tidies up his clothes and hair) and more dramatic ones (in episode two he tells Polly that “it’s just possible that you’ve been given a series of orders while you’ve been asleep. You know, do this, do that, do the other thing. My advice to you is don’t do anything of the sort. Don’t just be obedient. Always make up your own mind”).

Ben, Polly and Jamie are all subjected to deep sleep adjustment. A calming voice (“the sleeper must relax and believe. Everything in the Colony is good and beautiful. You must accept it without question. You must obey orders”) is piped through to their quarters but Ben is the only one to succumb. This allows Michael Craze to act evil for a change (and gives him something more to do than usual – with three companions all jockeying for position there have been times recently when one or more has ended up quite redundant).

The monsters of the tale – crab-like baddies called Macra – tend to lurk in the shadows. This is understandable since they must have been incredibly unwieldy (anyone who wants to escape from them just has to walk away at a moderate pace). Once again we have to thank the Australian censors whose squeamishness has preserved several short clips for us to enjoy. They show the Macra in all their slow moving glory (though to be honest it’s hard to imagine them giving that many people sleepless nights – unless they have a crab phobia).

Medok’s role in the story is an interesting one. As the only Colony member who seems to know the truth about the Macra, you’d assume that he would play a key role in overcoming them. But this isn’t the case – he’s rather casually killed off in episode three and no-one seems to notice or care that much.

By this point, Jamie’s lost in the mines and tangling with the Macra (in scenes that tend to go on a little), Ben’s beginning to fight against his processing (some more good work from Craze here) whilst the Doctor and Polly team up at the gas refinery to cause as much confusion as possible.  Troughton and Wills bounce off each other very agreeably in these scenes, indeed it’s at this point that you realise they haven’t really shared that many scenes together and since Polly’s time is nearly up, they won’t do so again ….

Ian Stuart Black delights in giving Troughton a number of lines that perfectly sum up his Doctor (“Confusion is best left to the experts” and “I can stand an operation on its head quicker than anyone” to name but two).

Also of interest is the moment when the Pilot confronts the Doctor, who has been entertaining himself by scrawling an impossibly complex series of calculations on the wall. “You’re not asking me to believe that in a few moments you have been able to work out a formula which it has taken our combined computers years to perfect?”

The Doctor has, of course, done just that and it serves as a reminder that – erratic as he may appear – he still possesses a keen scientific brain.

When the Doctor later shows the Pilot that the Macra are the ones in control he’s shocked and stunned. This raises an intriguing point – is it only the rank and file workers who undergo mind control? Since the Pilot immediately agrees to join forces with the Doctor to destroy the Macra, I would assume so. Ola probably also has free will – he continues to toe the party line but presumably only because he’s a sadist who sees nothing wrong with the status quo.

All in all this is a story that’s rich in incidental detail, even if the main plot is quite straightforward and (to be honest) not that interesting. With the Macra only able to provide the occasional scare, the actors – both regulars and guest cast – are required to keep things ticking along, which they do nicely.

Troughton especially is on great form and Peter Jeffrey doesn’t disappoint, although it’s a shame that the Pilot only has a handful of scenes in the second half of the story. John Harvey (as Officia), returning for his second Ian Stuart Black story, is another dependable performer who has a little more to do here than in The War Machines.

A bit of a run around then, but it rates a healthy 3.5 TARDISes out of 5.

Doctor Who – The War Machines

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For those rewatching the series in chronological order, The War Machines is something of a jolting experience. For the first time since Planet of Giants we have a story set entirely in modern day Britain and for the first time ever the Doctor is shown out and about, enjoying the sights of 1960’s London (especially the Post Office Tower, which back in the mid sixties stood as a key symbol of technological development).

With Dr Kit Pedler now onboard as the series’ scientific advisor, it’s easy to detect his influence. As would later happen in Doomwatch, a scientific hot topic (in this case the fear that computers could become sentient and take over) is at the heart of the story. Indeed, Doomwatch would tackle this theme some years later in The Iron Doctor.

In The War Machines, WOTAN – a super-computer with ideas above its station – decides that the human race should be under its control. WOTAN decides to achieve this goal by brainwashing selected humans and forcing them to build the titular war machines. This is where the logic of the story starts to evaporate as the WM’s not only look very clunky and inefficient, it’s hard to see how they could hope to subjugate a city (today London, tomorrow hopefully the world).

Earlier on, we saw WOTAN recruiting helpers via the telephone – broadcasting an irresistible hypnotic signal. If somehow WOTAN could have developed this idea (a television broadcast maybe?) then that might have worked a little better. Ah well, it’s too late to worry about the plot now.

Ian Stuart Black, returning for a second story in a row, took the original idea by Kit Pedlar (and then roughed out by Pat Dunlop – father of Lesley) and turned out the four scripts. As in The Savages, Stuart Black wasted no time getting the Doctor involved in the story – he gains access to WOTAN and its inventor, Professor Brett (John Harvey), with embarrassing ease and shortly afterwards becomes a house guest of Sir Charles Summer (William Mervyn) in the same casual manner. This feels a little odd, but let’s just go with the flow.

The War Machines drops the Doctor right in the heart of Swinging London (well, let’s say it’s slightly swaying). The Inferno (“the hottest nightspot in town”) is a hoot, peopled with slightly jiving respectable types and library cues courtesy of Johnny Hawksworth.

At the Inferno, we meet Polly (Anneke Wills) and Ben (Michael Craze) who are Innes Lloyd’s attempt to create more modern companions (they certainly seem to be from a very different generation to Ian and Barbara). Next to them, poor Dodo is clearly surplus to requirements and after she suffers a spot of brainwashing from WOTAN, her time is up. Cured by the Doctor in episode two, she’s then packed off to the country for a good long rest and is never seen again.  Even though she hadn’t been with the series that long, it’s a remarkably off-hand way to deal with a regular character.

I wonder if a year later Wills and Craze remembered her fate when they were dispensed with in a similar fashion ….

One problem with The War Machines is that it employs good actors – John Harvey (Professor Brett), John Cater (Professor Krimpton) and Alan Curtis (Major Green) – and then rather wastes them since once they become slaves of WOTAN they just turn into dull automatons. I know that’s a point of the story, but it means that scenes with them are rather hard going.

Luckily we do have William Mervyn as the avuncular Sir Charles Summer, who teams up with the Doctor to form an agreeable double act. He’s a prototype of a character type who reappears time and again during the Pertwee era. But whilst the Pertwee Doctor delighted in clashing with figures of authority, the Hartnell Doctor is content to be more conciliatory (although the Doctor and Sir Charles do have a brief difference of opinion).

The fact that the army turn up (and prove to be fairly ineffectual) is another story beat that hints at the way the series would develop once UNIT became a regular feature.

Michael Craze is particularly well served during the second half of the story. With Polly now under the thrall of WOTAN, it falls to an increasingly hysterical Ben to raise the alarm. His anger at Sir Charles (when the older man dismisses his wild tales of killer machines) is well done as is the way Ben gradually becomes the Doctor’s side-kick. Given Ben’s military training it’s easy to see why he so swiftly defers to the Doctor (no previous companion or companion-to-be has ever called the Doctor ‘sir’ but it seems natural for Ben to do so).

Polly doesn’t have quite so much to do, but Anneke Wills is gifted plenty of close-ups as Polly begins to fight against WOTAN’s influence.

The conclusion of the story – the Doctor sends a reprogrammed War Machine to destroy WOTAN – feels somewhat anti-climactic. You can’t help but wonder how it reached the top of the Post Office Tower, where WOTAN had its base. Does the Post Office Tower have very large lifts? If so, then I wonder how the War Machine managed to select the correct floor with its big clod-hopping arms.

The War Machines is a real curio then. You have to appreciate the fact it was a trail-blazer in many ways – the novelty of seeing the Doctor in modern-day London, the introduction of Ben and Polly, the way it inadvertently foreshadowed the way the series would develop during the late sixties/early seventies – but the story doesn’t quite hang together. I’ll still give it 3.5 TARDISes out of 5 though.

Doctor Who – The Savages

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The moment the Doctor declares that they’ve reached an an age of peace and prosperity you know there’s going to be a sting in the tail very soon ….

The Savages is an obscure one.  Lacking a monster and with only a brief few clips and limited photographic material available to supplement the audio soundtrack, that’s not really surprising.  But whilst the storyline – a seemingly ideal society is revealed to have been built on evil foundations – is fairly routine SF fare, it shouldn’t be dismissed lightly.

I will concede that some parts are odd though. The notion that the Elders of this unnamed planet know all about the Doctor (they’ve dubbed him ‘The Traveller from Beyond Time’) because they’ve been following his adventures from the comfort of their advanced city is pretty bizarre.  It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see in the TV Comic Doctor Who strip.

But I suppose it does help to integrate the Doctor into the plot quite quickly. His already established status means that he’s not required to prove his worth – as soon as he turns up he’s feted as an honoured guest and given an impressive cloak to wear.

At the same time the Doctor is hob-nobbing with Jano (Frederick Jaeger), the leader of the Elders, Steven and Dodo are given a conducted tour of the city.

We’re not that far into the first episode and already the alarm bells should be ringing for the viewer. Avon (Robert Sidaway) and Flower (Kay Patrick) are both attentive hosts, but Dodo’s not entirely satisfied (“every time I want to see something, they stop me”). On the other hand, Steven is quite prepared to endure this guided tour uncomplainingly.

Making Dodo the questioning one offers her a belated spot of character development, but the downside is that Steven then comes across as a little dim, as he seems to accept without question that the Elders have created a paradise where anything they want will be provided for them on a plate.

There has to be a price of course, and this is the torture of the other race on the planet (referred to by everyone simply as the “savages”). Back in 1966, memories of WW2 would still have been fresh in the memories of many (Terry Nation, for example). The way the young savage Nanina (Clare Jenkins) is strapped to an operating table and watched dispassionately by a group of scientists is a disturbing one which can’t help bringing to mind echoes of Nazi experiments.

After Dodo goes her own way and pokes her nose where she shouldn’t (when Flower suggests she wouldn’t have gone down the forbidden corridor, a sadly resigned Steven tells her that “you don’t know her. She’d go anywhere”) we’re given another sign that the outwardly benevolent world of the Elders is only skin deep. Having failed to keep Dodo in check, Avon and Flower are collected by the guards.

Avon attempts to reassure her, telling Flower that “this is a free state, isn’t it, and we are all equal here”. The fact they are roughly escorted away and simply vanish without trace from the story is a disquieting touch. It certainly carries more punch than any on-screen punishment could.

That the Elders draw the life force from the savages (not killing them, but leaving them barely alive afterwards) in order to replenish themselves is the dirty secret at the heart of their paradise.  It’s the cue for a pulsating scene where the Doctor and Jano face off (such a pity this doesn’t exist on video, as Hartnell sounds to be on cracking form).

JANO: You are standing in the way of human progress.
DOCTOR: Human progress, sir? How dare you call your treatment of these people progress!
JANO: They are hardly people, Doctor. They are not like us.
DOCTOR: I fail to see the difference.
JANO: Do you not realise that all progress is based on exploitation?
DOCTOR: Exploitation indeed! This, sir, is protracted murder!

Character development in The Savages is fairly rudimentary. The two leaders – Jano for the Elders and Chal (Ewan Solon) for the savages – are the ones who emerge as the most rounded individuals. Solon overcomes the handicap of what looks to be fairly unforgiving old-age make up to give Chal a fairly noble air whilst Jano (once he’s taken on the Doctor’s life force) does something similar.

Frederick Jaeger treats us to a fairly accurate Hartnell impression (plenty of hmming) after this happens. The ultimate outcome – the Doctor’s imported conscience finally brings Jano to his senses after all these years – is a neat way of pushing the story towards a conclusion, although part of me wishes that the Elders could have been swayed by arguments as well. As it is, they only seem to capitulate once their laboratory is destroyed and they no longer have the means to experiment on the savages (this always supposes that it couldn’t be rebuilt from scratch).

Since the rest of the Elders are fairly anonymous types, we never find out what they really think of the situation, so once the Doctor toddles off in the TARDIS pretty much anything could happen. Although since Steven has been left behind as their new leader, let’s hope that he’s able to keep the peace.

The faltering friendship between a guard called Exorse (Geoffrey Frederick) and Nanina, which begins in the penultimate episode, does suggest that the future might be a positive one though. Held prisoner by the savages, the previously belligerent Exorse (who earlier had captured Nanina) gratefully accepts the small kindnesses of Nanina when she treats his wounds.  Maybe a little more could have been made of this, although when Exorse returns to the city he doesn’t give his new savage friends away, which shows that his loyalties were already beginning to shift.

So we have to bid farewell to Steven. The nature of his departure is a bit abrupt (although it’s not half as abrupt as Dodo’s upcoming exit). As with previous departures, it’s easy to imagine that Hartnell was as sorry to see Purves go as the Doctor was to leave Steven behind. It’s nice that a few small scraps of 8mm cine-camera footage captured their final scene together.

The Savages might err on the predictable side, but since it’s a four-parter, like most of season three, it never outstays its welcome. I’ll give it 3 TARDISes out of 5.