jackie lane

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.

Doctor Who – The Gunfighters

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Back in the olden days (let’s say up to the late eighties/early nineties) we all knew for a fact that The Gunfighters was an embarrassment. It was the lowest rated Doctor Who story ever (except it wasn’t) and choc-full of terrible performances (except it wasn’t). Jeremy Bentham’s summation in Doctor Who – A Celebration (1983) was typical of the lack of love it generated at the time. “The script was pure Talbot Rothwell, the acting was not even bad vaudeville and the direction was more West Ham than West Coast. It was not good. It was bad and ugly”. Ouch!

If you’re a Doctor Who fan of a certain age, then you probably grew up learning about the series’ illustrious past in great detail before you ever got the chance to watch it (in the UK, repeats of older stories were scarce to non-existent). But by the late eighties this was changing – most of the available episodes could be accessed in wobbly quality if you had a contact in the pirate video network and by the early nineties they were being broadcast in a more watchable form on UK Gold.

It was around this point (when we could actually see The Gunfighters) that opinions about it began to shift. Indeed, early 1990’s A5 DW fanzine culture was a bracing thing – full of twentysomethings who delighted in overturning the received opinions of their elders. So for a while, Pertwee was definitely out of fashion whilst the previously neglected Hartnell era was reassessed much more favourably.

Quite why The Gunfighters should have been the target of so much vitriol is a bit of a mystery, but when stories like that were out of circulation it shows how just a handful of people (Jeremy Bentham amongst them) could shape the debate. We took it for granted they knew what they were talking about ….

I will concede the some of the American accents (yes, the Clanton brothers, I’m looking at you) are a little suspect. Even more suspect is the way the story plays fast and loose with historical fact – if you want to learn about what really happened at the O.K. Corral then it’s best not to trust Donald Cotton.

But those quibbles apart, I can find little to complain about. Hartnell’s in great comic form during the early episodes as the Doctor, suffering from toothache, is forced to seek respite with Doc Holliday (Anthony Jacobs), who by a remarkable coincidence has just opened up a dental establishment in Tombstone. The fun keeps on coming after the Doctor then runs into Seth Harper (Shane Rimmer) who’s teamed up with the Clantons in order to run Holliday to ground.

HARPER: Doc!
DOCTOR: What? Yes, yes, what is it?
HARPER: Holliday!
DOCTOR: Holiday? Yes, I suppose so. Yes, you could call it that.

From such small acorns do mighty oaks of confusion grow. With the Doctor mistaken for the infamous Doc Holliday, comic sparks will fly. After being sidelined during The Celestial Toymaker, Hartnell is now back to his best – give him some decent material to work with and he’d never let you down.

Peter Purves and Jackie Lane both fare very well too. Purves disliked this story for decades as he found director Rex Tucker a difficult man to work with. But even if Tucker didn’t give him a great deal of direction, Purves still emerges with honour (like Hartnell, he was able to pepper the episodes with sharp comic touches – such as his exaggerated double-take when he discovers Charlie’s dead body).

Dodo falls into the company of Doc Holliday and Kate (a delightfully blowsy performance from Sheena Marshe) and during this association is gifted a handful of good lines and bits of business (drawing a gun on Doc Holliday, for example). It’s not much, but considering Dodo’s lack of character development so far it’s a lot more than she’s been used to.

And that’s a real shame because there are signs here that, given the right scripts, Jackie Lane could have been an asset for the series. But her time is already almost up (we’ll discuss the terrible way she was dispensed with in a couple of stories time).

John Alderson (British born, but American based, so his US accent sounded authentic) and Richard Beale were another couple of strong additions to the cast. Alderson’s byplay with Hartnell is always entertaining and Beale was the sort of dependable supporting player who would never leave you down. Add in David Rimmer as the permanently nervous barman Charlie (who comes to a sticky end) and Lawrence Payne as the man in the black hat and you’ve got a very strong cast (far removed from the embarrassment we were told about).

As with The Myth Makers, the story gets darker as it goes on. Steven nearly gets himself lynched whilst the hapless Warren Earp (Martyn Huntley) is murdered by Billy Clanton. And suddenly the Clantons don’t seem quite so comic …

Another criticism of the story is that the Doctor takes no part in the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (although how exactly would he have fitted in?). True, this means that the climax of The Gunfighters doesn’t involve the Doctor, but this sort of thing was a problem that the historical stories often struggled with.

Oh, and I’ve always found the Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon (another aspect of the story that many dislike) to be good fun. The way the lyrics continually keep updating in order to archly comment on the unfolding narrative is a little touch of genius.

One thing that even the carping 1980’s reviews couldn’t disparage was the quality of the sets. When Seth Harper takes a fatal bullet and slumps on the bar of the Last Chance Saloon it wobbles in a most unconvincing way, but apart from that the sets look solid and convincing (plus you get real horses during the Ealing filming!). Whilst it seems that Rex Tucker had his issues when directing, there’s no sense that he was slapdash or disinterested – often we see shots from unusual angles (either low or high) which suggests he was keen not to settle for anything too obvious.

It’s not perfect (but then what is?) but I’m happy to give The Gunfighters 4 TARDISes out of 5.

Doctor Who – The Celestial Toymaker

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Poor old Celestial Toymaker. It’s one of those stories that’s languished in obscurity for decades – probably ever since 1991 when its only surviving episode (The Final Test) was released on VHS and the less than thrilling hopscotch game was once again seen in all its glory.

It’s fair to say that The Final Test doesn’t show the serial at its best – if any of the first three episodes also existed I’ve a feeling that we’d think better of it. Given the production issues The Celestial Toymaker had to overcome (a restricted budget and numerous rewrites) it’s possibly not surprising that it feels a little rough round the edges. And yet …

I’m never averse to the series trying something different – especially since once Innes Lloyd gets his feet firmly under the table he’ll format DW much more rigidly than its ever been before (I hope you like base under siege stories, as pretty soon you’re going to get an awful lot of them). The Celestial Toymaker‘s childlike fantasy world is like nothing we’d seen before and would rarely see again (apart from The Mind Robber).

Unlike most stories where there’s scientific (or at least pseudo-scientific) reasons for whatever happens, here we just have to accept that the Toymaker (Michael Gough) is a fantastically powerful being who can trap people and force them to play his games. Refreshingly (unlike in The Mind Robber) he doesn’t have galactic conquest on his mind – he’s simply bored and wishes to be entertained. As the story progresses we learn little about him – apart from the fact that he and the Doctor have met before.

As the episodes tick by, one obvious weakness is that Gough ends up being rather underused. After his impressive entrance in the first episode, the Toymaker spends most of his time with a mute and disembodied Doctor (Hartnell taking the opportunity to enjoy a few week’s holiday). So he’s got little to do except keep an eye on the Doctor’s progress in the trilogic game and pop up every so often to annoy Steven and Dodo as they battle through a series of different games.

The world of the Toymaker initially delights Dodo, who so far has been played as little more than an over-enthusiastic child. Steven’s less enamoured with some of the silly games they’re forced to play (I like to think a little of Peter Purves’ attitude was seeping through here).

One thing that appeals to me is the way that Campbell Singer, Carmen Silvera and Peter Stephens keep reappearing in consecutive episodes as different characters. It helps to keep the budget down of course, but it’s also a chance for Singer and Silvera especially to stretch their acting muscles (a pity that neither appear in the final, existing, episode).

In part one they’re a pair of clowns – Joey and Clara. Joey doesn’t speak (he just, Harpo Marx style, honks a horn) whilst Clara has an incredibly annoying high pitched voice.  With very little photographic material in existence, the game they play with Steven and Dodo seems to stretch on interminably.

Things pick up in episode two – The Hall of Dolls – as they’ve now been reincarnated as the King and Queen of Hearts – joined by Stephens as the Knave of Hearts and Reg Lever as the Joker. Singer’s performance as an amiable old duffer with Silvera offering strong support as his stern wife enlivens proceedings enormously (without them, the game of hunt the chair would have been far less fun).

Indeed, as I made my through the story this time, Campbell Singer really emerges as the serial’s unsung hero. His turn in episode three – the bluff and cowardly Sergeant Rugg – is another entertaining one. As with the second episode, it’s the byplay between Singer and Silvera (here playing Mrs Wiggs, a stern cook) that helps to drive the first half of The Dancing Floor on. The second half – Steven, Dodo, Sergeant Rugg and Mrs Wiggs contend with some deadly dancing dolls – might be eerie or it could have fallen flat (with only the soundtrack available it’s impossible to know for sure, but I’m inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt).

As touched upon earlier, the absence of Singer and Silvera hurts the final episode. Peter Stephens’ performance as Billy Bunter (sorry, Cyril) is annoying, although I’ll concede that it’s supposed to be, so in that respect it works well. It’s nice to have Hartnell back in the flesh but his final confrontation with the Toymaker does feel somewhat anti-climatic.

So, it’s a mixed bag overall. But I’ve a feeling this is a story that needs to be seen in order to be appreciated. Some missing stories work well as audios, but The Celestial Toymaker lacks well drawn guest characters (although the roles adopted by Campbell Singer and Carmen Silvera in the middle two episodes are worth the price of admission alone) and so suffers without any visuals.

Although on the surface the Toymaker’s games appear whimsical, there’s a harder and nastier edge lurking under the surface. Subverting the safety of the nursery (at one point the Toymaker proudly shows the Doctor two children’s chairs he’s designed for his latest dolls – Steven and Dodo) is an eerie thing to do. And are the ‘people’ Steven and Dodo encounter just figments of the Toymaker’s imagination (as Steven believes) or are they real people, previously ensnared by the Toymaker and now forced to act out his wishes on command? The latter possibility is a horrific one.

Given it’s experimental nature, I’ll give it three and a half TARDISes out of five.

Doctor Who – The Ark

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I’m still reeling from the slapdash way Dodo was introduced at the end of the previous serial, The Massacre. Jackie Lane continues to be thrown in at the deep end as this story begins, but as Dodo will eventually settle down I’m prepared to cut her some slack.

The opening episode – The Steel Sky – is a pretty impressive production. There’s plenty of rapid cutting in the jungle scenes from film, to studio, then back to film, etc. This sounds straightforward enough, but since the cutting had to be done live during the studio recording, the chances of something going wrong was quite high.

Unlike film/studio cutting during the colour era, the constant changes from film stock to studio videotape isn’t so noticeable in black and white, so director Michael Imison manages to get away with it. There’s some other nice shots in these early episodes and some decent model-work, which suggests that Imison was trying to use the series’ limited technical resources to their fullest degree.

This is just as well, as the acting is, to put it kindly, a bit hit and miss. Eric Elliott as the Commander and Inigo Jackson as Zentos both manage to chew any bit of scenery they come across. Kate Newman (Mellium) is better, but she’s not given much to do. It’s good to see Michael Sheard (making his DW debut as Rhos) but if it hadn’t been Sheard playing the role I doubt anyone would spend a great deal of time talking about this character.

What’s notable about The Ark is the way it neatly splits into two two-part stories. Although at the end of the second episode (which sees the Doctor and his friends bidding the inhabitants of the Ark a fond farewell after curing them of the terrible damage inflicted by Dodo’s cold) it appears that the story has run its course.

The reveal that the TARDIS has travelled in time, but not space, dropping them back on the Ark seven hundred years later is a good twist. As is the cliff-hanger reveal that the statue of humanity (which was only partly constructed at the start of the story) has now been completed with the head of a Monoid.

Ah yes, the Monoids. They spent the first two episodes in the background as mute servants of the humans. But now they’ve gained voices and – rather ticked off about the way they were treated as second class citizens for centuries – have taken over and are giving the humans a taste of their own medicine.

That the Doctor was partly responsible for this state of affairs (Dodo’s cold led to a mutated disease which, after they left, sapped the will of the humans) is an interesting story beat. Given that the Doctor can never resist meddling in local affairs, it’s easy to imagine him leaving a trail of unintentional destruction as he goes along his merry way. It’s not surprising that the series rarely comments on this though (Planet of the Spiders being a notable exception).

The Monoids, bless them, aren’t in the top rank of Doctor Who monsters. Their wobbling walk is bad enough, but when they begin to talk in part three – The Return – things really begin to career downhill. This episode features several of the serial’s most cherished moments – the Security Kitchen, for one. Maybe this is intended to be ironic and we’re simply not getting the joke (after all, where exactly do the Monoids stuff all the food they force the Guardians to make for them?)

Dodo’s confrontation with Monoid 2 (none of them have names, only Prisoner-ish numbers) is another classic.

DODO: Yes, I bet it’ll take some time to get the whole of the population down here, so the sooner you get started, the better, I should think.
MONOID 2: Don’t worry. It may not take as long as you think.
DODO: What do you mean? Are you up to something?
MONOID 2: Er, no.
DODO: No? But you gave yourself away, didn’t you?

Dodo’s tone here is rather like a mother chastising a naughty child. It helps to dispel any lingering menace that the Monoids might have had. This is a pity as they look quite imposing in still form (see below) it’s only when they walk and talk that they have a problem …

The Ark trundles along to a conclusion, with the humans and the remaining Monoids (after the more warlike ones perish in a brief civil war) agreeing to bury the hatchet and begin a new life on Refusis along with the invisible Refusians, who are looking forward to having a bit of corporeal company at last.

Given what’s happened before though, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re at each other’s throats in a couple of decades time ….

It’s easy to be a little dismissive of the simplistic storyline and the lack of three-dimensional guest characters (all the ones we see are drawn from stock – the impulsive hot-headed human convinced that the Doctor is a menace, etc). But The Ark does have some solid science-fiction concepts – such as the generational spaceship in search of a new home – and the production design by Barry Newbery has plenty of little touches which still look good today.

Ratings-wise, I’ll give it three TARDISes out of five.

Doctor Who – The Massacre. Part Four – Bell of Doom

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History continues to proceed in an inexorable fashion, with Steven and the Doctor caught in its flow. To begin with though, Steven is convinced that the Doctor is dead – so his sudden reappearance comes as something of a shock.

He doesn’t explain where he’s been, only mentioning that he was unavoidably delayed. This is something of a plot-flaw – bad enough that the Doctor decided to head off on his own, but it’s even worse that he now swans back without a care in the world.

It’s only when he realises the date and the year that it suddenly becomes clear to him just how much trouble they’re in (and also for those at home with a decent knowledge of French history). Was it assumed that the audience watching in 1966 would have been easily able to put two and two together? If so it implies that the (largely) child viewership must have been very historically literate.

The Doctor is keen to pack Anne off as soon as possible, but the girl has nowhere to go.

DOCTOR:  Now, my dear, there must be somewhere you can stay in Paris.
ANNE:  No, there’s only my aunt’s place, and they’ll kill me there.
DOCTOR:  Oh, nonsense. Tonight, you will be quite safe. Now you go carefully through the streets, hmm?

And that’s the last we see of her. When Steven later learns that thousands of Hugenots were massacred that day he’s convinced that she too must have died and that the Doctor was culpable. “You just sent her back to her aunt’s house where the guards were waiting to catch her. I tell you this much, Doctor, wherever this machine of yours lands next I’m getting off. If your researches have so little regard for human life then I want no part.”

Could the Doctor have saved her? Of course and they could all have left in the TARDIS together. We’ve seen the Doctor pluck people from many different periods of history, so it’s hard to see why Anne would have been any different. Indeed, it’s possible to believe earlier in the story that she was being groomed as possible companion material, but the events of The Daleks Master Plan should have taught us to take nothing for granted ….

If Hartnell’s been taking it easy for the last few weeks, then this episode gives him one of his signature moments. After Steven storms out of the TARDIS, the Doctor is left all alone. “Even after all this time he cannot understand. I dare not change the course of history. Well, at least I taught him to take some precautions. He did remember to look at the scanner before he opened the doors. Now they’re all gone. All gone. None of them could understand. Not even my little Susan, or Vicki. Yes. And there’s Barbara and Chatterton… Chesterton! They were all too impatient to get back to their own time. And now Steven. Perhaps I should go home, back to my own planet. But I can’t. I can’t”

It’s a lovely moment, although given Hartnell’s reluctance to learn lengthy speeches it can’t have been easy for him. Interesting that the Doctor here still seems wedded to the S1 concept of not interfering in history. This ties in with Lucarotti’s previous stories (notably The Aztecs) but the series, notably under the influence of Dennis Spooner, had somewhat moved on since then.

What’s disappointing is the way that the power of this scene is negated by what happens next. A young girl, Dodo Chaplet (Jackie Lane) bursts into the TARDIS, followed by Steven, and the Doctor is forced to take off immediately. This therefore not only cancels out Steven’s anger with the Doctor, it also provides us with the most perfunctory introduction possible for Dodo, the new companion.

That the Doctor tries to pour oil on troubled waters by pointing out that Dodo’s surname is similar to Anne’s, which maybe suggests than Anne survived after all, feels like little more than an exercise in straw-clutching.

This whole section seems rather bolted on (and was surely contributed by Donald Tosh, rather than John Lucarotti). But even allowing for the way that The Massacre rather dribbles to a halt, the bulk of the story is so strong that this isn’t really an issue.

It might not always feel like Doctor Who, but it’s still excellent drama. Let’s close with a line from Tavannes, a chilling proclamation that sums up the serial perfectly. “Tomorrow this city will weep tears of blood.”