Doctor Who - The Time Meddler

Fair To Meddling

Doctor Who
The Time Meddler
Airdate: 3 July - 24th July 1965
BBC  Region B Blu Ray
Four Episodes

Just a very brief review of the last story in the second season of Doctor Who, The Time Meddler... one which I’ve always wanted to see. Okay, so following on from the events of the previous story, The Chase (reviewed by me here), The Doctor (William Hartnell) and Vicki (Maureen O’Brien) are discussing the departure of Ian and Barbara from the crew of the TARDIS, only to find that Peter Purves’ character, Steven, made it out of harms way by, somehow (let’s not get into it), stowing himself away. Actually the chemistry between him, Maureen O’Brien and Bill Hartnell, thanks to a script that really works well, is excellent and I’m surprised this team is not better remembered. But then, I believe a large proportion of the stories in the next few seasons are lost to time so, perhaps that’s why.

Anyway, the TARDIS lands in Anglo Saxon England in 1066 but, their movements are being watched by a mysterious monk, played by famous British comedian (and Carry On film regular) Peter Butterworth. Vicki and Steven soon find themselves separated from The Doctor (of course, that’s how these dramas work) and it’s all shenanigans befriending the locals and trying to dodge a Viking invasion scouting party. But, something’s not right because, why was the monk checking his wrist as though looking for a watch? A watch that Steven finds later in the episode. Not to mention the church is lit with a simple flick of a switch. And are there really a lot of monks in that Abbey... no, it’s a recording playing on Peter Butterworth’s gramophone. Wait, what?

As the story suggests, the monk, or The Meddling Monk as he came to be known, is someone who is deliberately interfering in time. It’s mentioned that his anti-gravitational lifts helped build Stonehenge, for instance. ‘The why’ is of no concern to The Doctor, who shuns the idea but ‘the how’ is very simple. At the end of the third episode, Vicki and Steven follow an incongruous cable leading into a door in the side of a big tomb... they go through and it reveals they are standing in another TARDIS! The Monk’s TARDIS, a much later type and improved model with, obviously, a chameleon circuit that is not stuck as a 1960s Police Box. Although the show hadn’t yet come up with the idea of Gallifrey and the Timelords yet, The Doctor acknowledges that The Monk is from the same race of people as he. My thinking is that he’s a much more benignly mischievous prototype for The Master character who was created for the show against the third incarnation of The Doctor. In fact, The Meddling Monk was the show’s first recurring ‘villain’, in that he was in a couple of episodes of the next year’s 12 part story The Dalek Master Plan... although all but two episodes exist (I think I might have seen one of The Meddling Monk episodes of that on a compilation DVD of incomplete Doctor Who serials, a couple of decades ago).

And there’s not too much more to be said about this other than, perhaps, that the backdrop skies on some of the ‘studio as exterior location’ shots are much better than previous attempts. And there are a bizarre couple of shots of close up, bloodless but nonetheless intense stabbings which were not in the copy of the episode found in Nigeria (and presumably redubbed with the original audio recordings) because they were cut. I’ve not yet watched the documentary on this one to see how the BBC managed to restore them for this release but, for a children’s programme, even in less ‘nanny state’ times, it’s pretty intense. You feel those ‘trick theatrical blades’ go in.

The end titles are also pretty remarkable on the last episode, where the BBC have superimposed white, posterised faces of the three main characters over a starry background. The show had not yet got to the stage where The Doctor’s face appeared in the opening titles so, I guess this closing title was Hartnell’s one time where he was represented in a graphic form during a credits sequence.

And, yeah, The Time Meddler is not a bad story... I kinda enjoyed it and, it packs a lot into the four episodes, for sure. Apparently, a good time was had by all during the shoot, with Butterworth milking the cast and crew for laughs between takes. It’s a nice way to end the second series, for sure.

Doctor Who - The Chase

Mechanoid Mayhem

Doctor Who - The Chase
Airdate: 22nd May - 26th June 1965
BBC  Region B Blu Ray
Six Episodes

I’d never seen the Doctor Who story The Chase before. It’s actually down in records as the least popular of the Dalek stories but, I certainly preferred it to a few fair others I’ve seen with those creatures in it, including some which other people consider absolute classics. There’s lots going on in these six episodes but with little actual plot... the Daleks have somehow invented a time machine and are pursuing The Doctor (William Hartnell), Ian (William Russell), Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) and Vicki (Maureen O’Brien) through time and space in order to destroy their timelord enemy and his companions once and for all, after their defeat in the Dalek Invasion of Earth (which I reviewed in TV form here).

The TARDIS crew go to a fair few locations such as a desert planet, the Empire State Building, a ship (more on that soon), a horror themed fun house and, finally, the planet Mechanus. So this review is going to be a hotch potch of facts more than anything else... but lots of interesting things, to say the least.

Like the fact that one of the humanoid/formerly aquatic/sand dwellers in the opening two episodes is played by Hywel Bennett in his first role. Or the fact that some of the Dalek props were mismatched, borrowed versions from the first movie version of Dr. Who And The Daleks (reviewed here).

This is also the first Doctor Who story to feature a doppelganger of The Doctor, a robot version constructed by the Daleks to ‘infiltrate and kill’. Unfortunately, the actor standing in for Hartnell as the doppelganger (who was his acting/stunt double on set anyway), looks nothing like him... so it sounds rather disturbing when they dub Hartnell’s voice over his. Having said that, the quality of the signal reception in those days may well have hidden the inadequacies of the character from the original audience.

Episode three marks the first role in this serial for Peter Purves, who plays a bizarre and highly comical American tourist in the third episode. Now William Russell and Jacqueline Hill, much to the consternation and regret of Hartnell, had decided this was to be their last Doctor Who story. The BBC had no contingency plan to replace them with other companions but, because Purves got on so well with Hartnell for the third episode, Maureen O’Brien suggested to the people at the top that he would be someone who could get on with the sometimes cantankerous Hartnell on set and so, for the final episode, Purves returns in a different role, who would be the new companion opposite Vicki for the next year or so.

There are some terrible things which make no sense too. Continuity wise, for example, The Doctor refers to having built the TARDIS himself. This then, is before the established back story that he did, indeed, steal it (unless, maybe he built it then stole it?). But the worst glitch comes in Episode Four, which The Doctor explains, incorrectly, all takes place in the human mind. The crew meet both Dracula and the Frankenstein monster (the latter being somehow totally based on Jack Pierce’s make up job for the Universal horror films... how did this lot not get sued?). However, when the Daleks show up and try to exterminate both these creatures, their death rays do not affect them at all. Indeed, the guy playing the Frankenstein monster must have been pretty strong because you see him pick up a Dalek and throw it. However, a pull back at the end of the episode shows it to have been a futuristic fun house... why then did the Dalek rays not kill or destroy the creatures therein? Make no sense.

But at least, according to Doctor Who lore, we now know why the Mary Celeste was empty. There are shenanigans afoot when the TARDIS arrives but, of course, when the Daleks arrive on the ship, the entire crew are scared and flea to their deaths in the sea. Mystery of the Mary Celeste solved, I guess. It was the Daleks all along!

I’m glad to say that this version of The Chase is uncut (but only the UK Blu Ray version... everywhere else the sequence I talk about next has been sliced out). So you will see about a minutes worth of footage of The Beatles (the only surviving footage of them left in existence of their appearances on Top Of The Pops) although, how Ian can sing along with a song (Ticket To Ride) that hadn’t been released before he got on the TARDIS is anyone’s guess.

And then there are The Mechanoids from the last episode (and a brief appearance at the end of the fifth). These robot creatures were supposed to be the next big thing after the Daleks but, this was their (to date) only proper appearance. My best guess as to why they never took off is... yeah... they’re really pants. Not good monsters at all although, it has ot be said, their English/Basic (computer language) speech is kinda interesting. There is a big battle between them and the Daleks which is all superimposed action montaged together... trying to make it look spectacular and, to be honest, failing at that.

There’s also a ‘still’ montage of Ian and Barbara returning to Earth two years after they’ve left. It’s very Richard Lester inspired, it seems to me but, at least they got a nice send off. As the episode closes, Peter Purves new character is lost, presumed dead but, yeah, I think I know where he is... pretty sure he stowed away on the TARDIS so, we shall see in the final story in this Blu Ray Series Two boxed edition, which is one I’ve always wanted to take a look at. My verdict on The Chase though is that it’s mostly tosh but, so what? It’s very entertaining and interesting tosh so, I’m happy with that. This particular serial was supposed to have been the basis for a third Peter Cushing Dr. Who movie which, alas, never came to fruition.

Doctor Who - The Space Museum

Whoseum Piece

Doctor Who -
The Space Museum
Airdate: 24th April - 15th May 1965
BBC 1 - Region B Blu Ray
Four Episodes

Okay then. The Doctor Who story The Space Museum is a little odd but, of course, that makes it all the more interesting and, despite it not being held in very high regard by the show’s still growing fan base, I certainly thought this one was quite enthralling.

Following on from being frozen/paralysed in the TARDIS at the end of the last episode of The Crusades (reviewed here), in footage which is repeated, the crew of the TARDIS... William Hartnell as The Doctor, Maureen O Brien as Vicki, William Russel as Ian and Jaqueline Hill as Barbara... find themselves in a space museum. And the planet housing the museum is a pretty badly shot environment, it has to be said... when the actors manage to cast shadows on the backdrop of the sky and rocks in the distance, it’s a pretty big giveaway that it's a small studio. But odd things happen like, after beings frozen they somehow find that they are no longer in their crusades costumes. And when Vicki accidentally drops a glass of water, it reassembles itself and jumps back into her hand (in one of the very few pieces of early recording on film stock for a ‘non-location screen’ in a show, in order for the film to be reversed).

And when they go out onto the planet they are walking around in thick dust but... leaving no footprints (which I suspect is a discovery with more of an eye on explaining why they weren’t leaving footprints on the studio set, to be honest). Then, they go inside a structure and find themselves in a space museum, but out of time phase with everything else. It must have been a great tease for viewers at the time when they come face to face with a Dalek, only to find out it’s an exhibit. Although, personally, I would have questioned why, in all of the museum, that was the only exhibit which was labelled up. It’s more of a shock for the regular companions when they come face to face with frozen and embalmed corpses of themselves in four display cabinets, which is when The Doctor realises they are somehow out of phase with time and are actually exploring the planet before they’ve actually arrived (which in the fourth episode is explained away as a malfunctioning component in the TARDIS). He says that, when they do arrive (and this happens early on in the second episode when the encased versions of themselves dissappear), they will be in great danger and will have to make sure that this possible future event doesn’t actually occur. The rest of the story, which once again splits the four companions, is about evading the military presence who run the space museum and teaming up with a ‘rebel faction’ whose planet it was in the first place.

And it’s odd because the whole ‘out of phase’ stuff from the first episode, as intriguing as it is, is not really explained to a satisfactory degree and, frankly, it would still certainly not explain why the travellers are in their crusades clothes one minute and then in their regular attire the next. Furthermore, certain plot details made apparent seem to be dropped in without any pay off later in the serial, such as when The Doctor makes a big thing out of Ian having a button on his jacket missing. You could surely be forgiven for assuming that this will come up later in the story as a way of telling one time phase from another but, no, it’s not mentioned again other than in the second episode of this four episode arc.

But it is enjoyable and has moments such as William Hartnell hiding in a Dalek and, when the coast is clear, putting on a Dalek voice and popping out of the top in a comical manner. Also, newby companion Vicki really shines in this episode, as she stirs up the rebels into a full scale revolution single handedly, by taking apart and rewiring the computer defending entry into the military armoury and enabling the rebels to retake their planet from the, really very small, occupying force.

Okay, so it’s pretty entertaining despite its many flaws and I really thought it was quite good. Also, though, it has a decidedly odd ending to the fourth and final episode. Viewers at this point were more than familiar with the practice of dovetailing the story into the next arc but this one does it more like a teaser trailer by showcasing the Daleks (who really have nothing much to do with this story at all, other than an older, differently designed model being on display in the museum). It’s really the Daleks tracking The Doctor in their own time machine (don’t know how they got one yet) and letting viewers know, at the beginning of the whole Dalekmania period of fandom, that they will be back in it for the next story, entitled The Chase. Which is the next one in this set and which I look forward to watching. That being said, I can only hope the BBC have paid all thier licences as footage of The Beatles was included on a screen in the TARDIS in the original broadcast of that serial and, I know from a recent viewing of The Evil Of The Daleks (review coming soonish), that they certainly didn’t include The Beatles song from the original broadcast in the new edition of that story. Time will certainly tell, I guess.*

Meanwhile, as far as I’m concerned, The Space Museum is another winner of a story and, what it maybe lacks in dynamic punch for some viewers, it certainly makes up for in it’s odd, off kilter qualities, I reckon. I certainly enjoyed my visit with it. It’s a shame the BBC didnt include a Behind The Sofa extra for this one... although there is a charming but short documentary on the collectibles/merchandising of the 1963-65 period of Doctor Who which is worth a look, it has to be said. 

*Since writing this review, time has indeed told and, let's just say if you purchased a UK edition of the Blu Ray like me, you got lucky where many didn't.

Doctor Who - The Crusades

Saladin Days

Doctor Who - The Crusades
Airdate: 27th March - 17th April 1965
BBC 1 - Region B Blu Ray
Four Episodes including two reconstructions

Oh dear... well, there was a reason why the BBC chose Series 2 for the debut Blu Ray collection of William Hartnell’s Doctor (hopefully it won’t be the last). The sixth story of the nine serials which comprise series 2, The Crusades, has two episodes ‘missing presumed wiped’ (as the saying goes), making this season the most complete of this era’s Doctor Who stories. And this one, for me, was a hard watch for various reasons.

Notable things include a famous actor and actress in key roles. So joining the crew of the TARDIS... Bill Hartnell as The Doctor, William Russell as Ian Chesterton, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright and Maureen O’Brien as Vicki... are Julian Glover as Richard The Lionheart and Jean Marsh as his sister Joanna. The whole tale takes place in Palestine during Richard’s crusades and it’s actually quite boring... at least it was for me... playing around with political intrigue and cowtowing to regal entitlement (I really have no love of positions of authority, it has to be said).

Another interesting thing was, once again, seeing William Hartnell getting in on the action for a little bit of the first episode. Indeed, he knocks a Saracen Warrior unconscious and even attempts to indulge in some swordplay. Then we get what seems to have become a standard formula for the show, the TARDIS crew get divided with Barbara captured by Saladin, Ian (or Sir Ian as he is to become after King Richard knights him) going after her and getting into his own trouble... while The Doctor and Vicki keep themselves close to the King to try and assure things go smoothly for everyone. Which it decidedly doesn’t and the four travellers barely escape with their lives at the end of the fourth episode, which itself cliffhangers into the next story arc.

And, yeah, the overly talkie script, definitely took on the original mission statement of the show, to teach kids about history, is a hard slog but it’s proven even harder by the BBC’s decision to not do what they’ve been doing a lot of recently, for missing episodes... in that they have not commissioned new animations to go with the surviving soundtracks. Instead, they’ve fallen back on something they used to do which is to have the sound of the episode play while still photographs from the production are manipulated, to give a sense of what the accompanying visuals would have been.

Now, I’m not knocking that their is a certain amount of creative thought gone into the way the still photographs are manipulated. For example, different characters will be highlighted in close ups as they speak to mimic the cinematic syntax of cross cutting between two or more people in a conversation. However, it would, I think, be true to say that this does nothing to lift the story and, since it’s a relatively dull story anyway, the decision not to add animation is a poor one. Especially since, I suspect, it all boiled down to the BBC being too cheap to commission the animation of a mere two episodes. So, yeah, it certainly doesn’t do it any favours.

And I really don’t have much else to say about this one, I’m afraid. The novelisation, Doctor Who And The Crusaders by David Whitaker (who added a fair amount of stuff not seen in his serial from the same year) was the second novel to be released (after Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With The Daleks) and also the last to be released until Target rereleased these first two, with this as their third, in 1973 (immediately following their first original release, Doctor Who And The Zarbi, based on the previous serial The Web Planet, reviewed here). I don’t remember much about it but I would certainly have enjoyed reading this one a lot more than the experience of finally watching it, I can tell you that. I suspect this is the one real weak link in this Blu Ray set and it’s telling that the BBC didn’t subject any of their special guests to have to slog their way through this one... it’s one of the few discs in the set which doesn’t have a Behind The Sofa extra. So, yeah, that probably says it all and I certainly wouldn’t recommend this story to anyone I know but, still, I’m very glad to have it and have the opportunity to finally see it, that’s for sure. Just wish they’d at least coughed up a little cash to animate episodes 2 and 4. And so onto The Space Museum... which I confess I’m looking forward to much more.

Doctor Who - The Web Planet

Animus Crackers

Doctor Who - The Web Planet
Airdate: 13th Feb - 20th March 1965
BBC 1 - Region B Blu Ray Six Episodes

Hmm... okay then, time for me to finally sit through The Web Planet. This was one of my favourite of the First Doctor Target novelisations as a kid and it was the second one the company released in that kind of format... always under the title Doctor Who And The Zarbi. However, as much as I admired the book, written by the same guy who’d written the original script to this one, I couldn’t get through more than the first episode of the actual TV version when I borrowed a VHS cassette of this from my cousin in the early 1990s. And I’ll get to why in  a minute but first, a very brief flavour of the plot...

The Doctor (William Hartnell), Ian (William Russell), Barbara (Jaqueline Hill) and Vicki (Maureen O’Brien) are pulled down, as at the end of the last episode of The Romans (reviewed here) onto a strange planet, which they later discover is called Vortis. There, they are split up into groups by various threats (as is the nature of a Doctor Who story) and have to help in a conflict between the evil, spider like animus of the planet that controls the ant-like Zarbi (which I’m assuming is the same plurally here as it is the singular of the name of the species), the moth-like Menoptera (who, judging from recent trailers, may well be returning to the show for the first time later this year) and a third species who are technically the ancestors of the Menoptera (who are themselves trying to reclaim the planet). Shenanigans ensue and the outcome is, pretty much what you’d expect.

Okay, that’s enough plot. The reason I had troubles watching this was because the quality of the image was so bad on VHS. I assumed at the time it was the state of the original negatives that were used but. looking at this Blu Ray, it seems (and I’ve since confirmed this), that every time the exterior of the planet (itself a studio bound set where you can see the joins on the skyline backdrop) is used... which is pretty much most of the story... a bizarre filter was used to make blurry streaks across the camera, obscuring half of what you see. I can only surmise that the people filming realised how bad the Zarbi costumes were and wanted to obscure them as much as possible. Yeah, pretty much ant shells with a little bit of controlled movement in the legs/arms and two, black stockinged human feet clearly walking around.

That being said, the Menoptera costumes are quite beautiful and, when they take off, fly around a bit and land due to the magic of wires, they look even better. I guess the vaseline-like smearing on the camera also helped hide the wires on these because, I somehow couldn’t spot them.

Okay, so it’s very much business as usual but the story feels very padded, I have to say. Quite possibly... because the show was a studio bound series of sets... they maybe wanted to make it last a while because it was presumably a lot cheaper than going on location. But it did feel like the whole thing could have been covered in two episodes (or, indeed, on 20 minute episode of an old 1930s serial such as Flash Gordon, for instance). I mean, some of the designs and landscapes were good and some of them were bad. A pyramid projected onto the backdrop, for example, would have looked much more convincing if it wasn’t also half projected onto the backs of The Doctor and Ian when they go over to investigate. And the sound the Zarbi make was possibly inspired by the sound the ants make in Them! but, it gets pretty irritating after a while. And even the comedy element coming from the knowledge that one of the chief Menoptera was played by a young Martin Jarvis in his first role doesn’t really do much to lift the show. That being said, the cliffhanger ending to episode five, where the screams of The Doctor and Vicki can be heard as they are covered in an enveloping web, is pretty terrifying, I would say.

And that’s me done with The Web Planet, I think. There are a few extras but not as many as on most of the other discs in the BBCs Season 2 collection but, happily, one of those extras is the Behind The Sofa feature, which I’m really getting into just lately. It’s not a story I’d recommend using to jump into the show, for sure but, it’s a nice look at one of the more ambitious (in terms of effects and costumes) of the earlier shows and the monsters in this one were promoted in merchandise at the time. Worth a look if you’re already a watcher of the show, for sure.

Doctor Who - The Romans

Lyre, Lyre,
Rome’s On Fire

Doctor Who - The Romans
Airdate: 16th January - 6th February 1965
BBC 1 - Region B Blu Ray Two Episodes

Carrying on from the end of The Rescue (reviewed here), the story that introduced Maureen O’Brien as new companion Vicki, The Romans was the first real attempt add some comedy in Doctor Who. It was also one of the two educational/historical stories in the second season... something which was originally the intended brief for the show but, already the producers were realising that the purely historical shows suffered more in the ratings. When Verity Lambert saved the show by going with the Daleks in the second story of the first series, the genie was out of the bottle so to speak. Consequently, this season brought not one but two Dalek stories with it.

Okay, so it was played slightly for laughs and writer Dennis Spooner, who wrote a lot of great television shows in his time, delivered a pretty good script but, I have to say, unless I’d known beforehand that this was supposed to be a comedy, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. Although there is a nice moment when The Doctor deliberately misremembers Ian’s name to set up a joke which is pretty clever. But it’s not wild humour like the writers could get away with when Patrick Troughton joined the show, for sure.

So we have William Hartnell as The Doctor, Maureen O’Brien already firmly established and, of course, Ian and Barbara played by William Russell and Jaqueline Hill. This one is odd in that it replays the moment from the end of the last story where the TARDIS materialises and promptly falls off a cliff edge but then, we rejoin the four characters fully kitted out in Roman clothes and enjoying a holiday at a villa which they have taken over while the owners are out. So the action jumps a month from that first scene and The Doctor is not worried about heading off in the TARDIS again when it’s time for the holiday to end, mentioning it can dematerialise from any angle.

Then, in true serial fashion, the main characters get separated. While on a jaunt to Rome, The Doctor and Vicki come across the body of a murdered lyre player and The Doctor poses as him when a Roman centurion goes to find the man who, it turns out later, he knows should be dead. So The Doctor and Vicki end up in Nero’s palace as entertainers, where they get involved in a conspiracy to kill the emperor. Meanwhile, Ian and Barbara get kidnapped as slaves. Ian finds himself on a Roman Galley while Barbara is, luckily, sold to Nero’s palace. Ian escapes the galley and goes looking for her and, by the time of the fourth episode, shenanigans ensue as the main cast are once again reunited in one way or another.

And, yeah, it’s not a bad story actually. It was a lot more painless than I’d imagined the historical ones of the time would be and there were, it has to be said, some eyebrow raising moments. Such as a fight scene which takes place in the second episode between The Doctor and a would be assassin. I certainly didn’t expect to see the elderly Hartnell throwing himself and his opponent around and even, without the aid of a stuntman that I could detect, throwing someone with a Judo move. Pretty good stuff.

There’s also a scene right at the end when Vicki, after it’s clear that The Doctor accidentally burning Nero’s plans by hiding his glasses behind his back and magnifying the sun’s rays is responsible for the Emperor’s idea to set light to Rome, tries to make him understand that it’s his fault Rome (and presumably many of the people in it) is burned to the ground. The Doctor at first rejects this theory (and would continue to reject that notion in the 2008 story The Fires Of Pompeii) but then embraces the idea with much laughter... so, yeah, for future versions of The Doctor that may seem a little out of character but, you really don’t get the sense of it here.

There’s lots of unintentional humour in the things too, as is made much of in this disc’s Behind The Sofa extras, where the three teams of past companions watching this story are in fits of laughter that the Centurion’s helmet keeps bobbing up and down on his head whenever he’s talking (with Bonnie Langford laughing so hard I thought she was going to pass out) and there are also a lot of places where you can tell, in the days when re-takes were an expensive rarity, that Hartnell is forgetting his lines and ad libbing while the other actors try to accommodate.

All in all, though, I quite liked The Romans and I’m warming to Vicki as a companion surprisingly quickly. Next up, though, is The Web Planet, which I remember trying to watch in my teenage years on VHS and never managing to get through it. I loved the Target novelisation when I was a kid but the quality of the footage when I tried to watch it was alarmingly bad, from memory, So I’m hoping the new Blu Ray version will look a heck of a lot better than that. Time will tell, I guess.

Doctor Who - The Rescue

Discreetly
Packaged Dido

Doctor Who - The Rescue
Airdate: 2nd - 9th January 1965
BBC 1 - Region B Blu Ray Two Episodes

Warning: Full spoilers.

This story follows on from Caroline Ann Ford’s departure as original companion, The Doctor’s granddaughter Susan, in the previous story The Dalek Invasion Of Earth (reviewed by me here), alluded to fleetingly when William Hartnell’s Doctor briefly forgets she’s no longer on the TARDIS. The Rescue served as a very short, two part introduction to the newest companion joining the TARDIS crew, Vicki, played by Maureen O’Brien. And it’s a quite nice introduction, at that. Apart from the last story, I’d not seen any of the other shows in the new Second Series Blu Ray set from the BBC and the ride so far is of varying quality but, never less than interesting, it has to be said.

So The Doctor, Ian (William Russell) and Barbara (Jaqueline Hill) land in a cave on the planet Dido and are menaced by a threatening alien called Koquillion. They are split up and Barbara survives a cliff top plunge by being rescued by one of two survivors of a crashed spaceship, Vicki and the disabled Mr. Bennet, played by Ray Barrett. The Doctor and Ian, left in the cave with a ferocious looking monster (guy shambling around on all fours in a rubber suit) and a series of traps, seek to get out to find out what’s happened to Barbara while she, rescued by Vicki, bickers with her and Mr. Bennett about their safety and how they might throw off the threat posed by Koquillion. The Doctor and Ian eventually arrive (after Barbara has accidentally shot Vicki’s pet monster to death) and The Doctor solves the riddle of what’s really going on.

Now, I have to be candid here... around about 15 minutes into the first episode, I realised there was going to be a twist and guessed exactly what the twist would be. But, I have to say... it’s a smashing twist and normally, even though I can usually see the twists coming a mile off most of the time... I really shouldn’t have seen this one coming and I think a lot of people, including many of the various guest companions watching this as part of the much loved Behind The Sofa watch-along extras in this set, were taken by surprise by it. I only guessed it because the monster costume on the Koquillion looked so much like a standard man in a suit that I figured it was actually supposed to be representational of a man wearing a suit... and not just some ‘golly weren’t the monster suits so bad in those days’ manifestation. So, yeah, I was way ahead when it turns out the person responsible for the deaths of the rest of the crew members and the majority of the Dido race was actually the disabled Mr. Bennet himself, putting on the personae of Koquillion and heading for a pure Scooby Doo ending when The Doctor works this out and he unmasks himself. It didn’t take me long to figure out both Koquillion and Mr. Bennett were never seen together at the same time.

At the end, a really bizarre and, possibly slightly disappointing bit of deus ex machina resolution sees Mr. Bennet fall to his death and The Doctor waking up in the TARDIS, to offer Vicki the chance to ride along from adventure to adventure with them. As was standard for the show at the time, the story finishes and automatically starts off the next adventure, with the TARDIS landing somewhere and falling off a precipice.

Okay, it’s actually, despite how some people feel about this one, a really nice introduction to the character of Vicki... who’s not such a cardboard cutout of a character, it seems to me, as you might think and definitely modelled from the same mould as Susan, in terms of arguing about things and being quite child-like in places. I’ve never seen this companion before but I’ve warmed up to her right away, even though the person she was replacing was absolutely phenomenal in her role. It’s a hard gap to plug but I think the writing and performance fills it pretty well here.

The actors are all great although, since they were only allowed two edits or retakes an episode, you can once again see how Hartnell’s memory started flagging and how he pauses and talks around things to give the right cue to the other actors after remembering what his real lines were... with William Russell occasionally looking bemused or off set to see if he should try to continue or not, it seemed to me. Hartnell, though, is absolutely electric in the role here and he really does save the story in some ways. His pep talk to Vicki and his later confrontation with Mr. Bennet/ Koquillion is pretty strong and helps things along greatly.

The one thing which I only just realised is that they were also writing in scenes where he’s almost the butt of the joke in terms of humour. For instance, with Ian suggesting or observing something and the elder Hartnell ignoring it and eventually flagging it up himself. I reckon this was to get the teenagers into the show more, to identify with the younger members of the cast looking up at the old fuddy-duddy and it probably would work to retain these audiences on this show, for sure. Make no mistake though, Hartnell’s Doctor is ingenious and with a lot more going on that you at first see... Hartnell plays it to perfection as somebody who really has some teeth which, when they come out, certainly demonstrate his bite is louder than his bark, so to speak.

So, yeah, The Rescue is another excellent, if short, story and I really enjoyed this one. I’m not looking forward to the next one so much as it’s one of the period/eductional stories but, well, let’s wait and see. I’ll report back here soonest.

Doctor Who - Planet Of Giants

Putting The Insect Aside

Doctor Who - Planet Of Giants
Airdate: 31st October - 14th november 1964
BBC 1 - Region 0 Blu Ray Three Episodes

Well now, of all the things I was expecting from the BBC delving into Blu Rays of its classic strand of surviving Doctor Who stories, an almost complete set of surviving episodes from Series Two was not among them. But here it is and, I have to say, I am somewhat in awe of such a release, although the inaugural story of this second season, Planet Of Giants, doesn’t exactly set the world alight but, I think that’s probably about my familiarity with this old cliché of a novelty theme more than anything else.

Almost the entire story takes place in just three locations... a back garden, a laboratory which connects to the garden through the pipe in the sink and, for a few brief scenes, a local telephone exchange. Something goes wrong with the TARDIS when it rematerialises and the scanner smashes (a scanner which is somehow miraculously repaired when The Doctor (William Hartnell), granddaughter Susan (Carol Ann Ford), Ian (William Russell) and Barbara (Jaqueline Hill) return to the machine at the end of the third episode.

When they wander outside, they find lots of dead things and inanimate objects in giant sized form. They wonder where they are until they come to the conclusion that they are not on a planet of giants at all but on Earth... Norwich, to be precise. Whatever went wrong with the TARDIS has shrunk them to the size of about an inch each and then shenanigans ensue as two mini groups of them get separated and accidentally stumble onto a plot involving a new, lethal insecticide. A chemical that is a little too powerful but which the businessman behind the development wants released at all costs. Something we learn when he murders a troublesome government scientist in the first episode.

Although The Doctor, Susan, Ian and a very sick Barbara... who has come into contact with the insecticide and whose internal antibodies are too small now to fight off the effects properly... never actually meet or come face to face with the oblivious ‘giants’ who are instrumental in the plot, they manage to defeat them. In doing so they also survive two cliffhanger moments at the end of the first two episodes involving a giant sized (but not really because in reality, it’s just stayed at normal size) cat and water released down a drain that The Doctor and Susan are hiding in.

And I suppose it’s all okay but, with films like The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver and later shows like The Avengers and Land Of The Giants covering similar territory, I have to say that I can’t get all that excited about it. That being said, the performances by the key four cast members are all quite good, despite, I think, a bit of ‘slip up covering’ from Hartnell in a take which maybe the BBC didn’t have time to reshoot and a truly stupid moment when a man says he’s been working on a formula for as much as 60 hours a day... yeah, I think your original script said ‘week’ matey.

So, yeah, it does look stagey with all the oversized props but most of them look fine. With almost everything dead from insecticide the encounters with a large, prop ant are also quite good although, I have to say, the accidental comedy moment of a bee being dropped lifelessly onto the set to feign insecticide death and the truly terrible state of it, leaves a lot to be desired. As do some of the painted backdrops of grass in what looks to me like an entirely studio bound shoot. In terms of the scenery, I had to keep reminding myself that these things were never made to be seen in high definition or at a great size like we look at these things now. So the quality of the transfer on this new Blu Ray certainly doesn’t do the story any favours, I’d have to say.

The Doctor’s costume is interesting... I don’t remember seeing this incarnation in a cape before (although I remember he was depicted this way in some of the BBC Christmas Annual illustrations from this period). I don’t seem to remember him wearing it in the next adventure but, I may be wrong. All in all, Planet Of Giants is not a terrible watch and everyone is quite good in it but... yeah, it’s also a little dull, I think.

As far as the next story in the box, The Dalek invasion Of Earth, goes... well I’ve already reviewed that one in DVD form, which you can find here. Sometime this year is when my review of the big screen adaptation of that story should also see the light of day on this blog. Both this story and the next were hold overs from Season 1 so, although Carol Ann Ford is in both stories, she’d technically already left the show by the time Season Two was under full swing. And I’ll get back to you with my review with the third story in this new box sometime soon.

Doctor Who - An Unearthly Child

Who Un Earth?

Doctor Who - An Unearthly Child
Airdate: 23rd November -
14th December 1963
BBC 1 - Region 1 DVD
Four Episodes

I hadn’t seen the very first Doctor Who serial since it was repeated, when younger viewers such as myself could finally see these older episodes, as part of a five story collection of 18th Anniversary shows called The Five Faces Of Doctor Who (which kinda cheated since the only footage we’d seen as yet of The Fifth Doctor thus far, repeated as part of this season, was the last 20 or so seconds of Tom Baker’s last story). I remember at the time being extremely intrigued by the opening episode of this one but, finding the following three parts somewhat underwhelming. However, I thought I’d revisit the serial again, this time as a DVD, which is a third, bonus disc included in the US Blu Ray edition of An Adventure In Space And Time (which I reviewed here).

Now, I remember the first episode being extraordinarily well written and suspenseful and, sure enough it is. It tells the story of two teachers and ‘about to be companions’ of The Doctor, who are discussing a mysterious and ‘ahead of her time’ student, Susan Foreman. They want to get a handle on her strangeness and, eventually follow her home, to an old junkyard where they end up meeting Susan’s grandfather, The Doctor (after about ten minutes into the first 25 minute installment), get into an argument with him, get alarmed about the inside of the TARDIS being bigger than the outside and, eventually, by the end of the first episode, being pitched back to the days of the cavemen. The following three episodes, while definitely fulfilling the brief to educate kids, shows them embroiled in a power struggle between two violent and ‘would be’ leaders of a tribe, held captive until they can show one or the other how to make fire. Yeah, episodes 2-4 are still pretty much silly shenanigans but, it’s really not as badly written as I remember.

So much for the plot. The actors and script are all superb (in the first episode), however. We have Carole Ann Ford as Susan, playing her as a teenager (although she was in her twenties when she took this role) and in a much different but striking way to the much younger version of her presented in the two movie adaptations. There’s also Jacqueline Hill as history teacher Barbara Wright, who is mostly the scream and act like a damsel person in this first serial but I seem to remember she got much better things to do in later stories.

Then there’s William Russell as science teacher Ian Chesterton, who I always kind of liked and he’s the ‘young man’ member of the cast, presumably to be the one to do any fighting or heavy lifting as required in each story. He later returned to the role as a cameo in Jodie Whittaker’s last story, The Power Of The Doctor (reviewed here by me) in 2022, marking it as the longest gap for a returning actor playing a character in TV history, I believe.

And, of course, we have William Hartnell, who was finally persuaded to join the show and, after a very short while, rather took to it. It’s a very different version of The Doctor than most kids would perhaps accept easily today and, the same can be said of the show as a whole. The nice thing about Hartnell’s portrayal of the role was that he was stubborn, tetchy, antagonistic and, in the early days, you never knew if he was a hero or a villain so much. For instance, in this story, when a caveman has been badly mauled by a beast and his companions, who have all been trying to escape from the victim, stay to help said caveman recover form his wounds... Ian catches The Doctor about to bash the wounded caveman’s head in with a rock because he’s slowing down their retreat back to the TARDIS.

And when I say it’s a very different show... well, for instance, when the caveman is mauled (off screen) by some kind of animal, his torso is absolutely covered in blood. Pretty sure they wouldn’t get away with that in that time slot these days.

There are a few interesting things about the show so let me just quickly point out the obvious ones but, before I do that, I noticed a big continuity problem this time around which I’d never thought of before and so I’ll maybe point that out here (I’m sure I’m not the first to do so). When Barbara lends Susan a book on the history of the French Revolution, once left on her own she begins to read it and mutters to herself... “That’s not right!” Well, all well and good but, bearing in mind she doesn’t actually visit the French Revolution until a 1964 story, later in the same series, one has to wonder how the heck she would know the history books have got it wrong.

The show starts out with the chilling title sequence and Ron Grainer’s catchy theme tune, rendered all the more unearthly, to match the first episode premise, by the uncredited arrangement by the late, great Delia Derbyshire. It must have put fear into the hearts of children everywhere whenever it started each week and it’s still, pretty much, the most effective arrangement of the theme tune (various modern arrangements don’t stand a chance against it).

In the last part of the final episode of the first serial (each series was put together by a number of Doctor Who serials), the episode bleeds into the next story, where the needle on the TARDIS Geiger counter slips into the danger zone, unnoticed by the crew. This is, of course, because they have just landed on the planet Skaro and are about to come face to face with The Doctor’s most famous and popular villains, The Daleks.

Now, about that. Sidney Newman, the show’s producer, tasked Verity Lambert with bringing a science fiction programme which would educate children and families... his big edict was “no bug eyed monsters”. If Lambert hadn’t rebelled against that idea and ran with The Daleks as the follow up story, I believe Doctor Who would not have survived it’s first season. They had some ratings issues for sure. In addition to some of Britain being hit by a power cut the night the first episode aired, it was also the day after the assassination of President John F Kennedy, with news programmes and national trauma (to an extent) overshadowing proceedings. The BBC took the opportunity to repeat the episode again before the second one aired, which picked them up a fair few more viewers but, honestly, the rating were not what they would have liked (although, compared to ratings today for a TV show, the viewer numbers would seem a smash success). Doctor Who was, though, a smash success... but only because Lambert went ahead and ran with a science fiction story featuring the mechanistic, exo-skeletoned Daleks. She realised the gambit had paid off over the next few days when kids in playgrounds and on buses were stretching their arms out and yelling “Exterminate”. Plans were quickly put in place for the Daleks to return the following year and there was also some development considered for a spin-off Dalek television series... which didn’t quite happen but, with various bits of strange news coming out of new co-owners Disney just recently, this still might occur.

And that’s me pretty much done on the opening story. A lot of the mythos surrounding the character of The Doctor is established in these first few episodes... more than you might think. Names and places are not revealed as yet but various pieces of lore built on and expanded over the years have certainly been thought about due to the open ended nature of some of the things said. If you’re a fan of the show and you’ve never seen it before, Doctor Who - An Unearthly Child, is well worth a look... especially the first episode, which sets things in motion. It’s not all that dated and surprisingly well written... maybe give it a go sometime.

Doctor Who - The Three Doctors

Real 3D

Doctor Who
The Three Doctors
UK Air date:
December 1972 - January 1973
Four Episodes.
BBC Blu Ray Zone B

And so it came to pass it was time to crack open the Doctor Who Season 10 Blu Ray box set and, the first story in the box is the much loved fan pleaser The Three Doctors. This show must have been a nice Christmas present when the first episode was first broadcast in the holiday period between Christmas and New Year in 1972 and it was the programme’s ten year anniversary story. Of course, only the last three episodes were in it's 10th year and in January... the show itself wouldn’t reach that 10 year marker until November but, nobody seemed to care much and it’s an entertaining story.

This one tells of the Timelords on Gallifrey trying to save themselves and the rest of the universe by teleporting in previous incarnations of The Doctor to help himself fight the threat of the famous, 'missing presumed dead' Timelord Omega, who sacrificed himself many centuries before to give their race the power to master time travel... and who now lives in a black hole of his own making, out for revenge.

This was the first time in the history of the show that two or more incarnations of The Doctor had met each other and, to date, this has only happened four other times (not counting CGI trickery of half glimpsed running feet etc). This marks the first time that Patrick Troughton’s wonderful second Doctor would appear in one of these crossover stories (also his first time in colour) and he would go on to do the same in 1983 and 1985 (although his 1985 appearance, reviewed by me here, is perhaps best left forgotten). Also, because of the failing health of first Doctor William Hartnell, a small ‘limbo’ set was constructed at his home and his few brief scenes, roughly one per episode, were relayed as communications to Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee’s Doctors by video screen... the excuse being that the timelords didn’t have enough energy to fully transport him to rendezvous with the others.

And for an obvious, celebratory gimmick episode it’s actually quite well written, at least in terms of dialogue and the story isn’t too bad either. The show also features the then current Doctor’s companion Jo Grant, played by the inimitable Katy Manning (this would be her last season until she returned for two episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures opposite Matt Smith’s Doctor in the next century), Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge Stewart (played impeccably, as always, by Nicholas Courtney, who again made his swan song in a story from The Sarah Jane Adventures) and also a bigger part than normal for John Levene as Sgt. Benton (this is due to the part originally being earmarked for Frazer Hines to reprise his role as Second Doctor companion Jamie but, alas, he was busy doing Emmerdale Farm at the time... or Emmerdale as it seems to be known as today).

The chemistry between all the players is very strong and the humour coming from the dialogue is great. This one has probably one of my favourite scenes where, at UNIT HQ in the first episode, where the situation is already dire, the Brigadier asks The Doctor if there’s anything he can do to which Pertwee’s Doctor asks him to hand him a carbon rod. When the Brigadier does this, Pertwee uses it to stir his cup of tea... good stuff.

The really good decision the writers made in this was to not have the two primary Doctors, Troughton and Pertwee, who are present for all the episodes... get on with each other all that well. Just because you’re both the same person doesn’t mean you will agree on things and a great source of the humour and entertainment of this story is the constant bickering between the two of them, both put in their place by Hartnell at one point who calls his ‘replacements’ a dandy and a clown. Yep, there’s some good writing here. Such as the explanation of why so much stuff is pulled into the black hole when Omega is just after The Doctor... “Rather like taking a pill with a swig of water.” There’s even a joke reference in this, made by Katy Manning, to The Beatles song, I Am The Walrus.

I also liked the breakaway sets that were whisked away into the ‘quarry’ landscape of the planet in the black hole and the way bits of man made items are scattered about seemingly randomly in surrounding landscape... UNIT HQ even gets completely transported as the cliff hanger ending of one episode.

The special effects, though, are... not great. The electronic jelly that beams everything back to the black hole is a pretty rubbish looking video effect and the iconic gel guard monsters are actually quite awful and unconvincing suit creatures when you see them moving around. Quite disappointing for monsters who were never used again but whom everyone seems to remember (they even made it onto Weetabix cards, if memory serves).

Omega himself, a completely masked up figure, looks fairly impressive, a little like a golden pre-Darth Vader type presence. Alas, camera angles being what they are, especially when restored to Blu Ray, when the creature is revealed to have been eaten away with, as much of a surprise to him as to everybody else, nothing actually inside the suit, the illusion is ruined a little later on when you can clearly see the actors eyes behind the slits in the mask at one point.

About the Blu Ray... the transfer is pretty good but, for some reason the externally shot scenes, especially those at the beginning of the first episode, look fairly blurry and foggy still. I am guessing this is because the cameras weren’t quite in focus, maybe and, bearing in mind the way these episodes would have been received on first broadcast, probably nobody minded much. It wouldn’t look very different on those old TV sets compared to the rest of the footage, which on this new Blu Ray looks very sharp in comparison.

And that’s me about done on The Three Doctors. Omega would return in a different form for a Fifth Doctor story in the 1980s and the other thing that’s very important about this episode is that, as a reward for helping out the Timelords and saving the known universe, The Doctor is gifted with the components and memory needed to be able to control his TARDIS and travel in time again. His exile to Earth, brought in at the very end of the last Troughton episode and designed to make the show cheaper by not having to constantly make unrealistic looking alien sets, was over. Of course, this meant a very reduced role for the Brigadier and the rest of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (as it was in those days.. I’m not having any of this new Unified stuff, thank you very much) officers in the show but they wouldn’t disappear completely... not yet anyway. Overall, one of the more enjoyable stories and a cracking set of scenes with the Second and Third Doctors working together and bickering their way through the story. An entertaining celebration of a series which, I’m sure, had already run far longer than the show’s original producers had expected it to.

Doctor Who - The Edge Of Destruction

Quo Tardis

Doctor Who - The Edge Of Destruction
8th and 15th February 1964 BBC1

Okay, so The Edge Of Destruction is one of those old Doctor Who serials that I’ve wanted to see for a long time because it’s unique in a lot of ways. As far as I can remember, this was the first and only two part story until 18 years later, with the broadcast of the Peter Davison story Black Orchid. It’s also the very first bottle neck episode in the history of the show which, considering it’s only the third story in, could be something of a record for TV bottlenecks. In case you don’t know, a bottleneck episode is a show which is made on a very limited budget, to compensate for overspend on other episodes of a TV show. They’re very cheap and you can usually tell when you’re watching one within five minutes because, often, the episode will consist of an excuse to gather just a few of the cast in a single room where they reminisce about things that have happened recently. The episode would usually then quickly devolve into a series of clips/highlights from previous episodes of the show so the running time is padded out completely and, hey presto, you’ve hardly spent any money on that edition.

Bottlenecks weren’t a new thing even back in 1964, of course. I know the theatrical serials from the 1930s to the 1950s, such as the Flash Gordon serials, would also tend to contain a similarly lower budgeted episode where the good guys would stop and take stock of their current situation. I don’t know what year the phenomenon came to television, though. I do suspect, however, that the producers of the show were in a tight spot after presumably spending a good chunk of their money on the prior story, which was the debut of The Doctor’s most famous adversary, The Daleks.

Well, The Edge Of Destruction doesn’t contain any flashbacks to previous episodes but it does limit itself to the only four regular cast of the show at that time, comprising William Hartnell as The Doctor, Jaqueline Hill as Barbara, William Russel as Ian and Carol Ann Ford as The Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan. And it’s all a very simple, studio bound set as, for the only time I can remember in the show, the entire story is set inside the TARDIS, in just two rooms... mostly the main console room. A few years ago there was another ‘mostly’ TARDIS set story called Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS (which I reviewed here) but while the majority of that story took place in The Doctors favourite mode of transport, not all of it did. There were some significant sections set outside the TARDIS whereas this story has absolutely no external setting at all, apart from what is seen on the TV monitor in the background of the set. Running at about 50 minutes for the two episodes, it’s also a bit longer than the more modern story too.

One of the reasons I’d always wanted to check this one out is because the drama of this one strips away the way the characters present themselves to each other, to a certain extent, as they all turn against each other to try and figure out just what is going on. They all wake up with temporary amnesia and go into almost a trance state at times, often cowering in pain as they try to approach the central control panel. There is even a moment where Susan tries to attack Ian with a pair of scissors, instead letting them rip and tear into a couch she’d been resting on. I noticed, at this point, that the music illustrated her actions with stabs of tone which, although they weren’t performed here on strings, I suspect owed a certain debt to Bernard Herrmann’s similar musical shenanigans in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho, already. Susan also later threatens Barbara with these same scissors and it’s interesting to see these characters suddenly so paranoid about each other at such an early stage in the show’s run. Although it’s a bottleneck story, I’m guessing viewers at the time must have been riveted to this one. Similar hostility is shown in the end of the first episode’s cliff hanger... which concludes with Ian, who was supposedly drugged by The Doctor, attempting to strangle the time lord where he stands.

The fallout in terms of character’s relationships with each other in this one is that, after the story has concluded, Barbara does quite a bit of extended sulking, The Doctor finally apologises to her and tells her that she is a valuable contributor to his accidental crew. So the episode does go some way towards building the characters and the way they approach each other in future episodes.

The reason The Doctor realises her value is because, at some point in the second episode, Barbara realises that there’s some kind of pattern to various strange things that have been happening in the TARDIS and this leads The Doctor and Ian to eventually conclude that the problem is that the TARDIS is stuck going backwards and forwards in time between the start of the universe and, presumably, the planet Skaro, where our heroes had been to in the prior episodes of the season. So once The Doctor works out what’s wrong, he manages to put things right and then go on to explain that, although the TARDIS is a mechanical device, the funny shenanigans such as clock hands disappearing are the machine trying to warn them. And it’s here that we get the first idea that, despite The Doctor’s protestations in this episode, the TARDIS is actually a conscious, sentient entity and, of course, this would be picked up in the Russel T. Davies era of the show, culminating in the Steven Moffat produced episode, written by Neil Gaiman, The Doctor’s Wife (reviewed here).

Unfortunately, as far as I’m concerned, this explanation makes not one lick of sense as to why anything has been happening at all in the story and goes down as one of the most ‘WTF?’ moments in Doctor Who history. Seriously, a time loop means everyone keeps going into a trance, losing their memory, getting headaches and then pinching pains in the back of their neck... not to mention large, unhealthy doses of paranoia. It’s a poor explanation for what has been, up until this point, a fairly interesting story.

That being said, if you’re going to do a bottleneck episode, this is the way to do it. It’s got a nice, claustrophobic feeling to the two episodes and even when Susan and Barbara go outside the TARDIS to lead us into the next episode, they are only viewed by Ian, The Doctor and ourselves through the scanner in the TARDIS so... yeah, all set in the TARDIS. Good stuff. This is certainly one of the favourites of the, admittedly few, Hartnell stories I’ve seen and, though I wouldn’t start with it if you’ve never seen any of this era of the show’s stories, I would certainly include this one in on a viewing list. In fact, those first three Hartnell stories are definitely worth seeing in order, I suspect, as the characters and their relationship to each other are properly set up over the course of many weeks. Despite the sheer lunacy of the ‘answer’ to the mystery of the story, it’s a pretty good entry in the series and, possibly, even goes into Sapphire And Steel territory at one point. Definitely worth taking a look at this one.

Doctor Who - The Dalek Invasion Of Earth

Hello, Dalek!

Doctor Who -
The Dalek Invasion Of Earth
21 November - 26th December 1964 BBC1
BBC DVD Region 2

“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 am not mistaken in mine.”
The Doctor, The Dalek Invasion Of Earth

Well, it’s been a while since I personally watched the original version of the Doctor Who story The Dalek Invasion of Earth. My previous experience of this classic William Hartnell tale dates back to the days of VHS, when I probably borrowed it off my cousin. Of course, this 1964 adventure was remade two years later by Amicus studios as Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150AD, following the success of their 1965 remake of the 1963 Doctor Who serial The Daleks, entitled Dr. Who and the Daleks, for the big screen.

Now, while I quite like this original version of the story, I have to say I much prefer the big screen version a whole lot better with its crazy music, vibrant colours and more condensed, pacey version of the plot points. However, this version runs for six, 25 minute episodes instead of the 84 minutes of the movie version, and both have good things and bad things to offer the casual watcher of a story like this.

The first episode starts off strong with a slightly disturbing moment as a robo-man’s brains are finally scrambled enough by the device he’s wearing so that he throws himself in the river to drown, his floating body used in this and subsequent shots. Then the TARDIS materialises, not with the sound we know these days but with much less fuss. Interestingly, it’s not a model but a life size prop and... it’s looking a hell of a lot more authentic in this incarnation than it has done on many occasions in the intervening years. It even has two of its windows tilted open... not something I remember seeing before (or should that be since?). The TARDIS is still carrying its original crew who first set off in their adventures the year before, namely William Hartnell as The Doctor,  Carol Ann Ford as his grandaughter Susan, Jacqueline Hill and William Russell... as Coal Hill School teachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton. Of course, we shall be hearing more about Coal Hill School later in the year when the BBC launch their new Doctor Whoniverse spin off Class.

The four seperate into two groups after Susan sprains her ankle (no, really) and the TARDIS is accidentally buried under a falling bridge. Ian and The Doctor go to a warehouse, where they encounter the robomen while Susan and Barbara are picked up by the resistance. They soon discover that they are in the year 2164... which is 200 years after the episode was broadcast, of course. For some reason unknown to me, the big budget movie remake was set in the year 2150 so... I don’t know, maybe the producers of the movie version just liked rounded numbers.

At the end of the first episode, where Ian and The Doctor are cornered by robomen alongside the Thames, we get treated to the famous, classic reveal, cliffhanger shot. As they turn to hurl themselves into the river Thames and escape, not the best choice anyway if you don't want to get killed by the polution (in any century), we see a ripple on the surface and then a Dalek reveals itself as the main enemy of this story, slowly trundling out of the water and onto the bank of the river. Good stuff. This was only the Daleks second appearance, the first being just under a year before this in the second Doctor Who adventure but... I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to conclude that if series producer Verity Lambert hadn’t broken from her 'educational, history programme’ brief for the show in the second story... the series may not have continued running for too much longer. The Daleks were a huge hit on their first appearance and even more so with the release of more Dalek stories... as Dalekmania shook Britain in much the same way that Beatlemania had a year or two before.

It’s an interesting story and, as the groups of protagonists get further divided and find each other over the course of the six episodes they, independently of each other, all make their way with other characters to a mining operation using human slave labour in Bedford, to uncover the Dalek’s master plan of destroying the Earth’s core so our planet can be piloted around the galaxy like a huge spaceship. Fair enough, I guess.

There are quite a few differences from the film other than the obvious cinematic shorthand used in the later production. For a start, there’s certainly not an abundance of posters in post invasion London which are advertising the popular breakfast cereal Sugar Puffs like there are in the movie... where you can hardly look at any exterior shot without finding a Sugar Puffs poster at some point. The film version is, of course, very much an example of exclusive product placement gone mad and shattering the illusion of reality... unless mankind in the future really are subsisting on a diet of Sugar Puffs like they’re chowing down on Soylent Green.

The robomen are a very different beast here too. In the serial here they’re wearing very cumbersome, top heavy helmets and whatever clothes the human who was converted was wearing at the time. In the movie version it’s a much more military, deliberately Nazi-like affair with black, shiny uniforms and a sleek helmet not entirely unlike a German stormtrooper from the Second World War. It’s safe to say that the movie is pushing a slightly different commentary on the robomen than the no less sensitive but, certainly less demonised, versions in the serial. Also, I know these were being primarily watched on small, fuzzy screens which showed none of the detail you get these days but... it’s kind of hilarious when you realise the actor playing the roboman who throws himself into the river at the start of the first episode plays a roboman in various locations throughout the six episodes... and dies a fair few deaths too. Great stuff.

Other takeaways I got from this show was that, while the Daleks do say their trademark “Exterminate” a few times, it hadn't quite got the status it later achieved and, more often than not, they’ll just talk about people being killed instead. I also noticed one of the resistance fighters talking about striking a blow to give Europe a hope... so I guess by 2164 we must somehow be on very good terms again with our fellow Europeans after all this Brexit fuss... at least according to Doctor Who.

The ending of the final episode is quite dramatic and, surprisingly moving. The Doctor’s grandaughter has fallen in love with one of the resistance fighters but she has to leave him to carry on with her travels. However, The Doctor gets wind of this and locks her out of the TARDIS, abandoning her to a more stable future away from all his time travelling shenanigans. This is where the famous, farewell, ‘no regrets’ speech which I quote at the top of this review comes from. Even if you’ve never seen this episode, you’ve probably seen the speech because it is always used in documentaries about the show and in flashback sequences within the show itself. This was the very first time a companion had left the show but Carol Ann Ford would, of course, briefly return to the role opposite Richard Hurndall (standing in for the long dead Hartnell) in the 20th anniversary show, The Five Doctors.

And that’s that, I think. Doctor Who - The Dalek Invasion of Earth is something of a classic of the Hartnell era and definitely one to contemplate watching if you ever feel a hankering to watch a First Doctor adventure. Dated but kinda fun... but don’t count the movie version out just yet.

Doctor Who - The Tenth Planet

I Don’t Like Mondas

Doctor Who - The Tenth Planet
UK Airdate 8th - 29th October 1966
BBC Region 2

The Tenth Planet is one of those Doctor Who stories I’d not seen before (I started consciously watching the show, at the age of three, from Jon Pertwee’s first episodes in 1971) but it’s been something I’ve wanted to get around to seeing for a while. Unfortunately, the all important last episode of this story has been missing for quite some time and it’s a shame because it contains the sequence (which the BBC still have, albeit in truncated form) that is one of the reasons why this episode is still so sought after and near the top of everyone’s “missing presumed wiped” wanted list.

I’m talking, of course, about the regeneration sequence at the end of episode four. This story is the very last of Hartnell’s stories as The First Doctor in his original run, although he did briefly reprise the role for the 1973 tenth anniversary story The Three Doctors. When Hartnell was just too ill to be allowed to continue in the role, the people behind the show found a way to keep their extremely popular series running with a change of cast... thus the first regeneration scene, to allow the writers to change actor, and it was a bit of a clever idea for its time. The Doctor could be replaced any number of times and have a brand new personality to go with the new face and outfit each regeneration. So this really is a story which is a piece of television history.

The other reason I wanted to see it is because it’s the very first story in the show to feature The Doctor’s second best known enemy, the Cybermen. I’ve been seeing pictures of the original costume designs for years, which are a lot clunkier and primitive, and always thought they had a charm above and beyond the later designs of them (although the ones used for the Patrick Troughton story Tomb Of The Cybermen are also astonishingly good). Now that I’ve finally seen them in the flesh, so to speak, and heard the almost sing song voices and witnessed the unearthly, uneasy visual of them opening their mouths to speak and then their lips not moving as they talk, I have to say that it’s pretty much my favourite Cyberman design of all time.

The story in this one is pretty simplistic and features the return to our solar system of the Cybermen’s home world Mondas, the Tenth Planet of the title. Here they plan to drain the Earth of all its energy, leaving it a dead husk of a world, and take all of the humans back to Mondas, to delete their emotions and convert them into Cybermen. It’s up to the group of military people at the South Pole, in the far future year of... um... 1986... to stop them, with a little help from The Doctor and his two travelling companions at this point in time, Ben and Polly.

And when I say, a “little” help from The Doctor, I really mean it. Hartnell is hardly in this story. He’s around for the first two episodes but, for the most part, just stands on the sidelines of the action and watches things develop, offering the odd bit of advice or two. By the time the third episode has come around, Hartnell was too ill to work for a while and so a body double collapses to the floor in a weakened state and he’s out of it for the entire episode. Sadly, when Hartnell does have a little more to do, in episode four, it’s the one episode that hasn’t survived and we are left with a quite nicely animated episode, pitched as visuals against the original sound recordings. Which is unfortunate but, it’s the best we can get until a miracle unearthing of the lost episode in future years, perhaps.

I’d have to say that, The Doctor has more to do in the old Target novelisation, in which the various things he had to do which were hastily reassigned to other actors for Episode 3, are still in tact in the book. It’s not the best Doctor Who story I’ve seen, I have to say, but it was completely worth it for the chance to see, and hear, the original Cybermen and to finally watch one of the most iconic serials in the show’s, to date, 51 year old history (it will be 52 years in November 2015). If you want to get a taste of William Hartnell in the role of The First Doctor then, sad to say it, but this probably isn’t the one to watch. However, any fan of Doctor Who would probably want to see this because of its place in the history of the show and due to it being the genesis of the Cybermen. I have to say, it’s whet my appetite for seeing more of the Hartnell stories, so I will hopefully be pursuing a few more of those on this blog, over the next couple of years (along with some more, incomplete Troughton stories). The Tenth Planet is probably not one for the casual viewer but to genuine fans of the show it’s something of a “must see”.  So if you count yourself a such... maybe give it a go sometime.

An Adventure In Space And Time

Cinema Verity

An Adventure In Space And Time
UK Airdate: 21st November 2013
BBC 2

Last night I saw one of the best put together pieces of contemporary television I’d seen in a long time. Written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Terry McDonough, An Adventure In Space And Time is a dramatic retelling of the story behind the first three years of Doctor Who and has been made as part of the fifty year anniversary of the show. It’s not, to be fair, all that detailed a look at the process and events that went down, for sure, but it doesn’t have to be and, anyway, it isn’t the intent. It’s a docu-drama with the emphasis on drama and, therefore, a certain amount of dramatic license has been allowed and utilised throughout the running time. This, however, is one of it’s strengths and allows the writer to weave a spell and create an atmosphere something closer to the heart of the matter... a place where mere facts can’t always explore so... well... so truthfully.

There’s one iffy moment near the end that, right since I’d heard they were making this show, I was wondering whether they’d be bold enough to try and was almost hoping that they would. Well they did but I don’t think the moment I have in mind really quite worked as well as it could but... oh, I’ll get to that later. You might want to shy away from the last few paragraphs here if you haven’t yet seen this and want to have a surprise moment still be a surprise.

Now, as I said, it’s not trying to cover everything but what this show does, and does very well, is take some of the triumphant moments from the first three years of Doctor Who and use them as story highlights to reveal the physical events and the beating hearts that birthed the series. It doesn’t harm things, either, when the casting is so good. David Bradley, Hogwarts caretaker from the Harry Potter films, amongst other roles, plays the actor William Hartnell absolutely pitch perfect and the cast he is with all deliver and, miraculously, many of the actors utilised here look very much like the people they’re playing. This helps but, honestly, they are all so fine in their roles that you almost wouldn’t mind if they looked nothing like the people in question (although it obviously assists very well in maintaining the illusion) as they all tackled the roles, or at least the popular perception of who those people were, with absolute charm and vitality. Jessica Raine channelling the strength of character of the show’s “first female producer at the BBC” Verity Lambert, for example, is absolutely compelling and creates a very strong positive role model for aspiring young people everywhere.

The way the story is introduced with a few scenes from the end of the time period under scrutiny is absolutely brilliant too. Starting off with a scene with Hartnell (sorry... Bradley) in a car, gazing at a police box after he’s just been, pretty much, fired from the role of The Doctor, due to various reasons, the narrative jumps forward a little in time to the shooting of his last story, The Tenth Planet, which introduced the Cybermen to the world, is all pretty good... and then the show jumps back via the TARDIS control panel readout to 1963, which is revisited and used as a device to click off each year as it occurs in the drama. I always kinda half like, half disagree with Mark Gatiss’’ writing (which isn’t a bad emotional response to be left with by someone actually... just means he’s a legitimate artist) but I have to say he’s been slowly growing on me over the last few years and, out of the few bits I’ve seen by him, this stands out as his best work to date... at least in my book.

The show also magically captures the spirit of the sixties, or more accurately, captures that distanced, nostalgic feel that passes as a kind of postmodern shorthand these days for the sixties, and this is injected lovingly into every frame and used to bring out the story in the most wonderous ways. Throughout the running time there are various geeky references and in-jokes and I’m certainly not buying into everything here as gospel, but it’s enjoyable stuff. There also seems to be an undercurrent of things which are put there, not for the likes of me, and which are kinda half hidden beneath the surface of the thing... which I could just about detect but which I can’t quite put a finger on because I don’t know the people in question. I was kinda half picking up  on a repression of certain hints of alternate sexual chemistry with some of the characters, for example... never once spelt out in any fashion but certainly simmering somewhere down there in the subtext. I suspect this is done for the sake of subtlety and to touch upon certain issues for the sake of accuracy without bringing it up as any kind of judgement in itself... which is great. Kind of like extras for the people in question who happen to be watching this show.

Some of the recreations of the clips from the episodes are right on the money too and it looks like the people both in front of, and behind, the camera made every effort to make them so... much more than, say, the crew of the film Hollywoodland did when they were inaccurately reproducing episodes of the George Reeves, 1950 TV show The Adventures Of Superman, for example. And I loved the little nods to the shows past with such villains as the Cybermen, The Daleks, The Menoptra (from The Web Planet story) and Marco Polo from... um... yeah I think you get the idea. I'm just thankful they didn't show the Zarbi.

I also found myself very taken with an anachronistic piece of dialogue which was just perfect but which looks forward to the show’s future while referring back to the past of the audience... when Hartnell finds himself “let go” from the show, he uses exactly the same “I don’t want to go” bits of dialogue that David Tennant spoke just before regenerating in his last story. Which is a bit of an amazing temporal anomaly if you think about it but, you know, that’s what Doctor Who does best after all and... who cares? There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Another main “moment” that happened in this whimsical vein, and read no further if you don’t want to spoil the surprise, is something which I thought would be a cool idea for the people behind this to do when they first announced it... I just didn’t think they would be brave enough to do so. Well I was wrong, they did it. Matt Smith is in here, playing himself, playing The Doctor. Or at least the ghost of him from the future, who appears in Hartnell’s mind as he contemplates his last moments on the show. It’s a nice, but cheesy moment, which didn’t quite work for me but Gatiss and the producers were brave to give it a shot and, well, since I also thought it would be a good idea back before they started making this thing, I can’t be too critical of somebody having this idea and running with it. I’m not sure it quite fits and it certainly dates it and anchors future viewings of the show to a 2013 time frame, but it’s quite fun and certainly within the spirit of the show. So I’ll shut up whining about that now and whine about a couple of other things instead.

These things being a few missed opportunities in terms of things covered which I feel might have been good to include and which I suspect were excluded due to factors like running time. The creation of Ron Grainer’s title theme tune, for example. He is credited visually with this but Delia Derbyshire, who was instrumental to the sound of that theme, was kind of short changed here, I felt. Also, a little epilogue with Hartnell’s participation in the ten year anniversary show The Three Doctors might have been nice but it would have maybe have changed the tone the writer wanted from the ending. What I would have liked to have seen, though, since the show was extremely informative to me and showed me a few things I didn’t know (yeah, I know, been watching the show for nearly the whole 45 years of my life and still managed to be informed by this... marvellous) is what Hartnell’s reaction and thoughts at the time were to Peter Cushing playing the big screen version of The Doctor (or actually a character called Doctor Who in the movies, if memory serves me right). It would have been interesting to see how this impacted on him, considering the timing of those movies.

At the end of the day, though, this programme was damn near perfect and, as I emphasised at the start of this review, one of the finest pieces of drama put out on television in years (and easily better than the majority of the episodes from the actual show itself, over the last few years). If you are a lifelong fan of the show, or even if you’re just curious about the early days and Hartnell’s involvement in the show and the gumption of Verity Lambert to get it made, then this one off special is indeed an essential piece of viewing. If the 50th anniversary episode shown on Saturday 23rd November 2013 is even half as good as this one, then we’re in for a good time on that one too.