Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 716: Battlefield, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I really do love it when a story comes along that I’m not really expecting a great deal from, and then I end up absolutely loving it. Battlefield is one of those stories. As the closing credits kicked in on today’s episode, I declared to the empty room that this is brilliant, and that I’m really - really - liking it. Oh, I’ve still not really forgiven that nonsense in the first episode about no one having the faintest clue about the Doctor, and opening the season with a shot of a garden centre is unforgivable (even if that wasn’t the original plan), but there’s an awful lot to enjoy about this one.

And I keep coming back to the fact that I know I’d have loved this as a kid. The more the story goes on, the more I’m watching it with the mind of an excited child as opposed to a ‘grown up’ fan. During the first episode, I thought that Bambera was rubbish - with far too much comedy for the character she’s supposed to be. Now, though, I’m actively embracing the comedy, and it’s a shame that we only ever get to see her this once! I’ve often mourned the lack of a consistent ‘UNIT family’ outside of the Pertwee years (which is why occasional returns for characters such as Magambo between Turn Left and Planet of the Dead, or the team headed up by Kate Stewart in the more recent episodes really appeal to me), and I’d quite like to see how one would have been handled in the early 1990s, with Bambera as the head of the organisation, and our faithful Lethbridge-Stewart cropping up from time-to-time to lend a hand.

Oh, and I have to mention him here, don’t I? There’s something quite bold about not having the Doctor and the Brigadier meet until this third episode, but the actual greeting is rather well handled when it does arrive; ‘who else would it be’ is absolutely perfect for the Brig we know and love. He settles in with the Seventh Doctor pretty much instantly, and they continued to amuse me as a pairing throughout the rest of the episode. I commented the other day about the programme bringing back as many of its icons as possible before the end, but I’m terribly glad that they got the Brig back for this one - his final appearance in Doctor Who proper (he’ll be cropping up for Dimensions in Time in a couple of weeks, and then for a Sarah Jane Adventures story later on, which I’ll certainly be watching, even if I don’t write about it in the Diary).

While we’re on the subject of bringing back old companions, I’d better make mention of Jean Marsh, too. In the special features on this DVD, Jean goes into quite a lot of depth about the way that she saw her character, and how she chose to play it based on the material she was given… you sort of get the impression that she’s giving it quite a lot more thought than perhaps anyone else. That said, I’m glad I listened to her opinions on the part last night, because it means I’ve been watching her performance in today’s episode with a slightly different view. She really is giving all she can to the character, and it’s coming off the better for it. Marsh talks at some length about the way that she thinks nothing of killing someone, but then restores the sight of a blind woman, and it’s really beautifully done in this episode; I’d sort of forgotten just how close together the two acts are, as part of the same scene.

Not all the credit can be given over to Ms Marsh, though, because a lot needs to be laid at the door of Ben Aaronovitch, who’s back on writing duties this time around. I was very impressed with his script for Remembrance of the Daleks last season, and he’s managed to bring the same skill in to this story. He’s managed to balance the comedy and the drama particularly well, and once again slipped in several continuity references to the past without them feeling overbearing or shoehorned in. It’s a pity that this is the last script we’ll be seeing from him in the programme - I’d have loved to see what he’d do in the early days of the 21st century series.

One final thing to bring up - Sylvester McCoy. During The Happiness Patrol last week, I seemed almost surprised by the fact that he was rather good in the part - having been so unsure about him during those first few stories. The one thing that’s always troubled me about McCoy’s performance, though, is when he’s asked to do something big, and angry. There’s a few sequences that stand out in my mind (notably from Survival), which I recall as not being very good, because he simply couldn’t handle such ‘big’ moments. But then you’ve got this episode, in which he runs in to the middle of a battlefield and bellows at the combatants… and it’s wonderful. It’s one of his greatest moments as the Doctor, and it’s really won me round on his ‘angry’ acting. I’m just hoping now that I’m mis-remembering the scenes from Survival, and they they won’t be tainting this one in the near future… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 715: Battlefield, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I’m almost surprising myself when I say that this one is really good! Yesterday, I mentioned that Battlefield didn’t have the strongest reputation behind it, and I’d sort of resigned myself to thinking that it would probably be the weak link in Season Twenty-Six, but actually, I’m really caught up in things, and I’m really enjoying it!

In many ways, this feels a lot like a Matt Smith episode. There’s strange goings on with time, with the suggestion that a large chunk of the guest cast have encountered the Doctor at a point later in his time stream than he is currently, a lot of bluster on the part of the Doctor as he tries to remain in charge while piecing everything together, and lots of little moments that wouldn’t feel at all out of place in a more recent Steven Moffat episode. The Doctor looking down at the mysterious inscription in the ground and commenting that it says ‘dig hole here’ in his own handwriting elicited a huge laugh from me, and I love him working out how to open a door inside the space ship simply by barking ‘open up, it’s me’. It’s giving McCoy a chance to flex his more ‘entertainment’ muscles again, too, which is always fun.

Even the mythologising of the Doctor that we get in this story seems to fit better with the depiction of the Doctor in the 21st century version of the programme. Oh, sure, there’s been elements of it right the way through the programme, going right back to almost the very beginning, but there’s some lovely descriptions of the Doctor here - that he ‘rides the ship of time’ and that he has ‘worn many faces’ - which would sit right at home in the modern programme, and are really rather lovely. It often gets said that the McCoy years are very much a basis that the 2005 rival picks up from, and I’m seeing that more and more as the episodes roll by. Add in the on-going character arcs for Ace and the Doctor, the relationships with the companions’ family (this was perhaps more prevalent with Tegan, but there a new relative just popped up when they needed to put someone in danger), and the fact that the programme has become far more Earth-centric in this final season - there’s a solitary alien world in Survival, but even that’s tied to Perivale - I can really see where the comparisons come from.

Aside from all of that, there’s also the sheer fun of the idea at the heart of this one. It’s Doctor Who does the Arthurian legends… and being Doctor Who, they can’t just go for setting it in a time of myths and magic, but they instead make the knights dimension-hopping soldiers who’ve been caught up in a time-travel based plot with a future version of the Doctor, and they pit them against UNIT. I mean, come on, that’s a brilliant Idea, and it really is something I’d have loved as a kid. I was so completely in to castles and knights, and wizards… give them laser guns and point them towards a nuclear convoy, and it only gets better!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 713: The Curse of Fenric, Episode Four

Dear diary,

The cliffhanger to yesterday’s episode, leading in to this one, must surely rank among the very best that the programme has ever done? It’s so firmly embedded on to my mind that I can’t help but quote along as it plays out - right down the the intonation of each word. It’s also quite telling that the use of the words ‘Time Lord’ here carry real impact. We’re in a period of the show where there’ve been several references to the Time Lords and Gallifrey quite vital to the stories (Remembrance of the Daleks and Silver Nemesis both go so far as to namecheck Rassilon and Omega, while inventing new parts of the Gallifreyan mythos), and yet somehow, the whole concept of the Time lords feels more distant than at any time since - quite possibly - the 1960s.

By the time Pertwee’s Doctor arrives on the scene, the Time Lords are always sending him off on missions, and they begin to lose some of their grandeur. Once you’re into the late 1970s, you’ve got the likes of The Deadly Assassin letting us actively in to their world, and then The Invasion of Time littering it with cheap plastic furniture. I’ve mentioned enough times in the last six months how much I dislike the 1980s version of the society, with its marble effect and pastel colours, but suddenly here it’s become something rather special again.

Our last actual contact with another Time Lord was the Rani at the start of Season Twenty-Four (and it’s strange how long ago that feels now - the programme really does evolve in to a different beast in these final two years), and then the season before that was littered with Time Lords, but we never get to visit Gallifrey because it’s in political turmoil. Suddenly, the idea that this entity knows that the Doctor is a Time Lord and can make the word sound so sinister - in a story where you’re so not expecting to hear it - is wonderful, and it might just be my favourite part of the entire story. I can wholeheartedly guarantee that I’ll have watched the closing moments of Episode Three several times over before I next watch The Curse of Fenric in its entirety.

Add to all this the fact that Fenric is really rather good, thank you very much. I love it when villains in Doctor Who are given a vein of comedy, and Dinsdale Landen plays the possessed Judson so perfectly. He manages to make the performance camp, but without pushing it too far. I love the way he reacts to the Ancient One not being around ready for his revival, and I’ve more than once used the line ‘don’t interrupt me when I’m eulogising’. Frankly, I find excuses to slip it in to my day-to-day life. I think the only issue that I have with Fenric is that he’s defeated very easily, isn’t he? We’ve had three episodes building up to his release, with the stakes (and the stress) growing steadily across those episodes. We then find out that he’s been manipulating other recent events in the Doctor’s life - citing the chess set in Lady Peinforte’s study and Ace’s arrival on Ice World as examples. He’s supposedly this great cosmic force, evil since the dawn of time… and yet he struggles very much with a chess problem until Ace gives him the answer, then he grandstands for a bit before being wiped out with a deadly poison. It feels as though he should be a bit more of a problem to dispose of…

Which brings up a point that I’ve been musing a bit in the last couple of weeks. As I’m making my way through the McCoy years, I’m becoming ever more determined to listen to all of the Seventh Doctor’s audio adventures. Don’t worry - I’m not suddenly going to be dropping them in to this marathon and extending it out by another year, but I’m certainly more eager than ever before to hear them all. I’ve dipped in and out of them from time to time, but I’d love to follow the continuing story, because it very much builds on what we see on screen in this period of the programme. I know, for example, that Fenric shows up again at one stage, and I’ve head an episode in which the Doctor and Ace manage to check in on little Audrey; there’s something very appealing about the idea of hearing this story continue to play out, and I think it’s probably going to be my next ‘marathon’ undertaking once this whole watch-through is over in a few months.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 712: The Curse of Fenric, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Once upon a time, when I was living in my flat in Norwich, I used to have a shelf of Doctor Who action figures up in the living room. Each Doctor - from Hartnell to Smith at the time - was accompanied by an enemy from their era. Hartnell had a Dalek, Troughton had an *Invasion*-style Cyberman, Pertwee had a Sea Devil (and/or the Master, depending on my mood), Tom Baker had the K1 Robot, Davison had the Ainley Master (or, as Nick likes to point out, Kameleon), Colin Baker had an Earthshock-era Cyberman, and McCoy had two Haemovores. Now, Character Options have never produced any Haemovore figures, but I had a friend who made some really great custom models to suit the range, and when I saw that he was selling off a few of the vampiric creatures, I leapt at the chance to own them. Specifically, it was the couple that we see peering round the tombstone here - presumably the Sundviks? 

I love the design of the Haemovores, and I really think that they’re a great example of just how brilliant the monster design is in this season. In the next story we’ve got the Destroyer coming up - which is another fab design that I’m surprised hasn’t yet been immortalised in action figure form - but the Haemovores really made an impact on me early into my journey to becoming a *Doctor Who* fan. Regular readers will no doubt be surprised that they were etched on the my mind while reading Doctor Who: The Legend, and every time I come back to this story, I’m a little bit delighted to find that I’m loving the look all over again. That we get to see them besieging the church is just a bonus, really!

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been complaining that even though I knew where The Curse of Fenric was heading, it had completely lost me along the way. There’s been so much going on in this story, and it was all happening so quickly, that I’d completely failed to keep up with everything. Suddenly, today, I’ve realised why I’ve struggled so much - you’re not really supposed to understand what’s happening here. All the stuff with the Russians, and the vampires, and the evil fog… that’s all just to keep you interested and watching for two-and-a-half episodes, before you’re suddenly given some information about what’s happening at the same time as Ace. Quite how I’d managed to forget this beautiful exchange is beyond me;

ACE

You know what's going on, don't you? 

DOCTOR

Yes. 

ACE

You always know. You just can't be bothered to tell anyone. It's like it's some kind of game, and only you know the rules. You knew all about that inscription being a computer programme, but you didn't tell me. You know all about that old bottle, and you're not telling me. Am I so stupid? 

DOCTOR

No, that's not it. 

ACE

Why then? I want to know. 

DOCTOR

Evil. Evil since the dawn of time. 

ACE

What do you mean? 

DOCTOR

Will you stop asking me these questions? 

ACE

Tell me!

It’s the kind of scene that we’ve been needing to build towards for some time now with this pair - Ace has been caught up in the Doctor’s schemes since her second story, and while that’s not all that long ago at a time when the seasons are so short, it’s felt like a real through-arc building up to this. It’s taking that final scene from Silver Nemesis, and building on it before we move on to Ghost Light and seeing the Doctor push his companion into ever darker places.

And it’s something I’ve mentioned before, but you really do get the sense that Ace is growing up during her adventures. I’ve said elsewhere that I’d happily believe the pair of them have spent around two years beetling around the galaxies by this point, and I think all of Ace’s comments here in regards to not being a little girl any more and starting to change her mind about marriage and her future would certainly fit her at about eighteen years old. Yes, we all cringe a little bit during that flirting scene (‘faster than the second hands on a watch?’), but it’s another part of Ace’s evolution that feels right to be shown.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 711: The Curse of Fenric, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I don’t know what’s wrong with me this week, but I’m completely lost with this story! I mean… I know where it’s all building, as I said yesterday, and I’m enjoying it on the whole… but I’m struggling to keep up with it! Everything is moving very fast, with characters darting from one location to another, sometimes only remaining there for the duration of a very brief scene, before heading off to the next place. The Doctor is especially bad as a culprit of this, and I’ve very quickly lost track of everything. Is it just me? It’s not a particularly complex story, but it’s at a pace I’m simply not used to seeing from Doctor Who!

Still, as I’ve said, I’m enjoying the story irregardless of my ability to follow it. There’s just so much atmosphere to The Curse of Fenric, isn’t there? Something about the way the mist rolls in while Phyliss and Jean go for their swim sums up the entire story so perfectly, and it’s the first time in a while that I’ve been able to claim that it’s the kind of thing that would have taken a hold of my imagination as a child and hooked me right in to the programme. It continues to get better from there - when we next see them, having ended their previous scene on a shot of the empty water, it takes a moment to really register what’s happened. Have they been zombified? Are they simply okay? It’s not for a good few seconds that it hits you that their fingers and nails have grown long and spindly, and that they’re pale and drained of blood. They then tempt the Russian soldier in to the water, and watch on as the hands emerge from the water to drag him down. Later on in the episode, when those same creatures come marching from the sea, I always remember a note in the About Time books that makes reference to the fact that this is the late-1980s version of ‘monster emerges from water’, citing Full Circle’ and ‘The Sea Devils’ as earlier examples in the programme. It’s *such a great shot, though, isn’t it? And I think this may be the best example of it yet.

The thing I’m enjoying most about this episode has nothing to do with the effects or the eerie atmosphere, but is relevant to something I read recently. During Series Eight, I read a comment online regarding Frank Skinner’s appearance in Mummy on the Orient Express. Someone complained that it was ‘pushing stunt-casting to the same levels we got under John Nathan-Turner’, and suggested that it was bad for the show, citing ‘Beryl Reid, Ken Dodd, Nicholas Parsons, and Hale & Pace’ as examples. Now, I spoke about Beryl Reid’s casting during Earthshock and concluded that actually she probably wan’t quite right for the role. I also discussed Ken Dodd during Delta and the Bannermen, and decided that he was absolutely perfect for the part - and looking back he’s probably my favourite thing about that entire season; I still love the way he’s shot in the back as he tries to get away!

But I sincerely doubt I’m alone in saying that Nicholas Parsons in this story completely justifies the practice of casting well known ‘names’ for the show. He’s most well known for hosting Sale of the Century or for charing Just a Minute, and that’s often brought up when people take a pot shot at him taking on a dramatic role in this story, but he’s frankly wonderful as the vicar here. His performance is honestly one of the best that a guest actor has ever given to the programme, and I could quite happily spend time just watching him. I’ll admit that it doesn’t always work - again, Beryl Reid, I’m looking at you - but surely this is the ultimate example that just because you cast someone who’s mostly known for ‘light entertainment’, it doesn’t mean that they’re not right for Doctor Who, also?

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 710: The Curse of Fenric, Episode One

Dear diary,

Just as a recap to those of you who may not have been keeping up with the Diary over the last few weeks - I’m watching lots of Seasons Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six out of broadcast order because… well, because they work a bit better being watched in the order that they were intended to be seen in! I’m also going all out with The Curse of Fenric, and watching the Special Edition on the DVD, though I’m still breaking it down into individual days, just pausing the DVD at the appropriate cliffhanger points. I can’t tell you how tempting it was today just to carry on and watch it as a movie-length version, though! I think this story may have been the first McCoy tale that I ever saw, and there’s certainly a fair bit that I like about it…

Perhaps largely, it’s the relationship between the Doctor and Ace. It’s something I’ve been touching on for a while now, but they really do gel together as a team in a way that other Doctors and companions haven’t since about the time Romana was on the show. Don’t get me wrong - Davison worked very well with Tegan, and Colin Baker went well with Peri (even when they were arguing, in an odd sort of way) - but McCoy and Ace just fit, don’t they? I speculated during Remembrance of the Daleks that up to six months may have passed for the pair between their first meeting and the events of that story, and by the end of last season I’d decided that they’d already spent a year together. I think I’m willing to take another big leap here and say that we might well be coming up on the two-year mark. Something about the fact that the seasons are so short in this period (over in a fortnight!) makes it feel automatically as though there must be a lot of off-screen adventures happening somewhere, and the relationship between our leads just fits that idea beautifully.

I’m finding this episode a bit strange to come to now, because it’s a story that I’m so familiar with. I know that the Doctor will go on to battle with Fenric by the end, and that Ace is a pawn in this game, and yet this first episode doesn’t really give you many clues as to what’s going on. The Doctor has obviously come here with a distinct purpose (Ace is even dressed for the period when they arrive), and then he spends the episode running from location to location, but he seems to switch between knowing what’s going on, to not having a clue. I think I’m right in saying that he’s worked out that Fenric is involved somewhere (or, at the very least, he’s almost entirely certain that it must be him), but that he’s not entirely sure how everything factors in to Fenric’s plan? Or is he looking in to all of these things to confirm his theories about what’s happening? The problem is that because I’ve become so used to looking at this story as part of the ‘bigger picture’ within the era, it’s suddenly throwing me to be watching it properly again - it’s been a good few years!

From tomorrow’s instalment, I’m going to try and block all of that out of my mind, and just go along with the story. Certainly I’ve enjoyed today’s episode, but perhaps not as much as I was expecting to because there’s so much back and forth trying to get everything in to place so that the story can progress. It’s one of those occasions when knowing too much can have a detrimental effect - but I’m also quite keen on the idea of watching this story again in the very near future, once I’ve regained a better grounding of how the story works in itself, as opposed to being part of the overall story.