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

Day 185: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Five

Dear diary,

The more I look at the tele snaps for this story, the more I think the Yeti look brilliant. They just do! There's a shot early on in this episode where three of the beasts make their way across the courtyard of the monastery, and it just looks brilliant. What with the Cybermen in the last story and the Ice Warriors coming up in the next one, there's certainly a lot of tall monsters around in this season.

I'm also finding that I like the idea of the Yeti being controlled by the small models more and more, too. Though I've never seen The Abominable Snowmen before, I have seen Downtime more than once (for my sins, though I still think it would have been great adapted into a Sarah Jane Adventures story - imagine Yeti stomping their way up Bannerman Road!), and I'd never quite understood the point of the little wooden Yeti that's so key to the plot there.

Actually, there's quite a lot about Downtime that's confused me over the years, and I think that might be one of the resins I've never really managed to get my head around the Great Intelligence. For some reason, my mind goes all over the place in Downtime, and gets confused about Victoria looking for her dead father in Det Sen Monastery, where she encounters the long-dead Travers (who's played by Watling's real-life dad… see how I manage to confuse myself?), and then there's some stuff about the Yeti invasion of London, which is still to come for me in the marathon…

As if that wasn't bad enough, I'm still struggling to tie up the Great Intelligence we see here with the one from The Snowmen, The Bells of St. John, and The Name of the Doctor. Piecing together what I've gotten from this story and what I vaguely recall from the last series of Who, this is what I think the Intelligence's timeline is like. Anyone care to point me in the right direction? I've made a bit of a guess in relation to how the Intelligence came to Earth, so bear with me…

1) The Great Intelligence is a formless entity that floats around the stars. It may or may not be (depending on how you class the books) a being left over from a previous universe. While it's very intelligent, it longs to have a physical form.

2) While it's floating around, wondering how to gain a physical body, he encounters Padmasamabhava's mind on the Astral Plane, somewhere around the 17th Century. Using the monk's mind, he is drawn to Earth but cannot materialise. He intends to replace humanity with Ice People (that's his plan in The Snowmen, I think…), and so possesses some snow in the Himalayas, and directed it to London (Britain is a great empire at this point - you want to take over the world? London is a good place to start…).

3) The snow is then made into a snowman by the young Simeon, who grows up under the Intelligences guidance. The Doctor manages to defeat the Intelligence, dropping a big hint about the London Underground (while also seeming to not realise who the Intelligence is) and then muses that it will learn to live without a host body.

4) Upon defeat, the Intelligence draws back to the Astral Plane, where he's still in contact with Padmasamabhava, and has kept the monk alive for centuries. He starts work on a new plan which will allow him to take the form of a load of foam. Y'know, just 'cos. He then builds robot Yeti to protect his pyramids - the means through which his new form can enter the world.

Now, I've not seen The Web of Fear yet, but I think I can more-or-less guess where things go from here (broadly speaking, anyway). I don't want to make some massive assumptions and look like a complete fool if I'm wrong, though, so we'll pick this timeline up in a couple of weeks when the Intelligence makes a comeback. It's taking some thinking, but I'm pretty sure I've got it worked out nicely, now, and it makes sense!

The problem is, while I quite like the grand idea of it (and if things go the way I think during The Web of Fear, there's suddenly more justification for the Great Intelligence committing suicide to destroy the Doctor at the end of the most recent series), I'm still just not all that involved in The Abominable Snowmen as a whole. Ho hum, one more episode to go, and I'm expecting lots of Yeti action, so that could be good!

a 

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

Day 183: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Somewhere in my mass of notes for The Tomb of the Cybermen, I made a remark that it was a slight twist on the base-under-siege format, as the 'heroes' and the 'villains' were both inside the base, and it was more about trying to stop them from getting to a certain part of the base, or using a certain type of equipment. When the first episode of this tale told us that the Yeti had been getting more aggressive and heading closer and closer to the monastery, I thought we were in for a more run-of-the-mill adventure, with the bad guys attacking the base.

So the presence here of the Yeti being controlled from within the monastery is a welcome surprise. As I said yesterday, I know who is behind it all, but not how he operates, and I didn't realise he was going to be actively inside the building. It does make me wonder quite why the Great Intelligence would be brining the Yeti closer and closer to the place he (or, at least, his mouthpiece) is hiding in, though…

I'm also trying to piece together the Great Intelligence's timeline. In The Snowmen (How did I not figure out the surprise appearance until well into the episode - given that title?), the Doctor comments that the Intelligence will learn to operate without a physical form. This was in the late Victorian period - thirty or forty years before this tale is set. I thought, what with the disembodied voice and all, that we'd be seeing just that: the Great Intelligence working without a body. Don't get me wrong, I didn't actually expect it to match up perfectly with a story made forty-odd years later, but I did think that these event would have been taken into account when writing that Christmas special.

As it is… I'm not completely sure. It feels like a massive step backwards for the Intelligence. Yes, the robot Yeti are quite impressive and the control spheres are pretty cool, but they're nowhere near as advanced as the sentient snow he'd been using decades ago. Is it just because he's weak? Equally, were told here that the Intelligence will finally be able to gain physical form, and end its wanderings in space… I know it could have been floating around the stars ever since the Doctor destroyed it's previous host body, but the wording here imp lies a long period of not having any kind of physical form.

These things would probably bother me less if I hadn't seen the Christmas episode so recently (well, last Christmas), and they're only minor niggles for now. I'm also very aware that I'm only half way through The Abominable Snowmen at this point, and things may tie up neater towards the end. Hopefully.

I'm not all about complaining today, though, because Victoria's being given plenty to do again! Hooray! She's been a bit of a yo-yo so far, flitting between simply being there to scream ('Jamiiiiieeeeee!') and being a good companion - for much of today's episode she's firmly in the latter camp. 'Aren't you a little bit curious?' she asks when trying to find her way to the inner sanctum, and she's later warned off being too inquisitive. When she finds out that the Doctor and Jamie have gone off to hunt a Yeti, she's really not pleased to be left behind. We're a far cry from the feeble prisoner of the Daleks we had a couple of stories ago, and I'm very pleased to see that she does have potential…

a 

a  a

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

Day 182: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

As much as I've been enjoying listening to the soundtracks over the last couple of months (it's become a way of life, and having an episode on during my walk home each day has become something of a routine), it really does help when there's an actual, surviving episode to go on. I think I was rather spoiled by having all of The Tomb of the Cybermen to watch, so it felt like a bit of a step backwards to have little to base yesterday's episode on than tele snaps and location photos.

I've found myself far more drawn to this episode of the story than I did yesterday. In part, it's possibly because there's a bit more going on today than we had yesterday, but it doesn't hurt that if we do encounter a less interesting part of the story, it's got some lovely direction to fall back on. This is Gerald Blake's first time directing on Doctor Who (and he won't be back until The Invasion of Time!), but he's off to a great start, really injecting the story with some atmosphere.

The dark corridors of the monastery really are the perfect setting for a Doctor Who tale, and the rest of the building holds up in its design, too. There's a section of narration on the soundtrack to Episode One where Frazer Hines describes the Doctor looking up at a large statue of a Buddah, and I vaguely pictured something of a manageable size… but there really is a massive statue at the back of one set!

Equally, the location footage looks great. The story gets a lot of stick for using the mountains of North Wales as a stand in for the Himalayas and while, no, it doesn't quite work, I'm ready to admit that it gives it a good shot, and it certainly looks impressive enough anyway. I seem to say this a lot as the shoe continues to broaden out into more varied (and lengthier) location shooting, but it really does have a feel of being completely unlike any other place we've seen before in the series. Mind you, doesn't Victoria say something about footprints in the snow in the first episode?

And then you've got the Yeti themselves. Often called out for being quite cute (which, yes, they are) they still come across as pretty impressive here. The cliffhanger reprise gives us a chance to see one of them lumbering into the cave towards Jamie and Victoria, and it looks as good as I could have hoped it might from picturing it yesterday. Admittedly, they look a little less imposing when they stand around outside the monastery and watch their friend be trapped, but they still look quite good. It's a pity that we've never had that action figure of them - I'd snap one up.

The Yeti's spheres are pretty impressive, too, perhaps even more so than the creatures themselves. We get to see a couple of instances of them moving here without any apparent outside help, and it works well both times. I'm not sure if it's more impressive to see that it actually can move through the thick mud (K9 would wince at the idea!) or the shot of it rolling along the edge of the Buddah statue, at some speed. I'm guessing the story would see more of this going on in the later (missing) episodes, so I'm glad we get to see at least a few brief snippets of it happening in the part that survives: at least it shows me that they could do it well!

Because I've been a fan for several years, I'm more than well aware that the omnipresent voice echoing through the inner sanctum of the monastery is that of the Great Intelligence, but it doesn't take anything away from it - it genuinely is quite imposing. 'Do not be afraid,' it booms at one point, when it's hard to be anything else! Having just gone through the most recent series of Doctor Who, I keep expecting Richard E Gran't face to appear in the smoke from the candles at some point. Maybe as an anniversary treat, they could have him re-dub all of the Great Intelligence's lines?

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

Day 181: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode One

Dear diary,

I think it's more than fair to say that whatever had to follow The Tomb of the Cybermen for me was going to have a tough job to keep me impressed, and I'm sorry to say that the first episode of The Abominable Snowmen has left me rather flat. To tell the truth, I think it really is as simple as me being disappointed that it isn't another episode of Tomb, because there's plenty here that would be right up my street in any other circumstance.

There's two areas of the story's setting that should particularly appeal to me. The fact that it all takes place in-and-around a remote monastery in the Himalayan mountains means that I've got an instant hook - take a Google Image search of these monasteries, there's some beautiful examples of them. They're just the right setting for a Doctor Who story, and especially suited to a base under siege tale - there's no one else for miles and miles around. I'm listening to today's episode on audio, so I've been picturing a desolate mountainside shrouded in snow and fog, though I fear tomorrow's episode may not tie in with that, if the location photos are anything to go by!

Quite aside from the location of the story, it's set in a period of history that really interests me - that late 1920s/early 1930s period where there were still areas of the Earth, to be explored. Oh, don't get me wrong, I know that we've still not been into the very depths of some rain forests, or to the peaks of every mountain, and the bottom of the sea leaves us with a vast area to explore, but this period in time is the dying days of the stereotypical 'explorer' image, when you can still sail out to sea and discover a new island which a satellite would have located in seconds today.

Then there's the idea of hinting for the Yeti. I've never really known where I stand on the idea of the Abominable Snowman. I don't think I believe in its existence, or if I do then I think it's probably just a type of rare monkey, and nowhere near as mystical as people think. But I love the idea of those early 20th century explorers going out to look for the creature, and the suggestion that the Doctor is from a newspaper, and there to sabotage the mission for a 'cheap headline' is great - and very in keeping with the era.

We've also got an opening scene that I really should absolutely love - it takes time to show us the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria all hanging around in the TARDIS and having fun together. It feels like an age since we've been able to spend some time inside the ship with our regular cast (I have to admit that I didn't really notice it fading out, but I think The Chase was probably the last time that we really had anything quite like this. Possibly I could cite the opening to The Moonbase where they joke about the Doctor over-shooting Mars).

It's not all fun and games, though, and there's plenty of drama to be found once the Doctor is inside the monastery and being held prisoner by the monks. It's always of interest when the Doctor is separated from his friends and left alone with no allies, and in a setting quite unlike any we've had in the series before, it's always nice to have something new. Jamie and Victoria's exploration of the Yeti cave isn't of as much interest to me, though, and I'm sorry to say I zoned out a little during this (Victoria's screaming soon snapped me back to attention, though!).

Here's hoping that the chance to watch tomorrow's episode will allow me to pull this story out from the previous one's shadow, and set me on a better course for the rest of the tale…

a 

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

Day 180: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode Four

Dear diary,

It seems strange, standing at this end of the story and looking back, that I ever considered it may not hold up. I’d worried that having found a fondness for other stories which I’d never really considered before, The Tomb of the Cybermen - ostensibly my ‘favourite’ Doctor Who tale - and suddenly find it underwhelming. Almost ten years of it being my favourite could be washed away in these four days.

What’s actually happened is quite the opposite – I’ve completely rediscovered my love for the story as though seeing it again for the very first time. It possibly helps that this is the first time since The War Machines, way back at the end of Season Three, that I’ve actually had a full story to watch. It could help that I’m already looking more favourably on this one than some of the stories I’ve never seen but haven’t heard great things about. Or it could be that, quite simply, The Tomb of the Cybermen is one of the all-time greats. Certainly, I’ve met a number of people over the years who have either cited it as their favourite, too, or at least considered that it’s a good contender for a favourite story to have.

Right the way through, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by just how much I’ve been loving this one – by the time Episode One had finished, any worries I had were gone, and I was left just enjoying things. Each episode has given me something new to love, and the fourth is no exception to this – I’d always thought of Toberman’s partial-conversion into Cyberman as having no real merit, but it works really well and is key to the story. His fight with the Cybercontroller here is much better than any of the fights in the last episode, and the final shot of him, staring down against the Controller as they each push on opposite sides of the door is fantastic. Are they just planning to leave the body there, though? I realise it must be a pretty long trip back to Earth, but surely they must be able to take him home? At least throw a sheet over the corpse or something!

I’ve focussed so much in this story on the developing relationship between the Doctor and Victoria (though it feels like they’ve been travelling for a while now. The About Time series speculates that there could be unseen adventures between her entrance to the TARDIS in Episode One and the arrival on Telos – and there’s plenty in the story which I think can support that), but I’ve barely mentioned Jamie’s role in events.

It’s far from being a secret that I love the pairing of the Doctor and his Highland friend, and there’s so much of a spark between them in this story that I can’t let it pass without mention. The ‘hand holding’ in Episode One is always singled out for praise, but brilliant as it is, there’s a number of other moments in The Tomb of the Cybermen that I think showcase the pair better. Episode Three sees the Doctor making a pun about the Cybermat’s metal brains being overloaded (‘You could say they’ve had a total metal breakdown’) and Jamie's reaction to his terrible pun. Today we get Jamie tying the door of the revitaliser machine, before the Cybercontroller breaks through the door (‘Jamie, remind me to give you a lesson in tying knots sometimes…’), and his realisation of what’s happened to Toberman: the boy is learning from his travels.

Something that often gets talked about in this story is the death of a Cyberman here, where the chest unit bubbles as foam rises up and overflows. It’s cited as an example of Doctor Who going too far and being too violent, and I can almost see that. It’s certainly more horrific than we might usually get at this time. For me, though, what made it scary was the way the Cyberman grabs at his chest throughout, almost as though trying to force his circuitry back inside. That’s the really gruesome part, but it works. Equally, there’s a scene where Jamie fires a gun point blank into a Cyberman’s face as it climbs from the hatch. Smoke comes pouring out of the mouth as it stumbles back down into the tomb. It’s a striking image.

For a long, long time, The Tomb of the Cybermen was the fabled ‘Holy Grail’ of missing Doctor Who tales, and the general consensus is that when it showed up in 1992, it wasn’t as good as everyone hoped it might be. For me, though, it’s damn near perfect, and I’m pleased to say that it’s still coming out top for me.

I’m hoping that it might be a good sign – I’ve been slightly dreading Season Five. It’s mostly missing, and it relies heavily on the Base-Under-Siege and Monster-of-the-Week formats, I’d been fearing that I might find it repetitive. Hopefully, though, if things continue to live up to the quality of The Tomb of the Cybermen, we could be on to a real winner…

a 

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

Day 179: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Simply because The Tomb of the Cybermen was my first exposure to the creatures, I’ve always thought of these as being the ‘default’ model. It’s this design that I think of when people talk about Cybermen, and the style of speaking here is the one I most readily associate with them, too. It’s pleasing, then, to be enjoying them so much again now. There’s something about the voices especially that really is creepier than we’ve had before (as much as I loved the ones in The Tenth Planet), and it helps that some of their dialogue is so blunt.

Yesterday’s episode ends with the Cybercontroller telling the archaeological party ‘You belong to us. You will be like us’, and there’s a moment here when Jamie tells a Cyberman that he’s a human – he’s not the same as them, and the reply is simply ‘You will be’. The idea of being converted into a Cyberman has been present ever since their first appearance, but this is the first time it’s really being played as a threat. In The Tenth Planet, it’s almost an offer, but here it’s a terrifying experience, and something that you really don’t want to happen. In promoting Nightmare in Silver, Neil Gaiman commented that he’d been watching the 1960s stories and wanted to make the Cybermen scary again – it’s hard not to see what he means about the terror.

This episode, perhaps more than any we’ve had for a while, relies on a number of big special effects. I remember back during The Ark, I commented that the effects were just being dropped in easily, wheres before they’d have been the showpiece for the entire 25 minutes. Here, they’re just part of the routine, and the programme thinks nothing of showing the effect of a Cyber-gun against a wall (the awesome power of which lends weight to the cliff-hanger, when the same gun is fired in the Doctor’s direction).

Perhaps the biggest effects surprise for me, though, is the Cybermats. I have to admit, as much as I love The Tomb of the Cybermen, I’ve never been all that fond of the Cybermen’s pets. I’ve seen this story several times over the years, but in mind mind the Cybermats didn’t work and looked rubbish… but they’re great! I’d not remembered that the tails wag, which really helps to sell the effect, and I was surprised just how similar this version is to the ones who appear in Closing Time - I’d not seen this story since that one aired.

Just because I love the story doesn’t mean I’m completely blind to some of its faults, though. While there’s plenty of great effects in here, and the Cybermen get used in a way that makes them look great (there’s a show of one trying to hold the hatch to their tomb open, and you really get a sense of the strength involved), I’m willing to admit that it doesn’t all work. Just like the previous two episode of this story, I’ve written absolutely loads of notes, but this time around there are several about things that aren’t great.

There’s a fight early on between the archaeologists and the Cybermen which becomes a bit of a muddle, and it’s home to the shot of Toberman being hurled through the air by a Cyberman. It’s a lovely idea, but sadly the kirby wires are just far too visible, which somewhat lessens the effect. Similarly, a later shot of the Cybermen stumbling around in the aftermath of some smoke bombs doesn’t look all that spectacular.

All of that can be forgotten, though, because this episode is home to one of my favourite scenes in all of Doctor Who, when the Doctor and Victoria share a conversation in the dead of night, as everyone sleeps huddled in corners of the tomb’s lobby. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve not been all that impressed with Victoria so far on the whole, but these few minutes, shot in close-ups of Patrick Troughton and Deborah Watling as they just get the chance to act together really sells me on her. It’s a beautiful moment, and another one of those scenes that shows emotion didn’t creep in with the advent of 21st century Doctor Who.

I hate quoting long passages from the episode when I’m writing about them, but the Doctor’s words about remembering his lost family are so emotive, that I just have to post them again here;

Oh yes, I can when I want to. And that's the point, really.
I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The
rest of the time they… they sleep in my mind and I forget. And so will
you. Oh yes, you will. You'll find there's so much else to think about.
To remember. Our lives are different to anybody else's. That's the
exciting thing, that nobody in the universe can do what we're doing.

I’d not be surprised if that’s another one of those moments that really sold me on the idea of Patrick Troughton as being the Doctor – it’s simply wonderful

a 

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

Day 178: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I can distinctly recall purchasing The Tomb of the Cybermen on DVD for the very first time. I'd been something of a Doctor Who fan since the autumn of 2003, but only dipping in and out, picking up one or two titles on VHS from the library as and when I felt compelled to. Then, one day in the summer of 2004, in what was then the BBC Shop in Norwich, I purchased my first two Doctor Who DVDs. There was this one, and Resurrection of the Daleks. None of the stories I'd rented had featured either of the programme's top two monsters, so I thought that it would be a pretty good place to start.

And you know what? I loved them. I'm sure I'll talk more about Resurrection next year sometime, when we reach the right placement for the tale, but I can recall just being blown away by Tomb, right from the off.

Looking at this episode today, and viewing it for the first time in the context of all the stories that have gone before it, I don't think it's impossible to see just why this one is so loved by fans. In several ways, it's the perfect representation of the Second Doctor's era, and I think it's fair to say that Troughton is on the absolute top of his game. Everything his Doctor does so well is showcased in these 24 minutes, from letting slip that he knows more than people realise ('Your colleague has very strong hands,' he tells Kaftan, shortly after they discover that the fuel pumps on the rocket have been tampered with. He continues: 'Enough to do a great deal of damage if let loose in the wrong place…'), to subtly controlling the room (switching levers to make sure that the hatch to the tomb will open), and making quips when the bad guys get it wrong.

There's something about his look here, too - the way his hair sits, and the way his costume looks underneath his recently-added cape - that just screams 'Second Doctor' to me. The Tomb of the Cybermen was recorded at the very end of Doctor Who's fourth production block, and it's clear that by this stage, both Troughton and the programme makers have settled on exactly what this new version of the character should be. Placed in the surroundings of such a fantastic story, it's no wonder that I took the Second Doctor to heart and made him my favourite.

That said, you do have to wonder why the Doctor does some of the things that he does in this story. During The Evil of the Daleks, I mentioned that we were seeing the first real attempts of the Doctor to manipulate the people around him (the First Doctor did this too, especially in the early days, but this is the first time we see him doing it with just the right word or action here or there, as opposed to actively misleading people into doing what he wants, as we see in stories like The Daleks), and he seems to be doing the same kind of thing here… but then almost instantly wishing that he hadn't.

In yesterday's episode, he discovers that the Cybermen are buried somewhere inside this cliff-face, and that the archaeological team can't get the door open… so he shows them how to get in. They then can't figure out how to get the machinery working… so he gives them the answer, before adding that they really shouldn't. Today, he helps them open the hatch, before spending plenty of time talking about it being a bad idea, and hoping that nothing will go wrong. Is he just a bit confused? Maybe it's the low temperatures?

It's good to see Victoria being given a bit more of a personality here, too. There's a moment early on when the Cybermen's gun trap fires and she lets out a little scream, but after that she's a much more assertive person than we've seen before. When the professor advises the women to stay behind, she actively tells him that she's coming along wether he likes it or not, and she's not afraid to step in and deal with Kaftan once the Doctor has highlighted her as a threat, even going as far as to hold the woman at gunpoint. This is much more like it, and I think I can go along with a version of Victoria that behaves more like this.

Elsewhere, I feel as though I need to praise the set design a little bit more today. The design of the tombs is simply stunning, and one of my favourite sets from Doctor Who's long history. You should have heard my cry of joy when the design cropped up again for Nightmare in Silver a couple of months ago. Everything about the tomb itself, especially the scale - which I think is best captured by an on-set photograph of director Morris Barry stood in front of the construction - is simply gorgeous, and I love it.

Back in 2005, with the programme back on TV and my friends suddenly deciding to take an interest, they asked to watch one of the old ones so they could see what it was like. Of course I plumped for showing them this! It’s my favourite story. Having sat through half the first episode with one friend complaining about the lack of colour (I shouldn't have been surprised - a few years earlier he'd walked out of a cinema screening of Van Helsing, because the first few minutes are black and white) and the other about the slow pace, I skipped ahead to show them the final few scenes of this episode, with the Cybermen being unfrozen from their winter sleep.

And they couldn't stop laughing. They thought it was hilarious. I was mortified - one of my favourite moments of Doctor Who and my friends couldn't stop talking about how rubbish it looked. I've always secretly thought that they were wrong (I say secretly, I tell them they're wrong, every time I visit home), but you know what? Watching it again now in the context of all these other episodes? I know they're wrong! Because it does look bloody fantastic!

The ice 'melting' from the tomb, the blurry shapes moving around inside before splitting open the casing and climbing down the ladders at the sides… it is a great moment, and it's an example of the show pulling off an effect pretty well. I'll admit, I don't like the way they start to break out of the tomb, and then are instantly frozen again (complete with a thick layer of ice - get your money's worth from the visual effects department) only to re-emerge, but everything else here is great. There's not all that many Cybermen, but when they're swarming around the cave it looks like masses of them. It's a great bit of directing from Barry.

Although, I will concede that the About Time book for this era is right - it would seem that the Cybercontroller has spent the last five centuries squatting in a cupboard. Ah.

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

Day 177: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode One

Dear diary,

This is it! This is the big one! For the best part of the last decade, I've always cited The Tomb of the Cybermen as being my absolute favourite TV Doctor Who story. I credit this serial with making the Cybermen my favourite monsters, and Patrick Troughton my favourite Doctor. It's almost the template I have in mind for what Doctor Who is supposed to be. The bad thing about all this is that I've been dreading hitting it in The 50 Year Diary. It's always been my favourite when I'm comparing it to odd stories here and there, but how's it going to stand up in context? What am I going to make of it, now that I've discovered other gems like The War Machines and The Macra Terror? Essentially, is The Tomb of the Cybermen going to turn out to be really a little bit rubbish?

Thankfully, the answer to that question is no. Of course it's not going to all fall apart now that I've watched 160-something other episodes that immediately preceded it. The Tomb of the Cybermen is my favourite story for a reason, and it's holding its own very nicely here. You'll forgive me if I'm a little more forgiving of the story than I might otherwise be, but there's not an awful lot that needs to be overlooked - the full-body versions of the Cyberman image don't look half as good as the head-and-shoulders version that we're all far more familiar with, it's true, and it seems silly that there's a table and chairs waiting handily in the lobby to their tomb, yes. But you know what? Everything else here is fantastic, so I don't care!

I think it's probably telling that I've written more notes about this episode than I think I have about any other in the marathon so far. I usually get about six episodes on a single sheet of paper, but I've used a side and a half for this one. There's just so much that I wanted to note down, and so much that I could talk about that it felt silly not to. It probably helps that this is the first full Troughton story that I'll be able to watch (indeed, it's the only full Troughton story from his first two seasons in the role), which means that there's little visual things I can pick up on more than I've been able to lately.

So where to start? The introduction of a new companion has often been used as a way to reintroduce the concept of Doctor Who to an audience who may be joining for the first time, and it's strange to note that this is the first time that the re-establishment happens in the first story of the season - we pan into the image of the Police Box, and then cut to inside (the first time we've seen it since The Moonbase, which feels like an absolute age ago), where the Doctor explains that it's his home, and has been for some time. Victoria is then introduced to the concept of time travel, and the idea that they can travel anywhere in time and space. The aspect of not being able to control where they go gets glossed over on this occasion, though Jamie does ask the Doctor for a smooth landing.

It's another one of those moments that shows how much the Doctor and Jamie have become best friends since they first met, and even aside from the argument they had during the last story, they really are becoming inseparable. There's little wonder that they travel together until someone else forces them apart - I imagine the pair would still be out there somewhere if they could be. Troughton and Hines simply bounce from each other, from the way the hold hands (and then quickly stop) as they enter the tomb, to the Doctor's tease that the Highlander's skirt is a bit short. It makes this phase of the programme so much fun, and I really can't get enough of the pair.

Victoria, it has to be said, still isn't really giving me much to love, though. Deborah Watling is doing a good job, and again it has to be said how beautiful she looks as she stands in the TARDIS at the beginning, but the character is a bit of a generic Doctor Who girl. She wanders into the Cybermen's 'revitalising' machine, where the bad guy locks her in, and then she's flustered when she gets out. There's a moan to the Doctor about wanting to just leave, and a constant feeling of unease. I get that it's her very first TARDIS trip, but this is the side of the character we saw plenty of in The Evil of the Daleks, and the fact that I can't remember much about what else she does in my favourite story probably speaks absolute volumes.

Although I've only got tele-snaps to compare it to for the most part of the last season, this story seems to be set on a far vaster scale than I'm used to from the series. I seem to find myself saying this a lot every time we get to a surviving episode (it was true of The War Machines, and The Faceless Ones, and the tele-snaps for The Smugglers made it look pretty large scale, too), but we really are on a new level here. There's a shot early on as we look down past Toberman's legs to the rest of the archeological expedition below, and it makes the place look so grand that it almost throws you. It does have to be said that I'm not sure it always works as an alien world (there's another shot which makes it look like a group of people inappropriately dressed for a day that the beach), but it sets the story apart and really gives the start of the new season a glossy feel.

I could just go on and on about this episode and all the things that are right with it, but I'd start to bore you before too long, and there's another three episodes to fill with praise yet, so I think I'll call it a day here. Suffice to say that my favourite story hasn't let me down, and I'm tremendously pleased by that.

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

Day 176: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Seven

Dear diary,

I spent a fair bit of time during The Faceless Ones talking about the way Samantha Briggs was being set up as a companion, with a proper back story that served to show off all the aspects of her character – she was plucky, inquisitive, unafraid to dive right in to potential danger (she’d come all the way down from Liverpool, too, you know) and there was a real connection between her and Jamie. She was so very clearly the new companion… right up until the end of the story, at which point she wasn’t.

I’ve then spent plenty of time in this story actively waiting for the chance to show Victoria being signposted as the companion… but she isn’t, until the latter half of today’s episode – six after she was introduced. Victoria has come across as just a bit of a damsel in distress, and although much of the story has revolved around her (or, at least, around Jamie’s attempts to rescue her), she hasn’t really made much of an impact on me. Certainly, I couldn’t tell you very much about her character at all, whereas Sam Briggs was fully rounded by the time she kissed our highlander goodbye.

It’s surprising, then, that her being accepted onto the TARDIS as the new companion carries as much weight as it does. I’d forgotten that her father died during the course of this story, so his sacrifice to save the Doctor came as a pleasant surprise, and it was very movingly done. ‘You’ve just saved my life,’ the Doctor tells him. ‘It’s a good life to save,’ Waterfield replies, before asking the Doctor to look after Victoria for him. Jamie later muses that they can’t just leave Victoria (alone on Skaro, with her father and her best friend dead? I should think not!) and the Doctor confirms that she’s leaving with them. It’s a lovely moment, and oddly emotional, considering my lack of attachment to her up to now.

It’s odd to think that this is it (barring the odd cameo) for the Daleks until quite some way into the Third Doctor's era. They'll be absent from the series for the next five years, and absent from The 50 Year Diary for the next five months, rather fittingly returning for me just around the time of Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary. It was at this point Terry Nation started to really look at selling the Daleks as their own series, and this is probably the more logical placement for Daleks: The Destroyers to sit, but it felt like 'the final end' was a good point to leave the creatures on for now.

I wonder, though, what it would have been like if the Daleks hadn't turned up again to face off against Jon Pertwee? It's definitely true to say that without them, the programme wouldn't have gotten out of the First Season (possibly not even that first 13-episode commission), but by this point in time, it really has picked up it's own following, and losing the Daleks here and now possibly shows that they're not really needed for Doctor Who any more. Imagine a world in which the return of the Daleks, those pepper pot creatures from the 1960s were being revived for the new series as a slightly more obscure monster, in the same way the Macra and the Ice Warriors have been in recent years!

On the whole, I'm sad to say, The Evil of the Daleks hasn't been the barn-storming end to the Fourth Season that I was hoping for. The story's reputation within fandom has always been very high, but it really hasn't delivered for me. Lots of very nice moments, but it's felt like the Daleks leaving the series with more of a whimper than a bang, a real shame. I'm almost tempted to read the Target novel at the end of Series Five (when this serial was repeated on television) to see if I can improve my opinion on it - worth doing?

Aside from that, and The Highlanders, Season Four has been very strong. I've really loved it. I worries so much about these 'middle' seasons of the 1960s, since there was just so much missing, but it wasn't until after I'd finished with today's episode that I realised - we've not had a complete story all season! THat's about to be changed, with the release of The Tenth Planet and The Moonbase with animated episodes, but for me, every single story has been supplemented with the soundtracks. I think it's a testament to the season that it's managed to make such a great impression with so little visual material to go on.

But forget all that! We move onwards, and into Season Five! Not only that, it's my first complete Troughton story, and it's the classic tale I've always considered my favourite Doctor Who story. Little bit excited? You bet I am!

a

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

Day 175: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Six

Dear diary,

It’s very clear that we’ve got Roy Skelton on Dalek duties in this episode, isn’t it? At times, it sounds like Zippy’s gotten hold of a ring modulator! If anything, it actively helps to story – as if these child-like Daleks weren’t already unnerving enough, they’re speaking in the voice of a beloved children’s character. Fantastic stuff.

That whole opening scene, with the Daleks continuing to play their games with the Doctor, is absolutely brilliant, taking the great ending to the last episode and taking it even further. There’s something very unusual about the way that the Daleks slowly drawl the Doctor’s words back at him (though we get ‘Traaaaiiiiinnnn’ and ‘Dizzzzyyyyy’, I’m a little sorry that they didn’t attempt to copy ‘Roundabout’. I’ll have to make up for it by saying the word in a Dalek voice to myself for the rest of the day. Or to strangers on the street. Why not? Roundaboooouuuttttt…). The scene seems to keep getting creepier and creepier, until it’s drawn to a close when the Daleks ominously state ‘we must go now’. It’s said in a way that wouldn’t be out of place coming from a spooky child in a horror film, and really works.

I was starting to think that’s I’d never have a nice word to say about The Evil of the Daleks, so I’m really leased to find that things are more to my taste now. I was hoping that the shift over to Skaro would be a turning point for the story, and it seems that it has more or less coincided with this, so I’m happy. And it’s the first time that we’ve seen the Doctor travel back to an alien planet we’ve already been to! We’ve seen him return places before (He’d been to Dido in The Rescue, for example), but this is the first time that we’ve seen both of the trips to the planet (Hm? You what? Oh, all right then. Yeah yeah, we visited Kembel on two separate occasions in The Daleks' Master Plan. I'll give you that one, but as that was all part of one big adventure - spread across several different stories! - I'm discounting it. This is the first time we've seen him return to an alien planet in a completely different context.)

Years of being a Doctor Who fan means that I know full well how the sets look for this episode, with the stark black and white angles, and the Dalek Emperor sat in the corner, plugged into the city (the narration on the soundtrack nicely describes it as sitting at the centre of its ‘web’), but I can’t help picturing the stark, metal corridors of the original Dalek story – without the visuals to this episode, my mind has automatically gone back to what I consider to be the ‘default’ design.

There’s something quite brilliant about the Doctor facing up to the Dalek Emperor, who towers over him. He’s cool and confident, musing that he’d always wondered if the pair would ever meet. It put me instantly in mind of a similar scene, in which the Ninth Doctor steps out of the TARDIS and confronts another Dalek Emperor. In another similarity between this and The Parting of the Ways, the Doctor seems to issue spoilers for us, when he tells the Emperor that he’ll have a revolution on his hands pretty soon, once the new ‘humanised’ Daleks start to ask questions.

The main issue I have with all of this - and the reveal that while the Doctor thought he was isolating this ‘Human Factor’, he was actually helping to discover a ‘Dalek Factor’ – is that I’m not sure I care. Much as I love Alpha, Beta, and Omega, I’ve said before that I wasn’t really paying too much attention to the experiments that the Doctor was being forced to do, so it doesn’t feel like some massive shock revelation here. I’m hoping that won’t matter too much as we move into the final episode, which I already know is the much fabled ‘Final End’ of the Daleks (at least during the 1960s).

a

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

Day 174: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Five

Dear diary,

My favourite Beatles Album (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) was released in June 1967, while The Evil of the Daleks was being broadcast (between Episodes Two and Three, to be precise), and watching through the series in order, it's easy to draw some comparisons between the evolution of both the band, and Doctor Who's greatest foes. Although it's not as black and white as I'm about to paint it, I've always thought of the Beatles as being split into their early, very '1960s' stuff, and their later more abstract music.

Similarly, The Daleks have evolved since their earliest days in the series, and I think it's fair to say that they can be divided into the early stuff where they're just 'evil' pepper pots, who come along and invade/kill/shout a lot - essentially, every William Hartnell Dalek story. Or to put it another way, every Dalek story that Terry Nation had a real hand in - and the later Daleks who are more experimental: the two Whittaker stories.

They've not really had a massive presence in this story so far, and I don't think I'd have missed them had they not arrived until this episode in the narrative. Now that the story is shifting its focus back onto them, though, we're given that more abstract kind of Dalek scene that Whittaker is so good at - the episode closes on three Daleks playing a game. It sounds so simple, but it would have been unthinkable for the series to do something like this two years ago. Even the 'comedy' Daleks in The Chase ultimately get restored to shouting 'exterminate!' a lot and chase the Doctor and his companions.

This is the kind of cliffhanger that I've been waiting for from this story - one which takes the Daleks and does something interesting with them. Even when Power of the Daleks was left to show us a group of Daleks amassing an army, they did it on such a scale as to make a real impact. Cliffhangers like the one we had yesterday (two Daleks approach Jamie! Oh no!) just don't pack a punch any more, whereas this kind of thing is fantastic.

I think it's fair to say that the store has a whole has turned around a bit for me today - certainly I've been far more receptive to it. It helps that after several episodes in which we watch people move from 'A' to 'B' to 'C' and back again, things seem to be reaching a kind of point now. The idea of identifying the 'Human Factor' was introduced back in Episode Two, but it feels like so long since then that it had almost become irrelevant in my mind (Of course, it's the whole point of everything that has happened in Episodes Three, Four, and Five, but to my disconnected mind, I couldn't care less).

It might just be because I'm feeling more generous towards the episode, but I've picked up on a lot more sparkling dialogue today than in the rest of the story - it's the first time that I've written quite this many notes for a few days' There's obviously Troughton's speech about being a professor of a wide academy (of which human nature is merely a part), which has seeped into being one of those quotes you often see associated with the Doctor. There's also his discussion about the human emotions and how useful they can be, and his sheer delight when the Daleks push him around the room on a spiny chair. It's another thing I just can't imaging Hartnell's Doctor doing: for all his giggling and light-hearted moments, I can't imagine him being pushed around on a chair by a group of Daleks. Something about that image doesn't seem right in the way that picturing Troughton doing it does.

Perhaps my favourite dialogue from today's episode comes from the Doctor and Jamie's argument. I praised the earlier one they had in which the Doctor tricked Jamie into doing what he needed, but that one was partly play acting, at least on the Doctor's part. Today's argument is real, and you can tell from the way it's played. It's much lower-key than the earlier example, and it feels far more real. In many ways, it's reminiscent of the final scene of The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, and there's a number of beats in both those arguments that are the same.

I didn't know that the Doctor and Jamie ever had a discussion like this - I always thought they spent all three years together as the absolute best of friends, with never a cross word between them, so it's brilliant to see that there's more to their relationship than all that, and to know that Jamie is capable of being fleshed out in such a way. 'Look, I'm telling you this - we're done, you and me. You're too callous for me,' Jamie tells his friend, and it ties in nicely with my thoughts about the Doctor being seen to manipulate his friend earlier in the story. As always, it's a little thing, but it really works.

I'm hoping that the goodwill I've built up over this episode is a good sign, and with another two to go I may yet figure out why this story is held in such high regard. It's good to know that we're three characters shorter now, as I have to confess I was starting to get a bit lost as to who was who. Now that we've got Daleks acting very differently, and the story seemingly headed somewhere, things are looking up…

a 

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

Day 173: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Four

Dear diary,

How do you type that noise you make when you suck air in through your teeth? I’m genuinely not sure how to type this one today. All I’ve got written in my notes is ‘Jamie fights Kemel for the first five minutes’. After that, there just wasn’t really anything else that I felt compelled to write about. I’m so disappointed – this was supposed to be the great one! The big send off for the Daleks!

I think the thing that annoyed me the most was the cliffhanger. I spent every episode of The Power of the Daleks absolutely singing the praises of the episode endings. Every singe one felt new and fresh, taking the Daleks and making them scary in a way completely unlike anything we’d ever seen from them. Today’s cliffhanger involves Jamie reaching a door, while two Daleks trundle up behind him, guns at the ready.

At the end of Doctor Who’s fourth year, this just doesn’t hold up as a Dalek cliffhanger. We’ve seen them approaching people ready to kill in various forms ever since the fifth episode - and there we only see the plunger and Barbara from the Daleks point-of-view. Take away the thrill of not knowing what this strange thing could be, it’s still framed more interestingly than this one, at least judging from the tele snaps.

I think I was just expecting there to me a bit more to The Evil of the Daleks. Now, I’m not completely in the Dark, I know that at some stage the action will switch to Skaro, and we get a big destruction of the pepperpots, with (so I hear) pretty good integration of model work and studio footage – not that I can actually see it…. I know we’ve got a huge Dalek Emperor on the way, and I can only assume that this is what sets this story on such a high pedestal. It’s just that… I thought from reputation that we’d be getting a brilliant story from start to finish. Ah well, you can’t win them all, I guess.

I’ve always been more intrigued by the proposed notion of a Daleks vs Cybermen story from the 1960s. I know we eventually got one during the Tenth Doctor’s era, but there’s something about the idea of the 1960s versions of these creatures dueling it out that really appeals to me, and I can’t help but feel that I’d be enjoying it more than I currently am this one. I don’t think it’s helping that I know The Tomb of the Cybermen is coming up, and I’ve always thought of it as my favourite Doctor Who story, so this one just feels like a bit of an obstacle in my way!

Hm? Sorry? What do you mean you can feel a tenuous link on the way? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

…Knowing that this story was on the way, with its big old Dalek Emperor, I decided to pick up my (slightly battered) copy of The Dalek Chronicles on my last trip home. It’s a 1994 Doctor Who Magazine special, which reprints all of the Dalek comic strips from TV Century 21, in order from the start. I managed to grab a copy on Ebay years and years ago, but I’ve never actually read it. Always meant to, just don’t think I ever found the time. I’ve been reading it in chunks alongside this story, and I’m somewhat dismayed to find that I’m enjoying it more than The Evil of the Daleks.

I’d imagine that a number of people reading The 50 Year Diary will have at least a vague idea of what these comics are, but for the uninitiated: Tv Century 21 was a comic produced in the 1960s, and for 104 issues they ran a single-page comic titled The Daleks. It told the story of the Dalek’s creation on Skaro – there’s no Davros, but they’re still created by a scientist, and there’s still a great big war – and then follows them as they spread out across the stars. They fight the Mechanoids a bit, too. The final strip in the series ends with the Emperor Dalek declaring that the Daleks will conquer Earth, which leads quite neatly into the second of the Peter Cushing Dalek films, and tellingly, the later strips see the design of the creatures morph to look more like their movie counterparts.

I think it’s probably fair to say that it’s not any great literary feat, and it doesn’t stand up to a great deal of scrutiny, but taken at face value as a weekly adventure strip featuring the Daleks, it’s really rather good. It has the feel of a comic strip from The Eagle (perhaps unsurprisingly, as the first artist on the strip, Richard E Jennings, had contributed to The Eagle for a long time, and Eric Eden who filled in for a few issues in the middle of the run had worked on Dan Dare), full of that wonderful breed of what we tend to call ‘retro futurism’ these days. The design of the Daleks’ city is fantastic, and there’s plenty of little touches to the strip that can’t help to make me smile.

Quite early on in the story, only about five or six issues in, a spacecraft lands on Skaro for the first time, and the Daleks plot to capture it. The thing that I enjoy about it is the way they hide themselves to prepare their attack: the emperor orders the Magnetic Sand to be switched on, and it covers the city in a perfect disguise. It’s the kind of fantastic futuristic thing that you’d expect to find in a children’s ‘space’ comic of the age, as is the invention of things like the ‘Astrodalek’ later on in the story (A Dalek with his eyestalk plugged into the end of an enormous telescope), and the Daleks’ flying Hover Discs, which have become quite iconic withing Doctor Who - there’s even a new Dalek toy set available now that comes with one.

The strip is mostly written by David Whittaker, but it’s far more traditional than some of the things he tries with the Daleks on TV. That doesn’t mean that things are rendered to being dull, though, as it has a kind of simplistic charm to the story. Whittaker even still takes old favourite ideas from Terry Nation and does something new and different with them – there’s a wonderful moment on the planet Alvega with some living plants (haven’t seen any of those in a while!). While it could be reduced to being a rubbish retread of the kind of things we’ve seen in stories from The Keys Of Marinus, to The Chase and The Daleks’ Master Plan, Whittaker depicts the plants as plotting against the Daleks, and there’s a fantastic panel at the end of one strip where the plants have worked their way inside a Dalek’s casing and grown out, bursting out from every seam. It’s a bizarre image, and it looks stunning. Pleasingly, it’s given plenty of room to breathe.

The first three strips, and a few from later in the run (once Ron Turner had taken over art duties for the latter half of the run, a style which, sadly, down’t appeal to me half as much as the earlier one does), have recently been reprinted in the Doctor Who Magazine Dalek spacial, reprinted from the original art which makes them look gorgeous – certainly much better than the versions in my 19-year-old version! Here’s hoping that they’ll see a full reprint in the near future, because the series as a whole is certainly worth a read, if only to see an alternate (and much more 1950s/60s sci fi) version of the Daleks’ early years…

I think I’ll be giving the strip as a whole an 8/10 – wish I could say the same for The Evil of the Daleks!

a 

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

Day 172: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Oh dear. I think I've taken the same kind of issue with this story that I did back with The Highlanders - I've decided early on that I'm simply not impressed and now that's all my mind can focus on. Things are even worse here, though, because I'm going in with the pre-defined notion of this being a real classic that can do no wrong…

Whereas actually it's just a bit of a plodding bore that can do no… well… anything, really. Seriously, we're almost 75 minutes into The Evil of the Daleks, and very little has happened. The TARDIS is stolen. The Doctor and Jamie are kidnapped and taken back to 1866. Turns out the Daleks are there, and they want the Doctor to perform experiments on his young friend. Oh, and now there's a Turkish man in a fez and a series of elaborate traps for Jamie to get through so that the Doctor can actually undertake these steps.

Really, though? Really? This story was voted top 18 in the last big fandom poll? (I've yet to see how it's faring in our own large-scale poll of Doctor Who episodes, so I don't know if it's retaining its position, or if it's following its previous form and slipping down the table.)

Oh, all right. It's not all bad. Certainly, it's not reached the point where I'm dreading the throughout of having to go on and start looking for an alternative way of finishing the story (Hello, The Highlanders, again). I think the only thing that's keeping me going at this stage is the promise that things are going to get better. I don't often seem to agree with received fan wisdom, but they can't have been this wrong for so long, surely? The Evil of the Daleks is going to become fantastic any minute now, yeah?

There's one or two little pockets of things peppered throughout the story that are keeping my interest up, and today's thing of interest has to be Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines. Again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I've praised them to the high heavens plenty over the course of Season Four, but they really are something special, aren't they? Today, we get to watch (hear) them having a blazing row, and it's enough to make the ones the earliest Doctor used to have with Barbara look like a minor play fight.

And then, it's all revealed to be a part of the Doctor's plan - a way of tricking his companion into taking part in the experiment, so that they have a chance further down the line. People often single the Seventh Doctor out as the arch manipulator, but this is a perfect example of it being used much earlier on in the programme's run. I've commented before that this incarnation is very good at dropping the right word or the right action at just the right moment to get the results he wants, but it's never used better than this.

Aside from that scene, which comes fairly late on in the episode, I'm afraid that things just aren't grabbing me. I was going to be rating this one a little lower than I have, but that scene alone is so good that it deserves to bring the score up just a little bit…

a 

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

Day 171: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I've often thought that if (when) I ever got my hands on a time machine, I'd quite like to visit Victorian England. Couldn't tell you why it's the top of my list, but I've always been fascinated by it. Even at school, the Victorian era was one of my favourites in history lessons. In many ways, I've always thought of Doctor Who being particularly suited to the era, too, and it seems many other's agree with me - several parts of the most recent season have been set there, and it's not been uncommon for the Doctor to visit in the past.

It's odd, then, to think that this episode marks the first time that we've actually seen this era in the series (yes, yes, pedants, the scene on the Marie Celeste during The Chase is technically set in Victorian times, but it was way out at sea, and might as well have been set in any generic past if it wasn't for the joke at the end, so I'm disqualifying it), almost five years in. Oh, and it's done beautifully. It's said a lot, but the BBC design department really do make a stunning job of this period, and this episode is no exception. Maxtible's drawing room has to be the crowning achievement, as it looks simply brilliant, and it's nice to have an episode from the story surviving so that we can really appreciate it.

Speaking of which, it's bloody lovely to see a Dalek again! We've had them in the series quite recently to welcome the new Doctor to the series, and I watched The Destroyers not all that long ago, but thanks to the gaps in the archives (and the lack of production of The Destroyers…) this is the first time I've actually seen a Dalek on screen, moving and everything, since The Daleks' Master Plan, and that feels like a lifetime ago. Technically, it was for the Doctor.

It's nice to see that the Daleks here are the same kind of manipulative ones seen in Power of the Daleks, and the cruel, terrifying version that we had in Master Plan, too. Yesterday's episode ended rather nicely with a Dalek screaming at Kennedy to identify himself (though it wasn't as good a cliffhanger as they had pretty consistently in their last tale), and then the resolution to that ending today? The Dalek exterminates him as soon as we're done with the reprise. Then it disappears, and Waterfield has something of a breakdown as he realises he'll have to dispose of the body. The Daleks really are at their best when their callous, and Whittaker knows exactly how to use them in the right way.

All that said, I'm sorry to say that the story still isn't really capturing me. I've seen this episode before (a long, long, time ago on a bored Sunday-afternoon viewing of the Lost in Time collection), and remembered it being pretty good, but this time around it still feels as if I'm waiting for things to get going. As ever, there's a lot to like, but it just don't seem to be doing very much. Maybe I'm being put off by the fact that people say it's one of the stone-cold 'classics' of Doctor Who, and my expectations are just set a little bit too high?

We do get our first introduction of Victoria in this episode though, as a captive of the Daleks, who seem obsessed with her weight. They're holding her prisoner as leverage with Waterfield, so that he'll help capture the Doctor and force him to conduct some experiments on Jamie. I complained yesterday that the plan to get the Doctor to the antiques shop was a bit round the houses… but now it makes even less sense! Surely it would have been quicker to knock the Doctor and Jamie out at Gatwick, transport them to 1886, tie Jamie up in the lab and force the Doctor to get to work under Dalek guard? Why all the messing about?

Victoria herself comes across as less obviously a companion as Sam Briggs did in the last story (heck, even Mollie seems to be a more likely candidate to step aboard the TARDIS at this point!), but it does have to be said that Debbie Watling does look beautiful in her first scenes. I've not seen much of Victoria's tenure outside of The Tomb of the Cybermen (as Deborah herself says on one of the DVD special features about this era - there's nothing left of there time on the show, really), so I'm hoping she'll blossom once she's out from under the Daleks' watchful eye-stalks.

a 

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

Day 170: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode One

Dear diary,

In the early 1990s, The Evil of the Daleks was voted the best Doctor Who story ever by the readers of DWB. It had dropped a little in estimations by the time Doctor Who Magazine ran a similar poll five years later, coming in at number nine in the list, and in the 2009 Mighty 200 poll, it slipped even further, to number 18. Indeed, in Doctor Who Online’s very own 50th Anniversary Poll, it’s currently sitting at number 25! Despite this decline in opinion, it still has to be said that Evil has something of a reputation amongst Doctor Who fans as being pretty darn good.

It's perhaps surprising, then, that this first episode comes across as being just a bit of filler material. The impression I got from the opening to the episode is that the Doctor and Jamie were supposed to see the TARDIS heading off on the back of a truck (at the end of the last episode, the Doctor had already deduced that it had gone, and now they actively see it), and then Bob Hall is planted in one of the hangars to put the pair off the scent. He's then followed, and is knocked unconscious for it - his being followed is clearly not a part of the plan (Kennedy even plans to beat the Doctor and Jamie over the head to make sure that they don't discover anything). It then transpires that the pair were intended to come here, because there's a pack of matches planted to lead them on to the coffee bar. So why knock out Hall? It leads to his fleeing the city, and is surely a waste of a valuable ally?

Once the Doctor and Jamie have made it to the coffee shop (where contemporary music helps to set the scene, though it's a shame to know that the Beatles' Paperback Writer had to be removed from the soundtrack), they're met by Perry. Perry has been sent by Waterfield (who also sent kennedy to plant the matches and, I'm guessing, Hall to start the whole thing rolling) to ask the Doctor to come to the antiques shop at 10pm. Why the overly-complex plan? Surely seeing the TARDIS being carted away - and then being asked by Hall at Gatwick to head to the antiques shop if they want to see the police box again - would be enough to get them there?

The whole thing is an exercise in delaying the pair until the story is ready for them. I don't know if the story was intended to be a six-parter which was then extended out to seven (in the same way as The Mind Robber being given an extra episode late in the day) or if it was just needed to get things set up ready for the main tale, but either way, it's odd.

That's not to say that it's a bad thing, mind. There's plenty to like about this episode, not least the fact that we get to spend some more time in the company of Troughton and Hines again. I'd not realised that such a large part of the story kept them in the 1960s (I'd always assumed that they stumbled into the Victorian era pretty quickly once the story got started), but it's odd just how well they really do fit in here. Whereas in The War Machines, at the end of last season, the sight of William Hartnell climbing out of a cab was unusual, it doesn't feel at all out of place to see (or, at least, hear) Troughton doing so. Considering how much time Ian and Barbara spent wishing the TARDIS would land in the 1960s, it turns up there an awful lot these days (I make it The Massacre of St Bartholemew's Eve, The War Machines, now here, and there's a couple more trips to this period in the next couple of seasons).

Not only that, but the ship keeps returning to the city on the same day! In the fantastic History of the Universe in 100 Objects book from last year, there's a line describing the 20th of July 1966 as being the day that WOTAN launched his War Machines, the Chameleons returned hundreds of missing people to Gatwick airport, and the Daleks were at large in their time-travelling antiques shop. Surely that sentence really sums up just why this era of the show is so fantastic?

Despite all the running around, and knowing vaguely what's going on, which runs the risk of lessening the tension (It's a shame, for example, to know that the Daleks are going to be a part of the story - of course they're in the title - because it takes away some of the tension of Waterfield arguing with his 'unseen masters'), there is enough here to hook me in to the tale. I don't know, for example, what the Daleks need from the man. Or why they've stolen the TARDIS (the Daleks have time travel, so it can't be that… are they just trying to capture the Doctor's attention?), or what the time-travelling antiques shop has to do with anything, and I'm keen to move on and find out, so I guess that's the story doing something right!

But to come in the top 25 Doctor Who stories ever…? I think it's got a way to go, yet…

a 

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

Day 169: The Faceless Ones, Episode Six

Dear diary,

The bad news: although Ben and Polly do actually turn up to say goodbye to the Doctor, it comes as a scene at the very end of the episode, following five-and-three-quarter episodes in which they're barely mentioned. With Dodo, it almost feels less of a shame, because she's only been there for a few stories, but with these two… Ben and Polly have been a part of the programme for around a year, they've been present at the very first regeneration, they've encountered Daleks and Cybermen and all manner of monsters in-between… and then they just sort of vanish. A real, real shame. Much as I love the Lloyd era of Doctor Who, and as much as I'm willing to sing its praises from the highest of the rooftops, this feels like a massive mis-step.

The good news: when they do show their faces to say goodbye, it's absolutely fantastic. It's the programme judging a departure absolutely right - had this come at the end of a story that really showcased the pair (as many of their adventures have) then it could be put down as one of the best ever leaving scenes. It's filled with emotion, as Polly tearfully makes her goodbyes, and Ben is ecstatic at the thought of being back in his own time - and even on the same day (what are the chances?). The whole thing feels very real, so it's a shame it's undermined by the seeming lack of care for the duo in the rest of this story.

It's the Doctor, I think, who really sells the moment to me though. I commented the other day that this incarnation seems to give an air of always being one step ahead of the game, and you get the impression that he's known since the moment they arrived at Gatwick that this may be a parting of the ways for his little group. Maybe that's why he's been so keen to accept others under his wing throughout the story - to get used to the idea of not having Ben and Polly around? For the Second Doctor, they really are a part of life. 'The thing is,' Polly tells the Doctor, 'this is our world…', and he sadly agrees with her: 'Yes, you're right. You're lucky. I never got back to mine…'. It's another lovely little hint at the Doctor's past, and it fits beautifully into the scene here.

He goes on to tell Ben that he can re-join his ship and become an Admiral, and that Polly can look after him. Thing is, in my mind, that's just not what happens. It's too nice, too neat. Real life just doesn't work like that. I've always had a future in mind for Ben and Polly, and making my way through their stories just cements it in my mind: of course the pair plan to be together, and I imagine that they agree to a date in the Inferno club (where else?) for a few days time. Polly never shows, though, instead sending a note to say that she can't - her family will never approve.

The don't see much of each other for the next twenty years, as they go about their separate lives, and eventually each of them settles down and marries someone else. I'd like to think that they do meet up on the night that Mondas approaches Earth in 1986 (there's a short story about it in one of the short Trips books), but they never end up together in my head. They always regret it, though. Bittersweet, perhaps, but that's always the way I've imagined life after the Doctor for this pair. It's a far cry from orphanages in India…

I wonder if I'd feel more forgiving towards the absence of these two from most of the story is Sam had opted to stay on with the Doctor and Jamie at the end? The offer is there, but she turns it down. She even asks Jamie if he might stay a little longer with her, but he's too close to the Doctor to abandon him, now. Much as I think the accent might get on my nerves in the long run, I'd enjoy Sam sticking with the pair for a little longer - the TARDIS has been stolen, after all, so they're going to be in the area for a while at least…

The story itself is perfectly good in this final episode, too, managing to be both epic in scale (this is probably the only time you're going to see me describe a car park at Gatwick as being 'epic in scale', but it is for Doctor Who at this point!), and intimate too as the Doctor makes his negotiations with the Chameleons. If anything, though, I think the thing I'm going to miss most is the narration using the phrase 'Raw-State Chameleon' every few minutes…

On the whole, I have enjoyed The Faceless Ones, but my interest in the story (and the way things hang together) has been on a bit of a downward trend across the six episodes. The latter half certainly wasn't as strong as the start of the tale - and it felt in places as though concepts and characters were simply abandoned when the writers got bored with them. Even Sam, who was such an obvious companion for a while, ends up being somewhat relegated in the last two episodes. A four-part version would, I think, have been fantastic. And now, we're onto a seven-parter! The first since Marco Polo, and the longest story (I'm discounting Daleks' Master Plan because, as I argued lots at the time, it's really lots of little stories) we've had since then, too. But it's the Daleks, who I've grown to love, so it's all to play for…

a 

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

Day 168: The Faceless Ones, Episode Five

Dear diary,

I think that since The Faceless Ones lost its firm grip on my attention and interest in yesterday’s episode, it’s fighting an up-hill battle to keep me invested in events. The biggest problem, I think, is that we’ve now not seen Ben or Polly for three whole episodes (and technically, we’ve not actually seen Polly since Episode One), and they leave in the next one! Dodo’s abrupt departure half-way through The War Machines is often hailed as one of the worst ways for a Doctor Who companion to leave the series, but at least her part in the story s over, and she was sent off for a break in the country! Ben and Polly were both kidnapped… and that’s sort of it!

I have a feeling that the odd way their final adventure is being handled is rather turning me off from the story. Every time the Doctor gets into a scrape with one of his stand in companions (we’ve now got Sam, Jean, and the real nurse Pinto fulfilling the role to varying capacities), I’m left wondering about where Ben and Polly are. I’m not sure they even get their token name-check in today’s episode, but grouped in with the now-captured Jamie as being one of the Doctor’s missing friends.

It’s a shame that I’m having my opinion of the story so coloured by this, because there’s still an awful lot to love here. You can take it as read that Troughton is on fine form (I really enjoyed his first scene pretending to be one of the Chameleons, and using the opportunity to gather more information about them), and he’s just as brilliant when he’s interrogating Meadows, too. It’s also becoming just as common for Jamie to be fab, too, and that’s true of this episode. His investigation of the satellite is great – he’s really becoming a proper Doctor Who companion now.

It also means that he gets to take in some of the great dialogue which is still (for the mots part) on offer in this story. ‘You seem to know a lot about it, Inspector,’ Jamie muses as he’s told the truth of what’s happening to the Chameleon Tours flights, and learns of the intelligence of the Chameleon’s leader, the Director. ‘Of course I do, Jamie,’ comes the reply, ‘I am the Director…’. It’s a ‘twist’ that anyone can see coming, but Jamie’s innocence means that we can completely buy his surprise at the situation.

Perhaps my favourite line in the episode – possibly, in the whole story – is the description given of the Doctor: ‘He is not of this Earth or this century. He has traveled through time and space. His knowledge is even greater than ours…’. It’s a great description (and very much in the vein of the speeches we’ll hear more of in the 21st century incarnation of the programme), and it’s a brilliant reminder that we still don’t really know all that much about him at this stage in the show’s life.

Much as I've loved the Gatwick airport setting to the story so far, I'm hoping that the shift through the clouds to the Chameleon's sattelite may help to give the final episode a boost before the story bows out. My biggest hope, though? I'm hoping Ben and Polly actually turn up again to say goodbye to the Doctor! If they end up going the way of Dodo, with Sam telling the Doctor that they send their goodbyes, I may scream!

a 

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

Day 167: The Faceless Ones, Episode Four

Dear diary,

It's a shame, considering the amount of praise I had for the way this story was treating Jamie as a companion from history in the first two episodes, that there's several moments in today's entry that left me thinking more about how out of place something felt than simply enjoying the story. Indeed, on one occasion, I spent so long wondering about where Jamie got his passport from that I actively zoned out from the audio for a few minutes, and had to skip back. It's pleasing that we get an explanation for this later on in the episode (indeed, there's a scene which seems to exist in part simply to explain away how the Highlander has made it this far into his journey).

Still, though, it felt really out of place when Frazer Hines' narration talks of Jamie noticing Sam's airline ticket sticking out of her top pocket, then sneaks it away from her. I could argue that he's spent so much time watching the Chameleon Tours checking-in desk that he's figured out you need a ticket to travel, but it still felt out of place at the time. And then he's managed to make his way through the airport (a few episodes back, it was being painted as a vast alien landscape in his eyes), on to a plane, and then he knows where to run when he's feeling the need to be air sick. It all just felt a bit too jarring for the character, and I think I'd have been able to buy it better had Ben been the one filling this role.

Ben, and Polly, though, are still absent from the story! It's strange, considering that it's their final outing in the TARDIS, that we've not had two episodes in a row to feature neither of them. I'm assuming that they'll be back tomorrow to round off the story, but it's an odd decision all the same. Still, I think the saddest thing is that I'm not especially missing them. I don't mean that to sound negative - I'm sure anyone who's been following The 50 Year Diary over the last six weeks or so will have noticed how much I love the pair, but Sam and Jamie are fulfilling the companion roles more than amply, so there's no time to mourn our swinging sixties teens.

You may be able to detect that I'm slightly more puke-warm towards this episode of The Faceless Ones that I have been to any of the others so far. I think, unfortunately, that we're suffering a bit from the return of the six parter. There's lots to love in this one, and my notes are full with notes on great dialogue, as is usual for Season Four ('Ah, you're still thinking in Earth terms…' / 'And I intend to keep on doing so!'), but I think things may just be dragging a little in the middle. We get a great revelation here that the Commandant's secretary (?) has been phoning all the airports that Chameleon Tours fly to (and there's a great line slipped in about how much that will have cost - it's a little thing but it helps to make it all the more real), and she reports that the flights never arrive. Other airports have their passengers collected, taken away… and that's it.

It would be a great moment for the story, with some proof to the Commandant that there really is something shady being done right under his nose, in the heart of his beloved airport, but it comes after we've seen a plane full of holidaymakers suddenly vanish without a trace. Had we watched this scene yesterday, just before we witness the plane empty in a matter of seconds, it may have had more of an impact. As it is, the whole thing falls a bit flat.

I'm not even sure that the survival of the episode would have helped greatly. The main set-piece here is the transformation of the aeroplane into a spaceship, which is described on the soundtrack as 'hovering above the clouds, the huge wings fold in…'. Looking at the tele-snaps (there's two for this moment), I can't tell if it would have looked quite good or a bit ropey. Sadly, I have a feeling it might have been the latter - it almost looks a bit animated in the pictures. Still, in my mind, it looked awesome as the wings folded in, so perhaps it's a good thing we can't watch it?

Oh, and one last thing - if I can keep track of the 'arc' involving the First Doctor's relationship with history, then I can keep track of the Second Doctor's 'arc' towards developing a Sonic Screwdriver. We've had scenes in The Power of the Daleks, in which he (tries) to open a lock by finding the right frequency on his recorder (and that's a point, we've not seen it in a while. I knew they phased it out, but I expected to notice!), and now we've got him using a regular screwdriver to open the lock on a cupboard. Another season from now, he'll put two-and-two together…

a 

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

Day 166: The Faceless Ones, Episode Three

Dear Diary,

There’s an episode of Adam Adamant Lives! (sadly, the only one from the first series that’s missing from the archives), in which a train mysteriously vanishes, only to later re-appear pulling into Waterloo station… full of skeletons! It’s a scene that a number of people believe to be from Doctor Who (Indeed, I used to work with a chap who swore blind that it was a Jon Pertwee story), possibly because it’s such a bizarre image.

I’ve said it a couple of times since Innes Lloyd took over the producer’s chair – quite often in stories written by Ian Stuart Black – but much of the stuff in this episode really could have come from an episode of Adam Adamant Lives!, The Avengers, or whatever. There’s no aliens on display (even if they are present), and much of the story hinges around the Doctor finally managing to convince the powers-that-be there’s genuinely something wrong at Gatwick airport.

The final shot, in which we see a plane filled with excited young tourists suddenly left empty is fantastic – and very reminiscent of the kind of striking image that you’d find in action/adventure serials of this period. The only real Doctor Who twist is that we’ve been told these planes are going up higher than expected – right the way into space. As I’ve said before: this may not really be Doctor Who, but I love it.

One of the things that works the best is the Doctor himself being placed into the format of a 1960s adventure serial. All I seem to do lately is sing the praises of Patrick Troughton, but once again he proves why he simply is the Doctor as he tries to convince the Commandant and the Inspector that there’s more going on here than they may care to believe. He demonstrates a kind of cooling gun on a man he suspects to be an alien duplicate, before going on to muse to the man that he’s sure he’s seen him before – he must have a double!

I spoke a lot in the First Doctor’s era about Hartnell’s transformation from crotchety old man to the person we think of as being the Doctor, and I think that The Faceless Ones might be the best example of Troughton becoming the person we think of as being the Second Doctor. All through his stories so far, he’s perfectly played the quiet Doctor, coming across as being innocent and child like (and it’s not all an act, I don’t think), while really standing back and keeping an eye on events. It’s obvious in The Underwater Menace, as he stops the spear from hitting a girl, and stirs up a conversation with Zaroff to try and uncover the professor’s true intentions. It’s even more present here, as he joyfully revels in being one step ahead of the aliens for the most part. The Doctor’s really enjoying this.

Watching television last night, an advert came on for the DVD release of a film starring Pauline Collins. and I pointed her out to Ellie as ‘the companion in the story I’m currently watching’. And that’s accurate! If we can count Kylie Minogue, and David Morrisey as companions in the 2009 specials, then we surely have to count Sam (she’s from Liverpool, you know) as being one, too.

It’s strange, coming after an episode in which I’ve been praising just how well the Second Doctor interacts with Ben and Jamie (and usually Polly, when she’s not been kidnapped), that our two most experienced companions are totally dispensed with in this episode, and replaced with a new girl. With the benefit of 40-something year’s hindsight, I know Pauline Collins isn’t going to be stepping aboard the TARDIS in a few day’s time, but it’s clearly the way the character is being written here.

She’s introduced as an intelligent, plucky young girl, she’s got a character quirk (did I mention that she’s from Liverpool? It was brought up three times in as many minutes in yesterday’s episode, so I thought I’d better say something about it), the Doctor groups her in with Jamie at one point when speaking, and there’s no mention of any family outside of her brother, who’s disappeared (that’s why she’s down from Liverpool). It’s interesting, at least to me, to have a potential companion being introduced with such a thick accent, less than 18 months after Dodo’s was shifted around the country before being phased out.

If anything, at this stage, the accent makes it even more obvious that Sam is to be our new time traveller, as having some kind of ‘quirk’ is a bit of a pre-requisite for a companion at this stage. Since taking over, Lloyd and Davis has introduced Ben (the ‘East-ender’), Polly (the ‘posh girl’) and Jamie (the ‘Scottish lad from the past’). In the next story we’ll be adding Victoria to our list (the ‘Victorian girl’). Still obvious as it may seem, I’m ever so glad we won’t be getting Sam full-time – that voice could grate after a while…

a 

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

Day 165: The Faceless Ones, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I think this might be the first time that it's really clear just why the Doctor and Jamie travel together for such a long time. They're so brilliant together! Even while they're on the run from the authorities, trying to solve a murder, and having to work out what's happened to their friend, they really seem to be enjoying the adventure. At times, 1960s Doctor Who can feel like simply heading from one terrifying ordeal to the next (just a few weeks ago, Ben and Polly had to endure fighting the Cybermen one day before heading right off to do battle with the Daleks - no time for a rest in between!), so it's lovely to see a Doctor and companion having a great time together.

It also gives us the opportunity to see them really sparking off each other, and the friendship between Troughton and Hines shows through wonderfully, too. There's plenty of fun moments here - hiding behind the newspapers is great, and Hines' narration on the soundtrack, when he explains that not only is Jamie's paper foreign, but also upside down, had me laugh out loud. Even Ben manages to get in on the fun, while the trio hold a private meeting in a photo booth. Thankfully, there's a tele snap of them pulling funny faces at the camera when they get caught huddled in the machine.

We're seeing Jamie being used to good effect as a historical character, too. It's often said (more by fans than anyone, but still) that a companion drawn from history wouldn't work in the show today, as you can't latch onto them in the same way you can a character from the present day. Here, though, it works brilliantly. We've already had Jamie's fear of the 'flying metal beasties' in yesterday's episode, and here we get a full minute of ambient airport noise, as Jamie looks around the huge concourse, trying to make sense of it all. It's perfectly simple to latch onto: if you've ever been a child, lost in a busy supermarket, confused by all the hustle and bustle around you, then you're able to sympathise with Jamie here. It takes the world of Gatwick airport (as I mused yesterday, it was already a place not many of the viewers would have been in 1967), and makes it just as alien as Vulcan, or Atlantis.

I worried, when Polly 'changed', that it may lack a bit of impact. The Macra Terror used the idea of a companion being taken over to the wrong side so well, and I feared that this would fall flat coming so soon after that one. Thankfully, though, it's been fantastic, and it's different enough in tone to the last story that it doesn't feel as rehashed as I thought it might. The crowning moment has to be when Ben opens the packing crate and finds the real Polly shut inside it, unresponsive. Yesterday, I mentioned that the Doctor and Jamie finding nothing but paper cups in the crate was a good moment, but here it gets turned on its head and used as a terrifying image. We don't often see the companions in a state like this…

There's plenty of other things in my notes for today that I could pick up on, but I think I'll stick with just one for now. The Doctor making his escape from the Commandant's office is a scene that you'd never see on Doctor Who these days, as our hero stands in the middle of an airport, holding a suspicious item, and declares 'one step nearer, and I'll blow you all to smithereens!'

a 0

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

Day 164: The Faceless Ones, Episode One

Dear diary,

This may feel like an odd place to bring it up, but I've been dreading the Pertwee era. Even though he was my first Doctor (well, my first BBC, Doctor. Peter Cushing was the first Doctor I ever actually watched), I've always considered him my least favourite, and his era isn't one that I recall enjoying all that much. There's several reasons why, which we'll get to later in the year.

The reason I mention it here is that one of the things I've always thought I didn't like about that early 1970s period of the programme was that it was set on contemporary Earth. I seem to recall that I was just never all that keen on the idea. It's a good thing, perhaps, that at the moment, these contemporary Earth stories are doing very well with me. The War Machines was my highest-rated First Doctor story, and The Faceless Ones is off to a good start in this episode.

It might help that, as I've said before, I really do love the look and the feel of the 1960s. Seeing things from this era thrown up onto screen is great fun for me, and that's probably affecting how much I'm enjoying things. Add to that the fact that this is still a very new kind of story for Doctor Who to tell, and I think you're onto a winner. Hopefully, the magic will hold out long enough for me to reappraise the Third Doctor's time on the planet when it comes…

As I watched this episode, I was met with the nagging sense that I'd seen it before at some point. I'm wondering if I might have watched it on the Lost in Time DVD in the past, possibly following on from my first viewing of The Moonbase. Certainly, I'd seen the arrival of the TARDIS on the runway before now (though I don't think I'd appreciated before just how vast in scale it is!), and I'm sure I've watched the Doctor and Jamie battling with the officials about their passports. Equally, when the Commandant asked to see inside the packing crate at the Chameleon Tours hangar, I vaguely knew that there'd be plastic cups in there.

This has turned into another case of appreciating things far more when they're being seen in order, though. As I've said above, the scale to this episode really is vast, from the opening shots of aeroplanes coming in to land, to the high shot of the TARDIS materialising and the policeman chasing our regulars, there's a sense of scale to things here that we've not had an awful lot of in the programme. Plus, it's all filmed at Gatwick airport! In 1967, this isn't a place that many viewers will have been to, and that probably added to all the magic just that little bit.

We're given plenty of opportunity to look at it, as well. They're really getting their money's worth out of the location. The first three minutes of the episode are (mostly) the Doctor and his friends being chased to some high-tempo music and acoustic airport noise. All this brevity is then cut through when Polly witnesses a murder, and the Doctor's got a mystery to solve.

It doesn't stop the fast tempo of the episode, though, or the amount of humour that's involved. Jamie's initial description of an aeroplane as being a 'flying beastie' is brilliant, and even more so when Polly tells them what she's just seen, and Jamie wonders if one of the 'beasties' could be the murderer. We also get plenty of comedy (at least to start with) from the Commandant, as he tries to clear the obstruction to the runway ('What was it? It was a police box!?!'). It's a scene that I can perfectly imagine Nick Courtney playing as the Brigadier, which is perhaps another good sign for that era?

It's great fun watching the Doctor and Jamie argue about their passports while trying to convince people that there really has been a murder, and then the pair continue to delight as they head off to the hangar once more to search for the body. Troughton looks just right in a Sherlock Homes role, as he studies the surroundings with his magnifying glass.

As I watched the episode, Ellie was sat next to me (though not paying attention - she was getting on with some work on her laptop). The thing that did rouse her interest was the first shot of the burnt arm as it appears from behind a doorway. It has to be said that it's pretty effective, and works just as well when it's repeated later on, peeking out from under a cloak as the creature is led away to the airport's sick bay.

The shot of the two men carrying the creature up the escalators is nice (again showing the scale of the room, though perhaps more through unusual framing than anything else…), though it would have been nice to see a different angle on the scene. I'd more or less worked out that the cliffhanger would be that we'd see the face of the creature up-close, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that I was wrong. The hood of the cloak comes down, we see the back of the creature's head - just as burnt and painful looking as the arm… and then the credits kick in! We're left to wonder just what it might be. Brilliant stuff.

8/10 

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

Day 163: The Macra Terror, Episode Four

Dear diary,

No matter how much I've praised the way that the Doctor and his companions slip away un-noticed at the end of adventures lately, it's undeniably great to see them here enjoying the good feeling of their victory. The Macra are defeated (there were such things as Macra!), the colony is free, and they're holing a dancing competition to celebrate. Goodo!

The only thing is… I've gotten the impression throughout this story - and this episode in particular - that the Macra are the ones who provide for the colony. They use the humans to mine the gasses that keep them alive, and in return they give them food and shelter etc. Is their entire colony not going to collapse in on itself now that the main source of 'employment' is finished with? Maybe there's more to it that we just don't see in these four episodes, but it did leave me wondering about the future a bit…

I've spent a lot of time in this story talking about how scary the Macra can be if they're imagined in the right way, but the sight of them in the control room, operating machinery, could swing either way. On the one hand, it could be terribly sinister (the narration describes one of them using a giant claw to push a button, which could look quite effective), or on the other it could just look funny. And a bit naff, if we're talking about the Macra looking like they do in the tele snaps.

I also have to wonder what effect it has when it turns out that the Macra are the voice behind the Controller. In some ways, I rather like the idea that the Macra are more than just the creeping monsters they've been painted as throughout the story so far. But then once the lead crab had started talking, I couldn't help but picture him with a little pencil mustache and a monocle. Couldn't even tell you why (the voice certainly doesn't sound like it comes from a crab wearing a monocle), that's just the image that formed in my head. Far from being scary, it's actually quite amusing. I'm sure that wasn't the case on screen at the time, though!

That said, this is another funny episode. There's lots of humour involved from all parties. The aforementioned celebration at the end of the episode is good fun, with the Doctor and his friends dancing their way towards the exit and flinging themselves out of the door (after all, as Jamie explains, that's why they call it a 'Highland Fling'). The earlier scene in which Jamie is forced to dance in order to make his escape is just as brilliant, and it comes at the tail end of another scene (the cheerleaders chanting in unison) that walks a tight line between being sinister and being funny.

Perhaps the thing that I've enjoyed most about this episode, though, is Anneke Will's narration. Right from the word 'go' with the sheer zeal she puts into reading the story's title, in which she makes it sound like it should end with a big exclamation point - The Macra Terror! - you know just how much she's getting into this story. I'm ever so glad that this new version of the soundtrack has been put together. No matter how much I enjoy Colin Baker, I think the new narration, and Wills' performance, really does help lift the story up to a whole new level.

z 10

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

Day 162: The Macra Terror, Episode Three

Dear diary,

It was always going to be a hard task following on from yesterday's episode. I didn't really know how to approach today's episode, because one you've hit a 10/10 for one, it's always going to be tricky moving forward into the next part. There's nothing wrong with this third episode, but whereas I praised yesterday for not feeling like Doctor Who, today's limitation is that it feels too much like Doctor Who.

That's not the complaint it sounds like. Even when it's being 'just' Doctor Who, it's better than most other things ever invented. It just feels like today has been pretty much standard Episode Three fare. The Doctor and his friends are captured, there's an escape, and the cliff-hanger ends with Jamie being menaced by the story's monster.

Even though the Macra are still scary (I'm continuing to picture them like real crabs as opposed to the prop used in the story), this is the fourth cliffhanger in a row that centres around them, usually bearing down on someone. At the end of The Moonbase, we had the claw appearing menacingly on the scanner. It was the Doctor and Medok in Episode One being cornered by one, giving us our first proper look at the creature as a whole. At least in my head. Episode Two saw the Controller being grabbed by a giant claw, and now you've got Jamie, edging his way around one sleeping crab while another scuttles up behind him. There just comes a time when they start to lose their impact a little.

It has to be said that - once again - it's Partick Troughton who salvages the episode for me. He gets two scenes today where he really stands out, and they each showcase him in a different way. In the first, he works out the equation to find out what the gas is for. Listening to it on the soundtrack, almost the whole scene is narrated by Anneke Wills', and it's very visual few minutes. Even so, I've gotten used to Troughton to the point now that I can just picture his movements as he hurries back and forth across the control room in pursuit of data.

The highlight of the scene has to be when he discovers that not only has he worked out a correct formula, he's worked it out exactly right, and it took the colony's best computers years to figure out. With a joyful tone, he happily crosses out the 10/10 he's given himself (written in chalk on the wall, just under where he's being doing his calculations), and corrects it to an 11/10. It's a great little moment, and another example of something that I just can't picture Hartnell doing.

The other scene that gives him a chance to shine comes slightly before his comedic runaround with chalk. The Doctor is left alone in the control room with Ben, who is still under the control of the colony. It's a beautifully played scene by both Troughton and Michael Craze, as the Doctor tries to break Ben's conditioning subtly. He picks his way through a bag of sweets as he muses that this 'just isn't like you, Ben…' and warns him to stay away from Jamie, who might not be forgiving. It's another of those moments that I'm really sorry doesn't exist - as I'd love to see this pair on screen together more.

One of the key things that people tend to note about The Macra Terror is that it's the first time that the titles for the programme have changed. It's less obvious to me, listening to it on audio, as the music won't alter for another couple of days. The Troughton titles set the template for the rest of the programme's classic run, and I usually think of them as the 'default' titles for the show. In a recent Doctor Who Magazine Poll, they were voted people's 6th favourite (out of 13), so perhaps not as popular as I'd expected.

The thing I always remember about this particular sequence is my mum's reaction to it. Mum's not a fan of Doctor Who in any shape or form. I can recall watching Smith and Jones for the first time, on a visit home, and mum sitting in another room because she didn't really want to watch. Every five minutes or so, she'd walk through the living room and make a point of looking at the screen and loudly declaring that it was 'a load of old rubbish', with a bit of a smile. Still, the last time she visited me in Cardiff, Ellie and Me took her to the Doctor Who experience, as it's only a ten minute walk from the flat. She ended up quite enjoying that, so perhaps we can make a fan of her yet?

Anyway, in the early days, when I was first getting into Doctor Who, I'd picked up a Troughton story on DVD and I was settling down to watch it for the first time. As soon as the titles came on, mum decided that it was time to up and leave, as it was these titles that put her off Doctor Who for good. She'd have been about seven when they started, so old enough to really take note. She'd always found the sight of Troughton's face appearing from the howl around to be just a bit too scary, and took that as her cue to leave the room.

Often, she'll talk about just hearing the theme music as a child, and that being enough to scare her, so I think it's safe to say that these new titles weren't perhaps the greatest of successes the show ever produced - at least not in the eyes of some children!

z 

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

Day 161: The Macra Terror, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I said yesterday that - giant crabs notwithstanding - the plot of this story could be transplanted into virtually any 1960s TV programme, and it would work just as well. Heck, in some seasons of The Avengers, you'd probably even get away with the giant crabs. Today's episode has only really served to strengthen my thoughts on this. Put simply, this isn't Doctor Who. This is better than Doctor Who!

Some of you will know that when I listen to the missing episodes as audio soundtracks, I tend to do so while doing other things. My mind wanders too easily with an audio, so if I'm sat in front of a computer, for example, every five minutes or so I realise I've not been paying attention and I don't have a clue what's happening. I've usually been distracted by pictures of cats. Today's episode was listed to in a format that often serves me well - while doing the washing up (with frantic drying of hands every time I want to make a note).

It's a good sign of the quality of this episode, then, that I found myself simply stood in the kitchen for most of it. Not washing up, not drying, not cleaning anything, just standing in the middle of the kitchen listening to the story.

I think that owes a lot simply to how dramatic this episode is. Yesterday, I was praising the story for being quite comical, featuring scenes of the Doctor getting spruced up and then tumbling back into the 'cosmic hobo' style, and laughing with his friends, while something sinister played out in the background. Today, that humour has almost completely been abandoned in favour of something dark, tense, and pacy. It's signposted right from the off, with the cliff-hanger (a Macra approaching the Doctor and Medok) being resolved in an unusual way. The two men don't try to run, or fight the monster. They don't get captured by it and taken away.

It's not resolved in any of the ways that you might come to expect from Doctor Who at this stage in its life. Instead, the creature leaves, and it's Medock screaming and shouting about how he's vindicated, since the Doctor has seen a Macra too, that alerts the guards to them and sets them off for the rest of the episode. My notes for these first few minutes simply say 'unusual resolution to cliffhanger', as though it were a sign of the things to come.

The whole thing from there on feels like you're watching a completely different drama. The Doctor and his friends happen to be there, and they're on fine form as usual for this season, but they just don't feel like they're making a Doctor Who story.

As I seem to be saying a lot recently, I think there's a chance that this story is greatly helped by the lack of visuals. I've seen images of the Macra before, so I know that they don't look quite as good as I might like them to, but with the soundtrack and Anneke Wills' narration, it's easier to imagine them looking far more mobile, like real crabs scuttling about. There's a moment where we're told that Ben and Polly are surrounded by the creatures in the construction site, and they come scuttling out of every doorway. In my head, that scene looks terrifying. Specifically, Ive got THIS image in mind, which was created a couple of years ago by the fantastically talented Jay Gunn.

Quite apart from the giant crabs scuttling about in the shadows, you've got Ben being turned into a traitor. It feels like it's the main focus of today's episode, and it's set up early on with the polite announcing that the Doctor's friends will need 'deep sleep and thought control'. It's great to see Jamie being the one who resists it, and the scene between him and Ben is fantastic. Hines and Craze play it beautifully, and it's written with such subtlety ('Go to sleep. We've got a long day's work tomorrow') that you can't fail to marvel at it.

Once the suggestion is out of the way, and the Doctor has smashed up the control equipment, Ben is used to great effect in the rest of the episode. Everything he's asked to do by the script is filled with menace, and a kind of threat that we've never seen in Doctor Who. He calls for the guards to take the Doctor away, adding that 'he should be in that hospital of yours', and he mocks Jamie for trying to support his friend. Later, he stalks Polly through the darkened streets of the colony, cooing her and teasing her to come out.

By the time they report to the pilot to announce that they've both seen the Macra, I thought that we might be done with the whole 'evil Ben' plot, but then there's a great twist when he repeats the instructions given earlier in the episode - there are no such thing as Macra! The last time we saw a companion taken over this way was in Ian Stuart Black's last script for the series, The War Machines, in which Dodo and Polly were controlled by Wotan. This feels different, though. There, they were asked to look blank and do the work of the mad computer. Here, Ben is required to turn sinister and actively oppose his friends. It's all very unsettling and comes from right out of left-field. It's brilliant, though.

I've complained in the past that people are often too eager to hand out '1' or '10' to stories that they either hate or love, but I tend to keep my scores much more measured. I reserve the polar extremes for the episodes that really send me in one direction or the other. We've had a couple of '9' scores in The 50 Year Diary up to now, but I think this episode has been more enjoyable than some of those, which leaves me with only one way to go…

a 

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

Day 160: The Macra Terror, Episode One

Dear diary,

The first line of my notes for this episode reads: 'Creepy opening noise', which I've later described as a 'factory heartbeat', 'cut through by up-beat music'. It's a great opening to the story, with this 'heartbeat' playing out for quite some time before the Hi-De-Hi music cuts in, and it works especially well on audio. Odd though, I thought, that I didn't have a clue what was going on, because no one stepped in to narrate. It was only a little later, when Colin Baker's voice appeared on the soundtrack, that I realised I was listening to the old version of the story.

A quick trip to the AudioGo website soon rectified it, and while the new version of the story downloaded (narrated this time, in full, by Anneke Wills), I had a chance to muse on how odd that opening had been. I've often heard that the original release of the story's soundtrack (in the early 1990s, I believe) wasn't very good, and a number of people got rather excited when it was announced that the 'Lost TV Episodes' box sets contained a new version.

As soon as I'd loaded the updated edition to my phone and hit play again, it quickly became apparent just how much better this attempt at the story is. For a start, having been given a few seconds of the 'factory heartbeat', Wills' steps into to tell us what's actually happening at this point - and it's quite key to the rest of the plot. There's a bit of me that almost wants to listen to the original version and see how well you can piece things together. The narration is helpful, too, once the happier music kicks in, paining a picture of what's going on.

I'm finding that I'm picturing the colony here as being something akin to the village seen in The Prisoner, which would have gone out about six months later than The Macra Terror. Tellingly, and much like Ian Stuart Black's scripts for Season Three, much of this story feels like it would fit in just as well if you were to remove the Doctor and his companions, and to substitute them with the lead characters from Danger Man, The Avengers, or Adam Adamant Lives!. It's only when a giant crab starts to crawl towards us in the cliffhanger that things really lurch back into being a Doctor Who story.

That's not a criticism, mind. Doctor Who is at its best when aping other styles, and Ian Stuart Black is a writer who understands 1960s adventure better than a lot of people. The whole story is tense and gripping right from the off, with the TARDIS landing right in the middle of a chase (and our regulars getting caught up in said chase almost the minute they step out of the ship), and then onwards through a slightly too happy world, where everyone is smiling, and we're asked to ignore the single mad man ruining everyone else's fun.

All the stuff with the Doctor and his friends being given a relaxation treatment is great fun, and it's a sequence that I'd love to actually watch properly. The Doctor stepping out form a machine freshly pressed and looking terribly clean is brilliant… as is his almost instant reversal to being a bit of a scruffy clown. As I've become used to, Troughton is on sparkling form here, and he's given plenty of brilliant dialogue, too. My notes are filled with snippets of conversation, but my favourite has to be just after their arrival in the colony: 'We're in the future, and on a planet very like Earth,' he declares, before Jamie questions how he knows that. 'I don't know,' the Doctor responds, 'I'm guessing.'

Having seen a few full moving Troughton episodes now, I can just picture him playing this moment, and just thinking about it brings a smile to my face.

Once we move into the later half of the episode, and the squeeky-clean veneer of the colony has been wiped away, we're left with the Doctor creeping around in dark streets and building sites, looking out for the only other person who may know the truth. This episode is perhaps the first time we've really seen the Doctor standing back, knowing exactly what's going on, but playing the fool all the same.

For much of the episode, he doesn't seem to have any idea what's going on, but then he drops lines into conversations that betray a greater intelligence. He makes a point of mentioning crawling along the ground (instantly getting the guard's backs up), and again, it's a scene i can just see Troughton playing.

Ian Stuart Black wrote my highest-rated serial of the First Doctor's run, and if he can keep up this quality for the rest of the story, The Macra Terror could be rating quite well, too.

9/10 

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

Day 159: The Moonbase, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I didn't notice it during Episode Two (possibly because we spent a lot more time in the medical wing), but the set of the Moonbase itself is huge! There's a shot early on, where the Doctor and Hobson walk from a telescope across to a section of controls, and they're walking for ages. Several other shots focus on people in the foreground, with others getting on with work elsewhere (it's usually the Doctor, watching through the telescope) in the back of the shot. It's not often in Doctor Who at this stage that you get sets on a scale like this, so it adds something really different to the story.

It's also nice to see close ups being used here to great effect, much as they were in Episode Two. Once again, we get a great close up of Pat Troughton as he delivers the end of a speech, and it really does help to sell the danger that they're all in. Again, it's an unusual look to a Who story, so it's fantastic to see. Hopefully, when the story sees its release on DVD later in the year, with the two missing episodes animated, they'll be keeping to this style - it really is better than average.

The close ups are also used brilliantly when we're with the Cybermen in their ship - which has a great design, by the way! The hexagons are beautiful, and the weird light-effect pattern being used as a screen is psychedelic. Very 1960s! - and they're framed at slightly odd angles, not usually face-on to one of the creatures. I think it makes the Cybermen costumes look better than they otherwise might, as it has to be said that the more this story goes on, the less keen I am on this design. It's very nice and all, it just looks a bit… tatty.

They're at their best in the first few minutes, and the recap from yesterday's episode as they slowly advance across the surface of the Moon. The shot of their feet marching along is stunning - one of the best we've ever had - and having the title come up over it looks fab, too. It helps that there's loads of Cybermen, so it seems like those feet are coming towards you for ages.

It has to be said that they also look pretty good when being lifted off into space. I mused during Episode One that it was perhaps thankful that it was missing from the archives, so we could imagine the shots of the Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Jamie larking about in zero-gravity looking as good as we wanted… but actually, it's pulled off really well here, with the Cybermen! It does help that the black sky gives more of a chance to hide the wires, but it looks great all the same. It's also a nice touch that they're not just whisked off into the air, but they start to lift a little first, before being swept away. A little thing, but it really helps the moment.

And then, as soon as the Cyber-menace is defeated, the Doctor and his friends slip away before too many questions can be asked. It's something that's become a staple of the series by now, even though it's crept in as a relatively recent thing. Hobsons' comment that it's probably for the best, since there's enough madmen in the base anyway is great, and sums up Troughton's Doctor perfectly. He really is the first 'madman with a box'.

I'm tempted to turn on my own Time Scanner now, and see if I'll enjoy tomorrow's episode or not, but I don't know, since The Macra Terror is another of those stories from this era that I know little about. It’s got giant crabs in it. That's about all I can tell you. I do know, however, that the idea of the Time Scanner is a bizarre one - something that perhaps feels more at home in the TV Comic stories than it does on screen. I don't dislike it, per say, but it does feel a bit out of place…

8/10 

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

Day 158: The Moonbase, Episode Three

Dear diary,

There's a moment in this episode, when Hobson comments that if they can't get the Gravitron back under control quickly, then the weather on Earth will be all over the place. I couldn't help but sympathise with that, as I listened to this episode on a walk home in the pouring rain. Does anyone know who I need to email if I want them to change the settings on their weather plans a little, and bring back the sunnier weather?

On the plus side, the darkening sky and downpour of rain really did help to amp up the atmosphere in this episode. Instantly, I realised why I'd always thought of myself as being such a fan of these Cybermen (and the ones in the next couple of Cyber-stories): they have such creepy voices! There's a real metallic drone to everything they say, and it really works. Even when they Cyberman is mocking the crew of the Moonbase ('Clever. Clever. Clever…'), there's something quite unnerving about the tone.

And these Cybermen are cruel. The ones in The Tenth Planet were pretty heartless, to be fair, wanting to suck Earth's power and then convert its inhabitants to Cybermen to ensure their survival, but the ones we're presented with here are really cruel. I'm thinking, specifically, of the moment when a Cyberman is told that humans can't be sent into the chamber, because they'll lose their minds. They Cyberman assertions how long they'd have before going insane, and then declares that it's longer than they're needed for, so it's no matter.

People often ask me why I prefer the Cybermen to the Daleks, and I think that just about sums it up. Daleks have no care for your life, they'll just kill you. Cybermen will get what they need from you first, and then if they don't kill you, they'll remove all your humanity and then shove you in a tin shell. Lovely.

It has to be said that the Doctor doesn't really do a whole lot in this episode. For the first fifteen minutes or so, he mostly sneaks around, playing with the various sonic controls When you take this and also think of his attempt to break a sonic lock with his recorder during The Power of the Daleks, you have to wonder if he's started to think about creating a Sonic Screwdriver yet. It turns up at the tail end of next season, and this almost feels like the early stages of its invention. I know it's not - they didn't plan things like that so far in advance in 1967 - but it's a nice little happenstance.

The benefit of the Doctor being taken out of the action a little is that it gives his companions a chance to shine. With the room to breathe, Jamie is allowed to wake up and take some screen time alongside Ben and Polly. It's great to see more being made of his 'companion from the past' status here again (Ben and Polly discuss the idea of using radiation to beat the Cybermen, before Jamie chimes in and announces that in his day, they used to throw Holy Water on witches… and that's what leads them to a solution!), and being given more of a chance to stand out.

Perhaps most interesting is the slight rivalry between Jamie and Ben when it comes to their fellow TARDIS traveller. It's very different to see two companions falling out like this, almost puffing out their chest to state their superiority, and I'm hoping that we see a bit more of it as we move forward. Certainly, it helps to remind us that Ben is a 1960s Cockney lad, and Michael Craze plays the scene beautifully. It also gives Jamie a great chance to show us that he's capable of standing up for himself, too.

Even Polly gets a chance to be important again, today. Following on from Jamie's suggestion of using Holy Water, it's Polly who comes up with the solution of disintegrating the Cybermen's chest units, with a number of different cleaning fluids. Ben even christens the concoction 'Polly Cocktail'!

This is more The Moonbase that I remember from my first viewing years and years ago. Full of suspense, with the Cybermen being devious and harsh, and the Doctor accompanied by a brilliant group of companions. The more I watch, the more I come to the conclusion that Season Four really is my season of Doctor Who - I'm loving it!

8/10 

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

Day 157: The Moonbase, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Because I listened to the soundtrack for yesterday’s episode, I didn’t get to see the cliffhanger in any way. It gets repeated at the start of this episode, and I couldn’t help but wonder… how obvious was it to kids watching at the time that these were Cybermen? I mean, there are similarities between this and The Tenth Planet’s design - the handlebar motif, mainly, and the eyes are similar enough, but was it a case of them being instantly recognisable?

I always used to think of the Cyber-designs from The Moonbase as being one of my favourites, but actually, I’m not so sure of that now. Having fallen so in love with the design on display a few weeks back, these just don’t pack the same punch. The moment that really convinced me of that was a shot of a Cyberman stood at the foot of Jamie’s bed.

The entire moment is played to shock you, as Polly turns around to see it, the camera pulling round to show us what she’s looking at. It works very well, but just imagine the shock of the reveal being one of the Tenth Planet models stood there, with a blank cotton-covered face! That would have a real impact.

I don’t think the design is helped by having them do things hat really aren’t flattering. There’s a great scene of the Cyberman breaking into the base via a hole in the store-room wall, as it pushes its way through, sending bags of food tumbling… and then we get to watch for a few seconds as the Cyberman stops and starts piling them back up again. It’s not exactly the most thrilling thing they’ve ever had to do. Or there’s the cliffhanger, which revolves around the Doctor finding another of the Cybermen taking a little nap under a blanket in the medical wing. That’s not their greatest moment, either.

It’s a shame, in some ways, because when they are being used well, they’re being used really well. The shot of them killing two of the crew on the surface of the Moon (and the subsequent shot of the two empty suits laying on the ground) is fantastic, and they do look quite imposing when they take the crew members from the medical ward. Hopefully, now that they’re on display to Hobson, we’ll be getting more Cyber-action that shows them in the best light.

All that said… I love their plan. Poisoning the sugar supply. I really wish that I didn’t know that was coming, since it’s a great reveal and a very clever idea. After all these years, that’s the one plot point that I’ve always remembered from The Moonbase. It helped by a fantastic special effect of the infection taking hold, spreading black lines across a hand. It’s an example of the programme trying a special effect and getting it so, so, right.

This is where, lately, I’ve been telling you that I’m not going to bother praising Troughton. Today, though, I think I need to make an exception. His ‘some corners of the universe’ speech is one of the best known moments of his entire era (it’s Troughton’s equivalent of the ‘one day, I shall come back’ moment), and it really is brilliant. It’s possibly the bit of Troughton that I find myself quoting the most (with the right initiation of ‘they must be fought!’), but even I’d forgotten just how great it was.

It also marks another key point in that journey that I was tracing for the First Doctor, in regards to becoming the man that we know and love today. With occasional backtracks, the Hartnell incarnation was pretty much at this point by the time we reached the end of Season Two. This is a great example of the Doctor really laying out the way that he views the universe. Ben suggests that they take Hobson’s orders and simply retreat to the TARDIS, but the Doctor argues that, no, they have to stay because there is evil to be fought in the base.

It’s a real high point for Troughton, and he seems to really relish playing the moment. He’s equally as fantastic during the cliffhanger, when he has to question Hobson about his men searching the medical bay. The camera pulls in really tight to Troughton, who switches to ‘serious’ for one of the very first times. We saw a bit of the serious side to this Doctor in The Power of the Daleks, but this is our first proper exposure to it.

And it really helps to sell the threat. When the Doctor is worried, we should be worried. I’ve grown so used to this incarnation playing everything as a game, it feels genuinely unusual for him to be in this kind of mood. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of chances for Troughton’s clowning around to creep into the story, too, though. The entire scene of him sneaking around in the main control room taking samples from the crew members is brilliant, as he stretches himself up and crouches down in the pursuit of data. Brilliant stuff.

And lets have a hand, please, for Space Adventure, the default Cyberman theme in this era. We heard bits of it yesterday as a cue that something was about to happen, but this is the first time that we’ve had it for any kind of sustained period, during the cliffhanger. I love Space Adventure. It’s quite possibly my favourite of all the music ever used in the series. I hum it when Ellie and me watch any Cyberman episode (It really got on her nerves during Nightmare in Silver a few weeks ago). For a while, it was even my ringtone. These days, I can’t even figure out how to change my ringtone, so it couldn’t be even if I wanted it to.

And now, I’m going to have it spinning in my head until tomorrow’s episode. Sing along with me, now…

8/10 

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

Day 156: The Moonbase, Episode One

Dear diary,

Ah, The Moonbase. Before starting on The 50 Year Diary, The Moonbase was one of the few missing stories that I’d watched in any form. Put simply. It’s because the soundtrack is available on the Lost in Time collection, so I think I went through them in the space of a day. It’s recently been confirmed for release with Episodes One and Three animated, but it’s not going to be available until long after I need to watch it, sadly. It’s been a few years since I last saw the story (I bought the Lost in Time DVDs on release, and that was about nine years ago, now), but I seem to recall liking it.

The thing I think I recall the most about this story is that Jamie doesn’t make much of an impact to the plot. I remember at the time thinking that this must be because he was added last-minute as a companion, but then watching The Underwater Menace, where he didn’t feel especially out of place (even if he did feel like he was simply filling a role), I wondered if I’d find myself pleasantly surprised.

Things start well enough, with a continuation of the TARDIS scene from yesterday’s episode, but it’s not long before Jamie has been knocked out and we’re left with him just waking up to mumble from time to time. It’s nice, at least, that what he’s mumbling seems to be tied in well with his Scottish heritage - with a family legend about the ‘Phantom Piper’.
With the members of the crew Who are left awake for the rest of the episode, there’s quite a lot to enjoy. Being another in the mold of the ‘Base Under Siege’ story, there’s a number of similarities to The Tenth Planet, quite apart from the presence of the Cybermen. We’ve got the international crew (this time, our ‘comedy European’ is from France), A leader Who’s not overly keen on the Doctor (though Hobson is friendlier than General Cutler was), and a number of confined areas that could create good drama. Outside our base of choice, there’s an open expanse that cuts us off from the rest of humanity, with only a radio to keep us in contact (I can’t remember, but I’d not be surprised if the radios get damaged at some point before the story is over).

It sounds like I’m complaining about all these similarities, when the truth is that they work just as well here as they did in The Tenth Planet. The ‘Base Under Siege’ is something Doctor Who can do very well, especially in this era of the programme.

If anything, I think I’m more drawn to this story’s ‘hook’ than I was to the one in Hartnell’s swan song. Mysterious power-drain from a spaceship and the approach of a tenth planet was all very well, but I’m really enjoying the idea of the crew falling ill, seemingly at random, and the idea that there’s someone - or something - listening in to all the base’s radio communications.

I think this episode, much like the last of The Underwater Menace, is helped simply by being missing from the archives. While the Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Jamie all exit the TARDIS and bounce around on the surface of the Moon, I’m free to imagine it looking as good as I want. Were the episode to exist for me to actually watch, I fear that the result may end up looking not all that different to the swimming scene from Episode Three of our previous story.

It may help here that it would be against the black background of space, perhaps hiding the kirby wires a little better than the rocks of Atlantis did, but there’s a danger of it looking not quite as good as I’d like. As things go, it’s a strong start, but we’re about to enter a week or so of episodes existing seemingly at random, as I alternate between soundtracks and the Lost in Time DVDs on pretty much a daily basis…

7/10 

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

Day 155: The Underwater Menace, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I’ve been waiting all the way through this story for the bottom to fall out of it and for it to become rubbish. I think it’s fair to say, now that I’ve heard it all, that it certainly doesn’t deserve to poll seven places from the bottom in the Doctor Who Magazine ‘Mighty 200’ survey from a couple of years ago. Let’s make no bones about it: I’ve loved The Underwater Menace.

I think it helps that all the right episodes are missing, and the 50% that I have been able to watch as full episodes is the right half of the story, too. Episode One has to feature the TARDIS materialising on the shores of a volcanic island, and while the tele snaps make it look half-way decent, I think there’s a danger that actually on screen, it may not have fared so well.

Similarly, today’s episode features the destruction of Atlantis, as the ocean breaks through the walls of the city, and rushes in to claim it for the deep. On the soundtrack, it sounds brilliant. The sound of the rushing water is modulated perfectly in every scene, and since I’ve listened to this episode on a train, without the tele snaps in front of me, I’ve been able to imagine it looking pretty good.

There’s a moment when Anneke Wills on the narration describes the giant head of Amdo falling from the wall. In my mind, that looked pretty spectacular crashing into the rising waves. On screen? Well, I’ve yet to look at the images, but I fear it might not have been quite as effective.

It helps, of course, that having seen two episodes, I’ve got a pretty good idea of just how things should look in this final episode. Perhaps the best thing that those two have done for me is working with Troughton’s Doctor. I mused the other day that in my head, all his movements seemed to be based on his appearance in The Three Doctors. That’s no so true, now, and it was very noticeable when he explains his plan to his group of friends.

Again, I’m not going to waste your time by harping on about how great he’s been in this episode, but he’s done it again - knocking it out of the park with his performance. What I will do is draw attention back to Michael Craze as Ben. I spent a lot of time praising him during The War Machines, and while he’s had a lot of nice stuff to do since then, today is the first time that he’s really made me smile. Sneaking the Doctor past a guard, he’s questioned on how they know this is a wanted man. ‘Well blimey,’ Ben replies, ‘Look at him! He ain’t normal, is he?’

This is yet another example of the fantastic dialogue littered through this story, and once again I’ve got notes of seemingly every other line. It’s a real pity that Geoffrey Orme didn’t write another Doctor Who story - I’m crying out for more of his work. Some of the particular highlights from today’s episode include Ben asking the Doctor if he knows what he’s doing (‘Oh, what a question. Of course I don’t’) and the poetic ways in which the destruction of Atlantis get described (‘The everlasting nightmare is here at last’).

And then we’ve got a lovely scene at the very end, with the Doctor and his trio of companions safely back inside the TARDIS, where they tease him about being able to pilot the ship. There’s yet more great dialogue (The Doctor claims that he can steer the ship if he wants to. He’s just never wanted to), and a real sense of bonding between them.

It acts as a nice counter-balance to the start of the story, and it’s the other half of Jamie’s ‘introduction to the TARDIS’ scene. Having the Doctor questioned about how well he can steer the ship seems to have become something of a staple when new companions are introduced. Here, the Doctor decides to take up the challenge, and sets course for Mars. And then the TARDIS goes haywire. How very fitting!

On the whole, I really have loved this story. It’s far, far, better than reputation would suggest, and I’m really hopeful that the recently recovered episode will convince more people to look more favourably on it as a result. Certainly, it’s low standing among fandom currently seems thoroughly undeserved. Plus, now we’ve got half the tale in the archives, surely that makes it a candidate for an animated release?

8/10 0