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

Day 706: The Happiness Patrol, Episode Three

Dear diary,

One of the things that comes up most about The Happiness Patrol, at least in fan circles, has to be the Kandy Man. Oh, god, the ridicule that’s been poured at that poor candy creation over the years! I can sort of see why, if I’m honest - I mean, for starters, it’s a Doctor Who villain in the shape of Bertie Bassett - but I also have to confess that I rather like him! 

There’s something so wonderful about the fact that a big pile of sweets can be made to be in any way threatening, and it’s largely down to the performance that David John Pope gives in the role. It’s played as childlike but sinister - and that’s a combination that’s always been effective. I also love the way that even the Doctor and Ace make fun of the character; a particular highlight being a scene in which the Doctor sticks his foe to the floor with Lemonade… Frees him… and then sticks him to the floor again! For all my talk of the Seventh Doctor’s scheming persona, and I’m sure there’ll be more of that to come in the next season, this is the most fun that his trickery ever comes across!

It also helps that the Kandy Man isn’t really the villain of the piece. In that time-honoured Doctor Who tradition, he’s simply a monster for the younger members of the audience to look at, while everyone else follows along with a pastiche of Thatcherism elsewhere in the story. A few years ago, this was picked up by Newsnight as though someone had just unearthed this hidden subtext in the story after all these years, but it’s fairly plain to see even if you’re not looking for it! I’ll not be delving too deeply into any of that, though, because there’s people far better suited to giving a proper in-depth look at the subject than I am - I’m more suited to discussing the Kandy Man! 

On the whole, I’ve rather liked The Happiness Patrol. It’s been the story that really solidified Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor in my mind, and that’s always a good thing. I’ve spent years knowing how much I enjoy him as a Doctor, but worried that Season Twenty-Four had proven me wrong. Here’s hoping that as we move towards the end of the ‘classic’ run, the great feeling in evidence production-wise throughout this story continues - letting us go out on a high.

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

Day 704: The Happiness Patrol, Episode One

Dear diary,

For a long time, I didn’t really know what the general opinion was towards The Happiness Patrol. It’s one of those stories that never managed to sit at the very top of many people’s list of favourites, but it was rarely right down the other end of those lists, either. Five or so years ago, it was the final McCoy story that I needed to see - I watched this one immediately after The Greatest Show in the Galaxy with a friend, and these three episodes were the last bits of Seventh Doctor that he had to experience, too. Truth be told, I can’t remember a great deal of my own thoughts on the story, either. A quick look at the Doctor Who Magazine poll from earlier this year reveals that it placed in position 172 of 241 - which putting it at the lower end of ‘average’ territory.

I think that’s a placement that I’d agree with, based on this first episode. There’s certainly a lot in this episode to interest me, but it doesn’t particularly stand out from the crowd at all. I have a feeling that in another six months’ time, after this marathon is over, I’ll be back in that same position of not really knowing how I felt about this one. I think what makes it all the more frustrating, and something which I hope improves as time goes by, is that there’s some real flashes of genius on display. I’m talking largely here about the direction in this one - there are bits of the episode being shot like an old movie, with dutch camera angles and some fantastically artistic lighting. I’d love love see more of this as the story goes on, because it’s that kind of visual flare that could really help this story sing.

As I’ve said, though, there’s plenty to keep me interested, and it’s mostly to do with the ideas in the script. It would be easy to talk about Helen A’s characterisation and compare her to the then Prime Minister, or to talk about the Kandyman in the kitchen (both of which I’m sure I’ll do in the next couple of days), but it’s really the ideas of the world that are appealing to me. I simply love the whole sequence in the ‘waiting area’, where the Doctor is told that this absolutely isn’t a prison, because such a place wouldn’t at all fit with the ethos of this world… but then it’s made very sure that he - and we - understand that actually, of course it’s a prison. That whole sequence is wonderful, and it’s one that feels entirely at home here in the late-1980s era of the programme. I think we’re at a point now, past the half-way mark for another Doctor, where you can really feel Andrew Cartmel’s influence in the stories, because he’s very much the hand steering the show at this point.

I also love that, once again, the Doctor is here for his own reasons. He tells Ace that he’s heard some nasty rumours about the things happening in this colony and he’s decided to check them out. It’s not often before this season that we’ve seen a Doctor so determined to go where and when he’s needed, and I’m really enjoying it as a new approach to the character. I’m also surprised, at the end of Season Twenty-Five, just how much he’s doing things like this. I’ve always thought of the ‘manipulative’, ‘scheming’ version of the Seventh Doctor as only really being apparent in the final season of the show, with only the odd hint towards that side of his nature before then. Actually, though, it’s been a plot point in all of this season’s stories, and I’d argue that it’s easily read in to the stories of the previous season, too (indeed, I did read that in to them). We’re really seeing the way he’s using Ace now, too, in the way they emerge from the TARDIS and he probes to find out what she senses about this place. We’re about to enter a period where she’s very much his litmus paper going in to adventures, so this is a nice thing to see… 

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

Day 703: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Episode Four

Dear diary,

This episode is home to not one, but two shots which I think so perfectly encapsulate the Sylvester McCoy era of the programme. The first comes when he’s in the ring, facing down the Gods of Ragnarok, and he turns on the spot, transforming his sword into the trademark umbrella. The second, of course, is the Doctor walking away from the Psychic Circus as an enormous explosion rips through the tent behind him. It’s become something of a legend within fandom that McCoy doesn’t even flinch when this explosion goes off - he does, and now I can’t unsee it - but he does look incredibly powerful regaining himself half a second later and continuing to strut. The story has been told a thousand times over the years that the explosion wasn’t supposed to be so large, but the fact that it is really helps to make this one of the most defining shots of the late 1980s.

The Doctor’s confrontation with the Gods here is somewhat wonderful, and it’s the first time in a long while that we’ve seen the Doctor square up to such a supposedly powerful being. We got hints of it a few days ago with his speech to Davros, but here we’ve got him properly face-to-face with his enemy in the same way we’ll get to see with Fenric in a couple of week’s time. The whole sequence is perfectly keyed to Sylvester McCoy, giving him a chance to clown around and do the kind of acts that he was best known for while also delivering some wonderful speeches to the ‘monsters’ as he brings their world crumbling down around them. It’s also interesting to note that he claims to have fought the Gods of Ragnarok ‘all through time’… presumably in adventures that we didn’t see? Or does he just mean that he;s fought gods like them, meaning the Animus, and the Great Intelligence? Still, it’s good to see the continuing trend of this incarnation specifically going after his enemies instead of just bumbling in on another of their evil schemes. By the time that the story is over, there’s no doubt left in my mind that the Doctor has orchestrated this whole thing.

I’m also rather keen on just how cleverly Captain Cook has been played throughout this story. He starts off as such an obvious parody of the Doctor (complete with companion), then comes back from the dead - how very like a Time Lord - and in this episode he also makes a point of announcing that he hasn’t come to this world simply by chance. He knows what’s going on here, and he’s here because of it all. I’d not noticed quite how well done this was the last time I watched the story, so I’m glad to have seen it now, because it’s a whole other layer that helps make the story all the richer.

On the whole, I’ve been left a bit mixed with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. I’ve enjoyed it, largely, but I don’t think I’ll be rushing to watch it again any time soon, in the way that some other stories are already at the top of the list for seeing again when this marathon is over. One thing I will say, though - in the special features on this DVD, lots of people complain about how the title was given to them by John Nathan-Turner, and they all say how awful it is… but I love it! 

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

Day 702: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Episode Three

Dear diary,

While I’ve never been actively afraid of clowns, I can certainly see why people can be scared of them. There’s something innately un-nerving about them, isn’t there? Maybe it’s the constant fixed smiles? Truth be told, I’m not sure, but watching this episode if you’re not a clown fan must be an un-nerving experience, because the ones on display here are downright creepy. Led by Ian Reddington as the Chief Clown, our troupe of circus performers manage to walk a nice line in this story - at once being this unstoppable force which has been stalking after the other characters from the opening moments, while also being just that bit useless. Ace has escaped capture by them on more than one occasion now, for example, and they’ve killed the one man who can repair them when they break!

What’s rather nice, though, is that while the clowns certainly fill the role of ‘monster’ for this story - up to now, at least - they’re not the actual threat of the piece. That comes more just in the sense that something is wrong, and the flows are really just a distraction while the Doctor puts all the pieces together. I know where this one is going, and who the true ‘villains’ of the piece are, but I’m rather impressed that we’ve managed to go three episodes with a lot of tension and worry without even revealing them properly yet. The story is absolutely packed to the rafters with elements, and there’s so much to follow that the episodes feel incredibly rich. Of course, the danger of this comes on the flip side - there’s so much going on that it can at times be tricky to actually follow everything that’s happening inside the tent. I can’t remember the last time we had a cast with this many characters each taking ownership of their own strand in the narrative.

Thankfully, all of these characters are without exception being played by rather fantastic performers. I’ve already touched on Ian Reddington’s Chief Clown, with that wonderful hand movement (I’ve been replicating it for a few days now while talking to Emma, and singing the ‘Psychic Circus’ theme tune, too), but then you’ve also got T. P. McKenna who is absolutely perfectly cast as Captain Cook (and who reminds me more and more with each episode of Mark Gatiss), and Jessica Martin making the perfect companion for him, and managing to be actually somewhat scary during her werewolf transformation in today’s cliffhanger. In the first episode, we had Peggy Mount as the stallslady (and you can see exactly why they’ve used her for the part), Daniel Peacock’s Nord, Christopher Guard as Bellboy… I could really list everyone in the cast, because they’re uniformly great in this one. All the ‘making of’ features on the DVD present us with people who’s memories of making this story - despite the troubles that the production ran in to - are only positive, and of a well-oiled team working together to make something in adversity.

I also need to touch on Gian Sammarco as Whizz Kid. It’s one of those things again that you’re just aware of as a Doctor Who fan - that Whizz Kid is meant to be a commentary on Doctor Who fans. I’ve always thought that it’s just something we’ve kind of projected on to the character over the years, but it’s pretty strong on screen, isn’t it? I think it’s more a view on fans of anything, because the same trends do seem to crop up time and time again. Still it’s hard not to listen to a line like this one;

WHIZZ KID

Although I never got to see the early days, I know it's not as good as it used to be but I'm still terribly interested.

and not compare it to the clip of John Nathan-Turner on Open Air in 1987, when he provided his famous ‘the memory cheats’ remark!

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

Day 701: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Episode Two

Dear diary,

It’s long fascinated me that The Greatest Show in the Galaxy almost went the route of becoming a Shada for the late 1980s - a programme which could have been part-way through production before everything ground to a halt. Having finished all the location filming for the serial, the cast and crew returned to Television Centre to record all the interior segments… only to find that the studios had been closed to have asbestos removed. Schedule in tatters, nothing to be done. It’s this particular behind-the-scenes story which people tend to agree most represented John Nathan-Turner rising higher than ever before. He found ways to work around the BBC’s temporary rules and regulations for completing programmes during this period, had a large marquee erected in the car park at Elstree, and they finished the production in there. The behind the scenes documentary on this DVD has some great anecdotes about an almost war-time spirit that everyone had in making sure that the story could be finished. It’s also pointed out that they’re lucky that this was the story caught up in these events, because it’s the only one this season (indeed, the only one from this decade, I’d argue, if not even longer) which could actively benefit from such a move!

All the scenes inside the circus tent look fantastic - and far more real than if they’d been shot in a mocked-up ‘big top’ in the studios. The same can be said for the great corridors that our cast are asked to run up and down today - the billowing white sheets that form the sides make the shots stand out as being quite unlike any other corridor chase in Doctor Who, and they look wonderful. I think the only disappointment with all of this is that the series has switched to shooting all on video - because I’d have loved to see all these sequences shot out on film, as was the case when a somewhat similar problem struck the production of Spearhead From Space almost twenty years earlier.

Everything has combined together to make this story stand out visually as being very different to anything else around it, and that really does help. Even if this story had ended up being shot in the studio, though, how beautiful is the location filming? It’s all been shot down in a Dorset quarry, and yet it doesn’t look like any of the other quarries that the TARDIS has ever pitched up in. There’s a feeling to this of an alien world that’s far more considered and developed than I’m used to from the programme. It even takes some of the tricks they employed for stories like Mindwarp and adapt them for use here, too - specifically the planet in the sky, which is nicer here because it’s done more subtly, without trying to draw attention to it. The shots of the circus tent from the exterior are beautiful, too, and I’m always a little bit floored by the fact that it was part model, part full-size construct, and just a bit of clever camera trickery to join everything up.

As for the story itself… I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. I think I’m enjoying it, and I’ve certainly been far more drawn in to this episode than I was yesterday, partly because the majority of the characters have now been introduced, and drawn well enough that I can quite happily go along with them. But then I’m not completely sure where things are going, and if I’m honest, my main concern is the running time. Because we’re in the era of three-part stories mingling quite freely with the four-parters now, I’m more acutely aware of the fact that I’m only half-way through this tale, and I’m not sure if there’s enough plot left to fill out almost another hour (I’ve seen the story before, so I know broadly where it’s going, but not the specifics). I think I’m just hoping that I’ll continue the trend of these last two days, and find each successive episode slightly better than the last!

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

Day 699: Remembrance of the Daleks, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war!

Those of you who’ve been reading along with my marathon for a while will know that I’ve been tracking the evolution of the Time War (sometimes in very spurious ways) for quite some time now. It’s largely because after 50-odd years of Doctor Who, things don’t always hang together all that neatly. Different producers, script editors, writers, and directors have all brought their own things to the programme over the years, and altered the mythos as they go. The Time Lords change on screen - from the immensely powerful god-like beings of The War Games to the asinine bureaucrats of The Deadly Assassin and beyond (though I still maintain that it’s the difference in seeing them through Jamie and Zoe’s eyes in that first story, and the Doctor’s view of them later on). The process of regeneration is made up when the need arises to allow the lead actor to leave the show. A decade later, that ability is capped at a set number of regenerations. At one point, we even see lots of the Doctor’s previous incarnations, meaning that he really should have died with Davison (‘is this death?’).

That’s why I can’t help but love the Time War. It’s big, and it’s mythic. The programme goes off the air for sixteen years - save for a one night fling with Paul McGann in the mid-1990s - and when it returns, everything has changed. The Doctor’s not been having adventures on our TV screens each Saturday night, because he’s been busy, off fighting a bigger war between his own people and his greatest enemies. It almost justifies the fact that there’s such a big gap in the broadcast of the show, and I love that idea. And yet… it’s all right here, being built up in the narrative of the ‘classic’ series for ages. When the Doctor first encounters the Daleks on Skaro, they’re just the week’s evil alien baddies to be stopped. By the time they return the following year, though, they’ve become the catalyst for the biggest change in the Doctor’s personality. Do you remember, back in those early days, how I used to track the Doctor’s evolution from the man we met in the junkyard through to the man he would then become? Fittingly, we’ve returned to that junkyard with this story, because this tale is unambiguously a major early strike in the Time War.

You don’t even have to try to shoe-horn it in. This isn’t like my argument that The Invasion of Time is a part of the war (I’m still convinced that it is), but it’s absolutely a part of it. Going back half the programme’s life time from here, The Genesis of the Daleks is also 100% a part of the Time War - it’s the Time Lords taking that very first strike. All these different production teams coming in and imposing their very different wills on the programme over the years, and yet when this major upheaval comes in - the Doctor becoming the last surviving member of his race - it’s perfectly in keeping with everything we’ve seen before, and retroactively looks like a great big game. I love that, and I think that’s even gone so far as to help up this story a little in my estimations.

Not that it needs that, of course, because Remembrance of the Daleks is simply a brilliant piece of Doctor Who. I think, if anything, it’s suffered slightly from how little I enjoyed Season Twenty-Four (I know, I promised not to bring it up again, but bear with me. I’ll not mention it for at least the rest of this season, promise). Because I became so used to handing out 3/10 and 4/10, suddenly having a story like this, which is such a leap in quality, throws me a bit. Had I been bobbing along with episodes at around 7/10, then this story would likely have rated a bit higher, because it’s so head-and-shoulders above the rest. It’s almost as thug hI’ve rated it down a little bit because I’ve been expecting the worst for a while.

I’m not going to really discuss today’s episode in a great deal of detail, because it seriously runs the risk of just me gushing over everything again. The guest cast on top form, the sets and locations looking lovely. The special effects (that Dalek battle under the bridge!) are fab. Sylvester McCoy is finally proving that he’s the right man for the job and a brilliant Doctor… Really, I’m going to sound ridiculous if I carry on. I think I’m just pleased that this is the final Dalek story of the ‘classic’ run, because it’s such a grand way to see them out - a real return to form, and easily their best outing since Genesis of the Daleks. I think this is probably the one I’d want to show new fans looking to get in to the classic series with a Dalek tale - because it sets everything up really nicely, and all that Time War stuff I’ve been banging on about is an easy bridge from the modern stuff, too.

The one thing I do want to draw attention to, though, is the way that this story uses Davros - because it’s the only one since Genesis to really get it right. Davros here is used sparingly. Really sparingly. He doesn’t turn up until this episode (or, rather, he’s not actually revealed - we see the ‘Emperor’ in Episode Three, too), but the whole story plays on your expectation that he’ll arrive. Because Terry Nation insisted on the character being in all Dalek stories from Genesis on, you reach points like Revelation of the Daleks, which seem to have Davros there just for the sake of bringing the character back. Hello, Doctor, I’ve lured you here to taunt a bit and stop my evil plans, etc.

Here, we’re built up to believe that the creature in Ratcliffe’s office could be Davros - it looks and sounds like him, after all, before we’re shocked with the reveal of the little girl plugged in to a Dalek Battle Computer. Just when you think we could be having a Davros-free story, the Emperor’s casing flips open and there he is! It’s a great moment, and I love that he’s so completely encased in the machine. From here in the audios, he returns in Terror Firma, where he’s become even more of a ‘Dalek’, and that really does feel like a natural evolution from this point. I just think that this is such a clever way of playing with your expectations of a Dalek story, and then doing something entirely different with it.

Oh, and it gives us the ‘unlimited rice pudding’ line, which is always sure to raise a smile! 

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

Day 698: Remembrance of the Daleks, Episode Three

Dear diary,

In the series of About Time books, each story gets a ‘critique’, and I often go back to catch up on what was said there to see how it tallies with my own thoughts on a serial. The critique for this story, though, has always stuck in the mind because it says something that I can’t help but feeling is exactly right: ‘Looked at now, it’s amazing that so few people saw it on first broadcast. Had the BBC got behind this series, episodes like these would have won it a whole new audience’. The more this story goes on, the more I think it’s a pity that the McCoy era of the programme is looked down upon by so many - especially within fandom. This is one of the greatest stories ever, and there’s no doubt that stuff like this would have gotten the public talking about Doctor Who again (there’s also mention in the About Time critique of Dragonfire that had more people been watching when that story went out, there would have been a flurry of complaints about Kane’s death. As it is, the whole sequence passed by under the radar).

This is really me struggling to find another way of saying ‘I’m still really enjoying Remembrance of the Daleks’. It’s almost the complete opposite of Revelation of the Daleks, in which there was absolutely no need for the Daleks to be there, because here we’ve got a story that’s about the pepper pots. We’ve got a manipulative Doctor trying to play his intergalactic game of chess, making sure that the right Daleks get hold of the right Gallifreyan super weapon at the right time, and there’s always something fun about watching so many of the creatures get blown up!

Because I didn’t really talk about the Daleks all that much during their last appearance, I’ve not had a chance properly yet to say just how much I love the white-and-gold versions of the creatures. It’s suck a lovely design, sleek and elegant, and they look so much nicer than the drab grey ones that have become so common throughout the colour years of the programme. The design of the Emperor is rather lovely, too, and their spaceship! Oh! There’s lots of photographs that show off the set here, but none of them capture quite how good it looks on screen. During our first trip aboard, there’s a lovely camera movement that pans around the room while a Dalek is busy shouting it’s… Dalek things, and it really shows the design off beautifully.

Indeed, the direction of the whole serial is rather nice, and it’s hard to believe that it’s by Andrew Morgan - the same man who gave us Time and the Rani! In that story, I complained lots about the way that the production had been put together (by all departments, from costumes through to lighting), but here we’ve been given something much stronger. I think, on reflection, that less blame should be placed at Morgan’s door for Time and the Rani than I did, because it ended up becoming an edict for the entire season, not just that story. Unshackled from that light-hearted style, which sat so at odds with the regular tone of the programme, Morgan has crafted something really rather wonderful this time around.

And then there’s the guest cast of characters. For a few years, now, Big Finish have produced a spin-off from this story, featuring Gilmore, Rachel, and Alison setting up the Countermeasures Intrusion Group in the months following this story. I’ve been listening to the series since it was first released, but at that point it had been a while since I’d last seen these four episodes. I’m glad, then, to see that the characters we get in the spin-off are very much drawn from what we’re given on screen here, and I’m looking forward to a re-listen with this story fresher in the mind. I’ve vaguely touched on it before, but these characters do feel so much more rounded than others we’ve had recently, and I can’t fail to get caught up in their world.

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

Day 697: Remembrance of the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Because I didn’t fully embrace my love of Doctor Who until the 21st century revival really booted me in to action, I’ve always been used to Daleks who are fairly powerful. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve been able to fly for as long as I can remember, and for a brief while they were even able to swing their mid sections around for full 360-degree action, and melt bullets as they were directed towards them. In short, they’ve always been a fairly unstoppable force. It doesn’t make the cliffhanger to yesterday’s episode any less exciting, though. It’s been almost two years since I started out on this marathon, so I’ve become very used to the ‘classic’ type of Dalek, which is usually a bit rubbish. We’ve seen them levitate before, of course (In The Chase, one rises from the sand, and in Revelation of the Daleks they’re seen to hover, but it’s done somewhat clumsily there, so you don’t really notice…), but seeing the way that this one approaches the stairs and just casually continues on the advance is great - and the Doctor’s reaction to it helps to sell the threat, too. Even he’s surprised by this development! This story also marks the first time that you see a skeleton as the Dalek bolt strikes someone - it feels like we’re moving ever closer towards the modern version of the show, and it’s interesting seeing the pieces start to fall in to place.

I’m surprised, too, just how excited I am to have the Daleks back here. Like the comings and goings of the different Doctors in this period of the programme, Dalek tales seem to come around really fast now (this is the third since September, whereas before that they’d been fairly paced out for a long time), and when they cropped up again in Revelation of the Daleks only a season on from Resurrection… I didn’t really care all that much. You might notice that I barely mention the Daleks in that story, and that’s because they were by far one of the least interesting parts of the narrative. Here, though, for some reason, I’m really pleased to have another Dalek tale. I wonder if it’s because this time, we’ve very much got the two sets of Daleks squaring up against each other (a plot thread introduced very late in to the last story), and I know that this is about to turn full-on into being the start of the Time War? It’s something I’ve been tracking for most of 2014, from the Doctor’s mission in Genesis of the Daleks and then on through various spurious links, so it’s quite exciting to have finally reached this point.

And the Doctor has now gone completely into his manipulative mode! Throughout the last season, I was tracking the little moments that seemed to point towards the character becoming manipulative and scheming, but I’d really forgotten just how blatant it becomes from this story onwards. I’d long thought of it as being something that was somewhat underlying in the show, and only really brought to the fore later on in the books, but here we’ve got the Doctor expecting the Daleks to turn up, and being somewhat unsettled when it’s the wrong faction that arrive on the scene (at least initially). By today’s episode, he’s already thinking that he may have made an error (it’s a lovely continuation of that great cliffhanger in Delta and the Bannermen, where he realises he may have bitten off more than he can chew), and I’m really enjoying that. There’s also the mystery of just when he started setting all of this up. At the undertakers, the ‘Doctor’ who left the casket with them in 1963 is described as being an older chap with long white hair - a pretty good description of the First Doctor, which would make sense given the trappings of Coal Hill School, Totter’s Lane, and November 1963 in the story - but this opens up a whole can of worms about the way the Doctor acts in The Daleks. There, it seems to be his first meeting with the creatures, but is there perhaps more to it than we ever realised? It’s not something I’ve ever really considered in a great deal of depth before, but I’m quite keen to watch that story again now and see exactly how he actually reacts to them…

I can’t let this episode pass by without bringing up the Doctor’s speech about making a difference. It’s lovely, and very fitting for this incarnation who’ll be plotting his way through the next eight stories. Another example of Sylvester McCoy simply getting the Doctor this season. You can really sense that both he and Andrew Cartmel have taken some time to sit down and really work out what they want to do with both the character and the series. I’ve said it before (and I’ll try to make this the last time, I promise), but there’s such a shift in quality between Season Twenty-Four and this story, that you can really sense just how much work has gone in to getting it right. I’ve often defended this period of the programme to people who claim it’s rubbish by saying how much the show found its feet again in the final two years, and this is the perfect story to demonstrate that.

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

Day 696: Remembrance of the Daleks, Episode One

Dear diary,

For the last fortnight, while I’ve not been enjoying Season Twenty-Four, Remembrance of the Daleks has been the light at the end of the tunnel. I could remember liking it from previous viewings (it’s one of the few stories I’d actually watched a few times before replacing it with the special edition), and the more I thought about little elements of the story, the more it seemed to be the absolute antithesis of everything that I perceived as being ‘wrong’ with Doctor Who as broadcast in 1987.

It’s nice, then, that this episode is pretty much everything that I wanted it to be. Let’s start with the thing that most relates to my complaints about areas of the last season - this story is set in the real world. When we join the Doctor and Ace in the adventure, they’re walking away from the TARDIS, which is parked down a side street. They’re out in real London streets, or in playgrounds, or junkyards. A large proportion of this serial is shot out on location - which helps - and everything feels much more solid than it did in Season Twenty-Four. These locations (and even the sets) don’t feels as ‘plastic’ or ‘comic book’, and it really does make a massive difference to things. By that same token, the fact that we see Ace go to get food in a regular cafe - as opposed to the version we saw in Dragonfire - grounds everything in reality much more. You can see where Russell T Davies was coming from when he chose to ground the 2005 revival in a council estate, with shops, and flats, and real people, because it has the same effect there that it does here, of making everything feel just that bit more natural.

Speaking of which, McCoy’s performance has jumped up tenfold from where it was last season, and he feels very natural here, too. He’s playing everything a little bit quieter, and even largely underplaying his lines, in a way that we didn’t really get to see a lot of in his first four adventures. I was trying yesterday to find a way of describing the differences in his performance, but it struck me almost instantly when he papered today - it simply is that everything is much calmer here - more calculated, and yet it comes across as less of a performance.

Take, for example, the moment when he stands with Ace, looking out over the scorch marks on the playground. He makes reference to both Terror of the Zygons and The Web of Fear, and plays the line beautifully. It’s the ultimate example of him underplaying a scene, when I know that his Season Twenty-Four performance would have gone to great lengths to really over-do the point. Having just come from two weeks of that style, I can picture exactly how that would have gone. I’m so glad, because I came to this period of the marathon knowing how much I like McCoy’s Doctor, but by the end of Dragonfire, I was almost beginning to doubt myself!

I discussed this with my friend Nick this evening. He acts as a nice counterbalance to me at this stage, because while he admits that Season Twenty-Four has its faults, he doesn’t dislike it to quite the extent that I do. He’s a bit more willing to accept that it’s the programme trying something different that doesn’t really work, but then it comes back this year and tries another direction. He’s right when he says that McCoy was pitching his performance last season to fit the ‘comic book’ style that they were going for - try to play the Doctor in Time and the Rani the way he does here and it would fall absolutely flat on its face.

That said, everything is pulling together here to help this new performance. Remember during Delta and the Bannermen, I complained that all the supporting characters just went along with the Doctor because the plot required them to do so, and it came across as rushed and false. Here, characters effectively do the same thing… but you get the sense that the Doctor has given them reason to go along with him. I think it’s in Silver Nemesis where he describes his usual tactic as simply acting like he owns the place, and it’s absolutely true of what happens here. When he climbs in to the van and Rachel questions his presence, he simply goes on with the rest of the conversation. Similarly, when they reach Totters’ Yard, he takes charge of the situation, and ends up being the one who takes out the Dalek, while the myriad of soldiers are largely ineffective against it. Here, even after one episode, I completely buy that everyone will go along with what he says, because he’s given me every reason to believe it. That’s much stronger scripting and performance than we’ve had before in this period.

While I’m on the subject, what’s the general thinking in terms of how long he’s been travelling with Ace at this point? There’s lots of little hints in this episode that seem to suggest they’ve spent a while together since Dragonfire (and I’d say that Sophie Aldred has been made up to look older than she was in that story), and that this pair are fairly comfortable together. Certainly, this isn’t the first place they’ve been to since Ice World. Equally, they’ve not been anywhere where Ace has needed to drive, because the Doctor has to ask if she can. I think I’m plumping for a period of maybe six months for them by now - long enough to go around and have several adventures, and to get comfortable together before they touch down here to sort out the Daleks (the Doctor is clearly here specifically for the Daleks, and I’d imagine he’d want to make sure Ace is up to the challenge before setting the coordinates). Does anyone else have a theory on how long they’ve been together already? 

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

Day 695: Dragonfire, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I was surprised, watching the ‘making of’ documentary on this DVD today, to hear that Andrew Cartmel and Ian Briggs weren’t all that keen on the final scene with Mel in this episode. It seems to be the case that it’s adapted from part of McCoy’s audition scene, which he’d been repeatedly trying to get in to the series for a while, and ended up just putting in almost without actually telling anyone! It surprised me because it’s such a beautiful goodbye, and for me it’s the highlight of the story (and, if I’m honest, of the season!)

DOCTOR

That's right, yes, you're going. Been gone for ages. Already gone, still here, just arrived, haven't even met you yet. It all depends on who you are and how you look at it. Strange business, time.

MEL

Goodbye, Doctor.

DOCTOR

I'm sorry, Mel. Think about me when you're living your life one day after another, all in a neat pattern. Think about the homeless traveller and his old police box, with his days like crazy paving.

MEL

Who said anything about home? I've got much more crazy things to do yet…

I think it’s fair to say that this is by far the best performance that we’ve seen Sylvester McCoy give all season - and it’s much closer to the way that he’ll be handling the part from now on - and there’s something rather beautifully melancholic about the whole scene. It fits quite nicely with the fact that he ended up meeting Mel out of order (even if we didn’t see this so much on screen, but it’s been explored in audios like The Wrong Doctors), and serves as a rather nice cap to their time together. It then moves on to be a brilliant introduction to Ace aboard the TARDIS. Thinking back to the Fourth Doctor’s words in Logopolis, when he claims to have never chosen his own company aboard the TARDIS, This may be the first time, really, since Vicki* that we’ve seen the Doctor actively ask someone to come with him because he wants them to.

I’ve never noticed before just how well it melds with the story arc that’s still to come surrounding Ace’s character. By the time we reach The Curse of Fenric - more on which in a moment - the Doctor is claiming to have sensed the deliberate alteration to Ace’s life even at this stage, thus choosing to take her along with him. It becomes a bit vague, I teem to recall, just how much he’s saying to break her confidence, and how much is the truth, but I think it’s very easy to read all of that into this final scene. It would especially explain why he’s so distracted as Mel tries to make her goodbyes, and even why she so suddenly decides that this is the end of the road for her time in the TARDIS (she clearly hasn’t even mentioned to Glitz that she’s planning to go with him). I think I’m right in saying that the New Adventures novels in the 1990s revealed that the Doctor mentally forced her to leave here, because he knew of the role Ace would go on to play, and needed Mel out of the way and back to safety while he concentrated on the new girl. I don’t think that’s a leap from what we’re given on screen at all, and indeed, I really prefer to think of it like that. It also works as a nice capstone to the building up of this Doctor’s ‘meddling’ personality that I’ve been spuriously tracking over the last two weeks…

As we move in to the final two seasons of the programme’s original run, a brief word on the order in which I’ll be watching the stories. For the first time in The 50 Year Diary, I’m completely breaking with broadcast order and doing it my own way. The reasons are simple: a few stories in the next few years were swapped around between production and broadcast, and work better if watched in the order they were intended for. Thus, I’ll be watching Season Twenty-Five as Remembrance of the Daleks - The Greatest Show in the Galaxy - The Happiness Patrol - Silver Nemesis, and then Season Twenty-Six as The Curse of Fenric - Battlefield - Ghost Light - Survival. I’ve never been overboard with trying to remain 100% accurate with this marathon, hence side-steps in to things like Farewell, Great Macedon, and Doctor Who and the Pescatons, and I think I’ll get more from the next eight stories in this order!

*Yes, I know, Harry, but he’s really only asking him aboard the ship so that he can show off a bit.

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

Day 694: Dragonfire, Episode Two

Dear diary,

During Time and the Rani, I said that the McCoy era was home to some of the best monster designs and costumes that the programme has ever seen - and yes, I did mean the Tetraps! Oh hush, I like them. Today’s episode is another great example with the dragon itself - there’s something really nice about the whole creature, and I even think the fact that the body is so spindly and hymn works, which is the one thing that I’d always been put off by. The actual head design is absolutely gorgeous, and I’d completely forgotten that it opened up to reveal the Dragonfire inside - I think I’d convinced myself that we simply saw it overlaid or something. I’m also fond of the fact that it’s a nice ‘monster’ - it feels like a while since we had one of those (yeah, yeah, the Navarinos in Delta and the Bannermen were friendly, but they were presented as aliens rather than monsters - the same can be said of the Lakertians at the start of the season).

Indeed, I’m rather liking the design on this story as a whole, I think. There are some seasons which seem to have their own very distinct ‘visual identity’ - Season Twenty-One is the most recent that comes to mind before this one - whereby you could show assorted screen captures of the episodes to people who don’t know which seasons they’re from, and they’d likely be able to group them together just by style. That’s been very true of Season Twenty-Four, which I’ve continually referred to as being a bit ‘comic book’. I don’t necessarily mean that in a negative way, it’s just the dest description I can find for the look of this season - very bright, and artificial.

Because I’ve not been enjoying Season Twenty-Four all that much on the whole, I’ve been thinking of Remembrance of the Daleks as something of a light at the end of the tunnel. As strange as it may sound, it’s the thought of grimy brick walls, and roads, and playgrounds that makes it feel better- something real and tangible. I know Delta and the Bannermen was set in Earth’s recent history, but the holiday camp setting and the way the whole piece came together still gave it more of that ‘Season Twenty-Four’ artifice than I’d have liked!

All that said, Ice World manages to fit the visual style of this year’s stories perfectly, but also look rather good on its own merits. I recently had to put together a kind of ‘ice world’ for a design commission, and found myself automatically trying to replicate the style of the walls seen in this story - though I didn’t immediately realise that this was where the inspiration was drawn from! The various corridors look lovely, and Kane’s lair works simply because of the size of the set, and the various levels and platforms (long-term readers will know that I’m a sucker for a set with levels!) The only slight let down is that McCoy is really trying to sell the ‘ice’ factor of these sets, slipping and sliding around on the floor as though it’s near impossible to remain upright… while no one else really bothers to do the same. Sophie Aldred has some nice moments of watching her feet and carefully choosing her steps, but then slips back into the way that Tony Selby and Bonnie Langford are playing it - as if there’s no ice at all!

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

Day 693: Dragonfire, Episode One

Dear diary,

It’s funny, isn’t it, how some Doctors just have that one companion that ‘defines’ them. For some, like the Second Doctor and Jamie, or the Fifth Doctor and Tegan, it’s because they travel together for such a long period of time (there’s only a single Second Doctor adventure without Jamie in, and only two Fifth Doctor stories missing Tegan). For others, it’s just because they work together so well. I think that’s the case for the Seventh Doctor and Ace (a pairing who do travel together for much of this era, but I think the shortened seasons means that there’s less of an impact to it). I’ve been waiting for this story to come along, because having struggled to find my feet with the Seventh Doctor so far, the arrival of Sophie Aldred and Ace to the series really feels like the missing piece of the puzzle being slotted in to place.

Surprising, then, is the fact that the Doctor and Ace really don’t get to spend that much time together in this episode! They talk for a little while in the cafe, while the Doctor muses on wasting to go and see the dragons, but then it’s really Mel who gets paired off with the newbie, so that we can find out all about her. Within these first 25 minutes, I already feel like I know Ace better than I ever have with Mel - and I think it’s helped by the fact that the information is being fed to us naturally, with Ace telling us her life story. When Mel was introduced in the latter stages of The Trial of a Time Lord, we were given occasional info dumps about her (‘this is nothing like Pease Pottage, Mell, you know, where you lived before we travelled together? And you worked there as a computer programmer? And you’re a health and fitness fanatic? Eh? Eh? EH?’), but with Ace, you get a real sense that everything we’re told - blowing up the art classroom, and whipping up a time storm - can have really happened for this character. It bodes well for her at this early stage!

The Doctor is instead paired off with Sabalom Glitz, another character I’ve been waiting to see. He was such good fun last season, and the chance for one more story with him here has been a little light at the end of the tunnel while not enjoying Season Twenty-Four. I’m enjoying him here - his interactions with the Doctor and Mel in the cafe are particularly fun - but you really can tell that he’s not being written by Robert Holmes any more. He’s still funny, but a lot of the wit and charm that made him so enjoyable in The Mysterious Planet just isn’t there anymore.

I’d also like to use today as another example of the Doctor’s ‘planning’ personality starting to shine through. He tells Mel early on that he’s been picking up a signal from Ice World ‘for some time’, and has now decided to check it out. We’ve had plenty of occasions in the past where the TARDIS has received a distress call, and the Doctor has hurried off to investigate, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a situation before where he’s been actively monitoring a signal for some time before choosing to follow up on it and find out what’s going on. Later on, Mel realises that the Doctor has brought them here because he wanted to see the dragons - though he omitted to tell her that fact! This is probably a clearer sign of the Seventh Doctor’s evolution than any of the little hints I’ve pointed out before, and I like it, especially when balanced with the Doctor’s sadness when he thinks he may not get the chance to go and see dragons after all!

What do you mean you were expecting me to mention the cliffhanger? There’s nothing to say, is there? It’s just your average, Doctor Who cliffhanger… 

…oh, all right. This episode is home to perhaps the programme’s most pointless cliffhanger, in which the Doctor gets to a fork in the road, with a path leading off to the left and the right… but instead he chooses to climb over the railings and dangle over an ice chasm via his umbrella. I’ve been a Doctor Who fan long enough to know that the intention is that he needs to go down to the next level, and misjudges the diastase he’ll need to drop (I think the novelisation restores this version of events), but the way it’s been staged on screen is awful. Here, he seems to climb the railings for no good reason whatsoever! I think, though, that this might be one of those times where the programme has done something so bad, that I can’t help but love it!

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

Day 692: Delta and the Bannermen, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I’ve been looking forward to this one, because it’s the first ‘real’ three-part Doctor Who adventure. Planet of Giants in Season Two was recorded as four parts, but later cut down, and The Two Doctors was shown in three parts, but was the length of six, but Delta and the Bannermen is three episodes of regular-length, planned from the start as a three-part story. This thought has been exciting me, because I’ve said several times across this marathon that three episodes is really the perfect length for the programme, cutting out all of that running around and getting captured in the third quarter, and helping to tighten everything up, which should in theory help the stories.

It’s a pity, then, that the format is used to badly in this story! The pacing is all over the place, and I’m not really sure that they’ve gotten the hang of it yet. I’d say that the first episode was more or less spot on, introducing the story, the characters, and the location, before ending with a cliffhanger that moves the narrative along. Episode Two then does up the stakes, before this final episode is just a bit of a mess. There’s so many characters, and everything’s been escalating so quickly - it’s another way of looking at the point I made yesterday, about the way that everyone just goes along with the Doctor, even though he’s given no one any real reason to do so, and Billy instantly accepts Delta’s situation, even going as far as to try and change his biology and fly away with her in a spaceship at the end, completely unfazed by events!

There’s not been enough time spent introducing us to these people as a group, so we’ve simply got bland ciphers doing whatever the story requires of them. Right up to the goodbye scene at the end, it doesn’t feel like anyone is a believable person here. When Ray says goodbye to the Doctor and rides off on the bike, it feels completely wrong - she got to see inside his spaceship, remember, the boy she loves has just flown off with another woman, and she’s filled the role of the Doctor’s companion for the entire story… she should at least ask to see another planet, before swanning off. This kind of thing also means that the tone is still wrong right across this episode - there’s not a single mention of the tourists who got blown up in their bus yesterday, because the plot was finished with them, and doesn’t even think to bring it up again. I’d at least expect the doctor to say something a little bit poignant about the situation.

I’m a little bit gutted about all this to be honest, because that first episode really did show an awful lot of promise, and I was looking so forward to seeing the programme attempt this type of format. We’ve got another three part story coming up next, so I’m keen to see if they’ll be any better at managing the pacing issues in that one, or if - like the rest of Season Twenty-Four - it’s all something of a failed experiment. 

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

Day 691: Delta and the Bannermen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I really can’t make up my mind with the Seventh Doctor so far. In Time and the Rani and Paradise Towers, I veered from thinking ‘he’s not got this at all’ to ‘ah, now he feels like the Doctor’ and back again (sometimes within the same scene), but I’m starting to think that by the time Delta and the Bannermen went in to production, he’s sort of picked a direction that I’m liking. Put simply: while I’m not sure he’s quite the Doctor that I’m waiting for (I’m becoming ever more convinced that I’ll have to wait for next season for that), there’s a version of the character shining through in this story that I’m really warming to. It’s present in the way that he takes instantly to Ray, and goes to comfort her after the dance, asking for her life to be spared, and generally ditching Mel for this story to hang out with someone cooler! I’m not sure if I like how quickly everyone is taking to the Doctor here, though, with people following his every whim and order without much question - at least the camp Major has to have a look inside the TARDIS before he’ll start to believe in what he’s being told!

It’s been a while since I had the chance to track any kind of story arc in the programme, and I think I may have found another (very) tenuous one forming here in regards to the Seventh Doctor’s persona. He’s often thought of as the arch manipulator, the one who goes in to his adventures with a plan in mind, and is working to a greater scheme that we can’t really see. It’s most prevalent in the books, but will start to come to the fore with Remembrance of the Daleks and Silver Nemesis in Season Twenty-Five, and then even stronger through Season Twenty-Six, in regards to Ace. I’m wondering if we might be seeing the very beginnings of that character starting to develop here.

I’m thinking specifically of the last story, in which the Doctor initially claimed to know very little about the Great Architect and Paradise Towers in General, but when things started heating up, he was suddenly all-knowing, and keen to make sure that the Architect really had been destroyed. In the cliffhanger to today’s episode, we get to see McCoy deliver the first of his big speeches - the kind of thing that he’ll face off against the likes of Davros and Fenric with later in his life - and then muse that he may have gone too far. It feels as though, early in to his new body, he’s flexing his muscles, and trying to see how he can handle events. What better way to test it than with a war over the final two members of a species? Go big or go home, I guess!

The one other thing that I’m struggling with in this story, and it’s related in a way to the fact that everyone just goes along with the Doctor and accepts everything he says, is the fact that Billy is so accepting of Delta’s situation! He spots her at a dance, takes a bit of a shine to her, pops round with some flowers, and then is told that she’s in fact an alien queen, and this is her child, and it’ll grow up incredibly fast, and there’s an army on the way to kill them all. His reaction to all of this? He takes her out on a date! With child in tow! Doesn’t bat an eyelid. I know he’s grown up in South Wales, with the Cardiff Rift nearby (I did wonder when Goronwy mentioned all the weird lights in the sky, if it could retroactively be thought of as the result of the Rift), but surely he shouldn’t be quite this accepting of the situation?

Several times over the last few days, I’ve mused that Season Twenty-Four has amore lightweight, ‘comic book’ feel to it than other Doctor Who seasons. It’s still in evidence here, with the bright colours of the camp and many of the supporting characters, but sometimes the tone does veer off the path somewhat, and leave you with an uncomfortable clash of styles. It worked very well yesterday when the Tollmaster was shot in the back, but here we see the entire tour bus of characters blown up! Mel then points out that all those innocent people have died! It should be a massive shock to the system because it really shows off the might of the Bannermen, and makes them unpredictable cold killers, but it just completely jars with everything else in the episode.

Instead, it shocks you because it’s not played quite right, and you’re left with a bit of a sour taste. If I’m honest, I had to skip back a minute or two to make sure that it had really happened, and that they didn’t manage to escape in the final seconds! I’m somewhat resigned to the programme having such an ‘off’ tone this year, and I can’t quite decide if it’s the result of there being a new script editor finding his feet in the show, or John Nathan-Turner coming to the season late (having assumed that he’d be allowed to move on), or simply that they’ve over-reacted to the criticisms of the programme a season late. A pity, because there’s still lots of ideas that I’m loving - as I say, the death of the passengers could be great - but it’s just not coming together for me! 

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

Day 690: Delta and the Bannermen, Episode One

Dear diary,

Today feels like an appropriate time to return to the subject of ‘stunt casting’ in Doctor Who. Ken Dodd’s appearance as the Toll Master in Delta and the Bannermen is often singled out as an example of John Nathan-Turner completely missing the point and casting light entertainment figures in the programme, but it’s an example that I think proves he knew what he was doing! Quite apart from the fact that Dodd fits the ‘comic book’ version of Doctor Who that we’re being given with Season Twenty-Four, he’s actually really good in the part, and his slightly zany antics (and very zany costume) work wonderfully in context, offset nicely against the run-down backdrop of the toll port.

Dodd’s character doesn’t make it out of the episode alive, and there’s something that really works in watching him die - throughout the scene I continually flip-flopped between thinking he was going to snuff it and thinking that he’d be spared, but I’m so glad they killed him off. It’s the perfect way to highlight Gavrok’s character, and having him shot in the back as he tries to get to freedom is just delicious. It always hurts that little bit more when a character dies who you rather like ,and who hasn’t done anything wrong.

You may have noticed from that opening paragraph that I’ve been a bit finder of today’s episode than either of the last two stories fared. There’s just so much to like here. Right from the off, we’re set down in to the middle of an alien battlefield, with a distinctive blue hue which really sets off the explosions. There’s little green army men (what a fantastic idea for a design - I’m almost surprised that the programme has taken this long to do it - one of those ideas that just feels perfectly ‘Doctor Who’), and alien princess, an evil villain and his army on the attack… it’s more action that the programme has seen in a while, and it’s rather nicely done! Even the shot of the space ship taking off to flee from the battle is something different- even though I’m sure it was achieved simply.

And then the whole idea of the story, well that’s another thing that’s pure Doctor Who! A spaceship, disguised as a bus, taking a tour group of aliens to visit Disneyland in the 1950s. It’s a great concept, and again I think it’s perfectly suited to this particular season of the programme. I can’t imagine it working at any point prior to this (and not really any point afterwards, either, though I think the Eleventh Doctor could just about fit in to this adventure), but it’s just so right for this season, and especially for Mel.

She looks so right sat on the bus, singing along with all the other passengers. It’s just a shame that she reverts to being a bit wet afterwards, though. There’s some nice character moments in her room with Delta - sympathising with the poor woman and trying to help where she can - but then as soon as she sees the alien egg, she bursts into a scream… before anything has even happened! Delta shows her a christmas decoration, and Mel screams at it! I’m surprised that she didn’t simply pass out when the little green creature emerged from inside!

The actual effect of the baby… thing coming out of the egg is lovely, and one of the best we’ve had in a long time. It looks genuinely creepy, and it’s enough to leave an impact for the week until the next episode. It’s not the only decent effects shot in here, either, and I was rather impressed by the TARDIS model as it followed the bus through space. The programme has been doing TARDIS models for ages by this point - decades! - but it’s always nice when they do it well, and having not seen many of them recently!

One last thing, though. Weismuller, one of the Americans pulls up to a police box and puts in a call to the States. He claims to be calling from ‘Wales in England’. I’ve lived in Cardiff long enough by now to know that they really don’t like it when you say things like that (we’re also not allowed to question the dual language on all the signs)!

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

Day 689: Paradise Towers, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Somehow, I’ve managed to make it through this entire story without making mention of Richard Briers’ performance as the Chief Caretaker. I think I’m right in saying that Briers once told an interviewer that he’d taken a part in Doctor Who as an excuse to ‘act badly’, and I think you can see that throughout appearance in this episode, because his performance is appalling…

…and completely right for the tone of the story! It works brilliantly, and I can’t help but fall in love with it. It’s so over the top that it’s almost grotesque, and it fits the slightly ‘comic book’ theme of this season particularly well. He’s been playing the part in a particularly bizarre way throughout (though, again, it’s fitted the story), but it’s really once his mind has been taken over that things really work for me.

It means that I’m also wondering if maybe I’ve been approaching Season Twenty-Four from slightly the wrong angle. I’ve spoken in the last week about how disappointed I am with the programme all of a sudden, shifting its tone from being television for children to strictly being ‘kids telly’, but with concepts and ideas that go beyond that area. I wonder if maybe I should have been looking at Time and the Rani and this story with a mind more willing to enjoy them on their own merits, including the ‘comic book’ tone that the programme has currently adopted. In the Last Chance Saloon feature on the Time and the Rani DVD, John Nathan-Turner comments that they were asked again to tone down the violence, and that they replaced it with more humour. I think that’s been very evident so far, and I’m looking forward to them managing to strike that right balance of violence and humour in the programme again.

All that said, I’ve still not really enjoyed this episode. There is - as usual - lots of little bits that I rather like, but they simply don’t add up to a satisfying whole for me. I’m thinking that this may be another story to add to my ‘must watch again’ pile (there’s at least one in every era), because taking a different approach may help. Today’s episode also isn’t helped by the inclusion of something that was so ridiculous that I couldn’t help but be put right off by it. The Doctor has brought Mel to Paradise Towers because she’s desperate to go swimming. Fine. Before they make it to the swimming pool, they get caught up in an adventure. Fine. During this adventure, Mel gets set upon by cannibals, and then screams for her life when she thinks she’s stuck in the basement. Fine. Mere minutes later, they arrive at the pool, so she decides to forget the events of the last few hours and take a dip! No! What the hell were they thinking? Does she think that now she’s found the swimming pool, all the dangers have gone? That she can simply abandon the adventure? What on Earth is she doing?

I think this is all part of my continuing dislike of Mel - and that’s not helping the season in my estimations much, either! Bonnie Langford isn’t actually bad in the role, but the problem is that she’s only as good as the material she’s being given. Mel is the absolute stereotype of a Doctor Who companion, screaming and asking questions, and getting in to trouble. She’s not in any way believable for me as a character, and I don’t think it helps that I know Ace is coming up soon; a character I’ve always liked. We’re shifting format to three parters for the next few stories - the format I’ve often claimed in this marathon to be the perfect length for a Who story - so I’m hoping it might help to give me a bit of a shot in the arm, because I really don’t like not enjoying the series!

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

Day 688: Paradise Towers, Episode Three

Dear diary,

There’s something I’ve never understood about Paradise Towers… where is it set? In my mind, it’s always been a single tower block just out in the middle of… well, the middle of nowhere if I’m honest. In my head, there’s a void, and the tower block, and that’s it. Somehow it’s never felt right to have it just somewhere on Earth, and even being a part of a city feels wrong - if people can get out and nip down to the shops or to the local park, then it really lessens the tension of the whole thing.

The implication from the video the Doctor watched in this episode (on DVD, no less! Forward thinking, there…) is that it’s on some other planet, and he comments that as ‘space is a big place’, the Great Architect could always move on and find work elsewhere. I’m not quite sure what to decide, I’d say that it can’t be far from Earth - it won awards in the 21st century, and we’re still in ‘Solar System colonising’ mode by the timeline established with the Second Doctor…

While I’m on that subject, I’m not sure if I like the image of the towers that we see at the start of each episode. It feels wrong that this world - so run-down and grimy on the inside - should be so beautiful and gleaming outside, with fresh flowers growing. It’s a concept that can work, and rather well, I think, but because we only ever see this ‘veneer’ of the building in a single establishing shot, and it’s not brought into the story at all, it seems out of place.

That said, I’ve found myself enjoying the interior of the place more and more today. The interior of the flat is still a weak point, as is the swimming pool (it just looks too ‘generic’), but the actual walkways and corridors are lovely. In the making of documentary to this story, writer Stephen Wyatt makes a point of saying that each floor of the building has its own streets and squares, and I’m rather taken with that idea, I think!

On the whole, I think I’ve been more amenable to this episode than either of the previous two. Paradise Towers still isn’t grabbing me in quite the way that I’d like it to, but I’m finding lots more to enjoy, and I think it’s a bit like Time and the Rani, in that I can see lots of brilliant ideas all bubbling under the surface, crying out to be done slightly better. The story is still hampered by that ‘kids show’ vibe that we’ve had since the Seventh Doctor arrived, but there’s so many dark and sinister ideas in here that the jolly tone almost works - helping to make them even more sinister!

I think I’ve just got a sort of general apathy towards Season Twenty-Four, because this simply isn’t grabbing me at all, despite numerous things which by rights should be. I’ve spent so long thinking of this season as one I’d hopefully champion, that I’m somewhat crushed by the fact that it’s not connecting - and I think that’s even leading to harsher scores on episodes which might otherwise fare a little better…

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

Day 687: Paradise Towers, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Over the last few days, there’s been something wrong that I simply couldn’t put my finger on. Something just didn’t feel right about the episodes I’ve been watching, and I’m coming away from them really unsure about the scores I’m giving. On the one hand it seems like I’m being too harsh on them, but on the other I know I’m rating in the same way I always do. And then last night, I finally found time to sit down and watch the Last Chance Saloon documentary on the DVD for Time and the Rani and finally managed to figure out what isn’t working for me - it’s Sylvester McCoy.

I’ve mentioned in the last few days that he’s not quite playing the role of the Doctor here in the way that he will over the next couple of seasons, but I don’t think I’d really considered that it could be the barrier stopping me from getting completely in to the stories. It’s not the only problem, I can’t place the blame entirely at Sylv’s door, but I think it’s what’s been putting me off. What helped me realise this was the way that Sylvester talks about Season Twenty-Four in the documentary, and specifically the way that he approached the part;

”I remember from Patrick Troughton that he’d been light-hearted in many ways, and comedic, and that was what attracted to me. I mean, I’d done straight drama as well, but a lot of my kind of natural instincts are towards comedy. You might be surprised to hear this, but it is! And so, I went for the comedic choices. And, I think, wrongly when I look back. Too many, it was too many.”

There have been several occasions in the last few days where I’ve mentioned Sylvester settling in to the role, but what I think I really mean is that there’s glimmers coming through of the Seventh Doctor I know from later seasons - an incarnation I like more than the impish clown we’ve got on screen at the moment. It’s a strange position to be in, really, because I’ve never had it before. The first six Doctors I’ve taken to immediately (even Pertwee, whose era I was dreading, and Davison, who perhaps took until his second season to really ‘find’ the Doctor he wanted to play), but this version of the Seventh Doctor isn’t quite doing it for me at the moment. I’m interested, now, to see if I start taking to him during the latter half of this season, or if it might take until next year.

As I’ve said above, the Doctor isn’t the only thing putting me off this story. As with Time and the Rani, the production team seem to be aiming this at a directly ‘kids show’ audience again, and sets which should be the bread-and-butter of the BBC design department don’t come across as well as I’d have liked. The actual run-down corridors of Paradise Towers are rather nice, and they largely work for me (some of the large windows against which McCoy is silhouetted in parts of this episode look lovely), but then we cut back to Mel in the flat with the cannibals, and it all starts to fall apart a little.

Still, tomorrow’s another day, and I’m still determined to like some of this season! 

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

Day 686: Paradise Towers, Episode One

Dear diary,

I don't have the first clue what to make of this one. As I seem to keep saying a lot in this period, this story doesn't have a particularly high reputation among Doctor Who fans, placing 230 out of 241 on this year's Doctor Who Magazine poll (the highest story of this season is Dragonfire in position 215), and this is one of those sad times where I think I can see where the dislike comes from.

The episode is very much a game of two halves - or more accurately, it's a game of thirds. The first two thirds is great, but after that… I loved the Doctor and Mel meeting the Red Kangs (they're the best), and it's another example of the way that McCoy is finding his feet more and more as the episodes roll by, I think, and while he's still not quite on form as the Doctor he'll be playing in his latter two seasons, he's certainly showing signs of very ‘Doctor’ behaviour here. My favourite exchange comes as the Red Kangs introduce themselves;

FIRE ESCAPE

Red Kangs. Red Kangs are best. Who's best?

RED KANGS

Red Kangs, Red Kangs, Red Kangs are best.

BIN LINER

So, who's best?

DOCTOR

The Red Kangs, I gather.

and everything that follows in that scene, with the Doctor and Bin Liner performing a kind of ritual greeting. It’s a scene that I can imagine most of the previous Doctors in, though for some reason I’d love to see Pertwee confronted with this situation! I'm also rather fond of the fact that the Kangs don't like Mel, because the feeling is regrettably mutual - but more on that in a moment. Then you've got ‘Caretaker number three four five stroke twelve subsection three’ venturing off on his duties and finding himself 'cleaned', in scenes that are filled with lots of great atmosphere.

It's then later on in the episode that things start to fall apart for me. I can't say that I found anything to enjoy during the scenes of Mel being confronted by the two cannibals, and it simply left me longing for a version of the pair speaking the language of Robert Holmes. Those scenes aren't helped much by the fact that Mel is continuing to grate on me. I'm trying to like her, I swear, but it's really not happening very well. It's a pity, because I assumed I'd end up being a champion for her in the same way that I so loved the much-derided Twin Dilemma, but I'm really struggling to get on with her. We're almost at the point when I'm counting down the days to Ace's arrival. I'm also sorry to say that I think it may be Bonnie Langford that I'm struggling to like as much as it is the character… but I don't think that's really her fault. She's been cast to fill the part of the plucky young companion, who screams at every monster and gets to excitedly recite such clichéd lines as 'look, Doctor! Look!'. She's not being given much of a chance, and I'm getting the sad impression that she'll leave the series fairly low down on my list of favourites.

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

Day 685: Time and the Rani, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I can't help but feel that Time and the Rani isn't necessarily let down by a poor script, but simply by the fact that the rest of the production seems to have fallen apart. I mused the other day about the fact that it looked and acted like a kids show, patronising the audience and overplaying everything, and I think that's the biggest problem - there's actually a half decent story in here about the Rani setting down on a planet, enslaving the population, and setting up her own deadly experiments in to creating a time weapon. I even like the fact that part of her plan is to go back and ensure the survival of the dinosaurs, because it makes sense of the T-Rex embryos in her TARDIS during her last appearance.

The direction of the story swings from being somewhat pedestrian to having moments where you can really see some flair, and I don't think that's been helping this one, either. It's hard to get involved when even the director doesn't know where he's pitching the tale. Andrew Morgan will be back to direct next season's opener - Remembrance of the Daleks - and I remember that story having a much better feel than this one - everything there just comes together so much better.

It's a shame, really, because this is the Rani's last proper appearance in the series, and I'm still finding her a really interesting character. She's not been quite as strong in this story as she was in Mark of the Rani, because she's been forced in to falling for the Doctor's prattling in lots of places, but there's still a lot to like about her. While I'm on that subject, I really wasn't keen on that final shot of her, being strung up by the Tetraps in her TARDIS, because it feels too much like a rehash of the way she was trapped in there last time, and with a less-beautiful TARDIS console room!

Four episodes in, I think I can go with the Doctor's comment that he'll grow on me - he's already been doing that for the last few days. I know from past experience that I like the Seventh Doctor, but he didn't win me over as much to begin with here as I was expecting him to. I think you can clearly see McCoy feeling his way in to the part throughout this story (and I'd imagine the same will be true of the next story, too, if not the season as a whole), and you really get the sense that like with Peter Davison, he's just been dropped in to the show and asked to get on with it.

I have a feeling that this story will be a good example of how I'll feel towards Season Twenty-Four as a whole, because I seem to recall finding the tone of this year's stories not quite right, even when the ideas at the heart of them are sound. I'm quite excited to find out what i make of the next three tales, because this season is the one I'm least familiar with from the Seventh Doctor era (though I've seen all the stories before). I'm willing to be impressed by it, but we'll need to step up a little from here…

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

Day 684: Time and the Rani, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I'm really pleased that the Rani needs the Doctor for her current experiments. Somehow, I'd convinced myself that she was simply out fir revenge against him in this adventure, and that seemed like a real pity after all the mocking of the Master she did in Mark of the Rani in regards to having a petty vendetta against the man. It's much better that the Doctor has been summoned to Lakertia in order to help. I'm also quite keen on the fact that while the Rani needed him to be plugged in for the main part of her plan, she was also seeking his assistance earlier on in actually making the experiment work. It just feels so much more realistic that she can appreciate the Doctor's skills, in a way that the Master simply can't.

It's just a shame that we had to put up with all that tedious 'pretending to be Mel' nonsense earlier on in the story, because I think I'd rather watch a story in which the Rani tries to convince the Doctor to help her while he's in the middle of his post regeneration trauma. It's something that I could believe the Rani would do, and I think she might even be able to convince him that it's a good idea (though she may have to lie). I'm still not quite sure what the Rani's scheme is in this story, mind. I realise it has something to do with the asteroid of strange matter overhead, and there's a giant brain involved but… have we actually learned what she's up to yet?

Something that I've been meaning to mention for the last few days and haven't found a chance to is how good the 'bubble' effects look in this story. This is one of the first Doctor Who stories to use computer effects in quite this way, and while is has dated, when watching through the programme in order, it comes across as rather effective. I've seen the location footage on the DVD before now, and seen just how simply the explosions of the bubbles hitting rocks are done, but they come across well on the screen! It's no wonder that we've been treated to examples of it in all three episodes so far, and I don't think I'd be surprised if we get one tomorrow, too!

While I'm on the subject of dated computer imagery… the new titles. I know they're not very popular, but I've always liked the McCoy title sequence. I've never noticed before just how ropey some of the CGI looks in there, though, especially on the TARDIS in the bubble. At the time, did this look any more impressive than it does now? John Nathan-Turner was always quite good at being forward-thinking, and I can imagine that going for these titles was probably another step forward from his point of view at the time. Oh, and then there's the new logo… I'm afraid that I love that! It's probably the least admired of all the 'classic' series versions, but it's one of my favourites (and I think it's certainly better than the famous 'diamond' one!). That said, I think it works best when seen in two-tone, such as on the cover of Doctor Who Magazine.

The new theme music is fine, although as I think I’ve said before, they all sort of end up blurring in to one for me! This story also marks the first of Keff McCulloch’s incidental scores for the programme. McCulloch doesn’t have the best of reputations among Doctor Who fans, but the score is one of the things I’m enjoying the most about this story so far! He can stay, as far as I’m concerned!

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

Day 683: Time and the Rani, Episode Two

Dear diary,

The Tetraps might well be one of my favourite monster designs from Doctor Who. There's something about them which makes me think that they should be a bit rubbish, but I just can't help but really like them. For a start, the design is quite nice in itself, taking enough from the look of a bat and yet tweaking it enough to make them truly alien. Then the actual masks are fantastic, especially when they have to snarl at people. I've always thought that the work on creating monsters in the McCoy years of the programme is especially good, and it's nice to see that it's a trend which starts right from the very first story. I'm rather keen on the way that the various different point-of-veiw shots are overlaid, then focussing in on specific images. I think this must be the first time since about Doctor Who and the Silurians that a POV shot has impressed me this much by doing something different with it.

I'm not so fond of the Lakertians design, because I'm not entirely sure that they work. I appreciate the attempt to do something a bit different with their make up and design (and the fact that the director has thought to give them a very distinctive way of running, which makes them stand out alongside the other characters) but there's something about them which doesn't appeal to me as much as their furry friends.

This episode seems to have allowed Sylvester McCoy the chance to settle in to the character a bit more, too, and I can't help but wonder if it's because he's no longer having to play amnesia, and because he's been reunite with a real companion, as opposed to thinking that the Rani's disguise made her look anything like Mel. When he finally is reunited with his friend, it feels like the moment that he suddenly becomes the Doctor - having spent a couple of minutes distrusting each other, the Doctor and Mel finally look at each other across a table;

DOCTOR

Mel?

MEL

But you're completely different. Nothing like you were. Face, height, hair, everything's changed.

It's such a lovely moment, and something about it really gels for me. There's a bit of conversation earlier in the scene where the Doctor suddenly remembers something about carrot juice, and it feels like the two of them are already starting to find their groove.

That said… I really can't take to Mel. I'm trying, and she showed a fair bit of promise during Terror of the Vervoids,but something's just really not gelling for me here. I don't know if it's the way that Bonnie Langford is playing her (certainly, this is her weakest performance so far), or just the way that the character is written - she's certainly the archetypal 'screaming' Doctor Who girl, isn't she? I actively had to turn the volume down today while she screamed and screamed at the sight of a Tetrap!

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

Day 682: Time and the Rani, Episode One

Dear diary,

Is it really that time again? It almost doesn't feel right watching another post-regeneration story (or, I suppose, plain old regeneration story) so soon after the last one. Like The Twin Dilemma, this tale isn't exactly considered one of the best to start off a new actor in the role, and perhaps more than with Twin, I can see why. When The Sarah Jane Adventures was on television, I used to hear people say they didn't want to watch it because it's a 'kids show' (I didn't point out that their favourite time-travel based series was, too), but I always argued that The Sarah Jane Adventures wasn't a 'kid's show' - it was drama for children. There's a difference in there. Lots of children's telly (not so much any more, thanks to Sarah Jane and the likes of Wizards Vs Aliens and Wolfblood) talks down to the audience, and fills the screen with things that aren't always worth watching. I remember Christopher Eccleston during publicity for the first series of Doctor Who making the point that if you give children good drama when they're young, they'll demand good drama when they're older, and I think there's a lot of truth to that.

Time and the Rani, then is what I would describe as being a real 'kids show', in the worst way. As I've intimated above, Doctor Who has always been for children - there's parts of it designed to appeal to every member of the family, but it's predominantly for the young ones. It's usually very good at balancing itself to be accessible for children while also having enough in there for an enquiring mind. This story is just a bit patronising, with very little beneath the surface. Everyone involved in the production is pitching their performance and their work as though this were a show for the youngest of children (even if the subject matter, and the skeletons and death seem to go against the grain of that).

Even Sylvester McCoy doesn't really seem to fit in here. He's not slipped in to the role with the same ease that Colin Baker did, and you can really see him feeling his way here. That''s not necessarily a bad thing, though, because I know the character that the Seventh Doctor will become, and it's quite fun to see him clowning around so much here. There's moments where you can see the more manipulating Doctor of his later seasons shining through, though - as in the moments when he first wakes up and starts going over a list of things he needs to do. We've never really seen the Doctor work to any grand scheme before, so it feels immediately fresh. I think McCoy is having to struggle against the story and the production, so I can't wait to see how he blossoms when placed in other settings. Also, I have to say, how much I love the way Colin's costume doesn't fit him! In all the other regenerations, the clothes all either change with the Doctor, or we see him choose new ones too quickly to get a feel for them in their predecessors outfit. It's great seeing the way McCoy tumbles around while being completely drowned by Colin's outfit.

I guess I should probably mention the elephant in the room for today's episode - the regeneration itself. Now, I have to admit that I don't really have all that much of an issue with it. No, the wig doesn't look all that convincing as Colin's hair, but the actual regeneration effect itself isn't bad - I certainly know several people who were completely fooled by it as children on the first transmission. There's a bonus version on the DVD for this story which edits in Baker's face to the sequence, just enough to make it look a bit better. I think this is probably the best that they could do in the situation with Colin not wanting to come back to the programme to film the scene, but wanting to show it anyway.

I think they would have been somewhat better not showing it at all. ave the TARDIS crash down in to the quarry, and then have the Tetraps drag the newly regenerated Doctor from the police box. The fact that he's in Colin's clothes would be enough of a giveaway for us that this is the same man, and we can then come to terms with is as Mel does, suddenly being told that her friend has a different face. Even better, they could just have carried on the way that the 2005 series did - with a brand new Doctor, and brand new adventures. Starting fresh, and moving on from the troubles of the last few seasons.

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Matt Fitton

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: September 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“The end of the world is nigh. That’s what everybody is seeing in their nightmares. That’s why they are congregating in Liverpool for the party to end all parties, hosted by Rufus Stone, a celebrity turned doomsday prophet. He claims he’s the only one who can save them when the day of judgement comes. Because he’s on the side of the angels.

The Doctor, Ace and Hector arrive to find the city in the grip of apocalypse fever. There are lights in the sky, earthquakes and power cuts. The Doctor is determined to investigate, while Ace is more concerned about finding a way of restoring Hector’s lost memories.

Meanwhile, in the river Mersey, hideous, slug-like creatures are stirring...”

***

So, here we have it, then: the absolutely-definitely final story for Hector/Hex we-promise-this-time-honest story.  I don’t think I need to put into words here the amount of scepticism I had going into this play, though I was comforted by the knowledge that the other two in this trilogy have been damn good.

I’ve been growing a bit… tired of the trilogy format for the monthly releases recently as it has perhaps grown a little stale, and you have to wait a long time between releases to encounter favourite Doctors or companions again, which can be a tad frustrating and stifles any real growth in affection towards said characters, but thus far this one had bucked the trend by giving us two strong releases back-to-back for the first time in a while.

I was also very, very wary of listening to yet another story in which they should get rid of Hex.  He should have gone in A Death in the Family, no doubt about it, but this was put on hold and, in fairness, there was some nice trickery going on with the Black and White TARDIS plot thread, and Protect and Survive was an incredible play.  And then Hex should absolutely definitely have gone in Gods and Monsters, and when he failed to then, I must admit that I just gave up.  It hasn’t diminished the quality of plays following, but was a really, really silly thing to do.  So then, exit point number three: does it make good on it?

I am pleased to say that Signs and Wonders does indeed, and also ends this strong trilogy on yet another strong release.  Set in Liverpool, a mysterious preacher man is foretelling the end of the world, people are having premonitions about their deaths, and Hector/Hex is fed up with not knowing who he is, and wants to return to his home, or the closest he has to one, to try and gain some perspective.  Throw in the return of Sally Morgan, some gods and slug monsters, and the scene is set for something final with a lot of explosions along the way for good measure.

At first, I feared that this story was simply going to replicate the big bangs and Elder God-related techno-guff of Gods and Monsters, but it quickly shows itself to have more heart and a plot two steps away from manipulation and ensuing confusion.  It’s also got Jessica Martin being wonderful in it as a Reverend who enjoys brass rubbing, which is nice.

As with the other plays in this trilogy, Matt Fitton gives us a good, strong story for Hex/Hector across four episodes, one which makes use of the plot developments for him without them getting in the way.  There is also plenty to do for the other characters, with the Seventh Doctor in particular having some fun with his brolly and Amy Pemberton excelling once more as Sally Morgan, one of my favourite additions to Big Finish in recent times.

I do not want to give much away here, but the play concludes with a very definite ending for Hex/Hector and a nice nod to the future for the Seventh Doctor and Ace, tying in to events we’ve already glimpsed in adventures such as UNIT: Dominion.  It’s a neat step forward.

The ending for Hex/Hector itself is absolutely perfect, and Fitton should be given full credit for pulling it off.  It’s a far, far more satisfying ending than Gods would have been in hindsight, though I still maintain it was where he should have gone if not in Death, which was every bit a natural conclusion to his character as this play is.  You couldn’t wish for a better ending to his story though, so colour me satisfied.

What is frustrating though is that it ever even got to this stage.  This is indeed the perfect ending (a Big Finish, if you will), so why didn’t we get this before? Why did we not get a trilogy as strong as this earlier? I’m glad that Big Finish got it very right ion the end, but disappointed that it took so very long to reach this destination.  It shows a lack of confidence in direction and an unwillingness to let go of actors and have the stories suffer accordingly.

The future is definitely looking brighter now, but please: have the courage of your convictions and know when to stop.

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: James Goss

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: September 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 16th September 2014

“Athens, 421 BC. An ancient civilisation of philosophers and poets and the birthplace of theatre. The Doctor has decided to show Ace and Hector how it all began, with help from the great comedian Aristophanes.

But life in Athens is no laughing matter. There’s the ever-present threat of invasion from the Spartan horde. The plague that turns people into the walking dead. The slavery. The tyrannical rule of the paranoid, malicious Cleon and his network of informers. And the giant flying beetle with knives for wings that stalks the city streets at night.

What Athens needs is a hero. And who better to be a hero in ancient Greece than a man called Hector?”

***

Before I even get going, I’m just going to take a second to assert what I did in my review of Revenge of the Swarm: I’m not going to bang on in this review about whether or not they should have brought back Hex/Hector.  They shouldn’t, but that’s a discussion for... well, probably the release after this one.  Instead, I’m going to focus on the play as its own entity, away from these things, for now at least.

The second in this trilogy of Seventh Doctor/Ace/Hex-sort-of-ish plays, Mask of Tragedy takes us back to Ancient Greece, a time of political reform, war, new ideas, philosophy, and, it turns out, space tourism and a lot of fun.  Barely two minutes have passed before it’s revealed that in Greece around this time, everyone is well aware of time travel and aliens, because... well, because it’s Greece around this time, so every time traveller wants to visit it!

It’s a great idea: funny, silly, cheeky, a little bit Iris Wildthyme, and perfect for a play that honestly made me laugh aloud at least twice an episode.  I simply was not expecting this play to be as funny as it is.  I’ll confess that despite liking James Goss’s writing and the Seventh Doctor (heck, I like all the Doctors, even... no, no, especially Edmund Warrick), this play didn’t hold much expectation in my mind before listening to it.  Perhaps it’s due to my apathy towards the resurrection of Hex/Hector, but regardless, it is often the way when two plays in a run get released in the same month: you’re aware, especially so in this case, that a finale of sorts is in the pipeline, and so it’s easy to lose sight of what else is there.  I remember when this happened with Paper Cuts, which proved itself to be one of the best Sixth Doctor/Charley adventures out there, and this is certainly every bit as strong a release as Revenge of the Swarm was last month, so I dearly hope it doesn’t get overlooked.

The play kicks off with Ace acting as a Greek chorus and giving us hints of what’s to come, which is at once confusing and intriguing.  We’re then thrown into the action, with Hex still not the Hex we once knew and the Seventh Doctor in a toga, keen to take a trip into history, but one with an ulterior motive, as it soon transpires that he is sponsoring the comic playwright Aristophanes and, in his own words, wants to keep an eye on things due to the nature of all things time travel converging on this one place in time and space.

We soon get a playwright bemoaning his art being sullied by an audience’s taste for fart jokes, Ace as a proto-Feminist freedom fighter, a not-very-good space traveller who is only there for kicks and lessons, Spartans a world away from their depiction in 300, and Hex/Hector lost and adrift in a time he finds hard to cope with, with the titular mask proving that he is not the man he was.  Indeed, Ace and the Doctor find themselves treading on eggshells to not remind him that he’s not this guy they once travelled with, and this is shown up time and again here when Hex/Hector is thrown into the past and expected to cope in the way Hex used to be able to.  Indeed, this is a play which uses the Hex/Hector plot device to full effect, both with regards to story and drama, and it is also a play which doesn’t forget what has just come before, with Swarm proving itself to have an effect on his character here, too.  It’s an example of continuity being used in a smart and effective way, as opposed to a clunky one.  You don’t need the lines nodding towards Swarm in there, but it helps explain a few things.

Sylvester McCoy and Philip Olivier are in fine form throughout the play, though Sophie Aldred perhaps suffers a little by having an Ace who is used mainly for comedy and is given some... questionable lines.  I’m sure having her bellow “I’m gonna teach ya... how to gatecrash!” works well in a comic strip, but on audio it’s a little bit wince-inducing.  That said, Aldred does spar well with Emily Tucker, with whom she is paired with for a fair chunk of this play, and she plays some of the tender moments between her and Hex/Hector rather well.  Why do birds suddenly appear, etc.  I suspect we’re heading towards tears before bedtime with this budding romance, as hinted at in Swarm as well.

Mention has to go to Samuel West as Aristophanes in this play, who manages to be blackly funny and wonderfully dour in equal measure throughout.  He also steals the show in the CD extras by being so damn nice and loving towards Dimensions in Time, which is genuinely touching and pleasingly fan-ish to hear! It does make me sad though that he never once wishes upon someone that they are doomed to go on a journey... a very long journey.

Whatever my misgivings towards Hex/Hector, the same cannot be said for this play which, like Revenge of the Swarm, is good fun throughout.  We have an ending approaching though: a definite ending this time, apparently.  I am not sure that I really believe Big Finish on this one, but let’s play along with them and say it’s true.  I want it to be true, and if that play can be as good as the two preceding... well, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised once again.  Here’s hoping. 

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Jonathan Morris

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: August 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 15th August 2014

“The Doctor thought he had defeated the microscopic Nucleus of the Swarm in his fourth incarnation. He was wrong. It survived within the TARDIS, and now it has brought it back to Titan Base, back to the point of its own creation. It has a plan that spans centuries, a plan which will result in the Nucleus becoming more powerful – and larger – than ever before.

To defeat it, the Doctor, Ace and Hex must confront the Nucleus within its new domain - the computer-world of the Hypernet, the information network crucial to the survival of the human empire. But if the Doctor is to save the day, he has to risk everything and everyone he holds dear...”

***

Did you ever see Tron: Legacy? It came out a few years ago.  It was, as you can probably guess from the name, a sequel to the film Tron from many years earlier and on paper at least, was fan pleasing and moved things on whilst revisiting some old friends.  Well, Revenge of the Swarm is very much Tron: Legacy to The Invisible Enemy's Tron: old settings and old scenes, done bigger and with the different technologies at their disposal and with enough new bits and bobs in between the set pieces to keep you engaged.  We travelled into a body before, so where to this time? We took over some people before, so how many now? The prawn got big before, so how much bigger can it go?

I suspect that a lot of people’s enjoyment, or lack thereof, with Revenge of the Swarm will relate to how much people enjoyed The Invisible Enemy.  I must confess that it’s one of those stories which I have always really enjoyed: space shrimp! A cool catchphrase! Going into a brain! K-9! To my eyes at least, it’s always been an extremely enjoyable tale: a romp, if you will.  Here, years on, we’re back with Jonathan Morris helming the shrimp (a phrase I like so much I’m going to use it again later, just you wait) and his own love for the weird adventure in space and the mind itself is there for all to see.  This is as much a love letter to The Invisible Enemy as it is a story in its own right, but that’s no bad thing.  Morris’s enthusiasm is infectious and with every twist and turn, you can almost imagine him smiling as he puts words into the mouths of the Doctor, Ace, Hex/Hector, and the aforementioned Nucleus of the Swarm.

I’m not going to dwell on Hex here.  I’ve done so before and I fear becoming far too one-track and repetitive.  In short though: should Hex have gone before now? Yes.  He should have left in A Death in the Family, or if an extension was absolutely necessary then definitely in Gods and Monsters.  This isn’t to say that I don’t like Hex (he’s fine) or some of the stories which came afterwards (Protect and Survive was wonderful), but… but the same old criticism I’ve done before, so let’s move on.  Hex here is used rather well and given the set-up we now have with him not quite himself (A Hector is a Half-Formed Thing), Morris at least uses this to his advantage.  He’s definitely… well, Hex in most ways and not pseudo-Hex, but I guess that was always the intention and it’s the little things which mark him out as different that count.  I mean, they really are very little as you’ll be hard-pressed to notice them for the most part, but still.  The ending of the play perhaps signifies more of this to come, so we shall see.  It also addresses the somewhat odd attitude to death, or rather the lack of outwardly caring about it, which the Doctor and Ace sometimes show.  This jars a bit though, given that a lot of Afterlife also covered this and had Ace making similar criticisms there to Hex’s here.  Still, a bit of hypocrisy never hurt anyone.

Philip Olivier sounds like he’s enjoying the material he’s given, as do both Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred.  Indeed, I thought McCoy really sounded happy and at home throughout, something also apparent in the recent first box set of New Adventures with Bernice Summerfield.  Whatever Big Finish are doing with him, they’re doing it right, as McCoy is on fire right now.

We’re also treated to John Lesson being wonderful in a role that is not K-9, which is forever a rare but much-treasured thing, and Morris has taken the time to really think about the logistics of the Swarm: when possessed, for example, why is it that no-one seems to be aware that other people are or are not possessed? Clearly, they lack the sort of mental link you’d expect with this sort of alien takeover and it’s more akin to being drafted into an army.  Little things like this which Morris has taken time over which means a lot and adds up to a very satisfying play.

Am I dead excited for the second instalment in this trilogy of plays? Not as such, but not because of this play itself, simply due to the trilogy format.  I long for a return to the days when every month, for the most part, gave us a different Doctor and companion(s) team as I just haven’t been invested at all in any of the recent arcs and how they resolve (again, partly because they almost never actually end!) but, all that said, I hope it’s as fun as this was, and I would definitely not say no to Jonathan Morris helming the shrimp one more time. (Told you so.)

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: John Dorney

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: November 2013

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 30th November 2013

“London. The end of November, 1963. A time of change. The old guard are being swept away by the white heat of technology. Political scandals are the talk of the town. Britain tries to maintain its international role; fanatics assassinate charismatic politicians and Group Captain Ian Gilmore is trying to get his fledgling Counter-Measures unit off the ground.

When his life is saved by a familiar umbrella-bearing figure, he knows something terrible is going on.  Whilst Rachel investigates an enigmatic millionaire and Allison goes undercover in an extremist organisation, Gilmore discovers a sinister plot with roots a century old.

The Doctor and Ace are back in town. A new dawn is coming. It's time for everyone… to see the Light.”

* * *

This must have been a difficult play to be created, make no mistake.  It has to meet six very important criteria, namely:

To satisfy and not isolate anyone who hasn’t listened to Counter-measures.

To satisfy anyone who has listened to Counter-measures and not make them feel that the series or its concepts have been diluted by their inclusion in a Doctor Who release.

To satisfy the fans of Remembrance of the Daleks who are looking forward to the various characters’ reunion after all these years.

To satisfy the fans of John Dorney, one of the most popular writers and performers which Big Finish have to offer.

To satisfy the fans of the 1963 trilogy (though ‘trilogy’ is a strong word when it’s the year and nothing more which link up the stories).

And, finally, to stand up to closer-than-usual scrutiny, being as this is the release for November 2013, Doctor Who’s fiftieth birthday month.

Quite a challenge.  I wouldn’t have blamed anyone for turning it down; nor would I have blamed it if it had been a release which missed the mark: quite frankly, it’d be nigh-on impossible to write without the pressure of November 2013 on the back, however right or wrong that may be.

     Thankfully, none of that happens, and 1963: The Assassination Games is a very strong release indeed, easily ticking all of the above boxes with little fuss.  The opening episode is essentially an episode of Counter-measures, with the team going about their business whilst two people they never thought they’d see again (the Doctor and Ace) pop up from time to time to nudge them on their way.  It’s a lovely set-up, and in many ways I wish that the rest of the story had followed suit: I rather like the idea of a Doctor-lite story featuring characters from a spin-off range, and the Seventh Doctor feels particularly suited to that sort of behind-the-scenes approach.

     That’s not to say that the rest of the story disappoints though– far from it.  Over the course of its four episodes, it slowly works its way from Counter-measures territory to Doctor Who terrain, finished up in an episode which feels like it’s jumped fresh out of Season 25, with stunts, bike chases, and a big evil from ancient times.  Throw into that brilliant performances from all the leads, Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred particularly channeling their old performances well, and you have a very satisfying story which sates the desires of the (not necessarily exclusive, but you never know) fan bases of both series.

     The very best thing this story could do is persuade fans to listen to Counter-measures, and help it gain a wider audience: it would be nice to see it run to another couple of series at the very least as there is a lot of potential in there.

     The 1963 trilogy has given Big Finish some of its strongest stories for a while, with some very memorable characters, situations and performances.  When people look back on November 2013, many will recall sitting in cinemas with 3-D glasses and bathing in the wonder of The Day of the Doctor, but for us lucky few, we’ll also remember listening to The Common Men being The Beatles, Samantha Bérat giving us a heartfelt performances for a frankly bizarre character, and Chunky Gilmore being reunited with his most-trusted Doctor at long last.

     Thank you, Big Finish, and Happy Birthday, Doctor Who.