DWO’s Spoiler-Free preview of the 2015 Christmas Special, The Husbands of River Song;

So here it is, Merry Christmas! Everybody's having fun. Not least of them being Doctor Who, which is off on a bit of a lark following a season which saw the Doctor go through some fairly significant losses.

Bringing back Alex Kingston’s River Song to bounce off another incarnation of the Doctor was always going to be a recipe for fun, and The husbands of River Song doesn’t disappoint in this regard. Watching her dance around the screen with Peter Capaldi’s incarnation of the Time Lord is a real delight. There’s something about seeing the Twelfth Doctor let his hair down (so to speak… let his eyebrows down? There’s a breeze when he moves them…) and engaging in a bit of fun with his wife which is completely endearing and so perfect for Christmas Day.

As ever with River, the Doctor turns into a bit of a love-struck fool, and it’s really great to see a new side to Capaldi’s Doctor. Don’t fret that he’s not the Time Lord we’ve grown to know over the last two seasons, though; there’s a lot about his wife’s activities that this Doctor doesn’t approve of. Popping up with a new face (his thirteenth - one he’s not supposed to have and one River certainly doesn’t gave a picture of) gives him a chance to see what his beloved is like when he’s not around.

Oh, but the two of them absolutely sing together. Was there ever any doubt that they wouldn’t?

It helps that they’re supported by a stellar guest cast of husbands, fronted by the likes of Greg Davies as King Hydroflax, and Matt Lucas and Phillip Rhys as River’s partners in crime. As ever with names like this, there’s been a certain amount of grumbling about ‘stunt’ casting for the episode, but when you see the way everyone comes together on screen, you can’t help but get swept up in the ride. Make sure you hold on tight and don’t lose your head…

The episode also sees a very welcome return to the director’s chair for Douglas Mackinnon, who was sorely missed throughout the main bulk of Series Nine. Mackinnnon brings his style brilliantly to the worlds of the special, and there’s several moments where Doctor Who has rarely looked better.

There’s a danger that throughout this preview so far I’ve made the Christmas episode sound like a lot of larking about with no real substance, but never fear - the Doctor and River’s relationship has always been laced with emotion and sadness - how could it not when one of them dies on their first date? - and there’s a big dollop of that embedded in here, too.

Happiness and joy mixed with a hint sadness and thoughts of those we’ve lost. Is anything more Christmas than that?

Five things to look out for;

1) "I think I’m going to need a bigger flowchart…"
2) "The diary of River Song! The ultimate guide to the Time Lord known as the Doctor…"
3) "You are a time/space machine! You’ve a vehicle! I’ve never asked you to cheer me up with hologramatic antlers!"
4)  24 years. 
5) "An archeologist is just a thief with patience. I never had much of that."

[Sources: DWO, Will Brooks]

   

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

Day 420: Revenge of the Cybermen, Episode Four 

Dear diary,

Although not much of the story is catching my interest, something did strike me today (though more from my mind wandering off while the episode played out than because I was inspired by it). I suddenly realised how few female characters there are throughout Season Twelve. Obviously, there’s Sarah Jane on her travels, then you’ve got Miss Winters in Robot, plotting to take over the world, Vira on the Ark, assuming command and preparing to lead her people back to the Earth, Bettan leading the fight against Davros and the Daleks... and that’s pretty much it! All the other speaking characters in the series have been male.

It’s not particularly unusual for the series (I’m sure we must have had an incident or two of it before now... Dot Cotton is the only female in The Time Warrior’s guest cast, Jill Tarrant is alone during Death to the Daleks, and Ruth seems to be the only woman left in London following the dinosaur evacuation during Invasion of the Dinosaurs, for instance), but I can’t say I’ve ever really noticed it before now. I think it’s only cropped up today because I was just going through the motions trying to watch the episode.

I’m sorry to say that - right to the end - Revenge of the Cybermen just hasn’t really grabbed me. Today, I even went as far as turning on the commentary half way through, because I thought I may find it more interesting than the story itself.

It’s a real shame, because there’s actually a few things in here today that I should rather like. There’s the Doctor’s famous line ‘Harry Sullivan is an imbecile’, another one of those things you just know about when you’re a Doctor Who fan, but it’s given more context seen like this, and after a season of the pair bonding and playing off each other so well it comes as a real highlight. There’s some lovely shots of the Cybermen aboard Nerva, illuminated in a blue light (on the commentary, even Elisabeth Sladen picks up on how good this looks). The Doctor fills a Cybermat with gold dust and uses it to attack a Cyberman, in a clever way that parallels the plague being delivered right back at the start of the story...

But for everything that crops up that I do quite like, there’s something else that irritates me. The way the Cyberleader looses all sense of power when he stands over Sarah with his hands on his hips. The Sky-Striker rising from the planet of Voga... where they’ve decided to spend some time (and some of their budget, though I guess that’s not so much an issue for a planet of gold) on printing ‘United States’ on the side (yeah, yeah, I know it’s stock footage). The way that Nerva skimming the surface of the planet looks quite good in a way, with a lovely detailed planet surface... but the roll that they’ve created it on is a bit too small in diameter, so it looses any sense of scale that it really should have...

In the end, it’s all just lost on me. Still, it’s only fair that I find something positive to say... um... well, no, ok. I do quite like the soundtrack. I can’t say that I really noticed it much during the story itself, but the menu clips on both the main menu and the special features one start with some lovely musical cues from the story, and they’ve been looping in the background for a while now, rather pleasantly. Yes, I’m really reaching.

Still, the story is over now. It may go onto the pile of tales to revisit in the future and see if my mood has changed towards it. Stories like Fury From the Deep are on my list to revisit one day, but for now, I simply have no desire to see this one again. I’m sure it has its fans, but I’m sorry to say I’m just not one of them.

Season Twelve on the whole has been a bit up-and-down for me. Generally, I’ve really enjoyed it, but it’s very much characterised by some great highs (The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks) and a few lows (The Sontaran Experiment and this story). Still, I’m completely sold by Tom Baker as the Doctor, and we’ve got a great team as we move forward into the new season. It’s such a shame that they’re only really together for one more story...

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

Day 419: Revenge of the Cybermen, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Break out the party hats, and bring me a cake. As of today, I am officially half-way through The 50 Year Diary. Sort of. Maybe. Not quite.

Perhaps it would be better to say that I am officially half-way through televised Doctor Who for the purposes of this marathon? The 50 Year Diary will cover every episode from An Unearthly Child to The Time of the Doctor, which is 800 episodes in total. Revenge of the Cybermen falls perfectly in the middle of those two, coming in as the programme’s 400th episode.

I can’t decide whether it feels like way more than 400 episodes to reach this point, or if it feels like we shouldn’t even be anywhere near 400, but it’s exciting to think that I’m somewhere around the middle of the project. I’m not exactly sure, because (as you’ve no doubt noticed), the 400th episode doesn’t necessarily fall on the 400th day. I’ve taken a few side-steps to reach this point, you see. There was the experiment with Farewell, Great Macedon between Seasons One and Two, and the day out to hear Daleks: The Destroyers between Seasons Three and Four. Then those two Patrick Troughton stories arrived back in the archives from deepest Africa, and they had to be slotted in as well.

All those things pushed the number of Diary entries up. And there’s more to come! In the next half of the marathon, I plan to take time out to listen to one of the Fourth Doctor ‘Lost Stories’ (I know people weren’t overly keen on me doing so with Hartnell, but I’ve heard nothing but praise for The Foe from the Future so I’m adding it in), then we’ve got Dimensions in Time, Scream of the Shalka, the Doctor’s appearances in The Sarah Jane Adventures... At this stage, I honestly don’t know how many entries the Diary will run to. I’ve always known that it would be around the 800 mark, just based on the number of episodes, so it’s quite an achievement to be somewhere around the middle. I know I say it a lot, but I really am very surprised (and delighted!) to have made it this far. It’s just a shame that the story this landmark falls in isn’t one of my favourites...

Still, I’ve realised today what my problem is with this story. It’s got Dominators Syndrome, a condition in which – no matter what happens in the story – I simply cannot enjoy anything on the screen. These situations do crop up from time to time. The Dominators has been my most recent example for a while (although The Curse of Peladon was developing symptoms for a while), but the same has also been true of stories like The Highlanders. It means that in my mind, I’ve just completely switched off from the story, and it’s unlikely to pull me back in.

It’s a shame, because it means that I’m not even giving the episodes the attention they deserve. They’re playing out on the screen, I’mwatching them, but I’m just not taking them in. I’m not even really making any notes, just jotting down the occasional bit of dialogue that I find amusing or emotive, because I’m not engaging with the story enough to really care.

Another problem that this causes is that I find myself just being incredibly negative about everything. Yesterday, I spoke of how much I like the way that these Cyberman costumes are such a neat halfway between The Invasion and Earthshock, but today even that’s grown stale for me, and I’m focussing far more on the fact that I don’t like their voices in this one. Sometimes, during the 1960s, they could be quite hard to understand... but at least they sounded alien! These Cybermen sound like guys with buckets on their heads. Oh... wait...

Even the design of Nerva is irritating me this time around. I spent ages during The Ark in Space praising the way that the design of the beacon really held together and worked, but I’m just not liking it here. They’ve added a number of panels to the set – grey with little inset circles – to give the impression that we’ve visiting Nerva at an earlier point in its history. In theory, I quite like this idea. I love buildings being taken over and getting a new purpose, but so that you can still see bits of the history shining through into the new design. Sadly, I’m finding that the design modifications to the Nerva set make it look worse than the version we saw earlier in the season!

I’m guessing that the final episode will have a real fight to try and get me interested in the story again. It’s a shame, after so long without a story like this which really just doesn’t grab me in any way, that this season should limp out rather feebly as opposed to going out with a real bang.

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

Day 418: Revenge of the Cybermen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

For all my complaining about the way that the Cybermen are being treated in this story (and I’m still not keen. The Doctor muses that the Cybermen must be planning an attack on the planet of gold because they’re so allergic to it: it’s treated as a fact we should all know, but it’s news to anyone watching through in order like this!), it does have to be said that their appearance in the cliff hanger is very well done. They emerge from their own ship, board Nerva, and are instantly greeted with a hail of bullets from our human crew. They don’t even leave a scratch. In return, the Cyberleader fires three shots from the gun built into his head – and hits all three targets. It’s cold, and it’s by far the best moment we’ve had in this story so far.

It’s just a shame that this couldn’t have been their first appearance in the story! In my head, I’d prefer an Episode One where there’s a mysterious space ship just in range of Nerva’s scans, but it’s failing to answer any of their communications. The ship just sits there silently, while Nerva’s crew all fall victim to a horrible plague. As the Doctor investigates, he realises that they’re in orbit not far from Voga, the planet of gold. But how are the two connected? Could it be? As the episode rolls on, the ship finally starts to make its approach, docking with the beacon. The airlock opens... and then the cliff hanger plays out exactly as we’ve seen here. The Doctor makes his deduction that it must be Cybermen at the same moment they emerge from their ship, but it’s too late.

I think that’s what’s missing from this story for me – any real sense of tension. We know the Cybermen are involved from the title, but the story is treating it so matter-of-factly that there’s been very littleexcitement in there for me. I want the Cybermen to emerge triumphantly, not for us to occasionally cut back to them stood in their control room with their hands on their hips. Still, I am glad to have them back in the programme, and hopefully now that they’ve arrived properly and taken out the crew (I’m assuming they’ve simply stunned them all, or clipped them?) we can get down to some proper Cyberman action.

I rather like the design of the creatures seen in this story – they feel very much like a half-way house between the models from The Invasion and the ones that we’ll go on to have for Earthshock. The guns in the head is a fairly neat idea, and it does make sense for them to have some kind of built-in weaponry like this. We’ve also got the first appearance of the ‘black handlebar’ design to denote the Cyberman in charge, and that’s something I really like. It’s toned down by the time the Cybermen next pop up in the series, but I was really pleased to see it brought back again for The Next Doctor a few years ago.

Less effective for me is the Vogan prosthetics. I’ve never been a big fan of the design – it’s the ultimate example of ‘man in ill-fitting- rubber-mask’ for me, and I’m finding it quite hard to take them seriously. It’s a story of political power struggles, with factions developing different goals... but whereas a similar story about the established power being overthrown was presented as gripping and, in some ways, adult during Genesis of the Daleks, here the whole thing is failing to engage with me because I can’t stop looking at those masks!

There’s something else that’s drawing my eye, too, and it’s the Seal of Rassilon! Now, I know about many of the fan ‘workarounds’ for little continuity blips like this, but I don’t know of any which explain why the Vogans have adopted the Time Lord’s ceremonial symbol for their own design. It’s not even only slightly part of their culture – it’s on their walls, their tables, their robes... it’s a big part of this society. Now, obviously, I know that in reality, they’ll come to make The Deadly Assassin a couple of years from now and decide that they like this symbol and could re-use it, but when you look back on the series, knowing just how much this will become a part of Time Lord design does make it a bit jarring!

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

Day 417: Revenge of the Cybermen, Episode One 

Dear diary,

It’s odd how this stage of the programme goes through a period of looking back to the people who were involved with it during the early years. Last season we had Paddy Russell returning to directors duties for the first time since Season Three’s The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, and with The Ark in Space John Lucarotti made his return (to some degree) for the first time since that same story. Glyn Jones, writer of The Space Museum turns up as one of the crewmembers in The Sontaran Experiment, and now we’ve got Gerry Davies back on the scene for the first time since The Tomb of the Cybermen. You’ve also got the old enemies being revived - the Daleks made their return after a five-year absence a few seasons ago, and now the Cybermen follow suit, emerging for the first time since The Invasion, way back in 1968. After this story, they’ll vanish for another seven years. It’s a wonder that they ever made it into the pantheon of Doctor Who’s most famous foes!

And yet, despite the fact that they’re making a triumphant return after more than half a decade away from our screens... it’s treated as just any old monster of the week turning up. I often complain about it during these diary entries, but you do play something of a game with Doctor Who. If the story features a returning villain, then their name appears in the title. You spend that entire first episode knowing that they’ll be revealed - pointlessly - at the cliffhanger... but that’s all part of the fun. Yes, it’s a bit cheesy. Yes, it’s a bit repetitive. But it’s what you expect.

So it’s a surprise when the Doctor twigs half-way through this episode that the Cybermen must be involved with the events unfolding around Nerva. It’s thrown into the dialogue as if we’re supposed to think ‘of course! Who else?’, but really it feels like it should be a bigger deal than this. Not long after, we get a shot of their spaceship while Kellman contacts them, and then we cut directly to a shot of them all stood around in their control room.

Now, I’m watching this and thinking ‘oh yes! It’s the Cybermen!’, but would kids at home be shocked by this revelation during first broadcast? We’re now deep in a period of the programme where the past is more accessible than it has been before - the Radio Times anniversary issue a few years before gave details of the Doctor’s old adventures, and the Target novels have begun in earnest - but it still feels odd to treat their big return after such an absence with such... dismissal.

I think it’s completely put me off the story right at an early stage, and Revenge of the Cybermen may be looking at a real uphill struggle to win me back round. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while now, since it’s both the return of my favourite monsters, and coming at a phase where the programme has never felt so self-assured. I’m all ready for a Cyberman story told with the kind of edge we see in Genesis of the Daleks, but this first episode has left me almost entirely cold.

It’s a huge shame, too, because we start of with such promise. The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry arrive back on Nerva, but the twist is that we’re a few thousand years before the events from The Ark in Space. They need to make do with waiting around until the TARDIS can come back and catch up with them... but this being the Doctor, he almost instantly stumbles across a corpse and a mystery to solve. Ofcourse he does. He only has to open a simple door to find himself in trouble!

We’re then treated to a return for Nerva’s most iconic piece of scenery - that corridor. This time, though, it’s been strewn with dead bodies. It’s sinister, perfectly in keeping with the tone this programme’s now got, and a great hook for the start of the story. Add to that the idea that there’s a Cybermat moving around unseen amongst the victims, and a spaceship floating just out of reach from Nerva’s scanners... all the right pieces are here for a great story, but I’m just not feeling it. Still, I’m hoping my disappointment at the slightly bungled reveal of our old favourite monsters won’t overshadow the rest of the story, so I’ll be moving forward with an open mind tomorrow...

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

Day 416: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode Six 

Dear diary,

The scene in this episode, where the Doctor holds the two wires in his hands, knowing that he only needs to touch them together in order to destroy the Daleks forever is perhaps one of the most famous moments in Doctor Who history. I’d always assumed it was the very climax to the story - it’s what I thought we were building towards certainly - so imagine my surprise when it actually came along just seconds after the end of the cliffhanger reprise!

There’s no denying that it is a great scene, but I found that its impact was then somewhat lessened by the fact that the story goes on for so long afterwards, feeling artificially drawn-out, before the wires get touched together anyway when a Dalek happens to trundle over them by accident. For me, it takes away from the beauty of that scene, and I think that Genesis as a whole (no matter how much I’ve enjoyed it) would have been better served as a four-part story, cutting out a lot of the padding. Remove things like the giant clams, the Doctor getting strangled by a Dalek mutant, and all the business today where they’re ready to go but - oh no! - they’ve lost the Time Ring again, and you’d have a tighter story. I know it was released as an LP in the late 1970s, as an edited version of the story, and I’m almost tempted to give that a listen when the right time comes along, to see if I like the story even more in a condensed format.

All of this is sounding very negative, but really I have enjoyed today’s episode once again. I made a note early on about how, after effectively building up their numbers throughout the tale, it waspainfully obvious that they only had three Dalek props this time... and then you get that stunning reveal that there’s actually loads of them. I wondered for a while if this was simply some odd direction from Maloney, but I think it’s actually all about making that impact when the screen is suddenly full of them. It’s the first time in a long, long while that they’ve actually seemed scary.

The downfall of Davros is actually very well done, too. In keeping with the rest of the story, it’s very down-beat and harsh, from the moment we see Nyder unceremoniously exterminated onwards. I don’t know what I thought would happen to Nyder. If Davros was to be exterminated, then there was no way his henchman could be allowed to live, after all, but I’d never really considered it. He’s been such a genuinely nasty presence right through the story, and I love that his death is handled so unceremoniously. There’s no fanfare, no build up, and no mourning, he’s simply alive one minute acting as Davros’ lap-dog, and dead the next. It’s so sudden, and it really works.

And then you’ve got the extermination of Davros himself. That we only focus in on his hand when he dies, and not his face, is an absolute masterstroke. It creates a lasting image of his death, while at the same time making him just another casualty of the Daleks. As I mused yesterday, I really do think that this would be a good place to leave his story, but I’ll wait and see how I feel about that by the time that Destiny rolls around.

I said when this story started that I was usually skeptical about those stories that people consider to be absolute classics. Genesis of the Daleks has proven that sometimes, just sometimes, fan wisdom claims a story is great simply because it is. I’m genuinely surprised by just how much I’ve enjoyed this one, but I’m completely thrilled that I have. The next couple of seasons are practically littered with stories that fandom rates very highly, and if they can all be as worthy of their reputations as this one has been, then I’m in for a real treat.

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

Day 415: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode Five 

Dear diary,

Genesis of the Daleks marks a turning point for Dalek stories in the classic series - there’ll be four more before the Doctor and Ace walk off towards new adventures, and they’ll all feature Davros. I’ve already mentioned that I quite like the 1980’s version of Davros, and I like Julian Bleech’s version as seen in the revived series, but the more I watch through this story, the more I wish that the character had simply never returned.

There’s several problems that arise by having Davros around for the rest of the ‘classic’ Dalek stories. Firstly, the Daleks themselves are suddenly that bit less wonderful. Oh, I know I’ve made fun of Death to the Daleks a bit lately (and the further away from it that I move, the more I think of it as being a bit silly!), but when you think back past that story, to the Daleks of the 1960s... they were clever! They were cunning! Remember that scene right back in The Daleks, where they lure the Thals into their city and then all glide back into the shadows in unison, ready to attack? That was glorious! Even past that, when they’re trying to drill out the Earth’s magnetic core (lovely to hear a reference to that in today’s episode), or building their own time machines to pursue the Doctor through all of time and space... The Daleks used to be rather magnificent in their own right, without having their dad around to cramp their style.

Russell T Davies sums it up best in The Writer’s Tale: “I simply can’t bear it when Davros is in charge of the Daleks. They wouldn’t let him; it reduces them to soldiers.” It works for this story, because the Daleks are brand new. We’re watching on as Davros orders the alterations to their brains which will go on to make them ruthless and independent, and while I’ve never seen this story before, I know that it ends with them breaking free of his control and deciding that they don’t need their creator any more... so it feels like a shame to then bring him back time and time again.

After this story, the Daleks disappear from Doctor Who again for another long stretch. They won’t be back again until Season Seventeen, which feels a million miles away from here and now. I’m interested to see how I feel about all of this by the time I get there, though. Will I have reached a kind of nostalgic time where I’m pleased to see Davros again? Once this story isn’t so fresh in my mind, it may be that I rather enjoy him coming back. It’s certainly one for me to look out for, and another reason that watching through like this is such good fun.

As I’ve said above, the Daleks being controlled by Davros really does work in this story, because - really - this isn’t a Dalek story at all. This is a story about their creator, and about the world into whichthey were born. I’m now five episodes in, which means that I’ve watched about two hours of the story, and the Daleks have barely featured. As is traditional, they appear only for the cliffhanger to Episode One, and then they’ve been appearing in ever increasing numbers since (two Daleks in Episode Two, three in Episode Three and so on), but only ever really to glide in-and-out of a room. The most Dalek action we’ve had is the attack on the Thal dome, but even then we only get to see bits and pieces of it.

Maybe that’s why I’m so unsure about bringing Davros back again? This is very much his story, and it feels complete enough for me. I don’t have any urge to seek out the prequel series Big Finish made which led him to this point, and I’d not be sorry to never see the character again once the next episode is over. Genesis of the Daleks feels like a nice, self-contained story, and it would be a shame for anything to lessen its impact...

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

Day 414: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode Four

Dear diary,

It’s a mark of the quality of this story that when I mentioned it to a colleague at work yesterday, who grew up watching Doctor Who in the 1970s, but only really takes a passing interest in it these days, his face lit up as he declared Genesis of the Daleks to the ‘the best Doctor Who story ever’. It seems to be a really common opinion, and I’m somewhat surprised to see it being shared by even people we’d consider to be ‘not-we’. I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised, really, since this story has been repeated on terrestrial television more than any other from the classic series’ run – it must be doing something right!

What’s made a mark on me today is just how much you’re tricked into thinking that it really is the end for Sarah and Harry. The Doctor reminds us that he’s sent them off to the Kaled dome and then we’re forced to watch with him as the dome is completely obliterated. As if it needed any extra impact, the Doctor laments that he’s sent his companions into ‘that holocaust’, and seems genuinely defeated, before resolving that he’ll need to carry on with the task he’s been given, so that they’ve not died for nothing.

He then meets Thal, and minutes later saves her from a Dalek attack – it’s done almost in the way of him meeting a new companion for the first time. If I didn’t know that Sarah and Harry go on to have more adventures after this, and I were coming to this story cold for the first time, I think I’d genuinely believe that we’d lost the pair off-screen in the attack. As the episode then continues, we don’t actually see them until around ten minutes in – there’s not even a hint that they could have survived. In some ways it’s quite bleak, but it fits the tone of the story perfectly, and it does provide some great drama.

When my colleague was raving about how much he enjoyed this story, he did manage to inadvertently spoil a bit for me (in as much as you can spoil a story made and broadcast almost 40 years ago!) regarding the scene today where Nyder meets with scientist in the lower levels of the bunker and tricks him into revealing the names of the people who are plotting against Davros. He pointed it out as a scene that’s a little bit silly, specifically in regards to the way Peter Miles snaps back to attention when he’s got the information that he needs and responds with a clipped ‘thank you’. Watching the events unfold, I clearly knew where we were headed, and he was right – that moment is a bit silly. That said, there’s also something really menacing about the way that Davros then emerges from the shadows to greet the pair.

I’m a fan of the 1980s Davros, but the character we see in those three stories has nothing on the one we see here. The Davros of this story is perhaps the cruellest villain that we’ve ever been given in the programme. He’s willing to see his own race utterly destroyed in fire and pain simply because they dared to stop his experiments. He’ll have people killed when needed, and if he still requires their skills, then he’ll simply have their brains altered to support his way of thinking. There’s something really rather brilliant about it all, sinister and evil as it may be.

And yet, we’re starting to see a transition into the version of the character we get in the later Davros stories. Here, we get to witness him ‘ranting’ on more than one occasion, but it feels like the character’s decent into madness rather than simply something that he does. The ultimate rant then comes right in the closing moments, when he demands that the Doctor give him information on every Dalek defeat, so that he can make sure to overcome it. How do you think the Doctor will explain the one where they’re tricked into leaving Exxilon with bags full of the wrong minerals, and then get blown up?

I joke, of course, but this really does feel a million miles away from the Dalek story we were given in Season Eleven. I don’t know how much of this is down to Terry Nation upping his game (Terrance Dicks tells the story that Nation submitted his script for this story and they found it to be a complete rehash of all the ideas he’d used in Planet of, and Death to, so they suggested that he go away and given them something new, possibly about the Daleks’ origins), or how much comes from Robert Holmes’ input as script editor, but something has really gelled – this is in a whole other league.

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

Day 413: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode Three

Dear diary,

You can forget your Davroses and your Daleks. Your Sontarans and your Giant Spiders. Forget all about Ice Warriors and Dinosaurs, because the scariest thing that we’ve seen in Doctor Who during these last few seasons comes early on in today’s episode, when Sarah Jane has to jump a small gap between the scaffolding platform and the rocket.

It sounds like I’m being facetious, there, but genuinely, that’s the scariest that I’ve found Doctor Who in a very long time. It’s not the jump that’s actually worrying - it’s the way that Sarah reacts to it. She is clearly scared of heights. She’s just made her way, with difficulty, up that scaffold. She’s one of only two survivors. Her captors aren’t far behind, and their armed with guns, then then she has to go and look down, and realise just how easily she could fall. People talk about Lis Sladen being a fantastic actress, and I think the way she shakes while preparing to jump is one of the finest performances that we’ve ever had in the programme. There’s no debating it - that’s genuine fear.

And yet it comes in the episode containing perhaps the most infamous part of this story - the Giant Clam. I’ve been in Doctor Who fandom long enough to know that - supposedly - the only blemish on this story’s otherwise perfect six episodes is the presence of a Giant Clam chewing on Harry’s leg. I think I’m right in saying that the clam appears in another scene later on, too, which is even more ridiculous. I can’t say I was all that bothered by it, to be honest. It comes as one of those typically Terry Nation action-adventure-serial moments, where there needs to be some threat to the Doctor and Harry’s journey through the tunnels.

I’m surprised just how much of a team the Doctor and Harry are, to be honest. People always talk of the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane, and though they will get their time in the spotlight in the next season-and-a-half, it’s feeling increasingly as though Harry is the Doctor’s favourite. They’re separated off together for much of The Ark in Space, and they’ve been firmly in each other’s company for the three episodes of this story, too. I love the way that they bounce off each other, with Tom and Ian really gelling together. I’m drawing closer to the end of Harry’s travels in time and space now than I am to the beginning of them, and that’s a great shame, because he works so well as a companion. I’m hoping he’s given a few more chances to shine before the season is out.

There was a moment in today’s episode, when the Doctor’s exploring ways to sabotage the Thal rocket and the guard begins to come round again, where I wondered if we might get our first Pertwee-style fight scene for the new Doctor. He engaged in armed combat with Styre during the last story, but I thought we may be in for a bit of Venusian Akido here. This is a very talk-y story, though, with a lot of focus being placed on the dialogue. That the Doctor and Harry made it through to the Kaled leaders to have a proper conversation with them really surprised me - I fully expected them to go through some more chasing, capture, and escape. Indeed, there’s a moment when Ronson is told that they’ve made it to the dome and into a meeting with the leads where I fully expected that to be a trick, a way to force him into slipping up and admitting his guilt. I rather like that the Doctor’s approach to stopping the creation of the Daleks is to talk to the people with the power rather than simply go in and fight his way through - it really is something that sets him apart from other heroes.

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

Day 412: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Since Lis Sladen joined the series with The Time Warrior, I’ve been taking the opportunity to listen to the audio book of her autobiography again. I’ve heard it all before when it was first released a couple of years ago, but having her turn up in the show has given me a real desire to hear all of her anecdotes again. There’s one she tells about this story, and specifically about the filming of the sequence in today’s episode where Sarah Jane and the other prisoners make a break for the scaffolding in an attempt at freedom.

She talks about David Maloney’s desire to make the scene the best that it could be, so while she’d expected it to be a short day filming a simple climb up the scaffolding, they were up and down all day until they had the scene just right. Sladen’s biggest complaint is that the bars of the scaffolding were that bit too far apart, which made it more of a struggle to climb, and even more exhausting than it might have otherwise been. You can see that, watching the finished scene, and she really does have to struggle to reach every new rung during the climb… but it’s so effective! Had the bars been closer together and the actors were able to climb up just like a ladder, it would have made the escape attempt look too easy. As it is, you can really see them having to work for it, and it adds a certain layer of realism to the proceedings.

It also helps that it’s such a lovely set. Right from the first forced perspective shot of a model rocket, the whole room simply works. Once we’re onto film for the climb sequence, it just looks brilliant. The lighting is very well done, the direction makes good use of switching from longer shots to close ups… yeah. It’ all just holds together well. It’s something that’s evident right the way through this episode – the sets and the design are all very well done. I spent a fair bit of time praising the way in which everything held together during The Ark in Space, but then this is just on a whole new level.

Everything is drawn from a very muted colour palette. The entire world of Skaro is painted in blacks, whites, greys, and silvers. Even when we get glimpses of the ground outside, it’s a kind of flat, washed-out brown. Everything from the barren, smokey landscape outside to the reflective corridors of the Kaled bunker conforms to this simple palette, which makes it all the more exciting when the Doctor, Sarah, or Harry arrive on screen (it’s not – ironically – the multi coloured scarf which helps the Doctor stand out, but rather the deep burgundy of his jacket), or when we get our shot from the inside of the ‘incubation chamber’, and the screen is filled with a vivid green light.

It’s almost cinematic in the way that colour is being used here, and you really get the impression that a great deal of work and thought has gone into making it all look just right. The only thing which I’m finding distracting is the Thal’s guns… because they’re the same ones as used by the Drahvins in Galaxy 4! I noticed it yesterday, when the Doctor compares the weapons as being several centuries apart in their development, but assumed they’d just pulled something out of the BBC props store for use in the one scene, but it seems like they’re continuing to use them throughout the rest of the tale, too. I rather like the idea that these props still existed ten years after their initial use, and can be pressed into service once more for the Doctor’s adventures.

When I’m not sat thinking about how good this story looks, I’ve been admiring the dialogue. There’s some really great exchanges scattered throughout these 23 minutes, and I’ve written down far more snippets of conversation than I could ever repeat here in one blog entry without simply replicating the script. All of this great dialogue is helping the cast to turn in some absolutely stellar performances, and once again I find my praise being drawn to our new Doctor. Genesis of the Daleks was the penultimate story filmed during Tom’s first production block (Terror of the Zygons was filmed after this one, but was then held back for Season Thirteen when the start date was brought forward), and you can really see that he’s found his feet by now. I’ve been singing his praises since the very first episode of Robot, but here he’s really managed to get the performance down to an art. The key moment has to be when scientist realises that the Doctor must be from an alien world, and as he spells out the realisation… the Doctor just grins at him. We’ve seen Tom flash his huge smile plenty of times by now, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen it quite like this.

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

Day 411: Genesis of the Daleks, Episode One

Dear diary,

I’m always very weary of any story which gets described as a ‘classic’ for Doctor Who. You know the type - those stories which can do no wrong in the eyes of fandom, and which always appear near the top of ‘favourite stories’ lists. There’s a few titles that spring to mind (The Evil of the Daleks, Fury From the Deep, Inferno, The Dæmons), including this story. Throughout my time doing The 50 Year Diary, I’ve often found that I don’t really agree with the general consensus (Inferno is the only one of those stories which rated very well with me), and usually the knowledge that a story is supposed to be one of The Very Best is enough to ruin it a little bit for me. Ergo, I’m often let down by the finished product.

Over the years, I’ve found that my friend Nick Mellish and I tend to have some very similar tastes when it comes to Doctor Who stories, and he’s always been of the same opinion as me that many of these supposed ‘flawless’ stories are just that bit over sold. I mentioned to him the other day that I was gearing up for another of them - Genesis of the Daleks - and he replied with some encouraging words: “Ah, now I love Genesis! One of the few that lives up to the hype. Avoided it for years and then watched it: marvellous.” Now, I tend to trust Nick’s opinion on Doctor Who more than anyone else’s, so this was a positive sign. I’d been instantly turned from dreading another six-part Dalek story into actually looking forward to it.

Right from the moment the titles faded away and the episode started, I knew that he was right. For a start, we’re back on good old film for the location footage. I know I’ve moaned on about it an excessive amount recently, what with Robot and The Sontaran Experiment shooting all their exteriors on video, but it really is wonderful to be back in this format again. It just adds so much more depth and atmosphere to the proceedings, and I don’t think that this episode would have been quite so wonderful were it shot on plain old video. Those opening shots of the misty wastelands, into which the gas-mask-clad figures emerge is stunning. Watching them go ‘over the top’ and then get gunned down in slow-motion was genuinely gripping, and then to see the Doctor emerge from the smoke looking just as lost and confused as we are… beautiful.

And then it doesn’t let up from there. While there’s plenty to love from the studio scenes, the highlights of this episode really are all the film sequences. We get a real sense of space during these scenes that I can’t remember ever seeing in the programme before - there’s one shot when the Doctor and Harry make their escape from the Kaled dome that’s shot from a very high angle, and the location seems to stretch out for ages in all directions. Equally, there’s shots early on with our three regulars exploring the landscape and you can see bodies, weapons, and rubble strewn everywhere. There seems to be more effort put into this than we often see - it’s certainly one of the best location shoots that Doctor Who has ever seen.

To some extent, it also adds credence to my complaint in an earlier Dalek tale, Planet of the Daleks that adding in more smoke would help the atmosphere of the tale, because this story is dripping in it. When we switch from location to studio, while the change is still evident, the use of such a thick coating of smoke really helps to make it all feel like one shared world. I was going to say that it reminded me very much of The War Games, not just because it has a similar setting, but because of the style of the direction, and it wasn’t until the end credits rolled that I realised we’ve got David Maloney back behind the cameras. He was also responsible for the earlier Planet story, but I’m much preferring his work here.

I think this may also be the best use of the ‘Dalek reveal’ cliffhanger since possibly as far back as The Dalek Invasion of Earth. I’d planned to say that once again their presence in the title (and being mentioned early on by the Time Lord) ruins their reveal, and destroys a lot of the subtle hints and piecing together that we get throughout the episode - A particular favourite is the Doctor musing that K-A-L-E-D is an anagram of… well, yes - but actually, it means that we’re actually anticipating them once again. Watching Sarah Jane’s reaction at the end as once of the pepper pots follows orders is lovely, and I’m surprised by how pleased I am to have them back, considering how little time we’ve had since their last appearance in the programme.

Once again, and I fear this may become a running theme in the Diary over the coming months, you can really see the darker tone the programme has inherited. I’ve already mentioned the opening shot in which we witness people’s deaths in slow motion, but this entire episode is laced with death. They’re scattered around the wasteland. They’re propped up against the sides of the trenches. Following a gas attack, Sarah Jane wakes up amongst a pile of corpses! Can you imagine a scene like that occurring at any previous point in the programme’s history? Doctor Who is actively embracing the new horrifying image that it’s taken on, and it’s not difficult to see why Mary Whitehouse started sitting up and taking real notice around this time.

The last few Dalek stories have been set against a background of super-intelligent touch-screen cities, jungles where the plant-life is more animal than vegetation, and a futuristic world in which they use gorillas to do their bidding. Here, they’re simply pitted against a completely bleak background of death, and destruction, and there really is no feeling of hope to be found anywhere at this stage. As with the programme itself, the production team are trying to make the Daleks scary again, and if the tone of the story continues on in this style, then there’s a good chance that they may well succeed!

It has to be mentioned at some point, and here is as good as anywhere else. In recent years, it has been suggested that this story represents the first shots of the Time War being fired - thus making the Time Lords responsible for their own later destruction (or not, as the events of Day of the Doctor now show us). Although I’ve not watched the story before, I’ve always known that Genesis involves the Doctor being sent back to Skaro’s past by the Time Lords to avert the Daleks creation, but I’ve never really given it so much as a second thought.

Having now watched through the Pertwee years, in which missions for the Time Lords became something of a common plot device (even though some stories didn’t mention it directly, there was usually enough evidence to suggest their hand in events), it’s quite interesting to see where we’ve ended up. All their previous missions seems decidedly low-key in comparison to this one, and were it not for the presence of the Daleks lurking in the background, the Doctor would have been completely against it. But this now marks the start of yet another ‘loose story arc’ that I’ll be tracing fro now on - the build up of the Time War. Obviously, it wasn’t the intention at the time, but with retrospect, it is hard not to see this as a declaration of war against the Daleks, even if it’s being done in a slightly sneaky way and somewhat under the table.

So… One of those stone-cold, Doctor Who classics… And perhaps the first one to really resonate with me. This episode is the first non-Troughton one to achieve a perfect score - 10/10. I’m stunned by how much I’ve enjoyed today’s episode, and I was really tempted to simply move right onto Episode Two, without even pausing to write up this entry! I’ll be a good boy, though, and hope that the next few days will prove to be very enjoyable indeed…

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

Day 410: The Sontaran Experiment, Episode Two

I really like the idea of Sarah watching our Sontaran friend emerging from his spaceship, and removing his helmet, while thinking that it’s Lynx. As she rightly says here, it can’t be him, because she saw him blown up during her first trip in the TARDIS, but it creates such a great moment of surprise, and it’s a shame again that the title of the episode somewhat gives the game away. But then the cliffhanger is already ruined to some extent by the fact that the Sontaran mask has been redesigned since their first appearance a year earlier.

There’s nothing wrong with this new mask – indeed, it’s quite well done once again – but it just doesn’t have the same impact as the last one did. It looks more like a mask than before, and that takes away from the effect a little bit. It also somewhat spoils the idea that the Sontarans are all identical (which is something done so nicely when we’re put in contact with the general via video phone), and Sarah’s assertion that he’s so similar comes across a bit silly. This was the main topic of conversation during our earlier commentary for the episode, where both Alex and me lament the difference in the mask.

Thankfully, though, Styre is just as ruthless as Lynx – if not more so. There’s a lovely moment here where he spits at Sarah with ‘You are nothing, do you understand? You are a mistake and therefore must be eliminated’. He’s very brutal, perhaps more than we’re used to in the series – it seems to be another sign of the programme moving into slightly darker territory with the introduction of a new producer.

The biggest cause for disappointment for all of us watching on the commentary from 2009 was Styre’s pet robot. The spaceship crew all live in fear of this machine (more because of what happens after it’s captured you, in fairness), but it’s just a bit… well… pathetic, isn’t it? The moment when the Doctor manages to disables the machine and I tell my assembled friends that the moment was ad-libbed on location, because the robot prop collapsed during the middle of a take, and they decided to incorporate the footage into the story. Perhaps unsurprisingly everyone simply replied that it seemed likely! I told them that I’d been joking, but the general consensus seemed to be that the prop probably did fall apart more than once during the filming!

Perhaps the thing that people know most about this story is that Tom Baker injured himself during the filming, and broke his collar bone. Of all the places to do so – the middle of Dartmoor is probably about the furthest away from a hospital that he could have been! I don’t think it impacts on his performance greatly, but if you know what you’re looking for, it’s quite obvious which scenes have been filmed after the accident, because his arm is always held in the same position! If anything, it makes the final shot of him departing in the middle of the transmit ring all the more unusual, because he’s able to use his arms freely again, having held it static for such a long time!

Ultimately, I think The Sontaran Experiment has just suffered from that age old issue – I’ve spent a while expecting to not really enjoy it all that much, and so no matter what it did, I was never going to be impressed. It’s not a bad story, by any means, but it’s neither here nor there, and it’s simply failed to really capture my imagination.

It’s been a bit of an odd experience over these last six episodes, listening to commentaries featuring myself on them, among a few friends. I’m most surprised by just how little we actually say in the recordings – I don’t know how I ever really thought that they would be of much interest to anyone. I know my plan at the time was to write them up and do something with them, but I can’t imagine that being very popular! I’m really glad that we’d done it, though, because it’s been a really interesting experiment to copare my thoughts from five years ago with what I think now.

It’s strange just how much I’d forgotten about these stories in the last five years – I couldn’t have told you how The Ark in Space ended, for example – and even stranger to see just how much I’d missed first time around. I’m still most stunned by my earlier assertion that the lighting on Nerva was rubbish, considering how much I loved it this time around! I suppose it brings to mind some of the Eleventh Doctor’s final words, where he talks about the way we all change, right the way throughout our lives. If anything, it makes me keen to repeat this ‘complete marathon’ experience a few years on from now, using The 50 Year Diary as my chronicle of what I thought here and now: I’d love to see how my opinions on Doctor Who stories change in the future…

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

Day 409: The Sontaran Experiment, Episode One

Dear diary,

The episode select screen seems so bare with just the two episodes on there - we’ve not had that since The Rescue almost a full year ago! It’s also been worrying me a little bit as today’s worn on, because I really couldn’t remember much caring for this story. In my mind it was a bit throwaway and dull, with a spaceship crew that I wasn’t keen on, and a robot design that just didn’t work for me. It’s one of those days - the first one in a while, actually - where I wasn’t excited to be sitting down for my dose of Doctor Who.

Which is odd, frankly, because I really rather liked the last story to feature a Sontaran, and this marks the first time they’ve gotten their name in an episode title, which makes them officially one of the Doctor’s most popular foes. Unfortunately, as the episode wore on, and I realised that we were heading for a cliffhanger reveal (in true … of the Daleks fashion) of the titular monster, I couldn’t help by feel even more that the story boils down to very little. The return of a Sontran was planned partly because they had the costume in the cupboard (although they’ve had to recreate the mask, so it’s not quite the cost-saving measure they’d planned), but also partly because of how well received they were last time around, so it seems a shame to have all the Sontaran action confined to a single episode.

I think we’re in one of those awkward situations, where I’ve spent such a long time thinking that I’ll probably not like a story, that no matter how much good there is, I just can’t get myself interested in it. I started my notes today by commenting how nice the opening tracking shot across Dartmoor looked… and then went on to wish that they’d shot this entire serial on film (like Robot, it’s been recorded on video), because everything comes across looking just a bit flat. I visited Dartmoor a few years ago, and my main memories are driving down the roads where you’ve just got these stunning vistas laid out before you. It’s a beautiful landscape, and while some of the bits we see cropping up in this episode are quite nice, it seems a shame that so much of the story feels very confined, and you don’t get a real good look out across the vistas very much. Filming miles and miles away from anywhere should mean that they use the remoteness of the location as an advantage, but that feeling just doesn’t come across.

My then-partner sums it up best on our five-year old commentary for this episode, when Sarah says that this doesn’t feel like Earth at all: ‘she’s obviously never been to Dartmoor’. I then go on to muse that if they’ve supposedly landed right in the remains of Piccadilly Circus (it’s not clear wether the Doctor is joking or not), it would have been nice to see one or two bits of evidence. Something like a crumbling Nelson’s Column in the distance, for example, just to make the landscape feel that bit more alien.

So: time for something a bit more positive, I think. As younger me points out, I rather like the ‘serial’ nature of Season Twelve, where very story leads directly into the next one. There’s a very clear through-line from Robot (or, if I’m honest, Planet of the Spiders) to around Terror of the Zygons - though I think I’m right in saying that some of the other Season Thirteen serials link back in, coming one-after-the-other, too. It’s not something I’d like all the time, as it has the danger of making the Doctor’s life seem that bit shorter, but it’s nice as an occasional one-off. It also means that this story retains several links to the previous one, leading to…

The ‘legend of the lost colony’. I love this whole idea. Nerva has been floating about in space for 10,000 years now, carrying a subset of the human race. It’s completely over-slept the alarm clock, and has been all but forgotten about. Vira is somewhat thrilled to learn during The Ark in Space that other pioneering attempts from her own time to reach out into the stars proved successful (even if they did lead to the war against the Wirrn), and it’s great to see some of these other areas of humanity, to whom the Ark is a legend older to them than even the Bible is to us. Of course it’s slipped into obscurity and myth. It also leads to my favourite line from this episode: ‘you’ve done nothing for 10,000 years, while we made an empire!’

The only bit of all this which doesn’t quite ring true with me is the idea that Nerva has never been found. The model shots in the previous story showed it floating in space not all that far from the planet - even if this group of humans managed to miss it on their way in (they may have landed on the wrong side of Earth, but even then you’d expect their ship to pick up on it), surely enough people must have seen the station over the millennia? Maybe Nerva sightings in the future are the same as bigfoot sightings currently, and everyone considers them to be fakes? I’ve got images of people creating a Nerva model out of washing up bottles and stringing it up next to a photo of Earth to try and fool their friends…

I’d completely forgotten this whole aspect of the story, but it’s a lovely little link, and adds a nice dimension to the whole Ark storyline. Harry goes on to mention that they’ve got no end of animals and fauna aboard the station, ready to bring back to Earth, and I’m somewhat surprised that we’ve never had a follow-up story showing the inhabitants of Nerva starting to re-establish the Earth. Big Finish have given us stories set during the Wirrn Wars and which return the Doctor to Nerva… maybe a follow-up could be the next story they tell us in this ‘era’?

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

Day 408: The Ark in Space, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I’ve been trying to find the right word to describe what we’ve seen of this story (and thus, of the Hinchcliffe producership so far), and I think I’ve worked it out today: it’s confident. I thought it by about the time Episode Two of Robot had rolled around, but it’s hard to think that Tom Baker hasn’t been playing this part for years already. He’s just so sure of the performance, and I’m completely sold on his version of the Doctor.

It also has to be said that the style of the show has already started to assert itself very strongly. This is possibly the biggest tonal shift that we’ve seen the programme attempt up to this point, and yet it’s doing it with such bravado – there’s no gentle easing into this new format of Doctor Who. I was mentioning this to a friend earlier today, who pointed out that it’s no greater change than any other regeneration. But I think we’re prepared for the way the Troughton yers begin because The Tenth Planet is something of a template for his era, and we’re prepared for the Pertwee years by the presence of stories like The Web of Fear and The Invasion. Although the Third Doctor had started spending more and more time away from Earth as his era went on, the adventures he had out in space were of a different style to the one we’re seeing here. To put it bluntly, they simply weren’t as scary as this story.

The Wirrn themselves are a great design, and I’m really surprised that they haven’t turned them into an action figure yet – they’d look great on the shelf! My only complaint about the costumes is that they’re too dry. That sounds a bit odd (and it probably is), but it feels as though they should be at least shiny, if not slightly dripping with goo. It’s not the first time that I’ve felt this – I thought the same about the maggots in The Green Death, a great design, but one that’s let down by the fact that they’ve been so obviously created for a television programme, and they don’t seem to have anything making them look a bit more… natural.

I’ve seen it said over the years that the one moment which lets this story down is the Wirrn crawling their way across the surface of the Ark in an attempt to reach the rocket. I’ve known, therefore, that such a shot was coming up, and I’d been sort of dreading it. With everything else pulling together so well in this story, I didn’t really want it to be let down in a few seconds of screen time during the final episode. I rather liked the shot, though! It’s certainly not the worst model effects that we’ve ever seen in the series, and it may even be the moment where I find the Wirrn most effective! When it comes to the full-size models, younger me on my commentary recording makes a point of describing them as not being the most mobile of creatures, and I think that thought holds true now. It’s a lovely design, but a bit… bulky. No wonder they couldn’t follow Sarah down the ventilation shafts!

I think I sort of lost track of what was happening at this point, because when the Wirrn suddenly find themselves blasted off into space I was completely stumped by it. I’d not registered that they’d entered the shuttle at any point, and figured that they were just making their way towards our heroes to try and cut them off before… oh, I don’t know. I’d just sort of lost my place with things. Still, it’s nice to see Noah retaining some of his human spirit right until the very end of the story, and that’s something that younger me had picked up on, too (even if I’d forgotten all about it by the time of this viewing).

It’s been interesting listening to the commentary I recorded for this story five years ago as I’ve made my way through – mostly because I’ve completely forgotten everything about it. I’ve know that I’ve watched this story right the way though to the end before now – and I’ve even got the audio recording to prove it! – but I couldn’t have told you anything about what happens at the end here. I’ve got a commentary recording for The Sontaran Experiment, too, and I’m hoping it continues to be a novel experience for me to listen back to them. I’ve been struck so far by how little we’re actually saying on the commentaries, but there’s steadily more coming out with each passing episode. I think we’re finding our feet with the process as we go along!

At the end of today’s recording, the title credits play out and I make a point of asking Alex and Stevie what their favourite moments from the story were. Alex’s answer is jokey to begin with (he plumps for the little blue ‘splat’ effect when a gun is fired early on) before deciding that he was rather fond of the Doctor teasing Sarah Jane in this episode to spur her on in a moment of need. Stevie simply liked the moment when the Doctor got punched for his own good, and I decided that the best bit of the story was that moment in Episode Three where the door opens and we find Noah in a half-infected state on the other side.

While I’d still single that out as being a fantastic moment in the story, I think I’d like to change my answer now. This time around, I was more struck by Kenton Moore’s earlier performance in Episode Three, where he wrestles against his infection to try and warn Vira that she needs to get off the Ark while she still can. It still stands out as being one of the greatest performances we’ve seen in the programme, and I’m surprised I didn’t say much more about it the last time I watched the story – I think I was too busy looking at the bubble wrap!

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

Day 407: The Ark in Space, Episode Three

Dear diary,

The Ark in Space has always been something of a fan-favourite in the world of Doctor Who. Russell T Davies has cited it as being his favourite ‘classic’ story, while Steven Moffatt has hailed it as the best of all the Tom Baker stories (perhaps a worrying sign for me, so early into his tenure - will it all be downhill from here?), and for as long as I can remember, it’s been one of those Doctor Who classics that you just can’t fault.

I think a lot of the praise for this has to be given over to the story’s casting. There’s a scene early on in this episode in which Kenton Moore, in the role of Noah, has to struggle against his spreading infection, and try to send a warning to the rest of his waking crew to get them away from the possible danger. The only way I can think of to describe the scene is that we’re watching a proper actor at work - he’s taking it all very seriously. If you can overlook the bubble wrap hand that he’s sporting throughout the scene, it’s possibly the closest to real drama that we’ve seen the programme attempt in a very long time. It’s being played as scary, and serious, and even though Tom Baker grins his way through much of the episode, it’s got a far darker tone than anything the show’s given us since probably Season Three.

Later on, the Doctor and Vira encounter him in the corridor, and he’s been significantly more overtaken by his Wirrn persona. The design on this ‘phase’ looks significantly more effective than the earlier hand effect, and it’s possibly the scariest bit of the transition. While the hand and the larvae don’t really work for me (though bubble wrap would have seemed more alien in 1975, by 2014 it’s just that bit too common place to really have any effect on me!), this half-converted Noah really does do the trick. This same scene has a bit of awkward editing where they’ve cut a line of Noah begging to be killed, and based on the performance being given elsewhere in the story, I’m not surprised it was cut.

It’s amazing, too, how simply changing the lighting setup can make this previously huge, white, open set feel small, and claustrophobic. It’s like getting up in the middle of the night in a house you know so well… and suddenly finding it strange and not how you remember it. I get the sensation whenever I visit the farm back home - I grew up in that house for 17 years before moving out, so I know it like the back of my hand, but if you get up in the middle of the night and make your way to the bathroom with very few lights on, the whole place feels different. It’s great to see this being put into practice with the Nerva set, and especially after I spent so long yesterday praising the way the set looks. Here, we’re given a whole different viewpoint on the place.

Ironically, listening to the commentary I recorded five years ago for this episode with some friends, only one thing stood out to me. Once I’d heard it, I couldn’t really pay much attention to anything else, because I’d somewhat shocked myself! My then-partner points out how the bubble wrap looks so much better when it’s being used for the half-converted Noah compared to when it was just on his had. I thought that was a fairly good observation, and indeed I’d made the same one in my notes while watching today. But then younger me cut in on the commentary; ‘I don’t think the bubble wrap is helped by the fact that this set is lit like it’s from the mid-1980s’.

Within Doctor Who fandom, it’s generally accepted that during the mid-80s (Some of Colin Baker’s stories, and Warriors from the Deep in particular) suffer because they’re lit so bright and flat throughout. There’s not much room for atmosphere, because you can see every nook and cranny of the set. I’d not really considered the fact that his set is being given the same treatment during my current watch-through, though as Alex then says on my old commentary: ‘I think it’s supposed to be lit like this, though. That’s part of the style’

He’s right, of course, and I’m surprised that younger me was so dismissive of the lighting during that watch. I can’t remember ever being anything less than loving of this set (especially when - as I said yesterday - I used to use it as my default ‘space’ set when thinking of Doctor Who), so I was really surprised to hear myself saying this. Assuming it is me, of course. I’m convinced that I don’t really sound like that, but Emma assures me that my voice hasn’t changed in the last five years. She seems to find it quite amusing.

Despite my shock at the statement, it’s exactly the kind of thing that I was hoping for these recordings to throw up. I genuinely can’t recall ever thinking that about these sets, and as my entry yesterday praising the design of the Nerva station will attest, it’s certainly not something that I’d agree with now. I love seeing just how much my opinions have changed over the years, and I can’t wait to revisit some stories in the future and see how my views then compare with the ones I record in this diary now. It’s a great time capsule, and I really am enjoying this chance to revisit my earlier feelings on things…

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

Doctor Who is the world’s longest-running science fiction programme. Oh, sure, it’s not been in constant production for the whole time since An Unearthly Child first appeared on the nation’s screens, but it’s been around, in some shape and form, since 1963. Indomitable, as the Doctor might say. That’s a brilliant thing! Wonderful! Fifty years of time and space, all seen through the unique prism of our favourite time-travelling madman in a box.

But the sad fact of the programme running just so long is that, more and more, we’re going to be saying goodbye to those pioneers who’ve worked on the series on both sides of the cameras. It’s always the same when someone connected to Doctor Who passes away - whispers ripple out through fandom, and you all find yourselves stopped for a second while you think of all that a person has done to contribute to the ever-growing legacy of the series.

It was with sadness that today I was told of Christopher Barry’s death. As a director, his is one of the more well-known faces. Indeed, I only finished watching one of his stories, Robot, a few days ago. Barry really was an integral part of the programme’s life, from almost the very beginning. He was the second director to work on the fledgling series, coming in to direct episodes of The Daleks way back in 1963. He’s the man responsible for that iconic image of a plunger creeping into frame, backing Barbara against a wall as she becomes the first person to ever set eyes on a Dalek.

And it didn’t stop there! Christopher Barry returned to direct nine more Doctor Who serials over the years, notching up work with each of the first four Doctors. He was the creative vision behind The Rescue and The Romans in Season Two, The Savages in Season Three (still right up towards the top of my ‘most wanted’ list of recoveries - the telesnaps make the direction look stunning), The Dæmons, The Mutants, The Brain of Morbius, and The Creature from the Pit. Years later, he’d even return to helm the Great Intelligence’s third attempt at world domination in the spin off video Downtime.

But perhaps more crucially, he was the director for both The Power of the Daleks and Robot - two of the first three ‘first’ stories for a new Doctor. Throughout the various tributes and obituaries that have been popping up across the internet today, that’s the fact that people seem to be bringing up the most. It’s as though it’s taken us all by surprise - I’d certainly not really considered it before - this is the man who helped to ease in Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker, two of the most popular Doctors ever.

It’s always a shame to say goodbye to someone who holds such a vital part in our favourite show’s history, and Barry has always seemed so alive in his appearances across various special features on the Who DVDs - a man filled with a real energy, and a genuine love for the work he did on the programme, even after all this time. I’ve still got several of his stories to go, so it’s not as though I’ll never see his work again, but for now, I’ll be raising a glass to one of Doctor Who’s true greats as I bid him a fond farewell.

Day 406: The Ark in Space, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Back when Character Options first started releasing a wide range of Doctor Who action figures, I used to be really in to taking photographs of them. I’d spend hours sorting out the lighting and posing them into scenes just to take that perfect shot. I even went as far as to commission a model TARDIS console room in the right scale, with light up walls, and a working scanner screen, just so that I could take some photos on there. But when I first started on this kind of thing, all my photos set the TARDIS down on some futuristic space station, where the Doctor and Rose were being menaced by some Cybermen (hey, they were the best figures available right at the beginning. They even travelled with K9 for a while in my images, simply because he was a great figure).

The types of sets that I built for those earliest photographs were all based around one simple template – the Nerva station from this story. It’s your traditional ‘sci-fi’ set, isn’t it? Lots of large, white, sterile spaces. Big banks of technical looking equipment, all of which really boiled down to a load of buttons arranged in neat little rows, or in blocks. It’s such a typical ‘space’ design, that even the TARDIS console used elements of it by the time you reach the mid-1980s.

And yet, I don’t think that Doctor Who has ever done it better than they do here with Nerva. It’s the same kind of style that the programme was fond of back in the 1960s (it brings to mind images of the Wheel), and returning here for this story suddenly feels like Doctor Who heading out into its old familiar territory. The crowning piece of the design has to be that curved corridor, with the big windows thorough which you can see out into space. Younger Will, on the commentary for this episode, describes it as ‘a typical Doctor Who corridor… but it really looks good’, and I have to confess that my opinion has never really changed about that. When I talk about making those little sets for my action figures to pose in, it’s this set that I was always trying to recreate, but instead of using any kind of ‘space’ backdrop, I used to use bright green paper to simulate a ‘green screen’ effect that I could key out later once the pictures were uploaded to the computer.

The only issue that I have with this set is that I’ve never quite figured out where it’s meant to be within the Nerva space ship model. For a long, long time, I assumed that it was that outer ‘ring’ that runs right the way round. But when you look closer, that clearly isn’t the case. A quick check of some images on Google highlights that it’s actually an inner ring, behind that large one on the outside… so then why don’t you see the larger ring through the great big windows? They just stare out into the starry image of space. The fact that they don’t quite match up irritates me more than it should, and I think that’s simply because both elements are so nicely designed in their own way.

Younger me goes on to point out just how great the Solar Stacks look in comparison to the rest of the set. On their own, there’s nothing really all that special about the set (although the use of different levels with the steps is quite nice), but it provides such a stark contrast to the rest of the station that it really does stand out. It feels just like the kind of run-down, rough setting that several of David Tennant’s futuristic stories are set in (I’m thinking especially of something like 42), and it helps to highlight just how much of an artifice the nice sterile effect really is. Young Will goes on to point out that it’s a shame the close-up of the creature trapped in the machinery - which actually looks quite good, even if it is a mass of writing bubble wrap with an eye in the centre - doesn’t match up with the longer shots of it seen while the Doctor, and later Noah, explore the area.

Quite apart from all the set design and the model work, I’m really liking the costume design for this one, too. It’s one of those occasions where everything feels really cohesive, and you get the impression that all the various design teams have really been communicating with each other. The beautiful white outfits fit in really well with their surroundings, and Sarah Jane looks rather wonderful in hers! I love that they’ve all got different colours built into them to denote rank - its a very Star Trek idea, but it works beautifully here.

Although we’ve had several instances before where all the elements of design on a story really pull together to make a great looking final product, I think this may be the best example that we’ve had to date. I can’t find a great deal to say negatively about the design aspects of this story, and that’s always a good thing.

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

Day 405: The Ark in Space, Episode One

Dear diary,

Before I start on today’s entry, a little side-step. During the 2009 break from a regular series of Doctor Who, I decided that the time had finally come to sit down and do a marathon. I’d managed to collect most of the stories by now on a combination of DVD and VHS, and with no 13-week run to look forward to, the time finally felt right. There was no way I’d manage to do it alone, though. At the time I was sharing a flat with my then-girlfriend, and she’d expressed a vague interest in the classic series, even watching a few stories with me from time to time. Along with her and my friend Alex - a massive Doctor Who fan whom I’m lived with briefly when first moving out from home - we decided that we’d start from Robot and work our way forward. The reasoning was simple: we didn’t want to have to deal with all those missing episodes, and Alex hated the Pertwee years as much as I did. It was only logical that we should start from Tom Baker and work our way forward.

We decided that we’d do six episodes a week, all in one go on a Friday night. Alex would come over bearing takeaway, or we’d cook, and then we’d all settle down to enjoy that week’s episodes and discuss them aloud. In the corner of the room, my laptop would record everything that we’d said, so that I could write it up later on that weekend to post on one of the Doctor Who forums as a record of my experiment. I’ve always been the same - I can’t just sit and watch a marathon of a TV show, I need to document it to feel like I’m actually doing something with my time that’s vaguely meaningful.

Over the next couple of weeks, we made our way through Robot, The Ark in Space, The Sontaran Experiment, and the first two episodes of Genesis of the Daleks. Things all sort of fell apart after that. I can’t remember why we didn’t keep on watching (though I have a vague memory that Alex moved house around this time, so popping over on a Friday night became a more mammoth task, involving several busses instead of a 20-minute walk), but I know we only made it that far. I continued on with Revenge of the Cybermen and Terror of the Zygons, but then found myself giving up, too. And you wonder why I didn’t expect to keep The 50 Year Diary going for this long!

And now, here we are, five years on… and I’ve forgotten pretty much everything. I can’t remember a single word that we said about the stories, or really how I felt about them at the time. All of it, completely lost as my mind has moved on to think about other things. I know I wrote the first couple of stories up, but I don’t think I ever did anything with those write-ups. It wasn’t until starting on Robot the other day that I could even remember doing this mini-marathon. But then I got to thinking. I’ve still got the laptop I had at the time, because it’s the computer I take whenever I go away somewhere, so that I can still watch episodes for the Diary.

A bit of digging around in the various long-forgotten files of the hard drive turned up five separate audio files. ‘Ark 1’ to ‘Ark 4’ and ‘Sont. Exp.’. A quick play through iTunes revealed that these were the original recordings we’d made all those years ago. Then it sparked up a bit of a mystery. ‘Ark 1’ was only 16 minutes long, and clearly started right in the middle of the first episode. There was no sign of Robot, and nothing for Genesis, either. I was rather liking this. It was all a bit like archaeology, trying to figure out what had happened to these other recordings - where had they gone?

Eventually, I realised. There’s no recordings for Robot, because we never made any. For that first serial, I wrote out in shorthand all the things we were saying so that I could write them up later. It was obviously somewhere early in the first episode of this story that I realised we could simply be recording our thoughts directly into the computer. As for Genesis… that’s still a mystery. I could just be that I’ve deleted the files over the last five years, and these five have somehow survived the cull, like a crop of missing episodes turning up in deepest Africa. It could be that they’re on there something but listed under some obscure name (my digital filing system has never been particularly easy to follow). Or, it could be that I’m mis-remembering, and we never even made it as far as that, stopping after The Sontaran Experiment.

Anyway, I’m excited by this find, because it means that - for the next six episodes, I’ve got a rather unique perspective on these stories: my own. When we recorded them, I’d just turned 20, David Tennant still had three episodes to go before handing over the TARDIS key, there were 106 missing 1960s episodes, I’d yet to move to Cardiff, and I never dreamt that I’d actually do a proper marathon, day by day, that everyone could read. I’ll be spending the next few days watching the episode through, writing down my thoughts, and then doing it all over again but with younger me on the commentary track. I want to see how much my opinions of these episodes - and of Doctor Who in general - have changed in the last half-decade, and I hope you’ll put up with having two of me around for a week or so!

- - -

It’s funny that, over the course of the last few Jon Pertwee seasons, I’ve been pointing out more and more instances of 1963-style opening episodes. It’s usually in a Terry Nation script (Planet of the Daleks and Death to the Daleks both spring to mind!), but we’ve seen a bit of a return to the idea of the TARDIS crew being alone for much of the first episode. I’d thought that they were just strange leftovers from a bygone age, and caused simply because Terry had been invited back to the programme after such a long absence. I’d completely forgotten that not only does this episode adhere to that format, but it actually doesn’t feature anyone other than out three regulars.

Oh, sure, there’s a pre-recorded voice being played while Sarah undergoes her cryogenic suspension (she must be getting used to that by now, having woken up from a supposed long sleep during Invasion of the Dinosaurs), and we get both a small, slug-like creature and the Wirrn in the cupboard, but there’s no other characters present aboard Nerva at this stage who haven’t arrived there in the TARDIS.

In some ways, it’s quite reminiscent of The Dead Planet - that first episode of The Daleks - where much of the threat comes in the form of sliding doors closing behind the characters, or the potential that there could be some kind of threat lurking just out of sight around the corner. It’s quite a laid-back episode, but it never allows itself to be boring in any way. I’m also impressed by the way that it once again separates the Doctor from Sarah Jane: it’s very much about him and Harry exploring the ship, and for a large portion of the episode, Sarah is completely out-of-the-loop.

It’s lucky, then, that Harry is such a loveable character. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone say a bad word against either him or Ian Marter, and this is the perfect showcase for all that is right with him. He sparks so nicely with Tom Baker, and it’s not hard to picture those anecdotes Lis Sladen used to tell about the pair scurrying off into a corner at rehearsals, making notes and plans for their own Doctor Who film. The Doctor is, on the whole, quite dismissive of Harry at times, but you always get the sense that it’s done with a sense of kindness and gentle teasing - the Doctor likes him, really.

It turns out that he’s rather fond of human beings on the whole, really. I try not to quote big lots of text, but I think this may be one of those times where I can allow an exception to the rule;

THE DOCTOR
Homo sapiens. What an inventive, invincible species. It's only a few million years since they crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenceless bipeds. They've survived flood, famine and plague. They've survived cosmic wars and holocausts. And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life. Ready to out sit eternity. They're indomitable. Indomitable.

It’s such a lovely speech, and it’s delivered with real charm, too. The direction, the timing… everything really pulls together to make it a real highlight. I’ve always known about it being here, but I’d completely forgotten just how much there was to it. I could recall the Doctor describing us as ‘indomitable’, but I had no idea just how lovely everything leading up to that moment is.

As for what the ‘me’ of five years ago had to say about this one… I’m missing all the earliest parts of their arrival because of starting the recording so late in to the episode, but I tend to pipe up throughout the rest of the time. It’s perhaps surprising that there’s two things I point out during my earlier observations that I considered writing down on this watch through, too, before completely disregarding them and deciding against making the note.

The first was the pulsating light in the wall when Sarah Jane is about to be teleported off for the suspension process. The second comes not long after, when the voice starts to play out, welcoming her to Nerva and preparing her for what’s about to happen. Upon being greeted, Sarah gives a small, drowsy wave into the air. It’s such a small moment, but it really is rather lovely. I’m not sure why I decided to ignore it this time around - despite it raising a smile - but it’s interesting to know that it did catch me on both occasions.

I’m hoping that with tomorrow, and the first ‘full length’ commentary for an episode, I may continue to see these little things that I’m not bothering to really make a note of anymore. It’s interesting to see how my observations have changed over the years, and it’s great to be watching that change in the first proper story of a bold new era for the programme.

Surely, though, the noise on these recordings isn’t really what my voice sounds like?

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

Day 404: Robot, Episode Four

Dear diary,

‘Gentlemen, I’m afraid I have some bad news. This room is surrounded by film!’

There was a time, when I used to just dip in and out of various Doctor Who stories at random and not pay a great deal of attention to them, when I never really noticed the difference between film and video tape. I mean, I was always aware that the majority of location scenes were shot on film, while anything built in a BBC television studio was more often than not videotape, but I never really noticed it. Since starting out at the pace of an episode a day, I’ve become much more accustomed to the differences, and I’ve grown rather used to noticing when a fight or special effect is about to kick off, because we switch to film (which usually - if not on location - means we’ve moved to Ealing film studios, where they can better execute their plans).

It reached the point once we’d switched to colour in the Jon Pertwee years that I couldn’t help but notice just how much better the series looks on film. Oh, I’ve banged on about it enough times over the last few months, so I won’t do so again here, but suffice to say I’m a total film convert. I find it ironic, therefore, that the very first Third Doctor story is the first Doctor Who story to be shot entirely on film, while the first Fourth Doctor story is the first to be shot entirely on video! They even use the same location for bits of the outside filming!

The purpose for switching to all-video here was to cover several bases. For a start, Outside Broadcast (OB) cameras were now becoming lighter and easier to take out on location. Not for the first (or last) time, Doctor Who became something of a testing ground for a new technique and the idea of shooting all-video was carried forward by Barry Letts into some of his later positions within the corporation. By the time we reach Season Twenty-Three, John Nathan-Turner will take the decision to shoot everything in this format as standard, which is why the picture quality of some later McCoy stories doesn’t always hold up.

The second reason for this new approach to production was to try and better integrate several of the effects shots in this episode. In the making-of feature on this story’s DVD, Barry Letts talks about how poorly the shots of the models from Invasion of the Dinosaurs, shot on videotape in the studio, match up to the location footage shot on film. I can’t say I really noticed it as being a problem at the time, but some of the shots used to highlight his point do seem to make it rather stand out. Therefore, in his last story as producer, he decided to try and blend things better. Trying to do the shots of the robot growing to an enormous size and stomping around the Think Tank grounds in film would be possible, but it would take a lot of time, effort, and money. It’s easier therefore to do the whole thing on video tape, so that the CSO shots in the studio can line up better with what they’ve filmed outdoors.

I’ve seen people over the years really knock the sequences with the giant robot from today’s episode, and while it’s true that they don’t always work, there’s an awful lot that they do get right. The shot of him growing to the larger size, for example, is great! It’s almost a good excuse for shooting the whole story on video…

…Except that it does lend the whole production a far cheaper look than usual. I’ve not mentioned it until this final episode because I didn’t really know how to sum up my thoughts on the way it looked, but then it clicked for me today - it has the same kind of finish as a ‘fan film’. There’s a few sequences - especially looking back - of people walking and talking out on location, and it has the same feel as something like Downtime did in the 1990s. That’s nothing against fan productions (there are some fab ones out there!), but they do have a look about them that instantly tells you it hasn’t been made in the same way as regular Doctor Who. We’ve got another ‘all-video’ production later in the series with The Sontaran Experiment, so I’m keen to see if it works any better for me there.

I think I’ve realised today why it was I couldn’t get a handle on this story in the first couple of episodes. I suggested that it was a hollow shell in which Tom Baker could find his feet, but that was proved wrong in the second episode, when he’s already settled in and the story starts to take a more central place. It then turned quite dark in episode three, with lots of Nazi imagery inside the SRS meeting, before all our human enemies have fled, and we’re left with a monster story which takes heavy inspiration from King Kong. Robot as a story shifts it focus a lot more than some others do, and that’s made it difficult for me to really get a grip on.

That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed it, though. A lot of that praise has to be given over to Tom Baker, who has so completely settled himself in as the new incarnation of the Doctor. Had this been a Pertwee story, I don’t think it would have rated as well with me. That’s not trying to take away from Pertwee, but a lot of the fun and charm in these four episodes is hinged on the fact that we’ve got a new leading man who’s bubbling with a very different kind of energy to the one I’ve been used to for so long.

And with the first two instances of ‘would you like a jelly baby?’ - a phrase which in many ways is so integrated with the programme, and yet I realise someone asked me today and I completely failed to make a Who-related joke! - we’re off into time and space again. I’m in for a long, long, haul with this new Doctor, so I’m thrilled that he’s made such an impression so quickly. Frankly, I can’t wait to see where we go from here!

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

Day 403: Robot, Episode Three

Dear diary,

It’s odd that as I write this, the actual K1 robot is stood less than a mile away in the Doctor Who Experience. I visit far more often than I should – it’s the stockist of Doctor Who Magazine and the new DVD releases closest to my front door – but I love seeing so many of the original props and costumes up close. The K1 robot has always been something of a highlight, because it’s such a fantastic design. The prop has been through a number of hands in the last 40 years, and it’s not always looked as good as it does in the original story (I believe for a while, it had been painted a horrible matt grey over the reflective silver!), but the restoration work that’s gone into it for display in its current home is flawless.

A few years back, when they released the first wave of ‘classic’ figures, they each came with a part of the robot, which could be clicked together to build up the full model, which would tower over the other figures. I loved it – bought the entire wave on day of release, and snapped together the large figure as soon as I got home. For ages, it remained the only figure out on the shelf which wasn’t one of the Doctors. Since moving a few months ago, all my figures have been up in the loft, but I do miss having it out on display.

There’s so much to love about it, but for me the best bit is the shoulders and the head. There’s something about the chunky design which really appeals, and the sudden flash of red across the creature’s ‘face’ is a lovely touch. When it lights up, it really does look great. The only thing that really lets the design down is the wrists. You’ve got those big, chunky shoulders, which lead down to thick metal arms, at the end of which are these strong vice-like claws… connected by a tiny, thin little bar, which wobbles around quite a bit when they’re required to move. The problem is really highlighted during a sequence in Episode One when we follow the shadow of the robot across a wall, in full on Nosferatu mode… and those tiny wrists really look a bit pathetic in amongst the rest of the body. They also have a tendency to bend a bit when he’s forced to hold anything - like the disintegrator gun at the end of today’s episode. It somewhat lessens the effect, but it’s a minor flaw in an otherwise great design, so it’s easy enough to ignore, I guess!

There’s something really quite great about the creature in this episode - it’s the first chance we’ve had to really see it in action. First fighting the Doctor at Kettewell’s place (and what a great opportunity for Baker to show us just how nimble he can be! All those worries about needing to bring Harry in as the ‘action man’ were unfounded!), and then against UNIT out in the open. Things are slightly let down by the moment the robot is seen being helped down a few steps, in case he goes toppling over, but aside from that, it’s all pretty good.

I’d forgotten just how like the Nazi’s the Scientific Reform Society were made out to be in this tale. I’ve always known that there’s a general resemblance in the style of the uniforms and the way that their rally is held, but I’d never before realised that it was so overt. There’s not much room left for ambiguity - these are the bad guys, because they’re designed to resemble a - relatively recent, at the time - political party that was widely feared. It’s great, though, because ti shifts the story into a whole new direction. Up to now, things have all been rather cosy, with the Doctor settling in and UNIT running around trying to work out what’s happening, but now things are getting serious.

You’ve got a full-scale battle, the likes of which we’ve never really seen UNIT get in to. Sure, there’s only a few soldiers involved which lessens the scope, but the Brig has even layed on a tank for the occasion…! Ah, yes. The toy tank which trundles onto screen for a few seconds at the end of this episode is somewhat infamous within Doctor Who history. Admittedly, it’s not the best effect they’ve ever achieved, and I don’t think the forced perspective of the shot works, either, but thankfully it gets disintegrated before we can take much of a look at things!

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

Day 402: Robot, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I was wrong. Yesterday, I said that Robot wasn’t really about the titular mechanical creature, but rather an excuse to introduce us to the new incarnation of the Doctor. I mused that UNIT, the Robot, Think Tank, everything was just set dressing around a few episodes of Tom Baker finding his feet in the role. But actually, watching today’s episode, I was completely wrong.

You see, all of that was true of yesterday’s episode. Not only the scenes early on in the UNIT lab where the Doctor roams around in his pyjamas and tries to prove to Harry that he’s perfectly well, but throughout the rest of the episode, too. Even the cliffhanger is given over to Sarah Jane in danger rather than out new man, as though they don’t feel like he’s quite embedded enough to have a cliff hanger of his own yet.

It’s all change today. Tom has completely settled into the role – though I’m not sure if he looks quite comfortable surrounded by Pertwee’s trappings, it could be more that it doesn’t look right to me because I’ve just come from a long period in the company of these characters and this style – and it feels almost as though he’s been the Doctor for ages, certainly not just two episodes. I think it may be helped by the casual way in which he plays the role. There’s a moment in today’s episode where he lies down and goes to sleep on the Doctor’s lab table, and he’s just got a complete disregard for the whole place. You can’t imagine Pertwee’s Doctor behaving in the same way, and though you sometimes got the impression that the Third Doctor was simply tolerating the Brigadier, the Fourth really seems to give off a sense of complete ambivalence towards both the Brigadier and the situation they’re facing.

It works, though! The Doctor never seems like he’s actually bothered by any of this, almost as though he’s not even paying attention - he spends most of the time building piles of random electronic equipment, or looking around wondering where Sarah Jane is, or simply napping. Even in yesterday’s episode, he says his piece before disappearing into a bundle of hat, and scarf, and curls. Underneath it all, he’s fiercely intelligent. It’s the same kind of thing we saw with the Second Doctor, whereby you don’t really pay him much attention, but then he opens his mouth and comes out with exactly what you need to hear.

People always talk about Tom Baker as being the best of all the various Doctors (‘the definitive article’, as he himself puts it during this story), and it does have to be said that he’s instantly watchable here. Even when he’s not the focus of a scene, you can’t help but watch him. Over such a long time in the part, it’s obvious that he’ll evolve the character, and that’s one of the things that I’m looking forward to watching over the next few months, but it’s amazing just how well he lands on his feet here – there must have never been any doubt that they’d found the right man for the job.

There’s plenty to love with the introduction of Ian Marter to the cast, too. Harry jumps right in to the action, suggesting that they should have someone on the inside at Think Tank (though it’s the Doctor who nudges the conversation towards sending Harry), and then turning up in full on ‘Steed’ gear, complete with bowler hat. There’s no other indication at this stage that he’ll become a regular companion for the rest of the season, as opposed to just being a one-off UNIT member, but it’s nice to see him getting involved in the action all the same. Elsewhere in UNIT, Benton has been promoted! I didn’t have a clue that this had happened at any point after him becoming Sergeant, but I love the idea that he receives a UNIT promotion every time there’s a new Doctor on the scene!

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

Day 401: Robot, Episode One

Dear diary,

Last year, the BBC released a special DVD box set containing all of the regeneration stories. I bought a copy - despite having all of the stories in question on DVD anyway - because I liked the packaging. Simple as that. I’m a sucker for nice DVD packaging. Anyway, it’s a nice enough set, and I popped in the DVD of Tenth Planet Episode Four just to take a look at the animation, but since then it’s simply sat on the shelf and looked pretty. But I’ve always thought that it was a bit of a shame that it’s just the regeneration stories - because to me they’re only half the tale. The Tenth Planet certainly sees the First Doctor wearing a bit thin and then collapsing onto the floor of the TARDIS to change his face for the first time, but it’s the events that follow directly on in The Power of the Daleks that I found most interesting. Similarly, the opening of Spearhead From Space gives extra weight to the end of The War Games, because we get to see the Doctor in his new face, just as confused as the rest of us are.

I’ve seen Robot several times before now. I can distinctly recall the very first time I watched it - sat on a beach in Tunisia. It had just been released on DVD that Monday, so I copied the whole thing to my pre-iPad style device to take with me and enjoy in the sunshine. I’ve never really been able to get my head around sunbathing - it’s so boring! What are you supposed to do, just lie there? - so it was a good enough way to while away the hours. I’ve seen it two or three times since then, too, in whole or in part, but this is the first time that it’s ever really meant anything to me.

I’ve often thought of Robot as being a bit of a spare part from the Pertwee era - a leftover adventure with UNIT into which the new Doctor is shoehorned. I’ve also never really thought of it as being a particularly big threat to them - oh, sure, there’s the possibility of a nuclear war before the story is out, but it lacks the sheer scale of a dinosaur invasion of London, or The Green Death, or any of their earlier efforts. It feels like a rather low-key story, and that’s always left it a bit insignificant for me.

But now I’m seeing it in context, it’s clear that the story isn’t supposed to be particularly brilliant. Despite the title, these four episodes aren’t really about the robot, but rather about introducing us to the new Doctor while he’s surrounded by all his old friends. Everything with the robberies, Think Tank, Professor Kettlewell… it’s all just window dressing to allow Tom Baker an opportunity to bed himself in and find his feet in the role.

Thankfully, he doesn’t waste any time doing so. Right from the off, his energy is simply absorbing. The way he bounds around the UNIT lab without ever really touching any of the Third Doctor’s equipment is fab - Pertwee used to be fiddling with some gadget or gizmo, but this new incarnation has no interest in any of that. As he’ll go on to say later in his lifetime - he doesn’t work for anybody here, he’s just having fun. That really is the only way to describe the Doctor in his earliest post-regeneration madness. The look of sheer glee when he turns round and sets eyes on the TARDIS for the first time can’t help but raise a smile from anyone watching, too, and I think it’s probably the moment that you come to completely accept this new incarnation.

I love the way that he interacts with the Brigadier, too. Over the last few months, I’ve become very accustomed to the way that the Third Doctor interacted with what was effectively his boss, so it’s great to see the new guy being completely bored by the man. He doesn’t even really look at the Brig if he can help it, instead choosing to stare off into the middle distance somewhere and steer his companions into the right direction. He’s also go a real dry wit that doesn’t come across quite as forced as it sometimes did during the Pertwee years, and I found myself laughing out loud at a number of moments throughout the episode - all related to the Doctor.

I think what’s surprising me is how little time he’s actually spending with Sarah Jane - his actual companion. She’s the one who, early on, manages to call him back as he tries to escape in the TARDIS, but after that they seem to just go their separate ways. I know that their two stories will dovetail before Robot finishes, but here they don’t seem to have much care for each other. Sarah’s not even present when the Doctor chooses his new costume - that scene is left for the Brigadier. I’ve never noticed it before, but it does seem really odd to keep them so far apart for much of the story. I’m wondering if it’s because chinks of this story were filmed alongside Planet of the Spiders, so Lis Sladen is kept away from the rest of the cast on location as much as possible, to allow double-banked shooting? Whatever the reason, I’m hoping to see it rectified sooner rather than letter, because I want to settle in and watch how this pair develop their relationship in the early days of the new incarnation…