Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 469: The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Episode One
Dear diary,
I tend to listen to a lot of Big Finish stuff, but vary rarely any of the actual Doctor Who lines. I tend to enjoy the series that are inspired by Who, or set in the same world, but which don’t usually feature our Time Lord pal. Counter Measures, Bernice Summerfield, even some completely non-Who things like Dorian Gray and Dark Shadows. The one that I’ve seemed to latch onto the most, though, is probably Jago & Litefoot. It’s hard to explain the excitement of a new box set from that series, and every time I tell myself to span the adventures out: do them one a week, at least, if not one a month. And then, every time without fail, I listen through all four new stories in the space of a few brief days. I can’t help myself – I just get so caught up in their world, with a lovely mix of Victoriana and the supernatural. And yet, I’ve never actually watched The Talons of Weng-Chiang! Their ‘origin’ story! Truth be told, I think I’ve always avoided it because it’s another one of those stories that people think of as unable to do any wrong, and I’ve always found that very off-putting, in case it doesn’t live up to expectations!
I know I’ve tried to watch it before. I can’t remember how far I got (though certainly not even to the end of the first episode), or what distracted me, but I ended up simply watching the special features on the disc instead. I’m surprised that it didn’t hold my interest, because this first episode is really rather good! I said yesterday that I couldn’t believe Philip Hinchcliffe would instruct the entire production team to go all out and spend whatever for his final few stories, but watching this episode does make you wonder. Right from the opening shot, with an entire screen filled with supporting artists enjoying their night out at the theatre, you can see that some real money has gone into making this serial.
But then, part of the real gloss we’ve got here is simply the result of experience. Every time we drop back into history, I end up saying ‘the BBC are very good at period settings’, but it’s worth repeating yet again – because it’s true! The Victorian age is a specialist spot in the corporation’s skill set, and you can really see that here. Every set is superbly realised, and every location is gorgeous. They’ve not held back on using the smoke machine, either, and every outdoor scene is simply bathed in the stuff! Most impressive is the fact that we’ve got so much shot on location at night! We’re still in a period where night shoots are rare, so they really do make their mark when they appear.
The shot of the TARDIS materialising at the end of a foggy street is probably my favourite bit of the location work so far. It’s got something to it that’s more impressive than I’m used to from a materialisation. Maybe it’s the atmosphere afforded by the fog, or the distance from the camera that the box appears, but it’s really rather striking no matter what the reason. That’s not to say that the rest of the location footage is lacking – David Maloney is really going out of the series in style here. Even a shot as simple as the Doctor walking down the street is given that extra something that makes it stand out.
We’ve even got a fight scene that Pertwee would have been proud of! Tom Baker doesn’t often get the chance to engage in this sort of action, so it’s actually quite nice to see it back again here. Leela getting involved (and using a Janis thorn later in the episode) is a nice link back to her origins, and I’m somewhat surprised to find her still retaining so much of her original character, even though she’s no longer being written by Chris Boucher. It feels as though they’ve drawn a really strong character, and Robert Holmes (perhaps helped by having script-edited the last two stories) has a really good handle on her. I believe that this was originally intended to be Leela’s final story (only a temporary companion to round out this season, before introducing the new ‘full-time’ Doctor Who girl the following year. Or not, if Tom Baker could get his way…), so I’m really hoping that all this strong characterisation doesn’t simply fall by the wayside once we’re into Season Fifteen.
Indeed, I think the only thing which lets this episode down a bit is the giant rat during the cliff hanger. It’s one of those effects which is somewhat infamous in Doctor Who history, and I can’t decide if it’s better than I was expecting it to be, or worse. I knew from behind-the-scenes images that the rat was realised via the age-old medium of ‘a bloke in a rat costume’, and assumed that this was the cause of it not quite working. In actual fact, the close up of the costume wasn’t all that bad (I may regret saying that if we see more of it during the next episode). What threw me were the close ups of a real rat in a model sewer. Something about this just looked wrong - actually, I can tell you exactly what looked wrong about it: it looked like a real rat in a model sewer. I’m actually quite interested to see how it looks during the resolution in the next episode, because I want to see if this is the bit that draws so much criticism!
