Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 470: The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Episode Two
Dear diary,
I’ll warn you now: I’m likely to bang on about the location work during every episode of this story. I spent enough time yesterday talking about how good it all looked, but it’s almost as though they’ve gone a step further here and decided that they can up their game a bit further!
Every bit of it is stunning, from the exteriors of Victorian London through to backstage at the Palace theatre. In the same way that the power station gave The Hand of Fear a scope unlike any other in the series, these locations do the same for this story - the shot of the Doctor looking out into the huge theatre hall is beautiful, and it really helps to ground him in the real world. My personal favourite has to be the brief scene in which the Doctor steps out of professor Litefoot’s carriage, and heads off across the street. It’s a lovely location in itself, but the smoke, the extras, and the odd bits of hay littered about on the street really help to give it a texture far greater than I’m used to seeing in this programme. It looks like some of the very best location work that the BBC has ever produced, let alone simply for Doctor Who.
And it’s all helped by some really fantastic lighting. I don’t usually bother to say all that much about the work of the lighting team on the series. That’s a good thing, on the whole, because if attention isn’t being drawn to it then it means that they’re doing their job properly, and I’m getting caught up in the adventure rather than focussing in on their specific role in the production. It’s hard to ignore in this story, though, because it’s simply so beautiful. Again, a lot of it comes down to the amount of location work (lighting for film is a very different skill-set to lighting a studio set on video), but it’s absolutely flawless in every scene. The yellow hue to the light on the street, the near-darkness of the upper gantries in the theatre, even the moonlight of Litefoot’s garden, it’s all somewhat spectacular.
I’m also really loving Litefoot and Jago more and more. As I said yesterday, I’m a big fan of their audio adventures together, but I’m surprised to see just how well-drawn the pair are here. Litefoot is perhaps the most vague, but then he’s always been something of a ‘plainer’ character when compared with Jago. That’s not a bad thing - you need Litefoot’s personality to stop Jago from becoming too over the top, and you can already see his very defined character in full swing here. Passing out when he sees the ‘ghost’, claiming to be as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar (before falling right under the Doctor’s hypnotism)… it’s all very much the same character we get to hear on audio, even after six seasons.
The one thing I am finding though, is how much I prefer their voices in the audios. Both Trevor Baxter and Christopher Benjamin are thirty-something years older by the time they reunite for their own series, and their voices are noticeably older. I think I’d say that they’re also that bit richer with age, and that really works for me. The series is set shortly after the events of this story (placing it primarily in the 1890s), but I always imagine the pair as older men, after years of adventuring. I know this wouldn’t quite fit with the time period, but it’s always the way I picture them! I’m surprised to already be a third of the way through the story, without the pair being brought together, but I know it’s just something to look forward to later on. With all the other great stuff in these episodes, I can wait a little longer.
