WHO 50: 1969: The Krotons.

TV Some time in November 1981, the BBC repeated the final episodes of a series of stories every Thursday in a special season called “The Five Faces of Doctor Who”.

The idea of not showing a whole story seemed a bit odd even to the younger version of me (I was seven), yet I was still terribly excited to see these earlier Doctors no matter how much of it they decided to reveal.

Looking at what was available in the archive, the BBC schedulers chose The Krotons to represent the Troughton era and right through the rest of the decade I always had a vivid memory of Patrick at his most excitable, jumping about, shouting.

I could never quite remember what it was he was so excited about, why he was jumping or what he was shouting, but I always remembered his big friendly face.

It was a precious memory which remained doubly vivid because I didn’t think I’d ever see it again.

It wasn’t until many, many years later whilst reading a Doctor Who Magazine article about the season, I discovered that whole stories had been broadcast.

For some reason, I’ve never quite understood, I’d only happened to have been sitting in front of the television each Thursday which I later reinterpreted as a scheduling decision.

Which is sort of was. But at my parent's end rather than at the BBC.

I was simply busy between Monday and Wednesday having meals or out and about.

Wouldn’t happen now. We’d simply watch it later on the iPlayer, or buy the dvd.

Which is clearly better. You lucky children.

WHO 50: 1968: The Mind Robber.

TV  One of the more eccentric elements of early Who includes the lengths the production team had to go through in order to produce each week’s episode, particularly in unforeseen circumstances.

During the making of The Keys of Marinus it was agreed that each of the regulars would have a couple of weeks off and in that and each ensuing story, other characters were brought in, sections were pre-filmed and scripts extensively rewritten to accommodate this much needed holiday.

With the show being made in series of over forty episodes, who could blame them?  Did the public, as they would now, notice that the participation of the regulars were extensively scaled back in those weeks?  Was there talk of a Susan-lite episode?

But sometimes, such changes were so last minute that they utterly changed the fabric of what was on screen, or as in the case of The Mind Robber enhanced it.

When Frazer Hines contracted chicken pox, there wasn’t much that could be practically or convincingly done to write the character out.  So they recast.

A scene was written in which the Doctor and Zoe were forced to put the features of a cut-out version of Jamie back together to save him.

They fail and in walks Hamish Wilson playing Jamie for the rest of the episode and quite well too, blending seemlessly into the mayhem of the Land of Fiction.

By the next episode, Frazer was back, Jamie’s face put back to normal.

But our understanding of the environment became richer.  Darker.  It doesn’t just have the capacity to create fictional characters from the minds of the Doctor his companions, it can materially change them too.

Scary.

WHO 50: 1967: Tomb of the Cybermen.

“I wonder what he would have thought if he could see me now.”

TV Another Cyberman story, another remarkable moment which has almost nothing to do with them.

When Doctor Who was revived, much of the commentary pointed to how much of the series was refreshingly about the characters, the so-called soapier aspects, of the Doctor dealing with survivor guilt, Rose tied to her home and their romance.

This as though the first run lacked all of these things, as though everything was about the plot, the characters one-dimensional automations.

Whilst it’s true across the two and a half decades, such elements oscillated in importance, there are still many scenes in which the characters consider their relationships to one another and their unique position (as was the case then) as time travellers in the fourth dimension.

Sometimes, often, these were clustered around major events, companions joining or leaving, a regeneration.

But sometimes, they would be in the midst of an adventure, just as now, and in their own way all the more powerful because it.

Here’s a quiet moment from Tomb of the Cybermen.



It’s extraordinary for a number of reasons, not least the performances, Patrick and Deborah demonstrating that he wasn’t simply playing the clown and she the screamer.

It’s the two of them sharing their pasts with each other and the viewers and not in a glib way, not for example, the Time Lord name dropping or Jamie emphasising his Scottish heritage.

It’s them talking about their relative losses, the ancient man whose escaped his home world, the girl who watched her father die.

Her acknowledging that he could be a potential father figure, him communicating that their mission goes beyond that:

"Our lives are different to anybody else’s. That’s the exciting thing. Nobody in the universe can do what we’re doing."

Arguably all of his best companions since have understood that too. Embodied it.

Then it’s time for Victoria to sleep, the Doctor to keep watch.

Stephen Baxter’s The Wheel of Ice reviewed.

Audio  Earlier today, the BBC’s official Doctor Who website posted a short film, pieced together from bits of storyboard, a script by Chris Chibnall and a voiceover from Arthur Darvill explaining what happened to Rory’s Dad after his son and wife were zapped back in time at the close of The Angels Take Manhattan.  Even in this rudimentary form it’s poignant, bittersweet epilogue providing the footnote which was missing from the televised episodes.  It’s called P.S., post script, and is structurally rather like those Brief Encounter prose shorts which appeared in Doctor Who Magazine way back when.  It’s also doing what many past Doctor stories have across the years: it concretes in a narrative or thematic or character hole which the television series either neglected to, or as is most of often the case didn’t think of.

Stephen Baxter’s The Wheel of Ice is another of those post-scripts.  The first of these past-Doctor novels since the television series returned in 2005, it features what’s now called the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe in an exciting adventure on a ring of one of Saturn’s moons, where a mining colony ekes out an existence supplying raw materials for an Earth which is stretched to its own limit.  Amid equipment failures and social unrest, the TARDIS crew find themselves trapped by some cosmic time anomaly and quickly realise that in order to break free they have to investigate what’s causing the malfunctions and fuelling the disruption within the colony.  Before long, as is always the case in these situations, they're blamed for both, subjected to medical testing and only the Doctor’s charisma can save them.

It’s a post-script because amid all of that it’s also a story about the colony’s children.  In the 60s, for a show designed to attract inquisitive, very rarely were the stories specifically about them.  Susan and Vicky were both supposed to be viewpoint characters, but stories weren't often specifically about them (which was one of the reasons Carole Ann Ford left the programme) or the people they might meet on a planet and that continued right through to the modern era.  One of the major threads in The Wheel of Ice is how the children’s rights have been neglected because of the apparent need for them to work the mines, the argument being that like settlers on old Earth who equally exploited their young folk, they’re working for some greater cause, an argument which ultimately unravels as the cause of the all the mischief unravels.

Like those other post-script it’s also an attempt to place those 60s stories in the context of the franchise elements which were established later, threading various parts of its story through the later history of the programme and established fixed points but cleverly without subjected the TARDIS team to information they shouldn’t otherwise be exposed to (think the treatment of the Borg and Ferengi in Star Trek: Enterprise).  Though not too far ahead; unlike Gareth Roberts’s novelisation of Shada, the references are kept well within classic Who and indeed almost as though the 60s show was simply foreshadowing events in future stories close at hand rather like a continuity strung modern affair like Fringe.  Such things were the 90s post-scripts also built on and Baxter’s clearly paying a debt to them too.

It also takes full advantage of its medium.  After a number of recent pretty straightforward nuWho novels providing what amounts to a novelisation of an episode which hasn’t been made, it’s refreshing to return to a book which is able to have “interlude” sections revealing the back story of key characters (one of which, an A.I.-like deviation about a robot, is one of the best pieces of writing produced in connection with the franchise) and that’s unafraid to take excursions into what’s often described as “hard science”, something the author is especially known for.  Not having read nearly enough of anything, I’m not that aware of his work.  It’d be interesting to know the extent to which he’s subsumed his style in service to the franchise.  It’s certainly a clearer listen than Michael Moorcock’s attempt.

It’s always authentic.  In its audio form, each of the eight discs roughly covers what you might expect in a typical television episode, albeit on a massive budget with an infinitely extended shooting schedule.  All of the main characters are present and correct aided by David Troughton’s glorious reading in which he once again eerily recreates his father’s performance and offers a pretty decent Fraser too.  Baxter’s prose has a conversational style which really lends itself to be read out loud and although it's arguable whether it’s a story which needs telling over this extended length, it’s never less than compelling (which is something which can’t always be said of adventures from the television period in which this is set).  If Baxter wants to return to our universe at any point, he’d be most welcome.

Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter is out now from AudioGo.  Review copy supplied.

"No wonder Jacqueline Hill went on holiday - she probably saw it all coming."

TV I couldn't not share this. I was having a clear out today and found the following. When I first came back to the series in the late nineties, a relative (my auntie) recorded some of the UK Gold broadcasts. Being that kind of person, I put the tapes in proper video boxes and printed up inlays upon which I wrote some mini-reviews.

Eventually, those tapes were packed away (notice not thrown out) but for some unknown reason I kept the inlays along with these initial raw reviews written before I really knew anything about the show -- I don't think I'd even started buying Doctor Who magazine yet. I thought you might find them amusing -- although it's slightly worrying how little my writing style has developed over the years. I won't post them all at once, but here, to begin with, are Billy and Pat. Count how many times you think 'No it doesn't' or 'No it isn't'.

William Hartnell Era

The Plant of the Giants has to rate as one of the dullest hour-ten minutes of anyone's life. God it's Slow. It's annoying. It feels like a thousand years. Oddly enough, the last episode was edited together from two separate episodes - and its still slow. Things aren't helped by the fact that Barbara is reduced to running around like a feckless idiot, just so that Ian can look a bit heroic. It's an example of the schizoid nature of the show that ...

The Dalek Invasion of Earth, although exceeding flabby in places is also unbelievably intelligant at times. Alright, so everything still creaks and the pace is still from snoozeville (heh, heh) but there is some really intelligent character interaction, and genuinely scary moments, especially as the pepperpots fly through London like kings. Susan's leaving scne is also some kind of genius.

The Web Planet is probably one of the slowest, dullest stories Who ever produced. I mean the thing would have seemed long stretched over three episodes, but six!?! Some have tried to excuse it by saying what 'amazing' costume design there is for the period. Yeah - it's amazing the costumer designer managed to keep their job. All this really amounts to is a bunch of guys in fancy dress running around a studio for six weeks. No wonder Jacqueline Hill went on holiday - she probably saw it all coming. When the only exciting thing to happen in a story is one of the monsters bumping into the camera, you really know you're in trouble.

The Space Museum does have a quite good first epsiode, its just a shame that the programme makers forgot about logic, good characterisation and pace. This is the kind of story which probably gave Who a bad name all those years ago, somehow forgetting what the kids tuned in for each week. Only Hartnell seems to be making a good fist of it, as everyone else doesn't seem to care - and why should they when presented with material like this? Imagine you're making for fourth episode of this and you realise you've got six episodes of The Chase coming up - better conserve that energy guys ...

The Gunfighters. My word. Hmm. I'm sorry, but matter what anyone might imply, they must have done some really good drinking at the DW offices in the 60s. I know -- lets do a historical about the gunfight at the OK Coral and somehow shoe-horn the Doctor into the action. And lets build quite good set but shoot it really badly so that the whole thing looks like it was shot in a school hall somewhere. That'll work.

Patrick Troughton Era

Tomb of the Cybermen has a shockingly contemporary script which really sticks out because of its greatness. I mean how often was it that a companion talked about their life before her travels with The Doctor and at a moment which isn't driving the story along? The Cybermen are particularly menacing despite the rudimentary areas of the cast. That'll be a definite classic of the period then.

The Dominators. Yawn. Its stories like this which Who a bad name. Its starts slow and gets slow-er. Lots of bad acting ensues and then the whole thing slows to a halt in a more of boredom. Just awful.

The Krotons just shows how a lot of what's left of the Troughton era really begins to mass into one story in the memory. And which twerp thought that name Gond was a realistic and not funny at all name for an alien. And the confusing storytelling doesn't help. Want a glimpse into hell? Watch this and the Dominators back to back like I did.

The War Games is long, but the pace is quite frenetic and there doesn't seem to be too much padding. What strikes you is how it feels like the culmination of six years worth of build up. It has everything - the historical elements which made the Hartnell shows such a joy and the science fiction elements of the Troughton years. Everyone gets something to do - and if some of the acting is a touch wooden, the scope is a amazing. This is an action adventure movie years before its time, with a stangely more grown up feel than Star Trek was achieving at the exact same time, across the pond. Amazing.