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Doctor Who Project: The Moonbase

July 29, 2023December 14, 2014 by Chris Baer

Will somebody please tell us what it all means?

Just when you thought it was safe for the Doctor and his companions to visit an isolated human outpost that coincidentally contains a device capable of destroying the Earth, the Cybermen show up yet again to spoil the day. In almost every regard, Kit Pedler’s “The Moonbase” (Story Production Code HH) reads as a remake of his “The Tenth Planet,” aired a scant four months earlier, only with a different Cyberman weakness and a different Doctor at the helm, plus a groggy Scotsman who thinks a Cyberman is an avenging angel. We have: a remote international base (on the Moon instead of the South Pole); a commanding officer who effectively shrugs his shoulders at strangers knocking on his door; a doomed Earth spaceship; a group of Cybermen knocked out by quick companion thinking; a whole bunch of technobabble that sets up the doomsday device on the base; and a Cyberman weakness that requires humans to act in their stead and lets the Doctor turn the tables on the silver suited cyborgs.

And yet, derivative as it is, “The Moonbase” winds up being very different from “The Tenth Planet” almost entirely because it’s the Second Doctor rather than the First doing the table-turning.

If nothing else, “The Moonbase” represents the moment where Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor finally comes into his own as a fully developed character, out from William Hartnell’s shadow. To be sure, Pedler makes the connection between the two Doctors, with the Cybermen recognizing the Doctor (and vice versa):

Cyberman: You are known to us.

Doctor: And you to me.

The Daleks in “The Power of the Daleks” similarly recognized the Second Doctor, suggesting, again, that the Cybermen know of him from encounters between the original 1986 meeting, where the First Doctor regenerated, and their current 2070 engagement. But there, we didn’t recognize the Doctor even if the Daleks did; here, we feel like we know this Doctor: he’s crafty, cautious, and cunning, aware of his limitations and confident despite that knowledge. By the this story ends, we know how the Second Doctor thinks and acts. Pedler simply nails it. We almost feel badly for the Cybermen, because we know this is going to end poorly for them. You might say the Doctor blows them off their feet.

Doctor Who Project: The Underwater Menace

July 29, 2023November 16, 2014 by Chris Baer

Just one small question. Why do you want to blow up the world?

Thus far in its four seasons, Doctor Who has had its share of evil villains bent on controlling the universe and dastardly foes driven by petty greed and egotism, but not until Geoffrey Orme’s “The Underwater Menace” (Story Production Code GG) do we get a truly mad scientist for the Doctor face off against. And oh, boy, is Zaroff mad.

In some ways, using a monomaniacal scientist determined to prove his genius by accomplishing that which no other scientist ever has—to wit, blowing up the planet—turns Zaroff (Joseph Fürst) into the kind of monster that the show’s original “no monsters” remit tried to avoid; first season shows in particular featured opponents who were driven by complex and internally consistent, though perhaps misguided, desires, like Tlotoxl and Autloc in “The Aztecs” or the eponymous Sensorites. Zaroff just wants to blow up the planet like some human Dalek, and as such, he provides no real challenge for the Doctor and his trio of companions, wasting the elaborate stage production of “The Underwater Menace” in the process.

With new companion Jamie aboard, the TARDIS shows up on volcanic specks of rock in the Mediterranean, the only above-water vestiges of the Lost Continent of Atlantis. Polly finds a medallion from the 1968 Mexico City Olympics near a cave mouth, to help place the story sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s; it must have been dropped by a shipwreck survivor who was, like the Doctor and friends, captured by the Atlanteans, who use such people as sacrifices to their deity or as labor in their mines or sea farms.

Those sea farms, producing plankton and tended by slaves who have been implanted with plastic gills, cause the Doctor to dive into his Five Hundred Year Diary and come up with a name that saves them from becoming shark food as an offering to Amdo, the Atlantean god. He remembers that a Professor Zaroff, thought to have died in the 1950s, devoted his efforts to feeding the world through plankton, and by brandishing this name, he secures an audience with Zaroff, sparing his companions in the process. As he does so well, the Second Doctor plays to Zaroff’s ego in order to learn all he can, and it transpires that Zaroff has promised to raise Atlantis back above the sea. He just intends to lower the oceans by dumping them into the Earth’s molten core rather than lifting Atlantis itself, though, with the slight side effect of causing the planet to explode. When the Doctor notes this outcome, Zaroff readily acknowledges this result as a feature, rather than a fault, of his plan. Where are the rational Daleks when you need them?

Doctor Who Project: The Highlanders

July 30, 2023October 13, 2014 by Chris Baer

You should have paid more attention to your history books, Ben!

With the regeneration and the obligatory Dalek story out of the way, the Second Doctor has the opportunity to stand on his own in his sophomore outing, “The Highlanders,” (Story Production Code FF), written by Elwyn Jones and Gerry Davis. Set in the waning moments of the Jacobite rebellion in 1746 Scotland, the story feels like a change of pace from the Doctor’s last two outings, both of which featured futuristic settings, but in truth, it’s not much different in tone from “The Smugglers” some three stories back, complete with shipboard scenes and a change of heart by an English officer. Only this time, Polly is the action hero, not Ben.

“The Highlanders” is widely regarded as the last of the proper “historical” stories on Doctor Who, with actual historical settings and personages with whom the Doctor interacts, a fitting change to go along with the new Doctor and the series’ new, more youthful approach. The show’s original educational remit has been abandoned (along with the prohibition on monsters and such), but for a final outing in the past, “The Highlanders” manages to convey what made the historicals some of the best stories of the show’s run, mostly by ignoring their rules.

History imposes certain limitations on the Doctor. He lives under a self-imposed restriction against changing history—or, at least, Earth history that has happened prior to the 1960s—often causing him to witness rather than engage. In stories such as “The Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve,” this stay on action works to strong dramatic effect; conversely, as in “The Romans,” the Doctor finds that on occasion he inadvertently brings about the history he is at pains to preserve, in this case inspiring Nero’s burning of Rome. In any event, non-intervention is the watchword in the historicals; what will be, will be, until we get to “The Highlanders,” where the Doctor intervenes quite a bit without one whit of concern for the sanctity of history.

The story centers around the flight to France of the followers of Bonnie Prince Charles, the Stuart Pretender to the English throne, and where in prior historicals the Doctor and his companions would be engaged on the periphery of this historical crux, in “The Highlanders,” they conceive of and implement the plot which enables the flight to take place. Absent the Doctor’s direct intervention, this bit of history does not happen. The story manages to be engaging and action-packed, with pistols going off and sword-fights galore, but, one must say, the First Doctor would have had none of it. The series has changed along with the Doctor. Indeed, could one have imagined William Hartnell’s Doctor in a dress?

Doctor Who Project: The Power of the Daleks

July 30, 2023September 3, 2014 by Chris Baer

So he gets himself a new one?

The Doctor might be new, but the foe is not. To usher in Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor, David Whitaker’s “The Power of the Daleks” (Story Production Code EE) relies on the everyone’s favorite aliens to ease the fledgling Time Lord (and the audience) into the new era. Viewers uncertain about William Hartnell’s replacement could still be expected to tune in for the Daleks, last seen some ten months prior. But, as is standard with Dalek stories, we do not see one until the end of the very first episode, leaving room for Ben and Polly to ask questions of this interloper, whose entire appearance and demeanor have changed.

Care is taken to reassure the viewer that there is a strong continuity between manifestations, particularly with a shot of Hartnell’s visage when Troughton looks into a mirror. The Doctor rummages through a chest and pulls out objects from past adventures, such as a dagger from Saladin and, ominously, a chunk of metal that causes him to mutter, “Extermination!” Oddly, though, he does not refer to himself as the Doctor once in the entire story, even referring to the Doctor in the third person during the first episode when asking if the Doctor kept a diary.

Viewership figures (as reported in Wood and Miles, About Time 2), come in at nearly eight million per episode for the six-part story, far stronger than those for recent stories like “The Smugglers” (less than five million per) and even “The Tenth Planet” (starting at five and a half million and peaking at seven and a half million as Hartnell exits). The audience, clearly, accepted Patrick Troughton, but do Ben and Polly accept the Second Doctor as the Doctor?

Polly does, almost immediately; her concern is whether this Doctor is so different that he will not want them along. Ben takes somewhat longer to warm to the idea. Clearly, this new figure knows his way around the TARDIS, flicking open the door switch without looking, but Ben calls him out for not checking the monitors to ascertain if it’s safe to leave. The Doctor drilled that notion into all his companions’ heads; if this strange figure doesn’t even bother, how could he be the Doctor? But the reply puts Ben rather in his place:

Oxygen density 172. Radiation nil. Temperature 86. Strong suggestion of mercury deposits. Satisfied, Ben? Now are you two coming or are you not?

The regeneration (a phrase not used in this story) is explained, broadly, as a function of the TARDIS. The exact phrasing—”I’ve been renewed. It’s part of the TARDIS. Without it, I couldn’t survive.”—leaves open the possibility that the Doctor’s life force is connected to the TARDIS not just for regeneration but for his very existence itself, bringing a hint of mystery to the ship that we haven’t seen since “Inside the Spaceship” back in the first season.

If “The Power of the Daleks” is known for anything, though, it should not be for the difficult task of selling the first regeneration as much as for making the Daleks scary again. An empire of Daleks can be (and has been) played for laughs; one Dalek is frankly terrifying.

Doctor Who Project: William Hartnell Retrospective

July 30, 2023August 4, 2014 by Chris Baer

Over twenty-eight stories, spanning three years and four seasons, William Hartnell was not the First Doctor; he was, simply, the Doctor. As such, he played a more significant contemporary role in Doctor Who than his predecessors, if only because the actors who followed were understood to be interchangeable, transient, and ultimately fleeting. Viewers in the mid-’60s, tuning in to the BBC for this show ostensibly pitched to children, had no idea that there would be a Second Doctor, let alone a Twelfth. Hartnell was it.

And, at the end of “The Tenth Planet,” he is gone.

The cliffhanger, with Hartnell’s face dissolving into Patrick Troughton’s, takes place not at the end of a season but at the end of the fourth season’s second story. Only a week of waiting was required for the transition to be explained (and, hopefully, accepted). The change-over did not take place in a media vacuum; viewers knew what was happening behind the scenes even as it occurred, though perhaps not to the extent that William Hartnell had become progressively weaker and, to credit the tales, cantankerous. But all the exposition in the world matters little if the character does not live on in the new actor, and that basic characterization, that ur-Doctor, passed from iteration to iteration, comes from William Hartnell’s portrayal of the Doctor.

So what core attributes derive from Hartnell’s time as the Doctor?

Doctor Who Project: The Tenth Planet

July 30, 2023July 20, 2014 by Chris Baer

I don’t understand it. He just seems to be worn out.

As Doctor Who stories go, quite a lot is asked of Kit Pedler’s “The Tenth Planet” (Story Production Code DD). In addition to delivering a ripping near-future yarn about cybernetic invaders from a twin-Earth, the story also needed to usher out William Hartnell’s First Doctor in a fitting and dignified manner. Pedler, with assistance from story editor Gerry Davis, manages both with some aplomb. Not only do we get the Cybermen, more frightening here in their debut story than in any future iteration, but also, Hartnell is given the chance for the virtuoso exit he richly deserved.

The TARDIS again finds its way to Earth, skipping from seventeenth century Cornwall to twentieth century Antarctica, though in 1986, twenty years in the future from Ben and Polly’s time, much to their dismay. With plenty of warm coats in the TARDIS wardrobe to choose from, our time travellers merrily pop out onto the ice cap for a visit, only to be apprehended by soldiers from the International Space Command, at whose polar base the TARDIS had landed. The commanding officer, General Cutler, has no time to interrogate his guests, however, as a space capsule on a routine mission has run into trouble. Some outside force is pulling the astronauts from their planned orbit. And the Doctor knows just what has happened.

In order to prove his knowledge of events, and thus potentially to help, the Doctor gives a scientist at the base a piece of paper noting that the problem stems from the sudden appearance of another planet—the Tenth Planet—in Earth’s vicinity; and not just any planet, but Earth’s long-lost twin, Mondas, with the same continents (and continental drift), only upside down. What’s more, the Doctor knows that Earth is about to receive visitors.

The Cybermen are on their way. They don’t want much, really. Just to drain the Earth of all of its energy and then destroy it.