doctor who – Page 24 – Movement Point

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.

Doctor Who Project: The Smugglers

August 1, 2023June 3, 2014 by Chris Baer

My dear boy, it could be a great deal worse.

From the swinging Sixties, we head immediately to the swinging Sixteens—hundreds, that is—to open the fourth season of Doctor Who. Brian Hayles’ “The Smugglers” (Story Production Code CC) deposits the Doctor and his two new companions, Polly and Ben, on the coast of seventeenth century Cornwall, caught between pirates on one side and the titular smugglers on the other. The sense of youthful vigor Polly and Ben brought to the prior story carries through here, and the Doctor seems pleased to watch his young charges discover that they have, indeed, travelled through space and time. The youngsters scamper up from the beach where the TARDIS has landed, and the Doctor follows along after them with some glee. He displays considerable anger upon discovering them in the TARDIS, but his actions here belie his true feelings.

Landing on beaches with new companions has become standard procedure for the Doctor—Steven’s first disembarkation from the TARDIS was on another British beach—but one wonders why the Doctor, for all his knowledge, tends to forget that tides go both out and in. With the TARDIS trapped by the tide, the three time travellers must find shelter for the night and walk right into…the Curse of Avery’s Gold.

It’s not truly the tide that traps them, though; the Doctor decides show off for Ben and Polly, and that behavior embroils them in the intrigue. The local churchwarden initially wants nothing to do with them, being distrustful of strangers and suspicious of any who might come from the sea. As a demonstration of his savoir faire, the Doctor charms and flatters the nervous layman, so sufficiently that entrusts the Doctor with a deadly secret:

If you should this way again and find me gone, remember these words: This is Deadman’s Secret Key: Small[beer], Ringwood, Gurney.

Shortly after the three head to the local inn, a burly pirate named Cherub emerges from hiding, having seen the churchwarden whisper in the Doctor’s ear. Our churchwarden turns out to be a former pirate, and Cherub wants the secret. Cherub is quicker with his knife than his tongue, though, and kills the churchwarden, leaving only one source for the clue to finding the legendary treasure of Avery’s Gold: the Doctor.

And what do Polly and Ben think of their sudden appearance in the seventeenth century? Ben has no second thoughts about employing Cockney slang on random inn patrons, while Polly just wishes everyone would stop calling her “lad” and thinking she’s a boy, a nice riff on her short-cropped hairstyle and Sixties-stylish pants-suit. These, then, are not your parents’ companions. Until, of course, the Doctor is kidnapped by the pirates and the companions get framed for the murder of the churchwarden and thrown in jail, where Polly yells, much like Susan, upon seeing a rat.

Doctor Who Project: The War Machines

August 1, 2023May 5, 2014 by Chris Baer

Well, hardly a specialist, sir, but I dabble. Yes, I dabble.

Doctor Who‘s third season ends as the entire series began, in 1960s London, and in many ways, the season’s final story, “The War Machines,” (Story Production Code BB) takes its meager strengths from being set in quite familiar surroundings. Ian Stuart Black’s tale of an artificial intelligence bent on destroying its organic creators could easily have transpired on some distant planetoid in the far future, but such a danger arising from a laboratory atop the newly completed Post Office Tower in London just at the point when computers were beginning to make inroads into public consciousness provides sufficient narrative impetus that we can almost ignore the sloppy plot.

Writing his second Doctor Who story, Ian Stuart Black again shows no sense of familiarity with (or worse, no respect for) the series’ norms and established precedents. The Elders in his “The Savages,” aired immediately prior to “The War Machines,” track the Doctor through space and time somehow, which the Doctor himself has not yet accomplished through three seasons, while here the villain of this story, the awakened computer WOTAN (Will Operating Thought Analogue), refers to the Doctor as, egads, “Doctor Who.” In “The Savages,” at least, Black has characters specifically note that they do not know the Doctor’s name; here, even henchmen spout the offending phrase:

Professor Brett: Top priority is to enlist Doctor Who. He has advanced knowledge which WOTAN needs. Doctor Who must be enlisted into our services tonight.

Much about this story suggests a break from past precedent and the dawn of a new era, as the production team was obviously complicit in this breach of naming protocol. After three seasons of not being able to get back to contemporary London, the TARDIS materializes there with nary a remark from the Doctor. He merely pops an “Out of Order” sign on the rather beat-up looking police box door and, sensing that something is very “alien” about the Post Office Tower, arranges confabs with the leading scientists and civil servants of the day.

We have no lead-in from a prior story—and no lead-out from this story to the next—to explain why and how the TARDIS has arrived at the next destination. The Doctor just shows up, senses something is wrong, fixes it (ostensibly because he has nothing better to do), and disappears. Even the interactions here with the military, a first, will become commonplace in the next eight seasons. A format has arrived. Even the episode titles are different, in a computer font with an animated effect. To go along with this change in sensibility, two new companions arrive, every bit products of ’60s London, and one companion is almost literally sent out to pasture.

And how does the Doctor fix a maniacal computer bent on the eradication of the human species? With punch cards, of course.