rewatching – Page 20 – Movement Point

Doctor Who Project: The Faceless Ones

July 29, 2023February 9, 2015 by Chris Baer

Perhaps you’d kindly explain why you have no passports?

Though it starts out as a bit of a farce, with the TARDIS materializing on an active runway at Gatwick Airport and our time travellers scattering to avoid the police, David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke’s “The Faceless Ones” (Story Production Code KK) turns into an oddly satisfying story of body-snatching aliens offering cut-rate tours for teens. But along the way to the good stuff in this six episode story, there’s a fair bit of filler to slog through.

Credit should be given to the writers for attempting to show the difficulties the Doctor and his companions would have trying to enter an international airport from the tarmac (back in pre-jetway days) without passports or other identity papers—such appearances have, in the past, been glossed over with nary a mention—but where some simple trick on the Doctor’s part to get into the terminal would have sufficed, instead we are treated to overly-long sequences with immigration agents and officious bureaucrats who are less concerned with a dead body than with a missing passport. Still, there’s some humor about the affair, and when they escape, an inspector wryly notes that it shouldn’t be hard to find a rumpled man in a frock coat and a young lad in a kilt.

Note the emphasis, however, on two individuals, rather than the current TARDIS complement of four. Ben and Polly make no appearance after episode two, save for a filmed inset of their departure in episode six. They’ve been written out of the show, and though their leaving is treated with substantially more dignity than Dodo’s abrupt rest cure in “The War Machines,” they could easily have played substantive roles in the events of the story. Instead, they are captured by the aliens and serve as spurs to action for the Doctor.

Events start quickly enough, with Polly witnessing a murder in the hangar occupied by the aliens’ tour company, Chameleon Tours, a name that sits a bit too much on point. Polly reports the murder to the Doctor, who is intrigued and determined to investigate. Though the story returns to the scene of the crime far too many times, a sense of mystery does surround the evil goings-on, with the aliens (who, chameleon-like, look like humans) not tipping their hands via narration or action. The viewer has no idea that aliens are even at work here, with the shady motives of Chameleon Tours completely opaque, beyond the fact that they killed a man for seeing the postcards. Sinister secret society? Corrupt corporate creeps? Dastardly devious deltiologists? The first episode ends with a monster teaser that, while very much in the show’s tradition, nevertheless feels fresh. There’s actual mystery here!

And then, in the second episode, everyone talks at length about how they figured out all the clues from the first episode (including the unsent Spanish stamp!), dispelling (almost) all the mystery.

Doctor Who Project: The Macra Terror

July 29, 2023January 4, 2015 by Chris Baer

They’re in control!

Though only four seasons in to Doctor Who‘s run, by the time of Ian Stuart Black’s “The Macra Terror” (Story Production Code JJ), one would be forgiven for thinking that the series has a limited number of stories to tell. The prior story, the Cybermen sophomore effort “The Moonbase,” plays as a virtual repeat of first Cybermen story, “The Tenth Planet,” with Kit Pedler writing both. Now we have Ian Stuart Black riffing on his favored theme, that of a hidden power secretly controlling people’s minds for some nefarious purpose, as last seen in “The War Machines.” Only this time, replace a self-aware computer in ’60s London with crab monsters in some future human colony, with a touch of the utopia hiding a deadly flaw (as seen in his “The Savages“) for good measure.

On the surface, it’s not a bad story idea to revisit, and the approach here differs from “The War Machines” in focusing on the dehumanizing force of brainwashing and subliminal messages rather than the dangers of technology run amok. Advertising jingles carry a strong propaganda message to the colony and play in the background even as the actors speak, suggesting that they are always playing, forcing happy thoughts into all of the colony’s inhabitants. As the leader of the colony states, they regulate their lives by music.

The Doctor and his companions arrive on this far-flung planet to inadvertently assist in the capture of a dissident from the unnamed colony, whose crime is twofold—he’s not happy, and he has seen something forbidden that he refuses to repudiate. The Doctor takes a liking to him immediately, while Ben and Polly just want to get the free shampoo and massage on offer as a reward for helping the colony capture this dangerous ne’er-do-well. Their glee at such services leads one to wonder if there’s a shower on board the TARDIS. But there’s a price to be paid for the spa treatment, as Polly soon finds out.

Yes, she’s seen the Monster-of-the-Week, the crab/insect creatures known as the Macra. Quite often, one mourns the loss of so much Second Doctor footage. Well, not so much here.

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.