Authors: Robert Shearman,Toby Hadoke
Tags: #Doctor Who, #BBC
Bah.
T:
Well, I’m not sure... One says that the Guardians helped the Monoids to develop their voice boxes and heat prods, but not that this was the reason for the revolt. Sort of. Either way, discovering the consequences of the Doctor’s actions by revisiting the same place some centuries in the future is a great, interesting concept that we haven’t seen before. The idea that the formerly lethal cold mutated and sapped Man’s will is a clever one, and puts the onus of setting things right on the travellers’ shoulders. And the Monoids’ gesticulation makes absolute sense, as they used sign language before they developed their Zippy synthesisers, so it’s logical that they’d continue to be demonstrative. I’ll take what’s seen here over bringing in Roslyn de Winter to do, for instance, some “Monoid Movement” any day.
The Refusian Barratt Home that you rightly mention is a curious blip in what’s otherwise an exemplary design; the space-launcher chair that flips when the door opens and turns into steps, and the mountain-backdropped Refusian jungle are most impressive. (When this story is restored for its DVD release, it’s going to
look
fabulous.) And who cares about the logic of it – I love the space-potato pills. It’s another throwaway effect that looks impressive without making a song and dance about itself.
I do get the nagging sense, though, that after the thoughtful and elegant ideas at work in his previous two episodes, Paul Erickson has given up trying to be clever. His attempts at futuristic dialogue are unintentionally hilarious – Dassuk asks how the Doctor’s party has returned after all these centuries with “How in space could you do it?” And Venussa does that impossible thing you often find in a Terry Nation script – she’s already conversant in the language, idioms and culture of people she’s only just met, when she describes one of the subject Guardians to Steven as, “What you’d call a collaborator.”
The biggest mystery here, though, is why Two’s manservant Yendom seems to die with his arms sticking up in the air, as if he’s a dead cat.
February 25th
The Bomb (The Ark episode four)
R:
Even though the story is working its way towards a climax, there’s a lot more time this week for little moments of subtlety. Take for example, the look that’s passed between Venussa and Dassuk when she elects to stay behind on the Ark with Steven to search for the bomb; it’s as if she’s dumped him for Peter Purves, and he goes off to Refusis spurned. At the end of the story, as they contemplate future generations, Eileen Helsby and Brian Wright manage to make it look as if they’re referring to their
own
children – they’ve patched things up, and going to make a go of it. It’s an example of two actors getting together and finding
something
to do, some little character arc they can play out to make the job more interesting, even if there’s no script evidence for it whatsoever. And it’s really rather wonderful.
Or there’s the little subplot concerning Maharis, the quisling human. He’s genuinely distraught to find out that the Monoids have betrayed him in his slavery, and the resigned disgust that Steven shows him when he refuses to help search for the bomb lends him a depth that the dialogue itself only hints at. So his eventual death, crying out with delight when he sees his masters, only to be gunned down automatically, has a certain pathos to it.
It’s little things like this that make The Ark work, in spite of itself. The actual scene-to-scene plotting is pretty wretched, all told – but the cast and director are putting in enough effort to make sure the incidentals count. Even though he’s trapped inside a limiting costume, Edmund Coulter tries his level best to make Monoid One a distinctive villain, patronising when talking to his slaves, and madder and madder with his arm movements the closer he gets to taking over the world.
And it must be said – after all my ranting yesterday, there
is
some attempt to suggest that the Monoids shouldn’t be merely demonised as evil villains, and that their corruption was in part the fault of the original humans who marginalised them from their society. Indeed, the whole Monoid civil war goes a long way – in theory – to establishing them as a bit more complex than The Return suggested. (I say “in theory”, because it’s still a bit hard to think of them as individual characters when the main bone of the revolution is Four picking a fight with One, much to Three’s disgust. Pity poor Seventy-Seven, lying there dead on the surface of Refusis, the victim of another Monoid’s war. And with 76 Monoids more important than him still unaccounted for.) But the intention is there, and I accept that.
So – this is the last story produced by John Wiles. I know it’s a little against the spirit of this book to say so... but I’m rather relieved. The joy of Verity Lambert’s Who was its diversity, not only in location but in tone. Wiles made sure that the TARDIS travelled the length and breadth of the universe, but the tone has been much the same throughout – and that tone is chilly. The Myth Makers is a wonderful comedy that, nonetheless, ends in chaos and despair. The Daleks’ Master Plan is a romp, the closest Doctor Who has ever come to a comic book, but which ends in death and ruin. And frankly, The Massacre isn’t full of the jollies either. It’s all very
clever
, and I honestly admire his intent to push the boundaries of the series and see it as a more thoughtful concern than a children’s tea-time serial. But not only has he lost the fun of the thing, he’s also misplaced its wonder and vision. I’ve found Doctor Who a little hard going recently, and I want to enjoy myself again, please.
T:
I’ve already discussed how I wish John Wiles and Donald Tosh had overseen more stories, and can only continue to applaud Wiles for broadening the kind of stories the series should be attempting... even if I do, Rob, grudgingly accept your point about the lack of humour.
Looking at the last instalment of The Ark itself, I can only encourage anyone reading this to check out Erickson’s novelisation of this story – in this, he succeeds (as Glyn Jones did with his book version of The Space Museum) in fleshing out his original storyline, and making things chock-f of nuanced touches and character moments. (Although I do seem to recall mention of Steven “ejaculating” – i.e. “snapping”/“sharply expressing” – himself once too often. Now that I think of it, Dodo “ejaculates” once too.) The Monoid rebellion in the book is far more plausible, and there’s a big showdown by a waterfall – as opposed to the load of paunchy, waddling actors zapping each other and falling over that we get on screen. It’s a shame, actually, that although the latter two episodes of The Ark are marginally better acted than the first couple, so much potential complexity has been squandered.
Still, visually this continues to be engrossing – Imison not only has great flair, he’s a bit cheeky too. We see many a shot of finished Monoid food or drained Monoid glasses, but of course we don’t
see
them actually eating, do we? It’s as if he’s daring us to ask where their mouths are. Many of Imison’s shots are impressively long and wide – there’s a fantastic forced perspective shot of the launcher taking off with a Monoid in the background – meaning there’s nothing small or cramped about this story. It’s the same on the Ark itself – we have a close-up of Venussa’s nodding head, and then she walks out of frame, leaving the statue in the background.
If The Ark hasn’t been overwhelmingly successful, its ultimate message of multiculturalism comes across strongly enough. And even if this story doesn’t amount to the sum of its parts, it’s more original, well made and beguiling than many of the better-remembered and better-lauded adventures of this era.
Which brings us, neatly, to The Celestial Toymaker ...
The Celestial Toyroom (The Celestial Toymaker episode one)
R:
Do you know, there was a time when it seemed everyone actually
liked
The Celestial Toymaker? Not now, of course, when fan consensus seems to regard it as something rather evil smelling – but back in the eighties when I was growing up, it was seen as odd and brave and different. In fact, it’s a measure of its reputation at the time that John Nathan-Turner tried to bring the character back as a foil for Colin Baker. (It’s tempting to see Michael Grade as a twenty-first century fan, quickly cancelling the entire season at the very thought.) I remember that a boy from school had got an audio recording of this story, and gave me a copy. I listened to it a lot when I was growing up, and pretty soon had memorised all the dialogue. (There isn’t much.) The tape played slightly fast, actually, which made it all sound even more bonkers: William Hartnell and Michael Gough (playing the Toymaker) squeaked, and Carmen Silvera (playing a clown, Clara) spoke at a pitch that only dogs could hear. And I loved it.
And against the weight of fashion, I do still – especially as a contrast to the episodes we’ve been watching over the past fortnight, which have been so earnest and grim. Instead, this is just sinister – and what makes it all the more macabre somehow is that it doesn’t emphasise that sinister streak too forcefully. Twenty-odd years later in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, we would see the programme deal with killer robotic clowns in a circus of death. But this first proper dip into the surreal works because, for the most part, it truly suggests that the games that Steven and Dodo play to win their freedom really may just be an entertainment for them, and that the clowns who cheat are being loveable rascals rather than psychotic murderers. Brilliant as Greatest Show is, it very quickly decides that it is a story about good and evil, and becomes a much more conventional story with surreal trappings; The Celestial Toymaker walks a much more disconcerting tightrope. It plays upon the trivial and the childish, the Toymaker trapping his victims not for material gain but because he’s bored. And the more that the threat becomes unspoken, the more genuinely disturbing this becomes. The scenes in which the Toymaker makes the Doctor invisible at a whim are fine – but it’s the mocking fact that he then leaves the Doctor one hand to play his game which hints at how much power he has. The Doctor’s urgent cries that Steven and Dodo must not look at images of themselves is never properly explained, and is so much more potent for that.
I would criticise Jackie Lane, whose performance of a companion with the mental age of ten is still in full force, except for the fact that she fits neatly into a world of child’s playthings. The story wouldn’t work at all if the companions treated the situation with the full gravitas it deserves, because the principle pleasure of watching Steven is not that he’s playing for his life, but that his self-respect is equally at stake. The deadly Blind Man’s Buff game is smashing: accompanied by music which is just a little too jaunty, and performances from the clowns which are just a little too annoying, it is actually unsettling. A lot of this atmosphere is the responsibility of Peter Purves; the scene in which Steven adamantly insists that the clowns play on until death reveals a hard edge which suddenly makes the episode more serious.
Anyway. It’s different. What do you think, Toby? I know we’re not going to agree on this one...
T:
I’ve already confided in you that I was dreading having to rewatch this story because I think it’s nonsense, but I’m determined to give it the benefit of the doubt here. As you know, normally if a story flouts the usual Doctor Who rules and conventions, I’ll be the first to champion it, even if my reasons for doing so don’t hold much water. But even then, this adventure has never quite done it for me, possibly because it’s a Donald Tosh-John Wiles story put on the screen by Gerry Davies and Innes Lloyd. It’s a bit like having a Coen Brothers film reimagined by Jerry Bruckheimer and Roland Emmerich.
All of that said, it’s quite unsettling just how little preamble there is. In an era where it can take the entire opening instalment for the regulars to find out exactly what the story is and who’s going to be in it, it’s to be applauded how swiftly the Toymaker (so to speak) puts his cards on the table. The opening is spooky and unsettling, and the episode cleverly exploits that old childhood bugbear of the nightmarish clowns. Setting the story in a moody world of games and illusion is a new one for Doctor Who (we’re more than two years away from The Mind Robber), and there’s a sense of the series boldly venturing into new frontiers. It even seems a novel threat that the Doctor’s very tangibility has been removed, even though – as you say – it means that poor old Hartnell has been shuffled off to the side again. (Perhaps it’s a punishment for his mucking up the story title again when he refers to the “Celestral Toymaker”.)
As far as the episode’s main plot goes... hmm, well, Peter Purves does his best to be grumpily affronted that he’s having to engage in such childish flim-flam, but as Clara and Joey’s terrifying machinations include such horrors as squirting you in the face with water and popping a balloon behind your back, we’re not exactly left on the edge of our seats. The Blind Man’s Bluff game is pure nonsense, with the level of villainy exhibited by the clowns being that, er, they’re cheats. And when they’re rumbled, the game simply has to be played again. This is hardly the stuff of high drama, is it? It really needed to be a ghoulish abstraction of child’s nursery, not just an oversized recreation of one. It only flirts with the nightmarish when Joey is coldly forced to play the game properly – Dodo’s “he’s not funny anymore” is the best line in the whole episode.
Then everything gets wrapped up with a very limp cliff-hanger in which some dolls come to life because Dodo asks them to, although I will admit that flashing the words of the riddle on screen gives the pleasing suggestion that the adventure has been lifted from the pages of a book.
So, this isn’t nearly as bad as I had feared, Rob... there are some interesting moments, and a definite atmosphere in places. Dudley Simpson’s rattling wooden percussion is a cannily conceived musical conceit, and I very much like the way the Toymaker refers to the Doctor as an undefeated enemy of old, because it gives our hero an air of epic grandeur. And isn’t it doubly a shame that this episode hasn’t shown up somewhere, as it features clips from similarly missing instalments of The Daleks’ Master Plan and The Massacre? I’ve reassessed my preconceptions before, Mr Shearman, so who knows? Let’s see if I continue to warm to this story...
February 26th
The Hall of Dolls (The Celestial Toymaker episode two)
R:
I think more than any other episode we’ve yet heard, this one all depends on what it actually
looked
like. There’s an interesting vein running through the dialogue about whether the Heart family are real people or not. Certainly, they act like comic caricatures – the Queen is by turns Lady Bracknell and Queen Victoria, and poor foolish King Henry is any hand-me-down old duffer. But that all may be just what happens to you if you get trapped in this realm forever and become toys – you lose your identity a bit, you go insane. Amongst all the bizarre jokes, the only thing that pulls them up short is the notion that they’re not actually human beings – and you get the sense that this strange game of deadly chairs is their last gamble to hang onto the scrap of humanity they have left. This is what Steven and Dodo will end up like.
And that’s all fine and good, but therefore the threat of the chairs has to be real. All the dialogue and sound effects suggest that the dolls look like real people too – the same height, the same weight. And that means that whatever devices the chairs use to despatch their victims, it should always be made clear that these could be used against a human body – just like those disturbing ads we had in the seventies, with crash test dummies going through windscreens of cars. The first chair that we see turn on its victim shakes it to death. When we return to the scene a bit later, it’s still shaking – and it’s clear that by now
the doll’s head has come off.
That’s a disturbing image. And we get an episode where Steven and Dodo, as real people, are playing against people who are only
half
real (and whom, by implication, they wish to die instead of them), using dolls which just
look
like people. That’s creepy stuff. All done to heightened comic dialogue, and the sort of japery where the King amusingly tries to persuade both his son and his fool to take one of the Russian roulette bullets for him.
It
really
depends on how it looks, though. If the dolls’ destruction is violent and grotesque, then this is wonderful. One gets cut in half with a knife, for God’s sake! But if the production holds back and plays it too safe, then this would be entirely pointless. As pointless, one might argue, as listening to the soundtrack and
imagining
it as eerie as I want. But hey. Them’s the breaks.
William Hartnell literally phones in his performance this week, doesn’t he? His one voiceover part is clearly delivered with absolutely no understanding of what the context of the lines could be. “It’s chair number,” he says, as if that were a complete line in itself, not a revelation that gets interrupted.
T:
I’m trying to be charitable to this episode, but too many things are niggling at me. First off, I’m finding it very odd that the programme-makers went to the expense of hiring an actor as talented as Michael Gough, only to consign him to being stuck in a room, playing a tedious game with a recording of the leading man’s voice. Second, and as I mentioned last week, the Toymaker’s minions cheat. So, what’s the bloody point of playing the games at all, then? If the Toymaker doesn’t take doesn’t take joy in the game-mechanics – if he doesn’t delight in the fun of playing the games – why go through all the rigmarole? He could spare us an episode of British Bulldog With Spikes or Hunt the Exploding Thimble and just turn the Doctor, Steven and Dodo into his playthings and have done with it. You can only really justify such an odd and potentially silly set-up if it takes you into the realms of dark surrealism, but this doesn’t, instead offering us overblown whimsy at best.
And isn’t this getting a trifle repetitive? We get almost exactly the same cliffhanger as last week, and Dodo’s enthusiasm here simply exposes her weakness as a character, completely failing to sell the idea that any of this is in any way threatening. Tellingly, Steven has to keep saying the same things to Dodo over and over again to remind us that this is supposed to be scary. Also, the way that even the Doctor’s voice is taken away makes me a bit angry on Hartnell’s behalf – he may as well trip over on his way back to work, thus adding injury to the litany of insults he’s being dealt.
(Right, things are getting a bit negative, and I need to adjust my perspective here. Go to your happy place, Toby... go to your happy place...)
On the plus side, I do like the way the Hearts mention their desire for liberty, and that the King and Queen sit on the final, deadly chair together – both moments give a touching hint of their latent humanity. It’s rather fun that each chair kills in a different way, and the music remains suitably childish and plinky-plonky (that’s a technical term). I also like the groovy robot with a TV screen on its chest – it’s like a cross between a Dinky toy and a Tellytubby.
See, Rob? I’ve just reproved the rule that Doctor Who is such a fantastic show, you can milk a few compliments even out of a story you normally can’t abide. Unlike the Toymaker’s underlings, I’m at least
trying
to play by the rules we set out for this book...
The Dancing Floor (The Celestial Toymaker episode three)
R:
Crazed Toymaker apologist as I am, I have to admit this episode tests my patience a bit too. I’m enjoying seeing Campbell Singer and Carmen Silvera pop up each week in a different guise – the Toymaker’s realm is a bit like an impoverished theatre repertory company – and they both banter very well as Sergeant Rugg and Mrs Wiggs the cook. But who cares? – their current guises have none of the immediacy of clowns or playing cards, and are utterly unrecognisable figures. And the games that Steven and Dodo play against them this week are paltry fare, neither “hunt the key” nor “avoid the annoying ballerinas” having any of the macabre edge seen in the previous two weeks. There’s pleasure to be derived from watching Dodo try to seduce a tin soldier, I suppose, and there are actually some good witty lines to be had between Rugg and Wiggs – but there are so
many
lines between them that this does get a bit wearisome.
Things do pick up, though, with the arrival of Billy Bunter. (Sorry, “Cyril” – no copyright problems there, then.) It’s not that the image of a fat jolly schoolboy is so very odd, it’s more that they’ve got a middle-aged man playing him. The best bit of the episode is Steven’s reaction to Cyril telling him that he’s one of his heroes, and that when he grows up he wants to be just like him: “You seem pretty grown up already!” There is some relief to be had when the next episode is announced as being the
final
test.
T:
The dramatic high point of this episode is when a character who doesn’t really exist threatens a pie. That should tell you all you need to know.