There is a school of thought that says that it was a conscious
decision on the part of Barry Letts and his team to ‘dumb down’ the show from
the intelligent and mature level of the stories of the previous season, the
seventh season. Now, I don’t know if that’s a particularly flattering way of
putting it, but if it was their intention to make the 8th season
more appealing and accessible to the 7 and 8 year old section of the audience,
then it must have worked for me. Before watching the 7th season
stories, with the exception of the first story “Spearhead from Space” I had
precious few memories of watching any of these stories, although I definitely
did. All of which suggests that they may well have been too complex for me to
grasp properly at that time of my life. Maybe.
What I can say is that there are surely other reasons why “Terror of
the Autons” made such an impression on me. The first and most obvious being
Roger Delgado’s The Master. Wasn’t he just! We’re going to discuss his
portrayal of the essential Moriarty to the Doctor’s Holmes as we watch the
stories, but in my memory he was just brilliant- certainly the man I loved to
hate. By all accounts the late Roger Delgado was a wonderful man, every bit as
charming as his screen counterpart, but with none of the accompanying
megalomaniac and psychopathic tendencies, and it was a tragedy that he was
killed in a car crash just a few short years after his first appearance. It
also introduced Miss Jo Grant. Jo, it is fair to say, most certainly was not a
top scientist. But she was brave, utterly loyal to the Doctor, and posed in
Playboy with a Dalek. Well, alright, it was Katy Manning the real life actress
rather than the fictional character Jo Grant who did the posing. Not that this mattered. It is fair to say
that Katy appearing in Playboy wasn’t of the slightest concern to me at the
time. Be fair, I was only about 10 when she left.
Yes, I’ve watched this one again within the last couple of years,
but even before that there were elements of this story which had stuck in my
memory for over 40 years. I was certain that the Doctor was warned about the
Master by a Time Lord floating in thin air, dressed with a bowler hat and a
rolled up brolly like a city gent out for a stroll, and I was right. Then there
was the cliffhanger which probably affected me more than any other at any time,
when the Doctor was strangled by the phone flex. Ooh, it makes me start to
tingle just thinking about it. Let’s go and start watching.
After Watching
This was the story where I finally ‘got’ the Third Doctor era, or
more accurately, the 2nd Third Doctor Era. Was I scared when that
telephone cord wrapped itself round his neck as the episode 2 cliffhanger? You
bet I was. I knew he’d get out of it, well, I hoped he would, but I didn’t know
how. Did I understand the nature of the threat to the world? Yeah, of course I
did. It’s the ugly old Nestenes again using plastic to kill humans and take
over the world. Got it. Did I ‘get’ the Master? Not ‘alf. At that age if you’d
tried to explain his purpose using the names Holmes and Moriarty I wouldn’t
have had a clue what you were on about, but that didn’t matter. Here we had a
villain as smart as the Doctor, at times as charming as the Doctor, and at
times as evil as the Doctor is good, a Time Lord with his own TARDIS. An arch
enemy in fact. Yeah, I got that alright, and I loved it. This didn’t make me a
Doctor Who fan – I was already a fan – but this story cemented the
relationship. If Barry Letts’ purpose in the change of direction he brought to
the show was to make it more accessible to the youngest members of the
audience, in my case, at least, he succeeded.
Right, that was just so you know where I’m coming from when I write
about this story. Because … it’s not as good as I remembered it to be. If I’m
totally dispassionate, and don’t allow the 7 year old me to get a word in, then
I can make these criticisms. If you’ve never watched it since it was first
broadcast, watch it again now, and see if you’re not surprised when you find
yourself noticing these things: -
The Doctor is absolutely horrible to Jo Grant. His attitude towards
her is foul, recalling the very worst of Hartnell from his earliest stories. He
is at his most unlikeable in the first episode.
As well as what seems to be a heretofore unseen streak of misogyny,
the Doctor here exhibits also his most blatantly Establishment credentials,
threatening a ministry pen pusher to have words with his superior, ‘Tubby’
Rowlands next time they are in their gentlemen’s cub together. I’m not a
betting man, but if I were, I’d lay odds it’s the Carlton Club he’s referring
to.
I’m afraid that the evidence is that nothing has happened to
enlighten the show in its attitude to race since Sonny Caldinez played the mute
strongman Kemel in “Evil of the Daleks”. In its careless use of actor Roy
Stewart as the mute circus strongman it again plunges the depths of
institutionalized racism of “Tomb of the Cybermen” and “Evil of the Daleks”. In
fact, Roy Stewart actually was Toberman in the former. I can’t even excuse the
show by saying that this was typical of the time when it was made, because it
was wrong then, and it is still wrong now.
Barry Letts was first of all a director on Doctor Who – he directed
The Enemy of the World – and he had a clause in his contract as Producer
allowing him to direct one story every year, and this is the one he directed.
The thing about our Barry is that he did love his Chromakey, the CSO box of
tricks used throughout the colour eras of classic Who. Now, there were very
good reasons for a lot of the use of Chromakey in the show, since it enabled us
to see things which just couldn’t have been shown otherwise. But Barry goes way
above and beyond what’s necessary in this story. He uses chromakey for a
domestic kitchen, for heaven’s sake. The thing about Chromakey was that
although it did allow you to do things which couldn’t otherwise be done, it did
often leave a fringing around objects and people, and was best not being done
when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. A little went a long way.
Unless I’m very much mistaken, in “Spearhead from Space” the Doctor
is told that the Nestenes do not have their own physical form. Yet in the
denouement of “Terror – “ we are told that the Master is using the radio
telescope to allow them to manifest on Earth in their own physical form. Huh?
While we’re at it as well, the Master really doesn’t need a great deal of
persuading to abandon his Auton allies either, and work with the Doctor to
repel the Nestene. This is the first time he turns coat and works together with
the Doctor – I promise you it won’t be the last.
The ending worked great for me when I was 7, with the Doctor
seemingly glad that the master has escaped, since it means that they’ll be able
to lock horns again in the future. It doesn’t sit quite so well now,
considering all the death and destruction that the Master has been responsible
for, in fact if anything it appears rather heartless.
Thankfully, that’s the negatives over with for now. Now we can talk
about why I still like “Terror of the Autons”. You see, what it is, and what we
can celebrate, is a succession of great ideas and great set pieces, riding on
the back of Holmes’ earlier, and more complex “Spearhead from Space”. In terms
of plot, it’s a bit like the Readers’ Digest version of the earlier story. It’s
Auton Lite, if you wish, but it works. Maybe not as well as the earlier story,
but if you accept its limitations there’s quite a lot to still enjoy about it.
There’s the visit by the Time Lord to warn the Doctor of the
Master’s imminent arrival. He’s played by Solicitor Gray from the Highlanders,
actor David Garth, and it’s a typically Holmesian touch that this is rather
played for laughs to some extent. Yes, the first Time Lord the Doctor met, the
Meddling Monk, was a comic turn, but that was years before the name or concept of
the Time Lords had ever been formulated. In “The War Games” the Time Lords were
solemn, almost monk-like beings of deeply serious mien, and incredible powers.
In this, David Garth’s unnamed Time Lord is incongruously dressed as a city
gent, and materializes in mid-air by mistake. The Time Lords of the War Games
could easily have dealt with the Master, probably without lifting a finger, but
this one makes it clear to the Doctor that he’s on his own.
Ah, the Master. While I might at times criticize the Master’s
actions, or the concept of the character, you’ll not find one word of criticism
here for the late, great Roger Delgado. An evil villain can be good. A charming
evil villain can be incredible. I loved his Master. Oh, I hated him too, and
was scared of him, but then that was the point. Watch any scene that he’s in
during “Terror of the Autons” and I can pretty much guarantee you won’t be able
to take your eyes off him. That’s just when he’s playing off good old pros like
Harry Towb, last seen in The Seeds of Death. The scenes between him and the
Doctor fairly sparkle and crackle with energy.
Let me point out the sheer variety of different ways that the Auton
threat was portrayed. There was the killer sofa which ‘ate’ McGregor, played by
the afore mentioned Harry Towb. The Autons with huge clownlike heads. The phone
flex. The deadly daffodils. The devil doll. The Auton policemen. Actually the
team got a strongly worded complaint from the police, asking them not to show
the police (even bogus ones) in this light again, since it meant that people at
an impressionable age might become scared of the police force.
If we look at “Terror of the Autons” as the first true story of the
Barry Letts era, can we notice any huge differences to what went before in
season 7? Certainly. There’s the hint that relationships – between the Doctor
and Jo, the Doctor and UNIT, the Doctor and the Master – are going to become
key elements of the era. More creative energy is applied in this story to ways
that the Doctor and those important to him are put under threat than to the
rationale of why it is all happening. In season 7 the ‘why’ was as important as
the ‘how’. Now the how is everything. However, on the positive side, this story
really motors, although it was bound to contrast with the three 7 parters which
preceded it. The acid test will be how fast the 6 parter which comes next seems
to move.
What have we learned?
The Nestene actually does
have a physical form now
Every renegade Time Lord
seems to have a more modern TARDIS than the Doctor
In Jo Grant’s case, it’s
certainly not what you know
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