Question: In
classic Who, which writers went the longest amount of time between having their
stories produced? Answer – I have no idea, but I wouldn’t mind betting that
Louis Marks is right up there. John Lucarotti must have come close, but his
original version of “The Ark In Space” wasn’t really what Robert Holmes and
Philip Hinchcliffe were looking for, and so they opted for a page one rewrite,
and so “The Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve in Series 3 remained his last
writing credit for the series. Louis Marks’ previous Doctor Who story was
“Planet of Giants” way back in series 2, so that’s a gap of 7 series between
stories. Before we leave this digression behind, while I think of it, Terry
Nation went from Season 3’s “The Daleks’ Master Plan” until season 10’s “Planet
of the Daleks”, also a gap of 7 series. Then Gerry Davis went from season 5’s
“Tomb of the Cybermen” to season 12’s “Revenge of the Cybermen” – again a gap
of 7 series.
Coming back to Louis Marks, it’s no great chore
recalling this story considering that I bought the DVD a year or two ago, and
have watched it a couple of times since. In fact, I’ve watched all of the
extras as well, so going into the marathon watch, I probably know this Pertwee
story pretty much as well as I know any of them. In fact, of the four stories
he wrote for the series, none of them are duds. If you’ve read my review of
“Planet of Giants” you’ll know that I thought that particular story was
something of a neglected gem, although that’s more to do with some frankly fantastic
model work than the brilliance of the script. He wrote the underrated “Planet
of Evil” for season 13, and then his last story for the series was the very
palatable “Masque of Mandragora” from season 14 (Tom Baker’s 3rd).
All of which is a long winded way of saying that I already know that I liked
this one a lot, and this was such a short time ago that I last watched it that
I can’t see my opinion changing drastically in the interim.
After Watching
In my review of Season 8 I did mention that it is worth
discussing whether the show had been dumbed down at all. Here we had a story
which actually took a unique look at some of the implications of time travel,
and managed to do it intelligently, while still being a good action story as
well.
The story, like season 8’s “The Mind of Evil”, has a
world peace conference as its background, and again it’s the Chinese who are
proving the real obstacle to progress. I wonder if it was just too politically
sensitive to use the Soviet Union in the 70s?
In real terms it seems like a very long time since the series
engaged in any kind of debate about Time Travel, and how it affects History. If
we recap: -
In “The Aztecs” the Doctor thunders at Barbara that you can’t change
History, not one line of it. In one sense the story bears him out, since
Barbara is unable to achieve her stated aim of turning the Aztecs away from
their rituals involving blood sacrifice. Whether or not this would have made
that much difference to the Conquistadores later on is a moot point. However,
Barbara does change the destiny of one man, Autloc, who leaves all his worldly
goods behind him and wanders off into the desert. Now, maybe, just maybe he
might have done so anyway, but there is no reason for him to have done so
without Barbara’s intervention in the Society in which he lives.
The first hint that we get that this hardline towards the changing
of History is softening is in the climax of “The Romans” when it appears that
it is the Doctor who has given Nero the idea of burning down Rome. Now, okay,
we might brush that one under the carpet by saying that Nero would have done it
anyway, therefore nothing has really changed QED. Realistically we might also
say that this was a Dennis Spooner scripted romp, which didn’t take itself
seriously enough not to have a little fun by bending the rules and maybe hoping
nobody minded that much.
So then Dennis Spooner went and muddied the waters again with “The
Time Meddler”. In this joyous story the Monk, clearly a member of the Doctor’s
own race, equipped with a slightly newer time machine, and presumably as well
versed in the laws of Time as the Doctor is, decides that he will lend a
helping hand to the Saxons facing Harald Hardrada’s fleet, to enable Harold
Godwinsson to forego having to defeat them at Stamford Bridge and therefore win
the Battle of Hastings. The Doctor’s reaction to the Monk’s meddling is
telling. If what he said to Barbara in “The Aztecs” was true, then what he
should say to the Monk is,
“Go ahead, do your worst, but you’re wasting your time and energy
because you can’t change History, not one line of it.”
He says no such thing. The gist of what he does say to the Monk is
not – you CAN not do this – but – you MUST not do this – and there’s a whole universe
of difference between those two concepts.
In the context of “Doctor Who”, the ‘you must not change time’
approach makes much more sense than the previous stance. If you cannot change
History, then the Doctor and his companions can only ever be observers, unable
to influence any of the events going on around them. Yet they have already done
just that on several occasions. In fact, it’s worse than that, for if History
has been preordained in this fashion, then none of what anyone does is either
good or evil, for everyone is just a puppet, dancing to a sequence of strings
being pulled which had been written down long before they were even made.
That’s actually a very bleak way of looking at the world, and one which I don’t
believe for one minute that the show ever shared.
In “The Massacre”, which is the last, real, old style Historical in
my opinion, the Doctor of necessity returns to the – this has happened, and so
we can’t change it however horrible it is – line of argument of “The Aztecs”,
which causes Steven to lose all sympathy with him, and leave the TARDIS as soon
as it stops. This is actually the last gasp of the Doctor’s non-intervention
policy. Only a few stories later, in “The Gunfighters”, the Doctor shows no
such scruples, which is just as well since the story does take a few liberties
with what actually happened.
In Patrick Troughton’s era the whole vexed question was never really
examined at all. The only historical was “The Highlanders”, and this neatly
avoided the whole question of changing the course of History by having the
TARDIS arrive after the battle of Culloden. From then on stories would be set
either in the future, or on alien worlds, or on contemporary Earth. Stories on
contemporary Earth, ever since “The War Machines” show that the Doctor feels he
has a free hand to do what’s right. Why? Because it isn’t that the Doctor at
any time couldn’t rewrite any history, it is just OUR History he can’t rewrite.
And our History works back from where we are now, the moment that the story was
first broadcast.
And so to “Day of the Daleks”. The main thrust of the story concerns
a group of time travelling assassins from the future, who travel back to
contemporary England, to find and assassinate the diplomat, Sir Reginald
Styles. Sir Reginald is chairing the International Peace Conference, and has
been the only man able to bring the recalcitrant Chinese delegation to the
table.
The clever thing about it is that at first it seems as if the
assassins want to kill Sir Reginald to scupper the peace process. Actually,
though it turns out that they want to kill Sir Reginald to save the peace
process. In the future from which they arrived, the world has been successfully
invaded and is now controlled by the Daleks. It began when a bomb exploded in
Sir Reginald’s country estate where the peace conference is taking place,
killing the delegates and leading to World War III. In the aftermath the Daleks
found the Earth easy pickings. They believe that by killing Sir Reginald they
can save the delegates and the peace progress, and engineer a different,
Dalek-less future for themselves. Phew! And we thought that Doctor Who had been
dumbed down in this stage of the Pertwee era!
There’s actually more than one aspect of changing history to
consider here. On the one hand there’s the idea of being able to retro-engineer
History, to change the present by changing the past. That’s foregrounded as the
Big Idea of this story and that’s what we’ll come back to momentarily. However
there’s also the fact that this is not the Dalek Invasion of 2164 featured in
“The Dalek Invasion of Earth”. This seems to be an alternate future, another
vision of future History. It is not explored in the script in any depth at all
– which is probably just as well or we could easily have had another six parter
on our hands – but it does suggest a background in which History changes, and
time streams shift. Later on in “Genesis of the Daleks” the Time Lord ( who
looks like something out of an Ingmar Bergman movie) who tells the fourth
Doctor of his mission explains that a time stream has come into being in which
the Daleks succeed in becoming the dominant life form of the Universe. Which is
not actually that far fetched a concept when you know that the Daleks did
develop their own Time Travel Technology, and have presumably been monkeying
away with Time themselves. However, I digress.
Now, at the climax of the story we find that the great irony is that
the explosion wasn’t caused by Styles or anyone else at home in the 20th
century. It was caused by one of the assassins themselves, isolated from the
others, who sees no other way of destroying Styles. The Daleks and their
henchmen have followed the assassins back to the 20th century, and
the bomb which would have been used to kill the delegates is actually used against
Daleks and Ogrons. Now, this isn’t just a simple matter of a basic time
paradox. I’ll explain what I mean.
A time paradox would mean, for example, you use a time machine to go
back in time. Your time machine materializes on top of your father when he was
a little boy, sadly crushing the life out of him and killing him. Which means
that you would never have been born. Which means that you would never have used
the time machine. Which means that it wouldn’t have crushed your father to
death. Which means that you would have been born. Which means that you would
have used the time machine which means that you would have crushed your father
to death and so on ad infinitum.
Now, this is different, because in this story the chain of recurring
events can simply be broken by preventing the assassination. No bomb goes off –
no successful Dalek invasion – no assassins go back to kill Styles – chain
broken. What it doesn’t explain is how the chain started. This isn’t a chicken
and egg situation. The peace conference must have been blown up originally
BEFORE the assassins went back in time. There is no start to it, you have to
say that it looks pre-ordained that the assassin would come back to set off the
bomb. However, if it was preordained – then the Doctor wouldn’t have been able
to change events and break the chain! Which probably explains why the classic
series avoided such complex ideas in the first place.
One thing we should consider when discussing this story is that it
wasn’t actually a Dalek story at all when it was first mooted, and when Louis
Marks began working on it. Messrs Letts and Dicks decided that they wanted to
bring them back, and saw this story as a good vehicle for them. You have to
agree with that. It’s very difficult to imagine them being slotted comfortably
into any of the other 4 stories of season 9. This story is the first Dalek
story since “Evil of the Daleks” and it represents something of a reboot for
them. I wonder how the conversation with Terry Nation went when they asked him
about using the Daleks?
“No, no of course you don’t have to write it yourself, Terry, we’ve
already got a story, God bless you. No, now, we’d LOVE you to write one, only
we’ve already got one.”
Who knows? The fact is that Terry Nation would write a Dalek story
for each of the next three seasons. Robert Holmes once related a story about
his time as Script Editor when he was having a chat with Terry Nation, who
suggested that he should write a Dalek story for every season, to which Robert
Holmes replied non-committally. Days later there was a call from Terry Nation’s
agent, ready to draw up a contract to that effect. For season 13, Holmes
steered Terry Nation away from writing another Dalek story to writing something
different, and this is how we ended up with “The Android Invasion”. Let’s get
back to “Day of the Daleks”, though.
This is the first time that they have appeared in colour, and I’m
not that sure that I like it that much. There’s a gold one, and a couple of
darker ones, and while darker Daleks are okay, the gold one just doesn’t quite
gel with me. I know that I liked the colourful Daleks in the films, but that
has to be seen in context. The Amicus films were live action comic strips,
while a complex TV story such as “Day of the Daleks” is a lot more than that.
There’s not a lot of them either – I think that they only had three Daleks to
use for this production, and while you could get away with using blow up cut
outs in grainy black and white, you wouldn’t have been able to in garish 1970s
colour TV.
The Ogrons made their first appearance in this story as well, and
they’re an interesting addition to the Dalek mythos, fulfilling the role of the
Robomen from “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”. I do wonder whether they were
subconsciously inspired by the gorillas in “Planet of the Apes” – their faces
do have a certain simian appearance. They don’t actually do a lot, but they’re
a threatening presence which is really the point, and it’s a bit of a shame
that we only get to see them again in “Frontier in Space”.
A serial story, with a little time to develop plot and character,
has the time to play tricks on its audience. Aubrey Woods’ Controller, the
Daleks’ puppet in charge of earth, is a good example. He starts off playing a
very mannered, very theatrical stage villain, and yet at the end it’s his act
of heroism in defiance of the Daleks that saves the past, even though it is
probably condemning him to death. Of the assassins, an interesting point was
that the leader, Anat, well played by Anna Barry, was a woman. A mature,
intelligent woman, noticeably smarter than her companions, and every bit as
brave. But before we go congratulating the show for this, the simple fact that
it sticks out when the show put a woman character in this position shows that
it still had quite a long way to go.
You know, it’s often said that the third Doctor is the most
‘Establishment’ of all of the Doctors, the most reactionary and the least
anarchic. I’m not saying that I would disagree with that, and yet, that having
been said, the third Doctor just really hates these Whitehall types. Maybe it
just sticks out more because he has to deal with a lot more of them, being
stuck on contemporary Earth. Still, Sir Reginald Sykes is just the latest in a
line which included Mr. ‘Double’ Chinn in “The Claws of Axos”. Frankly, the
idea of a pompous pig like that ever being a diplomat is a little far-fetched,
but hey, I’ve only ever known one career diplomat in my life, and he is a
delightful man, so who am I to judge?
Had I not watched the accompanying documentary among the extras on
the BBC DVD, I wouldn’t have seen the contrition from the production team over
the Doctor’s use of a gun to shoot an Ogron. It is an issue with the story that
he does this, and all in all it probably would have been better had he not done
so. Yes, it might fit better with Pertwee’s Doctor than it would have ever done
with the first or second Doctors, but even so there has to be a set of core
values central to any portrayal of the Doctor, or they then become separate characters,
and the show becomes meaningless. The Doctor doesn’t like guns. Full stop.
-----------------
Final words on “Day of the Daleks”, then. There’s a level of
complexity in this that we haven’t seen in season 8, which while it doesn’t hit
the heights of season 7, makes this an intensely watchable and enjoyable story.
What Have We Learned?
You can change the Future,
but the Future can also change the Past.
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