10:The Dalek Invasion of Earth

Before watching

Produced on MS Paint using Bamboo graphics tablet

This is one of the Hartnell stories where I can honestly say that I know the storyline pretty well before watching it. This is partly through having several times seen the Peter Cushing film, “Daleks : Invasion Earth 2050” based on the serial, and partly through the Target novelization. While the film to a greater extent, and the novels to a lesser extent may take a couple of liberties with some of the plot details, by and large they’re pretty faithful enough to give you a good idea.

However, I have had it on the word of someone whose judgement on matters DW that I value – my brother – that this is a bit slow and tedious. It’s a 6 parter, and they often tend to be padded. Also the word on the streets is that the effects – albeit that they were made for tuppence ha’penny to use the currency of the time it was made, are poor.

Therefore – expectations aren’t that high.

After Watching

While not wishing to gloss over any of this show’s flaws, I really enjoyed it. I wrote about the DWM Mighty 200 poll in my round up of season 1 – and this story is ranked 44^th on the DWM Mighty 200 poll, and I think that’s pretty fair.

Actually the start of the serial, the first episode, was really on the whole rather good. I mean, I’d already in the past watched “An Unearthly Child”, and “The Daleks”, and read the Target novelisation of “The Keys of Marinus”, but when you see the opening of this, their last adventure together, you come to realize how they have developed as a group together. You can’t help wondering what the impact of this episode would have been had they kept daleks out of the title, and pre publicity for the show, and you hadn’t realized they were involved until that iconic final shot of the dalek coming up out of the Thames.

Really and truly, this should be quite disorienting. I am watching this in 2015, pretending to be London some time after 2164, while all the time making no effort to look like anything other than 1964. Although the show is set around 2164, the visuals make no concession to this, and as a result you kind of just get on with it. If anything it gives the story a nostalgic feel.

Actually, the rather gentle pace of the first couple of episodes, and the atmosphere reminded me of films such as ‘Day of the Triffids’, and if anything its maybe a foreshadowing of Terry Nation’s own “Survivors”, his 1970s drama series about life for a group of survivors of a devastating pandemic which kills a huge percentage of the human population of Earth.

 I don’t know that you can get the point of the Hartnell shows from just reading the Target books. The stories I’ve actually seen, and this one in particular give me the strong feeling that you have to watch them to understand.  I loved the third and fourth Doctors, but there was always a feeling that they were going to eventually take charge and be more than equal to whatever situation they might find themselves in. The dynamic is completely different in the Hartnell era. In “An Unearthly Child” the Doctor has taken Barbara and Ian off on a joyride to prove to them that he can do what he says he can. This is an extremely irresponsible, if not reprehensible act, since he knows that there is no guarantee that he is ever going to be able to bring them back to his own time and space. In the first episode  they do actually believe that they’re home after all this time, and it’s the dawning realization that this is not actually the case which adds greatly to the atmosphere and poignancy. I find that the way that the action and the driving of the plot is shared out between the Doctor , Ian and Barbara, and to a much lesser extent Susan, to be really different to what I’m used to as well. It shouldn’t work, and yet it actually does. For example – the extended sequences of Barbara and Richard Briers’ wife running through the streets of London pushing Dortmun should really be laughable. But they aren’t.

Partly this is because of some great acting. Look at Jacqueline Hill’s face during these sequence. I tell you the woman looks terrified out of her skin. I cheered when she drove into the Daleks.

OK – the plot, essentially, is rubbish. The Daleks are excavating the Earth’s core in order to bung a motor in it and fly it around the Universe? Yeah, right. Nonsense. The special effects shots of the Daleks’ flying saucer actually flying are rather embarrassing. They must have looked pretty crappy even back in 1964, which is why you see so little of them. I can’t help wondering why they needed these shots anyway. If you’re going to do it that badly, then why do it at all? Then there’s the Robotmen. Their headsets are awful, and some of their acting doesn’t seem a lot better. Yet harping on about these things is all missing the point. I concede all of these drawbacks, and yet I loved it.

This story is all about the triumphant resurrection of the Daleks. They had a massive part to play in the success of the first season, and as a reward they get a story which allows us the iconic shots of the lone Dalek rising out of the Thames, and Daleks trundling across Westminster Bridge and around Trafalgar Square. The shots of the robotmen overseeing the enslaved humans dragging wagons into the mine are really good too.  There’s some lovely performances too. Bernard Kay – again, a name you might not know, but a face you surely do – is always good value for money. It was nice to see Nicholas Smith – Mr. Rumboldt from ‘Are You Being Served’ popping up in the mine scenes too. If you twist my arm and force me to tell the truth I’d admit that it’s probably at least an episode too long, and yet I would still far rather watch this than the film version any day of the week. I would also far rather watch this than ‘The Daleks’ .The original Dalek serial is too long at 7 episodes, and I’m afraid that the Thals get on my wick after a while, being, in my considered opinion, a bunch of big girls’ blouses. And if that wasn’t enough, we have Susan’s leaving scene. This is neatly prepared for with a couple of the Doctor’s comments as he notices the burgeoning romance between Susan and David Campbell. Actually, I say burgeoning, but this was 1964 family viewing, so subtle hints are all we get. The Doctor has been criticised for his indecent haste in packing Susan off at the first opportunity, but I think that this is in character, as a protracted leaving scene would not be something he could handle yet. This was the first ever leaving scene in Doctor Who, and in my view Hartnell pulls it off brilliantly. These little emotional moments, where he is called on to put out real tenderness, really show off what a good actor he was.

Judging by the fact that she was willing to appear in 1983’s ‘The Five Doctors’, and other appearances on various shows and DVDs about the show, Carole Ann Ford has come to terms with her time on the show. You can’t help sympathising with her, since by all accounts she was sold on the ‘unearthly child’ concept of her role, yet found that the unearthly aspects of her character were largely ignored, and she became the first in a long line of screamers. For a lot of her time she was just used as a functional character whose purpose was there to move the plot forward. She wouldn’t be the last. I am sorry to see her go, but I think the show will cope without her far more easily than it would do without Ian or Barbara at this stage.

 What Have We Learned

Everything is cyclical. Or, put it another way, London in 2164 will be a dead ringer for London 1964

William Hartnell is capable of scenes of genuine emotional intensity

Daleks keep pets

9: Planet of Giants

Before Watching

Remember how I told you that I used to read about Doctor Who in Doctor Who Weekly/Monthly and various books? Well, somewhere along the line I once read that “Planet of Giants” was allegedly one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever made.

Well, I’m taking that with a pinch of salt. “The Sensorites” has the reputation of being a story which puts most people off their attempts to watch the whole of classic Doctor Who before they’ve even finished the first season, yet I found no trouble watching it, and found bits that I even quite liked. Anyway, there’s a special reason for watching it. This is the last story where the original TARDIS crew both arrive at the start and leave together. Next up is the Dalek Invasion of Earth, and that’s when Susan’s off.

After Watching

Sometimes I have difficulty understanding why other people formed the opinions that they did about some of these stories. I felt that Planet of Giants was absolutely fine, and enjoyed it a lot.

One of the things I’ve noticed about the show at this early stage of its development is how willing the team are to experiment and try something different. This is something different again, a story in which the travellers essentially have no interaction with the inhabitants of the place where they’ve landed.

Once again, a TARDIS malfunction is the catalyst for a lot of what happens in this story. An alarm goes off as the TARDIS is landing. The fault locator tells the crew that there’s nothing wrong – but hey, it did that in Edge of Destruction as well, so it’s not the kind of thing I’d be happy to stake my pension on. They leave the TARDIS, and find that they’re in a world where they are only slightly bigger than ants. The title suggest that this is an alien planet, but when the crew find a huge seed packet with the word Norwich on it, they realise its Earth, and they have shrunk, caused by the TARDIS malfunction.

It is a feature of these early stories that the crew have to get split up, and one of them (at least one) has to get her or himself into a pickle. For a change the pickle in this one is Ian’s – who becomes trapped in a matchbox and taken into the house. This is where the other strand of the plot starts to become obvious. The matchbox has been picked up by a governmental official, Farrow, who has come to tell a corrupt industrialist called Forester that he is recommending that the government do not license his insecticide DN6. Forester takes issue with this, and shoots him for it.

So you’ve got two strands of the plot gradually coming together. Firstly there’s the crew’s attempts to come back together, complicated by the fact that Barbara has come into contact with the insecticide. Then there’s the other strand, with the scientist Smithers,(no, really, that’s his name)  who created the insecticide, gradually coming to realise how dangerous it is, and Forester’s crimes eventually being revealed. Now although the travellers do attempt to warn authorities about the insecticide, they are totally powerless to do so, and so once again they don’t really influence events. Well, this is Earth after all.

This story scored for me on several levels.

It turns out that this was originally made as 4 episodes, but fearing that the pace was too slow, Verity Lambert insisted that it was edited down to 3. They did a hell of a job with the edit, because I had no idea that it was originally a 4 parter. You can’t see where there are plot elements or possible action scenes missing. Speaking of which –

I think that the Special Effects are amazing. The giant sink set is superb, and the model fly which sits on a pile of grain, which incidentally infects Barbara with the insecticide is possibly the most convincing giant insect that ever appeared in the classic series. It’s far more convincing than the sorry flying creature in The Green Death, and beats my own personal favourite, the Wirrn from the Ark in Space. It’s just terrific. During the first series, while I was watching the special features on one of the discs I was sure that it mentioned that this idea was one of the first to be discussed as a plot idea for the series, and I have to say, it worked very well. You wouldn’t necessarily think that having two such disparate plot strands would work, yet it does. The whole Farrow – Forester – Smithers thing works, maybe because the presence of Alan Tilvern as Forester firmly puts it within the familiar milieu of 1960s crime drama. If you’ve watched as many old films as I have, you’d recognise his face. Here’s a thing. I did an internet check just before I started writing the After Watching part of this review, and found out that Alan Tilvern actually played R.K.Maroon in Who Framed Roger Rabbit!

All in all, this is an enjoyable start to the second season. No single episode is quite as good as the first episode of An Unearthly Child, but then you only ever get one first ever episode of a show. The three episodes of Planet of Giants are far, far more enjoyable than episodes 2 to 4 of An Unearthly Child.

What Have We Learned?

It maybe suggests that it is not that the inside of the TARDIS is so much bigger than the outside – but that you shrink when you go inside it. Or maybe it’s just something whereby if you open the TARDIS doors too early, you get shrunk.

If Barbara starts rubbing her hands, ask her where she’d been putting them

Season One: Overview

Mighty 200 poll – First Season Ratings

Back in 2009 Doctor Who Magazine carried out a poll amongst its readers, to rate the first 200 stories of the classic and new series. These were the positions taken by the stories of the first season. I quote these as a useful comparison to my own ranking. Here’s the Mighty 200 ratings : -

The Daleks - 37

The Aztecs – 57

An Unearthly Child - 61

Marco Polo – 65

The Reign of Terror - 144

The Edge of Destruction - 158

The Keys of Marinus - 160

The Sensorites – 183

Now here’s my rating.

First season -

The Aztecs

Marco Polo

The Keys of Marinus

The Reign of Terror

The Edge of Destruction

The Daleks

An Unearthly Child

The Sensorites

This surprises me somewhat. Had you asked me prior to watching the season whether I thought the Historicals would come out so strongly, I would probably not have said so. This was based purely on how much I enjoyed each story – I didn’t take into account how seminal each story proved to be, or how influential – otherwise the Daleks would obviously have been much higher. As it is, though, it’s overly long, the Thals are a bit of a bore, and it outstays its welcome in my opinion. If I was ranking individual episodes, then episode one of An Unearthly Child would be a lot higher, but the caveman story which takes up three out of four episodes is a yawn. The Sensorites for me is nowhere near as bad as people have told me it is, but it’s still probably the least good of what has actually been a really good series. I’ve loved the way that the crew’s relationship with each other has developed, and feel sad that there’s only two more stories left with them as a unit. 

8: The Reign of Terror

Before Watching

Another historical, the last of the first series. In fact the last story of any kind of the first series. If you include “An Unearthly Child”– which admittedly is more of a Pre-Historical – then it’s 4 –all between the sci-fi serials and the Historicals. This one was not scripted by John Lucarotti, I knew, but by Dennis Spooner. This is a bit of a surprise since I mostly associate Dennis Spooner with some of the classic episodes of The Avengers, which would have led me to expect a more sci-fi sort of thing.

The French revolution is a fascinating if rather confusing period of History. I somehow don’t expect we’ll be seeing anything similar to “The Aztecs” with this one, although as much as Barbara wasn’t able to change history back then, it should stand even more so for this serial – we all know that the Doctor didn’t save Marie Antoinette, or discredit Robespierre, or see to it that Napoleon never took over.

My personal feeling before we start is that they might have trouble spinning 6 episodes out of this, but I’ve been wrong before. Only one way to find out.

After Watching

I’ll come clean from the start here. Although this one had some great moments, as a whole I liked it less than either “Marco Polo” or “The Aztecs”.  Dennis Spooner has a different approach to the Historical story from John Lucarotti. There’s more comedy, and less obvious educational content. That’s okay, but it’s different, and if it comes down to personal preference, I like the John Lucarotti approach more.

Any fictional account which uses the French Revolution as its background is going to invite comparisons with “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, or “A Tale of Two Cities” or both, and “The Reign of Terror” certainly does that. Which is not necessarily a negative, for the series has often drawn on a wide range of sources for inspiration for individual stories.

The French Revolution is a complicated period of History, and this sense of not really understanding what’s happening certainly comes across in the first couple of episodes of this story. “Marco Polo” and “The Aztecs” both took different approaches to the problems of a Historical story. In the former, the Travellers were attached to a real historical figure, and this figure, Polo, was cleverly used to share the viewers’ sympathies, and the duties of exposition and taking the plot forward. In “The Aztecs” the Travellers, well, Barbara, actually initiate action through trying to change history, and her attempts and their failure are the real engine that drives the plot forward. In “The Reign of Terror” the plot is neither nailed to the actions of one real historical person, nor does it revolve around the attempts of the regulars to alter History. In fact all the regulars can do is to try to find each other when they are separated, avoid the guillotine, and get back to the TARDIS. That’s perfectly consistent with much of what we’ve seen this series, I grant you.

This doesn’t mean that there are no historical figures portrayed in the story. Robespierre features quite prominently in the later episodes, and the Doctor even gets to speak to him. For me this scene isn’t all that effective. It’s a bit stilted, not least because Robespierre can’t really act out of character, and whatever the Doctor says to him we know that it can’t change history. Then towards the end, when Napoleon Bonaparte appears, Ian and Barbara see him as spectators do, they cannot get to interact with him. “The Reign of Terror” is at its best with the Doctor’s interactions with some of the more obviously comic characters – the overseer of a road gang he meets on his way to Paris, who calls him skinny, and soon after gets brained on the back of his head with the Doctor’s spade is one, and the jailor is another good example.

It’s important for the plot that the travellers are split up early in the second episode. Caught in a burning ‘safe’ house at the end of episode 1, Susan, Barbara and Ian are carried off to Paris and imprisonment, while the Doctor is left behind, and then woken by a young lad. The scene between him and Hartnell is rather charming, and another sign of just how much the grumpy gittishness of the first couple of stories has receded into the background.

Ian is imprisoned away from Barbara and Susan who are in the same cell as each other. Ian is in the same cell as a dying man, who gives him information for the British ‘scarlet pimpernel’ figure – James Sterling. The plot of many of the remaining episodes plays some interesting tricks before we find out just who this mysterious figure is. The Doctor, meanwhile, sets off to walk to Paris to free the rest of the crew. His plan involves stealing the uniform of a revolutionary official, and at first this seems to work rather well, although it does eventually lead to him having to meet Robespierre for the rather lifeless scene that I mentioned earlier.

I did like the final scene, though there is a real irony in it which I doubt was intended. After the travellers depart in the TARDIS we see the background of a star field, and hear the Doctor saying, “Our destiny is in the stars – so let’s go and search for it!” Was this a cryptic sign to the audience that in future season we’d see more and more stories like ‘The Daleks’ and fewer and fewer like ‘The Aztecs’? If it wasn’t, then its hugely ironic.

What Have We Learned?

The Doctor's favourite period of history is the French Revolution

COmedy can work well within Doctor Who if its not overdone. 

7. The Sensorites

Before Watching

I have it on good authority – ie – my brother who knows lots more about classic Who than I do – that “The Sensorites” is, and I quote, ‘crap’. Now, in my salad days when I first learned about the Hartnell and early Troughton stories I was always much more interested in the overtly sci fi ones than the Historicals – we live and learn –and so while the Sensorites didn’t quite entice me as much as let’s say The Ark, The Space Museum and The Keys of Marinus, I was still intrigued by the synopsis. I fancy that the Sensorites featured in that first Doctor Who annual as well- and I’m almost certain that the flippin’ Menoptera from The Web Planet were there as well.

As for expectations, well, so as long as it’s another good Barbara story we should get through it relatively unscathed. “The Keys of Marinus” doesn’t have a great reputation, and I enjoyed that one well enough.

After Watching

Well, it didn’t help that Jacqueline Hill must have gone on holiday after the first two episodes. As a result the story is a Barbara free zone in the middle episodes.

Now, one thing I’ve noticed and actually rather like about the stories from the first season of Doctor Who is the rather leisurely pace of storytelling. I love the new post 2005 Doctor Who – but the storytelling is usually very frenetic, blink and you’ll miss it stuff. In fact, sometimes I don’t blink, and I still end up thinking I might have missed something. However, I digress. So I really didn’t mind that the Sensorites is pretty slow moving.

The actual premise is not without interest. The Tardis lands on board a spaceship. On first investigation the TARDIS crew think that the spaceship’s human crew are dead. Actually they are just pining for the fjords – sorry – they are unconscious. It turns out that the ship has come under attack from the Sensorites, a race of aliens with psychic powers, humanoid bodies arms and legs, strange circular feet like dinner plates and overly large, bald bearded heads with tiny eyes and no mouths. Now, the interesting twist is that in the second episode we find out that the Sensorites aren’t actually evil, they are just timid and suspicious, and naturally frightened of humans considering the way that humans who landed on their planet before have treated them. They wish no harm on anyone, but cannot ever allow them to leave the Sense Sphere – their home planet, for fear they will bring other humans back with them.

Now, while the Doctor is establishing working relationships with the First Sensorite, the leader, someone or something has been poisoning the waterhole, and Ian nearly dies from it. Meanwhile the nefarious City Administrator – number 3 in the Sensorite hierarchy, sees a chance to indulge his hatred of humans, and improve his position within the hierarchy, and does away with number 2, while trying to pin the blame on our heroes.

I’d be very surprised if I wasn’t the first to point out that one plot point hinges on the fact that the Sensorites are supposed to be identical – yet they are clearly not! Even their faces are a little different to each other, and as for their bodies – well, they’re none of them giants, but some are short and thin, and some are short and. . . er . . . well, fat , for want of a better word, while some of them are in between. Yet merely changing the bands of office that they wear seems enough to enable them to impersonate each other. Huh?

The very best of Doctor Who stories manage to be more than the sum of their parts. This is somehow less. On paper, the Sensorites are an interesting alien race, but very little is actually done with their psychic powers, and our knowledge of their Society is hardly developed at all during the story. In the end Peter Glaze’s City Administrator is played as a two bit villain, rather than someone who genuinely believes he is doing what must be done for the good of his race, and their future. I’ve no doubt that if it was remade today this is the tack that they might take with it. At least they wouldn’t have too much difficulty condensing all these episodes down into a story lasting less than an hour.

I’m not imagining this, though. The TARDIS crew have become a group who seem to know, like and trust each other now. I know that Susan gets to leave in two stories’ time, in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”, and Ian and Barbara go before the end of the second season, in “The Chase”. How will the Doctor react to that, I wonder – is he going to revert to type and take it out on the new companions? I’ve been rooting for Ian and Barbara all along, and because the Doctor is part of their group, I’m rooting for him now, which I certainly wasn’t doing before “Marco Polo”. With the exception of “Edge of Destruction”, and the first episode of “An Unearthly Child”, the focus of each story’s plot has never been on the development of the relationships between the TARDIS crew, and yet for all that it clearly has developed by this, the penultimate story of the first season. That’s a strength. I know we shouldn’t compare classic Who with the post 2005 series, but the Doctor’s relationships with his companions has been the main plot element in many of the stories, and taken over the story arcs of the most recent series completely. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, but using it to outline the contrast with the original series. So going back to the first series, by this stage the relationships have developed so much that Ian and Barbara now trust the Doctor, and although he has been singularly unsuccessful in getting them home, that doesn’t seem to matter so much, and one suspects that the imperative to try to return them to their own time and place will become less important.

Speaking of Ian and Barbara, is it just me, or did anyone find Ian’s constant badgering the Doctor about asking the number one Sensorite to allow Barbara to join them just a little disconcerting? Ian is supposed to be at least the physical hero of the crew, but here he reminds me of nothing less than a whinging child pestering his Dad about when his Mum’s going to be home, after she’s left them to run off with Uncle Frank. On the plus side, this is a much better Susan story. I wouldn’t be surprised if Carole Ann Ford got quite excited when she saw the title of the first episode was ‘An Unearthly Child’, and must have though she’d be getting some juicy action stuff to do. Alas, she was only the first female companion to be lured in with promises, only to find her character becoming little more than a recipient for info dumps, a producer of screams on demand, and a functional character who can be used to blunder into something, or hurt herself, or whatever when the plot needs moving on. In this she is the one who has the telepathic abilities, and she gets a good defiant teen scene with Hartnell.

If I have to deliver a verdict on The Sensorites, then no, it’s not great. Sensorite society isn’t explored or portrayed with any great depth, and at times this is quite sub-Terry Nation stuff. But . . . it has a kind of charm about it. And I can’t lose sight of the fact that the villain of the piece, the City Administrator, is played by Peter Glaze! I mean come on, this is Peter Glaze from Crackerjack (CRACKERJACK!). The man who invented d’oh! A more jolly and cheerful and above all else unvillainous little man you couldn’t hope to meet. I can forgive him any amount of slices of ham that he serves up in this role. So the Sensorites gets by, and we move on pleasantly enough to pastures new.

What Have We Learned?

All Sensorites are identical, although some are more identical than others.

The TARDIS can detect when it’s moving even when it’s stopped.

If you really want to confuse a Sensorite, wait till he’s asleep, then swap his bands of office with somebody else’s.

It’s the shy and timid ones you have to keep the closest eye on sometimes.

Ian’s true feelings towards Barbara may be that he sees her as a mother figure. Susan surely does. 

6. The Aztecs

Phew - my school's inspection is over, and so that source of stress, and distraction from the serious job in hand of watching every classic Doctor Who episode is out of the way. Good job too. 

Before Watching

“Doctor Who” was originally conceived by Sydney Newman as a show where stories involving the Doctor travelling back to witness and to an extent participate in some of the great events of Earth History would be just as important as those featuring Science fiction elements. It’s a matter of public record that he hated “The Daleks”, even though the success of this second story dictated the eventual path that the series would take. Still, the so-called Historicals were very much a part of the William Hartnell era of the show, and even if they have proven to be an evolutionary cul de sac in the show’s development.

As we’ve already seen, the first, and possibly greatest , of the Historicals, John Lucarotti’s “Marco Polo” doesn’t exist in the archives. This four parter, then , is my first chance to accurately assess what I’ve been missing with my previously dismissive attitude towards them. I really enjoyed “Marco Polo”, so this story has a lot to live up to.

After Watching

I’m glad that this isn’t the first Hartnell era story that I’ve watched. If it had been I might have spent so much time concentrating on what wasn’t in it, that I would have missed out on what is so good about what is in it.

I think that it’s a very good example of what Doctor Who could do well. I don’t think that you would ever see a story like this in the new series, or really in any other era. For one thing, the main motivation for all of the characters except Barbara is to find a way to open the tomb in which they left the TARDIS to enable them to leave. This is totally in keeping with what we’ve seen so far in this first season. It’s only Barbara who wants to do something else, to improve a situation, and right a wrong. She wants to persuade the Aztecs to abandon their custom of blood sacrifice. She is mistaken for the reincarnation of the Goddess Yetaxa since she is wearing Yetaxa’s bracelet that she picked up from inside the tomb. Barbara uses this mistake to try to impose her will upon them. Not only does she fail, she has to endure the Doctor telling her that she is doomed to fail, and that she is utterly powerless to change their doomed destiny. In case we didn’t get that point, the last we see of any of the Aztecs themselves is a close up of the manic face of Tlotoxl, the High Priest of the Blood Sacrifice, just as he is in the process of carrying out said sacrifice.

This sounds rather bleak, but it actually isn’t; rather it raises some interesting, almost philosophical questions. For example – what right do the Doctor and his companions actually have to go about changing the course of events? What right do they have to challenge the Aztecs sincerely held beliefs, however abhorrent those beliefs might actually be to us today? Answers on a postcard, please.

There’s a great deal to enjoy about this story. It’s all set in the studio, and although the painted backdrops are a little too obviously painted in some shots, the fact is that the designer has done a marvelous job with the sets. They get full value out of them too – I’m sure that every penny that was spent here is shown on the screen.

The regular and supporting cast are very good here too. Starting with the guests, John Ringham, a man best known probably for playing stuffy businessmen and civil servants, and Jan Francis’ character Penny’s well meaning father in “Just Good Friends”  puts in a wonderfully sly and oleaginous performance as Tlotoxl. Tlotoxl is the chief villain in the story, and yet such is the complexity of the plot that when you break down his actions and his motivations, you can’t help seeing another side to him. To whit, while Tlotoxl is a nasty bit of work, he does what he does because -

* He suspects that Barbara is not Yetaxa – he’s right! She isn’t!

* He fears that she means to try to get them to change their whole way of life and belief system – he’s right! She does!

In that light, his actions are totally understandable, and, if we judge his actions by the standards of his own society, then they are justifiable as well.

There’s a nicely observed portrayal of the High Priest of Knowledge, Autloc, by Keith Pyott as a counterpoint to Tlotoxl. Autloc is unswervingly loyal to Yetaxa, yet his doubt as she asks him to overturn his whole belief system is there in every word he utters and every expression on his face. In the end he accepts what Barbara tells him, and as a result he elects to leave behind his status, his family and all his worldly possessions and go out into the wilderness. Now, the Doctor at the end tells Barbara that if she didn’t save a civilization – which she didn’t – then at least she saved one man. Now surely the audience are expected to take this as irony, for its hard not to draw the conclusion that Autloc would have been far better off had she never appeared in the first place.

I’ve known a few meatheads like Ian Cullen’s Ixta in my time as well. I’ll be honest, I haven’t known many Science teachers who would have been able to defeat him in a fight to the death the way that Ian does, but William Russell has enough credit in the bank with me by this time that I’m perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief.

I absolutely loved the sub plot of the Doctor’s ‘romance’ with Cameca, played beautifully by Margot Van der Burgh. She would return to the series in one of my favourite Tom Baker stories , “The Keeper of Traken”. The Doctor, not understanding enough of Aztec customs, ends up proposing marriage to Cameca, and you get the idea that he is not totally dismayed when he finds out what he has done. The romance is of course doomed, for the Travellers have to leave, and more than that, they need Cameca’s help to do so. She knows that they must leave, and that she will not be marrying the Doctor, yet she helps them anyway, and shows true nobility of spirit. There’s a touching little Hartnell scene where he considers discarding the keepsake that she has given him before entering the TARDIS, but cannot quite bring himself to do so. He has never seemed more human at any earlier time in this series.

“The Aztecs” is certainly very much a Barbara show. How fortunate the team were to cast Jacqueline Hill in the role. In every story we’ve seen so far, and practically in every scene in which she is given something meaningful to do she is compelling, and a very good actress indeed. So a Barbaracentric show is usually going to be a winner. If they’d renamed the Aztecs something alien – like the Dorgs or something, and set this on a different planet, it would probably rightly be remembered as one of the classic ‘alien’ stories.

It’s a terrific story, and difficult to fault. For the first time we, the audience, are asked to seriously consider the effects that contact with the Travellers has on the people that they meet. It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that two good people have had their lives made worse – Cameca through heartbreak, and Autloc through losing everything. This is not the same as the Thals who made the decision of their own free will to join the fight against the Daleks and were killed during the attack on the city – they at least had something to gain.

It also tries to deal with the question of changing History, and this is more problematical. You’ll have to give me time for a little digression with this one.

“You can’t change History – not one line!” thunders the Doctor. Now, as wonderful as this line is, and as well as it does fit this story, it doesn’t actually bear close analysis.  It doesn’t even work when you consider what has already happened in this first season. Work with me on this one. Let me give you an example: -

In “The Daleks”, it is crystal clear that the Thals would never have attacked the Dalek city had Ian not made the threat towards Alydon’s lady friend, and shaken them out of their pacifism. Therefore, Ian has changed the history of Skaro, QED.

So . . . either you CAN change History . . . or the Travellers’ actions are actually part of History, and are meant to happen. If that is the case, then this introduces the vexed question of predestination. This basically says that what is going to happen has already been decided, and whatever we might think about free will, we have none, and are acting according to a script from which we can never deviate, even if we have no awareness of it whatsoever. In which case nobody is good, nobody is evil, and nothing has any point. This is certainly not what Doctor Who has ever said.

It’s only really since the 2005 revival that this issue has been attacked head on. What we’ve ended up with is the only sensible model of History in which Doctor Who can work. The current attitude towards changing History in the show is that you can change SOME of History, but there are fixed points in Time which cannot be changed without the whole of reality falling part, as was articulated during the Tenth Doctor’s tenure in several stories. This gives the Doctor the leeway to change events on Skaro, for instance.

So, in terms of retrospective continuity, you can suggest that maybe the Doctor knows that this is a fixed point in Time, and so rather than having to go into long, involved and complicated explanations uses the simplified line of argument that you can’t change any of History, knowing full well that Barbara should not be able to change this point, and probably confident that he can counteract anything she achieves if he needs to.

Of course, the real reason why he said this is that we know that Barbara can’t make the Aztecs give up blood sacrifice, because they didn’t. Which is the real reason why changing or not changing history only really matters in the Historicals – for who knows what the history of Skaro was going to be anyway?

What have we learned ?

That you can’t change History, not one line of it (as long as it’s Earth History, and it happened  prior to the year in which the programme was made. As far as anything else is concerned, play  ball).

·         As I’d suspected for a while now, the Doctor DOES have a heart. (although it is a while before he will come clean about having two of them) 

5. The Keys of Marinus

Before Watching

Ah, I told you that this one has been on my hit list for donkey’s years didn’t I? Having read some comments about this story online I get the idea that it has a reputation of being Terry Nation’s Difficult Second Album. I remember the Voord, who are the main villains in this story, from a story in the first Doctor Who Annual. I don’t know how much they cost now, but you could pick one up in decent nick for pennies in jumble sales back in the 70s.

I liked the idea of the Conscience Machine, of the keeper of it living on this isolated island, and of the quest for the Doctor and the companions to bring back the five keys. This basic plot engine was similar I suppose to the Key to Time malarkey in Tom Baker’s day.

I can remember reading Philip Hinchcliffe’s novelisation back in the day, and not being overly impressed. I can’t for the life of me remember anything that happens in it. So let’s rectify that now.

After Watching

Well, I’m very sorry to all the naysayers, but in my opinion, that really wasn’t bad at all. I loved the first episode. Alright, the filmed shot of Susan’s shoe dissolving in the acid pool isn’t that well done, and there are some fairly obvious errors. I will be honest, I watched this one back with the text on to confirm that I had seen a stage hand who wasn’t supposed to be there when the Voord was caught out by the revolving wall. I don’t mind that much. In some ways it’s a real contrast to the opulent production values of “Marco Polo”. Then Arbitan the Keeper appeared, and I exclaimed, “That’s George Colouris!” George Colouris would have a pretty decent claim to being the first big name guest star actor ever to appear in Doctor Who. Maybe the name doesn’t mean a great deal to you now, but George Colouris had a very important role in one of the most important films ever made in the History of Cinema. During the late 1930s Colouris was working in the USA, and joined Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre. In Citizen Kane Colouris is cast as the lawyer who has to break the news to Kane’s mum that her son has become heir to a multi million dollar fortune, and then becomes Kane’s exasperated legal guardian.

Colouris brings a certain gravitas to the party, although somehow some of this is lost when he asks the travellers if they will look for his daughter while they look for the keys for him. I don’t know, I would have preferred him more powerful and other worldly than being concerned about lost daughters. I mean , it’s not exactly a crucial plot point that Sabetha, who we meet first in episode 2, actually is Arbitan’s daughter. It wouldn’t make any real difference if she wasn’t.

Once again, though, as with “The Daleks”, the Travellers’ initial reaction is ‘stuff what’s going on here, we’re off back to the TARDIS’. Mind you, the whole thing with the Conscience Machine is rather dodgy. Arbitan’s info dump about it is a little bit of a yawn, but basically it turns out that this is a mind control device. Yes, he says that he will only use it for good, but that’s not the point. Mind control is wrong, so we are forced to ask the question, can you achieve good through doing something evil? Put it another way, quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Yartek, leader/controller of the Voord developed the ability to resist the Conscience Machine some 700 years earlier,which is why the keys were dispersed throughout Marinus. OK. But the Machine has had an upgrade of some kind, and will now work on Yartek, so Arbitan wants his keys back. He can’t be arsed to get them himself, so wants the Doctor and companions to go and fetch them. Understandably their reaction is ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ so Arbitan places a forcefield around the TARDIS so that the travellers can’t leave anyway. Now, I won’t be the first to ask why Arbitan doesn’t place one around himself at least, in which case the Voord wouldn’t be able to kill him. The answer being that George Colouris had specified that he could only do one episode, so for the story’s sake he has to be killed off. I really shouldn’t watch these episodes with the text on. I like the transporter bracelets that Arbitan gives them. The text suggested that Terry Nation liked them as well, and that’s why he used transporter bracelets in Blakes Seven. I thought that they had to use transporters for the same reason that Star Trek did – because special effects shots of spaceships landing on planets were too expensive and looked crappy anyway. But maybe this story is why he picked on bracelets.

I didn’t see anything greatly wrong with the first episode. As for the ones that followed, well, I’m sorry, but I like a good quest storyline. In fact I don’t even mind a not so good quest storyline. The Velvet Web – episode two – is an unusually poetic title for Terry Nation, and although the pace is quite languid at times, it’s actually rather good and quite amusing. The way this story has been worked out is that they have a self contained adventure in each place where a key can be found. For an action-minded script writer like Terry Nation I can see that this must have had a huge appeal. For set and costume designers however it must have been an absolute nightmare. The plot of “The Velvet Web” owes something to the lotus eaters episode from the Odyssey. The Doctor and companions arrive in a place where it seems that the locals’ dearest wish is to provide for their every whim and desire. Only as the story develops does Barbara begin to see what is really happening. The fabulous clothes they have been given are rags. The Doctor’s laboratory he has asked for is a mostly empty room with a couple of dirty mugs. It turns out that this place is run by the Morphotons, a group of brains with eyes on huge stalks, living in jars. Their brains have outgrown their bodies. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m always in the market for a brains in jars story. They feed the unwary with visions of being given their wildest dreams, while simultaneously leaching away their memories of their life before, eventually placing them into zombie-like slavery. Once Barbara has broken the compulsion though she goes into the room where the Morphotons are kept, and – well – she only manages to smash one of the jars, but it seems to do the trick. The brains shrivel and die, and the travellers and two slaves, Altos and Sabetha are freed from their compulsion. Altos and Sabetha who is Arbitan’s daughter, were both originally sent by Arbitan to retrieve the keys.

There is a reason why Sabetha and Altos join the band. This is the first time that one of the regulars got a fortnight holiday break during the season, and it’s William Hartnell. So in the next two episodes they get to take over some of his lines and actions. Speaking of which , episode three sees Terry Nation revert to type with the title. This one is called “The Screaming Jungle” because it is set in a Screaming Jungle. Now, let’s be fair, we’re in good, Indiana Jones territory with this one. You have a jungle, and a strange temple that surely houses the artefact we’re after. Yes, there it is on the statue’s forehead. Barbara reaches up to grab it, throws it down, and then the statue’s arms grab her, and it pulls the old revolving statue trick. Worse than that, Sabetha looks at the key, and it’s a fake! Remember that, it’s a plot point we’ll come back to later on. Ian does the same as Barbara, and when the two of them are reunited, they find Darius, who gets his clothes from the same monk’s oufitters as Arbitan. He conveniently dies, when giving them a cryptic clue to the whereabouts of the key. I have to say that Ian, the Science teacher, is a little slow off the mark in realising that it’s a chemical formula, but hey, we all have our off days.

Right, so episode 3 was jungle – where are we going for episode 4? What looks like the polar ice caps. I bet the designers were tearing their hair out by this time. Ian and Barbara fall into the hands of Vasor, a big fur trapper, who looks like he’s eaten half a badger and left its arse hanging out. Like Ganatus before him, he has the hots for Barbara, and unlike Ganatus, he isn’t going to be a gentleman about it. Ian, whom he sent out to die with wolf-attracting raw meat in his bag, returns with the other three whom he went out to look for, and saves the day.

Right’ let’s have a wee digression on sexual morality in “Doctor Who” shall we? It’s what you’ve all been waiting for, I’m sure. In 2015, watching the first series, I suppose it’s inevitable to ask the question about Ian and Barbara – are they or aren’t they? But I have to wonder, was that question even on the agenda in 1963? I mean, let’s look at the facts. They weren’t married  - not to each other anyway, so I suppose that a hint of anything the least bit sexual wouldn’t have been allowed. Here’s a point too. Does anyone ever actually say that Ian is single? We know that Barbara is Miss Wright, and that in 1963 Miss meant Miss. But how about Ian? True, he never mentions having a wife and/or family, but then some men don’t. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring, but again . . .

I rather like the quest elements of this episode. They have to cross an ice chasm on a rope bridge. Hmm. That’s the second time in two stories Terry Nation has had our heroes having to cross a chasm. He clearly has something about them, and you don’t need me to make the obvious Freudian connection. Inside the ice cave they find the key, encased in a block of ice, surrounded by four frozen knights. The idea is that they have to turn on the central heating pipes – no really – in order to melt the ice, which will at the same time wake up the knights. Meanwhile, old badger-arse chops turns up and disconnects one end of the rope bridge. Well, Susan crawls across on some large icicles, and reconnects the bridge, while the others use the time honoured method of grabbing the key and running like hell. If only they’d not left their bracelets with the trapper. One long trek later . . .

The last key, then is retrieved when the story changes tack again to become a courtroom drama, when Ian is accused of murdering a museum guard and stealing the key he was guarding. Ah, but the guard was working with the Doctor, who is back from his hols. And the Doctor defends Ian, while Barbara, Susan and the other two find the murderer. OK – rather run of the mill and humdrum, although again, a complete contrast to what has gone before. Finally back to where it all started and the Conscience Machine. We get our first sight of Yartek, the real villain of the piece, who has a Voord helmet, although his doesn’t have an antenna. Earlier on, each of the Voord helmets had a slightly differently shaped antenna on it – thus foreshadowing the Tellytubbies by several decades. None of them ever take their helmets off so we can’t see if they are humanoid, or if their helmets are shaped oddly because they’re shaped oddly. We can’t even tell if Yartek is a Voord – he calls them his ‘creatures’ so it suggest that maybe he isn’t. Right, remember the fake key? Guess how the good guys bugger up the conscience machine? Well, we’ve seen worse denouements I’m sure.

Overall – and a lot of people won’t agree with me – I really rather enjoyed this, and it didn’t terribly outstay its welcome. Jacqueline Hill is always value for money, and you can definitely see how relationships between the TARDIS crew have changed since “The Daleks”. They ‘ve been through so much by this point that they know how to all pull together – even if Susan is still being underused.

What Have We Learned?

Sometimes what looks like a man in a wetsuit actually is meant to be a man in a wetsuit.

If a man in a white robe gives you a transporter bracelet – don’t take it off and leave it in a fur trapper’s hut.

Brains in jars are never to be trusted.

If it’s written by Terry Nation, thumb forward through the script until you reach the bit with the chasm.