11:The Rescue

Before Watching

Confession time. I have actually watched this story before. Years ago now UK Gold used to show some of the old stories on a Friday night. I watched “The Rescue”, “The Time Meddler”, “Tomb of the Cybermen”, and the last few parts of “The War Games” if I recall correctly. At this stage of the game, many years later, it’s difficult to recall that many details of any of them, although some of them made more impression than others at the time.

The Rescue then. Let me summarise what I remember. Alien planet. Crashed spaceship from Earth in the future. Young girl, Vicky, terrorised by large spiky alien. In the end she joins the TARDIS crew, which Susan has handily just left.

It’s only two parts so it should be relatively painless, but from what I recall I’m not exactly expecting a classic here.

After Watching

It was interesting to see that Maureen O’Brien who plays Vicky got at least as much to do as Carole Ann Ford ever did – and probably quite a bit more than in any episode other than episode one of “An Unearthly Child”. You can see that there’s already some affection there between the Doctor and her – so obviously this is the direction that the production team decided that they wanted Hartnell’s Doctor to take, and that’s all to the good. He’s got the capability to allow flashes of the grumpy old git out now and again, just for a bit of variety and to stop the show getting too saccharine.

It hasn’t been often so far that the TARDIS has landed on a planet the Doctor has visited in the past, but I suppose it helps explain how he knows that the ‘monster’ Koquillion, is really Bennett, Vicky’s fellow castaway, in a Didonian costume. Now, this is one of my problems with this story. Bennett is, by all accounts, a nasty piece of work. He’s a criminal, who used the crash to set about murdering his captors, and the remaining Didonians he found. Vicky is only kept alive as she doesn’t know what he is and what he’s done, and she will be his ticket onto the rescue ship when it eventually arrives. As I say, thoroughly nasty , and yet, not in the least bit frightening. Or interesting for that matter.

This story didn’t look quite as cheap as I remembered. The exteriors of the ship looked quite like what Gerry Anderson was doing at roughly the same time. Scenes in the abandoned Didonian buildings look really rather good in moody black and white. But overall, this whole story, all two episodes of it, is rather bland.  If it had to stand alone – well, it wouldn’t really. But it gets by, I think because we’ve just spent 6 weeks fighting the Daleks – (well, three consecutive evenings in my case, but you know where I’m coming from) and this is at least a contrast and a change of pace. But it’s hard to find that much to get excited about with it. The main purpose of this story is to introduce us to Vicky, and to help us get to know and hopefully like her, since she’s going to be a member of the regular cast from now on. And this, at least, it does fairly well. As I mentioned earlier, there’s an interesting relationship developing between her and the Doctor.

I really haven’t got a lot more to say about this one, but then I don’t honestly think that there is a lot more to say about it anyway. The fact that it was written by story editor David Whitaker suggests that this was written to fill in a gap, and also to helpfully introduce the new companion. It’s nowhere near as unconventional as his first Doctor Who story, The Edge of Destruction. Sadly, it’s nowhere near as interesting either.

What Have We Learned?

Ian must never, ever again say the words 'Cocky Likkin'