16: The Chase

Before Watching

Even though I’ve never watched “The Chase” before I know that this is Ian and Barbara’s last story. I have mixed feelings about it. I think that William Russell did a sterling job in what , at times, must have seemed to him like utter nonsense, and my admiration for the acting skills of Jaqueline Hill has already been put on record in this very blog on more than one occasion. But I do accept that things change. Ian and Barbara’s job was originally to be the viewer’s anchor, our point of focus. With so much strange an unusual going on around them, with the Doctor proving so mercurial and unpredictable in the earliest stories, they were a reassuring presence. But things have changed since then. We know the Doctor now, and while he can still be snappy, and prone to sudden fits of anger, we know that he wants the best for his friends, and will never let them down. His body might not let him solve situation through his physical prowess, but he’ll solve them anyway, through other means. He is now the hero of his own show. He no longer needs Ian to get him out of scrapes, and he no longer needs Barbara to argue with, and to pull him back in when he is out of line. Time for them to go.

As with the preceding story, “The Space Museum”, this one really doesn’t have much of a reputation. It’s not true that fandom in general has no good words for the story – they have many very good words for it, none of which I can use in a family blog. As ever, though, I intend to keep an open mind – and I have a box of tissues on standby for Ian and Barbara’s farewell.

After Watching

Never has the phrase ‘somehow manages to be less than the sum of its parts’ been more appropriate for a Doctor Who story. “The Chase” doesn’t maintain the level of sustained madness we saw in “The Web Planet”, but it has moments which are so . .. well, for want of a better phrase, downright wrong, that are unmatched in any of the shows I’ve watched since I began. And yet . . .

I liked the way that the first episode took it for granted that you had remembered what had happened before, and showed the TARDIS crew having some downtime and the equivalent of a lazy Sunday afternoon, before tuning into the Dalek channel on Time TV. It’s not quite as good as Dave, but better than QVC.  I also liked the scene of the Dalek assassination squad trundling their way into their time machine. Their time machine itself, I did not like so much. The only way that I can describe its external appearance is like this. I once saw a coffee table made out of three pieces of MDF. Two piece slotted together in an X to make the stand, and on top of that went a large circular piece for the table top. Imagine that scaled up, and that’s what the Dalek time and space ship looked like. It’s all very disappointing. I suppose that the Daleks never did get a hang of aesthetics. Their spaceship in The Dalek Invasion of Earth earlier in this season looked crap too.

In Terry Nation’s non-Dalek story, The Keys of Marinus, he opted for a very episodic series of episodes – if that’s not a tautology – or to put it another way – under the umbrella of the search for the keys, the travelers ended up participating in several different self-contained adventures, and there’s more than an element of this in “The Chase” too. The first of these takes place on the desert planet, Aridius. This planet is home to the Aridians, a race of semi humanoids with some rather fishy features, who remind me just a tad of the aquaphibians’ King Triton in “Stingray”. I knew from “The Wife in Space” and “Running through Corridors” that one of the Aridians is none other than Hywel Bennett. The same sources had alerted me to the fact that Martin Jarvis was also one of the Menoptera in “The Web Planet”. In both cases I wouldn’t have spotted this fact unless I’d noticed it on the credits. These fishy wimps are put to work, brushing the sand away from the TARDIS by the newly arrived Daleks – using toothbrushes by the look of it – and as soon as the Daleks put the slightest bit of pressure on them they promise to hand over the Doctor and the crew. Serves them right that the Doctor did nothing to solve their own problems and left them in the lurch.

The next part of the story saw the TARDIS land on the top of the Empire state building, which allowed me to indulge in another enjoyable bout of pointless pedantry. When the TARDIS eventually dematerializes, the wall behind it is clearly a brick wall. Well, the Empire State Building is not, and never was made of bricks. The nearby Chrysler Building, which is slightly smaller, and slightly older to the tune of a few months, was built from bricks, and is actually the world’s tallest brick building. Blue Peter’s Peter Purves (remember the name, he’ll be back) plays the amiable cretin Morton Dill from Alabama, who decides that the sudden appearance of the TARDIS denotes that a movie is being shot there, and greets the Daleks when they appear soon after in the same manner. Why don’t they shoot him? Heaven alone knows, but then this section of the story is very clearly being played for laughs. Doesn’t find many of them, but it tries.

Off again then, and this time onto a sailing ship. For the very last time, a humanoid male gets the hots for Barbara again. When she got back to civilization, I bet that was one thing she didn’t miss. Although I don’t know, maybe in 60s Britain this was the norm for her. Anyway, the Daleks arrive soon, the Travellers escape, and a jolly free for all ensues in which the crew all end up leaving the ship , as does one Dalek which walks – er – trundles the plank for reasons best known to itself. Hands up who didn’t know that the deserted ship would turn out to be none other than the famous Mary Celeste?

Enough of this enforced jollity. The TARDIS lands in a haunted house – and for a while the DOCTOR decides that this must be a recess of the human mind. Huh? Barbara becomes a most un-Barbara like screamer, as Dracula and Frankenstein both rear their unconvincing heads. The Daleks arrive, and are attacked by the Dracula and Frankenstein robots? – if that is what they are. Vicki somehow gets separated and ends up on the Dalek ship, just in time to see them making a replica of the Doctor, whose mission will be to kill the Crew. As the TARDIS departs we see that this is all an exhibit for the Ghana international fair of 1999.

Well, with two episodes of pointless padding over, we can at least now get on with the story – such as it is. Vicki somehow manages to evade capture on the Dalek ship. These Daleks are particularly inept – as you can see from the pig’s ear they make of the Doctor’s replica. In many shots he is played by Edmund Warwick, who, bless him, didn’t bear much of a resemblance to William Hartnell, either facially, or in body type. I’m sure that there was some rationale behind the decision not to have William Hartnell double up as his own double, but it was to the detriment of the story.

Right then, to the climax on Mechanus. Mechanus, planet of giant mushrooms, and robots that look like geodesic domes. Actually I like the idea of the Mechanoids. They were robots left on Mechanus to tame the jungles, make it habitable for humans, and build a city, and then the humans abandoned the project, and the Mechanoids developed minds of their own. There’s quite a nice model city, where the daleks have a good old rumble with the Mechanoids, and the Travellers meet the shipwrecked space pilot Steven Taylor. Now, Steven’s resemblance to Morton Dill is a hell of a lot better than the robot Doctor’s resemblance to the Doctor, and hardly surprising since it is the self same Peter Purves we first met a couple of episodes ago, although not the same character. Was there a rule against having more than one actor playing two parts? If so – why do it this way. It makes no difference whether Peter Purves or another actor who looks nothing like him plays Morton Dill. Go figure.

Alright, Ian and Barbara’s departure. This one forms a real contrast with Susan’s. There’s no room for sentiment here as they have to practically beg the Doctor to set the controls on the Dalek timeship to take them home. He gets all angry and grumpy, telling them that there is a 50% chance that they will die in the process. We know while we’re watching it though he is only saying this because he can’t bring himself to tell them how much he doesn’t want them to go, and how much he is going to miss them. I have to say – me too. I’ll be honest, I’d think twice about getting into a timeship that looks like flat pack MFI furniture. It was good to see them get a little montage of them enjoying being back in London. They’re going to be alright, and if they manage to get a little jiggy with each other now, well, good for them.

What Have We Learned?

Well, we know what really happened to the Mary Celeste - sort of

Doctor Who and Dracula and Frankenstein really don't mix

Aridians are a bunch of ...  
Peter Purves had a career before Blue Peter