Well, for once, this isn’t actually a
before watching at all. I’d better explain that. Before this experiment
started, last summer in fact, I found out that the Watch digital channel was
showing old episodes of classic Who, and, joy of joys, one Saturday they were
screening the Tomb of the Cybermen in its entirety. I set the Tivo box to record
it, and a couple of days later, when the family were all off doing whatever it
was they were doing, I watched it all.
The danger with watching what you have
always anticipated to be a classic, without actually having seen any of it
before, is that you find all your illusions are shattered, and that actually,
it maybe isn’t all that much to write home about. The thing is, though, this
wasn’t a critical viewing, like the way I’ve approached all of the 30+ stories
I’ve reviewed so far. This was just for pure pleasure, and while I admit that
the story certainly isn’t without its flaws, I sat there with a big silly grin
all over my silly old face for the whole two hours.
Still, it’s not good me pretending that
this is a first time watch, or even a first time for ages watch, as is going to
happen when we get to Pertwee, Baker and Davison. So if this turns out to be a
more critical, in the correct sense of the word, well, I can only apologise.
After
Watching
You can’t really fault the start of the
first episode. The location shots, albeit taken in a quarry by the look of
things, make Telos look appropriately bleak and inhospitable. In general the
design work on this story, and the look of the whole thing is pretty
impressive, bar for a couple of things which I shall come to in due course.
So, our heroes have landed on Telos at the
same time as an Earth Archaeological expedition, searching for the Tombs of the
Cybermen. The members of the expedition are worth spending a few moments
discussing. The first thing I noticed, and I don’t like being critical of
actors and actresses, but I have to say that in my opinion, the poor devil who
plays Hopper, the American accented captain of the Earth ship, gives probably
the worst acting performance I’ve yet to see in the course of writing this
blog. I’m sorry, but he’s absolutely dreadful – so wooden you practically want
to give him a wipeover with Mr. Sheen every time he opens his trap.
Well, Hopper isn’t the most important
character by a long chalk, and so if his was the only jarring note, we could
probably gloss over it. But, and I’m fully aware that I’m not the first person
to make this point, we do need to look at some of the claims of racism which
have been levelled at this story in the past. The man who has provided the funds
for the archaeological expedition, Eric Klieg, aided and abetted by a lady
called Kaftan, is the chief human villain of the piece. Klieg is a suitably
foreign sounding name, especially when compared with the comfortably anglo-saxon
names of most of the other expedition members. It’s difficult to tell precisely
in monochrome, but he certainly appears to have a Mediterranean complexion.
Kaftan is a likewise exotic name, and just in case we miss the point, it’s
fairly clear that Shirley Cooklin, the actress playing her, has had what
appears to be fake tan smeared all over her face. Very cheap fake tan as well,
judging by the clearly visible streaks, to which my eye is irresistibly drawn
every time she is shown in close up. When we looked at the last story, “”The
Evil of the Daleks, one jarring note was the presence of Kemel, Maxtible’s mute
Turkish servant. Kaftan too has a huge mute servant, Toberman, played by black
actor Roy Stewart.
I want to defend the show, I really, really
do. I want to say that look, this was the 1960s, and so you can’t blame the
show for making the kind of crass, lazy stereotyping which other shows of the
same time went in for. But I can’t. This isn’t a defence, not when you consider
why it is that people value Doctor Who as a show so much. The whole point is
that it ISN’T like other shows. I don’t think that the show is DELIBERATELY
following a racist agenda either here or in “TheEvil of the Daleks”. But I’m
very disappointed that nobody apparently stopped to consider just what message
using Kemel and Toberman in this way did send out, intentional or not.
Wrenching myself back to the review then,
Troughton’s Doctor is probably the most mischievous and quietly anarchic of all
of the Doctors, apart, possibly from Sylvester McCoy’s 7th Doctor,
and here he is at his most mischievous and delightfully irresponsible.
Actually, the more I watch of Patrick Troughton, the more I’m drawn to the
conclusion that some of the best features of McCoy’s Doctor were those that made
him like Troughton, at times. He pretty much aids and abets the party in
getting into the tombs, and reanimating the Cybermen, and you suspect that this
is motivated by a sense of curiosity as much as anything else. In fact, this is
actually a terrific story for Patrick Troughton. He acts rings around all of
the guest stars playing the human characters, which isn’t difficult considering
the rich vein of cardboard that Gerry Davis has mined for their
characteristation. George Pastell as Klieg and Shirley Cooklin as Kaftan, for
example are very one-dimensional. It’s a bit of a shame that they are so
clearly going to be the human villains of the piece that you know it within a
minute or two of each one opening their mouths. Going back to Patrick Troughton,
he gets a very touching scene with Victoria. It’s a plus point for the story
that it acknowledges that Victoria had to join the crew after her father died
saving the Doctor in the end of the previous story, The Evil of the Daleks.
This was actually the end of the previous season, and so it would be very easy
to decide that there’s no need to make any reference to the circumstances under
which she joined the crew now. I think it’s a strength of the show that this
story does, and it adds just a little more light and shade. As did Hartnell
before him, Troughton excels at these little moments of tenderness and pathos,
discussing, as he does, the fact that he too has family who now ‘sleep in his
memory’ most of the time. Poetry, that. Actually this is a good story for
Deborah Watling’s Victoria too. In her scenes with Kaftan she gets to show that
she’s made of stern enough stuff to be worth her place on the crew.
As I have already said, I thoroughly
enjoyed watching this. But. . . if I engage my critical faculties there are a
few observations I can make. Firstly, barring the uneven level of performances
of some of the guest stars, it’s pretty tense, exciting and enjoyable right up
to the point when the Cybermen reanimate and break out of their tombs. This
doesn’t look bad now, but in the mid 60s it must have seemed state of the art.
However, once the Cybermen come out of their tombs, well, for me this is where
the story runs out of steam somewhat. There’s the usual faffing about,
threatening to convert the humans into Cybermen but not getting on with it and
doing so which we’ve come to expect in previous Cybermen stories – although to
be fair at one point they do give Toberman a rather effective pair of cyber
arms. At one point they even go back into their tombs – which does rather beg
the question why they bothered getting out of them in the first place.
One difference between this and its two
cyberman predecessors is that this is the first time we see a human traitor
trying to form an alliance with the Cybermen. We’ve had this happen with the
Daleks before – and believe me it will happen again, and again . . . – but not
the Cybermen. Klieg and Kaftan belong to the Brotherhood of Logicians, who have
reached the far from logical conclusion that the emotionless Cybermen will be
so grateful for their release that they will form an alliance with them.
Another development from the previous two Cybermen stories is that
for the first time we get to meet the Cyber Controller. We know that this is
the Controller, partly because he tells us so, and partly because he looks so
different from the others. He doesn’t have the usual piano accordion on his
chest, and he has a large painted dome on top of his head in which you can see
his brain. Now, a slight digression here. The Cyber Controller in this, and
Colin Baker’s “Attack of the Cybermen” was played by an actor called Michael
Kilgarriff. Michael Kilgarriff also played the robot in Tom Baker’s first story
“Robot”. Michael Kilgarriff was a sometime client of the company that my Mum
worked for in South Ealing in the mid-late 80s. She said that he was a very
large man, and she found him very, and I quote, ‘actorly’, and rather gruff and
brusque. One day, after much urging from my younger brother, she explained to
him that we were massive fans of Doctor Who, and would it be possible for him
to autograph something for my brother? (I may be wrong, but I think this might
have been his copy of the David Banks Cyberman book) A complete change came
over the man immediately – he was all smiles, and absolutely delighted to
provide the autograph. So obviously a man who had some affection for his time
on the show, and delighted to be approached about it.
So, it isn’t the greatest Doctor Who story, and it certainly doesn’t
do to analyse it too much. The story really doesn’t go very far, and the effect
of Toberman throwing the cyber controller – who by this time has been replaced
by a dummy in a suit – really isn’t good. But let your inner child out for a
couple of hours, while you’re watching it, and like me, you’ll probably have a
big silly grin all over your own face too.
What Have We Learned?
Let sleeping Cybermen lie
The Brotherhood of
Logicians are a bit dull
No comments:
Post a Comment