22: The Massacre of St. Bartholemew's Eve

Before Watching

Throughout my formative Who-watching years , from the Jon Pertwee era right up until the end of the Tom Baker era, it was pretty much a given that the Doctor only had one companion. Yes, he had the backup of the UNIT lot in Jon’s time, and for a few stories he had Harry Sullivan at the start of Tom’s tenure – but the most part he was with just Liz Shaw – just Jo Grant – just Sarah Jane Smith – just Leela – just Romana (don’t let’s get into how much of a companion K9 was just right now). So it’s with some surprise that I come to realize that as far as I can tell, this is the first story where the Doctor has just the one companion – Steven. Katarina, who only came aboard in The Myth Makers, bit the dust last time out, leaving just Steven. Thinking about it – I’m pretty sure that this will be the only Hartnell story where he has only one companion for its whole duration. I know that Dodo Chaplet rears her homely head right at the end, but that’s after the ‘story’ part of the story is over. Steven leaves at the end of the Savages, but Ben and Polly (we’ll get to them afterwards) are there right throughout The War Machines, and stay right through into Patrick Troughton’s tenure.

As for this story – well, I’ll be honest and say that I’m not looking forward to it. Our last venture into historical France, The Reign of Terror failed to interest me much, and so I’m pretty sure that my candle will remain unlit through this one.

After Watching

One of the first nice surprises about the first episode was the presence of Eric Thompson as Gaston. Nowadays probably best known as the father of double Oscar winner Emma Thompson, Eric Thompson was asked by the BBC to take the tapes of a French programme for young children, called Le Ménage Enchanté – and translate it into English and record the voices for it. The thing was, Eric Thompson didn’t actually speak French. So what he did was to rewrite each episode based on what he saw on screen, and what he created was a thing of great wit and charm, which appealed to adults to an extent as well as the kids it was written for. He also created one of the great characters of kids TV in Dougal. He wrote several books of stories based on the characters, and these were witty and funny and just beautifully written.

To this story, then. The TARDIS has indeed landed in France again, several centuries earlier than in the Reign of Terror. The real life Massacre of St. Bartholemew’s Eve happened in 1572. This is not a period of French history that most viewers would have known a great deal about. Basically, it was a time of great religious upheaval. It was a rather complicated period to try to explain in a few lines, but we’ll try. At the time of the story, the Huguenots – French Calvinist Protestants – were fighting for greater power and acceptance of their religion. They had already been subjected to one terrible massacre at Vassy ten years earlier. Their great hope lay in the fact that the heir to the French throne, Henri de Navarre, was protestant himself. In 1572 the reactionary Catholic, the Duc de Guise, had his supporters murdered the Admiral de Coligny, who had the ear of the King, Charles IX. This began 5 days of Catholic violence against Huguenots, in which perhaps as many as 10,000 were killed. This was known as the St. Bartholemew’s Day Massacre.

When the TARDIS lands, and the Doctor works out where and when they are, he decides to go off on a jolly to visit the scientist Preslin – Elvis Preslin?  - and so he tells Steven all of this as they are sitting in a tavern, and warns him to stay out of trouble. Hello pot – this is the kettle, ringing to tell you that you’re black. Of course, the tavern does happen to be a hot bed of Huguenot intrigue, as Steven falls in with the patently good and earnest David Weston as Nicholas Muss, and the hotheaded Eric Thompson as Gaston de Lerans. They accept Steven into their company and as they are toddling off home, they rescue a frightened servant girl, Anne Chaplet, who tells them she worked for the Abbot of Amboise, and overheard plotting for another massacre like that of Vassy.

There’s an interesting directorial choice here. The decision was made to have Anne say her lines in a ‘peasant’ accent. The trouble is, the more she speaks, especially in the second episode, the more her delivery reminds me of Pam Ayres.

The second pleasant surprise of the first episode was seeing that Preslin was played by Eric Chitty. People of my vintage will remember Eric Chitty as Smithy in the sitcom Please Sir, but for classic era Doctor Who fans he will always be Co ordinator Engin in my all time favourite story “The Deadly Assassin”.

The Doctor fades out of this story about halfway through episode one , but William Hartnell has to play two roles in the story as it turns out. The big cliffhanger at the end of the first episode is that the evil Abbot of Amboise, the architect of the massacre to come, is in fact a dead ringer for the Doctor, and played by Hartnell as well.

Episode two focused largely on the baddies’ attempts to get Anne back, even though half the time they are also saying that she isn’t important. Hmm. It’s a completely Doctorless episode, and so Steven has to take the centre stage a lot, and fair play to good old Peter Purves, he has a pretty good lash at it as well. He is with his Huguenot mates when he sees the Abbot of Amboise, whom he immediately identifies as the Doctor. Made aware of his mistake he gets Nicholas to take him to Preslin’s, where a dotty old bag tells him that Preslin has been in prison for the last two years. Huh? Steven gives an angry Nicholas the slip, then later overhears the Catholic baddies discussing plans to murder the Sea Beggar. He tries to tell the Huguenots, but Gaston is having none of it, and even draws on Steven, who saves himself by not fighting. Hmm. Gaston won’t listen to him, and sends him away. Again, we got a nicely different type of cliffhanger in this episode, which ends with the Admiral Coligny revealing that his championing of a treaty with the Dutch against Spain has earned him the nickname of the Sea Beggar. Oooh!

I was really enjoying this story, and hoping that episode three would be as good as the first two, and . . . it was! What I think happened is that the production team made a tense, well written political drama, and I found that I was being drawn into the goings on in and outside the royal court. In fact, Steven’s actions came to be something of a diversion, and I almost wished he’d just let the story get on with it. I don’t know if it does help to already know something about the background leading up to the massacre, for example,  I was a little confused when Coligny survived the assassination attempt, since Coligny’s assassination was actually the catalyst for the atrocities that followed. Here might be the time to mention the number of other good actors who turn in fine performances – Leonard Sachs and Andre Morell to name but two. As the episode worked its way to a conclusion though, I did wonder where it was going to go. After all the massacre did actually happen, and nothing Steven or the Doctor could do would prevent it. You can see the swerve the story is taking, though, with the killing of the abbot, and Steven’s fear that he is going to be stranded .

Episode 4 was rather strange – not bad, and not unenjoyable, but strange. In fact it was very enjoyable, but it was remarkable how quickly the story leaves behind the political drama. The Doctor suddenly reappears, and refuses to explain his absence other than the fact he has been held up. I can’t help thinking that William Hartnell has been rather shabbily treated in this story – all in all he must have been absent for over 2 episodes’ length. Yes, he got to do the cameo as the Abbot, but it’s not the same as having a sizable amount to do as the Doctor. He always rose to the occasion when he was given a script as good as this one as well. He hasn’t been back 5 minutes when he’s reaffirming the Aztecs doctrine – namely that you can’t change History, not one line of it. Oh yeah? Why did you spend so much energy thwarting the Monk, then? Why not just sit back and wait for it all to go pear shaped? It’s not the only throwback to an earlier series in this episode either. The Doctor’s haste to get to the TARDIS and get out is very familiar, and some of his former harshness seems rather evident in the way that he insists that Anne Chaplet should go to her auntie, rather than accompanying them. Mind you, considering what happened to his last two female assistants I suppose you can’t blame him. To lose one companion may be looked on as misfortune, but to lose two . . .

Whether you liked or disliked this episode  (I loved it ) there’s no way that you could call it boring. Following their departure we’re treated to a montage of woodcuts showing the horrors of the massacre. That’s something different. Then Steven, disgusted with the Doctor’s attitude to Anne, insists on jumping ship at the next stop. This happens to be Wimbledon Common. Steven hops out, and the Doctor leaves the door open, and then embarks upon a short but mesmerizing monologue about his former companions. Hartnell at his absolute best, showing everyone what they’d been missing during the story. A young dark haired woman with a (vague) resemblance to Susan runs in. The suspicion that she may not be the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer is raised by the fact that she doesn’t seem to notice that the inside is bigger than the outside. Hmm. She is none other than Dodo Chaplet, possibly a descendant of Anne Chaplet, who may have survived the massacre after all. She hasn’t got Anne’s French/mummerset accent though. Dodo is determinedly Mancunian. Well, we’ll see how long she keeps that up.

Make no bones – that was great. Seriously, Doctor Who at its best

What have we learned?

Apparently you can’t change time again (but you can)

Cyberman Animation

Got really bored this morning and yesterday evening after watching The Massacre, and writing it up. So I decided to have a go at creating a doctor Who animation. Here it is - see what you think : -

21: The Daleks' Master Plan : Parts 9 - 12

Episodes 9 – 12

Episode 9 – Golden Death

I find myself hoping that we do actually get some real plot development now. After all, we still have 4 episodes to go, and this story is now in danger of becoming The Chase on a grand scale.

OK – who’s writing this one? Oh, Dennis Spooner again. Right – where are we? Well, in Ancient Egypt so it appears. As the Dalek machine approaches, Chen muses why it is that the TARDIS has landed, and not tried to take off again. The answer is that the Doctor is trying to properly repair the TARDIS lock. So what else actually happens in this episode? Well, the Daleks arrive, Steven and Sara see their ship land, and think it’s the Monk’s. They investigate, but get hauled off by the Egyptians after seeing the Daleks and Chen emerge. The Monk arrives, and walks out of his ship straight into an ambush by Chen and the Daleks. The miserable worm agrees to help them and to get the taranium from the Doctor – who has of course been eavesdropping. He sabotages the Monk’s TARDIS, having removed the directional unit. The Monk tries to get into the Doctor’s TARDIS – can’t, and the Doctor attacks him. Ho hum.

Episode Ten – Escape Switch

Oh, we’re back in live action. That’s a relief. So, Sara and Steven free the Monk from the sarcophagus into which the Doctor put him. Guess what? The three of them get captured by the Daleks. The Monk’s duplicitousness actually saves them when he tells the Daleks that he has brought the Doctor’s companions as hostages, and that the Doctor will exchange the Taranium cores for their release. It’s Chen who latches onto the idea, saying that the Doctor’s loyalty to his companions is unshakeable. I wonder how he can say this based just on his brief acquaintance with the Doctor? Meanwhile, back in pyramid HQ, the Egyptian workers decide that they will attack the Daleks at precisely the same time that the handover is taking place, which enables the Doctor to get away, but not to take the taranium with him.

Having removed the Monk’s directional unit, the Monk’s TARDIS will work, but without the Monk being able to control where it lands. In fact, in exactly the same position that the Doctor himself has been – which at least puts him slightly better off than he was previously, since he’s not marooned. The last we see of the Monk is him swearing to get revenge on the Doctor. Well, it hasn’t happened yet. I know that the Monk has never reappeared (I’m not a subscriber to the Monk-regenerated-and-changed-his-identity- theory) which is a bit of a shame. I think that there was quite a bit of mileage left in the character, but I guess that he was created by Dennis Spooner, whose time as script editor had already ended, and who would not write for the series again. So nobody else fancied resurrecting him. Shame.

Episode 11 – The Abandoned Planet

Guess what? The planet isn’t actually abandoned – it’s just meant to look that way. Things are at last coming to a head. The directional unit despite blowing up seems to have worked since the travelers are actually back on Kembel. The Doctor does make a point of telling us, though, that this is a one shot deal, and it’s definitely up the spout now. So the Doctor heads off back into the Dalek city for a final showdown, and is captured by Chen. As for Steven and Sara, well, they watch Chen’s ship blow up, thinking that he is on board. They then find a doorway in the mountainside which is obviously the way that the Daleks come and go from the city. They conveniently find all of the treacherous allies of the Daleks imprisoned, and free them all to go back and warn their galaxies of the impending Dalek invasion.

I mean, we’re obviously building up to a climax here, but for all of that there isn’t a great sense of urgency. Still, now that we’re coming towards the climax I am actually looking forward to the last episode – and not just because it is the last episode. This story might not necessarily be epic in scope, but it has managed to keep me at least partially interested throughout the 12 episodes, and that’s not easy when you consider that I often fidget through 6 parters.

Episode 12 – Destruction of Time

Well, this is it. Mavic Chen’s usefulness appears to have come to an end as he finally indulges in one carpet chewing scene too many, and the Daleks dispose of him. A shame, perhaps that it’s so abrupt, but it does serve to illustrate the point that however smart you are, ultimately this is exactly what working with Daleks will bring you. It’s much better than, I don’t know, having the incorrigible old Tom Jones lookalike suddenly repent and make some great self sacrificial gesture against the Daleks.

The deus ex machina in this particular situation, then, is actually the Doomsday Weapon itself. The Doctor activates the Time Destructor, and puts the Daleks into the dilemma that they want to shoot the Doctor, but they will destroy their weapon if they do so. It’s very like the stand off with the taranium in earlier episodes.

On the telesnaps the Time Destructor looks just like a globe with some Perspex tubes sticking out of it, but the ticking effect imbues it with a real menace, and for me it dominates the last 15 minutes of the story. The ageing of Sara looks good on the surviving photos – I wouldn’t be surprised if it looked even better in live action. Very hard lines on her though, since all she was trying to do was to help the Doctor. Now, when Steven flicked the switch that put the Time Destructor into reverse, the Doctor was given back the years that had been taken away from him, but it didn’t bring Sara back to life – which is probably just as well since that was a place in which the classic series certainly didn’t want to go. It begs the question, does Sarah Kingdom count as a real companion or not since she only featured in one story? Well, she was certainly in more episodes than her predecessor Katerina was.

It’s difficult to know what to say to sum up The Daleks’ Masterplan in any fair way. It’s sometimes described as epic, which claim can only really be justified in terms of its length. As it is the story itself only really takes place over 11 of the 12 episodes, since you can’t really count The Feast of Steven. I think in some ways it’s quite clever in the way that the story is structured, at least cleverer than it’s often given credit for. The first 4 episodes for example foreground Bret Vyon. The next two are about Sara Kingdom and how she becomes a companion. Episode 7 is a lighthearted pantomime – which works like a caesura in the development of the story. Episodes 8,9 and 10 benefit from the Monk’s presence, while the last 2 endings are the climax. 

What Have We Learned?

It is possible to construct a story which plays out over twelve episodes. Whether it is a good idea to do so is another question.

Ancient Egyptians were wimps.

The Monk presumably is still out there somewhere, endlessly wandering

Taranium comes from Uranus

21: The Daleks' Master Plan : Parts 5 - 8

Before Watching

Well, I know that Jean Marsh, last seen as Richard the Lionheart’s sister Joanna in “The Crusades” is going to have a lot more to do now. Last we saw Chen was sending her off to assassinate her brother – who happens to be Bret Vyon – having convinced her that he is a traitor. My main thought is to ask myself the question – how are they going to spin this story out for another four episodes – let alone another 8?

I know that one of the coming episodes – The Feast of Steven (number 7) was the first ever ‘Christmas special’ and has been widely criticized for being such, especially for the moment when the Doctor turns to the camera at the end and wishes all the folks at home a Merry Christmas.

After Watching

Episode 5

Following the bloodbath of the previous episode The Doctor, Sara and Steven are the victims of cellular dissemination – which means they are caught in a primitive transmat beam. Right “they’re moving through space towards a strange planet, the nature of which we can only guess at” says the blond one of the two scientists with silly tunics and sillier pudding bowl haircuts. I’ll have a guess – I said to myself. Bet it’s a jungle planet. Yep – I was right – and helpfully it’s a jungle planet a lot closer to Kembel than Earth is.

There’s a lovely scene in which Kevin Stoney virtually chews up the scenery when his bald henchman Karlton suggests a way of putting a spin on the travellers’ being sent to Mira as a deliberate security measure. A word too for Maurice Browning who plays Karlton. He is absolutely terrific himself, and his reaction to Chen’s little megalomaniac outburst is priceless.

On Mira we find Steven slapping an unconscious Sara Kingdom and taking her gun, then footprints appear from nowhere in the sand, being created by an invisible beast of some kind. I think it’s the first time that invisible monsters have appeared in Doctor Who. “The Visians. We can’t see them, but they’re very vicious.” The Doctor helpfully informs us. The end of episode 5 looks like one of those which Terry Nation wrote in order to see if Dennis Spooner could write his way out of it – namely the Doctor, Sara and Steven are surrounded by Daleks, and the Doctor announces that it seems as if the Daleks have won. Pah, he’ll have something up his sleeve.

Episode 6 – Coronas of the Sun

We start with a stalemate. The Doctor has the taranium, which means that the Daleks cannot fire at him, because of the effect it will have on the taranium. This gives the Visians time to attack the Daleks, and in the confusion, the Doctor and co escape. Their decision to escape on the Dalek pursuit ship is predictable, but a little disappointing – we’ve already seen them all escaping on a stolen ship once in this story.

This leads to a terrific confrontation between Mavic Chen and the Daleks. I don’t remember ever seeing anyone else apart from the Doctor ever giving a dalek such a dressing down, especially when the news comes through that the Doctor has stranded the dalek squad on Mira. This leads the Daleks to take remote control of the spaceship, and again that’s a little bit of a cop out since that was done with Chen’s ship as well. They break the dalek control, then find themselves caught in a sort of tractor beam. Now all the time this has been going on the Doctor has been manufacturing a fake taranium core. It is Steven’s idea to activate it by using antiquated gravity force technology. The Doctor and Sara poo poo the idea, so he does it anyway. It works, but knocks him out, and when he starts to recover he is covered by a force field. Hmm – bit lucky that.  So, having been brought down on Kembel, the Doctor makes the condition that he will only hand over the taranium in front of the TARDIS. Which means that he and Sara can sneak into the TARDIS, Steven can hand it over, then walk into the TARDIS while the daleks are shooting away his forcefield. It’s all a bit convenient.

Continuity wise I really want to know how the Doctor can just hand the key over and have Sara, who has never seen the TARDIS before, open it without destroying the lock. Cliffhangerwise, it’s a bit of a damp squib too. The TARDIS lands on an unknown location, and the scanner is on the blink. Steven goes to open the doors, and the Doctor stops him, announcing the atmosphere outside is poisonous. That’s it – the cliffhanger. Somehow I don’t see Terry Nation having sleepless nights about writing himself out of that one.

Episode 7 – The Feast of Steven

I forgot – this episode is the infamous Feast of Steven. Dennis Spooner was probably under orders not to write the Doctor into a hole which would take too long to extract himself from. So it turns out that we are actually back on Earth. The first bit sees the Doctor invade an episode of Z Cars. It’s clearly played for laughs, but really isn’t all that funny, although I dare say it might have raised the odd titter when it was first shown. Steven steals a police uniform and poses as one of the boys in blue to rescue the Doctor, who has been arrested coming out of the TARDIS, and adopts a cod Liverpool accent to do so (Z Cars was set in a fictionalized Merseyside town called Newtown) and I must admit I half smiled when the Doctor asks why he’s speaking in the accent, and Steven justifies himself by saying that everyone else is doing it. Alright, alright, calm down, calm down. After ten minutes or so’s nonsense they leave in the TARDIS.

As they’re going Sara says that she has forgotten about the Daleks for a moment, to which the Doctor replies “My dear, you must never forget about the Daleks.” Yet the episode continues to do precisely that. Now we materialize in silent movie era Hollywood. This bit may have been better in the live action original, but as a recon it’s pretty poor, especially since the first couple of minutes are so noisy you can’t really understand what’s happening. Alright, I’m being churlish. There are a couple of chuckles in this second half of the episode. It’s obviously meant to be tongue in cheek – hence the use of old silent movie caption cards to the accompaniment of tinkly wobbly cinema piano music. I liked it when the Doctor told the actress in the recreation of Valentino’s the Sheikh to put some clothes on for instance. It’s not a great line, but it’s something, as is ‘this is a mad house, it’s all full of Arabs!’ You wouldn’t get away with that line now. Finally the interminable Hollywood sequence ends, and the Doctor produces a bottle of champers, gives a glass to Sara and Steven, and the wishes all of us at home a Merry Christmas – arrghhh!

Look, it is what it is. This episode contributes nothing whatsoever to The Daleks’ Masterplan other than making the original audience wait for a fortnight for the story to continue rather than a week. So you have to judge it on its own merits. Considering that Terry Nation did have a pedigree as a comedy writer, having written for Arthur Haynes (means nothing to you now, but he was big back in the early 60s), considering that then the comedy is forced, and lumpy. I have seen some rather kinder reviews suggest that this episode is actually about the show cleverly mocking itself. Well, maybe the first half is. But even so, the purpose of the show is to entertain, and while it might well have done just that to an unsophisticated Christmas audience back in the 60s, it struggled with me in 2015, and ultimately, it lost.

Episode 8 – Volcano

Interesting title. The Daleks have a bit of a problem with volcanoes – as I recall the Doctor turned their Bedfordshire mine into a volcano in the climax of the Dalek Invasion of Earth. Right, we’re back to the story in this episode. Daleks, Chen and a couple of other knobbly bobbly and spiky aliens gathered to watch the test of the Time Destructor. The Daleks decide to use one of them, Trantis, the spiky one, as a guinea pig. When the Daleks discover that the core is the problem they round on Chen and accuse him of giving them useless taranium.

“It came from Uranus, I know it did!” he remonstrates. Hmm. Is that Dennis Spooner giving the less mature among the grown ups a better laugh than the whole of the previous episode offered, I wonder? In an episode full of surprises, an even better laugh was given when we got something straight out of the opening of Douglas Adams’ “Life the Universe and Everything” when the TARDIS materialized in Lord’s cricket ground, and the commentators carried straight on with their commentary, speculating on the effect that the appearance could have on the match if it stayed for a speculative 10 minutes. Of course, this aired long before Douglas Adams wrote the 3^rd Hitchhikers’ book. Adams was script editor of the show for Tom Baker’s penultimate season, and a big fan of the show when a child, so the chances are that the passage from his book must have been inspired – if only at a subconscious memory – by this episode. It must have seemed even funnier when first broadcast, since there wasn’t the book to compare it with back then.

So, the TARDIS, which has been chased – a la the Chase – lands on a volcanic planet, and the Doctor announces sadly that they haven’t shaken off the chaser. Who turns out to be – well well well, our old friend the Monk. Alright, I knew this was going to happen, but the original audience didn’t. It must have been a lovely surprise when a door in a large rock opened, the background music changed completely, and out popped good old Peter Butterworth. The meddlesome one is after his revenge, and he messes about with the lock on the TARDIS. The interplay between the Doctor and the Monk when they find him, about to drop a rock on their heads (is that a deliberate echo of the Doctor’s actions in An Unearthly Child?) are as good as ever. His plan, apparently, is to maroon the Doctor in the same way that he was marooned by the Doctor. It works too, until the Doctor does something fancy with his ring – it’s impossible to see exactly what on the recon, and it works.

So, we have the TARDIS and the Monk’s TARDIS in the time space continuum, and just to complicate matters further, a Time machine arrives from Skaro, and Chen and a Dalek squad set off in it. This one looks a bit better than the MFI table inspired design from The Chase. The last few minutes remind us that this would have been shown at New Year, as the TARDIS lands in London on New Year’s Eve, and the episode ends with the Daleks chanting exultantly that now the death squad are on their way nothing can stop them and conquest is assured. A triumph of hope over experience there, methinks.

So that’s episodes 5 – 8. I was actually really rather starting to enjoy the story when the Feast of Steven came along. I mean, I can understand why they did it – the gritty gloom of what had gone before in the previous 6 episodes is hardly Christmas fare after all, but I kind of wish they hadn’t. Especially considering how much episode 8 actually had going for it. Well, two thirds of the way through now, so I confidently expect to be able to make it all the way.

What Have We Learned

You can make your own personal force field just by pratting around with a gravity force generator and a fake taranium core

You can bypass the dimensional stabilizer of a TARDIS, but it will give you a very bumpy ride if you do so. 

21: The Daleks' Master Plan : Parts 1 - 4

Before Watching

My impression, judging by Mission to the Unknown, is that this should be a return to the more familiar ‘serious’ Dalek mode, after the supposedly comedic excesses of The Chase. I’ve already made my mixed feelings about the Daleks clear, and the thought of twelve consecutive episodes of them doesn’t exactly fill me with anticipation.

There are a couple of things which hold out some hope to me, of course. Jean Marsh is always good value and brings a little touch of class to whatever she appears in. Nicholas Courtney’s first Doctor Who role as Bret Vyon should be worth watching. Then there’s the reappearance of the Monk, which I know happens sometime in the second half of the story.

Since this is no ordinary Doctor Who story, what I’ve decided to do is to try to review it in three chunks of 4 episodes each.

After Watching

Episodes 1 – 4

I think that part of my problem with this story so far isn’t that it isn’t any good, but just that it really isn’t all that much my sort of thing. I’ll try to explain.

Now, as we know from “Mission to the Unknown”, the Daleks plan to invade our galaxy, using an alliance of outlying planets and systems. “Mission to the Unknown” took place on the jungle planet Kembel. The TARDIS lands on this planet, since the Doctor needs to find medical aid for Steven who was injured in Troy. He meets Bret Vyon. Now, I’m sure that all even slightly well informed fans know that Bret Vyon was the first character in Doctor Who to be played by Nicholas Courtney, who would go on to play Colonel, then Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart from The Web of Fear with Patrick Troughton, until The Terror of the Zygons with Tom Baker, then a couple of guest appearances in The Five Doctors, Mawdryn Undead, and Battlefield. The Doctor becomes caught up in Vyon’s mission to find out what happened to Agent Marc Cory from “Mission to the Unknown”. Despite their initial antagonism towards each other they discover not only the Daleks’ plan, but also that Mavic Chen – Guardian of the Solar System, is treacherously in league with the Daleks.

The Daleks’ Master Plan of the title centres on their use of their latest Doomsday weapon, the Time Destructor – which I presume will do exactly what it says on the tin. To work, the Time Destructor needs a core of the mineral taranium, which happens to be the rarest in the Universe – and this is where Mavic Chen comes in, for he supplies it to the Daleks. The Doctor, who disguises himself as one of the delegates, steals the core, and he, Bret Vyon, Steve and Katarina escape on Chen’s Spar – an ultra-modern spaceship as opposed to an old-fashioned corner shop. Their plan – to deny the Daleks the taranium cores they need, and to inform Earth of Chen’s treachery – they handily found Marc Cory’s tapes on Kembel as proof.

Now, OK, as a set of 4 episodes the first 4 are coherent, and do follow a tight, internal logic. The development of the relationship between Bret Vyon and the Doctor is not without interest. There’s plenty of action and incident as you’d expect from a Terry Nation script – alright, Terry Nation only wrote some of the episodes, the others being written by Dennis Spooner.  But. . . well, I know that this is sacrilege to some people, but in some ways the story so far has reminded me a little of a Blake’s Seven style space opera, and I’m afraid I was never a great fan of Blake’s Seven.

I’ve gone on record before with my ambivalence towards the Daleks. I respect their contribution to the success of Doctor Who, and when I was a kid I was just as prone to running around the playground with one arm out shouting “Exterminate!” as anyone. But I found classic Doctor Who Daleks often to be two dimensional and rather repetitive – although to be fair some of the Dalek stories, such as Genesis of the Daleks did rise well above the common herd. The ‘new’ series Daleks, revived in Rob Shearman’s ‘Dalek’ are far more interesting. Now the Daleks so far in this story have at least been rather more serious and threatening than we saw in The Chase, which is all to the good. But however you dress it up, you can have spam with eggs, spam with beans, or spam with bread and butter, but at the end of the day it’s still spam, if you know what I mean. No? Well, the Daleks are always just Daleks.

The Daleks force the Spar (where did they get that name from? And more importantly, why?) to crash land on a prison planet, Desparus. Before they can take off again, a convict sneaks into the airlock, and he traps Katarina in there with him after they take off. Katarina makes the ultimate sacrifice, opening the airlock to become the first companion to die. This is a hugely dramatic moment, and it’s a shame that this only exists in still photos – and not many of them either, judging by the recon I was watching. I can’t help saying that it is something of a jarring note, though. This is the first time that the Doctor has taken someone on his travels in the TARDIS, and not either returned them (close to) home, or left them in a better situation than the one they came from. Now, you can argue that Katarina may well now be in a better place, but that’s an article of faith, not fact. For me the whole thing was just a little callous, and smacked of just wanting to get rid of a tricky companion who was proving far too difficult to write convincingly for. Almost as shocking was the sudden death of Bret Vyon, gunned down by his sister Sara Kingdom, who has been told he is a traitor.

Well, as I say, I doubt that “The Daleks’ Masterplan” is going to make it onto my all time top 10, but it’s not without its positive attributes so far. There’s precious little slack in these first four episodes, although I could do with a little less of the convicts nattering to each other. I’ve mentioned Mavic Chen. He’s played by an actor called Kevin Stoney, and his appearance is somewhat similar to the current appearance of Sir Tom Jones, what with the perma tan and the shocking white hair and beard. He is terrific though. In the recons he’s consistently the most interesting thing on the menus in this, and that’s just with his voice. In the second episode, “Day of Armageddon”, which still exists, it is very difficult to tear your eyes away from him when he’s on screen.

Overall, well, I’ve seen better, but crucially, I have also seen worse. This hasn’t yet outstayed its welcome, and I’m pretty much ready to watch the next four episodes.

What Have We Learned?

Being a companion of the Doctor just became very dangerous

Taranium is the rarest mineral in the Universe, until the next rarest metal in the universe comes along. 

20: The Myth Makers

Before Watching

Can you call this one a historical? Well, we’ll see exactly what we can say about which genre, if any, it fits into after we’ve watched it. What I will say is that I’m not really looking forward to it. Let me explain that. When I was a kid I loved reading about Greek Mythology. So much so that I won my first ever ‘Mastermind’ competition at school, in the sixth form, when I took Greek Mythology as my specialist subject. If you’re going to do well in general knowledge quizzes, then a good knowledge of Greek Mythology will always be a boon to you. Well and good. However the negative side of this particular coin is that I used to – well , still do – get really annoyed when people get the myths wrong, or start calling Greek Gods and Heroes by their roman names – the Twelve Labours of Hercules, for example, being a bit of a red rag to a Cretan bull as far as I’m concerned.

My prior knowledge of this particular story includes the fact that this is Maureen O’Brien’s last. We’ll talk about that, and my overall feelings about Vicki, after we’ve watched the story.

After Watching

In terms of the script, and yes, the acting too, I felt that the first episode set an unbelievably high standard for the rest of this story to follow. Basically, the episode sets out quite convincingly to let you know that everything you thought you knew about the Trojan War was nonsense. Far from chasing Hector three times around the walls of Troy, Achilles does the fleeing, and when Hector is knackered, then he applies the coup de grace, just as the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS to be hailed by him as Zeus. There’s a delicious moment when Achilles explains that Zeus has to use a variety of guises to appear to humans, and on this occasion he has obviously chosen to appear as an old beggar.

A number of actors have reappeared in different prominent roles in Doctor Who, including Francis de Wolf, Agamemnon in this story, whom I recognized as being the actor who played Vasor the fur trapper in The Keys of Marinus. More importantly, seeing him in Greek costume I recognized him as the actor who plays Agrippa in my officially favourite Carry On film of all time, namely Carry on Cleo ( De Wolf: I am Agrippa – Kenneth Connor : Well I know a few holds myself.)There’s a terrific scene between him and his brother Menelaus, played by Jack Melford. If you remember, The Trojan War was all in aid of getting back Menelaus’ wife, Helen from the clutches of Paris, Prince of Troy. Far from wanting Helen back, Menelaus it turns out is quite happy for Paris to have her. This is not her first dalliance, apparently.

The tone is maintained throughout the second and third episodes too. Some of these characters are rather broadly drawn, and yet the whole thing is quite irresistible. I really enjoyed Max Adrian’s dotty old Priam, Ivor Salter’s Odysseus, and Barrie Ingham’s Paris. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, someone else comes along with a cynical one liner which knocks you back a bit. For example, in the third episode – Death of A Spy – Odysseus waits impatiently for the Doctor to unveil his master plan for beating the Trojans. The doctor reveals a paper airplane, and asks if Odysseus has any idea what it is. Ivor Salter wrinkles his unlovely nose and replies, “It looks like one of the parchment darts that my kids make” or words to that effect. When Odysseus announces that the Doctor will be in the front of the plane they will build, he rapidly suggests the wooden horse in its place. The irony of this is that Vicki has already told Steven that the Doctor said that the idea of the wooden horse was actually invented by Homer, and didn’t really happen.

This playing with your expectations and consistent undermining of the original myth has made this a tremendously enjoyable story for me. The 2004 Wolfgang Petersen film, “Troy” also removed the mythical elements of the original story, and what resulted was a little bit of a macho bore – this is so, so much better than that, notwithstanding the fact that it’s all recon. Writer Donald Cotton plays around with our expectations so much that he even uses this groan inducing pun as the cliff hanger to the penultimate element. The wooden horse appears outside Troy, and Priam decides that Vicki has done his bidding and used her powers to bring them victory. Cassandra the priestess tells them they must not bring in the horse as it will lead to their doom. A leading Trojan – it was difficult to tell each one – tells her words to the effect of – shut your mush. This is what follows -

“Cassandra : Then woe to the house of Priam, woe to the Trojans!

Trojan : You’re a bit too late to say woah to the horse – I’ve just given instructions to have it brought into the city.”

Cue end titles. Absolute classic work.

The last episode was the first time that I actually noticed Katarina – played by Adrienne Hill. You wouldn’t know her importance from the start of this episode, but I already knew that she was going to join the TARDIS crew – albeit briefly. At the start although the Horse is in the city, and we think we know what is going to happen, the tone remains the same as the other three. The Doctor grumbles about the horse, saying that he wishes Odysseus had given him another day so he could have fitted the horse with shock absorbers.  Of course the tone darkens, for this essentially is the story of a massacre, the massacre of the decent Trojans.

When I read versions of the original myth, I always felt that the true heroes were to a lesser extent Achilles, and to a greater extent Odysseus. Well, as for Achilles in this, he’s far from invulnerable. In fact he turns out to be extremely vulnerable, especially when Troilus dispatches him in their fight. As for Odysseus – well, without wanting to mince my words – he’s a git. A pragmatic, determined, cunning git, but still a git. In a similar way I always felt sorry for Cassandra – cursed with the gift to be able to foretell the future and never have anyone believe her – but here Frances White manages to make her thoroughly unsympathetic. When Odysseus announces at the end that she has been earmarked for Agamemnon it’s him I feel sorry for, and Odysseus makes some comments to the same effect.

I knew that Vicki would be staying with Troilus, but I didn’t know that she wouldn’t get a proper farewell scene with the Doctor. That’s a shame. Vicki was a cut above the stereotypical screamer, and was probably allowed to do a lot more than her predecessor Susan was. Curiously there seemed to me to be far more of a grandfatherly bond between the Doctor and Vicki than there was between him and Susan. Still, for all that she didn’t get a leaving scene with the Doctor, at least he was allowed to express his hope that she will be alright, and how much he is going to miss her. As for Vicki, she has a touching scene with Troilus as she reassures him that they can build a new Troy together. Mind you, am I the only person to detect a note of doubt in the fact that the original (medieval) story of Troilus and Cressida is one of betrayal in love? Bearing in mind the way that this whole story has played around with our expectations, it’s probably deliberate.

Overall, it’s a good example of just how Doctor Who has always been able to appeal to different audiences of different ages and levels of maturity. There’s a lot in this that you probably just wouldn’t notice as a kid – not least Odysseus’ use of the simile  - ‘as nervous as a bacchante before her first orgy’. Even in 4 parter stories I’ve often found that there’s a dip in one of the episodes, but I didn’t really find there was any slack at all. In brief, it’s a remarkably good piece of work that I thoroughly enjoyed.

What Have We Learned?

Hard to tell really

It’s probably best never to meet a hero – in real life he’ll often turn out to be a git.

19: Mission to the Unknown

Before Watching

I hope this one is alright. This one is the only whole story never to feature the Doctor or any of his companions. What it is, then, is a precursor, a teaser if you like, to the epic (in length, anyway) 12 parter The Dalek Master Plan, which is coming up after the next story, The Myth Makers. So if this is rubbish, then it’s only going to put me off that story, and believe me, that’s a hell of a lot of story to be put off of. There is a certain fascination to see what a Doctor Who story can be like without the Doctor in it, and so without further hesitation, let’s find out.

After Watching

I asked what a Doctor Who story is like without the Doctor in it, and now I know. It’s like part of a substandard James Bond film, where it’s set in space, and James Bond himself is a bit pants.

Mission to the Unknown is at heart a relatively simple tale. Special Agent Marc Cory – Licensed to Kill (no, honestly, he really does say this) is with a crash landed Earth expedition on the Planet Kembel. His mission is to find out exactly what is going on with the Daleks. They have been unseen in the galaxy for over 1000 years since the Dalek Invasion of Earth was defeated, but there have been reports that they are casting their beady eyestalks in this direction again.

Cory hits paydirt. The Daleks have a city on Kembel, and once he enters it The Daleks are discovered forming an alliance with various alien representatives of the outer planets with a view to conquering Earth. It seems as though the Daleks manage to find Cory and kill him before he can alert Earth , but . . .

I watched the Ian Levene animated recon and it passed quickly and inoffensively enough, I suppose. It was a bit of a dour 25 minutes though. I liked the idea of the Varga plants, a species genetically engineered by the Daleks and then transplanted on Kembel. These plants kill you with their thorns, and then you become one of them. These are the first killer plants in “Doctor Who”, and they certainly won’t be the last. Without the Doctor and companions, though, it’s all a bit pointless, and time will tell how essential it is to have seen this before you start watching The Dalek Master Plan. I mean, the fact that it would be five weeks before The Dalek Master Plan actually started – plenty of time to forget what actually happened in this one – suggests it isn’t all that important. So does it stand on its own right? Well, it all depends on your feelings about the Daleks. As I may have mentioned before, I’m not the Daleks’ biggest fan, and as such, I didn’t think that their presence alone was enough to justify this episode.

What Have We Learned?

Doctor Who without the Doctor is just Who?