My submission concerns a crisis which threatens the lives not only of a group of people confined together with no means of escape, but would, if unresolved, threaten every mortal being on the planet Earth.
What are you, a comedian?
No, more a sort of clown, actually.
Some context…
So, while the next story is being scripted, Eric Saward resigns, he’s had enough of it all and his relationship with JNT has disintegrated. Two other two-part stories by new writers have fallen apart, Eric’s first thought was to call in Robert Holmes to write the final two stories, but he is really ill, has already had to re-write ‘Mysterious Planet’ thanks to Grade/Powell and Eric has had to start writing the first episode of the final story to Bob’s story breakdown. It has all gone wrong, everything is falling apart, working relationships fraying, everything is suddenly very personal, JNT is really starting to lose any semblance of control, hated by the man he reports to and disliked by his own script editor – who has taken his grievances upstairs to Powell. Before leaving, Eric and John have pressed the big red emergency stop button, broken the glass and called in Pip and Jane Baker.
Now, if I take the piss out of Pip and Jane’s work, please be aware that there is a whole lot of context here and I have a grudging admiration for them. Some people like this season, some love it, some don’t. But make no mistake they had to finish it. Love season 24, love the Cartmel era – ‘Paradise Towers’, ‘Greatest Show’ or the ones I love ‘Curse of Fenric’ or ‘Ghost Light’? None of those happen without Pip and Jane coming in and saving the day. It is difficult to know what would have happened next, but the future – the New Adventures’, McGann, Big Finish, the new series wouldn’t quite have been the same. Ok, so it might have been better to call in Terrance Dicks, but they didn’t, also he knew what happened to Bob Holmes, I wouldn’t have blamed him for saying no if they had asked. Actually, do you know what Terrance would have been ideal for the Trial framework, he was probably better suited to it than Bob Holmes – at least for the basic script logic – he had already done something similar with ‘The War Games’ and ‘Five Doctors’.
So regardless of any of that, Pip and Jane save the day, they really do. I don’t really like any of their stories, I think their dialogue is pretty dire, but they deliver scripts that can actually be made to a timescale. Sometimes that really is enough – there is a job to be done, professional people with pride in their work, roll up their sleeves and get on with it – they might grumble about it, they might not be happy about it – but they are professional. Anyway, Eric is finally persuaded to return to complete the final part of the story, but before that, things will take another twist, a story to tell before the final two parts of this most attritional of seasons.
Part the way through episode one, I realise I am actually quite enjoying this. That, I have to say comes as a pretty major surprise. I never have before. I mean it is pretty bad – actually really bad, but after ‘Mindwarp’ it feels like a relief. I think that I’ve only ever watched these stories in order before (at least once on VHS and more than once on DVD), so it isn’t the ‘marathon effect’ either. Maybe it is different this time because I’ve had to concentrate on the stories this time to write about them – instead of wandering in and out, getting on with other stuff while they are playing? Or maybe it is just a fluke?
Firstly, some things I like. Colin’s narration of opening scenes as the Hyperion Three gets ready for embarkation is rather nice. There is also a strong ‘Doctor Who’ story idea in here, one that I am sure I would enjoy much more in any other era than this. Experimentation producing a new species of plant or human/plant hybrids, body horror and transformation, a murder mystery on a liner, the comment on capitalism – people sacrificed for the economic, slave potential of the Vervoids (‘The most enduring and spectacular empire, Rome, was built on slave labour’). All good stuff for a ‘Doctor Who’ story. However, it suffers from the usual lack of conviction at this point. The exception to this is the woman in mid-transformation slowly becoming a Vervoid – that is quite powerful stuff, I can imagine it being quite scary for a younger audience, but isn’t really developed further. Likewise, the human compost heap – that could be quite horrific. I do understand why – this era has been told by senior execs to dial back the horror and violence, another time these might have been explored better and depicted in a more visceral manner.
Unfortunately, we have the same set of issues familiar for this season all over again – a good, strong central idea, but a script and realisation that really does not do them justice. As in the aftermath of Adric’s death, we really don’t see a strong enough response to her loss in the subsequent episode. Colin is good in these quiet moments (he always is, I wish there had been more of this in his TV era), but it is very much on with the show.
Pease Pottage and carrot juice
In addition to this, we immediately get the introduction of Mel, which is utterly botched and doesn’t help either her or the audience. A cleverer production team could probably have pulled off this sort of narrative leap, but here it just isn’t that great an idea in an already quite complicated, convoluted season. Whilst cutting out the bickering and whining associated with the previous pairing, it is also accompanied by some serious musical theatre acting by Bonnie – all arms and projection and stance. The latter shouldn’t be that surprising, as that was pretty much what she had been doing at this point in time. She needed some direction to tone it down a bit, make it smaller for the smaller screen. However, the producer wanted Bonnie and what we get is what Bonnie does (or at least did back then). For some unaccountable reason she is also wearing the sort of beige ‘leisure suit’ that pensioners sometimes wear on coach holidays. The opening scenes on the exercise bike feel like they beamed down from some sort of alternative reality when ‘Doctor Who’ was made by the team behind ‘Rainbow’ – Rod, Jane and Freddie with their own time machine.
It isn’t just Bonnie, a lot of the cast in this aren’t very good. All of this PERFORMANCE needs toning down – instead we get both our leads all overacting, over-gesturing and over enunciating – all dials at eleven at the same time. Honor Blackman spends most of her time shouting and being unpleasant – like a female Stahlman with a gym pass, she really is better than she shows in this and she isn’t alone. It’s all a bit one-note. The rest range from the merely functional to the pretty bad, the knack of finding an ensemble cast that works seems to have been lost with the likes of Camfield and Maloney and Harper. Even the ‘lesser’ directors from the previous 20 years could put together a cast – surely it is a core skill for a director? This is the cast of ‘Annie’ or possibly ‘Acorn Antiques’ performing ‘Seeds of Doom’ on a 1980’s cruise ship.
Sadly, I am left thinking, couldn’t someone just have found JNT a light entertainment slot to produce instead? I don’t mean that in an insulting way, he’d done his stint on this, really had done his best, produced some great stuff, worked hard and there is absolutely no doubt that he loved the series – he had done his best to ensure its survival, but I’m sure he would have loved doing something in entertainment where he could have exercised that part of his talents better. He loved doing the yearly pantomime in his time off at the end of each season – he was a showman at heart. On that subject, he met Bonnie at a restaurant, Colin at a wedding, Lynda Bellingham at another party, Tony Selby at Lynda Bellingham’s party – so this season, it feels like the casting of the main actors is almost entirely based on the whims of JNT’s social life. That might sound bitchy, it isn’t meant to – everyone uses their professional and social network, but it isn’t really working at this point. Like Saward, for his own sake and sanity, he probably should have moved on during the hiatus. Powell detested him and I think gave it to him as a punishment for the work he did trying to ensure that the series wasn’t completely cancelled.
Murder on the dance floor
Moving on to the plot, the murder mystery aspect of this is also slightly lost on me. I had forgotten it was there, I just assumed that the Vervoids killed everyone. I only finished watching it yesterday and already I can’t remember who was supposed to have done it or what ‘it’ even was – was it the Mogarians, or one of those blokes with Lasky or the bumbling security bloke – all of them? I always remember ‘who did it’ – so much so that I can never be surprised by repeats of any detective series once I’ve seen them. Somehow here though it doesn’t seem important, I can’t really remember who anyone is anyway. To be fair ‘Robots of Death’ isn’t really a murder mystery either – it’s just that the production, cast and script are of massively higher quality than this. It is almost like there is an image of the Silents embedded on the ending of the story and I just keep forgetting what has happened, not enough of it unfortunately, just the bit about what mystery is supposed to be.
The Pip and Jane Effect…
And so to the dialogue, oh the dialogue. Really, what are you supposed to do with….
At least one face not belonging to a stranger.
Far cry from the carefree life of Pease Pottage, eh, Mel?
To be complete, the syllogism only requires its grim conclusion.
Any suggestions why a mineralogist who wanted to see you should be killed?
My dear Melanie, if you wish to pursue this completely arbitrary course, pray hurry along to the Hydroponic Centre and leave me to my static and solitary peregrinations.
What’s a thremmatologist doing in an isolation room wearing a surgical mask?
No matter how you and Professor Lasky rationalise the situation, we should never have proceeded to the point we’ve reached. (that one is an absolute corker!)
What I do want to hear from you is a reason why I shouldn’t throw you in the brig. Fire alarms are not playthings for irresponsible buffoons.
And anticipating your next question, we left the fruit on Mogar. We’re merely taking the shucks as an example to fellow agronomists in earthbound laboratories.
A woman could have dumped me in the waste bin.
I’ll stop there, there are far too many examples, it is just too easy. It feels like a script by a ‘normal’ writer has been fed through a patented Bill Hartnell word mangler and spat out the other end. At least Bill had a genius for it and an excuse. Look, I really don’t mind the more florid stuff, it is supposed to be fun and part of Colin Baker’s schtick, Bob Holmes does that sort of thing really well – so I can’t complain here, rather it is the really tortuous lines that are meant to be naturalistic – every one of them a beat or two too long. They remind me of the classic line in ‘The Sensorites’ ‘Are the hearts of the human creatures on the right or left side of their bodies, or in the centre as in ours?’. Oh, Sensorites, how I long to be watching you instead.
The Vervoids could have been an effective creation, maybe they were if you watched this as a child? I’d be really interested to know, I hope they were and that there were youngsters out there that were scared and thrilled in the same way that I was by the monsters from my youth. Is it just me though, do their heads just look a bit, erm, how to put this delicately, a bit rude? Like an amalgamation of the ‘parts’ of various species – a mash-up of genitalia, an assemblage of reproductive organs, a gathering of gynaecological appendages (sorry went a bit Pip ‘n’ Jane there..). The combination with a boiler suit covered in leaves and the tropical plant colour scheme is just all a bit ineffectual. There are plenty of monsters from the past that this could be aimed at, so it might be a cheap shot, I think it is just by the mid-80’s we start to reach the point where you really couldn’t get away with this anymore.
Overall, production and script issues aside, balancing the mystery aspect, the Vervoids and the trial scenes feels a bit too much of a stretch for the story. The trial aspect does work slightly better here – the bickering is toned back a bit and the Doctor is better in his quieter moments, on the back foot after the death of Peri and as the charge turns into genocide. At this point the threat becomes a bit more serious and we start to see the trial with some jeopardy for the lead – which it should have been from the start. It isn’t exactly gripping or dramatic, but it is a bit better.
How did it come to this?
So ‘Terror of the Vervoids’ could have been OK, doesn’t quite manage it, it isn’t all bad, it just isn’t all that good either. I didn’t hate it, but my enjoyment I realised later was me laughing at it, rather than along with it. Which is incredibly sad – I loved this show, how had it come to this?
One last thought, I do really like Janet the stewardess, she’s the best thing in this – can’t we keep her instead of Mel? She looks like she’s wandered in from another proper TV production by accident. She apparently makes nice coffee as well. Which is nice.
On a side note, my reviews of these stories are also becoming a bit slapdash, as I’ve lost the will to take any of it too seriously. I can’t be bothered checking the facts. So, like the matrix, I’ve maybe become a bit unreliable.
A Journal of Impossible Things 