It is the 50th anniversary year. BBC Worldwide brings out a rather brilliant set of mugs – each with a montage of images from a different Doctor and their first and last words in the role. At the moment I’m having a cup of tea out Jon. It is a simple pleasure, a glimpse of my domestic life when I am working from home. I spend a few moments choosing which Doctor – the completist in me would like a John Hurt and Peter Capaldi in the same style, but I can live with that. At the back of cupboard lies Colin Baker. The rest of the mugs are a pleasant colour inside – light blue, grey, mauve, scarlet etc. Colin’s is a sort of horrible mustard yellow colour, the sort of colour that Austin Allegro’s and Princess’s came in in the 1970’s. His first words are ‘Change my dear and it seems not a moment too soon’ and his last ‘Carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice’ – saying everything three times was his ‘thing’ right until the bitter end.
I only very occasionally drink from the mug of Colin, my partner refuses – she wants Jon or David, Matt or at a push Peter or Paul and would rather do the washing up than use that particular mug. The thing is the design is quite nice – in the shape of Colin’s face, we have Davros and a white and gold Dalek and Peri wearing a low cut top from the Two Doctor’s, but mostly it is an unloved thing, there for completeness and because it came free with a DVD order from the now sadly defunct BBC Shop. For a week or so, I am going to reach to the back of the cupboard, reach for that mug and empty out the enormous Metebelis 3 size spider that has set up home there and drink deep from the cup of Colin!
I’m generally a nice sort of person, well at least I hope so and I really like Doctor Who. I tend to mark an awful lot of it in the 6-8 out of 10 bracket, I have lots of favourites in the 9-10 range and very few get marked 5 or below. It pains me to just laugh at the show, especially since for every one of the few stories that I dislike, they are someone else’s jumping on point, a happy childhood memory or something similar that just makes them feel better. For the first time in this thread I am going to write about something that I think is pretty rubbish. And it still hurts a little bit. I did think of skipping it, this marathon allows me to pick and choose, unlike the more usual format, but I thought why not – maybe something good might come out of it? Last time I tried to watch Attack of the Cybermen a year or so ago, I only got through half of episode one and I shamefully have to admit I spent nearly all of that staring at Peri’s top – more of that later. I generally try my best to produce balanced reviews and I normally dislike hyperbole or hatchet jobs – but I’ll admit I’ve really struggled with this one,
Anyway, for good or ill, here goes. It starts out like Doctor Who meets ‘Minder’. Resurrection did The Sweeney, this one does the 1980’s equivalent. I don’t mind the early scenes with Lytton – Maurice Colbourne is a pretty classy actor and Brian Glover is always good for a laugh or two (‘Time travel in an organ’). They are organising a bank raid in 80’s London – a cockney diamond blag with shooters and everything. The opening scenes in the sewers are also classic Doctor Who stuff, the unsuspecting workers being attacked would fit pretty much into any era.
Then it all goes horribly, horribly wrong. What has happened to our two regulars? The Sixth Doctor is just horrible here – utterly unlikeable in every way (unstable, Unstable, UNSTABLE!) – I’ve tried, but I am struggling to find any redeeming features to this section. If I was just to look at this story and Twin Dilemma (all there was to go on at the time of transmission) the only conclusion I could possibly come to – is that the Doctor has for the first time been horribly miscast. Sorry, I don’t like saying that – I have posted nicer things about Colin’s performance in this thread before and actually will do again soon, but he isn’t great here. At least in the first episode, he gets better moments towards the end of the second episode – but I was already lost by that point. If you don’t enjoy spending time with the Doctor and I am aware that others could level this at Doctor’s that I really like, then what is the point? Likewise the Doctor companion relationship – shout, whine, bluster whine, be obnoxious, whine. She wasn’t like this with the Fifth Doctor – if any Doctor and companion bring out the very worst in each other it is these two. To one degree or another most other production teams managed to get this relationship right – I can’t think any other point from 1963 until 1985 where this aspect has been got so disastrously wrong – it is painful to watch. This is especially perplexing when you consider their obvious chemistry off screen.
The Doctor’s ‘look’ has been covered more than adequately a million times before, so I won’t dwell on that. However I will talk about costume design in general. The show sometimes does amazing things on a miniscule budget and no time – creating the Silk Route, Tenochtitlan or Jaffa in a studio with back cloths, building design classics like the Daleks or K9, the TARDIS interior, monster sculpts like the Draconians or the original Davros. Costume design for your regular cast costs a fraction of those things, I’ve no doubt it takes skill, judgement and taste to do the job and pick or make clothes that work, I’m not decrying that – but in comparison with trying to create the surface of Vortis and 5 species of giant invertebrates for 50p it has to be easier surely? How is it possible to get this one aspect that should be easy to get right so very, very wrong? It is the least would expect from the show – the very least. Now I don’t know how much of this is down to JNT’s interference or is genuine output from the costume department – but the work here is just atrocious and it isn’t just because ‘that’s was how the 80’s was’.
What can I say?
Take Peri – she has two costumes here – both seemingly designed to clash as much as possible with everything on the screen, including the leading man and make everything look as cheap as possible – a horrible, garish mess. Her first, a bright pink leotard top and shorts, utterly distracts me in every scene that she is in, that isn’t just down to the colour though. There’s no getting away from it – she is extremely sexy (maybe not in the cliffhanger though!), I know something for the Dad’s (and teenage boys) was a thing back then and still is to some extent – but has it ever been made to look this obvious? Look, I do my best, but if I’m entirely honest I won’t turn down the opportunity to look at a beautiful woman in a very tight, low-cut top if offered – here though it is just really, Really, REALLY – said in the style of Colin Baker – distracting. There is a seemingly unintentional, truly brilliant moment in this story when Peri goes off with a Cyberman into another room in the TARDIS and comes back wearing an equally horrible bright (bright, BRIGHT!) red jump suit. It just looks like the Cybermen have had a word amongst themselves and decided to ask her to put some clothes on. Even the emotionless Cybermen think she should dress more appropriately.
The plot lacks narrative drive (where is the ‘Attack’) and the script this time around all feels like re-heated leftovers – a cul-de-sac that the show has driven up when Resurrection should have been the end of that particular line. There is very little dialogue, apart from that given to Brian Griffiths, or character work that is memorable or particularly good to balance this. People die again. The Cryons, who again look terrible – costume hang your head in shame – they are wearing plastic shower curtains, well charitably maybe they add some much needed pathos to the piece, but are in reality a failure in depiction. Unless I am missing something, did the Cybermen lock the Doctor up in a cell full of explosives? Really? I don’t know maybe all this looked better on paper, but I just can’t see past the production – a decent production might have papered over some of the cracks. The costumes in particular just clash horribly with the downbeat violence of the piece – creating a glaring uncertainty of tone – including in the denouement when the Doctor shoots the Cyber-controller. I think the piece does need something to lift it – to give light to the shade, as did Resurrection, but just putting the leads in bright colourful costumes isn’t it.
I don’t find the continuity a problem on reflection – the Cybermen want to go back in time to stop their home planet from being destroyed – we have far more complex, intricate, interlinked plots these days, often spanning several series. Unless I am missing something, knowing about Tenth Planet. Tomb of the Cybermen or The Invasion isn’t really required? The problem is that the story itself isn’t worth telling and the clashing of tone, production design issues and problems with the regular cast and their relationship that compound this. When Doctor Who truly fails for me – it is because it fails on multiple levels at the same time (I can forgive a dodgy effect or performance or two) and this one ticks off most of them.
Oh, Michael Kilgarriff you are so much better than this – looking a bit porky and doing ‘The Robot’ in a silver flight suit – like a somewhat rotund Peter Crouch (I can imagine the terrace chant). Hasn’t he noticed that no other Cybermen are joining in? Just slightly sniggering behind this back at the one with the big, bald headed one with the muffin-top, middle-aged spread. OK, a cheap shot I know – but it is important that the lead villain looks the part and he really doesn’t.
If anything can be salvaged out of this garish, overly violent mess it is probably Lytton. His redemption as a good guy of sorts working for the Cryons (a bit too sudden a change really, but I’m clutching at straws somewhat here) and death through his cyber-conversion and attack on the Cyber controller is actually pretty decent, although the crushing of his hands into a bloody mess goes too far. Also Cyber conversion is shown here for the first time in a long time – it is a core part of what the Cybermen are and for my money isn’t shown or exploited enough. Actually while on a more positive roll – the scenes on the surface of Telos look really good and the model work is excellent. So there is some good stuff from the returning Mathew Robinson here amongst the problems.
My overarching feeling watching this again was – that this one is a bit rubbish and I am going off to spend my time more profitably elsewhere. Which is pretty much what I said to myself in 1985 and pretty much what I did – it hasn’t aged any better. Still makes me sad though…
A Journal of Impossible Things 