Flatline by Jamie Mathieson (2014)

You are monsters. That is the role you seem determined to play. So, it seems I must play mine.

I came into the re-watch of this story with a slight misconception. I had always assumed that the pitch went like this. What if figures from Banksy’s street art came to life and started killing people in Bristol? Not a bad idea at all for a ‘Doctor Who story. I mean that’s a great one-line pitch isn’t it? No? Just me?

It appears that I was slightly wrong and its conception was actually a bit more interesting, involving influences and concepts as diverse as Hans Holbein, and Wile E. Coyote. It was rather the concept of 2-D creatures adapting to a 3-D universe, sliding across their victims, snapping their necks and ‘driving’ their bodies that formed the initial pitch. After he had failed multiple times with the previous story ideas he had pitched to Steven Moffat and his predecessor for earlier series, Jamie Mathieson was offered another chance to via Sue Vertue. Between those pitches, he had also gained experience working on other BBC Sci-fi/Fantasy series ‘Being Human’ and ‘Dirk Gently’. For this meeting, Jamie Mathieson came prepared with both ideas and visual images to illustrate them. Previously, Steven Moffat had always asked him the question ‘but where’s the monster?’. This time he had answers for that, even checking them with Toby Hadoke to ensure they hadn’t been used before. ‘Flatline’ followed on from those discussions and on the strength of that he was also asked to develop ’Mummy on the Orient Express’.

Whilst ‘Flatline’ is quite simple concept, it is actually very, very clever in execution. It fits perfectly into a tradition in ‘Doctor Who’ stories going back nearly 50 years at this point in time – of depicting the horror of the other, of possession and body horror, death and destruction in the contemporary and the everyday, the domestic or the high street. I can imagine Barry Letts trying to do this with early CSO, like the hand in ‘Carnival of Monsters‘ or Christopher H Bidmead latching onto the dimensional aspect and the shrinking TARDIS. There is even a hint a hint of ‘Web of Fear‘ – with monsters stalking the dark, underground tunnels and the Doctor using the public address system. Oh and Robert Holmes would have loved the idea of the boneless, snapping their victims necks and possessing their bodies. It is firmly in the tradition of ‘Tea time terror for tots’.

So, as with ‘Mummy on the Orient Express’, despite being very modern and bedded in the contemporary, this also feels very traditional at the same time. It is often very scary and very, very funny, often in a quite a surprisingly cartoonish way and it sometimes manages to be both at the same time. He is a rare talent Jamie Mathieson and it won’t come as any surprise to learn that I absolutely love this.

Adventures in two dimensions

As I have already hinted, there are an eclectic set of inspirations for this story. One of the main images Mathieson presented to Steven Moffat, was the anamorphic skull from Hans Holbein’s painting ‘The Ambassadors’, which is on display at the National Gallery. When viewed from high right or low left, the stretched image at the front of the painting reveals itself to be a skull. This technique is used in a number of places across the story, including the opening scene when the camera changes perspective to reveal the remains of the victim of an attack by ‘The Boneless’.

In a similar vein (no pun intended!), the images of the human nervous system used in the story, look rather influenced by the anatomical drawings Vesalius or Leonardo.

And when I say eclectic sources of inspiration, I really do mean eclectic. As another key influence were the adventures of Roadrunner and Wil E Coyote. We see this in the finished story in moments where door handles flatten or images of doors are painted on a wall to imply perspective or the train smeared against the tunnel wall. Much of the humour comes from these moments and the glorious scenes of Capaldi in the shrunken TARDIS.

Another reference point given, was the brilliant Sapphire & Steel Assignment IV, where children step out of old sepia photographs which like this story is replete with memorable images, not least it’s blank-faced protagonist.. And there are also a couple of literary influences – the children’s book ‘Flat Stanley’ (by Jeff Brown 1964), about the adventures of a child who has been accidentally flattened (hence the character named Stan) and lives as a 2-D person in a 3-D world and also ‘Flatland: A romance of Many Dimension’ (by Edwin Abbot 1884), which is an early representation of people living in a 2-D or 1-D world.

Of course, something similar had also been done in ‘Doctor Who’ before – in ‘Fear Her from series 2, where Chloe Webber captures her neighbours as drawings and when a 3-D scribble monster comes to life from a 2-d drawing for example. However, this feels rather different to that in content, style and execution. Whilst the earlier story isn’t as bad as some would have you believe, ‘Flatline’ is also much more successful in scripting and execution.

Next. In part two I will look at Clara’s role in all of this, of how a little local knowledge goes a long way and how to live life in 2 dimensions.

Why, Doctor Oswald, you are hilarious.

Rule number one of being the Doctor. Use your enemy’s power against them.

Another plus for ‘Flatline’, is that it is a very good story for Clara. It isn’t so much a Doctor-lite episode, as we get plenty of prime Peter Capaldi in this, instead it rather cleverly separates the pair, moving him into a guiding and consulting role from his rather reduced circumstances, trapped within the TARDIS. This opens the story up for Clara to take a lead, but also gives some great material to Capaldi, actually some of the best for the season.

As with ‘Mummy on the Orient Express’, Clara is largely released from the baggage of main arc this season. Rather, I should say that this is really the start of another arc, one which will be picked up in series 9. She does brilliantly in this – learning to stand in for the Doctor, putting into practice what she knows of his techniques, how he manages the crowd and assumes leadership and even cleverly traps ‘The Boneless’ in a downfall of their own making. However, in hindsight now, we know that this will eventually be the cause of her own downfall in ‘Face the Raven’. In series 9, she becomes overconfident and reckless and starts to love the life and the role a little bit too much.

Here, she investigates the disappearances, keeps Rigsy on side and pulls together the rather ragged, disparate collection of individuals of the community payback group. With the Doctor and TARDIS denied to her – she even provides the method of defeating the Boneless, getting Rigsy to paint a door handle on the wall in front of the shrunken TARDIS. She is rather magnificent in this and I would have liked much more of this across series 8. One scene that I especially love, is her and Rigsy swinging on the seat suspended from the ceiling, as the room melts around them. All whilst taking a call from Danny – who comments that it sounds ‘active’! Actually, that scene mimics a game that we played as children – crossing the room without touching the ground and is very much typical of how the Moffat era often reflects childhood. More than the role of the Doctor though, stylistically she more assumes a role similar to the ‘X-Files‘ Agent Scully role, investigating the alien and bizarre in an assured way and pretending to be from the security services.

Local Knowledge

Do you know, I think that you were wrong about this lad. I think that he could be very useful. Vital local knowledge. So try not to scare him off

And Clara gets to have a companion in all of this – Rigsy, a clever capable lad, who we immediately like. He immediately stands out in the group as brighter (how could he not?) and his compassion immediately shows as he assumes that Clara has lost a loved one. Of course, as ever, this Doctor takes an instant dislike to him, before realising how useful he could be and immediately changing course, that doesn’t often happen! Amongst the action there isn’t too much room to develop Rigsy as a character, however he seems to want his own redemption, to be seen to be doing good – his own community payback. He was prepared to sacrifice himself to save everyone else. Only Clara saves him from that, but in the end, it is his skill as an artist and his knowledge of the underground tunnel network that ultimately saves them all. It is a lovely performance by Jovian Wade, who I hope goes on to have a successful career, we would at least get to see him once again in the show in ‘Face the Raven’.

File under imagination, lack of…

It takes quite a lack of imagination to beat psychic paper.

Pitted against the free spirited and youthful Rigsy, we have a charmless, pathetic excuse of a human, his adversary, Fenton. Played brilliantly by the cadaverous Christopher Fairbanks, who is probably best known for ‘Auf Wiedersehen Pet’. He is one of a line of unpleasant, selfish, nasty little people who survive while all of those better than them die. Think Rickston in ‘Voyage of the Damned’ or Robertson in ‘Arachnids in the UK’. As with those examples, the experience of all this leaves him utterly unchanged at the end (‘They were Community Payback scumbags, I wouldn’t lose any sleep.’). He is summed up by the fact that he lacks even the imagination to be fooled by the psychic paper. He voted for Brexit, for UKIP and then Johnson and he’s really enjoyed lockdown.

Living in 2 dimensions

At the heart of all this though, there are two brilliant, largely visual aspects of this story – the shrinking TARDIS and the 2-D creatures becoming 3-D– The Boneless.

Out of the former, we get the comedy of Peter Capaldi trying to get out of the doors of the half-sized police box, Clara carrying the TARDIS around in her handbag and the best of all, the shrunken police box on the railway line. The latter is a scene that manages both be simultaneously very tense and very funny. Echoing ‘The Addams Family’, but with more than a hint of Looney Tunes or Hannah-Barbera as well, as the Doctor’s hand emerges from the TARDIS doors and tries, Hermit Crab-like to scuttle away from the oncoming train.

The main triumph of this story though, is the depiction of the 2-D creatures – ‘The Boneless’, as they attempt to become 3-D. Some of the imagery is genuinely terrifying. The poor WPC being absorbed into the carpet, we see a movement in the wall and floors in the background behind her and she slowly sinks, screaming into the floor. It is the fluid nature of the creature, moving through the walls or the carpet – there is no place of safety.

Then we have the shock moment of the elongated hand that grabs Al in the railway tunnel, which is apparently a Steven Moffat addition.

The army of them faces of the dead worn as flickering masks in the tunnels is probably the scariest that the show has been since the gas mask zombies from ‘The Empty Child’ or the Angels in ‘Blink’. For me the show shouldn’t go too long without being scary and when it is at its zenith it deftly balances those scares with great imagination, action and humour. ‘Flatline’ manages of all of this almost effortlessly.

Despite everything, the Doctor does try unsuccessfully to understand them and their 2-D world – to offer them a lifeline, to open communication, but to little avail:

The impressions we make in two-dimensional space. That was them reaching out, attempting to talk. At which point they moved into flattening and dissection. Trying to understand. Trying to emulate. But here’s the big question. Do they know they’re hurting us?

We’re not calling it a de-flattener.

They’re wearing the dead like camouflage. Whatever they are, they are experimenting. They’re testing. They are, they are dissecting. Trying to understand us.

As the story reaches its conclusion, what we mostly have pitted against the horrific body horror and lurching, flickering zombies, well what we mostly have is some more visual comedy. The scares counteracted by laughs – the train flattened against the tunnel wall, the door handles de-flattened and flattened again. The door that Rigsy paints on the wall that the Boneless try to restore to 3-D, only succeeding in restoring the TARDIS in the process. These are the aspects that feel very ‘Looney Tunes’ – the Doctor’s gang become Roadrunner and the Boneless become Wile E Coyote, about to run off yet another cliff. It is quite the balancing act between the often horrific imagery and the laughs. One which works very well to my mind.

‘The man who stops the monsters’,

Clara and Rigsy might be the main heroes here, however it isn’t their show and so for the ending, back comes the Doctor for a big Paul Cornell style mission statement. Really it is straight out of his Virgin New Adventure playbook – re-purposed for the Steven Moffat era, via the heroic stance, sonic screwdriver aloft, taking centre stage once more and banishing the monsters back to their own world:

‘And I think you just don’t care. And I don’t know whether you are here to invade, infiltrate or just replace us. I don’t suppose it really matters now. You are monsters. That is the role you seem determined to play. So it seems I must play mine. The man that stops the monsters. I’m sending you back to your own dimension. Who knows? Some of you may even survive the trip. And, if you do, remember this. You are not welcome here. This place is protected. I am the Doctor. And I name you The Boneless.‘

“Flatline’ has a real velocity to it, pace and scares and laughs and some interesting core concepts and a nice cast of characters. And it is smart with it. Encompassing the visual arts – painting, street art, animation and film/TV genres from horror, spooky fantasy, cartoon and almost slapstick-level comedy (the flattened door handles and the train feel straight out of Keaton for example). It reminds me rather of a Steven Moffat story in the Russell T Davies era. It isn’t quite as stellar as those, but it is close enough to be a great story in its own right. Similar to something like ‘The Empty Child’, which has similarly great visual ideas and gags (the gas mask zombies, the barrage balloon, the spooky typewriter, the squareness gun etc.), ‘Flatline’ simultaneously feels both new and reassuringly traditional, it maybe lacks some of the depth and range of Steven Moffat’s first story, but it is nonetheless an impressive, assured debut script. The contemporary and traditional, scares and laughs. That is a neat trick to pull off. And very ‘Doctor Who’.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland -a tribute to Deborah Watling

The following article was written in July 2017 just after I heard the news that Deborah Watling had died. This was my tribute to her.

I am going to talk about a few specific scenes from 1960’s Doctor Who. It is to remember Deborah Watling and the companion she played – Victoria Waterfield. I have a real fondness for the character and for Debbie, not least because ‘Web of Fear’ and ‘Fury from the Deep’ and the rest of season 5 are some of my favourite stories. I have happy childhood memories of reading ‘The Abominable Snowmen’, ‘Web of Fear’ (the first book I bought as a child) and ‘The Ice Warriors’ and only really knowing what they looked like from those Chris Achilleos cover illustrations. Through those books – Victoria, Jamie and The Second Doctor were the third TARDIS line-up that I had encountered – after Jo, Sarah and Harry. In that respect they feel very much part of my childhood and they are still one of my favourites.

I first saw some of her surviving episodes – ‘Web of Fear‘ episode 1 and ‘Enemy of the World’ 3 at a Second Doctor themed convention in 1984 – there were very few surviving episodes at that time – before the recovery of ‘Evil of the Daleks‘ 2, ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’, ‘The Ice Warriors‘ and obviously ‘Web of Fear‘ and ‘Enemy of the World‘. It is a joy to have all of those back and to be able to see them. I will hopefully be covering these stories on the blog – but the scenes I have chosen here are really to pay tribute to Debbie, to stick up for Victoria, who I feel is often unfairly maligned as a character and to the era as a whole.

The only time I met her was at the 50th celebration at Excel, being interviewed with Frazer and then had a very brief chat afterwards. Two of their stories had just been returned a week or so beforehand and they were talking to Dr Mathew Sweet about that and their time on the show. Debbie and Frazer’s relationship after all these years seemed very similar to Jamie and Victoria’s – he gently teases her like a naughty schoolboy and she acts slightly like his older, wiser, slightly prim sister – like the following scene from ‘The Ice Warriors’:

JAMIE: You see how those lassies were dressed?
VICTORIA: Yes, I did. And trust you to think of something like that.
JAMIE: Well, I couldn’t help thinking about it.
VICTORIA: Well, I think it’s disgusting, wearing that kind of thing.
JAMIE: Oh, aye, so it is, so it is. You don’t see yourself dressed like that then?
VICTORIA: Jamie!
JAMIE: Oh, I’m sorry. It was just an idea.
VICTORIA: We will now change the subject, please

The next is from ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’ and is one of my favourite scenes in the history of the programme – beautifully played and written:

VICTORIA: I thought you should rest.
DOCTOR: Why me?
VICTORIA: No reason really.
DOCTOR: Oh, I think I know. Is it because I’m
VICTORIA: Well, if you are 450 years old, you need a great deal of sleep.
DOCTOR: Well that’s very considerate of you, Victoria, but between you and me, I’m really quite lively actually, all things being considered.
DOCTOR: Are you happy with us, Victoria?
VICTORIA: Yes, I am. At least, I would be if my father were here.
DOCTOR: Yes, I know, I know.
VICTORIA: I wonder what he would have thought if he could see me now.
DOCTOR: You miss him very much, don’t you?
VICTORIA: It’s only when I close my eyes. I can still see him standing there, before those horrible Dalek creatures came to the house. He was a very kind man, I shall never forget him. Never.
DOCTOR: No, of course you won’t. But, you know, the memory of him won’t always be a sad one.
VICTORIA: I think it will. You can’t understand, being so ancient.
DOCTOR: Eh?
VICTORIA: I mean old.
DOCTOR: Oh.
VICTORIA: You probably can’t remember your family.
DOCTOR: Oh yes, I can when I want to. And that’s the point, really. I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they sleep in my mind, and I forget. And so will you. Oh yes, you will. You’ll find there’s so much else to think about. So remember, our lives are different to anybody else’s. That’s the exciting thing. There’s nobody in the universe can do what we’re doing. You must get some sleep and let this poor old man stay awake.

Victoria has just lost her father, having already lost her mother and the Doctor and Jamie have taken her under their wing. Her relationship with the two of them is a mixture of them encouraging her to move beyond the restrictions of Victorian life and gentle teasing. The thing I really love about Victoria is that she brought this out of an otherwise quite elusive Second Doctor – he becomes protective of her in a way that the First Doctor was with another orphan – Vicki. I love these scenes – he is very gentle with her, tender and comforting – it is very touching. We haven’t heard anything much about the Doctor’s life and his family since Susan left – the end scene in ’The Massacre’ possibly being the closest to hearing his thoughts. Patrick Troughton and Deborah Watling play this scene absolutely beautifully and I don’t think, Victoria’s leaving scenes aside, we see anything quite so emotional until Jo’s leaving in ‘The Green Death’.

That line – ‘the memory of him won’t always be a sad one.‘ is the one that really affects me – it is very true and is probably the scene where Doctor Who, certainly in it’s original run, that most embraces and addresses bereavement and loss. It a beautiful thing to offer to a young audience – the sadness of loss will fade and life goes on, don’t let it diminish your spirit of adventure and sense of wonder. The scene is simple, emotional and touching in a way that some later more emotionally manipulative scenes aren’t always.

The last set of scenes that I wanted to talk about were from ‘Fury from the Deep’, as Victoria leaves. The Doctor is again gently supportive of her and her decision:

DOCTOR: You don’t want to come with us, do you, Victoria.
VICTORIA: I don’t know. I don’t really want to leave you.
DOCTOR: Well, I suspected as much.
VICTORIA: Would you mind?
JAMIE: Victoria, you can’t
DOCTOR: Just a minute, Jamie. You mean you want to stay here and settle down. Well, if you want to, you must.
VICTORIA: I’m sorry.
DOCTOR: No, that’s all right. Mrs Harris, I wonder if you’d mind if Victoria stayed with you for a little while. You see, she’s got no parents or home and it is a bit difficult
MAGGIE: Well, of course. We’d be delighted to have you for as long as you want to stay.
VICTORIA: Oh, would you?
MAGGIE: Yes.
DOCTOR: There, thank you very much. Jamie and I will stay for another day, just in case you want to think again.
JAMIE: Look, we’ll talk it over later.
DOCTOR: Now, Jamie. She must make up her own mind. It’s her own life. It’s her decision.
JAMIE: Aye.

Again the Doctor is very gentle with her, realising that she wants to leave and has had enough. It is very unusual for the Doctor (especially this one) to stay, but he is beautifully supportive of her as she takes control over her life. It is her life and her choice.

And there is this beautiful scene, where Victoria and Jamie discuss her leaving.

JAMIE: Are you not tired?
VICTORIA: No. No, I’m fine. I’m not tired at all.
JAMIE: Do you know what the Doctor’s just gone and done?
VICTORIA: No.
JAMIE: He’s only gone down the beach for a swim. He gets worse. You’re still not sure, are you?
VICTORIA: Yes. But it doesn’t make it any easier leaving you and the Doctor.
JAMIE: Aye, we’ve been together a long time now. Has the Doctor said anything to you?
VICTORIA: No. No, you know what he’s like, he wouldn’t. He believes in people making up their own minds.
JAMIE: Oh, Victoria. Do you think you’ll be happy here?
VICTORIA: Oh, I think so. The Harrises are very nice people.
JAMIE: Yes, I know that, but they’re not from your time, are they?
VICTORIA: I wouldn’t be at ease back in Victorian times. I had no parents or family left there anyway.
JAMIE: Aye, that’s true. Oh, well.
VICTORIA: Jamie.
JAMIE: Yes?
VICTORIA: You wouldn’t go without saying goodbye, would you?
JAMIE: Of course not. That won’t be till the morning anyway. Goodnight, Victoria.
VICTORIA: Goodnight, Jamie.

And then the final scene between Jamie and the Doctor as they leave:

JAMIE: We can’t just leave her.
DOCTOR: We are not leaving her, Jamie. It was her decision to stay. She’ll be quite all right with the Harrises. Now don’t worry so much, Jamie.
JAMIE: I’m not, I’m just. Och, come on, let’s go.
DOCTOR: Well, where would you like to go?
JAMIE: I couldn’t care less.
DOCTOR: I was fond of her too, you know, Jamie.

Victoria’s story is picked up on in ‘Downtime‘ which I have already reviewed. It is rather sad – rather like Nyssa, she lost her mother, her father and is left an orphan stranded in a world 100 years after the one she left in ‘Evil of the Daleks‘. The story finds her looking for a father figure, for a purpose in life and taking a wrong direction. As the Doctor once told her though – it wasn’t always sad, for all the terrifying events of her time with the Doctor – Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti, Ice Warriors and killer seaweed, there was also a lovely relationship between her and Jamie and the Doctor and they visibly have fun together – the scenes on the beaches in ‘Enemy of the World‘ or ‘Fury form the Deep‘ for example. Her character might not chime so much with modern sensibilities, but it seems rather more realistic to me. Being kidnapped, imprisoned, bullied and shouted at by homicidal machine creatures is something that most of us would be scared of.

And I have no truck with the idea that she isn’t brave, I’m not sure how anyone could watch ‘Tomb of the Cybermen‘ and come to that conclusion. She stands up for her right to explore, confronts Kaftan, shoots a Cybermat, gives Hopper short shrift (I love their relationship), all while wearing a mini skirt that would have made most Victorians blush. Likewise in ‘The Abominable Snowmen‘ she runs rings around poor Thonmi, goes off on her own to explores the sanctum of Padmasambhava – her bravery allowing the Intelligence to possess her. For a young Victorian orphan, she is pretty liberated and self-assured at times. Ultimately, though she is a young girl, out of her time, dealing with loss she has suffered and surviving a series of terrifying events. In the end she has to move on and leave her new family behind.

Quatermass II by Nigel Kneale (1955)

Subjection to the intention of the thing is widespread…

‘Quatermass II is the second in the original trilogy of Nigel Kneale Quatermass stories. It picks up the story two years after the original. Like it’s predecessor, ‘The Quatermasss Experiment‘, whilst a hugely important cultural artefact in it’s own right, it is also hugely influential, particularly on a number of ‘Doctor Who‘ stories and in some ways, on the whole direction the series took in the late 1960’s. The title ‘Quatermass II’ is not only indicative of the fact that it is a sequel –it is derived from the name of the nuclear-powered rocket that the British Rocket Group (BRG) are testing at the start of the story. This second ‘’Quatermass’ story provides the inspiration for plot elements of ‘The Invasion’ and ‘Spearhead from Space’ and possibly even something like ‘The Green Death’.  Any story with a sinister industrial complex, with black dressed militarised guards and friends in high places to protect their secrets, where people are possessed or replaced, well this is really the source text. It retains the body horror and possession aspects of the ‘The Quatermass Experiment’, but adds into the mix a cold war era conspiracy thriller element. The paranoia and menace extending not just to the secretive industrial complex at the heart of this, but to Whitehall and even as far as Quatermass’ own rocket group.

In my review of the Doctor Who story ‘Spearhead from Space’, I mentioned that whole scenes at the start of the story are lifted straight from ‘Quatermass II’, as is the plot strand of ‘meteorites containing an alien consciousness and creating a new form in a tank’. In ‘The Invasion’ – the black clad guards, sinister industrial complex, government conspiracy to cover up their activities and possession of senior government/military figures aspect of the story feels wholly imported from ‘Quatermass II’. As do the repeated UFO scares in both ‘The Invasion’ and ‘Spearhead’. Another ‘Doctor Who’ story – ‘The Invisible Enemy’ even uses test footage for a proposed remake of ‘Quatermass II’ – the scene where the Doctor looks through an inspection window to see the virus growing. That original scene from this story is repeated again and again in ‘Doctor Who’ – Quatermass finally gets to see what is growing in the synthetic food tanks at Winnerden Flats, opens the inspection hatch, looks inside and turns away in revulsion. Think the Wirrn grubs in the solar stacks in ‘Ark in Space’, the Kaled mutant embryo room in ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ and various scenes in the impeller shaft in ‘Fury from the Deep’. Even something like ‘Inferno’ or the space control scenes in ‘Ambassadors of Death’ feel like they belong in the world of Quatermass II. It is hugely influential on Season 7 of ‘Doctor Who‘ as a whole – very much in line with producer Derrick Sherwin’s vision of ‘let’s take it back to Earth and do it like Quatermass’.

Cold war paranoia and post-war housing policy

However, I would be doing ‘Quatermass II’ a real injustice just to look at it from the perspective of how it influenced ‘Doctor Who’ – it is a hugely important piece of British cultural life and an important piece of popular British TV history. ‘Quatermass II’ is Kneale’s response to the cold war paranoia sweeping the world of 1955. To the listening stations and missile bases springing up around the country and the burgeoning military/industrial complex. Kneale is instinctively anti-authority, Quatermass bristles with this, being both inside and outside of the establishment. Like the Third Doctor, he both has to cooperate with and use officialdom, whilst also fighting against the constraints and narrow minded attitudes at the same time. It is an an uneasy balancing act. There are times when Kneale’s work feels almost anarchistic, at times deeply conservative, especially as he gets older. This is a piece that has libertarianism at its heart and features an armed workers revolution against ‘the company’, whilst at the same time fighting against a creature that is itself a collective, a group or gestalt, which could be viewed as a signifier of communism. Or alternatively Kneale’s critique of his many travails with and grudges against the BBC and its management, something that troubled him deeply and he wouldn’t let go of his whole life.

The story is told across six half episodes, aired on a Saturday night at 8pm – ‘The Bolts’, ‘The Mark’, ‘The Food’, ‘The Coming’, ‘The Frenzy‘ and ‘The Destroyers‘. The structure of the piece, splits the action between the British Rocket Group, where Quatermass has been studying the test results for his new rocket, the sinister industrial complex and its associated workers community at Winnerden Flats, the committee of enquiry at Whitehall and finally and least successfully an asteroid in Earth orbit.

At the heart of ‘Quatermass II’ though is the small, coastal village of Winnerden Flats in Eastern England, which has been completely bulldozed out of existence. In its place a shining new, massive industrial complex has risen, filmed at the Shell complex at Stanford-le-hope, Essex. Mirroring those ghost villages absorbed into MOD land or flooded for reservoir construction. It is all highly secret, with the well-paid construction workers sworn to silence and images of wartime propaganda – posters like ‘Talk about your job – lose it!’, ‘Remember silence means sealed lips!’. It is also a reflection of what Kneale himself has been doing since we left him in 1953 – adapting ‘1984’ with Rudolph Cartier for a seminal and very controversial 1954 BBC TV production. For Quatermass, the complex even looks very similar to his own abandoned plans for a moonbase. The pressure domes designed to provide a breathable atmosphere for and nourish human life on the moon, repurposed for some other reason.

Winnerden Flats is also a reflection of the rise of the New Town in the post-war era and the temporary, hastily erected pre-fabricated housing, built quickly to house a displaced urban population. The mythos of Old Winnerden Flats itself, is like a Betjeman poem or Kinks song – a paean to the lost innocence of the past.  In a terrific scene in a pub at a nearby village, an old man recounts to Quatermass what the place was like, almost in a eulogy – ‘I courted a girl from Winnerden flats, I married her..’ lost in a reverie. It is beautiful writing. Kneale expertly entwines the normal and everyday amongst the uncanny, the existential threat to humanity and the jack boots and machine guns of the guards.

We also have the memories of a tramp (played by Wilfred Bramball) who fondly remembers the villagers and their generosity., whilst hiding from the guards in the rubble of its destruction The impact of the Cold War on British life in microcosm – the military and industrial trampling on old England.

Later, a family – Mum and Dad and young son carry on with the pretence of a holiday in the shadow of the plant – ignoring the changes and security notices, in a very British show of the ‘holiday must go on’ despite the pouring rain. Later as Quatermass speeds away from the plant in his car, Cartier pans back to show the remains of the family. A typical piece of Kneale brutality and there is plenty more of that later.

Even the situation we find the BRG in, echoes the Cold War setting. They have just tested the experimental Quatermass II rocket, with a hybrid nuclear engine in the deserts of central Australia. The Woomera test range was used for the real British rockets of the time – Blue Streak and Black Knight. This was very much a time when a British rocket programme and even possible exploration of space, looked far more likely rather than our modern perspective. It was lost not through lack of expertise, rather lack of money in the post-war era. That plot thread will be picked up by Kneale in ‘Quatermass and the Pit’, when the military move to takeover his rocket group, supported by the government. Here we also have a conscious echoing of the British nuclear tests in the Australian desert. The consequences for the test crew here are fatal, wiped out as the nuclear motor goes critical – all captured on remote filming. The consequences in real life for many would be similar, just from cancer over a longer period of time.

Next up. I will look at the nature of the threat, of the conspiracy covering up the existence of the menace and what is contained in the pressure domes.

‘Dillon – there’s something on your face’

One of the aspects of Kneale’s writing that I love most, is his skilled handling of exposition and the range of methods he employs to control the slow release information across the piece, so that it feels natural and not forced. As with ‘Quatermass Experiment’, he drip feeds everything we need to know across the piece, Initially we have the conversation in the radar tracking station – the nature of the threat and that it has happened before and been covered up. Then the scientific investigation by Quatermass, his daughter and Leo Pugh revealing the shape and nature of the meteorites and eventually where they are coming from. An enquiry into Winnederden Flats by a campaigning MP – Vincent Broadhead, leading the uncovering of plot at the heart of government and that the menace is not just confined to Britain – it is global in nature. And finally a press story (Hugh Conrad, the journalist played by Roger Delgado). It is extremely impressive writing again. The plot is beautifully constructed, at least until the final episode. It is an onion being slowly pealed and revealing the layers of the silent invasion and the conspiracy at the heart of government and the establishment.

We start with the opening scene which I have already referenced – the radar tracking station tracking meteorites landing nearby, a scene which brilliantly highlights the mundanity of army life. This also introduces us to the fact that this has happened before (again used in both ‘Spearhead from Space’ and ‘The Invasion’). Captain Dillon and the Sergeant go off to try to find one nearby and again in scenes echoed in ‘Sprearhead’ find an old farmer’s wife looking for help, something is wrong with her husband – he’s found one of the meteorites and he starts acting uncharacteristically.

‘I’m certain there was something …else. For a moment I saw it clinging to his face. Then it had gone, like a soap bubble bursting It wasn’t unlike a bubble .. and it left a mark’

This all ties back to the British Rocket Group, because Dillon happens to be the boyfriend of Paula, who works there and happens to be Quatermass’s daughter. She is presumably the daughter that is referenced in the final Quatermass instalment, where he is searching for his lost granddaughter. Quatermass agrees to accompany Dillon to the scene of the landing, largely to take his mind off the disaster that has happened during his initial tests of the rocket. The meteorites break open when a victim is nearby, releasing an ammonia gas ‘a smell of old stables’ and a mark on the skin. Dillon is infected, collapses and taken away by the guards at Winnerden Flats – who have been collecting the meteorite ‘overshoots’. The role they play in the plot has similarities to the Autons collecting the Nestene energy spheres in ‘Spearhead’ and the IE guards in ‘The Invasion’. They are blank, emotionless and ruthless – the workers call them ‘zombies’.

Later, Leo Pugh, a scientist and mathematical genius working with Quatermass, reconstructs the fragments of the meteorite which infected Dillon. He discovers it was hollow and designed like projectile to survive entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Does any of this sound familiar?

Power to Compel….

’In the past few hours I’ve gone over this again and again. There is only one possible explanation… a multiple organism. A group creature .. a countless host, a thousand billion individuals if you like … with one single consciousness. You see what that means? The experience of any one of them is transmitted to all the rest. Shared by all of them simultaneously… wherever they may be.’

‘There’s this violent shock to the brain. And afterwards – something is left implanted. You might call it a new instinct. A blind compulsion to act only – for them’

In episodes 2 and 3 the story switches to Whitehall. Quatermass has tried contacting Lomax, the police inspector who helped in the first story, to no avail. Instead he tries Fowler, the civil servant he liaises with on his own work. Who puts him in touch with Broadhead’s enquiry. It becomes clear though that many of the committee members have been infected by the same thing as Dillon and the farmer – they all share a similar mark. The conspiracy stretches not just to the British government – the ‘synthetic food’ plant at Winnerden Flats, but also globally with similar plants in Sweden and Brazil.

Escaping, as Broadhead is infected, Quatermass and Fowler meet a PR man, Ward who can get them into the plant. And again, the action switches back to Winnerden Flats. As they investigate the plant, Ward dying covered with the poisonous slime that is being fed into the tanks. More of the menace is revealed as the contents of the substance covering Ward are analyzed back at the BRG – an ammonia-based toxin. Pugh and Paula also work to track down where the meteorites are coming from – an asteroid hidden in Earth orbit. Quatermass returns , to the camp at Winnerden Flats with the journalist Conrad – a nice performance from Roger Delgado in a non-villainous role. While they are questioning the worker’s at the pub, thousands of meteorites start falling. Conrad is amongst those infected – phoning in his story to his sub-editor as the workers listen to the story of what they have actually been building.

At the plant, in a seminal, much copied scene, Quatermass gets a glimpse of the creatures growing in the alien atmosphere created in the pressure domes – the ammonids.

Quatermass steps up to the massive cover. He spins a locking wheel….pulls. The cover creaks open, revealing an armoured glass inspection window. He moves close  – and stiffens with horror.

Through the glass can be seen the whole of the interior of the dome. In shimmering light, muddy slime is surging and bubbling, violently agitated. Its surface boils just a few feet below the inspection window … and in it are shapes. Shapes that in the same instant have no shape…. but which to judge by the size of the lamps in the dome and a steel ladder descending into the sludge are colossal.

Something slithers like a mudfish, puffs to a dripping grey protuberance as high as a man – shoots upwards in a series of vast bud-shapes that spring neck from neck, ever wider, towards the very roof of the dome far above. Then it withdraws in an instant.

Wreaths of vapour curl and hang. A bobbing bladder distends itself into a vast glistening cloud., expanding at one point, shrinking at another – twists abruptly into a spiral of thick strands – and foams away under the slime. Shapes – or a single vastly complex shape? A monstrous, swaying column of glistening living matter rises past the inspection window, swoops downwards to link with another group – and plunges, sending the black ooze spattering against the glass.

Fade in end music. Fade to black.

In the final part we will take a look at the revolution at the workers camp and at the final flight of the Quatermass II rocket.

Rudolph Cartier and the workers revolution …

Apart from the sense of creeping paranoia, the most impressive thing about ‘Quatermass II’ is the section of the story that deals with what is essentially an armed worker’s revolution at the Winnerden Flats community. Rudolph Cartier is a ground-breaking director for British TV – almost redefining what the medium could be and those scenes are almost his ‘Battleship Potemkin’ (OK slight exaggeration) – shot on film at the oil refinery at Shell Haven. Val Guest would repeat these very impressively in the film ‘Quatermass 2’, but Cartier is achieving this on a BBC budget and schedule. Cartier is the man who almost more than anyone defined the grammar of British TV – he took a medium that had been treated as ‘radio with pictures’ and made visually distinctive, filmic pieces that moved the medium on from its live, in-studio beginnings. The leap from ‘The Quatermass Experiment‘ to ‘Quatermass II‘ is very apparent – much as it would be from here to ‘Quatermass and the Pit‘ (1958) – these serials chart the very development of British TV.

As Nigel Kneale got older, he, like many, became more conservative. A view that his son, the novelist Mathew Kneale, endorsed on a recent ‘Front Row’ podcast. However here, he almost seems to be to the left of Mac Hulke. Quatermass convinces the workers at the plant to rise up, as a series of events – a meteorite injuring one of their wives, an infected child and  the actions of the ‘zombies’ start to mount up. This culminates in the infection of Delgado’s Hugh Conrad in front of them and the mass landing of the meteorites. They storm the plant and take up arms. Holed up in one of the pumping stations that controls gas flow to the huge pressure domes where Quatermass has seen the creatures growing – the voice of ‘management’ (actually Nigel Kneale himself) implores them to surrender. These scenes would be rather unrealistic scene today – the workers using machine guns on the guards as the take over.  It is much less implausible in 1955 – when all of these men would have had military training and many fought in a war. Armed revolution in Eastern England probably seemed more plausible anyway in 1955.

As the workers take control of the pumping station to the pressure domes and start pumping in oxygen to poison the creatures, the ‘company’ try to fight back. Using the tried and tested method of ‘divide and conquer’ – familiar to anyone who grew up during the Miner’s Strike, convincing some of the ringleaders (almost acting as union reps) into talks. This leads to one of the most harrowing scenes that I can remember in British TV drama. The worker’s hear screaming echoing through the pipes and the pressure drops as the pipes feeding the dome are suddenly blocked by something, liquid dripping from them.  Quatermass and the others realise that the bodies of some of the ringleaders of the uprising have been pulped and used to block the pipes leading to the pressure domes where the ammonid creatures are growing. They use human flesh as a ‘plug’. Now that is horrific, I mean really horrific, they are nice, reasonable people – the ones who want to negotiate with the ‘management’ and hear their views. They are killed and used like a raw material. I can’t think of any way that this can’t be construed as an attack on the way that workers and soldiers were treated in the Britain of the 1950’s – fodder for the bosses and test subjects for the military. It takes an armed revolt in this case for them to break their chains, only for their flesh to be used in an industrial process.

Past imperfect

The story, whilst frequently brilliant, isn’t entirely without its faults. John Robinson has replaced Reginald Tate from the original serial, who sadly died shortly before this was filmed. He came in relatively late in the day and has to carry a lot of the storytelling and technical dialogue. He isn’t bad, but he isn’t quite in the same league as Tate or his successor, the brilliant Andre Morrell. He is a much colder version the character, not the bawling mass of aggression of Brian Donlevy in the film version, just somewhat reserved and not especially likeable. This is still live TV, albeit with more filmed inserts than ‘The Quatermass Experiment’. ‘Quatermass II’ was recorded on transmission, unlike most of the original serial, but the majority of the performances are still live, unlike say early ‘Doctor Who’ – which was ‘as live’ – recorded, but little opportunity to cut or record scenes. Robinson suffers, rather like Hartnell at times with the highly technical and often complex dialogue has to carry.

Some of the other performances are also somewhat stilted – especially Monica Grey as Paula.  Apparently, she was appointed against Rudolf Cartier’s wishes as she was the wife of someone important at the BBC. Again, as with ‘The Quatermass Experiment’, some of this is just different performance codes of the times – the especially heavy RP she employs for example and some of it can be put down to the live nature of these. These serials chart the very rapid changes in TV and the BBC in general between the first in 1953 and the last of the trilogy in 1959. The improvement in the production values of the serials is vast. We are missing some of the links between serials – Cartier and Kneale’s ‘The Creature’ for example, which features some of the earliest location filming. By the final serial ‘Quatermass and the Pit’, we are watching very well-made TV, with strong filmic direction and quality acting. We see that in embryonic form here.

The Destroyers – an epilogue too far.

Like ‘Spearhead from Space’ – the ending is definitely the weakest aspect of this. Although for quite different reasons. With the events at Winnerden Flats wrapped up, following the uprising and destruction of the creatures in the tank. One of the workers leaders, enraged by the deaths of his friends and colleagues, fires a bazooka at the pressure dome, destroying it and the creatures with it and releasing the toxic gasses through the complex. In a typically bleak Kneale move, it seems that everyone dies except Quatermass who is wearing a protective guard suit and mask already.

The narrative now instead turns to the asteroid that the creatures have come from. And as it does it turns somewhat into the sort of hokey sci-fi that Kneale detested and had indeed parodied in the cinema scene in ‘The Quatermass Experiment’. Despite a pretty awful central performance from Brian Donlevy as Quatermass, the Hammer film version of ‘Quatermass II’, has a more successful ending – it finishes as Winnerden Flats as the plant and creatures are destroyed and the Quatermass II rocket is used as a missile (pre-figuring the final story) and destroys the asteroid.

In the TV version, Quatermass returns to the BRG to find it occupied by British paratroopers (this is the year before Suez), lead by the possessed Dillon. Again, something that ‘Spearhead from Space’ would use with the replica of Scobie leading British Army troops against UNIT at the plastics factory. Oddly, the troops allow Quatermass and Leo Pugh to pilot the Quatermass II rocket to the asteroid, which is hidden in Earth orbit. The plan is to set off the nuclear motor and destroy it. This is also part of the creatures plan though – they want to use the rocket capsule to speed their journey to Earth. Pugh is revealed to have been possessed by the creatures since Winnerden Flats and dies, floating off into space. Quatermass ignites the rockets nuclear motor and destroys the asteroid and the creatures there, whilst escaping in the capsule.

It is a rare misstep from Kneale and Cartier. They clearly cannot afford this section of the serial and the space suits look absolutely preposterous. The surface of the asteroid has clearly been made with a fraction of that spent on even, say Vortis, in early ‘Doctor Who’. It would have been a much better idea to simply fire the rocket, unmanned at the asteroid instead. In any case, Quatermass just feels wrong in space – he is the troubled, moral, scientist, fighting high concept alien menaces on Earth, not out on the surface of an asteroid in space. Oddly, as such the ending feels much more like ‘Doctor Who’ – something that I really don’t think that Nigel Kneale would thank me for saying.

If you can look past these flaws though, this is a brilliant piece of work. When it plays to its strengths – the sinister cold war paranoia, the mysterious industrial plant, the wartime regulations, the government conspiracy, the body-horror and possession, the creeping menace and moments of genuine horror – it is superlative and a pivotal work in terms of its influence.

There will be more ‘Quatermass’ and Nigel Kneale to come in these reviews. Their influence on classic ‘Doctor Who’ and lingering impact on the new series simply cannot be understated, as such they should be required viewing for anyone hoping to understand the development of the series, particularly in the 1970’s, but also as groundbreaking, intelligent, popular British TV and a cultural phenomena in their own right.

Mummy on the Orient Express by Jamie Mathieson (2014)

There were many trains to take the name Orient Express, but only one in space.

Completely faithful recreation of the original Orient Express. Except slightly bigger. And in space. Oh, and the rails are actually hyperspace ribbons. But in every other respect, identical. Painstaking attention to detail.

A mini-break for two…

There’s a body and there’s a mummy. I mean, can you not just get on a train? Did a wizard put a curse on you about mini-breaks?

An exotic mini-break for two on a train in space? Mummified soldiers, passengers on a train dying one by one, malfunctioning alien tech – laughs and scares, a bit of glamour and a break from relationship issues. Sign me up.

The story so far

The series so far had been weighed down a little by a number of ongoing arcs – the story of Clara and Danny, the fallout arising from the Doctor’s regeneration into an older, much spikier, often callous man – him questioning ‘Am I a good man?’. And the collapse of the relationship between the Doctor and Clara as a consequence of these changes. This may have been somewhat disorientating and off-putting for an audience who had grown up with or gravitated towards a show based largely on two younger Doctors and relatively straightforward relationships – principally the Tenth and Rose and Eleventh and Amy- with lots of popular variations on that– Martha, Donna, Clara etc. There is a lot of angst and conflict in series 8 and a startlingly different Doctor, who often wasn’t all that easy to like, even for someone familiar with the classic era of the show. Less obviously across the series, another arc was also being seeded, one that would come to a head in ‘Death in Heaven’ – that of the new Doctor’s attitude to the military, which this story does contribute towards, albeit in a rather light touch way.

Personally, I think what series 8 really needed by this point (the eighth story in) is a couple of really good 8 or 9/10 ‘Doctor Who’ stories to anchor it. Scary, funny, entertaining and largely angst and arc-free. And then Jamie Mathieson turns up. The clouds part and ‘Doctor Who’ comes out to play again. Jamie I could kiss you, Well, I can’t, we are in the middle of the pandemic – but if ever a writer deserved a gold medal for good timing it is Jamie Mathieson here. Fifteen minutes to go, the substitutes warming up, we haven’t heard anything about this new kid, on the field, two cracking goals and the season is saved.

‘Mummy on the Orient Express’ isn’t a traditional, classic-era ‘Doctor Who’ story in structure or mostly in terms of content and yet it manages to feel like it is. It feels part of a tradition of ‘tea time horror stories for kids’. What is clever that despite feeling traditional – using the Mummy as a starting point (just as ‘Pyramids of Mars’ had), the cast dying one by one (as per say ‘Robots of Death’ or ‘Horror of Fang Rock’), it is executed in a way that feels more cut from the same cloth as a Steven Moffat story than Robert Holmes. The Foretold – a ‘monster’ that only the victim can see, the time limit, ‘stop the clock‘ and the resolution all feel very much inspired by the showrunner. What it feels like rather is ‘Doctor Who’ 1976/77 (death a plenty, scary cadaverous monster inspired by horror films, time running out) run via a 2014 filter, buffed up and presented afresh – a tad more glamorous than it would have been in the 1970’s – the beauty of the train and costume (Clara and the Doctor both look great in this – she is beautiful, he is very dapper, almost sophisticated, but very Doctor-ish), even music – the Queen song sung by Foxes and all. It isn’t hugely heavy on concept, at least by series 8 standards, but within that it manages to be very clever and have a through line that it feels almost by accident fits one of the themes of the series – the soldier still fighting the war in his head. It is so good and well, has a beguiling simplicity and clarity, that I genuinely wonder what I will find to write about it.

Can we talk about planets now?

Oh yes please, can we? Thankfully, the on-going damaged relationship business between the Doctor and Clara still hanging over from ‘Kill the Moon’ is out of the way early on and with minimal fuss. The Doctor tries to ignore it in exactly the same way that I’ve been trying to all season:

DOCTOR: Oh, I remember when this was all planets as far as the eye could see. All gone now. Gobbled up by that beast. And there’s that smile again. I don’t even know how you do that.
CLARA: I really thought I hated you, you know?
DOCTOR: Well, thank God you kept that to yourself. There was this planet, Obsidian. The planet of perpetual darkness.
CLARA: I did. I did hate you. In fact, I hated you for weeks.
DOCTOR: Good, fine. Well, I’m glad that we cleared that up. There was also a planet that was made completely of shrubs.
CLARA: I went to a concert once. Can’t remember who it was. But do you know what the singer said?
DOCTOR: Frankly, that would be an absolutely astonishing guess if I did know.
CLARA: She said, “hatred is too strong an emotion to waste on someone that you don’t like.”
DOCTOR: Were people really confused? Cos I’m confused. Did everybody leave?
CLARA: Shush. Shut up. Look, what I’m trying to say is, I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. But I can’t do this any more. Not the way you do it.
DOCTOR: Can I talk about the planets now?

The ‘Am I a good man’ theme which is potentially very interesting, but is generally presented across the series in a way that really isn’t, is similarly dispensed with here. We have a bit of narrative sleight of hand that initially suggests otherwise, but ultimately of course he is, he’s a bloody hero. He’s just one that doesn’t have the time or patience (or ‘bed side manner’) to always appear that way. Good, that’s done with. You can be the Doctor now. The relief of it. It’s like someone has opened the windows and let the bad smell out. Can we talk about planets now?

Clara and Maisie

Clara, who by the way, looks lovely here in her flapper dress and 20’s hairstyle, is once again enjoyable to spend time with. What really helps, is that once we have the heart to heart with the Doctor out of the way, she is then mostly paired with Maisie, who is in shock and feeling guilty after losing her Grandmother (the redoubtable Janet Henfrey) in the opening sequence. This works rather well after being stuck with either the Doctor or Danny for the series so far. It also serves to make her appear a much more sympathetic figure than she does for a lot of the series as she takes the rather damaged Maisie under her wing. Reminding us in the process, what a likeable, capable actor she is. It is maybe an approach they should have taken more often.

The Mystery Shopper, the Captain and the Chief Engineer

You know, Doctor, I can’t tell if you’re a genius or just incredibly arrogant.

Can we get a new expert?

Whilst Clara is paired with Maisie, the Doctor spends most of his time with Perkins, the Chief Engineer – who works very well as a foil for Capaldi’s Doctor. Working class, down to earth, technical and clever – you can tell the Doctor is impressed – he doesn’t even insult him that much. It isn’t always the most technically assured performance by Frank Skinner – but that actually doesn’t matter much, he’s charming, he plays it with a twinkle in his eye (old school reference there), is great fun to spend time with, looks like he’s genuinely enjoying himself and brings out the best in the new Doctor. It all starts to feel a bit like a Robert Holmes double-act, except with the Doctor – more like say the Doctor and Spandrell in ‘Deadly Assassin’. It is a shame we don’t see more of Perkins in subsequent stories, he feels very much to be set up as a regular and it feels like there is much more mileage in the character.

Elsewhere, the Doctor initially at least, has a less cordial relationship with the Captain, Quell (played by the excellent David Bamber). In classic ‘Who’, this would typically be the bureaucratic authority figure, refusing the act and locking the Doctor up for a couple of episodes. There to slow down the action to stretch to 4-6 episodes. However here we don’t that have that runtime to fill and so cleverly, even Quell is made a sympathetic figure. He is revealed to be suffering from PTSD after surviving a combat mission, where all his comrades died – another entry in the list of military references this season. He is allowed redemption before he dies at the hands of the Foretold, even thanking the Doctor for ‘waking me up’.

QUELL: When you said I’d lost the stomach for a fight, I wasn’t wounded in battle as such, but. My unit was bombed. I was the sole survivor. Not a scratch on me. But post-traumatic stress. Nightmares. Still can’t sleep without pills.
DOCTOR: Which means that you are probably next. Which is good to know.
QUELL: Well, not for me.
DOCTOR: Well, of course not for you, because you’re going to die. But I mean for us, from a research point of view.
QUELL: You know, for a doctor, your bedside manner leaves (something to be desired).

He has a point here. Other Doctors have been cold (Tom in a number of stories – ‘Seeds of Doom’, ‘Pyramids of Mars’, ‘Horror of Fang Rock’ or McCoy in a number of others) or manipulative of those around him (McCoy again, Troughton in ‘Evil of the Daleks’), but this Doctor takes it too extremes. He just about gets away with it here – as it is made clear that he is doing it for a reason and we get to see him take on the burden that Maisie carries, putting himself in harm’s way to confront The Foretold.

The rest of the cast are also excellent – Christopher Villiers in a lesser role – Professor Moorehouse, Janet Henfrey – killed in the opening sequence and John Sessions, who brings a kind of season 17 ripeness to the role of GUS that could otherwise have been quite dry. It is a pretty decent ensemble and could have benefited from a longer runtime.

The Foretold

Ladies and gentlemen, could I have a moment of your time, please? There’s a monster on this train that can only be seen by those about to die. If you do see it, you will have exactly sixty six seconds left in which to live

A mummy that only the victim can see. I was being rhetorical. I know exactly what this sounds like.

The star of this story though is the mummy itself – the Foretold. He is a brilliant creation. It is a fantastic piece of design work – the teeth, the rotting bandages and flesh, bones poking through. Even the walk. That walk – it is brilliant, the foot dragging half bent over as it stalks you. Even then you can’t run away as it can teleport as well. Possibly the creepiest moment is when it walks straight through the Doctor:

I can half imagine a season 13 or 14 John Friedlander version. It places the story firmly in that tradition. However rather than joining the list of Robert Holmes rotting, cadaverous, black-hearted villains – the Master or Greel for example, what elevates the Foretold, is that in the end it is a rather sympathetic figure. Really it is the Japanese soldier on a Pacific island, still fighting the Second World War in the 1950’s – because nobody has told him that the war is over. It is a terrific idea. It feels like a mixture between the moral complexity of someone like Mawdryn begging for release, combined with the malfunctioning tech of ‘The Empty Child’. The backstory and legend again feels like it is from the Robert Holmes playbook and contributes to the more traditional feel of aspects of the story, whilst giving the otherwise lightly sketched menace as weight and history.

The myth of the Foretold first appeared over five thousand years ago. In some stories, there is a riddle or secret word that is supposed to make it stop. Some characters try to bargain with it, offer riches, confess sins. All to no avail.

A tattered piece of cloth attached to a length of wood that you will kill for. That doesn’t sound like a scroll. That sounds like a flag! And if that sounds like a flag, if this is a flag, that means that you are a soldier, wounded in a forgotten war thousands of years ago. But they’ve worked on you, haven’t they, son? They’ve filled you full of kit. State of the art phase camouflage, personal teleporter. And all that tech inside you, it just won’t let you die, will it? It won’t let the war end. It just won’t let you stop until the war is over. We surrender.

The ending, the Doctor taking Maisie’s place and seeing the Foretold, making the intuitive leap that the symbol is a flag, is a satisfying ending to this story strand. The mummy/soldier standing to attention and saluting after the Doctor ‘surrenders’ is a mirroring of the series climax in ‘Death of Heaven’ with the Brigadier. It felt forced in that story, but natural here, I wonder which was conceived first? In a series with a running theme ostensibly about the military, this is the most truthful passage to my mind, the most meaningful compassionate and affecting.

The clock has stopped. You’re relieved, soldier.

If there is weakness to the story it is that there are still unresolved plot elements – who was GUS and what does he want? It feels like it was designed for a follow up episode that never appeared. GUS was originally intended to appear in Jamie Mathieson’s series 10 story ‘Oxygen’ but was dropped, so we still don’t really know who he was or what that was about. Also, just who was Perkins? Are we supposed to ask that question even? He is pitched as if he was intended to be a bit of an enigma – like he is maybe more than the chief engineer on the train. In that regard the story seems to end rather abruptly, cutting to the beach after the explosion and with only a farewell scene with Perkins, lovely though that is. Poor-old lifelong fan Frank Skinner – offered a place in the TARDIS and having to turn it down. He would have added a nice balance to the mix of regulars, much as Nardole did in series 10. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.

This is a lovely story and announced a genuinely new talent to the world of Who writing.
Indeed, at times this story, ‘Flatline’ and ‘Oxygen’ almost feel like pilots for a Jamie Mathieson series, mirroring the Steven Moffat stories during Russell T Davies’ time as showrunner. There are the building blocks of his own world here. Unfortunately, we are still waiting to see it.

Listen by Steven Moffat (2014)

Question. Why do we talk out loud when we know we’re alone? Conjecture. Because we know we’re not

It could be with us every second and we would never know. How would you detect it, even sense it, except in those moments when, for no clear reason you choose to speak aloud? What would such a creature want? What would it do? Well? What would you do?

Listen.

There is a moment in ‘Listen’ which asks a pretty fundamental question about the story we are watching, how much of it is real and whether it is actually an exercise in fake scares and mass hysteria, a campfire ghost story or a fake Victorian séance. The moment is when Clara asks the Doctor ‘So is it possible we’ve just saved that kid from another kid in a bedspread?’. And the answer the Doctor gives is still entirely valid by the end of the story – ‘Entirely possible, yes’. It is a clever idea, exploring the nature of nightmares and the fears of childhood, but in way that is left unresolved and almost entirely ambiguous and yes paradoxical. It may be that Clara, the Doctor, Orson and Rupert have just spent the whole story effectively scaring each other. I rather like that. Of course, it is also perfectly possible to view it as a colossal waste of everyone’s time!

In the opening the Doctor muses ‘Evolution perfects survival skills. There are perfect hunters. There is perfect defence. Question. Why is there no such thing as perfect hiding? Answer. How would you know? Logically, if evolution were to perfect a creature whose primary skill were to hide from view, how could you know it existed? It is an interesting and rather scary premise. A silent, invisible companion through your life. It is also I think a slight misunderstanding about how Natural Selection works. It doesn’t perfect – it does just enough. Think more of an evolutionary arms race – just enough to allow you survive long enough to pass on your genes. Specialism generally comes at a price, something else has to be compromised – it is no use being as fast as possible if that physiological adaptation to achieve that means that you can’t reproduce effectively. In the environmentally degraded world we live in, there is rather a tendency for generalists to survive and flourish – they are better adapted to survive environmental change. We see this across orders – for example birds and butterflies with highly adapted, highly specialised lifestyles declining, while adaptable generalists have greatly increased in numbers. Despite that reservation, it is an interesting thought experiment and provides a good central conceit for this story.

The natural history of fear

‘Listen came about in a conversation between me and Brian Minchin about what we can do with sound in Doctor Who? That just set off something in my head. Let’s try and do a story that’s just about what the Doctor thinks about the monster… but in which the monster never actually appears.’ Steven Moffatt goes on to talk about wanting to write a chamber piece in the middle of the series to stretch him as a writer. And that is how it feels, a writer wanting to stretch himself, to keep himself interested and engaged after 4 series as showrunner, something which would be repeated the following season with ‘Heaven Sent’.

Unsurprisingly sound and sound creatures is something that has been explored in audio media ‘Doctor Who’, as early as third Big Finish story – ‘Whispers of Terror’ or later with ‘Static’. From time to time they employ techniques that use audio only stories to the full and plot sleights of hand that rely on a lack of visuals. Here we get some of that, but within the scope of a visual story, so instead we rely on physical barriers to stop us from seeing the ‘menace’ and certain other story elements – the noises outside of the time ship, the ‘creature’ under the blanket on the bed that is then blurred and out of vision, the young Doctor whose face we never see or the simple visual of the Doctor turning away, the chalk dropping to the floor and the word ‘Listen’ appearing on the blackboard.

It is an interesting premise, whilst at the same time it also has the slight feel of a greatest hits package – all the clever or exciting bits in a different blend. Here we also get the spooky children’s home location from ‘The Impossible Astronaut’. We get a journey to the end of time, which we will see again in ‘Hell Bent’. Here though, the ‘hiders’ and the core concept of a childhood nightmare of something under the bed and an unseen creature with perfect camouflage, make this feel more of a piece with Steven Moffat’s other creations based on childhood fears or games – the clockwork men under the bed in ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’, the Weeping Angels (Grandma’s footsteps) or the Silence – who you forget as soon as you can’t see them.

We are never really sure if the hiders here are real or not, just a series of coincidences and spooky set-pieces. In that respect it really is a sister episode to Russell T Davies’ ‘Midnight’ – where we also never see the protagonist – only feel its impact – with Sky’s child-like mirroring everything the Doctor says. Similarly, the sequences in ‘Listen’ set at the end of time, where whatever is outside (if there is anything) is represented solely through noise or the movement of the ship, feel similar to the knocking sequence in ‘Midnight’ with the Doctor and the others stuck inside the bus. ‘Listen’ shares a similar experimental, chamber piece feel to ‘Midnight’ and they appear in both showrunners fourth series – a well-earned personal ‘indulgence’ after the heavy lifting of the major stories and arcs. Where ‘Listen’ is slightly different is that it is far less standalone than ‘Midnight’ and fits into the series 8 arc. The events that play out here will have consequences for ‘Dark Water’/’Death in Heaven’ and beyond.

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps…

Amongst the philosophical exploration of the nature of childhood fears and whether we are truly ever alone, I always forget that there is a great big wodge of Steven Moffat’s sitcom ‘Coupling’ in ‘Listen’. The date between Clara and Danny is a mixture of funny and utterly cringeworthy. Every wrong word uttered, every ounce of social awkwardness as two people get to know each other and mess it up. Including this classic – again it could come from ‘Coupling’, but in Series 8 things aren’t that simple the following exchange will have a very different resonance by the time we get to ‘Death in Heaven’:

DANNY: I dug twenty three wells.
CLARA: I’m sorry?
DANNY: Twenty three wells. When I was a soldier. Twenty three.
CLARA: Okay. Good. Good wells.
DANNY: Yeah, they were good, actually.
CLARA: I’m not doubting the quality of your wells.
DANNY: Whole villages saved. Actual towns full of people. People I didn’t shoot. People I kept safe.
CLARA: Okay. Point taken. Seriously.
DANNY: So why doesn’t that ever get mentioned?
CLARA: I’m sorry I didn’t mention your twenty three wells.
WAITER: Excuse me?
CLARA: Sorry.
WAITER: Er, water for the table?
CLARA: Don’t you worry. He’ll probably dig for it.

Something under the bed

One thing that generally doesn’t happen in the aftermath of a slightly disastrous date is that a police box materialises in your bedroom and a deranged Glaswegian, time traveller takes you off to try and track down ‘the perfect hider’, the hand on your ankle under the bed. Clara’s day goes from bad to worse and Danny’s isn’t much better. All of which the Doctor is utterly oblivious to, more than that he just doesn’t care (‘you said you had a date. I thought I’d better hide in the bedroom in case you brought him home. Bit early, aren’t you? Did it all go wrong, or is this good by your standards?’)! We know that this isn’t going to end well…

‘Dreams. Accounts of dreams, by different people, all through history. You see, I have a theory. I think everybody, at some point in their lives, has the exact same nightmare. You wake up, or you think you do, and there’s someone in the dark, someone close, or you think there might be.’

‘So, you sit up and turn on the light. And the room looks different at night. It ticks and creaks and breathes. And you tell yourself there’s nobody there, nobody watching, nobody listening, nobody there at all. And you very nearly believe it. You really, really try and then. (hand grabs ankle under bed). There are accounts of that dream throughout human history. Time and time again, the same dream. Now, there is a very obvious question I’m about to ask you. Do you know what it is?‘

The new series has a run of stories in which the Doctor either indulges a companion or his own curiosity by taking his friends to the worst places in the universe they could go at that moment in time. In ‘Father’s Day’ he takes Rose back just in time to see her father die, multiple times, in ‘Dark Water’ he takes Clara to ‘heaven’ to see the recently deceased love of her life, Danny. Here he takes her, albeit almost by accident instead of her own past, to explore her dreams, rather by virtue of an ill-timed mobile call to Danny’s. All just to see if she ever had a dream about someone under the head grabbing her ankle! This plan, via the labyrinthine mind of Steven Moffat is almost as convoluted as the Cybermen in ‘Wheel in Space’ or your average scheme by the Master. Here he connects Clara to the telepathic circuits of the TARDIS and well we end up in Gloucester…

It sets in motion a train of events that will explore Danny’s (actually Rupert’s) childhood and the future of his bloodline and give us a rare peak into the childhood and psyche of the Doctor. There are two main sequences, the first in the children’s home with young Rupert and the second the scenes in the far future with his descendant Colonel Orson Pink. Actually, there is a third – more of that later. They are tied together by childhood fears and the device of a toy soldier – a sort of rosebud from Orson’s past. And by Clara. She and the Doctor inadvertently set in train Danny’s own future as a soldier (an even crueller twist of fate given the events of ‘Dark Water’), while giving him tools to survive his childhood. We end up with an unresolved paradox – Orson, how did he come to exist given Danny’s eventual fate – did the timeline just change or was it just the change of heart from Jenna – deciding to stay on? Was her resolution to have been having Danny’s child?

Those scenes in Danny’s youth are effective and scary. The unknown presence under the blankets. The Doctor veering from helpful to unnecessarily scaring the poor bugger. But Clara is there – Jenna is fantastic in this story I think, it is great to see her compassionate, caring side more and the vulnerability of the date scenes. We get a glimpse at what a less spiky version of this trio might have been like – the tensions are all there, but we also balance that out with the occasional laugh and moments of genuine compassion. The speech that the Doctor gives to young Rupert here will be important later – important for the Doctor himself and his darkest hour:

‘Let me tell you about scared. Your heart is beating so hard, I can feel it through your hands. There’s so much blood and oxygen pumping through your brain, it’s like rocket fuel. Right now, you could run faster and you could fight harder, you could jump higher than ever in your life. And you are so alert, it’s like you can slow down time. What’s wrong with scared? Scared is a superpower. It’s your superpower. There is danger in this room and guess what? It’s you. Do you feel it? Do you think he feels it? Do you think he’s scared? Nah. Loser. Turn your back on him.‘

‘The breath on the back of your neck, like your hair’s standing on end. That means, don’t look round.‘

The End of Time (Again!)

From Danny’s rather lonely childhood, we venture into the far future. A future where his relative Orson Pink, a pioneer time traveller (rather like Hila in ‘Hide’) is trapped at the end of the universe. The sequence here again is effective, the time ship as a haunted house surrogate, the noises and bumps in the night enough to traumatise Orson and later the Doctor. The Doctor is hugely cruel here – bringing Orson back to this and then telling him the lie that it has to re-charge, just for his own curiosity. It is a conscious echo of the First Doctor’s actions in ‘The Daleks’. This thread is tied back to the children’s home through the device of the toy soldier, passed down through the generations. And tied to the next sequence, which provides the reasoning behind the Doctor’s own unquenchable curiosity to find out the truth of the hiders.

My lonely Angel

And so, then to the childhood of another lonely youngster, alone and scared in a barn. The ‘Lonely Angel’ –’Such a lonely little boy. Lonely then and lonelier now. How can you bear it?‘ that Reinette referenced in Moffat’s ‘Girl in the Fireplace’. Clara inadvertently becoming the trigger for his dream of a hand grabbing his ankle and the monsters under the bed – paradoxically the starting point of all of this. She redeems herself though, implanting his own advice to young Rupert in the Doctor at a similar age. This is very clever, whether people like it or not – actually, that is a slightly different question, this can be a clever, neat idea without necessarily liking it or its implications for the motivation of the Doctor or Clara as a plot device. It also ties back brilliantly to ‘Day of the Doctor’ and the day he has to decide to end the Time War – back to ‘Never cruel or cowardly’ and back in the location, where he first faced his own fears. Again, Jenna plays this just beautifully and kudos to Douglas McKinnon – all of this looks fantastic.

‘This is just a dream. But very clever people can hear dreams. So, please, just listen. I know you’re afraid, but being afraid is all right. Because didn’t anybody ever tell you? Fear is a superpower. Fear can make you faster and cleverer and stronger. And one day, you’re going to come back to this barn. And on that day you’re going to be very afraid indeed. But that’s okay. Because if you’re very wise and very strong, fear doesn’t have to make you cruel or cowardly.‘

‘You’re always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like a companion. A constant companion, always there. But that’s okay, because fear can bring us together. Fear can bring you home. I’m going to leave you something, just so you’ll always remember, fear makes companions of us all.’

This even thrillingly brings everything back to the first ‘Doctor Who’ story – where the First Doctor tells Barbara that ‘fear makes companions of us all’. It embeds this story within the mythos of the show. What it does for casual viewers, well I’m not entirely sure – I’m not sure that any of it would have made much sense, which I think is OK once a series. In that regard it is curious – not so much a vanity project, but an exercise in keeping the showrunner happy, allowing him to stretch his wings a little and have his own bit of job satisfaction. It is something that the show can afford to do from time to time, but not too often within the constraints of a popular Saturday night family adventure show.

‘Listen’ is a collision of ideas. There are aspects that feed into arcs that stretch multiple series, all mixed up with the mythos of the Doctor and the personal relationships and history of Clara Oswald. In the final analysis, despite all of the emotional arc work, nothing very much actually happens in Listen’ and what does is left ambiguous and open to interpretation. I rather love it though, although strangely I would find it difficult to argue too strenuously against those who don’t.

What’s that in the mirror, or the corner of your eye? What’s that footstep following, but never passing by?

Perhaps they’re all just waiting, perhaps when we’re all dead, out they’ll come a-slithering from underneath the bed.

Did we come to the end of the universe because of a nursery rhyme?

Yep, that’s about the size of it. Sleep well.

Father’s Day by Paul Cornell (2005)

Peter Alan Tyler my dad. The most wonderful man in the world. Born 15th September 1954.

It is 2005, ‘Doctor Who has been off screen, barring the 1996 TV Movie and a few repeats for 15 years. A generation had grown up without knowing what a TARDIS or Daleks were and the British TV schedules had been bare of mainstream sci-fi and fantasy for quite some time. When Russell T Davies was commissioned to create a new series of the show in 2003 – he was specifically asked by Jane Tranter (Controller of Drama at the BBC) to create his own version of the show. Russell had become known for high quality ‘popular’ drama – ‘Queer as Folk‘, ‘Bob and Rose‘ and probably most relevant to ‘Doctor Who’ (his BBC Children’s series aside) – his high concept series for ITV – ‘The Second Coming‘, concerning the possible return of Jesus Christ in Manchester. He was tasked with creating a popular drama series akin to the then modern series ‘Buffy’ or ‘Smallville’, where the Sci-fi and fantasy elements were balanced against the more ‘soapy’ elements.

Series One as a whole is an interesting balancing act between not scaring off a potential new audience with overly complex Sci-Fi concepts and jargon, building an audience no longer used to science fiction on BBC1, whilst at the same time attracting and retaining those who were watching for exactly that. It has to be viewed through that lens and this context is important to a number of stories from that series. ‘Father’s Day’ fits perfectly in here in conception – a family drama, rich in emotion, with people and relationships that we can instinctively understand, but also a story that can only really be told in a sci-fi/fantasy context, with the attendant time travel and paradoxes. It melds ‘Doctor Who’ and the popular drama’s of the time – not soap especially – more something that Jimmy McGovern, Paul Abbot or Russell himself would have produced. Clocking Off with time paradoxes and inter-dimensional monsters. It is something that Russell pulled off with Second Coming – mixing the uncanny and the ordinary. It is something that the show hadn’t really attempted before and so it feels fresh, whilst also acting as a pathway into the new series for a wider audience, which was maybe less tolerant or sure of the sci-fi elements.

While the show had been away during ‘The Wilderness Years’, three main fictional strands had kept it alive. The DWM comic strip, Big Finish (from 1999 onwards) and the Virgin New Adventures books (later BBC books) from 1992. The star writer of the Virgin New Adventures had been Paul Cornell – an author who had managed to move the show in a slightly different direction, broaden what it could be and in the likes of ‘Love and War‘ and ‘Human Nature‘ write stories that had a great emotional beating heart. He had even managed to introduce Russell to the range, to write his sole contribution ‘Damaged Goods‘. In short, once Russell realised he had 13 episodes to write, Paul was just the sort of person he wanted to write one of the remaining episodes and he had one particular story from the original series pitch document in mind.

Rose’s Father or Wounded Time

Russell gave Paul Cornell an outline for an episode of the returning series (‘Rose’s Father‘, later renamed ‘Wounded Time’), in which Rose would go back in time and meet her deceased father, seeing him die time and time again. Pete’s story would be told be the people who knew him. Draft after draft followed (Terrance Dicks has a few things to say about this!). In the end I’m not entirely sure who wrote what, but I do know that the episode that ensued feels authentically like both Paul’s voice and Russell’s, which is no mean feat. It is a perfect melding of ‘Doctor Who’ and high quality popular drama and it is very series one.

In the Series 1 script book, Paul has the following to say about the episode:

‘I once had a dream about my Dad. Men were being drafted into the army again, and my Dad told me that he would never let them take me. That I didn’t have to go if I didn’t want to. That he’d put his life before mine. I knew he would die in my place if he ever had the chance. That makes him absolutely special and completely normal for a father at the same time’

He also talks rather movingly about his father’s wartime experiences in Burma and him reading the Target books of Terrance Dicks to a young Paul when he was ill. Paul’s relationship with his own father suffuses this story and again makes him the perfect person to write this and Russell is the perfect person to oversee it.

“Father’s Day‘ certainly benefits from its placement in the running order for the series, not just in narrative terms, but also in terms of the quality of the production. By this point, the Series One production line looked to be in full flow, having put a lot of the initial production issues in block one behind it. Joe Ahearne was ensconced as the Director of Favour and Cardiff busy producing a run of excellent stories – Dalek, Father’s Day, Empty Child, Parting of the Ways. Ahearne’s direction and the performances of the leads are all assured and confident – the tonal issues of that first block of stories (‘Rose, ‘Aliens of London‘) seemingly banished. Even the look and feel of the show has improved and works brilliantly here. The grading and the filming in November, leaves on the ground, give it an autumnal and slightly funereal feel. It works thematically, even though it is set around a wedding, really it is a funeral eulogy to Rose’s lost father.

The story so far…

We come into this story already knowing Rose and her family – Jackie and Mickey and some of their backstory. So, even though we have travelled back in time, we are entering a familiar world. For those of us who remember the 1980’s it is an exercise in nostalgia – whether for the ‘No Third Term for Thatcher’ posters or possibly for the fashion and hairstyles of the time, with references in Pete and Jackie’s wedding to the 1981 Royal Wedding. For those who don’t remember the time – well it is an opportunity for youngsters to laugh at what Mum and Dad used to look like – just as Rose herself does. So the ‘near history’ setting is quite astute, a ‘Doctor Who’ 80’s night.

The ‘story so far’, for those who might have missed it is set up perfectly in the opening scenes, where Jackie talks to her young daughter – showing her the family photo album. This is interspersed with the older Rose asking the Doctor to take her back in time to see her father:

JACKIE: Come here, Rose. Come here. Who’s that? It’s your daddy. You weren’t old enough to remember when he died. 1987, 7th of November. Do you remember what I told you? The day that Stuart Hoskins and Sarah Clarke got married. He was always having adventures. Oh, he would have loved to have seen you now.

JACKIE: I wasn’t there. Nobody was. It was a hit and run driver. Never found out who. He was dead when the ambulance got there. I only wish there’d been someone there for him.
ROSE: I want to be that someone, so he doesn’t die alone.

It is done with brilliant economy and from that point on we find out everything we need to know about Rose and Jackie and Pete and their relationships as the story unfolds.

An Ordinary Man

I don’t think that the programme had ever before been either so emotional or so honest in its portrayal of love and loss and family. We’ve seen something of the impact of the loss of Pete Tyler on the lives of Jackie and Rose in the introduction, providing the lead in to Rose asking the Doctor to take her back in time to see him. This is an aspect that links in with the ending of ‘Rose’, where at she originally joins the Doctor – as she first turns him down and then agrees when he returns and mentions that it can time travel. What isn’t so clear is why the Doctor agrees to take her back to this dangerous point in her personal history. In those scenes where they repeatedly go back to the same point so that she can speak to Pete, he consistently lectures her on the ethics and responsibilities of time travel – but in the end it is he who facilitates her saving Pete’s life – pushing him away from the oncoming car that was to end his life. The reasons why he does this are somewhat lost and it is an area that isn’t really explored, almost as if there is a missing scene. Is he trying to impress her, just grateful for everything she has done for him – helping him to get over his trauma and survivors guilt at the end of the Time War? Whatever the reason, things don’t quite pan out the way she expected when she finally meets Pete.

Pete’s status as a hero arises out of his own fallibility and ‘normality’. He is an ordinary man, a bit of a loser, but with a good heart – a bit of a let down to Rose, not even tall enough to match her idea of what he would be like. He is brilliantly played by Shaun Dingwall here – a normal, everyday, flawed person. The story has an honesty, it doesn’t pull its punches with regard to the state of his relationship with Jackie, he has possibly strayed, she is quite heartless at times – we see the other side of her lovable, down market comedy mum and the effect of this on Rose – we see it through her eyes. This also contrasts nicely to the pathos of her loneliness without Pete or Rose, which we will later see in Love and Monsters. Jackie’s flat is alive with the evidence of the myth of Pete, his failures and triumphs so mundane (the bowling trophy with a promise of a trip to Didcot) – but to Rose this mythology is as impressive as the Doctor’ has to offer. Pete’s ‘ducking and diving’, scratching a living from ill-thought through schemes and his health drinks apparently was also based on Paul’s Cornell’s father’s own attempts to make a living, but it serves to give Pete’s later sacrifice a nobility.

The setting of the wedding cleverly brings the strands of the Tyler’s life together – their friends, young Mickey – it also provides a perfect setting to show the less than perfect aspects to their relationship. More importantly, as with a lot of series one, it grounds the high concept sci-fi elements very much in the everyday and normal. All aimed at the widest possible audience. Even Pete as a character is coded as an archetype familiar to viewers – that of Del-Boy, the lead in ‘Only Fools and Horses‘ – a BBC sitcom, which at peak had nearly 25 million viewers. He is a character, like Jackie, that the audience instinctively know. Whilst the narrative is constructed around the uncanny – the Reapers and the paradoxes inherent in changing time, the presentation is bedded in the familiar and normal. We even have the Doctor celebrating the life ordinary – bride-to-be Sarah, meeting her future husband Stuart outside of a night club and almost lamenting that he has never had a life like that. This very much feels like something Russell would have added – it also very much suits Christopher Eccleston and feels much more like the sort of work he would want to be involved with.

Wounded Time

I haven’t really commented too much on the sci-fi elements of the story, but there is a reason for that, they are not what I think of when I think about the story. However, this aspect, the time paradox caused by Rose saving Pete and later touching her future self and the Reapers arriving to ‘seal the wound‘ work really well. These were added later in the evolution of the script, Russell had conceived it as no monsters, Doctor-lite, CGI-lite, cheaper episode. However, Jane Tranter had asked for there to be more monsters added across the season, thinking it lite in that regard. The reapers at one point where a more literal representation of the ‘Grim Reaper’ – but abstracting them somewhat from that works better. The siege of the church provides the action and jeopardy, in a story that would be otherwise a bit lacking in that regard. The balance works well I think. Amongst the emotional, family thread we have the temporal paradoxes, the ’empty’ TARDIS and the shots from the Reapers POV as the inhabitants of the area around the church disappear. The Doctor is back-grounded slightly here in favour of the Tyler family story – it was originally intended as a Doctor-lite episode to give the lead a break, but it still works rather well.

Shelter from the Storm

If the setting of a wedding is astute from the perspective of bring together the Tyler’s and their extended friends and family, the location of much of the action within the church itself is symbolic. Paul Cornell is a practicing Christian, something which permeates his writing and his wife is a vicar. Interestingly though, the original setting for most of the action was a pub. It was the very much non-religious Russell T Davies, who suggested the church as a space in which all of the Tyler’s friends could all be brought together and the wedding as justification. This is one of a series of creative decisions he would make across his time as showrunner that would use religious iconography – angels, the hymn in ‘Gridlock’, Satan, resurrections and a series of god-like representations of the lead characters. The re-purposing of religious themes and iconography for a secular purpose.

The church here is very much a sanctuary – a safe place in the eye of hurricane. Its very age, as much as the stone walls a barrier to the Reapers and the chaos of the world outside. You could make an explicit connection between this story and Christianity. A man born to relatively humble circumstances, who gets to live beyond his initial death and sacrifices himself to save the world. It would be easy to construct a review around that. However it is so rooted in the ordinariness of Pete Tyler and his sacrifice for his family, that it never feels quite like that. Rather a secular piece, with a religious theme should you want to look for that.

Who am I?

So to the ending. The scenes between Pete and Rose, as he realises who she is and then tries to tell Jackie are quite beautiful. For Pete, meeting the grown-up Rose, the daughter who he will never see, is a moment to put aside his failures and disappointments, to grow up and take responsibility – to become a father in fact:

I never read you those bedtime stories. I never took you on those picnics. I was never there for you.
But I can do this for you. I can be a proper dad to you now. I’ve had all these extra hours. No one else in the world has ever had that. And on top of that, I got to see you. And you’re beautiful. How lucky am I, eh? So, come on, do as your dad says. You going to be there for me, love? Thanks for saving me.

‘No love, I’m your Dad. Its my job for it to be my fault’

‘Who am I love?’ ‘My Daddy’

These lines could sound quite cliched, but they are beautifully played here and get me every time I watch this. Instead of Pete lamenting his own fate, he treasures those extra hours with his daughter – the gift, albeit unwittingly given to both of them by. the Doctor. How many people wish for that – a bit of extra time with a loved one to tell them everything you wanted to say in life or a peak ahead to your child’s future to know that despite anything that happens to you, that they will be alright? It is simple, emotional and truthful.

I remember Paul Cornell saying that as Pete ran out to his death, he wanted the St Etienne song ‘Hobart Paving’ to play. I can’t say how much I approve, it is beautiful and one of my favourites. I’m listening to the “Van Dyke Parks arrangement’ version as I type this. With its refrain of ‘Don’t forget to catch me, don’t forget to catch me…’ it is rather appropriate. Murray Gold though provides an excellent score for this story – underscoring the emotional beats perfectly.

Again, in those final scenes, the ordinariness of one man being run over by a Vauxhaul Chevette contrasts with the sacrifice that Pete makes for his daughter and her world. One ordinary man seals a wound in time, brings back those who have been killed and banishes the Reapers. In doing so he saves the future for his wife and child.

The story nicely wraps around to the opening scenes between Jackie and the young Rose, with one particular change. It is a wonderful piece of symmetry.

He stopped, he waited for the police. It wasn’t his fault. For some reason, Pete just ran out. People say there was this girl, and she sat with Pete while he was dying. She held his hand. Then she was gone. Never found out who she was.

This coda of time being subtly changed and Pete having someone with him, to hold his hand as he dies, is rather like the dedication to Amy by Van Gogh in ‘Vincent and the Doctor’. We don’t see the funeral or the mourning, we don’t really need to as we have already seen the impact of Pete’s loss on the lives of both Jackie and Rose. We’ve seen the future he helped to save.

I’ve watched Father’s Day many times, although it gets me every time, I can’t quite recapture the emotional gut punch of watching it for the first time. I remember looking around the room and everyone, myself included was in floods of tears. The show was never really quite like this again, there are quite a few times that it has shamelessly tugged at the heartstrings, but never again was it all quite so ordinary and quite so perfect.

Coda

I originally wrote this review in 2016, which was a been a pretty bad year for many people – some seriously dispiriting world events and a plethora of beloved celebrities deaths, including some amazingly talented people. From a personal perspective, I had also just lost my own father to cancer after a very difficult, heartbreaking year watching him slowly die and writing his eulogy over and over again in my head.

My Dad, a bit like Paul’s or like Pete would have done anything for me and my Sister. He would have taken the same hit for either of us and he’s probably the only person that I will ever know who would. Thanks to Paul Cornell and Russell T Davies, for summing all of this up beautifully in what should be just a silly old British science fiction programme from my childhood, but which means so much more than that.

The Next Doctor by Russell T Davies (2008)

I’m the Doctor. Simply, the Doctor. The one, the only and the best. If you could stand back, sir. This is a job for a Time Lord.

‘The Next Doctor’ – the one with the rubbish, shaggy Cyber Shades and that nonsensical giant Cyberman at the end, isn’t it? Well, there is a lot more substance to it than that – if that’s all you got from it, well maybe take another look. It is a story about the trauma and ‘dissociated fugue state’ of one poor, decent man who has seen his wife die and his son kidnapped in extraordinary circumstances. He is a man who loses his own identity and memories in the process acquires new ones – he is also transformed into a hero. In some ways it is sequel to ‘Human Nature’, the John Smith story in reverse – actually closer to what starts to happen to Timothy Dean in that story – the tale of a human becoming a Time Lord or at least some of the characteristics of one. The story of how contact with ‘The Doctor’ improves all of us. In typical ‘Doctor Who’ fashion this is not through the bite of a radioactive spider or an experiment gone wrong – just by absorbing the ‘cleverness’ and knowledge of our lead character.

So, to my mind, there are two great ideas at the heart of ‘The Next Doctor’, both rather adult in their conception and both of which are played low in the mix, to allow for something that has to be suitable, upbeat family adventure entertainment on Christmas Day. The first is the exploration of trauma and ‘fugue state’ in the lead character – Jackson Lake/ The Doctor. The second is an intelligent woman attempting to better her position in life and avenge herself on the men who have not only kept her ‘in her place’, but it is strongly hinted that they have also abused her emotionally and sexually. The skill that Russell shows in taking these two core ideas, seemingly at odds completely with the core audience and the day/time slot that this piece of drama was to be aired and blend them with something that is pacy, action-packed, funny and well, for me at least, great entertainment, well that is something special. At the same time, he managed brilliantly to get extra publicity, in advance of David Tennant leaving, through the idea that David Morrissey might be the new Doctor after all.

Given that the story has always been enjoyed and appreciated in our household, I think I’d always assumed that other people liked ‘The Next Doctor’ as much as I did. Another surprise when I first delved into the world of online fandom. The story feels criminally underrated to me – people fixated on the Cyber-shades and the admittedly slightly ludicrous Iron Man, sorry Cyber King. There is far more substance below the surface of this one and frankly it is great entertainment, with two terrific leads and a great supporting cast.

One summer…

Back in 1983, when I was very young, two teenagers from Liverpool ran away to North Wales ‘One Summer’. Icky and Billy didn’t have much going for them – broken homes, petty crime, bunking off school – one of them illiterate, but they found friendship with a lonely gay man and Billy found his first love and heartbreak. Billy was played by an 18-year old David Morrissey and ‘One Summer’ by Liverpool playwright Willy Russell is one of the first TV plays that I can remember. I grew up with him as an actor – following his career just as I did with the likes of Chris Eccleston, John Simm, Robert Carlyle and Ian Hart – young actors from Northern Britain, usually appearing in socially conscious dramas by the likes of Jimmy McGovern, Peter Flannery, Paul Abbot and Ken Loach. David Morrissey was from my home town, an alumnus of The Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. Where I saw my first plays as a teenager and the old bistro and bar, that used to carry on serving until midnight when everything else, except clubs were closed, was the scene of quite a few drunken evenings. Morrissey has a string of great performances – State of Play, Blackpool, Red Riding, The Deal. I’d hoped since the show returned that one day he might play the Doctor. As a one-off in 2008, he was the ‘Next Doctor’ and I wish that he had stayed longer.

As ‘The Doctor’ – he has the command of every situation, reassuring presence and natural authority of Pertwee and is a man of action and adventure. The persona starts to crack over this story, as the fugue state becomes apparent, but what we see indicate that he would have made a fine Doctor.

I should introduce Rosita. My faithful companion. Always telling me off.

At this point ‘Our Doctor’ is travelling alone – having left Donna back at her home, her memories wiped. The ‘Next Doctor’, however has as companion of his own (‘The Doctor’s companion does what The Doctor says’ – typically this one doesn’t!) – the rather magnificent Rosita. Her name even reflecting our Doctor’s former companion, who he has just left at Bad Wolf Bay for a second time. She doesn’t take any of his nonsense, is headstrong, but also caring, taking charge of the children and she has obviously been looking after Jackson throughout the time since he lost his family and identity.

A fine bromance

Morrissey and Tenant make a great team. They had already worked together on the excellent BBC series ‘Blackpool’. Morrissey playing a local, dodgy entrepreneur Ripley Holden and Tenant playing the brooding policeman, with designs on Ripley’s wife. They also look here like they are having a great time making this, which bleeds through into the production and imbue it with a real spirit and energy. This is particularly true in the action set pieces – the scenes chasing the Cybershade, being pulled up a wall and along the warehouse floor and also the scenes sword fighting with Cybermen on the stairs of a Victorian house.

Tennant is a fine, adaptable actor, especially when it comes to working as part of a team. Whether with female leads – Catherine Tate, Jessica Hynes, Olivia Colman or male – Michael Sheen for example, he just adjusts and fits in. What we get here is a ‘bromance’ – the two Doctor’s get on famously – in a way that almost prefigures his meeting Matt’s Doctor in ‘Day of the Doctor’. They are great fun to spend time with, Tennant initially content to play the companion role, slowly gathering information about this new Doctor. As the Next Doctor begins to crumble and is true state becomes apparent, Tennant’s Doctor slowly starts to take the more prominent role in the relationship, gently guiding Jackson Lake back into existence and helping to heal the tear in his psyche, restoring his son back to him. This aspect of the Tenth Doctor is often ignored – people talk about his cockiness and occasional smugness, but we hear less of his caring, sometimes gentle nature – in this we get this not just with Jackson, but also the ‘villain’ Miss Hartigan.

Fugue state, memory and loss

Dissociative fugue is a subtype of dissociative amnesia but is more commonly found in people who experience dissociative identity disorder. Dissociation is generally thought of as a defense against trauma that helps people disconnect from extreme psychological distress. A dissociative fugue state is a condition in which a person may be mentally and physically escaping an environment that is threatening or otherwise intolerable. The onset of a dissociative fugue state is usually sudden and follows a traumatic or highly stressful event. Dissociative fugues are associated with difficult events, such as natural disasters and wars

Effective treatment practices include removing a person from the threats or stressful situations that may have contributed to the development of a dissociative fugue state. An empathic, supportive approach to psychotherapy will help people who have experienced dissociative fugue feel safe and open to treatment.

(definitions from Psychology Today)

And this is very close to what has happened top Jackson – the Cybermen have violently murdered his wife and abducted his son. Those acts alone might be enough to trigger a fugue state in an individual, but here we have an additional trigger – his use of the Cyberman’s infostamp, A device which contains a ready-made new personality for him to adopt – that of the Doctor. In becoming a hero, he forgets about the loss of wife and child, but constructs a new life of sorts. A life to fight against those who have caused his state – the Cybermen. The Doctor in this case, adopts the ‘empathetic, supportive’ approach advocated in the definition above and gently uncovers his memories and allows him to confront the trigger for his current condition.

A woman scorned

No one’s ever been able to change my mind. The Cybermen offered me the one thing I wanted. Liberation.

On top of all of this, we have a brilliant central performance by Dervla Kirwan. She is righteous fury – a woman abused fighting back. It is more than just being a second-class citizen in Victorian society – it is rather about abuse. Her anger and resentment is just channelled in the word way – albeit one that allow her avenge herself on her abusers. Russell T Davie said of the character in DWM – “There’s clearly some terrible history of abuse with Miss Hartigan, as a result, she can’t help but sexualise everything”

The scene in the graveyard is visually stunning (great direction and cinematography), but also allows her, in as far as a family show on Christmas Day allows, her to catalogue the abuses and turn the tables on those who have wronged her. I’m not sure if a ‘villain’ within ‘Doctor Who’ has ever explicitly had this motivation before have they?

VICAR: Madam, I must protest.
HARTIGAN: Whatever for?
VICAR: A lady at the graveside is debatable enough, but your apparel.
HARTIGAN: Is it too exciting?
COLE: You’re disgracing the ceremony, dressed like a harlot.
HARTIGAN: Oh, and you should know, Mister Cole.
COLE: How do you know my name?
HARTIGAN: You’ve walked past me so many times, all you good men of charity, never once asking my name.
SCOONES: It’s Miss Hartigan, isn’t it?
HARTIGAN: Oh, you noticed. I saw you looking, you cheeky boy.
VICAR: I’m sorry, but who is she?
HARTIGAN: Matron of the St Joseph Workhouse, your humble servant. Oh, I’ve watched you all. Visiting, smiling, bestowing your beneficence upon the poor while I scrubbed down their filthy beds.
VICAR: I must insist that you depart.
HARTIGAN: But that’s why the late Reverend Fairchild had to die. To gather you all in one place. Where better than a funeral? Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live. Although I’ve got some friends who might disagree with that. Would you like to meet them? Hark! I can hear them now.

In the denouement, the Doctor admires her strength of will and intelligence, whilst reluctantly pitting himself against her:

DOCTOR: Miss Hartigan? I’m offering you a choice. You might have the most remarkable mind this world has ever seen. Strong enough to control the Cybermen themselves.
HARTIGAN: I don’t need you to sanction me.

The key to this plot thread, is when she confronts the Doctor and says – ‘Yet another man come to assert himself against me in the night.’ It explicitly explains her motivation, but is played pretty low in the mix. In the end, the Doctor is forced to break her connection with the Cybermen, so she can become aware of what she has become.

Around the World in 80 Days meets Oliver!

As things escalate, the workhouse children are rounded up and put to work by the Cybermen. It acts as a critique of Victorian child labour and the work house system of care. The Victorian setting (London 1851), allows the story to show all of those trappings Victorian Christmas, introduced by Prince Albert and used in Dickens, but also to delve, albeit lightly into the other side of ‘Victorian Values’.

However, in depiction it all start to turn rather into Oliver the musical at this point, which feels anther sop to the Christmas Day slot. In the process though Jackson has his son returned and the trauma causing his fugue state is at least partially dealt with. This is Christmas though and we don’t get to dwell on that, as when that is done – well we have the Cyber King striding all around London like a steampunk version of Ted Hughes’ ‘The Iron Man’! It’s not entirely for me – but I imagine went down well with most families watching on Christmas Day. And then the Doctor takes to the air in an air balloon and it snaps back into adventure mode, before switching back to deal with Miss Hartigan and then back to Christmas celebration mode, with Jackson acting as a narrator for the huddled masses:

Well, I’d say he used that Dimension vault to transfer the wreckage of the CyberKing into the Time Vortex, there to be harmlessly disintegrated. Oh, I’ve picked up a lot.

Ah, but here. Ladies and gentlemen, I know that man, that Doctor on high. And I know that he has done this deed a thousand times. But not once. No, sir, not once, not ever, has he ever been thanked. But no more. For I say to you, on this Christmas morn, bravo, sir! Bravo! Bravo! Bravo, sir!

And the ending is lovely, the Doctor wants to disappear as usual, but rather touchingly Jackson manages to persuade him to stay for a Christmas dinner bromance. David Morrissey plays all of this very deftly, with just the right lightness of touch, especially for an actor better known for heavier roles – he would have made a fine Doctor.

LAKE: That offer of Christmas dinner. It’s no longer a request, it’s a demand. In memory of those we’ve lost.
DOCTOR: Oh, go on then.
LAKE: Really?
DOCTOR: Just this once. You’ve actually gone and changed my mind. Not many people can do that. Jackson, if anyone had to be the Doctor, I’m glad it was you.
LAKE: The feast awaits. Come with me. Walk this way.
DOCTOR: I certainly will. Merry Christmas to you, Jackson.
LAKE: Merry Christmas indeed, Doctor.

So, give this one another go. To my mind it is one of the best Christmas Specials. It is handsomely filmed (Gloucester cathedral and around Monmouth) manages to combine a thoughtful central premise, terrific performances, with action adventure, humour and a great spirit of joie de vivre. A Merry Christmas to you Jackson.

Never cruel or cowardly

A tribute to Terrance Dicks (first posted in the aftermath of his death in 2019)

When I first met Terrance Dicks at a convention in the early 80’s, I was still a child really and I was meeting the man who had written the first book I ever bought. My first real encounter with him though was through that book, which I chose from a shelf of other wonders, aged 7 and read all the way to a holiday camp in Norfolk. For the next 5 or so years, I would rarely be without one of his books, they are there documented in almost every childhood photograph of me. When I last met him, I was an adult, aged 45 and in my bag was that very same book, slightly faded, but still in surprisingly good shape. The book was ‘Doctor Who and the Web of Fear’. The date of that last meeting was the 23 November 2013 and the show which Terrance had done so much to ensure the longevity of, had just turned 50.

In the intervening 40 or so years, I had read many books. Big important, intellectual, hip books by writers that I could impress people (especially girls) by saying I’d read. All that time all of those books with a target symbol and ‘By Terrance Dicks’ on the spine were ‘resting’ in boxes in my parent’s loft – their equivalent of the warehouse in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, humming away to themselves, just waiting to be re-discovered. Honestly, I’m 51 now, I don’t need to impress anyone any more. They are in my house now, all of them, not in the loft, but on shelves in a room surrounded by the rest of me – my guitars and amps and music and books. Appropriate really for the ‘the children’s own programme that adults adore’. The books of Terrance Dicks are the most important in my life – because they set me up for a lifetime of reading. What a world to give a young child – a whole lifetime of books. That is Terrance’s gift to my generation and why he is so important to us.

Winding back a bit, there was a turning point when I was a young fan, a pivotal moment and that was the re-issued and revised version of Terrance’s ‘The Making of Doctor Who’ from 1976. The original was penned by Terrance in conjunction with his mentor Mac Hulke – a guide to the show as of the 9th season – it covered the production of ‘The Sea Devils’ and told the story of the show to date via the Time Lords and UNIT files. I never saw that Pertwee version of the book, at least not until years later when it was issued in pdf form on one of the DVD releases. The ‘new’ Tom Baker version of the book was a complete re-write by Terrance and it covered the scripting and production of ‘Robot. It told you about the world of TV writing and production and importantly also gave a synopsis of every TV story to date, the first time I had seen that – all of those exciting stories that Terrance hadn’t got around to yet. It was, I think, the first time I realised that Terrance hadn’t written the whole of ‘Doctor Who’. Sure, there were some other blokes – Malcolm Hulke, Philip Hinchliffe, Ian Marter and a few others who had written the odd story, presumably when Terrance was busy, but no, up until that point it looked like Terrance had written the lot. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that – later there would be Robert Holmes and Terry Nation and David Whittaker and lots of other key writers, but up until the age of about 10, there was only really Terrance.

Going back to 2013, it was a long day, there was a pause in proceedings between the main convention at the Excel centre in docklands and the evening screening of ‘Day of the Doctor’. Some people were heading off to see the story at home or in 3-D at a cinema, some were at the BFI (including quite a few who didn’t want to!) and some like me, my partner and my friend and his two lads were staying to watch it on a big screen at Excel. We finally had a chance to sit down and get a drink and on the next table to us was sat Terrance, his wife and I assume one of his grandchildren. I so wanted to go over and tell him how much his books had meant to me and show him the book I my bag, now nearly 40 years old. However, he looked so tired and weary and was spending some time with his family, so I decided to leave him alone. He had had a long day – providing a commentary on a showing of ‘The Three Doctors’ and I’m sure a stream of fans of a certain age telling him how they had basically learned to read through his books, my friend being one of them. He got that a lot, within the ‘Doctor Who’ world he definitely knew his place and the impact he had on generations of us (he described it as being famous within a very small world).

It was a very poignant moment when I last saw him. He was on good form, but obviously tired and not in the best of health. Excel was a great venue for the 50th and parts of it had been dressed up using sets from the show, including Totters Lane from ‘An Adventure in Space and Time’, however it is a really a big, cold, corporate exhibition space and by this point it was emptying of excited young (and ‘young-old’ faced) fans. We watched as Terrance trudged off (into the sunset really) along the featureless, white corridor and was gone. He was the reason why me and my friend and many others where there. Including many young fans who might not even know who he was, without Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts, the show likely wouldn’t have reached its’ tenth year, never mind fiftieth. As he wandered off, without the crowds that had accompanied Matt Smith and some of the other current stars, it felt like a changing of the guard. Terrance’s work was done.

Later that evening ‘The Day of the Doctor’ aired. A story for the anniversary written by someone raised on Target books. In the key moment in the story, when an old warrior is about to do something that he will regret all his lives, something that Terrance once wrote in ‘The Making of Doctor Who’ is used to represent what the Doctor is all about – his very essence – ‘Never cruel or cowardly. Never give up, never give in’. From the 1976 book:

‘He never gives in, and never gives up, however overwhelming the odds against him. The Doctor believes in good and fights evil. Though often caught up in violent situations, he is a man of peace. He is never cruel or cowardly’

I don’t know whether Steven Moffat took it straight from the great man or whether it came via their mutual friend, Paul Cornell who had used it again years later in one of his books. Whatever, right there in the beating heart of that story is a great big slice of Terrance. A man who understood the character of the Doctor probably more than anyone and it is used by a weary old man to re-discover himself, his carefree youth, to find the essence of what he is once again. The day and the Doctor are saved by the words of Terrance Dicks. I can’t think of a better tribute.

Doctor Who and The Web of Fear by Terrance Dicks Target Novelisation (1976)

‘Forty years the Yeti had been quiet – Collector’s item in a museum. Then without warning it awoke – and savagely murdered.

At about the same time patches of mist began to appear in Central London. People who lingered anytime in the mist were found dead, their faces smothered in cobwebs. The cobweb seeped down, penetrating the Underground System. Slowly it spread…

Then the Yeti reappeared, not just one but hordes, roaming the misty streets and cobwebbed tunnels, killing everyone in their path. Central London was gripped tight in a Web of Fear…’

Note. This review was originally written as part of a tribute to Terrance Dicks upon his passing in 2019. With gratitude for everything he did for us young fans in the 1970’s.

I have a book in front of me now. It cost a whopping 45p. I was surprised. Actually, I was surprised that I had 45p to spend in 1976, I don’t know how – probably I was allowed to buy something because we were going on holiday. Some of the earlier books that I later picked up second hand, cost a mere 30p (actually most were 5 or 10p second hand). I suppose Britain was in the grip of inflation and Target book prices just reflected that. Whatever, it was 45p well spent. I am not entirely sure why I chose ‘Web of Fear’ out of all the Target books available at that point. I mean there were quite a few books with ‘My Doctor’ – Jon Pertwee, including favourite old stories like ‘The Sea Devils’ or ‘The Green Death’. Also out was ‘The Loch Ness Monster’, which I’d missed three episodes of the previous year and was still really disappointed about, as it looked great. It was a straight choice between those two books I think and I chose ‘Web of Fear’. It was the cover I think, with Sergeant Arnold enveloped in a beam from the Yeti’s eyes and an entirely new exciting Doctor looking down on events. I think it was probably the army against the Yeti looked that swung things in its favour – but the cover blurb quoted above – I mean how exciting and scary does that sound?

The Return of Evil

Then there is the opening chapter – ‘Chapter 1 – The Return of Evil’ – the Return of Evil – blimey that sounds exciting:

‘The huge, furry monster reared up, as if to strike. Well over seven feet tall, its immensely broad body made it seem squat and lumpy. It had the huge hands of a gorilla, the savage yellow fangs and fierce red eyes of a grizzly bear. There was no fear in the face of the white-bearded old man who stood looking up at it, just a yearning curiosity. He knew the monster wouldn’t move. It had stood like this, in the private museum, for over forty years, ever since he had brought it back from Tibet. He reached up and opened a flap in the monster’s chest. Beneath was an empty space, just large enough to hold a small sphere.’

I had to ask my Mum and Dad what a sphere was. Blimey though a cross between a Gorilla and a Grizzly Bear – blimey.

Now episode One of ‘Web of Fear’ is one of my absolute favourites. Even here though Terrance does a little bit of tidying up and housekeeping. Julius Silverstein, a caricature of an Eastern European Jewish émigré, instead becomes Emile Julius. He also effortlessly sketches in the events of ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ and provides us youngsters with the story of how the Yeti comes to be in the museum, it’s relationship with Professor Travers, that they are actually robots and gives us the information that will be useful later that he already knows the Doctor. When I first read this book, I hadn’t read ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ and the two stories, separated by a few months on TV, both aired a couple of years before I was born – there was no chance that I was ever going to see them (actually that is probably still the case with most of ‘Abominable Snowmen’).

And then we get one of those great memorable ‘Doctor Who’ deaths:

On his way out of the hall, he stopped for another look at his beloved Yeti. He gazed proudly up at it. The Yeti’s eyes opened and glared redly into his own. Appalled Julius took a pace back. The Yeti stepped off its stand, following him. Its features blurred and shimmered before his horrified eyes, becoming even more fierce and wild than before. With a sudden, shattering roar the Yeti smashed down its arm in a savage blow…

And a passage that tells us everything that happens in between the Yeti coming to life and the point at which we’ll join the story properly with the events at Goodge St:

‘In the weeks that followed, the story was driven from the headlines by an even stranger mystery. Patches of mist began to appear in Central London. Unlike any natural mist, they refused to disperse. More and more patches appeared, linking up one with another. Most terrifying of all, people who spent any time in the mist patches were found dead, their faces covered with cobwebs. Central London was cordoned off. It was still possible to travel by Underground Railway—until a strange cobweb-like substance started to spread below ground, completely blocking the tunnels. It was like a glowing mist made solid, and anyone who entered it was never seen again. The combination of mist above and cobweb below became known as the Web. Slowly it spread. Then the Yeti reappeared, not just one but hordes of them, roaming through the misty streets and the cobwebbed tunnels, mercilessly killing anyone in their path. Central London was gripped tight in a Web of Fear…’

So, by the end of chapter one, we know everything we need to start the story. Terrance has sketched in quite a complicated backstory with great economy and skill.

Chapter two has to introduce our leads and the military investigation team. Now I’d only ever seen the second Doctor when I was very young – four in fact – in ‘The Three Doctors’, so I vaguely knew he existed, but I’d never met Jamie or Victoria, when I joined the show it was Jon, Jo Grant, the Brigadier, Benton and Yates. For each of the earlier team we get a lovely little pen-sketch that tells us all we need to know about them:

‘One was a small man with untidy black hair and a gentle, humorous face. He wore baggy check trousers and a disreputable old frock-coat. Towering over him was a brawny youth in Highland dress, complete with kilt. The smaller man was that well-known traveler in Space and Time called the Doctor. The other, whose name was Jamie, had been the Doctor’s travelling companion since the Doctor’s visit to Earth at the time of the Jacobite rebellion. A small, dark girl entered the control room. Her name was Victoria, and she was the Doctor’s other travelling companion. Rescued from nineteenth-century London during a terrifying adventure with the Daleks, Victoria had joined the Doctor and Jamie in their travels. Usually she wore the long, flowing dresses of her own age, but they were cumbersome and impractical during the strenuously active adventures in which the Doctor tended to involve her.’

These aren’t quite as economical as Terrance’s writing would eventually become – with his stock Doctor descriptions (‘pleasant open face’, ‘shock of white hair’ etc.). They are however confident and concise. In the following scenes, Terrance is pretty lucky in that the TV story provides pretty much everything you need to know about the relationships between the leads and their gentle teasing of each other.

Going Underground

Another key feature of the story is the location, the London Underground is almost a character in itself in this story. Now I’d been to London by the time I read this book, for the 1974 FA Cup Final (in case you are interested, Bill Shankly’s Liverpool gave Newcastle a bit of a footballing lesson), but many children wouldn’t know anything about it. For many, a trip on the underground would have been incredible exciting – just as it was for me, not an everyday event. Here, we have a useful setup where Jamie doesn’t even know what a train is and even Victoria only comes from a time at the start of the railways and so the whole concept of electric, underground trains can be explained through the dialogue of the TV story and Terrance’s lean prose. Just for good measure, youngsters are given a warning about not touching electrified rails!

Terrance only holds the youngster’s hands so far though. As in many of these books, there is an air that they have been written for adults or at least an older audience than I was, there are phrases used that would stretch very young minds and belong in more adult books. For example, Sergeant Arnold is described as ‘a tough old sweat’ and we have references to concepts and phrases that a child would have to ask their parents about. Like Mac Hulke in his books, we get taught a few life lessons as the characters are sketched in, take a look at this passage which completely nails Harold Chorley and tells us youngsters how to be wary of appearances:

‘He was an impressive-looking man with a stern, handsome face, and a deep, melodious voice. He was also extremely photogenic. On television he gave the impression of a sincere, wise and responsible man. Unfortunately, his looks were deceptive. Chorley was weak, vain and in reality rather stupid. But appearances count for a great deal in public life. Chorley’s voice and his looks, together with a certain natural cunning, had enabled him to establish himself as one of television’s best-known interviewers and reporters. He had one other useful attribute for success— he was extremely lucky.’

We learn to have a healthy skepticism about the press and handsome, overly confident people. In the scene where Chorley interviews Captain Knight we get a contrast between the awkward sincerity of the Army captain talking about his recently killed superior officer and the media soundbites of Chorley. Thanks for the tip Terrance!

Yeti in the London Underground is one of those bizarre ‘Doctor Who’ ideas that works because everyone decides to play it with utter conviction. Terrance knows this and acknowledges the oddness of this up front, in the process concisely telling us about the modus operandi of the Great Intelligence:

‘Incongruous at they were, in the setting of the London Underground, the Doctor felt no great surprise at seeing the Yeti again. Ever since that mysterious Web had held the TARDIS suspended in space, the Doctor had suspected that the Great Intelligence had returned to attack him. Exiled from some other dimension, the Intelligence was a malignant disembodied entity, condemned to hover eternally between the stars, forever craving form and substance. It possessed the power to take over human servants, who became totally subservient to its will, their own personalities utterly swallowed up. Yeti provided the brute strength and terror, human puppets supervised and controlled their actions. That was how the Great Intelligence had operated in Tibet, and the Doctor felt sure the same pattern would be repeated.’

Stanley and Livingstone

If the TV story throws away the first meeting of the Doctor and Lethbridge-Stewart (not knowing how important he will become to the show), Terrance comes from the future and he knows it is something that he must mark:

‘Suddenly a light-beam flashed out of the semidarkness and a clipped voice spoke. ‘Stand perfectly still and raise your hands.’ The Doctor obeyed. A tall figure appeared, torch in one hand, revolver in the other, covering the Doctor. It was a man in battledress, the insignia of a Colonel on his shoulders. Even through the semi-darkness the Doctor caught an impression of an immaculate uniform and a neatly trimmed moustache. The soldier peered down from his superior height at the small, scruffy figure of his captive. ‘And who might you be?’ he asked, sounding more amused than alarmed. Feeling at something of a disadvantage the Doctor answered sulkily, ‘I might ask you the same question.‘ I am Colonel Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart,’ said the precise, military voice. ‘How do you do? I am the Doctor.’ ‘Are you now? Well then, Doctor whoever-you-are, perhaps you’d like to tell me what you’re doing in these tunnels?’

Although neither of them realised it, this was in its way as historic an encounter as that between Stanley and Doctor Livingstone. Promoted to Brigadier, Lethbridge-Stewart would one day lead the British section of an organization called UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), set up to fight alien attacks on the planet Earth. The Doctor, changed in appearance and temporarily exiled to Earth, was to become UNIT’s Scientific Adviser. But that was all in the future. For the moment the two friends-to-be glared at each other in mutual suspicion.’

I love the ‘sounding more amused than alarmed’ – which very much describes Nick Courtney’s acting style – that wry smile and amused look that would elevate him above a more stereotypical portrayal of an army officer. As a youngster, I had to ask who Stanley and Livingston were – these books and the TV stories often food for an enquiring young mind and lead to a generation of Who fans with an unlikely collection of arcane knowledge and a strange vocabulary! The word capacious makes an appearance here – as ever as part of a description of the Doctor’s pockets.

Reading the book as an adult and having now seen most of ‘Web of Fear’, if I have a criticism of the novelisation, it is that it doesn’t quite capture the punch that the ‘Battle of Covent Garden’ or it’s aftermath. Episode 4 is desperate stuff, some of the bleakest scenes in the programme and for a moment Lethbridge-Stewart is almost a broken man after losing all of his men in the attack and the Knight too. Terrance cuts out some of the dialogue and the Colonel’s despair is skipped over, maybe he just didn’t think that it fitted the character he spent time developing. For me it works extremely well in the TV version and really raises the stakes seeing the impact that the loss of pretty much all of his men has on the cool and collected young officer.

“I want your mind”

If the events of episode 4 aren’t maybe quite as effective as they could be, the ending is very nicely done and is probably more effective than the TV version. Although again the death of Sergeant Arnold – which is really horrific on screen – is quite simply done in the book ‘The Doctor turned over Arnold’s body which as lying face down. The features had crumpled into a horrifying death mask’. I can imagine that the Ian Marter description of the blackened, burnt corpse would have been a bit more horrific than Terrance manages!

With the Intelligence defeated, Terrance wraps things up. Again tidying up, he adds a little bit of dialogue to dovetail into the creation of UNIT:

“Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart was lecturing Professor Travers. ‘What the world needs is a permanent International Organisation to deal with this sort of thing. A kind of Intelligence Task Force… I think I’ll send the Government a memorandum…”

and I had my first encounter with what would become an old favourite Terrance phrase:

‘The door closed and after a moment a strange wheezing, groaning sound filled the tunnel. Slowly the TARDIS faded away. The Doctor and his two companions were ready to begin their next adventure.’

And so was the younger me. My next book would be ‘Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster’ and my love affair with these stories would continue. I soon found a treasure trove of them in a secondhand book shop – 5 or 10p each, but usually with other kids names written in them – presumably those who had decided they liked ‘Thunderbirds’ more? Over the next 8 years I would rarely be without one of these books – I even remember running home from school eager to read the next exciting chapter of ‘The Auton Invasion’. One of the chapter titles in this book is ‘I want your Mind’, that could have been the Target motto – after this book there was no turning back – I was both a Doctor Who fan and a fan of these novelisations for life.

I’ve just finished listening to David Troughton’s terrific reading of Terrance’s novelisation and very enjoyable it was too. However, that slightly battered, yellowing, original copy of ‘Web of Fear‘ from over 40 years ago, retrieved from it’s resting place in my parents loft and in front of me now, is probably my equivalent of Charles Foster Kane’s Rosebud!

Flashback August 1976: It is a sunny summer day and I’m reading my new book on the back seat of an old Ford Cortina, my sister is asleep and it’s a long way to Norfolk, not once do I look up to ask ‘Are we nearly there yet‘!

The Five Doctors (Target Novelisation) by Terrance Dicks (1983)

Ahead of time…

It is Saturday November 19th 1983. “Doctor Who’ isn’t on TV, it isn’t the 20th anniversary yet, Longleat has long been and gone, all should be quiet. So, why is a 14 year old me standing excited beyond belief in a bookshop in Liverpool? To answer that question, I’ll ask you a couple of questions in return:

Imagine that if the weekend before ‘The Day of the Doctor’ aired, the Steven Moffat novelisation was accidentally on the shelves of your local bookshop – appropriately falling through a window in time or maybe via a 3-D Time Lord painting. What would you have done – would you have walked away calmly and remained blissfully unaware of what was going to happen until the evening of the 23rd? You are grown-ups – or at least a very rough approximation of one – what would you have done?

What about when the first Peter Capaldi stories were put out on the internet before they were even completed – did you download and watch them? As an adult are you able to avoid being spoilered, do you have the willpower, the self-control? We are fans after all.

Well imagine instead you are 14 years old and it’s 1983. It is the 20th anniversary of your favourite programme and you are really and I mean really looking forward to ‘The Five Doctors’. You have the Radio Times Anniversary special, you’ve seen some of the sets at the Longleat Anniversary convention, you’ve got this weeks Radio Times, but apart from the Doctor’s involved, you don’t really know too much about it.

I think what happened was that the screening in the UK was moved from the anniversary to allow it to be shown as part of ‘Children in Need’. So, the USA got the story first, which wouldn’t work at all these days, we’d be spoilered in seconds, back then it would have taken weeks! I don’t know the thinking behind the move, but it was all a bit strange and doesn’t seem to have especially worked, the ratings being pretty standard for Davison era stories.

Anyway, whatever the reason, someone forgot to tell W.H. Allen or W.H. Smiths. And so, the Saturday before (which would have been too early even if it had aired on the 23rd), there it was – sitting on a shelf in Smiths on Church St, Liverpool – ‘Doctor Who and the Five Doctors’ by Terrance Dicks. This was back in the days when that store was a thing of wonder – solely because on its shelves it stocked lots of Target books and Doctor Who Monthly and it was the scene of some of my happiest purchases of later childhood – ‘The Making of Doctor Who, ‘The Doctor Who Programme Guide’ and ‘Twenty Years of Doctor who: A Celebration’. Now ‘The Five Doctors’ is a bit of a rush job from Terrance, a quick turnaround, I doubt it is the favourite Target book of too many people. I mean, it has a beautiful cover – all rendered in silver and it is typical lean, sparse Terrance Dicks prose (more on that later). However, amongst its’ pages, at that precise moment in time it held forbidden fruit. It was the story of a TV show that hadn’t yet been aired. A Target book that should have come with its own illicit brown paper bag (ask an older gentleman if you don’t get the reference!).

So, what to do? Walk away, pretend you never saw it? Have a quick glimpse, just enough to get excited, but not enough to spoil anything and then walk away? Or buy it and tell yourself that you won’t read any of it until after the story airs, but at least you will be able to read it straight after? Buy it and just the read the thing? Or just read it in W.H. Smith in one long go for free? I can still remember that moral dilemma, I was the Doctor on Skaro with two strands of wire in his hands, agonising over whether to commit genocide or like Stein ‘I can’t stand the confusion in my mind’ (oh sorry that was still in the future!).

So, what did I do? If you were in the same situation what did you do?

Spoiler
I read the whole thing of course! I was a fan after all!

Whilst you can re-create similar contemporary examples (the leaks of episodes online, the early shipping of DVD’s etc.), this dilemma is very much of that time – a low-fi version of those other ¤¤¤¤-ups. It allowed you (if you chose to) to read the story, without having experienced the TV show. It was at the time, very similar to the way that Target books allowed you to experience old ‘Doctor Who’ that you hadn’t seen – just with a story that had never been shown before and wasn’t old – in fact it wasn’t even ‘new’ yet! A missing episode that wasn’t missing, in fact one that didn’t yet exist in the public realm – at least not in the UK. For a brief period of time, ‘The Five Doctors’ was Schrodinger’s story – it existed in book form and on TV in the USA, but not in the UK. I’ve heard Steven Moffat talking about facing this exact same dilemma – he went through the exact same experience as me. Given all of this, is it any wonder that his plots are all out of sequence and involve temporal paradoxes and things falling through time? That’s right Target books are entirely to blame for all of his output – whether you like it or not. It isn’t just ‘Never Cruel or cowardly‘ in ‘Day of the Doctor‘ that comes from Uncle Terrance – but the entire plot (especially the Fez!) was inspired by a publishing distribution ¤¤¤¤-up and a lovely little silver book from the great man!

So., there we have it – ‘The Five Doctors’ Target book and why it still gives me an illicit thrill. Probably shouldn’t have admitted that!

Five-ish Doctors

So, for the first time in possibly 38 or so years, I had a quick read of the Target book of ‘The Five Doctors’. What did I think? Well, what struck me as interesting, is that it is like a nugget of pure compressed Terrance. It is his story of course, but if you took all of his Target books and distilled them into pure essence of Uncle Terrance, then out of the distillation process would come something like ‘The Five Doctors’. Have quick read – a skim if you don’t believe me. I’ll save you a bit of time – he gets to describe all five of his Doctor’s and all the familiar descriptions are there. Here they are for your enjoyment:

“The commanding beak of the nose gave the old man a haughty, imperious air. The old man in the garden was known as the Doctor – a Doctor nearing the end of his first incarnation. The Doctor sensed that the end was near. He had come to this place to prepare himself, to say farewell to a body and a personality almost worn out by now, to prepare himself for the birth of a new self. Here in this peaceful garden he could prune his roses, and care for his bees. He could enjoy a time of peace, of semi-retirement, before returning to the mainstream of his life and preparing to face the coming change.”

“He saw an odd-looking little fellow in a shabby old frock coat and rather baggy check trousers. Untidy black hair hung in a fringe over his forehead, and his dark brown eyes seemed humorous and sad at the same time.”

“Elsewhere in space and time, on the planet Earth, the Doctor’s third incarnation was driving very fast along a long straight road. This particular Doctor was a tall figure with a young-old face and a mane of prematurely white hair. He wore a velvet smoking jacket and an open-necked shirt. The outfit was completed by a rather flamboyant checkered cloak. Doctor Three was something of a dandy. The car he was driving was a vintage Edwardian roadster nicknamed ‘Bessie’. It was moving at an impossible speed for so ancient a vehicle.”

“The tall curly-haired man with the wide staring eyes propelled the punt along the backwaters of the river Cam with steady thrusts of the long pole. He wore comfortable Bohemian-looking clothes, a loose coat with an open-necked shirt. A broad-brimmed soft hat was jammed on the back of his head, and an incredibly long scarf looped about his neck. This was the Doctor in his fourth incarnation. As might have been expected, he had something of all his previous selves about him: the intellectual arrogance of the first, the humour of the second, and something of the elegance of the third, though in a more relaxed and informal style.”

“Now in his fifth incarnation, he was a slender fair-haired young man, with a pleasant open face. As usual, he wore the costume of an Edwardian cricketer: striped trousers, fawn blazer with red piping, white cricketing sweater and an open-necked shirt. There was a fresh sprig of celery in his buttonhole.”

Oh and there is much more what that lot came from – descriptions of Sarah, K9, the Brigadier, Romana. In fact, Terrance even has a bit of fun at Nicholas Courtney’s expense – he mentions his size a number of times, including:

‘“Moving very silently for such a big man, the Brigadier crept up behind the Master. ”

Tidying up a bit

And of course, the book is better than the TV story – as Terrance tidies up a bit:

“The fog pressed in on her threateningly. Somehow Sarah was convinced that there was something waiting in ambush, out there in the fog. She tripped over a chunk of broken branch and snatched it up, thinking it might serve as a weapon. Clutching her club, she took a cautious step forwards – and suddenly the ground vanished from beneath her feet. She had stepped clean over the edge of a ravine.

Sarah screamed, dropping the stick, and flailed out desperately in an attempt to regain her balance, but it was too late. She hurtled over the edge, scrabbling desperately for some kind of handhold. She managed to arrest her fall by clutching at a shrub growing from the cliff edge. But it was too slight to bear her weight. She felt it beginning to pull away. Sarah looked below. The ravine appeared to be bottomless, a deep fissure in the earth. If she fell she would probably be killed. Even if she survived, she would never get out again. The roots began to tear…”

That’s a bit more exciting than rolling down a gentle slope in Snowdonia. It also makes Sarah look much braver – she is reaching for a weapon to defend herself.

He also gives Susan a nice introduction, set after ‘Dalek Invasion of Earth:

“The woman called Susan Campbell, who had once been known as Susan Foreman, walked through the streets of New London on the way to market. Looking about her, she marvelled at how swiftly the city had recovered from the devastation of the Dalek attack.

Gleaming new buildings were everywhere, the old bombed sites had all been cleared. Those which hadn’t been used as sites for new buildings had been turned into parks and gardens. It was a smaller London – it would be many years before population rose anywhere near its old levels – but it was a greener, far more attractive one.

Life had been hard at first. For many years she had seen very little of her husband David, who was a prominent figure in the Reconstruction Government. But gradually life had returned to normal. Now Susan and David and their three children could look forward to a more peaceful life. These days it seldom occurred to Susan that this wasn’t really her world at all, that she had originally come here almost by chance in the company of the old man she sometimes called Grandfather, and everyone else called the Doctor.”

It is a shame that while adding in little scenes like this, Terrance didn’t re-instate his cut scenes of the Autons in abandoned, derelict shopping street.

He nicely handles the scenes where the Doctor’s meet and a parallel scene where Tegan, Sarah and the Brigadier catch-up. At one point, addressing the issue of Tom failing to turn up:

“Sarah asked, ‘What’s happened to the other one. The one after him,’ she pointed to Doctor Three, ‘and before your one?’ ‘The one with the hair and the scarf and the funny hat?’

That would be Doctor Four, thought Tegan. ‘He doesn’t seem to be here. They were saying something about one of them not making it, getting trapped in the time-vortex.’

‘Trust him to get himself in trouble,’ said Sarah. ‘Pity, I’d have liked to see him again.”

Yes, so would we. And I suspect so would Terrance, would have saved him some re-writing!

The Quest to find a story

As for the story, well I feel slightly sorry for people who don’t enjoy ‘The Five Doctors’. I mean you don’t have to think it is good – but it is at least enjoyable – surely? You’re a fan, let your hair down, enjoy it, forget about any hipster pretensions you might have for a bit and just revel in your fannishness. We sometimes seem to have almost a self-loathing about that aspect of our fandom – but if you can’t indulge in a bit of nostalgia for the past, meet some old friends, have a few drinks when you reach a milestone birthday, when can you? This sets the Doctor off on a course to run away from Gallifrey and responsibility – which consciously re-iterates the original premise of the show, ‘Day of the Doctor‘ does the opposite – he ends up running towards it and the Presidency. One ends up with “Trial of a Time Lord‘ and other ends up with ‘Hell Bent’ – I struggle to endorse either approach!

Some complain that there isn’t really a story – well there is. It’s one of the oldest stories there is – a quest. The reluctant Greek heroes, wandering Vikings or Knights on a quest to a specific place (The Dark Tower taken from Browning), rescuing fair maidens, fighting and defeating monsters of legend, a villain that may or not be the brother of our hero – or at least is an old friend and rival, sirens calling, a maze, we have the grail legend of immortality and a god-like figure of myth at the end of all of this. It is Greek or Roman myth, Norse saga and British Arthurian or Saxon mythology all rolled into one – Terrance throws the lot at this. That is a story – it isn’t hugely sophisticated, but of course it is a story.

The reason of course is that it needs a simple framework that people will easily understand and get straight away to hang off so many characters and elements. Getting the framework right and balancing the elements is the thing that broke Robert Holmes’s attempt to write this – Terrance just makes the plot as simple and as identifiable as possible, rolls his sleeves up and gets on with the job. This is the man who managed to build a similar framework to hang 10 episodes of ‘The War Games’ off after all.

All of this is wrapped neatly up in the mythos of the first 20 years of Who – Time Lords, the Master, Daleks, Cybermen, UNIT, Susan, the Brigadier, Sarah, Jamie, Romana – that’s most of the big hitters – we are only missing Ian and Barbara and Jo really. It has the internal script logic of Terrance, but combined with the big set pieces of Bob Holmes and ‘journey’ and jeopardy of Terry Nation. I would argue that in many ways it is Terrance’s finest moment (if not his finest script – ‘Fang Rock’ is perfection) – to manage to create a working script that actually got made and was approved by JNT and Eric Saward. I think only Terrance could have managed it, it is the ultimate tribute to his professionalism and his ability to craft a script precision engineered for its purpose with all the complex moving parts ticking away harmoniously.

Dead Ringers

After reading the novelisation, I also listened to the BBC audio book. The narrator is John Culshaw and he makes an excellent reader. He also plays most of the roles – his Pertwee is uncanny, as is his Brigadier and his Troughton and Hurndall are very creditable. Culshaw has been an excellent addition to this range – I am currently very much enjoying his reading of ‘Genesis of the Daleks’. It is funny that we still pigeon hole people – you’d think we would learn our lesson. He is very much more than an impressionist or impersonator – he makes a very skilled narrator and proves himself a fine voice actor.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this, it rattled along and was a joyful thing in its own right. I have bought the Target audio range on and off over the years, whenever they were cheap really, but only recently have I really started listening to them – for the most part they are highly recommended and made with love.