Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s)

by Robert Shearman

  T: Mercifully, this is a much better episode. From the Cyberman killing Bob (aw, Bob was my favourite scientist – he was the Fat Keith of the Moonbase) and taking everyone hostage, to their climactic advance in large numbers, there’s a palpable sense of tension. It’s clever that Benoit is sent out onto the surface so you’ll genuinely wonder whether he’ll make it back or not, which you wouldn’t do if Ben or Jamie had been shoe-horned into that task. Andre Maranne is probably giving the best guest performance here – he sounds genuinely terrified when he’s confronted by the Cybermen, and he’s rather likeable elsewhere.

  The TARDIS regulars seem a bit off at points – Ben seems to have done a science degree and a dissertation on the Moonbase whilst they’ve been here, as he says some very uncharacteristic lines that he no doubt inherited from one of the crew in an earlier draft – but Jamie and Ben do have an unusual face-off that effectively diminishes the TARDIS crew’s cosiness. Polly cocktail is good stuff too, as by its nature it creates goo. (Goo is good, I like a bit of goo.) And I note from the telesnaps that the Cyberman who gets offed on the moon’s surface looks suitably gruesome. I was a bit rude about the Cybermen’s costumes yesterday, but I’ve actually warmed to them and think the masks seen here are pretty effective.

  Overall, I think this is an improvement because it’s an exercise in action and adventure, and it doesn’t waste time trying to be clever, clever, clever. It’s definitely not that, but it is becoming more entertaining.

  The Moonbase episode four

  R: I first saw this episode on a big screen at the National Film Theatre in London, as part of the twentieth anniversary celebrations in 1983. And I remember being rather offended by the audience’s response – which was to laugh at rather a lot of it. (Hey, I was 13. I spent most of my time being offended by laughter.) The Cybermen’s double take when they realise the laser gun doesn’t work, or the way in which they start to pirouette up into the sky when the Gravitron is turned on them – they look a bit like idiots. And I recognise now that that laughter is utterly intentional: there’s a real celebratory feel to this, as the monsters are beaten back by the Doctor’s ingenuity and the humans working together. “Hurray, that’s taken care of the Cybermen!”, Hobson shouts after the villains are thwarted. We’re meant to be jeering at the Cybermen as they fail, and cheering mankind on – and I don’t think that up to this point any Doctor Who story has ended in such a jubilant fashion. This is an episode about humanity winning. Mankind has come up with a wonderful invention to benefit the world; the monsters want to turn it into a weapon; mankind uses it as a weapon, just the once, and turns it on the monsters. There’s a poetic justice to that. It’s not subtle, but it’s nevertheless entirely right.

  And it’s also entirely right that the Cybermen’s departure is so funny. They might have brute force and cold intelligence, but they lack a sense of humour. So it seems just that as they’re defeated, they look comical. And how telling that it absolutely mirrors the opening to the first episode, in which the Doctor’s friends also took advantage of the low gravity to jump about like children (accompanied by the same Clanger-ish sound effect). The difference was that Polly and Ben and Jamie were laughing and enjoying themselves – precisely what the Cybermen couldn’t do. They’re defeated by something that’s supposed to be fun.

  The Moonbase is a pretty simple story, with stock characters doing stock things. If it feels very formulaic, then that’s because it’s getting the formula right for the first time. It’s the base under siege story done cleanly, without any of the structural oddities of The Tenth Planet. It’s a template for something we’re going to see done ad nauseam over the next couple of seasons – but that isn’t The Moonbase’s fault, and nor is it that we’re going to see the template used with more skill and more depth elsewhere. It’s a no-nonsense bit of children’s sci-fi. It makes the kids scared at the right bits, and then laugh at the baddies when they lose. It does its job.

  T: There is some good stuff here – the fate of the spaceship crew sent to help those trapped within the Moonbase is pretty grim, and we’re left to ponder on their slow descent into the sun. Much of the action on the moon’s surface looks jolly impressive – the forced perspective shot and the laser beam are no mean achievements. Troughton is again fantastic, especially in standing firm and facing up to the assault, then nearly fainting with relief when he turns out to be right. His performance is so chock full of clever little additions, it’s especially tragic how many of his episodes are missing from the archives. I also think that postulating that the shooting star is the Cybermen is a sweet and exciting idea for the kids, who’ll hopefully keep their eyes peeled on the night sky to see if they can spot them.

  But, dear Rob, we’ve known each other long enough that I have to take issue with the way you’ve framed how the Cybermen flying off the moon’s surface – in a moment that was rendered so brilliantly in the book (especially in the illustrations) – has a certain poignancy on screen because it looks like crap. Sorry, no... sometimes, stuff looks like crap because it is crap. It even sounds like crap (that’s right chaps, the dramatic finale is crying out for a comedy whooshing noise). And this is really just the climax of an episode where, in entry No. 2 of my Hadoke’s Hilariously Rubbish Sci-Fi Bits series, the triumph of humanity over cybernetics is shown in part as an attempt to plug a holed space dome with a tea tray.

  I know I’ve been less than kind to this story, and perhaps it’s because it rarely seems to cop any flack, and so I feel honour-bound to redress the balance. If I’ve been critical, though, it’s out of love – The Moonbase hasn’t amounted to much more than some terribly generic sci-fi nonsense that any other series could do in its sleep, but Doctor Who shouldn’t because it’s a more interesting programme than that. Still, if The Moonbase is more fondly regarded than I can credit it, that’s probably a good thing – different elements in Doctor Who are always going to appeal to different people, which is why the show works to well.

  I think I’ve deduced, though, why the second Doctor’s catchphrase was abandoned. Did you see the swimming caps that the scientists use to operate the Gravitron with? Not even Patrick Troughton could have said with a straight face that he’d like a hat like that.

  March 19th

  The Macra Terror episode one

  R: We’re back to the soundtracks again, since this one’s missing from the archives. So the first thing that hits us is two opposing sound effects. There’s an arhythmical heartbeat, and the laughter of a crowd enjoying a parade. I think it’s a measure of what we now expect from Doctor Who, that people having fun and showing just that bit too much happiness is the more disturbing of the two. The colony is represented by high-pitched jingles and people being exhorted to work in cheery plummy voices, and everyone sounds duly contented. As is the custom for an Ian Stuart Black script, the TARDIS crew are welcomed immediately – but here that results in makeovers for the entire cast, and promises of beauty pageants.

  And there’s that voice of dissent: the Doctor. If I’ve gone on at length about defining moments for Troughton, then here’s a whole defining episode. This is perfect for him. The sequence where he’s put in a machine that smartens him up is lovely – his immediate response is to make himself thoroughly dishevelled once more. What could sum up his approach better? He arrives in a place that is happy, and the first thing he does is seek out the one man who believes in monsters. And it isn’t with any fear, or out of a sense of concern, no – he listens to Medok’s tale about swarms of insects with eager glee. This is the anarchist Doctor, never in his element more than when he can be the fly in the ointment, the one man in an idyllic society who’ll find its weakness and bring it crashing down around everyone’s heads.

  The one real fault of the episode is that peculiar cliffhanger last week – where, for no very good reason but an old-fashioned urge to link one serial to another, the Doctor produced a bit of technology, a “time-scanner”, that he’ll never refer to again but which here enables h
im to show the future. It makes the eagerness with which the companions give in to their holiday camp treats look as if they’re a bit stupid, as they forget the imminent danger the time-scanner displayed so quickly. And worse than that, it gives the Doctor a motive for hunting out Medok besides his innate curiosity and his devilish attraction for crisis. You can tell hearing the episode that Black didn’t intend this, and Troughton isn’t playing it that way either.

  I had a girlfriend like Patrick Troughton once. Not that she dressed the same, I hasten to add. But put her in a hotel, somewhere perfectly nice on the surface, and she’d find the one thing in the bathroom that was broken, the one part of the carpet that wasn’t clean, the one bowl of soup in the restaurant that had a hair in it. She could ruin nice holidays just as effectively as the second Doctor. If there had been one person on that trip we took to Lanzarote who had been running about the resort complaining about crabs, I just know she’d have picked the suite right next to his.

  T: This marks director John Davies’ sole contribution to the series, so we’ve no existing episodes to compare his work against, but the illustrious career he had in future suggests he’s no mug. (By the way, he’s not the John Howard Davies of BBC comedy fame that Wikipedia and others mistakenly list him as being.) The archived telesnaps and clips of this story suggest he’s made some interesting choices – we open with a curious close-up of Medok’s shifty, frightened eyes, as the soundtrack veers from sinister undulating heartbeats to the screechy bonhomie that permeates the colony. It’s a very effective, beguiling opening that plays on all the senses.

  And this is just the first volley in an episode that contains strangeness in abundance. Much of this is wonderfully unsettling – particularly the weird, forced cheeriness and profligacy of hollow quotations, with scruffy old Troughton a perfect foil for this ersatz perfection. There’s a telling moment where the band-leader Barney compliments Polly, saying that she’s surely the most beautiful girl in the colony. When she coyly thanks him, he blithely tells her that, “It’s all part of our service” – meaning his remark was superficiality personified, the sort of thing “nice” people are obliged to say. (Thanks for nothing, then!) It’s a wonderful summation of the banality of this empty jollity. And the man playing Barney is Graham Armitage – he had quite an illustrious career too, so it’s odd that his one foray into the Whoniverse is this slightly cursory one-episode cameo.

  Events move along, and then the episode ends as strangely as it began, as a claw reaches out at the Doctor and Medok from the darkness. The soundtrack compliments this by replacing the ongoing throbbing noise with curious, warbling howls that punctuate the night-time hush. It’s almost as if the programme-makers expected that this would only exist one day on audio, and decided to make an extra effort in that department.

  Oh, and reading through what I’ve just typed, I’m further struck by my description of Troughton as “scruffy”. As someone who doesn’t own a hairbrush or an iron, I adore that the Doctor doesn’t have time for superficial things like appearance. If it’s true that we as fans tend to create Doctor Who in our own image, that might explain why Troughton is my favourite interpreter of the role.

  The Macra Terror episode two

  R: This is remarkable stuff. Ben is brainwashed and betrays the Doctor, whose unbridled delight in destruction and disorder is at its peak here. Now we’ve seen possession in Doctor Who before, of course – most recently back in The Moonbase, where those who were taken over grew helpful black lines all over their faces so we could tell. This is very different; what’s so effective about Ben’s treachery is that he hasn’t been reduced to a servile automaton who no longer remembers or recognises his friends. Though the Doctor denies it – quite often, as if he wants to convince himself – this is the same Ben, but one whose opinion has changed. There’s a comparable moment in The Velvet Web episode of The Keys of Marinus, where another apparently utopian civilisation encourages the TARDIS crew to turn against each other, but in that far more simplistic episode the brainwash means that when Ian captures Barbara, it’s as if he’s another character entirely. When Ben cries with anger that the Doctor always claims to know what’s best, there is an unpleasant truth being revealed. The Doctor may have, minutes before, told Polly to resist all orders from everyone, but the Doctor himself has always adopted a patriarchal tone not a million miles from the one the colony seems to speak in. Brainwashed he may be, but Ben’s rebellion is the first genuine revolt against the Doctor since The Massacre, and is just as revealing. When moments later, Jamie declares, “I only take orders from the Doctor,” it rings very oddly.

  As I’ve suggested before, Ian Stuart Black is the real political rebel of the Doctor Who writers. This is his best and cleverest script. It’s the first time he’s able to put the Doctor right at the forefront of the action – in The War Machines he mostly directs the action, finding in newfound companions like Ben the willingness to take his orders and be the brawn in his battle against the mind-controlling antics of WOTAN. Here he’s the iconoclast himself – but it’s fascinating too that by putting his hero so much into the story’s focus, the Doctor is as much a part of Ian Stuart Black’s criticism as the happy happy colony he cheerfully rebels against. The Doctor is having a great time, amiably vandalising the Pilot’s office as if he has a God-given right to spread chaos wherever he goes. And it’s his companions who suffer – they’re the ones who get slathered over by Buick-sized crabs, who have to question their loyalties. The Doctor is both utterly against the establishment, and the establishment itself. After all, the old Doctor never got his face in the opening credits, like this new upstart seems to have done suddenly! There’s a lot of real feeling in Ben’s rebellion.

  T: It’s so refreshing to once again have a story that – whatever its concerns with scary killer crabs – is about something. Medok is taken to a hospital for correction, we’re told, where he’ll be made better by having his free will removed. The Pilot of the colony tells us that it’s necessary to use force to create happiness – which is a wonderfully (and horrifyingly) paradoxical ideology. The spinning wheel onto which Medok is strapped whilst being interrogated looks giddyingly unpleasant, and suggests that this wonderful, liberty-loving colony will be putting him in an orange jumpsuit and torturing him next – all in the name of justice and happiness, of course.

  From the scant evidence we have, the people in front of and behind the camera seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet as the script, and are trying to make this as creepy as possible. Peter Jeffrey, playing the Pilot, is being wonderfully wistful about the measures his character feels he must take with Medok. Gertan Klauber plays the chief of police (Ola) with relish, as if to suggest that his cheerful facade masks a cruel sadism; he could almost be a metaphor for the colony itself. Richard Beale, as the propaganda voices, has seductive tones that try to woo the regulars into submission. And there’s something marvellously eerie about the way the Controller’s strong, screeching voice (performed by Denis Goacher) is issued from a still picture – it seems weird to be shouted at by a photograph, as if everyone in the colony is only allowed to watch a telesnap reconstruction of the Controller (I know how they feel, actually). It’s especially disquieting that, while it’s a bit difficult to make out what’s going on in the long pause between the Controller’s revelatory appearance (he’s played in the flesh by Graham Leaman) and his iconic dispatch as a claw pulls him off screen, it sounds as if he’s weeping.

  I should stop to mention how this marks the first of Leaman’s appearances in the show (notably, he’ll be along later as a Time Lord in the Pertwee era), but it here seems odd that the oft-used picture of him being menaced by the Macra claw (“Humans were the prey in the chilling The Macra Terror” is how The Radio Times 20th Anniversary Special captioned this photo), he looks nothing like he does on screen. Clearly, the publicity shots were taken before he’d had his baggy-eyed make up and scruffed-up white hair applied.

  This is all going marvellously. A
fter trying my patience on the moon, Doctor Who has most effectively clawed its way back into my affections.

  March 20th

  The Macra Terror episode three

  R: I think this may well be Michael Craze’s finest hour. (Well... 25 minutes, at any rate.) I don’t feel he’s ever been given a fair crack of the whip as Ben. After a gutsy introduction in The War Machines, he’s been allowed to take something of a back seat, always the character keenest to run back to the TARDIS and find somewhere else to visit – and it’s hardly been helped by the introduction of Jamie. At this moment, Jamie is no better a character than Ben, but... he does wear a kilt, has a better accent, and being from The Past – and therefore in Innes Lloyd’s Who, a bit thick – is amiably innocent rather than peevish and disgruntled. It’s such a relief to see Craze being given something interesting to do. And the scenes where he wrestles with his guilt are terrific – all the better because, against the cliché, those qualms don’t automatically lead to his salvation. His best moment is standing outside the Pilot’s office, determined that if he’s going to betray his friends, then he’s at least not going to do it to an underling. Absolutely wonderful stuff. The sequence where he reveals that he let Jamie take the chief of operation’s keys, and yet doesn’t know why he didn’t raise the alarm, is a carbon copy of the scene in The War Machines when the hypnotised Polly lets Ben escape. But it’s much more interesting here, because Craze isn’t playing Ben as a robot – it’s a subtle thing, but even the way he calls the gassed Official “mate” while helping him shows it’s the same person, not a mind-enslaved drone.

  And the presence of John Harvey also reminds me of The War Machines – yes, it’s Professor Brett back! Harvey seems contractually obliged to appear in Ian Stuart Black stories. Or maybe Black is obliged to write the stories featuring John Harvey. Either way, neither of them work on Doctor Who again after this. Harvey is rather wonderful here, though, as Officia – portraying a man who seems eminently benign, but just happens to be in a job where he sends disgruntled colonists down in the mines to be gassed to death. He even tries to persuade his prisoners to make the best of it – “There are worse things than the Danger Gang!” We’ve had all the cheery muzak and holiday camp atmosphere in the previous two episodes, but it’s in the part of Officia that we get a real sense of totalitarianism dressed up as a benevolent state. Even as he’s considering punishment for Jamie’s escape, he won’t raise a finger to oppose it, wearily telling the Doctor that Control knows best. He’s not a thug like Ola, but an ordinary likeable man who’s been distorted by the state he lives in. And a big cheer too, therefore, for Peter Jeffrey, whose Pilot is the most dangerous fascist leader we’ve yet encountered, precisely because he genuinely believes he’s a kindly man looking out for his people. He’s thoroughly charming, and the way Jeffrey resists giving him even a hint of cynicism turns him into that most interesting of characters: a despot who’s as enslaved by the system as much as anybody else. (We won’t see anything of this nature again until Martin Jarvis’ turn as the governor on Varos.)