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

by Robert Shearman

  You can’t write those moments. They happen, and you remain grateful for them, which I why I hope everyone will forgive me for being indulgent and mentioning them here.

  So you can see why I really don’t care that I haven’t warmed to Fury as much as I’d hoped on this run-through. It’s impacted me in all sorts of different areas more than watching a reconstruction of it over the past three days could ever compete with. Try as I might, I can’t be objective about this story – but why should I be? Maybe that lad who hates Blink once lost a girlfriend to a DVD shop proprietor called Banto, or perhaps he enjoys Time-Flight because it cheered him up after he’d had a humiliation at school. For those of us who grew up with Doctor Who, it’s so woven into the development of our lives that certain stories have a meaning above and beyond how we might view them as pieces of television. This show is a million different things to a million different people.

  Rick and Ilsa may always have Paris, but I’ll always have Fury from the Deep. And for that matter, it’ll always have me.

  The Wheel in Space episode one

  R: Okay, now this is odd.

  David Whitaker is an unpredictable writer, isn’t he? Just as I’d got used to him as the man who’d scripted The Power of the Daleks or The Crusade, I remembered watching this that he’s also responsible for The Edge of Destruction. There’s a crisis in the TARDIS! The Ship responds by doing funny things with the fault locator, and showing weird pictures on the scanner to tempt the Doctor away. (If its own particular way of warning the crew they were in danger seemed contrived in Season One, it just feels daft here in Season Five, now that the series is established. The day the Doctor fitted the Cloister Bell, and uninstalled the Bonkers Emergency software, was a very fine one indeed.) There’s a lot of worry about the mercury in the fluid link, and then a few minutes’ sequence in which the Doctor gets Jamie a meal out of the food machine, and you sort of want to ask – did the last few years of the show count for nothing? (And if so, did I sit through Galaxy Four in vain?) And when the Doctor takes out the time-vector generator, which means the TARDIS goes back to being just a police box (??), I smelled a rat. Has this David Whitaker even watched this programme before? It’s a different David Whitaker, isn’t it? It’s someone they just called from the phone book by accident!

  And yet, because we know that can’t be the case – I mean, could it? – there has to be something deliberate about this. What we get here feels like an intentional deconstruction of what we expect Doctor Who to do in its opening episode. The danger comes not from any real active threat, but from the fact that there’s no refuge for the Doctor and Jamie any more, that they’re just stranded in space on some bit of floating jetsam. Victoria implied in Fury from the Deep that her life in the TARDIS was one of aimless wandering – and it seems that what was metaphor last week has been made explicit. So we get the Doctor prattling about with food machines because there’s nothing else to do, a look at an unthreatening robot because there’s nothing else to do; and Jamie eventually calls it a night and goes to sleep. And when the dialogue stops, the soundtrack becomes for long minutes nothing more than a series of bleeps and whirrs – it’s Doctor Who not as drama, but as an ambient music album.

  Why? Why be this dull on purpose? Well, the thing is, I’m not sure it was meant to be. I think it was intended to be disorientating. In what it attempts – the Doctor and his friend staying out of the action, being confronted with nothing but void, even being tempted by false pictures on the scanner – it’s not unlike the opening episode to The Mind Robber later in the year. We all love The Mind Robber because it’s original and it’s eerie. In The Wheel in Space we’re meant to be watching in a state of tension – the continuity announcer has told us that this is a Cyberman story, we know the way the series works, we know there’ll be menace. Victoria knew it – that’s why she scarpered. The TARDIS knew it – that’s why it had a fit. We’re denied all of that for 20 minutes. And then suddenly, shockingly, we’re back with yet another bunch of Troughton-era scientists sporting a range of Troughton-era accents, and before we’ve the faintest clue who they are, they’re turning their lasers on the spaceship that carries the Doctor and Jamie. Twenty minutes of ambience, crashing into three minutes of the achingly routine, crashing into the end credits. It almost leaves you blinking, dazed at the change of focus.

  Or would do. If – and you can join in – It Existed In The Archives. It’s honestly hard to tell. Either The Wheel in Space episode one is the most mind-numbingly tedious episode in the Doctor Who canon, or it’s a rather brave experiment about audience expectations, trying to dislocate the way the viewers responded to space drama. (Not unlike the way Kubrick does in 2001.) The visuals might just have made this largely dialogue-free instalment weird enough to be intriguing. Not the visuals we see on telesnaps, of course – but scenes of empty corridors, of empty rooms, of emptiness waiting to be filled. And at that point I can feel Toby’s credulity stretch to breaking point, and I’ll go.

  T: Don’t worry, I won’t take you to task now, I’ll settle for giving you a Chinese burn next time I see you. But yes – it could be that Tristan de Vere Cole directs the hell out of this, and that it’s a Kubrick-esque masterpiece. On the other hand, I’ve seen the extant episodes three and six, and unless he had a stroke in-between now and then, I suspect it’s unlikely. Whereas the previous episode wrapped up the drama ten minutes early, this one doesn’t even bother to begin it until the last five. Still, we should count ourselves lucky that it’s not, as the opening few minutes suggest, a sequel to The Edge of Destruction (especially as somebody somewhere would have insisted upon calling this Inside Somebody Else’s Spaceship).

  I can’t help but feel a chill during the opening sequence – the TARDIS sound effect went on for ages during the closing music of Fury episode six, and here we have a reprise and a credit which means that this, and not Fury, is technically Deborah Watling’s last story. And it’s strange for me, as someone who grew up with even the companions as adult-identification figures, to suddenly realise that this young woman I’m watching fade away on the monitor is actually exactly 15 years younger than I am now. (Deborah Watling and I share a birthday, you see.) When did that happen? She used to be old enough to be my mother, but her Doctor Who-self is now young enough to be disgusted were I to make a pass at her. She’s a cruel mistress, Time. And it’s interesting that Jamie falls into the same bear trap as Ian and Barbara in The Rescue (is this a habit with Whitaker scripts?) when he says, “I wonder what Victoria’s up to now.” Strictly speaking mate, she’s not up to an awful lot. By the time your current adventure takes place, she’s dead, and has been for years.

  You can tell, Rob, how interesting I find this episode – I’ve spent the last paragraph talking about someone who’s in the first ten seconds, and no more. Yes, it’s hard to judge because we don’t have the video, so it’s entirely possible that the Servo Robot moves in an exciting way, or that Jarvis Bennett’s beard starts making Cyber-shaped shadow puppets on the back wall, but it doesn’t seem very probable. However much we might pretend otherwise, this does seem to be killing time. I seem to recall Dennis Spooner saying he’d cut a load of nonsense about the TARDIS food machine out of The Power of the Daleks episode one – maybe Whitaker noticed the deletion, and kept it in a drawer in case of a crisis.

  April 14th

  The Wheel in Space episode two

  R: Whitaker’s dialogue – now that he’s actually giving us some! – is actually rather stylish. There’s a clever way in which he segues from the end of one scene into another to give the flow of them a bit more energy. Jamie asks for a report on the Doctor’s health, and it’s immediately answered by Dr Corwyn in another scene talking to station-controller Jarvis Bennett; that scene with Bennett ends with his suspicions that Jamie might be a saboteur, cutting into a scene which suggests a very good reason why our kilted friend might need to become one. And with Victoria gone, we’re introduced to two new brilliant characters who might ta
ke her place. Wendy Padbury is really rather fab as Zoe, heartily amused by Jamie’s insistence that he’s not wearing ladies’ clothes and his threats to take her over his knee and “larrap her”. “I’m going to learn so much from you!”, she says in delight. And Gemma Corwyn is an even better character – the way she can tell Jamie isn’t a seasoned space traveller merely because he doesn’t drink the water she brings him is the single cleverest deduction anyone bar the Doctor has yet made in this series ever. She’s strong and compassionate and has authority – Megan Jones, I spurn you, I have eyes now only for Gemma. Zoe’s bright and likeable, and the chatty way she lists facts so unselfconsciously is great fun – but is it too much to hope that the next companion might be an older brilliant woman scientist for once? (Well, it is this season. But Gemma’s natural successor is on her way.)

  Not all the dialogue works. We don’t know these characters yet, so sometimes Whitaker’s attempts to give them idiosyncrasies just looks a bit forced. “Did I ever tell you about my nose?” is Tanya’s rather startling way of starting a spot of dialogue voicing her concerns about the rocket – Whitaker is trying hard to put a bit of colour into the clichés, but sometimes he’s trying a mite too hard. Mostly these people talk normally and suggest they have an off-screen life – but it’s so peculiar seeing the Kit Pedler stereotypes being given David Whitaker quirks that it disconcerts more than it convinces.

  The details are fine – but ultimately there’s not much of a bigger picture to look at yet. The cliffhanger boasts the eeriest image of the Cybermen we’ve yet seen, as they rock themselves awake and burst out of eggs as if they’re warped parodies of babies – but it also reminds us it’s the first time we’ve seen them in the story, now two whole episodes in. And the Doctor spending this episode unconscious only emphasises that this week, the series is marking time. This ought to be very dull; everyone works hard enough to ensure it’s merely mildly dull.

  T: I’m surprised you didn’t mention Jarvis Bennett’s slow descent into paranoia – when Gemma tells him that they don’t know enough about the approaching rocket, he rather bizarrely accuses her of subjecting him to psychoanalysis. He then starts mimicking the speech patterns of the child she thinks he’s behaving like: “Bang, bang, blow up the balloon.” Unlike Robson simply “cracking up” under pressure and Zaroff’s rather sweeping “madness”, Whitaker at least tries to characterise Bennett’s psychosis. Unfortunately, despite being handed some of the most clear and realistic scripted depictions of a commander buckling under pressure, Michael Turner is easily the worst exponent of such a character this season; he growls and spits his lines in an accent that contrives to veer from Scottish to American, and is sometimes both at the same time. He’s not the only one, regrettably – the crew babble includes Michael Goldie grappling with a wayward American drawl, whilst Peter Laird (a fine actor who has proved himself amply latterly) does an unforgivable Chinese accent, for which I hope he’s velly solly. Still, who needs glasnost when you have Leo Ryan and Tanya Lernov, flirting their way through mortal danger?

  Top marks too, to Jamie for addressing the issue of fashion. The 60s depiction of the future looks a bit daft to modern eyes, with snug two-pieces clinging to portly actors in an attempt to be space-age. So it’s telling that when Gemma queries Jamie’s dress sense, he points out that she’d look pretty silly to some people’s eyes – as indeed, she does to ours. That’s the thing about fashion: it always dates. Last decade’s cool is this decade’s naff, which is why I’ve never really bothered about hunting down the latest hot haberdashery. (Say it with me, everyone: “Wheel turns, fashions rise, wheel turns, fashions fall.”) This random allocation of coolness means I’ll probably be trendy by accident on a handful of occasions, and the beauty of that is, I won’t have paid through the nose for privilege. In turn, this will leave me more money for Doctor Who DVDs.

  And now, of course, Doctor Who is fashionable again – which makes me a winner!

  The Wheel in Space episode three

  R: Well, it’s good to have Troughton back – but he doesn’t get out of bed for the entire episode. This has a curious effect on the story; it means that halfway through a large cast adventure, he still hasn’t met more than a couple of guest characters. And with none of the main characters having yet met a Cyberman either, this really can’t be a good thing – I was ultimately prepared to forgive Fury from the Deep for the way it took its time before driving on with the action, but this is ridiculous. Troughton sitting up in bed makes him suddenly look very old, and really for the first time, this bundle of anarchic energy seems rather subdued and faded. The weary way in which he reacts to the news that he is Jamie’s scapegoat for the sabotage, or that he is being confined to quarters, is really unlike anything he’s ever done before, and Troughton appears to downplay his performance quite deliberately as a result. (He only really sparkles when he has the chance to flirt with Gemma Corwyn – the second Doctor and I have similar tastes, I think.) But what could easily have made the Doctor a bit dull actually gives him a certain freshness – I love his scenes with Jamie and Zoe, asking them both for theories to what’s going on, as if he’s a schoolteacher judging which is the most talented companion.

  And the Cybermen have changed again! They just can’t leave them alone. The new voices are – well, let’s be charitable – a mixed blessing. At first they seem less inhuman, but at least more comprehensible. But then in the cliffhanger, when they give instructions to the hapless crewmembers in their control, they seem gabbled and garbled. I wanted someone to ask them to repeat what they’d just said, maybe a bit slower – but I suppose that might have destroyed the atmosphere they were trying to create.

  Best bit of the week: the Doctor broods that there’s some menace to be faced, and the close-up of his face cross fades with a Cyberman. It’s a lovely moment. Runner-up: technician Enrico Casali enjoying with a smile the romantic banter between Tanya and Leo, and then realising too late it was supposed to be private. Worst bit of the week: Kevork Malikyan’s death by Cybermat. We’ve seen a lot of carnage on this series, but never has a man faced his maker quite so enthusiastically.

  T: Vision on! Thank goodness for that. I’ve just done 13 episodes on the trot with barely a moving image, and now we have a whole 25 minutes of telesnap-free goodness. We should be thankful for the telesnaps – a decidedly odd creation that at least gives us some visual representation of those missing years. But The Wheel in Space episode three is a reminder that even when a Doctor Who instalment isn’t overwhelmingly brilliant, we should be grateful that it was recovered. I remember when this was amongst the holy of holies – a missing Doctor Who episode! – but not any more. We can properly enjoy and evaluate it.

  The Cybermen are undergoing a rebirth in more ways than one – the first shot is a nifty special effect of an embryo Cyberman bursting out of a Cyber-ovary, and I like their costume redesign too. The masks are excellent (especially the tear drops and the lack of gaffer tape around the eyes and mouths), and I applaud “sleekness” over “baggy” in the Cyber-designs. It’s a pity, then, that the direction is a bit flat – we don’t have any of the trademark visuals of a Camfield or Martinus here – and the decision not to use music gives everything a rather disjointed feel, as we have oddly silent establishing shots, or scenes augmented by Radiophonic sound. This occasionally works and comes across as expressionistically weird, but it’s in spite of the visuals, not because of them. Basically, the “weirdness” here doesn’t seem deliberate, and is more jarring than disorientating.

  And while I take your point about the death of Rudkin, the only thing that’s really wrong with it is what Kevork Malikyan does with his hands. Being zapped by Cybermats is bound to have an effect, but his clawed fingers look silly – I think he’s trying to suggest that his hands are now paralysed, but it just doesn’t come off. It’s entirely possible that he thought this move was okay in the studio, then watched appalled at home when it didn’t turn out quite the way he thought it would. (I ca
n’t name an actor who hasn’t experienced that, myself included.) Given that the Cybermats were always going to seem pretty rubbish no matter what Malikyan did, the shot of the little creatures surrounding him and the close-up on his echoingly screaming mouth are actually pretty good. What follows Rudkin’s demise is a bit odd – the script tries to give Duggan some reason not to report “Billy Bug” right away (everyone thinks he’s daft for liking space fauna, so purportedly they’d all take the piss if he mentioned it), but in a high-security establishment that’s been a victim of sabotage, it’s very unlikely he’d keep schtum due to some potential social awkwardness. That’s no disrespect meant, by the way, to Kenneth Watson – for my money, he gives the best guest performance of the lot. Duggan seems natural and unforced, and his self-flagellation at Rudkin’s death, followed by an all too real “Oh what’s the use of talking...”, is terrifically empathic and believable.

  Otherwise, as you say, there’s a bit of playful banter here. I love that Troughton wakes up grumpy and automatically wants to cut clever-clogs Zoe down to size, and whilst your joy at the three-way banter between Leo, Tanya and Enrico is quite sweet, it’s also a bit tasteless seeing as they’re jollying about immediately after the brutal slaying of one of their colleagues. My favourite line of this episode, though? The Doctor saying, “Logic, my dear Zoe, merely enables one to be wrong with authority.” One suspects that’s what Whitaker himself said to many a poor script editor who had the audacity to question the nonsensical nature of his stories.