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

by Robert Shearman

  April 15th

  The Wheel in Space episode four

  R: Yesterday I took a pot shot at the new Cyberman voices. But now I’m back on soundtrack, what strikes me is how little they’re used. Compare them to the Cybermen of The Moonbase or The Tenth Planet, who were so chatty that at times you felt they could be employed as speakers at a rotary club. These ones hide in the shadows, and kill without warning or explanation. The death of crewman Chang (more on him in a minute) is so abrupt I had to rewind the tape to check it had really happened – he’s killed, then passionlessly dumped in the waste disposal, which is about as callous as you can get. Dear old Bill Duggan, played so amiably by Kenneth Watson, is in one moment cheerfully whistling as he sets about his work, and in the next losing his entire personality forever. I’ll not make a secret of it – I’ve been a bit disappointed by the Cybermen so far in Doctor Who. They’re a terrific concept, these emotionless men, wanting to convert the rest of us to their example – but in practice they’ve always been a bit too chatty and, therefore, reasonable. Here at last they seem as cold and merciless as they should be.

  I’m not saying I couldn’t wish they were in a faster-paced story, mind you. This week, we’ve got a sequence in which Zoe explains to an amazed Jamie the scientific magic that is the tape recorder. (It’s a bit too late for this sort of thing, isn’t it? And he didn’t even blink last week when sabotaging a laser cannon!) And Jarvis Bennett is the latest in a line of Troughton base commanders to go round the bend. Michael Turner at least decides to stop shouting a la Victor Maddern at the moment his brain finally cracks, though – there’s something at once very funny and rather unnerving about a man walking around his station grinning and cheerily telling everyone that there’s nothing wrong.

  And then there’s Chang! As played by Peter Laird. Yes, you’re right, the accent is shameful. But I worked with Peter Laird a few years ago in theatre; he’s a terrific comic actor, and a thoroughly nice chap. When I first started working as a dramatist, I put my foot in things a few times on my first productions – some director would cast a Doctor Who actor in one of my plays, and I’d excitedly break the ice at the readthrough by reciting their credits at them. Not a good idea. They’d usually think I was a weirdo, and avoid me for the rest of the run. By the time I met Peter I’d learned my lesson, and so only revealed that I knew of his dubious Oriental background whilst we were both safely merry at the opening night party. “Oh yes,” he said blithely, “I used to play a lot of Chinese back in the sixties. I got quite used to being made slanty-eyed with sticky tape.” Peter was very good in my Ayckbourn directed comedy; he’s rather less effective when required to get his “l”s and “r”s mixed up on a futuristic space station. It makes you wince to hear this Caucasian actor try to yellow his speech – but it’s a sign of the times, and leaves me wondering just how awkward it would have been now had Innes Lloyd jumped at Patrick Troughton’s initial suggestion to black up and wear a turban as the Doctor. Would we be able to watch any of his stories nowadays without shuddering? Would they be able to release them on DVD and put them in HMV shops? When Doctor Who Confidential announced the casting of Matt Smith back in January, and rattled through his ten predecessors in the role, would they have coughed with embarrassment over Doctor No. 2, and jumped straight to Pertwee?

  T: You’ve pretty much covered it, so I’ll just add that Laird isn’t even doing a Chinese accent very well – at one point he sounds like Bronson Pinchot’s character on Perfect Strangers.

  I’m noticing a pattern, though... you asked after the previous episode for the Cybermen to slow down (and/or repeat themselves), and in the recap, their speech is noticeably more measured and not as fast. And then, in our next scene with them, they repeat their instructions! Someone out there is listening to you, Rob. (If only you’d asked for The Web of Fear episode four to come back to the archives.) Not only that, but you’re getting all hot for Gemma Corwyn and – what luck! – she turns out to be a widow. You’re a bit charmed today – have you been rubbing any magic lanterns recently?

  And while I agree that Michael Turner is generally effective when he’s being quiet and distracted, I think you’re being a bit harsh on Victor Maddern by comparing them. The two parts are written rather differently, and Turner gets more interesting things to do, so it’s easier to pull off. He’s terribly unconvincing when pitching his performance up (not a criticism you can level at Maddern – he’s shouty, but it’s a good shouty), and he sounds like a pirate when he talks about morale never having been better. Add to this mix Elton’s weird accent (which brings to mind Reece Shearsmith’s comically appalling attempts to read F Scott Fitzgerald in The League of Gentlemen) and this has made for one of the most bizarre audio experiences I’ve ever had. At least the programme-makers had the common sense to kill Chang – I don’t think I could have faced a hypnotised mock-Chinaman.

  Otherwise, this trots along amiably enough – I like Flannigan offering to take just a five-minute break before knuckling down to work again, and how the Doctor wants a coffee and is given it in pellet form, in a scene that looks geared to remind us that we’re in space. Meanwhile, the newly pardoned Duggan looks all set to become the Doctor’s main helper until he’s unceremoniously brainwashed and rather callously zapped. I rather liked Duggan, he was nice – couldn’t Leo have just knocked him out instead? Bye bye, Duggan.

  And then there’s poor old Zoe – she’s not exactly likeable yet (but this is clearly deliberate), and she ends this episode being left out of the action, making us feel a bit sorry for her. She’s desperate to help, to join in, but none of the other kids will let her because she’s done well in school, is slightly annoying and awkward at social interaction...

  Oh my God. I’ve just described myself.

  That’s it. That’s the secret. Zoe is a Doctor Who fan.

  The Wheel in Space episode five

  R: So. Let’s get this straight. The Cybermen’s invasion plan is as follows. They contrive to make a star go nova, creating a meteorite storm that will threaten the Wheel. To destroy the meteorites the crew will be obliged to use the laser cannon, and use up essential supplies of the mineral bernalium. The Cybermen send Cybermats to the Wheel, which will eat the bernalium. Requiring further stock, the humans will fetch bernalium from the nearby spaceship, but the Cybermen will be ready, hiding in the bernalium crates, and gain access to the Wheel. From which they can launch the inevitable invasion of Earth (both of them). All as clear as mud, and begging only one question. Are we meant to take any of that seriously?

  It’s as contrived as can be, of course. And I’m not being fair to it, sticking it on the computer screen like that, rudely staring up at me in all its aching daftness. Because the uncovering of the plot has a different effect on screen. You realise this is like one of those Rube Goldberg inventions – when a series of increasingly convoluted machine parts operate in order to achieve a very simple solution. The effect is usually comic – whether it be the bizarre means by which Wilf Lunn would crack an egg on BBC kids show Jigsaw, or Doc Brown would feed his dog in Back to the Future. But here, it suggests one of two things. Either that the Cybermen are so enslaved to logic that they’re fiendishly clever at being able to harness so many variables – which is strikingly cold and alien. Or that they’re rather stupid, and to quote a later comment about the Master, would get giddy if they tried to walk in a straight line. Take your pick. But suddenly realising in this episode that we’re at the heart of such a staggeringly complex plot does cause the brain to flip – it’s dizzying. And anything in Doctor Who that does peculiar things to the brain needs to be cherished.

  Someone else enslaved to logic is Zoe Heriot. She’s a much darker character than I’d ever realised. Whitaker’s script rather brilliantly only hints that she comes from a pitiless totalitarian regime, where young children are taken and brainwashed so that they can come out the other end supergeniuses – capable of holding a huge amount of information, but not the wherewithal to respond
to it emotionally. She’s just another Cyberman. And it’s telling that the crew of the Wheel are seen to recoil somewhat from her – just as, years later, those who work on the Sandminer are uncomfortable around the chiselled cool beauty of the Robots of Death. Zoe recognises this. She struggles against it. In a moving scene, she asks Jamie what possible use she can now be for, when all her logical training comes up short against a problem she couldn’t have anticipated. She’s a robot wanting to be a human being – and what makes Wendy Padbury’s performance so powerful is that even in the recognition of this she still doesn’t give in to emotion, she’s still obliged to wrestle with the dilemma as if it’s a particularly taxing game of sudoku.

  T: So, finally everyone is coming together to fight the Cybermen – in episode five of a six-parter. Oh well, there are some brilliantly tense scenes here. The first has the Doctor and Jamie relying on the help of people who aren’t even in the same room to send a killer sound wave to destroy the Cybermats. It’s quite nailbiting (possibly because we’ve no video, and so can’t see the little metal critters). Their deaths take forever, no doubt because the production team wished to show off their cutting-edge radio controlled ‘roaches. And whereas you complained before about the indistinct Cyber-voices, what about the Cyber-lightbulb they report to? He’s indecipherable.

  The biggest disquiet I have about this episode, however, is the Doctor. He rather childishly forces a reluctant Jamie to go to the Silver Carrier to retrieve the time-vector generator, claiming Jamie was responsible for misplacing it (he wasn’t). He responds with testy petulance when Leo berates him for putting Jamie, Zoe and Gemma into peril, and he’s uncharacteristically callous – so much so that poor, brave Jamie must selflessly try to stop Zoe from risking herself. In The Evil of the Daleks, the Doctor’s plan obliged him to be shady and manipulative; here, he’s just a git. And then there’s his reaction to Gemma’s suggestion that they give Jarvis electro-convulsive therapy: “I wouldn’t advise moving him.” Yeah, because sending electric currents gushing through Jarvis’ brain would be okay, but moving him is a no-no. I suppose we can be a little accommodating based upon the year in which this was written, but it’s really disconcerting to hear such an awful technique talked about so blithely.

  I do like, though, how we have another variation of a character being seen in mortal danger via telephone/on a TV monitor. This one’s especially good, thanks to Troughton’s guilty panic and the calm, detached professionalism of Anne Ridler as Gemma does her job before trying to make her doomed escape. It’s a heroic death from a good character, and is as much the climax to the episode as Jamie and Zoe being under threat from the oncoming meteorites.

  Both hazardous situations being the Doctor’s fault, the swine.

  April 16th

  The Wheel in Space episode six

  R: The best bit about the episode is – once again – Patrick Troughton. He’s barely been in the adventure, and when he has he’s seemed much more subdued than we’re used to. But he rallies around, as if smelling the odour of season climax in the air. The way he insists that risking the lives of Jamie and Zoe was necessary for the greater good – but stands guilty and disconsolate when forced to admit that Gemma Corwyn is dead – is beautifully done. And even better is his confrontation with the Cybermen (the only one in the entire story!): his little moues of unhappiness when the villains keep bringing the subject back to his impending death are very funny, but also sell the jeopardy so well. As written, the scene is little more than exposition, but Troughton makes the whole thing seem as if this face-to-face with the Cybermen is actually about something pivotal. As it is, the story fizzles out as soon as the enemy stop skulking in the shadows and become plain for all to see – the skulking was really the whole point. But the skill of Troughton manages to elevate the episode into a discussion about the ends justifying the means, and give us a scene of extraordinary tension; we barely notice the plotline long ago ran out of steam.

  And we’re out of Season Five, and out of the cycle of telesnaps! Bar a few episodes here and there, Season Six exists entirely in the archives. It’s a relief. I think my eyes were starting to go funny. Idly watching the last minute of the story, I note with interest that the Doctor prepares to show Zoe a mental video of The Evil of the Daleks. He seems to start with the beginning of episode two – and it speaks volumes about my obsession with watching these things, that this automatically makes sense to me. Of course, I think to myself, he’s not going to give her episode one – she’s not going to want to sit through a reconstruction.

  T: He also gives away the ending to the next episode we’re about to see, so he’s clearly applying to be editor of the Radio Times...

  The Cybermen are pretty easily defeated, especially as Flannigan somehow knows to spray them with space-plastic – are we ever told why this is lethal to them? – but at least he’s rather winningly so miffed at the headache they’ve given him, he’s decided to stomp about and give them a good seeing to. We are given an explanation for what he does to eject the ballet Cybermen into space, but it’s a bit muffled under his helmet. I’m not sure it matters, however, because in essence the Cybermen are thwarted by that canny manoeuvre of pressing a button. Three times in fact! (The Doctor does it to electrocute his opponents, Leo does it to blow up the Silver Carrier and Flannigan does it in the airlock. What drama.)

  Still, this has its moments. I’ve knocked some of Michael Turner’s performance, but he’s quite sweet in this, deciding – with the no-nonsense resolution of a child – that he’s going to have a go at the Cybermen for Gemma’s death. It’s so pathetic that it’s actually rather endearing, and Jarvis’ death scene is very well (pardon my choice of words here) executed – the Cybermen pick him up and hold him aloft, but we only see this from afar on a scanner, so we’re spared the embarrassment of a dummy or Kirby wires. And the Cybermen themselves are massive – they tower over Derrick Gilbert, James Mellor and Frazer Hines, really fulfilling their remit of being silver giants.

  And at least Leo and Tanya have got all sexed up thanks to the death and drama. Jarvis and Gemma can rest safe in the knowledge that their demises resulted in a bit of space nookie – it’s not just Tanya’s nose that’s tingling.

  The Dominators episode one

  R: Philip Voss is really good in this. He’s cocky and arrogant – he fairly preens with self-confidence every time he checks the computer for radiation. And he’s naturally charismatic. And, frankly, Nicolette Pendrell is very easy on the eye. The script isn’t very sharp, but I could happily watch the continuing antics of their characters, the thrill-seekers Wahed and Tolata, for five episodes. I wonder what the Doctor will make of them?

  ... Oh no! They’re dead! They’ve been zapped by some unseen robot called a Quark, and just before falling over, their faces have been blanked out and distorted. (Well, Tolata’s has been, anyway. I don’t think they could afford the special effect twice.) Another character called Etnin has just been zapped too, but he was neither charismatic nor pretty, so I wasn’t as interested. Of the four Dulcians we’ve yet met, the only one left alive is the tubby chap in a toga. It’s not that Arthur Cox is bad as Cully, per se – but Voss got all the charm, and Pendrell all the looks. Cully needs to be a bit of a wily rogue, an Arthur Daley sort. Instead, Cox just looks a bit awkward, running up and down a quarry with his toga flapping.

  And we meet some other Dulcians. They wear togas too, except for the one who wears dungarees. Their performances are, at best, variable – but it seems rather cruel to name a character Kando when Felicity Gibson who’s playing her so obviously kan’t. And we meet some Dominators. They snarl a lot in contempt, usually at each other. Kenneth Ives, as the subordinate Toba, clearly likes blowing things up and killing people, and I like the little childish sadism he keeps on exhibiting – but it must be said, by the third time in one episode that his boss Rago (played by Ronald Allen) tells him off for doing the only mildly threatening thing yet in the story, it all gets very wearing.
/>   And, of course, there are the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe. Troughton tries very hard in this, delighting in the idea they’ve landed in the perfect spot for a relaxing holiday. He shows delight in the atomic test dummies, and fascination in the spacecraft – but it all feels just a bit forced, because for once nobody else in the cast is even attempting to act with the same energy. When the Doctor finds out the TARDIS is threatened, it’s all Zoe can do not to stifle a yawn – she decides to hang about with a bunch of strangers she’s just met rather than see if they’re in any jeopardy. And Jamie looks a trifle bored, and occasionally suggests they take off and go somewhere else.

  It’s a curious misstep for a season opener, this. Broadcast in August, when most of the audience are likely to be out enjoying the sunshine, this feels as lazy and as punch drunk as a warm summer’s day. Doctor Who is back on our screens, straight after a repeat of an epic encounter with the Daleks, and the first thing our heroes admit is that they feel tired and fancy a rest.

  T: Hang on, why aren’t we doing this properly, and watching The Evil of the Daleks again? They even went and sutured the repeat into the show’s continuity, so surely, we should be including it in our marathon? We’re going to get letters, I know it...

  One of the more curious aspects of this project is that we’re ruthlessly determined to get through it in one year, and so on a day-to-day basis, our takes on various episodes can’t help but be influenced by what mood we’re in. I’m feeling very good right now, as I have the day off, and I’m not working again ‘till Tuesday. That might explain why, even though I’ve previously felt less than kind towards the episodes I’m watching today, I didn’t massively object to Wheel episode six, and even The Dominators episode one seemed okay.