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

by Robert Shearman

  The Space Pirates episode five

  R: It began as a space opera, then became a cowboy western. Now the story becomes, of all things, a Victorian melodrama! The scenes with the Doctor are lit by candlelight, which I can only imagine change the atmosphere of the adventure quite considerably, and contrast with the steely brightness we’d have come to expect. And against this backdrop we’ve got something straight out of Bronte – the madman locked away for years in his own study, his daughter thinking he was dead. It’s nonsense, naturally, but so long as the style was right, and the guttering lighting made the study look suitably old-fashioned, then this turn of the plot might have been just odd enough to have worked. Caven starts behaving like a Victorian cad, blackmailing the beautiful heiress; in one very good scene, Dervish explains that he fell in with Caven because of “one mistake” – if this really were Victorian, he’d probably have got pregnant with an illegitimate child or something. (That would have been rather fun.)

  The change of style is welcome. That said – last week the Doctor spent the episode trying to escape from a pit, and this time he spends a good 20 minutes escaping from a locked room. It’s getting a little beyond a joke.

  T: Director Michael Hart (brother of Tony, don’t you know) is a bit of a mystery where Doctor Who contributors are concerned. As far as I know, Hart is one of a very few directors – in a group that includes Henric Hirsch, Mervyn Pinfield, George Spenton-Foster and John Crockett – who have never been interviewed about their work on the series. It’s hard to say if this is a great loss, however, because while I can credit Hart for trying to inject a bit of pace early on in this episode (by having Simpson’s galloping music playing underneath the early scenes), it’s a bit incredible that he’s managed to assemble such a terrific cast (on paper, at least) and then, even allowing that the material is so uninspiring, got most of them to fail at lifting it in any capacity. It’s like he’s gone to the RSC with the script for Crossroads, and asked them to learn it the night before the first performance.

  But the crux of this episode involves everyone getting chucked into a dusty library, and finding a bedraggled old man cowering under a desk. Yes, it’s Madeleine Issigri’s “late” father Dom, who has been mentioned too many times to not turn out to be alive after all. And as it happens, he’s an even more enigmatic figure in Doctor Who history than Michael Hart – because there are no pictures or telesnaps of Dom, we’ve no idea what Esmond Knight looked like in the role, no clue as to the state of his hair, beard and wardrobe. Which is something of a shame, as he was a close collaborator of Olivier in his Shakespeare films, and so by extension was one of the most illustrious actors the series had nabbed to this point. I remember Donald Gee telling me how thrilled he was to work alongside Knight, who had been a childhood hero of his. And yet, nobody at BBC Pictures could be bothered to nip down and grab a shot of him.

  I also know that Knight lost most of his eyesight during the war – not from any Who related research, but because my Mum told me. We were at the Grand Theatre Wolverhampton to watch Colin Baker and Jack Watling in Corpse, and Knight was included in some big pictures of stars from past performances. Mum told me about Knight’s ocular deficiency – and it’s funny that she knew that, because while she’s no philistine, she’s not a habitual theatregoer either. She’s also the one who told me that Dudley Foster (who plays Caven) had tragically committed suicide; I think she’s just from that generation who knew stuff, even if it wasn’t necessarily in their field. And if it enriches my Doctor Who knowledge, so much the better!

  May 3rd

  The Space Pirates episode six

  R: And sometimes a story just ends. In this instance, with the forced laughter of a Scooby Doo climax. That’s its job. Fair enough.

  No, the remarkable thing about this episode is that it’s the final missing episode. Hurrah! From now on, every bit of Who I watch will come lovingly pristine from the archives, with moving pictures and stuff. The dialogue will actually issue from actors’ mouths. I can’t tell you what a relief that’ll be. If not on my eyes, then on my mind. There were times during this project that I had to concentrate so hard on what was going on, I thought my brain would snap.

  But the even more remarkable thing? Really? Is that this episode exists in any format at all. Because, let’s face it, what are the odds?

  When I became a fan in the early 1980s, weaned on Jean-Marc Lofficier’s Programme Guides, and learning by rote not only all the story titles in order but even their bloody production codes, it took a while for it to dawn on me that a huge number of these episodes were no longer stored in the BBC archives. They all sounded so magical – my God, didn’t The Underwater Menace sound like fun! – that it seemed almost criminal that they’d been wiped. It upset me hugely. And as my Who obsession grew, I remember lying in bed one night, with the pull-out posters from Doctor Who Monthly staring down at me, and praying to God. “Please restore all the missing episodes to the archives,” I said to God. And, realising even at that age you don’t get something for nothing, I added, “And in return, you can take years off my life.”

  That’s honestly true. That’s how much I cared.

  It didn’t work immediately, and that was okay, and I didn’t blame God necessarily – he hadn’t protected me from the bullies on the school coach either, or removed my acne. And it occurred to me some time later that God may not operate at quite the same speed as I might have wished. That just because, by the end of that week, all the Troughton stories weren’t safely back in storage didn’t mean that God might not get round to honouring the deal later. After all, he’s dealing with a lot of prayers – probably – and I can hardly expect him to answer them all at once. As the years went by, as we passed through the Colin Baker years, then the Sylvester McCoys, I began to regret the offer I’d made. At the age of 13, in the anticipatory mania for The Five Doctors, giving up a portion of my life in return for The Space Pirates seemed right and proper; at the age of 19, watching the final season of Doctor Who in the university common room and squirming with embarrassment as fellow students laughed at it, it didn’t feel such a fair swap. In 1992, all the episodes of The Tomb of the Cybermen, at the time the most keenly desired story a fan could wish for, were found in immaculate condition in Hong Kong, and I genuinely began to fear that this might be the start of a trend. Maybe next week God would give us back The Web of Fear. By the end of the month, The Evil of the Daleks and episode four of The Tenth Planet. And by the end of the summer, as he finally plugged the last hole with The Feast of Steven, and William Hartnell wishing all us viewers a merry Christmas, he’d put me straight under a truck.

  It didn’t happen, of course. There are still 108 episodes missing from the BBC archives. My life is safe. (So far.)

  As a fan I’ve spent an undue amount of my life mourning what’s been lost. And not marvelling at what we have. Because it’s extraordinary – we’ve well over half of the black and white episodes of Doctor Who, complete and in good condition. (And all the Pertwees too. Just because at that point we entered the colour age of television, it doesn’t mean we necessarily moved out of some strange brutal philistine time where everything creative got deleted after broadcast – it’s curious how lucky we are that it’s only the monochrome portion of the programme that has gaps in.) But what’s more remarkable still is that for most of these missing episodes, we have telesnaps. My God, we actually have visual evidence of most of the Troughton era, where some chap called John Cura was actually paid to keep photographing his TV set broadcasting Who every few seconds, as if somehow he twigged just how much an anal-retentive fandom, 40 years later, would need to know the exact facial expression that Jamaica would pull when killed by Captain Pike in The Smugglers. And, no, even more incredible: the fact that we have complete audio soundtracks for every single one of these missing episodes too. Not a single one is absent. Not a single one. (And my 13-year-old self would boggle at this – you can actually walk down to your local record emporium and buy each and
every one of these lost stories on crystal clear compact disc. Fans these days don’t know how lucky they are.)

  So I’ve moaned a few times in this diary about having to find my way through episodes that don’t exist as they were meant to be seen. Listening to soundtracks, following online transcripts, watching the reconstructions. But it must be said now, before we move on forever, that the reason that I’m able to enjoy them in any form whatsoever is down to the efforts of a few fans. As early as 1964, a mere 14 weeks into the run, there were already those as dedicated to preserving Doctor Who as I would be in my bedroom, 20 years later – and doing something rather more practical about it than praying to God.

  It’s worth repeating, and worth reminding ourselves about over again. Doctor Who fans are extraordinarily lucky. We have each and every episode of the series to enjoy again, even if in a compromised form. When sense would suggest that our tally of episodes should be riddled with holes well into Tom Baker’s tenure, and that a substantial part of the 1960s offerings should be completely without shape or form. Here we are, Toby and I, and we’re going through all the 700-plus instalments of Doctor Who in order. And we can. It’s amazing.

  ... And, yeah, this essay is here in part because I can’t be bothered to talk about Milo Clancey any more. So sue me.

  T: Just a minute... does that mean that I have to talk about Milo Clancey? Dammit, you’ve played the Missing Episodes Joker when I had planned to! Suffice to say, if God knocks on my door with “the three Ms” (Marco Polo, Myth Makers and Massacre), and guiltily says he won’t give them back because of some deal with you that he feels is a bit of a high price to pay for some archival ephemera... well, I’m afraid I’ll have to snatch them off him, and just see you in the next life, matey.

  But, all right, I’ll write about the episode in question. History tells us that the regulars only appeared in pre-filmed sequences in episode six, as they were off fulfilling their massive obligations to the next story, so I’d expected their participation would be minimal. To my pleasant surprise, though, they feature heavily in this last instalment, and interact with many of the guest characters. And I can credit Dudley Foster for doing what he can with Caven, switching from no-nonsense, clinical villainy to snarling anger in a successfully brutal way. It’s brilliant (and pretty hardcore) that he’d rather blow himself up and kill his opponents than be taken alive.

  Two other characters, however, fail to live up to their potential. There’s Dervish, who showed signs of breaking out and having some impact on the drama, but ends up as a Private Pike to Caven’s Mainwaring – he snivels away, complains, and is told to shut up and do as he’s told. Worse, poor old Esmond Knight, as Dom Issigri, spends the whole episode collapsing and being disorientated. Has an illustrious guest actor ever been so shabbily used by the series?

  Oh, what’s the use? I can’t even pretend to muster any enthusiasm for this story. Do you know, it is my son’s ninth birthday today – I thought that would make me feel old, and it might have done, had I not already been watching The Space Pirates. I feel like I’ve aged decades watching this... just look at how the V-Ship hurtles towards the climax by telling us it’ll be there in 55 minutes, which makes The Invasion’s 12 seem like the click of a finger. And every process that everyone engages in is complicated – the landing procedure for the V-Ship is slow, laborious and complicated; a lock is complicated; and there are complicated explosives which will be complicated to diffuse. Here in episode six, all these manoeuvres serve to slow everything down, as if Robert Holmes is wilfully refusing to be dramatic. He might as well have been more explicit about it, and just started the countdown at T-minus three and a half months.

  But no, wait, I can be upbeat in one regard, even though you’ve somewhat paved this ground. The Space Pirates episode six is the final missing episode, which means that things will be very different from now on, because obviously I am – as with everyone reading this, I presume – more familiar with the stuff that exists on video. Sure, I’ve listened to the soundtracks of some absent stories many times, but usually while I’ve been pottering about doing other stuff, and not with the concentration that I’ve had this time around. That means that, whatever my reservations about a particular story, I’ve unearthed a few little nuggets that were surprising or mysterious or beguiling. The fact that so much is missing from this era, while deeply regrettable, does give it a magic that will be difficult to recapture with the more familiar and available. And let’s face it: even if an episode as mundane as this one turned up, it would be so exciting! We’d discover what Dom Issigri looks like, how the other rooms and caves are designed, what sort of physical presence Dudley Foster brings to Caven, and so much more.

  We can all lament at how much is missing from the archives, it’s true. But there are times when the absence of video makes even the potential of something like The Space Pirates seem so much more alluring! You can bet that I’d be the first in line, cash in hand, if ever it was recovered and released on those shiny disc things – what a wonderfully joyful and giddy time that would be.

  The War Games episode one

  R: And to think – the Doctor and his companions begin the episode laughing. The very first spoken line is of disgust, the music is immediately doomy, the opening landscape of mud and puddles as immediately depressing as it sounds. And yet the regular cast, almost against the grain of the script, emerge from the TARDIS as happy as we’ve ever heard them. They’ve no idea what’s in store for them. Nor has the viewer.

  Because at first this feels very much like a return to the historical adventure. About eight minutes in, we’re given our first anachronism – but it’s subtly done, and we’re left in doubt whether or not we’re understanding what we’re looking at. General Smythe opens a cabinet behind a picture and we see a little video screen. But we don’t yet know it’s a video screen; no-one’s face appears on it; it all looks so decidedly lo-tech that it could just be the lens of an Edwardian camera. Smythe refers to the 1917 zone, and that of course sounds off-kilter – but we’re given no further explanation of why he seems to be historicising the present, and it could at a pinch just be very awkward exposition. When Zoe asks the Doctor whether they’re on Earth, the script (very cleverly) only says that they would appear to be – and the irony is that this very bogus World War I setting looks as credible a historical backdrop as we’ve seen Doctor Who do for years.

  Film the Great War nowadays, and we’d be given sequences of soldiers being gunned down by machine gun fire in the trenches. (David Maloney will get his chance to do this, of course, and the imagery will be pure 1917 – but the action will be on Skaro, and by then Tom Baker will be the Doctor.) Instead, what we get to sum up the brutality is barbed wire and bureaucracy. The speed with which the Doctor and his friends are found, imprisoned, then sentenced, is almost surreal, and very dizzying – but that’s precisely the idea. We’re not seeing the ordinary Tommy killed without thought on the front line; he’s being symbolised by what happens to our heroes, caught up in a piece of madness they can’t reason their way out of, and then led off to execution. All of Troughton’s wit and cleverness can’t do a thing to stop it. The moment when he kisses Wendy Padbury goodbye has a despairing finality about it that is beautifully done – and very frightening, because we’ve never seen the Doctor so easily defeated. That final scene, in which he stands before the firing squad, and sighs with unhappy acceptance of his fate, is extraordinary. This is what the Great War did. It made death abrupt and commonplace.

  What’s horrifying is that the soldiers who sentence the Doctor do so very amiably. After Smythe appears, they all seem tragically human in comparison. The sergeant major who looks on sympathetically as he marches the trio to interrogation; the major who tries to comfort Zoe by chucking her under the chin as her best friend is led off to die. They aren’t monsters. That’s what’s so terrifying. They’re ordinary, even kindly people, who’ve got so used to institutionalised murder that in response to our regulars’ cries for j
ustice, they just exchange glances in bemusement. It’s almost cruel, the way that the story gives the viewer hope this might be like an ordinary Doctor Who adventure – Zoe finds the key for the Doctor’s cell, and goes to rescue him. (And after all the locking up and escaping we’ve just seen in The Space Pirates, this almost looks like a deliberate comment upon the series’ clichés.) It’s to no avail. He’s taken outside and shot forthwith... or so it appears, in one of the most honestly shocking cliffhangers the series has ever done. It really doesn’t matter that the way out of it will be a mite contrived. On its own terms, this episode appears to have taken children’s hero Doctor Who out of his fantasy, stuck him in a very real and very grimy war, and, with undue haste and with awful credibility, killed him. If next week The War Games becomes a weird sci-fi adventure with ray guns and monsters, that’s okay – this week, standing alone, it’s played the Great War straight, and in the process has been one of the most remarkable episodes we’ve yet seen.

  T: I’d like, if I may, to focus on the flipside of the casualness to murder that you’ve been writing about. There’s an extraordinary (but quick) moment here when Major Barrington gets news over the phone that his men are to charge over the top of the trench in the morning – right into the waiting German guns, presumably – and notes the order with grim acceptance before he puts on a brave face to Carstairs, and cheerily informs him about tomorrow’s big push. Then later on, after a kangaroo court has sentenced the Doctor to death, Barrington stoically gives Zoe some words of encouragement before returning to his command post...

  ... and we never see him again. Chances are, having told Zoe to keep her chin up, Barrington will have to be doing the same in a few hours. The Doctor’s not the only one who’s been sent to his death at dawn.