Mawdryn Undead

Chapter The 106th, you wait ages for the return of the Brigadier and then two come along at once...

Plot: 
1983. In a minor English public school, a mysterious pupil called Turlough (who's really an alien) does a deal with a man with a stuffed bird on his head in a whirly dreamscape. In return for safe passage away from the Earth, he has to kill some fellow called The Doctor. One of Turlough's teachers is TV's The Brigadier. The Brig's somehow forgotten all about the Doctor since a nervous breakdown he suffered in 1977 (so, sometime around Terror of the Autons - Inconsistent dating of UNIT stories Ed.) The Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa meanwhile land on the Starship Technobabble, which is travelling in perpetuity through a warp ellipse, or something, and is seemingly deserted. Through a complicated set of coincidences, which are being influenced by vengeful Mister Stuffed Bird on Head, AKA the Black Guardian, Tegan and Nyssa end up meeting the Brig back on Earth in 1977, and the Doctor ends up meeting him in 1983. Both parties end up back on the ship, with Turlough tagging along with the Doctor and Brig '83, and half-heartedly trying to kill the Doctor every so often.

On the ship are a handful of scientists led by a brainy chap called Mawdyn; they have experimented on themselves with Time Lord technology, and now cannot die, enduring in a state of continuous torment. They want the Doctor to euthanise them using his Time Lord energy (somehow). But this will mean he ceases to be a Time Lord and can't regenerate anymore. For some reason - his moral compass being a little bit scrambled by the warp ellipse maybe - the Doctor is very reluctant to do this selfless and heroic act; you'd think it would be right up his alley. Just as he's finally persuaded to do so, though, the two Brigadiers - who've been kept apart up to now with French farce style near misses, going in one door just as the other's coming in the opposite door and the like - meet each other, and release lots of plot expediency which allows Mawdryn and the others to kark it, and causes Brig '77's 'nervous breakdown'. Both Brigs are returned to their time zones. Turlough joins the TARDIS team, but nobody asks him about his background as the writers haven't worked it out yet. Everyone is fine with snatching a kid from his school and leaving the Brigadier - someone who had various grudges against the boy, and was the last person to see him alive - to presumably be suspected of his murder forever more.

Context:

The whole family had been very busy with this or that for quite a few weeks; so, we recently decided to have a weekend when we busily did nothing in particular, just hung around the house playing video games, drinking cups of tea and such. Lovely. On the Saturday, the whole lot of us (me, the Better Half, boys of 12 and 9, girl of 6) watched Mawdryn Undead from the DVD in one go. It's rare for nobody to get restless and want a break at some point during 100 continuous minutes, so Mawdryn Undead must be doing something right. The CBBC level (in a good way) dilemma made for good engagement with the kiddos; more than one of them was chanting "don't do it, don't do it" when Turlough was wrestling with selling his soul to the Black Guardian. And all the kids were mortified when he casually lies to deflect attention from himself and get his schoolmate Ibbotson into trouble. What a cad! Companions are not supposed to behave that way. 

First-time round:

The 20th Doctor Who series was the second run that I watched as it went out on BBC1. Unlike Peter Davison's previous year, I did not have to miss every other episode to go to cubs, as I was too old by then. It must have been the autumn of 1982 that I'd had a few taster sessions for sea scouts, one of which involved being chucked out of a boat and having to swim to shore in very cold water. Needless to say, this TV-loving geek did not take up such a punishing pastime on a permanent basis. So, from the start of the series at New Year in 1983, I was free to watch every story, including Mawdryn Undead, without having to get a precis in the playground of the odd numbered episodes. You might think that the sudden doubling of my episodic intake would have made it memorable, but casting my mind back I have only a few strong memories from watching the season, and none to do with this story in particular. A moment that sticks in my memory from watching Mawdryn was from many years later. In the mid-1990s, I was watching the VHS with the Better Half in my family home; my sister walked in, gave the TV screen and Turlough's antics upon it a long, withering look, and said "Why is that 30-year old dressed up as a schoolboy?". That was her one-line review.

Reaction

The stories of 20th century "Classic" Doctor Who were mostly multi-part stories with four or more episodes; in those days, I'll wager it was rare for one's favourite episode of any story to be part 2. Beginnings and ends are often favoured; lots of Doctor Who stories start well, and fewer but still many have a great ending. Robert Holmes, prolific 20th Century Who writer whose praises I was singing last post, said that episode 3 out of a 4-parter had "dog-legs", meaning that the plot would go off in a surprising direction, so there's some memorable episode 3s too; but, stories where episode 2's the best? Only Mawdryn Undead, that I can think of. The whole of that second episode is formally and emotionally rich: writer Peter Grimwade's script provides a solid and surprisingly modern usage of a guest character returning from the series' past. The Brigadier's memories of the Doctor are mysteriously blocked by some past trauma. During the second episode, they are unlocked in a wonderful character moment, and there follows lots of fan pleasing but non-gratuitous old clips. Then, as the Doctor teases the details of the mystery out of his old friend, the actions of his past as he retells the memories in the present are presented as intercut sequences. It works very well.

The original idea - before actor William Russell proved unavailable - was that it would be original 1960s companion Ian Chesterton teaching at Turlough's school. This might have fit better based on the cold hard facts of previous exposition, but Ian's character was solid and dependable; any kind of nervous breakdown would have seemed out of place. The Brig, however, near the end of his first ever story, The Web of Fear, starts to break down after an encounter with the Yeti has wiped out most of his men, and babbles about his formless, shapeless foes. The events of Mawdryn are entirely in keeping with that glimpse. Nicholas Courtney delivers perhaps the best performance from his many years on the show, giving us subtly different versions of Brig the Elder and Brig the Younger, and deftly performing the vulnerability masked by the stiff upper lip of a military man. William Russell would have been great too, I'm sure, but having Ian take a regenerated Doctor in his stride, seeing him without William Hartnell's Doctor and - crucially - without Barbara, would not have been as good as developing the Brigadier's story. All in all then, a happy accident.

The earlier portion of the tale concentrates on Turlough's selling his soul, which is an interesting concept but we don't know him well enough yet for it to resonate as much as the Brigadier's plot. Episodes 3 and 4 concentrate more on Mawdryn and his fellow scientists, who need to escape from the eternal life they've trapped themselves in. Again, this is a more distinctive motivation and richer emotional arc than usual, but the characters involved are not drawn in any detail, and are anyway a slightly immoral lot, not necessarily deserving of audience sympathy. It's a satisfying closure when they achieve their final rest, though. Think on this for a moment: for all its prototype Steven Moffat-esque timey-wimey structure, Mawdryn Undead contains three plots, all of which are propelled by understandable human emotions. It's admirable, and definitely not the norm for this era.

It's not perfect. There's a major misstep at the end where the Doctor's threatened fate is not to die, giving up his life for others; instead, he is just going to cease being a Time Lord. It's a more abstract concept, and one that requires awareness of obscure series continuity. And it's unnecessary: why not just have him risk death, it would be a simpler and more immediate threat that anyone could understand. Other minor negatives: despite the efforts of the script to sell it, nobody would have thought for a second that the charred Mawdryn was a regenerated Doctor (he wasn't wearing a loin cloth when last they saw them, was he?!); whatever his identity, dragging a burns victim along the floor and then wrapping him in blankets to "keep him warm" probably does not qualify as good nursing. Also, all the stories of this era have the same issue when watched in a random order: they always have an intrusive early TARDIS scene talking about the previous story - here it's the aftermath of Snakedance. It would be much better to forget about all that and get stuck into the new adventure. All in all, though, it was a very nicely constructed and performed piece, with plausible enough explanations for the huge coincidences at play. I was pleasantly surprised.

Connectivity: 

The Space Pirates and Mawdryn Undead both contain a space-faring object upon which the series regulars get stuck, which is subsequently blown apart. In both stories, being gullible is taken to an extreme (it's clear to the audience but not the characters who's behind the piracy, and that the bloke in the transmat capsule is clearly not the Doctor).

Deeper Thoughts:
A musical exercise. Shortly into Mawdryn Undead, Paddy Kingsland's otherwise excellent incidental music breaks in to a jaunty number to accompany Turlough and Ibbotson's grand theft auto, joyriding in the Brigadier's vintage car. It's a bit like the music that played on a Gameboy during Super Mario Land in the 1990s, both in terms of timbre and character. This cue remains a source of hilarity in our house, long after watching the episode; the Better Half sarcastically hums it occasionally to get my goat (though, I usually just laugh along with her). The odd lapse aside, though, I love most Doctor Who music. But I'm really bringing the subject up not to extol the virtues of the early chilly 60s electronica, nor Dudley Simpson's mid-period chamber incidentals, 1980s radiophonic synth anthems, nor recent romantic orchestral scores; I'm just using it as an excuse to tell you that I've lost two stone of weight.

It's not just a sweeping generalisation, more a sweeping, dusting, vacuuming and scrubbing the kitchen surfaces one: Doctor Who fans are not known for a predilection for exercise. Having been a pallid geek since the age of 9, and having piled on the years since then, I was until recently overweight and unfit. With some prompting from the Better Half, I decided to do something about this. Once we'd returned from our holiday this year (where I'd drunk a lot of wine and ate a lot of nice food), I have been moderating my diet, and doing more exercise. Part of the new regime has been doing Couch to 5K. This is an NHS-approved programme, that gradually takes a beginner over a 9-week period to the point where they can manage a 5K run. There's an app, of course, where a choice of voices can be selected to give you instruction and encouragement as you run. We both use the default voice of Laura, someone who previously did the programme herself (but who doesn't seem to have a surname, or at least not one she wants to make a big deal of online).

Most people have their favourite pop music music playing underneath too, helping to energise them. I'm not most people, though - I am exclusively using Doctor Who music. Three recent releases from Silva Screen records are currently loaded onto my phone, and I've tried running to all of them: the Capaldi series 9 original soundtrack by Murray Gold, Peter Howell's music from The Five Doctors, and Don Harper's music from The Invasion. Though always a favourite listen, the last of these has proved a bit too jazzy and laid-back for accompanying exercise, though there's something nice about starting a run to the original Delia Derbyshire arrangement of the Doctor Who theme, which kicks off The Invasion track-list. The Five Doctors is mostly fitting for fitness, particularly the track where Jon Pertwee is racing Bessie away from a pursuing triangle. I have, though, mostly concentrated on the most recent of the three, and a very specific part of it.

 

One disc of the series 9 CD release is given over to the full score of Heaven Sent, and it's this that has proved the best to accompany my Couch to 5K runs. Something about the metronomic nature of the story's main themes (as the Doctor explores his clockwork prison) helps me keep a steady pace. At the time of writing, we are on week 6 out.of 9, and still going. My main aim, apart from the better cardiovascular fitness and whatnot, is to time it perfectly so that the very wonderful cue 'The Shepherd's Boy', which crescendos as the Doctor slowly but surely punches his way free, is finishing just as I complete the run (and doesn't have Laura talking all over it). Not managed it yet, but a challenge like that keeps me trying, no matter what the weather. I shall report back when I chalk up this significant personal achievement.

 

In Summary:

A clever, and surprisingly emotional story; but, why is that 30-year old dressed up as a schoolboy?