The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Chapter The 151st, where Britain's Got Talons.

Plot:

The Doctor and Leela visit late-Victorian era London to see a Music Hall show, and by a million-to-one coincidence the theatre they choose is the centre of an intrigue involving a magician, a criminal gang, and a time travel experiment from the 51st century. Magnus Greel, the infamous Butcher of Brisbane, a war criminal from the future, uses a prototype time cabinet, and ends up in 1800s China, horribly altered by the process. He's taken in and looked after by young peasant Li H'sen Chang, to whom Greel appears as a god, Weng-Chiang. Soldiers confiscate the cabinet, which is taken for a Chinese puzzle box, and it ends up in the family of police pathologist Professor Litefoot, given to his father, a former palace attaché, as a parting gift from the Emporer. Greel, travelling with a group of assassins from a politico-criminal organisation called the Tong of the Black Scorpion, searches for the cabinet, and the search brings him to London. Chang accompanies him, performing at the Palace Theatre as a magician, presumably as some sort of elaborate cover, so he can set Greel up in a secret lair beneath the theatre's basement (actually, though, it seems that he likes the performing more than the crime, and who can blame him?). Greel has given Chang enhanced mental powers - which Chang uses to do conjuring tricks - and a vicious 51st century robot, the Peking Homunculus - which Chang, erm, uses as a ventriloquist's dummy. He loves the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd.

Chang is abducting young girls in the area for Greel, so that his master can extract their life essence for himself, to temporarily subdue the ravages the time experiment has done to his body. When the husband of one of the girls connects her disappearance to Chang, the Tong gang members and the Homonculus, known as Mr. Sin, attack and kill him. Stumbling upon this on their way to the theatre, the Doctor and Leela become embroiled. They investigate with help from Litefoot, and the owner of the theatre, Jago. They nearly come a cropper from an encounter with giant rats in the sewers under London, remnants of Greel's experimentation; then, they lose the Time Cabinet when Greel and his followers steal it from Litefoot's house. Luckily, one of the gang leaves behind the cabinet's key, which the Doctor uses as a bargaining chip. Things reach a climax at the House of the Dragon, where the Doctor, Leela, Jago and Litefoot battle against Greel, and win, bringing the 51st Century's dangerous time experiment to an end.

Context:

Saturday 14th March 2020, a BFI screening (see below for more details) took place in the midst of a pandemic. I am a BFI member, and a few weeks earlier had booked three tickets for myself and two fan friends (David and Alan, who I've attended many of these BFI events with, and mentioned many times on the blog before) to see Talons on the big screen with improved CGI rat. Also with tickets, booked separately, were other friends Chris, Dave and Tim, who we also usually meet up with at these things. As the date got closer, all of us were wondering whether it would go ahead, and whether we should attend even if it did. I am generally predisposed to do the opposite of what the current UK Prime Minister advises, and he was saying everything was fine; but, I also felt honour bound to go, as the tickets needed to be picked up from the box office by the card holder who purchased them, and that was going to be tricky for the other two, if I wasn't there and they still decided to go.

In the end, Alan and Chris decided it was best to stay home, and Trevor (another fan friend who I've attended these events with, and mentioned many times on the blog) took Alan's ticket. I packed my tissues and hand sanitiser, and travelled up to London on the morning of the screening. The train was empty enough that I had a metre between me and anyone else for most of the journey, and the weather was nice enough that I could walk rather than take the tube; I was still, though, nervous that I'd done the wrong thing. Three days later, the BFI closed indefinitely, and everyone was told to stay home unless they could possibly avoid it, so it was definitely my last social night out for a while; luckily, it was a good one. Writing this, only a few days later, stuck inside and preparing to home school the kids (boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7), it seems like a whole lifetime ago.

First time round:

This is one of only two stories on VHS that I ever received as a Christmas present (the other one being The Five Doctors Special Edition, which came up recently on the blog). It came out on VHS in late 1988, and I remember being completely surprised to receive it that Christmas from my Dad. I hadn't asked him to get it, and it must have been sheer luck that I hadn't bought it myself before that (although this was back in the early VHS era when distribution was patchy, so I may not have seen it in any shops by then). Looking at genome for 25th December 1988 brings back a lot of memories. I remember watching the Top of the Pops Christmas special live before lunch (the Pet Shop Boys, who I had recently become mad keen on, did two numbers) and Back to the Future was the big BBC1 afternoon film premiere, with some terribly clumsy dubbing to eliminate swearing. Then, later in the evening, I alas set the video for Silverado, presumably thinking it would be a laugh riot, starring as it did two of the main cast of recent cinema smash A Fish Called Wanda, John Cleese and Kevin Kline (I have tried a couple of times since with Silverado, and just don't get it). So, probably, I watched my new precious thing sometime between, when the TV and video weren't otherwise occupied, sometime between 5 and 9 pm on Christmas Day 1988. I was blown away from first watch: the richness of the staging, and the period trappings, all seemed apt for the festive season.

Some things I wouldn't have seen that Christmas were nunchucks. A shot or two featuring these in the fight scene in episode 1 were excised because the BBFC were very against nunchucks at the time. And I say episode 1, but what I really mean is the first 22 minutes, as Talons - like all the presentations on VHS of the time - was one stitched together omnibus version. I finally got to see it in full in 2003 when the DVD release came out. One other thing that was significant about this first watch is embarrassing to admit: I did not realise that the actor playing Li H'sen Chang wasn't Chinese. The character is played by a white actor, John Bennett, 'yellowed up'. It is the most infamously dodgy casting decision in Doctor Who's history, and it completely passed me by. I was old enough that you'd have thought I'd have been a little more savvy, but no. It only gradually occurred to my cloth-head over many re-watches: it's uncomfortable to admit, but it's a very good make-up job, and a good performance. Viewed on a small screen at home in VHS tape quality, it convinced. None of this, of course, makes it right, and I cringe at my younger self for being such a dolt. I can't, though, pretend to feel any hurt or offence, even though I completely understand and empathise with those who do. It would almost feel like appropriation for me to feel offence on behalf of anyone or any group of people. I'm just trying to be honest, and place this story in a personal context.

Reaction:

This is a story the many fans, me included, do feel an overwhelming urge to position in an appropriate context; they seek most of all for Talons not to be misunderstood, and this can look like we're making excuses. I will try to find the right balance here, and I most definitely am not seeking to offend. The major issue for contemporary analysis is that Talons is so very good - it's well made and delivers a superlative example of the achievement of Doctor Who's aims of the time (which were not to engage in any sociological discourse, but just to produce exciting adventure stories without much of a budget). I don't think this can be in any doubt - almost every aspect of the production is of a high quality by any objective measure, and I'll pick out some of my favourite bits anon. It is consistently popular, being a top ten story in all three of the official Doctor Who Magazine polls run to cover all the broadcast stories to date in 1998, 2009 and 2014. But The Talons of Weng-Chiang has two flaws, and they're biggies. First, the realisation of the monster, a giant rat, was overambitious for what could realistically be achieved, and the finished article is cuddly, which makes any attempt at dramatic scenes involving it seem comical. And second - it's racist.

I'm not seeking to equate the two in any way, but fans' reactions to those two flaws (one frivolous, one serious) is very similar: they ignore them, and mentally edit them out, as limitations that the production team couldn't quite manage to lift up to the same level as the material surrounding them. Obviously, we Doctor Who fans are used to ignoring naff bits of our programme and concentrating on the positive, but the pressure here is greater because the story is otherwise so great. If it was truly rubbish (and I wouldn't put any broadcast Doctor Who in the truly rubbish category), people wouldn't still be watching it after all this time, so a sort of natural selection would remove it from any debate. Even the worst Doctor Who story has more entertainment value to offer contemporary audiences than any episode of, say, The Black and White Minstrel Show. Talons is still being released, this latest time on Blu-ray, and still being shown - as it was at the BFI - to audiences. The temptation is there to make that editing out more than just a mental exercise. The version of the story shown at the screening had a CGI replacement for the cuddly rat. Crucially, on the box set this is only an optional extra, and doesn't replace the original. One day the technology might exist to replace John Bennett with an East Asian actor, and I'd like to see that version. But if one were to make that the default, erasing the history, then one would become even more of an apologist for the flaws, pretending that they didn't happen at all. This is my logic for saying that we have to grapple with Talons in its original form, deal with it head-on: we can't forget it, we can't change it.

So, to deal head-on with the statement that I so casually made two paragraphs above: is The Talons of Weng-Chiang racist? [Laurence Fox alert: white man is just about to define what's racist and what isn't; please understand that he is aware that this is a definition only for him, and others may disagree.] I think the answer is: yes, but not perhaps in the way many people think. There are unquestioningly racist lines in the story; this was even more obvious when watching at the BFI with an audience where some of them caused an audible discomfort in the room, albeit very briefly. Most of these can be seen as a realistic depiction of the mores of the Victorian era, but then Leela has a line where she describes Li H'sen Chang as "the yellow one". She's an Earth colonist from the far future with no knowledge of Earth or its history; there is no way by observation that she would refer to him that way: East Asian skin is not yellow, any more than mine is white, these are socio-political constructions. The Doctor doesn't criticise or correct any instances like this in the story, even when he's accused of believing all Chinese people look the same; it might have made it more acceptable if he had, but that's not in keeping for this Doctor; this is Tom Baker at his most mordant, brooding and alien.

The aspects more generally picked up on are of course John Bennett's 'yellowing up', plus that Talons presents all the Chinese characters as simplistic bad guys, a crude and monolithic expression of Chinese culture in a negative way. I sympathise with these interpretations, but I don't agree. For more details, I have previously written on this subject in the Deeper Thoughts section of The Keys of Marinus blog post, but in summary: Bennett's performance is probably a bad decision, but it's not racist - dressing up as other people is what actors do. They do this to please audiences, and if, as has happened in the years since the story's original broadcast, things change in the wider world, and it becomes clearer that this upsets or annoys a section of the audience, it doesn't get done anymore. Any moral argument about whether performances should or should not upset or annoy is so thorny, it's best to ignore that and follow the money. Changes in the wider world are instigated by activists leading the good fight, no doubt, but they only gain traction where there's risk that audiences will be lost; any perceived moral good is probably a side effect. Maybe this seems callous, but that's showbusiness. Once one accepts the kind of make-up and performance done here was a standard practice that has subsequently stopped being standard, then the other criticism falls away too. Whoever plays him, Li H'sen Chang is the best character in the piece, and he's a Chinese character - most of the nuance regarding the presentation of Chinese characters and culture in Talons comes from his story - he's clever, layered, full of subtle contradictions. That he is a bad guy is neither here nor there - it's a gift of a part, and the number one role in the guest cast that anyone would want to play.

Beyond Chang, every role is performed perfectly, and every character feels like they have a life of their own outside the narrative (Jago and Litefoot indeed had their own spin-off audio series that lasted many, many years), Robert Holmes' script has great examples of world building, fleshing out the day-to-day business of the Palace Theatre, Litefoot's family's previous life in China, Chang's life before Magnus Greel crashed in, the world of time agents and wars in the 51st century. Even the smallest roles - Patsy Smart chewing the scenery as a Docklands hag, Conrad Asquith as the Peeler that had a sneaky drink on duty - have their place to shine, fitting perfectly into the wider proceedings. The regulars are at their absolute best here too, Tom is at the height of his powers, making it look effortless, bringing in a lot of wit with some lines that are surely his rehearsal ad-libs, but never risking sending things up as he would in later years. Louise Jameson is peerless, probably the best actor ever to play a companion, and lifts every scene she's in to even higher heights. The script has such rich language (with Jago's polysyllabic alliterations a particular pleasure), and synthesises it's many influences - Sherlock Holmes, Sax Rohmer, Jack the Ripper, Phantom of the Opera, many many more - in such a clever way, that it all feels like one coherent whole rather than a set of riffs. Dudley Simpson's score is one of his best, and his band of players surpass themselves in its performance (Dudley gets to cameo as the theatre's conductor too). Great production design, great direction, and - rat excepted - good effects work too.

The new version does subtle improvements to some effects (like Chang's mesmer vision and the House of the Dragon's laser battle), but the new version of the rat is the main attraction. It's much better, but it's still not perfect. In a couple of shots, it looks like it has human hands. The requirements of the script are clearly still a big ask, even with today's technology, and the animator Niel Bushnell has done the best job possible. This watch did prompt a few other flaws to come to my mind: the story lasts 2 extra episodes just because of the coincidence of a character forgetting to pick up a bag when vacating the theatre; that could have been reworked to be a deliberate complication caused by one of the heroic characters. Why does Greel not use the life essence of young men as well as women? When he's in hiding, it's possible he felt women were less likely to be missed in Victorian London, but when he's about to leave he could dispense with that, and process a couple of young Tongs if he needs a snack. Chang makes a big deal of not being able to read the Doctor's mind to work out who this mystery person is, but why doesn't he just read Leela's mind to get details about the Doctor? It just goes to show nothing is without its little flaws, even things with a couple of other massive flaws. One other criticism, which could be levelled at any story in this particular era, is that there is no depth: Talons has no message or subtext, it exists simply to entertain. It's ironic therefore that a couple of points about its production mean that it has encouraged more serious debate than any other Doctor Who story ever made.

Connectivity: 

Both this story and Mummy on the Orient Express see the Doctor and the one female companion he's accompanied by have a bit of a night out, going to the theatre or on a posh train journey; they also get to dress up, with the Doctor not in his usual togs for the time, and the companion getting a nice period frock to wear. Both stories have a scene where a female singer entertains an audience with a diegetic performance (Foxes and 'The Sheffield Song Thrush"). There are allusions to vampirism in both stories.

Deeper Thoughts:

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy 

Palace Theatre Playbill: BFI Talons screening 14th March. Coronavirus worries, for very good reasons, sadly depleted the line-up for the day. Producer Philip Hinchcliffe and Christopher Benjamin, who played Jago, were due to appear, but had to send their apologies. The panel that was intended to kick off proceedings on the representation of ethnicity in archive TV had to be cancelled as people could not attend. Instead, our usual hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy had a conversation on this theme at the start, and quoted statements from a couple of those who were due to be on the panel. Johnson, who was in particularly funny form (though the discussion was treated seriously) pointed out the irony of it ending up as two middle-aged white men tackling the subject. The points discussed covered much the same ground as I did above. Emma Fo felt that it was problematic and hard for her to watch, with clichéd representations involving triads and Kung Fu moves dehumanising these characters, avoiding the need to explore them. Matthew Sweet added some context about Robert Holmes's influences: Sax Rohmer, writer of the Fu Manchu stories, had apparently said that he'd made a lot of money out of China without ever learning anything about it. Sweet also believed that the racist comments used in Talons were historically accurate, and the Doctor's aloofness was in character. Dick stated that the BFI should never be an apologist, but should be a contextualiser: Talons was made nearly 45 years ago, and it was the norm then - with only a few dissenting voices - for white actors to play non-white characters. It was only the next decade afterwards that the idea that it was wrong gained traction. Dick was also keen to point out that despite this, it still does happen occasionally to this day.

(L to R) Fiddy, Bushnell

Once the usual quiz was completed, the first three episodes were shown. After that, Dick spoke briefly to Neil Bushnell, the animator of the new CGI seen in the episodes. He had worked on a lot of the DVDs and Blu-rays, tidying up special effects and doing on screen graphics. He was keen to rise the challenge of replacing the rat as it is "One of the worst effects in Doctor Who and the whole of entertainment". The process is always a balance, and involves negotiation with the box set producer, with spreadsheets kept of all the possible shots that could be replaced. Some of his favourite work is subtle, material he'd be happier if people weren't consciously aware had changed. One shot he's particularly proud of was adding a London Skyline to a scene in an early episode of the Doctor and Litefoot in a boat on the river (and I didn't spot anything out of place when those shots had come up on the big screen earlier, so he's done his job well, and I'll be keen to have a closer look at that when the Blu-ray box set comes out in early May).

The final three episodes were then shown, followed by a selection of extracts from the special features planned for the box set. Then, Louise Jameson came out for a Q&A with Justin, and she really impressed. In general, she came over as self-effacing, but incredibly on the ball with detailed knowledge of every aspect of which she was asked - she even tried to give a reasoned response to a slightly unfair audience question late on asking for an explanation of the lack of East Asian actors in the whole of Doctor Who's history. A lot of performers I've seen talk about how much they enjoy doing Doctor Who audios for Big Finish, but I've never seen someone when asked about them give the titles and authors of her favourite ones. But then, I don't think anyone I've seen on the BFI stage before has created an original range of dramas for Big Finish, as Louise has done with the ATA girls audios. Early questions talked about her career before Who, and later questions touched on later work, and what she's going to be seen in next, and it's clear that she's very busy and always in demand.

(L to R) Jameson, Johnson

One topic that kept recurring was her stepping into the companion role after Liz Sladen left, and so feeling a bit in the shadow of Sarah Jane Smith. She told the story of getting delivered a bag of Liz's fan mail by mistake "which of course I read", and it all said how the correspondents missed Liz so much. There was such modesty on display by Louise in this regard, that one of the audience questioners made a point of telling her that she was every bit as loved as Liz, which got a big round of applause in the room. Louise also touched on the oft told tension between her and Tom Baker when they made the show together (they're better pals now, Louise telling of how he regularly emails her, always signing off as 'Old Tom') and she put a lot of the problems down to her not being able to replace Liz, at least in Tom's eyes. Tom always managed to hit her "crumple zones", and would have preferred the Doctor to be travelling on his own, or "with a [talking] cabbage". Some of this antipathy made it through into the performance, with Baker hardly ever making eye contact. Someone once edited together all the times the Doctor tells Leela to "Ssh" during their time, and "it's enough to fill an episode". None of this, though, ever made Louise stop respecting him as a charismatic actor. He was someone, she said (like John Hurt who she'd worked with on a TV play) who could instantly be sensed entering a room, and all eyes would be drawn to him.

She also shared some details of those early days after having taken over in the companion role. The make up session to apply her fake tan took one and a half hours, and was applied exhaustively to "some very personal areas". She had to wear red contact lenses to make her blue eyes seem brown, which she hated, and which made everything she looked at have a sepia tint. News of her casting leaked, so she had to do a 16 hour working day at one point as the press launch was handled at the same time as she was in studio for a full day. The flap on the back of her costume, covering her derriere, was added at her insistence. On her first shooting day, she kept a pink dressing gown on during camera rehearsals for as long as possible, delaying the point she'd have to reveal her scantily clad new image. When she finally had to shed her outer garb, the lighting man said leeringly "I don't mind lighting that for the next six months". Interestingly, though, Louise was fine going back to the savage skins look after having different costumes for a couple of stories, including The Talons of Weng-Chiang, saying "Part of the impact is the image", and though the Victorian frock was nice as a one-off, "I'm not much of a fan of corsets".

I don't think the Q&A lasted longer than any others, but because of Louise's vast intelligence and attention to detail it covered too much for me to include it all here. Also touched on was the #Metoo movement, and Louise's slow, gathering understanding over her career that she had a voice and could speak up; working with Jago and Litefoot actors Christopher Benjamin and the late Trevor Baxter (like working with two 7 year old boys); her reluctance to write an autobiography for fear of upsetting her children ("You'd have to leave out all the good bits"); the growing confidence of fandom, and how Doctor Who has pretty much single-handedly made geeks fashionable; handing over to Mary Tamm, who she knew well ("Only two questions - how much were you paid, and what's Tom like?"), and filming 11 takes on the scene in Talons of the Doctor and Leela climbing into the sewer, only for the final one having to be overdubbed as a small boy watching had encouragingly shouted "Go to it Doctor!" at the end.  Once it was over, David, Trevor and I had a few drinks together in the BFI bar (we're all still okay a week later, thank goodness, and we're not going out again, I promise). On the way home, Louise Jameson retweeted my message about attending the event, which made me love her even more, and I didn't think that possible.  No disrespect to Liz Sladen, but Leela was the best (except maybe for my absolute fave Caroline John as Liz Shaw, but Louise Jameson - who spoke admiringly of Caroline that day too - might not be too bothered on that point). 

In Summary:

Come for the entertainment, stay for the discussions on ethnic representation in TV. This theatrical marvel keeps on giving, and gets my personal top billing.