The Ark in Space

Chapter The 94th, in which a precious thing comes with lots of bubble-wrap.

Plot: 
The Doctor, Sarah and Harry arrive on a space station, sometime after the 80th century, where the survivors of the human race are in cryogenic sleep waiting out a catastrophe that's occurred on Earth. Before they have woken up to repopulate the planet, though, a giant parasitic insect queen of species Wirrn has broken in and laid eggs in one of the sleepers. Because of something the TARDIS team do in their investigations - or else just by a fairly big coincidence - the larvae start emerging exactly at this point after thousands of years. The sleeping humans start waking up, but their leader Noah comes into contact with a larva and that starts to convert him into a Wirrn. With help from the future humans, our heroes battle against the giant grubs. But it is Noah who saves the day; the last vestiges of his humanity winning out in a mental struggle, he leads all the hatched Wirrn off in the station's shuttle craft, and blows it up. Second-in-command Vira stays on the 'Ark' to continue awakening the surviving members of the human race, while the Doctor, Sarah and Harry transmat down to Earth to check it's fine (they never report back to Vira because they get embroiled in other machinations, but that's another story).

Context:

I bought the recent Blu-ray box-set of the five stories in Tom Baker's debut year, and as usual whenever a new Who release comes along, I mused a while on whether I should blog something from it, or whether that would be a dilution of the concept of doing stories at random. To decide whether to choose a story from the box set, and - if so - which, I introduced a chaotic element and used a four-sided die (that's just the way I roll). I've already covered two of the stories previously - Robot and Revenge of the Cybermen so 1-3 referred in transmission order to the remaining three stories; 4 would have meant I didn't blog anything at all. The 1d4 result was a 1, which meant The Ark in Space. I proceeded to watch an episode a night of this seminal tale, without the optional CGI model replacements, with only one evening's gap to watch England in a World Cup semi-final. In this, I was accompanied by the Better Half, and by my youngest two children (boy of 8, girl of 6) - for Ark in Space, I mean; the Better Half had no interest in the football.

First-time round:

I've previously written often about the excitement of the early scatter-shot days of the Doctor Who VHS range in the late 1980s, before the rate and dates stabilised and I found a regular stockist who'd have them on or near their release. It was pot luck in those days, rather as the Target novelisations had been previously: sometimes, you would walk in to a shop and be excited to find something suddenly, dizzyingly, available that you had no idea was coming out.

Something like this happened in 1989 (from memory, it was late Summer, before the broadcast of classic Doctor Who's final season on BBC1), when I walked into WH Smiths in Bognor Regis and found three new stories on video to buy (it looked like four at first, as one of the three was the first ever double tape release, which meant that it came in two almost identical VHS boxes). I probably had to beg my Dad, with whom I was staying for the holiday, for enough money to buy the lot in one go; so, the first time I would have watched The Ark in Space, which was one of the three, was at his place. That version had the middle episodes' beginning and ending credit sequences expunged, so it could be presented as a feature-length thing. The unedited version came out on a VHS re-release early in 1994. I then bought it for a third time on DVD in 2002, and again - though I'd completely forgotten about it until now - on an enhanced DVD re-release in 2013. The Blu-ray version is the fifth copy I've purchased,  and that's probably enough, I should say, as good as the story is. 

Reaction

It may be a false impression, but it seemed to me watching this story quite soon after Invasion of the Dinosaurs, that Tom Baker and Liz Sladen seem to share more screen time in Ark in Space than Jon Pertwee shared with her in their whole season together the year before. Aside from episode 1 of Dinosaurs, Sarah and Three are most often working individually: maybe it's a function of the 'split the protagonists up' trope, which Doctor Who writers are very keen on, but - not just in Ark, but in the other stories on the Season 12 box set - the fourth Doctor and Sarah (plus Harry, a witty and wonderful addition) are a team, a tight unit, in the way that the UNIT team weren't, at least by the time of season 11, despite the name. It helps that there's a first episode, like in Dinosaurs, concentrating just on the main characters. In these scenes, and throughout, Tom is 100% his Doctor, and he and the new era are fully formed by this second appearance (third recorded story, mind, as The Sontaran Experiment was made before this - and that story is still somewhat embryonic - but, still, they found their feet very early).

Why is it so successful at achieving a different approach? Robot and The Ark in Space feel worlds apart, but they're made in similar studios, with similar cameras, by similar means. I think that part of it is a certain stillness. There aren't many action sequences in Ark, and there's precious little fast movement by the characters - it's controlled, and deliberative, with drama coming from committed performances and character interactions. One of the most dramatic moments, at least for this viewer, is Noah looking at his alien, transformed hand. He's stock still, and the make-up effect is by all measures rubbish, but the expression on his face and the way he is holding himself are magnetic. Then, the script plays a blinder and a completely unexpected and initially incongruous voice-over starts up - the Earth High Minister giving the awakened humans their "pre-match pep talk". Noah, with a flicker of reaction, just listens. Director Rodney Bennett then does some elegant, glacial cross-fades, as these words are heard across the Ark, and it dawns that this is not incongruous at all - this is the heart of the story: the fight for Noah's humanity versus the mind and body horror of the alien parasite consuming him.

How good the transformation make up is ceases to matter (and, to be fair, all the other phases are pretty good, as is the larval mass behind the glass in the solar stack - it's only Noah's hand and the grub that don't quite work); all that matters is the story of Noah... and Vira. The Better Half clued me in to a subtle re-reading of this story, which might be obvious to everyone else, but has only occurred to me on this my millionth watch of Ark in Space, when she asked me during the last episode why Noah is offering the TARDIS team and the few awakened humans safe passage off the Ark. He doesn't need to, he doesn't even need to lie about it: the Wirrn are in a far superior position, and could just wait the humans out. He. Wants. To. Save. Vira. How could I not see this before? He wants to save his pair-bonded mate from his old life. The dialogue bears this out: Wirrn Noah only wants to speak to Vira, says her name over and over. The only way he can save her and conform to the pressure from the hive mind, to take over the Ark and devour the sleepers, is to get her away. When she won't leave, love wins in his internal battle, and he destroys the Wirrn instead. I've been watching a love story all this time. Wow! But, if you want to, you can ignore all of that and see this, as I previously have, as just as a triumph of Noah's humanity.

That central kernel - the everyday tragic love triangle between a man, a woman, and an alien parasitic gestalt - is surrounded by gold standard material at every level. The regulars input to the story is only really in the subplots, but it still works as they are so good. Dudley Simpson's tense metronomic score is excellent. The drama plays out against the backdrop of probably the best sets ever constructed for a classic Doctor Who: whether the decision to reuse them in another later serial afforded a bit more budget or not, there's high-level ingenuity from designer Roger Murray-Leach everywhere: not just in the big showy cryogenic chamber, check out the set for the launch pad of the shuttle, for example; this is only in a couple of scenes, and could have been a flimsy knocked-up thing, but it feels solid and real. The concepts too - the same inspiration from nature that Alien called upon a few years later in the cinema; and, considering it's a rush job page-one rewrite, Robert Holmes's script is top touch stuff with wonderful black comedy dialogue ("I'm no regressive, I'm a naval officer!").

Connectivity: 

Both contain a scene where Sarah Jane Smith is woken up to be told she's been through a cryogenic process on a craft in deep space. It's a lie in Invasion of the Dinsosaurs, of course, but here it's true.

Deeper Thoughts:
All the years are Tom Baker years. The picture quality is probably a bit better than DVD, and there's lots of new extras, but I don't really care: I only bought the Season 12 Blu-Ray box set upon which The Ark in Space features because it also has The Tom Baker Years on it. Why did it mean so much to me to see this curio again? For the uninitiated, a number of 'Years' tapes were created by 1980s producer John Nathan-Turner in the early 1990s as part of the burgeoning Doctor Who VHS range. There were tapes for each of the first three actors to play the Doctor, one for the Cybermen, one for the Daleks, each acting as a showcase for otherwise orphaned episodes and clips. The concept was already getting stretched by Jon Pertwee's one, though, as every episode featured there would be released with the rest of its complete story only three years after his Years tape came out. For the Tom Baker one, a new idea would be needed - there was nothing even slightly orphaned about any of his episodes, and every one of his stories would be released sooner or later.

Part of the reason why it's intriguing to see it again is the gimmick they chanced upon in 1992 to solve this problem, which was way ahead of its time: the Gogglebox factor. Tom would be filmed reacting to a selection of clips from his stories, and would comment on the action shown. It was both a rehearsal for DVD cast commentaries, which were still a few years away from being a reality when the Years tapes were being made, and a prototype for the award-winning C4 show which watches the viewers watching the programmes. In fact, it is echoed in a new extra that also appears on the Season 12 set called Behind the Sofa, which rips off Gogglebox shamelessly, but perhaps in the knowledge that BBC Video got there first. The main point that The Tom Baker Years got wrong, though, was it didn't have anyone else on the sofa for Tom to react with or play off. Still, if anyone could carry something like this solo, it would be Tom Baker you'd want to have a crack at it.

I haven't had, or even seen, a VCR in such a long time, and I disposed of all my video tapes a few years back (keeping the sleeves in clear wallets in a ring binder and - for want to any other destination for them - sending the cassettes themselves to the landfill). I could have kept or tried to flog The Tom Baker Years, it being one of the few tapes to contain material not available on another more up-to-date format, but I didn't. Had the memory cheated? Had I mis-remembered all its idiosyncrasies? Not really. Baker does watch the clips on TV from a chair next to a night-watchman's brazier for no reason. He does regularly fail to remember names of stories, names of actors, or that he ever performed in the particular thing put before him. He does rhapsody on various wonderful drinking sessions during location shoots over the years, including some rather obscure sounding tipples (rum and shrub, anyone?).

And he does deliver wonderful, memorable material, still etched in my mind today: his reaction to the most violent scene in The Deadly Assassin where he essentially sides with Mary Whitehouse, his summary of Margaret Thatcher's spell as prime minister, the story of getting attacked by a dog ("I'll have to play smiling parts for the rest of my career"), recalling his jealousy at Beatrix Lehmann's favouritism towards John Leeson, and - at the end - the lovely haunted cautionary tale about fleeting fame, when he recounts a visit to the hairdressers. It has a certain special something, even though it's not exactly a probing interview. If that's what you're looking for, 2018 Tom is elsewhere on the disc in conversation with Matthew Sweet, and gosh it's good as well. This is the first of what might be seven Blu-ray box sets covering Tom's tenure: is there really enough material about him to fill the remaining six? Well, if anyone could carry something like that solo, it would be Tom Baker you'd want to have a crack at it. Long may his years continue.

In Summary:
It's indomitable. Indomitable!

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

Chapter The 93rd, is one that just might be from a golden age.

Plot: 
The Doctor, trying to get new companion Sarah Jane Smith back home, arrives in central London only a few weeks after they were last on Earth, but the city is deserted: Londoners have fled after some menace has spread, and the area's under the control of the military. The two time-travellers get arrested suspected of looting, which is the biggest problem in the evacuated area (with the exception of all the giant lizards that keep popping up only to disappear again). Eventually found and rescued by the Brigadier, the Doctor and Sarah help UNIT to investigate what's causing the dinosaur invasion. Unfortunately, seemingly everyone involved in the investigation except the Doctor, Sarah, the Brig and Benton are part of a conspiracy.

The Doctor goes on the run after being framed as the monster maker (despite there literally being zero evidence against him, except his being caught near a dinosaur, which - given they are popping up in London at random - doesn't amount to a hill of beans smoking gun-wise). Sarah ends up imprisoned in what appears to be a spaceship three month's out from Earth. Benton ends up having to arrest himself. The conspiracy is led by an MP, Sir Charles Grover, who plans to revert the whole of the planet and its population, reversing millions of years, so that he and a group of people (those he's duped into thinking they're on a spacecraft to a new world, when in actual fact they're in a bunker under London) can start humanity off again along a better path. The Doctor stops the plan, just in time, and reverses the polarity on the time manipulation equipment, so Grover and the mad professor helping him are sent back in time on their own.

Context:

The Better Half and I watched from the DVD an episode an evening every so often. For some reason, we kept getting interrupted by other priorities, and this stretched to a number of weeks all told. In the middle of the watch, I squeezed in 10 episodes of The War Games in one evening, before spending another week or so finishing eps. 4-6 of Dinosaurs. Although it was ages ago now, I can remember that we chose to watch the first episode in colour: the DVD uses the clever technique applied to a few other Pertwee episodes that only exist as black and white film of recovering the colour information somehow burnt into each frame. This was the least successful attempt at the process, so the colour version of episode 1 is presented on the disc as a non-default option. To my eye, though, it's perfectly serviceable and doesn't detract (although episode 1's bleak abandoned London lends itself well to a black and white presentation anyway, so one can't really lose).

First-time round:

I missed any showings of Invasion of the Dinosaurs on UK Gold, so it was left to home video to allow me to watch it for the first time. By the time of Doctor Who's 40th anniversary late in 2003, the VHS range was approaching its end. The next range, re-releasing everything on DVD, had already got underway a few years earlier, but the BBC had decided to reward / exploit the loyal fanbase by completing the run on tape nonetheless. Invasion of the Dinosaurs was the final full story released in October of that year, probably left until last just in case they found the first episode in colour, or found a way to colourise it. In the end, it was released with the first episode in black and white. Then, by the time that DVD range was starting to peter out in 2012, Dinosaurs came out in DVD with the aforementioned option to watch it all in colour, and that completed the experience for me. The first season box set of what may turn into a full-blown range of Who Blu Ray re-releases has just come out, but they're starting with season 12, Tom Baker's first, the year after Invasion of the Dinosaurs. This is undoubtedly because that's the first year that is trouble free in terms of missing episodes or missing colour. So, it may be that I've collected my last ever version of Invasion of the Dinosaurs. What a thought!

Reaction

There were many sniggering schoolyard criticisms one could level at the many different series of cartoon franchise Scooby Doo, but the thing that always got me more than anything was a frequent plot standby they used where the baddies invented a photo-realistic holographic technique, but instead of exploiting this for commercial gain, they just used it to scare people away from a minor league smuggling operation based in the abandoned funfair. In Invasion of the Dinosaurs, the villains don't just have bleeding edge time manipulation equipment, they also must have engaged some very good set designers and visual effects artists to mock up their pretend spacecraft fleet. And they presumably have invented some kind of workable suspended animation technology too. What a waste of effort just to use all that for a monumental misdirection, while they do an insane scheme to reboot life of Earth.

The first episode famously is titled merely 'Invasion', which was intended at the time to preserve the surprise; watching now, though, it's tempting to think it was just because they didn't want anyone to get their hopes up. The dinosaur models used in this story, and all the different methods of integrating them into the live action, produce results on a scale from 'risible' all the way up to 'laugh out loud funny', but crucially it doesn't harm the action as they are - literally - a side show. It may even enhance it: the dinosaurs are victims, after all, just minding their own business when wrenched out of time. It's quite apt that they are more cute than frightening.

A much bigger problem is how many holes there are in the villains' plot: how did they get everyone, even those who weren't in suspended animation, into the pretend spacecraft without anyone twigging, for example? How were they planning on getting them out again without spoiling the illusion? That this doesn't matter either, really, is testament to the writer Malcolm Hulke's skill in creating character. Everyone has solid enough motivation to keep things on the right side of credible, just about. He pulls the rug out from even the long-term watchers of this era, by making the bad guys motivated by what previously had been the series' number one good guy priorities: the anti-pollution, anti-nuclear, anti-war characters are on the wrong side of the argument in this one. Is is too grand to compare this to Animal Farm? Hulke was none-more-lefty, but he could still write a parable where the world reshaped by those with good intentions rapidly deteriorates to include sinister 're-education' of the individual, and even the threat of execution to weed out the disruptive elements. Just like his work in The War Games and elsewhere in Doctor Who, Hulke is gleefully anti-establishment, whatever that establishment might be.

However one rationalises the holes in the spacecraft subplot, it does give the story its best cliffhanger (episode 3's) where Sarah has woken up and may be three months into deep space. And not just because it's the only cliffhanger that doesn't involve an entire suspension bridge of disbelief on the audience's part that the rubber toy dino on screen is real - it wrong-foots everyone, and comes out of nowhere, though it will be satisfactorily explained later. It doesn't matter either that footage of the Doctor and UNIT is intercut with the spacecraft scenes (a move that has been criticised in the past): we're supposed to see early on that it's all a con. Elizabeth Sladen's performance is very good in the second half of the story, doing her best to wake up the underground sleepers to the truth. In fact, all the performances are top notch: Peter Miles, Martin Jarvis, Noel Johnson; best of all for me is Carmen Silvera's icy turn as Ruth. Director Paddy Russell gets the best out of her cast, and also makes the most from some guerrilla filming in the early hours of the morning, providing episode one its remarkable deserted London scenes.

Connectivity: 

Like The War Games, this one has scripting duties contributed by Malcolm Hulke (writer of Invasion of the Dinosaurs) and Terrance Dicks (its script editor). Also, it's the third story on the trot (including Turn Left) to feature soldiers, an area visited by our heroes that's under martial law, and a plot involving the abuse of time travel.

Deeper Thoughts:
It's so easy to laugh, it's so easy to hate, it takes guts to be gentle and kind. In Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Sir Charles Grover, famous environmentalist, author of Last Chance for Man, admired even by the Doctor, let's everyone down. I've often wondered how I would feel if a famous person I really admired, like someone from TV's Doctor Who, was embroiled in some scandal, present or historical. There hasn't been a shortage of questionable Television Centre-based activities by certain persons reported as happening during my childhood in the 70s and 80s, but so far it hasn't involved anyone I really cared deeply about, certainly nobody from Who: mostly, it has to be said, the alleged perps were hardly surprising news at all to anyone who lived through TV of that era, a lot people on the box back then exuded a less than healthy vibe.

The day has now sadly come: it is not a hero of my childhood but of my older years who has besmirched his reputation, such as it was. That person is Steven Patrick Morrissey. His pronouncements have got more and more reactionary of late, but his latest crossed a line, defending as it did the indefensible, and supporting the insupportable. Heaven knows I've stood up for him in the past, like many an obsessive fan (as another hero of mine from that time, Sean Hughes - whose own  reputation took a hit when his obituaries came to be written - said: everyone gets over their Morrissey phase; except for Morrissey, of course). The Moz was misquoted, he was misunderstood, he's playing a persona, it's irony - I trotted out all those lines. Maybe he too always exuded a less than healthy vibe, and I just didn't see it back then.

So, what do I do now? Ignore it? The work is not the same as the creator, of course; but, Morrissey's modus operandi was always to include a lot of himself in his art. Should I get rid of all my albums as Stewart Lee advises? That seems unfair to the people who wrote the music, particularly Johnny Marr. All I can therefore do is feel foolish for my past; but maybe I shouldn't feel too bad. It's only empathy, after all, taken a little too far. Like any bad direction or decision, excessive hero worship starts with something natural, good... or at least understandable. This is why a plot like Malcolm Hulke's Dinosaurs story, despite its being OTT nutso sci-fi, still resonates - the bad guys don't know they're bad guys; they started with a desire to create a better world. Even nationalism, to pick one example, starts off from a desire to protect the ones we know or associate with most. The only way we can understand or counter these dangerous directions is by being open to empathy. If the price of that is that sometimes we feel foolish for singing the praises of a person or idea which turned out not to be as good as we first thought, that's probably a price worth paying.

In Summary:
All in all, it's something of a (temporal) paradox: a story with loads of big flaws, but it's still absolutely excellent. Final word on the matter: KKLAK!

The War Games

Chapter The 92nd, a 1960s Doctor Who double album.

Plot: 
Okay, there's 10 episodes of plot to summarise here, so buckle up: the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe land in what appears to be 1917 No Man's Land during World War One, but things aren't quite right - the soldiers they encounter seem to be under some form of hypnotism, and have no memory of how long they've been at the front; there's also an anachronistic communications monitor hidden behind a painting in a senior officer's quarters. The Doctor is condemned to death as a spy by a dodgy General's dodgy court-martial, but is rescued when a sniper starts shooting at the firing squad. This sniper turns out to be a Redcoat, who thinks it's 1745. The Doctor and his companions make a couple of allies, Lady Jennifer and Lt. Carstairs, and all of them escape crossing through a misty force-field into another area, where another war is playing out, this time featuring some ancient Romans.

After doing some exploration, our heroes work out that some of the officers are aliens, manipulating the remaining human soldiers into fighting one another. The Doctor and Zoe find themselves in a TARDIS like travel machine, bigger on the inside, which dematerialises and rematerialises in each zone depositing soldiers. It finally arrives in a central zone, where the aliens in charge have some kind of evil training programme going on. Hiding themselves in a lecture hall, they witness the mental reprogramming of the captured Carstairs: this process reportedly has a 95% success rate. (In the American Civil War zone, Jamie and Lady Jennifer meet some of the 5%, who have broken their programming and formed pockets of resistance.)  An important official, the War Chief, drops in on the lecture. He sees the Doctor and there is a shock of mutual recognition between them. The War Chief sends guards after the Doctor and Zoe, who run away.

The War Chief bitches at his colleague, the Security Chief, both of them not trusting the other, as they try to find the Doctor. (The War Chief is not from the same race as the others, he is a Time Lord, and it is he who has given them the time travel technology to allow the kidnapping of so many humans from different eras.) With help from his friends, the Doctor escapes back to the 1917 zone with the reprogramming machine, which he has altered to use in deprogramming humans, and starts to form the disparate resistance groups into one large army.

The War and Security Chiefs are joined by the evil head honcho, the War Lord, and they make a plan for an ambush in the 1917 zone, kidnapping the Doctor and taking the machine back. The War Chief speaks privately with the Doctor: the former knows of our hero, knows he too is a Time Lord, one who ran away from their planet in a stolen TARDIS. The War Chief explains that the War Lord's people are training up the humans into a perfect army, with which they plan to take over the galaxy. The War Chief intends to depose them once all that's done, and asks the Doctor to help him rule. But this is all a bluff: he really wants the Doctor's TARDIS as the machines he's made are breaking down.

In order to stop a neutron bomb being dropped on all the zones by the Security Chief, the Doctor plays along that he's turned traitor, and gets key members of the resistance to come to the central zone. There, with some bluff and subterfuge, they turn the tables on their captors. The Security Chief has recorded the War Chief's treachery, and deposes him. In the chaos as the resistance are battling guards, the War Chief kills the Security Chief, but too late - the War Lord has heard the recording, and kills the War Chief. With the War Lord held captive, the Doctor reluctantly calls in the Time Lords - returning all the soldiers to their real times is too much for him, and he needs his people's help. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe try to escape in the TARDIS, but the Time Lords use their all-pervasive power to drag the ship back to its planet of origin. There, the War Lord is put on trial and sentenced to being erased from existence. Then, it's the Doctor's turn. He justifies his breaking the laws of non-interference by presenting evidence of all the evils he has fought. His companions are sent home, their memories erased of everything but their first adventure with him; then, the Doctor is exiled to Earth where his appearance will be changed again. He drifts off into the void, his regeneration starting...

Context:

When the random number generator guided me to The War Games, it happened to be not long after it had been covered by the ongoing Twitch marathon. (I just dipped in to the current tweet stream for #doctorwhoontwitch, and it seems they've reached late Tom Baker and the latest meme is "Salami Sandwich"  - a silly line of Tom's in The Masque of Mandragora that was showcased in a trailer.) I realised, from reading comments from others who'd actually tried it, that in all the times I'd ever watched this seminal Doctor Who story, Patrick Troughton's swansong, I'd never attempted what might have seemed an obvious, albeit gruelling, way to watch - I'd never done it all in one continuous binge. The idea of such a challenge tickled me, and so I started to plan the right moment. The Better Half was out for the day, one Saturday during the recent UK heatwave, and once the children took to their bedrooms, exhausted from water fights and BBQ, I stuck on the DVD and let the next 4+ hours of adventure play uninterrupted. I had a chilled bottle of Sauv Blanc and some snack food, which I would regularly rush to the kitchen to replenish during episode end credits, and there was a minute or two's disruption when I changed to the second disc. But, I did it, and survived.

First-time round:

In early 1990, The War Games was one of probably the most exciting brace of Doctor Who VHS releases ever to come onto the market. For the last few years of the 1980s, I'd started my collection, slowly getting hold of the mere three tapes that were available for an affordable price at that time, whenever and wherever I could find them. The first one I bought upon its release - or at least as soon as possible afterwards (distribution was patchy) - was Death to the Daleks in 1987. There followed a couple of years of releases, which I picked up one by one. In 1989, a dizzying four tapes covering three stories suddenly appeared on the shelves of WH Smiths.

This batch included the first Hartnell release, which was the first ever presented with all its episode endings and beginnings left in, and the first available as a double tape release (at the time, this meant two ordinary VHS boxes sellotaped together). It must have sold well, as the following year  - when something of the regular release pattern of a couple of stories every couple of months was established - it was almost all 1960s episodic adventures brought out, a lot of which were in twin boxes (but they stopped bothering to sellotape them together, as I remember). The year kicked off with An Unearthly Child and The War Games. For a fan who had read extensively of these epochal stories, the bookends of the 1960s era, the one that started it all and the one that tied things up and flung the show off into a new direction, it was beyond amazing to suddenly own both of them to view for always.

Reaction

I have a little theory going of the parallels one can draw between Patrick Troughton's era, hairstyle and all, and the work of contemporary popular beat combo, The Beatles. William Hartnell's era is like the earlier rock and roll of the 1950s - it blazed a trail, pretty much did every possible innovation, but wasn't as finessed as what was to come. Troughton's first year is like the early albums - loads of great stuff, but the odd duff story / naff cover version here and there. After that, Season 5 is Sergeant Pepper, and Season 6 is the White Album: the first very popular and consistent, with some definite classics, but arguably somewhat 'style over substance', and not necessarily greater than the sum of its parts; the second, much more sprawling and inconsistent, much less loved (although with something of a recent revisionist view from some fan champions) and much much more interesting. If that's the case, then The War Games is the most White Album-esque of all: double the normal length, with many people including its creators worrying and wishing that bits should have been cut out to make it tighter, but still a classic.

Just like its 1990 VHS release mate An Unearthly Child, a large amount of this story is written off by certain fans. The first ever story is seen as one really great episode followed by some caveman nonsense, and this is seen as a lot of long, boring war stuff followed by one really great episode. Neither assessment is fair. The War Games packs in a lot of plot. The first few episodes really feel like the beginning of a four-parter, such do they speed onward never seeming like anyone wants to hoard any twists and turns for later. Within minutes, our heroes have arrived in a war zone, been captured, been rescued, met some heroes, met some villains, and the mystery has been seeded with some lovely little hints. Having seen this many times, but not having a very strong memory of the details, I'm surprised that the court martial and firing squad happen as early as episode 1 (neatly, the story starts and ends with the Doctor being tried and sentenced).

Quick out the gate, then, but does it keep up that pace thereafter? Pretty much. I can attest from having watched it all as one four-hour piece, it rarely ever gets dull; there's no sagging middle, which even I was prejudiced enough to assume was definitely there. When it is dull, it's just for moments, and it's just because the action's stopped for a punch-up or some other stunt work, which was an expectation of the adventure television form in those days, not anything for which The War Games is to blame. The War Chief and Doctor have that shocking moment of recognition in episode 4, the words 'Time Lords' are first mentioned ever in episode 6. There's a resistance, there's a threatened neutron bomb, there's real and fake treachery. In the blog passim I've often quoted Terrance Dicks, co-author of this story, beating himself up about all the loop scenes he and his co-author Malcolm Hulke had to put in to this story which killed time but trod water plot-wise. But I didn't spot any on this watch: it builds and builds, and twists and turns right to the end. Of course it could it be told in less time than it is, but the task was to fill ten weeks with exciting adventure, and these writers - already battle-hardened pros by this point in their career - do that splendidly.

It's not just the writers, everyone else is giving everything they can, and rising above the limitations forced up on them. Whatever some commentators of the time and more recently think, this does not look like the last tired gasp of a show risking cancellation. The director David Maloney sets out his stall early on with some interesting camera angles and movements (check out the materialisation of the TARDIS reflected in a puddle) followed hard on by the sudden explosion of wartime verisimilitude. Throughout the remainder of the story, he keeps this up, getting great performances of great characters, and framing them in interesting ways. He's forced to do this, of course, to keep things interesting over such a long running time, but that shouldn't subtract kudos for his achieving it. There are too many great creations to list them all: Philip Madoc's icily still take on big villain, the War Lord, Lady Jennifer, who is missed when she disappears from the narrative half-way through, Carstairs, plucky temp companion... The list could go on and on. Even minor characters shine, like David Troughton as Private Moor who has you cheering when he bests the baddie, or Rudolph Walker as Harper, who leaves you saddened when his brave resistance fighter is killed.

Then, there's the regulars. Oh gosh! There was no reason to suspect when Victoria Waterfield actress Deborah Watling left Doctor Who, that it would even work to just swap in another female companion alongside Patrick Troughton and Fraser Hines, but somehow it's much better with Wendy Padbury as Zoe. There is a sheer joy from watching any story where this trio stars together, and they are faultless in every scene in The War Games. This makes the ending even more devastating, where the two companions lose their memories of travelling with the Doctor and go back to their ordinary lives (the first time the show had pulled that particular trick). Then, there's the magnificent sets - whether recreating Great War trenches, or providing pop art majesty to the swirly 60s decor of the alien's central zone. Then, there's the music - I've been humming composer Dudley Simpson's military ditties ever since.

Anyone who is still willing to discount all of that, and everything else I haven't had space to eulogise, still has the final episode and its revelations. Oddly in opposition to the received reputations, it's only in this final episode that the plot is in danger of petering out, and the loop scenes are required - there's the mucking about in the TARDIS, cut with reused footage, or the final one - perhaps one too many - of the story's escapes scuppered at the last second by the bad guys stepping into our heroes path. As a whole, though, episode 10 is still monumental, and unsettling (Troughton's regeneration is truly horrific - his head disappears), and contains arguably the first and best set of "game-changer" reveals in the show's history. Next stop: Earth exile. Exciting.

Connectivity:
Both Turn Left and The War Games include soldiers, an area visited by our heroes that's under martial law, and mucho timey-wimey shenanigans.

Deeper Thoughts:
The Battle of the Binge. I've never been one massively for marathon watches or box-set binging. Nor, since I've had young children at least, can I say I'm one for snapping things up on the first day of purchase or being early to stand in a cinema queue for the latest release. Just ask a few of my enthusiast friends, who are badgering me to see - to pick one representative example - Rogue One, so they can finally talk about it in front of me (I finally got round to seeing it the other day, 18 months or so after it's cinematic premiere, and it was very good - there you go). Obviously, I know I am effectively doing a marathon watch of everything for this blog, but to use (abuse?) a marathon metaphor: I'm not expecting to make a record-breaking time or finish in the first few; after the forecast five more years it'll take to catch up with the Doctor Who currently on TV, I will be like one of those people in a gorilla onesie hobbling to the ribbon three days after everyone else has gone home.

Some stories, like Turn Left recently, I can enthusiastically whizz through and write up in record time, but the story I started after Turn Left has taken ages longer, an episode here and there, for no identifiable reason (certainly not its quality). In fact, I managed to watch the ten episodes of The War Games in one evening in the middle of weeks of struggling to finish that one (you'll find out which story it was next time). So, it can certainly be said that I have a love-hate battle going on inwardly with the correct speed at which to view episodic serials: there's a pleasure in making good things last, savouring every last moment, but there's an equal pleasure in ripping off the packaging, slotting disc into player and devouring it in one go. The interesting thing is it's a similar battle to that which everyone seems to be having now; box set consumption and deciding the correct etiquette surrounding it, has gone mainstream.

There aren't necessarily literal boxes to these box-sets any more; like a music 'album' the terminology has transcended its original physical constraints - once upon a time a purchaser would get a photo-album style booklet containing multiple 78s to group together a larger body of audio work than one disc could contain. To my mind, this is the key reason for the mainstream crossover: since the days of Laserdiscs and Betamax versus VHS, enthusiasts have wondered which physical medium would be the one that got the ultimate mass market buy-in; like with music, it turned out that the biggest buy-in would be when there ceased to be a physical medium at all. Sure, DVDs, like CDs, had their day, but there was still that whiff of collector eccentricity about them compared to just watching things on the telly. Of course, because of the march of technology, watching a drama serial (Stranger Things, say) as a broadcast, or watching it as a catch-up years later are indistinguishable events - the same interface and the same viewing experience goes with both. And, as has been seen with the Twitch coverage of Classic Who, just because something is old, doesn't mean it can't be appointment viewing and create 'water-cooler' moments for a cohort.

It doesn't take the sort of big push that Twitch got either; if my day job is anything to go by, many an office is working out as they go how they can collectively enthuse about what they've watched recently - it isn't hard, just requiring patience, and sensitivity around spoilers. If I have to wait a while to compare notes with a colleague or friend about American Gods or The Good Place, which I'm all caught up on, they reciprocate by not spoiling Jessica Jones or Lost in Space for me. In fact, the culture of recommendation and counter-recommendation building up reminds me more of novels than anything I've experienced with TV drama until now. No one expects anyone to read, and now to watch, the same things at exactly the same time, but when they have something excellent they are going to mention it, and hope you'll read / watch and like it too, so you can rave about it together. Along those lines, I would like to suggest Cloak and Dagger, which is intriguing and building up very nicely (new episodes each Friday on Amazon Prime), Halt and Catch Fire (which is magnificent and criminally under-seen, four series in total available also on Amazon Prime), and the Better Half would pitch Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (three series available on Netflix) for your consideration. Enjoy.

In Summary:
I'm not one for all that "maybe it was too many episodes". What do you mean? It's great, it sold, it's The bloody War Games. Shut up!