Plot:
On an unnamed planet, the Sevateem tribe wear skimpy loin-cloths, worship a god called Xoanon, and hate rival tribe the Tesh, who they believe are in league with Xoanon's foe, the Evil One (who happens to look a lot like the Tom Baker Doctor). A young warrior Leela is cast out of the tribe for speaking heresies. Banished to the lands outside her village, she bumps into the Tom Baker Doctor who's just arrived - what a coincidence! Avoiding the rest of the Sevateem who want to kill him, the Doctor investigates with Leela, and finds lots of evidence of an advanced space-faring civilisation in amongst the tribe's religious artifacts. Turns out the Sevateem are descendants of the survey team who ventured out to explore the planet, and the Tesh are the technicians, who stayed on the ship. The Doctor and Leela, followed by the tribe, find a way to reach the ship by climbing through a carving of the Doctor's face on a mountain. The Tesh attack them with psi-powers, but they manage to get through to Xoanon, who turns out to be the ship's advanced computer, driven mad by the Doctor's previous interference. Years earlier, the Doctor had visited the expedition and fixed the computer, but left his personality imprinted on it. Since then, Xoanon has experimented on the Sevateem and the Tesh, pitting them against one another. The Doctor puts things right, and leaves the two tribes squabbling about who will be leader. Leela insists on coming with him, barging in to the TARDIS as it dematerialises.
Context:
Context:
In between watching episodes and extras from the Trial of a Time Lord box set (which came out a few weeks back, but with its hours and hours of extra material is still dominating the Blu-ray player), I snuck in an episode of this story every so often. All told, it took two weeks to watch the lot, from the DVD, accompanied by all the children (boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7); the Better Half was busy doing other things. Why did it take so long? That was my fault, as I was finding the story hard going, so - and this is the sort of heresy that gets one thrown out of the Doctor Who fan tribe and fed to the Horda - I much preferred to watch Trial of a Time Lord instead. The Face of Evil is a story in one of the most highly rated Doctor Who seasons ever, starring the most popular Doctor ever. Trial of a Time Lord is... not held in such high esteem, it's fair to say. The children, though, loved The Face of Evil. I think this was mostly because of the character of Leela, to whom they all responded well. Even the youngest guessed that the Doctor was going to pick up a new companion this time "'cos he always has a sidekick". In the scene where Leela is poisoned with a Janus thorn, and the Doctor is racing to save her, all three of them watched from the very edge of their seat, holding their collective breath.
First time round:
First time round:
I was still living in a little studio flat in Worthing in May 1999 when this came out on VHS, but I moved out the following month to the much cooler nearby Brighton. I remember vividly the first VHS release that came out once I was living in Brighton (The Crusade / Space Museum double pack) as it contained a recently recovered and previously missing episode, and it had a free key ring. The Face of Evil also had its own free gift in a way: on the tape was a bonus archive clip, an interview with Louise Jameson, who played Leela, on Swap Shop from around the time of the story's original broadcast. I remember that very clearly, as I was convinced that Noel Edmonds was attempting to flirt with Jameson in a slightly creepy way. But I recall nothing of my first viewing of the episodes themselves. This story obviously isn't one I can engage with: I'll try to unpack why I feel this way ...
Reaction:
This story's author Chris Boucher could very well have ended up the script editor of Doctor Who the following year (the script editor of The Face of Evil, Robert Holmes, left halfway through the next season). Instead, he took the same job on a new BBC sci-fi series called Blake's 7, and Doctor Who instead got Andrew Read and then Douglas Adams in the role over the same period. It's often pointed out that Adams wasn't very well suited to the discipline of script editing, and that this should have been obvious based on his first produced Doctor Who script - The Pirate Planet in 1978 - which had far too many ideas for the running time without a sensible structure and characters to frame them. This criticism is never levelled at Boucher, but based solely on his first produced story The Face of Evil (a story with far too many ideas for the running time and no sensible structure and characters to frame them) it maybe should be. Boucher did follow it up with a much better structured script (The Robots of Death, which was broadcast immediately after The Face of Evil) and proved a much more successful script editor than Adams; but, based on that first production, you'd maybe not have predicted it would be thus. Face of Evil's incoherence is perhaps overlooked because the main point of the story is to introduce a new companion, and this is done well. All the surrounding material though, with tribes and mad computers, is a confused and confusing mess.
The first issue is the many members of the Sevateem tribe introduced en masse early on. Because of the nature of the setting, a primitive tribe with everyone clad in skimpy leathers, there can't be a way of making them visually distinct. As such, it was essential that the script gave them actions that efficiently conveyed their character, so you can follow who's who and why that's important; alas, there are so many of them that there just isn't time. The characters of Andor and Sole, Leela's Dad, get good intros in the first section, but then don't really have any relevance to the plot thereafter. Caleb, who is much more key to the story all the way through, has nothing to do in those scenes, and so remains indistinct for a damaging amount of time after that. There's an exchange of dialogue between other characters saying he's cunning and shouldn't be trusted, but that's the ultimate in 'tell rather than show'. Boucher's mistake has come from over-ambition, which is laudable, but it's a mistake nonetheless. It would be better to merge some roles. Sole could become the deposed leader of the tribe, with the sneaky Caleb arranging for Leela's banishment and her father's death so he can take over the tribe from the start of the story, removing the need for Andor - and exposition-heavy dialogue - altogether.
Part of the reason why the tribe don't get enough screen time to make their presence felt is that the second half of the story focuses on the Tesh instead. The Tesh are ascetics who control their emotions and deliver everything in a flat and emotionless way; consequently they are very dull. The only thing about them that's interesting - for the wrong reasons - is their costuming, which we can't blame Boucher for, of course, but it is another major issue: bright green shoes, candy-striping, inflated shoulder pads, knickerbockers! This is not how techno-monks should dress. Worse than any of that, though, is that they don't fulfil any plot function except as barriers to our heroes reaching Xoanon and fixing him. Maybe it would have been better for the Tesh's evolution to have progressed a little further, so they were essentially relentless machines, with barely any human features left. This would avoid the need to give them individual characters, simplifying the cluttered cast list further, and would also give the Face of Evil what it notably lacks compared to the other stories of this period: a monster. Okay, there is the pit of Horda creatures, I suppose, which the Sevateem suspend people over, including the Doctor. But given that those scenes take up lots of the running time, and have zero to do with the main dramatic questions of Sevateem versus Tesh, or the mystery of the rogue computer Xoanon, then they can easily be snipped out. They likely were only inserted in the first place because there was otherwise no monstrous alien creatures at all.
The story's not all bad though: there's good dialogue, and good set pieces throughout, and Louise Jameson is a big hit as Leela, a clever and resourceful character who can stand up to the Doctor while not undermining him; despite the fact that Baker had reservations about the character's inclusion, they have an instant chemistry. The jokes are good (the Doctor threatening someone with a deadly jelly baby has gone down better in the history of the show than anything else here). The Xoanon plot works well too, when you scrape off the other distracting surrounding material, and the cliffhanger ending to episode 3, with the voices of its multiple personalities screaming out before dropping down to a single child's voice crying over and over "Who am I?", is effectively creepy. Making the all-powerful antagonist barmy, though, does give scope for ill discipline: anything that happens can just be explained away as a symptom of madness. I'm not sure that Xonanon's experiment in eugenics with the Sevateem and the Tesh stands up if subjected to even the slightest scrutiny.
The first issue is the many members of the Sevateem tribe introduced en masse early on. Because of the nature of the setting, a primitive tribe with everyone clad in skimpy leathers, there can't be a way of making them visually distinct. As such, it was essential that the script gave them actions that efficiently conveyed their character, so you can follow who's who and why that's important; alas, there are so many of them that there just isn't time. The characters of Andor and Sole, Leela's Dad, get good intros in the first section, but then don't really have any relevance to the plot thereafter. Caleb, who is much more key to the story all the way through, has nothing to do in those scenes, and so remains indistinct for a damaging amount of time after that. There's an exchange of dialogue between other characters saying he's cunning and shouldn't be trusted, but that's the ultimate in 'tell rather than show'. Boucher's mistake has come from over-ambition, which is laudable, but it's a mistake nonetheless. It would be better to merge some roles. Sole could become the deposed leader of the tribe, with the sneaky Caleb arranging for Leela's banishment and her father's death so he can take over the tribe from the start of the story, removing the need for Andor - and exposition-heavy dialogue - altogether.
Part of the reason why the tribe don't get enough screen time to make their presence felt is that the second half of the story focuses on the Tesh instead. The Tesh are ascetics who control their emotions and deliver everything in a flat and emotionless way; consequently they are very dull. The only thing about them that's interesting - for the wrong reasons - is their costuming, which we can't blame Boucher for, of course, but it is another major issue: bright green shoes, candy-striping, inflated shoulder pads, knickerbockers! This is not how techno-monks should dress. Worse than any of that, though, is that they don't fulfil any plot function except as barriers to our heroes reaching Xoanon and fixing him. Maybe it would have been better for the Tesh's evolution to have progressed a little further, so they were essentially relentless machines, with barely any human features left. This would avoid the need to give them individual characters, simplifying the cluttered cast list further, and would also give the Face of Evil what it notably lacks compared to the other stories of this period: a monster. Okay, there is the pit of Horda creatures, I suppose, which the Sevateem suspend people over, including the Doctor. But given that those scenes take up lots of the running time, and have zero to do with the main dramatic questions of Sevateem versus Tesh, or the mystery of the rogue computer Xoanon, then they can easily be snipped out. They likely were only inserted in the first place because there was otherwise no monstrous alien creatures at all.The story's not all bad though: there's good dialogue, and good set pieces throughout, and Louise Jameson is a big hit as Leela, a clever and resourceful character who can stand up to the Doctor while not undermining him; despite the fact that Baker had reservations about the character's inclusion, they have an instant chemistry. The jokes are good (the Doctor threatening someone with a deadly jelly baby has gone down better in the history of the show than anything else here). The Xoanon plot works well too, when you scrape off the other distracting surrounding material, and the cliffhanger ending to episode 3, with the voices of its multiple personalities screaming out before dropping down to a single child's voice crying over and over "Who am I?", is effectively creepy. Making the all-powerful antagonist barmy, though, does give scope for ill discipline: anything that happens can just be explained away as a symptom of madness. I'm not sure that Xonanon's experiment in eugenics with the Sevateem and the Tesh stands up if subjected to even the slightest scrutiny.
Connectivity:
Another story that introduces a new female companion, and which would work as a useful 'jumping-on point' for new viewers.
Deeper Thoughts:
Deja Who. The Face of Evil is one of a story type that Doctor Who does occasionally, the sequel to an unseen previous story. The Doctor is placed in an opposite position to the audience, being familiar with some aspects of the backstory, while it's all new to the viewers. From the very beginning, there's always been an effort to place the Doctor's TV adventures as just part of a wider set, some of which we have not been shown. In early episodes of the very first season in 1963, there are references to the Doctor's previously meeting Henry VIII and Beau Brummel, for example. Beyond name dropping for comedy, or painting a word picture to give detail to the series for no extra budget, these didn't amount to all that much. It wasn't until three years in and the story The Celestial Toymaker that the format establishes itself fully. The Doctor has fought The Celestial Toymaker before, even though we've never been made aware of it, and the TV story is therefore a rematch.Since then, the device is used periodically throughout the classic series. In later years, Ben Aaronovitch delivers a trad version of this staple with Remembrance of the Daleks, which follows up on unseen business done by William Hartnell in 1960s London just before we meet him for the first time in An Unearthly Child. Aaronovitch follows this up by giving things a twist in his next story, Battlefield: this time, the story is a sequel to an unseen adventure of a future Doctor: now, the audience and the Doctor are both level, neither knowing what's going to happen next. Going into the post 2005 stories, the sequel to an unseen adventure story type has not been used so often, but the timey-wimey version has been deployed by Steven Moffat. His Library story scripts introduce an old flame of the Doctor, River Song, but the audience - and the Doctor - have never met her before. The trouble with the timey-wimey version, though, is that there's the temptation to fill in those gaps in future. Over the years, every one of River Song's interactions with the Doctor have been filmed, and nothing is now left to our imagination. Nobody has yet made the prequel / sequel to Battlefield as yet, but it could still happen one day.
What this structure brings is questionable, in my view. Does it smooth the delivery of exposition, or give more depth than just doing a standard plot and layering in backstory in the usual way? Like Xoanon, I'm in two minds about it. In The Face of Evil, there's at least the added dimension that the Doctor's actions in the previous unseen story have given rise to the complications in the present. It's not hard to see why this is a trick that hasn't been pulled that often, though. Putting aside it making the Doctor effectively the bad guy (The Face of Evil embraces this with floating Tom Baker heads shouting and zapping and controlling people), it also undermines every other Doctor Who story ever made. It makes one wonder what happens once the final credits roll, when the Doctor's whizzed off to a new time and place. The terrible realisation is that he could have made things worse rather than better every single week.In Summary:
A bit of a mess, on the face of it. Leela's great, though
No comments:
Post a Comment