The Reign of Terror

Chapter The 138th, the 138th Chapter Spectacular.

Plot:

The original TARDIS team, Doctor 1, Ian, Barbara and Susan, find themselves in post-revolutionary France, a couple of days walk - on pretty revolutionary exterior film, no less - from Paris. Unfortunately, the first thing they stumble upon is a safe house for royalists fleeing the country. Before too long, the place is surrounded by soldiers, Susan and the two teachers are captured and taken off to the capital for a date with Madame Guillotine, and the Doctor is left unconscious in the building, which has been set on fire. Luckily, he gets rescued by a boy he befriended earlier, and makes his way to Paris, being sidetracked briefly on the way by being press-ganged onto a road digging party. After failing to escape from the Conciergerie Prison, Susan and Barbara are rescued when their tumbrel heading towards execution is attacked by a couple more royalist supporters, Jules et Jean. They are taken to Jean's place where Barbara takes a shine to Leon Colbert, another conspirator. Ian meanwhile has shared a cell with a dying man, who with his last breath gives Ian a message to pass on to a spy from England called James Stirling. He escapes the jail to track this spy down, but asking too many questions at a local inn, he ends up getting attacked by Jules et Jean, and dragged off to Jean's place too.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has disguised himself as a Regional Officer of the Provinces to inveigle his way into the Conciergerie, but once there he gets caught up with Lemaitre, the official in charge of the prison, who takes him to meet Robespierre. A couple of twists and double-crosses later, the TARDIS travellers find out who Stirling really is, and he gets them to do him a favour undertaking a mission to spy on Robespierre's deputy Paul Barrass, who has a secret meeting with the young Napoleon Bonaparte. Robespierre is overthrown in a coup, and the TARDIS travellers make their way back to the TARDIS and depart.

Context:

Before the broadcast of The Happiness Patrol, one of the final classic Doctor Who stories in Sylvester McCoy's penultimate year, there was a rumour going around that it's final episode was going to be animated. It wasn't true, needless to say; but, it wasn't too believable either. At the time, it seemed very unlikely that a conventional BBC1 show would dip in and out of animation in such an avant-garde manner. In the many years since then, though, we have somehow come to the point where it's the default expected for those few stories from the show's early years where there are a few episodes missing from the archives, but which are mostly intact. The very first of these came out in 2006, which used animation to plug the two episode-long gaps in Patrick Troughton Cyberman story The Invasion. At the time, many fans myself included wondered how BBC Worldwide could afford it, and perhaps they couldn't quite as it would be another seven years before the next part-animated story was released, and that was The Reign of Terror. There were a handful more done in those last couple of years of the regular DVD range: The Tenth Planet, The Ice Warriors and The Moonbase. Lately there have been a few animations of wholly missing stories (The Power of the Daleks and The Macra Terror so far, with more planned). Every animation to date with the exception of The Reign of Terror has been of a monster story; monsters are presumably easier to animate, and certainly easier to animate interestingly than 18th century French persons. The therefore somewhat unusual and experimental Reign of Terror DVD was popped on, and I watched it on my lonesome an episode a night during the evenings of one week.

First time round:

Twenty years before the DVD release of Reign, 1980s Doctor Who producer John-Nathan Turner came to the end of his employment doing special releases for the Doctor Who VHS range. One of many ideas he had introduced to allow greater access to the archive was the release of some of those stories with gaps. Instead of episode long animations synced to the surviving audio, the gaps on video tape would be covered by an actor from the story giving a brief synopsis of the missing material to camera. The Reign of Terror was originally planned for release in the 30th anniversary year, with the actor that played Susan, Carole Ann Ford, having been recorded summarising the missing episodes 4 and 5. For reasons unknown, though, it was shelved, unlike everything else for which Nathan-Turner had assembled footage.

It wasn't released until 2003, ten years later than planned. It was the very last release of the VHS range, in a box set with some other odds and sods. I bought it in the MVC on London Bridge during lunchtime, on the day it was released. I may have been lucky to get it too; it was a limited edition, and my memory is that it was hard to find and lots of other fans reported online that they'd missed out (possibly because - DVDs being the big thing by then - VHS tapes were only expected to sell to raving lunatic completists like what I am, and it was probably therefore a little too limited compared to demand). I would have then taken the train home to Brighton and watched it that evening, and been confused as to who the hell was who when all the script's to-ing and fro-ing, double-crosses and traitors, and suspicion falling on different people in turn, was condensed into 5 minutes of brisk chat. 

Reaction:

I've written recently about how Doctor Who can do beginnings better than endings; I'd never thought about how well - or not - it does middles. The Reign of Terror's episodes 1 to 3 and 6 have some nice moments, but they feel quite episodic: escapes, comedy characters, walking, ooh Napoleon! But nothing ties them together. The missing episodes 4 and 5 develop the mystery of who's on who's side, and reveal in each of the two episode endings who is the bad guy, and who's the good guy. You can't skip all that, or skim over it as John Nathan-Turner 's VHS version did, and not be left with a pile of unconnected bits rather than one story. With the episodes reinstated using animation, it holds together as one story, but whether it's a particularly coherent story, that's a different matter. It's probably a bad sign if parts 4 and 5 of 6 are where most of the plot is, and the beginning and end of a story isn't contributing very much.

Let's start with episode 1. It's mostly exploration, taking it's time to let the regulars uncover where and when they are, and for the complications to arise. That's all well and good, and it's fun to spend time in their company (Ian talking the Doctor down from his mood of high dudgeon with the offer of a drink is a lovely moment). The episode's undermined though, by none of the principal guest characters appearing in it. They all enter in the next episode, or later. This is a problem in a spy story where the major dramatic question is who is the 'mole' in both camps: someone has been informing on the royalist sympathisers, and someone else is an English spy. Introducing the suspects earlier, instead of other characters who are only seen in this first part, would have allowed the mystery and tension to play out longer, and therefore mean more by the end. All the action of the story takes place in Paris, and by parking the Doctor and Co. so far out, writer Dennis Spooner stretches out his narrative at the expense of its focus: there's lots of 'shoe leather', scenes in the next couple of episodes of the Doctor, walking to the capital, and getting into scrapes which again don't have anything to do with the plot except to add colour.

Meanwhile, the others are trapped in jail cells for most of episodes 2 and 3. Ian goes one better - he's trapped on film (in pre-recorded inserts, as actor William Russell was on holiday for the studio days). The intrigue gets started then, with a cryptic deathbed message being passed on, but there's not much room for it to develop amongst all the other 'business'. It's difficult to ascertain how this would have gone over to those watching on its contemporary broadcast: it was very much an experiment in how much humour could be introduced into a story, with The Reign of Terror going further than any serial had in that first year of Doctor Who's life. The comedy jailer is okay, as he runs through the remainder of the narrative, having a purpose as an obstacle to our heroes. The scene with the Doctor getting the better of the road works overseer - despite some lovely Stan Laurel-esque physicality from Hartnell - is pure padding. Even the scene of the Doctor larking about in a gentleman's outfitters doesn't really go anywhere - the shopkeeper later turns him in to the authorities for disguising himself, and the authorities don't do anything about it. Meanwhile, Barbara and Susan have nothing to do at all, and Susan's character is very badly served: she would rather not try and escape because there might be rat in the cell, so she'll just wait to be guillotined instead? Really?! This isn't the telepathic future child that Carole Ann Ford signed up to play, and it is obvious why she left a couple of stories later.

An oddly shot action sequence where Barbara and Susan are rescued by another couple of significant characters (who are only being introduced half way through the story) takes us to the animated section. This is where the plot gets interesting, including the wonderfully tense sequence of the TARDIS women forced out of hiding to consult an untrustworthy physician. The animation helps one to follow the action better than an audio recording or summary would, but it isn't perfect. The character designs from some angles are very impressive; from others, they are unrecognisable as the actor in question - sometimes switching multiple times in one scene. Ian's likeness is particularly bad, very fleetingly looking anything like him. All the character models also have very prominent teeth: I don't know what's so off-putting about that, but it was all I could concentrate on for the first few minutes of episode 4, until I got used to it. I suppose you do see people's teeth when they act in real life, but I'm definitely not so consciously aware of it. The other major problem is that there are flurries of rapid edit points. Sometimes, a scene of something dull like someone being offered a chair and sitting down cuts six or seven times in a second. It's distracting and - needless to say - not representative of the stately pace of the episodes on either side of the animation.

The animation ends with all the mystery of the story resolved, and so there isn't much to do in the final episode, when we're back to live action. The final episode is off by itself like a one-act play of Ian and Barbara playing at being spies, tying up the staff of an inn and taking their place to watch a secret - and not historically verified  - meeting between Barrass and a young Napoleon. It's mildly diverting, I guess, but nothing really to do with the plot of the previous few episodes. Robespierre gets deposed, which is presented in a historically accurate way, but that feels like the finale to a different story, and one we haven't been watching at all, so ends up feeling a bit ho-hum. Then, it's over, with only an echoey voice-over from The Doctor over a starscape to give the ending faux gravitas (it was the end of the first ever season of Who, so I forgive them for indulging a little bit).

Connectivity: 

Both The Reign of Terror and The Bells of Saint John have most of their action take place in European capital. New episodes of both stories debuted in 2013 (when the animated middle episodes were released on DVD). That's pretty much it.

Deeper Thoughts:

2019: the year of new old Who. It's been more than 14 years since Doctor Who returned to our screens, but they've only managed to make 11 series in that time. As with everything to do with the show, there were lots of online rumours and conspiracy theories flying around whenever there were fewer than the expected number of episodes planned for a particular year, but the reason seems obvious: Doctor Who costs too much money to make every single year. 2009 and 2012 had only a handful of stories shown, but they still maintained a presence in the TV landscape, as significant things happened (the bowing out of long-running regulars in both cases). It wasn't until 2016 that new Who had it's first proper 'gap year', and 2019 is only the second time it's pulled this cost-conscious trick. In each case, there was a single festive special shown as a consolation prize. 2016 also had 'Class', a spin-off show that most thought was woeful, so it probably provided little consolation to adventure-starved fans; 2019 has had not a sausage since Resolution finished airing on the very first day of the year. Even the recent Children in Need segment, as sweet and affecting as it was, was just a personal appearance by the show's stars not any 'in character' drama.
    

Luckily, though, this year has seen a lot of new old Who. Unlike the deprived 2016, the emergence of the Blu-ray range has meant a regular delivery of classic adventures on shiny disc again in 2019. This isn't just repeats either. The online trailers for these sets have developed as time's gone on, with some of the latest ones including in-character appearances by classic series companions, continuing their stories in a vaguely canonical way. Katy Manning and Stewart Bevan got to play Mr. and Mrs. Jo Jones once more, having a rematch with some giant maggots in the trailer for the season 10 set, and - best of all - the recent trailer for the forthcoming season 26 set, which writer-director Pete McTighe discusses in detail in the current Doctor Who Magazine, which features Sophie Aldred as a grown-up Ace, in charge of a charitable organisation (in line with a reference in an episode of spin-off show The Sarah-Jane Adventures). It's really rather lovely and worth seeking out. For something a bit longer, the recent season 23 box set (The Trial of a Time Lord) re-edits one of the four sub-stories, Terror of the Vervoids, removing the trial bits and making it stand-alone, plus adding some cut material and new CGI. It's a breath of fresh air, and like coming to the story anew, working much better when the action isn't being halted to go back to the trial room every five minutes. The edit goes further than just removing the framing, though, and reshapes the material losing what the Blu-ray producers presumably thought were rubbish moments and lines from the original. It's an interesting experiment.

Another interesting experiment,and probably the most remarkable new old Who this year was the recreation of missing one-episode William Hartnell era story Mission to the Unknown. Students, graduates and staff from the University of Central Lancashire remade the episode as a media project, utilising the techniques and technology of 1965, when the story was first made. It was a great choice, as -compared to the rest of the missing stories - it is short, relatively self-contained and - crucially - doesn't feature the Doctor. It was an odd intermission in the usual TARDIS adventurers, instead featuring a three-man spaceship crew, crash-landed on a planet where the Daleks are plotting. If you haven't watched it yet, I highly recommend seeking it out on youtube. Another 1960s story recreation, building on the early work done on such releases as The Reign of Terror DVD, was the fully animated Patrick Troughton story The Macra Terror which was released in March. Two further Troughton stories, The Faceless Ones and Fury From the Deep, are being worked on now for release next year.

The online rumours and conspiracy theories carry on, and the latest (wishful?) thinking is that we're going to get a surprise Jodie Whittaker 2019 Christmas special announced any day now. Even if we don't, though, 2019 has had an embarrassment of riches.

In Summary:

Without the middle, it's a bit muddling. With the middle, it's only really middling.