Hide

Chapter The 152nd, where people stay inside a house while something a bit scary's going on.

Plot:

The Doctor brings Clara to a stately home, Caliban House, in 1974, where a former WW2 special operative Professor Alec Palmer and an empath Emma Grayling are doing experiments trying to contact a ghost that's historically recorded as haunting the site. With help from the Doctor, they discover that the ghost is a pioneer time traveller called HIla Tacorian, stuck in a pocket universe, echoing into our world. Also inhabiting the house is a scary monster thing, but there are for some reason no records of this creature relating to the site or the house, even though it looks nothing like the ghost of a woman, and it scuttles about in the open, and even holds hands with people; nobody's thought to mention it before. Harnessing Emma's psychic powers, and using a blue crystal from Metebe-lis 3 (twin planet with the similar but presumably different as it's pronounced differently Mete-be-lis 3 that Jon Pertwee visited), the Doctor goes through a portal into the pocket universe and saves Hila, sending her back through, but gets stuck in there himself. He is being stalked by another similar creature, but the TARDIS comes to save him. Once back in Caliban House, the Doctor realises that Hila is Palmer and Grayling's great, great, great, great, great granddaughter, or thereabouts, which is why there was such an empathetic link between Emma and her (and presumably also explains why Palmer was drawn to investigate the house too, or else that's a massive coincidence). The Doctor also realises that the two creatures are not dangerous, they are mates, separated, and he asks Emma one more favour, to open the portal again, so that he can reunite them.

Context:

During what I guess will be the early adjustment phase of the Coronavirus lockdown, but I hope like hell is the middle or towards the end of it (I can hope, can't I?), I was alone of an evening as all the family had gone to bed, and watched this story from the series 7 box-set Blu-ray. I'd waited for this sort of opportunity to watch it unaccompanied. It's not a story I revisit regularly; but, from what I remembered when the random number generator picked it as the next story to watch, it was a bit scary for the littler of my little ones. Having now watched it, I think I was overcautious and it would have been okay. No chance of a re-watch with the kids, though. Right now, they are in the middle of enjoying the (colour) animated version of The Faceless Ones, watching an episode every couple of days; so, I doubt they will be watching this story any time soon. So much for the idea that the lockdown would allow more time for catching up with new things; I seem to still be ploughing through the same build up of discs and books and watch-lists that I ever was (more on this later). 

First time round:

Would have been watched on the day of its original broadcast on BBC1 in early 2013, probably slightly time-shifted to allow for putting the kids to bed. I remember not being blown away, but it being generally okay. That was my default mode for the whole of the 2013 mini-season. This is one of only a handful of stories from the David Tennant and Matt Smith eras that the Better Half and I judged too frightening for our children to watch; the others were Blink, Midnight, Night Terrors, and The Waters of Mars, the last of which they have seen since. There's no hurry to show them this story or Night Terrors (no offence to either of them) but imagine how it's going to be when Midnight and Blink come up for the blog, and my children finally get to see them for the first time.

Reaction:

The role of the Doctor is in many ways a dull and thankless one for an actor. There's obviously some fun that can be had performing - play-acting - as the hero, but that can only get one so far. Like James Bond and maybe a few other showy roles, the Doctor doesn't change. Every week is the same, there's never going to be the interest of a plot where the Doctor is, say, bitter for the loss of his early promise as a scientist, or humiliated in a dead end teaching job, or shocked by a cancer diagnosis, or starting a double life cooking meth in an RV. Bryan Cranston as Walter White (in Breaking Bad) famously got to change by small degrees "from Mr. Chips to Scarface" and each gradual change on the way was a moment of drama that was interesting to play. Matt Smith as the Doctor saves the universe, every week, week on week. You can sometimes tell the moment the lead actor gets bored of trying to find different ways of saving the universe, and I think Hide is where this happens to Matt Smith. The performance displays a lack of discipline to me, particularly in the comedy, but even the tense moments don't really work. When Smith is doing lines like "Come on then big boy, chase me" or "You old romeo, you" or even "I am the Doctor and I am afraid", I don't believe him.

Aside from those occasional overripe lines of dialogue, there isn't really much wrong with Neil Cross's script. It's a contained chiller, making the most of a small cast, and it has some interesting surprises and reversals. It's another in the many, many examples in Doctor Who's history of "Nigel Kneale called and he wants his plot back" syndrome; it's set-up, tone and some plot details are shamelessly paying homage to / ripping off The Stone Tape and The Road. It's none the worse for that, though, and if one had to discount any Doctor Who that borrowed a bit liberally from Kneale, there wouldn't be many good ones left. There are definitely some plot points left frustratingly unexplained - how long has "the crooked man" creature been in our universe, for example? If nobody - not even Palmer who has bought the house and is thoroughly investigating the place - has noticed it, it can't have been a long time, so it is a big coincidence that it is only in view once the Doctor has arrived. I'm also uneasy about the TARDIS acting autonomously to save the Doctor, as she does in this story; if that can happen this week, what's to stop it happening every week? But these are fridge moments, as Alfred Hitchcock had it, they only bother you when you've finished watching and have gone to get a snack.

I suspect that the issue is with the direction, or parts of it at least. Jamie Payne manages to achieve atmospheric scary scenes creeping round the empty house, with ghostly things happening just behind our heroes, and lightning flashes and other jump scares: that's all great. There's also some reasonable visuals, particularly in the sequence where the Doctor travels through the history of Earth taking pictures of the ghost. The performances, though, are not quite there; it's clear that Payne wasn't strict enough to rein in Smith's excesses, but that's not the major issue. If "this isn't a ghost story - it's a love story" as the Doctor has it in the script, then it's the love story moments that let the side down. Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine, playing the mutually lovelorn pair, are both very good actors, and the script hits all the right notes, but there's no chemistry between them. The scenes of their gradual realisation of the romance that's been under their noses the whole time are stiff and a bit dry. When Raine as Emma is connected to the Doctor's lash-up, and it's causing her pain and torment to keep the link open to another world, we're supposed to feel worried for her, but we just don't know enough about her to feel anything.

It doesn't help that both the actors aren't the right ages for their roles. Based on Dougray Scott's age (and he looks pretty good for a 48 year old in Hide) Palmer would have been 19 when the Second World War ended; it stretches credulity that he would have got to the rank of Major, or been in a significant role within the SOE (or whatever fictional equivalent is presented in the narrative); even the cover story of his spending "most of the war in a POW camp" isn't believable, unless he lied about his age and enlisted very, very young. My guess is that Jessica Raine was cast first, also too young, and a younger actor had to be cast as the Professor to avoid the distraction of an age gap (but replacing it with the distraction of everyone like me doing hurried mental arithmetic as they watched instead). Jenna Coleman as Clara isn't very well served either, which given that there's only two other main cast members to give lines to, seems a shame. There's not much of her arc plot as the "impossible girl" this time; just some scenes where the TARDIS takes a dislike to her (was this ever adequately explained?), and the ulterior motive the Doctor had for visiting Caliban House in the first place (he wanted the famous empathetic psychic to secretly scan his friend for clues, which is slightly creepy). Ultimately this is a perfectly serviceable script, which has a few flaws, and is not held together sufficiently by the direction, so further flaws creep in - it's not bad, it's just a bit juiceless.

Connectivity: 

Both stories feature experimental time travellers from the future travelling back to a historical period, and being mistaken for something they're not (a god in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, a ghost in Hide). By the time of Hide's production, the 1970s (the decade when Talons was made) has become a period setting.

Deeper Thoughts:

Coronavirus and hiding from the sun. At the time of writing, everyone in the UK (and many other  countries around the world) is on lockdown, staying in their homes to stay safe, and to slow the spread of Covid-19, the Coronavirus. No social events, no going to the pub, no visiting friends or family; no sporting fixtures, no concerts, no meetups; no restaurants, cinemas or theatres open. Everyone has to stay inside and amuse themselves with whatever they can receive or stream on their devices. Three things occur immediately. First, I marvel at how lucky we are to have even these limited options; if this pandemic had happened back when I was the age of two out of three of my children now, I would have had only three TV channels and whatever books were in the house. I'd have gone mad in a week. Even if it was when I was the age of my eldest child, it would only have granted me an extra TV channel. I didn't yet have a video player, let alone any kind of tape collection. As it is, in 2020, I can find and watch pretty much any TV show or film I care to see, by hook or by crook; this includes new releases, and even theatre. I feel for those who are sports fans, instead of pallid geeks like what I am. Second thought: lots of commentators are saying how this emergency could be a golden opportunity for everyone to catch up on all those books and films they haven't had time for. I assume these commentators must go out a lot, but I'm a pallid geek with three young children: the amount of extra time I'm getting back is not a significant proportion, and my read- and watch lists are ever growing. But that brings me to my final and more positive point: I'm a pallid geek, I'll never run out of stuff to entertain me - I've been training for this lockdown my whole life!

If you are looking for ideas, there have already been a few Doctor Who mass watch-a-longs, with more planned: The Day of The Doctor on Saturday 21st March, and Rose, on the 26th at 7pm - the 15th anniversary (to the minute) of its original broadcast. This allows a communal experience, with fans (and some of those involved in making the programmes) syncing up the story, pressing play, and then hitting social media with comments to share each moment. I enjoyed both. The latest one, still in the future at time of writing, is Vincent and the Doctor, with a lot of the cast and crew joining in - I will pass it up, though, as these events are all about positivity, and I don't rate the story highly, but what do I know. If you're looking for something less communal, more just for you, then the history of Doctor Who throws up plenty of thematic material. If one wants to put together a 'virus playlist', then there are lots of contenders. Terry Nation particularly loves wiping out humanity with a micro-organism, or at least threatening to, in such stories as The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, The Android Invasion, and probably a few others I've forgotten about.

It wasn't just a predilection of Nation either; other Doctor Who plague parables by many different writers include The Ark, The Seeds of Death (sort of), Doctor Who and The Silurians, The Visitation, The Curse of Fenric. In Tom Baker space opera The Invisible Enemy, they actually have someone playing a virus (it looks more like a prawn when it comes down to it). You could add cyber stories The Moonbase and Revenge of the Cybermen to the list too, as they both feature an infection that affects more and more people cooped up together, but it turns out both are cases of surreptitious poisoning. Other stories that might resonate at the moment are in the "trapped inside, going a bit stir crazy" sub-genre, which would include many of the so-called 'base under siege' stories that have been popular in many eras of Doctor Who, plus three other notable examples: Kinda, Heaven Sent and Gridlock. The last of these shows a community were every person or family group is trapped inside a box going nowhere, while the environment outside is liable to kill them, but they communicate to one another remotely and still have hope.  Of course, if all these feel a bit too close to home and you just want some escapism, then your playlist can be all the other episodes of Doctor Who, every last one, it's all good. Testing times will continue, but be thankful for good things, and embrace your pallid geekiness - we'll get through this!

In Summary:

Hide's a bit dry.

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.

Mummy on the Orient Express

Chapter The 150th, in which various people are gone in 66 seconds.

Plot:

Clara has got the hump with the Doctor after he's acted callous one too many times, and is going to stop travelling with him. As a last hurrah, he takes her to the Orient Express in Space. Enjoyably - for him - it turns out that this is no pleasure trip. Most of the crew and passengers are holograms, and onboard computer Gus has brought most of the rest - all experts in their fields - together deliberately to investigate the Foretold, an ancient creature of fearful repute, who has the appearance of a bandaged Mummy straight out of a Universal horror movie. The Foretold can only be seen by his next victim, and once seen will kill that person exactly 66 seconds later. Gus provides one carriage fitted out as a lab to allow the creature to be studied, and will kill the other passengers and crew if they stop work. It wants the assembled to capture the creature so that its technology can be reverse-engineered; Clara and one of the passengers, Maisie, discover a hi-tech containment unit - which looks like a sarcophagus - in one carriage, for this purpose.

Using the data gleaned from victims as they are picked off, and helped by chief engineer Perkins, the Doctor discovers that the Foretold is attacking not at random but going for the most vulnerable, physically and mentally, first. He works out that the next victim will be Maisie, because of mental trauma, and gets Clara to lie to her to get her to the lab. He uses some tech to fool the Foretold into thinking he has Maisie's symptoms and in 66 seconds works out that the Foretold is actually the remains of a cyber-enhanced soldier, who can't stop killing until his long forgotten war officially ends, so the Doctor says "We surrender", and that stops the creature, who collapses into a pile of rags. Gus doesn't want any survivors, so tries to kill everyone, but the Doctor gets them away in the TARDIS before the space train explodes. Clara decides to continue travelling with the Doctor, understanding that he sometimes has to lie and be callous for the greater good.

Context:

Another one with all the family (Better Half and three children - boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7); we watched this, from the Blu-ray series boxset, on the first Sunday evening without a new broadcast Jodie Whittaker episode, to plug that gap. Everyone enjoyed it (the boys maybe enjoyed it more - or more visibly, at least - than Jodie's recent offerings). The youngest of the children was a little scared in places, but stayed with it. 

First time round:

We'd fallen into a pattern by the time of Doctor Who's regular broadcasts in 2014, where the Better Half and I would watch the latest episode time-shifted on the Saturday evening of broadcast and gauge it for suitability for the children. If it was not too scary, I'd watch it again with them the following day. That particular year was pretty intense, with a high proportion of stories felt to be too much, particularly for the younger ones. The very next story, Flatline, by the same author Jamie Mathieson, was one which only the eldest child was allowed to see at the time. Why we thought Mummy on the Orient Express was more acceptable is hard to quantify; it essentially comes down to an instinct. Immediately that the show starts, the threat is made plain to be something a long distance from anything they would encounter in real life, and genre is a kind of hard protective carapace for the young minds watching, I think. Compare this to Flatline where the danger is real and close-to-home: graffiti and the patterns you get in a suburban living room wall. As I remember, everyone enjoyed the Mummy story at the time; the younger two have still not seen Flatline, though. 

Reaction:

Speed is the key word for this story. Whether it emerged from the story-lining process, or writer or showrunner came up with the title first, the setting of the Orient Express, even a space-bound version, inevitably turns this from a pure horror tale to a genre splice with a disaster movie in miniature. There are consistent aspects of a standard disaster movie scenario: a group of different passengers expecting a luxurious pleasure jaunt instead are thrown into chaos that they must survive. A mismatched group battles through, but not all of them will make it, and the audience is left guessing as to which ones will die. The key thing, normally, though, is that disaster movies take time to play out: the suspense is ratcheted up by having a long period where everything seems fine, with hints about the oncoming tragedy but tension about exactly when it will strike. Then, the period of survivors battling through needs to be fairly gruelling, and there needs to be mystery about who will and won't make it through. The only other time that Doctor Who had previously tackled a disaster movie in a serious way was the Christmas special with added Kylie, Voyaged of the Damned, and that was more than 70 minutes long. Mummy of the Orient Express has to wrap things up in 45 minutes. 

Mummy hits every trope, but in a super condensed timeframe. The 66 second duration for the Foretold to kill each victim is a genius stroke therefore; as well as keeping everything moving at a fair lick, it's also a great gimmick - turning on its head the usual tradition that Mummies are slow and lumbering: this one is guaranteed to get you in just over a minute. The onscreen clock ticking is a nice touch to bring this home, and it allows for periodic bursts of frenetic excitement interspersed with the rest of the action. In the end, the implicit - and latterly explicit - promise of the script is realised as the Doctor is the one to face the antagonist, and manages in a minute to do his usual cleverness at top speed, working out and diffusing the threat, and throwing in a joke and a cheeky continuity reference ("Are you my mummy?" - they presumably couldn't resist) for good measure. Capaldi is excellent in that sequence, as he is throughout the episode, playing the early grumpy version of his Doctor. He's supported admirably by Jenna Coleman and Samuel Anderson, who are really nailing the relationships in their regular roles. 

The guest characters are impeccably cast; again, this is required because of the brevity. It's obviously going to be broadbrush, but this is still pretty much in keeping with the disaster movie genre; if you want a frighteningly severe old lady, who better than Janet Henfrey (she played one many times in Dennis Potter's works, and once before in Doctor Who too); Daisy Beaumont is every bit the anxious put-upon younger female carer, Christopher Villiers is impeccably suave and intellectual; John Sessions' vocal work is perfect for the bumptious Gus. David Bamber, who is always great in everything, manages to deliver shade and contradiction in only a handful of lines. When he answers an earlier rhetorical question of the Doctor's of how many people would need to die before he finds his backbone, saying "It turns out it's three", it's a lovely line, and nicely delivered. Again, the heightened final 66 seconds of the characters as each faces the Foretold gives extra opportunity for everyone to shine. Frank Skinner's performance is an interesting one. It's very... I can't find the words for it. It lacks nuance, but is still enjoyable. Sometimes, one can look and see a performer who's just very happy to be there, which jars a bit (one never ever loses sight of Frank Skinner in the character of Perkins). But Perkins is a character who seems to be having enormous fun working with the Doctor (as Skinner is working with Capaldi) so it works.

Every aspect of the production is perfect, which raises this up to be something special: sets, graphics, effects work. The costumes and decor are exquisite, and getting a pop star (Foxes) in to play a chanteuse and sing a lounge version of a Queen song adds to the opulence. They really pushed the boat out. The Foretold is one of the most amazing looking monsters the show has ever produced, too, for my money, and just as impressive as the similarly excellent designs for Mummies when they appeared against Tom Baker. The score is one of the best of this period, with the bombastic bit of Murray Gold's Capaldi Doctor theme kicking in as the Doctor confronts the Foretold (the first time I really became aware of it, as it had been more subtle in the mix in stories before this, at least to my ears) and the twinkly bit accompanying the aftermath. Even cramming all of that in, the story still finds room to keep the ongoing series arc going, with Clara finding new perspective on the Doctor's methods, lying to Danny and continuing her adventuring with the Doctor in secret. Combining a clever feat of writing and a richly staged production, this is one of the very best of this era, and well up there for the whole of Doctor Who too.

Connectivity: 

Mummy on the Orient Express is another story, like The Moonbase, which features an ensemble cast of characters stuck in a place without means of escape; in both stories these people are being attacked by cybernetic killers. The Doctor clashes with an authority figure, before eventually winning them round, and an antagonist opens up the secure base to the vacuum of space at one point in each story.

Deeper Thoughts:

Finale and Finality. I hope enough time has passed now to discuss the ramifications of the latest series of Doctor Who's final episode, The Timeless Children. If you haven't seen it yet, proceed no further as there will be spoilers. Mummy on the Orient Express was a story that, lest we forget, covered the aftermath of revelations that the moon was a big space-dragon egg in the sky, so Doctor Who has most definitely done audacity before, but perhaps not ever on the scale witnessed in The Timeless Children. So, to summarise then, partly to make sure I've got it straight in my head, we now have a filled-in backstory of how the Time Lords became able to regenerate, which also changes everything we knew, and the character herself knew, about the Doctor's origins. It centres on a figure from ancient Gallifrey, Tecteun (who we've never ever heard about before, but she is a woman so it's plausible that the patriarchal Time Lord society would have only remembered Omega and Rassilon, the men; I can buy that). Tecteun is a pioneer of space travel, and landing on a world where there is a portal allowing entry from other parts of the universe, she discovers a lone, abandoned child, assumed to have come through the portal from a time and a place unknown. This is the person that eventually we will know as the Doctor, and an accident reveals her ability to regenerate, which Tecteun studies until she can transplant the required genetic material into the elite of Gallifrey, who later become known as Time Lords. The Time Lord regeneration limit of twelve times is imposed on everyone by Tecteun, and doesn't apply to the Doctor.

The grown-up Doctor is recruited into a secret force, the Division, who are permitted to bend the rules about Time Lords' non-interference in other worlds. Nothing on screen states that this isn't a division of the CIA (the Celestial Intervention Agency) which was a similar entity mentioned in the classic series, so I'm going to assume they are one and the same. At some point, things turn sour and the Doctor breaks off with the Division, hiding out as a human after using a chameleon arch. The matrix from this point on is redacted, except for some encrypted scenes put there by Tecteun, potentially for the Doctor to one day find, that show events happening in Ireland (nice little in joke - several times in the classic and new series Gallifrey is assumed to be in Ireland somewhere). From these, it seems that the Division caught up with the Doctor, wiped his/her memory, forced a regeneration that made the Doctor a young (baby?) boy, and he then started life again as just another Time Lord, joined the academy at age eight, met the friend who would one day become the Master, looked into the Untempered Schism, grew up to be William Hartnell, stole a TARDIS, left Gallifrey, etc. etc.

It's rather neat, creates a new mystery about the Doctor, means that she is both normal and special without that being contradictory, and fits in very snugly with existing lore without too many loose ends. The Shobogans, for example, mentioned in passing in The Deadly Assassin, are revealed to be the indigenous Gallfreyan people. The Doctor as a child - seen in Listen - is part of the character's second lifetime, post the mind wipe. During a sequence in The Brain of Morbius, many faces appear that - from the dialogue - appear to be earlier incarnations of the Doctor, but prior to that - and since - it has been unequivocally stated that the William Hartnell incarnation is the first. That little crease has finally been ironed out. The many hints that were dropped in the Sylvester McCoy era that the Doctor was more than just a Time Lord make sense now, but only if we assume that he had some of those pre-Hartnell memories - but there's no reason to suggest that he couldn't have had a partial mental restoration just during that one life. The arch manipulator style of the seventh Doctor isn't much like any of the others, so presumably from Paul McGann onwards it has all gone from his mind again. The character of the 'Other', a third Time Lord pioneer alongside Omega and Rassilon, could be Tecteun, or the Doctor himself, but either way he could have - for that incarnation only - had memories of that time (this also handily explains away why it wasn't picked up on in the show before or since). 

What doesn't work? Biggest issue is that River Song can regenerate, even though she has no genetic material from the Doctor or any other Time Lord to allow this. But, we also have the often mentioned concept of regeneration energy, so it seems that over the years of time travel (which came to the Time Lords after regenerative ability), the time vortex has altered the genetic transfer in such a way that it can be passed on as pure energy, and this was what altered River at the time she was conceived in the TARDIS. It's still just on the right side of plausible. There's the issue that the Ruth Doctor seen in Fugitive of the Judoon has a TARDIS disguised as a police box, when we saw (in The Name of the Doctor) that the Doctor's TARDIS was stolen only when he was in his William Hartnell incarnation, and got stuck as a police box only in the first ever story An Unearthly Child. I like to think that it must be the same TARDIS and - as we know the TARDIS has a telepathic link to the Doctor - the ship made sure that he picked the same one he'd used in his previous life. It's a very old model compared to other Time Lords', which would fit - it might have been top of the range years before when the Doctor was first working for the Division. As to why it was previously shaped like a police box, perhaps it was an appropriate disguise when Ruth and her companion first landed on Earth (we don't know exactly how long they've been there), or perhaps the chameleon circuit was already on the blink. It was halfway through repairs when the Doctor (re-)took it, so worked for Hartnell for a while before falling into an old pattern stored in memory. 

Talking of The Name of The Doctor, that story also features Clara entering the Doctor's timestream,  splintering into lots of different space-time events, but she never encounters any Doctor prior to Hartnell. This is also explainable, though, as she never meets the War Doctor either, as the Doctor somehow blocks it (as he doesn't consider the John Hurt version to be worthy of the title Doctor). It seems sensible that a similar block on his memory of pre-Hartnell incarnations would prevent Clara from interacting with them. Why hasn't the Doctor ever bumped into any of those incarnations before the Ruth Doctor? Well, perhaps she has and not realised it. Or perhaps the Time Lords have set up some kind of time lock (similar to that which prevents anyone travelling back to the Time War) that prevents our Doctor from ever travelling anywhere where she may bump into them. This would fit, as once the Master has destroyed the Time Lords, that time lock is presumably gone, and the Doctor runs into Ruth pretty much immediately. It's also not very clear how much the Time Lords know about the Doctor's history. For the conspiracy to work, it would make sense for only a few people to know, and they may be long gone now. So, when his people bring him back for The Three and The Five Doctors, they aren't aware that there's previous Doctors before Hartnell, and when they gift him another regeneration cycle in The Time of The Doctor, they presumably believe he needs it or else he'll die.

The only other thing that I can think of (though five or six more points may occur to me in the next few days) is how to explain away how the Doctor appears to be half human just for one night in San Francisco in 1999. I doubt that one will ever be rationalised to anyone's satisfaction, so I'll just keep ignoring it like I have been the last 20 odd years! 

In Summary:

Your Mummy should know: this is one of the very best!

The Moonbase

Chapter The 149th, which alternates between cartoonishness and animation.

Plot:

A moonbase in the year 2070; a multi-national - but single sex - team working here use a device called the Gravitron to control weather on the Earth's surface. A squad of Cybermen arrive on the moon, create a secret entrance into the base by stealth, then come through in force, attacking the crew and putting down all resistance swiftly and mercilessly. They make the crew operate the Gravitron to devastate the Earth with storms, win, and the human race is destroyed. Except, this doesn't happen. Instead, the Cybermen - because they are a cold, logical race - have a better plan: they send just a couple of their number in who hide in the storeroom or under a sheet, they then poison the base's sugar supply, which incapacitates anyone who consumes it, allowing the Cybermen to very gradually turn them into zombies who do their bidding; this all takes just long enough for the Doctor and his companions Ben, Polly and Jamie to arrive and defeat them. Polly mixes a cocktail of plastics which can be sprayed onto the Telos toughies and thereby gets rid of the scouting party, then the Doctor has the idea of focusing the Gravitron onto the moon's surface, which repels the rest of the Cybermen and their spaceships. 

Context:

All the family (Better Half and three children - boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7) watched this, one episode an evening across a week, from the 2014 DVD. This contains the episodes 2 and 4 as originally broadcast, or thereabouts, but 1 and 3 - where only the audio is present in the BBC archives - are represented by animations aligned to that existing soundtrack. The children were very disappointed whenever the story cut back to real actors being filmed, and agreed that it would have been better if they had animated all of it. Interestingly, several years on and that's exactly what is happening. The latest animated story The Faceless Ones (see below) is the first - after wholly missing stories The Power of the Daleks and The Macra Terror were animated - where a story has been handled where some of the episodes (1 and 3 in this case) are intact in the archives. The decision has obviously been made, and I think it is the right one, that these new versions should stand alone for possible sales to broadcasters / streaming services (some Who animations are already available on Britbox) rather than just the niche enthusiast market (me included) who might have snapped up The Moonbase DVD when it first came out. 

First time round:

After a slow start, the releases of Doctor Who for home viewing and collection established themselves into a veritable range by the early 1990s, having started a few years earlier - a brief overlap before original series Doctor Who came off the air in 1989. It was almost as if a baton was being passed on to a new way - at least for me, who hadn't been alive to seen the old shows when they first aired - to get one's Doctor Who fix. The medium was VHS in those days, and the range was in fine fettle as the decade proceeded. As a new decade was starting, another baton handover took place as BBC Worldwide started to re-release titles from the range once more on DVD, now with higher definition and extras, and again there was an overlap with the new medium starting slowly as the previous one finished up. In the last couple of years, there's been the slow and gradual start of Blu-ray boxsets - more definition, more extras - overlapping with releases on DVD. At first glance, it looks like the classic Doctor Who range has been going uninterrupted for 30+ years, but there was a bit of a wobble. When the DVD of The Moonbase came out, those animated episodes could possibly have been the last original material from the classic era to see the light. A confident 'Coming Soon' trailer for The Underwater Menace appeared on The Moonbase DVD, but - as I describe in more detail here - months and months went by without that fishy epic coming out, and when it did, it was not so much released as it escaped.

I don't know whether The Moonbase being the final ever classic era story to come out, had that come to pass, would have been a good or bad thing. On the one hand, it is a very silly story, and almost half-formed - it's like a dress rehearsal for the more successful story The Tomb of the Cybermen, made by a lot of the same people soon after The Moonbase. On the other hand, the animation is great, and very much impressed on first watch, and the story as a whole being available was something new and miraculous. For, this is one of the few DVD releases (like The Underwater Menace, and The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear which were all released during the end stages of the range) which never came out on VHS, and whose existence on shiny disc might have seemed like a pipe dream only a few years earlier. For some, this was because the episodes had been recovered, but mostly this was because of the wonders of animation. In the VHS days, gaps would be plugged with a bit of to-camera explanation by a cast member. This enforced a rule that only stories with more episodes present than not could really have the full release treatment. The later innovations meant that Patrick Troughton was finally well-served, as his era was hardest hit by the losses in the archive. The total number of full story VHS releases for the second Doctor was a lowly eight. Thanks mainly to animation, the total number of DVDs will be double that by the end of this year.

The surviving Moonbase episodes were first collected on a VHS called 'Cybermen - The Early Years' released in July 1992, between my first and second years at university in Durham. I would no doubt have snapped it up from Volume One in Worthing on or near the date of release. Also on the tape were the surviving episodes (3 and 6) of another Troughton Cyberman story, The Wheel in Space. The 'Years' tapes were never intended to be anything other than a grab bag of different scraps, so no attempt was made to cover the missing bits. Because a middle episode and the ending was on there for both, though, it was possible - with a lot of imagination - to work out the story in one's head. I had nothing much to do over that long Summer Vac, and I seem to remember watching this tape a lot, wishing I had something more complete to enjoy, but making the best of it. I remember getting a bus over to Lancing to see a friend from my Sixth form days Alex (a different Alex from my childhood friend previously mentioned numerous times on this blog). Other Alex was fascinated by a minor subplot in the last episode where a relief ship is sent out to the moon, but deflected into a solar orbit by the Cybermen, with the ship inescapably drawn to the sun, even if it took them a week to die. He was incensed that the story just abandons them and everyone fixates on sorting out the Gravitron. His focus on it made me muse for quit a while about composing the story of that relief ship on their final slow mission to death, but I never got round to writing it.

Reaction:

There's always a tendency when a writer is researching the background of a story for them to fall in love with the interesting facts they uncover, and then not be able to resist putting them in somehow, even if they aren't relevant to the story and stick out like a sore thumb. Writer of The Moonbase Kit Pedler had recently become a scientific adviser to Doctor Who, collaborating with script editor Gerry Davis to create scenarios with greater verisimilitude. It did work to give a new feel to the series, and it went down well with audiences at the time (and is still popular now), but for me it has its problems. The main one is that Pedler is only interested in his research, or so it seems. The Moonbase is a story about a bunch of clever blokes using gravity technology to control the weather; the Cyber invasion is what's been shoe-horned in. This explains how Other Alex (see above) responded; he saw and felt a much more emotive plot (the fate of the relief ship) than the threat to the Earth of its own weather. It doesn't help that this threat is off screen: the Gravitron is a few flashing lights moving over a world map. At the very least, it needed some cutaways to stock footage of a monsoon or something to sell it, but we don't get that here, with action staying on the moon at all times. This scientific rigour doesn't stop some howlers slipping through either: did Pedler and Davis really believe that a hole in the Moonbase's protective outer shell could be adequately patched with a plastic tea tray, as depicted here?

The other drawback of Pedler and Davis's approach is that through working out this new approach they hit upon a structure that would showcase the science concept of the week, and that structure then stuck to the point where it became a formula, and then later became formulaic: a restricted and often isolated area, run by a stubborn authority figure with whom the Doctor clashes, is slowly infiltrated by aliens. The same structure is used for The Faceless Ones, and many many other Troughton stories. In The Moonbase, they're still honing it, and some aspects don't work as well as others. Patrick Barr as Hobson, for example, seems half-hearted when doing the stubborn authority bit as Moonbase leader, and it's probably down to the writing: one moment he's suspicious of the Doctor, next he's letting him access every part of the base and its crew, one moment he's threatening to turf the TARDIS team out, next he's placated by having a cup of coffee made for him. Even when he's telling the Doctor to get off the moon, it's so laid back he may as well be asking him to pass the sugar. This lackadaisical attitude infects the rest of the cast too, as epitomised by the ending of episode 4, where the defeated Cybermen, supposedly violently uprooted from the moon's surface, skip into the air waftily like they're playing a weightless skipping game, then the crew who've been standing around watching this give a perfunctory cheer, and then all get back to work. Is that really the thrilling climax to the story? One wonders for a few seconds, before realising that - yes - that was it.

I'm almost hesitant to say it with the current Doctor on screens almost making it work, but three companions is most definitely too many, particularly when it's by accident rather than design as it is in here. Frazer Hines was cast as a one-off guest character in The Highlanders, a couple of stories before The Moonbase, but they made a last minute decision to keep him on; so, the next few scripts including The Moonbase's had some hasty rewrites to encompass the new guy. This leads to a bit of line sharing where Ben acquires a sudden amount of scientific knowledge he's never had before. They can't keep that up, so knock out Jamie early on, and he spends a couple of episodes unconscious. This leads to an interesting concept being introduced, the "phantom piper" who appears to McCrimmons before they die, but it is a stretch that even in a concussed state Jamie would believe that the silver robot man, who has no bagpipes or anything, could really be this personage.

Polly gets a rubbish time of it for most of her stories - it's not just the sexism, but there is plenty of that in The Moonbase. The people representing the diverse nationalities of future international cooperation are all male, and Polly - the only woman in the cast - makes coffee for them. It really sticks out watching these 1960s episodes when they slip back to some of the less acceptable attitudes of the time. Doctor Who is usually better than this, which makes the lapses seem all the worse. A similar one in The Faceless Ones is when the Doctor's farewell to his two exiting companions lacks balance somewhat. The Doctor tells Ben he can be an admiral some day, then adds: "And you Polly... you can look after Ben". At the recent BFI screening (see below), this elicited an astonished response, with a lot of nervous laughter. Worse than this, though, is that Polly can be written well, as clever, strong and resourceful. But the writers can't sustain it, and fall back into having her screaming and needing to be rescued, to fit some template of what they think the companion should be. This means there are frustrating inconsistencies in Polly's character, often in the same story: on the Moon, for example, good Polly is using her intelligence to deduce a weapon they can use, mixing up cocktails, and taking the fight to the Cybermen. Bad Polly is screaming and dropping trays and wimpering, and serving drinks. 

There is some great material here, though. The filmed scenes of our heroes, and the attacking Cybermen, on the moon's surface are very well done. The continuing use of the stock music "Space Adventure" as the Cyberman theme is great. The new more streamlined and metallic Cyberman design is very effective - I like the practise golf balls on the joints too, though some people find them a bit silly. The animation is good, with very good likenesses. The story as a whole, though is just a bit disposable. But popular enough that things could be further refined in the next story, and set up this monster to be the returning baddie of the next few years. 

Connectivity: 

The Five Doctors makes this an easy game: both The Moonbase and Doctor Who's Twentieth anniversary Special feature Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, Fraser Hines as Jamie, and lots of Cybermen; in both stories, one of these Cybs when attacked spews out goo.

Deeper Thoughts:

Scotland Yard case file on Chameleon Tours: The Faceless Ones animation screening + Q&A, 29th February 2020. The first BFI Doctor Who event of this year; it seems like ages since the last one, and I enjoy them very much, so I happily took shelter in the NFT (or BFI Southbank if you insist) on a wet and windy Saturday. I met up with some of the growing group of attendees for these events - David, Chris, Tim, and Dave, and we settled in our seats. David and I speculated on how soon our hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy would introduce their first customary "Dick" joke, and we didn't wait long. Before proceedings proper began, Anthony Townsend of the Diva Loka Brighton fan group got up on stage to talk about a forthcoming charity event G'Day of the Doctor, and after a round of applause to greet him, Justin obligingly said "They like you more than dick". Ho ho! After Andrew had plugged this worthy event, the standard quiz got underway, with Justin asking the assembled audience trivia questions, and Dick roaming with a mic. Anneke Wills, who played Polly, won a DVD for answering a question about herself correctly, and - in a nicely shambolic and unrehearsed group show of hands response - someone narrowed down Frazer Hines's total number of Emmerdale Farm appearances (where he starred as Joe Sugden) to a mighty 1519 times.

(L to R) Fiddy, Johnson

The animated episodes were prefaced with a short video clip from Ben actor Michael Craze's son, Ben Craze, who couldn't attend in person. Ben was accompanied by his two daughters, Michael's granddaughters, one of whom did most of the talking (and was clearly a star in the making); sweet gems from this included "My granddad, who was called..." followed by a thoughtful pause and then "Granddad Mike", and an admission that she didn't watch Doctor Who because it is too scary. You had to see it, really; alas, it's probably too late (and too personal) to be included on the discs of the imminent release, but it was so lovely. After this, the first three episodes were shown. I have already blogged The Faceless Ones, but it seemed apt to include the write up of the animation screening here with The Moonbase, as they were transmitted as part of the same season (only one story apart on broadcast) and the animation link too, of course. I enjoyed The Faceless Ones when I was watching it as an audio and photo reconstruction, but the work done here lifts it even more. Colour seems to particularly work for this story, bringing the Swinging Sixties 1967 production to vivid life, highlighting much more of the fun and humour of this tale. An airport with all its machinery and planes gives Rob Ritchie's 3D animation freer rein, and he does exemplary work throughout. The character designs and 2D animation improve with every new release. Notable this time is that character's hand movements are featuring more - in places it looks a bit odd, but it's great that they are pushing the envelope.

(L to R) Fiddy, Walsh, Ayres

In between the two halves of the animation, there was a short panel with a couple of the people responsible for this new version: director AnneMarie Walsh, and audio supremo Mark Ayres. AnneMarie talked about the limits of how much the two existing episodes could be used as any basis for the animation: they are different media, with different needs including the number of shots and cuts. The two existing episodes seem barely to have been needed at all, as Mark confirmed that the audio used for all six episodes comes from the off-air recordings made by fan Graham Strong in the 1960s, as it is better quality than the audio of the surviving film copies of episode 1 and 3. Mark had to borrow sound sources from elsewhere in the episodes in places to aid the needs of the animation, and his audio was then what was used as a guide, with AnneMarie and the animators building animatics to fit this, which were then developed into the final version. Through this process, AnneMarie fell for Colin Gordon's Commandant, her favourite character in the piece. She also gave a shout out to Martin Geraghty for doing a great job with character designs. Dick Fiddy had a final question about whether the show Archer was something of an inspiration for the style used for The Faceless Ones, and both panellists confirmed that this was true, although they added that the people making Archer have more money, more time, and "more swearing".




The final three episodes were then shown. Unlike The Macra Terror, no major liberties have had to be taken with the story (a scene featuring the Rough and Tumble machine had to be excised from the animation of the Macra story as it was too complex to animate). The Chameleon's natural alien form has been re-imagined; the version created for the original TV show was probably too blank to come across as a drawing. The replacements are a little too 'generic green alien' for me, but it's a very minor niggle. One area where I almost wanted the animation team to take liberties was in the final sequences, where they could have featured an additional scene of Ben and Polly (at least a non-speaking Ben and Polly) before their final scene. These two characters had a very abrupt leaving scene as it had been filmed on location, and they were no longer employed by the time of the studio sessions of episode 6, so we are robbed of the moment when they are reunited with the Doctor and Jamie. That moment could have been inserted during the sequence of searching in the Chameleon's spacestation or searching the cars in the long-stay car park (although the logic of the plot is a little unclear, and I'm still not certain after many watches which place Ben and Polly would have been hidden).

One other point of note in the animation is the liberal sprinkling of in-joke Easter Eggs for the sharp-eyed to spot. [If you would rather be un-spoilered and find them for yourself, skip over this paragraph.] The earliest one is a Wanted poster in the airport police office. This appeared in a clip that was released online ahead of the screening, which shows the Roger Delgado Master's mugshot up on the pinboard, but added to that since has been another picture - this time of Sacha Dewan's incarnation. This got an audible gasp of a wowed reaction in the room. Comparing notes after the screening, my fellow attendees and I also spotted references to International Electromatics, Magpie Electricals, a newspaper with a "War Machines Defeated" headline (this story taking place on the day after the events of The War Machines), plus familiar names to fandom Hickman, Ridgway and Condon hidden in the settings. The aforementioned Rough and Tumble machine finally appears in an animation too: it's advertised in a newspaper that the Doctor and Jamie both read. There are certainly more there to find, so - if you plan to buy the DVD or Blu-ray - happy hunting!

(L to R) Wills, Hines, Johnson

After the screening had finished, the final Q&A of the day was with Anneke and Frazer. They were both in good form, working the room: the former as twinkly and naughty as ever, the latter in full on convention anecdote machine mode. Anneke talked first about reading the BBC Audio recordings of the novelisation for this story amongst others; this was a subject she returned to a few times, to some affectionate mockery from Justin Johnson. The Commandant had been the most fun character to play, as he was so strait-laced but had to deal with "the forces of chaos" as represented by the Doctor and his friends. Despite a lot of coaxing, she would not give her "Jamie" audio voice with Frazer in the room. On the subject of voices, Frazer was surprised by his slipping into English "Received Pronunciation" when playing the Chameleon version of Jamie, something he'd forgotten doing. They both enjoyed the finished animation, but are looking forward to their favourite stories one day being done. For Frazer, that's The Highlanders (although AnneMarie had told him that the tartan and kilt folds will be a nightmare to do); for Anneke, it's The Smugglers, which holds special memories as the cast got to spend a night away in a pub in Cornwall during its filming - the nearest a poor young actor could get to a holiday then.

Many things were learnt during this energetic session, not least how much each person got paid for The Faceless Ones. Anneke was on 68 pounds per episode, Frazer only 57, to which he reacted in mock outrage "I'm not sitting here to be insulted"! Troughton was on a whopping 262 quid per ep. There was an interesting discussion on actors watching recordings of themselves performing - Anneke doesn't, Frazer does, as he feels it's the only way one can improve, noticing bad habits (he mentioned he used to do too much scratching of his head and pointing, which he forced himself to phase out); Frazer topped this chat off with a zinger of a reply he gave to Peter Purves, who told him he would not watch his own performances back; Frazer replied: "You should do, 'cos we had to!" Anneke jokingly proposed that Frazer likes watching his performances as "You love yourself", to which Frazer replied, mock crestfallen "Somebody's got to love me". Anneke always feels that when you look back, you will always beat yourself up about what you could do better, but did find herself watching herself on TV one day, while drinking a glass of wine. She thought: "I'm rather good actually" and finished the bottle.

There were some well-worm but nonetheless welcome anecdotes griping about "control freak" director Morris Barry (who helmed The Moonbase as well as The Tomb of the Cybermen"). Apparently, Morris came down to the studio one day to find that the sets had all been put up slightly wrongly. Instead of amend his camera script, the actors and crew had to wait, while the set was broken and reassembled 6 inches to the left. When asked - with reference to the recent Blu-ray trailers that have caught up with some companions later in their post-Doctor life - what their characters would be up to in their later years, Anneke felt Polly would not be married to Ben, but would be living in a cottage in the depths of Dartmoor growing vegetables. Frazer thought Jamie, if he avoided being dead on a battlefield somewhere, would be married to Kirsty (Hannah Gordon's character in The Highlanders) with 5 kids, as there was "no TV back in those days, you see".

Talk turned to the superfluity of companions because of the last minute introduction of "cuckoo" Jamie, and the subsequent exit of Ben and Polly. Both actors agreed that three is too many, with Frazer remembering that the hasty rewrites imposed on The Moonbase meant that he was laying on a bed for three episodes moaning about the phantom piper, with Anneke mopping his brow: "Easiest money I ever made".  The producer decided to get rid of Michael Craze, asking Anneke if she would stay on as Polly, but she decided to be loyal to Michael and go. This also was an excuse to get off herself, as her partner of the time Michael Gough had told her when she started not to get stuck with one thing, and to be fluid. After he left the show, Frazer and Pat Troughton had kept in touch with one another. "We played golf for the next 16 years," said Frazer, "Very long game - he was a terrible putter!". When he, Pat and Wendy Padbury met up again during filming of The Five Doctors, they were rolling around on the floor laughing and joking in rehearsals. The other Dcotors, according to Frazer, were looking on jealous as they never did anything like that with their companions. By this time Anneke had forgotten about Doctor Who and was living in Canada, and - devastatingly - she revealed that after their final shooting day, she and Craze might have had a drink with Pat at the pub, but after that she never ever saw him again. After this, though, more happily, she said that she hopes they do more animations as "this is the highlight of my year". Though I wouldn't go that far, it is a very enjoyable day out. I'm looking forward to the next one, which is only in a few days' time...

In Summary:

The Moonbase, semi-animated, is neither one thing nor t'other; the fully animated Faceless Ones is much better; but, it's great to have both on the shelves!