The Time Meddler

Chapter The 180th, which features 1066 and all that (where all that = good direction, charm, quiet innovation, and stock footage).

Plot:

The Doctor and Vicki discover space pilot Steven Taylor in the TARDIS after he's stumbled aboard at the end of their last adventure; Steven is sceptical when the others tell him the ship travels in time, particularly after they've landed, when he finds a modern wristwatch in what the Doctor has told him is 11th century Northumbria. The Doctor splits up from the others, makes some enquiries and finds that a group of monks have recently taken new ownership of a previously abandoned monastery near a Saxon village. Arriving there, the Doctor is trapped in a cell by just the one occupant, disguised as a Monk, who's been regularly playing a gramophone record of plainsong to make it seem like there are multiple monks in residence. The Doctor escapes after finding a secret passage in the cell. Vicki and Steven, trying to catch up with the Doctor, go to the monastery and discover the gramophone, and that the Monk has his own TARDIS. The Monk is one of the Doctor's own race, who likes to meddle in time. It's 1066, and he has a plan to destroy the imminent Viking fleet, meaning King Harold's armies will not be distracted by them, and will therefore win the battle of Hastings later in the year. The Doctor has aroused worry in the Saxons minds about imminent Viking invasion, and they repel a scouting party, then turn on the Monk who appears to be trying to guide the Vikings to land (only so he can destroy them with his laser cannon). The Doctor nobbles the Monk's ship, stranding him; and the new TARDIS team goes off to have further adventures in time and space.

Context:

As the family has been a little reluctant to watch Doctor Who recently, when a black and white 1960s story came up next for the blog I decided to forego any struggle to persuade others, and watched the DVD on my own. I viewed it an episode per evening over four nights, finishing on a Saturday where I accompanied my final watch with a nice gin and tonic. Occasionally, during these four sessions, other members of the family would wander in, but nobody stuck around for long. It's a shame in one way, as the story is light and fun and enjoyable; but, it's light and fun and enjoyable if you sit down and watch it with a modicum of concentration, so in another way perhaps it was a relief. After a few weeks of the UK's Lockdown 3: The Revenge, the children (boys of 14 and 11, girl of 8) are perhaps getting a bit too restless for such a low-key story. The next time one comes up with lots of explosions and action, I might try to get them interested again.

First time round:

By the end of 1991, Doctor Who had been off the air for two whole years. There was still the odd mention in the Gallifrey Guardian (the news pages of the official Doctor Who Magazine) of independent producers pitching to the BBC for the opportunity to make the show again, but fans were not holding out much hope of that happening. Some small consolation came in the form of the VHS range, which had started in the mid-1980s and sporadically released the odd classic story; but, from the start of 1990 when Doctor Who was no longer on the TV, the range became more regular, with a couple of stories being released on tape every couple of months. The tapes covered a wide range of different eras of the show, but there were a lot of 1960s stories, so they must have proved popular. Maybe this was what inspired the series of  BBC2 repeats that started early in January 1992, or maybe it was a coincidence.

Whatever the reason, the powers that Beeb at Two decided to show a series of stories, one for each of the then seven TV Doctors episodically on Friday evenings. The beginning of the season, the first episode of the Time Meddler, went out on the 3rd January preceded by a half hour clips package documentary called Resistance is Useless. Seeing lots of clips was great, though the framing device of a talking anorak to represent the stereotypically knowledgeable Who enthusiast was a little questionable. I had finished my first term at university and was at home for Christmas when the story started, but the latter episodes went out when I was back in college. I would have travelled back to Durham with a blank tape or two in my bag. As I noted in the First Time Round section of my recent Sontaran Experiment post, during that first term I was a bit more reticent about watching Doctor Who, but having to record episodes would have necessitated my persuading my friend Mike, the only person with his own TV and VCR in his room, into letting me take over his equipment weekly.

Reaction:

When The Time Meddler was shown as part of the repeat season in 1992, there were a few fans questioning the choice. This was in the letters pages of Doctor Who publications, you understand, as access to the internet for me and most others was not yet possible at the time. It's not a very showy story, has no new or established monsters, and is tucked away at the end of a season after a more climactic one, The Chase, which had Daleks and the much loved characters Ian and Barbara saying farewell to TARDIS and audience. Unlike for second Doctor Patrick Troughton's poor depleted archive holdings, there were plenty more obvious stories for William Hartnell that existed in full and hadn't been released on VHS as yet (which seemed to be the considerations for inclusion). If they'd gone for a more obvious choice, like The Chase for example, there would have been less surprise registered, but maybe less enjoyment too. The Chase isn't very good for all that. Despite being more action-packed in theory, it would most likely have seemed identical to the Time Meddler in both pace and quality to a 1992 casual viewer at first glance. The Time Meddler though has intrigue and charm, not qualities normally associated with The Chase it's fair to say, and those qualities are much more likely to have kept an inquisitive viewer hooked beyond that first glance.

Thanks to a clever and creative director at the helm, the story makes the most of its limited setting and characters. The person in question was Douglas Camfield, one of the best of 1960s and 70s Who; The Time Meddler is only his second full story as a director, but he's already showing many signs of greatness. The judicious use of stock footage, including newsreel of a historical recreation society playing at Vikings, opens the story out beyond its Television Centre studio confines. There's other lovely technical flourishes too. The clifftop set, for example, shot from a low angle, with a wind machine tousling our heroes, and clouds back projected on the cyclorama behind them, really sells the illusion that the interior is EXT. The script by Dennis Spooner is amusing without damaging the adventure plot for the younger viewers. The Monk is sending up the Doctor not Doctor Who, and the plot still leaves room for some fisticuffs and bravery here and there, though it's mostly a comic romp. There's lots of farce like to-ing and fro-ing of different characters - be they time travellers, Vikings or Saxons - entering the monastery, trying to avoid each other, getting captured, etc. Camfield handles all this with a light touch, and also carefully teases out the scripts greatest innovation: the mixing of past and future. Doctor Who up to this story has visited history or it has visited futuristic alien worlds, but never before have the twain met. When Steven finds a modern wristwatch in 1066, and the Doctor hears that the monks' song is a gramophone record, the 60s audience must have been suddenly alert that they were witnessing something new. This builds up to the epic episode three cliffhanger where Vicki and Steven make a truly game-changing discovery: "It's a TARDIS; the Monk's got a TARDIS!!!!"

Camfield is not just a technical director; he's adept at getting good performances too. Biggest of the guest turns is Peter Butterworth, who just after filming The Time Meddler would start his long run as a Carry On film regular; he's perfect as the sly but rather jolly antagonist, causing mischief rather than evil. He uses his voice and physicality to create a instantly fully rounded figure, as befits the first villainous member of the Doctor's race, and he gets some of the best lines: "It's getting so that you can't call a monastery your own". The somewhat child-like rivalry dynamic between the Monk and the Doctor created by script, direction and performance is sublime too. William Hartnell seems to relish facing off against a comic performer who is his equal for once, and brings his A-game. Every scene between the two of them is a joy. Even in the scenes without Butterworth, Hartnell's having a good time. Never believe anyone who tells you he's the crotchety Doctor, here he's sweet and - dare I say it - sexy. I'm thinking particularly of his scenes with Alethea Charlton as Edith. Edith is clearly a bit smitten with the Doctor, plying him with mead, and telling everyone how trustworthy he is. Unless my eyes are deceiving me, Hartnell's pitching his performance in the scenes with Charlton to suggest the Doctor is flirting with Edith a little, and is a touch enamoured of her in return.

This story also features a new regular character. Peter Purves appeared briefly in the final episode of the preceding story, but his character wasn't really feeling himself. Here Purves'  Steven Taylor is showcased properly, and makes a great impression. A little more cheeky and flip than Ian, the previous male companion of the early years, and with his day job as a space pilot, Steven is more like the prototype for the Captain Jack role later. He gets some good lines too, and establishes great interplay with the Doctor and Vicki. By the end of the final episode, which completed the season with some close-up portraits of each of the three regulars against a starry backdrop, the new TARDIS team is firmly established. As well as all these other great elements, there are lots of other nice touches and moments in the story: the Monk's tick-list scroll for keeping a track of the progress of his scheme, the historically inaccurate but nonetheless funny comment about a horned Viking helmet being for a space-travelling cow, the conversation between Steven and Vicki about how their memories will change if the Monk changes history, and many more I'm sure I could list. "That is the dematerialising control and that, over yonder, is the horizontal hold. Up there is the scanner, those are the doors, that is a chair with a panda on it. Sheer poetry, dear boy."    

Connectivity: 

Following The Mark of the Rani, The Time Meddler is the second story in a row which features a naughty Time Lord trying to change history in N.E. England. It's also the third story in a row to feature more than one TARDIS.

Deeper Thoughts:

Repeats, repeats, repeats (part 1). Doctor Who fans of the 20th century were perhaps the only group of TV viewers in that time that not only did not object to but positively looked forward to repeats. The show was traditionally first encountered by young children, it had endured a longer time and gone through more radical changes than most series, it inspired a lot of devotion in the right kind of viewer, and - in the years before video recording became affordable - the one time an episode went out might be the only opportunity to see it. Any repeat therefore provided one of three boons. It could be an opportunity to relive the enjoyment of something one had already seen before; it could be a chance to catch up on something that had been missed because of an ill-timed family visit or birthday party clashing with Doctor Who's broadcast; finally, and most preciously, it could be the opportunity to see a small part of what the show had been like from before one started watching, or perhaps before one was even born, in a different era with a different Doctor to the current one. That third boon was the rarest of all. There were specific rules made with unions about repeat broadcasts which meant more effort and expense was required to show archive repeats, rather than just reshowing something that had been on within the last year to 18 months. It would take a specially curated season of archive repeats like the one in which The Time Meddler was shown in the early 1990s, and they didn't come along very often.

In the show's opening decade of the 1960s, any repeat at all didn't come along that often. Doctor Who was on all year round with only a few weeks break in the Summer, similar to an almost soap continuing drama like the BBC's Casualty or Holby City now; this left little scope for rerunning anything. Between 1963 and 1970 it only happened twice. The very first episode An Unearthly Child was first broadcast on 23rd November 1963 when the UK, and the world, was still reeling from the impact of JFK's assassination the day before. As it was felt that the launch was overshadowed, An Unearthly Child was shown again the following Saturday, the 30th, immediately before the second episode of caveman action. The second time was in 1968, bridging the Summer gap between the penultimate and final series of the 1960s. Here a whole story, The Evil of the Daleks, was shown week on week. It was nicely integrated into the ongoing storyline: the Doctor was airing his own memories of that adventure to his new companion Zoe, to give her a flavour - or warning - of what travelling with him would be like. The following Saturday after the Dalek story completed, season 6 of Doctor Who began with The Dominators, where a line was added to link back to the Doctor's feat of mental projection. Doctor Who had for one time only been shown pretty much all year round; but this would be the last time the series was so ubiquitous.

Starting from the episodes broadcast in 1970s, Doctor Who was only on for half the year approximately, with a much longer gap between seasons. In 1971, a tradition started of showing recently aired stories - either episodically, or as omnibus editions - in that gap. Generally, this would mean at least one story on BBC1 in summer and one shown around Christmas, showing stories first broadcast in that year's season or at most the one before. There was even one extra special treat in May 1974 - still reminisced about by fans of the time - where an unscheduled omnibus version of The Sea Devils was shown in place of abandoned live coverage of a cricket match. That must have felt like a gift from the BBC gods at the time. The Christmas repeats lasted until 1975, though there were a couple of re-showings at other times in winter for the next couple of years after that. From then on, the BBC1 repeats were restricted to the summer months. That tradition kept going without a break until 1984, with the final one being The Five Doctors (a de-omnibus, if you will, the 90 minute special being broken into four episodes for a run stripped across weekdays from the 14th to the 17th of August). From 1985 onwards, when - perhaps because video recording was becoming more commonplace, but probably more likely because Who wasn't the ratings draw it had recently been - yearly repeats on BBC1 stopped.

The final broadcast of classic Who on the mother channel to date was a 1993 showing of Planet of the Daleks to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Doctor Who (see the First Time Round section of that story's blog post for more details). BBC1 wasn't the only channel where Doctor Who could find a home of course. During that period of regular repeats on BBC1, BBC2 was once host to the Five Faces of Doctor Who, a season in Autumn 1981 that showed five stories, one each from the first three Doctors, plus the one where those three teamed up, The Three Doctors, and finished with the most recently broadcast story Logopolis, where Tom Baker turned into Peter Davison. The idea of this season was 1980s producer John Nathan-Turner's; it was intended to remind people who had only started watching Doctor Who within the previous 7 years that there were Doctors before Tom. It might have done that, but it had a separate fringe benefit: it was the first chance many of the fans of the time who knew full well there were Doctors before Tom got to see those Doctors in action. As such, it is warmly remembered by a lot of people to this day. For me, it was this repeat season that got me hooked on Doctor Who for the first time, which I detail in the Carnival of Monsters blog post that I wrote in 2016. The Five Faces season was the first of three specially curated runs in the 1980s and 90s showcasing Doctor Who's broad history by including older episodes, which would then usher in a later era of such repeats on BBC2, and more recently on BBC4. But that's for another day. This tale of Doctor Who's second chances to see is, I'm afraid, episodic and not an omnibus edition. I'll talk more about repeats on the sibling channels in a part two next post...

In Summary:

Like a fine wine, or mead, this one goes down smoothly and enjoyably.

The Mark of the Rani

Chapter The 179th, where someone single-minded and sociopathic inspires riots. Any similarity to peoples alive and impeached is purely coincidental.

Plot:

The Master visits Killingworth in the North East of England sometime early in the 1800s, as he's presumably tracked the Rani there rather than it just being a big coincidence. The Rani is another exiled Time Lord and old acquaintance of the Doctor and the Master, an amoral scientist. As part of an experiment, she is extracting a chemical from the brains of the miners that work in the town leaving them very aggressive. She has been popping back to various violent periods in Earth's history as a cover to harvest this chemical, and this time she's chosen the Luddite riots (though she's overshot by a few years). The Master hijacks the Doctor's TARDIS to bring him and Peri to the same place and time, then disguises himself as a scarecrow in a nearby field to await their arrival, as you do. Once they arrive, the Master swipes the Rani's vial of brain chemical to ensure her cooperation with his schemes, and stirs up some of the locals with Rani-impacted brain chemistry to kill the Doctor, making them think that the Doctor is trying to rob them of their jobs by mechanising the mine. The Master has a shrinking gun and could just shoot the Doctor, but he does not do this.

Their attempt is foiled by George Stephenson, who is working on his locomotive engines in Killingworth. The Master takes hypnotic control of Stephenson's assistant, Luke Ward, and finds out that a meeting is planned with many of the geniuses of the time (Telford, Davy, Faraday and Marc Isambard Brunel amongst them). He decides (on the fly?) it will be good to use the power of these geniuses to take over the planet; this is presumably a big coincidence, but maybe it was what he planned all along - it's not clear. He persuades the Rani that she can help him rule the planet, and they decide to kill the Doctor by laying mines in a nearby dell. Again, the idea of just shooting the Doctor with the powerful shrinking gun doesn't occur to the Master or the Rani. They tempt the Doctor and George Stephenson down to the dell, but it is Luke who steps on a mine and gets turned into a tree. Did I mention that the mines turn the person who steps on them into a tree? Well, they do. The Master and Rani flee in the latter's TARDIS, but the Doctor has sabotaged it so it keeps accelerating, and this starts to wake up the onboard dinosaurs - the Rani keeps lots of Tyrannosaurus Rex embryos in her TARDIS, as you do. The Doctor gives the mine owner the brain fluid vial, having pickpocketed it from the Master earlier, so everyone can be turned back to normal.

Context:

Watched the two episodes separated one a week (the rate at which they originally went out) on two Sundays in January 2021, from the DVD. I was accompanied by all three children (boys of 14 and 11, girl of 8) for the first episode, but they weren't very impressed, I have to tell you, and I watched the second episode on my own a week later. The middle child groaned audibly when Colin Baker's face appeared in the episode one credits. I didn't expect such a reaction, and he's certainly not copying it from me. While I feel there are undoubtedly lots of questionable choices made in his era, I've nonetheless always enjoyed watching Colin's stories, so I don't know from where this antipathy comes and have to assume it's the boy's genuine feeling. It's disappointing, as the middle child is normally very positive about Doctor Who; it also has echoes of certain jaded online fans of a particular vintage who never give Colin the time of day. But who am I to judge? There were definitely 11 year olds losing patience with the show in 1985 too. It's a shame he and his siblings bailed before the second episode as maybe people turning into trees and baby dinosaurs - for all that they made me scratch my head in confusion - might have appealed to them.

First time round:

I watched the first episode on its initial BBC1 broadcast on Saturday 2nd February 1985. I was in the middle of my second term at high school at that point, and I had made a new friend. It was a friendship that didn't endure, and sadly I can't remember my friend's name all these years later; it might have been David or maybe Adam; Paul, possibly. I can picture him, though. I often wish I'd been disciplined enough to keep a diary to help with such things all these years later. Anyway, his family had two season tickets for Brighton and Hove Albion at the historic Goldstone ground, the club's home for almost all of the twentieth century (it's a retail park now; there's a Nando's). Occasionally, this friend would get to take another friend to the football instead of going with his Dad, and sometimes he asked me. It was because I was on my way home from watching Brighton win one-nil against Cardiff City on the 9th February that I missed the second - and very different - episode of the story.

Just over ten years later, on 3rd July 1995, The Mark of the Rani came out on VHS, and I had again made a new friend: the Better Half. We were in the first few months of our relationship, but I had already 'come out' as a Doctor Who fan by then, and shown her some of my burgeoning video collection. Probably not all of it, though, as I didn't want to scare her off completely. On that Monday that the tapes were released, I was off work ill. Such was my enthusiasm to pick up this story (and Time and the Rani, the other story featuring Kate O' Mara's titular villain that came out the same day) that I walked - walked! - the three miles or so from my home to central Worthing and Volume One on Montague Street to buy the tapes, even though I was very poorly. Then I walked back. Six miles walking for The Mark of the Rani and Time and the Rani!!!!! I was an idiot in those days. It took me another two days to recover from this stupid jaunt, during which time I watched both stories. The Better Half came to visit me during that period and realised while nursing this poor pathetic specimen in front of her that she definitely loved me, and would be stuck forever with me and my Doctor Who collection, poor thing. As such, I can't help but have warm feelings for both these stories.

Reaction:

Like that Brighton v. Cardiff football match I went to in February 1985 (see above), The Mark of the Rani is a game of two halves. The writers of the story, Pip and Jane Baker, are infamous in Doctor Who circles for writing florid polysyllabic dialogue and erring on the side of too much camp in characters and scenarios, but even their sternest critics would have to admit, I think, that underneath all that they could plot a tale. The Doctor Who stories that they contributed in 1986 and 1987, and other non-Who examples of their work for the small screen that I can think of, are consistently tight and focussed adventure plots. Nothing too fancy (apart from the verbiage) but nonetheless solid and effective. This is also true of the first part of The Mark of the Rani. Yes, the Master's plot is hopelessly silly, but that's his M.O. and the script has the decency to mock him for it, with the more sensible Rani providing withering looks and asides at his convoluted escapades. The historic setting is a nice change of pace and allows for something that had not, believe it or not, been very common in Doctor Who for decades by 1985: the Doctor meeting a real person from history. The promise of the name dropping done in episode one is that the Doctor and George Stephenson are going to partner together in the final part to defeat the 'Luddites' and the two Time Lords who are manipulating them. In episode two, though, there are elements (magic trees and dinosaurs) that emerge from nowhere, and George Stephenson's only in about three scenes and does nothing.

What the hell happened to Pip and Jane here? I almost wonder if they were in such a rush that they both had to write an episode each in parallel, hoping that they would match up, such is the disjoint between the first and second parts. All the promise of the first half is squandered in the second, which is a great shame. The one very good thing that the Bakers deliver in this story is the Rani herself. The show had never before this point - such was the tunnel vision of the usual patriarchal approach - had a recurring female villain. The Bakers find a new take to differentiate the Rani from the show's other recurring Time Lord foe; she doesn't want to rule the world, she doesn't particularly want to harm the Doctor; she just wants to get on with her work. It's just that her work is amoral and has terrible consequences. This is indeed how the character is for the first episode; but, in the second, that all gets lost and she becomes full-on panto hiss baddie. Kate O' Mara relishes this change in the performance, and it could easily have been made into a more smooth character arc rather than again seeming like an abrupt bump. The issue is the presence of the Master. If the Rani's going to turn fully bonkers super-villain by the end, you don't need him; in the first part, though - where the Rani is an unwilling accomplice, gently sending the Master up - they work well together, and it's very enjoyable. It would have been better to pick a lane and either have the Rani alone with the character arc of going from nasty but at least purposeful experiments through to turning people into trees, or keep both the Rani and the Master working together with a plot that was more in keeping with each's original character.

The story has come in for some criticism over the years for historical inaccuracies. Its difficult to pinpoint exactly when it's supposed to be set, but it isn't quite so bad as has been made out. If Stephenson is working on a locomotive at Killingworth then it must be at least 1814, and it can't be any later than 1829 (the last time that the named visiting geniuses are all alive, Humphry Davy dying in that year). It's probably before 1820 when Faraday completed his apprenticeships with Davy, assuming they have been invited together. Luddite activity mainly happened for a couple of years after 1811, but there were still attacks on machinery happening as late as 1817. It's certainly plausible, at least in terms of the dates, that when Stephenson's workshop was set up it was protected in case of Luddite-style attacks, as mentioned in the dialogue. Of course, Luddite action was mainly against textile machinery not mine workings, and the activity did not take place this far North. Maybe the mine's owner Lord Ravensworth is just paranoid. It's easy, of course, for me to dial up all these facts with the internet at my disposal; the Bakers did not have such a tool. I think, though, that they just wanted a story with Stephenson and Luddites together, despite them not having much to do with one another, and they thought the dates just about lined up, with a bit of artistic licence.

There is a lot to recommend the story, in both episodes. The time and place is very effectively presented, with clever use of the locations (Blists Hill and the Coalport China Museum); there's great  direction from Sarah Hellings, who gets excellent performances from all the cast, particularly regulars Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Doctor and Peri; these two are given good opportunities from the script to be charming and fun occasionally, unlike the sniping and moaning at each other that is all they normally get from stories in this era. The stunt ending for episode one - the Doctor on a runaway gurney - is daft but exciting, and Jonathan Gibbs' score is evocative and interesting throughout. As badly as they join together, the two episodes would combine to be an above average story for the period, if it weren't for the people turning into trees towards the end. In the right place, a spooky tree transformation can work. One of my earliest memories of being utterly terrified by something I saw on TV was someone turning into a tree in a children's drama show. I must have been very young when I saw it, but it left an impression such that it stayed with me and I eventually managed - with help from the internet - to track down what this fragment of disturbed memory was: The Man Who Hated Children, one of the later episodes of series 3 of Shadows, a horror anthology series for kids shown in the ITV regions in the late 1970s. I am not alone in being haunted by this moment for more than forty years, I have found testimonials online from multiple sources who were similarly scarred.

Such was the power of this sequence that I have not attempted to rewatch it to date; it could either be just as scary as I remember, or not nearly as bad, and neither of those options seems that appealing. Crucially, though, it only worked because it was in the right context. Shadows was a supernatural-themed series, rather than the fairly rigorous science-based world of Doctor Who; what makes it worse is that the first episode of The Mark of the Rani leans in to the science even more than usual, making one wonder exactly how - and why - this methodical scientist the Rani has created land mines that turn a person instantly into the tree. The change being instant also makes it risible; in the Shadows episode the transformation is gradual, not done in a second with a puff of naff pyrotechnics. I can't reliably recall how realistic the eventual tree was in the 1970s programme, but some images are burned into my soul: roots growing out of the character's trouser leg, bark appearing on their skin, and finally - when the man had been absorbed, his sad face peeking out of a knot in the trunk. The trees in Mark of the Rani appear to be made of plastic, and are erected in a real wood so they look ridiculous compared to the real trees around them. Plus, in The Man Who Hated Children, the man-tree post transformation does not bend a rubbery branch like an arm to save a damsel in distress. It's as if every contributor from script to final image got it 100% wrong. And don't get me started on the baby dinosaurs...    

Connectivity: 

Both The Mark of the Rani and Revolution of the Daleks feature a female incarnation of a Time Lord and more than one TARDIS.

Deeper Thoughts:

Calling the capitol, calling the capitol... The Mark of the Rani has two villains, and they get punished for their villainy at the end of the story. Sort of. There's not much in the way of due process - the Doctor feeds them to some baby dinosaurs inadvertently after sabotaging their ride - but it's something. We need stories to show us the inspiring myth that bad deeds end up being punished, because most of the time life isn't like that. I write these words on the 19th January 2021, the last day of the 45th president of the United States being in the White House. As ever, I find myself unable to type his name. At the time of writing, doom-scrollers across the world including myself are waiting to see exactly which group of rappers and neo-Nazis he is going to pardon before he leaves. By the time this is published and you're reading it, Joe Biden's inauguration will be in the past, you lucky thing. After that, the proceedings of 45's second impeachment trial will begin in the US senate. I don't hold out much hope that he will be found guilty, but it does look more likely than it ever has before that he might face some consequences for his actions. In 2016 when he won the election, he had already transgressed political and social norms on the campaign trail, and there was every expectation he would continue to do so in power; indeed some people who should know better wanted him to do so, to mix things up a bit.

As with my reaction to the UK's Prime Minister A. Johnson's behaviour, it was a surprise to me how very thin a layer of political and social norms exists between order and chaos. Norms, for instance, like accepting the result of an election you didn’t win. It turns out that you don’t have to do that, and that the long history of such things happening was just out of some misplaced feeling of politeness that egregious populists don’t have to display. Despite not being able to provide any evidence to persuade even partisan Republican courts that there was any widespread voter fraud - courts that must have known how dangerous taking this path was liable to get - the 45th president of USA kept repeating the big lie. He even repeated it in his supposedly placating speech made to the rioters who had broken into the Capitol at that very moment, and were intent on finding and destroying the electoral college votes (and probably much worse actions than that too). He also in that same speech said to the rioters in the Capitol, without qualifying that he was excluding anyone wearing a Camp Auschwitz T-shirt or waving a confederate flag or such, that “We love you” and “You’re very special”. It did not look like he was calling for calm at all.

Several of 45’s tweets after that reiterated the big lie and stirred things up further, precipitating the temporary and then permanent ban of his account on twitter. This, even more than the language used in his speech before his followers stormed the Capitol, seems damning to me. I still don’t think he’ll be found guilty, as he seems to have managed to evade any responsibility for anything he’s done throughout his long life. This unchecked behaviour led to the enablement and maybe even partial normalisation of white supremacy. This is where the abstraction of even something light like Doctor Who does get it right: just like the Master, coming back every time even though he was thought to be completely destroyed the last time, certain evils just won’t go away. I don’t know that the solution is to strengthen those norms; after all, if the heavily codified US procedures underpinned by an unassailable written constitution can’t prevent these things from happening, maybe nothing written down on paper will. The best course of action would seem to be don’t elect populists, and maybe the tide is turning on that, but it could very well turn back again. By the time you read this, you’ll be living in a day of hope, but each day after that will be an unending challenge.

In Summary:

The first episode goes like a Rocket, but - in the words of Radiohead - gravity always wins, and the second episode comes down with a hell of a bump. 

Revolution of the Daleks

Chapter The 178th, which sees corrupt politicians, violent attacks near a seat of power, and people confined inside for long periods of time, none of which would ever happen in real life, obviously.

Plot:

[Warning: spoilers spoilers spoilers; read no further if you haven't seen the 2021 New Year's special yet.] The 'fam' have spent ten months on Earth not knowing where the Doctor is, or whether she's alive or dead. Yaz has become a bit obsessional about working out how to pilot the Gallifreyan TARDIS that the Doctor sent them home in back to find her; Graham and Ryan persuade her to engage more with protecting the Earth, as it looks like the Daleks are back. Jack Robertson, the US Mister Big that created giant spiders with toxic waste, has bought out a tech start-up and is partnering with its CEO Leo and the UK government to create security drones that bear a striking resemblance to the Reconnaissance Scout Dalek. This is because it is based on the stolen shell of that Dalek, recovered from GCHQ on New Year's Day 2019. Unfortunately, Leo hasn't stopped at copying the shell, and has cloned a creature from some organic cells he found in it. Unbeknownst to Leo, the organism, once plugged into the company's systems, has started a cloning project to create many more creatures, and has adjusted the drones to be more deadly. When Leo shows Robertson the creature, Robertson orders it destroyed, but it takes over Leo before he can throw it into a furnace.

The Doctor has been in prison for many years after being locked up by the Judoon. Captain Jack breaks her out, and they travel to Earth and meet up with Yaz, Graham, and Ryan. The fam are not particularly happy with the Doctor for abandoning them for so long, particularly Yaz, but the Dalek situation on Earth is too pressing to allow any discussion on this bar four or five long conversations here and there. They all track down the Dalek clone farm, but too late to stop the creatures waking up, zapping into the clone shells and killing lots of people. To solve the problem, the Doctor uses the "nuclear option" of calling in more 'real' Daleks who - because of their obsession with racial purity - kill all the clone Daleks after a memorable confrontation between both factions on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Robertson turns traitor and offers up the Doctor to the remaining Daleks, so the Doctor uses herself as bait. The Daleks swarm in to what they think is the Doctor's TARDIS to attack her, but it is instead the Gallifreyan TARDIS disguised by its Chameleon Circuit, and the Doctor a holographic projection. It collapses in on itself  trapping those Daleks, and Jack, Ryan and Graham blow up their ship, destroying the rest. They also rescue Robertson, who claims he was just trying to help and is later hailed as a hero by the press.

Captain Jack stays on Earth to visit Gwen Cooper. The Doctor invites the whole fam to travel with her again to new adventures, but Ryan wants to stay; he's reconnected with his Dad and his friends over the ten months he's been back. Graham chooses to be with his grandson rather than continue his travels, and they say an emotional farewell to the Doctor and Yaz. The Doctor gives them both psychic paper to help them in their investigations to protect the Earth when she's gone. A little while later, once on their own, Graham and Ryan both see a vision of Grace smiling at them... somehow.

Context:

Over a few days in early January 2021, I re-watched this story on my own a couple of times making notes and analysing the scene structure and timings. It must have taken three or four days elapsed at most, maybe up to seven when including my first watch on New Year's Day (see below). In that short time, because of exponentially rising Covid-19 cases and deaths, the UK has gone into Lockdown 3: The Revenge (a second sequel, and everyone knows those are always much worse than what came before). After lockdown started, the UK broke the wrong sort of records with the most Covid-related deaths registered on one day, more than happened in any of the earlier spikes since March 2019. Across the pond, the President of the United States of America incited a seditious attack on the US Capitol, and a group of white supremacists broke into said building with pipe bombs and confederate flags. Lawmakers in the US are now planning to impeach this president for the second time, which would be a historic first. There's probably all sorts of awful stuff happening related to Brexit as well, but it's so far down on the news agenda that I'm not hearing about it. Seven days. 2021 is going to be just as interesting a time to live through as 2020. Happy New Year!

First time round:

The whole family could not all leave the house at the same time until late December as a couple of the youngsters had to self-isolate for the standard 10-day period starting immediately before Christmas, after their classmates had tested positive for Covid-19. Luckily nobody got any symptoms, and on the first day of 2021, when it had got dark, we were able to take a socially-distancing family walk around the immediate neighbourhood looking at everyone's Christmas lights and giving them marks out of 10. When we got back, it was not long before the start of Doctor Who. I found myself rushing around trying to get food ready for a TV dinner in front of the goggle-box (a luxury afforded us only rarely and usually for Doctor Who broadcasts) while additionally putting together my own 'Previously on Doctor Who' clips package on the fly from the Blu-ray discs containing Fugitive of the Judoon and The Timeless Children, as the Better Half couldn't remember the details of Jack's 2019 return, or how the Doctor ended up in prison. Once the broadcast time came round I was just about settled down with all the family (the Better Half and three children - two boys aged 14 and 11, and a girl aged 8). Everyone enjoyed it, though the Better Half not quite so much as me and the kids.

Reaction:

Revolution of the Daleks in 71 minutes long, which makes it the longest Doctor Who Festive special for over ten years. From a quick and unscientific scan of responses to the story on the internet since its broadcast, it has not been as divisive as previous tentpole episodes written by Chris Chibnall. Most think that this is one of the better of the big stories of the last couple of years; it's down to each individual reviewer how faint or otherwise such praise is intended to be. If you don't like the current house style or characters then obviously 71 minutes is going to seem like a long time. For me, the first fifty-five minutes flew by, and it was only towards the end that I had any issues with what I was watching. It intrigued me as to why that was; not just what slowed things down towards the end, but also how the start had flowed so seamlessly. Hence, as mentioned earlier, I watched this scene by scene, pausing the action and making notes. The first thing that became clear on doing this is that, though it might seem on first watch that the story was very action-orientated, it is not at all. The first proper action scene is not until past the halfway mark at around 36 minutes in (Jack and Yaz defending themselves against a Dalek mutant attack), and the scenes of Daleks attacking humans or one another thereafter add up to only about five minutes of running time. The Daleks don't go on the attack until the 45-minute mark, which in an ordinary episode would be close to the end (interestingly, when they do, the first casualties are in a uniform that makes them look very like redshirts, the Star Fleet characters that always get killed in Star Trek - was this coincidence or deliberate in-joke, I wonder?).

Though the title and publicity, and overall first impression, suggests this is a big Dalek story, they don't necessarily have the main focus, though they appear throughout, spread out cleverly. It's an interesting sleight of hand. Before the brief bursts of action, the Dalek plot is all about a linear, building menace as the elements all come together. There is no intrigue nor mystery; by the time our heroes are investigating Jack Robertson, we in the audience know almost everything: we're shown the original Dalek casing being stolen, then in the next scene we see who took it, and in the next scene we're told how (although, as many have pointed out, the original plan to poison the driver transporting the casing involves guessing exactly where he's going to stop for tea en route, unless they've replaced every roadside vendor in the area with an assassin). The scenes interspersed with this are a straightforward linear subplot too: one might have expected the Doctor escaping from space prison to have had some of the twists, turns or surprises associated with jail break scenarios in dramatic form, but no. We see some scenes of the routine of her long incarceration, with some fun uses of favourite old monsters like Ood, a Weeping Angel, one of the Silence and a P'ting; then, after this, Jack arrives and uses his big bubble device to get them both out. It's a fun and exciting moment, but it is straightforward. It's also dodgy optics that the Doctor as a woman seems incapable of even trying any plan to escape until a man comes to save her. I guess the point is that she's brooding on the events of the season finale in 2019 and her new mystery identity, but it does make her seem a little bit passive early on.

The third - and arguably most important - plot thread is about the Doctor's inadvertent abandonment of her fam for ten months, and the impact this has. Collectively, this has the most screen time in the story. There are long scenes (five minutes for the two-hander scene of the Doctor and Ryan in the TARDIS, almost as long for the scene of Yaz and Jack talking about what it's like to part company with the Doctor). These are nice character scenes, but again there's not much in the way of value reversal. The best moments are between Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill as Yaz. The aggressive shove that the Doctor gets from her female friend on returning to Earth is one of the only moments that actually shocks. There's also a lovely moment later when the Doctor casually tosses out a very traditional Doctor line as they plan to defeat the bad guys with some risky stratagem "When have I ever let you down before?" before the penny drops as the Doctor and Yaz exchange a sad look, and the former realises exactly what those words now mean.

So, ultimately, this story is a weave: two or three unconnected and linear plotlines weaving in and out of each other, but not really impacting each other at all. The Doctor could have encountered the security drone Dalek plot at any point in her era; it’s not connected – thematically or in terms of inter-plot complication – with her stay in prison, or her ten months apart from the ‘fam’. I’m not criticising this structure per se, it’s rather elegant in its way, but there is a challenge sustaining it over such a long running time. It certainly works early on, when there are three different plots to intercut. From circa 25 minutes in, though, when the team are reunited, there is only two plots left, the prison break stuff being done with. The story still manages to sustain for a while, as it makes logical story sense for the abandonment plot to get some focus at the point where the Doctor and friends are back together after so long.

When the Dalek plot heats up, though, it has to take centre stage, and that’s where its simplicity becomes more obvious, and is the point where the level of story interest looks most unsustainable: the Doctor has the idea to call in more Daleks to do her dirty work, she calls them, they come, they do her dirty work. Simple as that. The danger that they will attack the humans instead of the clone Daleks is mentioned, but immediately dismissed. This is a shame, as that might have upped the ante during this crucial point. Jack Robertson then turns traitor, which might have worked as a dramatic plot reversal if he wasn’t playing the role (very well) for comedy throughout. I didn’t believe his selling the Doctor out was going to cause any complications, and in fact it makes things easier for the Doctor as it sends all the Daleks to her fake TARDIS switcheroo. This is a neat bit of business, it has to be said, meaning the mechanism of their defeat has been in plain sight all along, and also works to get rid of a time machine that otherwise would be left on Earth indefinitely.  Mention of Chris Noth’s performance as Robertson highlights that it isn’t just plot that can provide the energy to drive a narrative. Both the American-accented characters called Jack, i.e. Noth and John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, bring a lot of energy to proceedings and make any scene they are part of zing and zip. They get most of the funny lines too, which means there isn’t as much scope unfortunately for Bradley Walsh to do jokes. He’s equally adept at drama, of course, and gets a little of that, but it would have been nice if he’d had a bit more to do in his final outing. Harriet Walter is great too, though conspiring to intercept the Dalek casing and then getting it to a willing private backer so quickly means she is far too competent to be representative of our current UK government.

Production value is as good as performance too, but ultimately both need to be in service of a plot. The Doctor’s final plan was simply to blow the Daleks up. The ‘getting towards the end, let’s just blow it up’ gambit is not rare in Doctor Who, but it is usually a sign that the plotting hasn’t been 100% successful. Every step has felt a bit too easy, and once the Daleks are defeated there are still 11 minutes more of the running time left. Aside from a nice moment – with an Emily Maitlis cameo – of the press turning the awful Robertson into a hero, this is all about Ryan and Graham leaving. Whether 11 minutes for this has been earned or not will depend on your feelings for these characters. I think they just about get away with it. Ryan’s decision seems a natural progression from themes highlighted in last year’s Can You Hear Me? Graham’s decision in reaction to Ryan’s also makes perfect sense. It’s a much more old-school companion departure than any seen post 2005; nobody got killed, sent to another dimension or memory-wiped, which means there could be the chance for these characters to return as guests one day, just as Captain Jack did here. I’m not totally sold on Graham and Ryan stepping up to be Earth’s defenders just because they’ve both got a psychic paper each, though. I fear for their long term safety if they do too much of that!

Connectivity: 

Both Revolution of the Daleks and The Sontaran Experiment involve cloned alien armies who want to take over Earth to use it as a base. Both have scenes set in London (unless the Doctor was joking in the Sontaran story about underground stations, and - let's face it - he probably was); both have scenes recorded in the West Country area of the UK (Dartmoor and Clifton Suspension Bridge - Bristol is just about in the West Country, I think, though purists may argue).

Deeper Thoughts:

Two knights lost, and maybe even the queen at risk, but a Bishop's being moved into play soon. [Casting spoilers ahead if you’re not caught up with Revolution of the Daleks, or are keeping clear of all Series 13 pre-publicity.] Changing regular cast members always affects the dynamics of a show. The Peter Capaldi Doctor stories subtly and sometimes not so subtly changed when he was teamed up with Bill and Nardole rather than Clara, just as Capaldi Doctor and Clara was different again from Matt Smith Doctor and Clara. In the 20th century, similar changes took place when Jon Pertwee was replaced by Tom Baker – the dynamic between each man and companion actor Elisabeth Sladen, who provided continuity between the two eras, was markedly different. Now that John Bishop is joining as new companion Dan alongside the Doctor and Yaz, it will be interesting to see how much this changes things. I have no experience that I can recall of John Bishop as a comedian or actor, so have no choice but to keep an open mind as to what his performance will be like. Most of all, it’s encouraging to know that they have got enough in the can thus far that they can show us a few shots of Dan in the mini-trailer that aired on BBC1 after Revolution completed.

Assuming that no other regular cast members are added, it will be a three person TARDIS crew, and I think this is a good move. I'll miss Ryan, and particularly Graham; I also would have been happy to see a series with just the Doctor and Yaz (we may get some short time with just the two of them before they meet Dan, you never know). But, if there's got to be a male identification figure in the regular cast - and someone's obviously decided there has to be - then I'm glad it's just one. The one major flaw with the stories broadcast between 2018 and 2020 was that, with four people in the cast, it was difficult to find enough for everyone to do. They made a better fist of it than the last time it was tried in the 1980s when Sarah Sutton as companion Nyssa would sometimes not get to leave the TARDIS while everyone else was off adventuring, but even so someone (usually Yaz, it has to be said) drew the short straw and may as well as been locked in the box given the lack of material with which they had to work. Doctor Who started in 1963 with a four person cast, and the 1980s was perhaps just a nostalgic echo of that. But in 1963 there was a reason for things to be set up that way: the Doctor wasn't the hero, he was conceived as a dark and not wholly trustworthy mentor character. Hence, there was a need for a male and female hero accompanying him, plus a youngster to get into scrapes. The Doctor developed over the years to become more heroic and more youthful, so the default position eventually became to have just one other cast member, usually female, and occasionally two (in that instance usually one male, one female).

There was clearly a decision made for the 2018 series that there needed to be a younger male and female companion accompanying the Doctor, but also the mature male perspective represented. This new set-up (again, assuming nobody else is yet to be announced) of Doctor with younger female companion and slightly older male companion seems the best way to balance that spectrum of identification without the weight of needing to support four cast members' action in each episode. Of course, if rumours are to be believed, there may be another casting change before the end of the year that will have even more impact. Yes, the rumours have started that there's going to be a new Doctor coming. After a flurry of tabloid newspaper reports early in January, but no official confirmation one way or the other, it's gone quiet. The slightly shortened run planned for later in 2021 will be Jodie's third series, and the pattern of all the recent Doctors is that they've only done three series before leaving the role. All the previous ones have done more episodes per year than Whittaker, though, and had a few extra specials on the way. As such, I would be sorry to see her go so soon, if the rumour is true. It may not be, though. It could be just that a reporter knows as well as I do that three years is the usual limit, and spun a story out of that. It could be that Whittaker's agent is negotiating for more money if she agrees to stay in role longer. Who - in a very real sense of the word - knows?! I don't think I'm going to engage with this further until it has been confirmed for sure, but if I had to guess, I'd say that the next Doctor will be a woman again.

In Summary:

Comes apart a bit towards the end, but generally a nicely woven yarn.