| Chapter The 185th, which features a group struggling for survival while facing strange phenomena that may be faked, there's talk of a group of others from the opposite side of the area, and there's secret bases with hidden entrances. |
Plot:
The exiled Doctor finally thinks he's got his TARDIS working, but it's being remote-controlled by the Time Lords. They send him and Jo to the planet Uxarieus to find a kind of Wild West re-enactment society: a group of frontiers people are trying to scratch a meagre life from the soil while being wary of the native tribe, and a group of unscrupulous strong-arms from a mining concern (IMC) are making trouble so they can take the planet instead. The Doctor helps investigate recent monster attacks, which look to have been staged by IMC. He also finds a secret underground city where the natives live with a priest caste and a Guardian super-being. They are remnants from an advanced society that long ago developed a doomsday weapon. The miners and colonists jostle for the upper hand, with attacks and ruses aplenty. An external adjudicator arrives, but it's the Master using an assumed identity. He's scheming to get his hands on the weapon, and - seemingly just for the giggles - finds in favour of IMC. The Master captures Jo to induce the Doctor to take him to the underground city. Meanwhile, the IMC team force the colonists to board their dangerously old space rocket to blast off from the planet. The Guardian helps the Doctor to destroy the weapon, which also destroys the city. The Master gets away, and the colonists sneak off the ship before it blows up after take off, and wrest control from IMC. A real adjudicator is sent for, and the one nice one among the miners joins the colony.
Context:
March 2021. A year into the UK's Covid-19 pandemic response, and the family and I are locked down still. Just as the last Doctor Blu-ray Who box set was a diversion from Lockdown 1 - a time in the UK of Joe Wicks and Baked Potato songs and hours spent waiting for grocery webpages to load - the latest box set has provided entertainment for the last couple of weeks of Lockdown 3. The episodes in question are season 8, Jon Pertwee's second year playing the Doctor, which introduced the character of the Master. The blog has already covered four out of the five stories over the years; so, to add a random factor I flipped a coin. The coin came up heads, which is why I'm writing a blog post on the remaining story Colony in Space. This means that season 8 is the second full season of Doctor Who I have completed for the blog. The first was season 23, Colin Baker's second, the Trial of a Time Lord year; this, I rounded off when its box set came out (see the post on Mindwarp for more details). Comparing these two seasons, it's interesting to notice they both have umbrella themes. Though they're not as often thought of in this way, 1971's stories link together to form one overall story just as much as Trial or 1978's Key to Time season. The decision to include the Master in each one of the five stories of the year has been criticised since, not least by the producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks who made that decision, but who later persuaded themselves they'd taken it too far. After this most recent re-watch, I'm not so sure I agree with them.
The inclusion of the Master is certainly something that wasn't done half-heartedly: Letts and Dicks go all out, committing 100% to the concept. There isn't exactly a paucity of imagination either, with just enough variety injected to keep things fresh: introduce the character in a story where he shares joint billing with a returning foe (Terror of the Autons), give him a full-on story where he is the main villain next (The Mind of Evil), tease our expectations over the next couple of stories (in The Claws of Axos, the Master is a helpless captive at first, and later seems to be helping UNIT more than is the Doctor), and finally round things off with a climactic confrontation where the character is captured (The Daemons). Because it was part of a box set, and to put the story in context, I watched Colony in Space 'in situ' as it were. Over a couple of weeks, I watched all the episodes of the season in order from the beginning, getting out my notebook for the fourth one. In Colony, the twist is that the script holds back, keeping us waiting for exactly when the bearded villainous one will put in an appearance.
During the few weekday evenings on which I viewed the episodes from the Blu-ray, I was mostly on my own, but the youngest two of my children (boy of 11, girl of 8) wandered into the living room occasionally. The elder of the two said of Jon Pertwee's Doctor, after watching the scene where he distracts a native with a magic trick before lamping him, "He's the best Doctor at hitting people on the head". The youngest didn't say anything but did keep coming back in to catch moments of the story and Blu-ray special features when I was watching them later. Ultimately, she requested that we watch The Daemons together, after being intrigued by the trailer on the Colony in Space disc. Accompanied by both her brothers (the eldest a boy of 14), we watched the omnibus version that comes as an extra in the box set. The boys lost interest quite early on, but she stuck it out and gave the story a big thumbs up at the end.
First Time Round:
By the mid-1990s, when the regular monthly releases of the Doctor Who VHS range were firmly established, BBC Worldwide started to use the final release slot before Christmas for something a bit more special than the norm. It could be a boxset of contiguous linked stories (The E-Space Trilogy set in 1997) or stories in special new versions (The Five Doctors in 1995) or stories with which additional material was included (The Ice Warriors, which was accompanied by a documentary about Doctor Who's missing episodes in 1998). By the end of the decade though, with more and more of the Who archive plundered, things got a bit more desperate and they fell back on something that they'd experimented with before in 1993, the 30th anniversary year: sticking a couple of random video cassettes in a tin. In 1999, they paired up the final two previously unreleased Dalek stories; in 2000, the final two Cybermen stories. 2001, the third year of this mopping up exercise, with the end of the range in sight, saw the final tin of the two stories that had not yet seen the light of day featuring Roger Delgado as the Master. It was perhaps not surprisingly called The Master Tin.
It was unfortunate that these two stories - The Time Monster was in the tin alongside Colony in Space - happened to be the two stories consistently found to be the least popular of Delgado's Who work (at least based on all the polls I can find to check online). Not surprising that these should be left to last, but unfortunate nonetheless. Despite knowing full well their reputations, I dutifully purchased the tin on the day of release, 5th November 2011, from the MVC in central Brighton. I then proceeded to watch all twelve episodes as urgently as possible on my own, in order; so, Colony would have been first. It wouldn't have all been on one night, but probably no more than two. Then, I put the videos on my shelf in their correct place, based on chronological ordering by broadcast date, natch, and hid the tin away in a cupboard. All would have been done and dusted before the second week of November got underway. Merry Christmas!
Reaction:
Doctor Who fan opinions do tend to get engrained, or at least they did in the pre-social media days. As communication between fans across the globe has become easier, I now see a more healthy plurality of views abound. Even in the badder older days, though, stories could get re-evaluated that had been damned before. The Pertwee years have found and lost favour, and then found it again, over the many years since the years of Pertwee. Releases such as this season box set are good opportunities for a retrospective, and previous ones may have contributed to that waxing and waning. Certainly a lot of assumed classics or assumed turkeys had some reputational reversals once the episodes were out for all to watch, rather than just being a few photographs and memories. Watching might not be enough on its own, though. As I'll go into in more detail below in the Deeper Thoughts section, which reviews the box set as a whole, I think this is the first time I've ever been close to not just watching the episodes of this season but seeing them, as they were first made and shown and meant to be seen, such is the impact of the restoration effort applied. Of all of the five stories, Colony in Space is probably the one that benefits from this most, as the Beeb's master tapes only exist in 525-line NTSC standard; the process used to revert the pictures to something approaching 625-line PAL for the DVD, though very clever, ultimately was not wholly successful, and the version using different techniques done for the Blu-ray is much better.
One day, new technology might improve things further; if so, I'll no doubt fork out again. As of now, though, with the currently best available versions of Colony's picture and sound available, what is it there to see? The first thing that strikes one is the exterior work. Director Michael E. Briant always gives good quarry, and this is definitely true here, in his first ever directing gig for Doctor Who. The Old Baal clay pit in Cornwall, used generously throughout the six episodes, is a great location with lots of different rock formations and areas that give scope for interesting camera angles, including some high angle shots. The time of year that they filmed also brings some drama, with a waterlogged hand-to-hand combat scene; two fit young men wrestling one another in mud is not something you see in Doctor Who every day. The landscape's all a bit of a dull colour, alas, but that fits the narrative of the planet's soil being polluted by the doomsday weapon's radiation. My previous view of this story has been that its colour palette was a bit drab as a whole, but the latest Blu-ray restoration makes the colour that is there shine through. The lower caste Uxarieans have never been so bright a green, and even the world of the colonist's dome has unexpected flashes of colour in amidst the grey and tan. Briant and the creative team around him add a few nice little details - the vehicles, mining machines, viewing screens and the geodesic dome interiors - to add reality to the Doctor's first off-Earth trip in the colour era.
The story is also not as drab as I have previously felt it to be. Writer Malcolm Hulke's structure is a strong one, borrowing from the land claim subset of Western movies. There's not much in the way of nuance in the colonists versus miners plot, but this isn't a bad thing. Captain Dent and chief henchman Morgan are boo and hiss-able sneering baddies, lying, killing and intimidating their way to achieving their aims. Bernard Kay has a nice role playing the only one with a conscience. It's a neat comment from Hulke on capitalism perhaps that the Interplanetary Mining Corporation crew only has one miner amongst roughly two dozen brutal security staff. The colonists are perhaps less distinct than their opponents: the firebrand one, the earnest leader one, the plucky young girl one. The latter, played by a pre-Coronation Street Helen Worth (she plays Gail in the long-running UK soap opera) leavens the dourness somewhat; it's nice seeing her and Katy Manning in scenes together. It's a shame that Briant had his casting decision to have a woman play the sadistic Morgan vetoed by the sixth floor BBC execs. The other female colonists get killed off or written out early on, and then it's just one group of blokes having periodic shoot-outs or punch ups with another. The Master is brought in relatively late, and his superweapon subplot (teased in the first scene of episode 1) held back until later episodes to give the six-parter a chance to sustain its momentum; but, it doesn't quite manage it.
One problem is that there's too much to and fro between the colonists and the miners, with each group see-sawing in the power structure from low to high and back again, without any sense of escalation until towards the end. To power this, people have to do some idiot moves so the other side can have the whip hand again. Nobody locks their spaceship, or locks up their stash of confiscated guns; colonists trust the person who's clearly an IMC plant; Jo sets off a trip alarm that she's only just been warned about in order to make the entire climactic sequence in the underground city possible. If it weren't for that, the story would finish an episode earlier (no sarcastic comments now!). I wouldn't say, though, that there isn't enough enough here for the narrative to fill six episodes, as there are some scenes that should be here that ain't, scenes the dramatic question of the piece begs.
Other points of note: though UNIT are not part of the story, it's good to see Nicholas Courtney as the Brig cameoing in the first and final parts. It's hard not to feel for the actor as he says the line "Doctor - come back at once..." as there's an implicit "...for the sake of my career!" tacked on the end. This story, only three on from the start of the 'UNIT family' era is the beginning of its end. In subsequent seasons, trips into time and space would increase in number, and stories featuring the Brig and his men would consequently decrease. As part of the same process, Katy Manning gets to travel in the TARDIS, so moves from just being a member of UNIT to being a fully fledged travelling companion, and has her own 'It's bigger on the inside!' moment and everything. Her regular pay cheque, unlike Nick's, was assured. Delgado is his usual charming self, the model work is okay for the most part, the music's good, there are a couple of good lines. "I want to see the universe, not rule it" is a nice distillation of the difference between our hero and the Master. The title of the story may well be stupid as well as bland - the colony is on a planet in space, anything could be said to be "in space" if it's on a planet in space, The Daemons In Space, anyone? - but is nonetheless amusing if one misspells it and it's auto-corrected to "Colonoscopy In Space" as I did in a WhatsApp group chat causing - ooh - sheer minutes of hilarity. Anyway, with everything taken together, this story has lots of interest packed in, and is nowhere near the bore-fest that I assumed it to be before this most recent watch.
Connectivity:
Both stories feature a wee fellah with surprisingly strong mental powers (George in Night Terrors, and the tiny Uxariean Guardian in Colony in Space) who are at risk of killing everybody towards the denouement.
Deeper Thoughts:
Adjudicator's Report: Season 8 Blu-Ray review (but no BFI event, alas). If it weren't for the pandemic, I'd undoubtedly be writing here of a trip to London's South Bank for a BFI showing of the updated version of Terror of the Autons from this box set. If I hadn't managed to get tickets, then one of the usual group - David, or Trevor, or Alan - would have. Chris, the other person who normally attends these events alongside us, also mentioned several times before on this blog, wouldn't perhaps have needed a ticket, and might even have been interviewed on stage by Dick Fiddy or Justin Johnson. For it was the same Chris (Petts) and his partner Sally Clayton that did the CGI and compositing work that made this new version of Terror of the Autons a truly special edition. Their work is perhaps most impressive when you don't notice it. There's lots of green screen backgrounds that have been improved or replaced altogether, and expert smoothing has been done on the 'fringing' joins between the actors in the studio and the image keyed in behind them. These subtle improvements collectively have a transformative effect on the story. The more obvious new material is also great too, of course. All the sequences where the Master's plastic troll doll moves have been replaced with a CGI version that blends in seamlessly with the footage - he's never been so cute nor so sinister. The model and movement for the Nestene creature that appears at the climax was probably an even greater challenge, and what's delivered is great for the few frames it appears, getting close to what those who first read the novelisation saw in their heads (before they were disappointed several years down the line when they finally saw the bit of tinsel that appears in the show as broadcast in 1971). I don't think it's hyperbole to say that the price of the set is worth it just for this version of Terror of the Autons on its own - it's like seeing the story for the first time anew.
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| A scene from the Season 8 Blu-ray box set trailer |
The other episodes without the special edition treatment are nonetheless similarly transformed. Of all the colour seasons, season 8 is the one where the very fewest episodes survive in their original broadcast format. Only three episodes in all, parts 1 and 4 of Claws of Axos, and part 4 of The Daemons, no whole stories. As impressive as the bumper selection of special features included on the discs is, it's the restoration of the episodes that is the biggest draw here for me. As I mentioned above related to Colony In Space, but it goes for all the stories, the work done (not forgetting Mark Ayres' peerless audio work either) makes it as though a gauze has been lifted that previously was between me and the episodes. Technology will of course eventually make a fool of anyone making a statement that these are the best that they could ever be, but just as of right now I believe it is the truth. Every episode in full colour (something that's taken decades of work to achieve) with fluid movement on video and film. It's a veritable miracle, and down to the hard work of some very talented individuals. With minimal remaining issues and artefacts blocking my enjoyment, and watching the season in order as a whole, it has gone up in my estimation enormously.
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| Another scene from the Season 8 Blu-ray box set trailer |
Of those special features, a couple deserve a mention upfront. Matthew Sweet's interview with Katy Manning is more than up to the standards set by his previous interviews for the Blu-ray box sets. I call myself a Doctor Who fan, and I have read and seen dozens of interviews with Katy Manning over the years, but Katy has done so much in her life so far that dozens of interviews couldn't possible contain it all. Hence, I learned a new thing every minute of the running time. I don't know how I'd managed to miss hearing about Katy's very special celebrity childhood friend before now, for example. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't yet watched the interview, and is similarly in the dark. The other big hitter documentary is Terrance and Me, directed by Chris Chapman. This sees Frank Skinner celebrating Terrance Dicks, covering his life and his work including Doctor Who in script and novel form. You won't think before you watch it that you could get a tear in your eye seeing a group of writers talking about their favourite Doctor Who book, or two men in a fish n' chip restaurant toasting using slightly cold chips instead of drinks, or even just a simple panning shot around a working cubby hole whose every wall and surface is covered in books. But you will, trust me. Chapman provides another couple of documentaries where actors or directors revisit filming locations, and they're both as informative and entertaining, but not quite as touching as Terrance and Me. One side effect of my time in lockdown though is that watching all of these I had the same two thoughts rolling round my head. Namely: 'When exactly was this filmed?' and 'They're never two metres apart, are they? Maybe it's the lens, but they look like they are standing too close - tell someone!'
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| A frame of Frank Skinner in Chris Chapman's Terrance and Me doco |
To work through all the material will, as usual, take one about a solid week. Commentaries and special features from the DVDs are included as ever; one of these is Living with Levene, an earlier Chapman doco, where Toby Hadoke spends some days, Louis Theroux style, in the company of Sergeant Benton actor John Levene. It has to be seen to be believed. Warning: you may need to hide behind the sofa. Talking of Behind the Sofa, the ongoing feature of that name, where Doctor Who people do a Gogglebox, is present and correct with some Covid-related tweaks. Former Doctor Who cute couple Katy Manning and Stewart Bevan have to have perspex between them, but current Doctor Who cute couple Anjli Mohindra and Sacha Dhawan don't. The other watching duo, Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton, have to have a blanket each rather than share one as they usually do. Elsewhere, there are examples of trails and/or continuities for every story, though they get more difficult to source the further back before the video age the sets go, so are spottily distributed - though nonetheless interesting - here. There's location and studio footage, linked archive material (a fascinating BBC Television Centre studio tour of the period, and a documentary on an archaeological dig that partially inspired The Daemons). My favourite of the archive extras is a convention recording from 1991 of Jon Pertwee doing an Ask Me Anything session; Jon's always a good interviewee, and this covered a lot that I didn't already know.
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| The first two of the standard edition Blu-ray box sets to be released later this year |
My doing any review of these sets seemed pointless until recently, as by the time I'd have written it, the limited edition set would always have sold out. To be honest, that's been true of anyone reviewing or even previewing the sets before now, such is the apparent disparity between demand and supply. There have been reportedly people who pre-ordered the last couple of sets that have been disappointed. There's no chance seemingly of a copy being available after the release date. That's changing, though. The BBC have decided to re-release the sets as standard editions with less deluxe packaging. This has been a long time coming, and is a good move, as ebay scalpers were the only people who can have been happy about the situation as it was. The first couple of seasons originally released are going to be available again in the next couple of months. So, if you haven't got a copy of the Season 8 set, and you liked the sound of it from my review, then just remember that until 2024, and you can snap up a copy. Can't say fairer that that. I'm really performing a public service here, aren't I? Aren't I?!!
In Summary:
Not perfect, but definitely more fun than a colonoscopy in space.
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