Enlightenment

Chapter the 266th, in which there's a chase during a race in space to a place of utmost grace. And the video picture is interlaced... (that's enough - Ed).

Plot:

The Doctor's new travelling companion Turlough has done a deal with the Black Guardian, agreeing to kill the Doctor, but can't go through with it. The White Guardian appears in the TARDIS, draining its power and dimming the lights to project himself, warning the Time Lord of impending danger: someone must be prevented from winning a race. The TARDIS arrives below decks in what appears to be an Edwardian racing yacht, but it's really a space ship with sails to catch solar winds. Many vessels styled after different Earth historical periods are in competition for the ultimate prize: Enlightenment. The officers of each are Eternals, beings that live outside time and cannot ever die, who use humans (or Ephemerals as they call them) for entertainment, and have brought groups of sailors from various times to crew their ships. The TARDIS team are on the Shadow, captained by the mysterious Striker; First Mate Marriner takes a shine to Tegan. The Black Guardian telepathically taunts Turlough that he is abandoning him to a fate of perpetual confinement on the ship, so Turlough jumps overboard. He is picked up by the Buccaneer, a pirate ship captained by the Eternal Captain Wrack. Wrack appears to be destroying other ships to gain advantage, by harnessing the Black Guardian's powers and focusing them on jewels she has tricked the other Captains into receiving as a gift. Striker is too wily to accept anything from her, though, so - at a party on the Buccaneer that everyone is invited to - Wrack hypnotises Tegan, and hides a jewel in the tiara she's wearing.

The others return to the Shadow without Turlough, who's taking his chances with Wrack. The Doctor manages to get the jewel overboard before it destroys the ship. Wrack has all the other Captains walk the plank, so the race is between the Shadow and the Buccaneer. The wind dies and the Shadow is becalmed, but the Buccaneer's sails are better. The Doctor goes back in the TARDIS to help Turlough, and from the Shadow Tegan sees two people ejected from the pirate ship. It is Captain Wrack and her First Mate Mansell that have been thrown overboard, though, and the Doctor and Turlough bring the Buccaneer over the finishing line. The Black and White Guardians are waiting for them. Striker, Marriner and Tegan come over to congratulate the winners. The Guardians send the Eternals back to their own dimension and offer Enlightenment to the Doctor, but he turns it down as not something he - or anyone else - is ready for. Turlough is offered part of Enlightenment, but the Black Guardian reminds him that he still owes a debt of the Doctor's life. Turlough has to choose, and gives the Black Guardian the portion of Enlightenment, which appears to burn the Black Guardian up. The Doctor explains that Enlightenment wasn't the glowing diamond thing they were presented with but was actually the friends they made along the way, or something.

Context:

Blogging this story, I have completed the 20th anniversary season of Doctor Who from 1983, 40 years on during the 60th anniversary year for the show. It's a shame that the - long rumoured - Blu-ray box set of this run has not been announced (at least at time of writing); I have a feeling it won't be too long before it comes out, and Enlightenment could well have been the story chosen for a BFI screening to tie-in. It would have been nice, assuming I would have been able to get a ticket, to cover that as part of any blog post. Unfortunately, the Blu-ray release schedule can't keep pace with my blogging frequency. Season 20 is the tenth now completed for the blog (following seasons 3, 8, 14, 15, 17, 23 and 25, and new series 6 and 13). If I keep up my three posts a month average, it's going to become more and more common to close these gaps, until I catch up with currently broadcast stories (some time in 2024, depending on when Ncuti Gatwa's first season airs). Anyway, I watched from the DVD as the best quality version available, an episode a night across a few days in May 2023. I was accompanied by the Better Half, who had no memory of watching these episodes since she first saw them 40 years ago. She expressed sororal admiration at Janet Fielding's ability to keep a boob tube up ("'Cos that's a hard thing to do if you haven't got much of a bust"), and moaned a lot about Peter Davison's hair being too long. She is a big All Creatures Great and Small fan (both original and the new Channel 5 version) and was moaning that Tristan's hair was too long in the 1983 ACGAS Christmas Special, which I told her was probably because Davison appeared in that between Doctor Who seasons and therefore couldn't get it cut. She has another thing to blame Doctor Who for now.   

First Time Round:

I watched this when it first went out in early March 1983, when I was just a callow schoolboy. I can only remember one thing about that first watch, and - sorry to raise the ick factor - but it was my going through another stage of my pre-pubescent sexual awakening upon watching Janet Fielding in her Edwardian decolletage be hypnotised by Lynda Baron as Captain Wrack. Enlightenment has more mature emotional and psychosexual subtexts than the average Doctor Who story, and the 10-year old me definitely caught something of that at some level of my psyche / hormones. Curiously, it wasn't so rare for stories shown around this time featuring Janet Fielding; earlier in the season was Snakedance, the sequel to the previous year's Kinda (watching which started the aforementioned pre-pubescent sexual awakening in the first place).

Reaction:

Doctor Who Magazine has structured its 60th anniversary poll of all broadcast stories differently to previous polls it has run over the years, perhaps to avoid upsetting Colin Baker again (see the Deeper Thoughts section of this early blog post for more details). This means that each Doctor will have their top three most voted for stories go into another poll, through which the overall final order of that second round subset will be chosen. There's still a chance that a Colin Baker story could come last of those, of course, but it won't be The Twin Dilemma this time at least (though that one did come last out of Colin's stories, as it always does, as confirmed in the most recent DWM at time of writing). As usual, I am avoiding any pressure of picking my top three by not entering the poll at all; if I were choosing, though, I'd coincidentally probably pick the last three I had left to blog at this point, with Kinda and The Caves of Androzani as well as Enlightenment getting my top marks. Randomness has saved my best for last, but my taste does not quite accord with everyone else's. Caves is a shoo-in, it's been in the top five of all Who stories in every one of the polls run to date, including nabbing the coveted number one spot in 2009. It was Peter Davison's top story in the first round of this latest poll as expected. My other two, though, didn't make it to the final. More action-oriented stories Earthshock and The Five Doctors - predictably - completed the top three instead (this is consistent with all the previous polls over the years). The more thoughtful, lyrical stories like Enlightenment are lower down, even though, in my humble, they are the ones that Doctor Who, and in particular this period of the show, do most well.

Every aspect of Enlightenment is effective at worst, superlative at best. From the first scene, one aspect is clearly better than normal, particularly for this period of the show, and that's the lighting. Watching the atmospheric TARDIS scenes at the beginning makes one wonder (as Davison himself says on one of the DVD extras) why they can't light the set like that every time. It's not just there, though; the scenes in the Eternals' ships are lit well in Television Centre, as are the top deck scenes filmed at Ealing. The nature of the race plot, involving groups of Eternals cosplaying from various periods of Earth history, means various creatives on the crew can utilise their skill and the stored resources of the BBC to produce great costumes and sets. This is particularly evident in the party scenes in part three that bring all the various ships' inhabitants together. The spacesuits, reminiscent of those in 2001 A Space Odyssey, are good too, it's not just the period stuff that's done well. Make-up and hair is also top class (Tegan does look stunning in her Edwardian party outfit and wig). Sailing craft in space is a big ask of model-work, but again the people behind the scenes come through. The reveal at the end of part one cliffhanger of multiple vessels hanging in space is a triumph of incongruous imagination, and one of the best in the series' history. Effects work throughout is strong, with only a couple of exceptions (but every Doctor Who story has some flaws, and here they are tiny); sound design and music are exquisite (more on the music in the Deeper Thoughts section below).

None of this would work without a good script and good performances. Enlightenment automatically has potential for a unique viewpoint as it is both written by a woman, and directed by a (different) woman. This would be the only time in the 26 years of the classic series such a thing happened, and it's only happened a couple of times since, and those very recently. Neither of those females are relying on any novelty, though, both work incredibly hard and deliver the goods. Director Fiona Cumming is a perfect match for this more lyrical story (having helmed stories like Castrovalva and Snakedance before this). She puts together one of the best ensemble casts Who has had, even though she had to react to some last minute changes when shooting dates were altered. I think that was a piece of luck; as good as Peter Sallis, originally cast as Striker, would have no doubt been, the series would have been deprived of what I think is one of the best performances of the classic era, Keith Barron's restrained but intense turn as the captain of the Shadow. At the time, I knew him only as a comic actor from a sit-com, so I was blown away, and am every time I watch this story again. Even something like raising a glass of wine to his lips is imbued with suppressed, inscrutable energy. The other recast role was Leee John, at the time known only as a pop singer in the band Imagination, as the baddie's sidekick Mansell. The performances of him and Lynda Baron - as pirate queen Wrack - come in for criticism, but I think they are both pitched perfectly. They are both playing characters who are playing characters, and gleefully.

The regulars all get served well. Davison gets a lot of good scenes facing off against the amoral Striker in righteous dudgeon, with the dialogue between them crackling ("Living minds are contaminated with crude emotions, organic, irrational, creative, entertaining" ... "A Lord of Time - are there lords in such a small domain?" etc. etc.) This is probably Turlough's best material, still struggling between good and bad choices, up to the end when he sits between a good and bad angel, almost literally, and finally decides which side he's on. Even a minor subplot like his betrayal of Tony Caunter's teetotal sailor Jackson is written and performed seriously, just one of many magical moments with which the story is blessed. The scene when Mark Strickson is thrown to the floor in front of Baron's Wrack for the first time, gets to his knees and looks up, with Cumming choosing low and high POV shots, is probably as close as Doctor Who could go to highlighting a sub-dom sexual subtext - it's almost like something out of a Frankie Goes to Hollywood video. The love subplot between Christopher Brown's Marriner and Tegan is sensitively handled but emotionally rich, and gives Janet Fielding her best scenes in any show that's not a Mara story. Barbara Clegg's complex and layered scripts contain many such resonances. The Eternals using the Ephemerals could be seen as a comment on gender (Marriner's unwanted advances ultimately being rejected by Tegan as he's only interested in himself) or class (the rich officer class exploiting the toil of those below decks to make them rich) or just as an interesting science-fiction concept in and of themselves.

I've barely scratched the surface of all the wonderful elements in this story. Unlike Earthshock or The Five Doctors, conflict is mostly at an interpersonal level; there's not much running around and zapping, and any monstrousness is not overt. Fans may have been disappointed that the big confrontation between the Black and White Guardians (something teased for five years but not seen on screen before Enlightenment) comes down to two men sitting on chairs, while the action is all internal, one person's choice. I think this is perfect, though, and much more effective than any attempt at pyrotechnics might have been. There's wonderful creepiness too, in scenes of space-suited Edwardian sailors queueing up for grog, or Marriner's hands and face appearing on the TARDIS scanner screen as he climbs up the outside of the TARDIS and then looks inside, sensing Tegan for the first time, with a sick smile on his face. Maybe this isn't traditional enough for some fans, but it obviously speaks to a good few including me: the story came fifth in the recent poll (Kinda was fourth); not too shabby.

Connectivity:

Both Enlightenment and The Idiot's Lantern feature female villains beginning with W (Wrack and Wire, The) and references to sailors (Rose's Mum's ex with incorrect flag advice in the Tennant story and a full ship's complement in Enlightenment). 

Deeper Thoughts:

Malcolm Clarke and the Musical Movements. The late, great Barry Letts was someone with the best claim to being a Doctor Who expert in its classic era, having performed pretty much every key role (directing before and after his time as producer, writing stories during that time and after, and finally returning to briefly be the executive producer at the beginning of the 1980s, a couple of years before Enlightenment was made). He also lived long enough to see the programme come back (indeed, was an honoured guest at the 2005 press screening of relaunch episode Rose) and share his wisdom in many interviews for DVD range releases. I barely have ever had the temerity to disagree with him on any view about the programme, as he's almost certainly going to turn out to be right. There have been a couple of times, though, that I've been convinced that he's wrong. One of these is in his opinions about the incidental music for The Sea Devils by Malcolm Clarke. At the time that music was first recorded, Barry Letts decided he didn't like it, and remained vocal about this thereafter. Having just finished working through all the extras from the Blu-ray box set of the season containing The Sea Devils, I heard him reiterate that he hated it on camera in a making-of documentary, and I heard him reiterate that he hated it on audio during commentaries. As ever, I heard all this thinking "How can he say this, when The Sea Devils has the best score of any classic Who story?!' It's innovative, exciting and in keeping with the action - Clarke somehow makes the electronically produced noises he creates supremely nautical.

While criticising The Sea Devils music, Letts praises Tristram Cary's just as experimental (but a bit more tasteful and therefore boring) score for the following story The Mutants. I hope this was Letts' honest reaction to the material and not him being blinded by status. Cary was a famous composer, but Letts sniffily refers to Clarke at one point essentially as a sound designer for the Radiophonic Workshop with ideas above his station. Of course, most of those working at the Workshop were composers too, and Clarke went on to score a good few Doctor Who stories, including Enlightenment. The cue used for the party sequences on Wrack's ship, for example, is beautiful, and a hell of an earworm. I defy anyone to say it's not the work of a real composer. His 1980s work was less divisive than his first score for the series, but it's fair to say that it was still quite divisive. Some might feel that there's not much point in creating something if it's not challenging; others might think that incidental music isn't the place for anything that stands out too much. I am sympathetic with the latter view, but this is Doctor Who we're talking about. It has always innovated in every aspect, particularly sonically, from the very first moments of the very first episode, and the Radiophonic Workshop was always a big part of that. Special sound was always within their remit, and even without their direct involvement the incidentals were often electronic and experimental (like Cary's score for the second ever story, The Daleks).

Generally, there are phases in the music used for periods of Doctor Who's life, where the sound is distinctive of that era. The 1960s splits into three for me, but as more experimentation was going on from one story to the next, it is not so clearly delineated. At the start of the show's life there was a tendency towards using new original scores, anywhere on the axis between traditional and experimental. Towards the end of the William Hartnell period, stock music becomes more prevalent, with clever use of repeating motifs (like the Space Adventure track that underscored the early stories of the Cybermen, becoming their de facto theme tune). Finally, as the 1960s progressed towards the end of Patrick Troughton's time in the title role, there's a period where the phenomenon of no music at all was tried. Maybe budgeting was more challenging, but even without music, there's usually something interesting to hear. Brian Hodgson's background soundscapes for stories like The Krotons can lay claim to be the Workshop's first incidentals, a few years before Malcolm Clarke's undersea opus. Into the 1970s, there's another brief period of experimentation, including The Sea Devils, before it rapidly becomes standard for stories to have traditional scores, almost always composed by Dudley Simpson. This is how things stayed for the rest of the decade. Producer for the 1980s John Nathan-Turner went a different way, giving Simpson the push, and engaging composers wholesale from the Workshop.

Clarke scored six stories in this period, alongside other composers like Peter Howell, Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb, and others. He contributes the final workshop Doctor Who score in 1986, when the final classic series musical movement is already underway. Individual freelance composers working on their own synthesisers are responsible for the music of the final four years of classic Who, technology having caught up to make this possible. In the 21st century, there's been much less movement. Apart from Segun Akinola's scoring of Jodie Whittaker's episodes, every story's music has been written by one person, Murray Gold. The level of experimentation has only been whatever Gold brought to each new score. Though he's challenged himself to keep things fresh, it does seem a shame that Gold is now coming back, seemingly for every episode henceforth. It might have been nicer to try something new, and it does seem a bit backward looking. Still, the Russell T Davies writing the stories will be a different man than the one that wrote his last Who story in 2009; so, perhaps we'll see an all-new Gold to the one that last produced music for the show in 2017. Time will tell, as it always does. 

In Summary:

It's better than Earthshock and The Five Doctors put together; so there!