More than 30 Years in the TARDIS

Chapter the 315th, which celebrates more than 30 years of More than 30 Years in the TARDIS.

Plot:

A young boy playing on the streets of London sees shop window dummies come to life, a web-strewn newspaper seller, and a post box that turns into a Dalek. Or maybe it's just in his imagination as he watches Doctor Who from behind the sofa. The Doctor (or Jon Pertwee) rides in the Whomobile again and is surrounded by dinosaurs that then disappear back in time. Susan (or Carole Ann Ford) is chased by Daleks in Westminster; she leaves some behind by climbing up some steps, but a Dalek hover scout pursues, so she escapes in the TARDIS. Cybermen patrol around St. Paul's Cathedral, following the Doctor and Peri (or Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant). Our heroes give the metal meanies the slip, but then a Cybermat attacks them. The Doctor and Ace (or Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred) are chased by Haemovores who turn out just to be actors in costumes. Sarah Jane (or Lis Sladen) is observed by a Sontaran entering a house. She watches TV alongside the young boy. Robomen and Daleks as they looked in the 1960s movies are observed by the movie Susan (or Roberta Tovey). The Brigadier (or Nicholas Courtney) visits the National Army Museum, but is attacked by Autons. He escapes in his chauffeured car, but the driver is also an Auton. The boy walks into the TARDIS and sees Susan, but then a Dalek appears in the control room. The boy, now back on the sofa with Sarah Jane, is grabbed by her when she is taken over by the Sontaran, with her eyes glowing green. Jamie and Victoria (or Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling) find themselves on Skaro surrounded by the Emperor Dalek and dozens of his underlings. In between all this, people are interviewed about the history and making of Doctor Who's first thirty years, and lots of clips are shown from Who and other shows.

Context:

This seemed like an apt one to watch for Doctor Who's anniversary on Saturday 23rd November 2024, which was not that far from the 30th anniversary of this cut of the documentary's release on VHS. But how would it stand up to a grilling from the standard canon questions I ask about my occasional off-piste viewings? Does it star the Doctor? Yes, I think there are moments where Jon Pertwee is appearing as the Doctor rather than himself, and there are sequences with Autons and Daleks, etc. Does it have visuals? Absolutely. Was it released as an official Doctor Who or official spin-off story (i.e. its not an unofficial fan-made proposition)? Yes. Is there a dramatic context to the story (i.e. it's not just a skit)? Hmm... the dramatic sequences aren't played for laughs, so I wouldn't say it's a skit, but obviously the main point is documentary rather than drama - I'm giving it a free pass. Was it released with the intention of being the main attraction for audience engagement (i.e. it's not just an extra on a DVD or Blu-ray)? Yes. Have I already covered it in passing with another connected story? No. The assessment being successfully done, I watched from the DVD, on my own - it was a bit too niche a prospect to try to interest the family in - musing a little as I did why it has not been made available on the BBC iplayer. It is probably prohibitive rights issues for all the many non-Who clips featured.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. Aside from the occasional sideways step into spin-offs or oddities like More than 30 Years in the TARDIS, I have completed five Doctors' eras and 30 out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 2, 4, 5-7, 9-11, and 13).

First Time Round:

I watched the original version of the documentary live as it went out on BBC1 in the UK on Monday the 29th November 1993. The celebrations for Doctor Who's 30th anniversary were many that year. The documentary was shown halfway through a weekly repeat of Planet of the Daleks: interrupted the previous Friday by Children in Need, it would resume four days after the documentary was shown. The Children in Need telethon featured the first part of Doctor Who skit Dimensions in Time, with the second part shown the following evening on Noel's House Party, a shiny-floored primetime entertainment show of the time. I was in my third year student house in Durham for all of these; we had a Radio Rentals big screen TV (my housemates and I all chipped in at the start of the year for the hire costs) connected to someone's toploader VCR brought from home on which I recorded the documentary onto a VHS tape. I don't still have the tape; this is a shame, as - unless I'm missing it - I can't find the original version as transmitted that Monday anywhere on any online video sharing sites. I am much more familiar with the extended version that is the subject of this blog post - it was released on VHS almost a year later, and that's when the 'More than' was prepended to the title. I bought and watched it, at home in Worthing by that time as I'd graduated, on or soon after its release date on 7th November 1994. I can't remember all of the differences between the two. I don't think the TV version had the section interviewing Roberta Tovey on her own about the 1960s Doctor Who films, nor the sequence where Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling stumbled across the Emperor Dalek. The TV version had a scientist explaining how time travel might be possible which was excised for the VHS. I'm sure there were many other differences too, as it was over a half hour longer than on TV.

Reaction:

When Doctor Who videos started coming out regularly in the early 1990s, they weren't the only tapes the BBC were releasing. For a good few years it was boom time, with lots of different television science fiction and fantasy titles coming out. The 1981 TV adaptation of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was one of those titles, released on two tapes in 1992. Before the episodes on them played, each tape had a brief message asking the purchaser to register their interest (maybe by writing to a PO box, or possibly phoning a number, I don't have the tapes any longer to check) in the purchase of a potential behind the scenes making-of documentary that might be made available. Enough people must have responded, and that indirectly led to the creation of this Doctor Who documentary. Kevin Jon Davies directed The Making of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and it was released on its own VHS early in 1993. Having done this, Davies was perfectly placed to make a similar documentary for Doctor Who later in the year. The Hitch Hiker doco used a framing device which featured Simon Jones playing both himself and Arthur Dent in newly staged scenes within the fictional universe of the show; More than 30 Years in the TARDIS did the same with multiple cast members. Interview material from the same session with Douglas Adams appears in both pieces (Adams was a script editor on Who, as well as creator of Hitch Hiker, of course). I have looked around online and can't find any absolute confirmation whether the original 30 Years documentary was initially commissioned for BBC TV, or for BBC Video as his previous effort was. Whether it was as an extension of the original remit, or the culmination of the original aim, or indeed a bit of both, a re-cut documentary expanded with additional material not shown on TV was released on VHS towards the end of 1994.

There's a lot more of Doctor Who than The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so Davies has more of a challenge to give every area of Who sufficient coverage in a coherent fashion. He finds a good structure to achieve this. The documentary is in three sections: the Doctor and the Daleks, Monsters and Companions, and Laughter and Tears Behind the Scenes. Sections end with a cliffhanger resolved in the next section, and in between sections are Who-related adverts for Walls Sky Ray ice lollies and Prime Computers. The interviewees are a pretty comprehensive selection; there's nobody from behind the scenes of Patrick Troughton's time, but there were few of those people still living in 1993. Peter Davison is conspicuous by his absence; probably he was too busy rather than wanting to distance himself from the role. Tom Baker is only represented by archive material. All the expected topics are covered: the genesis of the show, Daleks and other monsters, the companions and sexism, special and visual effects, the right level of frightening for kids, the use of humour, the show's eventual cancellation and its afterlife in novels, comics and videos. Davies also manages to explore some of the less well-known nooks and crannies of Who history. The 1960s Dalek movies are given generous coverage (Davies would create another VHS documentary dedicated to these two movies soon after More Than 30 Years). In the fake credits bits in between the sections, he sneaks in test footage for the series' different title sequences. There's un-transmitted sequences from stories included, a couple of Doctor Who novelty songs accompanying clip montages, and lots of Doctor Who being covered on other shows (Blue Peter, Crackerjack, Nationwide, Pebble Mill, and more).

There are loads of clips from Doctor Who, of course, but I think many fans including myself were getting a bit blasé about such glimpses of old Who by then. The aforementioned boom time of VHS had convinced us that all of Doctor Who would be available to own before too long, but - as will be discussed in the Deeper Thoughts section below - behind the scenes documentaries were more rare. Therefore, curios like the adverts and the excerpts of studio footage were more enticing. The newly staged scenes and recreations (Daleks on Westminster Bridge, Draconians and Ogrons on the South Bank, Cybermen at St Paul's) were as close to new Doctor Who as fans were going to get at the time, and so were received with enthusiasm. It was also gratifying, though this might seem strange to someone who wasn't around at the time, that commentators were on screen being interviewed as self-proclaimed Doctor Who fans. Such was fandom's perceived lack of wider affection for their favourite show, that getting Mike Gatting, Toyah Wilcox, Lowri Turner and Ken Livingstone involved seemed like a boon. I have never thought of Cybermen or Jon Pertwee in the same way since hearing Wilcox and Turner rhapsody about how sexy both were. Some of my favourite moments from the documentary: seeing William Hartnell's family photographs courtesy of his granddaughter Jessica Carney; a great live telly moment where a Doctor Who competition on Good Morning with Anne and Nick goes a bit wrong; discussions on a new younger generation of fans featuring Gerry Anderson with his son Jamie, and Lis Sladen with her daughter Sadie Miller. The parents are sadly no longer with us, but both the youngsters now grown up have ongoing roles in the world of Doctor Who audio.

There are loads more goodies. The effects sequence where a character opens the police box doors and enters the TARDIS control room in one shot is marvellous, and was the first time this had ever been done. Mary Whitehouse, an activist who lobbied for her own self-defined standards to be applied to television, is - in my opinion, of course - patronising and wrong about violence in Doctor Who in her interview, but Davies mischievously cuts from her to John Nathan-Turner saying he was happy whenever Whitehouse complained about the show as it added 2 million to the viewing figures. Douglas Adams comes over as the cleverest person involved in the documentary when talking about how humour and drama should best work together. This is unsurprising for two reasons; first, Davies was a long-time collaborator with Adams and so he was bound to show him in a good light; second and more importantly, Douglas Adams was the cleverest person involved in the documentary. There's a wonderful moment towards the end where Alan Yentob, who at the time was Controller of BBC1, is asked about ongoing discussions about Doctor Who's future (that would lead to the Paul McGann TV movie three years later) and quotes Michael Dobbs' Francis Urquhart "You might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment". This came at the very end of the documentary in its initial form as broadcast on TV, and my only criticism of More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS is that in the recut it is followed by two scenes; I would have kept the initial ending and moved those other bits up. All in all, though, watching this documentary was a great way to celebrate Doctor Who's 61st anniversary.

Connectivity:

If I counted up correctly, there are three clips of The Seeds of Doom in the documentary; so, both the Tom Baker story and More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS clips feature the Krynoid.

Deeper Thoughts:

The Doctor's Documentaries. I have collected all the DVD releases of Doctor Who stories and all the Blu-ray releases so far. Each disc of this collection is replete with myriad extras including many a documentary, and I've diligently watched them all. As such, it's hard now for me to cast my mind back and realise that for many years of my fandom a Doctor Who documentary was a rare and precious thing. And before that it was an impossibility. For the whole of the 1980s up to the end of the original run (I started watching in 1981 and continued all the way through the classic series in that decade), I never saw a single one as there wasn't really one to see. There had been only one significant documentary made for the UK by that point. This was Whose Doctor Who, a Melvyn Bragg presented 60-minute long episode of the BBC's Lively Arts strand from 1977 (a few sequences from it were reused in More than 30 Years in the TARDIS). I hadn't been a Doctor Who fan in 1977; even if I had, as I was but four years of age I probably would not have been interested in something about Doctor Who that wasn't Doctor Who itself. Shows like that didn't get archive repeat showings on TV, and in the 1980s the Doctor Who VHS range was only just releasing Doctor Who episodes, with no indication that it would ever release documentaries too. The first time I got to see Whose Doctor Who was when it was released as an extra on The Talons of Weng-Chiang DVD in 2003. I didn't feel I was missing out too much, because there was a Doctor Who magazine every month covering the making of the show in some detail, and occasionally there was a brief feature on a kid's TV show (Mat Irvine talking about effects on Saturday morning TV, or a behind the scenes view on a BBC programme like Take Two, as a couple of examples). There was definitely a gap in the market, though, for something more long form.

Whose Doctor Who Title Card

So, who had the nous to spot that gap, and make the first Doctor Who documentary I ever saw? It pains me a little to say it, because the blog has been a bit critical at times of his work creating them, but it was John Nathan-Turner and it was the Years tapes. Nathan-Turner was producer of Doctor Who throughout the 1980s, and after that had become a consultant for BBC Who product ranges. By 1991, VHS tapes ere being released more regularly than in the 1980s, and there was room to do something different. As a way to package up orphaned 1960s episodes where the rest of the story was not present in the archives, Nathan-Turner successfully pitched the idea of Years tapes: documentaries framing the included episodes and clips. In June of that year, the first two (The Hartnell Years and The Troughton Years) were released. This was ahead of its time thinking from the former producer; while working on the range, as well as creating new documentaries, he made expanded versions of stories incorporating material cut for time, and audio versions of missing stories with narration. In The Tom Baker Years, needing a new idea as Baker's era existed in full with no orphaned episodes, Nathan-Turner created the in-vision commentary, many years before DVD existed, with Tom Baker talking through and reacting to various clips from his stories. All these ideas would become standard much later, after his pioneering but embryonic attempts. A key problem was that there was minimal budget to realise any of these, and that tended to show. I wasn't as wowed as I should have been on watching my first ever long form Who documentary, because it just involved one actor (Sylvester McCoy in the case of The Hartnell Years) speaking brief links to camera. I also would have preferred to watch a full story (and there were loads still to be released) rather than odd episodes, so the main draw between the links wasn't engaging me either.

McCoy doing a link for The Hartnell Years

In January 1992, I saw my first documentary not created by John Nathan-Turner, Resistance is Useless, a 30 minute clip show with a framing device even cheaper than Nathan-Turner's (just an actor's voiceover accompanying a static prop giving us what was captioned as the 'Thoughts of an Anorak'). It was shown to herald the start of a BBC2 season of archive repeats that started immediately afterwards. Though it was great to see the clips, and interesting to learn some facts about the show, this still wasn't a full, proper documentary. That came the following year, also courtesy of the VHS range. As an extra on the tape of Silver Nemesis, a documentary The Making of Doctor Who made by a New Jersey public broadcast network on the making of the story was included. This was the full package, including interviews with cast and crew and behind the scenes footage of rehearsal and production of the 25th anniversary story. One could argue that the BBC shouldn't have needed programme makers from the US to show it how to make a Making Of, but I was very excited by this addition no matter who made it (more than I was by Silver Nemesis, if I'm honest). The documentary remained unreleased on shiny disc for many years, but finally was included on the season 25 Blu-ray box set released in October 2024 (I've got the set, and the US doco is every bit as comprehensive and fun as I remembered). Later in 1993, 30 Years in the TARDIS became the definitive retrospective documentary (particularly in the extended VHS version). The 1996 TV movie had Electronic Press Kit (EPK) material shot during its making, as was becoming more and more common.

The Silver Nemesis VHS came with The Making of Doctor Who

A few years on and DVD arrived, its additional capacity allowing for - and making consumers demand - more content accompanying the main feature. There was an explosion of Doctor Who documentaries as a result. By the time new Doctor Who launched on screens - and shiny discs - in 2005, it would have seemed more odd for its production to go unrecorded than not, and duly a sister show Doctor Who Confidential (later called Doctor Who Unleashed, but essentially the same show) was created. It would have an episode for each story, covering the behind the scenes process of its making. Some of this material would also make it on to the home video box set releases. In 2022, an authored documentary was created called Doctor Who Am I, showcasing Matthew Jacobs - writer of the aforementioned 1996 TV movie - and his engagement with mass fandom. This achieved the rare feat of a brief theatrical run in UK cinemas. Documentaries about the Doctor have come a long way since those early forays, and any child starting to watch Doctor Who now will likely have a much better first documentary experience than I did. Nonetheless, a debt is owed to those that pioneered such work, including JNT.

In Summary:

Docu-tastic!

The Seeds of Doom

Chapter the 314th, where confidence is a preference for the habitual collector of what is known as ... plant life!

Plot:

A three-man scientific team in Antarctica discover a large, green plant pod in the ice. They send word to the World Ecology Bureau, who bring in UNIT as the pod's presence is unexplainable. The Doctor and Sarah travel to the scientists' base. Not heeding the Doctor's warning not to touch the pod, the scientists examine it, and one of them is attacked by a shoot that whips out of it. He starts to go green and transform into a plant. Meanwhile, a civil servant from the Bureau, Dunbar, makes some money selling information about the pod to a millionaire plant enthusiast Harrison Chase. Harrison sends his Head of Security, a mercenary called Scorby, and nervy pet scientist Keeler off to Antarctica to fetch the pod. The Doctor knows all about the pod, and knows that there will be a second one buried in the snow, duly uncovering it. It is a Krynoid, a carnivorous alien plant creature that will kill everyone on Earth if it isn't stopped. The scientist transforming into a Krynoid goes on the rampage. Scorby and Keeler steal the other pod, escaping after setting a bomb on a timer. It blows up the base, destroying the Krynoid. Luckily, the Doctor and Sarah survive. They are picked up by a rescue team and return to the UK. They trace the second pod to Harrison Chase's estate and sneak in to the house. Sarah is captured, and Chase intends her to be the second victim of the Krynoid. The Doctor rescues her, and Keeler is instead the one attacked.

Keeler begins to transform, and the insane Chase - desperate to see what sort of plant he will grow into - imprisons him in a cottage in the grounds and has him fed raw meat. Dunbar, trying to make amends, enters Chase's estate to confront him. He is killed by the escaped Krynoid, which has now grown bigger than a human. The Doctor, Sarah and Scorby are trapped in the cottage with the Krynoid outside, now grown almost as big as the cottage. The Doctor devises a plan, and escapes to return with reinforcements. Scorby and Sarah hide in the main house. The Krynoid can now control nearby plant life; vines and ivy smash through the windows of the house. Chase has somehow developed a mental link with the Krynoid and wants it to succeed. The Doctor returns with UNIT troops who use weedkiller sprays to keep the plants at bay. Scorby makes a break for it, but plants drag him to his death in a pond in the grounds. Chase tries to kill the Doctor by putting him in his industrial-size compost maker, but ends up falling in and getting minced himself. UNIT contact the RAF who blow up the Krynoid (now the size of Chase's manor). The Doctor takes Sarah on a holiday in the TARDIS, but they end up back in Antarctica again.

Context:

Watched from the DVD with the individual episodes spread out a little bit (I watched one every other day, approx.) during late October and early November 2024. People from the household would drift in and out during my viewings, but nobody sat down and watched the story with me. The Better Half was in the room, if not actually fully watching, for a couple of the episodes. She commented at one point that Tony Beckley's velvety villainous performance as Harrison Chase - one of my all-time favourite turns in classic Who - was, quote "A bit like Dick Dastardly". I thought this was a mightily unfair assessment, but after that there were a couple of scenes where Chase rants about how he's "surrounded by idiots", so maybe there's a little truth in it. As it turned out, I made a good choice to watch from the DVD. Had I viewed the story on the BBC iplayer, the story would have disappeared halfway through my watch. Both The Seeds of Doom and Terror of the Zygons were taken down from the streaming platform on the 1st November 2024, a year after being made available as part of the wider 'Whoniverse' section. There are two things unique about those two stories in the Doctor Who canon - they're the only ones written by Robert Banks Stewart, and the only two scored by Geoffrey Burgon. Presumably an agreement with the estates of one of those gentlemen (most likely Stewart) ran out after a year.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. This marks the completion of another Doctor's televisual era, and not just any Doctor. Completing every one of the stories starring Tom Baker, the longest-running Doctor ever having been in the role for seven years, was a big milestone. I'll go into more detail to mark this in the Deeper Thoughts section below. Tom is the fifth Doctor completed so far (the seventh, eighth, eleventh and fourteenth Doctors having been completed before Baker). This post also marks the completion of another season, the 30th out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 2, 4, 5-7, 9-11, and 13).

First Time Round:

The obsessive detailing of every aspect of Doctor Who on the internet helps me to precisely date when I first watched particular stories. It works only if the first time I watched a story is when it was broadcast or repeated or released on a home video medium (the dates of which are freely available online for every story); there are a few, though, that are more difficult to pin down exactly because I first encountered them on a pirated video tape, the sort that was lent out or exchanged between fans in the 1980s and 90s. The Seeds of Doom was one of these: I know that my first glimpse of the story was on the Tom Baker Years clip compendium released on VHS in September 1992 (I was a bit bemused as to what was going on when watching a clip of various characters carrying pot plants from one place to another). So it was sometime after that but before the sell-through VHS release in August 1994. In that period, the only person who would have provided me stories that hadn't been officially released yet was fan friend David (mentioned many times before on this blog). I'd met David at university, but he was a few years ahead of me, and in 1992 had graduated. He did come to visit sometimes, though, so my guess is on one of those visits he brought a tape with him for us to watch. It was most likely early 1993 (I remember that Doctor Who was being repeated on BBC2 when he came back up to Durham in my second year). The reason why I'm particularly interested is that, given all the evidence above, I first watched The Seeds of Doom in my early 20s, but the one thing I can remember very clearly about that first watch is that the story creeped me out. I thought I was beyond being scared of  Doctor Who by that age, but The Seeds of Doom still had the power to horrify.

Reaction:

Just as I started to write up my reaction to The Seeds of Doom, the final story I had to blog of the early and popular Tom Baker era produced by Philip Hinchcliffe and script-edited by Robert Holmes, the latest Doctor Who Magazine (issue 610) was sent out to subscribers and dropped through my letter box. It was momentarily disconcerting to flick through the magazine and find this era and in particular Hinchcliffe himself was being covered in unprecedented detail, taking up about a third of the magazine. I thought for a terrible moment that he'd died, but happily this was not the case. It seems that his reaching his 80th birthday was the prompt for an in-depth and lengthy interview on his years working on the programme. Because he is so ubiquitously lauded by fandom, I probably react against that and tend to underestimate Hinchcliffe's input into the stories of his that I've covered here over the years. Undoubtedly he made a huge contribution to The Seeds of Doom. The most obvious sign of this is that the story's roots are showing; as with many a story that he and Holmes elicited from writers for Who, there is an obvious monster movie inspiration, or inspirations plural in this case: the first two-episode section set in Antarctica steals like a genius from the 1951 film The Thing From Another World. The second four-part section is a mash-up of Quatermass and The Day of the Triffids. That innovative way of structuring a six-part story in two sections is also something Hinchcliffe and Holmes brought in, and writer Robert Banks Stewart makes the most of it. As the audience has seen the impact on a human attacked by the pod once, there's enhanced dramatic energy in the third episode as the anticipation builds about who will be the second victim, and then the next three episodes show the process happening again, quickly progressing beyond what had been seen before.

Although all of that input from producer, script editor and writer is significant, it's the contributions from director Douglas Camfield and composer Geoffrey Burgon that are most important - they provide the eerie atmosphere I felt on my first watch that is this story's defining factor. The same people worked on the beginning story of the season as well as this season finale. They achieved a similar atmosphere in that story at first, but as I'll mention in the Deeper Thoughts section below the drama and excitement couldn't be sustained in the Zygons story. In this their second attempt of the year, they almost manage to sustain it for the full six episode length. Only once the interesting villain and henchman are dispatched do things start to fall apart. The solution to the Krynoid monster, that has grown to the the size of a mansion, is simply to blow it up. This is disappointingly prosaic, particularly as the Doctor has been quoted earlier in the serial saying that "Bullets and bombs aren't the answer to everything". Then, there's a supposedly humorous coda where the Doctor and Sarah end up back in Antarctica because the Doctor has failed to reset the TARDIS coordinates. Not only is this a continuity error (they didn't travel there in the first place by TARDIS but were helicoptered in) but it is also obscure. They join in reciting "Have we been here before ... or are we yet to come?" portentously, and then burst into laughter. But it's not a joke and it's not a quotation, so what does it mean? It's a bizarre way to end both story and season. It's a shame that the only major negative aspects of the story are saved for the very end, as everything else is pretty wonderful.

There are some good action set pieces: another thing that Camfield regularly brings to stories is well-shot scenes where soldiers blow things up, and he doesn't disappoint here. The soldiers in question are a kind of zombie UNIT. Technically this counts as the final UNIT story of their initial era, but none of the regulars of Jon Pertwee's time are featured, all having bowed out in stories earlier in the run; as such, this lot may as well be any old squaddies. There's a couple of moments where the Doctor behaves quite violently for the time - a neck twist he gives Scorby is particularly nasty - but these are brief. A rightfully praised bravura moment sees the Doctor smash down into a room through a skylight, knock out a baddie, grab a gun, save Sarah and deliver a quip (when asked drily by Chase what he does for an encore, he replies "I win") then exit the room, all in about 30 seconds. The production design is great (the skylight that Baker breaks and the room he drops into look real. The effects are all of high quality; Some scenes creating Antarctica are more impressionistic than realistic, but they work. The model work is intricate and excellent throughout. The stages of Krynoid transformation are mostly good, with only the wobbly version that attacks Dunbar at the end of episode four looking a bit too Monthy Python to be scary. Small lapses like that don't matter too much, though, as all the actors are playing the material with utmost conviction, and the material is rich. Baker is at his most brooding; the line "You must help yourselves", when suggesting that one scientist amputate the other's arm to stop the infection, is a moment that shows the Doctor at his most alien. Lis Sladen gets to challenge the baddies in some emotive scenes too.

The three scientists in the first two episodes are good, particularly as two of them have to deliver their performances from behind awfully fake beards, but it's the main guest characters that feature throughout or in the last four episodes that make this story special. Tony Beckley is fantastic at the velvety villainy, and does a plausible take on a rapid descent into madness. His childlike delivery of the line "I could have had two pods" is telling and chilling in equal measure. To my mind, though, he is marginally bested by his henchman. John Challis's turn as Scorby is one of the all-time best performances in the classic era of Doctor Who. Even though he is at first glance a stock heavy, Challis takes Robert Banks Stewart's words, which already give the character more depth than usual, and adds more to make Scorby a living, breathing and three-dimensional creation, and every scene he appears in is lifted by his presence. That's not to ignore some other great character performances, like repentant sell-out Dunbar (Kenneth Gilbert) or nervy reluctant accomplice turned victim Keeler (Mark Jones). The scene where the partially transformed Keeler starts to rant at Sarah, chanting "You want me to die" over and over is one of the moments in Doctor Who that most scared me - and, as mentioned above, I was in my 20s before I saw it for the first time. Even a minor character like Amelia Ducat (Sylvia Coleridge) shines. It's a nice bit of writing that she looks like a one-scene comic relief character, then unexpectedly returns as a complication factor, threatening Chase's plans. Just when we believe that she's coincidentally blundered in to things, it turns out she's a spy, deliberately investigating. It's no coincidence that when all these characters have exited or been killed off, the story runs out of steam - a giant green monster just isn't as interesting.

Connectivity:

I don't think this has ever happened before, but the titles of this story and the last one on the blog rhyme. The Seeds of Doom follows Boom. Bada-bing, bada-boom! Apart from that, both stories feature soldiers and an explosive device with a countdown. There's a reference in Boom to sentient mud, which is I suppose not that far from sentient plants, though the mud in the Ncuti story turns out not to be sentient in the end.  

Deeper Thoughts:

Milestone Watch Extra. As mentioned a couple of times before in blog posts this year, I have given up social media. As such, I have to get my news, including my Doctor Who news, from other sources. There's a certain obsessive fan flavour of FOMO - what if a box set was announced and I didn't hear about it to pre-order until the next Doctor Who Magazine arrived, and what if that was too late and they'd sold out, arrggh! - that compels me to regularly do an online search on the phrase 'Doctor Who' and check the News tab. There's very rarely any actual news, of course, but there are always hits. Nine out of ten of the hits will be clickbait articles on 'entertainment sites' speculating about something or other, or investigating some continuity error from a decade ago, or extrapolating a major character's return from something an old actor said at a convention. The tenth hit will invariably be an unconnected article with a headline along the lines of "Colorado doctor who slept with dozens of his patients jailed". I'd still rather get my Doctor Who news this way, though. This is because there's one thing I don't ever have to deal with using my approach: seeing Tom Baker trending, and having to investigate to confirm that the worst has not happened. My FFOMO, my fan fear of missing out, does not cross that boundary. The news that one day is sure to come, and may it be a long way off, that Tom has passed on is news that I'm happy to miss out on for as long as possible. I didn't grow up with Tom Baker's Doctor. I first watched Doctor Who when he'd just left the role, and the first story I ever saw of his was his swansong Logopolis when it was repeated in late 1981. Yet, such is the significant impact Baker had on the show in his time in the title role and ever since, that I feel it is required to take stock in the Deeper Thoughts section now I've completed blogging all his stories.

I promise I won't make a habit of this in posts to come (I'm near the end now, so most blog posts from this point on will be finishing some era or other). But, completing Tom Baker's era - seven years, 41 (or 42) stories, 170+ episodes, the exact numbers will depend on whether you count Shada or not - is the biggest mountain in the range I have had to climb, and is worth dwelling upon for a while. As I mentioned above, I only got into Doctor Who after Tom had left the role, so my experience of watching his stories was in a random order, which I then emulated in the way I've watched every Doctor's stories for this blog. After the repeat of Logopolis, the main way for me to watch his stories was when they came out on VHS as part of the official range. That range was slow to get going, but when tapes did start to be released the majority of them were for those stories starring Tom Baker. The first story of his I saw on tape was Revenge of the Cybermen, and the first one I bought was Pyramids of Mars. As noted in the First Time Round section above, there were eventually other ways to see Baker stories for the first time; I did see a few from pirated videos, and watched a few on UK Gold. The one thing I never did after Logopolis was catch a Tom Baker repeat on the BBC. This was mainly because the Beeb kept showing the same story (Genesis of the Daleks) whenever they repeated one of Tom's ones, and I'd already watched it on video. I worked out when I blogged it that the final Tom Baker I watched was The Sun Makers, when that story was released on VHS in 2001, so it took me 20 years to view every part of Tom's Who oeuvre (or Whoeuvre, if you will).

It didn't take 20 years to rewatch all the stories randomly for this blog, but it was getting on for half as long. The first one to come up was The Armageddon Factor - not an auspicious start - which I blogged in July 2015; nine years and four months later, the job was done. Tom stories came up with a reasonable regularity in the years in between. It didn't take too long (up to October 2017) for the blog to land upon Tom's first ever story, as the chronometer flies, Robot - the Deeper Thoughts section of whose post contains my tribute to the man behind the scarf, including mention of the time I met and had a book signed by Tom (a tale I think I may have told elsewhere on the blog too - apologies, I'm an old man who sometimes repeats himself). It took a lot longer before I blogged his last ever story (and the first of his I ever saw) Logopolis. I finally blogged it in December 2021. I had a few surprising reactions to stories over the years; the most disappointing watch was probably Terror of the Zygons. I'd always enjoyed viewing the story, never seeing - until the watch for the blog in September 2021 - that the story falls apart half way through. The same team (writer, director and composer) worked on The Seeds of Doom, and second time round they manage to put off the point where things fall apart until late on in the final episode, so it's overall much better. The Robots of Death maintains its high quality with every watch, including the one in December 2022 for the blog; Horror of Fang Rock gets better every time I see it, and might well turn out to be my favourite Tom in a couple of viewings' time. Underworld is nowhere near as bad as you might think. All in all, this body of work is a decent legacy for the great man. Seeing as they'll seemingly let anyone have a go at being president (twice, even) no matter how manifestly unfit and unqualified they might be, I'd say let Mister Baker do it. Tom for President!  

In Summary:

It's got atmosphere, it's got pace, it's got engaging characters and a lot of incident... it just hasn't got an ending.

Boom

Chapter the 313th, where the Doctor puts his foot in it (well, on it).

Plot:

[This is a relatively recent story of the streaming age, so be warned that there are spoilers ahead.] Kastarian 3, the future. The TARDIS arrives during a war between Anglican cleric soldiers and the Kastarians, an enemy the humans have never seen. The Doctor steps on a smart landmine. Balancing on one leg, he cannot look down for fear that the mine will explode. Ruby confirms what he suspected: it has sensors to confirm a live target, whereupon the green lights surrounding the edge of the mine will join up and the mine will explode. There is currently a small gap, but it is slowly closing. Ruby brings the Doctor something to use as a counterweight, so he can put his foot down. It is the auto-compressed remains of a soldier, John Vater. A holographic AI of the dead man emanates explaining that he was killed by a robotic battlefield ambulance, as he was injured and no longer fit for combat. Vater's daughter Splice turns up on the battlefield looking for him. Another soldier Mundy Flynn follows her, and an ambulance approaches. Worried that any attention it gives the Doctor could set off the mine, Mundy gives her gun to Ruby and asks her to shoot her in the arm; this will mean the ambulance will focus on healing Mundy instead. Another soldier Canto arrives, misinterprets what's happening and shoots Ruby. The ambulance will not help the dying Ruby as she is not in the army. The Doctor advises Mundy to surrender: there are no Kastrians, and the war is only being kept going by the military hardware's algorithm that sustains any conflict with an acceptable casualty rate to keep up demand for weapons. Mundy demands evidence, so the Doctor sends the Vater AI into the ambulance's systems, but it is attacked as a software virus. Canto tries to override this, but he is electrocuted and dies.The gap closes and the bomb's countdown goes to zero, but it does not go off. The Vater AI has taken over, and instructs the ambulance to revive Ruby, who recovers.

Context:

Watched on the BBC iplayer in late October 2024, on my own. The Better Half is still avoiding watching any further Ncuti stories, and both the two children still living at home (eldest, 18, has gone off to university) felt they had watched the story too recently to watch it with me again.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. Without much else for the random process to select, the 2024 season of seven Ncuti Gatwa stories have been gobbled up quite quickly. This is the sixth of the seven to be blogged, with only the two-part finale left to complete the run. Beyond those, I have completed four Doctors' eras and 29 out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-12, 14-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 2, 4, 5-7, 9-11, and 13).

First Time Round:

I watched this just after midnight on Saturday 18th May 2024, accompanied by middle child (boy of 14 years of age then, 15 now). Later on that day, I took the youngest (girl of 12) and her friend to Worthing for a day out, as it had recently been the youngest's birthday. In the evening, she watched the story too. Both of them liked it.

Reaction:

Boom saw the writer Steven Moffat returning to the series for the first time since the long period when he was showrunner (from 2010 to 2017), invited by his old friend Russell T Davies to come up with story ideas. He thus searched his mind for something he hadn't done in the many scripts he'd written for the series over the years, and decided upon a story of suspense. In an interview that was used as part of the BBC's media centre press for the story, he was quoted saying that the Doctor usually "kills suspense because he's funny and in control, which quickly ends any suspense". So, what is suspense? Alfred Hitchcock, long ago dubbed the Master of Suspense, described it - and how it is different from surprise - thus: "Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table... Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it... In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters... 'There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!'". If you substitute Time Lord for table, that's pretty much a description of Boom (and Hitchcock even anticipated the title in the quote, which is from an interview he gave to the American Film Institute in 1970), except that Moffat can't let the audience be further ahead than the Doctor (because of the super-heroic way Moffat sees the Doctor's character). So, audience and characters alike know the bomb is there, but nobody knows exactly when it will explode. Although, actually, maybe we do...

Later in the same interview, Hitchcock made it clear that "The bomb must never go off" or otherwise "You’ve worked your audience into a state and then they’ll get angry because you haven’t provided them with any relief". Everyone watching knows on one or more levels that Ncuti Gatwa has a long-term contract, so he's not going to get vaporised in the third story of the season. Moffat's script therefore is a tightrope walk; as well as all the other restrictions he's set himself (unity of time and place, limited number of additional characters) he has to avoid the un-explosive ending being an anti-climax. For what could be more dull than the end of a tightrope walk, where the acrobat dismounts safely on the other side? Moffat succeeds, while managing to keep things from looking too much like a challenging writing exercise. He does this through the use of efficiently sketched-in emotional subplots: Mundy and Canto both like one another, but neither of them has realised it of the other (and then Canto's killed off); even in a holographic AI form, John Vater still loves his daughter Splice (and he's reduced to that form because he's been killed off). The propensity to kill characters off suddenly is one way that Moffat avoids the emotion turning into sentimentality. When Vater's AI overrides the algorithm to stop the bomb from going off and get the ambulance to save Ruby, it's very close to a 'power of love conquers all' ending; I'm sure some viewers took an almost allergic exception to it for that reason. I was fine with it, but then found that the moment later, where the hologram turns and waves to the Doctor and Ruby as they leave, was a bit too much. The main plot takes an unswerving line cutting through the emotional subplots. It's a masterclass in the effective gradual release of information to the viewer, with significant changes in the situation happening every couple of minutes.

It's a minor gripe, but the plot is a bit linear; the one reversal - that the humans are fighting no enemy, it's all been caused by the algorithm running a war on automatic for profit - is so telegraphed from so early on that I don't think it was supposed to be any kind of twist. This satirical intent of the script also mirrors some stories from Moffat's time as showrunner (it's the same basic plot as Oxygen, but for war rather than heavy industry) This is just one of many aspects that were very familiar from all of Moffat's work, almost like he was giving us his greatest hits. This isn't a problem, and might not even be deliberate. When it was pointed out in an interview that the forces of antagonism in this script were exactly the same as his first Doctor Who script The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances (technology connected to a battlefield ambulance ruthlessly pursuing its programmed remit even at the cost of human lives), the coincidence came as a complete surprise to him. Beyond that, there's mentions of the Villengard munitions company (also first mentioned in the Empty Child 2-parter), military clerics, a dead character still repeating a catchphrase over and over ("Kiss kiss"), a mention of fishfingers and custard, and the involvement of a character played by a child actor. The last on the list is probably the weakest link; it's not the performance exactly, it's just that the actor is too old to realistically be saying any of the dialogue they're given: they look at least 10 or 11 years old, whereas the script seems to be pitching a much younger child, who can't tell the difference been a real person and a hologram, of something like 4 or 5 years old. That aside, though, this is a triumphant return for the grand Moff with director and crew visualising his work using innovative technology in the studio.

Connectivity:

A third story on the trot, following Survival and The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood, about the dangers of conflict. The threat in both Boom and the Silurian 2-parter comes from below the Doctor's feet (or foot for the first section of the Ncuti story), and in both stories the backdrop of events is on a planetary scale but the story only features a few speaking parts.

Deeper Thoughts:

Scot freebie. As seen in both the BFI events recently described here (see the Deeper Thoughts section of the last two blog posts for more details), where panels of people were grilled about a single TV production that they were part of 36 years earlier, Doctor Who never truly leaves you. It's a show that makes people happy, and generations of fans remain forever enthusiastic to talk about it in detail, and celebrate those connected to it, both from in front of and behind the cameras. It therefore probably surprised Doctor Who fans less than others (like TV professionals, say) that Steven Moffat returned to Doctor Who as a jobbing writer when he'd once run the whole show. Moffat is a fan himself, and if he has a good idea for a Doctor Who story (as Boom definitely was, and as Joy to the World is anticipated to be - the Moffat-authored Christmas 2024 special is still to come at the time of writing) he will want it to be made. He presumably would feel a certain emptiness if it weren't. Besides, a Doctor Who story written by Steven Moffat is going to be better than anything else written by Steven Moffat, however good it might be (sorry Sherlock fans, but deep down you know it's true!). The big question that remains is whether he will ever be tempted back in future. There's got to be a good chance, I think. As long as Moffat is still writing and Doctor Who is still going, they will be at some level interlinked. Just look at the long-lasting relationship with the show of another Scot. Frazer Hines played companion Jamie alongside Patrick Troughton's Doctor from 1966 to 1969, and since then has continued to be actively associated with the show, including brief returns to play the role on TV in 1983 and 1985. The series didn't even need to still be going - he's appeared at many a Doctor Who event and been interviewed for many a Doctor Who feature or documentary, including in the years when the show wasn't on TV.

Hardback cover

The association continues to the present date, but its latest manifestation is something of a departure. Hines has turned author. He wrote (with ghost-writing assistance from two more seasoned Who novel writers) a new novelisation of 1967 story The Evil of the Daleks that was published in hardback in 2023. Both Sophie Aldred (who played Ace) and Bonnie Langford (Mel) have also co-authored Doctor Who books featuring their characters in recent years, but those were original stories. It's the first time a star of the show has written a novelisation. The story was previously novelised in the 1990s, but that version has long been out of print. There was also a neat reason for a second prose telling of the story to exist, as Evil of the Daleks is unique in being a Doctor Who story with an 'in universe' repeat. At the end of the story that introduced Zoe to the series, with her wanting to join the Doctor and Jamie on their travels, the Doctor gives her a demonstration of what she might be letting herself in for; he projects images of his memories as a complete story. There was then a brief bit of voice over of the Doctor and Zoe added to the beginning of the first part of the Evil repeat when it aired the following week. The rest of the story was then shown weekly to bridge the summer gap between Who seasons; there was even a reference back to the memory projection process in the first episode of the next season. As such, any collector of novelisations could slip this new book in between the novelisations of The Wheel in Space and The Dominators, even if they already had the 1990s version a few books to the left on their shelf. That could only happen for me if the book was brought out as a Target imprint paperback, though. I collect the paperbacks but not the hardbacks; plus, a lot of the TV stories were never released in novelised form in hardback, so for a full collection it has to be paperback.

DWM 609

I was therefore delighted but surprised to find that I wouldn't have to pay to get the paperback version of Hines' book. It was given away with Doctor Who Magazine issue 609 in October 2024 as a free gift, and I was already subscribed to the magazine. The book is elegantly put together, with the Target logo, and with a new cover in the house style of recent books. But it isn't available in bookshops; it's an exclusive to the magazine. I thought this was a bit odd, until I started reading the book. As I say, I don't collect the hardback books, but I've read enough reviews to know that Hines' hardback version of Evil of the Daleks is a full novelisation of the story as well as the additional framing device featuring Zoe. The paperback, though, is not a full version. Whether for reasons of space, or to maintain the hardback version's marketability (or, as I suspect, a bit of both) the Target paperback is abridged. Perhaps there was a worry that someone going out and paying for such a book would feel short changed, as a lot of material has been removed. The top and tail scenes featuring Zoe, written in the first person from Jamie's POV, are present and correct, but the chapters in between, written in third person limited style, condense the action drastically. Those that read my blog post on the story will know that I am in two minds about the amount of padding in Evil as transmitted. It's ridiculous how much of the action could be removed without impacting the plot, as the paperback novelisation demonstrates. It removes almost all of the first two episodes as they played out on the TV. There's no sequences in Gatwick Airport or in the Tricolour coffee bar; the action starts in Waterfield's antiques shop, with the Doctor and Jamie then rapidly transported back to 1866. The characters of Bob Hall and Keith Perry are excised completely, and Kennedy has a much reduced role.

Paperback cover

The remainder of the story focusses on the experiments in Maxtible's mansion to isolate the human factor, and the civil war on Skaro that results. Such focus is achieved by removing all subplots, and this again means that characters completely disappear from the narrative - there is no appearance from Ruth Maxtible, Arthur Terrall or Toby. There's a vestige of the hypnotism subplot left in there (Victoria can't remember how she got to be imprisoned, and Maxtible does get to practice his mesmerism once). As I said in the Evil blog post, the story's padding provides a lot of the colour and interest. Without that, the plot is very straightforward, and results in a story that probably would not be as well remembered to this day as is the transmitted version of Evil. The more visual sequences that remain, of Jamie and Kemel dealing with booby traps in the mansion, or Daleks fighting on Skaro, don't translate that well into prose. The focus on action also means there's less material showing the inner life of Jamie, his thoughts about the Doctor and the events of the narrative, which was a big reason to get Hines involved in shaping the prose in the first place. Without much of that (to be fair, there is still some left in the finished product) and with it not acting as a faithful retelling of the story as broadcast, it's hard to see a point to this version. In the final pages, though, whoever edited the book plays a blinder with an inserted bit of dialogue that can't have been in the hardback: Jamie asks the Doctor why he left out so much of the tale, even going so far as to namecheck the many characters that are missing. The Doctor explains that he didn't want to worry Zoe too much. So, the book therefore becomes its own thing, a third retelling of the same story in a different way. That just about nudges this into being an interesting curio rather than a failure, to my mind. At the time of writing, issue 609 of DWM is still available; so, if I haven't put you off, you could still get yourself a copy and see what you think.

In Summary:

Banging.

The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood

Chapter the 312th, which depicts the war between the land and slightly under the land.

Plot:

The Doctor, Amy and Rory land in a Welsh village in 2020 that is somehow populated only by one family (it's probably something to do with Covid restrictions, it being 2020). A nearby drilling project has penetrated to a record-breaking depth, but this seems to have woken up something under the ground. The father of the family Mo has gone missing, and based on the Doctor's investigations he was sucked down below the ground. Soon, Amy disappears this way too. Rory and the Doctor protect the others - Mo's son Elliot, Elliot's Mum Ambrose, Ambrose's Dad Tony, and Tony's colleague on the drill project Nasreen - when a group of creatures travel up from below and attack. Eliot is taken, but the Doctor and Rory manage to trap one of the creatures. It is a Silurian - one of the original inhabitants of the Earth from prehistory - called Alaya. The Doctor and Nasreen travel in the TARDIS to the Silurian city under the ground to negotiate a hostage exchange. They find a vast colony, most of whom are in suspended animation. Mo and Amy have been held there by a scientist Silurian Malohkeh, but manage to escape. They find Eliot in suspended animation, but can't release him, then catch up with the Doctor and Nasreen.

Silurian military commander Restac, who is a relative of Alaya's, wants to kill all the humans, but Malohkeh wakes up their leader Eldane who prevents this. Elliot is released. Meanwhile, on the surface, Tony is ill from a Silurian sting; this, plus fears for her missing son, leads Ambrose to torture and kill Alaya. Amy and Nasreen negotiate with Eldane on behalf of Earth. But Rory, Ambrose and Tony arriving with Alaya's body puts a bit of a dent in those proceedings. Tony has set the drill to destroy the Silurian underground city, but the Doctor sends a timed energy pulse to destroy the drill. Eldane agrees - a bit too readily - to put his people back in suspended animation and wait 1000 more years, with the humans agreeing to spread the word down the generations to prepare for an amicable solution at that time. Restac goes on the attack, killing Malohkeh. Eldane sets off toxic fumigation to force the Silurians back into hibernation, so Restac is without her army. Tony decides to stay and go into hibernation too, so he can be cured of the Silurian venom in a millennia's time. Nasreen stays with him. The others race to escape before the drill explodes. As they reach the TARDIS, they see the mysterious crack that's been following them around the universe. The Doctor risks pulling a piece of shrapnel out of the crack to see if he can work out what caused the explosion that fractured reality. Restac staggers into view, dying from the toxic fumes and shoots Rory. He falls near the crack, and the time energy escaping from it erases him from existence. Amy forgets him. After dropping Mo, Ambrose and Elliott home, the Doctor examines the shrapnel - it's a piece of the TARDIS door.

Context:

Watched from the disc in the series five Blu-ray box set in early October, with a week's gap in between the episodes. I was accompanied by two of my three children, boy of 15 and girl of 12 (the eldest is now living away from home at university, and we miss him). Both of them were tickled by the 'futuristic' setting of the year 2020, and made comments about nobody in the narrative wearing masks or socially distancing (but it could be set in January or February 2020, of course). The youngest proudly told me before the first episode that Doctor Who had featured in Heartstopper (characters are seen watching David Tennant in The Runaway Bride in the latest run of that Netflix series).

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. Another domino falls, as this post marks the completion of eleventh Doctor Matt Smith's entire televisual Doctor Who era. This makes a total of four Doctors done so far (the seventh, eighth and fourteenth Doctors having been completed before Smith). This post also marks the completion of another season, the 29th out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-12, 14-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 2, 4, 5-7, 9-11, and 13).

First Time Round:

I always have trouble remembering my first impressions of Matt Smith stories; don't know exactly why. It's probably a combination of factors - it's a while ago now, the series wasn't as much of a novelty as the early period after the 2005 relaunch, and I had more going on in my life. What I have done in the past if I came up short was to use the First Time Round section to tell a completely different anecdote, mostly from the wilderness years when the show wasn't on TV as a regular series: nearly dying on New Year's Eve 1985, watching Blakes 7 videos with my school friend Paul, reading Doctor Who Magazine back copies rather than revising for my A-levels, interviewing for a university place in Durham, not attending a Doctor Who convention in my first week at university, being accused of shoplifting, attending a Tom Baker book signing, and what it felt like to be a fan in the slump between the years 2000 and 2003. I've run out of those anecdotes now, so will have to rack my brain for something that was going on in May 2010. Oh, of course, it was the beginning of the end of my country. A few weeks earlier (just before The Vampires of Venice) a general election in the UK had returned a hung parliament, so there were a few days of negotiations. Then, just before Amy's Choice, the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, had made a speech from the Rose Garden behind 10 and 11 Downing Street. They had formed a coalition government, allowing the Conservatives (the majority partner) to systematically dismantle anything and everything good. Policies would have started to be announced around the time of the Silurian two-parter, including the Fixed Term Parliament Act, which mandated that there would be minimum five years before there was a chance to get them voted out. Maybe this is why I struggle to remember the period - at some conscious or subconscious level, I don't want to.

Reaction:

The problem with reviewing any story featuring Malcolm Hulke's lacertilian legions is what to call them. At various points they have been known as Silurians, Eocenes, Earth reptiles, Homo Reptilia and probably a few more handles I've forgotten. I will stick with Silurians; even though it is wrong, it was what they were first called. Another problem with the Silurians is that they are a great concept, but a difficult fit for Doctor Who stories. Their backstory is more complex and lengthy than some other villains, which is not the best for filling in new viewers with on the fly during an action adventure storyline. The Doctor dumps all the info over the audience in a speech in the second part of this story. In two times 45 minutes of story, why was there no opportunity to tease this information out more gradually? Well, most of the first episode withholds the Silurians' identity and appearance to ramp up the tension and excitement. I wouldn't necessarily want it done differently, as the first part is rather good. The scenes of characters being sucked under the Earth, the siege scenes with Silurians barely perceptible, zooming past the camera as a blur, the distorted POV of characters being experimented on by a Silurian in a surgical mask. It's all great. Sooner or later, though, if the concept is going to be treated appropriately, the horror movie has to turn into the more sedate drama of people sat round a table negotiating. Trying to meld those two halves together in a coherent way is difficult. The original Silurians story from 1970 is essentially the same, horror and action adventure at the start and end, negotiations in the middle. It probably seems more harmonious as a whole than the more jarring changes in the Matt Smith story only because the length (seven episodes) smooths out some of the joins.

I don't fault the writer Chris Chibnall or director Ashley Way. The flaw is built in to the central concept, which tries to have its cake and eat it by presenting the Silurians as both a set of horror monsters, and as a group of people with legitimate claims. For example, Alaya - the first Silurian we are presented with in the story - is aggressive and prejudiced against humans to a ridiculously heightened degree. She makes the race seem less than empathetic, undermining the second part; but, she has to be nasty enough to be killed by a human; if she isn't, then there wouldn't be any dramatic tension in that second part, where her death undermines any chance of a peaceful solution. The two conflicting halves cancel each other out. Even if Chibnall hadn't given Alaya the taunting and manipulative dialogue, she looks like a monster, so inevitably would appear to be one in the visual grammar of Doctor Who. Obviously, the one addition to Silurian biology made in this story, a whiplash tongue with venom sting, isn't helping matters either. Many would say that Alaya's just one of a species that are infinitely varied just like humans; but, one of the more peacenik Silurians is scientist Malohkeh, played by Richard Hope, and he experiments on people. Why spend the first episode framing him as Doctor Mengele if you want him to be sympathetic? For the thrills, obviously. When the potentially more sensible negotiations section starts, it has two randos representing Earth. This seems to stem from having so very few characters in the story, probably for reasons of narrative or production economy (or both). If the Silurians agreed to terms, though, how in hell would Amy Pond and Nasreen Chaudhry have then persuaded the nations and governments across the globe? It's silly, and glaringly obvious from the outset that things will go back to the status quo with the Silurians hibernating again, and the issues side-stepped.

This is problematic because of the real world analogues of this fictional conflict. It doesn't need much spelling out: "We have a claim to this place extending far back in time", "Yeah, well you haven't been around for a long time and we live here now", "We will retake this place, it's our historic birthright", "No way, where would we live?", "Not our problem, you need to make way for our settlements", "Not without a fight", etc. etc. These sort of conflicts have occurred throughout history right up to the present date, and therefore need to be treated sensitively. It's troublesome to interrogate such issues in dramatic form if one side are dressed as lizard people. Even if we could put aside the risk of crassness - it's only a fantasy show aimed at a family audience after all, not meaning to offend - what is the best we could discover? The morality of such conflicts is complex, and the best we are likely to end up with after 90 minutes is philosophy at approximately the level of Culture Club's The War Song. If we dispense with the backstory, we would just have Silurians doing traditional Doctor Who monster stuff; to be fair, that's what their creator Malcolm Hulke ended up doing. In the follow up to his first Silurian story, The Sea Devils, the earth reptiles are reformatted to just be action adventure antagonists with the moral complexity largely ignored. Similarly, Silurians have made many returns to Doctor Who after this 2010 reintroduction, but there haven't been any more land claim negotiations included in those stories. That aspect seems to have gone into permanent hibernation. At the time of writing, though, a Doctor Who spin off is in production featuring the Sea Devils, which from the title - The War Between the Land and the Sea - might just be dabbling in that moral complexity again. Perhaps over a five episode mini-series that doesn't have to be Doctor Who exactly it can be made to work.

Other points of note: the moments from the wider series arc are much more successful than the Silurian story. The mysterious crack turning up in the end is very unexpected and dramatic; Rory's death scene and the scene where Amy tries to hold on to her memories of him but fails were both well played and emotional. The reveal that the shrapnel the Doctor has pulled from the crack is a part of the TARDIS exterior is nicely intriguing. The new design of Silurian make-up is effective. The regular cast are all on good form, particularly Arthur Darvill as Rory. It's got a phenomenal guest cast. Neve McIntosh gets the most interesting material to work with, and makes an indelible impact in both of her two roles. She got to return regularly to play a more nuanced Silurian in future stories. Everyone else is wasted to a greater or lesser degree bringing life to dull characters. Enough time has now gone by for Meera Syal and Robert Pugh to come back to the series playing other roles; it's too late for Stephen Moore, alas. There was definitely mileage in a claustrophobic chiller with a small group of people trapped with a violent and manipulative Silurian; there was probably mileage in a grander, more epic story of two races trying to find peace; trying to do both dragged the resultant story down.

Connectivity:

The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood and Survival are both themed around the dangers of conflict; both feature sequences set underground and races that are anthropomorphised versions of creatures found on Earth (cheetahs in Survival, non-specific lizards in the Silurian 2-parter).

Deeper Thoughts:

From reptile scales underground to musical scales underground: Part 2 of The Happiness Patrol BFI events write-up, Q3 2024. At the end of the first part of this epic - see the Deeper Thoughts section of the Survival blog post - an email had arrived. A week after the wrong version of The Happiness Patrol was shown, the BFI contacted attendees including yours truly to generously and unexpectedly offer free tickets to a rescheduled event where the new special edition version would be showcased, definitely and for reals this time. As it was inserted into the schedule at the last minute, the new screening was at an awkward time, 4.30pm in the afternoon on a Sunday, 29th September (about a month after the initial screening); three of us (me, Chris and Alan) were still able to attend. The later than usual start made travelling up less frantic, and we met for a spot of Sunday lunch before the screening, then ambled along the South Bank to the BFI and took our seats in the NFT1 theatre. Hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy made merry with the unusual situation from the off: "Welcome to the monthly screening of The Happiness Patrol" said Johnson, with Fiddy joking that in a month's time they would be showing an 8mm black and white version. Turning serious for a brief moment, Johnson gave appreciation to everyone, audience and panel members, that had made it back for this rescheduled slot, but then added of Sheila Hancock that "She's been banned from today's event; she spoke too much". The first item on the agenda was the social media round-up, with Johnson suspecting that some people were now making comments in the run up to BFI events deliberately to get read out, as with the tweet saying that fans who attended both times could "say that they've been double-Dicked". Johnson deadpanned that he was "horrified" that anyone would think he ever used Dick's name as a double entendre.

NFT1

After the quiz, with a final jokey and rhetorical question ("What is the name, address and phone number of the person at the BBC that sent the wrong files?"), there was the first instance of what Fiddy jokingly called "Deja Who". Pete McTighe, a major creative force behind the Blu-ray range, instrumental in creating the special edition of The Happiness Patrol, was invited to the stage to whet the appetites of the assembled about what they were about to see. In other words, to give the same interview he had given a month before. He revealed from his pocket a Blu-ray of the correct version of the story that he'd brought "just in case", and again talked about the insertion of cut material and restructuring of the narrative that had been done to what he feels is an "underrated gem" featuring two stars of the show "at the height of their powers". Again, he highlighted that the intention was to build up the world of Terra Alpha more than could be done with the original budget of "20 quid and a ham sandwich". After McTighe, there was another returning guest: model-maker and puppeteer Stephen Mansfield. This time he hadn't brought the Fifi puppet with him, as it had been assumed that the same people would be attending as had done the previous month, so all would have seen it already. A quick poll of the audience with a show of hands demonstrated this view was only half right: the audience was about 50/50 split between single and double-Dickers (any free tickets that hadn't been claimed by original attendees were put on general sale). Mansfield came up with a few new comments for those of us that had been before. A crucial moment for him was Fifi's death scene, which comes at the end of the story but was shot early on. It is a "tall order" to expect a puppet to be convincing all the time, and he was worried until he saw the emotion that could be wrung from a good actor such as Sheila Hancock working with his co-creation. He relaxed after that.

Our hosts

The house lights then went down, and the first two episodes of the story (in the correct new edition, no doubt to many gasps of relief) were shown. I was skeptical going in, but what has been achieved in these updated episodes is miraculous. The CG backdrops can never have quite the detail or feel of physical sets shot on video, and yet there are seamless sequences where the camera pans from one to the other, or they both share the same frame. McTighe's world building aim has definitely been achieved. The narrative has more time to breathe, with additional scenes inserted of the Doctor and Ace exploring. Lesley Dunlop's Character Susan Q seemed to suffer most from the drastic editing for time that was done on the original, and there are many more sequences featuring her now. There's also much more humour, like the moment where the Kandyman says "I don't give interviews" or a character from this very bureaucratic world tells another that "You need a permit to hide here". There is some reordering of material, but nothing jars and things flow along nicely. It wasn't just the episodes that were new on this day in September; the BFI had done a good job in providing some new onstage content too. After the two-thirds point of the story had been reached, there was a brand new onstage panel focussing on the sonic aspects of the Happiness Patrol. This featured Dominic Glynn (composer of the incidental music for the Happiness Patrol), Adam Burney (the harmonica player featured on the story's soundtrack) and Mark Ayres (audio restoration whizz for the Blu-ray range, amongst many other things). Ayres commended the new edition version that we'd just seen, describing The Happiness Patrol as "a lost classic, hopefully now being able to shine a bit".

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, McTighe

Glynn thought the story was a "wonderful gift" as music was built into the script; plus, the styles required varied wildly from awful lift muzak to the soulful harmonica motifs. Burney, who was only 19 when he performed said motifs, explained that all his work took place after the TV studio sessions. Like many an auditioning actor ('of course I can ride a horse'), Richard D. Sharp, who played the harmonica player Earl Sigma in the story, had said he could play. On watching the footage it quickly became clear that he couldn't. Burney had to shape what he was playing to best match Sharp's movements: "I think we got away with it". Ayres explained that as part of his remastering job, he noticed there was one brief moment of Sharp's performance still in there, which came as a surprise to Burney. Sylvester McCoy's live Television Centre performance of the spoons is still intact on the original recordings, and survives to the new edition. To extend Glynn's original set of cues to cover the new material of that edition, Ayres used every trick in the book, stretching, looping, even playing some backwards. Just before the panel ended, Glynn mentioned that he'd also scored the last ever classic story Survival: "So, as I always like to say, I killed it off." "That was my job," shouted McCoy from his seat in the audience. The lights then went down again, and it was time for episode three. It wouldn't be possible to fix every issue with the script (see my original blog post on the story to see if you agree with me on what those issues are), but McTighe has managed to smooth over some things. The fact that there seems to be no audience in the forum, for example, is explained by there being a curfew in place that is highlighted in some of the CG additions. The death of the Kandyman is built up much more, and there is new model work and explosions to up the dramatic ante. The final frame after the credits is an "In Memory of" slide for the late writer of the story Graeme Curry, which was a lovely touch.

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Mansfield

Pete McTighe came back onto the stage, this time accompanied by Chris Thompson, who had marshalled the new effects work we'd just seen. The chat with the two of them had been planned for the previous session, but couldn't take place once the wrong version of the story was shown. This was particularly tough on Thompson who lives in Belfast, and had to fly over twice. He showed the audience the new miniature of Helen A's escape craft, having made this - from many Kenner Star Wars toys stuck together - and many similar new models for new editions of the stories of season 25 for the box set. He had brought more of them over for the first BFI event, but unfortunately not this time as they'd been damaged in transit first time round: "The combined might of the Daleks and Cybermen was nothing compared to easyJet baggage reclaim". McTighe explained that a lot of the material reinserted came from early ('71') edits of the episodes that had been retained in the archive. Thompson also illustrated how ambitious McTighe had been in pushing for the scope of what could be changed in the story; Thompson had originally presented a plan with 20 new special effects shots; McTighe asked if they could have "an extra 40". Speaking for all of us, Johnson told them both that they had worked wonders. After a brief and nice moment of applause for the normally unsung BFI staff who were setting the stage up with more seats, the final panel of the day got underway. The panel a month earlier had been the biggest I'd ever seen at a BFI event; this one was was even bigger. Onto the stage, to much applause, came designer John Ashbridge, director Chris Clough, script editor Andrew Cartmel, guest actor Rachel Bell (who played Priscilla P), plus the star duo of Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy.

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Glynn, Burney, Ayres

There wasn't a single repeated anecdote from this final panel. The organisers of the event from both BFI and BBC deserve kudos for getting the key players back, finding new people to attend too, and keeping it fresh. Initial questions went to the two people who hadn't been present a month before; Bell had enjoyed seeing her younger self and loved the special edition, adding that she was "going to have to watch the original"; "Some of us did that quite recently," replied Johnson, to much merriment from the audience. Ashbridge gave a dramatic pause on being asked what he thought of the new version before replying that he thought it was "absolutely stunning"; "Phew!" said Johnson; more merriment. "If only Chris [Clough] and I could have done that first time". Clough explained that the 'fondant surprise' death of the Kandyman couldn't be shown in full in the original as it would have been impossible to have so much liquid in the studio. Later, Clough was asked how they achieved the fluid seen flowing into pipes in the Kandy kitchen: "God knows". Johnson talked to McCoy about some comments he'd made at the previous Happiness Patrol event, about the show being a vehicle for politics, that had subsequently made the news. McCoy was unrepentant, of course, and mentioned in his reply that his one stipulation on getting the part was that the Doctor never use a gun. He said that the Doctor would always "use this" pointing to his head, and added that this constituted good acting "as there's nothing there". Picking up on the drama with messages theme, a couple of the panel pointed out that there is a line in The Happiness Patrol about banning demonstrations, "And that's now, isn't it?!".

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, McTighe, Thompson, Escape ship model

Bell reminisced about taking her two children (aged seven and nine at the time) to the studio, and also a separate time when all the Happiness Patrol trooped in together to the canteen, where their short skirts were reportedly popular with some of the diners. The shortness of the skirt also led to a floor manager's comment relaying instructions from the gallery, which Bell retold: "Can you tell Rachel to put her legs closer together, please?". McCoy thought on first seeing the guest cast assembled "Oh my God, it's the Royal Shakespeare Company". Aldred remembered that before her first ever studio session, she didn't know where Television Centre was, so asked Bonnie Langford ("I figured she'd probably been there [while] in the womb"). Ashbridge had recently watched all the Doctor Who stories he'd designed for an interview by Doctor Who Magazine, and decided that The Happiness Patrol was his favourite - as it was studio-based, he had full control over the look, even though there were huge challenges equating the vision of the script with the resources and technical ability available. When Bell was asked if she was ever remembered by anyone for Doctor Who she said no, but added that this was because she's not recognisable as her younger self. She related the sort of exchanges she now gets with the public: "I know you?" "Oh?" "Yes. Don't you work in M&S?". Everyone loved the design of the Kandyman, though Cartmel said his first thoughts on seeing it were "That's fantastic - they're going to get sued"! McCoy thought that David John Pope had such poor vision in the Kandyman costume that he was lucky not to cut his own finger off in the scene when the character does the same. During a discussion about the proclivity of 80s TV to feature gunge (like the fondant surprise in Happiness Patrol), the TV show Tiswas was mentioned; "Ooh, I was in Tiswas" said McCoy somewhat wistfully.

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy, Ashbridge, Clough, Cartmel, Bell, Aldred, McCoy 

There were a fair few comments about the flimsiness of the Police Box prop that was taken on location to perform as the TARDIS. McCoy also noted that people used to use the interior as a public convenience. He acted out being inside it holding his nose, desperately waiting for a cue: "Please say action"! It was such a chatty panel that there probably wasn't a need for an interviewer, although Johnson did need to shush them when they were nattering away while an audience member was waiting to ask their question. A great audience question asked was about who should be cast if ever there was a docu-drama of the making of 1980s Doctor Who. After it was confirmed to him that the suggested person was still alive, McCoy put forward TV astrologer from years gone by Russell Grant to play producer John Nathan-Turner. Kit Harington was suggested for Andrew Cartmel. A person to play McCoy proved harder. As Clough put it: "Sylv's unique". After briefly suggesting himself "I'd do it again", McCoy thought Johnny Depp could play him ("He's a bit dodgy though"); Sophie mentioned Ben Whishaw to play McCoy. One of the last audience questions compelled Rachel Bell to say "Were there any sexual problems?", which I'd say only about 10% of the audience understood, but I was one of them (google "Dear John UK" if you are similarly in the dark). Then, it was all over, and we decamped to the bar. Johnson said at one point of the special edition that it was definitely worth a month long wait, and he's right. As testament to this, Chris - probably the most difficult to please of our group of regular BFI attendees - loved it. At the time of writing, there's only a couple of weeks before the box set is released, and I can't wait to see what has been done with the special editions of the other three stories in the season.

In Summary:

War, war is stupid and people are stupid, and love means nothing in some strange quarters...