The Macra Terror

Chapter The 118th, when the Macra become a bit more animated at last!

Plot:

The Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie arrive at a human colony in the future. Everyone seems very happy, there's festivals and dancing, and muzak fills the air jollying everyone along in their work in the not-sinister-at-all gas mines. Only one person, Medok, is not happy; he believes the colony is being overrun by giant crab creatures called Macra. The Doctor frees Medok from a cell where he'd been imprisoned, and they witness the creatures wandering around a deserted area outside the main colony buildings. Medok is recaptured, and is taken off for some definitely not-sinister-at-all correction procedure in the hospital. The Doctor returns to his friends in their temporary quarters to find that they have been subjected to hypnosis during their sleep. He vandalises the equipment applying this process; Polly and Jamie seem unaffected, but Ben has succumbed and is now a loyal Colony drone. He reports the Doctor to the Colony guards. The other three are put to work in the mines, with Ben sent to spy on them. They discover that the Macra are in charge, and have been controlling the humans to harvest the gas they need to live. Ben breaks his conditioning and helps the Doctor manipulate the gas supply, blowing up all the Macra. The colony wants to elect the Doctor as their new leader, so the TARDIS team make a quick getaway.
 

Context:

I watched the colour animated version on the big screen at the BFI South Bank in London. I was accompanied by fan friend Trevor, mentioned several times before on this blog; other fan friends old and new, Chris and Alan, were also in the audience. Alas, my longest-term fan friend David, also mentioned many times before here, had a prior engagement for the weekend, and was very miffed not to join us; we raised a glass or two to him in the BFI cocktail bar afterwards (in fact rather too many more than two were raised in all, it was a good night). Anneke Wills, who played Polly and did an onstage Q&A after the screening (see below for more details), was around in the bar until quite late too. I saw Christel Dee and Gary Gillatt around the building earlier, but that was it in terms of spotting anyone vaguely well-known. There was a good turn out of cosplayers, with a smattering of Troughtons and a very realistic Hartnell in attendance. It was a good atmosphere, all told. I think there was a lot more buzz than for any story shown at the BFI since the first animated release, The Power of the Daleks.

First-time round:

I bought the cassette tape - cassette tape!!! - version of the soundtrack in the summer of 1992, and likely listened to it first at home, as I would have been on my hols from University at that time. It had linking narration by Colin Baker written in the past tense in character: a later Doctor recounting a story from his past. This was the standard approach of those early releases; the script and Colin's delivery were markedly better than others at that time, but it still didn't really work. When the CD version was released in the year 2000, it was the only one where they retained the original narration: all the other re-releases updated the script and got a companion actor from the story in to perform vocal duties. A few clips had surfaced in between those two releases, and I first saw them when they were included on the 1998 Missing Years VHS that came with The Ice Warriors. Finally, I saw the full animated version at the BFI as described above. They did release a CD version in 2012 with narration by Anneke Wills, but I never purchased it. It's included on the DVD as an extra, though. As a copy of the DVD was included in the BFI event's ticket price, I will get to experience that version before too long.   

Reaction

Though the choice of The Macra Terror as the latest candidate for animation was likely dictated by logistics - limited number of episodes, few guest characters, most of the regular cast already had character design work banked from The Power of Daleks animation - the story has a lot to recommend it anyway. It was rated sufficiently by BBC Worldwide to be one of the earliest official audios on tape, and then again later on CD. It has an intriguing premise and memorable baddies. Plus, since those clips were discovered in the 90s, another key factor has came to light: there was so much room for visual improvement.  To be fair, fans were under no illusions that Macra Terror scored high in the production values stakes before we had the footage as evidence, but seeing was disbelieving: a wobbly claw threatening the aged Controller, Anneke Wills gamely shuffling herself into the clutches of a listless Macra, and a few other disappointments. The animation meanwhile delivers creepy scuttling creatures that can tower over people, pick them up, swing them around, and threaten them with a drop into a mighty chomping maw. This was never going to be possible with the expensive but static lump of fibre-glass made to represent the monsters in 1967.

There are lots of similar improvements and surprises, right from the off. It's a nice touch to create a pre-credits prologue, using the last lead-in scene of previous serial The Moonbase. Then, the colourised beginning credits kick in, unexpectedly featuring the Doctor's face appearing in its cartoon art version; I think this is the first time that's been done. The superlative backgrounds depicting various different locales help to expand out the world of the Colony, and create a greater sense of place than the original sets managed (at least from the remaining photographic evidence). As ever when watching on a big screen with a large audience, one gets surprised by the number of laughs. The animation retrieves wonderful moments, such as when we see the Doctor's indignant reaction to the suggestion that he, of course, would "like his clothes cleaned". You can't enjoy that gag when looking at a still image while some narration plays out; it's thus that the animation adds the most value. Ditto the sequence where Jamie has to do a highland fling to make his escape, which was never much fun to listen to, but now is an absolute joy.

There are places where the animation has to compromise and so ends up losing points compared to the original. Notably, an entire sequence is excised early on where the TARDIS team are pampered at a sort of day spa, and the Doctor is smartened up (much to his chagrin). It avoids a very complicated effort of animation, but robs the piece of some humour, and removes the only lengthy demonstration of the enticements that this society uses to keep its populace subdued. The ending too snips out a nice call-back moment when everyone has to emulate Jamie and dance their way out of the Colony to escape. This version instead does a lengthy, slow pull out through a window, to a long shot of a Colony building exterior, giving us a mini-cliff wondering how the Doctor will extricate himself from this planet's cloying gratitude. It almost works, but not quite. The jury's out on one other moment, the capture by Jamie and Ben of Medok at the start of episode 1. As per the narrated audio, Medok's trying to grab the stick that Jamie's wielding, and the TARDIS crew members think he's coming in for an attack. As it's animated, though, it just looks like they've piled on poor Medok for no reason. It could, however, have looked just as bad in the original production - we'll probably never know.

Apart from those minor points, the animation is an absolute triumph. The only other issues are inherited from the original production. Like a very similar later story The Happiness Patrol, the fantastic concept is let down a bit by the slightly clumsy narrative constructed to illustrate it. There's a lot of pointless to- and fro-ing, Jamie seems to spend ages wandering round caves, and Polly doesn't get a whole lot to do (the curse of the three companion story). Medok is a great character and early on is presented as a significant ally for the Doctor; the story makes an implicit promise that this disbeliever will triumph and be proved right. But then he dies abruptly, and is not mourned nor even mentioned again. Head of Police Ola is good too, a memorable henchman; but, he presents us with a bit of a plot hole. This society is being hypnotised into being mindless happy worker drones, so why would the Macra need guards, particularly guards whose leader is so aggressive? Maybe Ola's sleep hypnosis tape was turned up a little too loud. One also has to suspend a lot of disbelief to accept that giant crab creatures have managed to set up the intricate technology required to sustain the illusion of the happy colony. The ending is very bloodthirsty too. The Doctor blows up every member of a sentient species without hesitation or apology.

That's not to say there aren't many positives in the original production: the sinister atmosphere of cheerful banality works well, with empty slogans, blank-eyed positivity and tinny muzak, and is an interestingly different backdrop. When the music isn't deliberately being irritating, it is very good mostly (but sometimes veers towards being unintentionally irritating). Fraser Hines as Jamie starts to come into his own in this story too; but, the best performance and the best part of the story by far is Ben's subplot. Michael Craze gets to give a different shade of performance when under the influence, in sharp relief to his usual cheeky chappy character. He then gets to play the arc of Ben fighting against this brainwashing to go from betraying his friends to saving them. It's the best opportunity a script gave him during his time on the show, and Craze makes the most of it, in his last full story (he would leave alongside Anneke halfway through the following serial, The Faceless Ones).

Connectivity: 

Both stories feature a dance where one or more of the regulars make an escape after being pursued by the baddies. The cloudy forms of the Family of Blood before they take over a host look quite similar to the gas being mined by the colony members. That's about it.  

Deeper Thoughts:

Johnson (L), Fiddy (R)

Pilot's report to Control: the BFI Macra Terror screening and Q&A, 16th March 2019. The ever dependable duo of Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy were our hosts as usual. They again had a handful of Doctor Who products to give away for the correct answers to Doctor Who trivia questions. I managed five out of six correct answers this time (couldn't remember the name of the spaceship the Doctor and Jamie land on at the start of The Wheel in Space - it's the Silver Carrier, of course) but I never put my hand up or "shouted for Dick" to come over with the roving microphone, as: a) I'm shy, and b) I have all the products already. After stating that they didn't have any copies of the Jodie  Whittaker box set this time, there was a solitary cheer from off. At the BFI's Logopolis screening in February (which I didn't attend as I didn't know it was happening until too late - was it advertised anywhere?) there had been a contentious negative reaction to the idea of winning the newest series on DVD, reports of which were doing the rounds on twitter afterwards. Reading some accounts, you'd come away thinking that the audience that previous time had been all middle-aged white fellows booing diversity, but it seems like it was just this one bloke in the audience both times. Don't believe the hype.

Director John Davies (in middle)

After the quiz, Justin held a cheeky "non-binding referendum" of the audience on whether they would like to see the colour or black and white version of The Macra Terror. The colour one did seem to win by volume of cheers, but it was the only one cued up to be played anyway (a referendum with an inevitable result now matter how people voted - who'd believe such a thing could ever happen?!). Before the first two episodes were shown, there was a brief onstage interview with the serial's original director, John Davies. Macra was his only Doctor Who, early on in a long directing career. He told an anecdote about how during pre-production the then producer Innes Lloyd gave him the advice to "Make it frightening, old boy", but later insisted a sequence was cut for being too frightening. Davies had clearly done his job too well. He also, like everyone who worked with the actor has, I think, spoke of how wonderful Patrick Troughton was. He'd been "sweet and gentle" encouraging Davies, who was young and inexperienced at the time, helping the director along the way.

(L to R) Fiddy, Salmon, Geraghty, Norton

The first two episodes were then shown, followed by a panel Q&A with members of the animation team: director Charles Norton, and artists Adrian Salmon and Martin Geraghty. Highlights of their chat included how they use the audio rather than the shooting script as a guide for the animation, which means that they can sometimes be scouring the soundtrack wondering what tiny noises might have been. Finding reference material for character design is something of a scavenger hunt, often using photographs from other non-Who productions the actor was in, sometimes these being from years later and having to be 'de-aged'. Colour reference is sometimes very hard to come by too; for Macra, the only basis for colours to use was what the cast could remember. Eye colour is a challenge, as it can be hard to make out even if you have colour footage or photos (Norton related that in the end he had to ring up Daniel Hill, guest actor on the previous animated story Shada, to ask him what colour his eyes were). Norton also confirmed that doing the animation in colour was a commercial consideration that they had no choice in; but, a black and white version is available on disc. The final question was the inevitable  'Which story next?' and the team were as tight-lipped as expected. Someone in the audience suggested the 12 episode behemoth The Daleks' Master Plan, and all three members of the panel visibly shuddered at the thought of such a workload.

Johnson (L), Wills (R)

Before the next two episodes were shown, there was a nice moment where a round of applause was held for the late Graham Strong, the person who recorded all the soundtracks in good quality when they were broadcast in the 1960s. He'd been in the audience for The Power of the Daleks screening to take his praise, but alas has passed away since. It's down to him, and a few other amateur pioneers like him, that Doctor Who fans are blessed with a complete audio archive of their favourite show. Once the final two episodes had been shown, Anneke Wills bounded onto the stage and, after only a moment joyously greeting the audience and telling us she loved being here with us, said she hated her animated character's look. The remainder of her interview was the same mix of the candid and the enthusiastic. Early on, she mentioned that a favourite part of The Macra Terror was when she was paired up with Pat but without the other boys: "It was nice not having to share". I got the impression the same was true on the day; alone on the stage, she was freed up to say some things she might not have been able to otherwise, to be "wilful" as she put it!

Amongst the gems wilfully revealed was the tale of watching back her first story, The War Machines, and seeing Hartnell check her out with an appraising up and down glance when they're introduced, and later on have his arm a bit too low around her waist: "He fancied me." She recalled on a visit to the set of the 2013 drama about the making of early Doctor Who, An Adventure in Time and Space, that she had been fussing around David Bradley (who was playing William Hartnell) making sure he was feeling okay, asking if he needed anything, just like she had done with the real Bill back in the day. Another anecdote from the filming of the show was a moment where Anneke ran into shot when Reece Shearsmith arrived playing Pat, shouting "No, no, no" and redid his hair which was all wrong. The crew were apparently very shocked, but the fans watching with her all said "Well Done". Convention circuit appearances and events like this BFI screening were clearly something Anneke loved; conversely, when Doctor Who was broadcast back then, she recounted, the only feedback you got as a regular was the odd comment from someone in a pub, but there was complete freedom with no getting hassled.

Maureen Lane (in the middle)

Despite Anneke wanting to go to the bar ("Just one more question, then it's glass of wine time, much as I love you all"), Maureen Lane, who played the Drum Majorette, was brought up on stage for a few more minutes at the end. Maureen made a self-deprecating gag about how there was not much choice, as she's the only one of the guest cast left. Her scene had been filmed in isolation, and she hadn't met anyone else in the cast or even seen a crab. When she mentioned that she'd only first met Fraser Hines recently (as part of the publicity drive for the animation), Anneke said "Uh-oh!". This was part of a general good-natured joshing about Fraser's womanising ways, but he was also the topic of the most interesting comment at the event. When Anneke had been asked about him earlier, rather than her giving the theatrical luvvie answer I'd expected about how wonderful it was to work with him and so on, Anneke instead touched on the real hurt she and particularly Michael Craze had at the time, that the inclusion of this new guy was going to spoil the good thing they had going on. She described Fraser as arriving with spaniel-like enthusiasm and full of jokes, but Craze was very threatened having another actor playing another male Doctor Who companion role, and did not like having to share out his lines with this interloper. It did come to pass that Craze's contract was not renewed, and rather than stay on as she was offered, Anneke left in solidarity with her workmate.

Another great screening, then, and another great recreation of a lost story. When Doctor Who started to be released as sell-through home videos, there were only five Patrick Troughton stories that could be released in full, out of 21 that were made in the 1960s. The Macra Terror's release makes the total available to buy 14. This is because of reconstructions, finds and - not least - because of superlative work by different animation teams. Two thirds of the way through, and no reason not to think that they might all one day be released. I'll drink to that, and indeed I did, into the evening after the screening in the overpriced but pleasant environs of the BFI bar. Looking forward to the next one!

In Summary:

A crab-tastic cartoon that's a welcome addition to the canon!

Gridlock

 

Chapter The 86th, which oo-ooh sends me, takes me to the rush hour.

Plot: 
The Doctor and Martha visit New New York in the year 5billion-and-a-bit. Since he was last here with Rose, everyone but those living in the undercity ghettos have died from a virus. The remaining residents have been unaware of this - or at least fiercely in denial of it - for decades, assuming that the government is still around because of some automated systems, and have taken to the motorway in their flying vehicles to escape to a better life. Traffic is so bad that cars take years to travel even one mile, and so the motorists are all unaware or at least fiercely denying that they're going round in circles and will never get to anywhere.

Meanwhile, the cars' choking collective exhaust fumes are feeding savage Macra creatures in the fast lane way down the bottom of the multi-level 'road' system, and they like to destroy any cars that come down that far. The Doctor and Martha get separated and stuck in this system, but the Doctor is transported out by cat nun Novice Hame, and manages to open the motorway roof so all the vehicles can fly up and out, and everyone can repopulate the city. The Face of Boe - who has been keeping things running using his life force - dies, but not before telling the Doctor cryptically that he might not be the last of the Time Lords after all.

Context:

I was feeling knackered in the middle day of the - very sunny - May Day Holiday weekend. Usual pattern for such weekends is as follows: Saturday, go out somewhere, full of enthusiasm; Sunday, stay in watching TV hiding from the sun and other people; Monday, do some gardening, full of rue. This one proved no different. For the middle day, I usually plump for a comfort food watch, an Inspector Morse or Hickson Marple perhaps, or a film like The Princess Bride, but sometimes a Who is what the Doctor ordered. Gridlock probably wouldn't be my automatic choice - the random number generator I use to pick which story to watch next is a useful device, but lacks true discrimination - but it was pleasant enough way to spend 45 minutes. Yet again, though, I couldn't interest anyone in the family to join me as I viewed from my DVD copy.

First-time round:

When Gridlock was first broadcast in April 2007, it followed an FA Cup semi-final on BBC1; if the match had gone to extra time, then Doctor Who would have been postponed to the following Saturday. I remember feeling a small amount of worry that this would come to pass, and relief when it didn't. This demonstrates that I was still watching live, and still very much engaged with every individual show at that point. Our first child (boy, who at the time was still under 1 years old) can't have required putting to bed during the Doctor Who slot as he would the following year; it was in that following year that time-shifting became the default for us, and around this time too that the BBC iplayer launched, and BBC3 was repeating modern Who episodes in heavy rotation. So, the new series 3, Tennant's second year, including Gridlock, was our (and possibly many other people's) last point of regularly watching live as it went out.

Reaction:

Let's get it out of the way at the start: Gridlock doesn't have lots of plot holes, it is one big plot hole. It's really hard to reconcile how - except at the allegorical level at which the story operates - any of the character's behaviour makes sense. How can anyone believe there is still a functioning society in place outside the motorway? If the cars can communicate with each other why not the outside world? If so, why can't the Face of Boe or Novice Hame get a message to the trapped motorway dwellers? Or, even better, open the doors so they can fly out? It shouldn't need them to wait for the Doctor to arrive to sort it all out - what if he'd never come back to New Earth? None of this spoils the story, though, as the production integrates so well - in plot, performance and all aspects of design - to achieve the story's central visual metaphor: we're all trapped in our little boxes, going round in circles, in denial about whether or not there's anything beyond.

The comparable story from later would be Heaven Sent (and Eric Saward's abandoned script for the final episode of The Trial of a Time Lord bears some similarities too); maybe something about the stressful idea-consuming week-in week-out grind of writing Doctor Who inspired these repetitive circular narratives. In Heaven Sent, the circumambulation is a single-occupancy hell escaped only by the unstinting perseverance of the heroic individual, whereas Gridlock is a comment on the society stuck in the system. The motorway residents are joined together across differences - race, class, sexuality - through hope. Yes, it may be a delusional hope, but it's a hope nonetheless. The scene where everyone in the cars stops and sings The Old Rugged Cross, was justly praised at the time, and is still electrifying to watch. It silences the Doctor in his full blown self-righteous rant, trying to wake people up to their situation, but it's not really a pro-religion moment, more a humanist one. This is why it was crucial to have an actor like Ardal o' Hanlon who personifies warmth and friendliness, even under wads of fur and latex.

The consolations of denial are not lost on the Doctor either - there's a fine parallel drawn with his actions in the scenes with Martha bookending the piece: he too lies to his companion (and maybe himself) just so he can wish away an awful truth, the destruction of his planet and people in the Time War. In both scenes, and throughout, Tennant is excellent, bedded in nicely now after his less certain first year. The sequence of him breaking out of the side-to-side tyranny and traversing downward through different cars (accompanied by some great Murray Gold music) is Doctor Who as Ferris Bueller, anarchically making a short cut by jumping over garden fences. This sequence also allowed cheap and efficient world building - a redress of  the single car interior set, and a different set of cast members each time, giving brief intriguing glimpses into the corners of this odd place. Writer Russell T Davies finds a new text for Doctor Who, a voracious consumer of influences over the years, to rip off: the Future Shocks of UK comic 2000AD. It's definitely an interesting new texture. The Macra fit nicely into that world too, and it was a fun gag to bring them back.

It's a shame that this was the final part of a loosely linked trilogy of stories, as it would have been nice to revisit this world again; but, less is more. The show was getting better at using loose sequels and trilogies, plus running dramatic elements, to improve the season arcs and move away from the "Where's Waldo / Wally?" style of the first two years with mentions of "Bad Wolf" and "Torchwood" smuggled in. This third year culminated a lot of hints and plot elements in its 3-part finale, where the meaning of the Face of Boe's dying words was explained.

Connectivity: 

Both contain a talking appendage in a jar disconnected from any corresponding body, and in both stories this appendage falls out of its jar and onto the floor. The cat nuns were a sort of sisterhood too, although there's only one still around by the time of Gridlock.

Deeper Thoughts:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of thingummy doodah. A recent nerdy conversation I had (actually it was in January, where has the year gone?) discussed the inconsistency of Doctor Who episodes, and other genre fare. It's rare to find a season of anything without a few episodes one thinks of as duffers. With Who, it's almost part of its DNA: it started - and has mostly remained - as an ongoing series of stories in wildly different locales with cliffhangers leading from one to the next. Is there enough similarity in its overarching themes and characters that someone could like equally a tale of witches in Shakespearean England and a sci-fi allegory about people stuck on a floating motorway? Maybe, but what about the week after that? And the week after that? Sooner or later it seems likely it'll come a cropper. This is a curse of episodic genre television: variety brings with it risk, but the heightened aspects of the genre demand variety to an extent which a soap, say, doesn't have to face.

My exhibit for the prosecution, though, was Endeavour, the latest and current series within ITV's Inspector Morse franchise. It's a big favourite in our house, and I don't think there has been a single story in its five seasons to date that hasn't reached a high level of quality. You could argue that it doesn't face the same level of pressure to be varied that Doctor Who does, but I'm not so sure. It's at heart an adventure story with an intelligent non-violent protagonist, it's a period piece within a somewhat heightened version of reality, and it makes an effort to showcase a new locale each week; the latest series shown earlier this year featured, amongst others, stories set in a boy's public school, behind the scenes on a horror film, a railway station in the middle of nowhere, and an army base - any one of these could have been the setting for a Doctor Who, and some already have. The two key differences, though, are that Endeavour's seasons comprise a smaller number of feature-length stories, and they're all written by the same person, Russell Lewis.

From the early reports in 2003 and 2004, this is roughly the same structure I was expecting for the new Doctor Who. It was mentioned at points that the number of episodes hadn't been decided yet, and there was an impression given that a Russell (T Davies, in this instance) would be writing them all. I didn't expect feature length stories, but I thought there would be maximum 8 episodes, maximum an hour in length, so around the same commitment in minutes per year as the usual batch of episodes of Endeavour, or Lewis before it. The added value - 13 episodes and a Christmas special! - that we got from new Who was a nice surprise. For its latest season, though, Endeavour did 6 films, rather than its usual 4, of roughly 90 minutes each in length with the ad breaks removed. That's as close as dammit to the twelve 45-minuters in Peter Capaldi's last season. And - though it pains me to say it - Endeavour's run was significantly better.

Coincidentally, it was Endeavour's antecedent, the TV adaptation of Inspector Morse, that brought in the format in the first place; no pissing about with cramming a detective mystery into 50-minutes (like the roughly contemporaneous Poirot adaptations) nor of having multi-episode stories with cliffhangers (like the roughly contemporaneous Miss Marple adaptations), Morse from its debut in 1987, decided that each story was going to be a self-contained and feature-length film. Eventually, Poirot and Marple would follow its lead, as well as pretty much every other detective series and a large majority of dramas. If Doctor Who had still been going into the early 1990s, I don't think it would have remained as a multi-camera episodic show, it would have been done on film as 90-minuters with no cliffhangers (for its only outing during that decade, that was indeed its shape). Despite the small-batch approach, Inspector Morse was wildly inconsistent, both in tone and quality, particularly early on. But that was because it was still written and directed by different people each week, who were given a larger amount of freedom than now. Nowadays, protecting a brand is of higher value than giving talent (including quite a few newbies who worked on Morse) room to play.

Perhaps because of the success of Doctor Who since 2005, the Morse format has become less ubiquitous, and cliffhangers have had a bit of a renaissance. For example: in its later series, Morse sequel Lewis starting doing stories in two parts, separated by a week. It looked less like an artistic decision than a scheduling one, mind, and - particularly the first year they did it - the evidence pointed to them being made as feature-length, then chopped up. But, could it be done now? Could you restructure a Doctor Who season as a series of feature-length films? There's no reason why you'd need to jettison cliffhangers or overarching plots - Endeavour still retains vestiges of these - and it might help to keep things more consistent from story to story. But, you would lose something of the variety of locales, and a few people would get very upset that Doctor Who was on for fewer weeks of the year. That's happening a bit, anyway, though: Mister Chibnall's first year is going to be 10 episodes, but they're all going to be a bit longer than previously. Let's see how it goes when we get to Autumn. Exciting! (Why is this year taking so long?!) 

In Summary:
More fun, and more thought-provoking, than being stuck in traffic.