The Robots of Death

Chapter the 252nd, is a late Christmas present - shiny and decorative on the outside, but underneath is something even more wonderful.

Plot: 

The Doctor and Leela materialise in a mobile mining craft, the Sandminer Storm Mine 4, which roams the surface on a desert planet (or possibly a vast desert on a planet, it's not 100% clear) to extract precious minerals for company profit. It is crewed mainly by robots. There's also a small human crew, getting smaller every moment as they are being strangled, one by one. Suspicion falls on the Doctor and Leela, and the craft's commander Uvanov has them locked up. One of crew, Poul, doesn't believe they did it and releases them for the Doctor to share his theories; Poul also doesn't believe what the Doctor suggests, which is that the robots have been programmed to kill everyone. Poul and D84 - a supposedly mute robot that secretly can talk and reason - are undercover agents investigating threats made in letters sent to the company about a robot revolution. These came from Taren Capel, a robotics scientist, who's lived mostly with robots for his whole life, so nobody knows what he looks like. Poul breaks down, suffering from robophobia, on finding grisly evidence that the Doctor was right after all. Taren Capel turns out to have taken the place of Dask, one of the Sandminer's engineering crew. He and his controlled robots go on the offensive against the TARDIS team and remaining crew. The Doctor confronts Capel, with Leela hiding in the room with a cylinder of helium, slowly releasing the gas into the air. This changes Capel's voice such that the robots no longer recognise him, and kill him.

Context:

This was a random choice but within certain constraints. As it was Christmas, I decided to watch a story I really liked. I chose my favourite one of the stories that remain yet to be blogged for each Doctor, and then used a random number generator to select which one of the dozen or so I would watch. The fates dictated it would be The Robots of Death, a nicely fitting pick for three reasons. First, it was a companion piece to the last story blogged, Voyage of the Damned, which took some inspiration from the titular robots many years later; second, Robots was shown as a festive repeat almost exactly 45 years before this watch (as two fifty minute combined episodes on the 31st December 1977 and January 1st 1978, forming the final edited Christmas repeat of a long run in the 1970s); third, and most importantly, it acted as my personal tribute watch for its writer Chris Boucher, who sadly passed away earlier in December 2022. I watched on Blu-ray, from the disc in the Collection Season 14 box set, on a day during late December, accompanied by the younger two of my children (boy of 13, girl of 10) and the Better Half (it's one of her all time favourite stories).

First Time Round:

I first watched the story when it came out on VHS in the very early days of releases. It was 1988, and the original, classic Doctor Who was still a going concern on TV, but there was a sudden, giddy, wonderful chance to own episodes from long ago of which one may have heard. and one may have even read in novelisation form, but now they could be watched and re-watched, time and time again. Before this, in the late 1980s, only five titles had been made available and I'd collected them all. The gaps between releases seemed like ages, but were only a few months each time. Sometime around mid-February of 1988, I went into the upstairs of W.H. Smiths in Worthing and found two new tapes, The Robots of Death and The Day of the Daleks, on the shelves. I bought them both as soon as I could, took them home and watched them a lot. Both stories were particularly good examples of 1970s Doctor Who, though Robots was the stronger of the two for me (just marginally). With seven titles now owned, it felt much more like a collection than before. Even the box was a prized artefact, the cover images impressing despite showing the robots with blue-screen inserts in their eye sockets, used in the show to create their evil red-eye when under the influence. The version of the story on the 1988 tape was edited to remove the beginning and end credits of the middle episodes. I finally experienced the story in full as broadcast when an unedited version came out seven years later in mid-February 1995.

Reaction: 

The story behind The Robots of Death's superlative art-deco look and feel is that the director Michael E. Briant thought the script wasn't all that good, and therefore felt that he needed to lift it with the visuals. This confuses me, and I suspect has done the same to other Who commentators over the years, as it is clearly an excellent script: a simple idea executed well with great dialogue, merging ideas from big science fiction (Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert) with the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie. What was Briant reading that he found the material underwhelming? My theory is that the idea itself didn't appeal to the director (Boucher was sticking to the 'Whodunnit in space' brief given to him by the production team, but that's not necessarily everyone's cup of tea), and that blinded him a bit to the merits of Boucher's work. The upshot was, though, that an already excellent story gets an equally excellent realisation. Briant challenges every department to push the boat out in terms of opulence, and this creates something very special indeed. However good Boucher's blueprint initially was, the series produced based on it could have been unimaginative. Picture, for example, the robots and the sets being basic and utilitarian instead of the works of art they ended up being. It could also have been incoherent - each person on the crew pulling in a different direction - but the deceptively simple art-deco concept helps to integrate all the different contributions. The treadmill method of making classic Doctor Who didn't allow time for the 'tone meetings' the new series stories benefit from, but Briant essentially has one anyway.

That's it really. I could just end this now saying "It's an all time classic" and leave it at that. Maybe it would be just as quick to list the parts that don't quite work. The feet of the robots are not that great. Heads, bodies, voices, rhythm of speech, their choreographed movement, are all perfect, but you can't have everything. The robots' feet are plimsolls covered in silver sticky tape. It's just a shame that Briant uses a number of shots that focus on their footsteps advancing on their prey. Some scenes before the reveal of the murderer give the game away (his face isn't sufficiently disguised). A couple of the performances are not as good as the others. The make-up is a bit over the top. The corpse markers (robot deactivation discs stuck on each victim) are clearly rear reflectors for bicycles. That's all that comes to mind, really. But, having said that, it's nice that the mystery is solvable for the children in the audience (the ending's use of helium's voice-changing qualities is nicely appealing to children too). The cast is one of the most diverse presented in Doctor Who of this period, with good roles for women and people of colour; if that means some slightly less experienced performers were used, it's a fair exchange. Kids with a spare bike reflector get the chance to play robots of death with screen accurate props. And, it occurred to me on this watch (apologies if I'm being slow), that the heavy lines of make up around the Sandminer crew's eyes and noses make them look more like the robots, a hint at how important the "creepy metal men" are in this world, and a subtle highlight of the humans' love/hate relationship with their servants in this society. The Robots of Death's flaws aren't that bad, and may even be strengths.

The Robots of Death's definite strengths are, well, everything else: Dudley Simpson's score, the fantastic model work, the deft world building (brief mentions, such as to "Kaldor City", were enough that they could be developed into story after story, and indeed later were in books and audios). The key members of the cast, Russell Hunter, David Bailie, Pamela Salem, Gregory de Polnay, Miles Fothergill, and - oh gosh! - the wonderful, wonderful David Collings, are all brilliant. They are more than matched by a brace of regulars at the top of their game. Tom Baker is at the height of his powers and new companion actor Louise Jameson is more than good enough to match him. They make everything memorable, even a nice little bit of nonsense like their opening scene where the Doctor explains dimensional transcendentalism to Leela with a couple of boxes similarly to how Father Ted explains perspective to Father Dougal with some toy cows. I mentioned the excellent dialogue earlier, but it's worth repeating. There are too many good lines to quote them all; just one to call out as a personal favourite is Tom Baker's wonderful delivery of the beautifully clever line "Nine times out of ten" as he leaves the TARDIS (you'd have to see it in context, but I'm guessing if you're reading this that you have). The story even achieves some depth amongst the fun and the thrills and chills, for example in the exploration of "robophobia". This is a dread fear of what has subsequently been called the 'uncanny valley', our brains' difficulty in reacting to a creation that's almost like a human, but not quite.

Added up, it's an all-time classic, no other way to say it. Between them, Briant and Boucher, the former thankfully going strong, the latter now sadly no longer with us, created something truly excellent.

Connectivity: 

The robots of The Robots of Death were clearly the inspiration for the Host in Voyage of the Damned, but also both stories involve a group of people trapped aboard a craft being picked off one by one, these events orchestrated by a lone male figure who is more robot than man (figuratively in the 1970s, literally in the 2000s) working from a secret workshop on the craft.

Deeper Thoughts:

Next Time Trailer. Making predictions at New Year's is almost as silly as making resolutions, but call me silly - I'm going to make some anyway. I did the same last year in the final 2021 blog post for Flux. It's probably an even more silly thing to do to check back on how well or badly I predicted 2022's events last year, but I'm a sucker for punishment and will do that too. I was mostly on the money regarding Jodie Whittaker's finale; I guessed that both Sacha Dhawan as the Master and Jo Martin as the Division Doctor would return, and that the story would leave a lot of the questions about the Timeless Child and the Doctor's past unanswered (I failed to anticipate exactly how extreme Chris Chibnall would be in avoiding the subject altogether). Happily, I did not predict all the surprises of The Power of the Doctor (I mean, who saw most of that coming?) just as I didn't predict the return of the Sea Devils in a pirate-themed episode at Easter. That was revealed early on in 2022, in a trailer immediately after the January 1st special Eve of the Daleks. There won't be such a special in 2023, but instead we got a 60th anniversary teaser trailer released on Christmas Day. That may well be all we get now before full trailers are shown, likely only a couple of weeks before the specials air in November next year. I didn't really predict the lack of a festive special in the 2022/2023 Yuletide period so much as know it already as it had been heavily implied by statements made earlier in 2022. I did wonder last time whether there would be any Christmas special in 2023, at either end of the year, stating "The schedulers and Davies could move the special back to the 25th December and there'd be one before [2023] is out". That could still come to pass. Statements have repeatedly said that Ncuti Gatwa's first story will air "over the festive period" in 2023. To my mind that means they haven't decided / been given a date yet, so it could be shown anywhere from December 23rd 2023 to January 5th 2024. I very much hope it's on the 25th as it would be nice to want to watch things on the big day (only the Ghosts episode held any interest for me this year on all the four main UK channels).

What do I predict for the content of the David Tennant specials? Much as I tried to remain un-spoilered, I'd seen some bits of the location shoots posted online before the teaser trailer, so already had something of an unfair advantage re: predictions. It's been heavily hinted that a US TV star who's engaged to appear (I'm dancing around the specifics just in case anyone reading this has somehow missed the publicity and wants this all to be a surprise) is going to be playing a returning character from the early days of the classic series. Also, some creatures featured may well be slightly obscure characters from the extended Who universe (they certainly look like them). Nothing's absolutely confirmed though. Beyond that, I would expect more surprising returns from the past befitting an anniversary year. I expect, though, that they may only be old faces from the 21st century series now (beyond Donna and her family, who have been confirmed) or perhaps more extended universe characters. The Power of the Doctor thoroughly covered the classic series, and there isn't anyone or anything to bring back from 20th century TV Who that they haven't already. The only significant monster that hasn't been redesigned and reintroduced is the Yeti, but Steven Moffat did the Great Intelligence (without its cuddly hench-beasts) a decade ago. No, I think it's more likely that we'll see an appearance by, say, the Slitheen than the return of, say, the Terileptils. Mind you, Russell T Davies brought back the Macra for one night only, so anything is possible. Beyond the new broadcast episodes, there will also be new product coming out in 2023. The big continuing range is the Blu-ray box-sets of classic seasons that form The Collection series. Last year, I took a punt on which three seasons would be released in 2022, and came up with 13 (Tom Baker's second year), 22 (Colin Baker's first full run), and 2 (William Hartnell's second season). In the words of Meat Loaf, two out of three ain't bad. I didn't anticipate that only two sets would come out in 2022, so season 13 is still awaited. I'll roll over that prediction to 2023.

I'm going to guess (hope) for three Blu-ray sets next year, so in addition to 13, I'll predict season 20 (Peter Davison's second year released in time for its 40th anniversary) and another black-and-white 1960s season.  As they've done a Hartnell one this year, I'll go for a Troughton, season 6 (Troughton's third and final run). There are only a few gaps to fill because episodes don't exist in the archives. Five missing episodes of The Space Pirates can be presented as an audio and picture reconstruction, and the two episodes of The Invasion have already been animated. Whether those two episodes can be presented in high-definition will be a big question: they were the first missing episodes to be animated back in 2006, and the company that made them no longer exists. Britbox offer the story with the animated missing episodes one and four, and it looks good on my old TV. Talking of animations, I predicted last year that as well as The Abominable Snowmen, another animation would be released, and I guessed at The Wheel in Space. I wasn't to know that a funding partner for the animations, BBC America, would cease to be a broadcaster of Doctor Who outside the UK, and would therefore no longer be putting the money in. Will Disney+ now be taking up that baton? Nobody knows at the moment. I suspect that it will happen, but maybe not in time for any releases next year. If a story is released, my money would still be on The Wheel in Space to be the one, completing the visuals of Troughton's second year, season 5, and making that a possibility for box set release in the near future too. Many online fan commentators have expressed worries about Disney+ involvement in Doctor Who, and how much influence they will have. As we approach a new year, I'm minded to be optimistic. It's not so long since Disney+ shows were being touted as competitors of Doctor Who (see the Deeper Thoughts section of The Husbands of River Song post last Summer for more details), and now we're all on the same side. Anything can happen in the next 12 months. Happy New Year!

In Summary:

I'll just say it's an all-time classic, and leave it at that.

The Hand of Fear

Chapter The 163rd, in which Sarah Jane gets a hand upon her exit.

Plot:

The Doctor, attempting to return Sarah to her home in South Croydon (presumably to pick up some more clothes, as she's reduced to wearing an Andy Pandy costume), materialises the TARDIS in a quarry instead. An actual quarry. A blast buries the Doctor and Sarah in rubble. Sarah reaches out for a hand, which turns out to be made of stone (except for a ring on one of its fingers). While Sarah is unconscious at hospital, the Doctor and pathologist Doctor Carter examine the hand, which seems to be alive and absorbing radiation. The Doctor theorises that it is the remains of a silicon-based lifeform that crash-landed millions of years before. Sarah wakes, zaps people in her way using the ring, takes the hand and breaks into the nearby Nunton Power station's nuclear reactor. The hand comes back to life, and scuttles around. The Doctor and Carter follow, and Sarah is saved, but Carter and then a member of the complex staff are taken over by power emanating from the ring; they chant "Eldrad must live" and then get themselves killed in various ways helping the hand absorb more radiation.

The reactor looks like it's going to go critical, but all the power is absorbed. Eldrad is trapped in the reactor core, and the director of the station orders an air force missile strike. It could have been very nasty that, blowing up a nuclear power station, but luckily Eldrad absorbs the radiation and emerges fully regenerated in a female form. Eldrad tells the Doctor that aliens invaded her home planet and turned the people against her, which caused them to shoot her off into space and blow her to bits. To avoid her being stuck on Earth, the Doctor takes Eldrad to her home planet Kastria, whereupon she turns into her real form, a bloke. It turns out that all the talk about an alien invasion was hooey, and Eldrad's own people rebelled against his tyranny. They have all committed suicide to deprive him of any victory. Eldrad wants to enslave Earth instead, but the Doctor and Sarah escape back to the TARDIS and leave him there alone. The Doctor gets the call to go back to Gallifrey, and can't take Sarah with him, so he says an emotional goodbye and drops her off somewhere that isn't South Croydon.

Context:

Full disclosure: I have overridden the controls and journeyed deliberately, not randomly, to land upon this story for the blog. From when it was announced, I had pre-ordered the Season 14 Blu-ray box set showcasing Tom Baker's third year on the job. It's a very impressive set of stories, and I've collected all the other previous sets in the series now; as per the psychology of the sunk costs delusion, I'm in for a penny, in for 40 pounds plus per set approx. Early in May when it came out, it sold out very fast. It looked a bit touch and go for me for a day or two as well. Many people were being disappointed, even those who like me had pre-ordered the set; perhaps this was due partially to Covid-19 disrupting distribution. In the end, I got the discs only a couple of days late. Then, having built up lots of anxiety about obtaining the set, I proceeded to not watch it. Progression through the set was sluggish; I'm not sure why exactly, but it may be something to do with the volume of other non-Who stuff I was viewing during lockdown (more on this below). I watched the first story The Masque of Mandragora early on, and have slowly been working my way through the special features since then, but have not been particularly enthusiastic about the episodes. As The Hand of Fear hadn't been blogged before, I decided that covering it here would be a good spur to progressing through it and the rest of the remaining stories on the set. So, this was watched from the Blu-ray disc over four consecutive evenings in the company of the whole family (the Better Half, boys of 14 and 10, girl of 8).

First time round:

This story has some memorable visuals and emotional moments, so is perhaps an obvious choice for clip packages. I remember seeing the striking clip from the end of episode 1 - the hand coming to life accompanied by Dudley Simpson's scuttling score and sirens blaring - in 1986 as part of a celebration of 50 years since the start of broadcast television (TV50). There were other Doctor Who clips too, but that's the one I remember clearest, so it must have stood out. I first got a proper look at Lis Sladen's infamous Hand of Fear outfit, which can't be seen in its full glory in the episode 1 cliffhanger, on Resistance is Useless, a filler documentary shown on BBC2 early in 1992 to usher in a series of Doctor Who repeats. I saw the final scenes saying goodbye to Sarah Jane Smith on The Tom Baker Years VHS, a clips compendium on two tapes released later in 1992. Finally, I saw the - slightly less impressive - connecting tissue of the story that contained these nice moments in February 1996 when the VHS was released. I snapped it up on its day of release, as was my manner at the time. This was a good move, as it turned out. The Paul McGann TV movie had recently been announced, and a decision was made to clear the decks of any old Doctor Who product - including deleting many titles on VHS - before the big merchandising push accompanying the broadcast of this, the first new Who since 1989, in May of that year. This was particularly harsh on The Hand of Fear, which was deleted when it had only been out a few weeks, and made it a very rare and sought after VHS for the many years until the DVD of the story came out.

Reaction:

There is a screenwriting maxim that states that a lacklustre beginning or middle of a dramatic story will be forgiven by the audience if the ending is good enough. This is usually taken to mean the climax of the plot, though, not any short resolution scene. The Hand of Fear's final sequence - the Doctor and Sarah (and Tom Baker and Lis Sladen) understating the emotion of their goodbye - is magnificent, one of the best moments in classic Who. It saves the story it completes, which for the rest of the running time is decidedly average; but, it doesn't actually have anything to do with the previous 90 minutes approx of story to which it is tacked on. It wasn't written by the authors of the story Bob Baker and Dave Martin, but instead was extrapolated by Baker and Sladen themselves from an original version set down by script editor Robert Holmes. Aside from a few mentions of Sarah's home being in South Croydon, and maybe a few teasing moments where Sarah is in great danger as if this could be the moment she bows out (though even that's pretty much par for the course for Sarah anyway, she holds all the records for jeopardy-friendliness) there's no build up in the story proper to Sarah's departure. The abruptness is what makes it even more poignant, though, so this isn't a problem... for the final few minutes. What that screenwriting maxim leaves unspoken, though, is that the audience has to reach the ending for this forgiveness to work. I couldn't blame anyone who'd bailed out of The Hand of Fear before the final episode, as it seems to run out of plot partway through.

The first episode is okay, with an intriguing enough premise of the Doctor and Sarah stumbling on the remnants of a pre-historic alien crash-down. The beginning sequence of Eldrad's botched execution on Kastria should probably have been snipped out, as it removes the last shred of doubt that Eldrad might be a good gal / guy, and removes some of the mystery about what happened for the hand to have been buried all those years ago.  Better to keep the mystery and ambiguity going longer and explain all that later (they explain it all later anyway). The second episode is a belter: the fictional locale of an experimental nuclear reactor is pretty original, and the real world location is impressive too. The next stage of the fossilised hand - now energised and scuttling around - is very effective, and there's no better tension builder than the ramp up to a possible nuclear explosion. After the midway point and the end of episode 2, though, and there's nothing left to happen. All that really occurs in the second half is that Eldrad is revealed, whole, and the Doctor takes him/her to Kastria. From the start of episode 3, it could all be wrapped up in five minutes - there just isn't anything else of note left to happen.

Things are drawn out by a few different means. First, episode 3 spends a lot of time having the power station bombed, but that is just repeating the earlier story beat when the reactor was going critical, only not as good. The earlier beat has Glyn Houston's Professor Watson calling his family for a clichéd but nonetheless affecting final conversation. The reprise has everyone crouching behind a range rover as if that's going to protect them from the blast. It's silly, but even if it were as clinically accurate as the recent mini-series Chernobyl it would still not be very good, because the exact same thing happened last week. It's not a screenwriting maxim, but it really should be, that you can't have a nuclear reactor threaten to blow up twice. The next diversion to stretch the plot a little further towards the total running time is the gender swap that Eldrad goes through in episode 4. It is a nice idea, but doesn't add anything - apart from duration - to the piece; no value or circumstance of any character changes just because she becomes him. In its final attempt to reach the finish line, The Hand of Fear activates the episode 4 fail-safe of stories of around this period whose plot is petering out: the journey through a booby-trapped inner sanctum. If it weren't so obvious that the story has structural problems beyond this last episode, one might even think it was homage. The Doctor and Sarah had a part 4 spent avoiding such traps in Pyramids of Mars, and the same thing happened in Death to the Daleks too (Sarah only got to hear about that afterwards though, as the Pertwee Doctor didn't take her with him that time).

Aside from the long stretches of treading narrative water, the structure of the story is damaging at a character level too. We're introduced to interesting enough people (Doctor Carter, Professor Watson, even the bloke from the quarry) and then they disappear again never to return; it makes the story feel bitty and unsatisfying as every character arc feels prematurely cut off. In fact, when I later did my fan completist bit working though the Blu-ray, watching the episodes again with the information text, which gives details of the production as subtitles, I found that this was not bug but feature. Script editor Robert Holmes provided Baker and Martin with a structure that changed focus every episode, engineered so no character bar the regulars would appear in more than two episodes. I don't know if it was for budget reasons or artistic ones, but either way I think it was a mistake. This just shows that even the great Robert Holmes had his off days. It would need a bit of work to fix. The reactor just about to blow up is clearly your part 3 cliffhanger - it can't happen any earlier than that, and obviously can't happen twice. This means that Eldrad emerges at the start of episode 4, throwing the plot into a new direction with the trip to Kastria. That also means there's no time to faff about with sex changes, so just keep her as a female - it's more interesting anyway (Doctor Who baddies were almost always male during this period).

There's then the challenge of making the plot from the finding of the hand through to the build up to the reactor explosion cover three episodes. This is possible, though, if the action is slowed a little and a virtue is made of the gradual investigation and gradual change. The ring taking over Sarah and others would be better if not so sudden, with the Doctor unaware at first that his companion is working against him. The gentler it is - suggesting, not coercing - the better for not giving away just how evil Eldrad is too soon. A whole episode with a hand missing in a nuclear power station, scuttling in the shadows as our heroes search, then jumping out and strangling people, could have worked well (though it would presumably have put pressure on the effects crew). Despite the structure, the story still manages to be okay because of some memorable moments and visuals, and mostly high production values (the Kastrian dome model and the crystalline Eldrad costumes being particular highlights). It could have been so much better though, and then perhaps the extreme jolt upon entering that last wonderful sequence wouldn't have been so pronounced.

Connectivity: 

Both The Hand of Fear and Love & Monsters feature a single villain who first turns up in a different form, then reveals their true self towards the end.

Deeper Thoughts:

My so called life in film. At the time of writing, I have been at home for isolation / lockdown / not going out because the rules are too confusing (delete as applicable) for twenty weeks. Right from the start, I had no illusions about learning a foreign language or writing a novel or any other fantasy achievement during this period. This is not least because I'm one of those lucky people who can do their day job from anywhere, so I haven't had a single day on furlough; the amount of extra time I had was never going to be significantly increased. Sometime in May, when I'd had the Tom Baker Blu-ray boxset containing The Hand of Fear for a while, and barely scratched the surface, I did wonder where all the time had gone. So, I retroactively created a viewing diary of everything I'd watched to date, and then kept it going thereafter. As cinemas are now opening (I listen to Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode's movie podcast, and for the first time in a long time within the last week, Kermode has reviewed a film he saw in a theatre rather than on a smaller screen, so punters will surely follow), I thought the moment had come to stop cataloging and look back over this period. From a Doctor Who point of view, I started the lockdown period still watching the episodes and extras on the Season 26 box set, and then rapidly received The Faceless Ones, then later the Jodie Whittaker series 12 box set, then the Tom Baker set. I've also watched various stories for the blog and some of the early twitter watch-a-longs.

Beyond Doctor Who, I've managed to see a pretty good tally of 67 films or TV movies, and 26 full series, the latter ranging from the three episodes of ITV's Quiz, which was an early lockdown distraction, to 20+ episodes of some series of Community, which the family and I have done a full re-watch of from beginning to end. We're doing a similar re-watch now of Red Dwarf, but are only partway through, having finished series 8, but still having all the Dave episodes left to cover. We've done all of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes too; we started in line with the similar twitter live watch-a-longs of LoM, but one episode a week wasn't enough for us, and we ploughed ahead and enjoyed them in about a month elapsed. Life on Mars only gets better with age, but Ashes to Ashes was the revelation for me - much better than I remembered (and I'd remembered it as pretty good). I used a mixture of methods for accessing these series, and the films. Aside from Doctor Who (and one other collectible which I mentioned in a previous blog post, the Pet Shop Boys film It Couldn't Happen Here) I no longer purchase anything on DVD or Blu-ray. Well, never say never. Sometimes, old DVDs were dug out of a cupboard to be watched over the weeks, but mostly - even if I did own something on disc - it was streaming services that were the more convenient to use. For me, that meant Netflix, Amazon Prime, the BBC iPlayer, and the BFI player (which I started subscribing to during this period). 

I also used Apple TV for hiring the odd film, pay per view. Of these, and I know I'm very late to the party, but last year's Oscar winning best film, Bong Joon Ho's Parasite, was the best: slippery, uncategorisable, funny, scary, heart-breaking - believe the hype. I also enjoyed the Mister Rogers picture A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, and quiet British comic adaptation Days of Bagnold Summer. Good new films debuting on streaming services that I watched included The Vast of Night and 7500 on Prime; Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods and Will Ferrell-starring Eurovision comedy The Story of Fire Saga from Netflix; also, britflick psychodrama Lynn + Lucy on the BFI player.  Series new to streaming that I caught in the last few months included Space Force, which I thought was underrated by most critics, and Staged, the quick turnaround Covid-era comedy starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen (or - if you've seen it - perhaps that should be Michael Sheen and David Tennant, or various other combinations). It already feels somewhat dated, with jokes about zoom etiquette and drinking too much during lockdown, but it's hilarious and surprising (don't find out anything about the cast list if you're coming to it fresh, just watch). I also caught up on lots of recent things I hadn't caught when they first came out: Bait, Ready Player One, both series of Derry Girls, Russian Doll series one.  

The other way I consumed films was more old-fashioned: I recorded them off the telly. The aforementioned film podcast had always had a subscription free TV movie of the week feature; during lockdown, they expanded it out and recommended six films per week. I took the advice, and found other films too. Particularly good freeview channels in this regard are filmfour (where I caught up with Logan, Sicario, A Quiet Place and many others)  and the peerless, essential Talking Pictures TV (where I saw This Sporting Life and Whistle Down the Wind for the first time, and quite a few more). A few rare things I had to watch by putting aside my concerns about copyright law as they weren't available anywhere else. But mostly, people would have got paid (the tiny amount that people get paid for me streaming something, or that they got when I bought the disc way back when). The whole period has given me a new appreciation for home viewing that I didn't necessarily have before. I wonder how much this will change things in the future. I've very rarely paid to view individual new films before this year. If I couldn't catch it at the cinema, I was happy to wait for it to hit streaming services. I wonder whether this is something that will just reset once things go back to normal. I also wonder whether I shouldn't be reading more books rather than watching the tube quite so much, but I don't have any time to muse on that right now - the DVD box set that I impulse purchased of every surviving episode of The Adventure Game just arrived. Never say never.

In Summary:

The Hand of Fear is all about the digits, so here goes: the first three episodes and first 20 minutes of episode 4: 3 out of 5; the final 5 minutes: 6 out of 5.

The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Chapter The 151st, where Britain's Got Talons.

Plot:

The Doctor and Leela visit late-Victorian era London to see a Music Hall show, and by a million-to-one coincidence the theatre they choose is the centre of an intrigue involving a magician, a criminal gang, and a time travel experiment from the 51st century. Magnus Greel, the infamous Butcher of Brisbane, a war criminal from the future, uses a prototype time cabinet, and ends up in 1800s China, horribly altered by the process. He's taken in and looked after by young peasant Li H'sen Chang, to whom Greel appears as a god, Weng-Chiang. Soldiers confiscate the cabinet, which is taken for a Chinese puzzle box, and it ends up in the family of police pathologist Professor Litefoot, given to his father, a former palace attaché, as a parting gift from the Emporer. Greel, travelling with a group of assassins from a politico-criminal organisation called the Tong of the Black Scorpion, searches for the cabinet, and the search brings him to London. Chang accompanies him, performing at the Palace Theatre as a magician, presumably as some sort of elaborate cover, so he can set Greel up in a secret lair beneath the theatre's basement (actually, though, it seems that he likes the performing more than the crime, and who can blame him?). Greel has given Chang enhanced mental powers - which Chang uses to do conjuring tricks - and a vicious 51st century robot, the Peking Homunculus - which Chang, erm, uses as a ventriloquist's dummy. He loves the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd.

Chang is abducting young girls in the area for Greel, so that his master can extract their life essence for himself, to temporarily subdue the ravages the time experiment has done to his body. When the husband of one of the girls connects her disappearance to Chang, the Tong gang members and the Homonculus, known as Mr. Sin, attack and kill him. Stumbling upon this on their way to the theatre, the Doctor and Leela become embroiled. They investigate with help from Litefoot, and the owner of the theatre, Jago. They nearly come a cropper from an encounter with giant rats in the sewers under London, remnants of Greel's experimentation; then, they lose the Time Cabinet when Greel and his followers steal it from Litefoot's house. Luckily, one of the gang leaves behind the cabinet's key, which the Doctor uses as a bargaining chip. Things reach a climax at the House of the Dragon, where the Doctor, Leela, Jago and Litefoot battle against Greel, and win, bringing the 51st Century's dangerous time experiment to an end.

Context:

Saturday 14th March 2020, a BFI screening (see below for more details) took place in the midst of a pandemic. I am a BFI member, and a few weeks earlier had booked three tickets for myself and two fan friends (David and Alan, who I've attended many of these BFI events with, and mentioned many times on the blog before) to see Talons on the big screen with improved CGI rat. Also with tickets, booked separately, were other friends Chris, Dave and Tim, who we also usually meet up with at these things. As the date got closer, all of us were wondering whether it would go ahead, and whether we should attend even if it did. I am generally predisposed to do the opposite of what the current UK Prime Minister advises, and he was saying everything was fine; but, I also felt honour bound to go, as the tickets needed to be picked up from the box office by the card holder who purchased them, and that was going to be tricky for the other two, if I wasn't there and they still decided to go.

In the end, Alan and Chris decided it was best to stay home, and Trevor (another fan friend who I've attended these events with, and mentioned many times on the blog) took Alan's ticket. I packed my tissues and hand sanitiser, and travelled up to London on the morning of the screening. The train was empty enough that I had a metre between me and anyone else for most of the journey, and the weather was nice enough that I could walk rather than take the tube; I was still, though, nervous that I'd done the wrong thing. Three days later, the BFI closed indefinitely, and everyone was told to stay home unless they could possibly avoid it, so it was definitely my last social night out for a while; luckily, it was a good one. Writing this, only a few days later, stuck inside and preparing to home school the kids (boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7), it seems like a whole lifetime ago.

First time round:

This is one of only two stories on VHS that I ever received as a Christmas present (the other one being The Five Doctors Special Edition, which came up recently on the blog). It came out on VHS in late 1988, and I remember being completely surprised to receive it that Christmas from my Dad. I hadn't asked him to get it, and it must have been sheer luck that I hadn't bought it myself before that (although this was back in the early VHS era when distribution was patchy, so I may not have seen it in any shops by then). Looking at genome for 25th December 1988 brings back a lot of memories. I remember watching the Top of the Pops Christmas special live before lunch (the Pet Shop Boys, who I had recently become mad keen on, did two numbers) and Back to the Future was the big BBC1 afternoon film premiere, with some terribly clumsy dubbing to eliminate swearing. Then, later in the evening, I alas set the video for Silverado, presumably thinking it would be a laugh riot, starring as it did two of the main cast of recent cinema smash A Fish Called Wanda, John Cleese and Kevin Kline (I have tried a couple of times since with Silverado, and just don't get it). So, probably, I watched my new precious thing sometime between, when the TV and video weren't otherwise occupied, sometime between 5 and 9 pm on Christmas Day 1988. I was blown away from first watch: the richness of the staging, and the period trappings, all seemed apt for the festive season.

Some things I wouldn't have seen that Christmas were nunchucks. A shot or two featuring these in the fight scene in episode 1 were excised because the BBFC were very against nunchucks at the time. And I say episode 1, but what I really mean is the first 22 minutes, as Talons - like all the presentations on VHS of the time - was one stitched together omnibus version. I finally got to see it in full in 2003 when the DVD release came out. One other thing that was significant about this first watch is embarrassing to admit: I did not realise that the actor playing Li H'sen Chang wasn't Chinese. The character is played by a white actor, John Bennett, 'yellowed up'. It is the most infamously dodgy casting decision in Doctor Who's history, and it completely passed me by. I was old enough that you'd have thought I'd have been a little more savvy, but no. It only gradually occurred to my cloth-head over many re-watches: it's uncomfortable to admit, but it's a very good make-up job, and a good performance. Viewed on a small screen at home in VHS tape quality, it convinced. None of this, of course, makes it right, and I cringe at my younger self for being such a dolt. I can't, though, pretend to feel any hurt or offence, even though I completely understand and empathise with those who do. It would almost feel like appropriation for me to feel offence on behalf of anyone or any group of people. I'm just trying to be honest, and place this story in a personal context.

Reaction:

This is a story the many fans, me included, do feel an overwhelming urge to position in an appropriate context; they seek most of all for Talons not to be misunderstood, and this can look like we're making excuses. I will try to find the right balance here, and I most definitely am not seeking to offend. The major issue for contemporary analysis is that Talons is so very good - it's well made and delivers a superlative example of the achievement of Doctor Who's aims of the time (which were not to engage in any sociological discourse, but just to produce exciting adventure stories without much of a budget). I don't think this can be in any doubt - almost every aspect of the production is of a high quality by any objective measure, and I'll pick out some of my favourite bits anon. It is consistently popular, being a top ten story in all three of the official Doctor Who Magazine polls run to cover all the broadcast stories to date in 1998, 2009 and 2014. But The Talons of Weng-Chiang has two flaws, and they're biggies. First, the realisation of the monster, a giant rat, was overambitious for what could realistically be achieved, and the finished article is cuddly, which makes any attempt at dramatic scenes involving it seem comical. And second - it's racist.

I'm not seeking to equate the two in any way, but fans' reactions to those two flaws (one frivolous, one serious) is very similar: they ignore them, and mentally edit them out, as limitations that the production team couldn't quite manage to lift up to the same level as the material surrounding them. Obviously, we Doctor Who fans are used to ignoring naff bits of our programme and concentrating on the positive, but the pressure here is greater because the story is otherwise so great. If it was truly rubbish (and I wouldn't put any broadcast Doctor Who in the truly rubbish category), people wouldn't still be watching it after all this time, so a sort of natural selection would remove it from any debate. Even the worst Doctor Who story has more entertainment value to offer contemporary audiences than any episode of, say, The Black and White Minstrel Show. Talons is still being released, this latest time on Blu-ray, and still being shown - as it was at the BFI - to audiences. The temptation is there to make that editing out more than just a mental exercise. The version of the story shown at the screening had a CGI replacement for the cuddly rat. Crucially, on the box set this is only an optional extra, and doesn't replace the original. One day the technology might exist to replace John Bennett with an East Asian actor, and I'd like to see that version. But if one were to make that the default, erasing the history, then one would become even more of an apologist for the flaws, pretending that they didn't happen at all. This is my logic for saying that we have to grapple with Talons in its original form, deal with it head-on: we can't forget it, we can't change it.

So, to deal head-on with the statement that I so casually made two paragraphs above: is The Talons of Weng-Chiang racist? [Laurence Fox alert: white man is just about to define what's racist and what isn't; please understand that he is aware that this is a definition only for him, and others may disagree.] I think the answer is: yes, but not perhaps in the way many people think. There are unquestioningly racist lines in the story; this was even more obvious when watching at the BFI with an audience where some of them caused an audible discomfort in the room, albeit very briefly. Most of these can be seen as a realistic depiction of the mores of the Victorian era, but then Leela has a line where she describes Li H'sen Chang as "the yellow one". She's an Earth colonist from the far future with no knowledge of Earth or its history; there is no way by observation that she would refer to him that way: East Asian skin is not yellow, any more than mine is white, these are socio-political constructions. The Doctor doesn't criticise or correct any instances like this in the story, even when he's accused of believing all Chinese people look the same; it might have made it more acceptable if he had, but that's not in keeping for this Doctor; this is Tom Baker at his most mordant, brooding and alien.

The aspects more generally picked up on are of course John Bennett's 'yellowing up', plus that Talons presents all the Chinese characters as simplistic bad guys, a crude and monolithic expression of Chinese culture in a negative way. I sympathise with these interpretations, but I don't agree. For more details, I have previously written on this subject in the Deeper Thoughts section of The Keys of Marinus blog post, but in summary: Bennett's performance is probably a bad decision, but it's not racist - dressing up as other people is what actors do. They do this to please audiences, and if, as has happened in the years since the story's original broadcast, things change in the wider world, and it becomes clearer that this upsets or annoys a section of the audience, it doesn't get done anymore. Any moral argument about whether performances should or should not upset or annoy is so thorny, it's best to ignore that and follow the money. Changes in the wider world are instigated by activists leading the good fight, no doubt, but they only gain traction where there's risk that audiences will be lost; any perceived moral good is probably a side effect. Maybe this seems callous, but that's showbusiness. Once one accepts the kind of make-up and performance done here was a standard practice that has subsequently stopped being standard, then the other criticism falls away too. Whoever plays him, Li H'sen Chang is the best character in the piece, and he's a Chinese character - most of the nuance regarding the presentation of Chinese characters and culture in Talons comes from his story - he's clever, layered, full of subtle contradictions. That he is a bad guy is neither here nor there - it's a gift of a part, and the number one role in the guest cast that anyone would want to play.

Beyond Chang, every role is performed perfectly, and every character feels like they have a life of their own outside the narrative (Jago and Litefoot indeed had their own spin-off audio series that lasted many, many years), Robert Holmes' script has great examples of world building, fleshing out the day-to-day business of the Palace Theatre, Litefoot's family's previous life in China, Chang's life before Magnus Greel crashed in, the world of time agents and wars in the 51st century. Even the smallest roles - Patsy Smart chewing the scenery as a Docklands hag, Conrad Asquith as the Peeler that had a sneaky drink on duty - have their place to shine, fitting perfectly into the wider proceedings. The regulars are at their absolute best here too, Tom is at the height of his powers, making it look effortless, bringing in a lot of wit with some lines that are surely his rehearsal ad-libs, but never risking sending things up as he would in later years. Louise Jameson is peerless, probably the best actor ever to play a companion, and lifts every scene she's in to even higher heights. The script has such rich language (with Jago's polysyllabic alliterations a particular pleasure), and synthesises it's many influences - Sherlock Holmes, Sax Rohmer, Jack the Ripper, Phantom of the Opera, many many more - in such a clever way, that it all feels like one coherent whole rather than a set of riffs. Dudley Simpson's score is one of his best, and his band of players surpass themselves in its performance (Dudley gets to cameo as the theatre's conductor too). Great production design, great direction, and - rat excepted - good effects work too.

The new version does subtle improvements to some effects (like Chang's mesmer vision and the House of the Dragon's laser battle), but the new version of the rat is the main attraction. It's much better, but it's still not perfect. In a couple of shots, it looks like it has human hands. The requirements of the script are clearly still a big ask, even with today's technology, and the animator Niel Bushnell has done the best job possible. This watch did prompt a few other flaws to come to my mind: the story lasts 2 extra episodes just because of the coincidence of a character forgetting to pick up a bag when vacating the theatre; that could have been reworked to be a deliberate complication caused by one of the heroic characters. Why does Greel not use the life essence of young men as well as women? When he's in hiding, it's possible he felt women were less likely to be missed in Victorian London, but when he's about to leave he could dispense with that, and process a couple of young Tongs if he needs a snack. Chang makes a big deal of not being able to read the Doctor's mind to work out who this mystery person is, but why doesn't he just read Leela's mind to get details about the Doctor? It just goes to show nothing is without its little flaws, even things with a couple of other massive flaws. One other criticism, which could be levelled at any story in this particular era, is that there is no depth: Talons has no message or subtext, it exists simply to entertain. It's ironic therefore that a couple of points about its production mean that it has encouraged more serious debate than any other Doctor Who story ever made.

Connectivity: 

Both this story and Mummy on the Orient Express see the Doctor and the one female companion he's accompanied by have a bit of a night out, going to the theatre or on a posh train journey; they also get to dress up, with the Doctor not in his usual togs for the time, and the companion getting a nice period frock to wear. Both stories have a scene where a female singer entertains an audience with a diegetic performance (Foxes and 'The Sheffield Song Thrush"). There are allusions to vampirism in both stories.

Deeper Thoughts:

(L to R) Johnson, Fiddy 

Palace Theatre Playbill: BFI Talons screening 14th March. Coronavirus worries, for very good reasons, sadly depleted the line-up for the day. Producer Philip Hinchcliffe and Christopher Benjamin, who played Jago, were due to appear, but had to send their apologies. The panel that was intended to kick off proceedings on the representation of ethnicity in archive TV had to be cancelled as people could not attend. Instead, our usual hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy had a conversation on this theme at the start, and quoted statements from a couple of those who were due to be on the panel. Johnson, who was in particularly funny form (though the discussion was treated seriously) pointed out the irony of it ending up as two middle-aged white men tackling the subject. The points discussed covered much the same ground as I did above. Emma Fo felt that it was problematic and hard for her to watch, with clichéd representations involving triads and Kung Fu moves dehumanising these characters, avoiding the need to explore them. Matthew Sweet added some context about Robert Holmes's influences: Sax Rohmer, writer of the Fu Manchu stories, had apparently said that he'd made a lot of money out of China without ever learning anything about it. Sweet also believed that the racist comments used in Talons were historically accurate, and the Doctor's aloofness was in character. Dick stated that the BFI should never be an apologist, but should be a contextualiser: Talons was made nearly 45 years ago, and it was the norm then - with only a few dissenting voices - for white actors to play non-white characters. It was only the next decade afterwards that the idea that it was wrong gained traction. Dick was also keen to point out that despite this, it still does happen occasionally to this day.

(L to R) Fiddy, Bushnell

Once the usual quiz was completed, the first three episodes were shown. After that, Dick spoke briefly to Neil Bushnell, the animator of the new CGI seen in the episodes. He had worked on a lot of the DVDs and Blu-rays, tidying up special effects and doing on screen graphics. He was keen to rise the challenge of replacing the rat as it is "One of the worst effects in Doctor Who and the whole of entertainment". The process is always a balance, and involves negotiation with the box set producer, with spreadsheets kept of all the possible shots that could be replaced. Some of his favourite work is subtle, material he'd be happier if people weren't consciously aware had changed. One shot he's particularly proud of was adding a London Skyline to a scene in an early episode of the Doctor and Litefoot in a boat on the river (and I didn't spot anything out of place when those shots had come up on the big screen earlier, so he's done his job well, and I'll be keen to have a closer look at that when the Blu-ray box set comes out in early May).

The final three episodes were then shown, followed by a selection of extracts from the special features planned for the box set. Then, Louise Jameson came out for a Q&A with Justin, and she really impressed. In general, she came over as self-effacing, but incredibly on the ball with detailed knowledge of every aspect of which she was asked - she even tried to give a reasoned response to a slightly unfair audience question late on asking for an explanation of the lack of East Asian actors in the whole of Doctor Who's history. A lot of performers I've seen talk about how much they enjoy doing Doctor Who audios for Big Finish, but I've never seen someone when asked about them give the titles and authors of her favourite ones. But then, I don't think anyone I've seen on the BFI stage before has created an original range of dramas for Big Finish, as Louise has done with the ATA girls audios. Early questions talked about her career before Who, and later questions touched on later work, and what she's going to be seen in next, and it's clear that she's very busy and always in demand.

(L to R) Jameson, Johnson

One topic that kept recurring was her stepping into the companion role after Liz Sladen left, and so feeling a bit in the shadow of Sarah Jane Smith. She told the story of getting delivered a bag of Liz's fan mail by mistake "which of course I read", and it all said how the correspondents missed Liz so much. There was such modesty on display by Louise in this regard, that one of the audience questioners made a point of telling her that she was every bit as loved as Liz, which got a big round of applause in the room. Louise also touched on the oft told tension between her and Tom Baker when they made the show together (they're better pals now, Louise telling of how he regularly emails her, always signing off as 'Old Tom') and she put a lot of the problems down to her not being able to replace Liz, at least in Tom's eyes. Tom always managed to hit her "crumple zones", and would have preferred the Doctor to be travelling on his own, or "with a [talking] cabbage". Some of this antipathy made it through into the performance, with Baker hardly ever making eye contact. Someone once edited together all the times the Doctor tells Leela to "Ssh" during their time, and "it's enough to fill an episode". None of this, though, ever made Louise stop respecting him as a charismatic actor. He was someone, she said (like John Hurt who she'd worked with on a TV play) who could instantly be sensed entering a room, and all eyes would be drawn to him.

She also shared some details of those early days after having taken over in the companion role. The make up session to apply her fake tan took one and a half hours, and was applied exhaustively to "some very personal areas". She had to wear red contact lenses to make her blue eyes seem brown, which she hated, and which made everything she looked at have a sepia tint. News of her casting leaked, so she had to do a 16 hour working day at one point as the press launch was handled at the same time as she was in studio for a full day. The flap on the back of her costume, covering her derriere, was added at her insistence. On her first shooting day, she kept a pink dressing gown on during camera rehearsals for as long as possible, delaying the point she'd have to reveal her scantily clad new image. When she finally had to shed her outer garb, the lighting man said leeringly "I don't mind lighting that for the next six months". Interestingly, though, Louise was fine going back to the savage skins look after having different costumes for a couple of stories, including The Talons of Weng-Chiang, saying "Part of the impact is the image", and though the Victorian frock was nice as a one-off, "I'm not much of a fan of corsets".

I don't think the Q&A lasted longer than any others, but because of Louise's vast intelligence and attention to detail it covered too much for me to include it all here. Also touched on was the #Metoo movement, and Louise's slow, gathering understanding over her career that she had a voice and could speak up; working with Jago and Litefoot actors Christopher Benjamin and the late Trevor Baxter (like working with two 7 year old boys); her reluctance to write an autobiography for fear of upsetting her children ("You'd have to leave out all the good bits"); the growing confidence of fandom, and how Doctor Who has pretty much single-handedly made geeks fashionable; handing over to Mary Tamm, who she knew well ("Only two questions - how much were you paid, and what's Tom like?"), and filming 11 takes on the scene in Talons of the Doctor and Leela climbing into the sewer, only for the final one having to be overdubbed as a small boy watching had encouragingly shouted "Go to it Doctor!" at the end.  Once it was over, David, Trevor and I had a few drinks together in the BFI bar (we're all still okay a week later, thank goodness, and we're not going out again, I promise). On the way home, Louise Jameson retweeted my message about attending the event, which made me love her even more, and I didn't think that possible.  No disrespect to Liz Sladen, but Leela was the best (except maybe for my absolute fave Caroline John as Liz Shaw, but Louise Jameson - who spoke admiringly of Caroline that day too - might not be too bothered on that point). 

In Summary:

Come for the entertainment, stay for the discussions on ethnic representation in TV. This theatrical marvel keeps on giving, and gets my personal top billing.