Enlightenment

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

Plot:

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

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

Context:

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

First Time Round:

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

Reaction:

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

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

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

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

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

Connectivity:

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

Deeper Thoughts:

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

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

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

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

In Summary:

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

The Stones of Blood

Chapter The 235th, which demonstrates that it is relatively easy to get blood into a stone. 

Plot:

Sometime around 2000BC, the villainous Cessair of Diplos stole the great seal of Diplos, really the third segment of the Key to Time, giving her the power to transform the appearance of people and objects. She then abducts some silicon-based lifeforms called the Ogri from their home planet of Ogros to use as muscle; these creatures look like massive stones and drink blood. Somehow she still gets caught, and is taken off in a hyperspace ship for trial, with the arresting officers, plus justice machines called Megara sealed in one of the ship's chambers. They also transport the powerful seal and the Ogri in the same ship, which is asking for trouble. Cessair escapes and takes her weapon and hench-monoliths with her, leaving the ship stalled, and transfers from hyperspace to the corresponding area of real space: somewhere in rural England. The Ogri pose as part of a megalithic stone circle, and Cessair takes on a variety of aliases over the years so she has control of the land on which the stone circle stands. She could go anywhere and do anything, but she chooses to spend 4000 years pretending to be a Celtic goddess, the Cailleach. In the late 1970s, the Doctor, Romana and K9, arrive at the stones searching for the third segment. Cessair is now posing as Vivien Fay, a research assistant to Professor Emelia Rumford, presumably to sabotage the study Rumford is doing, the latter's curiosity having been piqued by discrepancies in the numbers of the stones recorded over the years. 

The Doctor visits De Vries, the leader of a local (fake) druid society based in a nearby manor house, and ends up the centre-piece of a pagan sacrifice, his blood to be food for the Ogri. Meanwhile, Vivien / Cessair cosplays as the Doctor using the segment's power and tricks Romana into falling off a cliff. Luckily, the 'druids' have second thoughts; plus, Romana manages to hang on. After having failed to sacrifice the Doctor, De Vries is killed by an Ogri; examining the manor house after this, the Doctor and Rumford find clues that help them piece together that 'Vivien' is behind everything. Cessair sends Romana to the hyperspace ship, so the Doctor builds a gizmo to follow her, which Rumford and K9 operate. While on the ship, the Doctor opens the seals on the Megara (who appear as floating sparkling balls), which they inform him is a capital crime. With Cessair in attendance, the Doctor defends himself appealing the death penalty, trying to get the Megara to realise that their escaped defendant is in the room. He fails, but moves near to Cessair at the point when the Megara are going to execute him; the Megara inadvertently knock her out, then scan her brain to check she's okay, revealing her identity. The Megara punish Cessair by turning her into another stone in the stone circle back on Earth. Before the Megara can carry out sentence on the Doctor, he uses the seal (somehow) to banish them back to their ship and the ship back to Diplos. The Time Travellers leave Professor Rumford and carry on with their quest...

Context:

After enjoying watching the last Doctor Who story for the blog on a Saturday morning, I did the same for episode one of The Stones of Blood. Last time, this led to many members of the family coming in and watching for long periods, but absolutely nobody so much as glanced in from the doorway this time. Separately, though, the two youngest (boy of 12, girl of 10) unexpectedly asked to join me for the next Who watch - this was after I'd caught up on parts two to four over the weekend. We'll see if they are still interested next weekend. I watched the story from the disc within the Australian region DVD box-set. (Why the Australian version? See the First Time Round section of The Armageddon Factor blog post for more details, but be prepared for man-baby whinging!)

First Time Round:

This is the fifth blogged of a total of six stories from the Key to Time series, season 16 of the classic run. I first experienced every one of this linked set of stories in the same way: on VHS. The tapes were released in the first half of 1995, two a month between April and June. The Stones of Blood was one of the middle pair released on Monday 22nd May 1995 with The Androids of Tara. Following the usual pattern of my purchases of this era, I would have ventured into central Worthing after work on the day the VHS came out (I was employed at the time in a factoring company based a little way out of the centre near the hospital, and it was just a little too far to go there and back in my lunch hour and still find time for lunch) to Volume One, my supplier of the time. Volume One was a book and video shop with a large cult and sci-fi section. I'd have bought both the two videos and then most likely have stopped to get a burger in Old Nick's Diner, then get the bus home, all the while soaking in every bit of information available on the cover about the new and special delights that awaited me when I was finally reunited with a VCR. This would have included opening up the boxes and reading the inner covers too, as BBC Video at this point had started to print slightly more in-depth sleeve notes on the inside (as pictured below). Once I was back in my old family home where I was still living at that time, I was on my own; my sister was at university and my Mum was living almost full-time at my soon-to-be Stepdad's place. As such, there would have been nothing and no-one stopping me from gorging on all eight episodes in one sitting, and nothing and no-one did. Volume One and Old Nick's Diner are no more, the family home sold, and the video tapes long ago consigned to landfill, but I feel they are in some small way commemorated by my still retaining that VHS sleeve in a plastic wallet in a folder alongside all of its stable-mates.

Reaction:

The most memorable part of The Stones of Blood is a scene late in episode three that is totally divorced from the main action: two campers find Ogri, or as they appear to them massive standing stones, mysteriously and suddenly situated outside their tent. They touch the stones, their hands become fixed causing them immediate terror, and we watch as one of their hands become a skeletal version, flesh and blood absorbed; the screen then fades to red. It's a chilling and effective contemporary horror moment, but it is telling that it stands out, unencumbered as it is with the weight of the ongoing narrative. The ongoing narrative, you see, is absolute pants. The Stones of Blood is nonetheless overall a good example of this period of Doctor Who, but it works as a series of moments, some witty and some horrific, that are connected by a loose plot that essentially involves the characters travelling randomly - and often quite slowly - from one location to another, with a backstory that struggles to make much sense. To see this, you just have to study the text to try to locate any motivation for Vivien Fay / Cessair's actions, and you'll come up blank. She is an escaped convict, and has the Ogri and the power of the seal. She could pretty much do anything she wants, and could certainly leave the immediate vicinity of the prison spaceship in which she was previously incarcerated, Instead, she hangs around for millennia pretending to be a goddess, presumably popping back to the ship occasionally to check it's still in the same state, acquiring a stately home and various minor positions of power over the years, and having herself immortalised in oils for a portrait every so often.

The three missing portraits clue is another case in point; it's a lovely moment when the Doctor investigates this Scooby Doo style clue, but the slightest scrutiny shows it to be absurd. If Cessair is trying to protect a secret identity and not draw attention to her superhuman longevity, why would she have commissioned three separate portraits of her unchanged mug over the decades, why would she exhibit them side by side in her house, and why would she only recently have thought to hide them, leaving very obvious gaps? It's similar to the investigation later when Romana finds out from cookbooks in the cottage that Vivien / Cessair is allergic to lemon juice; this fictional information only helps Romana and K9 to find a fictional planet of origin, through a fictional process of elimination, so could have been literally anything; she could be allergic to Bath Olivers or jelly or Sondheim musicals: go nuts, it's all made-up! The characters don't even use that piece of information in any way, so it was pretty pointless. Still fun, though. If one accepts that there must be some good reason why Cessair needs to continue - or at least enjoys - playing the fearsome beaked deity, her methods still don't add up. If she has the ability to transform into other things, why does she need to dress up (having said that, the feathered all-over number with plague mask is wonderfully scary and memorable). Can she also commune with the birds that seem to frighten De Vries so much? It's not mentioned as a power of the Key to Time nor the Guardians (though they do start wearing dead birds stuck to their heads in later stories, so who knows). Perhaps she has used the power of the seal to turn into the raven, but if so she appears to be in two places at the same time during the early parts of the narrative. How else though would De Vries know that his visitor is called the Doctor if  'the Cailleach' hadn't somehow told him? It's not clear and never explained.

None of this matters much, though: The Stones of Blood moves on to its next nice moment, fleet of foot, and gets to the end with the whole house of cards just about intact, held together by charm rather than logic. This story is perhaps the best use of the Key to Time arc plot in the stories before the season finale - giving the segment some powers that the villain can harness is an interesting twist on the established format, and also serves as a reminder to the audience half way through the quest of what it's all about. Behind the scenes there's a minor innovation too, with Outside Broadcast video rather than film used for the location footage, which happened very rarely in the 1970s. In general, the story is shot well - there's a beautiful low angle scene of K9 at dawn in the third episode. Well, I assume it's dawn. The story's notable for the use of a 'day for night' filter on some of the exterior scenes that doesn't quite work; unfortunately, the night-time lighting of outdoor set scenes that were staged in the studio is much darker, so there's still a visual bump between studio and location even though both are shot on video. The images on location seem a bit soft focus occasionally too, which may have been deliberate, but it's hard to be sure. The humour in the show, which is always to the fore in this period, is just the right side of taking the mickey. The scene where the Doctor takes on an Ogri like a matador, swirling his coat around Paso Doble-style, and tempting the poor stone creature towards the cliff edge, does go over the top (as indeed does the Ogri), but the rest is just slightly more restrained. There's much wit and wisdom, and some wonderful lines, like the Rumford / Doctor exchange: "Are you from outer space? / No. / Oh. / I'm more from what you'd call inner time".

Halfway in, the genre of the story abruptly changes. It's two for the price of one: the horror of the Ogri with their omnipresent heartbeat gives way to some harder science fiction of the hyperspace ship, and then a battle of wits in a (sort-of) courtroom drama.  Again, The Stones of Blood somehow gets away with side-stepping the genre promise of its earlier episodes. Lip service is paid with the occasional cutaway to the stone circle and the Ogri during the second half. One of these cutaways is a very well directed moment: most Ogri scenes see a septuagenarian leaving them behind at a slow walking pace, but the scene of K9 narrating them getting closer and closer to the circle as Rumford operates the hyperspace machine is tense and exciting. The main part of Dudley Simpson's score is good but not distinguished, but the cues accompanying the hyperspace scenes are much more distinctive and give it a lift in the second half. The Megara, flashing blobs vision-mixed into the main action, aren't that bad an effect. The story seems curiously underpopulated; apart from the cameoing campers and the Megara voice-only parts, there's only four speaking roles in the guest cast, and half of them are characters that are barely in any scenes and are dispatched early. The reason this doesn't matter is the other half of that quartet: this story stands or falls on the quality of two performances, Susan Engel as Vivien / Cessair and Beatrix Lehmann as Professor Rumford. Thankfully, they are both superb. Lehmann gives one of the best dotty scientists in the whole of Doctor Who's long history (and that's a crowded field). Engel's restrained and smooth criminality is a joy to watch. The queer coding of the couple gives an interesting subtext too (but its subtle enough to ignore it if you're not convinced and think I'm seeing something that isn't there). This is a female-led guest cast, with a token bloke and a couple of male voice artists; this was rare for Doctor Who in the 1970s. I haven't the time to be exhaustive searching back, but four guest speaking parts for women is probably a record for this era, if not for the whole of classic Who. They should have tried it more often. 

Connectivity: 

Both The Stones of Blood and The Curse of the Black Spot feature a space ship, its original crew dead for many years to the point that their bodies are desiccated, occupying the same place as an area on the planet Earth that is blissfully unaware that the ship is also there, but on another plane or dimension or some such nonsense; in both stories, the initial impact of an alien force on a character is shown by something happening to that character's hand (though it's a lot more grisly in the 1970s story).

Deeper Thoughts:

Target Acquisition - part 1 of 2. In 2021, I completed my collection of at least one copy of every Doctor Who novel and novelisation on the Target imprint, which I blogged about on occasion throughout the year. My collection stayed complete for - ooh - all of seven months. Now, for the third time in recent years, a batch of new novelisations has been published with the usual lovely retro covers; again, there's a mixture of classic and new series stories novelised. The latter category still provides ample scope for new releases, with only a handful of the many stories shown from 2005 onwards having been adapted into books; the former category meanwhile is close to done. With all the classic series stories completed in Target versions last year, the only couple left are two new versions of The Stones of Blood and The Androids of Tara, the prose written by original author David Fisher. These versions were made for alternate talking book versions, the original novelisations having been penned by Terrance Dicks soon after the television broadcasts; Fisher's versions are now printed on paper for the very first time. The Stones of Blood starts with a foreword by the author's son, Nick Fisher, also a writer, that's a heartfelt tribute to David, who's passed away since writing the adaptations. Another tribute, this time from a colleague, comes in the afterword, where Michael Stevens, the commissioning editor for the audio range, explains how this version originally came about: Dicks's novelisation was during the years where he was working on many titles, and therefore the books were very lean; Stevens wanted something more substantial for audio, and wanted to do something a bit different.

Fisher's prose is a solid and unpretentious as Dicks's work, and he does not deviate much from the story as broadcast except to smooth out some of the lumpier bits of plotting. For example, Cessair is shown to have mental powers from the seal that allow her some control over her acolytes, which she uses to get the original stone circle built. The book explicitly confirms that this also allows her to control the raven, rather than her transforming herself into one. This doesn't explain how De Vries knows the curly haired fellow in his manor is called the Doctor, though; a little bird couldn't have literally told him, could it? Because logistics and budget are no issue in a novelisation, there are many more birds in the narrative, including some gulls that try to push Romana off the cliff during the material that represents the episode one cliffhanger. The discrepancies in the number of stones can be more definite too, without having to adjust to a real world location: in the book, it's been surveyed as having either six or nine stones, depending on whether the three Ogri are on walkabout or not. Fisher returns the Megara to being the floating balls they were in his original script, rather than the sparkling lights of the TV production. There are a few extra lines and gags here and there, and sometimes dialogue is turned into character thoughts. There's not much of the inner life of the characters, though there's a nice couple of pages of Rumford using her archaeological skills to find where the crystals to power the Doctor's hyperspace gizmo might be hidden in Vivien's cottage. Something of a motivation is given for Cessair's actions, but I don't really buy it. She stays near the hyperspace ship in case she can work out a way to pilot it and escape Earth, and has to keep sacrificing people to the Ogri or she'll lose control of them. It's better than nothing, I suppose.

In a note on the text at the end of The Androids of Tara novelisation, Steve Cole, project editor of the Target range, explains that both Fisher and Stevens were keen to do another audio book after the first proved successful, so Fisher was commissioned in June 2011 to create a new version of the story that was broadcast directly after The Stones of Blood. My blog post on the TV version of the Tara adventure can be read here, and it gives away instantly to the reader that this is one of my favourites from the classic years of Doctor Who. Would the prose version meet such a high level of expectation? Not quite, alas. The prose style is the same, and again dialogue exchanges are simplified by being turned into character thoughts or reported speech where possible. More than in The Stones of Blood book, Fisher provides chunks of backstory. The problem is that the Tara story doesn't need it. In a way these two stories are polar opposites; Stones is a very simple plot based on some complicated and sometimes nonsensical backstory; tidying up that backstory in the book is therefore useful. Androids, on the other hand, though the plot is slightly more involved with its doubles and double-crossing, results from very straightforward motivations for all concerned that don't need fleshing out. It's all just about who becomes king of the planet. So, the additional material tends to go into detail about people's family trees and history, and is not so essential.

Like the previous book, The Androids of Tara is robbed of the wonderful performances from the TV, but this seems to hurt it more than its predecessor. It's a souffle of a show, the rise coming from some wonderful actors creating little moments that can't be captured on the page. For example, Simon Lack and Paul Lavers make a lot from facial expressions and tones of voice to create fun and laughter watching them, but the characters on the page are just a couple of dull soldiers. Peter Jeffrey's sly and witty performance as Count Grendel lifts what in prose form is a very stereotypical tyrant. I'm glad this version exists, but it'll never become my go-to version over the TV story; to be honest, though, that was never a likely outcome. Two new series stories came out alongside the two Fisher books in this batch (and I'll review them next time); there was to be a third, Peter Harness's book of his scripts with Steven Moffat, titled The Zygon Invasion, which was announced but then delayed until next year. The rumour, though, is that it will be part of a larger batch planned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who. I look forward to it.

In Summary:

Not quite a stone-cold classic, but very enjoyable (almost despite itself). 

The Ribos Operation

Chapter The 108th, where the con is on a global scale.

Plot: 
The Doctor and K9 Mark II are hijacked on route to a holiday by the White Guardian, and forced to go on a quest to find the six segments of the Key to Time, scattered throughout the cosmos. Recently qualified Time Lord Academy graduate Romana is assigned to help too. Searching for the first segment leads them to the planet Ribos, and slap bang into the middle of a crime caper. A couple of con artists, Garron and Unstoffe, are attempting to trick a deposed aristocratic tyrant, the Graff Vynda-K, out of a substantial amount of gold in a land sale scam (the land in question being the entire planet Ribos). One prop that the dodgy duo are using as part of this is a lump of a precious mineral, which turns out to be the first segment in disguise.

The Graff gets wind of the scheme, but thinks that the Doctor and Romana are involved too; he and his personal guardsmen pursue the conmen and the TARDIS team into the dangerous catacombs of Ribos, aided by the local wise woman who has a non-scientifically explained psychic ability. (There's also a brief detour made to tell a persecuted scientific heretic that he was right all long; sounds extraneous, but trust me - you wouldn't want to cut it.) The Graff and his troops end up dead, and the Doctor tricks Garron with his hitherto unmentioned pickpocketing skills, lifting the segment from him. Our heroes depart, leaving Garron and Unstoffe with the consolation prize of the Graff's ship full of loot. And the quest continues...

Context:

As the random number generator had landed on two Tom Bakers in succession, which it felt a bit samey to ask the family to join me in watching, and also because it's a favourite of mine, I kept The Ribos Operation all to myself as a treat. I watched it from the Australian DVD (long story - see the First-time round section of The Armageddon Factor post for more details) with a crafty craft ale late one evening. It went down as smoothly as I remembered. It's a hidden gem: well regarded by many enthusiasts (as a quick google of online reviews will confirm) but never appearing too high in any fan popularity list (it was 103rd out of 241 stories in Doctor Who Magazine's most recent poll in 2014 - resolutely mid-table).

First-time round:

April 1995; Britpop bestrode the charts, I had finished Uni the previous Summer and was back at home in Worthing, working in an office while figuring out what to do with my life (it turned out what I was going to do with my life was work in an office, but hey ho). I'd just met the very wonderful person who would later become The Better Half, when something almost as significant happened: BBC Video brought out the Key to Time season on VHS. Two of the season's stories were released every month from April to June until the set was complete. I don't know why they didn't just release 'em all in one go. Box sets were not such a big thing then, I suppose; there had been a few, but never containing as many as six stories in one hit. So, it was just the first two tapes - Ribos and The Pirate Planet - that I bought one lunchtime; I remember queueing to get a burger in Old Nick's Diner (a much missed institution) and perusing the boxes trying to work out what picture would be revealed across the spines when I'd collected them all. Once I'd collected them all, I was still none the wiser.

Reaction

The producer of The Ribos Operation, Graham Williams, took over the year before Ribos with a grand plan to have each of the stories in his first season linked by one over-arching narrative. For whatever reason, it was ultimately decided not to attempt this in his first season in charge, so it happened - as the Key to Time quest - for his second, season 16, which aired in 1978/79. On watching, you can instantly see that the show has stepped up a gear, and is more confidently meeting its maker's requirements. Season 15 was bitty and scrappy, a transitional phase; season 16 works much better, and reaches the best imaginative heights that Williams ever achieved (his third and final season in charge is, alas, bitty and scrappy and something of a transitional phase). That these heights were reached is even more surprising when one considers that the tale that kicks off this epic quest is resolutely small in scale, and character-driven.

Robert Holmes - no longer the script editor of Who by now, having left the role the previous year, but a gun for hire - is still in his imperial phase. He writes two scripts in the Key to Time year, commissioned by his successor, and in both he appears to be having fun trying new things, to see if they will work within the Doctor who structure. Although such a story type hadn't been tried before in Doctor Who, The Ribos Operation only very slightly qualifies as a heist narrative - the con isn't complex, and is dispensed with after the first couple of episodes. What propels the action is a set of marvellous characters, perhaps the best quality group that Holmes ever conjured up in one story. Starting with the regulars: Tom Baker and John Leeson (voicing K9) are firmly in their groove, delivering the witty dialogue with aplomb. The production team are trying to do something a little less sexist with the character of Romana, who is more studious than the Doctor but has fewer street smarts, but it's only a baby step: ice maiden glamour bomb is about as bad as semi-clad savage, or girl-next-door. Mary Tamm is excellent despite this, instantly making her mark.

Over the years, there's been lots of guest characters that have appeared in Doctor Who (often double-acts in Robert Holmes scripts, to be fair) that fans have wanted to see in their own spin-off. But characters like Garron and Unstoffe, or the Graff and Sholakh, are already starring in their own shows - they just happen to have crashed their shows into Doctor Who for a few weeks, that's all. Both pairs come with believable history and relationships, fully formed. Ian Cuthbertson is perfect as a lovable rogue, and gets some of the most memorable lines ("Who wants everything? I'll settle for ninety percent", "If mine's mines, what's yours?", "There's no comfort in dying - I've always said it was the last thing I want to do.", etc.). Nigel Paskitt uses his "honest, open face" to great effect. And would it be pushing things too much to suggest that the Graff Vynda-K, and his second-in-command, played with brio and just the right amount of scenery chewing by Paul Seed and Robert Keegan, are the most complex villains in classic Doctor Who? The world building that the script achieves in just a few sentences convinces you that a very 'large' characterisation is nonetheless real. When the Graff mourns the death of Sholakh, planting a kiss on his dead comrade's lips, you can't help but be mesmerised (and feel a little bit sorry for him).

Even tiny roles shine: Prentis Hancock - normally much higher up the bill when guesting in Who - makes the most of not many lines playing the Guard Captain; Ann Tirard as the Seeker; even the nasty guard that bullies Binro - they all get a magic moment, or several. There's great music, inventive sets and great costumes too. To me, it's almost flawless. The Shrivenzale is rubbish, but who cares? It's not the main point of proceedings. Obviously, not being the main point of proceedings doesn't mean something can't be great too. Case in point: Binro the Heretic. This character would lift out of the script without much effort to rewrite; the subplot about his persecution for heresy doesn't fit with the rest of the narrative at all, but somehow it works, probably as the character is written and performed excellently. The 'Binro was right' scene between him and Unstoffe - two minor characters discussing something unconnected to the story's plot nor the season's arc, lest we forget - is one of the greatest in Doctor Who's history. Simple, but affecting. If you can watch it without being overcome with emotion, then your heart is truly stuck in the Icetime. 

Connectivity: 

Loads of connections this time. The Ribos Operation and The Masque of Mandragora are two Tom Baker four-parters that each kick off their season of Doctor Who; both feature superstitious societies and characters that claim to have supernatural powers as a seer. The societies are both on the brink of new knowledge, with a character in each who has awareness of emerging scientific principles - both stories contain an essentially identical scene where this character shares with another a Copernican revolutionary theory. Both endings hinge upon the Doctor operating in disguise, donning one of the bad guy's outfits.

Deeper Thoughts:
Christmas, but not Special. The Ribos Operation features a lot of snow, and that's sufficient enough reason in my mind for deeper thoughts to turn to Christmas already. I have started the heavy rotation of my Christmas tunes playlist at home, and have had my first cup of mulled wine too, even though it's not even quite December. I love Christmas, you see - always have. It drives the Better Half mad, as she is more on the side of old Ebeneezer when it comes to things festive. I tend to have worn her down with my relentless enthusiasm by about December the 24th, though, and she usually enjoys the big day (but would likely not admit to that). Yes, I am a big kid, but a contented one. From Christmas 2003, after the announcement that Doctor Who was coming back to TV,  I have had enough of a Who-related gift in the promise of a new series to be made every year or so. Getting a Doctor Who special every Christmas from 2005 to 2017 was just a wonderful bonus. I'd have been stupidly, blissfully idiot happy anyway. But - as is sometimes the way with wells and water running dry - now I'm not getting a Doctor Who Christmas special on December 25th 2018, I'm mightily miffed.

After an uninterrupted run of 13 years, the seasonal Doctor Who special appears to be no more. Just as the regular series is no longer the brash young child of Saturday nights but has matured into a sensible Sunday night staple, so this year's extra episode is not a fit for the festive evening schedule, but is airing a week later on New Year's Day 2019. Did the production team jump at the chance to do something different, or were they pushed? There were rumours rumbling even before it aired that the 2017 Christmas special would be the last. But as any long-term Doctor Who fan will tell you, literally everything anyone could conceive about Doctor Who is rumoured at some point somewhere. The law of averages means that one will turn out to be right every so often, as this one has. This is why I can't get too worried about other rumours murmuring away in the background right now. There might be a full series next year, there might be only a few episodes with the rest showing in 2020, or there might be none except the one on January 1st. There's no way to know, until we know.

What seems likely, though, is that Doctor Who won't be on TV on December 25th in 2019, 2020, or any year after that. It's very rare for a series to bounce back into the Christmas day schedule once it's left. I find this a bit disappointing. It feels like a demotion; plus, the extended family doesn't gather round to watch TV on New Year's Day, so that ritual - which happened rarely, but warmed my heart whenever it did - is gone too. What's even more frustrating is that the last story to air on Christmas Day was so rubbish. I still haven't come to terms with Twice Upon A Time, but I thought a lovely hour of Jodie and the Team / Gang / Fam, washed down with lashings of sherry and mince pies, might have finally exorcised that bad memory. Alas, it will have to be a slightly more sober January 1st viewing experience instead.

In Summary:

Ribos is like a good wine: nicely put together, with dramatic and sweet notes, and lots of character.