The Vampires of Venice

Chapter the 247th, where there's something fishy about a Venetian artistocratic family

Plot: 

The Doctor crashes Rory's stag party to confess that Amy kissed him after their last adventure, then takes them both on a trip as a date so they can discuss and make-up. They arrive in Venice in 1580 to rapidly find a mystery involving aliens (it's only to be expected). The Calvierri family has persuaded the Venetians to cut themselves off from the rest of the world because of a non-existent plague, and have set up an exclusive school for girls. Venetians are sending their daughters to this school, never to be able to interact with them again, despite everyone involved in this educational establishment making it clear that they're turning the girls into vampires. Some investigations by the TARDIS team discover that they aren't vampires but instead Saturnyns, carnivorous fish creatures using perception filters to disguise themselves. The mother of the shoal, posing as Rosanna Calvierri, was the only female who survived when they fled their homes from something called the Silence (which isn't explained but which presumably will be covered in Doctor Who seasons to come, probably somewhat unsatisfactorily).

Aside from her son, also posing as Venetian aristocracy, the other males are swimming around in the canals of Venice. She is converting the school's pupils into Saturnyne females by draining their blood and replacing it with her own, Dracula style. With help from Guido, the father of one of the pupils who's desperate to get her back, the TARDIS team attempt to infiltrate by enrolling Amy in the school. They manage to get her out after only one small neck bite, but they fail to free Guido's still unconverted daughter Isabella. Isabella is killed by being thrown into the waters of Venice where the male Saturnyns eat her. The female converted Saturnyns attack Guido's house; the others escape, and Guido blows up some barrels of gunpowder he's been collecting to attack the Calvierris. Not knowing her breeding stock is gone, Rosanna starts up a weather control gizmo that starts storms in order to flood Venice and make it a watery wonderland, perfect for fish people. The Doctor climbs a Venetian tower and does some techno jiggery-pokery to an aerial to stop that. With her plans foiled, Rosanna commits suicide by jumping into the water, her perception filter device jammed on to human mode meaning the males will eat her. The TARDIS team travel off to new adventures as a trio.

Context:

Watched from the BBC iplayer (the Blu-ray remote is broken again) on my lonesome one evening.

First Time Round:

As usual, I can't remember my first encounter with a Matt Smith story. Almost certainly I would have watched The Vampires of Venice on the day of its UK broadcast, probably slightly time-shifted as the Better Half and I had at the time a young baby and a toddler whom we would have been putting to bed at around the time the story went out. In these circumstances in previous blog posts, I have produced an anecdote about the Doctor Who 'wilderness years' (the period from the end of 1989 when the classic series ended to its return as an ongoing new series in 2005). This one is not so much an anecdote as a description of how it felt for a few years of that period, specifically the period from 2000 to 2003. The 1990s, although they form the larger part of that so-called wilderness period, were pretty good for Doctor Who fans. Most would not have seen all the older stories that were being newly released on VHS, there were new original novels being published, and later in the decade Big Finish started to make new stories on audio; there was no shortage of tales to buy and enjoy. There were many repeats of old stories on terrestrial TV in the UK in the first half of the decade, a lot of hoopla around the 30th anniversary in 1993 with a big new documentary and a charity skit featuring new performances from actors that played Doctors and companions through Who's history; then, there was a brand new feature length story starring Paul McGann in 1996. It wasn't a barren wilderness

The decade ended with an entire night (23 years ago to the day as I write this) given over to Doctor Who related programming on BBC2, followed by the launch of an ambitious series of repeats. Starting with the first colour story, Jon Pertwee's Spearhead from Space, the intention was to continue with all the serials from the 1970s in order. Doctor Who would potentially be on British TV screens all year round. It was early in 2000 that things faltered. The repeats didn't get good ratings, so they tried leaping ahead to a Tom Baker story, but things did not improve. The repeats were cancelled, and thereafter no classic series episode would be repeated on the major BBC channels 1 or 2 ever again. Four years after its showing, there was no hope left that Paul McGann's one night stand was ever going to become a series, and the VHS releases were drying up (with less frequent releases of the dwindling number of unreleased stories in the back catalogue, none of which were that popular). DVD came along instead, but the range started slowly with only a handful of releases in the early years of the 2000s. For approximately three years, it was the leanest of times, and the wilderness did finally feel a bit barren. Then one day in September of 2003, everything changed, the sun shone and the land became green and bountiful again. A press release went out saying that Russell T Davies was producing a new series of Doctor Who. After that, all was anticipation, and excitement. Eighteen years later almost to the day, another press release went out saying that Russell T Davies was again producing a new series of Doctor Who. Now that Jodie Whittaker has bowed out, we are in the same kind of period of anticipation and excitement: over a year to go, little bits of filming being spotted, the unveiling of a new logo. If it's anything like the first time round, it'll be worth the wait.

Reaction: 

I can remember every story title from Doctor Who's start in 1963 to the present day, and can recite them to order, except... I never know if it's Vampires of Venice or Vampires in Venice. I have to look it up, every darn time. I had to look it up to title this blog, and as I type this I've already forgotten which it is and have had to take a glance upwards at that title to double check again. It's odd that my mind has this one silly blank spot where it has perfect recall elsewhere (believe me, I've tried to forget some of this stuff). It's not just the title, either; the story's not exactly forgettable, but it is rather superficial. For a plot that hinges on the projection of false images that disguise the villains, it coincidentally ends up all about the surface and not what lies beneath. It's a hell of a good looking surface though. A case in point is a stunning image from early on: beneath a grand staircase, the late and much missed Helen McCrory playing Rosanna Calvierri - whose work throughout the story is powerful, precise and excellent - kneels before a factotum, head back. He is serving her what looks like wine in a bejewelled gold goblet, but the hint is that it's blood. Her big skirts are fanned out flat on the ground behind her. It looks like a Renaissance canvas. Nobody could complain about the story's production design, and the sumptuous look created on screen: the use of the Croatian town Trogir with CGI enhancement to double for Venice, the costume and make-up, and a good number of background extras all add up to an effective and beautiful realisation of time and place. There are many other shots in the story as striking as the McCrory 'hydrating' scene too. But who in the story laid her skirts all flat like that, and why? How long did it take? Why make such a spectacle out of doing something which ought to be covert, and who exactly is the intended audience for this spectacle? There's a figleaf in the script suggesting that the aliens are so arrogant and superior as to be overt about their villainy, but this doesn't seem adequate to me.

This is not to say that the story is 100% superficial. There is some very neat material providing a scientific rationale for many parts of vampire mythology. They are really alien fish creatures using low-level mind control to appear human, but the human brain's survival instincts kick in when it sees the teeth, so they are not disguised. The same technology confuses your brain when seeing the reflection in a mirror, so the creature does not appear; and, as they usually live in a subaquatic darkness, they are sensitive to light. Rory is a nice addition to the regular travelling team, and Arthur Darvill's performance complements - completes - the others. This also allows a little bit of interesting interpersonal conflict between Rory and the Doctor as the former accuses the latter of making people put themselves into danger as he encourages them to want to impress him. The relationship between Calvierri mother and son is nicely sketched in. Matt Smith and McCrory have a couple of good confrontation scenes, where the villain challenges the Doctor's morality related to the fate of his own people (very similar to the scenes that writer Toby Whithouse had between Anthony Head and David Tennant in his story School Reunion, but none the worse for that). Smith does a good line in righteous anger "This ends today - I will tear down the House of Calvierri, stone by stone ... And you know why? You didn't know Isabella's name - you didn't know Isabella's name." There's some nice playful moments too, like Guido appearing in Rory's stag night T-shirt as they've had to swap clothes for Rory to pretend to be a Venetian. Listed out, it sounds like a lot, but it adds up to very little running time, and the rest is stuff that looks good but doesn't always make sense.

Why, for example, if the Saturnyns are just mildly sensitive to light does Amy's reflecting the sun onto one with a mirror make it instantly combust into a cloud of ashes? It's just for spectacle and to bring an end to a fight scene the writer had no other way of tying up, but it doesn't make any sense. There's a lot of other material that doesn't work too: there's the somewhat flaccid opening where the Doctor appears jumping out of a pretend cake at Rory's stag do; it's supposed to be comic, but it isn't because it's not real (has anyone's real stag night in the real world ever involved an exotic dancer jumping out of a cardboard cake, or is it just a TV-land only situation?), and the rhythm of the comedy is all over the place - there's not much of a punchline, and it's not cut so the credits come in quickly enough, leaving the scene to limp on for too long. The resolution is a bit too easy, with the Doctor effectively pressing a switch to turn off the plot (albeit the switch has been placed in a high spot to make it a tiny bit more difficult for him); by that point, the evil plan has effectively been foiled anyway, as Guido has blown up all the young female Saturnyns in a plot development that's heinously telegraphed by the presence of Chekov's gunpowder barrels in act one. There's a major loose end in that the carnivorous males are still swimming around in Venice's waters at the end of the story; how long they'll live to terrorise swimmers is not something that's covered.

Another puzzling aspect of the story, though it's not a fault of this script so much as it is the wider arc narrative of the Matt Smith years, is the references to the Silence. Clearly there was some planning ahead in the arc plotting of this period, and the Silence teased here would be introduced properly the following year. It maybe hadn't been thought out sufficiently to be so bold about it so early, though. The creatures that form the order of the Silence (Silents?) don't make things go very quiet, as suggested at the end of Vampires, it's just a name. Additionally and crucially, it's rapidly established when they finally appear that nobody can remember the Silence after an encounter, so how can Rosanna know that it was the Silence that attacked her home world? And why would the Silence attack her home world at all? They will either be the relatively peaceful religious order that want to prevent the return of the Time Lords to the universe, or a more violent breakaway group that want to kill the Doctor as they believe that will prevent the Time Lords returning. Neither group would have anything to gain by attacking the Saturnyns. I know this is nit-picking, but it's just another example of the story going for an effect without any underlying logic. It all looks very good though.

Connectivity: 

Both The Vampires of Venice and The Edge of Destruction feature William Hartnell (he appears on the library card that Matt Smith flashes at one point, thinking it's the psychic paper).

Deeper Thoughts:

For the Dads? For a long time after this story was broadcast, there were Doctor Who musical events - one-off proms, touring music showcases, etc. - which used the same pattern as had been established early on after Doctor Who's return with the very first charity concerts of Murray Gold's incidental music. There would be many pieces stirringly played, accompanied by clips on a screen and / or creature performers wandering round the audience scaring and thrilling kids. The creature costumes that would most often appear would be the ones you'd expect: Cybermen, Judoon, Ood... and, of course, the fish creatures from Venice in their nightie-wearing girl disguises. Erm? Why that last one again? They appeared in one story, never returned, did not make that much of an impact, and they barely look like monsters at all. Maybe the reason for their inclusion was so some female artistes could appear as part of proceedings (I assume that the big, heavy costumes of the other creatures were mainly worn by blokes, but I may be wrong), maybe it was to still provide some spectacle but take the pressure off backstage for a period as the vampire girls were easier to dress. Maybe. Hmm. I could be being cynical, but I suspect that at least part of it was that they were there "for the dads" as goes the phrase long associated with Doctor Who. Could they have been added to appeal to the fathers dragged along by the kids, who weren't particularly interested in science-fiction or adventure narratives? Though not exactly at the slutty Halloween costume level, the vampire girl outfits and performers in The Vampires Of Venice are clearly intended to have sex appeal for the heterosexual males watching. The script even has the Doctor describe them as "buxom", which I have to say stuck out as a line and put my teeth on edge when I watched the story this time round. Perhaps uncharitably, I am convinced it was a line added by showrunner Steven Moffat, no stranger to including a saucy gag or two in his writing.

Doctor Who has a long history, particularly in the 20th century, of introducing questionable sexist outfits as a way to attract a certain audience demographic that those making the programme thought might not otherwise be interested. Successive (male) producers presented the female companion characters in shorter and shorter skirts in the 1960s and 70s. Tom Baker's companion Leela played by Louise Jameson wore a skimpy savage girl leotard made out of chamois leather; in the 1980s. Janet Fielding as Tegan was hardly ever allowed a hem line below her knee (she finally got to help choose her character's outfit for her appearance in The Power of the Doctor, and wore trousers); in the same decade, Nicola Bryant perhaps got it worst of all, forced into day-glo bikini-top and cut-off shorts combos for her first couple of seasons. It seems to me a ridiculous notion that this would have any impact on Doctor Who's viewing figures, as households would have to be watching anyway for the Dad in this hypothetical situation to get a glimpse of leg - it wasn't the sort of selling point they covered ahead of time in the Radio Times plot synopsis. Is the scenario being envisaged that the Dad would keep tuning in the following weeks, whether his kids were still interested or not? Were the 1960s and 70s so devoid of titillation that these - if we're honest, profoundly unerotic - outfits in Doctor Who were a draw for perverts? If so, is this really an audience that the show wants? If any middle-aged man can't get through a music concert accompanying their kids without the potential for a glimpse of cleavage, they probably need a bromide prescription. Jodie Whittaker, in an early interview with Vulture after debuting as the Doctor, mentioned "the male gaze", and some of these decisions were clearly objectifying and - based on a lot of testimony since - were aimed at heterosexual males (they may have appealed to lesbian and bisexual women's gaze as well, I suppose, but this was not the intention).

As one of those heterosexual males, and being a long-term fan, I was apprehensive when watching Whittaker playing the Doctor for the first time. With all apologies upfront for my shallowness (I'm just being honest): I had seen her act in many other things and thought she was attractive. Was I going to end up fancying the Doctor? The way she played the role of the Doctor, though, was completely childlike and un-sexual (unlike, say, David Tennant's handsome swagger necessary for him to become a love interest for Rose and Martha, as the script dictated). It was a wonderful approach to the part; a bit like how Matt Smith mostly played the role (when he wasn't given lines noticing how buxom or not people were). Context is everything, and Doctor Who should not be the context for providing anyone those kind of thrills. It wasn't anyway Whittaker's meaning when she talked about the male gaze; the quote is about "stories being told through the white male gaze" (emphasis mine) not for the white (or otherwise) male gaze. Indeed, although he was a white cishet middle-aged man, Chris Chibnall in his time as showrunner did create the greatest plurality of authorial voices that had ever written for Doctor Who before, and did try in his own scripts to cover a range of subject matter that featured minority characters, situations and viewpoints. Incoming and returning showrunner Russell T Davies will continue this, or course. Won't he? Based on a recent social media reaction against some comments he's made, Davies has upset some of those hoping for a diverse and inclusive Doctor Who, and it also happened to be about a character wearing clothes that are just a little too small for them. (Note: spoilers for The Power of the Doctor follow, although I imagine you've seen it by now). At the end of Whittaker's swan song, the regeneration scene was different in that the Doctor's clothes changed also. The only time previously that this has happened was way back when Hartnell turned into Troughton, so it's not unprecedented, but Tennant plays the moment with surprise looking at his new outfit, and there are hints in the trailer for next year that it's going to link into a future plot point somehow.

Whether Davies's decision not to have Tennant appear in Whittaker's costume preceded or developed from the plotting of the 2023 stories is unknown, but a deliberate decision it was. In Doctor Who Magazine issue 584, the showrunner is interviewed and mentions it. He explains that he felt that the "culture and the dignity" of drag needed to be treated delicately. Because of the size difference between the two actors, he thought it would look like "taking the mickey" if Tennant appeared in Whittaker's outfit. He also believed that there would only then be interest in those images of Tennant in "what [the press] considered to be women's clothes" and it would become "weaponised" to mock feminine traits and drag culture. This upset some people, as Whittaker's outfit had been carefully designed to be gender neutral (some might not have the seen the comments about the press and their capacity to ignore that, though - a screenshot of the interview circulated online that only covered the first part of his comments as they continued over a page). Some others felt it was an attack on any male that had ever cosplayed as Thirteen, though it seems uncharitable to assume that Davies's talk of dignity did not extend to cosplayers. Why wouldn't it? A more valid criticism was that Davies shouldn't self-censor because of possible reactions from the reactionary press. I can sympathise with both sides: in a way, his decision is writing Doctor Who for the white male gaze (as dominates the tabloid press) yet again. Davies, though, wants no distractions from his series relaunch, particularly ones that might be hurtful to a group of people about whom he cares. The social media spat has probably fizzled out by the time you read this, and was mostly just an excuse for fans of one showrunner period to criticise another: this is just another rite of passage for any new era, just like revealing a new logo. It's nice to know that however Doctor Who develops, some things are constant, but also some things can change (the era of putting companion actors into revealing costumes is gone, I think, and I hope gone forever).

 

In Summary:

Looks good, but - on reflection - there's not a lot to it. 

The Curse of Fenric

Chapter The 130th, which is really really good - let's cancel the series!

Plot:

The Doctor and Ace, posing as visiting officials from the War Office, visit a top secret naval base in 1943, where Alan-Turing-tippexed-over-and-retyped-as Doctor Judson is working on his Enigma-hastily-crossed-out-and-replaced-in-biro-as Ultima machine. The camp commander, Millington, has an unhealthy obsession with Viking folklore and in particular a local legend about a curse. Judson is using his machine to decipher some Viking carvings in the crypt of the local church. Meanwhile, a squad of Russians arrive, on a secret mission to steal the Ultima machine, the local vicar is having doubts about his faith during wartime, and a couple of evacuee girls - who befriend Ace - want to have a swim in the local bay, Maiden's Point, even though it's forbidden as it's a metaphor for sex. The Doctor discovers the church also has a secret laboratory beneath it, as it is built upon a source of natural poison that can be used as a chemical weapon. A vial of this poison is built into the Ultima machine, and it's been booby-trapped to explode when the Russians, who Millington knows all about and has been expecting, take the machine and try to use it back home. But, the same trick Millington is planning to play on the Russians is played on him. When Judson decrypts the final Viking rune stones, it runs a program on the Ultima which wakes the dead, or undead rather, as creatures emerge from the sea and ground.

These creatures are Haemovores, creatures into which human beings will evolve in thousands of years time, and they're also the original Viking victims of the curse and their descendants that settled in the area risen from the dead, and they're also any new victims who they convert, if they decide not to drain them of blood... Look, they're vampires, basically - no point trying to wangle some scientific explanation for them, they're bloody vampires. Anyway, the vampires attack the Doctor and Ace at the church, but with some help from the Russians, and a neat little trick where having faith in something creates a psychic shield, our heroes escape back to the camp, finding an ancient flask in the underground laboratory first. This flask contains an ancient evil force, Fenric, who escapes and takes over the body of Doctor Judson. Judson/Fenric's henchman is the ancient leader of the Haemovores, who'd been brought back in time to 1943 to create his own future, or something... Look, he's Vlad okay, he's supposed to be bloody Dracula, that's all you need to know. Anyway, they're going to kill all the humans, but first Fenric has to solve a chess puzzle that the Doctor set him millennia ago, which he's previously failed and that's why he got trapped in the flask in the first place. (As an aside, if I were an ancient evil force, and a Time Lord challenged me to a chess puzzle, and I lost, I think I'd just kill him and not get in the flask - Fenric is clearly an ancient evil force of his word.)

Ace inadvertently helps Fenric to solve the puzzle, but this turns out to be all part of the plan: Fenric can manipulate anyone who's touched by the curse, and Ace's Nan turns out to be a local - one of the the WRENs who works at the camp, and whom Ace rescued earlier. The Ancient One looks like he's going to come in for the kill, so Ace protects them using her faith in the Doctor as a psychic shield. But the Doctor undermines her faith in him by saying some nasty things, and the Ancient One is released; surprisingly, the Ancient One attacks Fenric instead, as the Doctor's persuaded him that Fenric is the bad guy. The Doctor explains to Ace that he only said the nasty things to break the curse once and for all, and Ace seems to have surmounted all her teenage demons.

Context:

Watched from the DVD with the whole family (the Better Half, boys of 12 and 10, girl of 7) over a few evenings. I considered which version to share with them: the DVD has the original four episode version, and an extended feature length presentation, knitting together all the episodes, updating the special effects and reinstating twelve - twelve! - minutes of cut footage. That updated version certainly makes the plot flow better and adds some nice character moments, but - as we didn't have time to sit down and watch it all in one go, it really had to be the original, as broadcast on BBC1 in 1989. Everyone really enjoyed it. Eldest boy, on seeing the introduction scene of Commander Millington, with his office mocked-up to look like how his Nazi counterpart's digs would look, said "Is that Hitler?" Then, whenever, Millington appeared, he'd say "Oh look, here comes Hitler again". It may be that he was just trying to wind me up, or it may be that he likes being mentioned on the blog, I couldn't say for sure. The Better Half pointed out that McCoy's umbrella was useful for the only time ever during a storm scene, and highlighted that Ace had laddered her tights in the church attack scene.

Addition: we finished the story just before swanning off for 10 days in Mallorca, and during this holiday it became clear to me that The Curse of Fenric had had quite an impact. Whenever anyone was standing by the side of the swimming pool and not getting in with the rest of the family, someone would say "You shouldah come intah the wartah wiv us, then we'dah bin tuggevah". I should mention that we were lucky enough to find an airbnb with a private pool, so this wasn't in front of strangers, but even so...

First time round:

A Wednesday evening in autumn 1989, and I'm crouched by the TV; a video cassette in the slot of the VCR, my fingers are poised to hit record. Anticipation rises. The continuity announcer talks about Bergerac being on in 25 minutes, and I ready myself. "But now..." he finally says - and I press record, breathing out - "It's Doctor Who". Blank tapes were always scarce in our house, at least until the 1990s when they became a bit cheaper. A whole season of late 80s Doctor Who, all fourteen episodes worth, would fit on a single 180 minute tape, on long play mode, which sacrificed quality but doubled the capacity of the tape; but one had to be careful not to include too much spool either side of the episodes themselves. The last thing I wanted was to miss the last few minutes of the final episode of the year because I'd left in too much blather about Bergerac. I've mentioned previously about my ineptitude where programming - or even operating - the VCR is concerned, and this razor's edge of pressure brought on by needing to conserve tape did not help matters. By the 1989 season, I'd got better, and I only failed to record (and see) one episode of the fourteen that year. The Curse of Fenric was not the impacted show, so I was able to watch it in full, over and over again, over the next couple of years, until the commercial VHS came out. That version reinstated a few minutes of footage, and that version was the one that I then watched over and over again until the DVD came out. I didn't find the DVD version quite so compelling, or I was just more busy, and so the extended VHS version is probably my default - I certainly noticed the 'missing' bits of this recent watch.   

Reaction:

From the off, it's clear this story is something very special. Filming on the water, a sense of scale and atmosphere achieved with mist effects, the first lines of dialogue being in Russian with subtitles - at the time, and even now, it screams out at the viewer about a level of sophistication that's rare for Doctor Who. Having watched this quite soon after another 1980s story, Frontios, which was the previous watch for the blog, the vast difference in approach - after only 5 short years have gone by - is phenomenal. Frontios was a studio only affair, yes, and Fenric has the luxury of being all on location. They're all really good locations too - the perfect church, bay, and camp. There's expensive-looking underwater filming too (done by a second-unit - it has a second unit, this is almost unheard of - helmed by producer John Nathan-Turner, and bloody atmospheric it is too). It's not just how it looks, though, as a lot of that's just down to budget. The script has such a density of rapid fire information being conveyed, it makes Frontios - a pretty good story, lest we forget - seem plodding by comparison. Now, stories from Sylvester McCoy's previous season often had a lot going on, lots of characters chasing around - but they didn't manage necessarily to make all those things cohere. Fenric, the first story filmed for the year, marks an evolution, as everything has been integrated well in order that the piece as a whole builds to a fantastic conclusion.

Keeping up a break-neck pace while still remaining coherent is smoothed by some clever stylistic choices: lots of inter-cutting between events, with dialogue running over multiple short scenes as narration; there's also some wonderful touches that add character and depth while not necessarily being slaved to unfolding plot - moments like the Reverend Wainwright reciting 1 Corinthians 13 to an empty church, or Millington's haunted look as he explains that the code word that will detonate the Ultima machine is 'love', or the Doctor quietly reciting his companions names, as he has faith in them. A lot of the heavy lifting is done by the fine set of actors that's been assembled, and they are more than up to the job. Every small guest role is expertly cast, with only the two young girls giving anything slightly less than believable (and they're fine pre-conversion - if they're a little wooden once they've been made undead, it's forgivable, I think). Whether star name or newcomer, everyone gives their all. Anne Reid, earlier on in her career, has a smaller and less showy role than she got when she appeared in post-2005 new Who, but she's just as excellent here. Nicholas Parsons is a miracle - his casting was pre-announced and caused a shiver of fear to run through the collected fandom of the day (perceptible even in those pre-internet days), but it was all unfounded as he comports himself excellently. Sophie Aldred also does very well with some stretching material, which dances coyly around what would be more overt sexuality in a more traditional vampire tale.

There's a confidence on display here, that - had they got another series - might even have developed into a deserved swagger. At the start, the two lead characters are at the height of their powers, Ace and the Doctor are completely unbowed by being surrounded by armed shoulders "What would happen if the Germans attacked now?" "In fact, how do you know we're not Germans?" - it reminded me of the Season 10 blu-ray box set stories that I've been watching recently, containing Katy Manning's last stories as Jo Grant. Just as in the 1970s, when Jo's character was allowed to develop and mature, so here. The final scene, where Ace is finally allowed to swim in waters loaded with metaphorical baggage, probably irritated a lot of fanboys at the time, but by golly Doctor Who needed stuff like this. It helps that the scene is accompanied by the best cue in possibly the best score of the period. Composer Mark Ayres managed to produce something in his bedroom on his keyboards that is the equal or better of any incidental music made for Doctor Who to this date, and it's just another reason to feel sad that this era didn't carry on, to see what great music he would have undoubtedly provided for future stories.

It's not perfect, of course. I've watched too many episodes of Foyle's War in the interim, which has made me conscious of the historical errors, including signposts to coastal locations still being up, Kathleen's tie being very wonky when she's addressing her C.O., an older man and a younger woman being billeted together... There's insufficient defences on the shoreline too, but that might have something to do with the deliberate opening up of an opportunity for the Russians to steal Ultima, so I'll let them off that one. There's probably quite a few logic issues with the plot too, but it moves fast enough that these don't really register. The big one that stood out for me on this watch was the Ancient One, on Fenric's orders, killing off all the Haemovores just before the end, so that the climax can be more focused on Fenric, the Doctor and Ace.  A more elegant solution to achieve the same aim should have been found, as it doesn't make sense for Fenric to ask it, nor for the Ancient One to agree to do it, nor of him having the power to do it. Also, I'm presuming that Ace's Nan remarried, as it would stretch credibility for Ace to know her maternal grandmother's home address but be ignorant of her mother's maiden name!

Connectivity: 

Four more episodes of 1980s goodness produced by John Nathan-Turner. Both The Curse of Fenric and Frontios are from their respective Doctor's final season, and in both the Doctor has donned a new version of his usual costume - Sylv has his darker jacket, Davison has his slight variant on the cricket outfit worn in his first two years. More monsters emerging from below, more focus in the narrative on records about people being a key to a mystery.

Deeper Thoughts:

Don't mention the war! The Curse of Fenric was the penultimate story of classic Doctor Who, the last but one tale of the show's first 26-year stretch, and it's the first time ever that a story has been set - wholly or partially - in World War Two. This fact struck me on this watch, and seems very unusual. As someone wise once posited, if you've got a time machine, a thought that will rapidly occur is "Let's Kill Hitler", or at the very least, let's pop back and have a look and see how accurate Downfall was. Stepping the other side of the fiction, one might wonder why it never occurred to anybody making Who for the previous 25 years that there might just be stories worth telling in the rich seam of 1939 to 1945. Why did a succession of production teams ignore what seems to be such an open goal? Partially, it must be that near history was a no-no. I don't think this was ever an official policy written down anywhere, but there must have been some reason, some blocker in the collective unconscious, as until the Sylvester McCoy era (the last three years of the original run) the nearest time period to the war depicted was 1935, then a big gap before the contemporary and future Earth-based stories.

The couple of other Sylvester McCoy near-history tales broadcast before Curse were set later (in 1959 and 1963), sidestepping the WW2 period, and would have been seen as contemporary when Doctor Who started, and perhaps too close to contemporary in the years the show ran after that. Also, the story set in 1935, the Abominable Snowmen, could have been set at any time really, as it focuses on an isolated community away from anywhere, and doesn't focus on anything that was happening in the 1930s. It is also only from that story's later sequel that it is retrospectively dated so firmly. Chronologically before that there are a couple of outings to the 1920s, but never for a whole story. You have to go back in time another thirty years or more to find regular historical stops for the Doctor - the show seems most comfortable in Victorian and Edwardian periods, plus a smattering of renaissance trips, and a handful of earlier historical periods visited, mostly in the William Hartnell years. The Second World War falls in a section of history that they just didn't want to go near.

The main reason, though, is that Doctor Who was doing WW2, but not in historically set stories; instead, it was playing it out allegorically in those contemporary and future stories. The Daleks were used multiple times as Nazi analogues, most notably in The Dalek Invasion of Earth which borrows liberally from World War Two action film tropes. UNIT too, for all it's post-war style of pan-nation cooperation, was from its inception heavily influenced by the experiences - direct or indirect - of soldiering between 39 and 45. That aforementioned Abominable Snowman sequel was The Web of Fear, and the soldiers depicted within it, though they are supposed to be from the near future of its 1968 broadcast, draw heavily on wartime or at least movies of wartime. People sheltering in underground train stations from a menace above would have been a scenario familiar to those watching who were alive and in London during the war, and the story's wider situation - the whole of London evacuated - would certainly have been something that was imagined as a possibility in those terrible times. There are dozens of other examples from classic Who, which is not surprising when one considers the experience of those of the age making the show in the 60s and 70s, and the long shadow that the war cast over all UK culture. In those times, to have done proper historical stories set during the war as well as it permeating everything else must have seemed like overkill.

In Summary:

The only problem with watching The Curse of Fenric is all the while thinking, "What will they do next series to top this?!!" and remembering that they didn't get another series, and there wouldn't be another one for 16 years. Boo.

State of Decay

 Chapter The Nineteenth, The Nineteenth Chapter is The Nineteenth Chapter.

Plot: 
The Doctor, Romana and Adric face an attack of the definitive articles: The Three Who Rule serve The Great One and regularly hold The Selection to find The Chosen One for The Time of Arising. And there's something about The Wasting. The Wasting is The Wasting. Basically, nobody knows what The Fuck The Wasting is, but apparently it's bad. Vampire story with some spacey-wacey bits, essentially.

Context: 

Watched the DVD episode by episode over a few days with various of the three kids drifting in and out, but only middle child (boy, 6 years old) gripped enough to sit still and pay attention. During our watching together, he told me that Tom Baker is his favourite Doctor, with Slyvester McCoy next, and David Tennant after that. He's making lists! I'm so proud. Once he's putting all 12 main actors in one ordered sequence of preference (plus fretting over whether John Hurt should be in there or not) then my work will be done. Apologies to his mother.

First-time round:

I may be misremembering, but I seem to think that towards the end of my first year at university in Durham, just before the long Summer vac, my good friend and fellow fan David (see this post for more details) had a cache of videos, and sufficient cables, and I had sufficient blank tapes, to transfer over some of his unreleased Who episodes, so I could own them myself like a happy little pirate. Presumably I'd convinced another friend, fellow first-year Mike, the only other person I knew with a VCR in college, to let me borrow it to complete the set-up.  I seem to think Mike sat there in David's room monitoring to ensure I didn't break anything.

David was at the end of his final year, close to graduating, and this would have been a farewell present (though he came back to visit us several times during my second and third years, and we're still firm friends to this day). Funny how some things stick in your mind: as I transferred various episodes - somehow with a slight tracking issue, so every one had a crackling noise of the soundtrack, but never mind - David said I was "seizing the day" in doing this. We'd just been discussing Dead Poets Society and Carpe Diem, probably with me gnashing my teeth in self pity at how I wasn't making anything of my life (I did that a lot as an undergraduate). I appreciate that he was trying to cheer me up, but I don't really think having even more Doctor Who vids was necessarily going to help much in the self fulfilment stakes.

Anyway, I copied both Full Circle and Warrior's Gate, the first and last stories of the E-Space trilogy, but didn't do State of Decay which comes in between them. This means that either David or I had made a decision that this was the one of the three that was dispensable, and that we wouldn't be carting it around. I think it was his decision, but we'd have both been pretty much correct.

So, the first time I would have seen this story was when the trilogy came out to buy on video in the late nineties. I'm sure I would have been excited about seeing it for the first time; but I may have been equally excited about seeing the few minutes of bonus footage they'd bunged on of Anthony Ainley in character as the Master from the computer game that was soon to be released, or indeed seeing Warrior's Gate without crackly audio. This is State of Decay's issue in a nutshell: it lifts right out, and you hardly even notice.

Reaction:
The first thing of note is the titles which still feel wrong; Tom Baker, like his predecessor, changes his familiar title sequence in his final year for a new style that subsequently is reused and becomes much more associated with his successor. In retrospect, it feels like he’s wearing some other guy’s clothes.

The next thing I notice is that the script is fine; it takes a bit of time to get going, and clearly suffers from the script editor and writer pulling in different directions. All in all, though, it’s a solid effort.  The execution, mind you, has some big problems.

Peter Moffat’s work often comes in for some stick, but he usually is given a free pass for his first directional outing. Hmm. There are bits that might be odd choices or might just be errors, e.g. Baker is at one point talking to the arse-end of K9. The use of slow, balletic movement of actors is also something I’m not sure was fully intentional. Sometimes it works, sometimes it feels very stagey, e.g. the deliberate, stilted positioning of Lalla Ward’s head into close up as she’s about to get her neck bit.

The other major let-downs are Adric and the bats. On balance, of the two, the bats give the least worst performance, but they rarely convince, whether they are portrayed by rubber toys on strings, stock footage, or radiophonic tinkling. As for Adric, I mused as to whether viewers at the time were wondering in the first few minutes where the new boy had got to, or whether they collectively sighed when he finally showed up and thought “Oh God, he’s back”. Matthew Waterhouse, in his first recorded Doctor Who performance, and only second ever gig, cannot walk across a room convincingly, and cannot say a line without my wanting to punch him.

Something else that doesn't sit well is having too much focus on the 'lord' in Timelord: the Doctor and Romana act and are treated by the downtrodden natives like royalty, and it's only with them to inspire and lead them that the beardie proles manage an uprising. The Doctor is even shown to have blue blood. It's all part of Terrance Dicks's aristo agenda, I tells ye! 

Connectivity: 

Another tale of a vampiric entity that dwells at the centre of a celestial body in a smaller universe linked to our own; and, in both stories, the entity controls the people living there. The Doctor again is trapped in that universe, turning up with one male and one female companion.

Does both e-space and House being green count as a connection?  Not really: the colour for almost everything in Doctor Who is gween.

Deeper Thoughts:
You say technacothaka, I say museum, let’s call the whole thing off. State of Decay was not the first or last time there was an equal and opposite tension between Doctor Who writer and script editor, but it's probably the most interesting; much more interesting at least than watching the episodes themselves without knowing the behind the scenes gossip. In the red corner, we have Christopher Hamilton Bidmead, whose mission statement in the script editing role, and anything he’s said about the writing of Doctor Who since, I profoundly disagree with; but, he wrote three of my favourite 1980s stories. In the blue corner, is Terrance Dicks, who could more than hold his own against his opponent, as an old hand; but, most of Dicks's actual story credits on Who are a bit rubbish compared to the stories he magnificently script edited.

It would have been perhaps better instead to see a story Bidmead wrote and Dicks edited, but that never was to be, and we have to take what we can get. State of Decay is consequently a game of two halves that don't quite meld together. All the Gothic stuff is how Terrance Dicks wanted it; all the bearded procrastinating science men, and the inclusion of spaceships and escape hatches, is pure Bidmead. Normally, I'd think one more draft would have sorted it. But, from what I've heard of their process, one more draft would have pulled things further apart.

Bidmead made himself look silly trying to remove the silliness from Doctor Who. He didn't twig that silliness is a key strand of its fibre. Time man travels in phone booth = rigorous educational primer in science? Not likely. He didn't edit two stories before a cactus man was threatening to blow up a planet.  You will never remove the silliness from Doctor Who. Even if its leading man is not the type who can't see a set with a swinging door without introducing some improvised comic business where it bonks him on the nose (as Tom Baker does in State of Decay). Big but, though: Bidmead instigated - nay, insisted on - the Grimm brothers sequence (O'Connor becoming Aukon, etc.), which I think is magical. And it's because of his idea to make the tower an abandoned spaceship that the story has its bravura ending.

Dicks also doesn't come out of things blameless: he'd taken and rewritten top-to-bottom many a script in his time, but does seem to get a bit more precious when it's done to him in return. All in all, State of Decay does benefit from Bidmead's input. And season 18 does benefit from a dash of Dicks Gothic (as indeed it benefited from the odd cactus man) to offset the many earnest bearded men talking about science.

In Summary:

A little pale and bloodless, but still with surprising bite.