The Sensorites

Chapter the 294th, covers a pair of Hartnells, one from early on, and one that's brand new.

Plot:
The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan materialise on a 28th century spaceship in orbit around the planet Sense-Sphere. Two members of crew appear dead, but they are instead mind-controlled by the Sensorites on the planet below, who are keeping them in orbit. The TARDIS team manage to wake them up. There is also a third crew member John who has been driven mad by the creatures. The lock mechanism from the TARDIS is taken by the Sensorites, preventing it from leaving; the Doctor soon works out the weaknesses of these seemingly fearsome creatures. The Sensorites explain that they are fearful of exploitation of their planet, which is rich in the vital element molibdi- molybdu- molydem- ... iron, let's just say iron. Years before, a group of Earthmen arrived and caused trouble, but they're now missing presumed dead. Since, Sensorites have been dying from a suspected infection. If the Doctor can cure this, the Sensorites will allow him access to his TARDIS again, and will fix John. The Doctor, Susan and Ian go down to the planet with John and another member of the crew, his fiancé Carol. Barbara and the captain of the ship stay behind, though Barbara joins them on the planet later. Despite the City Administrator Sensorite working against them, and despite Ian falling ill, the Doctor works out that the water supply is being poisoned and provides the antidote. Ian and John are both healed. In some tunnels, the Earthmen are discovered to be still alive and poisoning the water supply with Deadly Nightshade. They are apprehended, and the TARDIS travellers are free to resume their journeys in time and space.

Context:

The plan was to watch an episode a day across six days in late February and early March 2024. Such is the reputation of The Sensorites as being a bore-fest that if I told you I enjoyed it so much I tore through it much quicker than that, you wouldn't believe me, but that is five-sixths true. The first episode proved a hell of a chore, such that I couldn't keep watching it on first attempt and instead split my viewing over two days, 10 minutes on the first, the remaining 15 on the next. After that, though, the story picks up, and though I didn't exactly binge them, I got through through the rest of the episodes much quicker than originally planned.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. This post marks the 22nd season completed out of the total of 39 to date (at the time of writing). In full, I have now completed classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14-18, 20, 21, 23 and 25, and new series 2, 6, 9-11, and 13).

First Time Round:

I met fellow Doctor Who fan, David, mentioned many times before on this blog, at university in the early 1990s and we've remained friends ever since. In the immediate years after my graduation, when none of my peer group had serious jobs or partners or families, there was a lot of time for visiting each other. Usually for no particularly special occasion apart from having a day or two of leave, we would traverse the country and meet up. In November 1997 (I can date this as I remember us both sitting eating breakfast in his kitchen with BBC Radio 1 on and hearing the first radio play of Help the Aged by Pulp) I was on such a visit to him. David had through various contacts and sources collected a video copy of pretty much every Doctor Who story that existed in the BBC's archives at that time. I only had collected what had been commercially available, though I'd borrowed some of his tapes from time to time. Being together and both fans, it must have seemed a good and obvious idea to sit down and watch some Who, probably with a beer and some snacks. Why we chose The Sensorites, I do not remember. Maybe it was the best of what I hadn't seen by other means by then. But all the available evidence - see the First Time Round section of this blog post for more details - suggests I hadn't seen Horror of Fang Rock by November 1997. Why didn't we watch Horror of Fang Rock? We got to watch that story together on a big screen recently at least - see the Deeper Thoughts section of this blog post for more details. It can be hard to remember details from that long ago, Was this the trip where David persuaded me to purchase his entire Target Doctor Who book collection from him, as he needed the space, and I had a challenging time getting it back home? Maybe that was a few years later. Jarvis Cocker isn't always around to help me date stuff, unfortunately.

Reaction:

Stories from Doctor Who's first 1963/64 season can't help but innovate in some way or other. The series was shiny and new, and trying out different types of stories each time, seeing what best fit. The Sensorites, though, innovates in a rather profound way in that the titular alien race are complex; individuals within the ranks of Sensorites have different motivations and form different factions, there's disagreement and dissent. They are not a monoculture, and they are the first aliens presented that way in Doctor Who. You don't get that with Daleks or Voord, and you won't get it with Zarbi or Cybermen. Most of the time in Who, alien races are there to be monstrous forces of antagonism, usually unreasoning, blank and implacable. There is a story type that would be used later, though, that is very like The Sensorites, such that the Hartnell story feels like a try-out. That is the suite of 1970s stories often of six episodes length written by Malcolm Hulke. In these stories, the 'monster' races had understandable viewpoints and different factions (The Sea Devils, The Silurians), or the antagonism comes from the machinations of humans instead (Invasion of the Dinosaurs), or all of the above (Frontier in Space). Put it in colour, swap in the appropriate TARDIS pilot, and The Sensorites would not look out of place during the Jon Pertwee era. Exploring this race of creatures provides lots of story potential for the portion of the narrative that takes place on the Sense-Sphere. It also provides a great villain in the City Administrator, who obstinately refuses to believe any good of the aliens visiting his planet. He may be a villain of the more hissable panto kind (so were Hulke's), but his presence lifts the scenes he's in.

That first episode really was a chore, though (see Context section above) and a fair part of the second episode isn't much better. Again, in line with many a 1970s story, it has the typical 6-parter blues, not quite having enough plot for the duration. Like many a 1970s 6-parter, generally after Hulke's time, it has a narrative structured as a two and a four, the first section on the ship, and the second section on the planet. The realisation of the ship in the studio is pretty good, with a nice continuous shot early on of the TARDIS travellers walking out of the console room and into the spaceship; but, the minimal cast can't sustain interest, and the sets don't feel big enough to contain the action. This can be seen when, in order to get into trouble, Susan and Barbara have to miss the very obvious sign saying 'WATER' and instead wander through a door looking for refreshment. They know there is danger elsewhere on the ship, but there's only one flippin' door, so you'd think they'd realise it's the one that leads to the danger. The only thing left for the cast to do to create dramatic tension is some very stagey and very 60s psychodrama about the impact of the Sensorites' mental powers. This has the unintended effect of talking up the Sensorites too much. Aside from the memorably creepy moment at the part one cliffhanger where we see the first glimpse of one floating outside of the ship, they are very disappointing and don't match up to the terrified reactions of the crew earlier.

Everything is fully explained in the script, if you pay attention: they are protective of their planet but didn't mean any active harm to the humans, so just left them in orbit in a sort of mental stasis, not knowing what better to do with them; the crewman John's excitement at discovering riches on the planet dropped his mental defences, and the Sensorites inadvertently altered his mind. All that material comes later, though: in the second episode, this terrifying unseen presence that has turned people into zombies or driven them mad is finally revealed... and it's a set of slightly cuddly creatures who are frightened of the dark and loud noises, and are at risk of tripping over their own feet. It can't help but seem risible. When it settles down to the more grounded conflict of the City Administrator's distrust, it's much more believable. As such, the story doesn't really need the creatures to be telepathic at all, particularly as it creates some plot holes. A lot of the double-dealing relies on the Sensorites not being able to easily distinguish between each other based on sight, but they don't need to - they're a telepathic race, wouldn't they just distinguish each other telepathically? The City Administrator's nefarious shenanigans involve disguising himself with another's sash of office, but couldn't other Sensorites work out his real identity by, I don't know, looking into his brain. The telepathy at least allows Carole Ann Ford to do something a bit different as Susan; her moments of discovering a telepathic link with the Sensorites causing conflict with her grandfather, and the love story subplot between Ilona Rodgers as Carol and Stephen Dartnell as John are nicely emotional scenes, done quite well.

There are other flaws in the story, but none of them felt big enough to trouble me much: the solution to the mystery of the Sensorites' affliction, that their general water supply is being poisoned, is so telegraphed as to be screamingly obvious; the writing out of Barbara, so that Jackie Hill can have two weeks' holiday, is terribly contrived (she spends the time alone on the ship with its captain for no apparent reason, though one could provide one's own subtext, then turns up on the planet with a nice new suntan); some of the dialogue is very on the nose; the schoolroom science of Molybdenum feels a little shoe-horned in. The worst mistake to my mind is that there's no comeuppance scene for the City Administrator, he's unmasked as the villain off-screen. This is because the focus switches in the final episode to the three surviving humans, ragged and mad and still fighting a war that's long over. The scenes with them were fine, with John Bailey's Commander keeping up an insane parody of military discipline, though I would have been fine with them just having been driven over the edge by their desperate situation, rather than there being an explanation included that the Sensorites' mind powers are responsible. I'd still rather have seen an ending where the City Administrator's plans come to a climax, but are roundly defeated. I'm reminded of Captain Dent, the love-to-hate-him baddie of Colony in Space, who similarly disappears from the story in the last episode and doesn't get a comeuppance scene. And who wrote that story? Why, Malcolm Hulke, of course! 

Connectivity:

Both The Sensorites and The Girl Who Died feature a grey haired Doctor played by an actor in his late 50s interacting with a race of aliens who are mostly indistinguishable from one another at a distance without their sashes of office / hologram projections of Norse gods. 

Deeper Thoughts:

From the Sense-Sphere to a realm beyond sense: BFI The Celestial Toymaker animation screening 2nd March 2024. It was a very rainy Saturday in early March as I made my way to the BFI Southbank for another screening. I'd bagged a ticket, and suspected that this one might have a bit less interest than the Horror of Fang Rock screening in February. The animations sometimes have less appeal to our little - but probably representative - band of regular fans than the Blu-ray tie-in screenings, the latter usually having better panel guests, and it's not the strongest story (a couple of our number expressed this opinion). Myself, I was wary of the possible audience reaction. The trailer showed that this was far from the usual style for these animated stories, and it was possible it would divide opinion. The panellists that there are at these events are usually those who've worked on the animated versions; I didn't like the idea of an awkward panel with rude audience questions from people who didn't care for what they'd seen on screen. My concerns were unfounded for a couple of reasons. First, the screening had sold out and the auditorium was full; second, there were no panels with audience questions at all. Our hosts, as usual Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy, informed us that the animation team are based in Australia, but even if they'd had the budget to fly them over, they wouldn't have been able to come: they were working on what we were about to watch right up to the wire, with the final files having been sent over the previous evening ("They're still drawing the third and fourth episodes," joked Fiddy). As such, outside of the team working on it, nobody had viewed the animated story in advance; those of us in NFT1 that day would be the first.

Aside from the animators, the issue with forming a panel for the story is that almost everybody credited on the original production, both in front of and behind the camera, is no longer with us. They had apparently tried to engage Peter Purves, who played Steven, and one of the non-speaking dancers who appear in one episode, but diaries did not align. They are really the only remaining options. "You've got Dick here," quipped Johnson, "What more could you want?!" In the absence of a full panel, our hosts endeavoured to keep up all the other rituals of these BFI events, including double entendres. Johnson did a round-up of online and social media activity connected to the event, noting that - even though nobody had seen it yet - the DVD release of the Toymaker animation already had many reviews, apparently all either ones or fives out of five. There was also the usual quiz with giveaway goodies for those that could answer trivia questions; one of the prizes, in Fiddy's words, was "One of the rare medium-sized Doctor Who T-shirts." After this, sound supremo Mark Ayres was up on stage, for the first of two times on the day, to introduce the animation. He confirmed that he had still been working on the sound mix the previous day, but said that Fiddy's earlier remark about the latter episodes still being finished was not accurate: the episodes were delivered in reverse order, so it was the first episode that was the last to be worked on. Alas, it wasn't quite done in time. There was a sequence where the watermark 'NOT FINAL' showed over the action, and there were a few parts that had errors that Ayres had spotted in his last-minute review. If there were more that he hadn't spotted, he said, then "Twitter will inform us in due course." He summarised it thus: "You're all going to see something nobody else is ever going to see ... I hope."

Johnson (L), Fiddy (R)

The screenings of the first two episodes then followed, and the first part was fine, not nearly as bad as Ayres had set up. The only previous animation by Shapeshifter Studios, using their motion-capture process, was for one missing episode of The Web of Fear (see the Deeper Thoughts section of this blog post for more details). It was an experiment, and it was not well received. It remains to be seen how people will react this time, but I liked it. Lots more work has clearly been put in, and the overall quality (and in particular, the movement of the characters) has vastly improved. The character designs are of a different type of abstraction than usual for the animation range, which takes a little getting used to; but, once I was acclimatised, I very much enjoyed the style. This is the perfect story to further the experimentation. Only the three regulars and the Toymaker need appear in any way naturalistically (and the Doctor is invisible for half the time, depicted in the animation as a glowing translucent outline); the animators are freer in designing the other characters - human beings turned into toys - and it gets very inventive. The playing card characters have a lovely origami look, and move in a distinctive way (achieved, as Ayres explained later, by them appearing at a different frame rate to everything else). There's a hint of 60s psychedelia in the imagery, with some characters looking like they've walked straight out of the Beatles' Yellow Submarine movie. After the end credits rolled on the second episode, Fiddy made the droll aside: "They still have LSD in Australia then". The scare factor is also increased; the sequence of Dodo turning to ice after sitting in a booby-trapped chair is genuinely unsettling in a way that the original would likely have struggled to achieve.

Johnson (L), Ayres (R)

Ayres came back up on stage for a quick interview in between the first and second half of the story. He talked about how the script, what he thinks of as the only outright fantasy in early Doctor Who (even The Mind Robber having something of a scientific explanation), is extremely inventive. Anyone who can remember my write-up of the story many years ago for the blog will know that I disagree. The scripting is simple and repetitive such that it could only work with ambitious visuals far beyond the resources of the time. On the strength of the first half, the animators were making a good stab of finally achieving such visuals, with Ayres hinting that the third episode went even further and was his particular favourite. He had not been slouching on the audio front either. 1960s productions often let the audio fall back to just actors in the studio, which has a hollow sound, and often the music - pre-recorded and played in to the studio - could drown out the dialogue; he's tweaked things to fix both issues. He's also done an elegant editing job to remove an 'of the time' offensive version of 'Eeeny Meeny Minie Moe'. For the first time, the source for the audio was the so-called Randolph tapes. These were provided to the archives in 2018 after having been found years before in a skip. They have the word  'Randolph' written on the reel-to-reel boxes, hence the name, but who recorded them and how they came to be there is still a mystery. They provide better quality recordings for some stories than exist elsewhere, and may be counted upon for future releases. Episodes three and four followed the interview with Ayres, and a sequence in the third was indeed breath-taking, and very in keeping with the more hyperactive sequences in the villain's recent rematch The Giggle. The nasty schoolboy character Cyril's death got a round of applause from the assembled.

The best kudos I can give to this animated Celestial Toymaker is to say that it makes one want to see The Web Planet animated, or the Sensorites for that matter, or indeed any other story where the ambition for the imagery exceeded what could be achieved in Lime Grove or Riverside by several light years. Obviously, I'm not suggesting they don't animate all the missing ones first - I want to be alive to see them all. The final treat for us that day was another exclusive, and another investment that's going to pay off over a long stretch of time. The first 10 minutes approximately were shown of a bonus feature from the planned Toymaker release; this is the first of a series where seven different teams of three people - themed for each of the first seven Doctors' eras - all grapple with a specially designed Doctor Who escape room. Each team gets their own episode, with the attempt of the First Doctor trio (Peter Purves, Maureen o' Brien and - erm - Lisa Bowerman) going on the Toymaker disc. The remaining six will go on appropriate animation or Collection box-sets in future. As the presenter of the series Emily Cook said in a brief onstage interview, it could take 20 years to get to the end, but it will be worth it. The concept is one that you can't believe nobody's thought of before, and it looks like a lot of fun based on the excerpt shown. Emily talked about the difficulty of balancing the right tone in her role between being supportive and being gently mocking. The escape room was put together as a set, and all the different sessions were filmed over a scorching two days in the Summer of 2023. The puzzles are styled after various elements of set dressing from classic Doctor Who (references to the Trilogic game from the Toymaker story, the colourful puzzle from the Pyramid of Mars and the gameboard from The Five Doctors were clear from the clip).

Johnson (L), Cook (R)

The Doctor Who-themed escape rooms in the UK (see Deeper Thoughts of this blog post for details of one of them) don't require any knowledge of the show to complete the puzzles, as that would likely be too niche for wide customer engagement. As such, the escape room of the bonus feature series would be much better appreciated by the fans than the stars of the show; alas, the sets have been struck and it is no more, so we will just get to experience it through watching others trying it. This seems like a fundamental flaw, but is somewhat the point, I suppose: it wouldn't be as much fun watching people smoothly and successfully work out a set of puzzles. Cook hinted at some humorous meltdowns: Peter Davison gets somewhat frustrated, and the antics of the fourth Doctor crew of Matthew Waterhouse, Micheal E. Briant and - erm - Toby Hadoke were hilarious according to Cook. After this final interview, the event was done. The three of us (myself, Trevor and Alan) went to the BFI cocktail bar, and met up with Tim and Dave, who I hadn't seen for a couple of years. Then, Chris came out to join us for a drink and some food, though he hadn't had a ticket for the screening. It was almost a full house of our usual group (only David and Scott were not there); the talk was good, the food and drink were good, and I said hello to a few other fans. Having been worried that the event would be negative, I left that evening to travel home in the glow of the most enjoyable and positive BFI session for an animation to date. I'm looking forward to the physical release (date TBC at time of writing) to see the final version of the animation, and to see if Purves and Co. ever manage to escape from that room.

In Summary:

Never mind its reputation, The Sensorites is sometimes as powerful as gamma radiation (inspiration for the incredible Hulke).

Marco Polo

Chapter the 275th, where the Doctor goes on a long journey, a very long journey.

Plot:
The Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara land in the Himalayas in 1289. The TARDIS is damaged, needing lengthy repairs, and they are without water or heat. Luckily, they meet a party including Marco Polo. He is en route to see Kublai Khan, and takes them with him, also bringing the TARDIS. Polo won't let the Doctor access the TARDIS and keeps the key, as he wants to give this magic flying caravan, as he sees it, to Kublai Khan and finally buy his freedom to return to his home in Venice after many years in the Khan's service. A Mongol warlord, Tegana, who is part of the caravan, is supposed to be a peace emissary, but is secretly plotting to kill Polo and the Khan. Another member of the party is a young girl Ping-Cho, who wants to get out of the arranged marriage to a septuagenarian that awaits her in Peking. There follows an epic journey where Polo and the TARDIS team face conflict with the elements (including sandstorms and the threat of dehydration in the Gobi desert) and with Tegana's plotting. The Doctor secretly accesses and fixes the TARDIS. Both the Doctor and friends, and later Ping Cho, make attempts to leave but are caught. Everyone ends up eventually at the Khan's palace in Peking. He and the Doctor bond over the aches and pains of old age and a liking for backgammon. The Doctor gambles on getting the TARDIS back but loses. Polo saves the Khan from an assassination attempt by Tegana. Tegana chooses death over dishonour at his own hand. Polo gives the Doctor the key and the time travellers escape; Khan forgives Polo this upon seeing the magic of the TARDIS dematerialising.

Context:

It was mid-August 2023, and the family was going on holiday. As long term readers of the blog (Hi Mum!) will know, this is often my opportunity to link the Doctor Who story being watched to the trip. This year, we were going to the Greek island of Kos. No Doctor Who story is set on Kos, or Greece, and the only contenders that are even tenuously related (The Time Monster, The Underwater Menace, The Horns of Nimon) have already been blogged long ago. The random number generator then chose Marco Polo to be next, and I stuck with it; it's vaguely apt as it does see the very first TARDIS team travelling for a lengthy period with the titular character and his caravan. My laziness knows no bounds: rather that struggle with an old laptop that has itunes on and a hard-drive full of all my ripped CDs, but is very slow, I just used one of my Audible credits to download Marco Polo afresh. I think it's probably been remastered since I got the audio version of the story on CD twenty years ago (see First Time Round section below), so that's something. The one credit got me a bundle which included many other William Hartnell stories along with Marco Polo too. Before the trip, I watched the condensed reconstructed version on DVD (again, see First Time Round below); it was a nice job by Derek Handley as always but it can't fully represent the story's expanses. Then I periodically listened to episodes of the story on audio while I was away.

First Time Round:

This is one of those Doctor Who stories that has something of a mystique, and I'm sure I'd heard of it and seen some of the on-set photographs before I ever knew anything about the story. It's the first proper historical story of the series, the first time a real figure from history appears. It forms part of the opening salvo from the series that captured the public imagination: the lavish sets and costumes and educational content appealing to viewers, with large audience figures and reasonable appreciation scores. It sold widely internationally too. It was mentioned subsequently by some of the regular cast as their favourite story, and was considered prestigious enough to be the topic of the series' first ever Radio Times cover. Plus, it's missing without a trace - the earliest Doctor Who story for which no moving images have yet been recovered. I first encountered it in novelisation form sometime in the 1980s. I then bought and listened to the audio version with narration by William Russell when it was released in November 2003 (the audio existing because of enthusiastic fan home-tapers). Finally, a few years later in January 2006, I bought The Beginning DVD box set, which collected the first three stories, and had as an extra the aforementioned 30-minute compilation representing the fourth story Marco Polo using photographs, off-screen stills and sections of the audio.

Reaction:

Unless Russell T Davies takes things in a very unexpected direction, this is the last 7 x 25-minute episode story I will cover for the blog. Doctor Who did stories longer than seven episodes rarely for special occasions or at times of desperation, but the majority of stories were either four or six episodes long. At the beginning, though, and periodically thereafter for the first few years, it kept coming back to seven episode tales. As I touched on in the recent blog post for The Ambassadors of Death, this is an odd length of story, with a single focussed narrative usually unable to sustain such a running time, necessitating the inclusion of a strong subplot. Here, though, a different approach is taken: it's all subplots, with the loosest 'journey' narrative framing them. This is risky, as the eventual piece could seem too unconnected and bitty. To help prevent this, the people and the places seen on the journey need to be interesting. It's unfortunate when judging it that the story has another significance in relation to this blog: it's the final missing adventure I'm going to cover. There remain left to blog only complete stories, or ones with an episode or two missing that has been replaced with animation. If ever a story needed its visuals for a proper assessment, it's this one. Luckily, we have the audio and a lot of photographs, and from that evidence, it seems like it was a lavish production. The evocative stops on the epic route - way stations, Lop, the Gobi desert, the Wall, the Yellow River, the White City, and palaces at Shang-tu and Peking - were no doubt created with utmost skill and ingenuity from the creative production team.

Writer John Lucarotti has also been clever in his scripts to allow for a story with epic sweep to be constructed within the confines of Lime Grove D. The device of having Marco narrate the journey by reading from his journal makes the action seem much more broad and spacious than any television studio. It also tends to make Marco the main character of this particular tale. He's already got the title (and was part of the Radio Times cover, unlike any of the regulars save Hartnell). The regulars' subplot is about getting access to the TARDIS so they can leave, which is not really as interesting, and certainly not as picturesque, as Marco's journey to the Khan, hoping to buy his freedom. In order to achieve their aim, the time travellers have to get Marco on side, which also makes him the embodiment of authority, Othello to Tegana's Iago, as the warlord persuades him that he cannot trust these strangers. The regulars don't feel sidelined exactly as they mostly have enough good material here and there to keep them on screen to remind the audience whose show it's supposed to be; but, it's telling that the Doctor's role in the second episode was drastically reduced (as Hartnell was ill for the rehearsals) and it doesn't impact the story at all. This is a lot to do with this being only the fourth ever story, with the rules and structures still plastic. One can see things develop in real time, with the early episodes having overtly educational material (water boiling at different temperatures, the origins of the word 'assassin') and Susan speaking in an uncharacteristic hip groovy idiom; all this disappears partway through the story.

The most interesting guest characters, with the best performances, are those in Marco's caravan that become de facto regulars for the seven weeks of screen time. On route, there are some comedy grotesques - unctuous attendants and villainous henchmen, even the doddery Khan himself - but the depth comes from Mark Eden's Polo, Derren Nesbitt's Tegana, and Zienia Merton's Ping Cho, and the interactions between them and the time travellers: the trust triangle between Ian, Polo, and Tegana, at one memorable point symbolised in a chess game, the sweet friendship that develops between Susan and Ping Cho, the Doctor's frustration that he's been bested by his intellectual inferior. The story is unique (again, this comes down to it being early on when approaches are still being tried out) in allowing so much story time to elapse for these relationships to develop. The character stuff never dominates over incident, though, and there are some great set piece scenes (sandstorms, repelled bandit attacks, the teased false ending of episode 5 when the regulars almost escape but are caught at the last minute) along the way. If there are flaws, they are minor ones; such time elapses, that it does feel Polo is sometimes being an idiot in stubbornly mistrusting the people who are continually helping him, and failing to suspect the person who always seems to go missing whenever they get into trouble. Sometimes the pacing might just be a smidge too laid back - it feels like a whole episode is taken up with the telling of one story. There's never a moment, though, when the story is less than charming. I just wish that I could see it.

Connectivity:

An extended period of time elapses in both Marco Polo and The Time of the Doctor compared to the majority of Doctor Who stories that more closely follow the Aristotelian advice on temporal unity.

Deeper Thoughts:

Travels without a TARDIS. The peripatetic nature of the story of Marco Polo is an excuse for me to indulge in a bit of travelogue and cover some episodic but unconnected Doctor Who activities and thoughts from this summer. The story starts with me at home down on the south coast of the UK. The group of Doctor Who enthusiast friends that I often meet up with (as recounted occasionally in these pages) were looking for an opportunity to get together as it had been a while. In previous years, there had been more Doctor Who events at the BFI Southbank, which we'd use as a reason to meet; but, with no stories having been released as animations for a while, and a slower rate of release for the Collection Blu-ray box sets, the BFI events had become few and far between. We decided to try something different, the Doctor Who escape room on Oxford Street. This is Escape Hunt's The Dalek Awakens. On a Saturday towards the end of July, I travelled up to meet the rest of the party in London. It was only as the train pulled out from Brighton that I heard someone behind me talking about their limited travel options because of the RMT strike, and I realised I might face limited travel options because of an RMT strike. In the end that meant that Scott couldn't make it at all, the rest (David, Trevor, Chris) were staying in or close to London and so were fine. I just had to go home earlier than I would have normally. The escape room only takes up to an hour, so the limited number of trains to get home didn't impinge on that activity, but we would potentially have gone to see the Barbie movie in the evening had I been around longer (I saw it with my daughter instead - great movie, not enough Ncuti!).

The first rule of The Dalek Awakens escape room is you don't talk about The Dalek Awakens escape room, the better for it to be a fun surprise for anyone doing it in future. As such, I won't mention anything here except that it had good production values (Jodie Whittaker provides extensive voiceover as the Doctor, as does Nicholas Briggs as the Dalek), and some challenging but not impossible puzzles. You don't need to know anything about Doctor Who to participate. For a few more details, but no spoilers, there is a Radio Times review online here. Unlike the group mentioned in that review, the four of us managed to complete it with a few minutes to spare. Our same group, with Scott and others mentioned many times before on this blog such as Tim and Dave, didn't have to wait too long after that for a new possible opportunity to meet up, as a BFI Southbank event was announced to tie in with the forthcoming Season 20 Blu-ray box set, showing a(nother) new version of The Five Doctors. Unfortunately, like the last two of these events the date clashed with a pre-existing engagement for me. I hope to get to the next one, whenever that is. The positive way to look at my clashing engagement is that I'm leaving someone else the opportunity to get a seat. Perhaps because there are fewer events of this kind of late, competition was fierce. Only David and Trevor managed to get tickets (which are limited to two per person). Everyone else tried and couldn't select tickets and get them into the basket on the website fast enough as The Five Doctors screening sold out in less than 5 minutes, the quickest I've ever seen for a BFI Doctor Who event.

A number of disappointed people online afterwards directed their ire at the BFI for not providing more - and perhaps more regional - opportunities for fans to access these events. This isn't fair. They have two venues only, both in London, one of which is an IMAX cinema totally unsuitable for watching old telly or guest panels. Also, their job isn't Doctor Who, it's programming a wide range of films, festivals and special events of which Doctor Who is just an infinitesimal fraction. BBC Studios could potentially branch out to find more exhibition partners across the country, but presumably they don't have much of a budget for any of their staff to find and progress such new relationships. The investment would only be worth it if the events were a sure thing, but the last BFI event I made it to, for The Abominable Snowmen animation showcase last year, wasn't sold out, and I couldn't give my spare tickets away. It's a shame, but I can't see us getting any more than we're getting, with everyone having to travel to London. Just before we were due to fly out to Kos, an announcement was made that The Underwater Menace was going to get a full animation release on DVD and Blu-ray in November 2023; assuming this will get a tie-in screening, there will be another opportunity for everyone to get stressed and frustrated with the BFI's website later in the year. There was an online story on the Mirror's website early in 2023 that stated Underwater Menace was being animated, so it was at least half right. The other one they mentioned was The Smugglers, so maybe we'll see that one soon too.

An attractive ruin in Kos town

Going back to the topic of disappointments caused by the popularity of Doctor Who stuff, I'd hoped that Pull to Open, Ten Acre Films book by Paul Hayes giving the inside story of how Doctor Who was brought to air in 1962 and 1963, would be my holiday reading. It's a companion piece to Hayes's book The Long Game that told a similar story about the new series before its launch in 2005, which I read and reviewed in the Deeper Thoughts section of the blog post of Midnight back in March. I was very much looking forward to reading it, and it would have been thematically linked to Marco Polo, one of the first script commissions from that early period. It wasn't to be, but it was for a good reason. The weight of demand for pre-orders necessitated an extended print run, which delayed the book, and I didn't receive my pre-ordered copy before we flew. It was waiting for me on the doormat when I got back home, and I'll share my thoughts in a future post. That left me with only Marco Polo as my Doctor Who fix in Kos. As I listened in the sunny surroundings, I struggled to find resonances (trying to eke out the bottles of sun cream we'd brought to last the week of our holiday wasn't exactly on a par with the Doctor and friends trying to make their limited water last for their trek across the Gobi desert). It was only on the penultimate day when we caught a bus into Kos old town that something occurred to me. As I wandered round the remains of many ancient buildings, surrounded by many other tourists, I realised Marco Polo is Doctor Who's attractive ruin: it's from long ago, it unfortunately doesn't all exist as it did when it was first made, but it's still a big draw for interested parties. Until it's restored by animation, or even the recovery of the original footage, let it always remain so.

In Summary:

Marco! Polo! Marco! Polo!

The Edge of Destruction

Chapter The 246th, where the very first TARDIS team are inside the spaceship, go beyond the sun, and find themselves on the edge of destruction and the brink of disaster.

Plot:

The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan are in the TARDIS when there is an explosion knocking them out. When they wake up, they suffer from unexplained pains and memory losses. The doors to the ship open and close of their own accord. Susan is paranoid that something might have got into the ship that is inhabiting one of the others, and threatens Ian and Barbara with a pair of scissors. The TARDIS scanner shows seemingly random images. All the clocks and watches in the ship melt. The Doctor accuses Ian and Barbara of sabotage, a way to blackmail him into taking them home to their own time. (This doesn't really make sense, but nobody's behaving very rationally.) The Doctor deliberately sedates everyone so he can investigate alone, but a suspicious Ian hasn't drunk the drink given to him. Eventually, everyone's awake again and collectively they piece together what is happening. The TARDIS fault locator starts honking and flashing every fifteen seconds, which clues them in that the ship is trying to count down time. One of the controls, the fast return switch, has become jammed, and they were all travelling back in time, into the beginning of the formation of a solar system, where the TARDIS would have been destroyed. The Doctor fixes the switch and all returns to normal. He apologises to Barbara, who was hurt by his earlier comments.

Context:

I have a broken TV/Blu-ray player remote control again (see The War Machines post for the last time this happened, with hilarious consequences). With no way to watch the DVD of this story, I had to resort to Britbox. The Britbox app that I can use on the family TV, via a Fire stick, is a bit buggy; with perseverance, though, I was able to get both episodes to play. I watched them one a night on two consecutive nights midweek in the final full week of October. Before this, while looking around the classic Doctor Who offerings on the streaming service, I noticed that there's a photo reconstruction of missing episodes of Patrick Troughton story The Wheel in Space that, unless I missed it, has never been made commercially available on any shiny disc release. I viewed a bit of it, and it was rather good. I was almost tempted to override the random generator and watch that story instead, but rules are rules. I sucked it up and watched the - probably more dull, even than a slide-show - Hartnell two-parter.

First Time Round:

Does everyone remember the different houses they've lived in, and when exactly they moved in to each? And every change of job, and every birth, marriage or death, to pinpoint date/time accuracy without having to glance at a calendar? I'm half a century old, but I can recall this information for my entire life, only because of Doctor Who. My extreme fandom means that I know which Doctor Who videos, DVDs or broadcasts I was watching in which homes, and then I can date them (usually from memory, but even if I forget once in a while, a large section of the internet is devoted to remembering Doctor Who dates also). I don't know if this is an affliction or a superpower. Most of the 1990s I spent living in Worthing on the Sussex coast (except for being in Durham in term time for my three years at university there). I moved to Brighton in 1999, at first in a house share, and then in a flat on my own from November of that year. The Edge of Destruction came out on VHS (accompanied by the pilot episode) six months later in April 2000 when I was nicely settled in there. I was still working in Worthing, taking the train there every day. In a few weeks' time, I would start a job commuting into London daily, whereupon my usual suppliers of Doctor Who stuff would change to be more capital-centric, as I wouldn't get home until later. On the day The Edge of Destruction came out, I would have had time after getting home on the train from Worthing to walk down Queen's Road and purchase it in the Brighton MVC shop, as they were still open (though I'd still have had to trot down from the station at a reasonable pace to get in before they shut). I'd then have walked back up the hill to the Seven Dials area where I lived, get in, and put the video on straight away. My memory is that it was a thrill seeing a William Hartnell story that was new to me (there weren't many of those left to release that were so by 2000), and it didn't bother me that the story was short, and unhinged. 

Reaction:

The Edge of Destruction, the third ever Doctor Who story, was something of an afterthought. The original commitment made by the BBC to the production team when the show was starting up in 1963 was for 13 episodes; 11 of these had been used creating the superlative two opening stories, four episodes for An Unearthly Child and seven episodes for The Daleks. Further full length stories were being prepped, somewhat at risk as there hadn't been a formal commitment to more at that point. Just in case they didn't get re-commissioned, they needed a space-filler - two episodes to slot in to complete the first batch, with the hope that more would follow if the decision went their way (as it eventually did). Writer (and script editor of the series at the time) David Whittaker had a tight brief, with limited resources he could use. If I remember rightly, even when it first came out for home video purchase in the year 2000 (as remembered above) the first impulse was again for it to be an afterthought. There was a plan to bring out a VHS box set of the first three William Hartnell stories; remastered versions of the first two that were already out on VHS, with the two episodes of The Edge of Destruction along for the ride. There was resistance to the idea that fans would have to pay for an expensive box set just to get two episodes of previously unreleased material, and the idea was shelved. That initial intention though would have reduced the two-part story to a glorified extra, with insufficient draw to stand on its own. In the end it had to, though. It may have been that, for a lot of fans, paying exclusively for two episodes of slightly inept psychodrama might have chafed more than if the cost had been subsumed into the experience of getting a pretty box and maybe a TARDIS-shaped keyring. Is it perhaps better for this story to remain an afterthought and not have too much focus upon it?

It's tough for me, though, as it's come up for the blog and I've watched it, so I have to write something. There's just not that much to say, as there's not much to The Edge of Destruction. It's only two episodes long and at the slow pace of the black-and-white stories of the time, but then so was The Rescue, and that had a somewhat engaging plot. Even the single episode story Mission to the Unknown, which doesn't include any of the regular cast, contains a reasonable amount of incident. There's something to be said for featuring other places, times, or people in a story. Within the severe restrictions he was faced with of not being able to do any of that, Whittaker still falls upon one very clever idea, the false suspicion that some formless creature has entered into the TARDIS and possessed one of the four, only for this to turn out just to be paranoia. If the script just developed this plot, I think it would succeed, or at the very least be better, but it doesn't. Each scene acts like an unconnected sketch or tableau on the loose theme of 'people going a bit loopy' without any real sense of progression. The four characters - five, if one counts the TARDIS itself - act strangely in their own little orbits, but rarely intersect with one another. Carole Ann Ford plays it all fear and rage, Hartnell is accusatory and aggressive, Barbara floats through proceedings like a zombie, and William Russell plays many scenes like a giggling drunk. Occasionally this works (Carole Ann Ford poised, still, arm raised with the scissors ready to strike is a wonderful image), but it seems more by accident than design.

The eventual explanation that the TARDIS has been deliberately dropping cryptic hints is ludicrous, obviously (it melted all the clocks to tell its crew that their time was running out, but it can't override the fault locator to register an issue in a jammed component because it is technically still functioning correctly); but it's also inadequate. Did the TARDIS somehow cause injuries to the backs of a couple of characters' necks? If so, why? If not, it's a bit of a coincidence that two different people got injuries in the same way. Did the TARDIS make Susan repeatedly stab a pair of scissors into a space-age chaise-longue? If not, what did make her do this? Big actions with insufficient motivation, alas, equals melodrama. That, plus limited options for visual interest, equals stagey melodrama. Nonetheless, there are a few moments that work - Hartnell's monologue about the mysteries of the universe when he witnesses the formation of a solar system is okay, although he delivers it when he knows they're short of time and in incredible danger. Have a sense of urgency as well as a sense of wonder, please, Bill! The story also works better in context than in isolation: a couple of episodes of breather in between longer stories, and something a bit different. In its third story, the programme demonstrates that it can go anywhere, even deep into some very strange story ideas indeed, and then - at the end - it moves on, and the four travellers find themselves at the 'roof of the world' just about to meet Marco Polo. The series would, of course, use this structure of continuing adventure, changing tone and genre and locale frequently, and - yes - occasionally trying something odd or something that didn't quite work, to power through another 13 episodes, and then another, and then another... for nigh on 60 years now, and counting.

Connectivity: 

The Edge of Destruction and Orphan 55 both feature a four person TARDIS team and the Doctor doing a monologue towards the end. That's pretty much it.

Deeper Thoughts:

The Ship in a Bottle Episode. The Edge of Destruction is Doctor Who's first ever bottle episode, in the truest sense of the term. If you're not familiar with bottle episodes, it is a phenomenon, and the resultant terminology to refer to that phenomenon, emerging from US TV. When you have to produce 26 episodes a year of a comedy or drama series, year in year out (which is rare in the UK, but commonplace in the US), there will be times when you need to economise. Just like the clip show, a bottle episode is a way to make the budget stretch a bit further. Unlike a clip show, which would allow a production team to make an episode out of recycled material with a small amount of newly filmed content as a framing device, a bottle episode is a full programme of new material. To keep it cheap, though, the cast and sets are kept restricted. Just as in Edge of Destruction, the most bottliest bottle episode features only the regular cast and standing sets. Often, plot has to be minimal because of this, and so stories tend to be at the inter-personal level, with characters exchanging dialogue to paint word pictures in lieu of globe-trotting, and subtext in lieu of action. Examples would be the Breaking Bad episode Fly (just the two main regulars in the lab set) or the One Where No One's Ready episode of Friends (just the six regulars in the large apartment set). Interestingly, the clip show did gain some traction in the UK around the time that Doctor Who started; Gerry Anderson's rival tele-fantasy series like Stingray and Thunderbirds often used the clip show approach. British TV didn't do the bottle episode, though, or at least not in the same way. To take an example: an entire series of a comedy like Steptoe and Son might rarely feature any scenes not in the standing sets of the house and the totter's yard: every episode was to a certain extent a bottle episode. UK television took longer to grow out of its roots as filmed theatre than the offerings from across the pond, and budgets tended to be lower, and expectations lower, from the get go.

Though a UK show might feature limited sets, it would then have a bit of budget for actors, a girlfriend for Steptoe Junior or a dodgy dealer come to sell him and Steptoe Senior some scrap metal, and so on. Doctor Who could only have done such a purist bottle episode as The Edge of Destruction early on, as later it had something of the opposite challenge. It was only in the early years of Doctor Who where spending significant story time in the TARDIS between jaunts was common, and there were sets built to accommodate this. Later, the console room set was the only standing set for the series, and it was too small to comfortably house an entire episode without the available camera angles becoming very boring very quickly. Doctor Who being a series of serials, each one in a new locale, meant that it had to create a new set of sets every few weeks, and therefore might not have had so much money for actors. This gave rise to a format later in the series where a large standing set was created to last the four to six weeks of the serial (the tomb in The Tomb of the Cybermen, the moon base in The Moonbase), and the cast was limited. The 'base under siege' format, as it became known later, gets some artistic genre value out of the restriction, and for a few years in the Patrick Troughton era Doctor Who focusses on horror plots where monsters infiltrate lonely outposts and pick off members of the limited cast one by one. There are echoes of this throughout Doctor Who long after it shrugged off that house style, in such stories as Tom Baker's The Ark in Space (which features only the regular cast in its first episode as they explore the impressive new sets) and something like Midnight (regular cast and limited guest cast trapped in a small newly built set) in the new series. These not quite pure bottle episodes are in good company; famous examples of similar episodes of other shows would be Seinfeld's The Chinese Restaurant (regular cast on a single new set) and Brooklyn 99's The Box (a couple of the regular cast on a standing set, but they've splurged on a big name guest actor in Sterling K. Brown).

Though Doctor Who would never be a stranger to budgetary constraints, it didn't often have to do anything as extreme as The Edge of Destruction again. The closest it came was having to work up from nothing an additional episode to be added to the front of Patrick Troughton story The Mind Robber to plug a gap. As well as the regulars and the TARDIS sets it featured a blank cyclorama to represent a white void, some non-speaking characters in robot outfits from stock, and a nifty bit of filmed effects work where the TARDIS blows up. It's arguably better than the four following episodes that had a more generous budget. Since it came back, the new series has had more budget and commitment from BBC executives than anyone could have dreamed of in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. There have still been challenges, though. In the first ten or so years after the 2005 return, the show was making 12 or 13 episodes a season, but also had to create a Christmas special. To make the schedule stretch, double-banking was often employed - splitting the regular cast between episodes so that two could be shot simultaneously. Often, this used similar techniques to the bottle episode. For example, in both Flatline and The Girl Who Waited the Doctor is stuck in the TARDIS, allowing the lead actor to do a short period of filming on the standing set that can then be intercut with the rest of the action, giving the character more screen time and interaction with the other characters than otherwise. In later years, with fewer episodes being made per year, double banking hasn't been necessary, and there's been no bottle episodes either. On the contrary, the show has travelled far and wide both in the real world (filming in many locations around the globe) and the fictional one (the many planets and times featured in Flux, despite the restrictions imposed by Covid-19 on filming). If a bottle - or bottle-ish - episode were to happen in future, it would most likely be for artistic rather than budgetary reasons. 

In Summary:

Bitty, brief and bizarre. 

The Reign of Terror

Chapter The 138th, the 138th Chapter Spectacular.

Plot:

The original TARDIS team, Doctor 1, Ian, Barbara and Susan, find themselves in post-revolutionary France, a couple of days walk - on pretty revolutionary exterior film, no less - from Paris. Unfortunately, the first thing they stumble upon is a safe house for royalists fleeing the country. Before too long, the place is surrounded by soldiers, Susan and the two teachers are captured and taken off to the capital for a date with Madame Guillotine, and the Doctor is left unconscious in the building, which has been set on fire. Luckily, he gets rescued by a boy he befriended earlier, and makes his way to Paris, being sidetracked briefly on the way by being press-ganged onto a road digging party. After failing to escape from the Conciergerie Prison, Susan and Barbara are rescued when their tumbrel heading towards execution is attacked by a couple more royalist supporters, Jules et Jean. They are taken to Jean's place where Barbara takes a shine to Leon Colbert, another conspirator. Ian meanwhile has shared a cell with a dying man, who with his last breath gives Ian a message to pass on to a spy from England called James Stirling. He escapes the jail to track this spy down, but asking too many questions at a local inn, he ends up getting attacked by Jules et Jean, and dragged off to Jean's place too.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has disguised himself as a Regional Officer of the Provinces to inveigle his way into the Conciergerie, but once there he gets caught up with Lemaitre, the official in charge of the prison, who takes him to meet Robespierre. A couple of twists and double-crosses later, the TARDIS travellers find out who Stirling really is, and he gets them to do him a favour undertaking a mission to spy on Robespierre's deputy Paul Barrass, who has a secret meeting with the young Napoleon Bonaparte. Robespierre is overthrown in a coup, and the TARDIS travellers make their way back to the TARDIS and depart.

Context:

Before the broadcast of The Happiness Patrol, one of the final classic Doctor Who stories in Sylvester McCoy's penultimate year, there was a rumour going around that it's final episode was going to be animated. It wasn't true, needless to say; but, it wasn't too believable either. At the time, it seemed very unlikely that a conventional BBC1 show would dip in and out of animation in such an avant-garde manner. In the many years since then, though, we have somehow come to the point where it's the default expected for those few stories from the show's early years where there are a few episodes missing from the archives, but which are mostly intact. The very first of these came out in 2006, which used animation to plug the two episode-long gaps in Patrick Troughton Cyberman story The Invasion. At the time, many fans myself included wondered how BBC Worldwide could afford it, and perhaps they couldn't quite as it would be another seven years before the next part-animated story was released, and that was The Reign of Terror. There were a handful more done in those last couple of years of the regular DVD range: The Tenth Planet, The Ice Warriors and The Moonbase. Lately there have been a few animations of wholly missing stories (The Power of the Daleks and The Macra Terror so far, with more planned). Every animation to date with the exception of The Reign of Terror has been of a monster story; monsters are presumably easier to animate, and certainly easier to animate interestingly than 18th century French persons. The therefore somewhat unusual and experimental Reign of Terror DVD was popped on, and I watched it on my lonesome an episode a night during the evenings of one week.

First time round:

Twenty years before the DVD release of Reign, 1980s Doctor Who producer John-Nathan Turner came to the end of his employment doing special releases for the Doctor Who VHS range. One of many ideas he had introduced to allow greater access to the archive was the release of some of those stories with gaps. Instead of episode long animations synced to the surviving audio, the gaps on video tape would be covered by an actor from the story giving a brief synopsis of the missing material to camera. The Reign of Terror was originally planned for release in the 30th anniversary year, with the actor that played Susan, Carole Ann Ford, having been recorded summarising the missing episodes 4 and 5. For reasons unknown, though, it was shelved, unlike everything else for which Nathan-Turner had assembled footage.

It wasn't released until 2003, ten years later than planned. It was the very last release of the VHS range, in a box set with some other odds and sods. I bought it in the MVC on London Bridge during lunchtime, on the day it was released. I may have been lucky to get it too; it was a limited edition, and my memory is that it was hard to find and lots of other fans reported online that they'd missed out (possibly because - DVDs being the big thing by then - VHS tapes were only expected to sell to raving lunatic completists like what I am, and it was probably therefore a little too limited compared to demand). I would have then taken the train home to Brighton and watched it that evening, and been confused as to who the hell was who when all the script's to-ing and fro-ing, double-crosses and traitors, and suspicion falling on different people in turn, was condensed into 5 minutes of brisk chat. 

Reaction:

I've written recently about how Doctor Who can do beginnings better than endings; I'd never thought about how well - or not - it does middles. The Reign of Terror's episodes 1 to 3 and 6 have some nice moments, but they feel quite episodic: escapes, comedy characters, walking, ooh Napoleon! But nothing ties them together. The missing episodes 4 and 5 develop the mystery of who's on who's side, and reveal in each of the two episode endings who is the bad guy, and who's the good guy. You can't skip all that, or skim over it as John Nathan-Turner 's VHS version did, and not be left with a pile of unconnected bits rather than one story. With the episodes reinstated using animation, it holds together as one story, but whether it's a particularly coherent story, that's a different matter. It's probably a bad sign if parts 4 and 5 of 6 are where most of the plot is, and the beginning and end of a story isn't contributing very much.

Let's start with episode 1. It's mostly exploration, taking it's time to let the regulars uncover where and when they are, and for the complications to arise. That's all well and good, and it's fun to spend time in their company (Ian talking the Doctor down from his mood of high dudgeon with the offer of a drink is a lovely moment). The episode's undermined though, by none of the principal guest characters appearing in it. They all enter in the next episode, or later. This is a problem in a spy story where the major dramatic question is who is the 'mole' in both camps: someone has been informing on the royalist sympathisers, and someone else is an English spy. Introducing the suspects earlier, instead of other characters who are only seen in this first part, would have allowed the mystery and tension to play out longer, and therefore mean more by the end. All the action of the story takes place in Paris, and by parking the Doctor and Co. so far out, writer Dennis Spooner stretches out his narrative at the expense of its focus: there's lots of 'shoe leather', scenes in the next couple of episodes of the Doctor, walking to the capital, and getting into scrapes which again don't have anything to do with the plot except to add colour.

Meanwhile, the others are trapped in jail cells for most of episodes 2 and 3. Ian goes one better - he's trapped on film (in pre-recorded inserts, as actor William Russell was on holiday for the studio days). The intrigue gets started then, with a cryptic deathbed message being passed on, but there's not much room for it to develop amongst all the other 'business'. It's difficult to ascertain how this would have gone over to those watching on its contemporary broadcast: it was very much an experiment in how much humour could be introduced into a story, with The Reign of Terror going further than any serial had in that first year of Doctor Who's life. The comedy jailer is okay, as he runs through the remainder of the narrative, having a purpose as an obstacle to our heroes. The scene with the Doctor getting the better of the road works overseer - despite some lovely Stan Laurel-esque physicality from Hartnell - is pure padding. Even the scene of the Doctor larking about in a gentleman's outfitters doesn't really go anywhere - the shopkeeper later turns him in to the authorities for disguising himself, and the authorities don't do anything about it. Meanwhile, Barbara and Susan have nothing to do at all, and Susan's character is very badly served: she would rather not try and escape because there might be rat in the cell, so she'll just wait to be guillotined instead? Really?! This isn't the telepathic future child that Carole Ann Ford signed up to play, and it is obvious why she left a couple of stories later.

An oddly shot action sequence where Barbara and Susan are rescued by another couple of significant characters (who are only being introduced half way through the story) takes us to the animated section. This is where the plot gets interesting, including the wonderfully tense sequence of the TARDIS women forced out of hiding to consult an untrustworthy physician. The animation helps one to follow the action better than an audio recording or summary would, but it isn't perfect. The character designs from some angles are very impressive; from others, they are unrecognisable as the actor in question - sometimes switching multiple times in one scene. Ian's likeness is particularly bad, very fleetingly looking anything like him. All the character models also have very prominent teeth: I don't know what's so off-putting about that, but it was all I could concentrate on for the first few minutes of episode 4, until I got used to it. I suppose you do see people's teeth when they act in real life, but I'm definitely not so consciously aware of it. The other major problem is that there are flurries of rapid edit points. Sometimes, a scene of something dull like someone being offered a chair and sitting down cuts six or seven times in a second. It's distracting and - needless to say - not representative of the stately pace of the episodes on either side of the animation.

The animation ends with all the mystery of the story resolved, and so there isn't much to do in the final episode, when we're back to live action. The final episode is off by itself like a one-act play of Ian and Barbara playing at being spies, tying up the staff of an inn and taking their place to watch a secret - and not historically verified  - meeting between Barrass and a young Napoleon. It's mildly diverting, I guess, but nothing really to do with the plot of the previous few episodes. Robespierre gets deposed, which is presented in a historically accurate way, but that feels like the finale to a different story, and one we haven't been watching at all, so ends up feeling a bit ho-hum. Then, it's over, with only an echoey voice-over from The Doctor over a starscape to give the ending faux gravitas (it was the end of the first ever season of Who, so I forgive them for indulging a little bit).

Connectivity: 

Both The Reign of Terror and The Bells of Saint John have most of their action take place in European capital. New episodes of both stories debuted in 2013 (when the animated middle episodes were released on DVD). That's pretty much it.

Deeper Thoughts:

2019: the year of new old Who. It's been more than 14 years since Doctor Who returned to our screens, but they've only managed to make 11 series in that time. As with everything to do with the show, there were lots of online rumours and conspiracy theories flying around whenever there were fewer than the expected number of episodes planned for a particular year, but the reason seems obvious: Doctor Who costs too much money to make every single year. 2009 and 2012 had only a handful of stories shown, but they still maintained a presence in the TV landscape, as significant things happened (the bowing out of long-running regulars in both cases). It wasn't until 2016 that new Who had it's first proper 'gap year', and 2019 is only the second time it's pulled this cost-conscious trick. In each case, there was a single festive special shown as a consolation prize. 2016 also had 'Class', a spin-off show that most thought was woeful, so it probably provided little consolation to adventure-starved fans; 2019 has had not a sausage since Resolution finished airing on the very first day of the year. Even the recent Children in Need segment, as sweet and affecting as it was, was just a personal appearance by the show's stars not any 'in character' drama.
    

Luckily, though, this year has seen a lot of new old Who. Unlike the deprived 2016, the emergence of the Blu-ray range has meant a regular delivery of classic adventures on shiny disc again in 2019. This isn't just repeats either. The online trailers for these sets have developed as time's gone on, with some of the latest ones including in-character appearances by classic series companions, continuing their stories in a vaguely canonical way. Katy Manning and Stewart Bevan got to play Mr. and Mrs. Jo Jones once more, having a rematch with some giant maggots in the trailer for the season 10 set, and - best of all - the recent trailer for the forthcoming season 26 set, which writer-director Pete McTighe discusses in detail in the current Doctor Who Magazine, which features Sophie Aldred as a grown-up Ace, in charge of a charitable organisation (in line with a reference in an episode of spin-off show The Sarah-Jane Adventures). It's really rather lovely and worth seeking out. For something a bit longer, the recent season 23 box set (The Trial of a Time Lord) re-edits one of the four sub-stories, Terror of the Vervoids, removing the trial bits and making it stand-alone, plus adding some cut material and new CGI. It's a breath of fresh air, and like coming to the story anew, working much better when the action isn't being halted to go back to the trial room every five minutes. The edit goes further than just removing the framing, though, and reshapes the material losing what the Blu-ray producers presumably thought were rubbish moments and lines from the original. It's an interesting experiment.

Another interesting experiment,and probably the most remarkable new old Who this year was the recreation of missing one-episode William Hartnell era story Mission to the Unknown. Students, graduates and staff from the University of Central Lancashire remade the episode as a media project, utilising the techniques and technology of 1965, when the story was first made. It was a great choice, as -compared to the rest of the missing stories - it is short, relatively self-contained and - crucially - doesn't feature the Doctor. It was an odd intermission in the usual TARDIS adventurers, instead featuring a three-man spaceship crew, crash-landed on a planet where the Daleks are plotting. If you haven't watched it yet, I highly recommend seeking it out on youtube. Another 1960s story recreation, building on the early work done on such releases as The Reign of Terror DVD, was the fully animated Patrick Troughton story The Macra Terror which was released in March. Two further Troughton stories, The Faceless Ones and Fury From the Deep, are being worked on now for release next year.

The online rumours and conspiracy theories carry on, and the latest (wishful?) thinking is that we're going to get a surprise Jodie Whittaker 2019 Christmas special announced any day now. Even if we don't, though, 2019 has had an embarrassment of riches.

In Summary:

Without the middle, it's a bit muddling. With the middle, it's only really middling.