Genesis of the Daleks

Chapter the 278th, where critiquing one of Who's biggest stories ever is like critiquing Hamlet: nobody wants my opinion, and probably someone's said it before me anyway. Nonetheless, I'll try... 

Plot:
The Time Lords intercept the Doctor, Sarah and Harry when they are mid-transmat travelling from the Earth to Nerva Beacon. They have dragged them off course to Skaro in the past, around the time of the Daleks' earliest beginnings, to give the Doctor a mission to avert the creatures' creation. Skaro is towards the end of a thousand-year war that has destroyed the planet and transformed the people. Both sides, Thals and Kaleds, feel they cannot now stop until they've achieved the total annihilation of the other. Sarah gets separated from the Doctor and Harry, is captured by the Thals, and press-ganged into loading a missile with dangerous explosive. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Harry are captured by the Kaled military ("Why, that's an anagram of -! How interesting."). The military are not really in command on the Kaled side, as the power is held by an elite group based in a separate bunker away from their main dome, and the Doctor and Harry soon find themselves imprisoned there. The leader of this group is a scientist called Davros. The Kaled Elite have forecast that the mutations caused by the weapons of this war will only get worse. Davros's research has therefore focussed on building a travel machine that will be used by the mutated forms that the Kaleds will eventually become; he calls this machine a Dalek. He has created many mutated lifeforms to test these machines, but others in the bunker are worried about his work: instead of just accelerating the mutation, Davros has genetically-engineered the embryonic mutants to remove emotions and make them more aggressive, essential - as he sees it - to their survival.

One of the Elite helps the Doctor and Harry to escape, and they go to the Kaled government and persuade them to halt Davros's experiments. They then travel to the Thal dome to rescue Sarah. Hearing of his government's moves against him, Davros goes to the Thals and gives them a formula that will help their rocket destroy the Kaled dome. He would rather sacrifice every Kaled outside the bunker than stop working on the Daleks. The Doctor gets everyone out of the launch area and then tries to sabotage the rocket, but is knocked out by a guard. When he awakes, the Kaled dome is destroyed and the Thals are celebrating the end of the war. He helps a Thal called Bettan escape when Davros's new Daleks arrive and start exterminating the Thals. The Doctor goes back toward the Kaled bunker, meeting Sarah and Harry en route. On re-entering the bunker, the TARDIS trio are captured by Davros, but later released by the anti-Davros contingent of the Elite, who are now in the majority. While these rebels confront Davros, the Doctor wires up the embryo room to explode, but has second thoughts wondering if he has the right to interfere. The Daleks return from the Thal dome and exterminate all the rebellious members of the Elite, but they don't stop there. They also kill those loyal to Davros, and even Davros himself. Bettan leads a resistance group of survivors who blow up the entrance to the bunker, just seconds after the TARDIS trio escape. Travelling back to the TARDIS using a Time Ring that the Time Lords provided, the Doctor muses that even though they did not stop the Daleks from being created, that they didn't really lose as some good will come from the Daleks continuing existence, but he's fooling himself really.

Context:

I couldn't get anyone in the family interested in watching this with me, and then I had a couple of false starts when - after everyone had gone to bed - I pressed play on the blu-ray disc (from the very first collection box set for season 12, released in 2018) and after a few seconds of theme tune decided I was too tired and went to bed. In the end I watched it over a couple of late afternoons and evenings during a rainy week in late September 2023. The Better Half sat in for the first couple of episodes, but this was mainly because she was feeling under the weather and couldn't find the energy to leave the living room. Wrapped in a blanket, she sat on the sofa making the occasional comment. The most interesting was an observation that you never see electricians or plumbers at work in science fiction stories, but they must be needed. She has a point. I could only think of the one scene in The End of the World that contradicted her assertion, and that was a last minute addition to pad out the running time. I then started to wonder who does the plumbing for terrestrial military bases during conflicts. I'm guessing that they didn't get Iraqi contractors in to fix the toilets in the Green Zone, and instead it would have been members of some mechanical engineering corps or other, but I don't know for sure. Maybe this is a topic for future study. The reason why will become more clear in the Reaction section below, but it is instructive to understand that these musings only occurred to me during the early episodes; by the end, I wasn't thinking about plumbing.

Milestone watch: This post completes season 12, which is the 14th out of the current 39 series of Who new and old for which I've blogged all the stories. It's the fifth of seven Tom Baker seasons completed, with only two of his many, many stories remaining to cover. Gosh!

First Time Round:

In the early days of the Doctor Who VHS range, from its beginnings in the 1980s up to around 1991 (the year that Genesis of the Daleks was released), one could not guarantee that one would be able to find a shop stocking the tapes on their day of release. Just finding the things at all was reward enough, the timing was secondary. As the 1990s progressed and the range established itself, things became more reliable and - for this fan at least, and I suspect from behaviour of others that I've witnessed over the years that it isn't just me by a long way - obtaining the story as early as possible became very important. This is one of those things that fans get obsessive about maybe even despite themselves. Thinking back about the early 1990s, I am probably projecting myself indulging in this behaviour, which I was definitely doing by later in the decade, before I truly did. Reading old diaries I recently rediscovered (see blog posts passim) made it clear that funding and personal organisation did not always allow this. In early October 1991, Genesis of the Daleks came out in a double pack with preceding story The Sontaran Experiment, and on the same day another classic Tom Baker story The Deadly Assassin was also separately made available. And I didn't purchase them for months afterwards. The reason for this, and a broader explanation of some of the obsessive behaviour of fans, I will cover below in the Deeper Thoughts section.

Reaction:

As the anecdote goes, Barry Letts - the outgoing Doctor Who producer who commissioned this story before Philip Hinchcliffe took over in the role - read the initial storyline that writer Terry Nation had submitted, and in a script meeting said to Nation "It's great; the only snag is that you've sold it to us twice already". This refers back to a brace of Dalek stories Nation had written in the previous two years. Both were straightforward adventure tales where Daleks and Doctor would land on a hostile planet full of perils overcome one by one, with an arbitrary plot eventually foiled. It was the basic formula for every Nation-penned Dalek story after his first couple in the early years; only the locales would really change. This time, Letts wanted something different. To his credit, Nation took this with good humour, and he, Letts and outgoing script editor Terrance Dicks brainstormed together and came up with the idea of showing the Daleks' origins. Watching the early episodes of Genesis of the Daleks, I wonder whether some remnants of that original storyline made it into the final product, though. There are tell-tale signs of the sort of Saturday morning cinema serial plotting that Nation loved to sample, and which was a major inspiration for early Doctor Who. Such plotting is never very joined up. A wasteland features in episode one that's dangerous with explosions, gas and gunfire; by episode three and four, people cross it with ease. Soldiers talk about how they must conserve ammo, and then seconds later are spraying bullets all over the place. Sarah has to load a rocket with dangerous material that will definitely kill her one week, but when she's finished loading the rocket it resolutely doesn't kill her the next week. In fact, she suffers no ill effects at all, and that danger is never mentioned again.

This sort of logical inconsistency wouldn't matter as much if it was just a simple adventure plot. Indeed all those scenes work in isolation, probably because they are staged and shot with gusto by director Davis Maloney and the crew. From the opening sequence of a brutal slo-mo attack on masked soldiers onwards, Genesis of the Daleks looks and feels excellent. There's a very generous eight and a half minutes of film before the first studio set, and even what's in studio is made, dressed and lit well. Production fell to the new team of Hinchcliffe and incoming script editor Robert Holmes, and they gave Maloney the latitude to bring more darkness (both literal and figurative) to proceedings, as well as - presumably - a bit more money than other stories that year. This is essential, as the remainder of the script apart from the perilous adventure stuff needed to be treated more seriously than the brighter and more colourful house style of the Letts and Dicks years would probably have allowed. It is after all a story heavily influenced by the horrors of the Second World War that examines the morality of eugenics during a major conflict. This subtext is laid on so thick you could almost lose the sub- and just call it text, with the Kaleds wearing Nazi-style uniforms and giving Nazi-style salutes (Nyder even wears an iron cross in the earlier episodes, before someone realised that was a bit too much and it was removed). For many years, people believed such material was probably suggested (maybe even written) by Robert Holmes, so different is it to what Nation usually delivered. But Nation was a very good writer, he just tended towards a certain expediency when scripting Doctor Who. When given a challenge, he needed no help, and the character of Davros and the narrative of the Daleks' creation is his best work for the series.

If Genesis has a significant flaw, though, it is that mix between the external, environmental threat of the adventure stuff, mostly in the earlier episodes, and the interpersonal and philosophical threat of the later material with Davros and the Kaled elite, mostly in the later episodes. The story is equal parts Buster Crabbe and Josef Mengele. That's an odd mix to begin with, but then those logical lapses in the earlier material make it even less likely to gel by undermining the later material. If this is a dangerous story universe where Davros's experimentation needs to be taken seriously, then you just can't have a toxic material illogically turn out not to be toxic at all. It's also a bit tiresome - at least to an old and jaded viewer like me who's seen the story a number of times before - to have scenes of exciting escapes and chases that turn out to be pointless as escapees are captured again and put back exactly where they were. I accept this, though, as part of Doctor Who; it's exciting for people watching the first time, it provides nice cliffhangers, it makes the story reach its six episodes in length - fair enough. There's no excuse for the toxic material stuff, though. It's frustrating. Either it should have been removed altogether, or Nation ought to have worked in some antidote. Instead, he seems to just assume viewers will forget what happened the week before. Genesis of the Daleks gets away it, though, as it's just so well made, and the later material so good, that these inconsistencies are forgiven. While intellectually, I can see I might enjoy a four-part version of this story that just concentrates on the Davros material, I know in my gut that it wouldn't be nearly as popular as the poll-topping behemoth that the story became.

What makes Genesis of the Daleks so good that its flaws are forgiven, apart from the way it's shot and designed? The most obvious thing is the conception and character of Davros, and Michael Wisher's performance bringing life to the Dalek creator. Wisher's work has long been celebrated, and I'm not going to contradict what's obvious: he is superb. The soft, sly delivery when he's being a political plotter, the brittle terse exchanges when he's dealing with people he knows to be his intellectual inferiors, the ranting where he sounds more and more like one of his creations - all these choices are so good they look obvious in retrospect and set a template from which nobody who'd play the character later could possibly deviate; it is impeccable and indelible. The mask and make-up are first rate, and the ideas that underpin all this are perfect. The Dalek travel machines are based on a similar life-support and wheelchair he's designed for himself. He sees the Daleks as an extension of himself ("We - I - will go on") which makes the irony of the ending where they turn on him, as he's programmed them to hate anything unlike themselves, even more powerful. This wouldn't work if he was the hackneyed mad scientist character - the story and the ending works better because his point of view, although extreme, is rational: in order to survive, he feels the Daleks must be the apex predator of the universe, and cannot afford to have any qualms about that. What's also refreshing is that - probably uniquely in classic Doctor Who - Davros as the villain wastes no time in disbelieving the Doctor is who he says he is, a time traveller from another world, and instead turns it immediately to his advantage.

The interesting POVs provided for the characters facilitate another big strength of the story, some big scenes. Aside from the ending (which continues after Davros is killed with a magnificent BCU of a Dalek - the new power on Skaro - facing right into the camera, ranting its credo of universal domination), there are two that are rightly famous. Whenever they occur, it's similar to when a production of Hamlet reaches 'To be or not to be'. Firstly, the Doctor and Davros in conversation, with the Time Lord trying to persuade the Kaled that his creations are like a virus that will eventually wipe out all other lifeforms. Wisher has Davros picturing the scene vividly, and even chillingly acting out the holding of a capsule containing the virus "To know that the tiny pressure on my thumb, enough to break the glass, would end everything: yes, I would do it!" and snapping his fingers closed, already bringing about galactic devastation in his warped imaginings. The other scene is the Doctor poised with two wires to touch together, asking if he has the right to change the future. Just those would be enough to push this story to the top reaches of fan polls, but there are so many great lines and moments (my favourite is Nyder's line about the Doctor and Harry "We'll find out what's different about them... by autopsy"). The performances aside from Wisher are all top drawer: Peter Miles, Tom Georgeson, Dennis Chinnery, Stephen Yardley, Guy Siner...

The regular actors are solid too, though at this early stage Nation hadn't quite got a handle on their characters. Baker's Doctor as written is a bit more lightly rather than broodingly eccentric, and Harry is written as solid and intelligent, without the humorous ineffectuality he had elsewhere. These are minor things, though. A clumsier bit of scripting is that scenes towards the end have to be broadcast on convenient screens so that characters who aren't present can still be aware of what happened. This might have been okay once, but unfortunately Nation has to pull the same trick twice as he's written himself into a corner. The introduction of the Thal rebel leader character Bettan feels a bit tacked on; she should have been featured earlier in a slightly bigger role given how she becomes the leader of another significant alien race in Doctor Who history (it's interesting and important - for a fan at least - to see the origins of the other tribe that lived on Skaro too). The story is remarkable for slotting neatly into established continuity without contradicting what came before. The origins as retold in the very first Dalek story are consistent with what we see in Genesis, bar a misremembered name or detail; only that those very first Daleks couldn't move outside the metal floors of their city does not fit, and that hasn't fit with any Dalek story made since - Nation must have cursed himself for ever including that limitation in 1963. Anyway, minor continuity issues, clumsy moments of plotting, or sub-optimally integrated character introductions cannot seem to dent enjoyment of this story, nor its reputation,

Connectivity:

Both Genesis of the Daleks and The Witchfinders feature at least one character appearing near the beginning in a mask, and each story sees the baddies attempt unsuccessfully to execute the Doctor; that's about it.

Deeper Thoughts:

Blue about Blu - the emotional perils of collecting. Genesis of the Daleks is one of those stories that has been analysed rigorously over the years, both in terms of the content (was this the opening salvo of the Time War?!) and the making of. As such, I am going to concentrate instead on a topic I come back to again and again, probably as a form of self-therapy so apologies in advance: the mentality of the collector and the fan. In some ways, I think it is an addiction, and that I am an addict. Let me tell you the story of the Collection, the range of classic series box-sets, each containing one season of Doctor Who, on Blu-ray. This range started with Genesis of the Daleks and the other stories from season 12 coming out in an elegant limited edition box in the summer of 2018. This was obviously not the first ever range making Doctor Who available to buy. From 1986 onwards, I collected all the available Doctor Who stories on VHS tape, until the range was complete in 2003. By that time, it was also possible to collect them all again on shiny disc, most of them on DVD, but also a few more as audio CDs of the soundtracks, which existed even when the moving pictures were lost). Every classic story was released eventually, and many of them had included animated episodes to plug gaps, married to those surviving soundtracks. The DVD range petered out around early 2014, with only one single surviving episode that existed in the archives not yet released. In late 2015, when I'd started this blog, that final episode was included on the DVD release for The Underwater Menace. I wrote about it here, thinking it would likely be the last classic series physical media release ever (streaming and non-physical pay-to-own looked to be the models that would take over completely then).

There was a definite sense of relief. I'd already taken a big step in combatting my addiction by declining to collect a new and expensive magazine partwork that had started to come out a month before The Underwater Menace (see the Deeper Thoughts of another early post for more details). Would I finally be able to kick the habit altogether? In short, no. It took a year, but a new source for collectibles on shiny disc was found - wholly animated stories. The first full story to be animated was The Power of the Daleks and jolly good this new version was too. I collected that one, as it was something brand new and interesting; I also knew that any other stories animated in the future I would be compelled to collect, but there didn't seem much harm in that. Realistically, they weren't going to be able to produce more than one or two animations per year. In 2018, though, came the Collection. As well as one or two animations a year, there would be up to three box sets of full seasons on Blu-ray to buy. It would mean collecting all the classic series episodes yet again from scratch, on yet another medium. Did I have the stomach for it? Most of Who made before the 21st century was not going to look that much better on Blu-ray as it wasn't captured in high definition. It would give another opportunity for restoration, though, and techniques improved year on year. The episodes would look better even though it wouldn't be the sort of leap in quality as that between VHS and DVD. There would also be new extras. Was that enough to tempt me? I ummed and ahhed, and eventually the presence on that season 12 set of a feature with Tom Baker that had only previously been available on VHS swayed me (see the Deeper Thoughts section of this blog post for more details).

I might have left it that, but the next set (season 19) was a run of stories that was particularly close to my heart, so I plumped again. By then, the BFI events had started up that tied-in with each box set's release, screening episodes from the sets (often in special editions with updated effects) and featuring panels of people starring in or working behind the scenes on the sets. The events were always a fun way of meeting up with fan friends, so we would usually go. If I was attending, it seemed wrong somehow not to also get the set being advertised. This could just be an example of the addict making any excuse to indulge in his addiction; but, alas, I think it's worse than that. I actually do feel at some level that it would be cheating. It's a completely irrational thought and yet it's one I can't quite shake off; clearly it's part of my individual fan pathology, and it might just be me. Every fan's got something, though. As I touched on in the First Time Round section above, many of us get bent out of shape if we don't get our new Who purchases on the day of release. A glance down the social media feeds of fans on a release day will show you, barely concealed, a collective angst along the lines of  'If I don't get this shiny new thing now, and everyone else does and is watching it and commenting on it when I can't, I will die'. This scenario did indeed happen to many, myself included, for the box set release in the third week of September 2023.

After I had collected a few of the box sets, a tipping point was reached, and I was committed (at least in my own mind) to seeing things through. The sunk cost of purchasing every new set as they've come out since 2018 has made it increasingly more difficult to just stop. The sets are also limited editions, and at first there was no hint that they would ever come out as standard versions once the initial run was completed; this put even more pressure on me to get each new set ordered as early as possible. The sets are now being rereleased in less deluxe packaging, but I've collected 14 of the limited versions now; if you think that I'd be able to accept having a set in amongst them on the shelf that didn't match, then you possibly will never understand Doctor Who fandom (or at least my particular version of it). I hope some of this explains why on 18th September 2023, after having pre-ordered the thing before the ink was even wet on the press release announcing it was coming out, it was a far from fun experience when my Season 20 set did not arrive. Other fans on social media were reporting that they were going through the same thing, or worse that their orders were being cancelled altogether. Amazon were not helpful, and after talking to their Customer Services I became convinced that my set wasn't going to arrive at all. In a panic, with visions of a line of irregular spines looking ugly on a shelf, I ordered the set from another retailer, and now I have two. One has been left in the sealed wrapping so I can return it, but I've opened the other and started watching some of the content. A few extras feature the cast (Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton) just sort of mucking around, being friends joshing with each other, brought together by Doctor Who, and sharing some of that love and joy with fans. This is an indication of the more positive foibles of fandom.

Why did I wait so long in 1991 to buy Genesis of the Daleks? In October, I started at university in Durham, many many miles away from my home on the south coast. I travelled up with one suitcase of stuff (accompanied by friend and fellow Doctor Who fan Zahir). I can't remember the exact date term started, but even if it was after the videos came out, it would have not been worth buying them and carting them northward up the country, as I didn't know I'd have had anything to play them on (one of the first friends I made in college Mike was soon discovered to have his own TV and video and a single room, so viewings became possible later, as recounted many times previously on the blog). I also had new expenses I didn't have when living at home, and there were no more videos scheduled for release that year (the next ones came out in mid-January 1992). As best I can recall therefore, I would have bought Genesis when back home for the Christmas holiday, and would have left The Deadly Assassin until later (as another friend made in that first term David had lent me a home-taped copy of that later story). December 1991 was the first time I'd seen Genesis of the Daleks, as I'd somehow missed the summer repeat of it in 1982. I remember my friend Alex telling me all about it when we were back at school in September. It's no coincidence that memories of watching these stories is tied up in memories of old friends like Alex, Zahir, Mike and David. I hope that makes up somewhat for the ridiculous obsessiveness. A collection might seem like just a bunch of things, I know, but they're things that spark happy reminiscences.

In Summary:

Equal parts Buster Crabbe and Josef Mengele.

The Sontaran Experiment

Chapter The 177th, a short bit between two bigger events either side, so very like the 26th to 31st of December.

Plot:

After having their more popular and famous adventure on an ark in space, the Doctor, Sarah and Harry transmat down to Earth to apply a permanent fix to the transmat receivers, allowing the revived humans on Nerva to beam down. Unfortunately, they have arrived in the middle of an experiment by a Sontaran, Styre, on some colonist humans he's lured to the abandoned Earth. He's doing this as part of plans for an invasion, but Styre doesn't seem to care about all the empirical evidence that the planet is empty except for these, like, six dudes. Instead, he tortures them to find their weaknesses. He likes torturing people, is what it is. The experiment also involves turning the leader of the humans, Vural, traitor and letting him spy on the others; again, not sure what help this will be for a wholesale military invasion, and anyway there are only about three humans left on the planet by then (the torture kills a few more of them); but, Styre's having fun is the main thing. The TARDIS trio get caught up a bit in the capture and torture, but soon dispatch the Sontaran; the Doctor challenges him to hand to hand combat to tire him out, and Harry meddles with a component in his ship so that when he tries to recharge, everything blows up. After this, the Doctor, Sarah and Harry say goodbye to the remaining couple of humans and transmat away to their more popular and famous adventure witnessing the genesis of the Daleks.

Context:

"But when is bins??!!" That's the traditional cry of mental anguish that can be felt across the UK in the period between Boxing Day and New Year's Eve, the Chrimbo limbo. It was on one early evening during that period in 2020 (and yes, I can't remember which exactly, only a few days on) that I put on and watched The Sontaran Experiment from the box set blu-ray disc accompanied by a glass of beer, and my youngest child (girl of 8). The other two children were amusing themselves elsewhere, firstly by playing draughts against each other, and then after that by fighting about the game of draughts. Happy days! The youngest, when Tom Baker's tones emanated from the TV saying "Doctor Who Season 12 Box Set Disc Three", recognised the voice as belonging to "the one with the scarf" making me proud, and then when he said "To select audio navigation, press Enter now" she said "Bossy!" making me laugh. Aside from thinking right at the start from the long shot that the transmat refractor balls were sheep grazing, and being disappointed when they weren't, there were no further comments from the little one; but, she did keep watching avidly, and fidgeted a bit in excitement at the chase scene in part one when Vural and his colonist crew are pursuing the Doctor. 

First time round:

Early October 1991. Bryan Adams was at number one in the UK singles chart for the 400th week running with disproportionately unremarkable song '(Everything I do) I do it for you', and I was packing my things ready to go off to university for the start of my first year at St. Aidan's College, University of Durham. A lot of people I have mentioned regularly over the years on the blog were connected to that place. I would travel up on the train for that first time with my Doctor Who fan friend Zahir, and within a few days would meet a lot of friends for life including my very good Doctor Who fan friend David, and my less keen on Doctor Who friend Phil who nonetheless has watched a hell of a lot of episodes with me over the years. I would quickly meet Mike, whose possession of a single room and a VCR would allow me to watch Doctor Who videos in my first year with lots of other friends who were curious if not fanatic, Tim, Rich, Andy, and even sometimes Mark who really doesn't like Doctor Who at all. I even met later Doctor Who Magazine editor Gary Gillatt who was at the same college at that time, a couple of years above me. Based on the odd time I've bumped into him since, he doesn't remember me, but does remember David.

Perhaps because it was such an exciting transitional time in my life, and there were other things to think about than Doctor Who, it is one of the rare points in this era where I am uncertain of the exact chronology of events regarding my first experience of a new Doctor Who story (get out the tiny violins - before university, seeing new Doctor Who stories on VHS was the most exciting thing in my life!). The Sontaran Experiment / Genesis of the Daleks VHS double pack, as well as The Deadly Assassin, came out at around the start of term, so I don't think I would have bought them on the day of release as was my usual style. My memory is of buying them in Worthing not Durham; later, during the Christmas holidays, I first saw The Deadly Assassin on a pirated VHS copy that David had loaned out to me (see here for more details). All the evidence suggests that, maybe wanting to save pennies, or to grow up a bit since I was in higher education, or maybe because I didn't know Mike well enough yet to monopolise the use of his VCR / room as I would eventually in 1992, I must have showed the most restraint I've ever done in my life and held off from buying a new Doctor Who release for three or four months. After that kind of wait, even The Sontaran Experiment - definitely the least of the three stories released in October 1991 - would have seemed exciting when I finally got to see it.

Reaction:

Tom Baker's first run, season 12, is structured to connect each of the stories loosely. This seems to have been driven by financial rather than narrative concerns; some sets are reused by having the Doctor and friends return to the scene of a previous adventure in a later story, for example, and the production also pulls off a trick that 1980s producer John Nathan-Turner would use regularly in his later seasons, of getting two stories out of one. So, a six part slot with an allocation for studio and location filming is split into one story that's all studio, and another that's all location; the first was The Ark in Space, the second is this 2-part quickie The Sontaran Experiment. To make the location shoot stretch to cover two full episodes, it is made on Outside Broadcast (OB) video rather than film; to be able to reuse a costume and spaceship prop from existing stock, the decision was made to feature an existing monster, the Sontaran as introduced in the previous year's The Time Warrior. All of these decisions look like they were made for budgetary reasons, and all have influences on the shape of the eventual narrative, some good, some not so good.

Starting with the good: the OB video cameras available at the time were designed for use mainly at sporting events, and had restricted scope of movement having to keep closely connected to the OB van. This necessitated the action of the shoot being all in one fairly localised area. Whether desolation was dictated by the script first, or - as I suspect - arose from those limitations, this gave rise to the idea of setting it in Dartmoor National Park, which is one of the biggest aspects the story has in its favour. The vast sweeps of greenery and craggy rock formations allow for a coherent vision of an abandoned world to be established with minimal external elements of set dressing, but still allow for variety without the cast and crew having to trudge too far between set-ups. From a narrative point of view, it allows development on from the previous story of the survivors of a cataclysm. Here we get to see the Earth the Nerva sleepers of The Ark in Space escaped from and which they hope to return. So far, everything is holding up logically. There has to be someone for the Doctor and friends to interact with, though, which is tricky on an abandoned planet; but, this is seeded within the previous story too. The people on the Ark weren't the only escapees, and some colonists have survived elsewhere. Some of these have landed on Earth and are now in a fight for survival. Again, so far, so good.

The colonists have little screen time to establish themselves; some interesting choices in terms of accents and dialect work as a characterisation shorthand to make them different from the Doctor and Friends, and from the humans seen on the Ark. Beyond that, there isn't a lot of space for anyone to shine in two episodes (The Sontaran Experiment was the only two-part story of the decade, this story length had fallen out of favour after being a bit more common in the 1960s, and would stage a comeback in the 1980s). Vural - played by fine Scottish actor Donald Douglas, most famous for portraying Darcy Senior in the Bridget Jones films - gets to do betrayal and last ditch attempt to put things right at the cost of his own life, but at warp speed, blink and you'd miss it. The other interesting character is half-crazed with shock Roth (Peter Rutherford) whose frightening appearance belies his bravery and decency when he rescues Sarah. He survives two seconds into episode 2 before being brutally and disappointingly gunned down by Styre before his character can develop further. Kevin Lindsay does solid work, building on his debut as a Sontaran the year before, this time playing both the two Sontarans in the piece, Styre and the Marshal spoken to on a video communicator (Equity might have had something to say about clone races in science fiction if Doctor Who had played this trick more often). The regulars, in only their second production together, are settling in nicely as a great TARDIS team, with some witty interplay and nice bits of business.

The effects, most of which would have needed to be created on location in camera, without the luxury of the studio gallery or much else in the way of post production, are nonetheless effective. Styre's head deflating when he dies, for example, is very memorable. The music is the Dudley Simpson house style of the time, and none the worse for that. There are a couple of great stunt falls on location too. This is slightly ironic, as one of the most famous things about this story behind the camera is that Tom Baker had a real fall on location and broke his collar bone. Later shots in close up have his scarf wrapped around disguising his neck brace, and later long shots of the Doctor are all played by stunt double Terry Walsh. If this is pointed out, you can't help but see it, but it's done very well, and the first time I watched I was unaware and it looked seamless. So, if all that's competent enough, then the drawbacks of this story must come from the script, mustn't they? But the little details of plotting to link this story to the others around it in the wider narrative are good too, with the Doctor saved from death when shot by Styre as he's got a piece of metal he nicked from Nerva in his pocket, and Harry mentioning the Animal Botanic section which will be used to repopulate the Earth's fauna. There's a nice bit of world building too, when the colonists gripe about the superiority of the pure Mother Earthers from Nerva, and not wanting to be bossed around by them.

No, the major drawbacks of the script are not the details but the bigger picture which doesn't really make sense. It's also not a great fit for the choice of adversary. The Sontarans as delineated in their debut story are thirsty for combat at all costs, so why would they delay and eventually call off their invasion of this galaxy while waiting for one Sontaran to finish an experiment? Though the first Sontaran we are introduced to in The Time Warrior, Linx, is proud of his superior technology, he is not messing about with science as part of a usual experimental process, but because he's stranded on a primitive planet and desperate. If he'd had an invasion force on standby, he'd have called them in without a single thought. Styre and the Marshall on the other hand seem reluctant to engage. Beyond that, though, what hypothesis exactly is the experiment supposed to prove?

At first glance Strye's actions look even more illogical than they actually are, as he seems to be testing humans in order to invade a planet that's uninhabited of humans; but, buried in the dialogue, is a confirmation that the Sontarans want to invade the galaxy not just the planet. So, assuming there are other worlds in that galaxy with humans on, then it does make sense to test their defences. But what have they got to prove except 'do our guns kill them?' which Styre presumably established on day 1. Why bother testing out their survival skills? Also, won't the battles to conquer a galaxy mostly, or at least firstly, be dogfights between spaceships? If so, all that needs to be be proved is 'do our guns kill their spaceships?' which Styre definitely establishes on day 1 when he vaporises the colonists's ship. Even giving the Sontarans the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they were anticipating on-planet troop battles later on, then wouldn't surveying each planet for ground defences and troop numbers be a better use of time than luring nine blokes to an abandoned planet and seeing whether immersing them in water or dehydration is a better way of killing them? Sontarans: you have guns that can vaporise their spaceships, stop mucking about.

Connectivity: 

Both The Sontaran Experiment and The Christmas Invasion are set in London (unless the Doctor's comments in the two-parter about underground stations are a joke), and both involve the Doctor challenging the main villain to one-on-one combat, duel style, and then the alien spaceship later getting blown up.

Deeper Thoughts:

2020 Hindsight. So, a new year is almost upon us; from my very unscientific glance at the international mood, it seems to me that nobody has any great concrete expectations for 2021 beyond getting 2020 over and done with. It doesn't feel like a time for resolutions. If you disagree, just think of all the people who at midnight on 31st December 2019 resolved to get out of the house more, see more live gigs, meet up with old friends again, or do lots of exercise in the spring when the weather would be nicer - definitely more than once a day. Those people can supply you their own hollow laugh. Yes, 2020 feels like something inflicted upon us, over which we couldn't have much control, and the beginning of 2021 is going to be more of the same. Resolutions may not be appropriate, but hopes, that's a different deal. Everyone has hopes that the roll out of Covid-19 vaccinations will restore normality at some point later in the year. One's level of optimism or pessimism dictates exactly when in the year seems plausible. I have bookings rearranged from 2020 for a live music event and a sporting event in May and July of 2021 respectively. I wouldn't put any money on being able to attend either, and expect them both to be cancelled or rearranged again. I hadn't had any plans to go to the cinema to see the new (well, quite old now) Daniel Craig Bond film, No Time To Die, but it now feels almost totemic. I feel that I should go along whenever - 2022, 2023? - the producers and distributors decide sufficiently good takings are likely, as that feels like the point where all the madness will definitely be over.

On a smaller scale, I'm looking forward to a resumption of Doctor Who on TV and on shiny disc. In both cases, it's been confirmed that there is something in the can ready for imminent release (Revolution of the Daleks on January 1st and the Blu-Ray Collection box set of season 8, Jon Pertwee's second year, in February), and work on the ongoing series in both cases has been resumed, albeit somewhat restricted by the virus, and associated tier and lockdown rules. I'm trying to remain as un-spoilered as possible for the 1st of January; I've seen some reviews being referenced online, but have not read any, and may have to go on a social media blackout for the next day. I don't know why exactly, I've certainly had my reservations about some of the bigger episodes of the show since 2018, but I think this one's going to be very special. I'll report back here later in January and let you know whether I still feel the same after having watched it. I'm also very intrigued by season 8 restored for an HD delivery medium. This was a set of stories that presented perhaps the most challenges of any colour 20th century run; episodes needed to be re-colourised, either from available non-broadcast standard video tape versions, or from the chroma dots stored in the black and white film copies; more still needed full re-colourisation from scratch. Some episodes are also conversions from another broadcast standard, NTSC, which contains less picture information. I've 100% faith that what is on the discs is the best that could possibly done, and I can't wait to see it.

Beyond this, Who knows what we will see in 2021? Assuming that nothing happens in the wider world to delay it further, there will be eight Jodie Whittaker episodes currently being made that will be shown later in 2021. Or maybe seven, and one will be held back for New Year's 2022 perhaps. What will happen within them is impossible to even take a guess at until any shocks, revelations or changes contained in Revolution of the Daleks are known. Will Covid restrictions change the types of stories being told? Will there be any continuation of the Timeless Child plot arcs from series 12? Will the Master return, or the 'Ruth' Doctor? Will any other old school foes be back? It's exciting to be able to speculate, and not have any kind of hint. Similar is true for classic series releases. What will be the next series box set? Is this the year when a black and white series finally gets its own Blu-ray collection release? What about animated stories, any chance of them? Well, on this last point, there's already some good news that the missing episode of The Web of Fear (part 3) has been animated for a special edition DVD and Blu-Ray sometime TBC in 2020. There's also rumours that another two animations are being worked on for release next year too. Even if not all of that proves accurate, there's still enough already confirmed to suggest that 2021 will have ballpark the same amount in one quarter alone that 2020 did altogether. With their recent work, the teams involved have proved that they can produce animations and Blu-ray restorations while working remotely, so it's only the new series which could be blocked by future events, and production is so far still going strong. There's every reason to be optimistic for a Happy New Year's worth of goodies to keep us entertained, even if we all can't leave our houses.

In Summary:

Like 2020, The Sontaran Experiment didn't make a lot of sense, but still had its fun moments. Happy New Year everyone!

The Ark in Space

Chapter The 94th, in which a precious thing comes with lots of bubble-wrap.

Plot: 
The Doctor, Sarah and Harry arrive on a space station, sometime after the 80th century, where the survivors of the human race are in cryogenic sleep waiting out a catastrophe that's occurred on Earth. Before they have woken up to repopulate the planet, though, a giant parasitic insect queen of species Wirrn has broken in and laid eggs in one of the sleepers. Because of something the TARDIS team do in their investigations - or else just by a fairly big coincidence - the larvae start emerging exactly at this point after thousands of years. The sleeping humans start waking up, but their leader Noah comes into contact with a larva and that starts to convert him into a Wirrn. With help from the future humans, our heroes battle against the giant grubs. But it is Noah who saves the day; the last vestiges of his humanity winning out in a mental struggle, he leads all the hatched Wirrn off in the station's shuttle craft, and blows it up. Second-in-command Vira stays on the 'Ark' to continue awakening the surviving members of the human race, while the Doctor, Sarah and Harry transmat down to Earth to check it's fine (they never report back to Vira because they get embroiled in other machinations, but that's another story).

Context:

I bought the recent Blu-ray box-set of the five stories in Tom Baker's debut year, and as usual whenever a new Who release comes along, I mused a while on whether I should blog something from it, or whether that would be a dilution of the concept of doing stories at random. To decide whether to choose a story from the box set, and - if so - which, I introduced a chaotic element and used a four-sided die (that's just the way I roll). I've already covered two of the stories previously - Robot and Revenge of the Cybermen so 1-3 referred in transmission order to the remaining three stories; 4 would have meant I didn't blog anything at all. The 1d4 result was a 1, which meant The Ark in Space. I proceeded to watch an episode a night of this seminal tale, without the optional CGI model replacements, with only one evening's gap to watch England in a World Cup semi-final. In this, I was accompanied by the Better Half, and by my youngest two children (boy of 8, girl of 6) - for Ark in Space, I mean; the Better Half had no interest in the football.

First-time round:

I've previously written often about the excitement of the early scatter-shot days of the Doctor Who VHS range in the late 1980s, before the rate and dates stabilised and I found a regular stockist who'd have them on or near their release. It was pot luck in those days, rather as the Target novelisations had been previously: sometimes, you would walk in to a shop and be excited to find something suddenly, dizzyingly, available that you had no idea was coming out.

Something like this happened in 1989 (from memory, it was late Summer, before the broadcast of classic Doctor Who's final season on BBC1), when I walked into WH Smiths in Bognor Regis and found three new stories on video to buy (it looked like four at first, as one of the three was the first ever double tape release, which meant that it came in two almost identical VHS boxes). I probably had to beg my Dad, with whom I was staying for the holiday, for enough money to buy the lot in one go; so, the first time I would have watched The Ark in Space, which was one of the three, was at his place. That version had the middle episodes' beginning and ending credit sequences expunged, so it could be presented as a feature-length thing. The unedited version came out on a VHS re-release early in 1994. I then bought it for a third time on DVD in 2002, and again - though I'd completely forgotten about it until now - on an enhanced DVD re-release in 2013. The Blu-ray version is the fifth copy I've purchased,  and that's probably enough, I should say, as good as the story is. 

Reaction

It may be a false impression, but it seemed to me watching this story quite soon after Invasion of the Dinosaurs, that Tom Baker and Liz Sladen seem to share more screen time in Ark in Space than Jon Pertwee shared with her in their whole season together the year before. Aside from episode 1 of Dinosaurs, Sarah and Three are most often working individually: maybe it's a function of the 'split the protagonists up' trope, which Doctor Who writers are very keen on, but - not just in Ark, but in the other stories on the Season 12 box set - the fourth Doctor and Sarah (plus Harry, a witty and wonderful addition) are a team, a tight unit, in the way that the UNIT team weren't, at least by the time of season 11, despite the name. It helps that there's a first episode, like in Dinosaurs, concentrating just on the main characters. In these scenes, and throughout, Tom is 100% his Doctor, and he and the new era are fully formed by this second appearance (third recorded story, mind, as The Sontaran Experiment was made before this - and that story is still somewhat embryonic - but, still, they found their feet very early).

Why is it so successful at achieving a different approach? Robot and The Ark in Space feel worlds apart, but they're made in similar studios, with similar cameras, by similar means. I think that part of it is a certain stillness. There aren't many action sequences in Ark, and there's precious little fast movement by the characters - it's controlled, and deliberative, with drama coming from committed performances and character interactions. One of the most dramatic moments, at least for this viewer, is Noah looking at his alien, transformed hand. He's stock still, and the make-up effect is by all measures rubbish, but the expression on his face and the way he is holding himself are magnetic. Then, the script plays a blinder and a completely unexpected and initially incongruous voice-over starts up - the Earth High Minister giving the awakened humans their "pre-match pep talk". Noah, with a flicker of reaction, just listens. Director Rodney Bennett then does some elegant, glacial cross-fades, as these words are heard across the Ark, and it dawns that this is not incongruous at all - this is the heart of the story: the fight for Noah's humanity versus the mind and body horror of the alien parasite consuming him.

How good the transformation make up is ceases to matter (and, to be fair, all the other phases are pretty good, as is the larval mass behind the glass in the solar stack - it's only Noah's hand and the grub that don't quite work); all that matters is the story of Noah... and Vira. The Better Half clued me in to a subtle re-reading of this story, which might be obvious to everyone else, but has only occurred to me on this my millionth watch of Ark in Space, when she asked me during the last episode why Noah is offering the TARDIS team and the few awakened humans safe passage off the Ark. He doesn't need to, he doesn't even need to lie about it: the Wirrn are in a far superior position, and could just wait the humans out. He. Wants. To. Save. Vira. How could I not see this before? He wants to save his pair-bonded mate from his old life. The dialogue bears this out: Wirrn Noah only wants to speak to Vira, says her name over and over. The only way he can save her and conform to the pressure from the hive mind, to take over the Ark and devour the sleepers, is to get her away. When she won't leave, love wins in his internal battle, and he destroys the Wirrn instead. I've been watching a love story all this time. Wow! But, if you want to, you can ignore all of that and see this, as I previously have, as just as a triumph of Noah's humanity.

That central kernel - the everyday tragic love triangle between a man, a woman, and an alien parasitic gestalt - is surrounded by gold standard material at every level. The regulars input to the story is only really in the subplots, but it still works as they are so good. Dudley Simpson's tense metronomic score is excellent. The drama plays out against the backdrop of probably the best sets ever constructed for a classic Doctor Who: whether the decision to reuse them in another later serial afforded a bit more budget or not, there's high-level ingenuity from designer Roger Murray-Leach everywhere: not just in the big showy cryogenic chamber, check out the set for the launch pad of the shuttle, for example; this is only in a couple of scenes, and could have been a flimsy knocked-up thing, but it feels solid and real. The concepts too - the same inspiration from nature that Alien called upon a few years later in the cinema; and, considering it's a rush job page-one rewrite, Robert Holmes's script is top touch stuff with wonderful black comedy dialogue ("I'm no regressive, I'm a naval officer!").

Connectivity: 

Both contain a scene where Sarah Jane Smith is woken up to be told she's been through a cryogenic process on a craft in deep space. It's a lie in Invasion of the Dinsosaurs, of course, but here it's true.

Deeper Thoughts:
All the years are Tom Baker years. The picture quality is probably a bit better than DVD, and there's lots of new extras, but I don't really care: I only bought the Season 12 Blu-Ray box set upon which The Ark in Space features because it also has The Tom Baker Years on it. Why did it mean so much to me to see this curio again? For the uninitiated, a number of 'Years' tapes were created by 1980s producer John Nathan-Turner in the early 1990s as part of the burgeoning Doctor Who VHS range. There were tapes for each of the first three actors to play the Doctor, one for the Cybermen, one for the Daleks, each acting as a showcase for otherwise orphaned episodes and clips. The concept was already getting stretched by Jon Pertwee's one, though, as every episode featured there would be released with the rest of its complete story only three years after his Years tape came out. For the Tom Baker one, a new idea would be needed - there was nothing even slightly orphaned about any of his episodes, and every one of his stories would be released sooner or later.

Part of the reason why it's intriguing to see it again is the gimmick they chanced upon in 1992 to solve this problem, which was way ahead of its time: the Gogglebox factor. Tom would be filmed reacting to a selection of clips from his stories, and would comment on the action shown. It was both a rehearsal for DVD cast commentaries, which were still a few years away from being a reality when the Years tapes were being made, and a prototype for the award-winning C4 show which watches the viewers watching the programmes. In fact, it is echoed in a new extra that also appears on the Season 12 set called Behind the Sofa, which rips off Gogglebox shamelessly, but perhaps in the knowledge that BBC Video got there first. The main point that The Tom Baker Years got wrong, though, was it didn't have anyone else on the sofa for Tom to react with or play off. Still, if anyone could carry something like this solo, it would be Tom Baker you'd want to have a crack at it.

I haven't had, or even seen, a VCR in such a long time, and I disposed of all my video tapes a few years back (keeping the sleeves in clear wallets in a ring binder and - for want to any other destination for them - sending the cassettes themselves to the landfill). I could have kept or tried to flog The Tom Baker Years, it being one of the few tapes to contain material not available on another more up-to-date format, but I didn't. Had the memory cheated? Had I mis-remembered all its idiosyncrasies? Not really. Baker does watch the clips on TV from a chair next to a night-watchman's brazier for no reason. He does regularly fail to remember names of stories, names of actors, or that he ever performed in the particular thing put before him. He does rhapsody on various wonderful drinking sessions during location shoots over the years, including some rather obscure sounding tipples (rum and shrub, anyone?).

And he does deliver wonderful, memorable material, still etched in my mind today: his reaction to the most violent scene in The Deadly Assassin where he essentially sides with Mary Whitehouse, his summary of Margaret Thatcher's spell as prime minister, the story of getting attacked by a dog ("I'll have to play smiling parts for the rest of my career"), recalling his jealousy at Beatrix Lehmann's favouritism towards John Leeson, and - at the end - the lovely haunted cautionary tale about fleeting fame, when he recounts a visit to the hairdressers. It has a certain special something, even though it's not exactly a probing interview. If that's what you're looking for, 2018 Tom is elsewhere on the disc in conversation with Matthew Sweet, and gosh it's good as well. This is the first of what might be seven Blu-ray box sets covering Tom's tenure: is there really enough material about him to fill the remaining six? Well, if anyone could carry something like that solo, it would be Tom Baker you'd want to have a crack at it. Long may his years continue.

In Summary:
It's indomitable. Indomitable!

Robot

Chapter The 68th, where Tom debuts in a Pertwee story.

Plot: 
The Doctor, as played by Tom Baker, dons his long scarf for the first time, and assists UNIT in investigating a series of break-ins of top secret establishments; the new medical officer Surgeon Lieutenant Harry Sullivan I.A.I. tags along to keep tabs on him in case of any post-regeneration complications. Turns out it's a robot that's doing it. Sarah Jane Smith meanwhile is actually doing her journo day job for once, interviewing for a piece on a scientific think tank where they are working on a mysterious secret project. Turns out it's a robot. What are the chances? The think tank is a front for an authoritarian group who want to hold the world to ransom, and use the robot to get access to nuclear weapons. After the Doctor sorts that out, the robot grows to giant size because science, and goes on the rampage. Also, it fancies Sarah. After defeating it, the Doctor, Sarah and Harry go off adventuring in the TARDIS, which is as it should be, and produced much rejoicing by everyone (except for Nicholas Courtney's agent perhaps).

Context:

I viewed from the DVD an episode at a time occasionally over the course of approximately a week, and was accompanied by all the children (boys of 11 and 8, girl of 5) who were surprisingly excited to watch. Either he's at a cynical age right now, or he was eager to be mentioned on the blog, but my eldest was full of commentary. A selection, just from the first episode: "Why doesn't he run away?" "Who shoots at a robot?" "The dog's run away, dogs have more common sense" "Are UNIT pretty much useless?" and a long discussion with his brother about how you can definitely see weird faces in Baker's slit-scan time tunnel effect credits sequences.

First-time round: 

( (Junior) Doctor Who and the Giant) Robot is one of those stories that always seems to have been around, at least for me. I think this is because my school - and probably every primary school in the country at the time - had the novelisation in its library. This was in the late seventies / early eighties. In fact, the school library had at least two versions of the story. I was always intrigued by the Junior Doctor Who edition of the book, but I never read it as I had read the X-rated adult version first. I josh of course, the Junior books did not exist to protect children from the extremes of sex and violence that would otherwise have been featured in Terrance Dicks' prose, but instead were easy readers aimed at a slightly younger audience than were the usual novelisations. I always wondered how much they differed, was it a page 1 rewrite job, or did they just edit out words and passages. I hope Terrance got paid twice, anyway.

The first time I saw the episodes themselves was when they came out on VHS in January 1992. This was when I was in my first year of university in Durham. It was usual in those days to watch a new release in my friend Mike's room, but for some reason we watched this one in David's room instead (David is my long-term fan friend, mentioned many times before on this blog). It got a good crowd too, maybe because Tom Baker was a nostalgic draw for everyone. There was much hilarity - and embarrassment on my part - when the Action Man tank is pushed on in the foreground at the end of episode 3; it's fooling no one. There was then equal hilarity when the same scene was repeated in the recap at the start of episode 4. 

Reaction:

Tom Baker's debut story is an odd one, as it's resolutely a celebratory swansong for an old era (his predecessor's) rather that the start of a new one more tailored to him; the first proper Tom Baker Doctor Who story would be the next one, The Ark in Space. As has been pointed out by many commentators before, this serves for four episodes to persuade any waverers in the audience that they're watching the same show, settling people in before there are even more radical changes. Nobody would begrudge outgoing producer Barry Letts staging this send off either; the last time there was a change of producer, that person also hung around to do one for the new Doctor. But Derrick Sherwin's Spearhead from Space was more about laying the groundwork for the new - colour, UNIT, Earth, invasions - than celebrating the old, and all those aspects Derrick originated would categorise Letts' era up to and including Robot. The coincidence of the same location (Wood Norton Hall) being used for both Spearhead and Robot further cements them as 'bookends' of this period.

Robot is successful as one last walkabout in a comfy old pair of shoes before they fall apart, but it's no more than that. It's not the deepest or most expansive storyline, and has significant flaws; but it does feature a big robot shooting at stuff, and UNIT soldiers running about and throwing grenades. The all-video look, which obviously isn't as classy as Pertwee's all-film debut, nonetheless is consistent and the robot is of a spectacular, if slightly impractical, design. In the location work, the sun is always shining, which is apt for how this story feels: it's a last bright and unchallenging Summer romp before incoming producer Philip Hinchcliffe brings in some more autumnal shades. Of course, it is very slightly of a type with what's to come, in that there is a horror movie pastiche in there (King Kong), an approach that would become more prevalent in later serials, but here it's only done half-heartedly, as something of a gag in the final few sequences.

For the rest of the running time, writer (and outgoing script-editor) Terrance Dicks is seemingly giving us his take on another classic, Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Like his buddy Malcolm Hulke's story aired in the previous season, this is a tale where the environmentalists (usually the champions of the Barry Letts era) are the bad guys, and end up threatening to wipe out the human race for the planet's own good, bar only a chosen few, safe in an underground chamber. As Dicks has less natural sympathy with their cause than Hulke, though, the characters never seem believable, so any dramatic edge is lost. With lots of other moments, such as his undermining Sarah's Women's lib credentials by showing her making sexist assumptions, Dicks gives the impression, in this last script for Barry Letts, that he's finally relaxing at no longer having to pay lip service to the hippy stuff he's been producing to please his boss up to now.

None of this explains why a rationalist scientific group who've planned every detail only checks they've got enough food and water to survive after they've started the nuclear countdown, nor why a disintegrator gun for some reason doesn't disintegrate the robot but instead makes it grow, like it's got an 'exciting denoument' setting. Kettlewell's behaviour in scenes in episodes 1 and 2 is so inconsistent with him turning out to be be the (spoiler) main bad guy that it's a major cheat on the audience. But, I don't think this is Dicks' error - it's in the direction. There are scenes that feel as if the director hasn't read to the end of the script, where he's showing Kettlewell keeping up the pretence even though there's no one around to witness it.

Connectivity: 

The first few minutes of both Robot and The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon contain a scene showing the Doctor regenerating; both stories are Earth-based and deal with an internal enemy rather than an alien invasion; the companion team in both is one male, one female bolstered by at least one significant recurring character. And both stories feature many ranks of armed public servants (at least in the Matt Smith story, the bullets have some effect).

Deeper Thoughts:
Human League B-Side. The people of Doctor Who are regularly referred to as a family, and I think I would broadly agree. I don't go to events or conventions that much, and it is there especially, but even in print and online, that you see a familial atmosphere between fans, between fans and the stars of the show, and even between the stars themselves: many actors from different eras have become mates from seeing each other on the convention circuit. There are family rows and feuds too, yes, but mostly it's positive. I'll admit I did shed a tear when Jon Pertwee died in 1996; he felt like a colourful great uncle that would never not be there, rather than just some bloke off the telly. Talking of great uncles, I'm sure I have some great uncles on one side of the family or the other, but I don't know anything about them. I do, though, know a substantial amount about the life and times of, say, Ian Levine. Is this healthy? And is it something that is unique to Doctor Who? Probably Star Wars and Star Trek convention-goers feel the same too; but there's one member of the Doctor Who family, a larger-than-life funny uncle, that no other franchise has or could ever emulate, and that is Tom Baker.

I remember the first point that I realised that Tom wasn't just any old actor, and was instead a true eccentric who is incapable of saying anything straightforward or uninteresting. I was reading Doctor Who Magazine when I'd started buying it again sometime early in the Nineties, when the series wasn't long off the air. I don't think it was an interview, just an article writing up a convention where he'd spoken, and I read some of his wonderful material for the first time. This was the story, which I'm sure he's repeated often since, where he's mistaken by a cab driver for Jon Pertwee, and strings the poor guy along for ages, as the driver repeats a comic refrain "You was always the most elegant, Mister Pertwee". In the end, horror of horrors, the driver asks 'Mister Pertwee' whatever happened to his successor in the role. Without missing a beat, Baker says he thinks he died drunk in a ditch.

I have met Baker once, accompanied by the Better Half, at a signing for his magnificent autobiography in a Worthing bookshop in 1997. The Q&A that preceded getting one's book autographed wonderfully demonstrated his art (an endlessly applicable one, if you can master it) of twisting the most uninteresting questions and answering them entertainingly by talking about what he wanted to talk about all along: himself, yes, but not in arrogant way; instead he uses that theme as his own unique philosophical window on the world. If I hadn't learnt from him the approach of stringing together random anecdotes in a semblance of coherence, this blog wouldn't exist. So, you know, he's to blame, is what I'm saying. Anyway, my copy of 'Who on Earth is Tom Baker?' is signed to me and the Better Half from him, which I consider just as binding and solemn as our wedding vows. We can never split up, the book says so!

Robot, whatever its good or bad aspects, will always be important, as it ushers in the most consistently popular period of Doctor Who to that point, and perhaps ever after, embodied in Tom Baker as the front man. For only seven of its 50+ years, Doctor Who featured a Doctor who wore a long scarf, but because of the indelible impression Tom left on the show, there are still a huge number of people out there now who if asked what the Doctor wears, will say a long scarf. He is the exemplar. Baker as the raconteur is only one aspect of a complex man; he's of course a bloody good actor too. But Baker as raconteur has had a place in the Doctor Who family far longer than he was playing the role. For almost all that time, Baker has fixated on his own mortality (he's had his own gravestone ready for at least twenty years). I think a lot of us are still banking on his turning out to be immortal, though, so we don't have to shed tears at what will be a great loss to the family.

In Summary:

Whatever happened to Sarah Jane? That Seventies Summer-dress frame...