The Moonbase

Chapter The 149th, which alternates between cartoonishness and animation.

Plot:

A moonbase in the year 2070; a multi-national - but single sex - team working here use a device called the Gravitron to control weather on the Earth's surface. A squad of Cybermen arrive on the moon, create a secret entrance into the base by stealth, then come through in force, attacking the crew and putting down all resistance swiftly and mercilessly. They make the crew operate the Gravitron to devastate the Earth with storms, win, and the human race is destroyed. Except, this doesn't happen. Instead, the Cybermen - because they are a cold, logical race - have a better plan: they send just a couple of their number in who hide in the storeroom or under a sheet, they then poison the base's sugar supply, which incapacitates anyone who consumes it, allowing the Cybermen to very gradually turn them into zombies who do their bidding; this all takes just long enough for the Doctor and his companions Ben, Polly and Jamie to arrive and defeat them. Polly mixes a cocktail of plastics which can be sprayed onto the Telos toughies and thereby gets rid of the scouting party, then the Doctor has the idea of focusing the Gravitron onto the moon's surface, which repels the rest of the Cybermen and their spaceships. 

Context:

All the family (Better Half and three children - boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7) watched this, one episode an evening across a week, from the 2014 DVD. This contains the episodes 2 and 4 as originally broadcast, or thereabouts, but 1 and 3 - where only the audio is present in the BBC archives - are represented by animations aligned to that existing soundtrack. The children were very disappointed whenever the story cut back to real actors being filmed, and agreed that it would have been better if they had animated all of it. Interestingly, several years on and that's exactly what is happening. The latest animated story The Faceless Ones (see below) is the first - after wholly missing stories The Power of the Daleks and The Macra Terror were animated - where a story has been handled where some of the episodes (1 and 3 in this case) are intact in the archives. The decision has obviously been made, and I think it is the right one, that these new versions should stand alone for possible sales to broadcasters / streaming services (some Who animations are already available on Britbox) rather than just the niche enthusiast market (me included) who might have snapped up The Moonbase DVD when it first came out. 

First time round:

After a slow start, the releases of Doctor Who for home viewing and collection established themselves into a veritable range by the early 1990s, having started a few years earlier - a brief overlap before original series Doctor Who came off the air in 1989. It was almost as if a baton was being passed on to a new way - at least for me, who hadn't been alive to seen the old shows when they first aired - to get one's Doctor Who fix. The medium was VHS in those days, and the range was in fine fettle as the decade proceeded. As a new decade was starting, another baton handover took place as BBC Worldwide started to re-release titles from the range once more on DVD, now with higher definition and extras, and again there was an overlap with the new medium starting slowly as the previous one finished up. In the last couple of years, there's been the slow and gradual start of Blu-ray boxsets - more definition, more extras - overlapping with releases on DVD. At first glance, it looks like the classic Doctor Who range has been going uninterrupted for 30+ years, but there was a bit of a wobble. When the DVD of The Moonbase came out, those animated episodes could possibly have been the last original material from the classic era to see the light. A confident 'Coming Soon' trailer for The Underwater Menace appeared on The Moonbase DVD, but - as I describe in more detail here - months and months went by without that fishy epic coming out, and when it did, it was not so much released as it escaped.

I don't know whether The Moonbase being the final ever classic era story to come out, had that come to pass, would have been a good or bad thing. On the one hand, it is a very silly story, and almost half-formed - it's like a dress rehearsal for the more successful story The Tomb of the Cybermen, made by a lot of the same people soon after The Moonbase. On the other hand, the animation is great, and very much impressed on first watch, and the story as a whole being available was something new and miraculous. For, this is one of the few DVD releases (like The Underwater Menace, and The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear which were all released during the end stages of the range) which never came out on VHS, and whose existence on shiny disc might have seemed like a pipe dream only a few years earlier. For some, this was because the episodes had been recovered, but mostly this was because of the wonders of animation. In the VHS days, gaps would be plugged with a bit of to-camera explanation by a cast member. This enforced a rule that only stories with more episodes present than not could really have the full release treatment. The later innovations meant that Patrick Troughton was finally well-served, as his era was hardest hit by the losses in the archive. The total number of full story VHS releases for the second Doctor was a lowly eight. Thanks mainly to animation, the total number of DVDs will be double that by the end of this year.

The surviving Moonbase episodes were first collected on a VHS called 'Cybermen - The Early Years' released in July 1992, between my first and second years at university in Durham. I would no doubt have snapped it up from Volume One in Worthing on or near the date of release. Also on the tape were the surviving episodes (3 and 6) of another Troughton Cyberman story, The Wheel in Space. The 'Years' tapes were never intended to be anything other than a grab bag of different scraps, so no attempt was made to cover the missing bits. Because a middle episode and the ending was on there for both, though, it was possible - with a lot of imagination - to work out the story in one's head. I had nothing much to do over that long Summer Vac, and I seem to remember watching this tape a lot, wishing I had something more complete to enjoy, but making the best of it. I remember getting a bus over to Lancing to see a friend from my Sixth form days Alex (a different Alex from my childhood friend previously mentioned numerous times on this blog). Other Alex was fascinated by a minor subplot in the last episode where a relief ship is sent out to the moon, but deflected into a solar orbit by the Cybermen, with the ship inescapably drawn to the sun, even if it took them a week to die. He was incensed that the story just abandons them and everyone fixates on sorting out the Gravitron. His focus on it made me muse for quit a while about composing the story of that relief ship on their final slow mission to death, but I never got round to writing it.

Reaction:

There's always a tendency when a writer is researching the background of a story for them to fall in love with the interesting facts they uncover, and then not be able to resist putting them in somehow, even if they aren't relevant to the story and stick out like a sore thumb. Writer of The Moonbase Kit Pedler had recently become a scientific adviser to Doctor Who, collaborating with script editor Gerry Davis to create scenarios with greater verisimilitude. It did work to give a new feel to the series, and it went down well with audiences at the time (and is still popular now), but for me it has its problems. The main one is that Pedler is only interested in his research, or so it seems. The Moonbase is a story about a bunch of clever blokes using gravity technology to control the weather; the Cyber invasion is what's been shoe-horned in. This explains how Other Alex (see above) responded; he saw and felt a much more emotive plot (the fate of the relief ship) than the threat to the Earth of its own weather. It doesn't help that this threat is off screen: the Gravitron is a few flashing lights moving over a world map. At the very least, it needed some cutaways to stock footage of a monsoon or something to sell it, but we don't get that here, with action staying on the moon at all times. This scientific rigour doesn't stop some howlers slipping through either: did Pedler and Davis really believe that a hole in the Moonbase's protective outer shell could be adequately patched with a plastic tea tray, as depicted here?

The other drawback of Pedler and Davis's approach is that through working out this new approach they hit upon a structure that would showcase the science concept of the week, and that structure then stuck to the point where it became a formula, and then later became formulaic: a restricted and often isolated area, run by a stubborn authority figure with whom the Doctor clashes, is slowly infiltrated by aliens. The same structure is used for The Faceless Ones, and many many other Troughton stories. In The Moonbase, they're still honing it, and some aspects don't work as well as others. Patrick Barr as Hobson, for example, seems half-hearted when doing the stubborn authority bit as Moonbase leader, and it's probably down to the writing: one moment he's suspicious of the Doctor, next he's letting him access every part of the base and its crew, one moment he's threatening to turf the TARDIS team out, next he's placated by having a cup of coffee made for him. Even when he's telling the Doctor to get off the moon, it's so laid back he may as well be asking him to pass the sugar. This lackadaisical attitude infects the rest of the cast too, as epitomised by the ending of episode 4, where the defeated Cybermen, supposedly violently uprooted from the moon's surface, skip into the air waftily like they're playing a weightless skipping game, then the crew who've been standing around watching this give a perfunctory cheer, and then all get back to work. Is that really the thrilling climax to the story? One wonders for a few seconds, before realising that - yes - that was it.

I'm almost hesitant to say it with the current Doctor on screens almost making it work, but three companions is most definitely too many, particularly when it's by accident rather than design as it is in here. Frazer Hines was cast as a one-off guest character in The Highlanders, a couple of stories before The Moonbase, but they made a last minute decision to keep him on; so, the next few scripts including The Moonbase's had some hasty rewrites to encompass the new guy. This leads to a bit of line sharing where Ben acquires a sudden amount of scientific knowledge he's never had before. They can't keep that up, so knock out Jamie early on, and he spends a couple of episodes unconscious. This leads to an interesting concept being introduced, the "phantom piper" who appears to McCrimmons before they die, but it is a stretch that even in a concussed state Jamie would believe that the silver robot man, who has no bagpipes or anything, could really be this personage.

Polly gets a rubbish time of it for most of her stories - it's not just the sexism, but there is plenty of that in The Moonbase. The people representing the diverse nationalities of future international cooperation are all male, and Polly - the only woman in the cast - makes coffee for them. It really sticks out watching these 1960s episodes when they slip back to some of the less acceptable attitudes of the time. Doctor Who is usually better than this, which makes the lapses seem all the worse. A similar one in The Faceless Ones is when the Doctor's farewell to his two exiting companions lacks balance somewhat. The Doctor tells Ben he can be an admiral some day, then adds: "And you Polly... you can look after Ben". At the recent BFI screening (see below), this elicited an astonished response, with a lot of nervous laughter. Worse than this, though, is that Polly can be written well, as clever, strong and resourceful. But the writers can't sustain it, and fall back into having her screaming and needing to be rescued, to fit some template of what they think the companion should be. This means there are frustrating inconsistencies in Polly's character, often in the same story: on the Moon, for example, good Polly is using her intelligence to deduce a weapon they can use, mixing up cocktails, and taking the fight to the Cybermen. Bad Polly is screaming and dropping trays and wimpering, and serving drinks. 

There is some great material here, though. The filmed scenes of our heroes, and the attacking Cybermen, on the moon's surface are very well done. The continuing use of the stock music "Space Adventure" as the Cyberman theme is great. The new more streamlined and metallic Cyberman design is very effective - I like the practise golf balls on the joints too, though some people find them a bit silly. The animation is good, with very good likenesses. The story as a whole, though is just a bit disposable. But popular enough that things could be further refined in the next story, and set up this monster to be the returning baddie of the next few years. 

Connectivity: 

The Five Doctors makes this an easy game: both The Moonbase and Doctor Who's Twentieth anniversary Special feature Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, Fraser Hines as Jamie, and lots of Cybermen; in both stories, one of these Cybs when attacked spews out goo.

Deeper Thoughts:

Scotland Yard case file on Chameleon Tours: The Faceless Ones animation screening + Q&A, 29th February 2020. The first BFI Doctor Who event of this year; it seems like ages since the last one, and I enjoy them very much, so I happily took shelter in the NFT (or BFI Southbank if you insist) on a wet and windy Saturday. I met up with some of the growing group of attendees for these events - David, Chris, Tim, and Dave, and we settled in our seats. David and I speculated on how soon our hosts Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy would introduce their first customary "Dick" joke, and we didn't wait long. Before proceedings proper began, Anthony Townsend of the Diva Loka Brighton fan group got up on stage to talk about a forthcoming charity event G'Day of the Doctor, and after a round of applause to greet him, Justin obligingly said "They like you more than dick". Ho ho! After Andrew had plugged this worthy event, the standard quiz got underway, with Justin asking the assembled audience trivia questions, and Dick roaming with a mic. Anneke Wills, who played Polly, won a DVD for answering a question about herself correctly, and - in a nicely shambolic and unrehearsed group show of hands response - someone narrowed down Frazer Hines's total number of Emmerdale Farm appearances (where he starred as Joe Sugden) to a mighty 1519 times.

(L to R) Fiddy, Johnson

The animated episodes were prefaced with a short video clip from Ben actor Michael Craze's son, Ben Craze, who couldn't attend in person. Ben was accompanied by his two daughters, Michael's granddaughters, one of whom did most of the talking (and was clearly a star in the making); sweet gems from this included "My granddad, who was called..." followed by a thoughtful pause and then "Granddad Mike", and an admission that she didn't watch Doctor Who because it is too scary. You had to see it, really; alas, it's probably too late (and too personal) to be included on the discs of the imminent release, but it was so lovely. After this, the first three episodes were shown. I have already blogged The Faceless Ones, but it seemed apt to include the write up of the animation screening here with The Moonbase, as they were transmitted as part of the same season (only one story apart on broadcast) and the animation link too, of course. I enjoyed The Faceless Ones when I was watching it as an audio and photo reconstruction, but the work done here lifts it even more. Colour seems to particularly work for this story, bringing the Swinging Sixties 1967 production to vivid life, highlighting much more of the fun and humour of this tale. An airport with all its machinery and planes gives Rob Ritchie's 3D animation freer rein, and he does exemplary work throughout. The character designs and 2D animation improve with every new release. Notable this time is that character's hand movements are featuring more - in places it looks a bit odd, but it's great that they are pushing the envelope.

(L to R) Fiddy, Walsh, Ayres

In between the two halves of the animation, there was a short panel with a couple of the people responsible for this new version: director AnneMarie Walsh, and audio supremo Mark Ayres. AnneMarie talked about the limits of how much the two existing episodes could be used as any basis for the animation: they are different media, with different needs including the number of shots and cuts. The two existing episodes seem barely to have been needed at all, as Mark confirmed that the audio used for all six episodes comes from the off-air recordings made by fan Graham Strong in the 1960s, as it is better quality than the audio of the surviving film copies of episode 1 and 3. Mark had to borrow sound sources from elsewhere in the episodes in places to aid the needs of the animation, and his audio was then what was used as a guide, with AnneMarie and the animators building animatics to fit this, which were then developed into the final version. Through this process, AnneMarie fell for Colin Gordon's Commandant, her favourite character in the piece. She also gave a shout out to Martin Geraghty for doing a great job with character designs. Dick Fiddy had a final question about whether the show Archer was something of an inspiration for the style used for The Faceless Ones, and both panellists confirmed that this was true, although they added that the people making Archer have more money, more time, and "more swearing".




The final three episodes were then shown. Unlike The Macra Terror, no major liberties have had to be taken with the story (a scene featuring the Rough and Tumble machine had to be excised from the animation of the Macra story as it was too complex to animate). The Chameleon's natural alien form has been re-imagined; the version created for the original TV show was probably too blank to come across as a drawing. The replacements are a little too 'generic green alien' for me, but it's a very minor niggle. One area where I almost wanted the animation team to take liberties was in the final sequences, where they could have featured an additional scene of Ben and Polly (at least a non-speaking Ben and Polly) before their final scene. These two characters had a very abrupt leaving scene as it had been filmed on location, and they were no longer employed by the time of the studio sessions of episode 6, so we are robbed of the moment when they are reunited with the Doctor and Jamie. That moment could have been inserted during the sequence of searching in the Chameleon's spacestation or searching the cars in the long-stay car park (although the logic of the plot is a little unclear, and I'm still not certain after many watches which place Ben and Polly would have been hidden).

One other point of note in the animation is the liberal sprinkling of in-joke Easter Eggs for the sharp-eyed to spot. [If you would rather be un-spoilered and find them for yourself, skip over this paragraph.] The earliest one is a Wanted poster in the airport police office. This appeared in a clip that was released online ahead of the screening, which shows the Roger Delgado Master's mugshot up on the pinboard, but added to that since has been another picture - this time of Sacha Dewan's incarnation. This got an audible gasp of a wowed reaction in the room. Comparing notes after the screening, my fellow attendees and I also spotted references to International Electromatics, Magpie Electricals, a newspaper with a "War Machines Defeated" headline (this story taking place on the day after the events of The War Machines), plus familiar names to fandom Hickman, Ridgway and Condon hidden in the settings. The aforementioned Rough and Tumble machine finally appears in an animation too: it's advertised in a newspaper that the Doctor and Jamie both read. There are certainly more there to find, so - if you plan to buy the DVD or Blu-ray - happy hunting!

(L to R) Wills, Hines, Johnson

After the screening had finished, the final Q&A of the day was with Anneke and Frazer. They were both in good form, working the room: the former as twinkly and naughty as ever, the latter in full on convention anecdote machine mode. Anneke talked first about reading the BBC Audio recordings of the novelisation for this story amongst others; this was a subject she returned to a few times, to some affectionate mockery from Justin Johnson. The Commandant had been the most fun character to play, as he was so strait-laced but had to deal with "the forces of chaos" as represented by the Doctor and his friends. Despite a lot of coaxing, she would not give her "Jamie" audio voice with Frazer in the room. On the subject of voices, Frazer was surprised by his slipping into English "Received Pronunciation" when playing the Chameleon version of Jamie, something he'd forgotten doing. They both enjoyed the finished animation, but are looking forward to their favourite stories one day being done. For Frazer, that's The Highlanders (although AnneMarie had told him that the tartan and kilt folds will be a nightmare to do); for Anneke, it's The Smugglers, which holds special memories as the cast got to spend a night away in a pub in Cornwall during its filming - the nearest a poor young actor could get to a holiday then.

Many things were learnt during this energetic session, not least how much each person got paid for The Faceless Ones. Anneke was on 68 pounds per episode, Frazer only 57, to which he reacted in mock outrage "I'm not sitting here to be insulted"! Troughton was on a whopping 262 quid per ep. There was an interesting discussion on actors watching recordings of themselves performing - Anneke doesn't, Frazer does, as he feels it's the only way one can improve, noticing bad habits (he mentioned he used to do too much scratching of his head and pointing, which he forced himself to phase out); Frazer topped this chat off with a zinger of a reply he gave to Peter Purves, who told him he would not watch his own performances back; Frazer replied: "You should do, 'cos we had to!" Anneke jokingly proposed that Frazer likes watching his performances as "You love yourself", to which Frazer replied, mock crestfallen "Somebody's got to love me". Anneke always feels that when you look back, you will always beat yourself up about what you could do better, but did find herself watching herself on TV one day, while drinking a glass of wine. She thought: "I'm rather good actually" and finished the bottle.

There were some well-worm but nonetheless welcome anecdotes griping about "control freak" director Morris Barry (who helmed The Moonbase as well as The Tomb of the Cybermen"). Apparently, Morris came down to the studio one day to find that the sets had all been put up slightly wrongly. Instead of amend his camera script, the actors and crew had to wait, while the set was broken and reassembled 6 inches to the left. When asked - with reference to the recent Blu-ray trailers that have caught up with some companions later in their post-Doctor life - what their characters would be up to in their later years, Anneke felt Polly would not be married to Ben, but would be living in a cottage in the depths of Dartmoor growing vegetables. Frazer thought Jamie, if he avoided being dead on a battlefield somewhere, would be married to Kirsty (Hannah Gordon's character in The Highlanders) with 5 kids, as there was "no TV back in those days, you see".

Talk turned to the superfluity of companions because of the last minute introduction of "cuckoo" Jamie, and the subsequent exit of Ben and Polly. Both actors agreed that three is too many, with Frazer remembering that the hasty rewrites imposed on The Moonbase meant that he was laying on a bed for three episodes moaning about the phantom piper, with Anneke mopping his brow: "Easiest money I ever made".  The producer decided to get rid of Michael Craze, asking Anneke if she would stay on as Polly, but she decided to be loyal to Michael and go. This also was an excuse to get off herself, as her partner of the time Michael Gough had told her when she started not to get stuck with one thing, and to be fluid. After he left the show, Frazer and Pat Troughton had kept in touch with one another. "We played golf for the next 16 years," said Frazer, "Very long game - he was a terrible putter!". When he, Pat and Wendy Padbury met up again during filming of The Five Doctors, they were rolling around on the floor laughing and joking in rehearsals. The other Dcotors, according to Frazer, were looking on jealous as they never did anything like that with their companions. By this time Anneke had forgotten about Doctor Who and was living in Canada, and - devastatingly - she revealed that after their final shooting day, she and Craze might have had a drink with Pat at the pub, but after that she never ever saw him again. After this, though, more happily, she said that she hopes they do more animations as "this is the highlight of my year". Though I wouldn't go that far, it is a very enjoyable day out. I'm looking forward to the next one, which is only in a few days' time...

In Summary:

The Moonbase, semi-animated, is neither one thing nor t'other; the fully animated Faceless Ones is much better; but, it's great to have both on the shelves!

The Five Doctors

Chapter The 148th, where Tom Baker is missing but probably still in the pub.

Plot:

Every Doctor to date, and whichever companions were available, work-permitting, are gathered up by a Time Scoop operated by a mysterious person unknown on Gallifrey. The fourth Doctor (scarf, bohemian, curly hair) and Romana are caught in the time vortex, but everyone else is brought, along with Cybermen and a Dalek and some other baddies, to the death zone, an arena used for gladiatorial-style games in Gallifrey's less enlightened past. The use of the scoop causes an energy drain, so the high council of Time Lords send for the Doctor; but, finding that his time traces converge in the zone, they send the Master in to save him. The fifth Doctor (cricket, celery, blonde hair) escapes the zone and investigates who the traitor on Gallifrey might be, and finds out that it is President Borusa. The three remaining Doctors (grumpy one, flautist, dandy) separately battle against all the obstacles, and converge on the Dark Tower at the centre of the zone, where Time Lord legend Rassilon is rumoured to still be alive and handing out immortality as a prize for passing the tests. Borusa arrives with the fifth Doctor, and - against the protestations of his other selves - the first Doctor tells Rassilon to give Borusa the immortality he seeks. But it's a trap, and Borusa lives forever turned into a statue. The Time Lords want the Doctor to take over as president but he instead chooses to go on the run from his own people, in a rackety old TARDIS; that's how it all started, don't you know.

Context:

Accompanied by all the family (Better Half and three children - boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7), I watched this one Sunday evening, from the DVD. We watched the original version as transmitted in November 1983, Doctor Who's 20th anniversary. I kept the title a secret before I pressed play, and was greeted by a chorus of jeers that we were watching "an old black-and-white one", this being in reaction to the William Hartnell clip used as a pre-credits sequence. I'd love to say that the jeers turned to happy astonishment as soon as the 1980s Peter Davison titles sequence kicked in, but they were in a rowdy and mischievous mood throughout.

First time round:

This was a big, big deal at the time - an absolute event - and was trailed long before it aired in various ways. I must have known it was coming from Doctor Who Magazine, I suppose, and I remember that was months and months before it aired. It's certainly the first and so far only Doctor Who story where I saw the sets before I saw the programme. This was at the Longleat Twentieth Anniversary celebration, Classic Who's equivalent of Woodstock. I was there with my whole family, and saw - if I remember rightly - the High Council's meeting room, the UNIT HQ interior, and Borusa's secret control room on display in a marquee. I remember mentally creating my own stories as I walked round the exhibit based on this furniture alone (none were even close to being on the money, by the by).  Next, probably only a few days before transmission, I remember seeing a copy of the tie-in novelisation in WHSmiths (it was mistakenly available in some shops before the TV story had aired, which had never happened before and probably never happened after). I remember lovingly caressing the foil embossed cover, but I did not sneak a peek at the contents. Looking back, I can't believe I was so restrained and am really proud of my young self.

Next comes the bit where I'm less than proud of myself, alas. On the evening of Friday 25th November 1983, the plan was that I would not watch Doctor Who. My sister had a big role in a local am-dram production, and the whole family was going to be in the audience to support her. I was not happy about this, as I did not want to miss the biggest Doctor Who story ever. Friends of the family had promised to tape the show on their new-fangled Betamax top-loader video recorder, and we were visiting them the next day. But I didn't want to wait a whole day to see it, so - amidst shouting and recriminations from all around me - I feigned illness and refused to budge when everyone else left. I watched on my ownsome, sitting through a lot of tedious preamble from Terry Wogan, as Doctor Who was shown as part of Children in Need. Looking back, I feel bad, but at the time I was perfectly happy with my decision - I estimated that The Five Doctors must be considerably better than whatever lame old play my sis was in. I apologise for the crassness of young me. Watching it on Friday did not then stop me from wholeheartedly embracing the viewing on Saturday too. The chance to see something I'd watched the previous night again was something akin to the finest magic. If it hadn't been early 1980s UK, with only one TV per household on average, and certainly only one VCR, I might have asked to watch it all again for a third time; but, the adults wanted to generally be dull and talk or whatever in the living room, so my sister (who was still talking to me, just about) and I retreated to the kid's bedroom - his name was Michael, if memory serves - and talked about our favourite bits. 

I've seen this story a lot in different forms. I watched the repeat the following Summer, which split the story into four twenty-five minute chunks with the worst cliffhangers ever. I bought the VHS when it came out in the early 1990s. Then, in late 1995, a special edition version of The Five Doctors - with a small amount of additional material, improved sound and new effects - was made for release on that magic home format: video tape. By this time, I was very familiar with the technology. It came in a set with preceding story The King's Demons, plus two postcards of each story's cover art (as they had been giving away with all the releases that year), and an album to collect up said postcards, which was smart, and which I still have somewhere. This was special as it is one of one two Doctor Who videos I ever got as a Christmas present. In general, I always snapped them up as they were released, never leaving anyone the opportunity to get them as a gift. I can't remember what happened that year to make me hold off, but it was very nice to unwrap and watch on Christmas day. As I was watching the scene of the Raston warrior robot battling with Cybermen soundtracked in gorgeous beefy stereo, my sister wandered in and listened to the Cyber voices giving it their best take at anguish and devastation, and said "Blobby blobby blobby" then walked away. Fair enough, I suppose. 

Reaction:

Robert Holmes, one of the best regarded of twentieth century Doctor who writers, tried to plot a version of The Five Doctors and couldn't manage it: all the disparate elements, all the many leading men to cater for, all the chops and changes of actors' availability - it was too much. He stepped aside, and Terrance Dicks picked up the baton. They are both fine writers, and there was nobody else around then (and few have come along since) who knew more about writing Doctor Who than the two of them. So, why did Uncle Terrance succeed where Holmes failed? My guess is that Holmes was overthinking it. One thing every fan knows from Holmes's aborted storyline attempt is that at the end the first Doctor (played here by Richard Hurndall, standing in as original actor William Hartnell had passed away) is revealed to be an Auton, explaining why he doesn't look quite right. Dicks just ignores the re-casting and gets on with a straight-ahead action story. Dicks's ability to produce such a simple and effective narrative, given the egregious length of the shopping list of elements he had to include, should not be overlooked: what he overcame had defeated Robert Bloody Holmes, for goodness sake! As such, The Five Doctors is bulletproof when it comes to critiques. It was built to showcase twenty years of Doctor Who, and that it does - anything more than that is a bonus.

So, it's pointless to criticise the structure for being basic and linear: that's a necessity, but also a strength. There's an intro to each Doctor, as they are zapped out of existence by a black triangle. Then there's a bit of each walking around the death zone, before having a couple of exterior set pieces each. Then, they enter the tower, each coincidentally with their own entrance. Then an interior set piece each, then all together for the confrontation with the main villain at the end. Then goodbyes and off they go. There's a subplot about the conspiracy on Gallifrey, but that's as complex as it gets, and even that's only added to give one Doctor something to do, who otherwise would be stuck in the TARDIS (a fate that, as good as he is, Dicks can't help but deliver to two of the many companions involved). Of course it is structured like this: who has time to do fiddly intriguing subplots and reversals when you have to give sufficient action to four leading men (if Tom Baker had agreed to take part, my guess is Richard Hurndall would have stayed in the TARDIS with Susan and Turlough). This is probably why no reunion story of this scale has ever been attempted in Doctor Who since (with the exceptions of two skits of varying degrees of success - more on those below).

What can I say about any of those scenes that hasn't been said a thousand times before (and that goes for positives and negatives)? The use of footage from the unfinished, and at that point widely unseen, Shada to give Tom Baker's Doctor something of a presence in the proceedings is inspired, and the scene of the Doctor and Romana punting on the Cam contains some of Douglas Adams most charming and witty dialogue: "Oh I do love the autumn, all the leaves, colours" is such an unassuming punchline, and delivered with such panache by Lalla Ward, it makes one glad this footage got a BBC1 airing. Until the Special edition in 1995 "fixed" things, it had never occurred to me as odd that the picture used to represent the two Time Lords stuck in the vortex didn't match what they'd been wearing in the punt. It also never bothered me that the Doctor is returned to his timestream stuck halfway under a wire fence - it just seemed like a bit of a laugh. 
  
The scenes of the Raston warrior robot - the one original element included here - slaughtering a platoon of Cybermen is magnificent. One of the Cybers vomits - it's amazing! It's very satisfying for the obsessive statto nerds like me that Jon Pertwee finally got to encounter the Cybermen (which he never did during his original tenure). Troughton gets all the best lines, which is the sensible choice as he is the best at delivering them; partnering him with Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier is successful too - they make a great double act. Hurndall is enjoying getting to be a hero (just for one day), and holds his own. The scene with him, Susan and the Dalek is nice, and it's great to see the shell exploded and the grisly, squiddly Kaled mutant inside for the first time in the series (that was an effect that they demonstrated at the Longleat celebration too, now I think of it).There's a cameo from K9, and another from Jamie and Zoe, and Liz Shaw screaming "Stop Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim!" What more could you want?

One bit that most fascinates me is the chequered floor sequence featuring the Master, Cybermen, and the first Doctor and Tegan (Dicks's drafts are showing here - why on Earth would those two be paired unless it was a remnant of a version where Tom Baker was the one investigating the conspiracy on Gallifrey, and Davison was allowed to adventure in the zone with his longest-running companion?!). The director Peter Moffat was well known for bringing productions in on budget in as unfussy a manner as possible, to the point where his work can look terribly pedestrian. That isn't so much of a problem here, likely helped by a more generous budget than usual, and a lot of his work looks excellent - particularly the location footage in the Welsh hills, and the beautifully lit sequence with Troughton attacked in a cave by a Yeti. He couldn't make much visual excitement out of a tiled floor, though, but who could? It's a floor. What's annoying though is that Moffat doesn't seem to have thought it necessary to help the actors to work out what is the logic of this floor trigger puzzle, and move accordingly to sell it to the watching audience.

Anthony Ainley's Master walks inconsistently over it multiple times, with differing levels of care about exactly where he's treading.  On at least one occasion, his foot falls at a point where four different squares intersect. They paper over this by adding a line on how the safe path changes every time, but it's hardly satisfactory. Every time I've watched this - and that is more times than is healthy, believe me - I've scoured for any discernible rules to how the chessboard of death operates, and there are none. The scene still, though, intrigues me more and more - it just gives and won't stop giving. The Master tells the Doctor it's as "easy as pi" and somehow the Doctor hears this homophonic clue, even though it's far from obvious. Tegan is chided about her grasp of mathematics and says, haltingly "the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is represented by the Greek letter pi, right?" which is a 1980s companion language translation of the human English which would run something like "pi is that thing to do with circles, right?". But then, Tegan, on being presented with a keypad to open a door earlier, exclaims with astonished joy "An entry coder!" which is not an actual phrase that's ever been used by anyone ever. I was an entry-level coder once upon a long time ago in my day job, but it's not the same thing. Why aren't 1980s companions allowed to speak human? I suspect script editor Eric Saward of being behind this guff, as Terrance Dicks can usually craft rounded human characters who speak naturally.

Anyway, back to the killer floor covering, the laser lino: the Doctor muses on the application of pi to work out the safe route, pauses for a moment, then walks across successfully. But how? What has pi got to do with it? Is it each digit of pi in turn refers to the safe column to walk down? Or the unsafe one? How can the Doctor possibly work out the safe route just from that? Also, how did the Master know in the first place? He gets to that part of the tower after the Doctor and Tegan, and is never seen experimenting. How did he work it out? Also, once the Master has tricked the Cybermen into getting themselves killed crossing the floor, why can't the Doctor and Tegan just step on them to get to the other side? As I said, I may have watched this story more times than is healthy...

Connectivity: 

It's not very hard to link The Five Doctors to any other story as it contains such a broad coverage of elements from throughout Doctor Who history. Like The Android Invasion, it features appearances by Tom Baker as the Doctor and Elizabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, members of UNIT, blank faced robotic killers with their armaments built in, and creatures created by Terry Nation. In both stories, Sarah Jane is rescued from a pathetically un-steep cliff edge.

Deeper Thoughts:

First as tragedy, second as farce, third as farce again (but better). In the 30+ years since The Five Doctors, the series proper has never again tried to bring together such a crazy big set of Doctors and companions as the 20th anniversary story managed. It's done two Doctors working together with returning companions (The Two Doctors) and without (Twice Upon a Time), and two Doctors plus a new Doctor, and a brief cameo scene for all the Doctors using clips (The Day of the Doctor). It's brought back loads of old enemies but no old Doctors a few times (The Pandorica Opens, The Time of the Doctor), and that's about it. Someone must have worked out that it's damn near impossible to pull off a passable story again unless one keeps things more restricted, even if you have the talent of Terrance Dicks to write it. Lightning cannot strike twice. If one wants evidence of this, one only has to look at the time they did try such a feat again outside of the series proper: Dimensions in Time.

For the 30th anniversary in 1993, Doctor Who had been off air for a while, but was doing healthy business on sell-through VHS. There had been an idea to create a one-off feature length story specifically to be sold on tape, called The Dark Dimension. They would have worked out the 'too many Doctors for one plot' problem by giving the lion's share of the action to Tom Baker, and had the others pop-up for cameos here and there. The other Doctors, perhaps understandably, did not like this idea, and anyway the whole thing fell through. A consolation prize was that a short skit was going to be shot and shown - like The Five Doctors - as part of Children in Need. It was only about 15 minutes long, and split into two episodes, with a phone vote in between (nothing says early to mid 1990s like a pointless phone vote) to decide whether Mandy or Big Ron would appear in part 2. For you see, Dimensions in Time was a Doctor Who / Eastenders cross-over. Oh yes! It was rubbish of course, and watching it in my third year at university, old enough to know better, I clenched in embarrassment at Noel Edmonds taking the piss when introducing it.

The piece was shot in a 3D format that required objects to be placed unnecessarily in the foreground, and for the camera to keep circling all the time. As such, it is not recommended if you have a hangover. Tom Baker has his hair cut disappointingly short, and doesn't interact with anyone else, just appearing on his own in a prologue. Louise Jameson as Leela is dressed as Pocahontas for some reason, many companions don't look anything like they did when they were first in the show. There are no Daleks, so presumably Terry Nation had got in a strop and taken his ball away. Most of the interaction with the Eastenders characters is woeful. Frank and the Mitchell brothers handle it okay. And there's a great moment when Mike Yates arrives in Bessie, and he and the Pertwee Doctor drive off, meeting the Brigadier who arrives by helicopter. Then Pertwee turns into Colin Baker (did I mention that the Doctor and companions turn into one another rather than all appearing together? Oh yes!). This gives good fan service, just as putting Jon Pertwee with Cybermen in The Five Doctors did, as Colin and the Brig never got a story together on TV during his tenure. Kate o' Mara reprising her role as the Rani is great despite her over-ripe dialogue, and a young Sam West gets to act as her companion, and he comes out the other side with his dignity more or less intact. All the many villains are played by fans wearing old costumes, but en masse they acquire a sort of tatty majesty. 

The one thing that's missing is a joke, any joke. It is curiously humour-free for a skit, but this is not unusual in my experience of Children in Need or Comic Relief segments such as this. For a funny Doctor Who short one would have had to wait another 20 years for the marvellous Five-ish Doctors Reboot that was shown on the night of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary, which - in its own way - managed to reunite multiple Doctors and still have a sensible plot through-line. Anyway, Dimensions in Time was the only scrap of new Doctor Who shown on BBC1 between the end of Sylvester McCoy's run in 1989 and Paul McGann's one night stand in 1996, so it has a misplaced home in the affections of fans of a certain age (mine!). Because of the conditions of its making, with the performers working for charity, it can never be released on any home format or shown on TV again, but it can be found on the internet, if you've never seen it. Brace yourself! 

In Summary:

Five times the fun, just don't overthink it.

The Android Invasion

Chapter The 147th, where Tom Baker visits a pub several times (art imitating life?).

Plot:

The Doctor and Sarah arrive at what appears to be the village of Devesham, near a space centre where UNIT are currently based helping in the recovery of long missing astronaut Guy Crayford, who's returning from deep space (at least I'm assuming that's why UNIT are there - is it ever properly explained?). But the village is near deserted, and the people they do see are acting very strangely, and there's various hints that all is not right (all the coins they find are minted in the same year, a calendar only has one date over and over). The TARDIS team get split up after a attack by androids with motorcycle helmet heads and guns in their fingertips. The Doctor finds that Crayford is present in the space centre working with an alien race called Kraals who are creating androids copies of humans, including Harry and Sergeant Benton. Sarah makes her way back to the TARDIS, but sees the unmanned ship dematerialise and leave without her. Despite encountering android copies of each other, the real Doctor and Sarah are eventually reunited and realise that they are not on Earth, but are on the Kraal's planet: the village and space centre have been copied too, to act as a training ground for the androids.

Crayford, who has been brainwashed by Styggron, leader of the Kraals, is going to return to Earth in his spacecraft as a diversion, and the android copies will be shot to Earth in pods to aid the take over. The Kraals also plan to use a virus to wipe out all life on Earth (this doesn't make sense 100% but it's contractual that Terry Nation scripts must include a virus that wipes out all life). The Doctor and Sarah hitch a ride with the invasion fleet, and are shot towards Earth. Using the android version of himself to bamboozle his enemies, the Doctor stops the invasion. Crayford gets killed and Styggron falls foul of his own virus. The Doctor doesn't say a proper goodbye to Harry or Benton whom he'll never see again, and he and Sarah go off adventuring in the TARDIS once more.

Context:

This is a first for the blog I think. Started off watching part 1 (from the DVD) with all the children (boys of 13 and 10, girl of 7), but the Better Half entered towards the end of the episode and was intrigued, believing she'd never seen this particular story before. So, we had to repeat the experience a few days later, watching the first episode again, but amazingly, all the children re-joined us second-time round, and with just as much enthusiasm as first time. Thereafter, the family watched the remaining episodes on occasional evenings over the course of a week approximately. I made an effort to increase the mystery by not telling the kids anything about the story, and blocking the screen when the title came up at the start of the first episode. But on seeing the very first moments of action as the twitchy UNIT soldier walks straight toward camera, the youngest said "That's not a real person", and the middle child said "Yes, it's a robot". So, perhaps a longstanding criticism of this story - that its prosaic title gives too much away - is unfair, as it's clear the story is intending its audience to be clued in from the off. Everyone very much enjoyed this story, including me, which I have to say was a surprise as its reputation is of being under par - more on that in a moment. 

First time round:

I first remember seeing the novelisation in my primary school's library when I was a kid, so probably read it at one point in the early 1980s, though I remember nothing more than the cover: it was a good drawing, and the mysterious figures holding the Doctor wearing motorcycle helmets would likely have intrigued. The depiction of lead Kraal Styggron was rather better - and certainly greener - than it was on the telly box too. The first time I got to see the episodes would have been in March 1995 when they were released on VHS. This was one of the first pair of new releases that year (the other coming out at the same time was Carnival of Monsters), and both were the first to come with a free postcard of the cover art, which was a gimmick that they ran with for the next year. As per my standard behaviour pattern at that time, I would have purchased it in Volume One, an independent book and video store in Worthing, on its day of release.

Reaction:

This story comes from a period that to many fans is the golden age of Doctor Who: Tom Baker as the bescarfed Doctor - cheeky but commanding, and now fully settled in after his first year - travelling the universe with Sarah Jane Smith, righting wrongs. When they both step out in part one of his story, they do look amazing on screen together, and the chemistry between them makes them one of the most iconic of teams to ever helm the TARDIS. This particular story, though, is not necessarily as well regarded. The stories either side of The Android Invasion as originally broadcast, Pyramids of Mars and The Brain of Morbius, were the second and third Doctor Who VHS releases ever, coming out in the mid 1980s, a period when BBC Video had decided that stories where Tom Baker righted wrongs, usually accompanied by Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane, were what the public wanted. Why is it that The Android Invasion never comes near the top of any polls, is never included in the list of classics from this era, and did not see the light of day on tape until 10 years later?

One theory is that the story's undermined by any mystery regarding the antagonist being blown by the title. Writer Terry Nation has form in this regard, with all his 1970s stories featuring his creations, Skaro's finest, named in the giveaway "Something of the Daleks" format. But here, the mystery of the story is clearly not intended to be that androids feature, which is confirmed early on (and is obvious from the first moments if my children's reactions - see above - are anything to go by). The real mystery is about the village, and the odd clues found there; the big reveal is that the TARDIS has landed on an alien planet and not the sleepy English countryside at all. And that mystery and that reveal are a perfect fit for the audience of Doctor Who, particularly the younger ones, to enjoy. The scenes of the eerie deserted streets and buildings of Devesham are great, and the moments of all the impassive robotic villagers are pretty creepy. The similarly blank-faced motorcycle helmet androids are visually arresting too, and the finger guns are a nice touch, easy for kids to emulate in the playground. Tom Baker gets to gently tease the concept - "Is that finger loaded?" - without undermining it. The Kraals look good, though there's only two of them. Nation unshackled from having to deliver yet another Dalek story has produced some good work. Overall, the story's got a lot going for it.

Perhaps the story is overlooked because it is something of a throwback. The presence of UNIT regulars, and the direction of Barry Letts (producer of the stories of Tom Baker's predecessor as the Doctor, Jon Pertwee) means it is quite backward looking at a point where the show was striding out into new territory. In the later years of Pertwee's time, with the narrative reason given that the Doctor's freedom to travel in time and space had been returned to him, the Earthbound stories where the Doctor worked with UNIT were being gradually reduced in number, and fewer and fewer of the previous ensemble cast of regulars were appearing in them. Letts' successor as producer Philip Hinchcliffe seemed happy not to make major changes to the format, but it seems clear that the stories that travelled the universe were the priority and nobody's heart was fully in making more old school tales. This is the second UNIT story of Hinchcliffe's producer-ship and arguably the last (the later story The Seeds of Doom is nominally a UNIT one, but contains no returning regular cast, and the soldiers in it, who only arrive towards the end of the story, could be any fighting force).

It's such a shame that the Brigadier gets no proper send-off, and instead is represented by an empty office with his name on it occupied by a hastily cut-and-pasted in replacement. Actor Nicholas Courtney wasn't available for The Android Invasion, and instead the crudely similar but nuance-free character of Colonel Faraday appears (who coincidentally seems to be performed almost exactly like Peter Glaze's take-off of the Brig in the Crackerjack Who pastiche skit "Hallo my Dalek" which aired a few months before The Android Invasion was broadcast). Being available and in the show doesn't protect a character from having a rubbish send-off either. Ian Marter as Harry Sullivan and John Levene as Sergeant Benton both appear, but don't have much to do, certainly no big heroics, in their final outings, and disappear by the end quite abruptly. Of course, it was likely that nobody necessarily thought they were going to be their final outings at the time. This isn't that big a deal, and certainly is no explanation for why this serial is undervalued, it's just a shame, that's all. The best inclusion from the previous era is Letts himself, who manages some impressive material here, particularly the generous amount of film used, but also some subtle use of green-screen to make things look more expensive and expansive than the budget allowed.

One final stick that's often used to beat The Android Invasion is the ridiculousness of the Crayford eyepatch subplot. Milton Johns, in one of his many Doctor Who appearances, plays Crayford as earnestly grateful for the rebuilding of his broken body after his rescue by the Kraals from his spacecraft crash. The only part of him that could not be reconstructed is his eye, covered with an eyepatch until near the end. There is, though, nothing wrong with Crayford. People think it stretches credibility that he hasn't checked at any point to see if his eye still works - but the script clearly states that he's been brainwashed. That's not to say there isn't silliness in the plot, but for some reason the focus is on the eyepatch when in fact it's everything else that doesn't make sense. Styggron's plan is to distract Earth with the return of a missing astronaut, and fire androids to Earth in pods to take over in key positions. But his plan is also to destroy all humans with a virus. He really doesn't need both plans, and they conflict with one another. If the pods containing androids will just be mistaken for meteorites, then why does he need the misdirection of Crayford's return? He could just fire the pods to Earth without putting monitoring on alert for a returning spacecraft - which could, after all, endanger the plan - freeing him up to be able to kill the weak link that is Crayford. Or, assuming he needs a ship to get close enough to launch the pods, then why not just make an android copy of Crayford to pilot the ship and speak to mission control? It would be more efficient than brainwashing, and the technology clearly exists to make it happen. Then, if he could use all his supposed Kraal genius to work out a way to just shoot the virus to Earth in the pods, he could cut out the need for any other androids, and all that faff training them up for so long. Evil geniuses, they never learn: keep it simple.

Connectivity: 

The Android Invasion and The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone both feature a Doctor travelling with a single female companion, plus the inclusion of a semi-regular character first introduced with a previous Doctor.

Deeper Thoughts:

Double History. The Android Invasion is one of a rich seam of Doctor Who stories, from throughout its lifetime, that fall in to a particular category: rip-offs of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This Doctor Who story - with its sinister versions of familiar people emerging from pods - is pretty blatant, but it's only one of many, many examples. A couple of classic monsters - the Autons and the Zygons - are wholly built around the duplication and substitution method cribbed from Body Snatchers, and a couple of others have dabbled (the Sontarans used their cloning tech to make a fake Martha in The Sontaran Stratagem, the Daleks made a robot copy of the Doctor in The Chase that even looked like him from some angles). In the lower monster divisions, the Chameleons were the first Body Snatcher types to appear in the series, and Axos had a go copying Bill Filer. Then there was Sharaz Jek making android copies of people in The Caves of Androzani, and the various android makers of Tara doing similar (in The Androids of Tara) and probably many more that I've forgotten.

Doctor Who loves a doppelgänger (oh yes, of course, I forgot the Gangers from The Rebel Flesh / The Almost People, I knew there were more!). There's a few obvious reasons why; it allows a regular actor to play someone different, and usually evil, to demonstrate their range, or prevent them getting bored. In the early days, this didn't require much plot reconciliation beyond just throwing in a massive coincidence. William Hartnell got to play his double the Abbot of Amboise in The Massacre, and Patrick Troughton Salamander in The Enemy of the World, with no need for any clever trickery on anyone's part; the characters just happened to look exactly like their respective Doctors. By the time of later original series examples - Tom Baker as Meglos, Peter Davison as Omega - this clearly wouldn't wash, so some technobabble about copying body prints or some-such was tossed in. 21st century Doctor Who allowed its star to flex his acting muscles only a couple of times, with Matt Smith playing a copy of the Doctor in the aforementioned Ganger episodes, and David Tennant becoming two subtley different versions of the Doctor in Journey's End. Tennant memorably also got to play John Smith, a completely different character, in Human Nature / The Family of Blood. But, as both characters occupy the same body in that story it's not quite the same, and is more like a character possessed (another trope Doctor Who loves to do) than a dopplegänger situation.

The other main reason for lookalikes appearing in Doctor Who is not so much arising from the plot as it is a quirk of casting on a long-running show: the 'haven't I seen you somewhere before' factor. In the 20th century, this was just one of those things and didn't warrant explanation or even comment for the most part. As mentioned above, Milton Johns played several guest roles on Doctor Who over the years without rationalisation in the script, as did Bernard Horsfall, Micheal Sheard, Philip Madoc and loads of others. No one batted an eyelid when this happened with regulars either: Peter Purves and Ian Marter played different characters before they became companions Steven and Ian respectively, and Jacqueline Hill played a different character later without the Doctor commenting that she was the dead spit of his old friend Barbara.  Even a Doctor (Colin Baker) was cast after having been in the series in a guest role the previous year. It's only with the post 2005 stories that it becomes necessary to hang a hat on this with some exposition: Eve Myles and Freema Agyemen's one-off characters were mentioned as being related to the regulars they later played. Peter Capaldi, cast like Colin Baker as Doctor after an earlier guest role, has picked the face deliberately to remind him to be kind or something. The only one I can think of that's never been explained is why Karen Gillan was in ancient Pompeii before becoming regular character Amy Pond. But as current showrunner Chris Chibnall has expressed a desire to bring Pond back it's not too late. Just as long as a plot tidying up some age old continuity can tempt Karen Gillan back from Hollywood paychecks and budgets, it can't fail! 

In Summary:

Unfairly overlooked - this is a lot of (silly) fun.