"Diz-zy Da-leks!"

Review: EVIL OF THE DALEKS

Audio soundtrack of incomplete story, written by David Whitaker, directed by Derek Martinus, 1967

Like The Massacre, it’s a massive cliché that this is a ‘best story’ contender. Similarly – and perhaps even more evidently – Evil of the Daleks very obviously lives up to that reputation. Before listening to it, this story already particularly appealed to me, helped I suppose by its popular status, but mainly because of the quite delicious combination of sixties-style machiavellian Daleks with a rich Victorian setting.

It’s not a particularly original observation to say that I love this story’s tone, but its – for this period – rare combination of creepiness, intrigue, and complexity is a massively satisfying cocktail. We might not be able to watch it, but I still rate Evil as one of the best ever stories the series has produced. Contrary to a general viewer’s expectations, it also flatters the audience’s intelligence a lot more than its modern equivalent – although, in fairness, it does have the luxury of a slow buildup, over seven episodes, with enough event and ideas packed into Whitaker’s scripts to ensure this (unusual) length doesn’t become detrimental.     

In fact, let’s just say it: David Whitaker is a genius. Like Robert Holmes, he comes across as a writer capable of far ‘better’ than genre stuff of this nature, but who elevated the series with an intuitive grasp of its indefinable essence, a love for which is tangible here. Even his attention to detail is impossible to underestimate, and a major part of the reason why a story like this, junked though it is, remains so impressive. Elements like Waterfield’s struggles with twentieth century slang or the much-derided concept of time travelling with static electricity and mirrors (which I love for its blend of ‘science’ and magic, creating something far more evocative than pure, unintelligible technobabble), exhibit a resonance a more perfunctory jobbing writer would deem beyond the call of duty.

The combination of science and magic is quite an apparent component within this story, which is a rather less straightforward and nakedly pulpy concept than those exhibited in the preceding The Faceless Ones, The Macra Terror, The Moonbase, or The Underwater Menace. None of those stories feature an idea as brilliant – and effortless – as that of a Dalek suddenly barging out of Maxtible’s cabinet of mirrors; a particularly sparkling fusion of sci-fi and Narnia-reversal, also millions of mile from the guerrillas and space plagues and alien jungles of Terry Nation. Experiencing the sci-fi elements of the story from the perspective of the Victorian characters (eg, talk of “thought patterns on silver wire”) is also a smart way of avoiding tedious technobabble, and further adds a gratifying veneer of fairytale to the Daleks’ technology.

Fully in keeping with this tone is the mad scientist Maxtible, who does everything he does because of his blinkered desire for the alchemical secret of transmuting metals into gold (“The Daleks know many secrets”). Incidentally, the actor Marius Goring is actually quite a casting coup if you’re familiar with his roles in Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death or The Red Shoes.

Jamie and Victoria – steadfast Jacobite and willowy Victorian soon-to-be orphan – also illustrate a more storybook or fantasy approach to the series than predecessors like the Swinging Sixties Ben and Polly or the ‘futuristic’ Steven and Vicki. As in the most recent season, I enjoy this take on the material, which seems a more effortless fit for Doctor Who than (going out on a limb here) the militarised UNIT era or the self-consciously urban Davies years. There is perhaps a danger of tweeness in the series drawing on (the modern conception of) fairy stories, but Whitaker counters this by peppering his scripts with little twists of sharpness, Jamie’s startlingly unexpected run-in with the Doctor being the prime example (more on that later).

The incongruity of Daleks in a Victorian house – or even of Victorian inventors on Skaro – feels quite glorious, and draws on parallels and opposition in a way that creates a lot more depth and significance than the other previously mentioned stories of this season muster, regardless of their quality. Even the Daleks themselves (“mechanical beasties”) are presented in a more fantastical way than before or since - eg, in their ‘possession’ of Terrall - while the whole concept of a distillable human or Dalek ‘factor’ is brilliantly rich and fantastical too. There’s no comparative frisson to Cybermen invading the moon, for example. 


Even in encompassing all three of Doctor Who’s stomping grounds, in its past, present, and future locations, Evil of the Daleks sets itself apart as something broader and more significant than its season four bedfellows. (How many contemporaneous writers must’ve kicked themselves for not going through with such a deceptively simple idea?) And it doesn’t stop there! There’s even a return to Skaro, an unprecedented event during this period - and, relatively speaking, soon enough after The Daleks to feel authentic, in the way that Attack of the Cybermen’s belated return visit to Telos… doesn’t. This return trip might be the most fabulously aberrant and ‘knowing’ element of Doctor Who at this point (and compared to the majority of the subsequent run) – something that’s hard to fully appreciate in a period when the series refers back to earlier stories as a matter of course.

That Whitaker manages to top all this is no mean feat, but he does so, with the dazzling (dizzying?) conceit of the friendly Daleks which the Doctor creates with the introduction of ‘the human factor’. In lesser hands, childlike Daleks could be a disastrous concept of the proportions of The Chase’s ‘thick Dalek’. It’s almost as if Whitaker was attempting to show how easily Terry Nation’s treatment of his own creations could be bettered – that he succeeds must’ve been a bit of a slap in the face, because the friendly Daleks highlight the creatures’ deviousness, rather than diffusing it. (The slurred friendly Daleks’ voices are almost more unnerving than ever: “Frieeends, frieeends…”.) In fact, that all this was done forty-four years ago shows up even Big Finish (never a company to shy away from any possible way of wringing a new take out of old material) – but Daleks playing trains is more postmodern a variation than I think even they would attempt in their numerous Dalek revisitations.

There’s a lot that’s unexpectedly metatextual here, for such an early story – not least people walking around arms outstretched, essentially pretending to be Daleks – which goes a long way to demonstrating what a before-its-time story this is. It’s full of brave ideas and intelligent use of the series’ tropes, to an extent that’s arguably far more sophisticated than the vast majority of seasons that would follow. Given the Daleks’ previous ‘servants’ routine in Power, Whitaker obviously couldn’t help but use them more interestingly than almost anyone else. Even the idea of the Daleks making the Doctor help them is an original, lateral idea – again, making the ever-diminishing returns of Terry Nation’s space plagues and alien jungles even more pitiable. (You almost feel sorry for him, don’t you? Oh, wait: Planet of the Daleks is 150 minutes I’m never getting back, so, no, I don’t.)

Considering that (collect-’em-all colour schemes aside) the Daleks were essentially unchanged in their last on screen appearance, in 2010, it’s remarkable that anyone even felt it necessary to treat them so inventively only four years after their very first appearance. (And yet we still have to endure outings like Victory of the Daleks. Oh dear.)

Even the – seemingly obvious – idea of a Dalek Emperor, although already essayed in the TV21 Dalek Chronicles strip, is more of a departure than any seen in previous Dalek stories since their shock reappearance at the conclusion of The Dalek Invasion of Earth episode one. The Emperor’s voice may be changeable, but is quite brilliant, especially in episode seven, where its harsh booming fills me with fannish glee. Similarly, the Daleks are also at their sixties best, with a genuine deviousness which actually makes them a credibly unpleasant force to be reckoned with. Even in small moments like threatening Victoria with force-feeding they are especially malicious, and as well as being particularly scheming, they seem especially violent and aggressive.

The story’s above-par treatment of familiar elements extends to the Doctor himself; in the first two episodes, his increasing bafflement and eventual realisation of who is manipulating events is extremely persuasive, not least for the fear Troughton brings to the role. Though massively over-complicated, the set-up to the plot and the Doctor’s Holmesian deduction is very satisfying. The various red herrings of the plot also ensure it doesn’t become stretched thin. Also, its large cast of varied characters (Bob Hall, Kennedy, Arthur Terrall, Maxtible, Waterfield, Victoria, Molly, Kemel, etc) feels very ambitious and wide-ranging, or rather, by comparison makes a lot of contemporaneous stories seem quite lazy and lacking. Even that events are already underway prior to the Doctor and Jamie’s arrival on the scene marks it out as more ambitious and involved than the norm.

Similarly, Whitaker’s handling of Jamie’s relationship to the Doctor, their argument, and the Doctor’s manipulation of his friend into doing what he needs of him, is actually quite shocking. These characters usually have such rapport, and I tend to think of Jamie as quite a twee character; his anger and scorn toward the Doctor is very rare within the show (what, Ian, Barbara, Ace and Donna are the only ones to really row with him – maybe Steven?). “No, you’ll not get round me this time, Doctor! … You and me, we’re finished! You’re just too callous for me.” The most clownish and likeable of Doctors is notably sharper in this story; cooler, more collected and knowing than we’re used to, he feels very much like a precursor to the Seventh. Whitaker also has a handle on making the Doctor seem grand and mythic, which seems very before its time, even in small lines like his quiet comment of the Crimean War: “I watched the charge of the Light Brigade; magnificent folly.”

(Speaking of companions, Victoria interestingly doesn’t fall into the companion role in her first story, meaning the previously-unseen rockiness of the Doctor and Jamie’s friendship is allowed to play out against the backdrop of a rare all-male TARDIS crew.)

By comparison to the enigmatic, richly evocative beginning, the last episodes are almost disappointingly ‘sci-fi,’ but this is nevertheless an unprecedentedly complex and multi-layered story for the period. Having said that, the period/sci-fi contrast is most effectively mined by the music, specifically with a rather wonderful changeover from acoustic instruments to pulsing, sinister electronic music when Daleks are afoot. Though I imagine the Skaro sections were less visually interesting than the Maxtible mansion, I choose to imagine Raymond Cusick’s Skaro sets and the original Dalek city model from The Daleks, especially since Evil uses the same echoey sound effects from that story.

I don’t want to be too hagiographic, but there’s so much going for this story that it’s no wonder it’s been a favourite for so long – conceptually alone, it’s a keeper, with big, brilliant ideas like the Daleks’ manipulation of the Doctor, and his own corresponding deviousness; humanised Daleks; Dalekised humans; a Dalek civil war…

I’m a great believer in judging Doctor Who stories on relative terms, but, from an era when the format was being pared down, with the removal of straight historicals, and a move into the ‘base under seige’ format that the production team were perhaps inadvisably keen on, Evil of the Daleks comes across as something as an embarrassment of riches, a massively impressive story which remains unbeatable and relatively seldom challenged in terms of its wide-ranging, magical content.

"Keep warm"

Review: THE TENTH PLANET
Written by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, directed by Derek Martinus, 1966

Watched alongside The Next Doctor and Attack of the Cybermen in an inadvertent cyber-fest, it’s fascinating having a chance to directly reconcile these wildly disparate periods of Doctor Who. These stories couldn’t be more different (despite all featuring the Cybermen), but are comparable in that none of them are very good examples of their eras.

Of the three stories, I actually found Attack the most enjoyable (bizarrely, as it is rubbish). It’s gratifying to see the Sixth Doctor – magician’s outfit and all – in an urban environment (a relatively unsanitised one, to boot), while Colin Baker’s dangerously unhinged joie de vivre comes across particularly well when combined with how compelling he is playing it straight.

Where Attack is infamously unfocused, with too many elements crammed in, The Tenth Planet is altogether more lacking. It has a status verging on the legendary, but this just isn’t deserved.

As a huge fan of the sixties, and of Hartnell in particular, this story is a massive disappointment. It feels like what I guess non-fans’d expect Doctor Who of this era to be like: dull and naïve and humourless. Which is ironic, as it barely feels like Doctor Who at all; it has a very fifties mentality (making a mockery of its then future setting), while the Doctor, Polly and (at least initially) Ben, are barely involved. There are plenty of Doctor Who environments which would be perfectly compelling sans regulars, but unfortunately this isn’t one of them.

The dynamism of The War Machines’ extreme angles and crash-zooms is replaced here by choppy editing and an impetus-less story. Much as I love Ben and Polly, even they seem depressingly at home in this shlocky situation – they seem like the arbitrary young couple archetype they normally surpass. Polly is saddled with some particularly dubious B-movie expository dialogue, while Ben is reduced to narrating aloud what he’s doing (though Michael Craze’s likeability and evident devotion to the character still carries the part – that he’s a fox and looks good with a machine gun undeniably helps).

The story itself is undermined by clichéd characters like the tediously intransigent Dyson, and hokey science. (The idea of a mirror-image planet rolling up is stupid enough to work on Doctor Who terms, but patently inaccurate scientific ideas such as said planet turning into a sun, and the boring-as-sin space programme, are rather more unforgivable.) Although mainly due to the upside down globe used to represent Mondas, that it takes everyone so long to realise why the planet looks ‘so familiar’ makes the production seem particularly moronic.

On the other hand, General Cutler is quite threatening because rather than being ‘bad’ per se, he simply has no respect for the Doctor (the blunt line, “I don’t like your face. Nor your hair,” is surprisingly shocking for its relative crudeness). He’s still rather tedious though, and that’s the most memorable character of the lot!

As a late video release, The Tenth Planet isn’t an established bastion of Doctor Who in the way the earliest VHS releases are (your Arks in Space and Day of the Daleks; the ones which invariably turn up in car boot sales). As such, the Cybermen here feel like retrospectively-devised Hartnell-era parodies of the Earthshock and Troughton versions. And you couldn’t make up a more sixties-looking version of the Cybermen! However, they work, if mainly in concept over realisation (though my appreciation of this design does owe a lot to Adrian Salmon’s DWM Cybermen strip, which made them look fantastically low-tech, chunky and powerful).

Though not my favourite Cyberman design – that’d have to be the sleek Wheel in Space wetsuit-and-garter look – I’d take these over the noodley ‘high-tech’ eighties version any day. There’s something grotesque about their crudeness, which is lacking in all later versions: the sense that they really are corpses with technological additions bolted on. With their creepy, doll-like faces, the Cybermen are arguably at their most potent here. (Helped by their booming theme, which sounds pleasingly – if unexpectedly – like something from Liars’ Drum’s Not Dead album.)

Though due to unavoidable rewrites, it does seem somewhat inexcusable that, in the swansong of the original Doctor, Hartnell gets very little send off. It’s certainly no finale; it’s only episode three in which he is completely written out, but even when present, he barely gets anything to do. (Has the Doctor ever been so passive in scenes where he’s present? At least his apparent prescience is interesting.) It’s fortunate then that when he does appear, Hartnell is on great form – both playful and exuding great authority (he is especially at his commanding best in episode four). He genuinely enlivens the scenes he’s actually in, and is the main source of enjoyment in this lacklustre story.

It’s hard to judge the first regeneration on the basis of The Tenth Planet, as it is only actually addressed in Power of the Daleks. I like the mysteriousness of the Doctor’s change – but still wish there were more build-up to it. God knows David Tennant’s exit from the show in The End of Time was cringeworthily overblown, thanks to Russell T Davies’ all too keen awareness of the expectations surrounding it - so maybe it’s best to appreciate the low-key nature of this initial, ground-breaking change. In fact, the poor-quality footage of the build-up to the regeneration used in the VHS reconstruction – grainy, strobbing images; all throbbing menace – is rather glorious; the whole thing has a climactic feel despite its lack of build up. There is an eeriness to this regeneration which is unmatched by any of those to come, where it would become a somewhat flashier, more crowd-pleasing (and obviously, expected) occurrence.

There is pathos in Hartnell’s last weakened handful of lines, increased by their understatedness (“I must go now”) – in comparison to a speech contrived to show how ‘fantastic’ he was. In fact, there is a wonderful weary sadness to his final dialogue, despite how little light it sheds on what is about to happen. I suppose, viewed in this way, even the Doctor’s marginalisation from the story adds to the poignancy of what amounts to his death.

Ten Stories #2: "He's got a printed circuit where his heart should be!"

Review: THE ICE WARRIORS
Written by Brian Hayles, directed by Derek Martinus, 1967

Especially in contrast to the audacity of The Chase, I increasingly can’t help feeling the Troughton era was went things started to go wrong for Doctor Who. Not that his era is bad – or that Doctor Who was ‘bad’ after the sixties generally – but, after the wildly varied and experimental Hartnell seasons, this was where reductive thinking started to mould the series into a more fixed format.

Both because Troughton’s so lovable and because so many of his stories are missing, negative feeling toward his years feels almost in bad taste, whereas Hartnell is less easily accessible, and, with more stories to judge, is more often considered fair game. This imbalance in critical feeling towards the two eras does seem somewhat unfair, cos Troughton’s era is so much less interesting…!

But – it’s still enormously exciting seeing a whole new Troughton (well, ‘whole’ in a manner of speaking). I tend not to distinguish between stories I know are completely missing, or are only lacking a couple of episodes, so in my head this story has always been filed ‘I will never see this’. But really, two episodes missing out of six is pretty good!

There are so few Troughtons that it’s easy to take him for granted, not having a great amount of variety to judge him on – but seeing him anew, in a new context, reinforces how fab he is (despite what I might think about his era as a whole). It’s also easy to forget what a massive leap he is from Hartnell (reminiscent of the Eccleston/Tennant handover). Troughton compares very strongly against Tennant, in fact (who isn’t a personal fave, but it’s great seeing a dusty old Doctor genuinely holding his own against the current mainstream one, the current benchmark); I shouldn’t be surprised, it’s just there tends to be so much hyperbole about the current incumbent. He’s so adorable that if you could put him in a story today people’d still love him. (As an aside, it’s interesting that the Doctor here considers himself a scientist – which seems remarkably mundane; now he’s a hero or champion, or even lost prince or lonely god.)

The story is a strong one from a production point of view: juxtaposing a period setting with futuristic trappings is always a striking visual device, and the combination of the manor and pop art printed-circuit costumes is very effective. Also, although this is a seemingly studio-bound story, we get a surprisingly good impression of the future ice age, with its caves and ice-falls. Despite the tell-tale squeak of polystyrene, the ice caves actually look impressively detailed (it helps they don’t have flat studio floors), while the creepy score helps give the story lashings of atmosphere. Also, Penley is a massively likeable character – when he meets the Doctor, it almost feels like two Doctors for the price of one. (Stor is an annoying bumpkin though.)

The Ice Warriors themselves are very effective monsters for this period – solid and memorably designed (the bipedal but inhuman silhouette is very successful), though the big-headed extras are quite a lot crapper. (They also show the later Ice Lords up as a pointlessly less effective variation.) In fact, these Warriors really wouldn’t require much alteration to still be effective on screen today. I love going back to old Doctor Who and it not feeling old; it makes you realise how little current Doctor Who has changed (the TARDIS team turn up, the Doctor sticks his nose in, and takes over the situation; this has never changed).

The Ice Warriors actually seems to have quite a bad reputation, at least lately (and maybe justifiably within season five), but it is a good story (and not just because it’s new to me); however, it doesn’t sparkle, and perhaps would have worked better as a four-parter.

Having watched stories from both sixties eras consecutively, what strikes me about the earliest two Doctors’ stories is that it isn’t effects which makes the current series more acceptable to modern audiences, by comparison to the old; it’s more the editing and general quality of the filming as a whole rather than individual effects that make the old series ‘unacceptable’ to a modern audience. This should be really obvious, but it’s a personal bugbear of mine that people are so dismissive of things for entirely superficial reasons.

In fact, I love the sixties specifically for its unique feel; the grainy B&W of the sixties is incomparably more atmospheric than, particularly, the crisp, too-bright eighties – and is beautiful in a way no other era compares with. It’s like the difference between vinyl and CD; it has an evocativeness to it even if you had no firsthand experience of it. Perhaps a better comparison is between Polaroid and digital pictures; whereas digital has a basic default colour balance that makes everything look the same, bland and ‘ordinary,’ Polaroid’s unique colour casts and imperfect development make everything look incomparably cooler.