Review: THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE

A little while back, I did a post on the perverse, experimental and rather wonderful Man in the Velvet Mask. But don’t get too excited: by contrast, this book represents a polar-opposite approach of traditionalist, continuity-ridden, pedestrian writing. But hey, what was I expecting – this is a Gary Russell, after all!

This isn’t a bad, bad novel (I could point to many that are much worse); it’s readable, even enjoyable – it is just wholly lacking invention or inspiration. Which wouldn’t bother me so much, except, given the detestation the former novel still receives, this is apparently what people want from Doctor Who novels. I mean, really?! Are people’s expectations so low?

This feels like less a novel and more an excuse to explain various inane FAQs from the series that have been niggling our Gary: namely, C19’s role in UNIT’s affairs (from Time-Flight and Who Killed Kennedy); the Brigadier’s family life with his first wife Fiona (all set for Battlefield and Downtime); the circumstances of Mike Yates’ promotion to captain (!); the initial encounter between the Doctor and the Triad from Warriors of the Deep; and (more laudably) Liz’s final story.

It’s like, once these boxes were ticked, he then draped an uninspired plot around them. It doesn’t help that despite its ‘traditional’ feel, the whole thing is rather mean-spirited; there’s lots of drearily wannabe-graphic shootings and decapitations, which are presumably meant to be cool, in a nihilistic way, but which don’t actually mean anything and are therefore utterly pointless.

The author’s note, which amounts to a bitchy rant against the rec.arts.drwho users who had the temerity to criticise the pseudo-science of his earlier Missing Adventure, (snigger) Invasion of the Cat-People, doesn’t help, starting things off on a slightly uncomfortable note. (It’s both annoying when authors wilfully ignore even the most basic scientific principles, and also when readers pick fictional science apart, but, I can’t help thinking: they were probably just having a laugh – get over it, Gary.)

The idea of alien invasions’ leftovers being used by the government for its own devices, while not desperately original (and this was years before Torchwood!), has potential. Unfortunately, this is undermined by Russell’s lack of restraint: there’s barely a relevant TV story which isn’t unambiguously catalogued. A little subtlety would’ve gone a long way here; maybe the author doesn’t trust us to work out anything too taxing – the monstrous dog infected with green slime, for example, really didn’t need to be called ‘Stahlman’s Hound’.

There is such a cavalcade of eager, fan-pleasing ideas (look – the base of an Imperial Dalek!), that they become very irritating, very quickly. Similarly, the book is crawling with unnecessary references to everyone from Sir Charles Sudbury to Group Captain Gilmore, Ann Travers, Ruth Ingram, George Hibbert… Gahhh! Give me strength! Struggling under this torrent of fanwank, the already barely-present Doctor seems rather anodyne; he rubs his neck a lot and a few ‘old chap’s are thrown in, but there’s nothing to make this ring true as Pertwee’s Doctor.

None of this would matter if Russell’s prose wasn’t deeply underwhelming (there are lots of phrases of the ‘He felt very hot’ variety), and, tonally, it’s irritatingly pompous and moralistically preachy. There is even an annoying tendency to reuse already all too ubiquitous quotes (sleep is for tortoise – come on!). Even the title’s crap! A book featuring Silurians with the word ‘scales’ in its title. Oh dear. (And speaking of the Silurians: a few names with apostrophes in them doesn’t cut it as world building. Although, to give him his dues, at least he didn’t ditch their third eyes and give them whip-like tongues and minidresses instead.)

Writing this, I feel a lot less well-disposed to the book than I did when reading it. It’s not hateful, or unbelievably bad. In a way though, it’s worse than that for being so depressingly unoriginal. You can really see all the joins – Russell obviously thinks he’s allowing us to relate to Mike Yates or whatever, or making the story into a sizzling rollercoaster ride. He isn’t. If this were a one-off author, I’d let him off. But this is a man who has had his fingers in all the Doctor Who pies – DWM, Big Finish, and even the new series. The day this man becomes showrunner, we’re doomed.


Read Who Killed Kennedy instead.

"Can't shoot me unless you’ve filled in all the forms, is that it?"

Review: INFERNO
Written by Don Houghton, directed by Douglas Camfield, 1970

Happening to watch this after The Invasion, I was surprised – even given that story’s influence on the season seven format – how unprecedented Inferno feels. The earth-exile concept is understandably taken for granted now, but given the relatively few contemporary-set sixties stories, in the context of what had gone before it’s quite a departure.

In fact, it’s almost like an alternative Doctor, or a reboot: a TARDIS-less, earth-bound kung fu dandy with a car and a whole military organisation backing him up. It couldn’t be much further from the distrustful old man in his junkyard, could it? (Given all the changes in format, it seems strange that the recognisable police box prop has been removed from the equation, rather than using it as a reminder that, no, you’re not watching the wrong program.)

Despite this gear change, I’m torn between whether season seven feels different from what’s gone before… or just the same, but in colour. There’s probably an argument for both views, but I think things are confused by the fact that there are precedents to season seven: The War Machines, The Web of Fear, The Invasion have similarities of style and approach – but weren’t representative of the contemporaneous norm. What’s different is tone: the year before this, Pat was battling Quarks on an alien planet; now it’s zombies and fascist versions of his friends in a bleak industrial complex.

It’s a cliché to say that season seven is grittier, more adult, etc, but it’s hard to avoid – the infected humans’ grey-blue Romero-zombie pallor is much more visceral than anything prior, especially without the light comedy relief of a character like Jamie taking the edge off. (It’s certainly not the plots per se that have changed – Inferno as a story is your basic scientific research gone wrong – but it is elevated by its execution.)

There is a big perceived division within fandom between the sixties and the rest of the series, which is only really attributable to the transition from black and white to colour (there seems to be a lot of people who’d happily watch season seven onward, but not touch anything from the sixties). Apart from the fatuousness of this opinion, it’s ironic how much cheaper and less attractive the programme looks in colour (especially emphasising the location/studio difference). It’s probably the advent of colour that really makes this division seem a big deal (imagine if Troughton’s last season had been in colour – the sixties-seventies/Second-Third Doctor division would seem a lot less absolute).

Another thing that does make Pertwee’s era seem tacky: unrealistic scientific establishments. I know nothing about drilling, but this is so obviously unrealistic, with its hall-of-mirrors walls… I suppose that ‘near future’ thing can answer for a lot. (I like the way they get a handyman on a bike in to fix the hi-tech drillhead.) This probably isn’t much different to Fury from the Deep, etc, but the run of season seven’s relative realism makes it more apparent. On the other hand, the power station location work is rather handsome.

The Doctor himself almost doesn’t feel like a continuation of the Doctor we know, and having him already established in a setting feels odd. However, by comparison to Doctors One and Two, he works excellently – a bastard, yes, but a cheery, breezy one. Love his opera cape, too. In fact, the simplicity of his ‘Sunday best’ (or rather, relative simplicity, compared to later purple-silk-lined checked hunting capes) is appropriately iconic – only a slight but effective variation on the First and Second’s costumes. (Given later contrasts, it’s surprising how similar they all are – essentially the same ‘Edwardian’ outfit of black jacket, cravat or bowtie, just the formal, hobo and dandy versions.)

Pertwee himself is a weird one – from the heights of the programme’s seventies popularity, he is one of the ‘most classic’ of the classic Doctors, but one who’s experienced a backlash over his chauvinism and authoritarian arrogance… Whereas Tom (charisma, humour, danger – all at once!) is still perfectly acceptable to a modern audience, Pertwee has fallen out of favour. Unfortunately, this is one of those bits of fan ‘wisdom’ which I’ve been swayed by – a shame, cos I love Pertwee, and the Third Doctor – so it’s great to see him holding his own in such a brutal and unforgiving story. (He’s brilliant playing it straight, isn’t he?) And – he does KUNG FU! (He even threatens to permanently paralyse Stahlmann…)

I’ve always loved Liz, too: capable but long-suffering – and generally fab! (I like her little curtsey when the Doctor sonics the door open for her.) She’s such a leap from the younger, more comic and less realistically-grounded Zoe and Jamie (although it’s arguable that this is exactly one of the things which diminished this season’s ratings – god forbid everything isn’t as accessible as possible! Nothing changes, does it?). She’s even an equal to the Brigadier in a way Jo or Sarah never are – he even calls her by her first name.

Anyway – I absolutely love Doctor Who played straight, and it really doesn’t get much grimmer than this, Androzani being an obvious exception (although Inferno has the advantage of being set in a recognisable world (or two)); everything feels similarly inexorable here. It’s also refreshing to have Doctor Who go fully apocalyptic, when understandably it’s normally part of the programme’s makeup for the Doctor to save the day (otherwise resulting in cop-outs like Last of the Time Lords).

Intercutting the doomed world with ‘our’ world makes everything all the more horrific. The final cut from now-familiar characters, threatened by lava, to the Doctor lying on the floor in silence is particularly shocking because of what it doesn’t spell out: all those characters have died horribly. And, despite helping the Doctor get back to save our world, they would have died anyway, so their deaths feel surprisingly nihilistic and meaningless. (The Fires of Pompeii notwithstanding – where all the sympathetic characters survive – Russell T would never have gone this far.)

Whether it’s really different from what went before, or more of the same with a fresh lick of paint, this story is great – it certainly feels fresh and different, despite being a long-established part of the Doctor Who story.

Ten Stories #3: "The man's a fool!"

Review: THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH
Written by David Whitaker, Trevor Ray (episode 1, uncredited), Malcolm Hulke (episodes 2-7, uncredited), Terrance Dicks (episodes 2-7, uncredited), directed by Michael Ferguson, 1970

It’s hard to retrospectively judge the changeover to colour, especially since this story, with its Ipcress File stylings, particularly suits black and white (although that film was in colour, but hush…). The black and white clips at the beginning of the VHS act as a brilliant trailer, while unfortunately looking far better than the colour footage; the sets and CSO are hugely improved. The titles especially must have been dazzling though – they still have such an unearthly, technicolour allure.

It’s often all too easy to lump the earliest Doctors’ eras together when considering the entirety of Doctor Who in overview, but with its stark industrial settings, this is a massive leap. It’s bleak, glum, austere; visually alone, it really doesn’t feel ‘teatime’. There aren’t many Doctor Who stories Michael Caine’s Jack Carter would feel at home in, but this is one of them.

Its stylishness – the much-cited shooting into the sun and fast cuts between Liz and the (brief) reveal of the Ambassador’s face, with building music – gives much more ‘coherent’ an approach than we’re arguably used to. The Invasion set a precedent for stories like Ambassadors, but, despite its relative ‘realism,’ it still featured supervillians and lairs, etc. Ambassadors is on a whole different level of realism again.

I also really like the earthbound setting when viewed as a not-quite-right ‘near future,’ especially since this is something people tend to ignore now. And it’s lovely (as in the later Invasion of the Dinosaurs) to have a bit of intrigue in Doctor Who. The whole thing is strangely – but appealingly – inaccessible (by comparison to the series’ most popular periods): things aren’t made easy for the audience; the good guys don’t have charming foibles, and the villains aren’t moustache-twirling clichés. The characters we have here are no longer larger than life figures – at least for a brief interlude. The Doctor doesn’t even stage the expected daring rescue when Liz is kidnapped; this very clearly isn’t the action-adventure world the Doctor usually operates in.

He does take control quickly and in a more assured manner than we’re used to, but the downside of the new realism is that it makes our hero feel like a much more conventional lead than previously. Though no Doctor in and of themselves is dated (in terms of performance or acting – ie, they are all still effective), Pertwee is arguably the most generic, as he is broadly comparable to John Steed or Jason King. Even in the aforementioned trailer alone, the Doctor, who features only as a talking head, is immediately a massive departure from his two predecessors. It’s decisiveness that makes him seem like an ‘action hero’ in a way the first two don’t; the decisive, grim Third Doctor is the closest the character has been to a conventional action hero so far.

Appropriately, even the Brigadier is at a level of all-time competence in this story, and doesn’t question the astronauts being aliens when the Doctor tells him. He’s shrewd, and has also changed his tune since the Silurians, when he disagrees with Carrington’s pre-emptive strike on the Ambassadors’ ship.

However, in the end, despite my attraction to its tone, Ambassadors is almost too dour – not that Doctor Who shouldn’t do this, but in the sense that there isn’t a great deal of variety of location, etc, in this period; the tone could have been used in conjunction with more varied stories (ie, there’s no reason, technically, why a Mawdryn Undead or Ghost Light format couldn’t have been used in the earth-exile period). Also, considering Carrington’s plan hinges on public reaction, this is an example of a story that could have been improved by showing the public or domestic sphere, as per the new series.

Overall its maturity in trying to be an adult thriller is its weakness; Inferno, say, is intelligent and mature but still plays with pulpy ideas (men into monsters and parallel worlds), whereas Ambassadors’ attempt at being a gritty adult drama is belied and undermined by a slight shoddiness (plot holes, continuity errors, under-directed extras) which seems more pronounced in relation to its high intentions.