Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s)

by Robert Shearman

  T: Larry’s self-sacrifice actually brought a tear to my eye. It’s so sad, and the mutual death is horribly touching – kudos to Peter Badger, who I understand added Robo-Phil’s final utterance of “Larry” in rehearsal. This allows the two brothers to be together, fleetingly, one final time, in their dying moments. It’s a typically grim Nation subplot, but he’s smashing at this kind of Boys’ Own stuff.

  But yes... the “waking” what? The “ally” who? Perhaps this refers to the Doctor being on his feet again, but he woke up last week (albeit out of shot). And anyway, he wasn’t supposed to be out of action then, and I’ve not heard of the title being altered at the last minute due to Hartnell’s injury. And even if that were the case, is there nothing else of note about which they could have named this episode? How about “Slyther Me Timbers” or “Fratricide of Doom” or (sorry) “Prisoners of Cod Science”. Whatever the reason, I bet it’s the only time in the history of the English Language that the words “waking” and “ally” have ever resided next to each other.

  And I really must try to perfect the “flirting over dead fish” technique that David uses on Susan sometime – it’s terribly effective and results in (for Doctor Who, at least) quite a passionate kiss. And the Doctor’s being a wily cove about this: “Something’s cooking,” he says gleefully, twinkling at the young lovers.

  January 26th

  Flashpoint (The Dalek Invasion of Earth episode six)

  R: I suppose, if you wanted to be critical, you could argue that wrapping up the entire invasion of Earth in 15 minutes flat is just too easy. And of course it is – but I think that rather misses the point. The plot of The Dalek Invasion of Earth is nonsense. For Heaven’s sake, it relies upon the idea that the Daleks want to mine the magnetic core of the planet, replace it with an engine and fly it around the galaxy like a bus. But Nation was always more interested in the symbols that the story offered as opposed to its hokey science – and so it is here. The problem with almost every Doctor Who story (classic series and new) is that however epic the crisis offered, the conclusion will inevitably feel a bit glib – and this story is about as truly epic as Doctor Who will ever be.

  But the symbols of the victory do matter, even if the plotting of said victory is rather muddled. After five weeks of Doctor Who being at its most sour, the triumph here as slaves and Robomen alike turn upon the Daleks is very powerful. There’s even a bit of comedy to those symbols, in that lovely scene where Barbara bluffs to the Daleks about several imminent uprisings against them by drawing upon her history teaching – and reminds us in the process of mankind’s ever present desire to fight for freedom through the ages. Yes, it’s ridiculous, the sounding of Big Ben as soon as the invasion has been foiled. But it’s extremely moving too, and Hartnell knows how to play the sentimentality of it perfectly – a hand on Tyler’s shoulder, a smile of hope and a soft repeat of “Just the beginning”. Wonderful.

  And all that is as nothing to the departure of Susan. She’s not been the best written of characters, shame to say, and her potential was clearly squandered. But right up to the end, Carole Ann Ford has tried her damnedest to find that ground between teenage cry baby and strange alien girl, and her final scenes are amongst her very best – she finds at last a cause that gives her identity and a man who loves her, and yet she’s unable to leave her grandfather, unable to grow up. William Hartnell sometimes looks a bit flustered when he’s dealing with plot-mechanics, but give him a scene which invites him to focus on truthful emotion, and he’s heartbreaking. He’s never been better than in the sequence where he puts all his attention upon a hole in Susan’s shoe, awkwardly pretending even to himself that he’ll repair it – that he can continue travelling with the granddaughter he loves so much. It’s not so much the speech that’s later repeated at the start of The Five Doctors that made me cry – oh yes, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I cried all right. It was more the way that having delivered that speech, he rushes the TARDIS dematerialisation with a couple of farewells, quickly, before he can change his mind.

  Did you cry, Toby? Oh go on. I hope it wasn’t just me. I’d feel like a right prawn.

  T: Tears welled, but they didn’t cascade – but then, I’m a tough nut to crack. But before we got to that last scene, there was some fun to be had along the way...

  As you say, final episodes are very difficult when the scale is so large, but I think they get away with it here. Well, almost. You have to wonder, retroactively, why Dortmun put so much effort into perfecting a Dalek-killing bomb when it turns out that simply whacking the Daleks with rocks will be more effective. And there’s a lot happening in that final explosion that finishes off the Dalek mining operation, isn’t there? The stock footage goes all over the place – I can just about buy the lava flow, as the Doctor mentions a volcanic eruption, but is the explosion really so powerful that land falls into the sea and then deserted buildings tumble down?

  But, who cares – this episode is about Susan’s departure. I’ll happily put up with a perfunctory plot resolution because these last ten minutes are the best. Hartnell is just superb, holding his granddaughter close because he knows that when he goes back into the Ship, he’ll never be able to do so again. Carole Ann Ford is good too (although unfortunately, she’s forced to clutch onto a drainpipe at one point), and it remains a shame that she was rarely allowed to be as alien as she was in the pilot. She’s lovely in her parting scene, though, especially when the TARDIS disappears and she puts her hands out to feel where it once stood. It’s a worthy send off, and Hartnell’s oft-quoted final speech is played magnificently.

  I have to say, Terry Nation has come out of this much better than I expected; the successes in this story are largely down to him and the actors involved, but I’m not sure how I’ll cope if they get Richard Martin to do another six-parter. Especially if it involves, say, very little film work and lots of complex and technically demanding studio scenes – that’d give me butterflies.

  The Powerful Enemy (The Rescue episode one)

  R: I was expecting the Doctor to be especially abrasive in this episode, reacting to Susan’s departure by snapping at Ian and Barbara and sulking. But, rather charmingly, he instead wants to fuss over these two companions that he never wanted in the first place, joking with them and showing concern for them and treating them much as if he’s their doting aunt. It gives the impression that he desperately wants to cling to the friends he has left, and it’s the most endearing portrait of the Doctor yet – and a very touching one too, as we can see just how much he’s suffering from the expression on Hartnell’s face when he accidentally asks Susan to open the doors. Barbara’s careful response – that he could perhaps teach her how to do it instead – and his gentle willingness to do so, is pitch perfect. We’ve seen the Doctor hide his feelings before beneath bluster and complaints, but never so vulnerably as here.

  Not an awful lot else really happens in this story, but for once that tranquillity is rather the point, and feels reassuring after the epic crises of the last adventure. The Doctor would far rather take a peaceful nap than explore the caves they’ve landed in, and Ian and Barbara too react to their new surroundings with the cheerful vague interest of a pair of backpackers. The story’s one real attempt to up the ante is when Ian says that he finds the enigmatic alien Koquillion more intimidating than a Dalek – what, really, mate, you’d rather take on a metal Nazi than some chap wearing a spiky headdress? – but it only adds to the charm of this instalment that you can’t really believe him. David Whitaker always seems to write these peculiar two-part filler stories that serve to take into account the state of the TARDIS crew and rethink it. In The Edge of Destruction, he depicted them at their most paranoid and embittered, but through the muddle and confusion of their adventure with a stuck button, they emerged as a recognisable team. Here, he starts from the reverse position, with the TARDIS as comforting an environment as it’s ever been, soon to be shaken by Vicki’s arrival.

  The peculiarity of the epis
ode is that for all you might think it’s there to introduce Maureen O’Brien as Vicki, it doesn’t really give her that much to do. But O’Brien mines every emotion she can out of a script which pretty much confines her to the kitchen – she shows elation, she’s frightened, she stands up to Koquillion, and, best of all, she’s proud enough to reject the look of sympathy she spies on Barbara’s face.

  T: Re-watching the show in order is making me reassess some of my attitudes – for example, I’ve always lauded David Whitaker and pooh-poohed Terry Nation. That might have to do with my in-built resistance to following received wisdom – Nation is probably classic Doctor Who’s most famous writer (well, all right... after Douglas Adams), so obviously I wanted to celebrate the more obscure writers to demonstrate that I don’t follow the herd – because, er, I’m a pretentious twit instead. But so far into this marathon watch, Nation has delivered in spades whilst Whitaker has trotted out the most bonkers 50 minutes in the series thus far.

  Whitaker redeems himself here though, first in providing a nice intro episode for O’Brien – she gets a big emotional scene, and, unlike her predecessor in the last story, doesn’t feel the need to clutch onto a pipe or anything. But do you know, Whitaker shines most in his handling of the regulars, providing a script that demonstrates the great dynamic between the characters and actors alike. Hartnell is very funny here – when Jacqueline Hill informs him that “the trembling” (i.e. the TARDIS engines) has stopped, he excitedly tells her, “Oh, my dear, I’m so glad you’re feeling better...” And he’s brilliantly dismissive when Ian shines the torch in his face to ask about the culprit of the growling Sand Beast-noise – “Well, it’s not me, is it?”, he snaps, hilariously. And I love the way the Doctor refers to sleep as being in “The Arms of Morpheus”; I do the same in Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf. It’s a phrase that was obviously dormant in my subconscious, as I hadn’t knowingly pilfered it from the programme.

  As you can probably tell, this project of ours is making me appreciate William Hartnell in ways that I never have until now. Yes, he makes some blunders (there’s a terrible one here, where he stumbles through his explanation that the TARDIS can travel through solid matter, so they needn’t worry about being trapped underground), but he’s brilliant at complicated material that requires his character to display one emotion while he’s actually feeling another on the inside. And Hartnell has got a face that’s so good in close-up – you get all the nuances of his character if the director is smart enough to exploit this (which is often the case here, including a terrific shot of Hartnell being seen through a magnifying glass).

  Other bits of this episode amuse me... when Ian and Barbara get into the spookily lit cave, they muse about what Susan is up to “now” in post-Dalek invasion Earth – milking cows, they suspect. But, as “now” is several centuries in her future, “being dead” is actually a more probable postulation. It’s a bit more depressing, I know, but that’s time travel for you. Also, isn’t it interesting that Koquillion uses yards as a measurement? He clearly rejects the metric system, and probably resents rules imposed by the EU (Exo-Space Union). And speaking as someone who watches the perilously dwindling population of Battlestar Galactica, I’d like to suggest that Dido’s 100 inhabitants aren’t enough to ensure propagation of the species – at least, not without an awful lot of incest.

  On a final note, I’m thrilled that credited the fictional Sydney Wilson as Koquillion. The production team clearly thought people would be reading the credits and in need of hoodwinking. You hear that, modern TV chiefs? People read the credits. So stop shrinking the bloody things and zipping them through at 200 miles an hour. Just because you can’t read, it doesn’t mean that the audience can’t either.

  January 27th

  Desperate Measures (The Rescue episode two)

  R: I really love the titles to this story – The Powerful Enemy! (Who?) Desperate Measures! (Where?) They’re just so wonderfully melodramatic and misleading. There are occasional moments in this episode when it thinks about rousing itself and having a bit of action – but rather like an elderly dog by a radiator, it thinks better of it, puts its head back under its paws and goes back to sleep. This might be considered a problem if you felt the story ought to be rousing itself – but it clearly doesn’t see this as its raison d’etre, and I don’t think we should either. It’s interesting how, as Doctor Who fans, we get into the habit of looking at all these stories individually and judging them as separate entities – whereas that was clearly not the way the series was viewed at the time. The point of The Rescue is that it’s a couple of weeks’ respite before the major adventuring begins all over again. It’s broadcast straight after Christmas, when everyone’s feeling fat and lazy and too full of turkey to move – this is the Doctor Who equivalent, an amiable enough little diversion that wants to be tackling all its New Year resolutions but hasn’t got the energy to get off the couch yet.

  So we have a main story that is so secondary, the Doctor tells Ian and Barbara about its resolution as if it’s an anecdote: “That Bennett, he turned out to be Koquillion, you know!” No, the purpose of The Rescue is to get Maureen O’Brien on board as a regular, and so its climax is therefore not some strange maniac falling to his death with a scream, but a little girl shyly accepting an invitation around the universe with a smile. The best moments in the episode are from William Hartnell; the way he bonds so easily with the upset child, and immediately establishes a rapport with her; the dignity with which he confronts the murderer Bennett in the hall of judgment and with such bored disdain tells him to get out of his ridiculous costume; and, best of all, the delightful scene in which he hears his friends talk about him over the intercom, and realises what an impression he’s made on Vicki, and how much he’s come to mean to Ian and Barbara. It’d be wrong to describe this latter scene as a defining moment for Hartnell’s Doctor, because it’s far too passive for that – but it’s sweet and uplifting, and nothing else demonstrates just how precisely he’s been redrafted now as a dotty grandfather. (You can see precisely why when Peter Cushing takes on the role in the Aaru movies he plays it the way he does – it’s an imitation of the benign old man with a twinkle in his eye that we see here.)

  T: Indulge me for a moment would, you? I’m watching this off a scratchy VHS recorded off UK Gold, as we’re just a month too early for the release of this story on DVD – which I’m on, as a commentary moderator! So these episodes (and the next four) are among those that I’ve seen more recently than most, because I had to scrutinise them for my moderation duties.

  Picture the scene: on 9th April last year, I was set to make my West End debut. By coincidence, the commentary for The Rescue was scheduled for the same day, so I set off at 6 am to get to TV Centre in time to sit alongside Christopher Barry, William Russell and Raymond Cusick. We watched this story, and I endeavoured to elicit their 40-year-old memories of it. I don’t say this to brag – instead, I try to imagine phoning my 14-year-old self as he illicitly pored over the pages of The Early Years, to tell him that one day he’d be watching this story in the presence of those mythical names who’d created the episodes he was reading about. He’d have been beside himself with joy! It’s occasionally worth reminding ourselves of such elation, and to not let being too close to the show (as we both are, professionally) dissipate that magic.

  And even though I’ve seen this story recently, there are so many little things about it that keep me from being bored: there’s the distasteful way with which Jacqueline Hill handles the flare gun, the Sand Beast’s evocatively lamenting cries as it dies, and the angled set (because the spaceship is lying there broken) allowing for brilliantly abstract shapes in the framing of the shots. And isn’t the way the Doctor smashes his way into Bennett’s room a bit of a cheek? (If someone tells me I can’t come in, I tend not to break their door down – for all the Doctor knows, Bennett’s indulging in an intimate moment with Space Razzle.) The actual appearance of the Dido residents, though, provokes a mixed reaction –
while I do think a potential sitcom about the last two survivors of this race was a squandered opportunity, I even more strongly wonder how the 100 people of Dido kept their species going until now (certainly, the two rather fey chaps seen here won’t cut the mustard in that regard).

  Hartnell is once again so good in this – even at this early stage of her tenure, it’s clear that O’Brien already adores him. The Doctor is so sweet with Vicki (sending Barbara and Ian away so that he can have a quiet word with her), and she gleefully takes his hand as she leads him to Bennett. There’s such good rapport between them – indeed, between everyone. I really enjoy being with these people.

  I have a confession to make, however: I was a bit in awe of everything that was happening during the commentary of this story, and so I neglected to ask William Russell precisely what he meant by calling Koquillion “Cocky-Licken”. It’s one of the eternal mysteries of Doctor Who, unanswered, and it’s all my fault. Sorry.

  The Slave Traders (The Romans episode one)

  R: Oh, this is just enormous fun – full of great verbal gags and witty bits of direction, and the cast all relaxed and making the most out of a script which gives them all plenty to feed off. But what makes it so enjoyable is that for once, it’s a fun shared by the characters as well. Everyone’s in Roman times, and they’re getting to do what any normal person would do if suddenly thrown back into an era so familiar from popular culture – they send it up, they walk around in their togas quoting Julius Caesar, they giggle over the exotic foods they can buy at market. They even laugh at the quaint backward society they’re visiting because the villa hasn’t got a fridge. In short, they’re actually properly behaving like tourists and it’s wonderful to see, because in all their hopping about through space and time, there’s been plenty of jeopardy to run away from but precious little pleasure to embrace.