One more thing... there’s a great moment where it’s postulated that the Doctor might be helping the Zarbi; Barbara says she’s certain he would never do such a thing, but Jacqueline Hill puts enough doubt into her voice to suggest that Barbara might be lying to herself. It’s a clever choice that re-injects some of the crew’s earlier, more ambiguous dynamic.
Invasion (The Web Planet episode five)
R: Back in 1982, to commemorate the return of the Cybermen to our screens, the BBC produced a special documentary about Doctor Who’s monsters on a magazine review programme called Did You See? And those clips they used on it for a long time were the only taster I had of the show’s black and white era. I couldn’t keep the documentary on video – they were so expensive in those days, and I was only 12 – but I copied it all onto audiotape. And I listened to it so often when I was a kid, over and over again, trying to imagine what these strange stories from the past could possibly be like. There’s a scene from this episode that I suddenly found I could recite, word for word – and the joke was, of course, that for so many years I had no understanding whatsoever of this rather dry scene in which a bunch of Menoptra discuss their invasion plans. Oh, the stories I imagined around that little scene during my childhood! “They too will be massacred. The Menoptra will be no more!” Gave me nostalgic shivers that did. Lovely.
The deeper you get into The Web Planet, the narrower the tightrope it walks between wonderful ambition and toecurling clumsiness. To be fair to it, it’s only here in episode five that it finally falls off. But look past the scenes of all the Optera bouncing up and down, or the long dialogue bits where Menoptra argue about Isoptopes and electron passwords, and there’s still much to admire. I love the way writer Bill Strutton has tried to give the story a language of its own – from the way that no-one can say Ian or Barbara’s names correctly, to Hetra’s description of digging as trying to make something talk with light. Yes, it’s all a bit mannered, even a bit pretentious – but it suddenly contrasts with the dispassion shown when poor little Nemini saves everyone’s lives by using her body to block a flow of acid, and the way that only Ian is moved by the sacrifice. The effort that has gone into making this an alien culture is almost bonkers in its detail – and yet, every once in a while, there’ll be a scene where the emotional reaction shown by characters is so skewed, and you realise they really are alien.
T: I’m increasingly starting to think that I didn’t enjoy this story previously due to the muddied, grotty print I had – now that The Web Planet has been all spruced up on DVD, it’s so much easier to follow, and there are so many interesting visual touches that the longueurs aren’t quite so painful. Even things that had annoyed me before – such as Ian Thompson’s very odd performance as Hetra – now work much better. His face is constantly twitching, struggling to form the words, which makes his guttural drawl a much more understandable acting choice. He seems to be giving the impression that his character is just learning how to speak and to enunciate – in other words, his speech is evolving in the same way that his species soon will. That may sound a bit strange, but it’s no less believable than aliens speaking RP, so good on him for having a bash at something different. His references to smashing teeth of stone and the hole being a mouth which speaks more light are brilliant – it’s an inventive approach to creating an alien viewpoint that we can translate and understand.
The set for the Temple of Light is very impressive, especially with those mummified Menoptra cadavers spookily hanging about the place. Likewise, it’s no mistake that the centre of the Animus – the “Carcinome” – has a cancerous moniker, meaning that the Isoptope is a kind of portable chemotherapy machine. This disease analogy helps the audience to understand the sci-fi concept of the Animus and its baleful effect on the planet.
And while you praised some of the guest-cast last week, notably your mate Martin Jarvis (you wait till The Time Warrior episode three and I’ll start the name dropping – oh yes indeed, I was once in a play with the non-speaking mate of the sentry in that brilliant scene where the Doctor is disguised as a friar), I here note that Jolyon Booth (playing Prapillus) gets lots of lyrical language to chew on and does it brilliantly. In contrast to all the visual oddities, there’s a poetic beauty in his descriptive vocabulary that’s most pleasing. But it’s perhaps no surprise that Booth handles such words so well – a friend of mine from university went to a posh public school (Winchester, I think) and Booth was one of his teachers.
I must stop to mention the very bizarre moment where a tendril appears to fart at the Doctor, and he ripostes “And the same to you!” But on the plus side – hurrah, we’re back to having successful cliffhangers! The Doctor and Vicki are here shown shrouded by web, in what’s a startling, chilling image.
February 1st
The Centre (The Web Planet episode six)
R: The Animus is defeated quite early in the episode, which leaves lots of time at the story’s end for Vrestin to teach the Optera how to enjoy the bright lights, and to give flying a go. It’s all done with much conviction by Roslyn de Winter – and then it dawns on you that this is probably exactly how she’s been treating the cast these past six weeks! “Be brave, be brave!” It’s so easy to picture her, leading masterclasses on hand waving in the mornings, and speech inflection in the afternoons.
“Be brave!” It’s not a bad way to approach The Web Planet, all told. There’s much here to admire, but let’s face it – it is (deliberately) the most alienating of all Doctor Who stories ever. (There are one or two of the Virgin New Adventures novels which come close, but even the ones which deal with the psi-powers arc aren’t as much of a culture shock as this.) And it’s also (not deliberately) one of the most dated. The latter is hardly the story’s fault. Indeed, if anything, it’s something to be cautiously admired.
Certainly, Doctor Who never even attempted to be quite this extreme ever again; there will never be another story without humanoid characters within it. That makes sense – at its best, the series is always about humanity, even if only in a form that is symbolic. But in a funny way, by attempting something as bold as this – to see whether Doctor Who could possibly survive without any of the familiarities that give it tone and theme – it shows just how limitless its scale can be. Doctor Who never needs to do anything like this again; now it’s been done the once, we can imagine, should we want to, that the strange adventures the Doctor often alludes (but which we don’t actually witness) may all be like this. Consider the off-handed mentions of the planet Quinnis where they nearly lost the TARDIS, the planet Esto where everyone communicated by thought – or even, in the new series, the planet Woman Wept, where the waves are like rock. The Web Planet conjured up all these imaginings, and serves as the bedrock for the breadth of its ambition.
Now let’s get away from those talking butterflies and get back to Earth. Pronto. What’s this? Next Episode: “The Lion”? I hope it’s not a talking lion.
T: Much of what goes on here at the end, I’m sorry to say, and with the best of goodwill, probably earns this story its brickbats. The Menoptra actors have previously done well enough with the odd speech patterns and the “Insect Movement” by Roslyn De Winter, but the way they clamber around the set screaming “Zaar-biiiiii-eeeeeee-eeeeeeeee” probably didn’t make it onto any of their showreels. I suspect that Ian Thompson’s copy of this episode had a suspicious looking edit just before Hetra decides to have a go at flying, and the final confrontation with the Animus is a mess – Barbara’s gun doesn’t work, then Ian appears, then Barbara perseveres with holding the weapon whilst everyone else falls over.. and then suddenly the Animus dies, with the camera apparently picking out random bits of action. It’s all very confused.
But, look! There are still plenty of good moments – Hrostar and Hilio clearly don’t like each other and have a little ritual hissing as they face off, and Prapillus has a sweet “dotty old man” moment where he bustles about the Doctor’s astral map and then tells everyone to hurry, unawar
e that they’ve already buggered off. (He also calls the “Sayo Plateau” the “Isop Plateau”, but you can’t really blame him for getting confused.) And as we finally see (or rather, can actually see, in this sparking new DVD print) the water breaking out onto the surface of Vortis, the leisurely pace at the end is quite welcome after what has been a bustling two and a half hours.
Whatever my reservations about The Web Planet – and whatever fandom’s low opinion of it – I think much of this works in context. Sure, much of it doesn’t work, but let’s remember that this is the show’s second year, and they’re not resting on their laurels. This adventure was a work of madness, but there was definitely some method in it.
The Lion (The Crusade episode one)
R: In its own way, this is as dated as The Web Planet. You start off being distracted by all the alarming facial hair – but it’s the blacked-up actors you remember. But, as we’ve seen in Marco Polo, the Saracens are treated with respect – because although their skin colour marks them out as foreign and exotic, their accents don’t; Bernard Kay, as Saladin, acts with the same rich Shakespearean delivery as Julian Glover’s King Richard the Lionheart. Certainly, this is going to be an issue that Doctor Who contends with for some time to come – and we’re still 12 years away from the wince-inducing portrait of the Chinese in The Talons of Weng-Chiang – but however awkward it looks from today’s perspective to see Caucasian actors wearing dark make-up, there’s nothing in the script or the performances which indicate that this is racist. Indeed, what’s remarkable about the episode is the way that it treats its two Famous Historical Characters. Saladin is terrific – the way he’s introduced, listening unobserved and unsmiling behind the curtain, gives him a real power; and once he emerges, Bernard Kay so effortlessly commands respect and fear without ever raising his voice or even appearing to change his inflection. There’s a wisdom and subtlety to the man, and for a moment we allow ourselves almost to patronise him, to think that this is the Kindly Arab. But there’s one magnificent moment in particular where Barbara, like the audience, is lulled into a false sense of security, as she contemplates how her storytelling will make her like Scheherazade. Saladin reminds her that the threat of death hung over her skills too... It’s his amorality that makes Saladin so compelling, and Bernard Kay is the equal of Julian Glover at commanding natural authority.
Indeed, if anything, it’s the amorality of Richard too which is so striking. Schoolboy history held that Richard the Lionheart was our hero king – that’s certainly what I gleaned from my Ladybird books when I was a kid – and all the Robin Hood legends, of course, paint him as the kindly monarch whose mere showing up at court could put an end to the schemes of the Sheriff of Nottingham. We know from real history, though, that Richard was one of the biggest gits ever to have sat on the throne of England (not that he was in England enough to warm the throne in the first place), but that’s not the point; it’s more that Doctor Who here refuses to paint Richard in the way that anyone watching in 1965 would have expected. We see in his first scene a king who is so capricious that he gets his fellows killed, and in his second a man given to bouts of melodramatic temper, who just can’t be reasoned with. (The cliffhanger has a double whammy – it’s not just that Barbara’s in danger, it’s that with Richard’s retort that she can rot in a cell for all he cares, the audience unequivocally are made to realise he’s not the great symbol of England they were hoping for, and it’s a real shock. It’s the equivalent of depicting Marco Polo as a villain, or Robespierre as a hero.) There’s a wonderful fluff that Julian Glover makes, and it actually helps this bold portrayal when he bemoans the fact that Richard des Preaux (not, more correctly, William des Preaux) has been captured. It gives the impression that for all his crocodile tears, this arrogant king can’t even remember his friend’s name.
T: Douglas Camfield is setting himself up early as the Doctor Who action director – all right, this inevitably looks a bit clumsy to modern eyes, but the ambition in the staging of the early scuffles marks this out as bold work. There are carefully timed and cunningly hidden arrows, Ian gets a fight on film (with Val Mussetti, a racing driver of note when he’s not playing a Saracen warrior), and best of all, stuntman Derek Ware gets thunked in the chest by a whacking great sword. It’s impressive, even if the rather mimsy underarm sword-throw that butchers Ware would have caused the weapon to just bounce off his chest rather than pierce his armour and ribcage.
But what’s so striking about this episode is that it makes as its core the two elements that are central to all good drama: namely, writing strong dialogue, and getting talented actors to speak it. This first makes me wonder what transformation David Whitaker has undergone since he stopped being script editor – the man who formerly wrote The Edge of Destruction and The Rescue here gives us such excellent dialogue and characterisation; episode one alone is a work of ambiguity and poetry. And while Julian Glover happily plays up Richard’s weaknesses and petulance to the point that he’s as big a threat to the travellers’ safety as anything else in this strange land, you’re absolutely right, Rob, to highlight Bernard Kay as Saladin. This is an astonishingly powerful performance – the best yet seen in the series, even – and a lesson in the art of underplaying. Saladin’s face is locked in the aspect of a man wearied by war, who has no time or inclination to dress things up or even strut his power. He completely deadpans when telling des Preaux “I salute your chivalry,” leaving you in no doubt that while he means what he says, he’s not someone who needs to get all flowery and twee. He’s at war, after all.
The only thing detracting from Kay’s performance – and as you’ve already mentioned – is the way he and other actors are “blacked up”. In fact, dark make-up isn’t the only means by which the producers have juggled with ethnicity here: one of the extras is Oscar James (later one of the original cast on EastEnders), who is of West Indian descent. (Imagine his agent telling him that as a West Indian, he’d be perfect casting in the role of an Arab!) But while I am almost painfully politically correct, I can’t say this damaged the story’s dramatic intent for me – you’d never get away with this today (and rightfully so), but it’s easy to view this theatrical practice as the product of bygone era. Donald Sinden played Othello once, for goodness sake, and – in the very same year that The Crusade was broadcast – so did Laurence Olivier, in full blackface! He was even nominated for an Oscar for it!
In the very first preview version of Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf, I did a joke about the whole race issue – mentioning that only in the 60s could you get twelfth century, Arabic Muslims played by actors called “Bernard”, “Roger” and (best of all) “Reg”. It got a decent response, but I didn’t really know what I was trying to say, and it seemed like an easy dig when there’s so much else to enjoy in this rich, lyrical tale. What is funny, though, is how this episode has a selfish, thieving opportunist named “Thatcher”.
February 2nd
The Knight of Jaffa (The Crusade episode two)
R: What I love about The Crusade is just how many different stories it juggles with at once, how tonally different they are from each other, and at what a terrific pace they’re told. So we open with a really clever scene in which the Doctor manages to manipulate Richard into reinterpreting the capture of des Preaux and Barbara as something to his political advantage; it’s delightfully done, and Richard’s commendation of Ian’s courage and the Doctor’s wit nicely assigns them their individual roles for the rest of the story. But we then contrast this with pure melodrama, as the scarred El Akir ponders revenge upon Barbara for humiliating him. And we contrast that with a scene of rare pomp within Doctor Who, as Ian is knighted by the King with all due solemnity. The Doctor can laugh about it all afterwards, and wish he’d been knighted too, but even he daren’t mar the tone of the ceremony. Just compare this to the corresponding scene in Tooth and Claw some 40 years later, where the Doctor and Rose are tourist bystanders to the same event even as it’s happening to them. And then we contras
t that with a wonderful scene of comedy in which the Doctor runs rings around the chamberlain, who has realised our heroes are wearing stolen clothes. We’re watching a story about kings and sultans, about merchants and thieves.
In a typical historical adventure we might expect this story to be taking twice as long. El Akir hatches a plot against Barbara – and it’s succeeded within ten minutes’ screen time. Ian is knighted so he can journey to Saladin – he’s there within the same episode. The distinction of the (serious) historicals before this has been the way they’ve explored the setting with respectful depth; The Crusade offers us almost a snapshot portrait of an epic. We’re presented with a whole array of characters who are painted in vivid detail, then disappear out of the story. The first episode seemed to establish the idea that William des Preaux would be an important friend to Barbara – the job done, they’re never in the same scene ever again. The merchant Luigi Ferrigo becomes lackey to El Akir, smarms his way around Saladin and is exposed at record speed. Sheyrah establishes herself as loyal ally to Barbara, in a role you’d expect in any ordinary story would make her a confidante like a Ping-Cho or a Cameca... and then she’s gone. David Whitaker’s script feels like an extraordinary synthesis of the historical he established as story editor in the first season, coupled with the quicker paced action approach adopted by his successor Dennis Spooner. And the result is all rather exhilarating.
T: You’re right... David Whitaker is so immersed in this world, he gives depth to characters with limited screen time; they fulfill their plot function with economy, but don’t feel at all sketchy or perfunctory. And because Doctor Who can’t do pitched battles at present, manners and guile are the weapons used in this engrossing historical drama.
Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) Page 20
