It was like blowing the cobwebs off a signed first edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare. A magic door had been opened, and televisual Narnia was on my screen. Oh look, the music carries on over the action, did it always do that? Is that a cat in the background? (It wasn’t, it was studio talkback in the first scene.) And blimey, Joseph Furst is listed second on the credits – oh, I get it, after the Doctor, they’re done in order of appearance. I didn’t know they did it like that! These were magical, magical times for me, never to be repeated.
But it’s not just nostalgia that makes me love this instalment – it’s absolutely great, dumb fun, mainly thanks to Joseph Furst. Anyone who thinks this is nothing more than bad acting hasn’t got a sense of humour. It’s a brilliant spoof performance about 20 years ahead of its time, anticipating knowing, genre-baiting comedies like Airplane! If you want to see him doing “proper” acting, have a butchers at Doctor Korczak and The Children – it’s a touching, dramatic tour de force that I guarantee will make you cry. He’s splendid in that, and everything he does here is deliberate and very, very funny. I also have a video interview with him where he recreates the famous cliffhanger whilst wearing an eyepatch! What’s not to love?
For benefit of anyone who says that Doctor Who only got camp and silly in the 1980s, I’ll gently point them in the direction of Peter Stephens, who here plays the high priest Lolem. He’s hilarious, swanning about in a skirt and wobbling. He even gets to say “Amdo has eaten up her victims” – not “eaten” or “eaten of”, but “eaten up”! Glorious. And one of my favourite Doctor Who moments, ever, is when he bitchily tells Zaroff that he wants the wrath of Amdo to engulf him, and Furst tells him to get out – in a manner that suggests he’s suddenly started acting in a Mel Brooks movie.
I’m not saying that a lot of what makes this good isn’t due to the heroic ineptitude in various departments, but seriously – how can you not adore it? Polly forgets to try to save Ramo, leaving Furst menacingly holding a spear until she audibly kicks herself up the arse. Zaroff’s hair gets madder as the episode progresses. His guards wear wetsuits, and some of the fish people need goggles. The music sounds like someone is strangling a cat as it scratches a blackboard with its claws. To top it all off, the loony professor gets hit on the head by a rock, and says “Oof” before running into the darkness bellowing a good, old-fashioned crazy laugh.
Nuffink in ze world can stop me from loving this episode!
The Underwater Menace episode four
R: The telesnaps suggest that this might have looked rather spectacular. (It was certainly pretty expensive!) The Underwater Menace shifts tone yet again, and largely this week becomes a disaster movie. The scale is rather grand, as the Doctor decides the best way to foil Zaroff is not merely by kidnapping him again (go on, it was pretty simple last time), but instead to drown the whole of Atlantis. As ever with this story, the plotting has a make-it-up-as-you-go-along feel, but it does give a sense of urgency to the adventure. It’s a race against time, as our heroes battle towards the surface!... and a race against gushing water too, obviously.
But with the visuals wiped, there’s a pleasing sense of intimacy to all this. The best bits are those that focus upon the companions’ obvious concern for each other. Jamie gently has to reassure Polly when they realise that the chances are the Doctor and Ben have drowned; in a moment so simple, it’s heartbreaking, Ben despairingly says just one word, “Polly”, as they too consider that their friends may be dead. And if, at the end of the day, this story was too ridiculous and too clumsy for words, episode four does manage to consolidate this rather large TARDIS team. The affection they show towards each other in the final scene, caught in telesnap mid-laugh, Polly wearing the Doctor’s hat and Jamie looking around his new home with pride, is absolutely gorgeous. Together they’ve weathered this very peculiar and very messy story; now, stronger, they can tackle better adventures.
T: Quite a lot happens in this last instalment, doesn’t it? Or, more accurately, perhaps I should say that it all seems very hastily bunged together... Richard Dawkins would probably approve that the new and improved Atlanteans decide that the best way forward is to ban religion, but this unfortunately means that the evil, experimenting doctor Damon is suddenly a goodie now. Elsewhere, poor old Lolem gets killed off screen. Elsewhere still, Zaroff doesn’t even get a Herculean outburst before expiring; our last sight of the man is his rather lame attempts to stretch his arms far enough through a grille to press a switch. He doesn’t even die because he’s trapped; he’s just mad and/or daft.
But all eyes are on the Troughton Doctor as he must save the entire planet Earth from being blown up. He’s not inspiring a great deal of confidence, though – when the Doctor is asked if he knows what he is doing, he replies in the negative, but that there’s nothing wrong with trying! It’s very sweet, and seems to be Orme’s main take on the character: that this Doctor cluelessly dives in and has a bash. It echoes similar instances found in the last three episodes – although I should again mention that I don’t think they could have persevered with this characterisation, which would have involved the Doctor saving the universe by accident every week! And I do like that even this anarchy-minded Doctor resolves to go back and try to save Zaroff – it only takes a handy rockfall to stop our hero from doing so, but at least his conscience has been articulated.
All in all, I feel deeply satisfied with this story. I’ve found it to be rather jolly, and even its flaws have held a certain charm. I suppose you could say that if any script isn’t going to hold water, it’s more than a little appropriate that it’s this one.
March 17th
The Moonbase episode one
R: There’s that bit where Hobson, the moonbase-leader, is introducing the Doctor to his co-workers and refers to Nils as their “mad Dane”. And it’s a fact of life that anyone in an office who’s described as the “mad one” is going to be the sort of irritating idiot who’ll photocopy his bum, or send spoof emails to all his colleagues masquerading as a virus alert, or have a mug in the kitchen in the shape of a turd. And then there’s poor Bob, tubby and bespectacled, who’s the sort never to get a snog at the Christmas party, and Benoit, the so-called natty dresser of the group, whose fashion sense is limited to a cravat. The last time Kit Pedler set up an international operations centre, the intruders were held at gunpoint by a warmongering general. This time, they’re welcomed by the space age equivalent of Ricky Gervais, a strangely benign boss who lets all his staff call him Hobby, and puts Ben to work in their equivalent of the stationery room. The change feels odd – we’ve never seen the TARDIS crew taken for granted so much before.
But I rather like it too. There’s so much padding to be got through in a story where the regulars have to spend the first half hour of the drama overcoming everybody’s suspicions towards them. (It’s why Russell T Davies introduced the psychic paper in the new series, just so we could all jump over that initial hurdle and get on with the story.) There’s a normality to this; the crew of the base are ordinary workers responding to a crisis not with panic, but the sort of weariness that comes of having to do overtime. And it’s all against a backdrop that you feel really ought to have been used before: the moon. Looking back, I suppose an adventure on the moon didn’t quite fit into the series’ remit before – it was too humdrum a setting for bizarre tales about giant ants seen through Vaseline-smeared lens, and too outlandish for anything that was trying to be Earth-based. There’s a lot of fun to be had here, especially after the strange insanity that was The Underwater Menace, seeing the Doctor and pals respond to real conditions on the surface of a real location off Earth. Spacesuits and low gravity and the like give a real contrast to any of the planets we’ve visited thus far, and as a result the moon looks all the more alien a setting.
T: If you’re turning this into an analogy of The Office, let me go a step further and suggest that it’s crying out for a second story where Controller Rinberg gets posted to the moon and proves to be more
popular than Hobson, leading to the latter embarrassing himself with a terrible dance. (The moonwalk, perhaps?)
Otherwise, a lot of time in this story seems to be spent on Kirby wires, with added crazy comedy sound effects whenever anyone exploits the gravitational potential of their surroundings. I suppose we should be indulgent about this – Man hadn’t conquered the moon when this was made in 1967, so all of this probably would have been far more fascinating than it is to our eyes. There is some padding, though – particularly the way the Doctor asks to be introduced twice, as if he’s demanding some scene setting before the adventure can begin. Hobson’s reaction to him is bonkers – a sort of glum resignation to the fact that his high security science establishment has been infiltrated by a group of misfits with no ID.
But, padding or no, there’s much to enjoy here. The telesnaps suggest an impressive use of the Cyber-shadow to ratchet up the tension, and we have the return of the whirry-whirry music I so like. Also, I love the way the Doctor keeps his spacesuits in a chest – that’s Doctor Who for you, the ancient and futuristic are so charmingly entwined! And the theme of the adventure as a whole couldn’t be better encapsulated than by Polly’s sweet response to the assertion that the medical machine can cater for all of Jamie’s requirements, but “It can’t be nice to him.” No matter what technological advances are made, nothing can replicate human kindness – it’s as fitting a riposte to the Cybermen as you could hope for.
The Moonbase episode two
R: Do you think Ben is really equipped to be a companion? In almost every single story, he has a moment where he’s all for turning his back on the crisis altogether and leaving in the TARDIS. It’s very sensible of him, and exactly what I would do in the same situation – but it’s hardly his acknowledging the format of the series, is it? It does, in this instance, provoke Troughton’s speech about how some corners of the universe breed evil that must be fought – which is pretty much a defining moment for his Doctor. (It’s the bit they’ll use on every clip show forever after.)
This episode does something very interesting – it’s the first time Doctor Who has wanted to mythologise a past adventure. We’ve had occasional references to old stories before, of course, but never to the extent that the events of The Tenth Planet are, as Hobson says, part of a history that every child on Earth knows about. It’s a very clever technique, because it means that not only do the Cybermen seem suddenly elevated after only a couple of episodes’ appearance to the status of Major Villain, but that the Doctor, Ben and Polly also feel like epic figures. It’s something that the series will do many times, as it reintroduces monsters like the Yeti, or planets like Peladon – but it’s never quite as striking as it is here.
And that impact is important, because although the Cybermen are back, and look silver and threatening, they don’t really do very much this week. They seem limited mostly to carrying sick patients about (and, rather hilariously, never quite deciding which one to pick, as if they’re stuck for choice in a supermarket). This is an episode which concentrates on Hobson and his team fussing over the Gravitron – one sequence in particular goes on forever. But the contrast between these rather dull scientists and the anarchy of the Doctor is brilliant – his collecting specimens and getting under their feet whilst they so seriously do by-the-book stuff sums him up exactly. He runs rings around Hobson, as desperate to find a cure for the mysterious illness as he is to pretend he may have already found one, just to buy himself more time.
There’s another bit used on every clip show, and that’s when Polly is asked to make some coffee whilst the Doctor does something clever. It’s used to illustrate the sexism of the programme, of course – and it’s unfair, because it’s taken entirely out of context. Anneke Wills is rather terrific this week, busying herself around in the medical lab helping to find a cure, and finding time to cast aspersions on the Doctor’s medical background. (And next week, she’ll do something truly dynamic.) It’s Ben who wants out of the adventure, remember, and Jamie who’s lying about and moaning some guff about the Phantom Piper. Polly’s doing fine. Leave Polly alone.
T: Let’s handle the good stuff first... Troughton continues to be brilliant – he’s mercurial, mischievous and likeable, but also capable of really hefty gravitas. He really sells the horror of what’s happening here, and it’s entirely down to his reaction that the episode gets away with the silly revelation that there’s a Cyberman under a sheet in the sickbay. He’s clearly taken ownership of the role, and in the 16 episodes since he took over, he’s yet to have a duff moment. It’s especially delightful when he cons Hobson, but with Patrick Barr playing the commanding officer like a slightly vexed but over-credulous uncle, this isn’t quite the tense face-off it could have been.
But this story just isn’t clicking for me, mainly because while it’s as stupid and hokey as The Underwater Menace – while it has a similar reek of the B-Movie about it – it doesn’t have the courtesy of providing us with performances either hilariously wooden or gleefully over indulgent. Try as I might to care about them, the moonbase staff are just dull, with their characterisation never really progressing beyond The French One, The Danish One and The Boss. Bloody hell, did you notice how in episode one, the black guy lived up to cliché by being the first to get zapped? As amusing as the regulars are, the supporting cast amounts to boring scientists wandering about doing boring things in boring T-Shirts.
The pity here is that I have such strong memories of Gerry Davis’ novelisation. (It’s for this reason that, deep down, I still think of this story as being called Doctor Who and the Cybermen rather than The Moonbase.) In the book, Hobson was a dour Northerner, and the Cybermen looked like the ones from The Invasion. When it was reissued with the correct Cybermen depicted on the cover, I mistakenly believed it was an aberration on the part of the illustrator; the proper Cybermen could never have looked like that, I thought, with their big letterbox mouths, golf ball joints and baggy suits. Cybernetics may be many things, but surely baggy ain’t one of ‘em!
I’m sorry that I’m getting a bit off-course in our efforts to stay positive, Rob, but it’s a bit frustrating that I can so easily see how this story could have been a success – namely, if you’re going to be bad, you should be operatically bad like The Underwater Menace. Because almost everyone involved is trying to play this straight, elements where they don’t get it right – the moronic science especially – seem all the more prominent. What, the Cybermen have entered the Moonbase after making a hole in the storeroom, and they’ve blocked that up with bags of sugar? Seriously? And if the Cybermen have been poisoning the sugar supply, wouldn’t that mean that the latest scientist to fall prey to the illness somehow, someway, hasn’t had a cup of coffee since the Cybermen started their dastardly plan? It’s only when things get laughably naff – the Cyberboots sticking out of the bed sheets, and then the bed itself wobbling its way into the cliffhanger – that I start to like this at all.
I am amused, however, that Sam’s surname is Becket. If Samuel Beckett had written the script, I’d have liked it a lot more.
March 18th
The Moonbase episode three
R: The Cybermen sound great. That electronic voice they have removes any sense of inflection or humanity. In The Tenth Planet, you almost felt they were amiable, creatures to be reasoned with – here they’re just chilling. More obvious, perhaps, but chilling just the same. Sometimes the dialogue exploits this well; when they stress that they are without emotions, you believe them entirely – they refuse to accept that they are taking revenge by destroying the Earth, but are just being practical. And sometimes their lines sneer at stupid human brains, and they even indulge in a bit of sarcasm. It’s inconsistent, and it ought not to work. But oddly enough, it almost works better than the pure emotionlessness. When you hear the words “clever clever clever” coming out in perfect unamused rhythm from the Cyberman, it takes you a moment even to realise what it could possibly mean. It only then dawns on you that it’s a strang
e parody of gloating, it’s mockery without any pleasure within it, and that these beings of metal and plastic used to be men as well.
Patrick Troughton hides in the background this episode, which only serves to emphasise him all the more. He leaves Hobson to do all the talking, and Benoit to do all the running; he’s mostly silent, except for one very peculiar sequence when he literally discusses the situation with himself. I’ve talked before about the mad schizophrenia of Troughton’s performance – and here it’s played without any comic resonance at all, as a genius who cannot contain the debate within his head. It’s earnest and actually very eerie – and in these few lines Troughton does more to sell the tension of the episode than anything else that’s happening.
Polly gets to display a bit of genius too; she devises the Polly Cocktail – a concoction of solvents, including nail polish, that eats away at the Cybermen’s chest units – and her ingenuity here may just be the character’s peak. Ben and Jamie are left to fight over which of them like Polly best. It’s typical boys in playground stuff – and a demonstration, perhaps, that the production team are trying hard to differentiate these two male companions by creating a false bit of conflict.
Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) Page 44
