I’m a genuinely a bit gutted typing this. For the first time since we began this quest, I actually cried. But it cheers me up to think that – as this story occurs on the same day as when Ben and Polly left in the TARDIS – anyone at Gatwick who had bothered to turn on the telly would probably have seen Kenneth Kendall warning everyone about the War Machines. If Ben and Polly hurry once they leave the Doctor and Jamie’s company, they can probably watch themselves embarking on their first adventure!
March 24th
The Evil of the Daleks episode one
R: Dudley Simpson’s composing the music... and for the first time, for someone so used to his work on seventies Who, it actually sounds like Dudley Simpson! It’s a subtle point, and one that would obviously have been entirely lost on the contemporary viewer, but to fans of a certain age like myself – and you, right Toby? – Dudley Simpson’s style defined what Doctor Who was. It was the glue that made The Horns of Nimon sound like it came from the same programme as Pyramids of Mars – his use of the orchestra, his use of tense themes. Up til this point, his music on Doctor Who has sounded rather inappropriately jazzy to my ears – but now, with his menacing Dalek theme, or the repeat of the woodwind to suggest “mystery”, this links the programme with my understanding of where tonally it’s going to end up in the Pertwee and Baker years.
On its own terms, though, this episode is rather an odd one, isn’t it? It teases the audience right from the get-go with the title – it suggests that with its setting, this at last is going to be a contemporary Dalek story; we’ve seen them everywhere else in the universe, but not on modern-day Earth. And what we get instead is a curious game, in which the Doctor and Jamie are led to follow a trail of increasingly obscure clues – all of which seems to be very unDalek-like behaviour, and are instead the work of a peculiar antique dealer, Edward Waterfield, who seems to have a problem understanding twentieth century slang like “okay” or “dicey”. Here’s an episode that stubbornly refuses to give the audience anything it’s expecting. At times it feels like a piece of Dennis Spooner-like whimsy (the suggestion being made that Waterfield is using time travel to sell genuine Victorian antiques is pure Meddling Monk stuff), at times it feels a bit like a thriller with heavies plotting against the Doctor and beating themselves up. And at other times, it’s the best treatment yet of the modern day – Troughton and Hines sitting in a coffee bar listening to The Beatles feels so suddenly natural, a million miles away from the awkward overstatement of the sixties we got in The War Machines.
What makes it work so well is that the performances all seem – for once – to be deliberately at odds with the other. I love Griffith Davies’ very natural performance as Kennedy (the baddies’ all-purpose stooge), just as I love Geoffrey Colville’s rather mannered comic turn as Waterfield’s assistant Perry: they seem to be acting in different styles altogether, and that only adds to the strange unease that hangs over the episode. And that’s all to the fore with the brilliant John Bailey, who is playing Waterfield as a mess of contradictions – he’s a Victorian man in 1966, a man plotting against the Doctor but who seems less of a villain than a man threatened. It’s a traditional game that we won’t see a Dalek until the first cliffhanger, but in every story until this one, the opening episode has concentrated on establishing the world that they’re going to dominate, and therefore what the tone of the story will be. At this point, when the Dalek materialises in front of Kennedy, we still haven’t got the faintest clue what The Evil of the Daleks is trying to do, we simply haven’t got a handle on this story yet. It’s all rather disconcerting. And frankly, a bit thrilling.
Thank goodness that 70s stalwarts like me can rely on Dudley Simpson’s music to reassure us.
T: I’m not the biggest fan of set-up episodes from Doctor Who’s early years – they often come across as prefaces, with the actual story only kicking in with the first cliffhanger. I’d expected the same routine here, as the Doctor and Jamie spend most of the time stalking/being followed by a couple of incidental characters. And yet, this episode really feels like we’re gearing up to an end-of-season extravaganza – it’s inherent even in the way the coffee-bar music fades out, to be replaced by the incidentals, as the Doctor grimly prepares us for a high-stakes encounter.
This is all the more remarkable when you consider how Doctor Who’s seasons have been structured prior to this. With modern TV, we’ve come to expect that showpiece episodes, monumental occurrences and actor departures will generally happen at season’s climax. The first four seasons of Doctor Who, by contrast, have been a much more organic affair – seasons have started and ended with unassuming fare such as Galaxy Four and The Reign of Terror, we’ve had cast changes (even that of the leading man!) occurring partway through the run (midway through a story, even!), and the longest story so far – a massive, 12-part Dalek epic – didn’t initiate or cap off Season Three, it was bunged in the middle of it. None of the season-enders were designed to be any more spectacular, expensive or grabby than any other story – so here, for the first time, there’s a sense that we’re building up to something epic and extraordinary, and that the script and production absolutely intend this to be the case.
With the Dalek story postponed from starting until episode two (as we’re obliged to have a Dalek appear in a “surprise cliffhanger”, in a move so bizarrely repetitious, it now defies all attempts to understand it), writer David Whitaker relies on character, language and tension to carry things through. Bob Hall is a gruff gopher who won’t resort to kidnapping, Kennedy is a jaunty little crook, Perry is wonderfully hoity-toity and Waterfield is haunted and eccentric – and it greatly helps matters that Whitaker has a discerning ear for the different idioms that highlight the contrasting backgrounds of these men. And the tension I mentioned comes from a sequence of funny, daft little clues (Hall’s overalls, the left-handed matches, etc.) that only happen in adventure series, but the beauty of this is that it’s all a huge contrivance. All of the breadcrumbs that the Doctor finds have been deliberately placed to lure and ensnare him – wonderful!
Complementing all of this is a design style that works best on a time-travel series – notice how Waterfield goes from his contemporary shop into a futuristic room and picks up an old antique – it’s a giddy melding of three time periods that plays with us on all sorts of levels. The antiques (and Waterfield’s manner and costume) all give a classy period feel, while the hi-tech equipment promises sci-fi thrills and the modern-day setting ensures it’s all believable. That’s why Kennedy makes more of an impact than most Doctor Who characters who survive only for one episode – at this point in the show, we’ve rarely had modern-day baddies who haven’t been hypnotised (The War Machines) or were really aliens behaving like cold space creatures (The Faceless Ones). Kennedy is a sprightly Cockney tough guy – a modern thug whose presence in the show is quite novel, even if he does sound like Harold Steptoe.
It’s also the first time the alias “J. Smith” is used in the series – and not by the Doctor! (It’s signed on a clipboard authorising the TARDIS’ relocation by lorry.) And by the way... what was so special about 20th July, 1966? We have three alien/computer menaces now, all hanging around Earth on the same day! Flipping heck.
The Evil of the Daleks episode two
R: Consider just how good Patrick Troughton is here. In the early part of the episode he plays everything down – he’s almost complacent as the Doctor, gently disregarding Jamie’s (correct) theories about why the antiques look new, barely breaking a sweat as a corpse is found. When Perry goes to fetch a policeman, Jamie looks alarmed; the Doctor calmly says that Perry’s doing the right thing, and carries on with his own investigation as if there’s no urgency whatsoever. And then...! He’s whisked back to 1866. And he’s panicked and confused. He thought he understood what sort of story he was in, but he’s now confronted by two Victorian gentlemen talking about mirrors and time travel, and he’s angry and frustrated. Then static electricity is mentioned, and the look of fear t
hat crosses the Doctor’s face, as he begins to work out that his old enemies are involved, is wonderful. The Doctor’s never been as out of his depth – and, conversely, Troughton has never seemed as in control of the material. The sly ease with which he responds to Jamie in 1966 contrasts with the awkward way he jumps on Marius Goring’s lines in 1866.
And he’s not the only one giving it his all. It’s really great to have this episode in the archives, if only to demonstrate that new-found rapport between Troughton and Hines; I don’t think a new companion has ever flourished away from the shadow of his predecessors as well as Jamie has. I love the way Jo Rowbottom, as the saucy young maid Mollie Dawson, flirts with Jamie (they’re all at it), and even brazenly shuts the door with her bum on first entrance. And Marius Goring (as Theodore Maxtible, the scientist who accidentally summoned the Daleks to 1866, but is foolish enough to think he can exploit them) and John Bailey spark off each other beautifully – at first both seem cast in the same jeopardy, but just look at the ways their performances contrast, Bailey playing his fear of the Daleks with despondent horror, Goring with a cigar-lighting flourish that shows you he’s really enjoying watching evil at work.
The Daleks are great too; as before, David Whitaker teases at them, trying to show them in unfamiliar ways. The scene in which one of them orders Edward’s daughter Victoria not to give the “flying pests” her food is brilliant – partly for the sheer incongruity of it, but also for the callous way that it threatens to force-feed her. (Maybe at last, we’ll find out at last what the sucker is for.) And it seems so typically Dalek that it’ll devise a weighing machine that gives its subject such distress. The means by which Maxtible and Waterfield have summoned them, that they’ve broken their way into our world by the use of reflective mirrors, ought to be laughable – but it gives them a curious mythic quality we associate with our worst nightmares. And it’s very telling that in his previous story, Whitaker kept the Daleks as polite for as long as possible before they went on the rampage – whereas the first thing he has them do here is exterminate the hapless Kennedy. They’re an intimidating force, however bizarre they look in the Victorian setting.
T: I remember when this episode came back to the archives – I saw it at a convention, and it was the first episode I’d seen that was actually better than I’d imagined it would be. In fact, I think it’s shown me what I like best from Doctor Who – good, scary monsters, a florid villain played by a big proper actor (Goring was a hell of a casting coup in those days) and a period setting drenched in atmosphere. David Whitaker’s script helps the cause immensely, of course – just how much classier does the plot seem when it’s explained by someone using 19th century parlance? The grandeur of Whitaker’s dialogue, though, is matched by the BBC’s consistent ability to mount impressive looking period pieces.
But much of the intensity of this story owes to Whitaker’s ability in the Troughton years to keep finding new takes on the Daleks – he here treats them absolutely seriously, portraying them as alien and unknowable creatures who nonetheless have discernible traits like cunning and superiority. (I adore the fact that the Dalek doesn’t realise that Victoria’s weight loss might have something, just something, to do with the trauma of being held prisoner against her will.) And let me also sing some praises for Derek Martinus’ directorial talent – he never lets an episode flag, and he’s clearly paid a lot of attention to his casting. Even minor roles are filled by actors with impressive futures in the profession, such as Brigit Forsyth (playing Maxtible’s daughter Ruth) and Windsor Davies (playing, unless you count Tobias Vaughn, the only classic series character called Toby – and no, that’s not the reason I’m enjoying this story so much).
The scene with the Doctor, Maxtible, Waterfield and the Dalek in Maxible’s lab (which is littered with paraphernalia, and has a pleasingly Jules Verne feel to it) is one of my absolute favourites in the series thus far. Troughton is just incredible, and really sells just how dangerous the situation is. “What have you done with your infernal meddling?!”, he cries, before nervously checking to see whether the Dalek has gone. What’s so disturbing about this is that the Doctor is terrified – he clearly doesn’t have a plan, and nobody, not even he, knows what he’s going to do next. You can see his mind racing, racing, trying to get up to speed. God, Troughton is so good – the desperation with which he scampers about, flapping and panicking, is childlike but never threatens to dilute the menace of the scene with unnecessary humour.
The only thing that’s disappointing about this? The curious double mention of Victoria being the spitting image of her mother; it’s a little hokey, especially as Frazer Hines hasn’t actually bothered to look at the painting of Mrs Waterfield before asking who it’s of. Oh, yes, and if I’m being honest, the whole “Human Factor” business is utterly nonsensical... and yet, I can buy it because everything else is being done so damned well.
So, hang on. What I’m saying is that this is brilliant even though the central conceit upon everything relies is ridiculous and unbelievable gibberish? Yes, I am. Few shows beyond Doctor Who could get away with that...
March 25th
The Evil of the Daleks episode three
R: The depiction of Kemel is hard to justify by modern standards. To go into details – here is a black man who’s mute and stupid (his brain, Maxtible says, is undeveloped), and only serves as a strong man. He’s so strong, actually, that he’s more animal than human – he can bend iron bars, and chop through planks. Now, within the very peculiar fairytale-like tone of this story, you can – just about – rationalise him as something from the Arabian Nights, not a character but an archetype. (And with Victorian maids and Arthur Terrall changing personality at least once every scene, and Windsor Davies – as Toby; a thug named Toby, that is, not you, Toby – playing every Dickensian lowlife rolled into one, it’s clear that this is a story about stereotypes. Which is exactly why the Daleks are trying to tap into the Human Factor as if the traits of mankind were just like ingredients you could read off a baked bean tin.) It also says much about the increasingly peculiar Maxtible that not only does he take pride in all the strange equipment he has in his lab, but he also has as a toy a foreign fella who can break things. Within the unnaturalistic style of this bizarre story, and set within the nineteenth century where you can imagine Kemel treated as a curio, you can maybe (if you’re very, very forgiving) accept it. So long as the series doesn’t do it again. Say in a futuristic story that should be more enlightened, with another strong dumb black man, in the very next adventure. Hmm.
It’s all over the place, this episode. Arthur Terrall is an intriguing enough character, but after the third time he winces and grips the metal in his neck, even his unpredictability seems very predictable. The most notable part of the instalment is undoubtedly the argument between Jamie and the Doctor. It’s brilliantly played by both Frazer Hines and Patrick Troughton, Jamie being genuinely upset to find out he’s being used by his friend, and the Doctor trying to cajole him out of his mood by treating him like a tantrum-throwing infant. But I don’t really buy it; it feels very contrived. This is a story right from the beginning in which everyone seems manipulated by the other – and although it’s thematically on the money, it’s emotionally very forced. Last week, the Doctor was adamant that Jamie must be informed about the test he’s to undergo; this time round, he’s being sly and cunning at the expense of a character I understand. This is only a few weeks after Ben’s rebellion in The Macra Terror, and there I thought that the drama it created asked genuine questions about the Doctor and his relationship with his friends, and became a turning point in the plot. Here, though, it’s just to make Jamie hotheaded enough that he’ll be a hero and run off to rescue Victoria. As the Daleks list all the characteristics that define humanity, the first they should tick off is “gullible”.
I must admit, though, I love Jamie’s impatient reaction to the Doctor’s mention of Daleks, as something he is always going on about. It’s not dissimilar to Ben’s re
action in The Power of the Daleks. I know I’ve said it before, but I do find it irresistible, this idea of a Dalek-obsessed Doctor, constantly mentioning them and pissing off his bored companions.
T: So, what you’re saying is that the Doctor is like Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses. (“When I fought in the Dalek war... blah, blah, blah...”) And while I certainly sympathise with your concerns about Kemel, perhaps our politically correct misgivings should centre around the casting of a West Indian as a Turk. Then again, this could all have been much worse... they could have hired John Maxim and got him to black up, or put Tutte Lemkow in a body suit.
Meanwhile, it’s getting harder for me to gloss over this whole Human Factor business, and I’m trying to wrap my brain around it. The ingredients analogy you offer is nice, yes, but what is it? What, exactly, is going to manifest itself within Jamie that the Daleks can actually remove and inject into other Daleks? Is it a chemical? It must be – but if things like compassion, bravery, and improvisation all make up the Human Factor, how do you siphon them off as something tangible? And if it’s not a chemical... what is it, then? I can’t stand the confusion in my mind!!!
But if the scientific principles behind this story seem baffling, I can take some solace in the intriguing characters on display here. I think I love Molly Dawson – she’s sweet and energetic and likeable and has a lovely dusky voice (she sounds like a ticklish Bonnie Tyler). She also sparks off Jamie wonderfully (he’s later very gallant too, offering to escort her to her room) and brings out the Doctor’s most charming behaviour. Arthur Terrall is also a stand-out character, shifting between being unsettling and yet sympathetic. And then there’s Kemel.... okay, so Kemel’s big, black, thick and mute, but at least he only resorts to hurting Jamie because Maxtible is lying to him. Kemel might be a stereotype, but he doesn’t unquestioningly resort to violence because his master tells him to. By the way, did you know that Sonny Caldinez, who plays Kemel, wrestled under the same name after this? Does that mean that World of Sport is actually the first Doctor Who spin-off – boasting, as it does, a character from Who played by the same actor? The mind boggles to think about it.
Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) Page 48
