Much of the rest of this, truth to tell, seems very truncated. Once Troughton has amusingly brushed himself down for the photo opportunity amongst the strewn Cyber-bodies, it’s down to poor old Clifford Earl (as Major Branwell) and Norman Hartley (as Sergeant Peters) to provide the necessary urgency. This they do very well, but there’s no escaping that the “exciting climax” occurs with those involved stuck behind desks and on a radio link. (For that matter, I was never entirely convinced that the UNIT control room set successfully represented the interior of an aircraft – it doesn’t quite translate for me, I’m afraid.)
Fortunately, they’ve picked the best director possible to handle this material – save for Robert Sidaway’s Captain Turner, who is rather impossibly cheery, Douglas Camfield has a gift for casting believable actors as military men. In particular, Clifford Earl is something of a wonder – before he was an actor, Earl was a soldier at Porton Down who was subjected to unlawful tests involving sarin nerve gas on unsuspecting human guinea pigs. (Those involved finally got an overdue, much-deserved apology and financial settlement last year, after decades of lobbying the government for them; it makes my long “12 minutes” seem like nothing.) In the previous episode, he got to say, “No hold-ups, please,” with unflappable professionalism as the countdown reached its climax – and this week, he composes his hands after he’s placed the firing keys in a way that suggests calm, standardised army procedure.
So, to review: The Invasion has been an impressively mounted production, helmed by a hugely talented director, with a stunning guest-cast and an excitingly adult tone. Has some of the Doctor’s magic been lost in the process? Perhaps, but if the series can keep alternating between the likes of this and the inspired whimsy of The Mind Robber on a regular basis, we’re in for a treat.
The Krotons episode one
R: This is such a contrast. We’re back into cheap Doctor Who territory with a bump: the very first image is of a sliding door that wobbles and then won’t shut properly. The Gonds are all dressed as simply as the budget will allow, and even the axes they carry have a distinctly hand-me-down whiff about them.
But it’s a contrast to The Invasion in other ways too. The regular cast are right at the forefront of the action again. The Doctor looks more relaxed here than he has for ages, taking in a gravel pit smelling of wet farts with a breeziness that suggests he’s just materialised the TARDIS on a pleasure beach. And he influences events within the Gond society so swiftly that it beggars belief; a several thousand-year-old culture topples within minutes as soon as the Doctor points out that these Kroton benefactors are murdering people. It’s as if Troughton is making up for lost time, after being shunted into the background by all those UNIT soldiers over the last few weeks. We’re back on an alien planet, and the landscape looks suspiciously like Dulkis, and its inhabitants are as badly dressed as Dulcians too – and you grit your teeth expecting a story of a similarly arthritic pace. But the plot is dizzyingly fast; within 15 minutes, we’ve got rebels leading armed attacks upon the establishment – it normally takes us three episodes at least to get this far!
Jamie’s been running on empty for quite a while as well, so it’s heartening to see that the first thing he does upon meeting the first stranger who gets in his way is pick a fight with him. The duel is really well choreographed (let down only a fraction by the Doctor and Zoe ad-libbing squeaks of concern in the background).
I like this. It’s back to basics Doctor Who, but none the worse for that. And it’s great to see Robert Holmes’ name on the credits at last. With Terrance Dicks for the first time being acknowledged on the previous story (as script editor), it’s strange to think we’ve come this far through the series only now to see the work of two men we credit with being so hugely influential.
T: Well, I never had you down as the sort of chap that would use the phrase “wet fart”. I have to say, it’s not the most edifying of images to enjoy my breakfast with.
Anyway, poor old The Krotons... I’ve never really shaken off the disappointment I felt, ages ago, because it had the indecency to not be The Tomb of the Cybermen. When The Five Faces of Doctor Who season was announced back in 1981, I was extremely excited at the prospect of watching those Target novels I’d been reading come to life. When Troughton’s turn came, and the BBC announced that they’d be showing the hitherto unheard-of (at least, in my world) The Krotons, it was my first inkling that perhaps not every story was available. Surely, after all, they’d have shown a well-known classic rather than this unknown entry into the canon? (That wasn’t the only limit to my knowledge either; believe it or not, at this point I still laboured under the misapprehension that all Doctor Who stories were four-parters.) So, this cheap and cheerful little tale had a whiff of “if only” about it, for reasons that were never its fault.
The good news is that there are only two actual problems here – the bad news is that said problems are the production values and the guest cast. It’s certainly not the first time that Doctor Who has been done on the cheap, but this looks cheap – the costumes are blander than a Hollyoaks cast list, the model shot of the Gond dwellings is dreadful and the computer banks don’t spark when they’re battered, possibly because they’re as wooden as James Copeland’s performance as Selris, the Gond leader. The rest of the one-off characters, though, aren’t much better... Gilbert Wynne gives an over-wrought turn as the young man Thara, and dear old James Cairncross, as the scientist Beta, is a tad too plummy. (He was considered the main guest star of this, would you believe, despite his having less than a dozen lines in this episode.) Maurice Selwyn and Bronson Shaw are hilariously poor as, respectively, the learning-hall custodian and an unnamed student. Only Philip Madoc, as the demagogue Eelek, is giving a top-notch performance – when he thinks a hand on his shoulder contains poison, he glowers menacingly and removes it with clinical disgust. We’re lucky to having him in such inauspicious surroundings, but it’s like watching Olivier playing Rosencrantz at your local Village Hall whilst Prentis Hancock gives his Hamlet.
And yet, for all of those troubles... I like this. The script has a laudable economy; Robert Holmes is very good at setting up relationships, customs and backstory with very little fuss. The story bounces along nicely, and if nothing else, it’s an intriguing premise (Holmes has only just left the starting gate, and already he’s shaking a society to its foundations). Troughton’s mourning over the destruction of his favourite umbrella is sweet and funny, whilst the tubular probe that emerges to seek him out is impressive in length, girth and mobility (even if it does bring Doctor Freud a’calling).
Oh, and I’m glad you liked the fight. Jamie’s opponent is Richard, my agent, so 15% of it probably used to belong to me.
April 26th
The Krotons episode two
R: I have to agree with you, Toby, that fandom has had something of a downer on The Krotons ever since it was repeated as part of the Five Faces season. As such, it was the first Troughton story of the video age – the only one for years that was readily accessible as a recording off the telly. My God, the fans I knew were sick of it. It opened our eyes to the state of the archives – that in a series of four-part stories, The Krotons was the only Troughton story then in existence of the right length. The Tomb of the Cybermen was still a good decade from discovery.
Of course, had Tomb existed, you could have been sure that John Nathan-Turner would have chosen it over The Krotons. And yet, I think that would have been a shame. I’m not arguing that The Krotons is a particularly sophisticated bit of Doctor Who. But as a showcase for the series regulars, I don’t think there’s anything better in existence. The rapport between Troughton and Padbury is extraordinary here – as they argue over their intelligence scores in the Learning Hall, and as they nervously enter the lair of the Krotons together, determined to “continue what they’ve started”. I love Tomb, but we don’t get as clear an interpretation of the second Doctor as he faces off to the Cybermen as we do here, when he bangs against the Kroton sp
aceship angrily because it’s dared to call him “DoctorGond”, or when he becomes alarmed once he realises he’s begun to bask in their subliminal praise.
And Jamie is great fun too. His first instincts are to accompany the Doctor into danger, and he’s only mollified when he’s asked very particularly to look after a pretty girl. His frustration against Selris – who’s so willingly sent the Doctor and Zoe into danger – and his furious attempts to get into the Kroton spaceship are really lovely; the episode makes it clear that of the three members of the TARDIS crew at the moment, Jamie is the only one who isn’t a genius, but it’s not a source of comedy at his expense. Instead, it demonstrates all that is great about Jamie – his courage, and his loyalty to his friends. Here’s a boy who’ll enter a death machine, confidently brandishing a crowbar, because he’ll do anything in his power to rescue the Doctor.
T: It’s interesting – we’ve both summoned up the ghost of The Five Faces of Doctor Who (my video copy of this still contains the promotional slide with said faces all together over a swirling, reddish starscape as the announcer tells us what’s coming up), and we’ve both compared The Krotons to The Tomb of the Cybermen. But do you know, I like The Krotons more. I’m not sure it’s any better, but where Tomb excelled was in moments of visual iconography, not the script. Here, there are plenty of decent, thoughtful ideas, all written with a certain witty flair, and all of them weighed down by a lack of money – something the makers of Tomb, fancy season-opener that it was, surely couldn’t complain about. (Incidentally, all of my books are in boxes because I’m getting ready to move house, so do feel free to wipe the egg off my face if turns out they were similarly budgeted.)
I could be wrong, but it looks like David Maloney has been given such scant resources to realise this, he’s opted to use some far-out flashing lights and distorting lenses on the Doctor and Zoe’s faces, hoping to inject some kind of abstract visual flair to proceedings. And he’s asked to pull off quite an ambitious sequence with the vats of slurry forming the crystalline Krotons (a nifty idea that pays lip service, in this case, to the science part of the fiction). It’s all a bit confusing, though, as the montage doesn’t really convey a sense of action or scale for the vats; are they big enough to create and house a Kroton?
The regulars are a mixed bag this time around... Zoe’s ill-advised zeal to have a go on the learning machine is one in a long line of examples of TV producers thinking the general public might find smug, precocious geniuses who nonetheless do stupid things as somehow endearing (answer: they aren’t). At least the Doctor tries to justify the scenario by saying that Zoe’s genius “can be very irritating at times”. He’s no fool, this Doctor, but he’s not one for exams or showing off – his intellect is served by instinct, not indoctrination.
And if nothing else, I quite like the Kroton voices – they’re not Brummie, as everyone says. Roy Skelton once told me that he and Patrick Tull opted to give the Krotons a South African lilt, bringing a satirical edge to the Krotons’ methodology of enslaving and exploiting the indigenous population. I tip my hat to their intent, and also appreciate the creature design. Designer Ray London always seems to get stories involving boxes (the box-like War Machines in their warehouse full of boxes, the Keller Machine), but rubber skirts aside, these fellas don’t look half bad.
Isn’t it odd, though, that two of the central protagonists that were established last week – Eelek and Beta – don’t turn up in this episode? We’ve no idea what they’re up to, but let’s hope that next time, Madoc and the Englishman come out in the mid-day sun.
The Krotons episode three
R: There are some interesting ideas in this episode. But unfortunately, they’re not being raised by the interesting characters. The Doctor and Zoe stroll out to the wasteland, and pick up a few sulphur rocks. Jamie spends the majority of the episode inside the Dynotrope. All three of them seem to have been elbowed out of the main action somewhat.
Which is rather a shame, because it means we spend the episode focused on all the wrong things. We give a greater importance to the Doctor and Zoe fussing about with the TARDIS than we do with the discussions about war going on between Eelek and Beta. And it’s good stuff, too – just as the last story took the time to show us the real-world military consequence to an invasion, going on after the adventure would traditionally end, so The Krotons is all about the way that opportunists and radicals take power in the wake of a cultural revolution. In most stories, the Doctor flies off in the TARDIS at the point when the enemy have been defeated, with the society left to pick up the pieces and rebuild itself anew. The Krotons haven’t been beaten yet, of course – but most often the Doctor’s battle is with convincing the populace that the status quo needs to be changed, and because that happened so quickly within episode one, there’s now time in the script to deal with the political ramifications of that.
Now, I’m aware that when I use the phrase “political ramifications”, I’m talking about the bloody Gonds. Get over yourself, Shearman. But the intent is there in Holmes’ script, and I love that about it. Eelek was nothing more than a jobsworth bureaucrat in episode one, following the Krotons’ wishes, and didn’t even appear in episode two. Now he emerges as a man savvy enough to seize power, because by destabilising the Gonds’ faith in the Krotons, the Doctor’s also destabilised their faith in their leaders. Beta may advise Eelek to be patient and wait until they can devise a weapon to use against their alien aggressors, but Eelek is shrewd enough a politician to realise that to keep the people happy, you feed upon their impatience for immediate change, even if it gambles with their freedom. In most stories last year, the Doctor would be advocating any form of action, because most of the peoples he was fighting for had retreated into timid passivity. Here, though, the opposite is the case: the Doctor has set in motion the overthrow of a tyrant, but without having had a thought of a system to replace it with. Not to sound too crass, but it’s not a million miles away from the war in Iraq nowadays. And to sound a bit less crass, it’s not far from the darker Doctor of The Evil of the Daleks or The Tomb of the Cybermen, who is at least in part responsible for the crisis. (Note also that if the Doctor and Zoe hadn’t been such showoffs with the learning machines, the Krotons would still be inactive in a pool of slurry. The thousand years of slavery might have continued, and the odd clever Gond might have been sacrificed, but the majority of the population would still have been happily cheering the society on in all its stability. Prior to the Doctor arriving and turning everything upside down, even the victims see their being taken away from their friends and family forever as an achievement to be celebrated.)
But all this is in a story with Krotons in it. I think you’ve pretty much got it right, Toby -their top halves aren’t bad, and I love the spinning heads! The skirts and feet are dreadful, though. David Maloney does his best with a long sequence in which one of them sets off across the rocky terrain to find the Doctor. Other directors we could mention (well, Morris Barry, at any rate) would probably depict the thing shuffling along ungainly. Maloney gives us the point of view shot of the Kroton, its gun sticking out ahead of it, making it all look a bit like the computer game Doom from the nineties.
T: Oh God, you’re getting nostalgic about the 90s. I remember when they were new. Heck, it’s just sunk into me that The Five Faces of Doctor Who was more than 25 years ago – in other words, my off-air repeat of a piece of vintage TV is now older than the vintage TV itself was at the time.
I’m continuing to find this story rather charming, even if the novelty has worn off in parts. The Gonds are a pretty dreadful bunch – how many of them are there, anyway? In episode one, Selris addressed the assorted throng like they were the entire population, and despite mention of “the council”, we don’t get a representation of the wider community outside the squabblers we see on screen. Still, at least there are neat little sketches of character backstory – such as Beta chiding Eelek and telling him it must be novel being popular – that help to colour this worl
d. Accent-wise, though, this has gone a bit off the boil – the South African ones are actually pretty ridiculous in practice, and it’s awfully strange when Madoc’s Welsh accent gets more pronounced (notably when he keep talking about a “little more time”), especially as he’s appearing alongside the resolutely Scottish James Copeland. With Cairncross (also a Scot, actually) being absurdly RP English, you almost wish the hotheaded Axus had been Irish, because at least then you’d have the ingredients for a joke.
Nonetheless, I’m entertained by different components of this... there’s a brilliant spinny thing that the Krotons hover above Jamie’s head (I’ve no idea what it actually is, but I like it). The Krotons’ spinning heads are fun too, and you have to enjoy a good-hearted laugh when a line from a hitherto unseen, nameless Gond is reallocated to Beta, meaning that he’s impossibly seen in the Learning Hall when the Doctor left him somewhere else entirely (that, or Beta discovered the principles of matter transportation instead of chemistry). Why, though, does the cast list at the end of this episode appear to have been cranked by someone suffering narcolepsy? I hope the Restoration Team recreates their slow, grinding progress when the credits are redone for the DVD release.
Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) Page 67
