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

by Robert Shearman

  And that’s it for Lady Jennifer, she’s gone! As a companion in the making she’s worked rather well, and Jane Sherwin has turned a woman who could so easily have been a prim and starchy aristocrat with a plum in her mouth into someone charming. (If you’re going to cast the producer’s wife in Doctor Who, better to go with Derrick’s than Peter Bryant’s, I think.) It’s odd that she tells Jamie to pass on her best wishes to Carstairs, though, when she’s every reason to believe he must be dead, and certainly no cause to expect him to be inside an alien base. It’s one of those little instances where the writers presume the characters know the same thing they do, and clumsy as it is, it’s an illustration of the enormous speed at which this epic story was composed.

  T: I worried when we started this project that I’d bang on about the actors too much – because that’s my field and one of my main interests – and although I’d like to think that I’ve restrained myself generally, here, on this final adventure, I haven’t been able to stop. But can you blame me? There’s so much to talk about! You’re right that it’s a shame about Rudolph Walker and Jane Sherwin – they both did a terrific job, and made an impact even amongst this vast and flashy cast. But stepping up to bat is Graham Weston, who gets a great entrance as Russell – the man whose no-nonsense pragmatism is necessary to hold the ragtag resistance together. It’s good that they don’t shirk from the difficulties of bonding such disparate fellows together.

  But I have to ask – what the bloody hell is James Bree doing? I remember reading an interview with Catherine Tate where she admitted that she thought the Daleks were the Doctor’s only nemeses, and appeared in all the adventures. It’s a reasonable enough supposition, but only if you’ve paid precious little attention to the programme. I bring this up because one suspects that Bree thought that too – did his agent tell him he’d be playing a lead villain on Doctor Who, and he presumed that he had to act like a Dalek? (His interrogator’s headgear, at least, is a bit Dalek-like; otherwise, he’s in entirely the wrong costume.) I wouldn’t so much mind, except that he’s acting in a manner completely at odds with everybody else around him. Oh, all right – I’m not convinced he’s got the right approach, but I’ll give him a bit of time and see if my opinion of it improves.

  Watch. This. Spaaaaaaaace.

  May 6th

  The War Games episode six

  R: It must be nice to have an influential Dad. Here’s David Troughton in his TV debut playing Private Moor – in a little tale which allows him to be scared, angry, a bit heroic and to have a rather good fight scene. And it’s a measure of how much space this ten-episode tale affords us; usually, if someone was to be given something for his first showreel, they’d be given a scene with a few lines in it, but the midway point of this long adventure allows Troughton’s storyline to be stretched right across the episode. And perhaps it shouldn’t work, perhaps it ought to look a bit tokenistic. But it’s brilliant. Partly because it at last allows room for a small character, a young soldier of no great consequence, to have the focus placed upon him for a change – and by giving him his moment, the writers allow every him to represent every other frightened Tommy who’s been exploited and become a victim of power politics he can’t even begin to understand. The War Games is all the richer because for all its epic ambitions, it still has the room to remind us that it’s a story about lots of ordinary people being treated callously. And it’s brilliant too, because David Troughton is extremely good. There’s an RSC star in the making here.

  David Maloney gets his first chance to get actors into gas masks – a recurring trope in so many of the Doctor Who stories he’ll direct over the next few years. And Wendy Padbury looks impossibly cute, flapping about in a great coat far too big for her, with a big hat perched upon her head!

  But for contemporary fans, this episode has particular significance because it’s the first time the phrase “Time Lord” is mentioned. It’s without fanfare, without emphasis, and it just passes by the once in conversation. It will have meant nothing at the time to the 1969 audience, but it changes Doctor Who forever. Did it give you a shiver, Toby?

  T: Yes, indeed... especially as it’s the legendary Vernon Dobtcheff who gets to say such a legendary line! So, we now know that the Time Lords (the War Chief’s people, and presumably the Doctor’s also) have mastered dimensionary transcendentalism and time travel, and that – if the controls used by the baddies are anything to go by – they’re able to manipulate such powerful accomplishments using fridge-magnet technology. But what’s most interesting about this is how, in context, the term “Time Lords” almost sounds like it’s nothing more than the peculiar vernacular to this particular tale. The aliens’ ranks, after all, include a Security Chief, a War Chief and a War Lord, so the jump to “Time Lord” is actually pretty straightforward, and less impactful as a result. Well, less impactful at the time – for the likes of someone like me, it’s hugely significant. I can’t quite believe that we’ve entered the fifth month of this project, and it’s the first time we’ve heard the term!

  Whilst this adventure is still very good, the edges are fraying a bit. The Doctor tries to get the mind-processing machine, is forced to leave it, sends Zoe away at the landing bay, and then goes all the way back for the device. This, in turn, facilitates a pretty grotty fight between Jamie, Carstairs and a couple of guards (whose method of attack is chucking themselves about in anticipation of as-yet unthrown punches that fail to make contact). And the Security Chief’s assertion that the Doctor could only have escaped from a room with the help of a space/time machine is so ludicrous, it’s comical. I know the War Chief points this out, but giving this staccato lunatic, who is prone to jumping to illogical conclusions, such an important position seriously undermines the aliens’ credibility. (And they are running a deficit of it at present – after all, these are the same people who take Russell prisoner, but leave him with his gun and ammo.)

  Still, these are minor quibbles for the most part. The writers have sensibly kept the adventure fresh and trotting along by adding new characters while taking others away. So we lose the creepy, weasally von Weich (it’s a splendid turn from David Garfield), while Russell starts to become a heroic figure. The former’s demise in the novelisation is rubbish, and he thankfully gets a better send-off on screen, as he impotently tries to raise his gun, in a final attempt to shoot his prey, before expiring. Talking of which, did you see how Carstairs rather gruesomely shot a guard, in the face, at point-blank range? And he’s one of the good guys!

  The best bit, however, is when Zoe asks the Doctor how he’s so quickly acquired the knowledge required to use the War Chief’s technology. He hurriedly brushes her off, with Troughton wonderfully conveying that this involves a terrible secret that he can’t bear to tell even his loyal companion. It’s very ominous. By the pricking of my thumbs...

  The War Games episode seven

  R: Two particular moments stand out for me. The one is the ingenious way that the Doctor uses his handkerchief as a white flag of truce – he comes out coughing on his knees from the SIDRAT groaning for all he’s worth, and it feels like a typical bit of Troughton comedy shtick. And then he surprises us; he’s going to use that flag as something to cover his nose when he gasses the entire room and makes his escape. It’s very clever, and turns the scene entirely on its head. No wonder the War Chief is impressed.

  And the other is such a simple facial reaction from Wendy Padbury, looking on in honest disgust as her own friends club down a couple of soldiers in the trenches. It’s so easy in a story of this length, with so many hapless people being killed, to become desensitised to it – and that is, in part, exactly what this story is about, how decent ordinary people can grow so used to war that it’s allowed to become something banal. Padbury’s reaction pulls us up short at just the right moment in the story, as the music becomes ever jauntier, in an episode where a terrific number of ordinary men just doing their duty get gunned down by the Doctor’s friends.

  But it’s
Philip Madoc who stands out here as the War Lord. He’s short and unassuming, and wears thick pebble glasses – he looks like an accountant, a grown up version of the kid who’d be ignored at school. And yet he commands instant respect. He quietly dresses down both the Security Chief and the War Chief, telling them to cooperate or be replaced, and you know immediately that this is a man of such power that he can conquer worlds without ever needing to raise his voice. When he comes up with a plan to defeat the rebels, having at last grown tired of the incompetence of his apprentices, it feels like Sir Alan Sugar has decided to step in and solve the week’s task. You know he’ll get his way. And within minutes, he’s managed what no-one else has been able to do for weeks – he captures the Doctor. It’s a rare cliffhanger, not of immediate jeopardy, but of despair; the look on Jamie and Zoe’s faces says it all.

  Only three episodes of Troughton to go. What do you say, we go hell for leather tomorrow, and finish off The War Games in one sitting? I think we owe it to the man.

  T: Sure, I can happily do three episodes of Troughton. It’s tidier for me too, as I fly to New Zealand the day after tomorrow. It’d feel wrong, somehow, saying goodbye to Troughton at an airport (I don’t want to give him the same treatment that Ben and Polly got). So yes, I’m sold – extra Doctor Who tomorrow! (Why not, as it’s more pleasant than the 300 other things I need to sort out before I go!)

  And hooray... there’s brilliant, wonderful Philip Madoc. And such is his severe haircut and fabulously short, prickly beard, he doesn’t even look like the same bloke from The Krotons, does he? Madoc has a great line in flickering, playful smiles that suggest a confident, quiet menace, and he provides a much-needed, fierce intelligence which thankfully gets between the increasingly interminable bickering of his two subordinates. Faced with the daunting task of writing a ten-part story, Dicks and Hulke have kept matters moving along by yet again escalating the level of villainy. And we’re reminded of how far we’ve come when some unfinished business with the story’s first evil protagonist, General Smythe, is addressed. The Doctor is pleasingly stroppy with him (and, to my delight, says “courts martial”), and eventually all the poise and authority Smythe displayed in previous episodes is stripped away, and he’s revealed as the squalid little sadist that he is. And he gets a pretty miserable death as he’s shot whilst scrabbling away on the floor, unmourned by his superiors.

  And isn’t it curious that the Doctor can’t speak foreign languages, and that the one word everyone fails to communicate to a Frenchman during wartime is “resistance”? Even I know that it’s the same word in both English and French!

  Oh, and following on the heels of Patrick Troughton’s son appearing last week, so Michael Craze’s brother crops up in this episode. Before you know it, they’ll be casting Jean Marsh’s ex-husband or something...

  May 7th

  The War Games episode eight

  R: I love that little scene where we see Russell and Carstairs manning the phones, cheerily taking down details of the latest rebel attack. They look like the minor celebrities they usually get to take pledges from callers at charity telethons! It works because (again) this is a story long enough to have the space to show a resistance movement stealing an advance upon the enemy; this sort of thing is usually confined to the second half of the final episode, and is led by the Doctor. But what’s wonderful is that this is only inspired by the Doctor – Zoe says quite bluntly that the best way to help him in captivity is to carry out his plans. In that way, as an emblem of revolution rather than merely the man scampering around breaking things, Troughton’s Doctor in his final story takes on a really epic status.

  And it’s a victory for mankind too, who can fight for freedom without his direct help. Mankind gets rather a rough ride this week otherwise, with the War Chief decrying them as the most warlike creatures in the cosmos. It’s a fair point – and a rather witty one, too, to conclude an era of stories which feature monsters more than any other – but Dicks and Hulke very skilfully contrast it with scenes of humanity achieving much by working together. They’re a strange ragbag, these resistance leaders – a whole slew of different accents and costumes, but they’re all characters too. And that’s why the broad comedy of Arturo Villar – the resistance leader from the Mexican Civil War Zone – works so well. The aliens are a humourless bunch who haven’t even got the wit to have individual names, just pompous titles. We’re better than that lot.

  The cliffhanger has a hard job. It needs to persuade us that the Doctor may have betrayed his friends to the War Lord. And it just about gets away with it, because the scenes between Troughton and Brayshaw are so electric. We’ve never seen anything like this before in Doctor Who. When Hartnell played off Peter Butterworth, it was for comic effect, it was for the merry contrast of seeing Doctor Who scolding his irresponsible little brother. Here, though, there’s a real sensation of new territory being explored, of the Doctor having a bond with a member of his own race. It’s powerful enough that you can see it as the template for all those end-of-story climaxes between Pertwee and Delgado. And where it puts the viewer – we’re learning secrets! At last! – is new and unsettling enough that the Doctor as traitor is far more credible than it should be.

  T: What a contrast those two Time Lords make – Brayshaw is all poised, stalking about with purpose and power, while Troughton is shabby and iconoclastic, grumpily rebuffing any notion of becoming a supreme being. The only thing that unites them is a shared, blazing intelligence, and a presence that only really good actors have. And it’s a handy foreshadowing of what’s to come when the War Chief mentions how the Doctor has changed his appearance – something that, after Troughton’s first story, the series has gone out of its way not to talk about.

  There are a couple of silly bits to this. The Security Chief hasn’t improved with time, and to my eyes seems like the thickest villain since Spencer the Idiot Chameleon. And there’s a very lame death from the resistance member who is manning the machine gun when the SIDRAT materialises – his method of expiration seems to entail straightening his cap, then having a snooze. Never mind that it’s somewhat surprising to see him turn up alive and well in the barn at the end of the episode.

  But as the eighth episode in, this has no business being as interesting and exciting as it is. Again, Dicks and Hulke have done a great job of gradually upping the stakes every week, and they’re aided and abetted by what’s a very cleverly mounted production in parts (to emulate the resistance’s uprising, they just stuff a handful of extras into stock costumes, and – hey presto! – the sense of scale is yet again broadened). Speaking of which, it’s pleasing that the resistance have a policy now of knocking out the conditioned soldiers rather than killing them; it’s bad enough to die in a real war, let alone perish in an ersatz one.

  The War Games episode nine

  R: It takes us by surprise a little, even though as fans we know that this story is pivotal for the future of the series. It’s that sudden shift in Troughton’s performance, where what concerns him is no longer the good will of the rebels he’s been helping, but his escape from his own people. The sequence in which he tells Arture Villar to shoot him if he wants to, but he’s moving on to a new adventure anyway, is an acknowledgement that the last nine weeks have been small fry compared to the threat he’s now facing. We’ve never seen Troughton so frustrated – note his sudden flare of anger when he tells Jamie to shut up and do as he’s told. And it makes the fear he shows in summoning the Time Lords so very credible – and therefore his calling upon them a huge sacrifice. There’s been an awful lot of explosions and gunshots in this story, but the climax of The War Games is the Doctor sitting on the ground and making a cube out of some white cards. It’s such a small moment, but it feels absolutely crucial. It’s the first time Doctor Who has saved the day by calling upon someone bigger than himself; this literal deus ex machina ought to feel like a complete swizz, but if anything it just raises the stakes as high as we’ve ever seen them. It’s quite remarkable.


  Edward Brayshaw helps sell this too – here’s a man who would rather take his chances with the War Lord’s cronies than wait around for his own race. The War Chief’s last gamble, as he pleads that he’s still an ally of the War Lord, is so desperate that you really feel for him; Brayshaw cleverly plays upon that same camaraderie with the Doctor that we’re soon to see from the Master. You want to be on his side. The sequence where he settles an old score, and guns down the Security Chief, has you cheering him on, albeit a bit guiltily... well, it did me, at any rate. And Philip Madoc is never better in Doctor Who than he is in this episode. I know he gives a first-rate turn in The Brain of Morbius – but the amusement he shows in the scene where he evaluates whether or not he’s going to accept the Doctor’s treachery is so very dangerous. There’s that little moment where the Doctor goes a little too far, and pronounces that the rebels are now his enemies not his friends – and you can see that Madoc doesn’t believe a word of it, and is the more cunning manipulator. Indeed, when the Security Chief leaves the Doctor to be lynched by the resistance, there’s a wonderful ambiguity to it – is this on the War Lord’s instructions, and did he intend the Doctor to be killed after all? That there’s room for such ambiguity in the first place is so refreshing – Doctor Who very rarely can resist the urge to spell out just how evil its villains are – but the way Madoc seizes upon it makes him by far the subtlest and most truly chilling adversary the Doctor has yet faced.

  T: You’ve done it too! You called Villar “Arturo” in episode eight and “Arture” in episode nine – which is exactly what the credits do. There’s nothing like a misspelt credit to get a pedantic little git like me all excited.

  And Villar himself is great fun – likeable though Russell and Carstairs are (hats off to Graham Weston and David Savile for bringing such amiability to what could have been potentially dull, stock good guys), the rebel camp needed a bit of colour. Michael Napier-Brown is clearly having a ball in the role, making the most of his character’s love for his guns and enjoyment of violence. It’s an interesting nuance that we’re meant to side with this man, even though he’d slit your throat for a bag of gold. Twice we’re reminded of this pretty blatantly: when he insists on killing because “what else do you do with prisoners?”, and his inability to discern the difference between shooting a man in the front or the back. This is the mankind the War Chief was telling us about last week.