Timelash

I didn't see Timelash when it was originally broadcast (probably because series 2 of Robin of Sherwood started on the same day) so my first exposure to it was as an adult. I must start by saying that I have never found this story particularly painful to watch- but this does not stop me from thinking that it's a load of rubbish. The script has a story that could easily have been made into a reasonably good adventure. However, the pacing is all over the place and the overall flow is terrible- too much happens in the first episode, too little in the second, which means that it runs out of plot too soon, meaning a second ending has to be grafted on. This brings to mind The Creature from the Pit- hardly an illustrious antecedent! There are numerous plot holes and poorly thought out developments which should never have made it past first draft. The dialogue is atrocious in places, with clumsy info-dumping and terrible metaphors; McCoy seems to be aiming to do for scripted drama what William McGonnagal did for poetry!

However, the script is by no means the story's greatest problem. This is clearly the cheap story of the season, but even so, a creative director can work wonders. So why on earth was Pennant Roberts brought back? At his best, he is competent, but it was largely due to his ineptitude that Warriors of the Deep slipped from mediocrity to travesty. Here, Roberts is given bland sets and a Timelash prop that is full of tinsel. Roberts amplifies the blandness by overlighting the sets and, in a decision of staggering incompetence, draws attention to the tinsel in the Timelash by having the door open, showing us the unlit interior and then turning the light on- as if the Timelash were a very Christmassy fridge! Fight scenes are pathetically staged and the TARDIS scenes, although they start nicely, get sillier as they go on, culminating in the ridiculous 'seat belts' which makes the console look like a rubbish chair-o-plane! Roberts, as I have said many times before, goes to pieces whenever actors actually have to move- in fact the only thing that he directed that I thought was actually good is the first scene of Shada- where all the characters were catatonic!

Roberts' attitude to casting and directing actors is similarly poor. A typical piece of inept casting is that of both Christine Cavanagh and Tracy Ward- although they play different characters, they are dressed identically and look quite similar, which must have made the appearance of Ward's character unnecessarily confusing to the casual viewer, as Cavanagh's character was killed off in the first five minutes. Roberts casts actors fresh out of drama school for the first scenes (including Stephen Mackintosh, who would eventually become a very fine actor) whose lack of experience is obvious. Then, there are more experienced actors who are basically left to find the character on their own- Jeananne Crowley, a very accomplished actress, gives a terrible performance. Perhaps Roberts was too concerned with reigning in Paul Darrow's hugely florid performance as Tekker. Darrow is fun to watch, though. The best performance by a country mile is Pakistan's finest, Robert Ashby as the Borad. Even though he is hidden under extensive make-up (the only production triumph of the story) Ashby is terrifying- his voice is the most chilling for a Doctor Who villain since Gabriel Woolf as Sutekh.

Colin Baker had clearly found his feet as the Doctor and he successfully wins against what the script and production throw at him. Nicola Bryant is again the object of bizarre lust- enough has been written about her being chained up and molested by the (laughable) Morlox. Which brings me to Herbert. If H G Wells had really gone through all that before becoming a writer, he would probably have written respectable and forgettable bildungsromans.

It's reasonable fun and passes the time, but then a microwaved pork pie is tasty- but I would be very unwise to make them a key part of my diet.

NEXT: Revelation of the Daleks

Warriors of the Deep

Warriors of the Deep saw the return of the Silurians and the Sea Devils to Doctor Who. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that Johnny Byrne wrote this story having never even seen the two Pertwee stories, but his script is reasonably good. The plot is reminiscent of the Troughton era monster stories, but Warriors of the Deep has the advantage of not having been broadcast between stories with exactly the same 'base-under-siege' plot. The very early introduction of the hexachromite gas makes the outcome extremely predictable and, indeed, the plot is a bit too straightforward. However, there are some nice concepts, such as the need to link to a human brain to launch nuclear missiles (Byrne is considerably more skilful in using technobabble than in the interminably dull Arc of Infinity) and there is some great dialogue for the regulars and, incidentally, the first fart gag in Doctor Who.

However, the story's visualisation is close to catastrophic. Pennant Roberts has never been the most skilful of directors, but his work here shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how to use visual images to tell a story. The Silurians are revealed by a simple cut, like they were a recurring adversary on Stingray. The camera work is incredibly lazy with any scene not requiring basic composition just being shot statically. This all comes to a head in the storming of the sea base. This takes up a good deal of the story, but, thanks to Roberts's ineptitude, what we get are lumbering Sea Devils moving against humans inching carefully backwards- not very exciting! The lighting has been criticised as being excessive, which is not quite the case- it is uniform and does not create atmosphere, as well as not conforming to expectations of what a sea base should look like. The realisation of the Silurians and Sea Devils are considerably less successful than the originals. They do not move their lips when speaking (which the originals did) and they move very slowly- a far cry from the fast moving Sea Devils of the Pertwee era. There is the nice touch of having blinking eyelids for Sauvix, but this is, incredibly, only utilised twice! Roberts has conversations between the reptiles take ages, with huge pauses between the speakers, almost as if it were a satellite link. Then there is the Myrka, one of the most pathetic looking monsters to ever appear in the programme. The sterile lighting only amplifies the problems in the realisation of the saurians. On the good side, although it is overlit, the set for the base is actually quite good and the music is wonderfully atmospheric. The production was rushed, by all accounts, but that does not excuse things like the Silurians' costumes not being fitted properly.

The guest performances are rather lacklustre, with some being downright dreadful. Ingrid Pitt has great screen presence, but she is not a very good actress, but Ian McCulloch as Nilson and Nitza Saul as Karina are far worse. Tom Adams is good as Vorshak, but he succumbs to Roberts's poor direction- Vorshak does not even react when he is shot. However, if there is one great thing about this story it is, again, Peter Davison. The Doctor is brilliantly characterised in the script, his handing over of his gun being a great touch and Davison attacks the part with gusto, giving one of his finest performances. Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson also work very well with the material they are given.

The end of the story is superlative- both the reptiles and the humans are dead and the Doctor, with a tremor in his voice, says 'There should have been another way'. This could easily be applied to the story as a whole, a story that could easily have been so much better.

NEXT: The Awakening

Shada

Shada is a tricky one to review as, obviously, what we are looking at is very much unfinished. Because bits of it were never shot it is hard to get a sense of the pacing and coherence of the thing. However, it is still possible to watch it and get a sense of the story, which is why I have decided to include it in my retrospective, in spite of the fact that it was never broadcast.

Shada was, in a sense, the end of an era and probably would have been (stylistically) the definitive example of the Douglas Adams era. The script would be instantly recognisable as Adams’ work even if it wasn’t reused seven years later as the basis for Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (the similarities are even more pronounced than in City of Death, with entire scenes being reproduced almost verbatim). As it stands, the script is a good one. It takes an idea- a scientist who wants to be God and runs away with it, with some inspired concepts such as the mind-stealing sphere and a spaceship computer that nigh-on worships its master. There is a good deal of the comedy characteristic of the era, but a fair bit of it is funny, fortunately. The dialogue is good throughout with a few exceptions: ‘They stole our brains!’ is never a good line, no matter how necessary to the plot it is. The characterisation is reasonably good, even though the key characters of Chris Parsons and Clare Keightley aren’t exactly fleshed out- apart from Arthur Dent, Adams was never very good at making his everyman characters three dimensional. However, we have the wonderful character of Professor Chronotis and the insanely arrogant and ruthless Skagra to keep our attention. The script seems to justify the length of six episodes, which is pleasantly surprising.

The standard of the production is hard to judge, as only one of the studio sessions were made, giving the studio scenes a very uniform look. However, the location scenes in Cambridge are wonderful and the Professor’s study is a fantastic set. Pennant Roberts puts in some fantastic work behind the camera (something I’d never thought I’d type)- of special note is the opening scene, where the camera circles round the seated figures of the Think Tank, which is intercut with a countdown in Roman numerals. The Krarg is a wonderfully realised monster, making a strong impression even in its brief appearance on the surviving footage. The performances are excellent, with Denis Carey being wonderful as Chronotis and Christopher Neame’s Nordic glower being used to good effect as Skagra. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward are clearly invigorated by this story and perform excellently.

Shada would not have been the best story of the season, but it would certainly have been very memorable if it had been completed. What is left of it can actually be enjoyed as a story and it is a real pity that it was not allowed to rescue what was the weakest run of Doctor Who stories for some time.

NEXT: The Leisure Hive

The Pirate Planet

Of all the writers who scripted Doctor Who in the 20th Century, only one became so successful that he arguably became almost as iconic as the series itself. Douglas Adams was riding the wave of success of the first radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when this story, the second in the Key to Time season was brought out. Adams's renown colours the perception of any viewer coming to the story today- we are looking for the detached view of the universe, the ideas that are both daft and brilliant, the absurd situations and the people that they spawn. We certainly get some very imaginative ideas- the Zanak, the planet that devours others; inertia absorbing corridors; a gestalt being formed from the psychic energy of the dead of a destroyed planet and moulding random inhabitants of Zanak to become Mentiads, beings with awesome psychic powers .

However, as you all know, I have been absorbed in Doctor Who for months, which led me to consider something- Douglas Adams has a lot in common with Bob Baker and Dave Martin. Baker and Martin are also fond of barmy ideas and they also have gaps in their scientific knowledge (to be fair, Adams has gaps, Baker and Martin have yawning chasms!) However, Adams is able to bind his barmy ideas into a narrative with more success than Baker and Martin usually do. Adams's humour is, of course a major factor, but more critical are the wonderful characters he creates. The Captain is one of the most entertaining figures the programme has ever seen, with his bombastic manner and piratical appearance. Bruce Purchase brings the character wonderfully to life, his mellifluous voice making us feel not only the bluster, but the ruthlessness and genuine humanity underneath. The interplay between the Captain and Andrew Robertson's wonderful Mr Fibuli are a joy to behold and the Captain's genuine grief at Mr Fibuli's death is genuinely moving. The twist in the tale is that the real reason for destroying dozens of planets and trillions of lives is to ensure that Queen Xanxia will be immortal. The vanity and total amorality is well portrayed in a restrained (and therefore very effective) performance by Rosalind Lloyd. Some of the other performances are less effective, however. The Mentiads are merely adequate, which is a real shame- we never really see why the rest of the population have such a horror of them. The only really disappointing performance is that of Ralph Michael as Balaton- not so much bad acting as wrongly modulated.

Like Baker and Martin, Douglas Adams's scripts don't seem too concerned about whether they can be effectively realised on screen with the low budget that Doctor Who had. However, the story is effectively realised, for the most part- special mention must be given to the wonderful costume for the cyborg Captain. The direction by Pennant Roberts is good enough to make the scenes work, but could have been better- his skill seems to be concentrated on some of the more impressive set pieces- the battle between K9 and the Polyphase Avitron was clearly filmed in a hurry, but works reasonably well.

Strange as it may seem, Tom Baker does not go completely over the top in his performance- perhaps this is Roberts's greatest contribution as director! Baker is funny when the script calls for it, but also expresses outrage at the countless deaths caused by Zanak. Mary Tamm is growing into her role nicely. Romana's attitude to the Doctor has changed a great deal, but her outward behaviour has not, something put over very well by Tamm.

The Pirate Planet is funny, clever and imaginative, which more than compensates for its flaws.

NEXT: The Stones of Blood

The Sun Makers

The first time I saw this story was at the Doctor Who Society at university. It was my first meeting and we were promised a classic. I never went to another. Since then, I have been baffled at the acclaim accorded to this story. It has been lauded as a 'clever satire', presumably by the same people who call The Curse of Peladon an allegory.

Robert Holmes starts by introducing some intriguing concepts- Pluto being terraformed and six artificial suns orbiting it- and then doesn't deliver on them. There is, in fact, no reason for the story not to have been set on Earth and we don't even get to see these artificial suns- a bit of a problem in a story called The Sun Makers. The idea of PCM, the anxiety inducing gas that is pumped into the atmosphere is a nice one, but is nothing like as fully explored in the script as it should be. We are then left with the basic story which has, strangely, been trumpeted as being about the tax system but seems to me to be a story about a populace living under authoritarian rule- call me crazy, but I find subduing a population with psychoactive chemicals in the air and making people who ask too many questions 'disappear' a slightly more serious abuse of human rights than people being charged too much for goods and services. I will not talk about the morality of a successful television writer moaning about his tax return- if I can overlook Don Houghton's appallingly rose-tinted view of Mao Zedong, I can easily overlook this. However, the tax satire aspect of the story is very badly done. There is the obvious point that the oppressive regime is a corporation, not a government. The only parallel to taxation that can be drawn is that of taxation prior to the industrial revolution- hardly satirical. There are so many aspects of the modern system of taxation that could have been examined- the way that trying to tax the rich means that they invariably find ways of avoiding it; the accountability that the tax levying authority has to the taxpayer and so on. Apart from the line 'probably too many accountants in the government' none of this is really addressed. There are no departments that swallow up money like a black hole and the jabs at bureaucracy are feeble. There are some reasonably amusing one liners, but a guard called the Inner Retinue and a 'P45 Corridor' do not make up for the lack of thought behind the story. Holmes's usual gift for characterisation seems to be absent, with characters either being stock reactive types or gross caricatures. Mandrell has signs of being interesting, but he abruptly changes personality half-way through, showing that this must have been an accident. The ending of the story is rushed and unconvincing.

Visually, the story is utterly dull. The set design is tepid and Pennant Roberts has no aptitude for action scenes. He does try to make some scenes interesting, such as having conversations between characters occurring on different levels. The costuming is either dull or, in the case of Gatherer Hade, silly. The lighting design seems to have only one aim, to make objects visible- these floodlit sets would not have been tolerated by the likes of David Maloney and Douglas Camfield.

The actors do they best they can with the script. William Simons gives Mandrell a real presence (and is seemingly the only non-middle class person on the planet!) and Richard Leech makes Hade interesting to watch, if not particularly subtle. Henry Woolf's performance as the Collector, however, is too comedic and his nasal voice is highly irritating. Tom Baker seems to be improvising half the time in a highly erratic performance and it is left to Louise Jameson to provide the only truly outstanding contribution. This is also K9's first proper outing and he is interestingly used exactly like a real dog- to attack and follow 'scents'.

This is, in short, eminently skippable. I certainly will do so, in future.

NEXT: Underworld

The Face of Evil

It’s all change for Doctor Who with Chris Boucher’s debut script for the story. The Doctor must deal with the consequences of a mistake he made early in his regeneration when a computer belonging to a human survey mission he repaired has developed a multiple personality disorder and is regarded as a god by the descendants of the mission- with the Doctor’s very face regarded as the face of the Evil One.

Boucher takes a well-worn sci-fi trope and makes it gripping because of the degree of thought that has gone into the writing. The development of the culture of the Sevateem and Tesh is realistic and the portrayal of Xoanon, the mad computer, is very well portrayed- note that the Sevateem sign to ward off evil has developed from the safety check of a space-suit. The environment that Xoanon has created for its followers follows a certain insane logic. A story of this type requires stereotypical characters, yet Boucher manages to make the characters seem real and the dialogue is rich with symbolism without being obvious- the pastiche of biblical language is pitched just right. Most impressively, the story does not end with all being well- there are still clear cultural barriers between the Tesh and Sevateem and much work still needs to be done (compare with The Savages from Season 3).

The writing helps the guest performances become genuinely interesting. Neeva is the shaman of Xoanon, yet, because the society has been so completely moulded by Xoanon, Neeva has nothing beyond his faith, no privileged position that demands that he maintain this position for his own ends. When Neeva realises the truth about Xoanon, he is only too willing to destroy Xoanon. David Garfield rightly plays Neeva as being just as much a victim as the other Sevateem- he is not a merely futuristic version of Tlotoxl from The Aztecs. Leslie Schofield does great work as ‘the devious Calib’ and it is welcome that he is allowed to survive the events of the story. The portrayal of Xoanon is first rate, with the multiple voices wonderfully portraying the madness, despair and anger of the computer).

The story is sound visually, although the jungle sets could have been better. The ‘holy of holies’ that is Xoanon’s control centre is brilliantly realised and the pallor of the Tesh contrasts well with the tanned Sevateem, as their clinical domain contrasts with the Sevateem’s tribal home. Pennant Roberts does some solid work behind the camera, although it is never spectacular

This is the debut story for Leela and Louise Jameson puts in a phenomenal performance, making her intuitive, intelligent and sympathetic, yet also brutal. It is clear from Tom Baker’s great performance in this story that this Doctor does not react well to being alone and it is clear that a Pygmalion type of relationship is to come.

This is a little gem and a great start for Leela.

NEXT: The Robots of Death