Welcome back to Whovember, where this time, we're taking a look at the last of Doctor Who's black & white years...
Year 5: 1967 to 1968 - The Mind Robber
When we think about Patrick Troughton's run, we often think of the "Base Under Siege" tales, the star recurring monsters and such, but for me, as much as I love those, my favourites are ones that buck that trend. The Enemy of the World for example is a great spy thriller mixed in with some wild SF ideas, and a great chance for Pat to show off even more range. But an even better example is this story, which is by far the most meta tale Sixties Who ever made. A few years earlier when The Chase was being developed, for its fourth episode Journey Into Terror, the original idea for why the TARDIS crew and the Daleks were meeting Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and such, would be that they had ended up in a real created by human imagination. Now that idea got quashed, the production team at the time thought it was too fantastical, so it got changed to a futuristic amusement park instead. (Like a Goth Westworld.) However, here we are not that long later (although it seems a lot long due to how much as changed and the sheer number of episodes), and now the show actually goes ahead with it, a tale in The Land of Fiction.
This story is an absolute gem. Now this actually starts with an episode that was thrown together at almost the last minute, a situation the show had found itself in before (The Edge of Destruction) and would find itself in again later (The Invasion of Time, Fear Her), but on this occasion it works brilliantly. A genuinely eerie twenty minutes, with some Prisoner-esque mindf***ery thrown in, which acts as a great prologue for what's to come, leading to that amazing cliffhanger above, which at points almost looks like a scene from Eraserhead. It drops the TARDIS team into a truly surreal experience of forests of proverbs, riddles, puns, mythological creatures, toy solidiers, Gulliver showing up, and changed faces. That last point, Hamish Wilson having to fill in for Frazer Hines for a few days, is another example of a behind the scenes issue actually being used to benefit this story, almost like the stars all lined up to make this one work. It's such a great conceit for a tale too, a realm build by fiction, many other writers have used it well too, such as Jasper Fforde, and later Who writer Paul Cornell did a Fantastic Four story with a similar idea. (It leads to the great Thing line "It's a truth universally acknowledged that IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME!".)
Speaking of comic characters, one touch I love is including a fictional character from the future, The Karkus, one that Zoe knows that the Doctor doesn't. It's such a good way to do some world-building, and making him a comic book superhero is not just I suspect a comment on how American superhero comics like Marvel were beginning to invade UK shelves around the time this was written, but given how that genre has taken over movies since the turn of the century, it seems positively prophetic. The Target novelisation, also by screenwriter Peter Ling (incidentally, this was his only script for the show, but boy he knocked it out of the park, one for one!) is a great read, expanding on things nicely, including extra touches such as mentioning that whenever the Karkus uses his raygun, the explosions have the word "BOOM" inside them. I really could go on and on about this story, I haven't even started on how it's been used by spin-off media yet (although I might have the chance to do so again later, hint hint), but I have fifty five more years to go through. Look, if you haven't experienced this story already, go give it a go right now, it's a real gem of the Troughton years. It's also a famous first; it's the first story directed by David Maloney, who'd later produce Blake's 7 and the BBC Day of the Triffids, and he also directed (amongst a lot of great Who stories) my next pick...
Year 6: 1968 to 1969 - The War Games
In deciding on topics for these posts, there were some choices to make that were far easier than others, some years where I didn’t even have to think about it, and for this one, there really was only one thing it could possibly be. In many ways you can draw a direct line through the history of Doctor Who, dividing it into Pre-War Games and post-War Games, it's an episode that changed everything. For starters, from a Doylist perspective, it's the show's fiftieth serial, it's the end of Patrick Troughton's run as the Doctor (as well as Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury leaving then too), and it's the last serial made in black & white. Now all of that alone, alongside it being one of the show's longest stories at ten episodes, would be enough to make it a major part of the show's history, but then we come to the Watsonian perspective. This is where all gets revealed, the Doctor being a Time Lord, the very existence of the Time Lords, the central mythology the show's lore is based up for the rest of Who's history is set here, with every subsequent revelation building upon it. Even something that's as big a shake up to the status quo as The Timeless Children* only adds an extra dimension to this one. Overall, I'd say the most important thing this one sets up is that right from the word go, the Time Lords are shown to be just the worst. They really are utter dicks in this one; yes, they clean up the villain's plan here, but what they do to the Doctor and his companions is just terrible... and it kind of sets the tone for everything else we see about them from then on.
Now again, we can see how this would be a very important story... so it's also the cherry on the cake that it's such a damn good story too! For something that kind of ended up ten episodes long by accident, having to fill in some other scripts that fell through, it's an astonishing piece of work. From what seems to be a WWI battlefield with something odd going on, to the reveal of more time zones, to the internal struggles of the main villains, to a problem so large that the Doctor is forced to put literally everything he has on the line in calling in the Time Lords, it's such an enjoyable tale. It never drags, there's always something new going on, all the cliffhangers are winners... and it keeps all this up over ten episodes! I have watched it several times, and I always end up binging the whole thing, the time just flies by with it; much classic Who works better going episode by episode, but the War Games works so well watched as a whole... and again, ten episodes! It even manages to have some great dramatic reflections, in the Doctor on trial in the first and final parts. Plus, as a bonus, there's the character of the War Chief... hmm, an evil rogue Time Lord with a beard who wants to turn the Doctor to his side if he cannot defeat him; that's an interesting little idea for later. And for those who complain that Doctor Who has "gone woke", I don't think you can get a more left wing, anti-war, bring down the ruling class story than this! I'll stop just listing everything I love about this, and just say that if you are at all interested in Classic Who, this is one of the Must Watch titles, for both it's place in history, and for being just that Damn GOOD!
*I have a little bit of headcanon I have developed about the War Games in relation to The Timeless Child reveal. See in that clip above the bit where they offer the Doctor a choice of faces? In my head, that's not what they are really doing; I like to imagine that the Division wants to know if their memory block is still working on the Doctor, so those faces are pictures of some of the Doctor's past selves, to see if he reacts to them. Only after he shows no sign of recognising them do they begin his sentence. Just my headcanon, but that's what's fun about an idea like the Timeless Child; it can give you a new lens to look at old stuff though
Next time, we're into the colour years, where we meet your plastic pals who want to kill you, and I tell of my first glimpse of TV Who...
No comments:
Post a Comment