Whovember Part 4: 1969 to 1971

Time for another installment of Whovember, and this time we're into the Pertwee years.  You know, in an odd way, Pertwee was my Doctor, partially down to how his stuff got a few repeats in the 90s, partially for a lot of his stories coming out on VHS then, and for the way he actually did a whole bunch of weird appearances in character ... and boy do I mean weird.  Here's one for a game show the BBC did called Happy Families, which I see as them trying for their answer to Gladiators, and missing by a mile, partially down to the guest score keepers being saddled with an absolute lead balloon of a catchphrase.  Pertwee even did a pair of radio serials then with Elizabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney, ones that I am hmming and haaaing about going back to, as one was pretty fun, but the other went somewhere I really think Who shouldn't really go.  But enough of that, time for my choices.

Year 7: 1969 to 1970 - Spearhead from Space

Season 7 is one of my favourite seasons of Doctor Who ever, however it’s not the way I’d want the show to be all of the time.  I adore this era of the Doctor’s exile to Earth, however for me Doctor Who is meant to be about exploration, discovery, so being stuck in the 70s (or is it the 80s…) for so long does tend to diminish that to a degree.  Still, it works very well for this era, with some fantastic and thought provoking stories.  The Silurians features a moral dilemma the show hadn't done in quite a while, The Ambassadors… :Twang!: OF DEATH finds a great way to turn a Quatermass style set up on its head, and Inferno is just… damn Inferno is good!  But for this pick, I am not going with any of those seven-parters, I'm picking the intro to this season, and to the Third Doctor.

It's worth remembering how much had changed between The War Games and this; none of the regular cast are back (the main returning actor was a guest role in a couple of previous stories), the format of the show was different, and everything is now in colour. (Mind, many households hadn’t upgraded to colour TVs yet, so that point would have been lost on them).  It's even different to the rest of the era being shot entirely on 16mm film, the only Doctor Who serial to do so.  ("Gentlemen, I have grave news; we appear to be surrounded by film!"). Yet this new era for the show starts off so self assured, delivering a great introduction for the new status quo, and letting new leads Jon Pertwee and Caroline John show off what they could do.  Troughton is a tough act to follow, but Pertwee pretty much nails his Doctor right out of the gate, being far more self-reliant and willing to leap into the fray directly.  Caroline John as Liz Shaw is great too, acting as a skeptic at first, but as she is introduced to UNIT and the Doctor, she is ready to accept it and do what she can to help.  And Nicholas Courtney gets to expand on the character of the Brigadier well after his introduction in the previous era.

But as well as a fresh introduction, it also tells a simple but solid alien invasion story in its own right, and in doing so introduces some very memorable foes.  The Autons are instantly iconic; perhaps one of the first Who monsters to deliberately invoke the Uncanny Valley effect, these mannequin menaces were instantly classic monsters, be they gunning down shoppers on Ealing Broadway whilst still having price tags on, or in their boiler suits (which really make them look Michael Myers-ish).  A couple of touches with the direction makes them particularly effective here.  Firstly, we have had bulletproof monsters before, but with the Autons, we actually see the hits, the impacts… and it does absolutely nothing to slow them down, it doesn’t help at all.  Then there are the little body language touches that show how eager they are to kill all humans; the one that chases Ransom at the beginning of Part Three seems really disappointed when it gets the order to stand down from Channing (in fact, on at least one occasion Channing seems to really struggle ordering one to not go in gunhand blazing).  The Autons and Nestene Consciousness did get another great story the next season, which was another big introduction for the show, but sadly that was it for them in classic Who.  There were plans for them to have a cameo in The Five Doctors, and Robert Holmes had a proposed story for them in for Season 23, though that never got beyond a vague concept.  Spin-off media has made great use out of them; recently Big Finish used them for a very memorable anniversary special for the Fifth Doctor, and there’s some great Torchwood stories with them, including one that wonders what would happen if an alien that can animate plastic got into all the waste currently in the Atlantic ocean.  But of course their big comeback was with the show itself, as they got to be the first monsters in New Who, as Rose very much used this story as a template for how to be a reintroduction.  A fine call… well, RTD was hardly likely to use The Twin Dilemma, was he?

Year 8: 1970 to 1971 - The Daemons (Episode 3 in particular)

Let’s explain right away why Episode 3; because this is the very first episode of Doctor Who I ever saw, although given my fragmentary memories I’m pretty sure I only came in about half way through.  Now no, of course I’m not old enough to see it on its original broadcast, this was when it was shown in BBC2 as part of the repeats run in 1992.  The scene in question (which I now know I must have seen on or after the 4th of December; thanks BBC Genome!) is one where the Master, posing as the local vicar, is laying down his plans to the villagers of Devil’s End he’s roped into helping him.  The Squire is not pleased by all these, and decides to leave… whereupon the Master summons his gargoyle minion Bok to vapourise the guy!  Now that’s the sort of thing that definitely grabs your attention when you’re six-on-the-cusp-of-seven. I find it very interesting that my first definite memory of seeing the show is not me seeing The Doctor, but instead The Master.  Maybe that’s why I have often found him (and on occasion her) such a fascinating character?

It’s definitely a good outing for him, and the whole of the regular cast, as this is a real treat of a story in a lot of ways.  It’s one of the show’s few five-parters, which was an unusual format; the only other two were The Dominators and The Mind Robber, which only happened because the former got cut down an episode, and the latter got given an extra as a result, which was a good move on a few levels.  It works here though, it’s pretty well paced; we get a bit more world-building and explanation than we would have if it was four episodes, whilst in turn I don’t think there’s quite enough in the story to justify any more.  The concepts are a lot of fun, it’s visually very different from the rest of the season, abandoning a typical Who sci-fi aesthetic all together, and the stakes do feel very high indeed.  Episode three has an interesting gambit of having the Master in jeopardy for the cliffhanger, however it really works because the rest of episode, like that scene I mentioned above, has him at his strongest, his most in control and intimidating, so seeing him having to cower before Azal helps sell just how powerful this new threat is.

These days, I appreciate the story on another level; for its original 1971 transmission date is right in the middle of the first really big wave of what we now call “Folk Horror”.  That subgenre is said to have been spearheaded by three British films in particular; Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan’s Claw, and The Wicker Man.  This came out the same year as Blood on Satan’s Claw (which in a neat coincidence not only features in the cast Wendy Padbury, but also a future master Anthony Ainley too!), and two years before The Wicker Man (which, like the Daemons, makes May Day a plot point).  As such, I think, given how this is a very well remembered story, which got not only good ratings but a repeat later the same year, I think this might be another important note to add to the canon of folk horror.  It wasn’t the first TV series to get into this territory (creepy kids serial The Owl Service aired about a year and a half earlier), but this story, with its Quatermass and the Pit filtered through Dennis Wheatley with a whole lot of rural weird thrown in elements, would certainly be a harbinger to what was to come.  Not only would Doctor Who return to similar territory (in tales like Image of the Fendahl, The Awakening, and The Witchfinders), but also a whole lot more TV would have similar themes, tales of weird old England.  I’m not saying they all copied the Daemons of course, just that this story prefigured quite a big trend.  So that’s one reason why this one is still so important to me, because it also reflects well on a big part of one of my later fandoms, the earthy, strange world of Folk Horror.

Oh, and bonus points for a young Matthew Corbett from Sooty in a small part as one of The Master’s coven!  Hmm, I wonder where Sooty fits into this story’s take on concepts of magic…?

Next time, it’s another great face off between the Doctor and the Master, and the first of an anniversary tradition for the show… although one that takes place about a year early!