Whovember Part 7: 1975 to 1977

 For today’s Whovember, I’m actually picking two serials that are pretty close to each other in the running order, two from Season 14, as the dates just allow it.  The era with Philip Hinchcliffe as producer and Robert Holmes as script editor is one hell of a high watermark for the show, an era of true consistency of vision and boundless imagination, and I’ll be highlighting two of their top serials today…

Year 13: 1975 to 1976 - The Deadly Assassin

OK, let’s get this out the way now; “As opposed to The Crap Assassin?  The Incompetent Assassin?  The Harmless Assassin?”.  Behind that clunky title though is a true Doctor Who classic… though many didn’t see it as such at the time.  This tale that decides to peel back the curtain on the Time Lords wasn’t actually that well received by some circles of fandom at the time, the most infamous reaction being “WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE MAGIC OF DOCTOR WHO?”.  Boy does this go to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?  Personally, this story really helps to illustrate why the Doctor left Gallifrey in the first place; we already knew that the Time Lords were kind of dicks in The War Games, this just establishes more how much their society was set in its ways; they have so much power, yet not showing much interest in the outside universe unless it affects them directly.  I have heard before the description of them being like the Oxford Dons of the Universe, and that pretty much fits in here.

But fans were not the only ones getting miffed about this one, as it earned the wrath of the greatest villain the Doctor ever had to face… MARY WHITEHOUSE!!!  Yeah, the violence in this one really raised a stink with her, and it’s thought that it’s the reason Hinchcliffe moved on after this season and Williams bought on board, to lighten things up.  I think it’s worth mentioning a reason why I’m OK with the darker content in this season, but not so much when in the later Eric Saward years I’m far more critical of it.  See, the difference between the more violent side in this season, and say Season 22 at its darkest is one of tone and spirit.  Eric Saward’s stories could sometimes have this real mean-spirited feeling to them, they just feel bleak, and worse still they sideline the character of the Doctor, he feels useless and at times morally compromised against this.  But here, though the story still has quite an edge, especially in the ordeal the Doctor goes through in the Matrix, he is still The Doctor, he is a breath of fresh air, you get the feeling that he’s on the case, and he will find a way to sort things out.  I don’t mind darker stories in Doctor Who, as long as in the end, the spirit of adventure is there.

Of course, as well as this story being notable for the introduction of a lot of Time Lord lore, it’s also a notable one for the reintroduction of The Master.  I think it was a bold move for Robert Holmes to bring him back many years after Roger Delgado’s tragic early passing, and in such a different form.  This angry corpse of a Master (who has over the years been nicknamed the “Crispy” Master… including by Missy!) shows him at his most desperate to live, and most driven by hatred and rivalry with the Doctor, and damn if his look here isn’t iconic.  There’s a touch in the novelisation of this one (which I read many years before seeing the actual serial) where, as the Master is preparing the Staser rifle that’s part of his plan “It amused him that he could bring death to any of the shapes down there so easily, with just a squeeze of his finger”.  Now interestingly there’s a bit at the very end that suggested that his plan to get more regenerations had succeeded, and was beginning to take on a new form… which didn’t get followed up on with his next appearance with The Keeper of Traken oddly.  Oh well, keeping with this incarnation for one more story does mean that Geoffrey Beevers took on the role, and he has been killing it in Big Finish Master stories for many years!

Year 14: 1976 to 1977 - The Robots of Death

One of my earliest Doctor Who VHSs again, mainly down to the cover.  No nice hand drawn artwork this time, but when you have robots that gorgeous, that’s not a problem.  This is one of the best looking Doctor Who stories not just of the seventies but of almost any era, I cannot think of a story with a better aesthetic than the art-deco inspired look in here.  It’s also a very technically slick production, with some solid uses of effects work in here, like some of the compositing for the Storm Mine, and unnatural glow of the Laserson probes.  I often defend old Who’s production values as best I can, but this story is a great card to play when it comes to that debate, as it shows it’s not how much you spend, it’s how you spend it.  Incidentally, a few weeks ago I was at the Gunnersbury Park museum near Ealing, where they currently have a sci-fi exhibition on, and got to see one of the Voc Robot costumes close up, that was a magic moment. I highly recommend going there if you get the chance.

Visuals aside, how’s the actual story?  Really damn good, this is one of three Who serials written by Chris Boucher, a writer who’d later do great things for Blake’s 7, and he does a sterling job here.  At its most simple, it’s a solid mystery story, with trying to work out who is behind the robots on this vessel turning against the crew and why.  It also manages to take a set up that seems like classic Who “Base Under Siege” formula, and turns it on its head by making clear that it’s no siege from the outside, the enemy has been within this whole time.  On top of that, it’s a clever engagement with previous sci-fi works about robots, like those by Asimov, or Karel Čapek’s Rossum's Universal Robots*, even down to a few character names hinting at those influences.  But the real strength here is the worldbuilding; though we never leave the sandminer, we get a pretty good idea of what the world of Kaldor is like, we learn a lot of titbits about its history, social classes etc.  It really helps to sell the characters as people, having a larger history to them and their world.  

In fact, they do such a good job with worldbuilding here that this story has fuelled a lot of spin-off material.  Chris Boucher later contributed a sequel novel to the BBC Books range, Corpse Marker, featuring most of the key players from this.  Then later Magic Bullet productions did a series of Kaldor City audios, which also featured a character Boucher created for Blake’s 7 (raising all kinds of questions), Paul Darrow playing a character who definitely isn’t Avon having escaped the end of the series, honest guv’! (THAT JUST RAISES FURTHER QUESTIONS!)  Oh, and the Fendahl shows up.  OK.  More recently, Big Finish have done a great sequel series simply called The Robots, which has done a very good job with stories exploring Kaldor and some interesting pure SF concepts related to robotics.  In fact, one of the Eighth Doctor’s companions, Liv Chenka played by Nicola Walker, is from Kaldor, and is a central part of The Robots.  It’s a mark of how much is in The Robots of Death that so many writers can find threads for not just more stories, but damn good stories too.

Next time, I’ll be paying close attention to one particular moment during the start of an epic for the Doctor, and then looking at the highest rated Doctor Who episode of all time… although it did have a bit of outside help in achieving that.

*I was once at a live script reading for RUR, where the writer adapting it for this performance mentioned that the original is “three hours long, and reads like Terminator adapted by Noel Coward”.  Accurate…