Showing posts with label Alan Wareing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Wareing. Show all posts
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Doctor Who: Survival
Part One
“People don’t just vanish.”
“You did.”
“That’s different.”
Blimey. Doing the Marathon has really leant this story a sense of occasion. The last proper McCoy story. The last story of the ‘80s. The last regular story for sixteen years. And for a long time threatening to be the last story ever. Fortunately, though, none of this is apparent in the story itself.
We end with another new writer, Rona Munro, now better known as a playwright, of course, and incredibly only the second woman to write for Doctor Who. It’s set in London’s suburbs in what was then the present day, and for the first time in this Marathon it’s a setting that feels pretty much like now. It’s quite shocking to get this sudden rush of normality; of streets, clothes and attitudes in Doctor Who, especially at this point.
So this is Perivale, where Ace comes from. I can identify with her even more, especially when she complains that “Nothing ever happens here”. Ace is back to see what happened to her old mates, but they’re nowhere to be found. Ace tries a phone box (ok, that’s dated a bit) while the Doctor gets bored very quickly (!) and is distracted by some feline goings-on. There’s something about this Doctor that suits such domestic ennui in a way none of his predecessors ever did.
They reach Ace’s old youth club, which is now the setting for some self-defence classes given by Sergeant Paterson, arse and windbag. I’m very strongly reminded of the Monty Python sketch where people are taught how to defend themselves against fresh fruit.
Said windbag alludes to Ace’s past (“The police let you off with a warning, didn’t they?”) and scolds Ace for not bothering to ring her mother, but fails, oddly, to query why the Doctor is hanging around with this young teenager. I suppose that’s another thing which dates this story a bit. We’re told four other young people are missing, and the Doctor removes himself from Patterson’s tiresome company by claiming he’s “going to see a man about a cat”. It’s a good scene, with Julian Holloway nailing his unlikeable part straight away.
The scene also, of course, introduces the theme of the story. While Ghost Light dealt (loosely) with natural selection, this story is more concerned with social Darwinism and the “law of the jungle”, with the carnivorous ways of our feline friends acting as the pivot. This is underlined in the following scene, in which shopkeepers Hale and Pace regale the Doctor with an obvious parable on this theme. Of course, the fact that the scene takes place in a shop makes it easy to relate the theme to Thatcherism.
And ok, Hale and Pace date the story a bit too.
Ace finally finds a mate who, in a further nod to the story’s themes, is a hunt saboteur. Apparently people are saying that Ace had “either died or gone to Birmingham”. Oi! There’s nowt wrong with Birmingham.
We then return to the topic of Ace not phoning her mother. I suppose it’s a shame the Doctor couldn’t rig some kind of device in the TARDIS, really. I’m sure such a thing will never happen. The Doctor then wanders off to find a cat for some reason, armed with some obviously fake brands of cat food (good old BBC!) while Ace wanders off to the sort of park that I used to play in as a kid but you just don’t find any more, with a roundabout and proper swings and everything.
And then suddenly a Cheetah Person on a horse appears from nowhere, chases her for a bit and then teleports her to Planet Quarry. The Doctor then discovers, firstly, that Ace has gone, and, secondly, that Patterson is still an arse. Ace soon discovers there are other people on Planet Quarry, including her mates Shreela and Midge, one of whom is slightly nicer than the other. Ace, of course, being fab, instantly takes charge. The Doctor and Patterson, meanwhile, are also transported to said planet by a cat of more conventional appearance. Well, I think it’s supposed to be. Actually it looks like some weird stuffed animatronic thing.
And so to the cliffhanger. The Doctor and his annoying companion are in a village full of tents and Cheetah People, and who should be there but the Master…
Part Two
“No dead wood!”
The Sergeant, goaded by the Master, runs, and instantly becomes the plaything of some Cheetah People, giving us our first inkling that he’s perhaps not so well equipped to survive as he thinks. The Doctor grabs a horse and saves him, and they move away from the village. The Master, apparently able to control the Cheetahs, remains unharmed in the village.
While this is going on we get the beginnings of a power struggle between Ace and Midge for leadership of the group. But while Midge offers nothing but cynicism, Ace instantly starts making plans to “get” a Cheetah Person. Her first trap fails, her second works- on Patterson and the Doctor. Here we get an exchange of exposition between our two groups, and the Doctor leads everyone through the village, being careful not to run and attract the attention of the hunters. It’s noticeable here that Patterson, in this context, has no authority and is below not only the Doctor but arguably Ace, Shreela and Midge in the pecking order.
The Doctor explains that the animatronic cats are “Kitlings”, scavengers with the ability to teleport between worlds, while the Cheetah People are linked to the planet and slowly destroying it by fighting each other. We don’t need to look hard for the metaphor here, but I like this way of doing things- science fantasy with social subtexts instead of “hard” sci-fi.
Sadly, a milkman suddenly teleports in front of everyone and the Doctor is forced to watch as chaos ensues. Ace, ending up by a stream, finds a Cheetah Person, Karra, helpless and in need of water, and goes to her aid. This contrasts with Midge, who kills a cat and takes its claw. Does this explain their different fates? I suspect their genders matter, too, especially as one of them is nurturing while the other is hunting and killing. Still, although I’m aware that symbols of femininity are said to be important to this story, that aspect of it went right over my head.
We discover that the Master is seemingly trapped here, and slowly being turned into a Cheetah himself. We’re left unsure whether this is to be Ace’s fate. But the Doctor is surprisingly ambivalent about whether or not Ace should help Karra, leaving the choice to her. The dynamics between the others, meanwhile, are getting very interesting. The Sergeant manages to assert leadership briefly, turning again to the Darwinian (and now more explicitly Thatcherite) theme of “no shirkers and no dead wood”. Midge, interestingly, attempts to consolidate the number two position by bullying others. But he’s too far gone; turning into a Cheetah, he’s captured by the Master who uses him to return to Perivale. Meanwhile, Ace’s eyes turn green…
Part Three
“If we fight like animals, we die like animals!”
Interesting, each episode has a different setting and flavour: the first on a very normal-seeming Earth; the second on Planet Quarry; and the third back on Earth again, but this time no longer so normal-seeming.
The Master is worried that he may still be turning feral, and the juxtaposition of this scene with scenes featuring scenes with Ace and Karra does nothing to diminish our fears for Ace. But when the Doctor arrives and asks her to “come home”, she chooses her existing life. Only at the end of the episode, of course, do we find out what “home” is.
The Doctor informs Ace that she has the ability to get everyone home, as Midge did, but if she does so she risks passing the point of no return and remaining feral. But he insists the choice is her; once again this Doctor’s reputation for manipulation proves an exaggeration of the truth.
We return to Perivale. And while not everything can just return to normal, Patterson immediately switches back to straightforward arse mode. But the Master and Midge are at large, and usurping his territory. Midge, strolling into the youth club dressed like a yuppie and pronouncing on survival of the fittest, seems very much the Gordon Gecko. But of course it’s the Master who’s pulling the strings, and he has a showdown to arrange with the Doctor. This turns out to consist of the Doctor and Midge charging at one another on motorbikes, causing a bit of a bang. The Master, horribly, orders Midge to just give up and die as he’s lost the Darwinian struggle for survival. But the Doctor has survived, and in the true showdown that follows he ultimately triumphs by breaking the cycle of Darwinian struggle and refusing to fight. The Master remains on Planet Quarry, trapped there by his adherence to the empty doctrines of social Darwinism. Anthony Ainley has been a revelation here, at last getting the chance to shine as the Master without the need for any of the “heh heh heh” stuff.
The final few lines are wonderful, as is the fact that we end simply with the Doctor and Ace walking to their next adventure…
Yet another 5/5, then. A brilliant script well made, and a fitting farewell in so many ways.
As for Season 26, with 4.25/5 it gets the same strong score as its predecessor. After a wobbly start the McCoy era has proven a revelation to me.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Doctor Who: Ghost Light
Part One
“I’m as human as you are!”
“Yeeesss…”
From the beginning to the end everything we see happens in the same few excellent sets, which are stuffed with various objects to draw the eye. The effect is that for once it’s easy to forget that this is the season’s studio-bound story.
Fairly early on we’re made privy to the fact that this richly atmospheric big Victorian house features some oddly futuristic technology and a strange creature which is kept imprisoned in a cell. But the things that are in store for us are much weirder than that. Such as the magnificent sideburns of the Reverend Ernest Matthews, a character so superbly brought to life that I had to be told by the closing titles that it was John Nettles.
The Doctor’s arrived here as some kind of “initiative test” for Ace. And they land in a richly atmospheric part of the house full of stuffed animals and all sorts of artefacts a Victorian explorer might collect. Speaking of which, we meet the magnificently grotesque Redvers Fenn Cooper, who introduces us to the dense literacy of the script with dialogue alluding to The Lost World, Heart of Darkness and no doubt other things. There’s a lot of this sort of thing.
Matthews, clergyman and naturalist who’s quite high up in the Royal Society, has arrived to question the house’s occupant, one Josiah Samuel Smith, on his blasphemous Darwinian theories, which he dismisses. Of course, no one alive today could possibly hold such a view.
On a related theme, Josiah’s manservant, Nimrod, appears to be a Neanderthal, and no one appears to be behaving naturally. This, and the claustrophobic confines of the house, makes things already feel deeply charged. But then things start happening. The creature is found to have escaped from its cell, and Ace realises this house is Gabriel Chase, a place which affected her very strongly with the evil she sense when she was in its ruins at the age of thirteen. This is a great scene, and one that gains a lot from being watched as part of the Marathon. Ace has been travelling with the Doctor for a while now, and her character is ripe for a bit of development.
It’s often argued that the Doctor’s being cruel, forcing Ace to face her fear like this, but it ain’t necessarily so. She seems to have exorcised some demons by the end of the story, and this all seems to tie in to some long-term plan the Doctor has for her. And the Doctor’s motives in this story hinge rather heavily on where all this is going in the long term. Sadly, of course, all this lies mostly in “what if?” territory.
And then there’s the story of Ace’s friend Manisha, of course, although we’re not told how she ties into Gabriel Chase.
I love “That’s the Way to the Zoo.” After all, not all references to the evolution theme have to be subtle. Nor, indeed, are those husks at the cliffhanger. For all that I don’t think this story is half as confusing as it’s supposed to be, I have no idea what the “Ratkin” stuff is supposed to be about.
Part Two
“Tricky things, mammoths.”
Another episode, another dose of splendid weirdness. This time we get an Inspector from Scotland Yard who’s spent the last two years asleep in a drawer. But things are also moving forward; we’re introduced to the powerful “sleeping one” who “must not be woken” in the stone spaceship. Of course, Ace sets in train the chain of events that will lead to its awakening.
There are some revelations which make things clearer. Well, a bit. The husks are previous versions of Josiah, “old cast-offs” from before he evolved into his present form. Josiah’s not the real owner of either the house or the ship, but was originally “part of the cargo”. He knows as much about the ship “as a hamburger knows about the Amazon desert”. And the mysterious escaped creature is called “Control”.
There’s a lot of wit and literary allusion- dare I say, ahem, semiotic thickness- in the dialogue which prevents the exposition from feeling like an exposition, and it’s all done with a real lightness of touch. It says a lot that most of this episode is exposition, the only real respite from it being the splendidly comical scene of the Reverend Ernest Matthews turning into an ape, but that in no way stops it being great.
The awakened Inspector MacKenzie is another fabulous comical grotesque, the classic small-minded ignoramus who tries to bluff his way through life. He’s also a major plot point; two years ago he was sent to the house to investigate the disappearance of its owner, Sir George Pritchard. And no doubt a second inspector was sent to investigate his own disappearance, and so on. No doubt there’s an entire police force hidden within Gabriel Chase.
The Doctor, being the Doctor, has a plan, and it involves doing a deal with Control. He knows this mysterious “sleeping one” is feared by both Josiah and Control, and worshipped by Nimrod, who, wonderfully, has “gone to see a man about a god”. We end with a few revelations- Mrs Pritchard is in fact Lady Pritchard and Gwendoline is her and Sir George’s daughter- and the unleashing of the powerful and mysterious Light…
Part Three
“Even I can’t play so many games at once!”
Sadly, in a story of almost uniformly excellent performances, we get one duff performance, and Light is it. And even McCoy has an odd moment, delivering the line “Only I didn’t get caught napping” in a most peculiar fashion whilst holding his arm right out in front of him for some reason.
We’re not told who he is or where he comes from, but Light’s ship crashed on Earth (although, as we later discover, it wasn’t significantly damaged) and for unexplained reasons he set about cataloguing all of its life forms. But he was shocked to discover that no sooner had he finished than it had all evolved into something else. It’s a little odd that a being capable of travelling through space at the speed of thought should be ignorant of natural selection, but never mind.
Oh, and in a scene absolutely vital to understanding what’s going on, Control states that “Control is me,” and the Doctor continues “And the survey is Josiah,” telling us the crucial fact that Light’s experiments were performed by using a control (Control) for the experiment (Josiah).
Meanwhile, Control spends most of this episode going through a speeded up version of Pygmalion; she’s even dressed as Eliza Doolittle for most of it. And we get more of Ace’s past- she has a sort of mini-breakdown in the corridor implying there’s a question she may have caused people to die. We’re later told she was guilty of arson at thirteen, setting fire to this very house exactly one hundred years later. If she did accidentally kill someone, no wonder she’s repressed the memory of this house and no wonder she was so upset is the first episode. If I’m reading this right, I’m surprised I haven’t heard about it before. It’s a big, big thing for the character.
The increasingly irrelevant Josiah had been planning to cause Redvers to assassinate the “Crowned Saxe-Coburg” in the delusion that he would somehow precede Bertie to the throne and in some way become an absolute monarch, a plan rather casually foiled by Redvers, simply because he likes Control better than him. Control has a rude awakening of the hugeness of the world outside, but fortunately Ace is there to play Henry Higgins.
Probably the best thing about the whole story is that, in spite of everything that’s happened, everybody just appears at dinner because this is Victorian Britain and failing to turn up is Just Not Done. But this leads to a splendid finale, in which the Doctor actually manages to talk Light to death plausibly, Control and Josiah switch roles, and all the characters who clearly aren’t ever going to be able to function in Victorian society just take off in the spacecraft, heading for somewhere “Light years from Zanzibar”.
Brilliant, easily a 5/5. For all the criticism this story sometimes get, it made a lot more sense to me than Battlefield did. I think I pretty much grasped the plot, although there are a couple of points which weren’t explained, although arguably they all lie outside the main plot (Who is Light? Why is he surveying Earth? Why does evolution surprise him? Why did he become dormant? How long have Josiah and Control been active- since 1881 when Sir George was, ahem, sent to Java? If so, what awakened them?). I must admit, though, this is not exactly my first viewing, and I’m probably advantaged by the fact that I watch all drama with subtitles if I can, so I didn’t have any problems with muffled dialogue.
“I’m as human as you are!”
“Yeeesss…”
From the beginning to the end everything we see happens in the same few excellent sets, which are stuffed with various objects to draw the eye. The effect is that for once it’s easy to forget that this is the season’s studio-bound story.
Fairly early on we’re made privy to the fact that this richly atmospheric big Victorian house features some oddly futuristic technology and a strange creature which is kept imprisoned in a cell. But the things that are in store for us are much weirder than that. Such as the magnificent sideburns of the Reverend Ernest Matthews, a character so superbly brought to life that I had to be told by the closing titles that it was John Nettles.
The Doctor’s arrived here as some kind of “initiative test” for Ace. And they land in a richly atmospheric part of the house full of stuffed animals and all sorts of artefacts a Victorian explorer might collect. Speaking of which, we meet the magnificently grotesque Redvers Fenn Cooper, who introduces us to the dense literacy of the script with dialogue alluding to The Lost World, Heart of Darkness and no doubt other things. There’s a lot of this sort of thing.
Matthews, clergyman and naturalist who’s quite high up in the Royal Society, has arrived to question the house’s occupant, one Josiah Samuel Smith, on his blasphemous Darwinian theories, which he dismisses. Of course, no one alive today could possibly hold such a view.
On a related theme, Josiah’s manservant, Nimrod, appears to be a Neanderthal, and no one appears to be behaving naturally. This, and the claustrophobic confines of the house, makes things already feel deeply charged. But then things start happening. The creature is found to have escaped from its cell, and Ace realises this house is Gabriel Chase, a place which affected her very strongly with the evil she sense when she was in its ruins at the age of thirteen. This is a great scene, and one that gains a lot from being watched as part of the Marathon. Ace has been travelling with the Doctor for a while now, and her character is ripe for a bit of development.
It’s often argued that the Doctor’s being cruel, forcing Ace to face her fear like this, but it ain’t necessarily so. She seems to have exorcised some demons by the end of the story, and this all seems to tie in to some long-term plan the Doctor has for her. And the Doctor’s motives in this story hinge rather heavily on where all this is going in the long term. Sadly, of course, all this lies mostly in “what if?” territory.
And then there’s the story of Ace’s friend Manisha, of course, although we’re not told how she ties into Gabriel Chase.
I love “That’s the Way to the Zoo.” After all, not all references to the evolution theme have to be subtle. Nor, indeed, are those husks at the cliffhanger. For all that I don’t think this story is half as confusing as it’s supposed to be, I have no idea what the “Ratkin” stuff is supposed to be about.
Part Two
“Tricky things, mammoths.”
Another episode, another dose of splendid weirdness. This time we get an Inspector from Scotland Yard who’s spent the last two years asleep in a drawer. But things are also moving forward; we’re introduced to the powerful “sleeping one” who “must not be woken” in the stone spaceship. Of course, Ace sets in train the chain of events that will lead to its awakening.
There are some revelations which make things clearer. Well, a bit. The husks are previous versions of Josiah, “old cast-offs” from before he evolved into his present form. Josiah’s not the real owner of either the house or the ship, but was originally “part of the cargo”. He knows as much about the ship “as a hamburger knows about the Amazon desert”. And the mysterious escaped creature is called “Control”.
There’s a lot of wit and literary allusion- dare I say, ahem, semiotic thickness- in the dialogue which prevents the exposition from feeling like an exposition, and it’s all done with a real lightness of touch. It says a lot that most of this episode is exposition, the only real respite from it being the splendidly comical scene of the Reverend Ernest Matthews turning into an ape, but that in no way stops it being great.
The awakened Inspector MacKenzie is another fabulous comical grotesque, the classic small-minded ignoramus who tries to bluff his way through life. He’s also a major plot point; two years ago he was sent to the house to investigate the disappearance of its owner, Sir George Pritchard. And no doubt a second inspector was sent to investigate his own disappearance, and so on. No doubt there’s an entire police force hidden within Gabriel Chase.
The Doctor, being the Doctor, has a plan, and it involves doing a deal with Control. He knows this mysterious “sleeping one” is feared by both Josiah and Control, and worshipped by Nimrod, who, wonderfully, has “gone to see a man about a god”. We end with a few revelations- Mrs Pritchard is in fact Lady Pritchard and Gwendoline is her and Sir George’s daughter- and the unleashing of the powerful and mysterious Light…
Part Three
“Even I can’t play so many games at once!”
Sadly, in a story of almost uniformly excellent performances, we get one duff performance, and Light is it. And even McCoy has an odd moment, delivering the line “Only I didn’t get caught napping” in a most peculiar fashion whilst holding his arm right out in front of him for some reason.
We’re not told who he is or where he comes from, but Light’s ship crashed on Earth (although, as we later discover, it wasn’t significantly damaged) and for unexplained reasons he set about cataloguing all of its life forms. But he was shocked to discover that no sooner had he finished than it had all evolved into something else. It’s a little odd that a being capable of travelling through space at the speed of thought should be ignorant of natural selection, but never mind.
Oh, and in a scene absolutely vital to understanding what’s going on, Control states that “Control is me,” and the Doctor continues “And the survey is Josiah,” telling us the crucial fact that Light’s experiments were performed by using a control (Control) for the experiment (Josiah).
Meanwhile, Control spends most of this episode going through a speeded up version of Pygmalion; she’s even dressed as Eliza Doolittle for most of it. And we get more of Ace’s past- she has a sort of mini-breakdown in the corridor implying there’s a question she may have caused people to die. We’re later told she was guilty of arson at thirteen, setting fire to this very house exactly one hundred years later. If she did accidentally kill someone, no wonder she’s repressed the memory of this house and no wonder she was so upset is the first episode. If I’m reading this right, I’m surprised I haven’t heard about it before. It’s a big, big thing for the character.
The increasingly irrelevant Josiah had been planning to cause Redvers to assassinate the “Crowned Saxe-Coburg” in the delusion that he would somehow precede Bertie to the throne and in some way become an absolute monarch, a plan rather casually foiled by Redvers, simply because he likes Control better than him. Control has a rude awakening of the hugeness of the world outside, but fortunately Ace is there to play Henry Higgins.
Probably the best thing about the whole story is that, in spite of everything that’s happened, everybody just appears at dinner because this is Victorian Britain and failing to turn up is Just Not Done. But this leads to a splendid finale, in which the Doctor actually manages to talk Light to death plausibly, Control and Josiah switch roles, and all the characters who clearly aren’t ever going to be able to function in Victorian society just take off in the spacecraft, heading for somewhere “Light years from Zanzibar”.
Brilliant, easily a 5/5. For all the criticism this story sometimes get, it made a lot more sense to me than Battlefield did. I think I pretty much grasped the plot, although there are a couple of points which weren’t explained, although arguably they all lie outside the main plot (Who is Light? Why is he surveying Earth? Why does evolution surprise him? Why did he become dormant? How long have Josiah and Control been active- since 1881 when Sir George was, ahem, sent to Java? If so, what awakened them?). I must admit, though, this is not exactly my first viewing, and I’m probably advantaged by the fact that I watch all drama with subtitles if I can, so I didn’t have any problems with muffled dialogue.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Doctor Who: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
Part One
“Oh no, not the spoons again!”
Another script by Stephen Wyatt, and it’s set around a circus. Already we know we’re going to get a somewhat abstract and allegorical tale which borrows from the style and aesthetics of 2000 AD. It’s quite interesting that we start with a rap, however dated it may be. Doctor Who is now in the age of hip-hop. And, as we’ll see, Goths. And ageing hippies, of course. At last, Doctor Who does youth culture.
We get to see the TARDIS interior for the only time this season, and after a brief nostalgic glimpse of Tom’s scarf we get the hilarious conceit of a junk mail robot. It’s advertising the Psychic Circus, but Ace, like all right thinking people, finds clowns creepy. The Doctor, naturally, wants to see this phenomenon. Of course, he probably has reasons other than the obvious.
There’s some great imagery, with Flowerchild’s hippy look, the psychedelic bus, and the clowns in the hearse, and it’s all very effectively shot. And by the time we get to see Nord (“Do you want me to do something unpleasant to your face?”), with his Mad Max look, it’s all looking like a Tharg’s Future Shock or something, already. Suddenly, Doctor Who looks bang up to date.
Contrasting with the whole hippy aesthetic is the robot bus conductor, who represents, like, the man, and the commercialism that, like, killed off the free festival. It’s highly symbolic that we find such a figure inside a bus that is so symbolic of hippy-ism, if that’s a word. In fact, it’s almost the story in microcosm in the way it foreshadows the wider themes, especially as it’s the Doctor who causes the ticket collector to break down. Far out, man.
I like the ringed gas giant behind the tent. This sort of thing is almost the calling card of post-hiatus Who. I also like Mags, and not only because she’s a pretty goth girl. I’m less enamoured of Adrian Mole as Whiz Kid, but heigh-ho.
That’s a bit of a peculiar place to put a cliffhanger.
Part Two
“It feels more like we’re part of a machine.”
I love the ‘50s family in the audience. And if it wasn’t clear before that we’re watching a piece of allegory and imagery where realism has no place, it certainly is now. After all, if we were to treat the story as “realistic”, why the ‘50s clothing? Along with lots of other things of contemporary Earth cultural relevance, in fact.
There are some things here I’ve not picked up on before. It’s noticeable that the Doctor and Ace are asked if they want to enter before they’re invited into the circus, just as the Doctor is asked if he wishes to perform on the stage before the trap snaps shut. It’s as though the victims need to agree of their own free will before the deceit and their true fate is revealed. But the upshot is that Mags, the Captain, Nord and the Doctor are stuck here, and T.P. McKenna is fantastic as the apathetic, smoothly self-serving Captain, manipulating Nord into performing, and dying, before him.
The Ringmaster and Morgana, meanwhile, have a bit of a chat about whether or not they’ve, like, sold out, man, just in case it wasn’t already clear what this story is about. ‘60s ideals slowly morphing into right-wing economic individualism- how very ‘80s.
I don’t like Gian Sammarco’s Whizz Kid one bit. There’s never been anything big or clever about the nerd stereotype, which has always had something of the school bully about it, and unfortunately the costuming and performance really push this. There’s no excuse, really, however much the production team may have felt under siege from certain elements of fandom. And it’s a shame, really, as the nasty elements of this stereotype don’t seem to be present in the script itself- although the “satire” of perceived fan attitudes certainly does, and this isn’t pretty either. Still, it’s admittedly a nice touch that Morgana, who up till now has subtly tried to persuade potential victims not to enter the circus, encourages Whizz Kid to his doom just to be rid of his annoying presence.
We’re introduced to the pit and the eye, though not yet to their significance. But the Captain has betrayed the Doctor…
Part Three
“Although I never got to see the early days, I know it’s not as good as it used to be. But I’m still terribly interested.”
Ace has a bit of a chinwag with Bellboy. “We had such high ideals when it started,” he tells her; “We shared everything.” I’m glad we got that line, because there’s no way we would have got the selling out subtext without it. Still, I’m enjoying this. It’s nice to have a story made entirely of aesthetics, imagery, allegory and subtext where all pretensions to realism are irrelevant. After all, one could easily point out the problem of how the circus manages to keep up the steady stream of entertainers for their mysterious and demanding audience, as there don’t seem to be many punters to be lured in. But to take things so literally would be to miss the point.
Whizz Kid meets his inevitable demise, paying the price for his inability to realise that the memory cheats. I’ll always defend JN-T, who has generally done a pretty good job however much I may object to certain of his previous script editors, but the unsubtle rant at his critics here comes across as unnecessarily bitter. Still, I’m highly amused by the scene where the Captain persuades him to go first, and especially the double-edged line “A sacrifice I am prepared to make.”
“You’re just an ageing hippy, Professor,” says Ace to the Doctor. Somehow that fits very well indeed, and not just the Sylvester McCoy model. It also shows us where he stands in relation to the allegory, of course.
Poor Bellboy gets hoist by his own mechanical petards. Ian Reddington is great here as the camera turns towards the Chief Clown’s reaction.
Part Four
“It was your show all along, wasn’t it?”
Hooray! The last episode ever I’ll watch on video, and consequently the last episode without subtitles for me and my dodgy hearing. No more muffled dialogue for me!
The Doctor tells the Captain he’s a “crushing bore,” clearly the most hurtful thing he’s ever said to him in his entire life. McKenna’s reaction is great, as is pretty much everything he does.
Appropriately, though, it’s Mags who kills him. Also appropriately, the eye heals Deadbeat / Kingpin, and the story enters its final stretch, much of which consists of the Doctor doing magic tricks for the Gods of Ragnarok. It’s a good climax, although I wish the allusions to Norse mythology had been done either meaningfully or not at all.
All the pieces come together and the Doctor, in a surprising return to traditional values in what I believe we’re supposed to call an “oddball” story, blows up the bad guys. The scene of his calmly walking way as the big top explodes is, of course, legendary. And the extreme coolness of Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor is underlined once again. “It was your show all along, wasn’t it?” asks Ace. You know, I wasn’t expecting to end up saying this, but this Marathon has really made me rethink Sylvester McCoy. As things stand, he might well end up as my favourite Doctor.
Well, the hippies vs. commercialism stuff was a bit more blatantly in-your-face than I remembered, but this is still great. Stylish, full of wonderful visuals, and playing with ideas in an agreeably fun way. 5/5.
As for the season as a whole- well, after a long time of seasons mostly ranking near the bottom, it’s with some relief, and no little surprise, that this gets a very creditable 4.25/5, placing it fourth overall.
“Oh no, not the spoons again!”
Another script by Stephen Wyatt, and it’s set around a circus. Already we know we’re going to get a somewhat abstract and allegorical tale which borrows from the style and aesthetics of 2000 AD. It’s quite interesting that we start with a rap, however dated it may be. Doctor Who is now in the age of hip-hop. And, as we’ll see, Goths. And ageing hippies, of course. At last, Doctor Who does youth culture.
We get to see the TARDIS interior for the only time this season, and after a brief nostalgic glimpse of Tom’s scarf we get the hilarious conceit of a junk mail robot. It’s advertising the Psychic Circus, but Ace, like all right thinking people, finds clowns creepy. The Doctor, naturally, wants to see this phenomenon. Of course, he probably has reasons other than the obvious.
There’s some great imagery, with Flowerchild’s hippy look, the psychedelic bus, and the clowns in the hearse, and it’s all very effectively shot. And by the time we get to see Nord (“Do you want me to do something unpleasant to your face?”), with his Mad Max look, it’s all looking like a Tharg’s Future Shock or something, already. Suddenly, Doctor Who looks bang up to date.
Contrasting with the whole hippy aesthetic is the robot bus conductor, who represents, like, the man, and the commercialism that, like, killed off the free festival. It’s highly symbolic that we find such a figure inside a bus that is so symbolic of hippy-ism, if that’s a word. In fact, it’s almost the story in microcosm in the way it foreshadows the wider themes, especially as it’s the Doctor who causes the ticket collector to break down. Far out, man.
I like the ringed gas giant behind the tent. This sort of thing is almost the calling card of post-hiatus Who. I also like Mags, and not only because she’s a pretty goth girl. I’m less enamoured of Adrian Mole as Whiz Kid, but heigh-ho.
That’s a bit of a peculiar place to put a cliffhanger.
Part Two
“It feels more like we’re part of a machine.”
I love the ‘50s family in the audience. And if it wasn’t clear before that we’re watching a piece of allegory and imagery where realism has no place, it certainly is now. After all, if we were to treat the story as “realistic”, why the ‘50s clothing? Along with lots of other things of contemporary Earth cultural relevance, in fact.
There are some things here I’ve not picked up on before. It’s noticeable that the Doctor and Ace are asked if they want to enter before they’re invited into the circus, just as the Doctor is asked if he wishes to perform on the stage before the trap snaps shut. It’s as though the victims need to agree of their own free will before the deceit and their true fate is revealed. But the upshot is that Mags, the Captain, Nord and the Doctor are stuck here, and T.P. McKenna is fantastic as the apathetic, smoothly self-serving Captain, manipulating Nord into performing, and dying, before him.
The Ringmaster and Morgana, meanwhile, have a bit of a chat about whether or not they’ve, like, sold out, man, just in case it wasn’t already clear what this story is about. ‘60s ideals slowly morphing into right-wing economic individualism- how very ‘80s.
I don’t like Gian Sammarco’s Whizz Kid one bit. There’s never been anything big or clever about the nerd stereotype, which has always had something of the school bully about it, and unfortunately the costuming and performance really push this. There’s no excuse, really, however much the production team may have felt under siege from certain elements of fandom. And it’s a shame, really, as the nasty elements of this stereotype don’t seem to be present in the script itself- although the “satire” of perceived fan attitudes certainly does, and this isn’t pretty either. Still, it’s admittedly a nice touch that Morgana, who up till now has subtly tried to persuade potential victims not to enter the circus, encourages Whizz Kid to his doom just to be rid of his annoying presence.
We’re introduced to the pit and the eye, though not yet to their significance. But the Captain has betrayed the Doctor…
Part Three
“Although I never got to see the early days, I know it’s not as good as it used to be. But I’m still terribly interested.”
Ace has a bit of a chinwag with Bellboy. “We had such high ideals when it started,” he tells her; “We shared everything.” I’m glad we got that line, because there’s no way we would have got the selling out subtext without it. Still, I’m enjoying this. It’s nice to have a story made entirely of aesthetics, imagery, allegory and subtext where all pretensions to realism are irrelevant. After all, one could easily point out the problem of how the circus manages to keep up the steady stream of entertainers for their mysterious and demanding audience, as there don’t seem to be many punters to be lured in. But to take things so literally would be to miss the point.
Whizz Kid meets his inevitable demise, paying the price for his inability to realise that the memory cheats. I’ll always defend JN-T, who has generally done a pretty good job however much I may object to certain of his previous script editors, but the unsubtle rant at his critics here comes across as unnecessarily bitter. Still, I’m highly amused by the scene where the Captain persuades him to go first, and especially the double-edged line “A sacrifice I am prepared to make.”
“You’re just an ageing hippy, Professor,” says Ace to the Doctor. Somehow that fits very well indeed, and not just the Sylvester McCoy model. It also shows us where he stands in relation to the allegory, of course.
Poor Bellboy gets hoist by his own mechanical petards. Ian Reddington is great here as the camera turns towards the Chief Clown’s reaction.
Part Four
“It was your show all along, wasn’t it?”
Hooray! The last episode ever I’ll watch on video, and consequently the last episode without subtitles for me and my dodgy hearing. No more muffled dialogue for me!
The Doctor tells the Captain he’s a “crushing bore,” clearly the most hurtful thing he’s ever said to him in his entire life. McKenna’s reaction is great, as is pretty much everything he does.
Appropriately, though, it’s Mags who kills him. Also appropriately, the eye heals Deadbeat / Kingpin, and the story enters its final stretch, much of which consists of the Doctor doing magic tricks for the Gods of Ragnarok. It’s a good climax, although I wish the allusions to Norse mythology had been done either meaningfully or not at all.
All the pieces come together and the Doctor, in a surprising return to traditional values in what I believe we’re supposed to call an “oddball” story, blows up the bad guys. The scene of his calmly walking way as the big top explodes is, of course, legendary. And the extreme coolness of Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor is underlined once again. “It was your show all along, wasn’t it?” asks Ace. You know, I wasn’t expecting to end up saying this, but this Marathon has really made me rethink Sylvester McCoy. As things stand, he might well end up as my favourite Doctor.
Well, the hippies vs. commercialism stuff was a bit more blatantly in-your-face than I remembered, but this is still great. Stylish, full of wonderful visuals, and playing with ideas in an agreeably fun way. 5/5.
As for the season as a whole- well, after a long time of seasons mostly ranking near the bottom, it’s with some relief, and no little surprise, that this gets a very creditable 4.25/5, placing it fourth overall.
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