The Alphabet Murders (1965)

 "A A, eh?"

This is, I believe, by the creative team behind the Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford who, indeed, gets an odd little cameo here. I'm told they're very good films, if apparently not particularly faithful to the novels. I intend to give them a chance. That is, despite the fact that this film is utterly unwatchable.

I'm not at all surprised that Agatha Christie herself loathed this film. It is rather difficult not to. I can't remember the novel (The ABC Murders)- it's been at least thirty years or more since the one and only time I read it. I read many, many of Mrs Christie's works in early puberty but rather went off her by my mid-teens. Still, I've no doubt that this is a far from faithful adaptation, not least because it scarcely pretends to be a whodunit. It is, rather, an embarrassingly unfunny attempt at "comedy".

It's trying to be a farce. A good farce is, of course, a very clever thing indeed. This is not. The cast, from the awful Tony Randall, surely the worst ever Hercule Poirot, with his ever-shifting accent, in one of the most cringeworthy leading roles ever, to a shockingly awful Robert Morley as an unrecognisable Captain Hastings, is either bloody awful or quite sensibly phoning it in for the money as there's no point doing otherwise for a script like this.

We get unfunny "comedy" setvpieces, one after another, and soooo much smoking.We get Anita Ekberg playing, well, the kind of tall blonde unattainable woman she invariably plays. We get a bit of psychological mumbo-jumbo. And we have a very unfunny conclusion in a train. And at no point is any of it remotely entertaining.

Be warned: ninety minutes of your one and only life are far too precious to waste on this drivel.

Doctor Who: Enlightenment

Part One

“The rigging’s no place for a coward like me.”

Chess in the TARDIS at the start reminds me of the previous regime but, of course, there’s no K9 and the tone is quite different. It’s hard not to see the black and white pieces as symbolic of the Guardians. It’s also hard to resist reading into the fact that Turlough’s playing white and Tegan’s playing black, although what this might signify I’ve no idea.

The TARDIS’ power is being drained by a rather weak-seeming White Guardian who has been much diminished from the days of The Ribos Operation, to the point that he’s taken to wearing a bird on his head. Beaches and cocktails are a distant memory.

Interesting that the Doctor doesn’t see Turlough as reliable and charges Tegan with communicating with the White Guardian- I tend to see this as judgement of Turlough’s character rather than any specific knowledge of what he’s up to at this point, but rather that the Doctor has understood both Turlough’s shifty nature and that he’s well-meaning underneath it all.

The Doctor and Turlough emerge on to an Edwardian sailing ship and acquaint themselves with its crew, who are oddly unable to remember coming aboard. Meanwhile Tegan is enticed outside by the creepy and mysterious Marriner. But we’re soon introduced to Captain Striker and the TARDISeers are reunited for a meal which supplies what I think is only the second “Brave heart, Tegan” ever.

The cliffhanger, of course, is mind-blowingly brilliant, and this is the perfect opening episode, piling mystery upon mystery.

Part Two

“You’re a Time Lord. A lord of time. Are there lords in such a small domain?”

The yacht’s crew wouldn’t dream of using their advanced technology to cheat at the race in which they’re competing, as they “observe the spirit as well as the rules of the race”. Aside from the minor fact it’s taking place in space it’s being treated entirely as a race between ships involving marker buoys. Which just so happen to be planets. Striker’s ship is seen rounding Venus, meaning he must be a Bjork fan. I mean, Venus as a Buoy. Boom boom. Oh, and the prize is “enlightenment”.

There’s lots of clever writing here. Our brief sight of the Greek captain alerts us both to the fact that the different ships are from different time zones and also that the Greek captain, in a nice bit of foreshadowing has an anachronistic red jewel on his sword. Meanwhile, we’re interested to the concept of the Eternals and their dependence on “Ephemerals” to be truly alive. They are gods in all but name, capricious and fickle as were the Olympians, treating humans as toys whose lives mean nothing because “Ephemerals have such short lives in any case. But these ideas are developed far more effectively in the relationship between Tegan and Marriner than in any expository dialogue.

Turlough gets some superb material this episode, being condemned to everlasting life on the ship by the Black Guardian for his failure to kill the Doctor and then appalling the Doctor by betraying a confidence about the expected mutiny. He’s being significantly better written here than in either of the previous two stories, with Strickson providing a performance to match, and as a result the cliffhanger has real weight.

Part Three

“I had no idea ephemerals could be so entertaining.”

Turlough’s picked up by Captain Wrack’s Buccaneer, and he’s now drinking in the Last Chance Saloon in more ways than one. Sadly, in spite of the required personnel being present, we don’t get the appropriate musical accompaniment.

It’s great seeing inside another ship, greater still that it’s a pirate ship, and utterly surreal (in a good way) that the ship is commanded by Nurse Gladys from Open All Hours. Although of course her towering and triumphant vocal performance of a certain ballad is of course the crowning moment of Lynda Barron’s career. Wrack the character is great, and even Leee John’s… unusual performing style is not out of place in these surroundings.

There’s a fascinating moment as mariner says to the Doctor that “Your companion is a very beautiful woman” and the Doctor replies “Is she?”, further ammunition for my theory that the Doctor doesn’t actually like Tegan and only keeps her around because he’s too nice to just turn her off the Ship.

Part Four

“Your mind is divided, confused, hard to read sometimes. But one thing is clear in it always- greed!”

There’s an interesting conversation early on between Tegan and Marriner in which Tegan misunderstands his fascination as love whereas he only wants “existence”. And we’re still being given a lot of these nice little character moments right through the final episodes even with all the plot threads to resolve. This is a bloody brilliant script.

Turlough seems to betray the Doctor by denouncing him as a spy to Wrack and insists on staying behind on the Buccaneer. Yet the Doctor still has faith in the boy, hoping that he intends to prove himself by doing so.

Tegan and the Doctor realise that the tiara is Wrack’s focus for her weapon, and the Doctor smashes it into tiny bits, which results in nothing aside from Wrack briefly re-enacting the final scene from The War Games. 

But shortly after that he saves the ship from destruction, and heads over to the Buccaneer to assist Turlough. We see two figures thrown overboard, who Tegan assumes to be Turlough and the Doctor. It’s clear from Marriner’s reading of her thought that the Doctor’s dislike of her is not reciprocated, although I don’t see anything in this story to indicate she has any sexual feelings for him as has been suggested in the past.

We end with both Guardians and Enlightenment, a prize to be awarded to a bunch of innocent immortals, which apparently consists of knowledge of good and evil. I’m sure there’s some kind of allusion here but I’m not sure what it is. I’m a bit confused by the Guardians’ dialogue though- I thought it was established in The Armageddon Factor that they represented chaos and order rather than good and evil? Perhaps I’m going too far with that- the Black Guardian was certainly described many times as “evil” in The Armageddon Factor- but chaos and order are much more interesting as concepts.

The Doctor and Turlough win, the Doctor declining his prize. Turlough’s share is forfeit to the Black Guardian under some sub-clause of his deal. Turlough ultimately redeems himself by choosing the Doctor’s life instead of Enlightenment, his conscience thus winning out over his greed. The Black Guardian is defeated by this, and Turlough’s contract is terminated. “Enlightenment was not the diamond” says the Doctor. “Enlightenment was the choice.” Utterly superb stuff.

Well, we’ve waited twenty years for a script by a woman and the first one goes straight into my top ten. 5/5. The finest story since Kinda and only the second truly great story of the Davison years.

Doctor Who: The Ribos Operation

Part One

“What will happen to me if I refuse?”

“Nothing will happen to you. Nothing at all. Ever.”

The Doctor’s got a new K9! Hooray! And then the story starts with a bang as the TARDIS doors open in flight in a scene which is made brilliant by inspired use of lighting. The Doctor’s been summoned by… well, God, and he’s been charged with a quest to find the Holy Gra- er, Key to Time. I love the way that, instead of depicting something cosmic and expensive, they’ve just depicted the White Guardian as some colonial type bloke in a hat sitting in a deckchair, which works much better.

Instantly it’s clear that, after last season’s unevenness, much thought has been given to things behind the scenes. It’s not just the (fan cliché alert) “umbrella theme”; the new era has now firmly acquired a confident tone and style of its own- no more scares and bangs, but a cheaper, less violent (well, you can’t have everything…), wittier and more postmodern take on things. And the script which heralds the new era in its fully-fledged form for the first time is… Robert Holmes, a man heavily associated with the previous regime. It’s a funny old world.

Anyway, the Doctor has a new assistant, an imperious Time Lady called Romadvoratrelundar, and she’s fab, as is Mary Tamm. Her guilelessly arrogant ways are perfect for winding the Doctor up, and we can tell straightaway that she’s going to be fun. Oh, and rather sexy too.

Apart from introducing Romana, this scene cements something new about the series’ style- wonderfully witty dialogue which is allowed freer rein than before, being let loose more often on that fourth wall, and something different about Tom’s performance. We haven’t really seen his sombre side at all since Horror of Fang Rock, and his more whimsical nature has been staging a gradual takeover for some time, but following the events of The Invasion of Time there seems to be a final shift. The Doctor is now more consistently witty, less prone to introspection, but still with a strong moral centre. But mostly he’s much more fun. I like this new Tom. And the great thing is, what with the events of the last story you could almost at a push call it character development.

Amusingly, we’re told that the Doctor only scraped 51% at the academy on his second attempt. And Gallifrey has a new president, who must be someone we saw in The Invasion of Time as we hear the Doctor say “I should have thrown him to the Sontarans when I had the chance!” Who is it then? It’s not Borusa, for constitutional; reasons. Bet it’s Kelner!

Anyway, Ribos. It’s a well-realised, wintry planet with a mediaeval level of technology which also has the fortunate side effect of suggesting a cultural hinterland in the way that futuristic metal corridors just don’t. There’s a lot of casually excellent design work here. The necessary exposition is handled admirably by means of the highly entertaining, ahem, “Holmesian double act” of Garron (the superb Iain Cuthbertson) and Unstoffe and their intended scam on nasty old offworld nobleman the Graff Vynda K. This planet has two seasons, Suntime and the present season Icetime, both of which last 32 years. Brilliantly, it’s actually part of the interstellar Greater Cyrrhenian Empire, but given that it’s only a “level two” civilisation, the offworlders who actually rule the planet have to claim they’re from “the north” and not display any advanced technology for fear of breaking conservation laws!

I’m loving this already. Garron is a great Holmesian character, a futuristic Horatio Bottomley with great lines, and the set-up is fab. I shall not speak of the Shrivenzale.

Part Two

“You hang a bit of that around your neck and you won’t never suffer from the scringes, no matter how cold it be.”

I love the way our conmen speak in cod-Mummerset accents when they’re pretending to be locals, and the Doctor actually pointed this out at the end of last episode! I love Unstoffe’s speech, but Garron’s the real star of the two of them. It’s fantastic how Holmes, incredibly, gets him to persuade the captain of the guard to deposit a load of money with the crown jewels, and makes it seem plausible. And indeed the fact that, as the title suggests, this is the first time we get a Doctor Who story that is essentially a heist movie. After years of Hinchcliffe era horror movies, Doctor Who is now plundering different sources!

The relationship between the Doctor and Romana continues to be brilliant, too: “An academy graduate doesn’t need things explaining, surely?”

Part Three

“When you’ve faced death as often as I have, this is much more fun.”

I think the scene where the Graff slaps the Doctor, and the Doctor slaps him back, is definitely in the running for my favourite Tom moment ever. The Doctor and Romana are captured and imprisoned, but it’s an interesting example of what a great writer Holmes is that while in the hands of a little writer this perennial Who cliché could be tiresome, here it’s just a pretext for a fun little chat between the Doctor and Garron, a bit of character stuff for Romana and some exposition. And once all this is achieved K9 just comes and rescues everyone, leaving the situation no time at all to become tiresome. Masterful.

The scene with Binro the heretic is of course wonderful, and almost distracts from the fact that Unstoffe seems to have acquired an RP accent what with all the stress of being hunted by the Graff. Interestingly, the Seeker seems to have genuine powers, so precognition works, which is a bit dodgy.

Part Four

“Well, I admit I had a great struggle with me conscience. Fortunately I won.”

There are so many great things about this story. I love the way the Seeker’s frenzied and tuneless shriek is supposed to be hugely annoying!

We get a well-crafted and entertaining conclusion. Binro dies tragically, the Graff disintegrates realistically in a surprisingly well done piece of characterisation, and our heroes have the first segment of the Key to Time. Only five to go.

Flawless. 5/5 and a good one too, only just missing out on a top ten spot. Great script, great new tone, great new companion, Iain Cuthbertson and, most relievingly, no obvious problems with the production. Well, Shrivenzale aside.. It feels as though the problems of last season are behind us already. Can things stay at this level?