Breaking a Blunt Instrument: "The Abandoned Planet" and "The Destruction of Time"

These two episodes are a mess, redeemed by some fine (if hammy) acting by Kevin Stoney, and the tragic death of Sara Kingdom.

That the Daleks' "allies" hadn't realized this late into the game that they were pawns, and pawns with very limited purpose, is a logical flaw in the script. But it does give Stoney a few last moments of increasing megalomania, and a perfectly earned death. One almost expects the Dalek Supreme to add "Shut up, already" as it orders Chen to be exterminated. To the last, he believes himself irreplaceable, immortal. There is even a great moment when Chen tells his fellow prisoners that Kingdom is coming out of loyalty to him, and when Sara confronts him, he promises her an appropriate reward.

Sara Kingdom's death--no; wait. She dies twice, really. First as Kingdom, then as Sara.

Kingdom was, as Ian Fleming described James Bond, "is a blunt instrument wielded by a Government Department. [she] is quiet, hard, ruthless, sardonic, fatalistic."

Kingdom dies when she realizes that her loyalty, which made her the blunt instrument in the hands of Mavic Chen, in whom she utterly believed, led her to gun down her own brother without a pause, without giving him a chance to explain, without a qualm. The instrument had been wielded, Bret Vyon was dead, the mission went on.

Until she found that the mission had been corrupted from the source, and her surrender of her humanity was not for humanity's benefit, but Chen's personal ambition. In Fleming's The Man With the Golden Gun (1965), Bond, who is captured by the Russians after his disappearance at the end of You Only Live Twice (1964), tries to kill M, having been convicted (brainwashed, in his case), that his own surrender of his humanity has been in a false cause.

So perhaps my earlier comparisons of Kingdom with Cathy Gale have been off base; she might better be seen as an inversion of Bond, whose seeming journey from M's "blunt instrument" into "humanity" is a false journey, further into darkness. By contrast, Kingdom's exact parallel journey is one from darkness into light. From the clipped, short tones of Kingdom, to a woman able to laugh, to smile, to see beauty, Kingdom dies and is reborn as Sara. Sara can be stern and tough, but can have friends, and pause to savor those friendships--hence my Cathy Gale analogy.

But then Sara dies. Ironically, she dies the same way Kingdom died--as a direct consequence of disobeying orders, this time the Doctor's orders to go back to the TARDIS with Steven:

DOCTOR: Now, both of you, back to the Tardis.
STEVEN: What about you, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Do as I say, quickly!
STEVEN: Go on!
(Steven grabs Sara's arm and drags her away. After a short distance, Sara stops and pulls herself free.)
SARA: Wait, Steven. We can't just leave him.
STEVEN: The Doctor knows what he's doing. At least, I think he does.
SARA: All we're doing is running to save our own lives. If anything goes wrong and the Daleks recapture the time destructor, we'll have failed for ever.
STEVEN: I know what you're saying. I'd go back too if I thought it would help. Whatever he's doing, he's doing because he thinks it's the best way. Now come on!

***

[As he hurries away from the control room, the Doctor meets Sara.)
DOCTOR: What are you doing here?
SARA: I came to help you.
DOCTOR: You must remember, my child, this machine is working. It's working slowly because its range is rather small at the moment, but it is working. Now, if you start to feel strange, you must let me know at once.
SARA: Yes, all right, but what about them?
DOCTOR: First, back to the Tardis. Is Steven not with you?
SARA: No. I came back that way.
DOCTOR: Hurry, my child, hurry!

As the episode casts its viewpoint back and forth between the Daleks, Steven watching from the TARDIS, and the Doctor and Sara's desperate effort to escape, Sara's fate unfolds:

[Kembel - Jungle]

(Steven reaches the safety of the Tardis and stumbles inside. Still clutching the time destructor, the Doctor leads the way back through the jungle but realises that Sara has fallen behind.)
DOCTOR: It's not far now. Sara!
(Sara is aging before his eyes.)
SARA: Keep going! The Daleks must be after us by now!
DOCTOR: The time destructor is
(His words are lost in the gale force winds)
SARA: You think I don't know?
(The Dalek patrol leaves the underground base and sets off in pursuit of the Doctor. Ahead, the Doctor does his best to help the increasingly infirm Sara struggle onwards, despite the ever-worsening environment.

[Tardis]

(Meanwhile, Steven is pacing impatiently up and down. Not sure what else to do, he turns on the scanner.)
STEVEN: Nothing.
(Feeling helpless, Steven takes out his frustration on the Tardis console.)

[Outside the Tardis]

(The Daleks maintain their dogged pursuit. All around them the jungle is changing, plants withering and dying, lush foliage shrivelling up and turning to dust. Apparently unmoved and unaffected by the vast power of the time destructor, the Daleks continue to close in on their quarry. Yet the effects are taking a heavy toll on both Sara and the Doctor. Frail and weak, the old man stumbles onwards, all too aware that time is quite literally running out for his companion. At last they see the Tardis ahead but the Doctor can barely stagger a few more steps before he falls to his knees unable to go on. With a final desperate effort, Sara helps the Doctor up and they stumble a few short paces further before the Doctor falls again. The time destructor slips from his fingers, rolling away to lie just inches from his hand. Beside him, Sara pitches forward in the dust, unable to remain upright. She barely has the strength to open her eyes but somehow finds the will. She attempts to claw her way over to the time destructor.)
SARA: Doctor.
(The last of her strength gone, Sara falls and lies still.)

Even with only audio and telesnaps to convey it, Sara's extended aging and death is brutal. We don't know what it that the Doctor says that leads her to shout "You think I don't know?" with a touch of Kingdom's old brusqueness, but the emotion in Marsh's voice is searing. As I read it, it's her response to her own impending death. It hurts to listen to; I can't imagine what it was to watch, with actors like Hartnell, Purves and, especially, Marsh giving it their all.

She dies, because she couldn't let the old man face the danger alone. She dies, because she can't risk failure, and leaving the universe vulnerable. Sara gets her killed as much as Kingdom does. More so, really, because she could have watched from the safety of the TARDIS-the Time Destructor is wreaking havoc on the Daleks too. So she dies because she can't let a friend take all the risk without sharing it.

It's a dark ending, to a dark, and long, story. The Doctor tries hard to draw some meaning from it all, to even attempt a weak Merlyn's laugh. But Steven is having none of it, and, ultimately, the Doctor agrees:

STEVEN: I wish Sara could have seen the end.
DOCTOR: Yes, my boy, so do I. You know, Steven, the one thing that Sara lived for was to see the total destruction of the Daleks. Well, now it's all over. Without her help, this could never have been achieved.
(The Doctor notices something in the sand and reaches down to scoop it up in his hand.)
STEVEN: What is it?
DOCTOR: Millions of years of progress reversed back.
(The Doctor opens his hand to show Steven a tiny dead embryo.)
DOCTOR: That's all that remains of a Dalek.
STEVEN: Let's go, Doctor. I've seen enough of this place.
DOCTOR: Well, my boy, we finally rid this planet of Daleks.
STEVEN: Bret, Katarina, Sara.
DOCTOR: What a waste. What a terrible waste.

The series has never left us in so grim a place before. Where do we go from here?

Merlyn's Laugh: "Volcano"/"Golden Death"/"Escape Switch" [The Daleks' Master Plan 8-10]

Well, we've left Terry Nation's episodes of this juggernaut behind, and Dennis Spooner is penning the story. Spooner's wit is a drier form of humor than is Nation's, but they each confront the same fundamental quandary: How do you wring drama out of the Doctor, Sara and Steven evading the Daleks and keeping the McGuffin away from them for yet three more episodes?

Spooner, as with his historical episodes, throws in some plot complications. The TARDIS i being chased by another time-traveling vehicle--the Daleks, in hot pursuit, they deduce. They land on Earth, to do repairs, but find themselves in the middle of the Ashes, where the cricket commenters take the appearance of the police box on the pitch as bad news for England, as its presence prevents play, and the announcers put me very much in mind of Chaters and Caldicott. The TARDIS dematerializes, having only cost England 2 1/2 minutes. . .

To land on a volcanic planet, where their pursuer is revealed as the Monk, seeking revenge. He messes with the TARDIS and gloats. The Doctor fixes the TARDIS, and we're away...


To ancient Egypt, where the Doctor expects only the Monk, but in fact, some Daleks with Mavic Chen are en route. (By the bye the TARDIS links pretty beat up again, and seems to have graffiti on it. Sara and Steven stalk the Monk (un, it's the Daleks, guys), while the Doctor fixes the lock.

The Daleks start exterminating ancient Egyptians (the Butterfly Effect isn't so much of a thing for the Daleks.) With Sara and Steven missing, the Doctor has finished his repairs, and goes in search of them.

Meanwhile, the Monk in fact arrives. Sporting some cool shades. The Doctor, wearing a really nice straw hat, stalks him.

Sara and Steven are thought by the Egyptians to be thieves, and possibly allied to the Daleks. They are held captive, but Sara begins to cut herself loose. She and Steven overpower the guards and escape. Meanwhile the Daleks and Chen capture the Monk. Chen begins to interrogate the Monk. He admits that the odd time machine out belongs to the Doctor, and that he wants to settle a score. Well, the Monk ends up getting forced into trying to trap the Doctor (he fails; the Doctor follows him, and changes his TARDIS's appearance from a stone pillar to...a police box. He walks off with a piece of the Monk's TARDIS, and follows him into the tomb. The Monk gets tied up by the Doctor as we can tell when Steven and Sara, entering the tomb find a heavy set figure trapped in a sarcophagus.

And then, blessedly, we move on to a live episode, not a recon.

The Daleks' Master Plan is a struggle in places, in part because the retcons lose so much of the action. The best work very well--The Myth Makers is the most recent example, but this story is so dense that the recons are not as useful as ideal. (Though the tele snaps of of Peter Purves struggling with guards and Jean Marsh in full-on Cathy Gale mode do work with the audio quite well).

But then we get Escape Switch, and realize how much even the best recons necessarily lose.

Kevin Stoney is eating the scenery as Mavic Chen, and remains a delight, slapping a Dalek's eyestalk when it doubts his ability to pull off his plan, but with moments of hesitation when he realizes they will turn on him if he doesn't pull off his mission.

Peter Butterworth as the Monk (now billed as "the Meddling Monk") is quite amusing as he desperately, and weakly, tries to play Dalek off against Sara and Steven, and then Steven (who has met him before) against Sara. When his schemes fail, and he finds himself wandering time and space in a TARDIS he can't steer--well--it works, that's all.

Steven's become fiery, yet not lost his sense of humor. Purves makes him likable, but tough. Not so tough as Sara, he admits, at one point (after they overpower their guards), remarking "remind me never to get into a fight with you."

Sara--oh, she's interesting. She's softening from the tough-as-nails Space Security Agent we first met, but she can pull that persona right back on, and it fits her like a glove. She's a lethal fighter, but she's befriending her companions, learning how to laugh. Jean Marsh really is awfully good in the part.

But the recons, by losing expression and movement, really undermine what Hartnell is doing as the Doctor.

Hartnell's performance here has become steadily more mannered, more "hmming" and laughing to himself. From the audio alone, it sounds off, with the movement and expression, you can see where Hartnell is going--he's Merlyn, as I've suggested. And that constant laughing reminds me of the story Robertson Davies tells in World of Wonders:

“The magician Merlin had a strange laugh, and it was heard when nobody else was laughing. He laughed at the beggar who was bewailing his fate as he lay stretched on a dunghill; he laughed at the foppish young man who was making a great fuss about choosing a pair of shoes. He laughed because he knew that deep in the dunghill was a golden cup that would have made the beggar a rich man; he laughed because he knew that the persnickety young man would be stabbed in a quarrel before the soles of his new shoes were soiled. He laughed because he knew what was coming next.”

The Doctor here is all reassurance, he's in control, amused, he knows what's coming, and, even though he has to give up the McGuffin to the Daleks to save Sara and Steven (yes, and he insists on saving the Monk, if a little unwillingly), and so the danger is greater than ever, he is undaunted.

Where that confidence will lead remains to be seen.

The Daleks' Master Plan (Parts 1-6)

Yes, I know. I'm not even listing the episode titles for this one. Sorry. I can't even, as the kids say.

But the 12 part storyline The Dalek's Master Plan Is a strange one--it's long (obvioulsy) and, written as it is by Terry Nation and Dennis Spooner, filled with lots of plot complications and twists and turns. The thing is, summarizing those twists and turns isn't all that much fun, and we'd get lost in a lot of the more intricate, less interesting, bits of plotting.

The story begins right after the TARDIS's hurried departure from Troy. The TARDIS lands in some forsaken wasteland, the Doctor starts exploring to find some medical help for Steven, poisoned in the last episode of The Mythmakers. Katarina, the handmaiden who brought him into the TARDIS, is trying to help, but, as she thinks the Doctor is Zeus and that she and Steven are dead, she's of limited utility.

Enter Bret Vyon, Space Security Service, man of action, who'd return in a few years in an iconic role. Bret is trapped by the Doctor (he wants to capture the TARDIS and use it to warn Earth of impending Dalek invasion, so he's a goodie at heart). Indeed, bound to a chair by the Doctor, he persuades Katarina to retrieve some pills from his belt and administer them to Steven, saving his life.

OK, see? I'm doing plot exposition. Maybe I should do a more Missy-style Catch up.

The Daleks have formed a league with some other aliens to conquer the Solar System. Vyon wants to stop them, the Doctor et al try to help. The Guardian of the Solar System, Mavic Chen (a scenery-chewing, great hambone performance by Kevin Stoney is betraying the Solar System by having a rare metal core (50 years in the making) for a Time Destructor (whatever that is) made. It's a McGuffin you could buy at Radio Shack. The
Doctor swipes the thing from the Conference of Evildoers, Vyon hijacks Chen's ship (they can't take the TARDIS--and this is the first good joke in the story--because they need to get where and when reliably.). On the way they're forced to land on a prison planet; they escape but one of psycho band of prisoners grabs Katarina as a hostage to make them take him anywhere but Earth. He picks Kemble--ie, where the Daleks are--and Katarina proves once and for all that she's not the naïf everyone thought she is, because she opens the airlock pulling her captor and herself into space, to save the others. It's brutal, even in a recon.

When they reach Earth, Chen--who followed in hot pursuit--makes sure That Kingdom, the Space Security Service's most ruthless agent, is assigned to kill the infiltrators and retrieve the McGuffin. We discover (and thank heaven we have this part in film and not just recon) is Sara Kingdom--and she guns down Bret Vyon, her own brother, and then coolly sends her agents out to kill the Doctor and Steven. "Shoot them in the head," she instructs them, to ensure the McGuffin is not endangered.

Meanwhile the Doctor and Steven--and Sara, who jumps into the room with them at the last second--get transported, along with some lab mice, to a planet far away, and (1) the Daleks trap them; (2) The Daleks exterminate the mice; (3) Sara is convinced of Chen's treachery, and grieves for Bret; (4) the Doctor, Sara and Steven steal the Dalek ship, and fly to Kemble. During the trip back, the Doctor makes a fake McGuffin and Steven finishes it, temporarily acquiring immunity to energy weapons. The Doctor turns over the fake outside the TARDIS and they all run inside--the Daleks fire at them, hitting Steven, but see earlier statement re energy weapons, temporary immunity to. The TARDIS dematerializes...

***

See what I mean? What a run-around. But so much to praise/condemn along the way.

The Daleks' Allies What a useless bunch of refugees from Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show (Or is it Dark & Nightshade these days? Hard to remember...)

The Daleks: Really, guys? You send the Laurel and Hardy of Skaro to track down the Doctor and the last piece of your superweapon? Ogrons would have done a better job. As for exterminating the mice because they were potentially hostile? Lame. Just lame.

Mavic Chen: Ridiculing the Daleks when they try to blame him for their failures, over-the-top megalomaniacal, he's the best old fashioned villain to date. I suspect I'll still rate the inimitable Roger Delgado well over Stoney--but he's good. Quite good.

Bret Vyon: Cool, unflappable, but with a sense of honor--sounds like Nicholas Courtney's iconic Brig, right? But he isn't; there's a tension, a near-desperate quality to him that differentiates him from Courteny's later performances. Subtle differences in body language and tone of voice. Vyon is tough, but he's at the limit.

Katarina: Basically she got stuck on the TARDIS by accident, helping Steven inside. She's just a place keeper, you might think, Until Adrienne Hill nails that horrifying, but noble death scene. Katarina is under no illusions; she's sacrificing herself, and it's raw and it hurts. And she's right.

Sara Kingdom: An amazing turn from Jean Marsh. Totally different from Joanna in The Crusade--all clipped commands and subtlety, even grieving. If I'm reading the dates right, Sara appears before Emma Peel in The Avengers. Whether or not that's so, Sara reminds me more of Cathy Gale, who proceeded Diana Rigg's Emma Peel, particularly in her earlier appearances where she's sterner, less playful.

Marsh makes Kingdom a true professional whose professionalism is used against her, and she's now desperate to stop Chen and wrest some meaning out of her brother's death, at her hands.

Doctor Who doing Space Opera rarely works; this part of the story could have been superb trimmed down to a four-parter. But what's good is really good.