"Roly-Poly Fish Heads": The Underwater Menace

The Troughton Era is getting well under way with The Underwater Menace, and it's clearly going to be a pretty mixed bag. On the positive side, there's a lovely opening scene when, as the TARDIS is landing, we hear each of the traveler's hopes:

BEN: We're just beginning to land.
DOCTOR: Hold tight, everyone.
JAMIE: Land?
POLLY: Don't be scared, Jamie, it's all right really.
BEN: I get a sort of queer feeling. See we never know what we're going to find, do we?
DOCTOR: Ah, that's the fun. Stand by, here we go.
POLLY: Please let it be Chelsea 1966.
BEN: Hope it's the Daleks, I don't think.
DOCTOR: Prehistoric monsters.

That's our Doctor,and he'll be this way all the way through Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and Deep Breath.

Some of the character beats are spot on--Ben is sarcastic, assured, and resigned; Jamie confused, and Polly--well, here's the thing. Polly, who was so brash, resourceful, and funny in The Highlanders, is afraid, hoping anxiously for home. And that's pretty much how Polly is used in this episode. Our stroppy, smart "Duchess" (as Ben often calls her) is reduced to screaming, panicked, damsel-in-distress for far too much of this story. Annette Wills tries, and finds a few moments when Polly is her more feisty self, but she's fighting the script and the director here.

(Although, fair dos, Polly gets to demonstrate her powers of deduction at the start of the adventure with what is, basically, a sherlockomito, based on her having found a bracelet in the sand:

DOCTOR: Yes, it's difficult to put a precise date on these people.
POLLY: I don't think it is.
DOCTOR: All right then, when?
POLLY: Oh, I'd say about 1970.
DOCTOR: Can you prove it?
BEN: Yeah, go on, prove it.
JAMIE: How d'you know, Polly?
BEN: Ah, she's been studying her crystal ball.
POLLY: Abracadabra.
(Polly produces the bracelet she found.)
DOCTOR: Oh, how interesting, yes. Hmm. It's Aztec. Fake of course.
BEN: Mexico Olympiad.
POLLY: When we first left Earth it hadn't happened yet.
BEN: No, that's right, it wasn't due till 1968.
POLLY: Right, so now is any time later than that.

So it isn't all bad for Polly.)

The basic plot is unpromising: The travelers land in Atlantis, are about be sacrificed to the Atlantean deity, the Goddess Amdo. The Doctor bluffs his way to a meeting with the scientist who has promised to raise Atlantis out of the sea, Professor Zaroff (a strong, mad performance by Joseph Fürst). Zaroff quickly discovers that the Doctor's claim that "vital secret will die with me" (signed "Dr. W", so further supporting the argument that the character is in fact named Doctor Who.) is a bluff, but is amused at the Doctor's effrontery. But then the Doctor discovers Zaroff's intentions are to raise Atlantis, but also to destroy the world, as scientists so often wont to do:

DOCTOR: Even supposing you succeeded, you know what will happen, don't you?
ZAROFF: You tell me, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Well, the water will be converted into superheated steam, the pressure will grow, and crack the crust of the Earth. Destroy all life, maybe even blow the planet apart.
ZAROFF: Yes. And I shall have redeemed my promise to lift Atlantis from the sea. Lift it to the sky! It will be magnificent.
DOCTOR: Yes.
ZAROFF: Bang! Bang! Bang, bang! That's all.
DOCTOR: Yes. Just one small question. Why do you want to blow up the world?

Meanwhile, the Atlanteans are planning to make Polly one of their "fish people"--former human beings converted into fish/human hybrids, and treated as food gathering slaves.

The three succeeding episodes are a bit of a run-around: The Doctor recruits a priestly ally, then the political leader, but Zaroff outwits him. Ben and Jamie effectively recruit some miners to help take down Zaroff, Polly screams a lot, but also plays a constructive part, the Doctor and Ben thwart Zaroff at the very end,and the TARDIS team takes off--who knows where?--while their Atlantean friends, who have seen their temple and lower levels flooded--grieve for them, and plan a new, more fair, Atlantis as their memorial.

Troughton is mercurial and charming, and Jamie is beginning to adjust. The design range from the silly--fish head masks for the temple ceremonies--to the sublime. There's an extended sequence among the fish people that doesn't advance the plot, but brings us back to the sheer demented weird spectacle of Auntie Verity's Pandemonium Shadow Show, best exemplified by The Web Planet. The show's not quite sure what it is yet, with Troughton but it's coalescing, and still determined to be Doctor Who.

Herr Doktor von Wer: The Highlanders

Well, we're back. Since I have managed to find a watchable version of Patrick Troughton's sophomore story, The Highlanders, we can carry on traveling, after all.

The thing that stands out about The Highlanders is just how competent everybody is in this story. Polly shows steely courage and initiative, getting herself and the laird's daughter Kirsty out of danger, and becomes a proactive force in her own right. In fact, in the end, Polly saves the day--her quick obtaining of a blackmailing hold over Lieutenant Algernon Ffinch (the least bad of the English portrayed in the story) repays her throughout the story, and gives the TARDIS crew a guide back to the ship after the Doctor's hostage, the creepy solicitor-slave trader Grey, escapes.

Throughout, Anneke Wills is the standout of this story--once she has some of Ffinch's hair and his identity disc, and can thus prove he was outwitted by, as she puts it, "two girls" (Kirsty helps!), her blackmailing mixes charm and menace--the stiff Englishman finds himself called "Algy" almost affectionately by Polly, even as she is coercing him into handing over all his money, violating orders, and risking court martial. Polly's teasing familiarity is both an assertion of power over him (his title and grandiloquent name--that is, his very identity-- are taken from him by her as much as is his money), and yet she is not entirely cruel to him; the stakes are kept bearable for him. (Like Arnold Zeck before her, Polly knows that a blackmail victim must be allowed hope, and not be "pushed to extremities".) She's gutsy, funny and flirty.

Michael Craze's Ben is also very good--escaping torture because he's familiar with the techniques of Harry Houdini, reassuring the rattled young piper Jamie (a solid, but not yet outstanding Frazer Hines), that the Doctor is trustworthy, and figuring out the Doctor's plan pretty quickly.

And Troughton? He's a protean force here, masquerading as a German Doctor von Wer" (yes, that's "Doctor Who" auf Deutsch), complete with Teutonic accent, and an old beggar woman as the plot requires. He naps at one critical juncture, as Kirsty and Polly are champing at the bit to have a plan of action. The Doctor here is less a cosmic hobo than a man--well, I hate to outsource my own commentary, but Elizabeth Sandifer pretty much nails it:

From there, almost immediately, the story just becomes a compilation of "stuff we couldn't get Hartnell to do." Prance about in a comedy German accent and do intense and oddly violent comedy scenes of humorously torturing people? Check. Cross-dress? Check. Be oddly obsessed with stealing people's hats? Check. Basically, liberated by his metaphysical change from the tedious requirement that he be remotely sane, the Doctor goes completely nuts here, hamming for the camera, firing off one-liners to nobody in particular, and generally having a good time, while, distantly in the background, some kidnappings and rescues go on.

This is where the spotters guide approach falls short, then. Because this isn't the last historical, due largely to the fact that other than having no overt science fiction elements, nothing about it even faintly resembles historicals we've seen before. In terms of televised Doctor Who, The Smugglers was the last historical, and this is just a parody of the genre to reiterate after last time that the entire rulebook has been chucked out the window.

We don't yet know what Doctor Who, as Sandifer writes. We're not yet sure who the Doctor is anymore. But he's fast, and funny, and watchable. Even in a recon.

"I Am Your Ser-Vant": Power of the Daleks, Parts 4-6

For my money, the creepiest moment of The Power of the Daleks is when Lesterson, the scientist who revived the Daleks, believed their protestations "I am your servant," until it was far too late to stop them, comes to admire them.

He steps out of the shadow in which he is hiding, and grating in his best impression of a Dalek voice, "I am your ser-vant." Robert James is great throughout, but his final moments are superb.

It's especially chilling because he is, at this point, completely sincere.

There are other deliciously creepy bits--the assembly line of the newly fashioned Daleks is beautifully animated, and flows much more naturally the human movements (my main complaint about the animation is that walking looks all too often like sideways hopping), the massacre of both the rebels and the guards by the Daleks--while the usurping Lieutenant Governor Bragan thinks his plans are working, humanity within the colony's capital is being efficiently wiped out.

There are moments that are touching--Valmar's sincere grieving for his colleague and fellow rebel Janley. In the wasteland her errors have indirectly caused, he can't leave her body, and murmurs, "She wasn't as bad as you think" to the Doctor. (Richard Kane infuses a touch of unexpressed passion in his dealings with Pamela Ann Davey's all-business Janley, and it adds to the poignancy of the moment.)

This is the first Dalek story to raise the threat level the pepper pots pose to the level they now do; the Doctor notes that all is not well with the colony, and then adds darkly, "Add to that one Dalek." Ben replies, "Oh, blimey, you don't half make mountains, don't you? One Dalek?"
The Doctor's answer will be echoed throughout the history of the program, most notably by Christopher Eccleston in 2005: "Yes! All that is needed to wipe out this entire colony."

So too will the "I am your servant" ploy reappear:



All this, and the first circle chanting "Exterminate!" "Exterminate" over and over again. We're setting some show standards here in this episodes, codifying tropes that will go on for half a century. And such is the cleverness of David Whitaker's script that the characters who are caught up in it all--the double-dealing Bragen, the honorable Hensell, the cold-blooded Janley, the enigmatic, flippant Quinn, and the tragically self-confident Lesterson--are each distinct, important characters. They're interesting in their own right. Even Janley's death, telegraphed as it was, counted for me, and Hensell--Doctor Who's early version of Ned Stark--dies rather than dishonor himself. And you believe it.

***

In a way, these last three episodes of political intrigue, the Daleks being cunning instead of only blazing away, and the Doctor's brilliant (or lucky; the episode seems genuinely ambiguous) is Doctor Who on good form, but not spectacular. But think about it, for a second, what has been accomplished.

A new Doctor has been inaugurated, in a painful process that acknowledges the pain of the loss of Hartnell, and the need to regain the audience's trust;

The Daleks are back, an existential threat in essentially the manner they will hold for the rest off the classic series, and, frankly, through the revival The Daleks remain the parable of nuclear war they always were, but now have a motive beyond their old enmity with the Thals:

POLLY: You've all underestimated these Daleks.
KEBBLE: Better brains than us, I suppose.
POLLY: I only know what the Doctor has told me. He says they're capable of exterminating whole nations.
VALMAR: Perhaps, but what would they want to kill us for, after we've taken over. We're friendly with the Daleks.
POLLY: But don't you see? Human beings can't be friends with Daleks. They don't have friends.
VALMAR: I don't see why not.
POLLY: It's a kind of hatred for anything unlike themselves. They think they're superior.
VALMAR: The girl's got something.

It's been intimated before, but Polly's articulation of it rings down the decades;

And a story of human vulnerability has been told--how we are capable of unleashing forces that seem benign but escape our control.

Just the story we need at this time, really.

"Who am I Anyway": Power of the Daleks Episodes 1-3

Who am I anyway?
Am I my resume?
That is a picture of a person I don't know
What does he want from me?
What should I try to be?
So many faces all around, and here we go
I need this job
Oh God, I need this show.

--Marvin Hamlisch, A Chorus Line.

The old order changeth, yielding place to new--that's where we left the Doctor, remember, gasping out his life on the floor of the TARDIS. His face glowed, his features shifted, and, an old man faded out, replaced by a younger, smaller man.

He awakes to great pain, and sound searing him. "Focus on one thing," he says, half audibly, and repeats it. And then--silence.

"It's over," the little man says, and then laughs harshly--almost a bark of a laugh. He hauls himself up to his feet, using the TARDIS console. The Doctor's clothes are much too big for him--he sheds the cloak, the coat. Left in the checked pants, braces, he staggers to a chest. When he looks in a mirror, his image fades, replaced by the of the Doctor, and then fades to that of the little man himself again.

Polly knows the the little man is the Doctor, Ben keeps trying to trip him up--or at least get a reaction:

BEN: Now look, the Doctor always wore this. So if you're him, it should fit now, shouldn't it?
(And slips it on the man's finger. It's far too big.)
BEN: There. That settles it.
DOCTOR: I'd like to see a butterfly fit into a chrysalis case after it's spread its wings.
POLLY: Then you did change!
DOCTOR: Life depends on change and renewal.
BEN: Oh, so that's it. You've been renewed, have you?
DOCTOR: I've been renewed, have I? That's it. I've been renewed. It's part of the Tardis. Without it, I couldn't survive. Come here.

It's not really an answer, necessarily--it's Ben's own words, fed back to him. Or it is an answer. Troughton plays it so perfectly that you can defend either reading.

After looking over some old possessions ("The Doctor was a great collector, wasn't he?" he asks appraisingly brandishing Saladin's dagger). He supplements his wardrobe--a more contemporary coat, a bow tie--looks for "the Doctor's diary" (it's a 500 year Diary, by the way).

Then, calling to his companions, he goes out for a stroll. He tests his legs, gets used to his new body. And starts exploring the planet.

****

Right, we'll get to the story, but stay with me on this magical, ominous, mystery tour. David Whitaker has done it again--created a capsule form of the original hero's journey that was the plot line of Auntie Verity's Pandemonium Carnival. The Doctor isn't for the first two episodes, trustworthy, in just the same way he wasn't in the first few Hartnell episodes--he is a mystery again, not the giggly, stern, pompous, righteous, brave old man we have lost.

We are back at the beginning.

***

This renewal is unexplained in its scope, and tied to the TARDIS somehow, but all we really know is that our hero is dead and what is left behind is--very different--his consistent references to the Doctor in the third person suggests that even he doesn't feel that he is the same character. The recorder, the indifference to his companions, the way he takes the Examiner's badge and assumes his identity--all of this leaves us with someone new. When he finds himself in a colony, in the muddle of a power struggle against authority and rebels, he shows no interest, he wants to know what's in the capsule scientist Lesterson is trying to open. He (and Ben and Polly) steal in after hours, opens the castle, and we see two cobwebbed and seemingly immobile Daleks--and one Dalek mutant scuttling across the floor into the dark.

Lesterson, flooding the third Dalek with power wakens it; it's first act is to kill Lesterson's assistant. Lesterson is too enthralled to look after him, Janley lies, saying that the assistant will live. "I am your servant!" it grates, again, and again, but then:

Lesterson's Dalek glides into the room. It's movement is strangely fascinating, holding everyone transfixed. Everyone except the Doctor who edges backwards, shaking his head in horror. The Dalek stops and looks around at each person in turn. At last it re-focuses on the Doctor. The Doctor backs into a chair.)
BEN: It recognised the Doctor. It recognised him.
POLLY: What's the matter, Doctor? Are you all right?
DOCTOR: The fools. The stupid fools.
BEN: You're scared. What can it do?
DOCTOR: Nothing yet.
LESTERSON: This creation is called, I understand, a Dalek.
BEN: It knew who you were. It sounds ridiculous, but it did.
DOCTOR: It knew who I was.

And suddenly, before the political machinations that take us to the end of episode 3, before the Dalek manages to make Lesterson its assistant, while hanging on--barely--to the "servant" persona, we realize that the Dalek's recognition of the Doctor has cemented our own.

The Doctor is different, but he is still the Doctor.

And just in time, too, because a small circle of Daleks chanting "We will have our power!" again and again suggests that we need him badly.

***

BritBox has the new restored animated version, which is what I watched. The animation is good, not perfect,, as the trailer above shows, but good. The cleaned up audio sparkles, and the story moves smoothly. And, for old Who fans, the animation team has subtly righted two old wrongs.

The traditional credit of the theme to Ron Grainer is followed by a credit noting the theme was "realized by Delia Derbyshire."

Likewise, the original credit for Terry Nation is immediately followed by a credit "Daleks designed by Raymond Cusick.

So much of the impact of the theme music was the strange, otherworldly sound dynamic crafted by Derbyshire; so much of the power of the Daleks (sorry!) is in their design. Yet for decades Derbsyshire and Cusick were not given their just due. The BBC has done a little justice in this revision to the credits, as well as creating a lost episode with style and narrative force.

Jodie Whittaker Falls Out of the World

So the 13th Doctor is Jodie Whittaker. She will be the latest to, in Phil Sandifer's wonderfully evocative phrase, fall out of the world.

I am . . . pleasantly surprised. Incoming show runner Chris Chibnall fooled a lot of fans, including me, and showed more daring than I thought he had in him. (I confess, I was underwhelmed with his Torchwood work, which too often seemed to conflate nastiness with depth. I thought much more highly of Broadchurch, however.)

The move is, not surprisingly, controversial (also, just see the comments--if you must--to the video introducing Whittaker I've embedded above).

I have say, I find the controversy. . . sad.

Yes, the obvious misogyny is just pathetic, but the entitlement is even more so.

The less overtly misogynistic rationale that has been offered is that boys need a non-violent role model, and the Doctor has provided that for 54 years.

Now, that's a nice theory, but, well, it hinges on three separate fallacies:

1. That Boys Can't Have a Female Role Model. Seriously? Boys can't admire women, and learn from them? In my adult years, two of my great mentors, one in law school, and the other years later, were women. Each in her own way made me a better lawyer, and, quite frankly, a better man. But beyond that, do we really think that boys can only learn from men? As a boy, my father was invaluable in encouraging my love of books. But--newsflash--so was my Mom, and so was the retired teacher who lived next door, and gave me a copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology, and opened a whole new world to me. Yes, the men who helped form me modeled a healthy masculinity for me, but I learned so much from the women who taught me, cared for me, and were just around me throughout my childhood, that to not include them as role models seems, well, willfully blind.

2. Hey, Don't Girls Deserve Role Models? Yeah, it's great that they have Wonder Woman (inter many alia), but, what, will the culture bank be broken if we share the Doctor? Somehow Doctor Whittaker somehow invalidates Doctors Capaldi, Smith, Tennant, Eccleston, McGann, McCoy, Baker, Davison, Troughton, and Hartnell? Look,it's rough when the Doctor who hits where you live leaves. I've loved the show since the 1980s, and have come to agree with the Brigadier: "Splendid fellows, all of you." And yet, it turned out that Capaldi is my Doctor. It's a loss to see him go; but I admit that the notion that he'll be replaced by a woman doesn't bother me a bit.

Why can't we share?

3. The Doctor is only Sometimes a Role Model If you read my Anglocat in the TARDIS entries, or Sandifer's excellent TARDIS Eruditorum, or Neal Perryman's Adventures With the Wife in Space, you'll see one common thread: The Doctor is absolutely unheroic to begin with, and even after becomes a hero, he has appalling lapses. (Including Six's fashion taste).

And yes, that is true in the new series. Here's the Tenth Doctor, adopting as his own the Master's catchphrase:



Look, the Doctor inculcates good values, it's true; I wrote years ago of the power to persuade inherent in a "cracking good yarn (yeah, Conan Doyle that last bit). But as the Doctor, I have every confidence that Whittaker can do that too. Just let the scripts be good, and her own charisma and talent have a chance.

***

I can't leave this post without thanking Steven Moffat, who slowly evolved the show's mythology to get to this point, where a female Doctor can be just the Doctor. From the offstage mentions of the Corsair, to the inspired brilliance of, and redemptive arc, pursued by Missy, as played by the superb Michelle Gomez (who began with Grand Giugnol, and ended with tragicomedy, all equally well handled), Moffat's tenure as showruner changed the question of whether a woman would be cast as the Doctor from an "if" to a "when."

Whatever one thinks of his tenure--and I am an admirer, though not entirely uncritical, in many ways, this is Moffat's victory.

"I Never Stay Where I'm Not Wanted": "Journey Into Terror/"The Death of Doctor Who"/"The Planet of Decision" (The Chase, eps 4-6]

-1-

Barbara Wright leaving, two cardigans shorn,
The Doctor is grieving alone and forlorn,
New companions to join him in traveling on,
Can't make up for first friends, happily gone.

***

In Journey Into Terror, the Doctor and Ian are brought face to face with, it seems, Frankenstein's Monster. After it sits up and threatens them, they flee the laboratory in which it lay. As they leave it behind, the Doctor tries to cover his obvious fear, by boasting "You know, when I was coming down those stairs, I knew that thing was going to move. I knew it." Ian replies, "Oh, did you? I didn't notice you standing around to check your premonition." The Doctor gets the last word, answering "I never stay where I'm not wanted. Come along."

***

Ian and Barbara did just that, of course--they forced themselves in where the weren't wanted, and then they stayed. We've come a long way since then. And by we, I mean the two schoolteachers, the Doctor, and the audience.

The Doctor has changed the most. From the unlikeable, paranoid old man who would kill a wounded man to facilitate his escape, the Doctor has become a kind of a hero. Not a warrior, per se--that will come later. But as I pointed out a little while ago, the Doctor has all the raw material to become Merlyn. Indeed, we viewers from a later time know that he is Merlyn. That hero's journey is well under way.

Ian has become the Warrior, but one who protects, not conquers. Always a kind man, he has discovered his limits--his anger, his occasional vanity and complacency. But he has discovered his potential to lead, to dare, to love.

And Barbara? What can I say about the woman who has been an Aztec Goddess, a French Revolutionist, an underground fighter against the Daleks, and a Roman concubine in a Carry On movie? She has been the heart of the show, brave, determined, sometimes a bit imperious, but always the voice of reason and compassion. It was Barbara who stood up to the Doctor when it was desperately needed, Barbara who taught Susan to grow up, and Barbara whose friendship with the Doctor brought out the deeply buried warmth he long suppressed.

Vicki and Steven will have to wait, I'm afraid; we need to say goodbye to these first friends.

-2-

The Doctor reverts back to the angry old man when he realizes that Barbara and Ian want to leave him. He is, briefly, the Doctor we first saw in The Cave of Skulls. He experiences their desire to go home as a personal betrayal and a rejection of him. Barbara tries to gently explain; he can't hear her. Ian also reverts; he declare, with all the ire of his first conflicts with the Doctor, "Oh, he's as stubborn as a mule." Vicki, who in the "Lazy Sunday in the TARDIS" prelude to this story in "The Executioners," declared that "I am redundant around here," and "I am a useless person," shows that neither statement is true:

VICKI: Doctor? Doctor, you've got to let them go if they want to. They want to be back in their own time.
DOCTOR: Don't you want to go with them, child?
VICKI: What for? What would I want to be back in their time for? I want to be with you. Doctor, you've got to help them.
DOCTOR: Don't you realise, child, the enormous risks?
VICKI: But it's up to them.

And so the old magician, recalled once more to his core beliefs--beliefs taught him by Barbara and shown him by Ian--does the right thing. And, when Barbara and Ian are back home, frolicking through London, he grieves. And he smiles.

-3-

Before I watched Journey Into Terror, and heard the Doctor declare he would not stay where he wasn't wanted, I was going to title this post "Trigger's Broom," because the show is changing almost completely underneath us. The brush, the handle are gone. Only the Doctor himself is left. Is the show still Doctor Who? Is the Doctor?



-4-

The three episodes leading to this moment have commendable elements. The obviously fake vampire teeth on Count Dracula, the bargain-basement monster Frankenstein--these work when it is understood that we are in a horror exhibit. But why does the Monster, unlike the Grey Ghost and Dracula, fight the Daleks, and not just run on its normal track, like they do? The Doctor's wrong theory that they are in an archetype of human fear is interesting, but comically exploded, first by the arrival of the Daleks, and then by the sign.

"The Death of Doctor Who}--the first of two episodes on Mechanus is taut (barring the obvious non-Hartnell stand in as the Doctor-robot). The second episode mostly works, though the Mechanoids are, um, yeah. Still, even before the astonishingly good farewell sequence, The Chase moves through a variety of situations and locations and never gets dull--an impressive feat for a six-parter.

And then it rips out your heart. Or is it hearts?

"It's the Chase, You Know": "The Executioners/"The Death of Time"/"Flight Through Eternity" [The Chase, eps 1-3]

Alas, I can't find you a good clip of the Beatles sequence--not, at any rate, one that doesn't give Blogger indigestion, at any rate (you can find it to watch if you look).

And, in fact, the version of the story arc called The Chase on my beloved BritBox has been cut to remove the sequence.

The setup is this: The Doctor has liberated a Time-Space Visualizer from The Space Museum. It allows (with some truly awful noises) the travelers to watch any moment in the future or the past. Ian wants to see Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, and is surprised that his wish is granted. Barbara wants only a view of Queen Elizabeth I's court, but gets to see Bacon, Shakespeare and the Queen herself discussing whether Falstaff was a slander of Sr John Oldcastle (spoiler: He was and the delighted Queen press for another play with Falstaff (also true). Then, the Beatles:

IAN: Well, Barbara, did you find out what you wanted to know?
BARBARA: I didn't really want to know anything. I just wanted to see Elizabeth's court. Did you see the way Shakespeare looked when he thought of Hamlet?
IAN: Yes, I did. I
(Vicki puts in her selection)
IAN: Well, where are we now?
VICKI: Shh.
ANNOUNCER [OC]: This is BBC One. The next programme is due to start in just under one minute.
BARBARA: Vicki, what year have you got on there?
VICKI: 1965.
DOCTOR: Come along, come.
IAN: You've got a television.
VICKI: Shh!
IAN: showing
VICKI: I want to watch it.
HOST [on monitor]: Here singing their latest number one hit it's the fabulous wait for it. It's the fabulous Beatles!
VICKI: Yes! Fabulous!
BEATLES: I think I'm gonna be sad, I think it's today, yeah! The girl that's driving me mad, Is going away.
She's gotta ticket to ride, She's gotta ticket to ride. She's gotta ticket to ride, and she don't care. My baby don't care.
(Everyone is bopping and singing along until Barbara leans on the volume and they loose the picture)
IAN: Oh, Barbara.
DOCTOR: Now you've squashed my favourite Beatles!
IAN: Vicki, I had no idea you knew about the Beatles.
VICKI: Of course I know about them. I've been to their Memorial Theatre in Liverpool.
BARBARA: Well, what do you think of them, Vicki?
VICKI: Well, they're marvellous, but I didn't know they played classical music!
BARBARA: Classical music?
IAN: Get with it, Barbara. Get with it. Styles change, styles change.

The whole first part of the episode has a "Rainy Sunday on the TARDIS" vibe that is quite charming; Vicki irritates the Doctor as he tries to get the Visualizer working; she then goes off to Ian, who is reading a science fiction anthology called Monsters From Outer Space, which he wryly describes to Vicli as "a bit far-fetched." She then drifts into the room she shares with Barbara:

VICKI: I am redundant around here.
BARBARA: Oh, nonsense. Come and sit down and talk to me.
VICKI: I am a useless person.
(Vicki sits on the edge of a 'bed' which then tips her forward making her knock over whatever Barbara was using)
BARBARA: Oh, Vicki!
VICKI: Oh, what was it?
BARBARA: Oh, it was a dress for you.

All of this is played for gentle comedy, and it's fun.

After they watch their "shows," though, and land on a sandy wreck of a planet, the travelers get one on the house: Daleks. Daleks, I might add, searching all of time and space for the TARDIS:

Barbara tries to turn off the visualiser, but gets a signal instead)
DALEK [OC]: The Supreme Dalek is ready to receive your report!
DALEK [on monitor]: The report is ready.
BARBARA: Doctor! Doctor, come quickly!
DOCTOR [OC]: Yes, all right, my dear, all right, all right. What is it now? Gracious me, can't I even relax for five
(The Doctor enters)
DOCTOR: The Daleks!

[Control room]

BLACK: Give your report.
DALEK: Our time machine has been completed.
BLACK: The operation will proceed at once. The movement scanners have located the enemy time machine, Tardis.
DALEKS: Tardis! Tardis! Tardis! Tardis! Tardis!

[Tardis]

BARBARA: Doctor, he said the Tardis. And look, on their screen, that's us.
DOCTOR: What is more important, he referred to the Tardis as the enemy time machine.

Of course, Ian and Vicki have gotten lost already.

**

The first three episodes consist of the setup, and three vignettes. The first vignette, set on the dry, sandy planet Aridius (I see what you did, there--), is the least interesting. Not entirely without interest, mind, just the least interesting, in that the Aridians are cowards who agree to turn team TARDIS, whom they have rescued, over to the Daleks rather than face the Vengeance of the Daleks (sorry!) The mire-beasts plaguing the Aridians break through a cavern wall like the Kool Aid pitcher (and both with all the finesse of Chris Christie, but I digress), in the struggle, the travelers escape, regaining the TARDIS.

The second vignette is a comic little bit in New York, in 1966 (The Chase aired from May 22-June 26, 1965, so still in the future, albeit not much). We're on the Empire State Building Observation Deck, where the TARDIS materializes in front of a confused young Alabaman, Morton Dill, played by Peter Purves. (We'll meet again!)

Finally, the TARDIS lands on, and thus dooms, the Mary Celeste.

The vignettes are interesting--a mix of comic and straight Doctor Who styles. So, on Aridius, with the mercifully not yet seen mire beasts pursuing them, Ian and Vicki exchange insults:

[Chamber]

(Vicki screams)
IAN: Don't just stand there and scream, you little fool. Run!

[Tunnel]

(But there's another one in their path)
VICKI: Oh, don't just standing there gaping, you nit! Come on, back!
(Ian throws a rock at it)

The American accents in the Empire State Building vignette are nothing short of atrocious, and Dill is played by Purves as a grinning ass, but most of the comedy works, and the Mary Celeste sequence combines some good comedy with a creepy finish. Still, unlike some of Terry Nation's other episodes, the thing moves along at a brisk, enjoyable pace, and never gets dull.

***

A couple firsts, in this story--the first, primitive effect at showing the TARDIS traveling through the vortex (or whatever that effect os meant to be), and the Dalek's similar ship in hot pursuit.

Also, the TARDIS crew are now the nemesis of the Daleks, their "greatest enemy."

The myth of the Oncoming Storm, it seems, has begun.

EDITED TO ADD: I meant to include, but failed to, the delightfully insane, but rather nifty, jazzy incidental music that captures the jaunty feel of these first three episodes. Terry Nation has given us his most fun script to date, and the production team has gone for it.

"I Fooled Them All! I am the Master!": The Space Museum/The Dimensions of Time/The Search/The Final Phase

For once, an episode of the the serial under review provides the epigraph. It's a nice moment, because it follows the Doctor being seized by three young men (boys, really, by the look of them) and, after shamming unconsciousness, the Doctor is left by two of the three (Tor and Sita) alone with the third, Dako. When they return, Dako is bound and gagged on the floor. When he is released, he describes what happened to him, "I didn't see anything. One minute was silence and the next minute a whirlwind hit me." The "old man" Doctor packs quite a punch, apparently. We then pan over to see a Dalek, which the TARDIS travelers have passed previously. This time the Dalek speaks, albeit with William Hartnell's mocking cadences, lacking the requisite grating.

The comic bit is immediately followed by the Doctor getting captured by the guards of the Space Museum.

***

The first two episodes are dominated by a neat little problem. The travelers in a flash go from their 13th Century crusader garb to normal streetwear for them. (Ian and Barbara, 1960s casual, Vicki in her a timeless dress, and Hartnell in full Victorian fig.) Vicki drops a glass of water, it reassembles (compete wit water) in her hand. They wander through dust, leaving no footprints. They are unheard and unseen both by armed uniformed men who are obviously the guards of this museum they have discovered and wandered into, and by young men in black (rather unconvincing guerrillas, but what would you?). Anything they touch passes right through them.

Then, they are confronted by the TARDIS--which they left outside only a little while before-and, in high quality glass cases--themselves. Themselves, not a picture, as P.G. Wodehouse might say, and Barbara in fact does.

The Doctor works out that the TARDIS has "jumped the time track" and is out of sync with its surroundings. They are looking at their own future, but not of it or in it, yet, so can do nothing to prevent it.

***

A nice little dilemma, no?

The is the best of the story, with the Doctor and his companions helpless and apprehensive, and even when they are pulled into sync with time, their own fear of acting in a way that will lead to the future they have glimpsed threatens to paralyze them. Ian, for once afraid either to act or to remain still, becomes snappish and irresolute. He snaps at Barbara and at Vicki too. And when the Doctor disappears (snatched by the three guerrillas), the three wander in confusion.

And now we get the first of a Doctor Who staple--the Doctor is interrogated, and resists his interrogator. And Hartnell laughs at Lobos, the Governor of Xeros (the planet on which the museum is situated), as he interrogates him, and outwits Lobos's efforts to read his thoughts, by projecting unhelpful images (walruses, a penny farthing bicycle (two years early), and men in victorian bathing suits. All the while he chuckles contemptuously, not unlike Tom Baker. It's a great scene, with Hartnell's laughter all the more cutting for how lightly the Doctor regards Lobos.

That this isn't entirely good judgment on the Doctor's part is demonstrated when Lobos kills him with the machine.

Um, yeah. Kills him. No regeneration, no special effects. Dead Doctor.

It's a reminder of how little mythology the show has at this point. No regeneration, no Gallifrey, no Time Lords. The Doctor is susceptible to death just like we are.

Except that he is successfully resurrected, so if you want to retroject 51 years of continuity, be my guest. But it's not there yet, and you're not actually watching the show on your screen.

***

As to the bog-standard help-the-rebels-gain-armaments-and-overthrow-their-oppressors plot, the paucity of rebels is a bit of a hindrance. Still, Maureen O'Brien as Vicki does the otherwise by the numbers plot beat with verve. Ian beats up some soldiers, and captures Lobos, and Barbara--well, sadly, this episode is the first where she isn't really pivotal.

And, as the Daleks spy on the departing Doctor and his friends, and as they leave Xeros, Barbara and Ian are beginning to leave too. They may not know it, but the next serial is the end of the road for Jacqueline Hill and William Russell.

The End of the Beginning is nigh...

Without Hope, Without Witness, Without Reward: World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls

Full Spoilers for the Season Finale




Warned, we begin:

The Doctor: “Winning? Is that what you think it’s about? I’m not trying to win. I’m not doing this because I want to beat someone … or because I hate someone or because I want to blame someone. It’s not because it’s fun. God knows it’s not because it’s easy. It’s not even because it works because it hardly ever does. I do what I do because it’s right! Because it’s decent. And above all, it’s kind. It’s just that. Just kind. If I run away today, good people will die. If I stand and fight, some of them might live … maybe not many, maybe not for long. Hey, maybe there’s no point in any of this at all, but it’s the best I can do, and I will stand here doing it until it kills me. You’re going to die, too, someday. When will that be? Have you thought about it? What would you die for? Who I am is where I stand. Where I stand is where I fall.”

Yeah, this one doesn't fit in my episode-by-episode progress here, and even the last-seconds appearance of The First Doctor doesn't justify it (although, if only these episodes aired when I was blogging The Tenth Planet, all would be perfect. Truly, had we but world enough and time, this coyness blogging would be no crime...)

So why do it now?

Well, because, the internet is abuzz about this extraordinary two part story now, tonight, and I just finished watching the second part. But also because I think that Moffat and Capaldi, Mackie and Lucas, and Gomez and Simm, have centered the Doctor and his universe, friends and enemies, in a parable for our time and for all time, really.

Kindness.

What is the great thing our culture, our politics, our time lacks?

Kindness.

Decency.

Whether it's Brexit, or Theresa May's thwarted effort to sell a "dementia tax"; or the roiling mess that is U.S. politics writ large, or the rise in hate crimes, the fact is, our times are deeply divisve, angry, and cruel.

So Mr. Moffat has told us a story.

A story in which a hero finally acknowledges that he is doing the best he can do, and asks help of his oldest friend and oldest enemy. And they say no, leaving together, and when the oldest friend's hearts misgive her, she kills the oldest enemy, her shadow side, and, happy to rejoin her friend at last, turns to him, but is killed by her shadow side with his last action.

The Master laughs, malicious to his last breath, knowing that he has prevented his future self from standing with the Doctor, even at the cost of his own future. Missy laughs, ruefully, sadly, yet acknowledging the irony: Her best decision was in fact "Without hope, without witness, without reward.".

So too the Doctor. He fights on, and on, and on, carrying the day, but losing his life.

And Bill--feared and hated by the people she is serving, because of her ghastly appearance, the Cyberman who remains a woman of heart, despairs when she finds the Doctor's corpse.

Only Nardole is left, and Nardole has dedicated himself to saving the life of the children and humans left on the ship at the edge of the black hole. He may never face the Cybermen again, or they may come for him and his wards tomorrow--or today.

That's the real end of the story. That's its point. The Doctor says it in so many words. I've quoted it above, but here's the critical bit: "You’re going to die, too, someday. When will that be? Have you thought about it? What would you die for? Who I am is where I stand. Where I stand is where I fall.”

The Doctor falls, faithful to the end. Bill too. Missy too, least likely of all. And Nardole still serves.

Strip away the magic ending for Bill--too specifically foreshadowed back in The Pilot for me to resent, but, yes, magic; and to the weary old Doctor summoned one last time from death's door, only to find himself there already--and that is what we have seen. The tragic end, with happy aperçus.

But none for Missy, who has truly changed, truly grown. She enjoys playing the old game for a bit, this time with her charismatic prior self to add to the fun. She abandons the Doctor, sadly, in contrast to the Master's flippant and contemptuous stroll away from him. But at the last, lethally embracing her former self, she says goodbye to what he meant, and explains why she's changed:

I loved being you. Every second of it. Oh, the way you burned like a sun, like a whole screaming world on fire. I remember that feeling. And I always will. And I will always miss it.

***

Oh, because he's right.
Because it's time to stand with him.
It's where we've always been going, and it's happening now, today.
It's time to stand with the Doctor.

Missy echoes the Doctor's final speech in The Day of the Doctor; she too has been going home to her oldest friend, though he may never know it; the Mistress has come home, the long way 'round.

***

The first part's brilliant, claustrophobic and creepy thriller was one of my favorite episodes even before I saw the payoff. The comic, all-too-meta comic opening transforming swiftly to a body-horror story that served as the Genesis of the Cybermen, wrung our hearts at Bill's loss--I could have written a long appreciative post about that. It deserves it.

But tonight, I can't help but feel that if do that now, you might lose the urgency of the parable.

Kindness, decency.

Without hope, without witness, without reward.

I may be a preacher of sermons for decades; I'll never beat that sermon.

"I'll Steal you, Joanna": The Lion/The Knight of Jaffa/The Wheel of Fortune/The Warlords [The Crusades]

That's William Russell, 35 years after leaving the show, returning as Ian Chesterton (or, as this story established, Sir Ian Chesterton, of Joffa). That's not in the version I watched; I watched the existing two episodes interspersed with two reconstructions. Again, I favor the tele snap over the animations, at least thus far, because the animation is too cartoony for my taste.

The central historical conflict of this story--the Third Crusade, and Richard I's proposal to end it by marrying his sister Joanna to Saladin's brother happened, although there is doubt as to how seriously Richard intended the proposal. David Whitaker's script takes it seriously, and thus gives us an unusually tight focus for the historical drama the TARDIS team fall into.

As Whitaker tells the story, Saphadin (Saladin's brother) was enamored by Joanna's beauty; when Richard and some of his knights were ambushed, William des Preaux, of his household surrendered as Richard, and later passed off Barbara Wright as Joanna--a scheme that fell apart when Saphadin, who had seen Joanna, met Barbara, and blew the whistle.

Barbara's captor El Akir is now furious at her for humiliating him before Saphadin and Saladin (she mocks him to their faces; Saladin joins in). He spends the rest of the story seeking revenge on Barbara. Of all the sexually-themed dangers Barbara has fallen into to date, El Akir is the nastiest, because he has no desire for her except to humiliate and hurt her. Most of the other moths drawn to the Coal Hill School flame genuinely are smitten with her; El Akir is a cruel thug. (One of the things about these first two season that I love is that Jacqueline Hill generally plays Barbara as mildly annoyed at being treated as an interstellar siren. She isn't surprised, she doesn't revel in it, she just tries to (mostly) deflect it.

Between Barbara's efforts to escape El Akir, and Ian's to recue her, we swing back to the royal drama (and the Doctor's and Vicki's) efforts to ingratiate themselves with both the King and Joanna, in order to mount a rescue for Barbara, and then, when Ian is sent to do just that, to stay alive and free until her return).

So the casting is critical to the success of these four episodes. Julian Glover is an excellent Richard, just a little petulant and spoiled, but fundamentally a good man, who has learned the darkness of war and is keenly aware of the need to get back to England. Jean Marsh is superb as Joanna. Her warmth and good humor toward Vicki and the Doctor, contrasted with her haughty body language to a merchant mere seconds later distills the character down to its essence: Joanna is every inch a queen (albeit widowed), and literally condescends to warmth. When she discovers that Richard has already offered her hand to Saphadin, she explodes with a wrath that equals--no, exceeds Richard's. Glover at first bellows at her, but then underplays when Marsh roars right back at him.

Yes, roars. They're both quite credible as children of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, but Marsh is if anything more so. But underlying the quarrel is Richard's yearning for peace after years of war, and Joanna's cultural suspicion and fear of the Other:

JOANNA: I would speak with my brother!
RICHARD: Oh?
JOANNA: What's this I hear? I can't believe it's true. Marriage to that heathenish man, that infidel?
RICHARD: We will give you reasons for it.
JOANNA: This unconsulted partner has no wish to marry. I am no sack of flour to be given in exchange.
RICHARD: It is expedient, the decision has been made.
JOANNA: Not by me, and never would be.
RICHARD: Joanna, please consider. The war is full of weary, wounded men. This marriage wants a little thought by you, that's all, then you'll see the right of it.
JOANNA: And how would you have me go to Saphadin? Bathed in oriental perfume, I suppose? Suppliant, tender and affectionate? Soft-eyed and trembling, eager with a thousand words of compliment and love? [angry] Well, I like a different way to meet the man I am to wed!
RICHARD: Well, if it's a meeting you want.
JOANNA: [roaring] I do not want! I will not have it!
RICHARD: Joanna!

[Richard's palace - robing room]

RICHARD: Joanna! (to the Chamberlain) Get out. Get out! Joanna, I beg you to accept.
JOANNA: No!
RICHARD: I entreat you, Joanna.
JOANNA: No!
RICHARD: Very well. I am the King. We command you.
JOANNA: You cannot command this of me.
RICHARD: [softer] Cannot?
JOANNA: No. There is a higher authority than yours to which I answer.
RICHARD: I am the King. Where is there any man who has greater power over his subjects?
JOANNA: In Rome. His Holiness the Pope will not allow this marriage of mine to that infidel.
RICHARD: But, Joanna?

[Richard's throne room]

RICHARD: You defy me with the Pope!
JOANNA: No, you defy the world with your politics! The reason you and all your armies are here is the reason on my side. You are here to fight these dogs, defeat them. Marry me to them and you make a pact with the Devil. Force me to it and I'll turn the world we know into your enemy.
(Richard nearly hits her, and Joanna walks out with her head held high.)

Saladin and Saphadim are portrayed as honorable and moderate. So too is Barbara's ally Haroun, both loyal and compassionate. Other characters--Ian's friends Ibraham the thief are more negatively stereotyped, but the show seems at pains to depict the Islamic characters as a mix, just as the invading English are (and the crusaders' status as invaders is underscored several times).

It's interesting how secondary the Doctor is in this story. He heps save Richard in the very beginning, he backs him as he strives for peace, but ultimately, the story is moved forward by the royals, and by Barbara and the other enemies to El Akir she meets along the way. Ian has a rather funny bond with a thief who at first tries to torture him into revealing where Ian keeps his (nonexistent) treasure, but then allies with him, because Ian is willing to steal from El Akir too. By the end of the story they're positively chummy.

The Doctor has two great sequences, though, each yet another reminder of how good Hartnell was at comedy. Needing clothes to pass at court, the Doctor (his anachronistic outfit hidden beneath a voluminous cloak) enters a merchant's stall. He has Vicki hide, and while the merchant (named Daheer) is investigating a mess at one end (caused by the Doctor), he flings garments out of Daheer's field of vision to Vicki. It's all rather like smaller version of the brilliant sequence in The Three Musketeers (1973) where out heroes swipe a large dinner from a tavern by staging a mock brawl.

A later comic gem, Hartnell at his best, is when he is confronted by the King's Chamberlain for the theft of the clothes from the stall, but he defends both himself and Daheer, who bought them from the palace thief:

CHAMBERLAIN: I have been waiting to speak with you.
DOCTOR: Oh? Pray, what about?
DAHEER: Thief!
VICKI: I beg your pardon!
DOCTOR: What's this?
DAHEER: Visitor of sorrows, depriver of my children, robber of my goods.
DOCTOR: Who is this? Do you know?
VICKI: No. Oh, his face is a bit familiar.
CHAMBERLAIN: You stole some clothing.
DOCTOR: Really?
CHAMBERLAIN: You see this riding habit? It was taken from this very room. Now it is back here again.
DOCTOR: And a pretty poor garment, too.
CHAMBERLAIN: This and this, stolen from me.
DAHEER: And stolen from me.
DOCTOR: Yes, now there really is a point there, isn't there? If I stole from you, my lord Chamberlain, how could I steal from him?
DAHEER: You did. You did steal from me.
DOCTOR: Then how could I steal from him, eh, you blockhead?
CHAMBERLAIN: Please, please. Now, I had the clothes first.
DOCTOR: Oh, how nice for you.
DAHEER: And I had them second.
VICKI: Did you buy them?
DAHEER: Yes.
VICKI: From us?
DAHEER: No.
DOCTOR: Then whoever it was stole them from you must have sold them to you. Now, don't you agree?
CHAMBERLAIN: Er, yes.
THATCHER: My lord Chamberlain, a ship is in the harbour disgorging fruit from Acre.
DAHEER: That's the man. I bought them from him.
DOCTOR: He must have stolen them from you.
CHAMBERLAIN: Thatcher! You villain!
DOCTOR: Now, just a minute! Oh, my dear Chamberlain, so undignified. The merchant bought the clothes in good faith and paid for them in good money. Now please return his money.
CHAMBERLAIN: But I have to catch the thief.
DOCTOR: Now, now, now. You mustn't let an honest man suffer. Pay him!
CHAMBERLAIN: Doh! Thatcher! Thatcher!
DAHEER: Joy to you, my lord! Giver of life to my father, provider!
DOCTOR: Yes, off you go! Off you go! Well, we seem to have got out of that problem all right, hmm?

Later, there's another very sweet moment between the Doctor and Vicki when she thinks he plans to abandon her. The gentle warmth with which Hartnell reassures her is quite touching, and a far distance away from the cold suspicious Doctor we first met.

It's surprising that a story missing so much of its footage works so well--but The Crusade does; it's lighter than The Reign of Terror, but more real and interesting than The Romans.

"The Ants Go Marching Two by Two": The Web Planet

This story arc--really, I can't do the usual, here, because these story arcs defy categorization. The Web Planet is weird in a way I don't associate with Doctor Who--it reminds me of early films. Yes, the obvious comparison is Méliès's 1902 film Trip to the Moon:



But it also is reminiscent of March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934), a phantasmagorical fairy tale that, like A Trip to the Moon,creates a world that is somewhat like ours, but is peopled with strange creatures and glimpsed through the prism of Victorian nightmare images.

The world of Vortis and its inhabitants are immensely detailed, lovingly evoked, and yet they are completely unrealistic. It's almost as if the Doctor and his companions have again been shrunk and are housed in a victorian puppet theater of the more gothic kind. More than any other planet the TARDIS has visited to date, Vortis and its inhabitants are fully realized, but like a cartoon.

The Zarbi, the ant-creatures of Vortis, are individually mindless soldiers, following the prompting of a single guiding force--the Animus, the main antagonist. Yet Vrestin, the main spokes--er, moth. The Menoptera are moths.

No, really:



So, Vestrin, the spokesmoth does not condemn the Zarbi completely; she says, instead, that "[t]he Zarbi are not an intelligent species, but they were essential to the life pattern here. We lived at peace with them, until they were made militant by the dark power."

The Doctor and Ian are not so kind:

IAN: What do you think they are, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Hmm?
IAN: Those things out there.
DOCTOR: Well, to use the term of Earth, I suppose we should call them insects.
IAN: Ants? I've seen a colony of ants eat their way right through a house. That size, they could eat their way through a mountain. Why are they that big?
DOCTOR: Size is only relative. In this rarified atmosphere, it appears that evolution has chosen that particular form of life on this planet.
IAN: Ants.
DOCTOR: Yes.
IAN: So relentless, indestructible. What are we going to do? Have you got any ideas?
DOCTOR: Well, it's this voice. It's this, this, this, this, this Queen of the ants, you might say.

The description of the ants is interesting here. I've no proof of this, and indeed may be wronging Bill Strutton, who wrote the script, but I can't help but think that the story of the ants added to the reworked version of The Sword in the Stone (1938) in the omnibus volume of The Once and Future King (1958), plays a role here.

You see, The Sword in the Stone is, in its 1938 text, much lighter than that published in the omnibus edition. In it, the young orphaned ward of Sir Ector, his name softened from Arthur to Art, and then replaced with the contemptuous, but not entirely unaffectionate, "Wart," finds a tutor--Merlyn--who educated both the Wart and his foster brother, Kay, but gives the Wart special tutelage, in visiting the animals to see how they are governed. In the tetralogy, though, we lose the charming battle between Merlyn and Madame Mim, and the visit to Queen Morgan le Fey. They are replaced by two episodes from The Book of Merlyn, one in which the aged King Arthur is shown brief happiness by visiting the geese, and discovers the miserable, regimented life of an ant. These episodes, rewritten for the Wart, are darker than the rest of The Sword in the Stone, don't fit as well as in The Book of Merlyn, but are arresting, especially the horror of the visit to the ants, which includes loss of personality (like Barbara and Vicki undergo) and body horror (the maimed Menoptera, the grubs stand in well). Like Dennis Spooner's viewing The Web Planet as "a parable about socialism, with the Zarbi and the Menoptera as the oppressed and the oppressors respectively," so too White intended the ants in The Once and Future King as a scathing portrayal of Soviet communism.

Published only seven years before The Web Planet, The Once and Future King remains in print today, and has left a large mark. Hartnell's Doctor is not unlike Merlyn: tetchy, absent-minded, laughing at the ironies only he can see, and kind underneath it all. (Interesting, Merlyn, who lives backwards in time, affects Victorian fashions on several occasions, as well as referencing events from the 19th Century. Hartnell's aesthetic is quite Victorian professor-ish, rather like Merlyn's.) It's quite conceivable, with its fairytale setting, its darkness as well as light, and the nightmare image of ant-land White conjures up, played a role in creating "The Web Planet."

****

The politics and sources of The Web Planet aside, its spectacle, hand-made and old-fashioned is what lingers. The plot is stretched too long, the story is unexplained (what exactly is the Animus? Phil Sandifer writes that "[l]ater writers engaged in a kind of ham-handed retcon that proclaimed the Animus, along with some other classic villains, to in fact be explicitly part of the Cthulhu mythos (Animus is apparently Lloigar, a 1932 creation of August Derleth). Although this retcon was, all told, a pretty dumb idea that does some real injustice to Bill Strutton's creation of the Animus, the observation that there's something Lovecraftian about this monster is pretty on target.") I can't improve on that, really.)

But deeply odd though this one is, it has a magic to it--the magic lantern of clever theater work, not unlike the charm of the shows staged by the parents in A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book. It's alien, strange, and sometimes alienating. The stylized movements by Roslyn de Winter are weirdly apposite even when thy seem bizarre.

Verity Lambert's Doctor Who is a show willing to gamble on an old-fashioned--even in 1965--kind of spectacle, confident it will pull it off. Lambert wins her bet.

Wot, Fisticuffs!: The Slave Traders, All Roads Lead to Rome/Conspiracy/Inferno [The Romans]

After a month of indolence in Nero's Rome, the TARDIS team find themselves drawn to the Empire's Capital. The cliffhanger (literally, the TARDIS was hanging on the edge of a cliff at the end of The Rescue) is re-shown, and we find the travelers in unexplained (until later) comfort. With Barbara and Ian rather flintily comfortable with each other, I might add.

If we begin discussing the story collectively known as The Romans by looking at the character of the Doctor, we can see what a difference a year and the first change of companion makes. Hartnell is clearly having a whale of a time in this, the first comedy historical, scripted by Dennis Spooner. Hartnell's Doctor is buoyant throughout this episode, preening himself for being two steps ahead of everyone--and generally being right about the fact. It's a great performance; even his line flubs aren't bothering him anymore (in season 1, he seems visibly frustrated whenever he blows a line). This is Hartnell in full command of his performance and his show. The fact that this makes his Doctor more amusing and yet more pugnacious--well, all those tough guy roles Hartnell played before the Doctor left a mark.

Maureen O'Brien as Vicki is enjoying the whole thing, too--she's bubbling with laughter through most of the story, and generally enjoying being paired with the eponymous character for most of the story. O'Brien is like a partner-in-crime for Hartnell--and in fact, as O'Brien described their relationship, "“We had fun. Our rehearsals were fun, despite when he broke into spitting, snarling rages. He had a laugh, he liked to work. He liked his whisky. We had a good time.” In an earlier interview, she was quoted as saying her "job really, since the acting was no sweat, was to laugh Bill out of his rages and tantrums, which I did thoroughly, and enjoyed! He’d get very tetchy, but that was just Bill’s personality, that’s how he was." That shows even in this early episode.

Those who contend that Barbara and Ian end up as a couple could rest their case on this story alone. The chemistry between Jacqueline Hill and William Russell is dead on. In first part, their banter has a lovely, teasing, unselfconscious feel to it:

BARBARA: You know Ian, I could get used to this sort of life.
IAN: Mmm. I already have. What about another drink? [He's clearly asking her to get it]
BARBARA: Oh, yes, I'd love one. Thank you.
IAN [wryly smiles; gets up to get it]: No ice, I'm afraid.
BARBARA: There's some in the fridge.
IAN: Ah.
(Ian starts to leave the room before the penny drops)
IAN: Very funny, very funny.
BARBARA: You went!
IAN: Well, here's to the first fridge.
BARBARA: Cheers.
IAN: O tempora, o mores.

Grand as it is to see them all enjoying themselves, the plot requires them to leave the villa. So the Doctor and Vicki wander off to Rome, where he is mistaken for a politically-conspiring lutist, while Barbara and Ian are kidnapped and sold into slavery. These plots are pretty dark, at least to begin. Barbara's kindness to a sick fellow prisoner catches the eye of Tavius, Nero's steward, who buys her. Ian becomes a galley slave, and goes through a capsule version of Spartacus.

Meanwhile, Barbara finds herself trapped in Carry On, Cleo, with six-time Carry On veteran Derek Francis playing a lust-addled Nero, who falls into what I would call Rule 2: Everybody wants Barbara. These scenes are of course very dated, but well within the Carry On tradition, or even A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

The Doctor, meanwhile, is beset by Nero (who wants to kill him for receiving more applause as a player than Nero has), Tavius (who expects him to assassinate Nero); and Vicki (who wants to explore more).

Barbara and the Doctor keep missing each other by seconds, French farce style, and in fact, the entire plot resolves without them meeting each other--the Doctor and Vicki think on their return that Barbara and Ian haven't budged since they left (they reprise their fridge schtick, playfight, and, er, make up...).

It's all a romp; the Doctor even violates his "Not one line!" rule against changing history--only for laughs:



Carry on, Doctor!

Everything You Know is Wrong: The Powerful Enemy/Desperate Measures [The Rescue]

The Doctor is not who he was.

Barbara notices that the "faint trembling" while it's in flight has stopped. But the Doctor is asleep in an armchair, the first time he hasn't supervised the landing. When they wake him, it's not the usual take-charge, imperious old man they know:

The DOCTOR is asleep in his chair)
BARBARA: And you know how the ship has a faint sort of trembling while we're moving? Well, I suddenly realised that it had stopped.
IAN: I believe you're right, Barbara. I think we have landed. But the Doctor's never slept through a landing before.
BARBARA: Doctor. Doctor!
IAN: Doctor!
BARBARA: Wake up.
DOCTOR: Hmm? What's the matter? What is it? What is it? Oh good gracious me! Don't tell me I went off to sleep.
IAN: Yes, you did.
DOCTOR: Oh!
IAN: At a very critical time. Oh well, I suppose it did you a world of good.
DOCTOR: Deep in the arms of Morpheus, hey my boy? Well, I feel a bit sticky. I must go and have a wash.
BARBARA: Oh, but Doctor, the trembling's stopped.
DOCTOR: Oh, my dear, I'm so glad you're feeling better.
BARBARA: No, not me, the ship.
DOCTOR: Oh, the. Oh my dear, I'm so sorry.
IAN: Doctor, we appear to have landed while you were asleep.
DOCTOR: What? Oh, I say, I must never allow this sort of thing again now, must we? No. Well, all we have to do is to turn the power off.
BARBARA: Then we have landed.
DOCTOR: Yes, er, excuse me, materialised, I think, is a better word.

He's disoriented, here, but Hartnell plays him as also gentler than usual. It's an interesting sequence, comic and a little disturbing.

Which is a good way to describe this brief, two part story.

The whole reality and illusion genre has its detractors, but this is Doctor Who's first trip to that well--and it's still only January, 1965. The Stunt Man is still 15 years in the future, to say nothing of overtly sci-fi-fi variations of the genre like The Matrix (a hair under a quarter of a century off) or Inception (35 years out).

Because we don't open with the Doctor and the TARDIS as I have. No, we open on the remnants of a badly damaged spaceship, where the two remaining crew members live in fear of the one member they have met of the dominant species of the planet Dido (named after a widowed queen who, deserted by her lover, kills herself), the choleric Koquillion. Koquillion, a spiky creature, threatens and reassures over and over again, insisting to the orphaned Vickie and her crewman Bennett, who has lost the use of his legs, that the other members of his species want them both dead.

But the Doctor recalls Dido as a peaceful planet.

Barbara meet Koquillion, who kills her. The Doctor and Ian then find themselves hunted by a fearsome beast. The beast attacks Vickie. The Doctor speaks to Bennett.

None of these statements is true, and yet that's what we see on screen.

Everything you know is wrong.

Barbara is alive (hidden from sight by Vickie), the "fearsome beast" is Vickie's pet, a vegetarian, friendly animal native to the planet. Barbara kills it, thinking she is saving Vickie, only to break the younger woman's heart.

Koquillion is Bennett (who can walk fine) who is wearing the ceremonial dress of the Didonians, whom he killed when they welcomed the crew to the planet (Bennett, a murderer facing charges, killed the rest of them, too.) We hear the Doctor answered by Bennett, but he's not there, his voice has been recorded.

One last thing happens that subverts what we think we know (although a brief moment in Marco Polo might have tipped us off); the frail elderly Doctor lies in wait for "Koquillion" and, in a manner prefiguring Tom Baker at his most severe, accuses him of all his misdeeds. When Bennett physically attacks him, and the Doctor fights back spiritedly--he even disarms Bennett (though he loses his own sword), holding him back long enough that two of the remaining Didonians can charge Bennett--who, faced with younger opponents, staggers back in fear, and tumbles to his death.

****

Among all these deceptions, there are some moments of truth: Barbara's defensiveness and then her shame at having killed "Sandy"(the allegedly fearsome beat); Barbara's and Vickie's mutual apologies; the Doctor's paralyzed response to asking Susan--no longer there--to open the TARDIS door.

And the Doctor's immediate rapport with Vickie.

This could have been awful; it's all on Hartnell and Maureen O'Brien. He is far gentler and kinder than we've seen him before, he's like a man coaxing a cat to come to him. O'Brien, as Vickie, plays the needy young woman who has been tormented by Koquillian for too long, and who needs hope and reassurance so desperately. The two bond, and he invited her into the TARDIS, a conclusion Barbara and Ian have already reached themselves.

So off they go, our travelers, having found some truth in friendship, only to land on an unstable surface, and topple into the next story.

"One Day, I Shall Come Back...": The End of Tomorrow/The Waking Ally/Flashpoint

Right, if you talk about the story arc called The Dalek Invasion of Earth, this scene, usually reduced to the last bit, from "One day, I shall come back..." used as an intro to The Five Doctors, haunts the back 9 as assuredly as the suicidal Roboman opening "World's End" haunts the first three episodes. One evokes the existential dread at the core of the arc,the other--

--well, the other has been torn from its context to make it a reaffirmation of the Doctor's aspirations--a distant ancestor of the "Doctor's promise"--you know, "never cruel or cowardly, never give up, never give in."

But it's not.

It's an aging man, who has been forced by new friends crashing into his life to confront his own selfishness, his cowardice, his capacity for cruelty, his willingness to give up and flee, forced to battle once more with his baser elements.

This time, it's the Doctor fighting down his possessive love for his granddaughter--his only link to his unknown home--and letting her go when she can't achieve the life-giving separation herself, out of love for him.

The selfish old man, knowing his selfishness, does not yield to it. He does the right thing, even if it--to quote Extremis--"without hope, without witness, without reward."



Because the Doctor does not have hope (for himself); he does not consider the witnesses (Ian and Barbara are present, but even we don't see their reactions; he doesn't know if Susan understands), and there is no reward for him. He loses her. He knows he must, and the Doctor faces loss, and, for the first time in the series, does so bravely. Better still, he faces loss with grace. That's a first for Hartnell's cantankerous Doctor--think of his tantrums at Susan when she refused to leave Earth in An Unearthly Child, or at Ian and Barbara in The Edge of Destruction.

No, this moment is huge, especially in context. But it dwarfs the three episodes that precede it, so let's give it its due. And then move on.

***

Just as well, because "The End of Tomorrow" is almost as lame as its title (The end of tomorrow is, after all. A fancy phrase for "tomorrow night," and isn't given more meaning here.). The Doctor is out cold for the whole episode (Hartnell had been injured in shooting the prior episode); Ian makes his way toward the mines, and Barbara--

--well, once again, Barbara saves the show. Because Barbara hijacks a vintage rubbish cart, and, well, let the dialogue tell the story:

[In the truck]

JENNY: Do you think that Dalek saw us back there?
BARBARA: It must have heard the noise.
JENNY: Then we're in for trouble.
BARBARA: Yes, they're sure to radio ahead. We may have to ditch this at any moment.
(round a corner and)
BARBARA: Jenny, there's a whole bunch of them ahead of us.
JENNY: Shall we jump for it?
BARBARA: No. I'm going through.
(She scatters them like skittles)
JENNY: We went straight through them! Straight through them!
BARBARA: Yeah, it wasn't bad, was it? I rather enjoyed that. We won't be able to stay in this much longer though. They'll be after us with a vengeance now.

(My italics.)

Pity there's no clip of the moment online, because Barbara's face gets a rather manic, but still proper, smile. Barbara Wright is not to be trifled with. And is here enjoying herself a bit too much.

Later, Ian and his companion Craddock meet Ashton the profiteer on the black market, who exploits his fellow humans for profit, only to die at the paws? of the ridiculous Slyther (who wins a point for whining pitiably when it, in turn, is dispatched by Ian). In "The Waking Ally," the pattern repeats--Barbara and resistance fighter Jenny are literally sold to the Daleks for extra food by an old woman and her daughter who collaborate with them by making clothes for slave laborers.

The humanity the Doctor and his companions seek to save here is not idealized.

Meanwhile, the story of Larry Craddock's search for his brother Phil comes to its tragic end. Larry, too wounded to walk, comes face-to-face with Phil, only to discover the latter has been made into a Roboman:

PHIL: (a Roboman) Halt!
LARRY: Phil! It's my brother. Ian, it's my brother.
PHIL: Too many in working party. Dalek Supreme Control recheck. Who are you?
LARRY: Phil? Phil, it's Larry. Your brother Larry. Think, Phil! Remember me!
PHIL: You are both runaways.
LARRY: Angela. Your wife, Angela! I'll take you to her.
PHIL: You must both be punished.
IAN: It's no good, Larry.
LARRY: No, no! No, Ian!
IAN: Come on!
LARRY: Ian, get clear. Run while you've got the chance! Run, Ian. Run.
(Larry throttles Phil while Phil shoots Larry)
LARRY: Run, Ian, run.

[Phil's roboman helmet is shattered; as he dies, he groans one word]

Phil: Larry.

Meanwhile, David and Susan begin to fall in love. We are shown humanity as both loving and at its least loving--Ashton, the old woman and her daughter--while Larry, mortally wounded, fights his effectively dead brother to save Ian. Even Phil has one last flash of his stolen soul, and recognizes the brother he has killed.

Barbara, captured and forced to work in the mines, uses Dortmun's notes to get herself face-to-face with the Black Dalek. She tries to "tell the tale" of a rebellion to get a chance to sabotage the Daleks in the heart of their empire:

BARBARA: Did you see that, Jenny? That's the way they control the Robomen.
DALEK 3: Herd all humans to galleries to nine, ten and fifteen.
JENNY: Perhaps we could put it out of action?
BARBARA: We could do better than that, we could give it new orders. Tell them to turn on the Daleks.
JENNY: Yes! That's a great idea.
DALEK: They are the prisoners that reported the imminent revolt.
BLACK: Speak!
BARBARA: (reading Dortmun's notes.) This bomb is the one with which
BLACK: We are not interested in the bomb. Give your information!
BARBARA: Right. This revolt is timed to start almost immediately. As in the case of the Indian mutiny, which I am sure
BLACK: Indian mutiny? We are the masters of India!
BARBARA: I was talking about Red Indians in disguise! The plan will run parallel with the Boston Tea Party. Naturally, you already have information about this.
BLACK: Wait! Why have I not been informed of this?
DALEK 2: There has been no information.
BARBARA: Good! That means the first part of the plan is a success. Now, I warn you, General Lee and the four, the fifth cavalry are already forming up to attack from the north side of the crater. The second wave, Hannibal's forces, will of course come in from the Southern Alps. The third wave
BLACK: Attention! Attention! Mobilise defence forces!
(Barbara dashes to the Robomen control panel)
BARBARA: Robomen, this order cannot be countermanded. You must
BLACK: Take them! They are lying! Take them! Take them! Take them!

Later, of course, the Doctor and Barbara will use the Control Center to order the Robomen to turn on the Daleks, and destroy them. So this idea of Barbara's in fact turns the tide, in conjunction with as Ian's sabotage of the Dalek's bomb, David and Susan sabotaging the pit.

***
You'll notice that these are all moments, not essential to the plot, and that I'm not recapping it. That's because the plot is famously bizarre--the Daleks wanting to husk out the planet's core and fly the earth around the universe (yeah, and that idea actually gets another try), the to-ing and fro-ing to pad out the story to fill six episodes--no, this story lives in its moments.

Grace notes, when the dying Larry hears his name on his dead brother's lips after all;
Where Susan sees herself as loved and loving,
or Jenny sees Barbara as her hero,
and David asks for the woman he loves to stay with him.

So, in the last post, I said that the title of "World's End" was, in a sense, true.

The Doctor is alone, except for the friends he's trying to help to leave him. Susan is gone, and with her, his own roots and family, and world.

Where does he go from here?

Shattered Visage: World's End/The Daleks/Day of Reckoning

After the oddball second season opener, the next story arc brought back the Daleks as a far more potent threat than their initial appearance. Where The Daleks was the story of the last remnants of two civilizations trying to revive their dead planet, one by destroying their erstwhile enemies, the other by reaching out to them, these episodes bring us to Earth, and to Great Britain.

A Great Britain more shattered by invasion than was Great Britain by the Luftwaffe, less than two decades before the filming of these episodes.

England--no, Great Britain--no, sorry, the whole Earth is occupied by the Daleks. Not all that many of them, seemingly. But that's all right; they've enslaved the locals, not by fear, or threat, but by stripping them of all humanity, reducing them to automatons with funky headgear, and hollow, sagging voices.

The Roboman is the specter that haunts these episodes, and if you've ever doubted Andrew Cartmel's description of the Daleks as "futuristic metal fascists," the Robomen, with their evocation of the broken spirits Victor Frankl encountered in the concentration camps in which he was imprisoned, cement the identification. The Robomen are our worst fear: that we ourselves could become obedient servants of an oppressor, all humanity lost. That we could all be Winston Smith--worse, even; Winston Smith with even the simulacrum of personality left him by Orwell's Ministry of Love destroyed.

That the visage of humanity could be all too easily shattered.

***

The TARDIS arrives on a deserted riverbank of the Thames. The TARDIS herself has never looked so beaten up before, her paint scaling, her side windows seemingly stove in--her exterior is almost as dilapidated as her surroundings. The iconic poster forbidding the dumping of bodies, the unexplained signs everywhere reading "VETOED,"--London is in ruins. And when the Dalek arises out of the river, and Ian and the Doctor are well and truly trapped--well, it's a strong ending for the first episode. Before that, we go through some interesting character beats--Susan merrily climbs a wall to see some indicator of when in London's history they are, and promptly sprains her ankle. On the other hand, when she and Barbara are the hands of the resistance (such as it is), and their usefulness is being assessed, she sasses her interrogator:

DORTMUN: Two more pairs of hands. Good, we need--
DAVID: She [Barbara] says she can cook.
DORTMUN: Oh, can you?
DAVID: And what do you do?
SUSAN: I eat.

Susan's quite charming in this moment, and it's a rare chance for her to be the flip, insouciant one of the party.

The Doctor's happy cleverness in working out a scientific puzzle left in the cell occupied by himself, Ian and another captive named Craddock, convinces the Daleks of the Doctor's superior mental agility--and marks him for robotization.

As to the wheelchair-bound Dortmun, obsessively refining his bomb, and launching a doomed attack dependent on its efficacy, without testing it--well, Dortmun makes me wish I believed that Terry Nation had, in creating the Daleks, foreseen Davros. Because like the creator of the Daleks, Dortmun is all too willing to weaponize people and trust to his own genius, sometimes disastrously. Unlike Davros, Dortmun still has his soul, under the obsessiveness. He gives his life testing his bomb himself, but also giving Barbara and Jenny, another resistance fighter, a chance to escape.

Meanwhile, David Campbell and Susan have a good chat about belonging somewhere and needing a real identity--and David turns down the opportunity to escape with Susan and the Doctor from his ravaged planet. He comforts her as Daleks slaughter a resistance eight they had met on the way. A tentative bond has been formed.

***

But these episodes aren't, at heart, character episodes. Nor are they about the plot--although it moves briskly along. Rather, it's power comes from evoking a legitimate terror, recent enough at the time of initial airing to still chill the hearts of the original viewers.

If The Daleks was a mediation on, and a fable about, nuclear war, with overtones of the Second World War, then these three episodes are peeping through half-opened eyes screened by one's fingers at the great British primal fear--what if that war had gone the wrong way--if Britain had been conquered and it, not Germany, occupied?

That terror is dramatized here, in sci-fi-fi dress, to chill parents and children alike.

It works.

"Look at the Scale of Things": Planet of Giants/Dangerous Journey/Crisis

Right, there are two ways I could go about this. The first is I could be glib, and say that the primary merit of this three part story (that's the originally aired version available on BritBox, so that's what I watched; I gather the four part version has been reconstructed) is that it preserves the beauty of a particularly nice-looking calico cat.

The other is to admit that the second season of Doctor Who starts with...mot exactly a whimper, but a misfire. It's not that there aren't things to like in this odd story; it's just that it doesn't work as a whole. But the good is quite worth seeing. Let me explain:

The story begins in the TARDIS, shortly after it left Revolutionary France. But not immediately; the travelers have all changed (the Doctor is swanning about in a cloak rather like that he received in The Sensorites, but (so it appears) lighter in color), when suddenly the TARDIS doors try to open in mid-flight, the console is hot enough to burn Barbara's hand, and the travelers barely manage to land intact--in fact, the scanner shatters, when they try to view their surroundings.

Team TARDIS spills out into a canyon, and discovers that they are surrounded by huge (but very, very dead) earthworms, ants and other insects. They wander around in two groups trying to figure out where they are, when they discover that giant humans live on this planet. Giant humans who use giant English products made in (seemingly) giant English manufacturing locales...

In a neat touch, the Doctor (with Barbara) and Susan (with Ian) realize the truth at the same moment, and explain it in the same words: the planet and its inhabitants aren't giants--the TARDIS and its occupants have shrunk, with the travelers reduced to an inch in height. Susan is sharp here, overriding her onetime science teacher with the same authority Hartnell as the Doctor brings to his explanation to Barbara. She is once again the brilliant "Unearthly Child" of the pilot, who has intermittently shown up when she isn't screaming. Carole Ann Ford is great as this Susan, and it's good to see her in a more mature and compelling role.

The travelers try to find Ian (who rather stupidly hid in a briefcase to avoid being spotted, and literally was carried away. Barbara makes the mistake of touching a huge seed, and begins to sicken...

Meanwhile, a greedy investor and an idealistic (albeit obsessed) scientist are hosting (at the scientist's home and personal lab) a government scientist who is testing the safety and efficacy of a new insecticide that will (if it works properly) end world hunger and make the investor a fortune (which he needs, having sunk all his money into it). The regulator realizes the insecticide is too effective--it kills everything, and for decades. When he tells the investor, in the absence of the scientist, the investor, er, kills him. Sorry, old chap. He tells the scientist that Farrow (the government scientist) was corrupt, and going to end the project--and thus no end to world hunger, so the scientist agrees to move the body.

Oh, my insecticide!

If this sounds like a crossover between Doctor Who and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962), well it bloody well feels like one. The two stories run parallel to each other, only intersecting occasionally, and at the end, when the Doctor and Barbara work out the harm the insecticide will do, and they try to get the attention of the police to not just the murder, but the underlying cause. That's when this already odd story crosses over again, this time with Dixon of Dock Green--the local constable, and his telephone exchange operator wife work out that the calls to London are not coming from Farrow, and the constable makes the arrest.

Because of the disparity in size, the travelers cannot make out the voices of the people around them, and can't be heard by them. So these stories only touch so that the big people can imperil the travelers (washing their hands in a sink while the Doctor and Susan hide in the drain), or the travelers try to stop the accomplice's covering up their crimes.

The idea isn't terrible, but because it's so disjointed, it's hard to get invested in the story of the insecticide and murder.

What does work, and works beautifully, is the relationships between the Doctor, Susan, Barbara, and Ian. Ian comes last in this list because he's least well served by the script. William Russell plays his role as stalwart here, but the script makes him repeatedly grab the idiot ball. But he portrays Ian's intrepidity and loyalty simply and convincingly.

Barbara oddly doesn't tell anyone that she's been poisoned, though she works up towards it at least once, only to be interrupted. This doesn't make sense, but Jacqueline Hill puts in a performance of mounting terror and disorientation that you believe it. Earlier in the story, the unaffected warmth between her and Hartnell's Doctor, and Susan, is both charming and earned.

The Doctor is more likable in season two than in the pervious stories--after being curt and dismissive during the initial crisis, he apologizes quite humbly to Barbara, addressing her as "my dear," and treats Ian as a friend throughout. He and Susan trust one another implicitly here, and work well together. Hartnell is quite good here--light where he can be, firm where needed. His boyish enthusiasm for explosions is pure Tom Sawyer, but he sells it.

The Doctor and his companions end up back safely in the TARDIS--with Barbara restored to full size, the poison that entered her system through skin contact is too small to affect her. They realize that they had touched on modern earth, but had to dematerialize to restore themselves to full size; the effort to move in time, but not in space led to an error the shrank them.

So where have they landed now, they wonder?

The next episode's title is "The End of the World."

In more than one way, that's just what it is.