Grab Bag Reviews: "The Tenth Planet"

Okay, first off, yes, now that Pluto has been demoted from planetary status the title doesn't work anymore.

As for the rest. Well, this episode marked one of those other 'great leaps forwards' for the show. Just as the introduction of the Meddling Monk (in "The Time Meddler") introduced the idea that the Doctor had a 'people' and that others of them could time travel too "The Tenth Planet" introduced the idea of regeneration... the thing that has allowed the show to survive and reinvent itself periodically in order to stay fresh.

This episode would also introduce the series' second most famous repeating villains... the Cybermen.

The first 'regeneration' (although it wasn't termed that at first -- that and the limitations to it would come later) was not without it's controversies.

By 1966 Producer Innes Lloyd had repeated clashes with William Hartnell -- so much so that Lloyd considered replacing Hartnell earlier -- halfway through the 1965-1966 season with the episode "The Celestial Toymaker". As it was, after much discussions, Hartnell agreed it was time to leave and the second serial of the 1966-1967 season was chosen for his departure. There are some rumors that Hartnell was forced out by Lloyd because of their personal disagreements. Officially it was Hartnell's declining health led the production team to convince him it was time to retire from the daily grind of episodic television. The truth of the matter will probably never be known but it was probably a matter of it being a combination of the two. There was no question that Hartnell's memory and health problems caused by his arteriosclerosis were worsening and he frequently missed filming for health reasons. In point of fact, even this, his swan song, suffers due to Hartnell being ill at the time of filming... but more on that later.

The big problem was the question of how did one replace the lead actor in a program like Doctor Who? And make no mistake, the show's popularity had the BBC quite interested in seeing it continue on instead of being cancelled outright.

The writers eventually stumbled onto a simple but genius idea -- since the Doctor was an alien it was simply his nature to change his appearance. At the start the writers envisioned this process as being termed a "renewal" and it would actually involve the Doctor shedding years -- not just changing his face. In this case, the idea was that the Doctor would actually de-age several hundred years during the process.

The next hurdle was to find someone to replace Hartnell. Many actors were considered and a couple were approached but indicated they had no interest in the role. One actor who was high on the list, however, was veteran character actor Patrick Troughton. Troughton was interested but he had one condition -- that he not be asked to try to ape Hartnell's style. Troughton felt that this would be an insult to Hartnell and the work he had done. The production team agreed and the new Doctor was set.

After leaving the show Hartnell continued to act -- particularly on stage where the pace of production was not as taxing as television -- and he reportedly also enjoyed meeting fans who had grown up on his portrayal of the Doctor right up to the end of his life.

Meanwhile, the production team was interested in coming up with new ideas -- particularly ones rooted in real science. They became exposed to the work of scientist Kit Pedler and Pedler became an unofficial scientific advisor to the show as well as being an 'idea man' to generate new concepts to turn into stories. The recent advances in artifical limbs as well as speculation about future advances triggered Pedler to create the Cybermen -- one of his most enduring creations.

So, shall we go and say "hello" to the Cybermen and say "good-bye" to our first Doctor?

The Plot: The Doctor, with companions Ben and Polly, land at an international space agency tracking station at the South Pole in 1986. As they observe a routine flight orbiting the Earth a strange planet suddenly appears near Earth! As the planet wreaks havoc with the space flight and begins draining energy from Earth some of the planet's inhabitants arrive to take over the South Pole station. Part flesh, part robot, but wholly without emotion, the Cybermen have a message for the people of Earth.... "You will be like us."

My Take: This is, again, one of those stories partly missing. The good news is that three out of the four episodes are still in existence. The bad news is that the missing episode is the fourth one with the Doctor's regeneration.

Back in the 1990's the episode was released on VHS by the BBC with the mission fourth part filled in by a condensed reconstruction of the episode using still images and the original audio track. The story was also released as an audio drama with descriptive narration provided by Anneke Wills, the actress who played Polly. I have seen the VHS episode but I own the audio so the audio is what I based this review on. The story has yet to be released on DVD by the BBC but there are rumors that the missing episode might be replaced by animation synced up to the surviving audio.

As for the story... I do have a problem with stories which are set in "the future" which includes my lifetime. Certainly to the writers of the time they had no idea that this story would be still being watched long after 1986 but here we are and seeing their vision of 1986 does give me a chortle to two.

All that aside, there are people who have a problem with the Cybermen's voices in their first appearance. They tend to find them laughable. I don't. Oh, sure, in a couple of places they get a bit too sing-song but other than that I really like the concept that there is still a trace of the organic voice but with an electronic overlay. It reminds the viewers that, chillingly, these were humanoid beings which have now become something other... something horrible.



The voices are both human and inhuman at the same time.

Another nice touch is the fact that the mouths on the Cybermen don't actually move when they speak. Their mouths open and the voices emerge -- as if the voices are coming from something other than their throats.

And the costume design here so nearly works. The ski-mask like face coverings are suitably chilling. They make the Cybermen faceless, anonymous; human in form but with individuality erased. The coverings also put one in mind of mummies and we are invited to wonder what might be underneath -- what horror or inhumanity do these masks cover? Or is there anything left there at all?

The headlamps, however, look like a miner's lamp gone wrong perched on top of some sink pipes and the chest units look like space-age accordions. It's all just a bit too silly looking. I will, however, award points for at least trying something that looks a little different.

Sadly, this is all the best parts of the story. The adventure dissolves into a flawed base-under-siege' plot weighted down with cement bricks in the form of the actors doing bad foreign accents. The "Italian" makes you cringe as they pull out pretty much every stereotype in the books and the "American", General Cutler is so "cowboy" it's nearly beyond words.

And the flaws just go from there. While Pedler may have had a brilliant idea with the Cybermen the rest of the psuedo-science on display is ridiculous. Okay, more ridiculous than usual for Doctor Who. A planetary body coming that close to the Earth would almost certainly impact things like weather and tides not to mention gravity. And that's getting past just the idea that a planet... the size of Earth... can just... appear without someone seeing it coming. Even the telescopes and technology available in 1966 would have been able to see something the size of a planet making it's way into the solar system! I'm willing to suspend a lot of disbelief but this story pushes the weight load past the breaking point.

And then there are the characterization holes. Granted, Hartnell was ill during at least part of the filming and perhaps most of it. He was not able to make it into the studio for the filming of the entire third episode and as such they had to write his character out of the scenes and the Doctor does not appear at all there. Still, the Doctor just simply doesn't do anything in this story. There are no grand speeches, very little taking the moral high ground, little showing off in his traditional role of 'smartest guy in the room', etc. And in point of fact he shows a ridiculous trust that the Cybermen will keep their word. At one point rather cheerfully sending his companion, Polly, off to be a hostage.

It is the other companion, Ben, who gets to save the day. Multiple times actually. Ben isn't stupid but the point of the character is that he was supposed to be a Cockney, Merchant Seaman -- someone who was born without a lot of advantages and who had a basic education. Suddenly here he turns into Sherlock Holmes. He pieces together the tiniest of clues into brilliant deductions and comes up with great plans for saving the day.

And Polly? Polly gets to offer to be useful by making coffee and then later becomes 'girl hostage'. *Sigh*. So much for women's lib. At least she doesn't do a lot of screaming.

Then there is also the fact that the very message of the story ends up being undercut by the character of General Cutler. The character starts out as a petty autocrat (whom viewers are apparently not meant to like) and he quickly slides downhill into a maniac. When his own son is put in harm's way Cutler schemes run the risk of irradiating the Earth to destroy the Cybermen's rogue planet. Seriously, he wants to use a bazooka to swat a fly and he doesn't care if he blows up the house in the process as long as the fly dies. Oh, and he intends to do it with the most silly, sci-fi sounding, deus-ex-machina superweapon I think I've ever heard... a "Z-Bomb". I guess since an atom bomb used to be abbreviated "A-Bomb" the other end of the alphabet needed a bomb as well.

But the point is that we, as the viewers, are supposed to be horrified by the idea that the Cybermen have eliminated emotions and consider them troublesome but then Cutler rushes headlong into the act of a madman because of his emotions! Therefore Cutler essentially proves the Cybermen right -- emotions do cause trouble!

Really, if it were not for the Cybermen and the regeneration I would advise skipping this story. It's not well put together and much of it is silly instead of the tension-filled nail biter it was obviously meant to be. The Cybermen are fascinating here though (or at least they are to me) and Hartnell does get a few good scenes in and his regeneration still manages to be filled with mystery and wonder as his Doctor holds onto his life to the bitter end.

Grab Bag Reviews: "The Moonbase"

It is fair to say that "The Moonbase" is 'not all there'. In fact, there are a number of Doctor Who stories which are not all there.

Back in the late 1960's and continuing through much of the 1970's the tapes and film containing many programs were seen as having limited usefulness. Once shows had been sold to other countries for overseas broadcast they were largely considered "done". As a result the tapes and films were either wiped or destroyed to make way for more programs.

In the late 1970's this practice changed at the BBC and not long after the home video market and syndication changed the face of recordings forever. Unfortunately many Doctor Who stories had been partially or completely lost... after a fashion.

Doctor Who fans were a passionate bunch and many would place tape recorders near the TV set and record the audio off the episodes. A few fans went the extra mile and kept those audio tapes for decades.

In more recent years the BBC reached out to those fans and collected those audio resources; remastering them to create audio adventures and even using them to reconstruct old episodes.

"The Moonbase" was missing the first and third installments. For the Patrick Troughton volume of the Lost in Time DVD the audio for the missing episodes is included along with the film for the remaining two episodes. This audio, combined with a slide show using still pictures on the BBC's Doctor Who Classic website, allows one to sort-of recreate the missing installments.

"The Moonbase" is notable for being the second story to feature the Cybermen. The baddies were introduced in William Hartnell's final story, "The Tenth Planet", and were well received by fans. As it was thought the Daleks were becoming old hat it was decided to push the Cybermen as replacements. Their look and voices were redesigned, going from this:















To this:















Their look would continue to be changed and tweaked over the next several years.

The Second Doctor would also face the Cybermen four times -- more than any other Doctor (and as a bit of trivia, the Third Doctor NEVER faced the Cybermen, making him the only Doctor to do so).

The Plot: The Doctor tries to take his companions Ben, Polly, and Jamie to Mars but instead winds up on the Moon in 2070. When Jamie is injured on a Moonwalk the time travelers find themselves guests at a base which uses a machine to control the weather on Earth.

Tensions are running high, though, as members of the base crew are falling victim to a mysterious illness. The Doctor battles suspicion to try to find the real cause. When the enemy finally stands revealed things go from bad to worse because the base is being targeted by the cold, emotionless, implacable Cybermen!

My Take: The fact that I love Patrick Troughton's Doctor does not blind me to the fact that "The Moonbase" is sadly a flawed story. It isn't a bad story - not by a long shot - but it's something almost worse than that... it's a bit boring.

I suppose, to be fair, the biggest issue is that it hasn't aged well. Although supposedly set in 2070 the base's computers use tape drives and the characters mention radio telephones (RT). There are also problems with the characters. The crew is 'international' in that old-fashioned way that was meant to be 'inclusive' but does so by making everyone a stereotype. The Frenchman, Benoit, lapses into French when not speaking with a ridiculous accent that would make Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau blush and the character of Nils is referred to as the base's "Mad Dane". The pseudo-science is laughable and the medical information is equally worthy of ridicule (since when does getting a mild concussion lead to a fever all in the space of less than half and hour?!).

The story also, through no fault of its own, suffers from what would come after it. You see Doctor Who had a habit of using and reusing certain plot devices. One of those devices was to gather a group of characters together, isolate them, and then have them come under attack from their enemies. These types of plots commonly became known as "Base Under Siege" stories since most of them tended to feature military bases or encampments of some type. Troughton's tenure as the Doctor tended to overuse this plot convention leading to a LOT of Base Under Siege stories. "The Moonbase" kind of gets lost in the crowd. Plus, you know what they say about familiarity breeding contempt?

On top of all of that there are issues with the script -- for example, the audience learns the Cybermen are behind everything by the end of the first episode but it takes the characters until into the second episode before THEY learn the Cybermen are behind it all. This leaves the audience knowing more than the other characters -- rarely a good idea for maintaining dramatic tension. There is a lot of padding as well as things take entirely too long to get going and there are constant false starts and reverses which are overused.

The regular cast also got squeezed here. Actor Frazer Hines, who played companion Jamie, had been a spur-of-the-moment addition to the cast. As a result scripts which had already been written and approved had to be re-written to include Jamie. One of the reasons why his character spends so much of the story "sick" is because they simply didn't have lines for him. They also had to shuffle and reparcel lines to fit the character of Jamie in.

All is not lost for the story though. Troughton turns in his usual brilliant performance as the Doctor -- his innocuous, occasional con-man turn hiding the Doctor's intelligence and determination to see evil repulsed. In point of fact, one of the show's most famous lines is uttered here: "There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which go against everything we believe in. They must be fought." There is also a really interesting internal monologue the Doctor has with himself -- the only instance of it's kind as viewers get a little sneak peek into how the Doctor's brain works. We wouldn't get quite as intimate a view again until this year's "The Eleventh Hour".

There are also some hints of conflict between companions Ben and Jamie which are quite intriguing here but sadly disappear by the next story. It would have been interesting to see the show deal with companions who maybe didn't always get along so well at this early stage in its development.

"The Moonbase" is entertaining enough but it definitely isn't one of the show's 'edge-of-your-seat' adventures. It can be amusing at times... but not enough to keep you awake so definitely don't put this one in your DVD player if you're sleepy.

Classic Doctor Who Reviews: "The War Machines"

Doctor Who Starts to Grow Up

The Plot: The First Doctor and companion Dorthea "Dodo" Chaplet land in (then) present day London having left another traveling companion, Steven Taylor, behind on an alien planet to broker peace between two disparate societies. The Doctor notices that construction has completed on London's latest landmark -- the Post Office Tower -- and also notices that he detects a very palpable air of menace coming from the Tower... so of course he decides to investigate. Inside the Tower he finds the government is putting the final touches on the most powerful, smartest computer to date... WOTAN - Will Operating Thought Analogue. Soon WOTAN will be tied to all the other computers in the world in a massive web of shared knowledge. Unfortunately, the computer programmers have done more than they realized. WOTAN is not only smart it has become sentient and it has decided that the best way forward for humanity is for it to control the world.

WOTAN soon hypnotizes the scientists who created it and a number of other people including the Doctor's companion, Dodo. With this enslaved force WOTAN orders the humans to begin building war machines -- all terrain vehicles it can control and use to conquer the city of London and then the rest of the world. WOTAN desires one more component though... the mind of the Doctor and it sets Dodo to lead the Doctor into a trap.

When that fails it falls to the Doctor's new aqauintances, sailor Ben Jackson and secretatry Polly Wright, to help him put a stop to the war machines as well as WOTAN.

My Take: It's the swinging sixties mate! At the top I titled this review "Doctor Who Grows Up" and in a sense it does mark the series taking it's first tentative steps towards a more mature outlook.

This was the first story to be so obviously set in current times and take advantage of the trappings. Certainly the first episode "An Unearthly Child" had been set in 1963 but it was never overtly ABOUT 1963. The characters really could have almost been picked up from any point in time. Likewise, although it is not stated, the episode "Planet of the Giants" was set on roughly contemporary Earth but, again, the time period wasn't really that relevant to the story. "The War Machines" set in 1966 London takes advantage of the fact by giving viewers a (admittedly naive) view of urban youth culture. Even with this rather idealized portrayal it is still more than what the series had shown before.

When it comes to the new companions, Polly is much more a modern girl and immediately comes off as much less naive, older, and more practical than previous female companions. She is a young woman of independent means, having a career and, presumably, her own place. Likewise, Ben Jackson is a departure. The first companion with a lower class background. With his Cockney accent and the fact that he is just a plain enlisted sailor (no officer here) he is virtually a walking blue collar.

Yes, there is some cringe-worthy attempts by the writers at crafting slang of the times and the Inferno nightclub where Polly takes Dodo is a bit... well, pathetic... considering the music seems to be provided by a record player. I suppose the BBC didn't want to spring for a band or even extras trying to look like a band. Overall, however, there is a very different aura to the whole story.

It is also interesting to note that the Doctor seems very much in his element here. He somehow wrangles a private tour of the WOTAN facility and he seems to be quite chummy with a number of people in power all without any explanation. I suppose we are meant to assume that he manages it with consumate diplomacy, name dropping, and/or display of his obvious superior knowledge.

The story itself also represents a kind of "sign of the times" in that, as the 1960's advanced and more things became automated there was an increase in these types of stories... the idea that one day machines might replace man. Or where the line between man and machine might blur. We saw this theme pop up again in the 1980's with movies like War Games, Short Circuit, and Electric Dreams. Here we have a computer that somehow (never really explained how) manages to take control of people's minds. While it is a far-fetched idea, the scene of Dr. Brett struggling to hold onto his humanity against WOTAN's control and eventually losing is chilling. Likewise, when the WOTAN controlled workers are urged by their fellow human to "be more like the machine" and be tireless. We see the consequences of this as one worker drops from exhaustion and is simply pushed out of the way as the others are told that those who "break down" will be eliminated. It is the heartless, cruelty of a machine logic. Later, however, we are given some hope as we see Polly allow Ben to escape from the clutches of WOTAN (although why they didn't just call up the computer and let it put the whammy on him instead of leaving him to run around loose is a plot hole) and have her humanity start to surface when confronted about the "betrayal" to the machine.

But this one really is the Doctor's story through and through. He swans through the whole thing in his black cape, giving orders as if expecting to be obeyed and generally being the smartest guy in the room. He is at some of his most authoritative and actor William Hartnell takes to every bit of it. There are a couple of scenes where he does chew the scenery like a colony of termites but this is a rare showing for Hartnell. Despite the many opportunities he had for going over the top throughout the years he rarely did it so he can be forgiven here. Also, to my eyes he seemed a bit more frail here than he had in previous stories. This may just be my perception but it was true that this was the last story of the 1965-1966 season and Hartnell would only do two stories (four parts each) in the 1966-1967 season before leaving Doctor Who. Despite that seeming frailty one has to admit that Hartnell simply owns the scene where one of WOTAN's robotic, titular War Machines advances on the military and they retreat while the Doctor slowly strides forward and raises his chin in defiance. It kicks ass.

The plot holes and square attempt to be hip on the part of the writers aside, there are a few other problems with the story. One of the most annoying is the fact that WOTAN refers to the Doctor as "Doctor Who" throughout the story. "Doctor Who is required" it says. Although the program was called Doctor Who and although Hartnell was always billed in the credits as "Doctor Who" it had never been a part of the program to actually CALL him "Doctor Who". The fact that WOTAN does it just feels and sounds wrong every time it comes up.

The other problem is with Dodo. Dorthea Chaplet was a bit doomed from the start. I don't think the writers could have thought through her nickname before they hung it on her otherwise they might have picked something else. It's lent itself too well over the years to snarky comments about the character's intelligence. Although, admittedly, she also, sadly, fell hard into the 'traditional female companion' mold so she never managed to come off as all that intelligent which added to the validity of the snark.

Originally, Dodo came from what was then the present day -- 1965 -- and was meant to be a bit lower class and have a cockney accent. If you watch her first story, "The Ark" there are some scenes where you can still hear traces of it; they actually had started filming with the cockney background for the character before the BBC cracked down and declared that there would be no 'lower class' characters in Doctor Who. This seems funny since, only about a year or so later, they would add Ben Jackson who would be allowed to have a lower class background. It also smacks of a double standard in that a male character would be allowed to be cockney but not a female one.... but I digress.

At the time there were certain standard roles for the companion characters -- the female companion was to be the "heart" of the TARDIS. She would be young, sweet, and would be very empathic. She would make decisions based on her "heart" and she would often feel compassion and sympathy. The male companion would be harder, he would be the "tough guy", the protector, the action hero and usually was supposed to be more cynical. As such, Dodo came off in most of the scripts as a rather fluffy, silly girl who was too kind hearted for her own good. In point of fact, so kind hearted as to be annoying.

I should say that I'm not much of a fan of the character of Dodo but even I have to say that the character, and actress Jackie Lane, got more than a raw deal out of "The War Machines". The BBC, deciding that the character of Dodo wasn't "working out", opted to write her out with this story. Whereas other companions got their moments to say goodbye or got their dramatic exits, Dodo is deprogrammed by the Doctor (in the first example of the Doctor's talent with hypnosis), given a post-hypnotic suggestion to sleep, shuttled off to the country to "rest" after her ordeal, and never seen from again. The Doctor learns that Dodo will not be rejoining him when Polly comes to deliver the news that Dodo has decided to remain behind in her own time period. It is probably one of, if not the worst, send-offs for a companion character in all of Doctor Who history.

With Dodo gone we now get the two new TARDIS companions -- the mod set Ben and Polly who run onto the TARDIS when Polly impetutously decides they need to personally return the key the Doctor dropped. And with that, the series takes at least one tiny step forward in introducing some new kinds of characters and having had an adventure in a different type of setting.

Despite the flaws, "The War Machines" is one of my favorite stories. The plot of "machine vs. man" is still a fun one to see explored in it's historical context and there are aspects of WOTAN which sound remarkably like the modern World Wide Web -- making the writers more forward thinking than they could have known. The Doctor gets a showcase for his more authoritative side and gets a truly "Crowing Moment of Bad Ass" (thank you TV Tropes) here and that is always good. And finally, despite the questionableness of the BBC writer's ability to write "hip" Ben and Polly are truly personable, charming characters and actors Anneke Wills and Michael Craze do an excellent job with the material.

As a little bit of trivia... Anneke Wills was, at the time, married to Michael Gough who most will know from his portrayal of Alfred Pennyworth, Batman's butler, in the Tim Burton Batman movies. Gough had played a Doctor Who villain called the Celestial Toymaker in the previous season and had a ball on the set. After hearing how much fun it had been, Anneke was encouraged to audition for the role of Polly.