Grab Bag Reviews: "The Aztecs"

Okay, I'm finally sitting down to work on this one.

And really, the delay has just been delay because it's not like this is a *bad* story. In fact, far from it....

"The Aztecs" was part of the first series but actually part of a kind of second wave of stories.

You see, while the BBC did go ahead and commission Doctor Who it was initially not approved for a full season run. The series original commission of episodes took it up to around the story "Marco Polo". As the show did prove popular, the BBC went ahead and announced to producer Verity Lambert that the Doctor Who team could continue on for a full season. As such, there was a slight scramble to hire writers to produce more scripts quickly to take the show to the end of the season.

John Lucarotti had written the script for "Marco Polo" and really impressed Lambert and the rest of the team. At the time of pitching the script for "Marco Polo" Lucarotti had also pitched a script idea for a story involving the ancient Aztecs. Recalling this pitch, Lambert told Lucarotti to move forward on the idea for that script to fill out the rest of the season.

There is also a somewhat commonly held belief that the costumes were not historically accurate in order to make sure they passed the censor board. This is not true -- the costume design team actually extensively researched Aztec clothing and replicated it very accurately.

And now on with the show....

The Plot: The TARDIS lands at a large, Aztec city and Barbara is quickly mistaken for a reincarnated high priest named Yetaxa -- favored of the gods. Unfortunately, the time traveling team is also cut off from the TARDIS, making them unable to leave until they can find a way back. Barbara sees this as an opportunity, believing that if she can rid the Aztecs of their rituals of human sacrifice then when the Spanish arrive they will not destroy the civilization. The Doctor warns her not to meddle but Barbara is insistent. Soon she finds herself embroiled in intrigues which threaten not only her own life but that of her friends as well!

My Take: It has been noted that, particularly here in the early days of the series, the historical stories tended to have a Shakespearean feel to them if not an actual Shakespearean tone and structure. That is really on display here as the actor playing the Aztec priest Tlotoxl goes into full-on Richard III mode. And it isn't just a viewer's interpretation, John Ringham, the actor in question, was more than upfront about it in interviews.

On the one hand, it makes for a delightfully villainous performance. On the other hand though it also occasionally makes for a performance made of canned ham. At one point Ringham, as Tlotoxl, actually turns and speaks directly into the camera thereby breaking the fourth wall by essentially speaking to the audience. No! No! No! You do not DO that!! Yes, it was a device used by Shakespeare and in Shakespeare it works. On television, however, it immediately reminds the viewer that they are watching a TV show. The cables on the suspension of disbelief bridge instantly snap. And as if that were not bad enough it's repeated in the opening recap of the next installment! Ack!!

Also, as a historian, I have a little problem with Barbara's assessment of the situation. Yes, I know the show was still at least paying lip service to the idea that the stories were supposed to educate children. And since it was aiming for children it didn't want to get too technical on them (although this was more a problem of the times -- the idea that kids needed to be spoon fed information. Nowadays we know we don't have to 'dumb things down' for them quite so much). Still, there is a metric crap ton of holes in Barbara's idea and as a supposed history teacher she really should have known better... And yes, I *am* going to divert here and discuss them. Go scroll down a bit if your eyes glaze over.

First, we'll give the show a pass on why a British high school history teacher would have "specialized" in Meso-American history. Hey, all us historians usually have a favorite field of history and sometimes it has nothing to do with where we live or our background but it has to be acknowledged that it *is* a little weird for Barbara to have this as a specialty.

Second, Barbara's assessment of the Aztec culture being destroyed by Spanish invaders simply because of the human sacrifice element of Aztec religion is simplistic in the extreme. Did the human sacrifice element contribute? Oh, yes, but Barbara's idea that eliminating that one element would save the Aztecs is just ignorant.

For one thing, the Aztec culture was already in decline when the Spanish arrived. There was corruption in high places. It happens. Given enough time if it hadn't been the Spanish the Aztec culture probably would have collapsed under it's own weight and evolved into something different from the rubble.

For another thing, the Spanish explorers/conquerors were there to bring back wealth for Spain. Gold and other precious metals, gems, etc. They were bound to destroy the Aztecs in the process of getting these items. It was sadly common for invaders to basically end up enslaving the local populace to get what they wanted. Again, all that follows was the times, this is *not* an attack on modern Spain, the Spanish people, or the Catholic church. History is ugly and there isn't a one of us whose ancestors didn't do something horrid at one point in time. Face up to it, deal with it, don't forget it, and move forward. That's what history is about.

And tied to that was the European ideas of superiority. No matter what the Aztecs were bound to be seen as "savages" by the Spanish and the process of "civilizing" them back then meant 'making their culture look like ours'. This, of course, destroyed the native culture in the process.

And finally (at least for this assessment where I hit just a few of the high points), at the time of the conquest Spain was a Catholic nation and they took as one of their duties an idea of spreading Catholicism as the one, true religion. As such, priests were dispatched to convert the native population. So in the context of this story, even if Barbara had managed to eliminate human sacrifice she could not have (and wisely did not try to) removed the Aztecs belief in their pantheon of gods. And no matter what, that belief system would have been targeted by the Spanish invaders as well and the stripping of it would have been another key in the destruction of the culture.

So, from a historical standpoint, Barbara gets a 'D' at least as a history teacher from me.


Okay, you can start reading the rest of the review now if you decided to skip over my historian's rant.

The rest of the story really is Barbara's story and, well, to be honest, I'm a little bit mixed about it.

On the one hand, it is an excellent showcase for actress Jacqueline Hill. That woman proves she was born to play royalty with her turn as Yetaxa. She pitches everything perfectly. She also gets a chance to show off Barbara's steel spine. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- Barbara is a badass. Not only does she verbally put the smackdown on Tlotoxl on more than one occasion, she also physically does so when she saves Ian's life by grabbing a knife and putting it to Tlotoxl's throat.

Let me repeat that. She saves *Ian's* life (that's right, traditional hero dude saved by the chick!) by grabbing the knife off the belt of an Aztec warrior and then holding it to Tlotoxl's throat like she means business. Not a single shake, not a single hesitation, she's ice cold throughout. YES!

On the other hand, however, Barbara comes off as both a bit too stubborn and emotional in her crusade and she is slightly condescended to when both the Doctor and Ian tell her she's wrong to try to change Aztec society and that she is also doomed to failure. So in that way there is a slight whiff of the 'overly emotional female who can't take good advice' trope. And I really hate that trope. Thankfully it's slight and doesn't ruin the rest of the story.

Then, of course, there is the Doctor's "romance". Fans of old have often disliked the merest hint of an idea that the Doctor may have had an actual romance with the older, learned, Cameca but for me, personally, I find it sweet. There are also indications that the Doctor did hold Cameca in some regard and he regretted very much breaking her heart. At the same time there is also no shame in the relationship for, despite Cameca being from a less advanced culture, she is still consistently treated with respect in the script and she is shown to be wise, experienced and insightful.

Really, the script is great on all counts in treating all the characters with a great amount of respect. Sure, Tlotoxl is a bit stereotypical and his motivations are a bit muddied but he is always treated as a genuine threat and never as a joke to be laughed off or discarded. The warrior Ixta who becomes Ian's nemesis is also shown to be a fast learner and a genuine antagonist as he takes Ian's lessons about unconventional fighting and the element of surprise and turns them on Ian himself. And in the end, the audience ends up feeling great remorse for Autloc -- the other priest and the one who accepts Barbara's message. In one way, Barbara succeeds with him in convincing him human sacrifice is wrong but in another way she fails because in doing this she causes the older man to lose not only his belief but also his faith in all his civilization. He gives away his worldly possessions and leaves to wander the wastelands in hopes of finding something to put his trust in. It's very nearly heartbreaking to see.

Kudos must also be raised to the costumers, prop designers, and set designers all. The costumes are exacting and beautiful and really add to the flavor of the story. Likewise the props -- the jewelry, weaponry, and pottery are also well researched and wonderfully executed. And the set designers certainly do a terrific job considering their limitations. At this time the series was still completely studio-bound and not only that but forced to film in one of the BBC's smallest sound stages. Despite this the set designers go all out in recreating an Aztec city. The fakey-ness of the background paintings is detectable today, yes, *but* modern television screens produce a higher resolution than older ones did and the original tape has been cleaned up to provide a clearer picture as well. Taking that into account the backgrounds are still very effective in the story.

Overall, (because I've already gone on too long) if you want to see one of the highlights of the First Doctor's era then this is the story to see. There is action and when there isn't action the drama keeps one on the edge of the seat. There are great performances by all of the regular cast but William Hartnell and Jacqueline Hill in particular shine here. Even where there is padding in this four parter it never really feels like padding. Arguably the best story of the show's first season.

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 Daleks"

Ah-ha! Here we go then... the first appearance of the monsters which would come to define and symbolize Doctor Who. There is not a single incarnation of the Doctor who has not faced the Daleks at least once with the exception of the Eighth Doctor... unless you count the audio stories... but that's another story. Anyway... DALEKS!!!

It was still only 1963 and at the time of filming the first episode of the series hadn't even aired yet. Doctor Who, however, was already suffering from some of the problems with late scripts which would plague the show intermittently for years. As such, a script from a relative newcomer to writing for science fiction TV was pushed up to be the second serial of the series. The writer was Terry Nation.

Producer Verity Lambert was also taking a chance on Nation's script. The department head, and her boss, Sydney Newman, had made it clear from the start that he wanted "no bug-eyed monsters" on Doctor Who. Newman was well aware of the show's science fiction elements but he felt it would be detrimental to the program to include alien monsters. Lambert, however, was in need of a finished script to shoot and she also believed very strongly in Nation's story.

For his part, in later interviews Nation claimed that he wrote the script intending for it to educate children on the dangers of fascism. Nation had lived through WW II and was aware that the generation of children who would be watching the show would grow up only knowing the war though history books. As such he wanted an allegory to teach them the dangers of extreme viewpoints and to stand up against those views when they found them. Because of this, over the years, even more would be made of the ties between Nazism and the Daleks in later stories... particularly "Genesis of the Daleks".

Set designers, prop makers, and costumers also got their first crash course in Doctor Who sci-fi as they created the planet Skaro, the costumes for the humanoid Thals, the city of the Daleks and, of course, the Daleks themselves. It is a testament to their skill that, other than a little tweaking, the design has remained largely the same for over 47 years. And it should be noted that, although Nation gave some basic descriptions of the Daleks in his script it was the prop designer who truly designed the look of the Daleks.

When the first episode of the serial aired Sydney Newman was quite angry to find that his rule against "bug-eyed monsters" seemed to have been ignored. A few weeks later, however, when the audience figures came in and it was apparent that Daleks were the talk of the town he issued a written apology to Lambert and promised to allow her to make the decisions on what was best for the show.

The Daleks were a hit and they would go on to menace time and time again.

But is that first episode all it's cracked up to be? Or is it merely enshrined in viewer's hearts because it was the first?

The Plot: The Doctor, his granddaughter Susan and his still recently kidnapped Ian and Barbara land on a strange, alien planet. Disappointed at not being returned to Earth, Ian and Barbara still join in the exploration... for a time. When the Doctor wants to investigate a strange city, however, the others refuse and insist they leave the planet. The Doctor sabotages the TARDIS in order to get his way but upon arriving in the city the explorers are taken prisoner by the Daleks! The group also realizes that they are suffering from radiation poisoning but that there is another race of beings on the planet -- the Thals -- and that the Thals left them drugs to cure them back at the ship!

Susan retrieves the drugs and meets one of the Thals, who informs her that the Thals wish to make peace with the Daleks. Susan delivers this message back to the Daleks and the Daleks agree to peace... or so it seems. The time and space travelers soon learn it is all a trap for the Thals and they helped lure the Thals into it!

Upon escaping the Daleks the Doctor soon learns that a part vital to the TARDIS was left behind in the Dalek city. They must stage a raid to get it back but can they count on the help of the pacifistic Thals? Even if they get the help can the now primitive Thals stand a chance against the technically superior Daleks? And meanwhile, what plans are the Daleks hatching to remove the Thals from the face of the planet forever?

My Take: With this being a very early story in the series there is still a sense of the writers and actors getting their legs under them a bit. There are also some striking characterizations which would change over time and so viewers might find these interesting precursors for what would come.

"The Daleks" features a very different Doctor than the one we would become used to. Here the Doctor is a conniving [insert somewhat impolite term for a person born outside the bounds of marriage] as well as somewhat cold and uncaring towards his unwilling companions -- for example, at one point the Doctor is quite ready to go off and leave the missing Barbara without a single concern for her welfare. This aspect of the Doctor's personality would be changed with the very next story ("Edge of Destruction") but for "The Daleks" it is still in place. Of course it is interesting in that the Doctor's selfish actions put himself and Susan in danger and he is forced to admit to Ian and Barbara that he is at fault here and has no one to blame but himself -- a nice little moment of thaw for the cantankerous old coot and a hint of the changes to come.

Taking the first several serials as a whole -- from "An Unearthly Child" to "Marco Polo" viewers actually see a character arc for the Doctor. Not only is he self-centered, egotistical, and lacking empathy, he also lacks the impulse to help and interfere. Last year fans were treated to an all-new Doctor who proclaimed that bringing down the government was what he did but here we have a Doctor who declares that that the Thal's predicament isn't any of their affair and they're all just better off leaving. Of course, by the end, we see him actually kind of revelling in what he has done -- encouraging the Thals and promising to stop by and visit them at some point in the future to see how they are getting along. He warms considerably to the point where he becomes more recognizable as the Doctor.

Ian and Barbara also get the meatier character parts with this story. They are disheartened at not being brought back home immediately, they are fearful that they might not get back home at all, and they are increasingly adrift with nothing familiar to cling to except each other. Those scenes between the two actors have a ring of truth and a feeling of real emotion to them. Sadly, they are all too short and never really come up again. Jacqueline Hill's Barbara, however, gets a hinted romance with one of the Thals that is also tentative and rather sweet. The fact that the writers had to downplay the plot element because of the child target audience of the show actually works in its favor -- making it light instead of heavy-handed as most other emotional beats are here.

And therein lies one of the problems with the script -- Terry Nation goes rather heavy-handed on most of the elements. For example, it takes the "outsiders" of Ian, Barbara, Susan and the Doctor to teach the Thals to stand up for themselves -- gotta love that whiff of old-fashioned colonial attitude there. And when the Thals state that they would simply retreat if the Daleks attacked Ian and Barbara are rather horrified by the idea... this of course being a clumsy and thinly veiled attack on former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who went down in infamy for taking an appeasement approach to Nazi Germany. Viewers are also hammered with the idea that the Daleks hate the Thals for no good reason -- merely a dislike of "the Other" -- which is, again, an overly simplistic view of the practices of Nazi Germany. Although Nation was trying to put forth the dangers of radical fascism and the need to oppose them to children the message is sent home with rather more force than is required even for kids to get the idea.

There is one scene which, despite being as heavy handed as the rest, which still manages to soar with some lovely moral ambiguity and that is the scene in which the time travelers discuss getting the Thals to help them. Ian and Susan take the ground that it isn't right to ask the Thals to die for them and the Doctor and (surprisingly) Barbara take a more practical view that if they don't ask the Thals for help them they are condemning themselves to die or at the very least to being stranded on the planet for the rest of their lives. There is actually a good moral discussion here as it is pointed out that Ian and the Doctor have a moral duty to those in their charge but at the same time they also have a moral duty to not try to coerce the Thals into giving up their lives for something that will not benefit them.

For their part, the actors playing the Thals also get their meatiest moments around this discussion. There is something that actually feels rather right in their clinging to pacifism and even when they decide to go to war they do so with caution and deliberation rather than anger or vengeance.

It really is a bit of a shame, though, that almost all of the really interesting stuff -- the characterizations, fascinating dialogue, and moral discussions all come right smack in the middle of the serial... and most of the rest of the serial is like watching someone play a video game.

No, seriously, I realized it as I was watching the last two parts of the serial -- the whole thing seems like the levels of a video game... only with some really boring dialogue. And therein lies the second and third problems with this story -- it's formulaic and padded. Even with only one serial in existence before this one a pattern is starting to emerge -- our heroes get captured, our heroes escape, our heroes have to return to their captors, our heroes have to solve a problem or put a wrong right then they can leave. The trek to the Dalek city that Ian, Barbara and the Thals have to make leading up to the climax of this story really adds nothing to the overall tale. It provides some action/adventure bits but aside from that it doesn't really give us anything new about the Thals or about Ian and Barbara or even the Doctor and Susan. "The Daleks" ended up stretching for seven episodes and the padding quite frankly shows. Entire episodes where our heroes are stuck in a Dalek cell doing little but rehashing the stuff we already know or have already been shown (usually the rule is "show don't tell" or "tell don't show" the rule is never "tell and show"), entire episodes that don't really add anything to the overall story, etc. "The Daleks" probably could have been a really excellent four part story, maybe five parts but at seven parts it overstays it's welcome by far.

There are some other things which help offset the plotting problems. For one, while some of the special effects are not the best in the world the set designers really did a good job with the Dalek city. The low, asymmetrical doorways tell viewers immediately that the inhabitants of this city are not human in shape. They also lead to a palpable feeling of claustrophobia -- a sense that our heroes are trapped even before they really end up trapped. There is also some nice model work and the costumes for the Thals seem nicely alien. And the Daleks. Ah yes, the Daleks. Now, after the passage of all this time, it's rather impossible to imagine them looking or sounding any other way, really. For the time period, however, the design was quite revolutionary and looked like nothing else out there... and probably inspired many a mock Dalek battle at the dinner table using salt and pepper shakers.

Overall, while "The Daleks" definitely holds a place in Who history it suffers from the passage of time and too much padding. Still, there are some really great moments here and it is interesting to see the origins of the show's most iconic monsters. I'd say definitely give this one a watch... but keep the remote control handy to fast forward through the boring parts.

Grab Bag Reviews: "The Romans"

Ah, it really seems as though I keep doing a lot of First Doctor stories -- which is odd because the Grab Bag is totally random and I don't have all *that* many First Doctor stories.

At any rate... here we go again, into the William Hartnell era with "The Romans".

There isn't a lot of background to this story. The show was well into it's second series by this point, Maureen O'Brien's new character of Vicki had just been introduced in the previous story, "The Rescue" and so O'Brien was still new to the show. The rest of the cast and crew were somewhat stable. Verity Lambert was still producing and the only other change was that Dennis Spooner, the writer of this story, had been named as the new Script Editor but he would not take over the duties there for another few months.

Lambert had long been wanting to expand the range of the show and so she collaborated with Spooner to have "The Romans" written as an action/adventure-comedy or, some would argue, a dramedy. Either way, "The Romans" would be Doctor Who's first foray into a more comedic style. It wouldn't be the last.

Just for some context as well -- this story follows directly on from "The Rescue" and the story that would follow this one was "The Web Planet" (previously reviewed HERE).

The Plot: The Doctor along with companions Ian, Barbara and Vicki make a rather bumpy landing in ancient Rome. 64 A.D. to be exact. We are immediately whisked away to nearly one month later where we find that the TARDIS team has found an empty villa in a little town not far from Rome and moved in. The rest and relaxation, however, comes to an abrupt end as the Doctor gets a case of wanderlust and decides to go visit Rome with Vicki tagging along. Shortly after the Doctor leaves Ian and Barbara take a more frightening and unexpected trip as the duo are kidnapped by slavers and taken away. Ian is sold on the road to Rome but Barbara travels on to the capital city where she is bought as an attendant for Empress Poppaea, wife of Cesar Nero!

Meanwhile, on the road to Rome the Doctor finds the body of a famous musician, Maximus Pettulian, murdered! The Doctor is mistaken for Maximus and decides to play along out of curiosity as to who might have killed Maximus. Their path takes them not only to Rome but to Nero's palace where the Doctor learns that Maximus himself was supposed to assassinate Nero and Nero, jealous of Maximus's fame with the lyre, had ordered Maximus's death! Now the Doctor must dodge more murderous attempts on his life and extricate himself from the plot to kill Nero as well.

In another part of the palace, Barbara has caught Nero's eye and tries to escape his amorous advances. All of this has not escaped Poppaea's notice and she tries to have Barbara killed to eliminate her as a rival. All this time, Ian has been having adventures of his own, escaping the life of a galley slave he makes his way to Rome to try to rescue Barbara.

With plots and counterplots, with jealous rivalries, with murder and executions hanging over all their heads can the various time travelers escape from their situations and make it back to the TARDIS?

My Take: "The Romans" is a bit of an odd-duck story but somehow it all manages to work. There is no denying the comedy and yet there is a dark streak running through the story and even a dark streak to the comedy. For example, we meet the "official poisoner" of the court and her matter-of-fact description of her job and the way she goes about it is deadpan funny but, at the same time, the fact that, in that time and that place, political killings were rather common is sobering. There is another moment when Nero gives one of his slaves a cup he believes is poisoned and orders the slave to drink from it. The slave does so and drops down dead. The scene is exaggerated and played for laughs but on the heels of that laughter you realize that Nero quite casually killed another human being and showed no remorse at the act.

There is also the situations of Ian and Barbara. Barbara, the former history teacher, flat-out states that the role of a slave in ancient Rome is a frightening prospect. We see Ian treated like dirt as a galley slave and, for all the humor in Nero chasing Barbara around like a farce one is uncomfortably reminded that female slaves could also be subject to rape. And for Barbara, Nero's advances place her between a rock and a hard place.

The more lighthearted part of the story is with the Doctor and Vicki. They face no hardships and we get to see the Doctor as a sly and crafty old bird as he avoids revealing that he is not Maximus and confounds Nero's schemes at every turn.

It is Spooner's script that manages to make everything gel so surprisingly well. Nearly every line of dialogue is a treat and he wrote genuine warmth and admiration into all the character relationships. In point of fact, his scenes between Ian and Barbara are downright flirtatious! It is also a really different story in that Spooner takes his time with the plot -- although not in a boring way -- it is one of the only Classic series stories where viewers get to see the characters truly relaxed and taking time to enjoy themselves. The usual Doctor Who method was to throw the characters into danger right away and the difference works well here.

Spooner also manages that deft balance that is required in black humor. If you push the darkness a little too hard you end up with a story that is disturbing instead of funny but if you don't push the darkness hard enough the story stays a little too light. Here the lines are perfectly drawn. As a four part story things really do not drag either. The action and interactions keep things moving and happening and at no point does the viewer get bored.

All of the actors involved also turn in lovely performances. Both William Russell and Jacqueline Hill prove to have a talent for comedy and William Hartnell, with a background in comedy, is obviously getting a huge kick out of going back to his roots and his enjoyment adds an extra spark to his performance. Character actor Derek Francis is also quite obviously going for the comedy jugular with his turn as Nero. He manages to balance a bit of menace with a kind of bumbling ineffectualness that is absolutely hilarious.

The story is also studio-bound but the BBC manage an excellent job with costumes and set dressing so that the viewer neither notices that much nor cares. Although it must be said that the minuscule budget means that some things have to be left out to the detriment of the story. For example, the audience is told about Ian's escape from the galley rather than being able to see it for ourselves.

Even if you're not a fan of the First Doctor take "The Romans" out for a spin. Hartnell's Doctor is light, happy, cunning, and having a grand old time instead of being slightly cantankerous. There is action, adventure, intrigue, lots of humor (even if the history is really lacking, but what the heck, if you can't laugh at history what can you laugh at?) and quite a bit of fun.

Happy Anniversary "Doctor Who"!

47 years ago today Doctor Who debuted on television. 47 years and eleven Doctors -- the longest running sci-fi TV show ever. And it all started in 1963.

So, to commemorate, I thought I'd break the "Doctor Who Grab Bag" tradition and just review the very first episode -- "An Unearthly Child".

I'm not going to go into too much background on how the show got up an running -- it's actually a pretty long and complicated tale. Needless to say, Doctor Who didn't just spring from some writer's head, fully formed like Athena. It's also a very interesting story which gives a peek behind the curtain at how shows are brought to TV.

Second of all, there are now two different versions of "An Unearthly Child". For decades the version which was broadcast on TV was the only one people knew. In more recent years the original 'pilot' episode has been found and is available on DVD with the first serial as an extra. The pilot is slightly different -- some of the dialogue is different and some of the pacing is different but the story itself is largely the same. The pilot was produced to show to the bigwigs at the BBC to get the series finalized. The BBC asked for some changes before broadcast and so there were some script tweaks, the whole episode was actually re-shot (because editing at that time was practically non-existent so they couldn't just cut scenes or reshoot one scene and then drop it in to replace a previous scene.

For the purposes of this review I'm looking at the broadcast version rather than the pilot version.

Also, there is some argument among Who fans about this story. Some insist that "An Unearthly Child" is a story unto itself even though it leads directly into the first serial. Some say that it is merely the first installment of the larger first serial. Again, for the purposes of this review I'm treating it as a separate episode.

And now, let us meet the Doctor for the very first time!

The Plot: School teachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton find something strange about one of their students -- Susan Foreman. 15 year-old Susan is a curious mix of genius intellect and ignorance and she seems very much a stranger in a strange land despite the fact that she claims to be a native. Trying to solve the puzzle, Ian and Barbara follow Susan home one night to confront her about the dichotomies in her life. There they find Susan's mysterious grandfather and an even bigger mystery in who and what Susan and her grandfather are. The two teachers are about to embark on a journey of a lifetime....

My Take: It has to be said that the story suffers a bit from being studio bound. Of course most things were in those days but here there are times when you can hear the "roominess" of the sound quality and where things just look too much like a sound stage. On the other hand, though, in order to hide that sound staginess the set dressers added a lot of shadows, darkness and fog which add to the atmosphere and really give the story a creepy edge and a sense that anything can happen. The setting puts one in mind of Gothic horror rather than sci-fi and that helps make the sudden reveal of the interior of the TARDIS so surprising. We go from darkness and shadows to bright white light and gleaming chrome. It's very effective.

Modern viewers will likely find the pacing very slow. It's kind of a talky story in which everyone stands around discussing things rather than doing. It is only in the last few minutes in which everything really takes off. Some of the dialogue is a bit repetitious but there at the end everything really starts to take off. Ian and Barbara have gone from the ordinariness of their classrooms and students into another world -- one which they cannot comprehend and so they try to make up stories to convince themselves they are not seeing what they really are.

The performances, though, are pretty top notch. Again, modern viewers will like find Carol Ann Ford as Susan overplaying her part. In truth, she's a little better in the pilot version of the story. Jacqueline Hill and William Russell, however, are fine and natural as Ian and Barbara. There is also an instant chemistry -- an easy rapport between the actors -- which really sells the idea that Ian and Barbara are long-time colleagues and friends.

The biggest difference people are likely to see in in William Hartnell. Most people are used to seeing his First Doctor in his more 'grandfatherly' mode. Charming, slightly befuddled at times, and warm. Here they are introduced to a cagey old man who is arrogant and dismissive. He's actually not a very nice person and that is especially borne out by the fact that he outright kidnaps Ian and Barbara to keep them from revealing what they have seen. No, it would be several more episodes before Hartnell softened the performance.

It's also interesting to see how much is set here. The TARDIS interior would change slightly over the years but the bulk of it would retain the white color scheme and the large roundels on the walls up until the series relaunched in 2005. There is also the first appearance of the familiar dematerialization sound which is still a part of the series.

Overall, though... Unless you are a Doctor Who fan who is interested in seeing how it all started this may not be the story for you. It's a great story, it's brilliant in it's own way, but it lacks a lot of punch. In all actuality, the pilot version of the story is a bit better with some better dialogue, better explanations and a bit more moodiness. But if you have the tolerance for a slower pace and more dialogue heavy scenes "An Unearthly Child" is worth half and hour of your time. The dialogue works and none of it is clunky or stupid and, of course, the last few minutes of the story are really hard-hitting and dramatic.

It's where everything began and all of the stuff we've come to expect -- all of the roots of the show are right here for everyone to see and get re-acquainted with.

The Return of the Doctor Who Grab Bag Reviews! "The Crusade"

I'm playing hooky from homework. Ergo, I decided to kick back with an episode of Doctor Who and get back to my grab bag reviews a bit. Also, makes a little cleanse of the palate from the Nero Wolfe stuff... although there will be more Wolfe to come as I'm behind on my reviews there.

Anyway... "The Crusade"!

We're back in the First Doctor's tenure for this one -- well into the second series. Already by this time the production team had abandoned the habit of doing a historical story every other serial but the show had not abandoned the pure historical yet either; that would not happen until 1966 (with a blip in 1983 for the story "Black Orchid").

Although there were some changes occurring to the production team at this time the biggest one -- the departure of the show's first producer, Verity Lambert, would not occur until the end of the series. By this time most of the cast had been on the job close to two years and even the newest member, Maureen O'Brien, had been on for several months and had settled into her role. As such the filming went along without a hitch and with no real controversy.

It should be noted that "The Crusade" was one of the stories which suffered from the BBC's tape wiping program in the 1960's and 1970's. Out of the four episodes two still remain but audio exists for the two missing stories. "The Crusade" can be found on the Doctor Who: Lost in Time, the William Hartnell Years DVD. The two extant stories and the audio for the two missing stories are provided. If one ventures over to the BBC's Classic Doctor Who website one can find that the whole story has been reconstructed using still images HERE. Using the audio and the still images it is possible to put together an at least rough reconstruction of the missing parts.

The Plot: The TARDIS lands in a wood... and lands right in the middle of trouble. The time travelers have managed to put themselves down right in the middle of an ambush toward the end of the Third Crusade. Barbara is kidnapped, Ian sets off on a perilous journey to find and rescue her and the Doctor and Vicki become embroiled in court intrigue at the stronghold of King Richard I. Will the court politics force the Doctor and Vicki to leave without Ian and Barbara? And can Ian find Barbara before she suffers a fate worse than death?

My Take: Many have often noted the Shakespearean tone of many of the old historical stories for Doctor Who and "The Crusade" is perhaps the most Shakespearean of all of them. Seriously, at many points while watching this you would swear that you were watching some long forgotten play by the Bard of Avon. Oddly enough it is the time travelers here who seem the most out of place and it is their dialogue which is the least Shakespearean... of course that is probably to be expected.

Let's get the good out of the way first, shall we? Julian Glover and Jean Marsh as Richard I and Richard's sister Joanna respectively turn in first class performances. Both actors were Shakespearean trained and it really shows. Glover showcases all of Richard's sides in this story. He is arrogant, temperamental, and almost childish at times but then turns around and shows nobility and a canny knowledge of politics and political expediency. Marsh counterpoints with her portrayal of Joanna as an intelligent woman who also knows well how court politics are played. She shows a strong will and self-assurance.

The other excellent performance here comes from Jacqueline Hill as Barbara. While, in some ways, Barbara is the typical female companion of the time period -- being captured and put in jeopardy -- in other ways she is a forerunner of the modern female companion. Here, while she is captured, she engineers her own escape at least once and is plotting her second escape when it becomes a moot point. She also is tough, clever, quick witted, noble, and not some little mouse easily frightened.

It also should be mentioned that, as usual, the BBC's costume department knocks it out of the park with clothes for the period pieces. The costumes for Richard, Joanna, and the rest of the knights (and later Ian, the Doctor and Vicki) are lovely and lush and emphasize the Shakespearean feel of the story. The set designers also do a pretty good job here. The forest scenes are dressed pretty well -- or at least well enough that viewers are automatically distracted by thinking it looks like a soundstage. The streets of the city of Lydda are also well done -- cramped, narrow, and dirty-looking -- just as you would expect from streets of that place and time.

That, however, is pretty much where the good ends.

One thing that becomes really obvious is just how much of a rut the show had fallen into by this time. In the two stories proceeding this one -- "The Romans" and "The Web Planet" the Doctor and Vicki have one part of the story while Ian and Barbara have the other part of the story. And the Ian/Barbara story in both of those cases as well as here with "The Crusade" consists of Barbara getting captured and taken off somewhere and Ian having to go find her to try to rescue her. It all gets so very tedious and one would think that the writers would have tried changing things up a little bit. With four main characters there are plenty of chances for mixing and matching the characters which would, in turn, showcase different aspects of the characters' personalities but instead we get the usual -- Ian goes off being heroic, the Doctor goes around being grandfatherly, and Barbara... well, I've already discussed what Barbara gets to do.

Adding to the tedium here is the fact that the the story falls into three main areas. You have the comedy element -- that is provided by the Doctor and Vicki and their ongoing wardrobe problems. The drama element is provided by the court intrigue -- of which the Doctor and Vicki are really merely bystanders, observers, and commentators rather than being in on the action. And speaking of action -- the action/adventure element is provided by Barbara's attempts to escape captivity and make her way back to her friends and Ian's attempts to overcome roadblocks to find Barbara and rescue her. And you can literally go through this entire four-part serial and anticipate when each of the different elements will be coming in. There is little to nothing here to surprise the audience or catch them off their guard. The whole thing is like a 'paint-by-numbers' picture.

And, surprisingly, even at only four episodes the story just goes on too long. The constant back-and-fourth between Barbara escaping and being captured and escaping again, etc. is interminable and while the sequences between Richard and Joanna can make for compelling viewing most of the rest of the court intrigue stuff is plain boring.

Also, there is Saladin and his brother and the nature of the crusades. Because, at this time, Doctor Who was considered a children's show, the story of the crusades has largely been condensed and cleaned up here. Added to that is the problem that this story was written in the 1960's, before many historians had fully embraced the complexities involved with the crusades and before Richard I stopped being quite so lionized. Because of that there is still a lot of mythology surrounding both Richard and Saladin and it doesn't do the story any favors. Like with many of Shakespeare's plays, there is a dash of real history to ground the story and then much of the characters and details are strictly fiction... grand, noble fiction as opposed to the dirty, bloody, slog most of the world was in that time period.

There is also the problem of the Saracens. While Saladin is shown as being intelligent, noble and honorable and a few other characters are shown the same it doesn't change the fact that all of the speaking parts are being played by Caucasian British actors in dark make-up. It gives the story a somewhat offensive tone. It also doesn't help that many of the other Saracen characters are vicious, greedy, conniving, or all three. You end up with two extremes -- the noble men (note: NOT noblemen) and the wicked.

And then there is the bit of script stupidity in trying to pass Vicki off as a 13 year-old boy at least until the third episode when she is "found out". The costumer does nothing to try to hide Maureen O'Brien's breasts and it is roundly quite obvious she's a girl and expecting the viewer to suspend disbelief that no one else notices is just ridiculous.

In the end, while there are some really nice aspects to the story which make it worth at least a cursory viewing it doesn't have a lot to recommend it for repeat viewing. The writers probably could have cut this down to a two or three part story and turned in something that would have really stood out among the historical stories but as it stands it bogs down in the middle and plods it's way to the end.

Doctor Who: After "Survival"

So Doctor Who was cancelled and you might think that would be the end of it... but it wasn't. After all, what do Time Lords do when they die? Regenerate into another form of course! In this case the good Doctor went to print.

Virgin Publishing -- that's the publication arm of Richard Branson's insanely sprawling multi-media empire -- got the licensing rights to Doctor Who from the BBC and in 1991 they began publishing all-new adventures of the Seventh Doctor and his companion, Ace. Over the years they would add new, original companions as well -- one of the most popular being Bernice "Benny" Summerfield, an archaeologist and adventurer. In point of fact, Benny became so popular she spun off into her own series of books and audio adventures from Big Finish (more on them later).

Rather smartly, Virgin accepted stories from a number of former Doctor Who writers such as Ben Aaronovitch and Marc Platt. Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to what fans refer to as "The Cartmel Master Plan".

When Andrew Cartmel was brought on board as Doctor Who's script editor he was determined to shake things up. He believed that one of the problems with the series was that the Doctor had become too well-known to fans. In the beginning he was a mysterious figure -- we didn't know where he came from or why he ran away, we didn't know anything about his people or his home. Over the years that changed until it got to the point that the Doctor could pop back to Gallifrey any old time (a rather grave change from the Time Lords who cruelly exiled the Second Doctor for his "meddling") and the Time Lords were as familiar, and as interesting, as a group of 70 year-old career politicians. Cartmel wanted to re-inject some mystery back into the Doctor.

Cartmel himself never referred to his ideas as a "Master Plan" and, in fact, did not know that fans did so until many years later. As it was his ideas were just that... ideas and suggestions that he tossed around with some of the writers for the show. What emerged was this idea that the Doctor was more than just another Time Lord -- that he was actually this reincarnation of a very powerful figure in Time Lord history -- an early Gallifreyan who had helped to found and start the Time Lord society and that this being, known as "the Other", was actually something of a demi-god to the Time Lords. Tied to this was a further idea that, being the Other, the Doctor had more powers than an ordinary Time Lord -- powers that he did not use. One idea was that the Doctor would end up encountering the cosmic personification of Time herself and he would be pushed into becoming "Time's Champion" and in this role would end up having to use more of his powers and abilities.

Cartmel quickly realized, however, that if he explained everything then it would put him right back where he was before with the Doctor no longer being a source of mystery and enigma. Therefore Cartmel and the other writers decided to content themselves with merely hinting at things and stringing the story out. Of course, the series was cancelled before all but the smallest little hints had been dropped.

Another story aspect which the writers had intended to work towards was the eventual departure of Ace as a companion. Had there been a season 27 then they would have continued laying the groundwork they had begun at the end of season 26 of showing Ace maturing and growing up and becoming a more stable person. Even though Sophie Aldred had not indicated a desire to depart the show yet Cartmel and the others felt that, after three seasons, they should make some changes to the cast and halfway through season 27 was felt to be a good departure point for Ace so that they could then introduce Ace's replacement and get her settled in the part before the season closed.

The plan was for it to be revealed that the Doctor had been grooming Ace all this time to go to Gallifrey, enter the Academy and become a Time Lord -- the first human to become a Time Lord. The tone of it was going to indicate that the Doctor felt that Time Lord society had become too hidebound and it was time for some new blood to shake things up.

When the series was cancelled obviously all these plans went for naught... until Virgin Publishing showed up. Seizing their chance, the writers used the books to introduce a number of their unused ideas from their scripts. Marc Platt, for instance, got to reveal much of the Doctor's past and his family in the book Lungbarrow. The writers found that at least one benefit of writing for books instead of TV was that the sky was the limit since they were not hampered by the limitations of budget or special effects.

The Seventh Doctor published adventures became known by fans as "The Virgin New Adventures" series but in 1994 Virgin Publishing branched out and began publishing books featuring the previous six Doctors in all-new adventures which were taking place in-between the TV stories. This range became known as the "Virgin Missing Adventures" series.

Then there was the blip on the radar in 1993... Every year there is a huge charity drive called "Children in Need" which raises funds to benefit a children's hospital and children's health care. It is a big deal in Great Britain and the telethon attached to it has long been known for special events and stunts. In point of fact, the anniversary episode "The Five Doctors" (which I've already reviewed) first aired as part of Children in Need. As 1993 was the 30th anniversary of the show (even though it was no longer on the air) Jonathan Nathan-Turner managed a herculean feat in that he gathered all of then then surviving Doctors and many of the companions to appear in two short episodes over two days of the telethon. The plot (what there was of it) involved the various Doctors and companions mixing and matching and jumping from time point to time point while the villainous Time Lady known as the Rani tried to destroy them. As William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton had passed away at this time computer generated images of them were shown already captured. Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy all appeared as the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors respectively and Carole Ann Ford appeared as Susan, Deborah Watling as Victoria, Caroline John as Liz Shaw, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Richard Franklin as Captain Mike Yates, Elizabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, Louise Jameson as Leela, Lalla Ward as Romana, Sarah Sutton as Nyssa, Nicola Bryant as Peri, Bonnie Langford as Mel, Sophie Aldred as Ace and John Leeson provided the voice of K-9. The short, called "Dimensions in Time", can be found floating around the Internet (usually in a rather poor copy which was taped off of someone's TV on a VCR back in the day) but it has not, to the best of my knowledge, ever been released as an extra on any of the Doctor Who DVD's so far.

All of this went on until 1996 when the BBC teamed up with Fox television and Universal to produce an all-new Doctor Who made-for-TV movie which was to air in the American market. The hope was that the TV movie would act as a pilot for a TV series which would be a joint BBC - American collaboration but which would feature primarily American companions and American locations.

It failed.

Up until recently there was a conflict between Fox and Universal over the rights to the TV movie and because of this it was never released on either VHS or DVD in America. One could purchase it in Great Britain but not here in the U.S. (although there were some shall we say less than strictly legal ways of getting access to the movie). That has changed, however, and as I understand it a special edition DVD of the movie is going to be released here in the States. As such I'm not going to discuss much about the movie here and will wait until it shows up in a future Grab Bag Review to go into details about the tangled web of the TV movie.

But the movie ended up having an impact on Virgin Publishing. When the license ran out in 1997 the BBC refused Virgin's offer to renew it and the BBC's own publishing wing now began to put out all new novels featuring the new Eighth Doctor as introduced in the TV movie. Along with that, BBC publishing also began doing a series of "missing adventures" for the past seven incarnations of the Doctor.

Then in stepped Big Finish. Here in America radio dramas died out in the 1950's as television took over but in Great Britain they never really did and in point of fact one of the BBC's radio stations is devoted to little but audio dramas as they are called. As such there is a market over there for original audio dramas done straight to CD or MP3. Big Finish started business in 1998 and quickly made a name for themselves by acquiring the licenses to do audio dramas based on a number of British cult sci-fi series like Judge Dredd (and no, don't think of the Sylvester Stallone movie -- most Brits will kill you if you bring that up) and Sapphire and Steel (one of these days I'm going to do a series of posts about that show). Another license they soon acquired was Doctor Who. In 1999 they began creating all-new audio adventures featuring the surviving past Doctors -- Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, and Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. They also managed to often get many of the companions actors and actresses to reprise their roles for the audios. Sarah Sutton and Mark Strickson reprised their roles as Nyssa and Turlough -- companions of the Fifth Doctor, Nicola Bryant reprised her role as Peri and appeared in audios alongside both the Fifth Doctor and the Sixth Doctor, Bonnie Langford, who played Melanie Bush, reprised her role beside both the Sixth and Seventh Doctors and Sophie Aldred gave voice to Ace again with the Seventh Doctor.

Big Finish also soon expanded and began doing all-new adventures of the Eighth Doctor, played by Paul McGann. As the stories grew more and more popular Big Finish even began adding new original companions to the past Doctors -- actress Maggie Stables gave voice to the new companion, middle-aged history professor Evelyn Smythe, who traveled with the Sixth Doctor. The Seventh Doctor picked up a young, male nurse named Hector "Hex" Schofield voiced by Paul Oliver, and many more. As of this writing Big Finish continues the line of audios.

Another one-off came in 1999... although not strictly Doctor Who... Another charity which is big in Great Britain is "Red Nose Day" -- a telethon that is part of Comic Relief -- in which comedians raise money to help end world hunger. The public is encourage to help raise money by doing something funny -- particularly involving comedy red clown noses. As part of the telethon there are stand-up comedians and comedy sketches and sometimes skits. In 1999 Stephen Moffat (current show runner for Doctor Who) was commissioned to write a comedy skit to air on Red Nose Day. What he produced was "Doctor Who and the Curse of the Fatal Death". The plot of the story revolves around the Doctor in his Ninth incarnation (played by comedy actor Rowan Atkinson -- best known for Mr. Bean and Blackadder) deciding that he wants to retire and settle down with his current companion, Emma, with whom he has fallen in love. He is forced, however, to confront his old enemy, the Master, as well as the Daleks in a series of traps, crosses, and double crosses. In the course of trying to save the universe (yet again) the Doctor keeps getting killed and regenerating -- going from Atkinson to actor Richard E. Grant to stand-up comedian Jim Broadbent to actor Hugh Grant and finally to actress Joanna Lumley. Like "Dimensions in Time" "Doctor Who and the Curse of the Fatal Death" was never made available to U.S. audiences although it had been made available in various formats to British audiences. It is floating out there on the Internet and if you want to you can probably find a copy of it. It has not been offered as an extra on any of the Doctor Who DVD's however and there is no word of it being so in the near future.

Time proceeded apace, though, and in the early 2000's the BBC began playing with webcasting -- producing audio stories with limited web animation accompanying them. The BBC chose to use Doctor Who for many of these experiments.

One of the earliest ones was a 2002 webcast featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace called "Death Comes to Time". The story has not been extremely well-regarded by fans since it ignores a lot of established continuity for both the Doctor and the Time Lords within the story and also because the end seems to indicate that the Seventh Doctor dies permanently -- which would end the series and also contradicts the Seventh Doctor regenerating into the Eighth Doctor in the TV movie.

"Death Comes to Time" was followed up also in 2002 by "Real Time" -- a Sixth Doctor story and featuring the companion Evelyn Smythe from the Big Finish stories -- so far the only time a Big Finish companion has been used in a BBC Doctor Who production. "Real Time" can still be found to listen to (free and legal) on the BBC's Classic Doctor Who website so sooner or later you'll probably see a Grab Bag Review of it. The same holds true of the next two webcasts the BBC created -- "Shada" in 2003 and "Scream of the Shalka" also in 2003.

And then, of course, the new series launched in 2005 and Doctor Who was reborn.

While it is fair to say that the good Doctor disappeared from TV screens in 1989 he never disappeared forever. The episodes were often seen in repeats and the books, audios, and little specials all show that the characters had gained a kind of death-grip on the British psyche and it was one that was not likely to go away soon. While those in charge at the BBC may have taken some convincing to bring the show back the people who had grown up on Doctor Who knew all along that there was something special here and they weren't going to ever let it completely disappear.

Grab Bag Reviews: "The Edge of Destruction"

Yes, it's another First Doctor story. No, I honestly don't plan these things -- it really is random.

In the early days of the series story titles were a lot more fluid. For example, the story "10,000 BC" was also known as "The Tribe of Gum" and this story, officially put on the DVD as "The Edge of Destruction" is also sometimes known as "Inside the Spaceship".

That clarified, here are a few other things to know about the story before we dive in... Doctor Who was very nearly ended before it began. Officials at the BBC worried about the expense of the show and nearly pulled the plug early. Luckily several people went to bat for the show and managed to convince the powers that be to give it a season run of 13 episodes.

What this meant, however, was that the series didn't have enough scripts at the ready quite to fill the 13 episode quota. It was decided to pen a quick, two-part script and stick it in between "The Daleks" and the lush, costume historical "Marco Polo". At the same time there were fears that the Doctor's rather abrasive and antagonistic personality might be frightening or off-putting to children and the two-parter was seen as the perfect place to start softening the Doctor's personality.

With this story needing to be completed fast and cheaply it was also decided to set the entire thing on the existing TARDIS set -- putting further constraints on the writer. The result of all of these requirements thrown into the story yields something that is... well... more than a little odd to be honest....

The Plot: Leaving Skaro the TARDIS suddenly lurches and there is a bright flash of explosion! Some time later the time travelers slowly regain consciousness but seem to be suffering from partial amnesia. The Doctor is injured but soon begins to recover with the help of Susan and Barbara but there is more going on -- the TARDIS is acting up, strange things keep happening, and the Doctor and Susan seem to be suffering from a great mistrust of Ian and Barbara.

As more and more things start going wrong Ian and Barbara wonder if there isn't something on the ship with them but the Doctor has found a more Earthly source to blame... Ian and Barbara! The Doctor announces he intends to put them off the ship but the crew may not even live that long as they race towards doom. Their only hope for salvation may lie unexpectedly with Barbara!

My Take: Remember when I said that "The Web Planet" was like 1960's experimental theatre? Well this is too. The story is just... it's weird. Plain and simple, it's weird. There are parts of it that come off well and hang together nicely and there are parts that just make no sense no matter how much you think about them. Sadly, the parts that make no sense make up the bulk of things.

There is no clear explanation of why the group had selective memory loss, no explanation for why Susan had a hissy fit with a pair of scissors, and the one thing we do get an explanation for -- the signals the TARDIS is sending -- makes no real sense. It just leaves the viewers quite frankly bewildered.

On the flip side, the introduction of the idea that something could be loose in the TARDIS and might even be possessing one of the group is nice and creepy -- and plausible as well for as long as it lasts. The Doctor's paranoia and suspicion by being unfounded, actually increase the tension as viewers begin to believe that the old man truly is insane.

And then there is the acting. Without a guest cast it falls all on the main cast and, sadly, there is a LOT of overacting done here. No one escapes from it but Ford may be one of the more overblown examples of it. Once upon a time this might have worked for the young audiences of the 1960's but modern audiences are likely to be too busy giggling.

"The Edge of Destruction" is not without some bright moments though. Jacqueline Hill's turn as Barbara has some great moments -- including one where she reads the Doctor the riot act and proves just how formidable a woman she can be.

Hartnell's performance as the Doctor is a bit overblown, yes, but there are also moments where he exudes menace and madness but later Hartnell makes the Doctor's change of attitude believable -- a humbled, contrite figure. One of my favorite moments comes when the Doctor believes he can do nothing to save them and quietly asks Ian if the young man will face death with him. It is nicely played -- quiet but with a sense of weight instead of over the top.

I also have to give credit to writer and production team for deciding to actually give viewers a story which changes the Doctor rather than just abruptly altering his personality without change. It also shows their thoughtfulness in that they do not make things easy on the Doctor -- while Ian lets him off the hook lightly he has to humble himself and apologize profusely to Barbara.

This story also marks the first point where the TARDIS is portrayed as semi-sentient. It will probably interest fans to see that the Doctor has never considered this possibility before and it is Barbara who surmises that the TARDIS is trying to communicate with them.

In the end, though, the positives about the story just can't overcome the negatives. "The Edge of Destruction" will probably only prove popular with those who are completists, curious, and/or fans of William Hartnell.