Grab Bag Reviews: "Survival"

Now here's a rather interesting one because "Survival" is one of the handful of Doctor Who episodes of which I had only seen a few clips from and never watch the full episode... before now. As such I had the rare experience of getting to sit down and go into the story with no preconceived notions.

"Survival" also had the dubious honor of being the last episode of what became known as the "Classic Series". What led to this happening is rather a long and strange trip...

The show had been bleeding viewers for a number of years by 1989. The cause was a number of things from uninspired writing to uninteresting characters to a perception that the show was catering more and more to an ever shrinking core of devoted fans.

Producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner had been in the top position for about ten years as well -- far longer than any other producer on the series -- and he was understandably burned out but what amounted to blackmail from the BBC kept him from moving on. The powers that be at the BBC informed J N-T that no one else really wanted the producership for Doctor Who and so if he left they were simply going to cancel the series. As a fan of the program as well as it's producer J N-T could not stand to see this happen and so he opted to stay. By 1989, however, he simply could not endure any longer and was determined to leave but had hoped to increase the show's ratings and standings so that the BBC would be more motivated to find a producer to replace him.

As it so happened, however, a number of other things also came about at the same time period. Despite the show's weakness, the BBC opted to change it's time slot -- putting it up against the a new but immensely popular nighttime soap opera called Coronation Street. This was like sending a fly to destroy a fly swatter... and it got exactly the results you might expect.

Also during this time period the crew on Doctor Who got a definite impression of snobbishness from the rest of the BBC's drama department -- of which Doctor Who was a part. To this day some of the writers allege that other writers and producers looked down on the show simply because it was sci-fi and they therefore considered it not real or proper drama.

While J N-T and script editor Andrew Cartmel both believed that the show was headed for a hiatus at the very least and more likely would be cancelled, they chose not to share their fears much. They did let their script writers, crew and actors know that the show was likely to be put on hiatus for a year or so but they said nothing about the worst case scenario. Even with the almost certainty of a hiatus looming they continued to make plans for another season -- what would have been season 27 for the venerable show.

Meanwhile, "Survival" would not be last episode filmed for the season -- that honor went to "Ghost Light" -- but it would be the last episode to air. With that in mind, Cartmel hastily wrote a little final speech for McCoy to say which could be dropped in at the end just in case the show went on hiatus and the fans might need something to tide them over until it returned.

Meanwhile, at the BBC the decision had been made. The new head of drama decided that the show needed a "rest". His intention at the time was to merely see Doctor Who be put on the shelf for three or four years and then be brought back by someone with some fresh ideas. In an interview for the "Survival" DVD he expressed a genuine regret that his decision led to the show going off the air for 16 years.

It was only long after filming for "Ghost Light" had wrapped that the entire cast and crew found out about the show's fate. Many were sad and bitter and while Sylvester McCoy, who played the Seventh Doctor, and Sophie Aldred, who played the Doctor's companion, Ace, knew that they could and would move on to other things they were upset that they would not be allowed to give their characters any closure.

Even for the fans, "Survival" aired as the last episode of the season and it was some time before a quiet announcement came out of the BBC that Doctor Who would be put on "hiatus" indefinitely. There was never a formal announcement of cancellation but as more than a year passed with no news of any new episodes fans eventually came to realize that the show was gone.

Over time there is some sense that "Survival" became somewhat revered simply because it turned out to be the last glass of wine from the bottle but does it deserve that status, no matter the conditions surrounding it?

The Plot: The Doctor has returned Ace "home" -- the Perivale Council Estate (read low-cost housing for the working classes) -- at her request as she wants to see what has happened to her friends while she's been traveling with the Doctor. Upon arrival, however, the Doctor quickly senses something amiss. Ace discovers that several of her friends have simply gone missing... as have others in and around Perivale and the Doctor sees a black cat the seems to have a slightly otherworldly quality to it...

Ace finds herself transported to a strange, alien world populated by Cheetah People and the Doctor soon follows. Once there, however, he finds that there seems to be no way back. He also finds that an old enemy is there waiting. To make matters worse, the planet has a symbiotic relationship to it's inhabitants -- the more they fight the more the planet begins to break up and destroy itself. Also, anyone who survives being the Cheetah People's prey slowly succumbs to the plant's influence and starts to become an animalistic Cheetah Person.

When the Doctor discovers a way back to Earth the Master takes advantage of it and in order to follow him and rescue the other trapped Earthlings the Doctor just might have to sacrifice Ace's humanity... But the Master is on Earth and he has been infected by the planet as well -- enough so that he now sees all around him as prey for the taking....

My Take: Okay, let's get the bad stuff out of the way first... the episode used a mixture of real cats and one animatronic cat as the Kitlings -- the otherwise seemingly ordinary black cats which are actually alien creatures who find the Prey for the Cheetah people on Earth and then facilitate bringing those people to the Cheetah planet to be hunted. The animatronic cat that the special effects department produced was quite bad. Really, really bad. Even by Doctor Who standards. The thing ends up looking rather moth-eaten and less convincing than the animatronic figures at your local carnival. Supposedly the animatronic cat was not supposed to be used very much but the live, trained cats which were hired proved to be less than well trained. Either way, there is no way a person can look at the shots with that blasted fake cat and not laugh.

Then there are the Cheetah People costumes. Reportedly, the costume designer's original idea was that the Cheetah people should look more humanoid. They would have some wigs and hair pieces to give the impression of manes and ruffs of fur but otherwise the Cheetah effect would be achieved through body paint. J N-T, however, wanted the costumes to be more overt and so the actors playing the Cheetah people ended up covered in spotted fun-fur with these large masks which ended up being, well, honestly, more cute and cuddly than ferocious. To make matters worse, in several sequences one can see the gaps at the neck of the mask and see them wobble and shift on the actors' heads as well completely destroying what little illusion there was.

There was also a kind of motorcycle duel between the Doctor and one of Ace's friends, Midge, now Cheetah-infected, that ends rather badly. Apparently the parts which make no sense were a result of the fact that the budget could not be stretched far enough and so some sequences had to be rewritten at the last minute. There were also a few things which J N-T feared would be too violent or intense and would get the show in trouble.

These things aside, the script is actually quite ambitious and effective.

First of all there is the story's initial setting. Perivale is representative of it's time -- the British Council Estates were, by all accounts (and some still are apparently) rather dreary places. This really comes through in the story mostly because the crew chose to actually film in the real Perivale Council Estate.

But the story shows the kind of dead-endness of the life in these types of places. When Ace runs into one of her old friends the girl says in a rather blase tone that everyone thought Ace had died... or gone to Birmingham. The same is true of the other missing persons. No one really cares and no one is surprised that someone might run away and leave no word behind simply to escape the drudgery of life there.

There is also hints of a criminal element and violence. The character of Sgt. Patterson teaches a self-defense class to the people who live there and indicates that he believes these youths must become hard in order to survive... that they must show no mercy to their attackers because their attackers will show no mercy to them. In short, Munro does all she can to blur the lines between the primitive, animalistic Cheetah planet and Perivale.

It has to be said, though, that the themes of "Survival of the fittest" and "Law of the jungle" do get pushed around awfully hard. The audience is rather beaten over the head with the phrases and the ideas and it does not take long before you're tempted to yell at the screen "We know! We get it already!"

There is also another theme running through which is a bit more subtle -- the idea of the violence of the people impacting the planet on the Cheetah world. We see and are told that the more they fight and hunt and kill the more the planet breaks up but at the same time, 1989 was still the era of Margaret Thatcher and George Bush and the Cold War and there were still those threats in our own world -- that the more we fought or came close to fighting the more danger we put our own planet in with the threat of nuclear war.

Another theme which comes through is the idea of the loss of humanity. When Midge kills a defenseless Cheetah person he begins the transformation into a Cheetah person himself. Once he starts down a path of violence without conscience he begins to lose his humanity. Later on the Doctor stops Ace from feeding on a dead animal carcass as even this kind of animal-like feeding would indicate a loss of humanity. As Ace falls under the spell of the planet and the Cheetah woman, Karra, she does break free for a moment when she realizes that Karra and her people hunt humans -- sentient beings -- without compunction or compassion, and Ace realizes how inhuman this is.

And there is the idea of the struggle that humans go through -- even in our pretty little world -- to hide the savagery underneath. The Master, who considers himself a great intellect and a man with supreme control over his emotions must now battle the beast within himself. Even the Doctor's greatest enemy feels something creeping up on him that perhaps even he will not be able to control and that something is his own animalistic nature. And it needs to be mentioned that Anthony Ainley as the Master turns in one of the best performances of his career. For once the Master himself has vulnerabilities and Ainley allows those to show through cracks in the Master's usually smooth veneer.

Then there is the theme of "home". The Kitlings bring the prey home with them to the Cheetah planet to hunt. Only the Cheetah people have the power to cross between the worlds but they cannot go back to Earth because Earth is not their home. So in order to return the Doctor must find... or create... an Earth-born Cheetah person and send them home. For Midge and Ace Earth is home, Perivale is home but also, as Ace comes to realize and finally give voice to -- the TARDIS is her home, her place with the Doctor is her home and the TARDIS is back on Earth. Likewise, when the Doctor again must throw himself from the Cheetah planet back to Earth he ends up right outside his TARDIS -- his home.

And finally, there is the theme of growing up for Ace. In the last several stories of season 26 the writers made it a point to put Ace on a character arc with an eye toward writing her out of the series during season 27 but doing so in such a way as to place her on a totally new track in life. As such the stories "The Curse of Fenric", "Ghost Light" and "Survival" were written to have Ace deal with a lot of the pain of her past and coming to grips with her growing up in the present.

Here she comes home again only to find what once was home has changed drastically. Old friends are gone and the ones who remain have changed -- just as she herself has changed through her travels with the Doctor. This is what happens as one grows up -- you find that time marches on with or without you and that people and places change and sometimes those changes cause you to lose them. Ace quickly realizes that she no longer fits in Perivale.

In that same vein, we see Ace disobeying the Doctor at several points -- breaking free of her father figure -- but turning back at several crucial points and crying for the Doctor to tell her what to do. Of course, the Doctor cannot. She is growing up now; maturing and she must make decisions for herself here.

Another interesting thing about this story is seeing how much it seemed to influence the new series of the show when it returned in 2005. Ace is a tough, streetwise kid who grew up in a council estate and Rose likewise grew up in a council flat. Ace, however, come across as a lot tougher than Rose, there is also a much greater sense that if Ace hadn't met the Doctor she might have ended up at a dead end or even in trouble with the law. Ace also seems to carry inside her more trouble, heartache and pain which are manifest in a fascination with fire and explosions.

But there is a difference here as well. When the new series would visit modern day London it usually felt as if that was the "normal" world and it was the Doctor and the alien bits which didn't fit in. With "Survival" it is the exact opposite. From the start Perivale feels like the alien world and it is actually the Doctor and Ace who seem like the "normal" components here.

By this point in the series McCoy and Andrew Cartmel had also gotten permission to start making the Doctor a darker character and this comes through here as well. The Doctor takes some of the lighter jokes and statements made by the ordinary people living in Perivale and he shows them the darkness lurking just underneath.

For example, a shopkeeper tells his co-worker that old joke about two guys out on safari when they hear a lion outside the tent. One of the adventurers start putting on a pair of running shoes and the other says "You can't outrun a lion." To which his compatriot replies "I don't have to outrun the lion." -- the punchline obviously being that the man only has to outrun his compatriot. The joke loses it's humor, though, when the Doctor steps in and points out that it means one must be willing to sacrifice a friend in order to save one's own skin.

There is also a sense that, once again, the Doctor is manipulating Ace -- even if it is for her own good. He also manipulates others -- like the Sgt. Patterson of the self defense classes.

And McCoy really sinks his teeth into this. He had been pushing for a darker interpretation of the Doctor for some time and having finally gotten his wish he plays it with great relish. One sees how he feels at different points -- those he uses whom he feels bad about using and those whom he does not feel bad about using. Also, his decision to, unlike the Master, be able to control his darker impulses and not give in to violence -- even when facing his worst enemy -- then who has caused him and those he cared about such pain and hardship over the years.

Kudos likewise go to Aldred who manages to convey very well the struggles of a young woman who is moving from childhood into becoming a full fledged adult. And who also manages to convey the emotional baggage of a girl who was brought up in less than ideal circumstances.

As fascinating as the script is, however, it is not without it's flaws -- just like the animatronic cat.

I mentioned before the rewritten scenes which remove some impact. The Doctor's conflict with the Master -- particularly the final fight -- is entirely too short. There is little of the back and forth fans have become used to between the Doctor and the Master and few scenes between them period.

Also, despite all the themes Munro plays with throughout the story it still feels like it has been padded. Ace repeats a line of dialogue almost verbatim twice and a lot of the Master's machinations after returning to Earth seem unfocused, petty, pointless and tacked on to fill out running time.

Overall, though... "Survival" was a good, solid story. As a number of fans and professionals have written over the years, there were signs that the show had finally "turned the corner". They had found their footing, they had started tapping really good writers who had a handle on the characters and they were starting to craft new, interesting stories. The pity was that it came too late.

As a capstone to the entire series up to this point? Well, it is a little lacking. Munro produced a story that was essentially one, long, extended metaphor and there were many points where the dialogue was actually quite poetic as well. It was stuffed to the gills with interesting themes and subtle social commentary and character development but there were still missteps. In places the themes were hammered home with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Dropped from the top of the Empire State Building. In other places the pacing lagged while somewhere else in the story things happened far too quickly.

"Survival" was a story with a message for it's time and place but there are elements which still ring true today and are just as relevant and fascinating and that makes it well worth the time for viewing even if it wasn't the sort of grand finale fans might have wished for the series.

And really, Cartmel's hastily scribbled speech for the Doctor was and remains lovely and there is good reason why fans still return to it over and over again. If anything it does somehow manage to encapsulate what was at the time 26 years of the Doctor...

Grab Bag Reviews: "Battlefield"

The Seventh Doctor's era was the swan song for the series for about 15 years (sort-of). The era had actually started somewhat badly with Colin Baker's tenure seeing ratings tumbling and Baker himself taking a lot of the heat for the failure. When Baker was fired from the job the production team sought out a new actor to play the Doctor. They found Sylvester McCoy -- a Shakespearean trained actor who happened, at the time, to be doing mostly a quasi-vaudeville revue. Originally his version of the Doctor was to be seen as somewhat befuddled -- dropping malapropisms everywhere. By the time "Battlefield" rolled around, however, this characterization was dropped for a version of the Doctor who used a disarming exterior to hide the fact that he was actually a master manipulator and schemer with something of a dark side. Sadly, ratings were still below where the BBC wanted them and there were those within the company who were sharpening their knives to cut it out no matter what.

At the time "Battlefield" was filmed the production team had heard rumblings that the series might be put on hiatus or even cancelled outright but they made the decision to continue on as if expecting to be renewed for the next season. At least they did for the most part. The opening sequence in the TARDIS is notably dark and sharp-eyed viewers will notice that there seems to be something wrong with the TARDIS walls. This is because the "walls" are, in fact, painted sheets. The set walls had been damaged and the production team opted not to have the expense of re-building them as the remaining scripts in the season didn't really call for much in the way of TARDIS interior shots.

As it happened, it was during the next story in production, "Survival" that the team learned that they would be allowed to finish out the season and then would be put on "hiatus". Most of the cast and crew believed that the so-called "hiatus" would be permanent. They were more or less right.

The story is also rather a tribute to the Third Doctor's era, with the inclusion of UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Task Force, complete with the blue berets this time), Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, and even the Third Doctor's yellow roadster nicknamed 'Bessie'.

The Plot: The Doctor and his young companion, Ace, receive a strange distress call and land on Earth sometime in the near future after 1988. Also summoned to Earth by the call are two groups of knights from a parallel dimension where the rise and fall of Camelot were rather more real. One group proves loyal to King Arthur while the other group are followers of the sorceress Morgaine. With a mixture of magic of futuristic technology these two forces pick a new battlefield and await the restoration of King Arthur. Adding to the commotion, a UNIT force is in the area trying to relieve a nuclear missile convoy which got off the road and bogged down near a lake. When the Doctor shows up UNIT immediately calls in a retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and he joins a new Brigadier -- Winifred Bambera. The forces in this war are small but the stakes are incredibly high. If the Doctor cannot stop the fighting then the planet itself may become a barren cinder.

My Take: I have to admit, when I was younger I thought "Battlefield" was a bit of a sub-par story. It seemed a bit too trite and a little too self-referential and self-reverent of the show's own past. Upon watching it again I find that I was more than a bit harsh on it.

I also have to say that the Seventh Doctor's era had the version of the theme song that I hate the most. It's too.... 'fiddly'.

It should be mentioned that this DVD comes with two copies of the episode -- the original as broadcast and a second version with some cut scenes added back in, enhanced visual effects and sound effects and all of the episode breaks taken out so the whole thing plays like a two-hour movie.

Getting down to brass tacks... The story itself is a mix of good and bad things. This new version of UNIT displays a rather conscious effort to put the U.N. in UNIT and while the diversity is nice it also feels a little bit forced with a French helicopter pilot, a Polish second-in-command, and at least one Czech officer as well. Fans were probably surprised to hear characters talking about "The Brigadier" and then not only NOT having Lethbridge-Stewart appear on the screen but have it actually be a black woman. Angela Bruce as Bambera is one of the best things about the new UNIT. She's tough and smart but without being annoying and is a shot in the arm for Women's equality. She also proves herself a capable leader and a capable warrior as well.

The plot is a bit of a mix and yet, somehow it all hangs together. It is a study on war and peace and honor in battle and yet manages to tack on an anti-nuclear polemic that actually works, as nuclear weapons are framed as a coward's weapon -- a killing without honor. There is also a sub-plot of the Doctor's future catching up with him. To the denizens from the alternate dimension the Doctor is known as "Merlin" but as the Doctor tells Ace, he is not Merlin... yet. But he might be someday. For now though, there are characters who know of his possible future while that future remains shrouded in mystery for him. It's a bit of the Timey-Wimeyness that Steven Moffat has gone back to in the recent series. On top of all that, the extended version of the story has another running plot of Ace and the Brigadier butting heads as Lethbridge-Stewart's old-fashioned attitude toward women tends to rankle Ace and she also feels that being the Doctor's companion is HER job now, not the Brig's.

The writer, Ben Aaronovitch, had intended to kill Lethbridge-Stewart in the story but in the end just couldn't do it. In a way this worked out for the best because fans have gotten to keep the old Brig around (and Courtney has reprised his role in a couple of Doctor Who audio stories as well as an episode of the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures) and in addition it actually becomes a surprise. The foreshadowing of the Brig's death is so sledgehammer obvious that we expect it and then find the tables turned on us!

The dialogue has some real triumphs. Great, quotable lines and sequences with a real Shakespearean flair. There are also moments, though, when things fall down. There is a lot of name dropping of Third Doctor friends and enemies which serve no purpose in the story other than to have their names dropped. It seems very forced and awkward when it happens.

The characters are also, on the whole, a delight. Angela Bruce has great chemistry with Marcus Gilbert, the actor playing the knight Ancelyn, and Gilbert infuses the role with charm and humor... and he's pretty easy on the eyes too so there's that. Nicholas Courtney had reprised his role as the Brigadier twice during the Fifth Doctor's era and here he slips back into it as easily as putting on a comfortable pair of shoes. Jean Marsh, who was a Doctor Who veteran turns in a surprisingly unexpected turn as Morgaine. At times she is a straightforward baddie but then she can turn on a dime and transform Morgaine into a concerned parent or inject pathos into a scene so that we actually feel sorry for the character. The actor playing Mordred, though... well, he does the best he can with the role but many of his lines are written so very over-the-top and his part is nothing but a 2 dimensional villain without any of Morgaine's twists.

The regular cast of Sophie Aldred as Ace and Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor turn in great performances. In particular, Aldred does a good job at showing Ace making a friend in a girl close to her own age. It rather points up the normality of such friendships which Ace misses by traveling with the Doctor. McCoy, for his part, brings drama and gravitas and the ability to move easily from a lighthearted attitude to a man you would not want as your enemy.

I don't often mention the music but here I feel I must. Back in the early 1980's the production team dumped series composer Dudley Simpson in order to have all of the show's music produced by the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop -- which was primarily into electronic and synthesizer music. The stuff they create here is sometimes quite good but at other times it is entirely too jaunty and just wrong not only for the scenes but the story itself.

While I do encourage seeing the original story as it aired, the second disk with the enhanced story is a very nice addition. While some of the added scenes somewhat interrupt the flow of the story most of them are really welcome additions. The conflict between Ace and the Brigadier, for example, adds some depth to the story. There are also sequences which help tie the Brig to Morgaine and Ancelyn -- that show the Brig as as old war-horse, who doesn't really like battle but by God when called to fight he will do so with honor... for both the living and the dead.

The enhanced special effects as well as the new sound effects are also helpful. The knights' supposedly futuristic guns which, in the original, only shot silly-looking sparks now have ray beams and many audio effects help fill-in plot holes. the one area I didn't care for it was in one crucial scene where Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor runs into a battlefield and should to stop the fighting. In the original it is all Sylvester McCoy letting loose with a Shakespearean roar but in the enhanced version an effect is added to McCoy's voice. I much prefer the unadulterated version as the "enhanced" version implies that the Doctor is employing some kind of device or technique to stop the fight where the original makes it clear that the Doctor is doing this just with his sheer personality.

On the whole, even the anti-nuclear message still holds up. While one can still hear some old, Cold War overtones here and there most of the points hold true in our world today. Just as the issues of war and peace and honor also hold true. There is a tribute to the past of the series while looking towards the future, there is charm and excitement and complex characters, great scenes and great dialogue. "Battlefield" is well worth the time.