Grab Bag Reviews: "The Mind Robber"

Okay, a couple of things right out of the gate.

First, yes, there was a time when Doctor Who was rather unabashedly geared towards kids. Over time this changed and the show became much more 'family viewing' but there was a time when it was very obviously playing towards kids. This doesn't mean that the stories were not good, just that they were a bit different than the fare viewers get today... or in the 1970's and later as well.

Second, I love Patrick Troughton, the 2nd Doctor. Even the stories he did that were crap were great simply because he was playing the Doctor. Troughton. Is. Awesome. That is all that needs to be said. So there's my bias on the table.

Now for one of my FAVORITE Doctor Who stories.... "The Mind Robber".

The Plot: While trying to escape the lava flow from an erupting volcano (picking up from the previous story, "The Dominators") the TARDIS malfunctions and the Doctor is forced to take drastic measures -- moving the TARDIS out of space and time entirely! While trying to make repairs the entire crew comes under the influence of a powerful mind. Companions Jamie and Zoe are lured out of the TARDIS and the Doctor comes under psychic attack. The Doctor manages to get his companions back but when he tries to return the TARDIS to normal space-time mysterious forces pull it apart!

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe awaken separated in a strange wood. Jamie and Zoe fall into traps and the Doctor soon begins meeting with some of the strange denizens of this world. Wherever they are the usual laws of physics seems not to apply and the Doctor soon discovers that imagination and words seem to hold all the power here.

After rescuing his companions, the little group sets out and begins encountering strange, wind-up, toy soldier robots and characters from myth and story come to life. The Doctor soon realizes that they are trapped in a land of fiction and their only sure defense to to keep telling themselves that the things they encounter are not real.

The TARDIS team eventually makes their way to the "master" of this land and discover the sinister plot behind it all -- a computer brain creates the world but it needs imagination to give it the shapes of things to create! Having taken a writer from Earth decades ago the man is growing tired and now wants the Doctor to take his place since the Doctor is much longer lived. The Doctor refuses to become a slave to the machine but there are consequences as Jamie and Zoe are absorbed and become nothing more than fictional characters! Can the Doctor find a way out of this and save his companions or are they all destined to become a writer's toys?

My Take: It has long been argued among fans that Doctor Who is more Science-Fantasy than Science Fiction and this is pretty true -- certainly some eras more so than others -- but "The Mind Robber" is very, VERY firmly in the Sci-Fa rather than Sci-Fi camp. Despite this (or maybe because of it) what viewers get is a delightful, creative, imaginative and unique adventure story. It also created a story that was able to be delightfully stretched when the production ran into trouble.

You see, quite a bit of Patrick Troughton's era was rife with problems. Scripts were continually late and this, in turn, caused rushed productions and sudden shifting of story order. As a result, "The Mind Robber" had very little wiggle room -- it had to be filmed quickly and there were no other scripts ready which could be put in it's place if something went wrong. And something went wrong.... 23 year old Fraser Hines, who played Jamie, and one of his brothers, were renting a house together in London and decided to play host to their nephews over a weekend. What no one knew was that the nephews were contagious with Chicken Pox. Hines showed up on Monday for filming and soon broke out and was ordered home to quarantine. Since Jamie was in too many scenes to film around Hines's absence the only solution was to temporarily recast Jamie. A young, Scottish actor was found for the part and a clever bit of writing created a scene in the script in which the Doctor has to reconstruct Jamie's face and gets it wrong and then later has to reconstruct it again and gets it right as Hines was well enough to rejoin the production.

While all of this was a 'work around' for an ill cast member it ends up adding a delightful bit of fun to the overall story. It highlights and brings home the idea that this is a world where anything can and will possibly happen.

The cleverness of the script is also shown in much of the imaginativeness of the writing. For example, the character of Gulliver from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels speaks only lines from that story. Rapunzel turns out to be quite used to people using her hair as a rope all the time and we are even introduced to a comic strip superhero from the future. A 'forest' turns out to be made of giant letters instead of trees and the letters all spell out common sayings, wind-up toy soldiers chase our heroes throughout the story, and Jamie and Zoe are pressed inside a giant book like flowers and become "fictional" characters. This is another part of the charm of the story; watching as an adult you become aware of the irony of the fact that the Doctor and his companions are already fictional characters.

For the most part all the performances are also just delightful. Of the supporting cast the "Master" writer is a bit too plummy at at times and his attempts to use a different voice when speaking as the computer brain don't always come off well but the script does a good job at keeping his true nature hidden until the very end. Also, throughout the story the viewer is led to think of him as the villain of the piece only for it to be revealed that he is not the bad guy we have thought him.

Bernard Horsefall would go on to guest star several times in Doctor Who but he makes a lovely Gulliver here. His voice and delivery of the lines made me wish there was an audio book of him reading Gulliver's Travels. He delivers the old-fashioned language without flourish or embellishment -- making it seem downright conversational.

Of the main cast, there are a few moments where Fraser Hines overacts a bit and Wendy Padbury's screams are sometimes over the top and are also done for no good reason at times. Aside from that, though, Hines makes Jamie charming, brave, and exasperated by turns and Padbury's Zoe presents viewers with the prototype of the modern, female companion -- intelligent, quick-witted and actually a bit tough. It must be said, though, that Zoe's fight with the superhero Karkus looks a bit bad on-screen. In the cast commentary Padbury explains that there was very little time to rehearse the fight, she had never done a fight scene before and there was no time to re-shoot the scene to cover some of the worse gaffes.

Troughton is also his usual, solid self here. His Doctor is a mercurial sort -- going from defiant to befuddled, to fearful in split seconds. There is also a slightly chilling moment as the Doctor refuses to take the writer's place -- not even to save his companions. We see, in a later scene, that the knowledge that his companions are lost to him pains him deeply but he refuses to give in even for them. The battle of imagination between the Doctor and the writer is also fun as famous characters from myth and legend appear and disappear to battle at the very thoughts of these two determined people. There are also some great lines of dialog as the Doctor baits and insults his opponent.

With an extremely inventive script, witty dialogue, nice acting performances all around, "The Mind Robber" is Doctor Who at it's best. The story shows just how malleable the format could be -- stretching the bounds of the series to date. Sure, some of the story seems a bit simplified and appealing to kids and some of the special effects don't hold up as well but the sequence of the TARDIS breaking up is still shocking today and provides one hell of a cliffhanger for the first episode and there are moments taken very seriously -- like where we see the Doctor seemingly defeated and out of options. Overall, while I wouldn't necessarily want a steady diet of stories like "The Mind Robber" as it stands it is a breath of fresh air, a view askew of the Doctor's world, and a look at what the show could potentially pull off.

Fans of Steven Moffat's current run on the show should definitely check this one out -- I think they'll find a lot in common.

Going a Bit Personal... "Why History?"

So I've got this class for my (second) master's degree (yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment. TWO master's degrees). For this class we are touring various types of libraries. One library we recently toured was a medical library. The other was a medical HISTORY library. And the difference was VAST.

For the record, I'm an archivist (no, not an archaeologist nor an anarchist). I virtually eat, sleep and breathe history. It's part of who and what I am. When I develop a new hobby I often find myself wanting to learn about the history of it. For example, when I started getting into comic books I didn't just read the comic books -- i read books about the history of comic books. I read stories about how and why comic books became what we know today. I've even read and collected hard cover and trade paperback reprints of older comics because all of it is interesting and fascinating.

So, yeah, I love history. But the fact of the matter is that, as I go through the world I meet so many people who DON'T. And, well, that's okay if it isn't your cup of tea. Diversity is what makes the world go 'round. What boils MY cup of tea, however, are the people who are not content to merely say they don't like history but the people who actually see history as a BURDEN. The people who actively state that they don't see what GOOD history is, they don't see the USE of it and anything old should simply be gotten rid of in order to make way for everything new.

One library talked about getting "stuck" with the archival material and seemed to begrudge it space in their facility and that they didn't know what to do with it. They were proud of the fact that they didn't keep anything "old" -- they were all "new" and "up to date" and there was even some bewilderment expressed when they did get requests for books or journal articles which were ten years old or more... as if they could not understand why anyone would want anything that old. In contrast, the other library reveled in it's old stuff. It joyed in showing people how far we've come and even teaching that sometimes we can underestimate what they knew and what they could do in the past. That sometimes we think we're so clever at inventing stuff when, in point of fact, all we're doing is updating an idea that is actually hundreds of years old.

The past is NOT something to be tossed aside for the "latest model". Nor paved over to make way for something that is more "up to date". To me, as the saying goes: "How do you know where you're going if you don't know where you've been?" What USE is history? Well, let me count some of the ways:

• History gives you a sense of roots. You can understand and see the longevity of a place or a family and it reassures you that those things will continue to be there for it.
• It can stop you from making a mistake. You can see what was done in the past and how it worked or did not work and therefore you can change your plans accordingly. Why recreate someone else's mistake?
• It can help you understand situations. Knowing what a country, or a city, or a person went through in the past can help you understand how they got to where they are today. Do you think the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sprung into being in the last 20 years? If you don't understand the background to the conflict you're not going to fully understand what's going on today. Houses are built from the ground up not the top down.
• It can give you hope for the future. In any struggle there has been a past. Looking back, you can see how far you've come. No matter how much further you have to go you can ALWAYS look back and see the changes and gain heart for the continuing fight because you DO have proof that things have changed.
• It can humble you. You might think you're hot stuff, coming up with a new idea but you might be surprised just what people in the past knew and could do. More and more people are learning and relearning knowledge of the past was not necessarily as "primitive" and they might think and the people of today may not be as clever as we think we are.

So history. Whether or not it is something that you enjoy it IS something to be respected. Our personal pasts make us who we are and we learn from them so how much more do the histories of our cities, states, country, continent, and world also shape who we are, what we do, and how we live?

Today and everyday I challenge you to go forth and SEE history all around you!

Grab Bag Reviews: "The Five Doctors"

The thing about the "grab bag" review format is that it does produce some weird results. I've reviewed one First Doctor story and one Fourth Doctor story and suddenly I've got to review a special, anniversary episode from 1983!



Oh well, I obey the rules of the "bag" and so.....

THE FIVE DOCTORS

I have to say that this story had such a long, involved incubation that I could actually write a Master's Thesis length document just on what went wrong (and right) about the genesis of the episode. I will, however, spare whoever is reading this that and try to keep things simple while still giving some idea of the scope involved.

A little background: 1973 marked the 10th anniversary of Doctor Who and the event was commemorated then by gathering the (then) three actors who had played the Doctor into an adventure called "The Three Doctors". The story seemed to "have it all" -- Time Lords, three incarnations of the Doctor, and even a Time Lord villain.... who was NOT the Master.

Even before 1983 rolled around, producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner was planning for the show's 20th anniversary and he wanted it to be bigger and better than the previous one. To that end he set about securing a script writer and lining up casts. He wanted to get every single surviving actor who had played the Doctor (William Hartnell, the First Doctor, having passed away in 1975) and several of the more popular companions who had been associated with the various Doctors.

Almost immediately there were problems. The original writer was having trouble with the story and eventually bowed out. He was replaced by show staple writer Terrance Dicks. Also, a great many of the original proposed cast members ended up either being unable to participate or else were forced to bow out before filming. Almost fatally, there was, apparently, a miscommunication between Nathan-Turner and actor Tom Baker in which Nathan-Turner believed that Baker was a lock for reprising his role as the Fourth Doctor while Baker has claimed that he had initially responded that he wanted time to think it over and eventually decided to opt out. Baker had, after all, only left the role about three years earlier and in those intervening years had found himself typecast.

With the Fourth Doctor out this put a strain on the script. One of the original ideas for the script was that the main villains would be the Cybermen and that they would create an android duplicate of the First Doctor and his granddaughter Susan and this would explain away the changed appearance as they hired a different actor to play Hartnell's role. They also felt that since this First Doctor would, in essence, be an impostor, it would still honor the memory of Hartnell by NOT actually recasting the role. With the Fourth Doctor out, however, the story was now shaping up to be more like "The Three Doctors and the Android Impostor Doctor". Nathan-Turner had discussed matters with Hartnell's widow and, to his surprise and delight, she actually gave permission for him to go ahead and recast the role. As such actor Richard Hurnall was approached to play the First Doctor. As for Tom Baker's part Nathan-Turner was still set on having all five Doctors appear in the story and as such he used a few clips from the unfinished and unaired Fourth Doctor story "Shada" to represent the Fourth Doctor in the story.

Finally, there was the matter of scheduling. With the way Doctor Who seasons were running at that time the previous series ended in March of 1983 with Fifth Doctor Peter Davison filming a sitcom during the off season before coming back to Doctor Who. In order to fit everything in Nathan-Turner received permission to film "The Five Doctors" as a movie-length episode and push back the start of the next season to fit it in. As a final flourish, he decided to have the movie debut during the BBC's annual telethon "Children in Need" -- a telethon to raise money for various children's services and charities.

As time approached for the story to air the episode was heavily advertised. Nathan-Turner planned a series of publicity photographs for the story and wanted all of the Doctors to appear in them. Tom Baker's refusal to participate left something of a noticeable gap so, rather infamously, Nathan-Turner arranged to borrow Baker's wax figure from Madame Tussuad's wax museum in London and the rest of the cast members posed with this.

Five years after the story originally aired the decision was made to "remaster" the story, adding some cut scenes and "improving" some of the special effects. Some fans, however, were not pleased with the "improvements" and as a result a special edition of the DVD was eventually produced which contained BOTH the original 1983 transmission as well as the longer, and improved later version. This review will actually consider both versions.

MY TAKE:

Well. There is something to be said for the fact that, until the abysmal "Dimensions in Time" special in the 1990's (I'll get to that one later) this was the last multi-Doctor story featuring as many of the Doctors as possible. With the passage of time Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee have joined William Hartnell in the Great Beyond and Tom Baker, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy no longer look so well, nor is their health always so great. I'm NOT saying they're going to pop off the mortal coil anytime soon, I'm just saying they aren't the Doctors they were. There was "Time Crash" but that's another thing I'll get around to later. Let's just leave it at "The Five Doctors" was pretty much the Last Great Multi-Doctor Story.

It does indeed seem to have everything fans could want -- iconic companions like Susan, Sarah Jane, Jamie, Zoe, K-9 and the Brigadier, iconic enemies like the Master, Daleks, Cybermen, and Yeti, and iconic places like Gallifrey and it's culture and history. The story is drenched in nostalgia both old and new -- everything from the Second Doctor's fur coat to the Third Doctor's yellow roadster Bessie, to the Doctor's friend and mentor Borusa -- not seen too long before. Upon the first airing in November 1983 it must have been like a fans' early Christmas and even for subsequent generations there is a magic in the first viewing -- it feels like everything fans love about Doctor Who.

Unfortunately, subsequent viewings over time seem to rub the shine off. Once one gets past all the bright, shiny, fan-y stuff it is too easy to start seeing all the plot holes left in a script that was sadly written and re-written. Things such as the First Doctor referring to his age and implying he is old when he is, in fact, the youngest of them and the Fifth Doctor being called a "young man" by his other selves when they know good and well that he's older than each of them. There is also the fact that we know the Doctors are being taken out of their relative places in the timeline yet the Third Doctor greets the Brigadier as if he hadn't seen him in a long time. This makes no sense since, by the Third Doctor's timeline he had probably seen the Brig not that long ago. And I could go on... but that would get nitpicky. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of things that don't add up. And then the [fill in the blank] of Rassilon gets a little laughable after a while... Black Scrolls of Rassilon, Coronet of Rassilon, Harp of Rassilon for goodness sake! It's all a bit too much.

Also, after "The Deadly Assassin" the show increasingly went to Gallifrey so what was once a mysterious and seemingly cold, hidebound society became something more familiar... and govenmentally bureaucratic. With "The Five Doctors" it feels almost as if all the alienness has been worn off of Time Lord society and the whole thing bears the stamp of modern, human politics.

As for the rest of the story -- most of the performances are delightful. Carol Ann Ford (Susan) is not given very much to do, really, but in her cries of "Grandfather!" viewers can hear the young Time Lady she once was. Although throwing in her twisting her ankle JUST to have her do a ankle twisting scene as a tribute to the past is eye-rollingly bad. Likewise, Mark Strickson, who played the Fifth Doctor's companion Vislor Turlough, gets sidelined throughout most of the story and given some of the most inane and pointless lines of dialog. This is doubly sad since his character had only recently polished off a big character arc. Janet Fielding as Tegan manages to hold her own, Elizabeth Sladen recaptures the different relationship she had with Jon Pertwee's Doctor and it works well and warmly, and Nicholas Courtney is a Brigadier-y as he ever was.

In regards to the Doctors... Richard Hurndall turns in a decent performance but he is simply not William Hartnell and seeing him just seems like a poor copy of the original... something that is a disservice to both Hurndall AND Hartnell. Peter Davison holds his own amongst such a famous and talented bunch of actors and really projects a sense of his version of the Doctor as the 'peacemaker', trying to keep the more fractious among his past selves from starting fires. Too bad he never gets to interact that much with the other Doctors -- it would have been delightful to see him get to do whole scenes with Pertwee and Troughton as he does with Hurndall. Troughton... Troughton just slips back into being the Doctor with the same ease as he slips into the fur coat. He bickers humorously with the Brigadier and with a genuine warmth and ease and yet there is also the dark side to him. It is Troughton's Doctor who admits that Rassilon may not have been the lauded hero Time Lord history has made him out to be... and he implies that he seems inclined to believe these darker tales. Jon Pertwee is ever the man of action and it is fun seeing him face off against the Master... even is it isn't the version of the Master he once knew.

The story also falls down a bit on the villain. It is supposed to be a shocking twist to fans but really it feels more like a sudden and inexplicable heel turn for the character. There is also the fact that viewers are being so obviously led to think this might be the Master that it does the opposite... viewers know it CAN'T be the Master because it's so obvious.

There is also the sequence where the Cybermen are decimated by the Raston Warrior Robot. Okay, so the robot costume hasn't aged well -- it looks like what it is -- a dancer in a silver bodysuit with a zipper up the back. But the robot itself is still a really good idea and the scenes of it slicing through the Cybermen like a hot knife through butter are chilling. It's made even more chilling by the rather graphic violence of it. Cybermen get arms snapped off, heads lopped off, chests blown open... one even actually looks like he vomits before expiring... it's all a bit terribly disturbing even today.

For the story itself, it must really be viewed on two levels. One level, as a fan in which critical thinking flies out the window. The performances are spot-on and it is a delight to see the past Doctors having a romp again. It also puts a smile on your face to see and hear some old familiar favorites such as Bessie and "You've redecorated.... I don't like it." The other level, as a logical, more critical viewer in which it must be admitted that the story is thin and filled with more plot holes than a piece of swiss cheese and in which several characters which deserve to be treated better basically get benched.

I did say as well that I was going to look at BOTH versions... Well, all things considered, the later version doesn't differ all that much from the original transmission. The extended scenes really don't add all that much to the story and, in most cases, the improved special effects are not so great. In the 1983 version each Doctor and companion are pursued by a black, trapezoidal shape and, when captured, their faces appear inside the trapezoid, frozen in expressions of fear and/or panic. It is actually a scary moment because, not only do we not know what is going on, it looks as though the act of taking the Doctors and their friends might actually be painful to them... this is hurting them. The later version replaced these black trapezoids with swirling, spiral cone shapes in which the images can vaguely be seen inside but not with any degree of clarity. On the one hand, they look better but on the other hand they do not convey the menace of the original.

Likewise, the original ending in which all the Doctors and their respective companions seem to enter the same TARDIS to go home only to see TARDISes split off and fly away was sweet even if the special effects for it look a little clunky today. Having the spiral cones take them all back home in the remastered edition does not seem to have the same charm.

The DVD is also absolutely packed with extras. The also interestingly split up the commentary tracks with the actors who played the companions providing an often irreverent commentary on the 1983 edition while Peter Davison and script writer Terrance Dicks provide a more technical commentary on the remastered version. There is also a lovely, lovely Easter Egg (and no, I can't tell you how to find it) of Tenth Doctor David Tennant, new series producer Phil Collinson and

new series script writer Helen Raynor providing commentary on the episode from the viewpoint of having been fans and actually watched the story when it first aired. There are also the other goody bag extras like outtakes, bloopers, a documentary on how the story came about (really interesting stuff there), publicity interviews and much more.

Overall, if you're a real fan then the 25th Anniversary Edition of "The Five Doctors" is a must have. Just make sure you turn off the critical and logical portions of your brain before you sit down to watch it. Put yourself in fan mode and enjoy the ride as this would be the last time we would see some of these actors working together as their wise, weird, and wonderful versions of the Doctor.

How George Lucas Ruined Star Wars

Yeah, yeah, you've heard it all before and seen it all before but here's the thing... I used to be a big Star Wars fan. In point of fact, if it hadn't been for Marvel's Star Wars comic books I probably wouldn't have gotten into comic books at all.

A lot of things went into my disillusionment... Lucas continually tinkering with the original trilogy (and by that I mean the three movies which were released in the late 1970's through the early 1980's) and re-releasing them onto DVD at a rate of about every year, expanding the universe of characters to beyond Star Trek levels and, most of all.... the prequel movies.

Gluh. The prequel movies!! I won't touch the issues most people talked about (the bad acting, the horrible characters, the stilted dialogue) instead, I'm going to focus on just a few ways that Lucas's inability to stop tinkering with his masterpiece ended up retroactively screwing up the originals... And really, the man CREATED this universe, how flippin' hard was it for him to NOT create these plot holes?!

Number One: Nobody knows Amidala's carrying twins. Here was a case where Lucas was actually trying so hard to keep to his original plot that he instead created an entirely different bit of stupidity. Darth Vader didn't know he had two kids. When watching the original trilogy it was easy to just assume that Anakin Skywalker left his love either before knowing she was pregnant or with her being in the early stages of pregnancy before the twins were discovered. Lucas just had to have Anakin around right up to practically the end of Amidala's pregnancy and the both of them refering to "our baby"... singular. WE in this day and age have had technologies for decades which would have picked up on the presence of twins and yet a far more advanced society with robots and laser weapons and interstellar lightspeed travel does NOT have this capability. Either that or Amidala is a poor mother who doesn't bother to get ANY pre-natal care. Either way you slice it, it's stupid.

Number Two: The droids. Just ignoring the stupidity of Anakin Skywalker building a protocol droid (seriously, he and his mother are practically slaves and he's going to build a protocol droid instead of something that could maybe help with the work?!), ignoring the huge, impossible to swallow, coincidence that R2-D2 and C-3PO would STILL be together after more than 18 years, There is the fact that Obi-Wan doesn't recognize them when he sees them with Luke in "A New Hope" (and dear God, I hate the fact that I have to call it 'A New Hope' just to make it clear which movie I'm talking about. I wish I could go back to just calling it "Star Wars"). Luke already thinks R2-D2 was stolen there was no need to Obi-Wan to say "I've never owned a droid like this". He could have said "No, it isn't mine but it does belong to a friend of mine", etc. but no, he doesn't know R2 or 3PO but he's got a pretty good idea where they came from.

Number Three: Leia remembered her mother. She told Luke that she didn't have very many memories of her real mother as the woman died when Leia was still very young. Yet we see Amidala die shortly after childbirth!

Number Four: THIS is the big one. This is the one that cheeses me off. Obi-Wan Kenobi knows Chewbacca. Now think about the scene in the Mos Eisley cantina.... No matter which way you slice it, Han Solo got played by Chewie. Even if we accept the huge, massive, choking coincidence that Obi-Wan manages to find the one bar where Chewie just HAPPENS to be right at the time he HAPPENS to be there it STILL doesn't mitigate the fact that Obi-Wan knows Chewie. So Obi-Wan tells them their plight and Chewie goes to Han and says what? Obviously, he didn't tell Han the TRUTH. So Chewie lies, or at best omits certain data in order to get Han to take the job. And if we DON'T accept that Obi-Wan running into Chewie was a coincidence -- if, as seems likely, he found some way of contacting him -- then that just adds to the betrayal since Chewie was therefore manipulating Han and luring him into the situation right from the start.

So way to go George Lucas. With three lousy prequel movies you managed to screw up three OTHER movies which were perfectly fine on their own.

Classic Doctor Who Reviews: "The War Machines"

Doctor Who Starts to Grow Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doctor Who Grab Bag Reviews

Yeah, yeah, I've been gone again. Combination of busy and a series of injuries keeping me away from my keyboard. Nothing too serious just enough to make typing uncomfortable.

So anyway, now that I'm back for a bit I thought I'd toss this out there. I have taken the titles to every Doctor Who episode I own (This includes DVD and audio stories), written them on slips of paper, put them in a grab bag and will, periodically, pull a title out at random in order to review.

The winner of the inaugural "Doctor Who Grab Bag Review" is.......

The Horror of Fang Rock

"The Horror of Fang Rock" opened up season 15 and marked actor Tom Baker's fourth season as the Fourth incarnation of the Doctor and the second season for actress Louise Jameson in the role of companion, Leela. In contrast, season 15 had a new producer, Graham Williams.

One season prior to this script editor Robert Holmes had wanted to introduce a new companion -- a young, Victorian woman from the lower class whom the Doctor would transform a la Henry Higgins did Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. Producer at the time Philip Hinchcliffe, however, was more interested in having a tougher, more self-reliant companion. Holmes and Hinchcliffe came to agreement over the character of Leela -- a character meant to be a kind of "one off" companion for the Doctor in the story "The Face of Evil". In that story the Doctor lands on an alien world and discovers that the human survivors of a crashed Earth space ship have devolved into two warring societies, most of their knowledge of technology lost and eroded over the generations.

The savage huntress Leela would go on to travel with the Doctor and, for a time, the stories would include the Doctor teaching Leela knowledge, manners and dress. For her part Leela would prove to be one of the toughest and best remembered of the female companions. Partly because of her usual outfit of leather singlet and short skirt and partly due to the fact that she usually held her own in a fight and often rescued the Doctor!

Also, for those of you not in the know, the old series of Doctor Who used to consist of "serials". Each story was broken up into two, four, or six (usually, although there are a few outliers) half-hour installments. "The Horror of Fang Rock" is a four-parter.

But enough about the past... On with the review!

Plot: Vince, the youngest keeper at the Lighthouse on Fang Rock, sees a shooting star plunge into the sea. Shortly thereafter a strange, unnatural, thick fog comes up. In the midst of this the lighthouse's electric generator seems to start acting up -- leaving the main lamp dark! When another of the lighthouse keepers, Ben, goes down to fix the generator something attacks and kills him with electricity.

Meanwhile, the TARDIS goes wrong and lands on Fang Rock instead of landing at Brighton where the Doctor intended to take Leela. Noticing that the lighthouse is dark the Doctor decides to take a look and see if he can help. He and Leela find Ben's body but the Doctor knows the electric generator was not at fault. As he tries to help Vince and the senior lighthouse keeper, Rueben, keep the light going a pleasure craft smashes on the rocks! The survivors of the craft are brought into the lighthouse but soon end up complicating matters as the Doctor discovers that there is a hostile alien among the group disguised as one of them!

One by one the alien picks off members of the group as the Doctor struggles to figure out just who this enemy he is facing is and what they want. Will anyone survive the horror of Fang Rock?

My Take: Philip Hinchcliffe's tenure as producer on Doctor Who has become famous for mixing sci-fantasy with gothic horror and history. Although Hinchcliffe was gone by the time "The Horror of Fang Rock" was made his successor, Graham Williams, backed this story as almost a kind of fond farewell to that era of the show. "The Horror of Fang Rock" was based off of a poem which was, in turn, based off of a real-life event in 1900 in which an entire lighthouse crew on an island off the Hebrides disappeared sometime during a storm.

The set pieces here take center stage as the props crew must have knocked themselves out creating the claustrophobic, realistic interior of a turn of the last century lighthouse. Pay attention to the doors which are even curved to fit the walls! Even the set dressing, the prop pieces, and the background items are period realistic. It's some truly lovely work. On the flip side, though, the interior set used to try to depict the rocky landscape of the island itself is sometimes a bit fake looking. Also, much of the fog and the background in the lamp house were created using CSO -- Color Separation Overlay -- or "blue screen" as it was known back then... the preucrsor to modern "green screen" technology. As such it too sometimes looks a bit off and the CSO is often betrayed by a blue halo appearing around the actor's heads.

The story itself, however, really allows one to overlook most of the flaws. There is an immediate sense of creepy atmosphere. The setting immediately buts the viewer's hackles up as we have a lonely outpost, quickly cut off by the fog, a creepy, unnatural fog, and then an unknown and intitially poorly seen creature which is seemingly picking off victims one at at time with ease. Adding to that is the sudden realization that the creature is locked in WITH the victims and the threat level immediately hightens.

Writer Terrance Dicks has admitted that adding the crew and passengers from the pleasure craft was a way of helping pad out the story and provide a higher body count and, as such, he did not give much thought to the characters beyond cannon fodder and it is true that a couple of the characters are quite annoying and you aren't sorry when they die but there are a couple of nice additions in there. There are several characters who you feel quite sorry for when they fall victim to the alien antagonist.

While, in the commentary, Louise Jameson reveals that she had trouble working with Tom Baker up until this story (when they finally sorted things out) viewers really wouldn't be able to tell it. Jameson and Baker have a fascinating chemistry with Leela sometimes being the more pragmatic of the two and sometimes being the learner. The story also is another great example of how good Baker could be in the role of the Doctor when he gets to balance the Doctor's manic humor alongside some moments of true horror. Take, for instance, the moment when he quickly tells the assembled clutch of trapped humans that they are trapped on the island and there is an alien entity hunting them and they are all quite likely going to die and then grins as though he's told the most amusing joke. That contrasts beautifully with the moment at the end of the third part in which the Doctor turns to Leela and whispers in horror that he has made a terrible mistake and locked the creature in with them!

In the end, if you love atmosphere, gothic horror, quirky humor and lightning quick dialogue then "The Horror of Fang Rock" is a story for you.

Trivia: There is a bit of wildly unscientific science at the end of the story when an explosion seems to cause "pigment dispersion" in Leela's eyes and they change color from brown to blue. In reality this was part of Louise Jameson's agreement to return for another season as Leela. Originally, as her character was supposed to be a "savage" she had to be covered in body make-up to give her skin a sun-browned hue and she had to wear red-tinted contact lenses to turn her blue eyes brown. She eventually managed to talk producer Philip Hinchcliffe into dropping the body make-up which she found uncomfortable and time consuming to have have applied (one could argue that she would lose the 'tan' after traveling around for a while). She had intended to leave the series after only one turn as a companion but producer Graham Williams did not want to lose her and managed to talk her into staying for one more season. A condition of her agreement, however, was that she be allowed to ditch the uncomfortable contact lenses. As such Terrance Dicks was ordered to come up with something in the script to explain the change in Leela's eye color.

At one point Leela uses the word "Teshnician". Some have claimed this was a goof on actress Jameson's part but in actuality it was not. In Leela's savage society certain words had been corrupted over the years. The original "Survey Team" became "Sevateem" and "Technician" became "Teshnician". Terrance Dicks scripted the word to remind the audience of Leela's background.

Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Doctor Who (So You Never Bothered to Ask), Pt. 2

Who's Your Doctor Now?



The production team for Doctor Who had a difficult task ahead in trying to decide first of all who to cast as the new Doctor and second of all how to explain away the change!

Producer Innes Lloyd drew up a short list of actors to consider for the role but in the end veteran character actor Patrick Troughton was approached. Troughton agreed after some consideration and on the condition that he not be asked to play the role in Hartnell's style... something he felt would be a disservice to the fine actor he considered Hartnell to be. The request was granted.

Troughton spent quite a bit of time trying to decide how he wanted to play the role. Some of his initial ideas were shaped by the fact that, at the time, the script writers were considering using the Doctor's "renewal" as a way of changing the Doctor's personality again. There was an outline for the idea that the Doctor had actually been in a galactic war and his side had lost. An exile and a fugitive from those who had won the war, the idea was that the renewal process would be like a "bad acid trip", bringing to the surface all of the Doctor's ad, old memories of the war and resulting in a man who was darker and more haunted by his past. Along those lines Troughton proposed some darker interpretations... including one idea he proposed that he dress rather like a pirate with a gold earring and a scar on his face.

Eventually, the idea of darkening the Doctor was dropped and Troughton decided to simply play the Doctor as an eccentric, slightly shabby fellow with baggy pants. In the years since fans have dubbed his version of the Doctor "the Cosmic Hobo".

In order to help the audience over the change Innes Lloyd decided to keep on Michael Craze and Anneke Wills who were playing companions Ben Jackson and Polly. There was, however, still the question of how to handle the change.

In what was probably a stroke of genius the decision was made to simply to not really explain it at all. By this time the Doctor had pretty much been defined as an alien (although his race of "Time Lords" and his home planet of Gallifrey would not be mentioned for several years yet) and so the Doctor explains away his change as a "renewal" and indicates it is little different than a caterpillar entering a cocoon and emerging as a butterfly.

The companions, meant to be echoing the audience, are at first a bit mistrusting of this man (although they saw him change before their very eyes) but eventually come to trust him... as does the audience. It does not hurt that the writers also mostly treated the whole thing as 'business as usual' and threw the Doctor right into the midst of an adventure right away. The tradition of having the Doctor be a bit out of it for a while after a regeneration would not start until the Third Doctor came into being.

Also to bolster Troughton's first outing as the Doctor the writers decided to bring in the Daleks. Still widly popular, an appearance by the Daleks would almost certainly get audiences to watch no matter their uncertainty about the change and hopefully by the end of the story they would have settled into accepting Troughton in the role.

Indeed, the gamble paid off and Doctor Who remained popular. So in 1966 it was official as the entire original cast had now left the series and a tradition of change had been settled into place. It would be this tradition of change which would allow the show to continue for decades.

For the three years of Troughton's tenure the show would remain remarkably stable.

With only the second story in the production team added a new companion. Actor Frazer Hines had been acting since a child and, at 22, he was already a known character actor and had actually worked with Troughton a few years before. With a Scottish mother and an English father Hines was known for his ability to credibly do other accents including Scottish and Welsh. As such he was signed on to play one of the primary supporting characters in "The Highlanders" -- the last of the true historical stories to ever be done. As the character of Jamie McCrimmon, Hines was originally supposed to help the Doctor and his companions in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden and then say his goodbyes. The production team, though, liking Hines's work on the story and his interaction with Troughton asked if he wanted to stay on. When Hines unequivocally said "yes" they quickly wrote him into the show -- which caused some major and uncomfortable re-writes to already finished scripts without his character in them.

Toward the end of the 1966-1967 season though the production team felt the series needed a shake-up. Also thinking that the TARDIS team had too many companions it was decided to keep Frazer Hines on and buy out the remainder of Michael Craze and Anneke Wills's contracts. As such "The Faceless Ones" became their last story and, much to both actors' dismay their characters are captured by aliens in the second installment of the six part story and do not appear again until the very end where, released from their imprisonment and finding themselves back on the very day they originally left with the First Doctor, they decide to remain. After a quick good-bye, Craze and Wills' characters were swept off.

To replace the two characters the production team decided to introduce one new female companion... Victoria Waterfield, who hailed from the Victorian era. Interestingly, this would mark the only time in Doctor Who history when the Doctor traveled with two companions from the past. Victoria, played by young actress Deborah Watling, fit very much into the traditional female companion role of playing DiD and screaming a lot. Like a great many actresses before and after her, Watling would eventually find the lack of character development stifling and chose to leave the series after only a year.

To replace Victoria the writers chose to go in the opposite direction. Once again, the show picked up a character who came from the future. In this case the genius intellect Zoe Herriot played by Wendy Padbury. Padbury reaped the benefits of a change in attitude by this point in the series. While she occasionally played DiD she was far more often a template for the more modern female companion to come. Her character of Zoe was smart, capable, relatively fearless most of the time, and saved the day on more than one occasion.

Only going through three companions in three years was quite a record for the time considering that Hartnell's tenure burned through six companions in three years. Part of this was the fact that Troughton took a very mentorly role toward his younger co-stars and kept the mood on the set light for the most part. This led to a very "family" atmosphere off screen by all accounts. In the end, though, this is what ended the Troughton tenure as well.

After three years Troughton began to fear that if he stayed too long in the role he would be typecast. In addition to this he apparently was reciving pressure from his agent and his wife at the time to do something with more weight than the 'kiddie drama' that Doctor Who was still classified as. At the same time Frazer Hines was getting pressure from his agent to leave the show and do something different as well. Learning that Troughton had decided to leave at the end of the season Hines decided to time his leave-taking to Troughton's. As with the change over from Hartnell to Troughton, the production team hoped to keep at least one companion character on to help with the transition to the third actor who would take on the role of the Doctor. They tried to talk Wendy Padbury into staying on but the family atmosphere that had been engendered under Troughton made her decide that it would be too odd and uncomfortable to continue on without him and Hines and so she opted to leave as well.

Along the way, ratings had slipped somewhat during Troughton's tenure although the numbers were still quite respectable. Worrying that the show was becoming stale, the production team decided that a change of direction was needed and felt that the Doctor should become more "relatable". Additionally, the BBC was pressuring the show to cut it's budget and bring in the episodes at less cost. As a result the decision was made to change the look and the feel of the next round of stories.

For the first time the show was facing a whole new round of firsts -- a change over to a new Doctor with absolutely no cast members overlapping, a change in direction and style and, perhaps most of all... the Doctor would be broadcast in color for the first time.....

To Be Continued.....