Wow. I think this episode may contain the single worst scene in Doctor Who history.
When Susan makes the somewhat reckless decision to entrust herself to the Sensorites, the Doctor and Ian and Barbara go after her. Does the Doctor try to convince her to discuss the issue rationally instead of making a unilateral decision? Does he express his concern for her safety? Does he buggery. The Doctor treats her like a cranky toddler who needs a time out, shouting at her in a horribly condescending and patronizing fashion. Honestly, it feels like the only reason he stops shy of spanking her and making her stand in the corner is that Susan folds so quickly on the one independent decision she's made since the start of the series that it makes you feel like she's been browbeaten to the point where she's afraid to make choices of her own. Anyone who thinks the Doctor is an arrogant, rude, sexist git to his companions in the new series needs to watch this scene, so at least they'll know he's mellowed some.
Other than that, this episode is surprisingly good. I mean, it pretty much does mark the end of any kind of menace the Sensorites have...once the Doctor defeats an enemy by turning down the lights and collecting the weapons they dropped in sheer blind panic over being in the darkness, you have to admit that they're probably never going to reach "iconic monster" status. But it's also where they start being treated like actual characters, which is a vast improvement and something Doctor Who has never really done often enough. Non-human aliens usually get relegated to "spooky spooky scary scary" status, but here the Sensorites are given a government, a society, and even some political intrigue to deal with.
And the political intrigue is actually intriguing. You have the First Elder, who wants to open up his society to outsiders; you have the Second Elder, who's doubtful about the idea but who's willing to work within the system to express those doubts. And you have the City Administrator, who's a straight-up xenophobe willing to undermine his own leader and the underlying structure of his society to "preserve" it from the alien freaks, and who's recruiting others to his cause. That's some pretty decent depth for a show that usually depicts alien cultures as "despotic tyrants" and "heroic rebels". Oh, and there's a plague going on that's been stymieing their efforts to cure it and decimating their citizenry. (And which doesn't strike the Elders, which may go some way to explaining why the City Administrator's not feeling too charitable towards them.) Admittedly, "mysterious plague" tends to come fitted as standard in Doctor Who stories, but still, it's some welcome complexity in a story that's been struggling to fill its six parts.
Oh, and Stephen Dartnell continues to impress as John, and Ilona Rogers gets in a good scene as Carol, and we're finally rid of Maitland and his plywood performance. Yes, this is picking up nicely even before Ian collapses at the episode's end. Doesn't mean I don't want to give the Doctor a good slap, but I still think they're finally hitting some kind of stride.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Thursday, March 5, 2015
The Unwilling Warriors
The frustrating thing about this story is that it almost, almost works. There are so many good ideas that just need a tiny bit of tweaking on one level or another to turn this into one of the classic "base under siege" stories. The Sensorites work brilliantly as an enemy, conceptually; they're telepathic monsters that feed on your emotions to control you, picking off the crew one by one by turning the enthralled crew members into weapons to terrify the others into submission. That's brilliant, but the script never properly exploits the sense of terror and paranoia the idea evokes--John, the crew member whose mind has been shattered by fear and guilt, has some wonderful moments as he tries to resist harming the others, but it's only an isolated minute or two in a script that's otherwise fairly tension-light.
The script also needs a larger cast for that concept to work--they need to have paranoia, tension, something to work against the Doctor's attempts to calm them down and get them to work together. No only are there not enough people for that, but Lorne Cossette and Ilona Rogers as Maitland and Carol play their parts so flat that you don't buy them as being terrified into submission, or even controlled, or...okay, I'll admit it, I don't know what they were going for, but they failed at it. It may be the direction that's to blame, though...Pinfield doesn't get good performances out of the regulars, either. Hartnell comes off as pompous and belligerent, and Ian and Barbara wind up just sort of flapping around the edges of the plot. (Although the script doesn't give them much to do, either.) The only person who should feel happy this week is Carole Ann Ford, who finally gets something to do as the one person who can communicate with the Sensorites on their level.
And the Sensorites, well...look, from the neck up, they're great. They have these crenelated, elongated heads with weird, wispy hair that makes them look ancient and arrogant and wise and strange...
And then from the neck down, they're wearing footie pajamas. There's just no getting around it--there is no way to make any monster scary when they're wearing footie pajamas. Just try to imagine it in your head, the Weeping Angels or the Krillitanes in footie pajamas. Reduces the menace factor pretty heavily, doesn't it? Couple that with the fact that they're apparently scared of the dark and flinch at loud noises, and it not only kills most of the drama of the slow-motion "chase" through the spaceship (and it's about here that I feel the need to mention that the spaceship's design scheme looks a little too much like brickwork to be convincing) but it makes Susan's decision to let herself be taken hostage, which should be a dramatic game-changer, look foolish. "If I don't, they'll kill you all, Grandfather! That is, unless you make a loud noise or dim the lights a bit. Then they'll have to leg it with their ludicrous feet."
Ultimately, a big part of the problem is that the script is trying to introduce a number of concepts that its audience doesn't have the cultural vocabulary to understand yet. Later Doctor Who stories would be able to take it as read that the viewers would know what telepathy is and how it works, as well as being able to drop things like "molybdenum" into the scripts without a pause for a brief metallurgy lesson. So much of the script is spent just getting across concepts that later generations would immediately understood that they can't properly set up the real conflict, let alone the twist that the Sensorites are more desperate than evil. In that respect, it's almost unfair to judge this episode by modern standards, since most modern Doctor Who can pace itself faster and do more with the same ideas precisely because of stories like this doing the heavy lifting in terms of explaining the concepts to fans. Which means we're back to the same conclusion as last episode--everything done here will be done better later, but that's a mark of this story's influence as much as its flaws.
The script also needs a larger cast for that concept to work--they need to have paranoia, tension, something to work against the Doctor's attempts to calm them down and get them to work together. No only are there not enough people for that, but Lorne Cossette and Ilona Rogers as Maitland and Carol play their parts so flat that you don't buy them as being terrified into submission, or even controlled, or...okay, I'll admit it, I don't know what they were going for, but they failed at it. It may be the direction that's to blame, though...Pinfield doesn't get good performances out of the regulars, either. Hartnell comes off as pompous and belligerent, and Ian and Barbara wind up just sort of flapping around the edges of the plot. (Although the script doesn't give them much to do, either.) The only person who should feel happy this week is Carole Ann Ford, who finally gets something to do as the one person who can communicate with the Sensorites on their level.
And the Sensorites, well...look, from the neck up, they're great. They have these crenelated, elongated heads with weird, wispy hair that makes them look ancient and arrogant and wise and strange...
And then from the neck down, they're wearing footie pajamas. There's just no getting around it--there is no way to make any monster scary when they're wearing footie pajamas. Just try to imagine it in your head, the Weeping Angels or the Krillitanes in footie pajamas. Reduces the menace factor pretty heavily, doesn't it? Couple that with the fact that they're apparently scared of the dark and flinch at loud noises, and it not only kills most of the drama of the slow-motion "chase" through the spaceship (and it's about here that I feel the need to mention that the spaceship's design scheme looks a little too much like brickwork to be convincing) but it makes Susan's decision to let herself be taken hostage, which should be a dramatic game-changer, look foolish. "If I don't, they'll kill you all, Grandfather! That is, unless you make a loud noise or dim the lights a bit. Then they'll have to leg it with their ludicrous feet."
Ultimately, a big part of the problem is that the script is trying to introduce a number of concepts that its audience doesn't have the cultural vocabulary to understand yet. Later Doctor Who stories would be able to take it as read that the viewers would know what telepathy is and how it works, as well as being able to drop things like "molybdenum" into the scripts without a pause for a brief metallurgy lesson. So much of the script is spent just getting across concepts that later generations would immediately understood that they can't properly set up the real conflict, let alone the twist that the Sensorites are more desperate than evil. In that respect, it's almost unfair to judge this episode by modern standards, since most modern Doctor Who can pace itself faster and do more with the same ideas precisely because of stories like this doing the heavy lifting in terms of explaining the concepts to fans. Which means we're back to the same conclusion as last episode--everything done here will be done better later, but that's a mark of this story's influence as much as its flaws.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Strangers in Space
The opening of "Strangers in Space" (at least, the opening once you get past the adorably awkward scene where the cast recaps all their previous adventures) is really one of the purest examples ever of what Doctor Who does. The Doctor and his companions land in an eerie, deserted, mysterious environment and are immediately presented with a puzzle...and with death. There's always more to things than immediately meet the eye, they frequently find traumatized survivors who provide cryptic clues to the mystery...and almost always, they quickly find that they couldn't leave even if they wanted to.
But at the same time, the very fact that this is the first version of such a perfectly-structured opening means that there's a lot of room for improvement. Maitland and Carol are both strangely detached in their reactions; they don't seem even slightly surprised at a bunch of time-traveling strangers suddenly piling into their control room, and they seem more irritated than terrified by being held prisoner by mind-controlling aliens. It could be that this was an intentional decision on the part of the production team, some sort of side-effect of the mind control, but the TARDIS crew doesn't seem to react to their unusual reactions. Plus, they're acting a bit out of character as well, particularly when the Doctor says no less than three times that there's nothing he can do and they should leave. (Although there is, as a counter-point, the adorable line, "There's not an ounce of curiosity in me. Now, young man, what seems to be happening here?") The net effect is confusing more than tense; you feel like you must have missed a scene somewhere.
Still, the episode is conceptually impressive. It's easy to get sucked into the atmosphere; creepy, mysterious, powerful aliens that can affect not just the protagonists' perceptions but the TARDIS itself have trapped everyone in an endless cycle of artificially induced fear, panic and near-death for unknown purposes. One crew member has already had his mind shattered by the endless torture and wanders the halls like the walking dead (or, to more accurately describe his appearance, like the Walken dead...seriously, if David Tennant and Christopher Walken had a love child, it'd look like Stephen Dartnell, the actor who plays John). This is really creepy and unsettling stuff, and it's no surprise that the series returns to these themes again and again over the ensuing decades.
It's also nice, as an aside, to see mental illness portrayed with a little sensitivity. For all that Carol and Maitland are concerned that John will harm others in his traumatized state, he's really more threatened than threat. Most people with mental illnesses are not violent or dangerous, and it's nice to see Barbara reaching out to help him once she gets over her initial fright. It's a welcome piece of empathy that doesn't diminish the atmosphere of the story.
The main thing that diminishes the atmosphere, sad to say, is the clunky dialogue and overly-mannered performances of the guest cast, along with a shaky performance by Hartnell. This is one of the first times you can really see him struggle with his lines--not just in a few infamous "Billy fluffs", but in a general reading of his lines that suggests he's working hard just to remember them. It's sad, even if at this stage it's more due to the rigors of the production schedule than the health problems that would eventually force him off the series.
At the end, of course, we see the aliens in the flesh. It's a nice reveal, nicer than people give it credit for--the Sensorites won't look so interesting when they're wandering around and chatting amiably, but the lighting and camerawork in this scene makes them look oddly skeletal and menacing. The tone may be off and the menace may not last, but "Strangers in Space" is definitely an important influence on stories yet to be.
But at the same time, the very fact that this is the first version of such a perfectly-structured opening means that there's a lot of room for improvement. Maitland and Carol are both strangely detached in their reactions; they don't seem even slightly surprised at a bunch of time-traveling strangers suddenly piling into their control room, and they seem more irritated than terrified by being held prisoner by mind-controlling aliens. It could be that this was an intentional decision on the part of the production team, some sort of side-effect of the mind control, but the TARDIS crew doesn't seem to react to their unusual reactions. Plus, they're acting a bit out of character as well, particularly when the Doctor says no less than three times that there's nothing he can do and they should leave. (Although there is, as a counter-point, the adorable line, "There's not an ounce of curiosity in me. Now, young man, what seems to be happening here?") The net effect is confusing more than tense; you feel like you must have missed a scene somewhere.
Still, the episode is conceptually impressive. It's easy to get sucked into the atmosphere; creepy, mysterious, powerful aliens that can affect not just the protagonists' perceptions but the TARDIS itself have trapped everyone in an endless cycle of artificially induced fear, panic and near-death for unknown purposes. One crew member has already had his mind shattered by the endless torture and wanders the halls like the walking dead (or, to more accurately describe his appearance, like the Walken dead...seriously, if David Tennant and Christopher Walken had a love child, it'd look like Stephen Dartnell, the actor who plays John). This is really creepy and unsettling stuff, and it's no surprise that the series returns to these themes again and again over the ensuing decades.
It's also nice, as an aside, to see mental illness portrayed with a little sensitivity. For all that Carol and Maitland are concerned that John will harm others in his traumatized state, he's really more threatened than threat. Most people with mental illnesses are not violent or dangerous, and it's nice to see Barbara reaching out to help him once she gets over her initial fright. It's a welcome piece of empathy that doesn't diminish the atmosphere of the story.
The main thing that diminishes the atmosphere, sad to say, is the clunky dialogue and overly-mannered performances of the guest cast, along with a shaky performance by Hartnell. This is one of the first times you can really see him struggle with his lines--not just in a few infamous "Billy fluffs", but in a general reading of his lines that suggests he's working hard just to remember them. It's sad, even if at this stage it's more due to the rigors of the production schedule than the health problems that would eventually force him off the series.
At the end, of course, we see the aliens in the flesh. It's a nice reveal, nicer than people give it credit for--the Sensorites won't look so interesting when they're wandering around and chatting amiably, but the lighting and camerawork in this scene makes them look oddly skeletal and menacing. The tone may be off and the menace may not last, but "Strangers in Space" is definitely an important influence on stories yet to be.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
The Day of Darkness
Everyone talks a lot about how Autloc's faith is destroyed in this story, but I think it's interesting to look at the depths Tlotoxl is driven to in "The Day of Darkness". He started the story as a keeper of the faith and defender of the Aztec way of life--if you don't mind me getting culturally relativist for a moment and pretending that a society built on imperialism and the brutal sacrifice of one's enemies to appease a bloodthirsty god isn't messed up. The point is, he is meant to represent a true believer in the Aztec society's code, and his objection to Barbara is that she's a con artist trying to lure them into heresy and the abandonment of their gods.
But in his desperation to drive Barbara and everything she represents out of his society, he's driven by this episode to manipulate the leader of the Aztec warriors into braining a high priest from behind. Barbara's schemes have driven to become the very thing he's terrified of, and the brilliance of his final scenes is that he knows it. His spitting, snarled epithet of "Let her go!" is the choked frustration of a man who feels defeated even in victory, and there's something forced about his invocation of sacrifice that belies the scene's attempts to convince us that he's won.
Everyone's desperate in this episode; after a brief moment of false hope, when Ian rigs the door at the beginning, there's a very real sense for much of the rest of the episode that the Aztec civilization is slowly closing a trap on them. Ian and Susan are framed for assault, Barbara's about to be entombed alive, and the Doctor...even though his fate seems like it's to be more pleasant than most, he's nonetheless trapped in this culture's ethos and ideals. Obviously, the trap is evaded, but the episode functions perfectly as a climax to the story. Having chosen to join the Aztec society in order to transform it, Barbara discovers almost too late that the role she's chosen is a prison without bars.
They do escape, of course, but not before Ian and Ixta have their final battle. This is a little bit of a strange note to strike; Ian is, after all, a maths teacher by trade. His scenes leading up to the battle, where he seems to be almost eager to have things out with Ixta once and for all, are surprisingly stone-cold and tinged with machismo. And yet, this is as much a watershed moment for Ian as last episode's confrontation with Tlotoxl was for Barbara. The two schoolteachers are coming around to the idea that this isn't Earth, and that they'll have to be very different people in order to survive their travels with the TARDIS. This story has left its mark on them, even if they didn't make a mark on history. That's the reason why the historicals always worked so well, even though they could "never affect things"...they could be affected, which is always the far more interesting outcome anyway.
But in his desperation to drive Barbara and everything she represents out of his society, he's driven by this episode to manipulate the leader of the Aztec warriors into braining a high priest from behind. Barbara's schemes have driven to become the very thing he's terrified of, and the brilliance of his final scenes is that he knows it. His spitting, snarled epithet of "Let her go!" is the choked frustration of a man who feels defeated even in victory, and there's something forced about his invocation of sacrifice that belies the scene's attempts to convince us that he's won.
Everyone's desperate in this episode; after a brief moment of false hope, when Ian rigs the door at the beginning, there's a very real sense for much of the rest of the episode that the Aztec civilization is slowly closing a trap on them. Ian and Susan are framed for assault, Barbara's about to be entombed alive, and the Doctor...even though his fate seems like it's to be more pleasant than most, he's nonetheless trapped in this culture's ethos and ideals. Obviously, the trap is evaded, but the episode functions perfectly as a climax to the story. Having chosen to join the Aztec society in order to transform it, Barbara discovers almost too late that the role she's chosen is a prison without bars.
They do escape, of course, but not before Ian and Ixta have their final battle. This is a little bit of a strange note to strike; Ian is, after all, a maths teacher by trade. His scenes leading up to the battle, where he seems to be almost eager to have things out with Ixta once and for all, are surprisingly stone-cold and tinged with machismo. And yet, this is as much a watershed moment for Ian as last episode's confrontation with Tlotoxl was for Barbara. The two schoolteachers are coming around to the idea that this isn't Earth, and that they'll have to be very different people in order to survive their travels with the TARDIS. This story has left its mark on them, even if they didn't make a mark on history. That's the reason why the historicals always worked so well, even though they could "never affect things"...they could be affected, which is always the far more interesting outcome anyway.
The Bride of Sacrifice
So this is the one where Barbara the history teacher just straight up threatens to slit a man's throat within the first thirty seconds.
The thing is, Jacqueline Hill plays the scene absolutely straight. There's not a hint in her voice or her expression that she's bluffing, or that she's frightened or nervous about the act. This is really a watershed moment for Barbara, a point where she realizes that if she's going to play a game this dangerous then she has to be willing to be dangerous herself. When you watch Barbara in that scene, there is absolutely no doubt in your mind that she will leave Tlotoxl bleeding out on the flagstones if she has to. It's no wonder the man backs down.
That's just the opening scene, too. This is an episode that really specializes is racheting up the tension on every level. Each scene raises the stakes in its own way. Ixta makes it clear that he has every intention of murdering Ian in cold blood (while, in a series of events that are both bizarrely chilling and hilarious, insisting that this shouldn't affect their friendship). Tlotoxl moves directly to his next plan, convincing Tonilla to help him murder Barbara with poison. Barbara in turn foils that gambit, and plays her own counter--she tells Tlotoxl directly that she's not a goddess, and dares him to denounce her openly. Each move and counter-move draws Barbara more deeply into events, forcing her to put more and more at risk.
Then of course there's the Doctor. Much has been made of his scenes with Cameca--how much did he understand of the cocoa bean ceremony? How much of his feeling for her is genuine, and how much is him playing her along to learn the secrets Ixta's father may have told her? To his credit, Hartnell doesn't play it in a way that makes any reading obvious. He understands that there's value in suggesting both sides; it prevents the character from seeming unsympathetic or foolish. (Although the near-spit take he does while drinking his marriage proposal is great.)
It takes Ian, in the end, to confront Barbara with the truth she's been avoiding, the blunt fact that human sacrifice is a way of life for the Aztecs and not just a superstition. It's not just because he's human and the Doctor is a pompous and arrogant Time Lord (yes, yes, I know, they're not called that yet). It's because he's been out there among the people. He's seen who they are, the bad as well as the good, and understands that Barbara's view of them as clay to be molded into "civilized" people is patronizing and false. His own speech about Autloc being "the civilized one" isn't without its own prejudice, but at least he understands that they're not children who need the guidance of a Great White Mother; they have a way of life, and they don't plan on changing it any other way except through force. When he breaks through Barbara's conviction, she finally understands just how much danger they're in and how entangled in events they really are.
But Susan doesn't. She still sees herself as fundamentally apart from the Aztecs, a visitor and not a part of their society. She thinks she can take and leave their customs, learn their religion and not have to follow it. She still thinks of herself as...well, maybe not a Time Lord specifically, but at the very least an alien. It's no wonder Tlotoxl chose her to spring his next trap. Compared to the choice presented to Barbara at the end--will she see her deception through all the way to allowing Susan to be maimed and tortured?--Ian's "death by flooding" predicament that forms this week's cliffhanger seems relatively minor. Presenting both back-to-back, though, leaves the story wound up to breaking point.
The thing is, Jacqueline Hill plays the scene absolutely straight. There's not a hint in her voice or her expression that she's bluffing, or that she's frightened or nervous about the act. This is really a watershed moment for Barbara, a point where she realizes that if she's going to play a game this dangerous then she has to be willing to be dangerous herself. When you watch Barbara in that scene, there is absolutely no doubt in your mind that she will leave Tlotoxl bleeding out on the flagstones if she has to. It's no wonder the man backs down.
That's just the opening scene, too. This is an episode that really specializes is racheting up the tension on every level. Each scene raises the stakes in its own way. Ixta makes it clear that he has every intention of murdering Ian in cold blood (while, in a series of events that are both bizarrely chilling and hilarious, insisting that this shouldn't affect their friendship). Tlotoxl moves directly to his next plan, convincing Tonilla to help him murder Barbara with poison. Barbara in turn foils that gambit, and plays her own counter--she tells Tlotoxl directly that she's not a goddess, and dares him to denounce her openly. Each move and counter-move draws Barbara more deeply into events, forcing her to put more and more at risk.
Then of course there's the Doctor. Much has been made of his scenes with Cameca--how much did he understand of the cocoa bean ceremony? How much of his feeling for her is genuine, and how much is him playing her along to learn the secrets Ixta's father may have told her? To his credit, Hartnell doesn't play it in a way that makes any reading obvious. He understands that there's value in suggesting both sides; it prevents the character from seeming unsympathetic or foolish. (Although the near-spit take he does while drinking his marriage proposal is great.)
It takes Ian, in the end, to confront Barbara with the truth she's been avoiding, the blunt fact that human sacrifice is a way of life for the Aztecs and not just a superstition. It's not just because he's human and the Doctor is a pompous and arrogant Time Lord (yes, yes, I know, they're not called that yet). It's because he's been out there among the people. He's seen who they are, the bad as well as the good, and understands that Barbara's view of them as clay to be molded into "civilized" people is patronizing and false. His own speech about Autloc being "the civilized one" isn't without its own prejudice, but at least he understands that they're not children who need the guidance of a Great White Mother; they have a way of life, and they don't plan on changing it any other way except through force. When he breaks through Barbara's conviction, she finally understands just how much danger they're in and how entangled in events they really are.
But Susan doesn't. She still sees herself as fundamentally apart from the Aztecs, a visitor and not a part of their society. She thinks she can take and leave their customs, learn their religion and not have to follow it. She still thinks of herself as...well, maybe not a Time Lord specifically, but at the very least an alien. It's no wonder Tlotoxl chose her to spring his next trap. Compared to the choice presented to Barbara at the end--will she see her deception through all the way to allowing Susan to be maimed and tortured?--Ian's "death by flooding" predicament that forms this week's cliffhanger seems relatively minor. Presenting both back-to-back, though, leaves the story wound up to breaking point.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Review: Doctor Who: The Scripts - The Masters of Luxor
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how to review 'The Masters of Luxor'. I mean, this is basically a discussion of a historical curiosity, a first draft of a script that wasn't deemed good enough to warrant a second draft, made for a production whose style of drama is now sitting comfortably at fifty-one years out of date. Is it even worth it to discuss the quality here? Does it even make sense to try?
In case the answer is "yes", I can say that 'The Masters of Luxor' as published isn't very good. There's a lot of random conjecture that turns out to be absolutely right for no reason beyond the writer having no real mechanism to deliver exposition about the dead, silent city and its robotic inhabitants. There's not much action over the six episodes, there's a lot of discussion about religion that seems weird and out of place as well as slow and talky, and the Perfect One is simply not very exciting as an adversary. There's some nice atmosphere at points, but it's really nothing that the city in 'The Daleks' didn't do better. Oh, and although the dialogue would certainly have been rewritten further in later drafts (and was rewritten for the script book already, according to the afterword) it still sounds clunky and not particularly like any of the regulars. Basically, it's not hard to see how they went a different direction after this.
But again, the quality isn't necessarily what we look at with this one. It's interesting to read it not because it's good, but because it demonstrates the thought processes of the people working on the series at the time. They knew they wanted to contrast the first "science fiction" episode of the series with the "historical" they'd already done, and their mental focus was obviously on the potential for sterility and inhumanity inherent in science. The unseen Masters of Luxor had gone down a path of eugenics, which wasn't (yet) a component of the Daleks' evil, but both of them shared the notion of a world where science gone mad had led to a world on the brink of death, and a city that was a scientific paradise with nobody left to live in it.
The discarded humanity is personified in both stories; in 'The Daleks', it's the Thals who skulk outside of the abandoned city, scarred by memories of a century-old war. In 'The Masters of Luxor', it's Tabon, who abandoned himself to exile and suspended animation rather than face the consequences of his experimentation. The Thals, of course, are just as responsible for the Daleks (in the original story, at least) as Tabon was for the Perfect One, but their ancestors' aggression and violence is downplayed to the point where the act of resuming the war against their old enemies is seen as a positive act and not a resumption of a campaign of genocide. Perhaps the production team weren't quite ready for Tabon's guilt, or perhaps they simply wanted more sympathetic characters? It's hard to sympathize with anyone outside of the regular cast in 'The Masters of Luxor', and Tabon's self-sacrifice seems more to be his just desserts than a tragic comeuppance.
Or honestly, it could have just been practical concerns. There are a lot of freaking robot costumes in this one, far more than the number of Daleks that appear on-screen. The TARDIS flies, something it did rarely in the Classic Series, and of course the story ends with the entire city exploding. It might very well have been judged unworkable in light of their budgetary concerns. (At the very least, 'The Daleks' stretched out the sets and costumes over an extra episode.)
Ultimately, we may never know exactly what caused this script to be rejected in favor of Nation's story, but I think we can answer one question. In the introduction, John McElroy asks, "In a universe of infinite possibilities, there are of course worlds in which [Masters] was the second story--I wonder if Doctor Who is still running there?" Based on this script, I'm guessing not.
In case the answer is "yes", I can say that 'The Masters of Luxor' as published isn't very good. There's a lot of random conjecture that turns out to be absolutely right for no reason beyond the writer having no real mechanism to deliver exposition about the dead, silent city and its robotic inhabitants. There's not much action over the six episodes, there's a lot of discussion about religion that seems weird and out of place as well as slow and talky, and the Perfect One is simply not very exciting as an adversary. There's some nice atmosphere at points, but it's really nothing that the city in 'The Daleks' didn't do better. Oh, and although the dialogue would certainly have been rewritten further in later drafts (and was rewritten for the script book already, according to the afterword) it still sounds clunky and not particularly like any of the regulars. Basically, it's not hard to see how they went a different direction after this.
But again, the quality isn't necessarily what we look at with this one. It's interesting to read it not because it's good, but because it demonstrates the thought processes of the people working on the series at the time. They knew they wanted to contrast the first "science fiction" episode of the series with the "historical" they'd already done, and their mental focus was obviously on the potential for sterility and inhumanity inherent in science. The unseen Masters of Luxor had gone down a path of eugenics, which wasn't (yet) a component of the Daleks' evil, but both of them shared the notion of a world where science gone mad had led to a world on the brink of death, and a city that was a scientific paradise with nobody left to live in it.
The discarded humanity is personified in both stories; in 'The Daleks', it's the Thals who skulk outside of the abandoned city, scarred by memories of a century-old war. In 'The Masters of Luxor', it's Tabon, who abandoned himself to exile and suspended animation rather than face the consequences of his experimentation. The Thals, of course, are just as responsible for the Daleks (in the original story, at least) as Tabon was for the Perfect One, but their ancestors' aggression and violence is downplayed to the point where the act of resuming the war against their old enemies is seen as a positive act and not a resumption of a campaign of genocide. Perhaps the production team weren't quite ready for Tabon's guilt, or perhaps they simply wanted more sympathetic characters? It's hard to sympathize with anyone outside of the regular cast in 'The Masters of Luxor', and Tabon's self-sacrifice seems more to be his just desserts than a tragic comeuppance.
Or honestly, it could have just been practical concerns. There are a lot of freaking robot costumes in this one, far more than the number of Daleks that appear on-screen. The TARDIS flies, something it did rarely in the Classic Series, and of course the story ends with the entire city exploding. It might very well have been judged unworkable in light of their budgetary concerns. (At the very least, 'The Daleks' stretched out the sets and costumes over an extra episode.)
Ultimately, we may never know exactly what caused this script to be rejected in favor of Nation's story, but I think we can answer one question. In the introduction, John McElroy asks, "In a universe of infinite possibilities, there are of course worlds in which [Masters] was the second story--I wonder if Doctor Who is still running there?" Based on this script, I'm guessing not.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Review: 12 Stories, 12 Doctors
I finally managed to get hold of a copy of the 50th anniversary novella collection, '12 Stories, 12 Doctors' (yes, I got what I'm calling the "Fuck You, Everyone Who Bought a Previous Edition" Edition) and I have to say, on the whole I was immensely satisfied. There were a few flaws--I'll get into them more as they crop up in specific stories, but they all seem to stem from a problem I'll call "Famous Writer, First-Time Who Writer Syndrome". It's what happens when someone who is an extremely talented writer decides to jump into the Doctor Who pool with what they think is a fantastically clever and original idea, all without being aware that it's already been done six times in five decades from every conceivable angle. The result doesn't feel as innovative as they no doubt hope for.
Nonetheless, this is an incredibly impressive collection of talent turning their collective hand to Doctor Who, and I think the results speak for themselves. Even so, I'm going to add my two cents. As follows...
1) "A Big Hand for the Doctor" by Eoin Colfer. This is a story that, depending on how you look at it, either "gets everything wrong" or "takes advantage of the wider scope available to a story that isn't written in 1963 for production in Lime Grove Studios with William Hartnell to do exciting and interesting things that simply weren't possible at the time, but that expand the conceptual space of the First Doctor". (Guess which side I'm on.) This is a fun story, albeit one that isn't attempting to slavishly recreate the Hartnell era, and it has an impish charm to the way it reinterprets canon without ever actually rewriting it. The coda is a bit twee--Colfer's FWFTWWS manifests here by having a Famous Author witness the events of the story and turn them into fiction, just like Wells and Dickens and Christie and and and...but the coda is short enough that the story doesn't suffer for it.
2) "The Nameless City" by Michael Scott. The Second Doctor and Jamie are manipulated into battle against vaguely Lovecraftian monsters by a thinly-disguised Delgado Master. So basically, here the FWFTWWS is Michael Scott not realizing that he's pastiching every third New or Missing Adventure. (Or maybe he does, and it's all done on purpose. Can't rule that out.) Nonetheless, it's well handled and spooky, with some interesting details that make the Doctor and his TARDIS seem strange and creepy all over again, and a resolution that's fun and clever.
3) "The Spear of Destiny" by Marcus Sedgwick. It wouldn't be a Third Doctor story without the Master showing up to provide the second-act twist, and I certainly won't fault Sedgwick for not being made aware that the previous story also involved the Master. (Especially since as originally published, there was a month-long gap between the two stories.) It certainly doesn't dampen what comes off as a letter-perfect pastiche of the Pertwee era, from the "UNIT family" to the cod-'In Search Of' fixation on weird and spooky legendary pseudo-archaeological artifacts (in this case, the titular Spear) and the sheer confounding Pertwee-ness of Pertwee. He gets that wonderfully frustrating paternalism dead on, and it's charming to watch him work in what feels like a slightly shortened version of a missing episode.
4) "The Roots of Evil" by Philip Reeve. This is definitely one of the highlights of the anthology. The Doctor and Leela get involved in some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey shenanigans involving a future incarnation (the Doctor is justly horrified to find out he will be wearing a bow-tie someday) that has set a lost human colony on a path of undying hatred against him. (One of the characters, "Ven", turns out to have a full name of "Vengeance-Against-The-Doctor-Shall-Someday-Be-Ours". The Doctor responds by admitting that would be a bit of a mouthful, and offering him a jelly baby.) Needless to say, there are horrific secrets at the heart of the colony, gruesome monsters, and witty bon mots dropped casually into the barking mad villain's monologues. It's not just a pastiche, it's a charming and clever story in its own right.
5) "Tip of the Tongue" by Patrick Ness. This is one of the ones that feels most like an actual children's story, perhaps because it focuses mainly on actual children. There's a certain sly understanding of the way that children deal with things that remain unspoken, yet are understood perfectly by all concerned; Nellie, one of the two main characters, is constantly dealing with emotions and realities too big to be spoken out loud. The thematic depth gives a lot of weight and realism to a story that might otherwise feel surreal or silly. The Doctor's barely in it, but I didn't mind that at all, given how well the prose flowed.
6) "Something Borrowed" by Richelle Mead. This was another favorite--telling the story from Peri's perspective gives some dramatic heft to a character that got stuck in the peril monkey role all too often in the series, and the Rani is a good choice of villain for an anniversary celebration. There's some material that's a little bit telegraphed, which is more a factor of the short space the author has to work with, but the whole thing is well-written and fun. (Although I did come away wondering what's going to stop the Rani from going ten miles down the road and doing the same thing all over again...)
7) "The Ripple Effect" by Malorie Blackman. This one, unfortunately, suffered from FWFTWWS big-time. The idea of the Doctor encountering Daleks that don't act like Daleks, and being unable to set aside his fear and hatred of them, is something that's already been done in stories like "Dalek", "Victory of the Daleks", and "Dalek Generation". The idea of the Doctor having to erase a parallel universe that's actually better than ours because of Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Reasons has already been done in "Genocide" and "The Girl Who Waited". And without the space to really develop either idea, it's hard to make this seem like anything other than a retread of things other authors have already done. If she'd had a chance to expand it to novel length, and had to do more than just reiterate these tropes, it might have turned out very special...but as it was, it kind of overstayed its welcome.
8) "Spore" by Alex Scarrow. Weirdly, it's the Eighth Doctor story that goes for the purely Hinchcliffian horror tale...but it does a reasonably effective job, with a space fungus that liquifies everything it touches and converts it into monsters. Perhaps a little too short to be effective--at novella length, the story barely has time to convey the threat before the Doctor resolves it--but it does a good job of what it sets out to achieve. And the pseudo-companion is a soldier who appears to be Asian-American, which is a nice change from the typical white dude/screamy white woman.
9) "The Beast of Babylon" by Charlie Higson. At first, this one seems like it might be going down a road that's a bit too kiddie--the Ninth Doctor teams up with a teenage girl named Ali for an adventure in Ancient Babylon! But just when you start expecting Ali to learn valuable lessons about Olden Times before coming back home, Higson makes clever use of the prose format to reveal a few details about Ali that weren't quite what was expected, turning the story into something of a shocking twist on the pseudo-companion tropes that are common to solo Doctor stories. Far from being FWFTWWS, this one feels like someone cleverly subverting the structure of a Who story in a unique and inventive way.
10) "The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage" by Derek Landy. This author and this Doctor seem made for each other. Landy has his finger perfectly on Tennant's lightning-fast patter, his gift of gab and his brilliant command of every situation (there's a wonderful sequence where the Doctor is challenged to a chess match, and announces that his opponent is so over-matched that there's no need to even play the game). Combine that with some hilarious jokes about children's literature and books in general (as they struggle to escape a world composed of Martha's literary tastes, they pass a scene from 'Twilight' and Martha simply hisses out, "Don't judge me") and you've got a story that brought a huge smile to my face.
11) "Nothing O'Clock" by Neil Gaiman. I don't wish to diminish any of the other authors in this anthology, all of whom are luminaries in their field and are immensely talented. But this is just a quantum leap beyond everything else in the book in terms of quality. It captures the Eleventh Doctor and Amy's voice perfectly. It expands on tiny details of their depictions on television in ways that really make me wish for more Past Doctor Adventures just to get this kind of contextualization on a more regular basis. It has one of the all-time great and creepy monsters in the Kin, which are not only great and creepy but perfectly encapsulate the fairy-tale ethos of the Moffat era without simply pastiching it. It has one of perhaps the best ever "Doctor fucks over the bad guy" moments, which I went back to read about five times (including one time reading the entire story out loud to my wife because it was just that much fun to revel in the prose). And oh by the way it's just awesome. Again, I don't want to suggest that the other stories in this book weren't great, but this is just a level of great that's above other levels of great, because Neil Gaiman is a one-in-a-billion talent and one of the best authors of our time. It is a pastiche, which is something that caused me a moment's pause because I would be interested in a take on Doctor Who that is solely Neil Gaiman's--a producer's take, if you will, instead of a writer's take. But that's merely a quibble that shouldn't stop anyone from picking up a must-read story.
12) "Lights Out" by Holly Black. This was probably a tricky brief, taking the Doctor with the fewest stories and trying to capture his voice. Black does a good job, though, capturing the spiky exterior of the Twelfth Doctor and the depth of feeling it conceals. The story is also in keeping with this Doctor, as well; it's a murder mystery, a character study and a moral dilemma all at once. You can easily see it fitting between 'Deep Breath' and 'Into the Dalek', and not just because that's where the author clearly sets it. A solid conclusion to the anthology, although I can understand being frustrated that Puffin seems to think it's worth sixteen bucks all by itself.
So there you have it. Plenty of good ones, very few weak ones, and one that's an absolute must-read. That's a pretty good record for a Who anthology, and it shows that in good hands, there's still a lot of interesting life to every Doctor. I look forward to another fifty years.
Nonetheless, this is an incredibly impressive collection of talent turning their collective hand to Doctor Who, and I think the results speak for themselves. Even so, I'm going to add my two cents. As follows...
1) "A Big Hand for the Doctor" by Eoin Colfer. This is a story that, depending on how you look at it, either "gets everything wrong" or "takes advantage of the wider scope available to a story that isn't written in 1963 for production in Lime Grove Studios with William Hartnell to do exciting and interesting things that simply weren't possible at the time, but that expand the conceptual space of the First Doctor". (Guess which side I'm on.) This is a fun story, albeit one that isn't attempting to slavishly recreate the Hartnell era, and it has an impish charm to the way it reinterprets canon without ever actually rewriting it. The coda is a bit twee--Colfer's FWFTWWS manifests here by having a Famous Author witness the events of the story and turn them into fiction, just like Wells and Dickens and Christie and and and...but the coda is short enough that the story doesn't suffer for it.
2) "The Nameless City" by Michael Scott. The Second Doctor and Jamie are manipulated into battle against vaguely Lovecraftian monsters by a thinly-disguised Delgado Master. So basically, here the FWFTWWS is Michael Scott not realizing that he's pastiching every third New or Missing Adventure. (Or maybe he does, and it's all done on purpose. Can't rule that out.) Nonetheless, it's well handled and spooky, with some interesting details that make the Doctor and his TARDIS seem strange and creepy all over again, and a resolution that's fun and clever.
3) "The Spear of Destiny" by Marcus Sedgwick. It wouldn't be a Third Doctor story without the Master showing up to provide the second-act twist, and I certainly won't fault Sedgwick for not being made aware that the previous story also involved the Master. (Especially since as originally published, there was a month-long gap between the two stories.) It certainly doesn't dampen what comes off as a letter-perfect pastiche of the Pertwee era, from the "UNIT family" to the cod-'In Search Of' fixation on weird and spooky legendary pseudo-archaeological artifacts (in this case, the titular Spear) and the sheer confounding Pertwee-ness of Pertwee. He gets that wonderfully frustrating paternalism dead on, and it's charming to watch him work in what feels like a slightly shortened version of a missing episode.
4) "The Roots of Evil" by Philip Reeve. This is definitely one of the highlights of the anthology. The Doctor and Leela get involved in some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey shenanigans involving a future incarnation (the Doctor is justly horrified to find out he will be wearing a bow-tie someday) that has set a lost human colony on a path of undying hatred against him. (One of the characters, "Ven", turns out to have a full name of "Vengeance-Against-The-Doctor-Shall-Someday-Be-Ours". The Doctor responds by admitting that would be a bit of a mouthful, and offering him a jelly baby.) Needless to say, there are horrific secrets at the heart of the colony, gruesome monsters, and witty bon mots dropped casually into the barking mad villain's monologues. It's not just a pastiche, it's a charming and clever story in its own right.
5) "Tip of the Tongue" by Patrick Ness. This is one of the ones that feels most like an actual children's story, perhaps because it focuses mainly on actual children. There's a certain sly understanding of the way that children deal with things that remain unspoken, yet are understood perfectly by all concerned; Nellie, one of the two main characters, is constantly dealing with emotions and realities too big to be spoken out loud. The thematic depth gives a lot of weight and realism to a story that might otherwise feel surreal or silly. The Doctor's barely in it, but I didn't mind that at all, given how well the prose flowed.
6) "Something Borrowed" by Richelle Mead. This was another favorite--telling the story from Peri's perspective gives some dramatic heft to a character that got stuck in the peril monkey role all too often in the series, and the Rani is a good choice of villain for an anniversary celebration. There's some material that's a little bit telegraphed, which is more a factor of the short space the author has to work with, but the whole thing is well-written and fun. (Although I did come away wondering what's going to stop the Rani from going ten miles down the road and doing the same thing all over again...)
7) "The Ripple Effect" by Malorie Blackman. This one, unfortunately, suffered from FWFTWWS big-time. The idea of the Doctor encountering Daleks that don't act like Daleks, and being unable to set aside his fear and hatred of them, is something that's already been done in stories like "Dalek", "Victory of the Daleks", and "Dalek Generation". The idea of the Doctor having to erase a parallel universe that's actually better than ours because of Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Reasons has already been done in "Genocide" and "The Girl Who Waited". And without the space to really develop either idea, it's hard to make this seem like anything other than a retread of things other authors have already done. If she'd had a chance to expand it to novel length, and had to do more than just reiterate these tropes, it might have turned out very special...but as it was, it kind of overstayed its welcome.
8) "Spore" by Alex Scarrow. Weirdly, it's the Eighth Doctor story that goes for the purely Hinchcliffian horror tale...but it does a reasonably effective job, with a space fungus that liquifies everything it touches and converts it into monsters. Perhaps a little too short to be effective--at novella length, the story barely has time to convey the threat before the Doctor resolves it--but it does a good job of what it sets out to achieve. And the pseudo-companion is a soldier who appears to be Asian-American, which is a nice change from the typical white dude/screamy white woman.
9) "The Beast of Babylon" by Charlie Higson. At first, this one seems like it might be going down a road that's a bit too kiddie--the Ninth Doctor teams up with a teenage girl named Ali for an adventure in Ancient Babylon! But just when you start expecting Ali to learn valuable lessons about Olden Times before coming back home, Higson makes clever use of the prose format to reveal a few details about Ali that weren't quite what was expected, turning the story into something of a shocking twist on the pseudo-companion tropes that are common to solo Doctor stories. Far from being FWFTWWS, this one feels like someone cleverly subverting the structure of a Who story in a unique and inventive way.
10) "The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage" by Derek Landy. This author and this Doctor seem made for each other. Landy has his finger perfectly on Tennant's lightning-fast patter, his gift of gab and his brilliant command of every situation (there's a wonderful sequence where the Doctor is challenged to a chess match, and announces that his opponent is so over-matched that there's no need to even play the game). Combine that with some hilarious jokes about children's literature and books in general (as they struggle to escape a world composed of Martha's literary tastes, they pass a scene from 'Twilight' and Martha simply hisses out, "Don't judge me") and you've got a story that brought a huge smile to my face.
11) "Nothing O'Clock" by Neil Gaiman. I don't wish to diminish any of the other authors in this anthology, all of whom are luminaries in their field and are immensely talented. But this is just a quantum leap beyond everything else in the book in terms of quality. It captures the Eleventh Doctor and Amy's voice perfectly. It expands on tiny details of their depictions on television in ways that really make me wish for more Past Doctor Adventures just to get this kind of contextualization on a more regular basis. It has one of the all-time great and creepy monsters in the Kin, which are not only great and creepy but perfectly encapsulate the fairy-tale ethos of the Moffat era without simply pastiching it. It has one of perhaps the best ever "Doctor fucks over the bad guy" moments, which I went back to read about five times (including one time reading the entire story out loud to my wife because it was just that much fun to revel in the prose). And oh by the way it's just awesome. Again, I don't want to suggest that the other stories in this book weren't great, but this is just a level of great that's above other levels of great, because Neil Gaiman is a one-in-a-billion talent and one of the best authors of our time. It is a pastiche, which is something that caused me a moment's pause because I would be interested in a take on Doctor Who that is solely Neil Gaiman's--a producer's take, if you will, instead of a writer's take. But that's merely a quibble that shouldn't stop anyone from picking up a must-read story.
12) "Lights Out" by Holly Black. This was probably a tricky brief, taking the Doctor with the fewest stories and trying to capture his voice. Black does a good job, though, capturing the spiky exterior of the Twelfth Doctor and the depth of feeling it conceals. The story is also in keeping with this Doctor, as well; it's a murder mystery, a character study and a moral dilemma all at once. You can easily see it fitting between 'Deep Breath' and 'Into the Dalek', and not just because that's where the author clearly sets it. A solid conclusion to the anthology, although I can understand being frustrated that Puffin seems to think it's worth sixteen bucks all by itself.
So there you have it. Plenty of good ones, very few weak ones, and one that's an absolute must-read. That's a pretty good record for a Who anthology, and it shows that in good hands, there's still a lot of interesting life to every Doctor. I look forward to another fifty years.
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