Review: Campaign

(This post originally appeared on the Doctor Who Ratings Guide on 7 February, 2003.)

So, now we know what it takes to get blackballed from the BBC entirely.

Actually, that's not fair to Mortimore -- Campaign did not get shot down because of a judgement of its quality, it got shot down because it was not the book he told them he was going to write. I do feel that had he submitted the idea for Campaign as he wrote it, it could very well have been accepted -- it's a fascinating story that, somewhat in the manner of The Edge of Destruction, dissects the characters of the first TARDIS crew in great detail, even while pretty much ignoring the plot. There's a lot of fascinating, poetic writing in here, and a lot of amusing nods to such non-canonical stories as The Masters of Luxor and the novelization of The Daleks... but ultimately, I think, you'll get a lot more out of Campaign if you already know the twist at the end.

Spoilers for said twist...

In the end, we learn that the entire novel we've been reading -- the death of all the Tardis regulars, the destruction of the universe, their journeys with Alexander -- all of it was just one big trippy virtual reality game called 'The Game of Me'. This would have infuriated me had I not known it was coming -- there's just enough of a hint of a plot to Campaign that it does seem like Mortimore is leading somewhere with his references to Aristotle "fixing" the T.A.R.D.I.S., and the idea of "breaks in history" and discrepancies among the memories of the Tardis crew. It seems like something you can puzzle out -- is the TARDIS really pregnant? Did the Doctor and his companions destroy the universe by interfering with history in Alexander's timeline? Can all this be fixed? To learn that the answer is, "It's all just a big video game!" is a huge let-down.

Luckily, I already knew from the beginning that it was all just a big video game, and could focus on the writing involved. Which is... wow, it's nice. Mortimore has always focused on beautiful prose at the expense of the plot, so in some ways this is the culmination of that trend; the plot is utterly irrelevant, so he's free to write some amazing, hallucinogenic prose as he puts Ian, Barbara, Susan, Mandy, Lola, and Cliff through the wringer. For everyone who thinks of Mortimore as a companion-torturer, this won't change your opinions... every companion dies violent death after violent death. (The scene where Ian kills the Doctor a dozen or so times sticks out in the mind.)

Campaign fails on a number of levels, to be honest; the plot's pants, the whole thing turns incoherent towards the end, and I honestly can't say I'm surprised that the BBC rejected it. But if you're willing to accept those flaws and read it as, say, an extended prose poem, it's well worth taking a look at.

Crisis

After perfunctorily dispatching last episode's cliffhanger, "Crisis" finally gets the hang of the advantages this premise provides that no other does. The Doctor and his companions figure out a way to take the phone off the hook using corks to prop it up, and they make inventive use of a spray can, a gas tap and a match to create an improvised bomb to attract the attention of the police. You could perhaps quibble about the ease of lifting the "oversized" objects, but the general idea of the script comes into focus tightly here. The tiny heroes use improvised tools to overcome the limitations of their size in order to foil the villain's plot.

Or they would, if not for the fact that the villain's plot is primarily foiled by a switchboard operator and his own astonishingly mistaken belief that he can masquerade as an entirely different person with a higher-pitched voice, a different regional accent and a mild lisp simply by putting a piece of cloth over the mouthpiece of the telephone. He doesn't even attempt to disguise his voice--it's as though he assumes hand towels have magical powers. Certainly the Doctor's plan helps by forcing him to talk to the operator a second time, but it's frustrating to realize that there's no need for either scene. The call to the Ministry is an unnecessary contrivance, and Forester has to be bright enough to realize that "he's already left for his boating trip" is a better plan than "oh, but I'm certainly Farrow. Can't you tell by my slightly muffled voice that sounds otherwise exactly like the person who was just on the phone?" (Then again, it's the same episode where Smithers suddenly says, "Hey, maybe I should have tested this new insecticide to see if it kills bees and earthworms!" Maybe he leeched the intelligence away from Forester and turned him into a less competent villain.)

If they'd left off those two scenes, then the Doctor's bomb plan would have been more consequential to the plot and added more drama. Then again, given that this episode was mostly cobbled together in the editing room out of two other episodes, it's probably amazing that it came out as well as it did. As it is, the only slightly ropey cut is when they jump mid-conversation to Barbara insisting they stay and raise the alarm regarding DN6, and that's only ropey because it stands out as markedly different from the editing in the rest of the episode. It's actually a fairly modern and pacy cut, the sort of thing you'd probably do these days without sweating it too much. Verity had it right here.

And at the end, the mysteriously-repaired scanner (I know, they probably didn't think audiences would remember over what was originally intended to be a month of real time) displays the title of the next episode. Handy, that--if it had happened after they stopped using individual episode titles, the Doctor could have learned about the Daleks' appearances virtually every single time.

Dangerous Journey

It's easy to see why Alan Tilvern had such a long and storied career as an actor watching this episode. The part isn't anything particularly special; he's a silver-tongued executive with a ruthless streak who turns to murder out of desperation, your basic villain in a suit. But Tilvern uses his expressive eyebrows and silky voice to become something more saturnine and sinister. I love the implication that he knew the story he told Smithers wouldn't hold up--the way Tilvern manipulates him first into accepting and finally into assisting with the cover-up is acted brilliantly by Tilvern. (Reginald Barratt as Smithers perhaps overacts just a bit, but he's got to sell the idea of someone so obsessed with DN6 that he'd go along with concealing a murder with very little persuasion. A little overacting helps in that department.)

The Hitchockian drama of Forester drawing Smithers into his web of deceit and murder is really the best part of the episode. Everything else is an exercise in contrivance, from "We can't go back the way we came, cats exist!" to "There's a person coming, scatter in every random direction and panic!" to "Hmm, grains of wheat covered with a sticky substance!" "Huh? Sorry, I don't really pay much attention to anything you say or do, Barbara. By the way, don't touch that wheat, it's covered in insecticide." It's all pretty much just getting everyone into the position of maximum peril for the next episode, which is kind of a shame because it doesn't really make nearly as much use of the 'miniaturized' concept as it could.

One thing that did strike me, though, is that this is the first time we've really seen the main characters split up along the lines that you'd think would be the norm for the series--Ian/Barbara, and the Doctor/Susan. It's the obvious way to group them, the aliens who've been traveling for years and the two teachers along for the ride, and yet it's just about the least common pairing they've done. 'The Daleks' has them split up like this in the last two episodes, and there are times when it's a pair and two singlets, but really it's only in the last story before Susan's departure that we see her really spending any time with just her grandfather. The actors play it well, given that it's a fairly perfunctory scene, but it's notable that the dynamic among the regulars has done so well for so long by resisting the "easiest" pairings.

Oh yes, and while I grumble about everyone doing nothing but peril monkey schtick in this episode, I have to love the dramatic touch of closing on the sink at regular size as the water slowly drains out. It's deliciously incongruous (as is the simultaneously tense and hilarious musical sting accompanying, "There's a sink in the lab") and leaves you to imagine the danger rather than attempting to show it.

Planet of Giants

Boy, have they been wanting to do this one for a while. You can see it in the carefully structured reveal--this is something they've been thinking about for ages. The journey through the stone labyrinth, the discovery of the giant worms and ants (the one weakness to my mind--Barbara calls it a "snake" when it's clearly an earthworm, which makes you wonder a bit too soon what else they're not noticing) and finally the revelation of the giant matches and the crazy-paving. It's all set up so deliberately that you can almost hear the entire production team in the background going, "Wait for it, wait for it..."

But that's really how a first episode should work in Doctor Who. The classic series has always been about exploring spaces; Part One of any given story is usually centered on the Doctor learning about the structures of the new environment he's landed in, whether social or physical or biological. Here, it's not just about the discovery that he and his companions are little and tiny and wee and adorable--it's about the way that they gain understanding of the entire ecology of their new world.

Which is, of course, in deadly peril thanks to Forester's DN6. It's both wonderful and sad that this little eco-fable hasn't aged very much at all in the five decades since it originally aired; to this day, there are still people trying to turn back the march of regulations so that they can spray DDT all over the landscape, ecosystem be damned. Forester isn't really any different from Tom DeLay, except that DeLay tried to crush inconvenient scientists with political power instead of just shooting them. (Mind you, some of that may have been that his enemies didn't come visit him without telling anyone where they were going, giving a convenient excuse for being missing for several days, and then turning their backs for a while just to see what happens.)

(Well, I mean, I assume they didn't. Maybe they did and he was just better at hiding the bodies.)

The point is, it's okay that this is an episode that's mostly just the Doctor and his companions wandering around and exploring, because that's how the series creates worlds for us to believe in. Even if those worlds are right outside our door.

Prisoners of Conciergerie

I don't want to seem mean, but...if I had to sum up that episode in a single word, it would be "misconceived". And if I got a bonus word, it would be "woefully".

The problem isn't the bad history. I mean, that's a problem too, especially as the script goes out of its way to draw attention to it--when one character spends half the episode deeply concerned with the possible rise of Napoleon to power, having him end the episode surprised to hear that a Corsican soldier might someday take the throne of France is probably a mistake. But the problem isn't even that the story is set in 1794 when Bonaparte isn't a significant political force in France and he wouldn't be offered power by Barrass or opposed by Stirling. To be honest, if they'd gotten the history right, the episode would have been even worse.

Because the meeting is the climax of the story, such as it is. Ian's been looking for Stirling since Part Two, Stirling apparently has one last vital task he needs to complete before he can leave for England and the others need to risk their lives to help him because Susan's been effectively written out of the story but is at least important as a MacGuffin, and the grand and vital task is...finding out something that the audience already knows. Or would, if they'd gotten the history right. (Maybe that's why they picked Napoleon--it probably would have been a less dramatic scene if Barrass had met with about a dozen or so guys that nobody remembers and agreed to form the Directory, a combined group of influential politicians who would then set up a provisional government and ratify a Constitution to...)

Ultimately, this is a lesson learned for Spooner. As much as he tried to subscribe to the Lucarotti philosophy of the historical story, to the point of setting the final scene inside the TARDIS so that everyone can speculate about why they couldn't change the history of France even if they tried, he's really more comfortable with the action-adventure model of story. And in an adventure, the hero has to have consequences to failure, because the structure of the adventure story makes us aware that they're pretty much immune to danger themselves. Nothing anyone did had consequences in this story, not for themselves or anyone else, and Spooner had to be aware of how hard that made it to write as an effective piece of drama. In order for him to be able to function as a writer and later a script editor, everything the series has tried up until now has to go. And with the next season of stories...it pretty much will.

A Bargain of Necessity

"A Bargain of Necessity" is pretty much an exercise in backing out of the plot cul-de-sac of the last episode. It does a good job of that, with some highly entertaining bits from Hartnell and some interesting moral debate from Ian and Barbara (and once again, Susan present as a plot anchor preventing the other characters from ditching), but you can still hear a faint beeping noise as the story goes through its motions.

The first chunk of the episode is mostly given over to Ian's interrogation and rescue, along with an explanation of the reveal that Leon is the traitor. It's one of those things that probably worked when the story was first shown but suffers greatly from the huge volume of guides to the series that collectively spoil Stirling's real identity. That is to say, the story has been working very hard to try to get the audience to believe that Leon is really Stirling, but if you know going in that he's not, then he by definition has to be the traitor because otherwise his character has no real purpose to the story. (This is also how Roger Ebert used to figure out who the traitor was in every action movie--he just looked for the person who would otherwise be utterly surplus to the plot.)

Ian's interrogation is played well--it's a scene that actually uses the overall flaw of the story as its strength, because this time the TARDIS crew is almost totally disconnected from events and has only the barest connection to the Stirling plot or indeed anything else. But Leon, who has been living in the world of espionage and plot and counter-plot and treason and counter-treason for years now, simply can't accept that Ian's motivation is nothing more than, "A dying man asked me to find a total stranger and give him a message, and I figured why not?" Because it's ludicrous. For the previous four parts, that's been the problem, but right now it creates a great deal of tension until Jules shows up to save the day.

Afterwards, we get one of those scenes that occasionally pops up in this era of the program and always, always, always works: Barbara confronts Ian and Jules with the moral complexity of the French Revolution and points out that no, Leon didn't "deserve to die" because he betrayed them...from Leon's point of view, they betrayed him and everyone he cared about. It's a great scene, made no less great because Barbara later apologizes; her apology isn't an acknowledgment that Leon did deserve his fate, only that there were no other alternatives.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is off being awesome. That's really all you can say about the scene where he tricks the jailer into letting Barbara go on the pretense that they can then follow her back to her confederates, only to explain after she leaves that he thought the jailer was going to do the actual following. Sheer poetry. After that, the brief look-in on the ostensible plot (Lemaitre is on to him, Robespierre is both terrified of betrayal and inexplicably absent-minded about the official change to the French calendar that abolished "July") is almost anti-climactic. Again, this story is very much a thing of parts in the absence of any real story, but that doesn't mean there's not a lot of enjoyment to be had from the best of those parts.

The Tyrant of France

It's a shame we see so little of the actual Tyrant of France in "The Tyrant of France", because the scenes with Robespierre are the best part of this episode. Despite the general storybook atmosphere of the story, Spooner isn't interested in reducing Robespierre to a one-dimensional caricature; instead, he makes good use of the old truism that every villain thinks he's a hero. Spooner doesn't shy away from depicting Robespierre as a paranoid mass murderer, but he also shows the guilt lying not far beneath the surface of Robespierre's brutality. He knows that he's murdering people by the hundreds, he knows that history will remember the bloodshed, but he sees no alternatives at this point. Better to be remembered as a monster who founded the New France than a monster who failed, right?

Hartnell's Doctor is great in this scene, and he's also great in trying to avoid a reprise of it. His bluster is charming and hilarious, even as we catch wind of the fear that underlies it. The Doctor knows full well that he's stepped in it much deeper than he planned to when it was originally a hastily-improvised disguise to intimidate the jailer into releasing a few prisoners, and his attempts to bluff his way out are tense and funny at the same time. Even so...

Look, it's not that the episode is bad. It does an effective job of moving all of the pieces around in an interesting fashion, what with Susan getting sick (although again, this story does seem to mark the point where they stopped even trying to do anything with the character other than keep her around as a convenient warm body to be dragged from one peril to the next) and her and Barbara getting recaptured and Ian pursuing his spy plot and the Doctor trying to avoid getting exposed as an imposter...but it's pretty clear by now that moving the pieces around is all that's happening. There's no real story here; Stirling's plot is so slight that it's barely taken up a few minutes of each episode, and there's no real sense of urgency or momentum to it. Ian is looking for Stirling to give him a message because some guy he met asked him to. There's no emotional depth to it, and everything else in the story is just a run-around until the allotted number of episodes is up and everyone can escape to the TARDIS.

Again, this is primarily a function of Spooner having jettisoned the series' previous approach to the historical without yet knowing what to replace it with. 'The Romans' will make better use of the farce structure that is essentially being developed here, and 'The Time Meddler' will inaugurate what generations of fans will come to know as the established structure of the series, "aliens meddling in important historical events". But here, he's got six episodes to fill, and very little to fill it with. He's already getting better at learning how to hide the padding, but it's unfortunate that there's still so much padding to hide.