I don't mean all the Hartnell or Troughton ones that were transmitted before I was born. Or the Missing Episodes which only exist in soundtrack and telesnap form. And I've talked before about how there were a handful of Pertwee stories which I had not seen before commencing this project - it's not those.
Remember that I first became a regular viewer and fan with Monster of Peladon and never missed an episode after that on transmission? Until now. I have reached the point at which I stopped watching Doctor Who.
Image of the Fendahl through to Underworld
I've been trying to figure out what caused me to give up on my favourite show for 12 whole weeks - between 29th October and 1977 and 28th January 1978. While it's true that we had just completed the poorly realised 'Invisible Enemy', I don't think that would have been a trigger. I then thought that maybe it was the lure of Glen A Larson's 'Buck Rogers In The 25th Century' on rival UK channel ITV, but a quick check revealed that it didn't start transmission until August 1980 (concurrent with Who's eighteenth season). We might come back to that later...
So something on another channel broadcast during late 1977. Probably in the SF / fantasy genre (I can't imagine anything else distracting me from Who). A little bit more digging on the Interweb revealed the only possible culprit, and it's rather embarrassing. It appears that I gave up watching Doctor Who for this man:
I'll admit he *is* enigmatic (last survivor of Atlantis and all that). He does have gills and webbed fingers. He does swim in a very unusual fashion. I'm a sucker for pretty much any SF and fantasy TV show, but even this is stretching things.
Okay, so there are SF elements in the plots of most episodes - a rogue computer brain, giant jellyfish, a hypnotic mermaid. One week even features an underwater landslide which transports Mark to Verona, Italy in the days of Romeo and Juliet! It's hardly all of time and space in a box that's bigger on the inside though is it?
So I'm going to blame my mother. You might think that's a bit harsh, but hear me out - the facts stack up. Remember that in 1977 I'm only 10 years old. I don't control the TV remote (actually I'm not even sure if there was a remote back then). We don't get a video recorder for another couple of years. So maybe, just maybe, me being able to watch Doctor Who all this time was because the adults in the house didn't want to watch anything else.
Until along came Mr Duffy and his bare torso. Because he does wear nothing but a pair of tight swimming shorts most of the time. Yes that's it - my mum was won over by his good looks, winning smile and sculpted six pack. Poor old Tom Baker couldn't compete. Surely that has to be the reason. Doesn't it?
Anyway, whatever the explanation, it meant I missed twelve weeks of Doctor Who. But it's more than that, because these are three Tom Baker stories I have never seen - not once. I can't remember anything from the Target novels for these three adventures and the little I do know has only been absorbed through some kind of osmosis over the intervening years. The DVD's have been sitting on my shelf just waiting for the right time.
Here we go...
Image of the Fendahl
What I do know: A glowing skull, a golden woman and a slug-like monster.
I can imagine that if I had seen this as a ten year old, it would have scared the hell out of me. Sure it plays with the old horror movie tropes - mysterious deaths in a village, meddling scientists inadvertently resurrecting an ancient evil - but it does it so well.
The opening sequence where Thea Ransome falls under the thrall of the glowing skull is made even more unsettling by the lack of Dudley Simpson's trademark music - just the ominous hum of the machinery and a subtle sound effect of the skull coming to life.
As an aside, a transparent skull would become a defining image during my early teenage life. A mere three years after 'Fendahl', in 1980, Yorkshire Television aired "Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World". This featured the infamous crystal skull in the opening titles and in one of the episodes. The series (and the concurrent launch of the part-work magazine "The Unexplained") launched my three year long semi-obsession with the paranormal, and mysteries such as UFO's, the Cottingley Fairies, stone circles, etc. I even remember doing an English studies spoken word piece at secondary school on spontaneous human combustion!
Back in Fetch Priory and the surrounding countryside it's all very atmospheric. Lot's of heavy mists, dark oak panelled corridors, tilted camera angles and shadowy corners. Yet again the incidental music is kept to a minimum, heightening the tension. The cliffhanger to part one is particularly effective.
The supporting cast are all good value. Fendelman starts out as your typical intense and obsessed scientist, but has a great reversal when it turns out he is misguided and is not the real human threat here. Stael is just mad as a box of frogs (with the googly eyes to match) - a soft-spoken, deluded maniac verging on the psychopathic. Colby is unusual as he has a wry, sarcastic personality and gets the lion's share of the funny lines. But best of all is the eccentric Mrs Tyler. Daphne Heard hams up the role for all its worth.
Tom of course is on fine form. Although he plays some of the story tongue in cheek - chatting with cows, sniffing the artefact in the lab - he is obviously enjoying himself and gives the plot the weight it needs, especially when the Doctor admits to being frightened by the gestalt entity from Gallifreyan legend.
The grotesque serpentine Fendahleen creatures are worthwhile - probably helped by the fact that they're not in it a lot. The dark shadows reinforce that something wet and slimy is hiding from you, leaving a disgusting mucous trail in the dark. Yes the mini-versions do look a little underwhelming but the overall design is a strong one and it makes a change from a bipedal obvious-man-in-suit monster.
So we have some mad goings on in a spooky old priory, an alien from the dawn of time tampering with human evolution, a coven performing ritualistic sacrifice and a threat so large that the Earth could be devastated in a single year. Perfect ingredients for a classic showdown? Well here's my only problem...
How does the Doctor beat this embodiment of death?. He throws some salt at it like a common garden slug! I guess I can see the parallels they were going for here, but it's a disappointingly easy resolution. Equally it's a shame that when the full orchestral music kicks in and Thea rises from the pentagram as the reborn Fendahl, it's as a golden empress with sinister eye-shadow, who does nothing more menacing than swishing her robes around the place and converting the unwitting acolytes into more Fendahleen, before she is quickly blown to kingdom come (The Brigadier would approve). Poor Wanda Ventham doesn't even get any meaty evil dialogue after enduring her full body makeover. I'm quibbling though - it's all lovely stuff and would not have been out of place in the Hinchcliffe era. The final implosion of the Time Scanner shows off some impressive pyrotechnics too.
In conclusion, perhaps the most disturbing element is when Stael is given a gun to commit suicide rather than be transformed into a Fendahleen. With all the noise made by Mary Whitehouse about the horror elements in the previous seasons, it's this scene which is maybe a step too far. I wonder what my ten year-old self would have made of it?
The Sunmakers
What I do know: Something about tax. The bad guy is the host of the fondly remembered educational series "Words & Pictures".
So by all accounts this is meant to be an incredibly witty satire on the high taxation policy of the UK government in the 1970's, written because Bob Holmes had a particularly large tax bill to pay which teed him off no end. So why is it that I struggled with the terrible costumes, the cardboard props, the bad acting and the by-the-numbers plot?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not some fat cat gloating in my mansion, dictating this to my flunky while reclining on my fur covered chaise-lounge. Doctor Who hasn't been this overtly political since the Pertwee era of pompous Whitehall bureaucrats - and I can see the obvious and distressing parallels to modern day society. Pluto is a sad and depressing place to exist, where the workers are ground down so much that suicide seems like an acceptable option. It's a dark element to kick the story off with.
However, the plot seems to be the standard "Doctor inspires rebellion against a totalitarian regime" plus a largely forgettable game of capture - release - capture with some added comedy driving from Leela. This might even be where the "running down corridors" phrase came from. Okay, so that's perhaps a bit harsh. It's not the classic work from Robert Holmes we have come to expect, but the world-building is excellent - drip feeding little nuggets of information. All that stuff about Wurgs and Keeks and Citizen Kandor is lovely.
Aaaand then we get Gatherer Hade in his hideous purple robe, delivering all his lines in an irritating silly voice - sounding like someone out of "This Is Jinsy" or, slightly earlier, Mathesar from "Galaxy Quest". While the characters in that TV show / movie are surreal and funny, Hade is just bloody annoying. The only thing he has going for him is his ever expanding obsequious vocabulary and increasingly offensive terms of reverence ("Your grossness, omniscience, audacity, monstrosity, corpulesence..."). Otherwise I have to ask, how did someone this ham-fisted incompetent get to such a position of power?
I will admit that the real-world locations for the Undercity do make a great backdrop - all those regular concrete shapes - and the lighting is pretty good with plenty of shadows. The rebel bands costumes also look so much better on film. It's just that for someone like me who has never seen this before, the location does make the serial seem like an episode of Blakes' 7. That feeling is strengthened by the Dudley Simpson music, the overall "orangey brown-ness" of everything, and the appearance of Michael Keating - plus even the guard helmets are prototypes of the Federation ones. Oh and don't forget drugging the citizens into compliance. Squint slightly and Avon could be hiding round the next corner. I wonder if Terry Nation and Bob Holmes got drunk in the BBC bar one night and swapped ideas?
Other scenes I liked? Where Leela is imprisoned hanging off the wall at a 45 degree angle and the steamer scene with references to "excellent duodecaphonic sound". How very 1970s.
It's probably around this time that Tom started being difficult and making his own script up as he went along, without a strong enough producer to reign him in. There's inventive, there's manic and there's Tom being all over the place, hopping around and generally behaving like a total loon - although I did like the bit where he hit his head on the scenery! Certainly the Doctor and Leela seem to snap at each other quite a lot and the "comedy" dialogue between them is very laboured. That could have all been in the script though.
Once again everyone seems to be deaf as they don't notice that K-9 sounds like someone shaking a box of spanners. Really with K-9 Mark I they should have treated him like Kamelion and found any excuse to leave him behind in the TARDIS. I suppose he does have his uses though as it now appears he can shoot round corners. Just as well as the rebels are a thoroughly unlikely and unlikeable bunch of revolutionaries. Only Cordo seems to have the ideological zeal, but I'm not sure he will be any better in charge than the regime he is trying to overthrow.
In fact the revolution is over a bit too quickly and a bit too easily. Storm one tiny room. Pull a few levers. Disperse the gas. Job done. It brings all that world-building crashing down. So the entire city population has been ready to revolt, it was just the gas that was suppressing them? Hmmmm....
Plus we get a disturbing conclusion that conveys the impression that throwing people off rooftops is hilarious and justified. I'm surprised Mary Whitehouse didn't have kittens.
The redeeming factor is of course The Collector. A wonderfully sadistic and toad-like turn from Henry Wolff, with his Dennis Healy eyebrows, cackling voice (which oddly didn't annoy me like Gatherer Hade) and his overwhelming glee at the continued profits of The Company at the expense of the grinding oppression of the masses. I especially liked it when he started spinning round in circles raving about the "vicious doctrine of egalitarianism".
The final confrontation with the Doctor (sorry, "Dok-Tor") also contains some of the best dialogue in the whole serial, although I could have done without the comedy "boing " effect when The Collector hit his big red button. His constant interrogations of "9-Zero-9" (which I presumed was his computer) for some reason made me think of 7-Zark-7 from "Battle of the Planets".
It was also a clever idea that beneath the veneer of a profit mad businessman - enslaving the population until the resources run out - was just another weak, feeble creature. The Collector screams and sulks as he oozes off down the drain. It's one of the few elements of the story that I can remember seeing before somewhere.
So actually, The Sunmakers is not all bad. It just needs a bit of tweaking here and there to remove the pantomime elements and beef up the production values.
Underworld
What I do know: Based on Greek myth. Lots and lots of CSO
Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. Yes it's basically Jason and the Argonauts in deep space. P7E is Persephone, Orfe is Orpheus, Herrick is Hercules, Jackson is Jason, etc., etc. If you don't work it out during the four episodes, the Doctor rams it home at the story's end. In fact the pilfered plot is Underworld's greatest asset. The other plus point is the excellent model and physical set design work. The opening shots of the Minyan ship flying through space are superb. The interior command deck is also well realised with a dilapidated look that reminded me of a mausoleum.
The conceit of a decaying run down spacecraft at the edge of the universe on a quest that has lasted 100,000 years is also a good one. What would it be like to have lived for all that time, constantly renewing your body, in pursuit of a single goal? Surely such a bleak long voyage would drive you borderline insane? As the Doctor says, it's the SF equivalent of the Flying Dutchman.
Add in some revelations of the historical link between Gallifrey and Minyos and why the Time Lords adopted their policy of non-intervention and you have some great core ingredients for a mythic tale.
Of course Dave and Bob do like a good catchphrase, so we get "The Quest Is The Quest", which signifies - precisely nothing. At least when you heard "Contact has been made" it meant that The Swarm had taken over another body. This is equivalent of me saying "My Job Is My Job", the kind of facetious nonsense that would get me a good slap. Maybe the crew have gone bonkers after all.
Nope. Instead of being weary and psychologically broken as the dialogue suggests, the Minyan space crew are mostly bland. Maybe all that semi- regeneration has sucked the personality out of them instead. It's not helped by the fact that a couple of them are terrible thespians, especially Imogen Bickford-Smith who plays Gwyneth Paltrow a-like Tala. She takes underacting to new depths. By contrast Alan Lake throws himself into the role of Herrick and gives Tom a run for his money with his mad-eyes and booming voice.
There's a bit of a lack of consistent logic going on at this early stage. Jackson describes the Minyans as "A ship of ghosts...going on and on and unable to remember why". Then in his very next sentence he manages to describe exactly what they are doing *and* why!
It's not too bad though as the plot rattles along. In very short succession we get the arrival of the TARDIS crew, some confusion, a history lesson, some technobabble, some exposition and finally imminent danger as the R1C is going to be sucked into a space nebula whirlpool (that's Charybdis ticked off the list then). The effect of the ship being covered in rocks attracted to it's gravity is pretty impressive. So far so good for episode one. A shame all that goodwill is about to be wasted.
It's not too bad though as the plot rattles along. In very short succession we get the arrival of the TARDIS crew, some confusion, a history lesson, some technobabble, some exposition and finally imminent danger as the R1C is going to be sucked into a space nebula whirlpool (that's Charybdis ticked off the list then). The effect of the ship being covered in rocks attracted to it's gravity is pretty impressive. So far so good for episode one. A shame all that goodwill is about to be wasted.
After K-9 intones "You have penetration" (ooo-er) and the ship crash lands into the planet we descend into... well all those of you who have seen Underworld before know what it is - It's CSO a-go-go.
Now the superimposed caves are not as bad as their reputation led me to believe. Accepting the huge constraints the production team were under and the level of this technology in the late 1970s, the results are not totally without merit. I love Doctor Who - I'm more than happy to overlook a few dodgy effects.The main problem is that the virtual sets have no weight or atmosphere to them, plus it's quite obvious that there really are only a couple of models which are repeated over and over again. At one point Herrick puts a marker on a rock so they don't get lost. He needn't have worried, as there appear to be only two corridors in the whole complex.
Costume-wise, the Minyan spacesuits have great tubing all over them, and helmets shaped like the rubber on the end of a pencil - which I really like. However in predictable style, the bullied Trogs are in sackcloth or hoodies while the guards are in natty black uniforms, with masks with multiple gimlet eye holes (goodness knows why as they look like normal humans underneath). They might be great at macho posturing but are really totally bloody useless - not even realising they are being gassed at the start of part three when their colleagues are falling down unconscious around them.
Let's talk about the cliffhangers for a minute, as they get progressively worse throughout the story. Part one has the rocks hurtling towards the R1C. That was pretty good. Part two has the Doctor ineffectually waving his scarf at some fake smoke which looks about as dangerous as steam from my shower. It's not great but I'll let it slide. Part three has the appalling mine cart tipping sequence. The idea of the Doctor and Leela falling into the rock crusher is a nice dramatic one, but it's so poorly directed that not only is it borderline incoherent, there is also no sense of peril at all. We don't even see our two heroes fall out or scream in fear! After the incredibly long recap they just get pulled up from the ledge and then give up trying to get into the Citadel that way. So what was the point of it in plot terms, apart from to pad out a story that is already treading water like there's no tomorrow? (We've already been treated to almost a whole episode where nothing happened, endless long shots of K-9 trundling along and guard chases where they fall over in the same place every time).
The better ending for part three would have been the torture of Herrick (complete with "Green Death" headphones) and the revelation of the true nature of the Seers. Imagine seeing those impressive metallic faces (like something out of the old 1940's Republic serial "King Of The Rocketmen") as the cliffhanger scream kicked in! Sadly it's robbed of all it's dramatic impact by something that makes no sense instead. By the way, did I miss the explanation as to why they look that way (their dialogue was quite muffled by the helmets), or is it just "they're machines"?
Speaking of which, what the hell was the Oracle - beyond yet another megalomaniacal machine? Was it the P7E's ship computer gone mad? Why was it insane in the first place? Why does it have spare copies of the Race Banks, when it has no reason to suspect that any other being in the universe even knows they exist? Apart from being derivative of countless Doctor Who stories before it, the Oracle instils no fear or sense of menace and apart from some nice sarcastic dialogue from the Doctor - "superheated junk with delusions of grandeur" - the confrontation with it is an anti-climax.
I think then that the real problem with Underworld is not down to a lack of imagination with the original story idea, or the extensive use of primitive CSO techniques, but the fact that due to a script that doesn't hang together properly, actors on autopilot mode and insipid direction it's just...dull. The production team get some points for trying something bold and ambitious under difficult circumstances, but perhaps someone needed to tell the Bristol Boys to focus on developing character and consistent internal logic and they should have hired a director who could, you know, direct. It's flawed from the start, and no amount of money on real sets would have changed that.
How much better would it have been if the Minyans had really been these guys?
Next time I'll be back from my misguided sojourn to Atlantis (shudder) as we say goodbye to the lovely Leela.
No comments:
Post a Comment