Friday, August 31, 2012

The Wheel in Space

Dear Gary—

The first few minutes of The Wheel in Space have some interesting echoes from the Hartnell years, but with definite Troughton twists. Something is not quite right in the TARDIS, a familiar theme.  The Doctor tells Jamie to look at the Fault Indicator which is located on the control panel. The TARDIS scanner has been showing pleasant places on the screen and not what is truly outside. The Doctor realizes that this is the TARDIS’ way of tempting them away; of warning them to the dangers that await.  
All of this, Gary, sends me back to Edge of Destruction. In that early Hartnell story the TARDIS, too, was warning the crew of the danger they were in. The scanner was showing scenes that were not of the present. And the Doctor and Susan turned to the Faulticator, which at that time was located behind a panel in the TARDIS wall.

Next we have the Fluid Link. This brings us back to The Daleks.  In this story, though, the Doctor is not pretending that the Fluid Link is out of mercury, it really is. Somehow the mercury begins vaporizing. This leads the Doctor to remove the Time Vector Generator which has the effect of shrinking the TARDIS down to the size of an ordinary police box (shades of The Time Meddler when the Doctor shrinks the Monk’s TARDIS). If he didn’t, the Doctor tells Jamie by way of explanation, the mercury vapors would have overwhelmed them. He then offers Jamie a lemon sorbet from a bag he takes out of his pocket. Hartnell was known on occasion to pull chocolate from his pocket, and of course this links forward as well, but let’s not digress too much.
Now the Doctor and Jamie are in search of mercury (you’d think the Doctor would have learned by now to carry an extra store of mercury on board the TARDIS). This leads them eventually to the wheel in space of our title, a space station observing phenomena in deep space. And it leads them smack into—not Daleks this time—Cybermen.

 The Cybermen and Daleks have been in heavy rotation during these Patrick Troughton years. What I find curious, though, is the inconsistent knowledge humans seem to have of the Cybermen. Their first appearance in Doctor Who takes place in the year 1986. The next few times they appear, the humans the Doctor meets know of the Cybermen but state that they have been extinct for hundreds of years. Now here we are in the 21st Century and the humans have no knowledge at all of Cybermen—never even heard of them. Curious.
Zoe, at least, is well informed on cybernetics and can readily understand and believe the Doctor when the others can’t comprehend.  Zoe, a fitting new companion for the Doctor and a fitting story in which to introduce her.

Zoe doesn’t want to be a robot. She gets accused of it throughout The Wheel in Space and she doesn’t like it. “I don’t want to be thought of as a freak.  . . . My head’s been pumped full of facts and figures which I reel out automatically when needed, but, well, I want to feel things as well.” Later she states, “I’ve been created for some false kind of existence where only known kinds of emergencies are catered for.”  She doesn’t like this “blind reliance on facts and logic.”
Zoe is almost like a Cyberman in training, but she rebels against it, and lucky for her she meets up with the Doctor. “Logic, my dear Zoe,” he tells her, “only enables one to be wrong with authority.” “Simple common sense” can work wonders. Common sense, independent thought, an open mind—all things counter to the cyber brain and all things the Doctor celebrates.

“Are there any ordinary circumstances in space?” the Doctor queries.  It is the extraordinary that must be accounted for, and it is the extraordinary that a cyber brain can’t comprehend. In discussing Controller Jarvis, a man showing distinct signs of rigidity of thought, a man “who can’t accept phenomena outside the laws of physics,” the Doctor states, “One does wonder what a man like that will do when faced with a problem for which he has no solution.” The Doctor always has a solution. The Doctor can accept phenomena outside of physics; he can abandon logic for common sense.
The Doctor is an anti-Cyberman, and he is just the one to pull Zoe out of the “all brain and no heart” rut she finds herself in.

At the beginning of The Wheel in Space Jamie was despondent over the loss of Victoria. He “couldn’t care less” where they went. Zoe should shake him out of this lethargy.
Hopefully, Gary, this next story will shake me out of my lethargy of reconstructions. At last I have a full story to look forward to. I know there are still reconstructions to come, but the end is in sight. And while I’ll be sad to see the end of Troughton, I’m sure the upcoming Doctors will shake me up sufficiently.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, Gary.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Fury From the Deep


Dear Gary—
Fury From the Deep suffers more than any other story so far from being a reconstruction. I’m having a hard time, Gary, remembering much about it. It takes place at a refinery and rig network and there is some menacing seaweed that is accompanied by surging waves of foam. It rather reminds me of the scene in The Thrill of It All when Doris Day opens her bedroom window and she and her daughter are swallowed by a wave of soap suds.

The seaweed in Fury From the Deep, however, has a sting to it that somehow sickens and entrances humans. There is a Mutt and Jeff duo under the seaweed’s control who go around sabotaging things and a scientist’s wife who gets stung and wanders off into the sea. There is the head of the refinery who has the ‘damn the torpedoes’ attitude,  stubbornly continuing operations as is despite warnings from his crew and the Doctor until he is maddened by the sea menace.
At least the mysterious webbing and fungus in The Web of Fear had Yeti thrown in to provide a proper threat. It’s hard to get really worked up about some seaweed, especially when you can’t properly see any of the action. The Doctor puts this particular fight in terms of matter over mind, and “matter will never conquer mind,” he states, “it’s against nature.” But when there is no matter to see it’s hard to keep the image of Doris Day being swallowed by soap out of one’s mind, even if Victoria keeps screaming at every opportunity.

And that, I have to say Gary, is the most hilarious thing of all. This ominous sea creature, this looming threat, this terrifying matter that is bent on the conquest of the mind is defeated by Victoria’s scream. Poor Victoria just has not lived up to her promise of her early stories. She has been relegated to the fate of most female companions of the Doctor, getting kidnapped and screaming. At least in this her final story her screams come to some good. The Doctor has her scream recorded and amplified, played back in a continuous loop. The sea creature retreats and all is well.
That really is all I take away from Fury From the Deep, Gary, except for the two major distinctions of this story: Victoria’s departure and the first appearance of the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver.

First the sonic screwdriver. Early in the first episode the Doctor pulls this out—“It’s a sonic screwdriver; never fails.” Too bad we don’t have the visual for this unveiling. I’ll have to keep my eyes and ears open to find out when it makes another appearance. There are some other TARDIS/Doctor related revelations in Fury From the Deep. For instance we learn in this story that “the TARDIS is perfectly capable of floating,” when the Doctor makes a sea landing. And it’s no surprise, given the Doctor’s somewhat unpredictable control of the TARDIS, that he doesn’t handle a helicopter very well either despite his long held desire to get his hands on one.  Also, the Doctor pulls out a book of legends and superstitions when seeking to identify the seaweed creature of our story. One can only imagine that the Doctor himself will end up in that book someday, or perhaps already is.
Now Victoria’s departure. It is evident from the start that she has become fed up with life on the TARDIS.  She begins with a frustrated query: “Doctor, why is it that we always land up in trouble?” Despite the Doctor’s assurance that this is “the spice of life,” she continues echoing this sentiment throughout the adventure. “Every time we go anywhere something awful happens;” “I’m tired of one crisis on top of another.” And on and on she goes, on a continual loop just like her recorded scream.

She doesn’t really want to leave the Doctor, she assures him. But just like Ben and Polly, she is tired of the monsters. Jamie takes her exit the hardest. “We are not leaving her, Jamie,” the Doctor insists, “it was her decision to stay.”  But Jamie is not quite convinced. “I was fond of her too you know, Jamie,” the Doctor exclaims defensively. I do believe poor Jamie had puppy dog eyes for young Victoria.
And so Victoria is left behind in this modern world of her future. She is taken in by the scientist Harris and his wife (now recovered from her seaweed sting). I can only hope, Gary, that Captain Hopper from Tomb of the Cybermen finds her there.

 “I don’t really want to leave you,” Victoria says. It’s hard leaving the Doctor notwithstanding the monsters. Thankfully, Gary, we don’t have to leave him yet.

Friday, August 24, 2012

The Web of Fear

Dear Gary—

The Web of Fear (or Return of the Muppet Yeti) is such a well written story that it is only afterwards in trying to recall it that I realize nothing in it really makes sense. Of course, this can be said of many Doctor Who stories, but this one in particular leaves me scratching my head wondering what this web was that the Yeti sprayed everywhere and that caused such fear; and what did the web have to do with the relentless fungus that was spreading throughout London and in particular the underground; and what is with the fog following in the fungus’ wake that swallows people; and how did one reactivated 30 year old sphere multiply into an army of Yeti; and how does any of this really aid the Great Intelligence who just after all wants the Doctor’s mind and could easily accomplish that by simply kidnapping Victoria and/or Jamie without this elaborate mishmash of a plot?
But this elaborate mishmash of a plot is the whole point, isn’t it? If the ultimate denouement doesn’t quite tie all the elements together, who really cares? As long as it is entertaining, well written, and ably acted?

I wish I had seen this story back in the 80’s when I was in Washington and we were running around the Crystal City metro stop playing out our Doctor Who scenario. Doctor Who naturally seems to lend itself to the underground.
Earth also seems to lend itself to Doctor Who. “Funny, isn’t it?” “What?” “How we keep landing on your Earth.”

The Web of Fear takes place some 30 years after The Abominable Snowmen (at least by all written accounts that I can find; although I swear that Professor Travers says that it was over 40 years ago—either the reconstruction audio is faulty, my ears are faulty, Travers’ memory is faulty, or the written accounts are faulty). Professor Travers from that story returns, 30 years older, and with a daughter Anne. We also get the return of Nicholas Courtney who had played Bret Vyon back in The Daleks’ Master Plan of the Hartnell era. Here he makes his first appearance as Lethbridge-Stewart, except he is a Colonel in this story and not yet a Brigadier and no mention is made of UNIT.
The Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria are in the TARDIS when something seems to be amiss. “Can’t control it? We’ll see about that,” the Doctor huffs in a rather familiar TARDIS refrain. After being suspended in space as a mysterious web engulfs it, the TARDIS lands in the London underground where our Yeti/web/fungus/fog/Great Intelligence adventure begins. We again get the one-two-three heads peaking around a corner, which seems to be something of a Doctor-Jamie-Victoria trademark, before the adventure really takes off.

The adventure of The Web of Fear takes place mostly in the London underground as the Yeti, our three travelers, the military, and Travers and his daughter run about in various groups, tangling with Yeti, getting webbed, being threatened by advancing fungus, working out ways to reprogram Yeti spheres, trying to explode things, and regrouping at HQ. (The London underground is much darker than the Crystal City metro stop.)
All the while they try to figure out who amongst them is working for the Great Intelligence. I have to admit, Gary, that throughout I suspected Anne Travers, and I was rather disappointed to learn that it was really Staff-Sergeant Arnold. That is another loose end that needed more explanation. Was he the traitor all along or only after he entered the fungus? And if he was the traitor all along, was it of his own free will or was he being controlled? If of his own free will—why? If he was being controlled, why wasn’t he acting robotic as Travers was when he was controlled?

No, I could much more readily see Anne Travers having had 30 years of stories from her father about the Yeti and the Great Intelligence and the spheres to work out some sort of plot to use this to her own advantage. But this is one Doctor Who story without a human scheming to use the monsters for his or her own end. This story has monsters enough without adding a madman to the mix.
“Let’s get down to some practical soldiering.” Ah, Leftbridge-Stewart.What a refreshing addition he is to Doctor Who. The Doctor flying by the seat of his pants; chaos erupting all around; cast members scattering into various groupings, getting kidnapped, searching for lost members, fighting monsters. “Let’s get down to some practical soldering.” Simple. Direct. Leftbridge-Stewart.

But as always, in the end it is not practical soldiering but the Doctor who winds things up. For all of the Yeti and fungi and fog, it is the Great Intelligence that needs to be defeated. This “formless, shapeless thing floating about in space like a cloud of mist only with a mind.” The Great Intelligence, much like the Elders in The Savages, has studied the Doctor; his reputation precedes him. “Through time and space I have observed you, Doctor. Your mind surpasses that of all other creatures.”
The Great Intelligence wants the Doctor’s intelligence.  It has a contraption for just such a purpose. The thing about contraptions and the Doctor, though—the Doctor can tinker with them. That is exactly what he does, too, with this contraption. Unfortunately he doesn’t let anyone else in on his plan and just when he thinks he is succeeding in wiping the Great Intelligence’s mind, Jamie, Leftbridge-Stewart, and the rest get down to some ‘practical soldiering’ and destroy all the machinery. Great for the immediate threat, but that still leaves the Great Intelligence lurking out there somewhere in space just aching for another Doctor Who serial to come along and resurrect it.

The Web of Fear has all the elements of great story telling thrown together in a grab bag and comes out a winner despite its incomprehensibility.
That is life, Gary, in the Doctor’s time swirl. All the elements are there, swirling about, and most times they come out a winner.

Monday, August 20, 2012

The Enemy of the World

Dear Gary—

Now that Patrick Troughton has had a chance to establish himself as the Doctor, as his own Doctor, The Enemy of the World gives him a chance to establish a solid link to the inalienable character of the Doctor as first portrayed by William Hartnell. Some of the most basic principles of the Doctor are represented in this story, as well as some simple details of his life. However, these only serve to more firmly entrench Patrick Troughton in the role, and to serve as a springboard to ever new revelations.
The Enemy of the World starts with a decidedly non-Hartnell moment as the Doctor strips down to his long johns and cavorts about in the ocean. But this is quickly followed by a Hartnellesque disclaimer of his medical qualifications when his title of Doctor is questioned by his recent rescuer. “Not of any medical significance,” he asserts.

“Doctor of Law? Philosophy?” Astrid presses him. “Which law; whose philosophies, eh?” The Doctor replies. (“One man’s law is another man’s crime,” echoes back from William Hartnell.)When Astrid and her boss Giles Kent try to enlist the Doctor’s help against his doppelganger Salamander, the Doctor queries, “Which side is good; which side is bad; and why should I interfere?” (“I’ve learned never to meddle in other people’s affairs”; “Trust can’t be taken for granted; it must be earned.”)
The Doctor reluctantly agrees to cooperate only in so far as to uncover evidence of Salamander’s true intentions. “”I’ll expose him, ruin him, have him arrested, but I won’t be his executioner—no one has that right,” he exclaims.  (“You stupid butcher, can you think of nothing else but killing?”; “In the first place, Madam, I never kill anything; neither do my friends.”)

Echoes from the past linking us to our present Doctor.
The Enemy of the World has another link to the Hartnell era, and that is the lack of any alien beings. However, this is not like any historical or mystery/murder story of that time. No, this has a decided Troughton flair.

Salamander is a perfect double for the Doctor and Patrick Troughton does a superb job in the dual role as he plays the evil mastermind, the Doctor, and the Doctor impersonating the vaguely Mexican Salamander who has been manipulating natural disasters to gain control of the world while all the while appearing to be the world’s benefactor. (Weather manipulation seems to be an emerging pattern in the Troughton era, Gary.)
The first half of our story is a clever little political intrigue, with Jamie and Victoria infiltrating the Salamander entourage and the Doctor treading warily around Kent and Astrid and later the Security Chief Donald Bruce as he tries to determine “which side is good; which side is bad.” There are assassinations and betrayals, arrests and escapes. In the end there is sufficient proof that Salamader has been manufacturing natural disasters to consolidate his own power.

Here, Gary, is where our story takes on a rather bizarre twist. It seems that Salamander is keeping a group of scientists in an underground bunker to create these disasters, and he has somehow convinced them that this is all in the interest of the war effort—a non-existent nuclear war that they believe is waging out on the surface of the Earth. None of them have been allowed to go to the surface; the few that have gone up have never returned. Salamander is the only person to come and go as he brings food and supplies to the dunderheads below.
Through his impersonation of this evil mastermind, the Doctor convinces Bruce of the truth and unmasks Kent as an original co-conspirator of Salamander (“Any man who resorts to murder as eagerly and as rapidly as you must be suspect”), although the two have since had a falling out and are now working against each other and towards their own ends. Astrid also discovers the duplicity of her boss and stumbles upon one entrance to the tunnel leading down to the hidden bunker.

With Kent and Salamander at each other’s throats, Bruce and Astrid now working to reveal the truth and seek justice, and the highly outraged scientists intent on revenge for having been duped into wasting five years of their lives underground, not to mention wreaking mass murder upon the planet, we are in for one slam bang of a finish.
An explosion nicely takes care of everything, with the good side triumphant and the bad side dead. But it’s not over quite yet. Jamie and Victoria have been sent back to the TARDIS where they meet up with the Doctor. However when an evidently befuddled Doctor instructs Jamie to work the controls they know something is wrong.

“You said we were never to touch the controls.”
Luckily, the real Doctor shows up just in time. The exposed imposter lunges for the controls and the TARDIS dematerializes with the doors still wide open. While the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria hang on for dear life, Salamander is sucked out into the time vortex.

Yes, Gary, The Enemy of the World has some definite echoes of the past, but it is firmly rooted in the Troughton era. The character of the Doctor is both constant and in flux. It is comforting to have the core beliefs intact, but exciting to have fresh perspectives in personality.
One additional revelation of the Doctor: “I always was interested in phonetics.”

Always we learn something new, no matter how small.
Here’s hoping that somewhere out there in the time vortex you receive these thoughts . . .

Friday, August 17, 2012

The Ice Warriors


Dear Gary—
The Ice Warriors starts with a nice comedy bit highlighting the camaraderie that is developing between our three travelers. It begins with the TARDIS landing unexpectedly sideways (“It was a blind landing”) so that the three have to climb over each other to exit, and ends with the classic one-two-three heads peaking around a corner, one above the other, as they enter the base they have materialized beside. I have to say, also, that the strange, high-pitched 60’s sci-fi music that starts out the story lends an unintended bit of humor as well. I almost expect a green alien woman to come floating by looking for her beloved Dr. Smith.

The base the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria are entering is reminiscent of that from The Moon Base except instead of controlling all weather patterns this base is focused solely on containing massive glacier movements that have been triggered by the lack of carbon dioxide. It seems that the people of future Earth have developed an inexhaustible food supply that does not require plant life and have replaced paradise with a parking lot so to speak (actually I think it has been replaced with living quarters to house the exploding population). No plant life=no carbon dioxide=New Ice Age. But not to worry, ionizers have been set up at multiple bases around the world to keep the advancing glaciers in check. Seems like it would be easier and cheaper to plant a few trees, but then we wouldn’t have a story.
The Ice Warriors highlights the Doctor Who love/hate relationship with computers/technology. Two of the main Doctor Who antagonists are humanoid beings that have had their humanity removed and replaced with electronics—Daleks and Cybermen. In The Ice Warriors the real threat comes not from the Ice Warriors themselves but from the indecision and dependence on the computer that runs the base.

The Doctor’s unease with computers is established early in the story when he is asked if he has ever worked with them. “Only when I have to,” he replies. And the ineffectiveness of the base leader who relies solely upon the computer is evident from the start. As one of his men says of him, Leader Clent is not a scientist but rather an organizer; “he should have been born a robot.” He doesn’t think for himself, he obeys what the computer tells him. “I do think you might try trusting human beings instead of computers,” the Doctor tells him.  “I trust no one Doctor, not anymore; human emotions are unreliable.” Sounds like a Dalek or Cyberman in the making.
The Ice Warriors of our story do pose a threat. Frozen in the ice, the base scientist unthaws one and we learn that they are Martians who crashed during the first ice age and have been frozen ever since. The recently thawed Ice Warrior, Varga, kidnaps Vicki, frees the rest of his men, and determines that the ionizer of the base is a threat and must be destroyed. The Martian ship, however, doesn’t have much power left and ultimately they don’t pose the real danger for the base. The fact that they have Vicki is the only complication for the Doctor to work out. They do have a weapon of sorts, but that is an easy matter for the Doctor.

No, the actual danger is the fact that there is a glacier bearing down on the base on the one hand and on the other there is an alien ship buried in the ice that may or may not have an engine that could trigger a nuclear explosion if they use the ionizer on the glacier. Couple this with the fact that Leader Clent is crippled by his reliance on the computer, and the computer in turn is crippled by this rock and a hard place riddle, and a genuine disaster is in the making.
“Because it is so logical it can’t gamble; it can’t take risks,” is the reason given for the computer’s indecisive decision to do nothing. It is playing for time. By demanding action, it seems, the crew is asking the computer to commit suicide. I’m not sure about that one, Gary. By instilling a sense of survival in the computer the show is ascribing human like qualities to it. Certainly there are Doctor Who super computers that develop the capacity for independent thought and monomaniacal traits, but there is no indication that the computer of our story is anything more than just that—a computer.

“This is a decision for a man to make not a machine. The computer isn’t designed to take risks but that is the essence of man’s progress. We must decide.” In the end, when pressed to make a choice, the computer implodes and the Doctor and the base’s rogue scientist Penley take over. They use the ionizer, only a minor explosion occurs, the glacier is stopped, the Ice Warriors are defeated, and all is right once again with the world.
This Man versus Technology theme is a fitting one for the Troughton Who era. Patrick Troughton’s Doctor is definitely one for individuality, creativity, impulsiveness. He uses a rock, not a sonic screwdriver. He knows what he is doing—he hopes. Or as he says in this story, “Your regulations do not apply to me; I work in my own way—freely.” Or as the computer asseses him: "High IQ but undisciplined."

One final note about Patrick Troughton, Gary, before I sign off. “I live in hope,” he says in The Ice Warriors. I’m glad to see this theme of hope continuing through from the Hartnell years—“You must travel with understanding as well as hope;” “Isn’t it better to travel hopefully than arrive?”
"I live in hope.”

Here’s hoping, Gary . . .

Monday, August 13, 2012

The Abominable Snowmen

Dear Gary—

I have been looking forward to The Abominable Snowmen for some time—ever since I learned that these lost stories are available in reconstructed form. I know very little of Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, but even my limited knowledge of him strongly associates him with the Yeti. I just did not know that the Yeti were more or less muppets (full-bodied muppets ala Big Bird and Snuffleupagus to be exact). To be even more exact, they are full-bodied muppet robots controlled by the Great Intelligence, a disembodied alien being intent upon conquering the Earth from his base located in a Tibetan monastery.
The Yeti are not the only revelation for me in The Abominable Snowmen, however. I also am getting a clearer picture of Patrick Troughton’s Doctor. He is more than just the Yeti and a recorder, the only two solid bits of information I ever really had of him before now.

“Doctor, you did know what you were doing, didn’t you,” Polly asks of him back in Patrick Troughton’s first story The Power of the Daleks. This echo of uncertainty follows Troughton’s Doctor.
“When you’ve been with the Doctor as long as I have you begin to realize you don’t know what he’s talking about,” Jamie offers up in our story. Troughton definitely gives the impression that he is making things up as he goes along.

“Have you thought of some clever plan, Doctor?” Jamie asks as the two are confronted with a Yeti. “Yes, Jamie, I believe I have,” the Doctor replies. What is this clever plan? To throw a rock at it. I think perhaps he has learned a thing or two from Vicki back in Galaxy Four who “observed, collated, concluded” and then threw a rock at the Chumbly.
“Would you walk up to a creature like that with just a screwdriver in your hand?” Current Doctor would, armed as he is with a sonic screwdriver. Patrick Troughton’s Doctor, however, has not yet gone sonic. For Patrick Troughton a rock will have to do.

And a sonic-less Doctor still yields results. “I’m really rather pleased with myself.” Ah, there is the continuity binding Troughton to all Doctors past and present. Arrogance. But where Hartnell’s Doctor’s arrogance was born of supreme confidence, Troughton’s is born of almost childish delight. While Hartnell would “observe, note, collate, and then conclude,” Troughton simply states, “I know what I’m doing—I hope.” He is flying by the seat of his pants and reveling in his success.
The story of The Abominable Snowmen is a bit disappointing, though. I’m sure much of this is due to the fact that it is another reconstruction, and not having quite the same script strength of some of the other reconstructions it doesn’t hold my interest for long. It also doesn’t help that the monks of our story don’t even come close to resembling Tibetans .

The Great Intelligence is another ambiguous alien with ambiguous motives. Somehow the Yeti it has created (and which are controlled through the use of a chess board) will take control of the Tibetan mountain and from there conquer the Earth. The Great Intelligence has a couple of entranced monks doing its will as well. The other monks are divided into camps of those who trust the Doctor and those who do not.
The Doctor reveals that he had visited this monastery 300 years earlier, and as proof he has the ‘Holy Ghanta’ that the monks gave him for safe keeping the last time he was there. This serves to ally him with the monks as they unite to fight the marauding Yeti and to break the hold of the Great Intelligence. In the end it is rather easy as they just have to smash up some equipment located in the inner sanctum.
I do find it rather amusing, Gary, that in the midst of rampaging muppet robot Yetis we have the monks proclaiming that Victoria “is a devil woman.” And what is her crime? “Headstrong, that’s what she is.” Yes, I’m glad to see that this aspect of Victoria’s character continues to be developed. She is impatient when left behind in the safety of the TARDIS and urges Jamie to go out exploring. Then, when put under guard in the monastery, she gives her jailers the slip to investigate the mysterious and off-limits inner sanctum.

“I just don’t like mysteries,” she declares, and she is determined to get to the bottom of things. Headstrong. Devil Woman. I like it.
I also like that the next story has only two of its six episodes still missing. And I just want to take a moment here, Gary, to note that the Troughton years seem to have gone back to the longer six episode story lines. Some of the Hartnell stories that were six or more episodes long could drag on, but I’m finding that I don’t mind as much with Troughton, even in reconstructed form. I believe that this is partly thanks to some excellent scripts. Or maybe it is just that I haven’t been exposed to most of these stories before and am curious to learn more of Troughton’s Doctor.

Whatever the case, I send this out, Gary, and hope that it finds you somewhere in the swirl of time.

Friday, August 10, 2012

The Tomb of the Cybermen

Dear Gary—

Hurray! Finally a real episode that I can sit back and watch. Finally a reprieve from the reconstructions. The Tomb of the Cybermen was actually a lost episode until it was found in 1991. Hurray!
This story has more going for it than just the fact that it is not reconstructed. We get some revelations about the Doctor, a well written and acted script, humor, great character chemistry, and the Cybermen.  Plus it has a small role for Clive Merrison who will go on to play one of my all time favorite Doctor Who characters—the Deputy Chief Caretaker in Paradise Towers.

A win-win throughout.
First we have some revealing and touching scenes with Patrick Troughton as the Doctor. In welcoming Victoria on board, the Doctor tells her, “It’s the TARDIS; it’s my home. At least it has been for a considerable number of years.” His affection for the TARDIS perhaps explains his continual defense of it, as he does again in this story: “A smooth take-off—what nerve,” he huffs indignantly when Jamie questions his ability.

And then for the first time he reveals his age—450 years (in Earth terms). This leads to a sweet exchange a little later in our story with the newly orphaned Victoria when the Doctor tries to comfort her for the loss of her father. Victoria asks the Doctor if he doesn’t remember his own family and he responds, “Oh, yes I can; when I want to. And that’s the point, really. I have to really want to to to bring them back in front of my eye. The rest of the time they sleep in my mind and I forget.”
Already he is a lonely Doctor. Exiled from his home planet; his granddaughter left behind on Earth to start her own life; the TARDIS the only home he has known for a ‘considerable number of years;’ his family forgotten, sleeping in his mind, only thought of when he wants to bring them forth.

Speaking of homes, Gary, we have a little confusion about the Cybermen’s true home. Back in the Tenth Planet where they were first introduced, Mondas was identified as their home planet. Now we hear that Telos is their home. However, what I gather from this is that Mondas was their original planet but since it was destroyed they turned to Telos and made it their new home.
We also learn at the start of The Tomb of the Cybermen that they have been dead for 500 years. Of course, in The Moonbase we also heard that the Cybermen had died out years ago, so this should be taken with a grain of salt.

Our action starts with a group of archeologists intent on uncovering the site where these supposedly dead Cybermen have been entombed. And just to illustrate how good a script we have in the Tomb of the Cybermen, we get this wonderfully humorous little exchange in a set-up scene with supporting cast as they explode the area in which they believe the tomb to be buried:
“Well, there you go—you blast yourself one layer of rock and all you’ve got’s another,” one says in defeat as the apparently futile explosion of rock settles.

“Man, you just blew yourself a pair of doors,” another exclaims, as indeed a pair of doors unexpectedly emerges at the last minute.
The Tomb of the Cybermen is full of great lines, great exchanges, great interchanges between characters, and these are liberally scattered to all the actors and not just to the main core. I especially enjoy when the American Captain Hopper enters the picture. He is a no-nonsense, direct, to the point, take no guff type of a guy, yet with a subtle humor that hints of an off duty persona I truly would like to know. Too bad his character is in a story so soon in Victoria’s Doctor Who experience; he would have made an ideal mate for her. I don’t know, Gary, how Victoria (or ‘Vic’ as Hopper calls her) does eventually leave the Doctor, but I hope that in her Doctorless future she somehow hooks up with him.

Captain Hopper doesn’t get much screen time; he has a sabotaged rocket ship to repair, and he makes it clear that he doesn’t need members of the expedition under foot, or as he shakes off a particularly annoying  scientist, “especially with you insisting all over the place.”
The archeologists and the Doctor are left to explore the mysteries of the uncovered tomb. There is a hatch that needs opening, a sarcophagus that swallows Victoria, and a Cyberman weapons testing room where one of the party gets himself blasted when he stands in the way of the dummy target practice. And of course, what is any good Doctor Who story without secret plots and a madman who believes he can control the Cybermen (or whatever enemy is on hand) to his own advantage.

“Some things are better left undone.” In this case, that something is the opening of the hatch leading down to where the frozen Cybermen await an awakening. But the expedition diligently works out the symbolic logic puzzle of levers to figure out the correct sequence. “Everything yields to logic.” “I think perhaps your logic is wearing a little thin,” the Doctor replies when the sequence doesn’t work. However the hatch finally does open and a party descends.
Curiously the Doctor only half heartedly tries to dissuade the resurrection of the Cybermen, responding to a chastising Jamie that he wanted to see what Klieg (the madman of our story) was up to. Meantime Klieg’s associate Kaftan, left behind with Victoria, closes the hatch thus trapping the Doctor and party below with the newly defrosted Cybermen.

I have to say that Victoria is not totally useless, despite the fact that she is so often left behind and does her share of screaming (“You scream real good, Vic”). For being a young innocent girl straight out of 1866, she is quick witted, sharp tongued, determined, and even defiant, all in a refined, soft spoken way.

She reluctantly obeys the Doctor when he orders her to stay above in safety, settling for the role of watchdog over Kaftan. Victoria is wonderfully stern and stubborn with the devious Kaftan. Then when Kaftan seals the hatch a determined Victoria, not knowing how to open the hatch back up, runs for Captain Hopper and Jim (AKA the Deputy Chief Caretaker). “Now hold on; I’m not pulling any levers until I know what this is all about.” But Victoria will not be dissuaded.
"Who’d be a woman?” she says in dejected disgust when rebuffed yet again from descending down into the open hatchway. “How would you know?” Captain Hopper shoots back off handedly as he disappears below. A woman born and bred in the 1800’s, but a woman getting a taste of adventure and beginning to question her designated role. I hope, Gary, that the show continues to explore this aspect of Victoria's character.

And I hope to see more of the great camaraderie developing between the Doctor and Jamie. They are turning into quite a team, at times a comic duo. After defeating an advancing army of cybermats by confusing “their tiny metal minds” with an electrical field, the Doctor turns to Jamie with “you might almost say they had a complete metal breakdown,” as Jamie groans.
Cybermats are not Cybermen, however, and the Doctor still needs to face the Cyber Controller. However these freshly unfrozen Cybermen are running sluggish and it is rather easily done. “The best thing about a machine that makes sense—you can very easily make it turn out nonsense.” But it is the human drama and comedy going on around the Cyber menace that is central to The Tomb of the Cybermen.

Kleig has gone completely off the deep end as the Doctor goads him into revealing his mad plan to gain ultimate power. “Well now I know you’re mad; I just wanted to make sure.” The Cybermen he was relying on, however, inevitably turn on Kleig and all that is left is for the Doctor to return the Cybermen to their deep freeze and seal up the tomb for good.
“That really is the end of the Cybermen, isn’t it?” asks Jamie. “Yes, Jamie,” the Doctor replies, “on the other hand, I never like to make predictions.” Good thing, because we know the Cybermen’s history.

I guess I’ve run on a bit, Gary, but it is just so refreshing to have such a great story in its entirety for a change.
I leave with just a few last observances from the Doctor. “Our lives are different to anybody else’s,” he tells Victoria. “That’s the exciting thing. Nobody in the universe can do what we’re doing.”

No, nobody can do what the Doctor does, nor can they do it in the style of the Doctor. As he eloquently says of his home the TARDIS, it “enables me to travel through the universe of time.”
I leave on that note, Gary, traveling through the universe of time with the Doctor.

Monday, August 6, 2012

The Evil of the Daleks

Dear Gary—

“Maybe I’m used to you.” And maybe I am used to Patrick Troughton as the Doctor. It is still hard to think of Patrick Troughton when thinking of the Doctor, though. So many lost stories make it difficult, and even though these stories are reconstructed, it just is not the same.
The Evil of the Daleks is yet another reconstruction. And it is another great story. A regular gothic tale spiced up with Daleks.

“There is only one form of life that matters: Dalek life.” So what are the Daleks doing in an 1866 mansion with beautiful damsels locked up in towers and fiancĂ©s who have changed overnight into slightly menacing figures and doddering father figures dabbling in dank basement laboratories in things they shouldn’t?
“All forms of life interest me.” That’s the Doctor. He is interested in these damsels and fiancĂ©s and dabbling amateur scientists.

And of course he wants to find his TARDIS. The TARDIS was lost back at Gatwick Airport at the end of The Faceless Ones. Following its trail, the Doctor ends up in an 1866 gothic castle mystery/adventure initiated by the Daleks. Frustrated by the fact that they are defeated time and again by mankind, the Daleks are intent upon discerning ‘the Human Factor’ and instilling it into their race.
It is all rather convoluted, as any good Doctor Who plot is. Our two scientists in 1866 have been dabbling in time traveling experiments with static electricity, which is what attracted the Daleks. To coerce their cooperation, the Daleks kidnap one of their daughters and promises the other the secrets of transmuting metal into gold. To lure the Doctor they kidnap the TARDIS.

This is where Jamie comes into the plot. To isolate the ‘Human Factor’ the Daleks concoct a scheme to somehow distill it through observing Jamie’s attempt to rescue the kidnapped Victoria. The Doctor goes along with this preposterous plan and ultimately isolates what he considers to be the better part of the Human Factor, “courage, pity, chivalry, friendship, compassion.”
“They’ve got a sense of humor,” the Doctor exclaims as the three Daleks he has injected with this new factor playfully cavort about the lab.  Alpha, Beta, and Omega the Doctor names them. Childlike Daleks with names.

The other Daleks, however, are not amused. This whole elaborate plot, we learn, was not to isolate the Human Factor but for the Human Factor to reveal the true nature of the Dalek Factor. “You have shown the Daleks what their own strength is.”
Of course, Gary, we know that is ridiculous. The Daleks have always known their own strength. But we needed an excuse to get all our characters together and to propel our plot, and if it results in ‘Dizzy Daleks’ Alpha, Beta, and Omega questioning orders and spinning the Doctor about the room who cares. What fun.

“We have a partnership; an understanding.” So says the alchemist who has willingly cooperated with the Daleks. “You have obeyed us,” say the Daleks. That is their strength in a nutshell. They don’t make partnerships; they don’t cooperate; they don’t compromise. They destroy. They never deviate.
Well, hardly never. Their one blinding weakness. When it comes to the Doctor they deviate. They do not destroy. They plan, they scheme, they plot, they try to outsmart. They do not destroy. Not the Doctor. They deviate.

In the case of The Evil of the Daleks they deviate back to Skaro. The Black Dalek and the Emperor Dalek show up. Alpha, Beta, and Omega show up. Jamie and Victoria show up. The two dabbling scientists show up. The Doctor shows up.
The Daleks, armed with their Dalek Factor set up an archway that will turn humans mentally into Daleks (more of a Cyberman objective than a Dalek, but who cares?). What they don’t know is that the Doctor has secretly switched out the factors and sends Daleks through, giving Alpha, Beta, and Omega some company.

“Why not question?” our new Daleks ask. “I will not obey,” they state. The Doctor has instigated yet another rebellion.  Black Daleks and Emperor Dalek are destroyed.
“I think we’ve seen the end of the Daleks forever,” the Doctor rather foolishly declares. “The final end.”

Of course we know it’s not, Gary. But let the Doctor have his day.
He gets a new companion along the way, too. Victoria’s father has been killed during the action and she is left orphaned.  “We’re not going to leave her; she’s coming with us,” the Doctor tells a concerned and smitten Jamie.

I feel I should mention, Gary, something of the vaguely sinister fiancĂ©, for I rather left him dangling out there at the beginning. That is how the story treated him as well. The fiancĂ© of the alchemist’s daughter, he was somehow being controlled by the Daleks and was merely a plot convenience to keep the action on track during our first half of our 1866 adventure. At least we have a hurried resolution as he is freed from the Dalek’s control and escapes with his bride to be before the Daleks destroy the gothic home back during their departure to Skaro.
Just wanted to wrap up that loose end, Gary, before sending this out . . .

Friday, August 3, 2012

The Faceless Ones

Dear Gary--

"Things are not always what they seem," and in The Faceless Ones we are drawn nicely in to the mysterious happenings at Gatwick Airport where, as the Doctor advises, "You don't want to believe everything you see." Despite being 6 episodes long, with 5 of the 6 being available only in reconstructed form, The Faceless Ones holds one's interest throughout; it is a tale well told.

First Polly (whose hair has suddenly grown back from the super short sleek do she was sporting in The Macra Terror) witnesses a murder, but when the airport authorities are notified the body disappears. Next we learn that the young passengers of a charter service have been disappearing; and there are several airport personnel who aren't quite themselves. Then Polly disappears only to reappear with a new identity and no memory of the Doctor. And this is only the beginning.

The faceless ones of our title turn out to be extremely egotistical aliens ("We are the most intelligent race in the universe") who have lost their own identities and have devised a way to take over the form of a human body despite their seeming contempt for mankind ("These earth minds cannot stretch that far"; "The truth is beyond their intelligence").

It does seem as if the aliens are right about the intelligence of humans. 50,000 young people are required and plane loads of them have been taken for some time with no one seeming to notice. The young people they are stealing are not too bright either. They are all asked to write out a postcard to their loved ones stating they have arrived safely at their final destination when they haven't even boarded their flight yet. Not one of them questions this. Then there are the airport authorities who don't seem to notice any of the alien activity going on under their noses and don't bat an eye when the Doctor and Polly inform them of a murdered body on the premises.

But you can't kidnap 50,000 young people without someone taking notice. Two investigators do show up, although one gets himself murdered and the other gets taken over by an alien; and one lone relative of a missing person begins to question her brother's disappearance. It is a delight to see Pauline Collins taking an early turn at Doctor Who as Sam the sister (she would later go on to make an excellent Queen Victoria during David Tennant's run). I understand she was offered a recurring role as the Doctor's new companion but she turned it down. What a shame. Polly and Ben are being phased out as companions during this story and Pauline Collins would have made a welcome addition to the cast. She and Jamie strike up a really nice little relationship; poor Jamie has to settle for a sweet good-bye kiss when all is said and done.
But there is quite a lot of action before all is said and done.  Jamie and Sam get acquainted while investigating the goings on at Chameleon Tours and keeping an eye on the strangely altered Polly who has taken up duties at the Chameleon kiosk. The Doctor meantime gains the trust of the airport authorities and works to uncover the sinister plot of the aliens who have been using the infirmary to take over the bodies of airport personnel. And still we’re just beginning.

Once it is established that Chameleon Tours has been whisking planes full of young passengers off to an alien satellite to be miniaturized and taken back to an alien planet for body transference, Jamie steals Sam’s plane ticket and goes himself as a passenger on the next flight (in one of his ‘flying beasties’); and the Doctor pretends to be a Chameleon who has taken over the Doctor’s body and makes his own way to the alien satellite. At the same time the airport authorities are frantically searching to find the ‘originals’ of the humans that have been copied to use as leverage against the aliens (when the ‘original’ is removed from the alien apparatus its alien counterpart is destroyed).
Once the originals are discovered the Doctor instigates an uprising amongst our faceless aliens. The Director and his inner circle have taken care to keep their originals safe on board the satellite. When the ‘unimportant’ faceless ones realize their originals have been left behind and they are now at the mercy of the humans, they side with the Doctor as their only hope. The leaders are destroyed, the miniaturized humans are normalized and the originals safely restored.

The cooperative Chameleons are given a reprieve by the Doctor. So long as they leave Earth alone, he will allow them to return to their own planet unharmed where, the Doctor speculates, their scientists “will be able to find some way out of their dilemma .” And he adds, “I may be able to . . . ah . . . give them one or two ideas of my own.”
Back at the airport things are settling back into a routine: "Flap over; let's get back to normal as quickly as we can." And Ben and Polly are reluctant to leave this normal world they now find themselves in.  Learning that they are back in their own time--July 20, 1966, back to when it all started for them--they realize they have the opportunity to return to a life with "no monsters or Cybermen." Ben reluctantly tells the Doctor they will stay if he needs them, but as Polly says, "the thing is, it . . . it tis our world."

"You're lucky," the Doctor tells them, "I never got back to mine. All right then, off you go.” And so the Doctor says goodbye to two more companions. At least he has Jamie, who can’t wait to get away from this ‘uncivilized’ world of 1966. First, the Doctor informs Jamie, they have to find the TARDIS which has disappeared.
So the adventures continue.

Until next time, Gary . . .