Doctor Who Story 049: The Space Pirates

STORY 049: THE SPACE PIRATES

Pirate Copies...

There is something almost perverse in that the only surviving episode of The Space Pirates exists in two places. One is a 35mm film print, which was preserved only because it was the first BBC program ever placed on film (which explains why said episode, Episode 2, is the only one surviving).  Then there is a rare instance of a video recorder being used on The Space Pirates.  Would you believe it...it is the EXACT same episode!  That means out of the six episode story, only Episode 2 remains for us to enjoy.  Enjoy, however, may be too grand a term for it, because even in that one episode, The Space Pirates looks like a slow and dull adventure made slower and duller by its length.

The Space Pirates lives up to its billing: it's about pirates in space.  That in itself is a bright idea, and Robert Holmes, in his second Doctor Who screenplay, at least presents the notion as instructed.  However, The Space Pirates is more a 'Western in Space' than a pirate story, complete with crazed prospector.  These touches, along with others, sinks The Space Pirates to mediocrity.

The TARDIS materialises in Earth's future on a space beacon just before it is attacked by pirates. The Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and his Companions, Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury) find themselves trapped in a sealed section of the beacon. It is blown apart and flown to where the pirates will plunder it of the precious mineral argonite. They witness a conflict between the pirates and the Interstellar Space Corps, led by General Hermack (Jay Mack) and Major Warne (Donald Gee).

The ISC are convinced that the pirates' mastermind is an innocent yet eccentric space mining pioneer named Milo Clancey (Gordon Gostelow), while their true leader is a man named Caven (Dudley Foster). Caven has a secret base on the planet Ta. He is assisted by Madeleine Issigri (Lisa Daniely), daughter of Clancey's ex-partner Dom, who - unknown to her - is now his captive.

When Madeleine discovers Caven's full treachery she helps to bring him to justice. The time travellers are given a lift back to the TARDIS by Clancey in his rickety old ship, the LIZ 79. *

Even in the surviving Episode 2 we see what makes The Space Pirates a weak Doctor Who story.  Namely, the Doctor and his Companions are basically irrelevant to the story.  Minus the Doctor's efforts to bring the broken-off section of the spaceship closer to the piece where the TARDIS is (which given the length of the story, he obviously was going to get wrong) they played no part in the episode itself.  In fact, if you cut their scenes, you would have had a whole new story that might have worked as a separate series. 

The NuWho fans are fond of demanding spin-offs for every Tom, Dick, and River that appears as a guest star/character  (getting their wish with the Captain Jack Harkness spin-off Torchwood).  The Space Pirates gives us a roundabout vision of what a potential Doctor Who spin-off might have looked like.  For all the length of The Space Pirates, one could easily have written the travellers out of the story without being part of anything. 

Granted, it's pretty difficult to make that argument without being able to see the other episodes, but the synopsis is pretty Doctor-lite.   I'd argue that if you removed the main characters you don't affect the overall flow of the story.  That being the case, it makes it hard to imagine that a story where the Doctor is almost irrelevant would be a good to great Doctor Who story.

Even that perhaps could be forgiven (although intensely difficult to do so).  The Space Pirates unfortunately suffers from other factors.  The decision by director Michael Hart to ask his characters to appear as if they were in a Western (particularly with Gostelow's "hillbilly in space" Milo, which makes him look a pickax and dance short of Walter Huston in Treasure of the Sierra Madre) turns this almost into farce.  Another space crew member, Technician Penn (George Layton), was allowed to have shaggy hair and a mustache that made him look like a lost Beatle.

One poor decision was in the costumes, which in terms are grand and almost comical (the space helmets themselves being a source of unintended laughter).  Dudley Simpson's score was on the plus ambitious, but curiously the vocalization that opens each episode of The Space Pirates makes it sound far too grand for the story its telling.  One thing that is in retrospect amusing is that The Space Pirates with that vocalization predated Murray Gold's NuWho score which similarly echoes a female vocal in space.

One final note: Robert Holmes' script makes mention of a 'mind probe', and I have no way of knowing whether Terrance Dicks subconsciously drew from The Space Pirates or Holmes himself when he turned 'the mind probe' in The Five Doctors into one of the most famous (or infamous) lines in Who history...but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

One complaint I continuously make is that with the possible exception of Dalek stories, long Doctor Who stories (those that are longer than four episodes) simply can't maintain the stamina or interest of an audience.  The Space Pirates at six episodes appears to be another case of the story being far too long for the tale that it's telling.  Even if it were to be rediscovered I doubt The Space Pirates would be all that popular.  Still, it would be nice to have more lost episodes found, even if it were something as weak as The Space Pirates.

* My thanks to TARDIS Wikia for the plot synopsis. 

3/10

Next story: The War Games

Doctor Who Story 038: The Abominable Snowmen

STORY 038:

THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN

Melted Snowmen...

Curiously, The Abominable Snowmen at times appears to both take things extremely seriously and not take things seriously at all.  On the one hand, you have a great deal of Buddhist mysticism wrapped up in a science-fiction show, with rather esoteric things as astrol planes and hidden mystics.  On the other hand, the title characters are not really monstrous-looking, but almost cuddly.  Granted, they can appear at times quite menacing when up close, but when we see them march up and down in unison, they end up looking rather cute.  There are some wonderful things in The Abominable Snowmen (in particular the art direction), and the one episode remaining has an intriguing set-up.  However, here is another case of whether six episodes were necessary to tell this story.

As close to a wrap-up as one can give considering only Episode 2 out of six survives, we have this.  The Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and his Companions Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Victoria (Deborah Watling) have arrived in Tibet, where the Doctor expects a warm greeting from the monks at the nearby Buddhist monastery, in particular because he is bringing back an ancient holy relic that he has kept for safekeeping (exactly safekeeping for what, I'm not sure).  Instead, the monks believe they are responsible for making the Yeti (or Abominable Snowmen) into aggressive beings rather than the shy monsters they normally are.

There's evil at work, and the monks, along with Professor Henry Travers (Jack Watling) believe the trio are a danger.  Eventually, we learn that the Yeti we've been seeing are not the same Yeti we all know and love.  Rather, they are actually robots being controlled by who and why.  Things get even weirder when the Doctor learns that Padmasambhava, the old monk whom he was friends with is still very much alive despite it being a good two to three hundred years since last he visited.

Padmasambhava, along with the Yeti, are being controlled by an entity called The Great Intelligence, an alien which wants a living form to conquer the universes.  The Doctor manages to defeat the Great Intelligence by destroying the spheres that control the various Yeti, and his very old friend is finally able to die at last.  With the Ghanta returned and the Yeti/Great Intelligence defeated, the Doctor and his Companions leave.

As I stated earlier, The Abominable Snowmen has some beautiful art direction which captures the beauty of Buddhist art as well as making the sets look like an ancient monastery deep within the Tibetan mountains.  In the surviving episode, we can see the great care that was taken to make such an exotic locale believable, even beautiful.  The inner sanctum where Padmasambhava resides is spectacularly captured (as are some of the costumes ranging from the Doctor's fur coat to the monk's robes).

It's unfortunate that writers Mervin Haisman and Henry Lincoln didn't take the same care with the actual story.  Don't get me wrong: there are some brilliant ideas in The Abominable Snowmen (such as the shifting of Padmasambhava's voice from benevolent and sweet to malevolent and angry when speaking of the Doctor), and good moments of humor (as when the Doctor warns Victoria away from Jamie because "he has an idea").  My issue with The Abominable Snowmen is that it is built on things that don't quite hold together if one is not Buddhist.

For example, the Great Intelligence is able to capture Padmasambhava when the latter is travelling in an astral plane.  I'm not against Buddhists or their beliefs, but I don't accept people can travel outside their bodies only to be captured by evil entities.  It's almost like getting the plot for Insidious, which works in a horror film, not so much in science-fiction.  Further, after three hundred years tinkering with machines for his army, the best he could come up with are those cuddly little things?

The Ghanta, this object of mystery, appears to be a MacGuffin, that object that appears important but is really an excuse to get the ball rolling.  I think it would have been a good idea if the Ghanta were somehow highly important to the Great Intelligence and his plans, or even to Travers.

Finally, in what I consider a flaw to The Abominable Snowmen (besides the rather cuddly, roly-poly monsters...not unlike Craig Owens) is that six episodes simply appears too long to keep the mystery going.  Very rarely have I found such a long story to keep up interest.  There have been a few (mostly the Dalek stories) but whenever we face some sort of alien that asks us to continue for such a long period of time, we feel a certain drag.  I don't know whether The Abominable Snowmen would have kept my interest, but I am leaning towards "no".

Again, this isn't to say that director Garald Blake didn't have good things within it.  The performances were all quite good, from David Spenser's innocent and devout monk Thomni to Norman Jones' belligerent Krihsong.  I wasn't too thrilled with Jack Watling's Professor Travers, thinking he was a bit too tough and not a particularly bright scientist.  However, given that we have only one episode out of six I can't say whether it would have gotten better or worse.

On the whole, the surviving episode of The Abominable Snowmen creates a strong atmosphere and does leave you curious as to what happens next.  However, I don't know if the final payoff would have resulted in nirvana. 
 

Keeping the Faith for a Full Restoration.

5/10

Next Story: The Ice Warriors

Doctor Who Story 035: The Faceless Ones

STORY 035: THE FACELESS ONES

Facing the Loss...

The Faceless Ones is six-part story that is yet another incomplete one, with only two full episodes surviving.   That being said, the two episodes that have survived are quite intriguing and have a strong pace to them.  It is unfortunate that The Faceless Ones (which saw the departure of Companions Ben Jackson and Polly) is so far lost to us.  However, I think the pieces we have hold up rather well.

The Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and his Companions Ben, Polly, and Jamie (Michael Craze, Anneke Wills, and Frazer Hines respectively) have found themselves in Gatwick Airport.  The TARDIS has been taken from the runway as they are forced to separate.  Polly hides in the hanger of Chameleon Tours, and to her horror witnesses a murder.  She finds Jamie and the Doctor while Ben is still missing.  As the three begin to both investigate and try to convince airport officials of the crimes, Polly is taken by the killers.  The Doctor and Jamie convince the airport security that there is a body at the Chameleon Tours hanger, but to their surprise, not only is there none, but Polly has somehow 'just arrived' fro a Chameleon Tour plane.  This tour company caters to young people between 18 to 25, but to their surprise, she now no longer recognizes them.

Skipping about a bit, Ben is still not part of the story, but we have Samantha (Pauline Collins), a girl from Liverpool whose brother is among the young people who have disappeared.  While Chameleon Tours sends postcards ostensibly from the travellers saying that they've arrived, Samantha and Jamie discover that they are really fake: having been written beforehand.  Inspector Crossland (Bernard Kay) whose partner was the murder victim, is taken aboard a Chameleon Tours plane and finds to his shock that the young people have mysteriously vanished into thin air.

To wrap up The Faceless Ones (given that only Episodes One and Three are known to exist), the Doctor discovers the young people are being used as replacements by these aliens who have become disfigured after an explosion in their homeworld.   The Doctor offers to help them in exchange for returning all the missing humans.  To their surprise, Ben and Polly discover that the date is July 20, 1966: the very date they left with the First Doctor in The War Machines.  Taking advantage of that, they decide to stay on Earth, and Samantha decides to say farewell to a smitten Jamie.  The Doctor and Jamie would have left too, except that someone has just stolen the TARDIS...

The Faceless Ones, despite its incomplete status, should show the folly of giving the Doctor so many Companions.  In this story, as in the three stories after The Highlanders to now (The Underwater Menace, The Moonbase, and The Macra Terror), he had THREE Companions to deal with: sailor Ben, posh Polly, and Scotsman Jamie.  With so many characters, it was clear that some of them would get short-changed.  In The Faceless Ones, Ben and Polly were for all intents and purposes written out, appearing in only Episodes One, Two, and Six.  In other words, for half of the story, they were not there.  It's difficult to say how this would have worked if Jamie hadn't come aboard at the end of The Highlanders, but it shows that he was ascending while they were descending. 

The main focus was between The Doctor and Jamie, (who had supplanted Ben and Polly) and even guest character Samantha was more relevant to the story than the seaman and "Duchess".  In regards to Samantha, it was because her character was being groomed as a possible Companion herself, but Collins turned that down.  However, The Faceless Ones showed how well Jamie and the Doctor worked together, and here, we see how Jamie grew into becoming one of the better Companions. 

It should be noted that Jamie stayed on until the Second Doctor's forced regeneration at the end of The War Games, having outlasted not only Ben and Polly, but future Companions Victoria Waterfield and Zoe Hariot as well.  However, I digress.

We do see how well Jamie and the Doctor work together in The Faceless Ones, especially in how they work humor into the scenario.  For example, they are too involved in their conversation to realize that Polly had been snatched from behind them.   It's a credit to both Troughton and Hines that they managed to create a strong team between them.

Hines in particular, in the surviving episodes, shows a strong range: a worried friend when they are forced to separate, a frightened man whose had his first encounter with an aeroplane (a flying beastie he calls it), and even a slightly timid and smitten young man when with Samantha.

Collins, whose Samantha has only this episode to show for her work, played the character as a smart and brave girl, certainly Jamie's equal in courage and I suspect his better in the brains department (although on the whole almost all the women Jamie meets tend to be smarter). 

It is a clever twist (if one wants to call it) to make the Chameleons/Faceless Ones not real monsters but more desperate beings doing questionable things to preserve their people.  I don't know if making them sympathetic at the end takes away from doing such things as kidnapping or murder, but on the whole the idea holds well.  The idea of bringing Ben and Polly back on the exact same day similarly works.

If I were to fault David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke in their screenplay is that one feels the story is stretched a bit.  Even in its incomplete manner, one gets the sense that The Faceless Ones is a couple of episodes too long.  Granted, I find lengthy stories (anything over four episodes) a bit difficult, and on the whole it takes a great story to accept being of such a massive length.  Some stories, like the seven-part The Daleks or six-part The Dalek Invasion of Earth really build on the preceding episodes.  The Faceless Ones does have some of that, but on the whole it appears to be making the effort to make the story longer. 

This really is something that tends to happen with longer stories, and apparently the only times a story can go beyond five episodes is whenever a Dalek is involved.  We have yet to have a brilliant four-plus episode story that didn't involve them, and The Faceless Ones isn't it. 

Would I like to have seen all the episodes and have a complete story?  On the whole, yes, if only to see Ben and Polly make their farewells.  However, while we have good elements with The Faceless Ones, I can't say I'm passionate about it or desperate to have in my collection.  Truth be told, I thought The Underwater Menace was slightly better...but then again, it was shorter.  Still, The Faceless Ones holds well and has a good, though not great, story. 

In the end, it's worth giving it our attention and keeping our full face forwards.

Next Story: The Evil of the Daleks

6/10

Doctor Who Story 033: The Moonbase

STORY 033: THE MOONBASE

Half-Moon...

The Moonbase is the earliest Second Doctor story that can be reconstructed.  His first two adventures, The Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders, have no surviving episodes and only some clips.  The third Second Doctor story, The Underwater Menace, has only one complete episode.  The Moonbase, a four-part story, has two complete episodes, and with the audio of Episodes One and Three you can build the entire story around the surviving material.  Just like The Crusade, we therefore can reconstruct The Moonbase and review it as a complete story rather than as bits and pieces.  While I hope that we will one day get an official reconstruction of The Moonbase, and while this story has the bonus of being the return of the Cybermen, The Moonbase itself falls a little short of expectations. 

The Doctor (Patrick Troughton), his Companions Ben (Michael Craze) and Polly (Annek Wills) and the Highlander Jamie McCrimmon (Fraser Hines), have landed on the Moon.  The Companions want to explore the Moon, and the Doctor reluctantly agrees.  Jamie is injured, but fortunately there is a base on the moon.  Here, a group of scientists are controlling the Gravitron, which controls the weather on Earth.  The moonbase is run by Hobson (Patrick Barr), who is highly suspicious of the new arrivals, but accepts them thinking that the Doctor is the doctor Earth is sending to try and find why so many of his crew are starting to fall ill.

Jamie is placed in sick bay and while there, continues to mutter about The Piper, threatening to take him to that big Highland in the sky.  However, it's no Phantom Piper that menaces the moonbase; it's the Cybermen.  Believed destroyed in The Tenth Planet, they have somehow survived and now are attempting to take over the moonbase.  One by one they are taking the crew: they have released a virus that makes them ill, then the Cybermen take a sick crewman one by one to "remake" him.  Soon, the Doctor discovers what is making them ill and how the Cybermen have been entering the moonbase surreptitiously.  Now, the Cybermen attack, determined to take the moonbase and kill all life on Earth (since the Gravitron on the moonbase controls the weather, it can create chaos on the surface).  The Doctor defeats the Cybermen by manipulating the Gravitron, and the metal villains (along with their ships) literally float away.  With that, the Doctor and his Companions quietly leave, and The Moonbase ends with our heroes seeing a gigantic claw on the monitor.

It is a shame that The Moonbase doesn't exist complete.  However, Kip Pedler's script starts out great and then slowly goes downhill, particularly in Episode Three.  Some things are beyond his fault.  During The Highlanders, it was decided that the character of Jamie would be part of the TARDIS crew, so he had to be written into the story.  The way to include Mr. McCrimmon was to put him in sickbay for two episodes, which perhaps was the only way to work him in, but his constantly protests about the Phantom Piper started wearing a bit thin and were becoming almost funny. 

There were also some rather bizarre choices director Morris Barry made.  For example, on the moonbase itself, the crew wore t-shirts with their respective country's flags on them.  Perhaps this was a way to denote they were from various countries (although from the footage we only saw British, French, Norwegian, and Australian crew--not exactly a worldwide effort), but the effect is a little curious.  One couldn't help think this was a cost-cutting effort.  If that aspect of the costumes wasn't already strange, it was the caps the crew had to wear inside the central control of the Gravitron that was just silly: it looked like they were wearing shower caps made of foam. 

There was also some pretty awful acting in The Moonbase.  Episode Four has what is suppose to be a terrifying assault by the Cybermen where the oxygen supply is cut off.  The way everyone is 'gasping for air' is so totally fake and highly exaggerated.  In Episode Two, when another crewman is taken ill, the acting is pretty lousy (if not laughable), but when the virus is seen to spread through his veins, that is a particularly effective, even frightening scene.  This I think more than anything else shows the good and bad of The Moonbase: a good story ruined by some bad choices.  One bad choice was in the voices of the Cybermen, not the actual voicework by Peter Hawkins, but in its use.  At times, it was hard to fully understand what they were saying.  This is more a growing pain for the Cybermen I imagine: their robotic voices would improve over time to where by their final appearance in the classic series (Silver Nemesis), they were intelligible. 

Side note: is it me, or are the Cybermen a lot like the Daleks?  They are at least similar in this way: both have no emotions.  Just a thought.

In a more historic sense, The Moonbase shows the casual sexism of the 1960s.  While Jamie and Ben are going around stopping the infected crew (controlled by the Cybermen) and the Cybermen themselves from taking the base, Polly is relegated to making the coffee and serving it to the crew.  She also gets attacked by a Cyberman in Episode Two, but the next time we see her in the same episode she is perfectly fine.  Watching The Moonbase now, it is hard to imagine someone like Sarah Jane Smith, let alone Rose Tyler or Amy Pond, doing nothing more than bringing coffee.  Admittedly, times have changed, so it is unfair to judge The Moonbase by today's standards.  However, it doesn't take away from seeing how a character is relegated to near-irrelevance.

Finally, the actual resolution to the Cybermen assault appears so quickly and almost comic.  A change in gravity has the Cybermen (along with their ships, which sadly you can see the strings on), just float away.  Literally, just float off into space.  To my mind, it appears a remarkably cheap and easy way to eliminate a threat that has been building for three episodes. 

There are good things within The Moonbase.  The story itself is quite clever, and the actual Cybermen attack in Episode Four creates a strong sense of menace and danger.  Troughton creates a great balance between serious drama and light comedy; he is trying to find the source of the virus but has had no luck.  Hobson is continuously threatening to kick them out of the moonbase, and the Doctor bluffs his way to get Hobson to leave the sickbay where he's conducting his experiments.  Here, Troughton shows his talent: he manages to sound serious to Hobson while quickly switching to slightly bumbling as soon as he leaves.

There is still a strong rapport between Wills and Craze, an affection mixed with a mild dislike, somewhat like a brother and sister.  Ben still refers to Polly as "Duchess" (mocking her more posh background to his Cockney roots) whenever he gets irritated with her questions, but it never appears to be said to spite her.  Hines starts out very slow (because he has to wait for that Phantom Piper), but by the end he takes the action role of Jamie and makes it his own.  It is unfortunate that with Hines' addition to the crew, the Companions often appeared to be secondary to the action rather than part of the story itself.  This isn't any of their faults: Wills, Craze, and Hines work well together, but having so many people in such a small space makes it hard to give them individual moments. 

It has a inventive story that with a bigger budget and some changes could have made it stronger (like getting rid of the national t-shirts).  Perhaps if the actual assault on the moonbase had been carried on longer, and we had more use of the unwitting Cybermen Fifth Column via the sick crewmen, The Moonbase could have been a real exercise in terror.   Despite its incomplete status,  The Moonbase is not one of the better Cyberman stories because of too many exterior aspects.  It does have the benefit of bringing back one of the best Doctor Who villains, one that have become iconic and rival the Daleks in terms of popularity.  However, the resolution doesn't work, the Companions are relegated to almost background players, and The Moonbase suffers from that.  In the end, The Moonbase ends up a trifle cheesy.

4/10

Next Story: The Macra Terror*

Doctor Who Story 024: The Celestial Toymaker

STORY 024: THE CELESTIAL TOYMAKER

Someone's Playing Games With Us...

This is certainly a sad case.  The four-part story known as The Celestial Toymaker has only one episode known to be in existence: Episode Four (The Final Test).  That one episode is all that remains of the first appearance of Michael Gough in Doctor Who. Although he did return in Arc of Infinity Gough was never to recreate his title villain.  He was set to return as the Celestial Toymaker in The Nightmare Fair but the story was scrapped when Doctor Who went on hiatus in 1986 and was replaced by the season-long The Trial of A Time Lord.  (Side note: curiously, although The Celestial Toymaker was to appear only once his influence is still felt today, but more on that later).

It's a curious thing about Gough.  Most people know him as Alfred Pennyworth from the Tim Burton film Batman and its three sequels (Batman Returns, Batman Forever, and Batman & Robin).  As Alfred, he's a very good guy.  The curious thing is that for most of his career, Gough was better known as a villain: from the Hammer Horror films through Berserk! with Joan Crawford and here.  He had a stern, powerful voice and strong screen presence that denoted evil, so seeing him as the title villain may be a bit of a surprise to Batman fans who know him as the kindly valet to Bruce Wayne.  

On the minus side, as stated only Episode Four is known to exist.  On the plus side, even though only one of the four episodes remains (or at least remains for the present), that one episode is still pretty strong, with good acting and an interesting villain.

The Doctor (William Hartnell) has disappeared and been rendered mute by the Celestial Toymaker (Gough), an immortal being who creates his own world and has captured the Doctor and his Companions, Dodo (Jackie Lane) and Steven (Peter Purves).  The Doctor must play the Trilogic Game (where he must deconstruct and reconstruct a pyramid made up of ten pieces within a certain number of moves from Point A to Point C and with the lower piece always being larger than the one above it).  Meanwhile, Dodo and Steven must play a series of games set up by the Toymaker in order to recover the TARDIS.  If they lose, they remain in this world forever as the Toymaker's playthings.  If they win, the world they occupy is destroyed...along with them.  By the time of The Final Test the Doctor has made a series of moves and is close to finishing the Trilogic game, while Dodo and Steven face their greatest adversary, a large man resembling a child who goes by Cyril (Peter Stephens) whom they've encountered before as the Knave of Hearts and a kitchen boy in the preceding episodes. 

Cyril makes them play hopscotch but always rigs the game to his advantage.  Eventually, Dodo and Steven manage to win but the Toymaker has one more trick up his sleeve: the Doctor at the nearly-complete Trilogic game.  The Doctor outwits the Toymaker, but with the threat that he may return.  In triumph and safe in the TARDIS, Dodo gives the Doctor some of Cyril's sweets, and after one bit he hunches over in pain...

The curious thing about the concluding episode of The Celestial Toymaker is that anyone would think that we would imagine the Doctor would be in danger when the next title is captioned A Holiday for The Doctor.  Even if I were a child in 1964 I still would have thought, 'A Holiday for the Doctor'?  Well, I guess he'll be all right next week".   You can't have such a dramatic ending with such a silly title as A Holiday for The Doctor. 

Now, as for the story itself, The Celestial Toymaker appears to be a rather good story based on the villain: a being who is immortal, evil, and highly intelligent.  At the center of what elevates The Celestial Toymaker is Gough's performance.  He is a being who relishes the ability to match wits with someone of high intelligence, which the Doctor certainly is.  Unlike the bumbling Meddling Monk, the Toymaker can be taken quite seriously in his deadly intentions.  Unlike the Daleks, the Toymaker has no interest in world domination.  He merely enjoys the challenge of capturing others and forcing them to play his deadly games.  In short, Gough is a master of villainy, and in The Celestial Toymaker he gives a great performance of someone who uses his superior intelligence as opposed to brute force to get his way. 

I also have to compliment Stephens' performance of Cyril.  He was perfect as an annoying schoolboy-type who cheats his way to the top.  Curiously, the end of Cyril, although not shown, is still rather gruesome.  It's a credit to The Celestial Toymaker (and especially director Bill Sellars) that while the horror of Cyril getting it at the end is not graphic, the remains are still a bit jarring. 

I also compliment Daphne Dare's costuming, particularly of both Cyril and the Toymaker himself.  He has this Imperial Chinese-style robe that makes him look elegant yet otherworldly, while Cyril is more a naughty British schoolboy. 

Now, even within The Celestial Toymaker, as good as the surviving episode is, some things just can't be fixed.  In this one episode Dodo still appears to be totally stupid--you would think after three games she would have gained some sense in how to deal with someone like Cyril.  The fact that she still can't get it right makes Dodo exceptionally stupid, annoying, and goes a long way to explaining why she is still one of the Worst Doctor Who Companions.  Steven, no MENSA master himself, isn't much better--always growling through every part of the TARDIS hopscotch.  Perhaps this is how they were directed, and while Lane and Purves did better work than in The Ark, they still don't make the best couple.

Despite being incomplete, The Celestial Toymaker is still a strong influence in Doctor Who.  In Amy's Choice, the character of The Dream Lord was so much like that of The Toymaker that I was not the only one that speculated whether or not it WAS the Toymaker making his revenge...I mean, return appearance.  I don't know if that episode consciously drew from The Celestial Toymaker, but it is strange that both characters would have the Doctor play games in order to survive.

Overall, The Celestial Toymaker is elevated due to Michael Gough's brilliant turn as the title villain.  Even though only one episode survives, there is no reason why the first three (The Celestial Toyroom, The Hall of Dolls, and The Dancing Floor) should not be reconstructed.  HOWEVER, I understand that in Episode Two, The King of Hearts recites the nursery rhyme "Eeny meeny miny moe" with an unacceptable word in it (even in 1966 it should not have aired).  The audio release has the narration cover up this word, and should it ever be reconstructed this is one time I would not object to having it edited out.  Sign of the times, unfortunately.  However, the story itself (officially credited to Bryan Hayles but with extensive work by both Donald Tosh and Gerry Davis) still holds up well and moves to a solid ending (minus the Doctor's toothache--bad way to end).  However, in the end, it is good to see The Dark Side of Alfred Pennyworth.

7/10

Next Story: The Gunfighters

Doctor Who Story 021: The Daleks' Master Plan

STORY 021: THE DALEKS' MASTER PLAN

The Best Laid Plans of Daleks & Men Go Missing...

From reading the outline of the twelve-part epic story The Daleks' Master Plan (which has the record for the longest story in Doctor Who*), it looked like a strong story.  However, due to the lack of foresight of the higher-ups, the story is alas, incomplete.  It has in fairness fared better than the three preceding stories (Galaxy Four, Mission to the Unknown, and The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve) in that we have any complete episodes at all.  As of this writing, a quarter of the story remains: Episode Two (Day of Armageddon), Episode Five (Counter Plot), and Episode Ten (Escape Switch).  It is rather difficult to give an overall review of The Daleks' Master Plan without actually having The Daleks' Master Plan to review.  However, since three episodes survive, I've opted to review those episodes and give an overall ranking to what remains of Story 021.  It's not a happy solution, but the best one can do under less-than-ideal circumstances. 

We need a bit of background.  The lost story Mission to the Unknown is a prequel to The Daleks' Master Plan.  The Daleks have decided they will conquer the universe (no surprise there).  The plot is discovered but those who know have been silenced before they can reveal all.  In the interim, The Doctor (William Hartnell) has lost his Companion Vicki (Maureen O'Sullivan), who has decided to stay on in Troy and take the name Cressida.  In her place, Katarina (Adrienne Hill), a handmaiden to the prophetess Cassandra, has boarded the TARDIS, in awe of the Doctor and Steven (Peter Purves).  With that, you should be up to speed.

Episode 2 (Day of Armageddon) has the Guardian of the Solar System Mavic Chen (Kevin Stoney) plotting with the Daleks to conquer all the galaxies.  Of course, both Chen and the Daleks are using each other and planning to betray the other at the first opportunity.  The Doctor, Steven, and Katarina join with Bret Vyon (Nicholas Courtney) to defeat the unholy alliance of Dalek and Chen.  The main task through all of The Daleks' Master Plan is to keep the rare mineral taranium away from them.  This material will aid them taking over and destroying the universe (perhaps all time itself). 

By the time we get to Episode Five (Counter Plot) poor Katarina has died: she opened the air-lock while held captive by a prisoner on Desperus, a planet they had crashed to while escaping with the taranium, and was swept out into space.  Vyon has also died, killed by Sara Kingdom (Jean Marsh), a loyal soldier in Chen's service.  A transport experiment now has swept the Doctor, Steven, and Sara to another planet, Mira, with the Daleks in mad pursuit.  On this planet, the native Visians are invisible but dangerous.  The Daleks, however, have tracked the trio down and the Doctor chillingly announces that "The Daleks have won".

Now, by Episode Ten (Escape Switch), we see the Daleks have not won.  The trio has managed to escape and now are in Egypt of the pharaohs.  In the midst of the chases, a new figure has entered the mad race: the Meddling Monk from The Time Meddler (this time he is billed as the Meddling Monk instead of just The Monk, so we can refer to him as The Meddling Monk).  He wants his revenge, but instead has gotten mixed up in the whole affair and is taken prisoner with Steven and Sara.  The Doctor has no choice but to give the real taranium core in exchange for all of them.  They manage to escape (thanks in part to local Egyptians who attack the Daleks--go Lotus Revolution!), leaving the Meddling Monk stranded on an ice planet, but the trio are engulfed by a massive explosion.

The final two episodes (the now-lost The Abandoned Planet and The Destruction of Time) wrap up the story.  In short: the Daleks are defeated but at the cost of Sara Kingdom's life (in a rather gruesome end, she ages to the point of disintegration).   With that, the Doctor and Steven are off to face another adventure.

After watching the surviving episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan, it's a credit to Terry Nation and Dennis Spooner (who wrote the scripts for this massive twelve-part story) and especially director Douglas Camfield that they don't appear as disjointed as they could have.  It helps when you have one object (in this case, the taranium core) be at the center of the story. Each of the surviving episodes has a strong and steady pace and packs a lot of information, action, and even comedy to it (the bumbling scientists in Episode 5 being the prime example). 

One of the best things about the surviving episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan is just how well-acted they are.  Stoney clearly delights in his malevolence as Mavic Chen (although the fact that a character with a vaguely Asian background is played by a European might be troublesome now, I see the character as having no real ethnicity because by this time in the Earth's future, one imagines ethnicity is rather a moot point, but I digress).  Throughout the episodes, he never shifts from being both evil and charismatic, a perfect villain to match the Daleks.  Peter Buttersworth is a delight to have back as the comic yet dangerous Meddling Monk, who is both delightfully evil and duplicitous (with the only caveat being that one wonders if he got thrown in just to be thrown in).  Courtney's Vyon is a tough soldier, a man who doesn't shrink from seeing Katarina killed because he sees the importance of sacrificing one life so that the rest can live.  This applies to himself, he too in the end sacrifices himself for the others. 

Of the performances in The Daleks' Master Plan, the best is Marsh's Sara Kingdom.  In the first episode we see her in (Episode 5), she is a no-nonsense soldier.  By the time we see the last of her (Episode 10), she is a full partner in helping the Doctor (though Marsh insists Sara Kingdom was NOT a Companion, I believe she was, but that debate is for another time).  The humanity behind the toughness of Sara came through, and the fact that she was in only ONE story but still leaves an emotional impact is testament to both Marsh as an actress and Kingdom as a character.

There are within the three episodes a few flaws.  I am not fond of invisible monsters (it screams 'cheap' and 'unbelievable'), and the wigs of the Egyptians in Episode 10 were comical (looking like they had wandered from a Beatles look-alike contest).  As a whole, twelve episodes was probably far too long (and having read the synopsis of Episode Seven: The Feast of Steven, at least one episode was totally irrelevant to the story). 

Even with the missing episodes, The Daleks' Master Plan is still a remarkably strong story that is worth restoring, with great performances by Courtney, Stoney, and especially Jean Marsh.  The Master Plan may have failed, but we treasure what remains.

Now for some housekeeping.  Story 022: The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve (or just The Massacre) has no known surviving episodes, clips, or even off-air recordings.  However, it is important because the next Companion, Dodo Chaplet (Jackie Lane), makes her debut in the story, and she will make her first full-story appearance in the next surviving story, Story 023: The Ark. 

7/10

Next Story: The Ark

* Here we have a curious issue among Whovians.  There is debate as to whether or not the season-long Trial of A Time Lord counts as ONE story or as FOUR.  Those who count it as 1 story will point out that at fourteen episodes it's longer than The Daleks' Master Plan.  Those who count it as 4 will argue that it can't possible be the longest.  Now, an argument can be made both ways. 

The pro-Trial group states that the story had ONE title with Episodes 1-14.  The anti-Trial group will point out that The Daleks' Master Plan had TWELVE titles but is really ONE story.  In this debate, I fall squarely on the anti-Trial side. 

With Doctor Who, titles border on the irrelevant because there has never been any consistency.  In the First Doctor's era, each episode had an individual title but was tied into one particular story until the now-lost story The Savages, which began the tradition of having each story carry an overall title and each episode being Part One, Part Two, etc. The revived series has gone BACK (to my mind bizarrely) to the First Doctor's title methods: the three episodes Utopia, The Sound of Drums, and Last of the Time Lords make up ONE story but (Russell T Davies notwithstanding), I never hear people argue they are THREE stories. (Side note: MY overarching title for these three episodes is Vengeance of The Master, since one of most iconic villains has never had the privilege of having his name on a title.  The Daleks have, the Cybermen have, the Sontarans have, even the Rani has, but the poor Master has never had any story called Blank of The Master or The Master's Blank...until now).  That being said, I believe The Daleks' Master Plan still remains the longest Doctor Who story filmed, but since it is incomplete, the longest complete Doctor Who story is at the moment the ten-episode Second Doctor story The War Games. 

Doctor Who Story 014: The Crusade

STORY 014: THE CRUSADE

Crosses to Bear...

As it stands, the four-part story collectively called The Crusade is incomplete. The pessimist says, "Half the story is lost". The optimist says, "Half the story survives". Episodes Two & Four (The Knight of Jaffa and The Warlords) are the lost episodes, while Episodes One & Three (The Lion and The Wheel of Fortune) still exist. However, all four episodes (in fact, all episodes of Doctor Who) survive in audio form. That being the case, we can reconstruct The Crusade in a roundabout way. The VHS release had William Russell reprise his role as Ian Chesterton to narrate the missing episodes and thus provide continuity. The DVD release of the Lost In Time collection released the audio tracks to Episodes Two and Four, so we could listen to them like we would a radio play. Therefore, in a sense, we have the complete story with us. That is why I've elected to review The Crusade as a full story as opposed to merely reviewing the surviving episodes.

A curious historic footnote to this historic story: in the Arab world, the story that followed The Web Planet was NOT The Crusade but instead The Space Museum. The actual Crusades are still a touchy subject in the Arab/Islamic world, so this four-parter did not air in the Middle East. As a personal aside I find that rather curious given that A.) the Muslims did WIN the wars, and B.) The Crusade portrayed the Islamic leader Saladin (Bernard Kay) in a positive light. It appears to be a consistent portrayal in Western films of The Crusades: Saladin is always a wise and (most of the time) benevolent warrior king. Well, as it stands The Crusade is incomplete no matter how you look at it, and it is a real shame because it is for the most part a well-crafted, well-acted story, although with a few issues.

The Doctor (William Hartnell), along with his Companions Ian Chesterton (William Russell), Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), and Vicki (Maureen O'Brian) land just as a raiding party of Saracens have taken a group of Crusaders by surprise. They seize one of them believing it is Malek Ric, better known to us as King Richard I the Lion-Heart, and take Barbara as well in the confusion of battle. The real King Richard (Julian Glover) escapes, while of his courtiers, William De Tornebu (Bruce Wightman) is injured. The Doctor, Vicki, and Ian take De Tornebu back to Jaffa and the King. The captured man is William De Preaux (John Flint), but while Saladin's vassal El Akir (Walter Randall) is fooled into thinking William is the King and Barbara is the King's sister Princess Joanna, both Saladin and his brother Saphadim (Roger Avon) quickly see through the ruse. King Richard is determined to both get William back and win the war, but the TARDIS crew just want to get Barbara and then get out of there. Richard makes Ian a Knight in order to be an emissary and attempt a rescue, as well as making an indecent proposal: a marriage between Saphadim and the real Princess Joanna (Jean Marsh).

Barbara, believing she is being helped in an escape, is really taken by El Akir, but she manages to escape him and finds shelter with Haroun ed-Din (George Little), a victim of El Akir's tyranny. His wife and son were executed by El Akir, and one of his daughters was taken from him, leaving only his other daughter, Safiyah (Petra Markham). Barbara, in an effort to spare Safiyah from El Akir's men, allows herself to be captured, and soon she is taken to El Akir. Before he can kill her, Barbara escapes into the harem, where she discovers Haroun's daughter Maimuna (Sandra Hampton) is alive. Ian, having escaped bandits, gets to the harem and fights El Akir, who is about to win when Haroun comes and kills El Akir, thus reuniting with his lost daughter. Meanwhile, back in Jaffa, Joanna is infuriated at the prospect of being traded like a bag of flour and will not consent to marriage. At first, Richard believes the Doctor has betrayed his plans, but soon discovers he is mistaken. The Doctor and Vicki, wishing to avoid more court intrigue, are given freedom to leave, and soon all four are reunited. The Earl of Leicester (John Bay), believing The Doctor to be Saladin's spy, captures them and threatens death, but Ian (in his role as Knight of Jaffa), convinces him that HE will be the executioner. Fooling Leicester, the group flees into the TARDIS.

The Crusade faces that difficulty of being a story with missing episodes, but the handling of this situation is brilliant. Russell reprising his role as Ian, links the missing parts so well that the narration flows beautifully, almost as if they were always intended to be there. What is truly incredible about The Crusade is how well it works vocally. David Whitaker's script is so well-tuned that at times it reads like both a stage play and a radio play. For example, in Episode Three (The Wheel of Fortune) The Doctor whispers to Vicki, "Here comes the King", as you would when the character makes an entrance on the stage. In the lost Episode Four, the bandit holding Ian prisoner gives a description of the torture he plans on him in such a way that it almost appears that the loss of The Warlords was anticipated and it was spoken like it would be on radio.

It isn't just how the dialogue was spoken, but the actual dialogue itself is quite poetic. Haroun's monologue in Episode Three about the loss of his family to El Akim is beautiful and quite moving, as is the intrigue in the King's Chamber in the same episode. This doesn't mean that Whitaker doesn't know how to lighten the mood: there is an ample bit of comedy thanks to the character of Ben Daheer (Reg Pritchard), a shifty merchant who is almost always on the losing end of the deal. There is even a bit of Vicki/Victor/Victoria action when, to protect his youngest Companion, the Doctor has Vicki pretend to be a boy...right down to being in drag, confusing the Chamberlain (Robert Lankesheer) to no end when he first mistakes the 'girl' for a 'boy' then when the 'boy' is revealed as a girl.

The performances are also quite strong and intelligent. Whatever personality conflicts Hartnell and O'Brien may have had off-screen, there is no hint of it in The Crusade. Rather, there is warmth and tenderness between The Doctor and Vicki, making their scenes together quite beautiful and sweet. Marsh is excellent as Princess Joanna, being both imperious and tenderhearted in turns. Her best scene comes when she confronts her brother about his plans to marry her off to an infidel. She is on full cylinders, expressing an uncontrolled fury to defy her King. Glover matches her in this scene, and throughout The Crusade he shows Richard to be both petty, almost child-like in his anger, as well as desperate to win the war. Randall's El Akim is what you might call a standard stock villain--all that was needed was for him to twirl his mustache, but since he didn't have one the scar across his face will have to do. Pritchard should also be singled out for his excellent comedy work, and Markham's Safiyah, although in one episode, also gives a beautiful performance.

The success of The Crusade as a story goes to Douglas Camfield's direction. He manages to keep the story going over three episodes and guides the leads and the guest stars without shifting the balance to one or the other. I do note that I said "three episodes" because by the time we get to the fourth episode, the story has lost a bit of steam and is unfortunately becoming a bit repetitive. Take for example the characters of Barbara and Ian. Neither of them are allowed to go beyond what they've done before. Ian is the dashing daring-do type, with action sequences in Episode One (The Lion) and Episode Four. Other than to rescue Barbara, he isn't integral to the story. Babs is the one that suffers most in The Crusade: she is held hostage by one Saracen or another throughout the story, and she's taken prisoner/abducted at least three times. One begins to wonder if it is becoming a running theme in Doctor Who: Barbara abducted/held prisoner and Ian having to go in and rescue her.

Another issue is that by Episode Four, the story starts wandering off a bit. We are no longer with Saladin or Richard the Lionheart; now the focus is on rescuing Barbara--which if one thinks about it was the focus of Episode One before they wandered into Richard's Court. It is curious that in The Crusade the actual Crusades are by this point secondary. Now that whatever Court intrigue (which wasn't that much to begin with) either with the Muslim or the Christian are gone, we have another 'rescue' story. It is a positive that loose ends of the story are tied by the time we leave, but somehow in Episode Four we've shifted the focus from the war between Richard and Saladin to a fight with El Akim.

Given that we no longer have Episodes Two and Four, I am surprised that there was no attempt to reconstruct these episodes for the DVD release. The seven-part Marco Polo had a condensed version recreated with photographs mixed with the audio, and the eight-part The Invasion had the missing episodes animated. For the Lost In Time release we only had one picture throughout the half-hour or so of the presentation of Episodes Two and Four of The Crusade. At the time, it seems no one had the imaginative leap to use photographs or animation to reconstruct the episodes, or at least to give the audience an idea of how it looked when first broadcast. It's a strange thing that you can find reconstructions in places like YouTube but not from the BBC. Of course, it does leave the possibility that a future official restoration of The Crusade is possible, and I would love to have an animated version a la The Invasion released. The chances of that, granted, are small, but given that only half the story is lost (unlike say, the four-part The Myth Makers or single-episode Mission to the Unknown to something like Fury From The Deep or The Power of the Daleks, both six-part stories where all episodes are lost), a full restoration is always technically possible. I Hope.

The Crusade is a good, strong, historic story, with beautiful dialogue and some wonderful performances. The lack of visuals as well as a bit of meandering at the end bring it down a bit, but on the whole it holds up extremely well, especially given that we don't have it complete. We should do our best to both preserve and restore what we have of early Doctor Who, and The Crusade may be our Call to Arms for this noble endeavour.

6/10

Next Story: The Space Museum