LET'S GET SERIOUS
An epic ramble through Tom Baker's final year. It's been well worth it.
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| 'Nothing like this has ever happened before.' |
Tom Baker’s final series over 1980-81
was a personally significant one for me. I hadn’t missed an episode since 1972,
which was quite a feat in the days before home video recorders. The fourth
episode of ‘Meglos’, on Saturday 18 October 1980, was the turning point.
That was the night Scottish glam
punkers The Skids, my second favourite band – The Stranglers were first, and
still are – played the University of East Anglia in nearby Norwich. I’d
organised a minibus full of Sixth Formers, of which I was one, to go and see
them, leaving an anxious Mum in charge of audio recording ‘Meglos’ Part 4. In short, to paraphrase Tom, that summer I’d
discovered the pubs, women and music.
Building up all Tom’s stories on DVD
again and the recent, mammoth interview with the lad himself in Doctor Who Magazine have put me in a
nostalgic mood. Despite the lure of what used to be called ‘going out’, I
remained very active in Doctor Who fandom
in the early ‘80s. In any case, the PanoptiCons, the annual conventions the Doctor Who Appreciation Society organised,
were basically excuses for everyone to get drunk, if you were lucky get laid,
and talk all night about television and films.
In 1980, we fans were throwing
welcoming garlands of praise at the feet of incoming producer John
Nathan-Turner and 1981’s PanoptiCon felt like his canonisation. The stories
looked great (translation: expensive), Tom’s Eric-Morecambe-in-space capering
had been toned down and THE CHARACTERS MENTIONED OLD STORIES! Can you imagine
how impossibly exciting that was in the days before commercial VHS and DVD
collections going back to 1963? There was an air of intellectualism and visual
inventiveness about the series, the Master was back and, the crowning glory,
there was a dynamic new Doctor waiting in the wings.
Reflecting fifty plus years on from
all that, Season 18 initially feels as if it was designed to appeal to young
men uncomfortable in their adolescence (exhibit A: the first new companion, Adric) and uncomfortable in their love for Doctor
Who, which had been through a rough time in the media since the arrival of Star Wars. Rightly or wrongly, those
same serious young male fans had considered the series progressively ‘silly’,
so JNT – as he soon became known – and his new script editor, computer journalist Christopher H. Bidmead, had
done something about it.
With a decent budget, more stories
and what we now have to call a ‘story arc’ about the Heat Death of the universe,
Season 18 may have been great at the time, but how does it stand up today?
After all, Graham Williams’ three series were almost universally maligned by
fandom at the time and look at their reputation – rightfully rehabilitated, in
my opinion – today. Roll VT...
The
Leisure Hive
The startling, filmic direction of
‘The Leisure Hive’ builds an environment rather than navigates the viewer
around an atmospheric BBC TV studio. For instance, you initially wonder why the
camera is dwelling on the silent Klout, who doesn’t seem at all important. The
reasoning becomes clear later on, a technique common in movies. It might not
have been the first time this had been done in Doctor Who, but it fits with director Lovett Bickford’s novel, (mostly)
carefully considered vocabulary of tracking shots, low angles that show the
sets have ceilings, tight close ups, fast cuts and crash zooms. The cliffhanger
to Part 1 is still fantastic, as the decapitated Doctor swallows the screen and
the closing titles’ star field appears to be taking the viewer down his throat.
As you’d expect from David Fisher,
there’s a credibly realised alien society. Following a trend in Season 17,
there’s also a clever plot about the subversion of commerce, as well as
allusions to Greece and Rome, together with a discreet inter-species love story
– Mina (Adrienne Cori, above right)
and Hardin (Nigel Lambert). There’s a nice touch of dramatic irony, too: Pangol
(David Haig, above left), the only child of a
civilization ruined by war, making amends through a community that promotes
inter-racial understanding, is a xenophobic war monger. The nicely underplayed
point, that the lessons of history can be forgotten or distorted, for me sadly resonates even more today.
It’s also the only story where you’ll
see the Doctor knock out a guard using mathematics. Watch it now and you can easily
see Bidmead punching the air and shouting ‘Yes!’
Meglos
Parts of ‘Meglos’ are the worst Doctor Who story written up to this
point in the series’ history. It’s become fashionable to affectionately dismiss
the serial as a Doctor Who Annual
story that somehow got on to television, but that really isn’t good enough. If
the script editor had been doing his job properly, the clunky expository
dialogue between the inhabitants of Tigella, where they explain their own society
to each other, would never have made it past the first draft. You can’t believe
it’s from the typewriter of the same guy who edited ‘The Leisure Hive’.
Then again, writers John Flanagan and
Andrew McCulloch are more interested in having fun with the malevolent, shape
shifting cactus of the title and the marauding Gaztak mercenaries of General Grugger (Bill Fraser, above left).
This is where the story comes to life, and Tom is clearly having a ball playing
a power mad egomaniac.
The unexplored potential here – a parasitic
race that can manipulate time and build super weapons that become worshipped – makes
you realise why JNT considered bringing Meglos back.
Full
Circle
There’s no doubt about it, Matthew
Waterhouse (far left) was the wrong
choice to play Adric. Either Richard Willis (Varsh) or Bernard Padden (Tylos), playing
the other young rebels, would have been preferable. I’ll go further –
Waterhouse was the worst choice of actor ever
for a leading role in Doctor Who.
He just didn’t have enough acting experience. The casting was a seriously questionable
decision, but, from what I can remember, fandom at the time was largely in
denial about it because they’d got everything else they wanted.
Anticipating the 21st century stories, ‘Full Circle’ is notable for having no villain, but if there
is one it’s the concept of the Starliner ruling elite’s blind adherence to propaganda
and meaningless procedure – ironically, falsehoods that hold their society
together. The character journey of Login (George Baker) follows this rather
beautifully, as the most respected man in the community joins the government,
slowly has his belief in it destroyed and then finds his own path. Who says
Andrew Smith was an inexperienced writer?
The brilliant scene where the Doctor demolishes Starliner society in one
confrontation confirms otherwise.
Notably, the opening scene between
the Doctor and Romana in the TARDIS may be inspired by continuity, but the
economy of the closing dialogue speaks volumes about the characters: ‘You can’t
fight Time Lords, Romana.’ ‘You did – once.’ ‘Yes – and lost.’ I bet Russell T.
Davies and Steven Moffat wish they’d written that. I wish I’d written that.
State
of Decay
The investigate/get locked up/get rescued
structure of ‘State of Decay’ is really noticeable after the first three
stories went so far away from the old formula.
What makes the story work are the
performances. Tom and Lalla Ward (Romana) are at the top of their respective
games, two chummy intellectuals who don’t seem too worried about being lost in
another universe. In his first recorded story even Matthew Waterhouse isn’t too
bad – he doesn’t do much – and I much prefer the original conception of the character
as an amoral chancer, which they’d perfect a couple of years later with
Turlough (Mark Strickson). Aukon (Emrys James), Camilla (an unrecognisable
Rachel Davies) and Zargo (the brilliant William Lindsay – whatever happened to
him?) as the vampires (above) are
notable for being so deliberately and enjoyably theatrical, though modern
viewers might find the baroque acting style a bit hard to take.
For the record, this is the first
‘classic’ Doctor Who young Poppy
watched all the way through with us. She loved K9 and Tom Baker but declared
the flight of the Hydrax scout ship ‘really
fake.’ Don’t worry, love, it’s OK – we thought that at the time.
Warriors’
Gate
Stephen Gallagher’s script is the
definitive example of how mature the writing is this year. Throughout, Romana
does all the Doctoring, confronting the crew of Captain Rorvik (the peerless
Clifford Rose), empathising with the Tharils and rescuing her companions, so that
by the end of the story it’s logical that she leaves to effectively become the
Doctor, with K9 and her own embryonic TARDIS (above). Significantly, the same idea’s not spelt out with a flashing neon
sign and the sledgehammer subtlety the way it would be 34 years later in ‘Hell
Bent’.
This time around, ‘Warriors’ Gate’ is
my favourite story of 1980-81. It’s a fantastic combination of an articulate,
esoteric script and a director pushing for a truly innovative form of visual
storytelling.
Paul Joyce isn’t attempting to direct
the story either just as a movie or just as a piece of atmospheric, videoed
theatre: his approach uses the best elements of both, at the same time ignoring
the naturalistic conventions of TV drama. The white void is a blank canvas and
the monochrome gardens of the Tharils’ stately home clearly aren’t meant to be
‘real’. The only reality here is the slack workforce of the Privateer, a wonderful, underplayed
satire on British industry circa 1979. It’s been said before, but it was a huge
loss to Doctor Who that the
iconoclastic Joyce was never used again.
The
Keeper of Traken
Pleasingly it looks, and in places
sounds, like a particularly stylish National Theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I guess
is the point, what with the lyrical metaphor of weeds in the garden representing
evil. Here we have a liberal, humane culture that, almost imperceptibly,
becomes authoritarian, violent and xenophobic. The more things change, eh?
What’s lovely about these stories is
that supporting characters have complete narratives of their own: Mina and
Hardin’s love story, Grugger and Brotadac’s alliance of convenience with
Meglos, Login’s discovery of the sham of Starliner society, Ivo’s feud with
Habris in ‘State of Decay’, Aldo and Royce’s fatalistic malingering in
‘Warriors’ Gate’ and, in ‘The Keeper of Traken’, the rise of the corrupt
Proctor Neman (Roland Oliver, above)
which can only end badly for him. This isn’t unique in Doctor Who by any means, but the care with which it’s done in
Season 18 is quite striking. With that in mind, Sarah
Sutton’s Nyssa stands out a mile in a strong cast, so it’s not surprising she was asked to stay
on.
Logopolis
Barry Letts was Executive Producer on
Season 18 and I do wonder how much influence he had on Tom’s final story. In
looking forward, ‘Logopolis’ casts more than a backward glance at Letts’
tenure: the TARDIS inside a TARDIS, a Master who resembles Roger Delgado, a
future regeneration of a Time Lord, the Doctor’s last-minute alliance with his
nemesis, a death plunge from a radio telescope… you can also detect his hand in
the creation of Tegan (Janet Fielding), a young career woman who stows away aboard
the TARDIS. It’s a continuity fest that, with hindsight, was an ominous sign of
things to come. That said, it’s a shame they didn’t keep enough money back for
a stunt fall like the remarkable one at the end of ‘Terror of the Autons’.
Everything’s stripped back for 'the universe isn't big enough for the two of them' show down between the Doctor and the Master and, this time, Anthony
Ainley’s darkly camp take on the character is both refreshing and genuinely
sinister.
‘Logopolis’ is a combination of
funereal gravitas and threadbare production values, which is somehow
appropriate for the epitaph of a Doctor who saw out the 1970s. A whole
generation of children hadn’t known any Doctor before Tom, which the story
treats very seriously, so much so that his famous grin is barely seen until the
regeneration, fittingly enough. He was a bit Woodstock, a bit New Wave and defined Doctor Who like no other actor before or
since.
In
conclusion…
If you want to look at Season 18
within the wider folklore of the series, the End of the Universe in ‘Logopolis’ might
be the ‘eternal chaos’ predicted by the White Guardian in 1978’s ‘The Ribos
Operation’, the prevention of which never happened because the Doctor dispersed
the Key to Time. As the Black Guardian (left) appears at the end of the clips of
Fourth Doctor enemies bellowing ‘DOCTOR, YOU SHALL DIE FOR THIS!’ just before
he falls to his death, the idea fits. Perhaps the ‘galactic hobo with ideas
above his station’ casually dismissed in ‘The Leisure Hive’ wins after all.
Cosmetically, the star field titles
haven’t dated as much as I thought they would, probably because they had such
an influence on the title designers of the BBC Wales series. The completely
radiophonic music is a breath of fresh air – considered, atmospheric, unusual
and evocative, far from the generic synth pap it would become when budgets were
cut. It’s only in the Gothic stylings of ‘State of Decay’ that the new music
doesn’t really work. Long-time traditional composer Dudley Simpson’s marimba is
sorely missed.
Summing up, I can’t think of any
other series in Doctor Who’s long
history where the non-Terran civilizations are so well thought out and diverse.
The TARDIS only touches Earth at the beginning and the end of the series and,
for once, it’s the least interesting location the Doctor’s ship visits. He only
encounters humans or human descendants four times (and that’s assuming the crew
of the Privateer are human). The
production team should rightly take a bow for such a concerted effort to stay
away from Earth. After this, it was a quick slip back into human-featuring or
Earth-set stories; by the 21st century, the TARDIS was returning
there with monotonous regularity and the buggers had overrun the galaxy.
Behind all the accurate but dull
scientific terminology – which, despite what Chris Bidmead might protest, might
as well be made up – it’s the conceptual cleverness of Season 18 that impress
and inspires today. The Argolins’ Experiential Grid, Meglos’s time loop, the
Mistfall evolutionary cycle, the Great Vampire’s planetary bolt hole, the Privateer, the Gateway, the Keepership
of Traken, Logopolis… every story has at least one brilliant science fiction
idea. ‘The Leisure Hive’, ‘Full Circle’ and ‘Warriors’ Gate’ are packed with
them.
This series is a thrilling collision
of ‘serious’ science fiction concepts and artistic experimentation. One thing
that’s particularly noticeable, watching the stories back, is Bidmead’s
fascination with the lies and anarchy lurking beneath the thin skin of
civilised society, a theme he’d return to in both ‘Castrovalva’ and ‘Frontios’.
If Season 18 proved anything, though,
it was that JNT was only as good as his script editors. It’s very significant
that Bidmead asked for a 30% pay rise and when he was turned down, he left.
Phew! That was fun.
And in case you were still wondering, The
Skids were fantastic. And still are.
All images: copyright BBC
