Galaxy Four (revisited)

I reviewed Galaxy Four quite a long time ago, but having watched the rediscovered episode three and the new reconstrution on the Aztecs DVD, I thought I ought to write something about it.

The reconstruction on the DVD is very impressive, despite the scarcity of material. It's better than the Loose Canon recon and better than many other recons with far more available photographic material.

I am struck how much this is a story aimed at the kids. Not in the way that today's show aims stuff at children, with dumb laughs and non-stop action, but with a simple plot and simple morals. As I said in my previous review, there is an element of fairytale (not the Disney or Moffat style) in these Hartnell stories.

The recovered episode demonstrates that Stephanie Bidmead's performance as Maaga is less than impressive. As Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood say, she comes across as a "slightly irked school dinner lady," rather than a villain with true menace.

I think the Drahvins are a future offshoot of humanity. Maaga strongly imples that she (unlike her soldiers) is human. That means that this story, like a number of other Hartnell stories is set far into the future. For some reason, the First Doctor seems to end up in the far, far future far more often than his later incarnations.

I think this story would have worked well as a Graham Williams era story. Romana would have been able to fight Maaga, K9 could make Computer Love to the Chumblies and Tom Baker's Doctor would have been completely dismissive of the whole story. Quite a few Graham Williams stories feel like send-ups of the Hartnell era.

I still feel very sorry for the Drahvins who are left to perish with the dying planet. I wish Dr. Who could have found a way to save them.

The Web of Fear

As it is a Troughton base under siege, featuring a classic monster in England, with Lethbridge-Stewart making an appearance, The Web of Fear represents for some fans the very ideal of what a Doctor Who story should be. For those fans, the rediscovery of this story (with just one episode still missing) must have seemed like a dream come true. I remain unconvinced that this story is in any way a classic or a particularly great story, but it was good to be able to finally view it.

There is always an element of paranoia in base-under siege stories, but The Web of Fear seems to take it to another level. Nobody trusts anybody in this story, apart from the TARDIS crew who trust each other, Professor Travers who trusts the TARDIS crew and Travers and his daughter trust each other. Anybody else could be an agent of the Great Intelligence. For much of the story, it creates a sense of claustrophobia, particularly combined with the underground setting, but at some point, the tension starts to get tedious. This is not helped by the six-part length of the story. It is uncomfortably padded out.

This story is famous, of course, for having the first appearance of the Brigadier, then just a Colonel. It has been pointed out by many that he seems a quite different character to the one we meet in the UNIT stories; though there is a pretty big difference between the portrayal of the Brigadier in Season 7 and the rest of the Pertwee era. For me what was most striking and surprising about the Colonel was his readiness to believe that the Doctor really had a machine that could get his men out of the Underground. This contrasts remarkably with the absurdity of his scepticism in the UNIT stories, most especially in The Three Doctors.

The return of Professor Travers brings with it pseudo-companion Anne Travers. Anne is a likeable and intelligent female character, who is arguably in some ways perhaps a prototype of Liz Shaw. Her relationship with her ageing father is nicely portrayed. According to the novel, Millennial Rites, Anne Travers goes on to succeed Rache Jensen as scientific adviser to the Cabinet and helps to establish UNIT. With the presence in the serial of a pseudo-companion, Jamie and Victoria are left a little bit redundant at times, but in the case of Victoria, that is probably not a bad thing.

It is quite remarkable how similar this story is to Fury of the Deep. Both stories about a mysterious intelligence that takes control of humans and which manifests itself as foam. I very much prefer Fury from the Deep, as parisitic seaweed is more interesting than robotic Yeti.

The monsters in the London Underground are Yeti, they might as well be Cybermen or Ice Warriors. Shooting people with web guns is not a particularly Yeti-ish thing to do. Rather than strange mysterious monsters of the mountains, they are standard sci-fi robot monsters. What we get in this story is the arrival of the worst idea in Doctor Who, the 'Yeti in the loo' theory. This notion holds that a monster is inherently more interesting for being placed in a mundane setting. This is an idea that tends to lead to ludicrous plotting, as well as a lack of atmosphere. A Yeti on a misty mountain is scary; a Yeti in a loo is at risk of seeming rather comical. Unfortunately, the writers of the present series of Doctor Who have been rather too attached to this kind of story. For all it's good points, Web of Fear has to take the blame for this.

The Enemy of the World (the real thing this time)

I reviewed the audio version of this ages ago, but having watched the rediscovered episodes, I had to review it again.

If any story in Season 5 deserved to be rediscovered it was The Enemy of the World. Season 5 is popular with many fans, but I find the run of bases-under siege a bit tedious, even if Fury of the Deep has an interesting monster. Enemy of the World is different; a story with no monsters, that is driven by human drama, interesting characters and surprisingly effective James Bond visuals. It feels such a refreshing break within thsi most predictable season.

The Enemy of the World succeeds because it is a story driven by character. It is about a corrupt dangereous world of the near future and about the people that inhabit that world. We have such a fantastic cast of characters; the abused but dignified Fariah, the sincere but doomed Dennes, the cynical Australian chef Griff, the self-serving Kent and of course, the brash megalomaniac Salamander. Griff contributes absolutely nothing to the plot, yet in him we see how a person in a terrifying and brutal environment can survive through humour. Likewise, the moment when Dennes jokes about it being a long time since his food was cut up for him shows such basic human dignity in the face of certain death.

Troughton's Mexican accent is a bit odd, but his portrayal of two roles is simply amazing. Particularly delightful is the way he plays the Doctor impersonating Salamander and he manages to make the impersonation distinct from the real Salamander.

Before the rediscovery of these episodes, there was always an uncertainty as to whether the visual elements of this story really lived up to their grandiose aspirations. The answer turned out to be that they did. For a Doctor Who story, this is remarkably visually impressive with the helicopter and hovercraft scenes. This is a clear tribute to the strength of Barry Letts' direction. Even in the later episodes, where things get more obviously studio bound, we get a great shot of the lift shaft to Salamander's lair.

If the story has a significant flaw, I would say it is the way things shift once Salamander's game is revealed. Once we move away from the corrupt backstabbing of Salamder's court and into his underground den, we enter more generic Doctor Who territory. It feels uncomfortably like Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

Jack Graham over on Shabogan Graffiti offers some good comments on the complex racial politics of this story. While it is great to have a black actress playing a significant role in a Sixties Doctor Who story, the fact she plays a standard racial role as a slave is problematic. Even worse, it is implied that she did something wrong and it is her fault she is a slave. Any critique of racism is rather muted by the fact that she is enslaved by a Mexican, rather than by a European white man (Troughton bronzing-up is problematic in itself). Of course, it might be assumed, with Troughton's European features, that Salamander is a Mexican of primarily European descent. There are lighter-skinned Mexicans and no doubt some of them are racist toward black Mexicans of African descent. I am reminded of the X-Files episode El Mundo Gira, in which we meet an immigration police agent who assists Mulder and Scully. His accent and cultural outlook indicate he is of Mexican, or at least Latin American origin, though his fair skin indicates European descent. He posesses a status and privilege that contrasts massively with the darker-skinned Mexican illegals that we meet in the episode and he displays to them an attitude of racist contempt.


The recovery of this story was truly a delight for Doctor Who fans in the 50th anniversary year.