The Collection - Season 12 Blu Ray

For years and years, a sub-section of fandom has clamoured for “Season Boxsets.” Now, it seems, they are - as Steven Moffat would put it - a thing. There can be no doubt that July’s Season 12 Blu-Ray release is one of the very finest, most lovingly-crafted pieces of merchandise the show has EVER had. That may sound like quite a claim given the enormity of Doctor Who’s extra-curricular output. But alongside my vinyl edition of Spare Parts, the beautiful Season 12 box is quite a favourite thing.

Let’s talk first about the design. Online, it looked good. When it’s in your hand, it’s positively alive. It’s weighty and robust, and feels of genuine quality. This is a high-end, collectors’ edition, make no mistake. Lee Binding’s artwork within is even more impressive than the exterior. The booklet boasts an ethereal image of Tom, Ian and Elisabeth, surrounded in their swirl of vortex matter by Daleks, Wirrn and Cybermen. The booklet itself features retro montages of each story with brief synopses and development histories. The discs themselves, individually artworked, are piled up in an easy-to-access digi-book. What’s more, the form this boxset takes can be replicated by other seasons and hopefully, they’ll eventually form a unified complete history to sit alongside the books of the same name. It’ll be all the Doctor Who one could ever need.

The discs themselves open with an animated 2018 logo, blistering its way across the screen, a reminder that the programme is still being made and we don’t need to resign ourselves to Season 12 alone (though given the content of these discs, why wouldn’t we?). Then we’ve got Tom Baker’s “To Select Audio Navigation” idents followed by glorious CG menus of the TARDIS interior, ironically a set missing from this season! The menus are easy to navigate and the fonts are classy and neat.

And then one takes the plunge: ROBOT – PART ONE. And bloody hell, does it look gorgeous! There seems to be absolutely no picture noise at all. The sound is crisper, deeper. It’s the best we’ve ever had. And instantly the mind boggles: what would 60s Who look like spruced up in this way? Would the McCoys with all their problems look the same? What about the RSC Pertwees? Hopefully, we’ll soon find out!

The story itself is breezy one. What’s most striking about it is the pace. We think of Classic Who as slower, more naval-gazing, but the new Doctor’s first scene lasts less than a minute before we’re inside a robot looking out as it infiltrates a base and kills a dog. We journey from UNIT to Think Tank, to a vault – not a safe, Doctor, a vault - to the SRS theatre, to a nuclear bunker to a CSO rooftop via Terrance Dicks’s taut, perfectly-driven script. Character are clear-cut, instantly recognisable but somehow don’t feel cliched. The relationship between Kettlewell and his K1, although aping King Kong, feels real and at the heart of the tale. In fact, Kettlewell finally comes across as a very sorry, easily-manipulated sad act. 

But what of this new Doctor? Fans must now be so familiar with the big scene between Tom Baker and Ian Marter that all its surprises have vanished. Watching with my 14-year-old step-daughter though, I noticed again how extremely funny Tom is in it. She burst into laughter when he hit the brick and ran furiously on the spot, his face a picture of seriousness, his hair bouncing. Then when he grabs the skipping rope, it looks to Harry as if he’s about to use them as a weapon. The scene ends with the two doctors skipping and in-between scenes, the Doctor does indeed use the ropes as a weapon. There is something immediately more unpredictable about this man. He is funnier than Pertwee and far less grand. But interestingly, this is not the Doctor Tom Baker would shortly become. His delivery is a little more clipped and rigid, elements of his dialogue still shouting Jon Devon Roland. Tom seems concerned to emphasise the clarity of his lines. It is almost, almost a nervous performance. In scattered cases, one can see Tom trying to act. “How can I prove my point?” he sighs overly-wistfully. By 1976, Tom wouldn’t need to act.

It is costume designer James Acheson who feels like the star of the show when it comes to Robot. Not only does he produce that defining look for Tom Baker but masterminds the series’ best ever physical robot. It is cleverness unbound: the V-shaped collar masks any “join” between costume and mask. The top-heavy, trapezoid-shaped body makes the creature threatening and also disguises the shape of the human (much like Acheson’s earlier Mutts with their tiny waists and bulbous chests). It’s just a shame one or two re-takes, or even edits, couldn’t have been made to omit its stumbling over its own feet at the start of Part Three or Jellico clearly guiding it to the escape van a little later. As Doctor Who monsters go though, K1 and its story is an unassailable victory.

Next, we’re off to The Ark in Space, much lauded by superfans Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat as the template for modern Doctor Who. It’s easy to see why: an isolated base, a creeping menace but at its heart, this is the story of humanity trying to break free not just from the burnt earth but also the parasites trying to infiltrate their stability. It is in its moments of distant human memory that The Ark in Space sings, punctuated by a glittering electronic fanfare from composer Dudley Simpson, who, it has to be said, brings his absolute A-game to this season, as if to prove his worth to new-boy Philip Hinchcliffe.

Design plays perhaps the most important element in the story, Roger Murray-Leach’s curved ark corridor rightly lauded as a brilliantly inventive piece of engineering. The chamber of bodies is also quite grand for its day and the bubblewrap grubs are surprisingly effective and creepy. What perhaps isn’t so effective is the lighting. The sets are all white, the costumes are white and the lighting for the most part is a blanket of white. Although this adds to the sterile, hospital-like feel of the beacon, its robs the story of its atmosphere. It’s only in the solar stack or later on when the Wirrn sever the power that the story begins to feel as frightening as it should.

Whilst The Ark in Space is an undoubted stand-out of the classic series, it’s never been a personal favourite. The opening episode is inspired, putting its new TARDIS crew slap-bang at the centre of things and establishing their credentials as the perfect travelling trio. However, Part Two – within a matter of minutes – sags dreadfully. It is as if the guest cast, none of whom particularly stands out, have deflated the entire thing and it takes a long time to get the narrative back on track. By the end of Part Three, the action is beginning to work, Bob Holmes having the Doctor enter the Wirrn mind as his friends are attacked by the grub on the other side of the room. Holmes would do even better in the next few years but here, we see the start of things to come.

The Sontaran Experiment is a brief but terrific interlude, too often overlooked when it comes to this season due to its length and the totems standing either side of it. But this is a sinister work, a lone “alien in the rocks” carrying out its sordid experiments on a few rather paltry humans. It hits home when Harry finds the man who has been left to thirst to death and this is one of those moments you can imagine Mary Whitehouse not being particularly chuffed by. The atmosphere on display here is rich and haunting but there’s also time to make the Galsec guest cast interesting and give their relationships a rough sort of politics. Kevin Lindsay excels in his second and last turn as a Sontaran and every version we have seen since, right up to Dan Starkey’s Strax owes him a huge amount of debt, so slithery and driven is his performance. 

Dudley Simpson must be mentioned again here. His score for Experiment is weird and mellifluous. Watch as Sarah hazards the cliff edge with the twisted branch or the crescendo as Terry Walsh is chased from a ravine by the robot. Part One’s cliff-hanger is a masterclass in how to do “cliff-hanger music.” Dudley really comes into his own when Tom steps aboard the TARDIS.

Genesis of the Daleks, the ultimate fan-favourite, forms the centrepiece of the season. Its first episode oozes menace and foreboding, the scenes in the wasteland some of the most unsettling on display in this most insidious and nihilistic of tales. Tom Baker is more affirmative and confident 11 episodes into his tenure. “Did I hurt your fingers?” he smiles after whipping a gun from Raven’s hands. This is a definitive take on the character. This is Baker giving his Hamlet. By the episode’s conclusion, we have met the lizard-like Nyder, stood on landmines, been chased at gunpoint and ultimately sighted Davros, a whispery, frightening performance from Michael Wisher, who stands – or rather sits – as one of the finest villains the show has ever had.

Part Two is similarly relentless in its action and culminates in the climb up the rocket scaffolding: one of the tensest action set-pieces since perhaps, The Ambassadors of Death five years earlier. Elisabeth Sladen gives her performance of the season, clearly terrified by the loathsome Thal soldiers but determined and brave. We also witness the stand-out scene of Davros’s first Dalek demonstration here, which, no matter how many times one sees it, feels like history in the making. David Maloney directs with absolute aplomb, so confident and assured, one almost doesn’t notice it.

Unfortunately, the rest of the story drags. By Part Six, we’re looking around corridors for a dropped time ring in the same way that by Part Six of Weng-Chiang, we’re hiding behind a table. Davros’s presentation to the scientific elite takes an age to deliver. The tale has run out of steam. Interestingly, it’s the only Hijnchcliffe 6-parter without a “dog leg,” the others being split up distinctly into 2 episodes of one story and 4 of another. I have a theory that Genesis is so lauded chiefly because of the cut-down LP version, much tauter and lacking the capture-escape filler we see later on. Terrance Dick’s Target novel is also sharper, cleaner, as is the omnibus viewable elsewhere in the boxset. It feels disingenuous to criticise a story so cherished by fandom but really, as a kid, I wanted more Dalek action and less talk. As an adult, I find I want the same. It’s relentlessly grey, a little bit samey and by its conclusion I feel I’ve seen far too much of it.

The first thing to notice about Revenge of the Cybermen is that the good music’s gone. This may seem cruel (Carey Blyton pipes his way earnestly through events) but that magical soundtrack the season has so far enjoyed is starkly missing. We’re back on those wonderful Nerva Beacon sets though which now feel almost as familiar as the UNIT family a year before. I can’t help but feel the story would have been more successful had it remained here. The Vogans of Voga are a plastic-half-masked bunch, paling in comparison to their immediately prior contemporaries, Davros and Styre. Their planet looks incredible on film and wretched in studio. The character work is paper thin and their politics forgettable. There’s early talk of a rise to the surface but it’s without pay-off. With Gerry Mills a foot in the past and Robert Holmes a foot in the future, Revenge falls between two stools and ends up being about nothing. The most successful scenes are those of the silently approaching Cyber-ship, and their climactic entrance at the end of Part Two. In fact, Revenge of the Cybermen is at its best when it’s being The Wheel in Space. 

It’s a shame the season ends with its weakest link. Had Terror of the Zygons managed to get made, it would have given 1975 two pleasing, Earthbound bookends. As it stands though, the show splutters its way to the final titles of Revenge Part Four after flying over a spinning toilet roll. Nevertheless, we are left with a sense of wonder yet to come, of the promise of continuing adventures with Sarah and Harry (Oh, if only…) and a new Doctor a million miles away from his predecessor and vitally, urgently present. Things feel bright and hopeful and alive. Season 13 would prove this to be true.

Overall then, there are several stand-out contributors to Season 12: Terrance Dicks (that Robot script), Robert Holmes (whose voice springs out of the The Ark in Space instantly), Jim Acheson (Tom’s costume), Roger Murray-Leech (the art of space), Dudley Simpson (the sound of death), Philip Hinchcliffe (in his complete spring clean and renovation of Doctor Who), Ian Marter (dependable and assured) and Tom Baker in his surprisingly tentative, hard-earned fledgling outings. Elisabeth Sladen perhaps comes off poorly. She isn’t playing the same character she was in Season 11 after Robot and the actress seems a little at sea (particularly during The Ark in Space). Gone are the journalistic, all-power-to-the-woman tendencies, to be replaced by a more child-like ignorance and charming bravery. She would be different again in Season 13, but 12 was Tom’s year. The new Doctor had entered the building and if Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans couldn’t get him to leave, it’d take someone like JNT. But that’s another story for another day. Season 12 is – all niggles considered – a huge triumph, a monolith.

Special Features review to follow.

JH