With
such a long and varied history, it’s only natural that every era of Doctor Who
has its fans and detractors. I’m a sucker for late McCoy, early Capaldi and
mid-Troughton; I’m not so much enamoured with late Colin, early McCoy or
mid-Matt Smith. But each era is always a re-imagining of the same show. Its
DNA, like the Doctor’s, never truly changes. The heart of the show remains.
With the Jodie Whittaker era, fandom seems to have been split somewhat. There
are those who’ve stopped watching – and yes, those people do exist alarmingly.
There are those celebrating the Whittaker era as a fresh, new revival, as if
the show’s had a good spring clean. But at its centre, the programme remains
resolutely the same. Which begs the question, which story defines what it is
that makes Doctor Who Doctor Who? Is there a story to sum up in a few hours
exactly what it is we love about the adventures of our favourite Time Lord?
Look
to the fan classics and it’s very difficult to find a “typical” adventure. The
Talons of Weng-Chiang is a Sherlock Holmes/Fu-Manchu mash-up featuring a
time-travelling and disfigured ex-con. Plus giant rat. It’s undoubtedly
tremendous but I’m not sure I can think of a similar story in the full Who
gamut. There’s The Crimson Horror, Ghost Light and maybe Pyramids
of Mars, but the similarities there are to do purely with the period
setting. It’s a bit like comparing Downton Abbey to An Inspector
Calls. They’re all quite different beasts, although it has to be noted that
the turn of the century marries beautifully with the atmosphere of Doctor Who
in its many forms: Human Nature feels essentially Doctor Who-y arguably
because of the period.
Blink
is a Doctor-less story, told out of order and The Deadly Assassin is a
companionless story with an almost dialogue-free Episode 3. City of Death
has one foot in Monty Python’s Flying Circus and even the very first
adventure, An Unearthly Child fails to set the benchmark for what
typical Doctor Who would be like. I can see why it would be easy to make a case
for Genesis of the Daleks as the go-to exemplar – Tom Baker Versus The
Daleks in Lots of Corridors and a Quarry - but for my money, it’s quite a dour,
humourless affair, taking itself seriously in a way most Doctor Who actively
tries to avoid. So which story sums up Doctor Who in a nutshell, from start to
finish, illustrating every aspect of the adventuring escapades of the mad man
in a box, the show’s humour and peril, its scope and its imagination, its
ambition and its joy? For me, there’s only one contender:
The
Daleks’ Master Plan
Just
think about it for a minute. Even superficially, it sums up the show: It’s too
long, there’s a Christmas Special involved and it’s got different authors
across its twelve episodes. But there’s far more to it than just its length.
The
Daleks are threatening throughout. It’s almost unbelievable that in their
previous TV appearance, they coughed and umm-ed and ahh-ed over dithering
decisions. They even looked a bit crap. Here, they have absolute control. Their
plans span the breadth of the solar system and they’re shot, judging from the
three episodes we have and the various clips from elsewhere in the story, as a
supreme menace. In The Nightmare Begins, as Kert Gantry creeps terrified
through the jungle, the Dalek arrives, shot from below in a blaze of glory, a
crash-zoom on the firing gun. Their threat is credible and felt.
Everyone in the story takes them seriously and the believability of Kevin
Stoney’s Mavic Chen only bolsters their status.
On
the subject of Stoney, he would return to play another memorable villain -
Tobias Vaughan - across a mammoth eight episodes of Patrick Troughton’s story The
Invasion. His performance alongside the Cybermen is a masterclass in how to
“do” Doctor Who villainy and anyone familiar and besotted with his acting chops
there, can feel the cosy familiarity of yet another magnificent (though
similar) performance here. That goes double for Nicholas Courtney’s performance
as Bret Vyon. Courtney’s influence is still felt in the series to this day.
Since his death in 2011, his character The Brigadier has been granted both an
on-screen death and resurrection at the hands of Steven Moffat, and the
character’s daughter Kate has enjoyed recurrent encounters with the Doctor.
There is a reassurance when Courtney arrives on screen in Master Plan.
We know we’re in safe hands. Those first four instalments feel embedded in the
lore of Doctor Who thanks to his presence. The only tragedy is that he isn’t in
more episodes.
In
terms of breadth, The Daleks’ Master Plan enjoys trips though space and
time, to various alien planets (jungle, urban and volcanic), to swinging
sixties Liverpool, to Ancient Egypt and to Hollywood's Silent Film Studios. No
other programme can mix the otherworldly with the ordinary in quite such epic
proportions. The twelve episodes of Master Plan represent Doctor Who’s
size not just in minutes but in the vastness of its artistic canvas. Golden
Death is literally a million miles away from Devil’s Planet.
Master
Plan might have scale in terms of its locations, but
its tonal shifts could also be described as seismic. The first half is Terry
Nation at his page-turning best: think Survivors or Blakes 7
scripts, gritty, hard-nosed and exciting. Once Peter Butterworth’s Meddling
Monk (this era’s equivalent to the Master) arrives, the story becomes
admittedly sillier, the Daleks remarkably remaining credible alongside a Doctor
now happy to wrap up his adversaries in bandages and leave them in sarcophagi.
Its notable that the second half of the adventure is written by Dennis Spooner,
whose penchant for the silly comes happily to the fore. Despite this, the
second half does conclude with a grim and ghastly big finish, the death of Sara
Kingdom a reminder that the Daleks really are a force to be reckoned with
amidst the high-jinks and madness.
The
Daleks’ Master Plan is a truly epic tale, itself a compact
microcosm of the entirety of Doctor Who. It features a Doctor at the peak of
his powers, the ultimate enemy in the Daleks, a rival Time Lord in the Monk, a
strong leading villain in Mavic Chen, three companions, alien worlds, Earth
history, pulpy sci-fi, farcical romps, a Christmas Special and the darkest
ending. There are moments of high drama – the death of Katarina is nail-biting
- and knockabout laughs with Peter Butterworth. In the end though, after all
the to-ing and fro-ing, from high stakes to playground tomfoolery, the series
comes out triumphant because it can handle anything its writers throw at it, so
robust and bulletproof is its formula. With leading men like William Hartnell
and Peter Purves at its helm, the show is unassailable. If there were ever a story
to prove Doctor Who’s worth, to dazzle with its scope and potential, its
borderless ambition and edge-of-the-seat thrills, it’s – perhaps surprisingly –
a black and white, Twelve-Part Dalek Story from the 1960s.
JH
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