During the UK lockdown, I’ve
decided to briefly revisit each Doctor’s era, ranking the stories and saying a
little bit about each. After exploring the Hartnell era, I’m moving on to the
Troughtons. I found it much trickier to rank the Troughton stories. On any
given day, any of the top six could take the top spot. There is a deluge of excellent
Troughton episodes from which to pick. Equally, however, there are a fair few
clunkers vying for the bottom spot. After much thought, here are the stories ranked
from least to most favourite and with a hopefully fun and specific observation
for each. If you’re spending time reappraising the old stories during isolation,
please feel free to comment below, argue or share your own rankings. However
you find this blog, I hope you have fun with it!
21. THE DOMINATORS
I think there may have been two
occasions on which I got to the end of The Dominators. I don’t know what
it is about this tiresome tale, but it doesn’t stimulate the imagination in a
way the show was doing, say, only two stories beforehand. It should: the quarks
are a cool, new creation and very different to the more monstrous fare of
Season 5; the Doctor and Jamie have so much screen time to lark around, we should
be in seventh heaven; even visually the story is arresting, especially the
spaceship set (with only the Dulcian costumes seeming disappointing) and Episode 1 rockets along. So what
is wrong with it? Perhaps it’s the lack of momentum. The story is repetitive,
stuck in its own status quo, going round and round in circles. What’s more,
there are no characters as rich or charming as the writers’ own Professor
Travers or Colonel Lethbridge Stewart. There’s no Earthly dialogue the writers
proved they could crack in The Abominable Snowmen or The Web of Fear.
Everybody sounds the same. In fact, the guest cast talk as if reciting dissertations
on pacifism. Derek Pollitt was a terrific piece of casting as the cowardly Driver
Evans; Arthur Cox is the worst cast angry student ever. There’s no one here to
care about. The 77th time the Dominators threaten to destroy the
Dulcians, you wish they’d just get it over with and kill the whole dreary
bunch.
20. THE SPACE PIRATES
It’s a shame the rest of the
story doesn’t exist: it’s perhaps a tale that put its visuals first. Judging by
the (relatively) recently found film footage from Episode 1, there are some
striking sequences, Robert Holmes putting lots of faith in the abilities of the
production team to deliver his frontier space opera. The Space Pirates’s
biggest problem though, like many a failing story, is that it side-lines the
regulars for far too long. Holmes has form with this sort of thing and indeed
has relegated his TARDIS crew to considerable dramatic effect – look at The
Caves of Androzani. But here, it’s a more serious problem from his less experienced
self. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe don’t show up for the first 15 minutes, spend
Episode 2 on a set on their own divorced from the guest cast and disappear 15
minutes before the story’s conclusion. It’s telling that Episode 4, in which the
Doctor begins to play detective is when The Space Pirates finally comes
to life. Too late in the day. A shame as some of the guest characters are
typical of Robert Holmes’s brilliance, most obviously Milo Clancey. What a
shame we don’t meet him at the same time as the Doctor and his companions. If
Episode 2 saw the regulars onboard the V-41 interacting with Hermack and having
rings ran around them by Clancey, we might think a lot better of this, in many ways
very original story.
19. THE MOONBASE
OK, so there may be a large
contingent looking at this last and balking at the lowly position of The
Moonbase in this ranking. But I have a theory that the reputation of this Cybermen
tale comes from its Target novelisation which is gripping and taut, just as I
suspect the reputation of Genesis of the Daleks is heightened by the
much tighter LP version, available for 70s and 80s fans to listen to again and
again. What we have left of The Moonbase is a very cool set on which not
very much happens. Ten minutes into Episode 2 and I want to throw things at the
screen. The incredibly long scene in which we see the Gravitron in operation is
tedious in the extreme, the overt, annoying sound effects sapping any energy
the scene might have had from it. Admittedly, there are dazzling scenes on the
moon’s surface, but they’re largely reserved for Episodes 1 and 4. The
approaching Cyber army at the close of Episode 3 is a frightening cliff-hanger
but where this story should be claustrophobic, frightening and gloomy, it expends
its energies on the monotony of day-to-day procedures on the station and
quickly becomes boring. Nowadays, life on the moonbase would be quickly sketched
in during a pre-titles sequence and the rest of the story could get on with
being a frightening chamber piece. As it happens, The Moonbase really isn’t
that story.
18. THE SEEDS OF DEATH
Again, this is another tale which
usually finds many plaudits. The modern outlook is that the brilliance of The
Seeds of Death was not noticed on its initial VHS release because it was
edited together as a two-and-a-half-hour film and there was a belief that
better was still to come. However, despite the fantastic and sinister Ice
Warriors, the tight plotting and dynamic direction from Michael Ferguson, there
is a feeling of tiredness about The Seeds of Death. We are on another
moonbase with an already familiar monster, neither as effective as in their respective
first outings. Look at the moonbase set here compared to the one in the earlier
story. There we had a Perspex dome from which the desolate surface of the
satellite could be seen. Here, we have a rectangular windowless room which doesn’t
allow for any feeling of otherworldliness. Indeed, the T-Mat station on Earth, itself
with black drapes for walls, could be in the same building. The TARDIS team don’t
have the freshness displayed a season earlier. Look at Troughton in The Web of
Fear: mysterious, aloof, energetic, alien, or in The Ice Warriors:
funny, charming, arrogant and blundering. Here, despite a robust performance
with several very funny moments, there’s the vague sense that the best has
already been and he’s simply going through the motions. He hasn’t even trimmed
his sideburns. That’s the same feeling I get watching The Seeds of Death
– it’s been better before.
17. THE KROTONS
On the surface, this is a bog
standard Who story. Like The Savages, it’s a story of a repressed
underclass lauded over by mysterious rulers with a dark secret. To a degree,
that’s true. There are large sections of the story which remain unexciting. However,
it’s surprisingly fresh for the Troughton era and feels very different to the
stories before it. The crystalline Krotons themselves are imposing and their powerful
voices sell their might. Look if you will though, at Episode 2 in particular. Imagine
the rest of the story were missing. All the best stuff happens in Episode 2 and
it’s strikingly directed by David Maloney using fish-eye lenses and film
sequences which make for a psychedelic, trippy sojourn into the Dynatrope. There’s
also the much-celebrated scene at the learning machine in which the Doctor flunks
his test much to Zoe’s disenchantment. It’s a classic moment. If Episode 2 were
all we had, The Krotons would hailed by fans as a lost classic.
16. THE UNDERWATER MENACE
When Episode 2 was returned, the
general reaction was that we’d been wrong all the time. We’d missed the fact that
this was actually a strong, exciting Atlantean adventure. I can’t go along with
that. Episode 3, to my mind, is far superior. It’s more fun, more frenetic and frankly
a far more joyous excursion through the marketplaces, temples and tunnels of
the underwater city. Episode 2 is more misguidedly po-faced and in places
becomes dull. I liked The Underwater Menace far more when I believed it
to be a freewheeling, pacey escapade rather than the standard 60s fare it now
looks more like. But it is still no small miracle and no small joy to be able
to witness what is now Troughton’s earliest surviving take on the Doctor. He’s
still playing it a little looser, still stretching the muscles of the part,
still dressing up, and in his scenes with Joseph Furst’s insane Zaroff, he is
quite, quite magnificent.
15. THE FACELESS ONES
From now on, every story in this
list is one I’d happily sit through time and time again. They are strong,
robust tales, well-acted and directed with enough idiosyncrasy to be memorable.
Nevertheless, The Faceless Ones is not without its problems. I recently
reviewed this story on its animated Blu Ray release, so I won’t go into
details. Chiefly though, the trouble is the pacing. There’s enough material for
two episodes in Episode 1 and two episodes in Episode 6, but in Episodes 2-5,
there’s barely enough for one. Malcolm Hulke would prove himself to be the
master of the six-parter in the Pertwee years but here, he and David Ellis aren’t
quite sure how to space out the revelations or when to solve long-standing problems
(such as the dull issue of the Doctor’s missing passport). All told though,
there is enough film noir-like menace and 60s modernism to mark this out as a
unique story and for once, there is an actual, mature attempt to parley with the
aliens in Episode 6. It’s a moody, visual piece, quite unlike any of stories of
the era.
14. THE HIGHLANDERS
The last of the historicals is a
lot of fun. Troughton hasn’t quite settled and Episode 2 in particular is the
one I’d want to see. Here, he adopts comedy violence as a coping strategy, repeatedly
smashing his superior’s head against a table. Then, he dresses as a washer
woman and adopts a Scottish accent as a coping strategy. In fact, throughout
the story, the Doctor seems to be having his own little adventure. He’s
certainly not being sold as a slave, made to walk the plank or falling into man
traps. No, he’s too busy crying “Down with King George!” whilst under English
guard in order to hear the echo. This is an anarchist Doctor, not particularly
moved by the plights of those around him, treating Culloden as historical tourism.
The Highlanders, for the Doctor at least, despite the hangings, the
shootings and the knifings, is a lot of fun. Perhaps too much fun.
13. THE INVASION
There’s no doubt The Invasion
has a peculiar, rich atmosphere. Don Harper’s unsettling score and Douglas Camfield’s
filmic direction give it a flavour all of its own. There are blazing
performances from Kevin Stoney and Nicholas Courtney alongside a reinvigorated
Pat Troughton. It doesn’t half run on the spot though. An eight-parter with
essentially three locations (the IE offices, Isobel’s house and the UNIT HQ) was
always going to feel cumbersome and it is in the moments when it breaks out into
the sewers or the London streets, that it come alive. Disappointingly, after
that terrific cliff-hanger of the Cybermen emerging into the capital, the
promise of their invasion isn’t fulfilled. They don’t even appear in Episode 7
aside from the opening reprise and there is a feeling that the real story is
happening off screen. We see an incredible amount of padding, the capture and escape
routine being played once too often. Kevin Stoney uses up his many intonations
of the name Packer by the half-way mark and we feel at the end of Episode 4
that we probably haven’t learnt anything new since the end of Episode 1.
However, there are visceral moments which play straight into the hearts of
Doctor Who fans: Watkins shooting Vaughan in a dizzying madness is supreme
television; Jamie trapped in the crate with something moving is as creepy a
cliffhanger as they come; and that unbeatable walk down the steps of Saint Paul’s
are precisely the sort of thing that Doctor Who has always done so blisteringly
well. The tradition continues to this day.
12. THE WHEEL IN SPACE
Contrary to received wisdom, I
think The Wheel in Space is rather better than The Invasion. It exercises
claustrophobia in a way the other base under siege stories don’t quite manage.
The Wheel itself feels isolated, dangerous and has a real sense of geography. When
Gemma implores the Doctor to switch to the sectional air supply because the Cybermen
are going to poison the air, there is a genuine feeling that the very base in
which our heroes find themselves is being used as a device to kill them. The
meteorites heading for the Wheel pose a threat to its fragility. There is a feeling
of the dangers of space, the long journey to the Silver Carrier becoming a
source of drama. Just as The Impossible Planet would illustrate the “toughness”
of space travel in 2006, the perils here are similarly ever present and the Cybermen
use them to ensnare the humans. It’s a frightening, atmospheric bottle story
which makes extraordinary use of special sound to yet further the feelings of
dread it elicits. And I LOVE the Cyber outfits!
11. THE WAR GAMES
At ten parts, it feels like the beginning
of a slog but after one episode of The War Games, it becomes patently
obviously that this is going to go at a fair lick. Compare the events of Episode
One to any episode of say, The Invasion or The Space Pirates.
Compare the number of locations and guest characters. This is ambitious and thrilling
stuff. And then, in Episode Nine it becomes clear that the scale of this
enormous story has been for a reason. Because events are about to come to pass,
the lore of the show is about to change, as Philip Madoc so terrifyingly
intones, “They are coming.” The organ begins. (Dudley Simpson always came back
to that organ for his Time Lords.) The Doctor is desperate. There is a feeling
of totality to this, of finality. The story of Doctor Who is ending. Long live
Doctor Who.
10. THE MIND ROBBER
The first episode here, set
against white drapes with recycled robot costumes and a TARDIS set comprised of
two real walls, against all the odds, is a magnificent piece of television. The
remainder is not quite in the same league as this apparently writerless opening
instalment but there is still a strangeness about Peter Ling’s Land of Fiction.
He doesn’t appear to have a particular grasp of Doctor Who’s story structure: Episode
2 opens with Jamie and Zoe kidnapped in quick succession. There’s no set up of
this new place, no rules established, no guest cast introduced. It’s straight in
with the drama and it puts our adventurers at the forefront of the action. The
strange beasts and characters are as rich and brilliant as their literary counterparts
and this feels like an exciting, original divergence for Doctor Who. But it’s that
opening episode that lingers in the memory. The bleached Jamie and Zoe,
hypnotically walking away from the sinister robots; Zoe screaming as her
facsimile smiles, beckoning the Doctor into this horrific, empty no-place; and
that cliff-hanger, that striking, wonderful cliff-hanger, perhaps the best of
all time?
9. THE MACRA TERROR
What a shame this marauding
monster tale no longer exists. The recent animation paints its pictures on a
broader, more attractive scale than the TV episodes could have managed, judging
by the telesnaps, but it is the original footage (the controller being attacked
by the claw; Polly and Ben fending off the clutches of the enormous beast) that
truly excite. From what we can see, this was a story of tense, shadowy atmospherics.
Episode 2 is the best: Ben is possessed, by night he and Polly venture into the
darkness, and finally the colony’s leader is brought down. Perhaps this is how The
Macra Terror should have ended. The rest of the narrative seems to run on
steam somewhat. However, there is nothing to beat the giddy chills this story
of a colony isolated elicit. It is the stuff the best Doctor Who is made of.
8. THE ICE WARRIORS
The leading voices of fandom have
noticeably shifted in their allegiances across the generations. When fandom first
arrived, the likes of Jeremy Bentham rightly celebrated the glorious black and white
days; then the mood shifted to Pertwee and fans revered The Daemons as
the Greatest Story of All Time; soon the Holmes/Hinchcliffe Golden Age was
heralded as just that; and these days the 80s are getting a much fairer
look-in. Sadly, The Ice Warriors seems to have fallen out of favour. It’s
sad because it achieves many of the same sorts of thrills and spills as the
still-lauded The Tomb of the Cybermen. Victoria being chased through the
icy tunnels and THAT publicity shot are the things which gave birth to the
monster season’s legendary status. The Ice Warriors themselves look astonishingly
powerful, perhaps more so than most Troughton Cybermen. Peter Barkworth is astonishing
as the fragile Clent and Bernard Bresslaw creates the first, most iconic, never
bettered Ice Warrior. Patrick Troughton is engaged, mercurial and magnetic. The
pace might be a little slow but the desperate situation at Britannicus Base is
enough to fuel six episodes’ worth of totemic Doctor Who.
7. THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN
Yes, there is a curious absence of
snow but Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln establish such a rich, dark, oppressive
sense of place that precipitation doesn’t seem to matter. Besides which, the
highlands of Snowdonia make a very reasonable substitute for the baser regions
of the Himalayas and the film sequences feel grand and make the cast seem small
in the face of the mountains. The Yeti too, despite protestations that they
resemble teddy bears, are striking-looking and feel like genuine animals. The
emphasis on sound and chanting in the absence of incidental music adds hugely
to the malevolent, imposing doom of the piece. I wish we could see Padmasambhava
because judging by the telesnaps he seems horrific: an old man with a laughing
baby’s face. Wolfe Morris’s performance is an auditory wonder too, by turns whispering
and ethereal then spiteful and hissing. The Abominable Snowmen, like The
Web of Fear later, is an exercise not in logic but in claustrophobic terror,
in establishing a scenario and plumbing its depths for scares; and like The
Tomb of the Cybermen and The Ice Warriors before it, The Abominable
Snowmen keeps up the towering standard of Season 5. Again, the season is
not as celebrated as it once was (partly probably because most of it has been
found) but it’s easy to forget quite how monumental these three stories were in
shaping the future of Doctor Who and in establishing a new understanding of the
show’s DNA. We are so far removed from the Hartnell era now, it’s barely
recognisable as the same series.
6. THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN
The Cybermats are useless; the
action stalls once the Cybermen are out of their tombs; and there are some very
ropey effects even for Doctor Who of this vintage: despite all this, The
Tomb of the Cybermen is magnificent. The dread, the knowing that something
is coming, that the silver giants are lurking is what makes this programme. It doesn’t
matter that when they arrive they don’t do very much other than stand around,
and then weirdly, go back into their tombs for a rest. What matters is that the
first few minutes of Tomb establishes the Cybermen off-screen as a viable,
ancient menace, a foe to be feared, a dead species about to rise from their
sleep. That fear then permeates the rest of the story so that whatever happens
next, we feel their tall shadows across the corridors, their presence looming across
the narrative. This is the story that made the Cybermen scary and that second
cliff-hanger is them at the very height of their powers. For all its faults,
this once-lost, now-found classic is just that.
5. FURY FROM THE DEEP
Another exercise in creeping
dread, all of the greatness of the monster season is encapsulated here. The
base is real, remote and isolated, the threat cerebral and disturbing, the
villains memorable and frightening. Those cliff-hangers, too, are so remarkable.
The suicide scene at the end of Episode 3 is strangely, understatedly brutal.
The quietness of Episode 2’s cliff-hanger is haunting. At the end of Episode 4, Troughton’s Doctor explains the
metaphor to harrowing effect: “The Battle of the Giants!” The censor clips from
Episodes 2 and 4 in particular expose the terrifying nature of Fury. The
descent into the pipes is the story’s most unsettling set-piece. Dudley Simpson
provides a bizarre, worrying electronic score and even the title is moodily evocative.
Completely divorced from the wider series mythology, this is its very own strange
tale with its own agenda: to frighten. And it does.
4. THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD
I’d always been a flag waver for The
Enemy of the World. Episode 2 was, as far as I could see, a political
thriller in its own right: the story of the fall of Alexander Fedorin. It’s fantastic.
What I didn’t expect was Episode 1 to look quite so lavish and be quite so
exciting. It illustrates the restraints of hearing soundtracks alone. Who could
have expected that amazing helicopter shot as we fly up and away from the
Doctor’s pursuers, leaving them shooting at the camera from the beach far below?
Who could have predicted that Troughton would strip down to his thermals and
plunge himself gaily into the freezing ocean? Who could have predicted that The
Enemy of the World would rise so stratospherically in fan consciousness as
to be regarded as one of the very best? What makes this strange thriller such a
sure-fire hit is Patrick Troughton. He is absolutely astonishing. This is his
hour. Even his face seems to change shape as Salamander and his growling
threats are as terrifying as any other monster of the season. “I know
volcanoes,” he says under his breath, in what is a most peculiar threat even
for Doctor Who. His best moment though comes in the already existing Episode 3.
“One chance, Fedorin. I said one chance.” Thankfully, The Enemy of the World
got two.
3. THE POWER OF THE DALEKS
It’s easy to point out the
reasons why this is such an important story. So let’s not bother. Let’s look
instead to how the production team try their best to make this feel like Proper
Doctor Who without their star. The companions are suspicious of this newcomer, as
indeed are the viewers, granting us the feeling that we’re right to be unsure
about Patrick Troughton. Tristram Cary provides a familiar Daleky score which
puts us in mind of the earliest days of the show. The Daleks themselves are
made to feel new, the colony – and indeed Ben and Polly - unaware of their
potential danger. Cannily, this puts the viewer and the Doctor on the same page.
The Power of the Daleks could have done any number of things wrong in establishing
a new status quo for the show. It didn’t. But with Patrick Troughton at the
helm, already commanding scenes in his first episode, the show really didn’t need
to tread so carefully. Perhaps no one could have predicted quite what an instant
success he would prove to be, but regardless of his brilliance, The Power of
the Daleks is still a clever, watertight, spiralling script of a colony who,
unbeknownst to them, are heading inexorably towards extinction. And the only
person who can see it is the Doctor. He must be the real deal.
2. THE EVIL OF THE DALEKS
Here’s another story that has
fallen out of favour with fans in recent years, slowly slipping down the DWM
polls with each successive data collection. In 1998, it was up there in the Top
Ten and rightly so. This is a Dalek tale told across time. They are frightening
in the 1960s, they are frightening in Victorian London, they are frightening in
the metallic corridors of Skaro. This story proves positively that the Daleks
are frightening wherever they go. They look as wrong and terrifying in any setting.
The smoke-filled labs of Maxtible and Waterfield feel like Gothic cathedrals in
which to explore the evil of the Daleks, just as the death of Kennedy in the
back room of the shop proves the evil of the Daleks is as relevant and shocking
in the modern age, and the Emperor on Skaro proves that the evil of the Daleks
harks right back to their very first appearance and becomes the stuff of
legend. “The final end,” the Doctor says. This story is so big, so steeped in
the 60s mythos of Doctor Who that this could believably be its epic finale.
1.THE WEB OF FEAR
It’s in vogue to praise The
Web of Fear, it being (mostly) returned to us by Phil Morris in 2013. But hasn’t
it always been in vogue? It’s one of those iconic tales, alongside The Ice Warriors,
Tomb and Abominable Snowmen, with their dazzling Target Book
covers and evocative publicity photos which swell the nostalgic hearts of Who
fans. I was never over-keen on Web before its return. The soundtrack sounded
like a fairly strong whodunnit after Part Three but for the most part, it was
meandering, aimless and disjointed. But to actually see it, to actually
be able to live with it, was miraculous and revelatory. It was as dark
and dreadful as its reputation had suggested. The deaths were as horrible
as I’d always imagined. The meandering and aimlessness were desperate and disconcerting.
The sets, the music, the cast (God, that wonderful cast!) all conspire to forge
something of real terror, grit and darkness. Of all the scares of the Troughton
era, and we’ve discussed many (it’s such a staple concern of the era), in The
Web of Fear we surely have the best. We’re so lucky it’s back.
JH
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