#DoctorWhoLockdown – The Hartnell Years

With almost 500 hours of Doctor Who to investigate, what better time to start the re-exploration than in our country-wide lockdown? I’m going to try to write a little piece on every single story and I’ll be looking at each Doctor in turn. I very much hope I’ll have something original to say in each case and to save this becoming too encyclopaedic, I’ll try to be brief and fun! To add a bit of an OCD-lovers’ structure, I’ve ranked them in order from least to most favourite, saving the best ‘til last. If you’re joining me, I hope you enjoy the ride!

29. THE CELESTIAL TOYMAKER

You can imagine Donald Tosh’s face. He’d put the finishing touches to a Noel Coward style comedy chamber piece set in an ethereal, spooky toyroom and what does he end up with? Billy Bunter playing hopscotch with two thick companions alongside a turgid, irritating, asinine refrain from Michael Gough: “Go from move 231!” The Celestial Toymaker feels like there is a tremendous story at its heart, and it’s easy to see how the viewers of 1966 remembered this tale as “one of the best.” My Dad remembered this one, for heaven’s sake. The Celestial Toymaker is not that tremendous story though. Michael Gough is not even charismatic, disaffectedly intoning his feeble lines as if marking time before he can get home to Anneke. What’s so frustrating is that the story is peopled by the stuff of nightmares: clowns, knaves of hearts, walking dolls. They’re simply not very frightening and not very funny. What a waste. Poor Donald.

28. THE ARK

There’s so much going for The Ark: iconic looking monsters (truly, that’s such a brilliant design and the first reveal of a Monoid is the stuff of the very best Doctor Who), an interesting story structure (I can’t think of any other classic series story which effectively acts like a palindrome) and some vast, sprawling production values (the sets are massive and there’s a bloody elephant in it). Unfortunately, it really doesn’t land. There’s something about the distant directorial style and the frankly poor performances which fail to inspire. Despite the fabulous ideas in play here – Paul Erickson and Lesley Scott genuinely manage to deliver a multi-layered, believable future world - its population are inane, unsympathetic and forgettable. The Monoids themselves are fairly pathetic. Their sign language seems to have all the sophistication of a toddler’s playground game and their celebrated “security kitchen” is too naff to even be funny. There are so many efforts being made to make this a grand story, but with a forgettable cast of characters, functional dialogue and an aloofness in the camerawork, The Ark fails to connect.

27. PLANET OF GIANTS

The insistence on the first Doctor Who production team to roll with a story in which the TARDIS crew are reduced “roughly to the size of an inch” seems like a strange pre-occupation. Even by the opening of the second season, these “sideways” trips in space and time seem antiquated, as if they simply didn’t fit in with the quickly established formula of alternating sci-fi and history stories. (The Edge of Destruction proving to be a once-only, abandoned experiment.) Arguably, the first oddball story to really work is The Time Meddler which melds sci-fi and history for the first time in a surprising way. Here, there’s a feeling that alongside the regular characters, nobody really knows what the TARDIS is doing here. Louis Marks obviously wants to be telling a story about ecology but it doesn’t marry with the brief of miniaturisation quite as well as it might and leaves the regulars achingly far from the plot. However, there is a certain wonder evoked by the over-sized sets and a charm in the fact the production team thought, “How can we possibly show our TARDIS team have been shrunk ‘roughly to the size of an inch?’ What the hell: we’ll just use back projection, build enormous sets and employ giant flies!” Nothing could stop Verity Lambert and David Whitaker’s vision from reaching fruition and however misguided this weird three-parter seems, there’s no denying its headline-grabbing ambition.

26. THE SAVAGES

Here’s a story I feel obliged to find something to love in. It’s the first time we see lots of tropes which would later become Doctor Who staples: the oppressed commoners reigned over by an aristocracy with a dark secret; the quarry as alien planet; the Doctor as a famed hero. Truth be told, however, it’s very difficult to find anything spectacular about The Savages aside from maybe Frederick Jaeger’s Hartnell impression. The characterisation is middling, the plot standard and there’s no scary monster to thrill us or decent villain to boo at. Despite Steven leaving with a scene worthy of Peter Purves’s sterling efforts as the reliable companion, there’s nothing memorable about The Savages. Were it to come miraculously back to the archives tomorrow, I think it would prove to be the most uninteresting discovery. It’s a solid tale, structurally and thematically, but there’s little there to truly excite.

25. THE SENSORITES

This unloved story is nowhere near as bad as fans make out. Yes, it’s slow, naval-gazing and not a little bit patronising. But the story goes to lots of different places. We move from a spaceship, down to a planet and its city and through its aqueduct cave system. This is Doctor Who operating on a scale unfettered by televisual restraint and for the most part, it works. The spaceship feels like a spaceship; the city feels like a city; and Doctor Who’s staple caves are definitely Doctor Who staple caves. This is the first proper imagining of life on an alien world. The Daleks is arguably the story of two tribes, operating on the same scale as 100,000BC. Here, we have a fully functioning alien capital and all its complications. Doctor Who would do these things better, of course, but here in its infancy, this feels like exciting new territory. So next time you try The Sensorites (and an episode a week is advisable!), imagine the show has never done these things before and the newness of it all is quite striking. And that first cliff-hanger… it’s a masterclass!

24. THE KEYS OF MARINUS

If Terry Nation managed to hatchet job The Daleks in a fit of genuine inspiration, the muse deserted him second time round. Lightning really couldn’t strike twice. The plot of Marinus is simple and his enemies, The Voord, the very epitome of aiming low: after the design classic that was and is the Skarosian pepperpots, we are gifted the sight of a man in a wet suit with a triangle on his head. Still, Marinus is not an unenjoyable way to spend two and a half hours. Its naivety is rather charming and it’s structure, one strikingly different location per episode, means that each instalment has brevity on its side. It has the feel of an old-fashioned children’s serial to it, devoid of any amount of sophistication. It doesn’t even reach for analogy as The Daleks did. Its sole purpose is to entertain the lowest common denominator for 25 minutes at a stretch. In achieving what it sets out to do, Marnius can only be judged a success. 

23. THE SPACE MUSEUM

It’s difficult not to mention the elephants in the room – the last three episodes. Even Part Three has the dreariest Doctor Who episode title in history: The Search?! Really, I ask you! But what a joy the first one is. Inventively shot, peculiar and mysterious, if only the first instalment of The Space Museum existed, we’d be dying to see the rest. It would be up there at the top of missing episode wishlists. As it happens, and as is widely catalogued, the rest is grim stuff. Let me, however, draw your attention not to the inspired brilliance of Part One, but the moment when William Hartnell truly dries during his massive explanatory scene. It’s a difficult situation for the rest of the cast. Hartnell is driving the scene. He is offering the hypotheses. The only clues his three stablemates can offer him in terms of improvised help are along the lines of, “What do you mean?” “Can you explain that?” or “Hmm?” And so Hartnell is a one-man explanation machine and it comes after 20 minutes, the trickiest time for a Billy monologue. Watch and count how many times Hartnell says, “in the fourth dimension.” Far more than any reasonable writer could possibly have scripted, but then we are talking about Glyn Jones here. Next, he improvises desperately: “Yes! I think you’re all going to be delighted. I’m going to come up with the answer! And it’s so simple. Yes, so simple!” As if to confirm the improvised nature of the speech, Barbara cuts in after the first simple with “How simple, Doctor?” hurrying the old boy along in his struggle. Valiantly Hartnell ploughs on and ultimately prevails: after this hilarious extended calamity, he manages to rescue the episode in its last shot. “Yes, my dear, and we’ve arrived!” he says, his face a picture of dread. As off-road as Hartnell can be, at his best, he’s The Man.

22. GALAXY 4

Before Air Lock was returned, I found Galaxy 4 an insipid piece of work. When I watched Air Lock, I was pleasantly shocked at quite what a visual treat this is. The Web Planet is the story we think about when we think about Hartnell’s alien worlds, but Galaxy 4 manages a great job in depicting extra-terrestrial soil and with far more success. It may be a simplistic story, but its job is to be a spectacle. The Chumblies whip around the sets at impossible speed. The Rills have an impressive, solid design and Stephanie Bidmead’s Maaga is as committed a villain as they come. All contrast rather beautifully with one another from a visual perspective. Derek Martinus directs with aplomb, shooting from high angles and using film sequences cleverly. There’s also a neat flashback sequence nobody could have predicted from the soundtrack alone. Speaking of which, Galaxy 4 has an aural landscape as defined as its pictorial one. This is a piece of television which, despite a workmanlike script at best, is doing its damnedest to present something unusual, alien and robust. For the most part, it succeeds. I’d love to see more of it.

21. THE WEB PLANET

Doctor Who has a reputation of, and indeed probably functions by, extending its reach far beyond its means of accomplishment. The Web Planet is the ultimate embodiment of that. With just four episodes, Galaxy 4 plays it safe and succeeds. Here, we have a six-parter, no less, which insists on telling its story without human characters, with Vaseline smeared on the camera lenses, with choreographed dance movements, with characters talking in extended metaphor, with the massively irritating chirruping of the Zarbi a staple of its bizarre soundtrack. Director Richard Martin is going for awe and wonder, but to the modern viewer he seems to be putting every barrier to accessibility in the way. These strangenesses, however, help to disguise the fact that Martin’s camerawork is appalling. Quite what is going on at the end of Part Three is best guessed at. He’d later prove his inability in studio more obviously in The Chase but here he just about gets away with it because The Web Planet is such a strange beast. Its opening episode is actually quite frightening and there are moments in the final instalment with the Animus which cement this as a story of laudable size and ambition. Watched at a staggered pace, there’s a lot of greatness to be found behind the creaky sets and six-polystyrene-armed Optera.

20. THE SMUGGLERS

I hadn’t heard about the Australian censor clips when The Ice Warriors Collection was released on VHS in 1998. It was with incredible excitement therefore that I greeted the news from the booklet that documentary The Missing Years featured clips from Fury from the Deep, The Macra Terror and The Smugglers! I had no idea we had moving footage from these stories. Whilst the former Troughton tales elicited the most obvious rapture, the clips from this tale of the high seas were no less cherishable and certainly rousing. They showed off surprisingly realistic sets, gorgeous costumes, truthful performances and stand-out moments of violence. I’m sure, judging by the telesnaps, that the remainder looked just as sumptuous. The soundtrack alone doesn’t quite do justice to a tale with such extensive location work and prowess in its design. The Smugglers must really be something to look at. As a script, it’s a little muddy and ultimately a bit of a flimsy run-around but if Doctor Who is going to do a piratical tale, I’d much rather it be one of these Sunday serial jaunts than the over-complicated and badly focused Curse of the Black Spot. For me, the original Avery is easily the best.

19. THE MYTH MAKERS

The Target book is easily one of the very finest Doctor Who books ever written. Its audio release, narrated by Stephen Thorne, is sublime. What we have on TV is not quite as resplendent despite its growing appeal to the modern fan. It’s often touted nowadays as comedy akin to Blackadder followed by a devastatingly doom-laden final episode. The problem to my mind is that the first three episodes aren’t particularly funny (in the way that The Romans or Donald Cotton’s later The Gunfighters are) and the last episode isn’t particularly tragic because I don’t particularly care about the characters. Whilst there is much to love in the dialogue, its wits are not the kind aspiring to belly-laughs, rather a wry knowing grin in a drawing room amongst fellow academics. The scene in which Steven chats away with Paris during their would-be gladiatorial battle is the most fun and The Myth Makers is certainly a story like no other. I may be sounding unnecessarily hard on this Greek odyssey. It’s definitely a work of high-brow achievement and impressive scale, just not one that is quite as funny or as moving as modernist fan historians like us to believe.

18. THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION

A tale of two halves, you can certainly see which director had the best handle on Inside the Spaceship. The first episode is atmospheric, unsettling and moody, the scene with the scissors alarming in the way they appear in shot during a slow pan. The second is stagier and more cumbersome but with a frenetic climax. It’s an oddity in that for the most part, quite what is going on is a mystery. Even after the explanations, events remain mysterious. Why, for instance, does the opening begin with Ian addressing Barbara as if they have never left Coal Hill? In the end, it doesn’t much matter because Inside the Spaceship is an exercise in pushing the boundaries of the show as far as it can, given the stringency of only having one set at the team’s disposal. And after the disappointment of the banal fast return switch explanation, we get to what the hour in the ship has really been all about: reconciliation between our leads. The scene in which the Doctor and Barbara come to terms with one another quietly redefines the show. Our TARDIS crew are now a team, and have established a new solid status quo, meaning the main attractions of the stories to come will be the weird alien and historical worlds and their attendant guest characters. Because now we have a bulletproof quartet to experience them with.

17. THE GUNFIGHTERS

A Holiday for the Doctor is a breath of fresh air. From the po-faced, infantile silliness of The Ark and The Celestial Toymaker and the abject human horror of The Massacre, this heightened, funny and fast-moving comedy comes as the perfect tonic. And it is genuinely funny. Anthony Jacobs’s Doc Holliday is a snarling, grotesque, insidious comic menace and Sheena Marshe’s comedically broader yet more grounded Kate proves the perfect foil for him. Is there any better scene to illustrate William Hartnell’s flair for the funnies than when the two of them run rings around him in the dentist’s chair? The cliff-hanger ending is funny and frightening in equal measure and that’s a difficult balancing act. Sadly, the humour evaporates in the latter half of The Gunfighters and is replaced with some fairly insipid drama, but that first episode alone is worth the price of a DVD. It’s a glorious half hour of Western comedy in what looks and feels like a genuine Western town and it should be far more heralded by Doctor Who fans as the joy that it is.

16. MISSION TO THE UNKNOWN

The Chase gave us comedy Daleks in a voyage across the universe. Here, Terry Nation seems keen to reassert his creations’ standing as a genuine menace (possibly something to do with that American pilot he was craving). In fact, what he writes here is essentially that American pilot: a taut little thriller with a throwaway cast who can be replaced by a new set of regulars should this go to series (which it did in The Daleks’ Master Plan). The set-up for that epic is well-judged. The Daleks here win and explain their future plans: the takeover of the entire solar system. There is nobody left to stop them, they have an army of delegates to back them and their deadliness is without doubt. From this pilot, I can’t see how the series could have failed.

15. THE WAR MACHINES

Michael Ferguson makes his Doctor Who debut as markedly as the show comes suddenly back down to 1960s Earth. In an instant, the series feels fresh and relevant and meaningful again. We hit the streets of London as well as its clubs and warehouses and Post Office Towers. The War Machines captures the thrill of the swinging sixties as much as An Unearthly Child captures the more authoritarian fogginess of the early 60s. This feels like a show suddenly injected with the spirit of youth, not just by its addition of the wonderful Ben and Polly (and what a fantastic companion introductory story this is!), but by Ferguson’s pace, the dynamism of his shots both in studio and on location, Ian Stuart Black’s references to the modern world and his invention of the internet. In The War Machines we truly enter the latter half of the 20^th century and the rules of modern Doctor Who are established. They are still in force today. There is a definite, obvious through-line from The War Machines to say, Aliens of London.

14. THE TENTH PLANET

The iconic status of The Tenth Planet is down to two major events: the first appearance of the Cybermen and the last appearance of William Hartnell. Whilst the story is a pacey, good-looking affair which, like The War Machines, feels like the Doctor Who of tomorrow, its delivery of those two major events is arguably lacking. The Cybermen don’t appear until the very end of the first episode and then barely at all during Episode Three. They don’t really have much of a plan either. They do, however, look remarkably sinister and far more frightening than the production team seemed to believe. Hartnell’s exit is also fumbled. The poor man couldn’t make it to Episode Three so he is confined to a bedroom for half an hour at his eleventh. Luckily though, he’s on fine form in Episode Two, the last we can really see of him, and in the few remaining clips from Episode Four he seems authoritative, mercurial and haunted. They never get talked about but there is an affecting ordinariness about his last lines. As much as we all like to think we’ll end our lives with some carefully chosen last words, the likelihood is that we’ll go with words not unlike the First Doctor’s: looking at Ben and Polly, putting them above his own needs, he gives his last piece of advice when he utters “Keep warm.” Far rather these be his final words than those even the great man himself, Steven Moffat, gifted him later in Twice Upon a Time. They sing with the tragedy of reality. 

13. THE RESCUE

It might seem an unremarkable story but like The Edge of Destruction, this is David Whitaker re-establishing the TARDIS team, letting us know who we’ll be travelling with from now on. It’s always a thrill to shake up the regular cast and that’s now reserved for season openers. The new companions are also afforded the luxuries bestowed upon Vicki here. The first episode is an introduction story in the same way that Rose and Smith and Jones would be. Whitaker knew what he was doing all right. In terms of drama, Whitaker’s reign in the script editor’s chair is markedly similar to the path followed by Russell T Davies 40 years later, even down to the Sensorites (See Ood!). He introduces the Daleks then brings them back for an effective season finale which - due to scheduling - gets shunted into the following series. Apart from Jo Grant and perhaps Adric, companions would never get the exit stories they deserved again until the 21st century. Just look at Vicki. Here, so full of promise. By Season 3, after Whitaker had given up the helm, she’s a literal write-off. And the Koquillion twist is brilliant!

12. THE REIGN OF TERROR

To say this historical story takes place in as rich a setting as revolutionary France, it occupies itself almost stubbornly with a pretty dreary location: the majority of the action takes place in a drab jailhouse. But when Dennis Spooner opens out his script, it seems to come to magical life. The clothes shop, the inn, the barn and the surgery, all give the world a tangibility, an interconnectedness that the jail seems to stultify somewhat. My favourite set piece, however, happens on the way to Paris, on a country road. Hartnell’s Doctor breezes his way through a work party and to his arrogant surprise is quickly entrapped in spite of his haughty protestations. Here, Hartnell shows his gift for comedy again and the scene in which he conspires to whack his captor round the head with a spade, and then indeed does just that, is an unalloyed delight.

11. THE AZTECS

Apart from some dodgy camerawork, this is as tight a little historical as they come. On its own terms, it’s almost impossible to imagine a better way of telling this story for the pre-watershed audience. The violence is not graphic but strongly implied, such as the way Ixta smashes the clubs on the bier, crushing the emblem into pieces as he intends to do to Ian during their fight. John Lucarotti positions four impending disasters – one each for the regulars – as the dramatic motors of the piece: Ian the fight, the Doctor and Susan their marriages and Barbara the impossibility of a sacrifice without bloodshed. This gives The Aztecs, despite its gentle pace and willingness to explore the Mexican civilisation, a persistent level of underlying threat, several time bombs, as it were. And as Yataxa, Jacqueline Hill is stately, measured and dignified: a sublime performance.

10. AN UNEARTHLY CHILD

Fan consensus goes that the first episode is a television classic (granted with ease – it’s seminal and extraordinary) and that the remaining three are fairly arduous. The latter I disagree with but will say that it is The Cave of Skulls which somewhat lets the wind of Doctor Who’s fledgling sails, namely the first establishing scenes with the cavemen which are dreary, over-acted and slightly irritating. What’s more, the exciting story of Ian and Barbara’s first trip into eternity is put aside whilst we watch these grunting newcomers to the narrative. However, like most stories, once the TARDIS crew meet this week’s protagonists, it comes to life. Even two episodes in, seeing William Hartnell dart around the tribe offering desperately to make fire is a stark incongruity and the stuff of legend. By the time the TARDIS crew are in the forest of fear, they are fully integrated in this dark world, and the dramatic tension is almost unbearable. After a few admittedly faltering steps on the alien sands, Doctor Who comes to life extremely quickly, establishing not just that the narrative can go anywhere in space and time, but that at the heart of this new series is drama.

9. THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH

It’s the last scene, isn’t it? Just as Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, for all their Dalek and Cybermen infighting, comes down to a devastating scene on a beach between two people, The Dalek Invasion of Earth proves that you can tell a story on as vast a scale as planetary-wide takeover and servitude but it doesn’t get more powerful than a grandfather saying goodbye to his granddaughter forever. William Hartnell is astonishingly good here: assured, strange, completely inhabiting the Doctor. He is word perfect; this is no scrabbling around for lines. He knows the import of this scene. He knows it will break hearts. It’s a scene that has transcended the moment of its context, now just as much a part of The Five Doctors and An Adventure in Space and Time and it has taken on a new meaning. This is where Hartnell says to the world: You will remember me. And we did. If only the direction weren’t so clunky and the Daleks so nasally, then The Dalek Invasion of Earth may well be more adored.

8. THE TIME MEDDLER

I watched this as a seven-year-old in 1992. Aside from Episode 1, The Watcher, I must admit I found it quite boring. However, what I see now is a tale of great atmosphere and intrigue, superbly directed by Douglas Camfield with a peculiar, oppressive atmosphere. I can completely see why it was chosen as an exemplary four-part Hartnell story for the nation. The Doctor-less Part Two was probably a cause of my infantile disenchantment. After all, the hero doesn’t show up, but it does prove to be a great episode in terms of establishing the friendship between Vicki and new boy Steven. In fact, the final rolling credits, with our heroes faces hauntingly cast against a starscape, perhaps proves that this is what the story was about all along, a re-calibration of a show which had enjoyed a regular four-handed TARDIS crew and clear distinctions between historical and futuristic story types. Doctor Who is about to open up, throw the rulebook out and let some fresh air in. It’s what the show continues to do to this day. And in this quiet, contemplative re-assessment, Dennis Spooner subtly lays the groundwork for all future change.

7. THE CHASE

Like The Dalek Invasion of Earth, this six-parter saves the best ‘til last and for such a free-wheeling run-around, there’s a definite feeling of the rug being pulled from beneath the viewer as Ian and Barbara realise the end of the road is suddenly within sight. It’s the devastating effect it has on the Doctor (and obviously Hartnell) that causes such magnificent tension between him and his happier fellow travellers. But what of the rest of The Chase? It’s got Peter Purves being brilliant in it twice; it explains the mystery of the Marie Celeste; it features Frankenstein and Dracula, Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln; it features a killer Doctor duplicate; it features The Beatles, Mire Beasts, Aridians, Mechonoids, fungus plants, deserts, jungles, seas and skyscrapers. It is far too unwieldy, far too ambitious and far too silly (for want of a better word) but all those aspects conspire to produce a programme of ecstatic charm. Perhaps my favourite moment is Hartnell’s singing in the sand. With so much going on, we stop to show the TARDIS team at rest, utterly relaxed and bickering before the status quo is staggeringly disrupted. The Chase has so much to offer: so many different character beats, locations, jeopardies and laughs. This is a show so successful and confident it can throw everything at the screen and still come out smiling.

6. THE ROMANS

The show’s most underappreciated writer, Dennis Spooner, proves not just his tremendous comedic bent but also his gift for plotting here in this story of two parallel adventures in Rome. It’s a shame the conversation in The Web Planet dispels the notion that these two stories happen completely oblivious of one another, which is rather a wonderful concept. The Doctor and Vicki being unaware of Ian and Barbara’s plights and vice versa is the icing on the cake of this intricate story of ancient times. There is a feeling of the Ben Hur-like epic in Ian’s escape from slavery (especially the scenes on the incredible ship set) alongside The Emperor’s New Clothes re-telling from the Doctor and Vicki’s perspective. We have a farce in Episode 3 before a gladiatorial battle and most beguiling of all are the scenes which bookend the story in the villa with a TARDIS team of such innate charm they approach perfection.

5. MARCO POLO

Perhaps the purest example of Sidney Newman’s vision for Doctor Who comes the educational travelogue of China. At seven parts long, it feels like the production team appreciated the scale necessary to do this sumptuous, expansive story justice. I’ve seen it argued that seven-episodes is too long. Indeed, Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts vetoed them after their first season in charge. However, here, the very length of the story is its point. It takes Marco Polo and his team a long time to reach Cathay and it is not so much in the destination as the journey that the story finds its power. We stop for reflections on the etymology of the word assassin or the way that condensation works, for example. This may sound po-faced but there’s no patronising going on here. The lessons are couched in a dramatic journey driven by the politics of those we’re travelling with, which are complicated, dangerous and never far from hostility. Marco Polo is the first missing story and ironically, a tale like no other. Not one other Doctor Who feels like this. It’s its very own self-contained seven-part thing of beauty, playing by a completely different set of narrative rules.

4. THE DALEKS

This is the first alien planet we ever see and the first ever monsters. (Let’s forget the frozen Magnedon.) And Doctor Who goes and performs a television miracle. These Daleks are not the Daleks we will later know and love. They don’t say “Exterminate,” they can’t go outdoors, they speak as if they are ordinary people in metal shells rather than the squawking ranters of the modern series. They aren’t fully formed yet. It was arguably the public, and of course, the children of the 1960s, who invented the Daleks, not Terry Nation. There is something uncanny about watching these Skarosian interlopers now. Even their speech patterns are markedly different. But this relatively simple tale of the Thals versus the Daleks (the Pacifists versus the Nazis – or Americans, take your pick!) is totemic. It has been told in many forms: the Peter Cushing film, the David Whitaker novel, to name two. And always, its attraction is in that strange city with their strange inhabitants. This isn’t a particularly well-thought out world and its politics are incredibly simple, but it is within that simplicity that the Daleks are cemented and in their simplicity that they become icons. It is incredibly difficult to come up with a simple, original idea but here, thanks to Terry Nation, Doctor Who strikes gold.

3. THE CRUSADE

Never – and I mean that, never – has Doctor Who produced such a florid, beauteous script as David Whitaker does with his Crusade. Every scene is rich in elaborate verse. It may be faux-Shakespearean as the historical productions of the day often were, but Whitaker manages to make user-friendly his poetry. Forget the novelisation (itself a masterpiece in its own right), the Titan scriptbook is one of my very favourite items of Doctor Who merchandise. Knowing my love for this story, my brother bought it me for a birthday present years ago, and it is a constant source of articulate, rarefied beauty. Despite the brutality at play, the implied incest and the visits to brothels, The Crusade has a gentleness, a playfulness but also an assuredness about it. In its structure, dialogue and in its playing, this must stand as one of the most underrated gems of Doctor Who.

2. THE MASSACRE

In 1999, soundtracks of missing episodes were rare. When The Massacre was released, it seemed like an odd choice. No sci-fi elements, no Daleks, not one of the greats (no Web of Fear or Fury from the Deep): an obscure, pure historical rarely worth no more than a few sentences when historians chronicled Doctor Who. Its key feature according to those sentences was that William Hartnell played a dual role, but arguably that is one of the least interesting aspects of The Massacre. The Abbot rarely appears. It does, however, mean that in this sinister true story of a country mad, there exists the very real possibility that at the close of Priest of Death, it could well be that the Doctor lies dead in the streets, Steven forced to flee the Parisian crowds, leaving his fallen friend behind. Hartnell’s last speech in the TARDIS is nowadays the most celebrated of The Massacre’s achievements but for me, it’s what comes before it: the lyrical, complex, tragic journey into very real, very human terror.

1. THE DALEKS’ MASTER PLAN

I argued recently that if there were one story that could encapsulate the entire history of Doctor Who, then The Daleks’ Master Plan would be the only contender. It has the length to encompass wildly different locations, characters and even genres. There’s broad comedy and an actual silent movie amidst the pulpy, hard-nosed drama of the opening and closing quarters. The prison break episode Devil’s Planet is as bleak as they come, leading ultimately to Katarina’s death in The Traitors. There are, of course, the Daleks, but there’s also moustache-twirling villainy from Kevin Stoney’s Mavic Chen as well as a renegade Time Lord in the form of Peter Butterworth’s excellent Monk. There’s a Christmas Special, spaceships, teleports, pyramids, Egyptians, Liverpudlians, Nicholas Courtney, Jean Marsh and at the top of his game, William Hartnell. The greatness of The Daleks’ Master Plan is just that. It has the size and scope to be a true epic and it is. Far from The (madding) Chase, this is thrilling drama: divorcing the TARDIS crew from the ship adds a desperate element of perilous helplessness and their journeys from planet to planet become more unpredictable and dangerous. Sara’s death feels like the only way to end a story of this size, which even with its comic interludes, illustrates the Daleks as the ultimate enemy, the Doctor as the ultimate hero and the show as an expansive beast, never standing still, always pushing onwards across the universe.

JH

Top 50 TV Shows of All Time

What do Doctor Who fans watch when they’re not watching Doctor Who? With so much time on our hands at the minute, it seems an opportune moment to assess the very best of the box throughout the ages. What have the greatest writers, producers, designers and performers given us and what is the absolute best? All Doctor Who fans love a list and here’s mine: My Top 50 TV shows of all time. Perhaps you can settle down and enjoy something from the list you’ve never seen before or re-visit old televisual flames once again? This list comes from the heart though honourable mentions that missed out on a place here must go to: The Honourable Woman, McMafia, Toast of London, Father Ted and Garth Marhengi’s Darkplace. Sorry, lads. You didn’t quite cut it but you’d definitely be in my Top 100! Here goes:

50.   SOME MOTHERS DO ‘AVE ‘EM

Many of the episodes of this long-running sitcom have dated badly. Much of the scripting is sparse and repetitive, the jokes obvious. But amongst much of the standard fare, there are episodes of real, joyous splendour. I entreat anyone to watch The Baby Arrives. It opens in typical Frank Spencer fashion with some low brow jokes about his poor driving. By its conclusion, however, there has been a very funny birth scene and when Jessica has arrived, Frank’s last line, stood by the hospital entrance, is everything. Here is a man who is best described as inadequate. He is an abject failure in every walk of life. At the birth of his daughter, however, he looks triumphantly at Betty and without a hint of arrogance, stated as bald fact, he utters, “I’m a success.” Amongst all the great comedy characters, this makes Frank Spencer one of the most real.

49.   CALL THE MIDWIFE

Admittedly, whenever my wife or girls suggest watching Call the Midwife, I inwardly groan a little. Dreary Sunday night fare. And yet… within ten minutes of any given episode I’m hooked and usually by its conclusion, I’m wiping my eyes. In Call the Midwife, creator Heidi Thomas (after Jennifer Worth’s memoirs) hit up on the perfect formula for a dramatic long-running series. In every episode, a person is born. And no two births are the same. Each week we meet a different expectant couple and watch as the complications around the births are examined. Each week, there we are presented with a new angle on the most extraordinary of human experiences. Most striking of all is the second Christmas special, in which Nurse Lee offers closure to a neglected homeless woman whose children were taken from her and buried in a churchyard. It’s a deeply sad story which wrenches the heart from even the most cynical of viewers.

48.   BLACK MIRROR

Charlie Brooker expounds on the cynicism of the modern age, taking technology as his most oppressive theme. Every episode features a movie-sized idea. What if you could put people on Ignore? What if you could build a walking talking replica of a dead spouse? What if you could remember and rewatch every moment of your life? They are fascinating questions and explored in Brooker’s sadistic, nightmarish, particular idiom. White Christmas is the Christmas Special nobody asked for, but which Brooker delivered anyway. Starring John Hamm, Rafe Spall and Oona Chaplin, it’s essential festive viewing for the mean-spirited Scrooges amongst us. Maybe teenagers should watch it as a warning of what is to come.

47.   SHAMELESS

Namely Series 1 and 2, in which creator Paul Abbott paints the remarkable picture of Chatsworth Estate, peopled by the vividly rich and real Gallagher family. David Threlfall’s Frank is a modern Greek Oracle, parading his close truths through a stench of inebriation. It’s easy to think of the feel-good, anything-goes atmosphere of Chatsworth as something to aspire to but Abbott is sure to illustrate the great sadnesses of poverty alongside the do-it-yourself laughs. There is a feeling that these funny, beautiful people all suffer from a desperately disguised lack of self-esteem, each of them damaged by life in the underclass. However, each episode finishes with a rousing narration which points out that within the misery, there is always great hope and people will always come together. It’s an optimistic, uplifting message and leaves one happily bouncing alongside Murray Gold's jaunty theme music.

46.   ACCUSED

Jimmy McGovern’s anthology show chronicles the decisions made by a series of accused victims, each in their own way guilty and each utterly sympathetic. Whilst all the episodes resonate, there are several stand-out instalments. Frankie’s Story details the results of the despicable bullying in an army battalion and features a frightening turn from Mackenzie Crook. Helen’s Story sees a coruscating Peter Capaldi, dressed as a clown memorably interrupt court proceedings. Unremarked upon, but perhaps best of all, is Liam’s Story, in which Andy Serkis turns stalker, becoming infatuated with one of his taxi customers. It’s the stuff of very earthly nightmares.

45.   WALLANDER

Kenneth Branagh’s interpretation of this difficult-to-like drunken policeman is not for the fainthearted. Wallander resolutely wallows in its own misery. The pain he feels throughout the whole depressing saga, (for that is what it is: excitingly depressing) is the key component of this agonising serial. Subsidiary characters don’t really get a look in. His colleagues (played by Sarah Smart and Tom Hiddleston no less) are unmemorable and functional. It is Kurt Wallander we are following and we don’t get to know anyone else. In Peter Harness’s The Dogs of Riga, the show finds the perfect balance between the isolation of Wallander and the spy thriller. As he runs desperately across Latvia, no one to turn to, the establishment against him, this show becomes one of true greatness.

44.   STATE OF PLAY

Paul Abbott’s one-series mystery of the murder of MP Stephen Collins’s researcher is a taut, satisfying and gripping thriller. Starring David Morrissey, John Simm, Bill Nighy, Kelly MacDonald, Philip Glenister and James McAvoy, it represents the very pinnacle of the BBC’s talents circa 2003.  If one were to point to what television was doing so brilliantly in the 00s, this show would exemplify exactly that. It’s not just a thriller; typically of Paul Abbott, he has things to say. The job of the press is called into question as well as the motivations of our leaders. Its very title tells us everything. This is a story of the state of play in Britain encapsulated forever across three tightly scripted, fascinating hours.

43.   JEKYLL

Steven Moffat successfully delivered global mega-hit Sherlock before adapting Bram Stoker’s Dracula in his 2020 hit. Before that, however, he was doctoring Robert Louis Stevenson in this forgotten re-imagining of the 19t century classic. This is the first of three occasions we’ll find the towering Jimmy Nesbitt in this poll and here Moffat gives him the part of a lifetime, or should that be two parts? As Henry Jekyll, Nesbitt is sympathetic and warm. As Hyde, he is out and out terrifying. The first appearance of Hyde is one of the 00s best television moments. He opens the scene inhaling a cigarette with glorifying reckless abandon and finishes by jumping on a man’s chest with both feet. The show is full of Moffat’s trademark twists and structural intricacies. The episode which opens with Jekyll falling from a tree covered in blood is Moffat to a tee.

42.   THE DAY TODAY

Chris Morris and Armando Ianucci’s prescient satire of news programming is as relevant now as it was in the 90s and just as funny. The pace and incessant quick-fire hit-rate of the gags means it can be watched time and time again, with more to discover with each re-watch. There’s always a quick gag that’s been missed and its entrapment of members of the public in interview situations is bettered nowhere other than Brasseye, although in that case it’s celebrities who are savagely denigrated. “We’re talking today about the letter of the law. What letter is it?” asks Morris to an unsuspecting interviewee. In confusion, the poor blighter puts forth his apologetic answer: “… J?” Gold.

41.   BORGEN

A masterfully crafted Danish political thriller following the trials and tribulations of Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg. Each episode essentially operates as a perfect “fix of the week” one-act play, in which Brigitte must tackle a range of political problems. Every episode sees her backed into a corner from which there is seemingly no safe escape route but which she navigates delicately and cleverly with aplomb. Whilst the politicking of Brigitte and the toll it takes on her family make for riveting viewing, it is the childhood story of her damaged spin doctor Kaspar which resounds most loudly from Episode 8 of Series One.

40.   HAPPY VALLEY

Watch any scene with Sarah Lancashire in Sally Wainwright’s torturous Halifax-set drama and you’ll see an actor who is so perfectly at one with her character, it brings tears to the eyes. Lancashire internalises all the sorrow, rage and complication of Catherine Cawood and it lives and breathes in her every blink, her every facial tic. This is one of those pieces of casting that may seem obvious after the fact but character and actor combine completely to forge one of the true great heroines of television. Episode 4 ends in a visceral, edge-of-the-seat fashion as villain Tommy Lee Royce approaches. It doesn’t get much grimmer up north.

39.   THE HITCH-HIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

Although the vast breadth of what Douglas Adams imagined cannot possibly be represented by the BBC TV series of 1981, it’s here (rather than the books, rather than the radio series, rather than the 00s film) that Hitchhikers finds what feels its truest representation. Douglas Adams is as ubiquitous with Hitchhikers as he is with Doctor Who, as he is with the television of the late 70s and early 80s. And so in this Simon Jones starring six-parter, it feels like the natural home of the pangalactic gargleblaster. Paddy Kingsland’s beautiful score, alongside those Quantel graphics and Peter Jones’s precise Book combine to make some of the funniest, most deeply thoughtful and iconoclastic images of 20^th century television.

38.   THE MIGHTY BOOSH

Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding are utterly charming as the off-beat zookeepers Howard and Vince. For all the bizarre plots and characters they meet, it is in their scatty riffing dialogue that the show feels most like itself and comes back to its radio roots. Having said that, nowhere else on television could one find Old Greg, Tony Harrison, Monkey Hell or The Hitcher. Stand out instalments include The Priest and the Beast, an ode to psychedelic rock, The Strange Tale of the Crack Fox, with its vile putrescent guest star and Jungle, in which we first meet Rudi Van DiSarzio. There’s a sense of variety about the Boosh. It is as much about the guest stars (Roger Daltry and Razorlight!) as it is about the songs as it is about the recurring regulars and team spirit. Colourful, bold and idiosyncratic, The Mighty Boosh is its own optimistic, funny and zany world.

37.   SHERLOCK

It might seem like schlock, like genre telly, but like the great detective himself, there is a supreme cleverness about the vast majority of Sherlock. Three writers – Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Stephen Thompson – embark on a mission to make this the cleverest edition of Sherlock Holmes to hit the screens. There are stand-out episodes which in themselves would make for celebrated movies. Opener A Study in Pink sets out the stall for what will be a gripping series. A Scandal in Belgravia is a ridiculously intelligent script and includes the obvious distraction of a naked woman. (Sherlock, sociopath that he is, naturally deduces her dress size.) Best of all though is The Lying Detective, directed with supreme style by Nick Hurran, which for an hour is presented as a drug-fuelled series of hallucinatory episodes from Holmes’s perspective. There are few other shows that look quite as peculiar as this. And there’s a killer twist two thirds of the way in which leaves one gawping.

36.   JAKE’S PROGRESS

Two performative tours de force from Robert Lindsay and Julie Walters complement Alan Bleasdale’s Greek tragedy about a boy whose parents are tired of. Poor Jake resonates in the memory, the bleak ending unpredictable yet inevitable. There are stagey scenes which wouldn’t get past a script editor today but which have a boldness, a power, a sense of a specific authorly voice. Robert Lindsay’s Jamie sits in his living room and monologues in the first episode. There is a beautifully ambitious tracking shot through a party in Episode 4 and Jake’s celebrating of his birthday by himself in his bedroom is devastating. The theme music is sad and lingering from Elvis Costello and embodies musically the spiral down which the Diadoni family is about to slowly fall.

35.   COLD FEET

Nine series of Manchester-based comedy-drama, Cold Feet, and still it speaks to us. The dramas faced by Adam & Rachel, Pete & Jenny and Karen & David are the dramas faced by us all. This is the story of normal people growing up. During the long break off-air, the characters matured and so did their problems. These are people we feel we have lived with. The greatness of Cold Feet is not in its charming, gentle comedy or in its perfectly cast leads but in the way its emotional moments come like gut-punches. Mike Bullen’s writing is almost invisibly powerful in its depiction of ordinariness, so much so that when our characters come up against torment or hardship, it feels like we as they have stumbled upon it unknowingly. It’s easy viewing for the most part but has a delicate way of bringing us up sharp.

34.   TOP OF THE LAKE / TOP OF THE LAKE: CHINA GIRL

It is incredibly difficult to describe this Australian drama without giving very much away. On the surface, it looks like a regular “lost girl” story but it is so much stranger and more profound than all that. Dream sequences, particularly in the second series, offer disorientating and uncanny material. Elisabeth Moss’s Robin Griffin has a nightmare in which she attempts to put her shirt on whilst balancing unborn foetuses in her hands. Every episode, the show offers up a weirdness you’re unlikely to see elsewhere. The sinister story of David Dencik’s “Puss” feels dangerous, unsettling and all too believable. I’m not even sure to which genre this series belongs. It’s a crime thriller for sure but it’s also commenting on women, on childhood, on abuse. This is a deeply fascinating work of art.

33.   THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN

The first two series with their laugh tracks now seem rather dated despite the clearly outrageous and magnificent character work from Pemberton, Shearsmith, Gatiss and Dyson. Series 3, however, unsung at the time, is a work of ecstatic comedy. Turn Again Geoff Tips follows the titular would-be comedian to London for his fledgling performance on the stage of the The Salmon of Knowledge. It is a masterful examination of Northern hubris and lack of self-awareness. The One-Armed Man is King follows a joke-shop owner amputee who is a gifted a nun’s arm in an illicit back-door operating theatre. Throughout the series, the drifting plastic bag ties characters together and we realise we’re a long way from the sketch show we started out with. Far more Inside No 9 than Little Britain. My favourite is the Christmas Special, three stories forming a deliciously dark portmanteau episode which reveals the true face of Santa.

32.   DAMAGES

Glenn Close stars as NY attorney Patty Hughes in this five-series thriller. Each focuses on a different court case that the hot spot lawyer takes an interest in, cases of injustices at the hands of huge, global companies. Hughes intends to take down The Man, but she will do anything in her power to win. We are never sure whether to trust Hughes and Close plays her like a lizard, ready to flick her tongue and smote her victims with her sharp words or even sharper, more insidious deeds. Even more frightening, however, is her toxic relationship with new girl Ellen, played by Rose Byrne. We are never quite sure of Patty’s role in the attempted murder of her employee and the tension between them drives through all five series like a hot skewer. Perhaps the most alarming series is four which follows a private security firm in Afghanistan, although the ending of Series 3 is merciless.

31.   THE TRIP / THE TRIP TO ITALY / THE TRIP TO SPAIN

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play off-kilter versions of themselves in these surprisingly moving road trips from Michael Winterbottom. The two men come to terms with themselves as they frequent a variety of restaurants, but it is in their loneliness after closing time that we get under their skin. The show has a deft way of making us both like and hate them more as we travel onwards; they become more complicated, more conflicted and more pathetic in their gentle journey. Above all else, however, the range of incredible impressions on display is magnificent and Steve Coogan’s attempt to sing three octaves in the last episode of Series 1 is worth the entry fee alone. Best line of dialogue in the voice of Terry Wogan: “Now Rob, did you eat Mo Farah’s fucking legs?”

30.   PEEP SHOW

At the centre of this comedy is a very simple but inspired idea – that we can hear our leads’ internal monologue. This gives writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain carte blanche to be as tactless, rancid and truthful as they can possibly own up to being. Much has been written about the obvious rapport between David Mitchell and Robert Webb, but other memorable characters abound too. Paterson Joseph’s Johnson is as bright and shiny a comic hero to the modern TV viewer as Basil Fawlty or Frank Spencer. Sophie (Olivia Colman no less) and Dobby make for terrifically funny foils to the two pathetic boys. Perhaps the greatest episode is Mark’s wedding at the end of the fifth series, which charts a calamitous wedding day like no other, including some hilarious avenues on the way to the venue alone. The truth of these characters, as heard by us all, is what propels Peep Show from your run of the mill sitcom to a work of genuine inspiration.

29.   GIDEON’S DAUGHTER

To my mind, this is Stephen Poliakoff’s finest work. Usually, he languishes for too long in beautiful architecture, includes tales of a Jewish history which sometimes feel latched on and fixates upon photographs or films of yesteryear. Here, Poliakoff explores the simple idea of a daughter growing up and away from her father and the great lengths a father will do to rekindle his daughter’s love for him. I don’t know why this isn’t celebrated any more than it is. Bill Nighy is astonishingly good as Gideon and Miranda Richardson puts in a characteristically off-the-wall but grounded performance as Stella, Gideon’s new-found confidante. Give it a try. 90 minutes of bliss which can’t fail to move even the most stubbornly unemotional of parents.

28.   BOTTOM

Lots of people sneer at Bottom. It’s very title, however, tells us that Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson are aiming no higher than low brow. Both men are incredibly funny and the most natural of comic partners. Give me these two tugging at each other’s noses with pliers and headbutting banisters over Laurel and Hardy any day. If you can overcome your own snobbery, it’s easier to laugh at chilli-sprout-fuelled fiery farts. There’s a cavalier attitude to logic: at the end of Series 3 Episode 1 (Hole) the leads die, just as they do in Episode 6 (Carnival). The violence on display is so overblown as to be ludicrously comic. Perhaps the finest episode is Gas which features Richie climbing into bed with Brian Glover and his girlfriend whilst trying not to be seen. There is an amazing explosion here too, which looks like it probably breached BBC Studio guidelines thanks to an overenthusiastic FX team. Don’t be a snob. IF you want more of the great outdoors, look no further than ‘S Out which features a tremendous park-based fight with tent pole as blow dart.

27.   THE MISSING / BAPTISTE

Brothers Harry and Jack Williams are taking over television. They have written many modern big-hitters: Liar, The Widow, Rellik and One of Us. All are excellent but none quite match the atmosphere of The Missing. It has a despair about it. In it lingering establishing shots, there is a sense that the devil lurks just out of shot. The poignant, realistic story of the lost Oliver Hughes lingers long in the memory after the closing credits of each episode, with Episode 3’s ending posing terrifying, blurry video footage of the boy’s last moments. James Nesbitt’s harrowing performance as Tony Hughes is surely the sort that BAFTAs were designed to celebrate. The second series is similarly memorable, with events taking on a more grandiose turn in its final few instalments. Baptiste, the spin-off featuring Tcheky Karyo as the eponymous French detective, digs even deeper into the dark underworld of humanity (and is filmed in much the same style, even down to the opening theme music) and I so hope the promising second series sees the light of day in these uncertain times. The show delivers the same of grizzly frights in which we find catharsis.

26.   MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS

The first modern sketch show, there is an air of incredibly lucky undergraduates being allowed to mess about in Monty Python. Of course. Some sketches are indulgent and some drag, but any series with so many oft-quoted, well-known gags is doing something right. The frenetic cutting between video and filmed sequences lends the show an unpredictability that The Fast Show aimed for before it became Catchphrase Central. Cleverly, the Pythons use sets across episodes, meaning that there appear to be far more set-ups and elaborations than in other half hour shows of a similar vintage. It’s not always terribly funny, but it’s always surreal, anarchic and bedazzling and the six regulars deliver committed, high-octane, brilliantly funny performances. I can never decide who my favourite Python is. Sometimes it’s Cleese, sometimes it’s Chapman, sometimes it’s Palin. Each of them chime with one another like a punk band. There’s no sense of one-upmanship. They’re in this crazed world together and inhabit it with belief, pride and infectious gall.

25.   THE X FILES

Yes, it went on too long and the revival wasn’t quite the comeback anyone had hoped. But during its 90s zenith, The X Files was the talk of the town. Everybody watched it. It sat alongside The Simpsons, Friends and E.R. as the best that America had to offer. Two of the execs went on to write Breaking Bad. Another two went on to write Homeland. These guys weren’t messing about when they wrote The X Files. I can’t think of another series which offers up anything quite so frightening as Squeeze, Hell Money, 2Shy, The Walk, Irresistible, Fresh Bones or Aubrey. As the mythology progressed, Chris Carter and his gang of geeks produced finales of dynamite tension, cliff-hangering seasons on epic moments and leaving our favourite FBI agents in mortal jeopardy. As convoluted as it became, the opening of Season 5, as we finally gain access to the Pentagon files and the Cancer Man is shot clutching the photo of Mulder and Samanta, as a breath-taking, original thriller, the show is unbeatable.

24.   TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED

An anthology series of the highest order, Roald Dahl’s show is indicative of his mischievous sense of humour and glee in the macabre. In such a show, quite often the greatest casts are found. It’s only a few days filming for a star to fulfil and so it often fits into their otherwise packed schedules. Here we have John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, Brian Blessed, Michael Gambon, Timothy West, Sian Philips, Denholm Elliott and John Mills among many, many others doing a turn for the boys. Notable highlights include Lamb to the Slaughter, Skin, Royal Jelly and The Man from the South. In a series of such length, there are bound to be poorer episodes, but there is always a performance to revel in or a novel twist to enjoy and apart from anything else, there is Ron Grainer’s mesmeric theme tune which says, “Settle down. You’re in for a treat.”

23.   THE KILLING

It’s fashionable to laud Scandi-noir as the best that TV has to offer. The Killing makes it difficult to go against the grain. The first series spends a mammoth twenty episodes on the hunt for the killer of Nanna Birk Larsen. Although headed by Sofie Grabol’s enigmatically distant Sarah Lund, at the forefront of this show is structure. Each episode strictly follows the events of one day of the investigation. Its very length means that by 18, 19 episodes, the police force are understandably at breaking point and the pressure is piled on Lund to solve the case. The following two series, although shorter, are no less tense. Despite the culprits in Series 2 and 3 feeling a little more obvious, the twists and turns the narratives make before we reach our harrowing conclusions are like all the best thrillers, frustrating, irritating, unexpected and electrifying.

22.   CATTERICK

Vic and Bob’s best work. Described as “a seven-mile comedy road movie” on the DVD sleeve, this six-episode sitcom experiment of BBC Three’s infancy was the sort of thing the channel was once celebrated for. Other uncelebrated shows like Dogtown and Funland were birthed there, alongside other big hitters like Little Britain, Gavin and Stacey and even Torchwood which later became hits for their parent channels. For my money though, Catterick is the best, the weirdest and the most original. We start in what looks like a regular Fawlty Towers hotel-based set-up (although in the first five minutes, we see a man putting a bagful of ravens in a train station bin which suggest things might get weird). By Episode 5, we’re in a garden centre experiencing a shoot-out, a behanding and a would-be bomb building. Episode 6 chiefly revolves around repeatedly thwarted attempts to blow up a caravan. There is a monologue on the governmental protection of otters and a scene in which Bob (playing Carl Palmer) is forced to swallow cassette tape. (“Eat it, yer bastard!”) There is also a subplot involving a lost penis in a jar and love is found on a zebra crossing between two cross-eyed strangers. Bliss.

21.   THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA

The BBC’s adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair is as magical, ethereal and haunting as it was on transmission, helped by the gorgeous musical score (Geoffrey Burgon at his best) and the inventive design work of a BBC crew at the height of their powers, just before produced choice came in and in-house went out. There are elements which seem extremely dated in the light of the more recent cinema outings, namely the green screen, the cartoon-like animation and some of the puppetry but give me Ronald Pickup’s animatronic Aslan over a modern CG rendering any day. The Silver Chair has stood the test of time perhaps best of all. As Jill Pole stands with Aslan by the waterfall reciting the signs over the waxing music, we know we’re in the realm of awe. When Tom Baker arrives as Puddleglum and the gang set off to Ettinsmoor, there is a sense of epic adventure which matches any Lord of the Rings film. Because here, we are embarking on a quest with children in tow, making all the wonderment that bit more naïve, that bit richer, that bit closer, more real. And the scripts never, ever speak down to us. Of his siblings, Edmund remarks, “a bunch of self-satisfied prigs,” as if speaking the language of children everywhere. This is television for children which doesn’t feel the need to patronise them.

20.   THIS IS ENGLAND

Based on a film which didn’t quite land despite its hard-hitting conclusion, this TV show co-written by Shane Meadows and Jack Thorne, with a healthy dose of improv from its talented young cast, enjoys its longer form to better explore the world of working class 80s Midlands. There are great swathes of the show which are hysterically funny in their close observation. There are elements which illustrate the evil human beings are capable of. The most realistic and disturbing rape scene in all of television happens in the first series and it is one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences put to camera. The series reaches its pinnacle, however, at the close of ’88, when it becomes obvious that this wasn’t a story of society after all; it was a story of unfulfilled love, finally allowing itself to blossom. As Joe Gilgun and Vicky McClure reconnect, there shouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.  

19.   BREAKING BAD

It feels like a cliché to talk about the greatness of Breaking Bad but it can never be stated enough times. Bryan Cranston’s troubled Walter White has become a television icon. Perhaps what separates this from other TV shows is that the hero is resolutely unheroic. Underconfident, underachieving, bitter and aggressive, White’s cancer-scare fuels him to lash out at a world he feels has done him wrong. He cannot see that it is his own fear of reaching for something else that has meant he lives a life of no-frills and ordinariness. The show is so good it ends conclusively four times, once at the end of the fourth series in which Gus Fring comes to an apposite, stylish and deserved end, and the last three episodes of the fifth essentially offer a pick-your-own denouement. It can’t quite make the final reel quite as unexpected or freewheeling as the rest of the series, too concerned is it with putting its toys back in the box, but it’s a tiny quibble in a show that is meandering, gripping, horrific, funny and gruelling. Secretly, there’s a bit of Walter White in all of us. Most of us see Friends as wish-fulfilment TV but Breaking Bad is the renegade’s real deal.

18.   GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS

The BBC’s occasional ghost story series is much vaunted in television, deservedly so. Usually based on the unquiet tales of M R James, the atmosphere of these desolate, lonely tales is pervasive and threatening. Recently, there have been a few more excursions into Ghost Stories for Christmas, with a John Hurt starring re-telling of Whistle and I’ll Come to You, as well as Mark Gatiss’s adaptations of The Tractate Middoth and Martin’s Close as well as his own The Dead Room with Simon Callow. These tales don’t go in for jump scares or gore. They play in the shadows, exercise tension and dread, and slowly, almost unnoticeably creep under the skin. For my money, best of all is The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, in which one academic’s curiosity leads him to a horrific encounter in a tunnel. The world of these stories is one of wood panelled walls and candlelight, where intellectual aspiration comes face to face with an unknowable world unresting somewhere beyond the veil.

17.   RED DWARF

Rarely does the sci-fi comedy reach its potential, but when it does, there is no better way to spend a half hour than in the company of Lister, Rimmer, Kryten and the Cat. Series 5 and 6 are particularly impressive, with 5 marking the apex of this show in terms of its belly laughs and oddball ideas. Look at Demons and Angels, Quarantine or Back to Reality. They’re clearly high concept. Steven Moffat would be praised and win awards for his Doctor Who stories of a timey-wimey persuasion but Red Dwarf was doing this stuff decades before, The Inquisitor and Future Echoes the most obvious examples. At its best, Red Dwarf manages to bring its comedy out of its concept of the week. Occasionally, it tends to put plot and concept first (notably after Rob Grant left the show) but when the laughs work in symbiosis, the result is spectacularly clever, rewarding and original. Gunmen of the Apocalypse (Emmy award winning, no less), Psirens and Legion exemplify this. The new Dave iteration of the show is a worthy successor to the BBC days and occasionally does something magnificent: Lemons, Twentica and Give & Take see the Dwarfers at their middle-aged best, and in the final minutes of Back to Earth, Craig Charles what an understated actor he can be. Best of all though, is Series 2’s Thanks for the Memory, an episode which not only pieces its perfect plot together like the jigsaw puzzle of its closing shot, but also bases it on the cripplingly sad confession of a drunken Rimmer, showing that Grant and Naylor can not only plot a sci-fi show and earn a few brilliant gags, but tug on the heartstrings too.

16.   NATHAN BARLEY

If a sitcom written by Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker were commissioned today, it would be publicised to death. Nathan Barley flew under the radar. It’s such a shame because everything from the colour palette to the dialogue is as idiosyncratic, original and bizarre as you’d expect from these dark comedy masters. “Alright fucksticks,” says Nicholas Burns’s Nathan as he rides his too-small bike onto a bus in his introductory scene. The dialogue never stops being funny or outlandish. “Fill these,” says a media exec pointing at his ears. “I’ve had an ape hour ever since I saw a programme about them on Discovery. It was about apes,” says oddball TV honcho from his high rock. “It’s good because it looks it’s good because it’s rude,” says Richard Ayoade. Even Benedict Cumberbatch and Ben Whishaw get in on this crazy world where none of the characters is sympathetic. Claire Keelan’s lead, with whom in any other sitcom we’d engage, is irritating and out for herself. Her brother, Julian Barratt’s Dan Ashcroft is a sad waster. Barley himself is a total twat. Morris and Brooker present a world inhabited by morons in a statement about the media, society and our desperate want for the latest polished turd.

15.   UTOPIA

Off the wall playwright Dennis Kelly’s Channel 4 comic strip thriller is a colourful ferocity of imagination, to the dirty, explosive drum and bass soundtrack from Christobal Tapia de Veer. Characters are larger than life and function on just the right side of reality. The plot is extreme, thrilling and excessively violent, garnering viewer complaints on transmission. This is understandable: the first episode includes a de-eyeballing after sand, chillies and bleach have been applied to the victim’s sockets; the third includes a completely avoidable mass shooting at a school. Children are seen to carry and shoot firearms and many deaths are warranted for the sheer, devilish thrill of witnessing yet another operatic killing. In the first scene alone, it is implied that a child is killed by inhaling poison. That none of this feels sensationalist speaks volumes of the dark world Kelly creates. Utopia is its own vibrant beast and goes by its own twisted rules. Best moment of dialogue? “You, Sir, are drunk.” “Yes, and in the morning, we’ll both still be cunts.”

14.   LINE OF DUTY

The longer the show goes on, the more overcomplicated and melodramatic it becomes. But what melodrama! Scenes in interview rooms last extraordinary amounts of time, like those from stageplays excitingly using the language of formal police procedure as high drama. The balance of power shifts in those scenes in riveting, unexpected and dangerous ways, often threatening to derail the plot entirely. As well as these blistering dialogue exchanges, the violence on show is visceral. The defenestration in Series 2 makes one sick to the stomach. The almost-removal of fingers in Series 1 is an edge of the seat cliff-hanger and the cutthroat nature of the scene at the close of Episode 2 cements this as a series of shocking pivots and spectacle. The first episode of Series 3 is a work of dramatic art in itself.

13.   BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

Once cited as the greatest television programme ever made, even now it’s difficult to find fault in this beauteous, languorous roving around an England of yesteryear. Even the privileged Brideshead family themselves have one foot in the past and struggle to cope in an accelerating world. The poor Sebastian takes himself out of it, his sister Julia agonises in her attempts to reconcile the conservativism of her faith against the tugging of her heartstrings, Bridey remains an English eccentric (unhappily married) and Cordelia becomes a “plain, unattractive” woman after showing such vitality of character in her youth. Through it all, our narrator and confidante Charles Ryder – played with understated precision by Jeremy Irons – rails against the impositions forced on the family by their Catholicism before finally making his peace with religion in an ending which is both deeply saddening and hugely fulfilling, transcendental even. And Geoffrey Burgon’s score is ubiquitous, incidental perfection.

12.   GBH

Alan Bleasdale’s second great television success, produced by the legendary Verity Lambert and chopped to pieces by her. Reportedly, she cut 300 pages and Bleasdale missed only one scene lasting 45 seconds. Whatever she did to it, the result is an almost perfect narrative in terms of its structure, contrasting the lives of two men, one getting over a breakdown, another on his way to one. Both opposed politically and in terms of character, as one rises, the other falls. Typically of Bleasdale, he posits a moral in the last act: read more than one book. This is a call to humanity, an entreaty to attempt to understand one another rather than, as is the want of politics, to go loggerheads, to use conflict as the answer. And throughout the ten hours, mesmeric performances from Michael Palin and Robert Lindsay ensure we are enthralled. The hotel sequence in which Lindsay shines his shoes during a panic attack is as funny as Michael Palin’s hiding in the cupboard is painful. Through these two characters, Bleasdale illustrates that the mental stability of a person is always teetering precariously somewhere between total arrogance and abject fear.

11.   THE SINGING DETECTIVE

Exploring all of Dennis Potter’s recurrent themes, The Singing Detective encapsulates everything he ever seemed to be striving for. In coming to terms with himself, Philip Marlow – in a supreme masterclass of actorly prowess – learns how to walk again. In his pursuit, he must re-live the nightmares of his childhood through a haze of drug-fuelled, hallucinatory songs, which find a place in the narrative in a less jarring way than those of Pennies from Heaven, explained as they are by the series taking place within Marlow’s consciousness. The worlds of film noir detection and speakeasies, sunny West Country woodland and the stark sterility of the hospital make for the perfect bedfellows, each shedding a contrasting light on one another. Sumptuous, funny dialogue abounds throughout. “Little men shouldn’t sit places where their legs don’t touch the ground; makes me think of nursery rhymes.” This is television at its most vivid and rich, pushing at its boundaries and redefining what the medium is actually for.

10.   CRACKER

Robbie Coltrane – the man. As Fitz, he excels. This is a layered, brilliant, complex study of an extremely complex character. Jimmy McGovern’s most famous character has every right to be. Depicting a gambling addict with a self-destructive quality, Cracker explores crime thrillers from a psychological viewpoint. The clues to the crimes do not come from Macguffins or happenstance, and the crimes are not solved as in Jonathan Creek by working out intricate puzzles, but from a deep, rich understanding of character, of motivation and of relationships. Although there are more celebrated episodes such as those featuring Robert Carlisle’s disturbing Albie Kinsella or the brutal exploration of racism in Men Should Weep, it is in the tiny misjudged moment at the end of To Say I Love You which strikes me as the big moment in Cracker: Fitz is parleying with Sean in a house rigged to explode. He promises that if Sean comes with him, he can talk to Tina – his girl with whom he has enjoyed a killing spree - for an hour. But he has forgotten his psychology. Sean has a stutter. “You expect me to say everything I need to say in one lousy, stinking hour?” he asks agonisingly slowly, unable to form the words. And Fitz realises he is defeated. After three hours of getting inside these young people’s heads, at the last second, Fitz gets it wrong. That’s what makes Cracker. Fitz is not the copper who can slay a dragon every week. He is far more complicated, far more hindered by circumstance, far, far more truthful than all that.

9.       FAWLTY TOWERS

The best comedy series ever created? Undoubtably. Look at Communication Problems. In itself, this is a perfectly structured farce. From the very funny conversations in the first scene, the groundwork is being invisibly worked in for the payoffs at the episode’s climax. This and The Psychiatrist are perhaps the apotheosis of the series, where John Cleese and Connie Booth blend structure and character in such a way that laughs expound, one upon another, snowballing their way to an hysterical climax. Only Fools and Horses famously boasts a scene in which Del Boy falls through a bar. In The Psychiatrist, John Cleese falls through an open door and it’s the worst gag in the episode. The best that Only Fools and Horses has to offer couldn’t hold a candle to the magnificence of Fawlty Towers, twelve sweet episodes of despairingly English complication.

8.       BROKEN

The six-episode tale of priest Michael Kerrigan is Jimmy McGovern’s finest work. It deals with themes he returns to, time and again – gambling addiction, abuse and poverty, but never quite so maturely as here. When Kerrigan confronts the elderly priest who abused him as a child, there is a sense of this being a personal victory for Kerrigan, a step towards his healing, despite the abhorrent response from his abuser. The final scene, although it plays out only the smallest of kindnesses, is Kerrigan’s retribution. Here is a good man, beaten by the world, rarely thanked for the good he does, astonishingly well-played by Sean Bean, at last finding a happiness amongst his parish, a parish who value him far more than he would have himself otherwise believe. It is a tale which celebrates the good of a community in spite of its varied and difficult obstacles.

7.       DOCTOR WHO

It had to be there. Whilst the series doesn’t always offer up the very best of television in any given week, it goes to places other TV shows simply cannot. Christopher Eccleston told the press with relish that his first day of filming involved a midget in a pig costume in a spacesuit. What’s more, this was one of the show’s more serious scenes. Where else could the incongruous feel so at home? And in its best episodes, in its most bold and memorable, the show brings people together, from the youngest to the eldest. Gas mask zombies, weeping angels and regeneration are the stuff of water cooler conversation and stories such as Ghost Light, The Deadly Assassin, The Leisure Hive, Revelation of the Daleks, Father's Day, The Time of Angels and The Satan Pit are some of the finest examples of experimental television ever made. In recent years, it may have lost its sheen but there’s always something to delight, to thrill, to laugh at in this naïve show which puts imagination, goodness and intelligence above super powers, might and power.

6.       INSIDE NO 9

Five series in and I can think of only one episode of the anthology series which doesn’t quite hit the mark. This show is inventive, ambitious and intelligent. The number of number nine possibilities at first seems paltry but with each passing episode, Pemberton and Shearsmith show that the potentialities are endless given the freedom of imagination. Number nines include a hotel floor, a table, a train cabin, various studio spaces (art and magician’s), a dressing room, a police car and perhaps most inventively a shoe. Styles vary between shows: we go from Mike Leigh to Alan Bennett to Tim Burton, from karaoke songs to crossword puzzle to iambic pentameter. Every episode can stand as one of the best examples of the style it emulates; most include clevernesses, sleights of hand, twists and surprises. For half hours of television to be so perfectly and unpredictably captured week after week, episode after episode, with no signs of fatigue, is astonishing. It seems that Pemberton and Shearsmith can turn to their end to anything at all. And The Devil of Christmas is a twisted masterpiece.

5.       THE BOYS FROM THE BLACK STUFF

After the one-act play The Black Stuff, came this five-episode series covering the lives of its five leads during the 80s depression in Merseyside. Alan Bleasdale imbues his show with Liverpudlian humour to contrast against the darkness of his characters’ poor lives. Each episode is memorable in its own way. The death of Snowy, thanks to the negligence of the modern workman, is poetically ironic in an age in which people are literally begging for jobs. Dixie’s ferocity in his secret moonlighting directed at those he loves belies the fact he has all along been saving for his son. Chrissie’s killing of his animals to feed his family as the grace note of a row is harrowing. The tale of Yosser Hughes, all shot on film, is the episode the public remember, and Yosser makes for a totemic figure of 80s recession. Lastly, the death of George acts as the microcosmic death of a bygone age. He is the last of the great dock workers and with his passing goes the hope of Liverpool. Because Bleasdale doesn’t offer an end to this hopelessness. We end with Chrissie, Loggo and a diminished Yosser walking the desperate empty streets, no jobs to go to, futures uncertain.

4.       I, CLAUDIUS

The top spot is devoted to a family drama and here, we have the most powerful, famous and complicated family of them all: from Augustus to Nero, I, Claudius charts the Roman Emperors from their glorious heights to their despotic lows. Yes, it’s stagey, mannered and can’t quite illustrate the gladiatorial games and stadium-sized locations it so wishes to, but it doesn’t matter. It is symptomatic of the TV of its age, theatre on the telly, with character and dialogue the forefront of the viewing experience and there are no richer characters than here and no greater performances. It is quite something to behold John Hurt delivering the unfettered madness of Caligula, Sian Philips the wallowing evil of Livia and the redoubtable Derek Jacobi the shrewdness, clumsiness, humour, rage and sadness of Claudius. This is a true epic and a timeless story transcendent of the millennia it steps back through.

3.       OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH

A chronicle of our country through the 20^th century, from the 60s to the 90s. It’s a love story, a gangster story, a political story, a social story, a family story and a crime story. Most of all, it’s the story of how housing policy has shaped the nation. As dry as that sounds, Peter Flannery tells his story through the hearts of four very different friends: the grammar school boy, the working class lad, the runaway and the girl once blinkered, later educated. Our Friends in the North exposes the corruption of our establishments and the devastating effects that those corrupt decisions have on the commonfolk. Its illustration of the 90s council estate (then the modern age) is frighteningly real and the scene in which the four friends meet again, beautifully and silently unsure as to how to engage, speaks volumes of a country that has forgotten what it once stood for and how to articulate itself. This is devastatingly effective television and, like no other programme ever, captures what it is to be English.

2.            MAD MEN

If there is a theme that pervades Mad Men is that of the loneliness of man. And yes, it really is a story unapologetically about men. Of course, there are terrific narratives and foci on the female characters but at its heart, this is the tale of Don Draper, a man with secrets, a man out of time, a man who cannot function in a relationship if he is not in control, and then, when he is in control, seeks to squander what he has for the sake of excitement, of difference, of what he doesn’t know. Both Don’s - and indeed Roger Stirling’s - lack of self-awareness, lack of self-understanding, fuel the show. They seek almost in desperation a sense of self-worth which nobody can give them, except ironically and to their ignorance, themselves. The strength and weakness of man is here, glorified, explored, apologised for, digested and spat out. For such a beautiful looking show, it fully exposes the utter filth and loathsomeness capable of these arrogant, fragile and almost mad men.

1.       SIX FEET UNDER

The story of the Fishers’ funeral home and its complicated family. The five series deal with every aspect of life, from birth to death, including sex and sexuality, drugs and dreams, mental illness, “coming out,” kidnap, betrayal, murder, rapture, loss, hope and forgiveness. The characters are real and complex, they make “out of character” choices that most dramas would shirk from, they surprise, delight, swell the heart and break it. The plotting is unpredictable, awkward, meandering and a true mirror of the paths the characters take. Some simply vanish from the narrative, as do friends in reality. Some die suddenly. Six Feet Under captures the transience, beauty, joy and difficulty of life like no other series. The moment at the very end of Series 3, when Nate finally accepts his loss, is heart-rending in its understatement and heart-breaking in its truth. Never talked about, Six Feet Under, to my mind is the undisputed masterpiece of television.

JH

Introducing The Faceless Ones…

Colin Baker once said that Doctor Who was about “playing cowboys and Indians.” Growing up with three brothers, I can testify that that was very much what it was for us. We’d hide behind makeshift wooden forts in our backyard, shooting not just plastic rifles but pretend Dalek guns. We’d hold our fingers together in the shape of “the black triangle” from The Five Doctors and chase one another until one of us was winded. We’d act out the comic strips in our bedrooms, in front of tape recorders, for our mum. We’d hollow out polystyrene spaceships and march the Dapol Cybermen and Tetraps up and down the ramps. Doctor Who was the door for certainly my imagination. My brothers were never quite as enamoured but willingly played along in the spirit of it all. Jim, the closest brother in age, will still assert that The Tomb of the Cybermen is the best Doctor Who story of all time, and if that isn’t an example of a load of adults playing in some tunnels, I don’t know what is.

There was one caveat when I was young in our Doctor Who play. I was always the Doctor. I can’t ever remember one of my younger brothers being the Doctor. Selfishly, it was always me. I’ve always done the voices of the Doctors. I’ve always loved taking them off and using their respective patters and I know my brothers and friends enjoy it “when the voices come out.” 

In the spirit of play, therefore, and finding we all have more time than usual on our hands (ironic for a Time Lord), please enjoy these videos which I’ll couch under the umbrella term Introducing The Faceless Ones… It’s a short series of some of the Doctors - in no particular order - reacting to the latest, beautiful steelbook release. More to come!

JH

The Faceless Ones

When The Faceless Ones was announced as the next exciting animation project from BBC Studios, a secret little bit of me thought, “Oh no, not that one?” It’s a show that has never been hailed as a classic. It’s not even much talked about. Indeed, its matters of interest to the roving fan are usually summed up in one sentence: It’s the one at Gatwick Airport where Ben and Polly leave cackhandedly. It’s just possible that an early appearance from Pauline Collins could liven up this tale’s reputation and sense of invitation but even then, discussion usually reverts to talk of her now sadly absent millinery stylings. There’s a paucity of publicity photos related to the story and the aliens are one of the show’s least visible, least celebrated examples. Was this a fair summation of the merits of The Faceless Ones? A rightly forgotten, average 60s tale not even visibly promoted by its makers at the time? Or was the animation set to suddenly reveal a hitherto unnoticed classic? The answer, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in between.

The first thing most obviously noticeable about The Faceless Ones is the insane pace of the first ten minutes. It makes no bones about setting up what will be the status quo for the next four episodes. Polly is captured, the Commandant established, the Chameleon Tours boys are definitely wrong ‘uns. There’s an escape-from-a-landing-plane, a police chase, a very quick murder, a kidnapping and some verbal-sparring all in the first third of the episode. There’s a looming sense of dread-mystery hanging over this almost-noir suspense thriller of a first episode. Watching the Chameleon Tours men escort their bandaged patient through Departures is the stuff of classic film and puts one in mind of The Invisible Man. The final shot of the episode and the alien, its back to us, is a true spine-tingler and that moment, along with the eerily beautiful climax of Episode Four mark the story’s pinnacles.

However, once the status quo is established, its writers David Ellis and the usually reliable Malcolm Hulke, don’t really know what to do with it. There are repetitive scenes in the bland sets which really start to test the patience. When in Episode Three, the irritating Commandant asks yet again for the Doctor’s passport, there’s a definite feeling of treading water and we ache for the story to move into second gear. The self-imposed obstructions, such as the dratted passport business or Samantha Briggs being essentially put on hold by everyone she speaks to, hinder the narrative progress and there’s a feeling that very little of value is being learned in the time available. The mysteries are not enough to sustain themselves and their answers – when they come - are fairly facile. The Chameleons believe themselves to be the cleverest species in the universe, but they are easily taken in by the Doctor’s tricks and haven’t considered that a car park full of comatose youngsters might attract attention. They bicker like children and have formed petty cliques amongst themselves. They hardly behave in the most intelligent manner. But then again, neither do the relatives of any of the 50,000 missing passengers, excepting Samantha.

The story does pick up when we reach the Chameleon spaceship but even then, the irritating ambient sound, like a wet finger on a wine glass, evaporates any tension that might be had aboard the celestial vessel. Take the Episode Five cliffhanger: finally, the Doctor is face-to-faceless with his aggressors and… it’s all just so irredeemably flat. Donald Pickering delivers a disengaged vocal performance (presumably predicting that one day he’d have a cartoon face with as much expression to match), alongside another clearly uninspired Bernard Kay, for some reason equating Scotland Yard with a rubbish Scots accent, which he never loses even as the Chameleon Director, despite the fact that Jamie loses his rubbish Scots accent. The overthrow of the Chameleons however is in fact an uncharacteristically mature engagement with the alien menace for Doctor Who, putting intelligence and care at the centre of the winning formula. Lots happens in Episode Six, meaning that the otherwise slow-burner is bookended by two fast-paced instalments which work far better than the tepid remainder.

What The Faceless Ones does do particularly well is make the Doctor the star of the show. This is perhaps the first story to feature Patrick Troughton as we remember him nowadays, butting heads with officials, scheming whilst playing the clown and showing a certainty of tone, tightrope walking his mercurial balance between humour and tension. He is, in short, magnificent here and acts his co-stars into a corner. The only person to come out of this with as much dignity intact is Wanda Ventham. It’s certainly not the unceremoniously dumped Ben and Polly, who do at least enjoy a touching farewell which ends the story on a high note.

The animation itself is perhaps not quite as immediately impressive as The Macra Terror last year but it has far less scope to work with and a more difficult job. Unlike Macra with its alien colony interiors, outdoor terrain and gloomy mineshafts, this story’s sets are simple, sparse and dull – a series of grey box rooms. We also spend lots of time in each of them and it’s to the animators’ credits that they manage to avoid the pictures feeling as repetitive as the dialogue. Character models are strong (and we have a far better Polly!) although if I have a slight niggle it’s that the haircuts look rather like hats, wobbling atop the jaunty heads. Frankly though, this level of animation was far beyond my imagination even five years ago. Ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable. I can’t quite believe I have four ways to watch The Faceless Ones, a story perhaps less deserving than most to have enjoyed the treatment. Now, I did notice a Leatherman van in Episode One. Is there just a chance that this animation crew have been prepping The Evil of the Daleks too? Now, that might elicit a rather different response on announcement: “Oh yes, it’s that one!”

For now though, I’ve got three more ways to watch The Faceless Ones and even though it might be a rough diamond, there are still many elements to enjoy, not least the faultless Patrick Troughton. Dare we imagine that one day, perhaps soon, we’ll be able to watch, nay marathon, the whole of his era? We can hope!

6/10

JH

The Timeless Children

“It is solid enough but by far the least interesting of all the series finales since the show returned and the most derivative.” That’s what I wrote of Chris Chibnall’s previous finale, The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos. Finales are notoriously disappointing. Traditionally the grand set up of the penultimate episode is let down by a damp squib of an ending. The only finales which truly work in my view are The Parting of the Ways, The Big Bang and Death in Heaven. The remainder seem either overwrought, overwritten or strangely languorous and talky. After all the action of the build-up, we’re left with a conversation and however human that is, it can’t help but feel like deflation. That’s true to a degree of The Timeless Children which spends an awful lot of time in a room outside the Panopticon with a physically immovable Doctor meaning that in terms of geography, the story literally can’t go anywhere except the realms of the metaphysical. However, I’m also surprised and delighted that those three outstanding finales mentioned above now have a fourth stablemate because, perhaps against all the odds, Chris Chibnall has only gone and bloody done it.

The Timeless Children is a strange story. I wonder if it is a story that actually needed telling. The moral is essentially, as the Ruth Doctor tells us: whatever’s happened in the past, it doesn’t matter. So why bother exploring it at all? “Everything you think you know is a lie,” the Master tells the Doctor but we the viewers don’t actually know anything to begin with. We don’t know if the Doctor ever knew her parents. We don’t know where she came from in the first place. To re-write a history we know nothing about seems like a bit of a pointless task and surely a hiding to nowhere? But what we get here is mesmerising and robust. It is powerful and interesting. It is in the Doctor’s confusion and disconcertion where the drama lies. The Master’s narration over the beautiful images of early Gallifrey is pleasingly mythic and seeing the Capitol in crumbling disrepair feels iconic. I’m not sure how much I like the idea of the Doctor being a special child fallen from the stars (too Superman?); I prefer the idea of the bored student among many who did a brave thing and ran away one day. Cleverly though, Chibnall makes sure that both avenues of possibility are still open and as bold as his re-writing of canon is, he actually plays everything safe. There are no huge revelations, no jaw-dropping surprises. Things play out in measured, thoughtful movements and peak with that Brain of Morbius montage letting us know that everything has always been OK. That’s the real punch-the-air moment: that nothing was wrong with canon in the first place, that everything fits together, and as if to prove it, we get a glorious, reeling rendition of the theme tune to bring this whole incredible history and universe together.

There is another cleverness about this story and indeed this series and it’s perhaps a delicate issue. Since the casting of Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor, the obvious questions are very quickly asked: If we’re going down that route, why has the Doctor never been black? Why has the Doctor never been disabled? Why does the Doctor not represent me personally? How many degrees of self are there in the world for the Doctor to represent? And that’s the danger of identity politics. Chris Chibnall neatly assures us that in fact, the Doctor has already been all those things and can be any of those things. We don’t need to measure his or her identity any more by virtue of their sex or race or age. If anything, The Timeless Child broadens out the possibilities still further by making all those distinctions irrelevant. Having inhabited all those roles, why should the Doctor even notice anymore? And perhaps that is the over-riding message here: The Doctor, wherever they may be from, whichever body they inhabit, can be anything. And so can we all. The past doesn’t matter; the future is more important. And in The Timeless Child, Jodie Whittaker finally, finally convinces that she has the chutzpah to take on this part. For once, she convinces throughout. She is real; tangibly the Doctor. She is never better than when playing the victim and here, she is the centre of a very personal persecution throughout. Desperate, confused and scared, this episode plays to Jodie Whittaker’s real talents and she brings, ironically, her felt humanity to the part.

These last three episodes have been as grand, enjoyable and bold as Russell T Davies’ Utopia/ The Sound of Drums/ Last of the Time Lords or Steven Moffat’s Face the Raven / Heaven Sent / Hell Bent. They are the respective writers’ magnum opuses, Doctor Who in long form with an authorial vision at the centres. Chris Chibnall’s Who represented by this three-part finale is linear, exciting and personal. If I was unconvinced before about what Chris Chibnall had to bring to the table (and I’m still not sure I can hear his voice across his work), then I’m looking forward to what comes next. Because even amongst all the often nail-biting heroic posturing and sometimes po-faced mythologising of the show, there’s still room for those completely silly Cyber Lords. That’s the heart of the show, right there: the birth of the universe, bodily regeneration, Irish dreamscapes and camp robots in headdresses. Yeah, Chibnall understands what presses our fan buttons alright.

8/10

JH