It is incredibly difficult for me
to review Season 26 with any sense of perspective. One of my earliest memories
is of sitting on my Dad’s knee, the night drawn in, as two white-faced girls
approached a vicar in a graveyard. It’s such a peculiar and awkward shot: the
reverend facing towards camera and talking to the girls behind him without
turning his head, instinctively knowing they are there. There’s a
confident strangeness in it that pervades The Curse of Fenric and
indeed, the whole of Season 26. That strangeness captured the heart of this
four-year-old, making me a lifelong fan and since 1989, I have watched the
stories in this beautiful boxset time and time again. I treasure them dearly.
They’re a part of who I am, of how I see the Doctor (here, a small, gentle
outsider, fighting the good fight with words and subtle magic) and the
benchmark by which I view all other television and film. I laughed in the face
of The Lord of the Rings. It’s trying to sell me big themes
painstakingly slowly and earnestly through people I don’t care about. Here,
there are themes unfolding every few minutes and the characters are immediately
present and live on long after those criminally under-rated closing credits.
There’s a breathless freneticism about the show, an unwillingness to sit still.
The manic energy of Ghost Light, the original cut of Fenric, Survival
and even Battlefield mean that whatever is happening on screen, it
doesn’t last long but usually thrills. On the eve of cancellation, there’s a
sense that this show will not go gently into that good night. It’s doing things
it has never done before; it’s giving us snapshots of a programme that does
chime with its audience; that is modern and ancient at the same time; that can
endure; that is slave only to the imaginations of its writers - and in Ben
Aaronovitch, Marc Platt, Ian Briggs, Rona Munro and Andrew Cartmel, it found
the most imaginative.
A youthful voice can be heard
across the season. Despite Aaronovitch’s success with Remembrance of the
Daleks the year before, there’s a feeling that each writer believes this
might be the only script they’ll ever see produced and are ploughing all their
energies, all their ideas into them. In The Curse of Fenric, we have
Doctor Who Meets Dracula but it’s also Doctor Who Does World War Two Movie (for
the first time!), Doctor Who Does The Turing Test and Doctor Who and the Evil
from the Dawn of Time, as well as wrapping up threads we didn’t realise needed
tying up from Dragonfire and Silver Nemesis. In Ghost
Light, there are allusions to Alice in Wonderland, William Blake, Kafka’s
Metamorphosis, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, My Fair Lady and far more
besides. These are shows brim-full with high concepts, literary, historical and
scientific. Without any bias and including the 21st century
iteration, it would be easy to pinpoint Season 26 as the most dense, rich and
academic that the series has ever been.
Of course, that means that some
ideas don’t fully come into fruition and end up feeling like stories off-screen.
What in other tales would be important plot points are skimmed over with
abandon. Battlefield is full of this. Morgaine’s relationship with
Arthur is not explored well enough before she discovers he is dead so the
emotional ending doesn’t land. At this point, we are supposed to feel for her,
but the fact is we never really knew her. Bambera goes from being suspicious of
the Doctor, to becoming his tour guide, to wanting to arrest him and his freaky
friends over the course of twenty-five minutes. Shou-Yuing, like Jean and
Phyllis in Fenric, becomes Ace’s best friend almost immediately because
she is the only person of a similar age and they become very quickly attached
without us learning very much about them or they of each other. After fifteen
minutes of Fenric, Ace has met the girls at church, met up again on the
beach and fallen out with them. In Ghost Light, our leads become part of
the Gabriel Chase furniture without anybody asking who they are, including the
people who live in the house. Only Survival’s sense of pace truly
matches the unfolding of its themes. Structurally, we have one episode at home,
one on an alien world and then a return to Earth where the familiar has taken
on new meaning. What doesn’t particularly come into focus is the oft-cited
lesbian subtext which I’ve always struggled to even notice. Despite all these
perhaps shallower explorations, there have never been 25-minute instalments of the
show so cram-packed with ideas, philosophy, reflection and meaning.
The Special Edition versions
produced for DVD find a new home here. At the time of their production, they
were hailed as “definitive” ways to view Battlefield and Fenric.
It’s difficult to review these tales without at the very least alluding to the
Special Editions, versions deemed more satisfactory and truer to the original
visions of the writers and directors. Here, there’s also a Workprint Edition of
Ghost Light with deleted scenes re-positioned (although the nature of
the archive material means that picture quality can vary). This offers a
“fuller” version of Ghost Light to enjoy and many fans may see it as an
opportunity to get a version they might, just might, be able to follow!
However, the truth is that while the new editions certainly offer a fresh take
on the originals and many notable improvements, they come with attendant
disadvantages as well as boons.
For a start, that aforementioned
crazed pace of all three stories is damaged. Part Four of Fenric works
so well as broadcast partly because of its manically cut energy. In the
Special Edition, we’re given a slower more brooding affair, which may flow more
smoothly in earlier sections but doesn’t crescendo like the original and even
pauses for a flashback sequence which really isn’t needed. Granted, there are
many scenes in the broadcast version in which the Doctor and Ace seem to
materialise at different locations as if using a teleport. They leave Kathleen
and Audrey in the operations room, Ace in a foul rage, and we cut directly to
them entering Millington’s office quite calmly without any hint of a passage of
time between the scenes. Then they’re off to the church, then they’re on the
beach, and through it all, we don’t actually know why they’re there, what
they’re looking for or what they want. The Doctor and Ace simply turn up and
interact with the supporting characters as if they’ve known them for centuries.
In the Special Edition, there are helpful segue scenes and we feel we are
following them more carefully but it still doesn’t iron out the oddities of Fenric’s
plotting. Why do the haemovores arrive when Judson works out that the logic
diagram is a computer code? Why do new runestones appear in the church crypt? And
indeed, what exactly do the Doctor and Ace hope to achieve by arriving at the
army camp? It’s never stated but they seem to have a good idea. Despite its
seemingly more user-friendly pace, the Special Edition reveals a story in which
still, things simply happen, one event after the next, with little cause for
explanation. Depending on how much the viewer prizes structure, surely dictates
how enjoyable this relentlessly gothic and brooding tale can be.
Such illogicities punctuate Ghost
Light too. Although the Workprint Edition explains the glowing rocking
horse and ostrich eyes, there are still remarkably few explanations. Why does
Lady Pritchard’s candle have a suddenly-exploding flame? How and why exactly is
the Reverend Matthews devolved? It may be poetic justice for his failure to
change his mind, but how does Josiah manage to achieve his Homo Victorianus
Ineptus? Those hoping to find answers in the deleted footage will be
disappointed, although watching the Workprint is a fascinating experience in and
of itself and it’s a delight to be able to see what might have been. When asked
what my favourite story is, I always answer Ghost Light. I love that the
explanations are so thin on the ground; I love that it puts atmosphere first
and basks in its over-stuffed bizarreness. I love the oppressive music, the
tearaway performances, Sylvester McCoy, Ian Hogg, Carl Forgione, John Nettleton,
Sharon Duce; I love the magnificent sets, the stone spaceship, the
cliff-hangers, the allusions, the gags and the omnipresent, pervasive
Victoriana – from the décor to the philosophy. I can appreciate it might not be
to every fan’s tastes but the fact that this was broadcast in 1989, in Doctor
Who’s dying hour and the last story to be produced, speaks volumes of a
production and writing team who were torch-bearers for the future rather than
coffin-bearers of the past.
Both Battlefield and Fenric
Special Editions sport new effects and grading which do improve the viewing
experience (although I remain very fond of the grey textures which saturate the
original Fenric). It’s a pity that rubbish snake in Arthur’s spaceship
wasn’t replaced but the knights flying down to Earth through space feel now
more epic and mythical. The climax of Fenric Part Three sees Judson’s
eyes more startlingly green and there’s a new cut for the Blu Ray just
afterwards to retain the impact of that moment. The soundtracks are also improved
by Mark Ayres’s 5.1 remixes. It may seem like a miniscule detail but the thunder
and explosions heard across Battlefield Parts One and Two helps piece scenes
together geographically. The extra horns added to the Fenric soundtrack,
however, may sound classy but to my mind, take away from the ethereality of the
original. All told, from a visual and aural perspective, the new editions give
Nu-Who a run for its money.
Battlefield has always
been seen as the worst story of the season. I’m sure, given the excellent
Writers’ Room feature (which surely should have been longer!), that Ben Aaronovitch
would agree with me. But there’s still loads to love. It may look like a cheap
summer holiday for a BBC department not particularly in favour, but there are
some delightful directorial flourishes: the reveal of the new Brig in the
wing-mirror (and a big hand for Angela Bruce – the only Lethbridge-Stewart substitute
to ever work); the cut from the “Doctor being back” to Ancelyn’s gloved hand on
the TARDIS blue; and those explosive fight scenes in the last act.
Although Aaronovitch’s script does
jump around the houses with abandon, it’s the design work which is the biggest
criminal here: the spaceship sets look like gameshow backdrops, the aforementioned
video-effect snake and its attendant POV look cheap and the knight costumes are
dreadful. Ace asks, “Is it an android?” of a clearly lit knight in armour,
making her seem unforgivably thick. Famously, these should be cyborg knights as
written, but someone in costume couldn’t read a script. Still, the pub and
brewery sets look amazing. (I didn’t realise the pub was in studio for years.) Despite
the general lacklustre reception to Battlefield’s design work, even in
1989, let’s not forget too that this is a story featuring an actual helicopter spiralling
out of control. I think I could forgive all the design work if the Part One
conclusion had gifted us an actual explosion. As it happens, the arrival of the
baddies is drab and makes for the most disenchanting cliff-hanger of the whole
McCoy era.
Had the Brigadier met his ultimate
end fighting the beautifully designed and sinister Destroyer, it’s possible
that Battlefield’s reputation may be stronger and that it may be far
better remembered. Everything in the production is steering towards the
Brigadier’s death: his initial reluctance to go back to UNIT, “I’m not playing,”
the music as Doris watches his departing from the lawn, his parleying with
Morgaine, his eventual betrayal of the Doctor. All would have been worth it had
any of it meant something. As it happens though, I think Aaronovitch ultimately
did the right thing. Battlefield’s loss is the series’ gain. Even though
Steven Moffat killed the Brig off-screen (twice, no less), in my mind, the old
soldier is out there still righting wrongs, facing evils and personifying the
very best of stiff-upper-lip Britishness. Long may he and Nicholas Courtney
reign.
Survival ends the season
with a philosophical and strange bewitching tale of feral instinct and the power
of humanity against the animal. Like Battlefield, design elements break
the sense of urban reality, namely that wretched cat prop and the gloves worn
by the cheetah people. Andrew Cartmel repeatedly tells of his disappointment
with the feline threat on various features throughout the Blu Ray, but really
it’s only the hands that offend; just look at that beautiful mask by the lake,
it’s yellow eyes and sinister smile boring into Ace’s onlooking gaze: this makes
for magical television. Dominic Glynn’s score is another highlight of the
season, those coruscating guitars providing an element of the strange and off-centre
across the story. Anthony Ainley thrills in his finest take on the Master, his
possession making him seem dangerously unstable (and damn, doesn’t that costume
look good!). King of all, however, is Rona Munro’s beautiful script, its very
own beast. Difficult to quantify, hard to pin down, the poetry of the story’s
survival-of-the-fittest themes filters through to all the guest characters,
even Hale and Pace and Ace’s charity worker friend, making every aspect of every
scene feel like all of apiece, exploring matters of the most base instincts.
It’s ironic that the show ends on
a tale exploring what is needed to survive in a dog-eat-dog world. As the 1980s,
perhaps the most selfish modern decade, drew to a close, Doctor Who was a show
about looking outward to new worlds, new ways of thinking; about being gentle whilst
fighting injustice, about love conquering hatred, about pacifism and idealism
beating anger and aggression. At the heart of it, is perhaps the finest Doctor
and companion pairing of all time. The Professor and Ace personify all the vibrant
energies of Season 26 and Sylvester and Sophie are charming, cute and yes, wicked.
Even through all their animosity here, they eventually go “home” to the TARDIS.
McCoy’s Doctor feels like the paternal figure Aldred’s Ace never had and if
there’s a word to describe that relationship, what else could it be but love? It’s
the only word that truly describes my feelings for Season 26. It is messy, yes,
over-stuffed and wants to be about everything, but in the end, it’s impossible not
to see the astonishing efforts of a team of powerhousing writers, desperately
seeking to paint their original, vivid and enchanting imaginations on screen for
the one and only time. I can excuse all the mistakes of their youth, because these
writers’ hearts and the heart of the show itself beat louder than any officious
cancellation notice. This was the series showing us what it could be and what
it would be. Doctor Who would be back and no doubt about it. Season 26 is
transcendental.
JH
Addenda: Lead feature of the Blu
Ray boxset is the documentary Showman, chronicling the rise and fall of John
Nathan Turner, singling out the 20th anniversary celebrations as a perhaps
unlikely turning point in JNT’s flamboyant life. Chris Chapman’s hour and a
half doc is a stellar piece of work with a range of deeply insightful contributors
including John’s childhood friends. Surprisingly moving, it sees the later
years of JNT’s career as an undeserved and tragic decline, leading to his
ultimate ill health and probable alcoholism. This is a man whose face simply didn’t
fit with the upper echelons of the Beeb, even more tragic because he would be a
pioneer these days. God, wouldn’t he have loved a show like Peter Capaldi’s
casting reveal? If only he were still around, we fans, and this moving documentary,
could have made him feel proud.
Sophie Aldred’s conversation with
Matthew Sweet is another delight. She has a quiet, unsensational vocal quality but
her stories are utterly engrossing. It’s enlightening to hear about her time at
Manchester University and this interview gives, remarkably after 30 years, a fresh
perspective on Aldred’s life. Sophie also joins cast members on location for
the mesmerisingly well-shot Curse of Fenric documentary, directed by new
series writer Pete McTighe. It celebrates the four episodes as the glory that
they represent without the more prevalent fan cynicism of the adjoining years,
and seeing Nicholas Parsons so happy to be associated with our little show and
this incredible story is particularly poignant this year.
I’ll admit, the Behind the Sofa
series doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t know if it’s the editing but the episode
clips seem too long and we too often cut to our viewers watching in silence,
making the show feel sluggish and unengaging. If they were half the length and
twice as poppy, I might feel more inclined to love them but, despite enjoying
the company of the sofa teams, they feel distant and charmless, only very
occasionally offering a nugget of a reaction.
Once more, the superb quality of
these box sets is evident here though in abundance. The restoration is
phenomenal. Battlefield, in particular, looks far better than its videotape
heritage would sensibly allow for. How marvellous to have these four special
stories together in Lee Binding’s beautifully designed packaging, together for
old and new generations to assess and re-assess. I hope they feel the love I do
for these adventures. They were the past and they are the future and in so many
magical moments and special scenes, remain completely unbeatable.
JH
10/10
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