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 20th 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
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