Iain J Coleman (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} iainjcoleman) wrote,@ 2007-11-18 23:17:00 |
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The Hartnell Files
I've been watching some old Hartnell Doctor Who stories that I'd never seen before. They turned out to be, quite literally, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
The Reign of Terror. Hartnell's personal favourite episode, and it's not hard to see why. It's an edgy historical drama that gives the star plenty of performance opportunities, and he makes the most of them. The story itself is pretty brutal: the kinds of characters who you expect will take us all the way through the story are unceremoniously gunned down within five minutes of their appearance, the cruel dictator is shot in the jaw and dragged off to be killed without any indication that this will change the world for the better, and the only way anyone makes a cunning prison break is with the connivance of the authorities. Indeed, the story is all about being trapped, whether it's the Doctor trapped in a burning building (and Hartnell's palpable terror and vulnerability will never be displayed by his successors), the other regulars trapped in a web of political manoeuverings, or the Parisians trapped in a political structure whose remorseless logic over-rides the agency of any human being, even its apparent ruler. No one will ever call this one a romp.
The Keys of Marinus. The thing you have to understand about Terry Nation is that he is a gestalt entity composed of two very different writers. Good Terry writes bleak yet passionate stories about the dark side of humanity and the fate of our species: Blake's 7: "The Way Back", "Terminal"; Survivors; Doctor Who: "The Daleks", "Genesis of the Daleks". The there's Bad Terry, who churns out the most deplorable collections of sci-fi cliches, strung together in sequences rather than plots, with no idea too obvious, no development too ridiculous, no action too illogical. From Doctor Who alone there's "Planet of the Daleks", "The Android Invasion", and... "The Keys of Marinus". It really does fail on every level except the only two that matter to Bad Terry: filling 6x22 minutes of airtime, and cashing his cheque at the end of the week. It's a quest story made up of subplots set in widely diverse environments, and the big problem with it is that it's a quest story made up of subplots set in widely diverse environments. Long serials like "The Reign of Terror" or Good Terry's "The Daleks" could afford to spend time and money creating convincing, substantial settings, with the cost paid off by reusing them over the course of six or seven episodes. By demanding a completely new setting every episode or two, Bad Terry makes this impossible. No wonder the world of Marinus looks like a collection of hastily-dressed sound stages. And it's not just the sets that suffer. The self-contained sub-stories never get space to breathe, being crammed together like veal calves on their way the the Channel. There's no sense of narrative drive, precious little mystery or suspense, and the main antagonist is of little interest except to seriously hardcore rubber fetishists. It's a shame, really. A couple of the chapters - when our heroes apparently have their every wish fulfilled, only to find it's all an illusion, and when Ian is framed for murder and the Doctor turns detective - could have made for decent stories in their own right if they'd been properly developed, and episode two almost feels as if Good Terry has made a comeback. It doesn't last.Doctor Who has never been shoddier.
The Web Planet. No one could accuse this story of lacking ambition. The writer, director, designer and choreographer are all trying so, so hard to create a fully-realised, utterly alien world - unlike our own, yet rich and believable in its own terms. Tragically, the result is a couple of guys waddling about in flippers with ant costumes on their heads, flailing blindly at some other folk in fuzzily striped romper suits, while an old man in a silver wig tries not to get knocked over. The Optera larvae are possibly the worst-realised creatures in the history of sci-fi drama, with their hopping motion incomprehensible in view of their perfectly functional and visible human legs. The moment when one of them saves the others from an acid leak by sticking her head into the hole was probably meant to be a thoughtful and moving depiction of alien values. It's funnier than the death of Little Nell. The really sad thing, though, is that the story comes so close to greatness. The planet Vortis is depicted with a geographic extent that is rare in a genre in which alien planets typically consist of the inside of someone's office, or a single outdoors set, even if the visuals never match the sense of scale in the script. The soundscape is genuinely alien. Considerable effort has gone into designing inhuman forms of body language for the Menoptera, but since they are all too obviously people in ill-fitting suits the unnaturallness of the movement just ends up looking silly. (But there's still an important difference between this and the frozen knights in "The Keys of Marinus": the latter looked silly because no one cared enough about the production to make sure they did anything very specific, so they just end up milling about in a Pythonesque fashion. The Menoptera look silly because the choreographer has tried hard to do something innovative, and failed. The latter is much to be preferred.) With the story's credibility collapsing before our very eyes, the only hope is that the regular actors can somehow hold it together. And, remarkably, they do. Hartnell's commanding and controlled performance almost makes you believe in all the rubbish that's happening around him, while Jaqueline Hill maintains the reality of Barbara's charater whether she's fussing about the spring cleaning or leading the Menoptera in combat, and Maureen O'Brien is full of on-screen energy as Vicki. Only William Russell seems tired of it all, and given that he expends most of his energies in a sub-plot that ends up being totally irrelevant, who can blame him? Ultimately, "The Web Planet" fails not through any lack of conviction, but because the ambition is not matched by the execution. It's frustrating to see something so ridiculous and consider how close it comes to greatness, but, as Nigel Tufnell said, there's a fine line between being clever and being stupid.
I've been watching some old Hartnell Doctor Who stories that I'd never seen before. They turned out to be, quite literally, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
The Reign of Terror. Hartnell's personal favourite episode, and it's not hard to see why. It's an edgy historical drama that gives the star plenty of performance opportunities, and he makes the most of them. The story itself is pretty brutal: the kinds of characters who you expect will take us all the way through the story are unceremoniously gunned down within five minutes of their appearance, the cruel dictator is shot in the jaw and dragged off to be killed without any indication that this will change the world for the better, and the only way anyone makes a cunning prison break is with the connivance of the authorities. Indeed, the story is all about being trapped, whether it's the Doctor trapped in a burning building (and Hartnell's palpable terror and vulnerability will never be displayed by his successors), the other regulars trapped in a web of political manoeuverings, or the Parisians trapped in a political structure whose remorseless logic over-rides the agency of any human being, even its apparent ruler. No one will ever call this one a romp.
The Keys of Marinus. The thing you have to understand about Terry Nation is that he is a gestalt entity composed of two very different writers. Good Terry writes bleak yet passionate stories about the dark side of humanity and the fate of our species: Blake's 7: "The Way Back", "Terminal"; Survivors; Doctor Who: "The Daleks", "Genesis of the Daleks". The there's Bad Terry, who churns out the most deplorable collections of sci-fi cliches, strung together in sequences rather than plots, with no idea too obvious, no development too ridiculous, no action too illogical. From Doctor Who alone there's "Planet of the Daleks", "The Android Invasion", and... "The Keys of Marinus". It really does fail on every level except the only two that matter to Bad Terry: filling 6x22 minutes of airtime, and cashing his cheque at the end of the week. It's a quest story made up of subplots set in widely diverse environments, and the big problem with it is that it's a quest story made up of subplots set in widely diverse environments. Long serials like "The Reign of Terror" or Good Terry's "The Daleks" could afford to spend time and money creating convincing, substantial settings, with the cost paid off by reusing them over the course of six or seven episodes. By demanding a completely new setting every episode or two, Bad Terry makes this impossible. No wonder the world of Marinus looks like a collection of hastily-dressed sound stages. And it's not just the sets that suffer. The self-contained sub-stories never get space to breathe, being crammed together like veal calves on their way the the Channel. There's no sense of narrative drive, precious little mystery or suspense, and the main antagonist is of little interest except to seriously hardcore rubber fetishists. It's a shame, really. A couple of the chapters - when our heroes apparently have their every wish fulfilled, only to find it's all an illusion, and when Ian is framed for murder and the Doctor turns detective - could have made for decent stories in their own right if they'd been properly developed, and episode two almost feels as if Good Terry has made a comeback. It doesn't last.Doctor Who has never been shoddier.
The Web Planet. No one could accuse this story of lacking ambition. The writer, director, designer and choreographer are all trying so, so hard to create a fully-realised, utterly alien world - unlike our own, yet rich and believable in its own terms. Tragically, the result is a couple of guys waddling about in flippers with ant costumes on their heads, flailing blindly at some other folk in fuzzily striped romper suits, while an old man in a silver wig tries not to get knocked over. The Optera larvae are possibly the worst-realised creatures in the history of sci-fi drama, with their hopping motion incomprehensible in view of their perfectly functional and visible human legs. The moment when one of them saves the others from an acid leak by sticking her head into the hole was probably meant to be a thoughtful and moving depiction of alien values. It's funnier than the death of Little Nell. The really sad thing, though, is that the story comes so close to greatness. The planet Vortis is depicted with a geographic extent that is rare in a genre in which alien planets typically consist of the inside of someone's office, or a single outdoors set, even if the visuals never match the sense of scale in the script. The soundscape is genuinely alien. Considerable effort has gone into designing inhuman forms of body language for the Menoptera, but since they are all too obviously people in ill-fitting suits the unnaturallness of the movement just ends up looking silly. (But there's still an important difference between this and the frozen knights in "The Keys of Marinus": the latter looked silly because no one cared enough about the production to make sure they did anything very specific, so they just end up milling about in a Pythonesque fashion. The Menoptera look silly because the choreographer has tried hard to do something innovative, and failed. The latter is much to be preferred.) With the story's credibility collapsing before our very eyes, the only hope is that the regular actors can somehow hold it together. And, remarkably, they do. Hartnell's commanding and controlled performance almost makes you believe in all the rubbish that's happening around him, while Jaqueline Hill maintains the reality of Barbara's charater whether she's fussing about the spring cleaning or leading the Menoptera in combat, and Maureen O'Brien is full of on-screen energy as Vicki. Only William Russell seems tired of it all, and given that he expends most of his energies in a sub-plot that ends up being totally irrelevant, who can blame him? Ultimately, "The Web Planet" fails not through any lack of conviction, but because the ambition is not matched by the execution. It's frustrating to see something so ridiculous and consider how close it comes to greatness, but, as Nigel Tufnell said, there's a fine line between being clever and being stupid.
