A Doctor a Week: Christopher Eccleston: The Unquiet Dead

Russel D McLean

11 weeks. 11 Doctors. 11 stories. Right up to the fiftieth anniversary, Russel will be reviewing one story a week for each Doctor. He will try and relate each story to a larger picture and how it relates to each period. He will occasionally make fun of them. But he will try and show you what a varied and brilliant history the show has. As well as overcoming his own prejducies about certain periods in the shows history. Each review will have spoilers and will assume a certain level of knowledge about the story in question. 

The TARDIS is a machine that can travel in time and space, so it’s odd that this series of reviews has not focussed on many historically minded episodes so far. So it seemed a good idea to focus on the ninth Doctor’s first trip into the past with The Unquiet Dead, a story that also featured a character drawn from real life; author, Charles Dickens. Who had traditionally not used real life characters, preferring instead to intimate the Doctor’s meetings with them. (Madame Nostradamus was “a witty little knitter,” according to the fourth who also seemed to have run ins with a whole host of historical figures). The actor, Simon Callow, was approached to play the part but held out until he was sure that Dickens was done justice. And certainly the script gives us an interesting look at Dickens as he was at the end of his life, slowly losing his energy, becoming a more sombre individual that one might expect.

This was Eccleston’s third story as the Doctor. The episodes were no longer multi part, and each adventure now lasted forty five minutes (with the rare two parter). As such there was an economy of storytelling required that had never been there in the old series. It was taking a bit of getting used to. The series opener, Rose, was a little underdeveloped and rushed, while The End of The World was a little uneven in tone, trying to squeeze in too much in too little time. But the Unquiet Dead was the first time the new series established itself and its own tone. There is a gothic atmosphere to proceedings that works wonderfully. The scenes where Dickens reads his work and is interrupted by what appear to be ghosts in the audience are unsettlingly well done, and Simon Callow’s performance is absolutely brilliant. There’s a lot of dark humour too. Eccleston is generally considered a very serious Doctor, but he plays the role with a massive sense of humour, too. His outright enthusiasm at meeting Dickens is marvellous to behold and plays brilliantly alongside his frustrations at humanity’s inability to accept worlds beyond their own.

This episode also sets up the idea that the Doctor is part of a wider continuing universe. There has always been a kind of continuity in Who, but more often its of the 1066 And All That variety: what you can remember. In the show’s hey-day, there was little possibility of retreats so the writers could rely on half remembered bits of information to advance their story. By the time Who returned in 2005, we were used to getting regular releases on video, and shows were often repeated on a regular schedule. So an ongoing “arc” for any character was a must. And with Eccleston that arc was his guilt over the “Time War”, an event that wiped his own people and the Daleks out of history almost completely.

Any war has collateral damage; innocents caught in the crossfire. And the Time War were no exceptions. So when the Doctor and Dickens encounter ghosts reanimating corpses in Victorian Cardiff, it transpires that these spooks are the non-corporeal forms of aliens known as the Gelf who only want a new home after theirs was destroyed in the war. Naturally by the end of the episode it transpires they have more sinister plans (which lead to a few complaints that the episode was heavily right wing and a thinly veiled allegory for asylum seekers. Nonsense, I think. Something that Who - especially modern Who - can rarely be accused of is being right wing).

The production values in Ecclestone’s era (with notable exceptions, including the pilot episode, Rose) are excellent. Victorian Cardiff (even with paper snow) looks amazing. Its all a bit storybook,  but then Who gave up any pretence at historical realism sometime in the sixties, so its quite all right that the whole thing doesn’t ring with grimy accuracy. There are some odd tonal moments - its easy to see that the earlier scripts were a lot darker, and some of this darkness might have rounded out some of the characters - particularly the head of the funeral home, who comes across as this odd mix of creepy quirks but otherwise jolly behaviour; you don’t quite believe he could so casually lock Rose in a room with corpses about to come to life - but the episode races by at such an enjoyable clip you don’t really mind while you’re watching. But if it had taken some of the darkness inherent in, say, the Sixth Doctor’s Revelation of the Daleks, we could have had a spectacular episode.

Also worth noting is Billie Piper’s performance as Rose; the young London woman who has decided to accompany the Doctor and who has finally started to return him to his old self after the trauma of the Time War. Piper was a controversial choice, especially for anyone in the UK. She was known mostly as a fluffy teenage songstress and the (much) younger wife of ginger radio DJ Chris Evans. But even in the tonally odd pilot episode Rose, she proved to a nation that she was capable of a convincing performance and in the Unquiet Dead she rises even more above the usual role of “the companion” as it was traditionally seen to give us a well rounded portrait of someone whose universe has been well and truly expanded and who is capable of approaching these strange and fantastic new situations with an acceptance and a wide eyed joy. But beneath it all, she is still capable of being frightened, and those scenes where she realises that she and the Doctor could die in a cellar hundreds of years before she was born are played very well indeed.

The Unquiet Dead isn’t the eighth Doctor’s finest hours (that’s the season finale), but it is the point where the new show finally established itself as being back for good.

MOMENTS IN TIME

- Callow only agreed to do the show if they got Dickens right. And they did. Its amazing to see the contrast of the man off stage with the sheer power of his performance. Dickens was like many actors; a man not complete when he was not in the midst of his own fictions. I don’t know how true that really is, but it certainly feels real here.

- The decision to have Eccleston in normal clothes re-establishes the series quietly. If they’d gone OTT instantly, I think it could have killed any hope of the series being around for a long time. His performance works wonders too. Its a pity he only had the one season, although we still have to wonder what it was behind the scenes that made his decision to leave so soon.

- At this point, the Time War is vastly intriguing. By the time we get to David Tennant’s swan song, however, it will have become mildly irritating and the final explanations a little bit of a let down.

- The episode could have done with more breathing room. Its a crux of the forty-five minute format, and I do think that the UK writers have far more difficulty with it than Americans who have it down to a fine art.

- the glory of the TARDIS set is breathtaking when you think about the old roundels and plastic walls. This feels truly alien. In fact, that’s one of the reasons Eccleston works as well. He seems quite human and then turns on you with this very alien look; this sense that he has seen and understood things you can only dream of.

- Dickens seems to understand the phrase “test drive” despite it not being in use during his time. Ahh, well, its the usual timey-wimey Who dramatic license, then... (pick pick pick...)

A Doctor A Week (double Post): David Tennant: Army of Ghosts/Doomsday and Matt Smith: The Eleventh Hour

By Russel D Mclean

11 weeks. 11 Doctors. 11 stories. Right up to the fiftieth anniversary, Russel will be reviewing one story a week for each Doctor. He will try and relate each story to a larger picture and how it relates to each period. He will occasionally make fun of them. But he will try and show you what a varied and brilliant history the show has. As well as overcoming his own prejudices about certain periods in the shows history. Each review will have spoilers and will assume a certain level of knowledge about the story in question.

David Tennant: Army of Ghosts/Doomsday

Ahhh, David Tennant. Voted recently as the most popular incarnation of the Doctor. He truly was the populist incarnation of the character. Eccentric without being threatening. Odd but recognisable human. And of course, many regarded him as easy on the eyes, something that can’t be claimed by many of the Doc’s past incarnations.

I’m not actually over enamoured with Tennant’s run on the show. He had some amazing moments and when he was on form, he was truly, truly spectacular, but too often the scripts played to his humanity rather than his alien nature and he had an annoying habit of playing to the back of the room.

And let’s not mention the fact that two of his stories almost stopped me watching the show altogether (both co-starring that most brutally underused of all evil Timelords, the Master - - now I love John Simm as an actor, but he was woefully miscast and miswritten in his two outings). Now not all of this was Tennant. A lot of it was then showrunner Russel T Davies, who brought the show back in style, but soon lost the heart of his story amidst bombast and spectacle. But then, what do I know? Both he and Tennant had a brilliantly populist touch, and when it was on (Family of Blood, The Christmas Invasion, Impossible Planet, Silence in the Library) it was on. Nothing could touch them. But when it was bad (Fear Her, Midnight - and yes, I know its a fan favourite, but only if you haven’t seen Lifeboat or give a damn about developed characters - and the last two “specials” that just about lost me the will to live, especially that Lord of the Rings ending) it was horrid.

So why choose to write about the close to David’s first season?

Well I think Army of Ghosts and Doomsday show off the show and its best and worst. They show Russel T Davies’s soaring imagination and have a great performance from Tennant, but they also have lazy plotting and frankly ludicrous moments where characters obey plot rather than the other way round. Also there’s the interminable Rose/Doctor romance that worked very well for a while until it tipped over. The whole thing about neither of them saying they love each other is sacharine and carries more than a touch of the Mary Sue*. After all, RTD had always said he wanted to be the companion, and with Rose, he gets to fulfill that ambition completely. Of course, the end here is almost right for the story; the romance is never fulfilled and the characters are seperated by a whole wall of reality. If you’re going to do it, then make it bitter sweet. It would be two years before RTD brought Rose back and gave her a fake Doctor of her very one to play with in one of the most convoluted and unlikely plot lines of all time (Until The end of Time, that is)

Army of Ghosts is definitely big budget fan fiction. Daleks! Cybermen! Weird ghosts bleeding through reality! It all starts off well with the ghosts, and the Doctor (despite his odd Scooby Doo impression) doing his best to find out why people believe the dead have come back to visit them. Its all great fun. Rose’s mum is a great, sulky one-off companion and plays well against the Doctor (her face when he claims she’s Rose after facing the Time Vortex is brilliant). And its nice to see Mickey the Idiot (no longer an idiot) back as well. The first time I saw it, the cliffhanger at the end of Army of Ghosts gave me chills. They managed to hide the fact that Daleks were back so well that no one expected the ship from the void to contain them.

Like I said:

Daleks! Cybermen!

Its a fan’s best dreams come true.

RTD may have been great at set up, but he rarely followed through. As we would later discover, he loved cop outs and reset buttons. There’s a bit at the beginning of Army of Ghosts where Rose talks about being on the beach where she died. Her “death” is merely an administrative paperwork gag. And for all the chat about how she can’t come back through ever again, the Doctor meets her again and again on his travels. Its hardly the all consuming bittersweet frustrated romance RTD wants it to be when taken in context.

And then there’s the misplaced humour. The catty Daleks and and Cybermen “Daleks were not designed for elegance” “That is obvious.” as amusing but contextually misplaced. And then of course there’s the question of how some Cybermen slip in completely to land an invasion force while others appear as ghosts. The second half rushes towards it conclusion with bombast but it all falls apart when you start to look at it. And in the end, I’m still not sure I really care about two races whose goal is simply to destroy and assimilate. This story makes it very obvious just how similar the Daleks and Cybermen have become, except one stands on two legs and the other “E-lev-ates!” (no, really, the Daleks continue their habit of stating the obvious whenever they try and do anything).

As for Torchwood... well, at this stage RTD was setting the stage for his beloved spin off. So he wanted them front and centre. Its a great idea, that the Doctor’s actions earlier in the series make Queen Victoria decide to set up a group to stop him from ever returning. But given how long they’ve been around, its surprising they never ever caught up with the Doctor. Especially when he was Jon Pertwee, stuck on earth and working UNIT. (“Hey, hang on, this UNIT lot have a scientific advisor with a time machine. He calls himself the Doctor... do ya think...?”). But sometimes you just can’t think about these things too much.

In all though, its a bombastic end to the second season that entertains but falls apart the more you think about it. The performances are excellent, but it really does highlight all the greatness and all the flaws of an RTD run in one package. And it would prove to be the last of the great RTD end of season Dalek-taculars that really, really held together.

MOMENTS IN TIME

- Nice nod to Cyber history when they rip through plastic sheeting. Bit of a reference there to Tomb of the Cybermen. And that’s always a good thing.

- No, really, what’s up with that whole “Who you gonna call?” gag done in a Scooby Doo voice? Did anyone understand it? Event RTD himself?

- Aghhh, the celebrity cameos... just stop it RTD, just stop it... one thing I hate in this era of Who is the reliance on 20th century pop culture. And especially those rolling news segments to fill us in on what’s happening when the story should be making it obvious. Grrrr....

- On the other hand, I did chuckle at the ghost of Dirty Den appearing in the Queen Vic. Bit wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey, though, considering that the Doctor has visited Albert Square before during his 7th regeneration (although most right thinking people do try and forget about the terrible Dimensions in Time story that was produced for 1993’s Children in Need).

- All that said, though, what a great great cliffhanger to episode one. Totally jaw dropping the first time you see it. The void ship is a great idea. Something you can see and yet your brain doesn’t want to acknowledge it. An idea that would later be explored again in Matt Smith’s era with the creepy (if underutilised) The Silence.

*In the world of fan fiction, a Mary Sue is a character thrown into an established dynamic who is perfect, often romantically involved with the lead, and generally just the author’s wish fulfillment. This character can also be found in general fiction too but they’re far easier to spot in fan fic.

Matt Smith: The Eleventh Hour

Matt Smith.

What a thankless task taking over from the popularly handsome and dashing David Tennant. Smith could never hope to replicate Tennant’s romantic lead. Not least because he is not so classically handsome as tennant. But that face - composed of rubber, and capable of a million expression - is wonderful; just alien enough to work as the Doctor while still able to express a full range or recognisable human emotions.

Add to that Smith’s physicality. Its not just his face that’s made of rubber, but his whole body. He is always in control while looking utterly chaotic. And that’s a wonderful combination. Harks back a little to Patrick Troughton, the man who really started the kind of characterisations by which we understand the modern Doctor.

The 11th Hour had a lot of work to do. Tennant had defined the modern era of Who along with Russell T Davies. But Davies left along with Tennant and new showrunner Stephen Moffat had to establish himself and his new Doctor right off the bat. And he does so with some style. The opening scenes - following off the bat from Tennant’s bombastic finale where, for no discernible reason, his regeneration blew up the TARDIS interior - are brilliant with the TARDIS crashlanding in a child’s garden. The mysterious stranger. A little girl. Fish fingers and custard. Its all very fairy-tale ish. And Matt Smith pulls off that “old man, young body” feel that Moffat kept promising us. He’s out of touch and yet very wise. He silly and smart. He’s contradictory and yet understandable.

But all the same, I think for those who were looking for another Tennant - a romantic hero - they felt short changed. Smith’s not a dashing to the rescue type of hero. He’s darker than that in spite of all the silliness and even over the course of the 11th Hour, you can see his mood change from daft and frivolous to serious and in command. When he tells the aliens to leave Earth as it is under his protection, you utterly believe it.

Also his bow tie is cool.

Amy Pond gets a great introduction here, too. Moffat likes to play with the idea of the Doctor dropping in and out of people’s lives. so to see her here as a child and then a young woman, utterly unsure of who this man is or why he keeps appearing, is brilliant. Gillan plays it mostly straight and assured, and she feels like a real person; someone growing and discovering themselves. Its a shame her character would be messed around with in later seasons as the story got a little too muddled for its own good, but in the 11th Hour she makes a fantastic first impression.

As for Rory, her boyfriend and later husband... his introduction here is subtle and perhaps a little underplayed. He wasn’t someone we were too desperate to see return, but Darvill would grow in his performance and quickly become one of the highlights of the Smith season. But as as a supporting character here he just seems a little unnecessary in some ways; not quite fitting in yet.

Its interesting to see how Moffat plays a longer game that Davies did. And that’s been divisive. Stuff that seems odd at first soon becomes clear. While Davies liked to hammer us over the head with catchphrases (“bad wolf”, “torchwood”, “Mr Saxon”)  and then just pull something out in the season finale, Moffat teased things out further. Things that were initially irrelevant soon became important, and in his first season he seemed like a master magician as everything came together at the end, right back to small and seemingly insignificant moments from this first episode. From Amy’s house being a bit strange, to the cracks in the wall... creepy and mysterious and quite brilliant.

On its own, though, the 11th Hour is great fun. The main plot - the escaped prisoner from another dimension - is just engaging enough on its own without overshadowing the real business of getting to know Matt Smith’s new Doctor. Amy is a nice contrast to Rose and feels less of a Mary Sue and more of a growing character. And Smith himself owns the part from the moment he climbs out of the wrecked TARDIS.

The 5th season on new Who will remain one of the highlights for me. Despite a couple of dodgy eps, it reintroduced the Doctor with flare and panache. And despite criticisms of the seasons beyond 5, the fact remains that Smith’s performance has never been less than brilliant.

MOMENTS IN TIME:

- I don’t think we ever did get an answer as to why Rory’s nurses badge had a date that was different to the year they were in... mysteriouser and mysteriouser...

- Smith’s Doctor has a real thing for food. From whipping up his fish fingers and custard to making Omelettes for Craig in the lodger, he seems to be a Doctor of the senses; out to experience as much as he can.

- Smith is the youngest person ever to take the role. The worry could have been that he wound up like Davison; a little overwhelmed by the character or forced to play it too young. But Smith channels an energy that is decades - maybe centuries - older than his body. Its an incredible feeling to look into those eyes and see something unexpectedly alien looking back.

- One of the reasons I like Smith so much is that he harks back to Troughton. The odd little man in the blue box. The cosmic hobo.

- I’m still perturbed by what happened to Amy in later seasons. It feels like there was a whole story to be told but production schedules messed with it. Its a shame because if she got the chance to continue to develop as a full person she could have been one of the greatest companions of all time. However, her journey in season 5 is excellent..

- Its a great title, too. The 11th Hour. Its about the 11th Doctor. He’s arriving to save the world at the 11th Hour. It invokes a feeling of heady danger. I just really like it.

A Doctor A Week: Paul McGann: Doctor Who The Movie

11 weeks. 11 Doctors. 11 stories. Right up to the fiftieth anniversary, Russel will be reviewing one story a week for each Doctor. He will try and relate each story to a larger picture and how it relates to each period. He will occasionally make fun of them. But he will try and show you what a varied and brilliant history the show has. As well as overcoming his own prejducies about certain periods in the shows history. Each review will have spoilers and will assume a certain level of knowledge about the story in question.

Poor Paul McGann. One story, and then unceremoniously dumped as the Doctor was once again sentenced to years in the doldrums before his eventual resurrection in the form of Christopher Ecclestone (Every planet has a North). His one and only outing makes choosing this week’s story relatively easy, as McGann only had one spot as the Doctor when the Americans attempted to bring the show back in 1996 after it had been off air following McCoy’s final story in 1988.

There were a lot of concerns about the revamped show. The rumour mill had it being completely revamped, including a subplot where Rassilon accompanied the Doctor on a search for his own father. Luckily for all concerned, what we actually got was a revamped TARDIS and an increased effects budget.

Oh, yes, and a script that would prove a little divisive, mostly because it just wasn’t strong enough (but also because, shock, gasp, the Doctor dared kiss a human being).

There’s a lot to like in McGann’s only outing. The TARDIS looks spectacular for a start, and its great to have Sylvester McCoy appearing - if only for a few moments - to hand over the baton. The regeneration scene is fine (well, after the unceremonious shooting of McCoy), and Grace and Chang Lee make for interesting companions (Chang Lee in particular gets a nice moral ambiguity seeing as how, for most of the show, he’s working with The Master after falling for the resurrected Time Lord’s frankly terrible lies). And while Eric Roberts isn’t exactly the Master we’ve come to know, he’s got a nice line in threatening physical presence with just a touch of camp (“I always drezzzz for the occasion”).

The problems come from the fact that much of the 90 minute running time feels rushed. The opening sequence which is all tell and don’t show looks like it was done at the last second (and never mind the terrible Dalek voices) and it feels like we’re missing a lot of logical steps, especially at the end where there’s a lot of mumbled rubbish about treating the TARDIS like resetting an alarm clock (That’s all well and good, but you can’t reset an alarm clock without knowing which buttons to press and what time to set it to, so how does Grace manage this?). On top of this there’s the question of why the Master spits venom, and exactly how the miraculous resurrection of Chang Lee and Grace occurs.

But on the whole, the production is pulled off with a lot of verve and some style, especially for the mid nineties. The great side by side moment of the regeneration with someone watching Frankenstein in the morgue is very well handled, although it is then followed by the whole Doctor Jesus moment in the mysteriously abandoned wing of this well funded San Francisco hospital. Paul McGann makes us believe even the silliest moments of the movie with his wide eyed performance (he would have been spectacular in the role had he continued; a more innocent Doctor, perhaps, but suitably alien) and that TARDIS interior is absolutely beautiful.

The story itself is nonsense. The Master mysteriously escapes from a locked box while his remains are being transported by the Doctor to Gallifrey, and then he somehow takes over a human body (conveniently changing its DNA, hence the whole malarkey about the TARDIS responding to humans but not to anyone possessed by the Master) and proceeds to try and take the Doctor’s body so he can be a full time lord again. In order to do this he opens the eye of Harmony (now located at the heart of the TARDIS) and sets about sucking the whole of reality into a black hole. As usual he hasn’t thought this through. If reality is sucked into the hole, then there would be nothing left at all, including the Master and all his new regenerations. Its the kind of loose, melodramatic plotting that would become a feature of the show again during the later Davis years: big threat, unravels when examined too closely.

Anyway, its all breathless fun for the most part They overdo Doctor Jesus at the start (something Davis would return to in the Tennant years) but once McGann gets into Grace’s ex-boyfriend’s new shoes he’s perfect. There is of course the whole matter of the Doctor kissing Grace which caused a storm at the time but seems very very innocent, now. Grace herself is good, although her romantic attraction to the Doctor is again overplayed and weakens an otherwise very strong character who couldn’t be more different to the traditional image of a “companion” for the Doctor as perceived at the time. Its also nice that she makes the decision not to travel with him at the end.

But none of its strong enough. The movie was supposed to be a backdoor pilot for a full series. But the serious plot holes and inconsistencies weakened the project. Its a shame, because no matter what else you think about the movie, you can’t deny that for ninety minutes, Paul McGann was the Doctor. A performance so strong that it made this one off project an official part of Doctor Who continuity.

MOMENTS IN TIME

- It is a bit of an anti-climactic regeneration for a Doctor who had been so dark and manipulative as McCoy. Although I like the fact that its not the bullets that kill him, but someone trying to save his life.

- Chang Lee tries to steal the doc’s belongings, gets involved with gangs and hangs out with the Master. Yet he’s still a decent guy at heart. There’s a nice moral complexity to him (moral complexity for a mainstream nineties TV show, of course) that makes him rather endearing.

- Lots and lot of fanwank about jelly babies and so forth. Although I do like him finding Baker’s scarf in a Doctor’s locker for no apparent reason.

- “Half human on my mother’s side”. Once again an example of how every creative teams gets to just make stuff up. Although it could be a joke. Its never mentioned again.

- The cops are rubbish in this version of San Francisco. Even though the Doctor takes the cops gun and threatens to shoot himself if the cop doesn’t give him the bike, he has plenty of time to subdue the Doctor and Grace after they drop the gun and spend ages faffing about on the bike.

- Okay, I still laugh at the police bike going into the TARDIS and then turning round to come out again. Its an obvious joke but very funny. Although why don’t the cop’s brakes work? That is a question that has bothered me for years.

- “Think alarm clock”. Really, don’t think. Because none of the climax has any kind of dramatic or narrative sense. Lots of sound and fury signifying nothing and probably the weakest part of the movie.

- That said, love McGann’s Clockwork Orange headgear.

A Doctor A Week: Sylvester McCoy: The Curse of Fenric

By Russel D McLean

11 weeks. 11 Doctors. 11 stories. Right up to the fiftieth anniversary, Russel will be reviewing one story a week for each Doctor. He will try and relate each story to a larger picture and how it relates to each period. He will occasionally make fun of them. But he will try and show you what a varied and brilliant history the show has. As well as overcoming his own prejducies about certain periods in the shows history. Each review will have spoilers and will assume a certain level of knowledge about the story in question.

Its de-rigeur among certain Who fans to hate on McCoy. To view him as the silly Doctor, the little man who played the spoons, who had daft adventures and who ultimately killed the franchise. If the evidence was based only on McCoy’s first season, then this would be true. His early stories had some occasional promise but were hampered by cheap budgets and a production team struggling to find a way forward.

This all changed somewhere around Remembrance of the Daleks, a dark and brilliant adventure that saw the Doctor return to Totter’s Lane, where his story began, and face off against the Daleks in 1950’s England. This was adult Who, suddenly. There were explorations of racism and fascism. There were deadly serious scenes and a real sense of death. More importantly, the Daleks could climb stairs (people made a huge fuss of this when it happened in the Ecclestone era, but McCoy got there first!).

And from then on, aside from odd mis-steps such as, say, Silver Nemesis, Doctor Who began to get its groove back. McCoy was allowed to stop clowning around and darken up his appearance. He became more sombre, more removed, more alien. His odd appearance, with those thick eyebrows, became inscrutable.

He became more than just another Time Lord. He was a manipulator. On the side of the angels, but often employing darker tactics. And nowhere is this more apparent than in Curse of Fenric.

Curse of Fenric is the story that scared me most as a child. With the rotting Vampires (more properly called Heamovores) descended from cursed Vikings, its deep themes of faith and corruption, and that eerie soundtrack, it became too much for me and I couldn’t get through the last two episodes. But now it has become one of my favourite Who stories. Beyond the very real and visceral horror aspects, its a layered and gripping four episdes of Who that shows the McCoy era at its finest.

The Doctor has brought his young companion Ace to an army camp in 1944, where Doctor Judson - who lost the use of his legs several years ago - is working on a code-breaking machine that will make Enigma seem like a child’s toy. But the base commander - the strained-looking, almost-certainly-mad Commander Millington - has other plans for the machine. He is looking to create a trap for Britain’s Russian allies by having them steal the machine and decode one message that will cause the machine to unleash a deadly toxin. A toxin that is peculiar to the area near the army camp. A toxin that is decidedly not natural.

Add into this the sudden resurrection of long dead vikings (now blood sucking heamovores), a Russian platoon tasked with stealing the code machine and an ancient evil named Fenric who may have met the Doctor once before, and you could have an overcomplicated mess. Luckily, the script, for the most part, zooms along nicely, and the period setting really does the story justice.

The Doctor is the darkest he’s ever been, manipulating his companion to insane degrees, utilising her own fears and doubts to his own ends. The affection and Ace have for each other has never been clearer, but this is a Doctor who knows the bigger picture, and who has to difficult moral choices. The McCoy of only a few years ago would never have been up to the task. But having settled into the role, he really does sell the part convincingly. No one is sure which side he’ll jump to or what his gameplan is.

The cast is mostly admirable, with the exception of smaller parts (the squaddie Ace seduces with her ludicrous monologue is terrible, a throwback to the UNIT extras of the Pertwee years) and the evacuees, Phyllis and Jean are either terrible or passable depending on how generous you’re feeling. But the real surprise is Nicholas Parsons as a morally conflicted reverend, who has lost his faith in the midst of war. He can’t reconcile his idea of God with the idea of children being killed by British bombs, and of course, this is his downfall in the end. He wants to have faith but has been looking in all the wrong places.

The scripting is excellent, although some of the dialogue does feel wooden despite the gamest efforts of the cast. This is typical of the later era of Who, when the attempt to find depth in dialogue resulted in words that never quite felt natural; there was a stageyness to the era that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t (Ace’s watch speech is beautiful but never feels quite right coming from her). But in the grand scheme of things, Fenric is cracking telly and while the script sometimes tries too hard, you have to applaud its ambition and the fact that it lives up to it so often.

I still think its a shame that the first era of Who ended right when it was finding its feet again. The show was raring up for the nineties, and while there is an odd finality to McCoy’s speech at the end of Survival, I think it survived everyone when this now very grown up series came to an unexpected end.

MOMENTS IN TIME:

- When Ace’s Nitro Nine blows a hole in the crypt wall, the hole is perfectly door shaped. A rather unforgiveable blunder on the part of the design team...

- There’s real horror in Nicholas Parsons death. Nothing is shown on screen, but when the Heamovore’s break down his faith, there’s a sense of horror that pervades the scene. I remember this as the moment I was unable to continue watching as a child.

- Why are Phyllis and Jean the leaders of the Heamovores? Chronologically speaking they are the youngest after all. Maybe its because they speak the language of the times. Or maybe no one really thought about it.

- The music is very effective in this episode. A score of creeping dread.

- As much fun as he is as a villian, Millington is something of an enigma. I think he’s supposed to be morally confused, but mostly he’s just as a mass of unexplained contradictions.

- The chess motif is excellent, underpinning all the logic games going on in this story.

- When the Doctor finds the thing in which he has faith, he murmurs the names of all those who have travelled in the TARDIS with him. Including Adric. Oh dear, Doc. I know he died, but even you have to admit the smartarse maths genius was one of the most annoying people you ever met.

- The Judson/Nurse Crane dynamic is brilliant. Especially the reversal when Fenric takes over Judson’s body. His relish at gaining revenge on Crane shows us something of Judson inside Fenric.

- “from now on, everything in English” - - after all, the viewers can’t be arsed with all these subtitles.

- Its slightly sad how my memories of the underwater heamovores are undermined by the fact that the glimpse of their hands is clearly someone wearing a badly fitting prosthetic. Ahhh, well.

- And to add all the themes and symbolism everywhere, there are great whacking references to Dracula, too.

A Doctor A Week: Colin Baker: Revelation of the Daleks

11 weeks. 11 Doctors. 11 stories. Right up to the fiftieth anniversary, Russel will be reviewing one story a week for each Doctor. He will try and relate each story to a larger picture and how it relates to each period. He will occasionally make fun of them. But he will try and show you what a varied and brilliant history the show has. As well as overcoming his own prejducies about certain periods in the shows history. Each review will have spoilers and will assume a certain level of knowledge about the story in question.

Ahhhh, the sixth Doctor. The shortest serving Doctor. The worst costume. Some of the smallest budgets. The era in which the BBC tried to kill its flagship show with poor scheduling and management.

But while popular opinion would hold that this is the fault of the Doctor, it is anything but. Colin Baker - and maybe this is controversial - is more Doctorly than poor Peter Davison was ever given the chance to be.

He’s rude. Egotistical. Flamboyant. Alien.

Yes, I do agree that it comes as a shock after Peter Davison. And yes I hugely agree that The Twin Dilemma may be one of the worst introductions to a new Doctor ever (not because of the whole psychosis aspect - that’s brilliant - but rather because the adventure surrounding the new doc is so terribly terribly thought out). But the fact is that Baker is playing an alien character. He’s not neccesarily your best friend. He is someone who operates on a different plane of existence. And Baker gets that. He amps up the egotism. And even better, he’s very very funny. With just the right amount of empathy beneath the exterior.

Yes, that’s right. Empathy.

Look, the sixth Doctor does a lot of things one would consider unusual, given our expectations of the Doctor. But actually what he does is in line with past incarnations, only exaggerated.

The Doctor never uses a gun? Oh, let us count the ways in which he makes others use guns, joins paramilitary organisations (UNIT) and recklessly engages in fisticuffs (Seeds of Doom, any time the third Doctor employs his Venusian akido).

The Doctor always never allows anyone to die? The first Doctor did it all the time. The third doctor is stepped in the bodies of UNIT soldiers. The fourth Doctor contemplated genocide (Genesis of the Daleks). And on and on.

The Doctor is generally nice? The first Doctor is caustic and rude. The third Doctor is extremely patronising to Jo when he first meets here (and then tries to get rid of her until he realises he can’t).

On and on.

The sixth Doctor is just louder.

A lot louder.

And its all in the looks. In this story, when the mutant dies after Perry accidentally kills him, check the look on the Doctor’s face, He knows what the cost is and yet he also knows there is a bigger picture and he can’t hang around mourning. When he realises Perry is stuck with the DJ facing an onslught of Daleks, you see it in his eyes: this Doctor cares. He really does. But he also has a different sense of perspective than most.

I think Revelation is perhaps the perfect sixth Doctor story. Which is odd considering that the Doctor isn’t in it for much of the first half. He’s mostly tromping around the country getting attacked by mutants and assuring Peri that no, they really couldn’t get the TARDIS any closer to Tranquil Repose.

Which leaves us a lot of time for the drama inside Repose. And what drama it is. The story is set in a funeral home - a blatant homage to Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One - and features a gallery of human grotesqueness on display. The characters are complex and unlikeable to a man. And perhaps this is what makes the story fascinating; the very fact of the cast’s grotesque and unpleasant nature serves to show the Daleks for the functional, sterile creations they are. They are simple creatures driven by basic emotions. The funeral home staff, however, are complex. Tamsembeker in particular is a mix of self-obsessed busybody and infatuated virgin. She wants to be loved but doesn’t know what it is. And she certainly won’t find love with the pompous lech that is Jobel, the head undertaker played to skin-crawling perfection by Clive Swift.

The DJ who entertains those whose corpses remain in Tranquil Repose is the only character who shows any humanity at all. He must be the only human in this era of Who, who doesn’t make eyes at Peri (although that could be down the bizarre coat and beret arrangement she’s sporting) and who dies trying to proect her. Its a pity that we don’t see more of this side of the DJ, as in the early part of the story with his truly appalling US accent (Its hard to believe Peri would think he actually was a fellow American) he serves as a pointless greek chorus. And how does he see what’s going on anyway? Isn’t Davros supposed to be the only one with access to the near infinite camera system in Tranquil repose?

Oh, I haven’t mentioned Davros and the Daleks? Maybe I should seeing as they’’re in the title. But Revelation is less about the Daleks and more about Davros. WHich is a good thing. The Daleks, like the Cybermen, can get a little dull with their one-size-fits-all goals. As can Davros, admittedly. But here - unlike his appearance in the Peter Davison story, Resurrection of the Daleks - Davros is a conniving, scheming and quite terrifying presence. Reduce to a head in a jar for the majority of the story, he plays characters against each other and generally manipulates everyone in sight as he slowly builds his new race of Daleks - the ones with the stunning white and gold bodywork. The only bit of what-the-hellness comes from his plan to torment the Doctor by luring our hero to Tranquil Repose. No one can give a satisfactory explanation as to why Davros has errected a polystyrene statue of the Doctor in the garden of memories or why he forces it to topple on to the Doctor in what may be one of the top 10 worst resolutions to a cliffhanger ever.

There’s so much more going on in Tranquil Repose, but amazingly, Eric Saward’s script avoids too much complications. The strands - with bodysnatchers, assasins, political intrigue, gruesome goings on in the underbelly of the funeral home and so on - run concurrently but comprehensibly. And in the end almost everything has a purpose. Not neccesarily a grand purpose (inkeeping with this era of Who, very few characters survive the ensuing bloodbath) but nonetheless, the story makes mostly dramatic and logical sense.

Its interesting that this is the last story for this season Doctor Who. The show would go on hiatus for 18 months following this story, resulting in one of the worst pop songs of all time, and a return that was begrudgingly offered by the BBC and designed to try and kill it off completely. Its a shame, because as Baker himself has said, his Doctor was supposed to be on a journey of discovery, moving from arrogance to understanding. Revelation was probably the story where that truly began, but with the hiatus and then the Trial of a Timelord season (which, for the most part, is far better than its reputation might suggest, as long as you snooze through the appalling Vervoids section) Baker never saw the chance to truly round out his character. Which is a shame because his take on the character was never less than interesting, even when surrounded by some godawful guest stars or cheap effects (The Timelash, from the story previous to Revelation). Its cool to hate on Baker and his era, but the truth is that, especially given the BBC politics of the time, Baker was actually one of the most intriguing takes on the Doctor, but never got the chance to truly shine.

As to Revelation itself, it is perhaps Baker’s finest hour. It looks gorgeous, thanks to Graeme Harper’s direction, and its often a lot more thoughtful, witty and terrifying than most of the newly revamped series. If you only ever watch one Sixth Doctor (and you should watch more, just for the Doctor himself), then make it this one.

MOMENTS IN TIME:

- Blue is the official colour of mourning on Necros, which is good because the Doctor covers up that hideous costume.

- The location filming at the start is brilliant. Absolutely beautiful. And even better it gives us a chance to see the softening of the relationship between the Doctor and Peri. Its no longer bickering; its moving to affectionate banter.

- “This one thinks with her knuckles” There are some killer lines in here, assisted by the execution of actors (in this case, Clive Smith) clearly having a ball.

- “we don’t want the poor thing uncertain who the corpse is, do we?” Clive Smith gets all the best bitchy lines.

- The incidental music is terrible. This is the 80s, after all. But still not as bad as the farting kazoos in Pertwee’s era.

- When he’s being strangled by the mutant, Baker’s gurning almost matches the mighty Jon Pertwee’s. Almost.

- In case you were in any doubt, the graverobber’s hairdos remind you constantly that this is the eary 80s. Mulletastic.

- “I killed him and he forgave me...” “You had no choice.” Anyone who thinks Baker was too gung ho isn’t watching. He is alien. And his reactions may sometimes seem off, but there is definite compassion there. He is on a journey, here. becoming more and more compassionate and in touch with himself as the series progresses. One could only imagine how he would have continued if he’d been allowed to.

- For once the Daleks are not a cliffhanger. They’re there right from the start. And they’re not the focus, either. Which is wonderful. The silent Daleks are wonderfully scary.

- This is black, black humour. And that’s probably why it didn’t sit well with people.

- “I’m a past master at the Double entry”... oh, really? I think the campness in this one is mostly intentional.

- There’s real horror in the discovery of the Dalek factory. Makes anything Davies did seem weak and superficial. Here we understand the real horror of the Daleks.

- Speaking of which, the Glass Dalek is incredible.

- There is a lot of cynicism in the story; particularly Ocini and his squire. I think perhaps this marks the point where Doctor Who tried to grow up but couldn’t move beyond the perceptions of itself. Much of what people remember about the Baker era is the violence, and I think the memories of these violent moments has embedded more than the stories in which they take place.

- Hate the effect where teeny tiny Davros hovers over legless Ocini. Looks incredibly cheap. The sense of scale is gone. I think they were trying to make us believe that daleks could hover, but it doesn’t come across at all. Just wait until the McCoy era where the Daleks become truly frightening again as they climb stairs to get at their enemies.