MARK OF THE RANI

With Mark of the Rani, we are introduced to two figures who probably inspire more hatred than any other Doctor Who writers who didn't run the show - Pip and Jane Baker. This is, of course, massively outsized - they only wrote three-and-a-half stories across three seasons. But, because one of those turned out to be Colin Baker's final episode, and another was the debut of Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, their influence feels outsized. They certain are distinctive writers, full of wacky ideas and a peculiar approach to dialogue. And, of course, all of their episodes are rubbish, and yet they kept getting hired back.

There's a reason for this - they could meet a deadline like nobody's business. In the next season, for complicated reasons, JNT suddenly was unable to use the script for the season finale on a Friday, and needed a new script on Monday morning, including a massive laundry list of things that needed to happen, and were not allowed to see the old script or learn a single detail about it. And they did it. It was dreadful, of course, but damned if they didn't turn in a script that met every qualification.

Still, while that explains their other three produced scripts, that doesn't explain why they got rehired after Mark of the Rani to write an abandoned serial set on Gallifrey. So what about this serial got them immediately on the list of regular writers?

 

At a first glance, it's not obvious. Mark has enough good ideas for a single fun 45-minute episode, then only half-develops any of them, and then stretches that thin material out to an interminable 90 minutes. The dialogue is probably best described as turgid, when not straight-up taking random Shakespeare quotes and warping the poetry out of them:

DOCTOR: Now, perhaps, you'll accept there are more things in heaven and on earth than are ever dreamed of in your barren philosophy.
RANI: And now perhaps you'll accept you face a dilemma.
MASTER: More of an impasse?
DOCTOR: Wrong on both counts. There is no impasse, and the dilemma, Rani, will be solved by you.

A bunch of good actors struggle mightily with Pip & Jane's... eccentric way with words. (Amusingly, their original title for this story was Too Clever By Far.) Still, Mark is built on some good ideas, and you can absolutely see how these elements might have been molded into something worthwhile.

 It opens in the early 19th century in Killingworth, England, where the Doctor and Peri arrive (right away! How novel!) to find the local coal miners are becoming strangely violent. Their attacks on technological equipment gets them dismissed as Luddites by most, but these are men who were previously peaceable. Soon, it turns out that not one but two other renegade Time Lords are meddling about in Earth's history. One, the Master, the Doctor's lifelong foe, who survived being incinerated while the Doctor refused to save him at the end of Planet of Fire by... *checks notes* ... uh, surviving. The other Time Lord is The Rani, a completely amoral biologist experimenting on humans and removing the chemical that lets them sleep, turning them violent, in order to... *checks notes* accomplish something on the planet she rules. Definitely something.

Director Sarah Hellings, shooting primarily at Blists Hills Open Air Museum, crafts a vivid and utterly convincing portrait of the time and place, and gives every scene a great jolt of energy with her staging. Which is a good thing, because the script drags mightily, making the somewhat slow previous two stories seem in comparison like rocketing along in a Moffat-era one-parter. This helps keep it watchable, but Hellings can't solve a story that takes until well into its second episode to build even the slightest bit of tension. 

Yeah, that looks like about how I feel, Peri

This is ultimately the episode where Anthony Ainley's Master bottoms out. Ainley began with a truly frightening take on the character in Logopolis, but his effectiveness was gradually whittled away by constant guest appearances (twice per year when there were 6-7 stories total each year), each worse than the last. These scripts carved away any menace, forcing Ainley to gurn and sneer ever more to try to force some kind of effect out of it. Season 21 had seen a slight uptick, with the fairly solid Planet of Fire giving him some fun material and an effective cameo in the Fifth Doctor's dying hallucinations in Caves of Androzani. But here, the Master spends most of his time shuffling around, telling anyone who will listen that he is incredibly evil and wants to kill the Doctor, even though he doesn't get around to even trying until the end of Episode 1, and barely manages to get the Rani to try for it in Episode 2. This may be the nadir for a character who has had too many low points.

And it makes the Doctor seem less impressive a hero to take so long and struggle so much to defeat so lame a foe. Colin Baker's bluster is fun, but the Doctor's relationship with Peri is back to prickly in ways that spoil some of the offbeat charm. The Doctor-Master relationship by this point is a ridiculous pantomime. With Pertwee and Delgado, they had a sad warmth of former friends who would rather not be enemies and who sometimes have fun with their duels; it was engagingly complex, even if it didn't ultimately go anywhere. Turning the Master into a darker arch-villain worked at first, but by now, it's ludicrous and impossible to take seriously, but also not ridiculous enough to be fun on a camp level.

Which brings us to the story's great redeeming factor, the Rani. Pip & Jane write the Rani as exasperated by the whole thing between the Doctor and the Master, finding both utterly tiresome. For example, when the Master talks about ruling Earth and using it to forge a vast empire, and the Rani notes with mild annoyance that she already rules a planet. Kate O'Mara plays this to the hilt, and she's great fun mocking the two of them. It's a shame, unfortunately, that they really are as rubbish as she thinks, because it ends up being hard to argue with them. But that keeps her engaging.

She also has a fantastic TARDIS interior; it's a gorgeous piece of design that frankly is superior to some of the Doctor's TARDIS interiors.

Late in the story, when Pip & Jane remember that maybe something should actually, like, happen across the 90 minutes instead of characters just explaining and re-explaining their limited motivations to each other and walking around trying to find a plot, the Rani plants a minefield in the forest. These mines don't just explode, however - they turn whoever steps on them into a tree! This element has been much mocked over the years, and the execution has issues I'll get to, but it's a delightful concept and the kind of craziness this premise needs more of. Three Time Lords fighting it out should be chock-full of stuff like mines that explode people into trees.

But, of course, if it had more ideas like that, it would probably botch them similarly. Hellings' staging may have lots of atmosphere and energy, and does build solid tension when Peri walks through the minefield, but it's also clearly (and understandably) rushed, and doesn't establish the geography of the scene effectively, making it difficult to figure out how far away the Time Lords are from the action. More importantly, Pip & Jane don't know how to develop it or pay it off; a man exploding into the tree is neat, but why doesn't the Doctor yell out a warning or something? And when the story is done, they forget all about people turned into trees and go on as though nobody got hurt, really.

Another good but half-baked idea is not only actually using Peri's knowledge of botany for I think the first and only time, but contrasting her with the Rani, an evil biologist. Sadly, nothing comes of this, but it was a nice idea.

And Pip & Jane don't manage to build to anything resembling a classic. The Doctor setting a trap in the Rani's TARDIS, leaving her and the Master careening out of control with a soon-to-be-grown T-Rex is a solid enough conclusion. But it's not a climax or a story, it's a neat idea for the ending that doesn't connect. Nor does the Doctor do anything about the remaining tree mines, or even try to get the trees turned back into people. He just pops off, episode over.

The only thing the Doctor does manage to do in the episode is constantly push Peri's questions off with an "I'll explain later", a quirk that got ruthlessly mocked by Steven Moffat over a decade later in his Comic Relief special Cure of the Fatal Death. It's particularly obnoxious because, most of the time, the explanation would only take a single sentence.

And there's not really anything else to say. It's a nicely-directed nothingburger that drags when it isn't being obnoxious, and wastes a few good ideas. Kate O'Mara does manage moments of real charm, but they're oases in a desert of tedium.

Still, the next story will be written by none other than Robert Holmes, perhaps the greatest writer of Classic Who, coming off of his brilliant Caves of Androzani. And what's more, it's a multi-Doctor story, bringing back Patrick Troughton. If anything in this season would be an assured classic, it's that one.

Right?

 

VENGEANCE ON VAROS REDUX

"Is he sane, this Doctor?"

"... sometimes."

I already reviewed Vengeance on Varos just over ten years ago, and while I don't think it's a great review, I mostly agree with what I said back then, so I won't write an entirely new review. It's a strong story for the Sixth Doctor, finally getting his characterization to work after the miserable Twin Dilemma and the only-better-than-Twin-Dilemma-by-a-technicality Attack of the Cybermen. The series was always playing a dangerous game by making Baker's Doctor deliberately abrasive and unlikable, but this is a rare example where it works. Baker gets to be funny, clever, and heroic, without losing that untrustworthy nature; it's consistently intriguing and challenging. Sure, the approach was probably a bad idea since it required excellent scripts every time out, and even the best eras of Who are inherently somewhat uneven, but hey, at least it does work in theory.

The dystopian mining world of Varos, distracting its citizens by reveling in televised violence, is vivid and real, one of the best alien worlds in Classic Who. I love the way if the governor makes a decision voted unpopular, he's immediately tortured on television, and whether he keeps his office or is kicked out depends on whether he survives the torture. The satire is vicious and biting, managing to do what satire so rarely does, hitting its then-modern concepts dead-center and still hitting targets remarkably well decades later. (Well, good for this script, tragic for us.) The script is supported by terrific costumes, sets, and miniatures, and director Ron Jones puts it all together solidly. Sil is a delightfully disgusting creation, not only in writing and elaborate makeup, but in Nabil Shaban's snarling, snakelike performance.

 The sum is intelligent, funny, tense, and imaginative. All in all, it's a damn good Doctor Who serial in an era where competence is a struggle. So this isn't really a new review so much as an addendum, though I do find one disagreement with younger me. And, naturally, it's an addendum much longer than the original review, which seems about right for me.

In my original review, I found two flaws with the story. The first, that the pacing is off, I still agree with. As I noted then, the Doctor and Peri literally get stuck nowhere to keep them from showing up until halfway through episode 1. And I mean literally nowhere - the reason they go to Varos is that the TARDIS breaks down "Neither here nor there". In fairness, these scenes themselves are reasonably fun, but the intercutting with the setup on Varos, itself compelling, doesn't flow well, and the first half of the episode drags. 

The issue is even more severe in the second half of Episode 2, where, after a lot of tense set-pieces and elements, the story struggles to build effectively to a climax, instead for the most part just mildly repeating a lot of the same stuff it has been doing with less effectiveness. Not that these scenes are bad, per se - the Governor finding his conscience while bargaining for Peri's life is particularly good - but it is a fairly rare event in Saward's tenure where a story's high point of tension isn't in its final minutes. In fact, it's fairly rare in Classic Who that the best-paced and most-thrilling parts of the story are in the middle instead of on the edges. And it's mostly a tribute to how strong the mid-section of the story is rather than a major failing.

I mentioned the strong atmosphere above, and while a lot of this is the story, kudos should go to director Ron Jones, who mostly handles the visuals and tone well. His staging of actual action sequences are clumsy, but those are fairly minor bits in the story. (Though this probably explains why Saward, showing his typical tactfulness, insulted Jones' direction on this story while Jones was in the midst of directing Mindwarp. That Jones directed what are arguably the two best stories of the era suggests where Saward can shove his opinions about directors, though his apparent dismissiveness toward Fiona Cumming is more damning.) But Jones' tone and handling of the violence contributes to an issue that's difficult to quantify - whether or not the violence in the story is actually pitched at the right level, either for the program or for the satire here.

We may as well begin with the infamous acid bath scene. The Doctor's actions here are arguably defensible, if particularly cold. But the moment one of the guards emerges from the baths and accidentally pulls in his fellow guard, his skin largely burned off leaving only bloody flesh, is perhaps the most gruesome moment in all of Doctor Who, a moment simultaneously viscerally realistic and self-indulgently over-the-top; it seems to be aiming for Verhoeven, or at least Troma. And while this is the most blatantly unnerving moment, it's not the only time the serial is, arguably intentionally, going too far. The Doctor also sets up a trap that incinerates a guard before he really knows what's going on, and later sets a trap to kill off the villains with poison plants. Several injuries and scars are given horrific makeup. One torture involves mutating humans into human-animal hybrids based on what the person's fear visualizes.

On the one hand, Doctor Who is nominally a family program - not aimed primarily at kids, per se, but it's generally supposed to be appropriate for them. Sure, it leans more to the PG side than the G side, and always has had its share of violence and disturbing horror; that's baked into the show's DNA. But there's always a restraint; sure, it might be challenging for a 9-year-old, but not traumatizing. One could argue the show is pushing to find its limits, and there's something to be said for that sort of experimentation. But if you're going to cut kids out and seemingly insist that this is for adults, it becomes a lot harder to forgive the incompetent staging of action sequences, or, you know, that damn jacket. Doctor Who is a silly program about a silly man - one that can be intelligent and frightening and even brilliant, but there are limits to how far "realism" can be pushed without becoming bathetic.

It's also questionable whether the visceral realism actually works for the satire. After all, one of the most effective choices in the first episode is to represent torture simply with a light and some screaming from the actor. It's unnerving without being indulgent in the very manner the story is satirizing. On the other hand, if the Doctor is casually and violently killing villains with the ruthless efficiency and emotional coldness of James Bond, and characters are getting their flesh boiled off on-screen, and injuries are graphically displayed, isn't this just becoming the very thing it's condemning? Granted, I mentioned both Paul Verhoeven and Troma films earlier, both of which at their best push indulgent violence so far over-the-top as to become part of the critique of violence and the audience's enjoyment of such, so it's not impossible to go for that, but I'm not sure Vengeance actually hits that every time.

I don't think this is ruinous to the episode - not quite hitting the mark with the violent tone makes it unnerving in thought-provoking ways and kind of works anyway. 

Somewhat similarly, Varos is shown to be a deeply misogynistic planet throughout, and numerous characters expose deeply misogynistic views. Now, to be clear, these are the villains and the dystopian planet, but, at the same time, it's not really countered by the narrative. Not that one needs to explicitly point out such things, but it's honestly hard to tell where the show is condemning the misogyny and where it's just being misogynistic.

In the end, I think enough of both the satire and the adventure works that I'm willing to give to some slack, particularly since it does leave you wondering about where exactly the line for these things should be. But I'm not going to pretend it isn't hard to square the acid bath with that jacket. Or, for that matter, be entirely content that the highlight of the season works by being relentlessly nasty and unpleasant. Yes, there's some grisly fun to be had here, but it would be easier to roll with if it was surrounded by episodes that were fun without qualifiers.

But the main reason I'm bothering to write this is that I disagree with myself on the other flaw I mentioned originally - that Peri falls flat as a companion here. She doesn't quite reach the heights she does in the next season, but, especially coming off Attack of the Cybermen, she's quite good here. The by-play with the Doctor isn't cruel but funny and charming. There's no warmth between them, but at least they aren't cold, and the Doctor isn't insulting her. Or, you know, strangling her. But Peri also shows a lot of strength of character and humor in the story, and Bryant makes the most out of every opportunity; she's immensely likeable and engaging here.

Which is not to say there aren't issues with her as a character here, going to the nature of her conception. There's a wonderful moment when she's being tortured by the aforementioned mutation, and she begins to turn into a bird because, as someone notes, she wants to fly away and escape. It's a wonderful insight into her psychology... and the only one the character has had since she appeared in the middle of the previous season, and, as I recall, that she will get again until her final episode. (Though I suppose I'll see how my memory of that fares.) Peri was conceived, essentially, as the most generic possible companion, and so her effectiveness is entirely down to a writer's ability to make "generic companion" work, which is highly variable at the best of times, and this is far from the best. I mentioned in my Attack of the Cybermen review that her skimpy clothing didn't seem to fit with her characterization, but, honestly, the issue is that there's isn't a characterization to fit it with. 

This is not, to be clear, to say that a companion should under no circumstances wear sexy clothing to go on their adventures, but it should definitely fit them as a person. Playing up their sexuality in their costuming works for a character like Jack Harkness or Amy Pond, both of whom have a sexual openness to their psychologies and personalities, and would reflect that. But when there isn't any real psychology or personality, just someone reacting to a crazy adventure around them with more or less what you'd expect, running around violent dystopian worlds in short shorts and cleavage-baring blouse that accentuate every curve just feels like the producers being exploitative -- when goes back to the misogyny mentioned earlier. It's not that the program supports being sexist or violent to women intentionally, but it doesn't seem to counter that by giving them a voice in it. Sure, the monkey brain in me certainly appreciates it visually, all the more so for her attractiveness to contrast with the very effective ugliness around her. But if it's going to be done, it needs to be Peri participating in it rather than just being splayed out for cheap horny points.

But with all that said, I really do want to praise Bryant - she's given so little to do, but at every point, she shows that she's plucky, funny, and engaging; she can give as good as she gets when she's allowed to, and finds a lot of humanity. And when she's allowed to actually act, she really shows skill. One wishes the episode had done more with the "turning her into a bird" element, maybe keeping her in the (impressively elaborate) makeup longer before she reverted, and letting her say why she was turning into a bird. There's a poignancy to Peri's perils, and her ability to weather such nastiness, that the show too rarely notices.

Anyway, this short addendum became a 2000-word article of its own, and one where I'm not entirely certain what my conclusion is. But I will say this - it says something that I like the episode enough to want to dig into it, both in its qualities and foibles, when I really had no need (even if one pretends there is any need for this blog in the first place). I could have just re-linked it and called it a day, since I didn't significantly disagree with my thoughts. But I dearly love this show, and even the ragged version of the show in the Sixth Doctor's era, all the more so on an occasion when it doesn't just work, but sings. Vengeance on Varos is one of the good ones, and makes me wish more of the show in the era worked as well as this one, if not necessarily like this one.

 

I'm not going to pretend it doesn't have flaws, but I dearly love this episode, and wish it lived up to its best elements enough to give it more than three stars.

 

Attack of the Cybermen

"Didn't go very well, did it?"

Why, after ignoring this blog for six years, have I suddenly returned with a review of a mostly forgotten and otherwise disreputable mid-80s serial? Back in late 2014 and early 2015, I found myself with some real blocks trying to write these reviews, and, finally, the lack of any momentum or progress killed it. And the longer I got out from it, the more many of my early reviews here were a source of embarrassment, and I simply didn't bother. 

It wasn't a matter of the show's quality - I loved Series 9, found Series 10 to be uneven but with brilliant highlights. Unfortunately, I've been considerably less enthused with the last two seasons (I like Whittaker, but find Chibnall's showrunning to be about as effective as it was on Torchwood), and I guess haven't watched as much Who in general for some time. Still, after feeling deeply dispirited by Chibnall's Revolution of the Daleks on the heels of the dreadful Timeless Children, I rewatched several other New Who stories just to remind myself of how deeply I love this show. And then discovered BritBox on Amazon, which has virtually all of Classic Doctor Who, and started revisiting serials I had seen only once a decade or more ago and wanted to revisit.

And, for some reason, last night I had an urge to rewatch Attack of the Cybermen. Although its reputation is dire, I had recalled more or less enjoying it at the time even while registering some complaints with the script. And then felt the need to make it clear to the internet that I Had Opinions About A Thing.

Someone's been sneaking Cyber-snacks.

 

A bit of background on the production of this story, since this introduction isn't incredibly long or self-indulgent enough yet. But for those who don't know, it's important to understand in order to grasp what happens in this serial. Because this was Doctor Who on the knife's edge of its cancellation, and Attack of the Cybermen is the show trying to dance on that knife and splitting open its own veins.

John Nathan-Turner, popularly nicknamed "JNT", had become the show's producer in 1981 entirely through his accounting wizardry without any real creative background. He had a great passion for the show, however, and with Season 18's script editor Christopher Bidmead, (script editor being somewhat similarly to a lead writer in today's world, although they didn't necessarily write any scripts themselves) he had crafted a grand artistic success, if not a ratings one. He followed that up with the first season of the Fifth Doctor's era, which was a huge ratings success and was largely well-received. Bidmead had left after his first season, however, leaving JNT to hire first an interim script-editor for the first half of the season, and then scramble for a permanent person for the position. He chose Eric Saward, off the back of his pretty solid script for The Visitation, but who was otherwise almost entirely inexperienced outside of a few radio programs.

Still, Saward's script for Earthshock, which brought back the Cybermen after a lengthy hiatus, had resulted in a hugely popular serial, and the show's nostalgia-heavy 20th season was largely well-received. The nostalgia element, with every episode harkening back directly to some older element with returning villains, had been aided by series uber-fan Ian Levine, who became an unofficial advisor for the show.

With Levine's help, then, for the 21st Season, the show brought back two sets of old villains for the serial Warriors of the Deep. The result was a disaster. A chaotic production disrupted by Margaret Thatcher's snap election of 1983 resulted in an utterly botched adaptation of its script. Most memorably, the serial's big monster, the Myrka, ended up being literally just an ugly pantomime horse, garish overlit to boot. But the script was so wretched that James Cameron could have broken a Hollywood budget record on it and it still would have been absolutely terrible.

 And, unfortunately, Michael Grade, controller of BBC1, noticed. He had never particularly liked the show, but this was a true embarrassment, and he believed Doctor Who should not be kept on the air. Given its strong ratings, he couldn't kill it right off, but he was ready to. The rest of Season 21 largely went well, building to a tremendous climax with the Fifth Doctor's farewell story, The Caves of Androzani, not only one of the greatest episodes of the show, but one of the great works of science fiction in 1984, a particularly great year for the genre.

However, that wasn't the end of the season. For some bizarre reason, JNT decided that the first story for Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor would air as the final serial of the season. However, the production had run out of money by the point, the scripts were unfinished and lousy (the writer at one point made the excuse for a delayed script that his typewriter had literally exploded), and, on top of everything else, JNT, Saward, and Baker had all wanted to make this new Doctor dark and mysterious and strange... and had botched it utterly (not Baker's fault, in fairness). The result competes strongly with Warriors of the Deep as one of the leading contenders for the worst episode of Doctor Who ever, as well as the worst work of science fiction of 1984, all the more crushing a failure after the triumph of Androzani.

So, in 1985, coming into Season 22, Doctor Who desperately needed to come out strong. Saward took the reins personally, and worked closely with Levine to devise a story bringing back the popular Cybermen that would tie into two decades of continuity. Because script editors weren't suppose to write multiple stories and Saward was already writing the season finale, he convinced his ex-girlfriend to write a draft and keep her name on whatever he rewrote. And Saward, JNT, and the production needed to nail this one. Prove that it was, indeed, worthy of continuation and funding by the tax-payers of Britain. Prove that the Sixth Doctor could be as iconic and fascinating as his predecessors. Prove that JNT and Saward could actually deliver worthy drama. 

So, naturally, our story begins in a literal river of crap, as maintenance workers wade through London's sewers. They're surprised to find a wall that shouldn't exist, and are then mysteriously killed by something mysterious that definitely isn't the villain listed in the title. 

This opening scene shows off the serial's best asset, though, the direction of Matthew Robinson. Robinson is a rare Classic Who director who isn't best remembered for his contributions to Who - after this, he was appointed the lead director on EastEnders, and later became executive producer of the show, was promoted to head of drama for BBC Wales, and ended up producing a bunch of films in Cambodia. (It probably doesn't help, though, that the two scripts he was assigned to direct in Who were this and Resurrection of the Daleks, neither of which are well-remembered despite his strong direction in both.) Robinson shoots the serial with vivid atmosphere and lots of punchy visuals and editing; it feels more like an ambitious low-budget movie than a ropey no-budget TV show. Notably, the sewers are dramatically underlit to a degree rarely done on the BBC at the time, and all the more effective for it.

Attack then moves to the Doctor and his companion, Peri, in the TARDIS. And the early TARDIS scenes are rough. The costumes, of course, are wretched; I sometimes forget just what an endless eyesore the Sixth Doctor's costume really is. Peri's, of course, is a major improvement, though, as usual, it's skimpy in a way that doesn't seem to match her character, emphasizing her curves and her boobs bouncing around. (For those who don't know, JNT was gay, but wanted Peri to always be dressed sexily "for the dads".) It's also an extremely bright, saturated pink, as though it's trying to make sure she isn't invisible standing next to the Doctor.

Can't you just feel the love?

But costumes are one thing, the dialogue is a whole other can of awful. Not only do Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant evidence no chemistry here, but the banter is just the Doctor being a total kneebiter and ignoring Peri calling him on it. And every time she tries to turn it into light, fun banter, the Doctor just spits in her face:

"I was, in fact, taking you to Earth."
"Bit of an anticlimax after all that journey."
"Ungrateful wretch."
"Well, what do you expect, applause?"
"A bit of gratitude wouldn't irretrievably damage my ego."
"Come off it, Doctor. No one is more surprised than you are that we came through it."

What, exactly, are they expecting us to feel here? Saward and Baker both had ambitions to make the Doctor a more threatening and frightening figure, but even if JNT's insistence on that jacket wasn't blowing any chance at that, there's a difference between a mysterious and frightening figure and just a total dick. It was a questionable choice to begin with, but one that might have worked. Even setting aside the early days of William Hartnell's First Doctor as the beginning of his character arc from villain to antihero to hero, Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor could totally be frightening when Troughton wanted him to be, and Sylvester McCoy would prove the same afterwards. 

But the Doctor being a scary figure requires emphasizing their alienness, their elaborate planning to fight unimaginable power and evil, and how far they're willing to go in that fight - not being an abusive bastard to their companion. It gets the whole affair off on a horribly wrong foot.

These scenes are intercut with Lytton, Maurice Colbourne's mercenary last seen working for the Daleks in the previous season, working with a crew on earth to pull off a diamond heist through the sewers. These scenes are pretty generic bank robbery stuff, but there is a degree of fun in just bare competence at this sort of thing, which contrasts unfortunately with the TARDIS scene without elevating the proceedings much.

Thankfully, when the Doctor and Peri finally arrive on Earth ten minutes in, their banter improves massively, and, with decent material, Baker and Bryant turn out to actually have some chemistry; further, the Doctor's repairs to the TARDIS chameleon circuit malfunctioning have a whimsical charm too often missing in this era. And with more comedic material, Baker shines; when he's being funny or weird, his brash Doctor shines.

"I suddenly feel conspicuous."
"Not surprised in that coat."
"No, it's more a question of having organized a surprise party and forgotten who it's for."

 

The duo arrives in I. M. Foreman's Scrapyard on 76 Totter's Lane - which, you see, is the scrapyard from An Unearthly Child. This serves no purpose in the story beyond being an in-joke. One could stretch, I suppose, that echoing back to the Hartnell era sort-of works with the story being deeply wrapped into several of the 1960s Cyberman stories,  given that Hartnell's last story was the Cybermen's first, but it's tenuous at best. And, more to the point, it actually foreshadows that the Cyberman references will ultimately function merely as empty continuity masturbation. (For a sharp contrast, it's worth looking at how Remembrance of the Daleks similarly harkened back to An Unearthly Child with actual purpose and thought three years later.)

While Lytton and the bank robbers wade through the sewers to get to the diamond vault they're knocking off, the Doctor and Peri, after futzing around for 10 minutes trying to find the plot, run into two evil policemen. The Doctor instantly beats the snot out of one of them, while Peri cleverly deals with the other one. It's an exciting little scene, and slightly shocking for the Doctor's quickness to a violent approach. Baker pulls off the physicality effectively, but whether or not a more violent Doctor is overly jarring is probably up to the viewer. It's certainly different.

At any rate, having still not arrived at the plot, the Doctor and Peri enter the sewers and muck around themselves. If that seems like the entirety of the first episode is either walking around in a river of poop or trying to get to the river of poop, that's because it mostly is. In Season 22, in order to come in line with the rest of the BBC, where half-hour dramas had largely be eliminated in favor of hour-long dramas, Doctor Who had doubled the length of its episodes, now lasting a full 45 minutes. Given the problems the era had with pacing half-hour episodes, unfortunately, the result here unsurprisingly consists wheel-spinning for somnambulant periods. 

But, finally, Lytton and his thieves make it to the wall that shouldn't be there, and it blasts open to reveal the Cybermen. And, points to Robinson, the reveal works. Their dramatically-lit and edited appearance is genuinely frightening in a way the Cybermen rarely have been. Of course, then they start talking, and they're just daft, clumsy evil robo-men, but hey, at least they got one good moment out of them.

We learn that Lytton isn't just a mercenary, but from a race of mercenaries, which might be the single most Eric Saward thing ever written. And now we cut to the planet Telos, which Robinson makes appropriately alien, and, slowly, the actual plot comes into view. The Cybermen were stalking around the London sewers because, you see, in the story The Invasion they stalked around the sewers. But also, they're on the planet Telos, where they burst out of cellophane walls because, you see, they did that in Tomb of the Cybermen. And they're on both places now because, you see, in The Tenth Planet, they drove their own home planet Mondas, parked it next to Earth, and tried to destroy Earth so Mondas wouldn't literally melt for reasons that I think kind of made some sort of magic crazy person sense in The Tenth Planet, and anyway now they're going to redirect Halley's comet to strike the Earth to ensure Earth so Mondas survives. And they have two leaders whose respective ranks are never clear - Cyber Leader, played by David Banks because that was his role in Earthshock (even though he died there) and Cyber Controller, played by Michael Kilgaroff because he played that role almost twenty years earlier in Tomb of the Cybermen (even though Kilgaroff is visibly... rotund for a Cyberman after 20 years). If that sounds like a bunch of incoherent, masturbatory continuity nonsense, well, it is.

'member when the Doctor fought the Cybermen in those Tombs?
Yeah, I 'member!

And, honestly, that might be forgivable if the story built up to some kind of point and/or was entertaining. Unfortunately, Lytton getting out of Poop River, London doesn't get the Doctor out of it. The Doctor doesn't arrive at the plot until 38 minutes into a 90 minutes story. He then gets captured by the Cybermen, who have already captured his TARDIS with remarkable ease. And he spends almost the entire second episode in a prison cell. He escapes with the help of a Cryon, a member of the native race of Telos, and gives the Cryon his Sonic Lance so it can suicide bomb the Cyberman base. He then gets out of there while other characters solve the plot, and, in the final scene, uses a Cybergun to kill the Cyberman leaders at a point where their deaths don't particularly matter since the base is about to blow, but fails to save Lytton. 

You may have noticed the Doctor accomplishes close to nothing in the story, and mostly just tries to catch up to a story that hums along without him. It's possible for a story to work with a minimal use of the Doctor, but if much of the episode is just following him failing to make it to or affect the plot, and he doesn't even spend the time doing anything Doctorish, how is this supposed to work? Yes, when he's not asked to be an unpleasant dick, Baker has a brash charm and humor that's fun and a physicality that effectively feels like it comes out of nowhere, but the script doesn't care to let him do much of those fun things. He does get multiple scenes casually wielding guns, though, almost as if he's really a space mercenary at heart.

That could, theoretically, be at least somewhat forgivable if said story was itself engaging, but it's mostly not. Even given that the entire first episode is walking through a sewer and that the second half has all the action, there's very little going on here. The Cybermen get that frightening first appearance, and easily take over the TARDIS, but otherwise are easily killed by their own guns, regular Earth pistols, the Doctor stabbing them with his Sonic Lance, and even a nice whack to the head with handheld metal pipe that straight decapitates them. They stumble around so slowly that gunfights feel hilariously slow even with Robinson's general skill with action. And their original concept, that of horrific mirrors of humanity with all emotion removed, is barely present except for a single line of dialogue about the weakness of emotion; they're just generic clanging tin men. Although when Lytton stabs the Cyber Controller, he bleeds green, which I guess is kind of weird.

And what of Lytton? After all, Saward's real interest here seems to be Lytton. It feels like he would honestly rather be writing a TV show about Lytton rather than Doctor Who. (Indeed, Saward recently revived the character for a comic-book miniseries.) Lytton knows more about what's going on in the story than the Doctor ever really does. Maurice Colbourne has the right charisma for such a rogue. After being cagey for most of the story, it's revealed that he's actually working for the Cryons, not the Cybermen. And the story's climactic moment ultimately rests on Lytton having his hands brutally crushed by the Cybermen (which is far bloodier and more shocking than I remembered it being), getting half-converted, yet still fighting them before dying. And so the Doctor's final line muses that "I doon't think I've ever misjudged anyone as badly as I did Lytton."

 

But why? Lytton was a mercenary perfectly happy to work for the Daleks! And here, he's still just a merc, just not for the bad guys. He doesn't seem to have had any change of heart, the Cryons just happen to be the ones who hired him. And the Doctor wonders why Lytton didn't tell him he wasn't hired by the Cybermen, and Peri remarks the Doctor never gave Lytton a chance, but even when Lytton did have a chance, he was needlessly mysterious. If the story's point is that Lytton was misjudged, it's a misjudgement on the part of the writer, not the Doctor.

So, if the story is a slog that adds up to nothing, what is good here? Well, the production, mainly. Telos feels like an alien world rather than just a random quarry. Both the location shooting and the studio work are atmospheric and feature an effective variety of shots. The Cryons are pretty well-executed; played entirely by women, with sing-song voices and strange gestures, and a pretty cool design, they're probably one of the best one-shot aliens of '80s Who. Sure, they'd probably look better in black and white, and the closeups show the seams, but it's still some good work. And Saward at least tries to make them distinctive individuals, even if he doesn't do quite enough.

There's also one other element that works, and it's a distinctively Saward one. As the story comes to a close, most of the supporting cast is killed off, the rest are in incredible danger, and the Cryon plan seems on the verge of failure. The all-hope-is-lost moment builds a deep tension. This tension is sadly lacking in the rest of the story, but climactic tension is something Saward is great at building to. Unfortunately, here, he doesn't pay it off, and it largely whimpers to a close, with the Doctor's brief rolling about and gunning down the Cyber leaders feeling like an afterthought.

Basically, Attack of the Cybermen is a lousy story occasionally salvaged by the execution, which is as good as could reasonably be expected for such a cheap TV show with such a tight schedule. But Saward seems to this day proud of this story, happily taking credit. (Levine also takes quite a bit of credit when asked.) Because, you see, Attack of the Cybermen is what Saward and JNT wanted Warriors of the Deep to be: a boring river of grimdark, meaningless crap, sure, but with, like, shadows and slick editing and a kinda cool monster under the circumstances. And if anyone wants to know why Doctor Who was canceled, this episode is one of the best examples of why. If this is what they think the show should be when it's working, then it deserved to die.

 Thankfully, the next story is an astounding improvement, making a pretty good case that the show shouldn't be canceled, just that maybe teh reins should be given to someone else, because there's great potential in the various elements here. Sure, it's not enough, ultimately, to save the show, but, thankfully, it lasted enough more years to go out on a high note. Eventually.

RATING:

 

 

A Vision of the Future

So, I should be running my review of In the Forests of the Night on Thursday (probably late Thursday), and I'll do the two-part finale sometime this weekend. I'll hold off on a season review until after The Last Christmas, since that looks like it's going to pick up a lot of loose threads.

So, starting next week, I'm going to work on the William Hartnell era. I've already covered An Unearthly Child through The Dalek Invasion of Earth, so between now and February (with a quick detour when the Christmas special comes out), I'll be covering the series from The Rescue through The Tenth Planet.

But I'm also going to cover some of the non-televised adventures. I'll cover both the Peter Cushing movies, as well as David Whitaker's novelization of The Daleks. From the Virgin Missing Adventures, I'll do Venusian Lullaby, The Plotters, and The Man in the Velvet Mask. From BBC Books, I'm currently planning to do Byzantium, The Eleventh Tiger, and Bunker Soldiers. And from Big Finish, I'll cover Home Truths, The Drowned World, and Guardian of the Galaxy.
 

I haven't quite decided yet whether to do those in the order they fit in (i.e., The Plotters between The Space Museum and The Chase), or to gather them at the end of each season, to better show how they comment on the season. For example, Venusian Lullaby takes place between The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Rescue, but in many ways it's commenting on The Rescue and The Web Planet, so it might make sense to talk about it after covering both of those.

I'm also open to covering other novels or audio adventures from that time period; the only one listed above that I've actually read is Venusian Lullaby, so my choices were someone idiosyncratic. If there's a reason I should look at something else or a particular favorite, I'd welcome any suggestions.

Mummy On the Orient Express / Flatline

Although these don’t represent a two-part episode, Mummy On the Orient Express and Flatline combined are the debut of writer Jamie Mathieson, who I’d be willing to bet will become a regular writer for the show. After all, Flatline, which he wrote first, shows everything you expect out of a new writer - refreshingly blasting through wild ideas, full of all the headlong energy and excitement you’d expect. And it’s executed so well he was immediately tapped to write Mummy, based on a pitch by Moffat that was literally the title with IN SPACE! tacked onto the end, and while it’s not quite as good, it’s a damn entertaining yarn. Combined, it’s probably the most exciting debut for a writer since Neil Gaiman’s The Doctor’s Wife.

Both overflow with a love for the series, not only full of elements reminiscent of RTD’s era (particularly the prominent and hilarious usages of the psychic paper), but especially of the classic series. Mummy feels remarkably like a Hinchcliffe/Holmes era episode; it’s pretty easy to see how a four-part Four and Sarah Jane version would go. The half Victorian-Edwardian/half-Sci-Fi setting is about the most Doctor Who setting there is, and adds an easy atmosphere to the whole thing. Even its references to older episodes are classy and clever, like the brilliant bit with the jelly babies in the cigarette case.

Yet it’s unmistakably a Moffat-era story. The pace is lightning quick, which, on the upside, makes for a hugely energetic and exciting yarn, and Mathieson skillfully develops a thoroughly enjoyable cast of characters with remarkable efficiency. On the downside, it means, inevitably, that it feels underdeveloped in places. The setting, in particular, for all its imagination and atmosphere, feels completely wasted; this could have all happened in a hotel room without a significant change to the story. And while it goes through a solid number of permutations of the concept, it still feels like more could have been done, and the hanging thread of the identity of Gus makes it feel incomplete. (Since I mentioned it, I imagine the climax as it is would be the cliffhanger of Episode 3 and resolution of Episode 4 in that theoretical four-part classic version, with the Doctor and Sarah going after Gus for the finale. Maybe swordfighting him on top of the train [in Space]?)

On the other hand, it has the two great advantages of Moffat’s era, both his expanding and deepening the emotional depth that RTD brought to the show. First, the story resolves in short but thoughtful and quietly moving fashion that also works nicely as a variation on the season’s soldier theme (while, admittedly, not quite making sense logically). Second, it shows how superbly Moffat has handled the character arcs, especially this season. Even if Clara’s explosion at the Doctor in Kill The Moon didn’t entirely come off, this plays with the consequences beautifully. The arc of her increasing hints at an underlying darkness and her emotionally-charged relationship with the Doctor continues to be compelling, and never moves so fast as to strain credibility. Mathieson does it so well that he actually carries the flawed set-up from Kill the Moon and redeems one of its flaws. (Also, Clara rocks that Flapper costume.)

He also gives Capaldi some magnificent material, which Capaldi actually elevates. His Doctor remains outwardly cold, but inwardly compassionate, and has all manner of great Doctorish moments, both funny and dramatic.

It’s not perfect - in addition to the flaws mentioned above, the resolution of the 66 seconds detail is anticlimactically a bit of meaningless technobabble. But it’s a solidly entertaining episode, full of humor, characterization, atmosphere, and heart.

But Flatline is even better.

Where Mummy feels reminiscent of Hinchcliffe-era Who, Flatline feels like the Cartmel / McCoy era in its humanistic, whimsical approach. It’s particularly concerned with teens, and especially troubled lower-class youth, and manages to paint a compelling portrait of the nature of their lives through Rigsy, graffiti artist, well played by Jovian Wade. Wade not only makes him appealing in his own right, but pulls off being Doctor Clara's companion for the episode, and it's almost a disappointment he doesn't join on at the end.

Its central concept - two-dimensional creatures trying to break into our dimension - is fascinating in itself, and the long-simmering ambiguity over whether they’re evil or just don’t realize what they’re doing actually adds to the horror. By the time they are confirmed to be evil, they begin to appear in the form of truly brilliant special effects showing their chaotic, 2D attempts to be 3D. It’s a rare case where a CGI monster is genuinely frightening visually.

The episode’s two gimmicks for the Doctor and Clara are terrific as well, and probably could have carried their own episodes on their own at a stretch, but combined with the monsters, creates an exhilarating yarn. The Doctor stuck in the ever-shrinking TARDIS makes for all manner of lovely visual gags, climaxing in the hilarious sequence of the Doctor’s hand desperately trying to crawl away from a train, with Murray Gold rightly playing it as the most dramatic action scene ever.

Even better is Clara’s plot of being the Doctor for an episode. She takes on the role brilliantly, managing to be Doctorish without losing her Claraishness along the way. On the other hand, she turns out to be a little too good at the coldly moving on part, reminding the Doctor too much of his own self-loathing, which makes for a compellingly frustrated final scene. Jenna Coleman, as always, takes what she’s given and runs with it, making already great material sing. 

Director Douglas MacKinnon, in his third contribution this year (after Listen and Time Heist) again excels, playing the atmosphere and every scene dead-on. If it weren't for the two episodes following this, he'd be the clear choice for best Who director of the season.

The only part of the episode that really doesn’t work is the Doctor’s big speech about being the Doctor who kills the monsters and protects this planet and so on and so forth. To be fair, I’m rarely a fan of these speeches. For instance, that part in Voyage of the Damned where the Doctor basically announces his name, age, and place of birth, and everyone listening (and even the music) orgasms on the spot never did it for me. It just feels like the character showboating, and doesn’t really earn the dramatic point that everyone suddenly decides to follow him. But even that at least had Tennant playing it for all it was worth; this is probably the only time post-Sherwood that Capaldi doesn’t quite pull off a scene. And the underlying problem is the same; the part of the speech that isn’t “I am the Doctor” bit works nicely, but once he’s just bragging about his name, it falls completely flat.

But, really, that’s the only significant bit that isn’t great here. Flatline is fantastic; in Series 7, it would have been the clear highlight of the season, and a contender in almost any other. Series 8 is actually so good that it will have to settle for third or fourth, but that’s no fault of its own. On its own, it would be a promising start for a new writer, but combined, it’s a stunning debut, and a damned fine pair of Who stories.

RATINGS:

Mummy On the Orient Express: * * *

Flatline: * * * ½