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.