Time Stream #7 - The Sensorites

            In one of the DVD extras on “The Sensorites,” Toby Hadoke mentions the fact that this story is one that people just don’t really talk about much. Let’s try to remedy that here. Truth be told, I’ve been having a hard time starting this entry *because* there’s not a lot to say about it. I didn’t dislike it in the ways that I disliked “Keys of Marinus”, but it’s not on par with “The Aztecs” by a long shot. It very much wants to be otherworldly, and it tries SO hard, but it just doesn’t quite make it.

             

           One of the first stumbling blocks is the title aliens themselves.  The Sensorites are, for the most part, quiet and unassuming. They’re sensitive to noise and darkness. Aliens like this were never going to replace Daleks in the affections of the average viewer, and they do make for something different, but I spent the entire story just wanting someone to wrap them up in a shawl and pat their hands telling them “There, there, old thing.  Care for some tea?” They’re simply not that interesting even though the story desperately wants them to be. Their look of “old man in a jumpsuit” needed something besides their saucer feet to grab visual interest, and when a crucial plot point hinges on the fact that THE SENSORITES NEVER REALIZED THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME, there’s no avoiding that there is a monotony to their look.

           

          Something I did think was interesting that even at being the seventh story, it seemed like the program was trying to reaffirm how it was set up in the beginning. Ian is the action hero, the Doctor is a little tetchier than we saw him in “The Aztecs”, and Susan is showing some unearthly psychic ability. Barbara gets a bit shortchanged in this story, not least of all because Jacqueline Hill was on holiday for part of it. But after her fabulous performance in “The Aztecs” I wanted the Barbara Wright Express to keep on moving forward.  There is also a quick recap in the beginning of all the adventures the TARDIS crew have been on. Everyone is very sentimental about it all which is odd, considering they’ve almost died in every story we’ve seen. It definitely is a matter of playing catch up for the audience in case they’ve missed any of the preceding serials.

           

          As I stated in the beginning of this entry, there isn’t a whole lot to say for this story. It’s by no means the worst of this season, but falls squarely in the “average” category. The Sensorites, even the ostensible villain of the piece, aren’t that interesting. Their psychic abilities notwithstanding, there just isn’t enough there to make me care. Their first appearance, through the window of a spaceship reminds me of when Snoopy appears in the pumpkin patch in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and it kind of goes downhill from there.  There is earnestness to the whole production that just begs to be seen as a deep sci-fi adventure, exploring an alien culture, and even making a political statement on exploitation of mineral rights. But it’s the equivalent of when a small child draws a picture made up of scribbles and tells you it’s a cow. I can appreciate the effort and the sentiment, and bless their heart for doing their best, but in the end, it’s still a scribbly mess.

NEXT EPISODE: The Reign of Terror

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Time Stream #6 - The Aztecs

“You can’t rewrite history! Not one line!”

Aaahh, now this is more like it! After slogging through “The Keys of Marinus” it was such a treat to get to one of my favorite stories. I’ll say it up front that I unabashedly LOVE “The Aztecs”.  It simply works for me on so many levels. Characterizations are sharp and well done, with the guest cast showing up to essentially do a Shakespeare play set in Mexico. Tlotoxl is just an artificial hump away from full-on Richard III territory, but instead of being over the top, it works. Like in John Lucarotti’s previous story, “Marco Polo”, the setting is just as important as the characters themselves, and the set and costume design more than do justice to the Aztec empire.

            The regulars also are treated well in this story. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (or a skipping CD, I suppose) Jacqueline Hill is phenomenally good here.  The majority of the story’s weight falls squarely on her shoulders and she plays it for everything it’s worth. She knows what the Aztecs are and is determined to change them, to rescue them from themselves. More than that, she really believes that she can do it by herself, even after the repeated warnings from the Doctor. Her line reading of “Not Barbara. Yetaxa.” is a great moment and one of the best in the series so far.  

            I’ve not mentioned William Russell’s Ian as often as I should have. Consistently good, even when he’s not being the most scientific of science teachers, Ian really shines in “The Aztecs”. He truly gets to be the action hero here, what with all of the hand-to-hand combat and swordplay, not to mention some of his trash talking to Ixta. There is even an application of the Vulcan nerve pinch a few years before that other show made the scene. Susan also gets some good moments here, although not quite up to the levels of the others. She is believably incensed when told about an arranged marriage and suitably horrified at some of the Aztecs more brutal practices.  Just as a side note, what was John Lucarotti’s obsession with arranged marriages? It shows up as a topic in both this and “Marco Polo” just so Susan can talk about how no one will tell her who to marry…. and I think I just answered my own question. Let’s revisit this idea in a couple stories time, shall we?

            Then there is the Doctor. Damn, but Hartnell is great here. He’s likable, intelligent, shrewd, yet also stern, sometimes belligerent, and romantic. Yup, romantic. It’s been hand waved away that the Doctor’s “courtship” with Cameca was simply to get the information he needed.  Wrong. Wrong wrong. The evidence is all there, from his interest in her before he knows her strategic value, to the simple way he smiles when he talks to her. Yes, he practically spit takes his cocoa after he “proposes” but he seems to genuinely warm to the idea. He does keep her brooch before leaving in the TARDIS, and is a little wistful when doing so.  PLUS here is my own pet theory/head canon (if someone else has mentioned this I’d love to discuss!) In Episode 3, he and Cameca have a conversation about possibly one day having “a garden of our own”. Now in both The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors where is the First Doctor spending his time before getting dragged into those stories?  A garden! A lovely garden, in fact, and not one seen anywhere else in the series.  I think that after his regeneration, the First Doctor’s incarnation ended up in a garden with his fiancée Cameca. That’s what the romantic in me thinks, anyway.

            I’ve never been a particular fan of the historical stories, but watching the series in order helps put them into perspective.  It was certainly a welcome reprieve after “Marinus”, much like “Marco Polo” was worlds away from “Edge of Destruction”. The fact that the story is so good, is simply icing on the cake. “The Aztecs” is simply one of the best.

NEXT EPISODE: The Sensorites

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Time Stream #5 - The Keys of Marinus

            One of the things I have always loved about Doctor Who is that it has never been afraid to be ambitious. When that ambition is shared by all aspects of a production, Doctor Who is matchless. When there is something, or multiple somethings, that let down the side, then you get things like "The Keys of Marinus". Perhaps if I had spread it out over six weeks, I may have not found it so plodding. But watching all six episodes in an evening, I started thinking bad things about Terry Nation.

             

            To be sure, there are ambitious roots in this story: six episodes, ranging from psychological drama to a monstrous attacking jungle to a courtroom procedural, all reads like there would be something for everyone.  This might be where the faults begin.  The production simply didn’t have the strength to get from set piece to set piece without lagging along the way. The Doctor is missing for two episodes and frankly I think he got the best of the deal.  By the time we get to episodes 5 and 6, even the perpetually good Jacqueline Hill is stumbling over lines out of what could only be sheer boredom. Hartnell’s vacation seems to have invigorated him so that by the time he returns in “Sentence of Death” he is acting circles around the rest of the cast.

             

             This isn’t to say it’s entirely dire. Just mostly. Barbara again comes off as the strongest member of the TARDIS crew in episode 2. She is the first to realize the truth of Morphoton, and she even offers Ian a consoling shoulder – “It’s alright, Ian” – when he comes around at the end of the episode. If it sounds like I’m damning with faint praise, I am. It’s in this story that I could see why Carole Ann Ford started to get disillusioned with playing Susan. Her default emotion is HYSTERIA ALL THE TIME!!! If she was like this back in Coal Hill School, she would have been less “Unearthly” and more “Please stop crying over the decimal system, Miss Foreman.”

    

        Terry Nation had said that his writing of the Daleks was a “take the money and fly like a thief” kind of work for hire. It shows if you look for it, but not badly. “Keys of Marinus” in contrast feels like it is ENTIRELY made up of “Here’s an idea  -- gotta go!!” moments. Nation gets a lot of flak as the series goes on, but I was surprised that his phoning it in started this early in his Doctor Who career. At least later he has the Daleks, the Voord are laughably bad.

    

        I love this show, warts and all. I was disappointed to find such an ungainly wart this early in the show’s history, but as one of Hartnell’s successors noted, we have to take the rough with the smooth.  I am aware that there will be rough spots to come and The Keys of Marinus is going to be a lesser road bump in comparison.  But after a high degree of quality up to this point, hitting this first stumbling block hurts a little bit. Fortunately the next story more than makes up for things...

NEXT EPISODE: The Aztecs

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Time Stream #4 - Marco Polo

         The first reconstructed episode of this rewatch project has arrived! “Marco Polo” is the earliest missing story, and a lengthy one at that. Seven episodes, none of which survive, are represented only now by telesnap photos and the soundtrack. Luckily, this has been enough to make a reconstruction of this lost gem of a story. There is a condensed reconstruction on the DVD boxset “The Beginning,” but shrinking a 7 part story to a 30 minute run time doesn’t do justice to a lot of the subtleties of this story.  Fortunately I do have a full length recon and watched that in addition to the “official” one as preparation for this entry.

            This is also the first story that, going into it, I had no real experience of or strong memory of watching previously. I had watched the full reconstruction several years ago, but had not ever seen the BBC official recon, so I felt as if I was going into this story incredibly fresh and with no real pre-conceived notions.  Conventional “fan wisdom” calls this one a lost classic and even with only a reconstruction available, it is easy to see why. As only the fourth story in, this is Doctor Who’s earliest attempt at an epic story and it succeeds on so many levels.  The story is a gripping one, with the TARDIS needing repairs after landing on Earth and the crew becoming the guests/companions/prisoners of Marco Polo and his entourage on their way to Kublai Khan’s palace. Mark Eden’s Marco Polo is a complex character, swerving over the course of the story from a historically romanticized portrayal to frankly, kind of a jerk. His decision to simply take the TARDIS is key to the plot but I think it could have been done in such a way without making Marco incredibly unlikable. The antagonist of the story, Tegana, descends into mustache twirling villainy as the story progresses, but his initial assessment of the TARDIS crew as demons informs most of his decisions and portrayal. It’s a sharp character and his evil plans against the Khan feel somewhat tacked on – the complexity of Tegana gives way to a predictable episode of villainy, but his final end is still somewhat shocking. This also points out a failing of the official reconstruction: motivations of most of the characters are cut to the point of not existing and the story suffers for it.

            Some other observations from “Marco Polo”:

• Following on from the softening of relations in “Edge of Destruction” the Doctor acquiesces to Barbara when she tries to calm him down. Barbara also gets to show off her history background, whilst Ian gets to break out the science with his explanation of condensation.
• Susan is kind of a dilemma for me in this story.  She taps into her “unearthliness” when explaining her homesickness to Ping Cho, but wow she makes some bad decisions throughout this story. It’s not as strong a performance as Carole Ann Ford had in “Edge of Destruction”.
• Yes, it was 1963/64 when this was produced and aired. Yes, times and social mores have changed. But the character of Wang Lo, in a story that by and large did well by its Asian characters, is *ridiculously* offensive. Seriously. Mickey-Rooney-in-Breakfast-at-Tiffany’s level offensive.
• Tutte Lemkow’s eyepatch wearing Kuiju has a pet monkey and reminded me of Raiders of the Lost Ark every time he appeared on screen.
• At one point, my wife walked in the room and stared at the screen. “It’s just… pictures,” she said. Take note, Doctor Who fans, reconstructions are not for everyone.

“Marco Polo” has definitely gone up in my estimation. It is a terrible shame that we have no moving footage available. Waris Hussein’s direction is something I’d like to see. The production values are evident even in stills, the script is well done and complex enough to support a seven part adventure, and the incidental music is unobtrusive but evocative. Watching this makes me think it’s time for another story set in the Orient with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor. There is an untapped amount of source material and I think modern Who could do it justice. Seek this one out if you can, but only use the official reconstruction as a last resort.  There is so much more to the story than an abridged recon can offer.

NEXT EPISODE: The Keys of Marinus

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Quality Family Time

My kids’ Spring Break is this week – even with snow days, they somehow managed to get this entire week PLUS last Friday off. Of course, they don’t get out of school until late June. I picked them up Thursday night and they were here until yesterday, going home late afternoon. As I am currently unencumbered by the employment process, I was able to spend a lot of time with all three of them. Five days goes by in the blink of an eye, let me tell you. It was great to have them here for this “bonus” time (the week didn’t count as one of the two full weeks a year they spend with me, in addition to every other weekend) but the aftermath is no fun. When I drop them off to their mom, it usually takes me an hour or so to get home. That drive is so quiet compared to the usual laughing and singing we do when we’re in the car together. Last night was like the other nights when they go home after spending extended time here. The house is quiet(er), but it’s a bittersweet quiet as I miss them like crazy. Like any kids, they can be frustrating and exhausting but their absence is palpable and it makes my heart hurt. My kids are good kids and I love, love, love being their father. We have good times together and all three, even C1, are still happy to hug and snuggle with their old man and show some affection. I sometimes worry that if they were here full time that I might not be as good a parent as I hope I am, and am told by The Wif ™ that I truly am. The point is moot since, barring the unforeseen, they’re not going to be here full time, but I still wonder.

            Speaking of the kids though, I have to brag for a moment about C2 who has become quite a “jump in with both feet” kind of girl. She was the impetus behind a clothing drive at her elementary school, suggesting it to her teacher, who passed it along to the principal, until it snowballed into a school-wide initiative. Also, she had a suggestion for an improvement to this neti pot device she uses as a nasal rinse. C2 wrote a letter to the company, adorable misspellings and all, which made it up the chain of command to the CEO. He in turn distributed copies of it to his company, according to e lovely woman from the marketing department who called to speak to my daughter. The company was suitably impressed and a large care package of products is on its way here. Not bad for a nine year old.

            That’s been my week. With the kids here, I didn’t have time to focus on a Time Stream viewing or entry, but my hope is to have Marco Polo up by the weekend. Family time for Easter and Spring Break took precedence over nerd pursuits, although C1 and I *did* enjoy a couple of X-Files episodes. This entry is here simply to record for posterity how lucky I am to  be a dad of three amazing kids who make life better than I could have ever dreamed.

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