Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with Comics: "Prisoners of Time"

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Prisoners of Time #2

Nick: I have you to thank for getting to read the Second Doctor’s new adventure on the comic strip page. I’ve no idea where I would get Prisoners of Time in the UK otherwise, beyond the First (Doctor’s) issue. So thank you!

Sarah: You’re welcome! The IDW Doctor Who comics are a very rare occasion where something Who-related is generated for and only available regularly to the American market. We’ve got two strands here: the new, modern Doctor Who comic (which started with David Tennant’s Doctor), and Doctor Who Classics, which is made up of collected and colored strips from the early DWM days. I have the first few issues of Classics, which presented “The Iron Legion” and “City of the Damned” and so on. They’re really nice.

Nick: My local library (in South London!) had the first collected set of reprints. I was dead excited to see that – the new colouring looks great, especially for the wonderful Steve Parkhouse era, which really deserves to be in technicolour. The only problem is that everything’s reduced down to fit on the page, so you give yourself the worst headache just trying to follow the dialogue. The Panini reprints have the edge, of course. But it’s fantastic that these stories are being reissued for a new audience. The Marvel comic authors did an amazing job of capturing the Doctor’s character – and the ethos of the show – and then scaling everything up a hundredfold. That’s difficult to do. 

Dragon's Claw

Sarah: Just thinking about those great hi-tech, no-holds-barred Steve Parkhouse comics reminds me of my own history with Doctor Who in comics. When I was a teenager I had to travel to Baltimore, Maryland a couple of times a year to see surgical specialists and the like. They weren’t the nicest trips, but one real perk is that Maryland Public Television was one of the last few markets in the USA to show Doctor Who – once a week, late at night on Saturdays, in movie format. And this was sponsored by Geppi’s Comic Shop. Well, I used to visit Geppi’s in the Inner Harbor, and I would find these wonderful issues of the 1980s Marvel comic. You didn’t have this in Britain, but it was a comic that ran for about two years, running colored versions of the DWM Tom Baker and Peter Davison strips (and sometimes, the monster-only “backup” strips). And Dave Gibbons did brand new covers for them, which was wonderful. (Intriguingly, IDW used those same covers for the recent Classics reprints, and often used the ‘80s coloring as inspiration for the better, subtler 2000s colors.)

The Tides of Time

I loved those comics, and later, I enjoyed the dozen or so issues I found of the British Doctor Who Classic Comics, which reprinted first, second and third Doctor strips from TV Comic and TV Action. So it’s no real surprise that I’m always trying Doctor Who comics in case I find something I like. 

What kind of history do you have with Doctor Who comics, Nick?

Nick: Like you, I got into Who in the so-called Wilderness Years, so I read everything I could get my hands on. That meant back issues of DWM, new issues of DWM, the occasional issue of Classic Comics (for some reason I rarely saw it on the shelves – and I only had limited pocket money in those days), and even some of those ‘80s Marvel reprints you mention. Like all my experiences of Doctor Who, it was a higgledy piggledy experience, entering stories halfway through and leaving them unfinished, zig-zagging back and forth in time. It was wonderful, though! Admittedly, for a while the weak point in all this cascade of paper was the DWM comic strip – perhaps because it was so retrospective, like the Missing Adventures of the time. It’s great that we got new Pertwee, Troughton and Hartnell comic stories, but at the time I found them unsatisfying. The McGann strip, with Izzy and Fey, is a completely different matter – it felt current, unpredictable and fun, and it’s a central part of ‘my era’.

Wormwood

Sarah: Oddly, I really didn’t go for the McGann strip at the time – I gave up shortly after the end of that first arc, with the Threshold defeated. Having gone back to them, with the Panini graphic novels, I’ve found I have a much more positive view now – although I think I still prefer a lot of the storylines that came afterward, including the ones with Kroton and Destrii.

Still, no matter what you think of those late ‘90s and early 2000s strips, it’s a bit of a shock to go from those to the very disposable stuff that came in during the first couple years of the new series. A lot of it felt little-kiddie in a way I didn’t find particularly interesting, although I’m led to believe the DWM comic started to improve in leaps and bounds once they could give Tennant original companions.

Nick: It must have difficult, in the early days of the TV show's return, everything on a knife edge. But fortunately the Magazine had such an amazing heritage to look back to - with the Fourth Doctor and, like you say, original companions - that sooner or later it was going to find its own rhythm again. It still feels to me slightly stifled by the TV show, in a way that the Izzy comics never had to worry about - though I think they capture the Doctor a little better. Izzy, Fey and Destrii are the people I remember from the Eighth Doctor's era. He just wasn't a very 'cartoony' Doctor. But he was turned into a vampire, and then regenerated - neither Marvel or IDW can do anything like that!

Doctor Who / Star Trek: Assimilation²

Sarah: The IDW comic, especially, has felt a bit thin – and it doesn’t help that IDW is a company that exists totally on existing licenses like Star Trek and Transformers. At the end of the day, they’re pretty cheap. Often the covers to their issues are far nicer – and by totally different artists – than the pages inside. That probably reached its nadir with Assimilation², the Star Trek: The Next Generation crossover, which boasts some of the worst comic art I’ve ever seen. It's like looking at badly Photoshopped publicity photos.

In sharp contrast – and startlingly, because it comes from the same team of writers -  Prisoners of Time is the first Doctor Who I’ve seen from IDW that feels new and fun and celebratory, which is interesting, because I think Tony Lee’s Tennant comics dropped in bits of continuity all the time, and the miniseries event The Forgotten tried – but basically failed – to do a “Ten Doctors.” I think this one works for me because it is so simple: one issue for each Doctor, each with a contained story, each ending with the Doctor lifted out of time. Is it going to be a hugely intellectually-satisfying story at the end? Probably not. But it’s very fun.

Prisoners of Time #2

Nick: I agree. On the basis of this second issue especially, I'm looking forward to seeing what the other Doctors get. I think I would have had a lower opinion of the whole series on the basis of Issue One – it was diverting, and I liked the artwork (nobody looked like they were supposed to, except the monsters, but that’s Doctor Who comic strips for you – a fine tradition to uphold) but the pacing was bad, and the story pretty facile. This was a big improvement for me, how about you?

Sarah: Well, I actually got ahold of and read the second Doctor issue first – and I bought one for you, too – so I was a little confused when you reported back how you didn’t really like the first Doctor one. I agree, the Hartnell one is much weaker, and that’s not necessarily a statement about the art, which is off-model but better than a lot of IDW comics. I think it’s more to do with the even more constrained story – since the Hartnell issue has to set up the overall threat, it’s a few pages before we get to Hartnell and his companions – and a very out-of-character solution. I like the ones we’ve seen since then (Troughton, Pertwee, and Tom Baker) a lot more.

Prisoners of Time #2

Nick: I must say, overall it was still somewhat unsatisfying. Once again the pace was especially at fault – something the Second Doctor seems associated with, now, for me. Time was wasted on establishing the setting, and frankly I’ve seen the ‘world where you can buy anything’ done more than once in Doctor Who before, and better. But there are a couple of nice twists, and the Doctor’s using Jamie as bait feels faithful to a more interesting version of the character portrayed on telly.

Sarah: I don’t disagree, really, although the setting finds a funny way to use the famous “Look at the size of that one, Doctor!” joke. I mean, at the end of the day, these are 22-page stories. They really can’t go very far. The best they can do is present a sort of snapshot celebration of the era with the limitless visual budget of a comic, and in that regard, this delivers. You’ve got a classic team of the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe, all characterized individually if not remarkably; you’ve got monsters galore, including two from the actual Troughton era; you’ve got an alien world where the Doctor destabilizes an evil/controlling operation. That pretty much works for me. And you’ve got Lee Sullivan’s art; I’ve always liked Sullivan’s stuff, even at its most cartoony. It’s straightforward, it’s clean, it gets the job done. And admittedly, it very much comes out of that ‘80s style that found a balance between older, simplistic comic art and the more detailed and stylized stuff that started to come in more and more as the ‘90s approached.

Nick: In a parallel universe in which I am King of All, these stories would have been little pastiches of their respective comics eras. I think this is actually due to be the case with the Sixth Doctor’s issue.

Sarah: Seventh Doctor too, actually. I believe I’m right in saying they’re both being done by John Ridgway, who did all of the original DWM Colin strips and many of the McCoy ones. I would’ve killed for a fourth or fifth Doctor issue by Dave Gibbons, but sadly, ‘twas not to be. (I would imagine he’s just a touch too expensive.)

Nick: That’s a shame – but great news about the Sixth and Seventh Doctors. I suppose there is more of a congruency between the TV show and the comic strip with the Sixth and Seventh Doctors – Ace always seems to me a 2000AD-style companion, and works well in ink (especially in "Cuckoo"), while "Voyager" is all the imaginative potential of Doctor Who unbound. Some people may look on this anniversary as a celebration of the TV show only, but the real beauty of Doctor Who for me is its many weird and wonderful alter-egos. Even the ones that feel wrong are indissolubly part of the story. Wouldn’t you go for a Second Doctor story in the style of John Canning, with Zoe chucked in as a bonus – frenetic, brightly coloured, loose on ethics...

Prisoners of Time #3

Sarah: Yes, that would have been great! And it certainly would have been possible, even without the original artists, to homage those early strips. DWM did a 40^th Anniversary strip called “The Land of Happy Endings,” in which Martin Geraghty created Neville Main-style art that paired McGann’s Doctor with comic grandchildren John and Gillian.  I would have loved all of these issues to go in that direction. There are hints of it, though: Mike Collins’ art in the Pertwee issue includes several compositions that clearly reflect Gerry Haylock’s Pertwee art in TV Action!, and the plot of the Tom Baker adventure seems to owe something to Pat Mills and John Wagner.

The Land of Happy Endings

Nick: I adore “The Land of Happy Endings.” It’s one of the most beautiful comic stories the Weekly or Magazine has done, and probably its best use of colour artwork. The more overtly nostalgic material makes more sense in the context of an on-going narrative. Do you remember “Land of the Blind,” the other big Troughton comic strip (published in Doctor Who Magazine in the 1990s, during their ‘black and white’ era)? I remember it jarred visually, because the monsters (the winner of a reader competition) were so 90s-looking. Now I suppose I can look back on that as ambitious, but like several of those ‘past Doctor’ comic strips, it seemed unremarkable at the time – featuring the second Doctor but not about him, as the very best Missing Adventures seemed to be.

Land of the Blind

Sarah: I do remember it. That one would have been in some of the first DWMs I ever read, around 1994. You would have sent them to me; the first one you ever sent featured the previous storyline, with Pertwee and Liz and the psychic assassin. I was probably a little bit more excited by those strips than you were, because at the time I genuinely preferred the Missing Adventures to the New (strong and recognizable characterization almost always being my preference in a Doctor Who story). I don’t remember a great deal about “Land of the Blind,” but the art was by Lee Sullivan again – and to my knowledge, it’s the only DWM comic to ever be set in the second Doctor’s era.

Nick: That seems a shame, given that the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe seem like ideal lead characters for a comic. It really gives this issue some immediacy. Even bearing in mind many readers won’t even have seen "The Mind Robber" or heard "Evil of the Daleks," you know they’re getting half an idea of who these guys are when they appear, and the other half on their first line of dialogue. They’re uncomplicated and at the same time wonderfully odd. I suppose that means, conversely, the TV show in 1968/9 was becoming more cartoonish itself. Thank goodness it was well cast.

Eskimo Joe

Sarah: Yeah, I think the Troughton crews are very well suited to comics, actually, because they’re very distinct personalities. That’s something that’s really missing from those TV Comic strips of the 1960s, don’t you think? I admit to never having read any of the Jamie strips, but John and Gillian are total ciphers. And Troughton’s Doctor is a sort of grumpy action hero, half Hartnell and half Pertwee, apparently played by Patrick Macnee in a wig. I still have fondness for those old strips, though: Troughton with his utility belt and his laser gun, clad in purple check trousers. What do you think of them?

The Doctor Strikes Back

Nick: Having gone back and read a few, I have to say I find them extremely diverting as a perversely peculiar version of Doctor Who – and the wonderful thing about Who is that there’s no reason these stories shouldn’t have happened, the character has changed so many times that there’s no reason he should have become a zany inventor with a ray gun, just for a while. That said, unlike (say) the stories in Hartnell’s annuals, I don’t think I’d enjoy them if it wasn’t for their relation to the originary show. They’re zany, it’s true, but all the more so for seeing the Tenth Planet Cybermen behaving completely ludicrously, and the Quarks leaping about and squawking of their own accord (though it would have been a fabulous twist in their original stories if we found out Dominators Rago and Benylin were being telepathically controlled by their chirrupy little robot pals – they thought they were the villains but in fact they were just doing the leg work).

Sarah: I like the way you think! I’ve just been reading the first and second Doctor sections of Paul Scoones’ excellent The Comic Strip Companion – buy it from TELOS Books if you haven’t already, kids. It’s a guide book to the old comics, as well as analysis and (some) behind-the-scenes info about storylines and communications between TV Comic and the BBC. One thing that’s really jumped out at me is how bloodthirsty most of the Troughton strips are – and how much more bloodthirsty they were often intended to be before Peter Bryant or Terrance Dicks clamped down on them. Am I wrong in thinking that the outrageous cartoon violence is the main takeaway from these things? Can it be a coincidence that the major line you and I both seem to remember is “Die, infernal creatures, die” (as the Doctor shouts while gunning down a giant spider)?

Cyber-Mole

Nick: It’s an interesting perspective on how the show was perceived in the sixties: silly, adventurous, but bloodthirsty too. The story of the Cyber-Mole begins very atmospherically, with the Cybermen landing by night in the woods and tunnelling into the earth, but ends with the Doctor taking them by surprise and gunning them down...! I was also struck by the Doctor deliberately scattering a coven of witches, whose Grand High Witch (I think that’s her name – or am I thinking of Roald Dahl...?) bedevils him with a giant crab and indestructible net. The Doctor and his companion fool the witches twice by shouting from behind some rocks, and there is some talk of how superstitious the witches are (but then, you think, they are real witches – therefore implying some version of Satan nearby – what a pity we never had that story). The Doctor – sorry, Dr Who – is a cartoon version of the might of science. I can’t think (off the top of my head) of another comics hero with the same combination.

Invasion of the Quarks!

Sarah: Perhaps the best corollary I can think of the gun-toting, action man version of Sherlock Holmes who developed in the Basil Rathbone films of the 1940s: they’re both essentially peaceful, intellectual characters who are made more violent in the face of “great evil.” And you’re right to say that we wouldn’t even be looking at these comics if they didn’t have the words Doctor and Who on them, and if we weren’t sort of bizarrely fascinated by the twisted reality they present. Certainly, I never would have imagined Tenth Planet Cybermen on skis, Quarks armed with killer bees, or the exiled Doctor becoming a celebrity on the chat show circuit. It’s a glimpse into a Doctor-Who-that-never-was, and thankfully, never-is except in these odd little stories! They’re so outlandish they’re actually endearing.

Nick: Next week we’ll be discussing some more cartoon Troughton, in the form of Cosgrove Hall’s animated reconstructions. Now I’m dreaming of a static reconstruction, done by Lee Sullivan (or perhaps Adrian Salmon?) passing across the screen. Like a cross between Loose Cannon and Jackanory. Wouldn’t that be something?

Sarah: That would indeed be something. At this point, though, we’re almost past recons. It’s a bit of a relief, isn’t it?

Nick: It is good to see Troughton, Hines and Padbury – and next week, Nicholas Courtney! – as they are really the living structure on which a very comic book world of space monsters is based.

Sarah: Fasten your seatbelts for a long one, everybody…

NEXT WEEK

The Invasion

Serial UU: "The Mind Robber"

Sarah: Well, Nick, we’ve come to a moment I’ve certainly been awaiting with anticipation. "The Mind Robber" was only the third Doctor Who story I ever saw – following "The Five Doctors" and "The Dæmons." It was the second VHS I bought with my own money, and it was the first one I kept. As a child, I absolutely adored it. I watched it over and over again. When my family moved to Argentina for a year, I steadfastly made my own cassette recording to take with me for listening. I think I can say, without any hint of hyperbole, that this is the story that cemented me as a true-blue, lifelong Doctor Who fan. What’s your history with it, Nick?

Nick: Well, I don't remember anything as specific as that. I do recall the video being a Christmas present when I was a kid, and I've always thought of it as one of Doctor Who's highest points. I’ve been a bit wary of it more recently: I’ve thought of it as a good idea over-stretched. In the context of our re-watch, though, it stands out like a volcano of creativity in a dull, flat plain. It's funny, too, how you can become accustomed to something. Watching the first episode again, I tried to imagine what this would have looked like to the original viewer. I can't think of a more disturbing image for a child at the time than the TARDIS blowing apart in space.

Sarah: The first episode has to be, I think, one of the very best single episodes ever. There is simply nothing wrong with it at all, and everything that’s right. I even love that it begins with what could be assumed, if you didn’t know the context, to be the typical coda of an adventure with the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe. It’s that little bit of security, of normalcy, before everything starts going insane.

Nick: The thing that struck me is that it's very David Whitaker! Just the regular cast, trapped in the TARDIS, fluid links failing, weird images on the scanner. The show's been preoccupied with monsters ever since Dalekmania, but this is a great reminder that the show is at its strongest when the emphasis is on the Doctor and his companions, and thankfully this team is really strong (it might not have been so good with Victoria aboard!). And things keep mounting in tension: it's when things seem to have settled down most that the danger is greatest.

Sarah: I think if I had to point to the specific moment when my fate as a fan was sealed, it would be in that marvelous first episode. The White Robots surround Jamie and Zoe and they see a vision of themselves in negative (well, negative costumes), beckoning in a “come here” manner. I was a very cowardly child and I was frightened by TV and movies really easily, and I think that moment was just frightening enough for me. It had one foot in what was safe and identifiable and known, and one foot solidly in the realm of terror and horror and mysteries. (Indeed, watching it now, I immediately think of Kubrick’s The Shining.)  It wasn’t much longer afterward – a year, maybe two – that I started watching repeats of The Twilight Zone, and then, The Prisoner, which have since become two of my other favorite programs. And I think overall, "The Mind Robber" is a child’s version of those: it’s filled with iconic, surrealistic images; ideas that turn reality on its ear; sound effects that invite you to wonder, “What if…?”

Nick: Yes, I think a lot of the imagery in the rest of the story feels more like The Avengers - the big rival for British TV fantasy at the time, I would imagine - but Episode One is even more unconstrained, even more dreamlike. I think the most striking moment is Zoe's scream overlaid on an image of her smiling face, as she beckons the Doctor into the void. That's the sort of surreal juxtaposition that really gets down to the unconscious and tells you something is wrong. The cliffhanger is amazing because we have no story to cling to – these are just senseless images of complete disintegration. The theme music feels like it was composed to follow that sequence!

Sarah: Something else that astonishes me – and has astonished me, actually, in recent weeks – is the marvelous use of sound. There is nothing quite like that sound the White Robots make. The eerie nothingness has its own, void-like atmosphere. Zoe’s scream – and it’s one hell of a scream – cuts like a knife through that first episode on a couple of different occasions. The Radiophonic atmospheres have been getting better and better over the last few stories, but I’m tempted to say this is the most fascinating soundscape we’ve had since Tristram Cary and the first Dalek serial.

Nick: Episode One is almost like a long music video advertising the Radiophonic Workshop. What a relief this story wasn’t wiped! It would be unbearable without the visuals – but you could follow it very easily - the gurgle of lava, the comfortable hum of the Tardis, the piercing whine of an invading intelligence, the shuddering noise of the void accepting its victims, and that oddly organic noise of the White Robots. There's something intangible about it - and truly alien - which reflects the theme of the story brilliantly. We were so lucky to have the Radiophonic Workshop, not an album of space age library music. But then, the whole production coheres splendidly.

Sarah: This is the first time we’ve had David Maloney as a director, though he worked on some earlier Hartnell stories in a lesser capacity. Right away, you can see he’s treating this with total respect. The DVD production subtitles note that he went so far as to make a personal request for the most accomplished camera crew, and it shows; there’s some very creative camerawork here that completely reinforces the dream quality of the story.  (See if you can spot, for instance, the unbroken camera move where Jamie and Zoe disappear off to one direction and instantly reappear from another.) 

Nick: I must admit, I always thought this was a story that happened by accident. Cheap first episode, weird stuff thrown in at random, and a script that feels written as it goes along: all the sort of stuff that lets the raw material of the unconscious and the energy of the imagination out onto the screen. Some of that's true, I think, and some of the best 1960s Doctor Who was written at speed, when no-one had time to dial down the weirdness. But - seeing  this again, I realise how carefully and deliberately those images have been composed, how carefully written, how vivid it seems to have been in the author's mind.

Sarah: When I was in my teens, I was privileged to meet Mr. Maloney at a convention. I think he and his wife were a bit stunned that I even knew who they were, but they were terribly kind; they sat and talked with me at the launch party for 15 minutes or so, just the most proper and sweet older British couple you could possibly imagine. I was, of course, overly enthusiastic, as only a child can be, but they never let on that I was annoying them. To this date, David Maloney is the only non-cast member of Doctor Who I’ve ever met, and I figure if he remains the only one – yep, that’s a damn fine “one” to have met. (And yes, I asked him to sign my "Mind Robber" VHS. Wouldn’t you?)

Nick: And you got him to sign a Target novel of "The Mind Robber" for me! I've still got that (of course) and read it just last year. It didn't work terrifically well on the page - but it springs off the screen, powered by the energy of the cast and the clarity of its ideas. It's less frightening once we enter the Land of Fiction, but there's still an amazing underlying terror, as when the unicorn in Jamie's dream suddenly hammers toward the screen. And the forest of weird trees looks better than I remember it because - not in spite of the fact - it looks like something out of a pantomime.

Sarah: I think it’s an added bonus to the entire story that it has a “stagey” quality. I mean, my assertion has always been that the very best Doctor Who is played as theatre; that’s something my American friends rarely understand because television here is all about cinema, cinema, cinema. But you’ve got something disorienting like "The Mind Robber" and you treat it…not just cheaply, but minimalistically, and it becomes very surreal and otherworldly indeed. There’s this great bit in episode two where the Master just turns the lights on – and the Doctor’s entire world lights up. Simple studio lights, obviously. But it really works.

Nick: In episode three, when the Doctor and friends get lost in the forest, we should have seen the trees and things gradually superimposed on them; it’s such a shame we didn’t– it would have related beautifully to the animated sequence with Medusa’s hair, and the superimposed word puzzles – but knowing that, you can see how the entire world is meant to look flimsy and artificial. I adore the scenes with the Doctor on the roof of the citadel in episode five, with a night sky of painted galaxies. If you compare it to the London Underground sets of "The Web of Fear" you see how evident that would have been to viewers at the time ("The Dominators" isn’t a great comparison!). It’s a pity we have Frazer Hines on location for one jarringly ‘real’ scene – the only place that should feel real is the busy, disorienting set of the Master’s control room.

Sarah: It’s also got a lot in common, again, with The Twilight Zone and The Prisoner. The best Twilight Zones were often stageplays on a single set; the entire second half of "It’s a Good Life" comes to mind, for instance, along with "What You Need," "The Midnight Sun," and perhaps most especially "Five Characters in Search of an Exit." And the most surreal moments of The Prisoner are pure theatre, like the trial in "Fall Out." "The Mind Robber" is just keeping to a tradition of a sort of Brechtian uncanny: you know it’s an artifice, but the artifice somehow makes it more frightening, more potent.

Nick: A lot of Troughton’s stories are about the dread of losing free will, but this story is perhaps the cleverest and most disturbing of them all. I don’t think it was intended as a political parable but there was a growing suspicion in the 1960s that certain ‘histories’ were convenient fictions – and that it might happen to you, your life emptied of meaning. Hines and Padbury even make their own cuddly performances sinister in the final episode (‘Why do you keep saying the same things?’). It’s nicely stage managed too. The best Doctor Who makes a virtue of its shortcomings, and somehow there’s something magical about the way we cut from filmed sequences to the studio – from galloping unicorn to blow up photo – or the moment when the Minotaur vanishes before our eyes, simply by having its silhouette vanish, and the Doctor and Zoe visibly unfold with relief! Troughton and Padbury respond beautifully: the cliffhanger to episode 3 is really the same as episode 2, but I wouldn’t lose either of them – Padbury trying not to look, as the Medusa’s arm extrudes from the filmed sequence into studio 3 at Lime Grove…

Sarah: We’ve talked about David Maloney and, by inference, we’ve talked about Peter Ling, who was certainly responsible for most of episodes two through five. But one person who probably isn’t mentioned enough is Derrick Sherwin. He was only present for a very brief period of Doctor Who – he only ever produced one story, as I recall, although it’s a corker – but "The Mind Robber" seems to be very much his baby. He wrote the whole of episode one, and he also seems to have been responsible for many of the best and strangest ideas in the story. It was he, the production notes tell me, who determined that Gulliver should (almost) only speak in lines from his own book, which I think is absolutely terrific. He invented the little E. Nesbit group of children who taunt the Doctor. He even devised the way to replace Frazer Hines when he came down with chicken pox, and that’s got to be one of the most creative solutions ever concocted for an actor’s absence. He’s also responsible for the title – and it’s a nonsense title, when you think about it, but it fits all the same. I think there’s some real imaginative credit due him after all these years.

Nick: A little Googling about suggests that Sherwin came up with (deep breath) the Time Lords, the Doctor’s exile, UNIT and even the Autons – and given how, successively, "The Web of Fear," "The Invasion" and "Spearhead from Space" seem to crystallize a Doctor Who template (the impossibly alien Doctor defends civilization from the terrifying Other) which we saw only last Saturday in "The Bells of Saint John," I think the very least we could say of Sherwin was that he had the sort of vision for the show that Sydney Newman, David Whitaker and Verity Lambert had, a vision the show was missing for most of Patrick Troughton’s era so far. He gives the show a new confidence and energy. But he’s inventive too – just look at the first episode of this story. It perfectly extrapolates from Ling’s story into its ultimate surrealist dissolution of form.

Sarah: It’s interesting watching the layering effect of the first three episodes. In the first one, you learn that everything is not as it should be, that something is playing with our heroes’ minds. In the second, you learn that it’s all to do with words and language. In the third, the issue of fiction comes very much to the fore. That’s quite clever structuring, not bombarding the audience all at once, leaving them with something to wonder about each time. The lull finally hits in episode four, but not for long. We finally start to get a few answers, and we meet the Master of the Land of Fiction. The whole story clips along at such a remarkable pace you never stop to think about how thin it is, plot-wise; I mean, really, it’s just a quest to get through the (sometimes literal) maze to the heart of the castle. It’s – wait for it – a children’s story, told simply, with only five characters of any substance. But it’s an immensely fun, clever, surprising children’s story, all the same. You’re never really left wanting by those 18- or 19-minute segments. 

Nick: This is the most overtly child-oriented era for the show, and it seems typical of the Second Golden Age in children’s literature for it to make such confident use of fantasy: doesn’t it remind you Madeleine L’Engle, or The Phantom Tollbooth? It’s a shame the plotting goes skew-iff. We’ve had our quest to the Emerald City, and our revelation that the man behind the curtain is (at least in part) a giant glass brain spinning on a stick, and that it’s been using Frank Richards for a hundred years, and now it wants Dr Who to take over (or something). That would be enough, along with the tricks that draw the Doctor into his web, and the ‘press all the buttons at once’ conclusion, which makes a sort of sense, albeit the inelegant sort – but there’s an ‘invasion of Earth’ storyline that’s farted away – then we destroy the Land of Fiction and cross our fingers we get sent home. It could have developed more organically; perhaps we should just see it as a sign of vaulting ambition, though. Makes a change from the last three stories!

Sarah: Along with Marius Goring, is Emrys Jones the only Powell and Pressburger star to make it into Doctor Who? (No, wait. There’s Michael Gough, too. But still.) I like that even when we meet the villain, he’s not the real villain. In fact, we never quite learn who the villain is. I think that inspired me as a child – I was always writing some variation on a fan-fiction sequel where the Doctor returned and faced a new power in control of the Land of Fiction. And I loved "Conundrum," which was the Virgin New Adventures sequel. (I should give that another read one day…)

Nick: It amuses me – and depresses me somewhat – that the Second Doctor’s enemies are all so similar in appearance and intent (Quarks and Martians excepted) that they could all be tied together into one epic narrative: an insidious disembodied intelligence animating Cybermen, seaweed and fictional characters in its ceaseless urge to conquer. The weird force in the crystal brain is even referred to as an Intelligence, which doesn’t help. But yes, there is something fascinating about this evil power and the frail children’s writer who serves him. And it seems to me as if the current Master wants the Doctor to take over from him (‘I can’t go on forever!’) but the Intelligence isn’t that bothered, which is strange. It’s a shame they didn’t save that ‘invade Earth by turning everyone there into fictional characters’ storyline for a sequel – how amazing would that be…? ("Conundrum" was great – and I remember liking "Head Games" a lot too.)

Sarah: Yes, they brush the alien invasion under the carpet fairly quickly here. In fact, they brush the entire resolution under the carpet; there's not even a final scene to tie everything up, something that's always alternately fascinated and slightly repelled me. (As a child, I found it boggling that the VHS just...ended.) In a lot of ways, that fifth episode is actually pretty weak, plot-wise. It doesn't even have internal logical consistency; at one point, the Doctor says that he, Jamie and Zoe will become fiction if he writes them into the story, but ten minutes later, he explicitly names Jamie and Zoe during his mind battle. It doesn't really make sense, although I'd argue it's still magnificently entertaining to watch. Troughton and Jones are like too overgrown children, battling it out: "It's now a battle of wits between you and me!" Hines and Padbury get to do some very creepy acting (Padbury, especially, seems to be relishing her few moments as Evil Zoe), and all the secondary characters get to come out and take a little bow. The only dud moment for me is the actual content of the mind battle - seriously, the best public domain examples they could come up with were Cyrano, D'Artagnan, and Blackbeard? 

Nick: Yes, although I love it for being a rôle-call of big names 1960s kids would relish (they nearly used Zorro too till they realised he was still in copyright) it comes across a bit flat now. What I really wanted was for some characters from Crossroads to appear (Ling, Sherwin and Terrance Dicks all met because of their work on the show, which Ling created, and it seemingly inspired the story a bit too). It wouldn’t have been so hard for one other TV character appear, would it? But like I say, the scene remains charming – and hats off to Ling and Sherwin, for making the most of the Land of Fiction idea (they really didn’t hold much in reserve for a sequel) and still making the story feel dramatically satisfying. As a whole, this was a very pleasant surprise, after the novelisation put me off last year. One of the best experiences of our re-watch, for me (so far!). How about you?

Sarah: Absolutely - one of the very best. Having not watched it since the original DVD came out around a decade ago, I was surprised and pleased just how well "The Mind Robber" holds up. What a joy that it has survived fully intact, because we won't come the way of out-and-out fantasy again in Doctor Who for more than ten years... And now we're about to head into some gritty realism.

Nick: I'm afraid we're not, Sarah.

Sarah: We're not? 

Nick: I've been having some trouble with the power supplies, and it looks as if we're unable to re-enter normal space and time. Something to do with Blogger, I think. We're going to have to take a side-step into the Land of Fiction while we recharge! Brace yourself, Sarah - increasing velocity and transitioning to fictional mode in 5... 4... 3...  

Serial TT: 'The Dominators'

Nick: And so, to "The Dominators." An alien planet - an experienced pair of writers - not quite six episodes - and Zoe. Well, live in hope, they say, and die in despair.  I had mixed feelings as my DVD player chugged into action. I do try and keep an open mind where a story has a bad reputation. This was a story I knew pretty well - I remember buying it in WH Smiths in Forest Hill when I was a kid and putting it on in a state of terrific anticipation - but I also remember thinking it had some pretty tedious parts in it too. I also kneejerk against the idea of an anti-hippie story - it's not exactly what I want from Doctor Who (thank goodness "Prison in Space" was never made). But you never know, I thought, perhaps it'll be less of a drag, episode by episode - perhaps - somehow - it will have some surprises.

Sarah: For once, I think you may actually have more experience of a story than I do. I never owned the VHS of this one. I remember either watching this with my friend Michael, or borrowing his VHS – once. I know I’ve only seen it once. And I know, at the time, I found it pretty boring. But that’s it – I don’t have any specific memories about it at all. In fact, it’s only because I saw the Doctor Who and politics documentary on last year’s DVD of "The Happiness Patrol" that I knew this was an “anti-hippie” story. Not that you can’t figure that out within about twenty minutes, mind.

Nick: Yes, it’s like a very broad comedy with no jokes. And yet there’s a parallel universe where Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln just sat down, sharpened their pencils and wrote "The Laird of McCrimmon," concluding their Intelligence trilogy (albeit not in outer space, as the end of "The Web of Fear" promises) and giving Jamie the best companion send-off since Susan. I wish we lived in that universe.

Sarah: ...Well, maybe. We don’t really know much about "The Laird of McCrimmon," except that it would have been Jamie’s last story and – possibly – the third Doctor’s first one. Of course, I say that, and it can’t possibly have been any less interesting than "The Dominators."

Nick: Oh, I think we know a fair bit: Yeti disguised as cattle, people with the second sight, Jamie falling in love, and him being the rightful inheritor of the estate. It would have been fun to do this – and set it in space. So we land on an alien world, colonised by Earth people, and there’s a country estate on Venus but it still belongs to the McCrimmons. That wouldn’t make sense but it would be fun, which this isn’t.

Sarah: It’s not even that "The Dominators" is truly bad; it’s just so listless. People argue, and then they leave. Then they get somewhere new, and they argue, and they leave. Then the Dominators arrive, and they threaten people, and those people try to go somewhere else, where they argue, and then they leave... You can see where this is going.

Nick: That said, the opening episode does have some interesting ideas. It’s an unusual set-up for the show, especially in the last year or so: an island of death in a sea of mist, and constant reversals: the island of death is a symbol of peace, the radiation has mysteriously vanished, but the fey outward bounders are still dead inside ten minutes (rather gruesomely too).

Sarah: That I’ll give you. The set-up isn’t bad at all, and episode 1 is probably the most successful of the lot. You always hope that a story is going to propel you from its initial intrigue in the first episode into something exciting and thrilling, though, and that never really happens. The radiation and the island and the mist are perfectly good window-dressing, but they’re mostly just there for the characters to talk about for the remaining four half-hours.

Nick: And I would say that the bully boy Dominators with their creepy robots are impressive villains – you get the sense, at least initially, that they get stuff done. Good costume, ghoulish make-up, and lots of really Class A staring (by episode 5 I think they could have just abandoned the drilling machinery and had Ronald Allen’s terrifying stare burn through solid rock). They are the Roman legions, marching through space in formation, occasionally erring from their course to casually colonise a planet of lesser beings.

Sarah: What, all two of them? I agree that their costumes are good, and Ronald Allen can stare for England, but I’m not sure I find them as impressive as all that. They don’t cotton on to anything particularly fast; they have to put everybody through all these tests to see if they even make a competent workforce. Perhaps their most interesting aspect is that they don’t seem to need to carry out their plan with any real speed, which is perhaps the closest comparison to the Romans; they’re Dominators, and eventually, they’re going to win.

That leads me to my favourite line in the entire story. “Doctor, what in your opinion do these Dominators want?” Oh, I don’t know. To dominate, possibly?

Nick: I think they’re quite interesting. Precursors to the Sontarans, perhaps; something rings true about their imperious tone, which (as in nearly all Sontaran stories) is nicely undermined when we get two of them alone, when they just sound like flamboyant school bullies. Something about their casual attitude to conquest (killing a few innocents is ‘unnecessary’ because it wastes energy – but they can’t help themselves) is exactly the sort of thing the Doctor should be up against.

Sarah: True. It’s a little peculiar how casual he is about the Dominator threat (at least, in a relative sense). If this were a later Doctor – Pertwee, Tom, Colin, McCoy, Tennant, Smith – he’d go all moral outrage on them.

Nick: Well, something tells me the story is actually more interested in critiquing the Dominators’ victims. Sort of, ‘you can see why Ancient Greece fell to the Romans – they were all a bunch of nancy boys.’ The villains’ in-fighting would be the story resolution elsewhere, but Haisman and Lincoln seem more interested in them being matched in aggression, rather than see their weaknesses explored: a sort of admiration for the bully. The fact the Doctor never confronts them - and is included in the critique of pacifism – his claim that they have ‘outlawed violence’ is shown to be an impossible fantasy – suggest this story should never have been written.

Sarah: It’s a really peculiar position for Doctor Who to take, especially after the pro-flower-power-ness of very recent stories like, for instance, "The Wheel in Space." In fact, it even disagrees with Haisman and Lincoln’s own work in "The Abominable Snowmen." There is, perhaps, an argument to be made that the monks are being threatened by their own unwillingness to fight, and they only save the day when they take up arms – but if so, it’s sold at a much softer level than the anti-pacifism story we see here.

Nick: Why did Haisman and Lincoln decide to do too much? Why go off on one with this interplanetary fluff? And if they were going to do that, where did their flair for atmosphere go? Why sacrifice dramatic zap for some satirical pap?

Sarah: I have utterly no clue. This is satire? This is a Star Trek: Voyager plotline. The crucial difference being that Voyager – which is not a show I particularly enjoy – could have told it in 45 minutes flat.

It definitely makes me wonder who came up with this idea – or, perhaps more importantly, who chose to run with it. Was it Haisman and Lincoln, or was it new script editor Terrance Dicks? Was it that Haisman and Lincoln were rewritten more heavily before, and Dicks was just more ambivalent to a change in politics between the stories? (In interviews, he always seems to respond to Barry Letts’ and Malcolm Hulke’s more aggressive politics with little more than a chuckle and a shrug.)

Nick: Hmm. Dicks had a strong political spirit, I think, though I believe that was nourished by his friendship with Hulke. Look how he stood strong with the Writers’ Union, a few years later, with all that he stood to lose. The DVD info text points out that "The Abominable Snowmen" has a similar subtext – men of peace must become warriors When It Comes Down To It (and we know Letts thought the treatment of Det Sen was insultingly casual). I think this is a story idea that might have sounded fun in the original pitch but turned out to be a series of slow, unsubtle debates.

Sarah: Now, intriguingly, talking about Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke brings up an interesting point. The "anti-pacifism" aspect to this story doesn't seem very familiar relative to what we've seen before in the Troughton era, but compared to what's yet to come, it should feel very familiar indeed. Think about it. The Doctor stands apart from a bureaucratic culture of people who do nothing to help themselves? Change it just slightly. What about when he stands up to a bureaucratic culture of people who do nothing to help others? This is practically a dry run for his entire conflict with the Time Lords.

That’s an interesting point. As Alex Wilcock has pointed out elsewhere, the writers muddy their satire by depicting the Dulcians as a hegemony of old men. The kernel of the Doctor’s argument with the Time Lords – glimpsed here – might be resentment of apathy and neutrality during the rise of Fascism in the 1930s. (I’ve just been watching "The Lady Vanishes," and I’m thinking of Charters and Caldicott among others). The ‘beautiful people’ are being mocked, but there’s something about the Dominators - who are so evil that the Doctor can murder them without remorse, who belong to a massively powerful race that is still out there somewhere – they are a nightmare of men who were boys during wartime. At this stage of the series, they’re much more Nazi analogues than the Daleks.

Sarah: Can we talk about Quarks for just a minute? It doesn’t seem like anybody involved in actually making the show thought they were a great design; what do you think? From where I’m sitting, they aren’t a bad design; they work for comic strips, if you know what I mean. On TV, though, as soon as they move, it’s a problem. And I do mean move in any sense of the word, whether it’s their heads, their silly flailing arms, or their wooden soldier legs. There’s one moment when a Quark gets blown up and all that’s left are his little stumpy feet! I howled with laughter, I’m afraid.

Nick: Yeah, they’re not quite there – but then neither were the Cybermen on their first story, and the Quarks’ design is a dozen times more interesting than them. Their problem is the Yeti’s – they’re just too cute. It’s the feet, I think. And when they’re recharging, they do look like they’re trying to keep warm. I like the design of their heads (though there are several instances where it’s clear they don’t have 360 degree vision – which would be cool). Perhaps the crucial thing is there’s no Doctor Who quirk about them. They’re child sized robots. Any show can have robots in it.

Sarah: Their voices really don’t help matters, either. I’m not sure I was even aware until the DVD that they spoke; like the voices in "Tomb of the Cybermen," they were so unintelligible on the VHS I just thought they were randomly-generated “computer” noises. (Well, okay, I could at least tell the Cybermen were saying words.) Is this a Morris Barry thing? He seems to have been their go-to guy when it comes to robot monsters in quarries. Maybe he was so interested in getting his sets lined up with his shots he didn’t really care whether we could hear the Quark soliloquys.

Nick: There are some things to enjoy. This new TARDIS team works much better than the last one. They’re all somehow imperfect and unfinished, aren’t they? The Doctor is ostensibly an adult but has no real vocation; Jamie is halfway through an education, Zoe needs some emotional maturity.

Sarah: And as predicted, Jamie’s getting stupider, too. Or at least, they’re calling more attention to it.

Nick: Yeah, but he also destroys a Quark with a decent amount of cunning: ‘We had no laser pistols back where I came from...’ The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe all have the insufficiencies of childhood but they’re not diminished by it – they’re restless, full of curiosity and possibility. They need these adventures and they need one another, but each of them has a great deal of self esteem too, don’t they? A very nicely evolved team.

Sarah: No, despite my last comment, I agree. I much prefer this team. Zoe adds some much-needed vibrancy to the mix, and even if it does result in Jamie’s character losing a little intelligence, it’s made up for by the positives of a really cogent, individualized team. There’s no regular character who feels like dead weight now. Bye-bye, Victoria...

Nick: Everyone gets something to do, even with the guest character, Cully, involved. Jamie even comes up with the way to get the bomb thing – whereupon the Doctor has some business when he realises he can’t actually defuse it after all! A very funny twist, and it’s quickly obvious that Wendy Padbury can do comedy too. All good stuff for Troughton, who gets quite a lot to do, playing stupid, doing those tests.

Sarah: He does. I have to admit the “test” sequence in episode 2 is a very, very, very rare occasion where I’ve actually become a bit exasperated with Troughton and Hines clowning around. It just goes on forever. There are some genuinely nice moments, though: the bit where Jamie gets an electric shock and grabs the Doctor - shocking them both, of course - and the whole half-improvised routine with firing the gun. On the DVD commentary, Hines and Padbury clearly love that moment, especially when Troughton shifts from bluster to a more manipulative persona. (“We don’t like them very much…”)

Nick: You can tell these writers have some history with the show. You can also tell they’re a bit reactionary and behind the times. Look at all the female roles – line feeds and long legs. Though admittedly the girls’ costumes are at least flattering. The men couldn’t look more ludicrous if they had Sensorite feet and Voord antennae. It’s a pity Jamie didn’t have to disguise himself as one of them.

Sarah: As the resident girl-watcher of the pair, let me assure you that the girls look pretty daffy, too. The best one is the girl who gets zapped within the first ten minutes; she’s rather less attractive with her face fried off. Unfortunately, those Dulcian costumes only serve to make the others look even more like little children than they already do – yes, even the balding Cully. Zoe resembles some sort of pregnant 8-year-old. Not good.

Nick: Her dress does start to fall apart, though. That’s got to be worth something? And as the story progresses, Zoe ends up with more to do than Victoria was in all her stories put together. And no screams!

Sarah: One scream! At the end of episode 2. It’s an acceptable scream, though. I think I might scream if the entire building were falling down around my head.

Nick: It might be because she's being written by someone else, though. When Rago finally invades the Dulcian council, there is fantastic dialogue - thrown away – with one council member saying, 'Have you made an appointment...?' and another, 'You're not even on the agenda for this meeting!' And just as I was smiling in appreciation, a note flashed up to say that Derrick Sherwin and Terrance Dicks' rewrite was beginning to take over. From then on – I know you don’t agree – I think this becomes a fun story. The last reel is like New Who – catharsis for the supporting cast, the story resolved with some sleight of hand and a brief explosion.

Sarah: I don't totally disagree. I don't think it ever truly reaches "fun story" levels, but episode 5 is a marked improvement on the previous three. Things actually...you know...happen. It's frustrating in the same way as New Who, in a way, because the solution seems awfully easy, but what it actually reminds me of more is the TV Comic strip. (And that's incredibly appropriate, given the story we're talking about.) The Doctor's solution is pretty bloodthirsty, but he grins and claps his hands and acts like it's all a bit of a laugh. Okay, so it's no "Die, monsters, die!" (c.f. aforementioned TV Comic), but it did feel a tiny bit odd.

Nick: And there's first reappearance of the sonic screwdriver, which turns out to have been very New Series all along. ‘More than just a screwdriver, Jamie,’ says the Doctor, as he converts it into a blowtorch...!

Sarah: Again, weirdly TV Comic. It's not just a blowtorch, it's a little blowtorch gun! I half expected him to pull it out of his utility belt. Still, though, it made me chuckle, and that's worth something. Now I want to see Matt Smith convert his screwdriver into a welding tool for the new series.

Nick: Well, forty five years on, we’re about to see that new series back in action – while you and I, Sarah, are going somewhere very different....

NEXT TIME

THE MIND ROBBER