Sylvester McCoy

Dear Gary—

What better way to end the year than to bid a fond farewell to the last of the classic era Doctors, Sylvester McCoy. In my original rankings I placed McCoy a dismal ninth stating that the creativity of the show was dying. I have to revise that statement, although I retain McCoy in the ninth spot. Upon re-watch of the Seventh Doctor serials I see that creativity was not the problem. There were plenty of clever concepts during this time; however there was a lack of development and follow through and these ideas were never done justice, perhaps due to a lack of time and money.

Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor also suffers a similar fate as Doctors Five and Six. Doctor’s One through Four have a definite presence as the Doctor that is missing in Five through Seven, and what I come up with is that the actors— Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy—were  not given the freedom to be the Doctor. At least my impression is that each of these actors had an idea of the Doctor’s character foisted upon them, whether or not that characterization was clearly outlined or fully defined. I haven’t given full consideration to this, Gary, and am merely speculating at the moment; but I wonder if the germ of this didn’t start with the notion that, because Tom Baker had been the Doctor so successfully and for so long, Peter Davison’s Doctor had to be consciously and distinctly different. From that point on, it seems, the powers that be saddled the actor playing the part with pre-conceived but not necessarily well thought out notions on how to play the Doctor rather than trusting the actor to simply take the part and run.

One of the more tangible aspects to this theory is in the costuming. One through Four each has a distinct wardrobe it is true, however it feels natural to the Doctor and the actors always seem comfortable in it. Starting with Five, however, the Doctor’s attire becomes too tailored and self-aware, epitomized by the question marks. Sylvester McCoy, at least, does appear at home in his hobo-like clothes, but the sweater vest is highly questionable.

In his first few outings Sylvester McCoy is more relaxed in his interpretation of the Doctor. At times this comes across as a little too much clown and not enough hero, but when he is able to successfully blend the two elements he is spot on. These first stories might not be the best scripts, but they are some of my favorite McCoys because of this. Time and the Rani, for example, is more or less dreadful, and Sylvester McCoy doesn’t settle into the role straight off, but once he calms down a bit and begins to show the wheels spinning beneath the comic exterior he becomes the Doctor for me.

Starting with Remembrance of the Daleks, one of the better scripts of the McCoy years, an image of the Doctor becomes evident as someone darker, more mysterious, and almost godlike. This could work but it is an ambitious undertaking and needs full commitment and clarity. Unfortunately, for me at any rate, it doesn’t work. When the show makes the concerted effort to depict the Doctor in this way, he comes off as irresponsible, devious, and at times heartless.

Under this persona the Doctor is more in control of his adventures; he is not merely a wanderer who happens upon events; he masterminds events. But it is under this persona that he leaves dangerous artifacts behind or launches them out into the universe and then forgets about them or doesn’t decide to collect them until it is almost too late (case in point: Remembrance of the Daleks and Silver Nemesis). Then he concocts elaborate schemes to defeat his mortal enemies (resulting in the destruction of the Dalek home planet Skaro and of the Cyberman fleet), and incidentally jeopardizes other people, other planets, and other races in the process.

This is the persona that the Time Lords were afraid of and put on trial, and for good reason. They just acted one generation too early.

And it is under this persona that the Doctor manipulates his companion. It has been a long time since the Doctor has had a friendly relationship, and in Ace the Doctor has finally found a true buddy. There is an ease and affection between the two that is refreshing. But then he secretly pulls the strings to lead her into situations she would rather avoid. He forces her to face her fear of clowns in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy; he brings her to the haunted house of her nightmares in Ghost Light; and he confronts her with her despised mother in The Curse of Fenric. He does all of this without forewarning her. These are not the acts of a friend or even a trusted teacher; these are the acts of a sadistic taskmaster. It is hard to reconcile the outward rapport they share with these furtive machinations.

There is no payoff for this persona. Perhaps given another season it would have come to fruition. But there never was another season. Not for McCoy. Not for this production team. The Doctor needs to be fully trusted. The audience should not have to wait to discover the meaning behind the mask, especially for more than one season, and especially if there is some doubt that there will be another season.

It is a credit to Sylvester McCoy that even given this dubious guise he retains the core elements of the Doctor. In the Curse of Fenric Ace accuses the Doctor of holding on to the facts. “You always know,” she says. “You just can’t be bothered to tell anyone. It’s like it’s some kind of game, and only you know the rules.” Like Ace, I get angry with the Doctor and with the show for concealing intentions. But like Ace, I quickly let go the anger and forgive and forget. The Doctor is still the Doctor, and all we can do is put our faith in him.

For the most part I enjoy McCoy’s Doctor; and I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Paradise Towers. However in hindsight, Gary, I think it was probably for the best that Doctor Who was given a rest when it was. Who knows where another season of McCoy might have led, but given the behind the scenes climate at the time, it very well could have put a permanent closure to the show that might never have been overcome.

I send this out to you, dear Gary, with the closing of the old year and with a hopeful look towards the new . . .

Survival

Dear Gary—

Ace: “Home.”

Doctor: “Home?”

Ace: “The TARDIS.”

Doctor: “Yes, the TARDIS.”

For me, Gary, Survival is all about home; more so than the titular concept.

“You bring me back to the boredom capitol of the universe,” Ace complains, even though it was her request to return to her hometown of Perivale. Her interest, however, only goes so far as to discover what her old mates are up to. She has no desire to relieve the desperate fears of her monster of a mother, despite having just left the baby Audrey in The Curse of Fenric with the words “I’ll always love you.” Guess she hasn’t done as much growing up as we were led to believe.

Ace doesn’t find what she’s after in Perivale. Her mates are gone; married, moved on, or vanished. The only one left behind is a lackluster Ange. “Either you were dead or you’d gone to Birmingham,” Ange tells Ace of her presumed fate. “We were the only life there ever was around here,” Ace says of her missing friends. The depressed and dingy town no longer has anything to offer her.

The planet of the Cheetahs, on the other hand, entices. Whisked off into that world by Karra, Ace finds herself feeling more at home. “I feel like I belong here,” she tells the Doctor. “I can smell things as clear as pictures,” she continues as the spell of the place begins to take hold.

Ace discovers her missing mates here; however they do not extend the same sense of belonging as they once did. Bickering and barely managing to survive, the small group hardly welcomes her with open arms. Karra, on the other hand, lures Ace to the thrill of the hunt. “Smell the blood on the wind,” she cries. “Hear the blood in your ears. Run; run beyond the horizon and catch your hunger.”

Possessed by the blood lust, Ace turns to the Doctor for guidance. “It’s all right, Ace,” the Doctor tells her, “we’re going home.” Infected as she is, Ace has the power to teleport home (and she doesn’t even have to click her heels three times). Ace returns the group to Earth, to Perivale, next to the TARDIS. Of the three, it is the TARDIS that has the greatest pull. “What are we hanging about for,” Ace asks; she is ready to leave Earth and Perivale behind.

However the Doctor can’t leave just yet. The Doctor has unfinished business with the Master.

Like Ace, the Master is being influenced by the Cheetah planet. However the Master no longer has a place he can call his home. He needs Midge to transport him to Earth.

The idea of the Cheetah people is a good one. Essentially they are fun loving, as the Master explains, but when hungry they turn to the hunt. “You kill people; you eat people,” Ace says to Karra. “When I’m hungry I hunt,” Karra concedes. “When I hunt, I eat.” It is simple; it is survival.

This theme of survival is best exemplified by the Cheetah people, although much is made of Sergeant Paterson and his macho posturing. But Paterson only talks in platitudes; he doesn’t teach anything and I don’t even think he understands what he says. As the Doctor points out: “Survival of the fittest; rather a glib generalization.” About the only lesson his self-defense class learns is to kick someone when they are down. When put to the test, Paterson falls apart; he obviously is not one of the fittest.

The Cheetah people, on the other hand, are more poetic in their interpretation of survival, even though it is a stripped down, basal animal instinct; and both Ace and the Master find it hard to resist. Interesting that Paterson, for all of his ‘survival of the fittest’ talk, never succumbs to this primal nature of the planet. In fact when Ace returns him to Perivale he blocks all memory of the place from his mind, chalking it up to a stress-induced blackout.

Midge, however, turns himself over completely. His confrontational character combined with a weak mind is ideal for the conversion. Midge doesn’t even remember his own name. “You are all animal now,” the Master gloats over him, boasting of his own stronger will that can hold out against the contaminating spirit. This animalistic Master is a much more menacing villain than he has ever been.

The Master and Ace both have the mental capacity to keep the planet’s influence under some control. It takes the Doctor, however, to overcome it. “If we fight like animals,” he yells, “we’ll die like animals.” It is ultimately a bit simplistic. While the Master has decided to give in to the brutal power and use it to advantage—“If I am to become an animal, then like an animal I will destroy you, Doctor; I will hunt you, trap you, and destroy you”—the Doctor merely gives up the fight and all is saved. “If we fight like animals, we’ll die like animals;” and conversely I suppose, If we don’t fight, we live. In any case, it works. The Doctor is transported off of the dying planet back to Earth and the TARDIS—home.

It is a neat little story, but lacking. I could state the obvious—the Cheetah people are too cute and cuddly to be a threat. Then there is the fact that Paterson is too one dimensional; a little depth would have made his ‘survival of the fittest’ mantra more meaningful. Midge and his boy gang are a bit of a laugh. And what is up with that big bang of dueling motorcycles? It’s not just the effect that falls short, but the intent. Why would the Doctor get on the bike to begin with; what happened to the Doctors cry of “if we fight like animals, we’ll die like animals?” No, he ignores this sage advice and risks his own life, not to mention he kills Midge in the process. Somehow the Doctor is miraculously saved from this mighty crash by a strategically placed sofa in the middle of the field.

The end, too, is abrupt and light on explanations. The planet is being destroyed around the Doctor and the Master as they wrestle. According to the Doctor: “This planet’s alive; the animals are part of the planet; when they fight each other, they trigger explosions; they hasten the planet’s destruction.” One has to wonder how or why the Cheetah people, a people who hunt and kill and fight, ended up on such a planet to begin with. But it is an interesting phenomenon that could have been explored more fully and to greater effect. As it is, it is just a matter of convenience for some dramatic alien-planet-being-destroyed shots as the Doctor and the Master tussle. Somehow the Cheetah people suddenly vanish, but the Doctor’s “They’ve been taken back to the wilderness” doesn’t quite satisfy.

Overall an interesting serial that could have been so much more.

More time, more budget—who knows? Alas, dear Gary, time ran out on the good Doctor, at least for quite some time. It is fitting that this last story of the era concerned home and that it establishes the TARDIS as exactly that. The TARDIS, after all, is what makes Doctor Who Doctor Who.

And so I close, Gary, with the Doctor’s parting words:

“There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea’s asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea’s getting cold. Come on, Ace, we’ve got work to do.”

Here’s hoping, Gary, that your tea is not getting cold.

The Curse of Fenric

Dear Gary—

“They say evil was once buried here.” It’s a good premise for a Doctor Who serial, and The Curse of Fenric has many of the elements to be a first class story. I wish I could like it. It wants me to like it; it tries really hard. I think that is the trouble. It takes itself too seriously.

By viewing The Curse of Fenric in the serious vein it is intended, I end up poking holes in its pretense.

“Why is everyone round here so interested in Vikings?” My question exactly. There is nothing overwhelmingly Nordic about the story. The stage is set beautifully with a ghostly carving of a sunken ship’s dragon head lurking beneath the waters, some old runes that need deciphering, talk of a Viking curse, and Nordic names on some gravestones. But then we are not treated to anyone remotely like a Norseman. Instead we have a cast of British and Russian soldiers who apparently share a lineage with those long ago seafarers but bear no resemblance. And rather than taking place in the land of the North the action plays out along the Yorkshire coast. To complete this mishmash, we have a stolen Oriental vase, a World War II setting, a replica of the German naval cipher room in Berlin, and vampires—or rather Haemovores—a future link in the evolutionary chain of Homo sapiens. The set up of Viking mythology is wasted.

The runes are the biggest waste. Much is made of these ancient writings. Much time and effort is expended on translating them. There is even a giant ULTIMA supercomputer devoted to their deciphering (never mind that there is a war going on and that there are military communiqués that probably could use decoding) along with the expert Dr. Judson. “The ULTIMA machine can break the most sophisticated Nazi ciphers; some ninth century scribbling shouldn’t be much of a problem.” Except that the ninth century scribbling that everyone is so interested in has already been translated long ago by Reverend Wainwright’s grandfather, and they don’t reveal anything that most everybody doesn’t already know or could guess. “We hope to return to the North Way, carrying home the Oriental treasures from the Silk Lands in the east, but the dark curse follows our dragon ship.” Just a retelling of the ancient lore; no new secrets divulged; simply some exposition for the viewing audience.

I also have to wonder about those British and Russian soldiers. They are on the same side in their war against the Germans, yet as the story begins the Russians are sneaking in to the British naval base to steal the ULTIMA machine. They slaughter a bunch of soldiers on the beach in the process, and are ready to murder two innocent East End evacuees as they frolic in the water.  But by the end of the serial these battling allies are working together, their slain friends forgotten.

The Russians are surreptitiously aided in their raid by Commander Millington. Millington is so fixated on fighting Germans that his office is modeled after the German naval cipher room complete with Hitler portrait. As the Doctor explains, “He’s just trying to think the way the Germans think.” The Russian are fighting this same war with him, yet he engineers their abduction of the sabotaged ULTIMA machine that will eventually decimate the Kremlin. He is thinking ahead to when the war is over and the Russians will potentially be enemies. But then shouldn’t he wait in his destructive plans until, oh, I don’t know, after the war? His failsafe is that the poison won’t be released until a particular word (love) is decoded, and he therefore thinks the timing of the detonation can be controlled; but who is to say that this word won’t be incidentally decoded before that time?

OK, this is not really Millington’s idea; he is merely a pawn—a Wolf of Fenric. This brings me to Fenric. Now Fenric is supposed to be a pretty smart guy, and powerful too I would imagine because even entrapped he has the ability to influence minds and transport people through time and space. Yet he seems content to stay in his prison for centuries while he maneuvers and manipulates his Wolves in some elaborate scheme rather than simply having one of them find and crack open his flask. And he has had centuries to ponder on this supposedly insoluble chess game with the Doctor and still can’t figure it out, yet Ace can come up with the solution out of the blue. I can’t imagine why this mighty being is flummoxed by a game of chess to begin with. I wonder if a game of tic tac toe would suffice. And when Fenric does finally solve it (with the aid of Ace), I don’t know what all the fuss was about. What, the chess board bursts into flame? That’s it? That was its intended fate by order of Commander Millington anyway, so what’s the big deal? There are no great lightning bolts of destruction; no earthquakes; no tidal waves; not even gale force winds. Nothing but a burning chess board.

A freed Fenric doesn’t seem much different than a trapped Fenric. He has a body ("Evil needs a body.")—first Dr. Judson and then Sorin when Judson’s body proves too weak to undergo even the mental agonies of a tricky chess move—but he does little more than influence the minds around him, which is what he was doing while kicking back in his bottle. If he really wanted to be effective in a body, he should have taken over that of the Ancient One.

The Ancient One is a remarkably effective Doctor Who monster in the mixed bag of Haemovores that are roaming the naval base at the command of Fenric. I’m not sure how long these vampire creatures have been lurking under the water off the coast in varying states of conversion and decay. They have apparently been luring unsuspecting souls, enough so that Maiden’s Point has quite the reputation amongst the locals, but not enough to have spawned any kind of investigation into mysterious deaths or disappearances. I suppose their presence is just some devilish fun on the part of Fenric and are conveniently on hand to cause chaos on the base to divert the Doctor and the soldiers from Fenric’s machinations.

The two ‘maidens’ Jean and Phyllis are unnecessary distractions. They become chummy with Ace in record speed, but then Ace has been forming instant attachments all over the place in this serial. They are snide and unlikeable as human evacuees boarding with the caricatured Miss Hardaker, and too much time is spent on them. Why the initial dip, other than to showcase Ace’s fears and her loyalty to the Doctor? The stage is set for Phyllis’ and Jean’s conversion at that point, but then it is put on hold and we have to sit through yet another journey to Maiden’s Point with this deadly duo. Vampire Jean and Phyllis are sufficiently creepy in small doses, but again we have too much of them and their attack on Hardaker is gratuitous. Their usefulness comes in putting a human face on the Haemovores, I just wish this could have been done more economically. And of course the payoff is their confrontation with the Reverend Wainwright.

Reverend Wainwright is an element that is right. His halting recitation of Corinthians 13 is simple and real. Wainwright is the very picture of the earnest young man of the cloth who has become disillusioned by the war and is struggling with his faith.

Faith, as it turns out, is the only weapon that works against the Haemovores. That is a nice twist on the vampire legend and works to great effect in The Curse of Fenric. Thus Wainwright with his failing faith is ultimately defeated whereas Sorin can walk away from the blood lusting mob with his belief in the Revolution intact. The Doctor uses the names of former companions as his defense, but I don’t know about that, Gary. Love, yes, but faith? I don’t know that faith is the correct word. This is perhaps where the two become confused, and I wish more had been made of this. Faith and love are the two themes of The Curse of Fenric, but it is faith that is put at the forefront; love is left for the subtext. “And the greatest of these is . . .”

It is in Ace that the two, faith and love, are most effectively represented. “I believe in you, Professor,” Ace exclaims as things come to a head. The Doctor must brutally break Ace’s faith in him. “She’s an emotional cripple,” he says. “I wouldn’t waste my time on her unless I had to use her somehow.” Devastated, Ace drops to her knees. “I had to save you from Fenric’s evil curse,” the Doctor explains afterwards. It is powerful stuff, except I can’t figure out why Ace’s psychic barrier was preventing the Ancient One from attacking Fenric. Is faith that powerful that a Haemovore can’t even walk past a devout person to get to his intended target? Apparently.

Ace is the linchpin of this story; it is her coming of age tale. In addition to the belief she places in the Doctor, she displays superhuman mental powers, falls in love, seduces a soldier, and confronts her mother hate.

I never considered the sixteen year old juvenile delinquent Ace a genius, yet she not only outthinks the great intelligence known as Fenric, but she also discerns the true meaning of the latest rune when the expert, Dr Judson, cannot. How has Ace obtained all of this mental ability? She is supposedly one of the Wolves of Fenric; is Fenric therefore providing her with the knowledge? But then, why doesn’t he know it himself? Why does he need Ace to begin with? Why choose her; why transport her into the Doctor’s world; why manipulate her future? Is it merely to get the Doctor to cross his path, and if so there surely is a more direct route to that end; or is it to provide the answers he seeks to free himself, and if so, doesn’t he already have that knowledge, or does he somehow anticipate Ace will have the knowledge, or . . . ?

Too many imponderables; if this were a chess game I’d be trapped in an Oriental jug by now. Maybe I should get Ace to explain it to me.

But then, she’s busy falling in love with Sorin. Not busy exactly. She only sees this guy on the fly a couple of times. I guess it is the old standby love at first sight. Perhaps it was the “How about a little Cossack blood, eh?” line that swayed her.

Seriously, though, she spends more time with the guy she is trying to seduce; if you can call it a seduction. I marvel at the lack of discipline for this young soldier to walk away from his guard duty to tag along after a teenager. She doesn’t even wink or sashay; she simply stands at the door and then walks away; he trails along behind her as though entranced. That’s the only explanation I can come up with; he must be one of Fenric’s many Wolves and is mesmerized; either that or he wants to keep his eye on this young woman who appears to be deranged. “Sometimes I move so fast, I don’t exist anymore.” It’s some intriguing dialogue by Ace, but not exactly a classic pick-up line.

Finally we have Ace’s mother, Audrey. Ace falls in love with baby Audrey at first sight, much like she does with Sorin. But now, really—Ace of the superhuman mental ability to outsmart Fenric at a game of chess and to beat the mathematical expert Judson to the rune solution can’t figure out that a man and woman with the same names (first and last) as her grandfather and grandmother and who have a baby with the same name as her mother are actually her family—now, really?

But what really bothers me about this thread of the story is Ace’s hatred. Her mother must be a truly vile person to rate such unconditional loathing. Ace loves the baby but cannot reconcile this to the mother that she knows. “Love and hate, frightening feelings, especially when they’re trapped, struggling beneath the surface,” the Doctor tells Ace. A quick dip in the water and: “I’m not scared now.” All very touching and symbolic, but I don’t know that she has resolved her conflicting emotions. Has all the abuse she must have suffered at the hands of her brutal mother been washed away? In order to take this seriously I have to assume that Audrey is a devilishly wicked woman (perhaps the touch of Fenric?) and that Ace’s abhorrence is not simply teenage rebellion. But then I need more to the story than just a meeting with the innocent babe and a cleansing dive into deep waters.

The Curse of Fenric wants to dive into deep waters; it wants to mine rich story lines; it takes itself seriously but hasn’t the time or budget to do it justice. I want to dive into those waters and explore the themes of love and faith.

Ace chastises the Doctor: "You always know; you just can't be bothered to tell anyone. It's like it's some kind of game and only you know the rules." The Doctor is the manipulating mastermind, and this telling scene lays bare Ace's flagging faith more than the Doctor having to artificially shatter her illusions. This darker side to the Doctor could have been dealt with on a much deeper level if properly exploited.

Ultimately, Gary, I think the biggest handicap of The Curse of Fenric is Fenric. I wish he could be tossed out and instead make this a tale of the Haemovores with a bigger concentration on Ace’s actual relationship with her mother rather than a vague ‘I hate my mother’ attitude that is never expanded. That would be a story that could richly mine the themes of faith and love.

And the greatest of these, dear Gary . . .

Ghost Light

Dear Gary—

What the heck? Ghost Light is a nightmare gone mad. Even after viewing it several times and watching the DVD extras and listening to the commentary I still have trouble making sense of it all. But that is OK because it actually is a nightmare. This is a fantasy straight out of Ace’s head, and it does make sense in that dreamlike context.

If any Doctor Who serial needs to be viewed sideways, this is it.

Ghost Light, as Scrooge would say apropos of the season, is a bit of undigested beef, or perhaps a fragment of an underdone potato. Ace and the Doctor are sharing a nightmare; a nightmare called Ghost Light.

As in many a dream, one can discern a broad framework based on some semblance of real life. In this case, Ace and the Doctor must have recently been discussing Darwin, and combined with their space/time travels as well as Ace’s memories, they have concocted this adventure. A survey team consisting of three members—Light, Survey, and Control—is on Earth to conduct a study of all life. Their ship has landed in the cellar of Gabriel Chase; a house from Ace’s checkered childhood.

However, any resemblance to reality from this point is merely coincidental. Like the specimens found in Gabriel Chase cabinets, just when you think you have the story securely pinned down it comes to life in a fluttering chaos.

There is no design to the evolutionary chain transpiring in Gabriel Chase. There is neither rhyme nor reason; there is no order; there is no method to the madness. Light is not enlightening; Control is not controlled. What evolves within the walls of this Victorian mansion is a pandemonium of horror.

“This isn’t a haunted house, is it Professor?” Ace might well ask the question. A playroom that doubles as a laboratory complete with dead things floating in jars; glassy eyed servants gliding out of sliding panels in the wall as night approaches; and the day shift making a bolt for the exit with the warning “Heaven help anyone who’s still here after dark.” It’s a wonder that pouring rain and lightening don’t accompany this opening atmosphere.

“I told you I’ve got this thing about haunted houses.” It’s not surprising that Ace has been reminiscing about past fears, seeing as the Doctor has recently forced her to confront her dread of clowns. This latest anxiety resulting from her experience at the age of thirteen now lends the mood for this shared fantasy of terror.   

“The house is like a morgue; everything dead.” Hand in hand with haunted houses, we have this new imagery. Stuffed animals on the walls; bugs and insects pinned down in cabinet drawers; lifeless organisms pickled in jars; and the inhabitants of the house aren’t any livelier—walking about as though in a trance, hibernating during the day in cubby holes and under sheets, and with husks of shed selves littered about.

“That’s the way to the zoo. That’s the way to the zoo. The monkey house is nearly full but there’s room enough for you.” Haunted house. Morgue. Add menagerie to the list. Josiah/Survey has collected a houseful of oddities.

Chief amongst these is Nimrod, the Neanderthal manservant. (I still remember how Carrie laughed and laughed when she discovered a Nimrod Spencer in our family tree; but she shouldn’t have been surprised given the outlandish names of some of our nearest and dearest on that side.  Fittingly, Gary, when I did a search of Nimrod Spencer I discovered on Ancestry.com that we have our own missing link—Grandpa Spencer is non-existent according to that website. Instead there is a phantom child with no known facts and with a misspelled variation of another child who also is misspelled. Perhaps we don’t exist; or we exist in some Doctor Who alternate dream reality.)

Then there is Inspector Mackenzie who has been stored away in the bottom drawer of the specimen cabinet for two years (“beetles and bluebottles”). Revived by the Doctor, he barely skips a beat and carries on with his investigation into the disappearance of Mr. Pritchard. (Why no one has bothered to investigate his own disappearance these past two years . . . well, as in any good dream, it’s no use asking questions; people just pop up and do inexplicable things that seem to make perfect sense but upon reflection are completely illogical.)

The latest subject entered into the Gabriel Chase collection is the newly transformed Reverend Matthews—“Homo Victorianus Ineptus.” The most bizarre of this trio of curiosities. I haven’t quite figured out why he was invited to dinner in the first place; why he accepted; why he stayed; and how exactly he was converted into Monkey Man; but again there you go, Gary—dreams and such.

“This place is like a madhouse.” Yet another description of Gabriel Chase. A madhouse complete with a straight-jacketed inmate. Redvers Fenn-Cooper looked into the light and went mad. How the light got into his snuff box; what his snuff box has to do with anything; how he happened to be at Gabriel Chase; why he thinks he is still in the jungle . . . there I go again; it’s only a dream after all.

This haunted house/morgue/zoo/madhouse is the stage upon which the Doctor and Ace have set and upon which Light, Survey, and Control act out their play.

 Light had sent Survey out into the world; Survey liked what he saw and decided to stay. So he locked up Light and now he not only wants to stay, he wants to reign supreme. He wants to become the highest order of being on the planet Earth, and to his mind that would be the ruler of the UK. How assassinating the Queen will achieve that end I’m not sure, but then I’m not sure that Survey has a clear grasp of anything that he does.

Survey, or I should say Josiah as that is the name he has adopted for himself,  is so fixated on his plan that he is now stagnating in the house while he evolves. He has stopped going out to survey and instead spends his days in hibernation and his evenings enjoying the fascinating company of his adopted niece, the eerie Gwendoline, while being waited on by entranced maids headed by the lady of the house turned housekeeper, Mrs. Pritchard (Gwendoline’s mother).

Control, meantime, is sick of having to stay home all day with nothing to do. She wants to go out and explore, to experience, to change. Josiah/Survey has his hands full when Control breaks loose, not to mention contending with a house full of chastising reverends drowsing in the playroom, explorers roaming the halls looking for their lost selves, and resuscitated constabulary munching their way through their line of questioning. Not only that, but now Light has been released into the house and the Doctor and Ace are digging too deeply into the secrets of Gabriel Chase.

What better time to hold a dinner party? (“Don’t have the soup.”)

It’s a whirlwind of madness served up in a house of horrors.

“Only the madmen may see the path clearly through the tangled forest.” The Doctor’s lateral thinking does him justice in this dreamscape. None of the fantastic twists and turns surprise him as he calmly deals with each improbable occurrence. Except for Control. When she makes a bolt out the window the Doctor exclaims, “Oh, things are getting out of control. Even I can’t play this many games at once.” However, Control isn’t gone for long. “Ran away into big empty nothing,” she says upon her return. Control can’t escape the nightmare any more than the rest.

Even Mrs. Pritchard, awakened from her trance by the Doctor (why merely seeing a picture of herself with her daughter brings her to her senses when living with Gwendoline day after day does not . . .) remains trapped. Trapped in her memories of a happy past; haunted by the horrors of what her daughter has become, or perhaps what she always has been. Gwendoline has taken a little too much pleasure in sending people off to Java, her father included. They are both lost, Mrs. Pritchard concludes as the two are turned to stone by Light, who has been driven mad by a light of his own.

Things come to a fast and furious head in Gabriel Chase. Josiah/Survey is thwarted in his assassination attempt when Control burns the invitation to Buckingham Palace (his whole plan apparently hinged on that lone piece of paper). This causes quite a stir with Ace who inexplicably believes that tossing this tiny scrap into the fireplace will burn the whole house down, and she blurts out a confession of having done the same herself in her youth. The Doctor reads great significance into this fact for some reason, although I don’t see how Ace having burning down Gabriel Chase in 1983 has any impact on our Victorian story at hand (except that it is this fear which provided the spark that instigated this nightmare that is Ghost Light).

Light is defeated as well. The Doctor simply points out to him that his work will never be done. Light is confounded by the infinite variety of life on the planet and its constant state of flux. Light is so demented that even pointing out a change in his locale sends him over the edge. I don’t know who sent this survey team out to begin with, but they obviously didn’t choose their crew too wisely. In the end, Light extinguishes himself and his firestorm program magically redeploys its energy into the ship’s takeoff with its new crew of Control, Redvers, and Nimrod (Josiah/Survey having been subdued by Control).

Nothing can really be explained in Ghost Light. Like Survey’s cast off husks, Ghost Light is a muddled mutation of evolution. No wonder Light went insane; I don’t know what evolutionary chain Survey was following that led him from bipedal bugs to human being; anyone would go mad trying to sort that out.

As the credits roll the nightmare ends, and we are left trying to explain the nonsensical happenings in a logical world. It can’t be done. But viewed sideways and with a dash of the Doctor’s lateral thinking, it can be enjoyed.

Pleasant dreams, Gary . . .

Battlefield

Dear Gary—

I think I’ve finally cracked my code. I occasionally wonder why I enjoy some subpar Doctor Who serials more than others. I have decided that it is because while I can forgive the odd poorly constructed script and shoddy effects, I can’t get on board if there are no characters that I find interesting or worthwhile. Therefore, I can gladly re-watch almost any Doctor Who with the first, second, and fourth Doctor because I am fond of the Doctor himself as well as his companions. The same is true to a lesser extent with the third Doctor. With the fifth and sixth, however, I find for the most part that I need at least one guest actor I can relate to in order to overcome any glaring defects. So far the seventh Doctor is falling more into that latter category, although not to the same degree. Thus I like The Power of Kroll more than I do Kinda; The Invasion more than Attack of the Cybermen; and Silver Nemesis more than Dragonfire.

This is a longwinded way of saying that I like Battlefield despite the fact that more often than not I have trouble following it. Any Doctor Who serial that has Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is a good Doctor Who serial, even if the Brig is confined to a helicopter for half the story. In addition, Battlefield has the stellar Jean Marsh as Morgaine as well as the delightful pairing of Brigadier Winifred Bambera and Ancelyn. To top it all off there is a wonderful monster in the Destroyer (even if poorly used) and some decent locations. All of this makes up for the fact that the story makes little sense.

My basic confusion: Who are these aliens? Where do they come from? Why are they here? What are they after? Why are they fighting each other? I don’t think they know the answer to half of these questions.

Knights straight out of the Arthurian legend have arrived in twentieth century Earth from what appears to be outer space since they initially come hurtling down in a blaze of glory, but then we are told that actually they have entered our world sideways in time from another dimension and have gateways they can travel through. Then there is also a dimensional traveling spacecraft parked at the bottom of Lake Vortigern, and who knows how long that thing has been rusting away down there with no one the wiser.

Mordred and his mother Morgaine bring a contingent of soldiers with them while King Arthur is represented by the lone Ancelyn. The first engagement between these battling knights is difficult to read. Dressed in full armor, visors down, we have no clue who is who, why they are fighting, or what the difference is between one side and the other, if indeed there is a difference; for all we know this is an AWOL soldier that is being chased down by the MPs.  Every subsequent battle scene is as confusing as the first, even when there is a clear definition between otherworldly knights and twentieth century military there is no semblance of rhyme or reason to any of the fights.

Nor is there a mad rush to retrieve Excalibur, which seems to be the reason for everyone being there. Once Excalibur is found, it doesn’t do much of anything. It’s only purpose seems to be to bring Arthur to life, and since Arthur has long since been turned to dust it doesn’t even do that. There are no other magical powers associated with it; the bearer of the sword doesn’t seem to have any undue advantage in combat. It’s not even hard to get one’s hands on, either. Ace pulls it out of the stone with no problem and from there it passes from person to person with barely a notice. Morgaine does use it to create her portal home, but it appears as though any sword would do in a pinch; and anyway, why does the Doctor want to stop her leaving? Let her and Mordred return to whence they came and be done with it. What does the Doctor think UNIT is going to do with the pair? It seems a much more dangerous proposition to keep them on twentieth century Earth than to allow them to slip back sideways through dimensions to their own world.

Into this mix we add one nuclear missile and a UNIT convoy, but what exactly is this UNIT convoy escorting a nuclear missile doing camping beside Lake Vortigern? They seem to be stuck, perhaps as a result of equipment failure due to Morgaine’s mystical powers or magical disturbances associated with the traveling knights, but what were they doing down there by the lake to begin with? Did Bambera decide to make a picnic of it at the historical landmark? There doesn’t even seem to be a road on which they traveled; they are simply parked there in the grass along the shore.

As if this were not enough, we have a bunch of miscellaneous characters thrown at us for no good reason and who are carted off half way through. (And by the way since when can the Doctor hypnotize people into doing his will by sheer power of suggestion?) Not to mention a scabbard, which we are told is worth ten times the sword, but since Excalibur turns out to be worth next to nothing what does that make the scabbard? Turns out exactly that—nothing.

Finally we have the Destroyer, a perfectly marvelous Doctor Who monster who is extremely superfluous. Morgaine calls forth this frightening blue creature to aid in her cause, but she already has Mordred and the gang on top of her own considerable powers. The Destroyer seems a bit of overkill, especially since she is afraid of him herself and keeps him bound in silver chains, and especially since her cause of obtaining Excalibur seems easily accomplished with no outside help required.

This much ado about nothing backdrop provides the perfect setting for Bambera and Ancelyn who add a light romantic comedy element that is rarely seen in Doctor Who. “She vanquished me,” Ancelyn says with that boyish grin on his face that never seems to leave; Ancelyn is as much a lover as a fighter. Bambera is more a fighter, but Ancelyn eventually wins her heart.

However it is Morgaine and the Brigadier who are the real standouts in Battlefield.

“What is victory without honor?” Morgaine and the Brigadier are both soldiers of honor and they recognize each other as such.

Morgaine: “A warrior no less. How goes the day?”

Brigadier: “I’ve had better.”

Morgaine: “I am Morgaine the Sunkiller. Dominator of the thirteen worlds and Battle Queen of the S’Rax. What say you?

Brigadier: “I am Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Surrender now and we can avoid bloodshed.”

And then . . .

Brigadier: “Let me see if I’ve understood you correctly. You are holding a Remembrance ceremony for the dead of our World Wars, a ceasefire to remain in force for the duration of said ceremony, right?”

Morgaine: “Your words are strange, but that is the meaning, yes.”

Brigadier: “Right. What must I do?”

And finally . . .

Morgaine: “I wish you to know that I bear you no malice.”

Brigadier: “I understand.”

Morgaine: “But when we meet again, I shall kill you.”

They meet, discourse, and part in mutual respect. Equals.

It makes me long for those Third Doctor UNIT serials all over again. If only Morgaine had been around in those days. What a show it would have made.

Morgaine saves Battlefield, but she is wasted in Battlefield. Battlefield is a pitiful battlefield upon which to fight. The Doctor effectively points this out in his stirring anti-nuclear speech. "Not a war between armies nor a war between nations, but just death; death gone mad,” he argues; and he continues, “Is this honor? Is this war? Are these the weapons you would use? Tell me!”

“No,” is Morgaine’s resounding answer as she aborts the missile launch.

And then the Doctor truly crushes her. “Arthur, who burned like star fire,” is not only dead; he is “gone to dust.”

“Then I shall not even have that comfort,” Morgaine mourns.

There is no honor in this battle; there is no comfort. Battlefield is not the proper stage for these noble characters.

Which brings me to the Brigadier.

Battlefield was meant to be the death of the Brigadier. The stage was set; the groundwork was laid. The Brigadier, at home with Doris in his comfortable retirement: “Tell them I’ve decided to fade away.” But the name of the Doctor (“There are many secrets in names”) lures the Brig into one last adventure.

“You don’t need to go on playing soldier anymore,” Doris says as the Brig dons his uniform in preparation. “I’m not playing,” he responds.

“I just can’t let you out of my sight, can I Doctor?” One last Doctor for the Brigadier to meet. Recalling those past glory years the show reintroduces Bessie, taken out of mothballs, as well as referencing Liz Shaw. (Where is the Third Doctor when you need him? I had my problems with Doctor Number Three, but oh what I wouldn’t give . . .).

“Well, nothing ventured, Doctor,” the Brigadier says as he futilely pumps several rounds into the Destroyer and then gets blasted for his efforts (“That was uncalled for.”). That is the Brigadier, always game, always up for the venture.

The Destroyer is not done; the Doctor is not done; the Brigadier is not done. The Destroyer is poised to take on the world; the Doctor is poised to take on the Destroyer; the Brigadier is a match for them both: “Sorry Doctor, but I think I’m rather more expendable than you are.”

The Destroyer: “Ah, little man, what do you want of me?”

Brigadier: “Get off my world.”

This is the Brigadier’s shining moment. This is the Brigadier in all his glory. This is the Brigadier facing down Earth’s mortal enemy.

Destroyer: “Pitiful. Can this world do no better than you as their champion?”

Brigadier: “Probably. I do the best I can.”

This smacks of the Brigadier’s last stand. The Brigadier might be pitiful in the Destroyer’s eyes, but the best of the Brigadier is the best this world could ask for.

Doctor: “You stupid, stubborn, pig-headed numbskull. You were supposed to die in bed. I could have handled it, done your job.”

Brigadier: “Nonsense Doctor.”

Doctor: “You’re supposed to be dead.”

Brigadier: “Oh really, Doctor. You don’t think I’d be so stupid as to stay inside, do you?”

Doctor: “Well . . .”

Brigadier: “Really Doctor, have a little faith. Ace?”

Ace: “Yes Brigadier?”

Brigadier: “I’m getting too old for this sort of thing. He’s all yours from now on. I’m going home to Doris.”

By all rights the Brigadier should be dead. The stage was beautifully set. It would have been a noble death. Morgaine and the Destroyer are two formidable foes worthy of the Brigadier. Battlefield, however, is not the worthy stage. The story of Battlefield did not do the Brigadier justice; it is for the Brigadier to do Battlefield justice and he does just that and comes out victorious to live another day.

If only our own scripts could be rewritten, Gary  . . .

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

Dear Gary—

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is not that. It’s not even great. It’s OK. It starts out well but then loses its way. The circus setting has potential; I know several people who are afraid of clowns and while I don’t share this particular phobia, the clowns in this are the creepiest, especially the Chief Clown. I do have to say, however, that I’m not the biggest fan of circuses; I find them, along with magicians for that matter, well, boring. While The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is not boring, it just does not live up to its billing.

I guess my main problem with this is motivation. I can’t for the life of me figure out why most of the people in this do what they do. I’ll start with Nord. As the Doctor asks, “how do they expect a hard case like him to be going to the circus anyway?” That was exactly my thought when this guy appeared. He just doesn’t fit. His first appearance is sufficiently menacing and foreboding, but then it turns out that he is simply a stock character of convenience thrown in as fodder.

And what of Whizz Kid? All I keep thinking when I see him is, where are his parents? OK, he snuck away from his parents to run off with the circus, except this dweeby, nerdy Whizz Kid just isn’t the type. I get that this is supposed to represent the Doctor Who hard core fan, and I can see this kid as a fan of Doctor Who—just not of some traveling hippie circus. I don’t see this kid dreaming of wearing tights and walking a tight rope or of tumbling about with clowns or even of juggling hoops of fire. If this was a traveling chess club or a band of roving scientists maybe I could buy him running off to join the fun.  He’s an annoying addition to hit us with the meta angle, but he only succeeds in being meh.

That might be the anchor weighing this serial down—the desire to spin an allegory about the perceived evils of the BBC and critical audiences and network mentality and trying to force this to fit into the given story. And so you can watch the Whizz Kid in this context and have a good laugh—ha ha he’s the misfit boy obsessing over every last detail of every past show, going to every convention, reading every last detail, analyzing and romanticizing the past. But you can’t also watch the Whizz Kid in the context of the plot and be anything but irritated.

The plot is disserved by the parable.

Especially since, watching it today, some 25 years out, I just don’t care about the turmoil within the Doctor Who production ranks of the time. Perhaps as an historian, yes, it is of interest. Watching it purely within that framework it would make for some fascinating study. However viewing it simply as a Doctor Who serial I find myself scratching my head.

The biggest ‘Why’ I ask myself: Why did Kingpin, the Ringmaster, the Chief Clown, and Morgana sell out? And the biggest ‘What’: What is in it for them? “They took everything that was bright and good about what we had and buried it where it will never be found again,” Bellboy says of them; and from what I can see, they got nothing in return.

“Listen,” Ringmaster says, “just as long as they keep on coming, and they will, no doubt of that, we are a success. Don’t you understand? An intergalactic success.” I for one do not understand. This is how they measure success? A few stray stragglers wander in to their empty tent, are forced to put on an act for a creepy and unappreciative family of three, and then killed for their trouble. From what I see, there are no queues lining up waiting to get in. There is no audience to applaud. And their acts are dwindling fast. How is this winning them fame and fortune? Especially since no one survives to go forth into the galaxy to speak of the wonders of their show. And does nobody get suspicious when their friends and loved ones go out one day to the circus and never return?

There is no logical explanation for why Ringmaster and Morgana are complicit in this murderous endeavor. Bellboy and Flowerchild, too, have apparently been going along with this deadly show for some time before they both decided they had enough and tried to put an end to it. The only two I can understand participating are Deadbeat/Kingpin, who has been driven mad, and the Chief Clown, who appears to have his own insane voices he hearkens to.

Morgana does put on a convincing act of being frightened of the eye in her crystal ball, symbol of the powers behind this charade of a circus. However I’m not convinced that these powers can do any harm outside of the center ring. All of the killings that occur away from the tent are carried out by murderous robots that were created and are maintained by Bellboy and that are controlled by the Chief Clown. And the eyes in the sky that hunt down dissenters were created by Flowerchild. Why can’t the lot of them simply walk away?

This brings me to our Ringling Brothers trio, the so called gods of Ragnarok. “I have fought the gods of Ragnarok all through time,” the Doctor says. This is the first I’ve heard of it, but even still I could believe this statement if only this triumvirate wasn’t rooted to their seats in a tiny arena in a concurrent time space to some out of the way and barren planet and holding some pathetic troop of out-of-touch hippies hostage for no greater purpose than to keep them entertained.

That’s it? Make us laugh? What a joke. They don’t want to conquer the planet, the galaxy, anything? They simply sit in one spot waiting for the raggle taggle team they have working for them to recruit contestants in their Gong Show of death? And I have to say, they’re mighty quick on the reject button. No wonder there is so much down time between acts. They complain bitterly about the boredom as they await the next sucker to try his or her luck on stage, but then don’t even give the poor sap a chance. This again is where it works on the metaphorical level but as a Doctor Who story not so much.

About that Doctor Who story, the part that works, the part that you don’t have to think too much about or scratch your head over.

It is set up rather well. A mechanical gizmo suddenly materializes inside the TARDIS promising “the time of your life with the nonstop action” at the Psychic Circus. It is curious that the Doctor shows very little surprise that this space spam found its way into the TARDIS, but then I’m sure the Doctor has rigged it somehow. The Doctor must have been hanging around his intergalactic water cooler again picking up disturbing rumors about the circus and has decided something needs to be done. For whatever reason he doesn’t let Ace in on his plans and he has to convince his reluctant companion to join him.

Ace is pivotal in setting the tone of underlying dread. She dismisses circuses as childish and boring, but fear registers on her face as she thinks of the clowns of her youth. Taunted by the “junk box,” however, Ace puts on a brave face and follows along after the Doctor. Ringmaster’s rap, the creepy Chief Clown and his hearse full of robot clowns, Bellboy’s and Flowerchild’s desperation, and the high flying kites keeping an eye on the proceedings all underscore Ace’s foreboding.

The Stallslady only confirms Ace’s fears. “Every one of them who’s up to no good goes there,” she says. “We locals wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.” However, the locals dismiss the Psychic Circus; it isn’t a danger to them any more than it is a danger to the universe. It is only a danger to those foolish enough to attend, and those are few and far between it would appear. Ace is correct in hanging back from entering the canvas tent.

That’s not to say it isn’t worthy of the Doctor’s attention or shouldn’t be put out of commission; I just wish the show wouldn’t try to make it out to be more than it is. I wish it had treated it on the small scale where it so obviously operates; kept it to the simple machinations of the Chief Clown and perhaps found a more logical explanation for the eerie family in the stands other than some all-powerful gods who are actually rather stagnant and impotent.

Along the way to the circus the Doctor and Ace pick up Captain Cook and his companion Mags. I’m not completely clear on their motivations either, but they are more understandable than most of the others. There is no affection between these two; Cook regards Mags as a “specimen” and treats her with disdain while Mags has little regard for Cook other than I suppose gratitude for having saved her life once and perhaps as a means of transportation.

Mags is going to the circus because that is where Cook is going; Cook presumably is going to the circus to try and wrest control of its power source. This means that Cook has cottoned on to what is really occurring there (perhaps he belongs to the same water cooler club as the Doctor). He doesn’t seem to have anything by way of a plan, however, other than to try to outwit others into going into the ring before him while he contentedly sits by drinking tea in a cage.

Everything under the big top is well done; the horrors awaiting anyone entering center ring work best as they are left to the imagination and this gives the necessary tension to the scenes of waiting in the ‘green room’ of a cage and scheming to stall the inevitable; the family in the stands, stone faced and demanding, are terrifying; and the daunting prospect of entering the glaring spotlight to face your final judgment and having nothing prepared is straight out of a nightmare.

Equally effective are Mags’ transformation scene, the escape by Ace and her meeting up with the crazed Bellboy, the Doctor and Mags plotting their escape and the eventual betrayal by Captain Cook, and the Doctor’s working out of the puzzle when he meets up with Deadbeat/Kingpin. The action heightens with Ace and Deadbeat/Kingpin racing across the sands to find the missing eye to the magical pendant.

Where everything falls apart, however, is when the big top fades and we are left with the pitiful gods who don’t even know enough to stop throwing their deadly lasers around when they are being reflected back at them. I can’t help but feel disappointed. It was a big buildup for a massive let down rendering much of what preceded incomprehensible.

I repeat: circuses are boring; magicians are boring. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy succeeded in investing this Psychic Circus with a sinister air that kept it interesting, but ultimately it couldn’t keep all its balls in the air. It ends with the Doctor trying his best at his magic act that keeps the gods of Ragnarok (glued to their seats) mildly annoyed, but for some reason they don’t hold up their 0 scorecards (I guess if you make it out of the center ring and into the arena you are allowed more time to pitch your case) and instead let out some warning blasts. Then the Doctor mysteriously divines the exact moment when Ace is throwing the restored pendant down to him and voila, lights out, the party’s over.

“It was your show all along, wasn’t it?” Yes, the Doctor engineered and manipulated his way through without letting on. But Ace is beginning to understand this Doctor. This is a Doctor who puts on a clown’s face but has devious depths. The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is the Doctor’s show.

I’m hoping, Gary, that this seventh Doctor can keep all his balls in the air long enough . . .

Silver Nemesis

Dear Gary—

Silver Nemesis is good only as long as I am watching it; thinking about it is another matter. There have been a number of Doctor Who stories that don’t hold up upon review; Terminus is a prime example. However, while I have great fun watching Terminus, I have even greater fun picking it apart; whereas with Silver Nemesis I enjoy watching it but don’t relish mulling it over.

I’ll start with the worst, as does the serial—De Flores and his Nazi gang. There is absolutely no point in having this character and even much less relevance to his being a Nazi. This goes nowhere and could be dispensed with entirely. The Nazi business is simply a shorthand way of telling us this is a bad guy; I think we could have guessed that on our own. Additionally, we are never even given a hint as to how he obtained the bow or how he knows all about the Nemesis. De Flores is merely plunked down in the midst of the plot as a convenient third member of this triad of baddies that really doesn’t need a third member. The bow could have just as easily been in the possession of Lady Peinforte, the Cybermen, or the Doctor, or even have been sitting in the basement of Windsor just waiting for one of those three to collect it.

(About the only good thing De Flores arouses in my mind is the amusing recollection of a recent FB discussion regarding childhood memories of mangled Milwaukee German and of the everyday use of the word ferschummulled—ferschimmeled? ferschimmelt?—which apparently is a bastardization of verschimmelt.)

Next on our shortcut to bad—the Cybermen. This insert-villain-here of the week came up on the wheel of fortune of baddies, and they just didn’t even try. I’m not sure I need to say anything more because they just didn’t even try.

Now about this plot. My first thought when the Doctor’s alarm watch goes off is: What? Why? Since when? Then I have to echo Ace: “You mean the world’s going to end and you’ve forgotten about it?” For a Seventh Doctor who puts on a very good show of being in control, he reveals himself to be highly irresponsible in many important ways. This has to be one of his lowlights. The Doctor himself admits: “This may qualify as the worst miscalculation since life crawled out of the seas on this sad planet.”

It’s not just that he forgot about the Silver Nemesis that has the Earth on the brink of disaster; it is that he is responsible in the first place for the whole thing. Why exactly did he launch the Nemesis into space knowing that it was going to wreak havoc every 25 years and eventually fall to Earth to rain down destruction? Why not send it home to Gallifrey?

And OK, Lady Peinforte and De Flores have to wait around for the thing to come crashing down (after miraculously calculating the exact date and place—and is it my imagination, or did the Doctor actually give De Flores the means to do this?—and even more miraculously on the part of Lady Peinforte to travel through time to get there), but couldn’t the Cybermen just pluck the thing out of its orbit at any time?

But most importantly, why did the Doctor take his time getting there to resolve this pending crisis that he set in motion? When he first sent the Nemesis out on its lengthy journey, why didn’t he immediately set the TARDIS coordinates and arrive at the moment of impact? No, he set an alarm watch and promptly forgot all about it. And how exactly does this alarm watch work anyway? Presumably he set it in 1638 to go off in November of 1988 Earth time. “Well,” the Doctor explains, “in strictly linear terms, as the chronometer flies, I’ve known since November the twenty third, 1638.” But he didn’t travel in linear, as the chronometer flies terms; did he set his alarm watch to those terms? If so, he could have been anywhere in time or space when it went off 350 years from his adventures in 1638. He might even have been dead. Or did he set it to go off whenever he happened to materialize at that precise time in 1988? In which case, given the vastness of time and space, he might never have made it there. And what if he lost that watch in the meantime? Or didn’t happen to have it on him when it chimed?

This has got to be one of the worst things the Doctor has ever done. Where is the Time Lord Tribunal when you need it?

“Nobody’s perfect,” Ace tells the Doctor. However when the show is trying to make him out to be some grand mastermind with deep secrets hinting at almost godlike powers, he better be darn close to it.

Alarm watch aside—the Nemesis has crashed to Earth; Lady Peinforte, De Flores, and the Cybermen are all converging towards the same goal; Lady Peinforte gets lucky that her foolishly gold tipped arrows are actually the one thing that will take down a Cyberman; everyone gets lucky that the Cybermen are such pathetic shots; the Doctor and Ace hop back and forth between 1638 and 1988 (something that would have behooved him back when he originally . . . oh you know, Gary, I’ve already said it); the Doctor steals the bow out from under the Nazi’s noses without them even realizing it while they run around acting as though they are still a major player in the game; Richard throws away Lady Peinforte’s arrow and drags her off into the alien world of 1988; the Doctor steals it all out from under the Cybermen’s noses, programs the Nemesis to annihilate the Cyber Fleet and tricks the Cybermen into sending it out on its destructive mission (why the Doctor didn’t just give the direct order but instead had to go through his charade with the Cybermen is yet another example of his rather unsound judgment in this serial).

Yes, thinking about Silver Nemesis makes me want to send it out into orbit.

But then I watch it and I enjoy it. Given a choice between seeing, say, Vengeance on Varos and Silver Nemesis, I would pick Nemesis over the vastly superior Varos. Vengeance on Varos is a case where the thinking of it is more appealing than the viewing.

All credit goes to Lady Peinforte and Richard. The entertainment value of this pairing carries me through; Lady Peinforte’s calm, somewhat maniacal confidence and Richard’s cowering loyalty helps me to overlook the defects as they are unfolding before me.

“We ride on the back of time,” Peinforte tells a protesting Richard; and with an “oh fie” she dismisses his understandable concerns as they confront all manner of strange things some 350 years ahead of their time. This anachronistic duo breeze through twentieth century England with barely a sideways glance thrown their way and through it all the Lady Peinforte remains unfazed (“This is no madness; tis England”) while her loyal follower jumps at every shadow.

Yet for all his trepidation Richard stays steadfast to his lady and despite her contempt he remains loyal.

Even Lady Peinforte is forced to notice: “Always I have treated you badly. I have done you no service, shown you no kindness, and yet you risk your life to save me.” But it is ingrained in him; Richard can merely shrug when asked; “What’s to understand,” he wonders. It is who he is; cowardice and all he will fight for his lady; complaints and all, he will attend.

It is this decisiveness of character, the Lady Peinforte in her arrogance and Richard in his dedication, that plays so well in this fish-out-of-water scenario. And so when a couple of street punk thugs confront the two it is the skinheads who are left dangling upside down in their underwear.

Just when I’m getting fed up with incompetent Cybermen and wooden Nazis, Lady Peinforte matter-of-factly informs her devotee, “It is thy grave, Richard,” as they come upon his headstone. “I ordered you to be buried here when I planned my tomb.” And then again: “Such things happen only in the theater,” when Richard frets about a possible bear attack.

And then as the Nemesis, the bow, and the arrow go crisscrossing through the plot and I start getting irritated, this droll pair again save the serial.

“We can avail ourselves of one of these steeds, my lady,” Richard tells Peinforte, and he promptly sticks out his thumb to hitchhike. The comic timing is delightful as Richard tries in vain to flag down a passing car only for the calmly mumbling “All will be mine” Lady Peinforte to slowly enter the roadway and plant herself firmly in front of an on-coming limousine.

Their rich American benefactress is slightly over the top, but Richard’s bemused attempts to make sense of her conversation make up for it, as does Peinforte’s continued “All things will soon be mine” refrain, and then her sudden interest at the mention of a hated foe.

“We ride to destiny.” Peinforte never breaks character. She is so supremely confident that even without weapons, even without the Nemesis, the bow, or the arrow, she will prevail. All she needs is her knowledge.

Lady Peinforte is the holder of some deep, dark secrets regarding the Doctor. “I shall tell them of the old time, the time of chaos,” she warns the Doctor. “Be my guest,” the Doctor replies. The Cybermen are not interested in Time Lord secrets, and I have to admit, Gary, that neither am I. Just like that she is dismissed; it is the only way to deal with this puffed up ego, to brush her aside as superfluous. “You may go now.” Go she does, flinging herself into the Nemesis and becoming one with it as it goes soaring off into space to meet the Cyber Fleet leaving poor Richard behind (not to worry, the Doctor and Ace can give him a lift home).

Peinforte and Richard carry the serial, but the Doctor and Ace have some nice moments as well. They really are remarkably comfortable with one another and it is such a pleasant change from years of TARDIS turmoil.

The moment the credits roll, however, I am left with nothing but impressions of a story that becomes increasingly ferschummulled.

I’ll send this out, Gary, and won’t give it another thought until the next time I pop it in . . .

The Happiness Patrol

Dear Gary—

The Happiness Patrol puts a gun to your head and forces you to be happy, but no one is. That’s about it in a nutshell, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. I’ve watched it several times through. One time I think it is just silly, over the top camp; I mean, the pink hair, the toy guns, the Kandyman for goodness sake. And the next time I think it actually works; I mean the pink hair, the toy guns, the Kandyman for goodness sake.

The Happiness Patrol is putting a gun to my head and forcing me to be happy, but am I happy?

Yes and no. And I think that answer means that it is doing its job.

The pink hair, the toy guns, and the Kandyman are all the smiley face sticker slapped on top of the mournful harmonica underscoring the show. “There are no other colors without the blues.”

To begin our rainbow colored tale, the Doctor and Ace land on Terra Alpha, an Earth colony of which the Doctor has “been hearing disturbing rumors.” Evil rumors that the Doctor is determined to investigate. I guess after the joke of a trial he recently underwent, the Doctor now feels as though he can meddle with impunity. And I have to wonder, what water cooler is he hanging around that he is picking up these rumors?

“Too phony; too happy,” is Ace’s assessment of the place. Phony, yes, but happy? They are sitting in an empty street with Muzak droning away. Nothing about this place says happy. Even the pink clad patrols laying down the happiness law are grim faced and dour. Barely a smile is cracked and nowhere is there the sound of laughter. The subtle tones of Earl Sigma’s wailing harmonica is more apropos of the place; Terra Alpha was made for the blues; Helen A’s insistent pink cloud of cheerfulness fosters the dark grim underbelly of life like no other.

Maybe that is the real problem with The Happiness Patrol. Maybe what Terra Alpha needs is not the melancholy strains of the blues or the monotonous tones of elevator music, maybe what it really needs is the lively sound of a rousing polka to stir some true joy in the hearts of its citizenry. The relentless nature of Helen A’s happiness veneer teaches nothing but sorrow to her people; Terra Alphans have no knowledge of actual pleasure; their life is one of constant suppressed pain.

That is the story of Helen A. But it is a story untold. Earl’s study of psychology could gain much from an analysis of Helen A. Something in her past has brought her to this point, whether it was a loveless marriage or a lost child. There is a deep well of grief that is feeding her current desire to force a happy face on life. However we are not privy to this sadness; we only get the end product and can only guess as to the weary road that led her there.

A deeper exploration of The Happiness Patrol would have been a different story. Instead we are handed the sugar coated bitterness of life on Terra Alpha and its denouement.

The depressed Daphne to begin our serial sets the mood; the undercover Silas P establishes the ground rules; the “Have a nice death” Daisy K exposes the hypocrisy. This is life under Helen A on Terra Alpha.

 “Happiness is nothing unless it exists side by side with sadness,” the Doctor tells Helen A. The only trouble with that statement is that Terra Alpha is already riddled with sadness. It is happiness that is foreign to them. Citizens are told to be happy but are given nothing to be happy about; they are punished for being miserable which only serves to heighten their despair. Helen A and her subjects have lost the meaning of happiness. The Doctor gives them back the blues, but all they have been doing of late is indulging their blues under the mask of a smile; painting over their blues with a layer of pink. The blues are deeply ingrained in them; their society is built on the blues.

Susan Q personifies it best:  “But I did wake up one morning and suddenly something was very clear. I couldn’t go on smiling; smiling while my friends disappeared; wearing this uniform and smiling and trying to pretend I’m something I’m not; trying to pretend that I’m happy. Better to let it end. Better to just relax and let it happen. I woke up one morning and I realized it was all over.”

Susan Q is singing the blues. She and Earl should make quite a team.

Daisy K and Priscilla P of the pink brigade are another matter. These two do not sing the blues, nor do they embrace the pink. These two sneer their way through life. They seize the opportunity to inflict pain and suffering, whether under the guise of Helen A’s illusion of bliss or not. “I’m glad you’re happy,” Priscilla sarcastically says in the end to a disgruntled Daisy, echoing her mantra under Helen A’s reign. Neither has learned a lesson; neither knows true happiness or true sorrow. They are more of an angry purple (along with the surly box office worker in the Forum).

Joseph C is a case study in himself; he is colorless; emotionless. I can very well imagine that he is the reason Helen A has turned to the pink side.

And let us not forget the Kandyman. The kaleidoscope of a Kandyman. This has got to be the most bizarre villain ever conceived. Why he was made is a puzzler in itself. The back story of Gilbert M and his twisted creation would make for some wonderful storytelling. As it is, the Gilbert M/Kandyman symbiosis is enthralling. “You need me and I need me.”  “I need you and you need you.” At least they are both agreed.

The Kandyman’s high pitched screams for Gilbert when he gets stuck in the lemonade are hilarious; then Gilbert arrives.

Gilbert: “It’s quite simple. Created as you are out of glucose based substances, your joints need constant movement to avoid coagulation.”

Kandyman: “What do you mean?”

Gilbert: “You’re turning into a slab of toffee. I saw this at the planning stage, and then I realized what the solution was.”

Kandyman: “What’s that?”

Gilbert: “I’ve forgotten.”

Put these two on the Forum stage and they’ll have the audience rolling in the aisles.

For all of the “happiness will prevail” sloganeering, however, Helen A, her Happiness Patrol, and the Kandyman are all about death. Shootings, ‘disappearances,’ Fondant Surprise, sweets that kill; they are not out to make anybody happy; they are out to destroy anyone who is not. They are executioners not doctors.

Enter the Doctor and Ace.

Ace acquits herself well in this serial. She makes believable connections with those she meets and expresses the appropriate moral outrage and grief over Harold V’s death (“I want to make them very, very unhappy”) and again when Susan Q is taken away for execution.

The Doctor is most impressive as well, and very much a Doctor in control. “I ask the questions,” he tells Trevor from the Galactic Census Bureau, turning the roles around and taking complete command. And his handling of the snipers is masterful:

Doctor: “You like guns, don’t you?”

Alex: “He’ll kill you.”

Doctor: “Of course he will. That’s what guns are for. Pull the trigger, end a life. Simple isn’t it?”

David: “Yes.”

Doctor: “Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

David: “Yes.”

Doctor: “A life killing life.”

Alex: “Who are you?”

Doctor:  “Shut up. Why don’t you do it then? Look me in the eye, pull the trigger, end my life. Why not?”

David: “I can’t”

Doctor: “Why not?”

David: “I don’t know.”

Doctor: “No, you don’t, do you.”

Armed with nothing but words the Doctor disarms.

Then, after holding his clown-like persona in check for the bulk of the serial, the Doctor lets loose: “Today the Doctor and the drones are having a ball!” And just like that he turns the Happiness Patrol on itself, the only killjoys in the square.

Finally he has his last word with Helen A. Joseph C has left Helen, fled in the escape shuttle to start a new life with the fun loving Gilbert M. Helen is down and out, defeated, deposed, and now ditched. But she carries on, suitcase packed and ready to leave on the next flight. The Doctor is not there to stop her; he knows she can never escape because she is really running from herself. She is defiant; “I always thought love was overrated,” she tells the Doctor; but then she sees her beloved Fifi wounded and dying; Helen A has reached her breaking point, and her sobs are heartbreaking.

 “Happiness will prevail,” the Doctor says as his final word, leaving behind the grieving Helen, the bickering Daisy and Priscilla, and the wailing blues of Earl’s harmonica. Yes, sadness and happiness need each other, but Terra Alpha is already one deep well of sorrow; I can’t help thinking that what this planet really needs is a good belly laugh. (I am reminded of Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels.)

I send this out, Gary, with a belated and mournful ‘happy birthday’ . . .