The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Dear Gary—

“Mister Chang. Wonderful, wonderful. Words fail me, sir. Words fail me.”

Words fail me. Words fail me. I have struggled with this one. I have started and stopped. I have finished and scrapped. Words fail me.

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is probably the pinnacle of the Tom Baker Era, if not of Doctor Who. Since Robot, serial after serial has been outstanding, culminating in The Talons of Weng-Chiang. This is the last pairing of the dynamic duo of producer Phillip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes and they go out on the highest of high notes.

Perhaps that is why, along with Mr. Jago, words fail me.

How can I do justice to this classic of the classic?

“We don’t want to be conspicuous.” I’ll start with the Doctor. The Doctor and Leela. The Doctor and Leela emerging from the TARDIS onto the foggy streets of Victorian London. The Doctor dressed in his best Sherlock Holmes (sans scarf), and Leela, not in her traditional skins, but in a proper Victorian boy’s outfit.

“Doctor, you make me wear strange clothes, you tell me nothing, you are trying to annoy me.”

“I’m trying to teach you, Leela.”

The promise of the Professor Higgins/Eliza Doolittle relationship of this duo comes to life in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

But it is Pygmalion set in a Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper/Phantom of the Opera/Fu Manchu mystery thriller.

Words fail me.

Which brings me back to Mr. Jago, so maybe I’ll start there. Mr. Jago, Li H’sen Chang, Mr. Sin, Casey, a Victorian London music hall with a Chinese ventriloquist/magician and a ghost in the cellar. And the missing Emma Buller. “Don’t come the cod. She’s disappeared. Nobody’s seen her, not since she come here last night, so what about it, eh?”

So what about it? So much set up in the first few minutes.

And then we have the Doctor and Leela tussling with a gang of murderous Chinese thugs (Tong of the Black Scorpion) in an alley.

Atmosphere and mystery and characters abound and we’ve only just begun.

“On my oath, you wouldn’t want that served with onions. Never seen anything like it in all my puff. Oh, make an ‘orse sick, that would.” The unfortunate cabby in search of his missing wife Emma Buller, recently departed from the theater with his accusations against Li H’sen Chang ringing in Mr. Jago’s ears, has turned up dead in the river.

So what about it? So, bring in the Doctor and Leela as witness, bring in the one member of the Tong of the Black Scorpion who did not escape (“When I got here, he was being strangled with his own pigtail”), bring in Li H’sen Chang as interpreter.

“Show us a trick,” says the Doctor upon recognizing Chang from his music hall poster. Immediately the Chinese prisoner falls dead. “Very good, very good,” the Doctor applauds.

Bring in Professor Litefoot to perform the autopsy. “It’s been jolly interesting, wouldn’t you say? Most of the corpses around here are jolly dull. Now I’ve got a couple of inscrutable Chinks and a poor perisher who was chewed by a giant rat, having been stabbed by a midget.”

This brings up a valid criticism of The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Gary, and that is the racism that runs throughout. However, I have to point out that you cannot have a story set in Victorian England dealing with Chinese Tongs and make it feel authentic without using the epithets and attitudes of the time.  Li H’sen Chang himself is a counterpoint to the racism. “I understand we all look the same,” Chang tells the Doctor who is trying to remember where he has seen him before (“I haven’t been in China for 400 years.”). Li H’sen Chang, for all his villainy, is nobly realized.

As are all of the characters in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, from the unfortunate Casey up to our title character Weng-Chiang. I haven’t even mentioned Weng-Chiang yet. Weng-Chiang, our phantom lurking under the Palace Theater. Weng-Chiang, Chinese god of abundance. Weng Chiang, aka Bent Face, aka Magnus Greel.

Weng-Chiang provides the science in our Pygmalion/Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper/Phantom of the Opera/Fu Manchu fiction. Weng-Chiang, aka Magnus Greel, “the infamous Minister of Justice, the Butcher of Brisbane” from the 51^st Century who used a time machine based on zigma energy and fell from the sky like a god upon the peasant Li H’sen Chang. Weng Chiang, aka Magnus Greel, falling apart before our eyes, having to drain the life essence from young girls to keep himself alive.

Weng-Chiang brought with him Mr. Sin. Sin, posing as Li H’sen Chang’s ventriloquist dummy but in reality the Peking Homunculus, a cyborg toy with the cerebral cortex of a pig that was made for the children of the Commissioner of the Icelandic Alliance about the year 5,000 and that almost caused World War Six. (The Doctor knows all of this, having been “with the Filipino army at the final advance on Reykjavik” at the time.)

“I say, I may have had a bang on the head, but this is a dashed queer story,” Litefoot says upon hearing this preposterous history.

Dashed queer story, perhaps. Preposterous, perhaps. But intelligent, witty, entertaining, engrossing, and fun.

Words fail me.

“My dear Litefoot, I’ve got a lantern, a pair of waders, and possibly the most fearsome piece of hand artillery in all of England. What can possibly go wrong?”

Words never fail the Doctor. The Doctor has confidence, and Jago has supreme confidence in the Doctor. Henry Gordon Jago, one of the best Doctor Who characters ever created. He could have easily fallen to caricature but never does.

Henry Gordon Jago, proprietor of the Palace Theater, has the utmost trust in the Doctor, believing him to be in high standing with Scotland Yard, solving half their cases himself. “It stands to reason,” he explains. “I mean, they’re policemen. We all know they’re solid, sterling fellows, but their buttons are the brightest things about them, don’t you agree? Now the Doctor’s a real detective.”

The scenes early on between Jago and his Irish stagehand Casey, the “pixilated leprechaun” (“You’ve been drinking.” “Not a drop, sir.” “Well, it’s time you started.”), set the stage for his later pairing with Litefoot. Jago and Litefoot are a true Charters and Caldicott duo that saw life beyond The Talons of Weng-Chiang in the form of an audio series from Big Finish Productions. I’ll have to look into those one of these days, Gary.

Jago: “Well, I’m not awfully . . . . Well, I’m not so bally brave when it comes to it. I try to be but I’m not.”

Litefoot: “When it comes to it, I don’t suppose anybody is.”

Jago: “Well, I thought I ought to tell you anyway, in case I let the side down.”

Litefoot: “You won’t, Henry. I know you won’t.”

And neither one does.

Litefoot, for his part, is as good a character as Jago. Litefoot, the Dr. Watson/Pickering to the Doctor’s Sherlock Holmes/Professor Higgins. Litefoot, complete with a Mrs. Hudson as housekeeper, is priceless in his delicate dealings with the savage Eliza Leela (“found floating down the Amazon in a hat box”). When Leela bypasses the plates and cutlery as she dives into the buffet, Litefoot gallantly picks up his own leg of lamb to gnaw on. But he draws the line at using the tablecloth as napkin.

Leela is no slouch herself in The Talons of Weng Chiang. Diligently trying to absorb the intricacies of tea (“it’s very complicated”), Leela is more at home with a knife in her hand or at the throat of her enemy. There is no ‘Eek, a mouse’ moment for Leela. Trudging through the rat-infested sewers she says of the rodents, “They don’t look very dangerous.” She does run upon encountering the giant rat, but who wouldn’t, without a weapon and in one’s soaking underclothes? Even if the giant rat is the one unconvincing element in all of the six episodes of The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

“Spawn of evil, now I destroy you,” Leela exclaims as she jumps upon Weng-Chiang. Even faced with imminent death she remains defiant: “Kill me any way you wish. Unlike you I am not afraid to die.” And she continues, “I shall not plead. But I promise you this: when we are both in the great hereafter I shall hunt you down, Bent Face, and put you through my agony a thousand times.”

And she would, too. In a Doctor Who alternate time line I could very well see the huntress Leela stalking the cowering Magnus Greel.

But the Doctor rushes in at the last moment to save her.

Like Jago, I have every confidence that the Doctor will save the day. It is interesting, though, Gary, that Leela does not whimper companion-like in the face of death, calling for the Doctor. She faces it. She relishes it. She lays her plans for it.

But she needn’t.

“I owe you my life, Doctor. Thank you.”

Simple. Direct. She does not expect the Doctor to save her. She does not rely on the Doctor to save her. But when the Doctor does save her: “I owe you my life, Doctor. Thank you.”

Neither Leela nor the Doctor has let the side down.

“The list of your failures is growing.” Li H’sen Chang, on the other hand, has let Weng-Chiang down.

The Li H’sen Chang/Weng-Chiang relationship, like tea, is complicated. Li H’sen Chang is not your typical Doctor Who sycophant or groveling disciple or mercenary. Li H’sen Chang is not motivated by your typical villainous greed or lust or vengeance. Li H’sen Chang truly believes he is serving the cause of a god. And when his “list of failures” grows too great, Chang offers himself up to the giant rat as sacrifice.

But it is more complicated than that. Li H’sen Chang was a simple peasant. Magnus Greel came down upon him as a god—as Weng Chiang. Li H’sen Chang nursed him, protected him, saved him. Now Li H’sen Chang serves him. Weng-Chiang is his god.

But it is more complicated than that. Weng-Chiang has given Li H’sen Chang powers. Li H’sen Chang is a magician, a ventriloquist, a music hall favorite. Simple peasant Li H’sen Chang: “Next month the great Chang would have performed before the Queen Empress at Buckingham Palace. I, the son of a peasant.”

Now the simple peasant Li H’sen Chang, raised to theatrical prominence, has sunk to the depths of a sewer rat charnel house; has dragged himself, half dying and legless, to an opium den; has been shamed by his “false god.” Li H’sen Chang: “I believed in him. For many years I believed in him.” Li H’sen Chang: “Until he shamed me. I lost face. The whole theater saw my failure.”

Li H’sen Chang relied on Weng-Chiang. Weng-Chiang has failed him.

Weng-Chiang/Magnus Greel is an experiment in failure. He is surrounded by failure. He is a failure. Just don’t tell him that.

Doctor: “The zigma experiments came to nothing. They were a failure. Nothing came of them.”

Greel: “No! No, they were a success. Why, I used them to escape from my enemies. The first man to travel through time.”

Doctor: “Hmmm. Look what it did to you.”

Greel: “A temporal distortion of my metabolism. It can be readjusted.”

You can’t argue with delusion. But a midget pig-brained cyborg Peking Homunculus sidekick who is manning a death ray can be convinced that the zigma experiments are a failure and a last attempt to use the time cabinet will cause a deadly implosion.

“This is mutiny, Sin!” Surrounded by failure, set upon by mutinous pig-brained midget followers, Magnus Greel, aka Weng-Chiang, hasn’t a chance. Leave it to the Doctor to finish him off in Greel’s own catalytic extraction chamber; hoisted by his own petard.

The dust has settled. Magnus Greel aka Weng-Chiang has disintegrated, Mr. Sin the Peking Homunculus has been defused. All that is left is for the Doctor and the Leela to take their leave of Jago and Litefoot.

I am sorry to see the end of this, Gary. I was prejudiced going in knowing this was a six parter; normally I cringe at anything longer than four. But I almost wish The Talons of Weng-Chiang was longer. I could do with some more of Jago and Lightfoot. I could do with some more of Weng-Chiang and Mr. Sin (the Peking Homunculus). I could do with some more of Li H’sen Chang. I could do with some more of the foggy streets, the sewers, the theater, the opium den, and the House of the Dragon. I could even do with some more of the giant rat.

But it is the end. The end of The Talons of Weng-Chiang. The end of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era. However, as the Doctor says, “sleep is for tortoises,” and this is no time for sleep. It is time to look forward not time to reflect. There is much more of the Doctor and Tom Baker and I need to put this behind and get back on track.

And yet, Gary, words still fail me . . .