#7 (22.12 - 22.13): Revelation of the Daleks.

Davros (Terry Molloy), taunts the Doctor.

2 episodes. Approx. 90 minutes. Written by: Eric Saward. Directed by: Graeme Harper. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The planet Necros is home to Tranquil Repose, a facility in which people with enough money and status have themselves stored in suspended animation until a cure is found for their assorted diseases. The Doctor and Peri have come because Arthur Stengos (Alec Linstead), a professor and friend of the Doctor's, has died and his services are to be held at Tranquil Repose.

But something isn't right here. The two have barely arrived before being attacked by a hideous mutant, a pathetic figure who croaks about the experiments of "The Great Healer" before he dies. A great wall separates the outside from the facility within: A wall with no door. Inside, Jobel (Clive Swift), the chief embalmer, prepares for the funeral of the President's wife, even as the staff worries that Tranquil Repose's best days are behind it.

Meanwhile, the wealthy Kara (Eleanor Bron) has hired the infamous assassin Orcini (William Gaunt). Orcini is a former Knight of the Order of Oberon, and he has dreamed of ending his career with an honorable kill to make him feel like a knight once again. Kara has such a kill for him. On Necros, at the heart of Tranquil Repose, the Great Healer resides. But the Great Healer has another name, one he refuses to use on an open channel. That name... is Davros!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Much has been made about the Doctor's limited screentime in this story. Perhaps too much, given that he does have a sizable role in Part Two. But instead of focusing on the size of the part, I'd like to observe just how much Colin Baker does with it. His performance is noticeably softer and more subdued than in most of the rest of the season. In a fairly typical "bickering" bit at the start, he avoids delivering his lines as barbs, even responding to Peri's question about whether the local animals bite by putting a note of sympathy in his voice as he says, "Only each other." Even when confronting Davros, Colin remains subdued, showing as much with a glance at a dead body as with his voice. It's very good work, one that stands in stark contrast to his reputation in some circles as "the shouty Doctor."

Peri: Nicola Bryant is also more restrained here than in previous stories, which leads me to think director Graeme Harper was pushing the actors to embrace the funereal atmosphere. Her interactions with the Doctor continue to show that, for all the spikiness, these two are quite fond of each other. When she thinks the Doctor is dead, Jobel asks if the Doctor was a friend. Unhesitantly, she says he was "the best." When they are reunited at the story's end, the Doctor immediately expresses sympathy to Peri for the death of a friend she made in the course of the story.

Davros: "He sits like a spider at the heart of this planet, using the money he extorts from us to rebuild his disgusting creatures." Davros is the dark heart of this story. He lurks, watching the interactions of those who work at Tranquil Repose. Like any group, there are weaknesses, imbalances, and Davros pushes at the weakness of Tasambeker (Jenny Tomasin) at just the right moment to make her do her worst. He doesn't even have any real purpose: It simply provides a diversion while salving his wounded ego. When he's done, he disposes of Tasambeker like a child might do to a used-up and broken toy. Terry Molloy's performance is the best of his three televised showings (bettered only by the Big Finish audio story, Davros); he dominates the proceedings with a gloriously malevolent glee.


THOUGHTS

Doctor Who's final serial before the infamous 18-month hiatus that would cripple the show, that makes this the final classic Who story that was made when the series was  still at full strength. Thankfully, this is no "so-bad-it's-funny" runaround, but rather a meticulously-crafted, wonderfully shot piece that demonstrates that this series was far from the tired husk its fiercest critics made it out to be.

Revelation has an ambitious script, the most ambitious of Eric Saward's writing efforts by a considerable margin. Saward does an enormously good job of making Tranquil Repose into a place that feels convincing and real. The personalities of the egotistical Jobel (Clive Swift), the fawning Tasambeker (Jenny Tomasin) and the stable and steady Takis (Trevor Cooper) feel right, not just as characters in their own right, but as characters who fit into this setting and who fit in their relationships with each other.

The structure is made up of strands: Character pairs and interactions that form a tapestry as we see them building on each other, even when they don't directly intersect. Like everything about this serial, this structure is ambitious: Jobel and Tasambeker's strand has no connection with Orcini's story, and both characters only lightly brush up against the Doctor and Peri. But all of the strands feel like parts of the same whole, because they all "fit" within the setting.

I'm generally no fan of Eric Saward's, but this is his best work and shows that he did have some real ability. No punches are pulled - This is Season 22 at its purest, with black comedy and grim horror co-existing to ghoulish effect. It also gets an incredible boost from director Graeme Harper, who constantly finds ways to keep things visually interesting within his meticulously framed shots. Whether by color schemes emphasizing the coldness of Kara (Eleanor Bron)'s ship, or by color tints on the lighting, or by smoke in the frame, there's almost always something to push the visual element and keep the action dynamic. This is one of the best-looking stories of the classic series, with very little here that invites the viewer to laugh at the cheapness.

Harper's direction emphasizes the greatest strength of Saward's script: The atmosphere. The cold and somber mood of a funeral home in decline. That atmosphere can be felt in every scene, every performance. More than any other element, the craftsmanship behind the camera pushes this from simply being a good story into being a great one.


Rating: 10/10.

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#5 (22.7 - 22.9): The Two Doctors.

The Doctor (Colin Baker) tries to rescue
his earlier self (Patrick Troughton).

3 episodes.  Approx. 133 minutes. Written by: Robert Holmes. Directed by: Peter Moffatt. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and his companion, Jamie (Frazer Hines), are on a mission for the Time Lords. It's a simple diplomatic affair. The Doctor is to meet with station head Dastari (Laurence Payne) to ask him to suspend some time experiments - something which doesn't please Dastari one bit. The negotiations are already going badly when the station suddenly comes under attack by Sontarans.

Feeling ripples of the attack on his earlier, the Sixth Doctor decides to visit the station. He and Peri arrive to discover the effects of the massacre. Everyone is dead - save for Jamie, who escaped into the station infrastructure. They learn that the Second Doctor was kidnapped by Dastari, and follow the trail to modern-day Spain, just outside Seville. That is when they discover the real architect of this plot: Chessene (Jacqueline Pearce), an Androgum - a race driven entirely by their drive for sensual pleasures. Chessene has been genetically engineered to genius level, and is now manipulating Dastari, the Sontarans, and her fellow Androgum, Shockeye (John Stratton) in an attempt to gain power over the whole of creation!


CHARACTERS

The Sixth Doctor: This script is a particularly good match for Colin Baker, with Robert Holmes' florid dialogue a perfect fit for the actor's theatrical tendencies. There's what seems to be a ham-fisted moment in Episode Two, in which the Doctor imparts exposition to Jamie just in time to overheard by Field Marshall Stike... which Episode Three then reveals was deliberate on the Doctor's part; he noticed Stike's approach, and so he decided to say what he did to push the Sontaran into action. Therefore, Holmes' script tailors this most theatrical of Doctors to actually give a performance for the benefit of his enemy.

The Second Doctor: The last of Patrick Troughton's three returns to the series and, in my opinion, the best. In the multi-Doctor anniversary specials during the Pertwee and Davison eras, Troughton was certainly fun to watch and gave his scenes a boost with his energy. But when I watch The Three Doctors or The Five Doctors, I can never escape the sense that Troughton is playing a caricature, a send-up of what people remember his Doctor being like. He was rarely as purely comical as the character we saw in those specials. The script to The Two Doctors does seem to have mixed up Doctors Two and Three a bit (the Second Doctor working for the Time Lords, for instance), but it is the only of Troughton's returns that allows him to play both his Doctor's comical and serious sides.

Peri: The Sixth Doctor/Peri partnership has settled in nicely by this time. The two bicker, but it seems clear to me while watching that the two characters are genuinely fond of each other. Even in the midst of arguing on the space station, the Doctor pauses to lay a comforting hand on Peri's shoulder, for example. Peri also shows a basic, person-to-person compassion both Doctors lack. After Oscar's murder, the two Doctors bundle out of the restaurant and start arguing about which way they should go. Peri lingers a moment to comfort Anita, then angrily quiets them.

Jamie: This story was made almost two decades after Frazer Hines' time as a regular, and the years definitely show. Still, Hines' performance is a good one. He and Troughton recapture their chemistry instantly, and the interplay between the Second Doctor and Jamie in the opening sequence is a joy to watch. He also plays well opposite Colin Baker, to the point that I think it's actually a shame Jamie doesn't stick around with the Sixth Doctor and Peri at the end of the story - The dynamic works among the three characters, and the way in which Jamie casually pokes at the Doctor's ego when he falls down a rickety ladder is a wonderfully relaxed counterpoint to the more strident Doctor/Peri bickering.

Shockeye: Of the many pleasures I find in this story, John Stratton's Shockeye is the greatest. Shockeye, the Androgum chef, may be the series' single greatest example of Douglas Adams' description of the perfect Doctor Who villain: He's initially hilarious because of the ridiculous things he says, then monstrous as you come to realize that he means every word he says. His desire to eat a human begins as a whim, then builds to an all-encompassing obsession. For the first two episodes, his antics are largely comical, albeit darkly. Then he turns frightening. The effective Episode Two cliffhanger sees him looming over Peri, hands outstretched, intoning, "Pretty, pretty," in eager anticipation of his next meal. He becomes progressively more violent from there, until he is finally chasing a wounded Sixth Doctor through the fields, determined to kill him and probably eat him when he's done.


THOUGHTS

The Two Doctors is an often criticized story, and not without reason. The 45-minute format of Season 22 required this story to be a 3-parter, which is at least half an episode too long. This results in some pacing issues, and some general structural messiness.

The worst of the padding is in the slow-paced opening episode, which sees far too much time devoted to the Sixth Doctor and Peri evading the space station's automated defenses while picking their way through the station infrastructure. These scenes really aren't bad. But given that this material is only peripherally related to the main action, it's ridiculous that the characters are still there for a good chunk of Episode Two. Peter Moffatt's direction is too stagy to make up for the lagging pace with atmosphere, and the Episode One cliffhanger is one of the limpest of the entire series.

Add in an irritating guest character (James Saxon's imbecilic Oscar Botcheby). Then mix in some structural issues, many of them the result of the producer-imposed presence of the Sontarans in a story that simply doesn't require them. It becomes easy to see why The Two Doctors comes in for criticism.

So why do I enjoy it so much?

I do enjoy this story a lot. Though not the best televised Sixth Doctor adventure, it is nevertheless my favorite one.  It's also by far my favorite multi-Doctor story. And while the cast certainly deserve a share of the credit for that, the main reasons I enjoy it come back to the same source as the flaws: Robert Holmes' script.


OF POETRY AND PROSE

Robert Holmes has always been a writer who has enjoyed painting pictures with words. This is one reason, I think, why his scripts tend to stand out in classic Who. The show rarely had much money for visual splendor - but at his best, Holmes had a knack for creating that same feel with language.

The Two Doctors may be structurally flawed, but the language of its script is rich and resonant. Holmes stuffs his characters' mouths with words that evoke so much. Take the Sixth Doctor's musing about the scent of decay:

"That is the smell of death, Peri. Ancient musk, heavy in the air. Fruit-soft flesh peeling from white bones. The unholy, unburiable smell of Armageddon. Nothing quite so evocative as one's sense of smell, is there?"


Then there are Shockeye's many asides about the flavor and preparation of meat. Or the Second Doctor, in Androgum mode, describing for Shockeye the benefits of enjoying an appetizer before diving into the main course:

"One should begin with a light dish, something to bring relish to the appetite: Pate de foie gras de Strasbourg en croute, for instance, or a serving of Belon oysters. Even a light salad with artichoke hearts and country ham will suffice. It gets the digestive juices flowing!"

Only during Oscar's "definitive Hamlet" speech does the flowery language fall flat. Most of the poetic lines go to Colin Baker, Patrick Troughton, or John Stratton. And when these actors are embracing Robert Holmes at his most vivid, the plot ceases to matter - The language itself soars, creating something that's a genuine pleasure just to sit back and listen to.


THE OPENING SEQUENCE

Nor is all the plotting as bad as I've made out. I've already mentioned the structural flaws, most of them caused by overlength. So now let me praise the serial's opening scenes, whose structural tightness shows that Holmes still had all his storytelling instincts fully intact.

The script tidily sets the pieces on the board all within this sequence. The characters - Dastari, Shockeye, Chessene, and the Sontarans. Shockeye's overriding desire to eat human flesh, Jamie's in particular. The time experiments. Dastari's enhancing of Chessene, and Chessene's relationship with Shockeye. Virtually every piece of what follows is either seen or mentioned in these opening scenes, which also manage to find time for some amusing Troughton/Hines interplay.


THEME

A final word for the way the script plays with theme. Thematic resonance isn't something you find much of in classic Who, but Holmes' script is stuffed with it. It's fairly well-known that Holmes, a vegetarian, wanted to color his script as anti-meat, hence scenes such as Shockeye detailing the treatment of animals bred for slaughter or "tenderizing" a screaming Jamie while telling Dastari that primitive humans "don't feel pain the same way you or I do."

But, intentionally or not, the various characters are bound together by a theme of obsession. Every one of the villains is driven by an obsession. Dastari is obsessed with Chessene, and so has enhanced her to a genius intellect in order to "set her among the gods!" Chessene is obsessed with power, with making the Androgums the dominant species in the galaxy. Field Marshall Stike is obsessed with turning the tide of the Sontarans' war agains the Rutans by using time travel technology. Their obsessions bind them together to destroy the space station, to blame that on the Time Lords, and to kidnap the Doctor. But as their agendas start to conflict, the obsessive focus each places on his or her own goals leads to conflict and ultimately betrayal.

By contrast with the others, Shockeye's obsession with the purely sensual (specifically with eating, though it's clear that the sexual overtones in his menacing of both Peri and Jamie are not accidental) seems almost pure and simple. Which doesn't make it any less brutal. Even as the Sontarans literally self-destruct, even as Chessene turns on Dastari, Shockeye remains intent on sating his appetite for flesh. In this, he has other mirrors in the story: The Doctor's flirtation with fishing, Oscar's obsession with his moths which he kills in order to preserve and admire. Shockeye takes their actions to a new and horrifying level - one which puts the Doctor straight off meat at the story's end, as he agrees with Peri to embrace a "vegetarian diet for both of us."


OVERALL

This is one of those stories, much like Logopolis, where I'm very torn as to my final rating. As with that story, there are clear narrative flaws that keep this from being a "10," much as I might like it to be. The story is clearly overlong and is structurally sloppy. But it's so entertaining as it alternates from comedy to horror to horror that is blackly comedic. Holmes' script is among his most purely literate, and his language often soars above the messy plot and pedestrian direction.

My head says "7," my heart says "9." So I'm going to do the most reasonable thing and split the difference.


Rating: 8/10.

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#1 (21.23 - 21.26): The Twin Dilemma

4 episodes. Written by: Anthony Steven, Eric Saward (uncredited). Directed by: Peter Moffatt.  Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The Doctor has regenerated into his sixth persona - but the process has gone even less smoothly than the last time. This new Doctor is subject to wild mood swings.  Sometimes he maintains the brisk confidence befitting himself.  Then he will abruptly swing to other states, including extreme vanity, cowardice, and murderous rage.

It is not a good time for him to be so unstable. A being known as Mestor (Edwin Richfield) has arranged the kidnapping of two twin geniuses, and plots to use their mathematical abilities in a way that will threaten the entire galaxy. Only the strongest of minds could hope to face down Mestor. Normally, it would be a task the Doctor could achieve in any of his incarnations. But in his current state, is he up to the challenge?


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Colin Baker's debut as the Doctor became infamous, as he met with a shockingly poor reception from contemporary viewers. Some of this was certainly intended. The brief called for the sixth Doctor to be initially unstable, and for audiences to be left in doubt as to whether he could be trusted. I would question whether the best way to achieve this was to have him attempt to strangle his own companion, cower in terror behind Peri's skirts, and go down onto his knees beating his chest like a silent movie penitent.

What I won't question is Colin Baker's performance. He overdoes the theatricality in the first episode, but from Part Two onward is really rather splendid. He alters his physicality and voice for each mood swing, giving you a reasonable read as to when his Doctor is "on" (such as in the last half of Episode Two and most of Episode Four), and when he's "off." He plays marvelously opposite Maurice Denham's Azmael, and throws himself into the role with such absolute relish that his enthusiasm becomes infectious.

Peri: I actually think Nicola Bryant's Peri was one of the best '80's companions. Bryant is a good actress, and she does a good job of putting across the character.,  Peri is likable enough to maintain viewer sympathy, but also has the selfishness that a young woman in her character's age group and from her background probably would have. She doesn't always deal well with this new Doctor. Her initial rejection of him, telling him that his new face is "horrible," probably does little to help calm the Doctor's unstable regeneration. I'd half-theorize that, after settling down in his persona, he decided to stick with the coat just because he knew how much it annoyed her.

The early scenes of the serial show her in mild shock at what she's seen. He has just changed in front of her, completely changed, and she's trying very hard to get her head around that while dealing with his new persona. Not since Ben and Polly have we seen a companion having so much difficulty dealing with the Doctor changing. Her first reaction is to wonder what it means for her.  After his attack, she spends the rest of Part One interacting much more tentatively with him, clearly frightened that he might lose his self-control again.  She only finally snaps back at him when his self-aggrandizement over the rescue of Hugo gets to be just a bit too much for her.

Azmael: Maurice Denham gives a wonderful performance as Azmael, the Doctor's old Time Lord mentor who has been forced to work for Mestor. Mestor's plan is wildly hilarious, even by Who standards. A key part of his plan involves bringing two small planets into orbit around Jaconda, which will magically grant them the same atmosphere and make them ideal for farming. Which is why the moon has the same atmosphere as Earth, and why so many crops are grown there. Er... Still, Azmael is a fine character, and I enjoyed watching his inner conflict between following Mestor's demands and despising his own actions. His scenes with Colin are nicely-played by both actors, and the final moment between them is one of the best scenes of Colin Baker's television tenure.


THOUGHTS

The Twin Dilemma is often regarded as "the beginning of the end" of Doctor Who's classic run. It infamously earned the "Worst Story" slot on the 200 list, and is routinely knocked as the worst of the worst. I don't think it deserves such a condemnation.  Every Doctor's era, with the possible exception of Christopher Eccleston's single season, easily contains at least one or two stories worse than this one. The Twin Dilemma is silly, but it moves along at a decent pace, and it holds together structurally. I'm no fan of script editor Eric Saward, but he was good at keeping stories adhering to a solid dramatic structure. This keeps a certain shape and momentum to proceedings, resulting in a story that is never less than watchable.

That said, I was appalled with Episode One on this viewing. That first episode is actually much worse than I had recalled, with Colin overacting some of the Doctor's mood swings horribly.  The acting by the women in the police station is outright inept, and the actresses are hardly helped by such melodramatic asides as, "This order comes direct from the ministry. And may my bones rot for obeying it!"

Things settle down after that. Colin's performance remains theatrical, but starting with Part Two it's an acceptable level of theatricality, even an enjoyable one. He is particularly good near the end of Part Two, when his Doctor comes fully to his senses after being left in the dome by Azmael, and contrives an escape for both himself and Peri. I caught myself laughing out loud at a couple of spots, first when the Doctor says of leaving Hugo to die, "Well if it's him or me, I certainly can," and then later, after beaming Peri out, his genuine surprise that his plan worked. He also is quite good in his later scenes opposite Mestor. I'm a particular fan of: "In my time, I've been threatened by experts. I don't rate you at all."

Even as the story and performances improve, aspects of the production keep dragging it down. This is a particularly weak production, with some of the worst pre-hiatus production values of John Nathan Turner's stewardship. Both the police station and the dome are horrible sets, garishly designed, with someone apparently having decided that lots of sparkles will make up for a lack of set dressing. Mestor's lair and throne room are much better-designed, but are still seriously overlit. Perhaps a more visual director than Peter Moffatt might have convinced the lighting director to dim the lights a bit, which would have helped enormously. As it stands, even though much of this is enjoyable tosh, there's no atmsophere.

Peter Moffatt's directorial style is particularly ill-suited to this story. The scenes with Mestor are the biggest offenders. The costume for Mestor isn't really that bad, by the series' standards. But Mestor needs to be kept in low lighting, in the shadows, so that his bulky presence and voice can convey threat. Seeing him in the overlit throne room, clear as day, in full shots, really undoes him as a threat. The lighting may not be Moffatt's fault - but the wide shots certainly are.

Despite the weak directing, I don't actually think The Twin Dilemma is that bad a story. Viewed as just another Doctor Who story, this isn't even the worst of the season, let alone of all time.  But The Twin Dilemma is not just another Doctor Who story. It's an introduction to a new Doctor, and in that respect it stumbles. The decision to present the Sixth Doctor as actively unstable, often unlikable, and completely unreliable is interesting on paper, and could have been compelling. But the instability lasts too long, comes up too often, and interferes with selling this spikier new Doctor. On its own, this would probably have been a minor hiccup that the show would have recovered from rather quickly. But in a more competitive television landscape, with new programming management that was particularly unsympathetic to the show, things went very differently...


Rating: 5/10.

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