| Episode: | 330 | | | Serial: | 65 | | | Writers: | Bob Baker and Dave Martin |
| | Director: | Lennie Mayne |
| | Air Date: | 30-Dec-1972 |
Doctor Who is finally returning to television this month with its 60th anniversary special. But I can't write about something that hasn't aired yet, so today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm covering the first part of the four-part 10th anniversary serial The Three Doctors!
Anniversary specials traditionally happen near an anniversary, but they decided to get an early start with this one. In fact, episode one aired at the end of 1972, almost a whole year early! This was the first episode of Jon Pertwee's fourth year in the role, which means he'd beaten Patrick Troughton's run (almost 3 seasons) and was getting close to matching William Hartnell's (a bit over 3 seasons). Pertwee still had a while to go before he matched their ridiculous episode counts though, as he was averaging 26 episodes a year compared to their 42 episode seasons. It'd take Ncuti Gatwa 15 years to match Hartnell's run and that's including Christmas specials.
I already wrote about this serial a few years back when Twitch did its marathon, but I don't actually remember what I said about it. Or what happens in it. I'm pretty sure I liked it though... unless I didn't. Anyway, this time around I'll be going through the whole story scene-by-scene and writing about it properly. This means there'll be SPOILERS for the episode and maybe a few earlier ones as well, if I can remember anything from them.
This is the first episode of the Pertwee era that I've written an article about, so I get to write about the title sequence a bit. The Third Doctor actually had two openings during his run, with the second one featuring clever slit-scan time vortex effects. This is the first one though, so he's just lurking around a black void at the moment. There are plenty of classic howl-around effects though, like the First and Second Doctors had, except this time in colour!
I've read that the Pertwee era has a new version of the iconic opening theme and when I compare clips I can almost hear a difference. But not quite. It's not the worst thing in the world to still have one of the most iconic versions of the theme though, especially for an anniversary story.
I think that's a gun in his hand, so he's perhaps overly cautious about this plastic bag he's found. Though then again, this is classic Doctor Who, where you can be attacked by bubble wrap. Actually, I just remembered the Autons, who were killing people with evil plastic chairs and phone cables!
Okay fine, I was wrong, you can never be too cautious about plastic bags. That gun ain't going to do him any good though, as aliens are always immune to bullets in this series.
I have to admit, I was expecting the episode to have some kind of a hook to grab my attention and capture my interest. I know TV was different in the 70s, but I've seen Netflix dramas with more frantic pacing than this.
Land Rover guy arrives to find the orange box and plastic bag still sitting there, so he gets on the radio to UNIT HQ. And that's the first 2m40s of the episode (not including the title sequence). You can tell this was written by a pair of confident storytellers, as it takes real courage to write an opening this slow and assume that people will stick with it. Not that anyone was going to change the channel on the big 10th anniversary story featuring all of the Doctors. Everyone knew what they were getting with this, they'd seen the Radio Times cover.
Land Rover guy starts pulling out photographs and printouts to show to the Brig, and the poor guy doesn't have a clue what it's about. I must have dozed off and missed a line at some point, because I don't actually know what they're talking about either. It's rare that an episode leaves me behind like this, especially when it hasn't gone anywhere. I'm going to have to look this up.
Right, ok, it turns out that the plastic bag was a balloon used for high-altitude research! One of the few times in science fiction where the crashed UFO really was just a weather balloon. Land Rover guy, Dr Tyler, was using the orange box attached to it to monitor cosmic rays, and he drove over to pick it up when it landed in the wildlife sanctuary.
But something weird is going on... I mean besides Ollis' disappearance. They've detected energy directed right at Earth, travelling faster than the speed of light!
The Brig whines a bit about leaving Tyler here to play with the technology in a top-secret security establishment, before heading off somewhere himself. This means he's not around to see the image of a creepy face appear in the photograph. He also misses Tyler vanishing like Ollis did.
I'm fascinated by this effect, as I can't figure out how it's done. I imagine it was probably a CSO trick done live using a second video camera recording an object puppeteered against a coloured backdrop, but I don't have a clue what I'm looking at here.
The Doctor's known for travelling around in a patched-up antique, but during his exile on Earth he was typically driving this thing: a customised Edwardian roadster called Bessie that had somehow escaped being painted TARDIS blue.
In real life, this was apparently a 20-year-old 1954 Ford Popular 103E chassis and engine with a fibreglass body kit on top to make it look like it was another 30 years older than that. The car was a bit of a wreck at this point in the show however, so after this serial they gave it a full overhaul with a new chassis and gearbox, along with a bigger engine that required them to extend the bonnet.
Wait, no, I'm wrong, Bessie actually gets disappeared by the blob monster in this scene. RIP Bessie. At least the Doctor and Jo got away thanks to his quick thinking. When he said "Run," they ran.
They've no idea where Tyler has gone, but they do have a clue: the image he was developing. The Doctor figures it must be Ollis' face in the photograph, which is kind of weird. Was his face illuminated by bright cosmic rays when he got zapped or something?
Anyway, Tyler was taken from the Doctor's lab and the blob went after the Doctor's car next, so the pattern is pointing straight towards its actual intended target: the Doctor himself. On the plus side, this means they don't have to go out and look for it. It's going to come to them.
The way they pop in one at a time makes me think of that old Weebl Flash cartoon with the badgers and the mushrooms, except that had better animation. That cartoon's celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, by the way, so there's a Flash fact for you.
All they're doing right now is teleporting in, it's a very simple camera trick. You film the empty road, stop the camera, bring the monster into place, start the camera again. The trouble is that they chose a location full of trees that move in the breeze and didn't use a fade transition to hide the cut, so every time a blob appears the background changes. The other blobs did a good job of freezing motionless though.
It's been too long for me to try to rank these against the other monster suits they've had, but they look kind of rubbish in a still image and even worse when they're shuffling along. I'm giving them points for the Cyclops eye though.
The end result might not have been much to look at, but the prop department definitely put the effort into making them. There are rows of light bulbs built into the claw and they light up in sequence as it's charging up to fire its weapon.
I guess you'd need something like an RPG to really damage a Resident Evil monster like this. Try finding money for that in Doctor Who's budget though.
It's a very one-sided battle out here, as the UNIT soldiers are the only ones with the decency and training to fall over when they're blown up, so the Brig orders Benton to pull the troops back.
The building's being evacuated, but Jo refuses to leave the Doctor's side and Benton joins them by climbing into the lab through the window! This is a concern for the Doctor, seeing as the creature's coming for him, so he tries to convince Benton to get Jo out of there (conveniently removing himself from the room as well). This doesn't happen.
The Doctor is a genius with centuries of experience, so he decides that between the window and the indestructible time machine, it's probably best that the three of them run for the TARDIS. That means that Benton gets to see the console room for the first time!
The Doctor wonders if Benton's going to point out that it's bigger on the inside, but he feels that it would be stating the obvious. Just like if I were to state that they probably should've had that power cable plug in on the other side of the console where the camera couldn't see it. Oh hey, I just noticed that the console is green! I thought that was just something they did to make it look right on video during the black-and-white era, but they'd built a new console for Pertwee by this point and it's still green.
The TARDIS is plugged in, but the Doctor still can't get the thing to move. I'm surprised that he's surprised by this, as I thought the TARDIS was still stuck on Earth at this point. Maybe I'm misremembering. I do recall that he got the Master to fix it for him in The Claws of Axos.
Okay I've looked it up and the TARDIS was fixed in The Claws of Axos, but it always brings him right back to where he started, unless the Time Lords have a mission for him. Anyway, the Doctor always solves his own problems, he's stubborn like that, but this is a special anniversary crisis, so he activates the "Extreme emergency" SOS switch on the console and the episode cuts to the Time Lords in Time Lord HQ!
The Time Lords are also having a bit of a crisis, with their vital cosmic energies being drained through a black hole by a force equal and opposite to themselves that resides in a universe of antimatter! In fact, the whole fabric of space-time is at risk of being destroyed, so things are a little more serious than a few rogue blobs harassing scientists. Still, they're giving the Doctor all the energy they can spare (somehow), so that he can keep his TARDIS forcefield up.
They're also going to send him some help. They can't actually spare anyone to go, not one single Time Lord on the whole planet (they're all very busy), but they have a way around that. A solution that'll use up enormous energy and break the First Law of Time. They're going to send... the Doctor. Also, they're going to pick a version of him that's played by an earlier actor to avoid expensive split-screen shots and make the episode a must-watch event.
So it's almost 20 minutes into this 24 minute episode and there are finally two Doctors on screen! Not quite three Doctors yet, but they're getting there.
The Time Lords also wiped his companions' memories of him and put them back in their own times, so Jo and Benton should be concerned. Speaking of his companions, they're going to sit this adventure out. Frazer Hines was busy in a brand new soap called Emmerdale, apparently.
(Edit: I have been informed that at this time the series was called Emmerdale Farm).
The Second Doctor has a line here that became iconic, pointing out that the Third Doctor has changed the console room set and he doesn't like it. Too many colours, I assume. They don't actually call him "The Second Doctor" by the way, because that'd be weird. He's just "The Doctor", and now that he's here, the two Doctors get straight to driving each other up the wall.
This is all kinds of ridiculous, seeing as they're in a serious immediate universe-threatening crisis, but I'm not about to complain. This episode suddenly got way way better. Doctor Who's strength was always in its characters and dialogue, or at least that's where it always had the greatest potential to succeed, and it's succeeding right now.
Though the Time Lords realise their plan isn't working, even a telepathic conference wasn't enough to get the Doctors on the same page, so they resort to even more dangerous emergency measures: sending them another Doctor!
For some reason, I assumed that William Hartnell would be looking pretty old at this point, but it hadn't actually been that long since his last appearance. Just six years. The trouble was that he was suffering from an illness that had forced him out of the role and at this point he was incapable of memorising lines. The best they could do was record footage of him for the other actors to respond to. But there he is, the First Doctor, in colour.
As Hartnell wasn't able to get into the action they've put him in the wise advisor role, giving the younger Doctors the info they need to head in the right direction. Though they're not actually younger, in fact they're significantly older and more experienced than he is, so it's kind of weird that they need this kind of help from him.
To be fair, Three is the Action Doctor, so he probably would've ended up volunteering anyway.
Or maybe they both got vaporised, we don't actually know for sure what's going on here. I do know what happens when matter touches antimatter though: BOOM.
And the end credits roll.
Imagine going into this episode blind, somehow missing the title, and having no idea you were three Doctors in this story.
TO BE CONTINUED IN THE THREE DOCTORS, EPISODE TWO
CONCLUSION
Well, the episode does technically have three Doctors in it, so the title works. They got that much right.
The Three Doctors exists because of a desire to bring back familiar faces and an assumption by the producers and fans that putting multiple Doctors in the same scene would lead to TV alchemy. The good kind of alchemy where you get gold out of it and not some horrible toxic mess. There was always a chance that having multiple lead actors with a feeling of ownership over the show would lead to egos clashing, and how do you write a story with three equally smart heroes who all have to save the day anyway?
Fortunately, it worked out! Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton are great in their five minutes on screen together. Sure they mostly just bicker, but they do it in a way that shows off their comic timing, along with how different, and similar, they are in the same role. The First Doctor also has some time on a screen... well, William Hartnell does at least. I didn't really see much of the mischievous Time Lord in his performance, but that's a result of consequences outside of everyone's control. It was nice that they could get him involved despite his illness and his appearance alone after a six-year absence gave fans the emotional reunion they were craving.
The trouble is that all of this happens at the very end of the episode and I was in danger of falling asleep before it got there. Part of the problem I had is that I didn't even understand what was going on at first. I don't know if I was supposed to know that I was looking at a crashed balloon with a device attached to it in that scene at the start, but without that crucial piece of info I spent three minutes wondering what anyone was talking about. I had to wade through a fair bit of exposition before I finally stumbled across the subject of their conversation. Plus scenes like the Doctor and Jo driving off just to do nothing and come back didn't help me get invested in the mystery.
Then the action suddenly gets started with UNIT HQ itself under siege and troops unloading into the invaders with a mounted machine gun and a rocket launcher! And it doesn't work. Sorry, that was vague, I mean this whole chunk of episode doesn't work... though UNIT's weapons not working is definitely part of the problem. The trope of bullets being useless was already a tired cliché at this point and it means that you could just take the whole action scene out and absolutely nothing would change. Plus the blobs just look ridiculous as they're troddling down the battlefield. They put the series' low budget and cheesy effects on full display there.
So I wouldn't rate this episode highly to be honest, even if the last five minutes are a good teaser for a Pertwee and Troughton team-up that hasn't really started yet.
COMING SOON
You can write your own opinions in the box below if you've got thoughts about the story so far.
To my considerable shame I haven't seen this one. Well, it's less shame and more cheapness as I didn't want to fork out for Britbox, but now they are all on iPlayer I can give it a go.
ReplyDeleteOh, and it was Emmerdale Farm in 1972, which is mostly irrelevant, and very pedantic, and I am disgusted with myself.
Oh, and presumably the reason they did the ten year anniversary a year early is because it's a UNIT story and UNIT always gets the dates wrong.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I'm not the only one who was confused by the first half of this episode. The slow pace makes it feel like they should be dumping exposition, but they can't yet to retain the mystery, so it's just a confusing mess. You can see why they didn't do teasers back then.
ReplyDeleteIt actually took me a few seconds to realize the scientist at UNIT HQ was the same guy driving the range rover. It must be due to the huge difference in video quality. Or maybe it's his hat.
I think UNIT is like the CIA, in that people know it exists, and that's about it. Torchwood would be more of an entirely clandestine organization thanks to being a retcon.
ReplyDelete