Enlightenment 172 May2014

8/10/2019 Enlightenment 172 May2014

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Vol 30, No 1 | Whole Number 172 | Spring 2014

Enlightenmentis the quarterly fanzine of the

Doctor Who Information Network, a not-for-prot organization dedicated to the celebration

and promotion of DOCTORWHO(a BBC

copyright programme) and its fandom.

Editor: Cameron Dixon

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All articles, artwork and photos remain the

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With thanks to:

With thanks to: Michel Albert, Graeme Burk,

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Robert Smith?, Deborah Stanish and SPACE:

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To make a submission to

Enlightenment, send articles [email protected]

Next Issue Deadline:

Jully 31, 2014

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FORMATION

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The worlds

been changi

for a whilnow

Chronic Fatig

Cameron D

It was a

COLD,

DARK NIGHTin November

Im going to ask you to time-

travel now. Dont worry, this is the

perfectly ordinary kind of time travel that

we do in our heads all the time; I personally

havent lived in the present day for going on

two decades now. What I need you to do is

close your eyes, shut out the outside world, and

imagine yourself back to a quarter past ve,

GMT, on the evening of Saturday 23 November

1963.

Its getting dark now, and its time for you to

go home. You might pass a police box on the

way; theyre not exactly ubiquitous, but even iftheyre not a big part of your world, you know

what they are. If youre lucky, then theyre a

symbol of safety and of protection. Theyre solid,

theyre reliable, and they mean that the bobbies

are walking the beat somewhere nearby, looking

out for you, keeping you safe. They mean that

ocers and cars will respond to urgent calls. If

you can see one now, it means youre protected,

just that little bit safer than you would be if there

were nothing out there with you in the growing

dark.

Your home is lit up when you get back, a

beacon in the November evening. Your family

is inside, and the television is warming up in

the corner of the sitting room. Youve had a long

hard day, probably;

actually, its Saturday, so

youve more likely had

a long hard week. You

want to relax with your

family, either with your

children or your parents

depending on who you are in this scenario,

and the TV listings tell you that theres a new

show coming on that you can all watch together.

Youre not sure what its going to be like, but if

its meant to be for all the family, then surely itll

be safe viewing.Because lord knows you want to be safe today.

After what happened yesterday in Texas, the

world seems just that much darker. But they

couldnt have known that back in October when

they turned on the cameras in Lime Grove

studios and started recording the rst episode

of this new, family-friendly BBC science-ction

series. They were making this show in a more

comfortable world, the one that no longer exists

unless you close your eyes.

Or were they? Because lets face it, the worlds

been changing for a while now, both on and o

the screen. When you think of a bobby walking

the beat, you might think of good old Dixon of

Dock Green, keeping the peace and greeting


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COLD, DARK NIGHT

the viewers with an avuncular, Good evening,

all. Hes been around since 1955, wise and

comforting, and you know you can trust him.

But a couple of years ago the BBC started to

air a new police drama called Z-Cars, and thatone comes from a very dierent world. Its a

darker world, its more violent, the policemen

are rougher and less friendly. They may still be

trying to keep you safe, but they live in a more

dangerous world. Its a little bit less certain. You

dont really know what to expect from it.

And then

theres that other

popular show,

the one set in the

junkyard: you

know, Steptoe and

Son. The comedy.

The one where

poor old Harold

Steptoe strives for

something betterin life, only to get

put right back in

his place, week

after week, by his

scheming old dad. You can be certain of that.

And if you think about it, thats a little horrible,

isnt it?

But you probably dont think about it. You

dont watch these shows over and over again,

picking apart every moment for its social and

semiotic signicance. Its television, theatre for

the airwaves; its meant to be aired once and

then forgotten. So you sit down in front of the

telly with your family, and you watch this new

show, wanting only to be taken away from the

world you know for a while before you have to

come back to it.

And theres a bobby, walking the beat. Theres

a junkyard. Theres a police box.

And its all wrong.The music is like nothing youve ever heard

before, eerie throbbing and ghostly wailing.

The familiar images fade in over a glowing

light like a crack in the skin of the Universe.

The police box is in the middle of the junkyard,

exactly where it shouldnt be, and its humming

with power and

potential, like

something locked

down, just waiting

its chance to break

free.

Everything

that you should

know is made

unfamiliar. This

isnt the safefamily show

you expected.

This is from a

world where two

perfectly ordinary schoolteachers, trustworthy

gures of authority, step in to help a troubled

girl and are forcibly taken away from the world

they know, possibly never to come back.

This is where DOCTORWHObegins. And theres

no way you can know that it will still be going

more than fty years later. But you know one

thing as you watch: it wont be quiet, it wont

be safe, and it wont be calm. But if youre very

lucky, it will be the trip of a lifetime.

Welcome to the future.


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WhoL

Gian-Luca di

Peter Capaldis frst season

SHAPING UP(contains minor casting spoilers)Production of DOCTORWHOs 2014 season is well

underway. At the time of writing, six episodes

have completed principal photography. Steven

Moat has written the debut episode, as well

as Episode 4; it is expected that he will also

write the season nale and one or two others.

The season is expected to be 12 episodes long,

followed by a Christmas special; the BBC has

recently released

a teaser trailer

announcing that it

will begin broadcast

in August.

Other writers announced for the series include

veterans Mark Gatiss, Gareth Roberts, Neil Cross

and Steven Thompson, who have all writtenepisodes for Moat in the Matt Smith era. Phil

Ford, a veteran of The Sarah Jane Adventures,

returns for his rst DOCTORWHOepisode since co-

writing The Waters of Marsin 2009. Two writers

completely new to WHOhave been announced:

Peter Harness, who has written for the detective

series Wallander; and Jamie Mathieson, who has

written for both Being Humanand Dirk Gently.In addition to Peter Capaldi and Jenna

Coleman, it has been announced that the full

Paternoster Gang Neve McIntoshs Madame

Vastra, Catrin Stewarts Jenny, and Dan Starkeys

Strax will all appear in at least one episode of

the new series, believed to be the rst Twelfth

Doctor episode.

A new recurring character, not necessarily a

companion, has been announced: Danny Pink,another teacher at Coal Hill School (where Clara

has taught since the anniversary special, The Day of

the Doctor). The character is to be played by Samuel

Anderson, previously best known for playing a

regular character on the British soap Emmerdale(as

had been the case with Jenna Coleman).


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WHOLINE

Other guest cast members announced include

Keeley Hawes (Spooks, Ashes to Ashes), Ben Miller

(Primeval, Armstrong and Miller) and Tom Riley

(Poirot, Marple,and Lost in Austen).

Directors announced thus far include DouglasMacKinnon, who has previously directed

episodes with both David Tennant and Matt

Smith, and several directors new

to the show: Ben Wheatley, Paul

Murphy, Paul Wilmshurt, and

Rachel Talalay (director of the

movies Tank Girland Freddys

Dead: The Final Nightmare).

MISSING EPISODE NEWS

(OR LACK THEREOF)

At the time of writing, no further

announcements have been made

conrming or denying whether

any more of the 57 episodes

ocially missing from the archiveshave been found. There has been

no statement of any kind by either

the BBC or Phil Morriss Television

International Enterprises Archives,

which suggests that TIEA simply

doesnt have any more missing

episodes in its possession. Philip

Morris has repeatedly said to

expect the unexpected when

asked whether there are more to be

found. WhoLine will continue to

report only on ocial new stories

or announcements from either the

BBC or TIEA as they happen.

OBITUARY

Kate OMara, the actress who played the

villainous Rani in 1980s DOCTORWHO, passed

away earlier this year at the age of 74 after a

short illness. OMara played the Rani in two

proper DOCTORWHOstories, The Mark of the

Raniand Time and the Rani, as well as reprising

the character in the 30th-

anniversary charity skit

Dimensions in Time. Her

nal appearance as the

character was in the 2000

BBV audio play The RaniReaps the Whirlwind. She

was perhaps best known

internationally for her

role as Caress in Dynasty,

which she played between

her two appearances on

WHO. OMara also starred

alongside two Doctors in

other famous productions:

Colin Baker in the mid-70s

television series The Brothers,

and Peter Cushing in the

1970 Hammer Horror lm

The Vampire Lovers. She

had also been married to

two dierent actors who

had played guest roles inDOCTORWHO: Jeremy Young,

who played Kal in the very

rst DOCTORWHOserial;

and later to Richard Willis,

who played Adrics brother

Varsh in Full Circle.


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Moffat has

turned the

series on its

head and

reorientethe Doctotravels.

Crater of Need

Gian-Luca di

Living for the

MOMENTDOCTORWHO: The Day of the Doctor

Starring Matt Smith, David Tennant,

John Hurt, Jenna Coleman, Billie Piper

Written by Steven Moffat

Directed by Nick Hurran

Broadcast 23 November 2013

I

n the 20th-anniversary

special The Five Doctors,

then-incumbent DoctorPeter Davison indicated

that he tried to believe three

impossible things before

breakfast. The 50th-anniversary special

The Day of the Doctorgoes one step further:

it actually does three impossible things. It

manages to tell a story, while also celebrating

all 50 years of the programmes history in away that still made it accessible to viewers

mainly familiar with the new series or for

that matter, complete newbies watching

this as a one-o in the cinema and at the

same time it was doing both of these things,

it managed to lay the foundation for a new

direction in the programmes immediate future.

If all that wasnt enough, the story manages to

redeem past elements of DOCTORWHO, many ofwhich we never thought possible in 3D, no

less! And Ive still not mentioned John Hurts

performance as the conicted War Doctor,

or the magical moment when Tom Baker is

seen talking to Matt Smith itself only

a few moments after Peter Capaldis

eyes make a thrilling

appearance, allowing

the as yet unseen

Twelfth Doctor to be

part of an epic climax

that had many fans

literally jumping out of

their seats. Quite simply,

The Day of the Doctorwas

the triumph that we all

dreamed it could be.Steven Moats

ever-inventive script

manages to juggle all

of the above elements

more successfully

than perhaps anyone

thought was realistic.


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MOMENT

The only fault, perhaps, lies with the Zygon

plot fading away fairly quickly once the

main issue of whether the Doctor will

still destroy his homeworld or not

re-emerges for good. Even then, oneimagines that the Zygons may come

back another day, and the discerning

viewer can easily guess what must

have happened; in the meantime,

most of the audience is too

busy celebrating or recovering

from shock at all of the surprise

appearances to even care what

happened with the Zygons. The

plot overall bears the familiar mark

of Moats work, as it holds up

well upon subsequent viewings,

and the feelings of celebration,

redemption and hope are so

strong by the time one gets to

the end of the story that one is

tempted to forgive any looseends that might remain.

One criticism that many have

levelled at The Day of the Doctor

is that it undermines the RTD

era of DOCTORWHO, but this

accusation falls wide of the mark.

Firstly, the special focusses on the

nal events of the Time War, a story

concept squarely originated in the

RTD era. Secondly, the decision to

bring Billie Piper back (when Alex

Kingston could just as easily have

played the role of the Moments

sentient interface) clearly identies

The Day of the Doctoras a heartfelt

tribute to RTDs time as showrunner at least

as much as it pays tribute to any other era

of the show.

While The Day of the Doctorspecically

undermines (and arguably retcons) TheEnd of Time, it would be too simplistic to

suggest that this means the entirely of RTDs

era has been undermined in the process

particularly as The End of Timeseemed to

undermine earlier RTD stories, such as

The Parting of the Ways, by eectively

rewriting our understanding of the

Time War. In The Parting of the Ways,

the Doctors decision to end the Time

War is presented as a terrible one,

and is paralleled within the episodes

plot itself: again, the Doctor is forced

to choose whether to kill millions

of innocent lives in order to save

billions more from the Daleks. The

point made in The Parting of the Ways

is that the Doctor has learned hislesson; this time, he refuses to make

such a wholesale sacrice. In The

End of Time, the decision is seen in

a dierent light: the Time Lords are

essentially all bad, barring literally

two people, because ghting the Time War

has made them so. The Time Lords prior

description as goodies is explained away by

the Doctors remark to Wilf that its how

I choose to remember them. The Doctors

choice thus becomes: kill two sets of insane,

evil, aggressive baddies to save the cosmos,

or dont. Not exactly the great dilemma

suggested earlier.

The Day of the Doctorresets


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MOMENT

things back to the original view of the Time War.

There are billions of innocent Time Lords,

including their many children, who are

victims of circumstance and dont deserve

to die. It is only the High Council whohave turned to evil. The introduction of a

separate War Council neatly sidesteps

the need for an erasure of

The End of Time, although

it does poke a hole in the

assertion that it was the

eects of war that caused

the Time Lords to become

either evil or insane; if such

a correlation were accurate,

it should have aected the

members of the War Council more

than the High Council.

With this reset, the Doctors

choice becomes a terrible one

again, and provides what might

be called the most triumphantmoment in all the Doctors lives.

One can readily see why Steven

Moat hit the reset button. There is

far more drama to be found in the

Doctor undoing the single greatest

tragedy of his life than in him

merely avoiding a perfectly justiable

decision. This allows the 50th anniversary

special to be the biggest in-character

celebration possible.

Additionally, Moats reset denes a Time

Lords regeneration as an event that brings

about the renewal of the same character and

man, rather than equating it with death, as

The End of Timehad done. The solution to the

problem of saving Gallifrey is reliant upon all

13 Doctors being the same man, and, in

fact, having the same mind. We can see

the thought processes that lead to the

storys resolution start with one Doctorand then make their way into the others.

This is further evidenced with the reuse

and for some, the redemption

of the I dont want to go

line. The line is redeemed in

that it reprises Tennants nal

line in the show, but makes

it a reference to the Doctors

actual death, rather than

his regeneration from one

incarnation to the next. David

Tennants nal appearance

(to date) is no longer the

bitter, cynical, self-pitying

one from The End of Time. Such

an end served only to undercut

everything this optimistic seriesand its unselsh, compassionate

lead character always strove to

present. The anniversary special thus

allowed this fan to enjoy the David

Tennant Doctor and his era as a more

positive whole.

A further rehabilitation occurs in the

area of the Doctors relationship with

Queen Elizabeth I. In both The End

of Timeand a few of the early

Eleventh Doctor stories this

relationship is presented as

somewhat tawdry. In The Day

of the Doctor, we are given a

much clearer picture of the


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MOMENT

relationship, as one that was far more innocent

in origin and much less sleazy than we were

previously led to believe.

When Steven Moat was asked in 1999

what he would do with a revivedDOCTORWHOtelevision series, he

responded that hed chuck out

all that yawn-inducing Gallifrey

rubbish I dont care where the

Doctor came from. When he

became a part of the creative team

that did in fact revive the series,

that is precisely what happened.

With The Day of the Doctor,

Moat has reopened this door to

a new Gallifrey, one that shows

no signs of being yawn-

inducing at any point in the

near future. With this single

reintroduction, Moat has

turned the series on its head

and reoriented the Doctorstravels. For the rst 50 years,

he sought to leave or avoid

Gallifrey; now he is searching

for it, embarking on a long journey

home. The mythos surrounding

Gallifrey has proved too much a

part of the Doctors adventures to

be permanently abolished, no matter

how hard the television series, books,

audio plays, or imaginative depictions

of unmade Eric Saward stories by Ian

Levine have tried.

The special also gifts us with John

Hurts War Doctor, who

generally represents the classic

series Doctors in a way that neither Paul

McGanns nor Christopher Ecclestons Doctors

could possibly do, given that the eighth and

ninth Doctors characters are so clearly

dened in their own right. While theminisode Night of the Doctorgave the

much longed for nod to both Paul

McGanns audio adventures and the

series that never was, it took this

new incarnation of the Doctor to

give a voice to the fans who have

been disappointed with the new

series less scientic and often

more romantic approach to the

character.

Linked to all of these

observations must be the

tting tribute the 50th

anniversary special paid

to the much loved William

Hartnell era and the

adventures of the veryrst Doctor. Choosing to

open the story with the

original theme and visuals paid

homage to the magical moment

this unique series made its debut.

Taking the connection even further,

the Doctor once again takes a teacher

from Coal Hill School and show her the

wonders of Time and Space, just as he did

50 years ago (albeit in a more mutually

consensual context). It is wonderful to see

that Ian Chestertons name still carries

some weight at Coal Hill School, and

reassuring to know that I.M. Foremans

is still open for business just down the


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MOMENT

street.

The Patrick Troughton eras penchant for

monsters invading bases under siege is also

given lip service here, not just with the Zygons

placing UNIT HQ under siege but withGallifrey itself under siege by the Daleks.

The presence of UNIT provides a warm

tribute to the Jon Pertwee era, and the

special appearance of Tom Baker (not

to mention the reintroduction of one

of his best-loved and heretofore

underused monsters) has his era

covered. The Davison and Colin

Baker eras are taken care of with

the heavy use of continuity

(including returning monsters

and a Gallifrey-based, multi-

Doctor story); although the

argument could be made that

the years between 2008 and

2013 have seen the heaviest use

of continuity in the history ofthe series, The Day of the Doctor

packs in a denser use of the

concept than long-time fans are

generally accustomed to. Lastly, the

Sylvester McCoy era gets a shout-out

through the introduction of another

ancient Gallifreyan weapon, this

one both terrifying and uniquely

sentient.

Besides Tom Bakers appearance

on screen with another Doctor,

and the surprising cameo by Peter

Capaldis eyes, perhaps the two

most surprising aspects of the

special are the fact that Kamelion

received more screen time than K9 (honestly,

who saw that coming?) and the complete

lack of River Song. Given how important a

character she has been in the past ve years, one

thought a cameo might at least have beenforthcoming. It is perhaps less surprising

that Billie Piper did not actually play

Rose Tyler, and frankly, this was the

right move.Journeys Endmore than

adequately demonstrated that you

cant eectively shoehorn the

seminal Doctor/Rose relationship

into a story that is trying to do so

much else.

At the end of the story, the

Doctor confesses that he does

indeed have a dream: he dreams

about going home. I had a

dream as well: 25 years ago,

I dreamt that I could go to

see DOCTORWHOon the big

screen in a packed theatrewith an all-ages audience and

people lining up out the door

for the next showing as I left

the cinema. It took another quarter

of a century, but my dream came

true. Heres hoping that the Doctors

dream is fullled too, one day and

that Im still around 50 years later to

see it.

GIAN-LUCA DI ROCCO is

the reviewer none of the other

reviewers talk about


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p | 1Spring 2014

An Adventur

is a lovely

tribute to an

era of British

television tha

no longerexists.

5Annivers

Celebra

Graeme

You can rewrite

HISTORYAn Adventure in Space and Time

Starring David Bradley, Brian Cox, Jessica

Rayne, Sacha Dhawan, Lesley Manville

Written by Mark Gatiss

Directed by Terry McDonough

Broadcast 21 November 2013

T

he sprinklers never went off in

Lime Grove Studio D during

the recording of the originalpilot episode ofDOCTORWHO. The

TARDIS was never a standing permanent set.

Mervyn Pineld left DOCTORWHOin 1965 and

died shortly after, and was never an advisor

to Sydney Newman. The Daleks was already

four episodes into lming when the Kennedy

assassination happened. The TARDIS wasnt in

ight during the nal scene of The Massacre, sothere was no need to turn on the time rotor

These and

many more

historical

inaccuracies

can be found in

An Adventure

in Space and

Time, the TVmovie about

the creation of

Doctor Who.

And none of

them honestly

matter.

Okay, two ofthem seriously

bug me. The

rst is Brian Cox as

Sydney Newman, who

plays the Canadian

innovator who arguably

created the series as

a brash would-be

Hollywood mogul whoexclaims Pop! Pop!

Pop! as a catchphrase.

Its not that Cox

isnt huge fun as the

character hes great

playing the guy who

pricks the pomposity of the sti-shirted BBC

but in a sea of reasonably thought-out portrayalsIm disappointed they chose to go with such

a broad

caricature.

The

second is

Patrick

Troughton.

Reece

Shearsmithis a great

actor but

terribly

cast here,

and I think

the most


14/54

p | 14Spring 2014

HISTORY

amateurish cosplayer could come up with a

better Second Doctor costume than that.

But, heck, maybe even these two things dont

matter. An Adventure in Space and Time is a

lovely tribute to DOCTORWHO, the people who

brought it into existence and an era of British

television that no longer exists.

It shouldnt work. In spite of the jerry-rigging

of history into a compelling storyline (andjettisoning everything else; Delia Derbyshire

gets a brief appearance on screen but Terry

Nation, David Whitaker, Raymond Cusick and

C.E. Webber dont even get a mention), the fact

is that the real events sabotage the drama. Of

the people most responsible for DOCTORWHOs

creation Sydney Newman, Verity Lambert,

Waris Hussein and William Hartnell three of

them are gone or have little inuence on the

show within two years, leaving Hartnell (and a

version of Sydney Newman deputising for all of

Verity Lamberts replacements) to carry the rest

of it.

It creates a funny shape to the proceedings,

eectively two separate dramas with two

separate leads. The rst hour is spent showing

how DOCTORWHOcame to the air and became

a smashing success thanks to Verity Lambert.

The last half hour is spent showing William

Hartnells decline. It pulls it o by makingHartnell the connective tissue between the two

parts, with Hartnells inrmity coming into the

spotlight just as Lambert decides to leave it.

Its a very canny decision on the part of writer

Mark Gatiss. The reason An Adventure in Space

and Timegets away with everything, from its

odd shape as a drama to its fast-and-loose

treatment of real events, is because while it

fudges so many of the details its utterly rock-

solid in capturing William Hartnell. The real

Hartnell didnt fumble around quite so much

as David Bradley does that said, Hartnell was

pretty inrm by the end of his tenure as the

Doctor, and there are lots of nightmare stories

about working with him but what Bradleys

portrayal does is capture the emotional reality:

a man who nally found the role of his lifetimejust as his body was failing him.

Bradley is wonderful doing this. His Hartnell

is pompous and irascible but genuinely

vulnerable. And Gatiss sweetens the script to

great eect here. The sequence in which Bradley

as Hartnell haltingly recites the closing speech

from The Massacreis a brilliant scene. Its utter

bunkum the real Hartnell aced that scene, and

beautifully, too but its perfect for the drama, as

we nally get into the sheer terror someone like

Hartnell must have faced as a man now bereft

of everything he began DOCTORWHOwith, who

cant even retain the words in his head. Bradleys

performance here is deeply moving.

That broader emotional realism also works in


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HISTORY

the rst hour

chronicling the

creation of the

series. Here, its

a sh-out-of-water story as

Verity Lambert

and Waris

Hussein (played

beautifully

by Jessica Raine and Sacha Dhawan) struggle

against the powers that be to bring something

amazing to air. Raine is great at capturing the

bolshie side of Verity, who would stand up to

anyone who got in her way. Dhawan, though, is

quietly stunning at capturing the real Husseins

mannerisms and making him a man desperate to

make his mark, even on a childrens show.

An Adventure in Space and Timeis gorgeous

to look at. Even if it doesnt quite get its WHO

right (stand up, bad Cyberman and Second

Doctor costumes!), the attention to period detailis sumptuous (it helps that they were able to

lm at BBC Television Centre before it closed).

Terry McDonoughs direction mostly tries to

stand back and let the pageantry of recreating

1960s DOCTORWHOdo its thing, with a few

visual ourishes here and there. The real star

of the lm, though, is Edmund Butt, whose

score is genuinely beautiful and really moving.

If Murray Gold should ever leave, heres his

replacement.

The DVD/Blu-ray is scant on extras (though it

does include An Unearthly Child, and kudos for

that). The making-of documentary has a couple

of surprises, including an ending from the

cutting room oor that would have seen Mark

Gatiss playing

Jon Pertwees

Doctor (in

photographs,

at least). Thereare several

recreations

of sequences

from the series,

including

the TARDIS scene from the pilot, which was

apparently made on the original Marconi

pedestal cameras from the early 1960s. This

particular sequence should make you appreciate

how skilled the original camera operators

were; its not a patch on what was originally

done in 1963. There are also a few sequences

of speeches from other stories thrown in,

which were presumably to have been intercut

but never made it. The ten-minute tribute to

William Hartnell is too short, but it uses a great

combination of cast members and Hartnellscontemporaries to bring the man alive, along

with recently found footage of the man himself.

An Adventure in Space and Timeends with

a cameo appearance of Matt Smiths Doctor,

symbolising the longevity of the program as

Hartnell departs, which was powerful at the

time; however, I do wonder if its impact will

be dulled in the future. For me, the thing that

most aected me was the wonderful postlude in

which they play a clip of William Hartnell at the

end of The Dalek Invasion of Earthas the camera

tracks through the empty TARDIS set. I cried

after seeing that. I still do, every bloody time.

GRAEME BURK is a blast from the past


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[Tom] was

potty as afruitcakewhen he did

DOCTORWHO,

and he was

great fun!

EnlightenConversati

David R

MICHAELWISHER:Up above the gods

Well, it was a long time

ago. It started, really, when I

was in the Royal Air Force. People

always wanted entertainment wherever you

were, so I used to get up and entertain. Anyway,

when I left the RAF when I was demobbed, as

we call it in my paybook was written, MichaelWisher, actor, who in his spare time works for

the Royal Air Force. From then on, of course, I

really couldnt do much else about it, because

when you try to get a job when somebodys

written that in your paybook, youve really got

to go along the line they dictate!

Thus was born the acting career of Michael

Wisher, something that would eventually leadhim into the annals of DOCTORWHOhistory.

Best known for creating the role of Davros, the

shows most famous mad scientist, his numerous

other appearances both on and o screen only

serve to underline the import of his place in the

Whoniverse.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr Wisher,

a witty, literate and amusing man, at the Leisure

Hive convention in England in August 1986.My thanks go out to him for his time, and also

to British fan Andrew ODay, who assisted me

in the interview and made it all possible by

allowing me to use his tape recorder after mine

had malfunctioned!

After attending the Royal Academy of

Dramatic Arts, Wisher said, he went on to work

in radio, as well as

doing voice-overs

for commercials and

dubbing on foreign

cartoons. It is thus not

surprising that his

initial work on DOCTORWHOwas doing a voice-

over during Patrick

Troughtons years as the

Doctor.

I know I did one

voice-over, he recalled.

They rang up in a panic on a telephone.

Somebody couldnt turn up, and it was just asimple voice-over of about half a dozen lines. I

dont know what it was. And thats how I got

into it.

It wasnt until the Jon Pertwee era, though,

that Wisher became deeply involved in DOCTOR

WHO. I started doing Dalek voices and playing

villains, Michael remembered. I was usually

shot, blown up or eaten sometimes all three!

None of these things befell him, however, inhis rst on-screen appearance, in the role of TV

reporter John Wakeeld in The Ambassadors of

Deathduring the rst Pertwee season.

I had to say all these speeches straight into [a

TV camera]. In those days they had these sh-

eye cameras for close-ups. You had this funny

reection of your face which was all distorted,


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MICHAEL WISHER

any problem at all. Never. It was just a barrel of

laughs all the way through.

Id been a big admirer of his work because

hed been an actor for many years and a

classical actor, too but Id never actuallyworked with him before. He was a character

actor, one seen quite a lot in Shakespeare and

various other plays of classical venues, but I

think he brought a lot of classicism to the role of

the Master, rearlly. I think thats what made it

such fun to watch.

Two years later, Wisher appeared as the

villainous revolutionary Kalik in Carnival

of Monsters, a story directed by producer

Barry Letts. Though normally thought of as a

lighthearted tale about an itinerant carnival man,

this particular story, according to Wisher, had a

more serious meaning behind it.

It was a story about the world, their world,

divided in two, he explained, as the eete

master race walked upon a higher level and the

grunts walked upon a lower level, and never thetwain met; and if they did meet, the high-level

people were liable to kill the low-level people. It

was a sort of monster apartheid.

I asked him if he thought Letts purposefully

tried to emphasise the divisions and social

injustice in this storys society. Yes, I think

he did, and I think he succeeded, Wisher

responded. I think he made that point

perfectly clear, to show how, indeed, parts of

this world could go if the worst came to the

worst. It could regress and go that way quite

easily, that you could produce almost two

entirely dierent races of people, the grunts

and the upper crust, by selective breeding, by

those awful systems that have been tried in

our own time in Europe and indeed in Africa.

And when man interferes with the normal,

natural process of the world then something

ghastly usually happens.

Nonetheless, Michael did say that the storywas fun to make. It was a delightful idea that

two entirely dierent ideas should come together

[with] this strange showman, who was not an

evil man, but who regarded the universe as his

personal pond from which to collect specimens

and take them around the galaxy for people to

gawp at, trapped in this machine rather like a

mini-zoo.

Playing the part of Kalik required Wisher to

wear a false scalp and have his face painted

grey. This, he said, posed no problem, but the

costumes that he and his colleagues had to wear

were another matter altogether.

I always used to describe the characters

as coming out of some futuristic Jacobean

tragicomedy, he laughed, in that the costumes

were sort of semi-armour plate, and theywerent easy to move around in. In fact, we

used to get strange letters from strange people

saying, Dear Sir, how nice to see the thighs

of young men once again in these costumes,

and we used to pin these letters on the wall.

There was something about these costumes that

roused some rather curious feelings in some

even more curious people!

Kalik was the rst villainous role Wisher

played on DOCTORWHO. Did he nd that villains

were more interesting to play? Well, yes,

because they always believe theyre right, dont

they? I mean, they dont think theyre being

villains. Very few villains do. They do things

that are necessary, because they believe in


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MICHAEL WISHER

what theyre doing. Thats a dreadful word,

necessary. You could how many times the

various fascist regimes of the world have used

the word necessary.

Carnival of Monsterswas the last story in whichMichael Wisher was seen during the Jon Pertwee

era. However, he was still heard, doing Dalek

voices in Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleksand

Death to the Daleks.

Oh yes, Dalek voices were bread and butter,

Michael explained. I used to sit in my little

cabin in the corner of the studio, entirely

separated from everyone else. It was rather

like being in air trac control, really. You had

a monitor and you had a pair of earphones on

cans, as we call them and you had a script.

And your left eye was on the monitor, and your

right eye was on the script; your left ear was

up on the control oor, and your right ear was

down on the studio oor; and you had to sort

of collect, collate, coordinate your bit of Dalek

speech with what the hell was going on aroundyou! You could also hear all the rude comments

in the box upstairs, and the blackmail time came

afterwards when you could get at least a pint of

beer out of the director.

The Tom Baker years ensued, and with them,

Genesis of the Daleks, in which Wisher gave his

supreme performance as Davros, progenitor of

the Daleks. Naturally, it was about this story

that Michael spoke the most, beginning with the

unusual way in which he practiced his part.

We used to practice with a wheelchair,

obviously, because Davros was four-fths dead,

and he was certainly dead from the waist down.

His left side was dead, his eyes were dead, his

speech was dead. I mean there wasnt much

left of him alive, but he kept himself alive by a

sort of bionics, if you like. He had a mechanical

bottom half, a mechanical eye and mechanical

speech. His own speech must have been failing,

barely audible, therefore he had to boost it upby mechanical means. In other words, he was a

prototype for a Dalek himself, but he had done

this to himself. He was a scientist, probably a

brilliant man in his time and obviously right

round the bend now!

And so, bearing all that in mind, I realised,

since this incredible face of his had been

designed, that prosthetics would have to be

placed round my own head. Now, directors

are not infallible. They tend, when they look

at you, to hear your voice and to look at your

expression. They bring the two together, and

they draw conclusions from that. But I realised

very early on that that would be a mistake,

because there would not be any expression. Not

in that mask, there wouldnt! There would just

be a voice. So, in order to get David [Maloney,the director] used to this idea and in order to

get me used to it, too I put a paper bag over my

head with just two eyeholes to see out of, so that

I could neither see nor hear very clearly, just to

get me used to the idea of being cut o from the

world when I was performing. I had to get used

to the idea and let him get used to the idea too,

so that all he had was a voice to go on.

Wisher said that a cast of his face had to be

made in order to create the mask he was to wear.

It was designed very closely with my features

in mind, but much exaggerated. As Davros

saw with an articial eye, the eyes of the mask

were closed, making sight dicult. If you close

your eyes now, and have the merest of slits so


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MICHAEL WISHER

that youre looking through your lashes, thats

roughly what I could see, he explained. If you

stick your ngers in your ears, thats roughly

what I could hear.

As if those conditions werent dicult enough,Wisher had to provide Davross mobility by

scooting along with his feet the whole time.

That was me doing everything, yes. BBC dont

run to electric motors. As for having to sit in

Davross chair, It was quite painful in trousers,

so I had to wear a kilt!

Having explained the physical problems in

being Davros, Wisher was asked if scriptwriter

Terry Nation had been on the set to help with

the characterisation. Well, I did speak to Terry,

yes, but it was usually either about cricket or the

weather! No, Terry never interfered. He presented

me with the script and he left it up to the director

and artist to do it. I mean, he may have had

private conferences with the producer or the

director, saying, I dont like the way this is going

or I like the way thats going. Who knows? Butwe didnt have any conversations on that matter.

Nonetheless, there was no doubt as to what

type of character Davros was. One was always

aware of what Terry Nation had in mind,

Wisher explained. It was perfectly clear that

this was the invention of the Daleks. It was

made perfectly clear why he invented the Daleks

and it was perfectly clear that he was going to

create them partially in his own image rather

foolishly as it turned out, in my opinion, because

I dont think it was a very perfect image, quite

candidly. I think he could have done better.

Hed done it to himself, therefore he knew

the system could work. I mean, here was a man

who I imagine must have been around 190 years

old and still around. I cant say that he enjoyed

life very much. I cant see that a person in those

circumstances could really enjoy life, except

cerebrally, you know; or maybe he enjoyed

power. There was nothing else he could enjoy. Idont think he could enjoy girls, or booze! He

trailed o with a laugh.

Wisher worked closely in this story with his

friend Peter Miles, who portrayed the security

chief, Nyder. I thought he was brilliant as that.

He was quite chilling as the head of the Skaro

Gestapo, the geheime Staatspolizei of Skaro.

I mean, he was the archetypal man of power.

Very quiet. He didnt have to be noisy. He

only had to put a pencil through a name and

that name was rubbed out. I thought it was a

tremendous performance.

In fact, I have to say that there are many

ingredients which make these successful.

The rst ingredient, of course, has to be the

writing. You can louse up a good play, but you

cannot make a bad script really good. You canget away with it but you cant make it good.

Then come the other ingredients, direction and

performers, and it just so happened that the

performers really were absolutely the correct

mix. Everybody in the company turned in

smashing performances.

So how did Tom Baker approach the part of

the Doctor in his rst year in the role? Much the

way Tom has always approached every part,

Wisher recalled. Id worked with Tom years

ago. We were in rep together up in York. He was

quite round the bend then. I mean, he was potty

as a fruitcake up there and he was potty as a

fruitcake when he did DOCTORWHO, and he was

great fun! I loved him. We had a lot of giggles


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MICHAEL WISHER

together. His greatest role, I suppose, in the

National Theatre, was playing Rasputin the mad

monk. Well, since he had been a monk for six

years and he was right round the bend I should

have thought it was a very good role for him!No, he was lovely, Tom. The stories he told

about his past, when he was a monk all those

years, had me in absolute stitches. I wouldnt

dare repeat them. Hes the only person who

could tell those stories with great eect. I did ask

him once, Why did you become a monk, Tom?

and he said, Look, when you come from the

back streets of Liverpool, like I did, if it had been

the Royal Marines, the Royal Navy or the Royal

Air Force coming up the streets I would have

joined. It happened to be the monks!

One other little tale Michael told concerning

Tom Baker regarded the recording of Dalek

voices, which in Genesiswas handled by Roy

Skelton. Roy couldnt do a couple of lines for

some reason, and I seem to remember that I hadto pre-record a couple of lines and then play

opposite my own recording. I always remember

the end of the scene because Tom was leaning up

against the wall and in a very acid voice at the

end of it all he said, Mind if we join in now?

Though his brilliant portrayal of Davros

represented the pinnacle of his DOCTORWHO

career, Wisher appeared in two more stories. In

that seasons next story, Revenge of the Cybermen

which had actually been recorded prior to

Genesis he had a minor part as Magrik, the


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MICHAEL WISHER

Vogan scientist. Yes, a rather pathetic character,

Magrik, he observed of the wheezing, coughing

Vogan. He got this silicosis of the lungs, not

surprisingly. He spent his life living down mines

and miners tend to get silicosis.Having worked with the Daleks, did Wisher

see the Cybermen as being very dierent from

them? Well, not a lot of dierence. I didnt, of

course, have to do the voices. That was all left up

to other people. I mean, they were just characters

rather chilling characters in that they behaved

like human beings but looked like spare suits of

armour that had been hung up on the wall.

Michaels nal DOCTORWHOappearance came

the next year, as crewman Morelli in Planet of

Evil, a small role. After being deeply involved in

nine stories in seven years, it suddenly came to

an end. No one has any idea about these things

at all, he said of this end to his tenure. Regimes

change, ideas change. Youre avour of the

month one month and youre persona non grata

the next. It depends whos in power, and thatsthe way, I suppose, of all things.

Wisher did, however, continue to do some

minor voice-overs for DOCTORWHOepisodes,

including Logopolis. I did a lot of bits and pieces

here and there which were totally uncredited.

The only reason I know I did them is because I

get repeat fees coming through the post.

So far, he has appeared at some British

DOCTORWHOconventions. Has he ever been

to any Stateside events? No, Ive never been

to America. It was once mooted that I might

go over there, he said, but to be honest, Im

trying to sort of earn a crust over here, and its

a bit dicult to take yourself out of the action

to get over there. I think if youre a star you

can aord to do that because you can say when

youll do things. Us working hack actors, we

have to play the ball as its pitched and take

what you can get where you can get it. Its a bit

dicult to write yourself out of the game whileyoure going over.

With time in the interview running short, our

nal questions once again concerned Davros.

Wisher gave us his views on what the only still-

viable Davros story could be.

I think the only story that you could have is

a story concerning a little further back in time,

[with] the young Davros. What made him what

he was? Why did he become the monster he

did become? Because obviously he was a very

intelligent man, a very brilliant man. What

happened? What was the sea change that made

him become the dreadful character that we all

know and love?

If this story were ever produced, would

Michael want to play the part again? Well, I

dont think I could appear as him in anotherstory because somebody else does him now, he

said, and I think, frankly, Im probably too old

to appear as him as a younger man. However,

when I suggested to Wisher that he was still

much younger than the 190-year-old Davros, he

reconsidered. So you want him to appear as a

mid-50s man? Yes, all right, certainly I would. If

he was that age, yes. Why not?

Why not indeed.

DAVID RUDINs interview with

Michael Wisher was conducted in

August of 1986 and was originally

published in the fanzine The UNYT Times

Reprinted with permission


23/54

p | 2Spring 2014

The Enemy

of the World

stands as a

testament to

what DOCTOR

WHOcan do

when itpulls out the stops

Fluid Li

Robert S

THEFRENEMYOF THEWORLD:A review in six parts

DOCTORWHO: The Enemy of the World

Starring Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines,

Deborah Watling, Patrick Troughton

Written by David Whitaker

Directed by Barry Letts

Broadcast 23 December 196727 January 1968

iTunes release: 11 October 2013

1. THE NOVELISATION

For so long, The Enemy ofthe Worldonly existed as anovelisation. It was one of the rst

I owned, purchased on a family vacation, so I

read and re-read that book while on holiday

and then many times again in the years

afterwards. I was never quite sure if the cover

featured Giles Kent, Salamander or the Doctor,but I was pretty sure that was Victoria in the

high-collared shirt and helmet.

People have complained that the novelisation is

dense, but I loved it. Ian Marters style was vivid

and engaging, and brought the story to life for

me. Watching Episode 1 for the rst time recently,

I had the unusualexperience of watching

the lm of a book I

loved, where the lm

was almost exactly what

it was in my minds eye.

So that makes Enemy

of the Worlda more

successful visualisationfor me than The Lord of

the Rings.

Of course, the episode itself has some

marvellous gems. The Doctor skipping on the

beach and looking for a bucket and spade I knew

well, but Marter neglected to mention that the

Doctor was in his long johns and clicking his

heels. Why, I have no idea.

The other thing that stands out about therediscovered visuals is that they wipe out

decades of fan speculation about when the

story is set. Fans have gone through tortured

reasoning to date this story, most concluding that

it could only happen somewhere around 2030

but there on the screen, the Doctor glances at a


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FRENEMY

sign

indicating that its almost 2018.(Later, we discover that its 2017 from a similar

visual, a newspaper someone holds up.)

What this shows, I think, is the degree to which

the missing episodes have turned us into DOCTOR

WHOarchaeologists. Weve tried to reconstruct

an entire city based on bits of pottery, some coins

and an intact wall. But then somebody came

along and dug up an entire village for us.

2. THE MONSTER SEASON

Prevailing wisdom had it that Season 5

was so great because it was the monster

season. Watching the non-ction guides of

the 90s trying to justify this through a variety

of circular arguments is rather amusing.

However, the charge stands: the Cybermen

are rmly established as the go-to villain of

the Troughton era; the Yeti and Ice Warriors are

both introduced, the former being so successful

that they warranted a return appearance in thesame season; and Fury from the Deepintroduces

the ultimate in DOCTORWHOmonster purity, a sea

creature that can only be defeated by screaming

at it.

Then there was poor old The Enemy of the

World, the country cousin of Season 5, forever

relegated to a footnote because it didnt have any

monsters in it.

And yet, Ive always been fascinated by the

story for that very reason. In a season so self-

consciously about the monsters, what was

up with this? Whats more, the two people

most responsible for this story are stalwarts

of DOCTORWHO. In his rst outing, Barry Letts

brings a world-ranging story to life on a limited

budget, largely by being terribly creative. The

lmed backdrop of Jamie walking down a path,followed by his emergence on screen a moment

later, is a triumph of inventiveness. You can see

Letts love aair with CSO starting here even

before the technology had been invented.

And then theres the writer.

The Enemy of the Worldisnt some anomaly by

a writer unfamiliar with DOCTORWHOproducing

an Underwater Menaceor a Sensorites. Instead,

it was written by David Whitaker, the series

original story editor and a man with a decent

claim to have created DOCTORWHOas we know

it. The best we could do was rationalise that

Whitaker had lost it, becoming the equivalent of

Terry Nation in the Pertwee era, writing a script

for a bygone age.


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FRENEMY

Except that Whitaker had introduced

Troughton and was responsible for the eras

denitive story in The Evil of the Daleksjust a few

months earlier. So what exactly was he doing

with this enormous mismatch?

3. EPISODE 3

Even more damning than

the lack of monsters was the

James Bond structure. The

idea that the series could

carry o a Bondian story, with

worldwide locations, actionand helicopters something

inimical to DOCTORWHOas we

understood it was laughable.

That the surviving episode was

the third, made on a budget

so poor that Denes has to be

guarded in a corridor and

featuring Grin the comedy chef, only lentcredence to this claim.

And yet, in context, Episode 3 works a lot

better. For one thing, they have an actual budget

in Episode 1. They dont just show a hovercraft,

they actually use it. And the helicopter both

lands on screen and then, crucially, is used for a

glorious tracking shot away from the beach. The

budgeting decisions become clear: if you were

going to make an expensive episode and a cheapone, where would you rather spend the money?

Any producer worth his salt would be spending

it on the rst episode. Its just happenstance that

vastly more people ended up seeing the cheap

one.

Whats more, Grin the chef is a superb

character. He adds verisimilitude to the story,

being someone who contributes nothing to the

plot but everything to the sense of the world hes

living in. Everyone else in the story is one of its

moving parts, but Grin exists solely to suggesta much larger world beyond the one they can

aord to lm. When Episode 3 was all they had,

he seemed like a frivolity, lling up way too

much screen time. But in context, we see that

Episode 3 is his only episode and that makes

Grin work the way he was originally supposed

to: as a pause in the drama for some comic relief

that simultaneously paints a much larger picture

4. TELESNAPS

Fan recreations of missing episodes used

the John Cura telesnaps (photos taken of

the TV screen) to get a sense of the visuals.

Unfortunately, no telesnaps were taken of

Episode 4, leaving us an episode without any


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FRENEMY

visuals. Attempts were made, including by the

BBC for their photonovel website, to recreate the

fourth episode based on photos from elsewhere

in the story. But thats an uphill battle.

So this was a story with a limited visual record.Which is something of a shame, as its the rst

DOCTORWHOstory broadcast on 625 lines rather

than 405, making it visually richer than its

predecessors.

Theres another important visual on display

too: Fariah is the rst black woman to appear

in a speaking role in DOCTORWHO. And, unlike

recent clichs such as Toberman (strong, silent,

intimidating) or Jamaica (the name speaks for

itself), shes a complex character who doesnt

fall into stereotype. Part of her success is in

the writing: unlike Toberman, Fariahs central

conceit isnt awed. Yes, shes a food-taster, but

shes bitter and cynical, giving as good as she

gets to all concerned. Even more impressively,

nobody bats an eyelid in her presence. And its

not just because this is the future either; look athow Troughton plays o Tobermans size to be

comically intimidated by the scary black man in

Tomb.

Another thing to note is that the story follows

a curious structure. Its made very clear that

Salamander must have something to do with

the volcanoes, yet its also clear that he cant beacting alone. So the obvious conclusion, if youve

just come from Britannicus Base, is that hes

the puppet of some enormous crabs intent on

destroying humanity, probably operating from

a secret underground base. Except thats almost

the complete opposite of whats going on. Even

better, where the cast is pleasingly cosmopolitan,

the underground inhabitants are all very British.

So its clear: the monsters are here after all and

theyre us.

5. AUDIO

Fans familiar with the audio noted that

Salamanders accent, originally hyped as a

perfect Mexican one, was rather odd. (Although,

as someone who grew up across several ponds, itsounds identical to the accents I hear in Breaking

Bad but Im prepared to acknowledge that

this may just be me.) And Rods

attempt at an Australian accent in

the rst episode is so laughably

hilarious, it took me several

minutes to gure out what he was

even attempting. Giles Kent is

clearly an Aussie, though. (Thenagain, it probably sounds like

Janet Fielding to the rest of you.)

But what people missed with

all this focus on Troughtons

voicework is just how white-hot

the intensity is. Troughton plays


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FRENEMY

Salamander for all hes worth.

Its a tour de force thats so

convincing youll honestly

forget that youre watching

Patrick Troughton the actor, orthat Troughton also cameos in

the story as another character

entirely.

Actually, thats not fair.

Throughout the story,

Troughton has to play

Salamander, the Doctor,

the Doctor impersonating

Salamander and, nally, Salamander

impersonating the Doctor. He eortlessly makes

these four characters distinguishable from one

another, even working in the character point that

Salamander has no idea what the Doctor sounds

like and therefore impersonates him without

speaking a word.

6. THE REDISCOVERED STORY

Id like to quote a few very pleasing facts: a)

there are now more Patrick Troughton stories in

existence than not; b) so much of Season 5 now

exists that you can almost do a marathon; and

c) more episodes were returned to the fans on

11 October 2013 than had been returned in the

previous 22 years put together.

This means that those lm cans sat on a shelfin a television station in Jos, Nigeria, suering

heat, indierence and the threat of disposal for

almost forty years. It took the dedication of one

fan, Phil Morris, to actually locate them, but it

also took the BBC to manage their return and

then distribution in a manner that would have

been unthinkable to David Whitaker or Patrick

Troughton: they were released simultaneously

on iTunes, becoming the top ten most

downloaded television.

And so, in October 2013, the news came

through that the miracle had happened again:

for the rst time since 1991, an entire story

had been returned to the archives. And oh

what a thing of beauty it is! Visually rich andcosmopolitan, its a story that justies having the

word World in the title.

The problem with the monster season, of

course, is blindingly obvious: all the stories are

the same. Bases under siege, unstable leaders,

shambling monsters, screaming companions.

Only one story dares to swim against the tide,

inverting the formula and showing us that

what matters is not John Levene dressed in

a lumbering costume but rigorous scripting,

white-hot acting and inventive direction. So

instead of being the country cousin of Season

5, The Enemy of the Worldstands head and

shoulders over its compatriots as a testament to

whatDOCTORWHOcan do when it pulls out all


28/54

p | 2Spring 2014

FRENEMY

the stops.

Something else has happened as a result: we

now have the democratisation of The Enemy of

the World. No longer relegated to inaccessible

or confusing formats, the story is nowavailable for everyone to enjoy

its delights and judge it for

themselves.

My own judgement is

this: David Whitaker

was the Robert

Holmes of the 60s.

Here was a man

who wrote seven

and a half stories

for DOCTORWHO,

every one of

which was entirely

dierent from

the others. Yet the

majority of them are

rich and sumptuous,with a structure to die

for.

Here, the premise is clear

from the outset: DOCTORWHO

is going to crash into a James Bond

story. But as soon as it does, the stakes

are raised, because the Doctor looks like the

villain. So youre desperate for them to have a

confrontation at the climax. Except that, along

the way, Salamander proves himself a master of

the narrative by exiting one plot and reappearing

in a much more dangerous one. And then we

get the nal showdown in a way that interrupts

the narrative again, because Salamander does

something no other villain has managed: he

penetrates the TARDIS. And so his fate is

even more horric than anything weve yet

encountered. This is a masterclass in giving the

audience not only what they want, but what they

didnt even know they wanted.Whitaker died in 1980, partway

through writing the original

version of this storys

novelisation. The Enemy

of the Worldmight

have been a forgotten

story, but that was

something he clearly

wanted to rectify.

Little could he

have known that it

would eventually

be returned and

stand as a tribute

to three giants of

DOCTORWHO: Patrick

Troughton the actor,Barry Letts the director

and David Whitaker the

writer.

But dont take my word for it.

See it for yourself. Thanks to a man

named Phil Morris, a restoration team that

kept its secrets for years and the decision of the

BBC to release the story on iTunes for everyone to

enjoy, the entire world can once again enjoy one

of the truly greatDOCTORWHOstories of the 60s.

Just in time for 2017 to almost be here for real.

ROBERT SMITH? has reconstructed this

review from archives recovered from the

war-torn ruins of Calgary in the year 2064


29/54

p | 2Spring 2014

This story ha

been built

up to nearmythologicheightsinfans eyes.

Love aMons

Te Deb of

EVENTProgrammingDOCTORWHO: The Web of Fear

Starring Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines,

Deborah Watling, Nicholas Courtney,

Jack Watling

Written by Mervyn Haisman and

Henry Lincoln

Directed by Douglas Camfield

Broadcast 3 February 9 March 1968

iTunes release: 11 October 2013

Its difficult to write about TheWeb of Fear, the story, withoutwriting about The Web of Fear,

the event. While perhaps not the holy grail

ofMarco Poloor The Myth Makers, The Web of Fear

was one of the lost stories we might never have

seen again thanks to the BBCs draconian wiping

policy of the 1960s and 1970s. (The story of howthis travesty occurred is old news to DOCTOR

WHOfans, but if youre interested in a fascinating

look at the loss and rediscovery of many of those

episodes, grab a copy of Wiped!: Doctor Whos

Missing Episodesby Richard Molesworth.)

Despite swirling

rumours of episode

caches in attics

and dusty Africantelevision stations,

further fuelled

by the occasional

discovery of single

episodes as late

as 2011, most fans

didnt holdout hope of

a signicant

discovery. The

rumour mill

notwithstanding, most

of us felt we had found

all there was to nd.

When it was announced

in October 2013 thatnine Patrick Troughton

episodes had in fact

been found in a dusty

Nigerian television

station and that they

would be available to watch almost immediately,

its not an understatement that fandom went a

little crazy. The fact that they would be releaseddigitally through iTunes at the same time across

the globe was an unprecedented and savvy

move on the part of the BBC that had us near

giddy with delight. We were truly living in the

future and it was glorious.

Now, I have a

slightly dierent

relationship to this

story than longtimeDOCTORWHOfans. I

know, youre tired

of hearing me say I

didnt start watching

until 2005, but

think about it. The


30/54

p | 3Spring 2014

EVENT PROGRAMMING

whole oeuvre of classicWHOdidnt hit my frontal

cortex until late 2005 at the earliest, the early, early

episodes even later. The idea that whole episodes

were simply missing didnt hit my radar until at

least 2006. So, realistically, Ive only missed these

things for seven years. Sure, there was an ache, butin more of a completist sort of way. For lifelong

DOCTORWHOfans, it was more akin to the pain of a

phantom limb. And yet, as aDOCTORWHOfan (no

qualier necessary), I was just as caught up in the

excitement of the iTunes release, just as eagerly

watching the clock tick down to 12:00 a.m. GMT,

ngers paused on the iTunes purchase button.

So it almost seems mean and ungenerousto hold this shiny, shiny thing up to the same

review standards as you would The Day of the

Doctoror even The Bells of St John. Doesnt it

deserve a bit more consideration?

Well, yes and no.

As a phenomenon, it was darn near perfect.

The BBC created an event guaranteed to generate

excitement and not inconsiderable cash ow.

Who would have ever imagined that two nearlyancient black-and-white television programs

would hold the number 1 and 2 spots on the US

iTunes charts for days? Releasing the episodes

immediately on iTunes as opposed to waiting

for a DVD release saved them time and money,

allowed unprecedented access and helped whip

50th Anniversary Fever into a veritable froth.

As someone far, far from the lights of London,

I have to add that there arent nearly enough

words to describe the lilting magic of the phrase

universal release. Even the dodgy middle bit,where the footage had not been recovered and

we reverted back to narration and lm stills,

was forgiven in the giddy excitement of seeing

the Yeti at Charing Cross station, Anne Travers

delicious snark and the warm interaction

between Jamie and Victoria.

As a story, it was not bad. A classic base under

siege with surprise Yeti, bonus Alistair Lethbridge-

Stewart and a rare opportunity to see Jamie and

Victoria getting their companion on. The story

itself was only held together with a tangential bit

of logic and there is a limit to how much gurning

from Driver Evans that viewers should be expected

to tolerate. The paper-thin story was, however,

elevated to something a little more special by

the exemplary sets and clever camerawork (the

underground sets were so convincing, in fact, it isalleged that London Transport sent a letter to the

BBC complaining of unauthorised lming). The

artful shots give a convincing sense of the growing

claustrophobia that pairs nicely with the more

open shots, devoid of civilians, above ground. The

creeping sense of paranoia as to which character

was in league with the Great Intelligence was

executed awlessly through a combination of

lingering camera shots and savvy acting choices.

All in all, it was a nice, solid, middle-of-the-

road story as opposed to the world-breaker that

fans had anticipated. To be fair, The Web of Fear

suered more from heightened expectations than

it did mediocre storytelling. This was a story that

had been built up to near mythological heights in


31/54

p | 3Spring 2014

EVENT PROGRAMMING

fans eyes. Childhood images of Yeti in Charing

Cross had practically been woven into a section of

DOCTORWHOfandoms DNA. Even Mark Gatiss,

DOCTORWHOwriter and superfan, said, Its the

quintessentialDOCTORWHOstory, the most Britishthing you could ever imagine. That, right there,

is the very denition of big shoes to ll.

Even if the celebratory balloon was a bit

deated, there were still some nice surprises that

stills and audio simply could not convey. This

bit of conversation between Anne Travers and

Captain Knight, at rst glance, seems benign:

Knight: Whats a girl like you doing in a job like

this?

Anne: Well, when I was a little girl I thought Id

like to be a scientist, so I became a scientist.

Knight: Just like that?

Anne: Just like that.

Combined with the body language and

camerawork, this scene moves from benign to arather delicious interplay that feels fresh and a

little sly. It was a nice contrast to Victorias more

clinging performance. Yet Victoria was also a bit

of a revelation in this episode. Not a favourite

companion, Id often dismissed her character as

one of the weaker in the companion pantheon

[compantheon? Ed.]. But her distress and

willingness to move beyond her terror and fear

to save Jamie is a shining example that strong

is more than a physical trait and brave can be

dened as simply doing what you fear the most.

It gave me a new insight into her character that I

look forward to exploring further.

Finally, the character of Chorley resonated

strongly with a modern audience. Living in

a world where every political stumble is a

soundbite and journalist is dened as anyone

with a smartphone, the smarmy character seemed

only a slight step away from cable news pundits

willing to betray any sense of morality for a

headline. You could lift this character whole cloth

and plop him into the middle of any modern WHO

story, and it wouldnt cause a ripple.

Maybe The Web of Feardoes deserve a little

leeway. It was the perfect story at the perfect time:

it was revered, had the distinction of introducing

an iconic character, was oh so very British and was

gifted to us during a year in which DOCTORWHO

was a regular feature in the news cycles around

the globe. The BBC could not have orchestrated its

release more perfectly even if it had been sitting on

those lm canisters for years (that is a throwawaypithy comment, not a Missing Episode Conspiracy

Theory; simmer down, people!). So, yes. The Web

of Fear, the story, and The Web of Fear, the event, are

both worth the eort. Just like that.

DEBORAH STANISH wonders

whats this red button do?


32/54

p | 3Spring 2014

[Robert

Holmes] kne

he was being

appraised, b

he didntknow why

EnlightenConversati

Graeme

The

HINCHCLIFFE

YEARSI

havent done an interview for

Enlightenmentsince I left aseditor in 2010. But when Philip

Hinchclie was at the Gallifrey One Convention

in Los Angeles in 2013, I thought it might be time

to temporarily abandon my retirement.

From 1974-1977, Hinchclie was producer ofwhat was arguably one of DOCTORWHOs golden

ages: a three-year run in which, working with

script editor Robert Holmes and Tom Bakers

Doctor, a string of undisputed classics emerged

including The Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks,

Pyramids of Mars, The Seeds of Doom, The Deadly

Assassin, The Robots of Deathand The Talons of

Weng-Chiang.I approached this interview with remarkable

nervousness. For me,

Philip is to DOCTOR

WHOwhat George

Martin is to the Beatles

(curiously, both are

rather articulate gures

who speak the QueensEnglish uently!). But

Philip was very friendly.

By the time I got out my

recorder and started it,

the conversation was

already underway.

Philip started by asking about my own

background and how I became a fan ofDOCTOR

WHO. I told him about discovering Pyramids of Mars

as a 14-year-old. And I shared that not long after

discoveringDOCTORWHO, I discovered something

else Philip was responsible for (without knowing

he was the producer): the 1981 historical comedy

Private Schulz. This delighted Philip, who was

pleased that a 14-year-old would love Private

Schulz, one of his favourite TV productions.

Thanks to Cameron Dixons thoroughtranscription, you get a lovely sense of the actual

conversation as it took place. Its only been

moderately edited to take out some ums and ahs

And so we begin, in media res, talking about

the aegis of Private Schulzand its connection to

another lm...


33/54

p | 3Spring 2014

HINCHCLIFFE YEARS

>> Hinchclife: when the Nazis

>> Graeme: Oh, To Be or Not To Be.

>> H:I thought that was the title. It is, isnt it?

>> G:Yeah, yeah.

>> H:Youve seen that?

>> G:Yeah.

>> H:Well, when I was producing [Private

Schulz] when we were planning the show

and thinking about how to do it we were

referred to that, and had a look at that. I

mean, that was one of the best sort of tips we

had, really, cause it kind of showed you that

you could be almost serious and funny at thesame time, and just have this slow burn of

sort of humour.

>> G:Yeah, yeah. We were helped also by the

fact that I dont know if you were ever

able to seeMasterpiece Theater, but it was an

anthology format that

>> H:Oh, yeah. A lot of my shows went into

Masterpiece Theater.

>> G:Thats right. So you had Alistair Cooke

sort of guiding you through the minutiae of

[the bizarreness of a German spy] wearing

plus fours and trying and go to a pub at 2:00

in the afternoon, all that sort of stu. So you

sort of were nudged in the right direction,

so you kind of had that to help you along.

I hadnt thought about the

Lubitsch inuence, but I

can see it now that youve

mentioned it. It was yeah, I

love Private Schulz.>> H:Id love you to

mention that, because I dont

often come across people

who can remember watching

that, and its one of my most favourite

productions.

>> G:I actually went to the trouble of nding it

on PAL VHS when I was in my 20s, cause I

adored it so much as a kid.

>> H:Somebody uploaded somebody on

YouTube uploaded I dont know whether

its still on, but they uploaded the early part

of the rst episode, which was based on the

Venlo Incident and they uploaded it onto

YouTube.

>> G:Oh. Wow. I should look that up.

>> H:I think, if you I think if you Google what happened was, if you Google me, its

not there now, but if you Googled me a few

years ago, someone had kind of made this

link, and so it took you to that, but its gone.

>> G:Oh. Well, Ive been a big follower of your

career, so Im almost very, very tongue-

tied, like some people are around actors. I

guess my rst question was sort of a question

about, how much did you know about

DOCTORWHOgoing in? Had you watched the

show in the 60s? You were just going into

university shortly after

>> H:Yeah, Ive just answered that in a way up

there, which is that no, I didnt really see it at

all. So as I said just now, I was lucky enough


34/54

p | 34Spring 2014

HINCHCLIFFE YEARS

to have enough time to sort of watch a bit

and pick up the folklore of it. I mean, I kind

of was aware of it you know, it wasnt a

show that I watched and so I kind of did

my homework a bit before I took over. So theanswer is, Id seen very little.

>> G:So when you took over, did you were

you able to call up any tapes or lms and go

watch them, or did you just

>> H:Oh, yeah.

>> G:Were you watching mostly Jon Pertwees

episodes that Barry Letts had done, or was it

just sort of

>> H:Yes yeah, I think so. Cause I think

I remember seeing the rst episode with

Hartnell, and I probably had seen a few

minutes of Patrick Troughton, the sort of

thing that you Oh, thats on, and you

watch it for a bit and you get a feel for it.

>> G:So what was your assessment of it, sort of

watching those episodes of Pertwee? What

was your initial reaction to it?>> H:Well, I think my reaction was it was a very

grooved show. It was a format that worked,

a very unusual format that worked, but there

was a back-history, a folklore to it that you

had to sort of be cognisant of and not play

around with too much, because there was this

ready-made audience that sort of knew the

show and was sort of gradually moving on.

I felt that it was well-made, that Barry Letts

had done a lot with the new toys of [Colour

Separation] Overlay, and the new lightweight

cameras were coming in, electronic cameras

and stu, and so it was a very well-run

successful show. And its lovely to inherit a

well-run, successful show. So that was my

rst feeling. In terms of the content, I did a lot

of reading of science ction, science fantasy,

and just generally had my own sense of all

that. Which I realised I didnt know much

about science ction, its a bit patchy. But Ihad read, as a very young boy, quite a lot,

funnily enough, without realising it. I was a

bit precocious.

>> G:Its also said that you had taken in a fair

chunk of literary SF.

>> H:Yeah, yeah, and I mean, Ive mentioned

this before, but my childhood was listening

to radio and things like [1950s BBC Radio

drama]Journey into Space. And the producer

of that has only just died, Charles Chilton,

who was a sort of eminent radio producer.

So I decided that what I thought could

change was that they did a lot of invasion of

Earth stories, cause its cheap to shoot lm

on the real street, and I thought, well, that

was getting maybe a little tired; you know,

we could change that formula. And I thoughtthat I wanted to make it a little bit more I

suppose realistic is the wrong word, but

more compelling, I suppose.

>> G:The other thing that Ive always noticed

about your episodes is that you had a real

interest in the directors, and how they were

directed, and how they were shot. And you

can sort of see you know, I love Barrys

DOCTORWHO, but its very bright, its very

colourful, its very at lit, and suddenly

theres lots of very sort of the camera

the lmwork is much more polished and

the studio lighting is much Was that a

conscious choice?

>> H:Very conscious. In fact, Ive just read a


35/54

p | 3Spring 2014

HINCHCLIFFE YEARS

book that somebody wrote about my era, and

I was reminded of a remark that Id forgotten

that Tom made. He said you know, like

lm noir, he said our era was WHOnoir, and

I think thats a great description of what youtalked about, which is the Yeah, so, exactly

that. Youre the rst person whos really ever

picked up on that, and its

very Im so pleased that

you have done, because

that was specically

what I wanted to do. I

wanted to move away

from that bright lit, these

are sets, these are the

people in

Enlightenment 172 May2014

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Transcript of Enlightenment 172 May2014