Elizabeth Sandifer

There comes a point in Doctor Who where the sheer and unrelenting absurdity of the show’s premises and visual iconography simply renders all attempts to mock it moot.

It’s September 30, 1967. Mr. Humperdinck continues to rule over the musical Landscape untroubled by the psychedelic whippersnappers in the rest of the top ten (of which there are at least three). He continues this for two weeks, at which point he is abruptly unseated by the Bee Gees with “Massachusetts,” with The Move’s “Flowers in the Rain” immediately behind. For the next four weeks, it’s just a question of which bits of psychedelia fail to unseat the Bee Gees, who are currently beautifully exploiting the popularity of psychedelia to provide a safe and fun-seeming alternative with their almost-but-not-quite psychedelic lettering on their single.

“Flowers in the Rain” and “Massachusetts” are also, interestingly, the first two songs played on BBC Radio 1, one of a Collection of four new radio stations that comprised the BBC’s long overdue concession to the existence of rock and pop music on the part of the BBC and the death knell of the pirate radio stations. You also, during this story, have the murder of Jack McVitie by the Kray Twins, a key event in the unraveling of the dominant system of organized crime in London in the 1960s. In other news, it’s mostly Vietnam War I fear, though you have the memorable instance of Allen Ginsberg and Abbie Hoffman attempting to levitate the Pentagon during this story. Which is actually probably a decent way into this one.

One of the problems looking back at the 1960s is that for all we romanticize psychedelia and the hippies, for a wide variety of reasons, nobody wants to go back to Old Times and actually do that again. The October 21, 1967 March on the Pentagon is kind of a key event in this phenomenon. For large swaths of the world, the attempt to levitate it while Ginsberg performed Tibetan chants is simply incomprehensible, and is evidence that however nice an album Sergeant Pepper was, perhaps the whole acid thing went just a little further than is useful. I mean, levitating the Pentagon? Really?

In fact what we have here is a case of failing to understand your audience. Anyone who was tuned in to the psychedelic movement at large would have recognized the Pentagon levitation as an act of guerilla theater in the classic psychedelic vein. Did Hoffman and Ginsberg actually expect to levitate the Pentagon? It’s tough to imagine that they did, given that it’s not like they had a lengthy track record of levitations to go on. I mean, even if you decide to just completely embrace the idea that it is possible to levitate objects via meditation and chanting, nobody starts with the Pentagon. I don’t care how many drugs you’ve done, if you’re actually making efforts at psychic levitation, you don’t start with a colossally large building while the cameras are watching. You start alone, quietly, in your Room, or perhaps in the Basement, and establish that you can actually do this.…

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Oh no! You took it out of its original packaging! Now it’s worthless!

It’s September 2, 1967. Scott Mckenzie is at number one with “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair),” the basic subject of which we discussed on Wednesday. The Beatles’ anthem for the same events, “All You Need is Love,” is still at number six, having peaked at number one in July. A week later, Engelbert Humperdinck, who has increasingly become the very image of the establishment for the purposes of these metaphors, takes number one a week later, and holds it for the remainder of this story (and a third of the next). The rest of the charts remain pleasantly psychedelic, however, with Keith West, Flowerpot Men, and The Move keeping the dream alive.

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It’s OK, Mr. Emperor. Even the biggest Daleks suffer from droopy eyestalk sometimes. It’s perfectly natural, and doesn’t mean you’re not a real Dalek at all.

It’s May 20, 1967. The Tremeloes, best known as the band Decca signed instead of The Beatles, are at number one. The Tremeloes, like The Beatles, came from the Merseybeat scene we’ve talked about some already (which is also why The Beatles are spelled the way they are), and unlike The Beatles of 1967, were still churning out generic doo-wop inflected rock numbers such as “Silence is Golden,” which held number one for three weeks before Procul Harum takes number one with a nice, sweeping prog/psychedelic rock epic “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” which holds the number one for the remaining four weeks of this story. But let’s face it, the real news is this: Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is released, and becomes the soundtrack to the so-called Summer of Love, about which more on Wednesday.

In news that anchors who don’t sing won’t take, Celtic beat Inter Milan to win the European Cup, making them the first British team to do so. On one level, this continues the brief and shining moment of British domination of the sport. On another level, you have to understand Glaswegian sports fandom, the Old Firm rivalry, and sectarian violence to even start to understand what the phrase “Celtic won” means, and since none of those things are remotely relevant to Evil of the Daleks, hey look, we’ve moved on. (Though I’m sure it made Frazer Hines, a complete football nut, followed it avidly.) The Soviet Union, the US, and the UK agree not to put nuclear weapons in space, which is very nice of them.

In other news, let’s take a deep breath: Israeli/Egyptian tensions flare up mightily, the Six Day War breaks out and ends (these things happen when you put a six-day war in the midst of a seven-week Dalek serial), Biafra begins its futile attempt at independence, a Marxist rebellion begins in India, Loving v. Virginia is decided in the US, legalizing interracial marriage, Thurgood Marshall is nominated to the Supreme Court, two American race riots happen in Tampa and Buffalo, The EEC is merged with the ECSC and EAC to form the European Communities, and, three days after this story finishes, homosexuality is finally decriminalized in the UK, a move that most immediately impacts the artistic community, where it had long been an open secret (Doctor Who having prominently employed at least two semi-out gay men in its first three years – Max Adrian and Waris Hussein).

While on television, we have Evil of the Daleks. Which is as hard a story to see straight as exists in Doctor Who, so let’s just dust off the old-fashioned tricks and go through the thing linearly to see how it works, then sort out the rest.

There’s a fine and at times difficult to pin down line between a methodical, suspenseful pace and a slow one, and this story walks it.…

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The Doctor tries to sand his jowls off on an airplane wheel.

It’s April 8, 1967, and Englebert Humperdinck will not die. Actually, this is his last week at number one. Next week it’s Nancy and Frank Sinatra with “Somethin’ Stupid.” Once again we’re just seeing the pendulum in action here. It’s just that the pendulum is unusually swung at the moment – nothing all that interesting in the entire top 10 (though #11, Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze, reminds us that there is a counterculture out there). It peaks at #3, and The Who, The Mamas and the Papas, and Cat Stevens all break the top ten in the next few weeks as well, bolstered by a population who, having listened to Humperdinck for a month and a half, finally intuitively get what this revolution is all about. The flip side, and this is a lovely day to talk about it given that Eurovision is this weekend, is that the UK wins the Eurovision song contest with “Puppet on a String,” bringing this touching song about complete physical and emotional submission to your man to number one. (“If you say you love me madly, I’ll gladly be there like a puppet on a string.” Stay classy, British pop music.) Oh, and Pink Floyd chart, but nowhere near the top ten.

Whereas in the world of things that don’t sing, the Tories win the Greater London Council elections, never a good sign for Labour. Mass protests against the Vietnam War, Surveyor 3 lands on the Moon, Greece falls to a military dictatorship, the Soviets manage to kill an astronaut, and Prime Minister Harold Wilson announces that the UK will be applying to join the EEC.

Most of these can be slotted into standard 60s fare, but the last one might be lost on you, which probably also means that Mark Gatiss’s great joke about Euroskeptics in The Roundheads was lost on you too. So sad. Basically, the EEC is an earlier version of the European Union. It’s one of several “communities” to crop up after World War II – the first of them being the ECSC, European Coal and Steel Community, which sought to establish control over the basic supplies needed for war. A few more stabs in the dark in the general area of this eventually led to the EEC, which quickly became fairly powerful in that it made intra-European commerce more efficient, allowing Europe as a whole to remain a major force even as few of its component states retained the superpower status they had prior to the World Wars.

The thing is, the EEC and the UK kind of have a… history. Because shortly after it was founded, Charles DeGaulle shut down the process for countries to join because he didn’t want the UK to join, fearing that it would basically serve as a US puppet state. Given that the UK rarely required reasons to be ambivalent about its status in the European community, the re-opening of applications and the UK’s decision to apply in 1967 is, by any standard, a major shift in the general tone of European cooperation.…

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There’s a dirty joke to be made about getting crabs at a holiday camp, but we’re above that. Except when we’re not.

It’s March 11, 1967. In the charts, Engelbert Humperdinck is edging out The Beatles’ first single from the Sergeant Pepper sessions, Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever. Improbably, he will do so for the entire run of this story, and The Beatles will fail to make number one with that single. In real news, the psychedelic movement spreads from San Francisco when a copy of the Human Be-In takes place in Central Park, and Pope Paul VI releases his encyclical Populorum progressio, affirming the Catholic Church’s commitment to social justice – a striking commitment to make in the larger context of the 1960s.

While on television, we get The Macra Terror. As with a lot of Season 4, this is one history screws us up on. The problem is the same problem we ran into with The War Machines – also by Ian Stuart Black, as it happens. This looks a lot like stuff that came after it, and so we view it as a “normal” story. Trouble is, it looks very different from the stuff that came before it, and so at the time was anything but a normal story.

This may seem like a surprising statement. After all, at its heart The Macra Terror looks pretty standard. The Doctor shows up somewhere monsters are doing bad things and stops the monsters. We did, in fact, just see this. And in terms of that basic plot summary, it’s actually the fourth one this season, and that’s discounting the subtle variation where a mad scientist is doing bad things instead of a monster. On paper this is a straightforward development of the standard theme of the show lately.

But even using history, there’s something a bit odd here. Seven monsters make their debut over the Troughton era – the Macra, the Chameleons, the Ice Warriors, the Yeti, the weed creature, the Quarks, and the Krotons. Of those, two – the Ice Warriors and the Yeti – appear again in the classic series. But one appears in the new series – the Macra. There is surely something worth remarking on when a monster is brought back after forty years – not just as a name check, but as an actual on-screen appearance as a story’s primary monster.

Admittedly part of it is pure whimsy on Russell T. Davies’s part – he’s said that he really just wanted to bring back an obscure and abandoned monster. And another part of it comes down to the specifics of what he is dong in Gridlock, which is to say, comes down to things we’ll deal with much, much later in the blog. But there is something about The Macra Terror that made it the pick of the litter of long-abandoned monsters.

The answer comes down to one of those great divides between people who come at the story from the novelization era of fandom, where it was “that Patrick Troughton story with the crabs” (A 1987 novelization, for those keeping track at home).…

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We are programmed just to do Anything you want us to

It’s February 11, 1967. The Monkees top the charts, with the rest of the top ten including The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens, and The Move. In weeks to come, Petula Clark and Englebert Humperdinck will top the charts, while the rest of the top ten will see The Beatles, The Hollies, and Donovan chart as well. Non-musical news is slow this month, with a general heating of the Cold War providing the main backdrop.

And Doctor Who offers us The Moonbase. Which… well, let’s just say we have a lot to talk about. Eventually we’ll get into how this story marks the completion of the Troughton transition and conclusively establishes a new paradigm for what Doctor Who is. But to see why this story changed everything forever, we’re going to have to understand why this story was inevitably going to be made.

The inevitability of a lunar story in the late 60s has been remarked upon before, and is fairly obvious. But one thing that the frequent discussion of Doctor Who’s transition away from the exoticism of Hartnell stories and towards things like this overlooks is the fact that the very things that made a lunar story inevitable are the same things that are why the larger transition of Doctor Who towards the “base under siege” model took place.

Since I am apparently possessed with a strange and obsessive need to reference The Web Planet in every entry (mostly because it embodies the explorer spirit of the Hartnell era better than anything else), it is worth contrasting this story with that one, especially given that The Web Planet’s most obvious visual inspiration was Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon. The Web Planet is a story where a world with a thin atmosphere is nevertheless lush and full of strange life. And it aired in February of 1965.

The thing is, there’s a huge line in science fiction that can be drawn in July of 1965. Before that, you get things like, on the paranoid side, Quatermass, which assumes that space is teeming with awful threats, and on the more optimistic side, The Web Planet, which, even though it’s set in a different galaxy (but see Miles and Wood for several discussions of the extremely sloppy way in which the word “galaxy” is used throughout Doctor Who), tells us that space is teeming with fascinating and theatrical worlds. The default assumption was that planets were full of interesting stuff, and when you went to them, you’d encounter it.

Then came July of 1965, and, more importantly, the Mariner 4 probe. This, perhaps more than anything, explains the stark change over the third season of Doctor Who – more or less concurrently with the end of The Time Meddler, Mariner 4 flew by Mars and determined that there was almost certainly not life on Mars, nor had there probably ever been ancient civilizations there. Space, in point of fact, was more or less empty.…

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They’re not fish from space, they’re ballerinas!

Meanwhile, in news that does not sing, the US is found out for experimenting with germ warfare, the opening strains of the Summer of Love happen in San Francisco with the Human Be-In, which also introduces psychedelic culture to the masses (never mind that Doctor Who did it two months earlier. In a week or so we’ll watch, astonished, as Doctor Who invents steampunk in 1967 and gets no credit for that either). The UK begins negotiating to enter the European Economic Community, pre-human fossils are discovered in Kenya… and we’re so far two days into the four weeks this story ran. Thankfully things slow down, and over the rest of it the major news consists of the UK nationalizing 90% of the steel industry, the Apollo 1 disaster happens, and the US, USSR, and UK (who were apparently still expected to make it to space in 1967 – a fact that may be relevant in 1970 for our purposes) sign the Outer Space Treaty to demilitarize space.

If you have the sense that the 1960s are kicking into high gear very suddenly, you’re not far off. So I am deeply amused to bring you The Underwater Menace, which, according to Doctor Who Magazine’s definitive “Mighty 200” fan poll, is the worst story we’ve yet covered – one of the ten worst Doctor Who stories of all time, in fact. And so, even though its quality is by miles the least interesting thing about The Underwater Menace, I suppose we should start there.

The case for the prosecution is that the script makes no sense, the villain is ludicrous, and the whole thing is an effects-driven wreck of a story assembled under pressure. Wood and Miles take it to task for the fact that “it displays utter contempt for the audience. It’s not so much that it isn’t trying, it’s that it doesn’t think we care that it isn’t trying.” Shearman and Hadoke are kinder, both admitting that they love the story’s barminess.

It’s certainly the case that few of the usual reasons for writing off this story seem to hold up to scrutiny.…

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