Praxeus Breeds in Plastic (Terror of the Autons)
The rule, apparently, is that anyone talking seriously about this story has to start with Paul Cornell’s 1993 review of it. I’m not entirely sure why this is the rule—presumably because Cornell is surely terribly embarrassed by the review now that he’s firmly into the “everything is lovely, especially fandom and the Pertwee era, let’s all just get along and support New Labour” phase of his career instead of the “actually doing anything worthwhile” one. Or perhaps just because, in spite of Cornell’s latter day shame at having ever had interesting opinions, the review remains one of the most solid and important things ever said about the Pertwee era. It’s not that Cornell is correct per se—his vituperative denunciations of the entire cast along with everyone else involved in the story is excessive, not least in his claim that there are only two competent actors in the era, which more than doubles the actual number, although he at least correctly identifies one of them. It’s just that it’s petty, mean-spirited, and therefore exactly what the era needs, culminating in the utterly savage kicker that Barry Letts and Terrence Dicks “exiled the Doctor to Earth and made him a Tory.”
Part of the brutal efficiency of this comes from the fact that Terror of the Autons is, on a surface level, one of the least conservative Pertwee stories. I mean, the next story is a racist fantasy that posits that evil is a tangible thing. There’s two stories that look at the genocide of indigenous populations and offer a firm “well there’s good points on both sides.” This, meanwhile, is the ur-text for the era’s glam rock inclinations, which introduces three of the queerest characters in series history. It’s one of the maddest stories in the series to date—an explosion of color, spectacle, and basic weirdness. It is, in other words, an odd story to use as your staging ground for an attack on the Pertwee era’s right-wing politics. It’s like trying to go up an escalator on a unicycle: this should be easy, but not the way you’re doing it.
In a real sense, this is the appeal of Cornell’s approach. By going after one of the most straightforwardly appealing and consensus beloved stories of the era—one where its political foibles are quieter and its gonzo glam excesses are pronounced—Cornell goes for the throat. Complain about the politics of The Mind of Evil and you can semi-reasonably be answered “yeah, but it’s not all like that.” Complain about the politics of Terror of the Autons and the era’s defenders have relatively few retreats open to them. But Cornell does not actually go for the throat. Instead he takes drab swipes at the acting and production. As I said, it’s not that Cornell is wrong per se about the acting in the Pertwee era—almost everyone involved is various forms of dreadful. But what of it? The next era of Doctor Who is going to prove beyond all doubt that you can build a great show around a poor actor so long as you structure it to use their flaws.…