louise jameson

December 7, 2010

A Critique of the Gothic Seasons

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Yes, I know I’ve already done that joke… but it’s too good not to overuse. Here’s my stuff from Timelash II for the first three years of Tom’s tenure, generally regarded as the “golden age” (or something) of the old show. Not much extra stuff. Sorry. Oh, one warning: at several points in the essay below I will be going into gush mode. You have been warned.

‘Robot’

Dafter than the Rt. Hon. Lady Daftetta Daftington-Dafton of Daftwood Hall, Daftfordshire. A robot that grows to the size of King Kong (and starts acting like him)… a disintegrator gun kept in pieces and scattered in different locations… a government think tank that turns out to be a cover for fanatical right-wing scientific ‘progressives’ who think a good way to take over the world would be to destroy it first… umm, well actually the last ten years or so have made that last one seem quite plausible.

This is set in a world in which ‘bad’ scientists are spottable by their evil suits and ties, their evil black armbands and their evil black leather gloves; meanwhile ‘good’ scientists all work on renewable fuels, have bottle-end spectacles (as distinct from the evil little Himmler spectacles worn by ‘bad’ scientists) and cardigans and wildly unkempt hair.

But all that is nothing compared to the idea that, as Wikipedia puts it: “to ensure peace, the governments of Russia, China and America decided to give the locations and launch codes of their nuclear weapons to a neutral country — Britain — for safekeeping”.

Words fail me.

As in ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’, people who have an ideological desire to make a better world are portrayed as deluded, ruthless, callous fanatics.

Of course, you can simply decide not to worry about any of this (just as you can decide not to worry about the fact that the giganticized robot spends a lot of time carrying a wobbly doll and attacking tonka trucks) and enjoy this for the utter hokum that it is.

This is the last gasp of the detumescent Letts/Dicks comfy-cosy-nicey-wicey-matey-watey style (complete with the usual bit of largely-fatuous liberal/moralistic political comment). There’s something melancholy about watching a story with the Brigadier, Benton, UNIT HQ, Bessie, etc… but no Pertwee. I understand why they did it that way: if this new guy drives Bessie and the Brig calls him “Doctor” then he must be the same guy. But it just feels wrong somehow. And the style is past its prime. It’s done good service for a few years but now is clearly the time for it to be retired… which, fortunately, is precisely what happened. There are some eras that feel truncated wheras others end right on time, and ‘Robot’ is evidence that the Pertwee/Letts era was one of the latter.

I’ll post something about ‘The Ark in Space’ seperately, and I’ve done ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ here.

‘Terror of the Zygons’

Brilliantly done hokum. The direction is some of the best in the series: stylish, pacey, scary, beautifully cinematic (especially the location sequences which are amazing – they could be from a movie).…

December 7, 2010

Flat Earth Society

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The greatness and uniqueness of ‘Image of the Fendahl’ is shown in the scene where the Doctor “explains” what’s going on to Adam Colby. Of course, he doesn’t actually do any such thing. He suggests two possible explanations. He favours the first but his listener is sceptical so the Doctor offers an alternative which his listener finds more plausible. The Doctor also says that it might all be a coincidence. His tone is flippant but there is no real reason to suppose that he isn’t being serious. It is clear that the Doctor is theorising and that he doesn’t have the final answer.

This is fascinating and, as far as I can recall, unique in classic Doctor Who.

The Doctor has often been seen to behave superficially like a scientist (mucking about with test tubes, talking about oscillators, etc.) but this is the first and only real occasion when he really acts like one (like an idealised, Baconian one, that is). The Doctor is admitting that he doesn’t know and doing his best to come up with workable explanations which fit the facts. Moreover, the person the Doctor is speaking to is a scientist who has demanded answers and is coming to his own conclusions about how plausible the Doctor’s ideas are. No final decision is reached or stated as to which solution (if any) is correct. Fendleman’s rant to Stael before his death tends to support the Doctor’s idea about genetic manipulation (Colby’s preferred option, possibly because he heard Fendleman speak) but the Doctor seems to prefer his first idea about a “biological transmutation field” which Colby might doubt simply because he doesn’t know what one is.

This is all highly appropriate in a story that is preoccupied with the tensions between science, evidence, theory, supposition, superstition and belief.

The story opens with Colby fretting over a dissonance between established scientific facts (the age of the skull) and the apparent impossibility of their implications. (Someone once asked J.B.S. Haldane if any scientific finding could disprove evolution; “Fossil rabbits in the pre-Cambrian” was his gruff response.) Meanwhile, Fendleman spends much of the story trying to convince Adam of the validity of his theories. Wonderfully, Fendleman gets it partly right and partly wrong (something else that doesn’t usually happen in tales like this). His theory about the pentagram being a neural relay seems to be borne out, but his idea of the nature of the power it contains is woefully mistaken. Nobody is really entirely Right or Wrong about anything in this story, which is very refreshing.

Stael is an interesting character. His employment of the occult ritual is self-consciously ironic and cynical. He rejects Colby’s taunts about being a Satanist and claims to be unimpressed by “the grimoires”. Nevertheless, he employs occult language and ceremonies… this might be meant as showing unconscious drives. Scott Fredericks (an actor with a lot of interiority) even seems to be working to endow Stael with a repressed sexual interest in Colby. Stael’s ideas exist on that deeply-70s line of thinking along which the occult, paranormal phenomena and science intersect.…

December 7, 2010

Fang Rock, Class and the Tentacular Revolution

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If you ask me, ‘Horror of Fang Rock’ is one of the best ever; a thriller that focuses on characters who really interact while they’re trapped together, featuring Tom and Louise at their acme.

It investigates the nature of belief in an age of rising science and technology: Adelaide’s astrology fetish compares to the superstition of Vince and Reuben, with Vince’s terror as real as hers, and Reuben’s fear of monsters more a manifestation of melancholy stubbornness at the rise of unsympathetic forces he doesn’t understand (like electricity… which is also the weapon of the monster that kills and impersonates him). Meanwhile, Leela lectures Adelaide that consulting her “shaman” (despite Adelaide’s denial, that is the right word for people like Miss Nethercote) is a “waste of time”… but, with relishable irony, the semi-educated Leela simply believes in science because her mentor has told her to.

‘Fang Rock’ has a quiet undercurrent about sex too. Adelaide is understood by Harker to be Palmerdale’s “fancy woman” and Skinsale obviously envies this (though god knows why)… but he’s also clearly very taken with Leela. Paddy Russell gives us a whole shot simply to establish how much Skinsale digs Leela on sight. Vince is very flustered by Leela’s impromptu striptease (which she completely fails to understand) and pays attentions to Adelaide, which she simply treats with a patronising indulgence (to her he’s an instrumentum vocale, not a young man). And then we have the porn under Reuben’s bed. Mind you, I’m not a Freudian so I’m not saying anything about phallic symbolism. Sometimes, a lighthouse is just a lighthouse.

‘Fang Rock’ is also very interested in class and the way it was changing in the early 20th century. Palmerdale is loaded and is therefore a scumbag, obviously. Crude but very Whoish… and true enough in general terms. He seems dead posh to the keepers… but to Skinsale (a wonderfully apt name, considering the manner of his death) Palmerdale is a nouveu riche, arriviste, vulgar little money-grubber… and such things obviously matter to Palmerdale since he has evidently purchased his lordly title. He tries to buy everything. He even seems to be paying his mistress (albeit for being a secretary rather than a concubine). Skinsale, meanwhile, considers himself Palmerdale’s social superior, despite obviously being skint (old money, obviously… and with a reputation built on enforcing empire in India). Palmerdale gets loads of his sailors killed but makes sure that he escapes (there are lifeboats enough for the gentry, as with the Titanic disaster, but not for the commoners) after causing the crash because he’s anxious to use insider info to fleece the markets… and then views Harker’s recriminations as irrelevant impertinence, and the keepers as more servants.

It’s worth noticing that the Doctor treats the workers (other than the cloddish and xenophobic Reuben) with respect. He starts off calling Vince “Mr Hawkins” while the poshos automatically talk to him like he’s a footman.

Vince, upon realising that Palmerdale is dead, burns the cash that His Lordship gave him, instinctively understanding that if he’s found in possession of it, the society he lives in will simply assume that he murdered the venal, titled git for the money.…