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Pop Between Realities, Home In Time For Tea 5 (Cathy Come Home)

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Pop Between Realities, Home in Time for Tea is a recurring feature in which things that are not Doctor Who are looked at in terms of their relation to Doctor Who. This time we look at the TV movie Cathy Come Home.

It’s November 16, 1966. We’ve been here before, actually, and so I’ll refer you there for the standard litany of pop songs and news events. But we’re going to need to flash back, because what we didn’t deal with in amongst everything else going on in Power of the Daleks was the fact that the BBC aired Cathy Come Home, a TV movie about homelessness that has been recognized, apparently, as the second best British TV program of all time. So since it’s one of apparently two things in the history of British television to be better than Doctor Who, I suppose we should talk about it.

At a glance, mind you, Cathy Come Home seems to be radically different from Doctor Who. One is a fairly theatrical science fiction show. The other is a pseudo-documentary about homelessness and urban poverty that makes heavy use of techniques from social realism. The similarities are in no way obvious. But as with Z Cars and Dixon of Dock Green, it’s instructive to look at other major pieces of television to understand what exactly is different about Doctor Who.

As I suggested, the main thing about Cathy Come Home is that it uses a pseudo-documentary style and hand held cameras to tell its story. This was certainly one of the big things noticed at the time, and Cathy Come Home became something of a flashpoint in a debate about the line between news and entertainment (a debate that has yet to resolve, but hey).

So in the (increasingly usual) spirit of my blowing a perfectly publishable academic paper topic on a few paragraphs of a blog (though to be fair, more people read this than will ever see one of my academic articles)…

The thing that the discussion over Cathy Come Home’s use of documentary techniques misses is the hindsight of it. Cathy Come Home works not because it attempts to fool the viewer into believing they are watching a documentary. It works because it trusts that the viewer has a sufficiently good intuitive understanding of televisual storytelling that it can import documentary narrative techniques into ordinary television.

I mean, the fact that Cathy Come Home went out as part of the Wednesday Play anthology series makes it pretty clear how the story was positioned at the time. A negligible number of viewers would have come to it thinking that they were getting a documentary, and the opening credits giving it a writer are a pretty unambiguous sign that it’s not a documentary. So the idea that its documentary techniques were ever deceptive requires that you assume camera movements are a bigger signifier of the genre of a piece of television than the opening credits and explicit presentation of the show.…

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Every Single One Of Them, At Some Point In Their Lives, Will Look Back At This Man (The Moonbase)

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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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Another Rotten Gloomy Old Tunnel (The Underwater Menace)

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They’re not fish from space, they’re ballerinas!
It’s January 14, 1967. Tom Jones has yet to give up number one, though he will in a week when The Monkees take number one with “I’m a Believer.” It is worth remarking on the nature of The Monkees as a band – an American band manufactured for popular success in an attempt to reverse-engineer the Beatles at the exact same time that the Beatles were busy exploding their own formula recording Sergeant Pepper. In fact, the top three singles when the second episode of The Underwater Menace aired are an instruction manual in 1967 – corporate pseudo-mods, Tom Jones, and The Who with “Happy Jack,” complete with psychedelic cover. The Monkees retain number one for the duration of The Underwater Menace, with #2 and #3 switching to Cat Stevens in his first really big single and The Move, a Birmingham rock band, with “Night of Fear,” a song that is very obviously about a bad acid trip.

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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Fry Something (The Highlanders)

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Jamie McCrimmon, in his debut.

It’s December 16, 1966, and time for us to ring in 1967. Almost everything you need to know about music in 1966 can be explained by the fact that Tom Jones is at #1 with “The Green Green Grass of Home,” while The Kinks are at #7 with “Dead End Street,” a song about inescapable economic despair with a chorus of “We are strictly second class / we don’t understand /why we should be on dead end street/People are living on dead end street / gonna die on dead end street” while a background shout of “dead end!” repeats. (To be fair, after two verses of maudlin sentimentality, “The Green Green Grass of Home” turns out to be about waiting on death row, but the degree to which this feels like a pale imitation of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Silent Night/7 O’Clock News,” which does the smash fade from sentimentality to harsh materialism with far greater aplomb, and was released in the US, at least, two months earlier ultimately reminds us that this is still Tom Jones we are talking about.) Tom Jones will hold the #1 spot for the entirety of this story.

In actual news, meanwhile, you’ve got a nice illustration of how 60s news works in hindsight. You’ve got basically three categories of events. The first is of significance only to people who think that the 60s are about youth cultural revolution. For instance, The Doors releasing their self-titled debut on January 4th. The second is of significance only to people who think the 60s are about an obnoxious assault on traditional culture. For instance, the theft of millions of dollars of art from the Dulwich Art Gallery in England. And then there are the ones that are significant to both groups, and thus reveal the fault lines in what was actually going on at the time. For instance, Prime Minister Harold Wilson withdrawing all offered settlements with Rhodesia and insisting that the UK will only recognize a majority-black Rhodesian government.

This paradigm is not entirely unhelpful in understanding Doctor Who in its fourth season. On the one hand, you have the stuff that’s chum for fans of later eras: The Doctor is funny! Lots of contemporary Earth stuff! On the other hand, you have the stuff that feeds the Troughton-era backlash that seems to have seized Doctor Who fandom somewhere along the line – stuff that amounts to the loss of things that were around in the Hartnell era: No historicals! Endless bases under endless sieges! And on the third hand, because this is British science fiction and we have Zaphod Beeblebrox handy whenever we want him, you have stuff that turns to Marmite: Monsters! And… um… more monsters, really.

The underlying issue is this. In its first season, Doctor Who flailed around and tried to figure out what it was. In its second season, though, Doctor Who was ruthlessly confident about what it was. That confidence was arguably misplaced at times, but it was unquestionably there.…

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An Unknown Power (The Power of the Daleks)

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Of the many things to love about Daleks, the
way their eyestalks wilt when they lose
power is perhaps the smuttiest.

It’s November 5, 1966. The Four Tops are at number one with “Reach Out I’ll Be There.” In two weeks, The Beach Boys will take it with “Good Vibrations,” and two weeks later it’ll be Tom Jones with “Green Green Grass of Home.” Meanwhile, in the news, the Rhodesia situation goes worse and worse, John Lennon meets Yoko Ono, and Barbados declares independence from the UK.

While on television…

Sometimes Doctor Who is magical. I mean this on several levels, but one of them – and a significant one – is that the show is a clear formative influence on the sci-fi/fantasy culture that will eventually produce writers like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. As with many things about the future, we’ll get there in time. For now, the only thing you really need to know is that it’s hardly unusual for the show to have something of a spiritual dimension.

I mention this because, as The Power of the Daleks spins up, it’s essential to understanding the only thing that’s on anybody’s mind – what the heck just happened to the Doctor. Again, this is something it’s easy to forget in hindsight. We’ve had eight further post-regeneration stories now. We know how these work. But The Power of the Daleks isn’t written for us. It’s written for an audience with no idea what is going on. And it’s establishing all of this for the first time, which means there are no precedents for this. This isn’t “a regeneration story.” It’s the regeneration story – the story about what happens when the Doctor changes who he is.

It’s tough to say what does happen, though. Minimalist exposition and the fact that we’re on the joint longest stretch of missing episodes in the series conspire to make this a maddening thing to piece together. So let’s go to the behind the scenes and look at what the people making this thought was going on. For me, the choice quote from Gerry Davis and Innes Lloyd’s notes on what they call a “metaphysical change” is this: “It is as if he has had the LSD drug and instead of experiencing the kicks, he has the hell and dank horror which can be its effect.”

What does this mean? I probably should have tossed Timothy Leary in back when we did our roundup of 1966 counterculture. But suffice it to say that talking about LSD and metaphysical changes ties right in with the existing discussions of spiritual journeys that we’ve already had. But what, specifically, does LSD evoke? Well, let’s crack open our Timothy Leary – specifically The Psychedelic Experience – and look at his incantations to be used in case of massive acid trip:

That which is called ego-death is coming to you. Remember: this is now the hour of death and rebirth; take advantage of this temporary death to obtain the perfect state – Enlightenment. 

…

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Pop Between Realities, Home In Time For Tea 4 (Adam Adamant Lives!, Batman, The Avengers)

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Fun Fact #1 – Burt Ward, while playing Robin, frequently
had to be given emasculating injections to keep
his tights from being overly revealing.
Pop Between Realities, Home in Time for Tea is a recurring feature in which things that are not Doctor Who are looked at in terms of their relation to Doctor Who. This time we look at the British series Adam Adamant Lives! and The Avengers, as well as the American series Batman.



Occasionally cultural history throws up a juxtaposition that is so brain-breakingly weird that it perfectly encapsulates an entire moment of history. For instance, nothing has ever clarified the nature and tone of Japanese narrative structures for me quite like knowing that My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies were originally released as a double feature. (Though I have yet to find a definitive statement on which film came first, which seems to me to be just about the most crucial fact in human history.)

I mention this because if you want to understand 1966 in Great Britain, it is possible that no fact is more immediately relevant than the fact that on Saturdays in 1966, at around 5:15 PM, the latter episodes of Season 3 of Doctor Who were airing opposite imports of Batman, the 1966 television series starring Adam West. If this fact does not sufficiently unsettle you, I highly recommend firing up, say, The Celestial Toymaker Part 4 or a random bit of The Ark and watching it back to back with a Season 1 episode of Batman.

What is most unsettling about this is the fact that with only three channels in existence at the time, that meant that ITV viewed Batman as the natural competitor to Doctor Who in that media environment. Because other than being adventure stories (and thus, it is worth remarking, “for boys” in a way that it never was before the dual roles of Barbara and the young female companion were collapsed into one female companion role, thus changing the show from being about a bunch of people in terrifying circumstances to being about a bunch of boys and their girl sidekick in terrifying adventures) there’s not a lot of obvious similarities.

Up to this point, one of the major characteristics of Doctor Who has been the essential joke of the TARDIS crew being completely the wrong people for this sort of story. In its original form, this is clearest – two schoolteachers, a teenager, and an old Victorian inventor walk into an alien planet. Even when the companions were Vicki and Steven – two capable future types who have something resembling a valid reason to be traipsing about Galaxy Four – there was still the Doctor, who was by and large the antithesis of a correct action hero. The whole concept still hinged on the incongruity of the old Victorian inventor and these harshly modern (and increasingly postmodern) settings.

So where we’ve left the TARDIS crew off, that’s still basically where we are. There’s nothing too unusual about Ben and Polly as action heroes – unlike Ian (essentially a middle aged ex-soldier) and Barbara (the charmingly mumsy type), attractive young people are never out of place having exciting adventures.…

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Troughtonite Revisionism

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I reposted my Hartnell stuff from Timelash II pretty much as it originally appeared. I’ve rejigged the following Troughton stuff a fair bit, however, so you’d better read it all over again very carefully, in case you miss a syllable of my searing insight and sage wisdom.

‘The Underwater Menace’

I could easily tear this story to pieces, yes? And feed the pieces to my pet octopus, yes??? But this story has sense of humour! I too have sense of humour!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!

Look, if you think this story is any more silly than any other Doctor Who story… well, it isn’t.

Look at the amount of thought that went into the costumes and sets. Polly spends a lot of the story with a detail from a doric column on her head! Look at the detail in which Atlantean society is depicted. There’s a throne room, a temple, a lab, a hospital, a market… there are priests and acolytes, beggers and traders, slaves and workers, guards and orderlies… there are intimations of popular dislike for the forces of the state… Look at the variations in the personalities. Look at the way people change – from the king to the sadistic doctor to the disillusioned priest… And our heroes team up with two marooned sailors and a brave servant girl to form a little multi-ethnic band of rebels who instill industrial action… a strike that wins! And helps to bring down the government!

Yeah, I know… it’s daft. But it’s no dafter, fundamentally, than ‘The Caves of Androzani’. Yes, ‘Caves’ is infinitely better in many ways… but that’s not the point.

This has been called the Doctor Who version of Plan 9 From Outer Space… which is wrong, wrong, wrongarama. We laugh at Ed Wood movies because they’re badly made. This isn’t badly made. Actually – if you look at the verve and pace of Episode Three, the detailing of the designs and costumes, the wit of the dialogue, and the technical achievements – it’s rather superbly made!

The great underwater strike ballot ballet is amazing for the time, given that they probably made it in the cupboard at Lime Grove in 14 minutes on a budget of 2 shillings and fourpence. Yeah, you can see the strings a couple of times… but so what? Would you’ve thought it was all real but for those glimpses of wire? Is it really – I’m saying REALLY – any more fake looking than the CGI in most Hollywood blockbusters? Does that really – I’m saying REALLY – look REAL? Nope, of course not. And in addition to looking unreal it looks plastic, computery, synthetic… whereas the fish people’s underwater stuff looks physical, looks touchable, looks human. It’s like Ray Harryhausen animation. It’s obviously fake, but it has a beauty and a reality that goes beyond mere realism. It looks like its happening underwater! There are even bubbles! Yeah, they’re some form of obvious effect – but they look fantastic anyway!…

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The Power of the Zargoids (Reconstructed)

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What follows is a substantially rewritten version of something I wrote AGES ago and originally posted at my old site. The original version struck me as woefully inadequate (and embarassingly gushy… which is a fault of mine) when I reread it recently.

Is ‘The Power of the Daleks’ a parable about a democracy destabilised by fascists or about an authoritarian society destabilised by liberals, or even people who think of themselves as leftists? Well… the answer is, of course, yes.

If this is about the rise of fascism, there are some problems with it. Bragen works as a sort of fascist, scheming to replace a relatively soft regime with an authoritarian one which he will rule with an iron fist. But the presence of the Daleks muddies this, separating the barbarism of fascism from fascism as a political movement. The Daleks have always been symbols of totalitarianism so, when they turn on the astonished rebels, it makes it hard to see the rebels as analogous to the Nazi party. If the rebels are Nazis, it should be they who are persecuting the ethnic minority in the colony… and that’s the Daleks! And the depiction of fascism is inadequate anyway because it is depicted as the work of one man acting on his own psychological motives. The story manages to notice that fascism emerges from social democracy, that it is a mass movement which can mobilise some popular support and appear radical… but predicates it on one man’s ambition and offers no context for it, no recognition of the fact that it is a form of class war waged at times when the capitalist system is (or perceives itself to be) under intense threat from crisis, instability and rising working class resistance and mobilisation.

But a full analysis of fascism as an actual historical phenomenon isn’t what the story is trying to do. And, in any case, the rebels are never conclusively identified as a fascist movement… and nor is the Governor’s regime ever conclusively identified as democratic. It might be an unelected oligarchy, for all we know. It has military undertones, almost like the colony’s social superstructure is built upon the ranks and hierarchies of a military expedition. Hensall seems happy for Bragen to acquire more and more police muscle as long as he thinks they’re his to call upon. Hensall’s government certainly seems to operate very much behind closed doors amongst small groups of plummy-voiced men… but then so does ours and we’d call ours a “democracy”, meaningfully enough as long as all we’re doing is distinguishing it from places like Saudi Arabia. In any case, it’s perfectly possible that the rebels are a liberal or leftist movement reacting to an authoritarian regime.

The rebels don’t seem to be an ideologically revolutionary organisation. They certainly behave like one… although they may simply be a non-revolutionary organisation forced into clandestine meetings by authoritarian repression… though, the guards who’d do the repressing are commanded by the rebel leader, so…. hmm, it’s all a bit confusing.…

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