To Every Who There is a Season

My Doctor Who story cravings are often tied to the seasons of the year. As a Canadian, I have an emotional attachment to the changing of the seasons. Each with its own memories and rituals. Not surprisingly, a particular story is most often associated with the time of year I first saw it. Tom Baker stories are Fall and Winter, Peter Davision stories Spring. Hartnell, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy are tied closely to the Summer. Pertwee floats a bit more around the calendar year, but he's probably best viewed in the Fall (although for some odd reason The Mutants is a Christmas story?!). Troughton, alas, never seems long enough to merit a season.

There can be other considerations too--Doctor Who stories like Black Orchid, Silver Nemesis will always feel Summer-y by virtue of what's going on in the story. Ditto on The Daemons, although it fits well at both Halloween and May Day. Despite its chilly backdrop, Dragonfire is a light, breezy Summer tale.

The Seeds of Doom is a Fall story in every respect: the crackling fire in Chase's library, the laconic shadows everywhere and the golden, decaying leaves. It's just so bloody sensual in this respect. All the running around on the Athelhampton House grounds provide a great distraction for the healthy does of capture and escape (which is never excessive, considering this is a 6 parter).

No other story during this re-watch has given me a greater feeling of nostalgia, happy memories, and a sense general well-being. Whether it's the body horror (at its pinnacle here--poor Keeler), the radical change in locations from Antarctica to the Home Counties (and anyone who knows me, knows how much I like films or TV shows with snow--even fake snow), or how much the story makes me laugh-out-loud.

The Seeds of Doom is just so damned funny. In the best Doctor Who way, the humour is completely integrated into the action and the horror. The characters are all stock, but they're so brilliantly played with such wonderful lines. Harrison Chase (the effete megalomaniac), Emelia Dukut (the canny eccentric), Sir Colin (the brilliant straight man), Hargreaves (the loyal and long suffering butler) and of course the gloriously cynical, can't-help-but-love-him Scorby.

There's a wonderful scene where Chase rails about why he is surrounded by idiots, Scorby suddenly appears and Hargreaves gives him a dry, withering look. Love it, love it. And Hargreaves is always a perfect balance of dignified toady and horrified bystander. He's clearly appalled by what has happened to Keeler, but in Hargreaves proper world, Mr. Chase knows best.

Of course the story isn't perfect. Once Chase goes completely nutty under the influence of the Krynoid, he's somehow less interesting, and solving the whole thing with a couple of well placed RAF bombs is hardly satisfying.

Wow, I can't believe the curtain has fallen on season 13 so fast. It's a very consistent season in terms of tone, and style. Whereas both seasons 12 and 14 have strong currents of transition, (whether in front or behind the camera), here things hold relatively steady. Over the past several weeks Tom and Liz have built up their famous rapport almost effortlessly, and that's definitely going to up the resonance of The Hand of Fear in a few weeks. Curiously, I've had almost no changes in my feelings or attitudes to season 13 stories (yeah sure, Androids has slipped further, but that was almost expected). But the funny thing about Doctor Who is that, come the right circumstances, any story can suddenly find the right season--let the pub arguments commence!

Original viewing date: November 13 or November 20, 1983

Wine: In honour of Harrison Chase I picked up a Pinot Noir called "megalomaniac." Why it made for a great gimmick, unfortunately it wasn't a very good wine. It was too light and tasted vaguely of cotton candy!? Graeme texted me that the perfect wine for The Seeds of Doom would be called Green Cathedral. If I'm ever making small talk with a vintner, I shall wholeheartedly suggest the moniker.

Music: "True" by Spandau Ballet. It just defined the times. No link--thank EMI.

Doctor Solon or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Body Parts

I was having a lot of nightmares at the end of November 1983, but they weren't provoked by The Brain of Morbius. That honour belongs to the ABC telefilm The Day After, a harrowing portrayal of the events leading up to, during, and after a nuclear war. While it may seem like a dated curiosity now, at the time it haunted my waking and sleeping worlds. Suddenly, I began suffering dreams where I was desperately looking for a place to hide, or trying to find my family. Curiously, I never quite got to the apocalyptic part after the blast--it was always the confusion and horror of the moments leading up to it. I guess that's true of all horror--it's the fear and tension of what's to come, not the actual "boo"!

I remember some critics charging that by the end of the story, the characters were already "picking up their bookstraps" and starting to rebuild with true Yankee gumption. A comparable, but much more graphic British TV film about nuclear devastation, Threads, would further traumatize me not long after.

Deciding how much to push the horror envelope has been an eternal battle for producers of Doctor Who (with Mary Whitehouse looming in the shadows). After all, Doctor Who was and is a programme for children, primarily. The Brain of Morbius has many creepy and disturbing ideas (much like Frankenstein which it riffs), and rates high on the gothic horror metre thanks to Robert Holmes rewriting of Terrance Dicks original script. It's hard to imagine the story with a robot creating Morbius' body rather than the inimitable Solon. But again, at 14, the campier aspects of the production helped to counterbalance the horror elements.

The format of Doctor is a wonderful container for horror, because we know that the Doctor will win in the end. No matter how bad things get, he'll save the day(things are a little more complex in the new series, but there is always hope). There is no chance of a happy ending after a nuclear war.

Many of the ideas stuck with me though. The idea that Solon wanted the Doctor's head (literally) disturbed me, and when Sarah was blinded and had to make her way around the horrific landscape of Sarn, I felt a few chills. And don't get me started on the Sisterhood (again kudos to the make-up artist for giving Maren such a hard and intense look).

The look of the story is fantastic. I can't remember a colour Doctor Who story employing such a skilled use of shadows. They really give the story an added element of texture, depth and menace. And the effect of the Doctor being transported from Solon's lab by the telekinetic Sisterhood is chilling.

While it's fun to play "what if" and imagine Peter Cushing in the role, Philip Madoc owns his portrayal of Solon. It's like he's reading the dialogue directly from Holmes' macabre and stylish mind. His fixation on the Doctor's head always has the perfect distracted quality.

Tom and Elizabeth are also in top form. From his revealing and petulant stew at the start of the story right through to that subtle and hilarious moment when Sarah tells the Doctor he's "too late" and he grabs his head to see if it's still there! Sarah has lots of little moments like when she pours her spiked beverage out or doesn't scream when she first encounters the "Chop Suey" body.

These days the bomb has dropped far below my angst awareness, and I'm more likely to wake from a nightmare after watching AMC's The Walking Dead. It's ultra-real depiction of a zombie apocalypse has taken that genre to truly frightening places, not the least is its realization of redneck racists, withdrawn wife beaters and incontinent vulnerable seniors. I guess that's where my psyche is at--thank God for the gentle world of hissing covens and splattered brains.

Original viewing date: November 6 or 13, 1983

Wine: A Jean Bousquet Argentinian Malbec (made with organic grapes apparently). As the nights get colder, a good throaty Malbec always hits the spot--unfortunately this one has a metallic note that marred the experience.

Music: "Mad World," by Tears for Fears. After watching the story I went out to a retro 80s dance party at Dovercourt House (they hold it once every month). It was like a shower of nostalgia.

Diminishing Returns

Nostalgia can often raise up a mediocre or bad Doctor Who story to a higher place in my esteem. The Android Invasion is certainly no gem, but when I first watched it at 14 it had a number of elements to recommend it. A creepy first episode with a twitchy UNIT soldier falling over a cliff, a desolate little hamlet with a handful of mysteries and a pub with a single date on the calendar. We also got the return of Harry Sullivan and Sgt. Benton (yes, like the calendar, he will always remain Sergeant to me).

And of course it reminded me of the classic "fembot" episodes of The Bionic Woman. As a kid I was a massive fan of Jaime Sommers and her cybernetic counterpart Steve Austin. The fembot episodes were my favourites. The bug-eyed dopplegangers seemed invincible and the sight of them removing their faces freaked the ever living poop out of me. So when Sarah got tossed down to the ground like a rag doll and her face went the other direction, I couldn't help to be hooked.

Sadly, re-watching The Android Invasion over the years has been a case of diminishing returns. I guess the plot never really made sense, but this time around I just found myself a bit distracted and bored. The whole thing is a big throwback to classic UNIT stories, and yet it has none of the oomph of those stories. Guy Crawford is introduced rather matter-a-fact-ly and never really makes much of an impression (Milton Johns does a much better toady later on in The Invasion of Time). Once the mystery is gone, the jig is up.

Ultimately, it's a collection of Terry Nation bits with none of the polish on--it's just sort of thrown together. The Kraals are pretty generic (their motivations seem cribbed from the Zygons) and while their "rhino" design is an interesting idea, in 30 years Russell T Davies and his production team would ultimately best it. Every cool moment, like the Doctor jumping face first out a window is matched with a rubbish bit like Sarah tripping and hurting her ankle. I guess we can give Barry Letts credit for the former and Nation the latter.

Again, I quite liked the setting: it brought to mind the village from the new series story Amy's Choice. It was a nice touch that Sarah had prior knowledge of the village, but unlike say Tegan's connection to her grandfather in The Awakening, there's no real emotional connection to heighten the tension. There's a bit more of that later when Sgt. Benton and Harry show up, but then it's rather wasted when we get almost no interesting stuff with them later in the real world.

It would also have been nice to have one final goodbye to Harry, particularly since he never returned in any future stories. I guess it's indicative of the "phoned-in" quality of the story.

Random observations:

• Sarah is wearing clogs that look remarkably like crocs (no wonder she tripped)


• Colonel Faraday feels like a parody of the worst excesses of latter Petwee era Lethbridge Stewart. It's probably fortunate that Nicholas Courtney was spared being in the story


• Curiously, we have a scene where Benton is chastising his kid sister on the phone. It's a nice bit of business and seems surprising in the story. Makes me yearn for a proper UNIT story.

Original viewing date: October 29, 1983 or November 6, 1983

Spirit: Gin and tonic. Specifically Bombay Sapphire. It had to be a quintessential English pub drink and I wasn't up for lager or ale.

Music: "If This Is It" by Huey Lewis and the News.

Essential Viewing

Atop my desk at home, amongst a collection of wooden giraffes, teddy bears, my Mego "Bones" and other precious objects, stands a stoic mummy with a little Egyptian jar at its foot. Had I known of Doctor Who when I was 10 and had there been a dearth of related action figures (as there had been for Star Wars), I surely would have worn out this plastic automaton in the backyard sandbox or in a country house setting I would have constructed from boxes and stolen Barbie furniture.

Pyramids of Mars is the very definition of fun! And Doctor Who should always at its root be fun. More than anything, that's the reason why it's proved so resilient for me. I remember the fun of first watching it. On a bad day it can lift my spirits.

Back in the 80s, KVOS used to show clips from the story as part of its one and only advertisement for Doctor Who. It makes perfect sense: the Doctor states he's from Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous, while Sutekh identifys the Doctor as a Time Lord. And the clips looks cool and have the advantage of Gabriel Woolf's menacing and silky voice.

Pyramids of Mars feels like the very epicentre of Hinchcliffe/Holmes Doctor Who. It has a memorable villain in Sutekh, lots of great location filming, a large country home, some chilling deaths, fantastic acting, great chemistry between the leads, nods to the past (Victoria, companion to the 2nd Doctor is referenced as is the city of Exxilons from Death to the Daleks) and gosh darn-it--pyramids on Mars!

In retrospect it's just so darned iconic as well, which is why the "Oh Mummy" featurette on the DVD release works so well (the dialogue and images are so striking--"I bring you Sutekh's gift of death" or "plaything of Sutekh". And I can completely understand why Russell T Davies chose to reference it specifically in an episode in Queer as Folk. And hiring Gabriel Woolf to do the voice of The Beast in The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit two-parter during the 2006 series was a brilliant move.

Right off the bat we have a brooding Doctor who complains about being at the Brigadier's beck and call (and discloses his approximate age to Sarah). Holmes and Hinchcliffe must have felt a certain confidence in having the Doctor utter these sentiments on screen--we're pretty much done with all that folks (even though UNIT would have a presence in two more stories before disappearing).

Later Holmes shows us the consequences of the Doctor high tailing it away in the TARDIS without dealing with the baddie. It's a striking an important scene and I'm surprised we haven't had such an illustration in Doctor Who before (RTD would elaborate on the idea in the new series with his concept of "fixed points in time and space".

Every time I watch the story I can't help feeling the poignancy of Lawrence Scarman's death at the hands of his brother (or at least what he believes to be his brother). He's seen the wonders of the TARDIS, and the horrors of Sutekh, but in the end the power of his relationship with his brother remains the only truly real thing to him.

It's an old fan discussion to posit which Doctor Who story would be a good starter for a new viewer. I nominate Pyramids wholeheartedly for all the reasons I mention above. And what fodder it would have provided for my world-building 10-year-old self.

Original viewing date: October 22nd or October 29th, 1983

Wine: "Trapiche Reserve" my favourite Malbec from Argentina. It's deep, fully bodied and has a little of everything (vanilla, blackberry, oak-y, etc.), rather like the story.

Music: "That's All" by Genesis. One of those forgettable songs from latter day Genesis, but there's no accounting for taste at 14...