Part of me is sad that I will never have an opportunity to meet Michael Sheard. I'm generally not a starstruck sort of person, but some actors or personalities have had such a steady presence in my life, showing up at important moments in my personal narrative. Michael Sheard fits into the category.Even before I knew his name, he was present. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the classic Space: 1999 episode "Dragon's Domain" has been forever cemented into my psyche. Besides scaring the ever-living crap out of me, it provided endless fodder in the playground. My friends and I would take turns playing victim and monster. Two or three kids would form a creepy array of dangling arms to which another would be dragged helplessly towards. Then we'd switch places. Once I recall an endless stream of kids lining up to their metaphorical doom.
Michael Sheard was one of those victims in the episode. Part of a hopeful crew of space explorers, he would eventually be reduced to a cobwebby mess. It was a small part. I don't even think he had any lines come to think of it. My eight-year-old self mourned for him nevertheless. If only his character had gone into another career (perhaps, barbering, since all those guys are bald anyway).
The next time this gentle actor graced my imagination was in 1980. Our class was on a trip to Trier, Germany to study Roman ruins. One night we took a mysterious bus ride to a nearby American Armed Forces base where we were treated to a screening of The Empire Strikes Back (the yanks got it before us on the Canadian base at Baden). I won't bore you with how much of massive Star Wars fan I was: if you're reading this, chances are you were too). Sheard of course played Admiral Ozzal, doomed once again to meet an unfortunate fate at the hands of a man who couldn't even bother to be in the same room when he did him in. Once again, a minor role, but in a massive phenomenon.
A year later if I'd blinked I'd have missed him as the captain of the freighter in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Pyramids of Mars brought Sheard to my full attention as the tragic Lawrence Scarman. With each viewing of the story, my imagination fills in a few more details, the point where I can now evoke images of the two Scarman brothers playing cricket on a lazy afternoon or vying for the attentions of the local Victorian beauty (no I will not be writing any related fan fiction any time soon!).
Sheard was one of the highlights for me in The Invisible Enemy. I remember rooting for his character, Lowe, as an ally of the Doctor and Leela only to be chilled by his possession of the nucleus. Once he start working against the goodies, he's quite chilling. Again, there's that bittersweet sense of a good man lost. I suppose as an inhabitant (Mergrave) of Castrovalva he was collectively lost once Adric's sums fell apart, and we never got to see if the Headmaster at Coal Hill School (in Remembrance of the Daleks) was a good man possessed or just another fascist sympathizer. It's ironic that I never caught his most famous and iconic role as Deputy Headmaster Bronson on Grange Hill.
In total he made 6 appearances on Doctor Who in various roles (the list is rounded out with The Ark and Mind of Evil ). Surely, this must be a record.
At 14, The Invisible Enemy stood clearly in my mind as part of the "body horror" sub-genre: good people being reduced to grotesque alien monsters (Ark in Space, Planet of Evil, and The Seeds of Doom round out the quartet). The difference here of course is bright lighting and a talking shrimp. It was still a hell of a lot of fun, even if it was absurd that the Doctor and Leela were walking around in the Time Lord's body (it's like watching an episode of The Magic School Bus but with dodgier science). And of course there is the infamous re-lasered wall (second takes for effects shots on Doctor Who alas) that my Dad will bring up whenever you mention Doctor Who. My partner Ravi's comments about the Nucleus: "Nice head, too bad about the body."
Heck, I'm fine with the dodgy effects and loopy story elements; what annoys the hell out of me is the way the Doctor makes such a big deal of giving the Nucleus a chance to survive only to glibly blow it up at the first sign of trouble. It's a far cry from the tenth Doctor's you get "one chance."
Number of times "Contact has been made" is heard: 10 (with 1 "Contact must be be made" and a half a dozen uses of the word "contact."
Original viewing date: January 15, 1984
Wine: "Jester", a vintage Australian shiraz. As I was doing my weekly perusal of the Summerhill flagship LCBO, I overheard a rather odd man wax ecstatically over it's virtues and then order an entire case. How could I refuse. It fit the contradictions of Graham Williams Doctor Who like a glove and it tasted fantastic! Served with a shrimp cocktail of course.
Music: "Always Something There to Remind Me" by Naked Eyes.
It's funny, Sheard is like furniture and fittings. You don't really notice he's there and what great work he's doing. In Pyramids, his performance is great, but there are so many great performances it's hard for him to be noticed. But here, you're right, he's especially superb in this story.
ReplyDeleteThis strikes me as the sort of story that, had it happened a season before, would have been praised. Hinchcliffe would have thrown money at it and the design would have been done by someone like Roger Murray-Leach and the direction by someone like Lennie Mayne or Rodney Bennett. The story is pretty solid. It's only let down really by the visuals and the direction.