By Jessica Holmes

The third series of Doctor Who comes to a close, and it ends on a high note! Ian Stuart Black returns as a writer to bring us a high-concept sci-fi thriller set in modern London: The War Machines.

EPISODE ONE

The first thing that strikes you when watching this serial are the high-tech and creative title cards. It’s fitting to the theme of the serial, and I hope more serials will do the same. It’s a nice touch.

Arriving in contemporary London, the Doctor and Dodo take notice of the recently completed Post Office Tower. Here, it’s a front for a top-secret science project. In real life, as we all know, it’s where all the pigeons of London go to roost in between delivering the post. You can look it up if you like.

The Doctor, curious about the tower and following his gut instinct, heads up for a tour. The pair meet a computer scientist, Professor Brett (John Harvey). He eagerly shows them his life’s work: the thinking computer, WOTAN (Will Operating Thought ANalogue). Wotan also happens to be another spelling of Wōdan, a name for the Norse god Odin. Odin was associated with both wisdom and war. Additionally (and if this is deliberate, it’s absolutely brilliant), the name stems from the proto-Germanic *Wōđanaz, which has the meaning ‘leader of the possessed’. This is incredibly apt, as you’ll soon see.

The computer soon shows itself to be as smart as Brett claims, even correctly guessing what the acronym TARDIS means. But how did it know?

Prof. Brett introduces him to his secretary, Polly (Anneke Wills). We’ll be getting to know a lot more of Polly. While the Doctor continues to poke around the machine, Polly invites Dodo to the hottest nightspot in town – the Inferno.

At the bar, the pair meet Ben (Michael Craze), a down-in-the-dumps seaman stuck on shore duty. After Polly tries and fails to cheer him up with a bit of a flirt, she finds herself accosted by an impertinent idiot who doesn’t understand the word ‘no’. Ben comes to the rescue. That's all good. I was impressed with him for standing up to the creep. And then he had to go and RUIN it. How? By scolding Polly and telling her she ought to be careful who she encourages. The cheek!

I would have handled it a lot less gracefully than Polly does, and with language that would even make sailor-boy blush.

The Doctor attends a scientific club meeting led by Sir Charles Summer (William Mervyn), whose role in all this I’m not entirely clear on. He is extraordinarily posh. At the meeting, Sir Charles explains that WOTAN is going to be connected to an international network of computers. It will act as a central, impartial controller for all these computers – including those used for military applications. What could go wrong?

Prof. Brett is late for the meeting, having become suspicious that there’s an intruder in the building. He can’t shake the feeling that someone or someTHING is watching him. Then a discordant buzzing sound comes from the supercomputer. It turns almost melodic as it takes control of him, pulling him towards the machine…

The press conference is about to wrap up when Brett suddenly bursts in and asks to speak to another scientist, Krimpton (John Cater), and they both head back to the tower.

There, Major Green (Alan Curtis), the representative from the Ministry of Defence on the project, is the next to be ensnared by the machine’s siren song. He makes a call to the Inferno Club and asks to talk to Dodo. She answers, and the Major connects the phone to the computer, transmitting the hypnotic tone, and bringing Dodo under WOTAN’s control.

Brett drags Krimpton before WOTAN. The machine has thought it over, and come to the conclusion that the world can’t progress further with mankind running things. It’s time for WOTAN to take over.

The Doctor comes to the Inferno club to find Dodo missing, but where could she be?

Where else, but with WOTAN?

In a genuinely unsettling moment, the machine laughs as its plans begin to come together. It’s an unearthly, warped sound, but definitely a laugh. The machine instructs Dodo that Doctor ‘Who’ is required, and commands her to bring him to the tower.

This is a very good start to the serial. It’s all rather sinister so far, and things are moving along at a good pace, but not so fast that it feels rushed.

EPISODE TWO

For WOTAN’s plans to take over London, Washington and Moscow to come to fruition, it must have an army. An army of machines. Considering it’s about to link up to all the military computers, couldn't it just nuke the world into submission?

Then again, that’s not as much fun. While it is tempting (and fun) to point out logical holes in fiction, or smarter ways for characters to achieve their goals, sometimes it’s just more fun if the characters do things the hard way. On the other hand, it is meant to be a hyper-intelligent supercomputer, so you'd think it'd do things the smart way.

For another thing, if this machine was really all that smart, it’d know that the Doctor is not literally called 'Doctor Who'. Yes, it’s the name of the programme, and yes, that's his name in the credits. That much is true. But nobody calls him that, including himself. That, and it just sounds weird.

At the club, Polly is about to start phoning round the hospitals when Dodo shows up, claiming to have been visiting some old friends. Nobody notices how odd she’s acting, and Dodo almost succeeds in leading the Doctor into an ambush while waiting for a taxi – which then shows up, scuppering her plans.

In a nearby warehouse, WOTAN has made short work of mind-controlling a bunch of workers, who are beginning to build a War Machine. An unwitting homeless bloke finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and WOTAN sets the workers on him.

Then the first of the War Machines emerges in all its tin-can glory. It’s like the offspring of one of NASA’s big computers and a Dalek.

The next morning, the Doctor is at the home of Sir Charles when he sees the homeless man’s face in the paper, and recognises him, having seen him the previous night. To Sir Charles’ surprise, Polly shows up, having been sent by Major Green (most likely to keep her out of the way).

Dodo is still acting strangely, and she suggests that she and the Doctor go and call on Brett. To be polite, the Doctor decides to call his office first. Krimpton can’t believe his luck, and puts him through to WOTAN.

The result is more funny than scary, if I’m honest. It’s like a scene from a rubbish B-movie: Attack Of The Living Telephones! He eventually gets the phone away from his ear and collapses into a chair. The mind control doesn’t appear to have taken, but Dodo gives herself away before realising this. Deducing that WOTAN has hypnotised Dodo, the Doctor takes advantage of her trance and puts her to sleep. Sir Charles offers to have his wife look after her at their country residence, so off she goes.

And she was never seen again.

No, really. But I’ll get to that later.

Polly returns to the Post Office Tower, but gets a nasty surprise, immediately realising that something is very wrong with the Professor.

Ben turns up at Sir Charles’ house (the neighbours must think there’s a party with all these people coming and going), having arranged to meet Polly for lunch. She’s not here, and the Doctor lets Ben know of the goings-on with regards to WOTAN, and Ben offers his assistance.

The Doctor asks him to look into the area where that homeless chap got murdered last night. Off Ben goes, soon finding the War Machine factory – and a War Machine being tested.

EPISODE THREE

Ben makes a narrow escape from the War Machine, soon running into a mind-controlled Polly, who locks him inside the warehouse. The workers capture him, and poor Ben faces death at the hands of the Machine when Polly intercedes, saying that WOTAN needs more workers to complete the War Machines on schedule.

They get to work, and while they toil Polly tells Ben about the coming attack. Ben notices that the workers haven’t even bothered to guard the door. I’m no omniscient supercomputer hell-bent on taking over the world, but if I were, I’d make sure ALL my underlings were mind-controlled. After all, we know WOTAN has the ability to hypnotise people remotely. It would have only taken one phone call and Ben wouldn’t even be able to think about escaping!

At the first opportunity, Ben slips away. Polly sees him go, but for some reason she doesn’t raise the alarm. Perhaps because deep down, she remembers that he’s her friend. On learning this, the Major sends her back to WOTAN for punishment.

Ben makes it back to Sir Charles and the Doctor and tells them what he saw. Realising they must act quickly, Sir Charles calls the army in to deal with the factory. The Doctor thinks it’d be a better idea to strike at the heart of the problem and shut down WOTAN, but for some reason Sir Charles won’t believe that Prof. Brett and WOTAN have anything to do with all this. The Watsonian explanation would be that he’s…I don’t know, stubborn? The Doylist way of looking at it would be that it would cut the serial an episode short. I think we have to cycle back to my point that sometimes it’s just more fun if characters aren’t 100% logical all the time.

The army arrives (with an array of quite obviously recycled shots to make it appear that there are more of them) and send in an advance squad.

It does not go well for them.

I thought initially there was a failure in the sound department as I couldn't hear any shots, but it seems that the War Machine has the ability to jam conventional weapons.

The Doctor and Ben arrive as the few survivors emerge from the warehouse, pursued by the Machine.

Everyone at the site flees, but the Doctor stands his ground…

EPISODE FOUR

…And we start off with a bit of a cop-out as the War Machine rolls right past the Doctor and then shuts down. Why? The workers hadn't finished programming it, so it didn’t know what to do with itself. Seems a little convenient if you ask me.

The news of the War Machine begins to spread over the airwaves. The Ministry of Defence warn the public that more attacks are expected, and to be on guard. It has a bit of a wartime feel to it that will surely strike a chill in all of us old enough to remember.

The other War Machines are ready for launch. One machine while receiving orders destroys the transceiver and then kills one of the men who built it, to the puzzlement of Brett back at the tower…and me, come to think of it. This plot detail doesn’t really seem to go anywhere? It seems as if this machine might have developed its own sense of self-awareness independent from WOTAN, but nothing more really comes of it. Perhaps WOTAN is issuing its own orders without human intermediaries.

At the warehouse, the Doctor talks to the Major, who seems to have come around from his hypnosis with no memory of his actions. I don’t really understand what made him come around. After all, WOTAN is still active.

Meanwhile, some poor bloke gets killed while trying to raise the alarm about having seen one of the War Machines.

Ben continues to worry about Polly, but the Doctor keeps fobbing him off. This is weird, and I had initially thought that the Doctor had some sort of plan to make use of Polly’s hypnotic state or something to that effect, but it seems that he just doesn’t care all that much. In fairness to him, he’s trying to save the world and Polly is just some woman he barely knows, but it does seem out of character.

The second War Machine is heading for the Battersea power station. The Doctor thinks they should capture it. He devises a trap to capture the War Machine within an electromagnetic field.

The War Machine rolls right into the trap, and the Doctor strolls up to have a look at it, knowing it can’t hurt him. Not that it doesn’t threaten to, for which the Doctor scolds it, which is pretty funny as it impotently waves its hammer about. The Doctor reprograms the War Machine to make it an ally, and sends it off to the Post Office Tower to destroy WOTAN.

The Doctor still doesn’t seem to care about Polly, so Ben runs off ahead to get her out of there. With some gentle persuasion (read: physically picking her up and carrying her out the door) he gets her out of the way before the War Machine shows up.

Krimpton dies trying to protect WOTAN, but the War Machine manages to finish the supercomputer off. Now that I think about it, the War Machines were nigh-indestructible, but WOTAN was just like any other computer. I think one guy would have done the job just as well with a sledgehammer. Or a really big magnet. Or a cup of coffee.

With WOTAN deactivated, all the other War Machines freeze in place, waiting for orders that will never come. Everyone who was mind-controlled returns to normal. All’s well that ends well…mostly.

The Doctor slips away to avoid dealing with the aftermath, and waits by the TARDIS for his faithful companion…who doesn’t show up. Ben and Polly arrive with a message from Dodo. She's feeling much better and has decided to stay in London. Oh, and she sends her love.

Gee.

The Doctor takes her through time and space and she doesn’t even come along to say ta-ta in person? If there was a contest for Worst Companion Exit, Dodo’s departure would win. From what I can gather, Jackie Lane’s contract expired mid-filming, but could they not have found a more elegant solution? Why not have the farewell mid-serial, and do it properly? If they wanted to be really bold, they could have killed her off a la Katarina.

Rather put out, the Doctor retreats into the TARDIS, with Ben and Polly following him. The doors shut behind them, and the ship departs into time and space.

Final Thoughts

So, that was The War Machines. Personally, I really enjoyed it. The serial has a very cinematic feeling to it. There's lots of interesting shots and location shooting, making it one of the most dynamic serials we've seen. I enjoyed the technological thriller aspect, minor quibbles with the plot aside. Though it definitely dropped the ball when it came to giving Dodo a proper sendoff, this is however a very strong companion introduction. Ben and Polly were worked into the story in an organic way, and I like them already (despite Ben’s shaming of Polly at their first encounter).

Polly is the sort of cool modern woman we’d all like to be. It’s a shame that she was mind-controlled for much of her appearance. All we really know is that she’s cool and she’s nice. Ben, though definitely a bit condescending, especially towards Polly, seems like a good soul at heart. He’s very brave, which is an important trait to have.

I’m a little surprised at the brevity of Dodo’s tenure as the Doctor’s companion. It feels like she’s barely even arrived and already she’s out the door. I liked her, but she didn’t really get a chance to distinguish herself much as anything other than Replacement Susan.

Polly’s already more distinct, and she’s only been around five minutes.

I look forward to seeing how this new TARDIS team work together– I think the rotating cast helps to keep the programme from getting stale.

Let’s see where things go from here, shall we?

4 out of 5 stars