By Jessica Holmes

Ready for another historical episode? This serial of Doctor Who comes from the mind of Dennis Spooner, who I don’t think we’ve had a story from before. Interestingly, this is the first Doctor Who serial to be partially shot on location, instead of the airing cupboard at the BBC they usually use.

I want to start with a couple of things. One: I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an expert on the French Revolution. And two: my opinion on this episode is objective fact and I shall not be tolerating any dissenters.

Let’s get on with it, shall we?

A LAND OF FEAR

The TARDIS lands in a nice spot of countryside, and in keeping with his promise at the end of the previous serial, the Doctor curtly informs Ian and Barbara they can go now, and not to let the door bang their backsides on the way out. However, considering this is the Doctor we’re talking about, Ian and Barbara aren’t about to just waltz off when they’re not even sure they’re on the right planet, so Ian manages to coax the Doctor out for a drink while they scope out the area.

Hearing some loud bangs as they leave the TARDIS, Ian rummages around in the bushes and drags out a small boy, who kindly informs them that they’re in France. To be fair, it’s not far off from Old Blighty. Get a ferry from Dover and you can make a day trip of it.

The boy runs off, and the others track him to a deserted house.

Ian and Barbara admit to themselves that they wouldn’t really be disappointed if they weren’t in England in 1964. Or should they come back to 1963? I’m not sure if it’s been as long for them as it’s been for us.

Finding the house empty, the companions promptly start plundering the owners’ belongings. Aside from some fancy frocks and dusty candlesticks, they find documents signed by Robespierre…and realise where and when they are.

And just to round things off, while exploring alone (always a bad idea) the Doctor gets a nice whack over the back of the head.

Meanwhile, the rest of the companions are helping themselves to some contemporary clothes. The garments look quite accurate to the location and time period, though I couldn’t say if the lack of corsets is excellent historical attention to detail (the corset having fallen out of fashion during the revolution in favour of simpler garments), or simply a lack of budget or modern clothing standards getting in the way of accurate period costuming.

That might all be a bit nit-picky, but I think the Doctor would appreciate my twaddle on whether or not everyone should be wearing a corset. This is, after all, his favourite historical period. I don’t know what that says about him but I think we should probably keep him away from any members of the aristocracy, just in case.

Oh. Too bad, because a couple just showed up. This farmhouse, it turns out, is their hideout. I’m not going to tell you their names because for one, I didn’t catch them, and for two, they’ll be dead in a couple of minutes so there’s no point.

They prepare to make a brave stand as a gang of soldiers come to capture them, only for one of them to chicken out and run outside, necessitating the other to come out and rescue him. He’s doing well at persuading the soldiers not to shoot them, right up to the point that he tells them that even if they have uniforms, they’re still peasants underneath.

To literally nobody’s surprise, that’s not a very clever thing to say to a bunch of gun-toting peasants.

R.I.P, French blokes whose names I don’t know.

Meanwhile, Ian’s trying to find where they stashed the Doctor, who is still out cold, but the soldiers barge in before he can, and drag everyone (except the Doctor, who is still having a nice nap) out into the courtyard.

The Doctor finally wakes up just as the soldiers are about to execute his mates. However, their leader persuades the men that they should take the companions to Paris, where they’ll be rewarded for delivering them to ‘Madame Guillotine’. How nice.

Before leaving, they decide to burn the house down, just to be thorough. Things sure don’t look good for the Doctor. Pity I literally don’t care. Of course I always know the Doctor or whoever is imperiled in the cliffhanger-of-the-week is going to be fine, but I am usually enjoying the episode enough that I can suspend my disbelief.

I didn’t know 24 minutes of television with multiple shootings and a house burning down could actually be this boring. Yes; this is the end of the episode! Is it just me, or would all these events normally take place within the first fifteen minutes?

2 out of 5.

GUESTS OF MADAME GUILLOTINE

I think I like the title more than I like the episode.

With the Doctor being slow-roasted French-style, the companions arrive in the city of lights, and Paris gives them a lovely warm welcome, by which I mean they’re immediately sentenced to death for being in the company of traitors of the revolution.

There we go. Show’s over, everyone’s dead.

…Sadly I don’t think I’ll get out of doing this write-up that easily.

Unfortunately there’s a backlog of necks that want chopping, so Ian, Barbara and Susan are going to have to wait a bit, in the company of a delightfully charming jailor who makes creepy implications about what Barbara could do for him to secure her release. Barbara gives him a slap instead. That’s my girl. Susan, on the other hand, wallows in misery, convinced everyone’s going to die. Tsk.

Oh, and the Doctor’s alive too. The little boy from last episode went into the house and dragged him out, which is nice of him. Don’t expect him to stick around, though, nice as it might have been for the Doctor to have a plucky young sidekick. The Doctor’s off to Paris!

On a real, actual road! With real sky! And a fake Bill Hartnell! Two out of three isn't bad. See, they didn't actually have the budget to transport any of the cast out to the filming location, so they had to make do with a double shot from a distance. That's pretty neat!

Ian, meanwhile, is sitting in a cell with a chap who is not feeling his best. He’s got a nasty gunshot wound, and it’s clear he’s not long for this world. The wounded man tells Ian to find an Englishman in Paris, who is in the city to gather information. There’s a war coming between England and France, because the day ends in a Y. I can’t even remember which historical war they’re gearing up for. There’s too many, and a ridiculous number of them are simply called the ‘Anglo-French War’. We’ve been at war, or preparing for it, pretty much ever since that William bloke paddled across the Channel.

I digress. The man imparts his wish, and dies, and I swear this should be more interesting to me than it is. It’s just not doing anything for me.

Out in the sunshine, the Doctor is having a nice walk in the countryside, and comes upon some ‘tax-dodgers’ being forced to work on the road. He tells their foreman that they might work faster if he actually picked up a pick. Astute observation, Doctor, and a great way to illustrate the difference between intelligence and wisdom, as this makes the foreman take offence, and investigate the Doctor's lack of travel papers. No papers, eh? Probably up to no good. And what do we do with people who are up to no good? We put them to work!

In Paris, Barbara and Susan are making progress on digging their way out of their cell. It looks like the ladies might be coming to the rescue.

Meanwhile, the man who was commanding the soldiers who captured the companions (I’m sorry, I didn’t hear his name) has come to investigate the death of the man in Ian’s cell, and asks if he and Ian spoke before he died. Ian lies to him, and says that they didn’t, but the jailor tells the commander otherwise, though he didn’t hear what was said.

Back in the ladies’ cell, Susan and Barbara find some rats in the hole they’ve made, and go into hysterics, because we womenfolk literally melt if we see a rodent, don’t you know? I don’t know. You cross the universe fighting priests who cut people’s hearts out and bug-eyed monsters and pepper-pots with death rays, and you go to pieces over a few rats?

Look. I’m scared of spiders. But if I’m going to be decapitated in the morning, and the only way out of it is to crawl through a tunnel filled with tarantulas, I’d absolutely, positively, definitely…get my last rites in order and sort out a will.

Perhaps I can’t really talk.

Meanwhile in the countryside….

Sometimes I do wish the characters would stay together for longer than five minutes so I don’t have to come up with a new way to re-introduce them every other paragraph to prevent things getting repetitive.

But meanwhile à la campagne, the Doctor gets in a boring and stupid and unnecessary scene that, unless there is some deep meaning in it that I’m too thick to get, is there just to pad out the episode. This whole thing with the roadworks is so pointless.

The Doctor distracts the foreman by making him stare at the sun, then steals his money, throws it on the ground, and while the foreman is digging through the soil, whacks him over the back of the head. Our hero, everyone!

Okay, so he was actually using the foreman’s greed against him by making him think he’d found a treasure trove, but he still knocked a man out cold while he wasn’t even looking.

To be fair, I was already thinking ‘why not just hit him with your pick’, and then he did, but that doesn’t reflect well on either of us.

Back in Paris (see? This is what I mean), the guards come for Susan and Barbara, and they’re taken with a bunch of other prisoners to the guillotine.

And all Ian can do is watch helplessly from his cell.

And how have I managed to write so much about an episode of little substance?

2 out of 5.

A CHANGE OF IDENTITY

Let’s introduce this one with a little scrap from my notes:

My chippy tea is going cold and I’m having to watch this.

Jessica from the past, you put it into words.

At least we’re finally getting to the bit where people’s heads start getting chopped off. Please?

The Doctor makes it to Paris, just as the women are on their way to have a little off the top, though of course he doesn’t know that.

In an alleyway, two men, noblemen by the looks of it, are lying in wait for the prisoners and soldiers heading their way.

And back in prison. Oh, back in prison. I can barely bring myself to go on. The jailor leaves the key to Ian’s cell…in the lock. Of Ian’s cell. And then rushes off because the commander chap is calling him. Leaving Ian free to grab the key-ring, nick his key, and put it back how he found it before the jailor remembers what he did with the keys.

I don’t even have the will to make a joke or be annoyed about it. It’s just not worth it.

Out on the streets of Paris, the horse towing Barbara and Susan on their way to certain doom throws a shoe, and Barbara plans to make a run for it when the guards unhitch the horse. Susan, however, has suddenly developed a very inconvenient illness and so can’t be running off anywhere, and Barbara, bless, won’t leave her.

Luckily the two men are nearby to save them because goodness knows they couldn’t possibly have rescued themselves in the face of this sudden narrative contrivance.

The Doctor, meanwhile, is shopping for new clothes. This is Paris, after all. Being in possession of no actual money, he trades in his old clothes and also a rather ugly ring, in return for…well. Wait and see.

Barbara and Susan make it to a safehouse. The blokes who saved them are called Jules and Jean, and they are posh, upper-class, and might as well have a dotted line around their necks labelled ‘chop here’.

Ian, meanwhile, is escaping, but not without notice.

I’ll just say, it’s not a very thrilling escape when the jailor is passed out on the floor and the only conscious witness is presumably hoping Ian will just lead him to the English spy, and so doesn’t lift a finger.

Susan and Barbara tell Jules and Jean about the farmhouse and the men they met there. They realise that their escape route has been compromised. A messenger arrives for them, a man called Leon.

Back in the dungeon….

Forget everything mean I’ve said about this episode. It’s just redeemed itself.

Behold the Doctor’s new outfit:

Besides being a genuinely funny reveal, the Doctor’s new outfit serves another purpose. It enables him to walk right into the prison in the guise of a regional officer, and interrogate the jailor as to the whereabouts of Ian, Barbara and Susan!

He learns of their escape, but before he can go off to be their knight in fabulous plumage, along comes the commander, who asks to see the Doctor’s papers. Of course, the Doctor remembered to forge some this time (perhaps the only worthwhile thing to come out of his little interlude in the countryside), so he’s not rumbled…yet.

However, the commander is on his way to have a chat with Robespierre himself about the execution lists, and extends an invitation to the Doctor, who can’t very well say no.

At least that might be interesting next time.

In what the French call le safehouse, Leon and Barbara make small-talk. Barbara tells him that she’s English, which he takes as an encouraging sign that she doesn’t really have a side in the whole revolution thing.

Look, she’s a history teacher. I can bet you she has opinions.

So that’s nice. And dull.

However, back at the prison, qu’est-ce que c’est? Or, as the English prefer to say, what is this that this is?

It’s the man from the clothing shop. He informs the commander that he has evidence of a traitor, and then (all together now), dun dun DUUUUUUUN…!

He produces the Doctor’s ring.

See, this is why I don’t wear jewellery. You never know when a duplicitous merchant of clothes might buy it off me and use it as evidence of me betraying the ideals of the revolution.

Okay, that’s it. I’m free. For now. I really hope things start picking up next time.

2 out of 5.

Final Thoughts

Well, having spent quite a lot of this review just making my own stupid jokes, how engaging do we think I found this serial so far?

Not very.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but if I was going to hazard a guess, I would say that it’s the pacing. There is not enough plot here to stretch over a six-part serial, and so in dragging out individual plot points that might actually have been interesting in a more densely-plotted story, all the flavour is drained out of them. Think of it like jam scraped over too much bread.

Now, that’s not to say that a story must have a dense plot to be good. Not by any means. However, what a good story may lack in plot it absolutely must make up in terms of interesting character insight and development, and apart from the core cast, I don’t even know the names of any other characters here! The jailor’s a drunken lecherous lout, an embodiment of contemporary Royalist stereotypes about the Revolutionaries, right down to the tatty uniform. The commander? Well, I’d give you my judgement only I don’t have one. I don’t recall one thing about him! As for the young aristocratic men, they seem nice enough but about as interesting as white bread. At least the men in the first episode had the distinguishing characteristics of being a snob and a coward. Not the best characteristics, but I remembered them, didn’t I?

We’ll have to see how the rest of the serial pans out for me to lay down any greater judgement one way or another, but between you and me? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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