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[June 14, 1965] Our Best Man (the Young Traveler's favorite secret agent)

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by Lorelei Marcus

Spy King

A thrilling trend has swept its way across the screen recently. Suddenly everyone is keen on viewing the exhilarating day to day of the best secret agents film and television have to offer. They are dapper, cunning, and they challenge the world's darkest foes with masterful plans and interesting gadgets.

Yet among this sea of shadow-dwelling men there is a spy who stands above the rest as the best secret agent of all time. He's British, attracts women like a magnet, and works for a morally ambiguous organization to bring justice to the world.

I'm of course talking about John Drake.

Secret Agent, or Danger Man as it is called in its original airing in Britain, is the best fictional depiction of special intelligence on television. The sophisticated writing and wonderful performance from Patrick McGoohan has earned the show my weekly attention, as it should yours.

Now some may protest at the boldness of my claim. After all, how can a show almost no one in the States has ever heard of reign champion in the crowded secret agent genre? Especially with opponents such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and of course, the James Bond movies. Except, it becomes quite obvious when broken down that Secret Agent contains every possible desired aspect of the secret agent genre and excels where its rivals are lacking.

Exhibit 1: Stakes

Part of the spy appeal is the larger-than-life nature of their profession. Secret agents are frequently thrown into scenarios where their actions can change the face of the modern world. Secret Agent not only captures this drama, but on a level of such elegance and nuance that even the smallest of crises has you on the edge of your seat. John Drake is frequently sent to foreign countries to interfere or investigate governmental affairs; however no two jobs are ever alike. Sometimes he is stuck in the middle of a rebellion. Other times he's hunting down traitorous agents.

No matter the mission, John Drake always executes his work with a level of care, intelligence, and competence equalled by no other hero on television. The diversity and complexity of conflicts grounds the show in a realism akin to our own world. Not to mention the portrayal of other ethnicities and countries is done with unparalleled accuracy and respect. Every episode is exhilarating, mysterious, and well written, and there is yet to be one I didn't like.

To reinforce Secret Agent's excellence I'll compare it to the biggest secret agent film of the season: Goldfinger.

I would summarize the movie's plot, but to be frank it's been a few months and there wasn't much of one to begin with. Goldfinger was less a spy movie and more James Bond failing over and over and then being saved by the more competent people around him.


"I'll be over there, bailing you out…as usual."

Then there's Goldfinger's villain. While John Drake's foes are always complex and rarely monomaniacally evil, the titular villain, Goldfinger, throws subtlety out the window. Now, there's nothing wrong with the booming, big bad villain, but they also have to be cunning to properly challenge the hero. Except Auric Goldfinger's plans make no sense and reach a level of convolution so extreme that the movie must take 15 minutes to explain them to us.


Don't tell your evil plan! James Bond could be hiding under your little Fort Knox!

Sure there are the high-stakes threats of mass genocide and collapse of world economy, but they feel so large that that they are bound to backfire. James Bond has to win because otherwise the whole canonical universe would become unusable. Not that Bond doesn't try everything in his power to screw it up. Even after hearing Goldfinger's entire secret plan, he only barely manages to save the day by convincing Goldfinger's right hand woman to do it for him.


"Oh don't look at me. She's the one who'll be doing all the work."

The differences in quality are so vast that the two almost shouldn't be compared. The Bond Films are idiotic, nonsensical drivel in comparison to the grounded masterpiece that is Secret Agent. However for some reason James Bond is the much more popular and well-known franchise. Perhaps it's the higher budget and flashy special-effects, even though Secret Agent is often better at those, too.

Exhibit 2: Gadgets

All spies have to use fancy tools to save the world — because it's really cool to watch. Who doesn't get excitement from the technologies that make it possible to listen to secret conversations or track down criminals? Though James Bond does get some arguably neat secret weapons and tech, he always manages to lose them or destroy them in some bumbling foolish manner. Also, Bond's inventions are often beyond the realm our modern world, and require a suspension of disbelief.

John Drake instead often uses tools actual spies use such as bugs and microdots. That doesn't mean they aren't fun. The most fascinating part of each episode is witnessing Drake's plans unfold, and how he uses his technological tools is simply a part of that entertaining process. Realism does not inhibit creativity.

Beyond their use, the neat factor of these gadgets comes in how Drake transports them. In one episode, rather than an impossibly small phone in his shoe, Drake must obtain a radio while undercover by intercepting a package of meat that has the transmitter hidden inside. My personal favorite so far is a blowgun in the shape of the fishing rod that shoots listening bugs. The cleverness of the show never ceases to amaze me.

Exhibit 3: Charisma

Simply put, a secret agent has to be likable. Without charm, an agent would be unable to assume alternate identities convincingly– and also not be fun to watch. James Bond does not have the redeeming qualities needed to be a good agent: he is actively bad at his job. Morevoer, he cares more about dating than the fate of the world; in one grotesque scene in Goldfinger he actively forces himself onto a woman for no reason but selfishness.

Once again, the comparison is stark: John Drake is the complete opposite. He is the best at what he does, and because of that he never loses, but it's never a given. It's always his own wit that gets him out of close shaves and tough jobs. He also has an incredibly strong moral compass, always trying to do the right thing.


John Drake, equally at home as the suave man of society and a meek music aficionado.

This makes for incredibly interesting tension with MI9, the organization he works for, because they sometimes send him on missions that aren't necessarily moral. The internal conflict of Drake doing his work because he's the best at it, but sometimes having to do "wrong" things in that line of work creates wonderful character drama.


Drake has no qualms about telling off his bosses. But he does the job anyway.

Exhibit 4: Partners

Secret Agent consistently has some of the best portrayals of female characters on all of television. Many women fall for John Drake due to his innate and thorough confidence, and yet not once does he ever make a move. He is incredibly respectful and human in his treatment of women, as equals rather than objects for physical pleasure. And though many women are attracted to Drake, that does not lessen them as characters. The wealth of interesting and strong female characters on this show is unparalleled in any other broadcast I've ever seen.

In fact, Secret Agent goes out of its way to feature women, agents and otherwise, who are as talented and and resourceful as Drake. There are often several in an episode. Beyond that, the globetrotting Danger Man frequently works with locally based allies. Whether Western European or Eastern, South Asian or African, Caribbean or Middle Eastern, Drake's counterparts are played as competent professionals, and (usually) by actors of the appropriate background (with the occasional, unfortunate example of "brown/black/yellow face").

It's truly both astounding and refreshing to see such wonderful representation, and the willingness to let Drake share the limelight with other strong characters makes each episode almost an ensemble production.

Q.E.D.

It is, thus, irrefutable that Secret Agent is the best spy show ever to be shown on a screen — of any size. It is perfection, with sublime writing, engaging acting, fascinating characters, realism, and a progressiveness desperately needed but rarely seen anywhere else. It is currently midway through its second season in America, and there will hopefully be a third in Britain at the end of summer. Whichever side of the Pond you live on, please make sure to catch Secret Agent. You won't want to miss it.

This is the Young Traveler, signing off.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! You can dispute the Young Traveler's presentation. You'll be wrong, of course…]




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[June 6, 1965] The Dawdle, More Like (Doctor Who: The Chase [Parts 1-3])

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By Jessica Holmes

Well, it had to happen eventually. It’s impossible for a writer to knock it out of the park every time, and Terry Nation has batted his first foul ball. I think that’s the metaphor, anyway. But yes, his streak is over, giving us a rather tiresome story, The Chase, that I now bear the burden of talking about for a couple thousand words.

Let’s get on with it, shall we?

THE EXECUTIONERS

I was very excited going into this serial, as of course the Dalek stories we’ve had so far have also brought with them some societal commentary, and I am a big fan of that sort of thing. A bit of running around and zapping things is fun, but if you can give me food for thought at the same time I’ll fall madly in love.

This is not one of those stories.

The first half of the first episode is more or less dedicated to watching the companions watching television IN SPACE. Remember the Time And Space Visualiser the Doctor picked up from the museum? Yes, he gets it fixed so they all gather round to watch historical events across time and space. Because surely that’s much more fun than just using your time machine to visit these places in person. They snoop on the court of Queen Elizabeth I, watch Abraham Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address, and at Vicki’s request, they tune in to Top Of The Pops to watch The Beatles. Don’t get me wrong, I like the lads from Liverpool, but this is just pure filler. It serves no purpose whatsoever and honestly it’s quite boring.


Didn't your mothers ever warn you not to sit so close to the telly?

So after all that, the plot finally starts to move, as the TARDIS lands on a desert planet, sand dunes stretching far as the eye can see. The Doctor and Barbara stay by the TARDIS to catch some sun, while Ian and Vicki go exploring. Vicki finds some strange, bad smelling substance on the ground, and she and Ian follow the trail, not knowing that there’s something alive in the sand.

Back at the TARDIS, Barbara hears an awful noise. No, it’s not the Doctor’s singing. The Time And Space Visualiser (gosh, that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Let’s just call it a Space Telly) has picked up the Daleks in pursuit.

Cue a rather awkward scene in which the Dalek explain their plans for assassinating the TARDIS crew to one another, for nobody’s benefit but the audience. It’s a terribly clumsy way to deliver exposition, and the scene doesn’t get any better as we watch them silently file into their time capsule one by one. There are loads of them and I aged five years in the time it took.

So now that I’m pushing thirty and the Daleks have finally got into their time capsule, the Doctor and Barbara realise it’s time to get going, and fast. However, Ian and Vicki have wandered far away by now.

Vicki finds the end of the trail, and though at first glance nothing seems to be there, Ian finds some sort of ring in the sand, not unlike a door handle. After some deliberation over whether it’s a good idea to be pulling on things without knowing what they are, Ian goes ahead and tugs it, yanking the ring out of the ground, and opening up a hidden passageway.


There's a monster in the shot, honest.

Ever the responsible adult, Ian lets Vicki go in first, and they almost immediately run into a big ugly monster. I give it five minutes before Vicki gives it a name and tries to adopt it as a pet.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Barbara struggle through a sandstorm in a fruitless attempt to find the two, and once the storm has cleared, they realise to their horror that the landscape has changed entirely, and they can no longer find their way back to the TARDIS.

Worse, however, is the familiar shape rising from the sand…

Eh. It was a lot cooler when they had Daleks coming out of the Thames. So yes, that was a sequence of events. Calling it the beginning of a story feels a bit too generous. I call it a big load of nothing.

Let’s see where The Chase goes from here.

THE DEATH OF TIME

The music accompanying the episode titles in this serial is so ill-fitting it makes me cross. It’s just this weird jazzy sounding thing. I have no idea what tone it’s trying to set, but whatever it is it’s failing abysmally.

Spotting additional Daleks approaching over the dunes, the Doctor and Barbara flee, only to run into a bunch of humanoid fish people, because who else would you be expecting to find in a desert?

Ian and Vicki run away from the monster in the tunnels. I’m not sure it was really making much of an effort to get them.

The Daleks start murdering any local unfortunate enough to wander within shooting range, and identify the planet as Aridia (because it’s arid, get it?).

The Aridians, or fish people as I called them, seem to be a friendly sort (or at the very least not actively hostile), and they give the Doctor and Barbara the standard speech they get from just about every alien culture they come across. Or at least, that’s how it feels. You know the one, it’s about the world once being all lovely then something bad happened and now it’s rubbish so gee, it sure would be nice if someone were to drop in and help us right about now.

Also, they can’t act for toffee. You can’t argue that it’s some sort of artistic choice, like you could with the bee people who communicated through a mixture of weird sing-song voices and interpretive dance.

The Aridians are not like that. They are just plain bad. I’m talking drama-club-at-the-village-hall bad.

Through this haze of weird line delivery and overwrought emoting, the Aridians explain that this was once a watery world where they lived in cities beneath the sea, but the suns moved closer (oh, there are two suns) and the seas dried up, killing everything except the Aridians and the dreaded Mire Beasts.

The Aridians realise that Ian and Vicki must have found their way into one of the old airlocks leading to the city, which is very bad news as they’re about to blow up the tunnels to trap the Mire Beasts.

The group rushes to try to find them, but they’re too late. As a Mire Beast attacks Vicki, the charges go off, sending rubble crashing onto the Mire Beast, killing it stone dead, and knocking Ian unconscious. Vicki runs to look for help, as meanwhile the others arrive to the gates of the city. Though the Doctor is hesitant to involve the Aridians in his troubles with the Daleks, the friendly fish people assure him that they just want to help.


Daleks are keen detectorists.

Elsewhere, the Daleks find where the TARDIS is buried and continue to narrate their own actions. With this much padding, I have to ask if Nation originally wrote a three-or-four-episode serial and was asked by the BBC to stretch it out to six. It’s completely sucking all the tension out of the story.

In the city of the Aridians, the Doctor and Barbara get their first hot meal in a while, though Barbara is too anxious about the others to eat, and the Doctor notes that the food has an odd taste. Now, ordinarily I would take this as a hint that they’ve been given something horrific to eat and that the Aridians have some dark secret behind the friendly facade, but it appears to be a red herring, as nothing comes of it.

Still, I have to wonder what exactly the Aridians are eating if there’s no land suitable for farming and all the animals have died, and they said themselves that they can’t kill the Mire-Beasts, so they can’t be hunting them. So that just leaves…. Well, I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

However, the Daleks learn that the Aridians are sheltering the Doctor, and issue an ultimatum: either they hand over the Doctor, or the Daleks will destroy the city. The Aridians have no choice but to hold the Doctor and Barbara as prisoners while they decide what to do.

Vicki manages to find her way back to the TARDIS, discovering that the Daleks have dug it out of the sand with the unwilling help of some Aridians, who they promptly murder once the work is finished. I’ve heard of bad bosses, but that takes the cake.

The Daleks start bombarding the TARDIS, but to their frustration the little wooden box is impervious to their weapons. Appearances, after all, can be deceiving.

The Aridians come to the decision that they have to hand the Doctor and Barbara over, even though I wouldn’t trust a Dalek as far as I could throw one.

Ian wakes up from his little nap (being unconscious for that long, that man needs his head checking out) and gets up to search for Vicki, who has just been snatched in the tunnels by an Aridian.

In the city, Barbara notices dust coming from a bricked-up doorway. It’s apparently blocking off a section of the city that was lost to the Mire Beasts. It’s rather shoddy work considering it’s meant to keep literal monsters at bay. The Aridians drag Vicki in, and she tells them what she saw. However, before they can discuss plans of escape any further, the Aridians come to collect them for the handover to the Daleks.

It’s at this point the Aridians’ shoddy brickwork comes back to bite them. A tentacle bursts through the wall, ensnaring Barbara. In the ensuing struggle, she manages to break free. The companions flee the scene, leaving the Aridians to their fate at the tentacles of the Mire Beast. See, this is why you check reviews before hiring your builder.


Hm, maybe it should have stayed in the shadows.

The Daleks issue the Aridians a further ultimatum upon learning of the companions’ escape. They have one hour to recapture them, or the Daleks will destroy the city. For a Dalek, that’s a surprising display of patience.

The Doctor, Barbara and Vicki run into Ian in the tunnels. Ian comes up with a plan to evade the Daleks and get back into the TARDIS. He asks for Barbara’s cardigan (nicely, this time) and the Doctor’s coat, and uses them to construct a simple pitfall trap.

While the women wait for their chance to make a break for it, the Doctor and Ian catch the attention of the Dalek on guard. The stupid thing blunders into the trap, and the companions make a break for it, their ship dematerialising as the Daleks open fire.

This is actually a decent and fun scene. I have to call attention to it, because those are so very rare in this serial.

Other than that, all I can really say about this episode is…nothing, really. Not particularly bad, not particularly good, mostly dull with a good bit or two. It garners a shrug and a ‘eh’. It exists.

FLIGHT THROUGH ETERNITY

The TARDIS flees through time and space, while the Daleks waste a lot of time talking about their plans to follow them at once rather than just doing it. It’s an absolute tension killer.

Inside the TARDIS, the companions’ celebration of their escape gets cut short when the Space Telly detects another time machine pursuing them again.

Also, there’s a really obvious cardboard cutout on the Dalek ship. Look, I don’t mind being creative to stay in budget, but if you’re going to use a cardboard cutout, stick it in the background of a shot.

The TARDIS needs to land for…some reason, and the Doctor plonks it in the land of stock footage. Gee, I wonder which city this is?

Oh, of course, it’s New Amsterdam.

Silly me.

To the people of the United States of America: I apologise for the travesty that is to follow. I’m talking about the accents. Oh, boy. The accents. They are absolutely atrocious.

Well, at least we’re now even for Mary Poppins.

There’s yet! More! Padding! As a tour guide shows a bunch of tourists the famous New York landmarks from the top of the Empire State Building, which is where the TARDIS has just materialised.


'Maybe if we ignore him long enough, he'll go away.'

Upon emerging from their ship, they meet a man from Alabama who embodies just about every stereotype about American southerners you can imagine. It’s honestly embarrassing. He’s a friendly enough chap though, telling Barbara that the current year is 1966. He's very curious about how they appeared seemingly from nowhere. The companions manage to brush him off and depart, but the Daleks arrive moments later, demanding to know where they went.

In the greatest display of patience I have ever seen, the Daleks don’t just shoot him for being annoying. He thinks this is all some Hollywood lark.


That's not a microphone, buddy.

Back in the TARDIS, the companions learn the Daleks are still hot on their heels. They need to find a way to fight back.

The next landing spot is a nineteenth-century sailing ship somewhere off the Azores, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Barbara can’t resist having a look around, leading her into trouble when an officer accosts her. Luckily for Barbara, Vicki soon comes to give the officer a good whack on the head. Hearing someone else coming, Barbara tells Vicki to hide. Vicki gives the newcomer a good whack, before realising it was just Ian. Poor Ian. It’s a wonder he has any functioning brain cells left.

The women manhandle a dazed Ian back onto the TARDIS, which vanishes as the officer wakes up. He informs the captain of what he found, and the captain rallies the crew to search the ship. However, it’s not long before the Daleks show up, terrifying the sailors so much that they leap overboard, which strikes me as a bit of a silly thing to do.

The Daleks search the now-abandoned ship, finding no sign of the TARDIS, and continue the chase. We then have a long, long series of shots of the abandoned ship. It's the Mary Celeste.

The TARDIS whizzes off into time and space, but they’re losing their lead on the Daleks. They’d better hope that the Doctor manages to finish his secret weapon before the Daleks catch up.

Final Thoughts

Here we are. That was the first half of The Chase. Suffice to say, I am underwhelmed. There’s no interesting philosophical or social angle. It’s not even an exciting prolonged chase sequence. There are far too many lulls in the action and too much obvious padding.

The Daleks feel completely ineffective. They spend too much time dithering to seem like an unstoppable force of death.

The Aridians were just rubbish. Although we haven’t seen any real conclusion of what happens to them, frankly I just don’t care.

Even as an adventure, a romp, this serial doesn’t work. Let’s compare it to The Keys Of Marinus, for example. Both serials involve the companions travelling in rapid succession from one place to another. However, The Chase is more of a whistle-stop tour than a real adventure. In The Keys Of Marinus, the companions had some sort of obstacle to overcome at each destination. After Aridia, they bounced from one location to the next. There’s no real reason for them to have got out of the TARDIS at all in New York or on the ship, other than to trot out a few new sets and some dodgy accents. Then they just get back in again and leave. That’s not an adventure, that’s tourism.

I do hope that the serial improves from here. However, past experience would indicate that a serial which starts poorly ends poorly. I wouldn’t hold my breath.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[May 16, 1965] Gathering Dust (Doctor Who: The Space Museum)

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By Jessica Holmes

Thank you for joining me today, everybody. I hope we’ve all got our visitor’s passes and will be keeping our hands to ourselves, because today we’re going to be taking a tour of The Space Museum, and the main exhibit? The Doctor and his companions! Today’s serial was written by Glyn Jones.

The spaceship graveyard, with museum centre frame.

THE SPACE MUSEUM

If I may direct your attention to the opening of the episode, we can see that it picks up where it left off, with the TARDIS going dark. We then cut to a barren landscape dotted by rockets, among which the TARDIS materialises.

The crew seems dazed upon landing, and once the Doctor gets the lights back on, Ian and Barbara realise that somehow, they’ve changed their whole outfits.

Ian and the Doctor examine the ground.I used to wear socks like that for primary school…

We have a scene of Vicki getting water for the Doctor, only to drop the glass, spilling the water, which then un-spills and comes back to her hand. It’s a simple enough effect, but rather nifty, and it seems things might be a whole lot weirder than a change of wardrobe.

Upon viewing the spaceships outside, the Doctor comes to suspect, as they’re all from different time periods, that they’ve landed in some sort of museum. I wonder if they have a little shop? I like a little shop.

The group search for signs of life, leaving no footprints behind them as they walk. The gang soon find a building and some more people. They rush to hide, but when Vicki sneezes, it’s as if they didn’t hear her at all.

Two men pass by in the foreground as Vicki sneezes in the background.

Perhaps unwisely, the group enters the building to look around without even buying a ticket.

The gang get a nasty shock upon discovering the first item of interest. It’s a Dalek. A dead Dalek. Vicki, never having met the fiends, thinks it looks quite friendly. I really do love Vicki’s soft spot for creatures others might deem monstrous. Well, they’d be absolutely right in the case of the Dalek, but still. It’s sweet.

They have another run-in with some men, whose lips move but make no sound. That almost sounds like the opening to a riddle.

Think things can’t get any stranger? Think again! Caving to the urge to touch the shiny space exhibits, Vicki tries poking at an item only to find that her arm goes straight through. None of the others can touch it either, and a third group of men come by, looking right through them without seeing them.

Sorry, guys, but there’s only one conclusion: the TARDIS blew up and you’re all ghosts. I can think of worse places to haunt than a museum, so it’s not all bad.

The companions watch as the Doctor stands in the space where the TARDIS seems to be.My gut instinct says Pepper's Ghost so just take my word for it, okay?

Onwards, they find something quite unexpected: the TARDIS, but not where they originally left it. Still, one shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth so they decide they might as well get in and go home for a nice cup of tea and some custard creams. Of course, it’s not that easy. The TARDIS isn’t really there. Or is it? Perhaps they’re the ones who aren’t really there.

Out of curiosity, I did a bit of research to find out how they achieved this visual effect. In conclusion: I’m not sure, and that irks me. My guess is either a double exposure or Pepper’s Ghost.

Or magic.

Something wicked this way comes, for in the room holding the TARDIS, the crew find themselves. Literally.

The four main characters as exhibits in a museum.

It seems the gang’s exploits have earned them a spot in the museum. These aren’t dummies though, oh no. These are the real people, preserved and shoved into a glass cabinet to gather dust for eternity.

The gang arrive at the conclusion that what they’re seeing is their future, or at least a possible version of it. There’s a bit of technobabble about dimensions in time and jumping time tracks that I can’t quite wrap my head around, but the bottom line is that the reason they can’t interact with anything in the museum is that they haven’t actually arrived yet, but are in another time dimension seeing the museum as it will be after they’ve arrived and done…something or other.

Don’t worry, it gives me a bit of a headache too.


It's hard to get an interesting image of people waiting for something interesting to happen.

The Doctor decides that they should wait around for themselves to actually arrive, at which point time should sort itself out and things will progress as normal.

But…but wouldn’t they still be moving forwards in time so that their true-present selves would never actually catch up with their slightly-out-of-sync-with-the-rest-of-spacetime selves?

Let’s upgrade that headache to a migraine, shall we?

It doesn’t take long before there’s some sort of reversal of time. Two men discover the TARDIS, and the glass cases disappear, and the footprints in the sand turn up.

I might need a diagram to get this straight.

So, the serial opens with an interesting and often creepy episode. The sterile atmosphere of the museum and the deep quiet of the space creates an uncanny feeling, and appropriately enough a sense that there is no time in this place at all. We’ve got some interesting visual effects on display too, and although I do find the explanation of the time-bending shenanigans to be quite confusing, I do find it an interesting idea. Can the companions discover what led them to be museum pieces in time to avert their fate, or are they going to have to find out the hard way?

The Morok governor and his lieutenant.
Nice hairdo.

THE DIMENSIONS OF TIME

I think it’s about time some other characters were introduced, don’t you? Say hello to the curators of this museum, the Moroks. They’re not doing anything very interesting right now apart from talking about some rebellion and finding the TARDIS.

Speaking of rebellion, say hello to the Xerons and their fascinating eyebrows. They’ve also learned of the arrival of a new ship, and hope to attain the assistance of the new arrivals.

Said arrivals are currently flouting the ‘do not touch’ rule and nicking one of the guns on display. Ian, grown man that he is, even makes the appropriate noises as he waves it around. Don’t worry Ian, I’m not judging you… much.

The Doctor tells Ian, a grown man, that guns are not toys.

The Doctor decides that to avoid the future they’ve seen, they should try and find the TARDIS as soon as possible. However, that’s easier said than done, because this museum doesn’t have any signposts. Not even one of those handy wall maps with a big red dot saying ‘you are here’.

As the group travel, the Xerons nab the Doctor in a moment of distraction, and the Doctor bravely drops down and pretends to be dead. It doesn’t take long for Ian and Barbara to realise the Doctor’s gone missing, and start bickering like a pair of stressed parents wondering the whereabouts of an errant child, and if that doesn’t sum up their entire dynamic I don’t know what does.

Two of the Xerons make the mistake of leaving one of their number alone with the Doctor for more than five minutes, returning to find their comrade bound and gagged on the floor, and the Doctor nowhere to be seen.

This precedes the single best scene in all of Doctor Who. I’m not exaggerating. I cannot do justice to the sheer joy this scene brought me.

We slowly pan across to see the Dalek on display come to life, and from within comes a familiar voice.

The Doctor does a delightful Dalek impression as he congratulates himself on his cleverness, even waving the weapons around for good measure, and popping out of the hatch with an expression of pure glee.

The Doctor pops out of his hiding place.

He’s a little too pleased with himself, however, as it takes him all of about ten seconds to run right into some Moroks on patrol and get himself captured.

The others, meanwhile, are still lost. While wondering what to do Ian has a bright idea and starts taking Barbara’s clothes off. As you do.

Don’t worry, the programme is still perfectly suitable for a family audience. Ian’s had the idea to use the wool in her cardigan to leave a trail behind them, like Theseus and the Minotaur, so that they don’t end up going round and round in circles. It’s not long before the Xerons start to follow the thread too, and the companions discover that the TARDIS has fallen into the hands of the Moroks.

Ian tries to unravel a cardigan with his teeth.Ian demonstrating how NOT to unpick a piece of knitwear.

The Doctor finds himself in the company of the governor of the Moroks, who explains to him this is a museum dedicated to the military conquests of the Morok Empire, though interest has waned of late. It seems the people of the homeworld are more interested in enjoying life than ending it in insatiable imperial expansion. The Doctor suggests that they try reducing the price of admission.

The Morok asks where the Doctor’s companions are, getting naught but a giggle from him. However, he then shows the Doctor an image of the companions elsewhere in the museum. How did he get it? From the Doctor’s mind.

The governor interrogates the Doctor

The interrogation isn’t as easy as all that however, as it seems the Doctor has excellent control over his mind, and when asked how he arrived, thinks of a penny farthing, and when asked where he’s from, imagines a colony of walruses, followed by a picture of himself in an old-fashioned bathing suit. It’s quite funny.

The fun and games can’t last, however, as the governor becomes angry when his men can’t find the companions, and orders that the Doctor be taken to the preparation room. He’s to become an exhibit.

THE SEARCH

The Moroks can’t get into the TARDIS, much to the lamentation of the leader of this little band.

Here’s one of the issues of the serial. The conflict within the Moroks themselves is… boring. It’s just dull as ditchwater, and the performances are not strong enough to carry it on entertainment value or get me invested in any of the characters. What are their names? I don’t know and I don’t care.

Three Moroks outside the TARDIS
Do you think they realise how ridiculous they look?

Even the wider conflict between the Moroks and the Xerons is not interesting to me. We’ve seen it plenty of times before in Doctor Who, and done better. I think what the writer’s trying to do is ambitious, but it feels very flat to me. Unfortunately, it gets more attention than the strange time travel shenanigans, so it’s really dragging down the serial, and it’s only going to get worse.

Watching this bickering going on, the companions let down their guard long enough for one of the Moroks to find them, and Ian confronts the armed guard with impressive courage and questionable judgement. He figures that the guard can’t shoot him, as he knows he ends up in a glass box. Even if he does, well hurrah for averting the future. Well, I suppose either outcome is a success of sorts.

Ian stares down the barrel of a gun, with Barbara and Vicki behind him.
Ian faces the guard, while behind him, Barbara prepares to use Vicki as a human shield.

Ian tackles the guard, giving the others a chance to make a run for it, and there’s rather a good and well-choreographed fight scene following his ensuing capture. Often fight scenes in Doctor Who are shot quite close up and are hard to make much out of, and those that are shot more clearly often look absurd, but this one is both clear and believable. At the end of it, he’s left two Moroks out cold, as the others left in pursuit of the women.

The women are separated in the chase, with Barbara ending up trapped in a storage room, and Vicki running into the rebel Xerons. Thankfully, the Xerons are friendly, and one of them goes to look for Barbara while the others lead Vicki to their hideout.

Ian hides behind the TARDIS, unseen by the guard.

So, how did Ian escape the Moroks after his victory in the tussle? Well, apparently by virtue of the Moroks being utter clattering buffoons, that’s how. You want to know where he went? His brilliant hiding spot? Behind the flipping TARDIS. Just behind it. And somehow, the guard stationed outside the ship fails to notice him.

Ian surprises the guard and takes him hostage, holding him at gunpoint as he demands information and guidance. This is another thing that bothers me.

Yes, we know Ian is the action hero of the group. Yes, Ian’s absolutely killed people. However, all his kills have been in the heat of the moment, when his own life was in danger, and it’s quite disturbing to see him carry on for the rest of the episode threatening to shoot this guard in cold blood. Wouldn’t Ian instead try to bring the guard around to his side before resorting to threats of violence? This is a cold, angry Ian and it doesn’t seem like him to be this way. Besides all that, it doesn’t seem a good message to be sending to the younger viewers. ‘Why try talking to people when threats of violence will work just fine?’

Ian brandishes his gun.

The governor of the Moroks receives word from his home planet that they’re displeased the youth rebellion hasn’t been crushed yet, and gives the order to flood the museum with a poisonous gas that will paralyse everyone inside, to flush out the intruders.

Putting it that way, it seems a little flawed.

One of the Xerons manages to find Barbara, but before they can find the others the gas cloud envelops them and they have to flee.

Meanwhile, the others are explaining to Vicki that this is their world, that the Moroks committed genocide on the native population, wiping out the adults and enslaving the children. Is that meant to get me invested, three quarters of the way into the serial? No need to actually show us the oppression the Xerons face, or give us much in the way of emotional stakes, just throw in a line about mass murder and voila, you have an invested audience, right? Wrong.

The Xerons eat dinner with Vicki.

To get invested in a conflict, I need to be shown a reason to care about it early on, rather than have a lump of exposition spat at me most of the way through. Beyond that, this narrative of ‘rebellion against the conquerors’ feels like a retreading of the conflict in The Web Planet, but it’s much less interesting.

So, how’s the dullest rebellion in the galaxy going to overthrow their oppressors? Well, they haven’t actually worked that out. The youth have been making all sorts of grand plans, but the fact is they don’t have any weapons and no plan to get some. What they do have is knowledge of where to find the armoury, and a smart ally by the name of Vicki.

Vicki tampers with the machine while the Xerons watch.

Vicki examines the security equipment guarding the armoury. It’s a machine that asks questions, and can tell if the subject is lying. Of course, just telling the truth isn’t enough to get in, you have to be telling the truth about your credentials, permits, valid reason for accessing the armoury, and on and on the questions go. Understanding how the machine works, Vicki cracks it open to take a look inside, and tampers with the equipment, making it so that all that’s needed is the truth, not the credentials.

Well, that’s a bit of a rubbish security system if it can be tampered with that easily. Had none of the Xerons ever thought to try it?

However, with one small victory, elsewhere things go awry, as the gas overcomes Barbara and the other Xeron.

Ian manages to make his way to the governor’s office, and orders him to take him to the Doctor… but he doesn’t like what he finds.

The Doctor, unconscious.

THE FINAL PHASE

To his dismay, Ian finds the Doctor unconscious in the preparation room. The Moroks have put him into a deep freeze, and according to the governor he’s as good as dead. Ian demands that they reverse the procedure, or else.

Having successfully broken into the armoury, the rebels arm themselves, while Vicki goes back to the museum to rescue the others, taking one of the young men with her.

Inside the museum, Barbara and her companion start to recover from the gas. Well, that was a bit pointless, wasn’t it? Surely it’d be better if the effects took a long time to wear off, so the guards could remove the gas then search the museum without their targets being able to move around.

The Doctor ends up at gunpoint.

The Doctor’s temperature returns to normal, and he wonders if this has been enough to change the future. However, the Moroks, having noticed that the guard outside the TARDIS has disappeared, swoop in on them, knocking Ian out and taking the pair captive once more. Well, that was a bit of a narrative cul-de-sac.

Barbara and her companion continue making their way out of the museum, but a guard hears them coming, and lies in wait to capture them.

The Moroks regroup, and it seems that their victory is close at hand. However, when they try to get a message through to their barracks, they don’t get a reply.

Barbara and her companion up against the wall at gunpoint.

Barbara and her companion emerge from the museum, only to run into the waiting guard. But before their escape can be foiled, Vicki and her friend show up and shoot the guard down. The victory doesn’t last long, as more Moroks arrive and shoot the youth rebels, taking the women captive. Again.

Well, with all the gang captured, at least everybody’s together now. It seems there is nothing they can do to avoid becoming exhibits, but maybe they managed to change more than they thought. The youth storm the museum, having managed to overrun the barracks which happened off-screen probably so that people like me won’t ask questions about how a bunch of teenage boys who have never held a gun managed to overrun a barracks of well-equipped soldiers of an interplanetary empire.

The Moroks are about to cut their losses and make a run for it, but the rebels arrive before the Moroks can dispatch the companions. They wipe them out, and with that, the revolution is won. That is about as interesting as I can make it sound without just making things up.

The Xerons make their attack.

The gang avoid becoming museum pieces, and the future has been averted. The Doctor at last reveals why the weird time shenanigans were going on. Prepare to sigh deeply with me.

It’s a faulty TARDIS component.

Seriously? Nothing to do with the actual plot? That is boring and just plain lazy. With it being so disconnected, the time travel is little more than a gimmick thrown in to make a below-average rebellion story feel more impressive and complex than it actually is. I strongly feel that the element of time travel could have been integrated into the story far better than it actually was, rather than being dropped after the first episode. I could think of a few ways I myself would go about doing it, but perhaps I would be asking for a different story than the one the writer set out to tell.

The Doctor shows Ian and Barbara the faulty component.

The Xerons dismantle the museum, but not before the Doctor liberates a souvenir, in the form of a time and space visualiser. I suppose it’s like a television you can watch next week’s Coronation Street on.

Everyone says their farewells and the TARDIS leaves for parts unknown. However, somewhere else in space, a familiar foe glides into view…

A real Dalek

Final Thoughts

This is unusual for me, as a person incapable of shutting up, but I can’t think of anything else to say about this serial. There’s not really anything much to dig into. Sure, the serial poses the question of whether destiny can be altered, but then answers it with a resounding ‘yes’, so there’s nothing I can add to that. It was all right, I suppose. I'll probably have forgotten about it by this time next week.

I really am wracking my brains trying to think of something interesting to say, but there’s nothing to elaborate on that I didn’t discuss above. So, I suppose that’s my takeaway: so adequate-but-no-better that even I can’t wring a good long ramble out if it.

Well, let’s hope there’s a bit more to get our teeth into next time, okay?

Please exit through the gift shop.

3 out of 5 stars




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[April 26, 1965] A Stranger in a Strange Land (The Stranger, Australian TV SF)

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by Kaye Dee

I wasn’t contributing to the Journey last year, when Australia’s first home-grown science fiction television show, the children's series The Stranger, premiered in April 1964. So before the second series screens later this year, I thought I would take the opportunity to talk about this milestone in Australian television.


The screen title for The Stranger, with its unique, otherworldly script

Introducing G.K. Saunders

The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) is the first local producer to show an interest in making science fiction for television, adapting The Stranger from a radio serial by prolific radio and television script writer Mr. G. K. "Ken" Saunders. A British-born New Zealander who moved to Australia in 1939, Mr. Saunders began writing scripts for ABC radio children’s programmes as well as radio dramas for one of the commercial networks.

During the War, Mr. Saunders also worked for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). His exposure to scientific research seems to have sparked an interest in science fiction, because when he returned to writing scripts for ABC radio children’s programming, he produced about a dozen serials with science fiction themes. Mr. Saunders has said that he bases his science fiction on real science, and he consulted scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO, the successor to the CSIR) to ensure this. But his stories also have a bit of a twist to them, and both these traits can be seen in The Stranger.


Recording an episode of the Argonauts Club, a popular children's radio programme that has been on air since 1941. Ken Saunders is best known as one of its main script writers since it began

Some of the science fiction serials Mr. Saunders wrote still stick in my mind. His first, The Moon Flower, was broadcast in 1953. It tells the story of the first expedition to the Moon, which discovers a tiny flower in a deep cave. This might seem a bit silly today, with what we now know about the Moon from Ranger 9 and other lunar probes, but back then some scientists still thought there might be simple life on the Moon. There was another one I really liked, in which the first expedition to Alpha Centauri discovers a planet inhabited by a human-like species who are pretty much like us – except they never invented music! I found this a fascinating idea.

The Genesis of The Stranger

Ken Saunders moved to England in 1957, working as a television and radio script writer for the BBC. This is where the story of The Stranger really begins: it was originally written as a six-part radio play for the BBC, which was broadcast in 1963, so perhaps some British readers of this article might even have heard it. From what my friend at the ABC has told me, it seems that the first series of the Australian television version is very similar to the original radio play storyline, with the six 30 minute television episodes drawn from the six parts of the radio serial.


Playing possum. A publicity still showing a scene from the opening teaser, where the stranger pretends to be unconscious at the door of Headmaster Walsh's house

Episode 1

Broadcast on 5 April 1964, the first episode of The Stranger begins with a short teaser: on a classic dark and stormy night, a figure makes its way along a dark street to the gate of a house. A signboard on the fence tells us this is the home of the Headmaster of St Michael’s School for Boys. This stranger walks to the door and lies down, carefully arranging himself to look like he has collapsed. He then taps weakly on the door and closes his eyes pretending he is unconscious. This is followed by the opening credits that are used for the rest of the series: the CSIRO’s Parkes Radio Telescope scans the skies in a timelapse sequence that then dissolves into a cosmic view of stars and nebulae against which the title The Stranger appears, written in an unusual, fantastical script. The author’s credit and episode number then appear over a slow pan of what seems to be a desolate, crater-pocked landscape. These images and the eerie, slightly foreboding theme music, set the scene for the mystery that follows and unfolds over the six episodes.

Headmaster Walsh and his family help the apparently sick stranger on their doorstep, who claims to have lost his memory but speaks with a European accent. When they discover that he speaks French and German there is speculation that perhaps he is Swiss. The rapidly recovering stranger declares that because he cannot recall his own name, he will give himself another: Adam, since he is a ‘new man’, and Suisse, since he is possibly Swiss.


What's in a name? The amnesiac stranger, who has christened himself Adam Suisse, with his hidden radio that sparks the suspicions of our three teenage heroes

Events then move quickly: Adam becomes a language teacher at St. Michael’s and takes up residence in a disused building on the school grounds. There, at the end of Episode 1, the teenage Walsh children, Bernie and Jean, and their friend Peter, accidentally discover a strange radio-like device, hidden under a loose floorboard. Turning it on, they hear speech in a foreign language.

Episode 2

The teenagers suspect that Adam is a spy. Although he attempts to allay their suspicions, Peter is not convinced, and they follow Adam on one of his weekend bushwalks in the Blue Mountains. Adam has spoken passionately about his love for walking in the bushland and being close to nature but disparages reports about flying saucers seen in the area where he likes to hike. Bernie, Jean and Peter try to track Adam through the bush and at the end of the episode come face to face with a hidden flying saucer!


Not what you expect to find on a bushwalk! The "flying saucer" piloted by Adam's friend Varossa, hidden away in the Blue Mountains

Episode 3

Adam takes the three teenagers onboard the flying saucer, revealing that he represents about 300 survivors living inside a colony ship created from a small planetary moon. Known as Soshuniss, the moon-ship has been travelling for generations since the planet from which its people originally came was poisoned and made unlivable by some kind of “accident”. The Soshunites seek a new home and have been reconnoitring the Earth. They would like to live here, but have no intention of invading, as they are a peaceful people. Back on Earth, the teenagers’ disappearance is treated by the police as an elaborate hoax, abetted by the missing Adam. When Adam and the teenagers arrive on Soshuniss, they are taken to an audience with the Soshun, the leader of the Soshunites.


Fly me to the moon! Adam reveals the truth about himself to Jean, Peter and Bernie, on board the spaceship travelling to the moon-ship Soshuniss

Episode 4

The surprised teenagers discover that the Soshun is a pleasant elderly woman. She asks them to deliver a letter to the Australian Prime Minister requesting permission for the Soshunites to settle in part of Australia. In return the Soshunites will share their scientific knowledge with the world. On returning to Earth with Adam and his friend Varossa, the young people’s story is disbelieved by their parents and the police. The Soshunites are arrested as kidnappers and spies, while visiting American scientist Prof. Mayer persuades the teenagers to prove their story by taking him secretly to the hidden spaceship they returned on. Although he is convinced of the truth of the story when he sees the spaceship, the police have been following them and Bernie attempts to take off with the others in the flying saucer to return it to the Soshunites.


Take me to your leader! Peter, Bernie, Prof. Mayer and Jean meet the Soshun, who can be seen in the background of this shot

Episode 5

Bernie is unable to properly control the spacecraft and the friends are rescued by another ship and taken to Soshuniss. The police who saw the flying saucer lift off contact the authorities and the spacecraft is tracked by radar and then the Parkes Radio Telescope to the moon-ship 50,000 miles into space. There is now no question that the aliens are real and the case becomes a Security matter. Although the Soshun sends Bernie, Jean and Peter back to Earth, Prof. Mayer stays on Soshuniss to learn more about it. Meanwhile, at the end of the episode, Adam and Varossa have escaped from prison and await rescue from Soshuniss.

Episode 6

In the final episode, matters come to a head. Bernie, Jean and Peter are pressured by the authorities to reveal where the Soshunites are hiding, as they are now considered alien spies. However, the Soshun has returned Prof. Mayer to the United Nations in New York, repeating her request to be allowed to settle in Australia in exchange for Soshunian scientific knowledge. He convinces a UN Special Committee and just as Adam and Varossa are about to be re-arrested by the police, word comes through that the UN has accepted the Soshunites' offer and they will be allowed to settle on Earth. The episode concludes on what is both a happy ending and a cliffhanger suggesting there is still more of the story to come….


TV Times preview article from April 1964 promoting the premiere of The Stranger

Australia's Answer to Doctor Who?

Although The Stranger is classed as a children’s programme, it has much to hold the attention of an adult viewer, just like Doctor Who, to which it is now being compared. However, producer Storry Walton dislikes the comparison and believes that the Australian show is more creative and has better production values, with more sequences filmed on location. Locations for the series included St Paul's University College in Sydney (in the role of St Michael’s school), the Blue Mountains, exteriors at the ABC headquarters campus (masquerading as various locations, including Idlewild Airport!) and Canberra.


On the set during the production of The Stranger while filming a scene on Soshuniss. Adam tells the trio from Earth that the Soshunites originally wore their hair long, but have cut it to fit in more comfortably on Earth.

Both Mr. Saunders and the Production Designer, Mr. Geoffrey Wedlock paid particular attention to portraying the Soshunians as a plausible, but alien, extraterrestrial society. Mr. Saunders created a language for the inhabitants of Soshuniss to speak among themselves, and it is believably and naturalistically spoken by the actors. When they speak English, all the Soshunians have a European-sounding accent, signifying that they are not speaking their native language. One of Saunders’ characteristic twists is that the Soshun is a woman, rather than a man as might be expected, and that her title is also the word for “mother”: Soshuniss therefore means “the motherland”. The CSIRO was also engaged to advise on the design of the Soshunian “flying saucer”, to make it as plausible a spacecraft as possible.

Underneath its well-crafted juvenile surface story, The Stranger also touches on some important issues including the treatment of refugees and European migrants to Australia and the concerns that many people are starting to have about industrial pollution damaging the environment. Although the “accident” that poisoned the Soshunian’s home planet is not specified, there are hints that its environment may have been destroyed by some kind terrible industrial accident that released toxic chemicals.


Veteran actor Ron Haddrick, well known to Australian viewers, gives adult nuance to his performance as Adam Suisse, the titular Stranger

The cast of The Stranger, while mostly actors well known in Australia, would not be familiar to those of you overseas, but I must mention the distinguished theatrical performer Ron Haddrick, who played the part of Adam Suisse without the least condescension to the younger viewers at whom the show is aimed, much like William Hartnell approaches his role on Doctor Who.

Coming Soon

The second series of The Stranger is due to start in July this year and hints of the new storyline are beginning to emerge. Storry Walton mentioned in a recent interview that the second series would complicate the political situation surrounding the Soshunians request to live in Australia, with a suggestion that doubts would begin to grow about the good intentions of the aliens. I’m quite looking forward to this new series and perhaps those of you in Britain and the US may get to see it too, as the BBC has already bought the first series for screening next year and there are rumours that it may be bought by a US network as well.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[April 18, 1965] The Doctor, the King and the Sultan (Doctor Who: The Crusade)

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By Jessica Holmes

Welcome to another serial of Doctor Who. This month, we’ll be taking a trip through history, to the height of the Third Crusade, when Richard I ‘the Lionheart’ of England marched on Jerusalem, bringing him toe-to-toe with An-Nasir Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub (better known as simply ‘Saladin’). It’s the height of the Middle Ages, where the knights are holy, the princesses are beautiful, and the kings are noble and just. But are they really? Come along with me as I trail after the Doctor and his companions, and we’ll sort the fact from the fiction, and perhaps squeeze an adventure in along the way.

THE LION

The TARDIS arrives in the forest, a peaceful place one might think. However, some knights come walking by, and they’re being watched by a pair of fellows who would appear to be Saracens.

Well, they would if they weren’t being portrayed by White actors in makeup. Not even thirty seconds into the serial, and I have to put the brakes on to call attention to a serious issue. I have touched upon this issue before, when covering Marco Polo with its extensive use of yellowface makeup. It would seem that Doctor Who has not learned from its past error. I am disappointed, but I am not surprised. After all, it’s not as if the BBC is stranger to deeply racially insensitive programming. Just look at The Black And White Minstrel Show. Or, better yet, don’t.

How am I to have any faith that the story will do justice to this complex and layered period of history, and the people involved, if it is not built on an authentic foundation?

With a sour taste in my mouth, I’ll press on.

The knights are in the party of King Richard I (played by Julian Glover), who is encamped in the forests outside the city of Jaffa, much to the consternation of his men. After all, it’s the perfect spot for an ambush.

Enter the Doctor and crew, who barely take two steps outside the TARDIS before getting into a fight with a Saracen. Working together, the Doctor and Ian manage to subdue their attacker, but realise too late that Barbara has been abducted.

Things are even worse for Richard and his knights. This is indeed the perfect spot for an ambush. As the Crusaders drop like flies, King Richard takes a wound, and one of his knights bravely steps up and declares himself to be the king, allowing himself to be captured in Richard’s stead.

Having survived the battle, the companions gather together, and piece together approximately when and where they are. Upon realising King Richard is close by, the Doctor is eager to get into his favour. Fortunately, one of his knights survived the battle, albeit wounded. Surely Richard will be pleased to see him.

Barbara arrives at the Saracen camp in Ramla, where she meets the knight we saw pretend to be the King, name of Sir William des Preaux, who confides in her the ruse he’s pulling on the Saracens, and they decide to pass her off as his sister, Joanna.

The man who captured her, the scarred El-Akir (portrayed by Walter Randall, who you may recognise as Tonila in The Aztecs) comes and asks if they’re satisfied with their treatment, as Saladin has ordered that captives be treated well. That’s nice of him. It’s also true, as he was known for his mercy to enemy soldiers and civilians.

However, William attempts to tell El-Akir that Babara has not been treated well enough, but El-Akir cruelly rebuts him, reminding the pair that Barbara has no rights but those which Saladin grants. Well, why did you bother asking if you’re going to reject anything other than a glowing review?

I can’t help but notice that all the speaking Saracen roles so far are filled by White actors in makeup, but the background extras are not.

There’s a subplot about the Doctor doing a bit of shoplifting to get clothes so they can blend in, but it’s not essential to the story, so I will leave it at this: he shoplifts, later gets caught out, and manages to talk his way out of the consequences because the goods were stolen anyway.

El-Akir tells Saladin (portrayed by Bernard Kay, who also played Tyler in The Dalek Invasion Of Earth) that he’s successfully captured King Richard himself, along with his beautiful sister. However, Saladin's brother, Saphadin, instantly spots the deceit, realising that Barbara, lovely as she is, is not the Lionheart’s sister.

As things begin to kick off, Saladin pipes up that Sir William isn’t King Richard, either. I suppose Sir William didn’t consider that perhaps a clever man like Saladin might take the time to find out what his enemy looks like.

He orders that Sir William still be treated well, and the others leave, leaving Barbara alone with Saladin and his brother while they decide what to do with her. He asks how she came to be here, and Barbara explains as best as she can, being remarkably frank about her travels through time and space.

Saladin assumes that she means she’s with a group of players, entertainers– in other words, not useful. However, he’s not one to casually kill someone if there’s a chance he could make use of them. He invites her to dinner, where she’ll step into the shoes of Scheherazade. If she can entertain him, she gets to live.

Back in Jaffa, the rest of the gang bring the wounded knight to King Richard and report their doings.

Richard isn’t having a good time of it. Half his men are dead, and the other half are filling the streets of Jaffa with their vices. Oh, and to cap it all off, his brother back home, Prince John, has developed a taste for power. It’s all very dramatic and Shakespearean, and as adept at monologuing as Richard is, Ian doesn’t have the patience for it, and keeps asking him for help recovering Barbara.

However, stung from the loss of his men, Richard refuses to try trading with Saladin. Can the companions convince the King to see reason, or will Barbara and Sir William be left to the mercy of the Sultan?

Well, aside from the issues I brought up, this is a good start to the serial. We’ve got some excitement, some intrigue, and questionable casting choices aside, Saladin does seem so far to be given his due as a merciful opponent with a strategic mind. I also love Ian standing up to the King and breaking through his little tantrum. On we go!

THE KNIGHT OF JAFFA

My television reception was a bit spotty whilst watching this, so I apologise if I've missed anything significant.

The knight the gang rescued intercedes on their behalf, pointing that they have a great opportunity to make Saladin look foolish, thus boosting morale.

King Richard agrees, as the real Joanna arrives. Here commences a subplot which doesn’t really go anywhere, in which the Doctor passes Vicki off as his young male ward, Victor.

Richard laments that he misses England, which is funny considering that he spent the majority of his adult life everywhere but England, and quite likely didn’t speak English. To be fair to him, the weather is terrible.

Elsewhere, El-Akir attempts to coerce a woman to give him information on Barbara. When he fails, he enlists a Genoese merchant, Luigi, to aid him in abducting her.

Barbara talks to her maid, Sheyrah, as she prepares to perform for Saladin. Sheyrah is the woman El-Akir was threatening before, and she warns Barbara of the danger he poses.

As Barbara thinks about what stories she can tell to entertain Saladin, the merchant arrives, offering her an escape. She takes the bait and leaves with him, but in their haste Luigi accidentally leaves his glove behind for Sheyrah to find.

Elsewhere, Richard’s changed his mind about dealing with Saladin. In fact, he goes as far in the opposite direction as he can, offering up Joanna as a bride to Saphadin in exchange for peace.

It's a dramatic change of heart, to say the least.

Richard charges Ian to be his delivery boy, but because he can't just send some no-name peasant to deliver a royal message, he bids Ian kneel and dubs him the Knight of Jaffa on the spot.

I hope he doesn't start putting on airs and graces.

Luigi gets a meeting with Saladin, having done El-Akir’s bidding. However, the meeting doesn't last long, as Saladin has learned that his Scheherezade has vanished into the ether, and calls Sir William and Sheyrah in to find out what happened to her.

The gig's up for Luigi when Sheyrah shows Saladin the glove she found, and he recognises the matching glove hanging from Luigi's belt. Under duress, Luigi admits that he delivered Barbara to El-Akir.

In Jaffa, Ian makes his departure, and far away in the town of Lydda, Barbara arrives at El-Akir's palace. Before she can be ushered into the lion's den, she makes a break for it, leaving the guards in the dust.

Ian arrives at Ramla to learn the bad news from Sir William. Luigi has spun a tale of Barbara having eloped with El-Akir, which the Sultan and his brother accepted, although Sir William can see straight through it.

Ian decides he must go into his territory and rescue Barbara, despite El-Akir's wicked reputation.

Barbara flees through the streets of Lydda. It's a nice little set, with plenty of detail, evoking the atmosphere of a narrow street in the Middle East, quiet for now, but surely bustling and full of life in the daylight hours.

However, she can't avoid the guards forever.

Before they can grab her, however, a hand emerges from the dark and grabs Barbara's mouth, dragging her into the darkness. Is she saved, or is she doomed?

THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE

The stranger beckons Barbara to come with him, and hides her, before subduing the guards. He introduces himself as Haroun, and they have a common enemy in El-Akir, for the Emir stole one of Haroun’s daughters for his harem, and put Haroun’s wife and son to the sword.

Back at Jaffa, Joanna learns of the Vicki/Victor ruse, and puts an end to it, taking the young woman under her wing. In return, she ropes the Doctor into finding out what plans the king has for her.

However, Vicki isn’t too happy about having to go off with this stranger. The Doctor reassures her that it’s only for her safety, to keep her out of the way of any court intrigue. It’s a sweet moment, but I do wonder how old Vicki is supposed to be. Even if she’s meant to be around Susan’s age, the dynamic is still a bit weird, as the Doctor seems to treat her as if she’s a little girl. Is he overcompensating?

Haroun takes Barbara to his home, where she meets his remaining daughter, Safiya. He goes back out to scout around, giving Barbara a knife as he departs. It’s not for self-defence; if the soldiers come to capture them, she’s to kill Safiya and then herself. Better that than end up at the mercy of El-Akir.

Goodness.

Well, that turned rather dark, didn’t it?

Back with Richard, he’s holding a meeting, and tells everyone (well, the important men anyway) of his intentions to marry Joanna off to Saphadin and end the war. The Doctor asks if he’s run this by Joanna, but silly Doctor, women don’t get to decide who they marry! Besides, she’ll be saving thousands of men’s lives with her sacrifice, so who cares if she likes the bloke or not?

The lord of Leicester isn’t too happy with the plan either, though the non-consensual marriage part doesn’t bother him. No, the problem with the plan is that it’s just not violent enough. He insists that they must take Jerusalem by the sword.

Leicester says it’s all well and good for the Doctor with all his clever words, but when all the eloquent men have gone to bed it’s up to the soldiers to actually put their money where their mouths are. And he has a point there, I’d say, but the Doctor calls him a fool, prompting Leicester to draw steel, though Richard intervenes before things can get out of hand.

Saladin receives the offer, seeming faintly amused by it. Saphadin is quite enthusiastic about the whole idea. A beautiful princess and an alliance giving him power over the kingdom of the Franks? Ring the wedding bells! And with him being staunchly loyal to his brother’s interests, any influence he gained would be Saladin’s, also.

Saladin agrees to let it go ahead, but he’s suspicious of the offer, knowing it’s a last appeal from a weary man. Seeing how delicate the situation has become, he decides to both agree to the match and prepare his armies, should the worst come to pass.

In Haroun’s house, Barbara and Safiya hear the soldiers coming, and hide themselves away. When the soldiers decide to raze the house and smoke them out, Barbara’s faced with the choice: does she use the knife? Well, this is a family show, so Barbara gives the knife to Safiya and attempts to sneak out of the house alone. The soldiers catch her, but at least Safiya is safe.

Outside the city, Ian runs into some bandits, who knock him out cold.

In Jaffa, the Doctor finds himself in the middle of some court intrigue. He can’t risk angering Richard by breaching his confidence, but he also can’t make an enemy of the princess by keeping secrets from her. However, Joanna knows he’s keeping something from her, and after prying the truth from Leicester, she furiously confronts her brother.

Turns out women don’t much appreciate it when men try to marry them off against their will. It’s even worse seeing as Saphadin is, from her perspective, an infidel, and the religious animosity at the heart of this war burns strongly in Joanna. If her brother won’t accept her refusal, she’ll be more than happy to drag the Pope into the matter, and he surely won’t allow it.

In Lydda, El-Akir has Barbara dragged before him, and he has a dire threat for her. The only pleasure left for her is death, and that, he assures her, is very far away.

THE WARLORDS

My television set started misbehaving again, so I’m going to blame any oversights in the review on that.

Barbara remains in the Emir’s clutches for all of about ten seconds before escaping him through the ingenious means of knocking some coins out of his hands and then running out the door.

He really should fire his soldiers.

The men race after her and into the harem, where they’re told in no uncertain terms to get lost, as men (apart from the Emir) are forbidden to enter. El-Akir promises a ruby ring for anyone who sees Barbara and reports it to him.

Once he leaves, the women beckon Barbara to come out of her hiding place. Got to love a bit of female solidarity.

Out in the desert, Ian’s made the acquaintance of a nice chap called Ibrahim, by which I mean Ibrahim has him tied to the ground and dripping with honey. No, you didn’t read that last bit wrong. Ibrahim wants to know where Ian is hiding his money, so has smeared his wrists and chest with honey, and made a trail to the nearby ant nest. Once they get a taste of that honey, they just won’t stop. Well, it’s creative, I’ll give him that. It’s essentially scaphism, an ancient punishment which is very interesting but best not read about before lunch.

Back in Jaffa, Richard comes to terms with the fact that he will have to fight. For the Doctor’s part, he’s made an enemy of Leicester, and had better take his leave.

Before going, the Doctor asks if Richard thinks he really could hold Jerusalem if he managed to capture it. Richard’s not sure of it himself, but would be content to just see it. Of course, we know that Richard doesn’t win.

In the harem, Barbara meets Safiya’s sister, Maimuna, who is overjoyed to learn that her father and Safiya are alive.

In the desert, with the ants encroaching on him, Ian tells Ibrahim to look for the gold in his boot. Ibrahim, apparently not a smart man, unties Ian’s foot to get to the boot. Finding it empty, he unties the other. Guess what happens next.

This time, Ian succeeds in overpowering Ibrahim and has the bandit take him to Lydda.

In the harem, Barbara discusses a possible route of escape with Maimuna. However, once they leave, one of the other women, Fatima, slips out and goes straight to El-Akir.

Outside the palace, Haroun has recovered his faculties and lurks knife at the ready.

Ian and Ibrahim arrive in Lydda, and Ian steals some clothes from a dead guard. He was already dead when Ian found him, so that’s okay.

He’s found an unlikely ally in Ibrahim, who has as much reason as anyone else to hate El-Akir. The Emir’s a bad man, even by the bandit's standards, and worse still, he’s made everyone poor, so there’s nobody left for him to rob. Ian puts him to good use ‘acquiring’ some horses.

In the harem, the women realise Fatima has betrayed them as El-Akir bursts in, ready to slay Maimuna and Barbara where they stand. Then thwack! A knife hits him in the back, and he drops. Over his body steps Haroun, here to save his daughter.

Fatima arrives late to the party, horrified to find El-Akir dead. Behind her arrives Ian, because apparently the guards at this palace are there for decoration.

All’s well that ends well, and Ian, Haroun, Barbara and Maimuna depart, leaving Fatima to face the justice of the women she betrayed.

Outside Jaffa, the Doctor and Vicki realise that Leicester’s knights are lying in wait for them, thinking them traitors. The Doctor helps Vicki sneak back to the TARDIS, where she meets Barbara, but the Doctor falls into the knights' clutches.

Before the serial can come to a grisly end, Sir Ian, Knight of Jaffa rides up, confirming that the Doctor is indeed a Saracen spy. The Doctor plays along, and Ian escorts him for one last look at Jaffa… and then safely into the TARDIS, where the other knights can’t see them smirk.

When the ship vanishes before their very eyes, they mourn for Ian, spirited away by fiends, and swear never to speak of this matter again.

Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor and Barbara have a little banter about his piloting skills, and it seems all is well… for about ten seconds, before the shining control room plunges into darkness.

What happens then? Well, we’ll have to wait and see…

Final Thoughts

This is rather a dark serial for Doctor Who, quite serious in tone and subject matter, with the sword of Damocles perpetually hanging over the head of every character.

I very much enjoyed Glover’s King Richard, even if he did wax a little Shakesperean from time to time. However, I’m not sure how true to the character of the actual King Richard this portrayal is. The Richard of The Crusade is a war-weary man, missing England and wishing for an end to all the fighting and a chance to hang up his sword.

The real Richard, on the other hand, although revered in his time as a great knight and viewed by his subjects as a heroic and pious king, was also known for his cruelty both before his reign and during it. The passing centuries have been kind to Richard, transforming him into the quintessential knight in shining armour, a true king on a holy mission, juxtaposed with his brother, the wicked Prince John, beloved by nobody and vilified by all.

Saladin, for his part, seems to be treated quite fairly. He is noted for his mercy and intelligence, which are on display here, though his merciful acts do seem to be framed as more tactical than altruistic. Of course, there is the issue of his physical portrayal, as I mentioned at some length above. It is a recurring issue with historical episodes, as there have been a number of occasions where there was a lack of an attempt at authentic casting. For example, we have this serial, as well as The Aztecs, and perhaps most egregiously in Marco Polo. I feel it would genuinely strengthen the episodes and their credibility if there was more of a push towards authenticity in casting, and not just in set and costume design.

On a side note, it just clicked with me that the Doctor didn’t meet Saladin face to face. That’s a pity, as I think they’d be very interesting together. I think they’d get along… mostly.

Joanna, recorded as simply Joan in the historical record, was indeed offered as a bargaining chip to Saladin’s brother, though it would seem that high-ranking priests vetoed the match without her involvement. Also, I am not certain that she was ever at Jaffa with Richard.

El-Akir seemed at first to be a little too villainous, being only one kicked kitten away from turning into a cartoon villain. As far as I can tell, he’s not real, and if he’s based in part on any real historical characters, I couldn’t tell you who. However, upon reflection, I think he’s one of the more menacing villains to appear on Doctor Who. As with the Daleks, it’s because he’s 'real'. Yes, it’s a contradiction. The character himself may not have really walked the Earth, but thousands upon thousands have followed in his footsteps all the same.

At risk of this review turning into a historical essay (of questionable accuracy), I think that I had better arrive at some sort of conclusion.

The Crusade is a tightly-written and exciting story, with excellent character work (if we set strict historical accuracy to one side) and a high production value. It raises some interesting points about the cost of war and what actions are acceptable in the name of peace. Were I educated in philosophy, I could have a field day examining it from every which way. It’s also a significant improvement from writer David Whitaker, who previously gave us The Edge Of Destruction (still my least favourite serial) and The Rescue (decent, but fairly forgettable to be honest).

At any rate, it inspired me to read up on the Third Crusade and take steps towards educating myself about this period. If it worked for me, it will have worked for goodness knows how many kids, some of whom are sure to fall down the rabbit-hole into a lifelong love of history. And in the end, isn’t that the important thing?

4 out of 5 stars

Don't miss the next episode of The Journey Show, this time featuring flautist Acacia Weber…and, of course, your Q&A about life in April 1965!




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 22, 1965] To Bee Or Not To Bee? (Doctor Who: The Web Planet [parts 4-6])

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By Jessica Holmes

No, it doesn’t deserve a better pun. Dear reader, I have suffered. I have been tormented, driven to the very edge, and my hearing may never recover from the onslaught of NOISE. This isn’t the worst serial I’ve had to review, but it might be the most irritating. Hang on a tick, and I’ll explain why.

THE CRATER OF NEEDLES

I went into this episode hoping for the second half of the serial to make up for the mildly-promising-but-fairly-lacklustre nature of the first. Not only was I disappointed, but I think these episodes have soured me on the first half, and I’m glad to see the back of both.

We pick up with Ian and Vrestin, who just took a tumble and landed in the path of a dry ice machine. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a gang of dodgy costumes come to accost them.

Elsewhere, the Crater of Needles is… a crater. With big needles. They’re a literal bunch, the Menoptra.

In the crater are a number of wingless Menoptra being pushed around by the Zarbi. This is where Barbara’s ended up. She and the Menoptra are being made to heap vegetation into the acid streams. There, it’s broken down and drawn up to feed the carcinome.

Her Menoptra companion whose name escapes me (though it really doesn’t matter) explains to Barbara everything that Vrestin explained to Ian last episode. They came to liberate the slaves, overthrow the Animus, and failed miserably.

Back at the carcinome, the Animus grows impatient with the Doctor. It threatens to kill Vicki unless he comes up with the intelligence he promised. He gives up just enough information to buy them some time, then sends Vicki to grab his cane from the ship.

Down with Ian, we begin the long, boring and ultimately pointless subplot in which he and Vrestin meet the Optera. They're a bunch of bug-people who descended from the Menoptra. Rather than go and live on a moon, they went underground and lost the ability to fly and speak in complete sentences. Somehow, they are even more ridiculous than the Menoptra.

They might look more reserved on the pictures, but you haven’t seen them move. Their leader enters the room like a clumsy kid in a sack-race, literally hopping up to them. And while the Menoptra augment their speech with interpretive dance, the Optera bounce.

Also, Vrestin keeps calling Ian ‘Heron’. No, I’ve no idea why. Maybe ‘Ian’ is hard to say in her dialect.

Anyway, Mr. Hoppy, whose actual name I wasn’t paying attention to because I was too busy laughing at him, is a grumpy little pillbug. He gives the standard ‘outside world dangerous, outsiders must die’ speech that I swear happens at least once per serial at this point.

Speaking of the outside world, the invasion’s turned up, but unfortunately the Zarbi caught wind of it ahead of time. Hm, I wonder what happened there?

The Menoptra realise this too, and start to wonder. Their plan relied upon the element of surprise. Now it might be all for nothing.

This would be easier to take seriously if one: they didn’t look like that, and two: their voices weren’t so funny.

Meanwhile, with the Doctor, he’s using his cane to get hold of a mind control collar without touching it, while Vicki scares away the nearby Zarbi with the spider specimen.

Seriously, what’s with the spider fear?

The Doctor says something technobabble-y about realigning the power of the gold control whatsit. It sounds like gibberish and almost certainly is. The point is he’s trying to make the collar safe.

What kind of spider is that? It only seems to have six legs. That's not a spider, it's a beetle with delusions of grandeur.

The Menoptra in the crater prepare to destroy the larvae gun used by the Zarbi, and it’s at this point I felt rather thick as up until now I hadn’t realised what on earth they were on about when they mentioned the larvae gun. It’s the woodlousey things. The larvae…are guns. Okay. Sure.

The Doctor hooks up the control collar (I refuse to call it a necklace) to the TARDIS’ astral map, in the hope that the power of the TARDIS will overpower the device. And lo, it works. We even get a little pyrotechnic effect.

However, it catches the attention of the Zarbi, and the Animus tells him that time’s up. He lies and says that his equipment is faulty, which comes undone moments later when the device picks up a signal from the invasion force, revealing he knew where they were and what their plans were all along.

For this betrayal, the Zarbi place the Doctor and Vicki under a pair of control collars, but bear in mind that we did just see the Doctor deactivate one of them.

Barbara and the other Menoptra escape the crater, but that blasted warble sounds off again as the Zarbi flock to battle stations, and the Menoptra become convinced that the Doctor betrayed them.

Down below, the Optera are hopping mad and fully intent on killing Ian and Vrestin. They’re only acting in self defence.

Vrestin tries to convince them that her people are coming to liberate them from the animus and their zarbi slaves. The Optera are their kin, after all. When old-fashioned words don’t do the trick, she flashes them her wings. They’re suitably impressed, as well they should be. The wings are the one good bit of costume work in the whole serial.

Barbara and the Menoptra continue onwards and I have to admit the Menoptra do look good in flight as the spearhead comes in to land. The wings flex in a rather lovely and realistic manner.

The wingless Menoptra warn the spearhead to get out of here, or they’ll be massacred, but it’s too late. They’re already committed.

Well, it's more of an elegant smear, but it really did look good in motion.

The rest of the spearhead shows up, and out scuttles a larvae gun, which dispenses with them so effortlessly I’m wondering if the Menoptra are trying to get themselves killed.

This whole battle scene gave me a headache. That Zarbi warble continues throughout, and if that wasn’t ear-bleeding enough, we have to also endure what passes for a battle cry from the Menoptra, which all combined makes the most irritating sound in the world.

And it looks…well. The battle’s beneath a bunch of people in fancy dress hanging from wires and some rough ant sculptures with human legs sticking out the bottom. And a massive woodlouse with tassels. And someone smeared petroleum jelly on the lens so thick you can't even see most of what's going on. How do you think it looks?

The Zarbi force the spearhead into a retreat, and Barbara and her cohorts flee, only to be cornered by the giant ants moments later. How will they get out of this one?

Well, going by what I’ve said so far, I think you can gather that I’m not enormously fond of this episode.

INVASION

So, surrounded by the Zarbi, backs to the wall, it appears that all hope is lost for Barbara and the Menoptra. However, they have a trick up their sleeve. It’s called running away. But then they somehow managed to get cornered a second time, and with nowhere left to go, Barbara backs up into the wall…and the wall opens up. No, the set isn’t falling to bits. They’ve found a secret tunnel.

Meanwhile, Vicki, wearing the deactivated collar, is able to remove the device controlling the Doctor, who takes a minute or so to fully come to from the disorienting effect of the collar. Once he’s fully lucid, he figures that if they’ve reversed the power of the collar, he’ll be able to control it with his ring. I genuinely don’t know how. If they ever explained it, I must have missed it.


One ring to rule them all…

With some semblance of a plan starting to come together, Vicki attracts the attention of a nearby Zarbi by throwing the Doctor’s collar on the floor at her feet. When the Zarbi comes to investigate, the Doctor (wearing the deactivated collar) slips his device over the insect’s neck, rendering it docile and free from the Animus’ control. With their new pet in tow, the pair start to make their escape.

It turns out that Barbara and company have discovered an ancient temple of the Menoptra. Here, they meet up with some more of their forces and report the massacre. They come to the realisation that they have to warn the invasion force before it’s too late.


Is Barbara using her hands as binoculars?

Barbara asks what the plan would have been had the spearhead not failed, and the Menoptra show her a living cell destructor which they’d have used on the heart of the Animus. Barbara figures they have no choice but to try and push ahead with the attack.

Deep underground, Ian and Vrestin have convinced the Optera to help them. Mr. Hoppy tells them that these tunnels breathe, and in the centre grows the root of evil. Vrestin gathers that this must be the Animus, and Ian asks Mr. Hoppy to take him there.

Yes, I’m sure he probably had a name, but I think Mr. Hoppy suits him better. I don’t mind the Menoptra’s use of dance-like movements with their speech, as that’s similar to how bees communicate in real life, but the hopping just looks ridiculous.


Walkies!

The Doctor and Vicki escape the carcinome and set about finding the Menoptra, their pet Zarbi in tow. Now free from the control of the Animus, it seems about as smart and aware of what’s going on as a cow, so Vicki immediately gets attached and names it Zombo. Bless her. Just keep Zombo well away from Barbara.

Speaking of Barbara, she’s drawing up plans for a mock attack to distract the Zarbi while the rest of the forces make the real attack on the Animus. Then the Doctor and Vicki turn up, along with Zombo.

Ian’s journey through the tunnels is briefly interrupted when one of the Optera breaks through a wall into one of the acid pools above, and having no other way to protect the others, blocks it off with her own head. Ian looks appropriately appalled, but the group carry on.


When they said to use your head, I don't think they meant it quite like that.

Up above, the Doctor approves of Barbara’s plan. He asks what’s actually at the centre of the web, but the Menoptra don’t know. The doctor wonders where it draws its power from, and the Menoptera explain that the centre of the web is at the magnetic pole of the planet, so I suppose it’s generating power from the planet’s magnetic field.

This also apparently explains how the new moons showed up because of the same power drawing them here which… unless I’ve completely misunderstood what they’re getting at, is complete and utter nonsense. Magnetism and gravity are two different things, and moons are not held in place through magnetic forces. But it’s the only explanation we’re getting for the moon weirdness and the TARDIS being drawn here, so we’ll have to just put up with it.

The Doctor thinks of one small alteration to make to the plan. The mock attack will go ahead, but he and Vicki will take the cell destroyer to the Zarbi headquarters.

The Menoptra are hesitant, but decide to trust him, pretty much based on Barbara’s say-so, despite their earlier gatherings that the Doctor told the Animus about the invasion.

Vicki’s not enthused about going back to the carcinome, but they need the TARDIS back.


Hartnell makes some of the most wonderful facial expressions.

The Menoptra ask to borrow Zombo for the attack, however to control the creature they’ll need to borrow the Doctor’s ring, which he is loath to part with. However, when Barbara pipes up that it’s a good idea to take Zombo to the mock attack, the Doctor ceases all protest and hands the ring over. Just in case you were wondering who’s really in charge around here!

The Doctor and Vicki head back to the carcinome, meanwhile down below, Ian and Vrestin are, you guessed it, still in the tunnels.

Barbara and her troops ready themselves for the mock attack, but all is not well. The Zarbi capture the Doctor and Vicki upon their return to the carcinome. Some sort of webbing gun sprays them, holding them in place, and no small amount of pain.

I think this is one of the better episodes of the serial, but that’s not saying much.

THE CENTRE

The most awkward hug in the world doesn’t last very long. Vicki breaks loose from the webbing, and the Hairdryer Of Doom descends on the Doctor. He tries to explain that they came back to the carcinome of their own free will. That's not good enough for the Animus. He’s exhausted his usefulness. All he’s good for now is his intelligence, so the Animus orders that he be brought to the centre of the web.


"Did I leave the kettle on? I think I'm forgetting something…"

However, as they’re escorted out, Vicki remembers that she hid the web destroyer in the astral map when they were captured. She didn’t get a chance to retrieve it. They’ve lost their only weapon.

Meanwhile, Barbara and the Menoptra are carrying out their fake attack, and the Menoptra are continuing to get on my nerves. Down below Ian is, surprise, surprise, still in the tunnels. They find an aquifer, and also a tunnel leading upwards, but most of the Optera are too chicken to try climbing it. However, Mr. Hoppy agrees to go with Ian and Vrestin, and the group carries on.

Back with Barbara, the gang take Zombo’s gold collar and try to slip it onto one of the larvae guns. It doesn’t go very well. On the bright side, it did kill the gun…but also one of the Menoptra.

The Doctor and Vicki arrive at the centre of the web, and the Animus flashes them. A bright light. It flashes them a bright light. Vicki, having forgotten the weapon, resorts to shouting at the Animus and telling it to go away. Well, it was worth a shot. Though I can think of some much better insults than calling it a parasite. However, the Animus does say something quite interesting in response.

“Parasite? A power absorbing territory, riches, energy, culture…”

Hm, any of that ringing a bell? It might as well have said ‘Hello, I am a metaphor for imperialism.’

Let’s take a closer look at that for a moment. Does the metaphor hold water? Let’s break it down. The Animus barged into this world, claimed it for its own, and began to plunder it. It drove away or subjugated the native population, severing the connection to their own culture. Finally, it imposed its own ideas on the remaining populace and exploited them for its own benefit.

Although with the Zarbi being a non-intelligent species, the metaphor could use a little work. If we’re casting the Zarbi in the role of an invaded people, and the Zarbi had no intelligence and no society before the Animus arrived, then it would seem that the episode is (probably) unintentionally reinforcing the classic imperialist justification that the oppressors are a ‘civilising’ force.

I am probably giving this deeper thought than it deserves. I accept I might be talking a load of twaddle. It’s just my reading.

Oh, and can everyone referring to the Animus as a spider please remind themselves what spiders look like. That does not look like a spider. It’s not making my skin crawl even a little bit. It reminds me more of a jellyfish.

Ian and the others continue to climb. Moving on.

Barbara continues her assault, and the Menoptra take control of another Zarbi.

Meanwhile, the Animus has Vicki and the Doctor ensnared. It wants to use their intelligence to spread all the way to our own solar system, to conquer humanity. Another element to reinforce the Animus as Empire metaphor: the insatiable desire for more.

Barbara finds the Doctor’s astral map, so the Menoptra try to contact the main force. However, they get no reply. Upon investigation, Barbara finds the web destroyer.  They realise they have to try and get it to the centre themselves.

Meanwhile, Ian is climbing. Good grief, his side-plot is boring.

The Menoptra continue to astound with how stupid they sound doing anything. The group rush the Zarbi guarding the centre, and manage to get through without any casualties. How convenient. Seriously, how did they ever lose to this lot?

In the centre, they’re attracted to the light of the Animus, like moths to a flame. Barbara aims the plot device at the dark side of the entity (for…reasons). It doesn't do anything. All seems lost.

Then guess who shows up out of a hole in the ground!


Well it's about time, Ian.

I was rolling my eyes and expecting Ian to go and just wrestle the Animus to death, but he just sort of stands around while Barbara tries again with the web destroyer. This time, it works. The Animus slowly deflates. And then it’s dead. Just like that.

Without the Animus disrupting the environment, fresh water begins to flow on the surface once more. Free of its influence, the Zarbi become docile creatures once more.

This all gets explained for the umpteenth time. This serial has a real issue with repeating information to all the different characters. It just serves to pad the runtime and is boring.

Even the larvae guns are friendly now. They’re almost cute. Barbara plays with one rather than instinctively shooting it in the face, so huzzah for character development.

The Optera come to the surface and can finally bask in the sunlight. They won’t fly, given their wings atrophied long ago, but their children might, according to the Menoptra.

I don’t see any wings. I’m not sure they’re even the same species any more. Still, if it makes them happy, fair enough. If nothing else, it’s pretty funny watching them hopping about and flapping their arms, and weirdly endearing.

The Doctor gets his ring back, and the group pile into the TARDIS, bound for their next adventure. Ian, for his part, is still not over losing his tie.

Watching the TARDIS vanish, the Menoptra promise to remember them. They vow the flower forest will one day regrow, the planet can be repopulated, and… is the serial over yet?

And we are done, we are free. Free as a Menoptra, but I’ll leave the dancing to them, thanks. Good grief that was tiresome by the end. Not as tiresome as the attack of the stuck return button. But still. I’m relieved to be free of it.

Final Thoughts

Oh, and another thing! I thought of another thing to moan about once I’d finished watching the episodes. What, ultimately, was the POINT of Ian’s Journey To The Centre Of The Plot? He doesn’t actually do anything once he arrives at the centre of the web. It just serves to reunite him with the others. So why did we need to keep cutting back? The Optera didn’t prove essential. You could cut them out of the serial and lose nothing of value.

I’m glad it was Barbara who saved the day given that it’s usually Ian who faces off against the monsters. At the same time, Ian’s lack of having anything to do in the final confrontation renders his journey pointless.

So, what is there to say that hasn’t already been said? It’s an ambitious serial, I’ll give it that much. And creative, I can’t fault it for creativity. However, the execution leaves quite a lot to be desired. The plot is quite meandering. There are a number of scenes that go on for longer than they need, or could have been cut altogether. To me, these are clear signs of too little plot stretched over too many episodes. I think I’ve made my thoughts on the costumes and sound design quite clear. Frankly, I just find all the insectoid aliens annoying.

I think if the production team were given the budget of a feature film then it could have turned out better. However, all the money in the world can’t hide a script that has to keep stalling for time. More money, fewer episodes, and a good sharp editing pen, and this serial could work. It would be well worth it.


Not at all informative — are we going to Africa? Will the next episode star a host of aliens in cat costumes?

2 out of 5 stars




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 2, 1965] Doctor Who And The B-Movie Rejects (Doctor Who: The Web Planet)

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By Jessica Holmes

Hello, everyone. Today we're going to have a look at The Web Planet, the latest serial on Doctor Who, written by Bill Strutton. Now I don’t want to alarm you all, but we’ve got an infestation, and I think we’re going to need a bigger bottle of ant powder…

THE WEB PLANET

The Web Planet opens on a desolate landscape with some good miniature work by the art department. It’s barren and somewhat lunar, with strange column-like rock formations dotting the landscape. Stretching across the rocks, however, are threads of  a great web. I wouldn’t like to see the spider that made that.

The arrival of the TARDIS breaks the silence for a moment. All is eerily quiet, both outside and inside, as the Doctor worries about what dragged them to the web planet, and why.

We might be about to get a clue.

Behold…the Zarbi.

Are we meant to pretend we can’t see the human legs? Are they meant to match the insect legs? I’d say they look like they came out of a B-Movie but those have higher standards.

But what’s worse than the visuals is the noise these things make. They never. Shut. Up. It's like they're trying to induce a migraine.

I must also apologise for the blurriness of the images in this article. I do my best to get the clearest frame, but somebody seems to have smeared the camera with petroleum jelly, possibly to hide the dodgy effects.

And another thing before I move on. Ants? On the WEB planet? Would a spider costume have been two legs too many, or do we have an arachnophobe in the art department? Not that I'm complaining too much. Spiders have far too many legs for my liking.

The ship lurches about as the din increases, and loses all power. The noise is painful for the whole crew (and me) but it hurts Vicki most, so Barbara takes her to the medbay while Ian and the Doctor decide to go exploring.

And here we have them modelling the TARDIS springwear collection.

In the medbay, the women talk a little about Vicki’s schooling, and she mentions learning medicine as a standard subject, rather a step up from the ‘three Rs’ of Reading, wRiting and 'Rithmetic.

Yes, it is ridiculous. We know.

Anyway, it seems the youth will whine about school until the end of time (gosh, I sound like an old lady), as Vicki laments having to spend a whole hour a week at school.

Poor thing.

Barbara also finally manages to tell Vicki that she and Ian went to Rome, when Vicki takes an interest in the golden bracelet Barbara got from Nero. I’m a little surprised she kept it. Then again, gold is gold.

This scene doesn’t move the plot along, but I still like it as a chance to give the characters breathing room. There’s a tendency in Doctor Who (or indeed any other adventure story) to get so wrapped up in the plot that the characters are little more than narrative chess pieces. A short break now and then does wonders for both the pacing and the character development. Being early in The Web Planet, a quiet scene like this isn’t slamming the brakes on the plot.

Outside, the Doctor makes an attempt to be scientific about examining his surroundings, but when he asks to borrow Ian’s pen, the writing implement has other ideas and flies off. Now, this would probably bother most people, but the Doctor assumes it to be a clever sleight of hand by Ian. When Ian protests that it wasn’t him, does the Doctor take a bit more of an interest? Does he, heck. Ian’s raised voice produces a marvellous echo off the rocks, and all thoughts of scraping up bits of mica are forgotten as the Doctor gleefully amuses himself with the sound of his own voice.


He looks like a child who's just been told he can have whatever he wants at the toy shop.

Back inside the TARDIS, some unknown force starts to pull on Barbara's arm. It lets up after a short while, and she returns to the infirmary, troubled. It’s eerily quiet. It feels like something is about to happen.

Outside, Ian spots a pyramid-like structure. It’s very old. The men approach it, but can’t see what’s at the top.

Ian spots a pool of something he assumes is water, but the Doctor stops him before he touches it, and asks for his tie. Upon dipping it in the liquid, it begins to smoke, and Ian complains that he’s ruined his Coal Hill School tie. Ian, get a little perspective.

As they turn to go, that awful noise starts again.

Barbara can even hear it in the TARDIS, and watches in horror as the console itself begins to spin about (I didn’t even realise it could move) and the doors swing open. Her arm lifts again, and as if in a trance, she walks out onto the surface.

Vicki wakes up to find herself completely alone.

Ian and the Doctor hear the echoes of her cries, but as they run to help Ian gets caught in some sort of web, so the Doctor carries on alone. Meanwhile, Barbara walks ever forwards towards a bubbling pool of acid.

In the TARDIS, the control room starts to lurch around once more, and the familiar wheezing sound of the engine starts up, while Vicki can do nothing to stop it.

By the time the Doctor gets back to where he parked the TARDIS, his ship is long gone.

Whatever’s going on on the web planet, they’re in deep trouble.


'Now, where did I park the car…'

This is a very quiet episode, in more than one sense. Not that much happens, but I don’t think I’d call it boring per se. Honestly, I quite like being able to keep up with my notes for once.

That said, for viewers with a shorter attention span, The Web Planet might be a little too quiet and slow paced.

The mystery of just what the heck is going on is interesting, though. I mean, the answer is going to be ‘a weird space alien thing that we humans don’t know about’ but The Web Planet brings a real sense of scratching the surface of the unknown, the truly alien. This is what science fiction is for, after all.

THE ZARBI

So, TARDIS gone, Ian tied up, Barbara wandering towards a pool of acid. It’s all going a bit pear-shaped around here. This is why you should always remember to leave your handbrake on.

However, just before Barbara reaches the acid pool, one of the Zarbi makes that annoying noise, and she changes direction. It seems that it’s guiding her away from it. That’s interesting.

The Doctor finds Ian free of the webbing but covered in blisters and in a good deal of pain. It seems that the web had some sort of irritant on it. As if Ian wasn’t having a bad enough day, the Doctor informs him of the TARDIS’ disappearance.

Barbara carries on in her trancelike walk, and then an unexpected stranger pops up.


Boo.

I’m sorry, but that’s the funniest costume I’ve ever seen. That is absolutely ridiculous and I love it. It’s so bad it’s brilliant. It’s some sort of insectoid entity, more human-like in appearance than the Zarbi.

Meanwhile, Ian is having an existential crisis and the Doctor might be having a heart attack. So everything’s going well there. The thin atmosphere is starting to have an effect. It’s not deadly, but it’s very uncomfortable.

The Doctor spots some ridges in the sand, and realises that the TARDIS has been dragged away. He looks up and spots some unintentional comedy in the distance as the box scoots across the landscape. I don’t know why it’s funny, it just is.

Elsewhere, the bug man is guiding Barbara along, to join more bug men. I’ll give the costuming department credit, their wings are rather good. They treat her gently, and the one who was leading her removes her bracelet and throws it into an acid pool, snapping her out of the trance.

Ian and the Doctor traipse around trying to track the movements of the TARDIS. They lose the trail, but find a new trail of claw marks.

Ian steps in some sort of shell, which I can’t understand how he didn’t see given the size of it. The Doctor examines it and figures based on the wildlife and the landscape they might be on a planet called Vortis. However, Vortis doesn’t have a moon, and in the sky there are several.

Barbara explains to the insect people what’s been going on and how she came to be wandering the wilderness. They listen quite politely, and I had just written down in my notes ‘they seem friendly enough’ when one of them yelled ‘Kill her!’, so I guess I’m not the best judge of character. Another stops him, though, before he can bash Barbara.


They're also wonderful dancers.

These insect-like people, the Menoptra, greatly fear the Zarbi, and fear that Barbara will betray their location to them, willingly or not. While they talk, Barbara snags a stick with her feet, and manages to trip one of the Menoptra and flee.

Elsewhere, Ian and the Doctor spot lights in the sky, and below them, the home base of the Zarbi. As if on cue, a bunch of Zarbi show up.

Inside the TARDIS, the doors open of their own accord, and Vicki makes the questionable choice to leave, hoping to find the others.

Instead, she finds the Zarbi.

The Zarbi escort Ian and the Doctor to the settlement, which seems to have been grown rather than built. They reunite with Vicki, and the Doctor demands to know what the Zarbi want.

It doesn’t take long for Barbara to run into some Zarbi herself. What is the plural of Zarbi? Zarbis? Zarbii? Zarbodes?

Back in the Menoptras’ hideout, they’re debating whether to break radio silence and attempt contact with the Menoptra Invasion Force. Invasion? Interesting. We’ll put a pin in that.

However, they can’t get a response, and realise the cave is blocking their signal. Before they can go outside and try to get better reception, the Zarbi come along with a hypnotised Barbara, who has led them straight to the B-movie rejects. They smash their communication device and put up a brave fight, but the Zarbi are much bigger than the Menoptra. In the fight, the Zarbi kill one and capture another, but the third manages to flee.

The captured Zarbi removes a sort of metal collar from Barbara’s shoulders, waking her up. It seems the Zarbi need a metal conduit to control people. Specifically, gold. Ah, so that’s why the bracelet affected her!

Barbara asks what’s going to happen now, and the Menoptra informs her the Zarbi will take them to the ‘Crater of Needles’, which sounds delightful.

Back at the Zarbi base, the Doctor tries to communicate through mime, but doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

Some sort of alarm goes off, and the Zarbi force the Doctor into a… well, I think he describes it best himself when he calls it a hairdryer. It seems to be some sort of communication device, as once inside, an unknown voice asks the Doctor a question: “Why do you come, now?”

ESCAPE TO DANGER

The Doctor explains to the unseen voice that they come in peace, but the voice asks why they attack. It thinks that the Doctor is with the Menoptra, but won’t let him fully explain that he’s not with them, and moves to demonstrate what the Zarbi will do to the Menoptra, and uses some sort of energy weapon to fire on the TARDIS.

However, rather than destroying the machine, the energy pulse appears to restore power to the TARDIS.


It takes work to maintain that hairdo.

The voice asks the Doctor how his ship’s shielding works, and the Doctor in exchange wants to know how their weapon works. The voice makes him an offer: if they can use his ship’s defences against the invaders, they’ll grant him freedom.

The Doctor asks where Barbara is, and the voice tells him she’s at the Crater of Needles. He can get her back, but first the voice wants to know where the Menoptra forces are massing. The Doctor agrees to find out, and the Zarbi allow him to take Ian into the TARDIS to retrieve some equipment, but they keep Vicki as a hostage.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor practices medicine for once and gives Ian some ointment. He states the bleeding obvious that the Zarbi are ants, and Ian asks how they can be so big.

Answer: THEY CAN’T. It's just physics. They literally cannot get the oxygen required to sustain such a huge size. Ants this big would suffocate. Oh, and that's assuming an Earth atmosphere. I doubt the atmosphere on Vortis could sustain any arthropods much bigger than a centipede.

With Ian on the mend, the Doctor tells him to try and track Barbara down while he works.

They lug a device out of the TARDIS, and the Doctor tells the voice that something is interfering with his instruments, probably to do with the nearby Zarbi. The voice is reluctant to stand down the local Zarbi, but agrees when faced with the prospect of not getting help at all.

The nearby Zarbi become docile and stop making noise, their minds apparently going dormant, and Ian is able to slip away.

He promptly runs into a Zarbi. He tries to sneak past, but it stops him and he has to wrestle it in a deeply ridiculous manner. Ian wins, but then goes and gets himself trapped. That went well. The Zarbi forces come for him, but they’re such lumbering clumsy human-ant abominations that it’s not exactly difficult for him to give them the slip.

The voice accuses the Doctor of trying to escape, and demands to know why. He refuses to answer the question, and is completely fearless. If the Zarbi kill them all, his knowledge dies with him. Could he be lying? Sure. But the Zarbi can’t know either way.

The Doctor then asks Vicki to run into the TARDIS and grab a little red box. She brings it, and he insists he said a white box, as this is one of his specimen boxes. However, the Zarbi on guard seems to be very frightened of it. But what is it? It's a dead spider. I wouldn't be at all happy to find it in my bathtub, but it's a tiny thing compared to the Zarbi.


Well, I think it's a spider. Not sure where most of the legs are. Maybe it had an accident.

Outside, Ian meets up with the lone Menoptra, who is called Vrestin. She tells him the Zarbi have enslaved many of her friends at the Crater of Needles, where they tear off the Menoptra’s wings so they can’t fly away. Ian asks what else they expect when they invade a planet, but Vrestin insists that Vortis is their planet, and they’re reclaiming it.

She tells him that the Zarbi are an unintelligent species who used to live with the Menoptra, in peace, until they were made militant by a dark power, the Animus, which is the voice the Doctor’s been talking to. Nice to put a name to it. The structure inhabited by the Zarbi colony and the Animus grew at that time, and Vrestin calls it the Carcinome. At least I think she does. The Menoptra have a very strange (and annoying) speech pattern placing the emPHAs-is on thE wrong sy-LAb-LE, so I might have misheard.

The Menoptra had no weapons, and by the time they sensed the danger, the Zarbi were too strong to overcome, so they had to flee the planet. At that time, the strange moons appeared in the sky. One became their home, but it’s not a good place to live, so they must try to reclaim Vortis.

The Menoptra sent Vrestin to the surface along with two others to prepare the way for the invasion force. The Zarbi killed one, and the other is at the Crater with Barbara.

She teams up with Ian to go to the rescue, but of course Ian can’t fly, so it’ll take two hours to reach the Crater. The Zarbi soon catch up, so the pair run to hide, and their situation goes from bad to worse as the ground beneath their feet gives way. Well, I guess they’ll be very well hidden under a few tonnes of rock and dust.

Final Thoughts

Being quite a straightforward story so far, I’m not sure what else there is to add about The Web Planet. It’s a pleasantly strange trip out into the unknown. I like the decision to include non-humanoid aliens, even if the execution leaves something to be desired.

I've also enjoyed the sweet little bits of interaction between the Doctor and Vicki. It seems our Doctor has turned into a right softie, offering Vicki sweets to cheer her up when things get tough. Perhaps he's trying to make up for not doting on Susan as much as he perhaps should have.

I'll be back again later this month with a write-up on the second half of The Web Planet (and a big can of bug spray), so goodbye for now, and don't let the big bugs bite.



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 8, 1965] Roman Holiday (Doctor Who: The Romans)

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By Jessica Holmes

This month, we’ve got a bit of a surprise in Doctor Who: comedy. Yes, comedy. Do not adjust your television set. We’ve got Dennis Spooner back in the writer’s chair, and it seems that Mr. Spooner is having a little experiment with the format. Does it work, or like the reign of so many emperors, does it fall apart and die an undignified death? Let’s find out.

THE SLAVE TRADERS

So, remember how last time, the TARDIS fell off a cliff? Forget about it.

A month has passed since the TARDIS crashed, and the Doctor and crew are lounging about in a luxurious villa, sipping wine, eating grapes, and generally doing as the Romans do. Confused yet?

As I mentioned above, something you’ll notice quickly about this serial is the tone. In a bit of a first for the series, which does have its funny moments, The Romans is best described as a farcical comedy.

In the village near the villa, a couple of men with dreadful hairdos are browsing the market. They’re in need of new slaves to trade, and they take quite a liking to Barbara and Vicki, who, like true tourists, are proving to be absolutely useless at haggling. Where did they get the money? Is there a bureau de change somewhere deep inside the TARDIS? How many sesterces do you get to the Pound?

Slavers aren’t all that are up to no good in this little Roman town, however. An old lyre-player, minding his own business, is walking along the road outside town when a rough-looking man drags him into the bushes and murders him, for no immediately apparent reason.

Meanwhile, we interrupt The Romans to bring you Cooking With Barbara. Because one can only presume the men have never touched an oven in their lives, Barbara’s just fixed them up a lovely Roman meal of peacock breasts, quail’s tongues and pomegranates. She must be good, because I swear the Doctor is on the cusp of bursting into song. He’s a little less enthused when Barbara reveals that they had ants' eggs for starters.

Well, it’s certainly authentic. I know they say ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’, but I think I’ll stick with pasta if it’s all the same.

Following the meal, the Doctor announces to the surprise of his companions, that he’s taking a trip away for a few days, leading to this gem of an exchange:

IAN: You never told us you were going away.
DOCTOR: Oh? Well, I don't know that I was under any obligation to report my movements to you, Chesterfield.
BARBARA: ChesterTON.
DOCTOR: Oh, Barbara's calling you.

It turns out that our leads, though normally made to act in a serious manner, have a knack for comedy.

Bored of just lazing about the villa, the Doctor’s going to Rome. Eager for a change of pace, Vicki begs to come with him, to which he happily agrees. I’m starting to think he’s seeing her as a Susan replacement.

Now Ian and Barbara have some alone time, and Barbara wastes no time in checking Ian out, and she likes what she sees. By which I mean she thinks he makes a very fine Roman, once she’s finished restyling his hair. Nothing else going on here. Nope. No-siree.

Leaving aside the light comedy, the two Roman slavers are heading up to the villa to catch some Britons. Talk about mood whiplash!

Barbara and Ian don’t stand a chance. There’s no telly in the villa (nor a fridge… though Ian does forget that little fact, much to Barbara’s amusement), so there’s not much more to do than lie around drinking wine and teasing each other.

Fortunately, Ian isn’t quite so far gone that he can’t put up a fight against the home invaders. Barbara, on the other hand….

Bless her. She tries to help, she really does. She grabs a heavy pot as the men begin to tussle, and whacks it as hard as she can against the nearest man’s head.

Unfortunately, that head happens to belong to Ian. Oops.

On the road, the Doctor and Vicki come upon the murdered musician. As the Doctor picks up his lyre to examine it, a Roman centurion comes along, mistaking him for a famous musician, his arrival in Rome eagerly anticipated by Caesar Nero himself. Not one to pass up an opportunity to get into trouble, the Doctor goes along with it, and assumes the identity of Maximus… something or other. He can’t remember it, so why should I?

Barbara and Ian end up captives of the slavers and separated, as Ian is sold off to be a galley slave while Barbara is hauled off to be sold at auction in Rome.

Later, as the Doctor and Vicki rest for the night, the centurion accosts the man he hired to kill the old lyre player, as the job doesn’t seem to be quite done, and Nero pays very well to kill lyre players better than he.

That sounds like a very Nero thing to do.

So, with his life on the line, the assassin goes upstairs to finish the job.

Well this is… different. I don’t quite know what it is about it, but something about The Romans isn't working for me. The setup is a bit awkward and clunky, and the choice to give the episode a comedic tone is odd and confusing. It’d be one thing if it was dark comedy, but it’s not. It’s like watching a Carry On film on a broken television set that switches over to a serious historical drama every few minutes (the feeling made all the worse by Mr. Hartnell’s having been in both shows!) The episode is funny enough, but the tonal clashing kept me from really engaging with the episode.

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME

With the arrival of the assassin, the Doctor has no choice but to defend himself with his lyre and an amphora of something which I sincerely hope is just water.

He seems to be quite enjoying himself, but just as the Doctor has the upper hand, Vicki walks in on them, sending the assassin fleeing out the window. The Doctor even remarks that just outsmarting his enemies has made him forget the joys of fisticuffs.

While it’s funny and all to see the Doctor win a fight, I’m not sure his remarks on brawling being fun are sending a good message to the kids watching. I know, I’m no fun.

Still, at least his boasts of his fighting prowess make Vicki laugh. I’m growing to enjoy their dynamic. They’re getting along like a house on fire.

Vicki remarks that the centurion has vanished, and the Doctor surmises that it was he who hired the assassin in the first place, to avoid dirtying his own blade, as was common among the Romans.

Barbara arrives in Rome, a little worse for wear but still in one piece, and wonders whether she’ll see Ian again. A wealthy-looking Roman, Tavius, watches Barbara as she attempts to coax her cellmate to eat something, even though there isn’t really enough food for the both of them. He says he wants to help her, but she has to trust him. On a first impression, I certainly wouldn’t.

Tavius attempts to buy her directly from the slave trader, but the slaver refuses. Barbara’s going to the auction. Her cellmate, however, is not. She’s far too weak; nobody would buy her. Instead, she’s going on a trip to the circus. How nice, you might think, but this is the Roman circus we’re talking about. Less of the acrobats and clowns, more of the people slaughtering animals, being slaughtered by animals, slaughtering each other, the occasional mock sea-battle (no, really), and generally creating a bloodbath for the amusement of the masses.

Pinnacle of civilisation, my backside.

Some stock footage later, Ian’s ship is caught in a storm, and Ian takes advantage of the roiling seas to pounce upon the guard and steal his keys.

Back in the eternal city, Vicki and the Doctor arrive just in time for the start of the slave auction, but before they can spot Barbara and get her to safety, the Doctor whisks Vicki away, obviously wishing to shield her from the more unsavoury aspects of Roman life. What's the point of holidaying in history if you're just going to pretend the nasty bits don't exist?

The Roman men are very eager to get their hands on Barbara (watching them treat her like a piece of meat is rather disgusting), but Tavian massively outbids them all.

At the seaside, Ian’s just washed up ashore. The storm smashed the ship to bits, but a fellow slave, Delos, managed to save the pair of them and get Ian to shore. Ian decides to head for Rome to find Barbara, and Delos agrees to come with him.

Back in Rome, Tavian manages to make a compliment on Barbara’s kind nature sound creepy, explaining it as the reason he bought her to be a servant to the Empress Poppaea, Nero’s wife, but his tone suggests an ulterior motive.

The Doctor finally arrives at the palace, though by a stroke of misfortune doesn’t find out that Barbara is also here. Tavian greets him with a cryptic remark about someone waiting for him in another room.

At last, the moment we’ve all been waiting for (or at least, been mildly curious about): the arrival of the Roman emperor. Enter Imperator Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. I think we’ll just stick with Nero.

Ian and Delos arrive in Rome, looking rather the worse for wear. They’d better hit up the baths before attempting any rescue. They get about two steps before being accosted by guards. As runaway slaves, they’re bound for the arena. Perhaps the lions will be put off by the smell?

Curious about Tavian’s earlier remark, the Doctor investigates the palace and comes upon the murdered body of the centurion from earlier. It looks like he might have got more than he bargained for in this little ruse of his!

Things are getting interesting, and I didn’t get as much whiplash from pivoting between comedy and drama. Let’s push onwards.

CONSPIRACY

Back at the palace, Vicki and the Doctor have just spent the night, when Tavian beckons him and tells him he’s taken care of the body, and that the Doctor might want to wait before enacting the next bit of the plan. A little confused, the Doctor tries prodding to find out what that plan actually is, but Tavian says it’s better that he himself doesn’t know, and so doesn’t give him any details.

That’s helpful.

Tavian presents Barbara to the Emperor and Empress, and Nero’s eyes nearly pop out of his head when he sees his wife’s lovely new servant.

Poppaea, however, is less than pleased, warning Barbara to keep any aspirations of becoming Empress in check. Somehow, I don’t think Nero is Barbara’s type.

It’s not as if that matters to Nero, however. He corners Barbara alone in the palace, and begins to chase her around as if he were a schoolboy — except at my school, a boy chasing a girl around like that would find himself in detention.

The following sequence is not as funny as it wants to be, because I know enough about Nero to know that nothing good would come of him catching Barbara, and no amount of hijinks, near-misses and slapstick is going to make me forget that.

The Doctor might not agree with me, as his reaction to seeing the Emperor chasing a screaming woman around the palace is to laugh.

Really, Doctor? I bet you wouldn’t find it so funny if you knew it was Barbara.

Vicki meets the palace poisoner, a surprisingly personable woman for someone who makes murder weapons. There are so many people in the palace going around murdering each other that it’s practically a Roman tradition at this point. True. Nero had his own mother murdered. His first wife, too.

Speaking of Nero, he’s still stalking Barbara, begging her for a teeny weeny kiss. As if that’s all he wants! I know it’s technically ‘wrong’ and ‘interfering with history’, but I wouldn’t blame Barbara if she decided to respond to his demand for a teeny weeny kiss with a teeny weeny stab wound. Poppaea turns up just as Nero pulls Barbara onto the bed, but thankfully intervenes and sends Barbara away before things get any more disturbing.

The Doctor tries to find out from Nero if he knows anything about conspiracy in the palace. Nero doesn’t know a thing (big shocker), but he does tell the Doctor that he’s to perform at a banquet that evening.

Meanwhile, Vicki listens in as the poisoner supplies Poppaea with some poisoned goblets, one of which she is to give to Nero’s new slave, and put an end to any aspirations of usurping her. Uh-oh.

At the banquet, Vicki and the Doctor reunite, and meanwhile Nero surprises Barbara with a little gift: a golden bangle. She’s not one bit impressed, but she manages to smoothly recover and propose a toast to Nero, downing her goblet.

It’s at this moment when Vicki remembers to mention her visit with the poisoner, and casually remarks that she thinks she might have poisoned Nero, having switched the goblets around. She didn’t think it was very fair to poison the slave girl. I have decided I like Vicki.

The Doctor manages to stop him drinking it just in time, as Barbara conveniently leaves the banquet. The near-misses are just getting a bit annoying, now. The Romans would be over in five minutes if it weren't for all the coincidences keeping the group apart.

Nero hands off the poisoned cup to his manservant who has been annoying him all episode by just trying to do his job. Doctor, I know that you have to respect causality and all that, but couldn’t we just let Nero have a little bit of poison? Not enough to change history, just to make him regret that indoor plumbing hasn’t been invented yet.

Her plan foiled, Poppaea has the poisoner dragged off to the arena. What a charming lady.

The feasting commences, and something happens that irks me terribly: everybody is sitting bolt upright, rather than lounging on couches as any respectable Roman would.

It’s just an odd oversight for a serial that has been eager to show the details of Roman life, even down to mentioning real Roman food.

To avoid embarrassment, the Doctor thinks up a cunning ruse: he tells the Emperor that his music is so subtle only the truly gifted can hear it and appreciate it. When he then proceeds to mime playing the lyre, Nero acts as if enraptured by his skill, and the others, not wishing to end up on the Caesar’s bad side, play along. Yes, it’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. Who do you think gave Hans Christian Andersen the idea?

However, once Nero leaves, the guests burst out in laughter. Too vain and too much of a buffoon to understand the joke, Nero spitefully laments he’s been made a fool of, as the Doctor got a great big round of applause for his performance. How dare he upstage Nero! He plans to take revenge, and bids Barbara to come with him to the arena. While there, he fancies seeing a fight. Give you three guesses who’s getting tossed into the ring.

A bloodbath isn’t all Nero came here for, however: he has a special plan for the Doctor. He arranges to have him come to play at the arena… and then the lions will be released.

Ian and Delos emerge to a rather small fighting pit. It doesn’t look like there’s room to swing a cat, let alone have a fight. Ian and Barbara are shocked to see each other, but there’s no time for a reunion right now.

Ian quickly gets the upper hand (big surprise), but when he has Delos disarmed and at his mercy, he doesn’t go in for the kill, to the displeasure of Nero. Delos manages to turn the tables on him, and soon has Ian on his knees, his blade to his throat. A moment of tense anticipation follows, everyone looking at Nero to see what his verdict will be. Disgusted with Ian’s act of mercy, Nero sticks his thumb down and orders Delos to cut off his head.

INFERNO

Delos has Ian utterly at his mercy. He looks at Ian, raises his sword…and then lunges at the Caesar.

True to form, Nero uses Barbara as a human shield as the guards descend upon Ian and Delos. In the kerfuffle, Ian tries to whisk Barbara away, but with Nero keeping a tight grip on her, and having only seconds to make an escape, he has no choice but to flee with Delos, promising to come back for her.

At the palace, Poppaea is awaiting Tavius, and orders that he get rid of Barbara, or she’ll try again to kill her — and him, too. Tavius warns Barbara of Poppaea’s murderous intentions, and she tells him that Nero is planning to use her to trap Ian, and that he’s going to feed the musician to the lions. Tavian promises to think of something, and warn the musician for her.

Elsewhere, the Doctor and Vicki are examining Nero’s plans for rebuilding Rome. The Doctor gathers that they’re in AD 64. July, to be precise. It looks like things are about to start hotting up.

Tavius warns the Doctor that he’s to play in the arena tomorrow, and that today is his last chance to kill Nero. Well, that explains a lot, doesn’t it? The murders, Tavius’ suspicious helpfulness. After all, secret murder is a Roman pasttime.

Nero arrives to give the Doctor the good news about his upcoming performance, but is a bit put out when the Doctor 'guesses' that he’s to perform at the arena. Just to rub it in, he launches into a string of lion-related puns that would even make my Dad wince.

However, he should be paying less attention to wordplay and more attention to what he’s doing, as while he talks, he holds his glasses behind his back, and the sun is shining bright outside. I think you can guess where this is going. Without him realising, the papers behind him begin to smoulder and soon catch alight.

So, it looks like the Doctor is doomed. You’d think so. However, this is Nero we’re talking about. The burning plans give him the bright idea to raze the Roman capital to the ground and rebuild from the ashes. The Doctor is a genius!

The mind boggles that nobody has killed Nero yet for sheer ineptitude.

Later that night, the guards are preparing for the ambush, but Ian and Delos are clever, sneaking in with a bunch of men who have been brought before the Emperor for a very special task: to light the city on fire.

Tavian finds Ian among the group, and reunites him with Barbara. At the same time, Vicki and the Doctor have wisely decided to quietly make their exit from the palace.

Ian, Delos and Barbara safely escape the palace as the arsonists head off to torch Rome, and Tavian watches them go, sincerely wishing Barbara good luck. In his hand, he clutches a cross. This one shot turns my understanding of Tavian on its head, and makes him a much more interesting character. An early Christian in the Roman court. It’s a much more interesting drive for his actions than mere political ambition. Nero was an incredibly cruel man, after all. Christianity doesn’t look too kindly upon murder, but Tavian is only human. If you saw someone with great power abuse it day in, day out, wouldn't you try to do something about it?

The revelation does raise its own questions, however. Does Tavian really do the things he does for the greater good, in service to his fellow man, or is he just another schemer with his faith incidental? A good person who does bad things, or a bad person who sometimes chooses to do good?

It could be either way, but my gut leans towards the former.

As a pedantic aside, the cross is an anachronism. This early in the history of Christianity, Christians would use the icthys (the Jesus fish) as their secret symbol rather than the cross. Of course, the icthys is less readily recognisable.

Outside the city, the Doctor and Vicki spot the fire going up, and are a bit more impressed than at all bothered. Never mind all the people about to die a horrible death — both from the fire, and the Christians that Nero will scapegoat and persecute for the blaze. Vicky scolds the Doctor for nagging her about tampering with history earlier in the serial, now that he’s gone and given Nero the idea for the Great Fire of Rome.

He insists it wasn’t his fault and that it would have happened anyway, but is a little too amused by the idea that he caused this. Perhaps he is not so unlike Nero, who laughs as the city burns, strumming his lyre all the while. Sources differ on what Nero’s true actions were on the night of the fire, and whether he ordered it to be set at all, but we’re here to watch a fun romp through time, not to get embroiled in an academic debate on which Roman historians we believe.

Back at the villa, Ian and Barbara arrive to find a lot of cleaning up to do. Specifically, cleaning up the shards of a certain broken vase. This whole scene is quite funny, and I like how Barbara and Ian have settled in to a more familiar dynamic, much more playful and less restrained than they have been in the past. I would even go so far as to say it borders on flirtatious.

As Ian complains it’s not his fault he got hit with the vase, Barbara insists that it is because she only picked it up to help and he went and got his head in the way. Realising that Barbara knocked him out, he figures that she should clean it up and settles down to watch her, the picture of smugness.

By the time the Doctor and Vicki make it back, the villa is back to normal, and Ian and Barbara are cleaned up in their fancy Roman clothes again, lounging around as if they hadn’t moved since the Doctor left for Rome.

Off the crew go again, to places unknown, much to the disbelief of Vicki, who refuses to believe that the Doctor doesn’t know what he’s doing. Oh, Vicki. You have absolutely no idea.

The women head off to change, while the Doctor studies the controls. Noticing something seems to be bothering him, Ian asks what’s up. The Doctor responds that they materialised for a split second, and something’s caught them, is now slowly dragging them down….but towards what?

Final Thoughts

I don’t quite know what to make of The Romans. It’s a little too farcical for me to judge it on its merits as a pure historical, but is a bit too serious for me to really assess it as a comedy. It’s in a sort of in-between state of two genres meshed together in an inelegant fashion. The comedy here doesn’t work with the subject at hand. I get the sense that the jokes are there despite the topic rather than being based on Roman life and history.

I feel a bit out of my depth here, as critiquing comedy is pretty far outside my usual remit, and much more subjective than any other genre. Many probably like The Romans' use of comedy. I just don’t know how to feel about it. I think that the jokes were (mostly) funny, yes. And I’d love to see more humour woven into the fabric of Doctor Who. However, I think I’d like to see it better implemented in future, complementing the story rather than interrupting it. Perhaps something of a more satirical nature would gel better with the usual tone of the show.

Just a little something to ponder until next time.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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Magazine

[January 26, 1965] Down the Rabbit Hole…Again (February 1965 IF)

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by Gideon Marcus

TV Triplets

Back when the Young Traveler and I were watching The Twilight Zone, we accidentally picked the wrong time to turn on the set and ended up getting introduced to Mr. Ed, Supercar, and The Andy Griffith Show, in that order.  It made for an amusing night, and we learned a lot about the prime-time schedule for that season.

Recently, we once again fell down the rabbit hole, though not quite by accident. 

It all started with an amazing new import form England.  You may have seen the American rebroadcast of Danger Man back in the summer of '61.  It was a smart spy show starring NATO agent, John Drake, played by Patrick McGoohan.  Well, he's back, and this time his episodes are a full hour rather than just half.  It's gripping stuff, albeit a bit heavier and more cynical than the first run.  Realistic, idealistic, and respectful of women, it's a delightful contrast to the buffoonish Bond franchise.

So gripping was the show that we ended up somehow unable to change the channel when Password came on.  This game show is sort of a verbal version of Charades where a contestant tries to get their partner to say a word using single-word clues.  Play goes back and forth until one team gets it right.

It's kind of a dumb show for the viewer because we already know the answer.  On the other hand, the contestants always include celebrities, and it's fun to watch them struggle through the rounds.


Gene Kelly looked like he wanted to kill his partner.  The whole time!


Juliet Prowse, on the other hand, was adorable and funny.

After half an hour of that, we had summoned enough energy to reach toward the television remote…until we heard the bugle strains heralding the arrival of Rocky and Bullwinkle (and friends).  It had been my understanding that the show had completed its five year run, but it has apparently gone into reruns without missing a beat.  Since we had missed the first couple of years, well, we couldn't turn off the television now!

The only thing that saved us was the subsequent airing of Bonanza, a show I am only too happy to turn off.  Who knows how long we'd have cruised The Vast Wasteland otherwise.  Of course, now we're stuck watching all three shows every week (homework permitting).

Print Analog

Science fiction magazines are kind of like blocks of TV shows.  They happen regularly, their quality is somewhat reliable, but their content varies with each new issue.  This month's Worlds of IF Science Fiction defined the phrase "much of a muchness".  Each (for the most part) was acceptable, even enjoyable, but either they were flawed jewels, or they simply never went beyond workmanlike.  Read on, and you'll see what I mean:


This rather goofy cover courtesy of McKenna, illustrating Small One

The Replicators, by A. E. van Vogt

Steve Maitlin is an ornery SOB, a Marine veteran of Korea who knows the world is all SNAFU, especially the moronic generals who run the show.  Not only does this attitude make life miserable for those around him, but it also brings the Earth to the brink of interstellar war.  It turns out that the alien BEM Maitlin shoots one day on the road to work is just one of an infinite number of bodies for an IT, and the replacement body ends up with Maitlin's cussedness as part of its basic personality.

Said IT also has the ability to replicate any weapon the humans throw against it, but magnified.  Shoot at it?  It builds a big-size rifle.  Bomb it?  It comes back with an extra-jumbo jet and a bigger nuke.  In the end, Maitlin is the only one who can stop the thing, which makes karmic sense.  But can the vet change his nature in time to meet minds with the alien?


by Gray Morrow

This story doesn't make a lot of sense, but Van Vogt is good at keeping you engaged with pulpish momentum.  Three stars.

Reporter at Large, by Ron Goulart

In a future where mob bosses have replaced politicians (or perhaps the politicians have just more nakedly advertised their criminal nature!) power is entrenched and hereditary.  Only an honest journalist can bring about a revolution, but when any person has his price, only an android editor's got the scruples to speak truth to power.

Ron Goulart writes good, funny stories.  Unfortunately, while I see that he tried, he failed at accomplishing either this time out.  Two stars, and the worst piece of the mag.

Small One, by E. Clayton McCarty

A young alien has exiled himself as part of its first stage of five on the journey toward maturity.  Its isolation is disturbed when a tiny bipedal creature lands in a spaceship nearby and finds itself trapped in a cave.  The child-being establishes telepathic contact with the intruder (obviously a human) and an eventual rapport is established.  But everything falls apart when the Terran's rapacious teammates land and fall into conflict with the alien's infinitely more powerful family…


by Jack Gaughan

I am a sucker for first contact stories, especially when told from the alien viewpoint.  This one is good, but it suffers from a certain lack of subtlety, a kind of hamfisted presentation of the kind I normally see from new writers.  That makes sense; this is his (her?) first story.

Three stars, and my favorite piece of the magazine.

Blind Alley, by Basil Wells

A year after settling the planet of Croft, the human colonists and their livestock all become afflicted with blindness.  Against the odds, they survive, shaping their lives around the change.  But can their society take the shock when a new arrival, generations later, brings back the promise of sight?

Blind Alley treads much of the same ground as Daniel Galouye's excellent Dark Universe from a few years back.  The question is worth asking: when is a "disability" simply a different way to be able?  That said, Wells is not as skilled as Galouye, and the story merits three stars as a result.

Gree's Commandos, by C. C. MacApp


by Nodel

On a thick-atmosphered planet, Colonel Steve Duke assists a race of Stone Age flying elephants against the interstellar aggressors, the Gree, and their mercentary cohorts.  It's a straight adventure piece with virtually no development, either of the characters or the larger setting.  Somewhat similar to Keith Laumer's latest novel (The Hounds of Hell, also appearing in IF), it doesn't do anything to make you care.  Sufficiently developed, it could have been good.

Two stars.

Zombie, by J. L. Frye

Here is the second story by a brand new author…and it shows.  In the future, it becomes possible to transplant a personality in the short term to a physically perfect body.  Said transfers are used almost exclusively for espionage and sabotage — it's not much fun living in a shell of a form that can't really feel or enjoy anything other than the satisfaction of a job well done.  Indeed, the only people willing to endure the hell of personality transfer (back and forth) are the profoundly crippled.

This story of a particularly hairy mission has its moments of poignance, but again, Frye is not quite up to the challenge of a difficult topic.  Plus, he needs more adjectives in his quiver; I count seven times he used "beautiful" to describe the sole female character.  Even Homer varied between calling Athena "grey-eyed" and "owl-eyed".

Three stars.

Starchild (Part 2 of 3), by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson

Last up is the second installment of three (that number again!) in this serialized sequel to The Reefs of Space.  It's a short one, barely long enough to cover the harsh interrogation of Bowsie Gann.  Gann was the loyal spy servant of The Plan, returned to Earth at the same time the star-reef-dwelling Starchild began to turn off the local suns to scare Earth's machine-run government.


by Nodel

It's a most unpleasant set of pages, with lots of torture and cruelty (something Fred Pohl does effectively; viz. A Plague of Pythons).  That said, Pohl and Williamson can write, and I am looking forward to seeing how it all wraps up.

Three stars.

Stay Tuned

Like much of the Idiot Box's offerings, IF continues to deliver stuff that's just good enough to keep my subscription current.  I'd like editor Fred Pohl to tip the magazine in one direction or another so I can either stop buying it or enjoy it more…

Until then, I guess my knob stays tuned to this channel!

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 20, 1965] The T.A.R.D.I.S. Lands Down Under and Japan Invades Australia (Doctor Who and The Samurai)

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by Kaye Dee

I’ve been reading Jessica Holmes’ insightful articles about the British science fiction television series Doctor Who since she first started commenting on this show (see December 1963 entry) and I’ve been looking forward for some time to actually seeing it air in Australia. At last my wish has been granted! The T.A.R.D.I.S. has finally landed here, with Doctor Who commencing on the Australian Broadcasting Commission (the ABC is the Australian equivalent of the BBC) just in the past week, mesmerising me with those incredible opening credits.


Doctor Who's ethereal and abstract opening credits perfectly suggest travelling along the corridors of time

Not Just Kid Stuff

I heard from a friend who works at the ABC that Australia has been one of the first countries to buy Doctor Who from the BBC. In fact, I was really excited when he told me in March last year that the ABC had purchased the show and intended to debut it last May, but then delays arose due to censorship issues. Yes, although Doctor Who is classed as a family show in Britain, the Australian censors (who view and classify every overseas television show that comes into the country) have deemed the first thirteen episodes to be not suitable for children and classified them as “Adult”! This means that the ABC must schedule these episodes for screening after 7pm and couldn’t show Doctor Who in the Sunday night 6.30pm timeslot it originally planned. But at last Doctor Who has found a home on Friday night at 7.30pm (at least in Sydney). I just hope the censors aren’t going to decide one day that some stories are too scary to be screened at all!

Doing the Rounds

A funny thing about the ABC is that sometimes when it buys a show from overseas it only purchases one film copy of each episode. This film reel then has to be sent around from state to state so that it can be screened by the ABC broadcaster in each capital city. So, the first Australian screening of Doctor Who was actually in Perth on Tuesday, 12 January. Sydney and Canberra (linked by cable) were next on 15 January. Brisbane will get to see Doctor Who next Friday 22 January, but Melbourne will have to wait until Saturday 20 February and Adelaide won’t see the first episode until Monday 15 March! I’m glad I live in Sydney now.


Anthony Coburn (left) and Ron Grainer (right) may be virtually unknown in Australia, but they've had successful careers in Britain and have made important contributions to the creation of Doctor Who

The Australian Connection

It’s great to see that some Australians are involved with the production of Doctor Who. The premiere story, “An Unearthly Child” has been written by Anthony Coburn. I’d never really heard of him before, but according to a few newspaper articles reviewing the first episode he was born in Melbourne and has been working in England for many years as a staff writer for the BBC. Ron Grainer, who composed the wonderfully eerie and evocative theme music, has also spent most of his professional career composing music in Britain, although he grew up in a small mining town in far north Queensland. Vicki Lucas’ fascinating article on the music of Doctor Who (see December 1963 entry) tells me that an obviously talented lady named Delia Derbyshire at the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop created the amazing sound of Grainer’s composition: all I can say is that I’m in awe of her skill at creating electronic music, now that I have actually heard the theme tune for myself.


The mysterious Doctor Who and his granddaughter Susan. I wonder when we'll find out where they really come from and why they are exiles from their home world

A Family Viewing Experience

And that’s what I’ve discovered with the first episode of Doctor Who: it’s one thing to read about the show and look forward to seeing it, but it’s a whole new experience to actually watch it on television. My sister Faye and her kids watched “Unearthly Child” with me and we were all caught up in the mystery of Susan and her grandfather and what's going to happen to the two school teachers now that they've been whisked away somewhere in time and space in the Doctor’s T.A.R.D.I.S. Vickie and David certainly didn’t think that Doctor Who was just for adults, no matter what the censors said! We’re all looking forward to the next episode and enjoying the adventures that those of you in Britain have been watching for over a year.


Promotional image for The Samurai, showing Shintaro wielding a longsword that is the traditional weapon of a samurai warrior. The title character is played by actor Koichi Ose

Japanese Television Arrives in Australia

Doctor Who isn’t the only new television import to catch my attention lately. Despite the animosity that many Australians have felt towards Japan since the War, last year’s Tokyo Olympic Games, where our young swimmer Dawn Fraser did so well, sparked a lot of interest and curiosity about Japan and its culture. So much so, in fact, that TCN-9 in Sydney started showing the first ever Japanese television series on Australian screens at the end of December. It’s an action adventure series called The Samurai, set in feudal Japan three centuries ago. Channel 9 is taking a gamble with this show, which I guess is why they’ve put it on in the doldrums period of the Summer holidays.


Shintaro narrowly avoids a brace of 'star knives' (a weapon used by the ninjas). I've heard that Dads are now making home-made ones for their kids, snipped from used tin lids. It'll be fun to play samurai and ninjas until someone gets hurt with one of these!

A "Western", Japanese Style

The Samurai tells the story of a master swordsman named Shintaro (the “samurai” of the title), a half-brother of Japan’s young ruler, the Shogun, who travels around Japan putting down plots against his brother’s government, usually by the villainous gangs of a semi-magical secret society known as ninjas: you could say that Shintaro is a medieval Japanese cross between James Bond, a Western gunslinger and Robin Hood! Channel 9 has been showing The Samurai five days a week at 3.30pm and with its exotic setting, supernatural action and endearingly bad dubbing with broad American accents, it’s fast becoming very popular – and not just with the kids. Faye’s husband, Bruce, has been absorbed in the show while he’s on holidays and I’ve taken to this fascinating curiosity of a show as well. Mind you, so many ninjas get killed in each episode, I’m surprised the censors haven’t labelled The Samurai as “Adult”, alongside Doctor Who!

Japan Invades the Top 40, Too

Another bit of Japanese culture has also been making its presence felt in the Top 40 charts. In August last year, the lovely Noeleen Batley, Australia’s first female pop singer to have a national hit song, released an English version of a song that was a huge hit in Japan in 1963. “Little Treasure from Japan” charted in Sydney and Brisbane and even made it all the way to #16 in Melbourne last October. It really is a sweet little song, with one of those tunes you can’t get out of your head. My niece Vickie’s dance teacher is already creating a dance routine for her class to perform to the song for their mid-year concert. Now we just have to figure out where we can find a kimono for her costume.


Australia's "Little Miss Sweetheart" Noeleen Batley has had a hit with "Little Treasure from Japan". You can see by the wear on the cover that Faye's copy of the record has already been played quite a bit

Australia International

The fact that Channel 9 took a risk on screening The Samurai is an indication of how much Australians have broadened their worldview since the end of the War. The large influx of European migrants has introduced us to delicious new foods, good coffee (thank you!) and a more cosmopolitan outlook. Our TV might be dominated by British, American and (a long way third) Australian shows now, but hopefully we'll soon see more international programmes. Perhaps someday we'll even see a television channel offering programmes from around the world: I can't wait to see what fun and entertainment we've been missing out on!

[If you have a membership to this year's Worldcon (in New Zealand) or did last year (Dublin), we would very much appreciate your nomination for Best Fanzine! We work for egoboo…]




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