WhoThrough: Doctor Who Season Nine
The ongoing series starts to go beyond UNIT, but also goes back to the Master.
When my wife and I married in 2014, we started watching Doctor Who in order, one story a week. Five and a half years later we finished and started again. These are a combination of my scattershot notes from the first and second WhoThroughs.
DAY OF THE DALEKS
Funny to open on a UNIT era story with the reasonable fear of a gun-toting soldiers. The Daleks are actually rather effective in a smaller, specific role. The seductive lies Jo is told by the controller are horribly convincing, and it all carries a dreadful tension. The silver sheen added to faces is a very effective make-up. The visual style really doesn’t embrace the “haunted house story” the dialogue intends this to be.
The Doctor, Jo and controller having dinner and talking, the Doc probing and pushing, Jo defending the status quo, is wonderful — some of the best writing of the era. The Doctor doesn’t recognise Sir Reginald’s name, a notable tweak to his “we met at the club” persona from previously; there’s even a little dig against “political ideals”.
THE CURSE OF PELADON
All the aliens are green, the Peladons wear purple — both comic book villain colours. Seeing the Ice Warrior on the way in immediately throws superstition on them thanks to prior experience. Nice — and later the Doctor is clearly wrong, judgmental, and Jo is us, reasonable and (you’d hope, despite our early Ice Warrior assumptions) less biased. Jo leaping in to rescue the Doctor from Aggedor is insanely brave.
There’s a struggle at the start of part four to get the story re-started after most of what’s needed to come out comes out — what’s left is mopping up, less climax. Aggedor is a neat design — the sickly snout, horn and teeth, but also the soft fur and hangdog expression. Arcutras’s alarm gets lower pitched as things get less dangerous. Alpha Centauri is gender neutral. The Earth delegate is…a woman, despite everyone assuming the Doctor, rather than Jo, held that position.
Jo plays the princess brilliantly — that she was off on a date with Mike and crushes on the King all feels very modern, very Clara or Martha. Jo’s last act is pragmatic, she leaves for common sense, following head rather than Peladon-kissing heart: “I think I’d better”.
THE SEA DEVILS
Instant rapport between the Doctor and the Master — they really have missed each other. Lovely reveal that he’s already taken over. Neat scene where Doc pays to borrow the boat — all played in implication, which is rare for the show’s current style. Not sure the Doctor is wise to immediately sedate the only witness from the fort.
The fort set is fabulously grotty, and has a splendid overhead shots, underneath shots and canted angles, making good use of the split levels. There’s some very specific speed-up of moves in the video-shot sword fight that feels downright ambitious for the time. Lovely, playful Doctor gags — the blindfold golf, exploding radio, silent communication with Jo, stealing sandwiches. The Doctor immediately believing Jo that she saw the Master is (sadly) real progress for the character and their relationship.
“There was no need to have done that” — Doc’s response to a single Sea Devil killed mirrors the ruthless end of The Silurians. Interesting how the Sea Devils look so sympathetic. The show does well to hold back Sea Devil conversation until episode five — and throws in a brilliant turn in Walker, the civil servant who sends men to die between rounds of toast. Speaking of which: it’s probably wise the Brig’s not part of this story. The massive body count — basically all Sea Devils, and notably those bodies floating on the ocean — is very upsetting. As is the Doctor doing what the Brig did last time and blowing the buggers up.
THE MUTANTS
The strong episode one really ramps up, loads of conflict, an assassination, the box opening and a killer cliffhanger. Jo insisting she go on the adventure, rather than be swept up or defaulting to it, is a small but useful restatement of why the format works. I’d have been tempted to call this story The Storms of Solos rather than blow the emphasis on mutants that really only kicks in with episode three. A rare story where the Doctor’s non-human status starts to be played like a superpower. (How like Baker and Martin to see him this way.)
Bloody awful practical execution everywhere. The studio sets are horribly fake (areas separated at two meter intervals making it seem small rather than implied to be large, teleporter signs the wrong way round for common sense) and hellishly over-lit. The ‘earthquake’ shot done on a mirror in episode four keeps being used after the quake is over despite its low quality, and almost all the casting leads to lousy performances. They even kill off Geoffrey Palmer before he can class things up. (At least we have Paul Whitsun-Jones.) But: fun, colourful lighting in the caves — they seems alien and strange. Within those, the early reveals of fully insect mutants, silhouetted against purple light or the colourful fire storm, are knockout.
THE TIME MONSTER
Both UNIT stories this season are about two time periods being connected and running concurrently across one story, which suggests we’re reaching the end of that era.
The two TARDISes placed in a void over Kronos’s face is a wonderful image. It becomes a very TARDISy story despite not being one when it starts…but then ‘what story this is’ is always in flux anyway. It’s trying to be all Doctor Who at once. A UNIT story segues into duelling TARDISes in space, and then into a historical/mythical romp. But the first part goes on forever, the second feels like needless faffery, and the third is equal parts arbitrary or impenetrably dull. It’s possible the Atlantis stuff is harmed by being so rushed, and with less time TOMTITting about it might have worked better.
A laboured start to this one, first two episodes struggling to get into gear, getting the Doctor and Brigadeer to the same place at the same time in different ways. The Doctor’s pointless interference gadget, historical figures attacking, Doctor and Master refusing to just talk to each other — all to drag things out to six eps. Should just got to Atlantis sooner, made things like the minotaur less of an afterthought.
Love the Master’s suit. Kronos is appallingly designed, and locking him in a small room only draws more attention to the problem. The Doctor’s dick-shaped time gadget and the Master grappling with his crystal shaft aren’t helping anything be taken seriously.
The speeding up of Bessie is a curious early metaphor for the time acceleration that hits later, and production-wise it’s probably a daft thing to be using footage speed as a trick to show fast travel where elsewhere it’s used to show a different speed of time itself. How can the Doctor catch up to people running in slow motion due to time displacement? He’d be slowed down too.
Benton cleverly susses the Master’s trick and returns to the lab — we almost never see anyone do that, not even the Doctor; usually it’s ‘fall into trap, escape’. Batman and James Bond get referenced, which feels like a dam breaking. Interesting to have a cliffhanger that relies on our investment in, of all people, Mike’s survival. It works.
The early Atlantis scenes being shot on film make the studio version feel disappointing when you get to it. It’s in no way a thrilling myth we’re excited to encounter. But there’s also no real interest in making Atlantis feel like a real place, a genuine culture; a load of RADA standards ploughing through predictable power shifts and betrayals. Jo being put in the labyrinth feels more like her entering a slightly larger room. “Have a care” gets said three times by Atlanteans in episode five, a dated Britishism that’s apparently meant to feel like Old Speak, badly contrasted on screen with confusion over the phrase “you can say that again”.
“Those are my subconscious thoughts. I shouldn’t listen too hard, I’m not very proud of some of them” is a bit of a fave, and far more insightful than the “daisiest daisy” speech.
Check out the WhoThroughs for Season One, Season Two, Season Three, Season Four, Season Five, Season Six, Season Seven and Season Eight.
