WhoThrough: Doctor Who Season Six

The ongoing series sees Troughton off.

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.

THE DOMINATORS

The Dulcians have never met aliens, and have made their entire society peaceful — but somehow we’re meant to see this as a failing since they didn’t foresee alien bad dudes who want to steal…something they’d happily part with anyway. Yeesh. This hippie critique is rendered disingenuously, too — having been sold as a gullible culture who accept given information as fact, the Dulcians are infuriatingly cynical when told facts.

Zoe begins as the ultimate audience avatar — she’s literally seen the show, and is aware of the SF genre, what to worry about, what’s important. She’s dead keen to have a go at things, too. The show has a terrible inability to keep track of Quark numbers, which is only made worse when they start trying to tick them off on an on-ship display. Talk about the Quarks needing to ‘save power’ is a thin fix for the ‘Why do they even need slaves if they have robots?’ plot hole.

A neat finale would have been to have the Dominators tear each other apart, their violent nature ultimately self-destructive — this would balance the anti-hippie stuff, at least. “Only one heart” — funny how some ideas float around in the show until they land.

THE MIND ROBBER

The Celestial Toymaker done right. Strange how the heavily-episodic (The Chase, Keys of Marinus) and the mystical (Celestial Toymaker) haven’t worked great before but this does wonders with it — a combination of strong themes and strong direction. Jamie and Zoe in the void is so inventively shot and cut that any sense that the opener is a padding episode is totally sidestepped.

“This isn’t a joke, Jamie” — like us, hearing that “I think we’re lost” riff, Zoe knows an old gag when she hears one. A nicely unspoken detail: though we see the others’, we’re never shown the Doctor’s home on the scanner. Yet another step towards the Master with the Doctor-obsessed monitor-watcher. Things appearing in the studio during single takes, moved in while the camera is away, really sells the illusion. Having alt-Jamie finish his unicorn dream story helps make us believe it’s him. Zoe taking down Karkus is a fabulous moment of empowerment; intellectual understanding gives her strength. When non-stop recording is felt to be the norm, editing — like when the Doctor is tricked into a fake TARDIS — is a really powerful effect.

Thanks to scene blocking, when Jamie reads the ticker-tape about Medusa he’s reading right to left, which doesn’t make sense. (There’s a clever bit of repositioning to solve this later, when we need to see the tape close up.) Gulliver’s an interesting choice, him being a protagonist in Doctor-like adventures, and while he’s dated culturally Karkus and Rapunzel are (with Disney’s help) still very present in 2021.

THE INVASION

The way Watkins replaces Travers in the story is dreadfully half-arsed. Headed to London to see Travers is a feeble way to get the story going, and the Doctor’s insistence that IE need to be available immediately to sort out his TARDIS repairs becomes anger long before it’s earned.

Delightful to see Troughton barely able to get a word in with Isobel the photographer/model. Love Zoe beating the computer better than the Doctor did. UNIT’s spy photos, all odd angles, have a rare verisimilitude (as do the later ‘they look like fakes’ shots). Stunned in ep two that Vaughn really doesn’t blink. (What a great thing for the Doctor to find suspicious.) The Doctor being an ‘unofficial troublemaker’ operating with UNIT’s knowledge is arguably stronger than the format we later got with Pertwee.

First use of the word “feminist” ion the show? Isobel gets all the half-understandings and squealing of the worst companion moments — which only strengthens Zoe’s clear, competent and decisive action. (Hard to reconcile her with Anne Travers.) The ‘“canoe?” CUT TO’ is a rare use of such pacey grammar in these early series. The crash zooms as Watkins shoots Vaughn are great use of studio technique for an aesthetic goal. Turner seemed slated for death, then his big mission was cut out. The invasion itself — the IE gadgets everywhere, the people affected by the signal, the cybermen on the street — feels huge, arguably worth the savings of doing a long, simple story to that point.

I’m rather touched by how much Jamie values his radio — you realise he basically doesn’t have possessions. The conspiracy thriller first half (not unlike Enemy of the World with its iconic villain, running and hiding) is surprisingly good at staying compelling.

THE KROTONS

A population terrified of a wasteland is a tough sell when one can wander directly from it into their back entrance without so much as a door. The Krotons are watching Dr Who on TV and take a telesnap of Troughton. (Funny how this theme’s been here since very early. Later Jamie will watch Zoe and the Doctor on TV and impotently yell at them to get back in the TARDIS.) Nice bit of subtle direction as a figure in the background darts across before a group attack the Custodian. Amazing shot in episode 2 where the guest actor keeps blocking Troughton from the camera and he keeps leaning around to compensate. At a basic level, that the entrance to the Kroton’s machine goes left to right, but the rear exit also goes left to right, makes confusing geography that needn’t be.

A strange, alternate version of The Dominators. Characterisation of regulars in great nick — Zoe mad smart and confident of it, Jamie proactive and determined, Doctor weird and alien and compassionate (so sad about his umbrella) — shame about the Gonds. Squabbling, cockney/South African Krotons a potentially okay idea but doesn’t work. The Krotons are very tall, but you can’t really tell until episode 4 when they actually share single shots with humans.

THE SEEDS OF DEATH

Opening episodes would benefit from the two T-Mat locations looking more different. In the Doctor Who supercut of “people somehow hide behind things that don’t actually hide them” the ice warrior seeking an escapee in episode two takes the prize. Zoe berating ground control for being impatient is exactly why I love her. Zoe keeping her head while Phipps sobs and frets is wholly in character and really shows how needless a screaming peril monkey companion is — the people who live here are scared enough. Phipps, who builds a radio and an ice warrior disintegrator could be a new bestie for the Doc. Fascinating, if probably bad, choice to make the Doctor collapse from the seed pod gas, then see the same pods kill people, then give Troughton a week off — he’s potentially dead for aaaaaages!

Visual invention — hiding the Warriors with POV, warrior gunfire, models, projected countdown on Kelly’s face, gorgeous use of intercutting and fast editing — hampered by duff gravity acting and the sound of an object dropped off camera. The style of the countdown prep in episode two is like a music video. The first two episodes only exist because the TARDIS didn’t land on the moon in the first place. Battling a single ice warrior in episode 6 is like Terminator — so formidable, unstoppable. Much more effective than the unknown number on the moon. The action movie approach we get in the latter stages, especially with the Doctor zapping and blasting away Ice Warriors, makes it feel like we had Eric Saward script editing rather than Dicks.

THE SPACE PIRATES

Such a relief when the TARDIS shows up — half an episode getting through stuff you’d only need five minutes for — but then they don’t meet anyone for an episode and a half! Doesn’t matter how much Milo Clancey is set up as a killer, we’re just so relieved to see them meet someone.

It’s hugely exciting to get a clunky, utilitarian, real-world ship like Milo’s on the show at last. All plays like a space soap opera, with secrets coming out and betrayals over money. It’s partly the difficulty of the reconstruction, but I almost dozed off during episodes 3 and 4. There’s simply no core aspect for the cops, businesspeople and pirates to revolve around — no big dilemma, emotional drama or mystery to figure out. It’s such a relief when the dead dad shows up.

Footage of helmeted characters in space tends to look rather good — I wonder if that’s because we relate it to NASA footage of the time. The chanting 50s space opera music is an odd choice for the utilitarian, practical version of space travel this presents. Madeleine and Hermack have a daft scene explaining backstory they both know (and that she’s stopped worrying about) which normally would have come out through the Doctor.

I laugh every time Hermack says “Ian”. With Troughton’s departure announced, his “death” at the end of part five must have played as a potential ending for his Doctor. The Issigri Mining Corporation, the Space Corps…this is curiously akin to Red Dwarf (the creators of which would have been about 14 at the time).

THE WAR GAMES

It’s so usual that the gang get into trouble on arrival, no matter how contrived, that it’s thrilling for them to question just why it’s happening now, what’s motivating the refusal to listen? The trouble is more than just the system, it’s a parody of the system, abused to an end, with loads of questions raised — but also a firing squad that could be the end of the Doctor (and must have felt like it to audiences).

Doctor clearly a trigger: he is the reason Lady Buckingham and Carstairs start to work things out. Carstairs and Buckingham are rather delightful analogues for Ian and Barbara, showing both where the show came from and how far it has come. Lovely off-camera moment in episode one where Jamie’s overpowered a German in the back of a van — that “we can assume the usual” storytelling is rare, but very common in Moffat-Who. Anachronistic things play like the Meddling Monk, but we’re going to twist the twist.

Funny how being told the travel machines are green plays as a reveal; like describing how it smells. Showing off that the ray guns kill then later shooting Jamie is perfect construction for maximum stakes…except that it can only be undone with “they have a stun setting, too”. Time Lord tech being in play from the start make the ending feel driven-towards, if not the actual regeneration. The amount of shootings and fist fights make this tonally a lot more like season seven+ than even The Invasion. Being crushed by the space-time machine’s shrinking dimensions is brilliantly inventive. They keep forgetting to write Zoe smart — she looks at gadgets and asks the Doctor about them rather than having ideas of her own…but it’s not constant, and at least Jamie’s sexism gets a good mocking. The War Chief once again on the cusp of inventing the Master.

A black character being the first to show himself immune has subtexts both bad and good (the”special” savage, or the only clear thinker in a world of obedient white soldiers). “Strong personality and individuality” are the stated cause. Feels like a step forwards overall.

With ten episodes struggles are pleasingly hard won. It’s a slow, incremental process to get a resistance together and functioning, battles won before the war can be, as opposed to ‘turn on the rebellion’ moments in most four-parters where an angry mob quickly sorts things out. Episode 7 is a bit of a favourite: The crushing SIDRAT cliffhanger, the Doctor’s heroics in escaping that surrender, him stealing a travel machine and not being sure where it will land (!), the War Lord’s arrival. Also has a lovely “watch the 1917 zone”/“anywhere but the 1917 zone” cut, these modern devices really becoming part of the show now.

It’s an extraordinarily simple fix to the runaround nature of long stories: make it really hard to get from place to place, and every point of arrival only more risky. Most cliffhangers are built of changes to the premise, exciting developments — Romans! Travel capsules! The Doctor betrayed us! Time Lords are here! — rather than the standard life or death shifts that are easily undone. (But sure, a few of those, too.)

In a series that typically throws away the drama of change as an afterthought at the end of a story, that this whole thing was always about characters being taken out of time, travelling around and being returned makes it feel unusually whole. It was always meant to end this way, with the villians’ meddling and the Doctor’s paralleled, the costs for both paid in full.

Check out the WhoThroughs for Season One, Season Two, Season Three, Season Four and Season Five.