During rehearsals for The Robots of Death, Tom Baker was introduced to a man named Graham Williams. He was rather taken aback to learn that Williams was about to become his new producer.
The BBC had bowed to the pressure of attacks by Mary Whitehouse and her ilk, and had decided that a change of producership was needed on Doctor Who. Williams had been developing a new hard-boiled detective drama series which was to rival competition like The Sweeney - Target - which he hoped to produce. He suddenly found himself being taken off the project and moved over to produce Doctor Who, whilst his role on Target would go to Philip Hinchcliffe. A swap, basically.
Season 14 would therefore be Hinchcliffe's last, and he decided to go out with a bang. The final story of the season was to be the third commission from Robert Banks Stewart, who had written the previous two season finales (though Terror of the Zygons had been held back to launch Season 13).
Banks submitted a story titled "The Foe from the Future", whose villain was masked. The writer then got up in work setting up his own projects and had to pull out of further development on this story.
With the clock ticking, Hinchcliffe asked his script editor Robert Holmes to write the season finale himself, as there was not enough time for anyone else to do it. Holmes took some of Banks' ideas - such as the villain being masked and hailing from the future, but the rest is all his own material. he and Hinchcliffe had originally envisaged the Doctor's new companion to be a sort of Eliza Doolittle character, from Victorian times, whom the Doctor would mentor. The Victorian era was a favourite of Holmes' and he decided to cram in as many Victorian Gothic elements as he could.
Back in 1970, when planning Season 8, Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks had discussed how the Doctor had more than a hint of Sherlock Holmes about him, with the Dr Watson role going to the Brigadier. This had prompted thoughts of introducing a Professor Moriarty character to become his arch-enemy - equally clever but on the side of evil. This, of course, led to the creation of the Master.
In Talons, the parallels with Sherlock Holmes become even greater, as the Doctor steps from the TARDIS into the fog-shrouded alleyways of Victorian London in a deer-stalker hat and cape.
As with any six part story overseen by Bob Holmes, Talons has a main setting for four of the episodes, before transferring to a new locale for the other two, to give the viewers something new and stop the story dragging. The first section of Talons is set in and around a music hall - the Palace Theatre. A hugely popular BBC TV series of the time was an entertainments programme called The Good Old Days. This was filmed as though it were taking place in a Victorian music hall, with the artistes and the audience in appropriate period costume. There was a master of ceremonies - Leonard Sachs, who had appeared in The Massacre and would later play one of the incarnations of Borusa - would amuse the audience with amazing alliterations. In Talons, this role is replicated by the theatre owner Henry Gordon Jago. Comic magician Ali Bongo (real name William Oliver Wallace) was brought in to act as magic supervisor for the sequences where we see Li H'sen Chang performing his act. Bongo used to wear a turban, and to sport a drooping oriental moustache.
Chang is based on a number of Victorian and Edwardian stage magicians, most of whom were really Caucasian artists who dressed as Chinese, and often acted as such outside the theatre to maintain the illusion. China was so little known that the general public could believe that people really did have supernatural powers there. Probably the most famous of these was Chung Ling Soo. He was born plain William Ellsworth Robinson, in Westchester County, New York, in 1861. He began his magical
career on stage at age 14 under his own name, before adopting a more exotic Arabian persona. The famous magician Ching Ling Foo advertised that he would offer $1000 to anyone who could replicate his tricks. Robinson had worked out to copy the illusions, but failed to get the reward. Around 1900 he got a job at the Folies Bergere in Paris, and created a new act based on Foos - changing his name to the similar sounding Chung Ling Soo. Famously, Soo died on stage when he performed his illusion of catching a bullet between his teeth. This was on the stage of the Wood Green Empire in London, in March 1918. When he called for the curtain to be lowered, it was the only time he ever spoke English in public. In Talons, Chang performs a "catching a bullet" trick with the Doctor. A number of stage magicians have died performing this. In 1820 it was the magician's assistant, Madame Delinsky, who perished, whilst Arnold Buck died when, in 1840 the volunteer from the audience invited to load the gun replaced the bullet with some nails.
The theatrical setting allows Holmes to add another classic Horror character to be added to the mix - the Phantom of the Opera. The villainous Magnus Greel, a war criminal from the 51st Century, has been transported back in time to the 1800's, and the journey has left him horribly disfigured. He has lost his Time Cabinet, but has given Li H'sen Chang enhanced mental powers, after Chang had saved him when he arrived in China. Chang has hidden him away in the cellars beneath the Palace Theatre, after tracking the missing cabinet to London. Greel uses illusions to make it seem as though the cellar is haunted - to scare people away - but he also emerges from to time to time to prowl around the theatre at night. The Phantom of the Opera was written by Gaston Leroux, and was first published in serialised form from September 1909 to March 1910, with a book form later in 1910. It tells the story of Erik, a murderous music lover who lives in the ancient vaults deep below the Paris Opera. He champions the talents of a young singer, and kills anyone who prevents her gaining stardom. It was first filmed in 1925 by Universal, starring Lon Chaney, gaining a remake from the same studio in 1943 with Claude Rains. A Hammer version in 1962 featured Herbert Lom as the Phantom, and Patrick Troughton has a role as a rat catcher in the sewers. It is probably best known nowadays for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical which has been running somewhere in the world since 1986, and was filmed in 2004 with Gerard Butler as the Phantom.
Greel kills people in order to drain their life force to keep himself alive. He preys on young women, and a number of them have been reported missing in the area around the theatre in recent weeks. This prompts Casey, the stagehand, to surmise that "Jack" might be back. This is a reference to Jack the Ripper, who murdered five prostitutes in the Whitechapel district of East London between August and November, 1888. He was never caught, and many are the theories as to what his real identity might be. Some claim he killed far more than the five women attributed to him. The method Greel uses to despatch his victims leads the Doctor to describe him as a "vampire" - enabling Holmes to add Bram Stoker's Dracula into the mix. More on him next time.
The setting for Talons is said to be Limehouse, which lies just a little further east than Whitechapel, although the Doctor and Professor Litefoot's description of the theatre's location actually places it closer to Holborn, as the old River Fleet never extended so far east. If the Venerable Bede really did share a salmon from the Fleet with the Doctor then he must have taken it up to the North East of England, as there is no record of Bede ever leaving Tyneside. Limehouse was the location for London's Chinatown in Victorian times. Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes visit an opium den in the area in one of his stories - The Man With The Twisted Lip. Limehouse is also the setting for many of the stories by Sax Rohmer, which chronicle the dastardly machinations of the super-villain Fu Manchu. As well as a criminal mastermind with control over Chinese secret societies like the Tongs, Fu Manchu is also a brilliant scientist, who prefers to do away with his enemies through exotic poisons rather than bullets or knives.
The character first appeared in 1913 in the novel The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu, which was comprised of a number of linked short stories published the year before. Fu Manchu's nemesis is the Scotland Yard detective Nayland Smith, who is assisted in his exploits by Dr Petrie, who narrates the story - just as it is Dr Watson who narrates the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Watson / Petrie character in Talons is given to Professor Litefoot. Greel is clearly based upon Fu Manchu, with elements of the Phantom and Dracula thrown in for good measure.
The machinations of Fu Manchu have been filmed on a number of occasions, including Boris Karloff's portrayal in The Mask of Fu Manchu in 1932, but Christopher Lee is probably best known for playing the character in a number of movies - five in all.
The Talons of Weng-Chiang remains a very popular story amongst fans, although it has come in for criticism for its portrayal of the Chinese, and its use of white actors playing Chinese roles. As well as the main role of Chang being played by John Bennett, we clearly see stuntmen Max Faulkner, Alan Chuntz and Stuart Fell made up as Tong members. Critics need to be reminded that it was made at a time when minorities were still being stereotyped in film and TV, and "blacking up" was an accepted theatrical tradition. Doesn't make it right, but it is a product of its times.
The pairing of Jago and Litefoot continued years later when the characters were resurrected by Big Finish audio productions, and there was even talk at the time of them getting a spin-off show.
Next time: the Graham Williams era begins as it means to go on - with a crisis. Instead of vampires, we get creepy goings-on in a lighthouse...
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