Episode 120: The Savages (2)

Synopsis:

Having wandered into an area close to the laboratory presided over by scientist Senta, Dodo witnesses a wild-looking individual lurching down a corridor towards her...

This is Wylda, who has just had much of his life-force drained away - to be transferred into one of the inhabitants of this city. Weak and disorientated, the man doesn't even notice her. He stumbles towards a door which opens onto the outer wasteland.

Dodo sees Chal and Tor help Wylda, before going to investigate the sounds emanating from the laboratory. Here, Nanina is having her life-force drained.

In the council chamber, Jano is still trying to convince the Doctor of the benefits of their society when Steven rushes in to notify that Dodo has gone missing. The Doctor appears unconcerned, claiming she can look after herself.

She has been captured by lab technicians, who are unaware of who she is and think she has also been sent for transference. She threatens to smash the equipment.

After searching the city, Steven is barred from entering the laboratory. Edal agrees to go in instead, and informs Senta of who she is. She is released and rejoins Steven who is still accompanied by Flower and Avon. They refuse to believe her description of what she has seen.

Furious that they permitted one of the visitors to have seen the laboratory and what happens there, Edal has the two young citizens taken away under arrest.

Nanina has now been drained of energy like Wylda.

Dodo tries to warn the Doctor about what she saw, but he is too busy with the Elders to listen. He decides to return to the TARDIS to collect some documents to show them, and his companions agree to accompany him.

Jano is suspicious and orders Edal to follow them.

Sure enough, once outside the city the Doctor wants to know what Dodo saw in the lab. They come across Wylda, lying in the bushes where he was hidden by Chal. The Doctor sends Steven and Dodo to the TARDIS to collect medicine which will revive him.

Edal arrives and forces the Doctor to return with him to the city.

After they have gone, Steven and Dodo return with the medicine and give it to Wylda.

They are attacked by Chal and Tor, but Wylda stops them from harming the strangers - explaining how they had helped him.

Jano is challenged by the Doctor about the ethics underlying their society. Realising that he will never accept their way of life, the leading Elder orders the Doctor detained and instructs Senta to prepare for a very special experiment.

He is taken to the laboratory where Jano informs Senta that he will be extracting the Doctor's lifeforce. Normally, each life essence is shared amongst a number of citizens, but this time Jano intends that the Doctor's lifeforce, being so unique, will be transferred solely into himself. 

Senta is alarmed as this has never been attempted before, but Jano insists.

The Doctor is strapped to a gurney and placed in the transference machine. He passes out as the energy-draining process gets underway...

Data:

Written by Ian Stuart Black

Recorded: Friday 20th May 1966 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 5:35pm, Saturday 4th June 1966

Ratings: 5.6 million / AI 49

Designer: Stuart Walker

Director: Christopher Barry

Additional cast: Andrew Lodge, Christopher Denham, Tony Holland (Lab Technicians)

Critique:

Some guide books claim that The Savages is another 'appearances can be deceptive' story, like Galaxy 4.

This is true to an extent - we're supposed to see the Savages as dangerous and the city of the Elders a safe haven where enlightened good guys live - perhaps a race being besieged by the wild outsiders. The problem is that this deception isn't sustained long enough, and we already know halfway through the first episode that things aren't what they seem. We are told too quickly that the Elders are exploiting the primitive people. Tor keeps itching to kill people but Chal, from his very first appearance, is cautioning restraint from his friend.

The Doctor's suspicions about this society begin with his initial meeting with the Elders, which commences off screen. He stresses that he cannot "endorse" their society until he learns more about it.

He hasn't taken this approach before, so there must be something about the place that has raised his suspicions from the off. Might it have been the way the ragged men were hiding when he was first approached by Edal and Exorse?

He recognised this as a time of great peace and prosperity straight away, before he'd even set foot outside the TARDIS. Perhaps he already knew something of this planet - in the same way they seem to know so much about him.

It is odd that he perseveres in his attempts to know more about the Elders and their city, as though he knows there's a secret to be revealed.

It is even odder that Jano so quickly caves in and tells the Doctor how they go about gaining their greater wisdom, intellect and even looks - despite, as we mentioned last week, their foreknowledge of the Doctor. They must have known that he would oppose them.

This episode opens with Jano showing the Doctor the laboratory (the model of the set first seen in the opening instalment).

One has to wonder why Jano let the Doctor and his companions leave the city for the TARDIS, if he was only going to get someone to follow them and bring them back. He appears to have already decided to drain the Doctor's lifeforce, so is taking a gamble with him either leaving or - more likely - being killed or captured by the Savages. Presumably this is through his personal greed to have the Doctor's essence all to himself.

Last week we mentioned the racial undertones of the story, as one of the possible inspirations for Black's first script. He himself didn't seem to have had this foremost in his mind, as in a later interview he mentioned Gerry Davis changing the story title and claimed he only assumed it was because of the racial connotations.

Other critics have seen class division as a backdrop - a rich and powerful elite sustaining their privileged position through the physical and intellectual labour of others.

The other thing fans have picked up on is related to race - colonialism / imperialism. The Elders represent Great Britain, thriving on its exploitation of its colonies - their natural resources and the labour of their peoples.

It is hard to avoid the various inspirations when you look at some of the dialogue in this episode.

The sequence where Edal forces the Doctor back to the city furnishes the following exchange:

Edal: And you still waste time on this creature?

Doctor: This human being!

Edal: Why the concern, Doctor? They are only savages.

Doctor: They are men. Human beings, like you and me. Although it appears at the moment that you are behaving in a rather sub-human fashion.

Edal: They have not developed like we have. They are savages!

The Doctor continues this theme later with Jano:

Jano: How can you condemn this great artistic and scientific civilisation because of a few wretched barbarians?

Doctor: So your rewards are only for the people that agree with you?

Jano: No. No, of course not. But if you are going to oppose us...

Doctor: Oppose you? Indeed I am going to oppose you, just in the same way that I oppose the Daleks or any other menace to common humanity.

Jano: You are standing in the way of human progress.

Doctor: Human progress, sir? How dare you call your treatment of these people "progress"!

Jano: They are hardly people, Doctor, They are not like us.

Doctor: I fail to see the difference.

Jano: Do you not realise that all progress is based on exploitation?

Doctor: Exploitation indeed! This, sir, is protracted murder!

Jano: We have achieved a very great deal merely by the sacrifice of a few savages.
Doctor: The sacrifice of even one soul is far too great! You must put an end to this inhuman practice.

It's a remarkable performance by Hartnell, one which is rarely highlighted in the guide books thanks to the relative obscurity of this story.

The Doctor has come a long way since he seemed to be contemplating the murder of another "savage" in An Unearthly Child.

The location work for this story took place in a number of sandpits and quarries around the Home Counties.

It ought to be noted that we have now reached episodes 119 - 122, the 26th Doctor Who story. The series has been running for three years - and it is only now that a quarry is being used to depict an alien planet... 

Nowadays it's regarded as one of the series' biggest cliches, but the truth is that quarries and sandpits only became interchangeable alien planets once location filming became more common, thanks to lighter weight equipment and lower costs. When Russell T Davies brought the series back in 2005, he struggled to avoid this particular cliché - finally relenting when it came to Series 2's The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, and then it was filmed at night to make it look less quarry-like.

Doctor Who had filmed in a quarry as long ago as the start of Season 2 - but in The Dalek Invasion of Earth it was meant to be just that, the Dalek mine workings.

As he conducted more and more location filming, director Christopher Barry became aware of the poor facilities available to cast and crew at such remote areas. He would go on to champion improved catering facilities as seen above (Barry is on the left, accompanied by Peter Purves and Ewen Solon).

Toilet facilities were a different matter, as Caroline John and Katy Manning would often attest in interviews...

Trivia:

• The ratings continue their revival, with almost a million viewers added and a slight increase in the appreciation figure. The programme returned to the Top 50 most watched for the week (though only just).
• Future Doctor Who director Norman Stewart (Underworld, The Power of Kroll) was the Production Assistant on this story.
• If the Doctor's drug - D403 - can revitalise Wylda so rapidly, you wonder why the Doctor doesn't just offer the Elders this substance as an alternative to their parasitical ways.
• The New Zealand TV Weekly helped advertise the story's May 1969 debut in that country with a piece on Kiwi actor Ewen Solon. (The Savages was included in the fourth block of stories bought by the country. This did not include The Gunfighters, nor any of the later Hartnell Dalek stories as Terry Nation had by this time caused them to be withdrawn by the BBC for overseas sales).