Episode 143: The Highlanders (3)

Synopsis:

As they are rowed out to the Annabelle, Ben, Jamie and McLaren see a corpse being dumped overboard - and Trask threatens that this is the only way out for them...

The prisoners are forced below decks to a cramped hold where there are already several other captives. McLaren recognises one of them - a man named Willy MacKay. He is the true master of the Annabelle, but his ship has been stolen from him by Trask, his treacherous First Mate. MacKay had been smuggling guns for the Jacobites when captured by Government forces, and Trask had switched sides to avoid arrest.

He is initially suspicious of Ben, being English, but the others vouch for him. It is Ben who works out that they are going to be sold as slave labour.

Polly and Kirsty approach Inverness, where they decide to pose as orange sellers. They seek out Lt. Ffinch to help them, and find him at the Sea Eagle Inn. His sergeant suspects the women are the ones they were hunting the day before, but Ffinch is easily blackmailed by them and he insists they are old friends. 

They are being observed by an old woman, sitting at a nearby table.

Solicitor Grey is on the Annabelle addressing the prisoners. He informs them that they will all be pardoned if they sign a contract, offering them transportation to the West Indies and work on the plantations there for a period of seven years. The alternative is that they will be hanged as rebels.

MacKay warns everyone that he has witnessed conditions on these plantations, and warns them not to sign.

He refuses to do so, as do Ben, Jamie and McLaren.

Ben then asks to read the contract before he thinks of signing one. When Grey hands them to him, he tears them up. Trask orders him taken away and chained up.

Polly sees Grey's clerk Perkins and starts toying with him to gain information about her friends.

The old woman joins them, offering to play cards. Polly discovers that this is the disguised Doctor.

Grey arrives, but fails to recognise the Doctor. He leaves with Polly and Kirsty, instructing Perkins not to set foot outside the inn for the next ten minutes or he will shoot him dead.

The Doctor takes the women to a nearby barn, where he reveals that his pistol wasn't loaded. As an old woman he has been able to move about and gather information from the Redcoats, and tells them that their friends are being held on the ship. Polly suggests a plan to rescue them, but the Doctor thinks that they should capture the whole ship instead, then they could get everyone to safety in France.

They will need weapons, and Kirsty knows that the Redcoats will sell anything for a little money.

Whilst Polly wants immediate action, the Doctor then falls asleep.

Grey returns to the Annabelle with new copies of the contracts. He decides with Trask that Ben should be made an example of, to discourage the others from refusing to sign. 

The Doctor, Polly and Kirsty have managed to scrape together a few weapons, but hardly enough for their plan to seize the ship. Polly then discovers that Kirsty has been concealing a gold ring which they could have sold. She did not want to part with it as it belonged to Bonnie Prince Charlie, who had presented it to her father. The Doctor convinces her that it should be used to help save the Prince's supporters.

In the harbour, Ben is brought up on deck and has a rope tied around his waist. He is hauled up into the air, then dropped down into the murky waters of the dock...

Data:

Written by Gerry Davis & Elwyn Jones

Recorded: Saturday 17th December 1966 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 31st December 1966

Ratings: 7.4 million / AI 46

Designer: Geoffrey Kirkland

Director: Hugh David

Additional cast: Andrew Downie (Willy MacKay)

Critique:

The Highlanders is about as comedic as the Troughton era gets. (Some might think the next story the funniest - but that's more unintentionally funny). The Romans is often singled out for its humour, but not this fellow historical. Like the Hartnell story, the humour is very much juxtaposed against some terribly grim goings-on. The past was a dark and dangerous place.

The humour mainly comes from the star. After this story, the Troughton Doctor will be rapidly toned down. The Doctor is dressed as a little old woman for the entire episode, and seems to act erratically and impulsively. He once again runs rings around Perkins, but when Polly wants some action he simply yawns and falls asleep.

A comedy sequence in the inn, with the Doctor as the old woman, was cut late in the day, so the humour could have been even more overt. This scene would have entailed the Doctor trying to save his beer as he is being pushed around by some Redcoats and getting cross-eyed and dizzy, only to end with him knocking their head together.

Michael Elwyn continues to play Algernon Ffinch as a stereotypical upper class twit, having rings run round him by Polly and Kirsty.

Considering that she is often perceived as a typical screaming companion, it should be noted how proactive Polly is in this story. She takes the lead straight away her friends have been captured, arguing with Kirsty over her apparent helplessness.

It is Polly who spurs her to action and comes up with ideas such as blackmailing Ffinch and posing as orange sellers.

With this, Polly is recalling that famous 17th Century figure Nell Gwyn (1650 - 1689). A popular actress of the Restoration stage, she was best remembered as a mistress of King Charles II and is mentioned in the diaries of Samuel Pepys. Before her fame she had sold oranges at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane.

Ben is also given plenty to do, on the eve of his character being side-lined by the arrival of Jamie. He tricks Grey into handing over the signed contracts which he then destroys, and later pays the price for this with a decent action sequence - more rigging-hanging than cliff-hanging.

Ben's tearing up of the contract was inspired by a similar scene in Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped.

Filming took place at Ealing on Wednesday 16th November, to record the cliff-hanger - Michael Craze not being required for the recording of the fifth instalment of The Power of the Daleks. Of the guest cast only Dallas Cavell and David Garth were needed.

Fight Arranger and stuntman Peter Diamond doubled for Craze in the climactic scene where Ben is lowered into the water, having also been the dead body dropped into the harbour at the cliff-hanger of the previous episode.

Rehearsals were cut short for the regulars as they had to do location filming on the next story - The Underwater Menace - in Dorset. This had also entailed them having to give up their day off.

Craze and Hines then missed a further day due to other filming at Ealing.

The opening titles for this episode were played over a shot of bubbles rising, as the reprise from the previous instalment was reduced significantly.

Both recording breaks involved Anneke Wills and Hannah Gordon - the first to allow them to change into their orange seller costumes, and the other to allow them to move, with Troughton, from the inn set to the barn one.

Wills suffered a fluff when she got Ffinch's name wrong. His full name was supposed to be given as 'Algernon Thomas Alfred Ffinch', but Wills got the Algernon and Alfred mixed up.

When Polly says that his disguise suits him, the Doctor replies by calling her a "saucy girl". This was an ad-lib by Troughton.

The closing titles mirrored the opening ones - played over a shot of bubbles rising to the surface.

Trivia:

• The ratings actually increase by around half a million viewers - no doubt due to the New Year's Eve timeslot. The appreciation figure remains stable. It varies by only a single point over the course of the entire story.
• The old woman named Mollie, seen in Episode 2, was supposed to feature in this episode as well, serving in the inn, but her role was given instead to an extra as it didn't require a dialogue part.
• Willy MacKay was originally going to be played by Russell Hunter. However, he had to withdraw late in the day when veteran actor Duncan Macrae fell ill and could not appear in a pantomime version of Treasure Island in Edinburgh. Hunter was called upon to take over, and so MacKay was recast with Downie taking the role. Hunter would eventually appear in Doctor Who a decade later, playing Uvanov in The Robots of Death.
• Downie would later feature in the film Soft Top, Hard Shoulder (1993) - written by and starring Peter Capaldi.

The Art of... The Highlanders

The Highlanders was novelised in 1984, with the hardback released in August and the paperback following in November. The artist is Nick Spender. He stated in an interview that he took a long time getting Frazer Hines' likeness just right, and also got a couple of friends to pose in Highland outfits and pretend to fight for the background figures. The image of Alexander McLaren is based on William Dysart. It was extremely unusual at this time in the run of novelisations for artists to be permitted to use actors' likenesses.

Spender based the TARDIS on a photo from The Masque of Mandragora - the same one he used on the cover for Doctor Who - The Aztecs.

The book has never reissued with a new cover.

The soundtrack was released in 2000 with the usual photomontage cover featuring some of the cast. The Troughton image derives from a publicity photo session for the following story. Jamie is seen only side on, so a much better image really ought to have been chosen. Not sure why they didn't just use the whole image of the Doctor and companions being threatened by Jamie and Alexander. Young McLaren is quite prominent on the cover, despite being killed off half way through the first episode.

Hines provided the linking narration.

The novelisation was released in audiobook format in April 2012, using Spender's artwork. The larger, squarer format allows us to see another Redcoat on the right.

This time the reader is Anneke Wills.

The soundtrack was recently re-released on translucent red and blue vinyl - in June 2024. Demon Records have opted to concentrate on the Battle of Culloden for an exciting, attention-grabbing cover - even though the conflict is over when we join the story and nothing is actually seen (or heard) of it. Misleading, but I doubt very much if any non-fans ever buy these releases.

The inner sleeves have Radio Times-style listings for the episodes printed on them.

Finally, with no animated DVD / Blu-ray release on the horizon, the movie database site has provided its own colour montage to illustrate this story. The three key guest artists, plus Jamie, are featured along with Troughton larking about with the Jacobite bonnet.

The story is one which many fans would like to see animated, but there are some obstacles. If you've seen what they do with the Doctor's checked trousers, then you'd realise that tartan would be very difficult to depict. The story also has a large number of sets and speaking characters - plus it's a historical - which might all work against it being an obvious choice for animation.

Story 298: Eve of the Daleks

In which the Doctor attempts to reboot the TARDIS, in order to overcome the damage caused by exposure to the Flux.

She plans to take Dan and Yaz on holiday whilst this takes place, as it will not be safe to remain inside the ship. However, instead of an exotic location they find themselves in the basement of a storage facility on the outskirts of Manchester. 

It is New Year's Eve, 2021, and the manager of the facility, Sarah, has been let down yet again by her colleague. There is only a single customer - Nick - who turns up at this time every year. He puts into storage items left behind from his many failed relationships.

The Doctor detects a temporal signal on an upper floor. Nick has just exited his unit when he is confronted by a Dalek, which exterminates him.

The Doctor and her companions arrive too late, and the Dalek has already gone down to the reception area where it kills Sarah. When the TARDIS trio arrive, they learn that the Daleks have upgraded weaponry. All three are exterminated...

It is New Year's Eve, 2021, and Sarah has found herself having to work the late shift at her storage facility  as her colleague has failed to turn up yet again. She has a single customer - Nick, who always comes tonight to drop off items left behind from his failed relationships.

The TARDIS materialises in the basement...

Time has jumped backwards, and the Doctor and her companions are aware that something has happened - a sense of deja vu. Then they recall finding Nick's body and rush to his unit.

He and Sarah have also registered that time has somehow slipped backwards, and Nick has left his floor before the Dalek turns up.

At reception, he discovers that the building is sealed by a forcefield. The Dalek appears and exterminates him.

Sarah has gone to an upper level to see if there is anything that might be used as a weapon in her colleague's unit.

The Dalek finds and kills her. It exterminates the Doctor and her companions once again, after pointing out that there has been a time malfunction which has reset the last few minutes.

The cycle begins again, though the Doctor spots that the clock has gone back by one minute less. They may be able to exploit the fact that they are aware of the time slippage but have slightly shorter each time in which to formulate a plan to break out of the loop. She is aware that the Daleks will be thinking along the same lines, however.

When next the five are exterminated, the Dalek reveals that the damaged TARDIS is the cause of this time slippage.

As each loop comes round, the Doctor and her companions, with Sarah and Nick come up with possible plans to avoid the Dalek and to arm themselves against it. At one point Dan pretends to be a customer, mistaking the Dalek for a robot employee, just to divert it from the Doctor's actions. This works for only a short period.

Sarah learns that Nick's regular visits are due to him having a crush on her. He thinks he has avoided the Dalek - only to be killed by a second one. The Daleks have adapted by increasing their numbers...

The Doctor discovers a hoard of potential weapons - fireworks. One of the Daleks tells her that they have despatched this death squad to kill her for her role in the destruction of their fleet by the Flux. She points out that she merely made use of the Sontaran scheme - but they kill her anyway.

Several more attempts are made to survive the trap, which all end with the extermination of the TARDIS crew and their new friends.

When the Doctor and her companions are next killed, they know that they will have to act in the next cycle, as after that time will have sorted itself and anything which takes place will be permanent.

They lure the Daleks down to the basement where the fireworks have been stored, bolstered by various highly flammable materials. The Doctor then uses her Sonic to give false life readings, so that the Daleks will think they are gathered there. They are instead about to flee through a gap in the forcefield.

The home-made bomb is detonated and the Daleks are destroyed as the entire building blows up.

Not far away, the blast is witnessed by Karl Wright - the young man who had been hunted by T'zim Sha a few years ago. He thinks it is all part of the New Year celebrations. Sarah and Nick decide to go travelling together, whilst the Doctor retrieves the rebooted TARDIS. She is now aware that Yaz has feelings for her...

Eve of the Daleks was written by Chris Chibnall, and was first broadcast on 1st January 2022. It is the first of a trip of Specials which will culminate in him and Jodie Whittaker leaving the series.

For a festive special it is very small scale, and that is all down to it being filmed at the tail end of the Covid pandemic, when the various restrictions had merely been loosened, but not dropped.

There are only two guest artists in studio / location, with a third appearing only on video calls. The setting also lends itself to a controllable environment.

Neither Russell T Davies nor Steven Moffat had looked to the Daleks for their festive specials except for the odd cameo - saving them for their standard series stories. RTD had argued that you cant's have Daleks without many deaths - and this wasn't the sort of thing families wanted on Christmas night. Even Terry Nation had delivered an entirely Dalek-free episode for The Feast of Steven, the Christmas instalment of the otherwise bloodthirsty The Daleks' Master Plan.

Chibnall clearly saw mass death and destruction at New Year as being more acceptable, as he delivered Dalek stories for all but one of his specials.

It's not as if any of the deaths actually matter in this year's story, as time keeps resetting and everyone survives anyway, and his earlier specials had often included a healthy dose of humour to lighten the mood.

The main inspiration is obvious. Dan even mutters something about Groundhog Day at one point, to describe their situation.

This hugely popular 1993 comedy, starring Bill Murray, sees a cynical TV weatherman stuck in a temporal loop, reliving each day as he visits a town which celebrates the titular event. It's not a pure time loop, as he gets the chance to change his ways, Scrooge-like, over the course of his experiences. If A Christmas Carol was one of its inspirations, then it also counts here. In the case of Eve of the Daleks, it is the relationship between Sarah and Nick - initially antagonistic on her part, with unspoken / unrequited love on his - which is the focus.

This is mirrored by the relationship between the Doctor and Yaz - the former seemingly oblivious to her companion's feelings, and Yaz in a similar situation to Nick. 

As a full length story it rather drags, thanks to its repetitive nature. It would have made a far more exciting half hour. The set-up is interesting, and the way in which the situation is resolved is interesting - but there's just too much of the same thing in between.

Another problem I have is the whole notion that Sarah would be working on New Year's Eve in that sort of setting. I've had a quick Google and there isn't a single one near me that is open 24/7, let alone on a major holiday.

Moffat's timey-wimey stories were blessed with invention, but this just doesn't have much.

That small guest cast comprises Irish comic actor Aisling Bea as Sarah. She's appeared in a few movies, but is better known for her appearances on comedy TV shows or stand-up.

Nick is Adjani Salmon, who is actually better known for his writing and directing. He wrote and starred in the BAFTA nominated Dreaming While Black. This began life as a webcast before being picked up by BBC Three.

In a cameo role, seen only on video calls, is Pauline McLynn, playing Mary - Sarah's mother. McLynn will forever be known as tea-pushing Mrs Doyle in C4's Father Ted.

One further cameo is the appearance at the climax of Jonny Dixon, playing Karl once again - the young man from The Woman Who Fell To Earth.

Overall, an okay story which seems popular with many fans, though I found it a little dull due to the aforementioned repetition. A few less time-loops would have suited me better.

Things you might like to know:

• This special was supposed to be a lot bigger and spectacular, linked very closely to the previous two Dalek festive stories - Resolution and Revolution of the Daleks - to form a proper "Reconnaissance Dalek Trilogy". Covid led to a radical rethink, shrinking the story down to what we see here.
• The subsequent Sea Devil story hadn't been planned when Chibnall first wrote this, and he had the ending link directly to The Power of the Doctor's opening scene.
• There is an in-joke when the Dalek tells Dan: "I am not Nick" - as Nick Briggs is, of course, providing their voices as usual.
• Another Nick - Pegg - is inside one of the Daleks. He had fallen foul of the series, and DWM, after leaving a very rude message aimed at both the magazine and the BBC in the crossword he compiled for the mag.
• Chibnall claimed this episode took only two weeks to write. Kinda shows, I'm afraid.
• The opening credits don't appear until 9m 10s in, which is a record for the programme.

Episode 142: The Highlanders (2)

Synopsis:

Polly has fallen into a concealed pit. As she scrabbles to climb out, a hand reaches down towards her - clutching a dagger...

The hand belongs to Kirsty, who thought that a Redcoat might have fallen into the animal trap. In trying to pull Polly out, she falls in herself. They hear the approach of some soldiers, commanded by Lt Ffinch. He berates his men for allowing two women to escape and sends them off to search further. Noting that he is alone, Polly and Kirsty lure him towards the trap, and he also tumbles in.

They tie him up and rob him.

The Doctor and Ben, meanwhile, have been transported to Inverness, where they have been locked in a dank dungeon with many Jacobite captives, including Jamie and his Laird.

As the Doctor dresses McLaren's wounds, he notices an embroidered cloth hidden under his coat. This proves to be Prince Charles Edward Stuart's personal standard - given to the old man by the Prince himself during the recent battle.

The Doctor realises he can use this as a means to escape. He claims to have information about an assassination attempt on the Duke of Cumberland. He is removed from the dungeon to speak with someone in authority.

Polly and Kirsty will use Ffinch's money to get themselves to Inverness, and they also take some personal belongings of the lieutenant - including a lock of hair - with which to blackmail him should he try to interfere with them.  His commanding officer - Colonel Atwood - would be interested to know how he had been overpowered and robbed by a couple of girls.

Solicitor Grey and his clerk Perkins meet with a sea captain named Trask, with whom they are arranging the illegal transportation of Jacobite prisoners to slavery in the West Indies.

Grey is told of the Doctor's claim, remembering him as the Hanoverian medical man he had met earlier.

Having sensed his greed, the Doctor produces the Stuart standard to show how close he was to the Prince, and therefore party to his plans. He then suggests that he and Grey collaborate to capture the fugitive and split the £30,000 reward money between them.

He then tricks the solicitor into thinking that he might have something medically wrong with him - and takes the opportunity to tie him up and shove him in a closet.

When Perkins is called in, he does something similar to overpower him - allowing him to make his escape.

Ffinch is eventually helped out of the trap by his sergeant - who also blackmails him to keep quiet about how he had found him. Ffinch must provide drinks for the company, but having lost his money he defers this until they get back to Inverness.

Perkins warns Trask of the Doctor's escape and Grey is freed. The Doctor hides in the scullery of the Sea Eagle Inn. A woman named Mollie works here, cooking and washing laundry.

Still believing that the Doctor is closely linked to Bonnie Prince Charlie, Trask decides to question Ben, Jamie and McLaren. They are to be transferred with some other prisoners to his ship - the Annabelle. This is moored near the dock where the Inn is located.

The Doctor has borrowed clothing from the scullery, and is now disguised as an old woman to avoid capture.

As they are rowed out to the Annabelle, the captives see a canvas-wrapped corpse being dropped over the side into the sea. Trask warns that this is the only way any of them will ever get off his ship...

Data:

Written by: Gerry Davis & Elwyn Jones

Recorded: Saturday 10th December 1966 - Riverside Studio 1

First broadcast: 5:50pm, Saturday 24th December 1966

Ratings: 6.8 million / AI 46

Designer: Geoffrey Kirkland

Director: Hugh David

Additional cast: Dallas Cavell (Trask), Barbara Bruce (Mollie)

Critique:

The draft script originally specified that the plantations where the captives would be sent to were in Barbados and Jamaica. Gerry Davis named Trask's ship the Annabelle after reading how slave ships often had pleasant sounding names despite their horrific function.

The Doctor's bamboozling of Grey and, especially Perkins, in this episode is regarded as one of the highlights of the early Troughton era, and very much shows what the production team intended to do with the new Doctor's character. 

He has already impersonated someone to get into Grey's presence, but once there he rapidly overpowers him - first verbally and then physically. When Perkins arrives, he makes him think that Grey's frantic knocking is all in his own head and, when the poor clerk claims not to have a headache, the Doctor gives him one by banging his head on the table. It's all rather violent stuff - but played very much for laughs.

The Doctor does threaten someone with a pistol - but it is made clear that he would never actually use it.

Once he has escaped, the Doctor then takes to stealing clothes to create disguises. In this case an old washer-woman. He'll continue to adopt this disguise next week, before swapping it for another.

The Doctor also acts impulsively - something which will be totally dropped once this incarnation becomes the first of the quiet manipulators. He says things just for fun, which might annoy or even threaten their lives - like when he shouts "Down with King George!" in the dungeon, just to hear the echo.

The tone of the episode fluctuates wildly, but then you remember that this went out in the early evening of Christmas Eve.

Cast as Captain Jebb Trask was Dallas Cavell, who had featured in the series on two previous occasions - first as the roadworks overseer in The Reign of Terror, then as the convict Bors in The Daleks' Master Plan. He had just come out of hospital, following a hernia operation when he began filming at Ealing. He elects to play Trask like Long John Silver. (The last word of the episode is his "Arr!..").

Barbara Bruce, playing Mollie, had been an extra on The Chase.

The day before recording, a brand new opening titles sequence had been recorded at Television Centre TC2, which featured the Doctor's face for the first time. This would not be used straight away, however.

As scripted, Kirsty was to have threatened Ffinch in the animal trap with her knife, but as she now had his captured pistol it was decided to change the dialogue to reflect this. Some gruesome dialogue from Grey was also dropped, when he threatened to flay "Dr Von Wer" should he be wasting his time.

Of the two recording breaks, one was used to allow Troughton to change into his old woman disguise, and the other allowed Craze, Hines and Donald Bissett (McLaren) to move from the dungeon set.

It is a great pity that Geoffrey Kirkland did not do more Doctor Who, as we can see from the telesnaps that he managed to design some highly effective sets for this episode, including the use of water. 

Filming of the dockside scenes had taken place at Ealing on Friday 11th and Wednesday 16th November.

The Riverside sets are either indoors - a dungeon, Grey's office or the wash-house / scullery - or they are external but at night and in the fog, so atmospherically lit and filmed.

This is a story which would definitely be even more highly regarded if it could be seen as well as heard.

Two scenes were cut from the episode before broadcast. The first was in the dungeon, where the Doctor suggested that Jamie play a tune to cheer up the prisoners. Wishing he had his full pipes, the boy played a tune on his chanter, which the Doctor then tried to copy on his recorder.

The second sequence came at the end of the episode in the wash-house, where Mollie was unhappy with the Redcoats searching her scullery as the Doctor hid. After the soldiers had gone, she turned to see the Doctor's clothes hanging on her washing line.

Trivia:

• The ratings remain stable compared with the opening instalment, though the episode dropped from 67th to 89th most watched programme for the week, despite only having 0.1 million fewer viewers. No doubt this was due to all the additional / unique festive programming.
• At one point Ffinch threatens his men with 500 lashes apiece should they fail to capture the fugitive women. Anyone flogged thus would be dead long before they reached the first 100, and Gerry Davis took the opportunity to amend this dialogue when it came to the novelisation.
• A few synopses of this episode claim that a bound prisoner is dropped into the sea to drown, and another even claims that Ben and Jamie witness a keel-hauling. However, the telesnaps clearly show that it is a shrouded corpse which is dropped overboard at the cliff-hanger:

• Reveille published a full page piece on the stars of Doctor Who for the week 22 - 28th December. This included new boy Frazer Hines.

Inspirations: Cold War

A fairly straightforward one this - one of the most derivative Doctor Who stories ever. Not that Mr Gatiss hid the fact - he mentioned everything in interviews at the time.

Not only do a number of movies inspire Cold War, but earlier Doctor Who stories as well - primarily Troughton era ones.

Once one of the "Big Three" monsters, it looked for a time like the Ice Warriors were never going to make it into the new series. Steven Moffat himself was not impressed by them, regarding them as lumbering green giants which were difficult to make threatening to modern audiences. he worried that there might be little you could do with them that was original - and this story would have done nothing to change his mind on that score.

It was only at the insistence of Gatiss that Moffat agreed to bring them back. They are revamped, design-wise, but only slightly. Instead, Gatiss opts to look more at their background, inspired no doubt by their inclusion in a number of spin-offs (DWM comic strip and New Adventures novels especially).

One issue of contention is Gatiss' decision to show that the Ice Warriors are actually just wearing armour - as this was the opposite of what their designer, Martin Baugh, intended, and he ought to know. As a Grand Marshal, Skaldak really ought to have looked like the so-called "Ice Lords" seen between The Seeds of Death and The Monster of Peladon. We saw an actual Grand Marshal in the first of those stories, played by Graham Leaman.

The idea that they are skinny beings with claws that fail to match their pincer-like hands and with poorly rendered CGI faces is a great disappointment...

The starting point for Cold War is their very first story - The Ice Warriors. It took the whole of its first episode for the Martian to wake up but here, in the rushed 45 minute format, we learn that the creature has been found entombed in the ice in the Arctic and it is up and about before the opening credits have rolled.

Varga had also been found entombed in ice for many centuries, and was found by a group tasked with something else but which included a scientist with a secondary interest. Varga was found by an scientist with an archaeological background - Arden - when setting up seismic detectors, whilst Skaldak is found by the Russian military on an oil-seeking expedition, but which includes a civilian scientist - Grisenko.

Both Varga and Skaldak are awakened prematurely, and are at first thought to be of ancient terrestrial origins.

In both cases, the Ice Warrior finds themselves cut adrift from their own time and so desperately seeks to exploit their new-found situation to their advantage to get back in touch with their own kind.

Their actions escalate to threaten the whole Earth - Varga by wrecking the ionisation programme and Skaldak by triggering nuclear war - which brings us to the story title.

The Cold War is the period which lasted from the fall of Berlin in May 1945 through to Glasnost and Perestroika in the late 1980's - symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. The period was defined by war by proxy, with a number of global conflicts behind which lay the US and USSR, though they never dirtied their own hands publicly.

If a conflict with actual fighting was a "hot war", then one played out through "diplomacy" and string-pulling was therefore a "cold" one.

Gatiss elected to set his story during the 1980's, when the Cold War was hotting up again thanks to the sabre-rattling of Ronald Reagan and Mrs Thatcher, coinciding with a series of short-lived hawks in charge at the Kremlin.

This '80's setting is reinforced by Grishenko's love of music of the period - Duran Duran and Ultravox being specifically referenced.

The other big inspiration for Cold War is the submarine genre (sub-genre, anyone?). Gatiss specifically mentioned films like The Hunt for Red October (1990) which is set in the same period. Other sub-based films of recent years include Crimson Tide (1995), or the earlier Gray Lady Down (1978). Bond's The World Is Not Enough (1999) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) feature submarines prominently. Gatiss also mentioned the splendid German miniseries Das Boot (1981). War films like The Enemy Below (1957) and Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) had inspired the classic Star Trek episode "Balance of Terror", which first introduced the Romulans.

The submarine we see here is no CGI construct. It's a good old-fashioned model courtesy of Mike Tucker's Model Unit. We last saw a model submarine in the show in The Sea Devils, and the filming techniques - all done in the dry - are virtually the same.

This is Clara's turn to ask why she can understand foreign languages - something which each new companion goes through these days. This had always been glossed over by the programme, until Sarah brought it up in The Masque of Mandragora. In Rose it was confirmed that it was a function of the TARDIS.

Another Troughton nod is the manner in which the Doctor is conveniently separated from the TARDIS. This is said to be the fault of the HADS, the Hostile Action Displacement System which we first heard about in The Krotons.

The Pertwee era Peladon stories are also referenced as the Doctor describes himself once being an Earth Ambassador, and when he tells Skaldak of his people's achievements in the future.

Next time: I won't get the order of stories mixed up... This time it really will be a ghost story / romance mash-up.

What's Wrong With... Mawdryn Undead

So far for the 20th Anniversary we have seen the return of Omega and of the Mara, and this time it's the Black Guardian - last seen only in the closing minutes of The Armageddon Factor. It was also decided to bring back an old companion and, as the main setting was a school, Ian Chesterton - who goes right back to the very first episode - was the natural choice. However, William Russell was otherwise engaged, so second choice was Harry Sullivan - part of the classic Season 12 line-up. It was conceivable that he might now be in the teaching profession. However, Ian Marter was also otherwise engaged.

Third choice proved not to be busy elsewhere - Nicholas Courtney, reprising his role as the Brigadier.

The Brig might tell the Doctor that he knows how many beans make five - but I'm afraid the notion of the Brigadier as a mathematics teacher just does not seem right at all.

Unfortunately, writer Peter Grimwade opted to pick the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977 as a historic event upon which to anchor his tale - as the characters separated in time needed to know that this had happened and when they where.

There had always been debate about just when the UNIT stories were set, and it was generally believed to be in the near future (despite the on-screen car registration plates, calendars and pre-decimal currency notices arguing against this).

The usual timeline began with The Web of Fear, which was said to be 40 years after The Abominable Snowmen, which has a 1935 setting. (Ironically, now that we can see The Web of Fear we can note that the Tube map is all wrong for any near future dating). The Invasion was then said to be a couple of years after Lethbridge Stewart first met the Doctor, with Spearhead from Space another year at least after that.

This took us into the late 1970's - and then Sarah came along and claimed that she came from 1980.

Mawdryn Undead then tells us that by 1977 the Brigadier had already retired...

The dates were impossible to reconcile, and the great "UNIT Dating Controversy" really took to flight.

It's all sorted now, thanks to Sarah Jane Smith - the very person who helped create the headache. The Sarah Jane Adventures clearly give Sarah's birthdate, making all of the UNIT stories contemporary with the dates they were broadcast.

As mentioned, we see the return of the Black Guardian, out for revenge on the Doctor for denying him the Key to Time. For some reason he claims that he cannot be seen to be involved in his actions against the Doctor - but we are never told why this should be the case. If it's to stop the White Guardian noticing then he doesn't do a very good job as he's waiting in the wings just 8 episodes later.

Unable to act himself, what does the Black Guardian do? Well. he gets himself an agent to act on his behalf. And who he chooses is a public schoolboy. Yes, Turlough is an alien, keen to flee Earth, but he has no special powers or abilities. He lacks any real ruthlessness, or homicidal tendencies that could be exploited. He's just an untrustworthy, cowardly bully. Hardly the right person to recruit to assassinate the Doctor - whom the Guardian knows for a fact to be hard to defeat.

As a weapon, Turlough is about as threatening as a chicken vol-au-vent.

Mawdryn and his friends want to die, but keep regenerating. But we know that Time Lords can be killed under certain circumstances - quite a lot actually. The mutants could simply destroy their bodies in such a way that they couldn't regenerate - scattering their atoms through space for instance. They could simply climb into the reactor of their spaceship.

They know that the interaction of two of the same person from different time zones is highly dangerous, so why try to avoid it when it's the very thing that will allow them to die?

Oddly, the 1983 Brigadier is able to own the same TARDIS homing device already given to him back in 1977 - the same object from two time zones. If he puts them together in the same drawer will there be a massive temporal bang?

 

The 1983 Brigadier has forgotten everything about his time at UNIT which overlapped with the Doctor - which is just about all of it. That's a very big gap in his memory yet he gets a top job with children.

Has not one single old friend or colleague from UNIT been in touch with him since retiring? Not Sarah, not Jo, not Liz, not Mike Yates, not Benton, not Corporal Bell... Clearly not, or his memories would have been triggered sooner.

Some of these memories, when they do come back, involve things which he never actually witnessed personally.

Mawdryn's ship comes into contact with other planets on a fixed timetable, yet we know that the distances between habitable planets is variable. You can't have one exactly every 70 years unless the ship slows right down at some points then goes very, very fast at others.

There's a transmat gizmo on Earth at the school. Who put it there, if Mawdryn's first trip in the capsule burns him up? To get to the planet you have to set up a beacon on the planet to get you to the planet...?

It can't have been dropped down or teleported to Earth, as it's disguised inside an antique bit of statuary.

The Doctor clearly knows that Turlough's a wrong 'un - but Davison doesn't play it this way, which makes the Doctor look a bit gullible.

Last, but by no mean's least as far as I'm concerned, there's that appalling music in the first episode when Turlough takes the Brigadier's car for a spin. Makes the Terry & June theme sound like it was composed by Schoenberg.

UNIT, Recalled

I visited Riverside Studios at Hammersmith on Saturday 23rd November - Doctor Who's 61st anniversary - to attend the latest of the DWAS small themed conventions.

This time the subject was UNIT, specifically its peak period during Season 8. Three episodes were to be shown, and the guest list was headed by Katy Manning and John Levene.

The first episode to be shown was Part One of The Mind of Evil. Despite the colourised Blu-ray version existing, they opted to screen the instalment in its B&W form. Having watched only colourised versions of the episode in recent years, it was actually quite nice seeing the monochrome version again.

This was followed immediately by the opening episode of The Claws of Axos. Between them, these episodes had featured Fernanda Marlowe (Corporal Bell), Paul Grist (Bill Filer), Pik-Sen Lim (Capt. Chin Lee), and Derek Martin (UNIT soldier / stuntman).

They comprised the first Q&A panel.

This turned out to be Grist's very first ever fan event. Whilst some of the panel mentioned that they received residuals for their episodes, Marlowe did not, claiming to have been paid a lump sum instead. The money-conscious Martin advised her to look into this. Pik-Sen was accompanied to the event by her daughter, with whom she was pregnant at the time of recording her episodes.

Despite the intervening decades, everyone contributed to the interviews, with Martin particularly happy to talk about his non-Who work as well as his contributions to the programme (having gone from spear-carrying behind William Hartnell to a full speaking role opposite Tom Baker).

As soon as the group panel disbanded, John Levene took to the stage for a solo interview. He did precious little answering of questions, but a whole lot of joking - as anyone who's seen him will know. Derek Martin had elected to remain in the front row just in front of John, and the pair basically became a comedy double-act for a bit. John mentioned that he had just completed an interview regarding Douglas Camfield for the next The Collection Blu-ray set - but did not let on which season this covered (though we pretty much know it's Seven).

His time up, John was then asked to remain on stage whilst a presentation took place. The DWAS presented him with an outstanding achievement award, and he was joined for a time by Katy Manning.

The break then followed, during which the various photograph sessions took place. Pictures with the entire guest group seemed particularly popular. On my last visit, these sessions were held in a separate room off the main foyer, but this time they took place right outside the cinema where the event was taking place - an area that was a little too small and therefore quickly became quite crowded.

After the break came the fifth and final episode of The Daemons, after which Manning returned to the stage to be interviewed alongside John Owens, who played Devil's End villager Thorpe. Like Levene, Manning does like to talk a lot but Owens got to speak about his non-Who comedy work.

Following this Q&A, the guests reconvened in the cramped area upstairs for the autograph signings. There was much discussion amongst attendees about the just-announced colourisation of The War Games.

Not being an autograph collector, and having a rendezvous at a South London pub to see a band, I took my leave at this point.

I'm back in the district for another DWAS event in April - though not at Riverside. The one-day "Capitol Cutaway" event is being held at the Polish Centre elsewhere in Hammersmith and attendees so far include Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Jo Martin and Susan Twist.