Take Them to the Security Kitchen!

 This month on Place, I'm celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of The Five Faces of Doctor Who, with reviews of new or new-ish adventures for the Doctor.
The nightly repeats of  The Krotons ended on Thursday 12th November 1981, just after six p.m. I can't stress enough how thrilling and significant it was for my eighteen-year-old self. This was the first time since the Sixties that a Patrick Troughton story had been repeated on television- and the first b/w Dr. Who material screened since The Lively Arts documentary four years earlier.I was absolutely captivated by The Krotons, despite the variable acting and comical, egg-box Brummie monsters. I must have listened to my cassette recordings of the soundtrack half-a-dozen times over the next couple of years.

Today, however, we're starting off with The First Doctor, William Hartnell, and one of the greatest, in my opinion: without his character work, the series wouldn't have been nearly as successful. The Ark (on dvd from HMV in Inverness, as a matter of fact) is the only complete story from the era of Doctor Who's second production team: John Wiles and Donald Tosh. When brilliant innovator and future tv power broker Verity Lambert left Who, Wiles and Tosh wanted to rework the series as less of an "outer space" thriller for kids and more of an intellectually stimulating Hard Sci-fi programme (much as Bidmead and Nathan-Turner were trying to do with Who in the season prior to Five Faces)
From solar flares and space arks, to the evocative episode title "The Steel Sky", The Ark is full of Big Sci-Fi ideas. But wooden or hesitant performances and a frankly silly script sabotage the whole enterprise. My very favourite moment is Dodo's scrupulous interrogation of her Monoid captor :

" 'Ere, you lot aren't up to anything are you?/ Er....no."

 There's another hilarious scene when one of the invisible inhabitants of  the planet Refusis investigates one of the Ark's reconaissance capsules. The diesmbodied voice has one line of dialogue: it is "Hmmm."
Aside from the innovation of a Security Kitchen, I also enjoyed the amazing materialising Space Potatoes.

Lennon amd McCartney. Google images of "Monoids" and you get Naturists. Really.

There is something oddly loveable about the mod moptop Monoids, with their waddling gait, theatrical gestures and fondness for contractions. Passing reference to their leaders' designations as Number One and Number Two seems more than adequate, however.They remind me (but only slightly) of the ghastly and very alien Plant Men in ERB's "The Gods of Mars"- at least until they staa-aaa-rrrt too-oo spee-eaak.  The Aboriginal Slavery theme will be explored more effectively some forty years later with The Ood.

Dodo tunes in the Time Space Visualiser to Corrie just as Schmeichel is put down.

This story also represents Dodo's first adventure in Time and Space. With her erratic Mancunian vowels and fab gear dialogue, Dodo is in my top three "Least Engaging Companions of All Time", along with Adric and Mel. Jackie Lane is plainly an adult, impersonating a rather annoying school child. Her Crusades costume, allegedly the result of "footling around" in the Tardis wardrobe, is actually a wacky Sixties signifier of how "way out" she is. Unfortunately for Lane, Dodo is a collection of extremely broad mannerisms, rather than a character. I've never heard of anyone who likes Dodo.

Peter Purves, as usual, is the best thing in the serial, playing the rather thankless character of Steven with urgency and often mild exasperation. He is understandably negative about the serial's production values on the commentary but moderator Toby Hadoke very civilly doesn't correct him when he sneers at Hartnell's sonic screwdriver.

The Arkl has several links to the populist fiction of H.G. Wells, as the dvd points out and there are several positive aspects: the "game-changing" cliffhanger in Episode Two and the use of time-travel in the story ( ideas we're very familiar with, in the Moffat Era). However, the costume design, juvenile dialogue and the sidelining of Hartnell all result in a production with an appeal that's largely kitschy. Four out of Ten Talmars.

Of course, Five Faces was primarily a publicity gimmick for the Fifth Doctor,  Peter Davison. Incidentally, it also popularised the notion of what we've come to know as Canon in Doctor Who.
In a previous entry, I discussed some of the elements that have led  to the Fifth Doctor's fall from favour with me (http://somefantasticplace-dougie.blogspot.com/2011/08/i-will-cure-you.html)  To wit: an ineffectual Doctor, sidelined for cynical, one-dimensional supporting characters; too many poorly-acted, immature companions; and a preoccupation with continuity.

 In the face of all this, Cobwebs, a Fifth Doc audio drama from Big Finish, surprised me by being entertaining and compelling listening! The USP of the play is the Companion line-up: reuniting Tegan, Turlough and Nyssa after nearly thirty years. Janet Fielding has never been shy about airing her views on the character of Tegan or her time in the show- although I didn't rate her acting particularly highly when I reviewed the Fifth Doctor era a few years ago. She had been reluctant to revisit Tegan for Big Finish-apart that is from the Cyberman story The Gathering,  a miserable, interminable soap opera in which the longueurs of bitchy pub conversation ultimately revealed the Mouth on Legs was terminally ill. However, Fielding exercised a Woman's Prerogative and recorded two miniseries of BF adventures.

Cobwebs, then, not only reintroduces Tegan as a BF regular but also revisits Nyssa, several decades older- although for a Trakenite, that's not really an issue.  The plot is a typically Timey-Wimey one (Ugh. Hateful Phrase!) from Jonathan Morris and owes a great deal to The Space Museum, of all things. The Tardis crew answer a distress call at the Helheim research station and discover a mad computer, carnivorous insects and their own dessicated corpses! Now Get Out of That, as they said in 1981.

I feel that, aside from ruining Mark Strickson's reunion plans, Nyssa's absence would have been a welcome one. The character is already over-exposed in this range and her rather prissy nature, when combined with Davison's tone of condescending tolerance, defuses any tension in their stories. However, even with Morris's deliberately Saward-esque hardcase dialogue and sardonic nods to the Classic Series ("Is it a Black Guardian trap?"), this convoluted story was moody and atmospheric. Fielding finds a light, youthful tone for Tegan effortlessly and her energy drives the play. It ends on a grim note- very Eighties- and viruses and their containment is a rather tired meme at Big Finish. Nevertheless, it wasn't overly nostalgic and encouraged me to try more stories with this team. Eight out of Ten Talmars.

 Yesterday saw my monthly trip to Inverness for lunchtime theatre at the Ironworks. This time it was for "Blood from a Stone", a monologue on heritage and family played with great charm and energy by Garry Collins. This was the best production of this short, trial season. Lighting, sightlines and sound are all issues in the venue but hopefully, funding will be found to produce a second season. Oran Mor has demonstrated that this can be a money-spinning theatre format and the North-East needs and deserves it.

On my day out of Elgin, I picked up two new comics from Heroes for Sale. Action 3 begins with the first depiction of the New 52 Krypton in this comic, under attack from an entity that I assume is Brainiac. I'm not impressed by the ugly Harry Potter rendition of Clark Kent but I do like Morrison's direction (since it's pretty much what I had envisaged, as I said previously!). In this issue, he folds the origin of Metallo logically into the Brainiac story.
I also tried the third issue of Cornell's Demon Knights, DC's sword and sorcery take on the Magnificent Seven. I liked it a little better than issue one but there is still too much gore and sadism for my liking- hallmarks of the New 52, allegedly.

 Speaking of Cornell, a character he was associated with not so long ago is joining Marvel's Secret Avengers. Captain Britain is referred to as our premiere superhero but solicits also allude to a "big team death." Well, there's the line-up above; who looks expendable to you? Previously on Place, I predicted the probable killing of Our Cap as a typical Marvel stunt to bolster the badass reputation of some obscure villain. I will not be amused if I'm right. Anyway, here's what the real Brian Braddock was up to, this weekend in 1976:

Finally, Bronze Age enthusiasts, I've been reading  a very-early -70s reprint of World's Finest, featuring one of my favourite stories "The Feud Between Batman and Superman". When Batman suffers a serious injury, he loses his self-confidence. As therapy for the Caped Crusader, a concerned Superman stages a mystery to solve in Kandor but the threat of the Metalloids quickly goes out of control! A charming, forty-seven-year-old  fable about friendship and morale, it makes clever use of the Nightwing and Flamebird team and is almost as delightful as "The Fantastic Story of Superman's Sons".

I also read the 1970 Spider-Man King-Size Special, from the month that saw the debut of Conan's Marvel monthly and Red Wolf in the Avengers. In Spider-Man's earliest adventures, it's curious to see the Vulture's tail feathers and Spidey's tough-guy dialogue: " Did ya forget you're messin' with a guy who has the proportionate strength of a spider?"
"Just a Guy Named Joe" is a pure Ditko morality play, comparing Peter Parker (something of a Hipster here) with the inadequate young boxer-turned-super-powered-maniac. It's also amusing to see Ditko bait student protestors ("Aren't you interested in saving the world?? Anyway, it's an excuse to cut classes!/ If you've nothing to protest, don't worry about it! That won't stop us!") knowing Stan will go on to woo them a few years later.


Next: Magnus Opus.
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