Power of the Daleks

Rumours of missing Doctor Who material are always around but there seems to be a few more with the onset of the 50^th anniversary.  Typically missing episode rumours grow out of nowhere, a mix of off hand comments, incomplete memories and miscommunication, and on some occasions are deliberate hoaxes.  Often, it’s the claim that collectors are sitting on them, some in ignorance but there is always the dark suggestion that some know their value but hoard them.  I'm not sure whether to think this has happened with Doctor Who, but with the amount of film out there changing hands in a private market there is almost certainly material in the hands of a few that is not in the public domain.  There’s the suggestion that given the opportunity, some people would hoard as demonstrated when someone once listed missing Doctor Who material on eBay and were contacted for the purposes of a private sale.  There was no episode available and what those interested would have done with their purchase can’t be proven of course, but it seems that given the chance, there are people who would hoard.  The other issue is that the BBC won’t pay to get their own material back, while frustrating as a fan, it’s understandable in that the BBC doesn't want to create precedent for agreeing to buy their own property back lest encouraging missing material be held to ransom.  So while missing episodes are worth a great deal, there is reliance upon the goodwill of people to return them for little reward.  Furthermore, when the episode is returned, while the collector can keep the original film it is true, but it is significantly devalued in that it is no longer unique, being eventually available on DVD.  Given that, you can see why an unscrupulous person would want to hang on to their ‘investment’ as it loses both uniqueness and value.

Episodes have been found in odd places, and many episodes exist with difference degrees of editing.  Rumours are rife of them being held in various TV archives around the world but being lost by various forms of natural or man made destruction.  There are rumours of episodes secretly shown in conventions, though these are rather more difficult to believe.  The edits made to episodes ironically survive the destruction of episodes, so several fragments of material have come back piecemeal from censors.  Episodes as a result exist in various forms of completion.  For example, there are many copies of the Time Meddler in existence with different cuts.  One of which recalls another peculiar story.  The Time Meddler was returned in 1984 with edits to the episodes and sat as such in the archives for many years.  Just prior to the programme being shown as part of the 30^th anniversary repeats Ian Levine produced another copy of the Time Meddler which was a more complete copy.  Which was great, but apparently he had been sitting on it from the early eighties after being lent it by an unnamed ‘friend’ before the Nigerian recovery.  Obviously there were suspicions as to the motives of someone effectively sitting on material that was lost to the archive but Levine claimed that he was only holding onto them as a favour for a friend and as they belonged to someone else he didn't feel right to return them, even though they are, by rights, BBC material.  Levine claims that some people at the BBC knew he owned missing episodes outside their archive but that as there were strong rumours around at the time that some people had missing episodes they would only trade for other missing episodes, it was only right that he keep his own finds secret for some purpose.  Still, the safest place for missing material is in the archives and in BBC hands, not held by people hoping to use them as bargaining material or claiming to hang onto them for their mates while the BBC archive has gaps.  It's worth noting that as a result of this, the Time Meddler are the BBC was needlessly less complete than it could have been for around a decade.

Speaking of which there is currently a buzz that it isn’t a film collector or fan sitting on material, but the BBC iotself, keeping an announcement secret for the 50^th anniversary.  It’s suggested that some, or optimistically all, of Power of the Daleks has been recovered.  Elsewhere I've seen Tenth Planet part 4 being named, which strikes me as being ridiculously hopeful as it is probably the holy grail of lost episodes containing the landmark first regeneration scene.  That's been the target of so many hoaxes that it actually doesn't get named that often any more, hoaxers preferring to name something more obscure and less desired, though any missing material is welcome.

Where do these rumours this stem from?  Well firstly the BBC has a little previous form on this matter making people quicker to doubt denials by those likely to be involved.  When episodes from Galaxy 4 and Underwater Menace were returned in October 2011 they were kept under wraps for a surprise screening at a BFI event in December.  Galaxy 4 part three was returned first, and a few weeks later Underwater Menace part two was found by the same collector.  But this was kept secret in the face of fandom gossip, somehow the details didn't leak out and it was eventually shown to a few hundred who had tickets to the event, the only few to have still seen them as they currently await release over a year later.  It was one of those fabled examples of episodes found in odd places such as a Church basement.  These being bought at a school fete and twenty years later handed over to the BBC when mentioned to Ralph Montagu, Radio Times’s head of heritage, who identified them.  When asked if he hoped to find more he responded “Well, one or two other leads are being pursued at the moment. More than that I’m not saying!”  This caused a little speculation that perhaps there were more leads through acquaintances of the collector who had owned these two episodes all these years.

Moving on a bit and with the hope that the BBC may sit on things to announce when it suits them there’s a much talked about rumour that Anneke Wills made mention of a discovery being being hushed by someone accompanying her.  Ah ha, conspiracy!  But the circumstances around this seem a bit vague, who heard what and where?  Basically it’s claimed that something of Power of the Daleks has been found in Australia.  This has been given substance using the above observations of the BBC handing of missing material alongside various accounts of something Anneke Wills said at a convention.  Looking around the internet these accounts are varied, she’s supposed to have said that we’re getting a ‘wonderful surprise’ for the 50^th anniversary, that she said there is ‘more to come’ after Underwater Menace, that she responded ‘you’re not supposed to know’ to someone saying the episodes were back, to her saying outright whispering that it is Power of the Daleks.  In many of these accounts there are some ‘minders’ around that tell her not to speak further, which seems almost sinister considering that’s she’s supposed to be a guest at the event.  Unless she’s taken to telling everyone passing her at the convention bar, it seems impossible that all of these variations of the story are true.  Various members of the Restoration Team have denied missing material being returned.

There’s a good article on missing episodes by Ash Stewart linked below.

http://unlimitedricepudding.com/Mythmakers2004.html#Lies

Tantalising rumours over the years here

http://www.angelfire.com/retro/kingtiger/rumors.html

And one itemising the returns of various missing materials.

http://www.angelfire.com/magic/thedoctorwhonexus/episoderecoveries.htm

The Three Doctors for Nu Who

With the BBC keeping most of the details for the 50th anniversary under wraps, an my total disinterest in reading spoilers, I have no idea what is coming up for Doctor Who in 2013.  In my dreams it would be a special episode with past Doctors returning, the way of old. There will be the usual fan moans that multi-Doctor stories are a bit lame, thin on plot and just a contrived excuse for a get together.  What the hell?  That's the point isn't it?  Obviously Matt Smith would be in, and I don't think it would get much to persuade David Tennant back.  Some people say that Christopher Eccleston would never do it, but if that's true we are probably have the best chance at this moment.  Many of the complaints attributed to Eccleston refer to a production team than has largely changed, those he supposedly had disputes with are gone and the person running the series, Steven Moffat, wrote one of the stories he most enjoyed in his only season of Doctor Who.  All that and a little water under the bridge, would he be willing to come back for a single story?

I wasn't around for the Three or Five Doctors but I'm told they were very exciting by people who were young fans at the time.  Doctor Who repeats have always been thin on the ground, clutches coming along with the Five Faces of Doctor Who in 1981 and the stories chosen for repeats on the 30th anniversary.  Other repeats have been scattered across a the last decades, a Power of the Daleks here, a Genesis of the Daleks there.  The last repeat of old Who I can recall is Hand of Fear on BBC 4 when Elizabeth Sladen died.  Point being that when the Three Doctors came along, Hartnell had been out of the part for 6 years, Troughton 3 years, and neither had ever been seen in colour, only still pictures in a tiny handful of Doctor Who material.  I still have my father's 10th anniversary Radio Times, in which were episode listings which probably made it the first programme guide published for the series.  This made the Three Doctors very special, and some who were young at the time recall it being extremely exciting.

There is a big difference though between the viewer experience then and now, created by the home video age and the rise of digital channels.  Note that from the Hand of Fear repeat, old Who is now deemed BBC 4 material, to be shown alongside documentaries on Stradivarius violins, not BBC 2 as when the 30th anniversary was on, and certainly not BBC 3 where new Who is seemingly on constant repeat alongside Family Guy and programmes about yoof culture.  Still, between DVDs being sold cheap in HMV and regular repeats, new Who doesn't suffer the problem of old fans in the 70s.  Any time they want to see Eccleston or Tennant they can flick through the channels, go on iPlayer or get out their DVDs.

But although that takes a lot of the edge off seeing previous Doctors on the screen again, the fact that people still watch these repeats shows there's continued interest in them.  Furthermore, children are now growing up watching Doctor Who with no memory of the Eccleston era.  They are as much part of the past to a 10 year old now, as McCoy was to me when Paul McGann made his only appearance as Doctor Who.  To produce a new story allowing both young fans to see Eccleston in action for the first time, and for slightly older fans to see something other than reminiscences on DVD, would be grand.  It wouldn't matter if the plot was contrived because people want to see the characters in character.  It would be hugely entertaining.  The worst thing they could do is try to make a clever not-traditional multi doctor story in order to get the actors in but not have them play the roles we love them for, something pretentious and confused like Zagreus, for example.

No, Five Doctors good, Zagreus bad.  Stop trying to be clever and have fun.

As for the rest of the anniversary?  Well as I'll cover them another time, but they range from some great DVD releases, such as the Mind of Evil in full colour, a set of reprints of old novels with some dubious choices, and rumours of supposed missing episode discoveries that are being held back from public knowledge.  But reading around, these rumours span the view that there's nothing at all, to those claiming that a 'major haul' has been found.  I wouldn't put too much hope in that one.

Revenge of the Cybermen

'Revenge' of the Cybermen? Ugh, here we start the Cybermen descending into emotive behaviour. While entertaining, David Banks' cyberleader frequently showed too much relish for an unemotional being. Here they crack the odd joke (the cyberleader comments when tying the Doctor up on the Beacon that he won't be around to see the 'magnificent spectacle' of the crash with Voga) and a bit of monologuing about the destruction of Voga ending with "This is good!". The cybermen are restyled from the Invasion cybermen with more pipes and flares (it was the 70s).

Something about it all seems a bit lacklustre. Kellman is a great villain, he sort of comes out on the good side working for the Vogons, but still murdered a lot of people. I can't help wondering why his plan needed to be quite this ruthless, but he was going to help the Vogons blow the Beacon up anyway. The location shooting looks great, the main cast all come out of it well. The ark looks a bit cheaper this time around but the caves of Voga are much richer being filmed at Wookey Hole. It's probably just that the Cybermen are so naff reduced to just a few men with a silly scheme. The Vogon plan doesn't seem so smart either. There's a lot of things that don't add up, such as the Beacon not being able to radio for any help, the transmat removing the cybermat 'plague' by being set up for human tissue, but transporting the Doctor, Cybermen and their cloths and other non-human tissue. The surface of Voga as the Beacon flies over is obviously a revolving log in front of the camera and isn't well realised. The Cybermen fall for the old 'tie them up and leave them to die' trick which has been old since moustache twirling villains tied women to railway tracks. It makes no sense for the Cybermen to do this unless they bizarrely relish imaging the Doctor and Sarah having the front seat for the collision of the Beacon with Voga.

This story is the first to introduce the cyber-weakness to gold, yet oddly enough the only cybermen to die from gold is that injected by the captured cybermat. A cybermat is disabled with gold dust but the Doctor quickly gets it working again to terrorise Kellman. Both occasions when the Doctor tackles cybermen with a handful of dust they he is beaten back, people just can't get the opportunity to use it effectively as a weapon. While being a weakness, it's not an entirely practical one to exploit. Also we can assume that only gold dust is effective, as Vogon bullets are undoubtedly made of gold yet are ineffective. Either the gold needs to be a dust or the gold bullets, like regular bullets, just bounce off. I'm guessing both are true. But compare to Silver Nemesis where anything made of gold cuts through the cybermen like a hot knife through butter. Bullets are ineffective but gold tipped arrows and coins fired from a catapult cut them down. As soon as gold penetrates their armour they die, no talk of "clogging their respiratory systems", it's more like a puncture wound from gold is akin to blood poisoning from a lethal snakebite. Maybe gold in contact with the coolant circulating within a cyberman is lethal, but ultimately you have to ask why?? It's an inert metal.

It's a shame that Tom Baker only met the Cybermen once, and Pertwee only in the Five Doctors. The gap between the Invasion and Earthshock seems a long one with only this unsatisfying morsel in the middle. Hard to imagine now, what with the Daleks appearing in every season of Doctor Who, that you could go for years without these 'regular' monsters. People criticised the 80s for being continuity laden, probably with the nadir being Attack of the Cybermen, but throughout the 70s the old series was braver than the new by constantly creating new stories and pushing the horror to the limit. Currently the New Series relies on its past a lot more than is generally admitted with the Daleks appearing more frequently than ever over the last 6 years, and plays it quite safe regarding horror as seems in line with BBC paranoia regarding receiving complaints on any matter.

Our World

Reposted from Lawrence Miles' blog...

http://beasthouse-lm2.blogspot.com/2011/09/our-world.html

Death to the Daleks

Death to the Daleks was one of my first Doctor Who stories on video well over 20 years ago, alongside Day of the Daleks and The Daleks. But this one is often comes in for more criticism than most Dalek stories because of the many clichés being reused; dying civilisations, ancient cities, a 'quest' with tests and traps to overcome. Some dislike the music, it seems to mostly fit the dark brutal setting for the story. The Dalek music seems a little too jolly though.

I remember it being quite frightening with a brutal level of violence. The story's best moments are all in the dark, at night or in caverns. The Exxilons are probably more frightening than the Daleks, being rather aggressive and thuggish and have a tendency to hit people with clubs or shoot them with arrows. At the beginning of the story the TARDIS loses all power and is stranded in the dark with a thick green mist everywhere. The Doctor wanders off (I never understood this because he promised not to leave Sarah alone, what a git) and Sarah is attacked in the TARDIS by some brute. Various sources have since asked if the Exxilon is still wandering around in the TARDIS, but my impression is that Sarah does a very good job of beating him to death with the starting handle from a car. What we are spared from is the scene of the Doctor dragging the three day old carcass out of the TARDIS before take off.

The Exxilons have a good background and are yet another alien species, like the Daemons or Fendahl, to have influenced ancient Earth cultures. Unfortunately it went rather wrong, they built a living city, which then expelled them and has ever since has drained up all electrical power. The Exxilons descended into barbarism and worship the city as a god. Although there are rebels to this who seems smaller and paler in colour and live underground. The time for this fall is described as thousands of years, but one body in the city disintegrates to dust upon the air in the room being disturbed suggesting it's many many thousands.

The humans in the story are rather one dimensional. Commander Stewart is already wounded and succumbs half way though while hopes for a interesting character in Captain Railton end with a well placed arrow in episode 2. The only well placed arrow of the story, the Exxilons can't shoot for toffee. Peter Hamilton doesn't have much about him but possibly is the vague interest of the only woman on the team, Jill Tarant, who spends most of the story whimpering. That leaves ruthless bastard Dan Galloway who takes command when all the other officers are dead. Cut from the 'ends justify the means' cloth he does deals with the Daleks, agrees to ethnically cleanse the Exxilon society of their underground dwelling rebels. He also agrees to let the Daleks have the Doctor and Sarah, but they never actually get their hands on them. Of course he soon realises he's out of his depth with the daleks and does actually win back a bit of respect by stealing a dalek bomb and sacrificing himself to blow them and their ship up. It's a bit hard to have sympathy because he's been such an arse throughout. But he's the most interesting one of the lot.

Death to the Daleks is an apt title given how many Daleks die, some inexplicably so. The best bit with the Daleks is in displaying a little cunning and being able to quickly overcome the problem of not being able to use their weapons. The energy drain disables their energy weapons, but oddly not their other mechanical functions. In The Daleks they ran of static electricity and merely being separated from the floor cut their power, here they run on "psychokinetic power" which sounds like bullshit. Daleks move by power of their mind now? But back to the point, the Daleks quickly devise ballistic weapons firing darts or bullets and are quick to use them to subdue the Exxilons. The Daleks also allow people to go under the impression there are only four of them when in fact there are more in the spaceship. Reminiscent of Power of the Daleks there. Well we can say four Daleks, it's more like three because whenever four appear in a scene one of them never moves. Clearly they only had three operators and the fourth simply lingers static in the background.

The bad bits are the number that die for stupid reasons. One Dalek explodes after being attacked by a crowd of Exxilons who hit it with sticks. One fights a hopeless fight with the 'root' from the city in the caves and instead of retreating sticks around to be blown to pieces. The worst of all has to be where a Dalek finds that a couple of prisoners are not where it left them, and instead of going to search for them or reporting it, starts spinning in circles shouting that it has failed and has to self destruct. That's just embarrassing. But hell, they did it again in Remembrance of the Daleks.

The story ends with a chase through the city overcoming various intelligence tasks (for what purpose?) and includes an attack upon their sanity that has some of the brightest flashing sequences ever seen in Doctor Who. Certainly a bit harsh on the eyes. The Doctor whips a few PCBs out of a computer and switches a few components and the city goes wild with lights flashing and doors opening and closing at random. Once outside the heroes watch the Dalek ship explode before turning around to see the Exxilon City dissolving and crumbling. Obviously a polystyrene models sprayed with some solvent, it actually looks quite good.

Overall not a great Dalek story. It's a shame the history of the Exxilons has not been expanded, and a story focusing more on them and the humans might have been quite strong without the Daleks being involved. As it stands, the Daleks are at their weakest at times and make a poor showing with them dying for silly reasons.

The War Machines - On Location

The War Machines has a mix of some very prominent and rather obscure locations. The big novelty in this story is the Post Office Tower, now BT Tower. It was the first full contemporary Earth story paving the way for the likes of the Faceless Ones, Web of Fear and eventually the whole UNIT era. Hartnell works wonderfully in this story and it's a shame that this came late in his era, leaving his Doctor often in historical adventures or on alien worlds. But this isn't a review, just a brief look at some of the locations used in that story.

Immediately jumping out is Bedford Square only a minute's walk from the British Museum. Here the TARDIS lands in the first episode and is shot from various angles including a window of one house. In the row of photos to the back of me when taking this photo is No. 41 which doubles for the Royal Scientific Club.

From here the Doctor heads for the Post Office Tower which can be seen roughly to the North, however he is seen in the next shot approaching from Fitzroy Square along Conway Street which is just to the north of the tower.

The Tower itself is largely unchanged as seen in this shot from Cleveland Mews just off from Maple Street. The angle achieved in the story must be from a platform or window above the ground floor. The Tower has been closed to the public for a long time and has a rather permanent plaque on the wall stating this. :-(

There are a lot of shots taken in various streets during the War Machines attack but this taken in Berners Mews along which the War Machine reprogrammed by the Doctor travels to return to the Tower.

The Time Monster

Last night we had a friend to visit and watched The Time Monster. You just have to laugh at it, because it's so woeful at times and none of it makes sense. If you keep going until the end though, you are rewarded by the much better episodes set in Atlantis.

At six episodes there's a lot of obvious padding. You could probably do away with episodes 2 and 3 entirely, pick out a few salient points and put them into either episodes 1 or 4, making it a four parter. Episode 2 has a lot of running around, then with the reveal of the Master the Brig calls up UNIT and a wealth of heavy artillery which does nothing but allows for some extended scenes in which the Master calls up various things from the past, a medieval Knight, some Roundheads and a V-1, to attack them. Then the Doctor builds a thing out of old junk (see photo above) which does absolutely nothing to stop the Master. What's the point of it all? Episode 4 does some good stuff with the TARDIS, but Logopolis does it all better in later years.

Speaking of which, this is the one and only appearance of the 'washing-up bowl' interior for the redecorated TARDS but is also conveniently used for the Master's TARDIS. In retrospect it might have been nice to use a normal set for the Doctor's TARDIS and the new one for the Master's, just to differentiate them more. Perhaps they thought they would be getting more use from this set and shifting material for two different sets is asking rather a lot of the production.

That said the sets for Atlantis are actually very good and seem wasted on barely two episodes worth of material. In fact, perhaps they should have set the entire story in Atlantis and dumped all the TOMTIT stuff on Earth. Not that it makes much sense, but all the talk of the crystal 'not really being there' or actually 'being in Atlantis in the distant past' seems to suggest the Master should have just gone there in the first place and not bothered with the complicated research programme and false aliases.

Strangeness abounds. The relevance of the Doctor's dreams are never explained nor the eruptions in modern day Thera, but both lead the Doctor to jump from one conclusion to the next to implicate the Master in all of this. You have the preposterously named TOMTIT and the Master's convoluted plan to push things through the cracks in time. The crystal does all sorts, and can make people older or younger, but this is always rubbish. Why doesn't hair grow and if you are subjected to accelerated time wouldn't you quickly starve to death? Chronos looks bloody ridiculous swinging around on it's occasional appearances, the powerful god idea is far better conceived at the end of episode six.

There's the window cleaner who picks the moment of testing an important government project to wash the windows, pull a big "oooh" face before falling off the ladder. Having worked in a government funded research institute I don't know what's less likely, the fact that someone would even be paid to wash the windows or that an injured man is left left lying around for quite some time before anyone notices, apart from the Master who doesn't care. Maybe it's a weekend, because there only appear to be a couple of people working in the place. When he is found it's left to the Brigadier to sort it out because the government bods seems bored by the inconvenience of a crippled or dying man.

Fortunately all this is swept aside in the second half of the story, after an episode mostly set in the TARDIS involving threats of time rams and the Doctor being ejected into the vortex and saved, we get to Atlantis for the final third of the story. Which is clearly the best bit of all of this but many fans might have given up by the first 90 minutes. This is a shame because the best sets and acting are all present in this part. Ingrid Pitt is very memorable as Queen Galleia and there are some good performances from several of the other Atlanteans. The bit with the Minotaur is pretty bad but thankfully short. Roger Delgado is loving it in this part of the story, the Master oozes evil charm; seducing Queen Galleia and snapping his fingers when wearing gloves.

Atlantis doesn't last so long though and is destroyed with the Master trying to escape with Jo held hostage. But she causes a time ram with the Doctor's TARDIS. They are saved, by Chronos, who in it's own CSO environment appears as the massive face of a woman. So much more impressive than its previous manifestation. Chronos wants to keep the Master in torment, but after the most pathetic begging display from the Master the Doctor puts in a good word for him, but then the Master escapes! The review from the The Television Companion by David Howe and Stephen James Walker calls this overacting 'woefully' on Delgado's part, but I don't think so, it's obvious the Master is not being sincere and is pulling the Doctor's strings.

There are some great moments scattered throughout the story. The Master declining a lunch with the people from UNIT claiming to be a vegetarian who abhors violence is a lovely way to avoid blowing his cover. I love the Masters's line "You're wrong, Sergeant Benton. That is the oldest trick in the book!!" There are some great moments with the Master and Queen Galleia, and the Doctor's 'Daisiest Daisy' story is wonderful. That's probably the best way to look at this story - it's very easy to focus on the negative when so many rate it poorly but overlook the good bits and how funny the ridiculous bits are. It's not the complete write-off that some make out, there's a good story trying to get out here but it's just swamped in padding in the first half.