A question I see a lot on social media is along the lines of “What Film/TV show do you wish you could see for the first time again?”. Usually people go for ones that have some sort of huge plot twist that they’d like to experience the shock of again, sometimes it’s ones with a surprisingly upbeat ending after a dark film so they get that rush of joy and, for me, it’s got to be Doctor Who because there are times when I really wish I could get rid of 60 years of fan myth, rumour and foreknowledge and see each one, in order AND in the context of 60s television (and 70s and so on). I’m deeply jealous of those who saw everything on transmission because sometimes I think we need to shed the 21st century ideals and go back to winging it because that’s what you have to do. And whilst “Doctor Who” doesn’t quite take it as close to the line as my other favourite, “Dark Shadows” did, I really do think often what made it to the screen is a hundred times better than it had any right to be and, more importantly, if viewed in context, has a lot more thought put into it than we realise. Although I’m regularly referencing stories that are yet to come in this blog, at its heart I’m trying to focus more on what we already know and “The Chase” gives us some great examples of Terry Nation trying to mix some damn good attempts at thoughtful science with entertaining TV. Of course, a lot of it ends up as complete cobblers, but I’d say there’s more thought gone into some of this than certain series of Who that were planned out in advance.
Season one of Doctor Who swiftly moved to the “TARDIS is a taxi” type of storytelling where they’d arrive, get separated from the ship and then return to it at the end. On the other hand season two realises that it has a great story telling device in the form of the ship and starts to play with its concepts more. We’ve had a fault shrinking it, we’ve had it violated by what seems to be a scifi spider and last time we had it (for reasons we’ll never know) do weird things to the crew’s timeline. Even so, up until now, once it’s landed, we don’t get to take off again until the end of the story. The most we’d learned about the ship really was in the first Dalek story and it seems appropriate that, in our first properly multi-location story since “The Keys of Marinus”, Terry Nation once again gets to define a few more of the properties and functions of the ship. Remember that we’re only 18 stories into the show so there’s a lot of bits that might seem weird now but were actually 100% logical back then. First up we have a TARDIS magnet which, if you apply a certain level of generous thinking, vaguely makes sense on a couple of levels. Firstly there’s the fact that the TARDIS is broken and should change shape (just why the Doctor never gets around to repairing this will always be a mystery to me) but if we think about it, having a TARDIS magnet would make life a whole lot easier if you owned a shape changing ship. Land the TARDIS in a garden centre and it’s quite likely that it’s going to take the form of a garden shed. You head off, you have an adventure, a wander round and probably pick up a few plants (again, the lack of a potted plant seems weird in the TARDIS, I’d definitely want some greenery in the control room!) and then you’ve got to remember which shed is yours out of the dozen or so on display. Secondly, and possibly more relevant to “The Chase”, is that recently the TARDIS went missing. Life would have been a lot easier on Vortis if the Doctor could just have pulled the TARDIS magnet out of his pocket to locate the ship. If a TARDIS magnet didn’t exist before “The Web Planet” then it’s pretty likely that the Doctor would have thrown one together in case of similar future issues.
Although this is technically the first story where we’ve seen the TARDIS travelling through some mysterious “thing” that isn’t space, previous stories had already established that the ship can land / take off from within enclosed spaces (something that, strangely, Barbara had completely forgotten in “The Rescue”). Instead we’re going to jump to episode three and the idea that the ship’s computers take twelve minutes to “re-orientate and gather power”. Now, to those who’ve seen all the stories that come after this (including one written by Nation himself) it might seem a little strange and unlikely but, when we view the stories in order, this is the first time we’ve really seen the Doctor take off again so soon after landing. It also, rather conveniently, gives a rationale to why the Doctor’s forever getting into trouble. He knows that, no matter where he lands, he’s got at least ten minutes or so before he can think about taking off so he might as well go for a short walk to pass the time. Given that, so far, “The Crusade” seems to hold the record for shortest amount of time passing between leaving the ship and getting into trouble, a ten minute walk is almost certain to see the Doctor end up caught up in local affairs. What’s more important though is that, compared to computers in the early 1960s, being able to do all that in JUST twelve minutes makes the TARDIS systems seem very advanced. In “The War Machines” it’s seen as impressive that WOTAN can do square roots easily, so being able to calculate where you are and when in the whole history of the universe in under twelve minutes would have seemed amazing at the time. In the 1980s it took my home computer nearly 12 minutes just to load some games from tape! At least we don’t have banks of reel to reel computer tapes chugging away permanently in the background.
Next up on the “things people comment on” TARDIS list is the Doctor’s dismissal of Barbara’s idea to just sit and wait things out because, he says, they’d be dead in no time because of the vacuum of space. These days we know that the inside of the “TARDIS” is infinitely large and so this shouldn’t be a problem but let’s look at this in the context of the 17 stories so far and what we know. At this stage we still just about assume that the Doctor built the ship himself (it’s the last time we can really believe this). We know it has a control room, a sleeping area, a lab of some sort, a wardrobe and that’s actually pretty much it. Yes, it’s a few rooms at least but in an airtight environment with four people inside it you do have to wonder just how long it would last. The lab might have oxygen cylinders in (just not lots of mercury) so it’s surprisingly likely that the Doctor is telling the truth. When it’s parked on a planet it’s likely the TARDIS has a way of replenishing its air and water anyway, so how likely is it that the ship is actually designed to spend days at a time in the “vortex” (remember that it went from ancient Rome to another galaxy entirely in a matter of minutes). For all we know, the ship might go and park itself somewhere every time the occupants go to sleep and top up on supplies in the same way that Windows gives you the chance to reboot outside of working hours to run updates.
Daleks can’t climb stairs? Not according to Nation. It’s more a case that the BBC can’t do the effects needed to show them doing it. When they’re on the Mary Celeste, there’s a dalek very obviously on the upper part of the deck which is only reachable by going up a short flight of stairs, so not only is that staple of lazy journalism busted early on in the show’s history but it also makes the Daleks’ ability to turn into galactic conquerors slightly more believable. Whilst we’re on the daleks, time to stand up for the very hesitant Dalek in part three. Mostly it’s a Nation script so he’s working with his own creations and clearly remembering that there’s a living being inside the Dalek casing. True, we don’t know the ins and outs of Dalek reproduction at this stage but there’s been no indication that they’re a clone race or genetically manipulated in any way. When we get to “The Power of the Daleks” and the factory scene, we see Dalek creatures being revived and put into the casings. Why is it so unlikely that one might have the equivalent of a stutter? Fine, don’t put it on the front line where the inability to say “exterminate” might cause an issue but it’s actually reassuring to see that they still employ it. In “The Dead Planet” especially I always got the sense that we were seeing very individual Daleks with different skills and talents which is a far cry from the rather bland Daleks in the new series that all sound and act alike. Here, Terry Nation is writing them as individual characters (even if only on a surface level) and I genuinely feel that makes them more believable as a race.
Other issues with the story are also very much budget and production issues rather than story issues. The robot Doctor getting the name of the companion wrong is, to me, a brilliant nod to “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” and making it clear this is the same race who are out for revenge (as opposed to 70s Daleks which seem all over the place in terms of what they know, don’t know, want to do and can and can’t do). I never thought I’d say this, but I think it’s very telling that the Daleks seemingly remember Susan more than the Doctor does at this point. And then there’s the city on Mechanus (yes, okay, planet naming definitely isn’t one of Terry Nation’s strong points but he’s not the only one in 60 years to do it). In my mind there is a certain logic to sending a rocket load of robots to a distant planet to build your city for you so it’s ready to move into when you arrive. Easier ship to send on the first mission (no need for pesky things like oxygen etc if it’s all remote controlled, higher g force is possible, that sort of thing) and, given how little of the jungle/planet we actually see, it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to think that if the Doctor and co had maybe wandered off in the other direction when they left the TARDIS they’d have found the rocket, the packaging material left over from the flat pack city and half a dozen nuts and bolts left over from the assembly. It’s not really Terry Nation’s fault that the production team decided to make the Mechons/Mechanoids/Mechonoids so utterly impractical at doing absolutely anything whatsoever. Then again, who’s to say these are the only robots that were involved in building the city. There might be storerooms full of assembly droids that have long since shut themselves down and it’s only the bulky Mechonoids left running as a sort of defence of the city who are there to ward off invaders. What IS strange though is that the story seems to feature AI controlled robots that are impervious to Dalek weaponry… in a 1999 fairground attraction. Just what exactly happens in the future of the Earth that means they can build really advanced droids before the turn of the millennium but seemingly can’t replicate this technology several hundred years or so down the line? Well, other than most of the planet being wiped out in the previous Dalek story of course.
Fine, there are rather big chunks of the story that don’t fully make sense that really could have done with more thought. When you watch parts three and four carefully, you’ll realise that the amount of time that the Doctor seems to actually spend making his “Dalek Destroying Gizmo” works out at about 5 minutes most. No wonder it barely does anything other than give one Dalek a headache (plus you have to wonder just when he started building this device as it’s quite a hefty unit to lug around apparently. Is this something he began work on after they left future Earth just in case? Or is this a leftover from some unseen adventure with other aliens that don’t like bangs?). Parts one and two feature pretty much the wettest ever alien species encountered (oh the irony) and as for half of part one being padding around the Time Space Visualiser, the physics and mechanics of which defy absolutely all explanation, the less said the better.
For me, this is probably one of the best Nation stories when you look at it in the context of what we’ve had so far. There isn’t a hint of a character called Tarrant, there’s no mention of a plague, the Daleks have a solid motive and there’s a lot of ideas which deserve further investigation. Pretty much everything “fits” with the 17 stories that came before it and only now seems to have strange ideas in it because of things that happened afterwards. Yes, this blog will look at those changes in future stories but up next we have the story that basically rewrites Doctor Who history and puts the show on a far more interesting, if slippery, slope… one which sadly Terry Nation won’t do so well on.