Series 1 Episode 25: Sentence of Death

Serial: The Keys of Marinus
Episode: 5 (Sentence of Death)
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companions: Barbara, Ian, and Susan

Writer: Terry Nation
Director: John Gorrie
Producer: Verity Lambert
Original Air Date: 09/05/1964

THE DOCTOR ONE LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY (and other stories)

In which William Hartnell comes back from his holidays, Barbara and Susan are Team Watson, the Doctor plays at being a lawyer, and Ian is guilty until proven innocent. Also, domestic violence trigger warning. Because apparently this show is now Eastenders…IN SPAAAAAAAAACE.

We begin with a reshoot of Ian being boshed over the head with a potato gun, this time from an angle that doesn't make it obvious that he’s just having his spine tickled. Again he swoons and falls down next to the unidentified corpse that’s in the room with him, and again a mace is placed in his unconscious hand as his mystery assailant steals the micro-key from its case. Alarms! Drama! Etc.!

Ian comes round to discover he's sustained a painful bump on the bonce and that he is being interrogated by a guard in a vaguely fascist-looking uniform. Ian wants to know what the hell happened here; the guard thinks Ian should be the one answering that question. Apparently he couldn't have got into the room without the duty guard letting him in, and besides nobody gets into the vaults without a probity check. Ian hasn't had one.

Ah, probity probes.

Something else Ian hasn't had since waking up is a single fuck to give about any of this. In fact, he's projecting Barbara levels of Eternally Done right now, and in his furs looks as much like a bear with a sore head as he sounds like one. He's somewhat sobered, however, when he realises he's being accused of murder and their conversation is being recorded. There's also a rather poignant moment when he's asked his name and occupation, and he pauses for a moment before answering that he's ‘a teacher – Science’, as though it’s only just sinking in how ridiculously far he is from that former life. ‘Ian Chesterton, Science Teacher’ seems pretty distant from ‘Ian/Chesterton/Chatterton/Chesserman/Chesterfield/Dear Boy/the Human, Time Traveller’ who’s standing in an alien security vault wearing an outfit from the thirteenth-century Mongolian Empire and a wolfskin shrug. And when Tarron (his interrogator) asks him if he knows the purpose of the micro-key, he just rubs the bump on his head without answering, looking tired – no, not tired, weary.

I know he does have an actual head injury, but I think there’s an argument to be made for this scene being key to Ian’s character development. Increasingly we’re getting these quieter moments from him where he’s not dashing about à la Susan’s goldfish analogy or channelling his energies into being overprotective of Barbara and the gang; and we begin to get the sense that Ian’s the kind of person who has to keep active, not just because his inner pessimist tends to take hold at such times but also because as long as he’s fulfilling this weirdly chivalric ideal of masculinity he can subordinate his identity crises to the immediate need to be the Man of Action. And we can see this here: the minute he stops rushing around, he has trouble remembering who he is and what he’s for. Hashtag He For She; Hashtag Ian Needs Feminism Too.

Anyway, Tarron asks what Ian’s done with the key; Ian, frustrated, tells him he never had the effing thing. Tarron tells Ian he’s being charged with murder – DRAMATIC MUSIC! Ian thinks ‘this business is beginning to run away from me’, and protests that this whole thing is fucking stupid:

IAN: Well there was another man in here, I've got a lump on the back of my head to prove it!
TARRON: The dead man could have hit you before he was killed.
IAN: And I suppose I killed him when I was unconscious?
TARRON: Well it does suggest you had an accomplice, I agree. So you had better produce him, that's my advice to you for what it's worth.
IAN: I don't have to produce him, Tarron, you do! This is circumstantial evidence. You must prove that I did the actual killing!

And now for the real icing on the cake: in Millennius, the legal system dictates that Ian is not in fact innocent until proven guilty but rather guilty until proven innocent. So Ian needs to get a lawyer, sharpish, or he’s going to be executed. GULP. Ian thinks he knows the guy. And is cracking up a bit, because when Tarron asks who he is, this happens:

Keep it together, Ian.

Meanwhile, Barbara is being very polite and charming to the guard on the reception desk and has managed to get Team Tassles permission to see Ian. Susan, Sabetha, and Altos have been making enquiries about the Doctor, who’s been seen around the place but is currently AWOL. I must say I do love Team Tassles as it currently stands, mostly because Babs appears to have become its benevolent matriarch.

Enter Ian, who is pleased to see them but understandably anxious to find the Doctor on account of the fact that ‘the laws in this country are a mockery’. A familiar voice speaks from outside the shot: ‘I quite agree with you, my boy.’

BILLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY YOU’RE BACK! I didn’t realise how much I missed you.

Everyone except Ian runs to hug him, and it’s beautiful. Team Tardis is back together again, and everything is going to be all right. Apart from the fact that Ian (who sounds a lot more West Midlands when he’s agitated, it must be said) is going to be executed. The Doctor gets his Elle Woods on and tell Ian he’s the legal eagle they need. Bang on.

I just want us all to take a moment to appreciate that the Doctor and Ian are now officially Space Bros. The Doctor actually gives a shit about his humans and is finally stepping up to the plate for a change. Character development for the win.

Later, three beardy men with Interesting Headdresses that look a bit like chefs’ hats crossed with paper lanterns walk into an impressive-looking courtroom. They are the judges. They ask the Real Slim Shady representative for the defence to please stand up, and the Doctor asks for time to gather evidence. The request is granted, but he doesn’t have long, seeing as Ian’s going to be executed in three days unless evidence can be found to prove his innocence. Crikey.

Eyesen, the prosecutor, engages in some low-level smack-talk with the Doctor; the Doctor is sassy and unphased. Team Tassles congratulates the Doctor on his mad legal skills, and the Doctor tells hem he’s been studying the local laws since Eprim – Ian’s supposed victim – was murdered. Altos’s ears prick up at the sound of the name:

ALTOS: (shocked) Eprim?
IAN: He was your friend?
ALTOS: Yes. You found him, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Oh yes, I had met him and arranged to take the micro-key but something must have happened, that's why he tried to take the key earlier than we had arranged.
SABETHA: And he was killed?
DOCTOR: Yes. He must have told his plans to someone else. And that someone else killed him and took the key.
IAN: Then all we have to do is find out who took the key and why!

Rather than take a moment to mourn the loss of his friend, Altos chooses to process his grief through the medium of sass:

The Doctor agrees they all need to get a wriggle on, and sends Altos and Sabetha off to the library to research case histories of Hippogriff murder trials. When Susan asks what she can do, the Doctor says she and Barbara can be his Detectives. Right on. Then Ian asks what he can do. And this happens:

'TRUST ME [I'M THE DOCTOR]' IS BORN.

Sabetha and Altos are pretending to read a blank Space Book. Meanwhile, the Doctor, Barbara, and Susan, are going over events with Tarron, who maintains that the key cannot have left the room because of reasons which I would write down if I could be arsed. Suffice to say, it’s a Jonathan Creek-style locked room mystery, and the Doctor thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes:

BARBARA: Have you any idea how the key got out of here?
DOCTOR: Oh, elementary, elementary.
SUSAN: Grandfather! Do you mean you know? I mean, how? Where?
DOCTOR: All in good time, my child. The important thing is I believe I know who did the killing.

I already knew there was a strong Holmesian thread running through Classic Who, but I didn’t realise it went this far back. More importantly, the Doctor reckons he can figure out what happened by holding an impromptu improv session, which involves Barbara pretending to be Ian, Susan pretending to be the corpse (poor, morbid Susan), and William Hartnell karate-chopping the hapless Jacqueline Hill to the ground. It is a thing of beauty and must be GIF-ed.

Anyway, the upshot is, it’s the so-called relief guard wot dunnit because the easiest way for the murderer to get away without running into security is to pretend to be first on the scene. Babs and Susan are all ready to go charging off to tell Tarron, but the Doctor reckons this will only complete Tarron’s case against Ian, seeing as how he can’t prove it wasn’t Ian wot hid the key in its present location (which the Doctor knows but apparently isn’t telling). He also has a task for Babs and Susan that he thinks they’ll find ‘very interesting’; they look hilariously unconvinced.

It turns out Team Watson’s task is to talk to the relief guard in question. His name is Aydan, and he’s not at home; his wife Kala, however, who would make an excellent Narcissa Malfoy if only because she has the dogshit-under-the-nose facial expression nailed, is smoothly and unflappable hospitable. No sooner has a possible motive for theft been established – to wit, the fact that the key is valuable as hell seeing as there are only five of them in the whole universe – than Aydan himself comes bursting in, freezing in suspicion as he sees our detectives perched on the sofa.

And now it’s Susan’s time to shine, goading Aydan essentially by telling him that her grandfather is going to come down on him like a tonne of bricks in the courtroom, and then eliciting a confession from him using the oldest trick in the book:

SUSAN: I thought you might like to know that we know where the key is hidden!
BARBARA: Susan!
AYDAN: (Alarmed) But you couldn't know where it is! I...

Go Susan. Also, and I don’t say this to detract from Susan’s tactics seeing as how she clearly has the measure of him, how thick is Aydan? Anyway, he resorts to hollow threats, about which Team Watson gives precisely zero fucks.

Aydan, who is clearly a very insecure and violent man, makes as though to strike Susan but is held back by Kala, sparing Babs the necessity of going into kill mode. They leave the premises and immediately start eavesdropping. Aydan is aggressive, Kala placatory, and then something very disturbing happens: there’s a smacking sound as though Aydan has hit Kala very hard indeed, followed by a slamming door. Barbara and Susan look alarmed and immediately bend down to look in at the keyhole, but can only see a hand pressing the buttons of a comms device; footsteps sound in the corridor, and they have to scarper.

Yikes. What a bastard. I’d like to think that, had they not been forced to flee, Barbara and Susan would have stormed the place, or at least waited until Aydan had left before sneaking back in to check if Kala was ok. I’m actually going to save my comments on the domestic violence subplot for the final episode in this serial, because it’s only then that we get the bigger picture on Kala’s relationship with Aydan, and I have Things To Say about the way Terry Nation has used the fact that Aydan clearly knocks his wife about as a red herring. Which is…hmmm. It’s also a surprisingly complex and adult situation for a children’s show, so I want to do it justice by talking about it properly once it’s reached its conclusion. For now I’m just going to do a massive Humanities buzzword copout and say it’s – wait for it – problematic. But this will get the space it deserves.

Back to the plot, it seems someone in the Kala/Aydan household is calling Eyesen the prosecutor. We only get to hear Eyesen’s side of the conversation: an unspecified ‘she’ may know something, an unspecified mutual friend may be unable to go through with an unspecified something, and the person on the other end of the phone may have to do an unspecified something about it. Clear? I thought so.

Back in court, Eyesen is arguing that Ian is, like, totes guilty because the murder weapon has Savage Vibes or something and was found in Ian’s right hand. The Doctor gets his Poirot on, telling the assembled court that the murderer is IN THIS VERY ROOM but it sure as hell isn't his client (or words to that effect).

Such a drama queen. Or whatever the gender-neutral equivalent of a drama queen is. What is that, by the way?

Anyway, the Doctor calls Sabetha to the stand for a flagrant bit of theatre in which he shows her a picture of the micro-key and asks her whether she recognises it. When she answers in the affirmative, he asks her whether she knows where it is, at which point she produces one of her own micro-keys (or perhaps the fake one), to general astonishment. He asks her where she got it; she tells him the man who murdered the guard; he asks her where he is and whether she can point him out, and she singles out Aydan sitting in the front row. Doctor, you devious little blighter.

So Aydan, as well as being a murderer and a wife-beater, is also – as we saw earlier – thick as shit, and blurts out that she can’t have found it. Realising he’s incriminated himself, he makes a dash for it, AND IS GRABBED AND RESTRAINED BY BARBARA AND SUSAN. Seriously, do NOT fuck with Team Watson. Babs in particular looks like she’s ready to wrestle him to the ground, while the morbid ‘gonna walk you into a sword’ gleam is back in Susan’s eye.

Recognising that he is in the grip of unyielding badasses, Aydan promptly decides to spill his guts. He gets as far as ‘they made me do it’ before he’s murdered by lasers (assailant unknown) and falls dead to the floor. There’s a stunned silence before Kala sinks to the ground and starts weeping over the body.

Later, an unrepentant Doctor is explaining his tricksy means to the judges. Meanwhile, Ian and Babs are chatting to Tarron, who’s telling them about psychometric testing, whereby ‘[e]xperts are able to define from an object the characteristics of the person who last had contact with that object’. Which explains all that business with the murder weapon earlier. Babs comments that it’s an improvement on fingerprints; Tarron is nonplussed; Babs says it’s not important. LOL. Though what on Earth are you talking about, Babs? Psychometric testing on inanimate objects sounds fucking mental and seems to involve a great deal of profiling. Then this happens:

I’m glad the episode has this moment, as I was beginning to be concerned about the fact that neither Barbara nor Susan had brought up the fact that Aydan was physically abusive. She doesn’t elaborate, and clearly Ian doesn’t grasp the full significance of her grim aside, but I’m glad she for one won’t be shedding a tear over the loss of a murder with a nasty temper who takes it out on his wife. And speaking of Kala, she’s been sent home with some drugs because she’s ‘hysterical’. Sigh.

As the tribunal resumes, Altos asks Babs where Susan’s got to; apparently she’s gone to get Ian’s statement and has in no way been kidnapped or imperilled or anything like that. But OH NO, it looks like Ian’s still in the doghouse and the Doctor’s little spectacle has backfired: Eyore or Eyesore or whatever the prosecutor’s name is submits that Ian is still guilty as hell, that Aydan was clearly coerced into being his accomplice, and that Team Tassles probably killed him.

At this point, the guard from the security desk comes in, whispers to Babs, and she, Susan, Altos, and Sabetha scarper from the courtroom unnoticed. The head judge, meanwhile, reckons Eyesen is right, and the other two judges do a lot of vigorous nodding. The Doctor asks for time to produce new evidence, and is denied. Which is unsurprising after the stunt he pulled, I suppose. So now Ian’s going to be executed.

Outside, Babs is talking to her mate from the security desk, who’s been given a note to give to her. And OH CRIKEY, this is what it says: ‘There will be another death if you disclose where the key is hidden.’ Altos reckons this is proof that someone else was involved and is keen to get it to Tarron and the Doctor sharpish. Babs wants to know whose death is on the cards, and as if to answer her question, a phone begins to ring.

Babs’s mate from the security desk picks up the phone and hands it to Babs, smiling pleasantly. I know I’m holding up the momentum at a crucial moment, but I like this guy. I want to see more of Barbara and the Security Desk Guy. He could be the new Ganatus. It’s a niche ship, but I think it’s got sails.

Anyway, it’s Susan…and ‘they’ made her call Babs…AND ‘THEY’ ARE GOING TO KILL HER!!

SHIT THE BED WHERE IS SUSAN AND WHO’S GOT HER AND WILL SHE BE OK AND WILL BABS COME STORMING TO THE RESCUE? HOW WILL THE DOCTOR GET IAN OUT OF THIS LEGAL PICKLE? WILL ALTOS AND SABETHA EVER GET NEW CLOTHES? WILL BARBARA GET TO HAVE SOME QUALITY TIME WITH THAT PLEASANT-LOOKING SECURITY GUARD? AND WHERE IS THAT SODDING MICRO-KEY?

Summary (as applicable to this episode)

Does it pass the Bechdel test? Yup.

Is the gaze problematic? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? No. Altos, on the other hand...

Does a woman fall over/twist her ankle (whilst running from peril)? No, though the Doctor does send Babs flying again.

Does a woman wander off alone for the sole dramatic purpose of getting into trouble so she can be rescued later? Yup. Susan goes off to get Ian's Statement and promptly gets kidnapped.

Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? Yup.

Does the Doctor/a man companion/any other man have to rescue the woman companion(s) from peril? Not yet.

Is a woman placed under threat of actual bodily harm? Yes. Susan by her kidnappers, Susan and Barbara by Aydan, and Kala by Aydan.

Is/are the woman companion's/s' first/only reaction(s) to peril gratuitous screaming? No.

Does a woman companion go into hysterics over something reasonably minor? No.

Is a woman 'spared' the ordeal of having to do/witness something unpleasant by a man who makes a decision on her behalf/keeps her deliberately ignorant? No.

Does a man automatically disbelieve or belittle something a woman (companion) says happened to her? No.

Does a man talk over a woman or talk about a woman as though she isn't there? Aydan.

Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? Barbara is still on cuddlewatch.

Is a woman the first/only person to be (most gratuitously) menaced by the episode's antagonist(s)? Ian's under threat of death but the women get menaced a fair old bit.

Is a man shamed into doing/not doing something because the alternative is a woman doing/not doing something? No.

Does the woman companion come up with a plan? Nope, it's the Doctor running the show this week. Though I'd say Susan tripping Aydan up in his story is sort of a plan.

Does the woman companion do something stupid/banal/weird which inspires a man to be a Man with a Plan? Nope.

Does a woman come up with a theory and is it ridiculed by the Doctor/a man? The Doctor does pour cold water on Susan and Barbara's plan to tell Tarron about the relief guard being the culprit.

Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? Nope.

Does a woman get to be a badass? Barbara and Susan are badass detectives and heavyweights.

Is the young, strong, straight, white male lead the person most often in control of the situation? Nope, it's the Doctor in charge this week.

Is there past/future/alien sexism? Yup. Aydan is the worst.

Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? Only subtly alluded to by Babs.

Does an past/future/alien person have the hots for a woman companion and is it reciprocated? ONLY IN MY MIND.

Did a woman write/direct/produce this episode? No/No/Yes.

Verdict

Now that's more like it! Billy's back, and I didn't know I'd missed him but please never leave for more than one episode ever again. The Doctor and Ian get some nice character development, Babs and Susan get to be Team Watson but an independent Team Watson that the Doctor!Holmes actually trusts to do the job without secretly following them around and undermining their efforts. It's also nice to see Barbara and Susan have a few lighter scenes with the Doctor where they're all doing improv at the murder scene, the highlights of which include Barbara being very earnest in her game of 'what would Ian do?' and Susan being an Addams Family weirdo who's way too into pretending to be a corpse. A troubling domestic violence subplot which I'll get into next week once it plays out. Overall, however, a much-needed change of pace and genre.

Series 1 Episode 24: The Snows of Terror

Serial: The Keys of Marinus
Episode: 4 (The Snows of Terror)
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companions: Barbara, Ian, and Susan

Writer: Terry Nation
Director: John Gorrie
Producer: Verity Lambert
Original Air Date: 02/05/1964

YOUR TINY HAND IS FROZEN (and other stories)

Feat. Baby’s First Trigger Warning

Yeah you heard me. Attempted rape trigger warning. Terry Nation, what the actual fuck.

We begin with Babs and Ian doing their best Torvill and Dean impression, swooning away in the polystyrene snow as a singy lady à la Star Trek – or, if the commentary is to believed, a lady flagrantly ripping off Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia Antarctica - sets the mood.

I sped this up to make it look more like Bolero but tbh
 it just looks like Wallace and Gromit.

Babs comes round, looking unimpressed, and looks up to see a creepy beardy guy wrapped in furs looming above them; she swoons again. Creepy furry guy takes the opportunity to steal the micro-key from her hand.

However, FOR THE MOMENT, it would seem this guy isn’t a total bastard, because he appears to have taken our humans in from the cold to warm up in his log cabin. He wakes Barbara up, and she immediately wants to know where Ian is. Because of course. And GOOD NEWS, everyone, Ian’s made it, too. Creepy Furry Guy starts up a weird Che Gelida Manina routine with Barbara and teaches her how to warm up frost-bitten hands by stroking them in an unsettlingly slow manner. He asks Babs whether she’s afraid of him; when she says she’s not, he tells her he once broke the back of a wolf with his bare hands. Ok then. Also his name is Vasor.

In fairness, I would 100% watch a version of La Bohème where the rest of the song is about how Rodolfo once fucked up a wolf.

Babs goes to wake up Ian and give his hands a perfunctory rub. Vasor gives them some soup, and Babs tries to be gracious about his having saved them from freezing to death; Vasor tells them the wolves would’ve got them first.

Feat. Ian's default facial expression for the episode.

Anyway, it turns out the only reason they’ve both alive is because Altos was on hand to help. Rather shiftily, Vasor claims that Altos ‘went out’ and is probably in the village looking for Susan and Sabetha. Ian leaps into action and has to trade his travel dial for some really inadequate-looking furs so he can go after Altos. Babs isn’t happy about saying goodbye, and with good reason: she’s now alone with creepy, creepy Vasor and he plans to ‘fatten you up’. Eww.

Meanwhile, Ian is out in the snow with nothing but a fur stole and a lantern and some stock footage of wolves. He finds Altos and his Very Naked Legs lying unconscious in the snow with his hands all tied up. Foul play! Frankly I’m astonished he’s not dead yet or at least well on the way to becoming a double amputee.

SEAMLESS

Back in the cabin, Barbara is feeling super uncomfortable at the dinner table but still managing to be polite when Vasor comes out with shit like ‘that door’ll keep anything out…OR IN’. Vasor takes the dishes out, and Babs looks for somewhere to put the leftover cutlery. She opens a drawer and…OH TREACHERY! Inside said drawer are Sabetha’s chain with the micro-keys and everyone else’s travel dials. Vasor demands to know what she’s doing being all snoopy, and brave Babs confronts him over how he got her friends’ pretties. Vasor claims to have found Sabetha and Susan in a cave and given them food and fuel in exchange for their valuables; Altos forced him to go out and look for them, but instead they found our humans; afterwards Altos wanted to go out again. Barbara doesn’t believe him on account of the fact that Sabetha would never have given up the micro-keys; Vasor pretty much admits he’s left the others to the wolves (and the cold). Barbara mutters something about ‘when Ian gets back’, at which point Vasor suggests that would be highly unlikely on account of what’s in the bag he gave him. WHAT’S IN THE BAG, ANGELOS VASOR?

Outside, Ian is now rubbing Altos’s legs. Altos tells Ian it was Vasor wot tied him up, at which point Ian instantly starts panicking about how he’s left Barbara alone with him. As well he fucking might.

Che Gelida Patella

It is at this point that Ian realises Vasor gave him a bag full of raw meat to carry around with him. WOW that’s fucked up. And of course the wolves are circling. Realising the extent of Vasor’s treachery, Ian and Altos march back to the cabin to fuck him up.

*THIS IS THE BIT WITH THE ATTEMPTED RAPE. TO SKIP TO THE BIT WHERE I GET ANGRY ABOUT IT, SCROLL DOWN TO THE NEXT GIF, FEAT. BARBARA TAKING A CHUNK OUT OF VASOR'S HAND WITH HER TEETH LIKE A LATTER-DAY BRIENNE OF TARTH.*

Back in the cabin, Vasor is advancing on Babs and telling her there’s nowhere for her to run. Barbara picks up a poker and tells him to keep the fuck away from her. He tells her he can wait. JESUS.

Ian and Altos are still a quarter of a mile from the cute miniature of the log cabin and the wolves are catching up. They make a run for it.

Meanwhile, Vasor makes a grab for Barbara, who hits him with the poker. GO BABS. Riled, he tells her ‘I’ll wait no longer’ (!!!) and starts chasing her round the table. Then she falls backwards ONTO A BED and screams and he’s bearing down on her Dracula-style when there’s a knocking at the door and Ian’s yelling for Barbara to open it. Barbara runs for it and is grabbed by Vasor, but she bites his hand and breaks free and manages to unbolt the door. PHEW.

Tellingly, as Ian and Altos come crashing through the door, Barbara answers Ian’s question ‘are you all right?’ by reassuring him that ‘the girls are all right’ and in a cave somewhere. Altos looks ready to bash Vasor’s head in, but a grim-looking Ian tells him they need him unharmed if he’s going to show them where the cave is.

Ok, now that Barbara is safe and before we go any further with the action, WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED? Did they seriously just put Barbara in a damsel-in-distress scenario with a guy who was definitely trying to force himself on her and then carry on like nothing happened? Literally the only good things to be said about this scene are that a) there is zero victim-blaming involved and b) it’s not played for laughs like a Carry On film (or The Romans which is basically a Carry On film and also fucking horrifying), but just throwing it in as another bit of casual peril that’s all part and parcel of being a woman who travels with the Doctor and then not even addressing it afterwards is pretty shocking. I don’t care that a kid probably wouldn’t understand the implications of this scene; if you’re not prepared to actually talk about it in a kids’ show, don’t put it in a kids’ show. You don’t get points for adult themes in teatime viewing unless you allow some room for discussion. And this just feels gratuitous.

Rant over. For now.

Elsewhere, Susan is trying to light a paving slab, with understandably little success. She and Sabetha are cold and desperate, and Susan reckons their only option is to take their chances outside. Sabetha, who is still in her floaty Grecian number, points out they’re hardly dressed for it; Susan reckons they’ll freeze anyway sooner or later. They can’t quite remember the way they came, but they’re giving it a shot. And of course because of the Rules of Telly, it is at this point that Team Tassles (any team with Altos in it) is approaching the caves. Ugh. Filler.

Susan and Sabetha have taken the wrong turning and must now go back the way they came; Team Tassles has arrived to find an empty cave. Everyone starts yelling at Vasor to show them the way through the deeper parts of the cave; he’s…reluctant. Because of demons. They shove him into the cave passages anyway. Judging by the ferocity with which Ian is now treating Vasor, I’m going to assume that Barbara has filled him in on how Vasor is a creepy would-be rapist.

Meanwhile Susan and Sabetha seem to be going deeper into the caves and have found a TEENY TINY INDIANA JONES ROPE BRIDGE. It looks…very unsafe. They find themselves in a chamber with some creepy frozen warriors in it and freak out a bit.

Team Tassles is right behind them at the bridge, and Vasor is too much of a scaredy cat to go over it. Susan is reunited with Barbara and is delighted about it; Ian is so keen to join in the hugging that he trips over the bridge in his eagerness to cross it, and leaves Vasor behind LIKE AN IDIOT. Vasor unties his end of the bridge and throws it down, trapping everyone on the other side of what we are to assume is a gaping chasm of impassable magnitude. Ian says it’s too wide to jump (and he should know), and Babs suggests finding some logs or something to put across it. It actually looks a lot smaller than the one they jumped over in The Daleks. Just sayin’.

ENJOY YOUR TRIP

Anyway, the New Improved Team Tassles (plus much-needed furs and/or fleeces for Susan and Sabetha) wends its way through the tunnels, observing a dodgy-looking support that will probably be used to collapse the ceiling on assailants unknown at a later point in the episode. Susan has reverted to being frightened and cuddling Barbara, and Ian is almost maniacally insistent on their searching ALL THE TUNNELS for the key.

Arriving in the room with the warriors in it (who definitely won’t come to life at any time soon), Ian speculates they must be the demons stupid Vasor was worried about. Stupid Vasor who just pulled the oldest trick in the book on you with that rope bridge, Ian. Sabetha has spotted the key frozen in the middle of a block of ice, Thumbelina style. It’s also surrounded by pipes.

While Ian is waxing lyrical about the four ‘dead’ warriors, Barbara has found the hot tap; she calls Ian over. She starts to turn it, is told to ‘steady on’ by Ian, who seems to have a fleeting peevish moment in which he thinks that it surely can’t be that simple because he’s the Science Teacher and he should have noticed…before getting over himself and telling her to ‘go on’. It’s actually pretty funny.

Then this happens:

SABETHA: But how could it be? Where could the heat come from?
BARBARA: It must be a volcanic spring, buried deep in the bowels of the earth. Like the hot springs in Iceland!
SABETHA: Iceland? Where's that?
(BARBARA hesitates and looks over at IAN.)
IAN: In our own country, far away.

I love this for two reasons: firstly, that it’s Barbara who answers the Science question by doing her ‘this alien thing reminds me of an Earth thing’ thing, and secondly that there’s this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment of wistfulness between the two humans. Babs does a rather adorable thing which I as a Humanities person from a family full of Science people recognise from long years of trying to convince my nearest and dearest that I know things about Science, which is to put her ‘I know a thing LOOK I KNOW A THING you don’t understand I HAVE TAKEN ON BOARD AND REMEMBERED ONE OF THE MANY THINGS YOU’RE ALWAYS GEEKING OUT ABOUT’ body language all up in Ian’s face. Ian, however, continues to have a face like a slapped arse.

Anyway, the ice is melting, so Team Tassles decides to go and find a way of getting back over that chasm. Ian and Altos tie some giant icicles together (are they icicles?) and put them over the gap, while ‘the girls’ are sent to watch ice melt. If the key were in a meadow, they’d probably be sent to watch grass grow.

Back in the chamber, the warriors have all slumped over and the key is free from its ice block. Babs calls Ian and Altos, while Susan – displaying a morbid fascination we’ve not seen since she stuck a skull on a burning torch for fun in An Unearthly Child – starts fixating on how deadly-looking the warriors’ weapons look. She says she wouldn’t want to come across one of those in a battle…and OH EM EFF GEE one of the warriors appears to be waking up!

Susan screams and runs to Barbara for a cuddle; Sabetha stares transfixed; Ian and Altos arrive and wonder what the matter is, then see quite plainly what the matter is and tell them to get the fuck out of there and run, DUH. Babs and Susan don’t need telling twice. As the warrior nearest Sabetha raises its sword, Ian points out that if she’s got the key (which she has) she should also commence with the running, like, now. Then…TRIPPING! WOMAN FALLS OVER UNNECESSARILY WHILST RUNNING FROM PERIL KLAXON! Ian helps Sabetha up, and she scarpers as the warriors advance veeeeeeeeery slowly on Ian.

Meanwhile, out on the ledge, Sabetha, Barbara, and Altos are waiting silently for Ian’s return (too silently, if you ask me), while – unnoticed by any of them – brave, intrepid Susan ties the rope from the rope bridge around her wrist and starts crawling across the giant icicles. Careful, Susan!

Ian is trying to fight off a guy with an axe using an icicle. Outside, Babs notices what Susan’s doing, and Altos points out that their makeshift bridge is unlikely to have frozen solid yet and may not take her weight. As Susan inches her way across, one of the icicles rolls away, and she flattens herself against the remaining parts of the bridge looking grimly alarmed but determined.

Fun fact: the bridge did actually collapse at one point with Carole Ann Ford on it, so the concern is real.

Meanwhile, Ian has just made that dodgy archway collapse to block the path of the warriors. And now – HURRAH! Susan has made it to the other side and retied the rope bridge. The others hurry across. And oh no, the warriors have made it past Ian’s blockade! But oh yay Team Tassles including Ian is now across! Not a moment too soon, Ian, does a Vasor and unties the bridge again, just as one of the warriors is about to cross it. Said warrior goes plunging into the void with a drawn-out scream. Either because he’s never killed a humanoid during his adventures with the Doctor before, or because he’s having some sort of Nam-style flashback to Skaro and that time Antodus plunged to his death in an underground cavern whilst tied to Ian by a rope, or because that was really fucking close, Ian has an ‘I’m going to stand here looking mildly harrowed’ moment at the edge of the chasm before running off. Because character development. The other warriors dither about confusedly on the other side.

Back at the Cabin, Vasor is looking at all the shiny pretties he stole from Team Tassles. Enter Team Tassles, demanding their shit back. Vasor runs away, and everyone is about to turn their travel dials when Vasor comes running back in, screaming about the devils from the mountain. Those warriors sure are persistent!

Ian is surprisingly brutal about leaving Vasor to be murdered, telling him he’ll ‘have to entertain them alone’. I don’t dispute that the thieving, rapey, treacherous, cowardly shitbag deserves everything he gets, but it’s unusual for Ian to be this vindictive.

Vasor grabs Susan and tells them to stay or he’ll kill her. Susan yelps a bit at being grabbed, but then a seriously dark expression plays across her face as she calmly backs him towards the door while he’s still grabbing her. Vasor suddenly appears to be in agony…AND WITH GOOD REASON BECAUSE HE’S JUST BEEN STABBED THROUGH THE DOOR BY ONE OF THE WARRIORS’ SWORDS! And is dead. As everyone in Team Tassles turns their travel dials, the warriors break through the door into the room…and there’s nobody there to murder.

BUT WHERE ARE WE NOW? It would appear to be some sort of museum full of glass cases, on the floor of which a guard lies…dead? Enter Ian, who checks the guard is out for the count before moving to one of the cases and trying to open it. A black-gloved arm à la Midsomer Murders holding what looks like a potato appears in shot and hits Ian a glancing blow to the back; William Russell, trooper that he is, pretends he’s been bashed properly and swoons, falling next to a mace of some kind, which a black-gloved hand places in the grip of the unconscious Ian.

Now we see what was in the case - A MICRO KEY! The gloved hand breaks open the case and steals the key as alarm bells begin to ring.

TREACHERY AND INTRIGUE! WHAT THE FUCK HAS HAPPENED HERE? WHO IS FRAMING IAN AND WHY? WHERE WAS EVERYONE ELSE WHILE ALL THIS WAS HAPPENING? WILL THOSE WARRIORS NOW SET OFF ON FOOT ACROSS THE PLANET TO RESUME CHASING TEAM TASSLES? IS BARBARA OK?

Summary (as applicable to this episode)

Does it pass the Bechdel test? Yup.

Is the gaze problematic? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? No. Altos, on the other hand...

Does a woman fall over/twist her ankle (whilst running from peril)? Yes!

Does a woman wander off alone for the sole dramatic purpose of getting into trouble so she can be rescued later? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? Not exactly.

Does the Doctor/a man companion/any other man have to rescue the woman companion(s) from peril? Yup.

Is a woman placed under threat of actual bodily harm? Yes

Is a woman threatened with sexual assault and is does anybody talk about it afterwards? Yes and no. Jesus.

Is/are the woman companion's/s' first/only reaction(s) to peril gratuitous screaming? No.

Does a woman companion go into hysterics over something reasonably minor? No.

Is a woman 'spared' the ordeal of having to do/witness something unpleasant by a man who makes a decision on her behalf/keeps her deliberately ignorant? No.

Does a man automatically disbelieve or belittle something a woman (companion) says happened to her? No.

Does a man talk over a woman or talk about a woman as though she isn't there? Not as far as I can recall.

Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? Barbara and Sabetha are on 'Susan needs a cuddle' duty this week.

Is a woman the first/only person to be (most gratuitously) menaced by the episode's antagonist(s)? BARBARA.

Is a man shamed into doing/not doing something because the alternative is a woman doing/not doing something? No.

Does the woman companion come up with a plan? Barbara works out ow to melt the key out of the ice, but everyone's plans are pretty short-term this week.

Does the woman companion do something stupid/banal/weird which inspires a man to be a Man with a Plan? Nope.

Does a woman come up with a theory and is it ridiculed by the Doctor/a man? Yes and no. Barbara and the hot springs.

Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? The Doctor isn't here this week. Again.

Does a woman get to be a badass? Barbara gets to hit a guy with a poker and bite his hand, and Susan gets to be brave about the bridge and backs her captor into a sword, so that's pretty badass, but it hardly balances it out.

Is the young, strong, straight, white male lead the person most often in control of the situation? Yup.

Is there past/future/alien sexism? Vasor.

Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? No.

Did a woman write/direct/produce this episode? No/No/Yes.

Verdict

I...really didn't like this episode. For obvious reasons. Susan flip-flopped between 'everything is overwhelmingly terrifying and a need a cuddle' and 'I am brave and a morbid badass', and as much as I enjoyed the latter, she's poorly served by writers who mostly don't know what to do with her. Barbara's sole function this week was to be a potential rape victim, which is fucking appalling. She's fierce and fighty, and remains strong as hell, but it doesn't negate the fact that the only other thing she does this entire episode is figure out where the hot tap is. Ian's characterisation is interesting this week, though. He spends the whole episode being inexplicably mardy and is utterly pitiless in his dealings with Vasor, even though he's apparently capable of feeling Feelings about having been responsible for the death of a supernatural frozen warrior that's trying to murder him. I think maybe the full fucked-upness of his adventures may finally be catching up with him. Sabetha and Altos continue to be pretty and unflappable. Next week, the Doctor is back, and it looks like we'll be giving the action a rest. Maybe they'll all be able to have a well-earned nap and take stock of their crazy lives.

Series 1 Episode 23: The Screaming Jungle

Serial: The Keys of Marinus
Episode: 3 (The Screaming Jungle)
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companions: Barbara, Ian, and Susan

Writer: Terry Nation
Director: John Gorrie
Producer: Verity Lambert
Original Air Date: 25/04/1964

IANDIANA JONES AND THE BABS CRUSADE (and other stories)

In which Barbara and Ian fall foul of a handsy stone idol, there are more booby-traps than you can shake a pickaxe at, the first meeting of the Jungle Branch of the Marinus Book Club takes place, and no fucking of the patriarchy goes unpunished.

Earplugs at the ready, everyone, because Susan is having some sort of telepathic episode where she can hear the jungle screaming. A screaming jungle, if you will.

Enter the rest of Team Tardis (minus the Doctor plus Altos and Sabetha…which I’m going to call Team Tassles in honour of Altos’s ludicrous hemline); Ian put Susan into a half-Chesterton (only one shoulder shaken) in an effort to get her to tell them what’s spooked her so much; Susan decides to cuddle Barbara instead.

When children play favourites...

Sabetha, rather ominously, pronounces the jungle ‘a dead place’. Altos has found a hidden archway covered in creepers behind which he reckons there must be a key.

Meanwhile, Susan and Barbara get to have another lovely (albeit brief) Susan and Barbara Chat in which we get another glimmer of all-too-rare character development for our Poor Wand’ring One:

SUSAN: And was grandfather all right?
BARBARA: Yes.
SUSAN: I didn't want to stay until the last possible moment. I…I don't like to say goodbye.
BARBARA: No, I know.

Well my heart just broke a little bit. I love that we get this continuity from Marco Polo – a serial during which a) there was that gorgeous conversation between Susan and Barbara in the desert where the former seemed genuinely alarmed at the prospect of having to say goodbye to the latter at some point in the nearish future and b) Susan had to say goodbye to Ping-Cho. I also love that because Barbara was a) obviously a part of that earlier conversation and b) the first member of Team Tardis to see how important Ping-Cho was to Susan, she gets it straight away. Her ‘I know’ isn’t just a platitude to calm Susan down; it’s a moment of real, understated understanding between the two women. Good script editing, guys.

Ian reckons they should all go take a walk around the walls to see if they can find an entrance that isn’t covered in creepers that would take a day to hack down. Altos and Sabetha are eager beavers and want to come, too. Barbara, however, out of what I’m going to assume is sensitivity towards the still rather shaken Susan, tells Ian she’s going to stay behind and look for branches etc. in case they have to force their way through that wall. Ian, rather patronisingly, tells her that’s ‘a good idea’, and compounds his paternalistic asshattery by telling her ‘but don’t do anything until we get back’. Then this happens:

YES BARBARA! I’m so, so glad this is actually being said and that we do (eventually and after a bit of a shaky start) get a flash of Susan’s wicked goldfish side when she seems rather taken with the idea of rebelling against the patriarchy. It’s not that long since the two of them were verbally sticking it to Marco Polo and Tegana on the subject of Ping-Cho’s creepy forced marriage after all.

Anyway, there are more tantalising hints as to Susan’s character and abilities when Babs asks her what did happen back there:

SUSAN: Well it was a sound, a noise, like…like tapping and…and whirring mixed up with a sort of screeching. I…I've heard it before.
BARBARA: Where?
SUSAN: Well that's just it, I can't remember. I…I just recognise it as…being something evil.

Well that IS tantalising. I think this is what Carole Ann Ford meant when she complained about the fact that Susan was meant to have these fantastic telepathic abilities but they never really got developed despite there being early hints at that sort of thing. I know she gets to stretch her powers in The Sensorites, but otherwise I agree about it being a total waste. I want to know where Susan’s heard that tappy-screechy-whirry Sound of Evil before. Somebody please take Capaldi down this road.

Barbara, however, doesn’t seem to be as interested in all this as I am, and moves on rather unceremoniously to the subject of the vegetation covering the opening in the wall beyond which the key supposedly lies. But while Babs goes blithely on about how the vegetation ‘isn’t half as dense as it looks’, a creeper starts winding its way around Susan’s legs! SENTIENT FOLIAGE ALERT!

Susan screams for Barbara, who, fresh from her quadruple murder in Morphoton, wastes no time in pulling the creeper away and smashing it with a rock.

Barbara Wright: violent gardener

Which one would assume means Barbara thinks it’s alive. But no, she’s now being Teacherishly Firm with Susan and telling her to stop with all this OMG IT WAS ALIVE nonsense because it was ‘just your imagination’. Poor Susan. What is it with jungles and nobody believing her about having been menaced by something sentient?

Anyway, the combination of the Chesterton Method and the Cuddle Method seems to calm Susan down, and the two of them decide to concentrate on getting into the Secret Garden. Which they do with ludicrous ease, as it turns out you don’t have to hack through the creepers, you just have to push them aside and move past them. Which is probably true of human creepers, too.

Intrepid Barbara finds herself in a foliage tunnel, at the end of which is an idol with suspiciously human-looking arms. Susan begs her not to go any further, but Babs seems to be enjoying her ‘fuck the patriarchy’ moment too much to heed her. As if to reinforce this, Ian chooses this very moment to return and protest at Barbara’s refusal to obey his order to ‘wait until we got back’. Barbara, however, is unrepentant. In fact she’s only gone and found the key hanging on top of the idol, and what’s more can manage perfectly well by herself, thank-you-very-much, clambering triumphantly onto the idol’s lap and retrieving the all-important micro-circuit.

But OH BLOODY HELL we should’ve known it was all too good to be true. Have we not learned from Marco Polo that women who wander off alone in defiance of the orders of their nearest male authority figure are to be punished by the Scriptwriting Gods and ought to expect any manner of hideous misfortune to befall them (up to and including almost being murdered by a man who won the privilege of slitting your throat in a game of dice)? Because no sooner has Barbara crowed in triumph than this happens:

OH THOSE SPECIAL EFFECTS. I’ll bet that handsy idol is in some way related to Sutek’s handsy chair. Perhaps they’re cousins.

Anyway, prop-related hilarity aside, it’s incredibly annoying that everything Barbara has said about Ian being needlessly overprotective has essentially been undermined by the fact that minutes later she’s screaming his name and being Indiana Jonesed into unknown peril having had the presumption to act on her own initiative.

Ian is, alas, too slow, and is immediately both angry and panicky. He storms back out into the open because he ‘can’t think in here’, and, as is usually the case when Babs is missing presumed imperilled, any capacity he may have had for seeing the bigger picture goes out of the window:

ALTOS: At least we've found the micro-key.
IAN: Oh, I don't care about that now. The only thing that matters is getting Barbara out of there.

Oh Ian. I’m with Babs in that I think he’s downright overbearing at times (in case you hadn’t noticed), and maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but it’s almost endearing how he immediately goes to pieces every time he thinks Bae-bara is in danger. He’s also hilariously honest about his priorities. Though in fairness, it’s not like Team Tardis was ever invested in their quest beyond a ‘let’s find these sodding keys so we can get the Tardis back’ level.

At this point, Sabetha becomes the voice of reason: if Babs was wearing her travel dial – which she was – she can always use it to pop away from whatever danger she’s in…presuming she’s not been incapacitated in some way. Ian is still panicking, but Susan’s spotted something – the idol’s rotated back around, arms open, and no sign of Barbara! Ian has a brief moment of thinking he’s Hamlet or something as he turns away from his companions towards the camera to murmur that Bae ‘may have been injured, or even…’ and Sabetha adds fuel to his fears by speculating that Babs might still be in mortal peril even if she did use the travel dial because they don’t know what danger awaits them there either. Nice one, Sabetha.

The upshot is, Ian’s staying to check whether Barbara’s on the other side of the trap wall, and the others are jumping ahead. Susan wants to stay; Ian thinks not; Altos takes Susan under his wing. And OH MISFORTUNE UPON MISFORTUNE, Sabetha’s noticed that Barbara’s key is actually a fake, so Ian’s got to try and find the real key on top of everything else.

Resignedly, Ian allows himself to be fondled by the grabby idol:

Those hands never get old.

Anyway, on the other side of the wall is an overgrown courtyard full of statues and the like. One of them is a big chainmail-clad warrior with a very large axe, and when Ian steps on a trap flagstone IT COMES TO LIFE AND RAISES ITS AXE AND IS ABOUT TO BEHEAD HIM. Cripes. But HURRAH FOR BARBARA (WHO IS NOT DEAD) and who yells a warning just in time; Ian ducks, and the axe thuds into the stone floor. He runs over to Babs and is all for dwelling on the fact that she saved his bacon, but she’s got no time for that shit because this whole place is ‘one big booby trap’ and if he hadn’t turned up in half an hour she’d have turned the travel dial. Ian fills her in on the key situation, and they decide to ‘take it very slowly’…'it’ being the search for the real key, obvs.

They decide the best place to look is in the building, but the door is locked and can’t be broken down. Barbara notes that the vegetation ‘seems to be trying to get in’; Ian, having learned from his mistakes of bygone serials, doesn’t pooh-pooh the idea but rather seems more determined than ever to ‘get the micro-key and get out of here’. Babs sends him off to get an iron bar to break down the door; as she stands waiting the creepers in the background get longer.

Meanwhile, inside the building, an old man dressed like a monk is creeping (get it?) on the courtyard situation and shuffles into action.

Outside, the door opens, apparently of its own accord. The creepers that had been growing behind Babs move themselves obligingly out of the way as she moves to investigate. She calls for Ian, who says he’ll be right with her (once he’s finished faffing about with iron bars). She goes in anyway. Which by the Laws of Telly can’t end well.

Sure enough, no sooner has Babs wandered inside than a net falls from the ceiling, flattening her hairdo and apparently weighing her to the ground despite its not being weighted (good job, J-Hill).

As she turns herself onto her back and looks up, what should she see but…HOLY INDIANA JONES it’s a ceiling full of daggers!

Well actually they look more like plastic birds’ feet, but still, YIKES. Also I’m pretty sure spiked ceilings and revolving idols (and guys with monkeys and eyepatches) are ten-a-penny tropes in action films, but I’m increasingly of the opinion that there’s literally nothing in Indiana Jones that wasn’t in some way nicked from Doctor Who. That said, the spiked ceiling in Indiana Jones and the Very Racist Portrayal of Indian People Temple of Doom looks like it could do a lot more damage than the shoestring budget sixties kids’ TV show version.

Anyway, she lets out a blood-curdling scream, and Ian springs to action. Ever the practical person, he decides to take along this lethal-looking pickaxe he’s found on the floor, but some idiot has chained it to the ground. He tugs at it in frustration…which triggers another trap! A portcullis-type thingie clangs down in front of him, meaning he can’t get to Babs in time! Oh no! More haste, less speed, Ian. He grabs the discarded pickaxe and immediately starts trying to crowbar his way out.

So effort. Much try.

Meanwhile, Babs is still netted on the floor yelling ‘help me, Ian’. I know she’s panicking and disorientated and there are ceiling spikes, but she absolutely has time to roll herself out of danger, net or no net. However, seeing as they spent all their budget on foliage this week, I suppose they had no option but to throw the net from the back of a football goal over Jacqueline Hill and tell her to act as though it had weights on the end or something.

Fortunately for Babs, the ceiling is whisked away at this point to reveal one Darrius, the old monk who presumably set all the traps. There’s a reasonably hilarious scene in which he doggedly and dodderingly asks her a) who she is b) what she is (seeing as she’s not a Voord…though what do Voords actually look like?) and c) what interest she has in the keys. Babs, however, just wants someone to give her a hand with this bloody netting, protesting ‘I can’t talk to you like this’, and ends up having to remove it by herself as she attempts to convince the hysterically slow-talking Darrius that Arbitan sent her. She also wants to know what he’s done with Ian, seeing as how a Universe in which Ian does not immediately come rushing to Barbara’s aid is a Universe in which Ian is incapacitated in some way. She gives Arbitan her travel dial and he takes it away to check whether it’s been programmed correctly; if it has, he’ll know it’s from Arbitan. Babs continues to extricate herself from the net.

Don't look now, Babs, but your hair is...interesting.

Outside, better late than never, Ian manages to crowbar one of the…er…bars out of the way. He’s really rather adorably pleased with himself.

SUCCESS!

But oh how the tables turn! Darrius is now calling for help, and is being throttled by a creeper that’s made it inside the building! Babs is now almost entirely net-free, and she directs Ian into the room with the choking geriatric in it. Ian hits the creeper with a stick until it lets go, and Darrius is freed. He’s also raving: ‘It's coming again. The jungle is coming, when the whispering starts. It's death, I tell you, death…’

Blimey.

Later on, Darrius is coming round…only for Barbara to say he’s probably dying. Because of reasons? Ian asks Slowly and Loudly about the key. Darrius mumbles about how only those warned by Arbitan could have avoided his traps, which begs the question of why the hell Arbitan didn’t warn them about the traps. After further prompting, and in lieu of elaborating, Darrius gives our heroes the following information: ‘D…E…3…O…2.’ He burbles about the whispering starting when the darkness comes and promptly snuffs it.

Out with the old and...well. Just out with the old.

Hardened adventurers that they now are, Barbara and Ian put a blanket over the corpse and move on to the next bit of the story. They haven’t even checked to see whether Darrius is actually dead – he could just have passed out, but no, Ian closes his eyes and Babs covers his face and the move the hell on. Clearly he’s dead to them at any rate.

Ian reckons C3PO DE3O2 could be the combination to a safe. Which is unlikely in Space, but they also have plenty of other Earth Stuff around so actually why not? The next room is a botany lab, and lo and behold it does indeed contain a safe! Ian tries the combination but it doesn’t work. Babs reckons seeing as how Darrius was a trap-happy old coot the obvious place is probably the last place the key would be. They start going over the room.

Later on, something beautiful has happened: Barbara and Ian are reading books to each other. Babs is wondering what all that business about the darkness and the whispering was all about and whether it has anything to do with Susan’s telepathic episode, but Ian is more concerned with geeking out over Darrius’s biology experiments which are recorded in his diary:

IAN: Biology seems to have been his field as far as I can make out.
BARBARA: Well, judging by the specimens in here, I'd say he was very successful.
IAN: Yes. Last couple of entries are a bit strange. All about the balance of nature and increased destructive forces. Listen to this. "Nature has a fixed tempo of destruction, water dripping on a stone may take a thousand years to produce any sign of wear."
BARBARA: Well that's not very original.
IAN: It is if you could speed up everything. The wear on the stone could happen in one day.
BARBARA: But that's ridiculous!
IAN: Is it? He didn't seem to think so. He ends up by saying, "The growth accelerator has changed nature's tempo of destruction entirely."
BARBARA: Yes, well that may all be very fascinating…but we are supposed to be looking for the combination to that safe.
IAN: (Laughing.) All right, all right.

Oh that’s gorgeous. This is a lot like the Barbara and Ian we met in Ian’s lab at the very beginning of the series. Barbara is hilariously snarky, and I love that Ian is actually taking a genuine interest in the science aspect. It’s also interesting that this sort of brings their fields together and I can’t believe I’m about to say this because academic buzzwords make me die inside but I’d love to see more of this interdisciplinary approach to temporality in the show – Ian geeking out over geographical time scales only to be brought down by Barbara ‘yeah have you ever heard of longue durée’ Wright and a dose of practical thinking that brings the here-and-now back into sharp focus. (I’m rambling. Clearly I also need a Barbara to bring me back down to Earth.) Also this raises the question of whether the overgrown jungle is one of Darrius’s experiments gone wrong, because it certainly sounds like it.

Anyway, they both sit (or stand) and read for a while.

Which is beautiful.

Until a noise from outside makes them look up in comical synchronicity.

It’s the whispering! Barbara reckons this must be what Susan heard, and Ian points out that what she said about the jungle trying to get in earlier must be right; Babs immediately tries to discredit her own theory, possibly out of panic, but at any rate the plants are now definitely coming to get them. Because of the tempo of destruction having been accelerated. Fucking Darrius.

And OH NO a creeper has wound itself around Barbara’s ankles! She screams, and there’s a hilarious little scene of just their feet where W-Russ is mostly trying to get the creeper away while J-Hill just keeps shoving it back into shot to make it look like it’s attacking her. Actor-led SFX for the win.

When you're making out but some creeper's in the way.

The creeper is vanquished, but Ian has knocked over a jar in the process…a jar with a chemical formula on it. LIGHTBULB! DE3O2 must be a chemical formula! Admittedly it’s not one I’ve ever heard of, seeing as how to my knowledge there’s no D and no E in the periodic table, but hey, this is an alien planet and they probably have different elements or different names for them at any rate. It also explains why Ian hadn’t thought of it earlier.

Babs locates the correct jar, finds the key, and scurries back to Ian, who is busy smacking foliage out of the way.

They turn their travel dials and…OOOOOOOOOOOOOH (that was meant to be ethereal singing) they arrive in a sub-zero snowy wasteland. Babs immediately sinks to the ground, too cold to move, while the far more scantily-clad Ian entreats her to move so they can find shelter and not…y’know…freeze to death.

SNOWY CRIPES WILL OUR BROTP PERISH IN A WHIMPER OF HYPOTHERMIA? HAS TEAM TASSLES ALREADY BEEN WIND-MACHINED TO DEATH WHILE THE TEACHERS WERE BUSY PLAYING JACKANORY? HAS ALTOS ALREADY LOST HIS LEGS TO THE COLD? WILL SUSAN GET TO HAVE MORE FUN BEING TELEPATHIC? WILL IAN FIND A MORE SUITABLE JACKET? WILL BARBARA FINALLY GET TO FUCK THE PATRIARCHY WITHOUT BEING PUNISHED BY THE WRITERS? WHAT ARE THE ELEMENTS D AND E? WILL THE SCREAMING JUNGLE EVENTUALLY CONSUME THE ENTIRE PLANET ONCE TEAM TARDIS DEMATERIALISES, RENDERING THE WHOLE THING WITH THE VOORDS AND THE KEYS AND THE REVOLUTION IN MORPHOTON UTTERLY MEANINGLESS? IS THIS WHERE BABY KRYNOIDS COME FROM?

Summary (as applicable to this episode)

Does it pass the Bechdel test? Indeed it does!

Is the gaze problematic? Not especially.

Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? No. Altos, on the other hand...

Does a woman fall over/twist her ankle (whilst running from peril)? No.

Does a woman wander off alone for the sole dramatic purpose of getting into trouble so she can be rescued later? AND HOW.

Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? Yup. In a net, no less.

Does the Doctor/a man companion/any other man have to rescue the woman companion(s) from peril? Yup.

Is/are the woman companion's/s' first/only reaction(s) to peril gratuitous screaming? Barbara's screaming is a tad gratuitous this week.

Does a woman companion go into hysterics over something reasonably minor? Susan a teeny bit but she can hear evil pant noises in her head so I suppose that's not so minor.

Is a woman 'spared' the ordeal of having to do/witness something unpleasant by a man who makes a decision on her behalf/keeps her deliberately ignorant? Ian is pretty adamant about keeping Susan and Babs a long way from the action.

Does a man automatically disbelieve or belittle something a woman (companion) says happened to her? No actually. Barbara gets a bit sharp with Susan over the whole 'I hear Evil Vegetation' thing, but Ian accepts Barbara's theory about the jungle trying to get in without question. He's learning.

Does a man talk over a woman or talk about a woman as though she isn't there? Not as far as I can recall.

Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? It's mostly Barbara on 'everyone calm the fuck down' duty this week.

Is a woman the first/only person to be (most gratuitously) menaced by the episode's antagonist(s)? Yup. Barbara. Ian has to dodge a couple of traps, but when it comes to being menaced, it's all about terrorising poor old Babs.

Is a man shamed into doing/not doing something because the alternative is a woman doing/not doing something? No.

Does the woman companion come up with a plan? Sabetha shows a lot of short-term initiative, Babs is intrepid, and Babs is the one who suggests looking anywhere but the safe, but the plans this week are mostly short-term and involve Ian trying to find Barbara.

Does the woman companion do something stupid/banal/weird which inspires a man to be a Man with a Plan? Nope. Though smashing a jar whilst playing foliage footsy with Babs makes Ian realise DE3O2 is a chemical formula.

Does a woman come up with a theory and is it ridiculed by the Doctor/a man? Yes and no. 

Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? The Doctor isn't here this week.

Does a woman get to be a badass? Unless you count Babs hitting a plant with a rock, then absolutely not.

Is the young, strong, straight, white male lead the person most often in control of the situation? Yup.

Is there past/future/alien sexism? Not specifically. Just Ian being paternalistic as per.

Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? Babs call Ian out on his everyday sexism.

Did a woman write/direct/produce this episode? No/No/Yes.

Verdict

A mixed bag this week. Barbara gets a gorgeous 'actually fuck Ian's well-meaning everyday sexism because I've got this whole key thing sussed' moment, only to be punished by the Scriptwriting Gods for her intrepid presumption by being gratuitously imperilled by assorted booby-traps. Tantalising character development for Susan - more of that, please. And more scenes between Barbara and Susan where they get to talk instead of just cuddling as and when Susan gets spooked. Sabetha's got a lot of common sense, and Altos is...a bit redundant, if I'm honest. Ian, meanwhile, is ridiculous, but does get called out on it, and actually he and Barbara have some lovely friendship moments in their book club scenes. Also the special effects were So Special this week. Bravo, plant-life puppeteers.