Season 2 Episode 4: World's End

Serial: The Dalek Invasion of Earth
Episode: 1 (World's End)
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companions: Barbara, Ian, and Susan

Writer: Terry Nation
Director: Richard Martin
Producer: Verity Lambert
Original Air Date: 21/11/1964

BABY, BABY, BABY, YOU'RE OUT OF TIME (and other stories)

In which I suddenly remember why I ended up not hating Ian, Susan is infantilised horribly but also gets to burn her sexist bell of a future husband on their first meeting, the acting is surprisingly subtle in places (brava Jacqueline Hill in particular), the exterior shots are stunning, the special effects are wobbly, the humans get some character development, and iconic moments are iconic. (Also TW: suicide.)

WHOOPEEEEEEEE it’s time for one of my all-time favourite serials with one of my all-time most problematic endings! Or at least that’s how I remember it. And speaking of said ending, BOOOOOOOOOO this is the beginning of the end for poor, narratively-shat-upon Susan. I shall miss you, my child. Also, just FYI, I'm working on the assumption that everyone knows what happens at the end of this serial, so there will be spoilers for the whole thing throughout.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves! First off, we’re under a derelict-looking bridge, and there’s a man with a boxing hat on his head who’s looking pained and staggering about near a sign about how forbidden it is to dump bodies in the river. In medias res and all that. And HOLY FUCK IT’S NOAH FROM THE ARK IN SPACE. InfoText, you are lying to me and the commentary text I accidentally had on just now is correct: that is 100% Kenton Moore, and I know that because he’s doing exactly the same grimacing acting he did when he discovered his hand was covered in green bubble-wrap in the 1970s. Which is probably what happens when you face-plant into the toxic waters of the Thames like he’s doing right now. (In my head, this is totally one of Noah’s more unfortunate ancestors from several centuries before he became the boss of Nerva Beacon.) Also, I’m glad Kenton Moore survived being face-down in one of the world’s most revoltingly polluted rivers at least long enough to make it to Season Twelve of Classic Who.

A health and safety nightmare.

Ahem. I got distracted by the familiar face and somehow the fact that a man in distress just ended his life has been glossed-over. So to reiterate: this guy has just thrown himself into the river, and that's quite a harrowing beginning for a children's show.

ANYWAY, here comes the Tardis, inside which the Doctor is tutting and faffing around the console. Apparently, something is ‘not clear at all’, but we don’t get to find out what’s gone wrong because at this point the rest of Team Tardis comes in, asking where they are now and hoping it’s somewhere quiet. Susan enthuses about the possibility of a holiday, which makes me sad, because she’s about to take a permanent holiday if you catch my drift. The Doctor reckons the scanner (which I thought was broken?) might be showing running water, and Susan reckons the instruments are showing Earth readings! AND OH BACKGROUND (WELL, FOREGROUND) ACTING! Wordlessly, Ian and Babs look at each other; Ian grins at her; Babs moves over to his side of the console. MY SUBTLE DARLINGS.

Well, what are they waiting for? They all traipse outside the Tardis, and I’m assuming Jacqueline Hill legit trips on her way out because it’s not addressed in the script. And OH look at them all they’re all standing by the river like it’s the end of The Empire Strikes Back, the preciouses. The humans made it home, the long way round…which I didn’t realise was something Moff nicked from this serial. The next time I watch The Day of the Doctor, I shall have a few extra tears. The Doctor, in a rare moment of modesty, claims it was more luck than judgment.

Presented without comment.

Susan looks a bit morose (BECAUSE SHE’S NOT READY TO SAY GOODBYE), but the humans are excitable even though the Doctor complains about it being a horrible mess; as Twelve would say, ‘London: what a dump’. Ian hollers but to no avail, and things get meta when he speculates that it’s ‘probably Sunday’, which is of course how they got all those shots of deserted London in the next few episodes.

The Doctor wonders about the time factor, and, as the InfoText remarks, ‘[d]espite Barbara’s evident happiness, though, Jacqueline Hill’s performance subtly pulls focus onto something wrong—the small tree she’s fiddling with’. Because urban decay. Nice one, Jackie. Babs, however, is still delighted because it’s still London. Also, I’m glad Ian says a couple of years either way wouldn’t bother them, because spoilers.

Susan, meanwhile, has decided to climb up a wall/bank/thing because she is a short-arse and usually doesn’t get to climb up stuff the better to see what’s going on. The Doctor talks about neglect and decay, but Ian, like Babs is having none of it—construction work is always messy. Babs tells the Doctor not to be a spoilsport, but the Doctor assures her he 'wouldn’t spoil your homecoming for all the worlds'.

At this point, Susan falls off her perch; Ian is exasperated. THIS IS PARENTHOOD, IAN. According to the InfoText, in the first draft, Susan is startled by an owl; I feel like ‘topple, startled by an owl’ is right up there with ‘exit, pursued by a bear’. Babs is sympathetic and clucky, but the Doctor chides her for always dashing about being far too curious. WOMEN WHO DISPLAY OVERT CURIOSITY GET THEIR ANKLES SPRAINED AS PUNISHMENT. Poor, infantilised Susan. Ian gives it all the kiss of death by saying it could’ve been worse, at which point the entire bridge collapses. The Team bundles Susan and her sprained ankle out of the way just in time, but OH NO the way into the Tardis is barred by a fallen girder! The Doctor gives Ian a Chesterton Neck Pinch in his chagrin.

There’s a wonderful moment when Ian reckons they’ll need help to shift the crap that’s fallen onto the ship and the Doctor reminds him this is London and people will be curious and want to know what they’re doing trying to break into a police box…which is pretty much what happened in that junkyard when Babs and Ian followed Susan home. Once bitten, twice shy! But seriously, I do love that being home (even home in the wrong time) presents its own set of challenges.

Ian reckons he needs a cutting flame, spots a warehouse, then decides (much like the Space Bae in The Reign of Terror) that he can sort this all out with a crowbar. The humans do get so enthusiastic about crowbars. The Doctor is gorgeously amused at the optimism of his Space Bro. Ian once again displays his thorough grasp of the Rules of Classic Who:

The Doctor gazes on in fierce approval at his Space Son-in-Law's good sense, observing that 'it's intelligent' and 'that's good'. Can't help feeling that the 'it' in question is in fact Ian.

However, the Doctor has a feeling/intuition they’re nowhere near the 1960s. Ian hopes not, but the Doctor reckons it’s just too uncannily quiet. I don’t know if you’re meant to be able to hear Big Ben from where they’re meant to be, but the Doctor seems to think its absence is odd. Maybe this is why Big Ben doesn’t exist in the 28th Century (as our crestfallen humans discovered in The Sensorites).

At this point, Babs helps Susan hobble over, declaring no bones have been broken, and the Doctor continues to be a dick to his granddaughter by essentially blaming her for their current predicament. I mean, yes, she did pull the bridge down, but it WAS an accident. Ian seems to think this is all a jolly lark and informs the ladies that he and the Doctor will be off on an adventure to the warehouse; Babs looks miffed and asks why they can’t all go. Apparently she is default babysitter, because Susan’s ankle is still too bad to walk on. Then this thing I somehow managed to erase from my mind happens:

THE ACTUAL FUCK, DOCTOR?!? Oh, apparently this was William Hartnell’s unscripted contribution to the scene (THE ACTUAL FUCK, BILLY?!?), which may explain the expressions on the faces of the rest of the cast. Ian contributes to the general infantilisation of Susan by ruffling her hair as he exits. UGH this is the WORST. Susan is being treated like a wayward child; even if she is actually fifteen and not whatever the Gallifreyan equivalent of fifteen is, fifteen is way too old to be talking about a jolly good smacked bottom. Assuming that you believe that this is even an acceptable way to discipline your child, as it apparently was in the 1960s. Vom, vom, vom, vom, VOM.

Babs goes off to wet her handkerchief in the DISEASED RIVER so Susan can bathe her ankle; Susan (POOR SUSAN) punches her own leg in frustration. SUSAN DON’T APOLOGISE, THAT BRIDGE WAS SO STRUCTURALLY UNSOUND IT FELL DOWN JUST BECAUSE ONE TINY PERSON TOUCHED IT, IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN AT SOME POINT. ALSO THE DOCTOR IS BEING THE WORST.

There are some gorgeous shots of the warehouse and a crane swinging in the breeze looking derelict, and then we are treated to a scene I am reluctant to love because of the whole Famous Five ‘the girls should stay behind’ vibe, but oh my goodness the Space Bros are just too endearing when they’re off adventuring:

Gifs by cleowho.

I’m dying. Mostly because the Doctor isn’t even crotchety when he tells Ian’s he’s not a halfwit, it’s just sarcastic as hell. I love it.

Back at the river, Babs has spotted the sign about it being forbidden to dump bodies, and frowns to herself; returning to Susan with a filthy, river-soaked handkerchief, she tells Susan they’re not in her time. And my heart breaks. Susan asks what makes her say that, and Babs breaks my heart again:

Oh this scene. It’s so subtly done (well, not Susan's ankle face, but the rest), with little looks, and Barbara’s busying herself with Susan’s ankle but you can tell she’s crushed because she knows her home and it isn’t like this. Right place, right city, wrong time. Having been happy to the point of just standing there and fondling a plant, she’s now disappointed and businesslike. Then this happens:

SUSAN: Well, off we go again. (Barbara looks pained.) I'm sorry, Barbara. Is it selfish to want us all to stay together?
BARBARA: No, of course not.

I am feeling feelings I haven’t feelinged since Marco Polo: two homesick people realising how far they still are from home, and Susan desperately clinging to the stability of her new Space Family even though she knows how it feels for Barbara to be far from the home she loves (oh and I’ve strayed into Fiddler on the Roof...

Actually, if the ending of this serial had been more like this song, I'd have maybe been slightly less pissed off. It would still be an insulting end to an insulting character arc, but at least Susan would have some agency.)

Then something weird happens, which makes me wonder whether someone skipped a line of dialogue: Barbara thinks it’s ‘ridiculous’ (that word creeping into proceedings again—careful, Babs) that they still haven’t heard anything, to which Susan responds thus: ‘Things have to stay as they are, don’t they? Can’t change.’

Well, that’s disconcerting. I’m going to assume that what’s actually happening here is that both women are lost in their own trains of thought: Barbara is once again succumbing to the absurdity of being in the right place but at the wrong time, while Susan is rather scarily musing on how things have to stay the same…either because she wants them to or in spite of what she wants. It’s quite poignant, actually, given that we know she leaves at the end of the serial: on the one hand, Susan (or at least the Susan of Marco Polo) wants something to change insofar as she doesn’t want to be a wanderer forever, but she doesn’t want the change that would come of her Space Parents leaving her to wander the universe with only a man who thinks she needs a jolly good smacked bottom for company.

But anyway, this amount of discussion about Feelings isn’t British, so Barbara breaks my heart yet again by making a joke about how they’re probably done away with noise altogether, determinedly changes the subject to Susan’s ankle, then makes some bullshit excuse about her handkerchief not being wet enough, presumably so she can go back to the river and weep silent tears of fury or something. I jest, but I love the way both these actors are playing this scene: Jacqueline Hill in particular is being properly subtle about it, to the extent that what was probably written as a bullshit reason for Barbara going offscreen (seriously, a handkerchief is either wet or it isn’t) so that Susan can appear to have vanished in the next scene (spoiler alert) to rack up the dramatic tension feels like an exit that’s true to character, whereby Babs has made up said bullshit excuse just to get away from this conversation and have a moment to pull herself together.

I have written many words about a very short scene, but I will never not devote blogspace to Good Acting.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ian are spluttering about in the warehouse…and OH LOOK IT’S SUSAN’S FUTURE HUSBAND! I know, I know, spoiler alert. But everyone knows what happens at the end of this serial. Anyway, he’s lurking dramatically.

Ian goes to the window and spots Battersea Power Station but with a nuclear reactor and some missing chimneys, which means this is defo not the 1960s. The Doctor finds a calendar dated 2164 (exactly 200 years in the future), WHICH HAS BEEN STUCK ONTO A LITTLE NOTEBOOK WITH SOME SELLOTAPE OH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST THING SINCE THE FAST RETURN SWITCH. I don’t know whether the year is actually 2164, because if the Daleks (oh come on, everyone knows the Daleks are in this) have indeed been terrorising the Earth for a while, I doubt anyone has been printing new calendars. Still, they can at least say it’s the 22nd Century.

Meanwhile, Babs is dipping her hanky in the river (and getting rat-piss disease all over her hands) when…THE HORROR! She spots a corpse floating in the water. It’s Noah! I mean the guy from the beginning who face-planted into the Thames! Apparently this was considered particularly gruesome by the TV critics of the time (thank you, InfoText). But oh there’s worse! Scurrying back to her Space Daughter, she discovers that Susan has gone! Panic ensues!

And OH WHO IS THIS! A man jumps into shot, demanding whether Babs wants to get killed; Babs jumps behind some smallish tree trunks (presumably so she can use one of them as a staff, Little John stylee) demanding to know who this shouty bloke is and what they’ve done with Susan. Apparently some guy called Tyler’s got her, and Babs now has to get out of her and follow him. Babs knows a moment of crippling indecision, yells for him to wait, drops her handkerchief (on purpose?), and apparently decides that making sure Susan is ok is her top priority and that the Space Bros will have to fend for themselves. Because Barbara Wright is a grown-ass woman who don’t need no man and she will follow the shouty guy through this dystopian hellscape.

Back at the warehouse, the Doctor finds a dead guy in a cardboard box. He and Ian speculate as to the purpose of the dead guy’s headgear, and after discounting Ian’s suggestion of some sort of medical whatsit for a fractured skull, the Doctor decides it’s like an extra ear for picking up high-frequency radio waves. Apparently Terry Nation had something smaller in mind. Ian asks whether this means they’ve invented some form of personal communication, and I’m just chuckling away because I would love to see Ian in a story with wifi.

At this point, I become distracted, because Ian has found a whip, and I’m too busy laughing at the idea of wholesome Mr. Chesterton in a Fifty Shades scenario that I can’t read the InfoText, which at second glance tells me that originally the Doctor speculates that whatever shit went down did so in the 1970s, which is why this London looks so much like it did in the 1960s. Which would have been neat, actually. But would have ruled out the Tardis landing on Earth anywhere between the 1970s and the 2160s later on in the show, because it would be an alternate universe in which those 200 years were under Dalek rule. Insert satire here.

You're welcome, Chesterfans.

OOH and the InfoText keeps on giving: when speculating about the plague, apparently the original dialogue had Ian assume it was germ warfare between the USA and the USSR, ‘but Doctor Who points out that this would be suicide’. TOPICAL COLD WAR SHIT IS TOPICAL. Which makes sense, given that Terry Nation also wrote the neutron bomb into The Daleks.

And OH they’ve zoomed in on the knife that’s stuck in the dead guy and he’s very obviously breathing. Bless him, he has just been tumbled out of a cardboard box.

They explore a bit more, and end up in a storeroom (where Ian mercifully discards the whip he’s been brandishing like that map in The Sensorites), and then Ian manages to go through a door that leads to a room without a floor. Then this happens:

Ian: No one can get through that way.
Doctor: Except you!

Sweet Lord I will never not appreciate the Doctor sassing his Space Bro for his Charlie Chaplin shit. Essentially the Doctor has realised that they are the Space-Time Continuum’s answer to the Chuckle Brothers and they should quit while they’re ahead and get back to the others; Ian agrees.

Susan’s future husband peers in from between some petrol cans. Peeringly. I mean, I know we don’t know who he is yet or what the threat to the Earth is yet or who this man is yet, but I still like to foreground the fact that this loitering creep is the man to whom the Doctor will eventually marry off what I’m going to assume is his only living relative. Also, apparently Shell made it to the 22nd Century.

We now have a gorgeous sequence of Babs running after the shouty man through a derelict landscape which the InfoText informs me was a disused Tube station, though Terry Nation’s suggestion that they use an old bomb-site reminds me of what I’d forgotten—that there were indeed unreclaimed bomb-sites still knocking about London in the 1960s. Post-war Britain is post-war. Also, Jacqueline Hill must be boiling in that jumper. And uncomfortable in that pencil skirt. And feeling the terrain in those thin, flat shoes. Susan, however, is being carried, so congrats to whoever’s jogging down the stairs with her in his arms, because that is a surefire way to fall and twist your ankle, and we don’t need two hobbling people in this episode. The sequence ends rather comically with Babs coming up against a wire fence and melodramatically Hulking out on the bars before shouty guy comes up and points her in the right direction.

Back to the Space Bros, who have heard a noise…AND OH IT’S A WOBBLY FLYING SAUCER THAT LOOKS LIKE A BIT OF CARDBOARD SANDWICHED BETWEEN TWO COINS ON SOME STRINGS AND IT’S THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING I’VE SEEN SINCE THE CARDVOORD.

OH but this is a GORGEOUS shot: Tyler carrying Susan and then Babs running after them in an underground station-type place and the lighting gives them these fantastic long shadows. Beaut. Oh and then Babs trips over a can. Which serves no narrative function, so I’m happy about finding it entirely relatable.

Oh and here’s the little button saucer again. Also, according to the InfoText, the reason it’s so wobbly is because they used lateral strings rather than vertical strings which people automatically look for.

Meanwhile, Susan and Babs are arguing with the mysterious Tyler about going back for Ian and the Doctor, and pretty-much have to lump it.

Speaking of the Space Bros, they have arrived back at the Tardis to find Susan and Barbara have gone. And Ian, whose exasperation that nobody else has worked out that THEY’RE IN A TV SHOW WITH RULES, DAMMIT continues to delight me at every turn, has only this to say:

The Doctor, however, seems less convinced that the womenfolk are engaged in a conspiracy to wind Ian up and suggests that their disappearance may have something to do with the gunfire they heard over the river earlier. But seriously, the sooner Ian accepts that the women will never, ever do a thing because he told them to, the happier he will be. I mean, Terry Nation established pretty early on that Babs doesn’t always do what Ian says, and any filthy-jokey blonde aliens who try to mock her on the subject can expect disdain and/or sexual tension for their trouble.

But oh, what’s this? HOO-FUCKING-RAH, we have some actual character development for Ian! And William Russell has clearly quite literally taken a leaf out of Jacqueline Hill’s book, because he too has taken to using the foliage to ramp up the subtext. Indeed, Ian is anxious as hell given the way he’s shredding the local plant-life, and is clearly preoccupied by the thought of the body in the water and what it might mean for the other two. Then this happens:

Gifs by cleowho.

THIS. This is brilliant. Terry Nation, I had forgotten how much I like the way you write Ian. He’s anxious, and he's crotchety, and then he opens up: he admits, without mincing his words, that he wants to get away from here. Like Barbara, he feels this right-time-wrong-place thing is horribly, horribly wrong. He’s scared, he doesn’t like it, and he doesn’t mind admitting that he is all for running. It’s not just that he isn’t curious, it’s that this is the future—his future—and he doesn’t want to know what’s coming. He just wants the family back together and for them to get out of Dodge. Don't get me wrong, Ian gets bothered by stuff all the time, but he generally mucks in in spite of things—last week, after all, in that cut scene, we essentially had Ian’s philosophy in a nutshell, which is ‘fight the world we’re in [and] make something of it’—but this week we finally find out what freaks Ian out apart from being separated from Barbara: it’s not the past; it's not unknown worlds; it’s the future.

After a pregnant pause, Ian flings aside his mangled bit of foliage and snaps: ‘Where the devil are those two?’

The answer to this question would appear to be some underground location, where a poster of an elephant has been ‘VETOED’. I freaking LOVE those ‘VETOED’ signs. Can’t remember what they mean, but it’s gorgeous world-buildy stuff.

Tyler (where has the shouty man gone?) bangs on the wall, and David (Susan’s future husband) climbs out of a secret wall-chute thing with a knife, demanding to know who these people are.

Obvious confession time: I dislike David. Violently. Do you know one of the many reasons why I dislike David? Because he introduces himself to Barbara like this:

FUCK OFF YOU SEXIST ARSEHOLE, THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE 2160s AND YOU HAVE JUST ASKED A STRANGE WOMAN WHETHER SHE CAN COOK FOR YOU LIKE THIS IS LIKELY TO BE HER ONLY FUCKING SKILLSET? EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE AT LEAST ONE KICKASS WOMAN (OF WHICH MORE IN FUTURE EPISODES) IN YOUR RESISTANCE? EVEN THOUGH THIS IS BARBARA FUCKING WRIGHT WHO ONCE TOOK ON THE DALEKS WITH HER BARE HANDS, A ROCK, AND SOME MUD AND WON? HAVE MEN FORGOTTEN HOW TO COOK IN THE 22ND CENTURY? DIE IN A FIRE. DON’T YOU EVEN TOUCH SUSAN.

Ahem.

Barbara, who is from the 1960s, politely affirms that she can indeed cook. David ignores her attempt to question him and tells Tyler about how the warehouse is compromised or some shit and then it is established that he did indeed see Ian and the Doctor but thought they were enemies. Because…no fucking reason, I mean they clearly weren’t Robomen but whatever, David.

Enter a dude in a wheelchair, who nearly mows Barbara down and who wants to know what’s going on. His name is Dortmun and he's Sciency and he is determined that they’ll be ready for whatever’s in the saucer…this time. He also has a chip on his shoulder about being as active as everyone else, unsurprisingly, and Tyler isn’t a dick about it, thank god. He’s excited about the two extra pairs of hands, and David yells about how Barbara can cook, way too enthusiastically. DAVID, LEARN TO COOK. IT’S NOT FUCKING HARD. Then he asks Susan what she does, and it's fucking beautiful.

YES SUSAN! FUCKING YES! REMEMBER THAT THIS IS THE BASIS OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS ARSEHOLE AND ON NO ACCOUNT FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM.

David, still lightly smoking from the burn Susan just delivered, decides to go and find Ian and the Doctor. Yeah. Fuckity-bye.

Dortmun wants to know whether the two down by the Warehouse are MEN, and seems pleased when this is the case. Also die in a fire.

Dortmun mentions some attack plans, but won’t tell Susan what they are, and wants to know why she’s sitting down. Tyler takes the women off to what I’m going to assume is the kitchen, which Dortmun stays on watch. With a knife. Not a gun. They did not give the guy with mobility issues a gun. Maybe they don’t have guns.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ian are still kicking around by the river (and haven’t noticed Barbara’s hanky…which wouldn’t help them, but I just want someone to notice it…oh and look they find it in the camera script, according to the InfoText). Ian has, however, spotted the big sign about dumping bodies in the river. Which the Doctor proclaims stupid on account of the fact that nobody’s going to read it down by the river. Well…it’s not that stupid, Doctor, if the river is where people are dumping the bodies. Makes sense to have it by the actual river. Which Ian points out.

Ian also mutters stuff about bringing out your dead, and suggests that there’s been some sort of plague in town.

And oh shit. David has spotted them, but he’s also spotted a patrol of robomen! Yikes!

Meanwhile, the Space Bros are worried. Ian reckons the saucer landed over the river, but the Doctor is more concerned with the plague, and from what I can work out appears to be concerned that either Babs or Susan has in some way been in the water and been infected? I’m not sure. Ian says it’s unlikely they’ve drunk any, but clearly the Doctor still has Barbara and the Sugar Puffs on his mind.

Anyway, they decide to go further afield…but find their way blocked by Robomen! David is hissing ‘run!’ from the shadows, unheard by them, but would clearly be the ideal viewer for this show, seeing as how he seems quite invested in their plight. The Doctor suggests they swim for it, but Ian is lovely and suggests they try talking first; the Robomen raise their whips threateningly. Ian—and I’m paraphrasing wildly—says ‘when I say swim, swim’, but OH MY GOODNESS WHAT’S THIS COMING OUT OF THE WATER?

IT’S ONE OF THE MOST ICONINC MOMENTS IN CLASSIC WHO, NAY THE ENTIRE WHONIVERSE, THAT’S WHAT! A DALEK IS COMING OUT OF THE WATER AND IT’S BEAUTFUL AND SCARY AND YES WELL DONE THAT SHOW.

Ian and the Doctor are about to do a synchronised swimmer dive into the shallow Thames, but when they turn around…THEY ARE STOPPED IN THEIR TRACKS BY THE SIGHT OF A NIGHTMARE FROM THEIR OWN PERSONAL HISTORY, RIGHT HERE ON EARTH! SKARO COMES TO LONDON! THE DALEKS HAVE ARRIIIIIIIIIIVED!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH WILL THE SPACE BROS BE EXTERMINATED? WILL BARBARA AND SUSAN NOW HAVE TO SPEND THEIR LIVES COOKING (AND EATING) FOR THE HUMAN RESISTANCE? WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE EARTH? HOW DID THE DALEKS GET HERE AND WHAT ARE THEIR DASTARDLY PLANS? IS THIS BEFORE OR AFTER THE EVENTS OF THE DALEKS? SINCE WHEN HAVE DALEKS BEEN WATERPROOF?

Summary (as applicable to this episode)

Does it pass the Bechdel test? With flying colours.

Is the gaze problematic? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? Nope.

Save the girl or save the world? Whose decision is it? N/A. Though Babs has a variant thereof, insofar as she has a 'go with the girl or wait for the bros' dilemma.

Does a woman fall over/twist her ankle (whilst running from peril)? Yes indeed. Susan does her ankle in falling off something she climbed and has to be carried, while Babs trips over several things (possibly unscripted), once when coming out of the Tardis, once when running after the guy in the underground. However, only Susan's fall is a plot point.

Does a woman wander off alone for the sole dramatic purpose of getting into trouble so she can be rescued later? Hmm. The group splits up along gender lines but it seems this is for the dramatic purpose of the men being rescued later, which I appreciate.

Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? Not exactly, but Susan is pretty much carried off by the resistance.

Does the Doctor/a man companion/any other man have to rescue the woman companion(s) from peril? Babs has to run after Susan to make sure she's not been carried off for nefarious purposes.

Is a woman placed under threat of actual bodily harm? Mostly the Doctor and Ian this week from the Robomen.

Does a woman have to deal with a sexual predator? Nope. Just a few asshats.

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

Does a woman faint at the sight of peril/horror or generally lose consciousness (discounting normal sleep)? Nope.

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? Nope.

Does a woman suffer in silence (to further the plot)? Nope.

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? David talks over both the women. One of whom he will end up marrying.

Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? Nop.e

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

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? No.

Does the woman companion do something stupid/banal/weird which inspires a man to be a Man with a Plan? No.

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

Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? No, but Susan does protest against her telling-off from the Doctor.

Does a woman get to be a badass? Running alone through a post-apocalyptic wasteland is pretty cool.

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

Is there past/future/alien sexism? AND HOW.

Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? SUSAN. Ish.

Does an past/future/alien person have the hots for a woman companion and is it reciprocated? Right now David and Susan seem to have taken a violent dislike to one another.

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

Verdict

I despair at the twenty-second-century sexism, but I love Susan for having precisely none of that shit. Speaking of Susan, it is infuriating how she is continually treated like a wayward toddler. Maybe she’ll leave the show having grown into her own agency in a way that will have nothing to do with Dickhead Dave or the aggressively stifling control-freakery of her Grandfather. Pfffft. Barbara and Ian have some beautiful, subtle character development, while the Doctor is generally delightful…when he’s not threating to spank his granddaughter or just generally being the patriarchy. Thrilled that we got to see some proper Ian stuff this week for a change, too. Good job, Terry Nation.

Series 2 Episode 1: Planet of Giants

Serial: Planet of Giants
Episode: 1 (Planet of Giants)
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companions: Barbara, Ian, and Susan

Writer: Louis Marks
Director: Mervyn Pinfield
Producer: Verity Lambert
Original Air Date: 31/10/1964

NOT THE BEES!!! (and other stories)

In which Classic Who goes eco, the humans are dumb, Babs and the Doctor are besties, the sets are gorgeous, the insects are enormous, the continuity is annoying, and Team Tardis finally makes it back to Earth in the 1960s but nobody really wants to talk about it.

Welcome to Series 2! A note on this serial: I’m going to be blogging about this Borrowers-inspired romp as three episodes rather than four, just to save time, and because actually a lot of the stuff that got cut for the original broadcast was in fact pointless filler mostly involving shenanigans at the switchboard. Where genuine character development got cut, I will bring it into the mix; the same goes for scenes that make Barbara ‘I’m definitely dying but I’m not going to tell anybody because of reasons’ Wright look like less of a dick, because I’m biased like that. But this way it takes three weeks instead of four. Onwards!

So we left out motley crew looking for their destiny amongst the stars. We rejoin them in the Tardis control room, in which Barbara, resplendent in the most buttoned-up of buttoned-up blouses, is watching the Doctor faff about with the controls. He has a fancy new cape and looks fabulous.

The Doctor announces that they’re approaching a planet, which brings Ian into the frame, looking very teacherly in a suit and tie. He asks which one; the Doctor says they shall see. At this point, Barbara yells in pain, having burned herself on the console; apparently something is overheating. The Doctor sends Susan off to check the fault locator, and a worried Babs asks—not unreasonably—whether they’re going to blow up or anything. Ian, having stared at her burnt hand for a bit, pats her laughingly on the back, like the patronising sod he was the last time he wore a suit. REMEMBER THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION, IAN—Babs’s concerns are in no way invalid. Anyway, the Doctor’s been trying to side-step the ship from the eighteenth century into the twentieth, which is probably what’s up with the console.

Susan, decked out in dungarees, goes to check the fault locator, which has indeed located some faults. And HOLY KLAXONS BATMAN, the Tardis doors are opening! The Doctor yells for everyone to close the doors, which they finally manage to do; the Doctor mops his brow. And oh phew, they’ve just landed. Ironically, for this serial, the Tardis miniature they use for such shots is entirely appropriate.

Ian is rather sweet with his Space Bro and swoops over to check he’s ok; the Doctor asks Ian not to bother him. He orders Susan back to the fault locator, and when Babs (reasonably I think) says that at least they seem to be all right, he tells her off for being childish, and seems fixated on the fact that the doors opened before they properly materialised. Rude. When Ian and Babs want to know what the big deal is, the Doctor is frustrated that they are ‘talking on the 20th century level’ and is making a big song and dance about being terribly misunderstood.

At this point, Susan pops up to tell her grandfather there isn’t a fault anywhere…which I wouldn’t find comforting at all given that it didn’t say anything was wrong in The Edge of Destruction either. The Doctor doesn’t take Susan’s word for it and goes off to check it himself; Susan looks pissed off, as well she might.

Ian and Barbara are disgruntled, but then they remember that Susan actually knows stuff about how the Tardis works, too; after an unflatteringly long pause, they ask whether she can maybe translate the Doctor’s cryptic bullshit for them. Susan just knows the most dangerous moment is at the point of materialisation, and that the doors have never opened like that before.

The Doctor returns from double-checking Susan’s work and has also come to the conclusion that no harm has been done. He doesn’t apologise to his granddaughter for doubting her abilities but he does apologise to Barbara, and it makes me realise just where Moffatt and Gatiss got Sherlock’s modern-day personality from:

Gifs by cleowho

Clearly I’m not the only one who remembers The Edge of Destruction in this serial—specifically the epic tongue-lashing Barbara gave the Doctor the last time he was being a tool. Also, this is adorable.

Anyway, Susan turns on the scanner to see where they are, and BOOSH! The scanner explodes. How ominous. Hilariously, Ian suggests the Doctor might need a new tube, which I realise will mean nothing to anyone who grew up with an LCD telly display. I, however, have a Dad who is a massive nerd and who enjoys explaining these things to a less-than-captive audience. Just google cathode ray tube.

Anyway, the shock of the explosion has apparently caused the Doctor and Barbara to do a spot of clinging for mutual moral support, and the Doctor speculates that the way the screen blew out was like something was too big for its frame. Which is gorgeously imaginative I have to say, but I would’ve thought that if (spoiler alert) they have been shrunk (oh come on, everyone knows the basic premise of this one) the picture wouldn’t be too big to fit in the frame because that’s not how the telly works.

The upshot of this is that they don’t know what’s waiting for them out there; formerly unwilling adventurer Barbara Wright suggests they go outside and look. How quickly they grow up.

Susan opens the door, and the Doctor advises the team to exercise caution. Ian lags behind so the Doctor can tell him, man-to-man and all that, what made the doors open. The Doctor says the space pressure was too great, technobabble-technobabble, and that the strange thing is that they all came out of it unscathed; he looks positively delighted at the fact that he hasn’t a fucking Scooby what’s going on.

Outside, Babs reckons they’re in a mountain pass or something. The Doctor wonders why the scanner couldn’t just show them that, and Ian suggests the only thing wrong with the ship might be overloading on the scanner circuits. Yeah, Ian, because a science degree from Earth in what I’m going to assume is the late 1950s really qualifies you for diagnosing faults in a dimensionally-transcendental space-time travel machine. Far more so than, y’know, SUSAN, who can only co-pilot the bloody thing.

Babs and Susan are busy examining the rocks, and the Doctor (who is swishing about in his cape like a pro) calls Ian over to confirm something a bit more in his comfort zone, namely whether they are in fact looking at cement. Anyway, the Doctor suggests that he and Barbara go exploring one way, while Ian and Susan go the other way. Whether it’s because the Doctor’s bagsied Babs or because, as has been established in previous episodes, Ian has developed an entirely rational fear of splitting up, his reaction is priceless:

Ian agrees on condition that if they see anything, they’ll ‘sing out’; Team Barbator (for this is what I shall call them) agrees.

The Doctor just can’t get over this rock, but is rudely interrupted by Barbara, who has found a huge snake that is quite obviously a giant earthworm. Because they made Barbara really, really dumb in this serial. And that angers me. The Doctor, however, is utterly delightful, and assures Barbara that the ‘snake’ is dead with gleeful morbidity:

Well, he’s not wrong. They go out of shot, clinging…obv. Because they are ludicrously cute together.

Meanwhile, Ian and Susan are commenting on how hot it is and discovering giant, pill-shaped eggs…AND A DEAD, GIANT ANT. (Though if Ian thinks this is a fantastic size, he should wait until he gets to Vortis.) Ian has a weird little Freudian aside about worker ants who would rather give their own lives than abandon the eggs (broody much?), while Morbid Susan speculates as to the swiftness of the ant’s tragic demise. With almost Snape-like delivery, Ian wonders aloud ‘what sort of a world…could produce an insect…THAT SIZE’.

Elsewhere, Team Barbator has found the other end of the ‘snake’, which the Doctor pronounces a giant earthworm; if it weren’t for its size, he could swear it came from Barbara’s world. Well. He also reckons this maze of passages suggests a brain behind it all. How mysterious.

Meanwhile (again), Susan has been counting the dead ants, because of course; they’re all about them, everywhere. Then they come across something ‘really baffling’—an enormous picture of a seed packet. And the address is…NORWICH! Which means they’re on Earth!

Ok, I’ll actually stop to analyse this bit, partly because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone this excited about Norwich who isn’t Stephen Fry, and partly because this is how Ian reacts to the possibility that they actually made it home. He has a gorgeous little fluttery moment to himself but immediately starts talking about something being very wrong. Maybe they’re in a crazy exhibition where everything has been increased in size…which is plausible, tbh. Perhaps it’s just lazy writing, but I choose to believe that actually being faced with the possibility that their adventures are over has made Ian realise he doesn’t want them to be over. That’s my headcanon and I’m sticking to it: it doesn’t feel wrong because there’s a scale issue, Ian, it feels wrong because you’re not ready to go home yet.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has found a giant and obviously manufactured wooden object…which he knocks over. He and Barbara cling to each other because of course. Babs spots the charred end of the stick, and the Doctor realises it’s a matchstick. Babs corrects him—it just looks like a matchstick; but no, the Doctor is convinced it actually is a matchstick. And Babs still doesn’t get it. Which is stupidly out of character because of the two humans Barbara has consistently been the one who, when faced with a new reality, however ludicrously improbable, has just gone with it; she was also the one who had the imagination to translate the Tardis’s attempts to communicate in The Edge of Destruction. But no. This serial, Babs is unimaginative and slow. And makes really stupid choices. I can and will defend them in the context of her character development if I must, but mostly I think it’s just shitty, shitty writing.

We cut back to Ian and Susan, so that we can prolong the obvious reveal. In fairness, it is called Planet of Giants, which suggests that they might have landed in Space Brobdingnag, but enough already. They have found a matchbox. So obviously Ian climbs inside, still sticking to his exhibition story. But Susan—who, thank Zarquon, actually gets to know stuff this week—tells him he’s completely wrong (yeah Susan!) and that they have in fact been made smaller. With dramatic music. Which I thought I recognised, because lo and behold this is the first episode with incidental music by Dudley Simpson! It sounds so very Four.

Cut to the Doctor and Babs, who repeats ‘smaller?’ with some incredulity. I’ll give this serial gender points for making the smart/stupid divide a Gallifreyan/human one rather than a male/female one, I suppose. Anyway, they’ve been reduced to roughly the size of an inch.

‘AN INCH!?’ repeats Ian, back in the matchbox. Wow this back-and-forth parallel conversations thing is annoying. I suppose it keeps the pace up, but because they’re doing it as live, it’s not quite as snappy as it ought to be and just feels laboured. There are a lot of awkward pauses.

The Doctor confirms with Babs that this applies to them and indeed the ship; Babs gives him her best ‘FUCKSAKE’ face.

Ok so I said I could defend this from a character development point of view even if I remain of the opinion that Babs tends to go with stuff while Ian staunchly refuses to accept things that go against his notion of what is scientifically possible. These humans have been through a lot. A LOT. They’ve accepted that it is possible to travel in time and space, and that time travel has rules, and that anything goes in space. I think their unwillingness to make the imaginative leap whereby they have been shrunk in size has a lot to do with where they are: home. Home has rules which they think they know, and here they are trying to come to grips with some Gulliver’s Travels-style shit that makes a mockery of the familiar. To paraphrase Babs from later on in this serial, her complaint is that it’s just so fucking ridiculous.

Anyway, there’s a fantastic zoom-out shot from the model Tardis which is of course the model they use for (de)materialisation shots all the time only this time they can actually plonk it in the middle of some Crazy Paving:

The Doctor tells Babs they ought to reassemble the squad and get the hell out of Dodge; Ian, meanwhile, is flatly refusing to believe the truth as related to him by a superior mind (Susan). I must say I’m enjoying how much Susan gets to tell Ian he’s wrong this week. Though the pseudo-science of the doors of Tardis opening and the space pressure shrinking them does sound pretty daft. But I don’t care, because Susan is well and truly back in the game this week. Thank the Whoniverse.

But oh what’s this? A shadow passes overhead, and thunderous noises…er…thunder. Ian tells Susan to run, and fails to exit the matchbox. We return to the usual scale as a passing human picks up said matchbox from the ground…with Ian inside!

I have to say, the continuity is pretty bad here, as the matchbox is clearly much further away from the seed packet in the normal scale than the giant scale, and is really far away from the Tardis. Also, the matchbox and the seed packet are ON THE GRASS at ground level rather than in the cracks in the pavement, which is where Team Tardis is meant to be according to the giant sets, so Ian and Susan would have a clear view up to the house if they’re supposed to be standing by the matchbox. I mention this only because the Borrowers-style sets are so gorgeous and actually convincing that it’s enormously disappointing when the unshrunk world doesn’t match up with it. Also, has the human left his briefcase lying on the ground all this time, or did he put it down to pick up the matchbox? Argh!

Anyway, Susan emerges from behind the seed packet to find the matchbox has gone, and immediately hollers for Barbara (because of course), and Babs appears from behind the seed packet, too. She cannot have been that close-by or OH what’s the use. Sorry, I know there are constraints, and I am the first to appreciate the many difficulties of filming ‘as live’ in the 60s, but it annoys me when so much effort has been put into creating the spatiality of the giant world of the miniaturised travellers and it’s undermined by that one half-assed shot of the normal-sized world.

Susan has hysterics and Babs cuddles her (possibly to muffle the noise), and the Doctor with SUPERB Billy nonchalance supposes someone must’ve picked it up.

Meanwhile, in the matchbox, William Russell is doing ‘being flung from side to side’ acting like he’s in that episode of Brideshead Revisited where they’re on a crazy choppy sea cruise. The man with the matchbox sits on a chair and mops his brow; Ian massages his shoulder.

Ian stuck in a matchbox forever may be my greatest
technological achievement to date.

Back in the pavement cracks (SUPPOSEDLY), Susan is quite literally climbing the walls. As in The Reign of Terror, she is too much of a short-arse to see over the parapet, so Babs volunteers, only to be told by the Doctor she’ll only hurt herself and that he’ll do it. Even though he is shorter, older, and frailer than Barbara. Fucksake. Barbara’s half-lifting him up, and there’s some gorgeous squabbling between the two of them as she asks him whether the man's got the matchbox or not. Irritatingly the Doctor seems to be the only calm one of the three as he insists that they must find Chesterton before getting back to the ship. Which is endearing when you think how far the Space Bros have come in terms of the Doctor no longer being willing to leave a human behind (possibly he know Babs would skin him alive if he did) but Susan in particular is being a panicky mess. DESIST.

The man with the briefcase has a cat, and is about to reach for a match to light his deathstick cigarette when a lighter hoves into view, attached to a man who is clearly a wrongun. (Also, is this the first time a character has lit up on Classic Who? I’m going to say yes.) Anyway, the briefcase man is a sciency government guy (I think) called Mr. Farrow, and he’s been testing a new something called DN6, and has called the wrongun (whose name is Mr. Forester) to talk about it. To cut a long story short, DN6 is an insecticide, but unfortunately it’s not just effective but totally destructive and will wipe out pollinators and generally cause eco mayhem. Which the scientist who worked on it (Smithers!) apparently missed whilst working on it. CLASSIC WHO GOES ECO AND I’M LOVING IT. Ahem. But Mr. Forester is a businessman who has already put all his dosh into marketing DN6, and if it can’t be made, he’ll be ruined. He also doesn’t give a shit about the bees. And doesn’t take the word ‘can’t’ for an answer. Even when Mr. Farrow burns him good:

TAKE THAT, TRU-…I MEAN FORESTER.

Having told Forester that DN6 is an eco disaster waiting to happen, Farrow now wants to take a boating holiday on the rivers of France (I mean really) but is stopped in his tracks by FORESTER PULLING A GUN ON HIM. SHOCKER!

Back in the trenches, a dead bee drops out of the sky and almost brains Susan. The Doctor starts imagining what human versus bee would look like in a world in which they were the same size. Weirdo. He prods the dead bee, then sniffs his own hand and comments on the distinctive aroma of all the dead things he’s encountered so far. These are all things that will bother me immensely in the coming episodes because continuity.

Susan comments on the indiscriminate nature of whatever’s killing the insects, and Babs asks the Doctor whether whatever’s killing everything could also kill them; the Doctor says they’ll have to assume so, and that nobody is to eat or drink anything until they find Ian.

'BOOM!'

A cannon-like noise sounds from on high. And OH CRUMBS, poor old Farrow is the first smoking casualty of Doctor Who, and has been rather bloodlessly shot. At this point, Ian pokes his head out of the matchbox, and clambers out.

Back in the maze, Babs wonders what would’ve happened if they’d met any live giant creepy-crawlies. The Web Planet AMAZING TELLY is what.

Meanwhile, Ian is striding across a screen showing dead Farrow’s enormous face. Rather than seeming concerned that he’s staring into the eyes of an enormous corpse, he gets out his handkerchief to measure the scale of the destruction.

Then there’s a rather puzzling time jump, or else we’re supposed to believe that the squad has been reunited in the time it takes for a cat to scamper across the floor, because now everyone’s catching up. The Doctor can smell gunpowder; superderp Ian reckons that would explain the body. DERP.

The Doctor sits on a piece of chalk the better to observe the giant corpse; Babs observes that there’s death all around them, continuing her morbid streak. Everyone’s less concerned about the human murder than the bees and worms, which is refreshing and makes sense at their size. It also makes sense given how many random deaths they've witnessed, possibly to the point that the humans are now desensitised to human slaughter. Babs asks the Doctor (not Ian) to confirm that killing bees and worms is wrong, which he does, just in case we forgot that this is a show to educate the youth. But enough of that; the Doctor suggests they leave ‘this little mystery’—by which he means murder and the indiscriminate slaughter of local wildlife—and fuck off back to the Tardis, pausing to note only how it’s actually worked out pretty well for them that everything’s dead. So very, very Slytherin.

But OH MY GOODNESS LET’S ALL CLING! Because the cat has returned…and it’s either very close up or ENORMOUS.

WILL THE PACE PICK UP? WILL THE SCALE ISSUES RESOLVE THEMSELVES? WILL THE DOCTOR GROW A CONSCIENCE AND ACTUALLY GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE ECO STUFF? WILL BARBARA REVERT TO AN UNEARTHLY CHILD-STYLE BURYING HER FACE IN IAN’S TEACHERY JACKET AT THE FIRST SIGN OF DANGER AS SHE HAS DONE IN THIS CLIFFHANGER, OR WILL SHE SHOWCASE HER SENSIBLE AND PRACTICAL BADASS NATURE IN THE COMING EPISODES? WILL SUSAN GET TO KNOW MORE SCIENCY THINGS? WILL ANYONE ACKNOWLEDGE HOW SHITTY IT IS THAT THEY’RE HOME BUT THE WRONG SIZE?

Summary (as applicable to this episode)

Does it pass the Bechdel test? Yes but fleetingly.

Is the gaze problematic? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? Nope. High necks and dungarees all round.

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

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? Nope. Ian, however, is sort of captured insofar as he is carried off in a matchbox.

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

Is a woman placed under threat of actual bodily harm? Not until the end, when everyone is menaced by a cat. Ian and the guy who got shot are mostly getting hurt.

Does a woman have to deal with a sexual predator? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion's/s' first/only reaction(s) to peril gratuitous screaming? Yup. And clinging.

Does a woman companion go into hysterics over something reasonably minor? I think Susan's reaction to Ian having 'disappeared' is a little off, given that she's the one who worked out they'd been shrunk so surely she also ought to have twigged that someone picked up the box.

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, though Ian seems to think it might be one of those situations judging by how he takes the Doctor aside before exiting the Tardis.

Does a man automatically disbelieve or belittle something a woman (companion) says happened to her? Yes ish, as Ian refuses to believe that Susan and he have been shrunk.

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

Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? Yup.

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

Is a man shamed into doing/not doing something because the alternative is a woman doing/not doing something? No. Though the Doctor does take it upon himself to climb a wall he's least suited to climb because the alternative is Babs doing it.

Does the woman companion come up with a plan? No. Well, Susan comes up with the 'let's look over the wall' plan, but there's not really a plan this week except 'find Ian and fuck off', and that's the Doctor's plan.

Does the woman companion do something stupid/banal/weird which inspires a man to be a Man with a Plan? No.

Does a woman come up with a theory and is it ridiculed by the Doctor/a man? Yes. Barbara is worried that the Tardis is going to blow up and is ridiculed, and Susan's theory about having shrunk is flatly disbelieved by Ian.

Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? No need this week as the Doctor apologises for his bullshit before Barbara can take him to task for it, but there are some very endearing squabbles between the two.

Does a woman get to be a badass? No.

Is the young, strong, straight, white male lead the person most often in control of the situation? No.

Is there past/future/alien sexism? It's the present day, so N/A. 

Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? N/A.

Does an past/future/alien person have the hots for a woman companion and is it reciprocated? N/A.

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

Verdict

I love the ideas and the eco stuff in this episode, and I love the sets, but for some reason this serial isn’t quite working for me so far. It’s really slow, and so are the characters, with the exception of the Doctor (and Susan to a lesser degree when she’s showing Ian his wrongness). The bits where it’s great are where the actors are building on the relationships the characters have forged in previous serials (Barbara and the Doctor squabbling is the best), but it’s not really in the script so much as the acting. I like that Susan gets to know stuff this week, but she’s right back to shrieking at stuff and only gets to be smart when the Doctor’s offscreen. I think one of the main things that bugs me about this episode is that this is the humans’ world. Ok, so they need the Doctor and Susan to explain that they’ve been shrunk, but this is the only thing about this time and place they don’t understand; to be asking the Doctor to explain things about their own world to them (like bees being necessary to the ecosystem and all that) just makes the humans seem dumb. And surely Ian as a Science teacher ought to have more to say about all this. And nobody cares about the fact that there’s been a murder! Though as I say, this may be part of a disturbing character development arc whereby the humans are gradually becoming desensitised to violence, or have like Barbara realised that they're pretty-much surrounded by death at all times. All in all, too much has gone into making it look gorgeous (which it absolutely does) and the concept of an insecticide that kills indiscriminately (which I think is a great issue to be tackling in the show), and the character development has suffered. Let’s hope it picks up next week.

Series 1 Episode 43: Prisoners of Conciergerie

Serial: The Reign of Terror
Episode: 6 (Prisoners of Conciergerie)
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companions: Barbara, Ian, and Susan

Writer: Dennis Spooner
Director: Henric Hirsch
Producer: Verity Lambert
Original Air Date: 12/09/1964

WE SHAMBLE ON THROUGH THIS HELL, TAKING ON MORE SECRETS TO SELL (and other stories)

In which Barbara and the Doctor have more time-traveller chats, Susan finally gets out of jail, Ian goes on a genuinely pointless mission to save a man doomed by history, and the humans meet Napoleon whilst dressed as discount Poldark and Mrs. Miggins.

ALL PRAISE TO THE GREAT ONE, MY DARLINGS ARE THEMSELVES AGAIN! I have never appreciated the intricate mobility of the human face this much. Though I must say, all credit to the animators, who did a fair old job and made the missing episodes actually watchable. Still, it’s wonderful to see the actors themselves in motion.

So the Doctor has apparently betrayed everyone by bringing Lemaitre to Jules’s hideout in exchange for Susan’s release. Seriously, the Doctor would probably murder an old lady with a brick if it meant getting Susan out of danger.

They all stand around awkwardly for a bit while the titles go up, then the conversation starts again. Lemaitre is alone and unarmed, and the Doctor begs them to listen because of the whole Susan situation. When Lemaitre claims to come as a friend, Babs is scathing as hell, but Lemaitre appeals to Ian. Natch. Ian is surprised, but Lemaitre tells him it was he who arranged his escape from jail because he was certain Webster (Ian’s cellmate who snuffed it) gave him a message to deliver to James Stirling. But who is James Stirling?

Insert Spartacus Joke Here

Dun dun dunnnnnn.

I can’t remember whether I was surprised the first time I saw this so honestly can’t comment on the efficacy of the reveal, but he was always a shifty customer.

The Doctor gives precisely zero fucks as to whether this makes any sense or not and just wants to get Susan out of jail. NOW. Stirling says he can use his authority to get them all safe passage to wherever they want to go, and Ian has to grab his Space Bro by the wrist to stop him being the adorably cantankerous bastard he so desperately wants to be in response to all this faffery. I have missed these little touches (figurative and literal).

Anyway, Ian delivers the message that Stirling needs to get back to Blighty with whatever info he has. Apparently Webster mumbled a lot of strange things, but Ian can’t remember them now. Until of course Stirling triggers it by telling them that he needs their help finding out about a meeting with Paul Barras tonight on Robespierre’s orders. Ian remembers Webster saying something about Barras and a meeting and The Sinking Ship, which Jules tells them is an inn and ideal for a meeting. Ok then.

So Stirling’s plan is that Barbara and Ian to attend the meeting, seeing as how he and the Doctor are too recognisable now. Then once he has the info he needs, he’ll be free to help them. The Doctor says it’s nonsense and too risky, which is rather touching. Babs is all for it, and ropes Ian in, too. The Doctor agrees because Susan. Yadda yadda preamble let’s get to the shitty disguises already.

Also, in case anyone thought I'd forgotten about this week's Wildhorn Shoehorn:

(Side note: can Barbara and Ian ride horses? Because apparently The Sinking Ship is a two-hour ride away. Who cares. DRESSUP TIME.)

The moon goes behind a cloud, and thunder crashes, and the sign of The Sinking Ship flaps in the storm. And JOY OF JOYS Barbara is in the world’s most ginormous mob cap that sits on her mighty bouffant like a giant mushroom with frills. Or a jellyfish the size of a large cat. Anyway, Babs is serving Jules wine and making snarky comments about how shitty the trade is in this pub. Apparently they’ve bound and gagged the innkeeper and left him in the wine cellar, which means our faves get to do some play-acting. It’s nearly closing time, and while Babs is running the bar, Ian is busy drilling a hole through the shelves so they can see into the back room from the bar. We know this because Ian is trying to drill through a wine bottle that’s making a clinking noise; Babs, quick on the uptake, moves it to one side before it can attract attention.

Operation 'Tardis Wine Cellar' is go.

In said back room, Ian is resplendent in a Poldark hat; Babs comes in to tell him he’s through, and the two of them back their way back to the bar, into which an important-looking Citizen (Barras) has just walked. Ian is…is he trying to do a French accent? Actually? I don’t know, but he shuffles over to the Citizen and takes his cloak, sounding like the unholy spawn of Maurice Chevalier and assorted Eastenders publicans. He ushers the Citizen into the back room, and Babs comes in to offer him refreshments; she is doing a French accent straight out of the kind of Carry On film that has French maids in it, and ascertains that there will only be two people meeting in the back room. As the other guests leave, Jules too vacates the premises, and Ian tells Barbara that as soon as the other guest comes, she can lock up. Because apparently he is now the landlord boss of her barmaid persona?

The other guy indeed arrives, wrapped in a scarf, and neither Babs nor Ian sees his face as he goes into the back room. But when the guy pops his head around the door of the bar, Ian does see his face and excitedly motions Babs over to him—and tells her it’s Napoleon Bonaparte! HE’S GEEKING OUT SO HARD. Though how can he tell? I’ve seen portraits of Napoleon and literally the only thing I know is that he’s short with a Napoleon hat, and this guy isn’t even that short. Still.

In the back room, Napoleon and Barras talk. It’s long and historical and educational and I’m going to summarise by saying that they plan to arrest Robespierre tomorrow and then execute him without giving him a chance to talk and thereby rally support. He’s basically Saruman after Helm’s Deep. Then Napoleon is going to be in charge of shit. Barbara and Ian eavesdrop. I’m sorry that wasn’t particularly nuanced, but life is too short.

Back at Aristo HQ, Stirling is horrified by the idea of Napoleon as ruler of France. Lol dramatic irony, et cetera. Babs seems to be the one relaying the specifics, seeing as she actually knows the history of the period, so she’ll know about it initially being as one of three consuls and all that. This makes sense, and I approve. Stirling is concerned that Napoleon will rise to greater power, but before Babs et al can be like ‘lol well yeah that’s a thing that happens’, the Doctor cuts in tells him their only concern now is Susan.

Stirling, however, is in agreement with Jules that they don’t want a military dictatorship, and wants to go and try to stop Robespierre being arrested. Babs is gloriously incredulous:

BARBARA: You'd keep Robespierre as ruler of France!?
STIRLING: If I thought it was the only way...
JULES: We need a strong government, but not a military dictatorship. And it could happen.
BARBARA: It will happen!
DOCTOR: Oh, save your breath, my dear. (To Stirling and Jules.) Do as you think fit. I'm going off for Susan.

I adore this. ADORE it. Because obv Babs and the Doctor know that Stirling is trying to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted: Napoleon will be ruler of France, and of course it seems crazy to them that anything else would happen, though of course to Jules and Stirling the future is still indeterminate. It’s rather poignant, actually, in its way. I also adore the continued affinity between the Doctor and Barbara since The Aztecs, after their both having experienced the desire to break the rules and change history. Though Babs clearly doesn’t want to see history changed, it’s still interesting that the Doctor is speaking to her as he did back then as a fellow time-traveller—a novice time-traveller, yes, but still a time-traveller. I also like that this is one of the earliest instances in Classic Who in a historical where we get to the point where history is about to run its course and suddenly everyone disentangles themselves from the plot and essentially gets the engine running for a quick getaway.

Stirling, however, still has the urgency of a man who believes he can alter the course of a history he doesn’t yet know is predetermined, and starts ordering people about: Babs is to wait outside the prison and keep watch while Jules sorts out a getaway carriage for the Doctor and Susan, and Ian is to come with him to try to prevent Robespierre’s arrest. The Doctor tells Ian he may as well go with him if only to make sure Stirling keeps his part of the bargain, and the ‘save Robespierre’ party leaves in a flurry.

Babs tells Ian to take care. And then cracks up laughing:

DOCTOR: What is it? What do you find so amusing, hmm?
BARBARA: Oh, I don't know. Yes, I do. It's this feverish activity to try and stop something that we know is going to happen. Robespierre will be guillotined whatever we do!
DOCTOR: I've told you of our position so often.
BARBARA: Yes, I know. You can't influence or change history. I learnt that lesson with the Aztecs.
DOCTOR: The events will happen, just as they are written. I'm afraid so and we can't stem the tide. But at least we can stop being carried away with the flood! Now, Susan and the prison.

I *love* this. Seasoned time-traveller and novice time-traveller, talking about history, talking about time. As I say, it’s a continuation of the bond they formed during The Aztecs. I love the contrast between the Doctor’s resigned, almost saddened attitude to being unable to stem the tide and Barbara’s new appreciation for the absurdity of it all. It’s a contrast to her profound frustration during The Aztecs, and suggests that this is a natural part of the character development of those who wander in the fourth dimension. She’s still in the giddy stage, apparently. It’s also nice that she’s able to have these moments when her part in history seems absurd to her but it doesn’t counteract her willingness to fight with Ian over the importance of history, even if it can’t be changed. Though it seems there is in fact a difference in the quality of the two kinds of selfishness she encounters in Ian and the Doctor: Ian sides with whoever isn’t trying to kill them in this serial and then makes a moral judgment about what the other side deserves; the Doctor does so without moral judgment and (when he’s with Barbara at least) with a real sense of regret. You do get the feeling that he’s tried to change history before and lost, and that he’s paid a price for it. Which, in my head, may or may not have something to do with his willingness to protect Susan at all costs. I do worry at the slightly ‘fuck it’ attitude Barbara is developing in these matters, but as a time-traveller she’s still very inexperienced, and you get the sense that she’s still going to have to reconcile this giddy fatalism with her sense of what actually matters. And it’s the Doctor who’s going to have to get her through that, not Ian. Character development win.

Barbara, your Jafar is showing.

Back in his office, Robespierre is bolting the doors and going for his gun. Outside, the soldiers are breaking down the door. Robespierre is trying to bluster his way out of it as Stirling and Ian rock up outside the doors; Stirling want to go in, but Ian holds him back; we hear a gunshot. Robespierre is dragged outside with a surprisingly unbloody gunshot wound to the jaw. Stirling asks why Ian held him back, and Ian says Robespierre is finished. They’re taking him to the prison, and now it’s up to the Doctor to get Susan out before they get there.

Outside the prison, a storm is brewing, and the Doctor and Barbara are sheltering under a porch of some sort. They are generally adorable wishing one another luck and safety, and the Doctor goes off to get Susan.

In the prison, everyone is drinking. The Doctor tells the jailer Lemaitre was shot, and tells him that he himself was sent to Paris to ensure Robespierre’s downfall. He gets the jailer arrested for being Lemaitre’s accomplice, tell him he can’t decide whether he’s a rogue or a half-wit or both, and then pretends to give him the benefit of the doubt...then tells him to release the prisoners to ready the cells for Robespierre’s cronies.

Gif by Cleowho

Outside on the porch, Babs is looking on concernedly as violence rages around the prison offscreen; Ian arrives, and she tells them Robespierre’s been taken to the prison. There is casual clinging. Babs tells Stirling where they need to go based on what she remembers from the map. Well, she is their navigator, after all. Ian spots Jules.

Back in prison, Susan is finally let out of jail and tumbles sobbing into her grandfather’s arms. GIVE HER SOMETHING TO DO ALREADY. When he tells her they’ve a carriage waiting, she looks so relieved it only confirms my theory about Gallifreyans being generally allergic to squalor and requiring regular doses of luxury and/or fanciness. They see Robespierre being dragged by, again with his surprisingly bloodless jaw. Pausing only to observe how yesterday everyone lived in fear of Robespierre whereas today they…don’t, he and Susan leave the jail. FINALLY.

Susan is finally out of narrative jail.

Back on the porch, Ian is chatting with Jules; Ian tells him to remember the name Bonaparte. Babs is busy charming Stirling into not asking any more questions about where they’ve come from/where they’re going, despite her knowing how he feels about wanting to see England again. Susan and the Doctor rush on, and Susan hugs her Space Parents; everyone fucks off sharpish. Except Stirling, who has a moment with Jules, in which he speculates that the good people of Team Tardis ‘don’t know where they’re heading for’. Careful, Stirling, the Doctor gets pretty irate at that sort of talk.

There follows some footage of a childishly-drawn map mixed in with stock footage of a carriage rolling along. This means our heroes are Travelling.

And OH AT LAST they’re back in the Tardis. Everyone is half-in, half-out of their eighteenth-century gear, and Susan is playing dressup with the Doctor’s feathered hat. Then this happens:

DOCTOR: Well, I can assure you, my dear Barbara, Napoleon would never have believed you.
IAN: Yes, Doctor, but ah, supposing we had written Napoleon a letter, telling him, you know, some of the things that were going to happen to him.
SUSAN: It wouldn't have made any difference, Ian. He would have forgotten it, or lost it, or thought it was written by a maniac.
BARBARA: I suppose if we'd tried to kill him with a gun, the bullet would have missed him.

Dark shit, Babs. Even if you are being deliciously wry. But then a gorgeous thing happens: the Doctor chides his giggly crew, not just because he’s a grumpy old so-and-so, but because even though they can’t change history, that doesn’t mean that what they do doesn’t matter:

DOCTOR: Our lives are important, at least to us. But as we see, so we learn.
IAN: And what are we going to see and learn next, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Well, unlike the old adage, my boy, our destiny is in the stars, so let's go and search for it.

And there it is! There’s how you reconcile being a time-traveller powerless in the face of history with any sense of self-worth! That’s how you don’t crack up! Even if whatever will be will be, your life is still important, not because of what you do but because of what you see, what you learn, and what you find. And, beautifully, it’s not just the destiny of the Gallifreyans any more—it’s the destiny of all four of them, not trying to get home but trying to find that elusive something else. No, YOU’RE crying.

SQUAD GOALS

WHAT IS THE DESTINY OF TEAM TARDIS? WHERE IN THE STARS WILL THEY FIND IT? WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO SEE AND LEARN NEXT? WILL SUSAN HAVE MORE TO DO IN THE NEXT SEASON OF DOCTOR WHO? DOES NOBODY CARE ABOUT GETTING HOME ANY MORE? MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL, DID THEY TAKE A FEW BOTTLES OF DELICIOUS FRENCH WINE ABOARD THE TARDIS?

Summary (as applicable to this episode)

Does it pass the Bechdel test? Only if you're being very, very generous.

Is the gaze problematic? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? No. Though Susan and Barbara finally get to show a bit of clavicle. Scandalous.

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

Does a woman wander off alone for the sole dramatic purpose of getting into trouble so she can be rescued later? Nope. But Susan's entire dramatic function for the rest of the serial is to be in need of rescue so as to keep using the prison set and keep Team Tardis in the thick of it.

Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? Susan is a continued state of captivity, but there's no actual capturing.

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

Is a woman placed under threat of actual bodily harm? Ish? I'm assuming they're going to guillotine Susan.

Does a woman have to deal with a sexual predator? Nope.

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? Stirling talks about Babs as though she isn't there when he says she can stand guard outside the prison.

Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? No.

Is a woman the first/only person to be (most gratuitously) menaced by the episode's antagonist(s)? Not an enormous amount of menacing this week, but Susan is under most threat.

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? No. Though Babs seems to be the only one who knows where the Tardis is parked.

Does the woman companion do something stupid/banal/weird which inspires a man to be a Man with a Plan? No.

Does a woman come up with a theory and is it ridiculed by the Doctor/a man? Yes a teeny bit, when Babs is being glib about bullets bouncing off Napoleon, but it's wry as hell, and the Doctor is ticking them all off for not taking their own importance seriously.

Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? No.

Does a woman get to be a badass? No.

Is the young, strong, straight, white male lead the person most often in control of the situation? Not really. It's mostly Sitrling and the Doctor.

Is there past/future/alien sexism? Not specific to the past, I wouldn't say.

Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? N/A.

Does an past/future/alien person have the hots for a woman companion and is it reciprocated? N/A.

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

Verdict

A gorgeous ending to a hit-and-miss serial that has some excellent moments but which I'm unable to forgive for its not knowing what the hell to do with Susan. I adore the continued bond between Barbara and the Doctor following their time-traveller chats in The Aztecs, and am enjoying seeing her character development, even if it's going down the 'everything is absurd, nothing really matters, mama, just killed a man' sort of route. I am also an enormous fan of the Doctor's firm but not unkind attitude to his wayward Space Childrens' flippant remarks about the (un)importance of their actions in the field of human history. His little speech at the end of the episode is really key to his character, and you do feel that this idea of their lives being important to them at least is what keeps him going through that sense of the absurd that we see is beginning to take its toll on the new time travellers. It's a kind of oddly virtuous selfishness that never quite wears off. I'm a little worried about Ian, who does seem to flounder a bit when he isn't playing at being the hero. Identity crisis looming. And Susan. Poor, poor, poor, poor Susan. I wouldn't be surprised if this were the serial that made Carole Ann Ford want to start looking for another job. So, at the end of the first series of Classic Who, Team Tardis is a proper squad, beginning to move towards looking for a collective identity/destiny amongst the stars. How wonderful.