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. 

Series 1 Episode 22: The Velvet Web

Serial: The Keys of Marinus
Episode: 2 (The Velvet Web)
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companions: Barbara, Ian, and Susan

Writer: Terry Nation
Director: John Gorrie
Producer: Verity Lambert
Original Air Date: 18/04/1964

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH (and other stories)

In which hemlines are high, baddies are boogly-eyed, Marxist subtext abounds, and everyone is hypnotised but Barbara...who then inadvertently plunges an entire civilisation into utter screaming chaos.

BUT LET US WASTE NO MORE TIME SHILLY-SHALLYING for Babs is missing presumed mauled and Ian is getting antsy. The Doctor reckons she’s probably behind this triangulated wall, so of course Ian immediately springs into action; the Doctor tells Ian not to be precipitous; Ian forces the doors open anyway.

Ian sets his Mood Organ to 'OMG WHERE'S BARBARA!?'

Then HOLY RETINAS BATMAN there’s a blinding flash of light and the three of them find themselves in some sort of Greco-Roman leisure palace. Ian can hardly believe his eyes, for there on a chaise-longue resplendent in a Greco-Roman Dress of Floaty Loveliness is none other than Bae; I’m going to say he’s probably dreamed about this sort of thing. Susan runs over and hugs her, and Babs explains that falling through space freaked her out a bit so she tried to tear the travel dial of her wrist, hence the blood on it.

Colour set feat. Weeping Angel containment units

Ian instantly enters into the spirit of the Very Weird Situation and he and Babs start roleplaying or something. Babs seems to have no problem ordering the extras about, and tells them to get some food for her friends. The Doctor pronounces the place ‘sensuous and decadent, but rather pleasant’. Which sounds like something you’d find written on Mary Poppins’s magical tape-measure. Then he finds a pomegranate. DON’T EAT IT, DOCTOR! HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF PERSEPHONE?

Susan enjoys her teachers' weird power play flirting; the Doctor not so much.

The rest of the food arrives, and Ian is justifiably wary:

BARBARA: What's the matter, don't you like it?
IAN: No, I've just realised nobody's shown me the menu. [. . .] See, I don't know the price yet.
BARBARA: But we're guests here!
IAN: Oh, you've met the host, have you?

You can tell this is Terry Nation, actually, because Ian’s characterisation here is similar to the way he was written in The Daleks: cynical, slightly to the left, and unwilling to take advantage of the altruism of strangers. The Doctor, meanwhile, gives zero fucks and continues to be enthusiastic to the point of zeal about food.

Enter a man in a very long cloak; Ian reckons ‘this is where we pay the bill’; Babs tells him to wind his neck in. And HOLY HEMLINES BATMAN the man’s tunic is short to the point of indecency.

Man in the High Tassles

He’s also brought some exposition with him, after Babs responds to being asked whether there’s anything she wants by requesting KNOWLEDGE. Bullet-point time again:

• This place is the city of Morphoton.
• Its people are perhaps the most contented in the universe.
• Nothing the people desire is denied them.

So then of course Susan – Susan the homesick spacechild, Susan the wanderer, Susan who wants to know all the mysteries of the stars, Susan who has just found herself in the city equivalent of the Mirror of Erised – ASKS THE NICE MAN FOR A DRESS.

FUCKSAKE, TERRY. FIRST BARBARA GETS THE ROMANTIC GIFT OF DRESSMAKING FABRIC FROM HER THAL WOULD-BE LOVER ON SKARO AND NOW SUSAN GETS A SILK GOWN AS THE THING SHE DESIRES MOST.

The Doctor is sternly mortified at Susan’s presumption, but the Man in the High Tassles tells him it’s no bother. Then this happens:

MAN: And you? Have you no wish, no great desire?
DOCTOR: Well er, yes, perhaps, but er... I'm afraid it's not quite as easy as giving Susan a dress out of that.
SUSAN: What is it grandfather?

Yes, grandfather, what is it? A brain? A heart? A home? The nerve? A working time machine perhaps?

DOCTOR: Well perhaps, um, if I had to choose, a well-equipped laboratory with every conceivable instrument. Yes, yes!
MAN: It will be arranged.

Hmm. Well, I suppose a dream laboratory is pretty good.

Anyway, the leggy dude wishes them all good night, and Susan is dead on her feet; Babs levers her over to bed, speculating that the excitement has probably been too much for her, like she’s a fucking five-year-old. Poor Susan. Bad Terry.

The sun has gone to bed and so must I

But also Good Terry, because now Barbara and Ian are having another Excellent Barbara and Ian Conversation like they did on Skaro:

BARBARA: Well you don't look very happy.
IAN: Me? No no no, not at all. I think it's all marvellous.
BARBARA: Not very convincing. I don't know what you want.
IAN: Perhaps it's my materialistic side. How rich and powerful do you have to be to give things away free?
BARBARA: Oh, now don't spoil it all for me!
IAN: (Laughs.) I didn't mean to do that.
BARBARA: You can't apply Earth standards, you just can't!
IAN: (Quietly.) No. It's certainly very different here. You noticed that man's eyes?
BARBARA: Well, what about them?
IAN: He didn't blink once.

Maybe that's because all the statues are actually Weeping Angels. Wouldn't that be a twist? Ahem. Sorry. Anyway, Ian asks Babs if he's being ridiculous, and though she doesn't exactly pull her punches when she answers in the affirmative and tells him to sleep on it, it's still a bit gorgeous. I love Ian’s little Marxist moments when they crop up, and it’s interesting that Barbara is starting up a debate about whether or not you can apply Earth standards to other planets. They do complement one another very well: Ian doesn’t trust the 1% but also doesn’t trust aliens because they look alien; Babs has no qualms about taking whatever she can get but is entirely willing to put anything that seems a bit off down to cultural differences and accommodate it. Also what is personal space. Also also, Ian appears to have a DH Lawrence phoenix on the back of his jacket, which would explain the UST.

Do or do not. There is no try.

Anyway, they all lie down on their couches, and then HOLY GREEN MAN BATMAN the eyes of the beardy stone face in the wall light up and one of the Vestal Virgins or whoever goes round putting little discs on everyone’s foreheads. Babs is a super light sleeper and sits up, knocking it off her brow, just as the most godawful epilepsy-inducing hullaballoo starts up. She clutches her head in agony as flashing lights and alarms start going off before passing out. Blimey.

You are a wild boar, a wild boar...

The next morning, Susan, the Doctor, and Ian are up and breakfasting like Gods. The Doctor is really digging the glassware. Ian seems perturbed by Barbara’s super-long lie-in, and indeed either our Babs is having a very disturbed sleep or Jacqueline Hill just had to run to get to her position, because she’s breathing way too quickly for a horizontal person. Ian has a mystery sore spot on his forehead; so does the Doctor. Of course we know it’s from the mystery discs but I like to think that even for a split second Ian wondered whether he may have been branded for prostitution in the night.

Anyway, Susan’s dress has arrived and she wants to show Barbara. When our Babs wakes up, however it becomes immediately apparent that all is not well. And it’s so stupidly simply done I feel like applauding. Because now we get to see the room from Barbara’s point of view, and it’s shabby as all fuck. When the Doctor hands her a supposedly exquisite glass full of juice, all we see is ‘a dirty old mug’; she bats it away, and of course everyone thinks she’s a) crazy and b) rude. But then when we see Barbara from the others’ point of view, she’s still in her lovely dress and everything’s still fancy schmancy. Ian being Ian, he tries the old ‘shake the hysteric’ routine and gives Barbara an ineffectual jostling, but to no avail, proving once again how shit the Chesterton Method is.

Being routinely disbelieved is a bitter pill to take

Susan shows Babs her new dress, which we see is indeed ‘dirty rags’, and Ian, who has certainly changed his tune since last night, tries to remind Barbara that the people here have given them everything. ‘They’ve given you nothing’, says Babs, bluntly.

Enter Altos, the Man in the High Tassles, wearing Miss Havisham’s curtains; he immediately knows Babs’s brainwashing has been a failure, and she knows he knows it. He wants to take her to see their physicians; Babs is having precisely none of it and scarpers; Ian wants to go after her (because of course) but Altos tells him he’ll deal with her fit of Lady Cray. Ian, did you learn nothing from the last serial? If you don’t believe what Barbara says, sooner or later everyone ends up believing her the hard way.

Budget Smugglers

Anyway, we now get to see Shabby Babs in a Dress of Tatty Unloveliness, running off into a stone chamber. She hears footsteps and hides behind a pillar. Fortunately, and against all logic, Altos doesn’t find her; unfortunately, he’s locked the door behind him. Barbara, alone, her friends brainwashed, trapped in an alien dungeon, and wearing a fucking awful dress, sits down and has a little cry.

Meanwhile, Altos is going to check in with his bosses…WHO ARE STALK-EYED SNAIL BRAINS IN JARS! Boogly-eyed monsters for the win!

'MEOW'

But seriously they do look like Gary from Spongebob.

Anyway, Altos tells the Snail Brains that one of the women ‘has resisted the power of the Mesmeron’. I repeat, THE MESMERON. Ye GODS. More concerningly still, the rest of Team Tardis is going to get the next stage of treatment after a trip to the Doctor’s new lab, at which point they will be COMPLETELY SUBJUGATED. What is it with this planet and Free Will? Oh and Altos needs to kill Barbara. Because she has seen the TRUTH and is beyond their control. Damn right she is. Also, YIKES. Oh and the woman who placed the discs on everyone’s heads? Her name is Sabetha, and she’s going to be punished for Babs’s sleeping habits. Poor Sabetha.

Back in the cell, Babs is dozing when she hears footsteps and hides oh-so-stealthily behind the pillar again. Sabetha has been thrown into the mix, and Babs recognises her as the girl who put the discs on their foreheads; how she knows this I am not prepared to say. Anyway, Sabetha is pretty zombified, and despite Barbara’s best efforts, all she manages to say is ‘I am to be punished’. Exasperation ensues.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Ian are being reassured that Babs was suffering from Victorian Lady Disease and is now under sedation. Ian is, uncharacteristically, totally fine with this, and thinks they’ll maybe be able to visit her later. Because this is what the plot requires of him at the moment. The Doctor pays lip service to being concerned for Barbara’s welfare before essentially saying ‘hey ho nothing we can do right now let’s see my lab now please’.

Then there’s another triumph for Shoestring Budget Sci-Fi: upon entering the super-duper science lab, Ian and Doctor immediately start nerding out at a room that is totally empty but for a manky old mug on a bench. It’s like the Emperor’s New Clothes only without the moral bit. Ian is excited about something called a cyclotron, which is apparently an early form of particle accelerator; I bet he’d swoon with excitement if anyone ever showed him around CERN. The Doctor reckons that, with equipment like the manky old mug, he might be able to repair the Tardis’s time thingummy; oh, comedy.

Meanwhile, back in the cell, Sabetha is fondling something on a chain around her neck…IT’S A KEY OF MARINUS! Sabetha has a touch of the Gollums about her and claims it’s hers and was given to her by her masters as the thing she desired most; Babs puts two and two together and asks her if Arbitan is her father. Sabetha’s memory would appear to have been jogged. And indeed the Bechdel test would appear to have been passed this week. Thank goodness.

Elsewhere, the Snail Brains have plans for Team Tardis: Ian is to go into manual labour, the Doctor is to put his mind to ‘increasing manpowers’ (whatever that is), and Susan is to replace Sabetha being a hostess with the mostess and brainwasherwoman. Because alien Snail Brains are well into gender stereotyping.

Back in the cell, Babs is trying to get a very tired Sabetha to remember more things. Giving up on her variant of the Chesterton Method (arm-gripping and slowly articulating motivational stuff into the face of the grippee), she falls back on the Cuddle Method before scarpering behind the pillar again as Altos’s footsteps draw nearer. Altos grabs ragdoll Sabetha by the arm and tells her she’s to come with him; meanwhile, Babs has made a break for the door. Altos intercepts her and they have a brief scuffle, during which Babs is thrown to the ground, gets up, tries again, and is about to be throttled with a raggedy piece of Altos’s costume when Sabetha comes up from behind and smashes a stool over his head. GIRL POWER! Barbara tells Sabetha she has to go find the others and ‘try and convince them’ (of what?), and that she’ll come back for her if she’s successful; Sabetha goes to sleep.

Sabetha is smashing

Out in the corridors, Babs is sneaking about; hearing a noise, she ducks behind a doorway before realising she’s run into Ian! Relieved, she runs over to hug him, telling him she thought they must have got to him; realising that he is not hugging her back and that there is therefore something terribly wrong with the Universe, she breaks off. And indeed Ian is now in full zombie mode and must take her to his leaders. Barbara is too busy trying to stop her dress falling down to resist much.

Oblivious as ever to Ms. Hill's wardrobe malfunctions

As Barbara is bundled through the door, she comes face to face with the Snail Brain Bell Jars, and swiftly pronounces them ‘disgusting’. She tries to appeal to Ian, but the Snail Brains talk over her:

MORPHO: We are the masters of this place! Our brains outgrew our bodies, it is our intelligence that has created this whole city. But we need the help of the human body to feed us and to carry out our orders.
BARBARA: You use your people to act as machines for you.
MORPHO: Much more than machines. The human body is the most flexible instrument in the world, no mechanical device could reproduce its mobility and dexterity.
BARBARA: So, I'm to become one of your slaves?
MORPHO: No, you have seen the truth of our city, it is beyond our power to erase this from your memory. You must be destroyed. Kill her. Kill her.

Before we go on to the next bit, in which Bamfbara is a BAMF, let’s take a moment to appreciate the ongoing Marxist subtext of this serial, in which the Bourgeoisie are so grotesquely out of whack with the Proletariat that they are entirely divorced from the literal, physical ‘body’ of humanity and yet depend on them for their survival.

ANYWAY, in yet another instance of a woman being nearly throttled to death by a man on a kids’ TV show, Ian the Serial Strangler gets his hands around Barbara’s throat. But then OH YES PLEASE, after a brief moment of panic in which she tries to get through to Ian by calling his name a lot, Barbara decides she has finally had enough of this victimisation bullshit; you can actually see the moment where she suddenly decides ‘ACTUALLY FUCK THIS’, at which point she flings Ian’s hands away and starts smashing shit up Russian Revolution style:

Barbara’s quadruple homicide seems to have done the trick: as the last Snail Brain’s eye stalk wilts pathetically, Ian snaps out of it. It is very much time for hugs.

Later on, through the Power of the Boatneck, Babs has found the outfit she was wearing before her Greco-Roman fashion disaster, and she and Ian have been reunited with the Doctor. It seems Barbara’s killing spree has awoken the citizens of Morphoton to the shitty reality of their living conditions and they’re burning the city in a full-on riot, which is what happens when you don’t have a provisional government in place ready to take over once you’ve toppled your tyrant(s) of choice. Everyone agrees they need to get the hell out of Dodge before the revolution catches up with them; Susan’s bringing Sabetha and Altos, as it seems the latter is also one of Arbitan’s crew.

It turns out Altos had a chum who went on ahead to find the fourth key in a city called Millenials Millenius, a super-advanced and well-ordered society. The Doctor, who clearly can’t be arsed to rough it in (as we shall discover) the jungle or an icy wasteland, decides he’s going to jump ahead and search for Altos’s pal and have some Doctor Time away from the humans and Susan, who’s going to stay with the main party. The Doctor’s self-interest continues to be hilariously blatant. They decide to meet up in five days, and Susan turns her travel dial after a ludicrously swift goodbye to her Grandfather. Ongoing issues are ongoing.

Then HOLY DYSTOPIA BATMAN Susan arrives in a jungle where everything is screaming, Catching Fire style. She claps her hand over her ears and screams for the screaming to stop; we clap our hands over our ears and do much the same thing.

GALLOPING CROSSOVERS, HAS SUSAN INADVERTENTLY FOUND HERSELF IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 75TH ANNUAL HUNGER GAMES? WHAT AWAITS OUT HEROES IN THE SCREAMING JUNGLE APART FROM SCREAMING? WILL WILLIAM HARTNELL NOW HAVE A LOVELY HOLIDAY AND RETURN REFRESHED? WILL BARBARA BE ALLOWED TO HAVE A FEW EPISODES IN WHICH SHE IS NOT THREATENED WITH BODILY HARM? WILL SUSAN GET SOMETHING BETTER TO DO THAN SCREAM? WILL IAN GET A CHANCE TO CHANGE HIS OUTFIT?

Summary (as applicable to this episode)

Does it pass the Bechdel test? Indeed it does! Hurrah for Sabetha!

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? No.

Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? Everyone gets brainwashed but Barbara, and though Barbara does end up in a cell it's an accidental imprisonment as she just happened to hide in a dungeon.

Does the Doctor/a man companion/any other man have to rescue the woman companion(s) from peril? HELL NO. It's Barbara's turn to save everyone's skins this week.

Is/are the woman companion's/s' first/only reaction(s) to peril gratuitous screaming? Susan a bit.

Does a woman companion go into hysterics over something reasonably minor? Susan a bit.

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? As ever, nobody believes Barbara.

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

Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? I'd say Ian needs a hug as much as Barbara does after all that business with the brains, so I'm going to say it's evens.

Is a woman the first/only person to be (most gratuitously) menaced by the episode's antagonist(s)? Yup. Barbara. Also she's already had to deal with attempted strangulation way too often. I disapprove.

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? Yes.

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 yes. 

Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? Barbara calls out literally everyone this week.

Does a woman get to be a badass? BARBARA SMASH. SABETHA SMASH.

Is the young, strong, straight, white male lead the person most often in control of the situation? Nope. Makes a change!

Is there past/future/alien sexism? They seem to have pretty Victorian ideas about women and hysteria in Morphoton, but otherwise not so much.

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

Hurrah for Barbara! This week is very much her episode, and though she mostly gets lucky with her 'better start smashing jars' tactic, it's still a very quick bit of thinking under pressure. I'm not happy with the amount of let's-put-the-women-under-immediate-threat-of-bodily-harm that's going on of late, but I do love that this is the week where Barbara has very much had enough of being victimised and doesn't let the fact that the person trying to kill her is her zombified friend get in the way of being a badass. Interesting that this is the first time she's ever actually killed anyone (having been of course complicit in the Dalek genocide a few episodes back) and that she doesn't seem to give it much thought because they're boogly-eyed snail brains rather than humanoids. It's also interesting that the Doctor seems to get his 'well the baddies are dead now so let's move on and leave the locals to clear up the mess' approach to things from the two humans, who don't seem to be particularly worried about the fact that one of them has just plunged an entire civilisation into revolutionary chaos. I always find the politics of Terry Nation stories fascinating and this is no exception. On with the screaming jungle! Or the jungle at any rate.