Masterpiece Theatre: Fear Her

Masterpiece Theatre

Number 4: Fear Her

Sometimes the omens are bad. Midway through Chapter 5 on the DVD of Fear Her, the DVD player decided to give up the ghost and jam the disc.

Twice.

Maybe it was trying to tell me something. After all, when mindless technology decides that something isn’t worth playing, you know you’re in trouble.

Of all the modern stories integrated into the Mighty 200 survey conducted by Doctor Who Magazine in 2009, Fear Her ranked the lowest of  them all, in a terrible 192^nd place, just ahead of my beloved Paradise Towers and behind such horrors-to-come as Warriors of the Deep and the spiky green abomination that is Meglos. The next lowest modern story was nearly thirty places higher in the survey.

This by some distance makes Fear Her the worst story since Doctor Who came back in 2005. So what went wrong? Previous Masterpiece Theatres have pinpointed problems with the script or the direction or the lack of money available. To some degree all three of these apply here.

Watching Fear Her is like watching a Doctor Who by someone who doesn’t quite get it. It feels slightly off, much like the TV movie did. Now Matthew Graham is a good writer and a very good showrunner; Life on Mars and most of Ashes to Ashes prove this.  But Fear Her (and The Rebel Flesh/ The Almost People a few years later) indicates that he finds it hard to write to the constraints and rules of show that he has not created. Initially, the Doctor and Rose cast themselves as policemen investigating the disappearance of children, and are reduced to poor pastiches of Inspector Morse and Lewis. They are better characters than that. No characterisation should hinge on pretending to be someone from an entirely different show. The Doctor is reduced to skulking around paths and gardens looking for clues until Rose points out the obvious to him. And this, as Steven Moffat has quite correctly said, is meant to be the cleverest man in the room, several steps ahead of us, not a man who doesn’t know what’s happening until he is told by a chav.   

There is a certain lack of logic to the storyline too. If three children went missing from the same street in the week of the Olympics, wouldn’t that street be crawling with police making sure it doesn’t happen again? Bad publicity for London and all that. Alternatively it just needed a single line stating that the police were too busy with the Olympics to care. I’m all for setting a story in a recognisable historic event, and pre-empting the 2012 Olympics is a good idea. However the execution is poor. A group of about twenty spectators watching the torchbearer pass by is probably incorrect by about a thousand. I’m writing this a few months before the Olympics so I could yet be proved horribly wrong and actually only a few spectators turn up – we’ll see. If I’m wrong I’ll watch Meglos as punishment. The Olympics subplot seems uneasy with the rest of the story, as if Matthew Graham was asked to add it in order to ground the story with an event the audience could grasp. Unfortunately it leads to the scenes on the TV being mangled by a multitude of melodramatic lines from poor Huw Edwards, and the bad, bad climactic scene with the Doctor and the Olympic flame in which David Tennant gives in to the annoying over-exuberance that occasionally marred his first year in the TARDIS.

The money had obviously run out by now. The CG flame lighting up is one of the worst effects in modern Doctor Who, and the cast is kept to an absolute minimum. The locations are minimal and there’s a general sense of ‘We can’t afford to change it so it’ll have to do’. It’s a shame, as the concept of the Doctor turning up on your road is a good one, as Night Terrors would prove a few years later. That said, the fact that the audience never actually sees Chloe’s nightmare representation of her father actually makes that more powerful, proving the old tenet that less is sometimes more.

The thing that frustrates about Fear Her is that there is something good there, hindered by a not-quite-there script and not-quite-there money. Its main crime is being, well, a little bit dull. It’s certainly not a travesty and is certainly undeserving of its place in the bottom ten. And, as usual, there is a great deal to enjoy.

Ten Reasons Fear Her shouldn’t be left alone:

1.       The TARDIS landing joke. Landing between two large containers, the Doctor opens the door to find he can’t get out. With a perplexed ‘Oh’, he closes the door and parks properly. It is reassuring to know that the Doctor still can’t fly the TARDIS after all these years. The biggest laugh in a story light on chuckles.

2.       The Scribble Creature is a good way of allowing Rose (and eventually the Doctor) to make the connection between Chloe and the disappearances. It’s plausible and clever. Of course a child will scribble out its mistakes.

3.       Chloe’s Dad in the cupboard. As I said earlier, the fact that you never see the picture actually makes it scarier. I’m interested in the scene where Rose finds the picture and she is drawn into the cupboard by an unseen force which is never mentioned again. Is this the remains of a dropped idea from when the dad was going to be a CG creation?

4.       Fingers in the marmalade. Pondering the facts as he stands in the kitchen, the Doctor absent-mindedly picks up a jar of marmalade and scoops some out with his hand. Rose shakes her urgently as Chloe’s mum looks on in disapproval. The look of childish dismay on the Doctor’s face is very Troughton and links nicely to Matt Smith’s subsequent portrayal. It allows us to remember that the Doctor is an alien and at times oblivious to social conventions. This is the Doctor, Mr Graham, not the bloke who pretends to be a policeman. That’s Colin Baker...

5.       Chloe ‘Voldemort’ Webber. Abisola Agbaje does a very good job in giving the Isolus a different voice to her own. So good, in fact, that its whispering anger would be nicked wholesale by Ralph Fiennes in the Harry Potter films.

6.       ‘I was a Dad once.’ And so the Doctor’s backstory begins to creep into modern Doctor Who. For us folk old enough to remember the old series, this is not a surprise, but for the kids, and certainly for Rose, suddenly the Doctor is older than they realise. Subtle and elegant.

7.       Bob, Huw Edwards’ imaginary friend, who never speaks and is never seen. Real-life newsreader Edwards is saddled with dreadful lines throughout the episode, and struggles to inject them with any sense of realism, undermining all dramatic tension. His heartfelt cry of ‘Not you too Bob!’ is my personal favourite.

8.       The Doctor vanishes off-screen. Chloe Webber, or rather the Isolus, follows the Doctor and Rose back to the TARDIS. Recognising the Doctor as a threat, Chloe draws him. As the camera follows Rose, we hear the smashing of the contraption the Doctor has created to help the Isolus, leaving Rose alone with no idea how to bring him back. It’s a diluted version of the Reapers eating the Doctor in Father’s Day, but it’s an effective scene and probably the stand-out moment in the episode.

9.       The downbeat ending. The Doctor’s monologue stating, ‘There’s something in the air. Something coming. A storm’s approaching’, segues into an epic Coming Next Time trailer that promises Rose’s death. In a lot of ways this was better than watching Army of Ghosts. At least then we wouldn’t have the watch the terrible Ghostbusters moment.

10.   David Tennant and Billie Piper, throwing their all into a story they must have known was weaker than usual. The Doctor and Rose’s easy rapport demonstrates that they know each other so well by now, and the arrogance of earlier episodes has gone. It’s the last time we see them happy together, but the end is fast approaching for this particular pairing.

Fear Her is an average Doctor Who story, but compared with some of the gems of the 2006 season (The Impossible Planet/ The Satan Pit, The Girl in the Fireplace, School Reunion, Tooth and Claw, Doomsday) it looks impoverished and unfinished. It takes place at the back end of a season that has clearly gone to the limit with its budget, and pays the price much like Time-Flight and The Twin Dilemma did, although Fear Her is in a different league to those two horrors, possibly playing a different sport too.. Another draft would have ironed out the rough spots and turned it into something sparkling. As it is, we would eventually see the story in all its glory, but by then it would be called Night Terrors and be written by someone completely different. But let’s be clear about one thing: I would rather watch an average Doctor Who than almost anything else on television, because to be as good as average Doctor Who is all most other programmes can hope to achieve.

Next Time: Arc of Infinity

Dear Mr Moffat...

Please, please, please can we have Cybermen on skis in the next series?

Art Gallery: Terror of the Autons

Art Gallery 3

When I was growing up, in the innocent days before regular BBC video releases, my only contact with the episodes of Doctor Who broadcast before I was born were the Target novelisations I initially borrowed from the library before obsessively-compulsively spending all my money to complete my collection. My two favourites from that innocent time were The Tomb of the Cybermen and Terror of the Autons, borrowed over and over again from the library to be pored over and memorised. Something about The Tomb of the Cybermen resonated in my childish brain, and I loved Terrance Dicks’ way of writing.

Terror of the Autons I loved for the cover.

It’s the stuff of nightmares; a one-eyed octopus creature with a truly disgusting mandibular mouth. It would watch you unblinkingly as it slowly ate you. The black areas surrounding it indicate a creature that only comes out at night to watch you as you sleep. And since octopuses can flatten their bodies into any shape to fit in the smallest of areas, it would even fit under your bed. It could be under there right now...

This representation of the Nestene Consciousness doesn’t belong on the cover of a children’s book. It would be far better suited to one of the lurid horror novels that flooded the bookshelves at the time. It isn’t much of a stretch of the imagination to picture it on the front of one of the Pan Book of Horror Stories paperbacks. Alun Hood, the artist who created the cover, only painted two other covers: Planet of the Spiders with a huge and poisonous-looking spider, and The Green Death, with a large dragonfly/ fly hybrids and a pile of maggots. He was clearly the go-to man when Target needed a horrific image.

Alun Hood’s cover replaced a tamer piece by Peter Brookes from early in Target’s run of Doctor Who books. It was only as I came to understand that some books had been reissued, later on in my days of collecting them, that I found the original cover version in a second-hand bookshop. By then I was too old and too much of a horror story veteran for the cover to have had the same impact as the Alun Hood painting, but I can imagine it was a pretty successful cover all the same.

There was a trend at the time for adding a smaller image at the base of the cover, in this case Roger Delgado’s Master about to dramatically pull a switch and allow the Nestene Consciousness to take over the Earth. In the background Jon Pertwee is poised to stop him with a hand that is larger than his hair, which scarcely seems possible. But the attention is drawn immediately to the towering one-eyed crab-beast that dominates the picture, ripping the top off a radar telescope, its vast brain-shaped head filling the skyline as its terrible red eye gazes down malevolently. It reminds me slightly of the Metaluna Mutant from This Island Earth, and certainly echoes that sort of fifties pulp horror. The two images are beautifully linked by an arc of lightning emitting from the radar telescope to indicate that the Master has indeed thrown the switch. The only thing that could have improved this would be the tentacles at the top of the cover wrapping their way around the Doctor Who logo.

Terrance Dicks must have been delighted by both covers. It wouldn’t surprise me if Terror of the Autons was one of the biggest selling Target books. I can’t imagine I was alone in being drawn to it by the cold thrill of terror looking at the Alun Hood cover in particular gave me. Hundreds of schoolboys all over England must have loved it. It would have been in many ways their first horror novel.

But there’s more. Not content with traumatising a generation with a freaky octopus thing, the book had illustrations inside too, and these were possibly worse still.

Exhibit A: The Scariest Doll Attack Ever.

Aaaaarrrrrrgggghhhhhh!

Exhibit B: Never Trust a Policeman.

Blaaaahhhhhhhh!

They’re quite simply horrifying. There’s no other word to describe them. Thank goodness my mum didn’t study my Doctor Who book collection too closely. I’m fairly certain she would have banned me from reading them, let alone collecting them.

Now, inevitably, when I actually came to watch The Tomb of the Cybermen and Terror of the Autons, there was an unreasonable sense of expectation; Phantom Menace syndrome, as I believe it’s known. The Tomb of the Cybermen was brilliant. It’s still my favourite Troughton, although The War Games runs it very close nowadays. I can see past the dodgy wire-work and the fact that in the first couple of episodes nothing much happens because it’s a dramatisation of one of my favourite ever books. The TV version of Terror of the Autons is less impressive, though, mainly because the images on the cover and in the book were so horrifying that nothing that could be broadcast before the watershed could possibly match them. I’ve always been fond of horror films, and I think the illustrations in Terror of the Autons have much to do with this. The difference between the two stories is that I read Tomb for the story, but I read Terror of the Autons because of the cover.

This is why Doctor Who fans will never agree on anything (and why should they, as long as they are made to understand that The Power of Kroll is brilliant). We’ve all come from different places to discover the older stories, with different values and perspectives. Some of us have seen them on DVD first, others on video. Some of us watched badly degraded copies first, whilst others were privileged to see the stories when they were first broadcast. But for a generation of us, the Target novelisations were our first encounter with the Doctors who came before our Doctor, followed by actually seeing the stories. It’s a strange way of watching anything. I can’t think of any other examples of a programme or a film where I watched it for the first time knowing every element of the plot. But it’s how we did it, thanks to Target.

Carnival of Monsters: The Brains of Morphoton

Carnival of Monsters

Number Four: The Brains of Morphoton

I love the Brains of Morphoton. I’m a sucker for a brain in a jar. When I grown up I want to be one.

They sit around all day in their glass jars in a darkened room with nothing in the way of entertainment, not even a screen to watch their minions. Even Sutekh had a ZX Spectrum to keep him occupied down the millennia. What can they possibly do to relieve their boredom?

Brain 1: Did you hear about Morbius? He bought a new glass jar off eBay.

Brain 2: Oh, he’s such a show-off, always boasting about that new body he’s got on the way, and that it’s got a magnificent head.

(SILENCE FOR A FEW MINUTES).

Brain 2: Dorium's got Wi-Fi installed. Why can't we get it?



Brain 1: We don't need Wi-Fi. It's too expensive and besides we outgrew porn when we outgrew our bodies. Let's play a game instead.



Brain 2: (SIGHS) I spy with my little eye...

And for a people whose brains have outgrown their bodies because of their intelligence, their devices are so literally and amusingly named. We have the Mesmeron, for mesmerising people, and the Somnor discs for sending people to sleep. Clearly this is a people who haven’t invented Time Team with Tony Robinson. Watching that’s the most effective way to send someone to sleep.

The Brains only appear to have one voice. Maybe they pass it between them. When they chant ‘Kill her, kill her, kill her, KILL HER’ at Ian as he is trying to kill Barbara, I can’t help thinking if only it had been Susan he was strangling, I’d have been chanting with them.

But most of all I love the scene where Barbara attacks them with a beaker. I especially like the Brain that apparently dies of fright before Barbara gets anywhere near it. Just look at the poor fella’s eye stalk droop in terror.

Masterpiece Theatre: The Keys of Marinus

Masterpiece Theatre

Number 3: The Keys of Marinus

The Keys of Marinus ranked a lowly 160th in Doctor Who Magazine’s 2009 Mighty 200 survey. Statistically, it is the eighth-worst William Hartnell tale, only just ahead of The Savages and Planet of Giants.

But why is The Keys of Marinus judged so harshly? After all, the ambition of the story is faultless. One of the real truisms emerging from compiling these defences for those lesser-regarded jewels in the Doctor Who firmament is that each one aims high but is scuppered by some small aspect. In short, one of the crucial factors – the script, the direction, the money available – wasn’t quite right.

In the case of The Keys of Marinus, I believe that the story’s problems lay fundamentally with the script. The concept itself is very strong. The quest theme is a timeless one, and to my knowledge wouldn’t be done properly until The Key to Time stories. Terry Nation, the story’s author, was very much an ideas man, but his scripts tended to fall back on the same tropes each time. Basing the six episodes on a quest across a whole planet was a superb idea. The hunt for the microkeys provides a strong, easy-to-follow and easy-to-pick-up narrative structure. The characters find a microkey and move on to a new level, in a precursor to pretty much any computer game. However, Terry Nation must have realised that creating a new environment for near-enough every episode was well beyond the powers of Doctor Who in its infancy. This is why there are only five environments in six episodes. Unfortunately, we then spend the better part of two episodes in the least interesting environment: Millenius, a city seemingly obsessed with sentencing criminals.

The biggest problem with The Keys of Marinus is the lack of a cohesive world. The script never allows us to get a true sense of the planet, and each area seems mutually exclusive, like another planet. Maybe if each new episode took place on a different planet, like Traken had lots of planets within its Union, the lack of cohesion wouldn’t have mattered. Sadly, the script makes several explicit references to the quest taking place on the same planet.

When we start off on the island where Arbitan’s pyramid stands, the encircling sea is acid and the sand is glass, a defence barrier against the invading Voord. All very well and all very imaginative, until we then visit a snowbound area and a jungle area. If the sea is acid, then surely the snow must at least have traces of acid within it? Certainly the trees would be much affected by the regular acid rain. It is this kind of woolly thinking that undoes much of Marinus.

Also, characters in each area, Darrius aside and later on the judges of Millenius, know nothing of the other regions. You would think that a planet, having been subjugated under the Conscience of Marinus, a machine that controls their minds, would at least have some collective knowledge about the keys and the power they possess. Kala and Eyesen plot to steal the microkey from Millenius’ museum to sell it. If the script had revealed that they were working for the Voord, or were mercenaries plotting to sell the key to Yartek (leader of the alien Voord), then that would have made narrative sense. However, they seem oblivious as to its importance. The Brains of Morphoton do not know about Sabetha’s microkey, despite it being in plain sight around her neck. They have developed mind control abilities. All this needed to be was some residual side-effect from the Conscience and this would have linked nicely. (Incidentally, if the orange juice offered to the TARDIS crew when they are happily tripping on Morphoton’s drugs is actually dirty water, what is the Doctor eating when he samples a truffle? The mind boggles).

Similarly, if Tarron knows the purpose of the microkey in the museum, why doesn’t Ian tell him that Arbitan sent him and show him the travel dial? It would have saved most of an episode that could then have been devoted to resolving the Yartek plan, which is practically non-existent. That’s the other big problem with The Keys of Marinus. Would it have been too difficult to have included Voord in other regions, also searching for the keys? That way, we would be reminded on a weekly basis that there is a threat beyond deadly plants, brains in jars, rapists and murderers with the tendency to blurt out key plot points at regular intervals.

One last thought: Is Arbitan actually good? After all, he has designed a machine that controls the wills of a whole planet. He forces the TARDIS crew to fetch the keys for him. More damningly, the bracelets are preprogrammed with a series of destinations. Arbitan must have known where the keys were hidden. Why didn’t he warn the travellers about the Brains of Morphoton? Was he in league with them, and that is why they still had mind control powers?

And yet...

Despite the flaws with the script, there are a great many things to enjoy about The Keys of Marinus. Personally, it is one of my favourite Hartnell stories. In a way it is a pity that the option for the film version wasn’t taken up. The concept is certainly film-sized, rather than Lime Grove sized.

Ten Ways The Keys of Marinus opens the door to success:

1.       The familiarity of the TARDIS crew and the ease in which they work together. By this point, the Doctor has moved from being a kidnapper to being a friend. Barbara’s maternal protection of Susan the wet blanket is sweet, and Ian is a man made of tinkles and sparkles. He is gently humorous, loyal and caring, and when he gets too ever-protective Barbara tells him. These are real people, much in the way that Rory, Donna, Martha and Rose are (Amy less so...)and we care about them.

2.       Barbara’s Point of View shots in Morphoton, where we see the truth through her eyes is such an unusual device for Doctor Who, and it sells the concept beautifully that only she can see what is really happening.

3.       The laboratory scene in Morphoton is superb, allowing William Hartnell to really play up the humour of the situation. Future writers could see he had some talent for comedy, and I believe this is where that starts.

4.       Hiding in plain sight. The sets at Lime Grove were tiny and relied on creative use of space and suspension of disbelief at times, but this is really pushing it.

5.       The traps in the Screaming/ Whispering Jungle, like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom done twenty years too early and on a budget of sixpence. There’s a wobbly magic to them that CG just can’t match.

6.       The Ice Knights are a creepy concept, not quite done justice I feel, but a certain Peter Davison often quotes this as being his most scary memory of Doctor Who as a child, and I’m not about to argue with my favourite Doctor.

7.       The silence and stunned faces after Aydan’s brutal gunning-down, like the silence after Lee Harvey Oswald’s similar death. There are too many echoes for this to be a coincidence. Audiences in 1964 are meant to make this connection, so this is possibly Doctor Who’s first foray into making relevant comments on modern events. The scene is made more delicious by Kala’s sobs and moans over her dead husband’s body, when we later find out that she shot him.

8.       Yartek, leader of the alien Voord, or the occasionally alien and sometimes just men Voord. Never has there been a more rubbish villain. We have no idea of his reasons or his objectives, and he thinks he can fool Ian into giving him a microkey just by putting up Arbitan’s hood. Why bother? Just stab Ian and take the key. Then, to add insult to injury, he blows himself up. I don’t think he even meets the Doctor at any point. Useless, utterly useless...

9.       The fact that the guy in the Screaming/ Whispering Jungle is called Darrius, allowing me the gift of this joke.

10.   Legendary Billyfluffs. Poor old William Hartnell, forced to learn so many speeches in such a short space of time. It was inevitable there would be mistakes, but it adds to the charm of the First Doctor. A) ‘If you had had your shoes, you could have leant her hers!’ B) Could the sea be frozen? ‘Not in this temperature. Impossible. Besides, it’s too warm.’ C) ‘I can’t improve at this very moment... I can’t prove at this very moment that Chesterton didn’t hide it in its present location.’ Brilliant.

To fully appreciate The Keys of Marinus, we have to remember Doctor Who’s serial roots. No DVD, no iPlayer, no opportunity to revisit and catch up. Therefore you could get away with plot-holes big enough to drive Colin Baker through. Terry Nation didn’t care about the finer details and neither, I suspect did 99% of the audience. Unfortunately we fans do, and that is why it rates so low, despite being filled with gold.

Next Time: Fear Her



For Christian Cawley's opinion of The Keys of Marinus on Kasterborous.com, click here.
For Emrys Matthews' opinion at Wonderings in the Fourth Dimension, click here.
And for Sue and Neil's views over at Adventures with the Wife in Space, click here.