Why I like Base Under Siege stories
As the First Doctor era is characterized by its splendid Historical episodes, so the Second Doctor era is characterized by a proliferation of Base-Under-Siege type plots. That is to say, every episode in Season 5 except for "the Enemy of the World" is a base under siege. This can make season 5 somewhat tedious to watch in order, but the story type is a solid one, and a good vehicle for the themes of the era.
Probably the greatest Base Under Siege story ever told is George A. Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead. Yes, I'm aware this is not a Doctor Who episode; it is nevertheless an excellent and illustrative movie. Zombies lend themselves incredibly well to Base Under Siege, in that there are functionally an infinite number of them and they're refreshingly straightforward. All they want to do is eat your brains (they're not unreasonable - no one's gonna eat your eyes). In a Base Under Siege story, the motivations of the monsters - and it is monsters, not villain or villains, do not matter. They're out there, and the story is set in here. What makes Night of the Living Dead so great is not the Living Dead, but the fact that the whole movie is just six people in a room arguing with each other. The zombies create the crisis, but it's the people responding to crisis who make it interesting, and who are the real problem. A Base Under Siege story is not about the monsters, it's about humanity at its best and at its worst.
Now, Doctor Who has really never done zombies (although it did have some very zombie-like vampires), but it does have Cybermen and Daleks and Ice Warriors and Yeti. In many ways the Base Under Siege is the opposite of the great Hartnell Historical in that it is small scale and contained. The characters are both limited and confined and, as long as the siege holds, you don't actually have to show the monsters that much. They can be very economical, because they actually get more effective the less you show. You also drastically cut down the amount of running around in corridors, since you have both fewer locations and fewer things to run from. Although we should never underestimate the ability of Doctor Who to provide corridors to run through. Nevertheless, bottling the plot can often be a good thing. It also means that they are very isolated. Base Under Siege stories are typically somewhere remote: the Himalayas, the Moon, the bottom of the sea. It is humanity putting a toe-hold on the very edge of the unknown, a tiny beacon in the darkness, and the darkness looming back in response. Those "corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things." As sleepymarmot so beautifully put it: "something that lurks on the edge of life as you know it, just next to your planet, just outside your base." These monsters have a sense of having always been here, waiting for us to stir them up, from the Warrior trapped in glacial ice to Cybermen sealed in their tomb or the titular Fury from the Deep. Just close enough to home to be terrifying, just remote enough to be cut off from help and hope.
The Base Under Siege stories are also overwhelmingly human stories. The driving force of them is less the monsters and more how people react to the monsters. In a crisis situation, statistically speaking 10% of people will be Leaders, 85% will be Followers, and 5% will actively be trying to make the crisis work. Base Under Siege gives us a lot of time to first get to know our characters and then to watch them settle into those roles, and not always in expected ways. Sometimes the Arrogant Prick is the wrecker we knew he would be, as with Robson in "Fury from the Deep," but sometimes once the heat is on he develops in unexpectedly heroic directions, as with Clent in "the Ice Warriors." In this crucible, Commander Vorshak finds the moral strength to believe in humanity's potential again and stand up to the titular Warriors of the Deep, and the mysterious and somewhat sinister Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart grows into the leadership role that will eventually make him Earth's staunchest defender. It brings out weakness and arrogance, cowardice and heroism, and pits them against each other. We don't necessarily get those amazing philosophical debates with the villain - we don't need them, because they're happening among the defenders instead. Especially in the Second Doctor era when the overarching fear and theme is loss of humanity to mechanization and computerization, these stories give us literal Killer Robots trying to beat their way in, being held off by people at their most human, for good or bad.
Base Under Siege is a solid plot in any era, even if it was perhaps a tad overused in this one. It was used extremely successfully as late as "Warriors of the Deep" and "the Waters of Mars," - even "the Rebel Flesh" had a bit of the flavor of a good old-fashioned Base Under Siege story. Survival Horror works for a reason, and a good Base Under Siege story has the potential to be incredibly intense. It's a minimalist story type, and one which lends itself quite well to simply killing everybody - but equally well to an Everybody Lives ending. The variety comes less from the context and more from how the inter-character conflicts will break down and play out.
For whatever reason, the bases that end up under siege also tend to be very international as well; perhaps because it is a small cast, every member of which needs to be distinctive and fully formed, rather than dealing as much with large groups of largely interchangeable people, the proverbial Redshirt Army. It is a nice thing to see. Any way you cut it, I am always in the mood for a good old-fashioned Base Under Siege story.
Probably the greatest Base Under Siege story ever told is George A. Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead. Yes, I'm aware this is not a Doctor Who episode; it is nevertheless an excellent and illustrative movie. Zombies lend themselves incredibly well to Base Under Siege, in that there are functionally an infinite number of them and they're refreshingly straightforward. All they want to do is eat your brains (they're not unreasonable - no one's gonna eat your eyes). In a Base Under Siege story, the motivations of the monsters - and it is monsters, not villain or villains, do not matter. They're out there, and the story is set in here. What makes Night of the Living Dead so great is not the Living Dead, but the fact that the whole movie is just six people in a room arguing with each other. The zombies create the crisis, but it's the people responding to crisis who make it interesting, and who are the real problem. A Base Under Siege story is not about the monsters, it's about humanity at its best and at its worst.
Now, Doctor Who has really never done zombies (although it did have some very zombie-like vampires), but it does have Cybermen and Daleks and Ice Warriors and Yeti. In many ways the Base Under Siege is the opposite of the great Hartnell Historical in that it is small scale and contained. The characters are both limited and confined and, as long as the siege holds, you don't actually have to show the monsters that much. They can be very economical, because they actually get more effective the less you show. You also drastically cut down the amount of running around in corridors, since you have both fewer locations and fewer things to run from. Although we should never underestimate the ability of Doctor Who to provide corridors to run through. Nevertheless, bottling the plot can often be a good thing. It also means that they are very isolated. Base Under Siege stories are typically somewhere remote: the Himalayas, the Moon, the bottom of the sea. It is humanity putting a toe-hold on the very edge of the unknown, a tiny beacon in the darkness, and the darkness looming back in response. Those "corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things." As sleepymarmot so beautifully put it: "something that lurks on the edge of life as you know it, just next to your planet, just outside your base." These monsters have a sense of having always been here, waiting for us to stir them up, from the Warrior trapped in glacial ice to Cybermen sealed in their tomb or the titular Fury from the Deep. Just close enough to home to be terrifying, just remote enough to be cut off from help and hope.
The Base Under Siege stories are also overwhelmingly human stories. The driving force of them is less the monsters and more how people react to the monsters. In a crisis situation, statistically speaking 10% of people will be Leaders, 85% will be Followers, and 5% will actively be trying to make the crisis work. Base Under Siege gives us a lot of time to first get to know our characters and then to watch them settle into those roles, and not always in expected ways. Sometimes the Arrogant Prick is the wrecker we knew he would be, as with Robson in "Fury from the Deep," but sometimes once the heat is on he develops in unexpectedly heroic directions, as with Clent in "the Ice Warriors." In this crucible, Commander Vorshak finds the moral strength to believe in humanity's potential again and stand up to the titular Warriors of the Deep, and the mysterious and somewhat sinister Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart grows into the leadership role that will eventually make him Earth's staunchest defender. It brings out weakness and arrogance, cowardice and heroism, and pits them against each other. We don't necessarily get those amazing philosophical debates with the villain - we don't need them, because they're happening among the defenders instead. Especially in the Second Doctor era when the overarching fear and theme is loss of humanity to mechanization and computerization, these stories give us literal Killer Robots trying to beat their way in, being held off by people at their most human, for good or bad.
Base Under Siege is a solid plot in any era, even if it was perhaps a tad overused in this one. It was used extremely successfully as late as "Warriors of the Deep" and "the Waters of Mars," - even "the Rebel Flesh" had a bit of the flavor of a good old-fashioned Base Under Siege story. Survival Horror works for a reason, and a good Base Under Siege story has the potential to be incredibly intense. It's a minimalist story type, and one which lends itself quite well to simply killing everybody - but equally well to an Everybody Lives ending. The variety comes less from the context and more from how the inter-character conflicts will break down and play out.
For whatever reason, the bases that end up under siege also tend to be very international as well; perhaps because it is a small cast, every member of which needs to be distinctive and fully formed, rather than dealing as much with large groups of largely interchangeable people, the proverbial Redshirt Army. It is a nice thing to see. Any way you cut it, I am always in the mood for a good old-fashioned Base Under Siege story.