Classic Who: The War Machines

[strange_complex]

I’ve been slack on the Classic Who front for a fair old time - I blame the BBC for making too many new shows that I’ve wanted to write about instead! But a weekend at home has given me the chance to fill in another slot in my viewing of the Hartnell era

Comments

[swisstone]

Who knew that the template for all this was laid down, nearly-complete, as early as 1966?

I did, and have been talking to people about this ever since I first saw The War Machines.

In actuality, of course, the template was laid down in 1953 in The Quatermass Experiment, but it is a template that Who had been deliberately avoiding for its first three years.

[parrot_knight]

I did too, but then Doctor Who Weekly pointed it out in their History of UNIT in the late teens or early twenties of their run, in early 1980, so the idea was ingrained in me at an impressionable age.

[verlaine]

I was just lamenting the other day that New Who barely ever sets foot on alien worlds. The 9th Doctor touched down on zero alien planets; Donna had about 4 which I think trumps both Rose and Martha put together; and then 11 and Amy only managed one in their first season together. And it's all the fault of The War Machines, for showing that earthbound hijinks are both cheaper and less liable to result in eternal embarrassment than the likes of The Web Planet. Curse you, War Machines!

[strange_complex]

It's strange as well how rarely Doctor Who has managed to strike a reasonable balance in this matter. The Hartnell era avoided contemporary Earth like the plague (for the reasons swisstone mentions above), and The War Machines makes that seem like a shame, because it's actually rather good. On the other hand, the Pertwee era badly overdid it - and I think you're right that New Who has rather gone that way as well.

Your comment also makes me wonder how much weight we should give to the difference between actually landing on an alien planet, and landing on a space-ship or space-station of some kind. For example, you're right that the Ninth Doctor era was heavily Earth-bound, but how significant is it that four episodes are actually set on space stations orbiting future versions of the Earth (Platform One in The End of the World and Satellite 5 in The Long Game and the final two-parter

[steer]

Inferno is surely cheating -- it's (at least partly) in a parallel universe. If we're allowed that then you have to count "Rise of the Cybermen" since (IIRC) the Cybermen were human created. :-)

[strange_complex]

Hmm, true, yes. Does it make any difference that in The Inferno only the Doctor travels to the parallel universe as part of a sub-plot, whereas in Rise of the Cybermen the whole story is set in the parallel universe? If we count parallel universes as alien, then what happens in The Inferno doesn't actually bring any kind of alien influence (other than the Doctor) into our world, but Rise of the Cybermen is entirely set in an alien world. It's a difficult case, though...

[steer]

*Grin* Well even if you don't count them as alien do you count them as "contemporary" settings? There should be some new word for that "partemporary" or something -- Happening at the same time in a different time stream.

[strange_complex]

Hehe - good word! I think strictly speaking it needs an extra 'a', as in 'paranormal', 'paradox' and 'parallel'. But yeah - we definitely need a word like that to describe what's happening in these stories. 'Contemporary' doesn't cut it.

[meerium]

Black Orchid, which is a Peter Davidson story (and which was my single most vivid recollection of Dr Who), is alien-free, iirc...

[strange_complex]

It is indeed, but it's also a historical. The War Machines, and the other stories I've listed as being like it, are set in the contemporary present for the time when the story was broadcast. (Well, more or less, anyway - the stories featuring UNIT are a bit complicated).

[parrot_knight]

Black Orchid's a historical in a sense which none of the 1960s ones are, really - it's a pastiche of the 1920s mystery genre (one which might be more effective now than it was in 1982 - oh look, The Unicorn and the Wasp) and the legends which cling to aristocratic families and entertain visitors to country houses, such as that of the Beast of Glamis. It's heritage-historical, appropriate for the 1980s with its period family dramas on television, and for Doctor Who as it prepares to dive headlong into the trough of its past.

[strange_complex]

Good point about where it stands in relation to the programme's increasing interest in its own heritage. I saw it about 18 months ago, and was mainly interested in its use of costume and disguise at the time. That does link in with your point about it being a 'heritage-historical', though - more about dressing up and playing at being in the past than really being there. Mind you, I still stand by the point made in my review at the time that it is a lot more genuinely engaged with the past than near-contemporary alien invasion stories like The Visitation!

[parrot_knight]

I watched The War Machines last week, for the first time in years. The opening shot, looking down from Centre Point across Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia down to the TARDIS's materialisation point, is a remarkable statement of newness, in that the established rules of Doctor Who are being turned on its head and contemporary London is displacing the exotic cultures which have provided the setting until this point. Dodo's departure is badly handled, as will that of Ben and Polly be a year later; it's as if the shifting characterization of Dodo and Steven, at the whims of changes of production staff and memos fired at the Doctor Who office from a dismissive but interfering head of serials, had convinced Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis that there was no point in the companions having any ongoing development, though I agree with you that Polly and Ben are both set up very well here.

[strange_complex]

...no point in the companions having any ongoing development...

A real pity, because there are all too many later ones, too, who suffer from this.

And I absolutely agree about the opening shot. After so many stories have opened with the TARDIS materialising in weird and alien places, it's very exciting to see it suddenly manifesting in such a recognisably contemporary setting. In particular it must have given audiences at the time pretty much their first ever opportunity to gasp and think "Oh, we are part of all this! These aliens worlds and past cultures amongst which the Doctor walks - our world, too, links in with them and, is just another stop on his travels!" That illusion is very much part of the enduring appeal of the show, I think.

[parrot_knight]

My reaction to the nightclub exteriors (shot in studio) was that they reminded me very much of the recreation of 1960s Soho in Our Friends in the North, and so to me demonstrated a sort of reflexive authenticity.

For all my admiration of the John Wiles/Donald Tosh era of Doctor Who, the brief stopover to collect Dodo conceded that there was a need to occasionally drop anchor in the present day despite their assumption that the programme couldn't do so without undermining its entire appeal. I suspect Lloyd and Davis intended this would happen once a year, to change companions, though this didn't go as planned the next year

[strange_complex]

Oh, do! But only after you have finished your Proper Work article.... ;-p