Doctor Who 1.08 The Reign of Terror
The First Doctor with Susan, Ian and Barbara
Follows on from An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction, Marco Polo, The Keys of Marinus, The Aztecs and The Sensorites
DOCTOR: "Our destiny is in the stars, so let's go and search for it."
Overview
The final serial of Doctor Who's first ever season, The Reign of Terror is one of my favourite First Doctor serials although I seem to say that about a lot of them and it is no coincidence that it is another of the pure historicals that pepper this era of the show. I do always love the historicals, I think because, without any dramatic alien menace to propel the plot, the historical adventures are instead driven purely by the characters and their reactions to the situations they land in, and character-led action is always my favourite storytelling style.
I know very little about the French Revolution. In fact, most of my knowledge of that period of history comes from this serial and The Scarlet Pimpernel! So in that sense, the educational aspect of 1960s Doctor Who is a total success. The plot, in a nutshell, is this: the TARDIS lands in what the Doctor confidently proclaims to be 1960s Earth, Ian and Barbara's home, but upon exploring the travellers quickly realise that they have instead landed in France almost 170 years earlier, in the middle of the Revolution. The Doctor becomes separated from the rest of the group almost at once, left behind when they fall foul of a group of soldiers and are carted off to the Concierge Prison in Paris to face summary execution. The six-part adventure, which takes place against the bloody backdrop of Robespierre's turbulent final days, sees numerous sub-plots intertwining and overlapping as Barbara and a very unwell Susan are rescued on their way to the guillotine by a group of counter-revolutionaries only to be recaptured again later, Ian escapes from his jail cell and gets drawn into a local political intrigue, and the Doctor makes his way to Paris on foot and impersonates a regional official in an attempt to find and rescue his friends. In the final episode of the serial, Ian and Barbara go undercover to spy on a covert political meeting before the travellers are finally all free and together again to make their way back to the TARDIS.
That's the basic plot of the serial. The story, however, is about the characters and the emotional and physical ordeal they go through as they attempt to negotiate their way through this particularly bloody and unstable period of history unscathed. The story plays heavily on their concern for one another and the close bonds that have formed among the group, highlighting the lengths they will go to for one another, while also putting the lessons learned in The Aztecs into effect, showing how much Ian and Barbara have changed since they met the Doctor and how much he has changed since he met them.
Two out of the six episodes of this serial are lost episodes four and five, to be precise (including the scenes where Ian is chained up in a cellar, dammit!). The first time I watched the serial I experienced those missing episodes via an excellent reconstruction, which mostly matches the audio to a series of illustrative stills with narrative sub-titles, but also includes a few snatches of moving footage that an enterprising fan filmed off the telly when it originally aired. Since then, the serial has been released on DVD with the missing episodes recreated as an animation set to the original soundtrack. The animation is low budget and a little rough around the edges, but nonetheless it is fantastic to finally be able to experience a 'complete' version of this story for the very first time since it was originally broadcast.
Writer - Dennis Spooner
Director - Henric Hirsch
Script editor - David Whitaker
Producer - Verity Lambert / Mervyn Pinfield
Observations
Random thoughts while watching:
The first episode of this story, 'A Land of Fear', follows immediately on from The Sensorites, which was a bit of a tough one for the Doctor, emotionally, reminding him of all kinds of awkward little things that he'd sooner sweep under the carpet, such as the fact that he has taken his granddaughter Susan away from their homeworld and can't take her back even if she wants to go, not to mention the fact that Susan is growing up fast and developing a mind of her own in the process and he is scared of losing her. He ended the serial by taking his frustrations out on Ian, wilfully misinterpreting a light-hearted joke as a slur on his TARDIS piloting skills and vowing to put the human off the ship at the very next stop. As The Reign of Terror opens, he is sticking to that resolve, but does at least seem convinced he has actually managed to steer the TARDIS back to London 1963, so that he can drop Ian and Barbara off where he found them, which is something, I suppose. This is the First Doctor at his most petulant, blithely ignoring Susan's distress at the thought of losing the friends and semi-parental figures she has come to rely on and refusing even to carry out even the most basic of checks to confirm that they have actually landed where he thinks they've landed. If it were up to him, Ian and Barbara would walk out of the door and he'd take off immediately and would never know that he'd left them in both the wrong place and time. Because, of course, it is the wrong place and the wrong time he might not like to be reminded of the fact that he can't actually steer the TARDIS, but it is fact nonetheless!
This little contretemps is well placed, however, to demonstrate just how far the characters have come over the course of the season, and makes for a neat bookend with the temper tantrum the Doctor similarly threw way back at the beginning of the show, in An Unearthly Child. Back then, he was a stranger to Ian and Barbara and they had no idea how to react to him or how to handle the situation when he flew into a rage after they entered his TARDIS for the first time, so that the situation quickly escalated to the point where the Doctor, in his temper and panic, took off with them aboard the ship and has been stuck with them ever since. Then in The Edge of Destruction, we again saw the Doctor fly into a rage with his unwilling human companions, but although they still didn't know him well enough not to be afraid of him, they had got to know him well enough to stand up for themselves and his temper quickly cooled off and they were able to get on with things and resolve the situation. Since then, however, after so many hair-raising adventures together and so much reciprocal life-saving, they have developed mutual respect and admiration for one another and have become true friends. So when the Doctor again blows up at the two humans here, we are shown clearly just how far their relationship has come since those rocky early days, as they barely so much as bat an eyelid at his display of pique, but simply take it in their stride, knowing full well that he doesn't really mean it and that beneath that quick temper and prickly, prideful nature he is a loving and generous man who is just as attached to them as they are to him. The cliffhanger ending of the Doctor's temper tantrum is quickly defused into a more comical scene as, by dint of judicious flattery and cajoling, they manage to calm him down enough to agree to first conduct a few basic checks and then come for a walk to explore their surroundings, so that they can part on good terms, should they happen to be in the right place. Their wheedling is a lot funnier than it should be: Ian and Barbara now know exactly which buttons to push to get the stubborn old man back on side!
Susan's reaction to the prospect of Ian and Barbara leaving the TARDIS, meanwhile, highlights just how emotionally dependent on them she has become since they first came aboard. She is enormously distressed at the thought of losing them, a display of separation anxiety once reserved for her grandfather alone. Once upon a time they were simply her school teachers, but now they have become family and she clings to them as tightly as she does the Doctor. She admitted in The Sensorites that she sometimes wishes she had somewhere to belong her search for whatever stability she can find in her itinerant life has been a consistent character trait for her through the season and is a large part of the reason Ian and Barbara have become so important to her: if she can't have stability of place she can at least hope for stability of family. She doesn't want to lose the people she cares about, and that's something we can all relate to!
"I have the universe to explore," the Doctor rather loftily declares. That's pretty much his mission statement, right there and that mission statement has carried him through 50 years of the show so far!
It's interesting to see Ian and Barbara's reactions to the prospect of going home, the way they try to comfort Susan while being very firm on the point that if they really are in the right place then they absolutely will be leaving because that's what they've wanted all along, while also trying not to get their hopes up too high in case it's another false landing. As fond as they are of the Doctor and Susan, the dream of going home is still what drives them. Then when they realise that, yep, they are off-target again, they are philosophical about it, rather than bitterly disappointed as they might once have been, because while their emotional attachment to their new friends isn't enough to keep them aboard the TARDIS if they have the opportunity of returning home, it is enough to console them that this strange itinerant lifestyle isn't so bad after all, while it lasts. They have a couple of really sweet little conversations about it, just the two of them, reminding us that these two are a unit, set apart from the Doctor and Susan and bound together both by circumstance and friendship.
I love that after all his huffing and puffing and foot stamping petulance, the Doctor's bad mood just evaporates the moment he is out of the TARDIS with an exciting new environment to explore, since exciting new environments to explore are what he enjoys most. He doesn't even care that he has been proved wrong about not being able to steer the TARDIS. And Ian is very gracious about having been the innocent target for that bad temper, just lets it go and doesn't rub it in at all Ian's total inability to hold a grudge is just one of the things I love about him.
Our heroes go exploring and find a deserted house to investigate, in their quest to find out exactly where they are. This is where the Doctor separates off from the rest of the group, heading upstairs while they poke around downstairs something that highlights the ensemble nature of the cast in this first season of the show. Ian and Barbara don't need the Doctor to tell them where they've landed, they figure it out for themselves by examining their surroundings specifically, by examining the contents of a trunk they find, which is filled with clothes of all sizes, a food stash, maps and false documents. The house, they realise, is part of an escape chain, and the Doctor has put them down right in the middle of Robespierre's Reign of Terror.
Susan reckons the Reign of Terror is the Doctor's all-time favourite period of human history, which kind of begs the question: why?
Having found a supply of 18th century clothing just lying around, our intrepid heroes promptly proceed to play dress-up. I love it. Companions should always get to play dress-up! The dresses are really pretty, although a bit impractical in the novelisation, Ian Marter makes a point of stating that Barbara's is only an approximate fit and is a bit tight across the bust, which always amuses me and I adore that ruffed shirt on Ian! He is very dashing in this story.
One of the things I like about this story is how much attention is paid to throwaway character detail, even for the minor characters we meet in passing, like the two escaping French noblemen the travellers run into at the safe house and the Revolutionary soldiers who catch up with them there. None of them are important to the ongoing plot, yet we spend enough time with them in the first episode to get a distinct sense of their personalities the soldiers even get a scene or two to themselves, just bantering and bickering away. Some viewers might dismiss this as 'padding' to fill out the episode, but I enjoy that minor characters are allowed to have personality and a bit of story to themselves, it makes them feel more like real people and less like plot devices, so it's all good to me stories should always be about character and personality, rather than a race to the finishing line.
This is a very grim story, really it certainly doesn't gloss over the brutality of the Reign of Terror. By the time the first episode ends, our protagonists have already seen two aristocratic refugees shot down in cold blood by the revolutionary soldiers pursuing them, Ian, Barbara and Susan have all been arrested at gun point, narrowly escaped being shot down on the spot, and are being marched off to prison (and the guillotine) in Paris, while the Doctor has been left for dead in a burning building! It's a very effective cliffhanger, very bleak, as the danger our intrepid heroes are in feels very, very real.
Episode two, 'Guests of Madame Guillotine', sees the trio of Ian, Barbara and Susan arrive at the Conciergerie Prison in Paris. I love that of the three it is Barbara who speaks up to vehemently argue their innocence, of course she does, fruitless though such a protest is in this turbulent time of carnage and paranoia.
It was William Russell's turn to take a two week holiday during the filming of this serial, so he only appears in pre-filmed inserts in episodes two and three those inserts are quite cleverly handled, however, to give the impression that Ian is in the room with Barbara and Susan hearing the charges being read out, while thereafter keeping him in a separate cell so that he has a sub-plot all of his own, away from the others.
It's rather shocking for Doctor Who in 1964 to see Barbara having to fend off the lewd advances of the jailer despite being a children's show aired at teatime, it wasn't afraid to include less salubrious historical and social details in the name of accuracy! It all adds to the air of gritty realism that this serial has, with its warts and all portrayal of history sanitised to an extent, sure, but nowhere near as much as you might expect. There's nothing subtle about the lecherous bloke's advances, but Barbara is having none of it and whacks him across the face, because that's who Barbara is. She earns herself and Susan a stay in the worst cell in the prison, for her trouble.
With the Doctor having been left behind in a burning building, Susan's separation anxiety is out in full force, but she has a valid reason to be distressed, not knowing if her grandfather is alive or dead. And to her credit she at least starts out relatively pro-actively, getting Barbara to lift her up so she can scope out the prison surroundings through the high window, even if she does afterward lapse into depression and despair. Depression and despair are understandable, really, when locked up in a grotty little prison cell in Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, with a trip to the guillotine to look forward to in the morning!
Barbara, however, remains impressively positive in spite of being in such dire straits. She determinedly endeavours to keep Susan's spirits up while resolutely searching for a way out of their predicament. If she has to take the cell's one bed apart and use the frame as a crowbar to dig through the solid stone wall in order to escape, then dammit that's what she is going to do! I love Barbara. I love how positive and determined she is, the way she points out to Susan that they haven't relied on luck in their previous adventures but rather created their own opportunities, and the way she doesn't just sit back and wait for someone (i.e. a man) to come and rescue her but puts her money where her mouth is by doing everything in her power to change her own fate.
The Doctor, frail and old as this his first ever body is, could not have escaped that burning building on his own indeed, he had passed out from smoke inhalation as episode one ended. So, in fact, the five decades of the show still to come are owed entirely to a little French peasant boy named Jean-Pierre, who bravely rescued the old man from the fire. Way to go, Jean-Pierre! I am very impressed by William Hartnell in the scene he shares with young Jean-Pierre. He sounds really hoarse and choky, as if he really is suffering from smoke inhalation, and he is absolutely wonderful with the boy, treats him with real respect and dignity, as befits the person who saved his life a far cry from his dismissive attitude toward all humans in An Unearthly Child! He really has come a long way. I love the way he salutes the boy as he bids farewell, and promises not to forget him. I wonder if Eleven still remembers little Jean-Pierre who saved his life in 1794
Ian, meanwhile, has been locked up separately from the women, so that William Russell could pre-film his scenes before shooting off on holiday, and finds that his English cellmate, Webster, is badly injured. The actor playing Webster does a really good job in his one scene he looks and sounds absolutely ghastly and is chillingly convincing as a man who has been slowly bleeding to death in this hellhole of a prison for hours already. Ian does his best for the man, but he is a science teacher, not a doctor, and their damp, dirty little straw-strewn cell is not a healing environment. Before he dies, Webster whispers a message to Ian, a message that must be passed on to a man named James Stirling, if only he can be found. Right, so we now have a mission to carry us through the next few episodes, as well as the usual 'escape from the bloodthirsty natives and get back to the TARDIS' through-line.
Every time anyone says the name James Stirling in this story, I picture the James Sterling played by Mark Sheppard in Leverage!
While his companions languish in a dank, smelly prison in Paris, the Doctor (or rather, his body double) is having a pleasant little stroll through the French countryside in pursuit of them. I say pleasant because it looks like a nice sunny day, and was filmed on location in the actual countryside this was the first time the classic show ever ventured out of the studio to film on location but the Doctor might not agree, since he has about 12km to cover on foot and this isn't the sprightliest body he will ever own! En route, he encounters a chain gang being harassed by their bully of an overseer and can't resist getting involved, for no apparent reason other than to cause trouble. I mean, if this was a later version of the Doctor I might believe he was troubled by the sight of the labourers being so harshly treated and wanted to secure their freedom, but this is One and he doesn't seem to have any such intention in mind, he's just heckling because he can. This backfires on him as the overseer promptly pulls a gun and makes him join the gang in their back breaking work! This kind of thing would never happen to the Doctor in his later incarnations, who have presumably learned from this youthful experience!
This story follows a pattern that is fairly common in First Doctor stories, wherein the Doctor is separated from his companions and has a fairly light-hearted, comical little sub-plot of his own, while they do the heavy lifting where the more serious a-plot is concerned. I mean, being forced to join a chain gang could have been a very gritty sub-plot, but instead is played with a very light, humorous touch, as the Doctor enlists the aid of his fellow labourers to outwit and overpower the greedy, bullying overseer. Rather shockingly, mind, we are shown the Doctor smacking the overseer over the head with a shovel, but since the man collapses to the ground snoring rather than bleeding from a head wound, we clearly aren't meant to take the cartoon violence all that seriously it is certainly a striking contrast to the much grittier scenes of violence littered throughout the rest of the story.
While the Doctor is getting himself into and out of trouble along the road, his companions are having a dreadful time of it in prison. Ian has to spend several long hours alone in his cell with a rotting corpse before the guards notice and take it away, which is pretty morbid, while Barbara and Susan are tearing their hands to pieces trying to dig their way out of their cell. When the arrival of a so-called 'meal' (bowls of thin gruel) prompts an influx of hungry rats into the cell, Susan falls apart completely. I'm sure she must have seen far worse than a few rats on her travels around the universe, but the combination of the rats, the prison cell, the impending guillotine and fear for her grandfather's life seems to have defeated her. Barbara has to give up on the idea of digging their way out of the cell in favour of comforting Susan in her distress.
Morning brings with it a trip to the guillotine for Barbara and Susan but not for Ian, who has been reprieved by prison warder LeMaitre, who is anxious to find out if his dead cellmate Webster said anything to him before he died. Ian, sensibly, isn't admitting anything, but LeMaitre is unconvinced enough to keep him alive, for now, just in case. Thus the episode two cliffhanger sees Ian gazing in horror out of his cell window as he sees Barbara and Susan being driven away to the guillotine! It's a really nice shot of Ian, seen through the barred window and slowly zooming out thumbs up to the director, who does a nice job with this adventure all round, really.
Episode three, 'A Change of Identity', sees Susan struck down by what is probably a tension migraine as the tumbril slowly makes its way through the streets of Paris. She apparently feels so ill that she absolutely refuses to move when Barbara spies an opportunity to escape! Maybe she thinks having her head chopped off will help with the headache but here we see Barbara's devotion to the girl, as she gives up on her own escape attempt to stay with Susan and comfort her. It is lucky that a pair of counter-revolutionaries named Jean and Jules are on hand to rescue the women before they reach the guillotine. Only on Doctor Who, eh!
Ian, meanwhile, contrives an escape from his cell as a result of a remarkably fortunate sequence of events that start with the jailer leaving his keys in the cell door just long enough for Ian to stick a hand through the bars, remove the appropriate key from the bunch, and then stick the remainder back in the lock again before the jailer rushes back to retrieve them. I rather like the detail of the scene, as we are shown that Ian carefully chooses a key of similar size and shape to his own to put back in the door, to be sure it will fit, and that he then struggles to find the keyhole to push the keys back into, since he is more or less working blind and at an awkward angle. But I especially appreciate that it is almost immediately made clear that this very unlikely escape has in fact been deliberately contrived by LeMaitre, for reasons of his own.
So the entire gang is now on the loose in Paris, but apart from Barbara and Susan being together, none of them knows that the others are free in fact, Ian has reason to believe that Barbara and Susan are both dead, having seen them despatched to the guillotine. I suspect that's probably why he latches so strongly on to the mission Webster gave him; he needs the distraction, because he can't let himself think about Barbara and Susan being executed. And none of them know that the Doctor escaped the fire and is safe and well, so their uncertainty and worry over what they are going to do, whether or not they should be grieving, has them all in a stew.
The Doctor, believing his companions to be in prison still, goes to great lengths to acquire the costume and sash of a provincial officer, bartering his own clothes and ring in exchange. And oh my, the feathers in his new hat have to be seen to be believed! Marvellous! Once he has his new finery and has forged himself some official documents, the Doctor sweeps into the prison in state to bamboozle the jailer and this, right here, this is a very classic Doctor strategy, something that all his incarnations are good at (although some more so than others). He is brilliant at bluffing and subterfuge he has a real knack for assuming the role of an authority figure and playing it with such panache that he just sweeps all bystanders along with him and convinces them that he is genuine, for a while at least. In this instance, however, the role-playing is almost immediately thwarted by the fact that the friends he was hoping to rescue have all escaped already!
There is a gorgeous little moment when the Doctor first arrives at the prison and questions the jailer, when he is told that Barbara and Susan have been despatched to the guillotine already, and his reaction is just brilliant one to show to anyone who criticises William Hartnell's acting! It's only a few seconds before the jailer continues to explain about their rescue en route, but for those few seconds he genuinely believes that they are both dead and it hits him like a tonne of bricks, you can see it, but he can't let the jailer see that reaction, so turns away, very quickly, and even after being reassured that they are still alive, it takes him a moment to regain his composure and get his game face back in place to continue his charade. Really nicely done.
Why does the Doctor keep referring to Susan as a 'young child'? She's 16! A very immature 16, sure, and often very childish in her ways, but 'young child' implies pre-adolescent, which she certainly isn't! It is a very telling sign of how he still views her, however, even after the events of The Sensorites, in which we saw how much she is beginning to grow up and mature away from her intense reliance on him.
Barbara and Susan are fortunate enough to have fallen in with a very kindly, humanitarian group of counter-revolutionaries who have made it their daily business to try to save as many people as possible from Robespierre's purges. Jules' plan is to smuggle them out of France, but when they protest that they can't leave without the Doctor and Ian, he only too willingly agrees not to rest until he has reunited their entire group. Jules is lovely.
Since Susan is unwell, she is bundled off to bed, while Jules and Jean have business to attend to, so they leave Barbara with another friend of theirs, Leon. He is very flirty with her, very charming and attentive, and Barbara just laps it up! So much for her attachment to Ian but the show never overtly commits itself to stating that Ian and Barbara are a couple (although the novelisations sometimes do), so despite their close relationship and intimate body language, Barbara is a free agent to flirt with whoever she choses! Having secured her trust, Leon offers to find a suitably discreet physician to take a look at Susan, since Barbara is worried about how feverish the girl has become, worried enough to accept his offer.
Episodes four and five no longer exist in the BBC archive and are available only as either a fan-made reconstruction using still images or the officially commissioned animation, both set to the original soundtrack. The animation is a little rough around the edges in some ways and the style takes some getting used to, especially if the animated episodes are watched on their own, divorced from rest of the story, but when viewed in their proper context, they bridge the gap in the serial marvellously, allowing viewers to experience the story in full for the first time since it was originally broadcast. The moving figures of the characters take some getting used to, but the backgrounds are gorgeous, with some beautiful detail thrown in to add interest, such as a spider scuttling around on a web in a corner or dust mites floating in a shaft of sunlight.
The first thing that happens in episode four, 'The Tyrant of France', is that LeMaitre takes the Doctor, in his guise as a provincial officer, for an interview with Robespierre himself, who is in a rather fretful mood I would say paranoid, but since he is only a day or two away from being overthrown and executed at this point, it is safe to say that his paranoia is well and truly justified! The Doctor very cleverly manages to divert the conversation away from the region he is supposed to be responsible for yet knows nothing about after his fit of temper at the very start of the story, he is now back to his Doctor-ly best, manipulating the people around him to his hearts' content!
Meanwhile, Jules and Jean have been to investigate reports of someone asking around for them at a local inn and, rather than take any chances, have coshed this person over the head and hauled him back to the safe-house unconscious! The person in question turns out to be Ian, of course, as he was given Jules' name as a contact by the late Webster. It's such a shame that the episode is missing because the limitations of the animation mean that the reveal of Ian's face as Jules and Jean's victim loses its impact.
Jules and Jean are nicely apologetic about the violence, when they realise their victim is one of Barbara's missing friends. Ian, of course, being Ian, does not bear a grudge, in spite of the headache! He and Barbara have a very touching reunion that I really wish I could see, although the animated version is very sweet, with all the hugs and smiles and delight. I love the way Jules and Jean so enthusiastically celebrate this reunion by opening a bottle of wine the four of them have a long conversation about their situation and plans, exchanging information, and the conversation is punctuated by several cries of 'this calls for another drink!' which amuses me immensely. I know some people find the dialogue-heavy nature of 1960s Doctor Who a bit dull, but I really enjoy it I like watching the way the characters interact and talk things through.
In the morning, Jules arranges for Ian to meet with Leon, who they hope might know something of the elusive James Stirling, while Barbara takes Susan to see the doctor. I really like the way Ian argues against splitting up, plaintively protesting that he's only just found Barbara and Susan and doesn't want to lose them again. Now who's having the separation anxiety! He is overruled although turns out to have had the right instinct.
I really appreciate the timescale allowed for this story, which takes place over several days, with day and night clearly delineated so that there is a real sense of time passing.
I really appreciate Barbara's concern for Susan, who is very poorly. In the Doctor's absence, and with Ian unaccounted for at the time the decision to seek medical advice was made, Barbara has assumed parental responsibility for the girl, which is really sweet to see. Barbara and Susan spend a lot of time together through the early episodes of this story, giving us a really good look at the dynamic between them: the way Barbara draws strength from the need to care for Susan, while Barbara's encouragement in turn persuades Susan to push beyond her doubts and fears. But in all honesty, I'm really not sure what Barbara expected a visit to an 18th century physician to achieve! The best advice he can offer for Susan's fever is leeches, for crying out loud!
Episode four is all about betrayal. The Doctor is betrayed by the tailor who provided his regional officer outfit, who snitches on him to LeMaitre who, instead of acting immediately on this information, instead merely politely but firmly insists that the Doctor stay the night, because LeMaitre is playing games of his own. Barbara and Susan are betrayed by the physician Leon recommended, who turns them over to the soldiers to be hauled back to prison. And Ian is betrayed by Leon, who turns out to be a double agent, bringing soldiers to their meeting. But Ian isn't taken back to prison, since his meeting with Leon was arranged for a nicely isolated location, so that Leon decides to interrogate him on the spot, where no one will hear any screams
It's all rather grim, really! Episode five is titled 'A Bargain of Necessity' and sees Ian clapped in chains in an isolated cellar and if ever there was an episode that should not have been lost, it's the one that features Ian in chains! The animated recreation of the scene is excellent, however, filling in the blanks although in some respects the scene is even more chilling when you don't have the animation to watch, as Leon uses really menacing, intimidating language and not being able to see what he's doing makes it all so much worse. The chains chafe Ian's wrists until they bleed badly enough that Barbara later notices the injury; it's practically the first thing she sees when she next lays eyes on him and Leon keeps a soldier on hand to threaten him with a bayonet if he won't talk; they pull a classic good cop, bad cop routine, in fact. There is nothing cartoon about this violence. It's not exactly light entertainment and not what I'd call children's programming! But I do enjoy a spot of serious drama in my show if characters are going to be placed in dangerous, life-threatening situations, I appreciate it if that danger is played honestly instead of being undermined by being played for comic effect, or whatever, so as not to scare the kiddies. Ian's danger here feels very real and very immediate, all the more so because we know that there is no way the Doctor can come swooping in to save the day, as he doesn't even know where Ian is, even if he weren't detained at the prison himself, along with both Barbara and Susan.
As far as the interrogation goes, the trouble here is that even if Ian were inclined to talk, he genuinely doesn't know anything more than the name James Stirling, which Leon already has. In the end he decides that honesty is the best policy, so tells the God's honest truth about his arrival here in the TARDIS, taking a certain grim delight in knowing that the absurdity of this story will serve only to wind his captors up all the more. He clearly believes he is going to die anyway, no matter what he does or doesn't say but then just as he is about to be bayoneted to death for this defiance, a suspicious Jules turns up in the nick of time to save him, shooting Leon and the soldier dead when he sees what they are doing. That's another thing I appreciate about this early era of the show: it doesn't rely on the Doctor to do all the saving, other characters are allowed to do their share as well.
At the prison, LeMaitre is still playing it cool, not letting the Doctor know that he knows he's a fake. He contrives for the Doctor to question Barbara alone, so that he can sneakily listen in on their conversation; his motivations for all this remain very murky at this stage. The Doctor and Barbara have a very touching reunion, which warms the cockles of my heart even only watching it as an animation it's really sweet to see the way they rush at one another in relief. But then a moment later I am slightly aggravated when Barbara assures the Doctor that Susan is absolutely fine, admitting that she had a slight chill but brushing it off as better already just a few hours ago she was worried enough about the girl to take her to see a physician, who promptly betrayed them! So it is annoying to think that Susan is fine again already and all that fuss was for nothing but then again, it may merely be that Barbara is underplaying Susan's illness so that the Doctor won't worry.
We barely see Susan in the last couple of episodes; she has very little to contribute to the story throughout, in fact, which is a real disappointment after she'd stepped up to carry so much of the plot in The Sensorites. No wonder Carole Ann Ford was frustrated by the limitations of the role.
With a very frustrated LeMaitre having been summoned away by Robespierre, the Doctor cunningly manipulates the drunken jailer into allowing Barbara to just walk out of the prison! It really is a nifty little ruse. This is the Doctor at his cleverest, conning the jailer with ease. He is very autocratic with Barbara, mind, when he tells her what he wants her to do, but doesn't explain what his actual plan is and that is very reminiscent of various of his other selves. It is a recurring character trait in most of his regenerations that he is rarely willing to explain what he is thinking but always expects his friends to follow his lead blindly.
Back at the safe house, there is a really strong, powerful scene where Ian and Jules tell Barbara about Leon's betrayal and subsequent death, and the conversation blows up into the most heated argument we have ever seen Ian and Barbara have oh how I wish it still existed, for the animation simply can't recreate the nuances of the original acting. As close as they are, Ian and Barbara do tend to view the world rather differently. Barbara the historian likes to look at the bigger picture, and passionately defends the French Revolution as changing the world for the better, albeit at a terrible cost, while Ian the scientist is focused on what he can see before his eyes right now: carnage, treachery and chaos. Plus, of course, it makes a big difference that when Barbara met Leon he was charm personified and she liked him, whereas Ian was betrayed, captured and tortured by him, so naturally they are going to feel differently about his demise!
I really like that after having this heated row, Barbara and Ian both make a point of apologising to each other once they have calmed down. These two might argue from time to time, but they always make up again, always manage to find common ground where they can meet in the middle; I really love their relationship. This scene also gives us a lovely, passionate little speech from Jules about why he risks his life on a regular basis to save strangers from the guillotine. "There can be no loyalty or honour where anarchy prevails," he insists. Jules is not an aristocrat and he is not a revolutionary, he is merely a man caught in the middle, a man of reason and intelligence who is sickened by the slaughter he sees around him and feels moved to do something about it, to make whatever small difference he can. Jules is the hero of this story.
Just when the Doctor was on a roll, his attempted jailbreak of Susan goes horribly wrong as clever as he is, LeMaitre has outsmarted him and now uses Susan against him. With Susan still locked up in prison, LeMaitre blackmails the Doctor into taking him to Jules' safe house an apparent betrayal that makes for a very effective fifth episode cliffhanger!
Episode six, 'Prisoners of the Conciergerie', brings with it a rather startling twist in the tail when LeMaitre reveals that he is the elusive James Stirling they've all been looking for! This means that Ian can finally deliver the message he's been keeping secret since episode two, and the story enters the home straight at last.
Amusingly, when Ian is struggling to remember the detail of what Webster was muttering in his final moment, William Russell forgot his lines, so his fluster and confusion there is genuine. Luckily, his memory lapse coincides with Ian's memory lapse, so it works well for the scene!
I have to say, I find LeMaitre the weak link in this serial, especially here at the end where his role becomes more important alongside the fantastic chemistry of the four leads, who really have grown to inhabit their roles, his acting comes across as highly theatrical and rather wooden.
Having delivered his end of the deal, the Doctor is focused solely on retrieving Susan from prison so that he can take his companions back to the TARDIS and leave this place. He is not the slightest bit interested in the politics unfolding around them, despite Susan having claimed this to be his favourite period of human history; he operates a strict policy of non-intervention at this stage of his life. If he (or his companions) know that something has happened as a matter of history, then it cannot be re-written; it is only when they land in a place and time that is unfamiliar to them all that they become part of the unfolding story and are free to act. In a place like this, a notorious stage of human history whose events are well known to them all, they can only ever be observers: that is his policy, and the lesson Barbara and Ian learned from their encounter with the Aztecs a couple of serials back.
Nothing is ever quite so simple, however. Before Susan can be retrieved from prison, Ian and Barbara end up having to take on an undercover mission for LeMaitre/Stirling that sees them playing at being country publicans at a rickety little inn in the middle of nowhere so that they can spy on a covert political meeting. I really love the role-playing. Barbara doesn't put a great deal of effort into her role of bar wench, but Ian throws himself into his part with gusto, playing the country bumpkin innkeeper for all he's worth! Fantastic! They are so cute, spying together and conspiring to ensure that they pull off their little mission successfully.
The meeting Ian and Barbara spy on turns out to be between a traitorous deputy of Robespierre and Napoleon Bonaparte! History unfolding, indeed!
Ian and Barbara report back to the others the next morning and listen with rather wry expressions on their face as Stirling and Jules debate various ways of avoiding an end that they themselves know as historical fact. Alone with the Doctor a little later, Barbara can't help but laugh at the irony of their situation, watching such immense historical events unfold before their very eyes her experience with the Aztecs has well and truly taught her that she cannot influence what happens here, but she still finds it disturbing, knowing what is going to happen before it happens. I can't say I blame her! I rather like the Doctor's line about being unable to stem the tide of history, but instead having to make sure they don't get swept away by the flood. That's rather a good description for these historical adventures, in which the point is not to save the world but simply to navigate their way through dangerous times and out the other side, having learned from the experience.
While Ian and Stirling witness the downfall of Robespierre, the Doctor bamboozles the jailer one last time to secure Susan's release. He is so very good at bamboozling people!
As the TARDIS team bid farewell to their friends Jules and Stirling, I like the way Stirling observes that he doesn't get the impression they know where they are heading, before adding "Come to that, do any of us?" Very philosophical!
The philosophy continues in the closing scene, back in the TARDIS, as our intrepid heroes discuss their inability to change fixed historical events, Barbara and Ian proposing different options they could have tried, perhaps, while the Doctor and Susan explain why none of those options would have worked. It's a really interesting conversation and so cute, with Susan pinching the Doctor's plumed hat and plonking it on her own head, while Barbara and Ian gaze adoringly at one another!
This was the final episode of the first ever season of Doctor Who, after an epic 42 episodes of adventures. It ends on a very nifty pan back through space as the TARDIS travels on, and a closing voiceover. 'Our destiny is in the stars,' says the Doctor, 'so let's go and search for it.' If ever there was a mission statement for the show and the Doctor's never-ending travels, that is it, for sure!
Quotable Quotes
IAN: "Do you have to be in such a hurry?"
DOCTOR: "Enough time has been wasted bringing you back, young man. I have the universe to explore."
IAN: "Maybe you have succeeded. Maybe we are where you say we are. But I remember an occasion when you took us home once before."
BARBARA: "Yes, and we met Marco Polo."
DOCTOR: "Entirely different circumstances! I'm rather tired of your insinuations that I am not master of this craft. Oh, I admit, it did develop a fault, a minor fault on one occasion, perhaps twice, but nothing I couldn't control."
IAN: "I know that. Of course you're in control. You're always in control. And I'm sure you could revisit us at any time."
DOCTOR: "Very simple. Quite simple."
IAN: "Exactly, quite simple. But you have your important researches to complete. You may not find the time. There's a chance that we won't meet again. Don't you think it would be better if we parted under more friendly circumstances, say over a drink?"
DOCTOR: "Yes. Yes, well perhaps, since you put it that way, an hour or two won't come amiss."
DOCTOR: "A hundred miles or so either way is to be expected. After all, it's only a fraction of the distance we've covered. It's quite accurate, in fact."
IAN: "Yes. Assuming the distance is our only error. You know, Doctor, I have a feeling you've been building up our hopes again."
BARBARA: "You know, I'm certain we're sometime in the past."
IAN: "Yes. Well, we were a hundred miles out. Perhaps we're a hundred years out."
BARBARA: "Well, we're still not home."
IAN: "No, we're not, are we? Still, I do think he tried this time, even if it was out of bad temper."
BARBARA: "So we stay with the ship."
IAN: "Yes. Cheered Susan up, hasn't it?"
BARBARA: "Well, are you disappointed?"
IAN: "Funny enough, no. I don't know. Depends where we are. I still could be."
BARBARA: "How do I look?"
IAN: "Very pretty, mademoiselle. Hairstyle's a bit modern, but it's all right."
SUSAN: "Oh, what's the use? We'll never get out of this dreadful place."
BARBARA: "Oh, you mustn't lose heart, Susan."
SUSAN: "I'm not going to fool myself."
BARBARA: "Well, think of the times we've been in trouble before. We've always managed to get out of it in the end."
SUSAN: "Oh, we've been lucky. We can't go on being lucky. Things catch up with you."
BARBARA: "It hasn't always been luck, you know. We made our own opportunities."
OVERSEER: "I suppose you think you're very clever."
DOCTOR: "Well, without any undue modesty, yes!"
BARBARA: "Oh, Doctor, I thought we were never going to see you again."
DOCTOR: "You should know by now, young lady, that you can't get rid of the old Doctor as easily as that."
LEON: "How did you get to France?"
IAN: "You really want to know, eh?"
LEON: "The truth?"
IAN: "Oh yes, it's the truth all right."
LEON: "You swear it?"
IAN: "Yes, I swear it. I flew here with three friends in a small box."
BARBARA: "Are you serious?"
DOCTOR: "Absolutely serious, but I've no time to explain. Just do as you're asked."
BARBARA: "But Doctor, you "
DOCTOR: "Now, now, now, there's no buts. Don't argue. You know my plans always work perfectly."
BARBARA: "When we got to the prison, the Doctor was there."
IAN: "What?"
BARBARA: "Yes, he's dressed up as if he was running the revolution! From what I could gather, half the people there take orders from him."
IAN: "That sounds like the Doctor, all right."
BARBARA: "I'm so sick and tired of death, Ian. We never seem able to get away from it."
JULES: "There are only two sides today, Barbara: those who rule by fear and treachery, and those who fight for reason and justice. Anyone who betrays these principles is worse than the devil in hell!"
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!"
STIRLING: "Very well, if that's what you want. Now that I'm going home, I just can't wait to see England again."
BARBARA: "Oh, England. I know how you feel only too well."
JULES: "I hope they have a pleasant journey."
STIRLING: "So do I. But to where, Jules? Funny, I get the impression they don't know where they're heading for. Come to that, do any of us?"
IAN: "But 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'd 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."
DOCTOR: "Well, it's hardly fair to speculate, is it? No, I'm afraid you belittle things. 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."
The Verdict
I really enjoy the First Doctor historicals. Overall and taken as a whole, this is a bit of a meandering tale that maybe gets a bit bogged down in the complexities of the French Revolution in places, and certainly isn't what you'd call children's programming today, but is also a proper drama about politics and history, very classy and well told, highly character-centric. Apart from Susan's reduced role, all the characters are in great form here, which I always appreciate the Doctor, Ian and Barbara all shine in this story, which plays heavily on the strong bond that has formed between the group of travellers over the course of the season. A fitting end to the first ever season of the show!
19/02/2012; revised March 2013
Follows on from An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction, Marco Polo, The Keys of Marinus, The Aztecs and The Sensorites
DOCTOR: "Our destiny is in the stars, so let's go and search for it."
Overview
The final serial of Doctor Who's first ever season, The Reign of Terror is one of my favourite First Doctor serials although I seem to say that about a lot of them and it is no coincidence that it is another of the pure historicals that pepper this era of the show. I do always love the historicals, I think because, without any dramatic alien menace to propel the plot, the historical adventures are instead driven purely by the characters and their reactions to the situations they land in, and character-led action is always my favourite storytelling style.
I know very little about the French Revolution. In fact, most of my knowledge of that period of history comes from this serial and The Scarlet Pimpernel! So in that sense, the educational aspect of 1960s Doctor Who is a total success. The plot, in a nutshell, is this: the TARDIS lands in what the Doctor confidently proclaims to be 1960s Earth, Ian and Barbara's home, but upon exploring the travellers quickly realise that they have instead landed in France almost 170 years earlier, in the middle of the Revolution. The Doctor becomes separated from the rest of the group almost at once, left behind when they fall foul of a group of soldiers and are carted off to the Concierge Prison in Paris to face summary execution. The six-part adventure, which takes place against the bloody backdrop of Robespierre's turbulent final days, sees numerous sub-plots intertwining and overlapping as Barbara and a very unwell Susan are rescued on their way to the guillotine by a group of counter-revolutionaries only to be recaptured again later, Ian escapes from his jail cell and gets drawn into a local political intrigue, and the Doctor makes his way to Paris on foot and impersonates a regional official in an attempt to find and rescue his friends. In the final episode of the serial, Ian and Barbara go undercover to spy on a covert political meeting before the travellers are finally all free and together again to make their way back to the TARDIS.
That's the basic plot of the serial. The story, however, is about the characters and the emotional and physical ordeal they go through as they attempt to negotiate their way through this particularly bloody and unstable period of history unscathed. The story plays heavily on their concern for one another and the close bonds that have formed among the group, highlighting the lengths they will go to for one another, while also putting the lessons learned in The Aztecs into effect, showing how much Ian and Barbara have changed since they met the Doctor and how much he has changed since he met them.
Two out of the six episodes of this serial are lost episodes four and five, to be precise (including the scenes where Ian is chained up in a cellar, dammit!). The first time I watched the serial I experienced those missing episodes via an excellent reconstruction, which mostly matches the audio to a series of illustrative stills with narrative sub-titles, but also includes a few snatches of moving footage that an enterprising fan filmed off the telly when it originally aired. Since then, the serial has been released on DVD with the missing episodes recreated as an animation set to the original soundtrack. The animation is low budget and a little rough around the edges, but nonetheless it is fantastic to finally be able to experience a 'complete' version of this story for the very first time since it was originally broadcast.
Writer - Dennis Spooner
Director - Henric Hirsch
Script editor - David Whitaker
Producer - Verity Lambert / Mervyn Pinfield
Observations
Random thoughts while watching:
The first episode of this story, 'A Land of Fear', follows immediately on from The Sensorites, which was a bit of a tough one for the Doctor, emotionally, reminding him of all kinds of awkward little things that he'd sooner sweep under the carpet, such as the fact that he has taken his granddaughter Susan away from their homeworld and can't take her back even if she wants to go, not to mention the fact that Susan is growing up fast and developing a mind of her own in the process and he is scared of losing her. He ended the serial by taking his frustrations out on Ian, wilfully misinterpreting a light-hearted joke as a slur on his TARDIS piloting skills and vowing to put the human off the ship at the very next stop. As The Reign of Terror opens, he is sticking to that resolve, but does at least seem convinced he has actually managed to steer the TARDIS back to London 1963, so that he can drop Ian and Barbara off where he found them, which is something, I suppose. This is the First Doctor at his most petulant, blithely ignoring Susan's distress at the thought of losing the friends and semi-parental figures she has come to rely on and refusing even to carry out even the most basic of checks to confirm that they have actually landed where he thinks they've landed. If it were up to him, Ian and Barbara would walk out of the door and he'd take off immediately and would never know that he'd left them in both the wrong place and time. Because, of course, it is the wrong place and the wrong time he might not like to be reminded of the fact that he can't actually steer the TARDIS, but it is fact nonetheless!
This little contretemps is well placed, however, to demonstrate just how far the characters have come over the course of the season, and makes for a neat bookend with the temper tantrum the Doctor similarly threw way back at the beginning of the show, in An Unearthly Child. Back then, he was a stranger to Ian and Barbara and they had no idea how to react to him or how to handle the situation when he flew into a rage after they entered his TARDIS for the first time, so that the situation quickly escalated to the point where the Doctor, in his temper and panic, took off with them aboard the ship and has been stuck with them ever since. Then in The Edge of Destruction, we again saw the Doctor fly into a rage with his unwilling human companions, but although they still didn't know him well enough not to be afraid of him, they had got to know him well enough to stand up for themselves and his temper quickly cooled off and they were able to get on with things and resolve the situation. Since then, however, after so many hair-raising adventures together and so much reciprocal life-saving, they have developed mutual respect and admiration for one another and have become true friends. So when the Doctor again blows up at the two humans here, we are shown clearly just how far their relationship has come since those rocky early days, as they barely so much as bat an eyelid at his display of pique, but simply take it in their stride, knowing full well that he doesn't really mean it and that beneath that quick temper and prickly, prideful nature he is a loving and generous man who is just as attached to them as they are to him. The cliffhanger ending of the Doctor's temper tantrum is quickly defused into a more comical scene as, by dint of judicious flattery and cajoling, they manage to calm him down enough to agree to first conduct a few basic checks and then come for a walk to explore their surroundings, so that they can part on good terms, should they happen to be in the right place. Their wheedling is a lot funnier than it should be: Ian and Barbara now know exactly which buttons to push to get the stubborn old man back on side!
Susan's reaction to the prospect of Ian and Barbara leaving the TARDIS, meanwhile, highlights just how emotionally dependent on them she has become since they first came aboard. She is enormously distressed at the thought of losing them, a display of separation anxiety once reserved for her grandfather alone. Once upon a time they were simply her school teachers, but now they have become family and she clings to them as tightly as she does the Doctor. She admitted in The Sensorites that she sometimes wishes she had somewhere to belong her search for whatever stability she can find in her itinerant life has been a consistent character trait for her through the season and is a large part of the reason Ian and Barbara have become so important to her: if she can't have stability of place she can at least hope for stability of family. She doesn't want to lose the people she cares about, and that's something we can all relate to!
"I have the universe to explore," the Doctor rather loftily declares. That's pretty much his mission statement, right there and that mission statement has carried him through 50 years of the show so far!
It's interesting to see Ian and Barbara's reactions to the prospect of going home, the way they try to comfort Susan while being very firm on the point that if they really are in the right place then they absolutely will be leaving because that's what they've wanted all along, while also trying not to get their hopes up too high in case it's another false landing. As fond as they are of the Doctor and Susan, the dream of going home is still what drives them. Then when they realise that, yep, they are off-target again, they are philosophical about it, rather than bitterly disappointed as they might once have been, because while their emotional attachment to their new friends isn't enough to keep them aboard the TARDIS if they have the opportunity of returning home, it is enough to console them that this strange itinerant lifestyle isn't so bad after all, while it lasts. They have a couple of really sweet little conversations about it, just the two of them, reminding us that these two are a unit, set apart from the Doctor and Susan and bound together both by circumstance and friendship.
I love that after all his huffing and puffing and foot stamping petulance, the Doctor's bad mood just evaporates the moment he is out of the TARDIS with an exciting new environment to explore, since exciting new environments to explore are what he enjoys most. He doesn't even care that he has been proved wrong about not being able to steer the TARDIS. And Ian is very gracious about having been the innocent target for that bad temper, just lets it go and doesn't rub it in at all Ian's total inability to hold a grudge is just one of the things I love about him.
Our heroes go exploring and find a deserted house to investigate, in their quest to find out exactly where they are. This is where the Doctor separates off from the rest of the group, heading upstairs while they poke around downstairs something that highlights the ensemble nature of the cast in this first season of the show. Ian and Barbara don't need the Doctor to tell them where they've landed, they figure it out for themselves by examining their surroundings specifically, by examining the contents of a trunk they find, which is filled with clothes of all sizes, a food stash, maps and false documents. The house, they realise, is part of an escape chain, and the Doctor has put them down right in the middle of Robespierre's Reign of Terror.
Susan reckons the Reign of Terror is the Doctor's all-time favourite period of human history, which kind of begs the question: why?
Having found a supply of 18th century clothing just lying around, our intrepid heroes promptly proceed to play dress-up. I love it. Companions should always get to play dress-up! The dresses are really pretty, although a bit impractical in the novelisation, Ian Marter makes a point of stating that Barbara's is only an approximate fit and is a bit tight across the bust, which always amuses me and I adore that ruffed shirt on Ian! He is very dashing in this story.
One of the things I like about this story is how much attention is paid to throwaway character detail, even for the minor characters we meet in passing, like the two escaping French noblemen the travellers run into at the safe house and the Revolutionary soldiers who catch up with them there. None of them are important to the ongoing plot, yet we spend enough time with them in the first episode to get a distinct sense of their personalities the soldiers even get a scene or two to themselves, just bantering and bickering away. Some viewers might dismiss this as 'padding' to fill out the episode, but I enjoy that minor characters are allowed to have personality and a bit of story to themselves, it makes them feel more like real people and less like plot devices, so it's all good to me stories should always be about character and personality, rather than a race to the finishing line.
This is a very grim story, really it certainly doesn't gloss over the brutality of the Reign of Terror. By the time the first episode ends, our protagonists have already seen two aristocratic refugees shot down in cold blood by the revolutionary soldiers pursuing them, Ian, Barbara and Susan have all been arrested at gun point, narrowly escaped being shot down on the spot, and are being marched off to prison (and the guillotine) in Paris, while the Doctor has been left for dead in a burning building! It's a very effective cliffhanger, very bleak, as the danger our intrepid heroes are in feels very, very real.
Episode two, 'Guests of Madame Guillotine', sees the trio of Ian, Barbara and Susan arrive at the Conciergerie Prison in Paris. I love that of the three it is Barbara who speaks up to vehemently argue their innocence, of course she does, fruitless though such a protest is in this turbulent time of carnage and paranoia.
It was William Russell's turn to take a two week holiday during the filming of this serial, so he only appears in pre-filmed inserts in episodes two and three those inserts are quite cleverly handled, however, to give the impression that Ian is in the room with Barbara and Susan hearing the charges being read out, while thereafter keeping him in a separate cell so that he has a sub-plot all of his own, away from the others.
It's rather shocking for Doctor Who in 1964 to see Barbara having to fend off the lewd advances of the jailer despite being a children's show aired at teatime, it wasn't afraid to include less salubrious historical and social details in the name of accuracy! It all adds to the air of gritty realism that this serial has, with its warts and all portrayal of history sanitised to an extent, sure, but nowhere near as much as you might expect. There's nothing subtle about the lecherous bloke's advances, but Barbara is having none of it and whacks him across the face, because that's who Barbara is. She earns herself and Susan a stay in the worst cell in the prison, for her trouble.
With the Doctor having been left behind in a burning building, Susan's separation anxiety is out in full force, but she has a valid reason to be distressed, not knowing if her grandfather is alive or dead. And to her credit she at least starts out relatively pro-actively, getting Barbara to lift her up so she can scope out the prison surroundings through the high window, even if she does afterward lapse into depression and despair. Depression and despair are understandable, really, when locked up in a grotty little prison cell in Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror, with a trip to the guillotine to look forward to in the morning!
Barbara, however, remains impressively positive in spite of being in such dire straits. She determinedly endeavours to keep Susan's spirits up while resolutely searching for a way out of their predicament. If she has to take the cell's one bed apart and use the frame as a crowbar to dig through the solid stone wall in order to escape, then dammit that's what she is going to do! I love Barbara. I love how positive and determined she is, the way she points out to Susan that they haven't relied on luck in their previous adventures but rather created their own opportunities, and the way she doesn't just sit back and wait for someone (i.e. a man) to come and rescue her but puts her money where her mouth is by doing everything in her power to change her own fate.
The Doctor, frail and old as this his first ever body is, could not have escaped that burning building on his own indeed, he had passed out from smoke inhalation as episode one ended. So, in fact, the five decades of the show still to come are owed entirely to a little French peasant boy named Jean-Pierre, who bravely rescued the old man from the fire. Way to go, Jean-Pierre! I am very impressed by William Hartnell in the scene he shares with young Jean-Pierre. He sounds really hoarse and choky, as if he really is suffering from smoke inhalation, and he is absolutely wonderful with the boy, treats him with real respect and dignity, as befits the person who saved his life a far cry from his dismissive attitude toward all humans in An Unearthly Child! He really has come a long way. I love the way he salutes the boy as he bids farewell, and promises not to forget him. I wonder if Eleven still remembers little Jean-Pierre who saved his life in 1794
Ian, meanwhile, has been locked up separately from the women, so that William Russell could pre-film his scenes before shooting off on holiday, and finds that his English cellmate, Webster, is badly injured. The actor playing Webster does a really good job in his one scene he looks and sounds absolutely ghastly and is chillingly convincing as a man who has been slowly bleeding to death in this hellhole of a prison for hours already. Ian does his best for the man, but he is a science teacher, not a doctor, and their damp, dirty little straw-strewn cell is not a healing environment. Before he dies, Webster whispers a message to Ian, a message that must be passed on to a man named James Stirling, if only he can be found. Right, so we now have a mission to carry us through the next few episodes, as well as the usual 'escape from the bloodthirsty natives and get back to the TARDIS' through-line.
Every time anyone says the name James Stirling in this story, I picture the James Sterling played by Mark Sheppard in Leverage!
While his companions languish in a dank, smelly prison in Paris, the Doctor (or rather, his body double) is having a pleasant little stroll through the French countryside in pursuit of them. I say pleasant because it looks like a nice sunny day, and was filmed on location in the actual countryside this was the first time the classic show ever ventured out of the studio to film on location but the Doctor might not agree, since he has about 12km to cover on foot and this isn't the sprightliest body he will ever own! En route, he encounters a chain gang being harassed by their bully of an overseer and can't resist getting involved, for no apparent reason other than to cause trouble. I mean, if this was a later version of the Doctor I might believe he was troubled by the sight of the labourers being so harshly treated and wanted to secure their freedom, but this is One and he doesn't seem to have any such intention in mind, he's just heckling because he can. This backfires on him as the overseer promptly pulls a gun and makes him join the gang in their back breaking work! This kind of thing would never happen to the Doctor in his later incarnations, who have presumably learned from this youthful experience!
This story follows a pattern that is fairly common in First Doctor stories, wherein the Doctor is separated from his companions and has a fairly light-hearted, comical little sub-plot of his own, while they do the heavy lifting where the more serious a-plot is concerned. I mean, being forced to join a chain gang could have been a very gritty sub-plot, but instead is played with a very light, humorous touch, as the Doctor enlists the aid of his fellow labourers to outwit and overpower the greedy, bullying overseer. Rather shockingly, mind, we are shown the Doctor smacking the overseer over the head with a shovel, but since the man collapses to the ground snoring rather than bleeding from a head wound, we clearly aren't meant to take the cartoon violence all that seriously it is certainly a striking contrast to the much grittier scenes of violence littered throughout the rest of the story.
While the Doctor is getting himself into and out of trouble along the road, his companions are having a dreadful time of it in prison. Ian has to spend several long hours alone in his cell with a rotting corpse before the guards notice and take it away, which is pretty morbid, while Barbara and Susan are tearing their hands to pieces trying to dig their way out of their cell. When the arrival of a so-called 'meal' (bowls of thin gruel) prompts an influx of hungry rats into the cell, Susan falls apart completely. I'm sure she must have seen far worse than a few rats on her travels around the universe, but the combination of the rats, the prison cell, the impending guillotine and fear for her grandfather's life seems to have defeated her. Barbara has to give up on the idea of digging their way out of the cell in favour of comforting Susan in her distress.
Morning brings with it a trip to the guillotine for Barbara and Susan but not for Ian, who has been reprieved by prison warder LeMaitre, who is anxious to find out if his dead cellmate Webster said anything to him before he died. Ian, sensibly, isn't admitting anything, but LeMaitre is unconvinced enough to keep him alive, for now, just in case. Thus the episode two cliffhanger sees Ian gazing in horror out of his cell window as he sees Barbara and Susan being driven away to the guillotine! It's a really nice shot of Ian, seen through the barred window and slowly zooming out thumbs up to the director, who does a nice job with this adventure all round, really.
Episode three, 'A Change of Identity', sees Susan struck down by what is probably a tension migraine as the tumbril slowly makes its way through the streets of Paris. She apparently feels so ill that she absolutely refuses to move when Barbara spies an opportunity to escape! Maybe she thinks having her head chopped off will help with the headache but here we see Barbara's devotion to the girl, as she gives up on her own escape attempt to stay with Susan and comfort her. It is lucky that a pair of counter-revolutionaries named Jean and Jules are on hand to rescue the women before they reach the guillotine. Only on Doctor Who, eh!
Ian, meanwhile, contrives an escape from his cell as a result of a remarkably fortunate sequence of events that start with the jailer leaving his keys in the cell door just long enough for Ian to stick a hand through the bars, remove the appropriate key from the bunch, and then stick the remainder back in the lock again before the jailer rushes back to retrieve them. I rather like the detail of the scene, as we are shown that Ian carefully chooses a key of similar size and shape to his own to put back in the door, to be sure it will fit, and that he then struggles to find the keyhole to push the keys back into, since he is more or less working blind and at an awkward angle. But I especially appreciate that it is almost immediately made clear that this very unlikely escape has in fact been deliberately contrived by LeMaitre, for reasons of his own.
So the entire gang is now on the loose in Paris, but apart from Barbara and Susan being together, none of them knows that the others are free in fact, Ian has reason to believe that Barbara and Susan are both dead, having seen them despatched to the guillotine. I suspect that's probably why he latches so strongly on to the mission Webster gave him; he needs the distraction, because he can't let himself think about Barbara and Susan being executed. And none of them know that the Doctor escaped the fire and is safe and well, so their uncertainty and worry over what they are going to do, whether or not they should be grieving, has them all in a stew.
The Doctor, believing his companions to be in prison still, goes to great lengths to acquire the costume and sash of a provincial officer, bartering his own clothes and ring in exchange. And oh my, the feathers in his new hat have to be seen to be believed! Marvellous! Once he has his new finery and has forged himself some official documents, the Doctor sweeps into the prison in state to bamboozle the jailer and this, right here, this is a very classic Doctor strategy, something that all his incarnations are good at (although some more so than others). He is brilliant at bluffing and subterfuge he has a real knack for assuming the role of an authority figure and playing it with such panache that he just sweeps all bystanders along with him and convinces them that he is genuine, for a while at least. In this instance, however, the role-playing is almost immediately thwarted by the fact that the friends he was hoping to rescue have all escaped already!
There is a gorgeous little moment when the Doctor first arrives at the prison and questions the jailer, when he is told that Barbara and Susan have been despatched to the guillotine already, and his reaction is just brilliant one to show to anyone who criticises William Hartnell's acting! It's only a few seconds before the jailer continues to explain about their rescue en route, but for those few seconds he genuinely believes that they are both dead and it hits him like a tonne of bricks, you can see it, but he can't let the jailer see that reaction, so turns away, very quickly, and even after being reassured that they are still alive, it takes him a moment to regain his composure and get his game face back in place to continue his charade. Really nicely done.
Why does the Doctor keep referring to Susan as a 'young child'? She's 16! A very immature 16, sure, and often very childish in her ways, but 'young child' implies pre-adolescent, which she certainly isn't! It is a very telling sign of how he still views her, however, even after the events of The Sensorites, in which we saw how much she is beginning to grow up and mature away from her intense reliance on him.
Barbara and Susan are fortunate enough to have fallen in with a very kindly, humanitarian group of counter-revolutionaries who have made it their daily business to try to save as many people as possible from Robespierre's purges. Jules' plan is to smuggle them out of France, but when they protest that they can't leave without the Doctor and Ian, he only too willingly agrees not to rest until he has reunited their entire group. Jules is lovely.
Since Susan is unwell, she is bundled off to bed, while Jules and Jean have business to attend to, so they leave Barbara with another friend of theirs, Leon. He is very flirty with her, very charming and attentive, and Barbara just laps it up! So much for her attachment to Ian but the show never overtly commits itself to stating that Ian and Barbara are a couple (although the novelisations sometimes do), so despite their close relationship and intimate body language, Barbara is a free agent to flirt with whoever she choses! Having secured her trust, Leon offers to find a suitably discreet physician to take a look at Susan, since Barbara is worried about how feverish the girl has become, worried enough to accept his offer.
Episodes four and five no longer exist in the BBC archive and are available only as either a fan-made reconstruction using still images or the officially commissioned animation, both set to the original soundtrack. The animation is a little rough around the edges in some ways and the style takes some getting used to, especially if the animated episodes are watched on their own, divorced from rest of the story, but when viewed in their proper context, they bridge the gap in the serial marvellously, allowing viewers to experience the story in full for the first time since it was originally broadcast. The moving figures of the characters take some getting used to, but the backgrounds are gorgeous, with some beautiful detail thrown in to add interest, such as a spider scuttling around on a web in a corner or dust mites floating in a shaft of sunlight.
The first thing that happens in episode four, 'The Tyrant of France', is that LeMaitre takes the Doctor, in his guise as a provincial officer, for an interview with Robespierre himself, who is in a rather fretful mood I would say paranoid, but since he is only a day or two away from being overthrown and executed at this point, it is safe to say that his paranoia is well and truly justified! The Doctor very cleverly manages to divert the conversation away from the region he is supposed to be responsible for yet knows nothing about after his fit of temper at the very start of the story, he is now back to his Doctor-ly best, manipulating the people around him to his hearts' content!
Meanwhile, Jules and Jean have been to investigate reports of someone asking around for them at a local inn and, rather than take any chances, have coshed this person over the head and hauled him back to the safe-house unconscious! The person in question turns out to be Ian, of course, as he was given Jules' name as a contact by the late Webster. It's such a shame that the episode is missing because the limitations of the animation mean that the reveal of Ian's face as Jules and Jean's victim loses its impact.
Jules and Jean are nicely apologetic about the violence, when they realise their victim is one of Barbara's missing friends. Ian, of course, being Ian, does not bear a grudge, in spite of the headache! He and Barbara have a very touching reunion that I really wish I could see, although the animated version is very sweet, with all the hugs and smiles and delight. I love the way Jules and Jean so enthusiastically celebrate this reunion by opening a bottle of wine the four of them have a long conversation about their situation and plans, exchanging information, and the conversation is punctuated by several cries of 'this calls for another drink!' which amuses me immensely. I know some people find the dialogue-heavy nature of 1960s Doctor Who a bit dull, but I really enjoy it I like watching the way the characters interact and talk things through.
In the morning, Jules arranges for Ian to meet with Leon, who they hope might know something of the elusive James Stirling, while Barbara takes Susan to see the doctor. I really like the way Ian argues against splitting up, plaintively protesting that he's only just found Barbara and Susan and doesn't want to lose them again. Now who's having the separation anxiety! He is overruled although turns out to have had the right instinct.
I really appreciate the timescale allowed for this story, which takes place over several days, with day and night clearly delineated so that there is a real sense of time passing.
I really appreciate Barbara's concern for Susan, who is very poorly. In the Doctor's absence, and with Ian unaccounted for at the time the decision to seek medical advice was made, Barbara has assumed parental responsibility for the girl, which is really sweet to see. Barbara and Susan spend a lot of time together through the early episodes of this story, giving us a really good look at the dynamic between them: the way Barbara draws strength from the need to care for Susan, while Barbara's encouragement in turn persuades Susan to push beyond her doubts and fears. But in all honesty, I'm really not sure what Barbara expected a visit to an 18th century physician to achieve! The best advice he can offer for Susan's fever is leeches, for crying out loud!
Episode four is all about betrayal. The Doctor is betrayed by the tailor who provided his regional officer outfit, who snitches on him to LeMaitre who, instead of acting immediately on this information, instead merely politely but firmly insists that the Doctor stay the night, because LeMaitre is playing games of his own. Barbara and Susan are betrayed by the physician Leon recommended, who turns them over to the soldiers to be hauled back to prison. And Ian is betrayed by Leon, who turns out to be a double agent, bringing soldiers to their meeting. But Ian isn't taken back to prison, since his meeting with Leon was arranged for a nicely isolated location, so that Leon decides to interrogate him on the spot, where no one will hear any screams
It's all rather grim, really! Episode five is titled 'A Bargain of Necessity' and sees Ian clapped in chains in an isolated cellar and if ever there was an episode that should not have been lost, it's the one that features Ian in chains! The animated recreation of the scene is excellent, however, filling in the blanks although in some respects the scene is even more chilling when you don't have the animation to watch, as Leon uses really menacing, intimidating language and not being able to see what he's doing makes it all so much worse. The chains chafe Ian's wrists until they bleed badly enough that Barbara later notices the injury; it's practically the first thing she sees when she next lays eyes on him and Leon keeps a soldier on hand to threaten him with a bayonet if he won't talk; they pull a classic good cop, bad cop routine, in fact. There is nothing cartoon about this violence. It's not exactly light entertainment and not what I'd call children's programming! But I do enjoy a spot of serious drama in my show if characters are going to be placed in dangerous, life-threatening situations, I appreciate it if that danger is played honestly instead of being undermined by being played for comic effect, or whatever, so as not to scare the kiddies. Ian's danger here feels very real and very immediate, all the more so because we know that there is no way the Doctor can come swooping in to save the day, as he doesn't even know where Ian is, even if he weren't detained at the prison himself, along with both Barbara and Susan.
As far as the interrogation goes, the trouble here is that even if Ian were inclined to talk, he genuinely doesn't know anything more than the name James Stirling, which Leon already has. In the end he decides that honesty is the best policy, so tells the God's honest truth about his arrival here in the TARDIS, taking a certain grim delight in knowing that the absurdity of this story will serve only to wind his captors up all the more. He clearly believes he is going to die anyway, no matter what he does or doesn't say but then just as he is about to be bayoneted to death for this defiance, a suspicious Jules turns up in the nick of time to save him, shooting Leon and the soldier dead when he sees what they are doing. That's another thing I appreciate about this early era of the show: it doesn't rely on the Doctor to do all the saving, other characters are allowed to do their share as well.
At the prison, LeMaitre is still playing it cool, not letting the Doctor know that he knows he's a fake. He contrives for the Doctor to question Barbara alone, so that he can sneakily listen in on their conversation; his motivations for all this remain very murky at this stage. The Doctor and Barbara have a very touching reunion, which warms the cockles of my heart even only watching it as an animation it's really sweet to see the way they rush at one another in relief. But then a moment later I am slightly aggravated when Barbara assures the Doctor that Susan is absolutely fine, admitting that she had a slight chill but brushing it off as better already just a few hours ago she was worried enough about the girl to take her to see a physician, who promptly betrayed them! So it is annoying to think that Susan is fine again already and all that fuss was for nothing but then again, it may merely be that Barbara is underplaying Susan's illness so that the Doctor won't worry.
We barely see Susan in the last couple of episodes; she has very little to contribute to the story throughout, in fact, which is a real disappointment after she'd stepped up to carry so much of the plot in The Sensorites. No wonder Carole Ann Ford was frustrated by the limitations of the role.
With a very frustrated LeMaitre having been summoned away by Robespierre, the Doctor cunningly manipulates the drunken jailer into allowing Barbara to just walk out of the prison! It really is a nifty little ruse. This is the Doctor at his cleverest, conning the jailer with ease. He is very autocratic with Barbara, mind, when he tells her what he wants her to do, but doesn't explain what his actual plan is and that is very reminiscent of various of his other selves. It is a recurring character trait in most of his regenerations that he is rarely willing to explain what he is thinking but always expects his friends to follow his lead blindly.
Back at the safe house, there is a really strong, powerful scene where Ian and Jules tell Barbara about Leon's betrayal and subsequent death, and the conversation blows up into the most heated argument we have ever seen Ian and Barbara have oh how I wish it still existed, for the animation simply can't recreate the nuances of the original acting. As close as they are, Ian and Barbara do tend to view the world rather differently. Barbara the historian likes to look at the bigger picture, and passionately defends the French Revolution as changing the world for the better, albeit at a terrible cost, while Ian the scientist is focused on what he can see before his eyes right now: carnage, treachery and chaos. Plus, of course, it makes a big difference that when Barbara met Leon he was charm personified and she liked him, whereas Ian was betrayed, captured and tortured by him, so naturally they are going to feel differently about his demise!
I really like that after having this heated row, Barbara and Ian both make a point of apologising to each other once they have calmed down. These two might argue from time to time, but they always make up again, always manage to find common ground where they can meet in the middle; I really love their relationship. This scene also gives us a lovely, passionate little speech from Jules about why he risks his life on a regular basis to save strangers from the guillotine. "There can be no loyalty or honour where anarchy prevails," he insists. Jules is not an aristocrat and he is not a revolutionary, he is merely a man caught in the middle, a man of reason and intelligence who is sickened by the slaughter he sees around him and feels moved to do something about it, to make whatever small difference he can. Jules is the hero of this story.
Just when the Doctor was on a roll, his attempted jailbreak of Susan goes horribly wrong as clever as he is, LeMaitre has outsmarted him and now uses Susan against him. With Susan still locked up in prison, LeMaitre blackmails the Doctor into taking him to Jules' safe house an apparent betrayal that makes for a very effective fifth episode cliffhanger!
Episode six, 'Prisoners of the Conciergerie', brings with it a rather startling twist in the tail when LeMaitre reveals that he is the elusive James Stirling they've all been looking for! This means that Ian can finally deliver the message he's been keeping secret since episode two, and the story enters the home straight at last.
Amusingly, when Ian is struggling to remember the detail of what Webster was muttering in his final moment, William Russell forgot his lines, so his fluster and confusion there is genuine. Luckily, his memory lapse coincides with Ian's memory lapse, so it works well for the scene!
I have to say, I find LeMaitre the weak link in this serial, especially here at the end where his role becomes more important alongside the fantastic chemistry of the four leads, who really have grown to inhabit their roles, his acting comes across as highly theatrical and rather wooden.
Having delivered his end of the deal, the Doctor is focused solely on retrieving Susan from prison so that he can take his companions back to the TARDIS and leave this place. He is not the slightest bit interested in the politics unfolding around them, despite Susan having claimed this to be his favourite period of human history; he operates a strict policy of non-intervention at this stage of his life. If he (or his companions) know that something has happened as a matter of history, then it cannot be re-written; it is only when they land in a place and time that is unfamiliar to them all that they become part of the unfolding story and are free to act. In a place like this, a notorious stage of human history whose events are well known to them all, they can only ever be observers: that is his policy, and the lesson Barbara and Ian learned from their encounter with the Aztecs a couple of serials back.
Nothing is ever quite so simple, however. Before Susan can be retrieved from prison, Ian and Barbara end up having to take on an undercover mission for LeMaitre/Stirling that sees them playing at being country publicans at a rickety little inn in the middle of nowhere so that they can spy on a covert political meeting. I really love the role-playing. Barbara doesn't put a great deal of effort into her role of bar wench, but Ian throws himself into his part with gusto, playing the country bumpkin innkeeper for all he's worth! Fantastic! They are so cute, spying together and conspiring to ensure that they pull off their little mission successfully.
The meeting Ian and Barbara spy on turns out to be between a traitorous deputy of Robespierre and Napoleon Bonaparte! History unfolding, indeed!
Ian and Barbara report back to the others the next morning and listen with rather wry expressions on their face as Stirling and Jules debate various ways of avoiding an end that they themselves know as historical fact. Alone with the Doctor a little later, Barbara can't help but laugh at the irony of their situation, watching such immense historical events unfold before their very eyes her experience with the Aztecs has well and truly taught her that she cannot influence what happens here, but she still finds it disturbing, knowing what is going to happen before it happens. I can't say I blame her! I rather like the Doctor's line about being unable to stem the tide of history, but instead having to make sure they don't get swept away by the flood. That's rather a good description for these historical adventures, in which the point is not to save the world but simply to navigate their way through dangerous times and out the other side, having learned from the experience.
While Ian and Stirling witness the downfall of Robespierre, the Doctor bamboozles the jailer one last time to secure Susan's release. He is so very good at bamboozling people!
As the TARDIS team bid farewell to their friends Jules and Stirling, I like the way Stirling observes that he doesn't get the impression they know where they are heading, before adding "Come to that, do any of us?" Very philosophical!
The philosophy continues in the closing scene, back in the TARDIS, as our intrepid heroes discuss their inability to change fixed historical events, Barbara and Ian proposing different options they could have tried, perhaps, while the Doctor and Susan explain why none of those options would have worked. It's a really interesting conversation and so cute, with Susan pinching the Doctor's plumed hat and plonking it on her own head, while Barbara and Ian gaze adoringly at one another!
This was the final episode of the first ever season of Doctor Who, after an epic 42 episodes of adventures. It ends on a very nifty pan back through space as the TARDIS travels on, and a closing voiceover. 'Our destiny is in the stars,' says the Doctor, 'so let's go and search for it.' If ever there was a mission statement for the show and the Doctor's never-ending travels, that is it, for sure!
Quotable Quotes
IAN: "Do you have to be in such a hurry?"
DOCTOR: "Enough time has been wasted bringing you back, young man. I have the universe to explore."
IAN: "Maybe you have succeeded. Maybe we are where you say we are. But I remember an occasion when you took us home once before."
BARBARA: "Yes, and we met Marco Polo."
DOCTOR: "Entirely different circumstances! I'm rather tired of your insinuations that I am not master of this craft. Oh, I admit, it did develop a fault, a minor fault on one occasion, perhaps twice, but nothing I couldn't control."
IAN: "I know that. Of course you're in control. You're always in control. And I'm sure you could revisit us at any time."
DOCTOR: "Very simple. Quite simple."
IAN: "Exactly, quite simple. But you have your important researches to complete. You may not find the time. There's a chance that we won't meet again. Don't you think it would be better if we parted under more friendly circumstances, say over a drink?"
DOCTOR: "Yes. Yes, well perhaps, since you put it that way, an hour or two won't come amiss."
DOCTOR: "A hundred miles or so either way is to be expected. After all, it's only a fraction of the distance we've covered. It's quite accurate, in fact."
IAN: "Yes. Assuming the distance is our only error. You know, Doctor, I have a feeling you've been building up our hopes again."
BARBARA: "You know, I'm certain we're sometime in the past."
IAN: "Yes. Well, we were a hundred miles out. Perhaps we're a hundred years out."
BARBARA: "Well, we're still not home."
IAN: "No, we're not, are we? Still, I do think he tried this time, even if it was out of bad temper."
BARBARA: "So we stay with the ship."
IAN: "Yes. Cheered Susan up, hasn't it?"
BARBARA: "Well, are you disappointed?"
IAN: "Funny enough, no. I don't know. Depends where we are. I still could be."
BARBARA: "How do I look?"
IAN: "Very pretty, mademoiselle. Hairstyle's a bit modern, but it's all right."
SUSAN: "Oh, what's the use? We'll never get out of this dreadful place."
BARBARA: "Oh, you mustn't lose heart, Susan."
SUSAN: "I'm not going to fool myself."
BARBARA: "Well, think of the times we've been in trouble before. We've always managed to get out of it in the end."
SUSAN: "Oh, we've been lucky. We can't go on being lucky. Things catch up with you."
BARBARA: "It hasn't always been luck, you know. We made our own opportunities."
OVERSEER: "I suppose you think you're very clever."
DOCTOR: "Well, without any undue modesty, yes!"
BARBARA: "Oh, Doctor, I thought we were never going to see you again."
DOCTOR: "You should know by now, young lady, that you can't get rid of the old Doctor as easily as that."
LEON: "How did you get to France?"
IAN: "You really want to know, eh?"
LEON: "The truth?"
IAN: "Oh yes, it's the truth all right."
LEON: "You swear it?"
IAN: "Yes, I swear it. I flew here with three friends in a small box."
BARBARA: "Are you serious?"
DOCTOR: "Absolutely serious, but I've no time to explain. Just do as you're asked."
BARBARA: "But Doctor, you "
DOCTOR: "Now, now, now, there's no buts. Don't argue. You know my plans always work perfectly."
BARBARA: "When we got to the prison, the Doctor was there."
IAN: "What?"
BARBARA: "Yes, he's dressed up as if he was running the revolution! From what I could gather, half the people there take orders from him."
IAN: "That sounds like the Doctor, all right."
BARBARA: "I'm so sick and tired of death, Ian. We never seem able to get away from it."
JULES: "There are only two sides today, Barbara: those who rule by fear and treachery, and those who fight for reason and justice. Anyone who betrays these principles is worse than the devil in hell!"
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!"
STIRLING: "Very well, if that's what you want. Now that I'm going home, I just can't wait to see England again."
BARBARA: "Oh, England. I know how you feel only too well."
JULES: "I hope they have a pleasant journey."
STIRLING: "So do I. But to where, Jules? Funny, I get the impression they don't know where they're heading for. Come to that, do any of us?"
IAN: "But 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'd 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."
DOCTOR: "Well, it's hardly fair to speculate, is it? No, I'm afraid you belittle things. 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."
The Verdict
I really enjoy the First Doctor historicals. Overall and taken as a whole, this is a bit of a meandering tale that maybe gets a bit bogged down in the complexities of the French Revolution in places, and certainly isn't what you'd call children's programming today, but is also a proper drama about politics and history, very classy and well told, highly character-centric. Apart from Susan's reduced role, all the characters are in great form here, which I always appreciate the Doctor, Ian and Barbara all shine in this story, which plays heavily on the strong bond that has formed between the group of travellers over the course of the season. A fitting end to the first ever season of the show!
19/02/2012; revised March 2013