Doctor Who 26.01 Battlefield
BRIGADIER: "What was that?"
DOCTOR: "That, Brigadier, was the beginning of the end of the world."
BRIGADIER: "Same as ever, eh, Doctor?"
Overview
So, Doctor Who does the legend of King Arthur, but with a space-age twist!
I love this story. I feel I probably shouldn't, for a number of reasons, but I do, I can't help it. This is my era of the show, one of the adventures I have fond memories of watching as a child, so that any re-watching of it now is unavoidably tinged with nostalgia. The 12-year-old me didn't care in the slightest about plot holes, contrivances or inconsistencies, she just loved watching these characters having this mad adventure, and re-watching again now, so many years later, I find I have the same reaction.
Okay, so the story is a bit hammy and odd, but it is also a lot of fun and is very intriguing, making full use of the Seventh Doctor's enigmatic nature, his gift for adapting himself to any given situation and his ability to think on his feet, playing games within games. It toys with the concept of magic and sorcery, attempting to give them a place and an explanation within the science-based universe of Doctor Who, and it also toys with the relationship between cause and effect, taking a very modern-feeling timey-wimey approach to the concept of the Doctor as a time traveller by setting up something of a causal loop as it presents him with the aftermath of a very complicated situation he will apparently be involved with at some unspecified point in his personal future.
The basic premise of the story is fairly simple. Back in the 8th century a group of powerful beings from another dimension brought their civil war into our world, and a future version of the Doctor (apparently) became embroiled in this conflict under the assumed guise of Merlin, because let's face it, who better to play Merlin than the Doctor. Fast forward to the late 20th century and this battle and the names of the individuals involved have been distorted into human mythology in the form of the Arthurian legends, presumably by the peasantry who were around to witness events they couldn't possibly hope to understand…but some of the major players are now returning from their home dimension, in hopes of a rematch. Confronted by the consequences of something he hasn't done yet, the Doctor must feel his way through the situation as best he can to avoid seeing Earth drawn into someone else's war. What's not to love about all that?
The main flaw of the story is its ambition. It tries to achieve a bit too much, given the limitations it was produced under, and as a result it can be a bit naff in places. There are a few too many characters for any of them to be properly developed and the plot is stretched paper-thin a bit too often, ill-fitting concepts twisted and hammered into position leaving holes and inconsistencies in their wake. The production team were just a bit too attached to the traditional image of sword-wielding, armour-wearing Arthurian knights for the good of the story, really, and failed to successfully blend this image with the high-tech aliens they intended those characters to be. Put the adventure under the microscope, and all that is obvious. Yet it manages to stand up as a charmingly entertaining tale of heroic derring-do regardless.
Battlefield is also significant because it features the last ever appearance on Doctor Who of Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, and what a fantastic send-off it is for the character. I love that about this story, I love that it allows the Brigadier to be the hero of the tale, one last time. He really is the hero here, no two ways about it, and deservedly so for a character who has such a long and rich history with the show - this story aired in 1989, 21 years after Lethbridge-Stewart made his debut as a Colonel in the 1968 adventure The Web of Fear. Apparently, an early version of the script saw the death of the Brigadier, so I am incredibly glad that this was re-written! A triumphant victory makes a much better swansong for the character than tragic heroism would have. I absolutely adore what this adventure shows us of the Brigadier as he enters his twilight years: retired and married, happily so on both counts, but still immediately willing to do his bit to help the Doctor, when called upon. I also love that the end of this story shows us the Doctor going home with his old friend to spend some time together socially, after the battle is over, instead of just taking off again immediately, as is his usual practice. I believe this is the first time we ever see the Doctor doing such a thing - he tends not to even now, in NuWho, despite the best efforts of some of his companions to persuade him that he can - so the fact that he makes a point of spending time at home with the Brigadier here is hugely significant, speaking volumes about his affection for his old comrade.
Observations
Random thoughts while watching:
Well, this story makes me happy the moment the first scene gets underway. It's the Brigadier! It's the Brigadier all retired and domestic, in a garden centre with his wife Doris - the same Doris referred to way back in Planet of the Spiders, 15 seasons previously, one presumes. I love how content they seem together. But then Doris asks the Brig if he regrets leaving UNIT and he cheerfully assures her that his blood-and-thunder days are long past…talk about tempting fate.
UNIT, meanwhile, have a new Brigadier - a female Brigadier, and a person of colour, at that, while her subordinate Zbrigniev has an Easten European accent. Times, they are a-changing. What with Zbrigniev and then Husak and Lavel, who we meet later, the international nature of UNIT really is driven home in this story, in a way that never happened back in the heyday of the organisation.
When did UNIT abandon their 'greyhound' call signs? All this 'salamander' and 'seabird' nonsense sounds all wrong!
Jean Marsh plays Morgaine in this story and she is brilliant in the role. It could be seen as typecasting, as it isn't the first time she has played an evil sorceress, but she does it so well! She makes Morgaine a really nuanced character, rather than the two-dimensional villain she could have been. She is evil, for sure, but there is more to her than that - she has reasons for doing what she does, even if they aren't good reasons, and she has a twisted code of honour all her own, all of which adds interest to a character that might otherwise have been trite and one-note.
The first Tardis scene sees the Seventh Doctor being all enigmatic and philosophical, as is his wont, while Ace tries hard to get some sense out of him. Would it kill him to give a straight answer once in a while? Long story short, he's picked up a strange sort of distress signal coming from Earth, where else - Earth three years in Ace's future. So…early 1990s, then, presumably: slightly in the future of a story that aired in 1989. I do enjoy the Doctor's teacher-student dynamic with Ace - I enjoy her enthusiasm and desire to learn and his willingness to teach, for once. I also like Ace's willingness to experiment, messing around with the Tardis console to try and find out more for herself, since the Doctor is being all mysterious, even if he does promptly slap her hands away.
The Doctor and Ace hitch a lift from a friendly archaeologist named Peter Warmsly - shades of Four, Sarah and Harry having to hitch a lift after landing off-target back in Terror of the Zygons.
Oh my, the '80s special effects as armour-clad warriors start dropping out of space and crashing to Earth! Hilarious. I love how UNIT are right there and don't notice a thing, too busy fretting about the nuclear missile they've somehow got stuck in the mud while transporting it from A to B!
I am always amused by the Doctor's disparaging remarks about the military. That's an aspect of his character that really never changes.
While the Doctor is glued to his technical kit, trying to home in on the source of the distress signal, Ace is busily using her eyes to take note of what looks wrong. It's like Nine and Rose in reverse.
I will never not love seeing the random junk that the Doctor pulls out of his pockets when he's trying to find something. Hee!
Aww, the Doctor pulls his old UNIT pass out of his hat - and also one for Ace, a pass that once belonged to Liz Shaw. Nice to have the little nod at the show's past, but why is the Doctor carrying Liz Shaw's UNIT pass around with him this many regenerations later?
Zbrigniev claims he served under Lethbridge-Stewart while the Doctor, a previous incarnation of, was UNIT's scientific advisor. He's been with UNIT a long time, then, if he dates back that far - it's at least 15 years since the Fourth Doctor severed his ties with UNIT! What's really interesting about the conversation Zbrigniev has with Brigadier Winifred Bambera about this is gaining a bit of insight into how much the UNIT rank and file do and don't know about the Doctor. Certainly it seems his mysterious ability to change his whole appearance is widely known and has passed into legend, even if none of them really understand it.
Wow, the Brigadier has a lovely house. I want that house and garden!
When UNIT's Secretary-General himself phones the Brigadier from Geneva, the Brig stalwartly insists that he is retired and wants nothing to do with whatever it is…until he hears that the Doctor is back. That changes everything. Of course it does.
Apparently, Zbrigniev's testimony is enough to convince Bambera that the Doctor is genuine, after she'd initially dismissed him. Well, it's a better reason to take him into her counsel than most characters in her position have, in other stories!
Heh, I like the way the Doctor mildly prevents Ace from ordering alcohol at the hotel they put up at - she is underage, after all. It reminds me of Five doing likewise for Nyssa and Adric in Black Orchid. I like it when he takes responsibility for the younger of his companions.
The Doctor is charged £5 for a glass of water and a glass of lemonade and Ace is scandalised, but the Doctor simply shrugs that they are in the future. I call foul. I know inflation was high in the '80s, but still! This story is only set three years in its own future; they couldn't have expected inflation to rocket quite that badly! The Doctor then pays for the drinks with a £5 coin, which is amusing - those have only ever been minted as commemorative tokens and aren't usually accepted in general circulation! It's always funny when Show tries to predict the future, especially the near future.
There is something terribly incongruous about seeing a man wearing a suit of armour and carrying a handgun. It's even more incongruous when they waver back and fore from gun fighting to swordplay! This is an aspect of the Arthurian aliens that is never really explained: if they have such high tech weaponry, why do they bother with hand-to-hand swordplay? And why do they keep flitting back and forth between one and the other? It makes no sense. If they are fighting to win, which they clearly are, then they would use the weapons that gave them the most advantage - and those swords ain't it!
Oh, the Brig's old uniform still fits. Doris is as amazed by this as I am. I like the conversation they have as he leaves, with Doris arguing that he doesn't need to go and isn't bound by duty any more, that he's going because he wants to, while the Brig doesn't deny her point but simply assures her that he will be coming back. He's older now, but that smile of his is as warm and as reassuring as ever, the old warhorse.
This story was made in 1989 and set a few years later - but when trying to make a phone call, Peter Warmsly still just picks up the handset and asks the operator to put him through, instead of dialling a number. I don't remember ever having to do that in 1989! We always dialled the number for ourselves!
Okay, so Peter Warmsly has an archaeological dig near Lake Vortigern, where he found an old scabbard that gives off an electrical charge every time someone touches it for the first time. It's all very mysterious - but these kinds of details aren't ever really explained, except in the woolliest of terms.
Aww, UNIT sent a helicopter to collect the Brigadier. It's like old times. He always did like to travel in those!
Ace befriends local girl Shou Yuing. I like it when companions are allowed to make new friends on their travels, instead of just sticking with the Doctor all the time. The girls bond over a shared love of explosives. Someone on the production team obviously had a thing about girls and explosives!
A kind of hand grenade hurls one of the knights through the air and into hotelier Pat's home brewery. I am very amused by the Doctor's reticence as he inches up to the recumbent figure, very wary of touching it in case it turns out to be homicidal. So it comes as a huge surprise when the man's helmet comes off to reveal a very pretty blond-haired human named Ancelyn - who greets the Doctor as Merlin! It isn't the Doctor's face that he recognises, he adds, yet he is able to rattle off what does sound like a good description of the Doctor and the Tardis. The Doctor is what you might call confounded by all this. He recovers quickly, though, deciding that Earth is about to become the centre of a war that doesn't even belong here. Business as usual, then.
Is it bad that I kind of love the way Ancelyn and the others speak? The pseudo-medieval dialogue should sound all kinds of stilted and affected, but the actors do a good job of bringing it to life and it certainly adds something to the Arthurian characters.
Well, Winifred Bambera is a UNIT commander in the finest traditions of her predecessor, our Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - present her with an assortment of medieval-looking knights wielding both swords and futuristic guns and her immediate reaction is to demand that they surrender or she'll start shooting! The Doctor can't stop her, either - he tries pushing her gun aside and talking his way out of the situation instead, but Bambera promptly shoots one of the knights anyway. Her bullets have no effect, of course. UNIT never have learned that shooting at mysterious alien threats rarely works.
Like Ancelyn, Mordred almost immediately recognises the Doctor as Merlin. Curiouser and curiouser! I love how easily the Doctor slides into the role, even though he still has no idea what they are all talking about, because the Doctor is nothing if not an opportunist, has a gift for thinking on his feet and will take any advantage that's offered him! Ha, and Mordred and his heavily armed knights about-face and retreat, just because the Doctor has them scared that he might unleash some kind of wizardry on them!
Okay, so Bambera and Ancelyn scuffling to establish alpha status is more amusing than it should be. The Doctor tells Ace and Shou Yuing not to worry about it - he reckons they should be more concerned about sorcery. Sorcery and magic aren't really traditional Doctor Who subjects! But of course, if Doctor Who appears to be touching on magic and sorcery, you can bet your bottom dollar there's some kind of alien technology behind it somewhere. The Doctor refers to one of Clarke's Three Laws when he attempts to explain it to Ace, saying that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - and that the reverse is also true. It's the only explanation for Morgaine's 'black magic' that we get.
Ancelyn doesn't seem terribly concerned about having been 'vanquished' by Bambera - he seems to like it, in fact! Doctor Who does romance…
Mordred reckons this is the meeting place between two worlds, two universes and two realities. Well, okay, then.
Mordred creates a rip through space and time to allow his mother, Morgaine, to pass through. How he achieves this is not clear, since it mostly seems to involve waving his sword around and chanting - another example of this advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic! The Doctor can feel what he's doing, though, maybe via that telepathic sense all Time Lords apparently have. Morgaine is able to communicate with him telepathically, too. That's new, interesting...but really doesn't lead anywhere.
Heh. In the middle of Warmsly's archaeological dig is a carving no one has been able to decipher. Until the Doctor comes along, that is, announces that it says 'dig hole here' in his handwriting and invites Ace to oblige. Okay, that's amusing. Warmsly has just been waxing lyrical about what a painstaking labour of love archaeology is, so it comes as a nasty shock to him when Ace blows a great big hole in the middle of his dig with a can of nitro nine!
It's all surface and no substance (well, that describes this whole adventure, really), but I do enjoy the relationship that develops between Bambera and Ancelyn - its fun!
The Brigadier gets a bit of an unpleasant welcome when Morgaine zaps his helicopter out of the sky! He and his pilot just barely manage to get clear before it explodes. Back in action with a bang!
Man, for a hardened warrior, Mordred sure is a mummy's boy.
Oh boy, the Brigadier and Morgaine locking horns. Morgaine is a bit of a panto character, but Jean Marsh plays her so very well, and the Brigadier is so splendidly the Brigadier, it's an excellent scene.
The codpieces Morgaine's warriors wear are rather distracting!
The Doctor is really getting into the swing of this Merlin thing as he explores the secret tunnel under the lake - it's even got voice-activated doors keyed to his voice pattern. Ace gets well wigged out by it all, understandably, and is none the wiser when the Doctor cheerfully assures her that he isn't Merlin, no - but he could be, in the future…his own personal future, that is, which could be the past…
It kills me that the final resting place of King Arthur is revealed by this story to be a spaceship at the bottom of Lake Vortigern. That's hilarious.
I like how sharp Ace is, how quick she is to think beyond the obvious. Seeing Arthur's body slumped inside the spaceship, she doesn't automatically assume that he is dead but instead asks if he is in suspended animation, because she knows that things are rarely as straightforward as they seem. It actually makes for quite a twist in the tail of the story when it turns out that Arthur is just plain dead after all, and has been the whole time!
During filming of the cliffhanger episode ending when Ace gets trapped in a fast-filling water tank, the tank cracked and the resultant flood caused quite a major incident on set, what with all the live wires running around the place, and all! You can actually see the moment when the glass cracked during the sequence, as it was kept in because they couldn't reshoot.
It's quite amusing to see Warmsly telling Ancelyn the legend of King Arthur. If you accept this adventure's take on the legend - that these mythological characters are from another dimension and are quite real - it must be weird for them to return here and learn that their escapades have been warped into human legend!
Maybe I am just easily pleased, but I am amused by sequences like the one where Warmsly is in the middle of talking about the Lady of the Lake emerging from the water holding Excalibur aloft, when Ace does just that. Timing is everything! It's a fun little play on a traditional motif, as is the entire adventure, really - neither new nor original, but still entertaining.
The Brigadier shows up just in the nick of time to nip down the tunnel and save the Doctor from the spaceship's automated defence system. Good old Brigadier, dependable as ever. He's never met this version of the Doctor before, but that doesn't matter - he's known so many regenerations, over the years, he more than anyone else understands that they are all the same man, his old friend and ally, and accepts each new version without hesitation. Oh how I wish he'd managed an appearance in the rebooted show before Nicholas Courtney's death.
I am very sad the Brigadier's feisty little pilot, Lavel, falls foul of Morgaine, is quickly hypnotised into submission, is mind-raped for information and is then summarily slaughtered, poor lass. That's just nasty. The scene does show us the two sides of Morgaine, however, as she then about turns and restores sight to the blind hotel landlady, Elizabeth, as payment for a few drinks - a reminder that this sorceress isn't mindlessly evil but does have some kind of moral code all her own, albeit a warped one. It makes for a strange juxtaposition with her ruthlessness.
I like how miffed Bambera is about the Brigadier swooping in and taking over her operation. Good for her. She doesn't oppose him, though - there is such a thing as a chain of command, after all, and he has seniority. Anyway, she and Ancelyn make a cute little odd couple - they are heaps of fun together, the courtly otherworldly knight and the cynical, hard-nosed warrior.
This is a UNIT story, so of course there are a lot of action sequences - shooting and explosions and whatnot. It's traditional!
I am gratified that the Brigadier is using the traditional UNIT 'greyhound' call sign. Bambera can keep her 'sea bird'.
Oh, those field telephones are enormous! So funny.
The Doctor hypnotises landlord Pat and archaeologist Warmsly into agreeing to be evacuated, despite being so vehemently against it - we've seen the Master pull that little trick in the past, but not the Doctor. That's interesting. This is a Doctor who can be just a little more menacing and overtly manipulative than most of his predecessors, in his own way, albeit for the greater good.
Nicholas Courtney looks as if he had an absolute blast, filming this adventure.
I enjoy the way Seven reacts to the UNIT soldiers, accepting their salutes with a tip of his hat - he might not approve of military tactics, but he knows UNIT and is comfortable with them in a way he wouldn't be with most other military outfits, especially when the Brigadier is at the helm. Although of course they cannot help but butt heads over the advisability or otherwise of launching a full-scale attack on their adversary. It's almost like old times. I'm fascinated and highly amused by the list of weaponry and ammunition the Brigadier reels off - he really has prepared for absolutely anything, drawing on his years of experience with UNIT. They've got silver bullets, teflon anti-Dalek shells, high explosives for Yeti, armour piercing bullets for robots, and gold tipped bullets for Cybermen…that last indicating that the Doctor must have told the Brigadier about the Cybermen's weakness, since it didn't come up in his encounter with them.
Oh, oh, oh, the Brigadier has had the Doctor's old car, Bessie, hauled out of retirement for his use. Fantastic! It throws up all kinds of questions since Bessie was last seen on Gallifrey in The Five Doctors, but that story throws up all kinds of continuity questions anyway (and we know the car must have been returned to Earth by the Time Lords since Three was driving it when he was snatched out of time, but it was still on Earth for Four to use in his first story), so it is best to just not think about it!
The Doctor leaves Ace and Shou Yuing in charge of Excalibur, under strict instructions to draw a chalk circle and stay inside it if anything strange should happen. And it works, too. This story is such a weird blend of magical mysticism and science fiction.
Morgaine's warriors and the UNIT troops have got themselves into a pitched battle at the lakeside. So the Doctor just walks onto the middle of the battlefield and yells 'STOP' at the top of his lungs. Only the Doctor could get away with that. It works, too. But the battle - so many dead, on both sides - is merely a distraction to allow Morgaine to attack Ace in hopes of winning Excalibur. There's something really gruesome about that, when you think about it - the slaughter in this story is actually quite horrific, even if it is never dwelt on. No wonder the Doctor looks so sickened by it.
The Destroyer's monster mask isn't that bad, really, by Doctor Who standards. On the one hand it makes no sense that Morgaine would mess around with her knights and their small-scale hand-to-hand battles (which the show just didn't have the budget to depict efectively) when she has such a powerful weapon at her disposal in the form of this demonic creature, but on the other hand it is clear that she can't really control the creature, so that probably explains why she only employs it as a last resort.
It's quite a successfully big dramatic moment, for this era, when the Doctor holds a sword to Mordred's throat and threatens to kill him if the battle is not ended and Ace freed - but then can't go through with it when Morgaine calls his bluff. The Doctor is not a killer, not in cold blood, never if he can help it.
Luckily the Brigadier is on hand to hold a gun to Mordred's head instead - Morgaine and Mordred both know at once that he is an entirely different kettle of fish and won't hesitate to kill. The Doctor needs non-pacifist friends around him, from time to time, whether he likes it or not. But Morgaine proves more ruthless than anyone anticipated, abandoning her son to his fate rather than save him as he begs - way to call the bluff! So battle is joined once again.
I just…I really don't understand why these otherworldly warriors would fight with swords when they have supposedly powerful ray guns and explosives. I can just about buy the rest of the concept of them, but the swords just don't work for me. They are included because this is an Arthurian story, but the space-age twist to it renders them too anachronistic.
By the time the battle burns itself out, Morgaine's entire army has been wiped out and most of the UNIT soldiers, too, by the looks of it. That's just grim. But at least Ancelyn and Bambera survived. Ancelyn seems more relaxed about the slaughter than Bambera does; I'm glad she doesn't take it lightly.
The Doctor and the Brigadier follow Morgaine through an interstitial vortex. You know, as you do. Unfortunately, the Brig's gun is no match for the Destroyer's power and he gets himself flung through a window, which is pretty rough treatment for an old man. I like that the Doctor is so furious about this - he doesn't like to see his friends get hurt.
It all gets a bit panto, as the Doctor, Morgaine and Ace all take it in turns to snatch Excalibur from one another's hands, taking advantage of whatever distraction happens along. Why do none of these people remember to grip properly? I quite like, though, that Morgaine seems to just give up on the sword completely when Mordred appears, furious that she abandoned him to his fate - her shock that he isn't dead after all and distress over his sense of betrayal add still more depth to the character. She really is a complex character - as we see again later, when she learns that Arthur is long dead. Her grudge against him goes back hundreds of years, and yet she is genuinely grief-stricken to learn that she will never see him again.
The Destroyer has been unleashed which the Doctor expects to bring about the end of the world - apparently, this is a pretty fearsome beast, then. Just as well Ace brought along a box of silver bullets, then, which is it vulnerable to - and just as well also that the Brigadier had them requisitioned in the first place, just in case! In UNIT, it pays to be prepared for anything and everything.
The Doctor plans to go up against the Destroyer himself with a gun loaded with silver bullets. But this is the Brigadier's heroic last outing and he is having none of it, knocking the Doctor out and taking the gun from him to do it himself, since he believes himself more expendable than the Doctor. I doubt Doris would agree with that!
Typically of Doctor Who baddies, the Destroyer is prone to spending so much time monologuing about his evil intentions that he never actually gets around to carrying any of them out, which gives the Brigadier time to get back in there and point a gun at him, giving him fair warning: leave this world or be destroyed. The Destroyer mocks him, asking if Earth can't find a better champion, but the Brigadier is too cool to fall for that one, shrugging that he's the man on the spot and just does the best he can. That's the Brigadier for you! Awesome. So he shoots the monster dead - and it explodes, which is not something you want to be standing alongside, really.
The Doctor is absolutely distraught, believing that his old friend must have been killed in the explosion - I really do love how attached he is to the Brigadier, having known him through so many regenerations. He is rather startled, then, to find that the old man isn't dead after all! I love how casual the Brig is about it all - I love it when he is able to get one over on the Doctor! Seven's reaction to his supposed death here - and statement that he was 'supposed to die in bed' - works well as a precursor to Eleven's grief when the Brigadier's eventual death is announced on-screen in The Wedding of River Song, in bed and peaceful, as predicted. So he had always known how it would happen, then, but it wasn't 'real' for him (and therefore could always change, because of timey-wimey) until it happened as part of his personal timeline, is that how it works? Is that why he so rarely revisits companions once they've left him, because if he never experiences their deaths as part of his personal timeline, he can always think of them as alive, somewhere and somewhen?
Hee, while the menfolk argue over which of them most deserves the honour of replacing Excalibur in the stone and awakening Arthur, Ace just cuts through all their modest bluster and does it herself. No sense of ceremony, that girl, and that's why I like her! But there is a twist in the tail - the ship awakens but Arthur doesn't, he is long dead and gone to dust, leaving only a note for the Doctor in his helmet explaining that the king died in the final battle and everything else was propaganda…signed by the Doctor. Which means that at some point in his personal future (although not necessarily on-screen), the Doctor will encounter all these characters again and will be their Merlin and will then have to remember to leave all these little notes and messages for his earlier self to find…Ah, temporal paradoxes and closed time loops, dontcha just love 'em.
The future Doctor also very kindly left himself a warning - Morgaine and Mordred have seized control of the nuclear missile that UNIT were transporting, back at the top of the story. It isn't the first time the Doctor has found himself sitting on a nuclear bomb fast counting down to zero; he's had plenty of practice disarming them by now. But this is a Doctor who prefers to talk others into backing down rather than taking action himself. He delivers a passionate speech about the horrors of nuclear warfare and it cuts Morgaine to the quick - she is, after all, a creature of honour, whatever else she might be. And she backs down and hits the abort button herself. Score one to the Doctor's persuasive tongue. It's quite an effective scene, really, and gets right to the heart of the Seventh Doctor's character: brooding and intense and a man of words.
The Doctor instructs Bambera to lock up Mordred and Morgaine. Does he really believe a human prison can hold those two?
And then, bless, the Brigadier takes them all home to meet the wife. I can't describe how much I love that the Doctor doesn't just take off again as soon as the adventure is over, as he usually does, but instead chooses to spend some quality time with his old friend. This is the last time they ever meet, on-screen.
I still love the Brigadier's house!
It looks as if Ancelyn and Bambera are going to get some kind of happy ever after, even if he is a medieval knight from another dimension, now trapped in our world. I'd love to know how they got on, afterward - heck, I'd watch a spin-off of those two bickering their way through life and loving every minute of it!
The girls all take Bessie for a night out - and the Doctor offers to cook supper. That's so adorably domestic, I love it!
Quotable Quotes
DORIS: "You don't regret it, do you […] leaving United Nations Intelligence Taskforce?"
BRIGADIER: "No, my blood and thunder days are long past."
ACE: "What's that noise?"
DOCTOR: "A cry in the dark."
ACE: "A distress signal?"
DOCTOR: "A cry for help. Perhaps a summoning."
ACE: "Where's it coming from?"
DOCTOR: "Earth. Rippling out through the cosmos, forward in time, backwards in time and sideways in time."
ACE: "Sideways in time?"
DOCTOR: "Yes, sideways in time, across the boundaries that divide one universe from another."
ACE: "Weird."
WARMSLY: "The military use the area as a firing range. Never understood why."
DOCTOR: "Blowing the occasional chunk out of the earth keeps them amused."
BAMBERA: "I think I would have noticed a nuclear explosion."
DOCTOR: "Yes, well, they are conspicuous."
DOCTOR: "Among all the varied wonders of the universe there's nothing so firmly clamped shut as the military mind."
ZBRIGNIEV: "When I served under Lethbridge Stewart, we had a scientific advisor called the Doctor."
BAMBERA: "The man outside."
ZBRIGNIEV: "No, sir, but…"
BAMBERA: "But?"
ZBRIGNIEV: "He changed his appearance, several times."
BAMBERA: "A disguise."
ZBRIGNIEV: "No, sir. The word was he changed his whole physical appearance."
BAMBERA: "His whole appearance."
ZBRIGNIEV: "And his personality."
BAMBERA: "How could he be the same man if his appearance and personality have changed?"
ZBRIGNIEV: "I don't know, sir."
BAMBERA: "What do you know, Zbrigniev?"
ZBRIGNIEV: "Just that whenever this Doctor turns up…"
BAMBERA: "Yes?"
ZBRIGNIEV: "All hell breaks loose."
BRIGADIER: "Tell them I've retired. Tell them I've decided to fade away."
PAT: "Long journey?"
DOCTOR: "Er, quite a distance, as it happens."
ANCELYN: "Oh, he has many names, but in my reckoning, he is Merlin."
DOCTOR: "You recognise my face, then?"
ANCELYN: "No, not your aspect, but your manner that betrays you. Do you not ride the ship of time? Does it not deceive the senses being larger within than out?"
MORDRED: "You were bound. My mother sealed you into the ice caves for all eternity."
DOCTOR: "I am the master of time. I cannot be bound so easily."
MORDRED: "Master of lies."
ANCELYN: "Beware your tongue, Mordred. Have you so easily forgotten Baden, hmm? Where he cast down your mother with his mighty arts."
DOCTOR: "Yes, remember Baden and my mighty arts. Do you think I would use mere trickery against someone as formidable as you? Go, before I unleash a terrible something on you."
DOCTOR: "What happened to you?"
ANCELYN: "She vanquished me, and I threw myself on her mercy."
BAMBERA: "What's going on, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "I don't know, but I've got some nasty suspicions."
ACE: "You can feel it?"
DOCTOR: "Yes. I'm uniquely sensitive."
LAVEL: "How did it go, sir?"
BRIGADIER: "Oh, usual bureaucracy. Inch thick forms and half a pint of blood."
LAVEL: "That's London for you."
WARMSLY: "Ah, now that's a bit of a mystery. No one's been able to decipher the carving."
DOCTOR: "It says 'Dig Hole Here'."
WARMSLY: "Extraordinary. What does it say that in?"
DOCTOR: "My handwriting."
DOCTOR: "Ace?"
ACE: "I think the timer needs work."
DOCTOR: "One of these days we're going to have a nice long talk about acceptable safety standards."
ACE: "What's down there?"
DOCTOR: "With a bit of luck, a tunnel."
ACE: "A dark, mysterious one?"
DOCTOR: "Probably."
ACE: Leading to unknown dangers?"
DOCTOR: "Indubitably."
ACE: "Oh, wicked!"
DOCTOR: "Don't worry, Ace. It's only a trap."
LAVEL: "But sir, we don't know what the situation is here."
BRIGADIER: "The situation, Lavel, is normal. It doesn't get much worse than that. You know, I think I'm rather enjoying this."
MORGAINE: "A warrior, no less. How goes the day?"
BRIGADIER: "I've had better."
MORGAINE: "I am Morgaine, the sun killer. Dominator of the thirteen worlds and Battle Queen of the S'Rax. What say you?"
BRIGADIER: "I am Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Surrender now and we can avoid bloodshed."
ACE: "Where does Ancelyn come from?"
DOCTOR: "Another dimension. Sideways in time from another universe."
ACE: "Not a local boy, then."
ACE: "Are you Merlin?"
DOCTOR: "No. But I could be, in the future. That is, my personal future. Which could be the past."
DOCTOR: "Ace, I think it's time for plan B."
ACE: "We run?"
DOCTOR: "Yes, run!"
BRIGADIER: "I just can't let you out of my sight, can I, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. So you recognise me, then?"
BRIGADIER: "Yes. Who else would it be?"
BAMBERA: "Brigadier, I thought you'd retired."
BRIGADIER: "So did I, Brigadier."
DOCTOR: "Something's wrong."
BRIGADIER: "What?"
DOCTOR: "We haven't been attacked yet."
BRIGADIER: "Now, Doctor, we've been attacked. Happy?"
DOCTOR: "Yes."
BRIGADIER: "Oh, good."
DOCTOR: "As long as Morgaine's people are shooting at us, she won't be using more obscure methods of attack."
BRIGADIER: "Such as?"
DOCTOR: "I don't know, and I don't want to find out."
BAMBERA: "You're from an alternative dimension?"
ANCELYN: "Yes."
BAMBERA: "Good. You don't have cars there?"
ANCELYN: "No."
BAMBERA: "Good. Hold on to this wheel."
BAMBERA: "Ancelyn."
ANCELYN: "Yes, my lady?"
BAMBERA: "In this world we have a great and honourable tradition of tactical withdrawal."
ANCELYN: "Ah, you wish to run away. Well, there can be but thirty of them at the most."
BAMBERA: "If you don't start running, I'll kill you myself."
DOCTOR: "I've got to put an end to this bloodshed."
BRIGADIER: "Oh, how, Doctor? Stand in the middle and shout stop?"
DOCTOR: "Good idea."
MORDRED: "My mother will destroy you."
BRIGADIER: "Just between you and me, Mordred, I'm getting a little tired of hearing about your mother."
DOCTOR: "What happened?"
SHOU: "The hotel fell on us."
ACE: "There was this woman with a pet demon, and I seem to remember a chalk circle that was supposed to protect us from harm."
DOCTOR: "Yes, I get the idea, Ace. Where's Excalibur?"
SHOU: "Er, the woman seemed to want it very badly."
ACE: "Very, very badly."
SHOU: "So we gave it to her."
DOCTOR: "Good."
ACE: "But it's not our fault. I mean, if I'd had some Nitro, then maybe I could… What do you mean, good?"
DOCTOR: "Exotic alien swords are easy to come by. Aces are rare."
MORGAINE: "I could always defeat you at chess, Merlin."
DOCTOR: "Who said anything about playing chess? I'm playing poker. And I have an Ace up my sleeve."
ACE: "Very funny."
BRIGADIER: "What was that?"
DOCTOR: "That, Brigadier, was the beginning of the end of the world."
BRIGADIER: "Same as ever, eh, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "Simple, isn't it? Just like most killings."
BRIGADIER: "Sorry, Doctor, but I think I'm rather more expendable than you are."
DESTROYER: "Pitiful. Can this world do no better than you as their champion?"
BRIGADIER: "Probably. I just do the best I can."
DOCTOR: "You stupid, stubborn, pig-headed numbskull. You were supposed to die in bed. I could have handled it, done your job…"
BRIGADIER: "Nonsense, Doctor."
DOCTOR: "You're supposed to be dead."
BRIGADIER: "Oh, really, Doctor. You don't think I'd be so stupid as to stay inside, do you?"
DOCTOR: "Well…"
BRIGADIER: "Really, Doctor, have a little faith. Ace?"
ACE: "Yes, Brigadier."
BRIGADIER: "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing. He's all yours from now on. I'm going home to Doris."
DOCTOR: "Doris?"
BRIGADIER: "Yes, my wife."
DOCTOR: "Ha, ha, ha. So she caught you in the end."
DOCTOR: "Ancelyn, replace Excalibur and Arthur will arise."
ANCELYN: "I think the honour belongs to the Brigadier."
BRIGADIER: "Oh, the Doctor should do it."
ANCELYN: "No, my lord. You were the victor."
ACE: "Give me that."
DOCTOR: "Ace, have you no sense of occasion?"
ACE: "No."
DOCTOR: "All over the world, fools are poised ready to let death fly. Machines of death, Morgaine, are screaming from above, of light brighter than the sun. Not a war between armies nor a war between nations, but just death, death gone mad. The child looks up in the sky, his eyes turn to cinders. No more tears, only ashes. Is this honour? Is this war? Are these the weapons you would use? Tell me!"
MORGAINE: "No."
DOCTOR: "Then put a stop to it, Morgaine. End the madness."
DOCTOR: "Time and Time Lords wait for no man."
BRIGADIER: "What about supper?"
DORIS: "Oh, that's a good idea. Have something really delicious ready for us when we get home, okay?"
The Verdict
Okay, so this story doesn't have the strongest plot ever and has a bit of an over-crowded cast, but despite all that it is a fun, entertaining story with a lot of witty dialogue and engaging characters - a truly splendid final outing for the Brigadier.
DOCTOR: "That, Brigadier, was the beginning of the end of the world."
BRIGADIER: "Same as ever, eh, Doctor?"
Overview
So, Doctor Who does the legend of King Arthur, but with a space-age twist!
I love this story. I feel I probably shouldn't, for a number of reasons, but I do, I can't help it. This is my era of the show, one of the adventures I have fond memories of watching as a child, so that any re-watching of it now is unavoidably tinged with nostalgia. The 12-year-old me didn't care in the slightest about plot holes, contrivances or inconsistencies, she just loved watching these characters having this mad adventure, and re-watching again now, so many years later, I find I have the same reaction.
Okay, so the story is a bit hammy and odd, but it is also a lot of fun and is very intriguing, making full use of the Seventh Doctor's enigmatic nature, his gift for adapting himself to any given situation and his ability to think on his feet, playing games within games. It toys with the concept of magic and sorcery, attempting to give them a place and an explanation within the science-based universe of Doctor Who, and it also toys with the relationship between cause and effect, taking a very modern-feeling timey-wimey approach to the concept of the Doctor as a time traveller by setting up something of a causal loop as it presents him with the aftermath of a very complicated situation he will apparently be involved with at some unspecified point in his personal future.
The basic premise of the story is fairly simple. Back in the 8th century a group of powerful beings from another dimension brought their civil war into our world, and a future version of the Doctor (apparently) became embroiled in this conflict under the assumed guise of Merlin, because let's face it, who better to play Merlin than the Doctor. Fast forward to the late 20th century and this battle and the names of the individuals involved have been distorted into human mythology in the form of the Arthurian legends, presumably by the peasantry who were around to witness events they couldn't possibly hope to understand…but some of the major players are now returning from their home dimension, in hopes of a rematch. Confronted by the consequences of something he hasn't done yet, the Doctor must feel his way through the situation as best he can to avoid seeing Earth drawn into someone else's war. What's not to love about all that?
The main flaw of the story is its ambition. It tries to achieve a bit too much, given the limitations it was produced under, and as a result it can be a bit naff in places. There are a few too many characters for any of them to be properly developed and the plot is stretched paper-thin a bit too often, ill-fitting concepts twisted and hammered into position leaving holes and inconsistencies in their wake. The production team were just a bit too attached to the traditional image of sword-wielding, armour-wearing Arthurian knights for the good of the story, really, and failed to successfully blend this image with the high-tech aliens they intended those characters to be. Put the adventure under the microscope, and all that is obvious. Yet it manages to stand up as a charmingly entertaining tale of heroic derring-do regardless.
Battlefield is also significant because it features the last ever appearance on Doctor Who of Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, and what a fantastic send-off it is for the character. I love that about this story, I love that it allows the Brigadier to be the hero of the tale, one last time. He really is the hero here, no two ways about it, and deservedly so for a character who has such a long and rich history with the show - this story aired in 1989, 21 years after Lethbridge-Stewart made his debut as a Colonel in the 1968 adventure The Web of Fear. Apparently, an early version of the script saw the death of the Brigadier, so I am incredibly glad that this was re-written! A triumphant victory makes a much better swansong for the character than tragic heroism would have. I absolutely adore what this adventure shows us of the Brigadier as he enters his twilight years: retired and married, happily so on both counts, but still immediately willing to do his bit to help the Doctor, when called upon. I also love that the end of this story shows us the Doctor going home with his old friend to spend some time together socially, after the battle is over, instead of just taking off again immediately, as is his usual practice. I believe this is the first time we ever see the Doctor doing such a thing - he tends not to even now, in NuWho, despite the best efforts of some of his companions to persuade him that he can - so the fact that he makes a point of spending time at home with the Brigadier here is hugely significant, speaking volumes about his affection for his old comrade.
Observations
Random thoughts while watching:
Well, this story makes me happy the moment the first scene gets underway. It's the Brigadier! It's the Brigadier all retired and domestic, in a garden centre with his wife Doris - the same Doris referred to way back in Planet of the Spiders, 15 seasons previously, one presumes. I love how content they seem together. But then Doris asks the Brig if he regrets leaving UNIT and he cheerfully assures her that his blood-and-thunder days are long past…talk about tempting fate.
UNIT, meanwhile, have a new Brigadier - a female Brigadier, and a person of colour, at that, while her subordinate Zbrigniev has an Easten European accent. Times, they are a-changing. What with Zbrigniev and then Husak and Lavel, who we meet later, the international nature of UNIT really is driven home in this story, in a way that never happened back in the heyday of the organisation.
When did UNIT abandon their 'greyhound' call signs? All this 'salamander' and 'seabird' nonsense sounds all wrong!
Jean Marsh plays Morgaine in this story and she is brilliant in the role. It could be seen as typecasting, as it isn't the first time she has played an evil sorceress, but she does it so well! She makes Morgaine a really nuanced character, rather than the two-dimensional villain she could have been. She is evil, for sure, but there is more to her than that - she has reasons for doing what she does, even if they aren't good reasons, and she has a twisted code of honour all her own, all of which adds interest to a character that might otherwise have been trite and one-note.
The first Tardis scene sees the Seventh Doctor being all enigmatic and philosophical, as is his wont, while Ace tries hard to get some sense out of him. Would it kill him to give a straight answer once in a while? Long story short, he's picked up a strange sort of distress signal coming from Earth, where else - Earth three years in Ace's future. So…early 1990s, then, presumably: slightly in the future of a story that aired in 1989. I do enjoy the Doctor's teacher-student dynamic with Ace - I enjoy her enthusiasm and desire to learn and his willingness to teach, for once. I also like Ace's willingness to experiment, messing around with the Tardis console to try and find out more for herself, since the Doctor is being all mysterious, even if he does promptly slap her hands away.
The Doctor and Ace hitch a lift from a friendly archaeologist named Peter Warmsly - shades of Four, Sarah and Harry having to hitch a lift after landing off-target back in Terror of the Zygons.
Oh my, the '80s special effects as armour-clad warriors start dropping out of space and crashing to Earth! Hilarious. I love how UNIT are right there and don't notice a thing, too busy fretting about the nuclear missile they've somehow got stuck in the mud while transporting it from A to B!
I am always amused by the Doctor's disparaging remarks about the military. That's an aspect of his character that really never changes.
While the Doctor is glued to his technical kit, trying to home in on the source of the distress signal, Ace is busily using her eyes to take note of what looks wrong. It's like Nine and Rose in reverse.
I will never not love seeing the random junk that the Doctor pulls out of his pockets when he's trying to find something. Hee!
Aww, the Doctor pulls his old UNIT pass out of his hat - and also one for Ace, a pass that once belonged to Liz Shaw. Nice to have the little nod at the show's past, but why is the Doctor carrying Liz Shaw's UNIT pass around with him this many regenerations later?
Zbrigniev claims he served under Lethbridge-Stewart while the Doctor, a previous incarnation of, was UNIT's scientific advisor. He's been with UNIT a long time, then, if he dates back that far - it's at least 15 years since the Fourth Doctor severed his ties with UNIT! What's really interesting about the conversation Zbrigniev has with Brigadier Winifred Bambera about this is gaining a bit of insight into how much the UNIT rank and file do and don't know about the Doctor. Certainly it seems his mysterious ability to change his whole appearance is widely known and has passed into legend, even if none of them really understand it.
Wow, the Brigadier has a lovely house. I want that house and garden!
When UNIT's Secretary-General himself phones the Brigadier from Geneva, the Brig stalwartly insists that he is retired and wants nothing to do with whatever it is…until he hears that the Doctor is back. That changes everything. Of course it does.
Apparently, Zbrigniev's testimony is enough to convince Bambera that the Doctor is genuine, after she'd initially dismissed him. Well, it's a better reason to take him into her counsel than most characters in her position have, in other stories!
Heh, I like the way the Doctor mildly prevents Ace from ordering alcohol at the hotel they put up at - she is underage, after all. It reminds me of Five doing likewise for Nyssa and Adric in Black Orchid. I like it when he takes responsibility for the younger of his companions.
The Doctor is charged £5 for a glass of water and a glass of lemonade and Ace is scandalised, but the Doctor simply shrugs that they are in the future. I call foul. I know inflation was high in the '80s, but still! This story is only set three years in its own future; they couldn't have expected inflation to rocket quite that badly! The Doctor then pays for the drinks with a £5 coin, which is amusing - those have only ever been minted as commemorative tokens and aren't usually accepted in general circulation! It's always funny when Show tries to predict the future, especially the near future.
There is something terribly incongruous about seeing a man wearing a suit of armour and carrying a handgun. It's even more incongruous when they waver back and fore from gun fighting to swordplay! This is an aspect of the Arthurian aliens that is never really explained: if they have such high tech weaponry, why do they bother with hand-to-hand swordplay? And why do they keep flitting back and forth between one and the other? It makes no sense. If they are fighting to win, which they clearly are, then they would use the weapons that gave them the most advantage - and those swords ain't it!
Oh, the Brig's old uniform still fits. Doris is as amazed by this as I am. I like the conversation they have as he leaves, with Doris arguing that he doesn't need to go and isn't bound by duty any more, that he's going because he wants to, while the Brig doesn't deny her point but simply assures her that he will be coming back. He's older now, but that smile of his is as warm and as reassuring as ever, the old warhorse.
This story was made in 1989 and set a few years later - but when trying to make a phone call, Peter Warmsly still just picks up the handset and asks the operator to put him through, instead of dialling a number. I don't remember ever having to do that in 1989! We always dialled the number for ourselves!
Okay, so Peter Warmsly has an archaeological dig near Lake Vortigern, where he found an old scabbard that gives off an electrical charge every time someone touches it for the first time. It's all very mysterious - but these kinds of details aren't ever really explained, except in the woolliest of terms.
Aww, UNIT sent a helicopter to collect the Brigadier. It's like old times. He always did like to travel in those!
Ace befriends local girl Shou Yuing. I like it when companions are allowed to make new friends on their travels, instead of just sticking with the Doctor all the time. The girls bond over a shared love of explosives. Someone on the production team obviously had a thing about girls and explosives!
A kind of hand grenade hurls one of the knights through the air and into hotelier Pat's home brewery. I am very amused by the Doctor's reticence as he inches up to the recumbent figure, very wary of touching it in case it turns out to be homicidal. So it comes as a huge surprise when the man's helmet comes off to reveal a very pretty blond-haired human named Ancelyn - who greets the Doctor as Merlin! It isn't the Doctor's face that he recognises, he adds, yet he is able to rattle off what does sound like a good description of the Doctor and the Tardis. The Doctor is what you might call confounded by all this. He recovers quickly, though, deciding that Earth is about to become the centre of a war that doesn't even belong here. Business as usual, then.
Is it bad that I kind of love the way Ancelyn and the others speak? The pseudo-medieval dialogue should sound all kinds of stilted and affected, but the actors do a good job of bringing it to life and it certainly adds something to the Arthurian characters.
Well, Winifred Bambera is a UNIT commander in the finest traditions of her predecessor, our Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - present her with an assortment of medieval-looking knights wielding both swords and futuristic guns and her immediate reaction is to demand that they surrender or she'll start shooting! The Doctor can't stop her, either - he tries pushing her gun aside and talking his way out of the situation instead, but Bambera promptly shoots one of the knights anyway. Her bullets have no effect, of course. UNIT never have learned that shooting at mysterious alien threats rarely works.
Like Ancelyn, Mordred almost immediately recognises the Doctor as Merlin. Curiouser and curiouser! I love how easily the Doctor slides into the role, even though he still has no idea what they are all talking about, because the Doctor is nothing if not an opportunist, has a gift for thinking on his feet and will take any advantage that's offered him! Ha, and Mordred and his heavily armed knights about-face and retreat, just because the Doctor has them scared that he might unleash some kind of wizardry on them!
Okay, so Bambera and Ancelyn scuffling to establish alpha status is more amusing than it should be. The Doctor tells Ace and Shou Yuing not to worry about it - he reckons they should be more concerned about sorcery. Sorcery and magic aren't really traditional Doctor Who subjects! But of course, if Doctor Who appears to be touching on magic and sorcery, you can bet your bottom dollar there's some kind of alien technology behind it somewhere. The Doctor refers to one of Clarke's Three Laws when he attempts to explain it to Ace, saying that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - and that the reverse is also true. It's the only explanation for Morgaine's 'black magic' that we get.
Ancelyn doesn't seem terribly concerned about having been 'vanquished' by Bambera - he seems to like it, in fact! Doctor Who does romance…
Mordred reckons this is the meeting place between two worlds, two universes and two realities. Well, okay, then.
Mordred creates a rip through space and time to allow his mother, Morgaine, to pass through. How he achieves this is not clear, since it mostly seems to involve waving his sword around and chanting - another example of this advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic! The Doctor can feel what he's doing, though, maybe via that telepathic sense all Time Lords apparently have. Morgaine is able to communicate with him telepathically, too. That's new, interesting...but really doesn't lead anywhere.
Heh. In the middle of Warmsly's archaeological dig is a carving no one has been able to decipher. Until the Doctor comes along, that is, announces that it says 'dig hole here' in his handwriting and invites Ace to oblige. Okay, that's amusing. Warmsly has just been waxing lyrical about what a painstaking labour of love archaeology is, so it comes as a nasty shock to him when Ace blows a great big hole in the middle of his dig with a can of nitro nine!
It's all surface and no substance (well, that describes this whole adventure, really), but I do enjoy the relationship that develops between Bambera and Ancelyn - its fun!
The Brigadier gets a bit of an unpleasant welcome when Morgaine zaps his helicopter out of the sky! He and his pilot just barely manage to get clear before it explodes. Back in action with a bang!
Man, for a hardened warrior, Mordred sure is a mummy's boy.
Oh boy, the Brigadier and Morgaine locking horns. Morgaine is a bit of a panto character, but Jean Marsh plays her so very well, and the Brigadier is so splendidly the Brigadier, it's an excellent scene.
The codpieces Morgaine's warriors wear are rather distracting!
The Doctor is really getting into the swing of this Merlin thing as he explores the secret tunnel under the lake - it's even got voice-activated doors keyed to his voice pattern. Ace gets well wigged out by it all, understandably, and is none the wiser when the Doctor cheerfully assures her that he isn't Merlin, no - but he could be, in the future…his own personal future, that is, which could be the past…
It kills me that the final resting place of King Arthur is revealed by this story to be a spaceship at the bottom of Lake Vortigern. That's hilarious.
I like how sharp Ace is, how quick she is to think beyond the obvious. Seeing Arthur's body slumped inside the spaceship, she doesn't automatically assume that he is dead but instead asks if he is in suspended animation, because she knows that things are rarely as straightforward as they seem. It actually makes for quite a twist in the tail of the story when it turns out that Arthur is just plain dead after all, and has been the whole time!
During filming of the cliffhanger episode ending when Ace gets trapped in a fast-filling water tank, the tank cracked and the resultant flood caused quite a major incident on set, what with all the live wires running around the place, and all! You can actually see the moment when the glass cracked during the sequence, as it was kept in because they couldn't reshoot.
It's quite amusing to see Warmsly telling Ancelyn the legend of King Arthur. If you accept this adventure's take on the legend - that these mythological characters are from another dimension and are quite real - it must be weird for them to return here and learn that their escapades have been warped into human legend!
Maybe I am just easily pleased, but I am amused by sequences like the one where Warmsly is in the middle of talking about the Lady of the Lake emerging from the water holding Excalibur aloft, when Ace does just that. Timing is everything! It's a fun little play on a traditional motif, as is the entire adventure, really - neither new nor original, but still entertaining.
The Brigadier shows up just in the nick of time to nip down the tunnel and save the Doctor from the spaceship's automated defence system. Good old Brigadier, dependable as ever. He's never met this version of the Doctor before, but that doesn't matter - he's known so many regenerations, over the years, he more than anyone else understands that they are all the same man, his old friend and ally, and accepts each new version without hesitation. Oh how I wish he'd managed an appearance in the rebooted show before Nicholas Courtney's death.
I am very sad the Brigadier's feisty little pilot, Lavel, falls foul of Morgaine, is quickly hypnotised into submission, is mind-raped for information and is then summarily slaughtered, poor lass. That's just nasty. The scene does show us the two sides of Morgaine, however, as she then about turns and restores sight to the blind hotel landlady, Elizabeth, as payment for a few drinks - a reminder that this sorceress isn't mindlessly evil but does have some kind of moral code all her own, albeit a warped one. It makes for a strange juxtaposition with her ruthlessness.
I like how miffed Bambera is about the Brigadier swooping in and taking over her operation. Good for her. She doesn't oppose him, though - there is such a thing as a chain of command, after all, and he has seniority. Anyway, she and Ancelyn make a cute little odd couple - they are heaps of fun together, the courtly otherworldly knight and the cynical, hard-nosed warrior.
This is a UNIT story, so of course there are a lot of action sequences - shooting and explosions and whatnot. It's traditional!
I am gratified that the Brigadier is using the traditional UNIT 'greyhound' call sign. Bambera can keep her 'sea bird'.
Oh, those field telephones are enormous! So funny.
The Doctor hypnotises landlord Pat and archaeologist Warmsly into agreeing to be evacuated, despite being so vehemently against it - we've seen the Master pull that little trick in the past, but not the Doctor. That's interesting. This is a Doctor who can be just a little more menacing and overtly manipulative than most of his predecessors, in his own way, albeit for the greater good.
Nicholas Courtney looks as if he had an absolute blast, filming this adventure.
I enjoy the way Seven reacts to the UNIT soldiers, accepting their salutes with a tip of his hat - he might not approve of military tactics, but he knows UNIT and is comfortable with them in a way he wouldn't be with most other military outfits, especially when the Brigadier is at the helm. Although of course they cannot help but butt heads over the advisability or otherwise of launching a full-scale attack on their adversary. It's almost like old times. I'm fascinated and highly amused by the list of weaponry and ammunition the Brigadier reels off - he really has prepared for absolutely anything, drawing on his years of experience with UNIT. They've got silver bullets, teflon anti-Dalek shells, high explosives for Yeti, armour piercing bullets for robots, and gold tipped bullets for Cybermen…that last indicating that the Doctor must have told the Brigadier about the Cybermen's weakness, since it didn't come up in his encounter with them.
Oh, oh, oh, the Brigadier has had the Doctor's old car, Bessie, hauled out of retirement for his use. Fantastic! It throws up all kinds of questions since Bessie was last seen on Gallifrey in The Five Doctors, but that story throws up all kinds of continuity questions anyway (and we know the car must have been returned to Earth by the Time Lords since Three was driving it when he was snatched out of time, but it was still on Earth for Four to use in his first story), so it is best to just not think about it!
The Doctor leaves Ace and Shou Yuing in charge of Excalibur, under strict instructions to draw a chalk circle and stay inside it if anything strange should happen. And it works, too. This story is such a weird blend of magical mysticism and science fiction.
Morgaine's warriors and the UNIT troops have got themselves into a pitched battle at the lakeside. So the Doctor just walks onto the middle of the battlefield and yells 'STOP' at the top of his lungs. Only the Doctor could get away with that. It works, too. But the battle - so many dead, on both sides - is merely a distraction to allow Morgaine to attack Ace in hopes of winning Excalibur. There's something really gruesome about that, when you think about it - the slaughter in this story is actually quite horrific, even if it is never dwelt on. No wonder the Doctor looks so sickened by it.
The Destroyer's monster mask isn't that bad, really, by Doctor Who standards. On the one hand it makes no sense that Morgaine would mess around with her knights and their small-scale hand-to-hand battles (which the show just didn't have the budget to depict efectively) when she has such a powerful weapon at her disposal in the form of this demonic creature, but on the other hand it is clear that she can't really control the creature, so that probably explains why she only employs it as a last resort.
It's quite a successfully big dramatic moment, for this era, when the Doctor holds a sword to Mordred's throat and threatens to kill him if the battle is not ended and Ace freed - but then can't go through with it when Morgaine calls his bluff. The Doctor is not a killer, not in cold blood, never if he can help it.
Luckily the Brigadier is on hand to hold a gun to Mordred's head instead - Morgaine and Mordred both know at once that he is an entirely different kettle of fish and won't hesitate to kill. The Doctor needs non-pacifist friends around him, from time to time, whether he likes it or not. But Morgaine proves more ruthless than anyone anticipated, abandoning her son to his fate rather than save him as he begs - way to call the bluff! So battle is joined once again.
I just…I really don't understand why these otherworldly warriors would fight with swords when they have supposedly powerful ray guns and explosives. I can just about buy the rest of the concept of them, but the swords just don't work for me. They are included because this is an Arthurian story, but the space-age twist to it renders them too anachronistic.
By the time the battle burns itself out, Morgaine's entire army has been wiped out and most of the UNIT soldiers, too, by the looks of it. That's just grim. But at least Ancelyn and Bambera survived. Ancelyn seems more relaxed about the slaughter than Bambera does; I'm glad she doesn't take it lightly.
The Doctor and the Brigadier follow Morgaine through an interstitial vortex. You know, as you do. Unfortunately, the Brig's gun is no match for the Destroyer's power and he gets himself flung through a window, which is pretty rough treatment for an old man. I like that the Doctor is so furious about this - he doesn't like to see his friends get hurt.
It all gets a bit panto, as the Doctor, Morgaine and Ace all take it in turns to snatch Excalibur from one another's hands, taking advantage of whatever distraction happens along. Why do none of these people remember to grip properly? I quite like, though, that Morgaine seems to just give up on the sword completely when Mordred appears, furious that she abandoned him to his fate - her shock that he isn't dead after all and distress over his sense of betrayal add still more depth to the character. She really is a complex character - as we see again later, when she learns that Arthur is long dead. Her grudge against him goes back hundreds of years, and yet she is genuinely grief-stricken to learn that she will never see him again.
The Destroyer has been unleashed which the Doctor expects to bring about the end of the world - apparently, this is a pretty fearsome beast, then. Just as well Ace brought along a box of silver bullets, then, which is it vulnerable to - and just as well also that the Brigadier had them requisitioned in the first place, just in case! In UNIT, it pays to be prepared for anything and everything.
The Doctor plans to go up against the Destroyer himself with a gun loaded with silver bullets. But this is the Brigadier's heroic last outing and he is having none of it, knocking the Doctor out and taking the gun from him to do it himself, since he believes himself more expendable than the Doctor. I doubt Doris would agree with that!
Typically of Doctor Who baddies, the Destroyer is prone to spending so much time monologuing about his evil intentions that he never actually gets around to carrying any of them out, which gives the Brigadier time to get back in there and point a gun at him, giving him fair warning: leave this world or be destroyed. The Destroyer mocks him, asking if Earth can't find a better champion, but the Brigadier is too cool to fall for that one, shrugging that he's the man on the spot and just does the best he can. That's the Brigadier for you! Awesome. So he shoots the monster dead - and it explodes, which is not something you want to be standing alongside, really.
The Doctor is absolutely distraught, believing that his old friend must have been killed in the explosion - I really do love how attached he is to the Brigadier, having known him through so many regenerations. He is rather startled, then, to find that the old man isn't dead after all! I love how casual the Brig is about it all - I love it when he is able to get one over on the Doctor! Seven's reaction to his supposed death here - and statement that he was 'supposed to die in bed' - works well as a precursor to Eleven's grief when the Brigadier's eventual death is announced on-screen in The Wedding of River Song, in bed and peaceful, as predicted. So he had always known how it would happen, then, but it wasn't 'real' for him (and therefore could always change, because of timey-wimey) until it happened as part of his personal timeline, is that how it works? Is that why he so rarely revisits companions once they've left him, because if he never experiences their deaths as part of his personal timeline, he can always think of them as alive, somewhere and somewhen?
Hee, while the menfolk argue over which of them most deserves the honour of replacing Excalibur in the stone and awakening Arthur, Ace just cuts through all their modest bluster and does it herself. No sense of ceremony, that girl, and that's why I like her! But there is a twist in the tail - the ship awakens but Arthur doesn't, he is long dead and gone to dust, leaving only a note for the Doctor in his helmet explaining that the king died in the final battle and everything else was propaganda…signed by the Doctor. Which means that at some point in his personal future (although not necessarily on-screen), the Doctor will encounter all these characters again and will be their Merlin and will then have to remember to leave all these little notes and messages for his earlier self to find…Ah, temporal paradoxes and closed time loops, dontcha just love 'em.
The future Doctor also very kindly left himself a warning - Morgaine and Mordred have seized control of the nuclear missile that UNIT were transporting, back at the top of the story. It isn't the first time the Doctor has found himself sitting on a nuclear bomb fast counting down to zero; he's had plenty of practice disarming them by now. But this is a Doctor who prefers to talk others into backing down rather than taking action himself. He delivers a passionate speech about the horrors of nuclear warfare and it cuts Morgaine to the quick - she is, after all, a creature of honour, whatever else she might be. And she backs down and hits the abort button herself. Score one to the Doctor's persuasive tongue. It's quite an effective scene, really, and gets right to the heart of the Seventh Doctor's character: brooding and intense and a man of words.
The Doctor instructs Bambera to lock up Mordred and Morgaine. Does he really believe a human prison can hold those two?
And then, bless, the Brigadier takes them all home to meet the wife. I can't describe how much I love that the Doctor doesn't just take off again as soon as the adventure is over, as he usually does, but instead chooses to spend some quality time with his old friend. This is the last time they ever meet, on-screen.
I still love the Brigadier's house!
It looks as if Ancelyn and Bambera are going to get some kind of happy ever after, even if he is a medieval knight from another dimension, now trapped in our world. I'd love to know how they got on, afterward - heck, I'd watch a spin-off of those two bickering their way through life and loving every minute of it!
The girls all take Bessie for a night out - and the Doctor offers to cook supper. That's so adorably domestic, I love it!
Quotable Quotes
DORIS: "You don't regret it, do you […] leaving United Nations Intelligence Taskforce?"
BRIGADIER: "No, my blood and thunder days are long past."
ACE: "What's that noise?"
DOCTOR: "A cry in the dark."
ACE: "A distress signal?"
DOCTOR: "A cry for help. Perhaps a summoning."
ACE: "Where's it coming from?"
DOCTOR: "Earth. Rippling out through the cosmos, forward in time, backwards in time and sideways in time."
ACE: "Sideways in time?"
DOCTOR: "Yes, sideways in time, across the boundaries that divide one universe from another."
ACE: "Weird."
WARMSLY: "The military use the area as a firing range. Never understood why."
DOCTOR: "Blowing the occasional chunk out of the earth keeps them amused."
BAMBERA: "I think I would have noticed a nuclear explosion."
DOCTOR: "Yes, well, they are conspicuous."
DOCTOR: "Among all the varied wonders of the universe there's nothing so firmly clamped shut as the military mind."
ZBRIGNIEV: "When I served under Lethbridge Stewart, we had a scientific advisor called the Doctor."
BAMBERA: "The man outside."
ZBRIGNIEV: "No, sir, but…"
BAMBERA: "But?"
ZBRIGNIEV: "He changed his appearance, several times."
BAMBERA: "A disguise."
ZBRIGNIEV: "No, sir. The word was he changed his whole physical appearance."
BAMBERA: "His whole appearance."
ZBRIGNIEV: "And his personality."
BAMBERA: "How could he be the same man if his appearance and personality have changed?"
ZBRIGNIEV: "I don't know, sir."
BAMBERA: "What do you know, Zbrigniev?"
ZBRIGNIEV: "Just that whenever this Doctor turns up…"
BAMBERA: "Yes?"
ZBRIGNIEV: "All hell breaks loose."
BRIGADIER: "Tell them I've retired. Tell them I've decided to fade away."
PAT: "Long journey?"
DOCTOR: "Er, quite a distance, as it happens."
ANCELYN: "Oh, he has many names, but in my reckoning, he is Merlin."
DOCTOR: "You recognise my face, then?"
ANCELYN: "No, not your aspect, but your manner that betrays you. Do you not ride the ship of time? Does it not deceive the senses being larger within than out?"
MORDRED: "You were bound. My mother sealed you into the ice caves for all eternity."
DOCTOR: "I am the master of time. I cannot be bound so easily."
MORDRED: "Master of lies."
ANCELYN: "Beware your tongue, Mordred. Have you so easily forgotten Baden, hmm? Where he cast down your mother with his mighty arts."
DOCTOR: "Yes, remember Baden and my mighty arts. Do you think I would use mere trickery against someone as formidable as you? Go, before I unleash a terrible something on you."
DOCTOR: "What happened to you?"
ANCELYN: "She vanquished me, and I threw myself on her mercy."
BAMBERA: "What's going on, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "I don't know, but I've got some nasty suspicions."
ACE: "You can feel it?"
DOCTOR: "Yes. I'm uniquely sensitive."
LAVEL: "How did it go, sir?"
BRIGADIER: "Oh, usual bureaucracy. Inch thick forms and half a pint of blood."
LAVEL: "That's London for you."
WARMSLY: "Ah, now that's a bit of a mystery. No one's been able to decipher the carving."
DOCTOR: "It says 'Dig Hole Here'."
WARMSLY: "Extraordinary. What does it say that in?"
DOCTOR: "My handwriting."
DOCTOR: "Ace?"
ACE: "I think the timer needs work."
DOCTOR: "One of these days we're going to have a nice long talk about acceptable safety standards."
ACE: "What's down there?"
DOCTOR: "With a bit of luck, a tunnel."
ACE: "A dark, mysterious one?"
DOCTOR: "Probably."
ACE: Leading to unknown dangers?"
DOCTOR: "Indubitably."
ACE: "Oh, wicked!"
DOCTOR: "Don't worry, Ace. It's only a trap."
LAVEL: "But sir, we don't know what the situation is here."
BRIGADIER: "The situation, Lavel, is normal. It doesn't get much worse than that. You know, I think I'm rather enjoying this."
MORGAINE: "A warrior, no less. How goes the day?"
BRIGADIER: "I've had better."
MORGAINE: "I am Morgaine, the sun killer. Dominator of the thirteen worlds and Battle Queen of the S'Rax. What say you?"
BRIGADIER: "I am Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Surrender now and we can avoid bloodshed."
ACE: "Where does Ancelyn come from?"
DOCTOR: "Another dimension. Sideways in time from another universe."
ACE: "Not a local boy, then."
ACE: "Are you Merlin?"
DOCTOR: "No. But I could be, in the future. That is, my personal future. Which could be the past."
DOCTOR: "Ace, I think it's time for plan B."
ACE: "We run?"
DOCTOR: "Yes, run!"
BRIGADIER: "I just can't let you out of my sight, can I, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. So you recognise me, then?"
BRIGADIER: "Yes. Who else would it be?"
BAMBERA: "Brigadier, I thought you'd retired."
BRIGADIER: "So did I, Brigadier."
DOCTOR: "Something's wrong."
BRIGADIER: "What?"
DOCTOR: "We haven't been attacked yet."
BRIGADIER: "Now, Doctor, we've been attacked. Happy?"
DOCTOR: "Yes."
BRIGADIER: "Oh, good."
DOCTOR: "As long as Morgaine's people are shooting at us, she won't be using more obscure methods of attack."
BRIGADIER: "Such as?"
DOCTOR: "I don't know, and I don't want to find out."
BAMBERA: "You're from an alternative dimension?"
ANCELYN: "Yes."
BAMBERA: "Good. You don't have cars there?"
ANCELYN: "No."
BAMBERA: "Good. Hold on to this wheel."
BAMBERA: "Ancelyn."
ANCELYN: "Yes, my lady?"
BAMBERA: "In this world we have a great and honourable tradition of tactical withdrawal."
ANCELYN: "Ah, you wish to run away. Well, there can be but thirty of them at the most."
BAMBERA: "If you don't start running, I'll kill you myself."
DOCTOR: "I've got to put an end to this bloodshed."
BRIGADIER: "Oh, how, Doctor? Stand in the middle and shout stop?"
DOCTOR: "Good idea."
MORDRED: "My mother will destroy you."
BRIGADIER: "Just between you and me, Mordred, I'm getting a little tired of hearing about your mother."
DOCTOR: "What happened?"
SHOU: "The hotel fell on us."
ACE: "There was this woman with a pet demon, and I seem to remember a chalk circle that was supposed to protect us from harm."
DOCTOR: "Yes, I get the idea, Ace. Where's Excalibur?"
SHOU: "Er, the woman seemed to want it very badly."
ACE: "Very, very badly."
SHOU: "So we gave it to her."
DOCTOR: "Good."
ACE: "But it's not our fault. I mean, if I'd had some Nitro, then maybe I could… What do you mean, good?"
DOCTOR: "Exotic alien swords are easy to come by. Aces are rare."
MORGAINE: "I could always defeat you at chess, Merlin."
DOCTOR: "Who said anything about playing chess? I'm playing poker. And I have an Ace up my sleeve."
ACE: "Very funny."
BRIGADIER: "What was that?"
DOCTOR: "That, Brigadier, was the beginning of the end of the world."
BRIGADIER: "Same as ever, eh, Doctor?"
DOCTOR: "Simple, isn't it? Just like most killings."
BRIGADIER: "Sorry, Doctor, but I think I'm rather more expendable than you are."
DESTROYER: "Pitiful. Can this world do no better than you as their champion?"
BRIGADIER: "Probably. I just do the best I can."
DOCTOR: "You stupid, stubborn, pig-headed numbskull. You were supposed to die in bed. I could have handled it, done your job…"
BRIGADIER: "Nonsense, Doctor."
DOCTOR: "You're supposed to be dead."
BRIGADIER: "Oh, really, Doctor. You don't think I'd be so stupid as to stay inside, do you?"
DOCTOR: "Well…"
BRIGADIER: "Really, Doctor, have a little faith. Ace?"
ACE: "Yes, Brigadier."
BRIGADIER: "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing. He's all yours from now on. I'm going home to Doris."
DOCTOR: "Doris?"
BRIGADIER: "Yes, my wife."
DOCTOR: "Ha, ha, ha. So she caught you in the end."
DOCTOR: "Ancelyn, replace Excalibur and Arthur will arise."
ANCELYN: "I think the honour belongs to the Brigadier."
BRIGADIER: "Oh, the Doctor should do it."
ANCELYN: "No, my lord. You were the victor."
ACE: "Give me that."
DOCTOR: "Ace, have you no sense of occasion?"
ACE: "No."
DOCTOR: "All over the world, fools are poised ready to let death fly. Machines of death, Morgaine, are screaming from above, of light brighter than the sun. Not a war between armies nor a war between nations, but just death, death gone mad. The child looks up in the sky, his eyes turn to cinders. No more tears, only ashes. Is this honour? Is this war? Are these the weapons you would use? Tell me!"
MORGAINE: "No."
DOCTOR: "Then put a stop to it, Morgaine. End the madness."
DOCTOR: "Time and Time Lords wait for no man."
BRIGADIER: "What about supper?"
DORIS: "Oh, that's a good idea. Have something really delicious ready for us when we get home, okay?"
The Verdict
Okay, so this story doesn't have the strongest plot ever and has a bit of an over-crowded cast, but despite all that it is a fun, entertaining story with a lot of witty dialogue and engaging characters - a truly splendid final outing for the Brigadier.