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Audio Drama Review


Cover

Doctor Who
The Lost TV Episodes
Collection Three: 1966-1967

 

Starring: William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton
AudioGO
RRP: £75.00, US $124.95
ISBN: 978 1 4084 6753 4
Available 04 August 2011


Dozens of Doctor Who TV episodes are lost as visual film recordings - but they survive as soundtracks. Now remastered, with additional linking narration by members of the original cast, you can enjoy them again. This handsome box set collects six adventures that are either wholly or partially missing from the TV archives. Presented in chronological order of transmission, the stories in this collection are The Smugglers, The Tenth Planet, The Power of the Daleks, The Highlanders, The Underwater Menace and The Moonbase, starring William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton as the First and Second Doctors - plus bonus interviews with Anneke Wills and the BBC Radio 3 programme Dance of the Daleks...

Unlike AudioGO’s previous two collections of missing stories, this box set provides a complete consecutive run of adventures, from William Hartnell’s penultimate serial to Patrick Troughton’s fourth. That’s because this particular era of Doctor Who, the start of the show’s fourth season, is the most poorly represented in the visual archives. No complete serials from Season 4 survive. The closest we get to complete adventures from this season are the Cybermen stories The Tenth Planet, of which three out of four episodes exist - but not the crucial fourth episode, featuring the first regeneration - and The Moonbase, of which two out of four episodes exist. On audio at least you can experience the whole story.

Having said that, the concluding serial from the previous season, The War Machines, which introduced Ben (Michael Craze) and Polly (Anneke Wills), survives, so at least these companions have one complete story. Consequently, listeners to these box sets miss out on hearing Ben and the “duchess’s” debut adventure, though the events are briefly recapped by Wills’s narration at the beginning of The Smugglers...

The TARDIS materialises on the Cornish coast in the 17th century, where the Doctor and his new - if unwilling - companions, Ben and Polly, stumble upon a plot to smuggle contraband goods. The time travellers also become embroiled in a search for hidden treasure by a party of pirates led by the vicious Captain Pike...

This is an appropriately nautical adventure for able seaman Ben, though he spends hardly any time near the water (he spends more time at sea in The Highlanders). Both he and Polly experience their first trip in the TARDIS during this story, having made the acquaintance of the Doctor (William Hartnell) in The War Machines. At first, they are understandably reluctant to accept that they have travelled in time, especially Ben (it always seems to be the male companions who have the hardest time believing the TARDIS’s capabilities). This reluctance makes the listener all the more sympathetic to their plight.

Writer Brian Hayles’s plot progresses at a cracking pace, slackening a little only during the third episode. That’s saying something when you consider the sluggish nature of many of Who’s 1960s episodes. This is an example of the genre pastiche style of historical story, having more in common with literary escapades such as Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island than the educational remit of serials such as Marco Polo and The Aztecs. There’s double-crossing aplenty between the pirates and the unscrupulous local smugglers, and a particularly good cliffhanger at the end of Episode 1.

This serial works rather well on audio, despite the occasional fluffed line (and not just from Hartnell), though there is a moment of unintentional amusement before we discover the true nature of “Thomas Tickler”, the weapon with which the pirate Cherub (George A. Cooper) threatens the Doctor! The Smugglers is a remarkably grisly tale, punctuated by several violent stabbings, usually involving Cherub - one wonders what the kiddies (and their parents) made of this back in 1966.

Narrating a Who CD for the first time, Wills gives a strangely dispassionate reading during much of the story, though her enthusiasm perks up towards the end.

All in all, this is a lively little adventure.

8

 

The year is 1986, and at the South Pole the crew of the Snowcap Base tracking station have detected a new planet. The arrival of the Doctor, Ben and Polly coincides with another landing - that of a spaceship whose humanoid passengers have used cybernetics to replace their limbs and vital organs. They are called Cybermen...

The Tenth Planet has been released in full on video, as part of a VHS tin set (with Attack of the Cybermen), with the audio of Episode 4 illustrated by stills and explanatory captions. It could therefore be argued that this is the least essential of the soundtracks in this collection. However, the VHS release has long since been deleted (as the new series Cybermen would say) and the audio quality is greatly improved here, thanks to the restoration work of Mark Ayres and the fact that Graham Strong’s off-air recordings are actually superior to the optical soundtracks on the surviving Episodes 1 to 3.

In terms of Who history, however, the serial could not be more essential. It sees not only the debut of the Cybermen, and the first transformation from one lead actor to another, but it also marks the first use of the “base under siege” plot structure, which would become a standard story format for decades to come.

The Cybermen’s voices would undergo several modifications over the years (as would their outward appearance). Here they speak with singsong voices, provided by Peter Hawkins and Roy Skelton, whose inflections place emphases on unnervingly inappropriate words. Though not to every fan’s taste, for me the Tenth Planet Cyber-voices are eerily reminiscent of the automated collections of words you hear from railway PA systems: “The... next Cyber-invasion to arrive at planet Earth will be the... nineteen... eighty-six invasion of the... South Pole.”

I also rather like the cloth-faced look of these Cybermen, which brings to mind undead mummies. However, on audio we are mercifully spared the sight of their clunkier accoutrements, the sticky-tape holding their heads together, and their unconvincing “disguises” when they don parkas to sneak into the base! We also hear the first use of the famous “Cyber-theme”, Martin Slavin’s “Space Adventure”, well chosen stock music subsequently reprised in the next two Cyber-serials as well as The Web of Fear.

This being Hartnell’s final story, it’s a shame that he is absent during the third episode, due to ill health. Some of his dialogue is transferred to Craze and Wills, both of whom play effective roles in the serial. The First Doctor makes a triumphant return in the fourth episode, which is also his last. There’s a sense of sorrow and mystery as he claims that “this old body of mine is wearing a bit thin,” but “it’s far from being all over...”

Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis’s plot is rather hokey in places. Why should Earth have a “twin” that looks just like it, even down to the shape of its continents? Where exactly is “the edge of space”, where the Cybermen claim their planet drifted to? What a coincidence that the base commander’s son is the one who happens to be placed in mortal danger aboard the Zeus 5 spacecraft. However, the story is enjoyable in a good B-movie kind of way.

Until The Tenth Planet makes it on to DVD, this soundtrack will be many a new fan’s best chance to learn about the creatures’ origins - though if you can get hold of the VHS version, I would recommend that more highly.

7

 

The Doctor appears to have transformed before the eyes of Ben and Polly. Can they trust this stranger who claims to be their friend? That question becomes the least of their problems, however, when the TARDIS lands on the Earth colony of Vulcan, where a scientist has discovered a crashed space capsule - containing Daleks...

The Power of the Daleks is the first Dalek serial not to be written or co-written by their creator, Terry Nation. Former story editor David Whitaker takes over the writing chores (with uncredited assistance from his story editing successor Dennis Spooner), though he does find inspiration in Nation’s original Who script, The Daleks, by once again making the creatures dependent on static electricity.

It is significant that Whitaker returns to The Daleks as source material (the music department follows suit, reusing Tristram Cary’s distinctive score from that serial), because in so doing he effectively abandons the expansionist approach that Nation had taken, which was reaching unsustainable proportions. Nation’s first Dalek sequel, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, had seen the malevolent machine-creatures conquering our own planet. In their next story, The Chase, they acquired the power of time travel. Then, in the epic The Daleks’ Master Plan, they threatened to conquer the entire galaxy. Where could they go from there?

Instead, Whitaker goes back to basics. He depicts a (to begin with) small party of Daleks, who use their considerable cunning to gain the trust of the colonists. Rather than ranting about universal domination and extermination, they pretend to be helpful servants - though, thanks to the sterling efforts of voice artist Peter Hawkins, their murderous intent can always be heard lurking beneath the surface. We have every reason to believe the Doctor when he fearfully states that one Dalek is “all that is needed to wipe out this entire colony.”

Troughton certainly makes an impression as the new Doctor, as he alone voices concern about the Daleks. However, during much of the story he isn’t very talkative, preferring instead to communicate via tones on his recorder. We share Ben’s frustration with this cryptic character, whose personality would take several more episodes to settle down. Once again, Polly is more open-minded about the situation.

Of the other performances, Robert James stands out as the scientist Lesterson. He starts off as an eager, though naïve, pioneering spirit, but convincingly degenerates into a delusional wreck once the true nature of the creatures he has revived becomes apparent.

How this story fits in with the rest of Dalek history is unclear. Their reliance on static electricity, the fact that the colonists have never heard of the Daleks, and the dateline of 2020, which is stated in BBC publicity material including Radio Times, all point to this serial being set before The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

However, the date is never mentioned in the transmitted story, and the Daleks’ vertical midriff slats, which were added to the props from The Chase onwards, imply that this serial takes place post-Dalek Invasion (OK, I know this is an audio release, but you can see the slats on the cover). While the Daleks need static in order to move around the colony, they are also said to be storing the power, and a Dalek is later discovered outside the settlement, so perhaps they only need a regular supply during their initial recharging period. The fact that the Daleks recognise the Second Doctor suggests that they have met this incarnation before, in The Evil of the Daleks or some un-televised adventure. The colonists’ failure to recognise the Daleks is tricky, but it could indicate that several centuries have passed since Dalek Invasion, and the colonists aren’t too hot on their Earth history.

As a piece of Who history, though, The Power of the Daleks is indispensable.

9

 

The Doctor, Ben and Polly arrive in Scotland, 1746, in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden. Here they face desperate Scottish rebels, ruthless Redcoat troops and a corrupt solicitor who plans to sell prisoners - including Ben and a young Highlander called Jamie McCrimmon - into slavery in the West Indies...

Another example of the genre pastiche style of historical story, The Highlanders is the Second Doctor’s only SF-free adventure (there can be only one, you might say!) and it would be the last the TV series would attempt until Black Orchid in 1982.

There is little educational value to this story, which, like The Smugglers, is inspired by the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson - in this case Kidnapped. Indeed, writer Gerry Davis (though credited as co-writer, Elwyn Jones carried out no work on the serial) makes the common mistake of portraying the Jacobite Rebellion as an Anglo-Scottish conflict. The political reality was far more complex, being an attempt to restore the Stuart dynasty to the throne, with Scots fighting on both sides.

The Doctor is once again a man of relatively few words and little action, with Ben and Polly taking more active roles, the latter teaming up with Hannah Gordon as Kirsty - but his antics are overtly eccentric. His character would be toned down in subsequent stories, his love of disguises in general and hats in particular all but disappearing after The Underwater Menace, but here we have him impersonating a German physician, with a very dodgy accent that wavers into Irish, and even dressing up as an old woman!

The tone of the piece is uncomfortably uneven at times, with the comedy sitting oddly alongside the brutality of the fates that threaten the Highlanders and the time travellers. However, there is some sharp satire in the scenes involving Solicitor Grey (David Garth) and his clerk Perkins (Sydney Arnold).

Despite its inferiority to The Smugglers, The Highlanders is entertaining. It is also notable for introducing the popular and long-running character of Jamie, played by Frazer Hines, who provides energetic narration to the soundtrack of his debut story.

6

 

The TARDIS materialises on an extinct volcanic island, beneath which lies the lost city of Atlantis! A scientist, Professor Zaroff, has persuaded the Atlanteans that he can raise their city above the waves, but the Doctor realises that the professor’s plan could trigger the destruction of the entire planet...

I doubt that The Underwater Menace is regarded as a classic in anyone’s book. From the sequinned, goggle-eyed Fish People to the OTT performance of Joseph Furst as Professor Zaroff, this is all rather daft. Zaroff wants to destroy the world because... well, just because he can and he’s insane.

Still, at least we can’t actually see the dodgy visuals, as Ayres and Wills concede during their interview on the bonus CD that accompanies this story. Judging by the one surviving instalment, Episode 3 (which can be seen in the Lost in Time DVD collection), this story probably works better on audio than it would have done on video. Wills’s narration “bigs up” the production, reflecting the grander descriptions of the sets in Geoffrey Orme’s original scripts, as opposed to what the BBC’s limited budget could realise on screen. The underwater sequence in Episode 3 is presented without narration as nearly two minutes of nothing but Dudley Simpson’s early synthesised music, but count your blessings that you are spared all that “swimming” on Kirby wires.

As usual, the performances of the regular cast are well worth listening to. Joseph “Nozink in ze vorld can stop me now” Furst is also good fun as the very mad scientist.

Things take a more serious turn during the final episode, in which Atlantis is devastated, and the TARDIS crew have good reason to fear for one another’s survival.

In case you were wondering how the Atlantis depicted here ties in with the Atlantis of the Jon Pertwee serial The Time Monster (You weren’t? Oh well, I’ll tell you anyway!) I favour the assumption that the Atlanteans of The Underwater Menace are a small colony of survivors from the destruction witnessed in The Time Monster. The cultural upheaval of the decimated population could explain their turning to a new deity, the goddess Amdo, in the centuries that elapse between Monster and Menace.

The Underwater Menace is undemanding fun, so long as you expect plenty of high jinks before you get to the high drama.

5

 

In 2070 Earth’s weather is controlled by the Gravitron, a device based on the moon, manned by an international team of experts. The Doctor and his companions find the base in the grip of a plague epidemic that is drastically reducing the personnel. The Doctor suspects that this mysterious disease is not entirely natural...

The Moonbase marks a pivotal point in the Troughton era. It would prove to be the first of four encounters between his Doctor and the Cybermen. It also sees his portrayal settle down from the more overtly comical, if not downright irritating, personality of the previous three serials. Aside from one scene in which the Doctor removes all manner of bizarre samples for clinical analysis - including one crewman’s boot and a snippet of another’s trousers - Troughton’s performance is decidedly straight. Indeed, his sombre speech, about the need to fight the terrible things that have arisen in some corners of the universe, virtually sets out a mission statement for the programme’s next two and a half years.

Kit Pedler’s script is hardly the most original in the show’s history, rehashing the Cybermen’s siege of an isolated outpost from The Tenth Planet, even down to their interference in the trajectory of a spacecraft. However, this adventure also establishes trends for future stories, including Revenge of the Cybermen, which reused the notion of a “plague” that is selective enough to attack medical staff first.

The plot doesn’t stand up too well to close scrutiny, showing signs of having been cobbled together on an episode-by-episode basis. For example, the crew’s reaction to the first instance of the plague that we witness suggests that it is also the first time they have seen it. “What on Earth is it?” asks Benoit (Andre Maranne). “I don’t know,” replies Hobson (Patrick Barr). However, it soon becomes clear that staff have been falling victim to it for weeks. Perhaps Benoit and Hobson are supposed to be speaking with weary resignation rather than surprise. In Episode 3, Sam (the quietly excellent John Rolfe) tells Benoit that the communications antenna is not visible from within the base, but in the next episode it can be seen through a telescope. The Doctor clearly has his idea about tackling the Cybermen using the Gravitron during Episode 3, but then he conveniently forgets about it until Episode 4.

However, the stock “Space Adventure” theme and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s eerie background sound effects for the base convey the story’s creepy atmosphere at least as effectively as they did on screen. Indeed, the audio medium benefits the production in certain respects, hiding visual shortcomings such as the communications antenna resembling a giant TV aerial, the out-of-scale Gravitron prop, and the fact that the “acoustic helmets” worn by the Gravitron operators look suspiciously like swimming caps (as can be seen in the surviving Episodes 2 and 4 in the Lost in Time DVD box set). Unfortunately, nothing can be done to make the Cybermen’s modulated voices any more comprehensible.

All in all, though, this tale makes a successful Cyber-conversion to audio.

8

 

To add insult to the injury of missing episodes, it does sometimes seem as though it is the least interesting instalments that have survived. For example, we have the Hartnell-less and mostly Cyber-free third episode of The Tenth Planet, but not the crucial fourth. We have the relatively uneventful second and fourth instalments of The Moonbase, but not the intriguing first or the action-packed third. And I would rather have had the chance to see any part of The Underwater Menace, especially the flooding of Atlantis in Episode 4, than the silly and sluggish Episode 3.

The jewel case of The Underwater Menace has been enlarged to accommodate an additional CD, which contains extras such as Dance of the Daleks, a short documentary on the music of Classic Who. Featuring contributions by Mark Ayres and Dudley Simpson, among others, this brief but enlightening programme was originally broadcast in 2010 on BBC Radio 3 as part of the Twenty Minutes strand.

This is followed by 34 minutes of interviews with Anneke Wills, assembled from bonus tracks from the previous audio releases of The War Machines, The Tenth Planet and The Underwater Menace. These interviews contain a few surprising revelations, including the admission that the regular cast did not get on well with The Underwater Menace director Julia Smith (who went on to create EastEnders). Wills appears to have forgotten that Smith had directed her before, in The Smugglers.

As usual, there are also PDF scans of the camera scripts for each episode.

If you already own previously released versions of the CDs in this collection, do bear in mind before replacing any of them that some features from older releases have not been included here. My Life as a Dalek, Mark Gatiss’s affectionate tribute to the creators and performers of the Daleks, which was included in the 2003 Daleks tin containing The Power and The Evil of the Daleks, has been omitted (though you can find it on the BBC Radio 4 website). So has David Banks’s The Origins of the Cybermen, previously issued in the 2004 Cybermen tin containing The Tenth Planet and The Invasion (though this was itself a reissue of just the first of four releases from Silver Fist). I suppose it’s possible that they could turn up in Collections Four and Five respectively. The Wills interviews have been edited to make a more cohesive whole, and some mild swearing has been removed.

The placement of the bonus disc alongside The Underwater Menace may seem a little random, but Dance of the Daleks touches upon Simpson’s musical contribution to that story (among many others), and the interviews with Wills focus most closely on the Atlantis adventure.

One final nit-pick: incorrect running times are shown on the back covers of The Tenth Planet (an overstatement of ten minutes) and The Power of the Daleks (an understatement of fifty minutes, or two whole episodes) but that’s a relatively minor matter. It’s nothing compared to the absence of the episodes themselves from the BBC archives. Fortunately, this set of soundtracks plugs a significant gap in the collection.

Richard McGinlay

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