Category: Episode by Episode
Doctor Who episode 452: The Talons of Weng-Chiang – Part Five (26/3/1977)
Five episodes in, the first meeting of Henry Gordon Jago and Professor George Litefoot, one of the most delightful double acts in the entire series. It seems everyone involved in making this recognised that fact: Holmes’ script focuses more on their comic misadventures than it does the Doctor and Leela (who get all the legwork and exposition). Their first meeting is classic: Jago, mistaking Litefoot for a footman, has to slather on the flattery when he realises his mistake. And, rather wonderfully, Litefoot laps it up, his ego almost visibly inflating as Jago declares, ‘It’s a great honour and privilege for me to be working with you on this devilish affair.’ Jago spurs Litefoot on to greatness, Litefoot drags Jago up with him.
Doctor Who episode 451: The Talons of Weng-Chiang – Part Four (19/3/1977)
In many ways this episode is the culmination of the Chang plot (he’ll return next time, but only for an epilogue). Fittingly, the climax is on the stage of the Palace Theatre, where we first saw Chang, and where in front of a live audience, his showdown with the Doctor plays out in a brilliantly tense sequence where the “safe” peril of the magic show suddenly becomes real suspense as we’ve seen Chang load his revolver and pick out the Doctor as his mark. Of course, Chang gets thrown to the wolves by Greel who, unforgivably, ruins the performance exactly like in The Phantom of the Opera.
Doctor Who episode 450: The Talons of Weng-Chiang – Part Three (12/3/1977)
This is the one with the giant rat cliffhanger, the second-most regrettable thing about the story. Which, given it’s on screen for about 3 seconds mostly in shadow, is barely a criticism at all. For the most part, this is every bit as strong as the previous two episodes, and shows no sign of mid-serial doldrums.
Doctor Who episode 449: The Talons of Weng-Chiang – Part Two (5/3/1977)
This is very obviously influenced by The Phantom of the Opera (Greel’s broad-brimmed hat and cloak silhouette is pure 1925 Lon Chaney), with some moments, like the chase through the theatre flies, that are impressively filmic. These, plus location filming at night and the BBC’s ability to convincingly present Victorian Britain, mean this looks even lusher, if a lot grimmer, than The Masque of Mandragora. Even the maligned rat and a huge money spider are kept in the shadows so we don’t see the budgetary limitations.
Doctor Who episode 448: The Talons of Weng-Chiang – Part One (26/2/1977)
This opens on stage, and having established it, never shakes a sense of theatricality, melodrama and grand guignol. I think this strong stylistic sense is a massive strength of the story: one of the reasons why it remains in most top tens of Classic Doctor Who. The script is gleefully over the top, packed with florid dialogue, and David Maloney’s direction brilliantly exploits this. The scenes set on the theatre stage are shot exactly like you’d expect from a teal televised stage show: lots of wide shots to show the audience or whole stage, with some close ups of specific action. As soon as the camera goes backstage though it’s suddenly cramped, up close and handheld, verité rather than deliberate artifice of the stage scenes.
Doctor Who episode 447: The Robots of Death – Part Four (19/2/1977)
This even manages to largely avoid the persistent failing of the Hinchliffe era: half-baked endings. Partly that’s because after the steady pace of the first three episodes, this is pretty much non-stop action and peril. While Uvanov and Toos hold the bridge, the Doctor, Leela and D84 go to confront Taren Capel, and in a fairly relentless series of lashed-up bombs, laser probes and robot deactivation devices the robot revolution is defeated. It’s not the tidiest climax, and it abandons the conventions of the detective novel (which would have seen the Doctor gather the survivors in the lounge to unmask Taren Capel). However, everyone gets to play a part, Uvanov is revealed not to be the heartless manslaughterer Poul led us to believe, Toos gets to deduce that SV7 has been “turned”, and D84 becomes a hero.
Doctor Who episode 446: The Robots of Death – Part Three (12/2/1977)
[Spoilers]
Doctor Who episode 445: The Robots of Death – Part Two (5/2/1977)
The Agatha Christie allusions continue to be obvious: the scenes of Poul telling Uvanov, ‘We’ve all got something to hide’, and Zilda discovering something incriminating in Uvanov’s quarters just before she’s strangled are pure murder mystery. But again, this is all surface gloss. The real story Boucher wants to tell is quite hard SF: in a civilisation that has become dependent on robots, but failed to escape the uncanny valley (Uvanov’s ‘tin brains’ insult nods to the idea that these people aren’t as comfortable with the robots as they pretend), the revelation that the First Law of Robotics can be bypassed is liable to cause society to collapse.
Doctor Who episode 444: The Robots of Death – Part One (29/1/1977)
Is it just me or does the Sandminer look like the Thundercats’ Lair? This is a design masterpiece, an entire world imagined around the same aesthetic, from costumes through the the robot masks and the furnishings. Even the corridors, which could easily have been bog standard white moulded flats, look like a high-end, sterile spa. Everything from the witty script out speaks to a decadent civilisation built around a dependence on robots, where beauty and prosperity and one’s position in the social hierarchy are all that anyone really has to think about.
Doctor Who episode 443: The Face of Evil – Part Four (22/1/1977)
This is a rare story that gets more interesting as it goes along. The Tribe of the Sevateem stuff was fine, but I felt like it ran out of puff well before the end of the second episode. Whereas this, although it probably includes one corridor scene too many (and Leela getting possessed twice, which is weak as water), is filled with great character moments and wit, and ends up as the most compelling Hinchcliffe finale since Genesis of the Daleks.
Next Time... 