‘You always know. You just can’t be bothered to tell anyone. It’s like it’s some kind of game, and only you know the rules.’ Again, the choppy TV edit constantly teeters on the brink of collapsing into a mess. Luckily, it’s shot on location in period costume rather than on outer-space sets with glittery costumes, because the dialogue and plot isn’t much advanced from Dragonfire’s (and I like Dragonfire).
‘Deep down, everybody wants to come into the water.’ I guess because Fenric is an evil from the dawn of time it has the power to do more or less anything, which explains the creepy but baffling events in this episode: runes burning themselves into existence; a wellspring of deadly poison; girls running fully-dressed into the sea, and barnacled corpses rising from the deep.
‘This is it. The final battle between the gods and the beasts.’ It’s the most convincing Halloween episode since State of Decay, even if most of it takes place during the day. As with Dragonfire, it’s a melange of references, particularly to Dracula. And like most great Doctor Who it juxtaposes modern (for 1942) computers and machinery with ancient runes and Viking curses. It’s got POV shots of an unseen something hunting a terrified man along the beach, and the promise of ancient evil returning to haunt the present. It’s as much a race memory of Hinchcliffe Doctor Who as Remembrance of the Daleks was for the UNIT era.
‘If you don’t like it then bog off.’ Light is defeated in the same way as Dr Johnson in Blackadder the Third, by the hero pointing out gaps in his catalogue. This is more straightforward than the first two episodes, offering some necessary clarifications around Smith and Light’s separate plans (although how Smith thinks assassinating Queen Victoria will allow him to ascend the throne still less overturn Parliament is anyone’s guess).
‘To catch a wolf, I may have unleashed a tiger.’ This has a reputation for being complicated and impenetrable, and I think this is largely because there are two stories in parallel. One is Josiah Smith’s attempts to become a Victorian gentleman and restore the British Empire, the other is the Doctor’s decision to uncover the evil Ace once sensed in Perivale.
‘Can we go now Professor; the whole place gives me the creeps?’ Famously, the last Old Testament Doctor Who serial was originally conceived as Lungbarrow, the story that would introduce the Doctor’s family and reveal the existence of pre-Hartnell iterations in the form of the Other, a notion curiously resurrected in 1997 long after the New Adventures had lost interest in it. In a lapse of misjudgement, John Nathan-Turner nixed the idea, and so Marc Platt repurposed his story as Ghost Light and made it about exploring Ace’s dark past rather than the Doctor’s.
‘Simple isn’t it, just like most killings.’ In between plotting that gracelessly lurches from one scene to the next, there’s something very good here that suggests the show is groping towards the kind of ongoing character arcs beloved of 1990s telefantasy. For instance it’s rare for the series to call back to character moments from earlier episodes, but Mordred’s challenge to the Doctor – ‘look me in the eye end my life’ – makes it obvious that Cartmel isn’t just trying to get something in front of the cameras from week to week but wants to do something more ambitious.
‘Now I’m vexed.’ I like that Aaronovitch writes this as a proper “The Two Brigadiers” with the same slight tension and mild sniping between Lethbridge-Stewart and Bambera as we’d get between two incarnations of the Doctor. They even get a memorable first meeting: ‘I am the Brigadier,’ snaps Bambera. ‘So am I,’ announces Lethbridge-Stewart as he emerges from Arthur’s spaceship with the rescued Doctor. Rightly, though, there’s no implication that the old Brig is the better version and barring a couple of snide remarks (‘I thought you’d retired’; ‘Good lord, is that her name?’) the two of them are quickly on the same page. This era of the show likes the popular history of Doctor Who but is confident enough to suggest we’ve never had it so good. Bessie might be back, but the number plate is very clearly Who 7.
‘She vanquished me and I threw myself on her mercy.’ Bits of this look like a bad pop video from circa 1985 (especially Mordred opening a gateway across the dimensions complete with excited muzak, disco lights and a lot of stage laughter). The first five minutes are a chore, with McCoy asked to gargh at Excalibur’s flying scabbard as Christopher Bowen delivers unsayable dialogue.
‘Sideways in time, across the boundaries that divide one universe from another.’ Some of the details in this are brilliant: the Brigadier ending up with Doris; a genuinely internationally-flavoured UNIT and some effort put into getting a more diverse cast; futuristic hints like ‘the King’ and carphones, the little robot coin that could just have been a lump of colourful plastic, but suggests a level of attentiveness and care behind the scenes. Nicholas Courtney’s performance is superb: the moment he tells Doris kindly but firmly, ‘I’m not playing’ at soldiers is very moving. He’s not just “the Brigadier” showing up to tick a continuity box, we get a sense of a man with a life that we haven’t really had since the end of Season Eight.
Next Time... 