…join the TARDIS and its crew as they travel beyond the sun
to the edge of destruction via the brink of disaster and on to Story B. There,
I think that’s covered all the bases, coz, like it or not, it’s…
Inside the Spaceship
In which we learn
it’s always the smallest things that cause the biggest problems…
- as the story opens we see the Doctor, Susan and Ian lying about unconscious around the TARDIS control room. Of Barbara there is, initially, no sign. However, we hear her before we see her and...erm...it sounds rather rude. In fact you might be forgiven for thinking she's deliberately slipped them all a Mickey Finn, just so she can have a bit of personal time alone in her room with the device she no doubt keeps hidden away at the back of her knicker drawer. It's hard to discern from the grunts she makes as to whether she's having fun or needs some replacement batteries. Then we finally get to see her and...blimey...she looks a bit like Old Mother, draped as she is in a nasty length of rather rough looking cloth - it's the present Ganatus gave her at the end of the last story. The way she's entwined herself within its folds is actually quite effective; it looks as though she's desperately trying to cling on to a rapidly receding memory (perhaps it smells of fit Thal...an aroma she's become quite accustomed to over the past few days adventuring).
- has Verity Lambert managed to persuade Samuel Beckett to knock out an episode on his day off, because this makes about as much sense as any of his plays I've ever seen? And it's all a bit stagey, especially in the opening few minutes, as everyone speaks in a very stilted manner and gesticulates in an over emphatic way - it's as if Doctor Who has suddenly been taken over by a local amdram group...who've spent the past six months rehearsing and are still ever so slightly shit.
- this is possibly the most adult story so far. The first
adventure was a very gritty, at times
uncomfortably violent, political thriller; the second a story with high drama
and an undercurrent of doom that would've made the audience back in the day reflect on the political situation of
the real world in the early sixties. Both were horrific enough in their own
way. But this deals with mental breakdown and attacks and tricks played on the
mind. At least the threat in the previous two stories was tangible, here it’s
invisible and insidious. Like Midnight
forty-four years later it shows that psychological terror is still the most
effective - the threat of something dark and unknown playing on the primitive
subconscious parts of our minds (a mind we saw at work back in 100,000 BC) can lead to all kinds
of irrational behaviour. The whole thing plays out a bit like a haunted house
tale - no one’s quite sure what’s going on. It’s as if the four travellers have
woken up in the middle of the night from a collective bad dream only to find out all hell’s broken loose, and if there’d been a bigger cast of characters I
suspect they’d have been dropping like flies throughout Episode One. As it is,
the “Something inside the ship” approach of the first half makes it feel more like
one of those spine-tingling Sapphire and
Steel type supernatural stories, and we’d be entirely forgiven for thinking
this is what we were going to get. The show’s formula is still in its early
days here remember - we don’t know what its boundaries are yet, anything’s
possible.
- blimey! Carol Ann Ford couldn’t stop a pig in an alley,
could she! Her legs are so bandy! I’ve never noticed that before.
- Susan’s tights don’t half wrinkle when Ian pops her onto
the bed (don’t get too excited, this isn’t Bouquet
of Barbed Wire; he won’t turn out to be her father and then give her a
jolly good seeing to). Not so much Nora Batty as Susan Bonkers though.
- so the fast return switch sticking (not that we know that's what's wrong with the ship just yet you understand...oops! Spoilers!) even affects the food machine! If I were the Doctor I'd get someone in to look at the wiring once this is all over and done with.
 |
| Ian realised there was only one way he was ever going to get a shag aboard the TARDIS - rohypnol! |
- it’s obvious that madness has descended upon the ship as
both Susan’s and Barbara’s hair is even bigger than usual. The first sign of
trouble and the make-up department start furiously back-combing!
- and so we come to Doctor Who's homage to Psycho as, with a pair of scissors which any schoolchild could find in their mothers sewing kit, Carol Ann shows us exactly what she thinks of Ray Cusick's pull down bed design (it's an utterly gob-smacking moment. I bet parents across the land were hiding the contents of the cutlery drawer, just so little Timmy couldn't get his hands on Mummy's best carving knife to re-enact this scene on grandma). Mind you, it is an awful bit of kit. It looks like a sun-lounger! Has he just come back from holiday in Marbella? All it needs is a bedside table to rise from the floor with a drink in half a pineapple with a bendy straw sticking out of it to complete the image.
 |
| That'd been one hell of a party to celebrate the recording of the shows eleventh episode. Bill Hartnell had got so pissed he'd slept the night on the studio floor...in costume! |
- it’s ten minutes in before the Doctor gets up off the
floor! The first thing he mutters is ‘I can’t take you back Susan’, an
almost throwaway line which adds to the mystery of their origins and the
circumstances surrounding their exile beautifully. To
begin with he really doesn’t want to contemplate the fact that something
malignant might have breached his ship - the one refuge he has in all of time
and space. Is he perhaps afraid that having moved it from Totter’s Lane his own
people have managed to get a trace on his whereabouts and are now
hunting him to ground (as we see them do in Episode Nine of The War Games)?
- the incidental music is reused in The Moonbase, so it doesn't help that I keep expecting a Cyberman to sashay in at any moment and drone on and on about the importance of its race's survival.
- the Doctor's Vivienne Westwood stylee
 |
| Carole Anne's spitting feathers when she finds out that, not only does Jacqueline Hill have a significantly larger dressing room than her own, but it also has a fridge! |
-'These numbers keep blurring before my eyes' says the Doctor as he and Ian check the fault locator. 'What can I do to help?' asks the teacher. Erm...perform an eye test?
- when Susan drops the pant-dampening bombshell that a potential
invader could have hidden in ‘one of us’, I’m immediately put in mind of John
Carpenter’s The Thing and start to
worry that Barbara’s head might suddenly fall off, sprout legs and go for a
leisurely scuttle around the control room floor while some previously unseen
huskies enter and start exploding everywhere.
- the scanner shows them images of places where the TARDIS has previously landed. There's the English countryside, some place Big Finish had to go and bloody well write a story about for their Chronic Companions line and...hey...hang on, when did the Doctor visit the home planet of the Clangers (for that is, indeedy, precisely what it looks like...how ironic then that the doors should open and we hear what sounds suspiciously like a congested Soup Dragon)?
- bloody hell! Barbara doesn't half have a go at the Doctor! I bet her neighbours live in constant fear of her going off on one because their bins are a bit whiffy or their cat's had a crap in her flower bed.
- so the Doctor thinks Ian and Barbara are trying to sabotage the ship so they can take control of it. Erm...there's only one slight flaw in this argument. If he can't even steer the bloody thing, then what makes him think two prim and proper schoolteachers from the East End of London in the 1960s are going to be able to? It's almost worth letting them have a go...I mean they couldn't make any more of a hash of it than he has.
- ooooh, we get a brief flash of Ian’s Y-fronts as Barbara
turns him over and his dressing gown opens suggestively.
- fuck me! The danger signal we hear (the cloister bell?) sounds like the mating call of an extremely rampant moose! I'm listening to this episode on headphones - I nearly had a coronary!
- this story really belongs to the TARDIS. If this were a
novel I can imagine it would’ve been written entirely from her point of view
(this early on we should really regard her as an “it”, but it’s hard to break
the habit (started by Tom Baker?) of referring to her as being female, (especially so in light of The Doctor’s
Wife) - looking on in utter frustration as she tries to work out why its
occupants aren’t taking heed of her warnings and wishing she could communicate
in a language they would understand.
- Barbara’s attempt at an explanation for what’s been going
on - well, we might as well listen to the Doctor’s speech in Arabic in the
extras on the DVD release, it makes just about as much sense.
- Imagery - this story has an aura of witchcraft about it, something which is reflected in certain visual aspects on display. There’s a rather disturbing carving on the table in Susan’s
bedroom, for example, that’s got absolutely no reason to be there - there’s no
other ornamentation on display anywhere (apart from the clock in the control
room which has a purpose in the narrative), and I found myself beginning to
question why it had been included, wondering if it had anything to do with what
was going on. But that’s generally what this story does…makes you see things
that aren’t really there. All the shadows certainly help to heighten the mood of uncertainty (indeed, Susan even mentions them)...it's not something us fans of the seventies and early eighties expect to see in the TARDIS. When I was a kid it was usually lit so brightly you had to put on a pair of Ray-Ban's to stop retina damage whenever there was a scene set in the control room. (Sadly, as Susan races from her bedroom to stop the Doctor from turning on the scanner in Episode One, we catch a glimpse of the shadowy outlines of two studio hands who look as they've been caught red handed having a sneaky brew behind the set; they leg it as quickly as possible once they realise they've been spotted...no doubt expecting to get a right bollocking from Verity). Then there’s Susan in her rather unflattering
nightie, which just screamed ‘Puritan’ at me (especially when she's lying on her bed with a flannel over her forehead). She looks as though she
could’ve stepped straight out of a stage production of The Crucible. Quite appropriate considering she points an
accusatory finger at the two teacher’s in much the same way Abigail does the
womenfolk of Salem in Arthur Miller’s play.
- so, the ship just thought the Doctor had his finger pressed
down on the Fast Return Switch (which looks as though it could’ve fallen off
Verity Lambert’s twin tub by the way), hence the reason why the fault locator
couldn’t work out what was going on. Jeez! It sort of makes sense. In a way this is Doctor Who’s attempt at warning us of advancements in technology
and how, no matter how highly developed things become, just one small thing
going wrong can cause catastrophe. Also, the finger on the button analogy,
reeks of the political situation in 1963 - with the audience being encouraged to question what would happen if the computer controlling
either the USA’s or USSR’s nuclear stockpile were to be similarly affected...a nightmarish thought that gave me a
number of sleepless nights when I was a kid.
- Cry-Watch - the second
thing in the series to get me weeping like a child that’s just been told their
Christmas presents come from Argos down the local shopping centre and not some kindly old bloke who lives at the North Pole surrounded by his
little pixie helpers, happens towards the end of The Brink of Disaster.
And it really took me by surprise. Throughout the story, the Doctor has, more
often than not, treated both Ian and Barbara like dirt, believing them to be
the ones responsible for sabotaging the ship and even going so far as threatening to throw them into the void at one point. However, it's Barbara who manages to piece all the clues they've been given together and come to the conclusion that the TARDIS is in fact sentient and trying to alert them to
the real problem. In the aftermath of events, as the Doctor admits that she was
right and he was wrong, a stunned, resentful and shaken Barbara, unable even to speak,
simply stands up and leaves the room. It’s such
a powerful moment. She’s aware that the time has come to make a
conscious decision to either forgive this contemptuous old man who
kidnapped her, and his nefarious actions to date, and resign herself to becoming a slightly more willing
adventurer, or to let it all overwhelm her and allow herself to sink into a
depression that will ultimately see her lose sight of herself completely. And this
leads into a lovely coda between the pair in which she finally gets a
glimpse of the humanity which lies buried beneath his harsh and off-handed
attitude and which helps her to resolve her dilemma and make a decision she’s comfortable with. ‘We must look after you, you know - you’re very valuable’ he says,
standing up and gallantly helping her on with her coat. And when she smiles and
laughs it’s the most beautiful thing to behold, even though the Doctor actually manages
to apologise without using the words “I’m sorry” - yet the great thing is
Barbara’s wry smile lets us know she sees this, but is willing to let it pass.
As he offers her his arm and they both go to find out where it is they’ve
landed we know she’s made her choice and is comfortable with it. Theirs will go
on to be one of the deepest, most complex Doctor/companion relationships ever.
Only the bond between the Tenth Doctor and Donna will rival it, but whereas
their intimacy came about through an external binding
force working its way back through time (or some such cobblers), this is a relationship based on mutual understanding
and respect.
 |
| Ian felt a little hot under the collar when he realised Susan had somehow gotten her mitts on a home vasectomy kit. |
- ‘We’re on the brink of destruction…’ says the Doctor in
Episode Two (well, eventually - after a couple of stabs at the word
destruction…anyway, it was destruction in Episode One, shouldn’t it be disaster
in the second?) ‘…so that all four of us must work closely together’, and
indeed from hereon in that’s more or less what they will do. Oh, there’s still the
odd cross word and temper tantrum, but things had to move on sooner rather than
later otherwise they’d have literally ended up killing each other. The past
thirteen episodes have been absolutely fascinating and by the end of this, with the atmosphere between them all seemingly much more relaxed, you
really do look forward to spending a lot more time in their company. They've finally realised they must band
together as fellow travellers in order to survive the ordeals they inevitably seem to face,
which means that even in the future when they find themselves clashing (such as
in The Aztecs) their arguments have
more of a mutual respect behind them…well, certainly from the Doctor’s point of
view..
 |
| That settled it! It was the last time the Doctor ever bought any cheap shit from Argos! |
- so the power of the ship was being lured away by the
creation of a new solar system and this happened because the fast return switch
was stuck. It sort of makes sense. It’s like clicking the back browser button
on the internet, the more times you press it, the further back in your browsing
history you go, until there’s nowhere left and you end up at the very first
page you started, having passed the point at which you meant to stop. It could all have been explained a bit more simply if the home computer had
been around in 1963…David Whittaker could have cut a very long story short.
- so, as the story concludes, it finally feels as though the time
has come to lay to rest the bad feelings and bickering between the Doctor and
the two teachers that have marked out the past thirteen weeks. It’s time for a
new beginning. Not only for the characters themselves but for the shows
approach to them in general. We’re told that the Doctor got the coat Ian dons
from Gilbert and Sullivan, for example, yet it’s very hard to imagine the man we’ve seen on
screen up until now deigning to fraternise with such ‘stupid apes’ (as his
Ninth incarnation might have called them). But this is the production team
drawing a line under the overtly dark and sinister Doctor and hinting at a more
open, more tolerant character, to come…making things a little more relaxed and
enjoyable for those of us watching at home.
 |
| Clearly Primark were having a BOGOFF on unflattering female nightwear. |
- okay, so the TARDIS has been trying to warn everyone on-board that they’re heading for disaster, but that still doesn’t explain why
they spent the best part of two episodes acting as if they'd been auditioning for a part in the latest Harold
Pinter play. My money’s on it being something to do with the ship attempting to
communicate directly with them via the telepathic circuits - and making a complete
hash of things, hence Ian and Barbara seemingly suffering the early onset of
dementia and the shockingly extreme reactions of the Doctor and Susan (who're
both affected by a sharp pain to the back of the neck whenever they get too
close to the console - perhaps this is a dangerously unsuccessful attempt at
direct communication between the vessel and her designated drivers, each of whom possess some
degree of telepathic sensitivity). But how much of the vitriol the Doctor directs
at the two teachers is a result of this outside influence and how much is
genuinely heartfelt? I know the relationship between them has been fractious
from the start, but the Doctor here seems completely deaf to all other
possibilities other than it being the two teachers with harmful intent in mind. His manner is, at times, not only intimidating, but downright violent. It’s as if his emotions are being amplified and warped tenfold - he acts without any kind of common sense whatsoever. Yet, by having him apologise to Barbara at the end of the story, the script gives the impression
that he was in control of his faculties at all times and his malicious actions
were just an attempt at self-defence. Of course, at this stage in his travels,
he’s probably unaware that the TARDIS contains such a component as telepathic
circuits (it’s not until after his exile
on Earth is lifted that we first hear of them, so maybe the Time Lords gave him
knowledge of their existence at some future point after they re-established contact with him),
and the reason for his turnabout is genuine horror at his ruthless attitude - a much needed wake-up call, forcing him to rethink
his attitude towards them.
Score on the
TARDIS doors - 5 - if ever a story
needed a bit of added narration from the characters involved to help us
understand what’s going on, it’s this one. As it stands the
TARDIS crew seem to jump randomly from fuddled uncertainty one moment to sudden
brief spells of lucidity the next, with nothing on display to help us join the
dots. What are they thinking and feeling whilst in their states of confusion,
and how do they feel when normality returns? To be fair it’s performed so well
it doesn’t really matter, it’s just that the situation is undeniably alienating
for the audience. These people are still fairly new in our lives, and just as
we were beginning to understand what makes them tick all this happens and it
suddenly feels as if we’re back to square one. The story’s engaging enough, but
in the most bizarre way. We’ve no idea what it’s all about for the most part,
and sadly the script gets as confused as the travellers’ minds at the most
important part (the denouement). Apparently, David Whitaker stayed up two days
and two nights writing this. Hmmm, maybe if he’d had a power nap at some point the second
episode might've made a bit more sense. It certainly helps that these days we
can rewind a DVD. When it was first broadcast, god knows how much of this went
over the heads of those watching. It’s also one of the most nihilistic stories
the series has ever produced. The moment where the Doctor places Susan and
Barbara next to the main doors so that ‘When the end does come they won’t know
anything about it’ is bloody bleak! This also possibly sees Richard Martin’s best
work on the series. Give him something less technical to do and he’s like a
different director. He may have been very interested in the more sci-fi stories
but he can’t handle them anywhere near as well as emotional drama. Inside the Spaceship is more Armchair Theatre and he can cope with
that, it’s just a shame he couldn’t have stayed around to direct Episode Two
(and I doubt if you’ll ever hear me say anything as complimentary as that about
him ever again).
 |
| During breaks in rehearsals, William Russell would bore the bejesus out of everyone by going through every bloody utensil on his newly acquired Swiss Army penknife. |
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