This Sporting Life

The TARDIS arrives in London in 1966 but the streets have been cordoned off and people have been ordered to clear the area. The World Cup has been stolen at the height of the season; this would not normally be something the Doctor would be interested in but when a piece of the missing item comes into their possession, the Doctor, Steven and Dodo suspect that there is something more going on than simple theft or a sports prank.

This Sporting Life is one of the Short Trips range from Big Finish and made for a fun listen through the headphones via the Big Finish app on my phone as I wandered around the streets of my native Toronto last week. Given that the tale is told in under 40 minutes it has a structure something akin to that of a TV script, with the pace moving quicker than the usual Big Finish fare where they are able to take their time over several episodes.

The mystery of the deserted streets of London evokes the feel of later episodes of the show where alien invasions have forced people inside or to flee entirely, and due to the one man cast (Peter Purves narrating as well as providing the dramatized lines for Steven Taylor, the Doctor and the heavily accented Goldsmith) there is not exactly a feel of a busy full city going apeshit over a sporting event (I share Steven's cynicism about the hype surrounding the World Cup although I wouldn't go so far as to call the fans "idiot people").

This Sporting Life does not have the same grim edge that Bunker Soldiers wanted to have so by contrast it is a lighter story punctuated by some chuckle moments when the Doctor puts on his best indignant act and had to be led away by his companions while still going off. In fact the title of the episode itself is a reference to a film William Hartnell himself was in, which itself is not exactly a comedy by any stretch.

Regardless of its tone the short trip here is a nice bit of expansion on the time the Doctor spends with Steven and Dodo, even if Jackie Lane has so far been unconvinced to return to the role even for one episode (if Janet Fielding could be convinced to reprise Tegan, anything is possible). But their days as a team are drawing to a close...

NEXT EPISODE: THE SAVAGES

Bunker Soldiers

It's 1240 and a Mongol army is advancing upon the city of Kiev. Nothing can slow this force down it seems and the people of Kiev are waiting for the inevitible; they are waiting to die. The Doctor, Steven and Dodo have landed in Kiev but are denied access to the TARDIS unless they help the people of Kiev. The Doctor knows he cannot interfere with history and the siege of Kiev is something he cannot change, but there is another alien presence in the city which a desperate faction is willing to unleash in the hopes that it will help their cause.

Hmmm. Bunker Soldiers is one of the BBC Books range of novels published in 2001 and it was the second to feature Steven and Dodo with the first Doctor, although while reading it I can't shake the feeling that author Martin Day was not really interested in Dodo's presence at all. How do I know? For starters she is barely in it. I didn't think to do an actual page count but she's not a very active participant in the story at all, relegated to hanging around with another girl her age and being a bad influence on her while the Doctor goes to ask the Mongols to spare Kiev and Steven gets entire chapters of action to himself told in the first person. But Dodo's inclusion makes for placement in that short bit of time between The Gunfighters and the next story, The Savages.

There is a monster on the loose in Kiev in the story; something that can change its shape to blend in with its surroundings and something that was expected to help protect Kiev but seems to want to kill anyone in its path. Its alien origins are hinted at in the odd flashback here and there be it to the past in Russia or somewhere else loaded with technical jargon. The cover art is a bit misleading where that is concerned; it looks more like an alien from V than a shape shifter and what is described is more akin to the monster seen in 2007's Lazarus Experiment. 

I couldn't really get into this one for some reason. I'm not sure if it was the flat supporting cast of Kiev or the shift between first and third person narratives or the fact that the whole alien monster plot just didn't seem to even be necessary; the story could have worked as a purely historical tale and the effort spent pasting together a passable plot for the alien could have gone into refining the supporting cast. Or the alien presence could have been refined itself and played more of a role; it's one thing to shroud it in mystery but it's another to just crash bang resolve it within the last 20 pages of the story.  Odds are BBC Books will commission an audio book of the tale and it might make for an okay translation but I kinda hope they don't... I'd rather just put this one back on the shelf and move on...

NEXT EPISODE: THIS SPORTING LIFE

The Gunfighters

Suffering from a toothache, the Doctor puts the TARDIS down looking for some aid. The ship does not provide the best location for this and lands in Tombstone, Arizona, in October 1881 just before the infamous shoot out at the OK Corral. Dodo and Steven launch themselves into their roles as a tacky cowgirl and cowboy, unaware that the Clantons are in town looking for Doc Holliday. The Doctor, however, discovers that Holliday is the very dentist he seeks but a case of mistaken identity follows and lands him right in the Clanton family crosshairs, with Johnny Ringo not too far behind...

The Gunfighters is one of those stories which craws wildly differing opinions from fans; it is either loved or hated - there has yet to be anyone who was only mildly receptive to it. I'm one of the "love it" team although it's not hard to see why the "hate it" camp has such a hard time enjoying it; in fact the reasons are pretty much the same either side of the coin.

For starters it's a comedy. Some say that there is no room in Doctor Who for comedy and would not have enjoyed The Romans either for the same reason (wow - that seems like so long ago now) but when it's done right it's fine. I wouldn't say this is done exactly right but it's humourous enough and doesn't have a laugh track. I get a kick out of the small stuff like Steven tripping over his spurs when he walks, his cabaret act (at gunpoint) with Dodo at the Last Chance Saloon, and the interplay between the Doctor and any of the supporting cast. My favourite has to be the Doctor's experience at the dentist office as he realizes this is not the height of dental professionalism.

The supporting cast are... well... painful to watch sometimes. All those fake American accents just sound so bad and corny; thankfully Steven and Dodo give it up by the end of episode one and the Doctor never tries it on. But there is not much menace to be had in a shaky voice trying to sound tough in an accent that is not it's own. And as for Johnny Ringo... he looks like he's headed for an old gay bar I knew of called Badlands in his all black (of course - cause he's a bad guy!) attire and his tough guy smoking act.

Then there's the matter of the music. This was the first time lyrical music was used as incidental, and to an extent the lyrical stylings of Lynda Baron as she sings "The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon" serve as a bit of narration between acts as well. This sort of thing would not happen again until 1987's Delta and the Bannermen and even then it would not be to the same effect. The song has been added as a bonus to one of the audio releases of the story; one is the actual audio track with linking narration (which is baffling as this episode exists in its entirety and can be watched) and the other is a straight up reading of the novelization.

The big redeemer though is the sets - they're fantastic! As with The Ark there is a lot of overhead work and even a second floor to the saloon set, and the streets of Tombstone are actually pretty well designed and well shot to look bigger than they are. There's an obvious jump to a film stage for the OK Corral scenes and the opening where the Clantons ride into town on their horses, and even that looks good for the time.

I had mentioned the novelization of the story earlier; Donald Cotton provided one for this tale and very much in the style of The Romans and The Myth Makers the printed version plays up the comedy element some more. I had seen the televised episode before the novel was published and as such was not thrown off by the variances between screen and page... well not too much.

There are no real continuity points in this one; the premise of the Doctor's toothace is started at the final seconds of The Celestial Toymaker and there are no references to other adventures to cite aside from that and the fact that Steven and Dodo are still wearing the same clothes from that episode. The story does end with the Doctor, Steven and Dodo landing on another planet in an age of peace and prosperity, but it's not out of the question to suppose they had a couple other adventures in between them...

NEXT EPISODE: BUNKER SOLDIERS

The Celestial Toymaker

The TARDIS has been waylaid in a mysterious dimension ruled by the enigmatic Celestial Toymaker. The Doctor knows this being of old and warns Steven and Dodo not to fall victim to his tricks before he himself is taken away from them and forced to play a trilogic game. Steven and Dodo are thrust into the Toymaker’s games with his collection of dolls as their opponents, and they must finish playing them before the Doctor makes the 1023^rd move in his game, otherwise they will all be doomed to remain in the Toymaker’s realm as his playthings. The saying is it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye, but the stakes are significantly higher in the Toymaker’s realm…

Science fiction loves to make toys into sinister objects, and sometimes what is produced borders on the horrific. Toymaker is by no means an Annabelle but the toys that do inhabit the dollhouse are in some ways creepier when the viewer realizes that these are actual people who did not escape the Toymaker’s games. Their motivation to play the games is to beat Steven and Dodo and win their own freedom back, or that’s at least the subtext, and they cheat, they lie and resort to all sorts of dirty tricks. Each game that Steven and Dodo are forced to play has a deadly consequence to losing, be it to get stuck dancing forever or being electrocuted stepping on the wrong part of the floor and the prize at the end of the game is the TARDIS… or a fake one. The rogues gallery they face is comprised of some of what one might find in a 1960s child's toy collection: a toy soldier, royalty from a deck of cards and even some creepy expressionless dancing dolls. The worst of their competition? It’s a tie between the nasty Cyril or the clown duo Clara and Joey. 

But Steven and Dodo prove to be an effective team together, effectively carrying the weight of the story between them with the Doctor sidelined. While Dodo just gets to act spunky as usual we see Steven has progressed in stature on board the TARDIS and looks like he is helping pilot the ship as the story opens, and again at the end. Continuity wise there is a mention of the Refusians when the Doctor starts to fade off, but as far as anyone can tell there could have been any amount of time passing between the conclusion of The Ark and the start of Toymaker.

The Doctor is hardly in the story, at least physically. William Hartnell needed another vacation and the Doctor was thus cleverly rendered invisible by the Toymaker, so the most that is seen of him for the bulk of the story is one hand floating about moving the pieces of the trilogic game. An interesting bit of background on this one: the original plan with making the Doctor disappear was to make him reappear in a new body with a new actor, thus removing William Hartnell from the title role (he was becoming a problem to work with due to his failing health and the production team realized they were going to have to do something to replace him - but that was not yet to be). The Doctor does, however, know the Toymaker, and speaks to him as if he were speaking once more to the Monk. Does this mean the Toymaker is one of the Doctor’s own people? His power over the Doctor suggests that he is not of the same race and may well be his match and potential nemesis, but there’s no more background given to how the Doctor knows this man and what happened the first time they met. The Toymaker is often referred to as malevolent, but I don’t see him dripping with that same brand of evil; he’s just bored and powerful and something of a psychopath.

 

I came across another review of this one some time ago and found a fascinating rant about how the Toymaker’s character is actually a tremendous racist jab at the Chinese as the Toymaker dresses in Chinese garb but does not go so far as to don the dreaded yellowface. Even the word “celestial” seems to have been a word attributed to the Chinese, or at least in times past it was common to refer to China as the Celestial Empire. The commentary I read after the article had one voice demanding that the episode tapes be burned, which made me wonder if this was a sincere reaction or someone who knew right well that episodes 1, 2 and 3 are missing and was just taking the piss out of another revisionist politically correct fan. Yes, all that exists of the tale is the last episode and the lead in material at the conclusion of The Ark; the rest I enjoyed on audio MP3. The first time I enjoyed the story, though, was by reading the Target novel penned by script editor Gerry Davis and newcomer Alison Bingeman back in 1986, and it was as true to the original as it could be given the lack of source reference material.

But we all know this is not going to end the Toymaker's way, and there's going to be a clever escape, and a lead right into the next episode... yur darn tooin'...

NEXT EPISODE: THE GUNFIGHTERS

The Ark

In the far far future the Earth is doomed, and humanity has exited en masse on board a giant spaceship headed for the planet Refusis where they hope to start again. A race of reptilian cyclops called Monoids have tagged along as well and are earning their passage on the human ship by assisting with the work that needs to be done. It is a journey which will take 700 years. The TARDIS arrives and although the travellers are initially welcomed as esteemed guests, Dodo's head cold begins to spread like wildfire among the humans and the Monoids and they are soon on trial for their lives. The Doctor is determined to find a cure if they
will let him, but even curing this plague will not be enough as its long term effects will be felt far into the future.... 700 years into the future to be exact.

So this is Dodo's actual introduction story, on television anyway. She tends to rush headlong into things and at first does not believe that the TARDIS has actually left Earth, thinking it to just be a time machine for localized travel. In Salvation she was carefully kept away from Steven so their banter in episode one here is still a genuine first conversation about the perils of time and space travel. The Doctor is amused by her, even if he doesn't care for her language skills.

Where the humans and Monoids are concerned this is very much a tale of equality, or its absence under the guise of benevolence. The humans do not treat the Monoids like dirt but they certainly do not treat them as equals, developing a simple sign language to communicate with them as they are unable to speak and sending them off to do the dirty work. There's a certain amount of lip service paid to the aliens and their friendship with humanity and the value of their contribution to the ship's well being but it's all very condescending. The true read of their status comes when one of the humans remarks how the plague is bad enough but imagine if a human were to die from it - this while Monoids are dying all around them. Comeuppance, though, is inevitible, and halfway through the story the TARDIS departs, only to return 700 years later when the Monoids have risen up and made mankind their bitch. Humiliation and cruelty reign supreme, and it's no loner in silence once the Monoids develop speech.

I have a few questions about design, though. The first is the Monoids themselves; they seem to be reptiles but they have this funny kind of carapace like a skirt which covers their legs down to the floor and they have the oddest two-toed feet of any aliens so far. This design doesn't give them a great deal of mobility and they shuffle around the sets - sometimes for their lives - with only a bit less sure-footed grace than that of the Voord in Keys of Marinus with their big flippers. The one big staring eye roughly where the mouth should be is creepy enough, but then there's that big mop of hair, sometimes black and sometimes ginger. I don't get it. My other question is about the attire of the humans in the future - strappy tops over speedos and sandals? Is it really hot on the Ark? Are the environmental controls out? And out of the whole male cast there are really only two men who have the arms to carry off that look and they get rid of one early in episode one and the other we only see from the back briefly in episode four. Yes, I look for these things.

One of two men in the serial who could get away with the costume

The pace of the story is a bit slow, though, even if it if chock full of dialogue and the direction seems to be taking a bit of a turn to more modern storytelling with a lot of overhead shots and some decent location work for the jungle scenes. Something just made me nod off a bit. It is all on DVD though so it can be enjoyed in its entirety, which is rare for a story from this season. I first saw it on a WNED 17 omnibus edition as if it were a film back in the 80s and at the time was bewildered by who this Dodo person was, and Steven as well for they only showed complete stories and the last complete one they had was The Time Meddler. So at a first time view I was interested, but any subsequent views were like.... zzzzz. Even the enhanced special effects the series was starting to dabble with at the time didn't make it a stellar viewing experience... although... seeing the Earth burning as it headed into the sun was a bit disturbing.

I got my hands on the novel of the story sometime after though, and found that it had a lot more going on within its pages, with the Doctor taking a long leave of absence from Steven and Dodo and travelling to the different areas of the Ark looking for the cure for the plague, including to a farm homestead where a widow confides to the Doctor that she had actually buried her late husband in the ground rather than commit his body to space. That part felt a bit Starlost to me but added a bit more to the idea of the Ark being a vast environment and not a control room with people in speedos wandering around. I don't know if this was all some sequence author Paul Erickson wanted to put in but it was cut, or if it was something he thought of later to enhance the experience. Maybe he liked Starlost.

Doctor Who does not always go out of its way to preach about morals but the message sent by the tale of the Monoids here is pretty simple: treat everyone fairly or else. It's not the last time the show will go here, either. But once the Doctor and company have shown everyone else how to be better people they're off again, right back into danger...

NEXT EPISODE: THE CELESTIAL TOYMAKER

Salvation

Young Dorothea (who prefers to be caled Dodo) Chaplet escapes from being forcibly confined by a being she knows is not human and runs right into a blue police box on the Wimbledon Common. But rather than get the help of the police she finds herself in the company of the Doctor and Steven, and their hasty departure in the TARDIS takes them to New York City on the same day, where it turns out they are not the only visitors. A group of beings have come to town with the power to give people what they want, and they are drawing attention and growing in power and influence. The military wants them gone, they know a threat when they see one. Steven, his faith in the Doctor shaken by the recent death of Anne Chaplet, finds himself wanting something to believe in. And Dodo realizes that one of the beings is the same one who she has encountered before.

Despite having a pretty drab cover like the other BBC Books PDAs of its time, Salvation is easily one of the more engaging tales of the line. I'd first acknowledge the use of New York City as a backdrop to the tale as a fitting place for the story to take place; given the time it is set in there is not yet a military order in the UK to deal with alien menaces so the next best thing is the paranoid armed forces of the United States of America with all their secret Roswell stuff and their not so secret fears about the Russians, and with the Vietnam war boiling away across the Pacific. Unlike some adventures in the eleventh Doctor's time (looking ahead) this isn't some big suck up to an emerging market stunt.

I had said before that Dodo's appearance on board the TARDIS at the conclusion of The Massacre was not exactly the most clever companion introduction ever, but here there's an attempt to make it a little bit more credible. Well sort of. Escaping from a stranger who kept her locked up for days and attempted to molest her might rattle someone a bit and cast a bit of doubt on her easygoing manner at landing inside the TARDIS, unless we want to write that off as shock. Given that Dodo herself is not the deepest companion on screen she here is given a lot of rich backstory with her parents dead and her cold distant aunt a peripheral figure in her lie when she needs guiding adult influence in her life more than ever. Her almost instant bond with the Doctor is a lot more credible now, and his with her is easier to buy into as Steven has walked out on him. Sadly though this is really the only time Dodo is going to be an effective companion who is more than her brief of a plucky teenage girl from London.

Steven is haunted by the guilt of not having helped someone in his past and has been using his time with the Doctor as a means to make a difference, but with the death of Anne Chaplet and the Doctor's refusal to help her comes a new feeling of shame. The gods will make everything right, and after they intervene to save Steven himself he is a believer, and is now on the opposite side from the Doctor. Deep down Steven knows that the Doctor is probably right, though, but the gods have him in their thrall - him and a growing mass of New Yorkers who all want something.

Without Steven at his side the Doctor is forced to carry on himself, protecting Dodo and trying to make the bull-headed General Marchant see how to combat the gods without conventional weapons. The Doctor sees the gods for what they are and refuses to let them affect him, even if they can see right into his mind and pluck at his past failures to save people (Sara, Anne, and there is even a reference to Rebecca Nurses' fate in author Steve Lyons' previous book, The Witch Hunters). Lyons is very good at getting Hartnell's Doctor on page - you can hear him when you read the lines.

There's a lot of other things and characters happening in Salvation from the supporting military personnel to a crooked PR man and a pushy journalist but to me the real standout is just the regular cast, even if they are not all working together properly right now. Dodo must be confused by the tension between the Doctor and Steven as they work out their differences but she still chooses to become part of the crew This crew combo suffers as far as history of the show is concerned because they only get four complete stories together (and only half of those are complete in themselves to be seen) and Dodo does not stay long once Steven makes his eventual departure. If they had been written this way, or if this story had been around back then even, maybe things would have been different. But whatever has happened, Salvation can be dropped right in after The Massacre to give Dodo that proper introduction without disrupting any of the continuity into what comes after...

NEXT EPISODE: THE ARK

The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve

The TARDIS makes a return to France, this time in 1572. It may be an earlier period than the Doctor's previous visit during the Revolution but it by no means any less dangerous; tensions between the Catholic and Protestant citizens is on the rise and a royal marriage arranged to ease them has failed. The Doctor wishes to see a man named Preslin about his work in science and takes his leave of Steven, advising him to steer clear of any local trouble stemming from religion or politics, The dire warning does no good, though, and Steven finds himself alone in Paris in the days leading up to a bloody slaughter.

This one has interested me for a long time, going way back to when I first read the Target novelization of the script in 1987. As the episode doesn't exist on film or video I had very little to go on content-wise aside from the odd photo of the Doctor and Steven in period dress and a few details of the plot. Along came John Lucarotti's novelization of the tale and I was intrigued by its depth and detail and the sequences involving not only the Doctor's resemblance to the vile Abbot of Amboise but the Doctor's journey under Paris through the tunnels on a dog cart, the attempted burning of the TARDIS, and of the Massacre itself. Moreover I was surprised that the whole book was written as if the Doctor was on trial somewhere for interfering in history, and the events of the tale were being presented as evidence - this very thing had just been done on TV a year earlier in 1986. And at the end of the book there was no new companion introduced as I had expected; a girl named Dodo Chaplet was merely mentioned in passing as having joined the TARDIS crew sometime after the adventure. I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I knew I wasn't getting the whole story, brilliant as the novel was.

Then I got my hands on the audio recording of the original episode, narrated by Peter Purves, and it was almost a completely different story. The Doctor was hardly in it, and not once did he cross paths with the Abbot. There was no dog cart, there were no catacombs, and the TARDIS was not proclaimed and abomination and set on fire. And when Dodo Chaplet finally did arrive, it was in a hurried sequence at the end of episode four with no proper intro.

It is possible to reconcile both versions of the story, though, as the Doctor is missing for most of the televised serial and could have been getting up to all sorts of adventure while Steven tries to help a girl named Anne Chaplet avoid the clutches of the Abbot and the Catholic conspirators. The harder parts to explain away involve the Doctor and the Abbot meeting face to face, as the Abbot's fate was sealed before the Doctor returned to the screen. What was presented in the novel is apparently the original draft of the show before things had to be altered to accommodate a vacation for William Hartnell and remove some of the more challenging visual sequences. In an interview I read once before Lucarotti stated that the trial part was his own idea but he did not know that it was being used in the (at the time) current series.

Steven's about at breaking point in his relationship with the Doctor. Having seen so many friends die in the fight against the Daleks he is horrified that the Doctor will not do anything to try and save Anne Chaplet from the tide of history, and effectively sends her out into the night streets of Paris knowing right well that come morning thousands of Protestants (also called Hugenots) will be slaughtered in a religious cleansing by the Catholics. The Doctor knows he cannot interfere, and has an interesting soliloquy inside the TARDIS on his own, reflecting on his companions and their inability to understand his responsibilities as a time travellers, and he even muses about going home.

And along comes your Dorothea Chaplet, who prefers to be called Dodo, at the end of episode four when the TARDIS arrives in modern day London. As her surname matches Anne's the Doctor offers that consolation to Steven that maybe Anne survived and this is one of her descendants.

I don't like how Dodo just blunders into the TARDIS and is immediately accepted and taken away without any real consideration. Her only personailty trait seems to be she's upbeat, even in the revelation of her lack of parents and a great aunt who won't care if she doesn't come home. Oh, fine, welcome aboard then. It just feels like she was thrust into the series for the sake of having a female companion around and not have it just the Doctor and Steven travelling together. Oh if only someone had written a backstory for her, or at least a better introduction.

Oh wait, someone has...

NEXT EPISODE: SALVATION