Format: DVD
Warts & All: Black Hat On A String!
Quote: Fancy a dance, Brigadier? It’s kind of you, Captain Yates. I think I’d rather have a pint.
Review: After Colony In Space appeared to break the show free from its earthbound shackles, we’re firmly back on Terra for this one, but this manages to not feel like a standard UNIT story. Much of UNIT, along with the Brigadier, are fenced out while the village is locked in an early Under The Dome scenario, and those personnel – Yates and Benton – who do make it in are in civvies. It’s Doctor Who meets Dennis Wheatley and explores the boundaries of that old Arthur C Clarke quote, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’
It’s occult versus science and, just as Doctor Who should, comes down firmly on the side of science, with conservation of energy observed in Azal’s growing and shrinking, white witch and believer, Olive Hawthorne, thoroughly complicit in the use of trickery during the rescue of the Doctor and even offering up a pseudoscientific psychokinetic justification for the ritualistic mumbo jumbo that accompanies spells and general Dæmon summoning. Which, by the way, I recall in the novelisation included the Master reciting ‘Mary had a little lamb’ backwards and I’m sorry to say I listened closely while watching and am still not sure if he does that in the TV show. If so, awesome. Because a) it underlines the point that he could be spouting any nonsense and b) it’s hilarious.
Delgado is clearly enjoying himself immensely and there’s something special about the idea of the Master assuming the role of village vicar. A rational existentialist vicar, no less. We could almost have done with an extra episode just seeing him minister to his flock over cups of tea, perhaps the odd sermon from the pulpit. But no, as The Mind Robber proved, five episodes is the ideal length for a by and large perfect Doctor Who adventure. And this is very nearly that. Honestly, if the production team hadn’t thought to drag somebody’s black fur hat across a graveyard in the wonderfully atmospheric opening storm scene was somebody’s black fur hat, I would struggle to find things to criticise. And even then they might’ve gotten away with it if they hadn’t advertised the fact so much in the extras.
But it’s such a tribbling, sorry, trifling little detail really and if anything my chief grumble ought to be about the weak ending – with the mighty Azal short-circuited by Jo’s act of self-sacrifice. This tremendously powerful being who has presided over the human race, been here for a hundred thousand years, with his practically telepathic insights with regard to the Master and the Doctor, has never encountered self-sacrifice? Come off it, chum. But sod it, because everything preceding is such tremendous fun. The Wheatley elements never get as creepy as the Wicker Man, but with scenes like the opening of the barrow and the Doctor being accosted by Morris Men it captures some of the spirit while retaining its Who roots and lightly seasoning itself with helicopter and motorcycle chases, explosions and, by story’s end, some traditional UNIT lots-of-shooting-to-no-effect action. Olive Hawthorne is the only stand-out character in the village and I was thinking she could do with a story of her own, without realising Paul Magrs had done one for the charity anthology A Target For Tommy (way to go, Paul, I especially look forward to reading that tale).
Both Azal and Bok, the gargoyle, are reasonably well realised within the show’s technical and budget limitations and the fx in general are pretty solid for the era. Given the sheer number of quiet English villages troubled by ancient and/or alien darknesses in Doctor Who, this does well to stand as proudly as it does.
A fitting finale for the Master’s season. Magic.
