Crater of Needles

I honestly think this may be one of the most extraordinary episodes in the history of 'Doctor Who'. I don't necessarily think it's good for all that, although it's not nearly as bad as its reputation, but it is genuinely something astonishingly out of the ordinary. And that's by the standards of a program that I consider to be one of the most innovative shows on television.

There's a manifestly improvisational quality about it. Obviously, everyone is aware of the transcendently strange credit, "Insect Movement by Roslyn de Winter", and it's clear that the actors took a hand in coming up with ways to bring the script's audacious concept of truly alien aliens to life. But it seems to extend all the way through the piece, from the direction to the script to even the way the regulars behave. It's as though they're playing a child's game of Let's Pretend, where anyone can come up with a new rule for the story and everyone has to follow along. "I put a golden tuning fork on you, that means you have to pretend you're hypnotized!" "Okay, but I used the astral map from the TARDIS to neutralize it, and we have the spider that the Zarbi is afraid of!" Everyone seems slightly surprised by everyone else's lines, as though the story is being created on the spot.

It's a bold decision, one that risks failure at just about every turn. When the Optera are introduced, there's a manifest sensation that the plot is teetering on the edge of a total collapse into absurdity--they're strange, hoarse, grunting, hopping little men that the story tries to present as a terrifying threat to Ian and Vrestin despite all the visual evidence to the contrary. Russell and de Winter instinctively realize that the only way to survive a scene like this is to play it absolutely straight--if at any point they treat it with less than total dignity, we're going to lose our conviction in it as well. Which very nearly happens anyway, because de Winter's way of playing it "absolutely straight" is to do her best butterfly dance and talk like a particularly fey elf from a local stage production of 'Lord of the Rings', but Russell doesn't flinch at the weirdness. He's being given the most thankless role he's ever done on the series, but none of that shows in his performance.

In the end, the whole thing coheres in a weird fever-dream sort of way; you can just about understand what's going on, if you watch it only one-quarter with your eyes and three-quarters with your mind, but you can't imagine quite how it wound its way through the creative process to make it to the screen as a piece of television. It's like watching an experimental, avant-garde play...very bold, very courageous, with a lot to applaud, without ever necessarily being any good. And yet it's so compelling that you can't really call it bad either. And to think, there's two more episodes of this...

Escape to Danger

The first thing I have to say about this episode is that it's astonishingly strange, seeing an actual episode really titled "Escape to Danger". My generation grew up with the Target novelizations, and Terrance Dicks was notorious for using this as a chapter title in approximately every third book because a) it was a vaguely clever-sounding catchphrase and Terrance loved to recycle anything that sounded good, and b) it was open-ended enough to apply to at least one chapter of every third Doctor Who story. Seeing it used as a real live episode name is like seeing a Star Trek episode called "Beam Me Up, Scotty", or a Buffy episode called "High School Is Hell".

I know it seems like I'm obsessing over a trivial detail, but honestly, there's not much else to talk about in "Escape to Danger" apart from the title. The plot barely moves a millimeter in the half-hour running time, and the Doctor is forced to deliver a lot of boring and meaningless technobabble that's exactly the kind of thing Hartnell does poorly--you can tell when he doesn't really have any idea what the script actually means, because his delivery suddenly becomes stilted and portentious like a parody of a college professor. He's better when he's bluffing the Animus, but there's not enough of the "clash of wills" angle to really give him something to grips with.

Meanwhile, Ian is underused in a way that makes it clear that nobody here is interested in him as a character--William Russell gets to run around a lot and shove men in ant costumes around, and he gets to do a massive (and yet underwritten) infodump scene with Vrestin, and he gets to stare manfully into the middle distance while discussing plans with the Doctor, but he's basically delivering the same generic lines that any square-jawed hero sort would deliver in the same situation. You could give all the same dialogue to Jamie, Steven, Mike Yates or probably Harry Sullivan and nobody would notice.

Oh, and Vicki just stands around looking worried. Any episode where all you give Maureen O'Brien to do is "stand around looking worried" is an episode you have critically failed at as a screenwriter. (Barbara's off this week. Presumably Ian will find her in the Crater of Needles next episode with a good tan.) In short, this is the kind of pedestrian stall that you find in any six-parter, the sort of thing that needs a talented director to rescue it and--oh. Richard Martin. Well, that explains the Zarbi running into the camera and at least two sequences shot so incoherently that you have to rely on secondary sources to figure out what the hell just happened on screen, then.

In short, whenever people complain about 'The Web Planet' being a dull, incoherent runaround with horrible direction and long stretches of tedium, this is probably the episode they're thinking of.

The Zarbi

What most people get right about "The Zarbi" is that it's really weird. It's not just weird, it's disorienting and confusing--everything about this episode feels like something you've never seen on television before. What people get wrong is insisting that this is an accident or a fault--this is actually a deliberate aesthetic choice, meant to evoke the same feelings the TARDIS crew has at being trapped on an utterly alien world.

To that extent, everything works together almost seamlessly. The aliens are more alien than anything we've seen before, even more than the Daleks--sure, there are superficial resemblances to insects, and yes, the costumes do look a bit "stagey" and not at all what we're used to in a modern era of CGI. But it feels like the show has made a conscious effort to create not just an alien look, but an alien mindset--the Zarbi don't speak in anything comprehensible to the audience, a risky decision that pays off in making them feel harsh and inhuman on a level that the costumes alone can't quite pull off. The Menoptra, who are the closest we get to relatable characters, nonetheless behave in a way quite different from anything we've seen before in the series. Their strange and eerily graceful movements, deliberately choreographed by Roslyn de Winter, give the impression that they're not quite from the same series as the rest of the cast. Their bizarre, flat, affectless speech continually reminds you that you're not dealing with creatures who see the world the way we do. Best of all, they examine Barbara's hair with the tentative curiosity of a race who aren't quite sure what the strings of protein dangling from this weird creature's head are, or what they're used for. It's a clever, tangible reminder that we are on an alien world and can take nothing for granted.

And more than that, that we are trapped on that alien world. The episode opens with the TARDIS being stolen, and although the sight of it creeping along the alien landscape as though it's tiptoeing is downright ludicrous, it's another reminder that we don't understand any of the rules here and the one route to safety for us (well, for our proxy selves onscreen) is being dragged off to an unknown fate. The very air seems strange, inhuman, surreal with its odd gleams and refractions of light, and Ian and the Doctor quickly learn that it feels different in their lungs as well. There's a sensation that this is a wrong turn, as though the TARDIS has been dragged not just to a planet but to a narrative where it doesn't belong.

And then we get the ultimate violation--a Zarbi enters the TARDIS. It's the first time any monster has ever gotten into the Ship, and it remains one of only a handful in the series history; the violation feels complete and horrifying, to the point where even the Zarbi itself seems to recoil at its own action. Or else the TARDIS itself repels the invader, both seem equally likely. When the Doctor reacts in cold fury to the intrusion, we completely understand.

The whole episode is just one peak after another of inhuman alienation, reaching perhaps its crescendo when Barbara is forced to watch as the Zarbi rip the wings off a Menoptra to prevent it from escaping. Even without knowing anything about this world, we can instinctively sense the cruelty of the act along with her. The reasons for the act are lost on us, but that only contributes to the sense of dislocation and fear that pervades the whole story to this point. When the Animus finally speaks at the end, it's almost a relief...at long last, something here is communicating to us on a level we can understand.

But of course, it's the villain...

The Web Planet

Good grief, Maureen O'Brien is a treasure! Nothing against Carole Ann Ford, but this is one of the biggest companion upgrades in series history. They're having so much more fun with the character; I don't know whether it's that they're afraid of losing a second actress in a row if they give her nothing to do but scream, or if "future kid" is just a more accessible concept than "alien kid" and lends itself to more story ideas, but she is firing on all cylinders here. The scene between her and Barbara, where she debates whether to take "medieval" aspirin and Barbara offers to instead put on a mask and dance around the fire to drive the evil spirits out of her body, has to be instantly in my Top Ten Doctor Who Character Moments Ever.

Which is good, because I think an episode like this really needs strong character moments to ground you. The story itself is at this point pretty much incomprehensible; so far we've seen giant ants wander around the TARDIS chittering, a squat grub projecting a light show, Ian's pen teleporting, and Barbara being hypnotized by her bracelet. Even if you take it on faith that there's eventually going to be an explanation that links all this together into a logical narrative, it's certainly not there at this point, and it's pretty much the performance of the regulars that's holding all of it together long enough for things to gel.

Hartnell is keeping things going for his part with sheer manic energy; this is really where you start to see the "giggling with excitement and racing around poking at things" version of the character that's going to become the standard for later incarnations. (I can see Matt Smith, for example, doing a lot of the physical aspects of the Doctor in this episode.) We've left the snappish, rude version of the First Doctor pretty far behind, save for a few comedy moments when he accuses Ian of trying to play a prank on him.

Ian, meanwhile, has kind of hit the limits of his character here. He's still being played well by Russell, but at this point his "man of action" schtick is becoming a bit too one-note. You can start to understand why he's not going to be sticking around much longer; Barbara gets the jokes and the character bits, Vicki gets to be zany and energetic, the Doctor gets to be the lead, and Ian gets to stare sternly into the middle distance with a steely glare and be ready for trouble. It's not a thankless part, but it's one that definitely doesn't get its Christmas cards out until February, if you know what I mean. (And I almost certainly don't.)

Still, this is an episode that's doing what the classic series did well, creating an alien space and then exploring and defining it, even if it is pushing up against the limits of how "alien" the space can be. It says a lot that the cod-futuristic jargon of "atmospheric density jackets", "teaching machines" and other quaint signs of the Future They Thought We Were Going To Have actually seem normal next to the world we're being inserted into. It feels very much like we're starting to push the envelope of just how weird Doctor Who can really get.

It's New to Me!

I thought this might make a brief, interesting digression--as I've mentioned on occasion, the entire "pilgrimage" project started when I was discussing the Fourth Doctor story 'Warrior's Gate' with the inestimable Robert Smith?, and he was horrified to discover I'd never seen it. From there, I wound up having to admit that there were quite a few Doctor Who stories I'd never seen, and I came up with the idea of watching them all in order to remedy that. But I haven't specified which ones it is I'm watching for the first time. So here's a list of all the stories that for one reason or another, I had no real memories of the televised versions when I started watching episode-by-episode. That doesn't mean I'm not familiar with them--some of them I know from Target novelizations, and nearly all of them I know to some extent from episode guides--but I've either never seen them on-screen, or I have only scattered childhood memories to guide me.

Now you'll know when my posts are first impressions without me having to drearily mention that this one or that one is entirely new to me. They break down roughly as follows:

These are stories that are incomplete, and I'd never watched the reconstructed versions.

Marco Polo
The Reign of Terror
The Crusade
Galaxy 4
Mission to the Unknown
The Dalek Master Plan
The Massacre
The Celestial Toymaker
The Savages
The Smugglers
The Power of the Daleks
The Highlanders
The Underwater Menace
The Moonbase
The Macra Terror
The Faceless Ones
The Evil of the Daleks
The Abominable Snowmen
The Ice Warriors
The Web of Fear:
Fury from the Deep
The Wheel in Space
The Invasion
The Space Pirates
Shada

These are stories that I'd not seen since watching them on PBS as a small child, and that I don't remember as televised stories. Most of my memories of these come from episode guides and/or novelizations, and are not reliable.

The Space Museum
The War Games
The Ambassadors of Death
Colony in Space
Day of the Daleks
The Curse of Peladon
The Sea Devils
The Mutants
Frontier in Space
Planet of the Daleks
The Time Warrior
Invasion of the Dinosaurs
Death to the Daleks
The Monster of Peladon
The Masque of Mandragora
The Face of Evil
The Invisible Enemy
The Sun Makers
Underworld
The Invasion of Time
The Creature from the Pit
Nightmare of Eden
The Horns of Nimon
Meglos
Full Circle
State of Decay

And these are stories that, for one reason or another, I'd simply missed entirely.

The Sensorites
The Ark
The War Machines
The Enemy of the World
The Dominators
The Krotons
Warriors' Gate
"Cold Blood"

Inferno

Now this is sumptuous. Dennis Spooner is practically giving a masterclass on how to write 'Doctor Who' here, creating a climax with rising tension in every aspect. Ian and Delos' escape sets up a dilemma for Barbara, Barbara's revelations to Tavius set up a dilemma for the Doctor and Vicki, and the Doctor's accident sets up the great historical event that, in retrospect, we've been leading up to all along. Again, when you look at this next to 'The Reign of Terror', you can see that Spooner has learned all the right lessons from his previous story. Instead of passive observers of history, the Doctor and his companions are now taking a causative role--it's a major shift in philosophy for the series, and in some ways the ultimate climax of the story is the scene between the Doctor and Vicki where she accuses him of causing the Great Fire of Rome. Hartnell's performance is brilliant here; it's clear that this is the first time he's ever shaken off his dispassionate, alien upbringing and thought of himself as an architect of history...and when his response is to giggle madly at the idea, you can understand that we've moved into a whole new era for the program.

Of course, the whole thing wouldn't work if everyone wasn't giving amazing efforts at acting. Derek Francis amps up his petulant, charming monster to entirely new levels as "Inferno" proceeds, his face alternately contorting in fury and crumpling in petulant sadness (and I'll digress for a moment here and giggle like a loon as Hartnell's knowing puns about his own impending death by vicious lion--that is some epic trolling there) before finally lighting with a gleam of madness as he sets Rome alight. Even Hartnell gets upstaged when Francis is on a roll, and that's a pretty impressive feat by this point in the show's history. He's absolutely magnetic everywhere else, to be sure; his mercurial, unpredictable performance allows the show to be whatever it needs to from episode to episode and moment to moment. It's not that he hasn't been this good before, mind you, but this is the story where he really gets to show off what he can do and demonstrates that he can act as an anchor when the program makes great leaps in genre and tone.

This is really one of the moments where the series takes a quantum leap in quality, realizing that it's capable of much more than it's been doing up until now and adding an entire new set of tools to its workbox. They've had jokes in previous stories, of course, but this is the point where they realize that Doctor Who can be a comedy as well as an adventure series without sacrificing tension. It works on a whole different level from the stories before it, and sets a new course for the entire future of the show. Oh, and also it's awesome.

Conspiracy

"Conspiracy" has an extremely tricky tightrope to walk. On the one hand, it's a sex-comedy farce for a good portion of its running time, with Nero and Barbara running about the palace and almost bumping into each other and everybody else as Nero engages in an extended "aren't I a naughty boy?" romp, with Barbara as his intended conquest. On the other hand, "conquest" isn't really the right word. "Victim" is really more accurate, here--for the tension that drives rest of the script to work, it has to be very clear that Barbara has been caught in between two of the most dangerous people in Rome, and she takes her life into her own hands whether she refuses Nero's advances or not. (And the tightrope is even tighter when you take into account the change in society's attitude towards sexual harassment and sexual assault over the years--the episode wouldn't have aged nearly as well if they'd played Barbara's sexual peril purely for laughs.)

For the most part, the episode succeeds by making it clear that Nero genuinely is a monster. He's a monster who would be laughable if he wasn't the Emperor, of course; his self-pity, rampant egotism and comic ineptitude is a thing of beauty, especially with Derek Francis chewing exactly the right amount of scenery for the part. But if he's a narcissistic idiot, he's a narcissistic idiot with the power of life and death over everyone else in the story, and that makes him simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. He may be chasing Barbara around the bed like he's in a sub-par Benny Hill skit, but there's no question that if he ever grows tired of chasing her, he can have her put to the sword and nobody will say a word. The death of Tigilinus shows just how thin the line between comedy and drama is, here--after a full episode of narrowly avoiding Nero's wrath, he's killed simply to prove a point.

Everything else in the episode works because it walks the same tightrope. Locusta, the court poisoner, goes about her business with the same matter-of-fact disinterest as an undertaker (albeit a bit earlier in the process). Nonetheless, she's condemned to death for failing Poppaea. Vicki is cautioned not to change history, and responds with a decision that leads to what has to be the best line in the episode: "Oh, by the way, I think I poisoned Emperor Nero." The Doctor manipulates all of Nero's very obvious levers with brilliant aplomb (and it's a treat to see Hartnell and Francis playing off each other in the sauna scene, it really is) but winds up infuriating the Emperor nonetheless. At every stage and every step, comedy and drama perform an uneasy dance together...but the episode rarely puts a foot wrong.

Ian, unfortunately, doesn't get to participate in any of the comedy. His plot is basically a tour of the brutal Roman tropes, so he goes from galley slave to gladiator. His subsequent fight with his new friend Delos is as inevitable as water running downhill, right down to the cliffhanger of the episode. If you put a gladiator fight into a Roman story, is there really any way it doesn't end with the emperor turning his thumb in disapproval?

All Roads Lead to Rome

We're only two episodes in, and it already feels like Spooner has mastered exactly what he's trying to do with the series. There's absolutely none of the longueurs that 'The Reign of Terror' had; Barbara's scenes in the prison are brief, to the point, and move the plot along with brisk characterization. We're in there just long enough to establish her friendship with her fellow slave, introduce Tavius, and then it's off to the auction. Likewise, Ian's time as a galley slave last just long enough for you to get the basic idea of it (hint: it's horrible) and then there's a convenient shipwreck to move him on to his next stop on the Roman Magical Mystery Tour.

And this is also when Spooner figures out what to do with all the historical figures the Doctor keeps bumping into. He wasn't quite sure how to handle Robespierre or Napoleon--too grim, too serious, too...well, historical. He managed some interesting material with the moral dilemma that the architects of the Terror had to face, but it didn't really fit with the rest of the tone the story was aiming for. But with Nero, he finally gets the idea--this is an adventure, not a history lesson! The historical figures need to be treated the same way as the setting, made into near-mythical figures with all their character traits amped up to eleven. So Nero becomes a brilliantly over-the-top representation of the later Roman emperors--capricious, arrogant, narcissistic, and possessed of the power over life and death for his citizens. Derek Francis nails every note of the portrayal, but it's the script that gives his character its shape. Arguably, it's what gives the series its shape; Dickens, Shakespeare, Christie, Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill all owe something of their portrayal to Spooner's conception of Nero in particular and historical figures in general.

And then there's the Doctor. I said it before and I'll say it again--you could show this episode to any fan of the new series and they would instantly recognize the pairing of the Doctor and Vicki. Spooner's Doctor is curious enough to impersonate a dead man just to find out who wanted him killed--he'd already grasped the potential of "Doctor as imposter" in 'Reign', but this is where he figures out how to slot it into the story. In 'Reign', the Doctor knew he was playing a dangerous game and his discomfort showed in every scene..here, he's enjoying every moment of it.

This is also where it becomes obvious that the companion dynamic has completely changed. Vicki may be nominally objecting to the Doctor's dangerous plans, but Maureen O'Brien plays the role with an impish smile that a) has to be so incredibly freaking adorable that you want to squeal, and b) makes it absolutely obvious that she's only pretending to object. She's the model for Jamie and Sarah Jane and Ace and Rose and Amy and just about every good companion from here on out. It's no wonder Ian and Barbara have to be split so completely into their own story that they don't even bump into the Doctor...they don't really belong in Spooner's version of the series. They have their moments of enthusiasm for adventure, don't get me wrong, but they still think of the end goal of each adventure as "return to the TARDIS and try to get home". It's a model of events that has fundamentally become obsolete, even if it hasn't been entirely abandoned just yet. All roads lead to Rome...which means that they lead, more than ever, away from the TARDIS.

The Slave Traders

Structurally, "The Slave Traders" is a real refinement of the concept that Spooner introduced with "A Land of Fear" (the opening episode of 'The Reign of Terror'). In much the same way that his previous story traded on the tropes of the French Revolution, this story plays with the pop culture version of Rome more than the actual history. That isn't to say there's no overlap between the two, but Spooner has left historical Rome behind for schoolboy adventure stories, sword-and-sandal epics, and of course William Shakespeare (who gets a call-out in this episode thanks to Ian).

In fact, it's Shakespeare who probably proves to be the strongest influence on this story--the idioms of speech are different, but this could easily pass for a Shakespearean comedy. The slave traders are written in the style of his villains, rough and lacking in virtue but not significant enough to be more than incidental players in a grander tale. The confusion of identity between the recently-deceased Maximus Pettulian and the alive and utterly mischievous Doctor is straight out of any number of plays (although 'As You Like It' pops immediately to mind, disguises and mistaken identity is a hallmark of Shakespeare's comedic works). The splitting up of fast friends, the complications and peril that owe as much to contrivance as to character...it's all very much reminiscent of the Bard, although his Roman plays rarely had humor in their hearts.

For all that Shakespeare is taught in English class, though, this is light-years from Doctor Who's original mandate as an educational program. This is a story that could never have happened without Spooner's first Doctor Who script breaking that new ground and giving us a non-didactic (and not necessarily accurate) vision of history...but while 'The Reign of Terror' had trouble filling its running time with interest once three quarters of the cast were trapped in Conciergerie Prison and the fourth was stuck miles outside of Paris, here Spooner has figured out how to use his Roman tropes as a hook to hang a ton of plot points on. The Doctor and Vicki are jumping head-first into palace intrigue (and note that wonderfully, their reason is simply that it sounds like fun--we're light-years away from 'Marco Polo' or even 'Reign', where the goal was simply to return to the TARDIS as soon as possible) and Ian and Barbara's capture and subsequent separation allows them to explore their own individual plotlines. Spooner has learned his lesson; a plot like this has to feel overstuffed with incident to work.

It also needs great character work from the regulars, and we get it. Hartnell is now fully occupying the center of the narrative as the Doctor--his dialogue with Ian about pipes could have come out of the mouth of Matt Smith with very little alteration. Ian and Barbara have adjusted to their new, fundamentally reactive jobs of feeding the Doctor straight lines...but Vicki is where the series has really upgraded from one Spooner script to another. This isn't to blame Carole Ann Ford for the production team's decision to write her character as a shrieking neurotic, but Susan absolutely needed to leave the show in order for it to get to this point. Vicki is excited to be adventuring with the Doctor. She's bored with the placid villa life and actively looking for trouble--it's worth noticing that her efforts to dissuade the Doctor from impersonating Pettulian are almost entirely pragmatic, not ethical. She's behaving like the Doctor's partner in crime rather than his petrified granddaughter, and it really allows the show more freedom to become an adventure story rather than a history lesson. Like "A Land of Fear" before it, "The Slave Traders" is a huge step forward towards our modern conception of Doctor Who.

Desperate Measures

If the previous episode was where Hartnell started to shine, "Desperate Measures" is where he makes it absolutely clear that the series belongs permanently to the Doctor in general and to him in particular. It's not that any of the other regulars become any less interesting--Ian and Barbara get some great moments together, and Vicki has an instant rapport with them. The scene where they try to explain their status as unwilling time travelers, and Vicki's response ("You're five hundred fifty years old?") and Ian and Barbara's response to Vicki's response...it's all wonderful stuff.

But the Doctor becomes far more significant. There are two key scenes where he demonstrates his absolute mastery of the role, and in the process centers the narrative entirely around himself. The first scene is his initial meeting with Vicki; it comes at a key point in the narrative for her. The rescue ship is due in perhaps a day, and she'd been hearing for years that her only chance of survival was to listen to Bennett and Koquillion and wait for help to arrive. Ian, Barbara and the Doctor are strangers who immediately disrupt her world on every level--they mock her tormentor, they have a risky plan with very few upsides and potentially catastrophic downsides, they're potentially antagonizing Bennett (it's never overtly stated, but the way she reacts to that tells you volumes about the way he's treated her all these years) and to top it off, Barbara just killed her pet. She has absolutely no reason, no reason at all to trust any of them.

And then Hartnell turns on the charm. His eyes twinkle, he smiles a warm and brilliantly paternal smile, he sits down and beckons her closer, and Vicki just melts--and the audience melts right along with her. This is entirely a new experience for us--Hartnell's had his moments of vulnerability and warmth, sure, but we have never been subjected to anything remotely resembling a William Hartnell charm offensive. For someone following the series since 'An Unearthly Child', who remembers his initial scenes with Ian and Barbara, this is scarcely even credible. He is transcendent here, bringing a degree of warmth and kindness to this scene that makes Vicki's decision to travel with him instantly believable.

The second scene, of course, is his confrontation with Bennett. It's a magnificent piece of work, from his initial scene sitting in the chair and talking with his back to the villain of the story all the way up through the confession and his snarled, righteously furious, "You're a madman!" He owns this scene, every second of it. Bennett is great too, don't get me wrong; Ray Barrett hits every note of his character perfectly. But it's that very perfection that gives Hartnell the chance to take over the part so completely; Barrett as Bennett is bringing forth every ounce of his charisma and menace, and Hartnell is matching him with an implacable determination that gives him instant authority and gravitas. Obviously, it'll be a while before he can bring that authority to the physical arena--in this case, he's saved by Dido ex machina and a convenient cliff. But he's unquestionably asserting himself as the moral and narrative center of the show. From this point on, Ian and Barbara's days are just as numbered as Susan's were--this show now belongs in spirit as well as name to the Doctor.

The Powerful Enemy

There are some stories that are better the second time around. A really elegant twist doesn't just reveal something that the audience didn't know before; it illuminates the story in a whole new light, changing the way that you perceive events that you already saw and making you rethink everything you knew. A very good twist makes you want to watch the story all over again to see the story from a whole different point of view.

"The Powerful Enemy" has a great twist, and I'm sorry if you don't know it, because I'm about to spoil it. Bennett is Koquillion. If you don't know that, this is a reasonably interesting episode; the Doctor and his companions encounter a shipwrecked crew trapped by hostile aliens, and have to find some way to outwit them and free the humans. It's the sort of thing that you could expect in this point in the series, and anyone watching it who knew that Maureen O'Brien was going to be the new companion could imagine Bennett sacrificing himself to destroy Koquillion and Vicki going off in the TARDIS.

But if you know that Bennett and Koquillion are one and the same, this is an absolutely terrifying psychological thriller. Because every scene between Vicki and Bennett and between Vicki and Koquillion takes on a whole new light when you know that they're one and the same person. Every time Bennett warns Vicki of the terrible threat that merciless and brutal Koquillion poses to them, you understand that he is terrorizing her. Every time he unleashes his inner sadism while wearing the alien mask, you understand that he is tormenting and brutalizing her into a constant state of dependence on him. When you watch it knowing that Bennett is Koquillion, this is a nightmare.

That brings a whole new meaning to the scene where Vicki meets Barbara. Barbara's sympathetic look feels entirely different, Vicki's panicked insistence that "Koquillion always knows, he knows everything" is absolutely heart-breaking, and all you can think of is how much you want that poor girl to be rescued at once. It gets you on her side instantly and effortlessly. Not that Maureen O'Brien couldn't have done that just with her natural charm, but she's allowed to have a real performance here because of the nuances of the script and she shows what she can do right off the bat. This is definitely Vicki's story, and she steals every scene she's in.

All that makes it sound like not much is happening with Ian and the Doctor, but this is where Hartnell really starts to shine. Hell, he incandesces in this episode. From the beginning, where he shows a new warmth and tenderness to his friends that almost-but-not-quite conceals his aching loss over Susan's departure, all the way to his charming banter with Ian as they escape the temple, he is mercurial and adorably pompous and hilariously dotty and brilliantly sharp ("I can hear you in here") and deductive and everything he needs to be to carry his scenes. It's not that he's never been good before; it's that up until now, this has been an ensemble show and now it's a hero and a supporting cast. Hartnell steps right up, and he's brilliant.

And for all that people complain that "Bennett is Koquillion" is obvious in retrospect, Ray Barrett does an amazing job of making Koquillion seem creepy and alien and menacing. Honestly, my one complaint about the episode is that instead of being involved in the cliffhanger somehow, we instead get a bog-standard deathtrap (from supposedly peaceful aliens--exaggerate much, Doctor?) that we all know Ian's going to get out of a few minutes into the next episode. Still, this is a great piece, well above its reputation as a whodunnit with only one suspect.

Pilgrimage: The First Doctor Index

Since I've now been going through the series in order for a while now, I figured it would be nice to provide people with a way to follow along without having to click on the tag where they find it and go backward. So below is a list of my essays on the First Doctor's run, in order, and I will periodically update it as I do more. I'll do another post for the Second Doctor, the Third Doctor, and so on.

As of now:

'An Unearthly Child':
"An Unearthly Child"
"The Cave of Skulls"
"The Forest of Fear"
"The Firemaker"

'The Daleks':
"The Dead Planet"
"The Survivors"
"The Escape"
"The Ambush"
"The Expedition"
"The Ordeal"
"The Rescue"

'The Edge of Destruction':
"The Edge of Destruction"
"The Brink of Disaster"

'Marco Polo':
"The Roof of the World"
"The Singing Sands"
"Five Hundred Eyes"
"The Wall of Lies"
"Rider from Shang-Tu"
"Mighty Kublai Khan"
"Assassin at Peking"

'The Keys of Marinus':
"The Sea of Death"
"The Velvet Web"
"The Screaming Jungle"
"The Snows of Terror"
"Sentence of Death"
"The Keys of Marinus"

'The Aztecs':
"The Temple of Evil"
"The Warriors of Death"
"The Bride of Sacrifice"
"The Day of Darkness"

'The Sensorites':
"Strangers in Space"
"The Unwilling Warriors"
"Hidden Danger"
"A Race Against Death"
"Kidnap"
"A Desperate Venture"

'The Reign of Terror':
"A Land of Fear"
"Guests of Madame Guillotine"
"A Change of Identity"
"The Tyrant of France"
"A Bargain of Necessity"
"Prisoners of Conciergerie"

'Planet of Giants':
"Planet of Giants"
"Dangerous Journey"
"Crisis"

'The Dalek Invasion of Earth':
"World's End"
"The Daleks"
"Day of Reckoning"
"The End of Tomorrow"
"The Waking Ally"
"Flashpoint"

'The Rescue':
"The Powerful Enemy"
"Desperate Measures"

'The Romans':
"The Slave Traders"
"All Roads Lead to Rome"
"Conspiracy"
"Inferno"

'The Web Planet':
"The Web Planet"
"The Zarbi"
"Escape to Danger"
"Crater of Needles"
 

Flashpoint

It probably made sense on paper. I mean, in the script the weirdly-edited assemblage of random shots with the tiny model of Ian falling off the paper-mache cliff, the other tiny model of Ian sliding along the cut-out diagram of the tunnel, and the real Ian suddenly falling into shot on a random set we've never seen before was supposed to be Ian surviving the deadly fall to find himself in just the right place to stop the Dalek bomb by blocking the shaft. The shots of Susan and David doing, um...something, somewhere, with stuff...that was supposed to be them sabotaging vital control systems. And the final explosion of random stock footage...that was meant to be a massive volcanic eruption caused by the Dalek bomb exploding too close to the surface, an eruption that took out all the Dalek saucers in the world, because they just happened to be right overhead, while not at all touching the Doctor who was maybe a few hundred yards away...I did stress "probably", right?

But as filmed, it's barely coherent. I don't mean, "It didn't hang together as a piece of drama." I mean, "Many of the scenes as shot and edited do not form a visual narrative in any sense of the word, leaving the viewer to guess at key plot points at what is supposed to be the climax of the story." I complained about the end of the first Dalek serial not living up to expectations, but at least you could actually tell what was happening on screen. Here, there's way too much that the audience simply has to interpolate. It's an unmitigated disaster, even before you start wondering whether every single Dalek on Earth was really gathered in the same place, let alone whether all the other Daleks in the universe are just going to give up on their big plan now that a few of their saucers have been destroyed.

But let's face it, nobody cares, because we're all paying attention to the last scene. It's equal parts gorgeous and infuriating--on the one hand, the Doctor is incredibly patronizing to Susan, simply taking the decision out of her hands by leaving her behind without giving any consideration to whether she has something with David that will truly be deep and lasting or whether he's consigning her to a life of misery on an alien planet billions of miles and millions of years from home. (For all that John Peel deservedly gets hammered by the fans for 'Legacy of the Daleks', his portrayal of Susan and David's relationship as something less than a happy ending was pretty believable.)

On the other hand, the Doctor is doing what he does from a position of love and understanding. He knows that Susan wouldn't leave him behind even if her heart broke in two from the decision. He knows that a moment like this would happen some day, and that the longer he keeps her with him the more she'll grow to resent it. He knows his granddaughter, and he knows that the right thing to do is to take the decision out of her hands. It's possible to see both of those things in that scene, because everyone involved takes the script and brings out every wonderful nuance of it. (The scene where Carole Ann Ford stares at the space where the TARDIS once was, and you realize she's never seen it dematerialize from the outside before, is a triumph that makes you wish they'd given her something to do on the series before now.)

And so the series changes. Susan is left behind, and with it the idea of the Doctor as someone with a family, someone with a home. Someone human. He's finally free to become a wanderer, completely and fully. The show is now fully free to remake him as a character, and the process of shedding its old skin really kicks into gear here.

The Waking Ally

I'm sorry, but there's no getting around it--this episode opens with Ian just straight up murdering someone's pet by bashing it with a rock until it falls into a bottomless pit. I have no idea how the RSPCA didn't step in here. I just bet that in between each and every one of his scenes, the Black Dalek went back to his room and just sobbed openly, fondling the Slyther's collar with his sucker and whispering, "Why? Why?"

Okay, maybe not so much so, but it's still interesting to me that this is an era where the Daleks haven't fully ossified as a concept. They're capable of having pets; they view other life-forms as insignificant and not worthy of notice, rather than as targets to be exterminated. They enslave rather than kill for the most part, and even feel outrage at attacks against them (it's surprisingly funny when one of them talks about the "unprovoked attack on our saucer"). They're conquerors, but they're conquerors with a purpose rather than genocidal maniacs. It's a smaller difference between the Daleks then and the Daleks now than it was in their previous appearance, but it's still noticeable. They're still characters and not monsters. That won't last much longer, so enjoy it while it lasts.

The role of "monster" in this story is taken up by the Robomen, as Larry's search for his brother ends the only way it really can in a story like this. It's still a pretty good scene despite the obviousness of the trope, as Larry begs Phil to remember his wife and family and is shot in the gut for his troubles. None of it is surprising--it's all exactly what you would expect, right down to Phil whispering Larry's name as he too dies--but it's still hard to look away as it's happening. The Robomen really are such a good part of this story that it's amazing how rarely they've been used since--they really are more effective at being Cybermen than Cybermen are in some ways, both because they have this wonderfully horrifying air of neglect and despair, and because of the utterly horrific descriptions of their eventual demise ("they go mad, bash their heads against walls...") They're the dehumanization of oppressed people made brutally literal.

Of course, there's also the other kind of dehumanization that happens to oppressed people on display here. Barbara and Jenny's run-in with the collaborators is far more affecting than the Aaru version (what, you think I was going to get through all six episodes without referencing the Aaru version?) precisely because they never get their comeuppance; in the movie, they die the kind of gruesome death that all traitors deserve, but in this version they're out-and-out rewarded for their treachery and deceit. It's the kind of lesson Doctor Who doesn't always teach...sometimes, the bad guys get away with it.

As with the rest of this story, though, the weak point of "The Waking Ally" remains the star and main character. (And presumably the titular waking ally.) Their segment of the episode is nothing more than a slow trip to join the rest of the cast in Bedfordshire, and even the fact that Susan finally gets something useful to do one whole episode before she leaves the series for good doesn't change the fact that all they get is a boring fight scene and a bit of "science-y" exposition that again sounds like the Doctor is suffering from mild aphasia instead of a technical explanation. Again, it's hard not to feel like Nation doesn't feel like he has to try now that the Doctor is firmly cemented as The Hero; he was much more interesting when Nation saw him as a force for chaos rather than writing him as an agent of order.

But at least we're headed for a climax, right? Ian's hiding in a nuclear bomb, Barbara is infiltrating the Dalek headquarters, and the Doctor and Susan...are somewhere in the general vicinity. Better late than never, Doctor!

The End of Tomorrow

As with pretty much every six-parter, there's at least one episode that does little beyond padding out the run time...and "The End of Tomorrow" is pretty much a textbook stall. It's not a bad stall; the disappearance of Hartnell forces them to give David a bit more to do, which is nice as he's only got a couple more episodes left to become a romantic lead convincing enough to make us believe that Susan would want to stay with him instead of going off with her grandfather. They don't give Susan any of the Doctor's material, of course, but at this point we're all pretty much resigned to seeing Susan reduced to a portable scream.

But really, it's just an exercise in treading water. Ian and Larry wander around the labor camp narrowly avoiding Daleks and Robomen and stock footage; Barbara and Jenny very slowly work their way out of London; Susan and David wander around the sewers. None of it actually moves the plot forward more than a tiny fraction of an inch, but there's lots of incident to make up for the lack of actual events.

To be fair, one thing does happen. Susan and David bump into Tyler, who is quite frankly the most interesting and competent character onscreen right now. Actually, that's not fair to Jenny...she's terrific, and I find myself wishing she could have been a companion. Her over-protestation at the futility of Dortmun's pointless self-sacrifice is absolutely wonderful. Nation's supporting characters give me a lot more faith in his writing abilities than his regulars; Ashton is deliciously and unrepentantly amoral, and even Wells has realistic motivations and sincere heroism behind his trading with the black marketeer. There's a lot of depth to them, and Nation uses the extra time to develop them much better than supporting characters in Doctor Who usually get.

Other than that, there's not much to say about an episode with not much to say. The Dalek plan is still on "simmer", everyone's heading to Bedfordshire to meet Ian but they can't get there too soon, and Nation's run out of people to kill for now (although Ashton bites it, a bit too soon to be honest). Really, all that's left to comment on is the delightful notion of the Black Dalek's pet Slyther...I find myself wanting to know if he enters it in pet shows with Helen A's Stigorax. Do all the Daleks have Slythers? Are they all the rage back on Skaro, now that the fad for Varga plants has passed? Do they cuddle on the Daleks' laps, and get tickles under the chin with the suction cup? I know. I'm overthinking it. But in an episode like this, there's not much else to think about.

Day of Reckoning

If there's one thing that Terry Nation has a gift for, it's pointless brutality. Um...I mean that in a good way...

It's true, though. One of his greatest skills is in showing unflinchingly a convincing and realistic portrayal of the nasty side of adventure, and "Day of Reckoning" spares no sensibilities in exploring the consequences of Dortmun's defiant stand against the Dalek conquerors. The episode opens with the raid itself--chaotic and violent, filled with death and desperate flight from an enemy that has proven to be invincible. (The sound effects of Dortmun's bombs, which sound like nothing so much as glass Christmas ornaments when they hit the ground, are perhaps not quite right for this, but I'm not sure how exactly you do foley a dud bomb not exploding when it hits the ground.)

The raid also makes the usual splitting up of the cast feel a little less like authorial fiat and more like the entirely believable result of an utter rout. Ian winds up trapped on the Dalek saucer heading for the mines, the Doctor is dragged off semi-conscious by Baker, Susan (whose ankle appears to have healed up completely between episodes) hides out in the rubble with David, and Barbara returns to the rebel hideout and watches the fallout of the utter failure sink in.

Well, sink in for some. Dortmun's optimism now borders on the delusional--he's convinced that all he needs is another few tweaks to his formula, another few volunteers to toss the bombs (and does it not sink in to anyone that he's claiming his bombs can shatter the otherwise-impervious Dalek armor, but that they can toss them from about ten feet away with no ill effects?) and they'll have their long-awaited victory. Tyler, who has already capitulated to Dortmun once and sent 90% of the previous strike force to their horrible deaths, has pretty much had enough and fucks right off out of the story for a while. Really, Jenny and Tyler's reactions combine to really bring home the reality of the situation--they're both equally cynical about their remaining chances, but they express it in different ways. Tyler abandons his former comrades, deciding that caring about anyone but himself is a waste of time, while Jenny pretends not to care about anyone while showing through her actions that she still cares all too much. The expression on her face at Dortmun's death speaks volumes.

Actually, it would have been fascinating to see Jenny replace Susan as a companion, rather than Vicki. The interactions between her and Barbara, based on a sort of frustrated inability to appreciate each other's point of view, are really some of the best scenes in the whole episode. The best scene, though, has to be Dortmun's death. It's really the culmination of everything Nation's been trying to achieve in the story--his last stand is defiant, heroic, a demonstration of the indomitable human spirit, and utterly useless. The shot of the grenade, detonating with a futile hiss as the Daleks stand confused in front of his broken, lifeless body, is probably the best thing Richard Martin ever did.

Oh yes, and Hartnell's still in the series. He does a better job in this episode, and so does Nation; the scene where he and Susan argue is a bit clunky and clearly setting up her departure in a few episodes' time, but the subsequent bit where David flatters him shamelessly and the Doctor pretends that listening to David's advice is his own idea is the kind of charming egotism you expect from the Doctor, rather than the tiresome arrogance we saw in the previous episode. There's even a nice moment between Baker and Campbell that convincingly sells a friendship between the two, right before the former's departure...and murder, two seconds later, by a Dalek patrol. Did I mention the pointless brutality? Even Ian gets a taste, as he kills the Roboman who was his cellmate an episode ago (although that scene would probably have worked better if they'd mentioned that in the dialogue). Ultimately, Nation succeeds brilliantly at making this story look like a genuine war, occupation and rebellion. It's no wonder he went on to to explore the same themes elsewhere--being grim is kind of his skillset.

The Daleks

The good news is, there's only one thing about this episode that doesn't work. The bad news is, it's the star of the series and his character, who is taking center stage more and more as the series progresses and is placed front and center here in a fashion the show has never really done before.

Awk-warrrrrrd...

There actually is a whole lot to like in this episode. The two pairs of characters (Ian and the Doctor, Barbara and Susan) are in situations that are very different, but that nonetheless allow Nation to deliver some relatively painless exposition as to how the Daleks conquered Earth. It's actually a plausible and fairly vivid scenario--certainly others have commented on Nation's obsession with plagues, in this series and others, but here he paints a bleak picture of a world bombarded by meteorites and laid low by pestilence before the Daleks even made their first move. Not that humanity has given up, of course. Dortmun...

I'm actually going to give Nation a lot of credit for Dortumn. A whole lot. Because he's quite deliberately contrasting the iconography of Dortmun with the actual character, to brilliant effect. Dortmun's character calls to mind a whole host of tropes that were at that time deeply ingrained in living memory, and which still resonate today. The Rifftrax version of the Aaru movie called him "Churchill mixed with FDR", and that's exactly what he's intended to be...a stirring speaker, with an indomitable never-say-die spirit who rallies humanity into battle when our every instinct is to flee, hide or surrender.

But of course, he's completely and totally in the wrong here. Fleeing and hiding are actually pretty good ideas right now, and the hope he brings the resistance is entirely a false hope. And Tyler knows it, too--Bernard Kay plays him with the perfect amount of fatalism, going along with a plan he knows is doomed to get people killed because he understands that Dortmun's plan has such incredible amounts of narrative inexorability that he couldn't stop it if he wanted to. The bomb hasn't been tested, the plan relies on a transparent ruse, they have to commit most of their men to it, and there's no exit strategy--how could it go wrong? (And somewhere, the spirit of Terry Pratchett asks, "What if it isn't exactly a million-to-one chance?")

So there's a bunch of great stuff going on. Really, apart from the Doctor, it's all wonderful. (Okay. The Doctor and the fact that Richard Martin still hasn't learned that cardboard standees of Daleks look like exactly one thing--cardboard standees of Daleks. Seriously, just about everyone watching the Hartnell era complains about what a terrible job he did, and I was prepared to defend him at least a little until the night scene where the Dalek searchlights went not once but twice directly over to where the cardboard Daleks were propped up against a wall. DUDE!)

But complaining about the cardboard Daleks only delays me from talking about the Big Problem of this episode--the Doctor. Since the last time Nation wrote a Dalek story, the Doctor has gone from being a mischievous trickster whose antics got the rest of the crew into trouble to being the Hero of the Show. And while Nation wrote the mischievous Doctor with energy, verve, and moral complexity, he knows that a Hero has to be a flawless figure filled with righteousness and noble spirit and always ready with a witty quip and a brilliant plan.

Which translates in Nation-script to, "I think we'd better pit our wits against them and defeat them!"

The Doctor is awful in this episode. Hartnell tries to do something with the pompous, puffed, smug, arrogant "hero-speak" he's saddled with, but his default mode is to use comic pomposity to undercut his prickliness, and there's nothing funny going on here, which just leaves pomposity layered on pomposity. Every line is a thudding failure, as the Doctor belittles his allies, lectures his enemies, and gibbers out vaguely science-y sounding things as he solves the Dalek puzzle box without even noticing that there's a Dalek about three feet away listening to everything they say and do. Every single scene he's in is painful at best and incoherent at worst, and if Hartnell can't rescue a line, you know it's bad. It's probably a good thing he's going to be out of action for a while, if this is how Nation writes him.

Because the bits without the Doctor in them? Actually pretty good.

World's End

This is an interesting story, because it feels for the first time like Doctor Who is trying to do "event" television. In a way, it feels very modern, sort of like a season premiere or a season finale on a modern show (and had they not held it back, it would have been). That's almost certainly part of why it's so beloved by fans; it's got the shocking return of the show's most popular enemies, it's got the show's first cast change...we fans tend to be suckers for big events that change the metastory, and this is the first big one. That's a lot of weight for it to carry, and it's no surprise that it frequently winds up being loved more in concept than in execution. It should be a big, epic event, but it doesn't fit into that box at all when you watch it.

It's not without its charms, though. "World's End" plays very well to the strengths of the classic series; the same slowness that people complain about when they watch the old Hartnell stories transforms here into a gradually building atmosphere of dread. This is a story that needs to seep in; giving the regulars a full episode to slowly recognize the creeping wrongness of the London they've arrived in greatly enhances the sense that this is a world where the Doctor and his companions simply should not be.

Every moment of the episode works to heighten that tension. Little details--the lack of sound, the decaying buildings and crumbling brickwork, the weeds growing up and out of every surface...it all leads to a sense that this is a London that's not just forgotten but abandoned. The poor costuming and bad effects work on the Robomen actually help to enhance the mood rather than looking silly or cheesy; they look like zombies, like the Daleks have put in the absolute minimum effort in creating their slave labor and don't care about their welfare at all. Tattered clothes? Wasted and wan flesh? As long as there's another human around to take their place, it's irrelevant. They're unbearably creepy, and the story uses them to good effect in this episode by showing them sparingly.

Everything works together to create an excellent atmosphere of looming dread. When the TARDIS is buried in rubble, it feels different than the usual "oh, this is how they keep them in the plot this week" plotting. It feels like they're trapped somewhere they don't belong. When the Doctor asks Ian if he's curious about what's happened, Ian's simple "No," is more effective than any speech. (Which is good, because as the rest of the episode shows, dialogue isn't Terry Nation's strong suit.)

And then the money shot. After a full episode of gradually building wrongness, of a slowly growing and utterly terrifying mystery, we get the Robomen en masse. We get the flying saucer. And then we see it, the first ever recurring enemy coming out of the river. This is the moment that cements the Daleks' place as the Doctor's arch-nemeses, even if it's so badly shot that everyone who remembers it remembers it wrongly (the Dalek begins its ascent from the river before the characters can react to it). The Daleks are back. Even now, over fifty years later, it still feels unimaginably huge.

Crisis

After perfunctorily dispatching last episode's cliffhanger, "Crisis" finally gets the hang of the advantages this premise provides that no other does. The Doctor and his companions figure out a way to take the phone off the hook using corks to prop it up, and they make inventive use of a spray can, a gas tap and a match to create an improvised bomb to attract the attention of the police. You could perhaps quibble about the ease of lifting the "oversized" objects, but the general idea of the script comes into focus tightly here. The tiny heroes use improvised tools to overcome the limitations of their size in order to foil the villain's plot.

Or they would, if not for the fact that the villain's plot is primarily foiled by a switchboard operator and his own astonishingly mistaken belief that he can masquerade as an entirely different person with a higher-pitched voice, a different regional accent and a mild lisp simply by putting a piece of cloth over the mouthpiece of the telephone. He doesn't even attempt to disguise his voice--it's as though he assumes hand towels have magical powers. Certainly the Doctor's plan helps by forcing him to talk to the operator a second time, but it's frustrating to realize that there's no need for either scene. The call to the Ministry is an unnecessary contrivance, and Forester has to be bright enough to realize that "he's already left for his boating trip" is a better plan than "oh, but I'm certainly Farrow. Can't you tell by my slightly muffled voice that sounds otherwise exactly like the person who was just on the phone?" (Then again, it's the same episode where Smithers suddenly says, "Hey, maybe I should have tested this new insecticide to see if it kills bees and earthworms!" Maybe he leeched the intelligence away from Forester and turned him into a less competent villain.)

If they'd left off those two scenes, then the Doctor's bomb plan would have been more consequential to the plot and added more drama. Then again, given that this episode was mostly cobbled together in the editing room out of two other episodes, it's probably amazing that it came out as well as it did. As it is, the only slightly ropey cut is when they jump mid-conversation to Barbara insisting they stay and raise the alarm regarding DN6, and that's only ropey because it stands out as markedly different from the editing in the rest of the episode. It's actually a fairly modern and pacy cut, the sort of thing you'd probably do these days without sweating it too much. Verity had it right here.

And at the end, the mysteriously-repaired scanner (I know, they probably didn't think audiences would remember over what was originally intended to be a month of real time) displays the title of the next episode. Handy, that--if it had happened after they stopped using individual episode titles, the Doctor could have learned about the Daleks' appearances virtually every single time.

Dangerous Journey

It's easy to see why Alan Tilvern had such a long and storied career as an actor watching this episode. The part isn't anything particularly special; he's a silver-tongued executive with a ruthless streak who turns to murder out of desperation, your basic villain in a suit. But Tilvern uses his expressive eyebrows and silky voice to become something more saturnine and sinister. I love the implication that he knew the story he told Smithers wouldn't hold up--the way Tilvern manipulates him first into accepting and finally into assisting with the cover-up is acted brilliantly by Tilvern. (Reginald Barratt as Smithers perhaps overacts just a bit, but he's got to sell the idea of someone so obsessed with DN6 that he'd go along with concealing a murder with very little persuasion. A little overacting helps in that department.)

The Hitchockian drama of Forester drawing Smithers into his web of deceit and murder is really the best part of the episode. Everything else is an exercise in contrivance, from "We can't go back the way we came, cats exist!" to "There's a person coming, scatter in every random direction and panic!" to "Hmm, grains of wheat covered with a sticky substance!" "Huh? Sorry, I don't really pay much attention to anything you say or do, Barbara. By the way, don't touch that wheat, it's covered in insecticide." It's all pretty much just getting everyone into the position of maximum peril for the next episode, which is kind of a shame because it doesn't really make nearly as much use of the 'miniaturized' concept as it could.

One thing that did strike me, though, is that this is the first time we've really seen the main characters split up along the lines that you'd think would be the norm for the series--Ian/Barbara, and the Doctor/Susan. It's the obvious way to group them, the aliens who've been traveling for years and the two teachers along for the ride, and yet it's just about the least common pairing they've done. 'The Daleks' has them split up like this in the last two episodes, and there are times when it's a pair and two singlets, but really it's only in the last story before Susan's departure that we see her really spending any time with just her grandfather. The actors play it well, given that it's a fairly perfunctory scene, but it's notable that the dynamic among the regulars has done so well for so long by resisting the "easiest" pairings.

Oh yes, and while I grumble about everyone doing nothing but peril monkey schtick in this episode, I have to love the dramatic touch of closing on the sink at regular size as the water slowly drains out. It's deliciously incongruous (as is the simultaneously tense and hilarious musical sting accompanying, "There's a sink in the lab") and leaves you to imagine the danger rather than attempting to show it.