Doctor Whosday: Telepathetic Politics

In reviewing stories from the 60s, as I have been both here and on Marvel Mondays, certain themes come up again and again. One of the biggest is the contrast between democracy and communism. The freedom and individuality of the West is championed, while the collective juggernaut of the East is castigated.

"The Sensorites" begins much the same way. The brave, British astronauts from Democratic Earth are menaced by the Sensorites, insidious aliens who, while cowardly, have the ability to control the minds of humans. They have a collective society where each Sensorite is given their task, and they are in a cold war with the astronauts, refusing to let them leave peacefully yet also not killing them, yet. They are the communist threat.

And yet, in a bold move for 1964, "The Sensorites" takes a very different, and in many ways more modern, turn. And that is to be commended. But is it enough to overcome the weaknesses of the story? That is a good question.

Doctor Whosday: Fixed Points and Macehuitl Fights

It is always a risky thing, creating a story set in a foreign culture. The typical writer for western television grew up in the west, so while foreign cultures like European nations, or the United States, Canada, or the UK if you are not a native, can be difficult, they are at least similar to the writer's experience.

But when a western writer tries to write about a culture that rose up in isolation from the shared Roman Empire history of the West, be it Eastern culture or Hindu culture or African culture, that writer is often having to learn everything from scratch. If the writer does not care enough to do the research, this can lead to glaring stereotypes and errors.

This is doubly true for stories involving Pre-Columbian America, which does not have any shared history with Europe, Africa, or Asia (unless you subscribe to the African Origins theory, but as that is not the current scientific consensus we won't get into that here.)

So when I say that "The Aztecs", the sixth Doctor Who serial, does a magnificent job of realizing pre-Columbian Aztecs, both the good and the bad, and creates one of the most interesting and thoughtful Doctor Who plots yet seen, or indeed seen since, I want my readers to have a sense for just how impressive that is.

This is one of my favorites, and I may gush. You've been warned.

Doctor Whosday: Six Episodes, Five Keys, Four Quests, Three Companions, Two Hangers-On, One Sexual Assault, No Joy

Fresh off his success creating The Daleks, which catapulted Doctor Who into television history, writer Terry Nation wanted to do a historical story. When that fell through, the producers asked him to create another extremely marketable villain, like the Daleks had been. It was with this directive in mind that Nation wrote "The Keys of Marinus".

The serial was a series of quests for the titular keys, with each episode encompassing another adventure, with another key as the object. This plot would be replayed on a season-wide scale during the excellent "Key to Time" season, with Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor.

Unlike that story, The Keys of Marinus is crap. Welcome to Doctor Whosday!

Doctor Whosday: The Greatest Story Never Told

Being a Doctor Who fan has many frustrations. We have to deal with the neutering of the show by Mary Whitehouse and her ilk. We have to deal with certain stories being, how shall I put this... less than fantastic. In fact some of them are downright awful. We have to deal with continuity being an old rag to be beaten up, dirtied, abused, then torn to shreds, and the very word "canon" to be meaningless.

But perhaps most frustratingly, we have to deal with missing episodes.

There are a number of early Doctor Who episodes that were destroyed by the BBC during regular purges of old material. Of these, some of them have been recovered thanks to copies that were sold to foreign television stations, copies made by private enthusiasts, and other such discoveries. However, many First and Second Doctor stories remain missing, and as time goes on the chance of more being found diminishes.

The very first Doctor Who serial with currently missing parts is missing in its entirety. It was also perhaps the greatest First Doctor story ever produced. The serial is known by the name "Marco Polo".

Doctor Whosday: Message In A Bottle

In television parlance, a "Bottle Show" is a show that requires no new sets, and can be made for somewhat cheaper than a normal show. Fresh from their ordeal with the Daleks (as reviewed last week), the Doctor and company deserve a bit of a break, and so they are sent into a two-episode Bottle Show normally referred to as "The Edge of Destruction."

Obviously not actual dialog. In the show, Ian is more of a Jem fan.

The plot of this two-parter is not the greatest. It's got plot holes, a lot of twists that aren't really ever explained, and a conclusion that seems unsatisfying and petty. But the plot is almost incidental. The real joy of this serial is seeing our regular cast cooped up inside a TARDIS plagued by mysterious malfunctions, forced to deal with their tensions and develop as a group. They enter as disparate, and often antagonistic characters. They unite as a team of heroes that will weather the next year together.

And all it took was them almost getting blown up.

Doctor Whosday: Nazis vs. Aryans

Looking back, the Daleks really are perfect sci-fi villains. They are unashamedly evil, completely duplicitous, obsessed with exterminating anything that isn't Dalek, and based on the Nazis. How could villains based on the Nazis fail?

Pictured: The greatest terror known to Britain.

Indeed, the second Doctor Who serial, generally known as "The Daleks", was the beginning of Doctor Who's massive popularity. It turns out the things which frighten children the most are Nazi R2-D2s.

And the Daleks were Nazis. From their stilted, clipped voices (so reminiscent of the accents of "German" television and movie villains), to their advanced technology and mechanization, to their ideological desire to exterminate any and all beings different from their "purity", the Nazi overtones are obvious.

Doctor Whosday: Politics, Metaphor, and Unearthly Children

The beginning of the first political debate.

In 1963, one day after the assassination of President Kennedy, the BBC launched a new sci-fi show in its Saturday Afternoon slot that would forever change science fiction as we know it, and lead to hordes of screaming fangirls shouting things like "Allons-y!" and "Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey!" and pretending that fezzes are somehow cool.

Not that there are not screaming fanboys as well. Not that I would know anything about that (did you hear the latest rumors for Series 8 OHMIGAAAAAAWD!)