#but the only thing I could think to say of Snakedance was how good it is jdlfjkhdfj

[being-of-rain]

A torrent of random thoughts from my Classic Who watch, this time the first half of season 20.

I don’t know what fandom wisdom says abut Arc of Infinity (fandom wisdom isn’t something I give a lot of credit to anyway), but I’m not really a bit fan. The story structure is so weird, having a plot going on in Amsterdam and the Gallifreyan Capitol that don’t converge apart from the odd phone call until the final part. That said, the scene were the attack on the Tardis is intercut with the boys sleeping uneasily in a crypt was delightfully gothic. But apart from the production team once again taking as many opportunities as possible to show off their overseas location filming, most of the story was some rather dull Gallifreyan politics. It definitely felt like the Doctor should’ve ended up on Earth sooner. Nyssa almost feels like a new character with all the focus she’s forced to get when she’s the Doctor’s only companion. I don’t think she was written or acted as emotionally before she is when the Doctor is in danger on Gallifrey. Plus, it was cool to see her go on a killing spree (or stunning spree, whatever), which is a visual which sticks out in my mind when I think about this story. It’s cool to see Tegan investigating things on her own too, and cute to see the two companions happy to meet up at the end, even if the Doctor is hilariously but obviously annoyed at her rejoining them. That adds to my theory that he kinda left Tegan behind on purpose last story, an action that for some reason goes unaddressed and unexplained, but honestly it was probably good for Tegan to get some time to grieve Adric without the Doctor forcing her to repress everything. Do I just not like the Fifth Doctor? No, I think I just don’t like it when main characters have flaws that go so blatantly ignored. It’s nice to get a Leela reference and a Romana reference! I know the Doctor must have friends on Gallifrey, but it feels weird that Damon and Hedin are treated almost like characters we should know. Maybe it feels particularly weird because the story goes so unnecessarily hard on the ‘good guys are actually the bad guys’ fake-out. Also, some truly weird and unbelievable statistics are pulled out about the Time Lords. I know it feels extra weird now with all the EU content out there, but even for just the show thus far they felt silly. A Tardis recall circuit has apparently only been used twice before in Time Lord history. A Time Lord has only been destroyed (legally executed, presumably?) once before. And Borusa says “You know that capital punishment has long been abolished here in Gallifrey.” Didn’t the Doctor literally get put on death row previously in The Deadly Assassin?? Any other random points? Well, I don’t like to nitpick- no that’s not true, everyone likes to nitpick. I don’t like to let nickpicking ruin my enjoyment, but if a story brings up so many small points that it doesn’t satisfactorily answer, it starts to weigh it down. What exactly is the Ergon? How does the Doctor know about it and its name? What does the Ergon’s gun do to Tegan- teleport her dramatically? If so, why doesn’t it do the same to the Ergon later? The Ergon in general just looked funny enough to kind of ruin the aesthetic of the crypt scenes, sorry, which is a shame because the crypt aesthetic was one of the only things the story had going for it for me. I don’t know where ‘the spacetime element’ is an interesting or bad name for a piece of the Tardis console. Similarly, I don’t know whether I like the title Arc of Infinity- it’s a good title, but the arc is something that isn’t explained very well and doesn’t really have a large part in the story. Is there a little cafe on a walkway of the Capitol? Fun. And everyone talks about “No not the mind probe,” but nobody talks about the even flatter delivery of “Impulse laser?” near the start of this story from a guy who is about to be shot by an impulse laser. Finally, Omega himself looks great when he takes off his mask- gotta love Peter Davison in a black turtleneck. But things take such a turn in the last 10 minutes of the story. Omega has a quick scene where he simply enjoys some organ music and the view of a canal. It adds such a (sudden) tragic element to him, of a man who just wants to live in the real world again. Which is amplified when his final scene is played (again suddenly) extremely gritty, with the Doctor having to shoot him and cause his apparently agonising death. The last-minute tone shift is even more jarring when the show feels like it immediately chickens out on it, with the Doctor almost immediately after saying Omega might not be dead then ending the episode on a light-hearted note. I don’t often criticise the genius of author Nev Fountain, but I can’t help but feel he missed some obvious hooks there in his sequel audio Omega, in which Omega suddenly wants to return to his antimatter universe and leave the real one behind.

Snakedance! I think it’s not quite as good as Kinda, but it’s still really good! The way it creates a very believable and relatable world is so neat (maybe helped by my own interest in archaeology and ancient history studies which is represented in this). There’s always very realistic dialogue and acting. The plot is a little slower and more meandering than Kinda, and it’s a shame Tegan isn’t in it more (a downside Kinda shared). I don’t really have as much to say about the themes of this one like I did with the previous Mara story, though I’m sure they’re there. I’m left with just things to list off that I liked about the story. Part one has another fantastic cliffhanger, made better by the Fifth Doctor theme tune. Some of the Mara moments are genuinely unnerving, like Lon talking with Tegan’s voice. Lon is a great character, and I wish he was in more of it without being possessed tbh. But I did like how sometimes the Mara possessed people, and sometimes it likes to play on the temptations of people in order to manipulate them. I also liked the creepy moment that the carnival man is standing still in the dark cave to surprise someone, with the added irony that that’s what he suggested Tegan do at his hall of mirrors earlier. There’s a lot of altered states in this one; dreams, the sound machine, the snake poison, possession. And the use of sound could be very striking. The cutting between the noise of the ceremony and the calm of the Doctor meditating with Dojjen is very striking. And the same things with the fucking killer ending which goes from the intensity of the Mara trying to manifest to the silent horror of everyone recovering from it, followed by the end credits screaming in before you barely get a moment to process it all. I’m still not sure if I love it or not, but it sure as heck leaves an impression.

I spent ages looking for Mawdryn Undead and Terminus without the optional CGI special effects that were included on the DVD, because for some reason they’re hard to find online. I don’t know why people would prefer those versions: to me the old practical methods and less sophisticated special effects are not only part of the charm, but part of the original production and storytelling. It’s the same reason I enjoy the original versions of the Star Wars films rather than the many re-edits. Not so much because I’m a purist (at least I hope not), but because I like watching these things as products of their historical times as well as for their stories. Besides, the added CGI effects can often break my suspension of disbelief more than bad practical effects (even if it’s good CGI, which is not guaranteed) because it simply doesn’t look like it fits with the rest of the show. Also, literally who would want to watch Mawdryn Undead without the eye-wateringly horrendous original ‘80s training video effect behind Turlough and the Black Guardian when they make their dark deal. The new effect is the most boring thing ever and actually looks halfway good. Get that shit outtahere.

ANYWAY. Mawdryn Undead is a story of many different tones for me. This bit will mostly be me listing off random things in the story in roughly chronological order. The first episode almost felt like it could be a pantomime, though that’s probably mostly because of the Black Guardian in all his crow-headed glory, and the sometimes hysterical background music. If you haven’t watched the scene in the first few minutes when Turlough steals and then crashes the Brigadier’s car, please god look it up. Bloody iconic. It’s hilarious watching how quickly and thoroughly Turlough throws Hippo under the bus for stealing the car, but very satisfying for me personally who wants more deeply flawed and antagonistic companions. Also, my longest-running DnD character is called Hippo, so hearing the name bandied about felt so weird jsldkfj. It was kind of surprising how rude the Brig could be to students, but maybe that’s just what you’d expect to hear at a British public school. Considering how the Black Guardian pretended to have pure intentions, it was also kind of surprising to hear him shout “In the name of all that is evil!” at the end of the episode, but again maybe that’s just what you’d expect to hear at a British public school. I started vibing with the story way more than I expected when it became the Brigadier recounting to the Doctor the events of 6 years ago, which was when the Doctor’s present companions met him, and for the audience both plots were unwinding simultaneously. I love that kind of plotting in a time travel story. Makes it extremely satisfying to follow when the plots effect each other and weave together (eg when the Brigadier says he remembers the Tardis leaving without him, when actually his past self didn’t see that happen until part four). I also liked how the Doctor figures out something’s up with Turlough very quickly and takes a moment to show that he disapproves, but still keeps him around anyway. I imagine it’s a mix of wanting Turlough where he can see him, and wanting to help him. Speaking of what Turlough has going on, is it just me who thought it wasn’t made very clear that he’s an alien in his first story? There’s maybe a few lines that suggest it, and it was obviously the plan from the beginning since the following stories reference it, but honestly if I went into this not knowing he was an alien I’m not sure I would’ve figured it out by the end of this one. Why would Tegan and Nyssa assume that the burnt figure they find is the Doctor? It’s a kinda fun mistaken identity plot that adds to the many moving parts of this story, but obviously the burnt figure was imagined to be a lot harder to identify in the script. But I don’t mind too much when it’s followed up by Tegan’s healthy scepticism in the face of Nyssa’s panicked belief, and the Brigadier’s hesitant attempts to keep both sides happy. Tegan’s honestly very on point in this story. Watching through her episodes make me feel like she gets flanderised a bit in the audios as an argumentative woman who can’t follow a sci-fi plot. As time goes on, she’s shown a lot to be an extremely competent companion in the face of the Doctor’s adventures: see also Earthshock. The backhalf of the story gets a bit bogged down with everyone wandering around Mawdryn’s spaceship. Makes me feel like this would’ve been a very tight three-parter. But it is hilarious that there’s like half a dozen different factions with their own goals, and literally all of them want the past Brigadier to leave. So he spends ages getting shuffled round and out of the way, but he still ends up doing exactly what nobody wanted him to do at the end. The brigadiers creating their own temporal energy is a clever way to end the plot, but the fact that they coincidentally do it at the exact microsecond they needed to feels a bit too contrived. It feels like this could’ve been one of the best plots in Classic Who with just a few tweaks. Finally, the moral dilemma in this story is very interesting, but the Doctor’s response to it is even more so. It’s never brought up that killing Mawdryn’s crew is what he objects to, only that he doesn’t want to sacrifice his own future regenerations. He repeatedly objects to that aspect, and specifically phrases it as the end of him as a Time Lord. Could you say something about the Doctor preaching against the superiority of his people but then hesitating to give up their benefits? Maybe link it to this Doctor’s rather old world British aesthetic? I’m sure there’s other ways you could look at this situation too, since it’s such a complex moral issue.

#my thoughts #I have lots to say about two of these stories #but the only thing I could think to say of Snakedance was how good it is jdlfjkhdfj #five #nyssa #tegan #turlough #brig #omega #mara #black guardian

[tartantardis]

The Four Doctors in Fiona Cumming’s Who career

(This interview was conducted in October 2013, for the Daily Record's Tartan TARDIS supplement. At the time she was retired and living with her husband Ian Fraser - another Doctor Who alumni - in Dumfries and Galloway, in the south of Scotland. Sadly, Fiona passed away in 2015. This interview is presented in full, with quite a lot that was cut from the print original)

FIONA Cumming has a Doctor Who CV to be proud of, boasting credits with the First, Second, Third and Fifth Doctors.

Indeed, when Peter Davison made his debut as the Fifth Doctor in 1981, it was Fiona, who grew up in Glasgow and Edinburgh, who was directing the story. She went on to direct three more stories with him.

But Fiona's involvement goes further back than the 1980s, having first worked on the show in 1965 as an assistant floor manager on William Hartnell tale The Massacre.

Fiona, said:"I had applied to the BBC in 1964 when they were getting ready for BBC2, and I had been accepted - but they lost my file and because I had a teaching degree, I came back up to Glasgow and started teaching at Bellahouston Academy. I can remember in 1963 when the kids came in, talking about this brilliant TV show they had seen the Saturday night before, and I said, 'What do you mean, it's set in a police box?'

"Then in 1964 I went to the BBC as a relief assistant floor manager, where you were slotted into various programmes. I was doing the twice-weekly soaps Compact and Swizzlewick, and the first time I was moved on to something different it was Doctor Who.

"I was put onto The Massacre in 1965 - so it's now 48 years since I first worked on Doctor Who. Peter Purves was William  Hartnell's assistant at that time and the director was Paddy Russell, who had such a great reputation.

"In those days, working in television was like working in a teaching hospital - you learned from the person above you, and in turn you passed it on to the person below you when you moved up the ladder

"There was a feeling of passing on knowledge, but I think now that's not that way, because people are too busy looking after their own backs, and keeping their cards very close to their chest. In those days, there was a generosity of spirit, which was quite remarkable."

A couple of years later, Fiona worked on Patrick Troughton's second adventure after succeeding William Hartnell.

She said: "By 1967 I became a Production Assistant on The Highlanders with Pat Troughton which was one of the lost stories but there is a relic which I think I've still got. It was a piece of film in a tin and in the BBC, you get moved arond from office to office, and then one day someone forwarded this to me, along with a note, saying it was ridiculous I was leaving archive material behind! What they didn't realise was that it was just me with the clapperboard!

"I loved working with Pat Troughton and teamed up again in 1969 with The Seeds of Death. I had worked on Dr Findlays Casebook with him and admired him as an actor greatly.

"In 1972 I worked on my next Who, when Jon Pertwee was the Doctor in a story called The Mutants. That was around the time they had started using CSO, and I remember Katy Manning, who played the assistant, sitting in the middle of what seemed like a lot of custard, with the yellow colour they were using. She was pretending she could see all sorts of things, but really, it was just in the middle of this yellow part of the studio."

"The next years were varied but I'd started Directing and after cutting my teeth on Z Cars, Angels and other programmes in the Drama Serials department."

Fiona was delighted when she returned to the worlds of Doctor Who, launching Peter Davison as the Doctor in 1982 story Castrovalva.

But she didn't think that the show's new star was bothered with the level of expectation being thrust upon him after succeeding Tom Baker.

She said: "With Castrovalva, I think the pressure was on me because until then, I had been doing an awful lot of classical stuff - I was used to directing people in crinolines and long skirts.

"David Maloney had offered me an episode of Blake's 7 and I felt the writer Tanith Lee had done a great script, Sarcophagus, and I thought she was a writer who  could work beautifully on Doctor Who. I sent a copy of the completed tape to John, and he did try her but it didn't work out, but out of that came his offer to direct Castrovalva.

"Because it was the first story of a new Doctor, and because it was an area that I hadn't really worked in for so long, not having done a Doctor Who since 1972, that was quite a long period of time.

"The other thing was that by that point, in 1980, the cult that had developed around Doctor Who was underway, so you were quite aware of the mantle of Doctor Who by that time.

"It wasn't so much being the first story of a new Doctor, but the pressure, I felt, was on me coming back to it.

"Peter was absolutely terrific, a real joy to work with, and we kept the feeling of family on the show, which was extremely important as well.

"I thought at that stage, and at all the times I worked with him afterwards, that Peter would have made an excellent director. He had an eye for the right kind of things and knew what was right for the programme. I thought he might go behind the scenes, but instead he perfered to stay as a performer.

"He had been doing particularly well on All Creatures Great and Small, and he already had a big following, and I thought it was a brilliant piece of casting to take a younger man and make him the Doctor.

"Nowadays, it's far more common with the likes of David Tennant and Matt Smith as the Doctor, but back then it was very unusual to have a younger Doctor. Until then he had always been an older man, with Bill Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker.

"He showed it worked.

"I was very lucky with my scripts - it was nice to be able to delve into them.

"I actually got a letter from a man who had not allowed his children to watch Doctor Who, but for some reason he let them see Castrovalva and he jumped on to the fact we had featured the art of MC Escher. He found it so interesting that a children's programme like Doctor Who was looking at Escher.

"JNT (producer John Nathan-Turner) was always very good about casting his crew, as it were. He always good a good combination - he rated me as a director, but he wouldn't have put me onto something that had metal monsters - he worked to the strengths of the crew."

Fiona was back directing two stories in the show's 20th season, the first being Snakedance, which featured the TV debut of Martin Clunes. She laughed: "Doing Snakedance was lovely - I had been to Morocco and was very aware of the scenes we had in the souks, as I wanted to get the Moroccan feel for them.

"I was very lucky as John would give me carte blanche for casting, although he always kept an eye on things, but I was able to bring in people like Collette O'Neil and John Carson and leave them to do their thing as I've worked with them before and knew I can trust them, and that would leave me more time to spend with people like Jonathon Morris and Martin Clunes who were both working in television for the first time.

"I had found Martin just by flicking through the pages of The Spotlight. They used to have a dedicated to students who were just leaving their various courses, and I saw his face looking back at me. I knew the character of Lon would only work if you could equate him with being a spoiled brat who was totally self-centred, because of his extreme youth. You didn't want to dislike him, but he was totally objectionable! And Martin hit the spot, beautifully!

"The other performance I really liked was Brian Miller - I don't think I could have got anyone better."

Later that year, Fiona directed another story, Enlightenment

She said: "When I did Enlightenment, I think, at the time it was the only Doctor Who which had been written solely by a woman.

"I had originally cast Peter Sallis, but we lost him when we had to remount the story after a strike, and I brought in Keith Barron, who played it very differently.

"Peter arrived and asked, 'Where do I sit?' I told him he was the master of the ship so he would have to stand, but he said, 'No, I only do sitting parts!' I eventually convinced him the master of the ship was a standing part - but I think he was sending me up rotten!

"As a director, you have a company of actors you use regularly, and you develop a shorthand in terms of working, but if they've never done a telly before, they need to be led into it.

"When I did the remake of Enlightenment for DVD, I was able to take out what was the best in the original with the story, the acting and plot, and then go forward. I felt the model shots we had done back then really creaked and groaned to such an extent that I wanted to update them with computer graphics. I had the full box of tricks at my disposal, some 25 years on, and I was really pleased as I felt I was able to get the best out of it."

Fiona's next outing took the Doctor overseas for 1984's Planet of Fire, which was shot in Lanzarote. The location came about by chance after Fiona sent producer John Nathan-Turner a postcard from a family holiday.

"We were on holiday in Lanzarote and had the children with us. I sent JNT a postcard saying, 'Location fabulous, troglodytes willing - how about it?' I took some pictures without the children in them, just vistas, and out of that came Planet of Fire.

"In the heat, it was quite punishing, and we were trying to make sure everybody was drinking enough weather. It was not the most comfortable shoot!

"Poor Nicola (Bryant) was rolling down the jaggy rocks, and it was her first job straight out of drama school - I think she learned pretty quickly that it wasn't all glamour when you were making TV!

"But we all had a fantastic time - because we were there on a package deal, everyone was there together.

"On the days he wasn't filming, Peter Wyngarde would spread himself out on the beach, and I noticed he was always listening to music. I said to him one night, 'What's your choice of music?' He looked at me and asked what I meant. When I explained I'd seen him with his earphones on, he said: 'I'm not listening to anything - I just put the plugs in my ears so no-one disturbs me!' It's now something that I do myself if I'm on planes or whatever, if I don't want someone disturbing me.

"I went back and did a remake of Planet of Fire for the DVD release - it was interesting because I realised that they wouldn't let me into any of the areas which I'd previously worked on.

"We couldn't make it in the same way now, as the footpaths we had used back then were now just for the scientists working there.

"I liked being able to add volcanoes and fire to the long shots and to get rid of the music and just get the sound of the fire in - I appreciate it, but I think some of the fans didn't."

#Scotland #Scottish #DoctorWho #WilliamHartnell #PatrickTroughton #JonPertwee #PeterDavison #Lanzarote