Review by Guy Clapperton
Stars Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker,
William Hartnell (in cameo) | Written by Gerry Davis, Kit Pedler, Bob Baker, Dave Martin & Chris Boucher
UK cert PG | RRP £44.99 | Region 2 | Runtime 250 mins | Directed by Morris Barry, Lennie Mayne & Michael Briant
OK, first the slightly controversial bit. These older Doctor Who stories are all available separately and many fans complain when they’re released in a threesome like this – digitally cleaned up and in the case of the earliest story VidFired so it looks as though it was filmed last week. They don’t see why they need to spend £20+ (once the discounts have bitten) on something they mostly already own.
They miss the point that some of these releases happened over ten years ago. This sort of box set represents extraordinary value for a new generation that wants to find out what the appeal was about the older Doctor Who serials – and in fact, if anyone asks why we bothered watching all those years ago, there is no better collection to show them.
We kick off with Tomb of the Cybermen, probably the best Troughton story extant in the archives. The Doctor and his companions arriveon the planet Telos to find some archaeologists investigating why the Cybermen died out, and you just know from the title that they’re not actually dead. The silver giants resurrect themselves and make one of their most memorable appearances, rising from a giant tomb – still impressive now but it must have looked staggering at the time.
Troughton is completely entrancing even if the Doctor does seem to be encouraging people towards certain death to push the story along. He twinkles, he gets a bit of comic business with Jamie in, his quiet scene with Victoria is simply magical – and you never doubt his conviction and his fear. Yes, to some it will look like a hokey 1950s B-movie, complete with phoney American accents, by all means the Cybermen have an uncomfortable amount of duct tape on their costumes by today’s standard and the ‘thrown’ Cyberleader is unfortunate, but let it under your skin and it’s an utter classic. It’s been polished up and re-digitised to look better than it’s done since its original broadcast in the late 1960s.
Troughton is back in the second story in this set, The Three Doctors, made to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the show (those of us who remember it will be distressed to reflect that the 50th is next year). Pertwee is the Doctor of the day and Hartnell makes cameo appearances on the Tardis monitor, due to ill health a couple of years before his death. He looks and sounds oddly different – the illness has wrought changes and one co-viewer asked me whether it was the same actor.
The story itself is an odd mix. The plot is a bit panto; there’s this black hole threatening the end of the universe and the Time Lords – good guys in those days – are worried. So they pull the first three Doctors together, stranding one of them in a “time eddy”, the Doctors go through the black hole and find Omega, one of the greatest Time Lords of all, who’s created this mini-universe. The UNIT family are partly present and correct; Jo, the Brigadier and Benton lend sterling support to something that isn’t so much a story as a birthday knees-up. There are some memorably bad monsters in the shape of the Gel Guards, some dated special effects for the gloop that abducts UNIT HQ and a positively glittering performance from Troughton, who gleefully steals every scene in which he appears. I remember liking Jon Pertwee until this story and for the year and a bit after that until he left wanting a funny Doctor back again because of this. The story really animates itself when they come together and clash; just don’t expect anything researched or profound.
The third story in this is another corker for different reasons. The Robots of Death has Baker at his absolute peak, produced in the horror tradition by Philip Hinchcliffe with script editor Robert Holmes. The show would move to comedy the following year but this one feels as though it has real substance. The support characters have a lot to do with this. They’re not the utterly likeable people stranded on a spaceship we’re used to – they’re financially driven, at work, they don’t necessarily have to like each other. The robots themselves have a beauty about them except when their feet are being filmed – more on that in the extras section.
Baker and assistant Leela (Louise Jameson) are utterly superb in this. One-liners abound, the effects stand up and gloriously the designers decided to go for a bit of a period feel – so for once the look and feel hasn’t dated, it still looks Art Deco and is all the better for it.
So basically if the kids want to know what older Doctor Who was all about, this is the box set to buy. And if you just want to watch some corking examples of the original series at its best, that’s another excellent reason to get hold of this. Look, just buy it, it’s brilliant.
EXTRAS ★★★★★ ust when you think it can’t get any better, 2Entertain has spoiled us with some of the best extras on planet Earth. Some of these are from the original releases but a lot aren’t. There are too many to list individually. My personal high spots would be the archive interview with the effects man Jack Kine from Tomb of the Cybermen, the reconstructed battle from Evil of the Daleks on the same disk, a lovely making-of featurette called The Lost Giants, a long-overdue tribute to the creators of the VidFire restoration process but most particularly the historical perspectives offered by Sir Christopher Frayling and Dr Debbie Challis on the story’s origins. The structure of the archaeological team, down to the disinterested financial backers tagging along, really resonate through history as does the structure of what’s in the Tomb – I hadn’t realised how accurate this was, and my appreciation of the writers’ efforts really grew whilst watching this. There are also commentaries and a genuine 1960s Sky Ray ice lolly advert, featuring someone who looks completely unlike the Doctor – but then so did the collector cards the ad was pushing!
The Three Doctors has an endearing updated Happy Birthday to Who featuring Terrance Dicks, the late Barry Letts and many of the cast. Dicks’ belief that they got away with it is a bit modest but you can see, once you’ve heard about the ructions while they were making it, why he might think so. Was Doctor Who Rubbish? asks some searching questions about the old series and has some fairly predictable fan responses, defending it against today’s standards. Archived appearances by Pertwee on Blue Peter, original BBC trails, the trailer from the 1981 repeat just before Peter Davison took over, it’s all good stuff.
There’s nothing better than a good story-teller, though, and that’s what you get in the Robots of Death extras when director Michael Briant holds forth in The Sandmine Murders. He’s a great raconteur, telling tales of winding Tom Baker up about the quality of the script when the new producer is standing behind him and frankly apologising for not telling the costume designers the robotic feet were going to be in shot so often. They’d just put the actors in plimsoles with a bit of shiny stuff on them and they didn’t look good – it’s the only weak point in the production and he’s aware the camera lingers on them rather a lot. Off-air continuity, rushes without sound, there isn’t so much to enjoy in this particular disk but there’s probably less to say.
Overall a superb release – possibly 2Entertain’s best one yet.