Doctor Who #3 - The Edge of Destruction

The Edge of Destruction is a two part story, conjured up at the last minute due to an episode shortfall. It is an unsettling, claustrophobic tale that also provides important character development.

The story sees the TARDIS seeming taken over by an alien force. The Doctor, his granddaughter Susan, and her teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright start acting strangely and even turn on each other.

The main character in this is the TARDIS itself. By presenting the ship as an enigmatic, seemingly conscious entity make the epsiodes feel like a haunted house story. It's definitely unsettling to see characters at each others throats. In particular the sight of Susan trying to attack people with a pair of Scissors, or the Doctor drugging Ian and Barbara after he suspects them of sabotage.

Compared to The Daleks there is less action, which means that the Doctor can take a bigger role. We also start to see a thaw in his icy character at the end. He even apologises to the others for not trusting them. This sees an end to the adversarial relationships the character enjoyed, and the start of them working together as a team.

Doctor Who #2 - The Daleks

The Daleks is as important and ground-breaking as the previous serial An Unearthly Child. It also has some of the same issues with pacing.

The story starts with the Doctor, his granddaughter Susan, and their two fellow travellers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright landing the TARDIS in a petrified jungle. From there, they get caught up in a war between the Daleks, unseen creatures encased in distinctive mechanical shells and the Thals, an Aryan-like race of humanoids.

This incarnation of the Doctor has yet to settle down into the proactive heroic do-gooder we know and love. In the Daleks he sabotages the TARDIS to force everyone to explore the Dalek city. Ian remarks that the Doctor "has a knack for getting himself into trouble". Of course, that means it's not himself, but also his companions, two of whom are there against their will. Of course, if he had not, the Thals would have been eliminated by the Daleks. The Doctor remains a passive character in this story, with Ian leading the attempts to escape from the Daleks, and the later attack on their city.

There is some silly and frustrating padding, such as the scene with a Food making machine, and the pace of the story is at times glacial. It also soon becomes clear that too much inter-Dalek dialogue is grating and unlistenable. And why are the female Thals dressed like they're trying to be Playboy bunnies?

These minor quibbles aside, it is still a fantastic story. There is tension and a weird creepy atmosphere that runs throughout. The script has some undertones of racial intolerance and Nazis that would be explored further in later stories.

It's also fascinating to two things about both the Doctor and the Daleks. Firstly, at this stage, neither are encumbered by their own mythology. Secondly, how both have a very analogue 1960s version of advanced technology, with everything working from dials and printouts. And of course, the MacGuffin for the story is the mercury filled fluid link that, without which, the TARDIS is rendered completely immobile.

Doctor Who #1 - An Unearthly Child

 

An Unearthly Child is essential viewing for anyone interested in Dr Who, even if it is something of a Curate's Egg. Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton are two school teachers in early 1960s London. They share the same gifted but bizarre pupil, Susan Foreman. They decide to team up to confront her mysterious guardian, known only as the Doctor, who seemingly lives in a junkyard, inside a Police Box.

The first episode is brilliant, and establishes the main characters quickly. Especially interesting is the title character. As the show is yet to get bogged down with its own mythology, the Doctor we see here is a genuine enigma. He has unclear motives and an abrasive streak in his character.

The story sets the template for a type of story that will recur throughout the show, even into the modern era. The Doctor and crew get separated from the TARDIS, and battle to fight their way back. In this case it is against hostile factions of a Stone Age tribe who have lost the power to make fire. This means, whatever else is going on, the stakes can be raised a certain amount, and solves the "why don't you simply take off again" problem. But, in An Unearthly Child there is very little else, and could have lost one of the four episodes to tighten the pace. There is plenty of creepy ambience, and the climax in the Cave of Skulls is far more gruesome than I would have expected for a children's show of that era.

The Doctor actually takes a back seat as the story progresses, with Ian being the proactive character who shows the cave people how to make fire again. This is a show that is, finding it's feet, but the basic elements are there. Oh, and for anyone who thinks the show is only nowadays a bastion of bleeding heart liberalism, at one point Ian and Barbara try to teach the cave dwellers about democracy and compassion with the phrase "a tyrant is not as strong as the whole tribe acting collectively".

 

 

Heavens Above (1963)

Heavens Above is the high point of the several collaborations between  Peter Sellers and the British film making duo of Roy and John Boulting. The film takes on two most sacred of cows, organised religion and Christian beliefs (particularly how they work in the real world), with a brilliant, straight performance by Sellers, undermined by a ridiculous and unnecessary climax.

Sellers plays John Smallwood, a good hearted but naive prison chaplain, assigned as vicar to a small and prosperous English country town after a clerical error.

Smallwood's brand of Christianity runs on charity and forgiveness, the polar opposite of his congregation, who are outraged when he takes on a black man as his churchwarden, lets a gypsy family live in the vicarage, and talks the local landowner Lady Despard into giving free food for the church to distribute to the locals.

The cinematic legacy of Peter Sellers rests on his comic creations such as Inspector Clouseau and Dr Strangelove, but with Smallwood he gives us a character who is both vulnerable and believable, even resisting the urge to make his Brummie accent comically broad.

The writing, directing and producing team of Roy and John Boulting had worked with Sellers on the industrial relations satire I'm Alright Jack, where they mocked both the power-crazed unions and the greedy boardrooms. Here they take a similar approach, laying into the hypocritical church leaders and their congregation, but also Smallwood's guileless and easily exploited Christianity, and his betrayal by both his bosses and the people he tried to help is heart breaking.

Then, from out of nowhere, the story takes an unexpected diversion, abandoning village life to focus on a frightened astronaut and a new job for Smallwood. The comedy becomes broad and wacky, the polar opposite of everything we've seen up to then.  Jarring and pointless, this switch nearly derails the rest of the film.

8 1/2 (1963)

Films about films is a long established genre, going back at least as far as Buster Keaton. 8 1/2 is Federico Fellini's attempt to explore the difficulties of the creative process. Unfortunately, for me, the film is uninvolving and self indulgent, with inventive and surreal situations overwhelmed by stodgy pretentious dialogue and dull characters.

Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni), is a famous Italian film director (based on Fellini), suffering from writers block while working on a science fiction film. Struggling for ideas and with a messy private life involving his wife and mistress, he retreats into fantasies involving things like being hounded to death by the press or using a whip to keep his imaginary harem at bay.

There is little plot beyond that, which is fine in itself as strong narrative isn't the only way to tell a story. However, there is very little else to go with it. It's a character study of someone who seems to have little character, certainly little to engage the audience with. It's a film about film making, but by the end I felt I knew nothing about his creative process or struggles. Some of the surrealism is funny and surprising, but some feels forced and torpid.

Perhaps I'm missing something, as 8 1/2 has been praised repeatedly and regularly crops up as a favourite of both directors and critics, so it might be worth a second chance, but my main memory is the feeling of joy as the end credits appeared.

Carry On Cabby (1963)

The first few Carry On films are largely variations on a theme, with well-meaning bumblers wreaking havoc in a variety of jobs. Carry on Cabby keeps the work based setting, but cuts back on the bumbling to concentrate on the battle of the sexes.

Charlie Hawkins (Sid James) runs a highly successful cab firm, and the cab firm runs his life, much to the chagrin of his neglected other half Peggy (Hattie Jacques). To teach Charlie a lesson, Peggy clandestinely starts her own business, Glamcabs, employing only sexy young women as drivers. As Glamcabs starts to poach Charlie's business, he resorts to sabotage.

This may look like a case of women getting the upper hand, but, of course, this is a Carry On film, so for the women to fight back they have to use sexist methods, and the drivers are picked purely on their looks and legs.

The script is more story driven than later films in the series, favouring a tone that is warm and innocent rather than the knowing smut that would follow. There is a focus on relationships, and subtle little characterisations, such as Charlie helping out ex-army people, a code he sticks to loyally even if it means employing a hopelessly clumsy halfwit like Pintpot (Charles Hawtrey)

The end result is a film played straight and realistically by an excellent cast, and one more grounded in reality, and less cartoonish than the series would become.

The Thrill Of It All (1963)

The success of the TV show Mad Men triggered some interest and debate fairly recently over mid 20th century attitudes towards gender roles and advertising. The Thrill of It All is a film dealing with both themes, but as it was made nearer to the time Mad Men is set in, it does not have the safety net of ironic detachment to fall back on.

Doris Day plays housewife Beverly Boyer, who, after a chance remark at a dinner party, ends up doing TV commercials for Happy Soap - much to the chagrin of her husband, obstetrician Gerald, played by James Garner. As her fame and earning power grows, so does Gerald's jealousy. Will have Beverley have to choose between her career and her marriage?

Despite being written by two genuine comedy legends, Larry Gelbart and Carl Reiner, the script never raises any real belly laughs, and does not really rise above the level of the domestic TV sitcoms of the time, with cheesy dialogue and predictable situations, although some of the sexual innuendo is good for a chuckle. Thankfully, the seemingly effortless charisma of the two stars, who take up the majority of the screen time, make the film a very enjoyable watch. The rest of the cast go for a rather exaggerated, almost cartoon style of acting, that grates after a while.

The main message of the woman gaining, and then giving up her vocational and financial independence could be problematic, but it is difficult to take as misogynistic given the lightweight, insubstantial nature of the film.

Rather than the "Battle of the Sexes", the more interesting conflict is that between TV and cinema. The Thrill of It All is set in the time when TV was, relatively speaking, still in its infancy, and still a fairly crude and unsophisticated medium, both in technology and form. The dramas sponsored by Happy Soap are depicted as being poorly made, with a running gag of about them literally churning out the same scenes each week. Nevertheless, the public are entranced by it, perhaps as much by the novelty as by the content.

This leads to a slightly sneering, dismissive tone in the script, as if television is a medium driven primarily by commercial concerns, providing mindless, cheap entertainment to the masses, but never able to reach the sophisticated heights of more established forms. Which is of course exactly how, in it's early days, cinema was perceived.