Season 15 - Part One
“Why take the smooth with the rough? When things run smooth, it’s already more than enough.”
When Doctor Who returned to BBC1 in September 1977, it must have initially seemed like “business as usual” for its audience. Horror of Fang Rock is, like its predecessor of five months before, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, a horror story about otherworldly intervention at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Both feature a high body count, a brooding Doctor and Leela climbing out of conveniently wet clothes. Few viewers, I suspect, would have noticed that the penultimate name in the end credits had changed and that Doctor Who’s producer was no longer a man called Philip Hinchcliffe.
Hinchcliffe had taken Doctor Who to unprecedented heights in the television charts and achieved a level of critical respectability that prompted the first ever serious documentary about the show. He had also been moved off the series by his BBC superiors in faintly mysterious circumstances, although a controversy stoked by “clean up television” campaigner Mary Whitehouse over the series' content certainly played no small part in events.
Whitehouse's reaction to the freeze frame "drowning" cliffhanger to Part Three of The Deadly Assassin in particular is worth noting. So seriously did BBC Drama take this complaint that the final shot of the episode was erased from the original transmission master in order to prevent it even being transmitted again in its offending form. This was a fate it shared with the climax of the eighth episode of I, Claudius, transmitted a week or so before and subject to similar ire. The Deadly Assassin was later repaired using a fan off-air recording and has been released and re-screened as its creators intended. I, Claudius remains mutilated to this day.
But BBC Drama had other problems, problems unrelated to the ire of self-appointed guardians of public morality and arguably more real. One of them was the need for someone to “rescue” the troubled pre-production of a police series, provisionally entitled Hackett, which had been conceived as the BBC’s answer to Euston Films' The Sweeney by a well regarded and recently promoted-to-producer script editor by the name of Graham Williams.
The man who had made Doctor Who too hot for early evening and the man who wasn't getting a tough prime time cop show up and running sufficiently quickly effectively swapped jobs, and at very short notice. Which was probably harder to organise than it sounds. Williams was employed by Drama Series and Hinchcliffe by Drama Serials, which were then two separate departments with different heads, Andrew Osborn and Bill Slater respectively. (Although Slater, who seems to have initiated the move, would soon leave the BBC under a cloud, and be succeeded by Graeme MacDonald).
In interviews Williams (who died in 1990) said that Slater, who had also played a role in Tom Baker's casting as Doctor Who in 1974, only asked him to take over the series once the ambitious Hinchcliffe had expressed a desire to leave, with the latter having ostensibly already stayed longer than he intended. Yet even in 2024 Hinchcliffe remains adamant he had no plans to leave Doctor Who in the immediate future until Williams knocked on his office door and asked him to budge up.
But when did that happen? It can’t have been before The Deadly Assassin Part Three furore, and that began after its transmission on the 13th November 1976. The first Doctor Who paperwork with Williams’ name on it, an attempt to outline a concept of a “quest for The Key to Time” and to extend the fictional cosmology of Doctor Who, is dated the 30th of that month. That's little more than two weeks later.
Either that was a document for Williams’ bosses indicating what he would do if he was offered the job, or he was somehow already trailing Hinchcliffe. (Who remained in charge on the studio floor, and took the producer’s run throughs of the final two serials of the then current production block.)
Whichever it was, Williams had either just been formally appointed or soon would be. 30th November 1976 was between the two studio sessions for The Robots of Death, and Williams visited the set for that serial to be introduced to Tom Baker during the recording of the scene in which killer robot SV7 is destroyed. He found Baker quarrelling with director Michael E Briant about the blocking of the scene, and with the studio clock running down. Williams later recalled this as a hair raising experience, both in terms of observing his star’s temperament and in appreciating the sheer complexity of a Doctor Who studio recording. Because while a staff producer, nothing Williams had worked on since his promotion had, albeit through no fault of his own, actually reached the screen yet. More, coming from a script editing rather production management background, he had never taken charge of a studio session in his career.
A quick glance at the studio schedule for The Robots of Death tells us this was the 7th December 1977. By then, at the very latest, Hinchcliffe was on his way out the door. Hackett would eventually make it to screen as the all-film series Target, coincidentally or not the name of the imprint under which novelisations of Doctor Who serials were published. Hinchcliffe was the author of the imminent Doctor Who And The Seeds of Doom for the company (it was already scheduled for January 1977) and would keep his hand in on the series which he had so suddenly left behind by writing another a year until the end of the decade. Perhaps he was pining for his old job? Certainly Target (the series) was not considered a success, being criticised for its violence, ridiculed in the press, and disliked by the BBC hierarchy that had insisted Hinchcliffe produce it.
It was only with the BAFTA nominated and RTS winning Private Schulz (1981) that the next phase of Hinchcliffe’s career began. Forty years later he would still visibly bristle when asked about his departure from television Doctor Who on the Blu-ray release of the last series of it he did produce, and despite a stellar career in the decades since Private Schulz.
Hinchcliffe has also recently put some of his ideas for a fourth series of Doctor Who into practice as audio dramas for independent production company Big Finish. All this speaks far more of unfinished business than of a “young man in a hurry” in 1977. Perhaps Slater, like bosses the world over, was simply economical with the truth when he hit upon the idea of solving two problems facing BBC drama with a single job swap.
It was a decision with a long tail. It took Hinchcliffe two (truncated) seasons to escape Target, and when its star Patrick Mower also expressed a desire to leave, new producer Robert Banks Stewart was given the option of creating a replacement series instead. That series was Shoestring, which would go on to pull in some extraordinary viewing figures over the next two years (peaking at over 23m). When its star Trevor Eve similarly wanted out, Banks Stewart was asked to try again, and came up with the decade-dominating Bergerac. From such coincidental threads does the whole of television history hang.
Williams too would soon find himself disappointed, with his own initial plans for 1977’s Doctor Who series also having to be abandoned. His “Key to Time” concept was shelved for a year, although this cannot be on account of the scripts already commissioned, as is sometimes reported. Even the earliest scripts made in Williams’ debut season were not commissioned until new year 1977 (although discussions had been had writers Terrance Dicks and Bob Baker & Dave Martin about what they would contain). It was perhaps too broad a re-conception of the series to be carried out over the course of, roughly, a month.
Smoothing, at least in theory, the all too hurried transition between producers was retained script editor Robert Holmes. Holmes was, ironically, more keen on leaving Doctor Who at this point than his now former boss had been. The first four serials of the new block were all commissioned by Holmes, and from writers who had been working on Doctor Who since the turn of the 1970s. Including himself. Despite the change in producers, a new broom this was not, and in some ways these late 1977 transmitted stories represent an unfiltered Holmes version of Doctor Who, more than they do the creative intentions of the man in overall charge of the series. For that, Doctor Who viewers would have to wait.
The first story of the season as transmitted was meant to be The Vampire Mutation by Holmes' predecessor as Doctor Who's script editor, Terrance Dicks. But the newly installed Graeme MacDonald was worried that Dicks' story would be perceived as a spoof of an upcoming BBC adaptation of Dracula, intended as a prestige drama and one which MacDonald hoped would have a big impact. With his big idea staked, Dicks instead disappeared with a book about turn of the century lighthouses gifted to him by Holmes, and returned having distilled it into the aforementioned Horror of Fang Rock.
Fang Rock is an extraordinary Doctor Who story. Claustrophobic. Fast paced. Thoughtful. It’s superbly directed by Paddy Russell, and in the challenging studio environment of BBC Pebble Mill rather than Doctor Who‘s usual home of BBC Television Centre. The enforced trip to Birmingham was not to Baker's liking and, unhappy, he quarrelled ferociously with the rest of the cast and crew, often refusing to cooperate with his director's wishes and occasionally improvising on camera. Nearly half a century later, however, the work speaks for itself. His performance in this story is a constantly sparking Catherine Wheel of invention, and amongst the very best of his seven series and forty odd serials in the role.
Fang Rock's other great strength is Dicks' script. In it he contrives to trap a cross-section of 1900s British society in said lighthouse, and then has them start arguing about class. Then killed by an alien sea monster, admittedly, this still being Doctor Who. But nevertheless class is the key to everything in Fang Rock. Junior lighthouse keeper Vince Hawkins introduces himself in the same way to everyone, which leads Leela to call him "Vince" and the ridiculous secretary Adelaide to call him "Hawkins". (The Doctor plumps for "Mister Hawkins" and eventually "Vince.”) When the boatswain Harker expresses a wish that the financier Lord Palmerdale should die for his recklessness leading to the boat's crew drowning, the Doctor's reaction is not to diminish that anger or condemn it morally, instead he says "All that can wait".
Quite.
Late in life Dicks defined his politics as of “the Mild Left”, but Horror of Fang Rock, with its lighthouse stratified on three levels and angry class politics, in which the paternal aristocracy with their sense of duty are ultimately preferable to newer generations of money men, is Doctor Who’s most anxiously Marxist text. More so even than the work of Dicks' mentor and avowed Communist Malcolm Hulke. It's as concerned with class and how it traps people regardless of their abilities or inclinations as a Galsworthy novel or a Priestley play. It even begins with an argument about the nature of progress and includes barbed dialogue about two separate Tory Prime Ministers (Salisbury and Bonar-Law) and ends with an otherwise decent man dying because he can't quite resist the idea of free money. All just to make sure you don't miss the point. People have, of course.
The next serial has, in common with many Bob Baker and Dave Martin written stories, scripts with the remarkable virtue of relentlessly throwing new concepts and settings at the screen. Unfortunately in this instance, that tendency, seemingly not reined in by Holmes, crashes headlong into the inexperience in the production office. Having been a script editor, Williams had little experience of the budgetary and organisational side of producing. Made before Horror of Fang Rock, this was the first time he ever took charge of BBC studio session.
An additional problem was that while the serial's director Derrick Goodwin was hugely experienced in television, he had mostly worked in the domain of sitcom and police drama, and was exceedingly anxious about taking on a heavy special effects programme like Doctor Who. Williams, an old friend since their days on Z Cars, assured him that other elements of the production team would have his back. It didn't quite turn out like that.
In 1990 Williams told fanzine In-Vision that Goodwin was originally booked to direct the less technical The Vampire Mutation before plans changed. But the production folders for both stories demonstrate that this is not the case. (Perhaps this was a hope, rather than an actual plan. Or a simple misremembering on Williams' part.)
Regardless, the serial's studio sessions began to go badly wrong early on. The script is structured so that Parts One and Four largely take place on Titan Base and Parts Two and Three largely at a medical foundation. The material for Parts One and Four was shot first, with the material for Parts Two and Three following weeks later. Within each studio block the material was largely shot in narrative order. Which is why the wheels of this story fly off into space shortly after the end of Part One.
In production terms at least, the first episode works. But as the studio session went on, shooting became more and more hurried. Material for the story's climax in Part Four was being rushed and as the director's time ran out, the producer made a decision. In 1985 Williams told fanzine dwb that he was proud that he "...put my foot down down very severely on the first studio [for The Invisible Enemy]... I said 'We must not accept the fact that Doctor Who is going to overrun.'."
This response was indicative of Williams' inexperience on a studio floor. In the same interview he denies this was a matter of budgetary worries, saying it was about his personal authority. Putting his foot down was all very well as a method of establishing who’s boss, but it’s also a contributory factor to why this serial's final episode in particular looks as rough as a (robot) dog’s arse.
By the time of the second studio session, something had changed on Doctor Who. Advocates for the lesser stories of the Williams Era rightly cite their lightness of touch and charm in their favour. But there’s little of either on display in Part One. That vibe has yet to appear. Part Two, however, sees the arrival of the whimsical robot dog K9, and Frederick Jaeger playing his owner Professor Marius as a comedy character with a comedy voice. Jaeger is having fun. Sometimes the audience are too. K9 is an instant delight and only a churl would dispute that the decision to take him on board the TARDIS at the end was the right one. But there are issues in this second block too.
Baker, perhaps bored by the amount of time in this studio session that he has to spend tied to a gurney with no lines, perhaps aware from the previous session that the director and producer aren't really in control, launches into orbit the moment he's given any dialogue. The other actors compete to achieve Baker and Jaeger's tone. Even Michael Sheard, who had looked for subtlety in his Part One scenes, resorts instead to just shouting most of the time. The addition of Baker generated lines where the Doctor mocks the (admittedly dreadful) monster costume for the Nucleus of the Swarm is certainly a mistake.
The (barely) finished serial, in which we move from material from one studio session to the other and back again, suffers a tonal mismatch as extreme as any in Doctor Who. In Part One, the crew of the base are gunned down by (possessed) people who they regard as friends, while in the middle of throwing a boozy party. In Part Four, Sheard's Supervisor Lowe, who cowered in terror from that first massacre, is murdered by the Doctor while Lowe is possessed by the Nucleus of the Swarm. At this point in the story, the Doctor knows that people so possessed can be cured and rescued. In fact, he has been himself. So there really is no excuse. (Consulting the script, we see a more complex scene was envisaged and then unable to be shot due to time problems on the day.)
In some ways it's understandable that the actors tried to take the material in a new, lighter direction. The Holmes approach to Doctor Who was running out of road, as his own desire to leave acknowledged. BBC management had indicated that horror should be phased out, and Williams had come to the conclusion that harnessing Baker's vast energy and enthusiasm as a performer should be what filled the void. But the thing about depending on your lead actor's energy is that it's, well, dependent on your lead actor's energy, and thus their mood. Some days that's going to go well, and some days it's not. And you really have no control over when those days will come.
As a piece of television The Invisible Enemy hits the ground between two stools, scattering fibreglass prawn shards as it does so. The model work is admittedly terrific. But it was undertaken in a different studio by different people on a different day from those conducting the live action recordings. Six months earlier this story might have had the verve and confidence of The Robots of Death. Six months later it might have been saved by, well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Perhaps, given everything, Williams should have replaced Holmes, rather than Hinchcliffe. The man who wanted to go rather than the one who wanted to stay. Holmes' eventual successor was Anthony Read. Read had left the BBC some years before, and was asked back to take up the job on Doctor Who by MacDonald personally. Williams and Read had worked together before, and the much older Read would be a stabilising influence on a young producer. This is something Read comes within a hair’s breadth of acknowledging in his interview for Toby Hadoke’s Whosround, admitting that the unusual appointment of himself, a former producer of ten years experience, to the more junior role of script editor on Doctor Who was an attempt to patch holes in the production office's skill set. More usually Read would claim it was a job he accepted because Doctor Who was “a special programme,” an idea that naturally delighted fans as it was honed into well-worn anecdotage.
But it would have been unusual under any circumstances to offer the post to someone of Read’s experience, seniority and even expense. BBC employees being paid, like the civil servants they almost were, based on their experience, tenure and a kind of grade based formula derived from their salary the last time they’d worked for Auntie. It's also true that the script editing of the next two serials, both Holmes commissions, could have been handled by a novice, working under Williams, who was undeniably hugely skilled in those areas.
According to Image of the Fendahl's author Chris Boucher, he sent in scripts for the serial to Robert Holmes for notes, only to get an acceptance slip from Anthony Read. Boucher, busy beginning work as the script editor on Blake's 7, a job that Holmes had turned down, simply shrugged and got on with editing Terry Nation, with the final story essentially made from Boucher's first draft.
The paperwork certainly indicates that the first two episodes were submitted early (and even accepted before their intended delivery date) with the final two delivered a week or so late. Perhaps that stop-start combination was responsible in part for the scripts sailing through relatively unedited? Holmes is the only editor credited onscreen, with Read acknowledged on some paperwork. (Full disclosure: Read once remembered doing structural work on the story, although he also admitted his recollection was hazy and he may have been thinking of another serial entirely.)
Regardless, Boucher later thought better of this stepping back, finding the read through for the serial a painful experience in which a rampant Baker attacked page after page as "whippet shit", with some encouragement from Director George Spenton-Foster. Boucher, a huge admirer of the actor’s onscreen work, later confessed to nursing a years long desire to see Tom Baker “die in a cellar full of rats” following the experience. Ironically, in the DVD commentary for the serial, Baker genuinely cannot recall meeting Boucher, anything about him or even his name. Such is the fickle nature of television fame.
There are fair criticisms to be made of Fendhal's scripts. The Doctor is remarkably un-central to the serial, largely walking towards the story happening a short distance from him, and then backing away again, only pausing to unleash pages of backstory about the Fendahl and their battle with the Time Lords. And perhaps that is what Baker objected to? Certainly the fluidly written and well realised guest characters get the better half of possession in this story. The finest performance is from the veteran Daphne Heard as White Witch Granny Tyler, and it's one Louise Jameson picks out as a highlight of years on Doctor Who to this day. ("She honours the text.") But with a cast that include Scott Fredericks, Denis Lill and Wanda Ventham there are inevitably plenty of other delightful turns.
Baker's main memory of the serial is finding Ventham "immensely desirable” but he is genuinely brilliant in it (“Alas, poor skull”), turning that verbiage into revelation, convincingly wordlessly playing being telepathically compelled to place his hand on a skull against his will and defusing a moment of proper horror by talking encouragingly to his own legs.
Equally, while Spenton-Foster was a controversial figure, well known for playing favourites with some actors and deliberately humiliating others in turn, he mostly does very good work on Fendahl, particularly on film. The death of the Hiker and the end of Part One are some of the scenes in which 20th century Doctor Who most resembles a straight up horror film of its own era, and without the queasiness and uncertainty that destabilised The Invisible Enemy. It may be a de facto Williams / Read joint, but Image of the Fendahl is an effective last hurrah for the Hammer inflected Holmes / Hinchcliffe version of Doctor Who, a mode in which the first half of this production block had been compelled, if not content, to operate.
The second half of the season would prove to be very different.
Next Week: The Sun Makers, Underworld and The Invasion of Time.
