The Happiness Patrol

Acting on what he calls "disturbing rumours", the Doctor takes Ace to Terra Alpha; an Earth colony in the future. Alpha is governed by Helen A., a strict woman who wants only one thing from her people: for them to be happy. And to keep them happy, she has had smily faces painted everywhere, cheerful music piped out from speakers everywhere, free candy for everyone. And if that doesn't make the people happy, the Happiness Patrol will find them, and make them disappear for the good of everyone else.

Doctor Who dips back into the surreal here, to an extreme length. We all know a political system like that could never really work, so writer Graeme Curry is calling for not just a suspension of the viewer's disbelief but a total incarceration and exile of it for the story's three episode length. Maybe it's possible to accept Helen A's megalomania and the cowardice of her whipped husband Joseph C (some say this is a Margaret Thatcher comment, and perhaps it is), and the fanatical Patrol members Priscilla P and Daisy K, but along comes the Kandy Man, which is exactly what the name suggests: a villain made of candy. Something to upset the makers of Basset's Allsorts.

The colonists of the planet are not the only ones under threat from Helen A's programme of happiness through terror; humanoid rat-creatures that used to live in the sugar fields have been driven out of their native habitat and forced to scrounge in the underground pipe network beneath Alpha's capital (and like so many other planets in the Who universe, only) city. The colonists call them the vermin, a typical colonist slant towards indiginous life that gets in the way of progress, but they are an intelligent species aware of their plight and desperate to find a way out. When the Doctor meets them, he realizes they are on the brink of starvation, and as such extinction as well.

Even though this is only Ace's third adventure it's easy to see how well she is going to go over with such a totalitarian regime. Her black jacket with all its badges raises the ire of the Patrol, as does her refusal to smile, sing or dance. It's a given that Ace would rebel against any authority, but when she encounters it to this extreme she almost goes out of her way to court the danger. And yes, she has more explosives with her and blows up Helen A's vicious pet Fifi when it corners her in the pipes.

Jay and I enjoyed this one on the weekend, and as he had not seen it before we were not as verbose as usual. There were the usual comments when we found something silly or puzzling, like the way the Kandy Man's eyes were constantly spinning, or why he kept his lemonade in a wine bottle. There are a few actors in Patrol who we had seen before - one in Caves of Androzani and another from Frontios - which made Jay ponder why they recycled actors instead of finding new talent. And we wondered why go to the trouble of making the TARDIS pink for one episode, or, indeed, how the paint stuck.

My usual complaint with studio bound stories like this is I never get the feeling of it actually being a city, or a large one come to that. Sure they've rearranged it and shot from different angles and darkened the shadows to make the night time setting more menacing, but if you look too closely you recognize the background and become too aware of the studio limitations (something they just manged to avoid in Paradise Towers). The answer is probably to not look too close, as with all things.

Back in 1990 I first saw this on YTV when they had the rights to Doctor Who in Canada. Littered with commercials, sound levels shot to hell and shown out of sequence it didn't make much of an impression with me at the time. It doesn't help when you've got an adventure that has already been trimmed to fit into a shorter format that it gets sliced a bit more to make room for the ads. The novelization of the story came along within a couple of years and as was the fashion at the time it expanded greatly on what the writer really wanted to achieve. Who knows how much of what was presented in text actually made it to being recorded, and therefore might end up on a DVD release. A friend of mine said at the time that The Happiness Patrol would never be released on VHS due to its use of the Kandy Man and there would be lawsuits from Bassett's as it resembled their mascot, Bertie, but it happened, so the DVD is not an impossibility. The schedule for 2008 releases looks a bit packed for now so it is unlikely we'd see it in the near future, but despite it's slightly oddball status, it would be a good one to put out.

NEXT EPISODE : SILVER NEMESIS

Remembrance of the Daleks

It's November 1963 and the army are on patrol in Shoreditch around Coal Hill School and a junkyard at 76 Totters Lane. The Doctor and Ace arrive and find two different Dalek factions lurking in central London, both after the same thing: the Hand of Omega. During his stay on Earth with Susan, the Doctor had intended to bury the Hand on Earth and use it as bait but when Ian and Barbara pushed into the TARDIS he was forced to leave before completing the job. The Hand of Omega is what it implies: a tool used by Omega to craete the black hole that became the centre of the Eye of Harmony, and it will give the Daleks the power that the Time Lords have. But the Imperial Daleks, under the command of their Emperor, have to overcome the Renegade Dalek army which has enlisted the aid of local facists. And that means all out war.

Welcome back to Doctor Who.

Now I know a lot of people will get mad at me for saying it, but THIS is what the show is about. It's about the Doctor, the alien man with an agenda, who has had enough of the evil he finds in the universe and is going to do something about it. And the trusting companion, who believes in him totally, and even though this is their first full adventure together now that Mel has left (she never would have survived this one) one gets the feeling that a lot of time has already passed just from watching them together. There are of course moments where Ace's questions to the Doctor sound more like she's interviewing him from cue cards, but on the whole they've got it stitched up between them.

Word is Terry Nation did not like what writer Ben Aaronovitch did with the Daleks. I can't imagine what his beef was; they're at their most innovative here, with the Black Dalek's renegade army laying clever plans to use a small child's mind as a battle computer, and the Imperial Daleks evolving beyond their usual means and creating a super weapon in the form of the Special Weapons Dalek which is just an engine of destruction. I got annoyed at Ace's little soliloqy about the cause of the Dalek conflict though; she saw the fight as a parable of racial intolerance until it is revealed that Davros has become the Emperor Dalek and the Renegades are the last remnants of the Dalek race who would not follow him.

The commentary on racism continues with the xenophobia displayed by the character Mike, an army sergeant, who takes a shine to Ace, and she does to him until she realizes not only is he inadvertanly selling everyone out to the Renegade Daleks but he's the same racist scum she has always hated. The reasons for that aspect of Ace's character would come out later on in the television series but the novelization of the story illustates it beautifully; Ace had a best friend named Manisha who was from a Pakistani family, and racist white kids firebombed her home. And to further reference the novelization, there is some internal strife amongst the Imperial Daleks who view the special weapons unit as an abomination to their own purity.

So now with a companion who is more real than several of her predecessors who never really evolved beyond their character summaries, we also have a Doctor who is dramatically different from any of his previous selves. Sylvester McCoy has said he wanted to draw on characteristics of the previous Doctors but none of them ever had the same air of danger and menace about them as his Doctor would. The Doctor has deliberately drawn the Daleks to Earth and put it in danger, he engages in deceit to keep the humans involved out of harm's way, he gives Ace a superweapon by having the Hand of Omega imbibe her aluminum baseball bat with destructive energies (which she uses with great skill against a Dalek in episode two), and when it comes down to crunch time, he allows the Daleks homeworld to be obliterated without a qualm, precipitating what would eventually be known as the Time War and putting his own people in jeopardy.

Visually too this story is top notch. The Daleks are all rebuilt to look sturdier although Jay didn't like them; they're obviously pulled from a plastic mould as opposed to built in smaller bits. The Black Dalek, though, is made in the old way and is slightly bigger than the others. The Renegades are coloured in the traditional grey and black scheme and the Imperials have adopted the white and gold first seen in Revelation of the Daleks. A lot of the story is shot on location in the streets of London, including an incredible firefight between Dalek factions that apparantly set off alarms. The Daleks have new ray gun effects, and the mothership seen hovering over Earth maintains basic elements of the Dalek battle cruiser from Resurrection, and the shuttle... wow! As an outer space effect it looks pretty bad, but when they land the full scale version in the playground at Coal Hill School it is almost flawlessly done. The Emperor is more mobile than it was in Evil of the Daleks; now it is more like the Emperor Dalek of the 1960's comic strip versions with a bulbous head and no "arms", rolling along on a standard Dalek base.

I could go on at great great length about Remembrance of the Daleks. When I saw it back when I was 17 years old I was so fascinated by it I started seeing elements of it in my dreams, and eventually wrote a massive 150 plus page story for one of my classes where the fallout of Skaro's destruction forced the Imperial Daleks to adopt a plan devised by the Renegades (before they were deemed as such) involving their duplicates from Resurrection of the Daleks. I told Jay about it while we were watching this one and he seemed interested; maybe I'll dig it up and include it in my ideas here as I did with Offworld Vegas.

As a matter of fact, I think I will.

NEXT EPISODE : THE HAPPINESS PATROL

Dragonfire

The Doctor and Mel arrive at the space colony of Iceworld, on the planet Svartos, where they encounter Sabalom Glitz in a bit of a cash crunch. Having sold his crew off and in debt for a delivery of rotten fruit, he is contemplating searching for the fabled Dragon's Treasure as a means to regain his fortunes. Glitz is unaware that he is being played by Kane, a notoroius criminal who can only survive in extreme cold temperatures. Mel befreinds a waitress named Ace and together they join the Doctor and Glitz in the ice catacombs beneath Iceworld, dodging Kane's deep-frozen mercenaries, and the Dragon itself as it protects its treasure...

Dragonfire is by far the best story of the 24th season. The mood is set right away from the opening moments of episode one when Kane's newest recruits are brought in to be frozen in the gloomy control centre. Again, as with Time and the Rani and Paradise Towers the sets are built on a large scale and there is a lot of overhead work done, with action happening on more than one level at a time. The ice catacombs, though, aren't really that well realized; anyone looking close enough will see that it's not even solid stuff, it's guaze or taffeta or something stretched out ceiling to floor. The colony feels like a proper spaceport comeplete with aliens of all shapes and sizes hanging out at the milkshake bar (shades of the Mos Eisly cantina from Star Wars) including a long Argolin last sen in The Leisure Hive.

When Jay and I watched this he had forgotten that Glitz was back, and often pondered aloud why they had brought him back. True, he could have been anyone but when you're dealing with a 3 episode story it cuts down on a lot of trust-gaining if you go off looking for treasure with someone you already know. Also, the story is rich in new characters already: Kane and his fixation on revenge all brought on by his broken heart - oh and he can kill people with the touch of his freezing cold hand; Belascz disillusioned at how Kane's previous affection for her has faded; and Ace, the plucky streetwise waitress from Earth who arrived on Iceworld as a result of a freak time storm. Glitz gets some better treatment this time around, although he does still speak in mad fluting ways.. and his musical cues from The Mysterious Planet are used again for his scenes.

The real triumph of this episode though is the Doctor. Sometimes the clown, still the mysterious friend, he has finally come into his character this time, with good chemistry between himself and all the other characters.

Oh there's a dragon. Sort of. It's a biomechanoid. Looks like the BBC's attempt at Alien just more rubbery. Initially it's a monster to be feared, but the truth of its existence reveals it to be not as hostile as originally believed. In the end, it too becomes a sympathetic character to be mourned when it meets its end, right along with Kane who would rather die than face eternity alone.

Mel. The screaming. THE SCREAMING. You can see at the climax of episode one when she and Ace come face to face with the dragon how pained Sophie Aldred (Ace) looks at having this shrilling right in her ear. The other climax to episode one, with the Doctor stupidly allowing himself to dangle over a sheer drop by the end of his umbrella, is just stupid. And how the hell did he and Glitz get down without getting killed?

Where was I going here... oh right. Mel. Out of nowhere, she decides to leave. A sudden impulse takes her and she decides to leave the Doctor and run off adventuring with Glitz. The Doctor is hurt and sulks initially but then wishes her well. After all if Glitz sold his crew off just for doing their job she'd be up on the block pretty quick after one scream. But the companion transition happens right away; at Mel's suggestion the Doctor offers Ace a place on board the TARDIS rather than take her back to her boring life on Earth. And Ace literally jumps at it, forming what will be remembered as one of the most dynamic Doctor-companion teams in the history of the show right along with the fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith, the second Doctor and Jamie, and these days the tenth Doctor and Rose.

So after starting on a pretty lame note the series regains some of its footing and the fan base would start to rebuild. The production team would start doing new things with the Doctor and Ace for the 25th anniversary season, starting with pitting the new duo against classic enemies...

NEXT EPISODE : REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS

Red

The TARDIS suffers a telepathic attack, bringing the Doctor and Mel to a controlled colony where all the inhabitants of the Needle are monitored by a system called White Noise. The system is breaking down, though, and something is driving the inhabitants to kill ... something Red. Every colonist in the Needle has been fitted with a chip that inhibits violent actions, but over time the chips have deprived the colonists of the ability to feel anything. White Noise needs to stop the killings in keeping with its function, but something Red has other plans...

Every utopian setup has something wrong with it, although the problems with the Needle are all there for anyone to see: the building itself is for all intents alive, and White Noise acts like a god using chips to curtail the violent impulses of the people who live there, and when they experience a thought outside the parameters of White Noise's functions, the computer edits them out. The Doctor, of course, won't stand for it, and when he is fitted with a chip against his will he is able to resist White Noise's intrusions but he becomes linked to Red and witnesses the killings first hand. Red, in turn, is able to see into the Doctor's mind and comes up with more creative ways to kill.

The whole identity of Red is a bit unclear for the longest time; is it a collective manifestation of everyone's repression? Is it a telepathic alien? It is a rogue computer virus? Whatever Red is, it knows what it is doing and speaks through its agents as it kills, chanting the word red over and over as it throttles the life out of whoever is nearby. And seeing as only White Noise identifies the behaviour as "red-lining", it is obviously somehow part of this process.

Melanie falls in with people who have left The Needle; people who realized that surrendering their control of themselves to White Noise was a mistake, but they are all still chipped and vulnerable to the influences of Red. Their recreational escape from the otherwise dull reality is a drug called "slow" which places them out of synch with time around them, slowing everything down to their perception and leaving them vulnerable to attack.

I'm going to have to admit though that as clever as some of it sounds, I fell asleep through this one. A lot. Maybe it was a bad week. Or maybe it just wasn't that gripping. I do remember enjoying bits that I was awake for, but the rest... I think I'll need to go back and see.

Later.

NEXT EPISODE : DRAGONFIRE