NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

1954

Remember Nigel Kneale and Rudolph Cartier? They were the ones responsible for The Quatermass Experiment a year before, and so they teamed up again to bring forth this version of George Orwell's seminal post-war novel.

The novel itself was quite recent when this was filmed, and the 1950s saw a no less than three productions adapting the work. This one, an American adaptation for CBS' Westinghouse Studio One done a year before and another American film adaptation in 1956.

Peter Cushing (now, do I really need to introduce him?) plays Winston Smith, the Party member who sees behind the huge Party propaganda machine and eventually enters an illegal love affair with fellow Party member Julia (played by Yvonne Mitchell). It also features André Morell as O'Brien (Winston's friendly torturer) and Donald Pleasence as Smith's friend Syme. Incidentally, Morell would go on to play the lead  in the third Quatermass serial Quatermass and the Pit (which we will examine later on).

The fact that this is live television is most remarkable, and Rudolph Cartier was already a BBC wonderboy for his ability to present a live, televised play to the masses (or is that Party Members?). Even more remarkable is that they did it twice. Once on December 12, 1954 and another time on December 16. Both were live, so they literally did it again with the same sets, costumes, cast and so on. Only the second performance exists in the BBC archives.

Of course, it all looks so "stagey" today, but that's mainly because it was, for all intents and purposes, a filmed play. This sort of BBC way of doing things will loom large in years to come. For my parts, the starkness (and somewhat futuristic) aspects of it fits very well with Orwell's initial vision. The pristine yet functional aspects of the Ministry of Truth (where Winston Smith works) is contrasted with the run-down almost post-apocalyptic feel of London. The teleplay overtly states that the revolutions were brought down by widespread nuclear war in the aftermath of WWII (a detail hinted at but not specifically stated in the novel).

Back in the day, this would have hit right at home with the very real run-down aspects of post-war Britain, who won the war but lost just about everything else. Even more so when Orwell wrote it. One of the major themes of the novel is the culture of deprivation brought on by Party ruler-ship. In Oceania, everything is either on shortage or entirely absent. One of the avowed goals of the Party is to keep everyone in abject poverty. The culture of abundance manifested in post-war America is not only completely absent here, but the Party makes sure that the very notion of abundance has been abolished. There is a definite collusion with rationing post-war Britain, and the rationing of Oceania. The Party is able to exploit the anger and resentment of the people into war-frenzy (the very war which is responsible for the rationing in the first place).

The whole thing seemed to have sent Britain into some kind of a turmoil. According to Cushing's  memoirs, this was the first time someone was seen to be tortured on TV, no doubt bringing the general public unpleasant memories of their Boys being similarly treated in Japanese and German prisoners' camps. Even the government took notice, as there were motions proposed in Parliament to cull down the more sensationalistic aspects of television productions. In fact, Parliament actually voted if they would allow a second performance (the vote was very narrowly won in favour, fortunate since the first performance was not filmed. Therefore we should thank the UK government for our sheer ability to watch this nearly sixty years later).

This was Peter Cushing's first major part. Later in the decade his career would take off with him playing two very different kinds of medical practitioners.

The Doctor calmly ponders which is worse:  
The Monster of Peladon or The Time Monster?

THE THIRD DOCTOR: JON PERTWEE

Tenure: Seasons 7-11 (1970-1974)

I must admit, rewriting the Doctor as an action-adventure hero was a ballsy move. Thank God Pertwee was more than up to the task. Why shoudn't he? after all the whole schtick was his idea. 

The Third Doctor era is sandwiched between the last gasp of black and white Who, and the ever-so-popular Tom Baker. In that respect its surprising Pertwee's time as the Doctor is remembered at all. And yet, his time broke new grounds for the show, and very important ones as well. First of all, it was done in colour for the first time. Secondly, the Doctor was now making house calls with UNIT. Thirdly, the Master rounded up the team of technicolor misfits making the programme, infusing it with sometimes inelegant, sometimes silly-as-hell and yet heartfelt social comments.

As Robert Sloman once said, the idea that big business is evil and wants to pollute/destroy the environment with an unhealthy dose of corruption is old hat now, yet in the early seventies that type of story was only coming to the fore. Beforehand, Doctor Who tackled this big issues in layers and layers of allegory. All it took was an aristcratic Venusian-karate expert dandy, his stiff-upper-lip military loony friend and his ditzy hot-pants clad assistant to make the point as plain as the nose of your face.

The years from 1970 to 1974 were gaudy, as only early seventies TV can be gaudy. And we love 'em for it. If you're watching something from, say, 1972, then by Jove it better looks, talks and acts like it's from 1972. The Third Doctor was fun, even if he did overstay his welcome a bit (...a bit).

Yes, some of it was embarrassing, some of it was a tad overlong (oh, those long-forgotten six parters) and some of it was just plain crazy. Yet if you were young in 1971, there's a good chance you were somewhat embarrassing, overlong and crazy too (time to look back at those old photo albums).

ASSESSMENT:  If you like the idea of the Doctor insulting everyone within a mile, you're going to love this. Overall the Third Doctor made his mark, and his style is as peculiar, personal and unique as his predecessors and successors. Some of it has indeed dated badly, but so has other stuff before and after. Plus, his main title sequence is the most exciting yet and has not been improved ever since. And no missing episodes this time around.

FAVOURITE STORIES:

• Doctor Who and the Silurians  (Shows everyone why bringing the Doctor back to Earth was a good idea. A complex script with complex issues making no excuses and taking no prisoners. From the people who brought to you Season Seven)
• The Claws of Axos  (Yeah, Doctor Who goes psychedelic in this acid-drenched tale of Greeks bearing gifts, complete with phallic and vaginal metaphors, bureaucratic hassles for the Doctor and the Master for good measure)
• Inferno (Ever wondered what would happen if your friends turned against you overnight. The Doctor finds out in the most brutal way possible all the while trying to prevent the end of the world. He doesn't, by the way)

LEAST FAVOURITE STORIES
  

• Invasion of the Dinosaurs  (Imagine if Steven Spielberg directed Jurassic Park as a home movie with his kids. My god, Mr. Letts, if you can't afford dinosaurs on Doctor Who, then please please please don't put dinosaurs in it. Think of the neighbours)
• The Daemons  (In music, it sometimes happen that your favorite album by someone is their least favorite work. This is the reverse, as everyone who worked on it found it smashing, but then they didn't have to watch it, did they. A case of a very good ideas falling flat on their backs)
• Day of the Daleks  (Yes, the Daleks return after a six-years absence. The premise is oversimplistic, and the supposedly "clever" twist is actually the first time travel cliché in the book. Fair, but disappointing)

THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT

1953


"Seminal" and "highly influencial" are two terms that are often associated with this grandaddy of all British sci-fi serials. Written by Nigel Kneale and directed by Rudolph Cartier, The Quatermass Experiment sets the tone of pretty much everything the BBC will dish out to unsuspecting viewers for the next ten years or so.

I have heard about it for years, regularly mentioned in sci-fi magazines the world over and yet I never got down to watch it until a few days ago. However, only the first and second episodes of this six-part serials still exist and so we are deprived of the grand finale when the unfortunate Victor Carroon, turned into an alien vegetable during an ill-fated space mission, is tracked down and killed in Westminster Abbey.

The first episode mainly consists of Pr. Quatermass and his team sitting in a room, talking over the phone and wondering exactly where the hell is their space capsule gone. Due to technical and budgetary restraints (as was the custom, the whole thing was broadcast live) The Quatermass Experiment tells a lot without showing. The second episode adds a cold-war plot as astronaut Carroon is kidnapped by foreign agents.

I really don't know what to make of all this. The problem about these oh-so influential programs from the past is the sense of expectation that develops over the years. I half-expected to watch a forgotten masterpiece of terror and alien invasion, and what I saw was dated production values, a snail-paced plot and the fact that we never see anything remotely exiting.

Still, it was fun to finally see for myself what others have been talking about for years. However, I really shouldn't dismiss this right away. The public at the time seems to have caught on, and Quatermass would return twice before the decade was over. Oh, and Hammer films did a movie version which I intend to track down and watch, so more about that later. 

PSYCHEDELIC BREAKFAST #8

 Space Ritual Live
Hawkwind
1973

Master of the Universe
(Nik Turner, Dave Brock) 

 I am the centre of this universe
The wind of time is blowing through me
And it's all moving relative to me,
It's all a figment of my mind
In a world that I've designed
I'm charged with cosmic energy
Has the world gone mad or is it me?

I am the creator of this universe
And all that it was meant to be
So that we might learn to see
This foolishness that lives in us
And stupidity that we must suss
How to banish from our minds
If you call this living I must be blind.

Lyrics taken from http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/h/hawkwind/master_of_the_universe.html

The Doctor, wondering why I don't
like him as much as everyone else does

THE FOURTH DOCTOR : TOM BAKER

Tenure : Seasons 12 to 18 (1974-1981)

Before the advent of the new series, Tom Baker's position as the most popular, most iconic and most everything Doctor was unassailable. Yet, saying that is like saying the Beatles are the best rock band ever. And more to the point, people got tired of listening to the Beatles (even though they still respected the band's achievements). So, when David Tennant came along he became the current "iconic Doctor" mostly for people who had never watched the original series, or hadn't in quite some time.

Remember, Baker was the Doctor who sold Doctor Who in America. Jon Pertwee (Baker's immediate predecessor) was given a chance, but he didn't break the market, Baker did. When American fans embraced the show, Tom Baker became the Once and Future Doctor. As many others have said, he quickly made you forget his predecessors and made his successors irrelevant. That is why having the Fourth Doctor in a multiple Doctors story wouldn't work. I mean, there were frictions between Pertwee and Patrick Troughton when they did The Three Doctors, can you imagine what would've happened if Baker had done The Five Doctors? His ego alone would have blasted anybody else in the fourth dimension or something.

In the greater scheme of Doctor Who, this is a bad thing. The show always thrived on change, and once it was accepted that the lead actor could be replaced, then any incoming Doctor knew that his time on the show was counted. Even by design (Pat Troughton said from the get-go he wouldn't be doing this forever when he replaced William Hartnell, Peter Davison also stated he wasn't going to break any records and so on and so forth...). But not Baker. First of all he stayed for seven seasons, a record that is still not beaten to this day and is unlikely to be in the future. Secondly, his Doctor being a success, the incentive to leave was less and less apparent as time went by. Finally, unlike Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee, Baker's career prior to winning the part wasn't anything to write home about. Hell, he was working as part of a construction crew when he landed the part. Surely his career wasn't going on too well at the time. So, almost overnight, Baker went from "Tom who?" to "Doctor Who!!!" beloved by children everywhere. In that sort of set up, would you have left? And Baker left only reluctantly, due to conflicts with new-Who producer John Nathan-Turner.

On the other hand, waddyagonnado? Tom Baker was here, is here and will be here. He is unavoidable and inescapable. You can avoid his seasons if you wish, but you can't pretend it never happened as it has consequences for the rest of the programme's history.

ASSESSMENT: I only said I was tired of people calling him the best of everything, not that I didn't like him. It's just that, overall, he's a bit like the Rolling Stones : he's gone on for far too long, and the quality of his stories suffered as a result. Had he left after Season 14, he would have become the undisputed King of the Universe. And he isn't the only good Doctor around, as we shall see.

FAVORITE STORIES:

• Pyramids of Mars (The Doctor vs. Suthek the Destroyer, perhaps the only time during Baker's run that his Doctor looks a bit worried. An absolute classic)
• Genesis of the Daleks (Another well-written classic by Dalek creator Terry Nation. The Doctor tries to erase twelve years of Dalek continuity to no avail, and creates a new one in the process)
• Terror of the Zygons (The Zygons, who will be returning very soon, are the most perverse alien beings ever created for the show, and it's time for the Doctor to say goodbye to UNIT)

LEAST FAVORITE:

• The Android Invasion (Terry Nation decides to waste everybody's time for four episode. A very good argument for anyone who thinks Doctor Who is boring old shit)
• The Masque of Mandragora (Although respected in some quarters, this story never did anything for me. Sorry, but I must prefer to watch paint dry, thank you very much)
• The Robots of Death (Explain to me, Mr. Doctor sir, why I should like this story if I never liked Agatha flippin' Christie? Can you? Not bad, per se, but no great shakes either)

THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY

In this bit, I'll feature stuff on my (very long and impossible-to-get-through) reading list. 

For any serious fan of a particular TV show, finding a comprehensive guidebook can be a difficult task. Doctor Who has generated quite a lot of these over the years. And that's not counting the incalculable number of websites devoted to cataloging anything Who related. Yet, who has time to read all of those?

Thankfully, two very respected authors within the Doctor Who community, Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood have put their heads together and produced About Time, perhaps the final word on Doctor Who guidebooks. It's certainly the final word for me, since I don't expect somebody else putting out another with that level of quality.

About Time is published by Mad Norwegian Press in several separate volumes each concerning itself with a particular era of the program. Vol. 1 is about the Hartnell years (1963-1966), Vol. 2 covers the Troughton era (1966-1969), Vol. 3 is about the Pertwee yeas (1970-1974) while Vol. 4 deals with Tom Baker's first six season (1974-1980), Vol. 5 discusses Baker's last season and the Davison years (1980-1984), Vol. VI encompasses both the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy eras (1985-1989) + the 1996 TV Movie. Recently, a further seventh volume was published covering the first two series of the revived program.

How good is it? Well, not only do you get detailed analysis of every DW story betwen 1963 to 2006, listing how the Doctor and his companion behaves compared to past and future stories, as well as detailed description of any alien species and planets encountered by the Doctor and friends, you also get the always entertaining Things That Don't Make Sense a veritable list of "what went wrong" with a particular story. What's more, Miles & Wood also takes pain to put Doctor Who within the context of British society/cultural medias comparing it with what else was on telly at the time, not only that but you also get precise analyses of a particular story's foundation in the greater cultural scheme of the UK in the sixties, seventies, eighties and so on. The Lore section is a virtual "making of" segment where each story's origins and anecdotes are discussed. Of course, no such guide would be complete with a critique of that story. And even that goes beyond saying "it's fantastic" or "it's rubbish" as the authors attempt to provide a balanced view. Finally, each volumes are accompanied by stand-alone essays examining real-world or doctor who-world issues (such as the dating of the UNIT stories, the extremely complicated Dalek timeline, or defense and prosecution arguments of the John Nathan-Turner years).

Essential reading.

Just so we're clear, I am not a fan of Oliver Stone's work. I find most of his films over-hyped, overrated liberal claptrap of the worst kind based mostly on cinematic gimmicks at the detriment of story and characters. Frankly, his paranoid worldview conflicts directly with my paranoid worldview. I stopped watching after Nixon.

Given that, I found his miniseries The Untold History of the United States gripping, informative and often time depressing. Stone has presented us with an unvarnished vision of the Cold War, where, in his opinion, the Americans were mostly responsible for keeping that war going. The the US lists of crimes against other nations (not to mention against its own citizens) are indeed staggering, and a matter of public record.

This is the companion volume to the miniseries, expanding on what's show on the screen.

This is not, far and wide, the first and certainly not the last book on the subject. Books criticizing US involvement in world affairs are almost an industry by themselves. In the introduction Stone and Kuznick are insistent that it focuses on what the US has done wrong, as opposed to what they've done right, so the bias is said honestly right there and then. The book and the min-series certainly shows us the dark side of the 20th century (a century already filled to the brim with Dark Sides, and wait'll until they get a load of the 21st...no one will be spared...NO ONE!!!)

While most the arguments are convincing, and relies on official documentation, most of the arguments presented therein should be seen with healthy skepticism, just as books praising the US to no end should also be seen in a critical eye. To be honest, I mostly agree with what's being written here (except, perhaps when we get to the JFK assassination, yes Oliver, yes I know what you believe about that particular issue, everyone does, but do not get me started on the Kennedy assassination. If you want to know more, check Vincent Bugliosi's book about it).

No, I'm not going anti-american here. The US has indeed done great things, but, for the last seventy years or so, we have seen a succession of presidential administrations getting in bed with the worst sort of friends possible, at the detriment of truly progressive policies that would have made the US truly the great superpower it desperately wants to be. So, for me, the US is a case of "close but no cookie".

PSYCHEDELIC BREAKFAST #7

Directions to See a Ghost
The Black Angels
2008

Dee-Ree-Shee
(The Black Angels)

Rain, rain look up in sky,
All you see is yourself
Black cloud painted with trouble,
hanging over our nation, and you

All dry, are the crop around
We will be forced to steal
Like Grey Hawk perched up in tree,
waiting for the right kind of thrill (kill),
from you

I didn't know this was a game to you
I should have known by the silver
look in your eye

Bang, bang your magic is here,
white men and God are one
Make us feel like foreigners,
devils under our own sun

Wait, wait a few are blind,
let's trade secrets and get along fine
Which part of ours is entitled to us
You can't cross our imaginary lines

Trail of Fear and tears to come,
not a dry eye in our tribe
All worn down by the power of New,
Let's get together and drink until noon
Let's get together and dream
Let's get together and drink until noon

How could we stop this force
that grew on us
We should have drawn our own lines