strange_complex | Classic Who: The Masque of Mandragora, The Hand of Fear, The Horns of Nimon

Fourth Doctor: The Masque of Mandragora
As the season opener for September 1976, this was the first Who story to be broadcast in my lifetime - and I'm glad to say it's a corker! The title alone promises great things, evoking for me both masked balls and Antony and Cleopatra, with Cleopatra's wonderfully love-sick line:

"Give me to drink mandragora... That I might sleep out this great gap of time / My Antony is away."

The story itself then begins in Grade A Fandom Territory with a truly squeeworthy tour of the TARDIS, and the introduction of the beautiful antique-look 'second console room' - such a shame that this only lasted for the one season, but I'm really going to make the most of drooling over it while it's there. And then onwards to a really pretty impressively-costumed and staged fifteenth-century Italy, Hammer-style demonic cults and a Poe-style masquerade - all playing host to a brilliant script full of intrigue, adventure, jokes and tension.

I found as I watched that the Demnos cult reminded me of the case of Pomponius Laetus and his associates: fifteenth-century antiquarians who were accused of paganism by the Pope. The charges were never proven, but they did model their Academia Romana after the ancient priestly colleges, and the discovery in the nineteenth century of various bits of graffiti and the mock-antique funerary plaque shown below in catacombs on the Via Appia certainly suggests that they were at least actively playing with ancient forms of religion:

I hardly expected to find that this was anything but coincidence, as it's a pretty obscure reference to find popping up in a Doctor Who story. But checking up on the writer, Louis Marks, afterwards, it turns out that he actually has a DPhil in some aspect or other of Renaissance Italy - so in fact I'm now pretty convinced that he knew exactly what he was about. Serious squee-points, in that case.

There's a marvellous supporting cast, too, including Tim Pigott-Smith, but I'm afraid I found it rather hard to concentrate on giving them due credit for their performances in the face of the litany of Romantic Hero Moments and Boyish Charm Offensives that were dished out to Tom Baker. Just a few of the things the Doctor does in this story which = <3 include:

A dashing and heroic horse-chase.
Using high-kicks in a fight.
A daring scarf escape.
Carrying an unconscious Sarah Jane in a Manly Fashion.
Sticking his tongue out cheekily during a sword-fight.
Intensive medieval scholarship with a telescope and astrolabe.
Prancing about in his lion costume.

I shall be posting separately about the Almighty LUST I have by this stage conceived for the Fourth Doctor later on. This story is not by any means solely responsible for it - but it certainly didn't hurt. ;-)

Fourth Doctor: The Hand of Fear
Sarah Jane's last adventure with the Doctor - *wail!* (Well, until School Reunion of course... but still).

Of the Who scripts Bob Baker was involved with that I've seen so far, this is easily the strongest, exploring some genuinely interesting and ambiguous territory. There's a definite resemblence to The Claws of Axos in that the Doctor's instinct to try trust and cooperation instead of violence is eventually abused by the figure of Eldrad, but it is explored much more directly and thoroughly here - perhaps because the absence of both UNIT and the Master from the plot this time simply created the space to allow this. Interestingly, there's also what seems to be a direct response to the use of the RAF to blow up the alien menace in The Seeds of Doom two stories earlier - this time, the Doctor stands by laughing as this is attempted (I think even using the same stock footage), knowing perfectly well that it won't work.

The controller of the nuclear power station, Professor Watson, is pleasingly rounded-out - especially when he makes a phone-call to his wife in the full knowledge that he may well be killed, and very under-statedly simply tells her that he will be working late. And there's some fascinating gender-related stuff going on with Eldrad. When s/he first reconstitutes herself using the energy from the nuclear power station, she takes on a humanoid female form, and, although rather paranoid and self-obsessed, appears at least to have been rather mis-judged by the authorities on both Earth and Kastria. But it is from the precise moment when Eldrad switches to a masculine form on Kastria that the full extent of his megalomania is revealed - wanting to rule over not only that planet, but its entire galaxy. On one level, this is gender stereo-typing at its worst - women are deceitful and cunning, and hide their true intentions; men are aggressive and power-hungry. But if that's forgiven as a product of its times, then I think credit is at least due for exploring the possibilities raised by following a single character from one body-type to another.

Ultimately though, the real focus of attention in this story is always going to be the closing moments of the Doctor / Sarah Jane arc, and the script-writers know this full well. To say nothing of the genuinely touching ending, these are some of the deliciously 'shippy moments which the story serves up on the way there:

The Doctor's quiet but intense distress when Sarah gets buried under the rockfall.
The firm but gentle way he speaks to her when she is possessed by Eldrad.
The cute little grin with which he turns the sign on her bedroom door to read 'Patient Not To Be Disturbed' in the hospital.
The two of them spooning on the floor when an explosion goes off in the nuclear power station, his arms protecting her head.
Both of them telling each other, "I worry about you!" for different reasons as they march towards the power station to confront Eldrad.
Her catching him when he faints after being given the Flashy Blue Eyes treatment by Eldrad.
Him giving her his coat against the cold on Kastria - and then taking it back again as soon as Eldrad mentions going down to the thermal chambers.

Is it any wonder we're practically in tears when he finally has to leave her behind? I think I may well learn to like Romana as much as Sarah, based on what I've seen of her so far. But I have nine stories with Leela to get through first (two of which I've already seen), and I'm afraid I'm not looking forward to them anything like as much.

Fourth Doctor: The Horns of Nimon
Finally in the current batch of write-ups, a little jump ahead to revisit the monsters which I've now worked out were actually responsible for scaring me silly as a child - the Nimons! I've a feeling I'm going to get into terrible trouble with

swisstone for saying this, but, tempting though it would be to say it anyway even if I didn't really mean it just to annoy him [;-)], I'm actually only speaking the truth when I state that I rather enjoyed this story. *ducks*

Actually, it turns out that I've seen at least the beginning of the first episode before - that's 'before' as in within adult memory, and old enough to know Janet Ellis (woof!) from her later time on Blue Peter, as opposed to 'before' in the sense of when I got scared by the monsters. I think it must have been with OUWho, as I can certainly remember a friend and fellow-member of the society using the catch-phrase "Weakling scum!" a lot - one of those jokes you either love or hate, I think. But I guess I must have wandered off to chat to people part-way in, because I certainly don't remember any of the rest of the story, and clearly didn't notice any childhood memories being stirred by the Nimons, either.

I do see that the story could be viewed from certain perspectives as pretty camp and hammy. Soldeed, for example, is a bit of a two-dimensional villain. But he's such a good two-dimensional villain that I didn't mind at all, and in any case even he experiences genuine - and in fact quite harrowing - character-development at the end, while his equivalent number on Crinoth, Sezom, serves very nicely to illustrate the logical destination of the path he is heading down. The Doctor, too, appears in the same sort of buoyant, happy-go-lucky mood that I noticed when I watched City of Death - which could jar if you like him to lean more heavily towards the serious and commanding side of his personality. But he gets serious moments, too - particularly when he is fighting to try to bring Romana back from Crinoth - and in a way, of course, it is the very presence of Romana in the story that allows him to do this. There she is, sassy and self-possessed in her hunting pinks, tussling with him over whose sonic screwdriver is whose (and, unspokenly, whose is better - very blatantly hers), and competently converting the Skonnan battleship to run on haemetucite (sp?). With her so very evidently able to look after herself, he can relax and have fun in a way he can't with most other companions - and though it would be a loss to deprive him of the need to exercise fatherly concern permanently, I like the fact that the Romana era presents a chance to explore an alternative.

The story set-up is also quite nicely thought-out. Skonnos is carefully shown as a once-great world (especially through references to the 'First Skonnan Empire' and its now-obsolete technology) trying to regain its power, and it is plausible that this is exactly the kind of society the Nimons could exploit. And I liked the relationship between the adoring Teka and the actually-quite-clueless Seth, as well - especially since it allowed for the suggestion that heroism is as much about chance, other people's belief in the hero and retrospective myth-making as it is about genuine pre-meditated cleverness and courage.

The references to the story of Theseus and the Minotaur helped to give resonance to a plot which would certainly have been weaker without it. I was particularly interested to note that, as in so many epic films, it was woven in with references to early-twentieth-century Germany - for example in the black costumes and helmets of the battle-ship crew, or in the references to the 'First' and 'Second' Skonnan Empires. This sort of link is more usually applied in a Roman context than a Greek - but it is certainly an established path. Overall, though, I wasn't quite sure it really 'worked'. There was a degree of mixing up of characters - Soldeed should really be Minos, not Daedalus, but can't be because the most appropriate name has already been given to the Minotaur; Sezom, as pointed out elsewhere, is a bit of an anomaly; the role of Theseus is shared between the Doctor and Seth (although, as noted above, that could be seen as part of a clever comment on the relationship between heroism and myth-making); and it would have been nice to have some reference to Ariadne and her thread beyond the Doctor sticking stars from his own pocket on the walls of the labyrinth to try to keep track of his route. Of course modern fiction has every right to play with old myths in this way - it's only what the Greeks did after all. But it reaches a point where you wonder why they're making the references at all - except, as I say, to lend depth to a story which otherwise might lack it.

Anyway, although

swisstone sneered at the Nimons, they were for me one of the highlights of the story. I have a bit of a soft spot for bovines of all types, especially when in incongruous settings like cities (I am the only LJ user to date to have 'urban bovines' listed as an interest), so they were off to a good start with me in the first place. It's a pity that their heads wobble, and it's also true that laser beams coming from their horns make for a slightly unwieldy weapon - but it's a great play on bulls charging their victims, and they look really cool when they are doing it, too. I've also now concluded that they were in fact the original cyber-goths, and I shall now demonstrate both their general taurine excellence and their particular cyber tendencies via the medium of PhotoShopped captions (click for full-sized version):