Category: Tom Baker

TV Club: Doctor Who, The Talons of Weng-Chiang

“The Talons of Weng-Chiang” (season 14, episodes 21-27. Originally aired Feb. 27- April 2, 1977)

Victorian London has such a longstanding appeal as a fictional setting that it’s a little surprising that Doctor Who dropped in on the era only once, in 1966′s “Evil of the Daleks,” before taking a full-fledged romp through the city of gaslights and horse-drawn coaches in season 14′s “Talons of Weng-Chiang.” But the delay turned out to be a good thing, because there’s no era of Who better suited for a Victorian tale than the horror-tinged, homage-happy sci-fi gothic period of the early Fourth Doctor years. Just as Alan Moore did in the comics with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, “Talons” gleefully pillages the vast storehouse of Victorian adventure fiction to create a dark, moody synthesis of its own. It’s suffused with atmospheric details, and is one of the best serials the show ever did. If it wasn’t for the uncomfortably racist aspects of the story, it’d be close to perfection.

It’s also a long story at six episodes, so I’ll just briefly run through the basics of the plot, to lay the groundwork for the rest of my thoughts about the story: The Doctor and his companion Leela arrive in fogbound London as tourists, intending to take in a show at the Palace Theater, but wind up instead tracking down a serial killer who’s connected to a mysteriously powerful Chinese magician, Li H’sen Chang, and his sinister ventriloquist’s dummy Mr. Sin. Assisting them are a couple of affably naive Victorian gentlemen, the raffish theater owner Henry Gordon Jago and the serious but soft-spoken coroner Dr. Litefoot. The killer is pretending to be Weng-Chiang, the so-called “Chinese god of abundance,” and his powers seem to include the ability to create gigantic carnivorous rats, to grant Chang the ability to hypnotize people, and to give Mr. Sin the ability to move and think on his own. But these are all tricks: The killer is not Weng-Chiang but a fugitive Icelandic war criminal from the far future named Magnus Greel, whose escape in an experimental time machine left him horrifyingly disfigured and in constant need of fresh victims to replenish his failing DNA. Greel is only pretending to be Chinese because he happened to land there when he fled from his own time, a masquerade that is kept up largely as a means of ensuring the loyalty of Li H’Sen Chang, who worships him as a deity come to Earth. Greel and Chang are in London in search of his missing time machine, which turns out to be (in a bit of slightly undercooked narrative convenience) a family heirloom of Litefoot’s. And it’s become dangerously unstable, so if Greel does find it and try to use it, he might blow up most of London.

Originally published Oct. 23, 2011 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

TV Club: Doctor Who, “The Brain of Morbius”

“The Brain Of Morbius” (season 13, episodes 17-20. Originally aired Jan. 3-Jan. 24, 1976)

The first thing we see in “The Brain Of Morbius” is a monster. That’s not exactly unusual on Doctor Who. It’s a man-sized insect, crawling out of the wreckage of its crashed spaceship and obviously wounded or even dying, across a rocky, fog-shrouded landscape. (Longtime viewers will recognize it as a Mutt from the Jon Pertwee-era serial “The Mutants,” which is also a clue that this creature, grotesque as it looks, isn’t the villain of the piece.) The thing that tells us we’re getting into some darker territory than usual is that this monster is being stalked by another monster. A hulking, hook-handed ogre looms out of the shadows and brutally murders the poor creature with a wicked-looking blade. The scream is horrible.

So where have we landed this time? Well, the planet itself is Karn, a desolate place near the Doctor’s homeworld of Gallifrey, and thus tied to his personal history in a way rarely seen on the show up to this point. We’ve also landed, in terms of our trip back and forth through the ages of Doctor Who, right in the middle of the early Fourth Doctor era, the time of the remarkable three-year partnership of producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes—what I like to think of as the “Sci-Fi Gothic” era, and for my money, the high point of Doctor Who. “The Brain Of Morbius,” credited to the pseudonym “Robin Bland” but written largely by Holmes (drastically revising Terrance Dicks’ original idea), is a gloriously lurid gem, and maybe the quintessential story of the Hinchcliffe era. And despite some plot holes, it’s also my single favorite Who story.

Originally published Aug. 21, 2011 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

TV Club: Doctor Who, “Robot”

“Robot” (season 12, episodes 1-4; originally aired 12/28/1974-1/18/1975)

Before landing the role that would make him an icon of science-fiction TV, Tom Baker spent six years studying to be a monk, did a stint in the army, worked a construction job, and played an evil wizard in a Ray Harryhausen movie. As resumes go, that’s all over the place, and it reminds me of a Dave Foley line from NewsRadio: “Sounds like a drifter.” But it’s somehow perfect for the guy who gave us the most unpredictable incarnation of the Doctor in the history of the show, and helped it achieve both some of its greatest moments and some of its worst.

“Robot,” his 1974 debut, is a mixed bag—certainly not a disaster, but hampered by a story full of holes and logical inconsistencies, it’s still fun to watch thanks to the charisma of the actors, a wealth of clever moments, and some inconsistent but mostly engaging sci-fi adventure.

Regeneration stories always have twice as much to carry as as other Doctor Who stories, since they not only introduce the new lead, but usually do so by wrapping that reveal around a plotline that’s otherwise unrelated to the regeneration. (Next week’s “Castrovalva” is one of the rare exceptions.) “Robot” succeeds splendidly as Tom Baker’s debut, but the main plotline never really gels.

Originally published June 26, 2011 on avclub.com. Read the complete article.

Primer: Doctor Who

Primer is The A.V. Club’s ongoing series of beginners’ guides to pop culture’s most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: The rise and fall and rise again of Britain’s venerable science-fiction series Doctor Who.

Doctor Who 101

An icon of modern British culture and the longest-running science-fiction TV show in history, Doctor Who has never been more popular than it is today, thanks to producer Russell T. Davies, whose revitalization of the series returns this month under the aegis of new producer Steven Moffatt. Matt Smith, taking over the title role from David Tennant, will become the 11th actor to officially play the time-traveling wanderer.

The original series ran for 26 seasons, each consisting of several feature-length serials broken into half-hour episodes with cliffhanger endings. No matter who’s playing the lead, the basic premise has been essentially the same since the show’s debut: A mysterious, eccentric alien known only as The Doctor (not “Doctor Who,” in spite of the title) travels through time and space having adventures and fighting evil. He’s usually accompanied by one or two humans picked up along the way. They journey with him in a time machine called a TARDIS, which looks like a blue phone booth. If grievously wounded (especially by that fatal condition “actor-quits-itis”), he can regenerate his entire body, gaining a new face, a new personality, and a new name at the top of the cast list in the credits. This has also given the show an easy way to make more sweeping stylistic changes to evolve with changing times, and a way to correct elements after they go stale or otherwise become unworkable. In fact, it’s become expected that a regeneration of The Doctor will also regenerate the whole show. (Fans generally know each Doctor by the order in which they were introduced, so William Hartnell, who originated the role, is the First Doctor, and newcomer Matt Smith is the Eleventh.)

Originally published on avclub.com April 8, 2010. Read the complete article.

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