Gallifrey

This is found at 10:48 to 16:05 on Levine’s compilation. This one is entirely original. Up to now, on Levine’s compilation, we’ve only seen his efforts to recreate lost serials, or at least fill in the gaps of lost serials – of shows that were actually produced and aired (except for Shada) but are now vanished. Here, he’s moved on to something completely original and unique.

According to Ian Levine, Gallifrey was the final serial of the aborted version of season 23. The season that got cancelled, then uncancelled, then put on hiatus and cut back and shortened and morphed eventually into the Trial of a Time Lord.

But before Trial of a Time Lord took shape, the original season 23 was supposed to be 13 one hour episodes, divided up into six or seven two or three part serials, starting with the Nightmare Fair, running through Mission to Magnus, the Hollows of Time and eventually concluding with Gallfrey. Most sources seem to have the final episode as Children of January, but Levine disagrees:

“The Children Of January was a spare script and would only ever have made it to season 24, if ever used at all. Eric hated it.”

“Eric was writing Gallifrey. After the cancellation, JNT and Eric had a furious row because John wanted to carry on with the same scripts. Eric said that it needed a new fresh approach so he refused to complete Gallifrey. In a classic fit of pique, John commissioned Pip and Jane Baker to write it to Eric’s storyline. After one week, Eric made such an almighty stink that the commission was withdrawn,”

According to Levine, the story was about “con men, deposed Presidents, and sleeper agents with a hint of The Manchurian Candidate thrown in. Eric discussed the entire plot with me prior to the cancellation, but it never made it past the original story ideas as it would have been the last of the six stories to go into production, but Julian Glover was considered as the machiavellian arch villain President.”

That’s Levine’s take, so far as I can tell. Now, the problem seems to be that Story Editors were generally not supposed to be writing serials, that was sort of a conflict of interest. But there were occasions where that was bent. So…. maybe.

Other sources confuse the issue slightly. Shannon Sullivan’s incredibly well researched Doctor Who site had this to say:

“This was the first story to go into development after the yearlong postponement of production on Doctor Who’s twenty-third season. The Bakers — who had recently completed The Mark Of The Rani — were commissioned to write the scripts on March 11th, 1985 (under the misspelt title “Gallifray”). However, no work appears to have ever been performed on the project, and it was soon supplanted by The Trial Of A Time Lord. Doctor Who: Magazine Special Edition #3, Doctor Who: The Eighties.”

Then there’s Wikipedia:

“Gallifrey was a Pip & Jane Baker script for four 25-minute episodes that was commissioned on 11 March 1985 in the wake of the hiatus announcement, that reportedly would have dealt with the destruction of the Doctor’s aforementioned home planet.”

The stuff about four 25 minute episodes doesn’t make sense. Doctor Who had switched to a new format of 45 minute episodes, with serials typically lasting two episodes. It wouldn’t be switched back to 25 minute episodes until May, 1985, as part of the BBC’s ongoing ‘screw you’ to the show.

My own view is that the end of the season probably hadn’t fully been nailed down.  Some episodes had been commissioned and had reached script state, like the Nightmare Fair.  Some like Yellow Fever were pretty much locked in.  But the back end was probably pretty vague.

Now here’s the thing. Where’d this script, the one that Levine produced, come from? According to Shannon Sullivan, Gallifrey didn’t get past a story outline. Best evidence is that the Baker’s were commissioned late, literally commissioned one month, abandoned the next. I don’t think that’s enough time, realistically to put in a full script – although the Baker’s were legendary for being fast. Levine indicates that Saward was writing it beforehand, but also definite that Saward abandoned it.

But obviously Levine’s made his animation, there had to have been a script, so who wrote it? Saward? The Bakers? Did Levine excavate abandoned drafts? Did he write something himself based on original materials, the way August Derleth was prone to ‘finishing’ Lovecraft’s stories? Or did he commission someone? Bit of a mystery there.

Again, from what I can dig up.  It looks like Levine wrote it himself, based on either written materials or his memories from either or both Saward and Pip and Jane Baker.  Levine’s an inveterate collector, so he may well have obtained and kept stuff from there – proposals, outlines, pieces of script.  Or he may just be going on his memory.  In terms of the provenance, while we can’t verify his recollection, the fragment we see does contain a pair of ‘Sawardesque’ characters – a colourful, amoral duo who seem to shove the Doctor into the background.  That seems to support Levine’s history, as I don’t recall the Baker’s treating the Doctor like that, but it’s very much Saward.

Okay, so that’s the background, what we have of it. What’s it like?

Well, let me start off with “Holy Cow Batman!?!” This is visually really strange.

What it consists of appear to be still photos of people talking to each other. It looks like computer animation is used to make mouths move to the dialogue, eyebrows lift occasionally and figures tilt or nod. But backgrounds, including people in backgrounds are absolutely immobile. It’s very very peculiar looking. On the one hand, you’ve got that photo image quality that you associate with live action, and just a hint of movement, which oddly draws attention to the utter stillness of the scenes. Mostly the ‘camera’ frame doesn’t move that much, so it reinforces the odd still quality.

There’s a certain visual richness. You have people standing around in Gallfreyan Time Lord cowls and capes plotting away. It looks like the faces may have been repasted. After the Gallifreyan conspirators piss and moan for a bit, the scene changes to some gala somewhere, and a couple of con artists in 18^th century French wardrobe attempting to bilk what seems to be an Arab sheik. All around are Silurians, Harem Girls and Argolians, all still as statues, to add colour.

I’m really not sure what to think of it. Five minutes is pretty jarring. If I were to watch an hour and a half, would I get used to it and just get into the story? Or would it stay jarring all the way? I’d hope for the former. But I’m not sure at all.

A weakness here is the voice cast. Everyone talks the same way, with these looping drawls, that are barely one step up from a monotone. On the other hand, the voice work is quick, no awkward pauses between lines of dialogue. There’s the sense that the voice actors may actually have been in the same room playing off each other. On the down side, whatever his connections, Ian didn’t get Colin Baker in for this one, and the voice actor who plays the 6^th Doctor puts none of the Doctor’s clipped operatic style into it, so that hurts.

Bottom line? Hard to say. It’s peculiar looking, I’ll give it that, and visually arresting. But I have the feeling that this one will stand or fall on the voice performances, and I’m just not sure about that.

Yellow Fever

Another original production, this one with a firmer position in Doctor Who lore, appearing at 16:04 to 22:50 of Levine’s compilation.

Yellow Fever and How to Cure It is another of the lost season 23 serials. This one has the distinction of being written by Robert Holmes, and was intended to feature the return of the Autons, along with the Master and the Rani. It was going to be the centerpiece of the season, with three 45 minute episodes.

According to Shannon Sullivan’s web site:

“The Master and the Rani are in Singapore, disguised as street performers, and working with the Autons. John Nathan-Turner hoped to take Doctor Who on a location shoot to Singapore, where two episodes of the BBC drama Tenko had been filmed. He and production manager Gary Downie travelled there on October 19th, 1984. After viewing their footage, Robert Holmes was commissioned to write the first episode of “Yellow Fever And How To Cure It” on October 26th. Shortly thereafter, Nathan-Turner asked Holmes to add the newly-introduced Rani to his storyline, alongside the Autons and the Master. All three episodes were commissioned together on February 6th, 1985. On February 27th, 1985, production of Doctor Who suspended until Spring 1986, with the programme then returning for a season of twenty-five-minute episodes. Holmes was asked to rework his storyline for this format, with the Master no longer appearing, but the programme’s reduced budget precluded location filming in Singapore. Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #3, Doctor Who: The Trial Of A Time Lord DVD Production Subtitles.” (Abridged quotes)

Ian Levine has a very different take on it:

“As for Yellow Fever, I had a photocopy of the original scene breakdown of all three episodes, given to me by Eric. Indeed at one point Eric was hired to write it for the Doctor WHO book range, and got paid an advance, which he later returned.

The Rani was never to be in this story. Kate O’Mara was still doing Dynasty, and there was no mention of her in the story breakdown. This was a story about The Master, The Brigadier, UNIT, and Benton. The first half was set in London, with an Auton Prime Minister, the second half in Singapore. It would have been wonderful, especially with Graeme Harper directing.

I reconstructed three of the missing stories myself on audio, and did detailed visual recons on DVD of all six stories, with Nicola Bryant, Julian Glover, Milton Johns, Jon Levene, Waris Hussein, John Leeson, Nigel Plaskitt, Ian Fairbairn, and many many more. I am incredibly proud of them. Both Yellow Fever and Gallifrey were totally faithful to the original storylines.

I can 100% assure you all, no matter what anyone says to the contrary, that Gallifrey WAS to be the sixth story of that aborted season. And Yellow Fever’s tag “And How To Cure It”, was a Bob Holmes joke and never seriously intended to be a part of the title. That imagined cover featuring The Rani is just plain WRONG on so so many levels.”

I think he might be correct on the Rani. Certainly Holmes was concerned over Kate O’Mara’s availability, according to Shannon Sullivan, and the best information I have suggests that O’Mara was actively involved with Dynasty during the periods that they would have been looking at production. I don’t see how she could be available.

According to fan, Richard Bignell, however, Levine is wrong on both counts. The title “Yellow Fever and How to Cure It” actually does appear on BBC production documents, at least for a period of time. And as for Kate O’Mara “In the autumn of 1984 she was appearing in ‘An Evening with the Macbeths’ in Colchester and then in May 1985, she began a run in ‘The Ghost Train’ at York. Had ‘Yellow Fever’ gone ahead, it would likely have been made around June of that year. “

You know what? I don’t care. In any event, the Autons, the Master and the Rani, that’s a bit too much. Whether or not Levine is correct about whether the Rani was ever part of the consideration, his instincts were right on the mark to leave her out of his version. And this is his version.

In some alternate universe, maybe season 23 actually got made the way it was planned and with a dimensionscope we could see for ourselves how it turned out and whether O’Mara ended up in it. But here and now, this is Levine’s vision, based on a might have been, and it’s Levine’s project, he’s entitled to make creative decisions. I’d have to say it’s probably a good decision.

The entire script was never completed. The project died at outline stage. There is some reference that Holmes may have written the first 45 minute episode – there would have been time for that. He passed away a year later and it was never completed. The script, story outline/breakdown was apparently lost. The story was never novelized for Target books. I don’t believe that it was ever one of Big Finish’s adaptations.

As I’ve said, the episode script, if it existed, and the story outline/breakdown are now considered lost, and there was never a complete script which raises the question of what exactly Levine’s version is. He does claim to have a photocopy of the original scene breakdown, or he did. That’s not implausible, given that he’s an inveterate collector.

This seems to be Ian Levine’s own work based on either documents he collected then and used for this, or his recollections of that time. He would have been talking a lot with Holmes, Saward and Nathan-Turner. Levine claims to have a photographic memory, so it’s possible that he absorbed enough to write his own version, or to create notes for someone else to write.

This is another photo-animation. The photographs themselves are collaged together, you can tell that the photographsh are taken from all over and just mashed together, the lighting and shadows of the faces are wildly inconsistent.

This time, they’re not using computers to make the lips move. Lips don’t move at all. Instead, they just cut from one expression to the next.

But they’re marching about, leaning, and displaying more of a sense of physical motion. Not much, but it’s enough. Characters tend to be static and posed, but a bit of computer pokery gets them to lean forward or back, shift positions slightly, reminiscent of people’s natural fidgetiness. So it feels more… authentic. It’s much more kinetic than Gallifrey. The voice work seems to be more effective.

Once again, voice actors fill in for the 6^th Doctor and Brigadier who don’t even try to sound like them. Oddly, the voice actor for the Master sounds and inflects very much like Anthony Ainley. Unless they sampled his old dialogue, it’s probably not him.  Ainley died in 2004.  According to Levine’s facebook posts, he was working on Gallifrey and Yellow Fever in 2012.

Some of the shots and compositions are awkward – the scene with the Master and the Doctor on the tower has them supposedly fighting, but visually, there’s little sense of that – at points it looks like they’re humping. But that’s the thing with fan films, there’s not unlimited time or resources to get everything just right. You forgive and move on.

Overall, it’s not perfect, but there’s a certain engaging quality to it. I actually found myself being drawn in. I was watching, I was intrested.

One thing that strikes me, watching both Gallifrey and Yellow Fever is that they seem to be overly written. The dialogue seems to go on just a little too long or to be too windy. Possibly that’s just the way Levine writes.

The thing is, scripts go through a process of tightening, moving from story editor, director, to the actors, to read throughs and finally shooting. What usually shows up on screen has often gone through a pruning process. Here, we might be getting unfiltered, untightened script. Go figure.

Personally, and I’m going out on more of a limb than I expected to, here. But you know what? I’d watch this. The story seems engaging, the construction is visually interesting with enough animation and well enough designed to keep engaged, and even the voice acting seems tolerable. Love to see it. I’d give it a fair shot, sit down, watch the whole thing.

That’s not necessarily a guaranteed thing with me. I’ve had Big Finish’s pseudo-animated version of Shada, on my DVD shelf for a few years now, and I’ve managed to avoid watching it. Sat through the first few minutes, and that’s been it. There’s lots of stuff I actively avoid sitting through.

But this… This looks like it deserves a shot.

Lost in the Dark Dimension

This one appears at 22:50 to 27:34 on Levine’s compilation.

I’ve already gone over this ground in a previous review, so I’ll be brief. Back in 1993, coming up on the 30^th Anniversary, Tom Baker let it be known that he wouldn’t mind playing the Doctor again. BBC Enterprises jumped on that, and a rather sketchy fellow named Adrian Riglesford wrote a script for story that would star Tom Baker and incorporate all of the surviving Doctors.

Ultimately, the project imploded, and was replaced by John Nathan-Turner’s 13 minute, two part, ‘Dimensions in Time’ – the less said about that, the better.

Dark Dimension was lost in the valley of time, becoming one of those great ‘might have been’s’ that people like to talk about. Adrian Riglesford eventually wrote a book about it, which ironically, never saw publication. Riglesford himself eventually ended up in trouble with the law. Some of the production design – notably reimagined Daleks and Cybermen, wound up on the internet. Eventually, the script itself turned up, floating in cyberspace.

With an available script and a certain mystique, it’s not surpising that there were two separate fan projects to recreate the Dark Dimension.

The first one, James Walker’s project. we’ve already talked about. It’s a straightforward animation, and entirely impressive.

Levine’s project is the second, and it’s gone off in quite a different direction.

Paul Jones assays the role of Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. The big wrinkle is that Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred actually voice/play their characters in the story. McCoy has participated in some of Levine’s other fan creations, which is fairly mysterious to me – either Levine is writing big cheques, McCoy is incredibly fond of the gentleman or there is the matter of a certain amount of blackmail. Peter Miles stars as Hawkspur.

Levine’s animation takes the form of a ‘Reconstruction’ – which is another strange corner of Doctor Who history.  If you’d like, you can skip over this part, I’ve written it as an addendum to my review of Walker’s Dark Dimension.

Let’s just take a moment out to look at the ‘Reconstructions.’ I’ve referred to them a couple of times now in Evil of the Daleks and the Dalek’s Master Plan. Here’s what this is about.

Okay: Everyone knows that a whole pile of Troughton, Hartnell and Pertwee serials were junked by the BBC. Over the years, episodes and footage was recovered from here and there. But a lot was never recovered. The current tally stands at 96 missing episodes, and eighteen lost serials (give or take).

They weren’t completely and utterly lost. There were separate audio recordings, and fan audio recordings, and so we have a relatively complete set of the audio portions.

Then there were telesnaps. Technically, telesnaps were the name for photographs taken by a fellow named John Cura. He’d perfected a means of matching exposure length to the television scanning line, and focal depth to the curvature of the television, so he could take photographs right off the Television. He offered this service to the BBC, and so a lot of the Doctor Who serials from this era commissioned them. Cura would take an average of 60 photographs, for a 25 minute episode, or roughly one every 20 seconds.

Not technically telesnaps, but now going under the same name – for continuity purposes, television productions retained still photographers while shooting. You had to make sure that peoples hair was right, the clothes were right, the particular make up for a scene was correct and in order, the actors were standing in the right spots or doing the right action. So there was a lot of shooting going on. Then there were publicity stills that you would take for the set.

Bottom line is that there was a large library of photographs that became accessible to fans. So, some enterprising fans and fan groups began reconstructing the lost serials by merging the photographs with the audio tracks. I guess it was sort of like an audio-comic book-video. Still pictures moving from one to the other in sequence, with helpful captions and intertitles, while the audio played.

This was picked up by BBCi, the BBC’s internet based arm, back in the 1990’s, which eventually lead them to work with Big Finish for original semi-animated Doctor Who stories – Shada, Realtime, and Death Comes to Time, and eventually, to their Scream of the Shalka serial and a briefly official new ninth Doctor in Richard E. Grant. BBC enterprises itself dabbled in reconstructions, either as a one off project, or to fill in gaps in some of the mostly complete serials, or as extras on the DVD’s.

However, most of the Reconstructions are fan created, or re-created. The most notable ones are from Loose Cannon, which seems to be an unincorporated group of fans who have made these recreations their forte.

They’re a peculiar thing, a strange little lost corner of the Who-niverse. But they’re really the only way to see the lost serials.

Anyway, this is the approach the Levine has taken. He’s done the Dark Dimension in the physical manner of the Reconstructions. So, it’s mostly a series of photographs, with a lot of pan and scan, close ups, fade ins and outs, and some fairly limited and careful animation done here and there.

From what I can tell, this is unique. He’s taken a genre based around reconstructing old lost serials, and used its techniques and language to create a new and original work.

I can see why. It simply isn’t possible to put on any version of the Dark Dimensions as a live action product. You have to find another way to tell the story. For James Walker, it was an animation. For Levine, it was… this.

Okay, so the question is…. Is it any good?

That’s actually a complicated question, for several reasons.

First, let me say that I admire the particular and peculiar route they’ve taken, in basically, treating the Dark Dimension as simply another ‘lost serial’ and trying to recreate it in the form and format of a unique genre within the the Doctor Who oevre. I appreciate both the practical considerations, and the artistic factors that went into that decision and into the production.

On the other hand, I haven’t ever watched any of the reconstructions. Apart from abstract knowledge, I have no real insight into or appreciation of the Reconstructions genre. We actually have to learn to understand something, to appreciate something. It’s not necessarily an automatic thing. So without being able to appreciate or watch Reconstructions, could I really give a fair assessment of Ian Levine’s ‘Reconstruction-style’ version of Dark Dimension?

I don’t know. I think I’d have to go back and do a lot of aesthetic homework.

The Eight Doctors

Appearing at 27:40 to 33:25 of Levine’s compilation.

This is not a lost episode like Evil of the Daleks or Dalek Masterplan, or an orphaned script or story, like Dark Dimensions or Yellow Fever. Rather, this one is based on a novel by Terrance Dicks.

Go ahead, look it up. I imagine you can find it on Amazon or Abebooks or Ebay or something. It was written shortly after the McGann movie, and was the start of the 8^th Doctor Adventures series of novels.

Only problem? Dicks hated the movie. He apparently loathed it. Anyway, the 8^th Doctor, shortly after the events of the movie, falls into a diabolical trap and loses his memories. The Tardis brings him back in time, retracing the steps of his life, and he ends up visiting each of his previous selves in order at some crucial time in their lives.

From what I gather, it’s pretty dire stuff. More cruel and unusual punishment than an actual novel. I dunno. I haven’t read it, no immediate plans to.

There’s a theory that the novel might have been considered at one point for a Doctor Who special during the wilderness years. That would have had to have been between 1996 and 2003. I’m skeptical. But the theory holds, this is why Levine decided to render it.

This starts out more ‘live’ than previous fan films. We have a long opening ‘star wars’ expository role, a lot of smoke blowing, figured fading in and out. We even have a bit of live action, before reverting to the Telesnaps/Recon format.

From there we go to the 1^st Doctor and his Granddaughter in full time lord regalia. Pretty much the whole clip is set on Gallifrey and features Time Lords arguing with each other.

Hartnell’s face is composited clumsily onto a Time Lord costume, with a really inappropriate expression. He’s having a serious conversation with his granddaughter, Susan, but he looks like he’s about to burst out laughing. His voice is certainly sampled, it’s not clear whether Carole Ann Ford’s dialogue is new or filched from old episodes.

So, we’re back to the Telesnaps/Reonstruction format that Levine used for Dark Dimensions. Telesnaps format is pretty hard core, lots of still pictures with dialogue going on over them. Obviously, since they didn’t have real telesnaps to work with, they’ve composited a lot of pictures, some smoothly, some not so much.

Peculiarly, while the foreground and dialogue characters are absolutely frozen still pictures, with dialogue running over them, a lot of the backgrounds are lively. As two characters talk, a computer monitor in the background flickers merrily away with rolling lines of data. It’s a peculiar effect, not least because it sort of steals the eye away from the main characters and reinforces the artificial stillness of the frames. I’m not sure what to call it… Deanimation?

One good thing is that freed from the burden of actual telesnaps, Levine, or whoever he is working with, have free rein to compose their still images and ‘cheat’ the animation, using framing, zooms, pans and close ups to convey a sense of life. It may actually work better because of that, than the genuine Reconstructions – which are hindered by the physical constraints of the formal stock of photographs. Here, Levine is using and compositing whatever photographs he wants to create something new, and he’s willing to use animation ‘cheats’ to enhance his visual impact.

As with Lost in the Dark Dimension, Levine is working with a kind of medium or format – Telesnaps/Reconstructions that I’m really not familiar with. The Reconstructions, the synthesis of photographs and sound tracks, are essentially the only way now to get a sense of what the lost serials were and were like, and they’ve become their own unique genre or art form within Doctor Who. It’s fascinating that Levine’s decided to use this format to try and show us new works. But I’m not really qualified to judge.

I’d have to leave this up to the Recons afficionados to assess.