Terror of the Autons part 1
This topic contains 16 replies, has 8 voices, and was last updated by 
ScaryB 9 years, 5 months ago.
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I just worked out that I was 13 months old when this was first broadcast, so it is before my original viewing experience. Still loving it though.
We’ve jumped into a couple of Doctors and companions adventures with 4 and 7, and then saw a regeneration episode for 5. Only natural I suppose to cover the introduction to a companion then, and here we do with Jo Grant.
One thing about this period that (in my experience anyway) throws a few people, is jarring scene transfers. A few people I’ve tried to introduce it to suggest it seems a little piecemeal in approach, and I think I know where they are coming from. Once you get used to the approach though, there is a lot to like.
If you’ve only ever seen the AG years, the one thing you can understand is how the Doctor loves his bizarre lifestyle travelling through time and space. With the Third Doctor, he is denied that freedom and confined to Earth. Hence, he’s more than a little grumpy and prone to pick arguments with authority figures.
Jo’s introduced as a wide eyed novice to the spy world of UNIT. I love the little confrontation with the Brig as he suggests that, if the Doctor wants rid of her, he should be the one to do it. The little gleam in his eye suggests he knows that this is a battle he will win. What’s astonishing considering the legends that have built up around the Brig and the Doctor is how little time they actually spend together even in this, their most active partnership. In the scenes they do share there is a growing understanding in their little games of one-upmanship however.
Jo replaced the Third Doctors original companion, Liz Shaw. It was a shame it was all done off screen, but the reveal that Liz had stormed off complaining that all the Doctor wanted was someone to hand him his test tubes still makes me laugh, because it just seems to sum up Liz. Having a scientist as a companion was a great idea, but showed some of the problems in writing for a companion like that. She was either baffled by the weird science of the Doctor, or they were exchanging technobabble. In many ways the companion is there to ask the stupid questions, and I sometimes wonder if Jamie and Jo are so well remembered because that’s what they did so well.
It’s hard to believe that easily swayed plastic factory owner Rex Farrell is played by Michael Wisher, who went on to play an altogether more domineering character in Genesis of the Daleks:
Above all though – Delgado. He has few words here, but perhaps the quietness is all it needs? It’s hard to equate the Master of this period to the modern lunatic. Poor Goodge. Our first introduction to tissue compression elimination, and the delights of leaving a shrunken corpse as a calling card. He never even got to eat the egg he didn’t want!
Anonymous @
@phaseshift – I didn’t see this on first broadcast, either. Since I must have been about seven I’d probably reached still-Fascist Spain in my highly-educational world tour of dodgy dictatorships (courtesy H.M. Govt).
I have a very clear memory of watching The Deadly Assassin five and a half years later, and having to ask who The Master was – and the faintly shocked reaction of everyone else. How could I not know who the Master was? Roger Delgado must’ve really made an impact.
Because I have no memory of Delgado, I find that I’m considerably more tolerant of Anthony Ainley than many people my age. I liked his ‘yes, I’m evil – and I don’t care who knows it’ approach. Equally, I like John Simm’s ‘sanity is for wimps’ take on the Master, even knowing that Simm, personally, would rather have toned things down a bit. You can see them as a progression, with the Master getting more and more bonkers as he gets older.
But you can understand, on watching Delgado, why a lot of people who saw him on first broadcast just don’t want any other interpretation. Nowadays, when it’s more acceptable to put genre performances up for a BAFTA, he’d probably at least have been amongst the nominees. It’s just a really brilliant performance; restrained, very precise, completely magnetic and believably powerful. Oh, and completely psychopathic. 🙂
It’s interesting how many different ways they find to play the companion. Liz was definitely felt to have not worked – not because of the actress, but because she was also a scientist. Worse, she was a polymath scientist; the last time they’d had a scientist-companion, they’d made her expert in one area only (maths/physics) and made her someone with very little real life experience. Liz could discuss stuff with the Doctor as an equal – but the audience doesn’t need an equal. They need someone who can justify the Doctor explaining things. In English, since the audience doesn’t really speak techno-babble.
They have, subsequently, had companions who are just as smart as the Doctor – they’ve either stuck to the ‘very little real-life experience’ (Romana) or ‘no knowledge of science’ (Donna) or ‘the Doctor’s pupil’ (Ace and possibly Clara). River, the only character since Romana who knows more than the Doctor, has never been a regular companion.
Yeah, that Time Lord jailer seems to have no feelings at all for the humans that the Master’s going to murder along the way. And the bomb is ‘amusing’. Early signs from Robert Holmes, I think, that his take on the Time Lords wasn’t going to be ‘noble guardians of space and time’.
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This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by
Bluesqueakpip.
I love this story. It’s Quatermassy, Unit Family Who at its best. My love of it comes largely from the Target novelisation though (this was, I think, the second or third Target book I read). The cover alone still gives me the willies right to this day:
And this is kind of the problem for me. How could anything live up to that? Even David Attenborough would think twice about taking that thing on.
And even the interior illustrations (see below) were enough to give you the heeby-jeebies too. There’s some classic Who horror here and left to a child’s imagination, it is horrific. But the show was just not able to really do it justice, I think.
Aside from the disappointment of some of my most entrenched Who memories being slightly shat upon by production values, there are also another few things that irk me about this story. Chief among those is The Doctor himself. As I’ve said before, I love the Third Doctor — on paper — but when you see him as actually played by Pertwee, I just find him to be a colossal arse. He treats Jo really shabbily, I think (an unforgivable crime and my book) as he does the rest of the UNIT crew. (I’ve just done a major rewatch of the Pertwee years and I kept imagining Jo, Yates and Benton agreeing about what a knob the Doc was every time he moved out of earshot. I also imagined the older Jo in The Death of the Doctor inwardly lamenting at how come she didn’t manage to land the dishy version of the Doc, instead of the neck-rubbing, patronising fop she had to put up with.)
But to be fair, the Doc does slightly redeem himself in this episode. His sheepish ‘late developer’ line suggests to me that his air of superiority really hides a Doctor with serious self-doubt. To give him his credit, Pertwee is the first actor to give his Doctor some real psychological layers, however infrequent they are actually shown.
I always loved that little conference with the Time Lord too. It does show them up to be real callous sons of bitches. Capricious, intellectually advanced but morally stunted. As I say, very Oxford Don/Whitehall mandarin.
Delgado really hits the ground running in this story — although we haven’t really seen anything yet. Again I thought in print that the tissue compression eliminator just seemed like a horrific weapon. On the screen, it just seems a bit silly. I also tend to wonder just how he managed to get any villainy done when his every appearance was heralded by that bizarre three-note signature tune. (Although to be fair, I was using it as my ringtone at one point.)
@Shazzbot – I remember Jo in her last series with the Doctor. Judging by the way she is in this story (dragging the post vaguely on-topic), she must have been a bit like Rory – someone who matures and develops through her relationship with the Doctor.
I’ve read in various printed interviews that the ‘ditzy blonde’ thing was partly Katy Manning herself – because contact lenses weren’t comfortable or cheap in 1971, she had to take her glasses off to shoot scenes. And Katy Manning is really, really short sighted; so Jo became very much the sort of character who will knock things over or run into stuff.
I’m not sure if Katy Manning isn’t the reason behind the long-standing tradition of the Doctor grabbing the Companion’s hand and pulling her along; neatly spoofed in The Snowmen when the Smith Doctor complains: “No, I do the hand grabbing, that’s my job, that’s always me!” She was so short-sighted that apparently she was in real danger of running into a tree if Jon Pertwee didn’t lead her by the hand.
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This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by Bluesqueakpip.
Oooooh – cover envy. That’s new! I had the rather less scary:
Still the same internal illustrations though.
I don’t find Pertwee chimes with much of my ideal of the Doctor, but I think I appreciate him a lot more than others. I think there is at least some explanation that he’s being difficult because he’s in the last place he wants to be. He is no Six, who dials the unpleasant aspect to 11 with no apparent reason. His relationships with companions always seemed to have bad starts but grew with some affection to become enjoyable.
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This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by
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