Old Who The Deadly Assassin

[selenak]

After coming across two reviews of The Deadly Assassin in short order, I finally got around to watching it myself. Review will be briefer than usual due to RL. But I shall make some heretical observations.



Firstly, I have a weird reaction to Tom Baker as the Doctor. He was actually the first one I've watched - The Talons of Weng-Chian, to be precise - and most of the Baker era adventures I've seen, including Genesis of the Daleks and the wonderful City of Death, are all vintage DW - but for some reason I just can't connect to him emotionally. At all. I don't know why. With most Doctors, it just takes an entertaining adventure or two, and I adjust and feel affection and love in varying degrees, but with the most popular Doctor of all time, it just doesn't happen. (Belying the rule that you imprint on your first Doctor. After some T. Baker, I saw one C.Baker - Time Lash and ran the other way, then saw Curse of Fenric with Sylvester McCoy and fell in love.

Anyway. This being said. The Deadly Assassin is a Companion-less, Time Lord only adventure, which I'd describe as experimentally playing with the format, which I usually like in a program, except that the whole depiction of Gallifrey is as human as possible. I remember Helen Raynor on the Easter Egg commentary for The Five Doctors commenting that Time Lord scenes always gave her the feeling of having stumbled on a BBC staff meeting, and one can see the scriptwriters using Gallifreyan society to satirize their own administration, never more than here. Which works as satire in a Terry Prattchet way, absolutely, and is pretty amusing, but it completely loses the alien aspect which the Time Lords did have when introduced in The War Games back at the end of Two's era. I mean, I grinnned at the scenes the Doctor had with Runcible; but if Gallifreyan society is such a direct copy of Earth society that it has a hapless news reporter who is a direct satire of celebrity wannabe intimate newscasters on tv, it completely fails as a depiction of an alien people. (When reading complaints about how the recent Fires of Pompeii had deliberately depicted the Caecilii as a riff on a contemporary family instead of making them noticably different, I thought: but what about the Time Lords from The Three Doctors onwards, and Genesis of the Daleks at the latest (where we get the Celestial Intervention Agency as a riff on the CIA)? I'll take my contemporary Romans any day over that level of "they-are-us" depiction.) Which is one reason why I can see why RTD killed off the Time Lords and blew Gallifrey up; it allowed New Who to go back to the original characterisation of them as not only genuinenly alien and other, but also frightening.

My other problem with Gallifrey and the Time Lords is that this story has a lot of "as you know, Bob..." dialogue in it, i.e. exposition for the audience which actually both the Doctor and the other Time Lords shouldn't have to be told. I mean: "Rassillon was the founder of our society"?!? And suddenly nobody has ever heard of the Master when in Terror of the Autons they explicitly send someone to the Doctor to inform him the Master just came to Earth? Just so the Doctor can fill in the audience on the Master's backstory? This is why it's handy to have a Companion around who can ask about this stuff in a way that makes sense.

All this being said, I still can see why this is regarded as an Old Who classic. The concept of the Doctor and the Master having a psychic duel in the matrix is good, some of the scenarios are genuinenly disturbing and scary. (Trivia for New Whovians: I recognized a clip from the Confidential for Blink; when David Tennant and Stephen Moffat talked about the Old Who scenes that scared them most as kids, DT named the scene when the Doctor wipes away sand and sees a clown mirrored in the surface.) I can actually fanwank why once again they're drawn exclusively from a human context when we're in the mindscape of two aliens - after all, the Doctor's fondness for all things Earth and humans are well known to the Master, and it fits that he would deliberately use images from a culture the Doctor likes to create something scary.

Speaking of the Master: when last seen (in Frontiers in Space), he was still Roger Delgado and hence while being a ruthless sociopath with a fixation on the Doctor also rational (well, for a supervillain), and with equipped with a default sarcastic politeness and charm. This is evidentally where we step into truly manic territory, and rotting away in your last body is as good an excuse for the characterisation shift as any. Also, the rotting body concept spared the BBC the necessity of finding an actor who could take over from Delgado just yet. Sadly, the make-up has aged, and not in the way the Master did in this story. It's not frightening to look at at all today. (The idea behind it still is great and scary.) While the dialogue wit of the Three/Delgado!Master era is a thing past when the Fourth Doctor and the Master do encounter each other (instead, we sadly just get the standard "you're insane!" "I shall destroy you!" stuff, with the exception of the Doctor's "you'd stop an execution just to pull off the wings from flies" line), even these incarnations have the habit of fanboying each other in the midst of ongoing plot. "Ingenious as ever, Doctor," says Crispy!Master when watching the Doctor on the security monitor, and when asked a "as you know, Bob..." question about just how clever this Master fellow is, the Doctor replies: "He's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Almost up to my standard."

(This intellectual vanity a deux even makes it in the audios. In Master, the amnesiac Master, after having encountered the Seventh Doctor, raves about him to his friends and concludes: "...why, he's almost as intelligent as I am!")

Impatient Teacher!Borusa with the Doctor at the end - the "sir, yes, sir" line was fun, but again, a bit heavy-handed with the English public school parallels. Incidentally, this actor for Borusa is better whan the one in The Five Doctors, but then, Five Doctors!Borusa has gone evil and dones the black robes with the appropriate lack of subtlety.

Tom Baker must have enjoyed the costume change for this story. Assuming running around in tight trousers and an open shirt is more comfortable than running around in the full scarf and cloak regalia.

In conclusion: blowing up Gallifrey and eliminating the Time Lords except for the Doctor and the Master was a good idea. BBC make-up for superaged Time Lords was never stellar. Clowns were always scary. Four is the only incarnation of the Doctor who isn't slashable at all. Alas. For the Master here reaches new levels of obsession.

In other news, a Torchwood rec: Her Wonder-World is a look at Tosh, Owen and Jack in the early Torchwood years, pre-pilot.

Comments

[elisi]

Thank you for the fic rec, it was just lovely (and heart breaking! *sniff*). Also loved the one with Donna & Torchwood that you linked to yesterday. Brilliant!

And - since I seem to remember you expressing an interest - I posted the prologue to my Jack-is-The-Immortal fic. (pardon the selfpimp, I hope you don't mind.)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

No, I don't mind at all, and you're welcome!

[greenpear.livejournal.com]

This had been the first Master story I ever saw. So it wasn't until my PBS station got around to showing the Three episodes did I get to see Delgado in the role.

Tom Baker has never been my favorite Doctor (don't tell anyone) and I think the Matrix scenes were stretched to fill up time. And you're right, the Time Lords just were very "alien" in this episode.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

My first Master story was Survival, ironically enough; I didn't catch up with the Three era until later, but when I did of course I fell for Delgado in the role.

Tom Baker: we few, we very few.*g* And yes, definitely stretched Matrix scenes, but they often do that, so I wouldn't critisize the story just for that - it's the other issues I felt like complaining about. Give me my alien Time Lords, show, and keep your Discworld escapees. (Not that I don't love Discworld, but, you know - different universe!)

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

On the contrary, I think we non-fans of Tom Baker should stand up for ourselves!

And I never liked the gaudy, constantly-needing-rescue Time Lords of his era, either. Though I did eventually come up with the "Time Lords as BBC Governors" theory by the time of Trial of a Time Lord.

And I hated the rotting Master - I remember how furious I was at the time that they could claim this was the same character as Delgado. Though when they brought in Anthony Ainley, I didn't like him either, because I saw him as a lookalike. I think that's something the new series has got right: a actor who is nothing like Delgado, but is recognisably the same character, allowing for time and change.

So, ah... I'm pretty sure I did see The Deadly Assassin at the time, but remember only its bad points, and don't feel any urge to go back.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Anthony Ainley: he was actually the first Master I saw (blocking the horrible memory of Eric Roberts here), and he's not bad, but I didn't get the iconic status of the Master until I saw Delgado.

I think that's something the new series has got right: a actor who is nothing like Delgado, but is recognisably the same character, allowing for time and change.

Yes indeed, and I agree it was a mistake that they gave Ainley a look designed to resemble Delgado's instead of letting the Master change just as the Doctor did. Among other things, it ruined the parallel idea between the two.


This being said, I do think the idea of the Master rotting in his body and thus driven to extremes works; the execution, well. Incidentally, is he meant to be the same generation as Delgado, or a later one? I don't think they said it here; I know fanon has Delgado as the last proper regeneration before Crispy!Master, but do we know for sure one way or the other?

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, is he meant to be the same generation as Delgado, or a later one?

I don't know the detail of canon well enough, but if it isn't explained in The Deadly Assassin I can't think where it would be. There may just be a general assumption that nothing (or no one) of significance happens within the story's timeline without being shown, or at least mentioned?

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

If I understand correctly the spin-off novels "The Dark Path" and "The Face of the Enemy" by David A McIntee make it clear that Delgado was the last "normal" version and that he lost most of his regenerations in an accident with a black hole that was partly the Doctor's fault and was the final straw on top of some other stuff that made him turn evil. It's also hinted that the physiological effects and mental trauma of repeatedly regenerating in a short space of time made him a bit mentally unstable.

Some fans strongly dislike McIntee's Master backstory in the same way as I feel about Jeanne Cavelos's Morden, though, so all this is only optionally canon.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

As a fellow disliker of Jeanne Cavelos' Morden, I'll go with the "optional" then; in a way, I like it that we never got a definite explanation of why the Master is the way he is on screen; much more room for fanfiction!

Anyway, Delgado as the last "normal" regeneration: does this mean he died one more time before becoming Crispy!Master, or did the Delgado regeneration transform into this?

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I suspect the latter, although I haven't actually read the books in question.

[kathyh]

Time Lord scenes always gave her the feeling of having stumbled on a BBC staff meeting

LOL! You should be able to tell their level of Time Lord seniority then by whether they are allowed biscuits or not.

I used to love Four when he was on the screen but I must admit that these days I don't enjoy his performance as much as I used to do. I think you're right that the emotional connection is missing and maybe after having watched New Who I expect to feel that more from the Doctor than I did.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Biscuits: I must remember to mention this to versaphile. She currently has a WIP about the Year That Wasn't on the Valiant, Praxis, and in one scene, the Doctor, being momentarily unable to do anything effective against the Master without giving his Archangel network plan away, takes the Master-destined biscuits in frustrated pettiness. Clearly, this is keep the BBC staff metaphor alive!

Given that I love Three, am very fond of Two and One, love Seven, after initially finding him too bland have come around to liking Five and in the audios where he gets good scripts like Six, I really can't explain my problem with Four other than "lack of emotional connection". Maybe I should check out Baker in other roles to figure out whether it's him...

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

You know, the first time in history that Doctor Who fans started openly attacking the show's creators was through exactly your reaction to Deadly Assassin, complaints that it had made the Time Lords too human and not mysterious enough.

I don't know if you've seen The Keeper of Traken on DVD, but Geoffrey Beevers who played crispy!Master in that one has an interview on the disc in which he says that his concept for the role was that when the Master was disfigured he stopped trying to charm people because he thought he was too grotesque to and just let out the real inner villain that had been there all along. Oddly given this, things do get a bit slashy in a lowest-common-denominator sense at the climax of that story, where he has the Doctor paralysed, wants to take over his body, and starts eyeing and fondling said body in an intriguing way.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I've ordered The Keeper of Traken (and Logopolis, and C. - the "New Beginnings" collection), so I shall see it next week or so, but I haven't yet. I'm curious about Geoffrey Beevers' take on the role, though, having just listened to him on audio, but in Lidster's Master he's a benevolent amnesiac most of the time and has just one scene with the Master's memories restored, so it's hard to judge based on that (other than: Derek Jacobi did it better, but okay, that's why he's Derek Jacobi).

Re: slash factor: I think my problem here isn't the Master, crispy or not, it's that when Tom Baker's Doctor says he sincerely hopes the guy is dead, I believe him. I got no ambiguity of feeling about the Master from him at all. Now given that the Deadly Assassin is direct follow up to the Pertwee/Delgado era where the ambiguity, never mind the slash factor, was there in both scripts and performance, that's a shame. And since I am all about mutual, not one-sided feelings (like the Seventh Doctor, I'm not fond of unrequited love in a story), I can not slash Four with the Master. (Or anyone else, droll scene with Harry in Robot notwithstanding, come to think of it.)

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

If you try to analyse the Doctor's character in a way possibly more in-depth than people writing at the time did, you can see a major psychological feature of Four as the tendency to reject and want to get away from the emotional attachments of his previous versions (which could metaphorically tie in with the strongly Buddhist overtones of the events that led to Three's demise), which gets even more extreme with the traumatic events of Deadly Assassin. Hence the utter disgust for the Master which continues in Traken and only slightly softens in Logopolis, his failure to look up Sarah again after Gallifrey, and possibly the fact that the period from Deadly Assassin to Logopolis features very few visits to contemporary Earth by comparison to some other periods of the show.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

you can see a major psychological feature of Four as the tendency to reject and want to get away from the emotional attachments of his previous versions

That... actually makes sense. Especially if one employs the "each regeneration compensates for or reacts against something in the previous one" theory I've seen bandied about. *ponders*

[calapine.livejournal.com]

And suddenly nobody has ever heard of the Master when in Terror of the Autons they explicitly send someone to the Doctor to inform him the Master just came to Earth?

The best thing about that? Bob Holmes wrote both stories. He just wasn't big on that whole 'continuity' thing.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Bless. That didn't happen to him on B7, but I think we can credit Chris Boucher's editing skills there.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Yes, which makes it even more amusing that Deadly Assassin introduced the one feature of continuity that has caused most angst in the last few years, the thirteen-body limit. I suspect that the pain and contorted attempts at retcon with which fans have reacted to it as the limit approaches would make the poor guy spin in his grave.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

He'd probably have forgotten. I mean, this is the dude that got mixed up between Troughton and Pertwee and accidently gave us the 6B theory.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I used to think that, but information on the Two Doctors DVD strongly suggests that this was an attempt at a conscious retcon, designed to suggest that One and Two had always been on a long leash from the Time Lords and that their shock!shock!shock! at what Two was doing in War Games was arrant hypocrisy.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I must admit I'm curious which justification they'll come up with once Actor No. 12 quits, because you know they'll come up with something! (Other than ending the show for good, I mean.) Given that both The Five Doctors and Sound of Drums confirm that the other Time Lords could offer - and in the second case, actually give - the Master a completely new cycle of regenerations, there are a couple of options...

[deborah-judge.livejournal.com]

Which would seriously undercut the whole 'everything has its time and everything must end' theme of the show. Not that they shouldn't do it for that reason, but making the Doctor effectively immortal would question one of the basic underpinnings of the show's moral universe.

What I love about 'The Deadly Assasin' is the way it makes that moral universe so very clear. Evil = the refusal to die when it's your time to die. The Cybermen are basically the same way - evil because they've given up their humanity for survival. It's starting to seem like that with the Daleks as well: the only way for them to live is to destroy everything else. And then the Toclophane's struggle to survive the end of the universe turning them ancestor-cidal, and Jack's immortality being so wrong that the Doctor has to leave him. (And, yeah, Cassandra.) Now within the moral universe of the show the Doctor *could* live forever, as the Valeyard. You *can* live forever, but only by taking other people's regenerations.

Now one could argue that this is an entirely plausible character arc for the Doctor, but the show won't go there.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree from a storytelling perspective, whole-heartedly. But the cynic in me says that there is no way the BBC will be willing to end their longest-running cash cow, no matter how much the moral universe of that show demands it.

[deborah-judge.livejournal.com]

I can offhand imagine two ways to do it, without turning the Doctor evil:
1. Make the Doctor commit a horrible crime to get more regenerations. (Maybe make it nice and ambiguous so he's also saving Earth...or, conversely, also getting more regenerations for the Master.) Then his arc becomes about atoning for the crime and coming to terms with the 'wrong' that he's become. This could get way dark, but preserves the Doctor as basically a good person and the moral universe as one in which death is necessary.

2. Shake up the moral universe - which would mean rehabilitating the Master, and in particular re-evaluating his actions in this episode. Since 'The Five Doctors' establishes that the Time Lord Council can award extra regenerations, by *not* awarding regenerations to the Master (or most people, I guess) they are basically condemning him (and, I guess, most people) to death. Which makes it a bit more understandable why he's not bothered by the idea of destroying Gallifrey. Is the traditionalist Time Lord establishment more invested in the inevitability of death than it has to be? Maybe the Doctor needs to question why regenerations have to stop at twelve - and maybe he's been unwittingly buying into a moral universe that is more problematic than he realizes.

(Having said that, I rather like the 'everything dies' piece of the moral universe, and it's hard for me to think of what could take its place and be equally compelling.)

[elyssadc.livejournal.com]

I can offhand imagine two ways to do it, without turning the Doctor evil:

I think another interesting possibility might be that he expects to die his final death but doesn't. He gets the thirteenth regeneration without understanding why. He had made his peace but isn't ALLOWED to rest. So it's almost like his continuing existence is at once a mystery, a blessing, and a curse. Excellent fodder for some serious angst, but it also keeps the Doctor good. Like maybe the universe won't let him go because it needs him, OR because he hasn't yet atoned for his actions in the Time War. With the added bonus that if he doens't know WHY he continues regenerating, there isn't any set number of regenerations left and BBC can keep it going for as long as it's a money maker.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Hm, I like that one, though after a while the fans are going to demand an answer as to why; just think of the X-Files as an example of what can happen if you dangle the carrot too long in front of viewers.

Otoh, this is DW, and I think some mysteries - like the Doctor's true name, or why exactly he left Gallifrey - we don't even want to be answered on screen, and haven't for decades, so who knows?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Both would be interesting, as would E's suggestion below. Incidentally, the whole "the Time Lord Council can award extra regenerations" element is already endlessly morally ambigous. Because if they can do that, then why does Borusa go through all the bother within The Five Doctors to gain certain immortality for himself via the ring of Rassilon? Perhaps because the second regeneration cycle is dependent on something, or has a serious downside. The drums come to mind, because as far as we know, the Master is the only Time Lord who eventually does get granted a new regeneration cycle, and voilà, drums. (I'm going with the fanon they weren't there pre-Time War but were something that came with the new body.)

(The other unexplored question I have about the Time Lord Council is: if they exiled, forcibly regenerated and partially mind-wiped the Doctor for interfering, why on Earth didn't they ever do something about the Master? Other than that one time telling the Doctor, "oh, btw, he's come to visit. Have fun!" and later bribing him with the new regenerations promise so they can use him.)

[deborah-judge.livejournal.com]

The Gallifreyan Time Lords are seeming more and more like the Bajoran Prophets - just begging for a Gnostic reading. This business of the hazing ritual that makes eight-year-old Time Lords go crazy also doesn't make them look so good. Maybe they created the Master on purpose?

(And if we're doing theological crossovers, one of these days someone really is going to tell the Doctor and the Master to "Get the hell out of our galaxy." Which would not be an entirely bad idea, for them or for Earth.)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

The audio Death Comes To Time actually uses that idea - mind you, in a modified fashion, in that the Doctor is basically Galadriel and chooses to diminish and go to the West. (No Master around, and the other Time Lords get killed off in that audio - which was produced long, long pre New Who.) With the humans, symbolized by some of them, to wit, a former Companion of his, developing into the new Time Lords, for such is evolution.

_medley_ wrote a story about the Time Lords creating both the Master and the Doctor on purpose, as they knew they'd need someone to end the Time War, and if it wasn't one, it would be the other.

Incidentally, there are some DW stories and scenes which can be interpreted as the humans taking over the whole protector & champion role, like these scenes from Battlefield (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buaK7Pdaux0) (aka Doctor Who does Arthurian lore and the Brigadier totally rules).

[elyssadc.livejournal.com]

but for some reason I just can't connect to him emotionally. At all. I don't know why.

Yes, yes, YES! I do not like Tom Baker's performance even slightly. When I first started watching Four-era episodes I actually found myself LOATHING him. I have never been able to understand the fan love for him (or Tennant, for that matter). He is, emotionally, completely cut off from the viewers. And the more I read about Baker himself, the less I like his performance. I just recently read an interview with Louise Jameson where she was talking about how Baker didn't want a companion and kind of treated her like shit. And then the whole nonsense with Lalla after their breakup...ugh. What a self-involved git. He is so closed off, so not present as an actor in that role that I could not agree with you more. There is just no connection! So, the only way I've been able to really enjoy Four era eps is to watch them for his companions. Because despite everything else, he really did have some of the best.

In conclusion: blowing up Gallifrey and eliminating the Time Lords except for the Doctor and the Master was a good idea.

I also have to agree with you on this. I'm pretty sure it was the best idea RTD had. Well, next best. Getting Chris Eccleston for the role was definitely the BEST idea. ;-)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Well, you know we disagree on Tennant. I do love the Tenth Doctor quite a lot, and David Tennant himself I find impossible not to like - well, as far as one can an actor one only knows from commentaries and interviews -, what with him being the geekiest dork who ever geeked; anyone who can go fanboy about Zygons, knows the constellation Gallifrey was at by heart, scared Wendy Padbury by going "omg you're Zoe!" on her and won a West Wing fans quiz by detailed show knowledge is just too damn nice not to like.) And I'm sure the Fourth Doctor fans feel passionately about their guy; I just can't share it.

Four era companions: that's true. Mind you, Adric...

[elyssadc.livejournal.com]

Yes. We shall agree to disagree on Tennant.

Four era companions: that's true. Mind you, Adric...

I'M SO BUSTED! But, but...Adric was more of a Fifth Doctor companion, really. Wasn't he? Oh, well. You can't win 'em all. But Four really did have a hell of a run when it comes to TARDIS residents. Watching him with Leela was what saved him for me. I couldn't help but love her and it made me enjoy the eps SO much more. And I just can't hate anyone who has a K-9. Simply impossible. ;-)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

*g* That brings to mind the philosophical question of whether Sarah Jane was more a Four or a Three companion, doesn't it?

(BTW, I noticed Adric was the only Five companion not name-checked in Time Crash. Methinks Moffat isn't a fan, either...)

And omg, which Doctor do we assign the Brig to? Well, okay, he canonically insists they're all splendid chaps, so he probably wouldn't want to be confined to one...

[elyssadc.livejournal.com]

You are killing my brain!!! These questions are extremely difficult. I think I am going to say that SJ was more of a Four companion because, if I read the character correctly, I think SHE would say she was more of a Four companion. I tend to think that she believes Baker was HER Doctor. What do you think?

As for the Brigadier...I'd go with Three. Again, if I read the character right, I think in his mind the Doctor will always be Three. All the rest are just Three with a new face, if that makes sense. I don't think he spends enough time with any of the Doctor's other incarnations to really feel the personality differences. So, to him, they are even more the same man than they are to viewers. And that man is the Third Doctor.

Good grief. This is hurting my head. ;-)

(BTW, I noticed Adric was the only Five companion not name-checked in Time Crash. Methinks Moffat isn't a fan, either...)

HAHAHA. I can't blame him. I think maybe vandonovan is the only Adric fan in the world. Ugly, bat-faced boy.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Sarah Jane: hm, yes, all in all, when she thinks of the Doctor, she probably associates him with Four first. Except perhaps in specific situations; for example, when she met Ten in "School Reunion", he introduced himself as John Smith and she said "I had a friend who sometimes went by that name", she'd think of Three, since this is how she met him. (Also, Four didn't use the Smith alias, did he? At least when she was around?) Otherwise, yes, mostly a Four companion.

Brig: "Three with a new face" is a great way to put it. When I heard Sympathy for the Devil I thought that one of the reasons why this is a very clever AU was that it uses the fact the Brigadier met Two only twice, which was enough to build some sympathy and some trust, yes, but not yet the kind of deep friendship he had with the Doctor by the end of Three's term, and if he hadn't met the Doctor for decades after those two encounters with Two - well, they'd still have a long way to go.

Btw, I just watched Maewdryn Undead and just loved that when Nyssa and Tegan were all "oh, possible regeneration, OMG, drama!", the Brigadier was "ah yes, that again". (Not a bad episode, Maewdryn Undead, though with too much walking in corridors. For my money, the best post-Three use of the Brig were these scenes from Battlefield (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buaK7Pdaux0).)

[neuralclone.livejournal.com]

Firstly, I have a weird reaction to Tom Baker as the Doctor. He was actually the first one I've watched - The Talons of Weng-Chian, to be precise - and most of the Baker era adventures I've seen, including Genesis of the Daleks and the wonderful City of Death, are all vintage DW - but for some reason I just can't connect to him emotionally. At all. I don't know why. With most Doctors, it just takes an entertaining adventure or two, and I adjust and feel affection and love in varying degrees, but with the most popular Doctor of all time, it just doesn't happen.

Tom Baker's doctor is very much a "performer" - not just in the sense that "here is an actor, performing a role", but in the sense that the Fourth Doctor always seems to be performing to the gallery (even if the gallery is only the Doctor himself!) You can see it in his tendency to ignore his companions while he takes centre stage. It's amusing at first, but after a while it becomes alienating.

Now the Third Doctor by contrast - I've been watching a lot of Three, lately - has a theatrical side, but he does interact with the people around him. He spars with the Brigadier (and the Master) and encourages his companions rather than dragging them along in his wake. I've just started watching "Colony in space" where Jo goes on her first trip in the Tardis, and watching Three persuading her to go out and explore was a joy to watch.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Every Doctor - maybe except Five - has an ego and all of them like to show off in varying degrees, but I think you put your finger on it. When Three does it, he does it by interaction with his fellow players. You never doubt he finds these people interesting, too, and cares about them. I'm in the process of watching Invasion of the Dinosours and yes, the difference, after just having watched a Four serial, is striking.

(One of my first Three stories way back when was Carnival of Monsters, and the way Jo teases him about his driving, err, managing to steer the TARDIS is just great. And when we get exchanges like:

Jo:...and that means we're still on Earth.
Doctor: That's impossible.
Jo: Do you ever admit you're wrong?
Doctor: No. That's also impossible.

Is funny because of the way they're smiling at each other all the time, and the way they're talking. And it needs that level of personal interaction to come off as amusing (and self-aware on the Doctor's part) instead of condescending.

...it's ironic to think that Three has the arrogance reputation and Four is the universal teddy bear, you know?

[neuralclone.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think it's the other way round! Though if I wanted an explanation for it, I'd say it's because Three has the Vedy, Vedy Posh Accent and the dandified outfit, while Four wears the tweedy Bohemian clothes and has a slight less cut-glass accent.

Which only goes to show, that most people only see the most superficial things...

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I'd have to agree here. I think the root of the "arrogant, right-wing, sexist Three" trope is that when all the other Doctors behave anti-socially, the typical viewer sees it as alien difference or being unavoidably irritated by other people's limitations. Whereas Three's accent, and the way I think Pertwee plays him as possibly the most human of all the Doctors, makes most British people who tend in that direction to react to him viscerally as not a weird alien but an everyday "arrogant, entitled, arsehole who thinks he's better than you because of what school he went to".

[neuralclone.livejournal.com]

... And adding to the above: on a similar note we also need to discuss why Jo is commonly disparaged as the screaming, ankle-twisting companion... *G*

[selenak.livejournal.com]

londonkds and self had an exchange about that (http://selenak.livejournal.com/373707.html?thread=5690315#t5690315); he might be right as to where Jo's unjustified reputation comes from. But yes, it's baffling! And you might be on track with the accent and the outfit thing.

(Sort of reminds me of how in New Who, Nine has the "tough and dark" reputation because of the leather jacket. Err, no. Based on actual behaviour in one season, way more passive and less ruthless than Ten (while very messed up in either incarnation, but that's another issue), which makes sense since Nine is the one immediately post -Time War.)

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Not just the clothes, but also, I think, the accent and stereotypical Northern bluntness of speech.

[vandonovan.livejournal.com]

I have nothing to say except that Four is quite slashable, with both Harry and Adric, and any other companions you want to bring back from the past/future. (Ian? Steven? There's always room for Jamie, and hello, Jack?) XD

[selenak.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* Different strokes for different people. You're talking with the freak who finds Jack utterly resistable, so...

[vandonovan.livejournal.com]

Well, that makes two of us on that topic, at least. (Then again, I find Ten even more resistable.)

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

You know, I've heard a number of people say they dislike the metamorphosis of the Time Lords from mysterious, powerful aliens into this kind of mundane bureaucracy... I'm starting to suspect that I'm the only one who really likes them that way, but I do. I suppose that might have something to do with the fact that my first introduction to them came in this era -- possibly even with this episode -- so that this is the way they always were in my mind. I remember when I saw "The War Games" for the first time, finding them strange and wrong-feeling there.

But I don't think it's just that; I think there are other reasons why I prefer this approach, as well. For one thing, mysterious godlike aliens generally tend not to be very interesting, because there's not much you can do with them. They're Powerful and Mysterious! That's about it. There's not really much of anywhere to go with that. On the other hand, there is something interesting and believable in the idea of this most old and powerful and mysterious-to-the-rest-of-the-universe race having lived so long that its become senescent and only being able to cope with its unimaginable powers by being too insular to use them (except, of course, when they're not). It's a much meatier science fictional idea.

And while I definitely like to preserve some mystery in the Doctor's personal background, I think it does enhance his characterization to have the sense that he comes from a real, understandable place full of real people. In a way, it only enhances the mystery, because there's not an ultimately unknowable question mark there, but a sense of a real backstory that we simply don't have access to. More than that, I really like the idea that this, this stultifying, stagnant, bureaucratic, boring society, this is what the Doctor left, what he rebelled against, what he defines himself in opposition to. I think that works beautifully well with what we know of his character.

That having been said, yeah, I'm not going to argue against the point that in trying to capture that sense of, well, banality, this script in particular tends to lose sight of the fact that they should still feel like Time Lords. I think it is quite possible, actually, to capture both the banality and the powerful alienness simultaneously, if only because that is what they're like in my head. But I don't think there's any single story that's managed both at the same time yet.

And stories involving the Time Lords always seem to raise continuity problems, in terms of what the Time Lords are or aren't supposed to know. E.g., the Eye of Harmony is portrayed here as something the Time Lords have pretty much forgotten the existence of, but come the TVM, it's something that's casually integrated into TARDISes, including the Doctor's out-of-date-from-the-beginning model? Huh? (Not that the TVM didn't have other continuity problems, too.) Or, the Doctor doesn't recognize the Daleks when he meets them for the first time, but one sort of gets the impression later on that the Time Lords have known about them, and that they've had a hugely bad-ass reputation, pretty much forever.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wouldn't have wanted the Time Lords as, say, the DS9 prophets, but leaving later Voyager aside, the Q Continuum would have done nicely. If you know what I mean. As you say, keep the sense of alienness and inherent power together with the banality/bureaucracy/rule-boundness, but the way I see it, the alienness pretty much went out of the window with this episode and didn't come back until the Seven era (dare I utter the words "Cartmel Master Plan") when the production team deliberately tried to bring some mystery and alien aura back to the Doctor and kept all other Time Lords save the Master out of the story altogether.

Re: continuity problems - there is also the fact Susan and the Doctor are worried about radiation in that very first Dalek story when a) they'd just regenerate, and b) radiation is established as being child's play for Time Lords anyway. But these things happen in a decade long show, I know. I still feel more generous towards Dalek contradictions than towards what Holmes does here re: the Time Lords and the Master, and the Doctor needing explanations about Rassilon, because it smacks of sheer writerly laziness for me. (I.e. he needed to convey the information to the audience, and there was no companion at hand to ask the questions, so...)