Inferno

Listen to that! It's the sound of this planet screaming out its rage!--the Doctor

Evil Liz and Evil Brigadier

Episode one, 9 May 1970
Episode two, 16 May 1970
Episode three, 23 May 1970
Episode four, 30 May 1970
Episode five, 6 June 1970
Episode six, 13 June 1970
Episode seven, 20 June 1970

Written by Don Houghton
Directed by Douglas Camfield
Script editor: Terrance Dicks
Produced by Barry Letts

Jon Pertwee as the Doctor
Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Caroline John as Liz Shaw (last regular appearance)
John Levene as Sergeant Benton

Liz and the Brigadier, not evil

And now, finally, we have our first unambiguously mad-scientist story, making our alien invasion/mad scientist record 3-1-1.  The mad scientist in question this time is Professor Stahlman, who's heading a government project to drill through the Earth's crust.  He theorises that beneath the crust is a substance called Stahlman's gas, and by releasing it, he'll be able to provide Britain with an inexhaustible energy reserve.

Stahlman's not evil; he doesn't want to take over the world, or destroy it.  He's just arrogant: he's convinced of the rightness of his theory regarding the existence of Stahlman's gas, and he's so eager to get to it that he keeps speeding up the rate of drilling, regardless of any concerns for safety.  He refuses to listen to any warnings--from his assistant, Petra Williams (played by Sheila Dunn, wife of the story's director, Douglas Camfield); from the project's administrator, the civil servant Sir Keith Gold; from Greg Sutton, an oil-drilling expert the government has brought in from a drillsite in Kuwait; or from the Doctor, who's hanging around the project because he's hooked up the TARDIS to its nuclear reactor for some experiments he's running in his continuing quest to overcome the exile imposed upon him by the Time Lords.  UNIT are also hanging around, in order to ... well, actually, I'm not sure why UNIT are there, but they're there.

(A casting note: Derek Newark, who plays Greg Sutton, played Za in the Doctor's very first adventure in 1963, while Christopher Benjamin, here making his first entry into the programme, as Sir Keith, most recently appeared in Doctor Who in 2009, opposite David Tennant and Catherine Tate.  So in "Inferno", we've got 46 years of Who history playing opposite each other.)

But there are problems besetting the project.  Something is happening to a few of its technicians, and to a few of the UNIT soldiers: they're turning into hairy green monsters who are burning hot to the touch, and who are horribly strong and manically homicidal.  Unbeknownst to the main characters, this metamorphosis is caused because the unfortunate individuals are coming into contact with a strange green slime that's been oozing up from the drill head deep beneath the Earth's surface--the drilling is unleashing dark forces from the Earth's core.

The story takes a sudden, unexpected swerve when one of the Doctor's experiments with the TARDIS goes awry.  The TARDIS dematerialises, but it takes the Doctor neither forward nor backward in time.  Instead, he rematerialises in the same place and time, but in a parallel reality--an alternate history.  He soon discovers that he's somehow transported himself to a world where Britain abolished the monarchy in 1943 and turned into a brutal, right-wing fascist dictatorship.

Everything is present in the alternate world that was present in the real world, but it's been twisted.  The Stahlman's gas drilling project is still going on, headed by Professor Stahlman, but now the project is at a "scientific labour camp"--meaning slave labour.  The UNIT team are still providing security, but not as UNIT--they're now members of the Republic Security Forces.  They're led by the Brigadier, who has lost his moustache and gained an eyepatch and now goes by the rank of Brigade Leader.  His second in command is the stern, no-nonsense Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw, who's a far cry from being any sort of scientist.

(The "leader" ranks are a nice touch--even Benton is ranked "Platoon Under Leader".  It's an echo of Gestapo ranks, which all ended with -führer, from Reichsführer, the unique rank held by Heinrich Himmler, all the way down to Unterscharführer, or Squad Under Leader, the equivalent to lance-corporal or PFC.)

Of course, the Doctor is quickly apprehended by the dark, brutal counterparts to his friends from UNIT, who conclude that he's a spy for a foreign power.  So he has to avoid getting put in front of a firing squad, but he's also got another concern--figuring out what's going on with the drilling.

The alternate-world drilling project is further along than its real-world counterpart, and the Doctor is present when it penetrates to the Earth's core.  And it might surprise you to learn, but the result isn't the discovery of a new, inexhaustible energy source--it's the end of the world.  Tremors begin all across the country, and spontaneous volcanoes form.  The Doctor realises it's only a matter of a short time until the Earth's entire crust breaks up.

As the situation deteriorates, people's true characters come out.  The Brigade Leader becomes even more militant, more shrill, more megalomaniacal, convinced his vaunted Republic will save everyone.  (Nicholas Courtney is clearly relishing playing a shrill, paranoid villain.)  But Section Leader Shaw is gradually coming around to the Doctor's story of where he comes from, and she's showing a willingness to help the Doctor get back to the real world so he can save our own reality from suffering the same fate as hers.

Which is, of course, what happens.  The Brigade Leader hatches a plan to force the Doctor to take him back with him to our reality at gunpoint, but of course it doesn't work.  The Doctor makes it back alone, and he's able to stop the drill just before it penetrates the Earth's mantle.  One world has died, but the other has survived.

What Lisa thought

She really didn't like it.  She found it slow and turgid, and she's finding the UNIT format really repetitive.  When I told her "Inferno" is one of the most highly regarded Whos of all time, she asked, "... But why?"

She did like Evil Liz's look--she thinks Carolina John looks good as a brunette.

It's a shame, because I, like most of Who fandom, is really neat--the opportunity to see Britain as a fascist state, the opportunity to see UNIT turned to evil, and the opportunity to see Benton metamorphose into a green, hairy monster.

The next story is "Terror of the Autons".

The Ambassadors of Death

The Doctor: You're convinced their intentions are hostile, then?
General Carrington: Why else should they invade the galaxy?  They were on Mars before we were.

The Doctor greets Death's diplomatic representatives.

Episode one, 21 March 1970
Episode two, 28 March 1970
Episode three, 4 April 1970
Episode four, 11 April 1970
Episode five, 18 April 1970
Episode six, 25 April 1970
Episode seven, 2 May 1970

Written by David Whitaker
Directed by Michael Ferguson
Script editor: Terrance Dicks
Produced by Barry Letts

Jon Pertwee as the Doctor
Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Carolina John as Liz Shaw
John Levene as Sergeant Benton

Another UNIT story, so is this one an alien invasion or a mad scientist?  Well, it has aliens, but they're not invading.  And it has a madman, but he's not a scientist.  So I guess maybe this one ends up as a wash, bringing our alien invasion/mad scientist standings to 3-0-1.

Really, for all that Terrance Dicks (rightly) complains about the constraints imposed on Doctor Who with the reformatting at the end of "The War Games", this first season under the new regime is doing a nice job of varying it.  We started off with a straight alien invasion story; this was then followed by an alien invasion story, except the aliens are actually from Earth.  And now we get an alien invasion story, except the aliens aren't actually invading--their intentions are peaceful.

The story opens with the Recovery 7 space probe docking with the returning Mars Probe 7.  The astronaut manning Recovery 7, Van Lyden, is investigating to see what's happened to Mars Probe 7's crew, who cut radio contact seven months ago.  A piercing noise is then heard over Van Lyden's radio, after which Van Lyden, too, cuts contact.  But evidently he, or the Mars Probe astronauts, are still alive, because their landing pod begins re-entry procedure.

UNIT and the Doctor head out into the English countryside to recovery the pod once it lands, but they're attacked--by military special forces, disguised as civilians, who make off with the pod themselves.  At this point, another dimension gets added to the story--in addition to the usual Who sci-fi-cum-horror plot of What Did Those Astronauts Encounter in Space?, we've also got a government-conspiracy-thriller, as UNIT have to deal with a clandestine organisation trying to undermine them at every turn, headed by the enigmatic General Carrington, himself an astronaut aboard the previous Mars Probe, Mars Probe 6.  In that respect, we can liken "The Ambassadors of Death" to the Torchwood series "Children of Earth".

(Speaking of Torchwood--I've heard a very credible theory that Carrington and his men are, in fact, Torchwood agents.  After all, from Earth's perspective, this story falls between "Tooth and Claw" (1879) and "Doomsday" (2007), so Carrington and Torchwood would view the Doctor as just as much a hostile alien invader as they do the Ambassadors.)

So basically, what happened is that Mars Probe 6, with Carrington on board, encountered an alien race on Mars.  Carrington became convinced that the aliens were hostile, because they accidentally killed his crewmate Jim.  (The aliens didn't know that their very touch would be fatal to humans.)  Carrington therefore told the aliens that he would return to Earth and prepare the way for them; when Mars Probe 7 arrived, they should replace its human crew with their own ambassadors.

It is these ambassadors that Carrington has now kidnapped.  The alien ambassadors require constant access to radiation to remain alive; Carrington therefore rations their radiation, and forces them to perform missions for him--raiding nuclear reactors, murdering soldiers, stealing secret plans.  He hopes thereby to convince the world that an alien invasion is imminent, so that when the alien spaceship arrives in orbit over Earth, he can convince every country in the world to launch all their missiles at it and destroy it.

Of course, the Doctor and UNIT figure out what's going on, and they liberate the aliens and stop Carrington immediately before he makes a worldwide telecast to reveal the alien "threat" to the world.

What Lisa thought

This one was too slow and plodding for her--I think she's starting to feel the press of the other part of the show's new format, the longer story lengths.  She was also disappointed in how dressed the Doctor remained this time--for the third story out of his three so far, Jon Pertwee finds a reason to take his clothes off again, but we only see him once he's already been fully covered by a bathrobe.

It's the thriller element of the storyline that, I think, gives Ambassadors what success it does have.  We've got Liz being kidnapped and forced to work for Carrington's crew as they try to keep the ambassadors alive.  We've got Carrington's chief scientist, who defects to UNIT to tell them what's going on, and insists on being held in a prison cell for his own safety until he can talk to the Brigadier--but then, he discovers one of Carrrington's operatives has left a radioactive isotope in the cell with him, assassinating him by radiation poisoning.  And we've got Carrington going slowly more paranoid and insane, using the ambassadors to assassinate his own superior when that superior prepares to tell the Doctor what's going on, and then in the final episode going so far as to have the Brigadier and all of UNIT placed under military arrest in case they're collaborating with the aliens.

Though the most watchable thing about this story is the cast.  Several of the guest actors, as opposed to characters, are exceedingly engaging.  Chief amongst them are Ronald Allen, playing Professor Cornish (head of mission control for the apparently thriving British space programme), and William Dysart as Regan, the thug who's looking after the imprisoned Ambassadors (and the imprisoned Liz) for General Carrington.  Ronald Allen (who had previously appeared as a Dominator) has a very understated, clipped delivery, while Dysart has an odd Scottish accent, and both of them have great screen presence--Lisa told me she thought Allen came across as a man who should be a leading man, but just never got the opportunity.  Cheryl Molineux also grabs your attention as a technician at mission control, even though her total screentime is a series of about ten three-second closeups over the seven episodes, as she reads a countdown aloud.

Lisa also came up with an interesting theory about Carrington, to complement the one about his Torchwood origins: she wonders if he and Jim, during their months alone together on Mars Probe 6, found the love that dare not speak its name blossoming between them, and that's why his accidental death at the hands of the Ambassadors pushed him into insanity. Come on, people--of such stuff is fanfic born.

So definitely a hit-and-miss story--mostly miss, but what hits it does have are pretty strong ones.

The next story will be "Inferno".