Day 139 — May 19th 2021
Inferno Episodes Three and Four
Inferno — Episode Three
You’ll be pleased to know that I’m typing this one while wearing an eyepatch. I feel like it’s tradition.
Which is fitting because this is what I’d call a pretty ‘traditional’ episode for the Third Doctor Who. By that I mean we have a full six minute sequence which is largely dialogue-free, in which Doctor Who gets caught up in a chase sequence involving a vehicle (Bessie, in this case), and which ends with a stunt man falling off something high up.
And while that might sound like a bit of a criticism, I really enjoyed it! There’s a chance that if these types of scenes become as prevalent as I think they do then they’ll wear thin before long, but here as one of the first times it’s an exciting enough inclusion in the episode. And it’s telling that this set of action is far more effective than the ones in The Ambassadors of Death, as much as I enjoyed the story.
I think a fair amount of the credit for that has to be handed to Douglas Camfield, who it’s very nice to have back on the programme. I really enjoy Michael Ferguson as a director and his work on the last story was competent (although admittedly I didn’t love it as much as I had his two previous outings) but there’s something about the way that Camfield shoots action which really works.
It’s perhaps more noticeable here because both stories feature fairly similar sequences — UNIT soldiers chasing an intruder through an industrial landscape, up and down rigging and along metal pipes. Oh sure the facility in Ambassadors might have looked a bit more modern while here we’re full of rust and decay, but it’s an unusually close situation just a few episodes apart.
But you really get a sense of the scale when watching the chase in this one, and especially of the heights involved. There’s some brilliant shots looking down at the parallel-universe UNIT on the ground which make them look like they’re miles away, and some equally brilliant reverse images shooting up at Doctor Who and making the whole thing look dizzying.
And there’s even time amongst all the action for a bit of comedy — Doctor Who standing up to reveal he’s wearing a bin lid on his head is brilliant and it gave me a proper laugh without lessening the tension in the slightest. Of course when we get to the end of the chase we’re treated to the brilliant reveal of Alternate Universe Liz, and the look on Pertwee’s face when she turns him over to the soldiers. It’s incredible stuff.
And the episode carries on from there, really milking the idea of evil doubles in the parallel universe to the extreme. It’s nice to see our regulars given a chance to do something a bit out of the usual routine, and both Caroline John and Nick Courtney are making the most of it.
Another 8/10.
Inferno — Episode Four
I think the behind the scenes story of Doctor Who is just about as tumultuous and dramatic as any of the action we get on screen. With The Ambassadors of Death it was tricky to assign attribution for the writing, as David Whitaker started off the first few episodes while Malcolm Hulke produced the latter half of the tale working from Whitaker’s notes. We’ve a similar situation with Inferno, but in this case it’s the direction which got split down the middle.
Douglas Camfield kicked the story off, having directed all of the location work and the first two studio sessions before falling ill and passing the reigns over to producer Barry Letts. Camfield was well known for being a meticulous planner, and so for Episode Three Letts was able to work from detailed notes and direct the episode as closely as possible to the way Camfield would have done it, but the remainder of the story was almost entirely Letts.
I’ve been thinking about it in particular today because after a fairly unremarkable episode — the weakest instalment of Inferno so far, and a 6/10 — the cliffhanger is one of the most exciting sequences we’ve seen in a while. The tension is brilliant, and the choices from the director are spot on. It’s so exciting that I actually skipped back and watched it again.
As the closing credits rolled I found myself thinking ‘that’s exactly why you bring Camfield back’ before realising that he might not have been responsible. And it’s not only the cliffhanger which stands out in this one — there’s a brilliant scene early on where Doctor Who is interrogated and it’s shot in an unusual but totally effective way. On top of that, it’s unsettling to see this most dashing of incarnations looking so dishevelled.
I’ve not got a great deal to talk about when it comes to this episode, so this is the perfect chance to touch on the photography related to Inferno, because I think it’s got some of the best images of any Doctor Who story. A lot of the praise for this has to go to Don Smith, who worked as a photographer for the Radio Times for many years. He’s responsible for loads of iconic Doctor Who images from the programme’s early years, and I think he’s a name that should be better known.
One of my favourite shots of his from this particular story is of Pertwee stood at the TARDIS console — it’s no surprise that this image ended up on the DVD cover for the Special Edition because it’s a great portrait of the lead actor. Smith was responsible for all my favourite shots of Pertwee taken during Spearhead From Space, too.
But even aside from image of Doctor Who himself this story is home to loads of great photography. There’s shots of John Levene in particular which are better, I think, than any other image taken of him in the show. It’s perhaps a shame that in all these images he’s in the costume of his parallel universe counterpart rather than regular UNIT gear. And then there’s images of the wolf men — which I’ve not encountered in the story yet — which make them look genuinely terrifying where I suspect they could have come across a little silly and ineffectual.
I think my absolute favourites from this one have to be a series of images featuring Pertwee and Caroline John sat in Bessie. Sadly the negatives for these shots seem to have been lost in the last fifty years, so we’ve only got ropey quality copies of them now. Fingers crossed the originals will turn up one day, because I think these ones would be favourites for a lot of fans if we could see them properly.
There’s one other image from this story which we don’t seem to have a copy of any more — and it’s one that’s seen prominently once Doctor Who travels over to the parallel world. The face staring down from the ‘Unity is Strength’ posters is Jack Kine — an influential Special Effects guy at the BBC, who had worked on Doctor Who only once in The Mind Robber. It’s also fitting, given the themes and obvious inspiration for this season, that Kine was responsible for the special effects on The Quatermass Experiment back in 1953. It feels somehow right that he should crop up before the end of Season Seven, and I can’t help but think it must have been an in-joke on the part of the production team.
