Day 149 — May 29th 2021
Colony in Space Episodes One and Two
Colony in Space — Episode One
I’ve not been looking forward to this one. When I didn’t enjoy Terror of the Autons very much, and The Mind of Evil started to sag in the middle, I looked ahead to Colony in Space and thought ‘that one’s a bit rubbish, too. Season Eight might be a bit of a slog…’. I don’t know if I was misremembering, or if enjoying The Claws of Axos so much has put me in a good mood, but either way I’m pleased to say that this opening episode has really surprised me — there’s loads of really brilliant stuff in here.
For starters I’d forgotten that we opened with the Time Lords. I knew they were responsible for sending Doctor Who to Uxarieus in this one, but I didn’t realise that we actively saw them deciding to use him as a messenger. I’ve said before that I’m not a big fan of Time Lords but having them pop up as a surprise was oddly exciting, and they’re far more effective here than they were pissing around with bowler hats at the start of the season.
And then we get to see Doctor Who and Jo leaving Earth for the first time, with a mildly perturbed Brigadier left behind shouting into thin air! Hah! I love that. I said a while ago that one of my criteria for deciding who a companion is tends to be if you have to explain why they’re not involved with a story — and it’s telling that it feels important that we see the Brigadier get left behind. Narratively, this is the first time we’ve been to another planet in almost two years so it feels totally right that we should see Doctor Who go. It wouldn’t feel right to have simply opened already in the TARDIS.
It also means that we get to see Jo’s reaction to entering the police box for the first time! In The Mind of Evil I wondered how possible it would be that Jo had been working with Doctor Who for a whole year. I think I’ve decided here that the answer is ‘not very’, because surely she’d have been inside the police box before? We get a return of the ‘what have you got in there anyway. A policeman?’ joke, and then a really nice exchange between our heroes on the back of her reaction;
Jo: ‘I don’t believe it! It’s bigger inside than out!’
Doctor Who: ‘Yes. That’s because the Tardis is dimensionally transcendental.’
Jo: ‘What does that mean?’
Doctor Who: ‘It means that it’s bigger inside than out.’
I also love the idea that however long Jo has been working for Doctor Who, she clearly thought he was mental. She says that she thought all his tinkering with the TARDIS was simply a hobby and then when the ship actually takes flight, she’s amazed to discover that it’s really happening;
Jo: ‘All that talk of yours about travelling in time and space, it was true.’
Doctor Who: ‘Well, of course it was true! Before I was stranded on Earth, I spent all my time exploring new worlds and seeking the wonders of the universe.’
Jo: ‘But you don’t know what’s out there.’
Doctor Who: ‘Then let’s find out. Don’t you want to set foot in another world?’
Jo: ‘Well, yes, I do but I…’
Doctor Who: ‘Good. Come on. We’ll just take a quick look around, and then I’ll try and get you back to Earth. All right?’
Jo: ‘All right.’
If I’ve one complaint, it’s that their arrival on Uxarieus isn’t all that spectacular. I know the production team can’t control the weather, but having the TARDIS pop into place in the middle of an overcast quarry isn’t the most exciting return to space travel after so long. We get a few nice shots on location but it does look a little more dull than I’d have hoped — and I’m surprised that they didn’t make more of an attempt to do something spectacular.
I wonder if part of the reason it was a bit of a let down is because I’m picturing the beautiful Frank Bellamy comic strip which coincided with the broadcast of this episode in the Radio Times. I’ll talk more about Bellamy’s work next week when I reach Day of the Daleks, but looking over these pages this morning I can’t help but feel the planet looks far more visually arresting on the page than it does on screen!
I do love that we get to see the planet outside the doors of the TARDIS’ Control Room, though. It’s something they used to do in the very early years of the programme which had gone out of favour as the Hartnell era wore on. I didn’t think we ever really saw it happen again, so it’s lovely to see it making a return here. It helps to sell the idea that the planet really is just there, and is far more effective than sticking one of the photo blow up walls behind the doors, which they did in the last story.
I’ll reserve judgement on the guest characters for now, but I will say that I wish they’d cut to the cliffhanger ever so slightly earlier than they did. As it is, we get Doctor Who being menaced by a slightly hokey-looking robot, but there’s a perfect moment about three minutes earlier which I reckon would make for a really arresting cliffhanger;
Winton: ‘These other colonists. Well, where are they?’
Norton: ‘Dead. All dead. Giant lizards!’
I’m probably rating around a point higher than the episode actually deserves, but for being one I’ve really enjoyed when I wasn’t expecting it I’m going to go with an 8/10.
Colony in Space — Episode Two
I wonder if I was being too harsh on the location during Episode One, because there’s several shots in this one where it actually looks quite good. There’s some dramatic rock formations and some angles which feel like they give a bit more scale to the place. Perhaps they just chose an unfortunate place to build the TARDIS prop? We also get to see the outside of a Colony Dome here which looks great. We often hear about how thinly stretched the budget was during the Old Testament, and how they had to scrimp and save every penny, but then you get throwaway builds like this which look really impressive and can’t have been cheap.
Pertwee gets to add another vehicle to his collection in this episode, too, when a very trusting member of the IMC crew let him drive the cart back to their rocket. He looks quite pleased to be back behind the wheel but I have to wonder what was happening with his hair in those shots — it’s about five times its usual volume! Must be something in the atmosphere, because it’s calmed down by the time he gets back indoors…
One of the things that’s really impressed me about this episode is how richly drawn the vision of the future is. This episode builds up a picture of the Earth — overcrowded and choking — in little asides and brief videos, with the imagery being threaded through both Doctor Who and Jo’s respective strands of the story. While the picture we’re painted is fairly depressing it feels so well thought through. I’ll confess that I had to double check who wrote Colony in Space (yes, I know it sys at the start of every episode, but usually when I’m hunting for a pen…!) and when I realised it was Malcolm Hulke everything clicked into place. No wonder the images are so clearly defined.
The real giveaway should have been the characterisation on show — no one does it quite like Hulke. We’ve a lot of blokes with a lot of facial hair, but every one of them is clearly defined, and I feel like I totally get them. Colonists, miners, the lot. They’re all distinct and they all feel real. There’s hints of conflict and backstory, and all that is helping to elevate this above the standard fare it could otherwise have been.
I don’t have an awful lot of good things to say about the natives, but that’s okay at this stage because they’re just a distraction. The real bad guys here are the IMC team, being shady and working for their own profits over the good of their fellow man. People often talk about the Pertwee era as being the place where Doctor Who developed a real social conscience and it’s in places like this that it’s the most clear. I think I’m right in saying that Hulke was a member of the Communist Party at one stage of his life, and I think you can see that watching this episode. He makes it clear that he feels the greed of Capitalism surviving 500 years into the future — and halfway across the universe — is scarier than any monster.
And it works brilliantly. Sure, the message is laid on a little thick at times but there’s something infinitely more captivating about watching the machinations of some evil humans over the rubber suited aliens jumping around with their spears. I totally understand each of the IMC team and their individual motivations. I can even get on board with some of their arguments, though not at the expense of other lives of course. We’ve had surprisingly few tales of Human greed since Doctor Who was exiled to Earth, and there’s something a little ironic about needing to head to another planet to get one.
It also leads to a wonderfully dramatic cliffhanger moment. In many ways this is exactly the same cliffhanger as Episode One had — Doctor Who is menaced by the same robot in the same spot, the only difference is that the robot has now been fitted with some clawed gloves, and there’s someone stood by to watch. And yet the addition of Morgan makes all the difference, because while hammy his line is brilliant;
‘Purely business, you understand. Nothing personal.’
I’m impressed by the set of the IMC rocket; it manages to walk the line between being functional and bland while also being rather nicely designed. There’s a nice bit of orange detailing in the main control room which is especially nice, and looks great on screen. Unfortunately, this set — and the room in which Doctor Who is locked — are also home to the worst CSO we’ve had in the series so far. Points for trying to create some huge screens showing video footage, but the fringing round the edges is so poor that I’m amazed it made it to screen, even in 1971. Surely even Barry Letts looked at this and thought ‘perhaps not’..’?
Another decent one, and another 8/10.
