Day 228 — August 16th 2021
The Talons of Weng-Chiang Parts One and Two
The Talons of Weng-Chiang — Part One
I’m always a bit torn with The Talons of Weng-Chiang. It’s another one of those ‘classic’ tales which for years was considered pretty much untouchable in terms of reputation, but it was another which I was never hugely fond of. There were bits I liked, and it wasn’t bad by any stretch, but I didn’t get the hype that everyone else did. But then Big Finish took two of the guest characters — Jago and Litefoot — and spun them off into their own series of audio adventures, and they were brilliant.
I don’t listen to a lot of the audios, truth be told. It’s often because I never have the time, and there’s so much telly Doctor Who to get through which always tends to take priority. But there’s a few ranges I dip into. The Dorian Gray series is fantastic, I really enjoy their recreations of the lost Avengers episodes, and I’ve made the most of a recent sale by picking up all nine seasons of Survivors, which I’m slowly making my way through (alongside the telly stuff, thanks to BritBox) and enjoying a lot. And then there’s Jago and Litefoot, which I’ve heard and loved about the first ten seasons of. The interplay between the two leads is fantastic, they make the most of their period setting (although I think my favourite series might be the ones where they’re transported to the 1960s), and it meant that when I last watched this story I found a lot more to enjoy, because it was as much a pilot for another series as it was an episode of Doctor Who.
This time around… well, I think my reaction to this first episode has fallen somewhere between the two approaches. There’s a lot in here that I like, and chief among those elements are the characters of Jago and Litefoot, who are both introduced working their defining professions. It’s easy to take to both characters knowing all of the adventures they have ahead of them, but I think they hold up well even without that knowledge. There’s a reason that this Robert Holmes double act is the one which spawned a long-running spin off.
Then there’s the direction, which is typically beautiful work from David Maloney, who makes his last contribution to Doctor Who with this story. I think the legend is that Philip Hinchcliffe knew by this stage that he was being moved on to a different series — partly as a result of the complains about violence that dogged earlier stories in this run — and so he told the production team to just go mad and create something incredibly lavish no matter how much it cost. I don’t know how true that might be, but certainly the finished product on screen looks like one of the most expensive productions the series has ever mounted.
It’s at its most prominent in the location work, which I think must rank among the best we’ve ever had, and certainly some of the most extensive. As far as I can tell almost every scene of this episode is out on location somewhere.
The foggy night-time streets of Victorian London look incredible, and Maloney is such a skilled director that he knows just how to make the most of the setting. The shot of the TARDIS materialising, in which the camera pans down to find it right at the end of a foggy street with the lamp flashing, is gorgeous and I’m struggling to think of a materialisation I like more. Now I think about it, that’s always been an area in which Maloney excels — he did the beautiful ‘puddle’ shot in The War Games, and even in The Deadly Assassin I praised the way the box had been framed. It’s clear that he knows when he’s using a real icon of the series.
And yet for all the praise I’m heaping onto things, I can’t say this episode as a whole has done a lot for me. The dialogue — even though it’s by the much lauded Robert Holmes — just doesn’t flow as well as it has in the last eight episodes all by Chris Boucher. Indeed, there’s points where I think it’s actively abysmal. Take the laden way they heap exposition onto us about the missing girls, and bear in mind that this dialogue flows directly on from a shot of a poster which mentions the disappearances;
Jago: ‘I hope those girls go straight home to their digs.’
Casey: ‘Oh, that they will, sir, with all this in the papers. Nine are missing now, you know.’
Jago: ‘Nine! There was some fellow in here earlier blaming Chang of all people for some girl’s disappearance.’
Casey: ‘Just vanished off the streets, they have. Mostly in this area, too. What do you think’s happened to them, Mister Jago?’
Jago: ‘Nothing good, Casey, nothing good. That’s a stone certainty.’
Then there’s the relationship between Doctor Who and Leela. It’s something I’ve praised highly in the last two stories, with their interactions feeling natural and charming. Doctor Who is kind and patient with her, and they’re able to have a bit of banter back and forth. Here, though, he’s written almost entirely as patronising. He tells her they’re here because he’s ‘trying to teach’ her, and when there’s danger he insists that she wait behind even though she’s proven herself more than capable. I’ll be interested to see how this develops through the rest of the story and into the next season, as this is — sadly — the relationship I was expecting when Leela came along, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised so far.
All things considered I think I’m going for a 6/10 with this one, and hoping that I’ll find more to love as the story goes on…
The Talons of Weng-Chiang — Part Two
I’m finding myself oddly glum watching this one, because while it looks beautiful and I’m enjoying the presence of Jago and Litefoot, the whole thing seems to be significantly less than the sum of its parts — I think I’m going with another 6/10 for this episode, where I’d assumed I’d be continuing with the high scores the last two stories have been receiving.
Let’s go with the positives to start with. As I’ve mentioned, having Jago and Litefoot around is brilliant, and I’m really pleased to see both of the characters given plenty to do. They’ve each been paired off with one of our regulars (Jago with Doctor Who while Leela stays with the Professor) and that means they both get plenty of opportunity to shine. I’m especially pleased because I vaguely remembered them as not having an awful lot to do in this story until the end, but maybe I’m misremembering the fact that they don’t meet each other until relatively late on?
It’s also heartening to see that they’re very much the same characters here that they go on to be in the audio series, which didn’t start for more than thirty years after the production of these episodes. I’m so familiar with their audio personas (I did a marathon of the first eight-or-so seasons during the first lockdown last year, in an attempt to work out a proper placement in time for all the episodes, but it never quite worked out) so I’m pleased to see that they build on some really solid groundwork.
There’s several other character in this story which go on to appear in the audios, and my favourite of them is Patsy who discovers the body in Part One. She’s so much fun in her singular audio appearance and she’s just as brilliant on screen. I’ll be quoting her line ‘you wouldn’t want that served with onions’ in regards to anything I don’t like from now on.
Indeed there’s several moments of nice dialogue in this one, but I think it suffers from following so many episodes by Boucher. Where the dialogue in those episodes flowed naturally even when they’re setting up alien worlds and bizarre concepts. By contrast the dialogue here feels a bit heavier and the episodes as a result feel dense. It makes me feel like I’m having to really concentrate on everything rather than just sitting back and enjoying it.
Where the episode really continues to shine is in the direction, which is consistently beautiful. We’re still spending an abnormally large amount of time out on location, and that works massively in the story’s favour. Of course it doesn’t hurt that Maloney is one of the programme’s best directors, so he’s making the most of every location and every moment. There’s an especially beautiful shot of a handsome carriage trundling down the road which really stands out. The only downside is that were this directed by a more workmanlike director I think it would be faring even worse in my estimations.
Still, it’s a six parter, so there’s two more days for things to turn around for me. I think I’m mostly disappointed because I spent ages thinking of this as just another one of those stories which everyone loves and I didn’t understand, but then I loved the spin off so much and I’ve fond memories of this story from the last time around. Fingers crossed I’ll find more to love tomorrow…
