Day 260 — September 17th 2021
City of Death Parts Three and Four
City of Death — Part Three
I can’t believe I talked yesterday about how brilliant the guest characters are in this one without mentioning the greatest one of them all — Duggan. Ooh, he’s not only the best guest character in City of Death, I suspect he might be the best one in Old Testament Doctor Who.
As with the other characters in this story he feels fully rounded, and he’s got the same kind of over-the-top caricature personality as Kerensky but somehow manages to make it all totally believable. Last season I was gutted that Amelia Rumford didn’t go off in the TARDIS with Doctor Who and Romana, but I’m even sadder that Duggan only shares a single adventure with them, because he compliments the pair perfectly.
The story has managed to split him off with both of our heroes nicely, and he works as a surrogate companion for them. In Part Two he spends a lot of his time battling with Doctor Who (why is it that every time I start to talk to someone, you knock him unconscious?) but here he’s paired off solely with Romana and it’s a relationship which works really nicely.
Lalla Ward manages to sell the idea that she’s not irritated by Duggan but simply unbothered by him and yet it never comes across as cold or unfeeling. Indeed it has the effect of making Romana more like Doctor Who than ever before, and Ward plays it so well. She even has her own Sonic Screwdriver in this one, given that we saw Doctor Who’s one in his possession when he goes off to 1505, but she’s still got one (identical to his) here.
The pairing of Duggan and Romana has given me so many quotable moments, but I think I’m going to highlight just one of them as my favourite;
Duggan: ‘You know what I don’t understand?’
Romana: ‘I expect so.’
Although these two are the standouts in this episode, it’s never at the expense of the other characters, who continue to shine. Kerensky provides a new highlight of the entire story for me in this one, when he learns about the Count’s true identity as the Last of the Jagaroth;
Count: ‘You serve the Jagaroth. Now work!’
Kerensky: ‘It’s the Jagaroth who need all the chickens, is it?’
It’s about as broad as the comedy has ever gone — even in this stage of the programme’s history — but I totally buy it, and I love it unconditionally. That moment got a proper laugh from me, and I’ve been repeating it to the wife all afternoon (which she has, naturally, very much enjoyed).
City of Death is often cited as the template for New Testament Doctor Who. Julie Gardner has said that it was watching a tape of this one that made her realise what the show could be, and I’m sure Russell T Davies has said before that it’s a default one for him to recommend to people who don’t know the show. Watching it today I’m really appreciating how modern a lot of this story feels, and I think you can definitely see its fingerprints all over the 21st century stuff.
The key example for me in this episode is Doctor Who using a polaroid camera to distract a guard. There’s shades of that moment in The Fires of Pompeii when he fights off a Pyrovile with a water pistol, and I love both moments absolutely. On top of that there’s the twisty-turny plot with characters existing in different time periods, which I don’t think we’ve ever seen the show attempt on this scale before.
I think there’s odd moments in this one which belie the fact that it was written in a hurry — there’s a moment in this episode for example where it seems the Count is realising for the first time that he’s an alien, while we already know he’s aware of that fact from the first cliffhanger.
There’s also a handful of plot threads which don’t really go anywhere and feel like the result of the story changing as it’s written; the portrait of Romana in Part One is a curious choice, for example, and Doctor Who seeing the face of a Jagaroth in the machinery is an odd moment that doesn’t really tie in either. They don’t spoil the story in the slightest and I don’t think it matters that they don’t tie in because they’re brilliant in their own right and help to add to the overall atmosphere.
I mention them only as an explanation of why I’m going with another 9/10 instead of a perfect ten, because I’m aware that even such a high score can feel oddly uncharitable when all I’m writing is about how much I love everything!
City of Death — Part Four
I can’t say I’m a big follower of art. It’s a cliche to say but I know what I like and that’s about as far as it goes. That doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in art, though, and since I last watched this story I think I’ve become a bit more aware of the art world. My Instagram feed is filled with pages sharing artwork, and I binged every episode of Fake or Fortune last year during the first lockdown. God, I love that show.
It’s because I’ve taken more of an interest in that area that I feel like I’m appreciating some of the humour in this story all the more. This final episode in particular feels like it’s all about the art world — far beyond the fact that the Mona Lisa is one of the central bits of the narrative. This episode is all about the different ways people appreciate art, and it’s summed up beautifully by Doctor Who’s goodbye to Duggan;
Duggan: ‘But it’s a fake! You can’t hang a fake Mona Lisa in the Louvre!’
Romana: ‘How can it be a fake if Leonardo painted it?’
Duggan: ‘With “This is a Fake” written under the paintwork in felt tip?’
Romana: ‘It doesn’t affect what it looks like.’
Duggan: ‘It doesn’t matter what it looks like.’
Doctor Who: ‘Doesn’t it? Well, some people would say that’s the whole point of painting.’
Duggan: ‘But they’ll find out. They’ll x-ray it.’
Doctor Who: ‘Serves them right. If they have to x-ray it to find out whether it’s good or not, they might as well have painting by computer.’
Doctor Who would hate Fake or Fortune. They x-ray paintings all the time.
Of course this episode also includes the cameo appearances from John Cleese and Elenor Bron, acting as critics to the TARDIS’ presence in an art gallery. It’s probably one of the more famous parts of the story, but I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated before just how key it is to the overall story being told. And it sums up the story pretty perfectly; ‘Exquisite. Absolutely exquisite.’
This final episode continues to do well all the things from the previous three. The setting remains brilliant, there’s some nice location filming again which is nice to see before the story is through (Doctor Who and Romana racing across Paris at rush hour is fantastic) but it’s the characters who still shine through as the strongest thing here, Duggan in particular.
I longed in that final scene for history to be changed and him to go with the Time Lords as they depart from Paris. Can you imagine a whole season with this trio in the TARDIS? Tom Chadbon has worked with Tom and Lalla on Doctor Who again, appearing in a Big Finish play with them, but while I’d love them to make a full run of adventures with them all together, I suspect it wouldn’t work quite so well without Douglas Adams’ hand behind the scripts. I think I was perhaps a bit harsh on him last season. The Pirate Planet was my least favourite story in the Key to Time run and the comedy aspects especially fell flat for me. The thought of a whole season with Adams acting as Script Editor was filling me with dread a little. But this one proves how brilliant he can be — I appreciate now why people are such fans.
I don’t have a lot else to add for this one, save to say how much I’ve enjoyed the story as a whole. I’m going with an 8/10 for this final episode, but that brings in an overall score of 9/10 which puts this in joint first place with The Power of the Daleks in my rankings so far. I was starting to suspect that nothing would ever match that one, so I’m thrilled to see that there’s still surprises to come in the marathon.
