Day 276 — October 3rd 2021
Warrior’s Gate Parts One and Two
Warrior’s Gate — Part One
When I bang on about wishing Doctor Who had always been shot on film and on location, it’s not just because film looks glossier and locations are more real. It’s also because the flexibility afforded to the film shoots can allow a director to do something so much more interesting than they can under the constraints of studio production. Right through until the end of its original run, Who was recorded in a relatively old-fashioned way, running through broadly in order.
And then this story comes along and shows you what can be achieved in studio when a director is really determined to do things differently. The opening shot of the episode is an absolute masterpiece, starting with a close up of some machinery before pulling back to give us a sweeping view of the room. Just when I thought we’d gone as far as possible the camera carried on out of the door and further along the set, giving us close ups of other equipment while travelling down the corridor.
We finally do cross-fade to another shot, but it carries on in a similar vein, giving us a moving view up through the girders of the set with the light playing behind them. It’s a properly beautiful sequence, and probably the most striking shots the show has ever given us. It just looks so fresh and modern. You get the sense that this is the effect they were aiming for — but didn’t quite reach — when introducing the use of steadycam in Destiny of the Daleks, and while this is the second time this season that a story has opened with a single long almost dialogue-free shot, this is far more arresting than The Leisure Hive managed.
All of this comes at a price, of course. I’ll have to stick the DVD on and do the making of to remember the full story, but I think the director was sacked half way through production, and things were running far behind schedule and massively over budget. There’s a reason that most Old Testament Doctor Who looks broadly the same. Whatever the weather, this has been a real eye opener to what can be achieved in Television Centre, and I hope we’ll get more of this radical thinking as the story goes on.
Certainly the direction across the rest of the episode remains strong, and it’s helped by some of the best sets we’ve had in a long time. The spaceship in which we spend most of this episode is brilliantly functional, and it feels more like a real place than the Starliner did the other day, or really any of the ships we’ve had before. It’s all metal and rusty, with levels that have some genuine height to them. When Biroc makes a bid for freedom and runs off down a flight of stairs you feel as though he’s really moving somewhere else in the ship, rather than running around the same few corridors. We get another set right at the end of the episode — a cobweb-filled castle — and it’s exactly the high quality you’d expect the BBC to deliver for a period setting.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the biggest idea of the episode translates to screen very well, but it’s not down to the realisation. Romana notes that the coordinates on the TARDIS Console read as all zeroes, suggesting that they’re trapped between E-Space and the regular universe, but I don’t think this concept is ever properly established in the episode.
When we see Biroc feeing through a white void you don’t really know what you’re looking at, and even when Romana and Adric spot the crew of the ship approaching the TARDIS it’s simply noted as being impossible, with no explanation that there couldn’t possibly be anything outside the ship. The first time we see the TARDIS in the void it’s just sort of there, creeping into shot as the crew approach it. I think you need an establishing shot of the police box in the void, dwarfed by the enormity of nothing, to really set the scene.
The same is true of the first time we see the gateway. It’s shot entirely in medium shot and then close up as both Biroc and Doctor Who approach it. I know they built a full model of the structure, so I assume we’ll get some more distant shots later on, but the choice not to establish it here before we move in closer feels like a strange directional oversight, especially in light of the quality on display elsewhere.
Add to that the fact that I’ve found this episode a bit dull and I think the best I can offer so far is a 6/10, largely boosted by the sheer surprise of that opening sequence.
Warrior’s Gate — Part Two
One of the things I’m struggling to get my head around in this story is how much it’s deliberately taking the piss out of the harder science edge the programme has injected this season. Season Eighteen is script edited by Christopher Bidmead, who’s clearly more of a fan of the science than the fiction, and that comes across clearly in stories like The Leisure Hive and Meglos. It also seems to be fairly prevalent in this story, but when Romana starts spouting nonsense about ‘a digitally modelled time cone isometry parallel bussed into the image translator’ in an effort to confuse the crew of the ship it feels oddly out of place… can a script both indulge in this kind of thing and lampoon it at the same time? Either way, I think I preferred the swipe Terrance Dicks took at the same concept in the last story, when Doctor Who described the rebels’ hideout as a ‘technocotheca’ before admitting that he has no idea what that means.
It’s not the only thing in this story which I’ve not been able to get my head around, but I’m going to hold off complaining about that for now, because I’m hoping it’ll be come clearer as the episodes roll by. In the meantime I want to concentrate on something I am enjoying — just how believable the crew of the spaceship are.
Regular readers will know I’m a fan of rounded characters on this show, and these are some great examples largely because they feel so real. They moan about their situation rather than blindly following orders. I’m especially enjoying Royce and Aldo (as I suspect you’re supposed to), and their interjections to the narrative are making this one more fun that it otherwise might be.
During Part One I praised the attempt to do something different with the direction, and I still think that opening shot is the strongest part of the story so far. This episode continues the attempt to do something new, giving us some lengthy point-of-view shots for the escaping Tharril, but my the time we start getting the same thing from Romana I’ll admit that my attention had worn thin — it’s running the risk now of being just too different to the norm, and alienating me.
Christ, I’m never happy, am I?!
On the whole, I’ve not got much to say about Warrior’s Gate so far, and I’m dropping to a 4/10.
