Day 351 — December 17th 2021
The Happiness Patrol Parts One and Two
The Happiness Patrol — Part One
There’s a persistent rumour that they wanted to produce this story entirely in black and white, but were stopped from doing so by people higher up at the BBC. I think that’s probably a misunderstanding of director Chris Clough’s comments that he wanted to shoot the story in the stile of the noir film The 39 Steps, which would have involved almost every shot in the story being ‘off-kilter’. His desire to do this was so strong that he had special rigs brought in for the cameras at Television Centre, but during a run through John Nathan-Turner decided that the effect would be too disorienting, and asked for it to be avoided. There’s still a few examples in the episode as broadcast, but far fewer than would have been originally planned.
I’ll tell you what, though, even if they didn’t ever genuinely plan to do this story all in black and white, it’s an idea which has always fired my imagination. What a great idea! I’ve always wanted to see this story done that way, so on this occasion that’s exactly what I’ve done! I switched the colour off on my bedroom telly and watched in black and white. Does it work? Well… yes, for the most part!
I don’t think it’s any surprise that the shots which work most effectively in black and white are the ones which still lean heavily into that film noir style. Great off-kilter shots of Sylvester McCoy stand out especially, as does the opening scene in which Silas P manages to catch a killjoy on the shadowy streets. It helps that the costumes in that scene also feel drawn straight from the 1940s, so they all play into the atmosphere. Elsewhere the black and white is especially strong during lingering shots of the Kandy Kitchen as the execution is carried out. There’s some great angles where the turning cogs at the top of the set are casting shadows across the machinery and it wouldn’t look out of place in anything directed by Fritz Lang. I’ve always had a soft spot for early German cinema, and these shots are oozing with that feeling.
Where watching in black and white is less successful is when you feel like you’re supposed to be seeing some colour. It’s especially evident in the scene where the Happiness Patrol paint the TARDIS pink. That’s such a brilliant image, but it’s completely wasted with the colour switched off. They could be giving it a fresh coat of blue for all you can tell! I think for me the perfect version of this story would be one where you’ve got almost everything in black and white, but with a couple of things picked out in colour. So the pink paint? Absolutely. The Kandyman? Yeah, I think so! I did a (fairly ropey) example of this a few years ago and I think it holds up as an idea.
I even did a version with the pink TARDIS being the only splash of colour on some official Doctor Who merchandise! It was my absolute favourite cover I did on any of the comics (and I did something like 200 in total!), largely because when I pitched the idea I thought they were going to tell me to stop taking the piss! ‘It’ll all be black and white,’ I said ‘And then this big pink TARDIS!’. It still makes me happy that we actually got to make it, and I’m particularly proud of sneaking the Kandyman on there in spirit even after we were absolutely forbidden from putting him on the cover properly.
I’ll tell you where watching in black and white is at its most effective — it makes the entire production look significantly less cheap than watching in colour. The early versions of the script were heavily inspired by 1950s Americana, with Terra Alpha intended to look a bit like an American Diner, and the Happiness Patrol themselves to be dressed as cheerleaders. Ad the story developed they decided that the place needed to look altogether more run down, but in the process they ended up making it just look a bit… naff. The sets here are certainly not as strong as the also-studio-bound Paradise Towers, but they’re hidden a lot more easily when you drain the saturation. There’s a particularly embarrassing moment early on where the second floor of the buildings have been rendered using a painted curtain… but it’s not been hung properly, so you can see it all bunching up at the bottom. I suppose there’s an argument to be made that everything on this world is supposed to be artifice (it’s ‘too phoney’ complains Ace on arrival), but that’s a very generous stance to take.
Sadly the production as a whole is the thing which most lets this episode down. Aside from the sets looking so fake, the go-cart getaway ends up being one of the lamest things the series has done in a long time, crawling along at a fraction of a mile per hour. Impressively it makes the buggies in Vengeance on Varos look speedy! I think you could play this to your advantage, with Doctor Who and Ace making an incredibly slow getaway while the Happiness Patrol walk along in pursuit, as a further commentary on the idea that they’ve not — strictly speaking — been imprisoned, but sadly they try to play it as exciting and tense, despite all evidence pointing in the opposite direction.
For me, the best part of this episode is the discussion about depression between Ace and Susan Q. As someone who’s struggled with their mental health and dark thoughts in the last few months, there’s a lot in her words that resonate, and it’s surprisingly deep for Doctor Who at this stage. As with so many things in the last story, it’s another thing I just can’t imagine the series doing at any other point in the last seven or eight years.
Susan Q: ‘I woke up one morning...’
Ace: ‘I know that song!’
Susan Q: ‘There’s a million blues songs start like that. But I did wake up one morning, and suddenly something was very clear. I couldn’t go on smiling. Smiling while my friends disappeared, wearing this uniform and smiling and trying to pretend I’m something I’m not. Trying to pretend that I’m happy. Better to let it end. Better to just relax and let it happen. I woke up one morning and I realised it was all over.’
One last thing to mention here, and I’m afraid it’s one more complaint while I’m on the subject of comparing this to Remembrace of the Daleks. In that story we were treated to heaps of continuity references. The first episode alone dips into stories as diverse as An Unearthly Child, The Web of Fear and Terror of the Zygons, and that’s just for starters. In that case the references worked well. They felt organic in the dialogue, and I was impressed with how well seded in they were. This story, sadly, drops in continuity references with far less subtlety, as Doctor Who and Ace’s conversation as they leave the TARDIS;
Ace: ‘How about a triceratops?’
Doctor Who: ‘A horned dinosaur with a mouth like a beak? The Brigadier saw one in the London Underground once.’
There’s nothing natural about that in the slightest — and it’s the perfect example of a reference for the sake of a reference. When I moan about pointless continuity, this is exactly the kind of thing I’m thinking of. Sadly it means I’m then totally against any kind of references like this in the script, so when they later make a more acceptable reference to The Armageddon Factor (Doctor Who comments on his school nickname in response to someone else having the surname ‘Sigma’) I found myself rolling my eyes, even though it was so much better integrated.
It sounds like I’ve really not liked this one, because all I’ve done is moan about it, but I can assure you that I found plenty to enjoy, and I’m going with a 7/10.
The Happiness Patrol — Part Two
Listen, I’m not totally green. I know there’s a certain amount of cat and mouse that you have to play when there’s an accusation of copyright infringement. That said, I can’t believe that when Bassets wrote the the BBC to complain about their mascot being used as a monster in Doctor Who, John Nathan-Turner replied that neither he or the designer had seen any resemblance in the designs, but grudgingly admitted that some people might. I mean, come on! I suppose there’s only so many ways you can interpret the brief of a man made out of sweets, but it’s notable that in the draft scripts the Kandyman is much more human, and probably a bit more sinister. There’s a great bit where he takes off his glasses and begins to eat them — revealing that they’re made of candy — which I’m genuinely sad didn’t make it to broadcast. I could picture Gilbert M doing something like that, even if the Kandyman as realised couldn’t.
The Kandyman comes in for a lot of flak, and it’s certainly the most conroversial element in this story. Quite often it’s used as a by-word for how the series had lost its way in the final years, but I have to admit that I really love him. He’s camp and ridiculous and silly in the way that Doctor Who can do so well when it wants to. I love that Doctor Who manages to escape from him by knocking some lemonade on the floor so his feet get stuck, and I love even more that a little while later he makes a second escape using exactly the same trick! Hah! Often I’d be calling that lazy writing and having a moan, but there’s something I can’t help enjoying about seeing the Kandyman helplessly calling out for Gilbert. It’s got a good claim for being the campest thing in the show — against some stiff competition — and I love that. I’ve even got a framed print of the Kandyman on my office wall, in the form of a gorgeous poster Stuart Manning made several years ago. The poster makes him look more threatening than silly, but that works because I think he is oddly scary by virtue of being so ridiculous.
If I’ve one criticism, it’s that there’s so much going on in this story that they never really give the Kandyman enough of a set up, so he feels slightly out of place whenever we cut back to him. We only ever see him in the Kandy Kitchen (he’ll get to make a brief excursion to another set in the next episode) so he feels oddly divorced from the rest of the story. I think that’s added to by the totally different atmosphere of the sets. There’s a chance the effect is exacerbated by my watching in black and white, but when we cut from the dark shadow-draped streets to the bright whites of the Kandy Kitchen it’s a proper sea change.
He’s not really given a proper introduction in Part One, and it’s only here that we really get to learn who he is and what he does — ‘he makes sweets that kill people,’ explains Gilbert M — but we never get to see that in action. Oh sure he’s responsible for the fondant used in the execution sequences, but we never see anyone actually eat a real sweet at any point in the story, and that feels like a missed opportunity. I think we need a sequence in Part One where Doctor Who witnesses the effects of his sweets (‘if I’m on form, the human physiology is not equipped to bear the pleasure,’ the Kandyman tells us here) and then gets the surprise of meeting him later on. It would also give a chance for a proper ‘reveal’ of the monster, because sadly we’re back to just having him wandering vaguely into any old shot for his first appearance.
This episode also sees the introduction of the Pipe People, and while they’re a brilliant design (and look suitably creepy by virtue of being tiny next to the diminutive Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred), they feel a bit like they come out of nowhere, and we never get much sense of them. Doctor Who passes through their domain only briefly and acts as though he knew they were there, promising to pop back later on, but as with the Kandyman they feel separate to many of the other bits of the story.
One last thing here, and it’s another moan I’m afraid. The cliffhanger should be brilliant. Doctor Who watches as someone puts up a series of posters, displaying the faces of the people facing the Happiness Patrol auditions that night. The last one to go up troubles him… because it’s Ace! They then do a brilliant job of spelling out the danger she’s in by painting a big ‘R.I.P’ on the poster next to hers, and we close in on Doctor Who’s worried expression. It should be great, but the whole thing feels muddled, because having watched the poster of his friend go up, Doctor Who then has to ask someone to check their list and see if Ace is one of the people lined up for the show. It ends up feeling like something which was messed up between drafts of the script, so I finished the episode thinking ‘that’s a shame’ when I should have been thinking ‘that was great’.
Still, I’m happy I’m giving another 7/10.
