Day 42 — February 11th 2021
Four Hundred Dawns and Trap of Steel
Before I get started with the episodes today… what do we call this serial?
Ooh, it’s ages since we had a good story title debate, innit? After those first three stories, everyone broadly agrees with the titles for each serial, until we reach this one. For absolutely ages it’s been Galaxy 4, but lately I’ve seen some revisionist thinking that it should actually be Galaxy Four. So let’s look at the evidence.
The camera scripts for the story each list it as using the numeral, which seems fairly definitive to me. The Narrated Soundtrack CD goes with Galaxy 4, too, as does the Special Edition DVD of The Aztecs, which included the recovered Air Lock as a bonus feature.
And I’m sure I remember Doctor Who Magazine announcing in 2007 that 42 was the first episode title since Galaxy 4 to use numerals. Oddly, it’s a strange bit of publicity that’s always stuck in my mind, like them excitedly announcing that Love & Monsters was the first episode to use an ampersand.
All things considered, it strikes me that the story is definitely called Galaxy 4.
But then the Target goes with Galaxy Four instead. Yes, yes, I know, you should never take the titles on the Target Books as in any way definitive, but I’ve seen a few people lately argue that it’s a better title in that form, and that the title had changed in recent years (a bit like how, when I first got into Doctor Who about 20 years ago everyone insisted that The Massacre was supposed to be called The Massacre of St Bartholomew's’ Eve, but in recent years everyone has been more sensible about it). Someone even suggested that we needed to change the way we write the title because there’s now a mobile phone called the ‘Galaxy s4’. I just like to imagine the manufacturers are big fans of Season Three.
So what do you think? Do we stick with Galaxy 4 — which the evidence overwhelmingly suggests is correct — or go with the trendy Galaxy Four instead?
Four Hundred Dawns (Galaxy 4 — Episode One)
I feel like Galaxy Four is one of those serials that everyone sort of forgets about. Until the third episode — Air Lock — turned up again ten years ago (ten years!), it was the first of any serials over the next three seasons to be missing all of their episodes. It seems mad to think that up to now, from over 80 episodes, only 9 have been missing. Even more amazing to think that there’s only two missing episodes from Season Two! But I’ll encounter another nine missing episodes this week alone, and then many more to come.
In spite of being often overlooked, Galaxy Four doesn’t have the strongest reputation. Listening to this first episode it feels like a hangover from the last season — very much apiece with stories like The Web Planet and The Space Museum which just don’t do a lot for me.
That’s not to say I’ve not enjoyed this episode — there’s a lot in here to like. Vicki, Steven and Doctor Who seem to have bedded in nicely as a TARDIS crew, and you get the impression that some time has passed for them between The Time Meddler and this. I’m betting that there must be several stories set in the gap between seasons.
Sadly, the characters themselves aren’t perhaps as strong here as they were in the last story. Vicki is painted as being very much a teenager again, and she resumes her trait of giving the monsters a cute name (we saw it with Sandy the Sand Beast, Zombo the Zarbi, and now the Chumblies as a whole — I’d forgotten the name comes from her!). I have to admit I quite like her doing that, and it’s a little quirk I’ve enjoyed rediscovering on this marathon.
Steven fares worse, having to take over lots of dialogue that was originally written for Barbara. He gets a nice line of flirting with the Dhravins, which is nice and feels a lot like his character as we met him in The Chase, but he doesn’t get to be half as proactive as I’d like.
The biggest issue with this episode is that so much of it is exposition. It’s bad enough on audio as Maaga explains the events that put them here, and everything that’s happened since, but it must have been incredibly dull on screen, with actors simply stood around talking at each other. I should note that I’ve not watched the extended surviving segment from this one today, I’ve simply stuck with the narrated soundtrack.
And yet, as much as I complain about all the talking, there’s some really lovey turns of phrase in this episode. I really like the description of the days remaining for this planet as ‘dawns’. There’s something oddly beautiful about the description ‘some four hundred dawns ago’.
The only thing that throws me is the cliffhanger, where Doctor Who says that the planet only has ‘two dawns’ remaining, as it will die tomorrow. But the implication has been that it’s daytime given the suns in the sky, so surely there’s only one dawn remaining — tomorrow’s? It strikes me that would be more dramatic, too; the idea of a single dawn left to come. I wondered briefly if Hartnell had gotten himself muddled in the delivery — as he had with a few lines earlier on — but it’s definitely scripted as ‘two dawns’. Maybe it’s something to do with the multiple suns?
So not amazing, but not bad either. A 5/10.
I’ve not touched on photography for a while — not at all in Season Two, come to think of it — but Galaxy 4 is a good place to return to the subject. We can’t say for absolutely certain, but it seems that a series of lovely colour photographs of William Hartnell on the TARDIS set were taken during the production of this story. For a long time they were attributed to The Celestial Toymaker, but evidence such as the placement of the furniture in the TARDIS Control Room points to them being more likely to have taken place here.
(Galaxy 4 — Episode Two)
Is this the first indication we’ve had that the TARDIS might be indestructible? The Moroks failed to get into it during The Space Museum, but that could simply be an extension of earlier indications that the lock was difficult. In The Time Meddler, Doctor Who says ‘water cannot affect the Tardis. It won’t wash away. It’ll still be there when the tide goes down,’ but again it’s not necessarily an admission that the ship is particularly hardy.
Here, though, a Chumbley actively tries to blow the TARDIS up, and it survives unscathed. ‘My ship’s not made of tin like this old trash,’ Doctor Who tells the Dhravins, and it’s left at that. I’m looking forward to keeping track going forward from here, and seeing if the ship becomes any weaker after this point, or if we’ve finally established it as particularly strong.
Elsewhere, this episode isn’t anything amazing, but it’s certainly better than I’d been expecting. If anything, I’ve found it quite funny. I love Doctor Who’s disdain for the Dhravin ship (‘Seems if I cough too loudly, the whole thing’d fall to pieces’), and it’s great to have him paired off with Vicki again as they go off to confront the Rills.
The highlight of the episode has to be Vicki’s decision to throw a rock at a Chumbley, and to justify her actions to Doctor Who;
Doctor Who: Well, now don’t lose patience, you see. Now look, in this case, first we must observe, note, collate, and then conclude. After that, perhaps we can act.
Vicki: Yeah. Well, with the time we’ve got you have to all that in ten minutes flat.
[Vicki throws a rock at a Chumbley. It doesn’t react.]
Doctor Who: Are you trying to get us killed? It’s dangerous, and it’s very risky!
Vicki: That was no risk. I observed, noted, collated, concluded, and then I threw the rock.
These two haven’t had much time together since The Crusade, so I’m loving getting them back now. A surprising 6/10.
