Day 78 — March 19th 2021
The Macra Terror Episodes One and Two
The Macra Terror — Episode One
On my first Doctor Who marathon The Macra Terror was the surprise success story of the Troughton era. I’d never given it a great deal of thought before, but found myself really loving it. Indeed, I loved it so much that a few years later I decided I’d try writing my own novelisation of it, bringing to the fore all the bits I loved the most, but I’ll talk about that a little later on today.
I really worried about how I’d find it this time around. I loved The Savages and The War Machines last month, writer Ian Stuart Black’s first two stories for the series, but I’d also noticed a lot of elements in them that I knew would be coming up again in this story. There was a bit of a worry that I might suddenly find the shine had some off the story being heard in context again.
Thankfully I was wrong — I’ve really enjoyed this one all over again.
I also think that this is one particularly suited to being heard only as a soundtrack, without the visuals to accompany it. Indeed, although it’s a favourite it’s one that I hope doesn’t turn up because I suspect the images I have in my head for it are stronger than what actually appeared on screen. I’ve even gone so far as to not look at the tele-snaps today, because I don’t want my own version of the story to be compromised.
On the Narrated Soundtrack, for example, the cliffhanger in which Doctor Who and Medok encounter a Macra lurching towards them out of the fog sounds brilliant. In reality, I’ve seen a photograph of the Macra prop and I’m not entirely convinced it wouldn’t have looks rubbish on screen. Especially once you realise that the design of the Macra makes it look like it’s got its mouth open in a look of shock.
When I picture sequences like this in the story I usually have in mind a gorgeous photograph taken by Jay Gunn using an action figure of Patrick Troughton and a real crab. It’s such a dramatic and arresting image, and I suspect it didn’t look quite so dynamic on screen originally.
Luckily for a missing story, sound plays a big part in this one. We open with the drumming pulsating heartbeat and moving through to the jingles and muzak of the Colony itself. The shift in tone, and the bizarre mashup of a 1960s holiday camp with Orwell’s 1984, is one of the things that I think is most effective here. I especially love the subtext threaded throughout the scene in the Refreshing Department, and that’s something I really want to touch on today.
When this story was animated a few years ago, the decision was taken to cut out almost the entire sequence in the Refreshing Department. It was described at the time as being cut because it ‘would have been very difficult to do [in animation], would’ve taken an awful lot of time and resources and probably wouldn’t have ended up really working’. I have my own thoughts about this (surely if you’re animating a story, then you animate the whole story?) but as I’ve not seen the animation I don’t really feel it’s my place to question. I’ll also note here that I know just how much work goes into making these animations, and I’ll trust the judgement of the people making them.
The bit I seriously disagree with, though, is a follow up comment that describes the cut sequence as ‘not a scene that’s particularly pertinent to the plot’. Because for me, that misses the point of the scene entirely. On the surface it’s just Doctor Who and his friends larking around hand having fun (‘Hey, mister, would you call the ladies off? I’m frightened what they might do to me,’ says Jamie, while Ben says ‘It’s no good, Jamie, the lassies have got you., And believe me mate, I’m not going to struggle!’), but there’s so much more going on than just a bit of beauty treatments.
It’s the first indication of the Colony working to make sure that the strangers fit in with their way of life, and that their unusual appearance here doesn’t disrupt the unquestioned order of things. ‘You, sir, of course, would like your clothes cleaned,’ says Barney of Doctor Who, and while it sounds like just a fun line to which I’m sure Troughton gave a brilliant reaction, it runs deeper than that, trying to force Doctor Who to fit in almost as soon as he’s arrived. There’s subtext too about the strangers not being allowed to leave now that they’re here, and careful stroking of their egos in an attempt to make them stay.
For me, suggesting that this scene isn’t ‘pertinent to the plot’ is to completely misunderstand the story of The Macra Terror, but there we go.
It’s a 9/10 for me today, and I’m really excited to be back on one of my absolute favourite stories.
The Macra Terror — Episode Two
Ooh, I love this one. I think I might have described it last time as being ‘better than you expect Doctor Who to be’, and if I didn’t say that last time around then I’ll say it now all the same. The Macra Terror is a story about giant crabs, but it’s also some of the most interesting and sinister science fiction the programme has given us. It very much explores some of the same themes that Black used in his previous two stories, and it’s so very clearly inspired by 1984, and it’s all the better for it. The subject matter would have been largely familiar to Troughton, as he’d played the role of Winston Smith in a BBC Radio version of Orwell’s book only about 18 months earlier.
I love Medok sacrificing himself to let Doctor Who go free. I can’t decide if he intends for that to be so Doctor Who can continue the fight against the people in power, or if he just doesn’t want to drag another person down with him. I like to think it’s the former. There’s something particularly effective about the way the Pilot’s whole demeanour changes when he believes Doctor Who is still on his side, too. I love it when we get to chip away a little at the external appearances of a world like this. These first two episodes are particularly interesting — and probably my favourite part of the serial — because we’re still getting the ‘front’ of the Colony, before Doctor Who and his friends have seen too much and become a danger.
It means that we get brilliant material like the travellers being subjected to ‘deep sleep and thinking patterns’, and there’s something about the sequences of them being fed the lies of Control which is far scarier than any of the material with the giant crabs. It feels fitting that Jamie — in many ways the most simple of the team — is the one best able to fight against it, and it’s equally right that Ben’s the one who most falls under their spell. There’s a point in this episode where Doctor Who acknowledges how hard it must be for Ben to fight against this, and I like to imagine it’s because his role in the Navy means he’s so used to following orders.
It also helps that Michael Craze plays his possession brilliantly. It’s a totally different performance to his usual one, and it wasn’t until maybe my third listen that I realised it’s because he’s dropped his usually thick Cockney accent. As with so much else in this serial it feels like a great deal of thought has been put into it all, and it’s so much stronger as a result. I’m also always surprised by just how long Ben remains a pawn in the Macra’s game. I expect him to snap out of it when coming face to face with one of the crabs, and I love that the time he most struggles against his new instructions is when his ‘Duchess’ is in trouble.
But then I also love that the brainwashing has taken root so strongly that when questioned about the events after the fact he’s totally blacked them out and repeats the party line; ‘There are no such things as Macra!’
Indeed, that’s a brilliant thread across the whole episode, and I really love the increasingly desperate assertions by Control that the Macra do not exist. I’ll admit that it makes their reveal of the aged Controller a bit bizarre at the end (why bother? Surely it defeats their entire operation?), but I don’t care because it makes for a great cliffhanger as Polly screams that the Macra are in control.
Anneke Wills tells the story that her daughter watched this episode go out and asked her father if mum was going to be coming home that night! It’s a brilliant anecdote and I’ve no reason to doubt it. I wondered during Episode One how effective the Macra might have been on screen, but we’ve got some great snatches of them in this episode, thanks once again to the Australian censors. What we see here is certainly effective, and it’s hard not to get swept up in the drama of it, even with only a few fleeting seconds available to view.
For me, this is about as perfect an episode of Doctor Who as you’re ever likely to get, and it’s an easy 10/10.
As I mentioned above, I got a fair way into writing my own novelisation of this story a few years ago. You might wonder why, given that the story already has a novelisation written by Black in the 1980s, and I’m not sure I have an answer to that question…!
We’d gone to Dubai for a month over New Year (my father in law lives out there), and I’d taken a copy of 1984 to read. It had been ages since I’d last read it, and on this occasion I realised just how much The Macra Terror had taken from it. Re-reading the book just put me in mind of this tale, and got me thinking about how much it could do with some giant crabs.
I decided to see if I could write a version of the tale that really honed in on the similarities between the stories, and one which matched the version of The Macra Terror in my head rather than the one seen in the tele-snaps.
If nothing else, I think I’m probably the only person ever to have sat on a beach on The Palm and thought about Medok being chased by the Macra!
I wrote up most of the first two episodes’ worth of story before we returned to the UK and I never found the time to finish the book off. I even had the brilliant _Art_By_Steve_ paint a cover for the book, based on the design of a 1950s Butlins poster, which seemed appropriate. I’ve occasionally thought about returning to the book over the last few years, and listening to the story today makes me think about it all over again. Maybe 2021 will finally be the year I finish it off?
I wrote well in excess of 40,000 words, so I won’t post it all here, but here’s the first little bit of Chapter One to give some indication of the flavour;
The first remarkable thing about the Colony was that it never rained. Even on a day like this (a Wednesday, since you asked), when the clouds loomed ominously overhead in a stubborn shade of slate grey, and when water fell in droplets from the sky, gathering in large puddles along every street, any Colonist would smile and tell you what a lovely bright day it was.
From underneath their umbrella.
The Colony hadn’t been designed for wet weather. There are some places which look rather nice when viewed through a shower. It can lend just the right atmosphere to a scene. But the Colony was very much best served by the sunshine. The high outer walls, covered with murals and slogans, and posters bearing placid ‘inspirational’ quotes looked that little bit grimmer in the rain. The colours didn’t pop, and the watchtowers were somehow harder to ignore when set against a stormy sky.
The second remarkable thing about the Colony was that every single Colonist (well, almost, but we’ll come back to him) was happy with their life there, and wouldn’t change a thing. If you were to carry out one of those surveys, which decide on the best places to live, the Colony would take the top spot every time, with a perfect score. Forget Sweden, or Cardiff, or Rexel VI, the Colony was the place to be.
Colonists were happy to work (it said so on the murals), and happy to serve for the benefit of the whole. In many ways, it was a perfect socialist utopia, where the many are served, and the few don’t exist.
The third, and final, remarkable thing about the Colony was that the inhabitants showed a higher than average capacity for self-deception. That was a big factor, probably the biggest factor, in making the first and second remarkable things possible.
Life in the Colony didn’t always add up. Something which could be unequivocally described as ‘a fact’ on a Monday could be proven little more than a rumour by Tuesday lunchtime. The daily newspaper was recalled each evening, usually due to some error often described as a ‘misprint’. But it didn’t matter. The Colonists merely slipped their papers into the recall holes (usefully positioned on most street corners) and picked up the new issue the next morning.
Today, thanks to it being so lovely and sunny — so much so that everyone in the Colony had embraced their favourite coats — there was a special presentation happening in Celebration Square. Comrade Barney had brought the staff of his Refreshing Department out for the morning, to display the dance routine they’d been preparing for the Happy Colony Festival.
As the Refreshing Department had a larger than usual ratio of female staff (special dispensation to break from the Standard Diversity Quota having been granted by the Controller himself), this was quite the spectacle. A large group had formed, huddled under their umbrellas, to watch the display, and enjoy some entertainment.
