The Reign Of Terror
(Season 1, Dr 1 with Ian, Barbara and Susan, 8/8/1964-12/9/1964, producer: Verity Lambert, script editor: David Whittaker, writer: Dennis Spooner, director: Henric Hirsch with Tim Coombe and John Gorrie uncredited)
Rank: 150
'Remember, it's only 186 chopping days till Christmas...if you watch this story over and over again!'
Reign of terror? Aren’t we living through one of those? No its not Britain now – its revolutionary France of course! Of all the many DW genres the early historicals are probably the one I adore the most. The DW trips forward in time are so often imaginative, creative, exciting and brilliant but there’s something about the past being brought back to life and knowing that it happened (if not always quite the way it happens on screen) and the parallels with the time the show was being made in that just gets me. Mankind never really changes, he just wears different clothes now and again. It’s probably fair to say that I became a history major at least in part because of DW. Of all the decisions the production team made down the years phasing the historicals out from 1966 onwards was the biggest mistake of the lot for me – there were so many more strong stories to tell – and while I can (and in this thread have) chuntered about how history has sometimes been treated since the show’s comeback, bringing it back at all as a regular permanent part of the show was one of the best things RTD ever did. Ignoring ‘The Smugglers’ and ‘The Highlanders’ for the moment (which are more based on storybooks than history books) ‘The Reign Of Terror’ is the first of the early historicals to appear in this thread and while it does everything the others do (turning those who have till now just been names in books into real living breathing people, re-creating times past in enormous detail, spending more time looking at how the big figures’ decisions affected the smaller people) it does so with a little less panache than, say, ‘The Myth Makers’ or ’The Massacre’. In theory The French Revolution should be what this series is all about, a flashpoint in time when crushed people couldn’t take any more and made a stand, saying ‘enough!’, overthrowing a regime in the sort of way the 4th Doctor in particular will in the future six times before breakfast. It is, like all the Hartnell historicals, incredibly well made, written by Dennis Spooner as a real labour of love after a great deal of research, gorgeous to look at and impressively true to detail even when its a period of time you know really well. Somewhere along the way though something gets lost in this one compared to the others – its a little too clumsy, serious, macabre, without the deftness of touch of so many of the others. For a start it splits the Tardis crew up early on and only puts them back together again near the end, which is always a shame with this Tardis crew in particular who bounce off each other so well. That said, it does lead to this serial’s strength as they all see a slightly different version of history unfolding before them, influenced by who they meet and which side is trying to chop them in half: the closest Ian and Barbara ever come to having a disagreement is after she’s been saved by the revolutionaries while he’s spent all day trying to escape them trying to execute him, until both agree that the French Revolution led to good and bad. The story still seems to come down on the side of the nobility though and hint that overthrowing a corrupt regime without any idea of anything better to replace it is ‘wrong’, which makes sense given that this was broadcast in England in 1964 (with pride that such bloody revolutions could never happen here), but makes no sense at all in the context of the rest of DW’s early years. Every single time we’ve seen a corrupt regime of times we either see it fall or hear why the Tardis crew think it should, be it Ancient Rome, the court of Kublai Khan or The Aztecs. One other thing that’s always struck me is that throughout this story the characters on both sides are cold and calculating, not just unlike the people in the history books but unlike the French in general (they’re more British than the hot-blooded English in ‘The Crusade’ or ‘The Smugglers’ for instance). While the DW depictions of Ancient Greece, Aztec temples and ancient Rome are superb, down to the last details and feel as true to life as any series on a budget in a tiny London TV studio can, 19th century France never quite comes alive in the same way either, with just the market square capturing the eyes whereas most of this story takes place ij backwater pubs and prison cells. Stretched out to six parts this story really dips in the middle, with all the capturing and escaping, even though adding little plot details to such an exciting and ever-changing time should have been easy (there’s no sense of an unruly mob for instance, or any fighting beyond Barbara and Susan being rescued from a guillotine). Nevertheless, I’m oh so pleased they did it: I’ve never seen a DW trip into history I hated and this series makes the past come alive better than any other, with a love and respect I wish more costume dramas would follow, while everything in the story (bar the time-travel) is utterly plausible and meticulously researched (give or take Napoleon’s cameo perhaps but, well, why not? It’s not impossible he was around as a young man and nobody bothered to record it in the history books although he’s way too tall).The cliffhangers are almost all superb, each one a real how-are-they-going-to-get-out-of-that? moment that seem to offer no chance of escape, whether it be the first Doctor unconscious in a burning building, Ian languishing in a prison cell watching the guillotine being built outside, Barbara and Susan being transported to the guillotine with no hope of reprieve (till it comes anyway, last minute despite the odds) and the Doctor apparently betraying them all (though – spoilers - its in disguise to get them out of jail). William Hartnell’s background was in comedy, despite his breakthrough roles all being tough serious authority figures, and he has great fun knocking out supervisors and jailors left right and centre, with a slapstick violence to rival the much criticised 6th Doctor’s. One of the great things about Hartbell is how much his Doctor adjusts to the time-period he’s in, be it future or past – he’s belivably of the times he visits as much as, say Coal Hill school in 1963 and particularly here where he really rocks the French gendarme outfits. There’s a real sense of building tension as ten or so spies and counter-spies and counter-counter-spies get involved in an increasingly elaborate plot that really comes down to the age old debate of good versus evil and whether people good at heart have the right to commit evil for the greater cause. The story could have gone for the obvious clashes in the street but these fights are mostly behind closed doors, which means more talking and exposition but also means more debate and nuances. The end result is a historical that looks amazing, often sounds amazing (Dennis Spooner, soon to be DW script editor, was always so good with characterisation and dialogue) and is acted with all the love care and devotion that makes the first year of DW so special. But it also lacks just a bit of that magic, that made it feel like a show that could do the impossible and has either a few too many twists and turns or not enough to keep the viewer’s interest across three hours. So, in the end, its not quite ‘viva le revolution!’ but at the same time its a measure of just how brilliant the other Hartnell historicals are that a story still this good and this detailed and this vivid can end up being the least of them.
+
The guillotine set is a marvel. A huge amount of extras (well by DW
standards) mingle around and there’s even an actual horse pulling
Barbara and Susan across the studio. After several
episodes
trapped in tiny claustrophobic
cells
this set feels huge and open-air and is one of the most impressive of
many a long list of candidates from DW’s first year. I still can’t
quite believe they did it in
such a tiny space with such primitive (relatively speaking)
equipment.
All the more so given the problems behind the scenes (director Henric
Hirsch collapsed when leaving rehearsals one day, leaving assistant
and future DW director in his own right Timothy Combe to step in,
with help from previous director John Gorrie, neither credited,
despite no experience of being in charge. And it would be this very
episode
with
this very set when
it happened).
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Blimey, Susan’s a right drip in this one. Usually I’ll stand up
for her (she only looks like a teenager – for all we know, in
timelord years, she’s a precocious toddler not used to even the
basics of looking after herself) but even by Susan standards she
spends most of this episode a
sobbing
and a
blubbing
and a getting
in the way. She moans when Barbara starts an escape plan, moans when
Colbert and Robespierre rescue her from the guillotine and has more
hysterics at seeing a single
rat
than she does facing hordes of Daleks. While you can blame a lot of
this on her thinking the Doctor, her grandfather, is dead and there’s
no hope of escaping this time, even after he’s found alive and well
she’s grating on everybody’s nerves. Good job this is her last
historical then really; she’d have
had a fit in Ancient Rome or The Crusades or facing
The Vikings (the next three timezones to come).
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