The Talons Of Weng-Chiang: Ranking - 137

   The Talons Of Weng-Chiang

(Season 14, Dr 4 with Leela, 26/2/1977-2/4/1977, producer: Phillip Hinchcliffe, no credited script writer, writer: Robert Holmes, Director: David Maloney)

Rank: 137

  'A funny thing happened last night on my way to the theatre...An anomalous anomaly, this blue box of balderdash, this deliverer of deliberation was received from on high and came to land on this collection of vile villainous vastitudes of vaccination, defeated in their dastardly deeds by a Doctor of...Well, I never did find out what he was a Doctor of, but it was probably just about everything from what I saw. Corks! What a rum business that was and no mistake. I'll never view a rat or a pig or a magic cabinet the same way ever again. In other news: there will be no magic tricks hence with by order of the Palace Theatre management'.   

 

 Doctor Who Manchu! There was a time, not so very long ago, when this story was held up as evidence of everything great about Tom Baker era Dr Who whether it be that setting (foggy Victorian London), the most memorable supporting cast bar none (Jago and Litefoot) or that hat (no one looks as good in a deerstalker as Tom Baker. It’s a wonder he doesn’t wear one every story after this). Had this been twenty or thirty years I’d no doubt get lots of rude messages asking me why I haven’t put it top of my list; today I’m more likely to get slightly tetchy messages asking why its only halfway down, as Weng-Chiang falls out of favour.There are, as I see it, a couple of reasons for this. One is that it’s probably DW’s most racist story, give or take ‘Celestial Toymaker’, which makes modern fans uncomfortable – though given that its this series about equality and peace in the universe, the forward-thinking franchise that was giving heroic roles to black actors as early as 1966, DW’s ‘most racist story’ just amounts to hiring a European dude to play the Chinese baddie. Unthinkable now of course but so normal for TV in 1977 that its a bigger (and welcome) surprise that the story refrains from making any derogatory reference to China beyond that (let’s face it, if any nationality comes out of this story badly its the stiff-upper lipped British empire or the token comedy Irishman which, knowing how this production team’s humour worked, was probably deliberate). The other shift is that this used to be the second of only three journeys to Victorian London in the original DW franchise and the only one that uses all the trappings (as ‘Evil Of The Daleks’ only explores a single house), a period that’s always felt so ‘right’ for the series given that this is when the earliest scifi books were written (and indeed set). Walking along these cobbled foggy streets felt special as this was the only place you could really see it happen. Nowadays we seem to be in Victorian London every other flipping story, so Weng-Chiang feels as if its had its talons clipped slightly. As for my ranking, I’ve always liked this story a lot, but I never thought it the best. The plot is a bit of a confusing one, embracing music hall magicians using alien technology, an alien from the 51^st century pretending to be a Chinese God who has two different names and a time cabinet powered by crystals, while the Doctor and Leela don’t investigate something odd occurring so much as walk right into it off the street as soon as the tardis lands – even given my favourite theory that the Doctor has all these adventures because the Tardis knows instinctively where his help is most needed, this seems...well, its just a whacking great plot coincidence isn’t it? I mean, its taken the baddy twenty years to track this time cabinet down and here the Doctor walks right into it. Like many a six parter there’s so much endless escaping and kidnapping you quickly get bored and the story plays its hand early on, using most of its sets by the middle of episode two so there’s nothing that new to keep your interest in the story to the end. Though often held up as an example of why Robert Holmes was the single best writer to ever work on DW, in many ways its his worst script in terms purely of plot, drawing on cliches from Fu Manchu films rather than his own orignal ideas and with no ambition to make a further ‘point’ beyond an adventurous yarn. All that said, its not the plot or the metaphor you watch this one for – there are other stories for that after all. It’s the impressions that this story leaves that live long in the mind, Victorian London brought to eerie fog-lit life with theatres and handsom cabs. It’s the dark shadowy edges of the plot, which includes prostitutes and opium dens and more references to death than DW had ever done before or will ever do again pretty much and a brave stab at something more adult for Saturday teatime family audiences. It’s Magnus Greel aka Weng Chiang, master ranting Who villain with the deformed features trapped in a time he doesn’t understand and causing deaths not for power or money but as experiments to escape the time he finds himself stranded in. It’s the 4^th Doctor at his moodiest and most alien as he’s pushed harder than usual by a worthy foe, with very little time for jokes for once. It’s Leela, getting all the good lines as she alternates between action hero and comedy relief, simultaneously intellectually misunderstanding the basics of what’s going on all around her and instinctively understanding the real and vivid threat before her better than anybody. It’s two of DW’s greatest sidekicks in Professors Jago and Litefoot, who brighten every scene they’re in with the former’s very Victorian extroverted pioneering spirit and the latter’s dry English reserve (they’re basically Gilbert and Sullivan, complete with witty alliteration and impressive sideburns). No wonder these two got their own long-running Big Finish series forty-odd years after this; you’re desperate for them to somehow join the Tardis so you can see more of them. Even the giant rat, the part of the story that everyone laughs at, isn’t that bad – it’s very sensibly shot in the shadows so you only see bits of it at a time (although it does seem to live in remarkably clean sewers). A lot of DW fans used to hold ‘Weng Chiang’ up as a good story to show non-DW fans why they loved this series so much, which seemed odd to me because its the parts that DW usually gets right that don’t quite work and the parts it usually gets wrong that works: the sets don’t wobble, the incidental characters we meet are all three dimensional and there are Oscar-worthy performances from the entire cast. It’s just a shame that, underneath all that fine window dressing, the plot itself is such a perfunctory one compared to the very best this series can do.

+ Leela is surely a strong candidate for best series companion. Where others would be screaming or running away she trades insults with the baddie Magnus Greel (‘Bent face!’) then promises to spend the afterlife tracking him down and ‘put you through my agony a thousand times’. Basically Magnus Greel and her both have a strop at the other and its marvellous – would that all confrontations with the villain were like that in DW.

- Oh corks! By contrast the big showdown at the end is just standard DW fare. If standard is the right term for a whacking great polystyrene dragon with lazer eyes. Not to mention the snorting peking homunculous, which is still only the second most embarrassing space-pig in the series but still seems well out of place in such a serious story. While Jago’s distraction is worth a chuckle this also had to be one of the worst-staged gunfights in DW history; you have to be a pretty rotten shot to miss the goodies in this story and its all so slow you see every shot in great detail. Mind you, this story also has the best post-battle scene of DW too when they celebrate saving planet earth again by...going to the muffin seller on the corner (not the euphemism it sounds).