The War Machines
(Season 3, Dr 1 with Dodo, Ben and Polly, 25/6/1966-16/7/1966, producer: Innes Lloyd, script editor: Gerry Davis, writer: Ian Stuart Black, director: Michael Ferguson)
Rank: 87
'On at Covent Garden this week following the invasion of The War Machines are the intergalactic operas: the 2nd Dr in 'The Magic Recorder', The Chief Clown in 'Pagliacci', Martin Jarvis in 'Madame Optera', David Banks in 'CarCyberMen' and 'The Face Of La Boe-Heme'
Oh the irony! The Dr has spent nearly two full years (our time) trying to land the Tardis somewhere near enough to London in 1965 for Ian and Barbara to resume the lives that were so rudely interrupted by that detour into the Totter’s lane junkyard and then all of time and space and then where does it land just a few stories later? Swinging London in 1966 and the start of what can be considered Mark II of the series. From now on the series is going to be far less about exploring other worlds and more about watching those other worlds come direct to ours, delivering an extra thrill for the audience at home that these events could semi-plausibly happen to them tomorrow but I have to say losing a little of the magic and imagination along the way. Even so, something clearly had to change: across season 3 the budgets are getting tighter, the alien sillier, the sets more damaged, the plots more repetitive and the viewing figures (and particularly the audience appreciation numbers) freefalling ever since the steady but ambitious original producer Verity Lambert bailed out at the end of series two. Simply by doing something so radically different as bring the Doctor into ‘our’ world (at least on first transmission) means that there’s a frisson of excitement in this story that’s been missing since ‘The Dalek’s Masterplan’ and while in time this plot idea of home counties invasions will get even more tired than the one its replacing, here its the single most exciting thing DW could be doing because its the one thing its never done till here. The plot revolves around the newly established Post Office Tower (now the BT tower), which opened in 1964 and is still there today (though closed to the public since 1981 for security reasons – alas more boring and prosaic ones than the rogue computer in this one. or at least that’s what they’ve told us...For all we know everything in this story is true and the internet is just a ploy by Wotan). It’s a worthy choice: the tower looked very alien in 1966 and still does a bit now, exactly the sort of thing other stories would show in model form sticking out the side of an alien landscape, only this one happens to dominate the London skyline (even with bigger, weirder buildings around it nowadays it still looks out of place). The viewers who saw this story go out the first time would have come to it from a run of documentaries and news items about how amazing and futuristic this building was and how its aim to make London specifically and England in general stay in ‘communication’ with each other was the height of British engineering and technology. How very DW , then, to take something mankind was proud and smug about and wondering out loud what might happen if all that combined technology was used for war not peace. What could possibly me more plausible than having something that already seemed a little like magic to the people at home than make it the home of giant mad robot intent on taking over the world? The wonder in this story isn’t that someone thought to make a story like this, more how did the Post office Tower actually agree to the idea? (As it happens they were quite supportive, more so than the London underground were anyway – although I suspect a quick re-write at the end of episode four to make them the ‘good guys’ saving the day alongside the Dr probably helped). What can’t be under-estimated is that this was the first location seen in DW that you could actually go and visit at the time and point to, bar the Daleks on Westminster Bridge (there was even a restaurant on the top floor of the tower the public could go and eat at, closed only after a bomb attack in 1971, just for extra fan excitement). Wotan is the start of a whole new breed of villain in DW, the mad computer, and the first idea to come from new script editor Gerry Davis holding private conversations with his friend, Dr Kit Pedler, about his putting his genuine scientific fears for the future into a fictional setting (something which will result in them creating the Cybermen together), though the story itself was handed over to Ian Stuart Black (and transmitted directly after his ‘other’ story ‘The Savages’, a hotch-potch of old and tried ideas that couldn’t be less like this exciting new script; the first of only two times this happened in the whole of 20th century DW). Spookily Wotan brainwashes people through their phonelines where he (she? It?) processes information and passes it along, with immediate access to the whole of London and then perhaps the whole world; a seriously modern idea for 1966. Wotan is one of DW’s first voice-only parts that isn’t a Dalek and Gerald Taylor is excellent, hissing where other villains would roar and debating intellectually with the Dr where others would exterminate, even if he has a tendency to rant (even that’s in keeping with the theme of computers though: if my laptop could speak it would definitely rant). Wotan of course suffers from the 1960s way of thinking that in the future technology would get bigger and seem more and more impressive, rather than smaller and easier to use, so its a huge monstrosity filling up several floors even though it has the power of a modern calculator and the whirling magnetic tapes rather than digital files makes it seem a quaint period piece now. No matter though: in terms of what Wotan actually does and ‘The War Machines’ is an impressively ‘modern’ piece of TV that connects more now than ever in this age of artificial intelligence and taps into primal fears of new technology that dates back to the luddites, Wotan growing so intelligent its makers can’t control it and brainwashing people so that they can’t help but to do the computer’s bidding (honestly if the new series doesn’t do a sequel where Wotan is in everybody’s home as a piece of AI tech I’ll be disappointed). Seeing so many people acting weirdly in the robot’s rather psychedelic lair is eerie now – seeing it as a contemporary piece back in 1966 must have been downright scary. Weirdly Wotan gets his own credit at the end of the story despite being fictional, leading many fans to wonder if there really was a Wotan computer system in charge of the phonelines (however no reason is given for why he’s named after a Norse God. Unless of course he is the Norse God and the Vikings were actually worshipping a computer. Now there’s a Big Finish spin-off I’d love to hear). Wotan isn’t that mobile as computers go, though, so has its human slaves build new robots: hulking great things that take over Covent Garden Market (I’d like to think they’re off-screen invading the opera house too – given Wotan’s name he probably sent a war machine along to watch Wagner’s Ring Cycle) and it results in the first of many many DW battle sequences to come where lots of extras fall over going ‘ugh’. Given the size of the robots and ease with which they ought to be able to get out the way it ought to be one of the silliest DW scenes – and it is out of context – but the story is so engulfing that you’re too caught up in it to care. As brilliant as they are many Hartnell DW stories tend to be loose and slow, with scenes for description and investigation and character, but what strikes you about this story (especially if you’re watching them in chronological order – what do you mean you don’t?!) is how modern this one seems: every scene is important to the plot in some way and there are short scenes and quick jump cuts from one sub-plot to another (what a shame they couldn’t have tried this a few years earlier and saved Hartnell having to learn all those lengthy lines!) There are notably fewer fluffs here and Hartnell shines even for him, this Dr whose at home everywhere he goes suddenly as natural walking round swinging London in 1966 as he is Vortis or Skaro. The 1st Dr is still the only regeneration we’ve seen on screen in a nightclub incidentally, odd as that seems: in ’our’ universe the address for the fictional but plausible sounding ‘Inferno’ club is actually right for the genuine UFO Club so its nice to imagine a pre-fame Pink Floyd have only just walked off the stage playing something suitably spacey like ‘Astronomy Domine’ or ’Interstellar Overdrive’ when the Dr walks in. This is also the first real time the Dr has come up against the establishment directly and desperately tries to make them listen – he’ll be doing this a lot as the 2nd and 3rd Drs, but its a shame the 1st Dr didn’t do it more as he’s born for this. Just watch Hartnell bristle and seethe with indignation gloriously the way he did in all his classic films. Particularly the way he stands stock still staring whole everyone else runs around madly panicking and still totally owns the camera; he should have been allowed to do more of this but sadly its pretty much the last time he gets to ‘own’ this role he made his own. Overall, then, ‘The War Machines’ feels like the future – or at least it did back on first transmission in 1966, arguably more like what we have come to think of as the Troughton templates to come than anything the 2nd Dr actually did in his first year on the show. It’s not perfect – other DW stories to come will do this better, while the war machines themselves are another of the series’ desperate attempts to re-capture the Daleks by having aliens that aren’t just men in costumes, only this time instead of a man in an imaginative tank its clearly a man in a whacking great box. And only one box is ever seen at a time because they could only afford to build one prop – painting different numbers on it then cutting away in editing doesn’t fool anybody (the story might have been better still with just Wotan, a rare case of a non-Dalek enemy who really pushes the 1st Dr out of his comfort zone). Still, if you’re going to rip up the template and pretty much re-start the series from scratch then you’re not going to get everything perfect first go and the longevity of this series owes more than a little something to ‘The War Machines’, an experiment that was picked as the template for so many years to come. This is a story that feels timeless in all the best ways and only the fab gear, the all-round confidence that swinging London is the place to be and the Jimmy Savile reference gives away what a different world this was made in to ours.
+ A lot of screentime is given over to Ben and Polly, who get the
best companion debut since Vicki got a whole story to herself with
‘The Rescue’. They’re even more our representatives than Ian
and Barbara were, swinging sixties kids who defy authority with ease
and who so belong in this time zone that being whisked away in future
stories really makes the audience wonder what this time-travelling
life might be like for them. As with so many of this period of
companions we’ll never really get to know Ben and Polly before
they’re shelved for even more complex and rounded future
assistants, but they’re at their best in this story and a highly
believable double-act. They’re contradictions that are clearly
meant to go together too, even if they’ve only just met for the
first time in this story: Ben’s practical and heroic, but rigid and
all too keen to play things by the book (he is a sailor used to
taking orders, not giving them, after all) while Polly has all the
imagination and good ideas but lacks the courage to see them through.
His most noticeable feature compared to past companions: his
impatience, as he can’t even enjoy a night out the town from shore
leave without getting bored. Her noticeable character trait compared
to companions past: sarcasm. We’ve never had a companion quite like
Polly before, whose scared enough of the monsters to scream more than
anyone so far but cynical enough to laugh at people along the way.
Michael Craze and Anneke Wills excel from the first, nailing these
two characters and their interaction with the Dr, who looks like the
sort of authority figure they should be rebelling against but who
turns out to be an even bigger rebel than they are, is a delight. In
real life Wills was married to actor Michael Gough, who so enjoyed
his time as ‘The Celestial Toymaker’ a few months before he urged
her to go for the part; sadly they never did appear on screen
together.
_- On the other-hand poor Dodo seems less like an actual character
than ever when set against some ‘real’ swinging 60s kids with her
awkward fake cockney and endless enthusiasm. She gets written out
partway through the story after being brainwashed by Wotan and
doesn’t even get a proper leaving scene with the Dr, leaving by
note (it seems odd in retrospect that he doesn’t go back to check
up on her - after all there’s no hurry for him to leave in this
story unlike most others; in reality, of course, it was more BBC
penny-pinching so they didn’t have to pay poor Jackie Lane for two
episodes). As much as Dodo never really worked as a character its a
particular sad way for her to go, driven mad by having betrayed the
Doctor – she was, after all, the most open-hearted (some would say
stupidly so) of the Dr’s companions so to see her betrayed and
betraying the Dr in turn is quite a horrific way to go. The likes of
Sarah Jane got hypnotised more weeks than not and never thought
anything of it, but Dodo’s exactly the sort of character to have
been tormented by finding out she couldn’t trust everything would
be alright in the end. She might not have been the most likeable or
believable companion but she deserved a far better send-off than
this.
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