Are We There Yet?
When facing up to the failings of this serial, it should be acknowledged it was dealt two great curveballs. One came from simple co-incidence. The show had the Saturday night slot, and that year Christmas Day happened to fall on a Saturday. This was the era where that meant the nation grinding to a halt and every family gathering in front of the festive telly. It was decided that it would therefore get a lot more casual viewers, and besides nothing nasty should happen during the designated day of goodwill.
The infamous result was that the already-thin through-line was interrupted for an
episode more like ‘The Chase’ than ‘The Chase’ was. (And we are perhaps fortunate that the same thing didn't happen for 'Dalek Invasion of Earth', whose finale went out on the near miss of Boxing Day '64.)
And this episode is full of metafictional skits, with the Doctor visiting a silent movie studio and the location of 'Z Cars’. Given this context, the episode's most infamous moment – the Doctor’s to-camera wishing “a merry Christmas to you at home” - hardly jars in the way you might imagine. Given the preceding half-hour, it was probably the thing which made the most sense.
And the second googly ball... that's the twelve-plus episodes. This was an imposition as unasked as it was un-called-for, BBC Managing Director Huw Weldon intervened to order the supersizing as a crude cash-in on Dalekmania. (Though it might have worked better if intended as a plot to kill the pepperpots off.) We earlier used the phrase for the Hartnell era “four episodes good, six episodes bad.” Which of course makes twelve episodes doubleplusbad.
Fans, still insisting on their 'dark story', try to deal with the Christmas episode by ring-fencing it. They point out, accurately enough, you can skip it while missing nothing plot-wise and the serial was offered to foreign markets without it. But rather than a one-off, it sets the tone for the next batch of episodes. The next thing up, the cricket commentary sequence (seriously, don't ask) essentially continues it.
For the past few episodes it had essentially been steam-powered, carried along by hammy hi-jinks. And by this point things just run out of puff. Those of the age to remember double vinyl LPs may remember side three was often where the filler got filed. Well, the double-length 'Master Plan' quite definitely has a side three.
First, the Monk from 'Time Meddler' reappears. Who never had to be a one-time villain, and there's an undoubted charm to see Butterworth and Hartnell spark off one another once more – exchanging surface pleasantries when they meet. If Chen and the Doctor are like id and ego, occupying opposite poles of the narrative, he and the Monk are more like adversarial neighbours from some 'Laurel and Hardy' sketch - forever tit-for-tatting one another and pranking each other's Tardises like you might wheelclamp a car. And against both Chen's hubristic arrogance and the Daleks' remorseless single-mindedness his low cunning is a creative counterpoint. (When Steven disbelieves yet another bout of turncoating he pouts “this destroys my faith in human nature”.)
At the same time, his reappearance serves no purpose within the overall storyline (not even relating to that tin of Maguffinite. And the only reason you don't care is because there isn't one any more and, like the frenetic pace in general, he's there simply to distract you from looking behind him. Ancient Egypt... volcano planets... at one point the Black Dalek announces “we shall pursue them through eternity” and it feels like that's just what they're doing. It doesn't even feel over-long any more, it's gone past that – instead it's just arbitrary. Like it’s still happening because some switch got stuck, so more and more produce just gets produced.
There are various points in late Hartnell, of which this is merely the most severe, where it feels like the show's supposed strength – it's mutability – has turned against it. The original chief characters, Ian and Barbara, left some while ago. And without them it feels that the show has lost its way, that its feverishly coming up with stuff hoping something will somehow stick. You watch these episodes feeling something really wants putting out of its misery. After all, by this point it had run the best part of three seasons. That's enough, surely.
Time Files (And Then You Die)
As all the furious peddling has been about keeping the thing from falling rather than going anywhere, you expect the ending to be where everything collapses in an unseemly heap. Bizarrely, the opposite happens. After all the charging around the universe things relocate back to Kembel, and you realise inside this thirteen episode monstrosity lies a decent three-or-four-parter. One that never got distracted from the perilous planet, that has just been waiting for these interruptions to end, and which might even have resembled the fans' favoured 'dark story'. (While in 'The Chase', notably, they don't go back to Aridius.)
(Some fans pin the blame for the lacklustre 'side three' episodes on Dennis Spooner, much as he copped it for 'The Chase'. As it was him who came up with the Monk in the first place, presumably he brought him back. Yet this ignores both Nation returning to write episode nine, 'Escape Switch', and Spooner penning this darker finale.)
Firstly, Chen goes out just the way he should. By now his credulous inability to see the Daleks want rid of him should have become ludicrous and anti-involving. But, like going into a skid, they choose to play up the absurdity. His by-now-virulent megalomania is unable to take the info in – he simply can't grasp the notion that he, Mavic Chen, could not be needed. Their later exchanges are characterised by simply talking over one another. And he assumes the Doctor's intention is to make his own alliance with the Daleks, one of the many cases where an inability to see outside his own parameters becomes a villain's undoing. His comeuppance, at the moment he cries defiantly “you cannot kill me!”, is both comic and dark.
And as for the Daleks... They now finally have the MacGuffinite they need for their Time Destructor. Up to now, no-one's bothered explaining what a Time Destructor is. And, given that the second episode of 'The Chase' was called 'The Death of Time' for no real reason whatsoever, everyone has been assuming its just been called the sort of thing that things in 'Doctor Who' get called. As it turns out it destroys time. Which is, by this point, about the last explanation anyone was expecting. Or, more accurately, it destroys all in its vicinity by accelerating time until they drop down dead. The Doctor decides to use their own weapon against them. And boy, does it show.
What use such a weapon would actually be is anybody's guess. Some claim earlier drafts explain it was to ping their adversaries back in time before attacking, reducing their weapons to sharpened flints. Others have speculated they merely intended to use it as a threat, which of course would make it a Bomb analogy fitting neatly with the Cold War scenario. But, while the Doctor talks of “activating” the Destructor, he doesn't prime it or set it off. He pretty much just takes the lid off. Which makes it something more akin to Pandora's box. The Destructor is not so much a weapon of war as War itself. And once switched on War cannot be switched off, it's mercilessly all-destructive. Even fighting back catches you up in it.
The Daleks die. We're used to them being destroyed, but here they definitely die. For the first time in the whole story, the actual Daleks, the creatures in the casings, appear. The transcript says “as time continues to race backwards, the Daleks start to decay. Their metal casings split and melt away, briefly revealing the clawed mutants inside. Helpless, the creatures scream, reduce to embryonic state then turn to dust. The ground shudders and heaves”.
But war whitens the hair even of the survivors. The Doctor and Kingdom attempt to escape but, like the worst anxiety dream you ever had, they age faster than they can run. It upends all the “with one bound he was free” business which normally ends adventure stories. This is something you simply can't walk away from. In fact it would have made much more sense for the Doctor to 'die' and be regenerated here, rather than appended to the forthcoming 'Tenth Planet'.
episode more like ‘The Chase’ than ‘The Chase’ was. (And we are perhaps fortunate that the same thing didn't happen for 'Dalek Invasion of Earth', whose finale went out on the near miss of Boxing Day '64.)
And this episode is full of metafictional skits, with the Doctor visiting a silent movie studio and the location of 'Z Cars’. Given this context, the episode's most infamous moment – the Doctor’s to-camera wishing “a merry Christmas to you at home” - hardly jars in the way you might imagine. Given the preceding half-hour, it was probably the thing which made the most sense.
And the second googly ball... that's the twelve-plus episodes. This was an imposition as unasked as it was un-called-for, BBC Managing Director Huw Weldon intervened to order the supersizing as a crude cash-in on Dalekmania. (Though it might have worked better if intended as a plot to kill the pepperpots off.) We earlier used the phrase for the Hartnell era “four episodes good, six episodes bad.” Which of course makes twelve episodes doubleplusbad.
Fans, still insisting on their 'dark story', try to deal with the Christmas episode by ring-fencing it. They point out, accurately enough, you can skip it while missing nothing plot-wise and the serial was offered to foreign markets without it. But rather than a one-off, it sets the tone for the next batch of episodes. The next thing up, the cricket commentary sequence (seriously, don't ask) essentially continues it.
For the past few episodes it had essentially been steam-powered, carried along by hammy hi-jinks. And by this point things just run out of puff. Those of the age to remember double vinyl LPs may remember side three was often where the filler got filed. Well, the double-length 'Master Plan' quite definitely has a side three.
First, the Monk from 'Time Meddler' reappears. Who never had to be a one-time villain, and there's an undoubted charm to see Butterworth and Hartnell spark off one another once more – exchanging surface pleasantries when they meet. If Chen and the Doctor are like id and ego, occupying opposite poles of the narrative, he and the Monk are more like adversarial neighbours from some 'Laurel and Hardy' sketch - forever tit-for-tatting one another and pranking each other's Tardises like you might wheelclamp a car. And against both Chen's hubristic arrogance and the Daleks' remorseless single-mindedness his low cunning is a creative counterpoint. (When Steven disbelieves yet another bout of turncoating he pouts “this destroys my faith in human nature”.)
At the same time, his reappearance serves no purpose within the overall storyline (not even relating to that tin of Maguffinite. And the only reason you don't care is because there isn't one any more and, like the frenetic pace in general, he's there simply to distract you from looking behind him. Ancient Egypt... volcano planets... at one point the Black Dalek announces “we shall pursue them through eternity” and it feels like that's just what they're doing. It doesn't even feel over-long any more, it's gone past that – instead it's just arbitrary. Like it’s still happening because some switch got stuck, so more and more produce just gets produced.
There are various points in late Hartnell, of which this is merely the most severe, where it feels like the show's supposed strength – it's mutability – has turned against it. The original chief characters, Ian and Barbara, left some while ago. And without them it feels that the show has lost its way, that its feverishly coming up with stuff hoping something will somehow stick. You watch these episodes feeling something really wants putting out of its misery. After all, by this point it had run the best part of three seasons. That's enough, surely.
Time Files (And Then You Die)
As all the furious peddling has been about keeping the thing from falling rather than going anywhere, you expect the ending to be where everything collapses in an unseemly heap. Bizarrely, the opposite happens. After all the charging around the universe things relocate back to Kembel, and you realise inside this thirteen episode monstrosity lies a decent three-or-four-parter. One that never got distracted from the perilous planet, that has just been waiting for these interruptions to end, and which might even have resembled the fans' favoured 'dark story'. (While in 'The Chase', notably, they don't go back to Aridius.)
(Some fans pin the blame for the lacklustre 'side three' episodes on Dennis Spooner, much as he copped it for 'The Chase'. As it was him who came up with the Monk in the first place, presumably he brought him back. Yet this ignores both Nation returning to write episode nine, 'Escape Switch', and Spooner penning this darker finale.)
Firstly, Chen goes out just the way he should. By now his credulous inability to see the Daleks want rid of him should have become ludicrous and anti-involving. But, like going into a skid, they choose to play up the absurdity. His by-now-virulent megalomania is unable to take the info in – he simply can't grasp the notion that he, Mavic Chen, could not be needed. Their later exchanges are characterised by simply talking over one another. And he assumes the Doctor's intention is to make his own alliance with the Daleks, one of the many cases where an inability to see outside his own parameters becomes a villain's undoing. His comeuppance, at the moment he cries defiantly “you cannot kill me!”, is both comic and dark.
And as for the Daleks... They now finally have the MacGuffinite they need for their Time Destructor. Up to now, no-one's bothered explaining what a Time Destructor is. And, given that the second episode of 'The Chase' was called 'The Death of Time' for no real reason whatsoever, everyone has been assuming its just been called the sort of thing that things in 'Doctor Who' get called. As it turns out it destroys time. Which is, by this point, about the last explanation anyone was expecting. Or, more accurately, it destroys all in its vicinity by accelerating time until they drop down dead. The Doctor decides to use their own weapon against them. And boy, does it show.
What use such a weapon would actually be is anybody's guess. Some claim earlier drafts explain it was to ping their adversaries back in time before attacking, reducing their weapons to sharpened flints. Others have speculated they merely intended to use it as a threat, which of course would make it a Bomb analogy fitting neatly with the Cold War scenario. But, while the Doctor talks of “activating” the Destructor, he doesn't prime it or set it off. He pretty much just takes the lid off. Which makes it something more akin to Pandora's box. The Destructor is not so much a weapon of war as War itself. And once switched on War cannot be switched off, it's mercilessly all-destructive. Even fighting back catches you up in it.
The Daleks die. We're used to them being destroyed, but here they definitely die. For the first time in the whole story, the actual Daleks, the creatures in the casings, appear. The transcript says “as time continues to race backwards, the Daleks start to decay. Their metal casings split and melt away, briefly revealing the clawed mutants inside. Helpless, the creatures scream, reduce to embryonic state then turn to dust. The ground shudders and heaves”.
But war whitens the hair even of the survivors. The Doctor and Kingdom attempt to escape but, like the worst anxiety dream you ever had, they age faster than they can run. It upends all the “with one bound he was free” business which normally ends adventure stories. This is something you simply can't walk away from. In fact it would have made much more sense for the Doctor to 'die' and be regenerated here, rather than appended to the forthcoming 'Tenth Planet'.
But it's Kingdom who dies. Though as said this serves no purpose, it does to some degree redeem her character. She dies a dutiful Space Agent. And it touches on a theme not taken up again until much later – travelling with the Doctor burns you. It ends with the Doctor and Steven, the only ones left alive, unsure whether they should be celebratory or mournful.
And by that point you can't really blame them. The whole thing is, you may not be too surprised to hear, rather hard to sum up. The best way to watch ’Master Plan’ is to forget anything the fans ever said about it. Of the whole Hartnell era, here this is where their rating is most off. (Even with their under-rating of 'Web Planet.')
As is, not entirely by co-incidence, their sense of what type of a story it is. It's “darker and edgier'” only through some very selective viewing indeed. If you're really keen to see what that might look like, watch just the intro, the first and the last two episodes. Or if you insist on a fuller dose imagine a ’Space Agent’ show which never got off the ground. Then the waste-not Beeb instead forcing the script on ’Who’ and the actors figuring they might as well embrace the low-brow lunacy of it all. Watch it in strict weekly instalments. Saturday mornings would be a good time. Never mind if you forget plot developments in the meantime. So did they. And even then cut out a good chunk of the second half, perhaps episodes seven to ten.
It may be I watched all unlucky-for-some thirteen episodes so you don't have to. And yet you do get something should you choose to go for the complete experience, even if that thing decidedly isn't good TV drama. Like 'The Chase' before it, it's the Hartnell era compressed together. Its absurd that it goes from hardboiled SF to (yes, really) men dressed up as mummies within a single story. But then again that's something the show does, and perhaps not just in the Hartnell era. Encapsulating the unencapsulatable may be just what it does.
Ultimately, you'll need to make your own choice. Just don’t, whatever you do, write a long analytical review of it. That really would be a sign of insanity...
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