Escape To Danger No.50

Not that I could be accused of paying all that much attention, but yer New Doctor Who appears to be experiencing a kind of late Troughton Era style lassitude. Ratings are in decline, the production team are clearing their desks, and media interest is far removed from the levels witnessed when the rebooted series was in the flush of youth, full of adolescent piss and vinegar.

 

While probably not having suffered the script crises and meltdowns that the Proper Season Six encountered during the period alluded to above, there is nevertheless a faint whiff of ho-hum and meh around yer Modern Who that is at odds with a retooled programme that was once heralded as "defining the channel" (BBC1, presumably).

(Some may also comment on the similarities between the decline and fall of New Labour and the current ennui surrounding New Who, but that's not for me to say...)

With the recent passing of Brian Cant, it seems an opportune moment to cast my monocular eye over "The Dominators". (And you thought all that stuff about Troughton and the new series was just snarky opportunism? A clumsy attempt at creating some sort of structure, perhaps? I'll admit to that. It's a good job I've only got myself to amuse).

At this point, anyone who is familiar with the predictable tropes of my writing style will be waiting for the bit when I ever-so-bravely fly in the face of considered opinion, while unpicking the very scenario I've elaborated on to a tedious degree in the previous few paragraphs.

So with that in mind, it's perfectly natural for me to think that "The Dominators" is quite excellent, despite its reputation as a shaky start to a shaky season.

Mind you, I didn't always hold that high an opinion of the story, and have even opined (in print, no less) that it was "only of interest to timid twerps in togas". (I believe that I may be safe from discovery, though. The circulation of the "Happiness Is Dragon-Shaped" fanzine from the mid-1990's probably didn't reach much further than the DWAS Local Group it was intended to bewilder and momentarily amuse).

 

 

I remember that my younger self found it all a bit shabby and even childish at times. He wasn't a great admirer of the Quarks, with their silly voices, restricted mobility and cardboard-box-like appearance. Or the Dulcians, with their dreary Council and their unfortunate attire.

 

Basically, the younger me totally missed the whole fucking point of the story.

 

 

Another person who totally missed the point (and who should have known better if his - excuse me - beardy head wasn't almost permanently lodged up his own liberal backside) was Philip Sandifer. His TARDIS Eruditorum blog royally savaged Serial TT within an inch of its togas, mainly for its execution but also (and more interestingly) for its politics.

 

(I refuse to link to the article in question. Go and look for it yourself. It's worth a laugh, if you can stop your teeth from grinding for long enough).

 

 

Sandifer utterly mauls Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln (or "Norman Ashby" as they chose to be credited, after the writers fell out with the production team for hacking off an episode and refusing to give them a Terry Nation-like copyright on the Quarks) for their allegedly anti-pacifism script, and their perceived opposition to the ethics of a contemporary youth culture that he bizarrely places at the heart of the series as it stood then.

 

Personally, I would excuse a generation that lived through the Second World War for daring to pose the question "What if a totally pacifist culture was threatened by a force whose aim was to totally destroy them?"

 

 

But "The Dominators" isn't even doing that.

Unlike in "The Daleks" (or however we call Serial B these days), there is no noble rousing to action against the unjust aggressors. The Dominators (the race, not the story) are mere opportunists. Yes, they attempt to dominate and enslave by force, but not because they are intrinsically evil. They just want to get their fuel supply and sod everybody else in the vicinity. The fact that they are constantly fighting between themselves and have limited manpower resources highlights that we are very much in the mundanity of evil territory here.

 

(Meanwhile, I find that in 2017 the Dulcian council as portrayed sound like a load of boring right-on internet forum moderators. They've also probably geared their education system to teach their kids that everybody's opinion is important and valid, as long as it doesn't upset the status quo or be subject to any kind of scrutiny).

 

 

I guess that Morris Barry will never appear in anybody's list of the greatest Doctor Who directors ever, but here he does an outstanding job with the resources available. There is some notable location work, some truly gruesome deaths and, erm... some really big explosions.

 

Much like the Servo Robot from the previous story, the Quarks admittedly do suffer from a design that makes them appear somewhat comical when walking around. But they aren't a total disaster, by any means. Some wiser commentators have noted how their much-dismissed childlike voices actually make them appear more sinister. (And like the Krotons, they've also got great heads).

 

 

The Quarks eventually found a home in TV Comic, where the Mondasian Cybermen also used to hang out (sometimes on skis), so it's a pretty safe bet they'll never appear in Doctor Who again...

Did you see what I did there?