Doctor Who, season 4 continues …

The third episode of The Tenth Planet is a curious one.  Despite being at full-strength and the best of health for the first two episodes (and the preceding adventure), the third episode begins with the Doctor collapsing.  Hartnell is absent from the rest of the episode, as though it was an impromptu holiday week.  But why would Hartnell have a week off if he was to leave a week later?  Makes no sense.

Ben stands in for the Doctor, revealing that the Doctor had suggested certain things that he hadn’t – as though these things were originally meant to be spoken by the Doctor in this episode.  So maybe this wasn’t a planned holiday week?

The final episode of The Tenth Planet no longer exists in the BBC archive except for a couple of clips.  The DVD release had an animated fourth episode, but my version is from the VHS release in which the episode is recreated from telesnaps and clips – a lot like the “Loose Cannon” versions – with text captions making up for missing visuals.

When Hartnell returns in the fourth episode, he begins as strong as he was in the first two episodes.  Nothing wrong with him whatsoever.  Only after he’s taken to the Cybership, and not being in the episode for several scenes, do we have Ben going to “rescue” the Doctor and Polly, only to find that the Doctor is now barely able to move and close to comatose.

From here we’re led through to the regeneration sequence.  It’s not built up to with any sense of forethought.  It’s almost like Hartnell suddenly, for whatever reason, chose to have episode 3 off and, behind his back, they wrote the Doctor being “all weak and frail” behind his back.  Thus, we end up running into the regeneration segment almost by surprise.

Ben & Polly are well able to fill in for the missing Doctor during the adventure, but that’s because they barely get involved.  Once the Doctor has “gone for a kip” for all of episode 3, we’re left watching a regular “base under siege” adventure starring Robert Beatty as Cutler.  Sure, Ben gets involved with the warhead stuff in the last episode, but it didn’t need to be him doing what he did.

The Tenth Planet has a great reputation, but it’s surprising how easily the Cybermen are polished off.  They’re easily killed by their own weapons, a small dose of radiation does them in, and then we learn they’re all remote powered by Mondas so they all conveniently peg it when the planet melts.  Don’t get me wrong, the realisation of the Cybermen is great, with a solid back-story, and their wonderful melodic voices.  It’s questionable that they carry “easily-stolen and used by humans” weapon with no mention of what the big light thing atop their heads is for – almost as though the light was written as their weapon, but as it wasn’t so easily retrieved after they died, someone wrote in the carrying version for the humans to use.

The regeneration sequence is still marvellous.  Seen the clip a million times, but it still gets to you every time.  In fact, I’d say it made far more of an impact on me this time than ever before because I’ve been on the First Doctor’s journey from beginning to end.  It’s rather sad that this mysterious fellow that caught the school teachers in the junkyard should be reduced to a discarded figure on the floor, a body that’s tossed away like last week’s garbage so the new model can sit up in his place.  It’s sad, and poignant, and actually does tug at the heart-strings.  I really didn’t want Hartnell to leave by this point.  The only time a TV show has felt even remotely similar is in the final episode of Babylon 5, with Sheridan reaching the end of his time.  That version plays far more strongly on you than the First Doctor’s “death”, but the similarities are definitely there.

The last few adventures of season three, and the first six episodes of season four, saw a change in the First Doctor as Hartnell really came to the fore with a commanding performance.  No longer was he just letting the other regulars get on with the story while he mostly stayed in the background, hidden away by dubious means to cover for holidays, or given a barely relevant part of the plot.  In his last few stories, Hartnell really took centre stage, really bringing everything out of the character.

Had Hartnell left during The Celestial Toymaker, as the producer had intended, I don’t think his parting would have had the same effect – season three was not his best – but, having had the time to reinvigorate the character and take charge, Hartnell gave the character something that it had been missing for some time.  It’s that something I’m going to miss, and I started missing it as soon as the regeneration sequence ended.

Next time … The Power of the Daleks