Fetlock Holliday
The Earth Story Doctor Who DVD boxset
This new release from 2entertain brings together two stories that I doubt have ever previously been mentioned in the same breath apart from by the Doctor Who Equine Society (DWES – Hon. Pres Susan King) which released a whole series of loose-leaf ring-punched articles about horses in Doctor Who back in the early 1980s. But although 2entertain have concocted a tenuous link (both stories are set on Earth) to draw these adventures together, they do have something in common in that when transmitted, each had to follow a pretty dreadful story: The Gunfighters was saddled (get in!) with the awful The Celestial Toymaker, while The Awakening followed in the lumbering shadow of Warriors of the Deep and the dreaded Myrka.
Paradoxically this seemed to have the opposite effect on the reputation of each story; The Awakening was looked upon positively simply by dint of not being Warriors of the Deep, while The Gunfighters, via a weird combination of DWM, Peter Haining, and other misguided masochists who thought The Celestial Toymaker a ‘classic’, became a pariah, and was frequently called “the worst story ever made”. One of the pleasures of the Doctor Who DVD range is that old stories get the opportunity to be reassessed, and in some cases this allows old wrongs to be put right. I don’t think there are many people who still hold to the idea that The Gunfighters is terrible, but if there are, then the release should finally help to demolish this most preposterous of Doctor Who myths. In fact, although The Awakening is a harmless enough story, it’s actually The Gunfighters that feels the more modern of the two, and is so far ahead of its time that you could well imagine a Wild West story of this type cropping up in the current run of episodes complete with another appearance of Matt Smith’s stetson.
Of course, one of the weirdest reasons for many fans disliking The Gunfighters is that Donald Cotton had the barefaced cheek to write a comedy. There’s a fan quote about this story in The Television Companion: “Despite the sorry lessons of The Romans and The Myth Makers that comedy as such wouldn’t work in Doctor Who…” which sums up the dogmatic and humourless mindset that prevailed in fandom for many years. It’s a view that’s less entrenched today as both of those stories are now very popular, and in their own ways recognised as groundbreaking works that have far more in common with the current series (particularly ‘modern historicals’ such as The Shakespeare Code or The Unicorn and the Wasp), than, say, The Highlanders. If anything Donald Cotton’s work is somewhat bleaker then a lot of contemporary Doctor Who, and while The Gunfighters is not as good as The Myth Makers, the two stories have a lot in common, particularly in the way that a jokey atmosphere suddenly turns very dark in the final episode. The climactic gunfight of the story is also very well directed by Rex Tucker, and the mayhem that ensues while Doc Holliday slowly and deliberately takes aim among the chaos is reminiscent of the final shootout in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven where steadiness of shooting wins out.
The Gunfighters is also helped by a lovely performance from William Hartnell, who starts as he means to go on with that great scene in Doc Holliday’s dentist chair, and he’s supported ably by Peter Purves, with even Jackie Lane rising to the occasion and clearly much preferring the light comedy of the piece to the banality of The Celestial Toymaker. It also helps that this DVD release shows the episodes at their best, and while it’s not the greatest story ever, it is genuinely bewildering that it’s gained such a bad reputation simply because fandom has a poor sense of humour. This season started with Galaxy 4 for goodness sake! Save your annoyance for that rather than a Donald Cotton script. Who else could you make you laugh and then seconds later slip in a reference to Frank Norris’s 1899 novel McTeague in which the dentist protagonist dreams “to have projecting from that corner window a huge gilded tooth, a molar with enormous prongs, something gorgeous and attractive”.
Whether the allusions are there or not, you always feel that there’s real ambition in Cotton’s work, as well as a lightness of touch, and in this case it means that The Gunfighters is a positive pleasure to watch and one of the most enjoyable discoveries of the recent DVD releases. And I don’t have a problem with ‘The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon’ either, but maybe that just makes me a weirdo. If you want to hear more eloquent comments than mine on this story and the production of the DVD then you should definitely listen to Toby Hadoke and Ed Stradling on the Radio Free Skaro podcast straight away, if only for the wonderful moment where it sounds like Stradling is about to claim that Donalds Cotton and Tosh were once married to each other.
There’s no such fun and laughter in The Awakening, and unfortunately it doesn’t end with a violent gunfight and a high body count which if nothing else would have raised a smile. I say that with sadness because two of my favourite actors make an appearance, but not even the presence of titans like Denis Lill and Glyn Houston can lift this nice-looking but tedious story out of the mire. They also have to compete with a titanically bad performance from Jack Galloway, and an oppressive sense of ennui that even overwhelms the usually lively regular cast members.
The Awakening is the final Davison’s story to be released, and I don’t think the era (and I speak as a Davison fan) has emerged on DVD with its reputation enhanced. There are a small number of extremely, almost absurdly good stories, but the rest often feature Davison valiantly battling poor scripts and/or uninspired direction, and watching these stories on DVD with supporting extras that detail these deficiencies at length has left me feeling a bit jaded. I’m sure it will pass but at the moment The Awakening sums up the mediocre run of episodes from Season 20 to 21 in the same way that The Gunfighters embodies Season Three in all of its crazy, but rarely boring glory.
Extras:
The contentious and fascinating behind-the-scenes story of Season Three is featured in Ed Stradling’s documentary The End of the Line which I’m glad to say is something of a return to form after some of his recent pieces, which while good, were not quite in the same league his earlier classics such as A Matter of Time and The Seven Year Hitch. This is partly down to Johnny Morris’s excellent script, which deftly tells the somewhat chaotic story of Season Three, and Stradling’s films are at their best either authored like this, or when the events described form a strong narrative of their own such as in Trials and Tribulations. All the interviewees are good value, even when, such as in the case of Donald Tosh, their testimony has sometimes been known to be dubious. I can’t help wondering if a certain story about Terry Nation delivering incomplete scripts has been left on the cutting room floor, but although that’s gone Tosh still manages misleadingly to state that Hartnell improvised the line at the end of ‘The Feast of Stephen’ something which most of us now know to be a load of rubbish. Regardless of that, the film is an absorbing watch, and the only thing that distracted me was discovering how much the late Gerry Davis sounded like Ed Stradling.
Also worthy of note is another entry in the increasingly bizarre Tomorrow’s Times series of films examining the newspaper coverage Doctor Who has attracted over the years. Previous editions have featured presenters trapped in an al-Qaeda cell reading an autocue at gunpoint, but for a change of scene this time the makers seem to have plied Mary Tamm with champagne, stuck her on a swivel chair and filmed the results. Fortunately this was a stroke of genius, as Tamm clearly hails from the planet Delphon if her extraordinary eyebrow action is anything to go by. She starts off arch, but by the end of this short feature is the full flying buttress. It has a claim to be the funniest DVD extra so far – it could be genius, although I have been ill so don’t take my word for it.
Additionally there’s another excellent commentary moderated by Toby Hadoke. Right from the start, when one of the contributors whispers excitedly “Everything’s throbbing!” you know that this is going to be a good one and it doesn’t disappoint. Tristan de Vere Cole, Peter Purves, Shane Rimmer, David Graham and Richard Beale all come and go on the various episodes, and as well as the production details (a lot of interesting stuff about Rex Tucker for example) there are some trenchant opinions (Purves makes a point of saying that he prefers the old series to the new) and some very funny bits of badinage between those old Gerry Anderson refugees Rimmer and Graham. The commentary, like the rest of The Gunfighters release, is a real pleasure.
Despite my misgivings about The Awakening, Return to Little Hodcombe, the main feature by Chris Chapman, is as excellent as his other work in the range. On this occasion he gives the documentary a suitably bucolic atmosphere, and takes some of the cast members back to the village of Shapwick which was one of the three locations used to represent Hodcombe. Peter Davison is not involved, but Keith Jayne and Janet Fielding (who appear to have been separated at birth) make interesting contributions, and best of all Michael Owen Morris recollects the stresses and the strains of his first directing job.
Other extras include Making the Malus, where it’s revealed that a Who fan now has the original prop on his living-room wall, as well From the Cutting Room Floor which is notable for the Kamelion footage (once considered lost) alongside some mute location film trims which are about as entertaining as a bloopers reel from Salò. The other extra is, of course, the famous Golden Egg award featuring Dobbin the horse demolishing Barry Newbery’s lychgate. This clip was shown so often in the 1980s that Dobbin was able to retire on the royalties to a paddock in Wiltshire, where he lived out the next 15 years of his life sending photos of glue pots and tins of Pedigree Chum to his former stablemates.
Overall Earth Story is a fine release, with The Gunfighters revealed as a very good story from an important era, and well served by its accompanying documentary. The Awakening, despite being a lack-lustre story, is worth it for both Return to Little Hodcombe and the commentary. The latter may be the only 5th Doctor commentary that doesn’t include Peter Davison, but it does feature a cheerful Eric Saward. It’s taken roughly 25 DVD releases but we got there in the end.
Earth Story is released on Monday 20th June in the UK.
