The Good Life
Colony in Space on DVD
It’s been a bumper year for Pertwee releases on DVD, with no fewer than seven stories hitting the shops. If we’d known the schedule at the beginning of the year, especially with The Mutants looming so large, I suspect many of us would have found it hard to suppress a shudder of ennui at the prospect. In fact, one of the great pleasures of 2011 (in terms of the Doctor Who range at least) has been the opportunity of revisiting these Third Doctor stories which in the main have been highly enjoyable and enhanced by some excellent extras. In the case of Day of the Daleks (my review will follow once I’ve nipped back in time in order to meet the deadline) a lavish series of extras didn’t distract attention from the fact that on his day Jon Pertwee was an excellent actor in addition to being a proficient driver and amateur gurner. Despite the deserved upturn in fortunes for the era, it was always going to be difficult to maintain this winning streak, and with Colony in Space the revisionism has to come to an end unless you’re a more generous soul than this reviewer.
That’s not to say that Colony in Space is a terrible story but it’s long and dull, not only because of the dreary quarry setting, but also because the to and fro of the battle between the colonists and the IMC heavy-brigade is so repetitive that it makes The War Games feel like The Sontaran Experiment. Defenders of the story frequently argue that despite plot deficiencies, the characters are realistic and believable which may well be true, but overlooks the fact that they are nearly all men going through a midlife crisis. It’s tempting to see Colony in Space as an exaggerated portrayal of the kind of men who spend an awful lot of time at the allotment in order to avoid their wives; in this case the allotment is the planet Uxarieus and instead of sitting in a shed with pornography they’re sitting in a geodesic dome arguing about soil toxicity.
Ashe is a case in point. He’s apparently an intergalactic Tom Good, who has spent a lot of his spare time learning about crop rotation and how it was considerably more widespread after John Lloyd invented the patent crop rotator. On the face of it though, he’s also a man who fled halfway across the galaxy to spend time with his ‘daughter’ Mary, and it’s not just the colonists who exude that terrible fug of middle-aged angst, regret and befuddled sexuality. Caldwell, the bluff Northern IMC surveyor is far from home and seems determined to take advantage of this and explore new opportunities.
His first encounter with the Doctor at the start of Episode Two is like something out of Prick Up Your Ears: “Is this your place?” he twinkles, as if he’s about to admire the exquisite furnishings. The Doctor is not immediately responsive to his overtures but Caldwell is undeterred: “What are you up to?” he grins, before deciding that shy bairns get nowt and laying his cards on the table: “Look, I’m on my way back to my spaceship. How about you coming back with me?”. I’m sure we’ve all used that last line at some point in our lives, just as we’ve all had a version of the Doctor’s gentle knock-back: “Well, I’d like to, but I haven’t really got the time.” This scene is only outdone for confused sexuality by a later moment involving the IMC leaders getting drunk and languid on space sherry after yet another (short-lived) victory over the colonists, although an earlier exchange between two guards (“Who’s guarding the girl?” “Alan.”) also takes some beating.
While these men sort themselves out, and the few women remaining are either killed or condemned to a lifetime in Coronation Street, there’s still a story going on, and it’s one of intergalactic domination, Time Lords and three different Uxariean species linked only by a shared determination to remain uninteresting. Of the unexceptional aliens, the Guardian is particularly hilarious, with a face so wizened that it brings to mind David Hockney’s comment on the elderly Auden (“if his face looks like this, what must his balls look like?”) and although his scant scenes are amusing they are almost as undramatic as the Master’s appearance in Episode Four. The fact that the Master is a) appearing in the story, and b) is after a Doomsday Weapon might have been interesting and exciting if the surprise hadn’t been blown in the first minute of Episode One, so nice as it is to see the inside of his TARDIS (more exquisite furnishings) it doesn’t make up for the ho-hum nature of the unfolding story.
There’s also no getting away from the fact that although it has its moments, Colony in Space is a pale shadow of Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon. The latter, with the possible exception of Doctor Who and the Sontaran Experiment, is the most misleading novelisation in the Target range. In just a few passages – such as the description of early life of Captain Dent and the slaughter and burial of the Leesons – characters that are poorly realised on screen are made vivid, and anaemic scenes become dramatic. The televised version was always going to be a letdown after that, in the same way that Hulke’s four Crossroads novelisations left you disappointed when you realised that Meg Mortimer never actually encountered the War Chief in King’s Oak. Still, if nothing else, Colony in Space must have brought a lot of pleasure to the Pat Gorman household. He’s everywhere, and even gets a credit for a part he didn’t play. Truly a wonderful time for Pat, and if he was an Arsenal fan even better, as they won the FA Cup just before Episode Five. Every Doctor Who story means that special something to somebody.
Extras:
The main supporting feature is Chris Chapman’s IMC Needs You! As ever, Chapman brings some much-needed humour and visual flair to spice up an informative, but potentially rather dry examination of the making of Colony in Space. In this case, the introduction is a short, mock-recruiting film for IMC which has a gently amusing script (“Are you between 35 and 50?”) and nice animation by Richard Alderson, both of which soften the subsequent impact of a lot of people talking about how cold it was in the Old Baal Clay Pit, Carclaze back in February 1971. The one thing the crew don’t bring up is that they were filming on the day decimal currency was introduced to the UK. Were there really no anecdotes to be had about Pertwee throwing his rejected sixpence at the hotel staff or Katy Manning misusing her florin? Despite this oversight, it’s an informative and fun piece of work, complemented by the archive feature From the Cutting Room Floor, a series of mute sequences from the location filming. Normally the latter fills me with existential dread, but on this occasion there are nice moments where Pertwee tries to keep a straight face during an Aikido sequence, and there are glimpses of the HHH production code on the slate. Sad I know, but there’s something about Pertwee production codes that I can’t resist. So mock me – see if I care.
Definitely the most bizarre element of this release is the commentary. It has a beguiling combination of participants (Michael Briant, Katy Manning, Graeme Harper, Terrance Dicks, Bernard Kay and Morris Perry) that run the emotional gamut from enthusiasm to listlessness; informativeness to cluelessness; and lucidity to outright madness. A typical Doctor Who commentary I hear you all shout. I loved it and as usual admired Toby Hadoke moderating skills as he sat in the eye of an eccentrics’ hurricane. It includes too many amusing things to go into here but my favourite moments included Bernard Kay’s dogged and grumpy pulling apart of Episode Two; Michael Briant’s inexplicable belief that the world is going to be OK in the future because Dubai are hosting the World Cup in 2022 (Kay – “What has that got to do with anything?”); Graeme Harper cheerfully revealing how petrol expenses held back his career; and Toby’s enthusiastic praise of Morris Perry’s performance to a sceptical but appreciative Morris Perry. Best of all though is Terrance Dicks – he may only be present for the first two episodes, but he gets his bouffant in early (Ep.1 20′ 23″) and, bizarrely, swears through the episode like Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Yes – Dicks gets his expletives bleeped. What more could you ask for?
As usual there are some informative production notes, and on the whole, for an unregarded story, it’s a decent release. Although there’s a limit to what can be achieved with the source material, the picture quality is fine, and you only need to compare the main feature with the (I assume) unrestored clips used in IMC Needs You! to see the improvement. On the whole though, despite the fact that elements of Hulke’s script remain resonant today – a massive corporation from an environmentally ruined Earth attempts to destroy the lives and livelihoods of hard-working honest people – Colony in Space remains a bit of a slog. It has sparks of life here and there, but watching sexually confused men in uniform driving around in flatbed trucks gets boring after a while even, I imagine, for Top Gear fans. Certainly it’s just as well that Susan Jameson was dropped from the show – I suspect she would have struggled to get herself noticed in the geodesic dome whatever she happened to be wearing.
Colony in Space is released on Monday 3rd October in the UK.
