Love and Liberty

As the nights draw in for the spookiest Saturday of the year, what could be more appropriate to turn to than Doctor Who’s finest and most Gothic season? First broadcast in Autumn 1976, Doctor Who – The Masque of Mandragora opened an outstanding set of stories with Tom Baker’s Doctor a freethinking adventurer fighting both mental and political tyranny in the form of terrific villains and superstition incarnate. In the rich period setting of the Italian Renaissance, the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith face scheming, swordplay and masked monks as they’re caught in a dark world of intrigue and sorcery…

Doctor Who’s finest season so far is its Fourteenth, a year of dark religion broadcast across 1976 and 1977. It opens with Elisabeth Sladen at the Doctor’s side for the penultimate time of her original run, and this story should feel secretly familiar to you if you’ve been watching her starring in The Sarah Jane Adventures. When BBC4 showed her final story (until all the others) this May, my review of The Hand of Fear included my overview of Season Fourteen and its uncannily echoing themes under producer Philip Hinchcliffe – who wanted to expand the show’s horizons – and lead writer Robert Holmes – who wanted to “frighten the little buggers to death”. The Masque of Mandragora isn’t the season’s height, but it lays out those themes like a declaration of intent, even down to setting itself during the Enlightenment: the leading battlefield is for and within the mind, here championing rationalism against a whopping great metaphor for superstition; characters and societies strive to grow up, with Marco’s fight here to outgrow his uncle mirrored on a grand scale in Mandragora’s desire to keep humanity as superstitious children; and religion underpins the story’s Gothic setting of new and old world despising and deposing one another. After a couple of years of exploring the themes in unfamiliar framings, masses of monks coursing through secret passages in late Medieval Italy made this Doctor Who’s most flagrantly Gothic story so far – only to be topped a couple of stories later as this portion of the series reaches its crescendo… Back in September 2009, Doctor Who Magazine Issue 413 published “The Mighty 200” – 6,700 fans’ votes on all 200ish TV Doctor Who stories to that point – voting The Masque of Mandragora up to number 85. I might put it ten or so places lower, largely because the competent but uninspired director doesn’t quite fulfil its potential, but either way it’s an excellent little story that takes one of the series’ firmest philosophical stands.

While this ‘taster’ may not be short, incidentally, my policy in these is not to be too spoilery, in order than you can read on without fear of finding out too many key twists from the end.

That Golden Moment

“It takes away from Man the only thing worth having… A sense of purpose, what else? The ability granted to every intelligent species to shape its own destiny. Once let Mandragora gain control, and Man’s ambition wouldn’t stretch beyond – beyond the next meal. It’d turn you into sheep. Idle, mindless, useless sheep.”

The story’s most breathtaking moment for me has always been the cliffhanger closing Part Three, offering a memorably scary death, fabulous rolled Rs and a major turning point. But for most of those reasons, it’s too much of a spoiler to describe here. A couple of scenes from Part One spring to mind – the old Duke’s deathbed openly establishing one of the story’s key plots while more subtly setting out the other, the Doctor’s arrival at the court with a warning and quicksilver wit – but it’s a few minutes into Part Four that the Doctor muses on the philosophical battle that’s going to expand into the slightly ungainly finale. The science is a bit uncertain, but Tom’s dynamic, and the philosophy spot-on.

In 1492, “the period between the dark ages of superstition and the dawn of a new reason”, at the court of one of Italy’s most progressive Princes, two gatherings are planned: one, of the greatest scholars of the new sciences looking for that new birth of reason; the other, a bloodthirsty Roman cult aiming to climb out of its long death to hold Earth under its spell. Yes, it’s the battle of the worldviews, each with a champion from the stars – angel or alien, demon or energy force, according to ideological stance. And unlike the Mandragora Helix’s titanic booming voice, the Doctor has a sense of humour, which proves he’s on the right side. Even as he uses a primitive telescope to calculate exactly when the Helix will be in position to make its attempt, even as he asks for the simple tools he’ll need for his last dangerous gamble to draw off its power, even after he grimly tells Sarah Jane exactly what control by this alien force would mean were it to become humanity’s substitute for science… He goes to sleep standing up, steals the scene utterly from the poor discombobulated Prince and replies to his worry about putting off the (besieged) masque with gay abandon:

“You’re going to hold a dance?”

The signal for the attack – or when the stars are right – is to be a total eclipse, foretold as “When Mandragora swallows the Moon…” Though it’s much less vivid now, this story was made only a few years after we had first landed on the Moon, when that was a potent symbol of our reaching outward; Mandragora swallowing it was not just a suitably mystical-sounding way to describe the eclipse, but a metaphor for what it would do to our aspirations. The story’s coda famously predicts that the Helix will be in position to try again five hundred years later – how disheartening that by the end of the Twentieth Century, nobody was going to the Moon any more, and humanity seemed to have lost interest in going anywhere else. Maybe the Helix did come back and succeeded in putting our ambition to sleep after all?

Something Else To Look Out For

Often said to be his favourite story, The Masque of Mandragora feels like producer Philip Hinchcliffe’s manifesto for what the Doctor’s about – he’s an intellectual, and everything about it says so: setting; plot; theme; TARDIS reinvented as wood-panelled study; even the new titles font (the stylish DellaRobbia, named appropriately for an Italian Renaissance artist, becomes the look of the programme’s credits through most of Tom; luckily not the similarly Italian-named Times New Roman, for which I have an irrational dislike). And yet he’s also a swashbuckling adventurer, turning his hand to duelling as easily as engineering, dashing through a crowded market and winding terraces that you might think Italian if you’d never seen The Prisoner, racing along on horseback in exciting stunts that you might think entirely convincing if you’d never seen Tom Baker. And if you want to relaunch the Doctor as a Renaissance man, where better than in the Renaissance? The story isn’t perfect – despite the philosophical power, lush feel and obvious inspiration from The Masque of the Red Death, it lacks some of the bite of the season’s finest stories to come, and of course the edge of the immediately preceding season finale, The Seeds of Doom; but as that story was set on going as far as it possibly could (if not necessarily in the right direction, as I posted in a somewhat overlong reply to TARDIS Eruditorum yesterday) thanks to its thrilling but ultraviolent director, anything would feel like it was pulling back a bit afterwards. So it’s a good job this is moving forward, too.

The new approach is greatly aided by Tom Baker’s performance, carrying off his serious and playful sides with equal assurance as his Doctor comes out of what had almost seemed a year-long sulk. The orange is mightier than the sword; a lion peeps over an altar; he gets to tell Hieronymous, “come off it – drop all that bosh”. He gets a great scene towards the end of Part One, taking responsibility for having taken the Helix to Earth – like Adam, or Prometheus – and trying to warn Count Federico and his court of the terrible danger. That should imply a grimly serious attitude from the Doctor, yet wonderfully as the toadies first wait to see the Count’s reaction, then laugh on cue with their lord, and he’s then presented with the local astrologer to test his credentials, we see the Doctor thinking on his feet – first cheerily convincing, then sharp and sombre when he’s not getting through (“Because you don’t have a future…”), then disgustedly swatting down all Hieronymous’ nonsense just to exercise his wits (“All it requires is a quick imagination and a glib tongue”). And it’s a great scene for Federico, too, in his casual power and ability to size up a character – if not to understand anything that challenges his worldview – even down to rewarding that mocking tongue with that prize so rarely given by villains, prompt execution (and it’s not his fault, of course, that it inevitably fails).

With the Doctor so heavily featured, Sarah Jane’s role is a little more muted than in some stories, though Elisabeth Sladen finds yet another – and perhaps her creepiest – way to play ‘brainwash woman’, as well as all the usual spikiness, exploration and not really taking to being laid out for sacrifice. Pre-empting The End of the World’s definitive Twenty-First Century explanation of how the TARDIS lets its crew understand any language, this story is infamously the one where Bob Holmes decided it was time to say out loud those questions everyone put to him in the BBC canteen, as not only does Federico notice the Doctor’s peculiar clothes but also Sarah Jane – or something else through her – asks how she can speak Italian. It’s rather out of character for Tom’s Doctor (if not Pertwee’s) to object to questions, but he takes this not as a sign of her journalistic inquisitiveness but a dark portent that she’s been hypnotised. Again. Even the TARDIS gets a new start, for both practical (as revealed in the extra features) and aesthetic reasons, with the chutzpah of pretending that its new dusty wooden control room was in fact an old one we’d seen previous Doctors potter about in. It’s an evocative design by Barry Newbery, at once a Sherlockian study and a little chapel (his arched Palace corridors, cleverly theatrical temple effect and simple but inspired way of disguising the Village Town Hall are great bits of design, too). Also of note on the production side, the screaming masks of the Cult of Demnos are very effective, particularly the cruelly opulent design for their leader, though Dudley Simpson’s musical score is a little too reminiscent of several of his earlier contributions (Pyramids of Mars in the sacrifice, The Ark In Space as Sarah Jane’s bewitched), if still with some lovely deep chiming as the Brotherhood plot or spidery percussive music while Sarah Jane’s stalking the Doctor, as well as rather a beautiful arching version of his Doctor’s Theme shortly after they land.

A Gothic Story

Tom Baker’s first three seasons, led by Hinchcliffe and Holmes, are often referred to as “Gothic Horror”; this story, and this first half of Season Fourteen, is the clearest point to get across what’s meant by that (if you have a copy of Doctor Who Magazine 282, you might also read Alan Barnes’ excellent article Tales From the Crypt). Though the Gothic elements start off very early in this three-year period, perhaps disguised by the relative late-coming of dark shadows and travels back to older times, they reach a peak here in dark religion, ancient tunnels and mad monks. Gothic scholars would instantly recognise that this story is all about the Old World versus the New Age with the Renaissance itself at stake, that it cuts a fine line between exploiting the supernatural and explaining it, and that it’s overflowing with the Gothic trappings of Medieval Europe, alchemy, tyranny (even by the wicked uncle of the rightful heir), dungeons, torture, ancient passageways and rituals… Though, ironically, the force of irrationalism is named for a play by that arch-rationalist of the time Niccolò Machiavelli, in one of many crafty references by writer and Renaissance academic Louis Marks (whose earlier Day of the Daleks also explored issues of free will versus determinism).

“You mean they could dominate Earth now through an ancient religion?”

The anti-Catholic excesses of Gothic literature are here, too, if masked – which makes it ironic that I felt it was speaking to me at the time, brought up a good half-Catholic boy and as steeped in religion as this year of Doctor Who, if of a rather more modern sort than hinted at here. Of course, the evil Roman religion through which Mandragora will dominate the world is the “pagan” Cult of Demnos and not any vastly larger and more temporally powerful denomination from that city, but to ask the question ‘Why didn’t Mandragora pick the big one?’ is to realise that it’s less an opponent than a stand-in. It’s not a very opaque attack on organised religion: Federico blatantly has in place of a chaplain his “Court Astrologer” Hieronymous (named for the monkly Catholic preacher who effectively ruled Florence around this time), with a non-speaking ‘proper’ priest seen at the old Duke’s deathbed for approximately seven seconds purely, I suspect, for the producer to establish plausible deniability (the Doctor even hangs a lamp on this later with his “No priest available. Will a brother do?”); the Cult is a Latin-chanting mass of monks; and the leader of the Brethren standing in a pillar of fire from above to lay hands on his followers and pass on the unholy spirit seemed entirely plausible to my half-Baptist side. It’s tempting to believe, too, that ex-monk Tom Baker’s newly fired-up performance had something to do with his seeing exactly the same quality in the script, and understanding it all too well.

The TARDIS landing in the crystal spiral mountains of Mandragora – in the void – amid unearthly sound makes an intriguing start to the story, though if the sound design is more impressive than the visuals, they are at least memorable (and more so than the Mandragora energy on the prowl; the DVD range seemed oddly unwilling to offer alternate CGI for Hinchcliffe’s stories as it did for, say, similarly underwhelming effects on The Time Warrior). Resisting its dizzying hypnotic spell from the first by saying the alphabet backwards seems an appropriate mix of fighting it with learning and turning a catechism upside-down, too. But that’s only the prologue; it’s when we go to Italy that the story really kicks off, in the perfect setting for this battle of ideas.

“You can no more tell the stars than you can tell my chamber-pot!”

It’s all beautifully filmed, with what appears to be a medieval Italian town (and works damned hard to stop you recognising it) and glamorous wooded paths (after rain, suggesting they’re British, with exotic rhododendrons which suggest childhood holidays to me, though admittedly no closer to the Mediterranean than Watford). There are even bustling street scenes! Doctor Who seems to mix rather well with Italy – The Romans and The Fires of Pompeii two thousand years ago, The Vampires of Venice and a bit of City of Death in roughly the same Renaissance period, while even the series’ first historical, Marco Polo, had a Venetian lead character. And though several of those later stories were in fact shot abroad and one even in Italy, this is still the one which for me feels most Italian, with its gorgeous architecture, lavish costumes and a setting that’s right at the heart of the story. Though it’s amusing that the DVD picture’s been cleaned up so perfectly that while Sarah Jane calls it “Nice, warm…” you can also see Tom’s breath steaming. Oddly, only one of the actors makes a stab at an Italian accent, the others ranging from RSC to fearful Cockney.

People usually kick against the aristocracy in Doctor Who, but its casual power is everywhere here without comment, from Count Federico’s chess match to nice Prince Giuliano casually ordering his companion to fetch wine. Only the outsiders the Doctor and Hieronymous fail to defer, and both are nearly killed for it. The court intrigue is very well choreographed, with different guards crossing over each other in a physical symbol of the intercutting political plots. The scene introducing the main characters over a death is especially well-written: the Count enters late for the late Duke, prompting a confrontation between him and his nephew Marco over whether he was “enjoying some sport” which clearly sets up the two rivals for the Dukedom; but while that’s the focal point, other, more important lines from subtly different opposing sides almost toss away what the story’s really about:

“Many do not believe it – but the decrees of Fate will be obeyed. We – have no choice.”

“You’re alone, now, Giuliano. Your uncle is strong and ruthless.”
“You forget, Marco, I am Duke now… We make our own lives, Marco. Not the stars.”

Young Prince Giuliano (Gareth Armstrong) and his “companion” “dear Marco” (the now much more famous Tim Piggott-Smith) are Doctor Who’s first obviously gay couple, though the most suggestive scene is when he’s clearly rather taken with the Doctor at first sight: “A most uncommon spy…” No wonder that Marco spends much of the final episode, even after being broken by torture into awful betrayal, offering jealous put-downs on whatever the Doctor’s doing. And when he exclaims “We have weapons of our own,” his eyes flicker downwards on Giuliano. Really. With the theatrical look of a BBC Shakespeare of the time and the principal actors playing it like that, it’s appropriate that top Shakespearean scholar and Doctor Who DVD text note-writer Martin Wiggins famously compared Giuliano to Hamlet – murdered father, wicked uncle, reluctance to act – with this one stronger in rejecting superstition if generally more wet, and lucky to be in a story where Machiavelli’s Prince can lose (if not exactly by divine intervention), or he’d be deadmeat. Marco’s advice to him throughout is to be more firm – steady! – and ruthless, while the Doctor’s is to “Keep an open mind.” Giuliano has the makings of an enlightened Prince, and is certainly on the right side of the crucial fight here between free will and determinism, but you can’t help feeling that Mandragora and the Doctor turning up was the best thing that could have happened to him. Without them, there’d be Duke Federico.

“If you fail me, Rossini, you shall breakfast on hot coals!”

I loved a good bloodthirsty R-rolling villain as a boy, and I still do today – despite so much fun on offer, Jon Laurimore’s Count Federico steals the show. He’s clearly having a whale of a time from the moment we first see him torching and tormenting the peasants, and he’s not just relishably hissable but one of the series’ most competent villains, only brought down in the end by in effect not realising what sort of story he’s in and that he’s actually irrelevant to the key struggle – things come to a climax where, were this a ‘pure’ historical, he actually wins, and the Doctor would be stuffed. His excellent guard captain, Anthony Carrick, is a sort of henchman in Yes, Minster, too (and here shows how villainous ID cards are by demanding the Doctor’s on peril of his life). Jon Laurimore’s given many of the best lines and does great work with them – Richard sighs fondly when I laugh like a hyena at “Before sunrise, I want to see Giuliano’s liver fed to the dogs!” – but he also has moments of surprising quiet, while his final is not just fear, but awe, a man who finally believes in something.

“You can kill me first.”
“No… But we may kill you afterwards.”

Will We Have Any More Trouble From Mandragora?

There’s a lot more to this story than just the story. The DVD special features are rather fabulous; the novelisation a little flat, but with its moments, and reinvigorated by its audiobook reading; it’s had perhaps as many as five different sequels in different media; and it’s even inspired some rather lovely artwork (most notably Alister Pearson’s gorgeous not-at-all papal reissue book cover, perhaps best presented on John Pettigrew’s DVD and video cover site, as is Mike Little’s less technically accomplished but memorable Tom hemmed in by screaming masks, while on the DVD you can see some striking paintings from the Radio Times in pdf – just don’t look too closely at the masked Cult leader’s glowing crotch on the DVD cover).

The novelisation Doctor Who and the Masque of Mandragora is by producer Philip Hinchcliffe, and while it’s not bad, his writing style doesn’t flow anywhere near as well as Terrance Dicks’, with the scenes and lines trimmed for length making it feel a little sparse. There are a few other changes, of varying effectiveness: the ‘straightening’ of Giuliano; a tensely snapping wire; Hieronymous’ escape employing more thrilling cauldron-dashing; and though the mention of the Pope works vividly for one stream of the story (“The Holy Father himself will kiss my hand for cleansing the state of San Martino” as Federico plots to frame his nephew as a worshipper of Demnos), it works against the other by muddying the waters on religion. Tim Piggot-Smith, though, is a powerful actor, who enlivens the CD reading of the novel with considerable panache and an interesting take on the Doctor, old but deep-voiced and authoritative.

As for the sequels, the promise that Mandragora would return in five hundred years’ time inspired several writers. The first and arguably the most ambitious was Doctor Who Magazine’s comic strip (and graphic novel) The Mark of Mandragora; Big Finish’s Sarah Jane Smith series had the Helix threaded through its whole second series, the most promising and the most disappointing of the sequels (scroll down this article to find my spoilerful explanation of its climax, or anti-climax); the BBC Books novel The Eleventh Tiger matched the Helix, unnamed and anachronistically, against the First Doctor; and most recently, generously name-checking the other three, Gary Russell’s novel Beautiful Chaos brings back the Helix against the Tenth Doctor, Donna and Wilf, and is a particularly good story for the Nobles. Unlike other new series BBC Books (monogamous hetero Captain Jack of The Not-Deviant-At-All Strain, I’m looking at you), but appropriately for the TV original, it’s also got a pair of gayers among all the couples, too. That leaves The Sarah Jane Adventures’ Secrets of the Stars, a rather good TV story first broadcast three years ago, a blatant sequel but with the serial numbers inexplicably filed off. I may be doing him an injustice, but though I can’t trace it I remember some years ago reading its (very talented) author Gareth Roberts snidely asking, “Why would anyone want to watch The Masque of Mandragora?” Well, to get paid for doing an uncredited sequel and a drag comedy feature on it, obviously. Which brings me to the DVD special features.

“I only found out recently that there were other Doctors.”
“We didn’t like to tell you.”

This DVD features a particularly entertaining and informative commentary from Tom (“It was a wonderful time…”) Baker, producer Philip Hinchcliffe and his assistant Chris D’Oyly-John (revealing his favourite Doctor), all thinking it looks very good, and joined by Gareth Armstrong, who Tom now calls “Devastatingly handsome” but who at the time called him and Tim “Gert and Daisy”. Bless him – my favourite moment is when Tom sighs orgiastically as Lis Sladen’s dragged into the temple, then enthuses over how wonderful it is that she now has a series of her own. Though his opinion on HD TV, except for art, or engineering plans, or neurosurgery, is also a treat:

“I was watching something in high definition, and it was so boring, that I just counted the blackheads on the leading man.”

The ‘Making of’, The Secret of the Labyrinth, is rather gorgeous, mainly shot on location in – gasp – it was Portmeirion all the time! Though, in the style of The Prisoner, you’ll soon spot that they didn’t take all of their interviewees there, with some pictured against backgrounds in the studio. It’s one of the best the Doctor Who DVDs have done, helped both by the number and quality of guests from behind and in front of the camera and by the visual style of it all. Gareth Armstrong, for example, now bearded, has aged very well, as well as being incisive; Tim Piggott-Smith still very enthusiastic about how ambitious it all is, disapproving of how young actors today don’t know how to wear a sword, and giggling at how “Tom was very naughty,” especially making him corpse under torture (and, after doing ‘his’ Doctor for the book, gives a very creditable Tom impression); Barry Newbery is great, and I think I’ve worked out that his (cleverly mirrored) detail for Giuliano’s room is taken from Carpaccio’s The Vision of St Augustine; Anthony Carrick has the best stuntman story (while the director remembers cigarettes in their codpieces); but, appropriately, it’s completely stolen by Jon Laurimore:

“It’s an actor’s delight, actually, to get hold of a part like that… Wonderful, wonderful character – he’s the epitome of all everything that’s evil in Renaissance history.”

You can also watch a Now and Then piece if you can’t get enough Portmeirion, and there’s a nice feature on the history and design of the TARDIS, with Tom Baker, designers, writers and kids, and an interesting conflict between them – acerbic writer Robert Shearman thinks “You want to explore Narnia, not the wardrobe”, while Tom and Christopher H. Bidmead want whole worlds inside there; I loved Chris’ idea that “We still haven’t really seen the TARDIS,” but are just working our way towards what the TARDIS might really be. Gareth Roberts’ and Clayton Hickman’s spoof documentary Beneath the Masque divides opinion, but I thought several bits of it were funny (and not least because, like me, they like to quote the sinister Radio Times blurbs from the time. You get all of those here on pdf, too, of course, with an excellent interview with Philip Hinchcliffe promising “science fantasy and romance” for viewers up to 90 and some fabulous pictures). I’m afraid I laughed aloud at the ’80s video compilation, “Valerie Singleton”, “Andrew Pixley” and particularly the map of Wales. But – sorry, Gareth – the best bit’s still Jim Sangster’s “Tricky Action Engels”.

I wonder if it sparks like the Helix?



Update: A week later, I engage with different arguments about this story from TARDIS Eruditorum, in which she’s astoundingly far more biased than I am; by turns ignores, misquotes and misunderstands the text; constantly repeats unfounded assertions with ever more over-the-top name-calling as a substitute for evidence; and as a result misses the point entirely. I make my case in the comments. She sticks her fingers in her ears and re-edits her own post to try and make herself look marginally less daft. I eventually decide to stop, but I suggest you simply watch the programme for yourself and decide by empirical observation rather than magic thinking that ignores the words.

Labels: Books, Comics, Doctor Who, Doctor Who Magazine, DVD, DVD Details, Gay, History, Ideas, Religion, Reviews, Sarah Jane Smith, The Prisoner, Tom Baker

Radio 4’s flagship is the Today Programme – the pips, the self-satisfied presenters, the ludicrous tangents, everything that makes anyone seriously interested in politics wake up shouting at the radio and want to throttle their wireless in the shower. But while today’s Today is being a prime example over the Speaker, there’s more to the station than that. Between 11 and 12 this morning, I’ll be listening to two quite different programmes: The Age of Ming, on the discrimination against Ming Campbell; and On the Outside, It Looked Like An Old-Fashioned Police Box, celebrating Target’s glorious Doctor Who book range.

Yesterday, I know everyone throughout the land was glued to the various forms of BBC news to find out who was going to be the new Speaker – well, a few dozen of us, anyway – and though the last round was in some ways less exciting than the others, an almighty sigh of relief already having gone up that ‘favourite’ Margaret Beckett had polled disastrously lower than predicted and was out of the running, I was still moderately pleased that John Bercow won. As I wrote yesterday, I’m not a big fan of the man… But, given that I was relatively pro three of the possible Speakers (the one I’d probably have voted for first, as predicted, bombed) and dead against six of the candidates, he at least was the one left in the middle that I was wary of but not implacably opposed to, so by default he’d have been my fourth choice.

For once, the aftermath of something in Parliament was more infuriating than the vote itself. Gordon Brown and Call-Me-Dave Cameron both made very House of Commons speeches: amusing in the way that after-dinner speakers who’ve never done it before are, lavishing praise and the odd barb (echoing each other in their nature, too), full of insincerity and the traditional Thing. Nick Clegg, I was relieved to hear, got a frostier reception by choosing not to be ‘a good House of Commons man’, instead focusing entirely not on appealing to MPs’ traditions or hurt feelings and instead on the need for reform – and how Speaker Bercow would have a fight on his hands, because the Commons isn’t naturally inclined that way.

But while the BBC’s online coverage included more from Nick from the other two – because it’s easier to quote something with a point than waffle – naturally the TV news had the other two… But not a word from him, because now they’re no longer bound by election laws of fair coverage, we don’t exist again. Still worse was Nick ‘Mate of Dave’ Robinson, who gave what was even for him an egregiously biased report straight from Conservative Central Office. It was all about how the poor Tories will have trouble with this ‘unknown’ Speaker and he’ll have to work hard to get them to like him. Not a word, as you may have expected, about the key difference between John Bercow and Sir George Young – about a reformer defeating a traditionalist, still less about him doing it by a reasonably large majority across all parties (a majority much bigger than anyone had predicted, suggesting quite a lot of Tories weren’t telling the truth about their votes). And if a Tory Government does come, an independent-minded Tory sounds a pretty good choice for Speaker, rather than a down-the-line well-behaved one, doesn’t it?

This morning’s Today Programme went one better. Not only was Nick ‘Mate of Dave’ Robinson giving it the same old schtick, but the programme’s prime slot just after 8.10 in the morning was given to Nadine Dorries. Nadine Dorries?! The minor Tory MP with a relentless drive for self-publicity, the one who’s always lying, cheating, being found guilty and then lying again that she’s been completely exonerated? The one colloquially known as “Mad Nad”? Yes, for some reason, the BBC thought she was the most important politician in the land this morning, spewing out the unrelenting and embittered poison of a very bad loser, and every time we heard her say “This is a factual statement,” the words ‘Honking great falsehood’ may as well have appeared in neon letters a metre high above our radio (hilariously, she called the election of an independent-minded member of her own party with a record of calling for change being elected instead of an anti-reform Etonian baronet who was deeply culpable in getting Parliament into that mess “sticking two fingers up at the British public”. Ms Dorries, l’État c’est ne pas toi). They didn’t even ask her whether her furious vitriol against Mr Bercow was anything to do with him being the main Tory speaker against her (losing) proposals to slash women’s abortion rights, which you might think would occur to a journalist doing their job. Then, for political balance, they had Alan Duncan – a Tory, half-defending a Tory, against a Tory. Good grief. Followed by Nick ‘Mate of Dave’ Robinson – a Tory, commenting from a Tory briefing on a Tory who was half-defending a Tory against a Tory.

It’s good to know the BBC represent views all across the political spectrums.

Hopefully, then, my faith in the channel will be rekindled at 11 this morning, when Robert Orchard is due to tell “the story of Sir Menzies Campbell’s battle to shake off media claims that he was too old for the job as leader of the Liberal Democrats. Robert asks how far it is acceptable for journalists to poke fun at someone on the grounds of age?” Well, better late than never, I suppose; apparently it takes about a year and a half to produce journalists’ crocodile tears (see the section “Leadership and the Media” in this piece from after the media forced Ming out, and try to ignore the rest). Actually, The Age of Ming might have me shouting at the radio as well…

Thank goodness, then, for something that should be really worth listening to. The Age of Ming is followed at 11.30am by On the Outside it Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box. Here’s what the Radio Times has to say:

“Back in the days before VHS, let alone DVD, the Doctor Who novelisations were the only way a fan could commit the Time Lord’s adventures to memory [mostly right, but have they not heard of nightmares?]. With a child’s big-budget imagination filling in for wobbly sets and monsters, the books became a bestselling phenomenon for publisher Target. Here, Mark Gatiss wallows in some paperback nostalgia as he pays tribute to such authors as Terrance Dicks, Malcolm Hulke and Philip Hinchcliffe [surely Ian Marter] - writers who taught many (thanks to the Who house style) the meaning of the words “capacious”, “crotchety” and “bohemian”, and ended up shaping a whole generation of young readers.”

I learned to read on Target Books, and have written reviews both of whole bunches at a time and individual stories, so I’ll certainly be glued to the set and hoping they don’t make a mess of it. As BBC Audiobooks have now started putting out complete readings on CD – among the best releases so far are Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon, Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars, Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, Anneke Wills’ reading of my first ever book, and the rather lovely three-book boxed set Travels in Time and Space – I hope to hear clips of some of those readings coming up in the programme…


For your other viewing pleasure, you might like to try tuning in to ITV4 today at 10.50am – or 2.55 this afternoon, it’s the same episode – for The Prisoner in Dance of the Dead, arguably the best of the series. In some ways, it’s a good one for beginners; by our reckoning, despite always being broadcast eighth, in the running order that makes the most sense (key word: “most”) it’s the second one. On the other hand, it’s one of the barking mad ones, though some way from the most barking mad (key word…).

Patrick McGoohan is terrific in it, but the show’s stolen by Mary Morris, by a long way my favourite Number 2: small, elfin, but utterly dominant – one of the few who gives the impression she knows what’s actually going on rather than just being a jumped-up prisoner herself. You’ll get brain control, disillusioned spies, spooky cats, flirty maids and washed-up bodies on the beach… Then it gets stranger. The climax involves a change of identity for the body, Number 6 unwittingly adopting his own fancy dress, and a carnival that becomes a court staged as a cabaret, featuring a grotesque twist and ending in mob hysteria. It’s a surreal and high-concept episode, teetering on but not quite yet completely mad. That it’s played with such conviction by such superb actors makes it all rather threatening, and compelling fun. It’s even got music from The Tomb of the Cybermen in it, too.

Labels: Bigotry, Books, British Politics, Conservatives, Doctor Who, History, Nick Clegg, Radio, The Prisoner, The Today Programme

At 11.55 tonight it’s BBC4’s latest episode of The New Avengers: Faces, an impressive adventure that reels you in slowly and really grabs you by the end. It’s the fourth and perhaps the best of The Avengers’ ‘doubles’ stories, going for broke with Steed, Gambit and Purdey all replaced by doppelgängers – or are they? Patrick Macnee and Joanna Lumley in particular are brilliant, and you can also catch Joanna on the iPlayer in The Psychedelic Spy, a drug-soaked, disturbing ’60s-set thriller that’s been playing on BBC7 all week (watch out for spoilers about both if you read on).

“Irreplaceable.”

Doppelgängers were a staple of ’60s and ’70s series whose feet left the ground, especially science fiction or the more outré spy thrillers – and with The Avengers crossing the boundaries between both of those, with comedy, fantasy and more besides, it’s no surprise that the series had a go at the subject more than once. Two’s a Crowd did it as cod le Carré for Mrs Peel (and there’s a touch of it in her Who’s Who??? and Never, Never Say Die, too), while Tara King’s They Keep Killing Steed may just give you a hint as to which character is copied multiple times. The two that try for the most ‘realistic’ approach, however, are the best of them. Back in 1963, Man With Two Shadows pitted Cathy Gale against Steed, both when one of his associates tips her off that he’s a fake and when he’s shown at his most ruthless with the real doubles. More incredibly, Faces relies much further on coincidence, recovering slightly with talk of plastic surgery and a story spread over a five-year time period, but really succeeds in its intercourse between the regulars. There’s also arresting direction, and among three well-characterised villains you’ll find Edward Petherbridge, later to find fame as Lord Peter Wimsey. Oh, and before I go on with my usual spoilertastic analysis, have you got this week’s Radio Times? Ignore what it says. It’s not a spoiler, just almost completely wrong.

“I’d better have a word with him. Pull him back into line.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Hmm. He’ll just have to be replaced, won’t he?”

Like several New Avengers episodes, the opening scene’s set some years – five, it turns out – before most of the rest of the story. Unusually, this is without clearly identifying it as such, and the strong implication’s that the main part of the episode takes place over a period of weeks, if not months. Though neither script nor direction express that as well as they might, it gives the story added weight and credibility, and the director gives it real force. Two tramps see an obviously wealthy man drive past, the spitting image of one of them; after what we infer is a period of studying him, the pre-credits sequence ends with one of the series’ most striking freeze-frames, as the rabbit-poaching tramp shoots an arrow into the wealthy double who’s diving into his own private pool. It may not be a subtle way of killing, but it gets your attention.


I’ll fill in the rest later, having given you a taste; my beloved came in late from work after a hellish journey, so I’ve been ministering to his needs and cooking a big meal in an attempt to revive him. Now I’m a little sleepy on it, so I’ll finish once I’ve had a while to digest. Possibly Monday!

The Psychedelic Spy

And finally, a word on Andrew Rissik’s radio thriller, made in 1990, set very firmly in 1968, and broadcast in five parts this week on BBC7. If you missed it, it’s well worth tuning in on the BBC iPlayer; James Aubrey’s rather good as the lead, but ’60s legends Gerald Harper, Charles Gray and of course Joanna Lumley completely steal it.

I’ve been trying to work out in my head something to say about The Prisoner since Patrick McGoohan died last week – I fear it’s still in a bit of a tangle, but if you want to try unpicking the series yourself, it is of course being repeated twice every Tuesday on ITV4. It’ll only be four episodes in this week (depending on how you count them, which is trickier than it sounds), so the next one up’s as good a place as any to pick it up: Free For All is a relatively early episode, which means it explains some of the set-up, but it’s also the first to go utterly barking mad, so that gives you a flavour of what it can all turn into. This isn’t quite as much of a detour as it reads, as BBC7 has been repeating two of The Prisoner’s cousins. Each weekday morning at 9.30 they’re currently broadcasting Michael Jayston’s superb reading of Rogue Male, a 1930s thriller novel that’s a clear antecedent of Patrick McGoohan’s masterwork – it, too, has a magnificently egocentric lead character, a lone wolf at the top of his brutal profession, who’s trapped, repeatedly trying to escape, and persecuted physically and psychologically by anonymous servants of a mysterious service who want to find the purpose of his attention-grabbing opening action. And, of course, the starting point of The Psychedelic Spy is a top agent who resigns – only for his old bosses to try to bring him back in, sent against his will to a mysterious environment where no-one’s loyalties are entirely clear. With a lot of drugs.

The story is both an effective thriller in itself and a meditation on where the ’60s went sour, aided by a soundtrack including Jimi Hendrix, the Byrds and, most tellingly, the Who; the performances are uniformly excellent, the mood alternately grumpy and despairing, and the twists – all right. Look away to avoid spoilers, remember, as I turn to the outstanding actors. Robert Eddison, Michael Cochrane and Ed Bishop are all excellent as minor characters (particularly, I think, Mr Eddison’s fading old master of secret information), and James Aubrey’s rather good as Billy Hindle, the British secret assassin who wants out because he fears he’s turning into a psychopath. The first episode stars Gerald Harper, formerly Adam Adamant, as his manipulative boss Sir Richard Snark; no, with a name like that he’s not very nice, but he’s awfully good at it. The whole thing really gets going, however, when Hindle flies out to Temptation Island, run by dying charismatic genius Charles Gray and his glamorous wife Joanna Lumley. They are, in short, fantastic.

It feels very much like a ’60s thriller, not just for the stars but its mix of acid music, James Bond, The Prisoner, Callan and le Carré (with a dash of Apocalypse Now), but despite its quality, one aspect disappointed me. I think of women in thrillers being the ’40s and ’50s femmes fatale of film noir, or the powerful figures of the ’80s, or simply being treated much the same as the men since; the fact that my favourite series from the ’60s that can very roughly be described as a spy thriller is The Avengers has, I fear, rather spoiled me for a story like this that, in setting itself firmly in the feel of the time, pushes its women firmly into the background. So I admit I was disappointed as The Psychedelic Spy’s three significant women were one by one revealed to be much less interesting than I’d anticipated. In a very ’60s way, they are essentially pliant victims, and it’s notable that Hindle shags each of them. His rather drippy girlfriend whom he picks up after resigning, Marianne, was so utterly convenient that I assumed she was an enemy (or perhaps British) agent right until she was shot in his arms; I then instantly assumed, correctly, that she’d been the target rather than him, and probably at the order of either his ruthless employer or Joanna Lumley’s Tara (another Avengers name). Joanna’s performance is so magnetic – and, as she gives as good as she gets with Charles Gray and claims to be a very bad person – I assumed that she was an agent in her own right, probably responsible for the dodgy activities her husband’s implicated in. Again, I assumed that right up until the last minute… At which point it became dispiritingly clear that she was only there as unfaithful wife and then widow after all. The third woman in the story is Hindle’s ex, who’s disappeared while investigating Charles Gray’s character – our anti-hero characterises her as an evil, manipulative bitch, so I had high hopes that she’d have survived and be secretly engineering the whole thing. No such luck. It turns out, eventually, that she’s dead after all, leaving her undoubted abilities both of no use to the story and entirely framed by men who didn’t like her. I’d have liked us to meet her, instead.

The close is a little too neat – not happy, you understand, but missing a dash of ambiguity, as if what we hear in the final episode is the truth rather than leaving it likely to be another layer of lies – but still, despite being occasionally predictable and a let-down on some of the non-existent twists involving female characters I’d predicted in hope, it works on the whole. Oh, I’m underselling it now; I liked it. But you might want to listen when you’re on an upper.

Labels: Joanna Lumley, Michael Jayston, Radio, Reviews, Spies, The New Avengers, The Prisoner

Richard has just put on The Andrew Marr Show, and he’s gone out to see David Cameron’s house, because the Tory Leader is now too important to come into the studio. Oh, god, and now it’s royal news. Much as I’m fond of Andrew Marr, and much as I enjoy his Prisoner fanboy opening titles, I’d rather watch almost anything else. Even ITV (well, on Tuesdays, when ITV4 at least is now repeating proper The Prisoner).

Before I go off to the bedroom to read instead, then, links to two online clips for your entertainment, one very funny, one loving.

I’m no huge fan of Microsoft, but I use a PC. And not being hugely technical, I tend to use my computer to type things into and watch things on, for which it’s adequate. I sometimes find Apple tempting because they have rave reviews from some people I know, and look pretty. But I can’t imagine touching a Mac with a bargepole for the foreseeable future. Why? Partly because learning to use a whole new system and worrying about compatibility with my last decade and a bit of PC stuff rates too high on my cantbearsedometer, and partly because of the Mac ad campaign.

No, ‘being just like everybody else’ isn’t a great selling point for me… But ‘excluding everyone else, because I’m part of a superciliously snobbish proselytising cult’ just utterly gets on my wick (and anyway, some of us prefer would prefer David Mitchell, at least if he hadn’t taken all that money from Apple). It gave a brilliant opening to giant corporation Microsoft to advertise the PC as something people-sized that breaks down barriers and lets people talk to each other instead, and that was a poke in the eye Apple fully deserved, the wankers. “Life without walls” is a Liberal message; ‘We are superior beings, so we can look down on 90% of people for being rubbish’ isn’t. Oh, and claiming that PC users are just following the herd when you’ve got massive market dominance in many other technological fields through your many iBrands doesn’t impress me, either.

So thank you, Forceful and Moderate, for this. It made me laugh.

Thanks, also, to the lovely Simon Guerrier for reminding me about this terrific recreation of a Doctor Who trailer from 1968. I’ve heard it before on audio and seen it accompanied by stills, but the CGI recreation of some of Patrick Troughton’s mannerisms is quite uncanny.


PS I love Richard very much, and this is not having a dig at him. It’s having a dig at Andy Marr luvvying up to the even-more-up-himself-than-Apple-with-even-less-reason Mr Cameron.

Labels: Adverts, BBC, Conservatives, Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton, Personal, Technology, The Prisoner

When Gordon Brown’s made such an almightily stupid mess of his tax ‘triumph’, it doesn’t say much for the nous of his backbenchers that even he can hoodwink them. Again. Last year they cheered him when he announced a middle-income tax cut that was going to win them the Election That Never Was. The Liberal Democrats immediately noticed this was paid for by doubling tax on the lowest earners, but Labour MPs took 379 days to spot the problem and mount a very late rebellion when it became obvious it would lose them the Election That Actually Is Next Week. Yesterday ‘rebel leader’ Frank Field, who the likes of the Daily Hate Mail and the Tories always tell us is a genius – bit of a clue there – dropped his rebellion when he was promised compensation for those who’ve lost out… And, to the surprise of brilliant Mr Field and his Labour fellows, it turns out this stupid, spineless shower cheered yesterday without reading the small print. How completely unlike last year, when they, er, cheered without reading the small print.

I thought they were stupid beyond belief for falling for it once. How mind-bogglingly useless do Labour MPs have to be to fall for the same trick all over again?

Prisoners of Stupidity

In half an hour on ITV4 (again at 3, and you can catch episodes on Wednesday evenings at 8, too) there’s another episode of the spy / political / drug-crazed thriller The Prisoner, all set within a mysterious Village full of absurd rituals, where an appearance of democracy is a sham because it’s all fixed behind the scenes, where you’re never sure whether anyone means what they say, and when just when you think you might have got somewhere, you always find yourself back exactly where you started. Oh, and there’s a near-infinite supply of Number Twos. Similarities to the Westminster Village aren’t difficult to come by.

While today’s episode is one of the weaker ones – The General, a very wide-eyed Sixties attempt at satire with a crushingly obvious ending – this time last week they showed perhaps the best of them, the complex, brilliant, mind-bending attempt at breaking down the Prisoner’s self-image by making him The Schizoid Man. By an uncanny coincidence, at exactly the moment that was showing last week, Angela Smith (one of the lowest numbers in the Labour Government) was resigning over the 10p tax rate, having taken just 393 days to do the adding up (you can see why her abilities haven’t propelled her further than the lowest rung, can’t you?). Then, suddenly – in a twist not unlike The Prisoner in one of its more bleedin’ obvious moments – she didn’t. And that’s the difference between the Village and the Westminster Village: the Prisoner is kept there because he stands firm to his principles and won’t cave in; Angela Smith was merely the precursor of all those Labour MPs yesterday who keep their places in the Westminster Village by giving up their principles and caving in at every opportunity, as interrogators pressed The Schizoid Woman: “Why didn’t you resign?”

Mr Brown’s Lies Exposed

Such few principles as Mr Brown clings to boil down essentially to two messages: that he believes work is the morally upright solution to everything; and that he wants to reduce poverty. His doubling the tax rate on the lowest-earning workers gives the lie to both. People who earn the smallest amount and often have to work the hardest to get it have had money taken off them by Mr Brown to give to people on middle incomes. Remember when he raised pensions by just 75p? Once again, his inherent meanness and control-freakery, means that he can’t stand people getting money, still less keeping their own, if he doesn’t think they ‘deserve’ it – and that, like his insulting 75p, he just doesn’t understand that people on less than a tenth of his generous public salary might be a bit narked when he squeezes them for cash.

If you heard any of his pathetic, mealy-mouthed excuse for an interview yesterday, you’ll have heard him trying – disgustingly – to claim that doubling the lowest rate from 10p to 20p* was morally right because it wasn’t the best way of helping the poor. No, Mr Brown, and giving a tax cut to people on middle incomes that’s bigger the better-off you are under about £40,000 was targeted at poverty, was it? Of course not. This shameful steal from the poorest was purely and simply to try and bribe people with their own money in the run-up to an election Mr Brown hoped was coming. But ducked and then lied that he’d never planned one anyone, just as yesterday he backed down in part and then lied that it was in line with what he’d said all along. When what he’d actually said all along was that there were no losers from his tax hike… Which was a flat-out lie.

*Though, of course, Mr Brown still calls what he did “abolishing the 10p rate” as if it was a tax cut rather than a massive tax hike for the lowest-paid. Sorry, but now that shameful piece of spin’s more than a year old, even Labour MPs have finally spotted it’s a lie.

The other point Mr Brown made yesterday was a claim that this was a historic simplification of the tax structure. Aside from the fact that, as I wrote more than a year ago, he’s “simplified” three income tax brackets into either two or three depending on which income you look at – which, as the more agile-brained among you (look away, Labour Members, it’ll make your heads hurt) will know means it’s technically complicated the tax structure rather than simplified it – most of the people he’s talking about don’t have a “simple” tax structure, but an insanely complicated tangle of tax credits designed by Mr Brown himself. And the fact that not everyone he penalised will get any money back is, of course, hidden within this Byzantine edifice.

While Frank Field and his fellow simpletons think that every loser will be compensated, and the compensation backdated, the truth is that the Labour Government has committed to no such thing. The only backdating that Ministers’ve said out loud is a winter fuel allowance-based one-off sum for younger pensioners; and even that means that the people Mr Brown has coshed for their cash may have to wait months and months to get it back, and there’s no assurance that they’ll get the same next year – because, remember, the 10p rate isn’t coming back, so any one-off sum means a rip-off delayed, not abolished. Then there are the young people who suffered from Mr Brown’s smash and grab raid who Mr Brown wants employers to pay for through the minimum wage; well, of course they shouldn’t have been discriminated against for the minimum wage in the first place, but it’s telling that the Labour Government is correcting this not out of principle but as a shabby cover-up – and employers won’t be backdating the higher pay. And then, of course, there are the tax credits, which everyone already knows can take months to work out, are often miscalculated, and then end up clobbering you again to claw it all back, even if you’ve filled out eight thousand forms correctly to get it in the first place.

Here’s an idea: why not just let people keep their money in the first place, rather than fiddle the system with a myriad bureaucratic fixes?

• Because that way Mr Brown wouldn’t be able to claim it wasn’t a climb-down.

• Because if everyone actually got their money it would cost more, as no-one would be left to fall through those carefully crafted cracks that allow the Labour Government to keep the cash that the low-paid might otherwise get.

• And most of all, because Mr Brown likes to dole out the money himself to make it absolutely clear that we’re all working for him.

I thought it was the other way round?

The Conservatives’ crocodile tears for the poor follow the inspiring pattern of first falling for Mr Brown’s sleight of hand tax cut and welcoming it last year, then abstaining on the doubling of the 10p band when it came to a vote, then only in the last few weeks – a whole year later, when suddenly it’s unpopular – saying that it’s a very bad thing but, er, that they wouldn’t do anything about it. Thankfully, after Ming Campbell made it his main line of attack on last year’s Budget while David Cameron was still panting wetly at the thought of lower income tax (without noticing a doubling of income tax on the poor to pay for it), the Liberal Democrats have kept up our opposition to this for so long that not just the dim Tories but even the unfeasibly stupid Labour MPs have now noticed. And Nick Clegg spiked Mr Brown appropriately at yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions – though, as Millennium points out, if he’d had more than two questions Nick would also have been able to expose another shameless whopper from Mr Brown.

In a few days, I’ll post what I think of the Liberal Democrat tax-cutting alternative – and propose another option that has its own problems in ‘selling’, but would benefit lower earners more while still giving tax cuts to people on middle incomes. In the meantime, if you think I’ve been a little harsh in mocking the spineless, stupid Labour wastes of space, you might like to read what Liberal Democrat Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Jeremy Browne said in the House of Commons the other day. He’s not as gentle as I am.

Finally, an apology. Having exposed many of the ways in which Mr Brown has been deliberately attempting to deceive people, it’s only fair that I come clean and admit that my headline is also a big fat lie. No, while Labour MPs are indeed the stupidest in the world, for that very reason they’ve not yet twigged that they’ve been conned again – I just thought the headline had more impact that way. As to when they’ll actually work out that Mr Brown’s “compensation” won’t reach everybody, won’t be backdated to everyone it reaches, and won’t give the full amount they’ve lost even to everyone for whom it’s backdated… My best advice is to set your calendars for 378 days.

Labels: British Politics, Labour, Tax, The Golden Dozen, The Prisoner