* The Great British Write Off

Whilst spiderkid was proposing the Great British Write Off, I was co-incidentally in the middle of writing a review on an instalment of "Doctor Who" which is British TV's longest and most fondly remembered sci-fi TV show. Not just any old instalment but an adventure which draws heavily on British folklore, namely the Arthurian legends of 8th century England.

* The Story

In 1989, Doctor Who enjoyed its last season on TV before being cancelled by the BBC. That season began with this story, where in one of the last of the TARDIS's voyages through time and space, the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace arrive on Earth in the Carbury area in the 1990s. At first all is peaceful in this countryside of historical heritage, but soon the area is being invaded by trans-dimensional warriors. It seems that the chivalrous warriors, knights and sorcerers of Arthurian legend have returned to Earth after a millenia of trans-dimensional exhile to fight for the Excalibur sword once more. As Merlin and his bodyguard Ancelyn protect the Excalibur sword and ward off the evil forces of the sorceress Morgaine and her dark knights, led by her bloodthirsty son Mordred, a genocidal chaos demon known as The Destroyer is summoned, threatening to kill all life on Earth.


* The Writing Style

This was another story by Ben Aaronovitch, one of Doctor Who's best script-writers (see my Remembrance of the Daleks review here), and he crafts some of the best moments in the series. As a "Doctor Who" story, "Battlefield" falls in the realm of light entertainment, alongside such stories as "The Three Doctors" and "Carnival of Monsters". That's to say its like bitesize theatre, with little chunks of intelligence, little chunks of tension and menace, but mostly just a clean, fun adventure for the family as opposed to some of the more dark, violent and deep Doctor Who adventures such as "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" or "Inferno". Certainly as an 11 year old child watching this repeated back in 1993, it was a hell of a lot less traumatic than watching "Genesis of the Daleks" the month before, and it was wonderful and reassuring how the series could go back and forth through the dark and the light- it suggested hope and highlighted the continual existence of the positive.

It was a common theme for Doctor Who to try and use aliens and time travel to explain common myths and legends and phenomenon in a child friendly way. Throughout the 60's 70's and 80's, it had explained everything from the Marie Celeste story and extinction of the Dinosaurs, to the Abominable Snowmen and the Loch Ness Monster. There was something shameless and fun about how the series would give its own take on such legends and not really care if the audience took it seriously or not. We actually are encouraged as mature viewers to share in the imagination of the idea the knights of Arthurian Legend still existing as trans-dimensional beings, with magical powers that can destroy entire worlds.

Ace shares our scepticism of the existence of forces of magic in the world of "Doctor Who" which, like all science fiction is supposed to rely on advanced, but ultimately rational science.

The Doctor: "Magic!"

Ace: "Oh be feasible Professor."

Doctor: "What is Clark's law?"

Ace: "Well any advanced form of technology is indistinguishable from magic"

Doctor: "Well the reverse is true."

Ace: "Any advanced form of magic is indistinguishable from technology?"

* The Good Guys

The view of the lives of people in the Carbury village is a lovely touch to the serial, as the Doctor and Ace befriend arcaeologists Peter Warmsley and Shou Yung who are excavating near Vorticon's lake (which legend has it was where the Excalibur sword was cast away in the Legends of King Arthur). But a military convoy carrying a nuclear missile have broken down next to the lake, and the archaeologists are naturally very angry about the presence of nuclear weapons in the countryside. Peter Warmsly is very romantic about the legend of Arthur and the notions of chivalry and honour in battle and is disgusted at the current situation of Cold War and how it goes against every honourable tradition of battle.

The Doctor describes the Cold War period with dialogue straight from a novelist's pen. "All over the world fools are poised ready to let death fly!.. Not a war between armies or a war between nations, but just death gone mad! Is this honour?" and he can't have said it any better or any less cliched than that- the type of dialogue you remember for years. For me it is better than seeing actual images of nuclear apocalypse in 80's films like "Threads" or "Terminator", because the words themselves paint a picture but contain it to a possibility for man rather than a fate and it galvanises hope that it doesn't have to be that way. I really wish this story and others like it were reshown or given another spin in today's world because it is more potent than ever- as a world of people we are very much throwing away the salvation that the Ending of the Cold War gave us, we're throwing away the chance we were given by fate to survive as a species, by warmongering over religion and revenge.

It is through the military presence that the Doctor is reunited with Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart. During the 70's the series had seen the Doctor briefly marooned on 20th century Earth, during which Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart was the head of U.N.I.T. (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), a covert military group to deal with the paranormal and prepare for the threat of alien invasion and during this time the Doctor became UNIT's scientific advisor. The Brigadier is now retired, but since the Doctor has aroused the suspicion of the soldiers in Carbury, the Brigadier agrees to be re-enlisted and goes off to fight once more.

It is certainly a treat to see the Brigadier returning, as are the lovely continuity references- one of the Doctor's gimmicks for getting past military security is to reuse his old U.N.I.T. ID cards, though Ace is concerned that she doesn't even look like the woman on the card- Liz Shaw. The Brigadier pulls out Bessie -the Doctor's beloved car- out of the mothballs, completely renivated and he gives a lowdown of his weapons stock, describing titanium bullets that can "go through a Dalek" and gold glitter guns for Cybermen. Also when Morgaine meets the Brigadier, she describes him as "Steeped in blood"- very probably a reference to the Brigadier's act of genocide against the Silurians.

The Doctor bravely rises to the occasion of being the hero- he will go to any length and any extreme to save our world from Morgaine's forces and the Destroyer and man's own foolishness. But he will not kill in cold blood- and back in the 80's, at a time when cinema was full of Mad Maxes, Dirty Harries and Robocops, it was something special and comforting to have a hero who would uphold the moral high ground. And yet the Seventh Doctor did have rough and sinister edges, since the writers wanted to recreate the sense of mystery about the Doctor that had been lost over time as so much had been revealed about the character's past and origins.

In one scene at the beginning of the story, before Morgaine's knights even appear on the scene, one of the UNIT soldiers describes how he anticipates danger and whispers to his fellow soldier "Whenever this Doctor person arrives.... all hell breaks loose!" Coincidence? Make up your own mind.

Later on the Doctor breaks up a quarrel between the soldiers and the uncooperative residents who refuse to be evacuated, and uses an alien method of telepathic mind control to ensure the people's co-operation. The Doctor even speculates about his future self possibly having a presence in Earth's past as he finds one of the ancient artefacts dug up by Peter Warmsly has engraved words written in his own handwriting.


* The Bad Guys

The story also romanticises heavily on the Arthurian knights own codes of honour and chivalry. Jean Marsh plays Morgaine in much the same way as she played other Nomadic Witch characters in the 80's fantasy films "Return to Oz" and "Willow". She has the power to hypnotise, to conjure lightning to bring down aircraft or burn people to a cinder, she can stop bullets in their tracks and crumble them to dust, and just by touching someone she can either heal or kill them.

Morgaine has flashes of nobility about her which separates her from Jean Marsh's other witch roles. She isn't totally evil, and to me she is one of Doctor Who's most interesting villains, along the ranks of Davros and Sharaz Jek. She respects a good foe and when putting a victim to death she treats them in an almost motherly way. Part of the reason the story and characters are able to develop at a slow pace with long breaks in the action (allowing us to appreciate the countryside scenery as well as the characters) is that Morgaine discovers a graveyard and World War Memorial stone and holds a cease fire as she holds her own sincere remembrance service, and she also scolds her warrior son Mordred.

Morgaine: "You fought on their land without proper respect for their dead! You have dishonoured us Mordred! What is victory without honour?"

And for me that's the key to her villainy which truly says something about the human condition- her notions of honour give her a sense of being right and having the right to kill for what's right. When you have notions of honourable death, desireable death, justified death- all these euphemisms giving permission to kill- then life becomes cheap and disposable and constantly judged for its worth. When a piece of TV or film makes you think this way, you know its something rare and special- something liberal enough to give you credit for being a free thinker who doesn't see the world in black and white or dogmatic morality and has every right not to, as opposed to hundreds of pieces of morally brainwashing media.

Her son, Mordred is a bloodthirsty warrior who occasionally stops in his war path to have himself a beer or charm the local women. His sense of humour and his pride makes him a delight to watch as he spits insults to everyone who crosses his path to provoke them to fight him. His dialogue is just right, almost from the Shakespearean school of classy insults. The type of put downs and flirtatious come-ons that elevate and define his character rather than bog it down to sleazy stereotype bad guy, except for just one embarrassing scene where Mordred tries his hand at doing some evil laughing, and its funny for all the wrong reasons.

Our other major villain is the Destroyer- a creature who's whole philosophy is destruction, rather like Sutekh in the story "Pyramids of Mars" killing for him is not his means but his ends, and he is manipulative and is wonderful in confrontations. Unfortunately he only appears in the second half of the story and is underused rather badly which is a shame because he was one of Doctor Who's better designed monsters. Whilst he is on screen however he does fulfil the role of being a metaphor for the threat of nuclear annihilation- he is the grotesque nihilism of Mutually Assured Destruction, a power waiting to be unleashed by its own creators. Like giving consciousness to a missile in a silo to the point where the missile actually wants to fly with liberation and hit its target and can actually persuade its creator to launch him. And it reveals the sad fact that Mutually Assured Deterrent cannot be guaranteed- I mean the governments of the world don't stockpile so many weapons of mass destruction simply for the sake of 'bluffing' do they?

* The Action

One source of fan complaints about this story is its action scenes, and it is true that the sword fights are very amateurly done and hardly fool the viewer into believing that these are master swordsmen who've been in battles to the death before, it is also true that the laser weapons and explosives that the knights use literally have the effect of throwing cheap fireworks at each other, which isn't really excuseable since the BBC were perfectly capable of using proper explosives by this time. It is also true that the incidental music to many of these action scenes is rather twee and intrusive rather than heightening to the drama. I would describe these faults however as not terribly noticeable- they're just unremarkable special effects for a Doctor Who story, rather than actually embarrassing ones and to be honest they do give a nice sense of action lite to the story. Certainly I can see why Doctor Who fans were disappointed because it was the first return to a UNIT story in over a decade and I can imagine fans were expecting really spectacular UNIT action scenes in the vein of the old 70's stories like "Spearhead from Space" or "The Mind of Evil".

But in any case even if the action itself falls flat, for me the confrontations, standoffs and verbal spars themselves are grand enough to make up for it- with stronger, more disciplined music, great acting, great dialogue and insults and mind games and bluffs, every such scene is brilliant.

As the UNIT soldiers and Morgaine's forces open fire at each other dangerously close to the Nuclear Missile, Merlin runs into the very centre of the battlefield and shouts "Stop! I command you! There will be no battle here!"

Ace and Shou Yung use a chalk circle to protect themselves from Morgaine's sorcery, but whilst in the circle, Ace and Shou Yung fall victim to Morgaine's mind control which sets the two friends at each other's throats to try and drive each other out of the circle's protection.

And then of course is the confrontation between the Brigadier and the Destroyer.

Destroyer: "Ah! Little man! What do you want of me?"

Brigadier: "Get off my world"

Destroyer: "Pitiful! Can this world do no better than you as its champion?"

Brigadier: "Probably.... I just do the best I can"

* British T.V..... Then and Now

For me this story is brilliant- completely watchable and rewatchable with hardly a single wasted moment, and I think it wouldn't look out of place being repeated on TV today in light of the recent crop of similar themed films like "King Arthur" and "Farrenheight 9/11". It was quality Doctor Who and its not even one of Sylvester McCoy's best stories. Unfortunately back in 1989, quality Doctor Who came too late as many fans had become disillusioned with the series after a long period in the mid-80's of poor quality Doctor Who stories which veered between embarrassing and downright repulsive in following the grotesque cinematic trend of the time for gratuitous violence (but even during then, there were still little diamonds in the rough). Viewing figures for the episodes were dropping and the series was axed that same year, just as it was getting great again.

Judging by the quality of the 90's series of New Adventures Novels, which continued the travels of the Seventh Doctor and Ace, the TV series could have gone on to even greater things if it hadn't been cut off. The series has now, 15 years later been promised a revival and though as a fan, I hope for the return of Doctor Who, I doubt that a 15 year break in the series' momentum can be bridged.

I also doubt that Doctor Who could be the same in today's British media climate which has lost the importance of intelligent liberal Television for the people (as an antidote to the media's heavily conservative and repressive side), ironically this is because of liberal TV's very own abundance in today's excesses of Reality TV and Sex Scandal Documentaries which have denigrated liberal TV to something totally banal. You could call it "Car Crash Television".

That's a rather sad note to end the write-off on I know, but still this video is well recommended (It is not yet on DVD) even if you've never seen a Doctor Who episode before- it will probably convert you.

Recommended suitable for family viewing with Parental Guidance. Contains mild violence which may upset younger viewers.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12