“Doctor Who” at the time of 1974 was about to go under new management, with Jon Pertwee, the Third Doctor, having recently left the programme after playing the main role in the show for five years, along with the shows current producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks. There came a new team in the form of a new doctor played by the charismatic Tom Baker and new producer Phillip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes. Together the team which was formed of Holmes and Hinchcliffe started off the Tom Baker era and focused their stories on classic Gothic Horror stories with a science fiction twist. (Newman. K 2005)
Before 1974, viewers of “Doctor Who” had been to a nourishing diet of earth-based adventures throughout Jon Pertwee’s era, with the doctor, his companions and the ever-reliable UNIT troops lead by Brigadier Alasdair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart to whom would clash with the doctor on many views of things to do with how certain things should be dealt with such as alien invasions. Throughout the Third Doctor’s era, the doctor had been exiled to earth by his own race “The Time Lords” as punishment for stealing a “TARDIS” and part of that punishment, they also changed his face as well as limiting his ability to travel in space and time. The decision to exile the Doctor to earth came from the Barry Letts’s predecessors Derrick Sherwin and Peter Bryant. For the majority of the third doctor era, it was all about Letts and Dicks working out between them how they could get the Doctor out of this predicament and get him back traveling in space in the TARDIS again. Something, which took them three years to do.
By the time Seasons Twelve, Thirteen and Fourteen came along, the verity of stories had a tougher, more genre-focused approach. They contained some of the most interesting and dynamic ranges of storytelling in Doctor Who’s long history which had a lot of influences from horror such as “Frankenstein”, “The Day of the Triffids” and “The Masque of the Red Death” to name a few examples. The show was moody, melodramatic, uninhibited, held together by safety pins and getting away with murder. Every week, between ten and thirteen million viewers were tuning to watch Tom Baker traveling the cosmos, doing battle with Zygons, robot Mummies and, creepy Castrians. To a generation of children, he was a hero. And to a generation of BBC schedulers, he was a hit.
But not everybody was happy. A small but vocal minority was very unhappy. For several years, the BBC had found itself under the watchful eye of a Christian pressure group that called itself, the National Viewers and Listeners Association. Its celebrated spokeswoman, Mary Whitehouse, strongly disapproved of anything she considered to be unsuitable for broadcast.
(I. Leitch. G 2013 p.150) This led to some controversy. There were complaints about the content being too frightening for children and levels of horror and violence being too high. It could be argued that this violence was more implied than shown, but complaints continued. Most famously, Mary Whitehouse publically complained to the BBC several times about Doctor Who. Based on this and many other complaints, producer Phillip Hinchcliffe was sacked in 1977. The new producer, Graham Williams, phased out of Gothic Horror themes and changed the focus to light humour and comedy, which did not always work.
Whitehouse was notoriously known for making formal complaints to the BBC about Doctor Who’s violence during the mid 1970’s. Her most famous complaint came in 1976. The scene that really tipped the scales came at the end of the third episode of “The Deadly Assassin” which transmitted that November, where there is a freeze frame going into the credits of the doctor’s head underwater being drowned in water. Whitehouse’s comments about this were that “My personal reaction to the sight of the Doctor being viciously throttled underwater is unimportant. What’s important is the effect of such material – especially in a modern setting – upon the very young children still likely to be watching. Strangulation – by hand, by claw, by obscene vegetable matter – is the latest gimmick, sufficiently close-up so that they get the point. And, just for a little variety, show the children how to make a Molotov cocktail.” (Whitehouse. M. 1976) This prompted Whitehouse to write a furious letter to producer Hinchcliffe. Mrs Whitehouse was used to having her complaints ignored by the BBC. But on this occasion she got results. From the next story onwards, Doctor Who was rescheduled for transmission at 6:20pm, the latest regular slot it had ever occupied. And it was amid this atmosphere that the programme begun to undergo one of its periodic cabinet reshuffles.
“To recount the call from the mother of a six year old boy who had been terrified by the headless creature in “The Brain of Morbius” and he woke up screaming every night…’ Well, I was a little boy of six in early 1976, and my mother definitely didn’t telephone Mrs Whitehouse to complain about the headless creature in “The Brain of Morbius”. Because I’d been losing sleep over the Mummies from “Pyramids of Mars”, besides, we didn’t have a phone.” (Barnes. A – Doctor Who Magazine Issue 508 p60 2017)
During Hinchcliffe’s period, the genre influences were clearly evident. Most important of these was gothic. Gothic is a tradition in English Literature and in film. Its characteristics include haunted castles on stormy cliff tops, horrific monsters such as Vampires, Werewolves and Demons, blood, people dying in a horrific way, backgrounds such as a dark wood for example. These are places set with dark undertones to them to give off the sense of a chilling and unsettling atmosphere. Frank Collin’s insightful five-part blog on Season Thirteen entitled “Gothic Who” talks about themes and influences made on the programme. In Part Three of the blog, Pyramid Power, he talks about the mid point of Season Thirteen “Pyramids of Mars” and describes the setting:
“Season 13, with its surface narratives full of castles, threatening jungles, monsters and mummies, linked directly into the contemporary popularisation of the form as well as a British televisual legacy that had already explored the same genre tropes.” (Collins. F. 2010)
This shows how deliberate the gothic references were.
Gothic films influenced the Doctor Who Series. The Hollywood film of “Frankenstein” directed by James Whale in 1931 and “The Curse of Frankenstein” directed by Terence Fisher in 1956 were key influences behind the ideas that went into Robin Bland’s “The Brain of Morbius”. Just as Roger Corman’s Horror/ Drama “The Masque of the Red Death” was Phillip Hinchcliffe’s main inspiration behind the story that eventually became “The Masque of Mandragora” by Louis Marks.
“Having the Doctor positioned within the Gothic and the Byronic subtext of the wandering hero, he (Hinchcliffe) also helped to demarcate and then repeat an underlying theme of the Gothic - the destabilising paranoia that threatens to reveal and perplex, via the use of the supernatural or the fantastic, social and "natural" distinctions concerning masculinity and male sexuality to produce multiple, often contradictory, identifications.” (Collins. F. 2010)
Tom Baker could portray the character of the Doctor, to be solemn and serious as well as eccentric and humorous. In “The Face of Evil”, when part of his personality is linked with a computer, he is transformed into a figure of power and evil. He is treated like a god and his image becomes frightening, his face is like Mount Rushmore and carved into a cliff. There is a scene at the end of the second episode where two of the Sevateem are out in the jungle and Tomas fires on Xoanon's projected face whilst Andor is being crushed. It is a very frightening moment because the face of the doctor is an image of which audience members did not realise could be so frightening. It begs the question of the Doctor himself being a frighten factor. Tom Baker could be terrifying when he was angry, he tended to shout and project his voice and that, in itself is quite shocking. Turning the lead character into something frightening, or making your lead character do something, which is very frightening, taps into that threat of the positive, the familiar figure, perhaps the parent figure, someone that you can trust letting you down.
Director Rodney Bennett directed three very different productions during the early Tom Baker years and was one of the directors who put a foundations edge to the era and recoginsed the change it was going through. “The Ark in Space (1975) – Bennett’s first credit on Doctor Who – marked a sea change for the series. The new emphasis – which was a psychological horror and plausible, hard – edged science fiction found an ideal home amidst the stark, clinical environment of the suspended animation repository of Earth’s last survivors.” (Hadoke, T. – Doctor Who Magazine Issue 509 p62 2017)Bennett was also good at capturing the scale of environments, making them speak volumes in terms of eeriness. When he directed “The Sontaran Experiment” (1975) he produced a mysterious and gloomy, paranoid atmosphere through the use of wide, open spaces full of rocks, cliff tops and hidden threats. It was shot all on location with lightweight video cameras. He had the skill of showing the scary side of an environment around him – “Despite the loss of film’s moody texture, there’s still a lot of atmosphere in the production. Largely thanks to Bennett’s handling of the bleak Dartmoor landscape.” (Hadoke, T. – Doctor Who Magazine Issue 509 p62 2017)
Bennett’s last Doctor Who he worked on, as director was the Season Fourteen opener “The Masque of Mandragora” (1976) a pseudo-historical story. A period piece set in the past, but also including sci-fi elements in it. The story was filmed on location in the Welsh village of Portmeirion, doubling for Renaissance Italy and which looks very much like the location in which it is set in. As the title suggests, this is inspired by “The Masque of the Red Death” (1964) starring Vincent Price, which was also set in this period.
It was a story, which Hinchcliffe was very keen on approaching. “I’d seen this movie, I just happened to catch it on the telly, Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death and I thought, “Oh, you know, that would be wonderful to take Doctor Who into that historical period. Sort of Machiavellian Italy.”
(Hinchcliffe, P 2010)
It was a story about the renaissance, coming out of the dark ages, and the new science. “The Cult of Demnos in this story provides the Gothic element, creating the dark magic from the old film by kidnapping Sarah Jane Smith and having her sacrificed to their noble course, the dark, gloomy catacombs give off a sinister backdrop to the surrounding environment. “I don’t know who came up with idea of an underground cult, it might have been Louis, it might have been Bob, But once we got that element, all the other stuff about, you know, the despotic dukes, and the infighting and all the poisoning and skullduggery, I mean, that was all ready to hand. You sort of knew that the props of that Machiavellian era gave you all those characters.”
(Hinchcliffe, P 2010)
Other bleak settings are the scenes in the palace dungeons where the Doctor, Sarah Jane, Giuliano, and Marco are held captive by Count Federico, the atmosphere in that dungeon looks very unpleasant, cold, and unhealthy, not to mention the mask which the character Hieronymous wears when he is the leader of the brethren, his overall look gives off a garish and in some cases frightening appeal to younger viewers watching at the time of broadcast. In the story there is also talk of horoscopes and the prediction of characters deaths such as “Giuliano”.
Given the show’s high viewing figures in the mid 1970’s, it took a surprisingly long time for critics to come round to Tom Baker’s portrayal of the Doctor.
It was not until Baker’s second series began that consistently positive reviews started appearing. The Daily Telegraph’s Sean Day Lewis was watching “Terror of the Zygons” when he noticed. “My children have come to like the Tom Baker version of Doctor Who, consider him quite as clever as his predecessors and much funnier. He further enhanced his reputation this time by appearing in the insignia of Bay City Rollers supporter.” (Day Lewis S, Daily Telegraph 1975). “Terror of the Zygons” (1975) was set in the village of Tulloch Moor in Scotland and employed a sinister castle, “Forgill’s home is the ‘secret’ at the heart of the narrative, symbolising one of the functions of the Gothic narrative, the reveal of the uncanny as well as that ubiquitous Gothic trope - the discovery of the secret passage - with this one leading into the fleshy environs of the Zygon spaceship.” (Collins. F. 2010)
The story was also their take on the Loch Ness Monster legend. Doctor Who Magazine interviewed Robert Banks Stewart, writer of two of the stories in the series, in January 2012. In the interview he talked about the concept behind coming up with Terror of the Zygons and said, “I came up with a story called The Secret of Loch Ness” (Banks Stewart, R – Doctor Who Magazine Issue 443 p18 2012). The idea of doing a Loch Ness Monster story was what Banks Stewart described as being ‘a sitting duck’ for a Doctor Who.
The Zygons themselves are half embryo, half octipodial sucker textured creatures, with a sinister whispering voice. They are sinister in their ability to shape-shift and take body prints of local people and use their body print to morph into that person. This is similar to the science fiction film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1964) directed by Don Siegel and as such combines the gothic atmosphere with science fiction elements. “The Influence of motifs from nineteenth century popular literature can be seen as a conscious attempt to reposition Doctor Who in relation to the tradition of ‘science fiction romance’ that preceded science fiction.” – (Chapmen. J p.107 2013)
The cliffhanger to the end of Part One is most effective when a Zygon creeps up from behind Sarah Jane. There is a good dramatic build-up to when you see the monster. It is everything a child could want from the first episode of a new season of Doctor Who, especially the scene where a Zygon disguised a Harry Sullivan one of the protagonists, attacks Sarah Jane in the barn with a pitchfork. It is quite menacing and shocking that Harry wants to do harm to Sarah. The Skarasen, The Zygons pet, a part cyborg, part living beast that lurks within the waters of Loch Ness and was the object of the “Loch Ness Monster” element to the story.
Something else, which Doctor Who often deals with, is the idea of possession, which can also be a Gothic convention. For instance the Master turns-up every few stories and hypnotizes people, there are aliens from other planets taking over other people’s minds. Possession in the sense of how frightening it is to change and identity was something which Hinchcliffe and Holmes were specifically keen on and in a few of their stories this is shown where characters minds and or bodies are taken over. In “Planet of Evil”, Sorenson is possessed by the Anti Matter and becomes infected the overall effect of this is similar to the narrative of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s “Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde” particularly when he struggles to fight against his infection, In “Pyramids of Mars” Marcus Scarman gets taken over by Sutekh and becomes a zombified puppet of Sutekh as if he has no control of his body anymore.
Harrison Chase in “The Seeds of Doom” becomes infected by the Krynoid in the sense that he becomes at one with the creature and his mind becomes susceptible to its power.
Terry Nation’s “The Android Invasion” which came mid way through the second season of Tom Baker’s era of stories sees The Doctor and Sarah Jane trying to foil the plans of an invasion of earth from a race of aliens known as “The Kraals” set in a quiet village of Devesham which provided a contemporary earth setting as well as a sinister background to the story. The story does not feature as heavy gothic themes and influences as much as other stories in the season do, but it is in some ways relatable to “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” in terms of people being replaced by android copies, which are instruments in a plan to an invasion to take over the earth. (Levy.E 2006) A sinister moment comes at the end of Part Two where the Sarah Jane android roles over onto the ground and her face rolls off to reveal the true android mechanisms. The android of Sarah Jane the companion exemplifies the change of identity. Incidentally the scene where the doctor is captured and being interrogated and tortured by Styggron relates back to some of the Gothic methods of the 1800’s. (TSS Senior Library 2011.)
Season Thirteen came to an end in early 1976, with “The Seeds of Doom”. In uncharacteristically alarmist mood on the 2nd February, Sylvia Clayton of the Daily Telegraph warned viewers “The nature of horror, of what causes audience gooseflesh, was illustrated vividly in “The Seeds of Doom”, Saturday’s new adventure of Doctor Who, in which the largest menace was a poisonous vegetable from outer space. Whether children are scared by it all will depend, I suppose, on how much faith they have in the invincibility of Doctor Who, Tom Baker. I wish that he would not dress as if he had just bought his clothes at an Oxfam jumble sale, and I prefer the deceive logic of Mr Spock, but I respect his ability to deal with mad botanists and any amount of intergalactic asparagus.” (Clayton, S. Daily Telegraph 1976).
The themes presented within this story become very similar to the works of John Wyndham’s “Day of the Triffids” with there being similarities comparing the Krynoids to the Triffids. With the Krynoids getting hold of plant life and their wanting to wreak their revenge on animal life, including humans, it is in no way a copy, but the similarity is created from both alien life forms being plant life. Horrific and violent moments from the story include showings of characters being strangled to death by plant vines and the scenes of the unfortunate victims Winlett and Keeler are transformed into the Krynoid monster.
Doctor Who’s continued suitability for children had been the subject of increased debate since the late 1960’s. In 1977, Jean Rook, the first lady of Fleet Street, launched a venomous attack on the production team’s morals. “What has gone wrong with the innocent teatime thrill of watching Dr Who?” she asked in the Daily Express on the 11th February. “Where I have gone wrong, and the time switch to a later 6:20pm should have warned me, is in not realising that Doctor Who is no longer suitable for children. And that it has grown out of a rubber monster show into a full scaly unknown horror programme. Compared with it, an old Hammer movie wouldn’t crack toffee.” - (Rook, J. Daily Express 1977).
“The Robots of Death” (1977) was influenced by popular English/ science fiction literature such as the works of Agatha Christie, Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert. It was about Robots on a sandminer brutally murdering the crewmembers by strangulation and taping into the idea that Hinchcliffe had of exploring the background of robotics such as Asimov’s first law. Having that idea in hand, the story also taps into a thrilling murder mystery in space storyline and the idea of characters being trapped within confined spaces and being cornered from all directions. The murder plotline owes a great deal to Agatha Christie; notably And Then There Were None and The Mousetrap being the most noticeable examples. The treatment of Robotics in this story has many initial nods to Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.
The Art Deco style of the sandminer and the costumes gives the whole story a finesse of a luxurious theme of sophistication and decadence and implies in what director Michael E Briant intended it to be “In the not so distant future, life is going to become more luxurious and grand.” (E. Briant, M 2012)
The look of the robots themselves matches this theme, they look quite plain in expression and appearance, which also makes them look creepy, when their eyes turn red, that signifies a sign of danger.
A horrific moment in the story is when one of the characters “Poul” is in the engineering room and he discovers a broken voc robot with its right hand is covered in blood, upon the shock of seeing such a horrific sight this leads him to having a nervous breakdown because he has a case of Robophobia which is an initial fear of Robots. This scene showed new signs of gore in Doctor Who, which had never seen before; such an effect was quite graphic to be seen on television for what was termed “a Saturday tea-time show”. It goes back to the deliberate decision of Holmes and Hinchcliffe wanting to push the show in a new direction and wanting to do a show that was more relatable to adult audiences.
Holmes and Hinchcliffe’s final story as the head production team was “The Talons of Weng Chiang” written by Holmes and closed the fourteenth season of Doctor Who and was broadcasted between February and April of 1977. It was set in the fogbound streets of Victorian London and provided many references to gothic styles and English literature such as “Phantom of the Opera”, “The Man in the Iron Mask”, “Pygmalion”, and “Sherlock Holmes” with the Doctor being dressed like the dynamic Conan Doyle detective and has the objective of teaching his companion Leela, who is a savage, how to adapt to the London society and culture just as Professor Henry Higgins does to Eliza Dolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion”.
The Phantom of the Opera references come from a masked figure skulking the palace theatre in the darkness of the night and has a secret lair from underneath the theatre. This much is evident when the doctor chases the masked figure through the theatre and the character vanishes in mysterious circumstances.
Other elements of Horror and violence include a giant rat, which skulks in London’s big dark sewers and attacks the doctor’s companion Leela, a horrible Chinese puppet that comes to life and comes at Leela with a small sharp dagger.
The Holmes and Hinchcliffe era came in after a very successful era from the Jon Pertwee years and improved upon it by producing a more gripping, creative and imaginative style of storytelling and making a dramatic change on the show which specifically focused on Horror style stories with genre twists.
Never before had an era of Doctor Who’s history purely focused on the Gothic conventions of horror and terror to the extent in which it was portrayed in the three years Holmes and Hinchcliffe were in charge of the programme. This led to creating a much more sophisticated target audience aimed at teenagers over the age of fourteen and adults. Viewers warmed to the face of Tom Baker as the doctor who made the character eccentric as well as brave. He was constantly surprising. He played off villains as if he was in a compelling tennis match with them.
However, this era also resulted in controversy and upset some critics, Mary Whitehouse being the main critic of the show. This led to the programme having to go through another dramatic change when the next producer Graham Williams took over, where the show would slowly drift away from the gothic horror themes and move on to becoming a show which was more about comedy and humour.
A lot science fiction stories, particularly Doctor Who stories, visit well-known mysteries and then give their take by coming up with an alien answer to what is lying behind the mystery, like the Bermuda Triangle for example.
Doctor Who’s frighten factor is to play with the unexpected, and that is always good for a child’s imagination. As Film and TV Historian Jim Sangster said, “The show’s at its absolute creative peak and at the height of its popularity. It’s ambitious and confident.” (Sangster, J 2010) The ability to present to children, in a strong visual format, a combination of things that are both thrilling and terrifying. There is a funny and likable character that children may perceive as an uncle, or a big brother, or a parent figure, combined with very realistic images of real, expected, predictable and safe world, behaving in very unpredictable ways. The Holmes and Hinchcliffe era took this to a new level and changed the shape of the way Doctor Who was seen and brought to new levels and as a result, brought the show to the height of its popularity in it’s long fifty-three year history.
