DOCTOR WHO's GOTHIC HORROR
AN ANALYSIS OF SEASON 14
Part One
In 1976, Doctor Who was riding on a creative high - the programme was hugely popular with British audiences and Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen were one of television's most recognizable and beloved partnerships.
Behind the scenes, producer Phillip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes had steered the programme away from the Earth-bound familiarity of the Jon Pertwee era and into tougher, more dangerous, more alien territory with gothic horror undertones to stories. Season 14 is their third season that would continue to build on this winning formula.
The Masque of Mandragora launches Season 14 with great panache, in a tale of an alien force at work in Renaissance Italy. With beautiful location filming (Welsh spring doubling for Italian summertime), sumptuous design and a committed guest cast, it's one of only four Fourth Doctor 'historicals'.
The following story The Hand of Fear, sees the departure of Sarah Jane Smith - arguably the most iconic of Doctor Who companions. Over three and a half seasons, the nation had fallen in love with Elisabeth Sladen and for years this story packed a cruel sting in its tail with her abrupt departure. Now of course, we know it was only a temporary goodbye and it was not the last time we would see of Sarah Jane in Doctor Who.
The operatic The Deadly Assassin is something of an experiment, with the Doctor flying solo for a full adventure for the first time ever in the shows history up until that point. It sees a darkly gothic take on the Doctor's home world of Gallifrey, and the reintroduction of his arch enemy the Master; far from Roger Delgado's villainous charm, the character is reinvented as a decimated, sadistic, ghoulish figure hellbent on revenge.
The Face of Evil serves as an introduction for the new companion Leela. Following in Elisabeth's Sladen's wake must have been a daunting prospect but Louise Jameson is an instant success in the role, creating a brand new iconic companion practically overnight. Smart, brave and empathetic, Leela is the perfect foil for the Doctor in this grittier, more muscular take on the programme, and there is an underlying tension in their relationship that only adds to the danger.
The Robots of Death is an Agatha Christie style whodunnit in space; and is regarded by many fans as an all-time classic adventure. With intriguing futuristic setting, gorgeous design work and the best looking robots in the history of television production, it's undoubtedly one of the jewels of Season 14.
The concluding adventure, Robert Holmes' epic The Talons of Weng-Chiang, is also regarded as one of the programme's finest stories, a hommage to The Phantom Of The Opera, The Man in the Iron Mask, Pygmalion, Victorianna and Hammer horror with a bit of Sherlock Holmes thrown into the mix as well; oh and a great big giant rat.
Season 14 would be producer Phillip Hinchcliffe's last, but his influence is still felt on the programme today. In partnership with Robert Holmes and Tom Baker, he crafted three hugely successful series that cemented Doctor Who's place in British television history.
THE MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA
Script editor Robert Holmes wasn't a particular fan of historical Doctor Who adventures, but producer Phillip Hinchcliffe was keen to tackle one as they started to develop ideas for the programme's fourteenth season. The historical period he had in mind was Renaissance Italy and the writer selected to develop this idea was Louis Marks, who wrote Planet of Evil the previous season. Marks was an ideal choice, he had worked as an an academic before transitioning into writing, with Renaissance Italy as his specialist subject.
Hinchcliffe and Holmes were keen for the story to blend astrology and cultism, citing a 1964 feature film of Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque Of The Red Death as an ideal influence.
Holmes and Hinchcliffe were happy with the resulting story line, Catacombs Of Death, and Marks was commissioned in early 1976 to write four scripts, the title changed numerous times during development; from Doom Of Destiny, to Secrets Of The Labyrinth, then The Curse Of Mandragora, before settling on The Masque of Mandragora.
Meanwhile, Elisabeth Sladen had decided to depart from the role of Sarah Jane part way through the season; Sarah would be written out at the end of the second story, with a new companion to be developed for the latter adventures. On Tuesday 6th April 1976 before starting work on Mandragora's location work, Sladen and Tom Baker recorded a BBC Schools Radio programme "Exploration Earth", in character which would be broadcasted in the autumn season. During this time, Tom Baker was also involved in discussions for a Doctor Who feature film. Although the proposition would ultimately come to nothing, the ideas for the film would be incorporated into the novel 'Scratchman' released by BBC Books in 2019.
THE HAND OF FEAR
The Doctor and Sarah encounter a renegade alien intent on regenerating its obliterated body and taking revenge on its people...
Hinchcliffe and Holmes had found great success turning to horror classics for story ideas, resulting in stories like Terror of the Zygons, Planet of Evil, Pryamids of Mars, The Brian of Morbius and The Seeds of Doom, Their next target was the 1960 feature film The Hands of Orlac.
Holmes enlisted Bob Baker and Dave Martin who had written for Doctor Who before and had written The Sontaran Experiment for Season 12, to write this serial. The writing team presented a breakdown for an adventure that would see the Doctor and Sarah arriving in the future, where they would meet their old friend Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, now in his 70s and leading an organisation called EXIT (Extraterrestrial Xenological Intelligence Taskforce.) A radical decision was made to kill off the character at the end of the story, with the Brigadier sacrificing himself to save the world. The monsters of the story were a race of aliens called the Omegans, a silicon life form who were found of Earth in the form of a disembodied, fossilised hand that would later regenerate itself.
Hinchcliffe and Holmes were broadly happy with the writers ideas, and commissioned them for a six part story intended to close Season 13. However, upon recipt of the scripts, Hinchcliffe had major concerns and decided to shelve the idea pending further development work. Holmes quickly commissioned a last minute replacement which was Robert Banks Stewart's 'The Seeds of Doom'. While this was in production, Baker and Martin worked on a revised story line for inclusion in Season 14.
After that Elisabeth Sladen was leaving the programme during 1976, Hinchcliffe and Holmes had begun to discuss option for Sarah Jane's departure. Director Douglas Camfield had successfully pitched a story called 'The Lost Legion' that would have involved the death of Sarah Jane. Holmes felt that the scripts were unworkable. Instead, Bob Baker and Dave Martin were told they're story was to be cut down to four episodes, and incorporate Sarah Jane's departure.
The resulting scripts retooled the story much as it appears on screen, with the villainous Eldrad as the story's main antagonist, and the main setting as a nuclear power station with a nuclear reactor.
It's fair to say that Sarah Jane Smith went out on a high and her Hand of Fear wouldn't be the last time we'd see her. That's for sure.
THE DEADLY ASSASSIN
The Doctor is summoned to return to his home planet Gallifrey where his oldest and most deadly enemy is planning to destroy him.
It was the idea of the producer Phillip Hinchcliffe to do The Deadly Assassin, it provided an experiment in trying something new that had never been tried before in Doctor Who; the doctor would be flying solo. After the departure of Sarah Jane Smith, Tom Baker was reluctant to have another companion, he thought his Doctor should travel alone; however, he was advised by Holmes and Hinchcliffe that wouldn't work long-term. The Doctor needed to have someone to talk to and explain things to, but with the idea presenting itself as a means of testing the idea on wheels The Deadly Assassin was born.
Apart from The War Games (1969), we as the audience would see the Doctor's home planet in full for the first time and meet his people the Time Lords who he so often refers to and talks about, we also get to know a lot about time-lord mythology and laws within one story. To any child who had grew up being a fan of the programme watching it, this must have been very exciting. The audience watching it at the time didn't know too much about the Doctor's back story, although the character should remain an enigma, The Deadly Assassin is one of those stories which invites us into the background of the Doctor's character and allows us to explore more into his origins of who he is and where he comes from.
As Hinchcliffe developed the story, at first titled 'The Dangerous Assassin', he settled on a Time Lord society that was corrupt and degenerate, who had exploited the Doctor for their own ends.
Robert Holmes wrote The Deadly Assassin, and honoring in on the most popular rogue Time Lord, Holmes elected to reintroduce the character of the Master, the Doctor's nemesis, who he had brought to life in Terror of the Autons (1971).
Hinchcliffe was uneasy about the character's reappearance but soon accepted that the Master fitted into the story in an elegant and surprising way. In bringing back the Master, Holmes rewrote an element of the Time Lord continuity - establishing that they had only twelve regenerations before they died.
But he also established some key points of Time Lord mythology that stand to this day. Including the introduction of the Matrix as a repository of Time Lord knowledge, mention of Rassilon (the engineer who created the power source that gave rise to Time Lord technology), the TARDIS as a 'Type Forty' time capsule, and talk of 'Artron energy'.
As far as productions go, The Deadly Assassin could not have come together more perfectly. But not everyone was happy, as later would became apparent when Mary Whitehouse wrote a letter of complaint to Phillip Hinchcliffe about Doctor Who, saying that the programme that he was producing was too scary for young children. Her key evidence of complaint was the scene that she refers to at the end of 'Part Three' where the Doctor is being drowned in a river and you pause to a freeze frame of the Doctor's head underwater.
This was deemed 'a step too far' in the eyes of Mrs Whitehouse, and although some of her complaints were ignored by the BBC, this one certainly wasn't. As a result of Mrs Whitehouse's actions, Doctor Who was moved to a slightly later time on Saturday evenings rather than at 5:30pm - its usual tea time slot.
So, what is clear is that Season 14 continues to improve Doctor Who audience figures and more and more people were sitting down on a Saturday afternoon to watch Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen battle against super intelligence's in Renaissance Italy, and aliens from another world threatening our present day.
The tone and the mood of the season would remain, but go into a new direction when the Doctor's next companion would come into the mix, the next three stories would come to prove as fine examples of Doctor Who at its strongest.
This brings Part One of our analysis of Season 14 to a close, join me next time where I will conclude this analysis and discuss the second half of the season.
