The Talons of Weng-Chiang v. Deep Breath
Not very many people read this blog. I’m worried that those who do might wonder why I bother. ‘This guy obviously hates Doctor Who,’ you probably think. ‘He’s always moaning about it.’ I hope it doesn’t come across like that, because I really, really love this show. It means a lot to me, and it’s one of those things that I’ve chosen in life to study closely and to learn from. Whether there are lessons to be learned from the stories themselves, or from how they were written or made, from other people’s responses to them or from the thoughts, feelings and ideas they prompt in me, I think of Doctor Who as a medium – a conduit, a touchstone – that helps me relate to think about myself and about life. It’s also a lovely comfort when I just want a bit of self-care.
Loving something doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be able to criticise it when we feel criticism is due, though. I try to be honest about my feelings, and the two stories selected this week by the Randomiser – The Talons of Weng Chiang (by Robert Holmes, first broadcast 26 February to 2 April 1977) and Deep Breath (by Steven Moffat, 23 August 2014) – are both stories which both give me a lot of pleasure and also leave me with a bunch of negative feelings, a mix of anger, sadness and disappointment. That’s how love can be.
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
I have a lot of memories attached to The Talons of Weng-Chiang. This is the story with the Victorian music hall, and smoggy brick streets. It’s the one with the chilling screeches made by giant rats in the sewers, and with the almost indescribably terrifying ventriloquist dummy Mr Sin rising out of a basket and clopping slowly across the floor with a knife in its hand. The Talons of Weng-Chiang is the one that didn’t end after episode four, as I assumed all Doctor Who stories did when I first saw it at the age of 6; as Magnus Greel and Mr Sin made their escape in a speeding horse-drawn cab I felt that Greel was laughing at my surprise that the story was not over as much as his own sense of victory. The Talons of Weng-Chiang is what Shaz christened my hideous toenails early in our relationship (‘Let the talons of Weng-Chiang shred your flesh!’). And The Talons of Weng-Chiang is the one that is packed with examples of the Sinophobic racism deeply rooted in British culture when the programme was made.
The awkwardness of the shameful truth about this story is compounded by the fact that so many of us didn’t notice for so long. Certainly as a child I didn’t recognise the racism, and despite seeing the story again probably three or four times in my twenties and thirties, I don’t think it really registered with me then either. It seems so obvious now – white actor John Bennet’s Fu-Manchu make-up and faux accent as the ‘honourable/despicable’ Li H’sen Chang, , references to ‘little men’, ‘inscrutable Chinks’, ‘Chinese ruffians’, ‘the Yellow One’, ‘epicanthic eyebrows’, and much more – but it’s telling of my own ignorance, and the ignorance of the culture in which I have aged, that it took so long for me to notice, and to recognise that it matters. How utterly shameful.
It's true that a lot of the scripted racism in the story (in addition to the fact that nobody seems to care a jot about the death of several Chinese characters, while getting in a tizzy about the death of white cabbie Joseph Buller) indicates presumed racist attitudes of Victorian London, which is a defence of sorts (although racism can be shown without necessarily repeating the actual slurs, especially on a show aimed at young children). Indefensible though, even for 1977 in my opinion, is for a fair percentage of the racism to be spoken by the Doctor – a character who should know better. That’s thoughtless, lazy, and rightfully should be decried.
TTOWC has some other problematic elements. There’s a fetishistic aspect to Greel’s demands for ‘young, plump, high-spirited girls’ from the streets of London, whose ‘life force’ he drains in order to replenish his own damaged DNA. No logical explanation is given for why the victims need to be young women, and we assume it is to give the crimes a Ripper-ish vibe but that doesn’t make it seem any less perverse. The pleasure Greel seems to receive when he turns on his distillation machine adds to the grim sexualisation of the whole process. One feels sorry for poor Louise Jameson having to flee Greel’s dungeon through the sewers in revealing undergarments, making a mockery of having been allowed to wear proper clothes for this story.
There is so much to like about this story too. Like The Shakespeare Code, which I wrote about last week, as fans we just have to decide for ourselves whether we carry on watching these stories with deeply troubling elements. It may be for some that they have become too spoiled, and I get that. I think the most important thing is that, whether we stick with them or not, we acknowledge where they are wrong, never apologise for are try to justify those aspects, and do what we can to ensure any negative influence from such stories is never passed on (e.g. if you are watching the stories with children, point out the bad stuff).
So what is great about TTOWC? Well, the rest of Robert Holmes’ script is really good. It’s a cleverly plotted story. Leela and the Doctor have a lot of great lines and seem to be thoroughly enjoying themselves, and the characters of Professor Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago (brilliantly played by Trevor Baxter and Christopher Benjamin) make a really terrific pairing. This was only Leela’s third adventure but already she is the star of pretty much every scene that she’s in, treating everyone she meets with suspicion and contempt while also demonstrating a suitable degree of curiosity on behalf of young viewers. The Doctor is pretty active in this story, streetfighting, hypnotising, giant rat hunting and performing on stage with that irresistible Tom Baker grin.
Not disregarding the racist aspects, Chang’s journey becomes an interesting one as we see him become disillusioned by being let down by his god, Weng-Chiang, fleeing into the cellars to be mauled by a rat, and ending his days drugged up on opium behind the Limehouse Laundry. As mentioned above, Mr Sin is quite terrifying – one of the scariest monsters ever to appear in Doctor Who, in my opinion.
We’re back in the London sewers again, following a couple of week ago’s The Invasion, and the various scenes of cold, dark Victorian London combine to create a cosy, atmospheric story perfect for Saturday teatime viewing in the late winter/early spring of 1977. And, in another call-back to a couple of recently-watched stories, when the Doctor empties his pockets at the start of episode six, there’s that yellow yo-yo again (see Genesis of the Daleks, The Robots of Death and The Girl Who Died) and is that the etheric beam locator (also from GOTD) too? These are very satisfying little connections that I never would have noticed if it wasn’t for the randomised order of my rewatching.
Deep Breath
Keeping it down, dirty and Victorian, here’s Deep Breath, another story set largely in a posh town house, down by the river, and on and beneath the streets of nineteenth-century London. Again, there’s a lot to like about this one – scares, atmosphere, strong production and an intriguing storyline – but it’s another that leaves me with mixed feelings.
To give this some context, I was full of excitement for DB, which launched not only a new series of Doctor Who (just after my birthday in the summer of 2014) but the start of Peter Capaldi’s run as the Twelfth Doctor. The previous year had been Doctor Who’s fiftieth anniversary year, full of memorable moments including The Day of the Doctor and a big celebratory convention at London’s Excel, which I had attended with Shaz, my son James, daughter Hannah, and Shaz’s daughter Katie. We all had a great time, cosplayed up, meeting some great guests, seeing the on-screen returns of David Tennant and Tom Baker, and the exciting introduction of Capaldi’s ‘attack eyebrows’, and so on – this felt like what Doctor Who ought to have been about. Also in 2013, Shaz and I were lucky enough to attend the live reveal of Capaldi as the new Doctor. What a thrill that was, and I even got to shake the great man’s hand and say ‘good luck’ after the show. We were both so pleased that he was to be the new star of Doctor Who; we had heard rumours that he was in the running, and he would have been our pick – we both think he’s a fantastic actor and he seemed perfect for the part. Brilliant! The hype continued the following summer when DB was broadcast in selected cinemas across the country at the same time as its television launch. We booked tickets for the five of us to see it at Wandsworth Cineworld. What a cornucopia of Whovian delights – an abundance of treats for a family of fans.
But I went home feeling … disappointed, I think. A little bit angry and upset. Which, I realise as I write it now, is embarrassing for a 44-year-old man, but such is fandom I suppose. As I said, there was much to enjoy and admire about the episode itself, but a few things had unsettled me. I wasn’t sure that I liked the new Doctor. He was grumpy and distant, inaccessible. He called humans ‘pudding brains’.
I realise that this was how we were supposed to feel, to an extent. Clara was there to represent the audience point of view. Where had her Doctor gone? Who was this strange, angry man, and why should she accept him as the new Doctor? I did feel a lot of sympathy for Clara in DB, as she took a pummelling from all sides. Vastra gave her a cold, condescending lecture. She was physically assaulted and creeped upon by Strax. She was abandoned by the Doctor in the lair of the Clockwork Robots and forced to hold her breath until her lungs nearly burst. If Clara was there to represent the fan experience, it’s no wonder I felt bruised and rather disillusioned at the end of it all. It’s a strange way to treat your core audience.
The kids were a bit meh about it all too. Following all the excitement of the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctor years, they never really took to Twelve. The stories became too dark and downbeat and introspective. All that ‘Am I a good man?’ self-doubt of series 8 – it was far too weighty, and just not the sort of thing a young audience cared about in the autumn of 2014, in my opinion.
The story seems to pivot on that scene in the remains of the robots’ spaceship, hovering above London, as the Doctor and Half-Face Man are locked in a battle of wills. The robot says that he is incapable of self-destruction, the Doctor says that he is incapable of murder. ‘You realise, of course, one of us is lying about our basic programming,’ he continues. ‘And I think we both know who that is.’ Then the Doctor looks grimly at us, through the fourth wall. It’s supposed to be ambiguous, I think: is he or isn’t he capable of murder? But that’s all a lot of nonsense. We know that he is capable of murder. We’ve seen it so many times before. The Doctor’s lying. He did kill the Half-Face Man, and here he is straight afterwards, defiantly staring at us the viewers. I didn’t like it. Fuck you, Doctor.
As I said, Clara takes a bashing in DB. The story overall is quite a turnaround for her, having reached the end of the Eleventh Doctor’s run as the saviour of the universe and the Doctor’s most trusted friend. The ‘Impossible Girl’ becomes, in DB, someone with ‘deflected narcissism, traces of passive aggressive,’ according to Strax, ‘an egomaniac, needy, game-player,’ according to the Doctor, shallow, interested only in young men, according to Vastra. I don’t disagree with some of these judgements. I remember finding Clara hard to warm to in those earliest episodes alongside Matt Smith, and thinking that there were aspects of narcissism in the character portrayed. But it does feel as though she is excessively picked on – almost bullied – in DB. That scene where Strax knocks her flying with a rolled-up copy of The Times is funny, but also seems to be a visual encapsulation of how cruelly she is bashed about in this story.
The headquarters of the Paternoster Gang doesn’t seem to be the safest place for an out-of-time woman to be stranded in Victorian London. While happy to help in the quest to track down the Doctor, Vastra is also anxious to hit on Clara in her vulnerable state, with flirtatious comments and invitations to strip off and become involved in her dom-sub relationship with Jenny. It’s uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as the scene in which Strax performs his ‘mandatory medical examination’ on Clara, exploring the sexual desires of her unconscious and examining her chest with his spotlight. This Carry On style of innuendo (in which it seems almost impossible for a female character to get through an episode without making or being subject to a sexually suggestive joke), along with the arch, sarcastic tones in which so many characters talk to each other, seems to be the norm for Steven Moffat scripts, whether they be Doctor Who or other shows.
It was an interesting decision to link the monsters of this story to the Clockwork Robots seen previously in Series 2’s The Girl in the Fireplace, and fun to see them again. It seems this bunch have been marooned on Earth for millions of years, presumably alongside the Silence, Scaroth of the Jagaroth, Vastra and the Silurians, and various other creatures revealed over the years to have been here all along. They’ve all been hibernating or hiding away in their own little corners of the world, just waiting for their moment to rise to power, and for the Doctor to arrive and make all that waiting to have been for nothing. Enabling the Half-Face Man to talk gives an interesting perspective on their plight. Poor Clockwork Robots. That they developed a faith – a belief in a ‘Promised Land’ awaiting them at the end of their great trial – makes sense. It’s normal to need purpose and direction, and given the plentiful number of human components they will have had inside them over the centuries, it’s logical to suggest that they have absorbed human ideas of heavenly salvation.
DB ends with an audacious scene in which Clara takes a phone call from the Eleventh Doctor, made shortly before his regeneration completed at the end of the previous story, The Time of the Doctor. Eleven made the call because he knew that Clara would struggle to ‘see’ him in his new form; and Moffat wrote the scene presumably because he knew the audience (at least, the huge portion of the audience who absolutely loved Matt Smith’s version of the Doctor, including many young fans who may not have remembered the last time the Doctor regenerated) would struggle to ‘see’ the Doctor in Capaldi too.
It's a very clever scene, completely unexpected, and corageous too. In my mind there had always been a convention that previous Doctors don’t return to the parish at least until the new incumbent has their feet firmly in the pulpit, so this is brave by Capaldi as well (I don’t know, but I imagine Moffat wouldn’t have gone for it without his agreement). It’s all quite gobsmacking and, in my opinion, a bit beautiful. It does suggest that the showrunner knew that there would be many reactions to Deep Breath similar to my own feelings about it. Change happens. It can be really, really rough, but we have to face up to it and deal with it. I’m glad that I stuck with it through the Twelfth Doctor years; there was much that I didn’t like, but also lots that I thought that was fantastic (Listen, Heaven Sent and Bill Potts immediately jump to mind). I thought Peter Capaldi put in a superb performance throughout his run – he is possibly the best actor to have played the role – even though I didn’t really like the Doctor at this time.
Does that scene at the end of DB justify everything that went before? I’m not sure, but I’m still grateful for it.
Connections
There’s a lot going on here. First and most obviously, and as already acknowledged, both The Talons of Weng-Chiang and Deep Breath are set in Victorian London. All the familiar trappings are here: hapless Peelers and foggy cobbles, horse-drawn cabs, men in top hats, flat caps and traditional Chinese garments, an early scene on the Thames Embankment, and terror in the tunnels beneath the capital.
Less obviously, both stories offer a discussion about length of hair. Litefoot is astonished but cannot disagree with the Doctor’s observation that the three-inch hairs found on the body of Buller are rat hairs. In DB, the Doctor pulls a hair from Clara’s head to measure the air disturbance in Mancini’s because his own hair is too short.
The clockwork customers in Mancini’s appear to be eating soup (although closer inspection reveals they are eating nothing at all). In Greel’s lair, the Doctor asks facetiously (and racistly, naturally) for the Bird’s Nest Soup.
Both stories see a time machine – Greel’s cabinet, and the Doctor’s TARDIS, tied to the back of a cart and transported across London.
Leela and Clara are both given stylish green dresses to wear by their sophisticated hosts, Litefoot and Vastra respectively.
Vastra wears a veil to hide her non-human visage in the company of strangers. Greel wears a leather mask to hide his inhuman disfigurements.
Leela and Strax both stand out to comic effect as the alien ‘savages’ in civilised Victorian society: Leela as the unladylike lady who fights and eats with her hands, Strax as the undomesticated domestic who washes in Clara’s drinking water and plans to melt the Doctor with acid.
More seriously, there’s a touching pathos to the spiritual pursuits of both Chang and the Half-Face Man, dreaming of a heaven they will never reach at the ends of their journeys.
For all these connecting themes and ideas, the most surprising for me came in realisation that both Magnus Greel and the robotic crew of the SS Marie Antoinette hail from the 51st Century. Both travelled back in time and are now stranded in Victorian London (is there any chance that the robots travelled back in pursuit of the criminal Greel?). And both the robots and Mr Sin, the Peking Homunculus, are clockwork automatons that can be augmented with organic parts. Was biomechanical horror ever so neat and satisfying?
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