THE POWER OF WORDS

The Invasion v. The Shakespeare Code

This has been a tricky one, for reasons to be explained, but I have still found much to enjoy in this week’s pair of stories: The Invasion (November and December 1968) by Derrick Sherwin, and The Shakespeare Code (April 2007) by Gareth Roberts.

The Invasion

I have a feeling that I had never ‘completed’ The Invasion before now. Possibly because it’s such a long story – eight episodes! – I have started watching it on two or three occasions since it was first released on DVD, and never got to the end. Life is busy and something else must have always got in the way, but that’s a shame because it’s a good one, full of character. Also, it seems to me, the two ‘missing’ episodes that have been animated (in collaboration with Cosgrove Hall studios, and the first to have received this treatment) are far superior than any animations I have seen since (although I haven’t yet seen all of them). They are a pleasure to watch, rather than a compromise.

The story itself – and I’m talking now predominantly of the actual episodes – is impressive in its range of location shots, both in London and the English countryside, and also for all the action – gunfights, helicopters and explosions! There’s an impression the boat (as well as the canoe) has been pushed out for this one, budget-wise, so it’s good to be able to appreciate it still nearly fifty-five years after its original broadcast.

London is looking very cool (if rather empty), with its back streets, warehouses, river, and – of course – St Paul’s Cathedral, location of one of the most iconic scenes in Doctor Who’s history. There’s a famous photograph of the Cybermen coming down those steps with the cathedral in the background that most of us of a certain age (too young to have seen the original broadcast of The Invasion, but old enough to have owned a copy of Target’s Doctor Who Monster book) will have gazed at, as children, lost in wonder and imagination, as an aesthete might stand for great lengths of time in front of a work of fine art in a gallery. I say ‘as children’ but it gives me … something still today. It’s broken now, but until just recently I had a favourite mug with this picture on it. What is it? What’s the beguiling power of this image? Part of it, I guess, is that placing of something dangerous and alien in the context of something comfortingly familiar, and Doctor Who is famously full of this sort of thing. The image also conveys a promise of epic adventure, depth and space and height, a grand landscape in which to run and fight and hide; and there’s significance and importance in there too – the Cybermen invading St Paul’s is so much more relevant than a futuristic adventure on the moon or in a space station. It makes Doctor Who seem grown-up.

There's an interesting mix of tonal notes to The Invasion, established in part by the impressive location shots and also by the story’s excellent soundtrack, composed by Don Harper. The streets of London, accompanied by ‘The Company’, contribute to a sinister gangland feel. The jaunty ‘Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart’ played over scenes of UNIT troops assembling in their jeeps and berets brings an element of ‘boys’ toys’ adventure. And, while I’m not sure there’s a specific musical track for this, the story also keys in to the hip and happening vibes of Swinging Sixties London through the partnership of Zoe and Isobel Watkins; the glamour photography, Zoe’s feather boa, and the pals’ general carefree, fun-loving, anti-authoritarian japes all seem very particular to this place and time, and a good example of Doctor Who representing the spirit and culture of its era of broadcast.

The Cybermen are used well in this story – certainly a lot better than they were in The Wheel in Space, earlier in 1968. They lie well concealed for the first four episodes, as the story is strong enough to carry on without us sparing too much thought to what the hidden threat might be. The charistmatic villainy of Tobias Vaughn and his henchman Packer provides excellent misdirection, along with the corporate subterfuge and helicopter escapes. When the Cybermen do burst out of their coffins, they are given additional menace by their surroundings – the sewers and streets of London. The Cyberman infected by Vaughn with the emotion of fear is especially disturbing, stumbling dangerously around consumed by self-torment. I’m not sure that this particular horror of being a Cyberman – what happens when the emotional inhibitions are lifted – had been done before in Doctor Who, and it makes me think of that unsettling scene from 2006’s The Age of Steel, in which the Doctor and Mrs Moore discover the Cyberman with the broken inhibitor in the tunnels beneath Cybus Industries (‘Where’s Gareth?’). The Doctor explains that the emotions have to be suppressed to stop the Cybermen going insane. It seems significant in The Invasion that the fear-driven Cyberman chooses to attack others of its own kind in the sewers, rather than the humans – what it fears the most is what it knows it is.

The Cyber Planner tells Vaughn that the Doctor is recognised from previous adventures, although The Invasion is set at an earlier date in Earth history than any of the previously shown stories. This suggests that the Cybermen have the ability to travel in time by this point in their development.

Kevin Stoney’s Vaughn runs the show in The Invasion. He’s a character with the suave menace that modern-day Evil Men of Business (Trump, Musk, Sugar, Bezos, Branson, etc) all seem to aspire to but just can’t carry off. The self-assurance with which he attempts to stand up to the Cybermen is impressive, and of course it’s satisfying to watch him fail. There is great pleasure in watching Vaughn descend from his lofty heights and ambitions to having to pair up with the Doctor to escape the Cybermen – two little men running through the streets – before he topples, ultimately, not from the upper floors of his towering International Electromatics building, but over the railings of a small set of steps.

Vaughn’s partnership with sidekick Packer is also very watchable. The two become increasingly exasperated with each other as the story progresses: Vaughn frustrated with Packer’s inability to execute his evil demands quite as ruthlessly or efficiently as he desires, and Packer with his boss’s increasingly unhinged megalomania. Packer is a particularly nasty individual by Doctor Who standards, it must be said. Professor Watkins describes Vaughn as ‘a sadistic man’, but I think it’s Packer who takes the more visceral pleasure from the infliction of pain and violence. There’s a creepy scene in episode three in which he loosens his collar and gives a little smile of anticipation after being authorised by Vaughn to ‘offer [Watkins] a little encouragement’.

The Invasion is also able to offer us a little bit of romance in the meeting and subsequent dating of Isobel and Captain Jimmy Watkins. I have to admit to being surprised at how much love and romance there has been in those stories, both old series and new, that the Randomiser has led me to rewatch so far. Looking back at the 30 stories I have covered so far on the blog, I can count just five or six that don’t have some sort of romantic relationship thread (implied or explicit). Why am I surprised? Perhaps because one of the preconceptions about Doctor Who (the classic series, at least) is that it’s a bit emotionally stunted, that it doesn’t like to talk about love in the same way that young boys are supposed to be uninterested in that sort of thing (which was never really the case for me, although it’s probably true to say that young boys often have the emotional inhibitors on) – and I’m probably guilty of believing that to be true. But the weight of evidence is beginning to suggest otherwise.

A couple of other observations about The Invasion: the Doctor hates computers, apparently (and I sympathise completely with his ‘Shut up, you stupid machine!’ tirade at the answerphone, and often express similar sentiments towards our infuriating Google Nest device); and the casual sexism of one of all the UNIT soldiers crowding around Zoe and one of them joking ‘Can’t we keep her, Sir? She’s much prettier than a computer,’ isn’t a great look, and echoes the ‘robot in the body of a girl’ abuse she received in TWIS.

The Shakespeare Code

The exact dates at which The Shakespeare Code and The Witchfinders (subject of last week’s post) are set is not specified on screen, but they were broadcast eleven years apart and it would make sense for the stories to have taken place at a similar temporal distance from each other. The Doctor tells Martha in TSC that they are in London ‘around 1599’, shortly before a performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost (written mid-1590s), and The Witchfinders is set in the early years of James I’s reign on the English throne (post-1603), so eleven years is a reasonably plausible speculation. There or thereabouts, anyway. Within the Whoniverse, this makes it seem likely that the appearance before the Globe audience of a swarm of Carrionites – cackling, malevolent creatures with the appearance of pointy-hatted hags on broomsticks – would have added to belief in the existence of witches in England at this time, and the cauldron of hysterical suspicion into which James published his Daemonologie and encouraged witch-hunting across the land.

TSC is a story about words, and writers, and it’s hard to separate the writer and some of his more powerful words from this one, but I’ll come back to that and review first the standout moments from the televised adventure. It’s a really entertaining one, bringing history to life with a lot of fun, scares and huge liberties (which I think Doctor Who has earned the right to take). Late Tudor London looks very impressive. The coven of Lilith, Mother Doomfinger and Mother Bloodtide bring laughs and chills. The ‘drowning’ death of Lynley, and the DNA-based puppet-control of Shakespeare’s writing hand are both very creepy demonstrations of the Carrionites’ magical powers.

I really like the idea of the Carrionites’ science being based on words, that physical energy can be generated and manipulated through the particular configuration of them, giving a curse or the spoken performance of a great playwright’s script the power of a magical spell. I have always made my living from words – in written form if not spoken – and I wrestle with them every day. They are central to my relationship with my partner Shaz; in fact, I remember talking with her about the Power of Words in the wake of the first showing of this very story. Words don’t always come easily or naturally – writing an email, or a blog entry such as this, can sometimes feel like wading through treacle – and more often than not I feel frustrated with the results, of having failed to wield these powerful tools effectively. Words can change hearts and minds. They can express love and passion, humour and knowledge, sadness and anger. And they can really, really wound.

This is Martha’s first destination as a companion of the Doctor’s on board the TARDIS, so there’s a fair bit of time spent on revisiting the wonder of time travel through a newbie’s eyes, and also in establishing her character and the nature of her relationship with the Doctor. One feels sympathy for Martha not only for the leching and constant references to the colour of her skin that she receives from Shakespeare, but also for the boorish behaviour of the Doctor. He’s fairly dismissive of her perfectly valid questions about her incredible new environment, and seems almost blind to her presence as he continues to obsess about Rose. The sympathy extends to actress Freema Agyeman, as one can’t help feeling the shadow of Billie Piper hangs heavily over her attempts to establish herself as the show’s new co-lead. As the first ‘new’ companion to join Doctor Who since the series’ revival in 2005, it must have been a tough enough task for Agyeman without all the scripted references to Rose. I remember feeling at the time that it wasn’t until the eighth episode of this season (Human Nature), that Martha really started to shine as a character and she was outstanding from that point on.

But I had forgotten just quite how obsessed the Doctor was with Rose at this point in the series. I remember 2005’s Doomsday as incredibly tragic, and I remember how important their reunion was in 2008’s The Stolen Earth, but it had slipped my mind that TSC (and, presumably, other episodes of this season) gave so much attention to how much he was missing her. He’s really cut up, and it comes as a surprise when watching this one in the midst of a whole bunch of other stories from the series’ 59-year history in which the Doctor doesn’t show anything close to the same intensity of love for anybody.

There are an interesting couple of lines in which Shakespeare seems to see beyond the Doctor’s showmanship (and with Ten, there is a lot of show), just as he can see beyond the deceit of his psychic paper. ‘And you, Sir Doctor. How can a man so young have eyes so old?’ and ‘I'll discover more about you and why this constant performance of yours.’ It’s an insightful description of this incarnation of the Doctor. As viewers, we know that this ‘performance’ masks Time War angst as well as the loss of Rose, but is there anything else? In the real world, people with as much banter and quick-talk as Ten are usually covering for some deep-rooted sadness or insecurities. I mean, the destruction of his home world and the casting of his true love into an unreachable parallel universe is all bad enough and sufficient to drive anyone to glib and overperformative behaviour. But I wonder if this goes even further – the grief felt by the Doctor for all the people he has lost across the centuries, and his failure to save them, all of which set him on the path to the Time Lord Victorious storyline, a Lear-esque madness that resulted in his eventual regeneration.

Moving now from a room in the Elephant to the elephant in the room ...

... and this is where the review becomes more difficult, because I think it would be dishonest – or, at least, inadequate – to extricate my review of the script of TSC from some of the public pronouncements of its writer. My feelings about the former are fused with my thoughts about the latter. Gareth Roberts is, in my opinion, a gifted writer – clever, witty, funny – and I’ve enjoyed his writing in many media over the years (books, audio plays, comic strips, tweets, articles and columns for Doctor Who Magazine). The Lodger was one of my favourite episodes of the new series of Doctor Who. I have disagreed with and been annoyed by some of the political views he has expressed on Twitter over the years, but have tried not to let that spoil my enjoyment of the Doctor Who content he has written, thinking (hoping) that is should be possible to separate the two. This became much harder after I became aware of tweets he has published that mock transgender people and deny trans identity. Once one knows that the author holds such views, that exchange between Martha and the Doctor close to the beginning of TSC (Martha: ‘Those are men dressed as women, yeah?’, Doctor (nodding, and looking … sad? exasperated? certainly not approving): ‘London never changes.’ As if this is some peculiar problem of London's.) becomes darker, and, I assume, alienating for any Doctor Who fan watching who happens to be transgender. Words have power.

(It doesn’t help that this story fawns so much over one of the most vocal, rabble-rousing transphobes of our day, effectively casting her as a modern-day Shakespeare, but I assume that’s an unfortunate coincidence as I don’t think she was known for her transphobic views back when TSC was made in 2006.)

Why does this matter? I have worked closely with several people who have transitioned, and whom I consider friends. Other members of my family have close friends who are trans. These are all good people, most of whom may well have already experienced personal trauma of some degree through the processes of coming out and transitioning, and now just trying to get on with their lives. All will have experienced the rhetoric against them significantly increased in recent years – a rhetoric not only unkind, misinformed and discriminatory but sometimes threatening physical violence and an eradication of their identity, legally, culturally and socially. It’s abhorrent, inhumane and utterly unacceptable.

I know that there are Doctor Who fans, both trans people and allies, who have in effect ‘cancelled’ Roberts, and refuse to acknowledge any of the stories he has written as a part of the show, which is completely understandable. Why would you accept as part of something that is important to you an offensive or toxic presence? I get that, and I guess it has to be a personal call for everyone. My personal feeling is that the words of a bigoted idiot should not prevent any of us consuming and enjoying the show we love. It's not fair, and that's how bullies win. Name it for what it is, but refuse to let it stop you loving what you love.

Connections

For all the power of words, there’s a significant number connecting The Invasion and The Shakespeare Code. The Cyber Planner tells Vaughn that Jamie and the Doctor ‘have been recognised on Planet 14’ (although there is some mystery over where that is). And the Carrionites influence architect Peter Streete to design The Globe theatre with fourteen sides, for alignment with the fourteen stars of the Rexel planetary configuration.

The moon features in both stories, although rather more significantly in The Invasion as the Cybermen are hiding behind it. In TSC it provides a spooky backdrop to Lilith’s broomstick-powered flight from Shakespeare’s window at The Elephant inn. This is a similarly weighted pair of lunar references to those I spotted in my post on The Seeds of Death and School Reunion.

Both stories have an instance of that ‘not knowing which way to go’ mannerism of the Doctor, which seems to have stayed with them across the ages. Two flips a coin to decide which way to head in episode seven of The Invasion (and then chooses the other direction anyway). In TSC, Ten and Martha race off to The Globe; ‘We’re going the wrong way!’, yells Martha as the Doctor hares off to exit stage right. ‘No we’re not!’ One beat later, the Doctor hares back to exit stage left: ‘We’re going the wrong way!’.

The most obvious and interesting connection between the two stories is that both are set in London, and make much of the location in each of the two eras – nearly four hundred years apart. The sites of the most iconic buildings from each story – St Paul’s Cathedral and The Globe – are just half a kilometre or so from each other across the Thames (although St Paul’s was a very different, gothic-style structure in Shakespeare’s day), so the Doctor will have been close to repeating his own footsteps from one story to the next. No wonder he loses his bearings.

Both stories feature a map of London. In the TSC, the Doctor identifies the witches’ house as All Hallows’ Street, which is pretty much on St Paul’s’ doorstep. In fact, there’s a little structure drawn on the map which probably is the original cathedral. In episode four of The Invasion, the Doctor and his team study a map of the city as they work out how to get into the International Electromatics headquarters. It’s hard to tell from the existing telesnap picture from this scene, but in the animated reconstruction it’s a map that certainly includes Southwark and the sites of events from TSC.

The Invasion makes good use of London’s sewer network. There weren’t any sewers in 1599, so Martha and the Doctor nearly get a bucket of human waste poured on their heads. ‘Gardez l’eau!’

There will probably be other pairs of stories in my Randomised journey which are both set in London. Going by memory alone, I can think of only seasons 9, 15, 16, 17 and 24 of the classic series, and seasons 11 and 13 of the new series, that have no scenes at all set in London at some point in time. I could well be forgetting something in one or two of those seasons – please do let me know if you think of anything!