Inside the Spaceship v. The Rings of Akhaten
This week the Randomiser leads me to make some unlikely connections between 1964’s Inside the Spaceship, by David Whitaker, and 2013’s The Rings of Akhaten, by Neil Cross.
Inside the Spaceship
‘Someone tell me what the hell is going on here?’ demands Ian at the start of Inside the Spaceship. Actually it’s ‘What’s going on here?’ but the frustration seems the same. The TARDIS’ original travelling crew seems to have no idea what’s happening. Me neither.
This two-part story set within the TARDIS is tense, claustrophobic and surprisingly violent for a teatime family show. Susan’s sofa-slashing scissor attack is disturbing, and I suspect young viewers will have found all the main characters’ unnatural behaviour unsettling.
Barbara, Ian, Susan and the Doctor become increasingly paranoid - of each other, and of a possible intruder in the ship. It’s intense, disquieting, and feels very much of the story’s time, in step with a ‘reds under the bed’ fear underlying public consciousness in the 50s/60s.
An interesting sidenote to this: in Toby Hadoke’s intriguing profile of ITS’s writer David Whitaker (on DW season 2 blu-ray) Simon Guerrier revealed Whitaker was effectively blackballed by the TV industry following a speech denouncing McCarthyism to the Writers Guild of Russia.
Despite being an inward-facing story, ITS includes an intriguing couple of points of series lore. ‘I can’t take you back, Susan,’ mutters the disoriented Doctor. Does he mean back to Earth, to Gallifrey, or somewhere else?
It’s revealed that the TARDIS is more than a machine, that she has a form of sentience. I was moved by the way she sought to communicate her impending destruction to the crew through disfunctioning equipment, as a pet might try to let its owner know of a serious illness.
ITS was only the third DW story produced, so the character of the Doctor himself was still being formed. We see several different sides of him:
1) The dark magician, cloaking the TARDIS console, fingers twitching with genius and potential.
2) The celestial poet, centre stage and spotlit, describing with wonder the astrophysical miracle awaiting the crew as their craft hurtles backwards through time towards ‘A new birth, a sun and its planets!’.
3) The absent-minded dufus, facilitating near disaster by failing to spot a switch with a faulty spring. I don’t buy this. He’s not that stupid, nor the TARDIS so basic. The Doctor knew something more significant was going on. River Song knew him best: the Doctor lies.
4) The arrogant twister. Having flung all manner of insults at Barbara and Ian, and threatened to throw them into the Vortex, the Doctor’s fauxpology to Barbara seems mealy-mouthed and manipulative. She forgives him far too easily.
Inside the Spaceship, or The Edge of Destruction, or The Brink of Disaster, could have been the last DW story ever made if the series wasn’t granted a further 13 episodes. Instead it is remembered as one of the very first, and an important moment in the birth of the show we love.
The Rings of Akhaten
My memory of The Rings of Akhaten from the first time I saw it is that it was a disappointment. I’m not sure why. The singing, perhaps, or the sun with a face? Clara’s leaf? I’ve just rewatched it, and those aspects don’t bother me at all. It’s a unique, beautiful episode.
The face in the sun is a bit silly, for sure, but not enough to spoil the story. The singing (watched this time with subtitles), of Merry, Queen of Years, and the choristers, imbues the episode with a sense of timelessness and the sacred. Something special is happening here.
The idea that a pressed leaf, a keepsake commemorating a family’s deepest joy and tragedy, should contain psychic power sufficient to repel an angry god makes sense to me. I believe that everyday objects can be powerful conduits for our memories and strong emotions, good and bad.
As in many churches, amid the wonder, reverence and hymns there is lurking horror in TROA. The masked, whispery Vigil are suitably disturbing, pursuing Merry with a Childcatchery vibe. And the mummy in the glass tomb is the stuff of even more terrifying nightmares.
Initially mistaken for the Akhatanians’ spiritual ‘Grandfather’, it writhes and roars with horrible malevolence. Its wish to eat the little girl’s soul, as Clara is pinned to his cage, conjures all sorts of creepy associations of powerful old men abusing their power.
TROA realises well an idea for alien religious mini-culture, with its rituals and rules. The alien market explored by Clara and the Doctor appears to have had plenty of production time and money invested in it, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in Star Wars.
I recall finding Clara’s character in series 7, before the mystery of her character was revealed, hard to warm to, but here she is sympathetic and relatable. We feel the sense of wonder she has at this infinite universe opening up before her.
Matt Smith turns in a thoroughly enjoyable performance. I’ve written on this blog about portrayals of the Doctor that I don’t like; here’s what I do like: comedy, awkwardness, wisdom, compassion and heroism. Smith and Moffat didn’t always hit the mark but here, for me, they do.
‘There’s always a way,’ the Doctor tells Merry. ‘Cross my hearts.’ This is a Doctorism, one that I try to carry over into real life. Whatever the challenge, there has to be a way to overcome. Think again and again about the cards dealt and the resources available. Never give up.
Connections
There’s a surprising number of links - connections and counterpoints - between Inside the Spaceship and The Rings of Akhaten, almost to the point that one could contrive an argument for one being a sequel to the other.
Coincidental parallels first. Both stories see the Doctor temporarily strangled by one of his companions: a deranged Ian attempts to throttle him at the cliffhanger end of ITS part one, and Clara clings rather too tight to his neck on the space moped.
The TARDIS decides who goes where in both tales. She won’t allow Barbara, Ian and Susan to leave in ITS, while the doors are firmly closed to Clara outside the spaceship in TROA.
The sentient star in TROA is called Grandfather by its worshippers. A deliberate mirror of the Doctor’s original grandfather role, perhaps, before he takes on the Sun God? The script makes a point of mentioning that he has a granddaughter, with whom he visited Akhaten previously.
ITS births certain aspects of DW’s narrative lore, and presents with some gravitas an account of the birth of a star and a new solar system. TROA tells us of the birth of Clara, a legend in many lifetimes, and prevents with even greater gravitas an account of celestial creation.
‘All the elements in your body were forged many, many millions of years ago, in the heart of a far away star that exploded and died,’ the Doctor tells Merry. ‘That explosion scattered those elements across the desolations of deep space.’
‘After so, so many millions of years, these elements came together to form new stars and new planets. And on and on it went. The elements came together and burst apart, forming shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings.’
‘Until eventually, they came together to make you. You are unique in the universe.’
Just me, or does TROA seem to make deliberate callbacks to the first Doctor era, and to ITS in particular? What’s going on here?
Most likely it’s just a way of reintroducing the Doctor’s history, both for new companion Clara and for viewers in 2013, the show’s 50th anniversary.
But it’s fun to wonder. What if … What if the Doctor *was* lying about that broken spring? What if a foreign presence *had* entered the TARDIS and activated the fast return switch? What if the intruder was impossible girl Clara, revisiting every moment in the Doctor’s timeline?
We know that the TARDIS rejected Clara before she knew she could be trusted, so it would make sense for this earlier version of the ship to start violently playing up when she felt her unwelcome presence on board.
If the Doctor and Susan had visited Akhaten previously - probably not long before Ian and Barbara joined the crew - the fast return could have been set for there, and the formation of a star that the Doctor knew they were heading for would have been that of Akhaten itself.
We saw in The Name of the Doctor this spectral Clara directing the journeys and adventures of the first Doctor and Susan. Now she wanted to use them to return to Akhaten’s beginning, perhaps even to prevent the birth of this soul-eating monstrosity.
The first Doctor realised where they were headed and wasn’t happy. This early incarnation of the Time Lord wasn’t one for facing dangers unnecessarily. He also strongly believed that history should not be changed, ‘not one line’.
He may have thought Susan set the controls at first, wishing to return to a favoured destination, hence ‘I can’t take you back’. Later he threatens to put Barbara and Ian off the ship, removing them from the danger of facing Akhaten.
Ultimately the plan didn’t work and the Doctor, aided by his objecting TARDIS, aborted the trip. But the memory of this near-miss remained, prompting Eleven’s creation speech, when he finally faced the Old God, echoing that of One.
‘I saw the birth of the universe, and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment until nothing remained. No time. No space. Just me.’
What if … Perhaps … Who knows, eh? Who knows.
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