What is it about The Curse of Peladon?
I enjoyed much of Season 8. I
admired The Dæmons. But I was
enthralled by The Curse of Peladon. I
watched the first episode in a state of delight. Just the thought of it put me
in a good mood. Having just finished Episode 4 with much the same feelings, I
find it's probably - very possibly - my favourite Pertwee story so far (tied
with Spearhead and Dæmons).
What's so special about it?
The Doctor and Jo Grant arrive on
the world of Peladon, in a dreadful storm, when Jo really should be sipping
Pernod and Black with Mike Yates in one of Tarminster's more happening wine
bars. Instantly, this story has a sense of occasion. It's Saturday night on
Earth, and like other teenagers in Great Britain
The Tardis is lost - no way out -
and they are impelled up a mountain, through a secret passage, into a citadel
built into the very fabric of this inhospitable world. We happily accompany
them, because they're written with a lightness of touch and because Pertwee and
Manning have a sublime rapport by now. The Doctor's tetchiness is wreathed in
smiles and affectionate teasing.
So we are drawn into this strange
space: the cosy refuge from the storm. Inside a mountain, outside our world,
out of the storm, into danger. All the lives and history of this world, boxed
up in one excursion in the Tardis, parcelled up inside Jo's Saturday night on
Earth. The castle on the mountain encapsulates all that is Peladon, and tonight
it even seems to encapsulate the galaxy, with representatives from distant
stars gathered all together.
As the Doctor and Jo move deeper
into this world, there's that cosy feeling of a world imagined entire: the
world of the story. Perhaps it feels more this way because of its fairy tale
quality: the castle on the mountain, the boy king who has to prove himself, the
magician with his mysterious princess.
Of course, this is an old-fashioned
Doctor Who feeling, one we've had to do without for a while. It used to be that
every Episode One began with our heroes walking into a new narrative and a new
world. With the canvas blank again each time, the Doctor and his companion can
be the vehicle for any kind of story, and any/every law of the universe is
potentially unstable: we flirt with a feeling of total otherness. Normally,
this is dismissed quite quickly by someone in a PVC nappy jogging across a
quarry, but the challenge can inspire stories like The Celestial Toymaker (by someone called Brian Hayles). It's the
televisual equivalent of 'Once upon a time, there was...'
What deepens the pleasure of this fairy
tale world is the arrival in it of the Ice Warriors. We've taken a side-step
into another world, but - a very
particular world. The world of Doctor Who! Where cold-blooded cyborg viking
dragons swish haughtily about, sometimes with evil plans involving space mushrooms,
sometimes on diplomatic missions to Narnia. And not only that, but as soon as
they turn up (looking fabulous onscreen, which is a relief after the doddery
Daleks) the Doctor is once again a man who has lived and died twice. The sort
of man who can remember visiting future Earth buried under ice age, as well as
he can remember Elizabeth I's coronation.
None of this is interferes with the actual story. You could
watch and follow this story knowing nothing about the show - but you'd be
constantly aware that it's a show about friendship over isolation, rationality
over superstition, looking your best and holding your own and trying to do
what's best, even when you're completely out of your depth. There's a
hermaphrodite with six arms, a gremlin covered in slime riding on top of a
drinks machine, and a fey young man in an outfit that could have Jacqueline
Pearce saying, 'Mm, it's a bit much...' - and they all want to get along.
Well, not the gremlin on the drinks
machine. He wants exclusive mineral trading rights with a man who looks like a
badger.
The audience can follow it. The
actors know what to do. The direction is fluid. Firelight flickers. It doesn't
just work - it unfolds.
At one point, the Doctor points out
to Jo how drastic the situation is: it's not about a bomb about to go off. It's
about a vast, diplomatic conflict. The Doctor and Jo, taking the roles of
politicians, have to engage in arguments and win the support of querulous
cephalopods, not to defuse a machine but a situation bigger than any of them.
Come to think of it, that's the
threat posed in The Mind of Evil and Day of the Daleks, too. But in this
story - particularly because Hepesh and Peladon are well-intentioned men who
make bad decisions - the story really convinces you of that threat.
And brilliantly, in a huge
progression from all her other stories so far, Jo Grant is instrumental in
saving the day! The Doctor sends her into the delegates' conference to persuade
them to do what she thinks should be done. Jo is an active participant in the
story. She talks to everyone, argues about everything, falls in love, pleads
for the Doctor's life. She doesn't just react to the action, she goes right
inside that story and makes stuff happen.
Now, perhaps I'm being sentimental,
but there is something special about a writer returning to Doctor Who. Yes, of
course, I'm being sentimental - I've read Robert Holmes' biography, the story
of a man who kept being called back to silly old Doctor Who because it was easy
to write and paid well enough, while his own personal writing projects pootled
along, or more often petered out. But there is something about a writer like
Brian Hayles (or indeed, Holmes or Terrance Dicks) who writes the series in
acknowledgement of its basic absurdities, its impossibility, its openness.
In the previous story, the Doctor
zapped an Ogron with a ray gun. In this story, the humanoid characters are the
most murderous, and even the Ice Warriors are friendly. This is a story which
belongs to the world of the Doctor: transcendental, absurd, cosy, and full of
ideas.
What's up next...?
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