Softer Six: The Doctor is appalled that there is nothing with the TARDIS, which means that he has no tinkering to do and nothing to pass his time whilst he is in the vortex. At the moment if you name anywhere in the universe and he could land you there in a millisecond. Sounds rather farfetched to me, given previous form. The hours, years and lifetimes that the Doctor has spent trying to keep the TARDIS functioning are beyond the comprehension of a human. Now he has nowhere in particular he wants to go and no task to perform and this is the time the TARDIS chooses to turn on him. As an opening scene, it is rather witty but it does expose the paucity of the agonising TARDIS scenes that plagued this era where the Doctor and Peri stood around bitching and griping at each other. It takes the Doctor 20 minutes to join the story, which is agonisingly faithful to season 22. He has no respect for the finest scientific instruments in the galaxy, shoving them back in the cupboard as if they were so much junk. The Doctor got his holiday ball from a particularly disreputable representative of the planet Salakan, the slimy super salesman Mordant.
Busty Babe: It’s Peri’s suggestion if the Doctor has nothing to do that he should take a holiday. He doesn’t comprehend the notion, but she has been pushing for that for ages. Peri sarcastically mentions that the locals of every planet want to turn her into a rock garden the moment she arrives…but that isn’t too far from the truth. Peri has been put off holidays for life, given every time she is promised one something horrible happens to her. Peri reminds the Doctor that at one point in this story she was heading for certain death and the Doctor brushes over that by reminding her that the fact that she isn’t means that banging on about it is irrelevant. This characterisation is so troubling.
Standout Performance: Colin Baker is as committed to his portrayal of the Doctor as I have come to expect. This is one story where perhaps he should have phoned it in. Once he is under the influence of the violence ray and turned into a homicidal maniac, the Doctor begins snarling and growling and spitting out threats. Colin sounds thoroughly demented and absolutely terrifying. It’s appalling characterisation of a great Doctor being brought to life by a theatrical actor. The result is quite nasty on the ears.
Dreadful Dialogue: I’m going to break down one piece of dialogue that will expose everything that is inherently wrong with this script, and the dialogue in particular. ‘Don’t be impertinent, Ravlos. You are simply a scientist and you should know that is no way to address a ruling family member’ You have hackneyed phraseology, a consonant heavy SF name, exposition and dialogue expressing something it expects us to know. It’s breaking every rule in the book. The trouble is you could point at practically every line and come to the same conclusion. It’s like SF from the 50s, not the 80s. ‘So, the Amelerians have indeed created a weapon to destroy us.’
Great Ideas: The Salakans want to drain the wealth of any planet they happen upon and so they find the planets needs and provide it for them. Usually, it is an addictive and one that only they can provide so they are in bondage to them. Thought bubble travel does sound amazing. That concept has far more potential than anything else in The Ultimate Evil. Building a society that has that level of sophisticated technology would have been much more satisfying.
Musical Cues: I love the mad organ stings that play throughout the most melodramatic moments of this story – somehow giving all the pomp and nonsense even more of a sense of occasion.
Isn’t it Odd: There’s a scene where one of the affected Tranquelans is clearly being played by Nicola Bryant in her natural accent. There’s nothing done to disguise the fact and the fact that Bryant has played parts before for Big Finish with her English accent seems to have been forgotten.
This is one of those dreadful mid 80s worlds where the characters talk in exposition to try and paint in details but you don’t really get to experience the culture and society that they are trying to build for you. Think Karfel but less smoothly written. Oh yes. ‘And if we are to discover it is the work of the Amelerians?’ says one characters, as if we are supposed to know what that means. You need to build a world through its characters, and then give them an excuse to sketch in details of the world around them. Remember Garron and the Graff in The Ribos Operation; the excuse to tell us about Ribos is there because one is trying to sell the planet to the other so it makes absolute sense that he should be providing a detailed account. You can’t just dump your audience in a science fiction setting and start spouting ridiculous sounding names for places and people and expect us to care. It was the formula in some of those 80s stories and so bravo for this lost story for emulating it authentically.
Just when I thought no stone would be left unturned in the season 22 rulebook…the Doctor announces 30 minutes into the story that his old friend Ravlos resides on the planet of Tranquela! He’s in the address book next to Azmael, Dastari, Magellan, Stengos, and Tonker Travers. Apparently Ravlos’ wife is fantastic at Sucksos. She gets pretty dirty when its on the go.
Another cliché…the peace-loving people of xyz planet, I’ll be so happy to see them again…open the TARDIS doors…oh my why are they trying to kill us? Sigh.
It’s very peculiar that the most horrific moment of the episode (the Doctor attempting to murder his old friend, Twin Dilemma style) all takes place from the point of view of the villain so we can only hear it taking place on a tinny screen with his laughing over the action. Perhaps that is a comment on how absurd the whole thing is, or perhaps by obscuring the madness of Colin Baker’s performance is the only way for this story to survive with its dignity intact.
There’s a very dark thread of disabled shaming taking place in the Colin Baker era that doesn’t sit at all well with me. Sil was a repulsive little capitalist that couldn’t walk. Magellan was a hideously deformed scientist that was only interested in defiling Peri and causing all out war. Davros has his hand blown off and the Doctor cracks a joke at his expense. And now we have the Dwarf Mordant, who wants to cause mass murder on a scale that is inconceivable. This era seems to be saying that if you aren’t fully formed and beautiful, evil is your dish of the day.
The Tranquelans and the Amelarons are the living embodiment of ill defined, utterly unrelatable alien races that Russell T Davies talks about when he describes the planet Zog and precisely the sort of crass scientific nonsense that he was trying to avoid in series one of the new series in fear of alienating the new audience. Give me one reason to understand, relate or care about anyone on this planet. Just one. I think I understood less about how this culture works at the end of the story than I did at the beginning. In the second episode we are facing all out war between the two factions and the whole planet may go up in carnage. At least that way we never have to visit this dreary backwater again.
Standout Scene: ‘Let’s squeeze the life out of you!’ So, whether the original season 22 had come to fruition or when the alternative reared its head 18 months later, Colin Baker’s Doctor was always going to turn evil and start behaving in a homicidal way. Either by death ray or Crozier’s mind control. Eric Saward really wasn’t too fond off the character, was he? I’ve always found the way the Doctor abuses Peri in Mindwarp discomforting but (and I never thought I would say this) thank goodness that is what we got because the thought of him turning beserk and attacking people with a shard of glass is too hideous to contemplate. Colin would have really gone for it as well, as he always does. It would have been an irredeemable act for the sixth Doctor. He commits domestic abuse on the TARDIS once under the hypnotism of the death ray, and she refuses to obey his commands. That might be the worst thing he has ever done in an any incarnation. The end of episode one features the Doctor screaming ‘raaaaaagh!’ and ‘I’m going to kill you!’ Was Eric Saward genuinely going to let Waly K. Daly put out something as irresponsible as this? Doctor Who is no longer a hero but a violent, murderous thug. Calling a story ‘the ultimate evil’ and then giving over the cliffhanger (the moment of optimum peril) to the Doctor behaving in an abhorrent fashion suggests that he is the recipient of that title. I’m just not sure why you would ever do that.
Result: ‘I couldn’t cope with turning you into a beast, my love…’ Any story that begins with the premise of an alien ray that turns the population of a planet into murderous fiends has got to be taken with a pinch of forgiveness because it is precisely the sort of concept that plays out in those fabulous low rent B movies that you can usually find hanging about in Pound shops. I can’t really defend how stupid an idea it is, but I just went with it and the result was that I quickly relaxed into how campy and outrageous the story was and in that way I got a great deal of enjoyment out of it. Everybody is on the joke; from the director to the actors to the music. Everybody knows this is a piece of old tat but is determined to make it as entertaining as possible. It’s very like Mission to Magnus in that respect, but pacier and even less subtle. If that is even possible. Living up to every cliché in the season 22 book (The Doctor joins the action late, the planet is less than fully realised but characters talk about it as though it is, scenes of protracted violence), The Ultimate Evil is doing exactly what it says on the tin a little too well. Whilst there have far been better Lost Stories in terms of plot, character, dialogue and even production, this is surely the most authentic in terms of tone, content and execution? It’s impossible to care about the people of Tranquela and their dreary little continent and so when they started getting bumped off in spectacularly violent ways I was cheering. I think the story wants us to find the violence shocking and unfair (if that was the case it needed to work harder to enamour itself to me beyond lists of details of religion, rebels and rituals) but truthfully those were the funniest and most enjoyable scenes. In that case think of this as the ultimate Doctor Who snuff movie. I can’t bring myself to hate this. It is every single hideous cliché in the book packaged together in a two-hour spectacular and quite, quite hideous. But on those terms, it is so much fun to listen to. Wally K Daly was a respected writer away from Doctor Who and so I can only assume that he was just provided what he thought the script editor wanted by looking at the work around him. I’d say he did that a little too well. The Ultimate Evil might be the ultimate so bad it’s good Doctor Who story, edging out Time and the Rani: 2/10 (or 8/10 depending on your mileage for absolute horseshit)
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