If you want the Human Factor, a part of it must include compassion.

Doctor Who

The Evil of the Daleks: Episode Four

So this is the “I’m a Doctor Who Companion Get Me Out of Here” episode, as Jamie endures Dalek trials observed by an attentive audience. It’s an extended trifle, without much substance.

Jamie wins out through showing mercy to his foe, Kemel; he saves him, and then they ally to overcome the Daleks and rescue Victoria (there appear to be no consequences for the Dalek destruction derby they embark upon). Aside from Kemel, various axes and spikey objects block his path. There isn’t much in the way of tension to these scenes, as we know it is just a test. Excepting the climb to the staircase towards the climax.

In respect of Kemel, the strong, silent savage aspect may well be a leftover from an earlier draft of Whitaker’s plot. Here, a caveman named Og would have featured in the challenges faced by Jamie. It would certainly have laid the story less open to accusations of racism, although quite likely Og would have been unintentionally amusing.

More meat is provided in the other plot threads. The Doctor instructs the Daleks on the human “ingredients” that are required.

The Doctor: If you want the Human Factor, a part of it must include compassion.

He also informs them,

The Doctor: But there is instinct too. Jamie used instinct to avoid your trap.

But it’s the interaction between Waterfield and Maxtible that scores strongest. Waterfield’s stricken conscience foreshadows the concerns voiced by the Doctor later in the story, but with the same religious overtones that imbue the Daleks with a satanic majesty.

Waterfield: There’s no end to this, the hands of the Devil.

Maxtible, single-minded in his avarice, insists that they are not to blame (for the deaths that have occurred, the most recent of which is Toby’s). His patience is running thin with his colleague and stooge (“Waterfield, I am sick of you… Am I to blame for everything?”)

Waterfield: How many people must dies so that my daughter can live?

Maxtible: We are not the murderers.

Waterfield: No, just the silent partners. But we are just as much to blame because we stand by and do nothing.

Waterfield has a strong moral compass, and the Doctor’s conversation with a belligerent Jamie in the following episode sees him hold forth similarly regarding the ends justifying the means. Just in less emotive language.

Maxtible’s base desires are laid bare this week, as he gets stroppy with his masters. He still labours under the delusion that he has equal bargaining power with them, such is his tunnel vision.

Dalek: Do you threaten the Daleks?

Maxtible: It is not beyond me to ruin the entire enterprise… The secret., the secret. You promised to give it to me. That is why I have done all this.

He worships the alchemist’s dream. Not the immortality of the Sisterhood of Khan, but the more prosaic version; the transmutation of metal into gold.

Maxtible: To possess such a secret would mean power and influence beyond all imagining. And I am about to discover the secret. Nothing will stop me! Nothing! Nobody!

It’s not a little ironic that he is blind to his scientific achievements (whatever their quantifiability; they certainly appear to have opened a portal to another dimension, even if it is the Daleks who provide the nuts and bolts of time travel apparatus). There’s a slight echo of the advancements and proclamations of Nikola Tesla in his science beyond the imaginings of the world of the 19^th century. But Tesla was dedicated to his practice, with little interest in financial rewards. For Maxtible, riches and prestige are the sole point of his dabblings.

Elsewhere, the increasingly combustible Terrall mystifies Ruth. His assessment of poor Molly might be better applied to the ever-wilting Victoria (well, the sniveling part).

Terrall: She’s a mean, snivelling little minx.

A so-so episode. But it’s not as if other lengthy (quality) stories aren’t the victim of similar less-than-essential padding. Both Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Planet of the Spiders include lengthy chase sequences that take up an entire episode.

Comments

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh ), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the wretched main arc when the show returned, although the writing was truly on the wall with Season 9 finale The Truth . For the most part, though, I found 8 and 9 more watchable than, say 5 or 7. They came up with their fair share of engaging standalones, one of which I remembered to be Via Negativa .

You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (SPOILERS) Hitherto, I was most familiar with Jeremiah Johnson in the form of a popular animated gif of beardy Robert Redford smiling and nodding in slow zoom close up (a moment that is every bit as cheesy in the film as it is in the gif). For whatever reason, I hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to check out the 1970s’ The Revenant until now (well, beard-wise, at any rate). It’s easy to distinguish the different personalities at work in the movie. The John Milius one – the (mythic) man against the mythic landscape; the likeably accentuated, semi-poetic dialogue – versus the more naturalistic approach favoured by director Sydney Pollack and star Redford. The fusion of the two makes for a very watchable, if undeniably languorous picture. It was evidently an influence on Dances with Wolves in some respects, although that Best Picture Oscar winner is at greater pains to summon a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans (and thus, perversely, at times a more patr

I tell you, it saw me! The hanged man’s asphyx saw me!

The Asphyx (1972) (SPOILERS) There was such a welter of British horror from the mid 60s to mid 70s, even leaving aside the Hammers and Amicuses, that it’s easy to lose track of them in the shuffle. This one, the sole directorial effort of Peter Newbrook (a cameraman for David Lean, then a cinematographer), has a strong premise and a decent cast, but it stumbles somewhat when it comes to taking that premise any place interesting. On the plus side, it largely eschews the grue. On the minus, directing clearly wasn’t Newbrook’s forte, and even aided by industry stalwart cinematographer Freddie Young (also a go-to for Lean), The Aspyhx is stylistically rather flat.

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

You know what I sometimes wish? I sometimes wish I were ordinary like you. Ordinary and dead like all the others.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) (SPOILERS) Bryan Forbes’ adaptation of Mark McShane’s 1961’s novel has been much acclaimed. It boasts a distinctive storyline and effective performances from its leads, accompanied by effective black-and-white cinematography from Gerry Turpin and a suitably atmospheric score from John Barry. I’m not sure Forbes makes the most of the material, however, as he underlines Séance on a Wet Afternoon ’s inherently theatrical qualities at the expense of its filmic potential.

A ship is the finest nursery in the world.

A High Wind in Jamaica (1965) (SPOILERS) An odd one, this, as if Disney were remaking The Swiss Family Robinson for adults. One might perhaps have imagined the Mouse House producing it during their “Dark Disney” phase. But even then, toned down. After all, kids kidnapped by pirates sounds like an evergreen premise for boy’s own adventuring (more girl’s own here). The reality of Alexander Mackendrick’s film is decidedly antithetical to that; there’s a lingering feeling, despite A High Wind in Jamaica ’s pirates largely observing their distance, that things could turn rather nasty (and indeed, if Richard Hughes’ 1929 novel had been followed to the letter, they would have more explicitly).

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.

Isn’t it true, it’s easier to be a holy man on the top of a mountain?

The Razor’s Edge (1984) (SPOILERS) I’d hadn’t so much a hankering as an idle interest in finally getting round to seeing Bill Murray’s passion project. Partly because it seemed like such an odd fit. And partly because passion isn’t something you tend to associate with any Murray movie project, involving as it usually does laidback deadpan. Murray, at nigh-on peak fame – only cemented by the movie he agreed to make to make this movie – embarks on a serious-acting-chops dramatic project, an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s story of one man’s journey of spiritual self-discovery. It should at least be interesting, shouldn’t it? A real curio? Alas, not. The Razor’s Edge is desperately turgid.

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

Schnell, you stinkers! Come on, raus!

Private’s Progress (1956) (SPOILERS) Truth be told, there’s good reason sequel I’m Alright Jack reaps the raves – it is, after all, razor sharp and entirely focussed in its satire – but Private’s Progress is no slouch either. In some respects, it makes for an easy bedfellow with such wartime larks as Norman Wisdom’s The Square Peg (one of the slapstick funny man’s better vehicles). But it’s also, typically of the Boulting Brothers’ unsentimental disposition, utterly remorseless in rebuffing any notions of romantic wartime heroism, nobility and fighting the good fight. Everyone in the British Army is entirely cynical, or terrified, or an idiot.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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