Doctor Who - City Of Death (DVD)

...was the script editor on Doctor Who during its most successful period until - well, until now, I guess - and wrote some remarkable scripts for the series, although not always under his own name...

City of Death is not just another Doctor Who story, it is THE Doctor Who story. It pastiches and celebrates so many things. The show's own history, most obviously, but also the whole gangster movie tradition. With a large amount of location ...
...the Romantic figures of the Doctor and Romana represent hugely Godardian hero figures, particularly in the contrast with the practical oafish Duggan). Hammer Horror is also parodied in basement laboratory scenes. By mining such a deep cultural vein, and then throwing in a crazy time-travel sub-plot, the result is ninety minutes of the greatest television ever produced.

The plot in a sentence: The Doctor and Romana loaf around Paris ... more

Douglas Adams passed away at a horribly young age. The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently series just seem insufficient as a body of work to represent possibly the greatest humourist of the 20th Century. Even the addition of Last Chance to See and the Infocom computer game of the Guide add up to a depressingly slim oeuvre.

Thankfully, of course, Adams did a lot of other work - not just the chicken coop guarding jobs he liked to joke about. He was the script editor on Doctor Who during its most successful period until - well, until now, I guess - and wrote some remarkable scripts for the series, although not always under his own name...

City of Death is not just another Doctor Who story, it is THE Doctor Who story. It pastiches and celebrates so many things. The show's own history, most obviously, but also the whole gangster movie tradition. With a large amount of location filming in Paris, City of Death borrows most heavily from Godard's iconic A Bout de Souffle and the New Wave in general (A Bout de Souffle's bungling detectives are still around, as is the emphasis on filming around Paris's main tourist attractions, and the amateur feel, with pedestrians gawping at the cameras. More generally, the Romantic figures of the Doctor and Romana represent hugely Godardian hero figures, particularly in the contrast with the practical oafish Duggan). Hammer Horror is also parodied in basement laboratory scenes. By mining such a deep cultural vein, and then throwing in a crazy time-travel sub-plot, the result is ninety minutes of the greatest television ever produced.

The plot in a sentence: The Doctor and Romana loaf around Paris before eventually thwarting an evil alien's attempt to go back in time and prevent the destruction of his entire race.

So, why is it so brilliant? Well, Tom Baker's Doctor has clearly fallen deeply in love with Lalla Ward, playing his assistant, Romana, which adds a rare romantic element to the show. And Julian Glover's portrayal of Scaroth is suave, witty and elegant, the perfect contrast to Baker's anarchic comedy. Glover would later crop up as the main villain in the final Indiana Jones film. But he's on better form here.

But above and beyond all this shines Douglas Adams's fantastic dialogue. All the actors seem to understand exactly what is required of them. Particularly brilliant moments include the Doctor's collapse while standing in front of the Mona Lisa ('The whole world had a funny turn'), and a magical and often-quoted scene between Baker, Ward, Glover and Catherine Schell (playing Scaroth's naive wife). We ignore the little niggles about this story (Adams later ripped off the villain's scheme for his novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, spoiling the plot revelation for anyone who has read that book) such as the normal special effects problems, simply because this is more of a brilliantly-written situation comedy than a science-fiction drama. And the special effects aren't actually too bad. While a lot of Doctor Who has aged horribly due to its reliance on primitive effects technology, this story is still as fresh as ever.

But it isn't just a comedy. Adams truly understands the power of humour in drama. And unlike his other contributions to Doctor Who, the cast is allowing the comedy to come through the dialogue, rather than playing it for laughs. And so there are also scenes of suprising poignancy, as Scaroth ponders his dilemna of being 'splintered in time', as well as being the last of his people. On more than one occasion, Glover simply lowers his voice, and the whole tone of the story changes. He is particularly good at working with the studio lighting, his eyes disappearing into blackness as he reflects on his responsibilities. At times he is a truly sympathetic villain.

But of course, we can't have that! Perhaps as a punishment for being too brilliant, Scaroth eventually rips off his Julian Glover face to reveal an alien head, for most of the final episode. Far from robbing a great actor of his dignity, the image of a single-eyed green monster in an elegant white Italian suit is powerful, and Glover is utterly convincing. So consistent is he in his physical performance, that the audience can ALMOST believe in the monster beneath his skin.

Scaroth's final scene, on the plains of Prehistoric Earth, is breath-taking. For all the tackiness of the painted backdrop set, the tension is close to unbearable as the Doctor pleads with the deranged alien to respect the laws of cause and effect. All comedy is thrown to the wind for this final confrontation, and the sudden grave attitude of all the characters is striking in contrast.

And then the bungling comedy detective defuses the whole desperate situation with a bit of slapstick.

There's so much more to talk about concerning the definitive Doctor's definitive adventure. I haven't even mentioned John Cleese's cameo as an art critic, or the loony idea of a time-travelling alien convincing Da Vinci to run off extra copies of the Mona Lisa.

Suffice it to say that this is the definitive Doctor Who adventure. In France, I met French and German students curious about the show, and this was the video I chose to show them. This is the video that transformed one of them into a hardcore WHO fan overnight.

As the Doctor and Romana run off into Paris at the story's conclusion, they are yelling their farewell to the comic detective who has been their ally throughout. But, if we choose to mishear the line very slightly, instead of shouting farewell to Duggan, they could so easily be shouting:

'Bye, bye, Douglas!'

Yes, I think I like that.

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The DVD has the usual high quality mix of commentaries, documentaries and interviews, and of course much crisper images and sound than the earlier VHS release. Splendid stuff. The highlight, however, is the inclusion of the PDFs of a Doctor Who annual. These annuals were patchy pieces of work but now change hands for silly amounts of money. To get them as a bit of an extra is to restore them to their actual value, and it means children will have access to them again, which is as it should be, really. 

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