Addendum to Last Week’s Post:
Your humble Dr Who columnist is embarrassed to admit leaving out an event of enormous significance in last week’s discussion of The Visitation. It should have gone in the “details” section, as follows:
- At one point in the story, the Terileptil leader catches the Doctor trying to use the sonic screwdriver to get out of a pair of handcuffs. Ordering the Doctor to drop it, he then blasts it to bits with his ray gun. Stunned, the Doctor says, “It feels like you’ve just shot my best friend.” The incident was the product of John Nathan-Turner’s feeling that writers had come to use the sonic screwdriver as a crutch to get the Doctor out of scrapes, so he wanted to write it out. It’s ironic in hindsight: the screwdriver was never used nearly as pervasively as it is in the current series. But JN-T got his way: this is the last time the sonic screwdriver ever appeared in Classic Dr Who.
And now, on with current business:
Black Orchid
The TARDIS lands at a railway station in the English village of Cranleigh on June 30, 1925 (unusually for the series, the date is specified exactly). By coincidence, local aristocrat Lord Charles Cranleigh is expecting a substitute player for his cricket team, a doctor who wants to remain incognito (for what reason is never explained), so between the Doctor’s period-specific cricket uniform and the way he introduces himself, he’s naturally mistaken for the player. The Doctor has great fun playing cricket, Tegan has great fun watching the game and then attending the fancy-dress ball at Cranleigh Manor that afternoon, Nyssa and Adric are baffled by the whole thing, but it’s all a pleasant little holiday until someone wearing the costume the Doctor was supposed to wear to the ball commits a murder, placing suspicion directly on the Doctor himself— suspicion which deepens when an apologetic phone call reveals the actual substitute cricket player missed his train.
Black Orchid is a short story at only 2 episodes long, and it’s unusual in other ways, as well. There is no science fiction or alien element at all, and the closet thing to a monster is the Phantom-of-the-Opera-like killer with his terribly scarred face. In that way it’s a throwback to the “historicals” of the Hartnell era (again, there’s a sense that season 19 is looking back to season 1). It’s also quite a peaceful and cheery little story for Dr Who. The great majority of its short length is occupied with all our characters having fun with their visit to a party at a 1925 manor house, and when a murder mystery intrudes it barely has time to spoil the mood. Lady Cranleigh knows the truth about the murder from the start and lets the Doctor be arrested because she’s trying to cover it up, but before we start thinking she might be a villain, we learn she’s only acting in the naive belief that the Doctor’s innocence means nothing bad can happen to him no matter what she says. When she reveals the truth to her son Charles Cranleigh, he sets her straight and they ring up the police at once— it’s all sorted out by the time the police car with the Doctor in custody reaches the station.
If all this sounds just too easy to be a good story— well, if it was longer than two episodes it would be. Or if things were this pleasant for the Doctor all the time. But as it is, it’s really an enjoyable little story, a kind of break between the more deadly adventures that normally find our heroes. The Doctor sometimes says he needs a vacation, and something terrible instantly happens— here he doesn’t say that, but he gets one. For two episodes it’s quite fun to watch Tegan really enjoying herself at the party, and to smile at Adric and Nyssa trying to figure it all out. It’s an enjoyable break: next week the adventures resume.
Details
- The reason for the short 2-part length of this story is that JN-T believed the series’ 6-parters tended to end up feeling padded and slow paced. Previous Dr Who script editors Terrance Dicks and Robert Holmes had agreed that 4 episodes seemed to be the “correct” length for a Dr Who serial (between them they had worked out a specific story structure for a 4-part Dr Who episode), but each season of the show normally lasted 26 episodes, which didn’t divide by four. Thus, the practice of ending each season with a 6-parter. When JN-T took over as producer for season 18, the vagaries of BBC scheduling assigned Dr Who 28 episodes, so the issue of 6-parters didn’t arise. In season 19, the show went back to the standard 26, but instead of a 6-parter, JN-T decided to include a short 2-part story to round out the episode count.
- The series plays the doppleganger card in this story, as Nyssa turns out to be an exact double of Charles Cranleigh’s fiancee, Ann Talbot. It barely plays into the story at all. At the climax, it allows Nyssa to be the one in danger from the killer (who thinks he’s kidnapped Ann) but that’s about it.
- Ann was originally engaged to Charles’ older brother George, a botanist who supposedly died two years earlier on an expedition to South America in search of the rare black orchid. Surprisingly, Tegan has heard of “the famous explorer and botanist” George Cranleigh, but apparently had not heard the circumstances of his death, since she seems surprised at the news (while also having no idea of the truth revealed during the course of this story).
- I’m not someone to do the kind of research it takes to reveal the following, but plenty of fans have and the following anachronisms have become part of the series’ lore over the years. Recall that the date is firmly established as June 30, 1925:
- The police recognize the TARDIS as a police box, but although police boxes existed in 1925, the TARDIS-style design was not introduced until 1929.
- When Charles Cranleigh takes orders for cocktails from his guests, Tegan orders a Screwdriver and he knows what she’s talking about. The Screwdriver is not known to have existed before 1938.
- At the party, a record player starts “The Charleston” and Tegan, recognizing it, starts to dance to it. Others join in. Although the song was popular in 1925, the well-known dance had only appeared in a Broadway stage play, and would not be widely known for a few more years. It’s a natural mistake for Tegan, but how did the other guests know the dance?
- From the unfortunate implications department: speaking of Tegan’s Screwdriver, Adric and Nyssa try to fit in by ordering the same, leading Cranleigh to tactfully suggest to the butler, “Better make it orange juice for the children.” Recall that Nyssa is the exact double of Ann, Cranleigh’s fiancee. If he sees Nyssa as a “child,” what’s he doing engaged to Ann? For that matter, Ann was already engaged to George when he disappeared two years earlier.
- Once there’s been a murder, and the Doctor is suspected, the police aren’t likely to accept his usual ducking of the question of his name. Pressed for his identity, he warns the police inspector “You won’t believe me”— and then tells him the truth: Time Lords, TARDIS and all. This leads to a scene where he proves he’s telling the truth by taking the inspector and a police sergeant inside the TARDIS itself. I love the down-to-earth reaction of the inspector (paraphrasing): “Well sir, this does prove you’re telling the truth in a sense, but there is still the matter of a murder to be cleared up.”
- Keeping up the attempt to create an ongoing serial feel, the episode again starts with our characters discussing the previous one. This time, however, the conversation feels far more natural than last week’s. Hearing they’ve landed on Earth, Nyssa worries whether they’ll be blamed for their role in the Great Fire of London. “All part of history,” the Doctor assures her. “It would have happened whether we’d been there or not.” (Which in turn raises all sorts of interesting ideas in the ongoing debate on whether Dr Who says history can be changed or not, and what the time travelers’ role in it might be— but that’s a lengthy discussion for another time.)
Next Week:
“Earthshock,” 4 episodes.
