“You are a Time Lord, a lord of time. Are there lords in such a small domain?”
The Black Guardian trilogy concludes with a far stronger outing than last week’s Terminus. The Doctor learns of the Black Guardian’s influence over Turlough, who in turn finally manages to break free of him, in an adventure which sees the TARDIS crew caught up in an unusual race of mysterious origins.
The TARDIS experiences a power drain which turns out to be the White Guardian, his powers nearly exhausted, using the ship’s power to warn the Doctor that someone or something “must not win the race.” The TARDIS then materializes on what seems to be an Edwardian era sailing ship, a racing yacht with a crew who can’t seem to remember how they came on board, and officers who are very peculiar and emotionless. It eventually turns out they’re actually on board a spaceship, carefully designed to resemble and even operate as if it were a sailing ship, part of a race organized by aliens called Eternals. The Eternals have the power to create anything they find in the thoughts of the mortal beings they call “Ephemerals” and have abducted humans from various times in Earth history to crew their spacecraft— and according to the rules of their race, they’ve built the ships to both look and behave exactly as if sailing in the ocean.
The Doctor soon realizes that despite their lofty pretensions of superiority, the Eternals are mere parasites: faced with the unending boredom of eternity, they’re no longer able to conceive any thoughts, or ideas, or even feelings except by lifting them from the minds of the Ephemerals they abduct. They have no concern for the fates of the humans they have on their ships: since Ephemerals all die anyway, why would it possibly matter to anyone if they do so a little sooner or later? The prize in the race is Enlightenment: the winner will gain the power to form his own ideas and escape from endless boredom. Although one of the Eternals turns out to be in league with the Black Guardian, sabotaging other ships in order to win, the Doctor realizes the White Guardian’s warning was that none of them must be allowed to win. Already too powerful, Enlightenment would turn even the best of them into universal threats.
Enlightenment is an intriguing story with some very nice moments. The buildup to the episode 1 cliffhanger, as the clues mount up that all is not as it seems until we hit the final reveal that they’re actually in space, is especially nice. The officers of the Edwardian yacht are very creepy: they’re played with a sort of emotionless calm that really conveys the true emptiness of the Eternals: I don’t know if the phrase uncanny valley had been coined yet, but the two lead actors, playing Captain Striker and his first mate Mr Marriner, firmly set themselves far down in it. They’re monsters that don’t look like monsters— and they’re the closest the Eternals have to good guys. (Some of the bit players among the officers slip into mere wooden acting, but they’re just bit players so it’s okay.)
Especially creepy is the crush Marriner develops for Tegan. His attempts to express his affection just keep revealing how Eternals see mortals like her, while she’s constantly horrified at the fact that he can completely read her mind, and she can have no possible privacy while she’s around. It’s a sharp SF twist on a common story: here’s a man who values Tegan for her mind, ideas, personality, feelings— but still sees her only as an object for his amusement, every bit as much as some jerk in a bar who only sees her body.
Unfortunately the creepiness of the Eternals falls by the wayside as the story proceeds. The villainous Captain Wrack and her officers are far more conventionally melodramatic. Taking the form of a pirate crew they play up their pantomime villainy to the hilt. I can easily imagine the writer of the episode intended this to be a “they doth protest too much” way of hiding from the same emptiness that Captain Striker and his officers display, but it doesn’t come across on screen. Captain Wrack just seems to be having too much fun for us to believe that underneath she’s as desperate and hollow as Striker. Once she’s on the scene, the story becomes just a series of standard perils and escapes until it reaches its conclusion. Now, they’re perfectly good perils and escapes and there’s nothing wrong with the latter half of the story— except that it doesn’t quite live up to the eery promise of the first half.
The story looks very good on screen. The idea that all the ships and crews replicate sailing ships and crews out of Earth history allows the set and costume people to delve into the BBC’s enormous repository of period costumes and props, the perfect way to make things look good even with Classic Dr Who’s miniscule budget. Even the miniature shots of the sailing ships in space, which you’d expect to be the story’s downfall, look decent enough (not brilliant, but they do what they need to).
If anything’s really lacking in the story, it’s the near absence of the Black Guardian. As the story opens, he makes an appearance to claim he’s set in motion another plan to kill the Doctor, but nothing follows from this (when the Doctor’s life is in peril at the climax of the story, this could be what he was talking about, but nothing specifically seems to connect it). He doesn’t urge Turlough to kill the Doctor— in fact he says he’s done with Turlough after all the failures, and through the story seems more concerned with punishment Turlough for it than anything else.
The very last scene, though, and the resolution of the Turlough arc, is quite nice. (Warning: spoilers for the end of the story follow) Turlough has two chances to kill the Doctor and fulfill his bargain with the Black Guardian: one time happens offscreen, for the sake of suspense at how it came out, but we learn he sided with the Doctor and as a result it’s the Doctor and Turlough who win the race and are entitled to the prize. Then, both the Black and White Guardians appear to give his share of Enlightenment to Turlough, revealing a diamond so large Turlough says “it could buy galaxies!” The Black Guardian says that under the terms of their contract, the diamond is his— but Turlough can have it if he fulfills the bargain and kills the Doctor. (The Doctor and Tegan are present and hear this conversation.) Turlough stares at the diamond greedily for a moment, then yells “Take it!” and throws it at the Black Guardian, who vanishes in a burst of flame. The White Guardian tells Turlough the contract is broken and he is now free. Mark Strickson, playing Turlough, performs the scene very well.
And I like the final bit of dialog in the scene. Tegan, who’s been suspicious of Turlough all along, isn’t satisfied and urges the Doctor to leave Turlough behind. The Doctor replies that he thinks Turlough can now be trusted. “You’re just saying that because he turned down Enlightenment for you,” Tegan says. “You don’t understand, Tegan,” the Doctor answers. “Enlightenment wasn’t the diamond. Enlightenment was the choice.”
Details
- Female directors at the BBC were rare back in the day, and so were female writers (at least on Dr Who). So it was doubly rare for an episode of the Classic series to have both at once. In fact, it only happened a handful of times (don’t ask me for a complete list!) and this is one of them. Enlightenment was written by Barbara Clegg, her only contribution to Dr Who, and directed by Fiona Cumming, who directed several other stories as well.
- Strikes from the BBC electricians’ union threatened the production, though not in the same way as last week’s Terminus. Terminus faced a severe compression of its shooting schedule, while Enlightenment had its production delayed. After Terminus, there were three more serials planned for season 20: Enlightment, a 2-part story featuring the Master (see next week) and a 4-part Dalek story called Warhead. For a while it seemed all three would be cancelled and season 20 would have to end with Terminus. Once the union dispute was resolved, it was only the Dalek story that got cancelled (and the script was eventually used in season 21, so it did not suffer the never-made fate of Tom Baker’s Shada). Strike threats averted, Enlightment went before the cameras late but with a full shooting schedule.
- The whole issue of the Eternals’ yacht race remains mysterious, and the story would probably benefit from a little more explanation of it. The period-detail ships, and the rules requiring them, fit nicely with the idea of the bored Eternals demanding constant entertainment: it’s exactly the sort of thing obsessive hobbyists might do in a civil war reenactment or other activities of the sort. But the two Guardians are the ones handing out the prize. Who organized the race and its so-valuable prize? The Eternals or the Guardians? If the White Guardian is so determined that none of the Eternals must win, why is he participating? A certain amount of mystery is suitable here— the Guardians and the Eternals are all very mysterious figures, and they work better that way— but I feel like a little more explanation would have been nice.
- Neither the Eternals nor the Guardians have appeared again in Dr Who since this story, though it seems like both are interesting enough concepts that a writer could do something with them.
Next Week:
“The King’s Demons,” 2 episodes and the season 20 finale (though it wasn’t supposed to be).
