The Story
The TARDIS loses power in mid-flight, and can’t move again without a supply of the precious mineral Zeiton-7. There’s only just enough power to materialize on the only planet in the universe where Zeiton-7 can be found, Varos. The Doctor worries about the timing— if they miss Varos’ mining period, no ore will be available and the TARDIS will never move again.
Fortunately they hit the mining period, but not a very pleasant part of it. Varos is a police state, and a poverty-stricken one at that. The people are kept distracted by live entertainment in the form of broadcasts of the torture and execution of rebels in the “punishment dome” and by a sham democracy in which the governor is forced to submit every decision to a public referendum, and if the vote goes against him (as it always does) he gets tortured live on video as well. In fact the governor is little more than an unlucky figurehead, chosen by lot from among the senior officials, and real power lies with the security officials who are in cahoots with the Galatron Mining Company to keep Varos ignorant of the true worth of its Zeiton-7 ore. It’s actually one of the most precious minerals in the universe and Varos should be prospering, but the governor and people of Varos believe it’s nearly worthless and they’re lucky to get the pittance that Galatron pays for it.
The Doctor and Peri run afoul of the corrupt system almost from the moment of materializing (the TARDIS lands in the punishment dome, they help a rebel avoid execution, and so are regarded as rebels themselves). They have to survive the hazards of the punishment dome, the sadistic machinations of a “research scientist” who is actually concerned only with devising novelty tortures for broadcast, and the actions of the sluglike Galatron representative, Sil.
Review
I have to start with a disclaimer: I really, really hate this episode, and I hate its lead villain, Sil (and not in the way you’re supposed to hate villains). But I have to admit this is a matter of personal taste, and not because the episode’s actually bad.
Normally on this blog I’m as quick as any fan to forget the difference between my opinion and objective fact, and just say “this one’s great” or “that one’s awful.” This time the difference is important, for two reasons: first, Vengeance on Varos is in general the most critically praised of the seldom-praised season 22. Second, I can look at it and see that it’s actually done quite well. It’s like going to a restaurant and getting a dish you can see is well prepared— it’s just not what you like.
Vengeance on Varos is probably the darkest story of season 22, maybe even of Classic’s entire run. Varos is a true dystopia of rusted corridors and people divided between the cruel and corrupt and the hopelessly depressed. In many ways this makes it the best match for Colin Baker and his technicolor costume: just as the Second Doctor’s era sent its shabby “Cosmic Hobo” into a series of gleaming, orderly, Star-Trek-like control rooms (where he taught lessons in the value of a little chaos in the midst of too much high-tech perfection), so the Sixth Doctor works best when sent into an environment of dingy darkness where his mere appearance is a disruptive element. In brighter surroundings his costume is just a clashing bit of bad taste. On Varos it’s a badly needed ray of light.
The villain, Sil, judged as a costume/special effect is well done: he’s a slug-like amphibious creature played by actor Nabil Shaban with a creepy, wet bubbling laugh and quivering voice. As a character, he’s basically identical to the “Collector” from The Sunmakers back in the Tom Baker era, and most reviewers (other than me) consider him one of the better creatures of this season.
Also like The Sunmakers, Vengeance on Varos features a greedy corporation and a corrupt, oppressive government in cahoots with each other (writer Philip Martin says the real target of his satire was the concept of state-run media). What Vengeance lacks, however, is any counterbalancing sympathy for the enslaved population. The only two common Varosians we see are a dysfunctional husband-wife couple watching the punishment broadcasts at home. They never interact with the story at all: they’re just passive viewers of it on their screen, and they evoke little sympathy for the suffering of Varos. They certainly think this latest broadcast is the best they’ve seen in years (why wouldn’t they? They’re watching a Dr Who episode!) but they’re as nasty to each other as they are ultimately heartless to the suffering they see on screen. They’re given the last lines of the story, when after the Doctor has brought down the corrupt system they stand at their now-blank screen realizing they have no idea what to do with the “freedom” they’ve just been promised. We leave Varos without much hope that anything will really get better there.
That may be why I end up disliking the episode (apart from the fact that I find Sil merely annoying rather than menacing). Its sheer, unrelieved bleakness seems to run counter to the grain of Dr Who, which works better on a sense of innate optimism. Last season’s Caves of Androzani also showed us a world with no good guys other than the Doctor and Peri, but the focus of that story was on the Doctor’s loyalty to his friends, even one he just met. Here the story seems to be crying out for the Doctor to save the world, not just himself and his companion, and it seems that he does— and yet we can’t help thinking it’s just not going to help. This is Dr Who at its most cynical— and I don’t want Dr Who to ever be cynical.
Details
- Writer Philip Martin was a successful writer of both stage plays and BBC drama. He approached Dr Who to write for the series, prompted by watching the Peter Davison stories with his then-eight-year-old daughter, and because he’d thought up a story he thought was best told via Dr Who: he brought the story outline to Eric Saward, rather than being commissioned to write on a story idea the production had come up with (as was more usual).
- The idea for the story came from an experience of Martin’s while working on a BBC production doing location shooting in Pakistan. There was a military coup while the production unit was there, and while they weren’t directly threatened Martin noticed that all the Pakistani television executives they’d been working with disappeared: the new regime had seized the TV stations. He went on to consider how governments use control of the broadcast media to keep their populations in line, and the idea for the story was born.
- Martin was known for breaking the fourth wall in his scripts and he flirts with it in the cliffhanger between episodes 1 and 2, which even I admit is a fairly clever one. The Doctor has apparently succumbed to one of the deathtraps in the punishment dome. As he collapses, the governor directs the video coverage going out to the population— and directs what we see at the same time. (“Zoom in on the face… hold it… and cut!”).
- In keeping with Eric Saward’s vision for Dr Who, the violence remains high in this story, which includes probably the most controversial scene, certainly of this era of the program and perhaps of its entire run (it would be one of the main things cited when the series ran into trouble as the season progressed). After the cliffhanger, the Doctor regains consciousness in a chamber where two guards are disposing of bodies in an acid vat. The struggle ends with both of them falling into the acid themselves. It’s not quite the Doctor’s fault, he doesn’t outright shove either of them in, but once they’re gone he just gives the seething acid a glance and says, “You’ll forgive me if I don’t join you” and walks away. Not quite the compassionate Doctor we want to see (and which even Colin Baker’s version normally is).
- I have to point out one shocking lapse in plot logic so great I have to wonder if I missed something. Toward the end of the episode Sil has the mining company send an invasion force to conquer Varos and restore order. Then he gets a message from them saying that another source of Zeiton ore has been discovered so they’re calling off the invasion. Really? The Doctor was clear that Varos was the only place in the universe it could be found, and if it’s vital to the function of TARDISes then you’d think the Time Lords would know if at a certain point in history other sources had been found. Then, immediately, another message instructs Sil to pay any price Varos asks for its ore. This is supposed to be good news, since Varos will now get a fair price and be prosperous, but— wait a minute. Galatron was willing to invade to avoid paying a higher price. Then finding another source meant there was no reason for the expense of an invasion— but now they’ll pay “any” price? Huh? What did I miss?
PROGRAM NOTE: I’m heading off on a vacation at the end of this week and will be gone for the following two. I’ll have a post tomorrow about “Into the Dalek,” last night’s new series episode, and then we’re paused until I return.
In Three Weeks:
“Mark of the Rani,” two episodes
