Colony in Space [Classic Doctor Who] – Blue Towel Productions

Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, and after a long time of not really watching it very actively, lately I’ve been deliberately working at rewatching all the available episodes of the classic series, and writing up my thoughts on each adventure. But there are a lot of episodes! So it’s taking a while. For extra fun I’m mostly watching them completely out of order.

Colony in Space

Starring Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor.
Companion:  Katy Manning as Jo Grant
Recurring Characters: Roger Delgado as the Master and Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart

Written by Malcolm Hulke.  Directed by Michael Briant. Produced by Barry Letts. Script edited by Terrance Dicks.

Format:  6 episodes, each about 25 minutes long
Originally Aired:  April-May 1971 (Episodes 15-20 of Season 8)

This is one of the classic Doctor Who stories that I’ve been most excited to revisit; I was quite excited when it came up in my mostly random process for choosing my next story. The reason for my interest? It’s actually the very first Doctor Who story that I ever watched, at least all the way through. Back when I first discovered the show, I found I could watch it on a local PBS station that I could access via UHF. They were airing Doctor Who on Saturday nights, with stories edited together into omnibus-style movies.

And thus, my first real exposure to Doctor Who came to be: on a fuzzy TV station on a black & white TV, with a really long story that edited out any of the dramatic tension created by its cliffhanger endings. And so a lifelong fandom was born!

Spoilers Ahead!

So yeah, my initial impressions from watching Colony in Space all those years ago were not favorable, making it in some ways a mild miracle that I still became such a fan of the show. It felt slow and plodding and lacking of dramatic incident. And for whatever reason, until these past few days I’ve never revisited the story again. So what are my impressions today, now that I’ve seen the whole thing with in color, in episode-format with cliffhangers, and with as much clarity as one could expect from a 70s TV show watched on a computer?

Well, it’s still kind of slow and plodding. There is dramatic incident, but it’s more sparse than it should be, and too frequently repetitious. But it’s also a thoughtful story, with some interesting social ideas in its orbit. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise, given that the writer is Malcolm Hulke, who took a similar approach with some of his other stories, like Doctor Who and the Silurians and Invasion of the Dinosaurs. In this case those ideas have to do with the conflict between a group of intrepid colonists looking to carve out a life for themselves, and a militaristic mining corporation that puts profits ahead of people.

The dynamic gives the story a needed edge, even if it’s not the most effective social commentary ever made. The so-called “primitives” who actually are indigenous to the planet don’t much consideration in any of this. The colonists do recognise the need to work alongside the locals, which puts them above the mining corporation, but it’s all undercut by the story’s general approach of just treating these beings as obstacles to deal with. And then at the end, the Guardian of the Uxarieans, as they can be referred to, seems to just summarily choose to blow up their doomsday weapon and with it their whole city. The Doctor makes a token effort to save all the panicking natives but really the story has got other things to focus on.

(Although see at the bottom of this post for some other thoughts about this).

It’s a weakness of the story’s ending, which has several abrupt elements–a problem that feels like it should have been wholly avoidable considering the overall serials length. I enjoyed the battle between the colonists and the miners, but it too often circles over the same ground multiple times. The miners get the upper hand, then the colonists get the upper hand, then everyone just submits to the Adjudicator anyway, and then the colonists get the upper hand, and then the miners get the upper hand, and so on. Surely some of that could have been trimmed back to make more room for the stuff that’s ultimately revealed to be the driving reason for the story–the Uxarieans and their doomsday weapon, and the Master’s attempts to get it?

What makes it all work as well as it does is the strength of the characterization of the guest cast.

There are a fair few important figures and the story for the most part gives plenty of space to show us who they all are. Robert Ashe & his daughter Mary, trying to hold things together; David Winton losing patience with the injustice around him; Captain Dent and his lackey Morgan, showing ruthlessness at the sign of opposition while still keeping themselves covered legally; and Caldwell, the mineralogist who becomes increasingly conflicted over what his company is doing–each of them are nicely fleshed out characters.

Even lesser figures like Norton (the spy) and the Leesons (the colonists killed at the start) do well.

It’s also too bad, therefore, that some of these characters lose out in the resolution. I would have liked to have seen Captain Dent get his comeuppance, for instance, and also Mary’s reaction to her father’s sacrifice.

Also doing well is the Doctor himself, and his interplay with the Master. Since I’m not watching all of these stories in order, it’s hard for me to know what was “new” at the time, and what was story beats we had seen before. But I enjoyed the sequence where the Master tries to tempt the Doctor into joining him, especially with the idea that if you had ultimate power, you could use it for good. Jon Pertwee plays this well–for a moment, the Doctor looks tempted. Like you can imagine the guy going, “Yeah, that would be convenient, if I could just tell everyone to stop being so stupid and make it stick.” Of course he quickly remember why this wouldn’t be a good idea. He has a line that’s actually pretty character-defining in this scene: “I want to see the universe, not rule it.”

And I also find myself appreciating this era’s take on the Master and Roger Delgado’s performance.

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again–the Master is overall a better character when he’s depicted as an intelligent adversary with evil plans that are actually motivated by something–ie power–rather than just a deranged lunatic out to taunt and harass the Doctor. This story’s Master might be insane, but Delgado doesn’t play him that way, and nor does he play him as “only” evil (the 80s Master could feel like that sometimes). The fact that he tries to get the Doctor onto his side, for instance, implies other facets like a measure of insecurity or loneliness that pairs well with his more grandiose delusions of setting himself up as a kind of a god-figure for the universe.

Colony in Space is, of course, the first Third Doctor story where he fully travels in the TARDIS to a whole new planet and century. They do this without upending the recent status quo of the Doctor being exiled on earth by having it be a special mission that he’s sent on by the Time Lords. As such, we get a glimpse of Gallifrey in this story, though still unnamed, only the second time we’ve actually seen the planet. Three Time Lords make an appearance–one of them is played by Graham Leaman who also went on to the play a Time Lord in The Three Doctors, but according to expanded media this is a different Time Lord, so whatever.

All of this means that the story features some fun scenes of Katy Manning’s Jo Grant marvelling at the inside of the TARDIS or at being on alien planet for the first time. These are all iconic moments for any companion, but because of the general story, for Jo they happen toward the end of her first season rather than her start. Jo goes on to have a fine role in the story–being loyal and brave and daring and all the rest, but nothing really outstanding. And she has one particularly dopey moment where she just completely forgets about the alarm in the Master’s TARDIS and therefore gets both her and the Doctor caught. Not her finest moment.

(There’s also this hilarious bit where she is being held prisoner and a guard named Allen just picks her up and carries her under his arm in order to prevent her escaping).

So yeah, that’s my long-awaited rewatch of Colony in Space done and dusted. Far from the greatest story, but not a complete waste of time, either. It could have strongly benefitted from some major adjustments to the pacing, and probably making it only four episodes rather than six, but it was still interesting to see the sort of stuff they were going for back then.

Other Thought:

• Jo’s first visit inside the TARDIS drew my attention to something I’d forgotten about, which is the way that in many stories, the doors of the TARDIS look completely different depending on whether we are inside of it or outside of it. This has never been acknowledged on screen, as far as I know. But not long ago I saw a classic-era story–I cannot remember which one–where I believe it is shown that the big interior doors on the TARDIS don’t go straight outside, but rather to a little chamber that itself seems to contain the exterior doors, or at least that could contain the exterior doors. I remember seeing that and thinking, “Huh, I’ve never noticed that before,” and wondering if that was what it was always like.

Well, Colony in Space answers that question–this is not what it was always like. Here the doors completely change shape and size between the shot of Jo and the Doctor leaving the console room, and arriving outside.

Now I’ll have to pay more attention to this and see what stories depicted this way and what depicted it other ways (of course, the modern series generally avoids this by having the “Police Box” doors fully visible in the main TARDIS interior). Anyway, further research is required (I’ve been thinking once this randomised rewatch is finished, I might just binge through the show chronologically without the burden of having to write about it all the time, so I guess I can look out for it then).

• Jon Pertwee gets a lot of cool martial arts and fight scenes in this story. This might not be too surprising–he tended to relish these sorts of moments, but looking at it now it still felt like a lot. He paralyses Leeson with a poke in the chest, and at various times fights the Master, Morgan and some of the Uxarieans.

It’s cool stuff.

• Amongst the guest cast of this story is John Ringham (Ashe) who was the treacherous Tlotoxl in The Azteks, Bernard Kay (Caldwell) who was Carl Tyler in The Dalek Invasion of Earth and Roy Skelton (Norton) who voiced Daleks and Cybermen and, very briefly, K9, in lots of stories.

• Also, assistant floor manager and future-director Graeme Harper shows up briefly here in the ID for the real adjudicator, whom the Master replaced. See entry #9 in this post for the evidence as to why that guy was actually the Doctor!

• Hmm, up above I talked about the summary way that the Guardian (a pretty nifty design, by the way) just seems to wipe out his people when the Doctor helps him realize that the Doomsday Weapon is a bad idea.

But I guess we’d just seen this making the Master’s weapon just disappear out of his hands, without any effort. It’s probably not too much of a stretch to suppose he might have just teleported all his people away to some other place on the other side of the planet before his city blew up. It’s a head canon but a pretty reasonable one, I think.