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| When worlds collide! The Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) is caught in the Inferno. Images: BBC DVD. |
DOCTOR WHO – INFERNO (SPECIAL EDITION) 2-disc DVD set
Starring Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, and Caroline John as Liz Shaw
Written by Don Houghton
Directed by Douglas Camfield
Available from BBC DVD 27th May 2013
Reviewed by Scott Weller
“Listen to that! That’s the sound of this planet screaming out of its rage!”
The terrifying, annihilistic fate of two Earth’s hang in the balance, and our Time Lord hero, the Doctor, seems powerless to prevent destruction, in the superbly atmospheric seven-part 1970 adventure Inferno, starring Jon Pertwee’s incarnation at his most serious and desperate, receiving a welcome Special Edition revision courtesy of those 50th Anniversary celebrating people at BBC DVD.
Writer Don Houghton, in his first of two WHO scripts, escapes the mundane soap opera horrors of CROSSROADS for the more enjoyable fantasy environs of DOCTOR WHO, carving out a fascinating, and cautionary, environmental fable, packed with sci-fi ideas, scary tea-time horrors and lots of action!
The tall, dominant, authority bashing, cape-wearing eccentric Doctor as personified by Jon Pertwee has now found his feet in the role- a slightly more gritty and aggressive Doctor here during the beginning of his era trapped on Earth in an uneasy relationship with those military men at UNIT, before becoming the flamboyant figure of later seasons. On the companion front, he’s well catered for by reliable scientist and mini skirted wonder Caroline John as Liz Shaw.
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| Scientists unite! The Doctor and Liz Shaw (Caroline John). |
Like the Doctor and Pertwee, Shaw and John now seem to have settled down with the series, too, so it’s a great shame she didn’t return for a proper series send off the following year. In some ways, before the shows twentieth anniversary, Liz was one of the forgotten companions of the seventies, but as season ten stated to arrive on video and DVD from the nineties onwards, as well as the series return in a modern updating, the actress and character have undergone a well deserved re-evaluation and increase in popularity.
The top secret UNIT organization - so secret their name and logo are all over the place and on everything!- is also very much a “companion” in its own right, headed by mean-mustached military man Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, always played with style by Nicholas Courtney, in an early offering that sees his character as a more intelligent and believing officer, often capable of thinking for himself and not always seemingly following the Doctor’s cape trails.
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| The Doctor is still trying to escape his exile on Earth. |
And as the UK Government backed Project Infernodrilling into the Earth’s core intensifies, there’s double trouble, literally and physically, for our heroes to oppose. Firstly, against a clever, doesn’t suffer fools gladly and on the brink scientist: the clever and calculating Professor Stahlman (Olaf Pooley), singularly obsessed in discovering pockets of a unique and possibly limitless new source of energy, but unwittingly unleashing the planets subterranean biological forces to the surface. As Stahlman’s unwavering hostility and sheer bloody mindedness continue, and the safety factors of the industrial operation get closer into the red, the Doctor’s attempts to stop him are aided by the experienced engineer and seventies “real man” Greg Preston (played by Derek Newark), plus Stahlman’s dedicated assistant/computer, Petra, played by Sheila Dunn (also the then real-life wife of director Douglas Camfield), and political liaison Sir Keith Gold (an amiable performance from Christopher Benjamin).
Secondly, time becomes our hero’s enemy, when, after conducting experiments on the separated TARDIS console, he and his trusty yellow roadster, Bessie, are thrown onto another Earth, a parallel one of totalitarian control where the problems of the drilling project are far, far worse. There, in that cold world of military enforcement, Project: Inferno is at the point of detonation zero unless the Doctor can intervene, seen and considered an intruder and saboteur by his once friends. The actions and mistakes of the people here soon providing a grim look at what could happen on “our” Earth if such a similar turn of events in the timeline is initiated...
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| Technician Bromley (Ian Fairbairn) is one of the first "infected" technicians. |
Grounded in realism with the Nigel Kneale QUATERMASS inspiration that would be so prevalent throughout Pertwee’s acclaimed and ambitious first colour season, this was the time when big seven-part stories would be all the rage, devised by previous producers Peter Bryant and Derrick Sherwin in order to save costs and spread the money out more effectively, making the series look bigger and better within the UNIT set-up- a move that script editor Terrance Dicks was ultimately, but powerlessly, against, though incoming producer Barry Letts liked it as long as future seasons had space epics alongside them, so as to give things more variety.
In this new look, new Doctor, earthbound series (exiled here by his Time Lord jailers, his knowledge of the TARDIS elusively removed from his memory), many of the shows then writers were considerably worried about the inflexibility of the new format, thinking they had only had two possibilities of storytelling to cover: alien invasions or mad professors. Fortunately, Terrance Dicks manages to find a third route with Inferno, notably in the story’s middle section (so as to keep it exciting for audiences), bringing in a parallel universe concept alongside Houghton’s grand ideas, where everyone’s a brutish variation on themselves, akin to the Classic STAR TREK episode Mirror, Mirror.
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| The evil Brigade Leader (Nicholas Courtney) of the parallel Earth. |
In this Nazi-esque flavoured realm of cruelty, mixed with a little bit of Orwell’s 1984, all of the series main supporting case get to relish playing their evil alternates, from Nicholas Courtney’s eye-patched Gestapo-like Brigade Leader, to Caroline John’s coolly efficient, but ultimately good natured, Section Leader. Even our usually friendly Sergeant Benton, played so amiably by John Levene, is a despicable thug in he way he treats the bruised, beaten and interrogated Doctor during the middle of the story.
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| Section Leader Shaw (Caroline John). |
But it's the Brigade Leader who shines the darkest here: a cruel bully who completely loses his cool when the world about him begins to fall apart around him, literally and physically- no longer having the man power to enforce his wishes. Showing her roots as a serious character actress, kudos to John in her effective chance to play a different version of Liz.
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| The scheming Professor Stahlman (Olaf Pooley) and the Brigade Leader. |
Meanwhile, the building countdown to disaster nicely gathers momentum, adding to the strong aura of classic WHO about the adventure. When things finally go belly-up, the parallel Earth screams its defiance- its sky now death red-as its genetically altering primordial soup infects technicians and turns them into animalistic Primords.
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| The Primord form of Stahlman. |
With these hairy beasties looming large within the facility, a genuine under siege atmosphere brews in parts five and six, leading to one of the first times in the series history that the Doctor has no choice but to abandon his old/new friends as this doom-laden scenario plays out around them, unable to save the day there but possibly able to correct mistakes being made in his own universe. It’s a series of tragic events that ultimately lingers in the character’s mind in later episodes of his era.
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| The Doctor takes out some UNIT soldiers (Derek Martin and Terry Walsh). |
A solid adventure of the kind they truly don’t make any more, Infernois a true and rare example of Pertwee’s incarnation against the ropes in dangerous times, though there’s lot of zippy action to enjoy, too, courtesy of an in-their-prime HAVOC stunt team- car chases, gun battles and Venusian Aikido chops courtesy of Derek Ware, Terry Walsh, Roy Scammell and Alan Chuntz, plus excitement and the aforementioned requisite hairy-faced monsters with lots of green goo on their hands, ready to wrap around the unaware. Luvly jubbly!
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| Barry Letts and Douglas Camfield (centred) with the 1970 WHO production team. |
Taking over from director Douglas Camfield after he fell seriously ill during the production, producer Barry Letts gets the most out of his actors and builds up the atmosphere (thanks to some worthy production design from Jeremy Davies), working from Camfield’s precise and ambitiously planned camera scripts (alongside excellent pre-chosen use of stock music and eerie sound effects). There’s also some excellent location filming in and out of an oil refinery located in Hoo, Kent.
Inferno probably could have shaved off an episode somewhere in its plotting, but episode six has a palpably strong and unique atmosphere about it, as the now red skied, volcanic ash spewed world is slowly being destroyed. It’s cliffhanger, showing the genuine end of the parallel Earth, consumed in lava, is one of the shows best and memorable images from its early seventies reign, and another reason why the story is so highly regarded- a firm fan favourite since the eighties.
The re-remastering of the story in this new release is a huge improvement on the previous 2006 DVD effort, with better picture stability and colour control. Sound in places is also greatly improved, especially in earlier episodes.
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| Nicholas Courtney and Caroline John recall the first colour season of WHO, and the UNIT era. |
Special features from the 2006 release are all present and correct: an audio commentary from the always lively Nicholas Courtney and John Levene, alongside Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks, the thirty minute Can You Hear the Earth Scream?- a top-notch behind the scenes documentary with lots of now recognizable anecdotes, The UNIT Family Part One- a look at the Third Doctor’s formidable military team, it’s origins, characters and casting (featuring contributions from Caroline John, Courtney, Levene, Letts, Dicks and former producer Derrick Sherwin), a promo film from 1969/70 looking at the diverse work of the BBC’s visual effects team, one deleted scene (and a silly one at that, too, of Jon Pertwee doing a voice-over as a radio newscaster), The Pertwee Years intro to episode seven’s release on VHS, back in the nineties, a photo gallery, PDFs of the very rare DOCTOR WHO ANNUAL from 1971 and RADIO TIMES listings, and programme subtitles.
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| Toby Hadoke (far right) and the men from HAVOC! |
Alongside new subtitle production notes and a satisfying Coming Soon trailer for the reconstructed Patrick Troughton tale of chilly Martian invaders, The Ice Warriors, come two high-quality original features. Firstly, there’s the warm-hearted Hadoke versus HAVOC, in which presenter and dedicated WHO fan/comedian Toby Hadoke reunites the surviving members of the seventies stunt team for one last time (Derek Ware, Derek Martin, Roy Scammell, and Stuart Fell), all recalling their unique contributions to the Third Doctor era, and getting their organizer to perform a risky stunt himself with their fun-loving support. A great half-hour, with some nostalgic recollections-nice to see Derek Ware in particular.
Finally, there’s DOCTOR FOREVER-LOST IN THE DARK DIMENSION-the penultimate episode in the five-part series which goes into the long dark tea time of the soul that was DOCTOR WHO’s wilderness years in the nineties and early noughties, as numerous film and TV people tried to get a new series or feature film off the ground to little or partial success, amidst lots of frustration and internal BBC politics of the period. This documentary is notable in that it has lots of interesting material on the almost 30thAnniversary film originally intended as a straight-to-video adventure, The Dark Dimension, to have starred Tom Baker as the Doctor, written by Adrian Riglesford and visualized by respected director Graham Harper, plus an earlier attempt made by seventies WHO director Paul Bernard to get his own pilot off the ground with actor David Burton playing an older Time Lord more in the vein of William Hartnell. (Burton makes an exclusive and intriguing appearance in the documentary.)
KOOL TV RATING: Magma madness, time travel nightmares and primal monsters make this supreme Pertwee, full of essential early seventies flavour. As damn near close to All-Time Classic WHO that you can get. 4.5 out of 5.
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