The Pirate Planet |
BBC The City of Death |
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| Episodes | 4 |  |
| Story No# | 105 | |
| Production Code | 5H | |
| Season | 17 | |
| Dates | Sept. 29, 1979 - Oct. 20, 1979 |
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With Tom Baker, Lalla Ward.
Written by David Agnew (Douglas Adams and Graham Williams, based on a story by David Fisher). Script-edited by Douglas Adams. Directed by Michael Hayes. Produced by Graham Williams. |
| Synopsis: The last member of a dead race fights to prevent his own catastrophe with the help of a Parisian art collector who plans to steal the Mona Lisa. The Doctor and Romana discover the collector's plans when dangerous shifts in time lead them to a remarkable discovery.... |
So Dark The Con Of Man by Jason A. Miller 8/3/06
Is there any chance that the upcoming "Da Vinci Code" movie is going to be as fabulous as City of Death? Both stories tell us that the world we know is a lie, that the mythology on which we have built our lives is based on a carefully fabricated and jealously protected false premise.
In City of Death, those mysteries are uncovered by private eye Tom Chadbon, coincidentally dressed as Tintin, and those same mysteries have been guarded by Julian Glover, who was so cool that he went on to play a bad guy in films from three quintessential action franchise movies in the '80s (Bond, Star Wars, Indiana Jones).
But in "The Da Vinci Code", we just get Tom Hanks again.
This is "The Big Lebowski" of Doctor Who scripts: every line is brilliant; even the bits of dialogue that are supposed to be serious exposition are drop-dead funny. The all-star cast of Glover and Chadbon, not to mention the brilliant Doctor/companion team of Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, takes this hilarious script -- written by Douglas Adams in one weekend while consuming pots and pots of black coffee -- and play every scene dead straight, right down the middle. The story produced right before City was The Creature From The Pit, which has since been reduced to a cautionary tale about what happens when you don't play comedy dead straight, right down the middle.
As has been written elsewhere, the story is plotted so tightly you could sing it like an opera. Scaroth, the last survivor of a vicious reptilian race, is fractured into 12 identical "splinters" of himself, set adrift in Earth's history and working to advance the human race to the point where a nebbishy Russian scientist can build him a small time machine. Scaroth's prior selves have hoarded the great art treasures of humanity: Gutenberg bibles, Gainsborough paintings, and seven original "Mona Lisa"s, all so that his 1979 self can sell them to buy the technology he needs. Which he will then use to save his people by preventing the cataclysm that, coincidentally, made life on Earth possible.
Because Julian Glover's villain is so suave and assured, he gets the rare Who trifecta of getting the final close-up of every cliffhanger. All right, in Part One it's not really him -- it's his stunt double's nose or chin visible through an aperture in the reptile mask -- but Glover's stern visage ends Part Two, and his smiling photo op self concludes Part Three just as he's killed off the Russian scientist in gruesome fashion. His line readings are a primer on how to speak the English language properly.
The DVD restoration team pulled out all the stops for the City of Death extras. The story itself didn't need a whole lot of work, so instead they've restored 25 minutes of raw camera footage, which had been recorded onto a kind of videotape that was obsolete the day it was recorded and so managed to avoid being wiped by the BBC, or stuffed under a highway like "The Wicker Man" film cans. The DVD also presents the raw film of the story's model effects -- a spaceship taking off and exploding, and five chickens acting the role of a single bird that ages to death inside an unstabilized time field.
The audio commentary doesn't feature Tom or Lalla, but it does have Chadbon and Glover (a huge addition to the DVD, huge), and director Michael Hayes, commenting on the story. Most prior Who commentaries feature aging actors and directors kvelling over lame 1970s relics that "really stand the test of time!" even when they didn't (Exhibit HHH: The Claws of Axos). Chadbon, Hayes and Glover are more realistic. They actually compare this story to the production values and shooting schedule 2005 season of Doctor Who! They also discuss Doctor Who conventions at length. It's great to hear Glover rediscover a role he's not seen in some time; I loved hearing his delight when he realiezd that Kerensky's death scene prefigured his own in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".
My favorite extra is the making-of documentary. This is not just your standard press-kit where talking heads praise the performance of each and every cast and crew member. You've gotta raise the bar for City of Death. So DW book author Jonathan Morris, who wrote the dead-on Douglas Adams homage Festival of Death, wrote the script. Two writers from the 2005 DW series comment on what makes the story work, at the same time that Hayes, Chadbon and Glover tell us why they loved making it so much. The narration is hilarious, and the reconstruction of David Fisher's original and abandoned script, via pretty color illustrations, is nifty.
We learn how Adams took a complicated, wide-ranging script and, over the course of one weekend, stripped it down into a story that utilized just a few sets, a minimal cast, 13 filmed minutes of actors jogging through Paris -- and turned it into one of Doctor Who's shining moments, that one story where everything just fit together perfectly.
Followed by The Creature From The Pit.
A Review by Finn Clark 10/5/07
City of Death is lovely, but somehow it's more than that. It's the traditional "good Graham Williams story of the year", but unlike Season Sixteen's The Ribos Operation it's become a symbol of its era. The Ribos Operation is wonderful, but it's not even trying to resemble its neighbours. It's a Robert Holmes story and a different genre from anything else in Doctor Who, let alone in Season Sixteen. It's a caper movie in which the criminals are the protagonists.
City of Death however gave us the rare sight of the shambolic Graham Williams era getting everything right. This is what the entire era wanted so hard to be. It's clever. The wit and playfulness actually works. It's charming instead of annoying. For starters, almost everyone's doing their jobs, although we shouldn't be getting excited about mere competence. Here there's genuine brilliance, which is true surprisingly often in Doctor Who but in this case there's so much of it that it seems to permeate the entire production. It's like champagne. The Paris location filming and John Cleese don't hurt either. The whole thing sparkles, somehow floating on its self-aware cleverness instead of being dragged down by it.
And when I say brilliance, I mean it. Let's start with Tom Baker and Lalla Ward. Tom may have been an uncontrollable drunken nightmare in rehearsals, but what he brought to the screen is absolutely unique. Lalla Ward isn't a particularly good actress, as was demonstrated in The Armageddon Factor, but here she's charming as Romana and she works beautifully with Tom Baker. They have chemistry. ("At it like rabbits" is the technical term.) In many ways the Williams era is the sloppiest, most shockingly lazy period of Doctor Who and that's partly a result of Tom Baker's behaviour, but at the same time his performance is probably the most iconic ever seen on British television. So often he had to transcend the rubbish surrounding him on all sides, but here for once the entire show has risen to his level.
The acting is delicious. Julian Glover is elegant and sinister, one of my all-time favourite Doctor Who villains. Catherine Schell as the Countess is stunning, but no less importantly is also a match for Glover and never less than delightful. I'd also like to praise Tom Chadbon as Duggan, doing great work in the sort of part that you'd expect a Graham Williams-era actor to ruin by hamming up. He's a stupid detective who punches things. Many actors would have turned that into a cartoon, but Tom Chadbon plays him for real and makes him surprisingly charming.
Alas, there's also David Graham's Professor Kerensky. Seeing him opposite Julian Glover gave me flashbacks to The Underwater Menace. The accent's not helping, but no one forced him to do it. He's overacting and rubbish. Oddly, he'd previously voiced Daleks and Mechanoids throughout the Hartnell era, not to mention playing Charlie in The Gunfighters. You'd expect a certain level of quality from an actor whose only on-screen appearances were in two of the all-time wittiest Doctor Who stories, but it's funny how these things work out.
Then there's the script. Douglas Adams is Doctor Who's most famous writer and this is undoubtedly his finest story (albeit credited to David Agnew), but the scary thing is that it was rewritten from a David Fisher script regarded as unusable. In fairness, the writing wasn't the main problem in Season Seventeen. Nightmare of Eden has a great script, for instance. However I've never liked David Fisher and presumably his draft of City of Death was outclassed by (gulp) Creature From The Pit. Nevertheless, the final version is lovely. It communicates breathtaking ideas with beautiful simplicity. (Even the mere timespan covered is gobsmacking, although those 400 million years have since been trumped more than tenfold in The End of the World.) The nearest I have to a criticism is to say that it's awfully clever. To be precise, it's constructed more like a puzzle or an intellectual game than a drama. The Doctor and Count Scarlioni are playing chess rather than doing anything visceral. Scaroth has a rock-solid set of motivations, but even so, one's left with an impression of everyone just being terribly elegant and witty.
On the downside, on first viewing I regarded part one as a waste of time with the Doctor and Romana wandering around Paris doing bugger all, waiting for the plot to start. There's a certain amount of that. ("Steal the bracelet!" "Steal it back!" "Look, we're being menaced by comedy thugs in ridiculously conspicuous coats and hats!") However this rewatching showed part one to be less aimless than I'd thought. The temporal hijinks are being set up and of course we're waiting to see how Scaroth fits in, the payoff to which is a million times better than most "look, it's the monster!" cliffhangers because the revelation overturns our assumptions about Scarlioni's motivations and the stakes for which the story's playing. Of course part one also wants to gawp at Paris, but for Doctor Who, Paris is a big deal. It looks nice and it's well filmed.
Comparisons with The Pirate Planet are interesting. Scriptwise, they're nearly identical. However, Paris looks gorgeous, while Zanak was godawful. The acting in City of Death is a highlight of the series instead of a festering blight on it, with the comparison between Julian Glover and Bruce Purchase in particular being akin to that between Dom Perignon and a urine sample. Furthermore, City of Death had a competent director, while The Pirate Planet had Pennant Roberts.
It's a cheeky story and I don't just mean John Cleese's cameo. That image of Scaroth as Jesus is fleeting enough for plausible deniability, but one can hardly believe that the production team did it accidentally. It's also solid on a production level, with the Jagaroth spaceship and primaeval Earth both looking lovely when a Time-Flight at the story's climax could have ruined the production. Someone put in a lot of work for the sake of only a few minutes of actual screentime.
There are those who argue that City of Death is overrated, if only since the only way it could match its rapturous reception in certain quarters would be for its cast to emerge from the television and provide you with your choice of sexual favours while you watched. It's a Doctor Who story, not a religious experience. However, I'd call it brilliant. One doesn't see that much, especially on British television, but I think City of Death qualifies. That doesn't make it the greatest drama in mankind's history, but I'll point out that it's so charming and effervescent that it almost makes the Graham Williams era look good. That's no small feat. It's a very specialised kind of Doctor Who story, but, like a shark, it's almost perfect at what it does.
A Review by Thomas Marshall 21/11/09
It is so, so rare in any show that the producer, and the director, and the actors, and the writer, and the script editor, and the designer, and the location manager all do their job to absolute perfection. The plus side is that when they do you are rewarded with a rich, sumptuous story, usually the finest made for the specific show. The only downside is that this puts all the other surrounding stories in a shabby light.
That is what City of Death does. I am going to rave about this story as I have done once with The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and intend to do with The Caves of Androzani. These three form my favourite Doctor Who stories of all time. What I love about City is that if you compare it to the other two "greats", which I just mentioned, it is nowhere near as good. "Uh," you cry. I will explain. City of Death is not the masterpiece of television drama that Talons and Caves are: the former exploring complex themes, beautifully directed, atmospheric, well written, the latter a frantic and bleak portrayal of a society, a heroic story of sacrifices, with more morals than a 17th-century Catholic priest. City of Death is neither moral nor complex nor atmospheric nor heroic. It never tries to be about the most villainous bad guy ever trying to blow up the universe. It is simply wonderful, nevertheless.
City of Death is so wonderful because of its imagination, because of its warmth and wit, because of its direction. We know it is not the most solid and serious slice of Doctor Who and yet we still put it up there with the all-time greats, whilst maligning other stories with a similar sense of humour. But that's where it triumphs: because it is so much fun.
The slapstick and "humour" of the Graham Williams era often seemed to fall rather flat on its face for me, so to have a story (written in just one weekend by Douglas Adams and Graham Williams) which is exactly the same but works is touching and brilliant. There are so many comic moments in this story, there is no way I will get them all down. For a start, the very premise is incredibly funny: an alien wants to steal the Mona Lisa! Pure genius! Why didn't anyone think of that before?
This little 1979 four-parter gets a lot of bonus points. It was the first story to be filmed overseas in the history of the show, in this case in Paris, as the Doctor and Romana struggle to uncover a plot to steal the Mona Lisa. The Paris location filming is breathtaking, as the Doctor and Romana have fun. They run down boulevards and into cafes and to the Eiffel Tower and they are having so much fun, you just want to eat your DVD of the story. It's padding, perhaps, but so mundanely beautiful - these two Time Lords who walk eternity, revelling in the atmosphere of Paris - you cannot fail to be impressed.
The ideas and the plot are breathtaking. It's one of those stories which is so fabulously plotted that it starts off about something (relatively) minor, as the Doctor and Romana experience time lapses and discover someone wants to steal the Mona Lisa. The alien involvement is quickly explained, and is followed by the revelation that Scaroth wants to go back to 4 million years ago and stop all life on earth. It's skilfully done, yet it doesn't feel as if they spent years deliberating over it (well, they didn't!) It's simple, instantaneous, fun!
The direction is also outstanding: Michael Hayes does a superb job, whether it is the beautiful scenes running down roads and round street corners in Paris or the extremely impressive model work of Scaroth's spaceship blowing up 4 million years ago. His excellence is consistent. The production is also wonderful: atmospheric caves, the cafe, the sumptuous living room of the Scarlioni household.
I cannot commend the eminently watchable time team of the Fourth Doctor and Romana II, played by Lalla Ward, enough. They have such an incredible chemistry, it would have been a crime for them not to get married in a couple of years: watching them run around Paris, them discussing art, Romana's confrontations with Duggan, their arguments and - oh! They take your breath away. This is what every story should be like!
It is largely down to Tom Baker that most of his stories are commended so much. With another Doctor they might not be so popular. Although City of Death would no doubt hold on its own even if another actor took Baker's place, much of its popularity must be laid fairly and squarely on his shoulders. He is by turns devious ("That's the whole point of art!"), rebellious ("Is no one interested in history?"), charming ("You're a beautiful woman, probably"), and laugh-out-loud hilarious ("What a wonderful butler, he's so violent!"/"A man with one eye and green skin, ransacking the art treasures of history, and you noticed nothing? How discreet, how charming!") and my personal favourite, "The centuries that divide me shall be undone? I don't like the sound of that!")
He is backed by Tom Chadbon as the dependable Duggan, an absolutely marvellous detective and sidekick who I really wish had become a companion ("That's your philosophy, isn't it: if it moves, hit it"). However, it is ultimately Duggan who saves the day, by knocking Scaroth out cold. "That might have been the most important punch in history!" the Doctor claims. The Countess Scarlioni is imbued with charm and haute couture by Catherine Schell, and I was very tickled by the humour of David Graham's eccentric Professor Kerensky; plus this story has a cameo from John Cleese and Eleanor Bron! What's not to like?
But best of all is Julian Glover. We already know he's an outstanding actor; he was in Star Wars and Indiana Jones and, a very long time ago, he was in The Crusade, in which he also impressed. But this is his triumph, as Glover plays Scaroth/Scarlioni/Tancredi. The idea of Scaroth, this terrifying alien and last of the Jagaroth race, being splintered through time is beautiful, and Glover nails the two splinters we get to see exactly right: they have style, sophistication. Tancredi has a rather splendid costume, and Scarlioni a keen wit ("It'll be so much the worse for you, for this young lady, and for thousands of other people I could mention, if I happened to have the Paris telephone directory on my person!"). But he does his best as the actual alien Scaroth, a truly brilliant creation, marvellously made-up (a man with one eye and green skin! Sublime!), and terrifyingly acted with the urge to survive by Glover!
What makes this wonderful story even better is that the Graham Williams' era is so often maligned, so hated, so blamed for the show's troubles, that for him to have produced the story voted as one of the greatest ever, renowned for its brilliance, and the story which gained the highest viewer ratings ever, is wonderful. The story should be hung up in the Louvre itself. Everyone could do dark and scary back then, but only Douglas Adams could do plain joyous and fun like this.
This, my friends, is City of Death. The story so marvellous it consistently comes in the top ten of every DWM poll. The story so marvellous it is consistently cited as the best story to show to those who have never seen the series before. The story so marvellous it simultaneously epitomises the Tom Baker era, the Graham Williams era, and the 70s era. A true masterpiece.
There's only one thing wrong with it, and that's the title, City of Death. There are three deaths by the end. Oh well, it's pretty much a mick-take title at the end of the day, isn't it? Forgivable. It's better than The Curse of Fatal Death at any rate - although, having said that, that title is supposed to sound bad...