"Inferno" - Episode 4

Doctor Who (1963) - Season Seven
Airdate: May 30, 1970
Jon Pertwee, Caroline John
Written by Don Houghton
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Douglas Camfield

In the interest of giving full credit where due, I should mention that most of the work of directing episodes three through seven of this story fell to producer Barry Letts, owing to heart problems suffered by Douglas Camfield. Barry Letts previously directed "The Enemy of the World" back in Season Five, and he'll go on to direct a number of stories throughout his tenure are producer. This gets a bit complicated to track, however, since the BBC had strict policies about people being credited for multiple jobs.

Anyway, now that the alt-universe concept has been fully established, it's time to carry on with the rest of the story. Unfortunately, much of this episode is given over to tedious interrogation sequences. Towards the end of the episode, however, the storyline pertaining to the drilling project takes a significant step forward. So let's take a bit of a step back and pay careful attention to what's going on.

The core idea is that penetrating the Earth's crust will have disastrous consequences. In any other story, the Doctor's goal would be to prevent this from happening, and he would succeed, thus averting the disaster. Not surprisingly, that's exactly what will happen in Episode 7 when the Doctor finally gets back to his home reality. But the alternate reality concept gives this story an opportunity to do something "Doctor Who" can rarely do. We get to see the Doctor fail.

We're getting a little ahead of ourselves, but take a look at the cliffhanger for this episode. We're seconds away from penetrating the Earth's crust, and the Doctor's increasingly hysterical warnings are going completely unheeded. He makes a last ditch effort at sabotage, but Stahlmann pulls a gun on him as the countdown reaches zero. It's a fantastic cliffhanger because there is literally no way out. I mean, of course Stahlmann won't shoot the Doctor, but that's not really the point.

The pacing is a bit of a problem, though. For most of the episode, it's just the Doctor wearily answering repetitive questions from Lethbridge Stewart and Elizabeth Shaw. Once he escapes, with the unwitting help of a random savage creature, he suddenly becomes desperate to stop the drill. Sure, he's been warning of unspecified dangers for ages, but he suddenly seems convinced that penetrating the Earth's crust will result in an unimaginable disaster. It's not entirely clear how he comes by this certainty, and it's hard to square with his willing participation in the project seen in Episode 1. But this is a small complaint.

The story manages to keep us in touch with events in the proper universe with the occasional cutaway. There's this unbearably silly disco-ball effect that signals the switch between universes, but it keeps the story connected to events back in the "real" world. Just one short sequence, and not a particularly significant one, but it's enough. In another subtle suggestion about the differences between the two universes, the fascist world is significantly ahead of schedule compared with the other universe. What this means is that the Doctor can fail in the alt-universe, stick around long enough to witness the consequences of his failure, and still get back home in time to prevent the catastrophe.