Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning
Written by Robert Sloman
Produced by Barry Letts
Directed by Paul Bernard
Let's get one thing out of the way first and foremost. While these scripts were credited to Robert Sloman, they were actually written by Sloman and Barry Letts, just like "The Daemons" from last season. By keeping Letts's name out of the credits, they didn't have to resort to a psuedonym to avoid violating BBC policy about people doing multiple jobs on the same production. Of the many producers the classic series had, Letts probably exerted the most direct creative control, and stories like this one were his opportunity to really put his stamp on the show.
One part of that stamp, I would argue, is a deeply ambivalent attitude toward sexism and feminism. Letts was always a left-wing kind of guy (which was pretty unremarkable for someone working for the BBC at the time, or so I've read), and he was often willing to put political messages into his "Doctor Who". But for some reason he always seemed to stumble badly over the issue of sexism. This episode makes a big issue out of combatting male chauvanism, and while that's certainly a good thing, it seems to me like this should have happened ages ago.
We've talked about sexism in "Doctor Who" plenty of times before, and the history of the series presents plenty of examples. But it also provides plenty of examples of smart, capable, independent female characters. What the show has never given us until now is a smart, capable, independent female character who constantly talks about "women's lib". It's not enough that Dr. Ruth Ingram is portrayed as an accomplished scientist, the script has to give her a soapbox. This actually undermines the point, somewhat. This is just me talking out of my ass, but this aspect of the Letts era has always struck me as being defensive and self-justifying, as if Letts was sensitive over criticisms that he intentionally wrote out a brilliant physicist like Liz to replace her with a ditzy bit of eye-candy like Jo. This phenomenon will get really bad once Sarah Jane is introduced as a "plucky" journalist with an enormous chip on her shoulder.
I guess I haven't really talked much about the story yet. Oh well. That will have to wait until tomorrow. But here's a preview: it's shit.
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