Serial H, in six parts:
- A Land of Fear - 8/8/64, 6.9m viewers
- Guests of Madame Guillotine - 8/15/64, 6.9m
- A Change of Identity - 8/22/64, 6.9m
- The Tyrant of France - 8/29/64, 6.4m
- A Bargain of Necessity - 9/5/64, 6.9m
- Prisoners of Conciergerie - 9/12/64, 6.4m
Sound Bytes:
"The Reign of Terror was three hours long, six half hour episodes, and you know there are going to be places in episode two where you don't want to go further into the story because you don't want that to happen until episode four. So if you can introduce a character with an element of humor then it becomes a marvelous way of padding the show without boring the audience or breaking up the plot. The audience will always watch a funny bit and like it." - Dennis Spooner on the jailer character, quoted in Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text by Tulloch and Alvarado (St. Martin's Press, 1983)
"It's a shame that The Reign of Terror was chosen as the template for further historical adventures instead of the impressive The Aztecs. In that story, it was a clash of cultures and social mores that provided the tension. In stories such as The Reign of Terror...it is simply the need to stay alive and stay free from the evil governmental authorities running things which propels the plot. The Reign of Terror is first and foremost about escape, not about people, or even the French Revolution." - John Kenneth Muir, A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television (McFarland & Company, 1999)
Comments:
I studied history a little in college. What I learned made me very grateful to have been born in the 20th century, because it seems that in the past, life sure was cheap.
The Doctor learns this valuable lesson in The Reign of Terror (and he relearns it in pretty much every historical serial). His favorite time period is the French Revolution, apparently, but from the moment he arrives in the midst of it he is in mortal peril. So, instead of hanging around to make an academic study of the revolution, he devotes all his powers to escaping as quickly as possible.
The serial as a whole is merely okay, but the first episode is excellent. It starts with the Doctor still in a raging tantrum because Ian teased him at the end of The Sensorites. In fact, the old man is so mad that he is ready to cast his human companions out of the TARDIS without first properly making sure that they have landed in 20th century England. There's a pretty funny scene when Ian and Barbara butter up the Doctor to soothe his anger, with Ian even offering to share a conciliatory beer with him.
Of course, the TARDIS crew soon realizes that it's not the 20th century after all, and the Doctor has instead plunged them into one of the worst time periods imaginable. But it's already too late to escape. Ian, Barbara and Susan are cornered and arrested by a strangely terrifying mob of mangy citizen-soldiers, while the Doctor is knocked unconscious and trapped inside a burning farmhouse.
After this great and rather tense opening installment, The Reign of Terror treads quite a lot of water through its middle episodes. Too much of the action is confined to the Conciergerie Prison, which isn't even a particularly convincing set. And, quite aggravatingly, Susan is confined in the prison, gets rescued, and is then sent back to the prison again! Normally I don't find Hartnell's stories to be slow, but the gratuitous padding in this one really annoys. (I suppose we can blame the budget; there wasn't enough money on hand to show full-scale chaos, so the action had to be grounded in some modest locale like the prison.)
It doesn't help that I'm not too interested in the French Revolution to begin with. My point of view -- which I admit might be simple-minded and uninformed -- is that neither the effete aristocrats nor the crazy, blood-thirsty rebels are particularly sympathetic. Worse yet, stories about this time period tend to feature a lot of hackneyed and romanticized nonsense about secret meetings, dual identities, dramatic rescues...and I've already had enough of that stuff from The Scarlet Pimpernell and Blackadder the Third.
Still, there's a lot to like about The Reign of Terror. Parts of the serial are quite gritty and even sleazy (I'm thinking mainly of the scene when the jailer offers Barbara her freedom on the condition that she has sex with him). Robespierre and Napoleon come across as somewhat impressive, which is important because botching major historical figures can be rather embarrassing. Also, I enjoy watching Hartnell parade around in his enormous plumed hat, shouting out orders at the lower ranks. In his own way, he can be an even funnier Doctor than Tom Baker.
It's just too bad that the Doctor Who production team didn't think of inventing the Meddling Monk sooner; he's exactly what's needed to spice up a very basic historical story like this one.
Grade: B