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THIRD IMPRESSIONS: “CITY OF DEATH”

David Agnew (script editor Douglas Adams and Graham Williams under pseudonym) brings us the very first Doctor Who story shot on location outside the UK (Paris, France). It marked the highest average viewing figures for the Tom Baker era (14.5 million) and is generally considered one of the better serials of Classic Who. It’s also the second time we meet Julian Glover on the show, this time in his more famous appearance as Count Scarlioni.

I’ve always loved the opening sequence, the camera that sweeps over a brown and orange alien world until it shows us Scaroth’s spaceship, stuck on the planet.

The change of location and the focus on location footage give City of Death an instant edge as it looks and feels fresh. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward have great chemistry, too, which makes them a joy to watch together. Of course, the cosy Parisian feel with its cafe visit is quickly hampered by an apparent crack in time, causing time loops.

It’s pretty weird how effectively Part 1 works despite hardly developing the plot at all—we mostly follow the Doctor and Romana as they go sightseeing and notice time anomalies, and Count Scarlioni doing strange temporal tests. The infinitely quotable and fun dialogue helps here.

The Part 1 cliffhanger reveal is very effective even when you know it’s coming. It’s one of those classic cliffhanger moments. Part 2 has the brilliant reveal of the multiple genuine Mona Lisas before ending with another shocker cliffhanger.

City of Death proves to be a great mix of the best aspects of Doctor Who: exotic locations, a unique and compelling mystery surrounding the Mona Lisa, time travel and temporal experiments, a trip to history, and an alien desperately trying to escape its fate. I love how the narrative is told across multiple points in time simultaneously and how the time periods cleverly blend into each other.

The only thing that I’m not very fond of is the suggestion that the explosion of Scaroth’s ship 400 million years ago created the radiation that led to the creation of humanity.

Baker is at his very best here, and his slow decline in the role is beginning to show after City of Death. Ward is given a great opportunity to develop her character’s quirky, intelligent, and youthful abilities further (she is still sidelined a bit until Part 4, though, even if her hanging around with Duggan is enjoyable to watch). Glover is, unexpectedly, superb in a scene-stealing performance that is both suave and menacing.

The guest cast is marvellous from beginning to end. Highlights include the overworked Professor Kerensky (frequent Dalek voice actor David Graham, who previously popped up as the bartender in The Gunfighters) and Detective Duggan (Tom Chadbon), happily clubbing down anyone he deems a threat and one of the best companions who never were. Julian Glover is one of those guest actors who is superb every time he’s on the show. He’s very different from King Richard from The Crusade, but just as compelling.

This one has one of those unforgettable and fun incidental music scores.

The John Cleese cameo in Part 4, where he plays an art critic reviewing the TARDIS, is my all-time favourite cameo in Doctor Who.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• Romana mentions the Braxiatel Collection, which will play a pivotal role later on in the extended universe, especially the Bernice Summerfield stories.
• The Part 3 cliffhanger, which sees poor Kerensky rapidly aged to death, brings to mind the Time Disruptor from The Daleks’ Master Plan or the TOMTIT machine from The Time Monster.