City of Death

📝9.8/10 → FAVOURITE!

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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.

This serial is a classic and for good reason. It's very witty and funny with solid direction and some lovely location shoots. The music is also really nice. The plot is engaging as well. There's a bit of nice commentary that resonates nicely with the current AI art discourse that I felt was very nice, even if not intentional.

This is a genuinely delightful serial. I seem to enjoy the Classic episodes set on contemporary Earth nore than any others, and this is no different.

It starts off slow, but is by no means uninteresting. I love that this show can take a moment to relax and show the characters simply enjoying their time here. The shots of Paris are lively and the music is fantastically atmospheric.

The side characters are very fun; the Countess steals every scene she's in, and Duggan, while fairly one-note and not particularly interesting, is never overused to the point of being annoying and makes for a funny Chekhov's gun. Even the one-off side characters are fantastic; the artist sketching Romana, the museum tour guide, the art critics appreciating the blue box, all serve to liven up the story and make this world feel real in a way very few Doctor Who worlds do - even the contemporary ones.

The story itself is interesting and fun without being overly complicated. Heists are a classic, and I love seeing Doctor Who tackle that.

Amazing, simply amazing. Easily lives up to the hype. City of Death was great and holds up really well. This is a great example of production really taking advantage of their location and embracing the setting fully within the story. Paris doesn't feel the slightly bit wasted and instead the episodes feel like the pretty much have to take place there - it wouldn't have the same impact or make as much sense given the art theft focus of the plot if it wasn't filmed here.

The villains were memorable and Duggan was great, even if the latter could get a little over the top. But everyone is going pretty big here, to be fair. At least it is intentionally funny. The da Vinci bits were funny and felt like the exact sort of thing they would do for a gag in the modern age, though the execution of the ending was a little clumsy.

Still, it is so strong. This is easily the best episode I've encountered with Romana (and quite possibly nothing will top it either, if the ratings are any indication). She is so well used here. That scene where she calculates the dimensions of the room they are in and realized there must be a hidden wall is a perfect expression about what makes her unique as a companion. This makes City of Death a must-see episode almost all on its own, but City of Death is full of great character moments like that. You can really feel the influence of Douglas Adams here. It left quite an impression on me.

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Destiny of the Daleks

As of writing this review, I genuinely think that this is the best classic Doctor Who story yet. Of course, that's subject to change, but I think for any story to match this, it will need fierce competition.

The makings of this story were the perfect storm to create such a genuinely brilliant piece of television. To start, the script, written by Douglas Adams, Graham Williams and David Fisher is brilliant, the dialogue is witty and the concept is unique. This is then greatly helped by the actors, the leads are incredibly charismatic and have great chemistry.

The supporting cast, most notably Julian Glover as the bond villain-esque Count Scarlioni and Tom Chadbon as the brawn-over-brains Duggan are exceptional with the latter being one of the best side characters (In my opinion) so far.

Then of course, we have the famous location filming in Paris, which gives a much needed break from the crummy BBC studios that plague most of Doctor Who's episodes.

This story, specifically part 4, has the highest viewership of a Doctor Who serial ever and I'm so glad it ended up being a story like this and not say, Destiny of the Daleks. There is a reason this story is deemed as a classic, it certainly lives up to it.

"My dear, nobody could be as stupid as he seems."

Next Story: The Creature from the Pit

City of Death is the most well handled comedic Doctor Who story since the show began, with perhaps only Carnival of Monsters as close competition. It is a welcome antidote to the studio and quarry bound productions which preceded it. The high proportion of shots on film give it an expensive Spearhead from Space vibe (a good thing) and there is a freeform, loose quality to the direction. At points it feels as if as if Tom and Lalla are improvising within the bounds of Adam’s excellent script.

The cliffhangers are consistently surprising and spine tingling. The guard character and the lead baddie / Jagaroth are particularly inspiringly and humorously portrayed. I love the idea that the explosion at the beginning of the story has splintered this man through time - spine tingling! We then get to see that pivotal scene again at the end - when the Doctor, Romana and Duggen stop the nemesis of the week from subverting the proper order of time.

The major plot point around a time travelling art dealer who buys prestigious pieces from the past and makes huge profits in the future gave me echoes of The Evil of the Daleks - though I must say it was carried off a lot better here.

It’s a crying shame that this is Adam's final broadcast effort for the show as it’s by far the most inspiring thing I’ve seen from Doctor Who since season 14. I am looking forward to the animated/ live action Shada though!