The Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror: 4/10 - Well I just finished Reign of Terror. I didn’t particularly enjoy it. The best part was probably the twist with the bad guy turning out to be the good guy. I thought that was interesting. I also liked the costuming and Hartnell rocked his outfit. The rest of the story was very boring to be honest. I didn’t particularly care for any of the characters and the animation probably didn’t help with my opinion of it. 

😄77% = Good! = Recommended!

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THEY ALMOST MADE IT: A COMMENTARY

• Part 1

The serial begins with an atmosphere of finality as the Doctor believes he's finally brought Ian and Barbara back home, only to slowly realise that they've landed on the right planet but at the wrong time.

I like how this episode relies heavily on the warm relationships between the four travellers, as well as the slow reveal of the setting and time period we have landed in. There's this wonderful sense of mystery and exploration that is prevalent in a lot of the adventures from this era.

The episode's tail end throws us into the tense political climate of the era, and we see death and treason up close as our heroes get entangled in the ongoing conflict.

I love the small musical touches, the costumes, and the sets that truly help underline the historical aspects of the adventure.

The supporting cast playing soldiers does a fantastic job of being nasty and militaristic.

The Doctor finds himself trapped in a burning house, seemingly unable to escape in time, creating a thrilling cliffhanger.

• Part 2

The second episode cleverly leaves us waiting for the resolution to the cliffhanger (spoiler: the Doctor survives!) and instead opens with Susan, Ian, and Barbara transported to Paris and thrown into jail. Here we also meet the harsh and bumbling jailer, one of the funnier supporting characters of the Hartnell era, performed well by Jack Cunningham.

I love the way William Hartnell delivers his French lines here!

Susan and Barbara work well together here, attempting to find a way out rather than wasting their time complaining (though Susan returns to it at the end). In the meantime, Ian becomes embroiled in political intrigues, hearing about significant individuals he needs to track down. These come into play at the end of the story.

The entire sequence with the Doctor and the road workers is pure filler, but it's one of my favourite scenes of Season 1 because it has such a funny ending. It sees the Doctor trying to use his authority to take charge, which usually works, only to be put to work with the other workers. He then has to use his wits (and, surprisingly, some light violence) to lure the guard and escape.

Lemaitre has a positive air of authority about him, which makes the viewer see him as a potential threat and someone to watch out for. James Cairncross, who also plays Beta in The Krotons, excels in his acting.

• Part 3

The serial continues to impress with the costumes and sets as the action moves to Paris proper!

Hartnell is truly on fire in this one and seems to enjoy himself, particularly as he gets the opportunity to impersonate an important French general to help his friends escape. The way he gallivants into the jail in full regalia as if he owned the place is satisfying, and it lets Hartnell bring out those stern military leader vibes he is so well-known for.

This is where the serial begins to drag a little. The Doctor's scenes are interesting, but the scenes in the jail with Ian, the jailer, and Lemaitre don't go anywhere.

Here, we meet Jean and Jules, who save Susan and Barbara. Although I've always found it challenging to differentiate and establish them as characters, their performances are commendable. They are then involved in lengthy scenes of exposition at the tail end of the episode.

We also meet Léon, another forgettable supporting character, but a charming one at that, with a key role in the final third of the serial. Barbara has a minor crush on him, which eventually leads nowhere.

• Part 4

Episodes 4 and 5 are missing, so I watch the official animated reconstructions for these. They were released in 2013.

These early animations are pretty rough around the edges. The character models are crude, but the facial features are recognizable! They stand out from the backgrounds in a strange way, and they excessively utilise close-ups and unconventional angles. They help to give the missing episodes some more life, though.

We immediately meet the infamous Robespierre, played very confidently by Keith Anderson, who makes him just the vile and determined tyrant he is known as. Robespierre doesn't make many appearances and doesn't really feel like a villain. The Doctor handles him very well, though.

This is another episode that hardly moves the narrative forward. Ian is gone for the most part of it; the Doctor maintains his ruse but evokes suspicion; Susan is suddenly ill; and Barbara hangs around with her newfound friends.

As the Doctor finally locates Barbara and Ian arrives at his secret meeting, we feel everything tightening just in time for the cliffhanger.

• Part 5

The crude animation continues here, and combined with some strange edits, it makes for an occasionally confusing visual dimension.

More political intrigues and twists occur in this one as Ian becomes a hostage and the Doctor attempts to deceive Lemaitre.

There's one action sequence in the dungeons that, unfortunately, appears a bit silly in this animation and doesn't do the actual scene any justice.

I have to admit that it is wonderful to see the Doctor scheming and fooling his enemies with his wits and authority, and Hartnell sells all these scenes perfectly.

Barbara and Ian argue over the Revolution, its casualties, and whether they are necessary. This is one of the outstanding moments in the story.

• Part 6

While the cliffhanger to Part 5 is fairly clunky, the resolution at the start is pretty awkward, as the actors stand in a circle waiting for their cue to arrive after the opening credits.

This is where we discover the major twist: Lemaitre was actually James Sterling all along. I've always quite liked it. It's also great to see the Doctor so genuinely worried about Susan and upset that he cannot get her out of prison.

The entire inn scene with Ian and Barbara in costume spying on the secret meeting is a wonderful one. The small Napoleon cameo enhances the scene even further.

I like how the tail end of the episode shows the end of the Reign of Terror and ties together all loose ends—Robespierre is brought down, while the Doctor fools the jailer one last time.

Susan has been gone for Parts 5 and 6, but she's back at the end here. This at least saved us from her constant complaining.

That final scene has an air of finality to it, but luckily, this isn't the end!

 

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RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

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• I've always found it fascinating that The Reign of Terror is the Doctor's favourite period of the Earth's history, when it is such a violent and bloody period.
• The sequence of the Doctor walking down a country road is the first instance of location shooting in Doctor Who. Brian Proudfoot, the first new actor to play the show's title character, plays the Doctor here instead of Hartnell.
• I frequently overlook the fact that Edward Brayshaw, better known to us fans as the War Chief in The War Games, plays Léon.
• Director Henric Hirsch infamously collapsed midway through production of Part 3, due to the immense pressure of the production. John Gorrie, the director of The Keys of Marinus, directed the rest of the episode. Hirsch was back for the filming of Part 4.

Probably the most interesting historical so far for me as i love the french revolution and feel it was a perfect place for this team.

One thing I’ve learned with the modern series, is that a boring story is worse than a bad story. Because with a bad story, you can still be entertained.

 

That being said, this story is very boring. One of the major causes for this is that all main characters don’t really interact. Which can work, if they were tested in some way. However, everything mostly comes down to idle dawdling until a conclusion is reached. It feels like pure padding, and has no real redeeming qualities to make up for it.

 

A great example of this is the picture of Ian that’s shown in the promotional art to the left. William Russell was on break during this story, so missed out on 2, yet he is still large in the picture, because even with the least amount of screen time he’s ever had up till now, there’s just nothing else to fill it with.

 

It wouldn’t be as bad if there was some background on the events that take place. As happened with Marco Polo, but even that is not really a thing. And I’ll be honest, I don’t know who Robespierre is, but I don’t know if it is up to the story or my general knowledge to make that known.

 

This leaves the first TV season with its first dud on the last episode. Hopefully future stories take more inspiration from the other stories in this season, instead of this one.

 

“Our lives are important, at least, to us. But as we see, we learn. Our destiny is in the stars, so let’s go and search for them”

The Reign of Terror is a strange tale.  It seems to fall between two stools as far as the historical stories go.   The historicals seem to fall into two camps – the comedy and the tragedy.  The Mythmakers, The Gunfighters, The Romans and The Time Meddler all go for a strong comedic angle whereas Marco Polo, The Crusade, The Massacre and The Aztecs very much take a serious, and often tragic, approach to the history they portray.  The Reign of Terror seems to be a little of both and, consequently for me, is far less satisfying.  The only other story which steers towards this dichotomy of style is possibly The Highlanders.

The subject matter is similar to The Massacre – a reign of terror in France where people live in fear for their lives.  It is quite merciless in its depiction of the violence of this regime, particularly in the first episode.  Susan and Barbara spend an awful lot of the story in a dark, dingy prison cell.  Susan, also for much of the story, is terribly ill.  The Doctor nearly dies in a burning building.  Ian’s cell mate dies before we really get to meet him.  Leon Colbert turns out to be a traitor and Robespierre is shot, relatively graphically, in the jaw.

In contrast, the jailer of the Concergerie is consistently played as a comedic character.  The Doctor’s encounter with the road crew is deliberately meant to be funny and his prancing around with ostrich feathers protruding from a ridiculous hat lends an odd tone to the second half of the story.

It just seems to me that these comedic elements sit awkwardly within the rest of the story.  Unlike the comedy of The Romans or The Mythmakers where it is the tone of the story and threaded throughout the script, the comedy in The Reign of Terror seems like isolated sketches or comes across as shoehorned into the script to desperately lighten the mood.  The worst offender for this is the roadworkers scene.  It serves no purpose, plotwise and, bearing in mind Barbara, Susan and Ian are all potentially headed for the guillotine, it frustrates the Doctor’s progress to Paris for no readily apparent reason – it doesn’t increase the tension as the Doctor is unaware of the predicament his fellow travellers are in.  The other problem with this vignette is how easily the Doctor gives in to the Overseer.  The Overseer tells him to join the crew and the Doctor says yes.  The Overseer doesn’t threaten him with his gun until the Doctor has agreed and there is no reason the Doctor couldn’t have fudged a reason why he couldn’t present his papers (not least because I don’t understand what authority the Overseer even has).  Seeing as Susan states this is the Doctor’s favourite period of history, I find it odd he isn’t better prepared to outwit the Overseer.

And then, of course, we also have the infamous shovel bashing.  When fans complain that the Doctor is never violent, they seem to wilfully forget all the times he is violent.  However, this occasion does seem a little gratuitous.  The Overseer is completely distracted by the coins and there is reason to believe the Doctor could easily have escaped without bashing him over the head with a shovel (which, bizarrely makes the man snore – I’m sure unconscious people don’t snore).  Certainly it would have seemed less out of place if one of the roadworkers had wielded the weapon.  Of course, for the first season, this isn’t completely out of character for the Doctor.  Only the presence of Ian seems to stop the Doctor braining Za with a rock in An Unearthly Child, so his lack of companions here suggests that, unchecked, the Doctor has few moral qualms about inflicting pain on others.  This is an interesting idea when viewed in the light of Donna’s comments to the Doctor at the end of The Runaway Bride about him needing someone to temper his more extreme actions.

Another strange element of this story are the final episode’s scenes with Napoleon.  Ian and Barbara get to play act as landlord and landlady and spy on a secret meeting between Napoleon and Paul Barras.  Basically, this is just a mini history lesson explaining how Napoleon began his rise to power in the wake of the revolution.  It has no true impact on anything in the story and isn’t even that interesting (although Ian does get to wear a lovely hat).

My other problem with the story was the lack of urgency.  Barbara is the only character who really makes any effort to improve their situation but even she gives in easily to Susan’s pathetic moans and mystery illness.  The Doctor wanders around getting himself in and out of trouble with his gift of the gab and Ian stumbles upon the answers to his mysterious message.  The supporting characters, with the possible exception of Edward Brayshaw’s Colbert, fail to make much impact.  In particular I found James Cairncross’ performance as Lemaitre ever so slightly weird.  Maybe it’s because I was fully aware of his secret identity of James Stirling, but every line, every look seemed to be laden with an odd secretive tone which just seemed to much.  It’s as if the audience is supposed to suspect him despite having no reason to.  Much of the story relies on some huge coincidences: Jules and Jean just happen to accost Ian and bring him back to their hideout where Barbara and Susan are; the Doctor just so happens to bring Lemaitre to the hideout who just so happens to be Stirling who Ian is looking for.

The story also takes a strange, never before seen/never seen since stance on changing history.  Rather than the ‘you can’t change history…not one line’ assertions of The Aztecs, here the Doctor and Susan suggest that you can try to change history, but something will happen to set it back on the ‘right course’ regardless of your efforts – which includes an odd explanation where Susan says that if they wrote a letter explaining to a historical character what would happen in the future, ‘they would lose the letter or just forget about it’ – or words to that effect.  It’s a weird scene thrown in at the very end of the story which seems at odds with the ethos of the programme up to that point, and certainly since then.  This seems to be the preference of Dennis Spooner, the writer, who would go on to become script editor after David Whitaker and develop this story's approach to the course of history in later historicals (particularly with dialogue in The Time Meddler).

In the story, we have the presence of Robespierre and, tangentially, Napoelon Bonaparte and Paul Barras but the setting of the French Revolution is a little more than a backdrop because the serial gives very little actual factual information about the so called Reign of Terror.  It’s never really explained who Robespierre is or why Ian, Barbara and Susan are arrested and sent to the guillotine.  The Doctor’s assumed identity of a governor of the southern province isn’t elaborated on and the story seems to assume the viewer already knows the basic facts of this period of history.  I think I know something of the period, but to be honest I think most of my knowledge is based on Carry On…Don’t Lose Your Head!

There is, though, much to enjoy.  The cliffhanger to episode one with the Doctor trapped in a burning farmhouse, is very exciting.  His rescue by Jean-Pierre and subsequent scene with the young boy is very sweet and shows how Hartnell was already softening his character even by the end of the first season.

Although, the sets are fairly limited throughout the story (we spend an inordinate amount of time at the prison and in one tiny room and Jules’ house), what we do have is the first ever location filming.  Even though we know it isn’t actually Hartnell on the film, it looks gorgeous and the cut from film to studio is neatly done, such as the part where the Doctor sits down on the milestone.The regulars are as always wonderful (to Carole Ann Ford’s credit, she makes a fairly thankless role believable and engaging, even if, storywise, she contributes absolutely nothing).  The supporting cast, too, are strong even if, as I’ve said, as characters they make little impact.

The costumes are authentic but I find it amusing that it’s the Doctor and Ian who get the fancy rags, whereas Barbara and Susan spend most of the story in the rather dowdy (and probably by the end of the story fairly dirty) dresses they pick up from the farmhouse in the first episode.

The animated missing episodes on the DVD of this release are an interesting curiousity.  They use a style which wasn't replicated in many other releases and consists of an awful lot of close ups with some very stark black and white contrasts.  It works in as much as it helps tell the story alongside the original soundtrack, but it isn't as accomplished as some of the animations which came later.

The Reign of Terror is a slightly odd fish of a story and not one I think particularly highly of but it does demonstrate an interesting bridge between the different ways historical stories were treated by the ever changing production teams.