The Best Doctor Who Story ever

It is odd. On days when the world is burning more intensely than usual, when the news reaffirming our absurd and fallen humanity in all its life and badness is apparently relentless, I tend to retreat either into silliness or defiance. I ought to make some reference to the lingering impact of Marxism, or Descartes, or Kant, or St Thomas--take your pick-- that ranks intellectualism above sensual and intuitive pleasure as an explanation and apology for my own following self indulgence. But I really can't be bothered. So I thought that I'd ask people what their favourite Doctor Who Story was, after a little debate on a friend's facebook page.

Mine is 1977's The Talons of Weng-Chiang, which is banned in Ontario, apparently. It is almost too long, and is clearly a pastiche--but what a pastiche. It mixes Sax Roehmer's Fu Manchu with Arthur Conan Doyle and Pinkerton's Magazine. The visual style owes a little to Hitchcock's Lodger and a lot to Hammer Horror silliness, and the sub-plot, concerning a bloviating music-hall entertainer and a somewhat disengaged pathologist is a joy. That sub-plot was in fact mooted as a potential spin-off show in its own right, set at some point in the later days of Queen Victoria, after the Whitechapel murders and presumably extending into the Siege of Sidney Street years later.

It's the little period touches I love. Robert Holmes, who wrote the script, included an automaton in it that probably was a nod of the head to Maskelyne's 'Psycho' doll, of great bafflement and interest in the real London of the matchgirls' and tailors' strikes, Phossy Jaw and sell-out performances of Jekyll and Hyde with Mansfield. I always think of that when I go anywhere near the smoking room in the Middle Temple, because despite a makeover at some point in the 1950s it still feels as though it belongs in that moment too, not least because of the pictures of Judge Jekyll and Chancellor Hyde on the walls.

The dialogue also recalls not how Londoners really spoke--who could know--but how one might think of people in the abyss speaking, especially after a quick read of Engels' Condition of the Working Class in England (which of course details life 44 years or so before). I thought of this yesterday when I caught the last day of the Jack the Ripper exhibition in Docklands. In it, a poignant scene of a London market--filmed contemporaneously--allowed my twenty-first century self to look at the image of eyes and smiles very long gone. The film produced a near-tear effect which I've dwelt upon in this blog before.

The Talons of Weng Chiang is also concerned with immigration--with the London of Limehouse opium dens that gave rise to some very queer business in real life, blamed on spring-heeled jack, and with the underground city of Bazalgette's sewers. The cold war tunnels beneath Holborn, once a secret along with this country's other underground assets, are now up for sale, incidentally (though they post-date the Victorian era by a long chalk). If you fancy a city centre residence that is probably fairly safe, you might have it (given property prices) for a song. It's never going to get licensed as a bar, hotel or restaurant anyway.

Most of all, the relative absence of special effects allows the ripper-influenced story (of an evil 51st century warlord harvesting young women in their skivvies for some reason not unconnected to the time the show went out, on a Saturday just after the football) to play upon dialogue. It's a treat on the ear. Six episodes of this sort of thing is just right, not overlong, as some contend.

That's my plug for my favourite story in anyway. This month's poll will be on the Doctor Who theme, and up shortly. What's your favourite story?