3x10. The War Machines
Writer: Ian Stuart Black
Director: Michael Ferguson
Script Editor: Gerry Davis
Producer: Innes Lloyd
Synopsis: The Doctor and Dodo
arrive in 1960s London as a team of scientists led by Professor Brett unveil WOTAN, a highly
advanced computer designed to control the operations of other computers
all over the world. Shortly before this plan is to be implemented,
WOTAN decides that human civilization has reached its limits of
progress, using hypnosis to direct an army of humans to attempt a
global takeover on its behalf. Along with new companions Ben and Polly,
the Doctor must work with the British authorities to foil WOTAN's plans.
Review: For those of us Doctor Who
fans who came to the series in the middle of its run, "The War
Machines" offers a certain comfortable familiarity: it's a story with a
contemporary setting in which some sort of inhuman threat is on the
loose and the Doctor teams up with the British authorities to stop it.
The original audience, of course, must have had
exactly the opposite reaction. All of the serials up until this point,
with the exception of the fantasy-based "Planet of Giants," had been
either historicals or outer-space adventures, and "The War Machines"
was the first to take place in a world that viewers would have recognized as
their own.
"The War Machines" is at its best in the first two episodes. While it's
easy to guess from the very beginning that WOTAN is going to pose a
danger, the script reveals the details of its plan relatively slowly
and with an effective sense of menace. At first, all we know is that it
seems to be hypnotizing people and controlling their minds. Later we discover that it's decided it must
take charge of civilization's future development and that it needs the
Doctor, and then finally we see the war machines being prepared for the
task of subduing the British population. Along the way we meet two
engaging new characters -- Brett's secretary Polly Wright and the
sailor Ben Jackson, both of them colorful products of mid-1960s culture
(easily the funniest moment is the Doctor's reaction to a nightclub
owner's comment on his "fab gear"). They are both instantly likeable,
and there is some real suspense at the end of the second episode when
they each come face-to-face with WOTAN's calmly ruthless minions.
The third and fourth episodes are a little disappointing by comparison.
Once WOTAN's plan has been fully revealed to the audience, the
narrative doesn't really go anywhere, instead opting to settle the
conflict with a series of action scenes and some plot devices that seem
rather arbitrary. Polly, for example, seems capable of some slight
resistance to WOTAN's hypnotism and thus allows Ben to escape from the
other brainwashed workers, but it's never explained why. Similarly, the
Doctor somehow guesses that the first war machine they confront hasn't
been fully programmed. This makes for a riveting third-episode
cliffhanger, in which he stands calmly in its way when everyone else
has fled, and I suppose it conveys a point about the limitation of
machines, but how did he know this in the first place? Granted, the
script isn't a model of airtight writing even in the first two episodes
-- the Doctor is curiously able to waltz into Brett's laboratory
without any credentials, and there's the now-infamous gaffe of WOTAN
and Brett actually referring to the Doctor as "Doctor Who" -- but I
think the story particularly suffers when the nature of the threat
itself becomes fuzzy.
The conflict between humankind and machines is one that would recur throughout Doctor Who,
but "The War Machines" was the first to place it front-and-center, and
it acquires some added pertinence from its modern-day Earth setting.
The script serves both as a cautionary tale about the human cost of
what we might typically see as "progress" and as a reflection of a
certain anxiety about computers (which were still a relatively recent
invention) and their increasing capabilities. And while the narrative
is curiously divorced from 1960s Cold War realities in its supposition
that all countries would eventually agree to place their systems under
WOTAN's control, it actually feels somewhat prescient in the age of Y2K
scares and globally-distributed computer viruses. Today's cyber-threats
are perhaps more likely to lead to confusion and chaos than to this
kind of mechanized totalitarianism, but in a way the point's the same:
as we invent more sophisticated technology and become more dependent on
it, we may actually increase the likelihood that small mistakes and
errors could have catastrophic consequences.
It is perhaps slightly ironic, then, that inventiveness is what redeems
"The War Machines" for its problems in execution. Fortunately, its
effect on the series was far from catastrophic: as has been pointed out
many times, it turned out to be the template for the UNIT formula
popularized during the Pertwee years and demonstrated that Doctor Who could work in a contemporary setting. Flawed it may be, but the lasting influence of its example can hardly be disputed.
Other notes:
- Another possible plot problem is that, although WOTAN seemingly needs
the Doctor for its plan to succeed, it goes ahead and attempts the
takeover of London even while he's still on the loose. (Though one can
make the case that its hand was forced after the confrontation with the
army at the warehouse and the capture of one of the war machines.)
- If I'm not mistaken, there is at some point a television or radio
broadcast announcing that there will be periodic interruptions with
more news about the war machines. Personally I'd like to know what the
regular programming was under these circumstances. ("Coming up in just
a few minutes we have the latest from the Beatles, but first, an update on the takeover of London by killer robots.")
- Dodo is only present in three surviving serials, and I never found
her a particularly interesting companion, but it's somewhat
disappointing that she leaves the series by sending the Doctor a
message from off-screen. If nothing else, I'd have liked to see a
little more of how the Doctor feels about continuing his travels alone,
since he doesn't know that Ben and Polly are about to join him in the
TARDIS.
Rating: *** (out of four)
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