A Bluffer’s Guide to Doctor Who: The War Machines
‘Doctor Who’ predicts the Internet in a 1960s mad computer story.
Describe The War Machines in six words:
Supercomputer plots revolution in Swinging Sixties
This is… the one where the BT Tower is evil.
Episodes: 123–126 out of 869
First broadcast: 25 June — 16 July, 1966
First overseas broadcast: circa April 1967 (Australia)
I’m New To This Story. What Should I Know?
- This is the last William Hartnell story to be complete in the archives. Out of Hartnell’s remaining eight episodes, only three exist. If it’s the last Hartnell story complete in the archives, it’s the only Ben and Polly story that’s complete.
More than that though, this is the last story of Season Three. The next complete serial is the first story of Season Five: Season Four contains no complete serials.
(If this is raising questions along the line of ‘What do you mean there are missing episodes?’, I’ll direct you here)
- In being the last story of Season Three, it should be noted that it isn’t a season finale. Doctor Who’s seasons up until 1989 consisted of largely self-contained serials, so this story doesn’t pay-off anything set-up earlier this season.
- It’s also worth noting that Season Four would start in about two months time anyway. Doctor Who was nearly always on. Indeed, this season has just finished a run of 45 episodes.
- It is the last story to feature Jackie Lane as companion, Dodo. New companions, Polly and Ben, played by Anneke Wills and Michael Craze join the Doctor in this story.
- A contemporary setting for Doctor Who was rare. Previously, the 1960s had only been visited briefly (see The Chase, The Daleks’ Master Plan and The Massacre) with the exception of Planet of Giants (were the TARDIS team were miniaturised) and the very first episode, “An Unearthly Child”
- The big thing about this story is that it centres around the Post Office Tower, now known as BT Tower. Needless to say, the events depicted in this story have not occurred in real life.
- This is also the only time that a fictional character has received a credit. After the cast is credited, a special credit appears as to include WOTAN in the cast list.
- Reputation-wise, this story is considered average. It receives strong criticism for its writing out of Dodo off-screen and for sequences were WOTAN address the Doctor as “Doctor Who”.
Setting: London, 12–20 July 1966
Villain: WOTAN
What Happens:
Landing in 1966, the Doctor senses a disturbances that he blames on the Post Office Tower (now that’s a way of getting your story started). The Post Office Tower houses a supercomputer that can connect to other computers: Will Operating Thought ANalogue (WOTAN for short).
WOTAN considers human beings inferior and begins taking over, brainwashing its creator Professor Brett and the Doctor’s friend, Dodo. The Doctor begins investigating with the help of civil servant Sir Charles Summer, Professor Brett’s secretary Polly, and a friend of Polly’s, able seaman Ben Jackson.
WOTAN is getting its agents to build heavily-armed machines to take over the world (The War Machines of the title, although they are never referred to that on-screen). The Doctor captures one, reprograms it to attack WOTAN, which it does, and the world is safe.
Dodo decides to stay. Polly and Ben, in returning Dodo’s key to the Doctor, follow him inside the TARDIS as it dematerialises…
Best Moment:
The War Machine repels the army : it shoots fire and it sends a signal jamming all their weapons. The army are forced to retreat. The Doctor arrives on the scene. From the War Machines point-of-view, we see the soldiers run away while the Doctor stands steadfast. Cue credits.
It’s a ‘hero’ moment of the type the Doctor gets a lot of now. The tension in the cliff-hanger is not that the Doctor is in mortal peril but that it’s clear he has a plan and the audience anticipation is built on the denial of seeing that plan. You can watch this scene here.
Worst Moment:
It starts off well.
At the Inferno nightclub, Polly tries cheering up a depressed sailor, Ben. She is leaving when a young man comes up and begins harassing her. Ben, seeing this, jumps to her rescue and attacks the man, saving Polly. It’s Ben’s ‘pet the dog’ moment: Go Ben! You’re a hero! Look how strong and caring you are! How brave!
Ben then immediately ruins this by telling Polly she was asking to be harassed. You can watch this scene here.
Where Does This Story Come From?
Quatermass. The BBC’s first success in science-fiction was a six-part thriller called The Quatermass Experiment in 1953. It starred Reginald Tate as Professor Bernard Quatermass, a highly moral scientist who is a pioneer of the British Space Programme. The series was event television. With the arrival of BBC’s rival, ITV, a sequel was made in 1955 called Quatermass II. Sadly, Reginald Tate had passed away so the role was recast with John Robinson. Quatermass returned for a third series during the winter of 1958 and 1959 in Quatermass and the Pit, with again Quatermass being recast, played by Andre Morell (who we have recently seen plot with the Queen Mother of France to kill the Huguenots). Quatermass and the Pit is undoubtedly one of the best things the BBC has ever made, all the more amazing considering it was made live.
The Quatermass serials are different from Doctor Who in that they are thrillers that work on a steady escalation of paranoia as the conspiracy is uncovered and failed to oppose until the final episodes, each which requires a friend of Quatermass to be sacrificed for humanity’s survival. Doctor Who on the other hand has no conspiracies: villains are obvious and the main impetus of the narrative is about survival and stopping the villains. Quatermass follows a long, winding structure of ‘Is there a mystery?’, ‘What is the mystery?’ ‘How do we find out what the mystery is?’ ‘How do we convince others of the mystery?’, ‘How do we stop it?’ and “Did that work?’. Doctor Who is: ‘Where are we?’, ‘What can we do in this world?’, and ‘How do we get out?’. Mysteries are limited and the length of time these mysteries are indulged is also limited. The Doctor doesn’t investigate what’s happening when he can be an active rebel or a tourist. He knows what’s happening, and if he doesn’t, it’s because you’re watching ‘Part One’.
This should feel a strange description of the show, as the Doctor investigating what the villains are up to is a key part of the series. While Doctor Who and Quatermass are doing things for different reasons, The War Machines is all about taking the investigative nature of Quatermass and giving it to the Doctor. To that end, the Doctor is allied with other qualities of Quatermass: He gets a civil servant to work with in the form of Sir Charles Summer. There is a military presence that works to escalate the situation but ultimately fail to resolve it. And, of course, the whole thing takes place in a recognisable place. This is the antithesis of many Hartnell stories where strangeness is the point (cf. The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction, The Sensorites, Planet of Giants, The Web Planet, The Celestial Toymaker), or treat what is recognisable as places with rules, culturally and socially, that a modern person cannot transgress with their understanding and need to form new understandings to operate in that world (the historical stories and the Dalek sequels), or are doing something different in the first place (The Rescue, The Space Museum, Galaxy 4, The Savages).
This last point, about being in a recognisable place, while similar to Quatermass, which is decidedly set in a version of the 1950s, actually makes Doctor Who different, which anchors its loyalties to a vision of the 1960s. The Quatermass serials are conservative: The writer, Nigel Kneale, spoke against hippies and the Beatles. Indeed, Quatermass puts forth a world where paranoia is valid and where we can only sleep peacefully at night because stiff upper-lipped noble Establishment figures are doing thinking on our behalf. Doctor Who puts for a world where your paranoia being occasionally valid is a tax we pay because rather than sleep, we’re out dancing at night to the Beatles — which we’re allowed to do because some alien traveller from the stars believes in peace. Or to put it another way, this story is really about…
Swinging London. London in the Sixties is the place to be. It’s the Beatles an the Rolling Stones. It’s Carnaby Street and the mini-skirt. It’s a place where the anti-Establishment has style.
It’s a story that opens with wide shots of London before zooming into a street corner where the TARDIS lands. There’s a (tamed for television) nightclub full of young things called the Inferno, and as such there’s a scene of the characters at the club, after closing working out how to get home. This has never happened in Doctor Who before! The new companions, Polly and Ben, are young , gorgeous things, enjoying the nightlife, music and fashions of London. (By nightclub, we mean a joint for picking up people. We don’t really see this happen, although someone does try to force Polly to go home with them, and Ben and Polly engage in some flirtatious teasing. It’s a subtle acknowledgment that the sexual revolution exists and seems the extent the show is comfortable with depicting this).
The most blatant example of this embrace of contemporary London is that the story’s about the Post Office Tower. The Post Office Tower was completed in 1964 and opened in 1966 to become the tallest tower in Britain (a title it held until 1980). Its size was related to its purpose: it was to carry microwave aerials for telecommunications and as such had to be tall so signals were not blocked by other tall buildings. It was just functional, though. It was designed to be culturally significant with viewing galleries, a souvenir shop, and a rotating restaurant right at the top. Why? Because it was in London, in the Swinging Sixties.
Which leads us to the other key thing the story is doing: artificial intelligence. WOTAN is a computer designed to connect to other computers across the world (There’s a sense in this story that this is Britain proving its worth in the Cold War. Not in a desperate attempt to look good to the Americans but in the sense of ‘While you were off nearly destroying the world in Cuba, we’ve been busy being clever.’) WOTAN is also designed to think for itself, and decides to destroy humanity.
There’s some near misses. First, is that no-one making this really knows how to do that. This is not a Terminator robot (It’s July, 1966. Give us until October before Doctor Who tries that). Rather, WOTAN can hypnotise people to do its bidding. Fair enough, and it makes it no worse than films and TV that just show hacking as typing quickly on a laptop and thus being able to fire missiles. It’s 1966. The fact we’ve got a computer networked to other computers (so, the Internet) is ambitious.
There is another miss, though. In the novelisation, the War Machines are called Valkyries. There’s a subtext, not developed, that attempts with the names WOTAN and the Valkyries to create Wagnerian associations with Nazism. It’s undercooked to the extent of that’s not there.
Part of all this artificial intelligence aspect to the story comes down to Dr Kit Pedler. Pedler was a scientist approached to offer story ideas to the production team in an attempt to include some real science. Let’s explore this person who’s encouraging “real” science into Doctor Who, shall we: This is someone who thought that the Post Office Tower could be used in a robot revolution; that replacing your body with synthetic organs and limbs would ruin your humanity (thus creating a horrific ableist subtext to the Cybermen which is saved by the fact that it’s dropped really quickly in favour of other things to use the Cybermen for); wrote a lifestyle book on the Gaia hypothesis; believed in alternative medicine; and argued for the existence of psychic abilities. In short, not the type of person you want contributing “real” science to your program. On the other hand, just the type of person Gerry Davis could spitball ideas with over a pint.
Written by Ian Stuart Black / Directed by Michael Ferguson
Any Behind-the-Scenes Gossip?
Only the culmination of things that have been brewing for a while. Namely, producer Innes Lloyd and script editor Gerry Davis making a clean sweep of what their predecessors brought in: Hence, the writing out of Jackie Lane as Dodo.
The other is their determination to make Doctor Who feel contemporary. As such, they devised to new companions and Davis began discussions with Kit Pedler to incorporate “real” science. The companions were Polly Wright played by Anneke Wills and Ben Jackson played by Michael Craze. They signed their contracts in May, 1966 and a photo-call was held on 23rd June. (The first episode of this story was broadcast two days later).
William Hartnell’s illness was severely impacted his performance and his moods (There’s a moment in Episode 2 where Hartnell begins “I wonder, Sir Charles, you don’t suppose…”, realises it’s not his cue, and finishes by saying “No, I don’t suppose you would.”). Lloyd approached his BBC superiors about replacing Hartnell, something John Wiles had tried to do but unsuccessfully. This time, however, the BBC agreed.
Ian Stuart Black was asked to write the script having recently worked on The Savages. Michael Ferguson directed his first Doctor Who story. He will return throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Stray Observations:
Ben and Polly instantly more likeable than Dodo. Dodo looks totally out of place at the Inferno nightclub (despite being the same age as Polly).
Really clear thought gone into shots, not just for the special effects. Overhead angles, frequent transitions between studio/film, montages (This has been something on and off, and suggests a greater technical competency. BBC not scared off sci-fi) Michael Ferguson will do enough Doctor Who monsters in future that he will develop a style for this.
Ian Stuart Black writes wittily and colloquially (doss, fab, with-it, Deb’s delight). First use of a real-life newsreader. TV reports, radio announcements, press offices: Increases the stakes. DW’s first proper aliens invades Earth story.
WOTAN: Voice difficult to hear (pre-empting the Troughton era). Gets his own credit in Eps 1–3 but not in Ep 4 when he is finally defeated.
First special titles (unless you count The Massacre).
Cliffhanger for Ep 2 odd (I remember thinking this when I was 9). Why do we care about Ben? Cliffhanger for Ep 3 so much better: Not only is it the Doctor in danger, but he’s holding his ground, facing the danger.
Dodo’s farewell in Ep 2 seems like a subplot. But she isn’t missed in Ep 3. Rubbish goodbye for her in Ep 4 though.
War Machines don’t identify themselves as War Machines. They are also the latest in a long line of Dalek rivals. This is emphasised in the beginning when the Doctor describes a sense of foreboding about the Post Office Tower as being “that prickling sensation again, the same. Just as I had when I saw the Daleks.” Doctor Who has been trying to create rivals for the Daleks for the past three years now. What’s the chances of them coming up with something before Hartnell leaves?
The Doctor apparently moves in with Sir Charles for the duration of this story instead of using his bedroom in the TARDIS. This makes for a lovely moment where we see the Doctor just casually reading the newspaper while eating breakfast.
Hartnell is weaker on technobabble but give him detective work, strategising, lion-taming War Machines, being cheeky. That’s the character he signed up for. Technobabble is recasting the Doctor as Quatermass-esque genre hero. (There’s a lot of film inserts in this. Did that help? Ease the pressure in the studio?)
Between You and Me:
Doctor Who is reinventing itself. A solid story, plenty of fun. It does, however, focus on aspects that are not Hartnell’s strengths such as having him explain technical exposition, something which previously could have been given to Ian, Vicki or Steven. It points to the idea that even despite his illness, Hartnell doesn’t fit in with what Lloyd and Davis want to do with the program.
What Lloyd and Davis want to do is make Doctor Who more popular, and thus, more populist. It’s not difficult to see why. Viewing figures were decreasing, audience appreciation was decreasing. The show hasn’t met its creative highlights established since Verity Lambert’s time as producer. John Wiles did well with a series of four bleak stories in a row but that wasn’t sustainable. Lloyd is now searching for something Doctor Who can be, reliably. As part of the process, The War Machines seems to offer some ideas to what that could eventually be.
Recommended / Further Reading: