The Mysterious Planet, by Jez Strickley (and Robert Holmes, and Terrance Dicks)

I first watched The Mysterious Planet in 2007. I wrote then:

The Mysterious Planet was Robert Holmes’ swan-song, from 1986. He wrote some of the best stories of the original Doctor Who run; this is not one of them. It’s the first segment of the infamous Trial of a Time Lord season, with the action of the main narrative (the Doctor and Peri land on a mysterious planet and must prevent the local bad guys from taking over the universe; also confusingly it may or may not be a far future Earth) frequently interrupted by flashforwards to a courtroom where the Doctor is on trial, the main story being presented as evidence for the prosecution.

The trial sub-plot simply does not work. There appears to be no due procedure that makes any sense; the evidence presented by the Valeyard (at least as far as this story goes) doesn’t do much to prove the case (as even the Inquisitor admits). If you simply tune out these deeply embarrassing bits, you are left with a fairly standard story: a couple of decent performances from guest actors, and a couple of very cardboard-looking robots.

When I came back to it in 2011, for my Great Rewatch, I wrote:

I started watching the Trial of a Time Lord season in a rather foul mood. But in fact, rather to my surprise, I found myself warming to The Mysterious Planet – in relative terms, of course; it’s definitely in the lower third of Robert Holmes’ stories, and has a number of plot elements recycled from his previous scripts when he did them better. But there is a sense that the show might be finding its feet again: back to the 25-minute format, and also embedding the season in a narrative arc (which was successful last time it was tried) in which the Time Lords are up to no good; the basics are actually there, and I think it is the production values that let it down as much as anything. (Though I should admit that the plot is also a bit confusing and over-filled.) The Mysterious Planet is a little dull but it’s not actively bad, unlike most of the previous season.

Rewatching it again, I remain more negative than positive, though I liked some of the Holmesian characterisation. The ridiculous trial set-up remains very poor.

It’s worth mentioning again an episode recounted in Richard Molesworth’s excellent biography of Robert Holmes, which I described in my review of it:

Holmes’ life ended sadly early. He died aged only 60 in 1986, half-way through writing the final story of that year’s Doctor Who season. This was the much contested Trial of a Time Lord arc, for which Holmes had contributed the first four episodes and was due to write the final two (but died before starting the last one). A higher-up at the BBC had sent round a brutal deconstruction of the flaws of the first four episodes (generally now referred to as The Mysterious Planet), which clearly deeply wounded Holmes and possibly even contributed to his illness and death. In a career of a quarter of a century, nobody before had been quite so brutal about his writing. It’s painful reading, and the one positive thing I will say is that the account here raises Eric Saward’s reputation in my view, as he attempted (but failed) to shield Holmes and also keep the show on the road. But between the lines it’s clear that Holmes no longer had what he had once had had. Between 1982 and his death in 1986, literally the only non-Who scripts he sold were three episodes of Bergerac and five for a short-lived drama series set in a Citizens Advice Bureau. Brutal though it is, the BBC higher-up’s criticism of The Mysterious Planet is mostly pretty well-founded.

Molesworth is defensive of The Mysterious Planet‘s virtues, but I’m afraid I am with the BBC hierarchy; it’s a turkey.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of Terrance Dicks’ novelisation is:

They ducked behind the cover of a sturdy tree.

First reading it in 2008, I wrote:

This is, however, not one of Dicks’ greatest efforts. I’ve noted before how the Dicks/Holmes combination is only rarely successful on the printed page, and this, the last of the sequence, is fairly typical, a faithful recounting of what the viewer sees on the screen without much added. There are some mystifying slips, Peri’s full name being given as “Perpegillian”, for instance. It also fails (as did the original TV version) to establish the Time Lord trial setting convincingly (let alone fit it into continuity).

Nothing to add to that, on re-reading.

So I turned with interest to the latest Black Archive, released last month, by Jez Strickley. Sometimes the Black Archives about Doctor Who stories I did not like much achieve a bit of redemption for me by calling attention to aspects that I had not considered before, and sometimes they at least woo me with the author’s enthusiasm. Which would it be?

I’m sorry to say that of the 79 Black Archives that I have read so far, this was the least penetrable. Strickley has written it as an exploration of his pet concepts, topophilia and topophobia, through the lens of the story, but using many other sources as well. I found it dense and uninteresting, and I gave up after the first chapter. The second paragraph of the third chapter will give you some idea, though I did not get that far.

The life of daleswoman Hannah Hauxwell may be a rare example of Heidegger’s concept of dwelling in practice. Born in 1926, Hauxwell lived most of her life at Low Birk Hatt, a farm in Baldersdale in the North Pennines. In the early 1970s, her life became the subject of a television documentary. Until then, and for a time thereafter, Hauxwell lived frugally on the produce of her farming, managing without electricity and running water. Yet, despite these privations, her love of her home and the nearby Hunder Beck, whose ‘waters sing a song to me’, was unwavering. Reflecting on her life in that remote and, in winter at least, unforgiving setting, she once observed that ‘I know this place will always be loyal to me […] It’s mine […] and always will be […] even when I’m no longer here.’⁴ Hauxwell’s turn of phrase, described by one critic as ‘Wordsworthian’, acknowledges a conception of place which goes beyond the purely material and approaches a bond that may be Heideggerian in nature⁵.
⁴ Hauxwell, Hannah, and Cockcroft, Barry, Seasons of My Life: The Story of a Solitary Daleswoman, p10.
⁵ Hauxwell and Cockcroft, Seasons of My Life, p186.

You see what I mean? Heideggerian, eh?

An unprecedented miss for me in this generally hugely enjoyable series. I believe that the next will be on The Enemy of the World, by Robert Fairclough, who has previously written about The Prisoner; I have higher expectations.

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The Mysterious Planet, by Jez Strickley (and Robert Holmes, and Terrance Dicks)

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