The War Machines Episode 1

The one where the Doctor visits the hottest nightclub in town...

Right from the outset, The War Machines is different, new and fresh. After the usual 20-second opening titles, we get an animated introduction of the story title, episode number and writer, with a drum roll to accompany it. This is highly unusual, but is another example of how the people behind Doctor Who were making changes to what was by then a tired format.

We're then treated to a glorious, sweeping view of the London skyline, and then a zoom into a leafy park where the TARDIS materialises. This is seriously progressive camerawork from director Michael Ferguson, a young talent who was only 28 years old at the time. His ambition and drive shines from the very first seconds of this episode. It feels very New Series.

It's also delightful to see William Hartnell on location, a rare sight indeed. It's lovely to see that the Doctor and Dodo have quite a sweet, endearing relationship, with the Doctor clutching Dodo's face excitedly as they realise they've "made it" to 20th century London. They both look very happy as fellow travellers, and although it transpires they've landed in July 1966, Dodo shows no real signs of wanting to leave the TARDIS, just to reacquaint herself with her hometown, which is fair enough.

The Doctor senses an alien quality about the Post Office Tower, which Dodo is surprised to see is finished. This is a little anachronistic, as the tower was actually completed in July 1964, well before she was whisked away from Wimbledon Common. The tower was opened to the public on May 16th 1966, just a couple of months before The War Machines aired, and Ian Stuart Black was commissioned to write the story in March 1966, based on an idea by Kit Pedler. The Post Office Tower was a major talking point over the spring and summer of 1966, so for Doctor Who to incorporate it into one of its stories like this was seriously refreshing.

For the first time ever, Doctor Who was contemporary, modern, of its time. It felt like NOW - June 1966 - rather than some trundly old sci-fi serial that previously felt a little detached from our reality. To see the First Doctor wandering the streets of Swinging Sixties London, chatting to pretty secretaries and attending press conferences, is both jarring and exhilarating. Heaven knows what William Hartnell himself felt about all this - maybe he felt his programme was running away from him a bit - but the production team were dragging Doctor Who firmly into 1966, with a hope of saving it from the axe. Ratings were drastically down (episode 4 of The Savages had attracted just 4.5m, less than half what the show was getting 12 months earlier), and something needed to be done. Making Doctor Who more relevant was a surefire way of getting it talked about again.

The Post Office Tower plot was one clever idea, but so too was using computers as the main threat. Back then of course, a computer could fill an entire room with its spinning dials and immense control banks (and everything WOTAN can do can be compressed into a fingernail-sized microchip these days!), but in 1966, computers were new and contemporary. They were exciting science. The fact the story addresses the very real concern that "thinking machines" could pose a threat to humankind was another ingenious way of making the show relevant and interesting.

Essentially, what Professor Brett has built in WOTAN is the start of the internet, judging by the plan to link WOTAN up to computer systems across the world (the White House, Parliament, Telstar, Cape Kennedy etc) and put it in charge. At the press conference, there's one extremely savvy American reporter called Roy Stone from the New York Sketch who foresees the problems Man might have with sentient computers - "Suppose it decides it can do without people, what then?" he asks. Sir Charles dismisses the idea by saying he is sure Professor Brett has WOTAN "well under control", but how can he if the whole idea is for WOTAN to be independent, sentient - an artificial intelligence of its own? Roy Stone could win a Pulitzer Prize if he sticks with this line of enquiry...

This episode feels like a completely different show. It feels more like The Avengers or Danger Man than Doctor Who. Last week the Doctor and friends were running about in a quarry and smashing up futuristic technology in Riverside Studio 1. Now he's up to his neck in international media, super-computers and 1960s dance music.

Ah yes, the Inferno club, "the hottest nightclub in town"! Brett's kohl-eyed secretary Polly takes Dodo to the Inferno where they meet owner Kitty, who asks them to help cheer up moody sailor boy Ben. There's a lot of new, young and hip people to meet in a very short time, but despite there being next to no plot by ten minutes in, the new-look cast are a breath of fresh air. You really get a feeling that we're supposed to get to know Polly, Ben and Kitty better. Maybe they'll become travelling companions with the Doctor and Dodo?

As supporting artists boogie away in the background like they're on Ready, Steady, Go, and Ben valiantly saves Polly from being harassed by a sneering flash-boy, there's the definite feeling that Doctor Who is both growing up and getting younger at the same time. How frighteningly prescient...

Anneke Wills, Michael Craze and Sandra Bryant are fun and refreshing, especially Wills, who seems very at ease and natural in her role. Wills really was a member of the Swinging 60s set at the time, and this bleeds through into her performance. She is immediately believable as Polly, from her unguarded performance (the face she pulls when she's described as a "cracking typist"!) to her Biba-inspired outfit. Polly is very much a girl from 1966, and I hope she sticks around.

The scene with the Doctor at the Inferno club is delightful. I mean, it's barely conceivable to think of the First Doctor in 1960s London, never mind standing at a bar in a subterranean nightclub! Kitty, sifting through her vinyl collection and settling on Mountain Fiesta! by Manuel and the Music of the Mountains (aka Geoff Love and His Orchestra, who would go on to cover the Doctor Who theme in the 1970s), compares the white-haired Doctor to "that disc jockey". He may go unnamed, but she obviously means the now infamous Jimmy Savile (whisper it!), who just two days earlier had presented Top of the Pops on the BBC. It leaves a nasty taste, having our dear Doctor likened to one of the UK's biggest ever pariahs...

Meanwhile, WOTAN - that sentient, independent-thinking computer that Sir Charles says will be just fine - is busy hypnotising human slaves: first Professor Brett, then Major Green, then Professor Krimpton, and finally it telephones Dodo at the nightclub and recruits her too. WOTAN has had chance to think things through and believes that Mankind has taken Earth's progress as far as it can alone. Only WOTAN can properly shape the planet's future from here. Oh-oh... That's what happens when you put super-intelligent sentient computers in charge.

Overall, this episode is light years ahead of what's gone before. It feels like a completely different programme, as if William Hartnell has a cameo in another show entirely. But it feels fresh and relevant and exciting and young, and is the first time that Doctor Who made such a radical alteration to its format and approach in order to survive. It feels a little odd that all this newness came right at the end of Season 3, then the show stopped for two months but came back looking exactly like it did in 1963, but this was the start of the change, the renewal... the rebirth.

It's a remarkably brave achievement.

First broadcast: June 25th, 1966

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Having scenes set in a nightclub, and characters straight out of Swinging 60s London, is refreshing and invigorating.
The Bad: We're barely introduced to characters such as Krimpton and Green before they're subjugated by WOTAN. It'd be nice to get to know them as real people before they became "baddie" ciphers.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★★

NEXT TIME: Episode 2...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode 2; Episode 3; Episode 4

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-war-machines.html

The War Machines is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-War-Machines-DVD/dp/B001BKYAY0