Carnival of Monsters Episode Two

The one where the Doctor and Jo become part of the machine...

Not until episode 2 does director Barry Letts show Vorg reaching into the miniscope and extracting the TARDIS (or bric-a-brac, as he sees it), but I still maintain it would have been better to show this at the end of episode 1 as part of the cliffhanger. The sight of a giant hand picking up the TARDIS is a corking OMG moment in itself, but to make it clear to the audience that the SS Bernice is actually inside Vorg's scope would be the icing on the cake. It's a good example of why I don't really rate Letts as a director, I find his work too choppy in the edit (The Enemy of the World is another example of abrupt editing, and the fact he doesn't give us a shot of the fully-grown TARDIS when it's taken out of the miniscope in this episode is unforgivable).

What also confuses me is why Vorg doesn't put the TARDIS back where he found it (in circuit three), if he's so bothered about destroying the illusion. Later in the episode, Orum fishes the police box out of the machine's circuitry, not the SS Bernice.

The imagination in Robert Holmes's script is staggering. It's a pretty brave move to have two apparently separate story strands (and two very contrasting strands at that), but it's not long before Holmes adds a third dimension to the story by having the Doctor and Jo break out of circuit three (ie, the SS Bernice environment) and into the innards of the scope itself.

The sight of the Doctor and Jo wandering around a giant circuit board is marvellous, and Roger Liminton's idea of what the inside of a futuristic machine might look like is beautifully day-glo, like a 1970s children's playground... It doesn't look much like the inside of any machine I recognise, but it's a fun environment for our heroes to explore (the Doctor seems particularly enamoured, describing it as vintage, wonderful and magnificent). Letts manages one great wide shot of the Doctor and Jo dwarfed in the vastness of the circuitry which works really well. I bet Pertwee was cursing Holmes though, due to the amount of jargon he's given to spout, including filter circuits, pulse mechanisms, caesium decay and auxiliary capillary pumps!

The episode is divided into three sections, with a fourth overarching "framing story" involving Vorg and Shirna's problems with the Inter Minorian customs bores (they've inadvertently imported live creatures without a license!). Again, the scenes on shabby Inter Minor are my least favourite or engaging, although there's obviously some sort of plot developing around Kalik's innate xenophobia and fear of the Lurmans (who he fears are mustering an invasion force) and the Tellurians (who he fears are mustering a diseased invasion force!). It's good to see the miniscope in action at last, with glimpses of an Ogron and a Cyberman (not named on screen) on the globesphere, as well as a Drashig, which Vorg unconvincingly describes as the most evil, vicious and frightening form of life in the whole universe! It's a pity the globesphere gives such a blurry, distorted picture for saying it's an advanced piece of machinery from the far future!

After a bit of fisticuffs with Andrews on the SS Bernice (the Doctor cheats by using his aikido, despite having had lessons from pugilism's first ever superstar, John L Sullivan*), the Doctor and Jo scarper, pursued across the decks with bullets ringing in their ears, until they manage to break out of the SS Bernice environment through the "invisible" hatch and into the machine's innards (I do love the Doctor letting Jo use the magnetic core extractor to open the hatch, and not doing it himself).

From here, they break back into another environment (using a handy hatch fitted with a doorknob!) which appears to be the Fens of East Anglia. The location filming at Tillingham gives this third section of the episode great scale, and when the terrifying Drashigs (anagram for "dish rag") pop up out of the marshes like mischievous jack-in-the-boxes, the blend between model and location is excellent. The Drashigs are quite impressive creations, with their piercing, screaming roar and slavering maws.

This story is bonkers. It has a dream-like, Twilight Zone atmosphere (that big eye blinking down at the Doctor and Jo is creepily surreal). It's all over the place, quite literally, but the skill Holmes had to imagine this and translate it to the page, and then the courage to actually submit it to a production team with a seriously restrictive budget, is a mark of the man's talent. Lack of money never stopped Doctor Who trying to tell an ambitious story, and although there are some disappointing production values (principally on Inter Minor), there's no stifling this wonderfully imaginative tale.

* I can't imagine the Third Doctor learnt boxing from Sullivan, seeing as he's only just got back the ability to pilot his TARDIS. I can't imagine the Second Doctor learning pugilism, but maybe the First, who is by far the most violent incarnation (and who also tutored the Mountain Mauler of Montana, remember!).

First broadcast: February 3rd, 1973

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Robert Holmes's ambitious storytelling, as well as Roger Liminton's crazy miniscope set.
The Bad: The Inter Minor scenes are still the dullest, and drag the rest of the story down a bit.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

"Now listen to me" tally: 21
Neck-rub tally: 12

NEXT TIME: Episode Three...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode One; Episode Three; Episode Four

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.com/2014/05/carnival-of-monsters.html

The Carnival of Monsters Special Edition is available on BBC DVD as part of the Revisitations 2 box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Revisitations-Carnival-Monsters-Resurrection/dp/B004FV4R9A/