The Talons of Weng-Chiang Part Five

The one where Jago and Litefoot finally meet...

The Doctor and Leela return to Litefoot's house to find a policeman dead in the garden with an axe sticking out of his back. A gruesome death indeed, especially for a family programme. Perhaps even more gruesomely, the Doctor pulls the axe out of the policeman's back to use as his own weapon (yes, I know he'd never use it, but Dr Who and axes really should not mix).

After reuniting with poor Litefoot, who gets his fair share of bumps to the head in this story, the Doctor miraculously deduces that Mr Sin is something called the Peking Homunculus, a robotic toy from the year 5000 with the cerebral cortex of a pig. It apparently almost caused World War Three, then went missing, never to be found, but it's obviously turned up here, in 19th century London. How the Doctor deduces that Mr Sin is the Peking Homunculus is a huge stretch. I mean, Sin could genuinely be a homicidal midget for all he knows. The Doctor says the homunculus "hates humanity", but it obviously has a soft spot for Professor Litefoot, who it refuses to actually kill!

Meanwhile, Weng-Chiang has upped sticks and relocated to the House of the Dragon, a secret base his coolies have been putting together somewhere near Limehouse. The size of this set is impressive, and the statue of the dragon is magnificent, a beautiful sculpt and really well painted. This set almost feels like a location rather than a BBC studio.

But life is never simple for Weng-Chiang because although he's now got his beloved time cabinet, he seems to have mislaid the key to operate it, which he kept in a trusty carpet bag which has been left behind at the theatre in the move. Bearing the brunt of the blame is poor coolie Lee, who forgot to pick up the carpet bag and so must pay with his life. Weng-Chiang forces him to take the sting of the scorpion, and sacrifice his own life for his failure. Li H'sen Chang is lucky his master didn't ask him to do the same.

And so back at the theatre, Jago discovers the carpet bag among the junk in the basement (unlikely in itself, but I'll go with it) and, seeing it full of strange paraphernalia which may be of use to the Doctor's investigation, takes it to the police station, where the officer redirects him to Litefoot's house. And so, eight minutes into part 5, Henry Gordon Jago and George Litefoot finally meet. Jago and Litefoot are so inextricably linked as a classic double act in Doctor Who history that it's easy to forget they don't meet until quite late in the story (in fact, Jago has taken something of a backseat in the middle episodes of the story). Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter bounce off one another wonderfully, and the pair are instantly perfect together.

They decide to return to the theatre to watch to see who comes to look for the carpet bag, and then follow them back to wherever they came from, hoping to locate the whereabouts of Weng-Chiang in the process. Litefoot is rather more up for this than Jago, who has always displayed a slightly yellow streak (excuse the pun), but it's lovely to see the two getting involved with events rather than just staying behind to get clobbered or whatever. This is the origin of what would become a dynamite investigative coupling in Big Finish's spin-off audio series.

Their ploy works, and they trace the coolies back to the House of the Dragon, but are unfortunately captured. "I'm a tiger when my dander's up!" Jago warns the surrounding coolies. Always good for a chuckle, Benjamin makes Jago such a lovable character, a blundering but well-meaning fool, full of bluster and spirit. His voluble and verbose vocabulary is remarkable, and it's very funny to see that he writes his letters just as loquaciously as he speaks!

Jago and Litefoot are locked up in the depths of the House of the Dragon, where they manufacture an impressive escape attempt by squeezing themselves into what must be the roomiest dumb waiter ever, and hauling themselves up to the dining room. Sadly, Robert Holmes is padding for Britain now, and the two adventurers escape simply in order to be captured again. This is always a sign the writer is struggling to fill their allocated screen time, and there are plenty of examples of this ploy in adventure fiction (someone is shown to escape, only to be immediately recaptured, just to fill screen time).

The Doctor and Leela decide to follow the trail left by the laundry company and end up in an abandoned opium den. As the Doctor explains to Leela, opium is a narcotic. Yes, we've had poison darts, nunchucks, axes, pistols, giant mutated rats, knife-wielding midgets, scantily-clad young women, so why not drug abuse as well?

Rather surprisingly, they discover a dying Li H'sen Chang puffing away on opium in one corner, his leg mangled by the rat. He regained consciousness in a rodent charnel house surrounded by rotting corpses, and managed to crawl away to die here. John Bennett is sensational in Chang's death scene, delivering Holmes's beautiful dialogue sensitively and gently as he slowly succumbs to death's embrace. The Doctor is rather more focused on finding out where the House of the Dragon is, but Chang is unable to tell him before he expires, managing only to stutter "B... b.... b....", and then desperately reach for the Doctor's foot. It's a pretty abstruse clue, but the best the celestial Chang can manage in his final seconds. It turns out that the House of the Dragon is located at Boot Court.

Back at Litefoot's, the Doctor finds the carpet bag, and is particularly pleased to find what's inside. "Do you know what this is?" he asks Leela, holding some kind of round white pendant (a trionic lattice). Leela smiles coyly as she replies: "You ask me so that you can tell me", summing up 75% of the dynamic between any Doctor and their companion! Louise Jameson is such good value for money, always staying in character even when nobody's looking (a case in point is Leela's obvious anguish at the death of Chang, expressed almost entirely through body language and expression).

As Leela prepares to turn Litefoot's house into a fortress (everybody's forgotten about the fact his dining room window is smashed), Weng-Chiang has made his way back to pick up his capacious carpet bag, and assaults the savage from behind with that old favourite of the Victorian villain, chloroform. Predictably giving up a fight, Leela turns and tears away Weng-Chiang's leather mask, to reveal a hideously burnt and melted face beneath (I wouldn't want that served with onions).

Director David Maloney wisely keeps it to the briefest of glimpses, but it's such a fantastically ugly make-up job that you can't help capturing Weng-Chiang's staring face in your mind's eye long after the titles crash in. Surely it's one of the most horrific deformities ever seen in Doctor Who, old or new? Mind you, Robert Holmes did like a good disfigurement, and The Caves of Androzani's Sharaz Jek is merely a retread (albeit a much better one) of Weng-Chiang.

First broadcast: March 26th, 1977

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Weng-Chiang's face is horrific, but wonderfully memorable and a cracking cliffhanger.
The Bad: There's a lot of padding in this episode, whether it's Weng-Chiang stupidly mislaying his carpet bag, or Jago and Litefoot escaping through the dumb waiter just to be recaptured almost immediately.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 07

NEXT TIME: Part Six...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part Six

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: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-talons-of-weng-chiang.html

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Talons-Weng-Chiang-Special/dp/B009BOSEEA