City of Death Part One

The one where the Doctor and Romana go on honeymoon holiday to Paris...

Ah, this one's written by David Agnew, the same bloke who wrote The Invasion of Time, so that doesn't bode well. In truth, of course, Agnew wasn't a real person, but a pseudonym first used by scriptwriter Anthony Read in 1971 for his Play for Today Hell's Angel, and later his BBC2 play Diane. Read adopted the alias for The Invasion of Time while he was Doctor Who's script editor, sharing it with producer Graham Williams, and it pops up again here as the pseudonym of Williams, new script editor Douglas Adams and writer David Fisher, who came up with the first ideas of what City of Death is based on. A bit of a mish-mash then.

The opening sequence (one of those that would've made a fab cold open if Doctor Who did them back then) features a gorgeous model set of a prehistoric landscape, centring in on an alien spaceship that vies with the Movellans' craft in the last story for sheer design creativity. This ship is a three-legged spider design, with a spherical centre housing an exposed cockpit. It's a radically different and unusual design by one of Doctor Who's unsung heroes, Ian Scoones, and it's a shame City of Death was his last work for the show. He'd also done excellent modelwork for stories such as The Ambassadors of Death, Pyramids of Mars and The Invisible Enemy.

Sitting in the ship's cockpit is an alien which looks like it has burnt spaghetti for a head, with one staring eye glaring out from the centre. Again, it's a startlingly unusual design for an alien, sitting in a startlingly unusual spaceship in a startlingly realistic prehistoric landscape. Now if that isn't an opening sequence to make you sit up and pay attention, I don't know what is!

The action moves to the Doctor and Romana (but no K-9 again!) on holiday in Paris, France (you have to put France in case people think it's Texas). It's the first time Doctor Who filmed abroad, spending four days in the French capital, and director Michael Hayes makes the most of their time there, to the extent that it becomes really quite boring. Yes, it's lovely to see the Doctor and Romana on location in actual Paris, mingling with real people in real places and doing refreshingly mundane things. But after the fourth or fifth location, it starts to feel like a rather uninformative travelogue, and Dudley Simpson's admittedly delicious score begins to grate through repetition.

Like so many TV shows which film overseas, it feels like Doctor Who is having to prove it's filming overseas by shooting as many recognisable Parisian landmarks as possible, or showing the actors in the context of the city as often as possible. I get that it would be pointless going all the way to Paris and not showing that you're in Paris, but Hayes goes too far into indulgence when we could actually be having a bit more plot. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward seem to be having a whale of a time, zipping along on the Metro and joshing with each other at the top of the Eiffel Tower. But I'm not there with them, so please just get on with it!

Aside from these rushes from Holiday '79, there are some mysterious experiments being conducted in the basement of a chateau belonging to Count Carlos Scarlioni, played by the supremely sophisticated and debonair Julian Glover, the original Man from Del Monte! I love Glover's supercilious presence, both in the way he delivers his lines and holds himself. You can tell Scarlioni thinks himself better than those around him, whether that be beleaguered scientist Kerensky, his right-hand man Hermann, or even his wife the Countess.

The Count is trying to raise money to fund Kerensky's very expensive experiments, and he's doing this by selling off some enormously valuable works of art, such as a Gainsborough painting and a Gutenberg Bible (of which there are only 21 complete copies in the world). The Count hands Kerensky a million francs to help pay some bills, but that won't last long, he says, so more art has to be flogged (discreetly). Hungarian Kerensky is played by David Graham exactly as you'd expect a "mad professor" to be played in 1979, with a dodgy accent and plenty of eccentricity. Frederick Jaeger did similar in The Invisible Enemy, as did Edward Burnham in Robot. There's not much subtlety, but you know exactly where you are with it!

Whatever the experiments entail, they could well be causing the time slips being experienced by the Doctor and Romana as they gallivant around town. As time travellers, they both feel movements and aberrations in the time field, but despite feeling time jump a groove while sipping red wine and reading Rigaud in a cafe, the Doctor is determined to ignore it and enjoy their holiday (which feels more like a honeymoon, to be honest...). There's a wonderful scene where Romana catches a street artist sketching her from the next table, but when he gets uppity that she dared to move, he screws the sketch up and leaves (the French are traditionally very grouchy).

The sketch shows Romana with a cracked clock for a face, reflecting the fact she's a Time Lady, and it's a beautiful drawing. But why is the face cracked, like "a crack in time"? If I didn't know better I'd think this was an allusion to Amy's crack from the Matt Smith era, but it can't be, so it isn't. I'm sure somebody somewhere has weedled it into their head canon though!

Ignoring the fact this is Doctor Who, a family programme for children of all ages which takes viewers on an exciting trip through time and space every week, the Doctor and Romana decide to visit the Louvre to "gawp and gape" at the Mona Lisa, a very pretty painting indeed. I can feel some viewers sighing as Simpson's familiar refrain cranks up yet again, but at least it feels like our heroes are getting a bit more involved in the plot (what there is of it), entering a gallery housing world famous works of art (remember the Count?).

While in the Louvre, the Doctor experiences another time slip and collapses to the floor, bashing his head on the concealed revolver of a nearby detective, and also managing to snatch a mysterious bracelet from the wrist of a beautiful onlooker (played by the incandescent Catherine Schell). There then follows yet more travelogue scenes as our heroes traipse around Paris, this time pursued by the trenchcoated 'tec, although I'm not all that sure why he's following them. Once Duggan catches up with them, he reveals that he suspects the beautiful Countess to be involved in her husband's art theft scheme. Several previously missing works of art have been suddenly turning up and making millions on the open market, and although Duggan expects them to be fakes, they defy such classification. To all intents and purposes, these pieces are the real deal.

Back at the chateau the Countess reports the stolen bracelet to her husband, who erupts with anger and demands his heavies get the bracelet back. They do this very competently and swiftly, but are rewarded for their loyalty by being murdered by Hermann. It's treated as a light-hearted quip, and it's supposed to make us see Scarlioni as a psychopathic rotter, but it has the dark edges of something out of Game of Thrones. Two brand new heavies are then sent to capture the Doctor, Romana and Duggan and bring them back to the chateau.

Meanwhile, the Countess wants a word with her husband, who's apparently alone in the basement. However, she finds the door to the basement locked, and that's because Count Carlos Scarlioni isn't everything he seems. He's actually the spaghetti-headed alien from the beginning of the episode, in disguise as a human with a rubber mask pulled over his scribble-faced visage. Much has been made about how Scarlioni pulling off the mask doesn't work because he wouldn't be able to see through two human eyes with one huge alien eye, and the mask's too small for his head beneath, but who cares? It's a wonderful WTF moment that brings the episode full circle, and a cracking cliffhanger to boot.

This first episode is lovely if you just want to hang out with Tom Baker and Lalla Ward in 70s Paris (and who wouldn't?), but it's quite slow and humdrum in parts and needs to step up a bit.

First broadcast: September 29th, 1979

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The opening sequence, from the modelwork to the creature design, is arrestingly good.
The Bad: The laboured repetition of the Doctor and Romana running around Paris, and Dudley Simpson's score, get tiresome after a while.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 20

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three; Part 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: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/08/city-of-death.html

City of Death is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-City-Death-DVD/dp/B000AWKSU0