Guests of Madame Guillotine (The Reign of Terror Episode 2)

The one where the Doctor's homicidal side rears its ugly head again...

One of the beauties of Doctor Who is how it can lurch energetically from being appalling to being fabulous in the space of one week, and such is the case with Guests of Madame Guillotine, which is streets ahead of A Land of Fear in every way. Where episode 1 was almost devoid of humour and any meaningful characterisation and plot development, episode 2 turns everything on its head, as if script editor David Whitaker had had a quiet word in writer Dennis Spooner's ear to pick up the pace a bit.

I instantly want to know more and spend more time with the two cackling hags sitting outside the Conciergerie prison, for instance. We only get a tiny glimpse of them, but they seem interesting, and it's so rare to get more mature female characters in 1960s Doctor Who. In fact, I'm trying to think if there have been any so far, and I can only think of Cameca from The Aztecs. Though uncredited on screen, these two characters are called "knitting ladies" in production paperwork, played by Eleanor Darling (erroneously listed in paperwork as Dalling) and Leila Forde.

Anyway, enough of these supporting players, what about the new guest characters? First up we have a gruff bewigged judge, played by Howard Charlton, who ends his brief scene by staring right down the lens of the camera as it closes in on him, and gurning magnificently! Already, just two minutes in, this episode has much more life and humour to it than last week's sorry affair.

The humour continues when Barbara encounters the Conciergerie jailer, played by the magnificent Jack Cunningham. The jailer is something of a lech and makes it clear to Barbara that he can make her life in prison easier if she cooperates with him ("It gets real lonely in here sometimes... now if we were to be friends..."). Once again Barbara attracts a potential rapist with her womanly charms (see also: Vasor in The Snows of Terror), but this time gives him short shrift with what is probably Doctor Who's first ever face slap. Russell T Davies would be proud! Jacqueline Hill is also most amusing as she tries to avoid the stench coming from the jailer's bad breath, while Cunningham finishes the scene with a now standard gurn into camera!

Back at the flaming farmhouse it seems the small boy has rescued the Doctor, who is most grateful. Peter Walker is much better than he was last episode, and the brief scene between him and William Hartnell is actually rather charming. This is the first time the Doctor has interacted properly with a child in Doctor Who (some Doctors are better at it than others), and you sort of wish little Jean-Pierre was able to travel to Paris with the Doctor. They'd make an interesting pairing, but it was not to be.

Guests of Madame Guillotine has, of course, the first ever location filming in Doctor Who, with the Doctor travelling to Paris across fields and along country lanes. This filming took place on June 15th, 1964 in Gerrards Cross and Denham Green in Buckinghamshire, but unfortunately does not feature William Hartnell as he was busy rehearsing Kidnap, episode 5 of The Sensorites. Instead the Doctor is played by Brian Proudfoot in Hartnell's costume and wig. Proudfoot would go on to play cup bearer Tigilinus in The Romans. The location footage is very well shot, and there's some lovely, playful music from Stanley Myers to accompany it. Fifteen years later, Myers would compose Cavatina, the haunting title music for the film The Deer Hunter.

Locked up in a cell at the Conciergerie prison, Barbara determines to try and escape by crowbarring one of the loose wall stones out, but Susan is uncharacteristically pessimistic about their chances. "I've never heard you talk like this before," says Barbara. "You're usually so optimistic." She's right. For all her faults, Susan is probably the most upbeat and glass-half-full of the TARDIS crew, so to hear her talk in such a defeatist way is quite startling. I guess this is because she doesn't know whether her grandfather is alive or dead in that burning farmhouse. We know he is, of course, and Barbara tries to convince Susan he'll have escaped, but as Susan points out: "You keep saying that, but you don't know!"

Meanwhile, everything inside Ian's cell is on film because it's William Russell's turn at last to take a fortnight's holiday. I'm fascinated by the holidays taken by the regular cast at this time. Doctor Who ran for almost every single week of the year back then - by the time this episode was recorded on July 17th, 1964, the programme had been in constant production for 10 months, with another three months to go until a brief break. Working the regular cast's holidays into the narrative was essential. During Doctor Who's first season, the regular cast had just two weeks off each (this is assuming they resumed rehearsals on a Monday):

William Hartnell - Saturday, March 28th to Sunday, April 12th, 1964

Carole Ann Ford - Saturday, May 2nd to Sunday, May 17th, 1964

Jacqueline Hill - Saturday, June 13th to Sunday, June 28th, 1964

William Russell - Saturday, July 11th to Sunday, July 26th, 1964

Aside from a week off to recover from an injured back during the recording of The Dalek Invasion of Earth (October 1964), Hartnell wouldn't get another week's holiday until April 1965, during filming for The Space Museum. When you look at how much of a factory Doctor Who was in these early years, no wonder the performers fluffed their lines from time to time!

It's also interesting that some actors shot pre-filmed inserts so their characters still managed to appear in the episodes (eg, Carole Ann Ford for The Aztecs and William Russell for The Reign of Terror), but others did not (eg, William Hartnell for The Keys of Marinus and Jacqueline Hill for The Sensorites). In Guests of Madame Guillotine, Ian's presence is felt strongly throughout thanks to a number of pre-filmed inserts, including the cliffhanger.

On his merry way to Paris the Doctor has been delayed by being cheeky to a roadworks overseer, who is organising the construction of a road by tax dodgers. The Doctor is hastily forced to join the construction work, but manages to escape the overseer's clutches by dreaming up a very clever plan which plays on the portly bully's greed. As the overseer bends over to grab the Doctor's carefully planted coins in the rubble, he belts him over the head with a pick-axe handle! Now seriously, this could well have killed the poor man, and shows that the Doctor's willingness to harm others to further his own aims still lies dormant within him (remember his plan to murder Za in The Forest of Fear?). The overseer isn't dead, merely unconscious, but this doesn't stop the Doctor's rather cruel parting gesture of placing a coin on his eye. Who pays the ferryman? It seems the Doctor does...

Guests of Madame Guillotine is great fun, and a huge step up from A Land of Fear. There's some lovely characters and performances, and something resembling a plot has begun to emerge (Webster's message to Ian to find Jules Renan). There are also several "firsts" in the episode - Doctor Who's first location filming, the first time somebody slaps someone across the face (increasingly prevalent in 21st century Who!) and the first time the Doctor interacts properly with somebody the same age as the target audience.

First broadcast: August 15th, 1964

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Jack Cunningham brings so much fun and colour to his performance as the jailer.
The Bad: The fact Ian, Susan and Barbara spend the entire episode locked up doesn't really move the plot along very well. At least Ian learns something important in his cell.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

NEXT TIME: A Change of Identity...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: A Land of Fear (episode 1); A Change of Identity (episode 3); The Tyrant of France (episode 4); A Bargain of Necessity (episode 5); Prisoners of Conciergerie (episode 6)

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/2013/06/the-reign-of-terror.html

The Reign of Terror is available on DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Reign-Terror-DVD/dp/B00AHHVQWW