Prisoners of Conciergerie (The Reign of Terror Episode 6)

The one where the true identity of James Stirling is revealed...

After a really awkward staring contest in which the actors have to look at one another silently as the title and writer captions fade in and out, we finally get to know who James Stirling - the English spy - is... it's Lemaitre! After all that, Lemaitre's scheming and eavesdropping was in order to make friendly contact with Ian, in order to learn Webster's dying message!

We then gets lots and lots of explanatory dialogue and info-dumping, setting the scene for what is an episode packed full of incident but also quite heavy on talking politics. If you didn't know anything about the political history of France before watching The Reign of Terror, you'll be an expert now! I do love the Doctor's focused insistence on getting his granddaughter out of Conciergerie however, and his frustration at having to delay Susan's release. As he says to Lemaitre: "Very well, if you must tell your story then get on with it."

Jules, Ian and Barbara decide to go to the Sinking Ship Inn on the road between Calais and Paris in order to find out who democratic politician Paul Barras is meeting there, and we're treated to the wonderful sight of Ian and Barbara masquerading as innkeepers. Ian and Babs undercover! It's so funny to see Barbara dressed up as a serving wench, complete with frilly apron and mop cap, clearing boozy tables and tidying behind the bar. I could watch an entire spin-off series where these two run a country pub together somewhere in the Home Counties! They really get into the spirit of it too, putting on local yokel accents!

When Barras's mysterious visitor arrives at the Sinking Ship, he couldn't look more conspicuous, with his muffler pulled up over his face. We soon learn that it's none other than Napoleon Bonaparte, the man who will go on to lead France as its Emperor between 1804-1814, and although all that is a good few years away yet, we know that his plot against Robespierre will succeed.

The rest of the episode sees the downfall of Robespierre played out, a lot of it off-screen, but one key scene is depicted off-camera on purpose. The shooting of Robespierre in the jaw has been a source of debate, as some sources claim he did it to himself when trying to commit suicide, while soldier Charles-Andre Merda claimed he shot him on purpose. It was perhaps too graphic to show directly on teatime telly anyway, so instead we hear the shot, as we see Lemaitre and Ian look on.

The Doctor returns to the prison to free Susan, but takes time to give the obsequious jailer a good dressing-down before he goes. "I can't decide if you're a rogue or a half-wit or both!" he says. He basically destroys the jailer with words, and plays on his self-preservation to his own ends. A much better Doctor than the one who wallops people over the head with pick-axe handles.

As our heroes say their farewells, Jules says that the first thing he intends to do is find Jean, before moving to the countryside. Ah yes, his "young friend" Jean, last seen in The Tyrant of France supposedly on a mission to find and rescue the Doctor, but never to be seen again. The same goes for Jules's sister Danielle, who also simply disappeared sometime in episode 4. To be honest, the unexplained disappearance of these characters is typical of how it feels Dennis Spooner has made this story up as he went along. Sure, he must have known the structure of the serial and where he needed to end up, but everything in between has largely been running around, imprisonment and escaping. The characters of Jean and Danielle are utterly superfluous to the plot, they serve no necessary function at all, so to create them and drop them as Spooner did is really quite poor.

After a long-winded montage of stock footage of a horse and carriage, and a map of France that a five-year-old could have drawn, our heroes get back to the TARDIS, where William Hartnell delivers the first ever end-of-season soliloquy: "Our lives are important, at least to us. As we see, so we learn... Our destiny is in the stars, so let's go and search for it!"

Magical! And we also get Doctor Who's first ever starscape at the end!

The Reign of Terror looks great, and the performances are, by and large, great too (not so much Keith Anderson), but it really suffers from lazy writing from Dennis Spooner, who seems to have a lot of trouble knowing what to do with characters - he creates Jean and Danielle, only to drop them without rhyme or reason, and his treatment of Susan is pretty unforgivable. She spends the entire story either ill, asleep or in a cell, and serves absolutely no active or productive purpose. Indeed, she doesn't even appear in Prisoners of Conciergerie until 20 minutes in, even though it's obvious Carole Ann Ford was available. No wonder she was happy to leave...

Doctor Who's first series was over. It had been running for a solid 43 weeks, but the gap between seasons wasn't as generous as it is these days. Fans would have to wait just seven weeks until Doctor Who returned, on Hallowe'en night, 1964. In the interim, the programme's time slot was filled by a repeat run of the sitcom The Valiant Varneys, but as ever, nothing could ever really replace Doctor Who.

First broadcast: September 12th, 1964

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Ian and Barbara undercover as country bumpkin innkeepers is an all-too-brief joy!
The Bad: The resolution feels rushed, with a lot of action off-screen, and lots of people looking and reacting to things we cannot see. That's budgets, I suppose!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (story average: 6.7 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: Planet of Giants...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: A Land of Fear (episode 1); Guests of Madame Guillotine (episode 2); A Change of Identity (episode 3); The Tyrant of France (episode 4); A Bargain of Necessity (episode 5)

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