The Awakening Part Two

The one where the Malus gets inside the TARDIS...

The design of the Malus is splendid, and pretty scary too. It seems to personify evil, with its glowing green eyes, hooked nose and rictus grin, which seems to be laughing at us as it billows acrid fog from its mouth. I reckon the image of the Malus in the church wall, rubble falling around it as it pushes forward, gave a few kids nightmares back in 1984. And then there's the awful roaring noise it makes as it awakes, a cross between the roar of a leviathan and the sound of tearing metal. Even today - at the cynical old age of 45 - I still find the image and sound of the Malus a little unsettling.

There's a lovely little team with the Fifth Doctor, Will Chandler and Jane Hampden, but sadly it isn't really capitalised upon. There are some nice moments between the Doctor and Will, and the Doctor and Jane, but not the three of them collectively so much, which is a shame, as the dynamic could really work, the motherly middle-aged woman and the vulnerable innocent. I can imagine them as a pretty effective TARDIS team, if only Will and Jane would talk to one another!

There's some really nice character beats in this episode, my favourite being the scene where the Doctor finds the terrified Will cowering in the bushes. Will tells the Doctor that, back in 1643, they burned the Queen of the May, and the Doctor rather heartlessly quips: "The toast of Little Hodcombe." But Will is not amused, replying: "T'ain't funny. She were screaming." The Doctor continues to make light of it as he makes off toward the village green, but director Michael Owen Morris takes time to stay with Will, slowly closing in on the boy's face as he remains lost in what must be some pretty scarring personal memories. The Queen of the May's screams have obviously stayed with the boy, haunting him, and it's great that this is reflected.

Peter Davison gives his best performance as the Doctor yet, managing to balance a rising eccentricity with his trademark breathless heroism. His scenes with Jane reflect a natural connection between the two characters, such as when they're moving through the secret tunnel and the Doctor explains the nature of the Malus to her. "The Malus is pure evil," he tells her. "Given enough energy, it will not only destroy [Sir George], but everything else. Cheer up!" Then there's the bit where he's trying to get around the crowded TARDIS console, and glares at Jane to get out of his way. It's little moments like this that Davison hasn't always had the opportunity to do, but they add character, depth and charm, particularly to his Doctor, who can occasionally come across as characterless. Season 21 seems to be where Davison finally nails his Doctor (although it feels a little too late in the day!).

It's also in the scene where he's accused by Sir George of speaking treason, and he replies: "Fluently!", and later in the TARDIS when he says: "Everybody stay perfectly calm and still", then bursts into action himself. You can definitely see his future son-in-law in his performance sometimes...

This episode is full of magical moments, such as the genuinely spooky ghostly cavalier, lit in ethereal blue, staring blankly ahead, then advancing toward the camera, sword brandished ready to attack. It reminds me of 'The Door' section of the wonderful 1974 portmanteau horror film From Beyond the Grave, in which a writer buys an old door for his stationery cupboard, but finds that he can pass through it into the room that once lay behind it, a room containing an occultist dandy played by Jack Watson.

Later, three spooky Roundheads appear, again with their swords brandished, but the scene does not go the way I expected, as it sees one of the war gaming troopers apparently beheaded by the ghostly apparitions. You don't see anything, but it's all heavily implied, both by the way the Roundheads trap the trooper's neck in a triangle of blades, followed by Owen Morris cutting away to show the gathered observers' horrified reactions (Tegan hides her face in her hands, Turlough looks disgusted, the Doctor slightly shocked, and Jane absolutely appalled). They couldn't show the beheading of course, but by not showing it, but strongly implying it, the viewer's imagination is forced to fill in the blanks, and that is possibly even grislier. I'd be interested in how a younger viewer might interpret that scene, whether they imagine a beheading or something different, but the later shot of the corpse is cleverly angled so as not to show any head, either attached or detached. It's one of the most graphic scenes in Doctor Who, and they don't show a thing!

Michael Owen Morris only directed these two episodes of Doctor Who, which is a shame because he shows flair in his approach to the drama. The action-packed scene at the village green is really well done, involving fire, horses, an escape by cart, and several angry war gamers. There are no inept camera angles or bits you think they ought to have gone for another take, it's just really well staged and cut together, and utterly convincing.

Everybody - and I mean everybody - returns to the TARDIS in yet another example of how the Fifth Doctor's happy to let just anyone into his amazing time and space machine. As well as the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough, there's also Will, Jane, Ben, Joseph and Andrew. That's eight people in that TARDIS control room, and not a single one of them gets to react to the fact they've just run into a police box in a church crypt and emerged into a spacious, brightly-lit futuristic spacecraft. I just wanted one of them to say "It's bigger on the inside" incredulously, but not a single one bothers to react, which is an indefensible error on the part of not just writer Eric Pringle, but also script editor Eric Saward and director Michael Owen Morris. OK, so the Doctor almost stops them in their tracks with: "Quietly now, don't alarm it," but it's a truly unforgivable oversight.

The "it" in question, of course, is a mini version of the Malus, a psychic projection clinging malevolently to the TARDIS wall like Doctor Who's very own version of Salacious Crumb. It's a fabulous image, and when the Doctor cuts off its connection to the psychic source and it starts vomiting green goo, it joins the lengthening list of icky moments in the Davison era that began way back in Earthshock, with the liquefied Snyder.

Further thoughts:

• When Turlough is inevitably locked in a barn (because that's the best most writers can think to do with him), he meets Tegan's errant grandfather, Andrew Verney, and as they chat we learn that this whole predicament was caused by Verney when he discovered the Malus in the church and woke it up. Sometimes I think that gets a little lost in the hubbub, but it's Tegan's grandad who sets all this off!
• I adore the shot of Will running through the field, falling, then getting back up and running on. It's a brief shot, and doesn't give very much, but it's like a scene straight out of the folk horror classic The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971).
• Turlough returns to his old habit of using rocks to hit opponents over the head and render them unconscious. He never quite managed it with the Doctor in Mawdryn Undead, but he certainly sees it through here, clocking Willow with a rock, and inspiring Verney to do the same with the trooper. That's a pretty lethal way to go about things, when a traditional 'chop to the neck' would have sufficed.
• That wonderful exchange between Turlough and Tegan: "We're running out of places to hide!"; "The story of our lives!"
• Oh, and then there's Tegan and the Doctor: "Aren't you forgetting something?"; "Probably, it isn't unusual, I've had a very hard day." Love it!
• There's a subtle nod back to the end of Warriors of the Deep, when Will asks the Doctor if it's important that Sir George "be dead". "Not if there's another way," the Time Lord replies, and sure enough, the Doctor spends a lot of time and energy trying to convince the raving Sir George to sever his devotion to the Malus, so that his life may be saved. "Listen, Sir George," he pleads breathlessly, desperate for this man not to become a victim. "Your village is in turmoil, you're pointing a gun at a man who's a friend. That's the true influence of the Malus. Can't you feel the hate and rage inside your head? Think, man! Did you have such feelings before you activated that thing?" It's all in vain, of course, as Will ends up pushing Sir George into the Malus, killing him. "It better he be dead."

The Doctor fails to save Sir George (played with relish by Denis Lill, who could probably taste the scenery for weeks after filming ended), but the Malus is destroyed as the church crumbles around them. They race back to the TARDIS and dematerialise just in time, and there's a magnificent model shot of the church collapsing and then exploding, in the perfect homage to The Awakening's forebear, The Daemons.

The final scene in the TARDIS is a rambling affair. Just look at 'em all! It's a sorry cop-out that Jane and Ben intend no recriminations towards the vindictive Joseph Willow - to be honest, he deserves some kind of punishment for the callous way he conducted himself - and it feels oddly inconclusive, having no "final scene" where the TARDIS crew say farewell to everybody outside the TARDIS. When the story ends, everybody's still aboard, and they're planning to nip back to Andrew Verney's place for tea ("Sounds an evil brew").

Of course, there's a lot of potential for there to be a whole raft of adventures in which this eight-strong TARDIS crew travel through time and space righting wrongs and fighting monsters, before returning to Little Hodcombe for tea and crumpets. The adventures of the Doctor, Tegan, Turlough, Jane, Will, Ben, Joseph and Andrew could be the latest exploitative endeavour from Big Finish, a bumper 10-disc box set with Polly James, Keith Jayne and Jack Galloway reprising their roles, and Jon Culshaw and Nicholas Briggs pretending to be Glyn Houston and Frederick Hall. Mind you, having an eight-strong TARDIS crew (nine with Kamelion!) would not have been such a good idea for the TV series, seeing as they often struggled to find enough for two companions to do, never mind seven!

All in all, I love The Awakening. It's very slight at two episodes - it could have been beefed up and extended to four - but the imagery and atmosphere it conjures are invigorating, and Michael Owen Morris directs with flair and style. There are far too many characters for the breadth of the plot, but they're all reasonably well drawn and a couple of them show real potential (Will and Jane in particular, who pop up in the book The Hollow Men, which tells us that the Doctor spent three months trying to return Will to 1643, with Jane in tow).

From the inky depths of Warriors of the Deep to the soaring high of The Awakening, I'm not sure what to expect from Season 21 so far. But the one constant is that Peter Davison seems more settled and self-assured, just before he's due to go!

First broadcast: January 20th, 1984

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The Malus is a triumph of design, both visually and aurally.
The Bad: Too many characters with not enough to do. Instead of shedding a few along the way, Eric Pringle has them all come along for the ride, which is a mistake.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆ (story average: 8.5 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: Frontios...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One

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.

The Awakening is available as part of the Earth Story BBC DVD box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Earth-Gunfighters-Awakening/dp/B004T9DSTI