Vengeance on Varos Part One

The one where the Doctor visits a planet where torture and death are entertainment...

After a good-looking model shot of the planet Varos (spoilt by the fact it's on videotape and looks precisely like a model), the next scene is of a handsome bare-chested young man being tortured by a beam of light, sorry a heat ray. Shackled to the wall and subjected to a 'laseriser', this is the rebel Jondar, played by none other than Sean Connery's son, Jason. More of him later (although there's plenty of him here too).

Watching Jondar's misfortunes on TV are bickering married couple Arak and Etta (the latter played by Sheila Reid, who'd go on to play Clara's gran during the Steven Moffat era). The torture and killing of rebels, criminals and miscreants on Varos is televised to entertain the general population in a twisted form of Big Brother that would make George Orwell proud. This is Doctor Who doing Nineteen Eighty-Four, complete with snappy contractions such as ComDiv and ComTec. At last, a script with a bit of depth and intelligence behind it, perhaps?

Vengeance on Varos introduces us to Sil, an odious slug-like Mentor played joyously by Nabil Shaban, who was born with the brittle bone disease osteogenesis imperfecta. It's refreshing to have a disabled actor in Doctor Who, although casting him as a disgusting green slug monster isn't quite as progressive as it could have been. Nevertheless, Shaban does a fantastic job of making Sil utterly revolting, from the way he squirms and wriggles like a frustrated worm, to the glutinous gunk he devours, to the repellent way he speaks, including that marvellously repulsive laugh he does with his tongue. Sil is a delightfully unique creation, and one of the best new monsters to appear in Doctor Who for years (it's a pity this is Doctor Who's second attempt at a slug monster in the space of three stories, but this is definitely the superior!).

Sil is on Varos negotiating the purchase of the planet's most valuable commodity, the mineral zeiton-7, a vital component for the operation of space/ time craft. Varos is the only place in the entire universe where zeiton-7 can be found, making any reliance upon it to fuel time machines rather short-sighted. TARDISes need zeiton-7 too, and what a coincidence that the Doctor's time machine just so happens to have run out of it, and just so happens to be close enough to Varos to pay a visit.

It takes a whole 23 minutes for the TARDIS to arrive on Varos, and to enter the story. Before that viewers are subjected to a series of tedious scenes in which the Doctor and Peri bicker and moan, snipe and grumble, wittering on about burnt dinners and cold suppers. These humdrum scenes are made no better by the fact the Doctor collapses into a pit of despair, slumping into a very 1980s chair and simply giving up. He can't even be bothered to get involved in his own show!

The more interesting stuff is happening on Varos, where the Governor (pronounced "govern-yerrr" by Sil, just one of a number of linguistic eccentricities which make the Mentor entertaining) is holding out for seven credits per unit of zeiton-7. Sil doesn't want to pay that much, and the people of Varos don't seem to want him to pay it either, as they go against their Governor in a televised vote. "Those who wish to fight alongside me for a prosperous tomorrow, vote 'yes' to a ten per cent reduction of our food rations," the Governor appeals to the people. "Those who wish for full bellies today, and nothing to eat tomorrow, have the option to punch their 'no' button."

Unfortunately for the Governor, the people want full bellies today, and 987,627 (61%) of them punch the 'no' button. Having lost the ballot, the Governor is then subjected to something called a cell disintegrator, and although he survives this time (his third), he'll probably not survive a fourth. Martin Jarvis makes some very strange noises as the Governor undergoes the televised torture, in what is overall a rather flat performance. I realise the character is ailing and exhausted, but there's something about Jarvis's low-key performance which makes the Governor terribly bland.

Into this rather unpleasant world, where taped recordings of murders and executions are sold to supposedly "civilised" planets, drop the Doctor and Peri. The bit where they peek round the corner to greet Maldak is the most like a Doctor/ companion relationship these two have had yet. It's cute and amusing, and briefly makes them quite endearing. That doesn't last long, but for a brief moment, the Sixth Doctor and Peri actually appear to get on.

Sadly, in rescuing shackled hunk Jondar, the Doctor falls back into his old homicidal habits and aims the laseriser at innocent Varosian guards, disintegrating one in the process. This is an unforgivable, deliberate example of the Doctor willingly murdering someone, and more evidence that something has gone fundamentally awry with the people making Doctor Who at this time. The Doctor is being consciously presented and portrayed as a killer. Any attempt to excuse this behaviour as self-defence is on rocky ground. This is Doctor Who, not Dirty Harry. Even The A-Team avoided killing the villains!

The Doctor says he rescued Jondar because he is the only person he's encountered who hasn't tried to destroy him. This is simply not true, because at no point did the guards try to kill him. All they did was arrive! As for Maldak shooting at the TARDIS, that wasn't personal. He's a guard, and a big blue box just appeared from nowhere. Of course he's going to be on the offensive!

The Doctor and Peri team up with a collection of guest actors with varying degrees of skill in their field. Keith Skinner is passable as the handsome Rondel (pointlessly killed halfway through the episode), but Jason Connery and Geraldine Alexander (Jondar and Areta) are lamentably poor. You'd have thought Connery, being the son of an international movie star, would have had good training, but it seems there was only so much Bristol Old Vic Theatre School could do with the resources given. Connery is dire, and the frizzy-haired Alexander only marginally better. The best thing about Connery is that he's half undressed for most of the episode (there's actually an unusual amount of flesh on show in this story, whether it be Jondar, Arak, Sil's mute bearers, or even Peri's figure-hugging outfit).

What doesn't help these young, inexperienced actors is the terrible dialogue they're given to say. It's hard to breath life into lines such as: "The whole dome is wired. Areas of ingenious danger lurk in every corner. You can die in so many varied and spectacular ways." Connery is not the actor to do this, but I feel sorry for any performer having to inject a degree of truthfulness into Philip Martin's turgid dialogue. I mean, poor Nicola Bryant having to deliver "a creature from my worst imaginings" with conviction.

The Doctor, Peri, Areta and Jondar "traverse the purple passage" where something as harmless as a gee-jee fly is blown up to monstrous proportions by a hallucinatory inductor. There's also an illusory stench coming from the illusory fly. I'm not clear how a smell can be a hallucination. Later in the episode, the Doctor is lured into a passage he believes to be a baking hot desert. He surely knows it is an illusion, but still tumbles into a rather unbecoming state of heat exhaustion, sweating like a suckling pig and collapsing unconscious ("Dead as death!"). But the desert isn't real, it's not really there, and neither is the heat. So why does the Doctor sweat, and overheat? I don't get how smells and feelings can be hallucinations and have a physical effect on a person. If it's all in the mind, why is the Doctor actually hot, rather than just thinking he is?

It makes for a neat little cliffhanger though, the Doctor's expiration being televised to the 1.6m Varosians watching at home. Director Ron Jones has the Governor directing the live broadcast, culminating in: "And cut it... now!" At which point the episode actually ends and cuts to the closing titles. Very clever, very meta.

I'm left feeling a little grubby by this episode. It's got an interesting premise, riffing on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the controversy swirling around the media at the time about video nasties and snuff films, but it feels a bit too on the nose. A guard slaps Peri across the face; some kind of facially deformed mad scientist speaks of a transmutation process which disfigures its victims; prisoners are tortured, maimed and murdered, resulting in a number of scenes where we have to watch characters in abject pain, moaning and screaming; reference is made to the entire planet being a prison world, "a colony for the criminally insane"; and the sneering Chief Officer and the sadistic Bax speak of enjoying at least 10 minutes of Jondar's apprehension and fear. "I'm sure the video of his execution would sell," gloats the Chief Officer.

It's just unpleasant. And I know that's the point, it's trying to be meta. But that doesn't make it fun to watch.

First broadcast: January 19th, 1985

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Nabil Shaban as Sil, one of the best new monsters in Doctor Who for years.
The Bad: Philip Martin's stodgy, sesquipedalian dialogue.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Word repetition: 4

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

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

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.

Vengeance on Varos is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Vengeance-Varos-DVD/dp/B00005NGUF