Battlefield Part Four

The one where the Destroyer is freed...

So Morgaine gives Ace and Shou Yuing over to the Destroyer to become his handmaidens in Hell, only for the Destroyer to then disappear for five minutes. Morgaine cannot cross the chalk circle with her magic alone, but the Destroyer claims he can if she releases him from his silver chains. "It burns!" says the blue meanie, which is a fantastically realistic design by Stephen Mansfield and Sue Moore, complete with huge Krull-like horns, a greasy black mane and a warty complexion. Interestingly, the original design for the Destroyer was by Mike Tucker, but he was given visual effects duties on The Curse of Fenric at the last moment, and Mansfield and Moore stepped in. Tucker's original design for the Destroyer eventually became the Unspeakable One in the 1992 Red Dwarf episode Terrorform. What we got was better.

Marek Anton gives the Destroyer such animation too, despite the character being quite static. The eyes dart about, the mouth snarls and gnashes, and Anton has the size, bulk and physique to make the creature truly daunting. Even the voice is scary.

It's just such a shame the Destroyer doesn't do very much. Morgaine brings him all the way from some shadow dimension in order to obtain Excalibur, then refuses to let him loose to do the job proper. He manages to break Excalibur's force field, and is also able to magically hurl people through walls while still chained, but his presence feels so pointless. After all the effort that went in to making the creature, and the build up throughout part 3, he basically stands around doing nothing in part 4.

I'm somehow convinced of the Destroyer's might despite seeing little evidence of it. He says he devours worlds, but I'm not sure how he does it (does he eat them like cake?). The Doctor is clearly afraid of what he can do, because he's pretty rattled when he calls Morgaine's bluff and she ends up releasing him. But again, the Destroyer doesn't do anything, he just wanders around celebrating his freeness, before the Brigadier comes in and shoots him with the Very Convenient Silver Bullets. And then it's all over, the Lord of Darkness is dead and I wonder why Morgaine even bothered.

Quickies:

• The Doctor threatening to decapitate Mordred is a bit full-on, but if ever there was a Doctor you think might actually go through with it, it's this one. Mordred taunts the Doctor that he would never kill, to which the Doctor snarls: "I wouldn't count on it." Sylvester McCoy gurns his way through this scene rather embarrassingly, but the icing on the cake is when Mordred turns the Doctor's own words from The Happiness Patrol back on him: "Look me in the eye. End my life." Such a clever little reversal there.
• Michael Kerrigan directs the battle scenes well, but again Keff McCulloch scores them like a cheap computer game. The action in Battlefield is overall pretty impressive - Kerrigan directs with depth and pace - but hardly anything feels quite real because of the musical migraine over the top of it.
• Prize for Possibly the Worst Acted Scene in All of Doctor Who goes jointly to Nicholas Courtney and Sylvester McCoy when they arrive at the hotel. The Doctor rushes forward, and Courtney unconvincingly exclaims: "Doctor, nooooo!" before McCoy finishes with a truly appalling: "If they're dead!" Ooh, it makes my skin crawl just remembering it.
• The two actors then continue to unravel their self-respect by pretending to spin themselves into, and then out of, a poorly realised interstitial vortex. Later, Ace pops out of the vortex just in time to knock Excalibur out of Morgaine's grasp into the Doctor's hands, boasting he has "an Ace up my sleeve". But how did he know she was coming at all, seeing as he told her to stay? As with Ace chucking the talisman into the well in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, it's just too convenient to be credible.
• I like the Doctor leaving himself a message from the future. It's a nice little play on the Seventh Doctor usually knowing more than he's letting on. In this story, he does know more - just not yet!

The Brigadier's face-off against the Destroyer is nicely done, as the giant blue demon mocks the old soldier for being the best Earth can manage as its champion. "I just do the best I can," says the Brig, ever the hero, before delivering one round rapid into the monster's conveniently exposed chest.

The Doctor finds the Brig motionless in the wreckage, and mentions that he is supposed to die in bed, suggesting he's taken the time to find out what happens to his old mucker. In The Wedding of River Song, the Eleventh Doctor is told the Brig's passed away, and although it's not explicitly stated he was in bed, he's given the news by what looks like a member of staff in a nursing home.

The Doctor knows the Destroyer's destroyed, but Morgaine doesn't. She just faded away when her estranged son walked back in the room, and has now got a new plan to blow up the nuclear missile bogged down in the nature reserve. She's full of plans, this one: first it was to send her son and his space knights, then it was to send her Knight Commander into battle, then it was to unleash the Destroyer, and now it's nuclear Armageddon. After getting the secret incantation / magic words / fail-safe release code from Bambera, she starts the countdown.

With 60 seconds to go, the Doctor turns up to talk her into submission in an unevenly written scene blessed with as many powerful lines as it is weighed down with hyperbole. It might not seem so overblown if McCoy didn't deliver his lines like he was bellowing into the wind, complete with demented eyes and gurning mouth. It could have been a much better scene in the hands of a more restrained actor, such as Tom Baker or Jon Pertwee, but McCoy is all over the place. The same goes for the entire scene set in the underwater spaceship, with McCoy shouting and overplaying every line and movement. He's actually quite terrible for most of this episode.

Not terrible at all is Jean Marsh, who saves the scene with her powerfully emotional coda in remembering her beloved Arthur (so they were lovers and fighters!). Her delivery is markedly more restrained and gentle, reflecting the mood of Morgaine's loss. "Arthur, who burned like star fire... And was as beautiful... We were together in the woods of Celadon. The air was like honey." It's those last five words which punch hardest, delivered in a whisper by Marsh, and inspiring McCoy to react with appropriate reverence. The Doctor actually looks genuinely upset by events.

Outside, the Doctor floors Mordred with a completely random magic zappy finger. "Time and Time Lords wait for no man," he says as the knight falls unconscious. This "superpower" is a very strange addition to the usually benign Doctor's armoury. It's one he'll use again in Survival, and links in with his sudden ability to influence people's physical and mental state in stories like Remembrance of the Daleks (Embery), The Curse of Fenric (Gayev) and in part 3 of this story (Peter and Pat). It's an interesting development, but one thankfully not expanded on too much. The Doctor should not have superpowers; he shouldn't need them.

The Doctor then tells Bambera to lock Morgaine and Mordred up, like they're everyday bank robbers or drug smugglers, not warriors from another dimension capable of sorcery and violence. What a ridiculously lame way to finish Morgaine and Mordred's story. Shouldn't the Doctor be trying to return them to their own dimension instead, perhaps sealing them in those ice caves? Also: how's Ancelyn getting home?

Just when I thought that was a lame way to end the story, there's a final scene which beggars belief. It's so tonally at odds with what has gone before, so cringe-worthy in its creation, production and execution, that it must count as one of the worst ends to a Doctor Who story ever. Everybody tramps off back to the Brig's house (all dressed in the same clothes, so probably the same day) and Doris - who's never met Ace, Shou Yuing or Bambera before - is off "out with the girls" in Bessie. In an attempt to be all modern and feminist, we see four women driving off (in a female car) leaving the men to cut the grass and make supper. The final nail in the heart is McCulloch's truly awful music when Bessie drives off, like something out of the very worst and most forgettable sitcom of the 1980s. Doris squeals "Weeeeeee!", and I scream for death's release.

This final scene maims me with such force and brutality that I always finish watching Battlefield with a rising hatred in my belly. I always suppress it, because it is a story with some lovely moments which deserve recognition. Sadly, the bad far outweighs the good, or should I say the execution ruins the potential. Battlefield has so much going for it - the Arthurian myths, the evil witch and her space knights, the quaint country setting with its amiable locals, the archaeological dig, the underwater spaceship, the Destroyer, UNIT, a female Brigadier, and the old one too - but nothing quite reaches its potential, everything falls short.

It's a disappointing way to open Doctor Who's final season after the promise of Season 25.

First broadcast: September 27th, 1989

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The Destroyer.
The Bad: That final scene.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ (story average: 4.8 out of 10)

Ace says "Professor": 64

NEXT TIME: Ghost Light...

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

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.

Battlefield is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Battlefield-Sylvester-McCoy/dp/B001FJ5D5M