Battlefield Part One

The one where the Doctor is mistaken for Merlin...

Here it is, the beginning of the end. The first of four stories in Season 26, bringing to an end Doctor Who's classic series run. Doctor Who had clawed its way back from the doldrums with the critical and creative successes of Season 25, and the change of Doctor in 1987 gave the show the fresh start it needed after the opprobrium associated with Colin Baker's tenure (even if Season 24 wasn't of the highest quality). As the Seventh Doctor entered his third year, confidence must have been at a relative high, with the production team sure of its intent and aims for the series. Last year ratings were markedly up, so what could possibly go wrong?

Season 26 opens with the dullest, most uninspiring and underwhelming scene in the history of season openers. It starts in a garden centre, and the first person we see is a tweedy old duffer in a trilby carrying a couple of shrubs. Battlefield stumbles at the very first hurdle. No wonder this episode was watched by just 3.1m people - less than half the figure for The Greatest Show in the Galaxy part 4 (6.6m). In truth, we know it was lack of promotion and harsh scheduling that did for Season 26, but the production team was doing itself no favours by starting with such a sedentary opening.

It's a story about swords and sorcery, knights and witches, laser guns and nuclear missiles - would none of that have been a better way to launch your first story? As it is, we're rather half-heartedly introduced to an old friend in the form of Nicholas Courtney's Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, a character last seen in 1983's Mawdryn Undead and The Five Doctors. He's now retired from both UNIT and teaching, and has finally married Doris, briefly referred to in Planet of the Spiders. Now the Brig buys shrubs for his azalea beds and ambles around allotments in a cardigan and flat cap. His blood and thunder days are long past, it's clear.

The narrative then turns its attentions to a glowing sword in some kind of spaceship, an evil-looking witch who lives inside a crystal ball, and the arrival on Earth of a bunch of alien space knights, whose mode of transport is not unlike a crashing comet. We're also reunited with UNIT (not seen since 1975's Terror of the Zygons), headed up by a very different Brigadier in the form of Winifred Bambera, played by Angela Bruce. How wonderful that UNIT is now led by a female Brig, and a mixed-race one at that. It's another feather in the cap for this more progressive era of the show, one that has foregrounded women much more and tackled some mature themes. Interestingly, as the Doctor says "there are many secrets in names", the meaning of Winifred is "blessed peacemaker".

It's also great to see UNIT finally reflecting its multinational nature, so as well as there being a non-white Brig, we also have a Polish sergeant in Robert Jezek's Zbrigniev. The uniform has changed to a more realistic camouflage too, complete with pale blue berets reminiscent of the United Nations. UNIT has been updated for the 1990s, and feels better for it (Battlefield is supposedly set a few years in Ace's future, circa 1999, although mention of the King places it beyond 2022!). It's just a shame Bambera keeps saying "shame".

Meanwhile in the TARDIS the Doctor's working with the lights down low, trying to concentrate after picking up a distress signal from Earth which is "rippling out through the cosmos, forward in time, backwards in time and sideways in time". The lights are down low because they'd mistakenly thrown away the TARDIS walls after shooting The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, so instead a couple of shabby back-cloths were used for the interior. It's quite obvious things aren't right - you can see folds and creases in the walls - and it makes for a sorry swansong for a beautiful set. I mean, how could you accidentally throw away the TARDIS?!

The TARDIS materialises in leafy woodland and our heroes are forced to hitch for a ride. But hold on, what's happened to the Doctor's coat? He's now wearing a dingy brown jacket instead of his usual cream one. Doctor, you've redecorated yourself - I don't like it! I much prefer the cream jacket, it suited him better. The change was made to reflect this season's "darker Doctor", but wearing darker clothes is taking things a bit too literally!

The choppy nature of this episode as it struggles to keep up with itself, introducing new characters and situations here, there and everywhere, reminds me of the disparate feel of Silver Nemesis, making it seem slightly inconsequential. Battlefield has more about it than Silver Nemesis though, due to its strong sword and sorcery theme, but it still feels a bit too scatty. It's not helped by Keff McCulloch's awful score, which ruins any attempt to build mystery or menace by being aggressively jaunty. It's better suited to some regional news programme, or those awful corporate training videos which kept ex-Doctor Who companions in pin money back in the day. I actively resent McCulloch's score for Battlefield, which I think goes a long way to spoiling the story entirely.

The Doctor infiltrates the UNIT convoy using antiquated passes from his time as scientific advisor, giving Ace Liz Shaw's pass ("I don't look anything like her!") and presumably using his own picturing his third or fourth self. These aberrations get the attention of Bambera, but she gives them short shrift despite having Doctor Who monsters shouted at her: "I'd just like to say three things: Yeti, Autons, Daleks. Cybermen and Silurians!"

Zbrigniev tells Bambera that he knew of a scientific advisor called the Doctor when he served under Lethbridge-Stewart. At this point I had to press Pause on my DVD and think things through. If this is set in 1999, how can Zbrigniev have served under Lethbridge-Stewart, who had retired from UNIT by the time of the Queen's silver jubilee in 1977 (Mawdryn Undead)? Actor Robert Jezek was 34 years old in Battlefield. So if the story's set in 1999, Zbrigniev would only have been 11 years old when Lethbridge-Stewart was leading UNIT. The maths doesn't work, and doesn't get much better if you delve into the maelstrom of UNIT dating assuming the Pertwee years were set in the 1980s. Basically, Zbrigniev isn't old enough to have served under Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, unless he came out of retirement for the Iraq War or something!

Anyway... stop this now Steve, it's not helping. It looks like the Brig's done well for himself in retirement, living in a grand country pile with immense grounds (big enough to land a helicopter in). Doris takes a call from the remarkably hands-on Secretary-General of the UN (in 1999 this would have been Kofi Annan) who wants the Brig to come out of retirement because the Doctor's back. This piece of news changes everything for the Brig, who wastes no time in squeezing back into his uniform and taking his revolver out of mothballs. There's a pleasant melancholy about these scenes, where Doris tries to persuade her husband not to go. "You don't need to go on playing soldier any more," she rather patronisingly appeals. "I'm not playing," he smiles back. Truth is, he just wants to meet the Doctor again, doesn't he!

The various space knights who have fallen to Earth have a clash of swords in front of the (very blue) TARDIS, a battle that also involves Bambera and her pistol. It's capably directed by Michael Kerrigan, but as with the Cybermen's guns in Silver Nemesis, the sparkler effect of the weapons makes the fight seem rather pathetic. Why aren't we seeing laser beams, rather than fizzing barrels? Still, it's great to see space knights sword-fighting in the verdant environs of the Home Counties, but why couldn't McCulloch have scored it more sympathetically (perhaps riffing on the recent success of Clannad's work for Robin of Sherwood?), rather than splashing bombast all over the place!

Arriving at the Gore Crow Hotel, the Doctor spots a young Chinese girl called Shou Yuing. McCoy's slightly camp, slightly lascivious reaction to seeing Shou Yuing is a bit creepy, truth be told. He gives a Frankie Howerd "oooh", doffs his hat and smiles, and has to be pushed on by Ace. It all feels a bit Dick Emery, and seeing this most sexless of Doctors take a shine to a young girl feels distinctly weird. Inside the pub he continues to take an interest by pushing between the two girls and introducing himself. Nothing more comes of this thankfully, but it's just a bit icky for my tastes.

Shou Yuing is a random local girl who likes to gossip and cheek her elders, so no wonder Ace clicks with her quite quickly. Ace deserves a mate to hang about with, although bonding over explosives isn't the usual way of making friends. To have Shou Yuing taking an active interest in trinitrotoluene as well as our resident terrorist Ace makes it seem like all teenage girls of the time had an unhealthy interest in blowing things up.

Ace and Shou Yuing move outside to talk bombs, while the Doctor learns more about the hot-cold scabbard on the pub wall, found at the archaeological dig near Lake Vortigern. It's lovely to have a blind character in the form of Earthshock guest star June Bland, making it three woke boxes ticked in less than 15 minutes (female non-white Brig; Chinese teenager; disabled woman). People harp on about the Chibnall era being too diverse (not sure how you can be too diverse), when actually the McCoy era was making great steps towards a better, wider representation of the world we live in decades earlier.

Elsewhere the space knights continue to clash, until a grenade explodes right in front of one of them and he's propelled through the air and through the roof of the Gore Crow's brewery. It's poorly directed and edited by Kerrigan, who intercuts Ace's story about blowing up Class 1C's prize-winning pottery pig collection with shots of the knights fighting, then being blown up. Does the knight voluntarily fly through the air to escape the blast, or is it the blast of the grenade that throws him through the air? Whichever, Sophie Aldred's delivery of "BOOOOOOOOOM" is deeply cringeworthy.

In the brewery, the Doctor, Ace and Shou Yuing find a dazed space knight, and remove his helmet to reveal an unexpectedly handsome blond with Lancelot hair and piercing blue eyes. The knight seems to recognise the Doctor as Merlin, not in the way he looks, but in his manner. "Do you not ride the ship of time?" he says. "Does it not deceive the senses being larger within than out?" Somehow this space knight has encountered the Doctor before, in a different body, and would appear to have been inside the TARDIS (let's hope the Doctor had the lights on that time).

The knight wonders whether now is the time of restitution, when King Arthur will rise again to lead Britain into battle. It's wonderful that Doctor Who is touching upon the dense magic of Arthurian legend, but placing it in an alternative dimension rather than suggesting the myths are real. Making the Doctor the sorcerer Merlin is a stroke of genius by writer Ben Aaronovitch, although it looks like the Doctor isn't familiar with being known this way.

The cliffhanger is another poorly staged, and written, scene. Out of the blue, the Doctor ascertains that the Earth could be at the centre of a war from another dimension, despite the only evidence to go on being a space knight who fell through the roof of a brewery. Then Bambera barges in and holds everybody at gunpoint, threatening the Doctor and his "freaky friends" with arrest, despite the fact they have done nothing wrong.

Then a bunch of space knights emerges from the wall and threatens everybody with death. "Kill them!" says the leader. "Kill them now!" This sort of writing is sub-par for Doctor Who by now. Doctor Who's in its 26th year of production, surely we're past this sort of cheap sci-fi cliffhanger by now?

So far Battlefield has been a visual feast, but it lacks the meaty filling the inspirational sword and sorcery theme demands. It needs to settle down a bit and make more sense of its disparate elements (space knights, UNIT, archaeology, a nuclear missile, the Brigadier), but there are three episodes to go yet so my hopes are high that the man who gave us Remembrance of the Daleks can weave this together.

First broadcast: September 6th, 1989

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: It's great to see the return of UNIT and the Brig.
The Bad: Keff McCulloch's awful score.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Ace says "Professor": 57

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

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

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