In 1956 the Americans made a film version of War & Peace starring Audrey Hepburn as Natasha Rostova. This was shown in the Soviet Union in 1959, and though it was immensely popular, they also hated all the changes and omissions that Hollywood had made. So early on in the '60s it was decided to make a Russian version that would be better, longer and more faithful to the book than the American version. So much longer, in fact, that they decided it had to be split into four parts, with each part being long enough to be worthy of a film in its own right.
Part One: Andrei Bolkonsky (1966)
With Cold War pride on the line, virtually unlimited assistance was promised by the Soviet government and so the budget is estmated to have been the equivalent of (adjusted for inflation) $1 billion. This is most obviously to be seen on screen in the battle scenes, which are frankly ridiculously massive in scope and involved the use of Russsian army conscripts as extras. But the sets and costumes even in the peacetime sections are also detailed beyond belief, and all the balls, banquets and salons filled with extras.
Not being an aficionado of Russian cinema, I don't know any of the main cast from having seen them elsewhere, so only two are worth calling out - in the casting of Ludmila Savelyeva as Natasha Rostova the Russians seem to be trying to out-Audrey Hepburn Audrey Hepburn. Or as Chekov might say: 'Audrey Hepburn was invented in Russia.'
Then there's the main character of the story, Pierre Bezukhov - easily one of the most famous characters in Russian literature, his part must have been heavily sought after by all the leading Soviet actors of the day (this is the character that Anthony Hopkins went on to play in the BBC TV version). So how did the director cut through the dilemma of who to cast? Simples. He cast himself.
At just under two and a half hours, part one is the longest of the four films (which add up to being over 7 hours in length). It is perhaps subtitled "Andrei Bolkonsky" because Prince Andrei (or "Prince Andrew" as he is unfortunately called in some English translations) arguably undergoes the most emotional development of all the main characters in this early section of the story. The son of a war hero and general, he joins the army when war (clang!) is declared against Napoleon's France because it is what is expected of him, leaving his pregnant wife behind. Being of the nobility, he is immediately made a senior officer and put on the general's staff. In the battle of Austerlitz Andrei is wounded and there is a famous scene where he lies on the battlefield gazing up at the sky, and realises there is more to life than the petty ambitions of mannys, all the while unaware that Napoleon himself is passing within a few feet of where he lies.
It's quite hard to judge each part on its own. In terms of spectacle - alas we live in the age of CGI, where such epic battle scenes could be created for a fraction of the cost (and by that I even mean good looking CGI, not your crappy Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V cheap job), so I expect this loses a lot of the effect it would have had in the '60s, when it really would have shown up the BBC the Americans. In terms of plot, you need to see more than just part one since a lot of the disparate plot threads are nowhere near ready to come together yet. In terms of emotional impact, this comes nearest to the book of any of the adaptations I have seen (i.e. both BBC versions) - which I would expect of oh those Russians.
Part Two: Natasha Rostova (1966)
The second part of the story is set in the peace (clang!) in between Russia's two wars with Napoleon's France. It focuses on the character of Natasha Rostova, hence its subtitle.
Arguably less epic than the first part due to the lack of battles, this part's centrepiece is the grand ball where young Natasha and Prince Andrei fall in love. This scene is in its own way as impressive as the battle sequences, with a cast of thousands all in period-appropriate costumes in attendance. It certainly puts the low budget 1970s BBC version to shame, and even the more impressive second attempt from 2016 (where the ball was a spectacular centrepiece) can't compete with this cinematic grandeur.
Andrei and Natasha get engaged, but his father won't allow him to marry until a year has passed. Much of the film is then spent on the things Natasha and her family do during this year, such as travelling into the countryside to go on a wolf hunt, and enjoying other quintessentially Russian, rustic entertainments. These scenes are thematically important elements of the book but hardly essential to the main plot, so it does somewhat feel as though the film is being forced to spin its wheels a bit.
Upon returning to the city Natasha attends the opera, where she is seduced by the dastardly Anatole Kuragin (whom Colin Baker played in the BBC '72 version). Natasha acts so irrationally and so emotionally in this bit that it is very tricky to empathise with her, although it is somewhat more understandable when he looks like this:
Purr.
Although Anatole and Natasha are prevented from eloping together, in a scene which is oddly quite rushed considering how long and slow many of the earlier scenes were allowed to be, Andrei finds out and feels betrayed enough to call off the engagement. This creates something of a cliffhanger ending for part two.
Part Three: The Year 1812 (1967)
The shortest of the four parts at a mere 1 hour and 21 minutes. This part is pure spectacle, with over 50 minutes of the runtime dedicated to the battle of Borodino. Scene after scene of vast numbers of soldiers, horses, explosions and smoke are presented to the viewer, the cumulative effect of which is to numb us into accepting that we're not seeing a phenomenally expensive film production, but the actual historical battle which actually happened.
So successful is this that we even accept the absurd sight of Pierre Bezukhov wandering through the battle as a civilian in his suit and tie posh clothes and white top hat. If mishandled this could have been unintentionally comedic, but it succeeds because the surrounding grandeur - and the detail of the reconstruction - forces the viewer to think 'yes, this could have happened: I can see it.'
The resumption of war against Napoleon's France, and the invasion of Russian soil by his armies, forces the peacetime plotlines of part two to go on hold for much of the duration. The only subplot of note that there is room for aside from the war concerns the death of Prince Andrei's father, which he learns about just before the battle begins and the news of which contributes to Andrei's acceptance of the inevitability of his own death.
At the end we witness the wounded Andrei meeting the even more badly wounded Anatole (a scene which the '70s BBC adaptation, sadly, only described happening off-screen) and reconciling before Anatole's death. This sudden reintrusion of the plot from part two might seem unexpected to a viewer unfamiliar with the novel, since there is no foreshadowing of this twist within part three itself, but it is at least faithful to the original story.
If there is a weakness to this incredible piece of filmmaking, it has to be the very ending, where a voiceover about the consequences of the battle seems to have been added to give some sort of closure and a futile attempt to make the film stand on its own. But it really doesn't - you need to have seen the earlier parts to understand the significance of the non-battle scenes, and you need to see part four to get any kind of resolution to the various plot strands - both the war ones and the peace ones.
Part Four: Pierre Bezukhov (1967)
Despite not containing any big battle sequences on the scale of those in the first and third parts, the final instalment of the film series manages to feel even more epic thanks to the scenes set around the French occupation, looting and burning of Moscow, which takes up the first third of the 1 hour 36 minute duration. It looks like a similarly enormous number of extras were used as in the battles, and the director again uses overhead tracking shots to put across the epic scale of the event in a similar way, but this time with the addition of loads of things being on fire.
As main characters begin to get killed off, the direction becomes more experimental, with Prince Andrei experiencing an extended surrealistic dream sequence that is like something out of Excalibur, while scenes focusing on Petya Rostov (a character who, if this were a conventional war movie, would have you shouting "Dead!" at the screen, Mary Whitehouse Experience-style) go into black & white.
It is curious to think that only the first film would even approach the length of most modern films, since the other three are all under 100 minutes each, so there would be no way they would need to split it into four sections if it had been made in the 21st century.
They also wouldn't have needed to abridge the novel so much, since even at the combined length of 7 hours the ending still feels rushed, without the proper conclusion to Pierre and Natasha's story (it is sort of left for the viewer to fill in the blanks, perhaps presuming familiarity with the original story) and even omits some of the more significant subplots such as Nikolai and Maria's romance. Why, if they made it now they could even get Peter Jackson to add some extra subplots!
I felt that, sadly, the badly paced ending was the weakest part of any of the four films (the '70s BBC version didn't exactly stick the landing either). But the journey to get there was worth it - a unique cinematic experience, not to be equalled in scope and scale until the age of CGI made faking it possible, and never, I expect, to be surpassed.
The film studio Mosfilm have made this available to watch in full, in good quality and with decent English subtitles, on their YouTube channel.
Lol. The prison's Governor is acting like more of a baddy than the Master, sentencing the Doctor and Professor Dale to a year in solitary confinement, which is a kind of prison for when you're already in prison.
The Master helps the Doctor again, by confronting the Governor and threatening him.
The Master: "I think that those two prisoners were telling the truth. I think that your trustee, Cross, was helping them."
Governor: "Why should he do that?"
The Master: "On your instructions."
Governor: "That is an outrageous suggestion..."
The Master: "Oh come, Governor. You rid yourself of a politically dangerous prisoner, and foster the legend that escape is impossible in one go. I must congratulate you."
Governor: "You're being very impertinent."
The Master: "Suppose I were to support the Doctor's demand for an official inquiry? Some very awkward questions could be asked."
Governor: "I have nothing to fear."
The Master: "Haven't you? Oh, come, Governor."
This is an example of why the Master is such a brilliant regular character, and so much more than just an antagonist for the Doctor.
Again he gets his way, and the Doctor is released into his custody just as Jo was. He tells the Doctor of all the crimes the Doctor is accused of committing on Sirius 4, to which the Doctor replies
"I seem to be quite the master criminal, don't I?"
Lol.
The Doctor is taken to the Master's spaceship, where there is a big cage that Jo is already inside, and the Doctor soon joins her. The Master says
The Doctor asks why he is still alive, and the Master makes a cryptic reference to his "employers" being "most interested" in him. Oh noes, that means the Master has had to get a job!
The spaceship takes off and flies over some stock footage of the moon's surface, then into space. The Doctor and Jo start trying to escape, even though the Master is watching them over the "closed-circuit television" (his ship has all the latest technology). To pass the time the Doctor starts making continuity references to previous stories, which bores the Master so he starts reading his book.
(I love how he still has his gloves on while reading, so cool. Purr.)
The Doctor gets out of the cell, and Jo has to keep talking so the Master doesn't notice what they're up to. She waffles on for quite a while, Katy Manning giving a good portrayal of somebody who is improvising:
"Lethbridge-Stewart, hey! As far as he's concerned I've been absent without leave all this time. I'm always telling you that you've no idea where you're going in that TARDIS of yours. I mean, you're supposed to be getting me back to Earth, right? And we keep landing up in one terrible situation after the other. I mean, when I get back, I'll probably be court-martialed, and then I'll be put in a cell again."
Not surprising that this is at the forefront of her mind, mew...
"That's if we do get back, and the way things are going, it doesn't look like it. But if we do get back, I'm telling you one thing, right here and now. I'm never going back in that TARDIS with you again. But if we do get back, I really do think you ought to be a bit more reasonable with the Master. I mean, he keeps offering you a share in the galaxy, or whatever's going on, and you keep refusing him and playing dirty tricks on him. But, you see, the trouble is with you is, well, you're so stiff-necked. I mean, you've got to realise that this time the Master has won. You might as well make the best out of a terrible situation. I mean, look at it now. Here we are..."
It is at this point the Master turns the volume down so he doesn't have to listen to any more. But we do.
"Goodness knows where he's taking us to. I mean, just a few of those Ogrons is bad enough. Can you imagine... I mean, imagine a whole planet of them? Still, I suppose it's all my own fault really. I mean, if I hadn't asked my uncle to pull those strings and get me that job, I'd never have landed up in this mess in the first place. You know, some people think that it's very romantic working in intelligence. Oh, but my goodness, I could tell you it's not. I mean, they think that I run around all day with terrific-looking James Bond types going to suave dinner parties. Oh, but I don't, you know. I mean, either I'm with the Brigadier and I'm doing the filing at HQ, which is very, very difficult, or else I'm running around making tea and being general dogsbody. I mean, the times come really when I'm..."
By this point the Doctor has managed to get a spacesuit on and open the airlock to get to the outside of the spaceship.
The Master, who is blissfully unaware of the Doctor's escape attempt, makes "a sharp course correction" while the Doctor is still outside, and this causes the Doctor to let go and begin floating around in space. He gets back to the spaceship and climbs about on it for a bit until he gets back inside through a different space door.
The Master eventually notices the Doctor has escaped so he gets a gun and goes to where Jo is still in the cage. He makes her get into the airlock, and threatens the Doctor that he will "open the outer door and hurl her into space."
We see that there is another spaceship flying towards the Master's, but the Master and the Doctor are unaware of it because they are too busy confronting each other. The Doctor manages to sneak up on the Master and disarm him of his gun, and then they fight until the Master manages to get to the airlock buttons.
The airlock opens and some Draconians come in with Jo and, mistaiking the two Time Lords for mannys, capture them both to take them to their planet Draconia. The Master ends up in his own cage, along with the Doctor and Jo, but from there he sends a secret signal to another spaceship, where we see there is an Ogron. This new twist in the plot isn't really much of a cliffhanger, but it is where the episode ends, with a shot of the back of an Ogron's head.
Imprisoned counter: Doctor 2, Jo 2, Master 1
Running total: Doctor 9, Jo 8
Oh, and did you see what they did there? The Master is reading The War of the Worlds because he's trying to start a war between the worlds of Earth and Draconia, lol!
The novel from 1990 is one of my very favourites, and manages to be better than anything else I have read by either of the two authors individually - this includes over 30 of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, although I must admit I am less familiar with the oeuvre of Neil Gaiman, seeing as that includes a lot of comics and short stories.
Good Omens sends up The Omen film series (as well as a few other films in the very niche sub-genre of 'Apocalyptic Antichrist Horror') while at the same time requiring its readers to have no knowledge of the thing it is sending up.
From the running gag about Elvis being still alive (which made it into the TV series in the form of an 'Easter Egg' for fans of the book to spot) to the footnote explaining pre-decimalisation British currency, the book is packed with witty wordplay and Laugh-Out-Loud comic moments for the reader, even as the characters are taking very seriously the imminent rise of the Antichrist and ending of the world.
But I'm now going to spend the rest of this post talking about the TV adaptation from 2019, starting with
The Good
It was just so much fun to see the TV series after so many years of waiting. It's such a great story and has deserved to get a decent visual (film or TV) adaptation for so long. The BBC Radio 4 series was good, and contained a near-perfect cast (arguably even better on the whole than the TV series), but the lack of visuals left it somehow feeling incomplete and unsatisfying.
The decision to have God as the omniscient narrator delivering many of the book's asides in the style of the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy was a great one (even if Her casting was, shall we say... unorthodox), allowing many of my favourite moments to make it to screen, including Aziraphale and Crowley dancing - on the head of a pin or otherwise - and Mr R P Tyler's hesitation over pointing out that Crowley's car is on fire.
David Tennant and Michael (not Martin) Sheen as Crowley and Aziraphale bring a kind of star quality to the TV series (as well as having amazing chemistry together, as was later also seen in their lockdown sitcom Staged). No wonder their parts were expanded to make them indisputably the central characters, rather than the more ensemble cast of the novel.
They would not have been my first choice for playing the characters - in my opinion Peter Serafinowicz and Mark Heap from the radio series are more faithful to the book versions - but Sheen & Tennant won me over very quickly.
The final item for this list is Dog, who steals every scene he's in.
The Bad
The WW2 Nazis scene with Mark Gatiss and Steve Pemberton at the start of episode three I found to be unfunny and way too OTT, bordering on the level of Panto (when Tennant arrives in the scene he reminded me of some of the more annoying character tics from his time in Doctor Who). I can see its purpose in both continuing to develop Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship over the course of history (including setting up the holy water plot device for later) and establishing the significance of The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter (Witch), but I think the screen time spent on this scene could have been better used by doing the subplot from the novel about the publishers Bilton and Scaggs, they of the three great publishing disasters, who could even have been played just as well by Gatiss and Pemberton.
Jack Whitehall as Newton Pulsifer is easily the most miscast actor in this. He could have been fine in the small role of Witchfinder Major Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer, but not as Newt, one of the main characters and a personal favourite of mine from the novel. He is the Martin Freeman of this series - he just rubs me up the wrong way every time he's on screen.
Some of the CGI is unforgivably bad, such as the explosion at the burning of Agnes Nutter - made worse by the fact that, like the tank in the third cliffhanger of Robot, we see it more than once - or the appearance of Satan in the last episode that manages to look worse than the CGI monster in the Doctor Who episode The Satan Pit, despite that being from 13 years earlier.
This is all the more surprising because so much of the SFX in Good Omens are really effective, from their realisation of the walled Garden of Eden through to the M25 motorway being on fire, and it makes the poor effects stand out even more.
And, to be clear, I am not including in this category the CGI that was made deliberately unconvincing 'bad' for comic effect, such as Dog's original hellhound face or Crowley's scary face from when he's scaring the manny from The Thick of It.
The Neither Good Nor Bad On The Whole, or The Equally Good And Bad (Do You See What I Did There?)
The addition of so much extra material, which mainly serves to increase the focus on Crowley and Aziraphale, leaves less screen time for other things from the book, such as the Four Horsemen. They are underdeveloped as antagonists as a result, certainly compared to Gabriel, Hastur, and the other angel and demon antagonists who we do spend time with since they are personal antagonists to the two leads.
Scenes taken from the book establishing War and Pollution much earlier in the story were filmed but consigned to the DVD Special Features only. I think including these would have helped establish their presence earlier, so their first appearances aren't when they are receiving their packages. And that's without me mentioning the other Four Horsemen, who are left out of the TV series entirely.
The largest addition comes with the extended ending, giving the story an additional climax centred on Aziraphale and Crowley, as they face their reckoning with Heaven and Hell respectively. Now, let's be honest here, the ending to the book is its weakest part - after a long, wonderful build up to the end of the world, it ends way too suddenly (the plot, I mean, not the world). Not for the first time in this article will I compare Good Omens to the books of Douglas Adams, when I say the abruptness of the ending is comparable to that found in his Dirk Gently novels, and for those too this is their biggest flaw.
Therefore, making an improvement to the ending was virtually the only way in which the TV series could improve upon the book. I'm no adaptation purist (although I hate gratuitous changes, such as those found in abundance in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy), so would have counted this among The Good, except for the aforementioned fact that the additions necessitated the omission of other scenes I would have dearly loved to see on screen, something that belongs with The Bad.
So let's call this one, in the end, on balance, a draw.
Dave the Daleks is the first story of season nine of Doctor Who, it stars Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, Richard Franklin as Captain Mike Yates, and John Levene as Sergeant Benton.
The show is stolen from under the noses of the regular cast by the principal guest-star for the story - not Roger Delgado (for a change) but Aubrey Woods, who had recently played the shopkeeper in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and who would later camp it up even further as Krantor in Blakes 7's Gambit.
Dave the Daleks was first broadcast in 1972. More importantly than that, it was released on VHS video in 1986, making it the first Jon Pertwee era Doctor Who story seen by many fans too young to remember the '70s (or the Five Faces of Doctor Who repeats of the early '80s). It is therefore fortunate that it makes for a good point of introduction to the UNIT era, perhaps because it was the opener for a new season, and this in spite of the occasional reference to earlier stories.
Although originally broadcast as four episodes, on the VHS it was edited into a single, feature-length story, as was common practice in those days. While many stories were harmed by the removal of their internal cliffhangers and reprises (which could make the pacing around those moments feel a bit off), in Dave the Daleks the editing was virtually seamless, and tests confirm that eight out of ten cats are unable to even tell where the cliffhanger points should have been.
It starts in the most unpromising manner - with a scene of a manny doing some W-word. Although brief, this makes us cats extremely uncomfortable. The manny is Sir Reginald Styles, and luckily for us he quickly decides to get up and be attacked by a manny with a pewpewpew gun - much more enjoyable for us, but he doesn't seem to like it for some reason. The manny then disappears with a special effect, as though he had been teleported away. Sir Reginald describes what he thinks happened to his secretary Miss Paget:
"He vanished... disappeared into thin air... like a ghost!"
The Brigadier gets telephoned by the Minister (no, it's not really the Master with another cunning alias, although I expect Barry Letts had to be talked out of making it be so) in a little scene that lets us know that UNIT have already found out what happened from Miss Paget, then the Brigadier goes to put his "best man" onto it - by which he means the Doctor. I know the Doctor and Brigadier are friends, but I didn't know that went as far as the Doctor being the best man at the Brigadier's wedding!
The Doctor is trying to fix the TARDIS console. Jo thinks it was fixed, and makes a continuity reference to the trip they made in it back in Colony in Space.
The Doctor proves it is not fixed when he accidentally makes another Doctor and Jo appear. As will one day become a staple of multi-Doctor stories (and one of the most enjoyable things about them, truth be told), the Doctor doesn't get on with himself and says
"This won't do at all. We can't have two of us running about."
After the second versions of themselves vanish again, the Doctor says
"Well, it's a very complicated thing: time. Once you begin tampering with it, the oddest things start happening."
This is the direct equivalent of the Doctor and Jo's first scene in The Dæmons that set up the science vs magic aspect of that story - here it is establishing early the fundamental theme of the time travel plot we are about to see.
The Brigadier then comes in and gets that plot started, by telling them about the events with Sir Reginald at Auderly House. The Brigadier recapping things that we already know for the Doctor and Jo's benefit is cut short, as we go to a scene of another "ghost" manny, dressed similarly to the first, teleporting into a location shoot accompanied by some really dramatic incidental music. He hears a high-pitched whistling sound effect that scares him - do you think Auderly House has one of those nasty devices that are supposed to keep cats out of the garden?
The manny tries to run away but is ambushed by an Ogron who was hiding just out of camera shot.
The Doctor, the Brigadier and Jo arrive at Auderly House and talk to Miss Paget and Sir Reginald. Sir Reginald claims he was just having sleeps (he'll get himself a reputation as 'Sir Reginald Naptaker' if he's not careful), but the Doctor finds a clue that proves a manny was there.
UNIT soldiers find the manny that was knocked out by the Ogron, and the Brigadier and the Doctor examine his pewpewpew gun. Mike Yates is there, as is Sergeant Benton, who has found a mysterious device which he gives to the Doctor.
Somewhere in the future, the Ogrons report to their boss, the Controller.
The casual way the Ogron says "no complications" has been much-mocked by Doctor Who fans over the years, but I think there is a hidden layer of meaning behind it - we learn later that the resistance has penetrated agents into the security forces, and I think this Ogron is one of those agents. He doesn't want to say "no complications" in a slow, laborious voice in case he later gets accused of racism or xenophobia against Ogrons, which might lead to him getting 'cancelled' by his own side.
Back in the UNIT era, a little later than before, the Doctor has the pewpewpew gun in his laboratory, and he demonstrates to the Brigadier and Jo (and us) how it makes the things it pewpewpews disappear. He has also recognised the device Benton found as a time machine, from it having a "miniature dematerialisation circuit" in it. He turns it on, and it makes the special effect start - except this causes the unconscious manny to get teleported away, even though he was in a different scene at the time.
The Controller's henchmannys detect the time machine being used from the future, and then the Controller has to make his "REPORT" to...
...a Dalek! They make their first appearance earlier here than in many of their stories, because when he was writing them Terry Nation liked to save the Daleks for a surprise entrance at the end of part one. However, here the writer is Louis Marks, and he has clearly realised that if your story has of the Daleks in its title, the revealing of some Daleks, however sudden, isn't by itself enough to justify a cliffhanger moment.
Here the big revelation is that the Controller may be the boss of the Ogrons, but the Daleks are his boss. Like his character in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Aubrey Woods is here playing a henchmanny to the title character(s).
The Dalek appears only for a second, then the episode immediately cuts back to the Doctor and the time machine, which is now borked. The Brigadier gets telephoned by Benton, who tells him the manny "faded away... like a ghost." The Doctor guesses that these ghostly mannys will "probably try again" at Auderly House, and asks Jo
"How would you like to spend the night in a haunted house?"
The next scene finds them both there, where the Doctor is more concerned with stealing all of Sir Reginald's noms than looking for ghosts. Yates, Benton and the UNIT soldiers are outside guarding the house.
The following scenes, where first Benton and then Yates try to get some noms from Jo, are filler scenes but are excellent at giving a little bit of character building to all three of them (even Mike Yates, who I am not normally a fan of, is fine for his small part in this story), and also the Doctor when he hears what has happened and says
"Do you know, I remember saying to old Napoleon, 'Boney,' I said, 'always remember an army marches on its stomach.'"
The house itself also has a character, or the bits we see of it do anyway - the main room with the french windows that can seemingly open by themselves even when there aren't any ghostly assassins from the future there, the hallway with its ticking clock and eccentric background decoration, and the cellar (which we will meet anon). In terms of creating atmosphere it's maybe not quite up there with the set design from something like Sapphire and Steel's first assignment, but it's pretty close, and does help build the anticipation that something dramatic is going to happen, even if not actually a ghost story in the traditional sense.
This time it is three mannys that teleport to the exterior location: Anat, Shura and Boaz (the latter played by Scott "Carnell from Weapon" Fredericks), who all have proper futuristic-sounding space-names. The Doctor has spent the night fixing the mini time machine, but no sooner has he turned it on then Shura comes in and (after getting Venusian Karated a couple of times) demands he "turn that machine off, or they'll kill all of us!"
In the future, the Controller once again reports that they have detected a time machine being used, and asks the Daleks what they want him to do about it - he gets the inevitable response (although it is nice of the Daleks to show us their logical progression from premise to conclusion):
"WHOEVER IS OPERATING THE TIME MACHINE IS AN ENEMY OF THE DALEKS. ALL ENEMIES OF THE DALEKS MUST BE DESTROYED. EXTERMINATE THEM!"
Anat and Boaz capture Jo and force the Doctor to turn off the time machine. Anat is about to shoot the Doctor, telling him "the time has come for your execution," but she thinks he is Sir Reginald. The Doctor shows them a newspaper with a story about the real Sir Reginald to convince them that he isn't him - what sort of terrible future do they come from where they will believe something they read in a newspaper?
Boaz wants to kill the Doctor anyway, but Anat says "we are soldiers, not murderers" which is a big clue to the Doctor that they are not baddys really. They start to talk, but before the Doctor can get them to trust him, Yates and Benton enter the house and frighten the mannys into hiding in the cellar with the Doctor and Jo still prisoners.
When Yates and Benton don't see the Doctor and Jo in the house where they expected them to be, they become suspicious.
The mannys leave the Doctor and Jo in the cellar, from whence they try to escape while discussing their predicament with each other, so that we learn the Doctor is more sympathetic towards their captors than Jo, who describes them as "criminals" and "a bunch of thugs" because of how they have acted so far.
In the future, the Daleks tell the controller about their "new equipment" the "Time Vortex Magnetron," which will bring anyone using the mini time machine to their base - but only the one the Doctor had, not any other machines like it. The Controller tries to point out how big a limitation this is, which annoys the Gold Dalek so it says
"DO NOT DISPUTE WITH THE DALEKS! THE FUNCTION OF THE HUMAN IS TO OBEY!"
I wonder if he also argued with Willy Wonka when told about the Golden Ticket plan - 'What if Charlie Bucket doesn't find the planted coin at the right time?' 'What is he finds it but doesn't want to spend it on chocolate?' 'What if somebody else wants to buy the exact chocolate bar with the ticket in it?' 'What if Charlie gets the ticket but avoids the Fake Slugworth on his way home?'
There are so many potential points of failure in Wonka's plan that it would be tempting to think that there was no conspiracy to push the final ticket on to Charlie after all, except for the crucial fact that we know Wonka tracked the location of the tickets and knew in advance the intended recipients - at least this is certainly true in the case of Veruca Salt's ticket, since Fake Slugworth was already on the scene before the ticket was even unwrapped, and must have been true in Charlie's case as well in order for Fake Slugworth to intercept him between finding the ticket and making his way home.
The Time Vortex Magnetron also interferes with Anat's attempt to communicate with her own base (this is is not explicitly stated, but is so strongly implied that it may as well be - but cleverly bypasses the need for some additional exposition to do so), so she sends Shura to lave the house and go back to the tunnel where they arrived to try communicating from there. This leads to some nicely atmospheric scenes of Shura stealthing past the UNIT soldiers, but when he gets to the tunnel he is attacked by an Ogron. He pewpewpews it, but is injured in the fight.
Yates tells the Brigadier of his and Benton's suspicions, so the Brigadier tries to find the Doctor by telephoning him at Auderly House.
We cut back to the Doctor and Jo, still prisoners in the cellar, where the Doctor says
"Jo, every choice we make changes the history of the world."
At face value, this would appear to contradict the Doctor's famous assertion in The Aztecs that "you can't rewrite history, not one line" but the two positions are reconcilable if you take can't to mean mustn't. Jo asks the Doctor why the mannys need to remain here and wait for Sir Reginald to come back so they can kill him, or as she puts it:
"I mean, why don't they go back to September the 12th if that's where they want to be? You know, have another go?"
"Ah, that's the Blinovitch Limitation Effect."
is his explanation that isn't really an explanation at all, since there is no elaboration on what the "Blinovitch Limitation Effect" actually is, and indeed it is not mentioned again in this story. The Doctor is prevented from telling Jo (and us) any more secrets of time travel because Boaz comes in - he needs the Doctor to answer the Brigadier's 'phone call.
Anat and Boaz want the Doctor to tell the Brigadier that everything is fine, but he does so in a clever way that lets the Brigadier know that the opposite is true:
"Yes, well, you tell Captain Yates not to worry. Everything's fine. And tell old Styles too... and the Prime Minister."
"Right."
"Oh, and Brigadier?"
"Yes?"
"Don't forget to tell it to the Marines. Goodbye."
Even if you don't know the meaning of the phrase "Tell it to the Marines" (slang that was evidently still in use by the UNIT era), the way the Doctor says it is enough to let the viewers know what he is doing, so when the Brigadier hangs up Yates says
"There you are, sir. I said there was something wrong."
While Anat and Boaz are distracted by making plans for what they will do when Sir Reginald returns to the house, Jo tries to escape by threatening to smash the mini time machine unless they let her and the Doctor go. But while she is holding it, she accidentally switches it on and disappears into the time vortex.
The Time Vortex Magnetron brings Jo to the Controller's room, where he speaks to her and pretends to be friendly - he sends the Ogrons away and the Daleks remain concealed from her - Jo is easy for him to convince because she was already so distrustful of his enemies, the "guerillas" (as Jo calls them - and if you don't see the word written down you might think she was calling them 'gorillas,' which would be very confusing). He gets her to tell him where and when she is from so that he knows the right place and time to send more Ogrons to - our chance of pinning down the UNIT era precisely is spoiled when she tells him the year off-screen.
The Controller promises to try to rescue the Doctor, then as soon as Jo is taken away we see that the Daleks have been watching the whole conversation, and the Gold Dalek (the one that is evidently in charge) says that it will go itself to exterminate the enemies of the Daleks.
Soon a load of Ogrons attack Auderly House (the Gold Dalek is nowhere to be seen here - typical politician, mew!) and have a pewpewpew gunfight with Anat and Boaz. They run away and leave the Doctor, who takes one of their guns and pewpewpews an Ogron before it can pewpewpew him (quite a bit before, by the look of it), and then the Brigadier arrives and shoots a second Ogron just before it can pewpewpew the Doctor. The Brigadier must be overjoyed that he has finally found an alien that isn't immune to bullets, but it's worth noting that he literally shoots first and asks questions afterwards:
"Doctor what on Earth's going on?"
The Doctor thanks him and then immediately steals his jeep to drive after Anat and Boaz. In response to his jeep being taken, the Brigadier simply says
Anat and Boaz run into the tunnel, followed not long after by the Doctor and the distinctive 'running about on location' incidental music that is unique to this story. The Doctor follows them into the tunnel, where a Dalek appears!
The Doctor, unsurprisingly, runs away. He catches up with Anat and Boaz just as a Dalek says
"exterminate"
to them in the most underwhelming way a Dalek has ever said their catchphrase. It's as if it already knows they're going to get away, which they do by using their mini time machine.
When they reappear after the teleporting/time-travel SFX, Anat says
"This may come as a shock to you, but you've just travelled two hundred years through time." "Thank you, but I'm probably more familiar with the concept of time travel than you are."
Lol. Ogrons chase them and they split up. The Doctor finds a convenient ladder that takes him out onto location in the 22nd century. The eerie incidental music the Doctor finds there does a lot of the heavy lifting in convincing us that this is the ruins of mannys' civilisation that the Doctor finds himself in.
Now back at their base, the Controller talks to the Daleks:
"There was one curious thing, the girl referred to a companion in her own time zone. She called him the Doctor."
"DOCTOR? DID YOU SAY 'DOCTOR'?"
"He appears to have got through to our time. He was seen by the guards."
"THE DOCTOR IS AN ENEMY OF THE DALEKS, HE MUST BE FOUND AT ONCE AND EXTERMINATED!"
Maybe this explains why the Daleks are so keen to conquer the Earth, where there are many theologians, scientists, and medical professionals going by the title of 'doctor.'
The Daleks then tell the Controller that they want mannys to do even more W-word. The Controller again tries to argue with them, saying "they'll die." The Dalek responds:
"ONLY THE WEAK WILL DIE. INEFFICIENT [W-WORD]ERS SLOW DOWN PRODUCTION. OBEY THE DALEKS!"
Note to government leaders in 2020: if your response to the coronavirus pandemic resembles Dalek economic policy - you are the baddys.
Anat and Boaz meet with another guerilla, Monia. It becomes clear that he is their leader when he orders the two of them to stop arguing.
The Doctor is spotted by a security camera - something that seems obvious now, but to an audience in 1972 it would have seemed a very futuristic sci-fi thing to happen. He sees some of the mannys being forced to W-word, clearly demonstrating the terrible nature of this future world, before he gets captured by an Ogron.
The Controller tells Jo that the Doctor is "alive and well" and then there is a hard cut to show the Doctor being roughly treated by Ogrons. A manny interrogates him, in a scene that is very reminiscent of the bit in Inferno where the Doctor is questioned by the Brigade Leader - exactly like there, the interrogator has already made up their mind about who the Doctor is, and he cannot convince them of who he really is because they will not believe the truth. Jon Pertwee is excellent here, and underplays both fear and anger at his interrogator's behaviour.
The Controller comes in and starts being nice to the Doctor, who doesn't know how to respond to this until he is told that Jo is also there and "safe." He realises he will have to go along with what the Controller wants, for now.
The Doctor is taken away, and the Controller then tells a henchmanny about the Daleks' demand for more W-word, quietly threatening him with what will happen (the precise nature of which is not spelled out to us, which helps make the threat sound even more sinister) if he doesn't. After the Controller has gone, the henchmanny is revealed to us to be a spy on the side of the guerillas. He telephones Monia and starts to tell him about the Doctor, but he is then caught by an Ogron.
The Hospitality of the Daleks
The Doctor is having noms with Jo and the Controller, but he quickly confronts the Controller with the truth he has found out, as a way of letting Jo know that all is not as it seems here:
"Do you run all your factories like that, Controller?"
"That was not a factory, Doctor."
"Oh, then what was it?"
"A rehabilitation centre. A rehabilitation centre for hardened criminals."
"Including old men and women, even children?"
"There will always be people who need discipline, Doctor."
"Now that's an old fashioned point of view, even from my standards."
"I can assure you that this planet has never been more efficiently, more economically run. People have never been happier, or more prosperous."
"Then why do you need so many people to keep them under control? Don't they like being happy and prosperous?"
I like it that the Doctor does not mention the Daleks here at all, he is keeping his knowledge of them to himself for now. In fact when he goes on to ask the Controller
"Who really rules this planet of yours?"
he already knows the answer, he is just trying to pressure the Controller into admitting it - to Jo, or maybe to himself?
Is it a coincidence that the last Golden Ticket was found, out of everywhere in the world, in the very city where Willy Wonka's chocolate factory was located? But if Wonka was going to plant the tickets in specific places, you would think that would be the last place he would choose - he was so prejudiced against the local mannys who stole his "secret recipes" that he locked them all out and got in the Oompa Loompas to W-Word for him instead. So he must have had a very specific reason for wanting a local manny to find a Golden Ticket.
Only after the Controller has stormed out of the room does the Doctor tell Jo what he knows. We then see that the Daleks are watching the Doctor on their TV set (how very meta). This is the first time since The Dalek Invasion of Earth that the Daleks have not recognised the Doctor, but they do know by now that he is able to change his actor, so they plan to use the "Mind Analysis Machine" (no, not the Mind Analysis Machine) on him to find out if this is the Doctor really.
The Doctor and Jo try to escape. After the Ogron guard proves immune to some Venusian Karate, Jo hits him on the head with the wine bottle to knock him out. The Doctor quips
"Pity, that was rather a good vintage."
like he is James Bond, but he is then immediately undermined by Jo reacting to him with a confused
"...What?"
They run out and get on a motortrike that happens to be nearby, leading into a chase sequence that is notorious for the trike being so slow over the rough terrain that the Ogrons have to deliberately run in slow motion in order that they don't catch up with it too easily. But they do catch up with it, and the Doctor and Jo are captured again.
The Doctor is then put on a table and strapped into the Mind Analysis Machine, which makes him show black & white publicity photos from his days being played by Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell, superimposed over the show's present title sequence - which is just as much a giveaway. The Daleks are happy, by the sound of their voices, and chant that they are going to exterminate him now that they know he really is the Doctor... although I have to assume they were probably going to do that anyway.
The Controller ends up rescuing the Doctor, by telling the Daleks he can use the Doctor to capture the guerillas. It's possible that this actually is his plan, and he is not saving him for the Doctor's own good, but maybe given the direction of the Controller's character arc through the story he is already rebelling against the Daleks.
But the Doctor doesn't think so, saying to the Controller that he only saved him "for your own purposes." Then when the Controller insists that he is "a senior government official" the Doctor becomes righteously indignant, shouting back
"You, sir, are a traitor! You're a quisling!"
Internets discourse has devalued these terms to mean anyone who slightly disagrees with the speaker's position, but when spoken by Jon Pertwee, firing on all cylinders now that he's had his chase scene, you can feel their power.
Aubrey Woods is also great here, easily the best guest actor of this story, as he responds, defending himself by telling the Doctor and Jo the exposition about the Dalek invasion:
"You do not understand. Nobody who did not live through those terrible years can understand. Towards the end of the 20th century, a series of wars broke out. There was a hundred years of nothing but killing, destruction. Seven eighths of the world's population was wiped out. The rest were living in holes in the ground, starving, reduced to the level of animals."
"So the Daleks saw their opportunity and took over?"
"There was no power on Earth to stop them."
With further exposition about mannys being "sent down the mines, the rest [W-Word] in factories" because the Dalek "empire is expanding," it becomes clear that this story is an allegory for Capitalism, with the Daleks as the capitalist class exploiting the mannys who are the W-wording class. The Controller stands between them, on the side of the Daleks even though, as the Doctor rightly points out to him, he would have "helped more by organising the fight against them."
When Charlie buys the chocolate bar that contains the last Golden Ticket, it is the shopkeeper who selects the bar in question from the display behind him (where it is one of the ones placed prominently, not an anonymous bar from a pile) and even suggests it to Charlie: "Why not try a regular Wonka Bar this time?"
He only does this after Charlie mentions that he is buying this second chocolate bar "for my Grandpa Joe."
Could it be that the shopkeeper was under orders from Wonka to ensure that the ticket went to Joe specifically? Given that the Golden Tickets are essentially the gateway to an elaborate moral test, with punishments for the undeserving children and guardian, has Wonka singled out Joe for this treatment? Does Wonka have a motivation for revenge against Joe? Could Joe, in fact, be one of the very spies he himself told Charlie about, that stole Wonka's secrets? This seems unlikely, since Joe has been "bedridden for the past 20 years," so we must look for another explanation.
Even as the Controller says the guerilla resistance to the Daleks cannot do anything to make a difference, the scene cuts to the guerillas enacting their plan to rescue the Doctor - a clever contrast. The fight scene is fast-paced and exciting, helped by the dramatic music, but somewhat clumsily directed, with mannys and Ogrons needing to stand still in the right place for the SFX to get them. It's not quite Remembrance of the Daleks* levels of two-sides-standing-out-in-the-open-shooting-past-each-other tactics, but it comes close at times.
* Ben A A Ronovitch, writer of Remembrance of the Daleks, has the nerve to criticise the director of this story for his action set pieces on the DVD making-of documentary, Blasting the Past.
Monia, Anat and a couple of extra guerillas run in and rescue the Doctor and Jo. The Controller shouts for his "Guards!" which may be one of the purest examples of the trope Terry Pratchett was mocking with the title of his novel Guards! Guards! to be found in all of Doctor Who. Even better is Monia's retort
"Guards? You have no guards, they're all dead!"
The Doctor stops Monia from killing the Controller. When Monia says
"He's helped the Daleks. He's [W-Word]ed for them."
the Doctor replies, sadly but truthfully
"They would always have found someone."
Not cats though, lol. They all leave the Controller standing alone in the room, with conflicting emotions visible in his face.
With the grandparents all bedridden for 20 years, how did Joe know that Wonka "shouted 'I shall be ruined! Close the factory!'" unless an eyewitness to the event told him? Charlie is not old enough to be that witness, which only leaves his mother. And why would she be present at the moment Wonka discovered there was a spy present in his factory? There can be only one conclusion - Charlie's mother was that spy, and the last Golden Ticket was given to her family as Willy Wonka's long-planned revenge. It was not Joe that was the intended recipient of it, it was Charlie, her son, who the shopkeeper could identify because he was the grandson of "Grandpa Joe."
At their secret base, Monia and Anat tell the Doctor and Jo what they know about Sir Reginald from their history - he blew up all the mannys in Auderly House, and himself by mistaik, and this started off the wars that eventually allowed the Daleks to invade successfully. Monia then tells them why they risked so much to rescue the Doctor - they want him to go back to the 20th century and change history by killing Sir Reginald:
"You can succeed where we've failed, Doctor."
In the previous two stories the Doctor has been tempted with offers of ultimate power from the Master and then Azal, but surely this is something that is more likely to succeed in tempting the Doctor - to prevent terrible wars from ever happening and defeat the Daleks at the same time. But, as will later be the case in Genesis of the Daleks, the price asked is too much for the Doctor - killing one manny, Sir Reginald, is here the same as the Doctor killing the defenceless little Dalek mutants in the later story.
In the 20th century, Shura, who we haven't seen anything of in a while, is still injured, but he runs around on location (accompanied by the runs-around-on-location music) until he finds a secret passage (or possibly a back door, mew) into Auderly House without being seen by UNIT.
In the future, the Doctor has made his decision. Here the dilemma diverges from the one in Genesis of the Daleks - both Jo and the Doctor doubt that killing Sir Reginald is the right thing to do, not just because of the morality of it but because they doubt he is actually a mad bomber like Monia and Anat claim. When the Doctor learns that the guerillas took "Dalekenium" explosives to the past with them, and that Shura is still there and still trying to kill Sir Reginald, he realises the truth:
"You're trapped in a temporal paradox! Styles didn't cause that explosion and start the wars: you did it yourselves!"
They go back to the tunnel so that the Doctor and Jo can travel back to the past, while we learn from a short scene that the Controller has set up an ambush for them there. The Controller has Ogrons with him, but he sends them away when the Doctor tells him that he can change history:
"You spoke of the war, of its years of suffering and starvation. Well, I can prevent all that happening, you know."
The Controller says
"You saved my life. You could have let them kill me. Go, quickly."
While he spells out here that this was a turning point for him, it is left ambiguous just how rebellious the Controller was before that happened. He lets the Doctor and Jo go back in time and then he goes back to the Daleks where he makes one final attempt to bluff his way out of being exterminated - a futile one, and he even knows it is futile as he tries it. The Gold Dalek says
"YOU MUST BE EXTERMINATED!"
and only then does he defy them to their eyestalks with a wonderful last line
"Who knows? I may have helped to exterminate you!"
The Daleks decide to go back in time themselves to stop the Doctor from changing their history.
We get the next lot of exposition from a meta-scene as Alex MacIntosh reports to camera from Auderly House, a superimposed caption introducing him as though we are watching a UNIT era news programme instead of Doctor Who. A pity they didn't get Alastair Fergus back from The Dæmons for some continuity - or maybe not, he was a different kind of TV presenter, after all. As part of Alex's report we see Sir Reginald arrive back at the house, along with delegates for his conference, and also the Brigadier.
Our regular programme resumes as the Doctor and Jo run into the house and try to get the Brigadier to evacuate everybody. We see why - the Ogrons and Daleks start to arrive down at the tunnel, with cuts and editing used to give the appearance that there are more than just the three Daleks on their way (notoriously there are more Daleks on the VHS cover for this story than ever appear on screen at one time). The Daleks exterminate a couple of UNIT soldiers to show they mean business - after all, we're nearly at the end of the story now and the Controller is the only manny they've managed to exterminate up to now.
Sir Reginald doesn't want to leave the house, but when the Brigadier hears from Benton that UNIT are being attacked he takes charge. This is the ultimate irony of the story - if the Daleks had not travelled back in time in order to secure their version of history, Shura would probably have blown up Sir Reginald and the other delegates while they were still in the house and so the Daleks' version of history would have been preserved. But because of the Dalek attack, the Brigadier is able to force the delegates to leave, so they all survive and history is changed.
The Daleks and Ogrons advance slowly (or 'inexorably' is a good word for it if you want to be kind) across the open ground towards Auderly House, with the director doing a poor job here of disguising how few of them there actually are. They almost get away with it, but one shot in particular gives the game away by being a bit too wide, revealing the lack of other Daleks or Ogrons to either side of the small group in the middle of shot.
Shura, hiding in the basement (which he knew from earlier was the one room of the house that UNIT's security had a blind spot towards), learns from the Doctor and Jo that the Daleks are on their way, and they instantly come up with the plan to let the Daleks into the house and then use the bomb to blow them up. Shura has to stay to set the bomb off but, as the Daleks wander around the house getting confused (and disappointed) that there are no mannys there for them to exterminate, he gets the satisfaction of saving the world.
"WHERE ARE THE DELEGATES?"
"WHERE IS THE MAN STYLES?"
"THEY MUST BE FOUND AND EXTERMINATED!"
"Oh no, not this time. This time it's going to be different!"
The bomb blows up the whole house, as before. The final scene sees the Doctor tell Sir Reginald that the conference has been saved, and they have another chance to keep the world peace:
"You still have a choice."
"Don't worry, we all know what will happen if we fail."
"So do we. We've seen it happen, haven't we, Jo?"
What's so good about Dave the Daleks?
On paper, Dave the Daleks is one of the best Doctor Who stories of the Jon Pertwee era. At its core is something surprisingly rare in a series where the main character has a time machine - it is a plot about time travel. It is tightly and expertly written, with the initial mystery to hook in the Doctor (and the viewers) transforming wonderfully into the struggle by the guerillas to change their history for the better. The fact that it is Daleks who have conquered the Earth of the future (again) is a bonus - a shorthand way of instantly letting us know that whoever is opposing them must be goodys really.
Where there are flaws in Dave the Daleks, they are with the TV production rather than with the story itself or the script - the writer seems to have maybe forgotten that they had to make the programme on a BBC budget! The small number of Daleks may be the most obvious of these problems, but also scenes such as the slow-motion trike chase or the awkward action sequences indicate that the director was not comfortable with transferring the material from page to screen.
This has the result that Dave the Daleks is one of those stories that may be better as a book, where there are none of these limitations, and I am lucky that this is one of the few Target novelisations of Jon Pertwee-era Doctor Who that I have. That said, with the book you miss out on watching the enjoyable acting performances by Jon Pertwee, Nicholas Courtney, Aubrey Woods, etc. so it is even better to have both book and TV versions, and to be able to compare them.
You can see from this photo that the name is a little different, but that was not uncommon for Targets, such as Doctor Who and the Silurians becoming Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters.
Speaking of changes between book and screen, in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory Charlie's father is said to be ded (the exact line, spoken by Grandma Josephine, is "If only his father were alive..."), which is not the case in the original novel. This then would explain why Charlie cannot take his father as the "one member of your own family" the ticket permits him to bring along with him, but he does not even consider for a moment taking his mother, immediately offering the place to Grandpa Joe instead. Perhaps this is because Joe had faith in Charlie that he would get the ticket, while his mother was more pessimistic, telling him "there are a hundred billion people in this world, and only five of them will find Golden Tickets. Even if you had a sackful of money you probably wouldn't find one. And after this contest is over, you'll be no different from the billions of others who didn't find one."
Something must have happened in her past to make Charlie's mother so much more cynical than the others in her family.
And yet... while the Golden Ticket led to the test of character inside the chocolate factory, it was possible, however unlikely, to pass the test. Joe, had he been the one being tested, would definitely have failed, what with him saying "If Slugworth wants a Gobstopper, he'll get one."
But it was Charlie that Wonka was testing for worthiness to be his heir, not Joe. "Oh Charlie, forgive me for putting you through this," he says, and "I had to test you, Charlie. And you passed the test."
Why would Willy Wonka single out Charlie Bucket for the test, of all the children in the city, never mind the world, with a confidence in Charlie that he clearly didn't have in any of the other four children ("You did it! I knew you would, I just knew you would," he says), unless he had some special connection to Charlie?
The son of the spy whose unmasking provoked him into closing his factory, yes, but more than that - Charlie's mother's betrayal of him must have been much more than just the theft of a few recipes to incite such a long-delayed and elaborate vengeance - it must have been personal.
Willy Wonka is Charlie's father. How's that for a conspiracy theory?
The 2016 series of War & Peace was not the first time that the BBC had adapted the novel of War and Peace for TV. All the way back in 1972 they made a version that was even longer - more than three times the length of the new series - and as all we long cats know, longer is better.
On top of that (as if being in 20 parts was not enough!) they got Anthony Hopkins to star in it as Pierre Bezukhov. He was not super-famous then, although he had been in The Lion in Winter (a favourite film of Gamma Longcat, especially during the colder months) in 1968.
Pierre first appears in the second scene of the first episode, alongside none other than Colin Baker (best known as Blakes 7's Bayban the Butcher* but most recently seen by me in the final part of Fall of Eagles), who is the second most famous actor to appear in the series. In the '70s Colin Baker was young and handsome, so he was well cast as the dashing but dastardly antagonist Anatole Kuragin, back when he looked like this:
Purr.
In episode 10 Anatole tries to elope with Natasha Rostova (Morag Hood) despite secretly already being married - naughty Colin! However, Pierre knows his secret and so goes to confront him, leading to a fight scene where Anthony Hopkins bashes poor Colin's head off of a sofa:
Colin carries on acting like the true pro he is, even though Anthony Hopkins is busy doing enough acting for both of them!
This series looks like had a bigger budget than most of the other BBC historical drama series that I have watched from roughly the same era, as evidenced by the extensive battle scenes with large numbers of soldier extras - at least compared to other series with military plots such as The First Churchills or Fall of Eagles, both of which went to some lengths to avoid showing scenes of battle whenever they could avoid it.
Even so, the series is not nearly as lavish as the recent remake was, which is most obvious if you compare the ballroom scenes that the 2016 series did on a far grander scale. But the extra running time of the older series allows it to feel the more epic in scope, and so better captures the feel of the original book. This is also achieved through the recurring use of voiceover monologues to show us the thoughts of the main characters - perhaps this technique was too old-fashioned for the 2016 series to make use of, but it also would not have had the time to use it even if it had wanted to.
For example, here we see a scene in which Prince Andrei (Alan Dobie) has been wounded at the battle of Austerlitz (said battle gets the whole of episode five devoted to it) and he monologues at length about seeing the sky, ironically unaware that the French Emperor Napoleon is close enough to him to be in the background of the same shot.
Napoleon is played by the third most famous actor in the series, David Swift, who was Henry in Drop the Dead Donkey and would, like Colin Baker, go on to have a minor role in Fall of Eagles. Though unlike Colin he would not go up against Paul Darrow in a Blakes 7 ham-off.
A curious aspect of the series is the way that the main characters who are killed off always die off-screen, with their deaths being referred to by other characters after the fact. While we see the emotional effects these deaths have upon the other characters, not witnessing the deaths themselves robs them of some impact. This means that Colin Baker does not even appear in the battle of Borodino episode (BBC saving a bit of money where it could?) and instead Prince Andrei mentions that he saw Anatole there several episodes after the battle is over.
The weakest part of the whole series is the very last episode, which is an extended epilogue that takes scenes implied by the end of the book and extends them out unnecessarily. While the BBC's Lord of the Rings adaptation spent an episode-and-a-half on the 'tea and medals' after the fall of Sauron, at least that includes the essential Scouring of the Shire bit. War & Peace takes up two whole episodes after the French retreat from Russia, about twice as much as is necessary.
This is really an issue with pacing rather than length, as the story is easily long enough to fill the 20 parts. It makes a good series, albeit one where the last quarter is the weakest, and the journey to get there more enjoyable than the arrival.
* Not really of course, he's best known for being in Doctor Who... as Commander Maxil, lol!
