Reign of Terror

“The Reign of Terror” by Dennis Spooner is the last story of the very first season of Doctor Who, a historical six-parter that, like “Marco Polo” and “The Celestial Toymaker” was lost—perhaps forever—when the prints were thrown out by an unthinking BBC. However, the soundtrack survived and some enterprising person decided to put it on CD, with linking narration provided by Susan herself (Carole Ann Ford) so that it becomes almost like a precursor to Big Finish audio stories. What results is surprisingly engaging and a bit eerie. There is so much dialogue in the 1960s stories—which, being so long, can be quite slow-moving and tedious—that the form lends itself very well to audio. It isn’t quite the sparkling, precise dialogue I’ve come to expect—or even have been cultivated to write—in audio plays, but one could see it losing an episode or two for streamlining, quite easily.

As a pure historical, like “The Aztecs” (and later, The Marian Conspiracy), this story is set in 1794 during one of my favorite periods, the French Revolution. One is immediately struck by the coldness, the selfishness, in short the alien-ness of the Doctor, whose race hasn’t even been named yet. The beginning of the story sees the TARDIS land in what the Doctor claims is 1963 Earth. The Doctor’s bossiness and gruffness as he almost refuses to see Barbara and Ian safely to their destination is almost shocking; if I was Ian, I’m not sure I would have put up with it. Finally the Doctor accedes to “have a drink” with them, and they walk practically into an émigré safe house (prompting me to wonder if anyone’s ever written something where the Doctor conducts on the Underground Railroad).

It isn’t long before they realize they’re in France, and taking a moment for everyone but the Doctor to get dressed in period attire (how convenient) the excitement begins. There’s a lot of violence in this story (a violent period), with two harmless dissenters getting shot in the first episode by the National Guard and leaving Susan, Barbara, and Ian to face the firing squad. There were dozens of good moments for cliffhangers, but the episode finally ends with the National Guard setting fire to the safe house with the Doctor unconscious in an upstairs room! How will he ever make it?!

Barbara and Susan are separated from Ian in the Conciergerie, and Susan proves to be a wimp (the first of many times) by not really helping Barbara to try to escape. I’m impressed at Barbara’s fortitude and can-do attitude; she and Ian really are matched. In his cell he also contemplates escape, while the Fool-like Jailer demonstrates his Somerset accent (indeed, all the characters had English accents, no one tried to impersonate a French accent, though I can’t say whether I’m disappointed or not). Susan and Barbara are put in a tumbril headed for Madame Guillotine (!)—I kept waiting for the Scarlet Pimpernel to rescue them as he did Marguerite in the Richard E. Grant movie—and even then Susan doesn’t seem too inclined to escape! Why do they get the guillotine and Ian doesn’t? They are rescued and taken to another safe house.

The Doctor, meanwhile, gets magically rescued from the burning building by a boy (a bit like Evelyn getting rescued by Jem in Doctor Who and the Pirates) and is on his merry way to Paris (would he have stayed, I wonder, if Susan had not been taken as well? Would he have left Ian and Barbara behind?). He stops to get into an argument with a chain gang guard (!) in what’s got to be filler. An English royalist named Webster dies in Ian’s cell, leaving him in charge of an important message (fortunate he gave it to Ian rather than Turlough or someone who wouldn’t have bothered to see it through) while the dastardly Republican official LeMaître makes himself as un-likeable as possible. Ian escapes to join Barbara and Susan at the safe house. Their cohorts, Jules, Jean, Leon, and Colbert seem to be ready any moment to burst into “Into the Fire.” It seems, though, Colbert has a crush on Barbara and that Barbara has a crush on Leon! Susan is too busy being ill, an Important Plot Point, though I suggested to my mom she’d gotten Mono somewhere along the way. I think I’ll have to write a story on that.

The coup de grace in terms of the Doctor, however, who has been walking to Paris this whole time, is when he enters a tailor’s shop and basically bluffs his way into securing the costume of a Provincial Deputy. Because there’s a still of it on the cover, we know he looks resplendent in tri-color and cockade. It’s also quite funny to hear him defending his “very unusual” normal outfit. He sweeps into the Conciergerie only to find his companions have already escaped, and dastardly LeMaître wants him to go before Robespierre. While I think it would be very funny to see the Tenth Doctor interacting with this most bloodthirsty of revolutionaries, it’s highly satisfying for the First Doctor to make himself quite a favorite. (For some reason during these scenes I reminded of the two regional waxworks museums I’d seen in France, one in Brittany and one in Provence, which both featured Revolutionary tableaux.) Spooner’s depiction of Robespierre is accurate enough, though a bit bland. There’s a great cliffhanger as the tailor reports to LeMaître that he has clothes belonging to a traitor passing himself off as a Provincial Deputy.

Susan and Barbara are betrayed by the Physician—so-called I imagine to distinguish him from the Doctor—and re-arrested. Susan spends most of the rest of the story in prison. Ian gets to be prey to somebody’s idea of S/M after Leon and Colbert reveal themselves to be spies for the Republican government. (Though it’s a cool setting—an abandoned church.) Barbara is freed by the Doctor and the bumbling Jailer, LeMaître confronts the Doctor and forces him to reveal the safe house. And reveals himself to be . . . the Scarlet Pimpernel! Actually not, he’s the Englishman James Sterling to whom Webster was trying to get a message. It’s a bit like Yana being the Master—I so should have seen it coming, and I suppose I did at the back of my mind. Barbara gives a rather wonderful speech about the now-dead Leon and Colbert fighting for what was right in their minds.

The sixth part seems to have been tacked on merely to be clever—involving another very-Scarlet Pimpernel-esque divertissement near Calais where Barbara and Ian meet Napoleon—but I guess if you want to teach children history, that’s the way to do it. Robespierre ends the way he did in real life, Susan is rescued, and Sterling asks Barbara where the hell they came from. Barbara is coy. “It seems to me,” he says to Jules, “they don’t even know where they’re going. Then again, do any of us?”

Overall I find nothing lacking in the story. The score is very interesting, using “La Marseillaise” as a musical motif, and getting to separate three companions and the Doctor was hardly done better. Susan, as Carole Ann Ford points out, doesn’t get much to do, and the Doctor goes “hmmm?” a lot. I do love the idea of him being vain at the tailor’s, though.