I Love... 1970

By Steven Alexander

Is Doctor Who science fiction? The answer, of course, is sometimes. This is the same answer that should be given to the question of whether Doctor Who belongs to historical drama, fantasy adventure, satire, or any other genre, but Doctor Who is labelled as a science fiction show by just about everyone. The Doctor has a magic door that lets him take people on adventures, anywhere in time and space. The magic door is given a name – TARDIS - and an explanation that sounds scientific. This could be seen as science fiction.

My personal definition of the genre is that it is an extrapolation of scientific possibility to tell a story; in other words, to ask "What if?" In 1970, Doctor Who was full of scientific extrapolations. The magic door was taken away (by the events of The War Games) and the Doctor became surrounded by soldiers and scientists, whereas before his companions had been teenagers from the past and the future. In this way, the fantasy aspects of the show were replaced by realism and science fiction.

The realistic approach to Doctor Who in 1970 seems at odds with the way the show returned. The new Doctor, Jon Pertwee, was mainly known for comedy roles and wasn't particularly known as a serious actor. During the course of the season, he picks up a jolly little yellow car, called Bessie. The show was also broadcast in colour for the first time, which suggests that the stories would be more colourful and bizarre than ever before; the tagline would be "Doctor Who returns in a blaze of colour!" All this worked in the show's favour. The juxtaposition of fantastic elements with the grittiness of the year's stories makes them a joy to watch. The four stories of 1970 are built around less outlandish concepts than previously, where the Doctor often faced evil monsters and fantastical villains.

The first story, Spearhead From Space, is ostensibly a monster story. The Autons are shop-dummy parodies of humans. They are frightening because they are close to being human, but all the details are distorted, they have blank eyes and plastic bodies. Even the more perfect copies have an unsettling plastic sheen to their faces. Despite the fantastic nature of the Autons, their origins are more scientific than previous monsters. What if plastic could be controlled by a malign intelligence? The ideas are realistically thought through, as the Consciousness delivers itself to Earth via meteorites and the Doctor uses a scientific device to defeat them, along with military help.

Spearhead From Space also introduces Liz Shaw, the Doctor's new companion. Except she is not a companion in the way that Victoria or Dodo are. Liz is actually working as the Doctor's assistant. Their relationship is not necessarily one of friendship, because they are colleagues who work together. Look at the scenes at the start of Inferno, where the Doctor is running tests on the TARDIS console and Liz is helping him. The way he behaves towards Liz is scientific and cold, especially when compared to his later friendship with Jo Grant. Troughton and his set of companions often seem like children playing together. Here, the relationship is one between grown ups. It all added to the sense that this was a far more mature take on the show.

What if there had been intelligent life on Earth before man? Doctor Who and The Silurians is definitely science fiction. Malcolm Hulke's great strength as a writer was creating believable and sympathetic characters that antagonised each other. The Silurians are very different from a race of monsters such as the Daleks, that would all behave in the same way. They are driven by their individual fears and beliefs. This makes it all the more convincing when one of them decides to use a virus to wipe out the human population of Earth. Once again, the Silurians attacks are not with ray guns and spaceships, they use more realistic science fiction devices, such as viruses and nuclear power against humanity.

The Ambassadors of Death uses convincing science in a tale of alien visitation and contains a lot of extrapolations. What if we made contact with benign aliens, but couldn't understand their ambassadors? What if the aliens fed off radiation? What if the aliens could be used to further people's own ends? This story also looks in detail at the trials of space exploration. The threats in space come from decompression, radiation and g-forces.

1970 also gave us Inferno. For that alone, it's a year to love. Whereas Ambassadors was a little too wrapped up in its scientific trappings to concentrate on providing drama, Inferno is a fast and exciting story. It also has the best science fiction concept of the season, as the Doctor is thrown into a parallel universe by his experiments with the TARDIS. Although running into alternative versions of familiar characters is an old trick, it is handled perfectly in this story. The characters are also extrapolations, their manners and attitudes are exaggerated, so that Liz Shaw becomes a cold and ruthless villain, the Brigadier is a blustering fascist and Benton is a thug. The only character that remains almost unchanged is Stahlman, who is just as unpleasant, obsessive and obnoxious in the alternative world as the real one. The science is prevalent in the Inferno project. The only fantastic element of the story is the transformation of people into the vicious, blue skinned Primords. Drilling under the Earth to find a rich source of power is something mankind has been doing for centuries. The terrifying result of this is the sudden and unexpected damage to the Earth's crust, which is enough to reduce the surface of the planet to molten lava. The brilliance of the alternate world concept is that we get to see the results of this catastrophe. Like the small-scale outbreak of the virus in The Silurians, the graphic portrayal of the potential destruction of humanity is unsettling and brilliant.

Naturally, Doctor Who changed in 1971. The focus on science fiction produced some fantastic and thought provoking stories, but lost some of the cosiness and quirkiness that appealed to mainstream audiences. Liz Shaw left in the way that work colleagues usually do; suddenly and without giving a reason. Her replacement was a clear signal of the new direction for the show – who could be more cosy and quirky than Katy Manning as Jo Grant?