The Reign of Terror

There is a word which was strung like a gigantic albatross over the planning stages of the early Doctor Who stories, not that they knew it at the time. The concept was not only a happy strand of the proposed series make-up, but in fact almost its reason for being. The word is 'educational'.

How ironic, given the items in the Doctor Who mix that were eventually revealed to be most popular, that Sydney Newman was reportedly furious over the invention of the Daleks. How long would the series have lasted if the production team had listened to him, reigned in their imaginations and turned to the history books, and not the wild absurdities of b-movie science fiction, for the literary signposts they chose to follow? Of course it made sense that Doctor Who was originally pitched at educating children. It's hard to see the bigwigs at the BBC nodding in approval of a new Saturday tea-time show featuring an old man, some schoolteachers and Carole Ann-Ford being chased round space by one-eyed tin terrors shouting "Destroy and Rejoice!"

After the Daleks invaded TV's and toyshops, it's a wonder they made any more historical 'educational' stories at all. Perhaps someone liked them, or else the series wasn't quite secure enough to ditch all attempts to journey back into the past just yet. But were these forays into Earth's history ever really popular? I can't personally imagine that any kid would gain as much enjoyment in tuning in to see the Doctor battle Robespierre as he or she would seeing a Dalek rising from the Thames, or even a comedy Voord menacing Susan in an alien city. I mean, why would they? History was something you were taught at school, and you watched Doctor Who to get away from all that. It's not so much a crying shame that the historicals were dumped in 1966 after "The Highlanders", but a one-up for senseless determination that they lasted this long. What child of the sixties EVER remembers "The Myth Makers", "The Smugglers" or even "The Romans" the most?

Today we pretend it was a pity there weren't more historical stories. Perhaps because they tellingly suffered most at the hands of the archive purge of the seventies, and thus stand as forgotten treasure to fall back on when the really popular tales have been exhaustedly explored. Isn't it odd that every story bar "Marco Polo" in Season 1 is almost complete, yet we don't have any of that one at all? You'd almost think there was a deliberate neglect towards those Doctor Who's which didn't feature any monsters or alien planets. It seems no-one rushed to rescue "the one where Doctor Who met Achilles" from the skip.

"The Reign of Terror" is the ultimate example of the production teams dog-eared determination to carry on the series original educational premise. The core idea - Doctor Who does the French Revolution - was even bandied about when planning the show, and like the minuscules story it was one the production team refused to let go, even if they didn't brandish it with quite enough enthusiasm to see it made before the end of the first year.

Somehow, unlike "Marco Polo", the story mostly survived, and is now shortly set to be the last ever story released on video. Perhaps the relative lack of interest in it is indicative of the real problem these tales always faced. Not only are there only dull historical figures to meet - and no monsters - but with the story taking place along the familiar tracks of human history, you've also got a fair idea of what it will look like and what will happen. The Doctor is unlikely to find a spaceship or a sea of acid in 1794 Paris, at least not until someone thought to invent the so-called pseudo historical genre some years later.

I asked a friend what he thought about "The Reign of Terror" recently. "I've not seen it," he confessed with little rapturous desire to amend that situation. "But I can probably guess what it's like."