Inferno

Season seven is just extraordinary, especially when you consider how uncomfortable with the exiled-to-Earth format Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts were, and how difficult seven parters are to work with. Theoretically then this should have been a disaster, such were the odds against it; instead, rather than being merely good, it’s possibly the strongest season of them all, pound-for-pound. And after three great stories the season is concluded with Inferno, arguably the programme’s most daring and uncompromising story. There’s a danger that if I start gushing like I want to I’ll just tie myself up in knots with rhetoric and run out of things to say, so to get started I’ll keep it simple: Inferno is, quite simply, awe-inspiring. There’s just no other word.

Like a handful of stories before it Inferno has its own specially designed titles that run after the main title sequence, and they really serve to remind me that while I might have watched it all in one go original viewers would have seen twenty-five minutes a week; in that circumstance these titles, where the credits appear over rolling lava, would have seemed dramatic and exciting. To me, as usual, they began to grate a bit after the sixth time I’d seen them. But these don’t affect the episodes themselves.

What’s immediately obvious is how fresh and lively Jon Pertwee is in his first season; by season eleven the strains of the format he loved slipping away (not to mention the death of one of his best friends) were all too obvious in his performance, but in his early years he fully justifies his iconic status. He is aided here by some great location shooting from the programme’s best ever director, the outstanding Douglas Camfield; his illness meant that a large part of the story was actually helmed by Barry Letts, but Camfield’s work on the location scenes helps to propel the story throughout its length.

Even before the plot has been introduced to the viewer there’s a real feeling of portent, a calm before a storm; Olaf Pooley as Stahlman and Christopher Benjamin as Sir Keith both put in great performances as two philanthropists with very different methods – he might have named Stahlman’s Gas after himself, but there’s no suggestion that Stahlman’s ultimate motive of genuinely providing endless energy is ever questionable. Shelia Dunn isn’t quite so good (that’s nepotism for you, just ask Francis Ford Coppola) but she still puts in a serviceable performance.

Because this is a Camfield episode we don’t have any of Dudley Simpson’s music, and while Simpson’s scores for the rest of season seven are in general very good it does make a refreshing change to have Delia Derbyshire’s atmospheric electronic music on the soundtrack. The swirling, dreamlike sounds seem more appropriate to the programme’s more space-age episodes and seem a little odd in the studio scenes, but on location they add to what is one of the most atmospheric episodes of all. The example I can think of is Slocum’s murder of the technician with the hammer; the sudden cut to Sergeant Benton can be in part credited to Martyn Day, who was also responsible for the superb second cliffhanger to The Mind Robber.

The semi-converted humans (in other words, Primords without the full make-up) are scary, mainly due to the sheer mania in the eyes of Walter Randall and Ian Fairbairn. Derek Newark is also good as Greg Sutton: although his first scene belts the audience with a massive infodump it’s still unusual to have an essentially villainless piece (the Brigade Leader is a villain in one sense, but is unusual in that he has no part in creating the events and merely reacts to them like everyone else) that is about an extreme natural disaster brought on by well-intentioned but naпve people. Greg’s get-yer-coat-love attitude to Petra is less effective though as the moral centre (in this case the “I’m not just a pretty face” kind) is laid on very thickly.

The Doctor’s remote control door-opener seems very twee now that they’re a staple of middle-class garages, but his first scene with Liz is a good one; she’s a much underrated companion (she certainly wipes the floor with Jo) and the production team’s usual excuse that exposition requires someone for the Doctor to talk down to doesn’t bear out on screen. That and she’s got the best legs of any Cambridge academic I can mention. Together Caroline John and Jon Pertwee bring poignancy to the scene (with the Doctor being trapped) and also darkness, with the Doctor’s ominous line “a terrible thing, a murder without a motive.” Slocum’s subsequent attack on Bromley is effective again for being left unseen, as the scene cuts away at a crucial moment.

The trip-out void scene where the TARDIS malfunctions is well done but very dated, although it retains a certain sense of the grotesque. The drill emergency is dramatic as it happens in the background, and the details are relayed through the characters – moments like this serve to advance the characters as much as they do the plot.

There is a very tense scene as the transforming Slocum is found, and the violence as he strangles Wyatt is actually quite brutal. The scorched wall is an engaging effect, and the effect he has on Wyatt and Bromley is nicely mysterious. The Doctor discussing the Krakatoa eruption on top of the silo is atmospheric in both visual and conceptual senses, and shows Camfield’s skill in using location and camera work to add an extra layer to what is already a well-written piece by Don Houghton. It is followed by a well-made chase sequence over the silos that ends with a good stunt fall from Derek Ware, although Pertwee’s vertigo is all too obvious on his face.

The computer is still giving out warnings – the episode’s slow pace doesn’t detract from the quality, but adds to the tension. Lines like “you, sir, are a nit-wit” demonstrate that the Doctor definitely works better as an aloof eccentric rather than the down-with-the-kids version of David Tennant. Stahlman softens up around Petra: he comes across as a pathetic, tragic figure who drives his project hard in order to compensate for basic loneliness, so that his eventual death in part seven retains a certain poignancy even though it comes after the shattering events of the sixth episode.

The Doctor’s transportation into the parallel universe requires a completely new set of introductions as late as the third episode, which helps fill this story’s impressive running time. The alternate Earth is very strongly defined; the fascist state is hardly original, but it is at least utterly convincing here and far more effective than the bit of everything approach favoured by Rise Of The Cybermen.

There’s more great action scenes in the third episode, a combination of the aforementioned location work, good stunts and Pertwee’s skilful driving. The Doctor defeating the mutating Bromley with a fire extinguisher feels like a lucky strike though, and a certain degree of logical reasoning has been omitted here. It’s all blown away though by what is possibly the best stunt in the show’s history, where Private Wyatt falls from the top of the silo, a height of nearly ninety feet. The only problem is that it’s obviously a jump rather than a fall, but it’s hardly something that detracts. 

Caroline John puts in a good performance as the alternate Liz, although her wig looks a bit silly. Nicholas Courtney’s eye patch is nicely iconic now, and in fact all of the regulars put in good performances as their alternate selves, even given John Levene’s relative inexperience. The only minor problem is Pooley, who isn’t in any way different to his counterpart. The Doctor hits a realistic impasse in trying to explain his situation to the security forces, which takes some time but is skilfully done and never allows the tension to flag. 

Things really heat up (no pun intended) in the fourth episode, but as yet the situation is not hopeless; there’s still a feeling of possibility which makes the alternative Earth’s fate all the more devastating. The relationship between Petra and Greg is improved slightly by the tenser situation of the parallel universe, and Liz’s softening is very well played.

The interrogation scene is well played out, with the Brigade Leader’s mock questions (he has the answers he wants in his own imagination) and good camera work which belies Camfield’s absence. The fascists’ fractured relationships with each other are great to see, as antagonists that hate each other as much as the sympathy characters are always more interesting. Suddenly back in “our” universe, it seems peculiar to see everyone again as they normally are, so earnestly are the parallel versions drawn.

Things crank up yet further when the crust is finally penetrated; the assertion that the world is doomed and nothing can save it is nothing new, but the fact that this actually happens makes Inferno one of the Doctor Who’s most daring and risky episodes. The characters begin to soften (apart from the Brigade Leader, as the narrative still requires a villain to bring the other characters together) to the extent that we almost forget about the regular version of them, and care about these new ones just as much.

With a growing sense of desperation and the omnipresent rumbling adding to the ambience, this story does more than just engage the viewer: it actively draws them into its Kafkaesque setting and makes them feel like they stand to lose as well, which is something that I can only say about the very best episodes.

“Greg, I’m frightened!” The trouble with being so serious though is that the touchy-feely approach to romance (never something the show did well, on the rare occasions it attempted it at all) simply doesn’t come off and the characters lose some of their dynamism as a consequence, albeit only temporarily. A similar problem affects the Primords when we see them in full make-up for the first time: they aren’t particularly convincing and while they aren’t any worse than the average monster this story is so uncompromising that it doesn’t make any allowance for anything less than absolute perfection. Benton’s transformation is a well-done scene, although I don’t quite know why it has to be followed with Sir Keith’s car accident. It only serves to demonstrate Stahlman’s ruthlessness, which has already been recorded.

The red tint on the location scenes helps create a sense of a planet tearing itself apart, still demonstrating Camfield’s skill long after he stopped tackling the studio scenes. The characters become more sympathetic the closer they come to the ultimate sacrifice; this story is about humanity surviving under immense pressure, and there is something genuinely life-affirming amidst the doom. Unfortunately, the fight at the end of the episode between Greg and the Brigade Leader is poor, as Barry Letts lacks Camfield’s magic touch in the studio when it comes to action. The cliffhanger though is devastating, and the cliffhangers have actually been rather lacking this story. The reprise improves it if anything, cutting away at the crucial moment. We never get to see the alternative Earth destroyed, and the Doctor’s quietly heartbroken line of “terrible things are happening there” is far more evocative than the most expensive special effects.

If episode seven has a problem though it’s that it goes over the same ground that the fourth episode does, complete with yet another chase over the silos with a character who’s already been killed off once in the story, and has been brought back to be killed again. Filler, anyone? However, it should be noted that part four was several weeks previously from the point of view of the original audience, and the Doctor’s excited notion that “the pattern can be changed” keeps the levels of dynamism on a high. I’m so drained after the sixth episode though that I almost don’t feel the defuse-the-bomb style ending – is that a good thing?

The only major problem with this story is its ending, with the slapstick scene of the Doctor materialising himself in a rubbish tip clashing badly with the grim tone of the rest of the story; his joviality seems inappropriate to the grim tone of the story and the horrors he has witnessed. However, it doesn’t hit the story as a whole particularly badly.

Inferno is a top five story, there’s no doubt about that. It is ambitious in a way that few other episodes are, and while ambition always creates a risk of undershooting this manages to achieve its lofty aims through a sense of grim, brutal realism and is never compromised by illusion-shattering comedy. Put simply, it’s astonishing television.