Doctor Who:
City of Death
By Douglas Adams
Reviewed By Will Barber
Romana II: Where are we
going?
The Doctor: Are you
speaking philosophically or geographically?
Romana II:
Philosophically.
The Doctor: Then we're
going to lunch.
The Doctor and Romana
arrive in Paris, 1979. The Doctor decides they need a holiday, so they begin to
explore the beautiful city but something is going on. Valuable and beautiful
works of art are turning up all over the place in auction houses. The only thing
that links these lost treasures is their owner: Count Scarlioni. The Count is
using the money to create disturbances in the fabric of the universe. He wants
to alter human history. The Doctor and Romana, with the help of English private
eye Dugan must stop him or the history of Earth will be changed forever and the
Jaggaroth shall rise once more.
This story was written
originally by David Fisher and then heavily re-written by Douglas Adams and
Grahame Williams. It was the first
Doctor Who story to be filmed outside the UK.
Most rushed together TV stories for instance, The Invasion of Time
(1978) are very much a yawn fest.
However, every so often mad pressure and whooshing deadlines make
something fantastic. City of Death is
one of those instances.
Sitting in my house with
rain falling outside, I wonder if City of Death would have been as good if
Douglas Adams and Grahame Williams had not re-written it. The answer is no. The whole story radiates
Adam’s natural humour. If you took The Doctor and Romana out of the story and
added Ford Prefect and Arthur, you could easily have a Hitchhiker’s story. All
the characters in the story, from the Count to Dougan could easily be
Hitchhiker’s characters because the brand of humour you see in the story screams
Douglas Adams.
Tom Baker portrays The
Doctor in this story at the height of his powers. In the previous season Baker
seemed enthusiastic about the role but not as much as he had been when he first
joined the show in 1974. Baker obviously
loves the script and plays it to his advantage. One moment The Doctor is funny,
the next deadly serious. Baker seems to have regained the energy and the lust
for playing the character which he has not really had since Sarah Jane left in
The Hand of Fear, 1975. I would go so
far to say this is Baker’s finest performance as The Doctor, outside his first
two seasons. Indeed this story really does show why a lot of Doctor Who fans
think he is the best Doctor of them all.
Julian Glover as
Scarlioni, is sublime. Glover and Baker
muscle for dominance in every scene. The
scenes in Renaissance Florence are a particularly good example. Baker and Glover are brilliantly balanced as
hero and villain. Glover is almost a Bondish villain, without going into the
absurd “so we meet at last Mr Bond,” type acting which is one of the things
that makes so many good films feel rubbish. Glover is constantly in control of
the scenes he is in. Like Skagra,
(Shada, an uncompleted Douglas Adams story from 1979.) Scarlioni has a ruthless
streak which is a trademark of all Adam’s villains. Count Scarlioni stands out
as probably the most believable and also the most frightening, of the Doctor
Who’s villains of season 17.
City of Death was the
second story in a season which is rather like Marmite. You either love it or
you hate it. If I’m honest, I rather
love it.
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