1977’s The Face of Evil does many things right. It is played with complete conviction; the jungle set is one of the more impressive in Who’s history (beaten only by the set from Planet of Evil a year earlier), and the script has many quotable lines: from Leela’s ‘They say the evil one eats babies’ to the Doctor’s ‘dead as a Dalek’, which sounds like an ad-lib but may not be.
Meanwhile the central story idea is a good one, conveyed so succinctly in the title-that-never was, The Day God Went Mad. But the story itself, despite playing on themes of religious devotion and artificial intelligence, never quite catches fire.
It’s certainly a story to flatter Tom Baker’s ego: a Mount Rushmore of Tom’s face dominates the narrative, and in the scenes where Tom is required to act opposite his own voice, he’s clearly having a ball.
But the minute the Doctor and Leela clamber over Tom’s teeth and into the world of the Tesh, the story suddenly betrays its ‘70s origins. Inside the Face, it’s all buzzing entry doors and reflective surfaces, as the Tesh parade prissily around in pink and jade, looking less like religious fanatics and more like mint and strawberry bon-bons.
It’s lovely to think that the script may be knowingly commenting on Tom’s larger than life excesses: the Doctor himself muses whether it was his own egotism that led him to imprint his personality on computer villain, Xoanon. There are certainly some cheeky metatextual touches – ‘Who am I?’ asks Xoanon in the story’s best cliffhanger, in what is both question and statement.
But the savage wit of the central conceit is never quite matched by an equal verve in the production, and in the Horda, it has one of Doctor Who’s least memorable monsters. As such, it’s a story to file under ‘commendable’ rather than ‘compelling’.
Extras: You have to love Louise Jameson. She has such commitment to her craft, and to fandom as a whole, that she tells every story as if it’s fresh, no matter how many times it’s been told before.
Even so, it’s unfortunate that this DVD follows hard on the heels of The Robots of Death’s recent Special Edition, as it means that many of the anecdotes on the disc – shared in the commentary and in an interview profile, Doctor Who Stories: Louise Jameson – are familiar from that release.
There’s a drinking game to be played with certain well-worn phrases: ‘Leela rode the crest of a feminist wave’; ‘dress someone in a leather leotard and put them on after the football results’; ‘We thought Janis Thorn sounded like an out of work actress’; ‘I did insist on the flap at the back’; ‘We rubbed our hands with glee whenever Mary Whitehouse complained’.
But after thirty-five years, Jameson is entitled to her repertoire of stories, and it’s a mark of her professionalism, and sheer damn likeability, that one greets them in the manner of a command performance.
Jameson is featured too on Into the Wild: the main documentary feature and an account of the making of the programme which chronicles its many triumphs – the making of The Face itself – as well as a few wrong-turns: those early publicity shots of Jameson in which she is pretty much blacked up.
The commentary boasts a remarkable line-up: Toby Hadoke moderating actors, Jameson, Leslie Schofield, David Garfield and Michael Elles, along with cameraman John McGlashan, extra Harry ‘H’ Fielder, producer Philip Hinchcliffe – plus extracts from an email exchange between Hadoke and writer, Chris Boucher.
Hearing Boucher in writing is possibly more revealing than hearing him in person, as he gives full vent to the satirical, politicised voice that endeared him so much to script editor Robert Holmes.
‘This was a time,’ observes Boucher, ‘when it seemed we were all headed towards universal rationality… And while we weren’t looking, the morons took over.’
But it’s not all atheist polemic. There is a strong element of luvvie too. Everyone in the room is charmingly gallant about Jameson’s costume, while Louise herself has much to say on the subject of commitment and truth in performance.
Most remarkably of all, someone not featured on the commentary, Tom Baker, is praised by the company for his dramatic restraint. Baker T., we learn, was charming and generous in his dealings with other actors – and resisted send-up!
Hard to imagine that, just a story later, he was berating the script as ‘whippet shit’ in front of incoming producer, Graham Williams. But that’s the nature of the man: mercurial; combustible; brilliant.
Of the remaining extras, Wendy Padbury narrates Tomorrow’s Times: The Fourth Doctor, a guide to Fleet Street’s coverage of the programme in one of its more controversial eras, when lazy hacks felt it acceptable to refer to ‘Larry Grayson… poncing about’ or introduced ‘heartthrob actor, Peter Davison’ as ‘the girl-chasing vet’.
When Tom Baker tells a journalist that he was a compulsive bedwetter until age 11, you savour a moment when the satirical tendencies of the show’s star completely outmanoeuvre the plod-footedness of Fleet Street’s less than finest.
Released on DVD on Monday 5th March 2012 by 2entertain.
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