Christopher Morley looks back at the First Doctor story The Savages, originally broadcast from May 28th 1966.
After no doubt gratefully escaping from a hullabaloo in the Wild West (The Gunfighters), the First Doctor, Steven Taylor & Dodo Chaplet - who despite her name isn't actually a large & now extinct flightless bird, more's the pity - find themselves flung into the far future. Their handy old Type 40, which the Doctor at this stage probably wouldn't even dream of calling 'Sexy', reserving that privilege for Cameca (The Aztecs), promptly drops them off on what appears to be a colony world.
And so begins The Savages, a four part adventure first broadcast from the 28th May 1966, and one that holds the honour of being the first Doctor Who adventure to not have individual episode titles, instead we have Episode 1, Episode 2, etc. The Savages is also one of the unfortunate stories junked by the BBC in the late 1960s/1970s, and so only fragments and still images from the episodes exist in the archives today.
After no doubt gratefully escaping from a hullabaloo in the Wild West (The Gunfighters), the First Doctor, Steven Taylor & Dodo Chaplet - who despite her name isn't actually a large & now extinct flightless bird, more's the pity - find themselves flung into the far future. Their handy old Type 40, which the Doctor at this stage probably wouldn't even dream of calling 'Sexy', reserving that privilege for Cameca (The Aztecs), promptly drops them off on what appears to be a colony world.
And so begins The Savages, a four part adventure first broadcast from the 28th May 1966, and one that holds the honour of being the first Doctor Who adventure to not have individual episode titles, instead we have Episode 1, Episode 2, etc. The Savages is also one of the unfortunate stories junked by the BBC in the late 1960s/1970s, and so only fragments and still images from the episodes exist in the archives today.
After landing on the colony world, the Doctor is
content to dust off his lapels & have a look around the place,
but can't escape the feeling that he's being watched. There's a good
reason for that - which we'll come back to. His companions, who've
decided for now to stay safely inside the TARDIS, have a bit of a
barney which causes a worried Steven to go & have a look for him.
Remember that sensation that somebody might be watching (other than
the 4.8 million who've tuned in to BBC One this Saturday tea-time)? Somebody is! And
the man who so hates being called 'Doc' is too busy telling himself
his friends will be in for a surprise & feeling tetchy at Steven
for the heinous crime of calling after him to notice...even back
alongside 'Sexy', Dodo can't escape the sensation that she too is
being eyed up. Some raggedy-looking primitives appear to have their
eye on the trio. Have the Stone Age tribe from An Unearthly
Child somehow mastered time
travel? It looks like it, as one of them is clad in rather fashionable
animal skins & holding an axe.....
Maybe he thinks
Dodo really is a dodo. Luckily for her, her screech of pure terror is
loud enough to bring Steven scrambling back to her side & have
the caveman running for the hills (if there are any). Perhaps
understandably & certainly logically Mr Taylor then comes to the
conclusion that they must indeed be in the extremely distant past.
The First shares his confidence, & two of the titular 'savages',
Chal & Tor, are busy trying to work out who & indeed what the
strange man in the smoking jacket is. He's not one of them & he
hasn't got a gun.
You'd think this
would persuade them that he's a likeable sort, at least sometimes -
but no. They decide the best thing to do would be to kill him, not
knowing that he'll simply regenerate, run off to find a recorder &
attempt to make good on an escape while having to explain to Steven &
Dodo just why he now looks like he should be on the cover of Rubber
Soul stood on the right of the
picture, next to Ringo Starr. But perhaps mindful of that very
eventuality, he tells anyone who might have their beady peepers
trained on him that he means no harm - which alerts two more
observers.
They're soldiers,
going by the names of Captain Edal & Exorse. And they've been
expecting him - in the legends of their superiors, the Elders, the
Doctor is known as 'The Traveller From Beyond Time'. Given their
vocation, they're somewhat shocked to see him carrying a 'weapon'-
actually a rather more scientific & less violent if slightly
dodgy-sounding reacting vibrator. At least they let him bring his
pals along, eh? An audience with the Elder leader Jano & his
councillors follows- they've tracked his trips through space &
time and are sufficiently impressed to offer him a position as a
High Elder.
Steven & Dodo
even get presents, too - a dagger for the man from Mechanus (The Chase) & a
lovely jewel-encrusted mirror for Ms Chaplet. They even get a tour of
the city while Jano picks the brains of their young oldish guest.
Turns out the Elders use the Savages as little more than a sort of
slave labour, and the Doctor really isn't cool with how they drain
their life-force & all that! A certain mistrust between the two
parties quickly starts to creep in after that, unsurprisingly.....
With the Elders
turning to spying on our heroes, a sort of Cold War atmosphere creeps
in. The Doctor won't have to literally deal with such a conflict
until renewing acquaintance with the Ice Warriors, or at least one of
them (in the literal Cold War),
but he does at least have a quite spectacular rant at the Elders,
lashing out at them as a clear & present threat to the
institution of humanity & even comparing them to perhaps his most
potent nemesis - the Daleks.
Do they deserve
such scorn? Well, take into account that in essence what they do to
preserve their own lives is drain energy from innocents & you
could say the inhabitants of Skaro might be eager to pick up the
phone & talk, if indeed they had the means to hold anything for
any great length of time.
But things could
be about to get interesting - Steven & Dodo are trying to inspire
these 'savages' into a rebellion against the Elders! Chal, though,
is pessimistic, mostly because their foes have advanced light-guns,
while they have next to nothing. If it all seems lost there, it might
be about to get even worse for the Doctor, who's about to be
vaporised, with his life energy transferred into the thoroughly
undeserving Jano. Steven proves himself to have quite a good grasp on
strategy & is quickly elected leader of the rebelling savages -
the revolution is on!
What the Doctor
might make of the whole business, having experienced similar further
back in time (The Reign Of Terror,
The Massacre Of St Bartholomew's Eve -
which is notable also for delving into Dodo's family history,
featuring her great-grandmother Anne Chaplet) is unrecorded. He's
resting up after having been somewhat drained, but would no doubt be
pleased to learn that his energy's putting itself to good use!
Following the
transfer procedure, Jano is quite literally changed. Turns out that
in the process of absorbing some of the Doctor's pep for himself,
he's also taken on aspects of his personality - which creates a sort
of schizophrenia. One minute he sounds like his old self, the next he
believes he's everyone's favourite space-grandpa, acknowledging
Steven & Dodo as friends and forgetting that the colony is his
home. This all comes in very handy when his 'companions' stumble
into trouble at the hands of Edal - Jano in his 'Doctor' personality
aiding in their escape.
Which makes the
later meeting of perhaps the original 'two Doctors' all the more
compelling. What the junior of the two does next comes as perhaps the
biggest surprise of the entire narrative. Leading a march back to the
colony, he decrees the Elders & Savages equal & orders the
transference equipment (part of the life-force draining process) be
destroyed. He's realised the need for democracy, and in future the
two parties will work as one. With the help of the senior Doctor &
his companions, the equipment is destroyed.
Jano asks the
Doctor to stay behind & help the community to rebuild - an offer
the First refuses. But Steven's built up quite a fan-club during the
turmoil, and following some initial reluctance he agrees to stay on,
the Doctor justifiably proud of his young charge. Dodo gives him a
nice hug & he thanks the Doctor for letting him share in his
adventures before embarking on a new career in politics, of a sort.
And with that Dodo is left to accompany the Doctor back into the
TARDIS, the two of them leaving for wherever 'Sexy' is drawn to
next - as it happens, it'll be Swinging Sixties London, just in time
for The War Machines............
But if you're
desperate for another First & Dodo caper before then, there are
several in the literary canon of Who -
as just one example, The Man In The Velvet Mask,
in which the duo arrive in a parallel universe's French Revolution.
Who's in charge? Why, its First Deputy Minski! And the Doctor can
sense a massive change coming...he's about to experience his first
regeneration & gain his second heart (which Time Lords
apparently do during their first such radical change of appearance).
Chuck in a cameo
from the Marquis De Sade, as a prisoner in the New Bastille (the old
one having been stormed in 1789 as the first real sign of discontent
at the reign of King Louis & his good lady wife/queen Marie
Antoinette) & you've got yourself a humdinger of a saga - all in
the First's favourite period of history, too. The Reign Of
Terror turned on its head, you
might say......
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