I’ve been doing my Very Slow Doctor Who Marathon for well over a decade – the pilgrimage, the quest, whatever fans want to call it. One thing that pushed me back towards it was the release of The Collection blu-ray sets. I’ve written about some stories in recent years, starting in the Pertwee era. Having found out old notes and notebooks, I’ve decided to finally start sharing a few of these thoughts. I won’t cover every story, so there will be gaps. Mostly, I wanted to focus on the seasons with stories I hadn’t seen before.
Carnival of Monsters was the first Doctor Who DVD I bought. Undoubtedly, I selected a Third Doctor story because he was one of the Doctors I hadn’t seen yet – UK Gold was running through the 1980s when I first tuned in. I knew nothing of the Doctor’s exile on Earth, so when I first sat down with this story, as far as I was concerned, it seemed like any of the later stories I’d seen, with the Doctor on random travels with a companion or three. From some of those 1980s’ stories, I also already knew that the Doctor hadn’t always had complete control over the TARDIS’s destinations.
While the Doctor has managed to leave Earth in different ways during his exile, Carnival of Monsters offers us something interesting from a time travel perspective. I always like it when Doctor Who finds ways to play with time instead of simply using it as a type of destination, so I really enjoy the time loop aspect of the story, with the ship’s passengers repeating their behaviour.
I came to Doctor Who after several years of being a James Bond fan. It took a while to adjust from a world in which the hero regularly killed people with rarely a flicker of regret, to one where the sanctity of life was held in much higher regard. I remember being confused as to why the Doctor cared so much: if people he didn’t know died, why should it matter to him? Perhaps this makes me sound a callous youngster, but I just wasn’t used to individual lives being so significant for my hero. After all, they weren’t all his responsibility. It forced me to stop and question the morality of things.
The Doctor is livid when he sees the Timescope. We’ve already heard him tell Jo that he campaigned for them to be banned, but that was a calm conversation with his friend. Though his strength of feeling might be inferred from that, it is only shown properly later. The show doesn’t always have time for a pause like this but it’s marvellous to see the Doctor’s passion and understand why he chooses to get involved so often.
Carnival of Monsters presents us with several alien species. The make-up on the Greys leaves a small amount of pink around their eyes and mouths, and I like how this highlights their features. The Greys are intent on protecting their own and we get plenty of political snippets throughout Robert Holmes’ script. It’s an unpleasant society and there are plenty of parallels to be drawn with our own, which I do like and seems to be fairly common at this time. Some still cut close decades later.
The two travellers seem harmless enough at first, simply trying to eek out a living through somewhat underhanded means. It’s the emphasis on the Timescope that makes us question them more thoroughly. I enjoyed the Doctor’s comparison of the Timescope to an ant farm – something that could once regularly be found in a toy department – and of course Carnival of Monsters was broadcast at a time when animal circuses were still more common.
The Drashigs stand out for me now due to the special effects used for them. But I do remember that when I started watching these older stories, I was, if not entirely oblivious, then certainly unbothered by them. I was more concerned with the story and the characters than anything else.