Doctor Who A-Z #54: Inferno (1970)

Season Seven is one of those seasons of Doctor Who that’s cherished, in part, because it has a unique tone which the show immediately moved on from. You can think of other examples: seasons Fourteen, Seventeen, Eighteen and Twenty-Six have the same air, as do series four and ten of the revival, to say nothing of the discrete arcs of the Key to Time, Trial of a Time Lord and Flux. All of those other seasons, though, were the last ones before a key member of the production team – a producer, script editor or showrunner – left their post. The seasons after those other examples were different because they were being made by different people, whereas Season Eight has the same script editor, the same producer and most of the same writers as Season Seven. Rather than being the result of a behind-the-scenes shift, the change in Season Eight can only be ascribed to Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks looking at Season Seven and realising they couldn’t develop this particular version of Doctor Who any further.

As the last story in the season, it’s tempting to look at Inferno for clues as to why they thought that. Its first-time writer, Don Houghton, would return in Season Eight to write the only story of that run that really feels of a piece with Season Seven’s grit and pessimism; Inferno, meanwhile, serves notice that the show is getting ready to leave contemporary Earth. Writing the most fanciful story of Season Seven and the most grounded story of Season Eight means Houghton is well-placed to bridge the tonal gap, but Inferno doesn’t seem like it’s trying to smooth anything over. It is best remembered for an astonishing break in the show’s reality, as the Doctor’s ongoing experiments with his broken TARDIS send him off to a parallel Earth, where the Brigadier is replaced by a fascist Brigade Leader officiating over the same drilling project his counterpart is trying to stop.

Watching the parallel Earth scenes, it’s easy to see why Inferno is many people’s favourite Jon Pertwee story; it has the same appeal as the “It’s a Wonderful Life episode” that’s such a television staple. You get to see all the familiar faces playing some very unfamiliar characters, with Caroline John particularly shining as the ruthless Section Leader Shaw. Without this dual role, John’s last story would be a feeble showcase for Liz, introducing her without fanfare and packing her off without a leaving scene. The stated rationale for this, that having a scientist as a companion left the Doctor without anyone to explain things to, is total rubbish. It might be legitimate if this show regularly drew inspiration from real-world science, but a 20th century human scientist confronted by the Nestene Consciousness is going to be as baffled as a 20th century anybody. Even if the show did deploy actual scientific concepts, the Doctor could always explain them to UNIT. He is, after all, their scientific advisor.

But then the Doctor rarely seems to be on speaking terms with UNIT in Season Seven. His jaunt to a parallel universe is, as noted above, an attempt to reactivate the TARDIS – he later denies that he was trying to flee, but we’ve seen him attempting to leave Earth in Spearhead from Space, and he’s made no secret of resenting being stuck here. This is not a terribly heroic thing for the Doctor to be doing, but then the Doctor can’t be a hero on this parallel Earth. The system is too corrupt, the Inferno Project is too advanced, and we get to see him traumatically fail to save Earth.

And this, perhaps, is why Dicks and Letts decided to change course next season. There is a tight limit on how much of a hero the Doctor can be on contemporary Earth; over the course of the 1960s, he became a more explicitly revolutionary figure, but the BBC obviously weren’t going to allow the Doctor to overthrow General Franco or anything similarly topical. Even so, it’s striking how much of a bad run he’s been on since defeating the Nestene. He failed to stop the Brigadier killing the Silurians and stomped off rather than help clean up the aftermath of the attempted coup in The Ambassadors of Death. Inferno takes this to the logical conclusion, confronting the Doctor with the world-destroying consequences of his indifference to this planet. And it’s telling that, when the Doctor returns, he does something that William Hartnell’s Doctor did right at the start of his hero’s journey, and vengefully smashes up Stahlmann’s machinery.

Despite being as ad hoc as any other television serial of its era, the First Doctor’s reign has been reinterpreted successfully as a modern-style character arc. The Third Doctor hasn’t received similar attention, despite his era working similarly well. Viewed through the lens of Inferno, Season Seven is a single serialised story about the Doctor being forced to confront the consequences of his disdain for contemporary Earth. He’s rewarded soon enough by being let out into the universe, which ironically sends him back to being complacent about Earth, an attitude which trips him up in his final story. It’s a wayward arc, for sure. But then, as the Doctor extrapolates from his adventures on parallel Earth, free will is not an illusion after all.

Blessed with a fantastic guest cast including Olaf Pooley, Christopher Benjamin, Sheila Dunn and Derek Newark, Inferno still isn’t a perfect serial. Its monsters, the Primords, are actually rather cute, with their wobbly false fangs and Pekinese fur. There seems to have been some disagreement over which animals they should sound like, and the compromise is to make them sound like every animal at once. But it does have Douglas Camfield, Doctor Who‘s greatest director, and it makes fantastic use of electronic library music including selections from Doctor Who‘s legendary original theme arranger Delia Derbyshire. Most of all, it shows you what happens when the Doctor can’t save the world, and every now and then the show needs to remind you this is a possibility. The stakes, going forward, are much higher as a result – even if the show’s tone changes significantly.

Next: Terror of the Autons (1971)

Graham’s Archive – Inferno

Full Doctor Who Archive Here