Liz Shaw: Cambridge research scientist, with half a dozen degrees in subjects including physics and medicine. A go-getter who never gave up, who could outsmart the Doctor, who saved the world with her electronic engineering skills on more than one occasion. A companion so good, the Doctor could go back to his laboratory at the end of a story, leaving her to finish saving the Earth. The best companion Doctor Who ever had, which is why she got fired.
Trouble is, not a lot of people have even heard of her. For most people, feminism started on Doctor Who with Sarah Jane Smith. And that’s not totally surprising: Liz Shaw only appeared in one season – the first Jon Pertwee season back in 1970. That’s 40 years ago.
Consisting of four stories – the four-part Spearhead from Space and the seven-part Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Ambassadors of Death and Inferno – season seven was probably the most adult of seasons, with some of the cleverest stories, which is naturally why the BBC threw them into a great big dustbin. For the most part, all we have left is an odd mix of colour and black-and-white versions of episodes, which is one of the reasons (apart from that whole seven-episode thing) that repeats have been fairly thin on the ground.
So how can we get an unknowing world to appreciate the value of Liz Shaw? Well, beginning this week (although not appearing necessarily every week, since these boys take time), I’m starting a four-part project called “Liz Shaw’s Best Bits”, which as the title suggests is a compilation of all the best bits of “Liz Shaw-i-ness” on Doctor Who. That’ll save you the three hours of viewing time necessary to get you through most of them, anyway.
The Ambassadors of Death This week, I’m starting with The Ambassadors of Death, Liz’s third story, and I’ll tell you for why. For my money, after the incomparable Caves of Androzani, The Ambassadors of Death is the best story old-school Doctor Who ever produced. It’s not perfect and the production values are very much of their time, but it’s a truly great bit of work.
The general plot is that we plucky Brits in the then near-future of 1980 (argh! UNIT dating controversy alert!) still have a space programme and have sent a space mission to Mars. Things begin to go wrong and the Doctor, exiled to Earth by the Time Lords and keeping himself gainfully occupied as UNIT’s scientific advisor, is called in to assist. It soon becomes clear that all is not what it seems and someone on Earth is interfering – and that Mars might not be as uninhabited as the first Mars mission suggested…
The Ambassadors of Death is notably the only crime story on Doctor Who – indeed, this is probably the most Avengers-esque story on Doctor Who, with Liz Shaw filling the Cathy Gale role nicely. It also plays cleverly on expectations set up by The Quatermass Experiment, that astronauts who venture into space are likely to end up different when they come back down again.
There are many plus points to Ambassadors: we have a proper villain who’s only in it for the money. He’s going around shooting people and burying the bodies. He switches allegiances whenever it’s convenient. He reports to a boss whose motivation isn’t world domination but who is simply misguided and trying to help the world wake up to what he thinks is an imminent alien invasion. And the aliens aren’t the baddies. It’s a human crime story with an alien backdrop and without the near-textual comments on morality the close-runner Doctor Who and the Silurians has.
It also has fantastic direction, probably the best ending to any Doctor Who story and Liz Shaw, being smart, offering witty one-liners, and getting captured (but hey, so does the Doctor), but still lording it over the villains. So, if you’ve 20 minutes to spare, peruse the first of Liz Shaw’s best bits: The Ambassadors of Death.
Part 1 – in which she speaks French without the aid of a TARDIS, masters technology, outsmarts the Doctor over a computer, uses a Geiger counter, does science, has a car chase and engineers an escape.
Part 2 – in which she tries to escape again, encourages a scientist to defect, insults a villain, gets offered a job, helps the Doctor build a machine to escape captivity then mops up the whole mess.
For the last two Big Finish releases, we’ve had something of a mystery. First, the Doctor winds up in 18th century Scotland where he bumps into his old companion (for he is old now) Jamie McCrimmon. Except something’s odd. Jamie doesn’t remember him and Scottish history has been strangely altered – Glasgow and Edinburgh have been destroyed and replaced by something that seems to be an oil refinery.
Well, it was pretty obvious from about halfway through Wreck of the Titan, but I won’t spoil it for you here. Needless to say though, following the revelations at the end of the play, something odd really is going on and the Doctor and Jamie are going to have to find out how to fix it.
This time, though, they’re going to have to fight the Cybermen to do it. But at least their old friend Zoe Heriot is along to help, in a conclusion that is both strange and really rather good. Warning: a few spoilers ahead for at least the first two plays, but I’ll do my best to avoid any biggies.
Stuart and I are having a little discussion over on his blog. We basically disagree on the nature of the companion’s role, particularly in the case of a female companion, on Doctor Who.
I argued that “It’s sexist to assume that the companion should not be shown to have other skills that may be as valuable as the Doctor’s and in some areas superior – or if she doesn’t, to fail to address her feelings on the subject.”
Stuart argues that “the companion is wholly subsidiary to the Doctor and need only exist to be a mouthpiece for the audience. I personally have no interest at all in the companion much beyond that.”
What do you think? Let’s throw it open to y’all with a question of the week:
What is the point of Doctor Who‘s companion? Should time be spent developing the role and showing his or her strengths? Or is that just a waste of time when all we really want is a cracking adventure and the Doctor saving the day? If so, is that sexist or simply the nature of a format in which there’s a 900-year-old male genius at the centre of it all? And are you even interested in the companions as characters?
As always, leave a comment with your answer, a link to your answer on your own blog or even leave it on Stuart’s blog for a change
For the last two Big Finish releases, we’ve had something of a mystery.