Serial T, in 4 parts
Written by: William Emms
Produced by: Verity Lambert
Directed by: Derek Martinus
"I'd not seen many episodes of the series at the time, so I was given an intensive course on what Doctor Who was all about. I sat down and watched some episodes, and Verity Lambert, the producer, asked me what I thought. I shocked her by commenting that I thought we should aim for higher standards! It was obviously not the thing to say, but when you're young and eager, you have high ideals." - Derek Martinus, director, quoted in The Handbook: The First Doctor by Howe, Stammers, and Walker (Virgin: 1994).
"Drahvins: Race of evil blonde babes who sadly never returned to threaten the Doctor after their encounter in Galaxy 4. But had the series ever taken off in America, well they'd have been a cert." - entry from Doctor Who: The Completely Useless Encyclopedia by Chris Howarth and Steve Lyons (Virgin: 1996).
This is my first real update to the web site in about three weeks, and it’s to review a bomb! Galaxy 4 was one of the best sleeping pills I’ve ever taken. It knocked me out not once but twice, the first time driving me into a slumber that lasted from about 8 pm to 2 am. The cold, dusty floor of my one-room apartment never felt more comfortable! I got up and watched The Face of Evil, which was a hell of a lot more fun.
Galaxy 4 is essentially a remake of the first Dalek serial. Once again, the Doctor lands on a dying planet and is caught between two warring factions of aliens, one faction consisting of physically beautiful blondes and the other faction consisting of mutant creatures and robots. Hell, even the sound effects are the same. The twist in The Daleks is that the robots are evil, Nazi-like oppressors who are trying to ethnically cleanse the Thals, who ironically look like Aryans. In Galaxy 4, the twist is that the beautiful people are the bad guys; the foxy, female Drahvins are the aggressors and the gooey, ammonia-breathing Rills are on the side of the angels.
Unlike The Daleks, Galaxy 4 pulls out a club and beats you about the head with its message of tolerance. Towards the end of part four, the Doctor and the Rills spew a bunch of trite platitudes about how it doesn’t matter what somebody looks like if they’re really very nice. Blah, blah, blah. I associate that kind of empty preaching with Star Trek, not Doctor Who. The Daleks is more successful because both the Daleks and the Thals are well-developed societies. By contrast, the Rills and the Drahvins are bland stereotypes.
The Drahvins are supposedly a pack of tough warrior women, but they spend most of the episode whining and failing to kill a lot of really small, cute-looking robots called Chumblies (baby Daleks?). Not exactly a pack of fearsome conquerors, are they? Like the Happiness Patrol, they rely on the shock value of their appearance. "Oh, my God! Chicks with huge guns!" Yeah, it’s a memorable image, obviously because men do most of the gun toting in our society. But a novelty appearance doesn’t necessarily make a great villain.
To make matters worse, the Doctor is dreadful in this episode. Poor Bill Hartnell flubs about a zillion lines, though it hardly matters since his dialogue is so bad. In one scene, he even gets a line right but backtracks and screws it up. "As a matter of fact," he says, "I think we should get some long deserved...undeserved peace...for once." Whatever, man. In this serial, the Doctor is less like an intergalactic explorer and more like your embarrassing, senile grandpa. It’s not all Hartnell’s fault, however. In one scene, the Doctor attempts to sabotage the Rills’ breathing apparatus before he’s even determined whether or not they are evil! The Doctor hardly ever kills, in my experience, especially when he’s not in full possession of the facts. Nice scripting, guys.
Peter Purves and Maureen O’Brien pick up some of the slack and give good performances as the Doctor’s companions. By the time Galaxy 4 was over, I got the feeling that I’ve been underestimating them as actors. But aside from this pleasant revelation, I got very little joy from listening to the BBC audio release of the serial (yes, this is another "lost" one). Purves does a good job narrating the story, providing information about what’s happening on screen that can’t be understood through listening to the dialogue alone.
I’d wager that Galaxy 4 was nice to look at, since Derek Martinus, probably my favorite Doctor Who director, was behind the camera. Martinus was responsible for classics like The Ice Warriors, Spearhead from Space, The Tenth Planet, and, if I’m not mistaken, the lost epic and possibly best episode ever, Evil of the Daleks. Martinus is renowned for creating good shock moments, such as the Auton street massacre in Spearhead, and legend has it that his direction of the Rills made them appear quite frightening, considering that they were guys in rubber suits. I guess we’ll never know for sure, though.
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OVERALL RATING: C-
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