Who In Review: The Awakening

Regarding the Peter Davison era, I have a lot to choose from as my favourite story! As with William Hartnell, there's no actual story which I really dislike and plenty which are remarkably good. Even snoozefests like Time-Flight, Arc Of Infinity and Resurrection Of The Daleks have a lot going for them, and Kinda, Snakedance, Enlightenment and Frontios are all fantastic serials. And whilst I could easily go with the flow and pick The Caves Of Androzani (it has so many things which make it great - scripted by Robert Holmes, Directed by Graeme Harper, everyone acting their socks off and the only two female characters being the only survivors at the end of it all), as good as it is I find it a little too grim and gritty, and isn't a story I can just sit down and watch. No, my favourite Peter Davison story is a little two-parter called

The Awakening

This story from Davison's final season has everything in it which worked best with the 5th Doctor apart from Nyssa (who was by far his best companion). We have a familiar setting given a sinister twist, a strong supporting cast of recognisable characters, the Doctor being underestimated, the Doctor being captured, the Doctor teaming up with a mature woman to sort things out and plenty of dialogue which allows Davison to demonstrate his range.

Of all the two-parters from the original run, I think The Awakening works best, and given it's running time of around 45-50 minutes I think there are quite a few scriptwriters from the more recent series' who could learn a lot about structure and pacing by watching it!

The story hits the ground running; three horses running, actually, intercut with clips of main character Jane Hampden hunting round a stable yard for Ben Wolsey. It's a good start, mixing expectancy with the mundane, and sets up the theme for the whole story. It's a mix of science fiction with the backdrop of slow rural life; historical re-enactment with Little England's ancient Pagan rituals; tales of the Devil with biologically engineered aliens. There's a breathlessness about the serial with people running about everywhere and occasionally stopping to take count of what's going on. In fact, there really is an awful lot of running - upon arrival, the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough witness somebody running through the crumbling crypt of Little Hodcombe church; later Tegan makes a run for it when she hears her Grandfather has disappeared, followed by Turlough; both are later seen running through Little Hodcombe's deserted lanes, the same lanes where the Doctor bumps into the scarred man who stole Tegan's bag who then legs it unfeasibly fast toward the church; later still we see Will Chandler running through a cornfield and it ends with everyone running back to the church. Will even brings an end to the proceedings by running at poor, deranged Sir George! What I guess I'm trying to say is that The Awakening has a lot of energy and makes the most of its stunning, Summery locations.

Having grown up in a rural, agricultural area, Little Hodcombe features a lot that I can relate to with the unmarked country lanes, gorgeous old cottages, run down outhouses, cornfields, churchyards - there's even a ford like the one in the village next to where I grew up. All this is very personal, but it's also very much a part of English life outside the cities in the last century, before the villages got overrun with New Builds and modern estates. Even the major players are country village stereotypes - Jane Hampden is the local schoolteacher with a background in History, Ben Wolsey is a local landowner, Hutchinson the local magistrate, Verney the Local Historian and Joseph Willow is a local policeman. What also makes this story refreshing is that all these characters are over 40 (Willow being the youngest and no less than in his late 30s). This emphasises the atmosphere of the rural surroundings and provides Davison's Doctor with some worldly characters to bounce off. It's a set up very reminiscent of a lot of John Wyndham's writing.

Each of the cast gives a brilliant performance, but I have to give special mention to Polly James. Many say that her erstwhile co-Liver Bird, Nerys Hughes, was one of the best companions Davison never had and I agree that they have great chemistry in Kinda, but I think Jane Hampden is a wonderful foil for the 5th Doctor. A natural ally, having been berating Hutchinson for letting the war games get out of hand just before the Doctor was dragged into Colonel Wolsey's fantastically opulent drawing room-cum-office, she teams up with the Doctor and Will after she stumbles across the hidden passage leading to Wolsey's drawing room. The end of Part One sees her get some wonderful lines as she comes to terms with the Science Fiction aspects of the serial which the Doctor casually throws at her. Questioning his assertion that the squashy metal Hutchinson discarded comes from the planet Raaga, and his more in-depth, Terileptil-referencing explanation, her reaction is:

"Oh no, I've escaped from one madman to find another. Do you expect me to believe what you're saying?"

He does, and given the circumstances, she rather realistically accepts what he says 'for the sake of argument', only to learn 'a spaceship...from Hakol...landed here..'

"Well, more likely a computer controlled reconnaissance vehicle." the Doctor expounds.

"How silly of me not to know..." Jane replies.

The Doctor continues to convince her with the chilling realisation that the Malus, a creature on board the Hakol probe, is still around behind the huge crack in the church wall, which leads into one of the best cliffhangers from 80s Who - the Doctor, hands to his ears in pain, engulfed by smoke spewing from the gaping hole in the church wall beyond which can just be made out a pair of huge, glowing green eyes, while Jane's cry of 'Doctor!' is swallowed by the closing theme. Polly James' very naturalistic acting makes Jane a hugely accessible character for the audience, reacting to Hutchinson and Willow's overzealous enthusiasm for the Games as any down-to-earth, middle-aged schoolteacher would and to the Doctor's outlandish claims with the amusement and growing fear of your average member of the public. There's a lovely scene towards the end where, having watched Tegan press down the Big-Curvy-Lever-With-The-Red-Handle to close the TARDIS doors, when the Doctor reaches to open them having defeated the projection in the console room, Jane pulls the lever before he reaches it (with a rather smug smirk). She also gets a great scene in Part One where, when told by Sgt Willow that it's just as well they've chosen Tegan to be Queen of the May as it could 'so easily have been (her)' she immediately slaps him across the face.

And let's just take a moment to look at Sergeant Joseph Willow. Doctor Who has featured some horrible monsters over the years, and an equal amount of nasty and unpleasant villains. But I'd argue that Sgt Willow is possibly one of the vilest characters the show has seen. Sir George Hutchinson is clearly the main bad guy in The Awakening. He's the one who first discovered the Hakol probe and it's he which the Malus is using to firstly instigate the local Civil War re-enactment and then work the villagers up into a bloodthirsty frenzy where they're perfectly happy to stand around and watch a complete stranger get burnt at the stake. But Hutchinson is under the control of the Malus, he clearly has a telepathic link to it which nobody else exhibits, and so, no matter how cruel and insane his actions, he isn't entirely to blame. Willow, on the other hand, is a truly nasty piece of work. He gleefully arrests the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough outside the church, waving his musket in the Doctor's face on more than one occasion. He relishes telling Jane that Tegan is to be the Queen of the May, deserves more than a slap for the aggressive way he tells her she could have been chosen instead, and it's actually incredibly grim when he drags Tegan into an upstairs room at Ben's house and tells her to change into the May Queen costume. When asked why, his response is 'Just do as you're told...unless you want me to do it for you'. The scene actually makes my skin crawl, as does the lascivious way he acts when collecting her modern clothes once she's changed. Even Ben Wolsey, at one point, asks him if he has to enjoy himself so much when hunting Tegan down. Throughout the story he plays Hutchinson's right hand thug, and he plays it incredibly well, far outdoing the main villain himself by revelling in the bullying, threats and pursuit more than seems necessary, so it's all the more surprising, and somewhat worrying, that once the Malus has been defeated both Wolsey and Jane agree that there will be no recriminations! It's a strong indication of how differently such actions were viewed back in the early 80s (and, sadly, until very recently) and I imagine, and hope, that such a character wouldn't be let off so lightly in the series nowadays.

The second episode sees the Doctor, Jane and Will in a mad dash to bring the war games to an end and thus deprive the Malus of the psychic energy on which it feeds. Meanwhile, Turlough is locked up with Tegan's grandfather who provides a bit of backstory before they manage to escape. It's nicely paced and sees all the threads come together for a final showdown with Hutchinson and the Malus. On the way there are some great character pieces, be it Wolsey's apology to Tegan, the Doctor and Jane's discussions in the secret tunnel, his confrontation with Hutchinson ("You speak treason!" "Fluently!") or his slightly tactless reassurances to Will that history won't repeat itself ("The toast of Little Hodcombe." "'Tain't funny, she was screaming!" "Well, that's nothing to what Tegan would've done."). I also love the concept of the Malus feeding off psychic energy - the idea that strong emotions produce energy which can be tapped and used - and that because it's so evil it requires the energy to be negative. The idea that the Hakol probe carried a giant, anthropomorphic biological weapon (which was mistaken by the 17th Century villagers for the Devil) is a fascinating one which I'd love to see explored again, especially since the Malus' design is so striking. Maybe one day, the Doctor will encounter another Malus, or its creators on Hakol, and we can see the buried creature in all its glory.

My love of The Awakening owes as much to my personal feelings and memories of growing up in similar surroundings and seeing them at the centre of a Doctor Who adventure as it does the story and the characters. But without those characters, it wouldn't be half as good as it is nor tap my nostalgia in the same way. Both The Dæmons and The Android Invasion feature similar Olde English villages but neither feature such relatable characters (my own village never had a white witch or a tweedy Squire, although there may have been one or two androids wandering about). And the level of modernity apparent in Little Hodcombe mirrors my own home growing up in the 80s and 90s. But regardless of these things, The Awakening is a great story, and it's a shame the Doctor didn't leave Tegan (and Turlough) visiting her grandfather while he went off round the universe with Jane and Will. Now, there's an idea for Big Finish!