The Savages

Episode 1

Hannah: I miss the individual episode titles.

We're not even three minutes into the first episode before Hannah's archaeological sensibilities are affronted once again, this time by Dodo's suggestion that the people of the stone age were savages.

Hannah: They weren't savages! They had culture and things!

I always enjoy it when she inadvertently gets to the core of the story right at the very beginning.

The Doctor walks up to the city so that he can make some calculations with his Reacting Vibrator ("His what?!") but instead meets the city Elders, who have been following his exploits and have already anticipated the arrival of "the Traveller from Beyond Time". This is particularly impressive when you consider that the Doctor himself has no idea where he's going.

Hannah: I don't see how they could predict that he would arrive. Sounds like bollocks to me. But I like the idea of a group of people that already knows who he is before they've met him, so that he arrives somewhere where he already has a reputation.
Me: They're essentially watching his adventures on television, so maybe they're the in-universe equivalent of Doctor Who fans. Except, you know, civilised.
Hannah: Are Doctor Who fans not civilised, as a rule?
Me: They're mostly okay, as long as you stay away from social media. I've had to stop reading the official Facebook page because the user comments are so cancerous.

Their leader Jano is keen to show his celebrity guest just how civilised the Elders are (in contrast to the savages living outside of the city), so he gifts Steven and Dodo with an ornate dagger and a diamond-encrusted mirror. Dodo excitedly remarks that the diamonds are genuine.

Hannah: How can she tell? As Dave Gorman teaches us on Modern Life is Goodish, you can't identify a real diamond without specialist equipment. Or by holding it against a piece of newsprint.
Me: Well, considering none of these episodes actually exist anymore, we can't tell what's going on. For all you know she could have picked up a newspaper in Tombstone.
Hannah: Those helmets look useless, by the way. Whose idea was it to give the city guards some protective headgear that doesn't even cover their heads?

Hannah, genre-savvy as ever, is convinced there's some corruption at work in this ostensibly perfect civilisation, but the Elders are reluctant to discuss their secret.

Hannah: It ruins the mystique a little when people are being so openly dodgy about the subject. Is it a drug, or something? A drug that increases their brain power, to the detriment of something else?

Then...

Hannah: Ah, they're like vampires. They suck the life energy out of the savages and absorb it into themselves. Then the extra energy turns the brain up, and they can use more of their intellect to achieve clever things that no one else has done before.
Me: You don't sound very impressed.
Hannah: I've read other stories like that.

The cliffhanger, in which Dodo wanders away from the guided tour and discovers one of the poor discarded savages lurching down the corridor, looks like something from a horror film. At least, that's what we assume it looks like.

Hannah: It's shrivelled like a zombie. I like this story. It's my kind of sci-fi.
Me: In what way?
Hannah: A colony that's so-called perfect, but with a horrible dark secret beneath it all. It's a lot like some episodes of modern Doctor Who in many ways, like "New Earth" or "The Beast Below". Perfection with an evil undercurrent.

Episode 2

The soundtrack feels a lot more atmospheric than usual; the string music for these episodes sounds completely unlike any of the incidental music we've heard in the series thus far.

Hannah: I'm liking the music in this. It's a lot more intense and emotional.

Hannah is disappointed that the Doctor doesn't seem too worried about Dodo's disappearance ("He has more interest in science than people sometimes"), although she's rather callous herself when a laboratory technician fluffs his line.

Hannah: Sack him.
Me: Sack him?
Hannah: Yeah. Fumble McFumbles.

In fact she hasn't been too impressed with the Doctor's behaviour in general; he's been "annoyingly aloof" from the beginning, ignoring the concerns of his companions and refusing to listen either when Dodo goes missing or when she returns shortly afterwards in a state of distress. It comes as a huge relief to find that he's equally suspicious of this "wonderful civilisation" and has been staying on the right side of his hosts while he worked out what was going on.

Hannah: So now they have a perfect opportunity to just go back to the TARDIS and leave.
Me: Except they're not going to want to leave if they know something's up.
Hannah: Exactly. That's why they can leave. Story-wise there always needs a reason for them to have to stay, and it's either because they can't or because they don't want to. They're staying because it's the right thing to do.
Me: We've come a long way since the morally-ambiguous Doctor of the early days. Three years ago the writers would have needed to cut him off from the TARDIS to get him to stick around and help.

For a story that doesn't often receive too much attention, Hannah seems even more engaged with it than usual.

Hannah: I like the pace that things are revealed; it's always a sign of good writing when the storyline keeps you curious but also doesn't keep you painfully in the dark for too long.

The Doctor makes an impassioned appeal to the Elders.

Hannah: Why is he calling himself a human?
Me: He's probably just speaking figuratively.
Hannah: Jano doesn't seem to appreciate being compared to the Daleks. He should be flattered that he's in such esteemed company.

Inevitably, the Doctor's plea only results in him being taken away to have his own life-force extracted.

Hannah: I wonder if he's going to break the machine. By being too shiny.
Me: Too shiny?
Hannah: Yeah. He's full of life-force. Lots of it! He's a Time Lord, he's not human. Maybe this won't work.

As the Doctor undergoes the procedure it's obvious that the episode is building up to a climax, but it's clearly not in any hurry to get there.

Hannah: It's a long cliffhanger!

Then, two seconds later...

Hannah: There we go.

Episode 3

Hannah: The choices people are making throughout the story seem to be less stupid than usual.

Jano is now planning to perform the same operation on Steven and Dodo, once he's transferred the Doctor's life-force into himself.

Hannah: Greedy bastards.

Hannah is uncomfortable when one of the savages, Tor, tells Steven and Dodo that the Doctor has been "used" ("Such a dirty word"), but she's downright livid when an enemy guard asks Tor where our heroes are hiding and he accidentally gives away their location by glancing towards it.

Hannah: Well, it's all his fault then. He looked at the cave. They wouldn't have gone in there if he hadn't been loitering around and given them away. I would have pretended to give them away, sent the guard down the wrong tunnel, and then crept up behind him in the dark and knocked him out; it's not like his helmet would have done any good.
Me: You're very sneaky.
Hannah: Yes. I'm also not stupid.

As luck would have it, Dodo's new mirror works nicely against their light guns.

Hannah: Very handy that she was given a mirror as a present. Almost as if this was always going to happen.
Me: I do love a good Chekhov's Gun.
Hannah: I like the way the script emphasises how human the savages are, showing that they're capable of great buildings and art; it makes their usage by the Elders all the more abhorrent. It's just a shame they've jumped to calling the strangers "gods" as soon as Steven proves the guards can be successfully defeated.

Meanwhile, Jano isn't quite feeling himself; it looks like the transference hasn't quite gone according to plan.

Hannah: Has his brain been fried?

But it's even better than that: he starts doing a spot-on impersonation of William Hartnell.

Hannah: Hmmm.

Predictably, this is our main talking point after the episode ends.

Hannah: So even though he's talking as if he were the Doctor, he hasn't actually stolen the Doctor out of his head?
Me: The Doctor's mind and body are still intact, they just took some of his life-force from him. It's like giving blood; you take blood out of someone and give it to someone else, and then the donor's body replaces the missing plasma and red blood cells. Normally the same thing happens with the life-force; it's removed from the savages to give to the Elders, and then the savages eventually recover.
Hannah: And the Elders aren't at all disturbed by the fact that they suddenly get the memories and personalities of the savages?
Me: That bit doesn't normally happen. That's the point.
Hannah: That's what I'm saying, I thought perhaps they had accidentally stolen the Doctor's soul this time because he's different.
Me: Not stolen, exactly, it's just that they've never done it to a Time Lord before, so it's having this unforeseen side-effect. Although obviously the concept of a Time Lord still hasn't been invented yet.
Hannah: So his life essence is a bit different and has started making them talk funny?

Episode 4

Hannah: He's very good at imitating the Doctor. Pity we can't see the action.
Me: Yes, he's got exactly the right speech pattern and mannerisms and everything.

Jano starts giving orders to the guards and Hannah briefly wonders whether he's gone back to normal, but we later find out that he hasn't just absorbed the Doctor's intellect; he's also received a permanent sense of conscience.

Hannah: Does this mean that not a single one of the Elders or guards has a conscience at all? They're completely happy to go along with the idea that the savages are basically sub-humans?
Me: I believe the original idea was for this story to be a parable about apartheid-era South Africa, so I think we're supposed to assume that it's a sort of institutionalised discrimination.
Hannah: Even at the time of apartheid there were people who disagreed with it.
Me: It wasn't enough, though, was it? Apartheid lasted for over 40 years.
Hannah: But I find it a little bit questionable that not a single person ever has tried to go against this system. Either that or they've been very unsuccessful.

Having shown Jano a better way of life, the Doctor decides to forgo diplomacy in favour of sheer brute force and he cheerfully joins Jano and the savages in smashing up the laboratory.

Hannah: They could just rebuild it, though. What they need to do is find and destroy the blueprints, wipe the data from the computer, and hope that nobody remembers enough to rebuild it. I'd like to see all this savage violence.

It looks like the Elders and the savages are on the verge of peace, but they need a mediator to smooth things over.

Hannah: I bet they turn to the Doctor and find that he's gone. It's always the way. The Doctor will start something, but he won't stay and finish it. He can't be expected to lead everybody and show them all the way.

Then I feel her starting to squeeze my hand when she realises what's happening.

Hannah: No, I like Steven! I can see what's happening here! I really like him. He's possibly my favourite companion so far, as an individual. Ian and Barbara together are a good pair, but individually, Steven is my favourite.

Thankfully, some fragments of Steven's departure exist on Super 8 film, and we get to see the Doctor shaking his hand and saying goodbye.

Hannah: It's nice to see people actually being able to say goodbye to each other. Sometimes it feels too quick.

After Steven walks away for the very last time, we get a bittersweet exchange between the Doctor and Dodo as they return to the TARDIS.

Hannah: Oh, it didn't have a eulogy.
Me: A eulogy?
Hannah: Yeah, the Doctor always says something nice. Well, I wasn't expecting him to leave. I suppose he's a good person for them to choose, but I'm trying to work out whether or not Steven really would have chosen to stay. Wasn't he happy going around with the Doctor? I know he's found somewhere he's wanted, but he's still a bit of a prisoner.
Me: He was already a prisoner when they first picked him up in The Chase, so I don't suppose he's too worried about it.
Hannah: Anyway, I think that ended quite well. And it's even better because usually the Doctor just walks away from things and says "Hopefully you can rebuild your civilisation, we're leaving now." Whereas in this situation, everything has changed and they're sort of responsible for it, so it's good to see them following through with something.

The Score

Hannah: Well. I love that kind of sci-fi story, where it's a perfect civilisation but you know there's something going on underneath, and then they uncover some kind of morally-corrupt problem and fix it. It had a good ending and I'm sad that Steven's gone, but they did it well and at least he got to say goodbye. I feel a little bit uncertain because we couldn't see any of the action, so I don't know what the story deserves. But if I'm judging it on what I can see, I really enjoyed it and couldn't find anything too wrong with it. I genuinely feel like there's no reason not to give it...

10/10

Wow. Our first perfect score. And to a story that doesn't even exist anymore!