Revisiting Old Doctor Who: Inferno

[Broomstick]

Inferno
(It's Volcano Day!)

Ah, the good old days of 7 part serials! You definitely had a different pace and a different sort of plot and character development. The downside, of course, is that it comes in 7 different parts, about 3 and a half hours of watching Doctor Who. I'd seen one or two parts of this before, but never the whole thing.

I have to say this is one of the better Doctor Who stories out of the whole run (although it does have what I consider a flaw, see below about hairy beastmen). It doesn't rely on special effects (not that there's anything wrong with special effects) but rather interaction and drama between characters. It does play fast and loose with the science, but that's nothing new for Doctor Who.

Clearly this was inspired by Project Mohole, a mid-1960's effort to drill into and through the Earth's crust. Inferno has an arrogant scientist type with a loayl female assistant, which is an interesting parallel to the Doctor and his assistant Liz Shaw. Both are irritable. Sir Keith the project manager bring in an outside drilling expert who is immediately snubbed by the scientist Stahlman, and the Brigadier has to keep a lid on the whole people problem. The Doctor is mainly interested in getting his TARDIS console to work (for some reason it's outside the actual TARDIS this episode) and Liz is worried the Doctor is going to get killed doing his experiments. Meanwhile, Sir Keith is off to some government ministry to try to get the project halted and Stahlman sabotages the project computer because he doesn't like what it's saying, mainly "stop drilling".

Oh, yeah, the computer - this is definitely the days before the PC. The thing is huge. Well, back in 1970 that's what computers were, huge, and this one is actually improbably small for the time. They also hadn't heard of video screens, the computer outputs onto narrow paper tape. So help me, I think the "microcircuit" removed and crushed by Stahlman was supposed to be some sort of fancy vacuum tube thing.

Anyhow, the story develops pretty nicely for awhile before the Doctor uses his TARDIS console to accidentally slip into a parallel universe which is also conducting its own inferno project, but it's much further along. They break through to the mantle, disaster ensues, and the Doctor escapes back to the original dimension where there is still (barely) enough time to stop the drilling. There are a few cut scenes during the alternative universe sequences where we get glimpses back to the original time line.

The fascist version of the UK was interesting, as were the differences in the people in the parallel world.

This isn't so much intellect saves the day as forewarned is forearmed. The Doctor doesn't foresee the utter disaster that is to come, he experiences it then has a chance to go back and save a world. Any intellect involved comes mainly from his working on the TARDIS which enables him to travel "sideways" rather than into the past or future.

I did mention there was what I considered a flaw in this whole thing, the Green Slime and the Beast Men. A green ooze comes out of the drill hole, rather than geysering out under great pressure? Touching it transforms people into gray/green wolfman types? (I found out later they're called "primords", but the term is never used in the story itself.) I did mention they play fast and loose with the science, right? But, it being Doctor Who, we can grant them this little weirdness. If you can accept the Green Slime that turns people into man-beasts, it actually does work. I think it could have also been a good story without them, just based on the human interactions and the issues around the drilling project.

[Uraniun235]

Oh, yeah, the computer - this is definitely the days before the PC. The thing is huge. Well, back in 1970 that's what computers were, huge, and this one is actually improbably small for the time. They also hadn't heard of video screens, the computer outputs onto narrow paper tape. So help me, I think the "microcircuit" removed and crushed by Stahlman was supposed to be some sort of fancy vacuum tube thing.

Transistorized computers became commercially successful in the early 60s, and graphic displays while rare and expensive were certainly around; I doubt that nobody would have heard of them in 1970. More likely that the BBC didn't have the money to rent or borrow one to operate.

[Eternal_Freedom]

A few interesting trivia notes, because I'm a total nerd and watch the DVD with the production subtitles:

-The TARDIS console: The Doctor removes it to run experiments,because obviously it's easier to move the console than the whole TARDIS (yeah, right). Out-of-universe, it was because the scriptwriters were considering abandoning the TARDIS prop altogether, and having the Doctor fly around just on the console.

-There is a scene in part 3 or 4 where the Doctor is fighting a Primord on top of a gas tank, and some RSF soldiers shoot the Primord. Because of various stuntman requirements, the soldier who shoots the Primord is the same stuntman who does the fall shot. He shot himself! (eat your heart out Red Dwarf and JFK).

-That same fall scene was at the time a world record, 50 feet IIRC.

-The familiar world UNIT soldiers used prop guns, whereas the fascist RSF soldiers used fully operational old Russian carbines. Fun.

-During the chase scene with the Doctor driving Bessie, the bumper ripped one of the stuntmen's leg open, but he insisted they keep filming before he get medical attention.

-Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier) was renowned for being unshakable in the studio. In the fascist world where we first meet the Brigadier, the cast played a trick on him by all wearing eyepatches for his big reveal scene, trying to force him to laugh. He kept going, to the consternation of the other cast and the director.

-Out of the speaking characters with facial hair, only Sir Keith's was real. Stahlman and the Brigadier wore fakes.

Phew, my anal-retentive memory still works!

[Broomstick]

Oh, yeah, the computer - this is definitely the days before the PC. The thing is huge. Well, back in 1970 that's what computers were, huge, and this one is actually improbably small for the time. They also hadn't heard of video screens, the computer outputs onto narrow paper tape. So help me, I think the "microcircuit" removed and crushed by Stahlman was supposed to be some sort of fancy vacuum tube thing.

Transistorized computers became commercially successful in the early 60s, and graphic displays while rare and expensive were certainly around; I doubt that nobody would have heard of them in 1970. More likely that the BBC didn't have the money to rent or borrow one to operate.

Yes, but for the general public, which is who the show was aimed at, they hadn't really hit the radar screen yet. Look at any show from that period (roughly 1965 and 1975) that had a computer in it and either it was a boxy IBM mainframe with the big tape reels or it was something like what we saw here, a large boxy thing spitting out paper. That was true up until the early 80's, even after the first small-box PC's and Apples came out in the late 70's.

There was no way in hell the BBC was going to pay for an actual computer as a prop in the 1970's. It's a fake, just like the TARDIS console and about as operable. The prop had to fit the public's idea of a computer, which was that of a big boxy thing, maybe with lights, and a paper output. The first computer I got to use was, in fact, a mainframe and the output was an old teletype terminal that used huge sheets of paper with alternating white and green stripes. In 1976, six years after Inferno was broadcast. In the movies and TV that's also what you got, maybe with some sort of weird oscilloscope screen output for a really advanced/futuristic/alien computer. TOS Star Trek was probably the most advanced in that regard, in that they actually had a type of video output on the bridge, but that was waaaay in the future. Inferno was set in the '70's, so the computer prop was just right for the times.

The same holds true for the "microcircut" prop which, as I said, might have been a vacuum tube of some sort, or something that looked similar. Inferno was made in 1970, vacuum tubes were common as lightbulbs back then, but almost none of the general public had ever seen a transistor, or knew what one looked like. Well, OK, there were some radios that had them, but even so, the bits were HUGE compared to what we have now printed on chips. Vacuum tube thingy as part of an electronic object was much more familiar to the audience than itty bitty stuff that looked like metallic confetti. Not to mention the prop they used was much more visible on the TV screen. It helps if the props make sense to the average viewer, and "delicate glass tube thing" was much more recognizable as a computer part, or part of a complicated electric machine, than a little dab of a transistor would be. And probably a lot cheaper, too, in those days. Like I said, they were common as light bulbs, wouldn't surprise me if they gone down to the local hardware store and bought a couple, or even used some burned out ones from around the studio.

Maybe some of the trivia types can help with this question: the Tom Baker TARDIS console was still the old one, if I recall correctly, but with Davison they started to get viewscreens and screen text, we see this in The Five Doctors TARDIS. Were those actual PC computer displays or still dummied up? Clearly, by that time they had adopted the traits of the PC's available, and the output does look like it could be that, and the cost of PC's had come down sufficiently to make it affordable. When did they switch to actual computer displays?

Then again, in the McGann movie the TARDIS displays had a decidedly retro look, what we now call steampunk, in many ways including the date displays.

[Patrick Degan]

Maybe some of the trivia types can help with this question: the Tom Baker TARDIS console was still the old one, if I recall correctly, but with Davison they started to get viewscreens and screen text, we see this in The Five Doctors TARDIS. Were those actual PC computer displays or still dummied up? Clearly, by that time they had adopted the traits of the PC's available, and the output does look like it could be that, and the cost of PC's had come down sufficiently to make it affordable. When did they switch to actual computer displays?

The console seen in Tom Baker's second season (the first time we saw the TARDIS interior in his tenure, with "Planet Of Evil") was the frame of the "old" console with new control panels on it. The instrumentation was the design that was seen throughout Baker's tenure and there was a large display screen on one panel of that console. A new frame was built for the prop as used from "The Invisible Enemy" all the way through "Logopolis" The aforementioned screen, however, was a dummy. The set designers may have had an idea to use it as the actual main viewer, since the console room set had no monitor in it at the time but gained one in a wall recess when the TARDIS sets were all refurbished, so from that point onward, the screen remained just a dummy feature. When the console prop was spruced up for Peter Davison, the data screen was changed to the more box-like raised screen on the surface of the one panel. The only time it was seen actually giving a readout was in "Castrovalva" but I think the rest of the time that screen, too, was a non-working dummy. The console seen from "The Five Doctors" on through "Battlefield" was the first one with live display screens.