Who Review: The Awakening
The Doctor takes Tegan and Turlough to visit Tegan’s grandfather, Andrew Verney, in the village of Little Hodcombe. The year is 1984, but on their arrival, they are greeted rather unwelcomingly by seventeenth century soldiers. It appears the village is reenacting the occasion when the English Civil War(s) came to the village, except it seems the villagers are getting a bit carried away with the realism. There have been acts of vandalism, and “high spirits” which the town’s squire, Sir George Hutchinson dismisses. But local schoolteacher, Jane Hampden, is more than a little concerned. Sir George has closed the village to outsiders for the duration of their “war games,” which is why he holds the Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough under arrest. As for Tegan’s grandfather, it seems he has mysteriously disappeared. Strange things are certainly going on in Little Hodcombe, and when the Doctor encounters a young lad from 1643, and an inexplicable build-up of psychic energy, he fears alien interference. But to what end? And can he stop it before the games come to their grisly conclusion?
SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen this serial. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!
“The Awakening” started life as a four-part story that writer Eric Pringle was having trouble telling. Working with script editor Eric Saward, the script eventually became a two-parter, and Saward undertook a number of changes to make it fit a shorter format. This made for a tight, pacy narrative, but I think it also left parts of the story rushed, and required big chunks of exposition to replace story that had to be edited out for time.
Despite its brevity, “The Awakening” is a good story. The premise involves an alien being called the Malus who thrives off of psychic energy, which it uses to manipulate those around it. The Malus first appeared during the Civil War, attracted by the large quantity of psychic energy produced by all that fighting. Three hundred years later, when Sir George stumbled upon the Malus in the local church, he came under its influence, and started reenactments of the Civil War to create the psychic energy so desired by the Malus. To protect itself from those that would try to thwart its plan, the Malus can use psychic energy to create projections, apparitions of creatures and soldiers that have sufficient physical properties to do real harm. Somewhere along the way, the Malus created a time rift, which is how young Will Chandler came to join the Doctor in 1984. Unfortunately, there is much that could have been developed in the story with another episode or two. Why did the Malus appear originally? To what end was it drawing psychic energy–to survive, or to escape? Why do we only see a head? Why did it create the time rift? Alas, these and many other questions must remain unanswered.
The sets and costumes are great, with the added bonus of this being “period” set in present day, so there was no need to hide phone boxes, cars, and telegraph poles. I really can’t fault much about the production. There aren’t a lot of special effects, but, for the most part, the effects team did well. I especially liked the lizard-like Malus projection in the TARDIS. We first see it on a wall, colored to blend in. None of the TARDIS crew notice it at first, so it’s up to the observant viewer to realize it’s there before Tegan points it out. Of course, when the Doctor taps into the Malus’s psychic frequency and destroys the projection, there’s green goo. For some reason, Doctor Who monsters like to spew green goo when they die.
Probably the most dodgy effect in the show is the giant Malus face that breaks through the wall of the church. It looks a bit more theatrical than I think they originally intended. If I’m right, and they were going for something with a more organic appearance–I’m sorry, but it looks like something someone made (which of course it is).
When the Malus is in its death throes, it focuses what psychic energy it has left to try to destroy the Doctor and those with him who are getting in its way. This creates a very tense and dramatic finale, where one person is decapitated by three soldier projections (we don’t see the beheading, but from the way they place their swords around the person’s neck, you know what happened when the camera cut away), and people start turning on each other.
Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor answers questions in what is clearly an attempt to use exposition to make up for a lack of episode time. This is a shame, as I noted above, since so much of what the Doctor says could have been shown given another couple of episodes. It also means the Doctor has somehow figured out where the Malus came from, and how to defeat it, and all kinds of other details based on what little evidence he found at the scene. Again, a couple more episodes where the Doctor could have, say, made contact with the Malus, and maybe found answers through discovery rather than intuition, would have made this much more satisfying.
All that said, “The Awakening” is worth watching, more than the previous episode (“Warriors of the Deep”). It’s not classic Who, and it’s not without its faults, but there’s a good story in these couple of episodes.
