Who Review: The Happiness Patrol
The Doctor and Ace pay a visit to the Earth colony Terra Alpha, following up on a promise the Doctor made to himself to look into disturbing rumors he’d heard about the place. On the surface it seems a cheerful planet, from the piped muzak to the decor, and the brightly-colored hair and clothes of the people. But Ace senses a phoney-ness to it all. Indeed, not all the inhabitants of Terra Alpha are happy, but those people live in the shadows. As the TARDIS team soon discover, on Terra Alpha, anything that smacks of sadness or melancholy is prohibited. Enforcing this code of imposed bliss is the “Happiness Patrol,” a team of armed soldiers in pink and purple who police the streets looking for “killjoys.” Anyone caught in a funk is liable to punishment, up to and including extermination. The Doctor and Ace side with the somber to help bring down the regime and its architect, Helen A. But they must contend with the Happiness Patrol, and Helen A’s chief executioner, the sinister Kandy Man and his deadly confections if they are to restore the blues to Terra Alpha.
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!
One of script editor Andrew Cartmel’s complaints about Doctor Who of late was that the Doctor always seemed to show up somewhere by accident, and get caught up in the events. For someone as powerful as he was supposed to be, the Doctor didn’t seem to show much control over his travels. This is why during Cartmel’s tenure, the Doctor more often shows up places with a purpose, and doesn’t leave until he has done what he intended to do. “The Happiness Patrol” is a good example of this kind of story. The Doctor didn’t accidentally stumble upon Terra Alpha. He had heard disturbing rumors about the place, and told himself he would investigate one day. This was that day. He deliberately lands on Terra Alpha, and sets himself the task of putting things right. I have to say, this does make for a more satisfying adventure, even if it casts the Doctor as a bit of a galactic policeman. But the Doctor has always left himself open for that by his unwillingness to allow evil to flourish in the universe, wherever the TARDIS may take him.
As I mentioned in my review of the previous story, “Remembrance of the Daleks,” this is Doctor Who’s 25th anniversary season, so the stories for this year intentionally recall past adventures in some way or another. The references in “Remembrance” were bold and explicit. In “Happiness Patrol” the nods are made more subtly through dialog. The Doctor recounts to Ace a time when the Brigadier met dinosaurs, which happened in the Third Doctor story, “Invasion of the Dinosaurs.” Later, remarking on the colonists’ use of “Sigma” to indicate foreigners, the Doctor notes that his nickname is “Theta Sigma”–a fact we learned from one of his former Academy classmates in the Fourth Doctor story, “The Armageddon Factor.”
I find “The Happiness Patrol” to be a bit of a mixed bag. The story concept is good: a society where happiness is mandated, such that what ends up looking like happiness is just a facade. The only people who seem to express genuine emotion are those who aren’t afraid to feel pain and show tears. There’s a serious message behind the story: happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin, and we can’t appreciate one without the other. One can only know true happiness when one is allowed to feel genuine sorrow. It’s a deep and weighty message, nicely packaged and presented through parody, irony, humor, and moments of anger and sadness. The scene toward the end when Helen A is finally brought to tears is quite powerful in context, and very well played by Sheila Hancock.
On the other hand, there’s something about the story that feels a bit off to me. It’s not just the budgetary constraints which give us some dodgy costume moments (the Pipe People, for example), and some short-of-passable creatures, thinking primarily of Fifi, which is not a bad animal design, but the solid face and feet make it as believable as Roland Rat (sorry–cultural reference for Brits of my generation). The serial feels to me as if it’s caught between being a Doctor Who story, and a thinly-veiled allegory. Of course, Doctor Who has often ridden a fine line between storytelling and social/political commentary, but here it’s as if they’re trying too hard not to allegorize. But again, there are some very commendable aspects to the story. The Kandy Man is a creepy monster, even if it did get the production team into trouble with sweet-maker Bassett’s for the similarity to their mascot, Bertie Bassett. And there are some great acting moments from both Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred.
All that said, I can’t give “Happiness Patrol” an unreserved commendation, but I think it’s worth watching. If only to see a pink TARDIS. 🙂
