The Masters of Luxor

The Hartnell era is another country: they do things differently there. The assumptions, the morals, the dramatic conventions of these episodes are such that those of us laughing at the farting alien who nearly said "bollocks" in last week's Doctor Who can scarcely imagine the cultural context in which they would have been taken as read.

Of course, thanks to the time-machine that is Doctor Who franchise fiction, there continue to be stories set within this antediluvian era. At such a historic distance, however, these tend to be telescopic examinations of the establishment of Doctor Who (Time and Relative, Frayed), of its early conventions (Campaign, The Eleventh Tiger) or of its universal value as a storytelling device (Auld Mortality, Deadline). Such fictions are always self-conscious, in a way the contemporary TV episodes never were, and ineluctably nostalgic in a way which would, of course, have made no sense whatsoever to anyone watching the BBC's smart new sci-fi drama in 1963.

Reading The Masters of Luxor, then, comes as either a breath of fresh air or a bucket of cold water in the face, depending on taste.

The Masters of Luxor is one of ten script books published by Titan in the early 1990s, and the only one which was edited from an unmade television script. These six episodes were written by Anthony Coburn to follow on from his story An Unearthly Child (aka One Million Years BC, unless that was that Raquel Welch film). But for the script's rejection The Masters of Luxor would have been the second Doctor Who story, but (fortunately for those of us looking forward to the scenes of alien bondage in next week's episode) The Daleks was made instead.

It's an extremely odd experience, reading a "new" first-Doctor story and finding that it shares almost nothing in common with any other first-Doctor story you've encountered since Target ran out of novelisations. (Even the later ones of those were getting pretty postmodern, gloriously so in the case of the Donald Cotton novelisations.) Apart from some fiddling with details on the part of Titan's editor John McElroy, The Masters of Luxor is utterly authentic, adhering to the original template of Doctor Who in a way that no new story has done since... well, some entirely arbitrary date, but one which would have to be several decades ago at the very least.

For a start, the script is extraordinarily slow-moving. It would be no exaggeration to say that more happens in 40 minutes during Rose than would have in the two-and-a-half-hours of The Masters of Luxor. Long scenes are spent standing around discussing the current predicament, formulating possible plans and eventually deciding on the one which is then implemented, in detail, on screen, at nearly as great length. Even reading the scripts (which, at my reading speed, work out at about 15 minutes per epsisode) one has a sense of the characters running on the spot.

However. Among the padding and the absurdly-spelled-out action, there are some elements, inherited from the BBC drama of the era, which Masters gets stunningly right. There's scope for long-term establishment of atmosphere and character: although the characters in Masters are subtly different from those of the on-screen Hartnell era, I feel considerably more convinced by them than I do by, say, Trix. And the build-up (what would, in practice, have surely been the agonisingly drawn-out build-up, whereby the first episode consists almost exclusively of the TARDIS landing and cliffhangs with Susan deciding to have a bite to eat) allows for a sense of setting which was absent from many TV stories with the advantage of visuals.

Some weird disparities exist between this and even the televised Hartnell episodes, presumably arising from the creative input of script editors and actors which moved the series away from its original brief. Barbara, for instance, is deeply irritating at times, insisting that she "feels" the evil of the place where they have landed, like some cut-price Deanna Troi. Susan says "Holy Moley!" and Ian comes out with phrases like "this electronic giggle palace". (Actually, come to think of it, that's perfectly in character for Ian.) The Doctor and Susan frequently refer to their friends as "you Earth people", clarifying their own status in a way which the televised stories wouldn't for years.

Most interestingly, for me at least, the characters say "thank God" and "for God's sake", and discuss religion and metaphysics with a freedom and maturity which even the New Adventures rarely aspired to. Astonishingly enough from our point of view, it isn't just the Earthlings who show religious leanings. When about to enter danger, the Doctor prays with Ian and Tabon of Luxor, their three planets' faiths apparently similar enough to be inoffensively compatible. Barbara and Susan sing hymns, admittedly to confuse and bewilder some logically-minded robots. Susan even asks her friend, after the latter makes a diffident foray into the transcendent, "Why are you Earth people afraid of the word 'God'?"

Most certainly religious themes are to the fore here, combined with those of the hubristic use of technology, so that the concept of Godhood is tossed around with reckless abandon. Tabon the robot-builder aspired to become like God, a desire which his ultimate creation the Perfect One mirrors too. The Luxorites turned their backs on God when they became so wedded to their technologies, Tabon turns to God when he repents, and it's not too much of a stretch to say that the Doctor and friends prevail in the end with the help of God. Masters is perhaps the only story where a religious alien (three of them, if you count the Doctor and Susan) isn't insane, pathetic or eventually eaten by his God.

Unfortunately for a story with such complex metaphysics, the actual science is strictly B-movie stuff: robots rebelling against their makers and building other robots, and -- absurdly -- the Perfect One aspires to slough off the last of his robot nature and complete his "humanity" by absorbing the life-force of a human. (All his attempts fail, however, suggesting perhaps deliberately that the Perfect One may simply be deluded.) His decision that a woman "from whom the life comes" is a more perfect source for his human essence than a man does open up some interesting theological possibilities (reminiscent of the antics of the Tribe of Gum), but scientifically it's evident pants. The story's sexual politics are generally of its time -- certainly the Luxorites are sexists as well as theists -- although there are scenes where Susan and Barbara acquit themselves impressively.

The Masters of Luxor is quite clearly a product of its time, with early-1960s social mores and many of the conventions of contemporary SF cinema. What feels so remarkable about it is that it sits right at the other end of the 42-year history that has been Doctor Who. Written before any Doctor Who had been made, it's now non-canonical by anybody's terms, and doesn't even sit well with the Hartnell era proper. A modern fan is likely to read it a a "side-step" or "unbound" story. But reading it as it was intended -- as the second episode of the BBC's new science fiction drama series -- provides a fascinating sidebar on the culture which gave rise to Doctor Who itself.

In the end, I wouldn't wish to see The Daleks unmade for the sake of having a TV Masters of Luxor (although that's more for the sake of the later Daleks stories than for The Daleks itself). But I'd cheerfully swap The Keys of Marinus for it.