Started 4-Jul
There's some lamesh*t plotting in this.
Like when (in part 1) the Doctor finds the giant rat hairs in Alf Buller's clothing and 'remembers' that Weng Chiang is the god of abundance. Where did that come from? A William Hartnell story?
And somehow this leads to the next bit where the Doc goes down the nearest sewer manhole?
Ok, I get it.The theatricality, the florid language and the old time music hall-ness blinds the sentimental audience to the plot development.
In other words it's a rollicking genre yarn with Tom as Herlock Sholmes and Leela as Deliza Oolittle set in a mix of the Good Old Days, Phantom of the Opera and the Ooze of Fu Manchu.
More specifically (from
http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/4s.html)
- 1904
Holmes short story The Adventure Of The Abbey Grange. (the monogrammed glove...)
- Gaston
Leroux's 1910 novel Le fantôme de l'opéra (better known
to English-speaking audiences as The Phantom Of The Opera) for Greel's Lair beneath the theatre.
- Sax Rohmer's
Fu Manchu canon (published from 1912) for the Oriental
ingredients of the adventure.
The dialogue is laced with aside references and old fashioned words
("oopizootics", "pon my soul", and ""Little Tich"). Again Bob Holmes is
just showing off but it's a rich skill. According to one story I heard
it was written between 12-Nov and 13-Dec 1976 (after Bob came back from a
holiday to discover the script for 4S being written by Robert Banks
Stewart had fallen through... and location filming was to start in
December.)
But is it racist? it is racist...
The biggest problem with this is the "yellowface".
I can take Alan "tough guy" Chuntz doubling for Tong member doing
Kung Fu in the filmed fight scenes. I can take Michael "Pommie" Spice as
an Australian War Criminal from the 51st century.
John Bennett was in DW twice (before this General Finch in Invasion of the Dinosaurs) and Blakes 7 (Coser, creator of Imipak in
s2e3 Weapon) and lots of films (The Fifth Element, Minority Report) and
great TV series (I Claudius, Jonathan Creek, The Avengers, The
Professionals, The Saint).
John Bennett is a good actor who makes something of a good part as Li Hsen Chang.
But someone, somewhere actually made a decision that a Chinese magician would be better played by a white guy.
In 1977 that was old fashioned and thoughtless. In 2019 it is beyond the pale and nakedly racist. And times haven't changed that much.
But imagine what
David Yip might have been like? (not Chinese but actually from Liverpool) (Veldan in Destiny of the Daleks, also
The Chinese Detective (1981)) There are others. And surely he was not the only choice available.
And why couldn't Chang have been a "stage" identity? The
character is a white guy pretending to be Chinese for effect.
On the positive side, the portrayal of Li Hsen is at least layered. He is a partly sympathetic character. His death scene in the Opium House is dramatic and tragic. He is shown to be the pawn of and dominated and misused by Magnus Greel. He is obviously a victim of the Zigma Beam Experiment as much as any Filipinos in the army that marched on Rekyavik (or something).
John Bennett's LiHsen is a major step up from things like Peter Ustinov (and others) as
Charlie Chan, Christopher Lee (and others) as
Fu Manchu
, Peter Sellers as Sidney Wang in
Murder by Death and of
course Mickey Rooney as Mr Yunioshi in
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The portrayal of other Chinese characters in a story like this at least acknowledges that they existed. They aren't entirely cyphers. But it's close to that. The number of lines for (let's say "dressed as"..) Chinese characters is:
- Li Hsen (lots)
- the others (some gutteral noises i.e.0))
A rewrite that features dialogue for one Chinese character perhaps mentioning that the (damn) shipping line that won't send them home (or something) or maybe ironically complaining that the theatre is "all that shouting in the evening" would humanise what is otherwise a troubling presentation of 'minions'.
An argument about this I read was that these are theatrical characters in a theatrically themed serial. That's a wily excuse but no more. (See below)
Apart from that...
The racism in other characters (Kyle, Teresa, Jago) is (arguably) in character but nonetheless ugly.
From Part 1 12m02s
KYLE: He's a Chinese, if you hadn't noticed. We get a lot of those in here, Limehouse being so close. Him jaw-jaw plenty by and by, eh, Johnny?
From Part 3 9m42s
CHANG: Fresh as dew and bright with promise.
TERESA: Yeah, well, that's how you might see it, Mister Ching-ching
From Part 4 21m39s
JAGO: You mean to say the celestial Chang was involved in all these Machiavellian machinations?
DOCTOR: Yes, up to his epicanthic eyebrows.
(The
epicanthic fold is a bit in the top eyelid of typically asian eyes that make the eyes look Chinese... and celestial does not mean from the stars....it
derives from 19th century American slang for China.)
Worse are these lines from The Doctor himself.
From p1 7m54s
DOCTOR: Oh yes, yes. We were attacked by this little man and four other little men.
From p3 3m19s
LITEFOOT: The sheer criminal effrontery. Things are coming to a pretty pass when ruffians will attack a man in his own home.)
(The Doctor puts a bunch of icecubes tied in a napkin on Litefoot's head.)
DOCTOR: Well, they were Chinese ruffians.
Read these for a taste of modern views on Talons' racist bits
https://cultbox.co.uk/features/doctor-who-fandom-the-talons-of-weng-chiang-and-racism
And as usual Sandifer is definitive. Briefly Phil/Liz says the racism is casual and forms the backdrop for witty dialogue.... which she reminds us is not a suitable excuse.
http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-lion-catches-up-the-talons-of-weng-chiang/
Also worth a read is Kate Orman's essay on this topic at
http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/one-of-us-is-yellow-doctor-fu-manchu-and-the-talons-of-weng-chiang-guest-post-by-kate-orman/
This argument is long and many regard it as largely unresolved. Other DW episodes with racist components compared to this are no different. (Tomb, Abominable Snowmen, Crusade, Ark in S)
What's key here is how explicit it is.
I will not argue for "it is a product of it's time". 1977 was NOT a time when racism did not exist or people were unaware of it's wrongness.
Mainly it was a time when some people chose to ignore the issue.
As Kate O argues to condemn Talons... for racism is not to lose it. But recognising it for racism is the same as to recognise (and forgive) the silly giant rat.
This is silly racism. No one will be persuaded to treat people racistly because of this story. Compared to actual neo-nazism this is fine.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shout out for Deep Roy. Kenyan born and not yet 20 yo when he appeared as Mr Sin, Deep is just 132cm tall and holds a unique quadrella.
He's been in:
- DW (Talons...)
- Star Wars (Return of the Jedi),
- Star Trek (2009, 2013, 2016) and
- Blakes 7 (4 times).
He's also got a list of movie credits which should make him a major star and nerdy icon. It would almost be shorter to list major genre movie franchises in which he hasn't appeared. Only Tennant and Capaldi rival him for international star status among DW alumni.
This story has a string of lasts.
- David Maloney (went on to produce Blake's 7),
- Roger Murray Leach (moved into other TV and films like Local Hero, Clockwork, A Fish Called Wanda),
- Philip Hinchcliffe (produced other TV: Target, Nancy Astor, The Gravy Train, McCallum, Rebus, Taggart),
- Chris Doy'ly John (PA and similar jobs back to The Ark),
- Michaeljohn Harris (Visual Effects back to The Tenth Planet).
In production terms this is a turning point for DW. From the next story Production Unit Manager is a guy called John Nathan-Turner.....
ABM Rating 3.20/4.00
LJM Rating 4.33/5.00
SPJ Rating 9.90/10
No. 15 (out of 91)
Link to Cumulative Rankings
Rankings Scoreboard
from http://www.pagefillers.com/dwrg/talo.htm
Elementary Holmes by Mike Morris
7/2/04
It's back, and this time it's got cliffhangers and numchucks. If
there's one thing I could never get my head around it was this story's
lack of availability in unedited format, and finally that's been
rectified.
Talons has arrived in a HMV near you.
There's been a fair bit of discussion about this story on this site
lately, which - as someone has already said - seems to centre around
whether or not it's a classic. I don't really know what the word "classic"
denotes in
Doctor Who, in fact (for reasons that Terrence Keenan
articulated lately) I actually despise the word itself. And yet I think if
there's one word that describes
The Talons of Weng-Chiang it's
"classic". It's practically an archetype. It's Hinchcliffe in microcosm,
but more so it's Robert Holmes in microcosm. And many of the successful
elements have recurred in
Doctor Who over and over again - the
setting, the villain, the stylised characters.
Talons is a
certain type of
Doctor Who, and that type is probably
Who's
most popular format. Just like
The Daemons summarises
the Pertwee era,
Talons summarises the Hinchcliffe era. It also
summarises Robert Holmes' style of storytelling, which is maybe why it's
so damn impressive.
What's interesting, though, is that I've agreed with most of the
criticisms I've read, and yet it hasn't made me like
Talons any
less. In fact, I think much of what people list of negatives are actually
what makes this story works so well. And so, I wouldn't mind a bit of a
comeback here. I think that there are three main criticisms of the story,
which I'll tackle in sequence.
Before that, I'll state my theory on why this is
the story for
many people. There have been many better scripts - in fact, in terms of
newness, imagination, plotting and even dialogue, the script for
Talons is probably the season's third or fourth best (this is a
reflection on the quality of the season, but still). Bluntly, I think the
thing that really hits the viewer is the production values.
Examining Phillip Hinchcliffe's impact on
Doctor Who is actually
quite difficult. The most obvious thing to say is that the production
standards became extremely impressive - and one of the interesting things
about DVD commentaries is that you can hear him stressing this often.
Talons is maybe his greatest achievement as far as that's
concerned. It looks gorgeous. Only the oft-derided Giant Rat lets the side
down (and it's nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be), but everything
else looks completely convincing, and this is a rare quality for
Doctor
Who. The numerous shots of the fog-bound streets and hansom cabs are
the kind of thing one sees in a flagship BBC drama, and to see them in
Doctor Who is astounding. This extends to little scenes, such as
the tracking shot to the Missing Girls poster - direction is tight and the
camerawork is flawless. These touches, such as the sequence where Leela
sees Li-Hsen Chang abducting a girl in the morning, all add up. Were that
sequence to be shot in studio everything would be closer, Leela would
probably have to hide two feet away and it wouldn't be anywhere near as
effective. Although we fans don't need good effects, it's thrilling to
have them and makes the story more accessible for a wider audience. Even
my mum liked
The Talons of Weng Chiang, and that's saying
something.
Okay, and now for those criticisms.
1. It's unoriginal.
Yes, it is; most of the ideas have been used in previous Robert Holmes
stories. Holmes was, of course, a delightfully quirky writer, and there
are many signature "Holmesian" ideas in
Talons. We have a
double-act, the most obvious Bob Holmes trait, but there's more. Robert
Holmes characters tend to be larger-than-life and theatrical, verging on
stereotypes in fact, and there's plenty of them. Holmes' dialogue is often
stylised, and his love of words is obvious, so who else would you expect
to write a line like "have you got the oopizootics coming on?" Holmes also
loves "guard-dog" monsters (Giant Rats, the Shrivenzale, the Magma Beast,
Kroll, and many more) and manipulated human agents of the main evil power.
And Magnus Greel bears all the traits of the classic Holmes villain. He is
deformed, he is desperate, he is close to death, he is imprisoned in a
sense and his motivation is more about survival than conquest. Of course,
he's also mad as a balloon. A quick glance through the great Holmes
villains shows how common this thread is - Morbius, Sharaz Jek, Noah and
The Master of
The Deadly Assassin are all similar in
many ways. By bringing all his fascinations into one story, Holmes
produces an exemplar of his work.
So
Talons is unoriginal, but not in a negative way. One
shouldn't forget that most Hinchcliffe-era stories are unoriginal
pastiches of B-movie sources, so to condemn
Talons for this is to
condemn the entire era.
This story is effectively Robert Holmes' masterwork, insofar as it
encompasses all the most outstanding elements of his writing. Rather than
Holmes running out of ideas and using up old, spent ones, it's more the
case that he takes all the key elements of his storytelling and addresses
them better than ever before. Rob Matthews
makes this point
above, in his usual perceptive way, and discusses the story largely in
the general context of Holmes' writing. I think he's more or less right to
say that Holmes' work is dark, meaty and very much centred on human
desires. For many stories these elements are pulled in by other
constraints, but in this story they are highly apparent. That he's done
them before is irrelevant; what matters is that here they are done better
than ever before.
The hunger-lust-desire subtext is particularly prevalent. I don't find
this as uncomfortable as Rob does; I think abandoning oneself to instinct
can be a liberating and healthy thing, and it's not like any characters
are savage or irrational - apart from, of course, the main villain.
However, that's really a question of taste. What's indisputable is how
clear this strand is, another example of the supreme skill with which it's
told.
2.
Talons is padded.
No, no, no. The story's pace, in my opinion, is lovely. It isn't
padded, it's slow, and they're two very different things. Excuse me as I
climb onto a very familiar soapbox; I'll say again that, contrary to what
a lot of
Doctor Who fans assume, "slow" isn't automatically a bad
quality. There's nothing wrong with a slow-paced narrative, and one thing
that makes the story so enjoyable is the way it's not afraid to take a bit
of time to examine its setting. It evokes Victorian London so well because
it takes the time to do so; to show us Litefoot and Leela sitting down to
dinner, to show Jago's introductory speech and the crowd's reaction, to
give us the wonderfully corny Daisy sing-song, to showcase the beautifully
rickety flytower interior, to basically meander around the setting that
makes the story so successful.
This isn't padding. The very word "padding" annoys me. It should mean
scenes that don't add anything to the story (i.e. pointless corridor
chases), but is often taken to mean "scenes that aren't directly connected
to the plot". Just because
Doctor Who stories are generally based
on economy and quickness doesn't mean slowness doesn't have value - in
fact, given that it's so scarce in
Doctor Who it's something to be
treasured. There's far more to storytelling than just resolving the plot
as quickly as possible, there's the creation of atmosphere, the
exploration of themes, the development of characters. Rob Matthews
points out above that "fans really enjoy the padding", but I
don't think he goes far enough; that the time-out scenes aren't padding.
The Litefoot/Leela dinner scene is very important, for example. One
reason that Magnus Greel is a genuinely frightening creation is that he's
a total contrast to the mannered society around him, and even to Li-Hsen
Chang's courteously menacing villain. This contrast is played out in a
more benign fashion in Litefoot and Leela's dinner together, enlarging a
theme which crops up elsewhere; the contrast between Mr Sin the on-stage
comedy puppet (by definition a collection of mannerisms) and Mr Sin the
savage killer, between the Doctor and the routine-bound policemen, and all
sorts of references to politeness in the script. Related themes are
theatricality and, particularly, concealment. Henry Gordon Jago is a
combination of the two, with his extravagant character concealing his
rather timid nature. The setting of the theatre itself expresses this as
well, with the contrast between the (theatrical) public area and the dark,
almost mysterious world backstage (which is why the flytower chase scene
isn't at all gratuitous). Then there's Magnus Greel, concealing himself
behind a mask; Li-Hsen Chang's inscrutable exterior; the rats and Greel's
base, hiding beneath the city in the sewers. Sigmund Freud would get a
book out of it. There isn't one scene in
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
that I'd want to remove. And more than any other it's this element that,
to my mind, elevates this story from good to great.
3. The characters are cliched, and the story is a little racist.
Yes. The characters are all stereotypes, of course. One might including
the setting here, which is basically a character in itself and fits in
every Victorian cliche imaginable. But then, part of Holmes' genius is
that he's not afraid of cliched, slightly unbelievable characters who talk
and act like no-one in the world would. His characters are usually
one-noters cranked up as far as they can go, and although that can
backfire, in the hands of a good actor it's dynamite. Also, Holmes
underscores them with such humour that it's hard not to be sucked in. The
bottom line is that
Doctor Who is melodrama, and the best
characters will therefore be melodramatic. So yes, Litefoot is very much a
jolly-good-chap Victorian gentleman, and Jago a sort PT Barnum-esque bag
of theatrics, but they are what the story needs and they are played
superbly.
This is where the story might be accused of racism, as the Chinese
characters are all evil and about as cod-Chinese as cod-Chinese can be.
Maybe this is questionable; but we shouldn't lose sight of that fact that
the story is obviously a slice of escapist hokum and no-one in it is
believable enough to be taken seriously (just as I find it funny, rather
than offensive, that the story features a leprechaun-like Irishman replete
with green jacket and woeful accent). Ultimately,
The Talons of
Weng-Chiang is like most
Doctor Who of the era; it's brash,
colourful, not too deep and there to entertain. That the characters can
all be categorised in the same way isn't a weakness, it's a strength. It's
especially fortunate that Leela was a companion (although the desire to do
a "Pygmalion" story was apparently an idea Holmes and Hinchcliffe had
knocked around for a while), as an everyday Sarah Jane Smith wouldn't have
worked. She would have been too ordinary, too real, and would either have
been drowned out by the surroundings or shown up their inherent silliness.
There are other reasons that these sterotypes work. First of all, they
are all incredibly theatrical - and the setting's a theatre, so that's all
right. Secondly, they are gradually undercut as the story goes on - as it
gets more fantastic the characters become more real, anchoring the story
in the same way. The "I'm not so bally brave" is just lovely, revealing
Jago's exterior as the veneer we always knew it was. And so many scenes
are simultaneously brashly comic and very touching, such as the scene
where Greel chokes Jago - Litefoot's defence of a man he's barely met
shows his integrity brilliantly, but there's still room for the little "I
say, steady on," joke. And then there's Li-Hsen Chang's wonderful death
scene. Again, it's the removal of the "sinister oriental" veneer that
makes it so gorgeous, with Chang exposed a rather innocent man whose
ambition stretches no further than a performance for Queen Victoria. And
his final breath is marvellous - he genuinely seems on the edge of
throwing up.
The only limiting factor amid all this genius is that Michael Spice, as
Weng-Chiang, doesn't really have the acting chops to make him as
frightening as he should be. Greel lacks the soft-spoken rationality of
Sutekh that would make him believably god-like. Nor does he pull off the
malevolence that Peter Pratt invested in the Master, and he doesn't quite
manage the cold-blooded scientist either. Rather he's a bit of a ranting
maniac who does far too much evil cackling. But the character's conception
is brilliant, and he does so many nasty things that he remains
frightening. The "sting of the scorpion" death of one of his stooges is
really very nasty. Besides, Mr Sin is so new-shorts-please-matron scary
that it really doesn't matter.
Overall; what a thing of beauty this is. It is a magnificent slice of
Doctor Who that thoroughly deserves its place among the greats.
It's a piece of storytelling that revels in escapism, which sucks the
viewer in utterly and gets better every time it's watched. Something
special.
