Entering The Matrix: The Horror of Who
The Hinchcliffe/Holmes era of classic ‘Doctor Who’ can be seen as a dark, bleak and moody one under their reign such stories as ‘The Brain of Morbius’ with evident Gothic overtones and inspiration from Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’; ‘The Talons of Weng Chiang’, painting the fourth incarnation of Dr Who akin to Sherlock Holmes opposite a disfigured alien; and ‘The Sun Makers’, set on Pluto in the far future and opening with an attempted suicide due to stressful working conditions. This era also gave way to new companion Leela, a savage plucked from her native tribe, after fan favourite Sarah Jane Smith was forced to depart from the TARDIS. Wedged between these two companions is ‘The Deadly Assassin’, one of the darkest ‘Doctor Who’ stories of them all, which also sees the Doctor travel companionless for the first time and return to his own home planet.
I want to make it clear from the out how I am a massive fan of gore, horror and suspense. I like ‘Doctor Who’ most when its at its scariest. But after watching ‘The Deadly Assassin’ for the second time this year, it finally clicked just how brutal and terrifying this story is. ‘Doctor Who’ was originally conceived in 1963 as a children’s show to combine sci-fi and history. During its original run from 1963 until cancellation in 1989, it was often broadcast at weekends around tea-time, a prime time for kids to crowd around their television set and watch their favourite Time Lord travel in his police box. After broadcast of ‘The Deadly Assassin’ however, many complaints were placed, and a dark shadow was cast over this era of the show. It would not be the last of its kind as both Peter Davidson and Colin Baker’s eras were both scrutinised for being “too violent” and “too dark” for such young regular viewers. ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’ (1984) is a prime example, having the largest death toll of the classic era.
I personally think what ‘Doctor Who’ does best, aside from giving children and adults an immense sense of escapism, is turning the most mundane things into something terrifying. Many examples can be found since the show was resurrected in 2005, with the first series giving children nightmares thanks to gas mask children. ‘Blink’ (2007) gave us the Weeping Angels and terrorised an entire nation, making us petrified of turning our backs on statues. ‘Silence In the Library’ (2008) made us scared of our own shadows and ‘The Waters of Mars’ (2009) turned water into a killer enemy. These monsters are all playing on mundane things children and adults see all the time though, whereas a story like ‘The Deadly Assassin’ (1976) accesses body horror while verging on bringing nightmares to life with an insertion of violence.
While I would usually preface something like this with a spoiler warning, ‘The Deadly Assassin’ has been around since 1975, so I deem it unnecessary to include a serious one. If you have yet to see this episode, please tread with caution, but only two major points are going to be heavily discussed: the Master and the Matrix. This is not a complete episode review, but merely a deep dive into these two points from a perspective of terror and later continuity. But to summarise the episode: the Doctor receives a premonition showing an assassination on his home planet, so he returns to Gallifrey to prevent it happening, while also discovering his greatest adversary is seemingly behind it all…
The Master
He and the Doctor were students at the academy on Gallifrey, both being crowned Time Lords and battling through the cosmos together since his introduction in ‘Terror of the Autons’ (1971). The Master was originally portrayed by Roger Delgado, who appeared in the role for eight serials, with ‘Frontier in Space’ (1973) being the last before his death. A final story was planned to put the Master and the Doctor at loggerheads again, titled ‘The Final Game’, but remained unmade due to Delgado’s death. The Master would not face the Doctor again until ‘The Deadly Assassin’ — a whole three years after his last appearance — and in an entirely different form.
It was in this story where the lore within ‘Doctor Who’ established a Time Lord can only regenerate twelve times and, once reaching their final thirteenth incarnation, their body begins to deteriorate. By this logic we can assume Delgado’s incarnation of the Master was his twelfth as, with the character returning in ‘The Deadly Assassin’, we see an incredibly dishevelled looking Master. He is portrayed here by Peter Pratt for the first and only time, while sporting golf balls for eyes and grotesque gloves for hands. This incarnation of the Master has rightly been coined the “crispy Master” by fans due to his appearance. Beneath a seemingly charred black robe is the face of a decaying Time Lord, in his final incarnation, appearing as a corpse brought to life. Several fans in their youth have often been vocal about just how much the “crispy Master” terrified them upon first watch, causing them to either hiding behind the sofa or having their own nightmares.
While this episode and incarnation of the Master added a crucial piece of lore to the Time Lords and the show itself, creating the infamous “thirteen lives” concept, I feel it personally went about it in too grotesque a way. If you compare the appearance of Peter Pratt to the appearance of Geoffrey Beevers’ in ‘The Keeper of Traken’ (1981), a striking difference can be seen between both decaying Masters. While the former channels that of body horror, pushing to look like a human skeleton void of any flesh, the latter has a far less terrifying appearance to it. Despite his appearance looking like that of a burn victim, Beevers’ second portrayal of the decaying Master utilises the actors face and human features — such at the eyes and mouth — as opposed to placing an entire mask over the actor’s face, which separates and hides any hint of humanity being there. In the process, a terrifying monster was created for ‘The Deadly Assassin’ which was thankfully rectified once he appeared again.
Inside The Matrix
Another important element of Time Lord lore/mythology introduced in this story is the Matrix. It functions as a supercomputer which houses the consciousness of every Time Lord, and is sometimes used to predict future events — not unlike the vision experienced by the Doctor at the beginning of ‘The Deadly Assassin’. The Matrix is also like its own universe, like the TARDIS appearing infinitely big while being entirely stored inside a tiny rectangular police box. When needed or desired, Time Lords can enter the Matrix to explore the data within or battle their enemies. This episode sees a battle between the Doctor and another Time Lord take place within the Matrix itself after both parties are wired into it.
When inside the Matrix, the landscape appears as a quarry — a regular filming location for classic ‘Who’ by this point, as they traditionally double as alien landscapes. There is also a marshland and forest attached to the location, where the Doctor and his foe do battle against each other. Fighting alongside them are projections of the Matrix, which appear as reality but are ultimately proven to be manifestations from a strong mind as an attempt to kill the Doctor. These entities all appear with their faces hidden, mainly behind gas masks, with a strong World War One theme at play. One of my favourite moments of the Matrix scenes is when a soldier and his horse come walking out from smoke toward the Doctor as several explosions go off around him. Additional appearances from these masked men include one flying a biplane shooting at the Doctor, and two more acting as train drivers who attempt to kill him after trapping his foot between train tracks.
There are more than just gas masked men within the Matrix who are attempting to kill the Doctor, as his adversary within the landscape attempts to poison and drown him. This resulted in a complaint being made against ‘The Deadly Assassin’, as viewers understandably claimed the part three cliffhanger showing the Doctor’s head being fully submerged under water was too frightening for younger viewers. Additionally, Tom Baker had a severe fear of water and was scared he was going to drown on set. Other water related shenanigans relate to the Doctor setting his adversary on fire in the marshland which, on second viewing this year, seriously shocked me how a ‘Doctor Who’ episode would show such an extreme form of attempted murder. Especially one being committed by the Doctor himself.
Drowning and burning aside, the Matrix scenes and sequences also tap into fears and create a mind-bending atmosphere. Take for example when the Doctor is trying to hide from his foe in a cave, and a spider slowly descends in front of him. Even though the prop looks fake, as somebody with intense arachnophobia, it was an extremely unsettling moment to watch. The creature was probably manifested by the Matrix, or the mind controlling it, as an attempt to expose the Doctor to his opponent. And creation of a mind-bending environment is achieved through one scene where eyes are superimposed onto a cliffside of the quarry, with a voice whispering over the image while addressing the Doctor. Such atmosphere continues when the Doctor realises he is bleeding and declares he denies this reality, promptly stopping his leg from bleeding. But the stronger mind he’s fighting overrides this statement, making it bleed again.
As the following examples showcase, so many terrifying aspects are packed within the Matrix scenes. It feels bizarre to say this is the episode which essentially tried to kill off Dr Who and scared its lead actor by filming a scene leading to multiple, yet understandable, complaints. But in addition to adding key aspects to the mythos of ‘Doctor Who’, it is these terrifying sequences and images which make me love the episode so much. As a younger viewer or parent, I can perfectly understand avoiding the episode to not scare myself or my child half to death; as a mature, horror loving adult however, I can safely say these features draw me back to the episode. But I must admit elements of it shocked even me — who’s been a fan of the show for sixteen years — when paying proper attention upon second viewing.
The Timeless Children
Finally, I want to conclude by bringing us to a more recent episode and connecting ‘The Deadly Assassin’ to Chris Chibnall’s controversial contribution to ‘Doctor Who’: the Timeless Child story arc. To summarise the arc, Chibnall has added a backstory to the titular character revealing Jodie Whittaker’s thirteenth incarnation is in fact not the thirteenth Doctor. Not only that, but the Doctor has had so many past lives lost and erased, she is painfully unaware as to how many incarnations she has truly lived through. This revelation was broken to her by the most recent incarnation of the Master who hacked into the Matrix, got lost within its content and happened upon the secret of regeneration being born from the Timeless Child: the Doctor herself.
Many fans were driven into negative reactions following this revelation, sharing their opinions on how it “breaks canon” or “discredits the classic series”. What I personally believe these people all fail to consider is how ‘Doctor Who’ is written as it goes, with each showrunner and series holding the ability to add anything they want or please to the show and its canon. When ‘The Deadly Assassin’ was being written and broadcast, nobody involved was able to predict the future of the show, and none of them wrote down a rulebook or guidance for it either.
We can reach beyond that and disprove the “breaking canon” and “discrediting the classic series” theories however, as lines from ‘The Deadly Assassin’ and other classic stories can easily play into the Timeless Child arc. Many fleeting remarks regarding the ambiguity of which incarnation the Doctor is currently at within ‘The Deadly Assassin’ itself: Part One includes an exchange with Runcible, an old school friend of the Doctor, who asks “have you had a face lift?” to which the Doctor replies “several, so far.” While this can be explained as a reference to the three regenerations we have seen on screen, usage of the word “several” suggests and feels as though it happens to be more than just three. Why not specify it to be three and use the word “several” instead?
This similarly links to the aforementioned ‘The Brain of Morbius’ (1976) from the season before, and the Doctor having a “mind bending” competition between the renegade, patchwork Time Lord called Morbius. Part Four sees this unfold, with their confrontation showing several “Morbius Doctors”, faces we have not seen on screen but are implied to be incarnations which have existed but are possibly lost to time (or the Matrix). After years of speculations from fans over the legitimacy of these incarnations, Chibnall finally decided to make them canon and added them into the Timeless Child mythos as Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor defeats and escapes the Matrix herself in ‘The Timeless Children’.
The Doctor makes comment on how “Time Lord history isn’t always accurate” in Part Four of ‘The Deadly Assassin’, further adding to early ambiguities surrounding the Doctor’s origins and timeline. This is a fact which is reinforced in Peter Davidson’s ‘Arc of Infinity’ (1983) story, where his fifth incarnation faces off against the renegade Time Lord called Omega. In this story it states how “the amount of knowledge in the Matrix, though vast, was not complete, and could be tampered with, given access.” This is a crucial point to the Timeless Child story arc as it clarifies how, even during his fifth incarnation, it was possible to tamper with data in the Matrix. With the Doctor being established as the foundation of Time Lord society, before living several lives which became hidden and repressed within the Matrix, the lore and continuity established in ‘Arc of infinity’ illustrates this to be entirely possible and plausible within Time Lord technology.
Alongside the introduction of several key points of lore which are continually expanded upon within the ‘Doctor Who’ universe, such as the Matrix and Rassilon himself, ‘The Deadly Assassin’ fearlessly channels horror and nightmarish visuals at its core. At the same time, along with several other classic ‘Doctor Who’ stories, it gives us passing ambiguous statements to embrace and reinforce the recent Timeless Child story arc which caused such controversy and uproar among fans. Here is a key episode of the show which not only terrifies its audience, but manages to lay the foundations for a character changing story arc to be debuted in decades to come.
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