antipopper

Sick and miserable at home. But Lena got me all these Doctor Who DVDs for my birthday, yay! Here’s a few snaps from 1964′s The Dalek Invasion of Earth, which I’d never seen. (Before this year, I think the ABC only showed any Hartnell episodes once in my lifetime).

Although I was familiar with the plot (how many unwatched TV episodes are there that I can claim this about??), there are fantastically iconic moments that I’d never even heard of, like the Dalek rising out of the water at the end of Episode 1. Doctor Who had yet to find the juicy horror/satire bite that it played so well in the ’70s, but in its place is a thoroughly haunting evocation of fragments of time. Long stretches of strangely unkinetic action, with no location sound, overlaid with impressionistic incidental music. Barbara and a wheelchair-bound resistance leader dash for their lives across the streets of London, which are deserted, save for the occasional Dalek. Moody shots of London’s decrepit industrial docklands — perfect for postapocalyptic sf TV, and now evaporated into gentrification. Weird signage: the ubiquitous “VETOED” sign in public spaces (apparently a wry take on the stamp used in BBC paperwork to rule out expensive set designs), the chilling “IT IS FORBIDDEN TO DUMP BODIES INTO THE RIVER”, and the Dalek’s own tag, stencilled onto monuments.

The whole thing reminds me of Deleuze’s work on neorealism:

[T]he post-war period has greatly increased the situations which we no longer know how to react to, in spaces which we no longer know how to describe. These are “any spaces whatever”, deserted but inhabited, disused warehouses, waste ground, cities in the course of demolition or reconstruction. And in these any-spaces-whatever a new race of characters was stirring, kind of mutant…

It ain’t no coincidence that all this display of the Deleuzian time image should occur in a how about time travel. Oh no. Australians, be sure to catch it when it arrives on TV.