The Empress of Mars sees Mark Gatiss donning his writer's cap and returning to Doctor Who with a stand-alone action-adventure which re-introduces villains from the Classic era. Here Gatiss celebrates British history and literature, with his tongue firmly in his cheek; for this a mash up of Doctor Who and a pastiche of the Flashman Papers by George MacDonald Fraser, garnished with a nod to H.G. Wells and William Defoe.
And it's this very interplay of influences which makes the episode.
In The Empress of Mars a rather routine day trip to NASA becomes something else entirely when a probe broadcasts footage of the planetary surface complete with rocks laid out upon it, spelling out "God Save the Queen". This wonderful hook into the episode is also a wonderful play on words, saluting the current Monarch Elizabeth II, as well as Queen Victoria - whose portrait reminds us Pauline Collins once played that monarch to David Tennant's Doctor (in Tooth & Claw) - whilst also foreshadowing our introduction to the so-called villainess of the hour: the Ice Warrior Queen Iraxxa.
A Victorian riffles regiment find themselves space-wrecked on Mars, supposedly mining for gemstones and minerals in the name of "Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom and Great Britain and Ireland Queen Defender of the Faith, Empress of India". Their presence on the red planet, complete with an Ice Warrior as major-domo, is obviously Gatiss's comment on history and the expansionism of the British Empire. More specifically the historical background to this episode could easily be the First or Anglo-Boer War of 1880-1881, which itself was preceded by the discovery of diamonds in South Africa in 1867. But unlike those historical battles, here the British are unexpectedly overwhelmed. Waking an alien foe, the conquerors soon find themselves conquered.
Gattis's script is peppered with historical facts and allusions, with music hall song lyrics and slang from the era, as well as the overt visual nod to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The children's literary classic had first been published some fifteen years before this episode is set. It's obvious the tea party attended by Bill and the Doctor - in a subterranean cave on Mars, complete with silver tea service and white linen table cloth, with a manservant serving tea and cake on china plates - is supposed call to mind the mad hatter and his tea party, emphasising the surreal element of this intergalactic locale. Gatiss spells out his nod to Robinson Crusoe overtly (the novel by Daniel Defoe was published 1719) but you'd have had to have read the book, or seen the film, to know that the character in question i.e. 'Man Friday' was a person of colour who Crusoe rescued from a tribe of cannibals, in order to have a servant whilst he himself was ship-wrecked.
And then there are the oblique literary nods, which Mark Gatiss may or may not have intended.
Ferdinand Kinsgley plays Catchlove, a brilliant, affected, caricature - part fop, part faux upper class twit - all pantomime villain down to the stroking of his rather fine moustache. There is something in his desperate bravado, at least at the beginning of the episode, which reminded me of George MacDonald Fraser‘s Flashman, particularly calling to mind his actions in the first novel Flashman, where he sets off from India to Afghanistan with a retinue of household staff only to have to barter or lose them all along the way.
- [... Basset, Iqbal and I rode horses, the servants tramped behind with Fentab in a litter but our pace was so slow that after a week we got rid of them all but the cook." [Harper Collins paperback 2005 - pg 87]
And, just like Harry Flashman quoting the diarist Henry Greville's to allude to his family's background, "the coarse streak showed through, generation after generation, like dung beneath a rosebush", here we see the revealing moment when Kingsley slips the word 'aint' into Catchlove's speech, instantly marking the character as someone pretending to be gentry (upperclass) just as he pretended to be the military hero of the hour when he's really the villain of the piece. Kingsley is charismatic. Arresting. This is possibly in part thanks to his lineage, for his dad is Sir Ben Kingsley.
.
If Catchlove is the anti-hero, then the hero of the piece is his superior officer GodSacre, played by Anthony Calf. Reluctant combatant, a deserter who was previously, unsuccessfully, hung by his regiment (for what must have been P.T.S.D) Godsacre nevertheless believes passionately in the oath of Allegiance he gave for Queen and country. In switching his allegiance from one Queen to another he saves the lives of his men, pre-empts war and destruction, and reveals the courage he believed he lacked in one final, desperate, act.
Aside from the compelling hero of the hour and the charismatic anti-hero (and the Doctor, and Bill) The Empress of Mars is truly an ensemble piece. Mark Gatiss's focus is equally weighted between the officer class and the foot soldiers who do the work, take the risks, and are hard done by. This is wonderfully encapsulated by the music hall song refrain sung by Gatiss's light-fingered, middle-aged, rifleman who loots a sapphire from the unearthed sarcophagus in which the Ice Warrior Queen lies dormant:
-
It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Ain't it all a blooming shame?
[Chorus of "She Was Poor but She Was Honest", an anonymous street ballad of the late 19th century; cited from Eric Partridge (ed. Paul Beale) A Dictionary of Catch Phrases (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986) p. 267.]
The theiving Jack Daw (played by Ian Beattie) is aptly named by Gatiss. 'Jack' is a word traditionally used to describe a thief and the jackdaw bird (like magpies) was believed to be attracted to shiny objects, and so likely to pinch them. If Daw is the older, disillusioned, member of the company, Vincey is the young rifleman hoping to return home to Blighty to marry his childhood sweetheart. When the episode first aired Mark Gatiss was originally quoted as objecting to the colour-blind casting of Vincey (played by Bayo Gbadamosi) noting that it would be highly unlikely that the young Victorian rifleman would have been black British. Amusingly, the BBC scoured archives to disprove his belief. I do wonder whether the decision to cast a black British actor may not, in part, have been down to the fact that a traditional working class accent probably doesn't come loaded with the same connotations (and subtext) to an international viewer as to a British one. It is likely though that such needed subtext now carries strongly via the casting choice.
Inverting his writerly focus from the male military culture which foregrounds this episode; Gatiss gives the women the upper hand. Godsacre may save the day, but the fact that he is able to do so, that he is the right place at the right time to knife Catchlove (as Catchlove had himself first ‘knifed’ GodSacre) is thanks to Bill. And it is Bill's presence, as the only other female amongst such a plethora of warrior males, which has the Ice Queen valuing anyone's opinion other than her own when entreated by Bill: "Queenie, Let's talk". It is the women who hold the reigns of power, and on whose decisions the fate of two planets turn. This is thematically apt given the historic era which backgrounds the episode, Queen Victoria being a lone, widowed, monarch for much of her rule.
Bill, Iraxxa and Missy all triumph - the latter piloting the TARDIS back to Mars and most probably heralding the return of this series's mytharc as a plot thread too. I was delighted to see Missy at the TARDIS console; amused to see that she was piloting complete with leather driving gloves, and reminded that the Master once had his very own TARDIS.
Stylistically, I'd say the episode owes more than a little something to BBC Four's adaptation of H.G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon which Mark Gatiss wrote and starred in back in 2010, together with Rory Kinear. That poignant fable was a visual celebration of steampunk, and its design influence is best encapsulated here by the brilliant diving-come-space suit, complete with ear trumpet. For all that there is a dark undercurrent running throughout this episode, this very darkness is obscured by a light touch of visual comedy. Nardole (played by Matt Lucas) exits stage right for much of this episode - understandably sidelined by a tetchy, malfunctioning, TARDIS given the large size of the ensemble guest cast - so isn't on hand to provide much needed levity. Instead, Gatiss and the design team nod to space opera comics in a slightly camp style: Soldiers die at the end of a blast from Queen Iraxxa's deadly gauntlet but end up as bouncing balls of C.G.I, a cross between a wood louse and a weeble (an iconic 1970's toy.) And the harsh fate doled out to a deserting soldier is nodded to in the dark humour of era appropriate slang ie the 'Newgate polka', with Kingsley miming as much for levity as emphasis. It's a macabre moment which probably passes right over a younger viewer’s head.
Pacing in this episode is deft, the acting strong, and the supporting cast brilliant. This is one of Gatiss's better episodes written for the Whoniverse, in a similar vein to Robot of Sherwood. And it ends with the lovely scene of the Doctor, Bill and Godsacre placing the rocks to mark out a landing sight for an Alpha Centurian rescue party, thus creating the causal loop which insures that both the Doctor and Bill will be on Mars in the first place.
The Empress of Mars is a solid, fun, stand-alone adventure which successfully nods back to classic Who canon. It's a fitting episode for Gatiss to end his current tenure as a writer for Doctor Who upon.