The Seeds of Terror (and Coherence) by Stephen Maslin 30/5/17
One doubts very much whether Robert Banks Stewart ever set any store in achieving immortality but, like it not, he got it. (Ask any bit-part thespian from Doctor Who's early days, and they would have recounted what became a familiar story: three minutes of screen time, a lifetime of devotion. To put that into perspective, RBS scripted two and a half hours of the show's 'Golden Period' - the first half of Tom Baker's tenure, in case you didn't know.) If one were to be unkind, one might say he was lucky. It is true that Douglas Camfield's directing of both of RBS' stories (Terror of the Zygons and The Seeds of Doom) is exemplary; that Geoffrey Burgon's music for them is some of the best we ever had; that some of their classic dialogue surely belongs to Robert Holmes and Tom Baker. Yet RBS's contribution should not be downgraded for all that. What he provided was what "classic" Who so seldom had: common sense. It's not only that TotZ and SoD are perfectly structured for the format but that they actually make sense (as far as a cyborg Nessie or talking carnivorous plants can make sense). Some of the greatest stories don't: they are maybe written with style, zest and fevered imagination but, ultimately, one realizes that it's not only Castrovalva that is like an MC Escher picture: metaphorically speaking, almost all of them are. They have the semblance of coherence but when examined closely...
(One might add a caveat or two with regard to The Seeds of Doom: Sarah and the Doc arriving in the Antarctic by helicopter, but then, at the end, "You forgot to cancel the co-ordinate program, didn't you?"; the out-of-character violence; the possibility of the RAF's low level attack with high explosives sending Krynoid spores over a wide area of south-west Britain, etc.)
RBS's two stories stick in the mind because it is the writer's solid framework that allows everyone else to fly. No one on screen has to worry about being in something thrown together to fill airtime. Tom and Liz are never better, John Woodnutt and Tony Beckley excel, and even the UNIT family (in TotZ at any rate) are at their most militarily impressive and their most likable. (Seeds of Doom's Major Beresford does let the side down a bit in that regard. "Hit it square in the chest! Faah! Faah! Faaah!") What's more, each episode ends so well: one might again point to fine direction and acting making every cliffhanger an absolute belter, but there is a superbly scripted build-up to every one of them.
Online biographies of TV writers such as RBS often leave the impression that they are making excuses for hackwork but, here at least, we are dealing with nothing of the kind; rather a product that is so good one barely even notices it. With already nearly twenty years in the industry by the mid-70s, he would go on to spend another quarter of a century there, not only as a writer but as a producer and script-editor (even as a creator of shows). Yet, much as one would have loved for more Doctor Who from Mr Banks Stewart, perhaps it's just as well he never got (or perhaps never wanted) a third chance. We never got his Creature from the Pit or his Dominators. He left on a high, a massive high. So, not just immortal then, but forever to be revered.
Afterthought...
Of the two shows RBS created for the BBC post-Who, the most notable episode of Shoestring (1979-80) for Who fans is the very first. Co-written by RBS himself and directed by Douglas Camfield, it featured none other than William Russell! There are many more such in tie-ins in Bergerac (1981-91): episodes written by Robert Holmes and Chris Boucher, some directed by Graeme Harper and others featuring actors like Kevin Stoney, Rosalind Lloyd, Beryl Reid, Mark Strickson, Maurice Roeves and Terry Molloy. (From Season 4 onwards, there was an annual "supernatural" episode, which had a very familiar feel indeed.)