THE DOCTOR WHO RATINGS GUIDE: BY FANS, FOR FANS
The Terilpetils
Reviews

To Reconcile the Love of Art and Beauty with the Love of War by Stephen Maslin 24/12/14

Amongst the Doctor's enemies, a love of things going 'bang' is a common enough character trait but as well as being rather keen on war, the Terileptils, we are told, also have a great love of art and beauty. Rather like Pope Julius II, only with scales. Yet if that great love is more than just a matter of passive appreciation, one wonders precisely what practical form those arts actually take. For the one thing the Terileptils do not have is dexterity. Fairly early on in their civilization, they would have had to find a way round having somewhat rigid claws so they could get about the business of glazing pottery, painting watercolor miniatures, playing the violin, perfecting their own distinctive brand of calligraphy, building sophisticated android servants, sewing perfect replicas of seventeenth century Earth costumes and so on.

"Concentrate on your thoughts, then I will hear them."

This may be speciesism on my part, but one look at a Terileptil should be enough to tell you that their claws are designed for shredding flesh rather than for basket-weaving; that their stout legs are built for leaping onto prey, not ballet; that their indifferently articulated lower jaw might make the singing of opera and the reciting poetry a bit of a tall order; that their scaly skin is for protection and durability, rather than for being clad in the finest silks and haute couture. My guess is that the world's more cultured species would look less like lizards and more like bower birds or Curtis Mayfield.

"Ah, yes, to live a primitive life without grace or beauty."

Physical inappropriacies aside, for most viewers the Terileptil leader remains a mysterious figure, as his all-over rubberiness denies us the connections we can sometimes make with other television shows. (Richard Mace was in On The Buses. The Squire went on to be in Coronation Street.) If you had asked any late-20th-century British TV viewer who Michael Melia was, they would probably have shrugged until being shown a photograph. "Oh, him! Yes, of course!"

"I have always found fear an excellent tool."

Melia's CV reads like a list of prime-time British TV dramas of the 70s, 80s and 90s but the Terileptil Leader (with the actor's face hidden from view) is, bizarrely, one of Melia's finest roles, in which he brilliantly transcends his usual London thug image. If you get past the 'cheap rubber monster' jibes, it should become clear just what a fine performance it is: the seething menace, the barely controlled outbursts, the sheer world-weariness of "Drop the sonic device". Alas, we are left in Invasion of Dinosaurs territory: with so much that is right collapsing under the weight of a disappointing visual impact.

"It's not supposed to be an argument! It's a statement!"

The Terilpetils are surely nobody's favorite Who villains, but they are by no means the worst for all that. There are far, far worse villains in far, far worse stories. Were they to return to 21st century Who (which is highly doubtful), they would probably look no better and little could be done about the generic nature of their motivation. One thing's for certain though: the actor inside the uncomfortable costume would be paid a truck of a lot more.

AFTERTHOUGHT

If there's one thing that really takes the shine off the Terileptils' only Doctor Who TV story to date, The Visitation, it's the ending. The Doctor starting the Great Fire of London of 1666 is contrived to say the least, but worse is the graphic depiction of the Terileptils' last moments, which is unnecessarily nasty. It seems to suggest that, like Tertullian looking down from heaven and taking pleasure in seeing the tortures of the damned, we are allowed to relish the pain of other creatures just as long as they are 'bad'.

"Sparing the rod" by Thomas Cookson 13/7/19

In my review of The Visitation, I treated the story's crime-and-punishment issue rather glibly. Davison deduces that the Terileptils are on the run from their people's brutal justice. Possibly born into criminality in a broken society. They'd suffered dangerous hard labour on the penal mining planets, leaving their leader disfigured, losing an eye. Eventually escaping and crashing on Medieval Earth, where they now plan to conquer and sterilize the planet via biological warfare.

Davison's proposed solution is to resettle them. Give them a third way out between surrendering back to prison and committing their atrocity. Given the Terileptils murdered an innocent, sympathetic family at the beginning, I objected to how Davison's plan would see the Terileptils go unpunished. Is it the Doctor's place to forgive them killing a family he didn't even know?

I've reconsidered since, wondering was I really speaking from the heart or had frustrations at Davison's do-gooder (in)actions elsewhere made me echo more reactionary views? Indeed, what would further punishment be to convicts who'd already suffered terribly? Hasn't their suffering made mockery of the idea of justice, if it was a brutal, dehumanizing experience that bred only the desperation to escape by any ruthless means?

Maybe the law of Earth or the Terileptils is wrong, and the Doctor's right to try adjudicating something fairer. I can't see fairness in the Terileptil's punishment system. Isn't that why we championed the Doctor? Because he knows rules and authorities can be wrong?

Logopolis showed Earth's police as clueless obstacles he had to evade, who didn't understand alien affairs. Sherlock, likewise, when having determined the murderer and motive, sometimes considered their motives mitigating enough to turn them loose, out of his justice.

True, the family at the beginning did the Terileptils no wrong and died for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But consider the case for turning them in. The Terileptil justice system failed to rehabilitate them and instead only hardened them into more ruthless killers.

Since they're in hiding in a discreet, primitive Earth, there's no major visibility to their thwarted escape. Punishing them wouldn't be deterrent to others either way. Whereas the punishment they've suffered was so inhumane, could there be a deterrent strong enough to counter the push factor?

Like Medieval England, maybe the present injustices will mould away in time as the fugitives' new society evolves and develops enlightenment. But it won't happen if Terileptil justice get its way and reabsorbs them into their brutal system.

I'm reconsidering this from some distance, however, because I just feel no desire to rewatch this. Frankly, I'd prefer rewatching Timelash. I'm not entirely sure why. I don't remember it being terrible, but it was rather dull and dry.

I think the issue's the Terileptils. They seem to occupy an uncertainty between monsters or villains. Neither scary enough to be monsters nor layered or complex enough to be anything substantial.

I think Season 19's already a chore to sit through for the terrible-trio companions, but usually through that kind of fraught, stifled articulation, stories like Kinda or Castrovalva ended up saying or providing something spiritually rewarding in the end. Here we endure that chore for the reward of something bland and generic.

Sure, the monsters are reflections of us. They're selfish, callous, cavalier and self-interested. But unless the story really wants to explore the broken society that produced such criminals with nothing to lose, with the Doctor working to help fix or reform it, they're just not villains it's rewarding or pleasant for the story or hero to so indulge. They're not really villains we want to spend time with.

They're just a bunch of snarling, unpleasant thugs and ultimately hollow. They're what people who don't watch Classic Who assumed all the monster stories were like and as such didn't realize the show could tell stories that weren't so predictable.

Mike Morris suggested there's an interesting moral dynamic with Davison thinking there's good reason to try reasoning with a belligerent creature, only for the Terileptil leader to be too hardened, obtuse and stuck in his ways to hear reason.

I think really it's just unimaginative Sawardian writing to pad the story out with a one-sided debate that goes nowhere. The frustration of the story being that it's about a complete uncooperation of story elements. Which can sometimes bring about good drama, but with Saward usually ends up a revelling in the shallow, obstinate and moronic.

Maybe I just don't like the Terileptils' unimaginative, rubbery design, to the point I can't see anything sympathetic in them, giving them no particular sense of 'soul'. Sure, there have been rubbish Who monsters aplenty. The problem is, they're overexposed and overlit, so they don't make a sharp impression, but neither do they work as a watchable antagonist. We want them vanquished offscreen for the wrong reasons.

Often in ways that really compromise suspension of disbelief. The fact they're so obesely lumbering and awkward, yet in certain key action moments we're to believe they've superior violent strength when dramatically required.

I think the Terileptils briefly seem like they might be something more complex and three-dimensional, because Davison treats them with the same respect he would any other co-star. Seeing them less as monsters, as men who've lost their way. But once we realize they're nothing more than generic bullying monsters, it feels something of an obnoxious 'gotcha'. The Terileptils tell us about the Fifth Doctor as a character.

It's a cliche to say Saward was a macho, violence-loving misanthrope who hated the Doctor and used the villains to point out how weak he and his ideals were. I've lately suspected maybe the opposite's true. Perhaps Saward initially shared the liberal politics fashionable among his middle-class peers.

Maybe Saward bought into the idea the Doctor's values were good, and Saward liked to think he shared and could give voice to them. Perhaps the issue was that, in order to write snappy, exciting, actioneering Doctor Who, those values had to fall on the villain's deaf ears. Maybe Saward's just being indulgent with what he already believed, at first. That criminals deserve a second chance, that pacifism should work.

Maybe Saward grew disillusioned, and we saw that disillusionment of a once 'true believer' projected onscreen. I think working-class fans saw Saward as 'one of them' because they shared his disillusionment with middle-class disdain for macho conventions. Not because they relished macho values but felt rightly suspicious of those privileged enough to claim they're easy to renounce, having never grown up in environments where macho codes are inescapable.

The 1980s commonly presented heroes who didn't know the answers to life, happiness or responsibility. Most macho cinema heroes were thuggish, misanthropic manchildren who didn't do self-help or healthier lifestyles, feeling no need to change their bad attitude. They sought happiness through violent retribution. Rebelling against the growing culture of wellness, spirituality and empathy values.

The attitude seemed to be that everything was a horrible mess, with no point doing anything but go off the rails. Boys From the Blackstuff saw all its characters come broke for answers and ruin their own lives, and it ended with the wisest character passing on his last words of wisdom before dying.

In that regard, Davison's Doctor might've been among the last heroes left who valued humanism and spiritual wellness. But, as this face-off with the disinterested Terileptils shows (which he never learns from), in this 80's televisual landscape, he was looking increasingly out of place and out of touch. Trying to recreate the Doctor of Pertwee's time, who always gave enemies chances. Maybe indicative of the makers' Pertwee nostalgia (riffing on The Silurians and The Time Warrior) and a desire to please those fans who struggled with Tom's alien capriciousness.

It's an idea RTD went with. Occasionally showing Tennant having unconventional, glib objections to status quo attitudes, whilst the humans are caught up in the crowd sentiment. Whether his revulsion in Doomsday to the idea of the dead returning from their natural end or nearly getting killed for pleading for a possessed Sky. The idea that, even in the reactionary Talons of Weng-Chiang, the Doctor as a character is often more clever, progressive and enlightened than the genre he's in.

Certainly, this seemed the same idea. The Doctor making child viewers double-take by his treating the apparently monstrous like they're not necessarily monstrous and deserve accommodation.

Perhaps my issue is the Doctor doesn't seem to have learned from Logopolis, nor woken up to how his past upholding of merciful, humanistic values is what enabled the Master to ultimately reach and destroy Logopolis and a thousand worlds with it. By the nature of Who's standalone serial format, perhaps he can't. It's tempting to see Resurrection of the Daleks as the delayed effect.

Perhaps Peter Moffat's directing lacks the show's usual beguiling surrealism to make the Terileptils intriguing. Thus giving the Doctor nothing to read between the lines for. Whilst it's all well him trying the appeal of reason, it doesn't lead anywhere rewarding, making for unpleasantly mind-numbing, boring viewing. I wish I could say that's only true of this story, but it becomes true of his entire era.

The selfless, compassionate Doctor triumphing over the Terileptils' mindless self-interest should be beautifully affirming. Yet I just find it rather sad to watch, really. Maybe it's that these thugs shouldn't be a challenge to the Doctor, if he wasn't determined to be so bleeding-hearted. The sense the show's challenges and stakes aren't rising, the Doctor's just become more awkward, difficult and procrastinating about overcoming them. That something's just keeping the show's storytelling from functioning properly. The wheels from turning.

If Davison couldn't rely on the hands-on, proactive methods of his more boisterous predecessor, then all he had was diplomacy skills. Which, if used right, could've made engaging drama without necessitating an excessive action emphasis. But it's undermined from the start because Davison's clearly a poor negotiator and mediator concerning his own bickering companions, so what chance did he have against enemies and fanatical ideologues?

The problem is his pacifist aims can only be achieved via willingness to invoke some kind of credible threat deterrent to discourage the aggressors. Total pacifism will only ensure violence and killing, perpetrated by aggressors who think they'll have it easy, because the Doctor didn't put a foot down sooner. Nor did he make clear (The Sea Devils) that other human military powers will.

I remember the Doctor being smart enough to know this, even in Genesis ("next time I press that switch, it stays pressed!"). Because he was that committed to preventing avoidable bloodshed. He knew total pacifism's the worst way to achieve that. But there's the sense that's simply how Saward thinks stories, heroes and villains must function now in order to contrive a breaking point that a cleverer Doctor would've known how to prevent (but which Davison never learns to).

Again, maybe there are so many desperate push factors for the Terileptils that the open window to this pull factor is irrelevant. But the Doctor has to offer more than just a third way. Furthermore the plague weapons make the Terileptils still a potential threat to other worlds, if Davison can't make them surrender their materials.

Maybe the leaders' only characterization being vengeful bitterness at his unmendable deformity leaves too depressing a thought for it to be entertaining. Especially under a brutal justice system that the story just accepts remains. Maybe it's just a sad waiting game for the Doctor to accidentally, mercifully end his sorry existence.

Maybe it's depressing because of the Terileptils' witless, hollow characterization. Making his deformity conjures more a maltreated dog who can sadly no longer be pacified, than a cool villain whose war-scars give them character and resilience. Maybe JNT's po-faced soap approach just deadens the flavouring of this sordid pulp sci-fi. Exposing how depressing its ingredients can be in isolation.