Donald Tosh never wrote
for Doctor Who officially however he did take the position of Script Editor
after Dennis Spooner left the position.
He did ghost write The Celestial
Toymaker and The Massacre of St.
Bartholomew’s Eve and of course submitted a few script ideas that never
went anywhere. One script survived in
Frazer Hines’s garage, The Rosemariners
a story about aliens that have evil roses taken from the planet Kembel and are
using the Doctor to find a cure to the Rosedream. It’s a very convoluted plot on the whole as
it could be a six part story with a few more characters, but the four part
formula works rather well this time around.
The story poses an interesting question for base under siege
stories. What would happen if the Doctor
didn’t stop the siege? The titular Rosemariners
have taken over a space station and have influenced xenobotonist Arthur Biggs
to find an antidote to rosedream. It
looks on the outset like it would be something different for the Doctor to go
into, but Tosh just writes a story very similar to the base under siege
format. This isn’t a complaint as the
base under siege format works and it works very well. The only real reason is that the sets
wouldn’t fit a Doctor Who budget and that would be a shame as part of the story
comes from the images of the rosarium, an enormous greenhouse filled with
roses.
As this takes the style
of a Companion Chronicle with only four actors, Frazer Hines takes on the role
of the Doctor and Jamie here. The
problem with that is whenever the Doctor speaks Hines’s impression is so spot
on you cannot help but think Troughton is back from the dead. The Doctor’s scenes with David Warner’s
excellent Arnold Biggs. The two
scientists have this chemistry together which is really quite good for the
story as they are working out what the Rosemariners really want. The opening episode is just the Rosemariners
coming to collect the Doctor and Biggs which allows what could have been a very
slow start to move along at a nice pace.
The problem however is that it doesn’t feel in place for the Troughton
era, but the Hartnell era which really doesn’t work for Troughton’s energetic
Second Doctor. This is really a problem
in the entire story as it is very much written for Hartnell as the Doctor. This is because of course Tosh was script
editor for Hartnell and only Hartnell.
Arnold Biggs would definitely get a larger actor to play him were this a
Hartnell story and really I can’t imagine anyone else in the role besides David
Warner. Warner, who can always play a
villain, gets a chance to play a hero as really it is him acting as the
companion to the Doctor in this story.
The story really is one
of three pairs. First is the Doctor and
Professor Biggs, and second is our villains Rugosa and Colbert. Rugosa is played by the deep voiced Clive
Wood. Wood has one of those voices like
silk that is as sweet as a rose, but like every rose he has his thorns and
those thorns are the fact that he is one of the Rosemariners’ prisoners who
took over his own prison and put the wardens under rosedream. His second in command is a nameless
Rosemariner who has replicated the appearance of Colbert, a Frenchman played by
Wendy Padbury. Padbury plays Colbert
because she lives in France and gets several scenes with herself. The two Colbert’s we see are opposites of
each other. The real Colbert is a coward
while the Rosemariner Colbert is a ruthless killer. They are both hilarious roles and get a lot
of great scenes throughout the story which really works for the betterment of
the plot. The Rosemariners are great villains
as they are a very civilized race, but sadly they aren’t used to their full
potential in this story. The final pair
are of course Jamie and Zoe who both act like mischievous schoolchildren in
this story similar to the Doctor and Vicki in The Crusade. Tosh’s script
is great for writing duos and Jamie and Zoe are the ones to reveal what the
Rosemariners are truly planning after capturing several humans and brainwashing
them. Wendy Padbury and Frazer Hines
both under Lisa Bowerman’s great direction reunite for a powerhouse performance
as they work together for what is a great story, but isn’t anywhere near
perfect.
To summarize, The Rosemariners is definitely a good
story and Donald Tosh knows what he is doing.
However it feels very out of place in the Second Doctor’s timeline as
things are written like a William Hartnell serial with a full episode dedicated
to exploration and three to the actual story which drags the pace of a four
part story down. The Rosemariners are a
great species and work as credible villains even if the story is very
predictable and the four actors work very well together under the direction of
the wonderful Lisa Bowerman. 75/100
No comments:
Post a Comment