"Better Living Through Chemistry"

“Give the poor man a chance.”

For the best part of a couple of decades many Doctor Who fans regarded The Krotons (1969) as little more a punchline, and that was true for both the four part story of that title and its eponymous monsters. Unfortunately, said fans also happened to be the only people ever giving them any thought. 

The costumes were silly and the story was boring, it was said. Yes, it was the first story written by Robert Holmes, one of Doctor Who’s most significant writers but thankfully he got better, eh? Ha ha ha. Frazer Hines, who played Jamie in the story, would routinely refer to it as “The Croutons”. Which prompted fandom’s would be comedians to make jokes about “being in the soup”. Frazer also listed it as his least favourite of the stories he appeared in for Doctor Who Magazine.

It’s easy to forget now, when every existing episode of Doctor Who is available to view more or less instantly and on multiple formats, that for much of the twentieth century Doctor Who fans were fans of a programme we couldn’t actually see. 

Sure, there were new episodes every year (well, at least until 1989) but especially in an era before video cassettes, of only three (then four) channels, and of few repeats of programmes of programmes more than two years old, Doctor Who’s past was obscured, unavailable. Ancient history. It was like being a fan of the Roman Republic. All you had to go with your firm conviction it was a good thing in its day were reports of what other people had once thought about it

Target books’ Doctor Who novelisation range, which began in 1973, was the closest thing anyone, in the UK at least, had to access to earlier episodes of the programme. But The Krotons, wasn’t novelised until 1985. Because of this it’s not a story was lodged in the minds of Doctor Who fandom by its print incarnation. It wasn’t mythologised through trips to public libraries and posters in book shops. It was forgotten. 

That, though, is possibly preferable to what happened next. In 1981 the story was repeated as part of the The Five Faces of Doctor Who season, which bridged the long gap between the end of Tom Baker’s last series and the beginning of Peter Davison’s first. In the process it became only the third black and white Doctor Who story to be repeated in its entirety, and one of only around a dozen over all up to 1981.

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Paradoxically The Krotons both lacked any specific anticipations and, forced to stand in for the entire Troughton era, was a massive disappointment. That was its bad luck. Very few Troughton stories were complete at the BBC in 1981. Four, including this one, the only four part story amongst them. With the repeats scheduled for Mondays to Thursdays over five weeks, The Krotons became BBC Two’s standard bearer for the latter half of Doctor Who’s 1960s simply by default.  

This disappointment was perhaps sharpened by its lack of famous monsters and other marquee elements. (The other repeats included the first ever Doctor Who serial and the then only multi-Doctor adventure, The Three Doctors, as well as the unimpeachably excellent Carnival of Monsters.) Whatever the reason, it became kind of Sin Eater. The wrong choice had been made for a repeat, fans insisted. Surely the Troughton era was not, as a whole, so small, so uninspiring, so grubby looking and so, well, cheap black and white space opera as all that?

The serial’s later novelisation was subsequently passed over by a fandom that had already seen and judged the story.

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Its video cassette release, in 1992, was overshadowed by being paired with an expanded, extended and improved version of 1989’s The Curse of Fenric, by an uncomplimentary review in Doctor Who Magazine, and by a then already aging fandom having taped it off BBC Two a decade earlier. Some turned up in DWM’s letters page to defend its honour, but could only do so by making disparaging remarks about The Curse of Fenric. The equivalent of a football fan claiming their team’s opponents are obviously shit, even after they’ve been thrashed by them.

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So let’s be fair to The Krotons, shall we? At the very least it has an interesting production history, and an obvious impact on the series’ future. Originally pitched to Doctor Who in 1965 and revised and revived as various projects since, the unsolicited The Krotons was developed by Terrance Dicks, then the series’ deputy script editor.

The 1968/9 Doctor Who production block was an unsettled period in the programme’s production history. Producer Peter Bryant and Script Editor Derrick Sherwin (who in practice effectively shared both jobs between them) had commissioned, paid for and abandoned a huge number of scripts. More, in fact, than they ever used. This was despite them working on what was then the shortest run of Doctor Who episodes yet produced. Dicks was ostensibly learning his trade with his over-commission, but it’s hard not to feel that the efficient and modest Dicks, who had already sussed how ineffective his superiors were, and was planning to leave ASAP, understood that these scripts would be required sooner rather than later.

In late 1968 BBC Director David Maloney, working on only his second Doctor Who adventure, aired his doubts that the scripts he had been assigned, Prison in Space by Dick Sharples could, or should, be made. Dicks’ project was offered to him as an alternative; on reading it, Maloney pronounced it suitable and it went into production instead.

Hines had been looking forward to making Prison In Space, because it was a battle of the sexes comedy, and perhaps because it concluded with his character spanking Wendy Padbury’s Zoe.

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Perhaps that missed, shall we say, opportunity is the source of his ire with the replacement scripts?

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He’s entitled to his disappointment, of course. But it’s hardly a basis for other people to judge the serial in 1981, let alone now.

What then, can we say in favour of the much-maligned The Krotons? Well, it’s worth noting that the opening episode of the story is one of only six Doctor Who instalments (out of nearly two hundred) transmitted from Spring 1966 to the end of 1969 to be watched by 9m viewers or more. That episode also features some hugely effective location filming, all crisp black shadows and silvery highlights. In it the unnamed planet of the humanoid Gonds, ruled by the alien Krotons, looks like something from Universal horror film of the nineteen thirties, and remains impressive to this day. The story has a score, or rather a background of Radiophonic sounds that occasionally seem like music, that is pioneering, deft and brilliant. One of the unsung masterworks of one the BBC’s most creative departments

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in 2023 it gives the whole serial an atmosphere, a vibe, which rather pleasing.

The Krotons also has a thoughtful and well structured script. This is unsurprising, given its author and editor, but also something rarely acknowledged even by those who admire the two. While The Krotons’ long genesis make it unlikely it was inspired by the 1968 Paris student riots, there are certain echoes of them within it, making its topic timely. There are strong ideas in the script concerning the lengths those with even small amounts of delegated power - such as Selris - will go to in order to keep hold of it. The story distrusts authority and conformity, wonders at the motives of the powerful and niggles away at the assumptions of the status quo. It is deeply suspicious of unquestioning adherence to tradition. Arguably, these are exactly the sort of things Doctor Who should be doing. 

Interestingly, while Holmes is celebrated at the grand master of Doctor Who by many, a lot of his later stories - and atypically for the programme generally - conclude with explosions or fights. The Krotons’ plot is resolved through school level chemistry. The Doctor realises something about the Krotons’ life cycle and biology from their behaviour, technology and appearance, and improvises a solution. In this instance both figuratively and literally. Again, exactly the sort of thing Doctor Who should be doing. 

Even more importantly, the always strong Doctor, Jamie and Zoe team are exceptionally well written here. That Zoe is clever and from the future, and Jamie instinctive and from the past is drawn out well, with both characters given distinctive things to do as they move around Troughton’s perfectly performed Doctor. Him panicking as he fails the Krotons’ tests that Zoe has passed with flying colours, leading her to perkily announce “The Doctor is almost as clever as I am!” remains one of the great scenes of the era. 

That’s the story, but what of the monsters? Well, their lower body, a sort of skirt section, is not impressive. But the upper body, with its claws and pipes, certainly is. Their spinning crystalline heads are striking, while giving a clue as to their origins and thus the methods of their defeat. And they sound brilliant, with their guttural, stentorian voices, barking commands in a sinister accent that strikes and odd balance between Afrikaans and Brummie.

The costumes built for the story were obviously fragile. One had seemingly been intended to be used in the “parade” of monsters in The War Games Episode Ten made just six months later, but had essentially fallen to bits in the interim. That’s a shame as, while this is rarely noted, the were the last original Doctor Who monsters of the 1960s. The three stories made after this one and in that decade either featured returning monsters of no monsters at all. 

For The Krotons it was sadly a case of here today, Gond tomorrow.

Sorry.

1. Let’s not get into an argument over which, if any, compilations count.

2. Excess unsold copies of it were re-jacketed in a double size volume with copies of another less-loved late Troughton story, The Dominators, which also did not receive the Target treatment until the mid-1980s.

3. We’ve all been there. Oh, just me then? Sorry.

4. Amazingly, this scene is foreshadowed in Jamie and Zoe’s first meeting in the second episode of The Wheel in Space.

5. The scripts have since been published and are available here. They have also been made available as a terrifc audio adaptation.

6. This, at least, is appreciated even if only by electronica nerds, and is available separately here.