Doctor Who’s ‘Carnival of Monsters’ and the metafiction of play

Andrew O’Day 
 

Introduction

Doctor Who metafictions could draw attention to different conceptions of the roles of television and of Doctor Who specifically. This article examines the claim that television is a source of pleasure for its audience (especially children) by focusing on Robert Holmes’ metafiction ‘Carnival of Monsters’ (1973) which, on one level, can be read as reflecting on the programme’s playful and stylish nature. By the time ‘Carnival of Monsters’ was first transmitted, Doctor Who had been on air for 10 years, and had established itself as an immensely popular Saturday tea-time series with a regular hero who could change his appearance. Originally positioned in-between Grandstand and Juke Box Jury (1959-67), the series was designed to bridge the generational gap, appealing to both the sporting dads, and the pop music teenage culture. Yet a common image associated with the series is of the child viewer hiding behind the sofa – terrified by the programme’s monsters, yet determined to remain viewing. Indeed, this very popularity of the series feeds into ‘Carnival of Monsters’ in a postmodernist fashion.  
 

The pleasures of television and of Doctor Who

Television, many have argued, has the responsibility to produce the good citizen, and to suggest that children have a right to be entertained may seem positively irresponsible (Urwin 1995). Children are seen in two contrasting ways: the ‘Romantic’ view is that children are innocent, predisposed to be good, while, conversely, children are seen as in need of moral guidance. David Buckingham (1996) indeed examines the arguments for the ‘possible’ detrimental effects of media forms on society, which is not the focus here. But television, as well as having the duty to produce the good citizen, is, as also a source of pleasure, including pleasure for children.  
 

      John Corner, for example, remarks that ‘to give pleasure is the primary imperative of most television’ (1993: 93), while Bernadette Casey et al observe that ‘viewers are not generally forced to watch television and that it is an activity freely entered into’ so ‘it might…be assumed that television is consumed largely for pleasure’ (2002: 152-53). ‘The unfolding of narratives’ write these critics, ‘is one of the principal sources of pleasure’ (2002: 138). Graeme Burton asserts that television can involve ‘the pleasure of suspending one’s relationship with everyday reality’ (2000: 72), while Bignell notes that ‘Narrative offers numerous images of other people, places and things…repeating the pleasurable moment of identifying with others’ (2003: 98). One can see how these last two assertions are particularly applicable to telefantasy like Doctor Who.  
 

      At its start, Doctor Who had the capacity to educate. John Tulloch and Manuel Alvarado place the programme’s science fiction history narratives within the context of the BBC’s pedagogic mission as a Public Service broadcaster. As a Public Service broadcaster, the BBC assumed a caring role towards its viewers and is typically referred to as ‘Auntie’. According to Tulloch and Alvarado, former BBC producer Krishnan Kumar refers to the original goal of the corporation ‘of lifting the British nation to new moral and cultural heights’ and of John Reith’s (Director General) strict interpretation of the BBC’s charter to ‘inform, educate, and entertain’ (1983: 36-7). Tulloch and Alvarado continue: 
 

The “popular”  was included…to lure the “mass” into the broadcasting channels which would then educate them into the “Cultural”…In 1955, the BBC’s control over national broadcasting was lost through the introduction of the commercial television channel ITV, meaning that the BBC had to become more competitive, since its audience figures slumped by the late 1950s to 27 per cent contrasting with ITV’s 73 per cent…But ‘the BBC’s “cultural” and “educational” hallmark was certainly not lost, even if now located within a new more competitive framework (1983: 37-9)  
 

Doctor Who was produced not by the BBC’s children’s department, dramatising books, but by the drama department. This was headed by Canadian born Sydney Newman, who divided the Department into Plays, Series and Serials. But Newman still ‘wanted a programme which, while not necessarily educational as such, was one which children could look at and learn something from…in an entertainment format’ (Lambert 2001), resembling The Eagle comic of the 1950s (Tulloch and Alvarado 1983: 39-40). 
 

      Doctor Who’s first producer Verity Lambert holds the view that television has the capacity to dramatise history and bring it interestingly to life as in the more recent series A History of Britain by Simon Schama (Lambert 2001). Lambert feels that this was a success in Doctor Who and testified to by the many letters she received from school teachers following the transmission of narratives: ‘teaching history…was made much easier by the fact that the children liked the programme and therefore were much more open to understanding historical events’ (Lambert 2001). Lambert’s view of such accessibility is also to be found in the writings of media critics such as Pierre Sorlin who comments that the experience of a past time is creatively conveyed in film differently than words on a page (1990: 31). Corner also notes that television has ‘often worked at the popularisation of knowledge’ enabling the viewer to cross into ‘dramatic…events of high intensity’ since for many television viewers ‘most writing…would be far from pleasurable’ and would be ‘inaccessible’ (1999: 96-7).  
 

      Doctor Who’s initial format highlighted the notion of learning and the distinction between inaccessibility and accessibility. While a history schoolteacher commonly presents visions of other past cultures through text books, in Doctor Who, the television viewer is not instructed by the schoolteacher Barbara Wright in lessons about past cultures but is brought with her across generic boundaries and sees through her eyes, as Lambert stresses (2001), the past of other cultures enacted. The schoolteacher’s role of commonly providing a textbook to educate students is highlighted in the first episode when Barbara lends Susan Foreman, student at Coal Hill School, a book titled The French Revolution to read at home. Susan’s home is actually the TARDIS, into which Barbara follows her, where with the characters the television viewer crosses into the past periods of other cultures, one of which, presented at the end of the programme’s first season, is indeed the Reign of Terror. The television viewer is not being lectured byBarbara but is on a par with her. Doctor Who’s accessibility was further made possible by the dramatisation of events through accurate visuals, where the BBC used many costumes and props hired in or taken from its other period dramas. 
 

      While Doctor Who’s format made the inclusion of the monster adventure genre appropriate in addition to the historical narratives, from the outset Sydney Newman had been firm that Doctor Who should not become such a programme, instructing producer Verity Lambert not to include Bug Eyed Monsters (Tulloch and Alvarado 1983: 42). However, the monster adventure became important once Terry Nation introduced the Daleks in only the second narrative of the programme. There were two forces at work. On the one hand, as Tulloch and Alvarado argue, ‘the embattled position of the BBC’ competing with ITV ‘meant that “entertainment”, even without “education”, was allowed to prevail in’ Doctor Who’s ‘scientific stories’ (1983: 42).  But on the other hand, as Tulloch and Alvarado point out, ‘Doctor Who…avoided the “science as education” problem by drawing on…“soft” socio-cultural…speculation’ involving ‘the investigation of different cultures through space and time, rather than seeking an involvement with hard science’ (1983: 41). Therefore, it remained educational in this respect in keeping with its Public Service remit, aiming to produce the good citizen. Hence, as early as the second narrative ‘The Daleks’ (1963-64), Nation explored the issue of racism, inspired by Wells’s The Time Machine (1898), and later in the Jon Pertwee narratives ‘Doctor Who and the Silurians’ (1970) and ‘The Sea Devils’ (1972) the issue of whether man had exclusive rights over the Earth was raised.  
 

      But narratives did follow the lines of popular adventure fiction. For example, in the Daleks later return in ‘The Chase’ (1965), the book that science teacher Ian Chesterton reads entitled Monsters from Outer Space is a far cry from the textbooks he used to teach at Coal Hill School and indeed the book that Barbara lends Susan in ‘An Unearthly Child’. Being a ‘bit far-fetched’, the book points to the construction of the Doctor Who narrative and is therefore a metafictional marker. The book mirrors the Doctor (William Hartnell) and his companions being involved in a picaresque adventure narrative dashing from place to place to escape the Daleks, without the serious moral tone of Nation’s earlier voyage narrative ‘The Keys of Marinus’ (1964). For this is what many youngsters wanted, who, as Gary Gillatt notes, were from the start attracted to the Daleks design and voices which led them to play monsters in the school yard and had precipitated the monsters’ return (1998: 17). The children were like the Doctor (William Hartnell) at the end of ‘The Space Museum’ (1965) who, in a metafictional moment, gets inside a ‘prop’ Dalek and jokingly pretends to be the creature in a prelude to ‘The Chase’. This moment is metafictional since it exposes the Dalek as a toy figure that contains real performers (actors who children mimic), but at the same time, the programme remains true to its own Realism since the Dalek is in a museum. 
 

      Doctor Who remained a programme dominated by monsters. Indeed, the historical, which, as Philip MacDonald notes, had itself become shaped by popular fiction and films (1992: 45), where, for example, ‘The Gunfighters’ (1966) consisted of ‘a series of what the Doctor himself calls “cliché-ridden conventions”’ (MacDonald 1992: 44), was phased out with Patrick Troughton’s arrival as the Doctor in 1966/67. Although in 1970 the format saw the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) imprisoned within boundaries when exiled to Earth in a new body, these boundaries were penetrated by multiple genres. Up to this point, the format had largely involved the Doctor’s scientific craft, the TARDIS, landing on alien worlds or on an Earth populated by monsters. For example, in the late 1960s, continuing the precedent begun by William Hartnell’s final narrative ‘The Tenth Planet’ (1966), the Doctor (Patrick Troughton) had crossed into a secluded base in ‘base-under-siege’ narratives, either in space as seen in ‘The Moonbase’ (1967), on another planet as seen in ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’ (1967), or on Earth as evidenced in ‘The Abominable Snowmen’ (1967), ‘The Ice Warriors’ (1967), and ‘Fury from the Deep’ (1968). Although the monsters in many of these narratives were played by actors in costumes, they were treated as ‘real’ and menacing in the narrative worlds and provided pleasure for viewers. Therefore, the comment in ‘The Invasion’ (1968) that Isobel Watkins’ photographs of Cybermen in the sewers of London make the creatures look phoney may be a little wink to the viewer that in fact Doctor Who’smonsters are played by men in costumes, but at the same time the programme remains true to its own rules of Realism in that Cybermen bursting out of the sewers and descending down the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral appears highly menacing. The prime genre which was introduced during the early 1970s was indeed the alien invasion genre. As the Brigadier tells Liz Shaw in ‘Spearhead from Space’ (1970), UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) deals with ‘the odd, the unexplained, anything on Earth – or even beyond’. Therefore, the confining aspect of Earth is literally invaded by other generic forces.  
 

      The pseudo-historical (mixing science fiction aliens with history) would make a comeback in Pertwee’s final season narrative ‘The Time Warrior’ (1973-74), and later the pseudo-historical would be blended with the gothic and its monstrous figures in the Philip Hinchcliffe/Robert Holmes era of the programme, with new Doctor Tom Baker (see ‘The Masque of Mandragora’, 1976). Producer Graham Williams treated monsters with humour, while, as Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore (undated) note, producer John Nathan-Turner and script-editor Eric Saward brought back many old villains and monsters, sometimes in a postmodern pastiche of their earlier narratives (e.g. 1985s ‘Attack of the Cybermen’ which not only references ‘An Unearthly Child’, 1963, and ‘Logopolis’, 1981, but also draws most specifically on ‘The Tenth Planet’, ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’, and ‘The Invasion’ and ‘Earthshock’, 1982, as well as indeed on ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’, 1984). This strategy ultimately proved unsuccessful with both regular audiences and fans as these narratives relied on knowledge of earlier ones, whereas ‘Carnival of Monsters’ is postmodernist in a different sense: in its meta-reflection on the significant aim ofDoctor Who which was to entertain.

Carnival of Monsters

Holmes’ Doctor Who narrative ‘Carnival of Monsters’ shows how there is a conflict between the programme’s format leading to popular entertainment on the one hand and serious drama with political undercurrents on the other. The narrative is from the Barry Letts/Terrance Dicks era which is one of the most political and moral periods of Doctor Who’s history, often, as noted earlier, using monsters in the process of commenting on serious issues. However, both producer and director Letts (2001) and script editor Dicks (2001) admit that there was an important place for play in the programme which came further to the foreground in this narrative. 
 

      ‘Carnival of Monsters’ sees two show people, Vorg and Shirna arrive on the planet Inter-Minor with a mini-Scope, a type of peep show. Analogies are set up between the mini-Scope and the programmeDoctor Who and television generally, where further ideas as to the role of television can be seen. When asked the purpose of the mini-Scope by the officials on Inter-Minor, the visitor Vorg states that his and his assistant Shirna’s ‘purpose is to amuse. Nothing serious. Nothing political’. The alien society that is presented follows a familiar hierarchal structure of ruling class - the Officials - and working class - the physically deformed and hence lesser beings, the Functionaries, whose role is - as Karl Marx would see it, and as their title suggests, to function at the economic base of the society. They are presented during the narrative as baggage handlers and vehicle drivers, with certain Functionaries rebelling, as indicated close to the start of the narrative where a Functionary makes a protest and has to be restrained. Added to that, it is made clear that the Functionaries may not symbolically ascend to the higher level.  The officials Kalik and Orum’s criticism of the carnival of monsters is that its very presence stands in opposition to social control and therefore, despite Vorg’s comment, is political. Indeed, on one level, the entire narrative can be seen as a satire of bureaucracy.  
 

      In the narrative, it is a concern of the Official Kalik’s that, as he states in an aside to his aide Orum, ‘Amusement is prohibited’ and that its introduction will see the Functionaries neglecting work and taking over. However, a view that has been applied to television is not that it offers an escape from hierarchy and work but that it offers the audience a release from work so that they will muster the strength to be able to cope with the work process again (Adorno and Horkheimer 1993: 137). As Orum states, ‘President Zarb is considering lifting [the] restriction’ on amusement since ‘The latest thinking is that the latest outbreak among the Functionaries has been caused by lack of amusement’. From this line, we can note that Zarb (unseen for the duration of the narrative) also views amusement as the prolongation of work, offering an escape from the mechanized work process so that citizens regain strength to be able to cope with it again. But an application of classical Marxism applied to television is that while the mass audience believes that television is harmless entertainment offering relaxation at the end of a hard workday, the medium instils bourgeois values.  
 

      The Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1968) examines the language and practices of the Renaissance carnival, which he distinguishes from the carnival holiday culture of today. According to Bakhtin, the Renaissance carnival culture involved ‘the temporary suspension of all hierarchic distinctions and barriers among men…and of the prohibitions of usual life’ (1968: 15) being ‘the place for working out a new mode of interrelationship between individuals’ where ‘People who in life are separated by impenetrable hierarchical barriers enter into free and familiar contact’ (1968: 123). As Bakhtin explains, the carnival also inverted the standard societal make-up (1968: 15). Therefore, for Bakhtin, the carnival can stand in opposition to, and sometimes satirize, social control. The carnival juxtaposes high and low and upper-class and lower-class culture. Bakhtin identifies the main forms of carnival which include ritual spectacles, and comic compositions such as inversions. Importantly, Bakhtin sees the forms of the carnival being transferred into other media such as literature and art. Indeed, John Fiske applies Bakhtin’s ideas of the carnival to television, where, for example, the character of B.A. in The A-Team (1983-87) is the low figure of carnival standing in opposition to social control (1987: 242), or where Rock ‘n’ Wrestling (1985) presents spectacle and also involves satire of the upper class through the character ‘Lord Alfred Hayes’ (1987: 245). We see that the carnival in ‘Carnival of Monsters’ would likewise involve the suspension of the prohibitions of the Functionaries’ usual life but in this case, the themes of the carnival assert, rather than invert, societal make-up. For example, the mini-Scope reinforces Inter Minor society’s hierarchal structure rather than subverting it, since one of the people contained within, Major Daly, is an upper-class plantation owner en route to India on a ship, the SS Bernice, just as the Functionaries on Inter-Minor work for their masters. The scenes in the mini-Scope on the SS Bernice are set in 1926, a time of colonization reflected in novels such as E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India (1924).       
 

      While ‘Carnival of Monsters’ addresses different roles of television, then, it can be read as reflecting on television, and specifically on Doctor Who, as fictional drama, as playful and stylish to give pleasure. In this respect, this article builds upon Henry Jenkins’ work in his book The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture (2006). In that instance, Jenkins looks not at the Renaissance carnival but at the vaudeville tradition (popular in North America from the 1880s to the 1930s) which involved different types of act (including musical numbers, dancing, comedy sketches, magic shows, acrobatics, juggling, one-act plays or scenes from plays and even routines involving trained animals). The vaudeville built up the viewer’s emotions to a climax, which Jenkins describes as the point where the spectator goes ‘wow!’. Although the vaudeville was viewed by some critics as vulgar and sensationalistic, Jenkins concentrates on the way it was celebrated by many for its playfulness, and proceeds to draw out the range of emotions elicited by popular culture texts, examining affect. Jenkins looks at different media, including television, composed of different genres, and at different emotional reactions. As we shall see, ‘Carnival of Monsters’, however, is most indebted to the carny (a travelling fun-fair), and that enables this narrative to actually reflect, here on playfulness.     
 

      In ‘Carnival of Monsters’, having regained his knowledge of how to work the TARDIS, the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and his assistant Jo Grant become entangled in a portable miniature peep show, viewed on a small screen. In the narrative, the creatures within this peep show are revealed to be real although situations in which they find themselves have been engineered and they have been programmed to repeat their actions. The metafictional nature of the narrative is highlighted in numerous ways. Tim Robins notes that the live action in the mini-Scope refers back to the early years of live television (66-05), but the liveness also enables the Doctor Who narrative to fit in with its own rules of Realism. Jim Leach, meanwhile, notes that the mini-Scope which viewers pay to watch for pleasure, is ‘a cross between a peep show and a television set in which the entertainment is provided by miniaturized live people and creatures trapped inside’ and this ‘plays on the “primitive” idea of how television works’ (2009: 69).  
 

      In ‘Carnival of Monsters’, Vorg makes the pitch for the mini-Scope on Inter-Minor, stating, to what he hopes will eventually be paying customers, ‘Roll up, roll up, and see the monster show’. ‘Carnival of Monsters’ therefore bears some similarities with the frame narrative. The frame narrative is one of fiction’s most self-conscious artificial forms (Geoffrey Chaucer’s medieval text The Canterbury Tales, drawing on Boccaccio’s Decameron, is the most famous example, while another instance from popular culture is Star Trek’s ‘Spectre of the Gun’, 1968). The frame narrative can involve narrator figures telling tales, and audiences listening. In ‘Carnival of Monsters’ viewer figures look at a screen. In the frame narrative, there is not only a process of division between the frame and the inner ‘tale’, but there is also a process of unification. It is in relation to the frame that what is within is given shape.  
 

      There are distinctions and connections between the scenes set on Inter-Minor and those set within the mini-Scope in ‘Carnival of Monsters’. Connections between Inter-Minor and the Scope are drawn to the television viewer’s attention early in the narrative. The television viewer is immediately given clues as to the fact that the Doctor and Jo have arrived in a mini-Scope. The very title of the narrative signifies that it is about a monster show. Implicit connections are also quickly established between Inter-Minor, and the object of the mini-Scope. Upon arriving on Inter-Minor, Vorg instructs the Functionaries to be careful with the mini-Scope, therefore highlighting the importance of the object. Soon, an establishing shot of a sailing ship in the middle of the ocean is provided, with it seems much space in which to travel. When the Doctor and Jo arrive on the ship, the SS Bernice, a red light flashes on the Scope indicating, as Shirna on Inter-Minor notes, ‘a systems defect’. The inclusion of this cross-cut is a technique drawing a connection between ship and mini-Scope. Furthermore, Vorg begins his pitch to the Functionaries on Inter-Minor that the mini-Scope is a ‘carnival of monsters’ with creatures ‘all living in their natural habitat’. Also, when the Doctor and Jo return from Major Daly’s cabin to the saloon in episode one, the Doctor refers to the ship scenes as being part of a ‘collection’ and uses the analogy of small boys looking down from above at a rock pool, which invites the television viewer to think of Vorg’s object, and to see that while the ship might appear to have a vast amount of space in which to travel, it is, in fact, highly contained.  
 

      Robins has intriguingly noted that the filming of the scenes set on Inter-Minor and that of those set within the mini-Scope is sometimes varied to provide the sense of two completely different environments. The scenes set on Inter-Minor have all been filmed inside on video, as indeed have those set in the workings of the Scope, while, conversely, some of the scenes set within the compartments of the mini-Scope (on the ship, the SS Bernice, and in the monstrous Drashig marshland) have been shot on film outside (with the exception of studio pieces like the saloon scenes on the SS Bernice, and those in Major Daly’s cabin). This can provide a jarring effect between the two and just as those on Inter-Minor stand watching the scenes on the mini-Scope, so too does the audience of Doctor Who watch, from inside, a programme that was in the Jon Pertwee years increasingly shot on film and location. As Robins notes, ‘The occasional forays into location never integrate with the studio work as anything other than what they clearly are – telecine inserts’ (66-06). For as Peter Anghelides remarks in the same publication, where he traces the move from studio recording to location filming in the production of Doctor Who: ‘Film and video were…being used together in television drama fairly extensively by the time ‘Carnival of Monsters’ was made. However, the two media look very different on screen’ (66-10). 
 

      The scenes within the mini-Scope follow a typical Doctor Who pattern. Doctor Who’s format led to a variety of genres, including the pseudo-historical (see Julian Knott quoted in Howe and Walker 1998: 240), where the normal setting is invaded by the strange, and the Doctor and his companion or companions land in this environment. ‘Carnival of Monsters’ operates along two axes. On the one hand, the narrative functions along a vertical axis. Viewers look down on the mini-Scope and the creatures contained within, meaning that there is a boundary between them. In this sense, the object is one of containment. Without the Doctor’s intervention, escape from the device would be impossible. On the other hand, the narrative functions along a horizontal axis. Within the mini-Scope, there are compartments containing different species. Creatures in the mini-Scope are compartmentalised where, for instance, there are scenes on board the ship, the SS Bernice, crossing the Indian Ocean in 1926, and where there is a separate marshland containing the Drashig monsters. Setting orientates one generically and the setting of the SS Bernice establishes the genre as a typical sea narrative. But the different compartments feature elements from diverse genres, making this not only a carnival of monsters but also a carnival of genres. An effect of generic disorientation occurs by the presence of the prehistoric dinosaur rising from the sea. As the Doctor tells Jo, after her assertion that the dinosaur which menaces those on board the SS Bernice did not exist in 1926, ‘this collection is a bit of a jumble’. The compartments are therefore mixed before the Drashig monsters burst through the workings of the mini-Scope to the SS Bernice.    
 

      On a thematic level, the situations presented within compartments of the mini-Scope are straightforward as what is important is play. For example, the scenes on board the SS Bernice involve Major Daly, Andrews and Claire arriving in the saloon after dinner with the Major referring to life on the plantation; Andrews telling Major Daly that he and Claire are going to take a tour round the deck and asking whether the Major wishes to accompany them; the Major replying that he wishes to finish his book and drifting off to sleep; and finally the sound of Claire screaming at the emergence of a prehistoric dinosaur from the sea and Andrews returning her to the safety of her now awoken father while Andrews leaves to deal with the creature.  
 

      Perspective is a key theme running throughout the narrative and especially of this scenario. Crucially, the narrative begins with the scenes on the SS Bernice being viewed from the Doctor and his companion’s perspective, as is common with Doctor Who narratives. Episode one is marked by shots of the Doctor and Jo looking. For example, upon leaving the hold where the TARDIS has materialised, there are shots of the Doctor and Jo looking through a door out onto the deck at one of the ship’s crew. Very importantly to the discussion here, this notion of the Doctor and Jo looking is carried on in the scenes in the ship’s saloon. The pair hide and there is a shot of Major Daly asleep, as seen from their perspective. When they hear a scream and Major Daly, Claire, and Andrews look at the dinosaur rising from the sea from the saloon, the first glimpse of the dinosaur is from the Doctor and Jo’s perspective. The Doctor and Jo are absent from the shot, but the shot is taken from behind Andrews, Claire, and Major Daly, whose facial reactions are therefore not at first evident. From behind, Andrews is presented on the left hand side of the television frame with his arms around Claire, while Major Daly occupies the right. Again, after the Doctor and Jo make their way back to the saloon from the Major’s cabin, in which they have been locked up as stowaways, there are shots of the Doctor and Jo looking in on the Major. Following the emergence of the dinosaur, there is again a shot of Major Daly on the right hand side of the frame, seen from behind and therefore from the Doctor and Jo’s point of view. Significantly, in episode two, the point of view of the scene on the SS Bernice depends on where the Doctor and Jo are. They are on the lower deck while Andrews and Claire are in conversation above on the upper deck. Although in all these instances, the Doctor and Jo are concerned that they not be seen, this notion of perspective is important since point of view is then played with in an interesting way where we assume the viewpoint of those on Inter-Minor watching Andrews and Claire on the Scope’s screen. We start to look down on the blueprint rather than be inside it. Moreover, following Vorg’s demonstration of the Scope to the officials on Inter-Minor, there is an obvious merging of the mini-Scope’s screen with the television viewer’s screen, even though the Doctor and Jo are still presented below the action on the upper deck, thereby still drawing us to their perspective.  
 

      Vorg states ‘I’ll switch back to Circuit 3’. There is a shot of his finger pressing down on a button on the Scope, followed by which we are jolted into what appears like a filmed insert of the prehistoric dinosaur roaring and then Claire Daly screaming, which occupies the entire television frame. The effect is that just as the officials are watching this on the mini-Scope, we are also ‘readers’ whose viewing is being directed.  
 

      At this point, the narrative focuses on the heroine in danger and rescued by the hero in, what Robins would call, a stereotypical manner (66-06), although he does not explore the way in which this is filmed and connected with the Doctor/companion relationship. In Doctor Who during Pertwee’s time in the title role the presence of the dashing hero is communicated through the mixing of science fiction with ‘action adventure’ and ‘monster narrative’. In ‘Carnival of Monsters’, however, there is a mixture of science fiction, the sea adventure, the monster narrative and romance which highlights the binary of hero and heroine. In ‘Carnival of Monsters’ the situation in the mini-Scope is repeated time after time where on board the SS Bernice Andrews is, as one would expect a young navy officer to be, the hero figure and Claire Daly is the screaming heroine. In the mini-Scope, the prehistoric dinosaur rises from the sea to attack those on board the SS Bernice, whereas in Doctor Who, the Doctor is frequently pitted against space monsters. Whereas in the original Doctor Who series, the Doctor does not display romantic interest in his companions, in ‘Carnival of Monsters’ Andrews does hold such affection for the heroine Claire Daly. In a Doctor-like role, however, Andrews rushes to her rescue as she screams at the monster’s appearance.  
 

      Although the situation is played over and over again, each time it is presented differently, highlighting that this is also a carefully shaped Doctor Who narrative. Scenes are constructed for us where the different use of editing and the camera have different effects. A prime example of this is on this occasion in episode two when we rejoin the action at the crucial point where there is a rapid succession of shots, first of the dinosaur, then of Claire, then of Andrews, providing a sense of excitement. Furthermore, Claire’s screaming at the appearance of the monster is presented in Extreme Close-Up, a type of shot used to capture facial reactions.  
 

      Just as camera shots emphasise Claire Daly’s reactions to the dinosaur, the end of the second episode focuses on the reactions of both the Doctor and his companion Jo, when faced by the fearsome Drashigs. Upon Jo’s seeing a Drashig rise from the marsh, an Extreme Close-Up is presented of her, as indeed is one of the Doctor, seen again when a Drashig advances on him in the hold of the SS Bernice in episode four. These Extreme Close-Ups are just as orchestrated as the one of Claire Daly screaming, and connects with this earlier use of this type of shot. Jo soon afterwards, at the start of the third episode, becomes stuck in the marshland of the carnivorous Drashigs, relying on the Doctor’s assistance, just as Claire Daly had relied on Andrews’ assistance. This draws attention to the way the Andrews - Claire scenes reflect on the Doctor - Jo scenes in a fictional Doctor Who narrative. It is significant that at the point that Jo first sees the Drashig, the Doctor Who episode ends so this also reminds the television viewer that this is part of a fictional Doctor Who programme. Indeed, in Doctor Who Jo is established as a screamer, although she does display moments of bravery such as in ‘The Mind of Evil’ (1971) and ‘The Daemons’ (1971) where she presents herself as a sacrifice to save the Doctor.  
 

      Part of the format of the programme was of the male Doctor accompanied by a female companion. Indeed, the only narratives not to feature the female companion are the one episode narrative ‘Mission to the Unknown’ (1965) in which none of the regulars appear since the narrative was a prequel to the twelve-episode Dalek narrative ‘The Daleks’ Master Plan’ (1965-66), and ‘The Deadly Assassin’ (1976). With Jon Pertwee’s arrival and more physically heroic Doctor, the number of companions was scaled-down to one female assistant, which remained the model until John Nathan-Turner took over as producer in 1980, with the brief exception of Tom Baker’s first season and ‘Terror of the Zygons’ (1975), and became re-established between the end of the 1984 season and 1989. With a touch of male chauvinism, the central character was one upon whom the screaming female companion was constantly dependent. Nicholas Abercrombie cites Doctor Who specifically as an example of ‘the traditional “males’ tale”’ where there is a rational active protagonist and an emotional passive heroine (1996: 72). Abercrombie argues that women ‘may attempt to help the hero but often end up having to be rescued’ (1996: 72). The female companion also differed from the male companion. The male companion appeared far less frequently, and existed to assume an action ‘“running and punching role”’ (Tulloch and Alvarado 1983: 229). For example, this was necessary when the first Doctor was played by the elderly William Hartnell and also when it was not known that Pertwee’s replacement would be the physically able Tom Baker (Tulloch and Alvarado 1983: 229). There were, however, attempts to get away from this female stereotype by making the companion a scientific genius (Zoe Heriot), or a scientist (Liz Shaw) or a feminist (Sarah Jane Smith), or a savage (Leela), or the 1980s street rogue (Ace). But the female companion commonly fell back into the stereotypical mould. The female companion often wore highly sexualised costumes (for example, Leela’s leather skins) and so was, as film critic Laura Mulvey would see it, the object of the heterosexual male gaze. The female companion was also present to assume a secondary role to the male Doctor (for instance, later Sarah Jane Smith shifted between the poles of active and passive and reliant on the Doctor, while Leela was like Eliza Doolittle, the student from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion(1916), to the Doctor’s Professor Higgins, while Ace differed in that she was actually given a more prominent narrative arc). Where later women were presented as active, they were often embodiments of wickedness like the Rani, akin to the science fiction programme Blake’s 7’s (1978-81) Servalan. Hence, frequently part of Doctor Who’s play saw stereotypes of gender roles with the female companion’s reaction to monsters being observed.  
 

      Furthermore, ‘Carnival of Monsters’ reflects on the playful pleasures (and frustrations) of the Doctor Who episode endings at the end of the second part. The Doctor and Jo have broken into another of the mini-Scope’s compartments, of the marsh of the monstrous Drashigs. There is again alternation between us sharing the Doctor’s perspective of the new surroundings as he looks around and that of viewers on Inter-Minor. There is an extremely brief cross-cut to the viewers on Inter-Minor and Shirna simply stating that ‘They’ll never make it’. Shirna is watching the Scope, yet her comment can be read in light of the episode ending of Doctor Who on our television sets. Doctor Who’s form as a series of episodic serials means that each narrative is divided into a number of episodes. Therefore, there is a deferral in the flow of each narrative. Enigmas are set but not immediately resolved but rather the episode ending creates a pause, leaving the television viewer in suspense until the next week, or occasionally the next days, instalment. For Doctor Who was transmitted once a week except between 1982-84 when it was screened twice weekly. While the reader of a book chooses at what pace they will read narratives, the pacing of television narratives is, upon first transmission, dictated to the viewer. Therefore, the television viewer is invited to experience mystery. As Tulloch and Alvarado put it, the close of individual Doctor Whoepisodes leaves the question ‘What will happen next?’ (1983: xi). Fiske makes the comment about series television that ‘the future may not be part of the diegetic world of the narrative, but it is inscribed into the institution of television itself: the characters may not act as though they will be back with us next week, but we, the viewers, know that they will’ (1987: 145). Sarah Kozloff notes, ‘because the characters must continue from week to week, suspense is diluted; the viewer knows that the hero is never in mortal danger’ (1992: 91). Therefore, the real television viewer is not invited to share Shirna’s view that ‘They’ll never make it’ at the end of the second episode of Doctor Who ‘Carnival of Monsters’. But Stephen James Walker focuses on the importance of having watched the programme in its original context, episode by episode, where the viewer did not have foreknowledge of what was to happen next in the plot (1999: 9). Therefore, the enigma is not whether the main character will survive but the television viewer is invited to experience the enigma relating to how the narrative will unfold. The television viewer’s wandering viewpoint does not entirely coincide with the hero’s who does not experience this deferral, a deferral which is part of the artificial construction of television. Episode three of ‘Carnival of Monsters’ begins with a cross-cut to Orum on Inter-Minor stating of the Doctor and Jo, ‘They are escaping’, paralleling the viewer at home’s reaction. Even on subsequent viewings, these elements reflect on the Doctor Who episode ending and its resolution. It is after this point that the Drashigs invade the SS Bernice compartment of the Scope, indicating, as is typical of the programme, how the Doctor changes events, just as characters on the SS Bernice react to his and Jo’s presence throughout.  
 

      In all, the monsters contained in the mini-Scope, notably the Drashigs, are, as Vorg puts it in episode two, ‘great favourites with the children, with their gnashing and tearing’, a common praise of DoctorWho among television viewers. As Robins notes, drawing attention to illusion-breaking, ‘Vorg’s “little carnivores” are spirited representations of all the monsters that have gnashed, snapped and torn at each other – and at the Doctor and his friends – throughout the ten years of “Doctor Who”. We hardly need cameo appearances by Ogrons and Cybermen to remind us that the series is itself a “carnival of monsters”’ (66-05). It is indeed interesting to note that, since Robins’ article was published, a segment devoted to Doctor Who’s monsters on the BBC2 Doctor Who Theme Night on Saturday November 13 1999 was entitled ‘Carnival of Monsters’ (9:50 – 10:20pm), suggesting that the programme, like Vorg’s mini-Scope, is such a carnival, and that the narrative has been read metafictionally. 
 

      Framing the scenes within the mini-Scope, the scenes set on Inter-Minor are associated with play, just as there may be a gleeful reception of Doctor Who. The title of the narrative ‘Carnival of Monsters’ is significant. In addition to the meanings explored earlier, the carnival denotes on a general level a travelling fun-fair. Performance is important in conveying a sense of play. Leslie Dwyer, once involved in the real life carnival, plays Vorg as a character associated with buffoonery rather than with seriousness. This is partly manifested through the character’s dialogue with Shirna. Author ‘Holmes’ oft-cited penchant for “double-acts”’ in the programme advanced narrative progression (MacDonald 1994: 5), as was also the case with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and as is evident in ‘Carnival of Monsters’ through Kalik’s political scheming with Orum. Additionally, Holmes’s ‘often fine sense of dialogue’, commented upon by MacDonald  (1994: 5), reveals how Vorg has arrived on Inter-Minor without permission and tries to pass on phoney documents to allow him to carry on with his monster show. Later he highlights his belief that since the fully grown Doctor and Jo are new to the mini-Scope, the creatures within must be breeding. Furthermore, as Barry Letts points out in the DVD commentary to the narrative, in a scene suggested by Dwyer, Vorg later speaks to the Doctor in the low carnival language, stating ‘Parla the carny?’, meaning ‘Do you speak the language of carnival?’, ‘Varda the bonapalone’, meaning ‘Look at the beautiful girl’, and ‘Niente dinari here ytils’, meaning ‘No money round here’. 
 

      The sense of exaggerated play associated with watching the carnival is communicated visually and aurally in a number of further ways, just as there may be play associated with watching Doctor Who. This is most notably conveyed by the effective use of fashion and set design. For example, the costume colouring (by James Acheson) and make-up (by Angela Seyfang) are significant. As entertainers, Vorg and Shirna’s taking off their grey space-wear attracts the attention of the Functionaries who see the costumes composed of an unusual excess of colours such as light greens and blues, purples, oranges, dark greens, and pinks, presenting an exaggeration of play. This exaggeration of play is also emphasised by the prominent use of blue and purple make-up around Shirna’s eyes. Also, for instance, contrasting with the plain grey attire of the Inter Minor officials, the multi-coloured stick-on circles adorning Vorg’s black jacket give him the appearance of a cheerful carnival master. Shirna’s head dress further suggests an elaborate exaggeration of play, resembling that commonly appropriated at a fairground, with stretched out wires, containing on the ends green and pink coloured balls. Further of note are Shirna’s elaborate earrings, again of variously coloured circles. Roger Liminton’s imaginative set design for Inter Minor sees the mini-Scope placed on a series of concentric circles, alternating between browny-red and white, an image that Letts (2001) describes as playful. It is not naturalistic but looks as though designed by an artist. 
 

      The sense of fun is evident through characters’ postures and through accompanying incidental music. Shirna performs a tap dance to explain the concept of entertainment to the officials, a scene which Letts (2001) again regards as light-hearted. The incidental music composed by Dudley Simpson of the type used to begin variety acts provides a sense of frivolity associated with Shirna’s movements. Shirna’s movements contrast with those of the Inter Minor Officials who are presented with hands behind their backs or in ordered symmetry in the television frame. This jolliness is associated with watching the monster narrative, something that is not appreciated in criticisms such as that by Ian K. McLachlan that ‘Carnival of Monsters…could have been much improved with Vorg and Shirna very much toned down’ and that ‘Perhaps it was their costumes which were most at fault’ (quoted in Howe and Walker 1998: 240). 
 

      Indeed, it is in these framing scenes to events in the mini-Scope that the narrative also reflects on its fictionality. In episode four, Vorg states that the Doctor is a great title for bringing people in, which (with a wink to the audience at home) refers to the popularity of the programme Doctor Who with television viewers. Furthermore, although it ultimately turns out that the Doctor does not understand the language of carnival, Vorg, who has worked many a Tellurian fairground, has told Shirna that he believes that the Doctor is one of them, remarking ‘look at his manner and look at his clothes’. The Jon Pertwee era ofDoctor Who was marked by an emphasis on visuals. From Pertwee’s debut in 1970, the programme had moved into colour and there was a concentration on the Doctor’s flamboyant and stylish outfits, signalling a departure from Patrick Troughton’s previous ‘cosmic hobo’ look. As Tulloch and Alvarado observe, visually, the third Doctor, like James Bond had a stylish dress sense since his Doctor wore ‘ornate flowing capes’ (1983: 99). In ‘Carnival of Monsters’, for instance, Pertwee’s Doctor is dressed (at first) in such a flowing cape, and in a stylish dark green velvet jacket, underneath which there is a lighter frilly green shirt. Furthermore, Vorg remarks on the Doctor’s ‘audacity’ and Pertwee’s Doctor was characterised by such bold mannerisms in the face of authority figures. As Shirna responds of the Doctor to Vorg, ‘You may be right. He’s certainly got the style’ (my italic). Therefore, attention is cast on the entertaining quality of the Doctor. Moreover, connections are drawn between Vorg and Shirna and the Doctor and Jo through the way in which, in both instances, a male figure is accompanied by a female ‘companion’. As noted of Shirna and Vorg’s relationship, the ‘female [is] his assistant’ and the Doctor tells Vorg and Shirna, ‘I too have an assistant, you know. She’s trapped inside the machine.’ 
 

      In these ways ‘Carnival of Monsters’ is a prime example of a postmodern text. Postmodernism is viewed as a reaction to modernism. While modernist works tended to reach out to a smaller elite audience, postmodernist works reached out to mass culture. As Jim Collins notes:  
 

The self-reflexivity of…popular texts of the later eighties and early nineties does not revolve around the problems of self-expression experienced by the anguished creative artist so ubiquitous in modernism but instead focuses on antecedent and competing programs, on the ways television programs circulate and are given meaning by viewers, and on the nature of televisual popularity (1992: 335)  
 

Collins takes The Simpsons episode ‘The Simpsons Thanksgiving Special’ from 1990 as a paradigmatic example of this type of metafiction (1992: 335-36). Bart and Homer Simpson are watching a Thanksgiving Day parade on television with balloon-float characters from cartoons and Bart complains that some characters should be used from the last fifty years. His father tells him that if a balloon was built for just any cartoon character then the parade would become a farce at which point a Bart Simpson balloon floats by. Bart watches himself as a popular figure. One can see how ‘Carnival of Monsters’ is a precursor of this: it is an articulation of the media by the media.

       ‘Carnival of Monsters’, then, lays bare the illusion of television in a playful manner. It fits into Patricia Waugh’s (1984) and Mark Currie’s (1995) classification of metafictions that are illusion-breaking as to their own fictionality. Indeed, there are other examples of this. Robins, for example, has drawn attention to the role of the ‘agrometer’ in episode two, which is significant since Pertwee’s Doctor was known for his Venusian Karate. Vorg explains to the officials on Inter-Minor that ‘by simply adjusting the agrometer the peaceful Tellurians can be made to behave in an amusingly violent way’ and demonstrates this. As Robins notes ‘This joke has been used again…in the satirical BBC2 series ‘Not The Nine O’Clock News’, in a sketch where various buttons enable a viewer to increase levels of sex and violence’ (66-06). In ‘Carnival of Monsters’, there is a brief cross-cut from the scene on the SS Bernice of Andrews about to thrash the Doctor with an inch of his life, and Kalik and Orum watching from Inter-Minor. Once the Doctor beats Andrews, there is a chase scene, common of Doctor Who, which is here of the Doctor and Jo being shot at as they race around the deck to escape. When they are cornered, Andrews prepares to shoot the Doctor, at which point the Doctor says ‘You can’t’ (my italic). Linking the SS Bernice scene with Inter-Minor, Vorg echoes the Doctor’s words, stating ‘I can’t leave it too long or the specimens might start damaging each other’ (my italic), as he readjusts the agrometer. In addition to this point, at the beginning of the second episode when Vorg removes the Doctor’s TARDIS from the Scope, it appears as a piece of ‘bric-a-brac’. Vorg states that he had better put it back within the Scope’s compression field, since it may ‘spoil the illusion’ and that it is important ‘never [to] let the customers see too much’. This can be read as a reference to Doctor Who where the TARDIS’s external appearance is that of a British Police Box while inside it is a vast technological space ship. But, of course, in reality the TARDIS is no more than a wooden box and a set which is brought to life by the wonders of television, although it is important that this is not drawn to the television viewer’s attention. Within the ‘Carnival of Monsters’ narrative, the illusion is maintained as, once out of the Scope’s compression field, the TARDIS returns to full size to which Orum exclaims ‘bric-a-brac!’.

      For it is ultimately important that the episode remain faithful to the rules of Doctor Who. This can be seen in other ways. At first, the narrative is coded as a mystery since upon arriving on the ship, the Doctor tells Jo that ‘in its time, the SS Bernice was as famous a sea mystery as the Marie Celeste’ when, days out from Bombay, the SS Bernice just vanished from the Indian Ocean. The first example of boundary crossing from within the mini-Scope to another supposedly ‘real’ environment comes when the Doctor and Jo make their way from the Scope into its workings. They achieve this by making their way through a metal floor plate on the ship, which, as Robins notes, is ‘invisible to the captive humans but once seen by the Doctor…reveal[s] the constructed nature of reality on board the ship’ or indeed ‘on the Drashigs’ planet’ (66-06). Yet while this may point to the constructed nature of television, within the narrative the Doctor’s moves from the ship through the metal plate and between the Drashigs’ swamp and the inside of the Scope are treated as ‘real’. There are gradually more forms of escape since just as the Doctor and Jo were aware of the strange situation on the ship, the Doctor realises that he and Jo are trapped in a mini-Scope, displaying awareness of those watching from outside the Scope. In this sense, the narrative resembles Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales where one of the characters in a tale makes reference to the Wife of Bath, who exists above the boundary of the tale as one of the pilgrim narrators on the way to Canterbury, there calling attention to the constructed nature of the work. The Doctor and Jo indeed see the giant hand pluck the TARDIS from the Scope;

       Moreover, images in the SS Bernice ship board scenes are earlier associated with linearity where one can see how these are subverted. Major Daly sits down to read his book, which is an example of a linear narrative with a starting and finishing point reached through time. But Major Daly is presented at the same point over and over again with, as he states, ‘only another two chapters left’. The Major’s comment that there are ‘only’ so many chapters left is ironic since he is nearly at the end of the book but gets no nearer to the end,

      It is also important to note that the mini-Scope has been constructed by an authorial agency. This authorial agency is not presented in the narrative but there is the suggestion that the scenes within the Scope have been orchestrated. The constructor is not Vorg who has simply won the device. But the Doctor’s reference to the jumbled collection of creatures in the mini-Scope implies that initially there must have been a narrative collector. Furthermore, at the end of the narrative, the Doctor returns the various specimens contained within the mini-Scope back to their normal environment. This involves a process of separation where for instance, the SS Bernice is returned to the Indian Ocean in 1926 but without the prehistoric dinosaur. Therefore, it is again evident that there had to be an original figure which assembled the creatures. Similarly, we might think of the fact that the creatures in Doctor Who have all been assembled by authorial figures but this is not explicitly stated. 
 

Conclusion

While there are different viewpoints as to the roles of television, with some focussing on the medium’s ideological function, the metafictional Doctor Who narrative ‘Carnival of Monsters’ can be read as, on one level, reflecting on television’s, and more specifically Doctor Who’s, association with play and giving viewers pleasure. This is in addition to it being seen as a comment on captive animals (Robb 2009: 110). While the narrative is un-naturalistic in some ways, it ultimately treats the Doctor and his companion Jo, and those contained within the mini-Scope, as ‘real’ in plot terms. Finally, it is interesting to note that the BBC Wales Doctor Who has inspired live events, showcasing the programme’s music and monsters, and, as Dan Berry’s feature in a recent issue of Doctor Who Magazine reveals, one such area tour was conceived by executive producer Steven Moffat as ‘a loosely connected sequel to Carnival of Monsters’ (2010: 30), indicating how the idea of the narrative is still seen as metafictionally reflecting on the programme as a whole.  
 

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