The Reign of Terror

Then tomorrow, the 27th of July, 1794 will be a day for history.

The Reign of Terror was a pretty good historical. In fact, setting aside 100,000 BC, I don't think I've seen a historical I didn't like.

As the title implies, the story takes place at the end of July, 1794 when the Reign of Terror came to an end with the arrest and execution of Maximilien Robespierre, leader of France. Despite this, politics doesn't factor in much as it mostly a cloak and dagger drama involving first the escape from prison and then fulfilling the mission of an English spy in the French government. Episodes four and five are missing, but fortunately have been nicely animated so the story doesn't go through too jarring a shift as recons can be.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode. Like most six-parters, it was too long though. This can be blamed principally on the fact that it was William Russell's turn to go on vacation. However, because Ian is the man of action and the de-facto star of the show, he was separated from the group for two episodes and filmed ahead of time for episodes two and three. Had this not been necessary, episodes two and three could have been condensed into one episode with the British spy making himself known to the resistance much sooner than the beginning of episode six.

Actually, I would have liked to have seen more of the machinations that went on in episode six, in which Napoleon is courted by the conspiracy that is overthrowing Robespierre. That was a only a coda which could have been expanded. It is interesting that Barbara makes a note of how amused she is that the people of the time are scrambling to see if they can prevent events that she knows will come to pass and how she learned that lesson in The Aztecs. That might have actually been a more interesting source of conflict if the Doctor and his companions had fallen into the hands of the resistance earlier and were forced to aid them in the attempted prevention of the rise of the three consuls, knowing that this would fail.

Still, there is a good bit of history and drama about this story that is enjoyable. One of the things I couldn't help pick up was the overwhelming use of "citizen" when addressing people. I'm sure there was historical precedent for this but given that this story was made in 1964, it was difficult not to pick up a little Soviet vibe from this; especially given the irony of how everyone was addressed with the same title but clearly still worked in a ranked society.

I would not make this story my first choice of a First Doctor story to watch again, but it was entertaining and flowed fairly well. I could sit down and watch it again without complaint.

Overall personal score: 3 out of 5