The Keeper of Traken
Jesus! These past few weeks ...! First there was David telling me that 'The Happiness Patrol' was really a fantastically elaborate allegory constructed around the show's recent history. "It's true," he babbled, his eyes glittering with unusual brightness. "I read it all in DWB! Helen A is JNT, the Kandyman is Colin Baker and Fifi is Bonnie Langford! You've GOT to believe me ..." And then there were all those weird rumours about JNT being the Anti-Christ. 'The Space Pirates' was, after all, the first story he worked on - a 6-parter which was the 6th story of the 6th season ... And if all this wasn't enough, there was the stuff coming over the radio ... "Jon Pertwee, the third Doctor Who, is to resurrect his television role of twenty years ago in a multi-million-pound stage laser-spectacular which pits him against the dreaded Daleks ..." Did I hear that??? To be told that Jon Pertwee is playing Doctor Who in a "stage-laser-spectacular" is too much. Shuffling on in a walking-frame, looking about 100 years old ... Blue and pink lasers flashing and flickering ... A single battered Dalek croaking ... "I cross the void beyond the mind ..." Strange things are happening, no doubt about it ... And there's no reason to believe they won't get stanger still. Why not? We are, after all, approaching the Second Millenium since the birth of Christ, and who is to say that the Great Beast Leviathan, the Whore of Babylon and the Anti-Christ himself won't finally make the scene? All Major Dates are marked by a crescendoing frenzy of craziness and sick degeneracy, a blasphemous lather of neurosis ... In 1900, for instance, the dive to be seen in was "L'Enfer", a Paris nightclub with a great green facade, a giant screaming Satan-face with glaring red eyes. In you went through the huge fanged mouth, to be served emerald absinthes in the near-darkness by waiters dressed as skeletons, while on stage batwing devils pretended to flog naked, decadently bored women ... And that was tame stuff compared to what used to go on in the Middle Ages, when hardly a day would go by without some bearded freak descending on a peaceful town or village, screeching about 1260 being the Year of Apocalypse, ladies and gents ... Whereupon all the previously-peaceful townsfolk would go wild and parade through the streets, wailing, rubbing ashes in their hair and lashing themselves with birchtwigs until the blood ran down their backs ... And if said holy man was stupid enough to still be in residence in the town when 1261 rolled along and no Armageddon - well, the enraged burghers would pull him violently apart. Indeed. Quite understandable when you think about it. ... All of which is leading up, I think, to this : That Johnny Byrne is on record somewhere as saying that the Doctor Who story 'The Keeper of Traken' (which, you may remember, he wrote) had as one of its Major Themes eschatology. Millenarianism. "This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius, etc." Freaky things starting to happen as the Age dawns, crop failures, wild storms, statues coming to life ... This, Johnny went on to say, was why he had written 'Keeper' with a monkish, superstitious, monastic, medieval setting in mind. The screened Art Nouveau stuff looked rrrrravishing, but rather diluted the impact of the Theme. Well ... perhaps. But I can't help feeling that Johnny is lying. That what we got was dam' good AND fitted in with his medieval bumf. Siddown, kid, an' lemme explain. ... You see, another thing that came out of the Middle Ages (which J.J.Bentham says Robert Holmes didn't like as a period because it "wasn't Gothic enough"!!??!) - another thing which came out of 'em was the ROMANCE. 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', 'Tristan and Iseut', 'The Death of Arthur', that sort of thing ... But the point is that these medieval courtly Romances, and Medievalism IN GENERAL, were really in vogue during - the late nineteenth century. The period of Art Nouveau, decadent Paris nightclubs, etc ... So all of a sudden we have Pre-Raphaelite paintings set in the Middle Ages, pseudo-Romance poetry about King Arthur and co., and ... Wilhelm Richard Wagner's operas. 'Lohengrin'. 'Tannhauser'. 'Tristan und Isolde'. And others. So what I'm saying is that 'Keeper of Traken' was not a 'medieval' story, but a late 19th-century-medieval/Art Noveau/Pre-Raphaelite story. And no conflict with Johnny's Theme. Just look at a selection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings and you'll see the lush visual resemblance to the 1981 Doctor Who story. Honest! But it doesn't stop there. Oh no. For one thing, I've been waffling on for quite a while now and I've not yet bunged in a pretentious quote (or two) ...
The Tolkien bit has no overwhelming relevance to this article, it's just a pretty nifty coincidence of names and situations (Melkor/Melkur; foul weeds clogging up nice Middle Earth/Traken gardens, etc.) ... But the Possum quotation is Really Important. Consider! Recently in Cambridge I purchased two black candles and an 'Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot'. Never mind why. The girl behind the counter gave me a very peculiar look, but never mind that either. Now, among the 78 beautifully painted cards that make up the 'Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot' is one called The Ace of Cups, not a description of David Gibbs, but a reference to ... THE HOLY GRAIL. Yassur! The pagan Celtic bowl (right at home among corn-dollies and maypoles) that became the chalice used at the Last Supper and later caught the blood of Our Lord as he hung on the Cross, having been jabbed in the side with a spear by some jobbie of a Roman Legionary (right at home among the medieval Romances). The medieval legends of the Holy Grail have several features in common, not a few of 'em descendants of pagan mythology. In the Germanic versions we have the following : - An order of Holy Knights, guardians of the Grail. - Their King, wounded a la Christ in the side with the very same Spear. - His kingdom, mystically linked to the King himself, which, because he's wounded, has decayed and degenerated into a wasteland. - A Ritual in which the wounded King uncovers the Grail. This revives his weary Knights with New Energy, making them immortal again. Making him immortal as well, which ain't very nice 'cos he's wounded and so it just prolongs his agony - he Just Wants To Die, folks, and stuff this Ritual for a game of soldiers ... Old Possum based his poem around these legendary motifs - 'The Waste Land', geddit? He played up the pagan links. Originally, the Grail King was this guy called the Fisher King ("I sat upon the shore / Fishing ...") - 'Fisher' 'cos fish were a symbol of fertility. This fellow (also known as Bran the Blessed) had his wound in the genitals (symbols of fertility), and as a result his rich, fertile, pagan kingdom has shrivelled up, just like his Christian descendant's. In Eliot's poem, the Waste Land is the modern world of the 20th century in the West - degenerate, tawdry, cheapened and trivial - where the healthy act of copulation has become sick and neurotic, where religion has none of the vitality it had in pagan and early Christian times, and where the classics aren't even taught in the schools anymore. (He also used our old friend the Tarot Pack as a motif, but let's not confuse matters ...) Another genius who based a work around these Grail legends (and whom Eliot referred to in 'The Waste Land') was Wagner - and this is where the real link with 'The Keeper of Traken' lies. Y'see, a few months ago I was watching that story and I felt haunted. Strange echoes and resemblances nagged at my mind, but I couldn't place them. Sure, 'Keeper' was a fine story, after the Mara tales the best thing JNT's managed to do, but now it suddenly seemed particularly grokkable. And then it came to me. The last opera (or music-drama if you're going to be pedantic) written by Richard Wagner was called 'Parsifal', after Wolfram von Eschenbach's medieval Romance, 'Parzifal' (the French form, of course, being 'Percival'). Believe me, the music for this long bastard (five cassettes!) is mind-flippingly beautiful - it really gives that old soul/butterfly the psyche a liberating jolt. The other day I was listening to the climax at one o'clock in the morning; I had loaded up on very strong white wine, a black candle was flickering on my desk, me sitting a little away in the darkened room ... a slight cold breeze through the window - and as the music soared into its climax, the tableau in front of me of candle flame, open black rectangle of window, anglepoise lamp, sea-green fluted mug on the desk, underwent a transformation. The ebony rectangle of window suddenly seemed ... majestic; the anglepoise, painted with white gloss, was the most sublime metal-sculpture imaginable; and the sea-green mug, its facets reflecting the candle flame in brilliant sea-green beams, became heaven - tears welled up in my eyes as the music reached it passion and my gaze was absorbed by the heavenly sight of that cheap little green mug that was suddenly a flaming, jade snowflake. Under my tears, the candle-beams faceted again, refracting and dividing like a crystal, crystal needles, dazzling me like a spray of light-water. Ecstasy! That holy tetrarchy - candle-flame, white metal lamp, green mug, black window - became one, perfectly balanced in a pyramid of ... blazing ... However, it's not Wagner's music but his PLOT, taken from von Eschenbach, that really concerns us here : The holy and compassionate order of the Grail Knights is in decline. An evil magician called Klingsor has created a Magic Garden next to the Knight's kingdom. The life-forces are leached out of said kingdom, while Klingsor's Garden runs riot, lush, luxurious and evil ... Klingsor is really out to get the Knights. Not only are they so sickeningly goody-goody, but he also wants to get his sticky mitts on the Source of their power - the Grail. One of his tools in his designs is the beautiful, witch-like seductress Kundry, who on Klingsor's orders goes about undermining the Holy Order. The Grail King, Amfortas, has succumbed to Kundry's advances, and while he was thus distracted, Klingsor duly poked him in the ribs with the Spear. So Amfortas goes about moaning and groaning about what a burden the Ritual of uncovering the Grail is, and why can't he just be allowed to die, blah, blah, blah. The beautiful, intense Kundry, meanwhile, doesn't REALLY want to serve old Klingsor, but she has no choice - she is helplessly under his evil Influence. However much she begs for release, he will not free her from her hateful duties. Enter the Holy Fool - Parsifal himself - young and innocent. The upshot of it all is that he's so holy that Klingsor and his Garden just implode into nothingness and everyone lives happily ever after. THE END. O.K. - now look at the plot of 'Keeper of Traken'. Pretty similar, huh? A compassionate order of semi-martial figures, the Consuls of Traken, sustained by the mystical energy of the Source, whose leader, the Keeper, is dying painfully, his harmonious empire, the Union of Traken, declining with him; an evil being with magical powers (Melkur) corrupting the Union, creating his own lush, weed- ridden garden (the Grove), physically attacking and wounding the ailing Keeper with his laser beams, and manipulating the beautiful, intense, seductive Kassia in his attempts to secure the Source for himself; and in the end, Melkur defeated and imploding into nothingness. As for the Holy Fool figure, well, the Doctor is the obvious candidate, though Adric and Nyssa might also fit the role - or all three together! Compare further :
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(This latter comparison of 'Keeper' with 'King Lear' is interesting - by a mindboggling coincidence, 'Lear' features a broken king with a blasted heath/wasteland of a kingdom.) ...
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... I think you'll agree the culmative evidence is pretty convincing. Johnny Byrne and Chris Bidmead are, I'm sure, intelligent and cultured men and I wouldn't be surprised if they consciously or otherwise filched some of the 'Parsifal' elements for 'Keeper'. (And this links back to the Apocalyptic Theme, 'cos the Grail stories all tend to conclude with a holy, universal enlightenment not unlike that supposed to occur on Judgement Day.) ... It's taken me a waffling long time to reach this point, and I am now faced with a problem. O.K., so 'Keeper' is basically an SF version of the Grail/Parsifal legends - but so what. What does that prove? Well, not a lot, but it is quite interesting (I think so, anyway). Furthermore ... I said Wagner's MUSIC had no relevance, but it now occurs to me that perhaps it does. A Wagner experience (especially a 'Parsifal' experience) can come close to the PSYCHEDELIC experience - particularly when you're drunk, have incense-sticks smoking merrily away in the room and a very low-watt blue bulb fitted into the light socket ... As big-dome philosophy-junkie Bryan Magee puts it : "... Wagner's music expresses, as does no other art, repressed and highly charged contents of the psyche, and ... this is the reason for its uniquely disturbing effect. Some people are made to feel by it that they are in touch with the depths of their own personalities for the first time. The feeling is of a wholeness yet unboundedness - hence, I suppose, its frequent comparison with mystical or religious experience. The passionate nature of it, its unwonted depth, and its frequently erotic character also explain why it is like being in love ... it seems to transcend - and to expand the consciousness of its listeners beyond - the bounds of what is possible ..." Right on! All this is more or less true; and here lies another possible link with 'Keeper' - for that story can be seen as a psychedelic one. The Art Nouveau look of the show is very close to psychedelic art - swirling plant-forms, a hint of the erotic, a combination of dreamy, otherworldly feyness with exaggerated exuberance and excess. The floral motif is very strong throughout the early episodes, while some of the dialogue echoes the ecstatic love-philosophy of the 60s flower-children :
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... Would YOU be surprised if the Fosters had also been wearing beads and long hair? Neither would I. Similarly, there is much in the libretto of 'Parsifal' that mirrors this hippy imagery and philosophy. Not only do we have a bunch of characters called "Blumenmadchen" ("flower-maidens"), but also stuff like this :
... This is no superficial resemblance either: like many of the 60s hippies Wagner tended to groove on Buddhist philosophy, taking on board such concepts as the compassionate renunciation of the World, and the attainment of the blissful all-in-one Nirvana, in which the individual is ... sublimated. These Buddhist notions (taken in Wagner's case via his mentor Schopenhauer) permeate 'Tristan und Isolde' and 'Parsfial', but perhaps find their best expression in the ending Wagner at one time considered for 'Gotterdammerung':
In other words - Turn on, tune in, and drop out! And - stop the Wheel! Moreover: Just as an LSD experience can slide from ecstasy into schizophrenic hell, the worst visions of a Blake or a Van Gogh or a Munch, so 'The Keeper of Traken' begins to take on the disturbing characteristics of the Bad Trip. Firstly, the gardens start to seem ever-so-slightly too luxuriant and overgrown - slightly sinister; then a statue appears which looks weirdly distorted underneath the surface elegance; then the statue begins to MOVE, its eyes glowing a bloody red; and finally the last comfortable layer is peeled back and we're into madness - the decaying Master, which Terrance Dicks describes as well as anybody:
... and by this time our acid head is a gibbering, paranoid heap on the floor. Such a shame we had the boring old starfield titles for this story and not the freaky psychedelic slit-scan tunnel ... (Last issue I suggested that 'Terror of the Autons' was also a Bad Trip of a story - it was, but from the very beginning. Where 'Keeper' started off as a nice Pre-Raphaelite, 'Terror' from start to finish looked amazingly like a James Ensor 'mask'-painting come to life ...) And just as 'Keeper' goes askew in the later episodes, so Wagner's music can also cause a Bad Reaction. Nietzsche started off a Wagner addict and ended up hating it (especially 'Parsifal'), sliding into megalomania and finally insanity. (No parallels with Ian here, obviously.) Not even Nietzsche's mighty Will could save him from what he called the "horrible sweet infinitude" of this particular drug. Early Wagner singers often felt the same: one killed herself after 'The Ring', another died insane after 'Tristan', another went mad studying 'Tristan', and another died insane after 'Parsifal'. And just to add the final link in the chain (Nietzsche's 'Ring of Recurrance'???), here's this from a 'Prisoner' fanzine discussing the psychedelic influences on that series:
Sounds rather like this article - or any Doctor Who tale. Strange ... In fact, this article is, I think, begining to resemble that animated underwater beast from 'Yellow Submarine' - the one that goes around zooting up all the other animated underwater beasts, then the background and finally zoots up itself. So let's quickly find something to finish with ... Let's face it. One of the main reasons why JNT is so disliked by so many people is that, quite apart from being to Doctor Who what Mozart is to painting, the guy looks and acts such a prat. "Yeah ... Graham Williams ... well, okay, he produced the odd clanger - who hasn't - but at least he didn't have a beer-belly. At least he didn't wear stupid shirts. At least he didn't have a whining nasal drone that goes through you like an oily bradawl. Or flashy gold jewellery. Or catchphrases, for Chrissakes! Yeah ... when you think about it, Graham wasn't that bad ... bit of a genius, in fact ..." O.K. So we have these two problems - the man looks dreadful and doesn't produce much better. Nowadays. Ay, there's the rub. For HOW could this prize geek have turned out something like 'The Keeper of Traken' in all its apocalyptic, psychedelic glory? Plain jaded nowadays? No. After all, Letts stayed for five, an' S11 ain't as bad vis a vis S7 as S22 was vis a vis S18, was it? Beeb interference? No. Could explain forced whimsy, etc., but not basic crap like useless scripts and direction. The Bidmead Factor? Possibly. But who first hired Bidmead? JNT? Or Higher Powers? Who knows? ... Hell - I'm drifting into JNT-bashing again here what the hell, one last time, get it out of the system, why not? A few days ago I read this letter in DWM:
Where do they find these people? Listen - stick 'The Keeper of Traken', Season 18, written by Johnny Byrne, directed by John Black, script-edited by Christopher H. Bidmead, and, yes, produced by John Nathan-Turner, stick it into the middle of Season 25 and then see the difference:::: 'Remembrance' was the televisual equivalent of a Pot Noodle, coming hermetically sealed in its own white, seamless, squeaky-clean, antiseptic plastic container, it swells up inside you, filling your stomach without ever really satisfying or providing nourishment. 'Happiness Patrol' - loved the Kandyman, could've been good if they'd junked the purecorn dictatorship crap, done it as a really weirdo sinister fantasy; as it was it was just Willy Wonka Meets the Sunmakers. 'Silver Nemesis' - merde! 'Greatest Show' ('The Killer Kites of Ginseng?') - actually quite GOOD, until the last episode screwed everything up with McCoy doing boring tricks with string ("I really enjoyed the scene with the Doctor doing his magic tricks" burbles our DWM letter-writer) for three cut-price Sutekhs for some reason named after the Scandinavian Gotterdammerung (hang on a sec - Ragnarok - Gotterdammerung - Wagner - psychedelia - it all FITS, the Ring of Recurrance!!!) - stick 'Keeper' into the middle of all this and watch it GLEAM like a freshly-minted coin tossed onto a shitheap. We've got a lot to be thankful to JNT for.
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