N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!
On the surface, The Talons of Weng-Chiang is as sumptuous a piece of melodrama as any you might have expected from the BBC’s 1970’s classic serial department.
“Elementary, my dear Litefoot”
The Doctor, The Talons of Weng-Chiang:
Part Five
Whilst the Doctor Who production team never did have enough money to make the show they wanted to, you can at least see where what-little-money-there-is is in Talons. The costumes, the location shoots, the villain dialling it up to eleven (Has there ever been a line in Doctor Who as over-egged as Greel’s ‘Let the talons of Weng-Chiang shred your fle-e-e-sh!’? ). Yes, nobody does period drama like the Beeb. Although, with its nunchaku, axe murders, vice girls, dismemberment and opium den, it’s not really one for the kids. (Despite this, my wife points out that I did watch it with both of my kids.)
I’ve also always thought there was something quite eerie about late 19th / early 20th century magical theatre (which must be why The Prestige is one of my favourite movies), so having that as backdrop to the unfolding mystery was always going to be appealing. And in Jago and Litefoot, as has often been commented, the Doctor finds excellent Watsons to his (Sherlock, not Robert) Holmes-like investigations.
“You ask me so that you can tell me.”
Leela, The Talons of Weng-Chiang:
Part Five
Perhaps though, given the story’s main adversary for its first two-thirds, it would have been more appropriate if he were Nayland Smith instead?
Elizabeth Sandifer’s excellent post on the serial provides an in-depth analysis of some of the problems with The Talons of Weng-Chiang. I find it hard to disagree with many of Sandifer’s comments, and find particularly interesting the assertion that the portrayals of racism (and sexism and class-ism for that matter) aren’t malicious but are cynical and knowing. (One of the things we love about Robert Holmes’s writing is his cynicism, after all.) They are, for want of a better phrase, part of the fun Robert Holmes was having throwing all these literary influences into the pot. Perhaps had Talons not been as a late replacement for another story that fell through at the treatment stage, a few more drafts would have enabled him to sharpen the knives towards some of these tropes. Or he might not, preferring ‘simply to amuse’, as Sandifer notes.
In casting the Chinese as the villains, Robert Holmes was of course tapping into the success of the Fu Manchu stories, popular in the early twentieth century. It would be unfair to say this is grafted uncritically onto the story but it would also be disingenuous to say that The Talons of Weng-Chiang simply reflects the time in which it was set – a time when descriptions such as the “celestial Chang” (Jago), “inscrutable Chinks” (Litefoot) and the “yellow one” (Leela) might have passed in polite society without censure or comment. It’s not only Leela though whose comments seem out of place to a modern viewer. Even the Doctor calls Chang’s accomplices “little men” and seems to make the distinction that “Chinese ruffians” were a worse kind of ruffian than that which Litefoot might normally expect. (The Doctor might be joking, but if he is, it cuts close to the bone.)
Indeed, for me, it’s the Doctor’s complicity (or at least inconsistency) that is the most difficult to qualify. Upon first seeing Chang he wonders whether he’s met him before. Chang comments “I understand we all look the same.” The Doctor seem oblivious to this stereotype (as you’d expect, given the breadth of his travels) and asks “Are you Chinese?” It’s an exchange I’ve always thought typified how the Doctor was above such nonsense as racism. And Chang’s subverting the stereotype had in the past impressed me. Watching it now though, I think it’d be more easier to admire had Chang been played by an actor who had not been made up to look Chinese (again, for want of a better phrase).
This too is not an easy argument in which to draw a line. I have often wondered why it was considered any more acceptable for an Italian-American to play a Cuban (Al Pacino, Scarface) than it was for a British actor (one born in India and who could speak Hindi and Urdu) to play an Indian (Michael Bates, It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum). I’m perhaps swaying dangerously close to a fallacy of relevance here, but it’s worth asking when is it that an acting role steps into the bounds of cultural appropriation or can be seen as an attempt to exert some form of supremacy by controlling the cultural narrative. In Talons‘ case, you could argue that Chang is how the British might perceive a Chinese stage performer, so a British actor plays the part and denies a Chinese actor the chance to interpret the nuances of the script and its presentation of racism. I won’t disagree that John Bennett turns in an impressive and sympathetic performance as Li H’sen Chang (in much the same way that Christopher Lee was always a strong Fu Manchu on the big screen), but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch.
I can of course place The Talons of Weng-Chiang both in the context of when it was made and when it is set. Given this, I can accept that its language and attitudes reflects both of those. And I can even accept the casting conventions of its time, knowing today that it would be far less likely to be cast this way. It’s important that we not brush these things under the rug of history. Better to discuss the issues and learn from them than pretend they never existed. (Coincidentally, my son and I had similar conversations recently whilst reading an early issue of Batman, in which the villains were Chinese and that was used as a shorthand for deeming their characters to be suspect.)
I can admire Talons‘ script, its acting, its production values and that in its way it’s a very fine piece of 70’s telly. I can understand what’s being attempted. It’s Doctor Who set in a romanticised London with all the, in Litefoot’s words, ‘depravity and degradation’ that journalists and Victorian, Edwardian and later writers grafted on to this myth. Doctor Who is not alone in telling stories in a mythical version of the past. (Take a look at old Westerns, for one!)
This is Doctor Who as Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, Fu Manchu, The Phantom of the Opera and whatever else Robert Holmes could throw in. And it is very well done. You can see why many consider it to be the peak of Hinchcliffe-era Doctor Who. The problem is that parts of the myth are offensive and, in not taking them to task as much as it could have done, perhaps simply from being guilty of having too much fun with the myth, this also means that for all its considerable merits, The Talons of Weng-Chiang makes for uncomfortable viewing at times.
"It's surprising that many people remember this story because of Jago and Litefoot because they didn't get together until Part Five."
"Jago calls Casey a 'pixilated leprechaun'. That's a weird insult."
"Another good name for this story would have been The Tong of the Black Scorpion, but The Talons of Weng-Chiang does make more sense."
Son of UT Rating: 9/10
"In the first episode they went in to a damp sewer and came across a big rat that looked cute enough to hug."
"In the fourth episode Leela wears a pretty dress that was lavender green with rose red stripes."
"In the last episode Magnus Greel did a super weird voice."
[I agree! – Son of UT]
[So do I! – UT]
