Quotes
====================================
"A horned dinosaur with a mouth like a beak? The Brigadier saw one in the London Underground once." ~ The Seventh Doctor"Yes, I've been hearing disturbing rumours about Terra Alpha, so I decided to look in some time. Tonight's the night. Rumours of something evil, and we're going to get to the bottom of it." ~ The Seventh Doctor
"Thank you, Trevor Sigma. Actually, my nickname at college was Theta Sigma." ~ The Seventh Doctor
"Oh, I say she is, relatively speaking, given the deeply distressing nature of so many fundamental universal truths." ~ The Seventh Doctor
"He is obviously a spy. She is obviously his accomplice. He will disappear and she can audition for the Happiness Patrol. You're under arrest." ~ Daisy K.
"Congratulations and well played. Here is your prize joke. Did you hear about the killjoy who won an outing with the Happiness Patrol? He was tickled to death! Enjoy yourself." ~ Helen A.
"I used to be her gag writer, when I was Harold F. Then my brother disappeared. I went to look for him. I heard of other disappearances. They caught me in the rocket port zone, trying to contact Terra Omega, and brought put me here where I was regraded to Harold V." ~ Harold V.
Harold V.: The Happiness Patrol were the nice side of her regime. Do you know who the Kandyman is, Doctor?
The 7th Doctor: He sounds like a sweetie.
(Harold is electrocuted by the slot machine.)
Priscilla P.: I think he got a buzz out of that.
Ace: Shut up!
The 7th Doctor: Hold it, Ace.
Priscilla P.: Rather a shocking experience.
"I want to nail those scumbags. I want to make them very, very unhappy." ~ Ace
"I'm not Happiness Patrol material anyway. They stand for everything I hate. Like you said, smiling all the time, smiling when it doesn't mean anything. I'm not one of them. I can't play an instrument, I can't dance, I can't sing." ~ Ace
"Tonight you see before you the artistic, sensitive side of me. So I make sweets. Not just any old sweets, but sweets that are so good, so delicious that sometimes, if I'm on form, the human physiology is not equipped to bear the pleasure." ~ The Kandyman
"Sweet dreams." ~ The Seventh Doctor
"This is some kind of an explosive device. I used to work with explosives when I was in Happiness Patrol B, the anti-terrorist squad. We worked the night shift. I like working late at night. Night times are when they come out. The killjoys. Depressives, manic reactive indigenous. We got them. All of them." ~ Priscilla P.
Wences: Wicked.
Wulfric: Brave girl.
Wences: Captive.
The 7th Doctor: That sounds like Ace. Brave girl, captive. If only she'd listen to what I tell her.
"You're a nice guy, Doctor, but a little weird." ~ Earl Sigma
"Population control? And which member of the population are you controlling today, just for the record." ~ The Seventh Doctor
"It's quite simple. Created as you are out of glucose based substances, your joints need constant movement to avoid coagulation. You're turning into a slab of toffee." ~ Gilbert M.
"Look at them, Fifi. Dreary clothes, turgid music and terrible deportment. Oh, they really are so depressing. Happiness will prevail. Happiness Patrol section F, prepare to effect a large scale disappearance. A drone demonstration is heading towards Forum Square. Proceed there directly. Take no prisoners." ~ Helen A.
"This is a public happiness announcement. A depression is moving towards Forum Square. The proper authorities will restore harmony and peace." ~ Tannoy
"It's all right, Ace. They can't shoot me because they see before them a happy man! And their logic tells them, twisted though it be, that as such they have no power over me. I may have been some time ago a little grouchy, perhaps, a little bad-tempered, but not today. No, because today the Doctor and the drones are having a ball!" ~ The Seventh Doctor
"That sounds like a Stigorax. I haven't met one since I was in Birmingham in the twenty fifth century. Ruthless, intelligent predators." ~ The Seventh Doctor
The 7th Doctor: Fifi? They don't mean Fifi as in Fifi the annoyed rat you claim to have blown to smithereens?
Ace: Nobody's perfect, Professor.
"I told them to be happy, but they wouldn't listen. I gave them every chance. Oh, I know they laughed sometimes, but they still cried, they still wept." ~ Helen A.
"What were these opportunities you gave them? A bag of sweets? A few tawdry party games? Bland, soulless music? Do these things make you happy? Of course they don't. Because they're cosmetic. Happiness is nothing unless it exists side by side with sadness." ~ The Seventh Doctor
"I always thought love was overrated." ~ Helen A.
====================================
Trivia
====================================
The character of Helen A was intended to satirize then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The character would say, "I like your initiative, your enterprise" while her secret police rounded up dissidents. In the story, the Doctor persuades "the drones", who toil in the factories and mines, to down tools and rise up in revolt, an echo of the miners’ strikes and printers' disputes during Thatcher's first two terms in office.
Sylvester McCoy told The Sunday Times in 2010 - "The idea of bringing politics into Doctor Who was deliberate, but we had to do it very quietly and certainly didn't shout about it...We were a group of politically motivated people and it seemed the right thing to do. At the time Doctor Who used satire to put political messages out there in the way they used to do in places like Czechoslovakia. Our feeling was that Margaret Thatcher was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered. Those who wanted to see the messages saw them; others, including one producer, didn't."
According to McCoy in an interview for DWM 425, this story was originally planned to be filmed in black-and-white. McCoy said that he had only known this after it was filmed and said that he would've begged the production team to film in black and white, as he thought the sets were lacking.
Originally titled "The Crooked Smile", "The Happiness Patrol" was to have taken place over several weeks, not one night. The Kandy Man was more human in appearance, with the fact that he was made out of sweets much for subtle, Muzak was supposed to play thoughout the city, Ace was to have tricked Susan Q into helping escape instead of Susan doing so willingly, and the the Doctor and Ace were forced to entertain their audience or be executed.
To compensate for the fact that all the action now took place over a single night, Graeme Curry decided to have Helen A's regime already crumbling at the start of the adventure. Chris Clough and John Nathan-Turner altered the Kandyman to make him more robotic, and the Muzak was nixed in favor of the blues because of fears of aggravating viewers.
Finally the part with the Doctor and Ace was changed as it was felt to be too similar to another season 25 episode, "Greatest Show in the Galaxy".
Scenes cut included a scene where the Kandy Man slices off his own finger only to calmly reattach it and Susan Q revealing that she was demoted from Susan L because of a smuggled blues record.
The script also called for a prison area called Arcadia, complete with dozens of fruit machines and an elaborate go-kart game; this was replaced with the far simpler Waiting Zone due to budgetary restrictions.
After the second episode of this story aired, the chairman and CEO of Bassett Foods wrote a letter of complaint to John Nathan-Turner, stating that the Kandy Man infringed on the copyright for his company's mascot, Bertie Bassett (a humanoid figure made of liquorice allsorts). A representative of the BBC Copyright Department replied, saying that there had been no violation of Bassett's copyright, but assuring the company that the Kandy Man would not return to the series.
The howl of Helen A's pet Stigorax Fifi was actually the modulated sound of director Chris Clough's own voice.
In the scenes set in the underground tunnels in Part Three, the Kandy Man has no metal brace around his mouth. This was added to the costume following these initial recordings to try to disguise the features of the actor inside.
When the Doctor answers the Blues player that he'll find him because of "The Brandy of the Damned" (i.e. his music), this is a reference to a quote by George Bernard Shaw.
The Doctor mentions his nickname in his academy days on Gallifrey was "Theta Sigma". The Doctor's classmate Drax referred to him by this nickname in the 1979 story "The Armageddon Factor".
This story most likely takes place in the 25th century as Earth is considered a miserable place and overpopulation is a concern. (Re: "Colony in Space") Similarly, many Earth colonies are considered terrible places in this century.
====================================
Links (Watch on DailyMotion.com)
====================================
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol (Story 153) DVD is available at Amazon.com,
or download from iTunes, or watch via streaming at Hulu Plus.
No comments:
Post a Comment