An Hour of Who a Day: October 2014

October 31: The King's Demons Parts One & Two

I have to wonder: was anyone fooled by "James Stoker" (as the Radio Times billed him) as Sir Gilles Estram? Yes, he's wearing a ginger beard and a false nose, but it doesn't really disguise Anthony Ainley's features -- and it doesn't help that he has a reasonably distinctive voice, even if he is speaking in what I assume is intended to be a French accent.

The unfortunate side effect of this is that you spend almost all the first episode waiting for the Master to reveal himself, which doesn't actually happen until the cliffhanger. (Although kudos to them for the actual shot -- the blurring between the two versions of the Master's face is whatever, but they do a really nice job of matching the body shot, such that you have to actively look to see when the changeover happens.) And, unfortunately, there's not much else to go on for the duration. Something's up with King John, that much the Doctor deduces (since he's supposed to be in London that day, according to history), but there's little else in the way of clues as to what's going on, beyond additional reinforcement of "this king is an imposter". Still, the jousting is entertaining to watch, and the swordfight between the Doctor and "Sir Gilles" is half decent.

But no, part one (which is also Doctor Who's 600th episode -- 600 episodes! Now that's a milestone) is all set-up, and then part two is almost all wrap-up, as this is only a two-part story. The reversal by the Master (where he changes out of the Sir Gilles make-up and reappears as the Master), where he convinces them that it's the "king's demons" (the TARDIS crew) that have been adversely affecting King John, is rather nice -- even if you have to wonder why Lord Ranulf doesn't recognize the Master as the unmasked Sir Gilles, who was then shoved into an (anachronistic) iron maiden which disappeared. And while the Doctor calls the Master's plan of altering history so that King John is deposed and thus never signs Magna Carta "small-time villainy", it's still potentially a big change, as Magna Carta is quite an important document (even if it wasn't at the time, as King John almost immediately got Pope Innocent III to declare it null and void and refused to obey it himself). That said, it's not clear what the Master hopes to gain from this plan, other than amusement.

Turlough, Tegan, the Doctor, and Kamelion. (The King's
Demons Part Two) ©BBC

But ultimately this story comes down to a battle of wills between the Doctor and the Master over a shapechanging alien appropriately named Kamelion. Kamelion is genuinely a robot that they've got someone off camera programming, and it's sort of effective here, even if it's not as good as they probably would have liked (and by all accounts was a nightmare to work with). But as Kamelion in the story is controlled by psychokinetics, it comes down to that aforementioned battle (shot rather well, it should be noted), which then ends when the Doctor transforms Kamelion's appearance into that of Tegan and pulls her inside the TARDIS. Kamelion, it seems, is going to be a new companion, despite Tegan's (rather worryingly close-minded) objections. (Don't hold your breath though; Kamelion was such a pain to work with -- not least because one of the people who developed him, Mike Power, died tragically in a boating accident not long after filming on this story was completed -- that he won't show up again until his swansong, Planet of Fire.)

It's only two episodes, so it might be unfair to judge it by the same standards as stories that have more time to develop, but The King's Demons is a rather slight affair. For all the talk about Magna Carta, it's hard to get the sense that any of this actually matters. Still, at least it looks decent, and the direction is good as well. But ultimately, The King's Demons just feels like a throwaway tale, and a less-than-stellar way to technically end season 20.¹²⁶ Maybe if the industrial action hadn't killed Eric Saward's Dalek script The Return we would have had a more effective season closer, but as is what we get is limp.

Season 20 itself hasn't been the most effective of seasons. Producer John Nathan-Turner told us that, while it wasn't intentional, season 20 would feature an element of the show's past in every story. This might be part of the problem. There's a tendency here to focus more on the past than on the future, but the issue is that too often there doesn't seem to be enough of a story to support those elements. What we get instead are a series of small scale threats, stories that are charming in their own way but don't stand out much from the crowd. The greater fluctuations in ratings this season (a lot less stable than season 19, and generally lower as well) seem to indicate that the audience hasn't been terribly impressed either. There's nothing that's really terrible this season, but too often there's a sense that nostalgia is enough to carry them through -- even if the nostalgia evoked isn't terribly strong in the first place.

But before we reach season 21, there's one more blast of pure nostalgia left, in time for Doctor Who's twentieth anniversary...

¹²⁶ I say technically because the next story, The Five Doctors, was made with season 20 funds, but didn't air until some eight months later. Still, for organizational purposes I'm counting it as part of season 20.

October 30: Enlightenment Parts Three & Four

The first two episodes of Enlightenment were set primarily on Striker's ship (the Shadow, according to the name on the lifebuoys), while the latter two split their time evenly between the Shadow and the Buccaneer, a 17th-century Spanish galleon. Wrack, the captain of the Buccaneer, seems far more lively than any of the other Eternals we've seen -- but maybe that's because she's doing her best to emulate a pirate captain, as opposed to, say, Striker's English "stiff upper lip" approach.

However, the standout performance here has to be from Mark Strickson. Turlough spends the entirety of these two episodes aboard Wrack's ship (well, once the Buccaneer scoops him up from his jump overboard), and he spends all that time being devious and conniving. "Your mind is divided, confused, hard to read sometimes," Wrack tells Turlough, "but one thing is clear in it always. Greed." But Mark Strickson (who hasn't exactly started this story as the most subtle actor) turns it up in an extremely entertaining performance. "I heard the power that speaks to you! I heard it, and I know the voice," Turlough wheedles to Wrack, in an effort to save his neck. "He speaks to me as well. I serve him, as I wish to serve you." It's tremendous fun, and it's a tribute to Strickson's abilities that, until the final moments of part four, you're never quite sure which side he's on. Is he, for instance, actually betraying the Doctor in part four by claiming the Doctor's a spy? Even though Turlough and the Doctor had a conversation about staying aboard the Buccaneer, and the fact that the Doctor seems sufficiently convinced by his intentions ("I think he wants to prove himself. At least, I hope so," the Doctor tells Tegan), you're still not certain if he's going to side with the Doctor or the Black Guardian.

The Black Guardian and the White Guardian, ready to present
Enlightenment. (Enlightenment Part Four) ©BBC

But then these two episodes, at their heart, really are about Turlough, and while there are other incidents along the way (Tegan being frozen in time so that Wrack can plant a deadly jewel on her, the destruction of another vessel due to Wrack, Marriner's desire to be with Tegan -- "You are life itself," he tells Tegan. "Without you I am nothing. Don't you understand? ... I am empty. You give me being. I look into your mind and see life, energy, excitement. I want them. I want you. Your thoughts should be my thoughts. Your feelings, my feelings." "Wait a minute," Tegan says. "Are you trying to tell me you're in love?" "Love?" responds Marriner, confused. "What is love?¹²⁵ I want existence"), none of them are the focus of the story the way Turlough is. And so the resolution ultimately comes down to him: as he helped sail the winning ship to the prize of Enlightenment, and as the Doctor isn't ready for Enlightenment, he's entitled to a piece of Enlightenment. And thus Turlough is presented with a choice: does he take the diamond, as well as power and all the other things he would get from the Black Guardian, or does he spare the Doctor's life? In the end he makes the right decision, giving the diamond to the Black Guardian, who disappears in flames:

WHITE GUARDIAN: Light destroys the dark. I think you will find your contract terminated.
TURLOUGH: (discarding the now-blackened communication crystal into the fire) I never wanted the agreement in the first place.
DOCTOR: I believe you.
TEGAN: You're mad.
TURLOUGH: What I've said is true.
TEGAN: You believe him because he gave up Enlightenment for your sake.
DOCTOR: You're missing the point. Enlightenment was not the diamond. Enlightenment was the choice.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Enlightenment)

Enlightenment brings an end to the Black Guardian trilogy, and while the White Guardian warns of a third encounter, to date this hasn't happened yet (unless Missy in series 8 is actually the Black Guardian...). It's a satisfying conclusion, one that sparkles with energy and charm. There's hardly a word or design choice out of place (well, except for the giant flashing VACUUM SHIELD OFF sign in Wrack's ion chamber, but I guess you can't have everything). Imaginative and clever, Enlightenment is one of the best stories of the Davison era.

¹²⁵ Baby don't hurt me
Don't hurt me
No more

October 29: Enlightenment Parts One & Two

Well, it only took twenty years, but Doctor Who finally gets its first female writer for the show in the form of Barbara Clegg. (Remember, by all accounts Lesley Scott did no actual work on The Ark.) And so far, what she's written has been really wonderful indeed. I like the slow build in part one, as the TARDIS arrives on a sailing ship that nevertheless has some oddities about it: the crew don't remember signing up, there are wetsuits for the crew, and the officers are decidedly peculiar. And it's interesting how the officers are similar yet different from each other: none of them seem to be terribly good at understanding people, but where Captain Striker is incredibly calm and collected, First Officer Marriner comes off as incredibly creepy in his pursuit of Tegan. Of course, they all seem to know what our heroes are thinking before being told, which might be extremely good anticipation or something else entirely. And then it all leads into that gorgeous first cliffhanger, where we learn that this sailing ship is in fact a spaceship, racing against a number of other sailing ships from Earth's history through the blackness of space...

There are some great moments throughout these first two episodes, of which that first cliffhanger is only one. There's also the interaction between the Doctor, Turlough, and the crew -- the crew's mistake of thinking the Doctor is in fact the ship's cook, and Turlough's cackling joy when the Doctor figures this out, is a particular highlight; the way the Doctor wants to finish his dessert before heading off after dinner; Turlough's decision not to kill the Doctor, in defiance of his deal with the Black Guardian ("I can't kill him!" Turlough cries), which leads to his desperate attempt to get off the ship, in the second cliffhanger, after the Black Guardian tells him he'll never leave Striker's ship; the nature of the Eternals, and their dependence upon Ephemerals -- those who live in one time and place -- and Striker's dismissal for the Time Lords ("Are there lords in such a small domain?"), even as he acknowledges that the Time Lords are more than mere Ephemerals; the way the scenes on deck are shot on film, suggesting location filming in an impossible locale... Enlightenment is filled with things like this, which add to a sense of groundedness even as we're told this is an unreal situation.

So there's been some fabulous acting and some sterling writing, and the whole thing looks beautiful as well -- so kudos to director Fiona Cumming, designer Colin Green, and costumer Dinah Collin for their work on that front. It's all especially impressive when you consider that this story was plagued by the same sort of industrial action that killed Shada and nearly ended The Invasion of Time. The whole thing is beautiful and a joy to take in -- it'll be good to see what's in store for the final two episodes.

October 28: Terminus Parts Three & Four

In a way, you sort of feel bad for Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson; with one exception, their actions have no bearing on anything going on in the main plot -- it's as if writer Steve Gallagher didn't know what to do with Tegan and Turlough, and so shunted them off to do their own, not very exciting thing. The only thing they do that's related to the main plot is when Turlough pulls some wires, trying to get the door to the TARDIS to reappear, and sends an electrical surge through the transport ship into Terminus, triggering an automatic fuel jettison. Everything else they do is padding. Mind you, there are some good moments in said padding: "If ever you had to kill someone, could you do it? Could you?" Turlough asks Tegan thoughtfully at one point. "No," Tegan replies. "I don't know. If it was important... to save my friend, to defend myself." "But cold-bloodedly?" Turlough persists. "You're weird, Turlough," she says. "What a subject to bring up at a time like this." Looks like Turlough is continuing to have second thoughts about his deal with the Black Guardian.

Terminus's dead pilot, the Doctor, and Kari in Terminus's control
room. (Terminus Part Three) ©BBC

Terminus's main storyline is content to move along without Tegan and Turlough, however, and it remains quite entertaining. There are actually two storylines on Terminus itself: one involves the Doctor and Kari learning about the origins of Terminus, and the other is about Nyssa's treatment at the hands of the Vanir and the Garm, and Olvir's efforts to rescue her. There's also another subplot regarding the leadership of the Vanir, and how they're in thrall to a faceless company that sends them drugs and patients, that neatly ties in with the Nyssa plot. That Nyssa plot, involving her being cured of Lazar's disease, is more interesting for the way it shows us how Terminus is supposed to work than for any other reasons -- that said, the fight scenes are reasonably good and Sarah Sutton does a fine job of showing Nyssa in distress and then cured, with a new purpose in life as a result.

The Doctor's plotline has more of a bearing on events in terms of threat level, as he and Kari make some interesting discoveries about Terminus -- due in part to Bor, the Vanir who went into the Forbidden Zone in part one and made some unpleasant discoveries of his own. Bor is probably the best of the all the Vanir, concerned far more with the possibility of another of Terminus's engines exploding than with anything else, including his own safety. Of course, this means that he's contracted radiation sickness from being inside the Forbidden Zone so long -- "Short-term memory's the first to go," he tells the Doctor -- but he still remembers enough to tell the Doctor how to find the control room.

I really like the idea of Terminus being inadvertently responsible for the Big Bang by jettisoning its unstable fuel, leading to the explosion that created the universe -- and that's why Terminus appears to be at the exact center of the universe.¹²⁴ It's a "big" idea in an otherwise small-scale story, but it never feels out of place here. In fact, it leads to some intriguing thoughts, which are never really explored but are still tantalizing to think about: if Terminus created the universe, what was there before? Is the Garm from the original ship or was it brought aboard? Plus it gives added impetus for the danger faced in the cliffhanger to part three and much of part four: if the jettisoned fuel the first time around was enough to create the universe, jettisoning the fuel a second time would be powerful enough to end everything.

But while there are big ideas driving the plot, the resolution is ultimately on a personal level; the Vanir wish to be free of the company and run Terminus on their own; the Garm is willing to save the universe in exchange for its freedom (to put it crudely); and Nyssa is cured and wants to help. This last one is the big one, because it means that Nyssa has decided to leave the TARDIS. Tegan is, predictably, unhappy about this ("She'll die here," Tegan says), but the Doctor seems accepting of the decision -- and, rather sweetly, Nyssa gives him a farewell kiss on the cheek.

Terminus is a story that often gets a lot of grief from fandom, but it's honestly hard to see why. There are a few questionable moments here and there, and some design decisions that don't work, but the core of the story is solid, and there are a lot of entertaining parts to a well-written script -- and one that seems to have had most of its plot bugs worked out ahead of time (not always the case at this point in the show's history). It's a story that strikes a fine balance between big ideas and small interpersonal relationships, and it does so in a suitably compelling fashion. Something of an overlooked gem, then.

¹²⁴ That said, I know that the Big Bang wasn't an actual explosion and that the universe doesn't actually have a center. But it's still a nice big idea.

October 27: Terminus Parts One & Two

Nope, looks like Turlough is still working with the Black Guardian -- and the cracked crystal has been repaired too. Tegan is still incredibly suspicious and distrustful of Turlough, although again there doesn't seem to be a good reason for it beyond "hey, Turlough's working for the villain, so someone has to be against him." It's not very satisfying as a result, and it doesn't make Tegan come off very well.

But it's actually Turlough's efforts to destroy the TARDIS ("I am ready to lift you away," the Black Guardian tells Turlough -- the words "yeah, right" come to mind) that lead to the main storyline, as the TARDIS latches onto a nearby spaceship to save itself from breaking up. Nyssa heads through the doorway that appears, and the rest of the story so far is about what she and the Doctor discover. (Tegan and Turlough spend the end of part one and all of part two trapped in some ductwork beneath the floors of the ship. It's about as thrilling as it sounds.)

I do like the slow realization, near the end of part one, that this ship isn't simply carrying standard cargo, but instead plague victims, and so the two raiders, Kari and Olvir, learn not only that they've been abandoned on a ship by their captain, but that it's a ship full of diseased people. Or, as Olvir memorably puts it at the end of part one: "This is Terminus! Where all the Lazars come to die. We're on a leper ship! We're all going to diiiiiiie!!!" And we learn in part two that Nyssa has also contracted the disease and is thus forcibly separated from the others.

Of course, it turns out that there are other people aboard Terminus. The ones looking after the Lazars are the Vanir -- but rather than being like the Norse gods of their namesake, these people are a sickly lot, dependent on a drug called hydromel and looking little better than the patients they're handling. I do like the look of their armor though, with its skeletal motif -- but there are also some small little touches (a snake head here, a dragon there) that add some character to the look. And people tend to look down on the Garm, but, glowing red eyes aside, I've always found it to be a reasonably convincing character. The Garm is certainly imposing; it's huge in every direction, and the idea of its being a servant of the weak-looking Vanir suggests that they must have some hidden strengths. And we get to find that out in part two's cliffhanger, as one of the Vanir attempts to throttle the Doctor -- with hands around the throat this time, rather than the usual Shoulder Rub of Doom.

There are other nice touches scattered throughout these two episodes; the skull motif on the transport ship, the transparent colored blocks that represent computer chips (rather than the standard "bits of circuitry" we usually get around this time), and all the different colored strips that show that the Forbidden Zone has been slowly getting larger (presumably as the radiation contamination increases). It's been a slow build, but thus far Terminus has been an intriguing story.

October 26: Mawdryn Undead Parts Three & Four

The two Brigadiers just avoid meeting each other. (Mawdryn
Undead Part Three) ©BBC

While the first two parts of Mawdryn Undead were interested more in the interwoven timelines, these two episodes are concerned more with the idea of assisted suicide, filtered through an SF lens. Of course, it takes a bit of time to get to that point (since it ends up being the cliffhanger to part three -- "It would be the end of me as a Time Lord!" the Doctor exclaims upon hearing of Mawdryn's wish for the Doctor's help in letting them die), and so part three is filled with a decent amount of wandering the luxury spaceship, combined with some more attempts by Mawdryn to convince Tegan, Nyssa, and the '77 Brigadier that he's the Doctor (even though we the audience know he's not). It's entertaining, but it's not, strictly speaking, doing much in the way of plot advancement. We learn that Mawdryn has seven compatriots on board, and that Turlough is still doing the Black Guardian's bidding (although he seems quite reluctant to actually kill the Doctor; most of his plans seem to involve trying to strand him instead), and that there are two Brigadiers on board, and should they meet, the result will be catastrophic. And that's really about it.

Part four deals more with the assisted suicide subplot, albeit in a manner which coerces the Doctor into helping them; he's not particularly keen on giving up his remaining regenerations to free Mawdryn and his fellows from their unending regeneration cycle (which they're suffering from thanks to some pilfered Gallifreyan technology), but when it turns out Nyssa and Tegan are infected with the same problem as Mawdryn, the Doctor feels he has little choice but to grant the poor fellows their wish. It's not a situation that's explored with any complexity, but the fact that they're even bringing up euthanasia at all is somewhat surprising. Of course, thanks to a deus ex machina (the two Brigadiers meeting at exactly the right moment, shorting out the time differential and supplying the power needed to cure Nyssa and Tegan and end the eight travellers' lives -- this event, incidentally, is why the '83 Brigadier had amnesia at the beginning of the story) everyone gets what they want without the Doctor no longer being a Time Lord, but it's interesting that the Doctor was willing to go through with it -- and it's nice that Tegan thanks him for that. And although Turlough was unable to kill or strand the Doctor, he's apparently going to get another chance, as he joins the TARDIS crew at the end of the story (although there's the moment where Turlough discovers that his Black Guardian communication crystal is cracked -- is he free of the Black Guardian's influence now?).

On the whole, Mawdryn Undead is a success. It's nice to have such a small stakes story (it's not the universe at risk, it's just eight people with a simple request), and there's enough going on otherwise (the return of the Brigadier, the Black Guardian's delayed revenge over the events of 1978's The Armageddon Factor, the mingling of the two time periods) to keep the audience happily entertained. Even the inclusion of the Brigadier feels right, even if he is a maths teacher -- the story originally called for Ian Chesterton to be the returning character, but the Brigadier slots in surprisingly well. It's not a "big" story, but it's not trying to be (as opposed to, say, Arc of Infinity, which does want to be a "big" story but fails at it). There may be a section of fandom who wish this story had never happened (albeit for the wrong reasons¹²³), but they can be safely ignored. Mawdryn Undead is a charming tale.

¹²³ All right, let's tackle the big one: assigning dates to the UNIT stories.
   When the UNIT stories were first conceived, the assumption was that they were taking place some 5-10 years in the future. So The Invasion was supposed to be 1975 (at least, according to the continuity announcer before Episode 1), Spearhead from Space 1976 or so, and so on -- hence Sarah Jane's otherwise bewildering comment in Pyramids of Mars about being from 1980. However, while this may have been the guiding philosophy of the production team, it's never actually stated anywhere in the programme proper (Pyramids of Mars aside), and there are enough hints in the broadcast episodes to suggest an earlier '70s date (i.e., 1-2 years in the future) -- although, again, nothing definitive, and there's sufficient leeway to keep both sides happy.
     The real problem comes with Mawdryn Undead. By 1983, the UNIT stories were already looking a bit vintage and thus were more or less placed in the "early '70s" category in the view of the contemporary production team -- and so this story has the Brigadier retired by 1976 and teaching at a public school, even though that contradicts the "late '70s" approach that the Pertwee team was going for. For some reason, even though the year is explicitly and repeatedly stated on-screen in Mawdryn Undead, this is still a hugely controversial issue in some circles, and some fans are incredibly unwilling to go against the Letts' team's original intentions, despite the on-screen evidence -- to the point that they're still making jokes about it (see, among others, 2008's "The Sontaran Stratagem" and 2013's "The Day of the Doctor").
     (Although while they're making jokes about it, nevertheless things like The Sarah Jane Adventures (explicitly in the same continuity as Doctor Who) are going around reinforcing the early '70s dating -- see, for instance, the SJA episode "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?", which establishes that Sarah was thirteen in 1964, and then note that she gives her age as 23 in Invasion of the Dinosaurs.)
   However, looking at the evidence objectively, it's pretty clear that placing the Pertwee stories in the early '70s works without any real insurmountable problems (or, at least, without any problems that aren't also confronted by late '70s dating -- the British Space Programme doesn't really fit with either time period), while going with late '70s dating requires you not only to pretend Mawdryn Undead never happened, but also to believe that a number of real world events (e.g., Britain switching to decimal currency and the death of Mao Zedong) happened differently in the Doctor Who continuity. In short, early '70s dating simply makes more sense, and we can move on to something more productive, like trying to work out when the Russell T Davies stories are actually set.

October 25: Mawdryn Undead Parts One & Two

It opens with a really bratty schoolboy named Turlough who goes around endangering others and generally not caring about if he lives or dies. "I don't think I'd really care if I were [dead]," he says after getting in an accident and looking down on the scene, in an unbelievably early '80s computer-generated vortex. He's there courtesy of the Black Guardian, who wants Turlough to kill the Doctor -- "one of the most evil creatures in the universe," the Guardian tells Turlough -- and in exchange the Black Guardian will take Turlough away from Earth (Turlough's not a native, it seems). Oh, and it seems that the maths teacher at Turlough's public school¹²² is one Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, last seen in 1975's Terror of the Zygons and now retired from UNIT.

Into this somewhat unusual setup the TARDIS arrives, caught in a warp ellipse along with some sort of luxury spaceship. The warp ellipse has immobilized the TARDIS, so while Turlough is being manipulated by the Black Guardian into a position near the Doctor, the Doctor himself (now apparently sporting mini-mutton chop sideburns) is trying to locate the ship's transmat beam (last operated six years earlier) so that the TARDIS can leave.

Turlough's introduction to the Doctor is pretty great, by the way; he enters the TARDIS while the others are out, and while he's checking out the TARDIS the Doctor rushes in, before looking slowly at Turlough. The Doctor seems quite willing to trust Turlough; Tegan doesn't, although there doesn't seem to be any reason for her not to. "Nobody from Earth is just going to walk into a transmat capsule," she complains. "As you did into the TARDIS on the Barnet bypass?" Nyssa asks pointedly. Of course, in this case Tegan is right (not that she knows that), and after the Doctor releases the transmat beam down on 1983 Earth, the TARDIS briefly materializes and then is gone again, and while the Doctor tries to figure out what went wrong, Turlough lifts a big rock and prepares to kill the Doctor. "In the name of all that is evil, the Black Guardian orders you to destroy him now!" the Black Guardian cries, which rather ruins the whole "you're doing the universe a favor by killing an evil man" excuse.

Part two is primarily about three things: first, the Doctor's renewed relationship with the Brigadier; second, the badly injured Doctor that Tegan and Nyssa find; and third, the storylines in the two different timelines (1983, where the Doctor is, and 1977, where Tegan and Nyssa are). That first thing is handled rather well; I like the idea of an amnesiac Brigadier who doesn't remember the Doctor or any of his friends or the events he shared (so, what did he think he did at UNIT all those years?), and the way in which the Doctor lifts the Brigadier's mental block is quite lovely, with all those sepia-tinted memories flooding back. I also like the way the subsequent storyline ties in with the third point, with us seeing what Tegan's doing with the 1977 Brigadier (quickly identifiable by the moustache he's sporting that the '83 version lacks) at the same time the 1983 Brigadier remembers what happened and tells the Doctor about it.

That second point is less successful; does anyone buy that that's supposed to be the Doctor? (Mind you, my wife bought it...for about fifteen seconds, by her reckoning.) It's more entertaining how the not-actually-Doctor (as played by David Collings) leaves smears of the body paint he's wearing everywhere -- and if you look, you can see Janet Fielding's hands are just covered with the stuff after she drags him inside the TARDIS. But even though it's less successful, it ends up being the driving force behind much of the episode, and while we learn that he's actually Mawdryn, not the Doctor (thus explaining the story's title), there's also some intriguing stuff about him becoming a Time Lord. And his appearance at the end of the episode, when the '77 Brig enters the TARDIS, is quite horrific, with his pulsing exposed brain...

¹²² Remember, in England a public school is, somewhat confusingly, a type of private school.

October 24: Snakedance Parts Three & Four

The Doctor and Nyssa discuss the Little Mind's Eye crystal.
(Snakedance Part Three) ©BBC

One of the impressive things about part three is that this is the episode where the Doctor works out the backstory of the Mara -- despite being locked in a cell for the majority of the episode -- through a combination of Dojjen's journal (the previous director's, given to the Doctor by Ambril's assistant Chela) and Nyssa's working through the properties of the crystal -- concluding that it must be man-made with no imperfections of any kind (not even distortions from gravity), an incredibly advanced technique from a people who now appear to be too primitive to be able to perform it. Therefore, the Manussans were once very advanced, but when they made the Great Crystal (aka the Great Mind's Eye) in order to harness their mental powers, they brought the Mara into being, leading to the downfall of their civilization and the rise of the Sumaran Empire.

Of course, while the Doctor and Nyssa are locked up, the Mara is making plans for its return. Curiously, though Lon is clearly in the thrall of the Mara, he still seems to retain some semblance of his old self (unlike Tegan), and while he's being controlled by the Mara, it's not actually living inside him. But he's fascinatingly manipulative with Ambril, who ultimately seems willing to let Lon use the Great Crystal during the Defeat of the Mara Ceremony, even though a) it's expressly forbidden, and b) he's seen some weird stuff inside the cave full of artifacts -- like Dugdale doing his barker routine to no one in particular. Incidentally, it's the "expressly forbidden" part that seems to convince Chela to release the Doctor, who's the only one who's been warning of dangers while Ambril is continually dismissive of the possibility. And incidentally, I really like the incorporation of the Mara into the Punch and Judy show -- it's a really nice touch.

Part four has two moments that are really wonderful. The first is the Doctor's interaction with Dojjen, who's gone off into the hills to become a snakedancer. The telepathic conversation they share (thanks, it seems, to a snake bite) is enigmatic and charming, with some great lines, such as "Fear is the only poison" and "The still point is within yourself ... To destroy the Mara you must find the still point." I also like how the Doctor takes full responsibility for Tegan having succumbed to the Mara; it's a nice touch.

The second moment is the ceremony itself; there's something pleasingly elegant about the (obviously well-known) lines spoken during it: "I offer you fear in a handful of dust", "I offer you despair in a withered branch", and so forth. Plus, the way in which Lon causes the ceremony to go off the rails is really well done ("What do you mean, [the crystal has] hidden depths? Where are they? Show them to me. It's just a fake. Your whole ceremony is a fake"), and the reveal of the Mara is a lot better than it was in Kinda. It's a significantly more convincing snake. The defeat of the Mara here is also better than it was in Kinda -- there's nothing here about mirrors, but instead it's about one man's refusal (the Doctor's) to submit to fear, to instead find the still point inside and thus disrupt the Mara's power.

Snakedance is a much more accessible story than Kinda was, and I think that's a real strength, for while Kinda was fascinating in its use of metaphors and imagery, Snakedance has much of the same feel while telling a more coherent tale. There are also some brave elements to this story (making the Doctor seem like a crazy outsider, for instance), and the whole thing coheres thanks to the sterling directorial work of Fiona Cumming. I've already mentioned the excellent work that Martin Clunes and John Carson have put into this, but I haven't mentioned Janet Fielding, who finally gets a chance to really let loose as the possessed Tegan. It's a frightening performance (even more so because we're familiar with how Tegan usually is) and one that Fielding takes full advantage of. All this and a great script make Snakedance easily one of the standouts so far of Peter Davison's tenure.

October 23: Snakedance Parts One & Two

"Well?" Nyssa asks the Doctor as this story opens, having changed out of her usual velvet clothes into a hideous new outfit of a white and blue striped shirt with a different striped skirt (predominantly dull purple, green, and red), worn over a pair of burgundy shorts. The Doctor, wisely, doesn't reply.

Other than some awkward exposition to bring anyone who didn't see Kinda up to speed, these first couple episodes of Snakedance are really well done. It's a sequel to Kinda, albeit on the planet of Manussa instead of Deva Loka. Manussa was the planet from which the Mara ruled over the Sumaran empire until it was overthrown by the Federation five hundred years earlier, and it seems the Mara is keen to retake Manussa through Tegan. Manussa, by the way, looks gorgeous -- the bazaar set in particular is a great riot of colors and nooks and crannies.

It's not just the set design, though: the script is filled with fantastic characters, all aided by an excellent guest cast. Lon, the Federator's son, has the purest motivation ever, boredom, and while there's nothing actually evil about him, there is a slightly sadistic and mischievous streak -- note the way in which he casually tosses that priceless artifact to Ambril. As everyone knows, this is Martin Clunes's first television work (before he became the star of Men Behaving Badly and Doc Martin), and he's magnificently good here, both when he's being indolent and when he's been possessed by the Mara. And I really like how he goes to the house of mirrors with Dugdale (played by Brian Miller, who's also Elisabeth Sladen's husband) because he's so impressed by the audacity of someone summoning him that he wants to see who would dare do such a thing. And John Carson pitches his performance as Ambril perfectly, being both somewhat insufferable when he's lecturing others on Sumaran history and realistically dismissive of the Doctor's wild claims (for which he has no proof) -- the sarcastic rejoinder to the Doctor's cry to cancel the ceremony celebrating 500 years of Mara-free rule ("Yes, I'll cancel the whole thing. At once") being a particular delight.

In fact, this is just about the only time in the series that we get a look at how the Doctor must seem to others. Manussa appears to be a relatively stable and free society, happily going about its business, when the Doctor appears on the scene declaring tales of doom and destruction if he's not heeded. And since he has no proof (Tegan having run off and then succumbing to the Mara, who's in no hurry to reveal itself), he really does look like a crazy person, even though we the audience know better. Mind, flashes of the Doctor we know still shine through: I love the Six Faces of Delusion bit, as the Doctor points out the obvious to the academic Ambril, who has examined the piece so closely that he missed the actual point of the headdress.

These two episodes ultimately feel like they're building to something big, as the Mara marshals its power and prepares to strike. That second cliffhanger is weird, though: I guess it's supposed to be worrying that Lon is speaking with Tegan-as-the-Mara's voice? But we already know Lon has been taken over, so I'm not sure what we gain from this. But never mind; this doesn't detract from what's gone before, and so far what's gone before has been excellent.

October 22: Arc of Infinity Parts Three & Four

I take back what I said last time about the Ergon; while it's not bad from a distance in poor lighting, up close in bright white lights it's really quite an appalling costume. It looks really cheap, and the fact that you can see the holes in the neck where Malcolm Harvey is looking out does it no favors whatsoever. Not that the other effects are that much better; the matter converter's beam and disappearing effect is quite nice, but the Matrix is rather disappointing with its shimmering black with odd white lines look -- we're a long way away from The Deadly Assassin's surreal landscape. And I don't think much of Omega's costume either.

But anyway... Part three is all about revelations. The Doctor's not dead! Hedin is the traitor! The Renegade is Omega! Er... bringing back a one-time villain from ten years ago doesn't seem like a great move (even allowing for the fact that The Three Doctors was repeated in November 1981 as part of BBC2's Five Faces of Doctor Who season), and Arc of Infinity makes few concessions to anyone who doesn't remember/know about Omega. Not that it really matters, I suppose; all you need to know is that Omega really wants to take over the Doctor's form and enter our universe, and that This Is A Bad Thing, because Omega is made up of antimatter and thus will create a huge explosion when he interacts with matter. Again, how has Omega not considered this problem? Moreover, no one on Gallifrey seems willing to work with Omega, to come up with a safe way for him to transfer over; they'd much rather annihilate him and be done with it.

Omega's body begins to break down in Amsterdam. (Arc of
Infinity Part Four) ©BBC

It's a decent enough episode, but the story really becomes worthwhile in part four, due in no small part to Peter Davison's performance as Omega-in-the-Doctor's-form. All the stuff leading up to that is suitably tense and dramatic, but once Omega achieves transfer and Peter Davison takes over, it's simply wonderful. Davison plays the role like someone experiencing the world for the first time, taking in all the sights and wonders that he's been denied for so long. The moment with the child in front of the calliope, where he looks at the child and smiles, somewhat uncertainly, is so magical that you find yourself rooting for Omega, even though he's ostensibly the villain of the piece (and he has just killed a groundskeeper). And the scenery is quite gorgeous; the Amsterdam location (the second time Doctor Who has filmed abroad) is used quite effectively and adds a sense of scope to the proceedings.

But of course it can't last; the transfer is unstable, and the Doctor is forced to dispatch Omega with a matter converter so that a huge explosion doesn't take place. The universe is saved, and Tegan is free to travel with the Doctor again. Although I can't tell if that final shot, where the Doctor smiles and then his face falls, is because the camera didn't cut away soon enough, or if the Doctor is meant to be somewhat less than enthusiastic about the prospect of traveling with Tegan again...

I can't decide if Arc of Infinity ultimately works or not. It's never less than entertaining, but there is a bit of a sense of the author's hand behind things; there's a good deal of technobabble floating around to make the story do whatever is necessary, and it's never really made clear what the main problem is. There's some handwaving about antimatter, but that's treated as if that's enough, and the threat Omega (allegedly) poses is thus frustratingly vague. It is, however, a story that works a bit better the second time around; if you already know that the Renegade is Omega, then you can have some fun with the motivations and the casual callbacks to facts we learned in The Three Doctors. But taken in context, Arc of Infinity is something of an unmotivated adventure, and while it's enjoyable enough while it lasts (and again, Peter Davison really is impressive as Omega), it's hard to dispel the sense that this is all rather irrelevant.

October 21: Arc of Infinity Parts One & Two

Season 20 opens with some shadowy Time Lord figure making a deal with someone unfamiliar, displayed in a negative image (you know, like a Dalek extermination effect). So it's going to be a Gallifrey story, I guess.

And it seems they've decided to make this some sort of mystery/suspense story, so we get lots of shots of shadowy figures and first-person-from-the-culprit's-point-of-view scenes. This is fine (even if it's aping The Deadly Assassin somewhat), but there's a lot of technobabble going on to support the mystery (biodata, Quad magnetism, temporal bonding), which instead has the effect of taking you out of the mystery rather than pulling you in.

Still, it's nice to see Nyssa interact with the Doctor without anyone else in the TARDIS to take up screen time, and we see a genuine affection there of the sort that wasn't really present in TARDIS scenes during season 19. It's a welcome change, and there's also a feeling that Nyssa has grown up a bit. Although the fallen hatstand in the console room seems to suggest that little time has passed between Time-Flight and this, it's hard to reconcile that with the easier and stronger relationship. Maybe the hatstand just fell over again.

There's also some stuff in Amsterdam with young tourists, but, while somewhat interesting, it's hard at this stage to really see how it ties in with the Gallifrey stuff, beyond the fact that the same person seems to be responsible for both Colin's "death" and the Doctor's attempted abduction/takeover. Although there is that weird chicken creature, the Ergon, to watch. Actually, I don't mind the Ergon as much as the rest of fandom seems to; it's not a total success, but you can sort of see what they were going for, and I don't think it looks that bad, especially if they were going for "weird" rather than "scary" (mind, if they were going for "scary" then it is a failure).

But look! It's Colin Baker as Commander Maxil! Which wouldn't normally be anything of particular note, except that Colin Baker is going to go on to become the next Doctor (not that anyone knows that yet). Here he's quite ruthless -- although he doesn't seem actually evil -- in the pursuit of his duties. Maybe the Doctor upset him at some unseen point before this story, since his reactions over the Doctor are much more extreme than anyone else we see. And Borusa has regenerated yet again, it seems.

Maxil and the Doctor in the TARDIS. (Arc of Infinity Part Two)
©BBC

Part two shows us why we're really supposed to care about the Amsterdam stuff: Tegan's back (well, that was fast).¹²¹ She's now unemployed and sporting a pixie cut, and it turns out that Colin the now-possessed tourist was her cousin (thus getting her involved in the story). So she and Colin's friend Robin go around trying to convince the police that there's a problem while Gallifrey gets on with executing the Doctor, so that the thing that tried to bond with him ("the Renegade", according to the credits) is unable to do so. The Renegade is composed of antimatter, you see, and if the bond were successful there would be a tremendous explosion as matter and antimatter mixed. Although you'd think the Renegade would have thought of that and would have plans to prevent killing itself.

But yes, this episode seems to just be marking time for large portions: Tegan learns about Colin and that's about it, while the Doctor is sentenced to execution (only the second time this has happened -- the first being Morbius, presumably) and waits around for it to happen. And that's largely it for plot purposes. Yes, there are some complications, and we learn that it must be someone on Gallifrey who's working with the Renegade in order to use the Doctor as a candidate for temporal bonding, but that's it. It does lead to a good cliffhanger, though, as the Doctor is led to the execution chamber and then appears to be vaporized -- although not before the Renegade has bonded with him...

¹²¹ To be fair, Tegan's departure was never intended to be permanent, but rather a cliffhanger to sustain interest over the season break. Except it sure looks like a departure and not any sort of cliffhanger at all, but never mind.

October 20: Time-Flight Parts Three & Four

Part three is something of a halfway house between the first two parts and part four; there's some maneuvering with the Master, as he takes the Doctor's TARDIS -- his own not working properly after he apparently barely escaped Castrovalva -- but there are also some efforts by the script to explain what's going on with the Xeraphin, the alien intelligence that the Master is attempting to control to use in his TARDIS. It does feel a bit mystical at times, with telepathic gestalt entities that are having an internal conflict between their good and evil sides and yet are still able to remove walls and create psychic projections, but as the first two episodes also had that mysterious quality, this isn't too bad.

The problem with this episode, then, is that Peter Grimwade (who actually began work on this story before his Who directorial debut in Full Circle) has had to write a number of scenes with the Master in the Doctor's TARDIS while Captain Stapley and First Officer Bilton spy on him, leading to some sabotage and then later an attempt to work out how to fly the TARDIS. (It may not surprise you to learn that a good deal of this material was padding to fill out an under-running script.) It's rather at odds with the surrounding material involving the Doctor and the Xeraphin tonally, and so it ends up feeling like something of a letdown.

The Doctor and the Master exchange TARDIS components outside
the Master's TARDIS while Concorde passengers look on.
(Time-Flight Part Four) ©BBC

Part four almost completely abandons the more mystical qualities the script has had in favor of a dull runaround, with the Master and the Doctor sparring with each other over TARDIS pieces while the Concorde crew readies their plane for takeoff back through the time contour that brought them there. The sets aren't very convincing and neither are the airplane parts (the wheels, for instance, aren't even the size of a standard car's), and you do sort of wish they would get on with it. This makes the very end of the episode, back in Heathrow, a refreshing breath of air -- there suddenly seems to be an energy present that was missing the previous twenty minutes. And it is a nice surprise ending: four episodes after the death of Adric, Tegan is suddenly and unceremoniously left behind (admittedly at the airport she'd been spending most of the season trying to get back to), without even a farewell.

There are two problems with Time-Flight. The first problem is that there's no money to make a story as ambitious as this one, and so a story that wants to be sweeping and epic is reduced to some tiny, cheap-looking studio sets representing Jurassic Earth. It's unlikely that there would have ever been enough money to do this story justice, but making it as the end-of-season runt just dooms it. The second problem is that, although the production team has spent this time bringing the Master back to the show, now that they've got him they don't seem to know what to do with him. This means he spends two episodes in disguise and then two episodes running around being generically villainous, rather than having a plan with some flair or drama. This isn't really Anthony Ainley's fault, as he's just playing the role they're giving him, but they really need to give him something better than this to make him rise to the occasion.

It's a weird story. It probably never would have worked (although it's fun to imagine how a million pound version of this would have looked), but there are some interesting ideas at play in various parts. Filming at Heathrow and being able to use Concorde is something of a coup, but unfortunately Time-Flight reaches a point where it's no longer sure what to do with the ideas it has and settles for something rather simple and dull, and so you can occasionally get the feeling that it's squandered its resources. It's not offensively bad, but it is worryingly aimless at times.

Time-Flight is, of course, the last story of season 19, and it's been an interesting season. There have certainly been some uneven moments, and this last story doesn't help matters any, but it's fascinating to watch Peter Davison's debut season as the Doctor -- you can visibly see him growing more confident with how he wants to play the part, such that he seems much more self-assured and consistent in his performance in Time-Flight than he did in Four to Doomsday. The large number of companions aboard the TARDIS is a bit of a problem (albeit one that the production team seems to have recognized, as they've been slowly culling the crew), and the varying quality of the stories has led to a less consistent run than season 18 was, but this appears to be a show comfortable with its identity again -- and the audience seems happy as well, with ratings consistently around the 9 million viewers mark, give or take a million. If there's a cause for concern, it's that the later scripts seem a bit less tightly plotted than the earlier scripts did -- but as incoming script editor Eric Saward is finding his feet as a brand-new editor, these could easily be teething troubles. It hasn't been an outstanding run, but it's rarely been less than entertaining, and the diversity of the scripts has been a definite positive. If they stay on this path, they'll be fine. Whether they do is a subject for next season...

October 19: Time-Flight Parts One & Two

I think it was Jonathan Blum who pointed out that it was in the previous episode that Adric died in a freighter crash in the late Cretaceous period, and although this story takes place in the late Jurassic (quite a time span away, but still), no one even mentions Adric's death after the opening TARDIS scene. Even though there's a crashed spaceship nearby.

I bring this up because it illustrates one of the inherent problems with the show at this point in time: it wants to have more interconnectedness between stories, to have a longer-running story than just the four episode serials, but it does it in a shallow way. There's a scene of grieving at the beginning, with the Doctor declaring that he can't go back and save Adric, and then it's on to business as usual; Adric might as well have been dead for months, for all Tegan and Nyssa seem to be subsequently broken up about it.

There are some nice ideas at work in Time-Flight proper; the thought of Concorde disappearing back in time is rather interesting, and there's some nice back-referencing to UNIT in part one, of the sort that's pleasing for long-term fans but not required for more casual fans to understand. But the issue is that because this is the last story of the season, there's not much money left to spend on sets, and because this is such an ambitious script, the results look particularly cheap. Air traffic control is one guy in a small windowless room, for instance, and while the Plasmatons aren't the worst creations ever, their appearance effect is an overlayed smoke funnel, and the effect of holding people prisoner consists of soap suds. And you can hear everyone walking around the wooden rostrums "outside" in the Jurassic wilderness.

One thing that's pleasingly odd is the Arabic magician who brought them all back in time, Kalid. There's something wonderfully bizarre about his performance, with his incantations and his threats toward the Doctor, and I find him terribly watchable. And his death in part two is particular gruesome, with all the green slime bubbling out as Kalid dies. It's actually a bit disappointing, since no one else in this production is really worth watching. And then, in the part two cliffhanger, it's revealed that Kalid is in fact the Master! Oh. Well, ok then. Now I don't understand where this story is going.

October 18: Earthshock Parts Three & Four

Today one of my best friends is getting married. Congratulations Jason and Elizabeth! I got you guys a dead companion!

Hold on, let's back up.

A Cyberman is frozen inside a door. (Earthshock Part Three) ©BBC

It turns out that most of the problems I have with Earthshock have to do with part four. Part three continues to excite and interest, as we see the Cybermen on the move onboard the freighter, while the Doctor and Adric try to convince Captain Briggs that they're not responsible for the deaths of the crewmembers. And there's also a subplot involving Lieutenant Scott and his troopers, accompanied by Tegan, working their way through the ship, trying to find the bridge while dodging Cybermen. It coheres rather well -- although you can see why Beryl Reid takes flak for her performance; there are definitely times when she seems unsure of the dialogue she's being asked to deliver. But I still think she does a nice job.

The Doctor's confrontation with the Cyberleader is also interesting; there's this curious moment where the Cyberleader says, "So, we meet again, Doctor," despite the fact that, as far as we've seen, no Cyberman has survived an encounter with the Doctor. And we get that great cliffhanger, as a huge number of Cybermen begin marching through the freighter, all in sync.

Part four, as I mentioned, is where the problems really set in. Things start happening for no obvious reason, and it's rather frustrating. Why, for instance, is the second wave of Cybermen activated? It looks like it's a fault, but there's also the question of why they weren't activated at the same time as the first wave; is the Cyberleader really okay with letting a large number of his troops be killed unnecessarily? And how exactly does hooking an alien computer up to the freighter cause it to travel back in time? If time had been spent coming up with some sort of explanation for these events, this could have been something special, but as it is it's just aggravating instead.

One thing that works better than it should is Adric's death. Adric has, unfortunately, become superfluous to the needs of the TARDIS crew, and so his time had come to leave the show. But what a way to leave! Obviously one of the companions had to die, to show that traveling with the Doctor doesn't necessarily mean you're safe. Matthew Waterhouse reportedly wasn't very happy with his character's fate. But it's certainly a memorable way to leave, and the ending is quite affecting.

There are a lot of things to like about Earthshock. The first three episodes are quite good, with good acting and some really great direction from Peter Grimwade, and some outstanding design work in both sets and costumes. If the entire script was of the same caliber it would be great, but the plot holes make this an ultimately frustrating experience. I really want to love it, but I just can't quite do it.

October 17: Earthshock Parts One & Two

There's a sense of tension and suspense that's immediately noticeable as Earthshock begins, with futuristic troops concerned about the deaths of archaeologists and geologists in a recently discovered cave system. Scanners indicate nothing down there, but something must have been responsible for those seven deaths...

The use of caves also gives a claustrophobic feel that serves Earthshock well -- we get narrow passages and effective lighting, with lots of shadowy figures and such. It's so good, in fact, that it's a bit of a letdown to shift to the by-now-standard TARDIS interior establishing scenes. Adric, it seems, feels unappreciated, so he and the Doctor have a fight about it, one which leads the Doctor to storm off into the cave system that the TARDIS has just materialized in. I understand why the production team wants to add these more "soap opera" elements, and while I like the idea of having a sense of continuity, to show the interpersonal relationships between the main characters, I feel like squabbling isn't the way to go about it. I want to like the main characters, I really do, but things like Tegan's constant sniping and Adric's repeated petulance make it really hard to.

Still, it does settle down after a bit, and the business with the troopers in the caves is more than enough to paper over any problems with the other scenes. This is also a fairly gruesome episode; while we don't actually see troopers being killed by the mysterious androids wandering the caves, we do see the aftermath of steaming goo and ruined uniforms -- it doesn't look like it was a pleasant death. And once the Doctor, Nyssa, and Tegan are introduced to the main action (complete with the usual suspicion regarding their presence in places where people keep disappearing), things really start moving. And then that cliffhanger, where we see that those strange androids are being controlled by... Cybermen! What a surprise that must have been to the initial viewing audience, to see the return of the Cybermen not just after seven years, but also without any sort of advance publicity whatsoever (Nathan-Turner in fact turned down the chance at a Radio Times cover -- which the show hadn't had since 1973 -- to preserve the surprise).¹²⁰ All these factors combined mean that Earthshock Part One is one of the best episodes the show has ever produced.

The high standards continue in part two, with some frantic scenes of the troopers fighting off the androids as well as the Doctor trying desperately to defuse a bomb before it's exploded by some unseen force (aka the Cybermen, but the Doctor doesn't know that yet). Oh, and we get our first use of the phrase, "Brave heart, Tegan," by the Doctor. There's also the nice use of old clips to remind viewers of previous Cybermen stories (even if it also serves as an indication of the state of the archives by this point, as the Cyberleader describes the events of The Tomb of the Cybermen (then missing) but uses a clip from The Wheel in Space to illustrate the second Doctor). And the redesigned Cybermen are fantastic-looking (and in fact are my favorite Cyberman design), a sleek mix of parts to suggest a powerful cybernetic organism -- and I love the transparent jaw, with the silver chin that can be glimpsed moving inside.

Soon the action moves from caves to a freighter heading toward Earth, and things do start to get a little silly. No, I'm not talking about Beryl Reid as the freighter captain (at this point in the story she seems in control of events and totally competent), but rather about the fact that three crewmembers have vanished without trace and yet only one crewmember, Ringway, seems remotely concerned about this. Let's be clear: three crewmembers have disappeared, and almost no one cares. What's wrong with these people?

And, of course, two more crewmembers are offed while the Doctor and Adric are exploring the cargo hold, and their timing is unfortunate enough to be discovered by Ringway as they're examining the bodies. "On this ship we execute murderers," he declares, pointing a gun at them...

¹²⁰ Although there's no ratings surge to suggest that people were interested -- the next episode, shown the following day, had lower ratings than part one. Parts three & four were up a bit though, so maybe it just took some time for the news of the Cybermen's return to circulate.

October 16: Black Orchid Parts One & Two

Two stories in a row featuring trips to Earth's past! That's almost unique in the show's history: the only comparable occasion is The Talons of Weng-Chiang followed by Horror of Fang Rock, and that involved multiple seasons.

But Black Orchid is a decidedly different beast; it's a shorter story (our first two-parter since The Sontaran Experiment), it's an historical story with no SF elements beyond the TARDIS (our first since The Highlanders), and the theme of the TARDIS's trip to the 1920s is decidedly whimsical. We see the Doctor playing cricket, Tegan dancing the Charleston, Nyssa involved in some "you look just like me!" antics, and Adric stuffing his face (well, he is Alzarian, with super-fast healing properties; presumably he has a high metabolism). There's a definite sense, particularly in the first episode, of the TARDIS team relaxing -- they're noticeably happier around each other, and even Tegan and Nyssa's ribbing of Adric about his food comes off as more good-natured than you might expect.

Of course, this is Doctor Who, so it can't all be a lark, and the trouble this time around comes in the form of a disfigured man who's roaming the halls of Cranleigh Hall and breaking people's necks (although he does appear to be tied up much of the time, so it's hard to tell if he's killing people as a result of being tied up, or if he's tied up to stop him killing). This actually leads to another case of mistaken identity; not only does Nyssa look like Charles Cranleigh's fianceé Ann Talbot, but the disfigured man (or "The Unknown", as the credits style him) dresses up in the Doctor's fancy dress costume and kills someone else in front of Ann. But, as he was wearing the Doctor's costume, Ann thinks the Doctor was responsible, and thus most of part two consists of the Doctor trying to prove he didn't do it.

It's a bit of a grim turn in such a lightweight story, but it turns out that this is a secret being kept in the family: the Unknown is in fact Charles's brother George, who went up the Orinoco River to find the black orchid and was mutilated by the local tribe as a result, as they considered the flower sacred. This does lead to some awkward questions, though; why are Lady and Charles Cranleigh keeping George locked and tied up in a wing of the hall and essentially treating him like a leper, rather than trying to help him in some way? And how did George finish the book he wrote about finding the flower if he was disfigured, and in a way that no one knew his final fate? And how were the Cranleighs explaining the presence of the actual black orchid in their sitting room, and not how they got it? (A possibility: they were claiming that George had returned and then died in England, rather than that he was lost in the rainforest -- well, except Lady Cranleigh explicitly says that he never returned from his last expedition. Hmm.)

This family tragedy does feel slightly at odds with everything else, because Black Orchid ultimately wants to be a fun and charming story and they don't quite get the balance right. There's also the issue that the TARDIS crew's involvement is rather slight; the Doctor provides George with the opportunity to roam the house, and Nyssa is mistaken for Ann at the end, in the events that lead to George's death, and that's really about it. There's no impassioned plea from the Doctor to reveal George's presence (in the event, it's Charles's unwillingness to see the Doctor take the fall for George's action that leads to the Cranleighs revealing their secret) or anything like that; this is a story in which the Doctor and his friends are very much observers. But the story is done well, and it's nice to see them have a bit of fun between more weighty events -- and at only two episodes, this is a story that doesn't outstay its welcome. It's exactly the sort of tale that would fit into modern Who very well.

October 15: The Visitation Parts Three & Four

Ah, a cliffhanger solved by someone shouting, "Wait!" and deciding to spare their lives for now. Of course, this just means that the Doctor and Mace have another chance to escape -- although it doesn't actually happen until the Terileptils' android smashes through the wall where they're being held, and then it just takes them back to the manor house.

There's honestly not much that happens in this episode: Nyssa works on building that sonic booster with which to shake the android apart, and Tegan is placed under the Terileptils' control and made to move dangerous vials into portable containers. The most interesting thing that happens is when the Doctor tries to unlock his handcuffs; he doesn't get very far at all, but nevertheless the lead Terileptil orders him to drop his sonic screwdriver, whereupon the leader destroys it. "I feel as though you've just killed an old friend," the Doctor says sadly, and for a while he was right -- this was to be the end of the sonic screwdriver, as John Nathan-Turner thought it made things too easy for the Doctor, and it didn't make another appearance for the rest of the '80s. But other than that, and the fact that we learn the Terileptils plan on wiping out mankind with a virulent plague carried by rats so that they can take over, little of note occurs in part three.

Part four is more engaging: we get to see Nyssa destroy the Terileptil android (with a quite impressive explosion), while the Doctor works on figuring out where the main Terileptil base is, so that he can stop their plan. The best part of the episode, though, may be the Doctor's increasingly frustrated reactions to Tegan (and occasionally Adric), as she talks back and is generally unhelpful. He's by turns exasperated ("Will you--?!" begins one irritated retort before he stops himself) and sarcastic ("Yes, that's why I'm searching," in response to a question wondering if he knows where the Terileptil base is), and it's a fascinating side to this Doctor's character that you really want them to explore more. All that said, a close second for best moment is Adric's attempts to land the TARDIS, and when they don't work, Nyssa suggests he try to think what the Doctor would do -- after which Adric thumps the console, which causes it to work.

But still, this episode is quite linear, and once the Doctor finds the Terileptil base it doesn't take long to take it out of action, thanks to a struggle with the Terileptils that knocks the torch out of his hand and causes the bakery they're in to go up in flames -- taking the Terileptils and their plague with them. It's still entertaining, but there aren't any twists in the story to keep you guessing, and there's something of a sense of inevitability when, as the TARDIS departs, we see the sign for Pudding Lane: it seems the Doctor started the Great Fire of London.

The Visitation is a very straightforward serial, to be sure; there aren't any new revelations or plot twists that challenge our previous understanding of what we thought we knew; here the aliens have a plan, they work on carrying it out, and then the Doctor stops them. That's it. But Peter Moffatt makes it work by keeping things interesting enough that the simplistic plot doesn't really bother you. Plus it's fun to finally be back in Earth's past after five years, and the design work is really nice. Ultimately, The Visitation isn't an ambitious story, but it is a competent one, and it's entertaining enough while it lasts. That counts for something, surely?

October 14: The Visitation Parts One & Two

So, for the first time since 1977's Horror of Fang Rock (a quick trip to 1505 Florence in City of Death and Event One shenanigans in Castrovalva excepted), the TARDIS travels back into Earth's past, to 17th-century England and the future location of Heathrow Airport. Well, the Doctor almost got Tegan back, even if she doesn't see it that way: "A broken clock keeps better time than you do!"

But before we quite get to the soap opera-esque TARDIS scenes (where the characters spend their time rehashing the events of Kinda in a decidedly less charitable light than when we last saw them), there are some establishing shots in a manor house, as a spaceship crashes down nearby. This leads to a sequence where the residents of the house try to defend themselves against the alien interlopers but are presumably unsuccessful, as the next thing we see is the house abandoned weeks later. It's a quite beautiful-looking android, though, with lots of glittering jewels and sharp elegant lines. But this scene sets up the aliens as potentially dangerous, and this is what our heroes wander into, after avoiding plague-fearing peasants (complete with Adric spraining his ankle for no reason whatsoever) and meeting up with a highwayman/out-of-work actor named Richard Mace.¹¹⁹ The rest of the first episode is an exploration of the abandoned house, looking for the alien survivors that have left bits of their technology scattered about. The first cliffhanger is completely unmemorable, though: the Doctor has disappeared. Which might be all right if I didn't know what the resolution was (he reappears, having learned that a brick wall was in fact a fake wall), but I do, so it remains a very uninteresting cliffhanger.

Part two is a bit more interesting, because we finally get to see one of the alien creatures, and it's actually a pretty good design. There's some nice detailing and some animatronics even, which give these lizard/fish creatures some extra realism. The actual plot is still pretty straightforward, though; Adric and Tegan are captured, while the Doctor, Mace, and Nyssa escape, stopping to investigate the crashed escape pod that the Terileptils arrived in (and the Doctor must recognize the design, because he identifies the missing occupants as Terileptils with ease). And while there's some fun interplay between the Doctor and Mace, as his entire worldview is repeatedly challenged (though, to his credit, he never completely cracks under the pressure), the plot is still remarkably linear; the Doctor and Mace head to the village, to work out how the miller can access the manor house (so that they can go the same way and rescue Adric and Tegan), but they're captured by the peasants, who decide to behead them. "Not again," the Doctor moans, as for the second time this season an episode ends with a blade raised above his head...

¹¹⁹ Richard Mace was a character created by Eric Saward for a series of radio plays in the 1970s, where Mace was an actor/detective in the late 18th century. Saward adapted the character for this story, despite Nathan-Turner's misgivings.

October 13: Kinda Parts Three & Four

I really like the cliffhanger resolution at the start of part three, where they open the box, only for a harmless little doll to jump out. It's a nice way of defusing the situation, and it's therefore more awesome how it turns out that there's something else inside the box -- the same thing that turned Sanders into a harmless, ineffectual person. However, the Doctor and Todd aren't driven mad, but instead are shown a vision that they decide to follow up on.

As I said before, Doctor Who is being shown twice a week in this period, and thus there's a sense in which the action is in episode pairs. Thus, while the first two parts of Kinda took place inside the dome, the last two are concentrated in the forest outside. It's a really nice set, by the way; lots of levels and good ground cover in the studio -- most of the time it's not obviously a studio floor. Plus the cave set is well realized, and there's fun dialogue to go along with it (after learning that the Doctor was present at the opening of the box but wasn't driven mad, the old woman, Panna, is confused: "No male can open the Box of Jhana without being driven out of his mind. It is well known. Unless... Is he an idiot?" "Well, I suppose I must be," the Doctor replies reasonably). And not just that; we also learn that Aris has been taken over by the Mara (thanks to Tegan's unsupervised dreaming), and that he now can speak, which causes all the other Kinda to obey him. But the most striking thing about part three is the allegorical apocalyptic vision at the end, with lots of different types of clocks on columns all ticking toward 12:00, while the Kinda trickster trips and falls, where he's set upon by his fellow Kinda as time runs out: this, it seems, is the destruction that the Mara will once again bring to the Kinda ("Was what we just saw the future or the past?" Todd asks. "Both," the Doctor replies) unless it can be stopped.

Part four is also full of engaging moments, such as the city that Hindle and Sanders have been making out of cardboard and other things lying around the base, complete with crude cardboard people to populate it (something Christopher Bailey disliked, as he had envisioned something far more intricate and lifelike -- but let's face it, it wouldn't be as interesting a scene if they actually looked like people). "You can't mend people!" Hindle cries, after one of the cardboard people's heads is torn off. And there's the way the Kinda have made their own Total Survival Suit, just like the dome has, except theirs is made out of wood and vines. It's a really nice touch, showing how the Mara has taken over Aris for evil purposes but still must rely on the Kinda's know-how to actually do things -- and while they can mimic the form they can't mimic all the technology.

Really, the only things that are unsatisfying about part four are the clear padding scenes between Adric and Tegan (which don't provide new information and are full of the two of them sniping at each other -- so not only is it clear padding but it's not even entertaining padding) and the realization of the Mara in its true form. Yes, Doctor Who often comes under fire for poor effects, usually unjustly, but the snake deserves everything it gets. It's so fake-looking that you can't help but cringe, even if you choose to treat it in a more allegorical sense. It probably wouldn't be as big a problem if the climax on the story wasn't hinging on it, but it is, and so the problem remains. (There's a CGI option on the DVD that's rather more convincing.) But the Mara is defeated (lyrically, because it's trapped in a circle of mirrors and evil can't bear to look at itself) and the Kinda's cycle has been broken -- Deva Loka will now be a paradise free from the Mara.

The impressive thing about Kinda is how well it's scripted -- other than the aforementioned padding, everything in this story is designed to lead into something else, even if it's not immediately obvious what that something else will be. There's also a sense of wonder involved that gives the story an almost fairytale quality, and the direction plays this up, as with the clocks scene, the way the Mara moves from person to person, and the zoom all the way into Tegan's pupil to represent entering her mind. It's not quite as perfect as is sometimes claimed, and it's not really the Buddhist allegory that is also often claimed (writer Christopher Bailey admitted he was mainly using the Buddhist names as a veneer on his own story, rather than intending to write a treatise on the topic through Doctor Who), but there's still quite a bit to like about Kinda; it's doing clever things in an era which is starting to become more straightforward in its storytelling -- something that the next serial will make quite clear.