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.

Todd, the Doctor, and Karuna find Tegan at the Place of Great
Dreamings. (Kinda Part Four) ©BBC

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.

October 12: Kinda Parts One & Two

You may recall that Nyssa collapsed at the end of the last episode, and here we see the Doctor constructing a "delta wave augmenter" so that she can get 48 hours of uninterrupted deep sleep -- in other words, Nyssa's not going to be in this story (just like they used to do in the '60s, although this time it's not because Sarah Sutton needed a vacation but because Nyssa was retained as a character late enough in the game that writer Christopher Bailey simply couldn't figure out a way to include her in the scripts he'd been working on).  And Nyssa's not the only one sleeping: Tegan also falls asleep beneath some chimes erected on the paradise planet of Deva Loka that the TARDIS has landed on, but unlike Nyssa, we're going to be privy to Tegan's dreams.  And they're quite stark-looking dreams, full of black spaces and high-contrast lighting, as someone who the credits call Dukkha (as in the Buddhist word for "suffering", but which also sounds a bit like "Doctor" -- although the fact that he resembles Christopher Eccleston is pure coincidence) tries to convince Tegan to let him take over her body and engages in all sorts of psychological trickery (such as having two Tegans trying to work out which is the real Tegan and which is the copy) in order to achieve his goals.  It's interestingly directed, and the moving snake motif is neat; moreover, it's clear when she wakes up, towards the middle of part two, that this is not the Tegan we know -- and Janet Fielding takes full advantage of the opportunity to play something more malicious and sexually charged than what she's been asked to play so far on the show.  The only real issue is that it seems disconnected so far from everything else going on.

So that means that the main focus of Kinda's storyline is on the Doctor and Adric's explorations through the forest, but fortunately for the audience it's quite a compelling plot thread.  The extraterrestrial explorers on Deva Loka (clearly based on the British Empire, with pith helmets and such on display) have been slowly losing team members, despite the natives, the Kinda, not being hostile.  The Kinda themselves are interestingly realized -- it seems only the women can speak, not the men (because for the Kinda, "voice is ... a mark of wisdom"), but they're all telepathic.  There are some intriguing hints about the Kinda, but for these two episodes we're confined mainly to the survey team's dome, where Security Officer Hindle looks increasingly likely to crack under the strain of things -- so it probably wasn't a good idea for the commander, Sanders, to put him in charge while he's out.  (The fact that when Sanders comes back he's changed from the gruff military man we saw to someone far more benign and passive is also bad news for our heroes, even if right before that we get a great display of Hindle's madness, as the world he's constructed in his head threatens to crash down around him: "Somebody make him go away!  Mummy!  Mummy, make him go away!")

It's a fascinating madness that Hindle displays; not the usual power-hungry madness that we see so often on Doctor Who, but instead something far more prosaic.  He's quite simply desperate to maintain control of things as they spiral away from him (something, it must be said, that Sanders' repeated needling of the man doesn't do much to help), and he's convinced that he's the only sane one around.  He provides an interesting contrast to their scientist Todd, who seems much more level-headed.  And in the midst of this is the Doctor, who seems to be hiding a probing curiosity behind the feckless charm he's exuding.  This makes the Doctor seem very much in control of the situation, even when he's locked up -- one gets the impression that he's simply waiting for the right opportunity to come along, while trying not to upset Hindle unduly.  Of course, by the end of part two that hasn't happened yet, and Hindle forces them to open the box that seems to have altered Sanders so dramatically and which he brought back for Hindle to open -- something that the Doctor seems very wary to do...

October 11: Four to Doomsday Parts Three & Four

It doesn't take long for us to learn what Monarch's really planning: according to Bigon, he wants to get rid of everyone on Earth, take all its silicon, and make more electronics in his quest to travel faster than light -- that way, he'll be able to travel back in time to meet the creator of the universe, who he believes to be himself.  Obviously the Doctor can't let this happen, so the rest of the last two episodes are about how he's going to stop Monarch from putting his plan into motion.

Of course, you need complications when something like this happens, and unfortunately much of these complications involve Adric and Tegan.  Adric continues his downward slide, being totally captivated by Monarch's "give everyone immortality by turning them into robots" plan for some inexplicable reason.  It feels an awful lot like the betrayal subplot in State of Decay, except here it's played for real.  The upshot is that you really want to smack Adric upside the head -- although his dressing down by the Doctor in part four (the conversation which begins with "Now listen to me, you young idiot.  You're not so much gullible as idealistic.  I suppose it comes from your deprived delinquent background") is made particularly entertaining because of Adric's prior behavior.  And Tegan is continually in hysterics, yelling at the Doctor and then running off and (somehow) causing the TARDIS to dematerialize and rematerialize out in space next to Monarch's spaceship.  It's not very pleasant or entertaining to watch her either.

The Doctor tries to spacewalk to the TARDIS. (Four to
Doomsday Part Four) ©BBC

But at least Peter Davison can be relied upon to entertain as the Doctor, working his way through the situation without tipping Monarch off too much as to his intentions.  It's fun to watch him and Bigon disable monopticons and try to devise a way to stop Monarch, and even when they're found out (in a dramatic cliffhanger to part three that ends with the Doctor about to be beheaded) the Doctor still manages to turn the tables.  A good chunk of part four involves him trying to reach the TARDIS out in space, and even this is entertaining, even though it just involves several attempts to try and float to the TARDIS.  (I'll not comment on the feasibility of the cricket ball stuff, as plenty of people have discussed that elsewhere, but I will say that the effects are really nicely done.)

This attitude sums up Four to Doomsday -- it's entertaining even when it's not doing much at all.  Even the resolution of the story, while being rather abrupt (Monarch confronts the Doctor, who throws the shrinking poison at him and ends his threat), still feels much in keeping.  It's clearly not a story for everyone's tastes, but if you're willing to accept it on its own terms then there's a decent amount of enjoyment to be had here.  Davison impresses in his first serial in the role, even if he's not quite settled yet, and the guest cast do a great job of propelling the story along -- Monarch is a despot who acts kindly toward his antagonists because he knows they can't threaten him, and it's a nice change of pace (even when this changes as Monarch begins to take the Doctor seriously).  It's not an important or epic tale, but that's okay: Four to Doomsday may be a slight story, but it's certainly not without its charms.

October 10: Four to Doomsday Parts One & Two

It's often been pointed out, but Four to Doomsday doesn't quite seem like the Doctor Who we're used to; instead it's structured much more like a Hartnell story, with the TARDIS arriving in an unfamiliar environment and slowly working things out about it as they explore -- there's little in the way of establishing scenes for anyone outside the TARDIS, and the audience learns about things at the same time as the main characters do.  It's a refreshingly more sedate change of pace.  And in keeping with the Hartnell theme, there are also moments that seem designed to be educational in nature ("Pass the sodium chloride", the nature of the recreationals) -- it really does feel like a 60s story.  There are even four people in the TARDIS again.

Except that's where the parallel falls through.  The Hartnell crew had an old man, a young girl, and two middle-aged adults.  Here we have three youngsters and someone who's old but seems almost as young.  This actually wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that writer Terence Dudley seems to have given the three companions the most broad of characterizations.  He's read that Tegan is bossy, Nyssa is smart, and Adric is chauvinistic (for some reason -- he never seemed to feel that way before), and so that's what the actors get to work with.  Sarah Sutton comes off the best because she's sussed that if she plays the lines with a hint of detached amusement then it'll work out.  Janet Fielding has to spend all her time complaining (mainly about how the Doctor didn't take her back to Heathrow and that she doesn't like Monarch's spaceship), and Matthew Waterhouse comes off the worst because his lines are all designed to make him sound like a stuck-up, awful brat, and he's not experienced enough of an actor (to put it kindly) to play against them.  This is therefore really where the rot starts to set in for Adric -- when it was just him and Tom Baker he could play the bright-eyed inquisitive, but now he has to fight for attention between two other companions, one of whom has been written in much the same way as Adric had been.  Adding two other TARDIS crewmembers was probably the worst thing to happen to Adric's character, and it's sadly not going to get much better.  It doesn't help that Tegan and Adric don't seem to like each other very much.

Four to Doomsday is actually the first story filmed for the new TARDIS team, and you can sort of see it in Davison's performance.  He's energetically enthusiastic about everything, particularly in the first episode, and even his voice is at a higher pitch than it generally is.  But it's nice to see such ebullience -- makes everything seem more exciting, somehow.

The actual story in these first two episodes is rather slight -- we're as much in the dark as to Monarch's intentions as the Doctor is.  But the exploration of the ship is quite nice, and the slow revelation as to the nature of the humans inhabiting it is built up well.  Oh, and apparently Tegan is an accomplished draftswoman, with some really well done sketches as to what the well-dressed early 80s couple is wearing.  Less plausible is her ability to speak the dialect that the aborigine Kurkutji is speaking¹¹⁸.  However, as the rest of the story so far has been quite charming, we can forgive this.  And it's a great cliffhanger for part two, as Bigon the Athenian lifts up his face to reveal that he's a robot, and then pulls out a small circuit board from his chest.  "This is me," he says solemnly.  Of course, we're not really any nearer to understanding what's going on on this ship (beyond the idea that Monarch wants to take 3 billion of his fellow Urbankans to make a home on Earth); maybe we'll get some answers next time.







¹¹⁸ In the 1980s there were around 200 different Aboriginal dialects still in existence (according to Ethnologue), most of which only had a relative handful of speakers.  Even if we assume that she got lucky and Kurkutji spoke one of the more widespread dialects, like Warlpiri, there's still the matter of how Kurkutji (we later learn) is from roughly 33000 BC, so he should be unintelligible anyway (by way of comparison, only about 1000 years separates Modern English from Old English, and that's still largely unintelligible to current English speakers).
     But then, even from an internal logic point-of-view, this gets weirder when you think about it; on a ship full of Greeks, Mayans, Aborigines, Chinese, and Urbankans, only Kurkutji is singled out as requiring a translator.  So either the TARDIS translator is able to translate all the other languages on board except this particular one, or everyone else is speaking English and Kurkutji just refuses to conform.  Except that everyone presumably understood everyone else before the TARDIS arrived, so they must be speaking some sort of common tongue that the TARDIS is translating anyway.  Unless Urbankan is remarkably similar to English.

October 9: Castrovalva Parts Three & Four

So, starting with season 19, Doctor Who moved from its traditional Saturday time slot to a twice-weekly affair, on Mondays and Tuesdays.  What this means is that (although I admit I might be imagining things) there's a tendency for stories of this period to feel like a game of two-part halves, and Castrovalva is no different.  The first two episodes were almost chamber pieces in a way -- you essentially had a cast of the Doctor, Nyssa, and Tegan, with occasional appearances from Adric and the Master, and after part one's exploration of the TARDIS we got part two's exploration of the forest around Castrovalva.  But parts three and four are about Castrovalva itself, and the supporting cast increases appropriately.

Full marks to new Doctor Who director Fiona Cumming, by the way, for that marvelous tease of a wounded Doctor early in part three.  To recap: Tegan and Nyssa have discovered that the Doctor is missing, and that there's a trail of blood leading away from his last location.  Then Cumming gives us a shot of a long trail of blood which leads to a prostrate Doctor -- except it turns out that the Doctor is just listening to the ground to determine how many people there are ahead, and the blood is in fact irrelevant to his current condition.  It's a really nice touch in a story full of imaginative moments.

The new Doctor is surrounded by natives. (Castrovalva Part
Three) ©BBC

Part three has those moments, for instance, as it continually thwarts our expectations about what's going on; the Doctor is seemingly captured by unfriendly natives, but they're actually very civilized and have just gone hunting for the purpose of exercise.  The town's physician, Mergrave, offers the Doctor a suspicious-looking drink, but it seems to help exactly as it's said to do. There's the charming scene where a little girl teaches the Doctor that three comes after two (a result of him being unable to remember about Adric).  Castrovalva itself seems to be an idyllic, peaceful place, but the cliffhanger reveals that space itself appears to be folding in on itself, and there doesn't seem to be any way out.

Part four has some fine moments as well; the scene where the Castrovalvans try to draw a map for the Doctor is wonderful, and the effect of space-time collapsing is well realized.  Castrovalva, in case you don't know, is the name of an M.C. Escher print of a castle on a hill -- it's not one of his optical illusion prints, but that's clearly the inspiration for a lot of what we get here, with our heroes continually heading down and yet always ending up back at the square.  It turns out that's for a reason: Castrovalva is a trap deliberately constructed by the Master to trap the Doctor (with some help from Adric), with a fake village and fake inhabitants all designed to defeat the Doctor once and for all.  Boy, the Master plans ahead, doesn't he?

Davison does an outstanding job, playing the Doctor like someone waking up in a brand new body and taking nothing for granted.  There's a subtle nuance to how he behaves that really sells it, but there's also a brand new energy at play here -- witness how he bursts into his quarters to confront Tegan and Nyssa about Adric.  Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton, as Tegan and Nyssa respectively, have a much more thankless task of trying to remain rocks in a sea of chaos, and while occasionally you get the impression that they're not quite sure how to play things (Fielding, for instance, often seems to default to outrage), in general they do a decent job with what they're given.  And Anthony Ainley's portrayal of the Portreeve gives lie to the complaint (from later in the series) that he all too frequently plays the Master as a two-dimensional cackling villain -- his Portreeve is wonderful and suggests that the problem with the Master lies in the scripting, not in the acting.  It is a bit of a shame when he reveals himself to be the Master, though, as he's just not as interesting -- particularly as it's the end of the episode, which means that after Shardovan, one of the Castrovalvans, sacrifices himself to end everything (with a great line: "You made us, man of evil, but we are free"), everyone hurries to escape the collapsing Castrovalva -- with the Master dragged back inside by his angry creations.

Castrovalva, in general, has a more relaxed feel than many of its predecessors -- even when people are frantically running around, there's still a sense of peace lurking just beyond the edges.  In large part this is because of Peter Davison's performance; he seems to be making an effort not just to explore what it means to be in a new body, but also to be as distinct from Tom Baker as possible.  So to that end he's considerably more accessible and less in control, and in this case it works.  And he's bolstered by a story which provides a puzzle for the Doctor to work through, rather than for a concrete threat to fight against.  In this respect, it's different from any regeneration story we've had yet -- the stakes are much lower and the story is focused firmly on the Doctor.  It's this approach, matched with the sheer charm of the piece and the talent in front of and behind the camera, that makes Castrovalva a success. 

October 8: Castrovalva Parts One & Two

Hey, it's Doctor Who's first-ever pre-titles sequence, as we get a replay of the regeneration of Tom Baker into Peter Davison (well, it has been nine months between seasons), and then BAM! Right into the modified opening titles -- modified in that it's Peter Davison's face there now, not Tom's.  And they've added a sort of ripple effect.

There were a handful of loose ends at the end of Logopolis (such as, what happened to the Master?), and Castrovalva endeavours to address these points by picking up where Logopolis left off.  And so we see the Master escape while the Doctor's companions help the newly-regenerated Doctor inside the TARDIS.  Only it seems there's something wrong with Adric...

Hang on a moment though; why is Tegan going with them?  Look at it from her point-of-view: she's been kidnapped (accidentally, but still) and forced to wander a white corridor labyrinth (that still upsets her, judging from her reaction in this story), then taken to an alien planet, where she demands to be returned to Earth, and then she sees the universe almost destroyed by some evil madman who ends up killing the only person she feels she can trust ("I'm staying with you," she tells the Doctor in Logopolis.  "You're the only insurance policy I've got") -- except then she watches as some weird-looking plaster-of-Paris-esque dude merges with the Doctor and creates a brand new person.  She's on Earth, in what appears to be her own time period; what possible reason does she have for getting back inside the TARDIS?  She must have incredibly strong feelings of loyalty to someone who doesn't actually look like the Doctor.  Or maybe no one's actually thought about this.

But anyway, into the TARDIS, where we start¹¹⁷ to see Peter Davison stretch his muscles as the Doctor -- which he does by impersonating the first three.  He does a good job (although his Hartnell is the best), and it's a nice sequence that seems designed to remind the audience that there were in fact Doctors before Tom Baker.  I also like the self-deprecating humor, as he first realizes in dismay that his hair isn't curly anymore, and then when he finally sees himself in a mirror.  "That's the trouble with regeneration," he says despondently.  "You never quite know what you're going to get."  But he soon seems happy enough, as he picks up a cricket bat, and soon we see that he's going to be wearing a sort of Edwardian cricketing outfit.

The interesting thing about this story's approach to the regeneration of the Doctor is how drawn out it is.  It's most like Jon Pertwee's debut, where he spent the first couple episodes of Spearhead from Space bed-ridden, but Castrovalva goes even further than that -- this is the weakest we've ever seen the Doctor, and it's explicitly because of post-regeneration trauma.  This means he's not much help when the Master (via Adric, who's actually a block transfer computation projection -- just go with it) programs the TARDIS to head back to the hydrogen inrush that led to the formation of the galaxy (huh?  Do they mean the universe?) -- an event that the TARDIS can't withstand.  (Cue part one's cliffhanger.)  This means that the Doctor is fighting not only his own healing synapses but also the Master's efforts to kill them all.  They manage to escape, but the Doctor is still unwell -- and the Zero Room that he was recuperating in was jettisoned in order to escape the Master's trap.

The second half of part two involves Tegan maybe piloting the TARDIS (her abilities are deliberately questioned) to a place called Castrovalva, where the Doctor can relax.  They build him a small Zero Cabinet and wheel him around the planet on a motorized wheelchair, but when the wheelchair falls in the water the motor shorts out, which apparently means the wheels don't work anymore either?  So Tegan and Nyssa have to lug this cabinet around.  And then the episode ends when they put the cabinet down, wander off, and then come back to find that he's not in the cabinet anymore.  The fact that this cliffhanger works at all is a testament to how much effort Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton have been putting into this thing, that this is something of a distressing moment and not just a case "oh, well OK then".

But then, these first two episodes have been surprisingly compelling.  The cast is quite limited (consisting of the four regulars and the Master, with an occasional line from one other guest actor), and the focus is thus on the Doctor's regeneration, to an extent that we haven't seen before, and it's this that makes Castrovalva work so far; the series is interested in exploring its own mythology a bit, and we're willing to go along for now, to see what they come up with.







¹¹⁷ Well, he starts from our point of view, but Castrovalva is actually the fourth story Davison filmed (the result of several different debut story scripts falling through), which means he's had time to figure out how to play the character and thus can work backwards from that to give us what's probably a more coherent, thought-out performance than what we otherwise would have gotten.

October 7: K-9 and Company - "A Girl's Best Friend"

It opens with a truly heinous title sequence, which looks like they drugged Elisabeth Sladen, dressed her up in various "casual" outfits, and propped her up around the English countryside.  And interspersed with that is various shots of K-9, while the whole thing is backed by an awful manufactured-pop-sounding theme (complete with John Leeson chirping "K-9" at various intervals) that's just catchy enough to get immovably stuck in your head, no matter how much you wish it wouldn't.  And there are reused shots in the sequence!  It's only like a minute long, and yet you had to reuse shots from earlier in the titles?

Even on the surface, K-9 and Company¹¹⁶, the only 20th-century Doctor Who spin-off to ever make it to the screen, is an odd proposition: a show about a robot dog and a journalist, stuck out in rural England investigating things, doesn't exactly sound like a dynamic premise, but even beyond this it's a weird show.  This establishing episode is full of things that don't really go together, as it bends over backwards to put Sarah Jane Smith in that rural setting, give her K-9, and then set them both loose on the locals, most of whom are engaged in pagan worship.  No, it doesn't exactly sound like a winner, does it?

But to the credit of most everyone involved, they almost make it work.  It's great to see Lis Sladen back as Sarah Jane Smith, and she is the anchor that this episode needs -- fortunately, the title sequence wasn't a warning of things to come.  She gives the proceedings the necessary grounding, and she seems to have no trouble interacting with K-9 (and remember, this is a new pairing, as K-9 was introduced after Sarah left).  This is K-9 Mark III, by the way -- Mark I having stayed with Leela on Gallifrey, and Mark II having left with Romana in E-Space.  Except, according to the accompanying documentary, all they did to make it Mark III was give the prop a fresh coat of paint.  The other actors also do a fine job: we get to finally meet Sarah's Aunt Lavinia (as played by Mary Wimbush, who to me will always be Bertie's Aunt Agatha in Grenada's Jeeves and Wooster), and the rest of Moreton Harwood are well acted, even when they're being shifty.  And it all looks good, thanks to John Black's capable direction; you can at least believe that you're in a house in the English countryside.

Sarah, Brendan, and K-9. (K-9 and Company - "A Girl's
Best Friend") ©BBC

So the acting is good, the direction is good... it's only the story that's bonkers.  It starts like a mystery (people keep disappearing) and then takes a left turn into Crazytown when it turns out that something like half the village of Moreton Harwood are pagan worshippers of the goddess Hecate, since they think she's the only reason the crops will grow, and that suddenly Hecate demands human sacrifice despite having been perfectly content without it for 90 years.  They plan on sacrificing Sarah's cousin Brendan (as played by Ian Sears, who actually copes quite well with a rather thankless character), and it's only thanks to K-9 that Brendan is saved.  Of course, this means that just about everyone we saw on screen is now in jail for attempted murder.  It's a strange premise for a story, let alone a whole series -- what would the other episodes have been like?  Would Sarah and K-9 have roamed the English countryside stamping out pagan cults, as the ending scene seems to suggest?  Or would they have stayed in Moreton Harwood and helped solve the massive soil acidity problem?  And would a computer as capable as K-9 have mastered the art of reading sheet music, so that the excruciating tag scene would never happen again?

It's a curiosity, to be sure, and it's great fun to see Sarah and K-9 together, but let's be honest: if it weren't for the Doctor Who connection there'd be no reason to watch K-9 and Company.  It's not a show that stands up to repeated viewings -- in fact, it's a rather shallow affair to begin with (it's certainly not subtle in its (vaguely offensive) portrayal of rural English residents, for instance).  But it is part of the history of the show -- the continued partnership of Sarah and K-9 into the 21st century makes that clear -- and it's not as bad as it could have been; as I said, there's enough that's right with this show to keep it from sinking into unwatchability.  That said, let's all be thankful that this never went to series (so that we never had to see the title sequence again, if nothing else) and quietly move on.







¹¹⁶ Well, officially it's only the show that's called K-9 and Company -- the actual episode is called "A Girl's Best Friend".  But as it's the only one they made, no one really calls it anything other than K-9 and Company, unless you're being strictly precise.