#7 (19.23 - 19.26): Time-Flight.

The moment Peter Davison started
thinking about leaving?

4 episodes. Approx. 97 minutes. Written by: Peter Grimwade. Directed by: Ron Jones. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The Doctor is trying to take Tegan and Nyssa to the Great Exhibition of 1851, to take their minds off Adric's death. But the TARDIS materializes at Heathrow Airport, 1982 - the very place the Doctor had been trying to reach throughout the first half of the season. They arrive to learn that a Concorde flight has vanished into thin air. The Doctor is enlisted thanks to his UNIT credentials, and he quickly determines that the missing airplane vanished down a time contour.

He insists on recreating the conditions of the flight, using another Concorde to follow the first one's path. He has his TARDIS loaded onto the plane, and he and his companions monitor the flight from inside. The console readings tell him what he already suspected: They have been taken back in time, into the Jurassic era. But what waits for them isn't dinosaurs, but rather Khalid, an ancient wizard who has used what appears to be magic to transform the first plane's crew and passengers into a slave labor force.

The Doctor confronts Khalid and appears to defeat him. But he has fallen into a trap. Khalid is actually the Doctor's old enemy, The Master (Anthony Ainley). And the Doctor has just become ensnared in his most insanely convoluted plan ever!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: I'll give Peter Davison credit for trying. The story opens with the Doctor, Nyssa, and Tegan mourning for Adric - then deciding to just get over it and make a trip to the Great Exhibition to cheer themselves up. As far as character writing goes, it's down there with a chipper Barbara telling us that she's completely over her experiences with the Aztecs in Part One of The Sensorites. The difference is that Davison and his co-stars do their best to play against the ridiculous dialogue. As they start chatting about the Great Exhibition, the actors put a note in their delivery to signal that they're simply going into very hard denial about what just happened and grasping for anything to keep themselves busy. An excellent look at actors trying to overrule bad writing through performance alone, and for that one scene, it just about works.

Nyssa: Develops psychic intuition for this story - and only for this story, as her psychic abilities are never mentioned again on television (though Big Finish made use of them a few times on audio). Her mind is somehow receptive to the Xeraphin, which allows her to lead Tegan to their inner sanctum. She also takes the lead when with Tegan. She does mention the Master's killing of her father, but then barely reacts to the Master's presence in the story's second half - which is quite a comedown from the fierce, "That face - I hate it!" moment in Castrovalva.

Tegan: Remains the more emotional of the Doctor's companions. She's the one who pushes the Doctor to violate the laws of time to save Adric. She does seem cowed by his angry response. But when she sees Khalid's illusion of Adric, apparently alive and pleading with her and Nyssa to save him, she is the one who wants to stop. It's the more intellectual Nyssa who recognizes the illusion for what it is and presses on. Left to her own devices, Tegan would have stopped at that moment.

The Master: This is the story in which Anthony Ainley's reputation as a particularly campy Master begins to take hold. He spends the first two episodes disguised as the evil wizard Khalid... for reasons that completely escape understanding, unless you go on the assumption that the Master just wants to "drezz for the occasion." After revealing himself, the Master proceeds to do very little in the second half. He cackles a lot and threatens various guest characters and extras with his Tissue Compression Eliminator. But mostly he just prances from one set to another, marking time until the Doctor can fool him with the Technobabble swap meet that makes up the, er, "climax" of Episode Four. And yes, the climax of this story does indeed appear to be the Doctor and the Master swapping bits of plastic on a bad studio set.


THOUGHTS

A rather good season of Doctor Who comes to a dismal end with Peter Grimwade's Time-Flight. Why is it so bad? "I'll explain later."

No, wait. That was the Doctor, waving away any need to provide a basis for any of the proclamations he makes at any point in the serial. Steven Moffat must have been thinking of Time-Flight when he wrote The Curse of Fatal Death. At least there, "I'll explain later" was meant to be funny. Here, it's just lazy writing, which is employed so often across these four episodes that it practically becomes a catch-phrase.

Really, for a story that's notorious for poor production values, it's startling how much of Time-Flight's failure comes down to bad writing. The story is utterly nonsensical, with the Master's plan bordering on incoherence. The guest characters are flatly written, with the un-hypnotized characters behaving in just as artificial a fashion as the hpynotized ones! I find it hilarious, for example, that Professor Hayter (Nigel Stock) spends Episode Two being an irritating boor whom the Doctor barely tolerates... only for the Doctor to turn around and choose him as his pseudo-companion near the start of Episode Three! Sure, the story looks cheap. But the real problem is that the script doesn't even pretend to hold together.

Too bad, because it all starts out fairly well. The first two episodes are absorbing. Cheap-looking, to be sure, but also well-paced and moderately intriguing. Had this been a 2-parter, with Khalid simply being who he pretended to be and his initial "defeat" being genuine, then this would have been a perfectly acceptable bit of fluff.

Unfortunately, once it truly becomes a Master story, what had been entertaining nonsense transforms into abject stupidity. The Xeraphim are introduced midway through Episode Three, with their entire backstory delivered in a mind-numbing infodump. Meanwhile, the episode pads out its running time as the Master tromps in and out of the Doctor's TARDIS while the Concorde flight crew watches through a doorway. So half of the episode could be summed up as, "Nothing happens," and the other half consists of exposition so dense and clunkily delivered that it practically becomes white noise. Episode Four is even worse, alternately rushed and padded. As if to add insult to injury, the story is resolved and the Master defeated... via some trickery the Doctor performed offscreen!

The good news is that Peter Grimwade would be recommissioned for stories in Seasons 20 and 21, and would do a much better job of writing something watchable in those stories. Based on this debut offering, I'd have probably advised him to stick with directing.


Rating: 2/10.

Previous Story: Earthshock

Next Story: Arc of Infinity (not yet reviewed)

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#6 (19.19 - 19.22): Earthshock.

The Cybermen observe the Doctor.

4 episodes. Approx. 97 minutes. Written by: Eric Saward. Directed by: Peter Grimwade. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The TARDIS materializes in a cave in the distant future. In the midst of an argument with Adric, the Doctor decides to use this as a chance to walk around and collect his temper. But the isolation is an illusion... as he discovers when he walks right into a group of soldiers, who have just lost several men to an unknown alien presence. Making him the obvious target for blame.

He establishes himself as an ally by helping the soldiers defeat two killer androids.  He then defuses a bomb the androids had been guarding, one which would have left Earth completely devastated. He traces the bomb's signal to a freigher in deep space, and takes the TARDIS to investigate. There, he finds himself and his companions in even greater danger. Both androids and bomb were the work of the Doctor's old enemies, the Cybermen. And they were just the beginning of the cybermen's plan to establish their dominance by wiping out all life on Earth!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Though most of Eric Saward's later serials would place the Doctor in a peripheral role, he is actually characterized quite strongly here. The Cyberleader describes him as "formidable," a term he lives up to consistently. He is almost entirely responsible for thwarting the Cybermen's first plan, in the cave. On the freighter, he constantly watches the proceedings, sizing up the situation and calmly putting the pieces together. Davison continues to play a barely-restrained weariness with other people's stupidity. Watch him in the final episode when he's calmly baiting the Cyberleader. When Captain Briggs (Beryl Reid) interrupts, he gets this lovely look of annoyance on his face. The Fifth Doctor may not be as blatant about it as his two immediate predecessors. But he still doesn't suffer fools gladly - just a bit more quietly.

Adric: Adric is paired with the Doctor throughout the story, allowing the script to emphasize the teacher/student relationship between the two. This gives him a decent role - a necessity, for the ending to work as well as it does. But the story doesn't tip its hand. Adric is his usual self throughout. He spends the first two episodes in a snit, essentially throwing an extended temper tantrum to get the Doctor to pay more attention to him. This works, as the Doctor happily brings him along to explore the freighter in the second half... which doesn't turn out so well for the young Alzarian, though his fate is largely of his own making.

Nyssa: She is reduced to a peripheral role, particularly in the second half of the story. The obligatory TARDIS cutaways may as well come with on-screen captions reading, "Nyssa's part for the week."  These cutaways feature what is probably Sutton's all-time worst performance in the role. Matthew Waterhouse's acting limitations are certainly on display - but Sutton is much worse than he is this time.

Tegan: Janet Fielding, however, is on particularly good form. Tegan's role isn't really much better than normal. She is as headstrong and stubborn as ever. But Fielding tempers Tegan's stridency with a compassionate side. I like the instinctive hug she gives to Nyssa at the end, even before she turns to the Doctor. Tegan also seems to have taken it on herself to be the one to reason with the Doctor when it comes to dealing with his companions as a group. While Nyssa soothes Adric, Tegan goes out into the cave to "talk some sense" into the Doctor.

Cybermen: The Cybermen's first appearance since 1974's Revenge of the Cybermen. This proved to be a much more successful comeback for them - so much so that they rejoined the ranks of the series' regular villains. This is almost certainly their best post-1960's use. They are genuinely formidable, with some clever camera trickery allowing them to be seen in force at the end of Part Three. David Banks' Cyberleader does seem a bit prone to gloating for a supposedly unemotional being, but this is a fairly minor fault in an otherwise strong outing.


THOUGHTS

Earthshock is, in its way, as ambitious a story as Warrior's Gate or Kinda. Not in the same way as those stories, with their multilayered narratives and thematic depth. None of that here.  This is a straight-ahead action piece with no real layers beneath its surface. The ambition here is in how far it tries to push Doctor Who's limited schedule and budget. Eric Saward is effectively trying to mount a Hollywood-style sci-fi/action blockbuster within the constraints of a Doctor Who 4-parter. It's fast, violent, full of gunfire and explosions.

On a classic Who budget, it by all rights should fall flat on its face. But a strong production comes together with a streamlined script and a mostly outstanding incidental score. The result may not be flawless.  But taken on the level of an action movie, this story works very well indeed.

A lot of the credit has to go to director Peter Grimwade. He maintains tight control of the narrative and atmosphere, using an effective mix of quick cuts and occasional, lingering shots. Many camera shots are framed very precisely, with characters in both foreground and background. The Cyberleader announces his army while standing in front of a monitor showing the army marching through the corridors. The Doctor defuses a bomb while Adric looks over his shoulder in the background.

Grimwade's occasional weakness at working with actors does show itself. Sutton is unusually poor. James Warwick, a reliable actor, isn't quite on form. Other guest actors are largely wooden, with one exception: Beryl Reid. Fandom insists that Reid was badly miscast, an early example of producer John Nathan-Turner's "stunt casting" going wrong. I strongly disagree. Beryl Reid was a terrific actress with range and a dynamic screen energy. In a role that is rather generic on paper, she lights up the screen and turns someone who should be just a plot device into a strong presence. There's no question in my mind that this story would be far the poorer without her.

It's all very entertaining. It probably should have been left as the only story of its type, rather than being closely replicated at least two (arguably three) times over the next three seasons. But as a change of pace (what it was, at this point), it's effective. Even startling.

And within the larger story of the Fifth Doctor, it marks the point at which he is first confronted by a universe that's become just a bit meaner and harsher than he's necessarily prepared for.


Rating: 8/10.

Previous Story: Black Orchid

Next Story: Time-Flight

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#5 (19.17 - 19.18): Black Orchid.

A family secret is exposed.

2 episodes. Approx. 50 minutes. Written by: Terence Dudley. Directed by: Ron Jones. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The TARDIS materializes at a railway station in 1925, where the Doctor is mistaken for a cricket player being sent for a match at a party at Cranleigh Hall. The Doctor is happy to go along with this case of mistaken identity, enjoying the chance to show off his skill at the game. But Cranleigh Hall hides a secret - a mysterious figure, held captive in a hidden room.

Soon, the Doctor and his companions are dealing with multiple murders. The killings are somehow linked to Ann Talbot, who is engaged to Lord Cranleigh (Michael Cochrane) - and who also just happens to look exactly like Nyssa! It's a relatively minor murder mystery, a case of family skeletons bringing themselves violently out into the light. The sort of thing the Doctor can sort in minutes. Except the Doctor happens to be the prime suspect!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Enjoys the chance to relax and play a game of cricket, which he plays with preternatural skill. Shades of the Eleventh Doctor playing football in The Lodger, as he joins a team suffering a miserable defeat and transforms it into a victory with seemingly no effort. When he's questioned for a murder in Part Two, he is unable to make himself believed. The more he talks, the more he makes himself look like a crazy man.  He finally just stops talking and gives up - a scene Davison plays wonderfully.

Nyssa: This story gives Sarah Sutton a dual role. Though actual character work is light, we do learn that Nyssa is an accomplished dancer, part of her training on Traken - a detail that fits perfectly with her established character. Despite her aristocratic bearing, she is a young girl and can't help but be taken with Ann's suggestion of doubling up their outfits for the party. As Ann, Sutton gets virtually nothing to work with.  Ann doesn't even register as a character, just as a plot device to justify Nyssa's being in danger at the end.

Adric: He can't dance, so spends the party stuffing his face at the buffet table. Which actually may be one of the more reasonable things he's done across Season 19! His general lack of common sense shows itself when he responds to the Doctor's arrest by protesting that it's Ann's word against the Doctor's... hardly the best way to try to garner sympathy or even willingness to listen by either the family or the police chief who is the family's friend.

Tegan: Opens the story by saying that she's decided to stay with the crew and that the Doctor can stop trying to deliver her to Heathrow - a major character shift, and one which apparently happened offscreen between stories. It is nice to see Janet Fielding giving a more laid-back performance, allowing Tegan to be something other than strident and high-strung. Her scenes opposite Sir Robert (Moray Watson) show a genuinely sweet side, and she seems to actually be enjoying herself for a change.


THOUGHTS

Director Ron Jones' first Doctor Who story. Though fandom tends to lump Jones in with Peter Moffatt as a director largely unsuited to Who, I've long felt that he's gotten a bit of a bad rap. He's certainly not up there with Peter Grimwade or Fiona Cumming, but he does understand the value of dramatic lighting.  This greatly enhances some of the scenes in the house, especially in the secret passages. He also deals well with large groups of actors, cutting between different groupings without losing track of where the characters are in the room or making the scene feel like something out of a stage play. He may not be a brilliant television director - but he is a competent one.

Black Orchid works better than most of the classic series' 2-parters, thanks to a narrative that is deliberately slight. There are no aliens, no science fiction elements, just a very minor period melodrama about family secrets.  Just about right to sustain 50 fairly laid-back minutes.

The first episode is quite good. The 1920's setting is impeccably rendered, and this is a rare classic Who story with no embarrassing production aspects. The tone is generally relaxed, with some pleasant scenes of the companions enjoying themselves at a costume party. The mystery is nicely built up in the background, from the cutaways to the mysterious figure who escapes his bonds, to the Doctor's crawling around the mansion's mazelike corridors after discovering a secret passage.

Once the Doctor is arrested in Part Two, however, it all goes a bit off the rails. There's a rushed and unconvincing scene in which the Doctor convinces Sir Robert to let him show off the TARDIS. While this little diversion is going on, the main story at the house becomes rushed. All entirely avoidable, as the story doesn't actually require the Doctor be taken off the grounds at all! Give that 5 - 10 minutes over to investigation within the house, and the script could jettison the silly TARDIS tour and give more breathing space to the resolution.

Despite the flawed ending, Black Orchid is an entertaining little diversion, a nice breather before the heavy action of Earthshock. The first episode, in particular, has a pleasant overall atmosphere, and both regulars and guest cast are in fine form. It could have been better with a little bit of rewriting to the second episode, but it's still highly watchable.


Rating: 6/10.

Previous Story: The Visitation

Next Story: Earthshock

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#4 (19.13 - 19.16): The Visitation.

"I feel as though you've
just killed an old friend..."

4 episodes.  Approx. 96 minutes. Written by: Eric Saward. Directed by: Peter Moffat. Produced by: John Nathan Turner.

THE PLOT

The Doctor's attempt to return Tegan to her own time fails miserably. He reaches the right place, but the wrong time - missing his destination by about 300 years and materializing the TARDIS in a wooded area near a quiet English village, circa 1666.

Before they get a chance to simply leave and try again, they find themselves the target of a mob of paranoid villagers who believe they are "plague carriers." They are rescued by actor-turned-highwayman Richard Mace (Michael Robbins), who tells them of strange lights in the sky.

That's when the Doctor discovers alien technology. The lights were a ship, crash landing. Now the survivors of the ship, members of a species known as the Terrileptils, plan to wipe out all life on Earth. And far from proving an impediment, the Doctor's arrival actually helps their plans - because it gives them access to his TARDIS!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Though I'm no fan of writer/script editor Eric Saward, I will give credit where it's due. In his first serial for Doctor Who, he gets the Doctor right. We see a Doctor who is temperamental. When Tegan has a minor meltdown at his failure to return her to Heathrow Airport, he is not inclined to forgive her - at least, not until Nyssa and Adric press him to. He does play favorites with his young charges, clearly preferring Nyssa's company to the other two. When the alien technology is found in Episode One, he becomes instantly transfixed on the thought of alien survivors in this village. But he only explains why to Nyssa, not pausing to explain himself to the others. Davison remains terrific, and seems energized by the character beats in the script.

Nyssa: After largely sitting out the previous story, The Visitation gives Nyssa a much larger role. She acts as the Doctor's most reliable support, with the first two episodes seeing him treating her almost as an apprentice. He keeps her with him when he enters the deserted house, insisting that his other companions wait for them outside. Upon discovering some Terileptil technology, he snaps at Tegan and Adric to touch nothing; then he and Nyssa take a closer look and exchange observations. Though Nyssa is less than pleased at the Doctor's plan to "improvise with an armed android," she ends up being the one to carry out his plan - which ends up working very well when she finds herself in close quarters with the android.

Adric: Senses Tegan's dislike of him, and there's an amusing early beat when the Doctor tries to evade the issue by very awkwardly reaching out to touch his shoulder. He behaves impulsively at several turns, ignoring Nyssa's very reasonable arguments to stay in the TARDIS and promptly getting himself captured by villagers. His headstrong nature does help the Doctor near the end, however, when his need to act by moving the TARDIS overcomes the Terrileptils' attempts to seal the Doctor and Tegan inside the house.

Tegan: Though her opening meltdown seems a particularly unwarranted "stroppy Tegan" moment, the script does at least provide some context. We first see her recalling what happened to her with the Mara, grappling with the idea of her body being taken over by this creature. In this way, we are shown that she is already in an emotional state when confronted with the disappointment of the TARDIS' missed landing. The rest of the serial sees her being barely tolerated by the Doctor, who clearly prefers Nyssa's company. However, her emotional nature does make a good contrast to her companions' more clinical responses, and she's the only one who seems genuinely appalled at the aliens' plans.


THOUGHTS

The Visitation is noteworthy, in that it was the first contribution of Eric Saward. Saward clinched the post as script editor on the strength of this story, apparently largely because it was a rare script that did not require any significant rewrites.

I've already given Saward credit for his characterization of the regulars, particularly the Doctor. And I will admit that showing understanding of the characters is a significant quality. Add to that, The Visitation is well-structured, with each episode building on the information established in the one before.

Unfortunately, it is also the very definition of a bog-standard average Who story.

This is my third viewing of it, and my reaction remains unchanged. As I sit in front of the screen, it isn't long before I find myself getting just a bit sleepy. There's an awful lot of tromping back and forth between the house and the TARDIS, the TARDIS and the village, the village and the house.  All the back and forth makes the pace feel very leisurely, even downright sluggish. The final episode manages to eke out some momentum - but even then, there's no real urgency. It feels very much as if Saward had enough plot for a 2-parter, and then just stretched it out until he reached 4 parts.

Decent direction would have overcome a lot of the problems here. This story cries out for a bit of atmosphere: some clouds, some fog, some darkness. Instead, the Doctor and his friends tromp around a very pleasant-looking bit of woods on a very clear and pleasant day (and usually do so in long shot). Peter Moffatt's stagy direction is just ill-suited to this kind of piece. Fiona Cumming, Peter Grimwade, or even John Black would have gotten much more out of this. Moffatt appears to be afraid of the close-up, and keeping distance from the characters puts the audience at a distance from the action as well.

I emphasize that this story isn't at all bad. It all hangs together and is perfectly watchable, and it does get better as it goes. It also has a terrific performance by Peter Davison, who is firmly the Doctor by this point, and an engagingly campy one by Michael Robbins as a theatrical actor-turned-highwayman. But with no spark of inspiration, a sluggish pace, and outright lifeless direction, it's hard to see how this ever gained such a high reputation. I enjoyed all three of Davison's previous stories considerably more than this one (yes, even Four to Doomsday).

As for Saward? Well, on the strength of this story's characterization and structure, I would certainly have re-commissioned him for another story. But with the lack of inspiration on display here, it wouldn't even have crossed my mind to make him the series' script editor...


Rating: 5/10.

Previous Story: Kinda
Next Story: Black Orchid


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#3 (19.9 - 19.12): Kinda

4 episodes. Written by: Christopher Bailey, Eric Saward (uncredited). Directed by: Peter Grimwade.  Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The Doctor takes the TARDIS to Deva Loka, a peaceful planet where he trusts that Nyssa can recover from her fainting spell in peace. As Nyssa rests, the Doctor and his companions go exploring. They find a beautiful set of chimes created by the natives, with an alien yet harmonic musical sound. The sound sends Tegan into a trance, where she finds herself in a sinister, all-black plane, menaced by the evil Mara.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Adric are captured by a colonization team. The team's leader, Sanders (Richard Todd), finds them harmless enough. But when Sanders goes off to investigate the disappearance of another team member, the security officer - the unstable Hindle (Simon Rouse) - takes command. Now the Doctor and Adric, along with the team's scientific officer, Todd (Nerys Hughes), find their lives at the mercy of a madman, while the ancient evil of the Mara uses Tegan as a vessel to the real world and threatens to engulf them all!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Though apparently originally commissioned as a Fourth Doctor story, this is one of those rare serials that is difficult to imagine with any other Doctor. It's so well-suited to Davison's thoughtful, understated performance, a story for a Doctor who takes time to evaluate the situation before acting. The Doctor does a lot of watching and listening, holding back until there is an opportunity for action to actually be beneficial. When he does finally take charge, in Episode Four, it's decisive. Davison's showdown with the Mara-possessed Kinda just before turning the mirrored panels on it could serve as a one-scene rebuttal to all the charges that he lacked authority.

Tegan: The first half of this serial gives Janet Fielding quite a bit of focus, and she eagerly rises to the challenge. The Mara's attempts to gain agreement to use Tegan's form are highly effective, creepy and surreal without being so esoteric as to nullify the drama. Fielding gets to play multiple levels, as Tegan is frightened yet stubborn in her refusal, then confused by trick after trick. Two dream figures tell her that she does not exist. Then a jester figure, the Mara's face for Tegan, mentally exhausts her before making good on that initial threat, fading Tegan from existence to "leave (her) alone." Finally, the terrified and exhausted Tegan is broken into granting her consent. It's magnificently nightmarish, wonderfully-directed by Peter Grimwade and acted to perfection by Janet Fielding, who obviously enjoyed getting something truly meaty to play. There's much less for her to do in the second half, but she still is effective when she sees the Mara's true form and demands to know that it's truly gone from her mind now (a demand that the Doctor ignores, thus paving the way for a follow-up).

Adric: After being borderline unbearable in Four to Doomsday, Matthew Waterhouse actually dials it back and is once again fairly watchable. I thought Adric's scenes opposite the insane Hindle were well-done, with Adric attempting to humor Hindle to gain a chance first to help the Doctor, then to escape, and finally to do something about Hindle's plan of destruction. He does dive back into being obnoxious in his scenes with Tegan in Episode Four.  Waterhouse seems to consistently be at his best when acting opposite Sarah Sutton, and at his dreadful worst when playing opposite Janet Fielding. 

THOUGHTS

Reading through the DWM: In Their Own Words special, it seems that Kinda had a particularly troubled genesis. The script was commissioned by Bidmead, to whom the concept of the Mara doubtless appealed.  It was delivered about the time that Bidmead left. Some development was done by Antony Root, who seems to have enjoyed the layered themes of the story. But written by an inexperienced television writer, it was still in no fit shape for broadcast when Eric Saward became script editor, leading to Saward giving the second half of the story a massive overhaul - one which did not please writer Christopher Bailey, who then did an 11th hour rewrite to try to restore some of the themes that he felt the Saward draft had lost.

Given such a troubled development process, it would be reasonable to expect Kinda to be a failure. Honestly, it would almost be excusable, after skipping along between three script editors, at least two of whom had radically different sensibilities, and a writer with no television experience. But somehow, it all manages to come together. The result is probably my favorite televised Davison story, and one of my all-time favorites of the entire series.

This is the first story of Saward's script editing tenure on which he had a strong influence, and it may be his crowning achievement as script editor. Both Saward and Root seem to have recognized that there was enough going on in this story to make it worth the effort to put it into shape. The result, I think, is a clear example of how creative tension can sometimes work in a show's favor. Saward's structural sensibilities keep the story moving along and keep it comprehensible, while Bailey's layered themes make it into something special within that framework. Effectively, this is to Saward what Warriors' Gate was to Bidmead: an imaginative piece that required a massive amount of work, but which paid off with 4 stunning episodes.

Like Logopolis, this story benefits from director Peter Grimwade's eye for the visual. Tegan's nightmarish encounter with the Mara on a black-on-black astral plane, the old woman's vision of the Mara, Hindle and his cardboard city - all are effective visual moments, exceedingly well-executed. Grimwade knows how and when to use close-ups for maximum effect, and when to cut away from close-ups to wider shots. The Part Two cliffhanger is particularly strong, with its cutaways to Hindle's black-and-white face on the monitor, rather than to Hindle himself, and with that sharp zoom to Nerys Hughes' scream. The resources may not have been all that could have been hoped for, and certain moments (hello, snake) fall slightly short. But he knows how to use the resources at his disposal to maximum dramatic effect.

The story features a fine guest cast. Screen veteran Richard Todd gets the "special guest star" billing, of course, and gives a strong performance. But in guest star terms, this show belongs to Simon Rouse. There's something wonderfully childlike in Hindle's insanity. He tries to model himself on his father figure (Sanders), imitating Sanders' militaristic way of running things by dressing his native hostages as soldiers and inspecting their fingernails. When Sanders returns - to take away his command, Hindle presumes - he falls apart as the old man approaches, crying out to "Mummy" to make Sanders go away, clearly flashing back on childhood beatings to which the script alludes. I loved some of the close-ups of Hindle's eyes. Staring straight ahead, not blinking, not quite focused. One of the most convincing madmen Who has offered, and one of the most unforgettable human guest roles in the series.

While the production isn't up to the level of the four serials preceding it, I would still rate it well above the series' average. Even the infamous giant snake stands out more for falling short of the superb production values of the JNT era to this point, rather than as a Myrka- or Scarasen-level disaster.  To my tastes at least, Doctor Who rarely gets better than this.


My Rating: 10/10.

Previous Story: Four to Doomsday
Next Story: The Visitation


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#2 (19.5 - 19.8): Four to Doomsday

4 episodes. Written by: Terence Dudley. Directed by: John Black.  Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

With his regeneration settled, the Doctor attempts to return Tegan to Heathrow airport, to begin her air stewardess job. When they materialize, however, they are not at their destination. They find themselves on a massive spaceship, ruled over by three amphibian aliens: the imposing Monarch (Stratford Johns), and his associates, Enlightenment (Annie Lambert) and Persuasion (Paul Shelley).

The ship is home to representatives of various ancient human cultures: Greek scholars, Chinese warlords, Mayans, and Australian aborigines. They appear to have been granted eternal life by Monarch. The aliens insist that their plans for Earth are entirely benign. But something about Monarch rouses the Doctor's instincts...


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: The first-produced of Peter Davison's stories, and there are bits and pieces where his performance feels less settled and confident than in Castrovalva.  Davison's voice sometimes gets a touch too high, and his interactions with his co-stars in the opening TARDIS scene feel a touch self-conscious.

Despite a few weak spots, though, his performance still mostly ranges from solid to excellent. I love the scene in which he dresses down Adric. It feels like a Tom Baker moment, but Davison sells it in a different way.  He keeps his voice soft despite the sharpness of his tone, and gives a pleasant smile for the spectators the whole while. He is particularly on-form when playing opposite Stratford Johns.  You can see his Doctor constantly thinking, putting on a pleasant face while probing for answers and weaknesses.

Tegan: As the first-produced Davison story, this is also the first time Janet Fielding has played Tegan since Logopolis. This explains why she is so much worse here than she was in Castrovalva. She does show good screen rapport with Peter Davison in their scenes together in the middle of the serial. But she's also back to overplaying her character's more strident qualities. Finally, while it's somewhat refreshing to have a traveling companion panic, I'm afraid I found some of her "breakdown" acting in Part Three to be uninentionally comical.

The character does get a few interesting beats. A notable one comes early on. When the Doctor decides all of them should leave the TARDIS, he instantly gives the key to Tegan. Though he has known both Adric and Nyssa longer, he seems to have an implicit trust that Tegan can take over as leader if something happens to him. There is also the unintentionally ludicrous moment in which Tegan converses with an Australian aborigine, as if it's normal for all white Australians to speak all aboriginal languages. Admittedly, Terence Dudley probably thought exactly that... but a trip to the library, or a brief interview with a few Australians living in the UK, would probably have disabused him of that idea, if he had taken the time to bother.

Adric: The Most Hated Companion in Who History (TM) has been quite tolerable up to now. It is only with this story that Adric starts to become truly irritating. He's dreadful in the early TARDIS sequences, massively obnoxious to both Tegan and Nyssa. The script does him no favors, but Waterhouse could have given these scenes a light touch. Instead, he cranks up the bombast, making Adric as unlikable as humanly possible. He becomes tolerable again around the middle of the story... but once the script requires him to side with Monarch over the Doctor, Waterhouse's performance plummets yet again, making both character and actor so poor that I more than half-wondered why the Doctor actually let him back into the TARDIS at the end.

Nyssa: She gets quite a lot of material during the second episode, when she and Adric are separated from the Doctor. She takes the lead almost immediately, and puts a lot of pieces together in her observations of the ship. This portion of the serial also sees Matthew Waterhouse's best performance, showing yet again that he and Sarah Sutton play a lot better when just acting opposite each other than when all four regulars are together in a scene.

Monarch: Stratford Johns is Monarch, the Ubankan leader who plans to colonize Earth. The episode is very gradual in doling out information about Monarch and his associates. The first three episodes put a consistently pleasant face on him. He rarely raises his voice, even when reprimanding Enlightenment for "blasphemy." He is instantly intrigued by the Doctor.  For most of the serial, he plays the good host, giving the Doctor apparently free (though carefully controlled) run of the ship while keeping him under watch. He even hopes that the Doctor might make a valuable ally. This provides a rare serial in which the conflict is more intellectual than physical. The Doctor and Monarch are both trying to find out exactly who the other man is, and their tools are similar: watching, listening, studying what they see. Johns has considerable presence, and gives a shrewd performance. His associates, Enlightenment and Persuasion, are enjoyably sinister - and actually seem more alien and mysterious once they adopt human guise.


THOUGHTS

Terence Dudley is far from my favorite Who writer. His stories are plagued by generic plotting, lazy transitions, and weak endings. However, despite Dudley and despite this serial's own reputation as a dud, I really rather enjoy Four to Doomsday. It's my favorite Terence Dudley script by far, and the only one of his scripts in which he seems to be really trying to create an intriguing science fiction story, rather than deciding that, "It's just Doctor Who."

Falling in between the two script editors (the credited script editor is interim editor Antony Root), this still carries much of the feel of Bidmead's Who. There's an attempt at hard science fiction, with interstellar travel portrayed as a lengthy process. The dialogue carries a hint of the lyrical in places, with characters who go by names such as "Enlightenment" and "Persuasion," and with references to "the flesh time." Mix in representatives of long-dead cultures putting on pageants, and there is a tangible atmosphere of both the hard science fiction Bidmead claimed to be going for and the more lyrical science fantasy that he actually achieved. It remains a mix that I specifically respond to, which is likely a large part of the reason that I enjoy this serial so much more than "Monolithic Fandom" has decreed appropriate.

This is one of the few Terence Dudley scripts in which his status as a respected veteran television writer shows. The less-seasoned Who writers of every era have good scripts and bad scripts, but often have difficulty in juggling multiple regulars. With three companions, then, it is rather impressive that Dudley manages to give something substantial to each character. He even maintains a consistency of characterization. Tegan is the heart, responding emotionally to everything she sees. Nyssa is the mind, responding in an analytical fashion to each new discovery within the ship. Adric is misguided youthful idealism, taking every perceived slight far too personally and being too easily influenced by Monarch. Each character is written convincingly within those parameters, and no one is sidelined.

One area in which JNT definitely raised the bar for Who during his early years was in production values. All of the stories I have reviewed in this sequence have enjoyed strong productions, and Four to Doomsday is no exception. The ship model may look a bit creaky by modern standards, but was well above-average by the standards of its day. The interiors still look good, even today.  There are a lot of raised platforms and staircases, which keep the characters' movements three-dimensional.  Lighting is varied from one area of the ship to another, which helps to keep this as one of the series' more visually interesting stories. Everything is held together by a visually consistent design, almost certainly one of the series' best spaceship interiors.  Just in terms of design imagination, I think the ship interiors here top many of those of the new series!

The story has earned a repuation as one of Davison's weaker efforts. An undeserved reputation, in my opinion, but it's fair to say that there are weaknesses. The first two episodes are mostly excellent, with a gradual but building sense of unease. But the story doesn't quite sustain four episodes, and the threads start to show in the second half.

Adric becoming an unswering convert to Monarch is one issue. A few minutes' conversation at the start of Part Three, and suddenly Adric is entirely convinced of Monarch's goodness, even after Persuasion orders the Doctor's death right in front of the boy. If Adric's conversion had been more gradual, with him having a lot of screen time with Monarch in Parts Two and Three, then it might work. As it stands, we are meant to accept Adric being willing to side against his friends with a silver-tongued alien after a single, five-minute conversation!

Still, the story keeps rolling along pretty well through Episode Three, and most of Episode Four. I didn't even object to the spacewalk scene. The bit with the cricket ball may have play out a bit silly, but it doesn't completely shatter my suspension of disbelief.

It all falls apart at the very end, though.  Monarch growls, "I, too, am not without agility," and then proceeds to do one very stupid thing after another, while the Doctor and his companions run about for a bit. It's as if Terence Dudley realized that he had less than half an episode left, and simply rushed out an ending, regardless of whether that ending really suited the story that had preceded it or not.

Despite these flaws, I genuinely enjoyed Four to Doomsday. The weak ending pulls it down a bit, but not so much as to forget the story's virtues: A very strong production, uniformly good guest performances, a script that doesn't forget any of the four regulars, and some clever science fiction concepts.  On the whole, much better than its reputation would indicate.

My Rating: 7/10.

Previous Story: Castrovalva
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#1 (19.1 - 19.4): Castrovalva

4 episodes. Written by: Christopher H. Bidmead. Directed by: Fiona Cumming.  Produced by: John Nathan Turner.


THE PLOT

The Doctor has regenerated, but this time it is not going well. He keeps losing his bearings, forgetting his own identity and the geography of his own TARDIS. He needs time for rest and recovery. But there is no time. The Master is still in pursuit of the Doctor, determined to wipe his old enemy out of Time and Space forever, and he has captured Adric in order to spring a lethal trap. The TARDIS is sent plummeting back to the beginning of creation, to be destroyed by the Big Bang.

Adrenaline allows the Doctor to regain his faculties long enough to avoid destruction, but now he needs rest more than ever. Tegan and Nyssa bring him to Castrovalva, a place of absolutely simplicity where the Doctor can recover control of his own mind. But the Master has not yet finished with the Doctor, and has one last trap ready to spring...


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Peter Davison's first story, this was actually recorded somewhere around the middle of his first season's production. A good decision on JNT's part, as it means that Davison is fully confident in the role, with his performance is at its best. In his own way, Davison is just as good as Tom was in the previous two stories. He's instantly engaging and sympathetic as the disoriented and weakened Doctor, particularly when the TARDIS is in imminent danger near the end of Episode One.  The Doctor is left helpless to do anything about it - leaving this man, so accustomed to taking control, incredibly frustrated and desperate to do something.

In those brief scenes in which he does gain his wits and is again The Doctor, he takes command effortlessly. On his entry to the Zero Room, he goes from something akin to a frightened child to a confident leader, fully in control... all done just with a change in carriage and tone of voice. Also in this scene, the Doctor assigns roles to each of his three companions.  A last attempt by writer and outgoing script editor Christopher H. Bidmead to provide a guideline for his successor in dealing with the companion overload, perhaps?  In any case, the roles are well-reasoned, and the scene conveys that this Doctor will take a more collaborative role than the Fourth Doctor did, and will rely on his companions more.

Tegan: Waiting to record this story also helped greatly with Tegan's characterization. Tegan strongly irritated me in her debut. Thankfully, Janet Fielding has greatly toned down her performance by this point. She and Sarah Sutton show a strong screen rapport in this story.  While Fielding quickly becomes the dominant persona, the brash Tegan taking a leadership role over the more analytical Nyssa in the script as well, she doesn't drown out her co-star. In Logopolis, Tegan felt surplus to requirements. Here, she fits nicely into the team, and I found myself liking both character and performance.

Adric: He's also less annoying here than in Logopolis... though that's largely because he's sidelined for the bulk of the story.  Bidmead is too good a writer to completely sideline one of his regulars, though. Even in marginalizing Adric, he makes him a key part of the narrative. Adric is essentially the battery fueling the Master's trap. He is still written as a strong member of the Doctor's team, actively resisting the Master at every turn. This is much better than the active hindrance Adric will become in... Well, exactly one story's time. Unfortunately, Matthew Waterhouse never worked as well opposite Davison as he did opposite Tom, so I doubt there will be many bright spots ahead for this character.

Nyssa: "That face! I hate it!" An advantage of following on from the previous two stories, with a script by the outgoing script editor, is that Bidmead still remembers that the Master is walking around in the body of Nyssa's father. That makes Nyssa's cry at the start of Episode Two a quite strong character moment. The Master is not just an enemy.  He's not even just an enemy who has wiped out her entire world and is apparently about to destroy her too. He is an an enemy who is doing all of this with her father's face, his every maniacal laugh corrupting her memories of a father she cherished.

There are other good character beats for Nyssa. We not only see Nyssa develop a rapport with Tegan, but also with the new Doctor. As early as Episode Two, when Nyssa assists the Doctor by building his new (much tinier) Zero Room, we see that Sarah Sutton and Peter Davison do work very well together on-screen. Davison's instincts, that Nyssa was particularly well-suited to his Doctor, were correct, and it's a shame that neither his producer nor his incoming script editor were able to appreciate and capitalize on that.

The Master: Just as it is a web in which The Master ensnares Adric, it's the imagery of the web that defines his traps. He starts with a simple, direct trap, designed simply to obliterate the Doctor. He has also prepared a trap within that trap, and revels in the complexity of his back-up plan. He doesn't seem disappointed that the Doctor escapes his first snare. After all, that allows him to actually use his second idea.

It's interesting to note how easily the Master could simply destroy the Doctor within Castrovalva.  But he doesn't.  He allows his enemy to heal, at least to a point at which the Doctor can appreciate the web in which the Master has entangled him. It's not enough for the Master to win - He wants to humiliate the Doctor, to have the Doctor know that he has won, and perhaps to impress him just a little bit. It makes him a more interesting and engaging villain. The final image of him here - entangled by his own creations, an evil version of Dr. Frankenstein destroyed by the goodness of his own monsters - is a memorable one.  It probably should have been the last seen of him, at least for a while, but it's a striking end to this trilogy.  Issues with the Master's later overuse/misuse are a discussion for another time.


THOUGHTS

In a sense, Logopolis and Castrovalva are not two stories, but one epic 8-parter.  Logopolis was all about entropy. Things fall apart, things decay. Tremas is taken over by the Master, Logopolis falls, Traken is wiped out, the Doctor dies... everything crumbles and degrades. Castrovalva becomes a story about life. The Master creates projections as a trap, but they gain free will. The Doctor's regeneration is rocky, but he recovers and comes out ready to face the universe with a sunny grin, declaring that he "feels absolutely splendid." Out of the chaos, order is restored.

Castrovalva is very different from previous stories introducing new Doctors. Previous stories dealt with the regeneration in the first one to two episodes, then got on with a more traditional narrative. Here, the central concern is the Doctor's regeneration. "I'm the Doctor," Davison says, "or at least I will be, if this regeneration works out." After 7 years, Tom was not just a Doctor, but the Doctor to most viewers. By making the changeover difficult within the narrative, it helps ease viewers over their own difficulties in accepting a new lead. Given this, I think that making the regeneration itself into the narrative was appropriate here. Bidmead's script helps in selling this, weaving the ongoing Doctor/Master rivalry and the ongoing entropy/renewal themes into that narrative.

Like Logopolis, the story consists of many set pieces. We get the Doctor literally unraveling the trappings of his previous persona as he descends into the labyrinth of his own TARDIS, unfamiliar to him in his addled state. The Master's first trap, the trip to Year Zero, is irrelevent to the actual plot, but it creates a sense of jeopardy for the early part of the story. There are many other set pieces.  Tegan and Nyssa, carrying the Doctor through the woodland surrounding Castrovalva. The trap of Castrovalva springing itself by sending the characters through a loop, returning them again and again to the courtyard. As was the case in Logopolis, most of the set pieces work. As was also the case with Logopolis, I enjoyed the fantasy elements: the castle overseen by a kindly wizard (the Portreeve), in which the Doctor might heal. The people, conjured out of nothing by a magic (mathematical) trick, who nevertheless assert their own will and declare, "We are free!"

This is a tighter script than Logopolis was, though, and the threads hang together much better.  Rather appropriate, in a story in which a tapestry plays a major part. There's a structure to the way the sequences are laid out. Except for the hook of the Master's first trap, the pieces build from lower-key ones (the unraveling of the scarf, the trip through the woods) to the more intense and bizarre (the loop, Castrovalva folding in on itself). Perhaps Bidmead learned from experience, perhaps he simply benefited from having a script editor other than himself to oversee his work. Either way, Castrovalva combines most of the strengths of his writing in Logopolis with a stronger narrative, making for a more satisfying overall viewing experience.

Castrovalva ends the trilogy began with The Keeper of Traken and continued with Logopolis.  In my opinion, these three stories taken together remain the most thoughtful and structured handover in the series' run.  Castrovalva in itself is my favorite of the three parts of this trilogy, and contends with Troughton's debut for my favorite "new Doctor" story.


My Rating: 10/10.

Previous Story: Logopolis
Next Story: Four to Doomsday


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