Grab Bag Reviews: "Enlightenment"

Ah, so this one is a little late. It just took a little while to get through a lot of the DVD extras... and I have to say that this release is really packed with a number of extras which add to the flavor of the story.

"Enlightenment" is a bit of an odd story in a couple of ways. For one thing, despite the fact that Doctor Who began under a woman producer and those early days and points thereafter saw several women directors, the show didn't have a script written by a woman until this serial in 1983. For another thing, the show's script editor at the time, Eric Saward, had expressed a preference for stories which were more firmly science fiction rather than science fantasy and "Enlightenment" would prove to be almost entirely fantasy and allegory.

There was quite a bit going on for Doctor Who when Barbara Clegg's initial script idea came in. Producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner (yep, it's J N-T time again!) and Saward had been recently mining the history of the show for story ideas and they had hit upon bringing back the White and Black Guardians from the Tom Baker years, choosing to have the Black Guardian finally seeking his revenge against the Doctor. To cement the plot they even had the original actors reprise their roles -- Cyril Luckham as the White Guardian and Valentine Dyall as the Black Guardian. At the same time, J N-T had come to the conclusion that the character of Nyssa (played by actress Sarah Sutton) had run her course and wanted to replace her with a new companion during the 1982-1983 season.

Back when the character of Adric was being developed for Tom Baker's last season the idea was to create a character who was an "Artful Dodger" type -- a charming thief with a bit of the con artist to him as well. That changed before the character was finally brought to the page but J N-T never quite let go of the idea of having a companion who was less than pure as the driven snow.

In the 1982-1983 season J N-T finally got his wish. Enter Turlough.

Turlough was to be a young alien who had been exiled to Earth for reasons which remained mysterious up until the character's swan song. While still not the "Artful Dodger" type Turlough was definitely not the usual fare for the Doctor's companions. A weasel who tended to blame others for his own mistakes and was perfectly willing to rat people out in order to save his own skin. Young actor Mark Strickson was hired for the role and while he had a certain amount of leeway in the interpretation of the character the broad strokes were already set. J N-T and Saward also tied the character directly in with the Black Guardian.

As the season started to draw to a close in the spring of 1983 it was decided to wrap up the Black Guardian story arc and wrap up Turlough's character arc at the same time. This resulted in three serials which have collectively become known as "The Black Guardian Trilogy". The arc began with "Mawdryn Undead", continued in "Terminus" and then Barbara Clegg was asked to wrap everything up with her story "Enlightement". This meant that she had to add extra elements to her original story idea.

With all of this, did Clegg's story rise to the challenge of fitting in all of the required elements and telling a good story at the same time? Let's take a look....

The Plot: The Doctor, sent on a cryptic mission by the White Guardian, lands the TARDIS on an Edwardian era racing yacht. All is not as it seems, however, as the yacht is one of several boats from different time periods all racing... though space! The race proves to be a contest of powerful, immortal beings known as Eternals. The Eternals, however, lack original thought and imagination and so have picked up Earthlings to crew the ships. Their minds clouded and drugged the Eternals are free to plunder the humans' imaginations to give themsleves life and shape.

Every race has a prize though and in the case that prize is "enlightenment" -- ultimate knowledge. The Doctor must make sure that no eternal wins the race and claims the prize because ultimate knowledge combined with the Eternals' near-limitless power would spell disaster. But how can the Doctor hobble a race that is happening in space? And how does sone beat immortal beings which can read even a Time Lord's thoughts?

As if that were not enough, the Doctor's compaions have their own struggles. Tegan finds herself the recipient of unwanted and unwelcome attention from one of the Eternals and Turlough learns that, when dealing with the Black Guardian, failure can be fatal.

Only one thing is certain in this game... there will be triumph and loss and the losses may be very grave indeed.

My Take: "Enlightenment" is a very deceptive story. Reading the synopsis above it sounds as thought there is a lot involved here and yet, while watching the story, nothing ever seems really confusing. The plot sweeps you up and carries you along with the tide... the solar tide in this case.
Barbara Clegg's script really brings back something that had begun to disappear from the stories around this time period... magic. The scripts had lost a lot of that soaring sense of wonder which captured fans' hearts in the first place. "Enlightenment" gives viewers back that amazement and does so in a story that breaks many of the established "rules" for the series.

For one thing, the Eternals are pretty much literally magical beings. Oh sure, the script never calls them that and there are some off-hand remarks about the Eternals being cosmic entities but the truth is quite clear... we're pretty much dealing with gods here in the mythical sense.

Then there is the fact that the Eternals are not your typical villains for Doctor Who. Captain Striker and Marriner of the Edwaardian racing yacht are creepy, yes, but overall hospitable and even helpful to the Doctor and his companions... when it suits them. The closest thing to a normal villain is the pirate ship's captain -- Wrack. Even at that her motivations are simple and eerily immature. Unlike other villains who have appeared on the series she does not seek to conquer Earth or part of the universe or the galaxy. She doesn't want to rule over people, nor does she hate other beings and want to see them destroyed or assimilated. She does not want to colonize other worlds either. Instead, all she wants is to relieve her boredom. All she wants is the power to entertain herself. It is the Eternal's lack of scale and context, their inability to understand compassion, and their superiority which make them dangerous. They seem less "evil" and more like a three year old with a potentially loaded handgun... only on a cosmic scale.

This ties into the allegory that Clegg was making in her story. At one point the Black Guardian says that the Eternals have no understanding of good and evil but that enlightenment will change that. This is obviously a metaphor for the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden from the biblical story in Genesis.

Clegg even goes farther -- painting them not just devoid of understanding of basic morality and compassion but also showing them to be completely devoid of original thought. They have lived so long and lost so much, or never had it to begin with, that they actually need Ephemerals so that they can raid their minds for new ideas and to give themselves shape, form, and something at feels at least a little like real life.

This theme also is highlighted in Tegan's character story with the Eternal, Marriner. She is disconcerted by his lack of humanity and disturbed by his ability to read minds but at the same time there is a kind of twisted romance to the plot. Marriner seems to woo Tegan with many of the words and forms which are usually used in romances but he does not understand love -- his focus is instead about living vicariously through Tegan's thoughts. Women have long been heard to say that they want a man who is interested in them for their minds but Clegg turns that into something literal here... and it comes off as cold and creepy and even more inhuman.

If there is a real villainous figure here it is the Black Guardian and his feature in Turlough's character arc also contains some religious/moral overtones. There are elements of Faust> in the tale as Turlough comes to regret his bargain as he realizes near death that evil simply doesn't care. This throws the Doctor into the position of the agent of good in offering rescue and forgiveness.

All is not perfect with the script, however. Despite the fact that Clegg says on the DVD extras that she was familiar with the character of Tegan her writing doesn't really capture that character well. The bold, spirited woman is really missing here and in her place is a character who is timid and unusually frightened in this situation.

There are a few other problems as well... mostly with the performances. Valentine Dyall's his first appearance as the character in 1979 lasted something less than five minutes so it was hard to see how he would have played the character back then. Reprising the role in 1983 he had a greater opportunity to flesh things out... and not always in a good way. To be fair, his rich, dark, voice was perfect for the character and he is obviously having a ball playing it but he's having a bit too much fun. Dyall overplays nearly every scene he's in. In point of fact on more than one occasion he actually laughs with one of the most staged, over-the-top, supervillain style laughs I've ever heard (and I grew up watching the Superfriends so that should tell you something). He actually goes "Nyaha-ha-ha-ha-ha". At that point you just can't help bursting out laughing and there goes every drop of menace the character is supposed to exhude out the window.

The other over-the-top perpetrator here is Mark Strickson. Overall, Stickson honestly did a good job with Turlough. Strickson's own long, thin face was perfect for conveying the character's weasely, cowardly nature and most of the time he perfectly pitched the character's superiority complex and snide nature. In his scenes with Dyall here, though, he not only dials the angst up to 11 he rips the knob off and blasts it into outer space. It really takes all of the steam out of the scenes.

A lot of people also like to complain about the character of Captain Wrack as played by Lynda Baron claiming that she, too is over the top. I suppose she is... a little... but I actually find her portrayal not that disconcerting. It is theatrical but it is also coming from a character which seems naturally theatrical -- someone who adores spectacle and who relishes playing to every trope and stereotype she can find.

There is some padding to the script as well but it isn't necessarily all that noticeable -- particularly thanks to the set designers and costumers who really went to town for this story. "Enlightenment" was entirely studio filmed -- no outside recording at all -- and yet you really don't notice it. Unlike other studio-bound stories this one never feels claustrophobic or like it's spinning it's wheels in the same corridors. The sets really make the audience feel like they are looking at the cabins and corridors of actual sailing ships. The costumes are equally authentic (well, mostly, and even when they aren't precisely authentic they are, at least, stylish) and both costumes and sets have weathered the passage of time well. The same can't be said of the special effects but even then the show was at least trying to push the limits of their special effects budget at the time and they aren't that bad.

But this brings us to the biggest and flashiest extra on this DVD set... A whole new cut of the story with updated special effects designed and envisioned by the original director of the story. Make no mistake about it, the new special effects really are spiffy (except a few which don't come off very well) and help flush out certain parts of the story. There are also a few new musical cues added which are appropriately grandiose and epic and add to the scale but there is another cost to this... there are scenes cut. Some of the scenes are quite rightly cut -- not really adding anything to the action -- but there are other scenes which actually detract from some of the color of the characters and even, in one case, character development. For example, a scene between the Doctor and Turlough which starts to show the idea that Turlough has changed enough that earning the Doctor's disapproval actually bothers him is cut in the special edition. Because of this both the original and the special editions have their positives and negatives but one cannot be said to be superior to the other. Watch and enjoy both.

And "Enlightenment" definitely goes on my list of "Doctor Who stories which everyone should see". It is filled with intriguing ideas and concepts, it breaks out of the standard mold for the series and it provides some nice character developments all told within a highly entertaining and imaginative story.

Doctor Who Grab Bag Reviews: "The Two Doctors"

It's an open secret that my favorite Doctor is the Second one and my favorite companion is Jamie McCrimmon (what?! Dude went into action wearing a kilt AND he had the legs for it too -- you don't get better than that) so, of course, a story that reunites by favorite Doctor-Companion duo should be at the top of my list right?

Wrong.

"The Two Doctors" is one of my least favorites... a train wreck of a story in which nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong...

It all began two years earlier with 1983's "The Five Doctors". Jonathan Nathan-Turner, seeing the boon that a multi-Doctor story could be to the ratings was almost immediately interested in producing another one. In addition to that he had been impressed with both how well the Patrick Troughton had slipped back into his character of the Second Doctor and the easy working relationship and genuine camaraderie between Troughton and Fraser Hines who played Jamie McCrimmon. At the time of "The Five Doctors" Hines had only had time for a small cameo but J N-T hoped to lure him back to do a full episode alongside Troughton.

By the mid-1980's the Doctor Who veterans had discovered the American fan base and vice-versa. The show had become a minor cult-hit in the U.S. thanks to a combination of syndication and showings on American PBS stations (which is where I discovered the show way back when). Doctor Who conventions were starting to spring up in the States and many of the people who had been or were currently involved with the show had begun traveling "across the pond" for the conventions. J N-T began to see this as the perfect time to propose a joint effort between the BBC and the American company which was syndicating the show.

In 1985 J N-T managed to secure an assurance from the American company that they would be able to cover expenses for Doctor Who to fly to the United States and film an episode set in New Orleans, Louisiana. As such, J N-T hired long-time Doctor Who writer Robert Holmes to write a script to match. In point of fact, J N-T gave Holmes a laundry list of things to squeeze into the script -- the current Sixth Doctor and his companion, Peri, the Second Doctor and his companion, Jamie, a new alien race that had some connection to New Orleans, and Holmes was also to throw long-time villains the Sontarans in for good measure... just because. Needless to say, Holmes was not really pleased at being hampered by all of the elements he had to add.

Meanwhile, J N-T got both Patrick Troughton and Fraser Hines on board. Troughton had reportedly had a wonderful time filming "The Five Doctors" and was eager to do it again and he and Hines were old friends and co-workers and both were also looking forward to working together again.

Holmes, being a vegetarian, decided to focus the story around food and carnivorism and apparently planned to die this into the cuisine of New Orleans. As such his new alien race, the Androgums, was an anagram for gourmand.

At the last minute, however, it turned out that the American money would not be there after all and the BBC could not foot the bill for a New Orleans filming. Having filmed in Amsterdam for the Fifth Doctor story "Arc of Infinity" and in Lanzarote for "Planet of Fire" also for the Fifth Doctor, J N-T was reluctant to let go of the idea of filming somewhere other than Great Britain. After several ideas fell through Seville, Spain was settled on.

The change in setting required some adjustments to the script and caused several things to not come off as well as they might have otherwise. Also, the shoot ended up with limited locations to choose from and many of the crew ended up on-camera acting as extras in several of the scenes.

And in the end... it really wasn't worth it and now we get to delve in and see why...

The Plot: The Second Doctor and his companion, Jamie, are sent by the Time Lords to the science research space station Camera in order to discuss the worrying experiments of two scientists who are studying time travel. The Doctor argues with his old friend, Camera's head of research, Dastari over the potential dangers of the time travel experiments. While there the Doctor encounters the station chef -- a member of a race known as Androgums, who tend to be nasty, brutish, violent, omnivores -- and another Androgum named Chessene, whom Dastari has genetically altered and augmented to become a genius -- something else that worries the Doctor. He has a right to be worried because Chessene has made a deal with the warring Sontarans to turn over the space station to them....

Elsewhere, the Sixth Doctor and Peri are trying to enjoy a little peace and quiet for a change when suddenly the Doctor has some kind of seizure. Feeling strange, the Doctor decides to visit Dastari to see if the scientist can detect anything wrong.

The Doctor and Peri arrive on Camera only to find it a charnel house -- all of the personnel have been slaughtered. The computer indicates the Time Lords were responsible but the Doctor cannot believe this and is determined to discover the truth. As he and Peri search the station for clues they find the sole survivor of the carnage... Jamie.

The Doctor soon realizes that his previous self has been kidnapped and he knows that it can be for no good purpose. Fearing that someone is planning on using his earlier incarnation to unlock the secret of time travel, the Sixth Doctor, Peri, and Jamie follow the trail to Seville, Spain and set out to rescue the Doctor. Little do they realize they are up against the brilliant mind of Chessene which has been wedded to an insane ambition. Chessene wants to rule the universe and she will use and discard anyone along the way -- Sontarans, Dastari and even Time Lords...

My Take: And that right above is just one reason why this episode doesn't stand up. Four paragraphs just to explain the plot and that's with me actually leaving out a lot of the subplots! At this time Doctor Who had shed the tradition of four half-hour episodes in favor of two 45 minute episodes per story but "The Two Doctors", being a 'special' episode, runs to three 45 minute episodes. Even with the extra time there's more plot here than is strictly necessary.

Then there are the Androgums. I have friends who are vegetarians and I myself often cook and eat vegetarian fare (although don't you dare try to take cheese from me -- I will stab you with a fork) but Holmes' script, with it's depictions and descriptions of meat eating and cooking are really just bad. If he intended it to be an advertisement for vegetarian eating he failed grandly because it is so blatant and over-the-top in it's indictment of meat eating it has the opposite effect. I almost want to sit and eat a raw steak just to spite the memory of Robert Holmes when I watch this story. Doctor Who has taken on vegetarianism in the past -- "The Green Death" for example is about not only environmentalism but healthier eating as well -- but without being this... derogatory about it.

On top of all of that Holmes seems to have caught the 'bickering bug'. Not only do the Sixth Doctor and Peri do their usual round of whining and picking on one another but there's quite a bit of it between the Second Doctor and Jamie -- something that really did not happen very often in the original run. There is probably more bickering between the Doctor and Jamie in the first 20 minutes of this story than there was in the whole three year run of the duo in the 1960's.
The tone of the story is also so far off the mark it could cause an earache. The Sixth Doctor's tenure often was criticized for excessive violence. To be fair, many of the criticisms laid were unfounded or uncalled for but here the story veers wildly from comedy to violence without warning and it just isn't handled well. There is also at least one death which serves no earthly purpose except to just be a death and there is also quite a bit of blood which is really uncalled for. Also, many criticize the Doctor's callous killing of the Androgum Shockeye but that is actually reasonably within character... the problem is the Doctor's casual, James Bond-like witticism about the killing. That's just not the Doctor -- he'll take a life if he has to but he shouldn't seem to enjoy it or crack jokes about it.

Perhaps the worst sin of all is the fact that, after J N-T went though all the trouble to get Hines and Troughton back together for this story, the duo spend the bulk of it separated. Hines's Jamie spends most of the story running around with Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor and there just isn't that much chemistry between the two actors. Not necessarily their fault -- after all chemistry is often something that is either there or it isn't and nothing can make it appear if it isn't there but to bypass Hines and Troughton's proven chemistry for this is bad plotting.

The plot aside, the story is also hit and miss on the special effects. The work for the space station Camera is actually pretty good overall. A lot of times the more futuristic sets don't age well but the work done for the sets here still looks fairly futuristic twenty-five years on. Many of the locations in Seville also look pretty good and do allow the show to get out of it's British focus for a while. The costumes for the Sontarans, though are just awful. For one thing the Sontarans are too tall and slender -- they were established a long time ago and rather short and squat -- powerfully built warriors -- here they just look like lanky, potato heads. As if that were not bad enough, the masks were ill-fitting and therefore muffle the actors' voices so they sound like they're talking through dish towels and on close-ups it is clearly visible that the mouths do not move on the masks and you can see the actors' lips moving behind the masks. Even by Doctor Who standards this is poor. Also, pity Nicola Bryant who is stuffed into more revealing clothes than usual, not to mention the fact that they are VERY 1980's and not in a good way, and has to run around on uneven ground in high heels... again. In the commentary Bryant also explains that the shimmery top she was wearing initially had no lining in it and under the hot Spanish sun it conducted heat like aluminum foil and burned her skin. And the less said about Dastari's Elton john-influenced glasses the better.

On the acting front... well, despite the poor script, Troughton and Hines do a bang-up job with what they have. The bickering aside, J N-T was right in that the rapport and real-life friendship between the two actors just comes through the characters beautifully and one might be fooled into thinking that virtually no time at all had passed since they last worked together.

The actor playing Shockeye is a bit too over-the-top to ever really take seriously. He's supposed to be menacing and creepy but instead he seems laughable and silly. Chessene, played by Jacqueline Pierce, is far better. She projects a perfectly haughty character and she pitches Chessene's ambitions well also. Pierce's casting, however, was something of a "stunt", however, as Pierce was well known to British sci-fi fans for playing the villainous Servalan in the series Blake's 7. Many cannot help but compare the two roles and so her Chessene often comes across as lacking to those who have seen both. Dastari is little more than a cypher and the actor emotes about as much as cricket and does little to try to add anything to the character.

As for Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Doctor and Peri... eh... They're very 'meh' here. Baker and Bryant have turned in worse performances but the script doesn't do them any favors and the bickering has, by this point, gotten rather old.

"The Two Doctors" is interesting in that it is one of only a handful of stories where the Doctor met up with other incarnations of himself, it would also be the last multi-Doctor story to air on TV and it was also, sadly, the last Doctor Who Patrick Troughton did. Troughton had wanted to come back and do another story -- only this time he wanted to do the story secretly -- appearing under mask or heavy make-up as an alien but he passed away of a fatal heart attack in 1987 before he had the chance to return.

There is little here to recommend the story but it stands up to at least one viewing out of either curiosity's sake or nostalgia for the Troughton - Hines era. There are a few scenes which work well and showcase all of the talents involved and once you figure those out you can pretty much just view "The Two Doctors" for the "greatest hits" portion of the story. If, however, you choose to skip it you won't be missing much.

Trivia: WARNING: Curse word used in the following trivia note. Turn away if it bothers you...


In the second episode a little over 18 minutes into the episode after the Doctor insults Peri you can clearly see Nicola Bryant mouth the word "asshole" at the Doctor.

Grab Bag Reviews: "Survival"

Now here's a rather interesting one because "Survival" is one of the handful of Doctor Who episodes of which I had only seen a few clips from and never watch the full episode... before now. As such I had the rare experience of getting to sit down and go into the story with no preconceived notions.

"Survival" also had the dubious honor of being the last episode of what became known as the "Classic Series". What led to this happening is rather a long and strange trip...

The show had been bleeding viewers for a number of years by 1989. The cause was a number of things from uninspired writing to uninteresting characters to a perception that the show was catering more and more to an ever shrinking core of devoted fans.

Producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner had been in the top position for about ten years as well -- far longer than any other producer on the series -- and he was understandably burned out but what amounted to blackmail from the BBC kept him from moving on. The powers that be at the BBC informed J N-T that no one else really wanted the producership for Doctor Who and so if he left they were simply going to cancel the series. As a fan of the program as well as it's producer J N-T could not stand to see this happen and so he opted to stay. By 1989, however, he simply could not endure any longer and was determined to leave but had hoped to increase the show's ratings and standings so that the BBC would be more motivated to find a producer to replace him.

As it so happened, however, a number of other things also came about at the same time period. Despite the show's weakness, the BBC opted to change it's time slot -- putting it up against the a new but immensely popular nighttime soap opera called Coronation Street. This was like sending a fly to destroy a fly swatter... and it got exactly the results you might expect.

Also during this time period the crew on Doctor Who got a definite impression of snobbishness from the rest of the BBC's drama department -- of which Doctor Who was a part. To this day some of the writers allege that other writers and producers looked down on the show simply because it was sci-fi and they therefore considered it not real or proper drama.

While J N-T and script editor Andrew Cartmel both believed that the show was headed for a hiatus at the very least and more likely would be cancelled, they chose not to share their fears much. They did let their script writers, crew and actors know that the show was likely to be put on hiatus for a year or so but they said nothing about the worst case scenario. Even with the almost certainty of a hiatus looming they continued to make plans for another season -- what would have been season 27 for the venerable show.

Meanwhile, "Survival" would not be last episode filmed for the season -- that honor went to "Ghost Light" -- but it would be the last episode to air. With that in mind, Cartmel hastily wrote a little final speech for McCoy to say which could be dropped in at the end just in case the show went on hiatus and the fans might need something to tide them over until it returned.

Meanwhile, at the BBC the decision had been made. The new head of drama decided that the show needed a "rest". His intention at the time was to merely see Doctor Who be put on the shelf for three or four years and then be brought back by someone with some fresh ideas. In an interview for the "Survival" DVD he expressed a genuine regret that his decision led to the show going off the air for 16 years.

It was only long after filming for "Ghost Light" had wrapped that the entire cast and crew found out about the show's fate. Many were sad and bitter and while Sylvester McCoy, who played the Seventh Doctor, and Sophie Aldred, who played the Doctor's companion, Ace, knew that they could and would move on to other things they were upset that they would not be allowed to give their characters any closure.

Even for the fans, "Survival" aired as the last episode of the season and it was some time before a quiet announcement came out of the BBC that Doctor Who would be put on "hiatus" indefinitely. There was never a formal announcement of cancellation but as more than a year passed with no news of any new episodes fans eventually came to realize that the show was gone.

Over time there is some sense that "Survival" became somewhat revered simply because it turned out to be the last glass of wine from the bottle but does it deserve that status, no matter the conditions surrounding it?

The Plot: The Doctor has returned Ace "home" -- the Perivale Council Estate (read low-cost housing for the working classes) -- at her request as she wants to see what has happened to her friends while she's been traveling with the Doctor. Upon arrival, however, the Doctor quickly senses something amiss. Ace discovers that several of her friends have simply gone missing... as have others in and around Perivale and the Doctor sees a black cat the seems to have a slightly otherworldly quality to it...

Ace finds herself transported to a strange, alien world populated by Cheetah People and the Doctor soon follows. Once there, however, he finds that there seems to be no way back. He also finds that an old enemy is there waiting. To make matters worse, the planet has a symbiotic relationship to it's inhabitants -- the more they fight the more the planet begins to break up and destroy itself. Also, anyone who survives being the Cheetah People's prey slowly succumbs to the plant's influence and starts to become an animalistic Cheetah Person.

When the Doctor discovers a way back to Earth the Master takes advantage of it and in order to follow him and rescue the other trapped Earthlings the Doctor just might have to sacrifice Ace's humanity... But the Master is on Earth and he has been infected by the planet as well -- enough so that he now sees all around him as prey for the taking....

My Take: Okay, let's get the bad stuff out of the way first... the episode used a mixture of real cats and one animatronic cat as the Kitlings -- the otherwise seemingly ordinary black cats which are actually alien creatures who find the Prey for the Cheetah people on Earth and then facilitate bringing those people to the Cheetah planet to be hunted. The animatronic cat that the special effects department produced was quite bad. Really, really bad. Even by Doctor Who standards. The thing ends up looking rather moth-eaten and less convincing than the animatronic figures at your local carnival. Supposedly the animatronic cat was not supposed to be used very much but the live, trained cats which were hired proved to be less than well trained. Either way, there is no way a person can look at the shots with that blasted fake cat and not laugh.

Then there are the Cheetah People costumes. Reportedly, the costume designer's original idea was that the Cheetah people should look more humanoid. They would have some wigs and hair pieces to give the impression of manes and ruffs of fur but otherwise the Cheetah effect would be achieved through body paint. J N-T, however, wanted the costumes to be more overt and so the actors playing the Cheetah people ended up covered in spotted fun-fur with these large masks which ended up being, well, honestly, more cute and cuddly than ferocious. To make matters worse, in several sequences one can see the gaps at the neck of the mask and see them wobble and shift on the actors' heads as well completely destroying what little illusion there was.

There was also a kind of motorcycle duel between the Doctor and one of Ace's friends, Midge, now Cheetah-infected, that ends rather badly. Apparently the parts which make no sense were a result of the fact that the budget could not be stretched far enough and so some sequences had to be rewritten at the last minute. There were also a few things which J N-T feared would be too violent or intense and would get the show in trouble.

These things aside, the script is actually quite ambitious and effective.

First of all there is the story's initial setting. Perivale is representative of it's time -- the British Council Estates were, by all accounts (and some still are apparently) rather dreary places. This really comes through in the story mostly because the crew chose to actually film in the real Perivale Council Estate.

But the story shows the kind of dead-endness of the life in these types of places. When Ace runs into one of her old friends the girl says in a rather blase tone that everyone thought Ace had died... or gone to Birmingham. The same is true of the other missing persons. No one really cares and no one is surprised that someone might run away and leave no word behind simply to escape the drudgery of life there.

There is also hints of a criminal element and violence. The character of Sgt. Patterson teaches a self-defense class to the people who live there and indicates that he believes these youths must become hard in order to survive... that they must show no mercy to their attackers because their attackers will show no mercy to them. In short, Munro does all she can to blur the lines between the primitive, animalistic Cheetah planet and Perivale.

It has to be said, though, that the themes of "Survival of the fittest" and "Law of the jungle" do get pushed around awfully hard. The audience is rather beaten over the head with the phrases and the ideas and it does not take long before you're tempted to yell at the screen "We know! We get it already!"

There is also another theme running through which is a bit more subtle -- the idea of the violence of the people impacting the planet on the Cheetah world. We see and are told that the more they fight and hunt and kill the more the planet breaks up but at the same time, 1989 was still the era of Margaret Thatcher and George Bush and the Cold War and there were still those threats in our own world -- that the more we fought or came close to fighting the more danger we put our own planet in with the threat of nuclear war.

Another theme which comes through is the idea of the loss of humanity. When Midge kills a defenseless Cheetah person he begins the transformation into a Cheetah person himself. Once he starts down a path of violence without conscience he begins to lose his humanity. Later on the Doctor stops Ace from feeding on a dead animal carcass as even this kind of animal-like feeding would indicate a loss of humanity. As Ace falls under the spell of the planet and the Cheetah woman, Karra, she does break free for a moment when she realizes that Karra and her people hunt humans -- sentient beings -- without compunction or compassion, and Ace realizes how inhuman this is.

And there is the idea of the struggle that humans go through -- even in our pretty little world -- to hide the savagery underneath. The Master, who considers himself a great intellect and a man with supreme control over his emotions must now battle the beast within himself. Even the Doctor's greatest enemy feels something creeping up on him that perhaps even he will not be able to control and that something is his own animalistic nature. And it needs to be mentioned that Anthony Ainley as the Master turns in one of the best performances of his career. For once the Master himself has vulnerabilities and Ainley allows those to show through cracks in the Master's usually smooth veneer.

Then there is the theme of "home". The Kitlings bring the prey home with them to the Cheetah planet to hunt. Only the Cheetah people have the power to cross between the worlds but they cannot go back to Earth because Earth is not their home. So in order to return the Doctor must find... or create... an Earth-born Cheetah person and send them home. For Midge and Ace Earth is home, Perivale is home but also, as Ace comes to realize and finally give voice to -- the TARDIS is her home, her place with the Doctor is her home and the TARDIS is back on Earth. Likewise, when the Doctor again must throw himself from the Cheetah planet back to Earth he ends up right outside his TARDIS -- his home.

And finally, there is the theme of growing up for Ace. In the last several stories of season 26 the writers made it a point to put Ace on a character arc with an eye toward writing her out of the series during season 27 but doing so in such a way as to place her on a totally new track in life. As such the stories "The Curse of Fenric", "Ghost Light" and "Survival" were written to have Ace deal with a lot of the pain of her past and coming to grips with her growing up in the present.

Here she comes home again only to find what once was home has changed drastically. Old friends are gone and the ones who remain have changed -- just as she herself has changed through her travels with the Doctor. This is what happens as one grows up -- you find that time marches on with or without you and that people and places change and sometimes those changes cause you to lose them. Ace quickly realizes that she no longer fits in Perivale.

In that same vein, we see Ace disobeying the Doctor at several points -- breaking free of her father figure -- but turning back at several crucial points and crying for the Doctor to tell her what to do. Of course, the Doctor cannot. She is growing up now; maturing and she must make decisions for herself here.

Another interesting thing about this story is seeing how much it seemed to influence the new series of the show when it returned in 2005. Ace is a tough, streetwise kid who grew up in a council estate and Rose likewise grew up in a council flat. Ace, however, come across as a lot tougher than Rose, there is also a much greater sense that if Ace hadn't met the Doctor she might have ended up at a dead end or even in trouble with the law. Ace also seems to carry inside her more trouble, heartache and pain which are manifest in a fascination with fire and explosions.

But there is a difference here as well. When the new series would visit modern day London it usually felt as if that was the "normal" world and it was the Doctor and the alien bits which didn't fit in. With "Survival" it is the exact opposite. From the start Perivale feels like the alien world and it is actually the Doctor and Ace who seem like the "normal" components here.

By this point in the series McCoy and Andrew Cartmel had also gotten permission to start making the Doctor a darker character and this comes through here as well. The Doctor takes some of the lighter jokes and statements made by the ordinary people living in Perivale and he shows them the darkness lurking just underneath.

For example, a shopkeeper tells his co-worker that old joke about two guys out on safari when they hear a lion outside the tent. One of the adventurers start putting on a pair of running shoes and the other says "You can't outrun a lion." To which his compatriot replies "I don't have to outrun the lion." -- the punchline obviously being that the man only has to outrun his compatriot. The joke loses it's humor, though, when the Doctor steps in and points out that it means one must be willing to sacrifice a friend in order to save one's own skin.

There is also a sense that, once again, the Doctor is manipulating Ace -- even if it is for her own good. He also manipulates others -- like the Sgt. Patterson of the self defense classes.

And McCoy really sinks his teeth into this. He had been pushing for a darker interpretation of the Doctor for some time and having finally gotten his wish he plays it with great relish. One sees how he feels at different points -- those he uses whom he feels bad about using and those whom he does not feel bad about using. Also, his decision to, unlike the Master, be able to control his darker impulses and not give in to violence -- even when facing his worst enemy -- then who has caused him and those he cared about such pain and hardship over the years.

Kudos likewise go to Aldred who manages to convey very well the struggles of a young woman who is moving from childhood into becoming a full fledged adult. And who also manages to convey the emotional baggage of a girl who was brought up in less than ideal circumstances.

As fascinating as the script is, however, it is not without it's flaws -- just like the animatronic cat.

I mentioned before the rewritten scenes which remove some impact. The Doctor's conflict with the Master -- particularly the final fight -- is entirely too short. There is little of the back and forth fans have become used to between the Doctor and the Master and few scenes between them period.

Also, despite all the themes Munro plays with throughout the story it still feels like it has been padded. Ace repeats a line of dialogue almost verbatim twice and a lot of the Master's machinations after returning to Earth seem unfocused, petty, pointless and tacked on to fill out running time.

Overall, though... "Survival" was a good, solid story. As a number of fans and professionals have written over the years, there were signs that the show had finally "turned the corner". They had found their footing, they had started tapping really good writers who had a handle on the characters and they were starting to craft new, interesting stories. The pity was that it came too late.

As a capstone to the entire series up to this point? Well, it is a little lacking. Munro produced a story that was essentially one, long, extended metaphor and there were many points where the dialogue was actually quite poetic as well. It was stuffed to the gills with interesting themes and subtle social commentary and character development but there were still missteps. In places the themes were hammered home with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Dropped from the top of the Empire State Building. In other places the pacing lagged while somewhere else in the story things happened far too quickly.

"Survival" was a story with a message for it's time and place but there are elements which still ring true today and are just as relevant and fascinating and that makes it well worth the time for viewing even if it wasn't the sort of grand finale fans might have wished for the series.

And really, Cartmel's hastily scribbled speech for the Doctor was and remains lovely and there is good reason why fans still return to it over and over again. If anything it does somehow manage to encapsulate what was at the time 26 years of the Doctor...

Grab Bag Reviews: "Castrovalva"

The show had changed lead actor in the Doctor role four times by 1980 but the next change was going to be particularly tricky....

Tom Baker, after seven years, finally decided to give up playing the Doctor. Tried and struggling with burgeoning alcohol and love-life problems the strain on Baker had begun to show on set more and more often.

The big problem was who did one find to replace one of the most popular Doctors in the history of the program? Jonathan Nathan-Turner's response to that was to offer the role to 29 year-old Peter Davison.

J N-T liked Davison as an actor but his motives were not entirely based on an appreciation of Davison's skill. Davison was immensely popular at the time, thanks mostly to his role as Tristan Farnsworth on the hit series All Creatures Great and Small. J N-T knew that anyone following Tom Baker would suffer inevitable comparisons and there would be many viewers who might be tempted to jump ship with his leaving. The hope was that, by signing an already popular actor to the role, fewer people might be tempted to leave and additionally more people who had followed Davison on All Creatures Great and Small but perhaps never or seldom watched Doctor Who might be willing to follow him over. On the other hand, J N-T was taking a risk that long-time fans of the program might consider Davison too young and handsome for the role.

For his part, Davison honestly did wonder if he was too young for the role. He did not immediately jump when offered the part and spent some time considering all of the pros and cons. In the end, though, he knew that Doctor Who was a kind of cultural institution and he might be offered this role only once in his lifetime. In the end, the opportunity to play the Doctor was just too good to pass up. Davison later admitted, though, that once he accepted he drew a blank on just how he wanted to play this new version of the Doctor. In the end he took inspiration from a fan at a Q & A session on a BBC entertainment program. The fans suggested that Davison play the Doctor like Tristan Farnsworth only with bravery and courage.

In addition to Davison, J N-T had steadily been building up the TARDIS team in the waning days of Baker's tenure; thinking that having more familiar companions around might help Davison fitting into the role. Matthew Waterhouse's character of Adric was already well established, having been introduced in "Full Circle". Added to this was Janet Fielding whose character of Australian airline flight attendant Tegan Jovanka had been introduced in Tom Baker's last story "Logopolis". Rounding out the cast was Sarah Sutton. Her character of Nyssa was supposed to be a one-off in the story "The Keeper of Traken" but the production team ended up liking her and thinking she would add something to the mix so she came back for "Logopolis" and stayed to become a permanent companion.

The show also, for once, had the benefit of time. Because Davison had already contracted to do another series the Doctor Who team had to wait to start filming. Because of this they pushed the launch back for a year -- giving them plenty of time to write scripts and start filming episodes. Knowing that Davison would face stiff comparisons with Tom Baker, J N-T wanted Davison to be confident in the role for the first episode since this would be where viewers would get their first good look at him. As such, with the extra time allotted, the decision was made to film Castrovalva fourth.

The King is dead. Long live the King.

The Plot: The Doctor has regenerated after falling from the gantry of the radio telescope at the Pharos Project but something is going wrong! Tegan, Nyssa and Adric struggle to get the Doctor back into the TARDIS. There is no safety even there, though as the Master has set a trap and managed to kidnap Adric and now uses the boy's mind to create illusions and influence the TARDIS. With the Doctor weak and confused, the group of new friends take him to Castrovalva -- where the TARDIS says he will be able to heal. The city of Castrovalva, though, is both more and less than what it seems and the Master is still out there attempting to destroy the Doctor. If this regeneration goes wrong who knows what might happen?

My Take: Bit of an uphill climb here, in more ways than one. I understand writer Christopher Bidmead wanting to inject some dramatic tension and uncertainty here but Davison squanders most of four episodes as the Doctor being befuddled or unconscious. It's tiresome and it doesn't give viewers enough of an idea as to who and what his Doctor is going to be; instead we learn more about the companions.

On the other hand, we can see even more of the Production team's insistence on "hard science" creeping into the stories. There are discussions of recursion in mathematics, "hydrogen inrush" causing the 'Big Bang', and the effects of mass on thrust in space flight. There's also a healthy dose of the works of M.C. Escher who mixed math, art and visual illusion.

The performances are roundly about what you would expect. There are some really lovely turns by the guest cast as the inhabitants of Castrovalva but Anthony Ainley as the Master is.... well, let's just say Ainley had a reputation of loving to ham things up whenever he appeared as the Master. There are some who love this aspect of the performance from him and some who are less than thrilled. Matthew Waterhouse has some good moments -- for example, when Adric tries to distract the Pharos Project guards by claiming to be an alien (which, of course, he is) -- but he also does his fair share of going over-the-top while imprisoned by the Master. Sarah Sutton turns in a pretty good performance as Nyssa -- in particular she really sells the idea of Nyssa slowly growing to become friends with Tegan instead of just traveling companions. Janet Fielding's Tegan would later get a reputation for being loud and argumentative but in these early days that isn't so much in evidence. Instead she comes off as forceful and determined and actually very caring. And then there is Davison. Reportedly Davison did enjoy those moments where he goes about imitating the Doctor's previous incarnations. While Davison is something of a poor mimic (sorry, but it's true) it does lend a little something to the idea that the regeneration is unstable and instead of elements only of his previous self bleeding through ALL of his previous incarnations are bleeding into his current one. It does take a bit for Davison to get going, thanks mostly to the script, but once he does viewers can see the Doctorly elements creeping in. With Davison, though, unlike with Matt Smith who also had youth working against him, there is little about his performance that seems necessarily 'alien'. There is intelligence and a certain amount of sympathy and sensitivity but there is little here that sets his Doctor apart from humanity and I think that makes it a bit harder to accept him as authentically a 'Doctor' right out of the gate.

Of benefit here is the fact that there are few special effects really -- most everything is accomplished with sets and camera trickery and that helps the series immensely. There are also some really nice sets which, for a change, aren't woefully overlit and there is some absolutely gorgeous location footage which really does convince the viewers that the setting for Castrovalva is a place of peace, tranquility and simplicity.

Overall, "Castrovalva" perhaps isn't the best 'Changing of the Guard' story but it is better than some with some well written and well performed scenes and lines of dialogue which really stick with you. Plus, "Logopolis" and "Castrovalva" together actually flow one into the other in such a smooth way that they feel like one, continuous story which is a nice effect and something that few other regeneration sequences can boast of.

Trivial Pursuit:

When the Doctor is wandering through the TARDIS looking for the Zero Room he imitates his First incarnation, his Third incarnation (complete with mention of the Brigadier), and his Second incarnation (including calling Adric 'Jamie').

Later, when looking at himself in a mirror, he spots a recorder lying around and picks it up and tries to play it with little success. This is a reference to his Second incarnation -- who occasionally liked to play a recorder. Obviously his musical ability has been lost somewhere down the line in subsequent regenerations.

Curiously, the First Doctor didn't know what cricket was but by this time the Fifth Doctor finds an entire room filled with cricketing clothes and equipment.

The Doctor seems to have acquired a power wheelchair somewhere over the years.

When trying to tell Nyssa and Tegan how to escape from the Master's first trap the Doctor mentioned reversing the polarity of the neutron flow -- this was a phrase particularly associated with the Third Doctor.

He also calls Tegan 'Jo' -- which was the name of one of the Third Doctor's assistants.

He mentions K-9 -- which was the little electronic dog which, in various incarnations, traveled with the Fourth Doctor.

Grab Bag Reviews: "State Of Decay"

What do you get when you mix Bram Stoker with Doctor Who?

"State of Decay"

As per usual, a little background to this story before we delve into the more review-like aspect of these posts...

Back in 1974 with new Doctor Tom Baker came a new script editor in Robert Holmes and a new producer in Philip Hinchcliffe. Holmes and Hinchcliffe shared a vision of proving just how far the format of Doctor Who could be stretched and so they began mixing the stories with elements of Gothic horror and mystery. In the process they pulled from some of the great stories of Victorian fiction... Mary Shelly's Frankenstein became "The Brain of Morbius", Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde became "Planet of Evil", and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were given tribute with "The Talons of Weng Chiang". Yet throughout all the stories one of the iconic monsters Hinchcliffe and Holmes never got to was Count Dracula. There had actually been a vampire story planned, written by veteran Doctor Who writer and former script editor Terrance Dicks but the script was quashed when the BBC planned an expensive adaptation of Bram Stoker's original novel and feared Doctor Who doing a vampire story would lower the perception of the other production.

Fast forward to 1979. Producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner (hereafter J N-T because I'm not typing all that out over and over again) found himself in a not-at-all-unusual place for a Doctor Who producer -- short on scripts and short on time. Feeling pressure, J N-T delved into the unproduced script files for the show and found himself reasonably attracted to Dicks' vampire story. Because of the passage of time, Dicks was asked to re-write the script to suit a different set of companions. There was also a clash as script editor Christopher Bidmead had wanted the show to move out of the realm of science-fantasy and back into more traditional science-fiction and asked that Dicks include more science and pseudo-science in the story -- something that irritated Dicks. Eventually, however, differences were ironed out.

Besides the script problems there was trouble on the set. Baker and co-star Lalla Ward (Romana) had been in an often-turbulent relationship. Part of the filming for this episode coincided with a period in which the two had broken up. Baker had also been ill for quite some time unable to get the rest he needed to get better. On top of all of this new cast member Matthew Waterhouse was not working out well. He was an extremely novice actor and some on the set felt he was disrespectful of cast and crew.

"State of Decay" would be part of a three-serial story arc which became known as "The E-Space Trilogy". Bidmead and J N-T had envisioned these stories as setting the stage for Tom Baker leaving the show. The trilogy featured the Doctor and Romana being trapped in a kind of alternate universe known as "E-Space". Over the course of the series long-time companions Romana and K-9 would depart, a new character, Adric, would be introduced and the whole would emphasize a theme of entropy, decay, and death as the Fourth Doctor's own "death" approached.

And now... on with the show!

The Plot: The Doctor and Romana continue to search for a way out of E-Space and back to their own universe of N-Space. Finding signs of technology on a nearby planet they land only to discover the population is at a medieval level, gathered around a castle and reliant on the "Lords" for protection. These Lords, however, exact a heavy price -- they keep the populace ignorant, have forbidden the use of technology, and regularly send guards into the village to take away the youngest and strongest of them... people who are rarely seen again.

The Doctor and Romana investigate and soon discover that the people on the planet came from an Earth exploration ship which also ended up in E-Space. Disturbingly, the Doctor and Romana learn that all is not what it might be with the Lords. The Doctor is reminded of an old Time Lord legend... that once there was a race of Great Vampires which threatened all the universe and the Time Lords went to war to stop them...

When stowaway Adric goes looking for the Doctor and Romana he soon falls into the hands of the Lords and Romana ends up in their clutches while trying to rescue him. Now it's up to the Doctor to finish a war that was started milennia ago and he has to finish it before his friends and traveling companions suffer a fate worse than death!

My Take: Despite all of the tensions on-set, off-set, on-screen and behind the scenes this story stands tall. It is rather obviously a throwback to the Gothic horror themed stories of Hinchcliffe's era and, as such, it does sit uneasily amongst not only the rest of the E-Space Trilogy but among the rest of the season as a whole as well. Still, there is no denying the powerful horror imagery and the tips of the hat to the Hammer Horror tradition. Of course, the show took some lumps from critics for the amount of blood and the bloody overtones.

The backstage tensions aside, most of the actors turn in excellent performances. After years in the role, the Doctor comes to Tom Baker as naturally as breathing. Much of his trademark madcap humor is toned down this episode, though, which helps to bring home the horror. A particular short-cut trick the writers sometimes relied upon is employed -- making the audience fear the bad guy because the Doctor is afraid of them. In this case it comes in rather handy since the primary villains the audience sees are the Lords and the Great Vampire himself does not appear until near the end. Having the Doctor seem intimidated and at a loss on how to stop the Great Vampire increases the threat level without needing to see the villain.

Lalla Ward's Romana is a bit weaker here than she has been in previous stories. She is less snarky with the Doctor, less witty, and takes the lead less often as well. While this is a bit disappointing for fans of the character it can be chalked up to Terrance Dicks having to write for a character he was not very familiar with. Of course, in those scenes where Romana is given a chance to shine Ward gives it her all.

Matthew Waterhouse though... Adric. Bane of most Doctor Who fans' existence. He rather quickly became and remains the character most fans love to hate. It's sadly easy to see why. Adric is smug, naive to the point of stupidity at times, and annoying and Waterhouse's lack of experience as an actor did not help him make anything more of the role or endear him to the audience.

The special effects have, sadly, not all held up well. Scenes of outer space have a distinctly greenish hue and in at least one scene of the TARDIS flying the "stars" are overlayed on top of the TARDIS. Likewise, the first images of the Great Vampire are not so great -- looking like a rubber hand puppet... which, eventually becomes a rubber hand itself. On the flip side, the costuming here is gorgeous, the face-paint used for the Lords conjure up the idea of abstract "wings" but lend an air of 'alienness' to the proceedings, the interior of the "castle" is well-done and the sequence where the Lords age to death actually still looks pretty darn freaky even today.

Overall, a nice, creepy story that pays tribute to the vampire horror stories of the past and yet gives everything a fun sci-fi twist. If you're looking for something different to watch at Halloween grab "State of Decay" and turn out the lights... if you dare.

Grab Bag Reviews: "The Five Doctors"

The thing about the "grab bag" review format is that it does produce some weird results. I've reviewed one First Doctor story and one Fourth Doctor story and suddenly I've got to review a special, anniversary episode from 1983!



Oh well, I obey the rules of the "bag" and so.....

THE FIVE DOCTORS

I have to say that this story had such a long, involved incubation that I could actually write a Master's Thesis length document just on what went wrong (and right) about the genesis of the episode. I will, however, spare whoever is reading this that and try to keep things simple while still giving some idea of the scope involved.

A little background: 1973 marked the 10th anniversary of Doctor Who and the event was commemorated then by gathering the (then) three actors who had played the Doctor into an adventure called "The Three Doctors". The story seemed to "have it all" -- Time Lords, three incarnations of the Doctor, and even a Time Lord villain.... who was NOT the Master.

Even before 1983 rolled around, producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner was planning for the show's 20th anniversary and he wanted it to be bigger and better than the previous one. To that end he set about securing a script writer and lining up casts. He wanted to get every single surviving actor who had played the Doctor (William Hartnell, the First Doctor, having passed away in 1975) and several of the more popular companions who had been associated with the various Doctors.

Almost immediately there were problems. The original writer was having trouble with the story and eventually bowed out. He was replaced by show staple writer Terrance Dicks. Also, a great many of the original proposed cast members ended up either being unable to participate or else were forced to bow out before filming. Almost fatally, there was, apparently, a miscommunication between Nathan-Turner and actor Tom Baker in which Nathan-Turner believed that Baker was a lock for reprising his role as the Fourth Doctor while Baker has claimed that he had initially responded that he wanted time to think it over and eventually decided to opt out. Baker had, after all, only left the role about three years earlier and in those intervening years had found himself typecast.

With the Fourth Doctor out this put a strain on the script. One of the original ideas for the script was that the main villains would be the Cybermen and that they would create an android duplicate of the First Doctor and his granddaughter Susan and this would explain away the changed appearance as they hired a different actor to play Hartnell's role. They also felt that since this First Doctor would, in essence, be an impostor, it would still honor the memory of Hartnell by NOT actually recasting the role. With the Fourth Doctor out, however, the story was now shaping up to be more like "The Three Doctors and the Android Impostor Doctor". Nathan-Turner had discussed matters with Hartnell's widow and, to his surprise and delight, she actually gave permission for him to go ahead and recast the role. As such actor Richard Hurnall was approached to play the First Doctor. As for Tom Baker's part Nathan-Turner was still set on having all five Doctors appear in the story and as such he used a few clips from the unfinished and unaired Fourth Doctor story "Shada" to represent the Fourth Doctor in the story.

Finally, there was the matter of scheduling. With the way Doctor Who seasons were running at that time the previous series ended in March of 1983 with Fifth Doctor Peter Davison filming a sitcom during the off season before coming back to Doctor Who. In order to fit everything in Nathan-Turner received permission to film "The Five Doctors" as a movie-length episode and push back the start of the next season to fit it in. As a final flourish, he decided to have the movie debut during the BBC's annual telethon "Children in Need" -- a telethon to raise money for various children's services and charities.

As time approached for the story to air the episode was heavily advertised. Nathan-Turner planned a series of publicity photographs for the story and wanted all of the Doctors to appear in them. Tom Baker's refusal to participate left something of a noticeable gap so, rather infamously, Nathan-Turner arranged to borrow Baker's wax figure from Madame Tussuad's wax museum in London and the rest of the cast members posed with this.

Five years after the story originally aired the decision was made to "remaster" the story, adding some cut scenes and "improving" some of the special effects. Some fans, however, were not pleased with the "improvements" and as a result a special edition of the DVD was eventually produced which contained BOTH the original 1983 transmission as well as the longer, and improved later version. This review will actually consider both versions.

MY TAKE:

Well. There is something to be said for the fact that, until the abysmal "Dimensions in Time" special in the 1990's (I'll get to that one later) this was the last multi-Doctor story featuring as many of the Doctors as possible. With the passage of time Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee have joined William Hartnell in the Great Beyond and Tom Baker, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy no longer look so well, nor is their health always so great. I'm NOT saying they're going to pop off the mortal coil anytime soon, I'm just saying they aren't the Doctors they were. There was "Time Crash" but that's another thing I'll get around to later. Let's just leave it at "The Five Doctors" was pretty much the Last Great Multi-Doctor Story.

It does indeed seem to have everything fans could want -- iconic companions like Susan, Sarah Jane, Jamie, Zoe, K-9 and the Brigadier, iconic enemies like the Master, Daleks, Cybermen, and Yeti, and iconic places like Gallifrey and it's culture and history. The story is drenched in nostalgia both old and new -- everything from the Second Doctor's fur coat to the Third Doctor's yellow roadster Bessie, to the Doctor's friend and mentor Borusa -- not seen too long before. Upon the first airing in November 1983 it must have been like a fans' early Christmas and even for subsequent generations there is a magic in the first viewing -- it feels like everything fans love about Doctor Who.

Unfortunately, subsequent viewings over time seem to rub the shine off. Once one gets past all the bright, shiny, fan-y stuff it is too easy to start seeing all the plot holes left in a script that was sadly written and re-written. Things such as the First Doctor referring to his age and implying he is old when he is, in fact, the youngest of them and the Fifth Doctor being called a "young man" by his other selves when they know good and well that he's older than each of them. There is also the fact that we know the Doctors are being taken out of their relative places in the timeline yet the Third Doctor greets the Brigadier as if he hadn't seen him in a long time. This makes no sense since, by the Third Doctor's timeline he had probably seen the Brig not that long ago. And I could go on... but that would get nitpicky. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of things that don't add up. And then the [fill in the blank] of Rassilon gets a little laughable after a while... Black Scrolls of Rassilon, Coronet of Rassilon, Harp of Rassilon for goodness sake! It's all a bit too much.

Also, after "The Deadly Assassin" the show increasingly went to Gallifrey so what was once a mysterious and seemingly cold, hidebound society became something more familiar... and govenmentally bureaucratic. With "The Five Doctors" it feels almost as if all the alienness has been worn off of Time Lord society and the whole thing bears the stamp of modern, human politics.

As for the rest of the story -- most of the performances are delightful. Carol Ann Ford (Susan) is not given very much to do, really, but in her cries of "Grandfather!" viewers can hear the young Time Lady she once was. Although throwing in her twisting her ankle JUST to have her do a ankle twisting scene as a tribute to the past is eye-rollingly bad. Likewise, Mark Strickson, who played the Fifth Doctor's companion Vislor Turlough, gets sidelined throughout most of the story and given some of the most inane and pointless lines of dialog. This is doubly sad since his character had only recently polished off a big character arc. Janet Fielding as Tegan manages to hold her own, Elizabeth Sladen recaptures the different relationship she had with Jon Pertwee's Doctor and it works well and warmly, and Nicholas Courtney is a Brigadier-y as he ever was.

In regards to the Doctors... Richard Hurndall turns in a decent performance but he is simply not William Hartnell and seeing him just seems like a poor copy of the original... something that is a disservice to both Hurndall AND Hartnell. Peter Davison holds his own amongst such a famous and talented bunch of actors and really projects a sense of his version of the Doctor as the 'peacemaker', trying to keep the more fractious among his past selves from starting fires. Too bad he never gets to interact that much with the other Doctors -- it would have been delightful to see him get to do whole scenes with Pertwee and Troughton as he does with Hurndall. Troughton... Troughton just slips back into being the Doctor with the same ease as he slips into the fur coat. He bickers humorously with the Brigadier and with a genuine warmth and ease and yet there is also the dark side to him. It is Troughton's Doctor who admits that Rassilon may not have been the lauded hero Time Lord history has made him out to be... and he implies that he seems inclined to believe these darker tales. Jon Pertwee is ever the man of action and it is fun seeing him face off against the Master... even is it isn't the version of the Master he once knew.

The story also falls down a bit on the villain. It is supposed to be a shocking twist to fans but really it feels more like a sudden and inexplicable heel turn for the character. There is also the fact that viewers are being so obviously led to think this might be the Master that it does the opposite... viewers know it CAN'T be the Master because it's so obvious.

There is also the sequence where the Cybermen are decimated by the Raston Warrior Robot. Okay, so the robot costume hasn't aged well -- it looks like what it is -- a dancer in a silver bodysuit with a zipper up the back. But the robot itself is still a really good idea and the scenes of it slicing through the Cybermen like a hot knife through butter are chilling. It's made even more chilling by the rather graphic violence of it. Cybermen get arms snapped off, heads lopped off, chests blown open... one even actually looks like he vomits before expiring... it's all a bit terribly disturbing even today.

For the story itself, it must really be viewed on two levels. One level, as a fan in which critical thinking flies out the window. The performances are spot-on and it is a delight to see the past Doctors having a romp again. It also puts a smile on your face to see and hear some old familiar favorites such as Bessie and "You've redecorated.... I don't like it." The other level, as a logical, more critical viewer in which it must be admitted that the story is thin and filled with more plot holes than a piece of swiss cheese and in which several characters which deserve to be treated better basically get benched.

I did say as well that I was going to look at BOTH versions... Well, all things considered, the later version doesn't differ all that much from the original transmission. The extended scenes really don't add all that much to the story and, in most cases, the improved special effects are not so great. In the 1983 version each Doctor and companion are pursued by a black, trapezoidal shape and, when captured, their faces appear inside the trapezoid, frozen in expressions of fear and/or panic. It is actually a scary moment because, not only do we not know what is going on, it looks as though the act of taking the Doctors and their friends might actually be painful to them... this is hurting them. The later version replaced these black trapezoids with swirling, spiral cone shapes in which the images can vaguely be seen inside but not with any degree of clarity. On the one hand, they look better but on the other hand they do not convey the menace of the original.

Likewise, the original ending in which all the Doctors and their respective companions seem to enter the same TARDIS to go home only to see TARDISes split off and fly away was sweet even if the special effects for it look a little clunky today. Having the spiral cones take them all back home in the remastered edition does not seem to have the same charm.

The DVD is also absolutely packed with extras. The also interestingly split up the commentary tracks with the actors who played the companions providing an often irreverent commentary on the 1983 edition while Peter Davison and script writer Terrance Dicks provide a more technical commentary on the remastered version. There is also a lovely, lovely Easter Egg (and no, I can't tell you how to find it) of Tenth Doctor David Tennant, new series producer Phil Collinson and

new series script writer Helen Raynor providing commentary on the episode from the viewpoint of having been fans and actually watched the story when it first aired. There are also the other goody bag extras like outtakes, bloopers, a documentary on how the story came about (really interesting stuff there), publicity interviews and much more.

Overall, if you're a real fan then the 25th Anniversary Edition of "The Five Doctors" is a must have. Just make sure you turn off the critical and logical portions of your brain before you sit down to watch it. Put yourself in fan mode and enjoy the ride as this would be the last time we would see some of these actors working together as their wise, weird, and wonderful versions of the Doctor.