Castrovalva

A new Doctor at last - Peter Davison

So at long last we have a new Doctor. Peter Davison appears on screen properly as the Doctor for the first time in ‘Castrovalva’, however this is in fact the fourth story that he has recorded. The second story chronologically, ‘Four to Doomsday’, was the first recorded and he has much shorter hair in that one.

Again, Christopher H. Bidmead has written the story, and sadly it makes less sense than Logopolis. I can’t say I was very taken with the tale. It’s not very exciting, it’s a concept piece perhaps, and as the opening story to a new Doctor it was a very poor choice. Doctor Who at this point moved to a twice-weekly slot over two nights a week, the first day-shift the programme has experienced. Although Season 17 rated its socks off, the ratings for Season 18 were as bad as the series had seen in 12 years, and as an overall season I think the lowest average.

The Doctor tries to prevent the destruction of the TARDIS.

Quite a shift from the (admittedly aided by strikes at ITV) ratings of Season 17 which contained ‘City of Death’, the highest rated story of all time, at around 17 million for one episode. In contrast 4-6 million was more the norm for season 18, season 19 saw those figures pretty much double in the new time slot.

BUT I digress, again. Christopher H. Bidmead comes across as being very full of himself on the DVDs, and quite frankly I don’t know why. He had a vision for the show, but after only one year became the outgoing script editor in favour of Antony Root. He still had given himself the power by writing Tom Baker’s last tale and Peter Davison’s first. ‘Castrovalva’ continues from where Logopolis left us, the Master is still hanging around.

It’s a story of two halves – the first is completely centred around the TARDIS and the Doctor’s failing regeneration, the second in the land of Castrovalva. Note that this story, like Logopolis, has an ambiguous sounding name based on a location of the story.

The Doctor arrives in Castrovalva.

Not since the heady days of William Hartnell had the production team decided to use the TARDIS so much, or explore it so heavily. They needn’t have bothered. It’s white and uninteresting and apart from the odd room it’s mostly corridors. The Doctor seeks refuge in the zero room, which is a nice idea and it doesn’t look too bad. The whole TARDIS should have been that soft pink colour, might have looked better!

Communicating to Castrovalvans isn't so easy.

The Master has set a trap, using a projection of Adric (I think) to set the co-ordinates for ‘Event One’, the hydrogen in-rush which began the Universe, he hopes to destroy the Doctor that way. Adric is stuck in a web for most of the story, in the Master’s TARDIS creating things, and several projections of himself that run around and do stuff. With the regeneration failing, this was not the wisest choice by Bidmead because Nyssa and Tegan are left trying to help the Doctor but they haven’t reallyhad much of a relationship with him beforehand, there’s no history. In fact, Tegan isn’t even a willing companion at all. Narratively it would have made more sense for Nyssa to be trapped in the web, I believe.

There’s not a lot of action until part four. Part One starts a bit lively as they are chased to the TARDIS, but then it’s wandering through corridors mostly. Oh, big finish. More time in the TARDIS in episode two, but eventually they arrive on Castrovalva after some awful dialogues about Index Files which really is squirm material. Not the actors’ fault – Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton do a great job delivering Bidmead’s wordy scientific rubbish. The rest of the episode is them wandering through the forest towards Castrovalva, a citadel atop some rocks.

The Master finally decides it's time to kill the Doctor.

Episode Three and the Doctor starts to recover, they are taken in to Castrovalva, we meet a whole bunch of other characters, something is wrong, build, episode end. Episode four they work out that Castrovalva is suffering from ‘recursion’, obviously Bidmead’s favourite word of the day he thought he would turn into a story. Turns out one of the people from Castrovalva – the Portrieve, is in fact the Master! Anthony Ainley starts to camp it up a bit. ‘Castrovalva’ was all a plan to, as far as I can see, catch the Doctor and destroy him, which disguised at the Portrieve the Master had plenty of chances to do.

Suddenly the people of Castrovalva, also created as part of this plot by the Master, realise he’s bad and attack him. Behind a tapestry we find Adric and the web! The Doctor pulls Adric out and the run away, to find recursion really taking hold of Castrovalva now. They have a lot of difficulty in working out how to get out! Luckily Adric created the place and he can see the way out. The Master is not so lucky and is still inside when the citadel disappears.

Space folds in on itself. Like so.

All that to just kill the Doctor? Because the ‘Event One’ thing didn’t work? Bah! Rubbish utter rubbish. It’s the first story of a new Doctor, you don’t want to spend most of the time working out what’s going on, you want to see what the new guy has to offer. And Peter Davison is a little in consistent to be honest. However, he’s just regenerated and it’s all within the bounds of what could be. Cast-wise it’s strong. It’s just so pointless! It’s not very engaging and quite boring at times to be honest. As a first story, I would have preferred to see a bit of action, and get to see more of Peter Davison as he takes the reins.

4/10

The Invisible Enemy

Tom Baker and Frederich Jaeger

If only it WAS invisible! Surely this should be renamed ‘The Killer Prawn’ or something? It’s been a long time since we’ve had such a poor story, but Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s ‘The Invisible Enemy’ has some pretty shockingly-bad moments. As with any bad-who though, it’s far from being ALL bad. The ideas behind the story were interesting, but perhaps it was simply asking too much of the production team to deliver everything that was in the script.

Worse than the prawn, the enemy looked like
this inside the Doctor's head!

Let’s remember that Doctor Who was and IS made for kids first, despite its huge adult following, the idea of cloning the Doctor and Leela, shrinking them down to microscopic size and then having them walk around in the Doctor’s head is rather interesting. Of course, it was always going to be very hard to portray convincingly on television, especially in a story which already appeared to have a lot more sets than your normal Doctor Who story. Various rooms, corridors, the hatchery on Titan, the hospital on the asteroid, the Titan space craft and the inside of the TARDIS. PLUS all the different parts of the Doctor’s brain. It was bound to stretch the budget too far. And it did. Parts of the brain interior are fine, others are very tatty.

Inside the Doctor!

And what do you find at the centre of the Doctor’s brain, hiding away? A giant prawn. Words do not exist to describe perfectly how unconvincing this prawn was. This was the nucleus of the swarm, who run around controlling people’s minds saying ‘contact has been made’. Then some grey scaly stuff appears on everyone’s faces.

The swarm leader infects the Doctor, who becomes the key to it all, but he tries to resist. Leela is rejected because she is not smart enough! They land on Titan where they meet Lowe, holding out against the rest of the crew who have been infected. When he become infected he puts on a giant mask to conceal his face. As if anyone would  be fooled by that! Then he takes the Doctor away from Titan when ordered to protect the Doctor at all costs.

Instead he directs the Doctor, via TARDIS, to the hospital in the asteroid belt. The Doctor tells Leela the co-ordinates – she can suddenly operate the TARDIS it appears. Turns out this is the perfect place to determine the infection and find an antidote! Not good thinking by Lowe – played by Michael Sheard, now in his fourth Doctor Who story.

In his third Doctor Who story is Frederick Jaeger playing... you guessed it, another scientist! Professor Marius is a little quirky, with a slightly German accent (naturally) and a robot-dog assistant called K-9, who ends up going off with the Doctor. As the story progresses the Doctor ends up blowing

Leela and K-9

everything up on Titan where the swarm is about to hatch, ably supported by Leela and K-9, who work well together, although Leela does kind of feed K-9 the questions in dutiful companion-like manner.

The fourth episode in particularly feels like it was a struggle to make and act in. ‘The Invisible Enemy’ was directed by Derrick Goodwin, his first Doctor Who story and he seems to have struggled. The effects shots are a mixed bag for instance, some work well, others of the shuttle for example appear to be bouncing around on a string. Shots are held a little too long in places, and especially in the final episode pauses between lines or reaction is very stilted. When the Doctor dematerialises without Leela Leela watches, and waits a number of seconds to stand up and call out after the TARDIS has disappeared. Needed a more honest, faster response.

It's the giant prawn!

Design-wise they did the best they can, and I’m sure we can say the same for Derek Goodwin. I imagine it was a nightmare to direct, one of the most technically demanding. Some of the dialogue is poor and not in keeping with what Tom and Louise Jameson were used to I think. The prawn is sadly laughable and spends far to much time on screen. The script could have done with a bit of refining too.

5/10

The Pyramids of Mars

Stephen Harris wrote this story. No wait, he didn’t really, it was mostly Robert Holmes after the original author, Lewis Griefer (?) wasn’t able to do the re-writes. Although the first Doctor spent a few episodes of ‘The Daleks’ Masterplan’, this is the first time Egyptology was explored in Doctor Who, and with the Doctor’s penchant for time travelling and the wealth of literature out there using this topic to create fiction, it’s a bit of a surprise.

Mummies guard the pyramid missile.

The script weaves Gods from Egyptian Mythology into a science fiction story loosely connected to pyramids on Mars which hold Sutekh prisoner. Sutekh is not the most mobile of foes, being stuck in a chair for much of the story, and then becoming a horse faced-thing as he starts to escape in episode four, but the voice is just chilling. Gabriel Woolf, the actor, took the decision not to make him a loud raving maniac, something of a surprising choice for a Doctor Who villain, and it was the perfect choice. I’m still a little confused how a doorway in a tomb in Egypt led to his chamber on Mars, but not everything has to make sense in the world of Doctor Who, right?

Of course, this story has roots in hammer horror. ‘The Mummy’ is a famous movie, which has been remade more than once since its original production back in the 1930s (I think). Modern audiences though may think the Brendan Frazer version of ‘The Mummy’ was a rip off of ‘The Pyramids of Mars’ lol. Ok, maybe not. Holmes has gone down the path here of everything having a sort of scientific explanation.

Peter Copley and Bernard Archard

Paddy Russel, the woman behind ‘Invasion of the Dinosaurs’, directs wonderfully in ‘Pyramids of Mars’, getting fine performances out of her cast – a small but perfectly chosen troupe of actors. Bernard Archard as Marcus Scarman is the standout – and on the DVD we see he hasn't aged so much since this 1976 production! Michael Sheard returns for his third Doctor Who role, playing the rather annoying blabbering brother, Lawrence Scarmen. Even the bit parts of Doctor Warlock (Peter Copley) and the poacher (George Tovey) were clearly astute pieces of casting.

Marcus Scarmen gets a rare insight into the TARDIS.

It’s a story about atmosphere more than anything else, helped by wonderful sets and props and the location shooting around a house owned by Mick Jagger at the time! Some bits were a bit dubious – the pyramid shaped rocket that was going to be fired at Mars for instance, but there is a sense something is building throughout, and we have the curious scene in the TARDIS where the Doctor shows Sarah what 1980 would look like if Sutekh wasn’t stopped. It wasn’t  a bad idea as the audience might argue that clearly the world didn’t end in 1911, when the story was set.

More mummies, this time on Mars.

The final episode though is a bit of a letdown. It has a ‘Terry Nation- City of the Exxilons’ feel to it as the Doctor and Sarah  follow Marcus Scarman to the centre of the Osirins’ prison for Sutekh. There’s questions and tasks that appear to be mostly padding. A good use of CSO though by the director – that’s not something I say often. And I liked the resolution, moving the end of the time corridor Sutekh was escaping through so far in the future he was dead before he could leave it. The Doctor and Sarah leave, the only survivors of any characters in the story, a bit sad really.

Sutekh, 

This is regarded as a gem, a serious Doctor Who classic. It’s certainly worthy of high praise, but I think there are better stories out there too. It’s direction, atmosphere and characterisations are very strong.

8.5/10

The Mind of Evil

Coloured again - episode one thanks to Babelcolour

If I loved Don Houghton’s first Doctor Who story, ‘Inferno’ (which I did) he was going to have a lot to live up to in his second story, ‘The Mind of Evil’, and he didn’t disappoint! ‘The Mind of Evil’ is a cracking tale that never lets up over six episodes. Recently returned to colour, the DVD is fantastic. The colour results on this one are far superior to that of ‘Ambassadors of Death’, and episode one was re-colourised from scratch by the incredibly talented ‘Babel Colour’.

Firstly, it is probably the most adult-orientated story I have seen in Doctor Who. Some stuff is pretty

confronting and pretty ‘real’ for want of a better word. Much of the story is set in a prison, and the sets are superb, and the director, Timothy Coombe, achieved a genuine feel of a prison, rather than a pantomime ‘don’t scare the kids to much’ feel that they might have gone for a year earlier.

The direction on this one is absolutely top-notch, and I was saddened to find this was Coombe’s last contribution to Doctor Who. Having overspent and having to remount a day’s filming, Producer Barry Letts decided not to re-engage the director and was clearly not happy. Personally I think it was worth it. The scenes when UNIT storms the prison are excellent, but hey, so is the whole story.

The Doctor is subjected to the Keller Machine.

Houghton very cleverly ties three strands of story together – the prison, the peace conference and the moving of a gas missile. He weaves the Master into the plot wonderfully and has created the Keller machine that sucks evil out of people, and then uses that evil to attack others. But my favourite bit of scripting is the use of the character ‘Barnum’, played by Neil McCarthy. The prisoner receiving the Keller process at the start of the story is only in the periphery for the next five and a bit episodes, displaying a child-like understanding of the world with ALL his evil impulses removed. Then suddenly it turns out he is the key to controlling the Keller machine in the last fifteen minutes. Wonderful use of re-incorporation, although a sad ending to the story.

Mailer (left) with Doctor Summers at gunpoint.

Which is fine – in fact the gravity and sadness of what has gone on through the story dictates that it’s not going to be all smiles and happiness when the machine is dealt with, and it’s nice to see the Doctor and Jo (especially) aggrieved over the death of Barnum, as so many on-screen deaths in Doctor Who are somewhat glossed over.

There’s a fair bit centred around the Chinese delegation at the Peace conference, and it’s interesting that back in 1970-71 they considered China to be such an important player on the world stage. Consider today they are pretty much the most powerful country on the Earth, it’s a good piece of prediction. The only downside to the

scenes in the Chinese delegate’s rooms is the dragon which isn’t so convincingly done, but they worked hard to use authentic language and had people who were actually Chinese playing the Chinese parts. Something else they are to be commended on.

Don Houghton, I have found out, never wrote another Doctor Who story which is truly a pity. His scripts presented real characters in unreal situations, but not situations outside the realms of imagination. ‘The Mind of Evil’ is less apocalyptic than ‘Inferno’, but is still confronting and frightening.

Pik-Sen Lim 

The casting was spot on too. Barnum I have already mentioned, but the casting of William Marlowe as Mailer couldn’t have been more perfect. He was able to portray a believable character that was easy to hate and fear as an audience member. Coombe did well to find good Chinese actors, with Don Houghton’s wife, Pik-Sen Lim, perfect for Captain Chin Lee. Benton has a tough time in this story, but John Levene does an excellent job of collapsing and getting hit on the head. Mike Yates is given some dynamic stuff to do as well, Richard Franklin must have enjoyed this one particularly and nice to see him return and become a regular cast member.

It’s probably Pertwee’s best story to date, as the actor delivers a wonderful monologue to Jo in episode four or five, and all the regulars get a good go. Finally, I must mention Michael Sheard as Doctor Summers, he’s been in everything (and regularly scored roles as Hitler), and this is his second Doctor Who tale – his first ‘The Ark’. Fine piece of acting and casting. Loved this story.

10/10

The Ark

A curious story is this one. It’s very enjoyable for one main reason – it exists! All episodes exist! I didn’t have to watch a reconstruction! So naturally I was happy about that. The story starts off really well and seems to fall slowly from there. The first episode is clearly the best written, acted and directed. We open with elephants, lizards and tropical birds in the amazing Ark set which apparently was made with mostly potted plants. The scale is incredibly impressive, like nothing we’re seen in a previous episodes.

Many Monoids

The Monoids are, as I have heard many found, a disappointment. Elements of the costume are good, the skin looks great, but the costumes are too loose fittings, the wigs stupid and they don’t have a mouth. However, they work well in the first two episodes as friends of the humans. The humans, who have left Earth for the final time before the planet explodes, are journeying for thousands of years to find a new home – Refusis Two. They have taken new friends the Monoids with them.

The Doctor, Steven and new companion Dodo arrive in the jungle area of ‘the Ark’. It would have been nice to get one or two exterior shots of the Ark moving through space. It was supposed to be spherical, like a planet and thusly shouldn’t have been too hard or expensive to do. However, arriving in the jungle with the steel sky is a nice start to the piece, and the director (who was apparently fired just before episode four was shot) Michael Imison really does a great job getting different angles and concealing the extremities of the set. He deserves a lot of credit for his work.

Jackie Lane has a word or two to say to the Monoid

I want to return to the character Dodo. As her accent slowly changes and morphs, I can’t help but feel the addition of her character is very disappointing in so much as we don’t learn anything about her, she runs aboard the TARDIS in the previous story, right at the end, and now it’s like she’s been travelling with the Doctor for a while. I like Dodo, played by Jackie Lane, as a companion. She proves to be bubbly and curious and in her first story is the crux of the plot in her first two episodes as she brings a virus on board that threatens to kill everyone. They are so far in the future they have no resistance to the virus. It’s a great idea, as is the Ark, wonderful science fiction ideas brought to life in the script by Paul Erickson.

Courtroom drama or courtroom farce?

However, episode two descends into a very poorly written and played out courtroom drama. It seems Erickson had no other ideas and needed to fill the 25 minutes somehow. One character, Zentos, is determined to bring down the Doctor and his companions, where as  the controller (Eric Elliot) is fully supportive of the Doctor watching sick through a monitor uttering poorly scripted lines. In the end the Doctor finds a cure and they are released. It’s all a bit ho-hum. They leave the Ark, but then return, 700 years later. They look up at a statue that was to be finished by this time, and instead of a human it has a Monoid head. A truly wonderful cliff-hanger, the best episode ending the series has produced to this point.

The Doctor, Dodo and Steven are thrown into... the SECURITY KITCHEN!

Unfortunately, the story now plummets to pure farce. The Monoids have taken over, but worse than that – they have become stereotypical stupid villains with ridiculous voices. They keep a few humans prisoner, working for them, in the ‘Security Kitchen’. They are bombastic and egotistical and when they travel to Refusis II and encounter the invisible Refusians, are soon defeated. It’s really embarrassing, cheap writing to be honest. The ideas of episode one which impressed me are totally undone by turning the Monoids into atypical stupid monsters.

Hello I'm an evil Monoid making crazy plots. And I find eating very difficulr.

Forget the poor design, these creatures would have held up better if they had kept their friendship with the humans. It was a breath of fresh air to see they weren’t treated in the typical way in the first half, but the last two episodes? Aye aye aye aye.

5/10