Day 585: Castrovalva, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Ah yes, that’s right. This episode contains the bit of Castrovalva that I’ve always thought of as being simultaneously very clever and very confusing. The Doctor manages to work out that everything here is a fictional creation because he’s identified the books as being five hundred years old, and yet they chronicle the history of Castrovalva from centuries ago... right up to the present day. The first time I saw this story, I loved that idea. I thought it was such a clever way of figuring it all out. But ever since, I’ve been confused by it. In yesterday’s episode, we saw a tapestry which records events as they happen. We’re told that only big events - like the arrival of the TARDIS - are enough to make it in to the image, but still... could it not be possible that 500 years ago they started to chronicle the history, and those ancient books are still being automatically updated as things happen? The pages would still be five hundred years old, but the information on them would be right up to date. That’s always been the sticking point for me - it’s a giveaway, yes, but I’m not sure hat there couldn’t be another explanation for it.

I’m impressed, though, that the Doctor works out that things are wrong even as he’s not sure of himself. It’s not really until the end of this episode that he’s managed to settle in to his new persona (and it’s splendid), so even in his varying states of uncertainty about everything, he’s still able to sense when things simply aren’t right. I like that, it seems fitting somehow. It’s great to see him flanked by his three young companions at the end of the story, too. There’s a range of images taken on location of the four lead actors, and this is a great counterpoint to those. The TARDIS hasn’t looked this fresh in years, and I’m really excited about it.

I suppose that I need to mention the Master, too, while I’m discussing this story. I really like his reveal in the narrative, as the Portrieve stands up straight, having been hunched over for every prior appearance, and revealing his true identity. It’s great make up, and I’m not sure that I’d have guessed it was the Master if I’d already known. It feels like a very petty reason for him to appear, though, in that he’s simply looking to destroy the Doctor once and for all. It feels a bit like a step down from the last story - there, he was wiping out half the universe while planning to subjugate the other half, while here he’s just trying to get one over on some bloke. It feels like he’s been around for ages now, so I’m keen to get back to some stories in which he isn’t the villain at the end of it all!

In some ways, Castrovalva is the perfect example of Doctor Who talking a story with a fascinating idea at the heart of it, but not quite being able to pull it off due to time, or budget, or ability. I love the idea of an entire town being based around the work of Escher, and it’s a great cliffhanger to have the entire place collapsing in on itself, but because of the way Doctor Who was made in studio at this point, it just isn’t an idea that can be very well realised. I’d really like to see what they could do with it these days, given the time to really do it properly - the sequence of the Doctor and his companions trying to make their escape would be the subject of a full day’s filming now, whereas they probably had to do it in about twenty minutes originally!

I’m also pleased to say that bringing in a supporting cast has helped to give the story a bit of life. As much as I like our regulars, and I’ve enjoyed their performances so far, it’s nice to see them bouncing off other actors, and being thrown in to a busy setting. I can’t really remember how the story winds up from here, so I’m looking forward to seeing where things go, and then we can move on from the ‘introduction’ story, and start simply enjoying this new era properly.

Day 583: Castrovalva, Episode Two

Dear diary,

There are very few bits of music from ‘classic’ Doctor Who that I can hum off the top of my head. The ‘Space Adventure’ theme that was so typical of the Cybermen in the 1960s is one of them. The ‘UNIT Theme’ from The Invasion (among others) is another one, and the music that accompanies Tom Baker’s regeneration scene, as the camera moves down from the girder to find out hero laying in the grass is another. Although I know these ones well enough to hum them while doing the dishes, the theme from this story is the only one which I occasionally find stuck in my head at the most unusual of moments. Oh, you know the one I mean: do de do de do, do, de do.... I rather like it, and there’s something about it that just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Last season, I mentioned that this period of the programme feels autumnal to me. For some reason, I simply equate it with that tail- end-of-the-year feeling, and perhaps none mores that this tale. I can’t even begin to describe why to you, but I watched this episode with a huge feeling of nostalgia - it just makes me feel comfortable. I can remember the first time I saw this story. It was some time before the DVD came out, and I hadn’t been a fan for all that long. I’d say it was probably around 2005, but it could even be as late as 2006. In the farmhouse I grew up in, I’d converted one of the back bedrooms into my own sitting room, moving in a massive old book case, and a couple of old armchairs when the suite of furniture downstairs had been replaced. This became my den. The walls were covered with posters of anything and everything, and the shelves were filled with as much ‘geeky’ stuff as I could lay my hands on.

Oh, I loved that room. The absolute pride of it was the growing collection of Doctor Who stories sat upon the bookcase. It was an odd assortment - a mixture of VHS and DVD, with the stories slotted in to match broadcast order. I used to pick up odd tapes from charity shops, or make lists of ones from adverts in Doctor Who Magazine to hand around for my birthday, or Christmas. I can’t recall how long I’d actually owned Castrovalva, but it had been on the shelf for a while before I decided to watch it for the first time. What followed was one of the happiest times I’ve ever had watching Doctor Who. I made myself a drink and something to eat, curled up in one of the armchairs with a big quilt wrapped around me, and settled in to enjoy Peter Davison’s first story.

I’d forgotten what an odd opening episode this is for a new Doctor. Having gone with a relatively unknown actor in Tom Baker for the part of the Fourth Doctor, this time around they’ve cast Peter Davison in the role - and he’s somewhat famous at the time of all this, what with his work on All Creatures Great and Small, among  other things. Lots of expectation, all eyes on the first episode of the Fifth Doctor, a show being re-launched in a new slot away from the Saturday night home it’s had for the last eighteen seasons... and they go with showing this.

I think what they needed if they wanted to really sell the idea of a Sarah Jane and K9 spin off was to have something big and spectacular. If nothing else, this went out around Christmas, and while it captures the feel of the winter brilliantly, there’s nothing that really screams at me that this is something I need to be watching. When Sarah announces that she’s come to Morton Harwood for the foreseeable future, you start to wonder if every episode would be like this one. Perish the thought!

It feels like it needs some aliens in there somewhere, really. Probably some from Doctor Who, if they want to sell the idea even harder. Maybe Zygons could work, impersonating the locals? You could go for a Sontaran scout if you wanted (a story like The Last Sontaran from the second series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, for example), or even the Master! As it is, everything feels somewhat wasted - even K9. Once he’s out of his box, he gives us some more thrilling info about the gardening, shoots a few people... and that’s about it. You almost want him to trundle out of the box, announce that he’s been sent by the Doctor-Master to help Sarah Jane with some specific alien threat, and then go from there. Were we not between Doctors, you’d also almost want the TARDIS to appear at the end, so that the Doctor himself can tell Sarah to keep the tin dog (incidentally, I love that the Fourth Doctor’a three main companions - Sarah Jane, Leela, and Romana - have all ended up with their own versions of the mutt.)

It’s quite strange, writing this entry, because I’m suddenly realising that I disliked the story more than I even realised. A shame, because I so want to enjoy is based on everything that came afterwards. Still, as an interesting diversion between Doctors, it’s perfectly watchable - and I don’t know if I’d be so down on it had I not known what it could have been like. I’ll be doing some episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures when the time comes, so here’s hoping that I can see them in a much better light!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 580 Extra: Fourth Doctor Overview

Dear diary,

Well. It feels like a long old time since I’ve had to write one of these entries, doesn’t it? As is tradition, let’s take a look back to my Third Doctor Overview (posted way back on February 4th) and see what I said about the era ahead of me...

And now I’m off into a bold new era. It’s a bit of a false start from tomorrow, because while Tom Baker is new to the mix, we’ve still got the same UNIT lab, with Bessie, and the Brig, and Barry Letts in the producer’s chair. It’s a few days from now, when The Ark in Space rolls around and Philip Hinchcliffe takes over the reigns that I’ll be entering the period that’s repeatedly held up as being ‘the best Doctor Who ever made’.

Most surprising to me was that on average, Tom is actually my least favourite Doctor! With an average of 6.54 across his seven seasons, he comes in marginally behind William Hartnell in the runnings (which also surprises me, because I remember rather liking Hartnell). I guess if there’s a moral to this, it’s that I don’t really have a ‘least favourite Doctor. Not really. He just happens to be my fourth favourite at the moment...

Although this last season has taken place in the 1980s, it’s really the arrival of Davison to the role which kicks off the decade, and it’s not one which is famed for being Doctor Who’s best. I’m keen to get on with it, though, and see what I think... 

Dear diary,

In some ways, it seems almost inconceivable that Tom Baker can have left Doctor Who. He’s been striding his way through time and space for seven seasons, and yet suddenly, as this episode ends, there’s some youthful-looking man laying around, swamped by the over-sized clothes of the Doctor.

I think any story would have a tough job to write out the man whom really does embody the programme. Unfortunately, for me, Logopolis has fallen even shorter than you might expect it to. Let’s start with some positives, though. For a start, this is my favourite episode of the story. Bringing it back down to Earth again really does help, and even though the Pharos Project control room is the same set that we’ve been seeing for a few episodes now, there’s something about seeing a regular person in there, instead of a man in robes with ‘sic fi’ hair, which just makes it so much more relatable.

This is also the signs of our three companion team starting to really gel with each other. Nyssa and Adric had plenty of time during The Keeper of Traken to bond, and it’s great to see how well they work together here, too. Tegan launching herself in to the fray is rather brilliant, too. While I’m still not entirely convinced that she’s been given a proper character yet, there’s some basic elements in here that are starting to feel believable - she helps the Doctor not simply because, as she puts it, he’s her ‘ticket out’ of the situation, but because she can see that he’s a good man, and needs someone at this point in his life.

(Aside-steptomorrow,tocatchupwithSarahJaneandK9,andalsolookbackontheFourthDoctyor\'sera...)

Day 579: Logopolis, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Good news, everyone! I’ve finally managed to understand what Logopolis (the place, not necessarily the story) is all about. I’ve always known the vague specifics of it, but never really got my head around it properly. It actually seems to be quite simple, now - in the same way that the Carrionites can use words as powerful science to make things happen, so too the people of Logopolis are able to use a string of complex mathematics to alter the universe around them. The power of these calculations are so powerful that they can’t be done in something as crude as a computer, because the equations would alter the state of the machinery itself. The only thing capable of withstanding it is a living mind. Ok, great, with it so far.

But that’s not necessarily the interesting part of the idea. I’d never really worked out how the whole idea of entropy factored in to this. The idea that the Universe should have died a long time ago, and that the peoples of this world are keeping it going through the use of their equations is fascinating, and I love that it was they who created the CVE that the TARDIS travelled through earlier in the season to get to E-Space - it just feels like quite a neat idea. It means that I also understand better now why the universe starts collapsing so quickly after the Master has enacted his plan.

Ah, yes, the Master. For every bit of good news, there usually has to be some kind of bad news to balance things out. I’m afraid that today, it has to be him. It feels like the production team have sat down with the plots to all of the Pertwee Master stories and realised that the usual pattern is for the Master to enact some kind of plan to dominate/kill/be generally evil (delete as appropriate), and then find he needs the Doctor’s help once he’s in too deep. In this story, all of that’s been boiled down to this single episode! The Doctor realises that the Master’s target is Logopolis... but... um... why? He doesn’t seem to realise what power the numbers here have, so he can’t be planning to use them to bend the universe to his will. As it stands, it looks like all of this was simply because he wanted to know why they’d build a big radar dish in the middle of their city. And the Doctor thinks that curiosity is his own downfall!

While I’m on the subject of companions... Tegan. It’s been an odd introduction for her character - possibly the oddest since Dodo (and perhaps even more so than that one!). Her three episodes so far have been something of an emotional roller coaster for her, but I really can’t decide if I’m liking the way she’s been written or not. She seems to settle in perfectly well when confronted with an alien world, taking it all in her stride. She’s believably upset when she discovers that her aunt has been murdered (the fact that you hear her crying in the background for a minute or so even after she’s left the screen and the focus isn’t on her is a beautiful touch), but then she’s all but forgotten it a few scenes later... by the end, when she’s against the Doctor and the Master teaming up, she seems to be fully up-to-speed with everything that comes with being a companion. I’m hoping that she’s rounded out as we go along - all the right elements are there, but they’re being thrown at us so thick and fast that none really have the chance to bed in.

And, actually, that’s not a bad analogy for Logopolis as a whole...

Frankly, this episode is bonkers. Genuinely, I’m used to the way that Doctor Who works - able to go anywhere and do anything, adapting its format to suit any story you care to tell - but I’ve come away from today’s episode with a headache. It’s all so... odd.

To start with, you’ve got the Doctor being arrested. Now, that doesn’t sound particularly out there, but it does look very unusual to see Tom Baker’s Doctor being directed into the back of a police car. I wonder if it would have felt less unusual with the Third Doctor, considering how used to seeing him on Earth I was? This incarnation has spent more time on contemporary Earth than I expected him to, but even then it’s in places like laboratories, or old houses (sometimes, both): it’s rare to see him in such an ‘everyday’ situation as this. That’s not a complaint - it’s actually quite interesting to see him like this. I know he can talk his way out of a showdown with a monster, but you almost wonder how he’ll pull of escaping from the police.

It’s after that that things start to go really off-the-wall. The Doctor reasons that the Master’s TARDIS must still be inside his ship somewhere. Ok, that’s quite neat idea. You could use that as the basis of a story in itself (a short one, perhaps...) as the Doctor and Adric get caught up in a chase around ever-moving TARDIS corridors in the hunt for their foe. What’s barmy is his realisation that the only viable solution is to materialise underwater and use the force of that to flush the Master out of the ship. I genuinely cannot get my head around this. For a start... where’s the Master going to come out? Is there a back door large enough for the water to force him out of? How does the Doctor think he’s going to cope after that, with a ship full of water? Does he really think that he and Adric can simply hold on to something to avoid being washed away? Absolutely bizarre.

In fairness, though, it leads to a couple of wonderful moments, and the ones that I enjoyed the most in today’s episode. First, the Doctor tells Adric that they’ve managed to perfect a nice soft touchdown. Seconds later, the ship lurches, and they’re thrown to the ground. There’s something about the timing of that sequence that just really works, and had me laughing. Then the image of the TARDIS having materialised on the boat is also wonderful, as is the shot that follows, of the Doctor spotting the white figure on the bridge overlooking them. It’s a great image when he goes to speak with this watcher, and you simply see the Doctor hang his head. Really quite striking, and probably the first time that you get a real sense that the end is fast approaching.