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

Day 593: Kinda, Episode Four

Dear diary,

Full disclosure: I’ve watched today’s episode with the CGI effects option turned on. I’ve been a fan long enough to have seen the original ending with the original snake more than once, and having loved Kinda so much all along, I wanted to go out on a high, instead of… well… with that original snake! I’ve dabbled with the CGI effects over the course of this marathon, but I think that this is the release that gets it the most right. It’s not having to replace lots of small effects across the entire story, but concentrating it all into the final showdown, and I think the CGI here is of a quality that I wouldn’t blink at on television today. It really does serve tohelp the story, and I think it does make the ending all the better for it.

I’m also pleased to say that I finally ‘get’ the Mara. The concept is actually quite simple in the end (I thought it might be, and that I’d just been missing the point for a while), but it’s certainly at its weakest when forced out of Aris’ mind and in to the open. The large snake is supposed to be the climax to the story, the big fearsome monster, but it just doesn’t scare me as much as the thought that the Mara could be inside anyone’s mind, and that it could just as easily infect you as anyone else. I think that’s where showing Tagan as the one who initially lets it enter our world inside her head really works wonders - it can infect a member of the TARDIS crew, the Doctor’s companions, so it must be powerful. Maybe to a child watching at the time, the snake at the end is a massive part of the tale, and the culmination to everything we’ve seen. I’ve built up a following of a few people in the comments to these entries who were watching at the time - help me out guys, was the snake scary at the time (even in its original form?), or had you enjoyed the creeping sense of unease across the episodes leading up to it?

Something I realised watching today’s episode is that I didn’t really take the time to praise Janet Fielding’s performance during the early stages of this tale. There’s been so many brilliant aspects of Kinda to comment on that things have somewhat fallen by the wayside! Fielding has always been a good actress in regards to the series, and one of the better companions, but given the chance to really go off and do something abstract with the ‘dream’ sequences in this tale, she’s really excelled. It’s almost a shame coming to this episode and finding her back in to the standard companion role of asking questions and getting annoyed at the Doctor! I think I’ve praised most members of the cast at one stage or another during this story, so let’s just say that everyone has been on absolute top form throughout Kinda, and the finished result is all the better for it.

Now, though, I’m sad not to be following the adventures of the Fifth Doctor and Todd as they head off to another time and place. Peter Davison and Nerys Hughes have really just fallen in to step with each other throughout this story, and Nyssa cutting short their conversation at the end by whining that she wants to leave (having only been awake a few minutes!) really just hammered home to me how much I’d rather have the Doctor leave her behind, drop Tegan off home, and travel on with Todd instead! I’m somewhat surprised that the character has never come back for Big Finish - especially with Hughes having worked for them over the years - and I’ll be crossing my fingers now and hoping for a trilogy of adventures for the pair. I can dream, can’t I? Maybe not too much, though. I don’t want the Mara to get me…