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

Day 627: Enlightenment, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I think it’s probably fitting for Enlightenment to end like this - leaving me unsure quite how I’ve felt about it. The story is one of those that I went in to with no preconceptions - I’ve seen it before at some point, I know, but I couldn’t remember anything, and I had no idea quite how fandom-at-large felt about it - which really meant that things could swing either way. As it is, I’m sort of left stranded in the sea of ‘meh’, because for everything I liked about the story, there’s things that just didn’t really work for me.

Let’s start off with a load of positives, because there’s a lot of them. The design on this story is fantastic. It’s yet another example of the BBC being so good at capturing period detail, and you can see the effort that’s gone in to creating both the Edwardian sailing ship and the pirate ship. I think it’s probably telling that the set which doesn’t quite work for me is the chamber on Wrack’s ship which calls for being more ‘sci-fi’. The big flashing light declaring that the vacuum shield has been turned off just doesn’t look right to me. All these sets are nicely shown off by some rather lovely direction, too. I was discussing with a friend this week that while Fiona Cumming is a perfectly competent director, she’s not one that you’d normally include in the upper echelons of people who’ve worked on Doctor Who. It’s nice, then, to see that she’s done such a good job with this story. I’ve switched back to the original model effects for these last two episodes, and they’re all rather good, and suit the tone of the story perfectly.

Then you’ve got the guest cast, who are all brilliant without exception. Oh, sure, they’re all playing it in different ways - Keith Barron’s turn as Striker is a million miles away from what Lynda Baron is doing with Wrack - but they work perfectly for the characters that we’re being asked to believe in. I can’t imagine Wrack working with a more low-key performance, and by the same toke, Striker wouldn’t be anywhere near as unsettling if he was going over-the-top with it. Even the Guardian’s are quite good in their own somewhat unique way - Valentine Dyall stalking around the set laughing his head off like Batman’s Penguin is a nice contrast to Cyril Luckham’s rather more laid back White Guardian.

I think that they’re the biggest issue that I’ve had with the story, though, and if I’m honest it’s a problem with this whole trilogy of tales. As I said back in Mawdryn Undead, I really like the idea of the Doctor’s new companion being placed aboard the TARDIS with a mission to kill the Doctor. It’s something new and bold for the programme to do, and a great way to spice up the companion role as we make our way though the twentieth year. The problem is that it starts to lose credibility as it goes on. When Turlough’s attempt to bash the Doctor’s head in with a rock is disrupted by an explosion, I can go along with it, and I’ll accept that he then doesn’t get another chance for a while because he’s busy getting caught up in one of the Doctor’s adventures. Where things start to fall down is in the slightly wooly characterisation that companions are given at this point - meaning that Turlough is often forced to be simply a tool in the story, and only come back to his motives when they need to fill a bit of time.

Terminus is the worst for this, having the boy slink off into a corner every five minutes to stare at his crystal and be told that he still needs to kill the Doctor, almost as if they’re reminding us who he is and why he’s around. It’s a good example of the programme needing the kind of ‘all seeing’ head writer that we get with the modern series, because I just don’t think that Eric Sawad has done a great job at trying to keep this storyline important across the three stories. It suddenly comes right back into the fore here, with the final showdown of light and dark, but it doesn’t feel like the big, awaited climax to this little story arc - it just feels like any other story. I think it’s what’s caused Enlightenment to fall flat for me - I’m waiting for some big ending to this plot line, and it just doesn’t live up to what I’m wanting.

That said, I think it might just be me finding fault, and maybe I’m just not in the right mood to enjoy this story? It placed the highest of the three ‘Black Guardian Trilogy’ tales in the recent Doctor Who Magazine poll, coming in at position 75, with Mawdryn Undead (my personal favourite of the three) ranking lower at 117, and Terminus languishing way behind at number 209!