Doctor Who Season 21: Caves, Daleks and a pantomime horse

After a shaky start, Peter Davison’s final season ends with one of the best stories of any era. Still, the stress is showing on the show, as the transition into the 1980s made for an uneasy era.

Warriors of the Deep

This is a pretty tense, base-under-attack adventure (ala the Patrick Troughton years) – until the monster pantomime horse shows up. That’s right, the big monster used by the combined forces of the Silurians and the Sea Devils was played by a pair of guys who normally were the front and back ends of a horse on a British comedy program. The adventure never really recovers, and the epic bloodletting that will
be the hallmark of the coming seasons gets off to a roaring start here, as pretty much everyone is dead (certainly all the Silurains and Sea Devils) by story’s end and leaving Peter Davison with his classic closing line, “There should have been another way.”

The Awakening

Two-part adventures were always an awkward fit for the Doctor Who format. These increased pace and tighter direction means that the modern-day adventures mostly have the same running time, but often didn’t have the weight to even carry two episodes of an adventure. The Awakening, on the other hand, really could have used a third episode, because the odd tale of time travel and English Civil War reenactments gone way, way too far really could have used some more time to flesh out the action. There are still good moments throughout here, including a nicely realized stone-face monster thing.

Frontios

The Visitation could have easily taken one of the episodes here. There is at least 25 minutes of  walks along the BBC corridors that could have been cut and not affected the story one whit. It’s a shame, as there’s some in this adventure. First off, we get a little more context for Turlough. Mark Strickson was a fine performer with an interesting look who never really had much to do except be a coward.
Here, there is some tension about his nature, as the villains of this piece (called Tractators; they have epic gravity powers) are buried deep in his previously barely mentioned alien race memory. The Tractactors themselves are pretty daft, as the limitations of the budget come home to roost with these big mollusks.

Resurrection of the Daleks

You shouldn’t get attached to any of the characters in this adventure, because they aren’t going to last long. The Daleks’ return opens with a group of escaping prisoners being gunned down by a pair of London Bobbies. The bloodletting only gets more intense from there, as characters are brought in mainly to be slaughtered – be they on then-contemporary Earth, on a Dalek spacecraft or a space station that guards the vilest prisoner in the cosmos: Dalek creator Davros. We also have a turncoat human working for the Daleks; an awesome cold-hearted bastard (Lytton, he’ll be back) working for the Daleks; and Peter Davison emptying a revolver into a Dalek mutant. By the end, poor Tegan has seen enough and decides to stick it out on Earth. That means, of course, that a new companion is in order…

Planet of Fire

I haven’t talked much about the directing during this era, but one of the reasons the adventures often feel like slogs is static, uninteresting direction. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the people behind the cameras. While the filmed segments were shot, well,like films – with a single camera used and multiple takes needed to cover each scene. The studio still used the format that had been there
since the beginning of the show – five or six cameras shooting the action as “live,” with a mix of these shots used as the foundation for editing and effects. Basically, it’s a set up designed to drain any life and excitement out of a show unless the director forces the action and works to be innovative. Time usually didn’t allow for much of that, and that hurts the studio side of Planet of Fire.

The filmed segments – shot in Lanzarote – do a nice job of bringing the titular planet to life, while the script itself does a lot of cleaning up and place setting for the end of the Davison era. This means Kamilion (remember, the robot locked in a closet) makes his return, though mostly played by an actor in silver makeup. Turlough finally meets up with his people and we learn more about his background – and he even gets to grow a spine at last. And then there’s Peri. JNT wanted an American companion for the American audience, not realizing that we – of course – could watch Americans on TV all the time. That the British Nicola Bryant wasn’t always convincing (she got better over her run) and her
character whined her way through the adventure (this never improved) certainly didn’t help. Oh, and the Master was around – and he was laughably tiny (a lab accident), which brought back unfortunate memories of William Hartnell’s Planet of Giants adventure.

The Caves of Androzani

In the late Aughts, this episode was named the best all time of the program in a survey of fans. I wouldn’t go that far (I’m partial to Pyramids of Mars myself) but it is light years beyond anything else done in the 1980s. Why? Well, Robert Holmes returns for the first time in years and gives us a typical Bob Holmes script, loaded with conflict, skuzzy-but-intriguing characters, and a tough, sardonic wit. We get an absolutely terrific “villain,” Sharaz Jak, who looks like a mix of Diabolique and a rubber-fetish enthusiast. Most importantly, we get Graeme Harper’s first go-round as director. While the show is still studio bound, it bursts with plenty of energy as Harper uses every tool in the limited BBC book to bring the story alive. We even learn what the damn celery was all about. Best of all, this isn’t a story about saving the galaxy or even a planet. Instead, it – like the earliest stories of the show – finds the Doctor and Peri quickly ensnared in a plot happening far over the heads. They are just trying to survive, and any good they may do is just incidental.

Then with a flash, the Peter Davison era is over. Enter Colin Baker – and the terrors of the next two seasons.