Category: Complete Review
Doctor Who episode 602: The Five Doctors (25/11/1983)
‘How long before I must retire, my work half done? If I could continue…’ This was the first Doctor Who I had on video (recorded off air, including the Children In Need links). In Special Edition form it was the first DVD I owned. I’ve read the novelisation numerous times. It introduced me to the first four Doctors. It’s impossible for me to be objective about The Five Doctors, because I love it more than any other episode.
Doctor Who episode 601: The King’s Demons – Part Two (16/3/1983)
‘I’ve had quite enough of you, whoever you are.’ A red-letter episode because this is the first Doctor Who I can remember watching. Specifically, the Doctor battling the Master for control of Kamelion, and the continuity announcer who upset me by announcing this was “the last in the series – and now A Question of Sport” (I had no concept of TV seasons at that young age). As such, this has a special place in my heart.
Doctor Who episode 600: The King’s Demons – Part One (15/3/1983)
‘Fortunately we are in England.’ Like the first episode of Black Orchid, this is a fairly harmless bit of whimsy which pulls on Merrie England and Bad King John stereotypes well enough while introducing a mystery for the Doctor to solve. The location filming looks very pretty (and damp), the sets and costumes are all very nice (including a preview of Fielding’s Season 21 look), the performances are all pretty good, the Doctor gets to be a swashbuckling hero (although I don’t get why he decides to leave the TARDIS when he can see lots of angry knights outside). If it weren’t for Sir Gilles Estram, this would be a pleasant, undemanding diversion.
Doctor Who episode 599: Enlightenment – Part Four (9/3/1983)
‘Back to your echoing void, back to the vastness of eternity.’ It’s easy to focus on the final scene, but it’s just summing up the themes of the story: no-one should have total power, neither the icy Striker, the fiery Wrack, nor any of the Eternals. The Doctor’s defeat of Wrack puts paid to the Black Guardian’s plan to unleash the Eternals’ amorality across time and plunge the Universe into chaos, and his rejection of Enlightenment is a restatement of his basic morality – he wants to see the Universe, not to rule it.
Doctor Who episode 598: Enlightenment – Part Three (8/3/1983)
‘He’s made the choice.’ The pace quickens but only slightly: this is a script that’s not afraid to take its time and tell a fairly linear story. After several serials where multiple storylines have seemed randomly shoved together, that’s not a bad thing. The scope widens to encompass the Buccaneer and its madly cackling Captain Wrack – making Lynda Baron the second camp grand dame to be a spaceship captain in the penultimate story of a Davison season.
Doctor Who episode 597: Enlightenment – Part Two (2/3/1983)
‘It’s as though someone’s been rummaging around in my memories.’ This really does feel like a Hartnell throwback, with a romantic sub-plot for Tegan, and the Doctor, on the moral high ground, confronting Striker and the Eternals’ dependence on ephemeral minds to fuel their own existence. The episode isn’t packed with incident, but it’s full of ideas and character – the opposite of the “and then this happened and then this happened” approach that’s often the nature of scripts during this period.
Doctor Who episode 596: Enlightenment – Part One (1/3/1983)
‘Tell the Doctor, winner takes all.’ It opens on a shot of chess pieces, setting up the wider conflict between the Guardians that, after eight episodes of a cackling Valentine Dyall, begins to coalesce in this episode. The TARDIS control room has never looked better than it does here, bathed in warm, amber light. It reminds me, slightly, of the 13th Doctor’s TARDIS without the slightly obscene thrusting crystal. And right the way through the episode, the lighting is great – dark corners below decks on the yacht, low lighting in the corridors and dining room. It’s a different perspective given some other directors of the period blamed production shortcoming on the fact it was impossible to get the technicians to turn the lights down.
Doctor Who episode 595: Terminus – Part Four (23/2/1983)
‘This is Terminus: no-one’s happy here.’ I think this is easily the best episode of the story because the themes of freedom and self determination suddenly come into focus as the Garm, the Vanir and finally Nyssa assert their independence, and hope conquers despair. Whether that’s enough pay off to probably the most joyless Doctor Who so far is debateable, but it at least feels like the slog had some purpose.
Doctor Who episode 594: Terminus – Part Three (22/2/1983)
‘If we don’t do something quickly, the whole universe will be destroyed’ *Boing* The bathos of that climactic sound effect is typical of the whole. There’s a good story in Terminus, but unlike Warriors’ Gate, it’s being actively hindered by poor production standards or, more likely, time constraints. Fight scenes look under-rehearsed. Even some of the dialogue scenes look like they could have done with one more take. There are images which seem to have been lifted from horror films, like Nyssa being chained up like a King Kong sacrifice to the Garm, or the dead pilot slumped in his chair like the desiccated corpse in Alien. But they’re empty references without broader relevance.
Doctor Who episode 593: Terminus – Part Two (16/2/1983)
‘What is this horrendous place.’ The story arrives at Terminus, ‘at the exact centre of the known universe’, and – oh, more grey corridors. Accepting that Terminus itself needs to be grim, it’s a shame more wasn’t done to make the Lazar transport look a bit different. As a result, this looks as boring as some of the cheapo spaceship sets from the Graham Williams run, without the saving grace that at least those usually took place across multiple, visually distinct locations.
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