Category: Episode by Episode
Doctor Who episodes 642 & 643: Slipback – Episodes Three & Four (1/8/1985)
Episode Three
‘Are you in the habit of dropping out of ventilator shafts, Miss?’ The benefit of the shorter episodes is that Saward has got the Doctor and Peri into the action much faster than usual. The downside is that when you have longueurs, as here, they can practically take up the whole episode.
Doctor Who episodes 640 & 641: Slipback – Episodes One & Two (25/7/1985)
Episode One
‘We’re not where we’re supposed to be.’ Made and broadcast by BBC Radio, with two 10-minute episodes airing each Thursday. It picks up pretty much where the TV episodes left off, with a grouchy Peri rousing the Doctor from a drunken slumber and interrupting a very White Guardianish message about the ‘eclipse of time’. It has the same archness as Revelation of the Daleks, with a computer that sounds like it’s been programmed with the Trillian voice pattern.
Doctor Who episode 639: Revelation of the Daleks – Part Two (30/3/1985)
‘If someone had treated me the way he has treated you, I think I would have killed them.’ It’s stylish, macabre and occasionally quite funny. It’s also another Saward massacre where each of the characters introduced in the first episode are picked off. Orcini might wax lyrical about honour, but there’s little of the heroism of the fifth Doctor’s fatal struggle in The Caves of Androzani, and so ultimately it just becomes a much better take on Attack of the Cybermen, where the deaths may lack meaning but at least it’s fun to watch.
Doctor Who episode 638: Revelation of the Daleks – Part One (23/3/1985)
‘They’re like a double act.’ Eric Saward’s best script so far shows his respect for Robert Holmes’ writing, and his lack of interest in the Doctor and Peri (who spend most of this literally on the periphery, looking for a way into the story). It’s constructed as a series of double acts, which keeps things moving at pace at the risk of making this fragmented. That it hangs together is largely due to Davros and the DJ fulfilling the old Arak and Etta roles of observers, commenting on the action rather than playing a part in it. And they work better than Arak and Etta because – at least in Darvos’ case – his existence is the catalyst for events, linking together Kara and Vogel’s assassination scheme; Natasha and Grigory’s graverobbing; Jobel and Tasambeker’s The Loved One pastiche, and Takis and Lilt’s administration of Tranquil Repose. This largely fixes the issue in Saward’s previous scripts of disconnected B-plots: it doesn’t matter if the characters don’t all meet if there’s a clear and common thread between them.
Doctor Who episode 637: Timelash – Part Two (16/3/1985)
‘I’ll explain one day.’ Well, it continues to be very weak without being horrible or wrong, and manages to include the single best sixth Doctor and Peri scene to date (the moment when the Doctor decides to nobly sacrifice himself and the TARDIS to save Karfel, and has to persuade Peri to leave him). Bryant and Baker play it beautifully, with the Doctor’s swerve into physically picking up Peri and yelling very clearly signposted as him doing his best to get her out of danger rather than risking her life. It’s very sweet, and, I think, largely scripted by Eric Saward. It’s a bit of a shame that it’s followed by an interminable scene of Herbert doing his best Adric impression. The line, ‘There’s nothing particularly masculine about throwing your life away’ could (should) be an apology for Attack of the Cybermen.
Doctor Who episode 636: Timelash – Part One (9/3/1985)
‘Mark my words, soon our planet will rule this corner of the universe with the power of a giant ocean.’ Blimey, this script stinks. The structure is terrible – the Doctor and Peri spend half the episode pratting about with bungee belts in the TARDIS which means they discover nothing about Karfel. Instead, we have to be told everything through appalling info-dumping like ‘I thought the Borad had banned all mirrors’ and ‘What sort of leader never appears in public, only on a screen?’. But then, all the dialogue sounds unnatural. Peri, allegedly an American teenager, declaims, ‘If you’re about to suggest the Eye of Orion, don’t. I’ve heard all about that elusive place once too often. No one lives there and few visit, apart from you.’ We even get the old Saward gems, ‘This is madness’ and ‘She must think we’re fools’. Oh dear.
Doctor Who episode 635: The Two Doctors – Part Three (2/3/1985)
‘May I say what a pleasure it has been to see two such dedicated trenchermen enjoying their food. Unfortunately the reckoning is rather high.’ In the end I think this is a failure, but it’s a Robert Holmes script and it’s at least an interesting failure. Broadly, I think the problems with it are that Holmes’ script is too thin to sustain the equivalent of an old six-parter, and that the direction does nothing to lift the material.
Doctor Who episode 634: The Two Doctors – Part Two (23/2/1985)
‘I think your Doctor’s worse than mine.’ This plays more like a comeback for Jamie than the second Doctor. Frazer Hines fits right into the line-up, with an easygoing rapport with Baker that suggests, given the right companion, the sixth Doctor would be a much more attractive proposition. The difference is his disagreements with the Doctor are banter rather than snide asides, and taken in good spirit, whereas half the lines Peri gets are acidic put downs or complaining that would make Tegan look mellow by comparison. The Baker-Bryant-Hines trio make this quite fun, even when a lot of the content is grim verging on inappropriate.
Doctor Who episode 633: The Two Doctors – Part One (16/2/1985)
‘I can’t bear the sight of gory entrails. Except, of course, on the stage.’ All the ingredients of a Robert Holmes concoction are here: the baroque dialogue, a series of double acts, moments that recall past triumphs (the perils of the abandoned Space Station Camera reminded me of Nerva in The Ark in Space). The Time Lords are characterised as the pompous hypocrites of The Deadly Assassin, using the Doctor as their agent to give themselves plausible deniability. Their engagement in space politics with the Third Zoners on the cusp of a time travel breakthrough feels more like one of Gary Russell’s Gallifrey audios than anything else in the classic series.
Doctor Who episode 632: The Mark of the Rani – Part Two (9/2/1985)
‘The Rani is a genius. Shame I can’t stand her.’ It isn’t as good as Part One, largely because the story fizzles out and is replaced by a string of scenes of the Master, Rani and Doctor bitching at each other. Fortunately, these scenes are quite fun: Ainley plays the Master more subtly than in his Davison stories, almost like he’s aware he can’t out-camp Colin and O’Mara, and it’s more fruitful to make the Master seem more thoughtful and conniving than usual. And yet, he still get’s the campest line in the piece: ‘Luke, I want you to swallow this very special sweetmeat.’
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