VENGEANCE ON VAROS REDUX

"Is he sane, this Doctor?"

"... sometimes."

I already reviewed Vengeance on Varos just over ten years ago, and while I don't think it's a great review, I mostly agree with what I said back then, so I won't write an entirely new review. It's a strong story for the Sixth Doctor, finally getting his characterization to work after the miserable Twin Dilemma and the only-better-than-Twin-Dilemma-by-a-technicality Attack of the Cybermen. The series was always playing a dangerous game by making Baker's Doctor deliberately abrasive and unlikable, but this is a rare example where it works. Baker gets to be funny, clever, and heroic, without losing that untrustworthy nature; it's consistently intriguing and challenging. Sure, the approach was probably a bad idea since it required excellent scripts every time out, and even the best eras of Who are inherently somewhat uneven, but hey, at least it does work in theory.

The dystopian mining world of Varos, distracting its citizens by reveling in televised violence, is vivid and real, one of the best alien worlds in Classic Who. I love the way if the governor makes a decision voted unpopular, he's immediately tortured on television, and whether he keeps his office or is kicked out depends on whether he survives the torture. The satire is vicious and biting, managing to do what satire so rarely does, hitting its then-modern concepts dead-center and still hitting targets remarkably well decades later. (Well, good for this script, tragic for us.) The script is supported by terrific costumes, sets, and miniatures, and director Ron Jones puts it all together solidly. Sil is a delightfully disgusting creation, not only in writing and elaborate makeup, but in Nabil Shaban's snarling, snakelike performance.

 The sum is intelligent, funny, tense, and imaginative. All in all, it's a damn good Doctor Who serial in an era where competence is a struggle. So this isn't really a new review so much as an addendum, though I do find one disagreement with younger me. And, naturally, it's an addendum much longer than the original review, which seems about right for me.

In my original review, I found two flaws with the story. The first, that the pacing is off, I still agree with. As I noted then, the Doctor and Peri literally get stuck nowhere to keep them from showing up until halfway through episode 1. And I mean literally nowhere - the reason they go to Varos is that the TARDIS breaks down "Neither here nor there". In fairness, these scenes themselves are reasonably fun, but the intercutting with the setup on Varos, itself compelling, doesn't flow well, and the first half of the episode drags. 

The issue is even more severe in the second half of Episode 2, where, after a lot of tense set-pieces and elements, the story struggles to build effectively to a climax, instead for the most part just mildly repeating a lot of the same stuff it has been doing with less effectiveness. Not that these scenes are bad, per se - the Governor finding his conscience while bargaining for Peri's life is particularly good - but it is a fairly rare event in Saward's tenure where a story's high point of tension isn't in its final minutes. In fact, it's fairly rare in Classic Who that the best-paced and most-thrilling parts of the story are in the middle instead of on the edges. And it's mostly a tribute to how strong the mid-section of the story is rather than a major failing.

I mentioned the strong atmosphere above, and while a lot of this is the story, kudos should go to director Ron Jones, who mostly handles the visuals and tone well. His staging of actual action sequences are clumsy, but those are fairly minor bits in the story. (Though this probably explains why Saward, showing his typical tactfulness, insulted Jones' direction on this story while Jones was in the midst of directing Mindwarp. That Jones directed what are arguably the two best stories of the era suggests where Saward can shove his opinions about directors, though his apparent dismissiveness toward Fiona Cumming is more damning.) But Jones' tone and handling of the violence contributes to an issue that's difficult to quantify - whether or not the violence in the story is actually pitched at the right level, either for the program or for the satire here.

We may as well begin with the infamous acid bath scene. The Doctor's actions here are arguably defensible, if particularly cold. But the moment one of the guards emerges from the baths and accidentally pulls in his fellow guard, his skin largely burned off leaving only bloody flesh, is perhaps the most gruesome moment in all of Doctor Who, a moment simultaneously viscerally realistic and self-indulgently over-the-top; it seems to be aiming for Verhoeven, or at least Troma. And while this is the most blatantly unnerving moment, it's not the only time the serial is, arguably intentionally, going too far. The Doctor also sets up a trap that incinerates a guard before he really knows what's going on, and later sets a trap to kill off the villains with poison plants. Several injuries and scars are given horrific makeup. One torture involves mutating humans into human-animal hybrids based on what the person's fear visualizes.

On the one hand, Doctor Who is nominally a family program - not aimed primarily at kids, per se, but it's generally supposed to be appropriate for them. Sure, it leans more to the PG side than the G side, and always has had its share of violence and disturbing horror; that's baked into the show's DNA. But there's always a restraint; sure, it might be challenging for a 9-year-old, but not traumatizing. One could argue the show is pushing to find its limits, and there's something to be said for that sort of experimentation. But if you're going to cut kids out and seemingly insist that this is for adults, it becomes a lot harder to forgive the incompetent staging of action sequences, or, you know, that damn jacket. Doctor Who is a silly program about a silly man - one that can be intelligent and frightening and even brilliant, but there are limits to how far "realism" can be pushed without becoming bathetic.

It's also questionable whether the visceral realism actually works for the satire. After all, one of the most effective choices in the first episode is to represent torture simply with a light and some screaming from the actor. It's unnerving without being indulgent in the very manner the story is satirizing. On the other hand, if the Doctor is casually and violently killing villains with the ruthless efficiency and emotional coldness of James Bond, and characters are getting their flesh boiled off on-screen, and injuries are graphically displayed, isn't this just becoming the very thing it's condemning? Granted, I mentioned both Paul Verhoeven and Troma films earlier, both of which at their best push indulgent violence so far over-the-top as to become part of the critique of violence and the audience's enjoyment of such, so it's not impossible to go for that, but I'm not sure Vengeance actually hits that every time.

I don't think this is ruinous to the episode - not quite hitting the mark with the violent tone makes it unnerving in thought-provoking ways and kind of works anyway. 

Somewhat similarly, Varos is shown to be a deeply misogynistic planet throughout, and numerous characters expose deeply misogynistic views. Now, to be clear, these are the villains and the dystopian planet, but, at the same time, it's not really countered by the narrative. Not that one needs to explicitly point out such things, but it's honestly hard to tell where the show is condemning the misogyny and where it's just being misogynistic.

In the end, I think enough of both the satire and the adventure works that I'm willing to give to some slack, particularly since it does leave you wondering about where exactly the line for these things should be. But I'm not going to pretend it isn't hard to square the acid bath with that jacket. Or, for that matter, be entirely content that the highlight of the season works by being relentlessly nasty and unpleasant. Yes, there's some grisly fun to be had here, but it would be easier to roll with if it was surrounded by episodes that were fun without qualifiers.

But the main reason I'm bothering to write this is that I disagree with myself on the other flaw I mentioned originally - that Peri falls flat as a companion here. She doesn't quite reach the heights she does in the next season, but, especially coming off Attack of the Cybermen, she's quite good here. The by-play with the Doctor isn't cruel but funny and charming. There's no warmth between them, but at least they aren't cold, and the Doctor isn't insulting her. Or, you know, strangling her. But Peri also shows a lot of strength of character and humor in the story, and Bryant makes the most out of every opportunity; she's immensely likeable and engaging here.

Which is not to say there aren't issues with her as a character here, going to the nature of her conception. There's a wonderful moment when she's being tortured by the aforementioned mutation, and she begins to turn into a bird because, as someone notes, she wants to fly away and escape. It's a wonderful insight into her psychology... and the only one the character has had since she appeared in the middle of the previous season, and, as I recall, that she will get again until her final episode. (Though I suppose I'll see how my memory of that fares.) Peri was conceived, essentially, as the most generic possible companion, and so her effectiveness is entirely down to a writer's ability to make "generic companion" work, which is highly variable at the best of times, and this is far from the best. I mentioned in my Attack of the Cybermen review that her skimpy clothing didn't seem to fit with her characterization, but, honestly, the issue is that there's isn't a characterization to fit it with. 

This is not, to be clear, to say that a companion should under no circumstances wear sexy clothing to go on their adventures, but it should definitely fit them as a person. Playing up their sexuality in their costuming works for a character like Jack Harkness or Amy Pond, both of whom have a sexual openness to their psychologies and personalities, and would reflect that. But when there isn't any real psychology or personality, just someone reacting to a crazy adventure around them with more or less what you'd expect, running around violent dystopian worlds in short shorts and cleavage-baring blouse that accentuate every curve just feels like the producers being exploitative -- when goes back to the misogyny mentioned earlier. It's not that the program supports being sexist or violent to women intentionally, but it doesn't seem to counter that by giving them a voice in it. Sure, the monkey brain in me certainly appreciates it visually, all the more so for her attractiveness to contrast with the very effective ugliness around her. But if it's going to be done, it needs to be Peri participating in it rather than just being splayed out for cheap horny points.

But with all that said, I really do want to praise Bryant - she's given so little to do, but at every point, she shows that she's plucky, funny, and engaging; she can give as good as she gets when she's allowed to, and finds a lot of humanity. And when she's allowed to actually act, she really shows skill. One wishes the episode had done more with the "turning her into a bird" element, maybe keeping her in the (impressively elaborate) makeup longer before she reverted, and letting her say why she was turning into a bird. There's a poignancy to Peri's perils, and her ability to weather such nastiness, that the show too rarely notices.

Anyway, this short addendum became a 2000-word article of its own, and one where I'm not entirely certain what my conclusion is. But I will say this - it says something that I like the episode enough to want to dig into it, both in its qualities and foibles, when I really had no need (even if one pretends there is any need for this blog in the first place). I could have just re-linked it and called it a day, since I didn't significantly disagree with my thoughts. But I dearly love this show, and even the ragged version of the show in the Sixth Doctor's era, all the more so on an occasion when it doesn't just work, but sings. Vengeance on Varos is one of the good ones, and makes me wish more of the show in the era worked as well as this one, if not necessarily like this one.

 

I'm not going to pretend it doesn't have flaws, but I dearly love this episode, and wish it lived up to its best elements enough to give it more than three stars.

 

Attack of the Cybermen

"Didn't go very well, did it?"

Why, after ignoring this blog for six years, have I suddenly returned with a review of a mostly forgotten and otherwise disreputable mid-80s serial? Back in late 2014 and early 2015, I found myself with some real blocks trying to write these reviews, and, finally, the lack of any momentum or progress killed it. And the longer I got out from it, the more many of my early reviews here were a source of embarrassment, and I simply didn't bother. 

It wasn't a matter of the show's quality - I loved Series 9, found Series 10 to be uneven but with brilliant highlights. Unfortunately, I've been considerably less enthused with the last two seasons (I like Whittaker, but find Chibnall's showrunning to be about as effective as it was on Torchwood), and I guess haven't watched as much Who in general for some time. Still, after feeling deeply dispirited by Chibnall's Revolution of the Daleks on the heels of the dreadful Timeless Children, I rewatched several other New Who stories just to remind myself of how deeply I love this show. And then discovered BritBox on Amazon, which has virtually all of Classic Doctor Who, and started revisiting serials I had seen only once a decade or more ago and wanted to revisit.

And, for some reason, last night I had an urge to rewatch Attack of the Cybermen. Although its reputation is dire, I had recalled more or less enjoying it at the time even while registering some complaints with the script. And then felt the need to make it clear to the internet that I Had Opinions About A Thing.

Someone's been sneaking Cyber-snacks.

 

A bit of background on the production of this story, since this introduction isn't incredibly long or self-indulgent enough yet. But for those who don't know, it's important to understand in order to grasp what happens in this serial. Because this was Doctor Who on the knife's edge of its cancellation, and Attack of the Cybermen is the show trying to dance on that knife and splitting open its own veins.

John Nathan-Turner, popularly nicknamed "JNT", had become the show's producer in 1981 entirely through his accounting wizardry without any real creative background. He had a great passion for the show, however, and with Season 18's script editor Christopher Bidmead, (script editor being somewhat similarly to a lead writer in today's world, although they didn't necessarily write any scripts themselves) he had crafted a grand artistic success, if not a ratings one. He followed that up with the first season of the Fifth Doctor's era, which was a huge ratings success and was largely well-received. Bidmead had left after his first season, however, leaving JNT to hire first an interim script-editor for the first half of the season, and then scramble for a permanent person for the position. He chose Eric Saward, off the back of his pretty solid script for The Visitation, but who was otherwise almost entirely inexperienced outside of a few radio programs.

Still, Saward's script for Earthshock, which brought back the Cybermen after a lengthy hiatus, had resulted in a hugely popular serial, and the show's nostalgia-heavy 20th season was largely well-received. The nostalgia element, with every episode harkening back directly to some older element with returning villains, had been aided by series uber-fan Ian Levine, who became an unofficial advisor for the show.

With Levine's help, then, for the 21st Season, the show brought back two sets of old villains for the serial Warriors of the Deep. The result was a disaster. A chaotic production disrupted by Margaret Thatcher's snap election of 1983 resulted in an utterly botched adaptation of its script. Most memorably, the serial's big monster, the Myrka, ended up being literally just an ugly pantomime horse, garish overlit to boot. But the script was so wretched that James Cameron could have broken a Hollywood budget record on it and it still would have been absolutely terrible.

 And, unfortunately, Michael Grade, controller of BBC1, noticed. He had never particularly liked the show, but this was a true embarrassment, and he believed Doctor Who should not be kept on the air. Given its strong ratings, he couldn't kill it right off, but he was ready to. The rest of Season 21 largely went well, building to a tremendous climax with the Fifth Doctor's farewell story, The Caves of Androzani, not only one of the greatest episodes of the show, but one of the great works of science fiction in 1984, a particularly great year for the genre.

However, that wasn't the end of the season. For some bizarre reason, JNT decided that the first story for Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor would air as the final serial of the season. However, the production had run out of money by the point, the scripts were unfinished and lousy (the writer at one point made the excuse for a delayed script that his typewriter had literally exploded), and, on top of everything else, JNT, Saward, and Baker had all wanted to make this new Doctor dark and mysterious and strange... and had botched it utterly (not Baker's fault, in fairness). The result competes strongly with Warriors of the Deep as one of the leading contenders for the worst episode of Doctor Who ever, as well as the worst work of science fiction of 1984, all the more crushing a failure after the triumph of Androzani.

So, in 1985, coming into Season 22, Doctor Who desperately needed to come out strong. Saward took the reins personally, and worked closely with Levine to devise a story bringing back the popular Cybermen that would tie into two decades of continuity. Because script editors weren't suppose to write multiple stories and Saward was already writing the season finale, he convinced his ex-girlfriend to write a draft and keep her name on whatever he rewrote. And Saward, JNT, and the production needed to nail this one. Prove that it was, indeed, worthy of continuation and funding by the tax-payers of Britain. Prove that the Sixth Doctor could be as iconic and fascinating as his predecessors. Prove that JNT and Saward could actually deliver worthy drama. 

So, naturally, our story begins in a literal river of crap, as maintenance workers wade through London's sewers. They're surprised to find a wall that shouldn't exist, and are then mysteriously killed by something mysterious that definitely isn't the villain listed in the title. 

This opening scene shows off the serial's best asset, though, the direction of Matthew Robinson. Robinson is a rare Classic Who director who isn't best remembered for his contributions to Who - after this, he was appointed the lead director on EastEnders, and later became executive producer of the show, was promoted to head of drama for BBC Wales, and ended up producing a bunch of films in Cambodia. (It probably doesn't help, though, that the two scripts he was assigned to direct in Who were this and Resurrection of the Daleks, neither of which are well-remembered despite his strong direction in both.) Robinson shoots the serial with vivid atmosphere and lots of punchy visuals and editing; it feels more like an ambitious low-budget movie than a ropey no-budget TV show. Notably, the sewers are dramatically underlit to a degree rarely done on the BBC at the time, and all the more effective for it.

Attack then moves to the Doctor and his companion, Peri, in the TARDIS. And the early TARDIS scenes are rough. The costumes, of course, are wretched; I sometimes forget just what an endless eyesore the Sixth Doctor's costume really is. Peri's, of course, is a major improvement, though, as usual, it's skimpy in a way that doesn't seem to match her character, emphasizing her curves and her boobs bouncing around. (For those who don't know, JNT was gay, but wanted Peri to always be dressed sexily "for the dads".) It's also an extremely bright, saturated pink, as though it's trying to make sure she isn't invisible standing next to the Doctor.

Can't you just feel the love?

But costumes are one thing, the dialogue is a whole other can of awful. Not only do Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant evidence no chemistry here, but the banter is just the Doctor being a total kneebiter and ignoring Peri calling him on it. And every time she tries to turn it into light, fun banter, the Doctor just spits in her face:

"I was, in fact, taking you to Earth."
"Bit of an anticlimax after all that journey."
"Ungrateful wretch."
"Well, what do you expect, applause?"
"A bit of gratitude wouldn't irretrievably damage my ego."
"Come off it, Doctor. No one is more surprised than you are that we came through it."

What, exactly, are they expecting us to feel here? Saward and Baker both had ambitions to make the Doctor a more threatening and frightening figure, but even if JNT's insistence on that jacket wasn't blowing any chance at that, there's a difference between a mysterious and frightening figure and just a total dick. It was a questionable choice to begin with, but one that might have worked. Even setting aside the early days of William Hartnell's First Doctor as the beginning of his character arc from villain to antihero to hero, Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor could totally be frightening when Troughton wanted him to be, and Sylvester McCoy would prove the same afterwards. 

But the Doctor being a scary figure requires emphasizing their alienness, their elaborate planning to fight unimaginable power and evil, and how far they're willing to go in that fight - not being an abusive bastard to their companion. It gets the whole affair off on a horribly wrong foot.

These scenes are intercut with Lytton, Maurice Colbourne's mercenary last seen working for the Daleks in the previous season, working with a crew on earth to pull off a diamond heist through the sewers. These scenes are pretty generic bank robbery stuff, but there is a degree of fun in just bare competence at this sort of thing, which contrasts unfortunately with the TARDIS scene without elevating the proceedings much.

Thankfully, when the Doctor and Peri finally arrive on Earth ten minutes in, their banter improves massively, and, with decent material, Baker and Bryant turn out to actually have some chemistry; further, the Doctor's repairs to the TARDIS chameleon circuit malfunctioning have a whimsical charm too often missing in this era. And with more comedic material, Baker shines; when he's being funny or weird, his brash Doctor shines.

"I suddenly feel conspicuous."
"Not surprised in that coat."
"No, it's more a question of having organized a surprise party and forgotten who it's for."

 

The duo arrives in I. M. Foreman's Scrapyard on 76 Totter's Lane - which, you see, is the scrapyard from An Unearthly Child. This serves no purpose in the story beyond being an in-joke. One could stretch, I suppose, that echoing back to the Hartnell era sort-of works with the story being deeply wrapped into several of the 1960s Cyberman stories,  given that Hartnell's last story was the Cybermen's first, but it's tenuous at best. And, more to the point, it actually foreshadows that the Cyberman references will ultimately function merely as empty continuity masturbation. (For a sharp contrast, it's worth looking at how Remembrance of the Daleks similarly harkened back to An Unearthly Child with actual purpose and thought three years later.)

While Lytton and the bank robbers wade through the sewers to get to the diamond vault they're knocking off, the Doctor and Peri, after futzing around for 10 minutes trying to find the plot, run into two evil policemen. The Doctor instantly beats the snot out of one of them, while Peri cleverly deals with the other one. It's an exciting little scene, and slightly shocking for the Doctor's quickness to a violent approach. Baker pulls off the physicality effectively, but whether or not a more violent Doctor is overly jarring is probably up to the viewer. It's certainly different.

At any rate, having still not arrived at the plot, the Doctor and Peri enter the sewers and muck around themselves. If that seems like the entirety of the first episode is either walking around in a river of poop or trying to get to the river of poop, that's because it mostly is. In Season 22, in order to come in line with the rest of the BBC, where half-hour dramas had largely be eliminated in favor of hour-long dramas, Doctor Who had doubled the length of its episodes, now lasting a full 45 minutes. Given the problems the era had with pacing half-hour episodes, unfortunately, the result here unsurprisingly consists wheel-spinning for somnambulant periods. 

But, finally, Lytton and his thieves make it to the wall that shouldn't be there, and it blasts open to reveal the Cybermen. And, points to Robinson, the reveal works. Their dramatically-lit and edited appearance is genuinely frightening in a way the Cybermen rarely have been. Of course, then they start talking, and they're just daft, clumsy evil robo-men, but hey, at least they got one good moment out of them.

We learn that Lytton isn't just a mercenary, but from a race of mercenaries, which might be the single most Eric Saward thing ever written. And now we cut to the planet Telos, which Robinson makes appropriately alien, and, slowly, the actual plot comes into view. The Cybermen were stalking around the London sewers because, you see, in the story The Invasion they stalked around the sewers. But also, they're on the planet Telos, where they burst out of cellophane walls because, you see, they did that in Tomb of the Cybermen. And they're on both places now because, you see, in The Tenth Planet, they drove their own home planet Mondas, parked it next to Earth, and tried to destroy Earth so Mondas wouldn't literally melt for reasons that I think kind of made some sort of magic crazy person sense in The Tenth Planet, and anyway now they're going to redirect Halley's comet to strike the Earth to ensure Earth so Mondas survives. And they have two leaders whose respective ranks are never clear - Cyber Leader, played by David Banks because that was his role in Earthshock (even though he died there) and Cyber Controller, played by Michael Kilgaroff because he played that role almost twenty years earlier in Tomb of the Cybermen (even though Kilgaroff is visibly... rotund for a Cyberman after 20 years). If that sounds like a bunch of incoherent, masturbatory continuity nonsense, well, it is.

'member when the Doctor fought the Cybermen in those Tombs?
Yeah, I 'member!

And, honestly, that might be forgivable if the story built up to some kind of point and/or was entertaining. Unfortunately, Lytton getting out of Poop River, London doesn't get the Doctor out of it. The Doctor doesn't arrive at the plot until 38 minutes into a 90 minutes story. He then gets captured by the Cybermen, who have already captured his TARDIS with remarkable ease. And he spends almost the entire second episode in a prison cell. He escapes with the help of a Cryon, a member of the native race of Telos, and gives the Cryon his Sonic Lance so it can suicide bomb the Cyberman base. He then gets out of there while other characters solve the plot, and, in the final scene, uses a Cybergun to kill the Cyberman leaders at a point where their deaths don't particularly matter since the base is about to blow, but fails to save Lytton. 

You may have noticed the Doctor accomplishes close to nothing in the story, and mostly just tries to catch up to a story that hums along without him. It's possible for a story to work with a minimal use of the Doctor, but if much of the episode is just following him failing to make it to or affect the plot, and he doesn't even spend the time doing anything Doctorish, how is this supposed to work? Yes, when he's not asked to be an unpleasant dick, Baker has a brash charm and humor that's fun and a physicality that effectively feels like it comes out of nowhere, but the script doesn't care to let him do much of those fun things. He does get multiple scenes casually wielding guns, though, almost as if he's really a space mercenary at heart.

That could, theoretically, be at least somewhat forgivable if said story was itself engaging, but it's mostly not. Even given that the entire first episode is walking through a sewer and that the second half has all the action, there's very little going on here. The Cybermen get that frightening first appearance, and easily take over the TARDIS, but otherwise are easily killed by their own guns, regular Earth pistols, the Doctor stabbing them with his Sonic Lance, and even a nice whack to the head with handheld metal pipe that straight decapitates them. They stumble around so slowly that gunfights feel hilariously slow even with Robinson's general skill with action. And their original concept, that of horrific mirrors of humanity with all emotion removed, is barely present except for a single line of dialogue about the weakness of emotion; they're just generic clanging tin men. Although when Lytton stabs the Cyber Controller, he bleeds green, which I guess is kind of weird.

And what of Lytton? After all, Saward's real interest here seems to be Lytton. It feels like he would honestly rather be writing a TV show about Lytton rather than Doctor Who. (Indeed, Saward recently revived the character for a comic-book miniseries.) Lytton knows more about what's going on in the story than the Doctor ever really does. Maurice Colbourne has the right charisma for such a rogue. After being cagey for most of the story, it's revealed that he's actually working for the Cryons, not the Cybermen. And the story's climactic moment ultimately rests on Lytton having his hands brutally crushed by the Cybermen (which is far bloodier and more shocking than I remembered it being), getting half-converted, yet still fighting them before dying. And so the Doctor's final line muses that "I doon't think I've ever misjudged anyone as badly as I did Lytton."

 

But why? Lytton was a mercenary perfectly happy to work for the Daleks! And here, he's still just a merc, just not for the bad guys. He doesn't seem to have had any change of heart, the Cryons just happen to be the ones who hired him. And the Doctor wonders why Lytton didn't tell him he wasn't hired by the Cybermen, and Peri remarks the Doctor never gave Lytton a chance, but even when Lytton did have a chance, he was needlessly mysterious. If the story's point is that Lytton was misjudged, it's a misjudgement on the part of the writer, not the Doctor.

So, if the story is a slog that adds up to nothing, what is good here? Well, the production, mainly. Telos feels like an alien world rather than just a random quarry. Both the location shooting and the studio work are atmospheric and feature an effective variety of shots. The Cryons are pretty well-executed; played entirely by women, with sing-song voices and strange gestures, and a pretty cool design, they're probably one of the best one-shot aliens of '80s Who. Sure, they'd probably look better in black and white, and the closeups show the seams, but it's still some good work. And Saward at least tries to make them distinctive individuals, even if he doesn't do quite enough.

There's also one other element that works, and it's a distinctively Saward one. As the story comes to a close, most of the supporting cast is killed off, the rest are in incredible danger, and the Cryon plan seems on the verge of failure. The all-hope-is-lost moment builds a deep tension. This tension is sadly lacking in the rest of the story, but climactic tension is something Saward is great at building to. Unfortunately, here, he doesn't pay it off, and it largely whimpers to a close, with the Doctor's brief rolling about and gunning down the Cyber leaders feeling like an afterthought.

Basically, Attack of the Cybermen is a lousy story occasionally salvaged by the execution, which is as good as could reasonably be expected for such a cheap TV show with such a tight schedule. But Saward seems to this day proud of this story, happily taking credit. (Levine also takes quite a bit of credit when asked.) Because, you see, Attack of the Cybermen is what Saward and JNT wanted Warriors of the Deep to be: a boring river of grimdark, meaningless crap, sure, but with, like, shadows and slick editing and a kinda cool monster under the circumstances. And if anyone wants to know why Doctor Who was canceled, this episode is one of the best examples of why. If this is what they think the show should be when it's working, then it deserved to die.

 Thankfully, the next story is an astounding improvement, making a pretty good case that the show shouldn't be canceled, just that maybe teh reins should be given to someone else, because there's great potential in the various elements here. Sure, it's not enough, ultimately, to save the show, but, thankfully, it lasted enough more years to go out on a high note. Eventually.

RATING:

 

 

Earthshock

[1982, Season 19, Serial 6]

Spoilers, I guess.  This is one of the most famous of all Doctor Who stories, particularly for two elements - its villains and its ending, and it is, of course, those aspects that everyone talks about.  If, by some chance, you haven't watched Earthshock and don't know either the identity of the antagonists or the finale of the story, it's worth trying to see it without knowing anything in advance.  The first episode is carefully constructed to avoid the identity of the villains, and the ending will have a much greater impact if you don't know it ahead of time.  Of course, it's near impossible to avoid those, but hey, just in case you're that one person who is unfamiliar with it, this is one of the most important Doctor Who stories, and in most ways an excellent one, and has two strong surprises.

You have been warned.

With Earthshock, producer John Nathan-Turner, writer Eric Saward, and director Peter Grimwade set out a hugely ambitious goal: to essentially make a spectacular sci-fi action movie on a few hundred thousand bucks and six days of filming.  And, amazingly, they pretty much pulled it off.

Earthshock doesn't feel like most other Doctor Who stories from its era.  It's much tighter and more quickly paced, first of all.  Doctor Who tends to be a bit slower, which is generally fine, as that allows for more characterization and world-building.  But having something so taut and thrilling particularly in a season with quiet stories like Kinda and Black Orchid makes a huge impact.  After the first episode, which is an excellent piece of suspense-building, the story rarely slows down; even scenes without violence are tense with the omnipresent threat of violence.  There's not as much action as there seems to be, but the intense feeling of constant action is what counts.

The first episode doesn't give away the villains until the final two shots; in the meantime, we're stuck in claustrophobic caves, alternating between the TARDIS crew and a group of soldiers finding their body counts steadily increasing as they look for missing comrades.  These are atmospheric, eerie scenes, particularly when the characters run across the remains of some of their fellows reduced to horrific puddles of liquids.

After some searching, they discover the culprits: mysterious black androids.  These are simple but creepy creations, and add even more to the escalating suspense of the story, but they're just a decoy to keep us busy until the real villains appear:

Part of the intensity comes from Saward's portrayal of the Cybermen.  It's easy to criticize where he failed: he gives them none of the overriding creepiness of the central concept, of humans who have essentially replaced their entire beings with robotics.  Nor does he make them emotionless; as he points out, it's very, very difficult to make conflict dramatic and interesting when the antogonist lacks emotion, and while it isn't impossible, Saward goes for a different approach.

But what he gets absolutely, stunningly right is making them genuinely threatening, more threatening than perhaps they've ever been.  They may not have the elements that make them really unique in place, but taken simply as unstoppable killers, they're truly frightening.  Sure, they could be any overly emotional robotic army, but that doesn't make them any less threatening.  These are violent, vicious metal creatures intent on and capable of all manner of murderous assaults.

Their redesign does them credit, as well.  In many past appearances, they looked cheap and silly; here, they look much more convincing than before.  JNT's concept of their mouths being semi-visible does give the one indication of their former humanity that works.

David Banks' performance as the Cyber Leader adds a lot to their menace.  Saward's dialogue for him is silly and over-the-top, but Banks plays the hell out of every word, and exudes power and evil.

Saward structures the story superbly, keeping things constantly moving and filling the story with action and incident.  He also does a good job giving Davison strong material as the Doctor; good lines, nice touches of eccentricity, and an awesome scene where he gets a Cyberman literally stuck inside the atomic structure of a door.

"I want to announce my PRESENCE!  And see what the reaction is."

Adric gets some of the best material he ever got.  He had an unfortunate run of stories where he was more a hindrance than a help, and he can easily get annoying, but here, he's at his best: a kid trying as hard as he can to really be helpful.  He's also a lot less obnoxious than usual, and is actually rather likable.  Matthew Waterhouse is pretty appealing with material this solid.  And it's a good thing, too, because there's a real payoff for all that...

Tegan is also well used.  Early on, of course, she mostly just complains and such, but this is the story where she finally decides to be more than, as she so accurately describes, "a mouth on legs," and jumps into the fray, picks up a gun, and starts blasting the hell out of the Cybermen.  It's the height of her character.

For all the material he gives to the lesser companions, though, Saward, drops the ball on the useful one.  Early on, Nyssa is both cool and kind-hearted, but after about an episode and a half, Saward can't think of anything else to do with her (including, I don't know, give her a gun, too?), and just sticks her in the TARDIS doing nothing for the last two-thirds of the story.  That's sort of the problem with having three companions; unless you're extremely clever, one of them is going to get shunted to the side.  Of course, in the '60s, they usually stuck Susan to the side, which worked out just fine since she was the least helpful.  For some odd reason, though, in the early 80s, it's Nyssa who gets screwed over more than anyone despite actually being far and away the best companion of the group.  That said, she does get a few good moments here and there, including a good moment at the end.

It's mostly just this, though.

Still, that aside, Saward creates a gripping piece of episodic television, ramped to full power by Peter Grimwade's direction.  The action is well-directed, the atmosphere extremely tense, and the production vastly more expensive-looking than it actually is.

Davison is predictably excellent.  He's never anything less than terrific in the role, always pouring everything he has into it.  Davison makes his bad lines good, his good lines great, and his great lines works of wonder. 

Waterhouse, again, is unusually good.  Janet Fielding is at her zenith as Tegan.  Sarah Sutton... well, her material's pretty lousy.  She's good in the first episode, where she gets to do stuff.  She's pretty flat in the rest, but you really can't blame her. 

The supporting actors generally do good jobs. Beryl Reid is a bizarre choice for the role of a hard-nosed spaceship captain, but she gives such a good performance it's hard not to have fun.

The story rockets along through its second and third episodes, with successively awesome cliffhangers.  I've said before and I'll say it again, Cybermen make for terrific cliffhangers.  The fourth episode slows just a bit on the action for the sake of tense stand-offs.  The conflict between the Doctor and the Cyber Leader is melodrama slammed across with conviction.

And then, of course, there's the ending, which finishes the story with a tremendous emotional punch.  Adric's death is superbly handled by Saward: it's heroic, yes, but it also comes from Adric's personality, both good and bad.  He's self-absorbed and invicible-feeling, like any teenager, and is, of course, a genius at math.  And he wants desperately to be helpful.  All these lead to him making a fateful decision that, ultimately, leads to that final tragic moment.

All in all, Earthshock is a gripping, thrilling, horrifying, and ultimately powerful thrill ride both dramatic and exciting, and earns its place as a Doctor Who classic.

... but even for Doctor Who, there are a lot of plot holes.  These aren't too noticeable until the last episode, when the overall plot is revealed, but even a moments thought and the entire story falls to pieces.  If the Cyberman could sneak a bomb onto Earth without it being noticed for weeks, why would their back-up plan be such a ridiculously convoluted scheme to steal a freighter for a suicide bombing?  The cliffhanger at the end of episode 3 is tremendous... but why would they put an army of ten thousand Cybermen on a suicide bomb?

Once it's all out in the open, the plotting is completely incoherent.  It's like Saward dashed off an awesome rough draft, and then decided not to read over it or even spell-check it, probably.

My heart tells me that this is a terrific yarn, full of drama and action, and one of the great Doctor Who stories.  My brain tells me it's 90 minutes of incoherent, senseless fury, done with low-budget style.  I guess, in the end, I'm listening to my heart and saying this is great stuff, but not without some massive flaws.

 RATING:

* * * ½

• The alternate CGI effects on the DVD are brilliant; they fit in so well you wouldn't even know they were there if you hadn't seen the original versions.  The laser beams are vastly improved, but still look like the product of 80s television.  But the big difference is during the climax, as the freighter hurtles toward the Yucatan.  First off, it actually is the Yucatan.  But it's much better than that: in the original, we just saw a quick model shot of the ship blowing up.  Here, we see it falling toward the earth and the giant explosion that ensues.  The Earth looks very similar to the original, and the effects honestly don't look like anything that couldn't have been accomplished in 1982 with just a little more time and money.  For any of the CGI alternate effects that I complain about, I hold these ones in the highest regard.

  

 

• Okay, one thing I'm really not clear on: why, exactly, does the freighter fly back in time?  There's so little technobable explanation that the actual reason seems kind of in the air.  I'm pretty sure that it's the Doctor himself who sets all this up, for several reasons.  First, it's way, way too big a coincidence for the ship to just happen to travel back to the very conversation the characters were having at the beginning.  Second, the Doctor really does seem to have a plan going, and while it doesn't go perfectly, I'm pretty sure from Davison's performance and the way the scene is set up that it really is the Doctor himself turning the Freighter into the K-T Extinction Event.  Third, otherwise it just doesn't make any sense.  But the thing is, it's never explicitly stated, and this isn't a script terribly strong on subtlety.  I like my theory a lot more than anything else, but I do wonder if it is just me throwing a theory where it doesn't belong.

Vengeance On Varos

Vengeance on Varos

[1985 – Season 22, Serial 2]

 

[NOTE FROM THE FUTURE - A decade after I wrote this, I added an addendum that may have gone on longer than this original entry.]

 

Doctor Who weathered more than its share of controversy in the ‘70s and ‘80s, mostly from one Mary Whitehouse, an ultra-conservative Christian of the sort that gives the rest of us a bad name.  She thought television was becoming far too permissive and showing horrible, awful things that would corrupt children and even older viewers.  It’s worth pointing out that she wasn’t talking about Torchwood, where I might be tempted to concede the point, but about television programs from 1963.  I don’t know, maybe the BBC was showing some pretty racy, violent stuff in ’63, but in America at least, about the most offensive thing you could find was the highly realistic black eye makeup on Opie Taylor when he got beaten up by a bully. 

Anyway, when the ‘70s rolled around, she singled out Doctor Who as “teatime brutality for tots,” a phrase I find highly offensive in suggesting that the rest of us don’t like a little teatime brutality.  She went on to claim that it “contains some of the sickest, most horrible material.”  Eventually, the BBC started to listen to her, and censored the cliffhanger to episode 3 of The Deadly Assassin, where the Doctor, in a fight with an assassin who, strangely enough, could be described as “deadly,” was held underwater to be drowned.  Later, producer Graham Williams had to severely tone down the horror and violence in the show under Whitehouse’s influence.

In the mid-‘80s, under the script editing of Eric Saward, controversy arose yet again over the violence.  But this time, it wasn’t just Whitehouse and her followers: even many Doctor Who fans complained about the high levels of nastiness that was beginning to seep in.  In Attack of the Cybermen, a mercenary got his hands cut off (off-screen, of course, but nonetheless pretty nasty).  Vengeance on Varos was even more criticized, and it remains one of the most controversial of all Doctor Who episodes, and raises the question of just what is “too far”.

Vengeance certainly is one of the darkest, grimmest, and nastiest of all Doctor Who episodes.  Its depictions of violence are painful, it’s atmosphere deeply oppressive, its humor pitch-black.  It's also one of the most vividly captured planets of the mid-eighties.

The question is whether or not that’s a bad thing.  Some fans hate Vengeance with a, um, vengeance.  Others admire just how strongly it holds to its convictions..

And other than the writing for the Doctor’s companion and the horrifying costume the Sixth Doctor was tragically saddled with, it does it very compellingly indeed.  Its depiction of the dystopian tragedy of the world known as Varos strikes deeply.  It was originally a colony for the criminally insane, and now the leaders of the planet are the descendants of the original guards.  Torture of political prisoners in the Punishment Dome is television entertainment.  It's a vividly disturbing world.

Though not quite as disturbing as the clown nightmare the Doctor is wearing.

The darkness is only deepened by the presence of the Sixth Doctor.  Had it been the Fifth Doctor, or even Three or Four, they would have decried the violence and set themselves apart from it.  But Six was a different creature.  Deeply conflicted over the horrors seen in the final days of his fifth life and how little his compassion did to stop it, and further twisted by his intense recent regeneration, Six is a Doctor who gives into his violent impulses when he feels he is up against real evil.  He’s edgy and unpredictable.

He’s also very, very funny, albeit in a rather dark vein.  In the serial’s most infamous scene, the Doctor fights with two guards, who, in the process, accidentally fall into an acid bath.  The Doctor looks horrified, but quips, “You’ll forgive me if I don’t join you.”  It’s a remarkably cold line from a man known for his compassion.

Not that the Sixth Doctor lacks compassion; his darkness makes it all the more powerful when he saves Peri and helps the downtrodden without hesitation.  Colin Baker is terrific in this serial.  If you don’t like DarkDoctor, this isn’t the episode for you, and most of Six’s early stuff, right up until Trial of a Timelord, really, are probably better off avoided.  But if you do like that element as a contrast to his lighter side (as I do), you’ll find much to love in this story.

Unfortunately, his companion Peri isn’t near as compelling, at least not in this story.  There are serials where she’s a terrific companion, but here, she is nothing more than a grating whiner shuffled off to the sidelines just enough not to accomplish anything, but not enough to actually shut up.  There are good Peri episodes out there, but unfortunately, despite otherwise being one of the strongest of the Sixth Doctor’s stories, the Doctor-Companion relationship is rather weak, and is above all what keeps it from being a classic.

 

[NOTE FROM THE FUTURE - this was my main point of partial disagreement in the addendum. Peri has her issues here, but I quite like Bryant's performance, and didn't find Peri grating, just underdeveloped.]

The other major flaw is the pacing – the first half is pretty slow to get started.  The Doctor and Peri don’t arrive until about 25 minutes in, and the plot doesn’t really get momentum going until then.

Whether or not you go for this is largely personal taste.  Granted, the humor in Philip Martin’s original script was unfortunately toned down too much, but what remains works very well.  It’s satire that, for once, is subtle and incisive.  It doesn’t glorify the violence; it decries it.

It’s also a suspenseful, imaginative adventure.  It’s not very kid-friendly for a show usually considered to be a family program, but it is a compelling drama of its sort, despite its rough edges.  I wouldn't want every Doctor Who episode to be so bleak and violent, much like I wouldn't want every Doctor to be unstable and violent like Colin Baker, but in this particular case, I like it.

RATING:

* * *

SIDENOTES

·        That’s Sean Connery’s son Jason being tortured in the opening scenes (and playing a fairly large role throughout).

·        I didn’t mention the character of “Sil”, a rather disgusting wretch.  He’s one of the original series’ most convincing monsters, not only well done makeup wise, but exceedingly well written by Martin and brilliantly acted by Nabil Shaban.

·        The other crucial supporting characters are Arak and Etta, who don’t have any involvement in the story itself; instead, they are the representatives of the world of Varos, and a sort of Greek Chorus to the various events.  It’s a good conceit that adds tremendously to the setting and themes.

[NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: My Sixth Doctor reviews otherwise came a decade after this, and I was largely quite harsh on script editor Eric Saward, a talented writer but largely unsuccessful editor and tactless human, but points where they're due - Arak and Etta were his idea, and that idea is one of the best things about the entire serial. They're really the rug that brings the whole room together.]

The Visitation

The Visitation

[1982 - Season 19, Serial 4]

The Visitation, Peter Davison’s fourth outing as the Fifth Doctor, seems like a good place to start reviewing his era.  It was the first script from soon-to-be-script editor Eric Saward, and it has to at least a small extent most of the flaws that so damaged the fifth Doctor’s era: thin, derivative stories; forgettable villains; plot holes; Adric; and above all, the Fifth Doctor’s inaction.  He’s supposed to be the most compassionate of Doctors, but in many writer’s hands – even good ones like Saward – he tends to do far too little.

But The Visitation is also blessed with everything good about the Fifth Doctor’s era, as well: Saward’s talent for writing mercenary characters; a competant, cool companion in Nyssa, nicely underplayed by Sarah Sutton; fantastic location filming, courtesy producer John Nathan-Turner’s ability to stretch budgets to their limits; and above all, Peter Davison’s performances as the Doctor, which are so charming and compelling that they rise above even the weakest of scripts.  Davison really was the glue that held his mixed bag of an era together.

The Visitation starts strongly, as a family in the mid-1600s meet a hostile alien visitor.  The family is nicely sketched by Saward and the actors for characters who only appear for a few minutes, and you care about those under attack from far superior technology.  It’s a short but effective opening.

Competent Special Effects?  What?!  This is an outrage!

Then to the TARDIS, where the Doctor chastises Adric (rightly) for interfering and nearly making everything much, much worse during Kinda, the previous episode.  It’s a rare Adric-centered scene that works, nailing his ineffectual character without making him overtly unlikable (which is good, because the rest of this episode won’t be anywhere near as kind).  It also has a great line from the Doctor: “Next time you want to escape somewhere, walk.”  Sarah Sutton plays the scene very well, too.  And the interaction with Tegan that follows is also effective.  I really like the Doctor’s severe reluctance to apologize to Tegan for what he considers a very minor mistake (arriving 300 hundred years early), as well as the semi-sincerity of his eventual apology.

Most of the first episode is very strong.  The location filming is terrific, and makes it feel much bigger-budget and more cinematic than most episodes.  If there’s one thing the BBC can do, it’s period pieces, and the costumes and atmosphere are excellent.  The effects are also unusually good.  It’s also enlivened considerably by Michael Robbin’s wonderful performance as Richard Mace, an eccentric highwayman/ex-actor who encounters the crew.  His interactions with Davison are consistently funny and far and away the highlight of The Visitation.

Saward, in fact, fills the dialogue with great exchanges throughout, and it’s great fun listening to his dialogue.  He doesn’t really develop any supporting characters beyond Mace, but Mace is such a great creation that he doesn’t need anyone else to carry it.

When they reach the manor attacked in the opening scene, the group splits up, and the Doctor and Nyssa go off alone.  The two work together beautifully; Nyssa is intelligent and clever, and Sutton has great chemistry with Davison.  She’s a terrific assistant, helpful and engaging.  And it’s obvious that the Doctor trusts her, and she rewards his trust with actual, you know, competence.  Take their interaction here:

Nyssa: Why are you so certain the aliens have come here?

Doctor: Well, I’m not.  For all I know, they went to the village.

Nyssa: They could also have died from the plague.

Doctor: Indeed!

Nyssa: They might be friendly.

Doctor: Well, if I’m right, the comet that actor saw was their ship burning up in the atmosphere.  They’re probably stranded here, desperate.  They could wreak havoc.

Nyssa: So, what are you going to do if you find them?

Doctor: Oh, twist their arms a bit to go back to their home planet.

Nyssa: I hope they have arms to twist.

Doctor: I’ll find something.

Doctor: Look!

Nyssa: Scarring from a high-energy weapon.

Doctor: And fired from a weapon.

Nyssa: So much for my friendly aliens.

Pictured: Helpful, Useful, Engaging.  Not pictured: Tegan, Adric

She’s helpful, she asks good questions, she figures out what’s going on quickly, and she notices a couple things the Doctor hasn’t seen yet, actually adding to his effectiveness.  Compare to the Doctor with Tegan:

Doctor: How do you feel now?

Tegan: Groggy, sore, and bad-tempered.

Doctor: Almost your old self.

It’s strange that JNT and Saward were more eager to get rid of Nyssa than Tegan, who’s fairly useless.  Granted, their dialogue is sometimes funnier, and it’s not that I don’t like Tegan at all.  She’s of great use in Logopolis and Castrovalva as an audience surrogate to help smooth the transition from one Doctor to the next, particularly when his other two companions are aliens (and one of them is Adric).  Janet Fielding goes over-the-top, but it’s appropriate for an often melodramatic character.  But this episode is a great example of why she doesn’t make a particularly good companion: she accomplishes nothing besides getting captured and quickly spilling everthing she knows about the Doctor (which, luckily, isn’t much) to the hostile aliens.  I mean, Adric does better under the same pressure – at least he resists one question before saying everything he knows (which isn’t much more than Tegan).

            Adric: I shouldn’t have told him about the TARDIS

Tegan: If you hadn’t, I would have.  I don’t think he was joking about torturing us.

            Adric: We need to get out of here.

            Tegan: Well, sure, but how?

Nice, Tegan.  You’re almost being out-companioned by the boy wonder.  Not that he ultimately proves himself here or anything – I’ll get to him later.

Otherwise, Tegan does little but complain and wish she was home.  There was no reason to keep her on after Time-Flight, which had an appropriate ending for her character: finally having returned home, to her job and her life, she suddenly regrets it and wants back on the TARDIS, only to find that the Doctor has already left.  And then, by the silliest of coincidences, she gets back on in the very next episode.  When she actually did leave down in Resurrection of the Daleks, her explaination was that after all that darkness and violence, it just wasn’t fun anymore.  But she was never having fun.  The Visitation shows very vividly how effective a companion Nyssa is, and how ineffective Tegan is, and somehow Saward didn’t even notice the point he himself had made so well.

Much worse than Tegan’s ineffectiveness is the Doctor’s action at the beginning of Episode 2.  Oh, it’s fine up to a point – the Android from the opening enters wearing a black cloak, and shoots Adric (Hooray!) and Tegan (Go evil Android!), knocking them out (awww…).  The Doctor, obviously lacking weapons, shoos Nyssa and Mace out of there and cleverly lets loose volatile chemicals in the air, forcing the Android not to use its weapon.  Then, as the Android descends on him, he bravely turns tail and runs away, heroically leaving Adric and Tegan to the mercies of this Android and the so far unseen alien threat.

The very picture of courage itself.

It’s about as un-Doctorly a moment as could happen.  Granted, given that they were only knocked out, they might not be in mortal danger, but the Doctor would never intentionally leave his companions to an unseen threat.  In fact, it’s hard to believe any other Doctor would do it.  Five, however, is just nice enough that he won’t do anything to the Android, and retreats without helping his friends.  Only Five was so kind-hearted that writers could make him a wimp. (and, frustratingly, no one stopped them from doing so)

Then again, it is Adric and Tegan we’re talking about here.

And it is a little unfair to criticize too much.  He can’t single-handedly carry them both out of the cellar, and he does go up to get Mace to help him carry the two.  I suppose there are just enough extenuating circumstances to give him a freebie here, but to be honest, he doesn’t do a whole lot for the majority of the story – mostly just get captured and escape ad nauseum.  His various escape attempts are clever at least.  Granted, Davison does this with great energy, humor, and conviction, making it feel like the Doctor is the hero throughout, but the writing doesn’t quite live up to the actor.  It’s not bad, by any means, and not really noticeable until you’ve watched some of the later Davison stories where he does nothing.  The problem may be here, but it’s just a minor annoyance at this point.

Anyway, after the Doctor fearlesslessly allows the violent, laser-firing Android to capture Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Doctor figures out a way to destroy the Android with an improvised sonic weapon from various pieces of the TARDIS, and sends Nyssa off to take care of it.  The aliens finally appear, and while the Terileptils do look a bit rubbery, they’re generally well designed.  Further, they’re the first use of animatronics in the series, and the result is an alien that looks refreshingly non-humanoid.  Saward doesn’t flesh them out very much – they’re just another alien threat to the Earth.  But the Terileptil leader’s dialogue is good, and he’s complex enough to be interesting.  All in all, they’re good enough for the occasion, if not terribly memorable.

The Doctor, Nyssa, and Mace find the alien ship and explore it.  They have an enjoyable stand-off with mind-controlled villagers, while Tegan and Adric, amazingly, manage to escape from their room, and Adric makes it out the window before Tegan is recaptured.  Nyssa is sent off to build the sonic weapon while the Doctor and Mace look for a miller who seems to be involved with the aliens.  This doesn’t go well.

The Doctor and Mace are captured by the villagers and locked up, and now the various lines are drawn clearly: the Terileptils, their android, and the hypnotized villagers against our intrepid (and less-than-intrepid) heroes, and while the rest of the story isn’t perfect, The Visitation on the whole turns out to be great fun.  Between Saward’s well-researched script, the BBC’s impeccable costumes and sets, and the atmospheric direction and filming, it’s an involving world.  The plot isn’t terribly original, but it plays out enjoyably, even if the third episode and the early parts of the fourth drag without much going on – Tegan is hypnotized and virtually disappears until the end, Nyssa just works on the device (she doesn’t use it until Episode 4), and the Doctor spends the whole episode captured (and even gets the Sonic Screwdriver destroyed – and didn’t replace it for two more lives).  Fortunately, he has Mace and the Terileptil to interact with, and it’s very entertaining.  Davison, expectedly, aquits himself very well.

"I feel like I've lost an old friend."

Saward does all he can to give the companions stuff to do, but he ultimately doesn’t help Adric’s case.  While Nyssa works on the sonic weapon, Adric makes it back to the TARDIS, and his unexpected competence in escaping from a decaying wooden room is all for naught as he stops Nyssa’s work so he can whine about the Doctor not being there.  Eventually, he gets around to “helping” her a little (mostly by whinily asking what she’s doing).  Then, over Nyssa’s protestions that there are bad guys outside, he walks right back out of the TARDIS and, hilariously, doesn’t make it twenty seconds before getting captured.

In fact, it would probably be a much stronger episode without Adric or Tegan altogether.  Remove them, and add a few more plot developments instead, and you’d have a classic.

SPOILERS

The second half is where Saward weaves his science fiction ideas – that the black plague was an alien attempt to destroy humanity, and the Great Fire of London came from the Doctor’s defeat of these aliens.  Saward’s attention to details and gradual reveal of the plot pays off, and it’s one of the more credible versions of a sort of story done to death in the last few years – explain some historical event as alien attack, have Doctor defeat them.  It gets old, but here, at least, it works very well.  Which is good, because the second half is otherwise a bit low on plot.

END SPOILERS

All in all, The Visitation is a strong Fifth Doctor outing – atmospheric, highly entertaining, funny, and exciting, and makes up for its slow second half with a good sci-fi yarn and a great ending.

RATING:

* * *

SIDENOTES

• Tegan, on going back to her own time: “Now I’ll have to pretend that nothing’s happened.”  What, has she forgotten that her aunt was murdered on her way to the airport?
• Oh, and right after that: “Nyssa, I know I haven’t always been the best of companions.”  This would be much less painfully true if Tegan didn’t overstay her welcome for two seasons after this.  Whatever.  It’s a good scene.
• I like Paddy Kingsland’s synthesized score.  Not quite as good as his Logopolis score, but still solidly atmospheric and dramatic.  A lot of the synth scores in the ‘80s are dated and distracting, but this is an exception.
• Adric: Where’s the Doctor?
  Nyssa: Downstairs.  He’s found a wall that seems to fascinate him.
  
  I really love Nyssa.