Serial 127: Enlightenment - The Black Guardian Trilogy Part III

Doctor: Peter Davison (5th Doctor)
Companion: Tegan, Turlough

Written by: Barbara Clegg
Directed by: Fiona Cumming

Background & Significance: With "Terminus" in the rearview mirror, the Doctor Who production team set about looking for a story that would wrap up this "Black Guardian Trilogy" that was the centerpiece of season twenty. To write it, Eric Saward brought in Barbara Clegg, whom he knew from his time working in radio. To direct, Nathan-Turner brought back returning stalwart Fiona Cumming, who had just come off directing the phenomenal "Snakedance".

For those keeping math at home, that means that this is the first, last, and only story in the history of Doctor Who (on television) to be written by a woman while also being directed by a woman. More than that, while it isn't the first story to be written-by-credited to a woman, it is the first to be actually written by a woman (Lesley Scott didn't actually do a word of work on "The Ark").

What's remarkable is that Nathan-Turner even managed to produce it. The story itself ran afoul of a labour strike (don't they always) and Nathan-Turner sacrificed what eventually became "Resurrection of the Daleks" to make it happen. Clearly this pained Nathan-Turner, who was a big proponent for The Daleks returning because, hey, ratings! But that sacrifice led to one of the true high points of the era and one of the best Classic stories, as far as I'm concerned. It's a personal favourite of mine, and as we round the corner towards the last three months of this blog, I love that I'm finally able to talk about it.

So let's get to it!

Serial 126: Terminus - The Black Guardian Trilogy Part II

Doctor: Peter Davison (5th Doctor)
Companion: Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka, Vislor Turlough

Written by: Stephen Gallagher
Directed by: Mary Ridge

Editor's Note: 'allo, chaps! Matt here stepping in to intro Cassandra's discussion of "Terminus". It's a mid-week thing because we're in the middle of a linked story (the things we do!) but I will be back in a  few days to discuss the fantastic "Enlightenment" so stay tuned for that. Also, appreciate the Cassandra because she's only got one more to go. Lucky her!

Background & Significance: "Terminus" is the second in a loose trilogy of stories featuring the introduction of new companion Turlough and the return of the Black Guardian from Key to Time.  As fate would had it, this story also served as a departure for Nyssa, who was supposed to fall ill and leave in the previous season, but managed to hold on til this story when JNT decided she'd truly run her course.

Granted, for all he brought to the show, I don't really agree with all of his decisions in a producer capacity, and this is one of them.  I personally love Nyssa, but she was never given the chance to grow as a character ever.  This really hurts her departure, because it pretty much comes out of nowhere (as we'll see); and even Davison himself was against the decision, believing Nyssa to be the best and most compatible companion for his Doctor (and he is not wrong).

Written by Steven "Warrior's Gate" Gallagher, you'd think this would be a much better outing with such a story under his belt.  I mean, he's already written a "suitable" companion departure for Romana, and "Warrior's Gate" was interesting and fairly cerebral, which I like in a Doctor Who story.  Unfortunately, I don't feel he lives up to the promise with this.

"Terminus" is the only Doctor Who story directed by Mary Ridge, who had a long-standing relationship with the BBC, but her stint as director for this story was so fraught with trouble and rushed (and it really shows), it ultimately resulted in a really icy and uncomfortable relationship/falling out with JNT, so she never returned.  Which is a shame, because there is some really good stuff buried in here, but...

Anyway, enough of all that.  Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Serial 125: Mawdryn Undead - The Black Guardian Trilogy Part I

Doctor: Peter Davison (5th Doctor)
Companion: Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough

Written by: Peter Grimwade
Directed by: Peter Moffat

Background & Significance: For Doctor Who's twentieth season, producer Jonathan Nathan-Turner had the idea to bring back a bunch of The Doctor's old villains in an effort to tie every story to the legacy of the show. The kick off story ("Arc of Infinity") featured the return of the "anniversary villain" Omega and the next story ("Snakedance") featured the return of the previous season's "Mara". There were plans for The Master to return ("The King's Demons") and plans were made for the Daleks' return at the end of the season in "The Return" (which fell through and became "Resurrection of the Daleks").

But the middle of the season featured a trilogy of stories that featured The Black Guardian as something of a background running villain. It allowed the story to do new and interesting things with new and exciting villains while still retaining the "returning villain" mandate.

This is widely referred to as "The Black Guardian Trilogy". Indeed, it's even boxed and sold that way on DVD as a trilogy of 5th stories. And yet, that's not quite accurate. See, the Black Guardian (as we find out here) is just a means to an end to finish replacing Adric. It's here that we get the introduction of a new companion: Turlough. As originally conceived, Turlough was somewhat duplicitous and (for lack of better phrase) "The Evil Companion". As an idea, this was one that captured the imagination of script editor Eric Saward, who was always looking at new ways to shake things up. They would roll out this character over the course of this "Black Guardian Trilogy" and once it was all said and done they could decide whether or not they wanted to keep him around as a permanent companion.

So what I'm saying is this trilogy should be called "Vislor Turlough, or How I Learned To Stop Hating The Doctor and Join The TARDIS crew".

Written by Peter Grimwade, who was trying his hand again at writing after the disaster of "Time-Flight", focusing away from directing after having a run of phenomenal stories. Fortunately, this time around he's much more successful. It's also the return of Peter Moffat to the directing chair. But perhaps most importantly, it's the return of Nicholas Courtney as The Brigadier. Ironically, last week we talked about him in his last appearance til this one, so much like The Brigadier here, we're jumping from one story to the next with no cover over inbetween. Granted, it was SUPPOSED to be William Russell as Ian Chesterton, but he wasn't available. Nor was Ian Marter (Harry), Nathan-Turner's second choice. Which left Nick Courtney to return.

And oh what a wonderful bendy return it is.

So let's get to it!

Serial 124: Snakedance

Doctor: Peter Davison (5th Doctor)

Companions: Nyssa, Tegan

Written by: Christopher Bailey

Directed by: Fiona Cumming

Editor's Note: Hey, kids! Matt here! Not stepping in this week because I promised Cassandra a good story and because I had already decided I would be fine with "just" doing "Kinda" I [foolishly] promised her "Snakedance" before I had seen it. So she's in this week and I'm left angsting that I don't get to write it. Ah well. It was nice to watch it again (which I just finished doing. TMI?) and while I'm sad I don't get to tackle this story in a blog capacity, I have no doubt that Cassandra will do a bang up job because it's a rich, kick ass story with tons and tons of things to talk about. And hopefully it won't be in the vein of the epics we've been doing around these parts lately. God knows we don't need another "Kinda"-length entry any time soon. Last week's was long enough.

But I'm talking. I do that sometimes. Shutting up now and turning it over to Cassandra for her thoughts on the return of Christopher Bailey and Fiona Cumming.

Background & Significance:  There's something about sequels in Doctor Who.

Because television tends to be more serialized than movies, it's interesting whenever a TV show chooses to do a sequel, especially considering the more moder and character arc-centric approach inherent to its storytelling foundations. But with Doctor Who sequels, I tend to be pretty wary of them, because they're usually pretty rubbish. I mean, look at "Monster of Peladon".  Same writer, same director, same Doctor, same production team, different Companion, and somehow it managed to take a completely awesome story in "Curse of Peladon" and come up with... well, a crap sequel.

So when I heard that there was a sequel to "Kinda," I wasn't entirely sure what to think. And then we watched it.

And it was awesome.

"Snakedance" is significant because it is a sequel.  It was broadcast during Season 20, the 20th anniversary year of Doctor Who. JNT and Saward wanted the year to be epic, so each story in the season was designed to bring back an old adversary of the Doctor.  Of course, the Mara sort of sticks out like a sore thumb because it was just introduced in the previous season.  But I think that's why it's better than just about every other story in the season.  That, and Christopher Bailey is a boss at writing awesome things.

It's also pretty significant because of its cast, which is expertly wrangled together by director Fiona Cumming. Brian Miller, husband of Elisabeth Sladen, is in this story in the role of Dugdale, which is pretty awesome.  And it's the first television role of Martin Clunes (Lon), who is a prominent and award-winning actor in the UK, which I guess is kind of a big deal.

But enough of all that.  Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Serial 128: The King's Demons

Doctor: Peter Davison (5th Doctor)
Companions: Tegan, Turlough, Kamelion

Writtten by: Terence Dudley
Directed by: Tony Virgo

Background & Significance: Now here's an odd one.

"The King's Demons" is one of the few two parters in Classic Who history, and it's something of a strange thing as a result. For one thing, these two parters are usually a bit of diversionary fun, but often structured strangely.

For one thing, they usually build like the first part of a four parter and then resolve and deal with complications rather quickly. In fact, there's rarely actually any sort of complication to them. They just sorta happen. Like I said, diversionary.

Terence Dudley, if you'll remember, is the fellow who did the script to "Black Orchid", which was also a two-parter. That, like this, was a bit of diversionary fun, something to intermissioncise the season between two stories--whatever was coming up supposedly being major or whatever. In this case, the plan was for "The King's Demons" to fall between the "massive" Black Guardian Trilogy and Eric Saward's revival of The Daleks in what was supposed to be called "The Return" but which turned into "Resurrection of the Daleks" a season later when it was postponed from this season (season 20) due to a labour strike (which was becoming far too common, if you ask me).

So it only makes sense that "The King's Demons" come here. I mean, The Daleks were about to come back. And now we're going to give The Doctor a cool, new, in-no-way-like-C-3PO robot companion with which he can use to fight The Daleks? Awesome. I approve.

Oh if only it were that simple.

So yes, this is the beginning of the Kamelion disaster, Kamelion being a robot so awesome he only made one other appearance in the life of the show. And rightfully so, because he totally was a botched attempt and not wonderfully realized or given that real chance to shine or whatever, but I'm sure I can talk about that as I go through it or something. Especially in part two.

Also fun to point out: it's Season 20! So we get the return of a villain. Last time we talked about this season, we talked about Omega (which was a genius callback, kids; seriously genius), but now we're at the tail end of the season and we get... Oh. We get The Master, again.

You can feel the wear and tear on the show. Producer Jonathan Nathan Turner's original plan to include The Master at least two times a season was quickly sidelined in favour of other stories that were, quite frankly, better. Also, the last time The Master showed up it was so super sucky that it makes you want to put a gun in your mouth. This is another almost famously infamous Master-is-totally useless story. Which is weird because if they had just gone straight pseudo-historical with this or maybe had the Monk (there's an idea, Captain Jonathan "Callback" Nathan-Turner) or something this would turn out a bit more interesting, but... alas, I suppose.

So let's get to it!

Serial 123: Arc of Infinity

Doctor: Peter Davison (5th Doctor)
Companions: Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka


Written by: Johnny Byrne
Directed by: Ron Jones

Background & Significance: Peter Davison's second season marked Doctor Who's twentieth anniversary. The season was punctuated by the continuity porn/cluster-frak The Five Doctors. But that's just one thing. This is TWENTY YEARS. The celebration of Doctor Who needed to be a year long and it needed to be epic and noticeable and memorable.

Or, at least, a little bit gimmicky.

The celebration came in the form of returns of old villains as the main foes in each serial. Does this mean Daleks, Cybermen, and The Master? Not.... really? Oh, then you must mean Sontarans and The Monk and stuff, right?

Well... yeah no not at all.

No. Their focus are on what can only be called the important but forgotten villains. Rather seemingly haphazardly selected, "Arc of Infinity" stars the evil villain from the seminal classic story "The Three Doctors". In case you don't remember (or didn't read it or see it, which you should because it was awesome) Omega was a good villain, and one who dated back to the creation of Time Lord society as one of its creators. Crazy memorable, super fun, for many many reasons.

What we end up having is a ridiculous mess of an episode (as we'll soon see) that isn't so much bad as it is textbook "not good". Most of these are story and writing problems, which is none too inspiring for writer Johnny Byrne's other stories: Tom Baker's penultimate "The Keeper of Traken" (starring the return of The Master) and the kick off to Davison's final season "Warriors of the Deep" (featuring the return of the Silurians).

That said? This story is ridiculous fun. So much of it makes absolutely no sense, but they go with it anyways and commit full on, and for that, this serial is amazing. From shooting in Amsterdam (as in the actual place), a trigger-happy Mutant Bird Slave, and some insane Time Lord blood lust, it's a bucket o' fun, and while at the end of it all I'm fully aware that it's not very good, it's still wonderfully awful in the way a lot of old Star Trek is wonderfully awful, and I tend to love these sorts of episodes.

We open after Tegan's departure at the end of the previous season's closer "Time-Flight", and Nyssa of Traken and The Doctor are flying around the universe having a grand old time with Tegan's nowhere to be found.

That's called "Life is good".

Also, because of the disjointed nature of two very different parts of this story, I'm going to split the commentary into "The Omega Storyline" and "The Amsterdam Storyline"

So let's get to it!

Serial 129: The Five Doctors

Doctors: Richard Hurndall (1st Doctor), Patrick Troughton (2nd Doctor), Jon Pertwee (3rd Doctor), Tom Baker (4th Doctor), Peter Davison (5th Doctor)
Companions: Tegan Jovanka, Vislor Turlough, Sarah Jane Smith, Susan Foreman, The Brigadier, Romana


Written by: Terrance Dicks
Directed by: Peter Moffatt

Background & Significance: In 1983, Doctor Who turned twenty. You know what that means. Something big. Something epic. Something legendary.

Ten year's previous, they did "The Three Doctors," a multi-Doctor crossover that didn't suck and was kinda awesome (despite the lack of Hartnell, but even then, he had one of the standout lines) and succeeded. In 1983, they decided to re-capture the magic with "The Five Doctors." They gave the script to popular and incredibly prolific Who writer Terrance Dicks. He was given the following rule: to feature The Doctor in his five incarnations and "as many monsters and companions as you could cram in there." The intentions noble, stages was set for the anniversary special to be a celebration of the show's long and varied two decade history.

Spoiler alert: And it fails. Hard.

First off, that's my own opinion, and maybe I'm a victim of my own anticipointments, but I don't think so. And for the sake of some background, here's why...

1) Tom Baker passed on it because it was "too soon". So they used archive footage from an incomplete story that was never aired, meaning he doesn't even really appear in this serial.

2) Hartnell's dead, so they decided to bring in Richard Hurndall, who kinda looks like him, and expected him to pull off Hartnell... But we'll talk more on him a bit later.

3) If you count The Master and not The Fourth Doctor, there are TEN main characters in this ninety minute story. Such character work takes a remarkably skilled writer, and, while Terrance Dicks is good, he's not that good.

4) There was a HUGE mess of scheduling conflicts going on all through this. They couldn't accomadate Frazern Hines (Jamie) to be Troughton's Companion, so everyone got kinda bumped and dumped around leading to some awkward things that don't necessarily make so much sense.

So just know all that as we delve into this. I really wanted to like this, but it ended up being overly ambitious and it ended up failing if you ask me.

One more thing before I start. This story is remarkably bouncy, with each Doctor kinda getting his own storyline, so I'm going to bounce around and just focus (for the most part) on one Doctor at a time.

Or at least, that's the plan, anyways.

But enough blather! Let's get to it!