The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: The Caves Of Androzani

THE CAVES OF ANDROZANI (Part One) 08/03/2024

So, here we are at the start of Peter Davison's final story and it looks like the Doctor and Peri might already be dead!

To be honest, I know the new Doctor is joining before the end of the series (for the first time since Season 4!) and I know killing off a new companion after only 5 episodes isn't unprecedented, but I doubt their execution was real. The cliffhanger was definitely a WTF moment, though, leaving you wondering exactly how the hell the Doctor and Peri will survive!

They've arrived on the planet Androzani Minor and found themselves embroiled in the machinations of gun runners. The inhabitants of sister planet Androzani Major rely on (are addicted to?) an anti-ageing drug called Spectrox which is created on Androzani Minor (a planet not colonised due to mudbursts from deep within the planet every time it nears its sister planet) by someone called Sharaz Jek. He and his androids control the distribution of the drug, pretty much holding Androzani Major to ransom for it. A military unit are stationed on Minor to track Jek down but have so far been largely unsuccessful. They, led by General Chellak, report to Morgus, a high-powered businessman on Major whose conglomerate just happens to own Minor, and who doesn't seem too chuffed that his planet's government are considering making a deal with Jek; the people, after all, need their Spectrox.

Exploring the caves of Androzani Minor, the Doctor and Peri stumbled across a consignment of weapons destined for Jek but were found by Chellak's soldiers and, on Morgus' instruction, scheduled for execution which happened at the close of the episode. Meanwhile, they and the military are being watched by a man, probably Jek, dressed in leather fetish gear, one glove, and a black and white mask which reveals only his mouth and right eye. Oh, and there's a pretty awful monster in the caves which, mercifully, we saw little of and in the kind of lighting that should have been used on the Garm and the Myrka, which shows that they can do decent lighting if they want to!

It's probably all down to the Director, and this story does seem to have a very good one with some nice high-angle shots, well cropped low shots, crossfades and montages, and an intensity which suits the theme of drugs and gun running. On top of this, Robert Holmes is back as scriptwriter, recycling his gun running idea from The Power Of Kroll and riffing on the name Sholakh from The Ribos Operation. The music is very atmospheric, too, and there's a very strong sense of foreboding reminiscent of Logopolis but (visually) a million times better done.

Peter Davison is taking everything very seriously and has quite a good rapport with Nicola Bryant as Peri. It seems a shame that this pair will have so little time together. It's a shame altogether that Davison has decided to call it a day. It barely seems five minutes since he arrived but he has done almost three full series, just as Pat Troughton did. Pat had more episodes, though, and in between we had Pertwee and Baker staying around for five and seven seasons respectively. I wonder, had Season 20 been better, if Davison would have stayed around longer? This series has, by and large, seemed much better than the last with a sharper style and a harder edge. There's been a bit more variety in pace and look between stories, although there has, throughout, been a strong sense of military action and the looming presence of war, possibly mirroring societal tensions and fears. I quite like this harder edge but stories like this, the Dalek story and the Silurian tale definitely need tempering with less gritty stories like The Awakening and Planet Of Fire.

So, an impressive opening episode leaving me intrigued as to how (and if!) the Doctor and Peri will survive!

THE CAVES OF ANDROZANI (Part Two) 09/03/2024 

On the whole this is a very good story, although the cliffhanger today let it down somewhat. I don't know why they insist on featuring monsters which are beyond the limitations of the budget to realise. This one looks like a cross between a dragon, a gorilla and an armadillo, and stinks of 'man in a rubber suit'. The head is hugely disproportionate, and sticking a weirdly shaped carapace on the back does it no favours whatsoever, merely highlighting how bad the muscle-suit looks and limiting the actor inside to very stilted movements. I don't think the creature is even necessary because the jeopardy of being cornered, for the Doctor, may just as well have come from the gun runners!

Aside from that, the story is holding up very well. More background was given for Sharaz Jek and Morgus, the two chief antagonists here. Morgus is the corrupt head of the major corporation on Major who, along with Jek, discovered a way of refining the raw Spectrox which is either the nest or the droppings of the giant bats that live in the caves of Androzani Minor, and creating a drug which holds back the ageing process. Jek created androids to harvest the Spectrox but, it seems, Morgus was unwilling to go halves on the proceeds of selling the drug and provided Jek with faulty equipment which led to a mudburst taking Jek by surprise whilst he was in the caves. He was horrifically scarred (and not just physically) but somehow retained control of production and distribution of the Spectrox and will only negotiate with Major when he has Morgus' head at his feet. Literally. You get the impression that Jek is actually Professor Jackage, who originally discovered the cure for Spectrox Toxemia - a fatal disease the Doctor and Peri contracted through touching raw Spectrox - which is the milk of a Queen Bat (all of whom are out of reach in the oxygen-free depths of the cave network) partly because of the similarity of the name and the fact that Jek claims to have once been a doctor, and partly because Morgus doesn't seem aware of Jek's vendetta.

Jek's ability to build remarkably convincing android duplicates (and his psychotic obsession with Peri) is what resolved yesterday's cliffhanger. He created duplicates and swapped them over before the execution. He's also duplicated Major Salateen (Chellak's second in command) who he's holding prisoner and so knows everything that goes on at the military base via the robot double (who no doubt also fitted his network of spy cameras). This would explain the Doctor's throwaway comment yesterday that there was "something funny about that Major!". Of course, the real Salateen isn't happy that the Doctor and Peri are now Jek's permanent guests, but cheered up when he realised they were dying.

Jek and the gun runners had some interesting conflict, and the fact that they have discs to wear to stop Jek's android army shooting them (the androids are programmed to fire at any Human without a disc, presumably so as not to waste ammo on any bats - although Salateen indicted the bat colony may have been mostly wiped out by them anyway) contributed to the Doctor and Peri's escape. The Androids recognise the Doctor isn't Human so he managed to deactivate their guard while Jek was negotiating with the gun runners and, Peri wearing a disc, they and Salateen escaped. They encountered another android, however, and the Doctor got separated from the others prior to the dodgy cliffhanger.

It's all very good, though, with excellent performances by Christopher Gable and John Normington as Jek and Morgus in particular. It's as dark and gritty as Resurrection Of The Daleks, but already it's clear that much more thought has been given to the plot, the backgrounds of the characters, and the world-building to bring the story to life. It's also a very Robert Holmes script in that there's only one female character aside from Peri - Morgus' secretary, Krau Timmin, who's basically a bit part. I do, however, like the fact that Krau and Trau are used as feminine and masculine titles for individuals on Androzani, something that needed no explanation but adds colour to the society. It's the kind of thing that sets Holmes above certain other writers for the show. It's nice to have him back.

THE CAVES OF ANDROZANI (Part Three) 15/03/2024 

I don't think there's ever been a story with such a sense of desperation. I think it's heightened by both the fact that the Doctor and Peri are slowly dying and that events from the very beginning have been completely out of their control. The story itself is actually about a political war over drugs (there's that 'W' word again) with the political machinations of Morgus on Major against his one-time business partner, Jek, on Minor. Morgus' corruption has led to him being both ambitious and suspicious despite being the richest man in the Five Planets and using Stotz and the gun runners to supply Jek with weapons to fight against the army he's sent there thus inflating the price of Spectrox and increasing Morgus' own wealth and power. This episode, he murdered the President after seeing the Doctor aboard Stotz's ship (being taken to Major because Stotz suspected he was a spy) and coming to the conclusion that, since he had no knowledge of who the Doctor was or what he was doing on Minor (regardless of the Doctor's protests of the truth) only the President could have ordered him to be there and instruct that the execution be faked, and thus suspect Morgus of orchestrating the ongoing war. Obviously, this wasn't the case and will no doubt lead to Morgus' downfall since he's now instructed Stotz to remain orbiting Minor and is going out there to see what's going on in person.

The Doctor, however, has freed himself, taken control of the ship and is crash-landing it on Minor so that he can save Peri in one of the most gutwrenchingly emotional cliffhangers I've ever seen! Davison is really dialling the drama up to eleven - I've never seen the Fifth Doctor this tense and angry - but it's not surprising considering the way he and Peri have been treated in this story; ignored, 'executed', beaten and tortured, and the fact that they're both dying of a swift and painful, almost incurable disease, and that their plight has, at best, just been laughed at is a pretty grim situation. I'm not entirely sure this is the sort of thing that's suitable for a family show, but it's certainly a billion times more dramatic, tense and heroic than the dirge that Tom got for his final story! It also fits quite well with the rest of the season so far, and I'm wondering if it was the Production Team's intention to give this series a slightly grittier edge throughout in order to build up to what otherwise would be a very dramatic shift in tone for Davison's final outing. I can't imagine this fitting at all well after, say, Terminus, Enlightenment and The King's Demons, but following on from Frontios, Resurrection and Planet Of Fire it feels like there's been a slow but sure build towards the Doctor and his new companion being put into this horrible situation.

It also occurred to me early on in the episode that, much like The Tenth Planet, the Doctor and Peri's presence has very little effect on the events taking place. This, of course, isn't true. Whilst they're both being dragged along by the actions of Jek, Chellak, Morgus and Stotz, both have profoundly influenced the decisions and actions of those around them, whilst the First Doctor, Polly and Ben's presence had almost no impact on the outcome of events of their story. And so we're back at the point of this serial having an incredible sense of desperation. The Doctor and Peri arrived on Androzani Minor and investigated the caves because of the Doctor's curiosity. They almost immediately became infected with Spectrox Toxemia then got caught up in a petty drugs war which is hugely important to the main players but a massive hinderance to the Doctor and Peri, seeing them dragged from one camp to another and preventing them from doing the one important thing to them - getting the cure; which makes the Doctor's last lines this episode so very powerful - it was his actions which got Peri into the danger she's in so nothing Stotz, or anyone else, can do will deter him from trying to save her. I think we're going to see the Fifth Doctor go out with a bang.

THE CAVES OF ANDROZANI (Part Four) 16/03/2024 

Well, that was the exact opposite of Logopolis! Rather than two episodes of meandering nonsense followed by a lot of cod science leading to an incredibly underwhelming 'epic' saving of the universe and a less-than-heroic final scene, we got the Doctor and Peri swept along by the well-plotted conflict of politicians, soldiers and drug dealers leading to a final episode where the dying Doctor fought to save Peri's life while all those around him died in the carnage of their own making. It's one of those occasions where everything came together. A layered and intelligent script given to a brilliant director, blessed with great camera work, incredible performances and a stunning score. Given to a less capable actor, and with a weaker director, Morgus may have come across as somewhat pantomime given that he was literally the only character here to have stylised Shakespearean asides (see, in contrast, Sheila Ruskin under John Black's direction in The Keeper Of Traken), but at no point did it feel out of place or strange due to the conviction of John Normington's performance and the confidence of Graeme Harper's directing.

I'm even happy to forgive my two chief criticisms of this story - the Magma Beast and the low number of female characters. Yes, the monster looked pretty dire and was relatively superfluous, but its screentime was kept to a minimum and you never got to see it in brightly lit close up like the Ergon, the Myrka or the Gravis. And Peri may have been a damsel in distress objectified by the primary villain, but Nicola put in a great performance and was given some quite often quite darkly humorous dialogue. Likewise, Barbara Kinghorn may have been a background character with few lines as Morgus' personal aide, Krau Timmin, but there was something beautifully satisfying about her appearance in the final episode informing Morgus that he had been deposed, was charged with treason and the President's murder, and had had all his assets seized including the secret ones on the outer planets he'd boasted about earlier in the episode because she herself had known all about what he'd been doing and had provided all the evidence to the authorities. Oh, and she'd taken over as chairman. It was a wonderful 'Fuck You' made better by it being revealed in front of Stotz and his men. Added to that is the fact that, in a story about a male bloodbath, the sole survivors were all women. I say 'all' because I include the Queen Bat alongside Peri and Timmin as you briefly saw her as the Doctor collected her milk, and I like the fact that the Doctor and Peri's only hope for life came from a female. The prop was also vastly superior to the Magma Beast, but that might just be because it was static and on screen for all of five seconds.

It was an incredibly brutal episode, to be honest, and not a style I'd want to see every week, but it was fitting for the story and certainly raised the stakes higher than most previous stories. It even trounced Pertwee's swansong in terms of self-sacrifice! An ongoing theme of the Fifth Doctor's era has been people not believing him and him not being able to swan into a situation and command authority like his predecessor. That this was a feature of his last story and that, rather than being in command of the situation but fighting everything around him to do something so (relatively) straightforward was in keeping with what we know about this incarnation of the Time Lord and incredibly poignant. It also underlined the frantic energy Peter has brought to the part, breathlessly running from place to place like his life depended on it. That this time he was doing it under a rain of bullets (not laser beams) because his companion's life depended on it was the perfect conclusion to his era.

I was wrong, however, when yesterday I said I thought he'd go out with a bang. Sort of. This episode was tense and breathless, but there was a strong sense of drive and determination underpinning the feeling of pieces slowly falling into place. Essentially, all the Doctor did was run from Stotz's ship to the Queen Bat, collect Peri, and run back to the TARDIS. The fact that he was being shot at or avoiding killer mudbursts all the way seems incidental. The conclusion was explosive, but the explosions were secondary to what the Doctor had to do. It all ended up with the Doctor and Peri on the floor of the TARDIS, Peri recovering having been given the last of the bat's milk, and the Doctor dying.

They brought all his companions and the Master back for the regeneration - Tegan, Kamelion, Turlough, and even Nyssa and Adric - and I think the regeneration itself is the best we've had yet, all swirling colours, overlapping dialogue and, finally, a big bang. And the new Doctor, Colin Baker (all curls but not all teeth) actually got lines post-regeneration! The fact that he was quite rude to Peri makes me think they've gone for another stark contrast between Doctors the way they did last time. After what has been something of a rollercoaster of a season, I'm intrigued to see what the next four episodes give us. I'd be surprised if they could top this! I just six days I'll find out!