Castrovalva

Chapter The 241st, which has a lot of Escher but no Gödel or Bach. 

Plot:

The Master plans ahead: not only does he have a backup scheme to kill the Doctor after his schemes in Logopolis fail, but he also has another scheme to do next if that one fails. Everything fails, so we get to see them all put into action. Having fallen from the Pharos Project radio telescope gantry, the Doctor regenerates - as witnessed by Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric. Security guards close in on them, so they perform the shortest ever chase sequence to reach the TARDIS and get the dazed new Doctor to safety. Adric at first seems to have been left behind, trapped by the Master's TARDIS, then he enters the Doctor's TARDIS, sets the coordinates and it dematerialises. It's not really Adric, though - it's a projection of him using the Block Transfer Computational mathematics of Logopolis (which is definitely not just creating things by magic). The Master has Adric in some kind of S&M harness in his TARDIS, and is using the boy's maths prowess to power this Block Trasf - magic, I'm just going to say magic. The Doctor's TARDIS is flying back into the big bang that started the universe, but this is averted by jettisoning rooms from the ship to create escape thrust. Unfortunately, one of the rooms jettisoned is the very 'zero room' the Doctor needs to recuperate in, but Tegan and Nyssa find a reference in the TARDIS databank to a place where they pilot the TARDIS that has the same properties: Castrovalva. This is all a projection too, and Castrovalva and its inhabitants don't exist, just more magic powered by S&M teen maths. The space starts to collapse in on itself, snaring the weakened Doctor. The Castrovalvans don't know they aren't real, though, and eventually turn on the Master who has been hiding out there disguised as a local. They destroy the S&M harness, freeing Adric, and hastening the collapse. As Adric created the world, he's able to get the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan out, while the Master remains trapped (he'll get out before the end of the season, don't worry).

Context:

Watched from disc one of the 'Collection' season 19 Blu-ray box set. I did not watch with the enhanced visual effects of the Blu-ray, as to be brutally honest I'd forgotten they were an option. The cliffhanger to episode 3 looks much more like an Escher print in the new version, but apart from that, they don't add much. For various reasons, I'm away from the family home for many weekends in September 2022, when I might normally have watched Doctor Who and tried to interest the family. I therefore had to grab any window I could to watch the episodes, one a day, over the course of a working week. Usually, I was on my own, but episode 3 I watched at the start of a day, and the Better Half and youngest (girl of 10) came in the room briefly. The BH was quick to point out that the Portreeve was clearly played by Anthony Ainley "It's so obvious" and then chuckled that the Castrovalvan characters were wearing waste paper bins on their heads. "No they aren't," said I, but then the 10-year old confirmed "They're definitely wearing bins on their heads, Dad".

First Time Round:

The series of Doctor Who shown in 1982, Peter Davison's first, season 19, holds a special place in my fan affections. I became interested in Doctor Who for the first time in the autumn of the previous year (as related in blog posts passim but most extensively covered in the Carnival of Monsters post) when a series of repeats were shown on BBC2. I was a fully fledged fan by Christmas 1981, but didn't yet have an active connection to wider fandom and its information (which might be how I managed to miss K9 and Company go out that Yuletide); still, though, I was aware that the first newly made set of episodes since I'd fallen in love with the show were starting early in January. This was I think because of a lot of advance publicity, perhaps to remind longer-term viewers that it was no longer showing on Saturday afternoons. Instead, the series went out in the evening on Mondays and Tuesdays. The Mondays were a bit of a problem for me, though, as on that evening weekly I was committed to attending 2nd Durrington cub scouts in a hall in Pond Lane, next to the park. While I was stuck in that hall, missing the first episode, I held out a small amount of hope that the Tuesday showing would be a repeat of what was shown on Monday, but no such luck. My Mum had put me on a reasonably long waiting list to get me in to cubs, and was immune to my protestations that started up as soon as I realised the full extent of my predicament after watching that Tuesday.

I've always remembered I had quite quickly feigned all sorts of ailments to get to see the odd numbered Doctor Who episodes, but I don't know if I ever before have worked out exactly how quickly. I pulled a sickie to get out of cubs at the very next opportunity, on Monday the 11th January 1982, so I could watch episode three. I know this because I remember continuing to watch BBC1 after the cliffhanger of part 3 for the next programme, So You Think You Know What's Good For You? This was a one-off light factual programme which featured married couples measuring their health and fitness, and one of those couples was Peter Davison and his then wife Sandra Dickinson. I can remember the continuity announcer bridging with something like "He was in a bit of trouble in Doctor Who, but now Peter Davison's fit and well in So You Think You Know What's Good For You?" or some such (the trailers and continuity on the Blu-ray are pretty comprehensive, but don't extend to covering that moment, so I can't be sure of the wording). I finally saw the first episode in March 1992 when the story came out on VHS. I remember watching it with a group of people in Durham University, as it came out during term time. In between, I read the novelisation in my final year of middle school (year 7 in new money), wrote is up as a book report, then had a lot of trouble explaining the concept of jettisoning rooms to my teacher Mrs. Rawlings, who just could not get her head around it.

Reaction:

Castrovalva shouldn't work, but it somehow does. It is a lyrical fairy tale written by the most rigidly scientific writer the show had; almost half the running time sees our heroes confined to the TARDIS, but it doesn't drag; there's no monsters, a lot of talking, and the threat when it comes is somewhat nebulous and hard for the production team to realise, but it still seems dramatic and exciting. It meshes neatly with the final Tom Baker story that preceded it as if they were planned as one arcing narrative, all neatly of a piece; but, in fact, Castrovalva was a relatively last minute rush job to replace a script that fell through. There's many a time where a Doctor Who story with everything going for it collapses because of a couple of dodgy elements, so I should celebrate when the opposite happens, I guess. It's odd, though. Why does it work? A lot is to down to the direction of Fiona Cumming that complements the material, and has a certain lightness. Lightness in all senses of the word, lightness of touch for such material, but also that almost every scene of Castrovalva is brightly lit in the house style of studio work at that time. This works for the story, though, as it isn't a fairy tale of dark corners and cobwebs; in Castrovalva there is more mystery in the visible than the invisible. It is after all the tale of a place that's supposed to look like a paradise, but turns out to be a trap - there is a good reason it wouldn't have too many shadows. When the trap is sprung, the chaos is economically invoked with sound effects, sparingly used video effects (which I thought worked very well at the time, and I think they are indeed still good taken in the context of the time), and - above all - good quality acting. The final Castrovalva sequence, where the Castrovalvans are tearing at the Master as he tries to escape, is lit rather moodily, and interestingly shot from a low angle, showing that such things could be done when apt for the story.

Cumming also gets great performances from every one of the cast. The first part of the narrative focusses only on the new regular cast and returning baddie character. It's particularly good to see Nyssa and Tegan (as played by Sarah Sutton and Janet Fielding respectively) as two female characters becoming plural protagonists in the main plot (The Doctor is mostly off in his own subplot adjusting to his regeneration, and Adric is captured and caged by the Master, giving the antagonist someone to whom to monologue) - this was rare for the show, which didn't usually give the female companions so much to do, and allows for great scenes of the two of them working out their situation, getting to know each other, and allows the audience to get to know them too. Again, the visuals are kept simple with a steam overlay to represent the increasing heat of the TARDIS as it approaches an explosive connection with the first ever event of the universe. Having this beginning section means that the trip to Castrovalva is somewhat truncated, but good casting means that the characters introduced halfway through nonetheless make their mark. Doctor Who stalwart Michael Sheard gives another great performance as Mergrave (never mind reaching 241 stories blogged, I've reached a real milestone with this post in that I've finally covered all the six stories that Sheard guest starred in throughout Doctor Who's classic era). Frank Wylie is a solid presence as Ruther, and Derek Waring is particularly good as the sinister-seeming Shardovan. And then there's Neil Toynay, the actor credited as the Portreeve. Call me naive but I did not see through the disguise or the anagram (Neil Toynay = Tony Ainley) when I first saw the story, and was convinced that Shardovan was the bad guy working for the Master (which of course is entirely what the script and direction intend).

Even with limited screen time, it's easy for the characters to shine if they're given great things to do or say, and writer Christopher H. Bidmead delivers what I think is the best of his three scripts for the programme here. As mentioned above, the action is continuous between this and the last story, also written by him, and he builds on the themes of that story seamlessly. Block Transfer Computation (creating real space/time events from pure mathematics) introduced for Tom Baker's swansong, is developed further, with the creation of beings as well as objects, and the story musing on whether they would be sentient and autonomous or not. The concept provides the imaginative leap required to make the magical aspects of the narrative just about acceptable for a Doctor Who context. There's another school room topic to engage the brainy teens and pre-teens watching; just as Logopolis used entropy as a theme, Castrovalva features recursion, using Escher's impossible pictures as a way of (sort-of) illustrating the concept. There's some great dialogue too. When told that the Doctor's recovery requires him to go someplace cut off from the rest of the universe, Tegan says "He should've told me that's what he wanted - I could've shown him Brisbane"! The child teaches the Doctor that 3 follows 1 and 2, and he says "We'll have to give you a badge for mathematical excellence" prompting his memories of Adric to return. The Doctor asks, within the screwy geography of Castrovalva, for the way out, only for the Castrovalvans to all point in different directions: "Well, that's democracy for you". Shardovan is able to see the spatial disturbance "With my eyes, no, but in my philosophy". Best of all for me, though I know some people think it's melodramatic and risible, is Shardovan's exit line to the Master before his self-sacrifice: "You made us, man of evil, but we are free". Each of these is not just a good line but a great moment in the story too, and there are loads of them. I still get mild chills at the reveal of the tiny detail that betrays the unreality of this environment: the books containing the history of Castrovalva are old, but they chronicle the history up to the present day.

I'm trying to second guess whether I'm too in love with this story to be objective, because of its small significance in my history of watching the show (see above), but I really think most of the choices made are right. Even something small like the TARDIS being landed at an awkward angle seems like it would be engaging to the youngsters in the audience. Yes, there's some very 1980s eye-make up on display (Michael Sheard's is more OTT than Janet Fielding's mind), and the costumes are starting to become more like brightly coloured uniforms than clothes. Poor Tegan has to climb rocks in an incredibly short, tight skirt, as she wasn't allowed to change into trousers like Nyssa. Before that, though, Nyssa could barely even run in her flower fairy skirt, poor thing. The Doctor's regeneration not going smoothly is fine enough as a one-off, but it did set the precedent that the character should always be somewhat unstable in each debut story, and that led to diminishing returns eventually. The cliffhanger where Tegan and Nyssa find blood next to where the Doctor has been is a bit of a cheat: it turns out to be a trail from the animal that Ruther and Mergrave hunted, and the Doctor's following it. But why would he suddenly decide to get out of the cabinet that's healing him and keeping him safe just to play at being a bloodhound? After a strong start, there's not very much for Tegan and Nyssa to do towards the end except narrate the action, but this is going to happen when you have too many regular cast employed on the show. I could probably pick more holes, but I could probably find more good points too, like Paddy Kingsland's music and the location footage at Buckhurst Park and Harrison's Rocks. Overall, against all odds, it's just a little bit magic. 

Connectivity: 

In both Castrovalva and The Abominable Snowmen the Doctor ventures into a closed and isolated community situated on a mountain; he's then followed there by two companions. The community isn't religious in Castrovalva, but there's something of a flavour or echo of an ascetic order in the 1980s tale. Bit of a spoiler, but in both stories the leader - or master? - of the community, who has some seemingly supernatural powers, turns out to be the evil force behind the proceedings.

Deeper Thoughts:

Well, that's lack of democracy for you! Like all those other humans seeing patterns that may not be there, particularly in this blog where a fun game is played finding connections between randomly sampled Doctor Who stories, I sometimes can't help but draw parallels. Often, as I'm interested in progressive politics (or lefty woke snowflake stuff, depending on which side you're on), this means linking Doctor Who to what's happening in my country's government. If that's not your bag, probably best to skip to the final sentence now. Because of the subsequent death of our long-standing monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, it's almost forgotten already, but - just as happens in Castrovalva where a new person took over in a leading role - the people of the UK have in the week I'm writing this got a new Prime Minister. Just as with the casting of any new Doctor, the people did not get a vote in this matter. That's the system here; we vote within our local constituency for a representative in parliament; these candidates most often tend to be from an established political party, and - after going to the polls in a general election - the political party that can command authority with a majority of the elected representatives (members of parliament - MPs), appoints the Prime Minister (which in modern times is always the leader of that particular party). The Prime Minister then runs the country on behalf of the Queen (and now the King). In the case where the leader of the party steps down between general elections, it is up to the party and their rules and procedures as to how a new leader, and therefore new Prime Minister, is appointed. As we've been reminded over the last couple of months here, the way the current ruling party, the Conservatives, do this is long-winded. MPs whittle down the many candidates in iterative votes until there are two left, then it goes to the ordinary members of the party for the final vote after many weeks of hustings. The membership of the Conservative party is approximately 160,000 people; needless to say, this is an infinitesimally small proportion of the population of the UK. For that couple of months, the rest of us have been watching this unfold without being able to influence it one jot.

The undemocratic nature of this was probably overshadowed for those of a republican mindset by the almost immediate handing over of power from one monarch to another, just by dint of birth and without anything as grubby and proletarian as a vote; at least that doesn't happen that often, though - it's not taken place in the UK for 70 years; Conservative Prime Ministers on the other hand seem to have adopted the pattern of Doctors recently of doing three years, then out. Unlike Peter Davison, who did his three straight, Doctors these days have gap years, or years with a few specials, to pad out their time. As such, Jodie Whittaker has now been the Who incumbent during the period where three different Prime Ministers have been in charge of the UK. This hadn't happened previously since Tom Baker's record-breaking seven year stint on the show. Another issue is that the politicians and the political media assume and expect a very presidential style of leadership, even though the mechanisms for appointing a leader (as outlined above) are not how any president would ever be chosen. There is often criticism that any new leader might prove to be the 'continuity candidate', but in the representative, parliamentary system of politics, that's exactly what they should be. They represent the same party, and until there is a general election, the same manifesto, but there is a strong expectation that - like any new Doctor - they will bring the freshness of change. Both issues might be the fault of rolling 24 hour news, accelerating the timeframe of current affairs and making the grammar of politics in line with the grammar of other television. New lead actor = new leader = change. The new Prime Minister Liz Truss barely has a mandate to carry on as things were, let alone make radical changes. She was never the majority selection of Conservative MPs - the representatives of the people - at any stage during the voting, and in the final round received the endorsement of only 47% of the members. It's going to be a challenging time, as the country has many pressing problems that can't wait any longer for internal party business to take precedence.

It's entirely in Truss's power as to whether I get a chance to vote for how my country is run sooner rather than later. I guess changing the party in power is a more fundamental change than just switching up the leader; it's probably analogous to the showrunner on Doctor Who changing rather than the lead actor. When Russell T Davies ran the show last, my preferred party Labour were in charge of the country; it would be nice if around the same time Davies returns, Labour does too. That would need - as I previously thought might happen, but maybe it's less likely now that every aspect of the UK is on hold for a period of mourning - a UK general election in mid-December this year, called by Truss. If it happened, it would mean that another build up to Christmas is ruined for me by worry of how it's going to turn out, but I'd happily accept that if it meant the baleful rule of the Conservative party was ended. Even without the sombre mood of national mourning, there is very little to celebrate right now, even when witnessing things I've dearly wanted to happen for a long time like Prime Minister A. Johnson leaving. That at least is an unalloyed good. He is a terrible person, and terrible leader, and his no longer being in the most powerful position means however bad Truss is she must be a marginal improvement (she's rubbish, but there's no evidence - yet - that she's a sociopath). Johnson's leaving speech was typically self-serving and divorced from reality. Using a metaphor, like an outgoing Doctor Who lead actor might, of passing the baton, Johnson petulantly mumbled his grievances at being ousted: "The baton will be handed over in what has unexpectedly turned out to be a relay race – they changed the rules halfway through, but never mind". No, nobody changed any rules. Johnson could not command a majority of MPs, so could not stay on as Prime Minister. His own party's MPs indicated this to him by resigning en masse from government roles. They were working within the established system in doing this.

The reason why that happened to Johnson is because of a culmination of uncountable broken rules, for all of which he was responsible, and none of which were changed halfway through anything. He no doubt wants to set up a betrayal narrative about his unfair removal, it's straight out of the populist playbook after all, but don't believe a word of it. It's telling anyway that Johnson didn't think of politics as a relay race before he was forced to quit, because what else has it ever been? Did he expect to go on forever clutching that baton to his chest, never letting anyone else take part? Yes, I think perhaps he did. Johnson also snuck in to the speech one of his tedious Classics references, mentioning Roman general Cincinnatus returning to his plough once his job was done. As many people pointed out as the speech went out, though, Cincinnatus came back to power later. As a dictator. I don't think Johnson is serious about this; clawing his way back would be a little too much like hard graft. The new monarch has also created something of a new epoch narrative that I think would make his return feel a lot more odd to the public than if the Queen had lived a little longer; lined up at Charles III's proclamation with the other ex-Prime Ministers, he looked to me a little bit like the relic of the end of the Elizabethan era. Just in case, though, to anyone reading this: this poisonous man must never under any circumstances be ever let anywhere near power again; never forget all the lies, all the deaths, all the parties, all the protected wrong-doers, and all the corruption. Exhale... OK, it's safe to read again: I'm taking a deep breath now, and not thinking about this anymore until I'm allowed a vote again.

In Summary:

Like one of Escher's drawings, it shouldn't work, but it somehow does.