Kinda

Chapter the 344th, is a gift for Christmas.

Plot:

The Doctor, Adric and Tegan explore the paradisiacal planet Deva Loka while Nyssa sleeps off a hangover in the TARDIS (a hangover from the end of the previous story where she fainted, I mean). Tegan falls asleep by some wind chimes and dreams of a mysterious figure who psychologically tortures her until she agrees to let him borrow her form: this is the Mara. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Adric come across a single-person armoured battle unit, the TSS. Operating autonomously, it escorts them to a dome set up by a survey party reviewing the planet for possible colonisation. Many of the survey team have gone missing outside the dome, leaving only three survivors. Commanding officer Sanders goes out to investigate, leaving the unstable Hindle in charge. Possessed by the Mara, Tegan finds Aris - one of the Kinda, indigenous people of Deva Loka - and the Mara transfers to him. Sanders returns to the dome a changed man, meek and smiley. He was given a wooden box by a Kinda, which he urges the others to open. It is a healing device for the mind, but Hindle refuses to open it. The Doctor and Todd escape and find that Aris is planning to attack the dome. The increasingly unhinged Hindle has wired the dome up with explosives, and an attack could mean the end of the world. Adric uses the TSS to stop the attack, but Aris escapes. The Doctor and Todd confront Hindle, who has regressed to childhood and is building a model city in the dome. Using reverse psychology, Todd gets Hindle to open the box, and his mind is healed. The Doctor disconnects the explosives. With the help of the Kinda, the Doctor traps Aris in a circle of mirrors. The Mara detaches itself from him in the shape of a red snake, and Aris is pulled free. The snake grows to massive size, but unable to face its reflection disappears. Tegan hopes she is free of the Mara's influence (she isn't, but that's another story).

Context:

Watched from the Blu-ray disc from the season 19 Collection box-set, a couple of episodes per night in mid-December 2025. I was accompanied for the whole thing by the eldest of my children, a young man of 19 years back from university for the Christmas hols. He enjoyed the story. I thought I'd adjusted the settings to select the version with enhanced effects, but when we got to the end it was the as-transmitted version. I had to pause the programme, go to the menu and flip the switch, so the eldest got to see the sequence of the Mara in the circle of mirrors both ways. He was very complimentary about Chris Petts's CGI work (as indeed he should be, it's magnificent).

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm very, very close to catching up. This story completes a season (the 19th of the classic era) and another Doctor's era. Blogging Peter Davison's final remaining story makes it 15 out of 15 Doctors and 41 out of 41 seasons completed to date (classic seasons 1-26, and new series 1-15). None of the 892 episodes of Doctor Who from An Unearthly Child up to The Reality War are left, just the 5-episode The War Between the Land and the Sea spin-off remains to be blogged.

First Time Round:

This is one of a few key watershed moments in my early history of Doctor Who watching. The first episode of Doctor Who I ever saw in full was from An Unearthly Child, first ever Doctor Who story (thanks be to a 1981 season of archive repeats for that symmetry). The first full story I ever saw was The Krotons, and the first colour one was Carnival of Monsters (both were later in that same repeat season). The first episode of Doctor Who that I saw on its debut broadcast was the second part of Castrovalva, in January 1982, a few weeks after the repeat season ended late the previous year (sarcastic thanks be to the scheduling of my weekly Cub Scout session for my missing parts of Castrovalva). The first full story I saw on its debut broadcast was Kinda. I had to pretend to be sick for two consecutive Mondays to get out of cubs and watch it in full, and I was mesmerised by it. I should say exaggerate my sickness rather than pretend, for I was already somewhat sick... at heart: you see, I already had an immense crush on Tegan Jovanka. It was a definite moment for the prepubescent me seeing Janet Fielding playing the Mara-possessed Tegan, with the smallest smidge of sexuality that she felt she could get away with, but that wasn't the main reason for the story's appeal. It had something that the young me could sense but couldn't identify. I now know it to be nothing much more than well-written drama, but it was mysterious at the time. Kinda was the story of the year for me. I was out of step with the fandom of the time, though - Kinda came bottom of the Season Survey readers' poll in Doctor Who Magazine that year. People voted Four to Doomsday and Time-Flight higher. You can't trust people, can you?

Reaction:

Doctor Who didn't have any real competition for the affections of UK children until 1977. Star Trek was popular, sure, but back then comprised only three seasons played in endless rotation - it wasn't something new, which reduced the excitement quotient significantly. None of the other competitors (from Land of the Giants to Space:1999) even got close to Star Trek's level, let alone Who's. But then there came Star Wars. From that point on, there was a dividing line: once Star Wars was there as a good-looking, high budget option for the straight-laced kids, Doctor Who became the thing the strange kids loved. There had always been a certain strangeness in Who and its fan audience, but the programme seemed to embrace it increasingly as the 1970s ended and the 1980s began. Kinda might just mark the apotheosis of that process. It is downright weird in many places: the dream sequences where Tegan encounters mysterious characters in the landscape of her own mind, for example, are visually interesting and cryptic, but they're also abrupt. They have clearly been cut down from longer sequences as the episodes were overrunning, but this manages to make them even more unsettling. The climax of the third episode is a bravura sequence where an apocalypse is represented, simply but with devastating effect, by an alarm clock going off and an oversaturation of the picture leading to a white screen. A few stories later - with the same director - the show would begin a period starting with Earthshock (which then became a template for future stories) where it tried to ape sci-fi action movies. It was enjoyable, but it was also a bit safe. Maybe it would have been better to leave that sort of stuff to George Lucas: I don't think Lucas would or could ever produce something like Kinda.

The biggest action sequence in Kinda sees two people in wooden boxes dancing around each other for a minute or two in a cramped studio. It's all the better for that, in the opinion of this reviewer at least. The cliffhanger ending of episode two is one of the best in the history of Doctor Who, and all that it requires is a small box plus engagement with viewer imagination. The staginess on display in places somehow seems apt. Kinda is not aiming for naturalism: it is a didactic morality tale told using symbols and artifice. The irrepressible dynamism of director Peter Grimwade has to have an outlet, of course, and he creates Kinda's fireworks in character and performance. To do this he assembles one of the best guest casts ever put together for Who, and they all respond well to an excellent script from writer Christopher Bailey. Stalwart British stars Richard Todd and Mary Morris are as good as one might expect, but this is true of everyone down through the credits list, no matter what the size of the role or the experience of the performer. The stand-out performance is Simon Rouse as Hindle. I have seen the moment in the final episode where he holds up the broken cardboard figure of a man and says "You can't mend people" dozens and dozens of times over the years, but it never fails to be spine-tingling. Doctor Who has definitely been guilty in the past of egregious use of mental health issues for antagonist motivation. It can be an easy catch-all just to call a villain insane; but Hindle's nervous breakdown is played with sensitivity and is grounded in reality. The subplot of his worsening mental health and its eventual healing links thematically with Kinda's central idea about the power of the mind. Ultimately, the story champions the power of community and shared ideals in opposition to the individualistic thinking of the colonist, which was quietly radical at the time and remains so now.

The regular cast are also firing on all cylinders. The ones that are not written out, that is. I believe the reason Sarah Sutton's Nyssa does not appear for the majority of this story was contractual rather than dictated by the story, but reducing the number of regulars having to share out action and dialogue is a good move. Peter Davison, in some of his earliest work as the Doctor, is unshowy but strong. Janet Fielding gets an opportunity that's rare in Doctor Who to do challenging material as the companion, and she is pitch perfect. Her turn as the Mara-possessed Tegan casts a long shadow: Tegan's only possessed for two short scenes, but Fielding burns through the screen in both of them. It is no surprise that a sequel (Snakedance) was quickly commissioned that leans in more to the 'evil Tegan' premise, and lets Fielding play the antagonist throughout. Her earlier scenes where she struggles to keep her sanity through various nightmare scenarios are great as well. Even Matthew Waterhouse's turn as Adric isn't too bad in this story: the character's more adolescent immaturity is a nice counterpoint to Hindle's mental regression to a younger childhood. As if following a Doctor Who 'conservation of sexism' rule, Tegan being given more interesting material is balanced out by another female actor having to do the thankless scenes of wandering around with the Doctor asking questions. This falls to Nerys Hughes as Todd, but her more mature approach and the quality of the dialogue make it a rather nice guest performance, all in all. She does at least get to save the day by getting Hindle to look in the mysterious box and be healed.

Kinda has a little something extra beyond the good performances, good script and - for the most part - good visuals. The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping - a touchstone of fan opinion for those enthusiasts of the show that were around in the 1990s - is almost surprised to find that beneath the allusions and parallels Kinda is at heart "a very original piece of genuine SF". It is rare for Doctor Who (and Star Wars for that matter) to tackle science-fiction ideas head on; usually they're just used as set dressing for an adventure story. Not so here. So much careful thought and depth has been put into the society on Deva Loka and the legends of the Mara. No matter how bad you might find the final realisation of the snake in all its papier-mâché glory, this is a world and set of characters that seem real. There is so much clever world-building in every line and moment such that the story lives long in the imagination after a viewing. The Kinda, for example, refer to anyone who is not Kinda (a tribe that commune telepathically, let it not be forgotten) as the 'not-we'. This is just so beautifully right. It has also become a way that fans refer to the uninitiated in the real world (in a similar way that Harry Potter fans use 'muggle'). Little details are tossed lightly away like seeds in the breeze, but they take root: the box of Jhana, speech only being something that women can do, the consciousness of the tribe's wise woman passing to their young apprentice on death, etc. Depending on how the mood takes me, Kinda could well be the answer to the question of what is my favourite ever classic era Doctor Who story, so it was a good one to come up as the final classic story to blog. It's weird but it's wonderful. I don't know of any story in any big TV sci-fi franchise that has ever tackled similar material, nor done it so well. Take that Star Wars!

Connectivity:

Both Kinda and Wish World / The Reality War feature real world physical manifestations arising from the thoughts of humans; they also both feature an antagonist who is one of the Pantheon of Discord (The Mara is the Pantheon's "God of Beasts" according to Harriet Arbinger in The Legend of Ruby Sunday).

Deeper Thoughts:

The Christmas List. The shallow surface reading - and I've been very guilty of thinking this way myself, believe me - is that after only a single Christmas special in the entirety of the classic Doctor Who era, a Christmas special for our favourite programme then became a mainstay only when the series returned in a blaze of glory for the 21st Century. The smallest bit of research, though, gives the lie to this: Doctor Who had a presence in the Christmas TV schedules almost all the way through the classic era (and then triumphantly built on this once the show was back on TV from 2005 onwards). In the early days, Doctor Who was on almost all the year round, so couldn't avoid yuletide. Christmas TV was handled slightly different back then, though; the only day that really had any significance was 25th December; any broadcast on a day around the main one could go out as normal without the makers having to prepare anything different. This, though, proved to be a good thing for Who. On its third Christmas after staring in 1963, the regular Saturday broadcast of Doctor Who happened to fall on Christmas Day, the only time this happened in the 20th century. So, as seemed traditional with all types of programmes, an episode was broadcast that was much less good than usual. Instead of doing what Doctor Who normally did but being more epic or more accessible or both, the episode (The Feast of Steven, sixth episode of story The Daleks' Master Plan) broadcast on 25th December 1965 was composed of a string of lame gag-free sketches. Even worse, the Christmas Day episode of this Dalek story, didn't feature any Daleks. This was during the height of Dalekmania, when any episode featuring the metal meanies would have been perfect festive viewing for families.

This was doubly unfortunate, because every Doctor Who broadcast during the festive period up to The Feast of Steven had been a Dalek episode, but these ones with actual Daleks. In 1963, 28th December saw the broadcast of The Survivors, second episode of story The Daleks. The following year, Who went out on Boxing Day with Flashpoint, the sixth episode of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The timing was no doubt accidental, but they couldn't have been chosen better as a gift for viewers of the time: the poisonous pepperpots' first on-screen appearance, and the big finale of their return adventure. At least The Daleks' Master Plan's seventh instalment on New Year's Day 1966 saw the Daleks return to the show again. Each of the remaining 1960s seasons saw a story broadcast that bridged Christmas and New Year, but none were Dalek stories. At the end of 1966, Patrick Troughton's first story The Power of the Daleks was slightly earlier (starting on Bonfire Night) and so was done with before the end of December. Christmas Eve saw the second part of following story The Highlanders instead. The Enemy of the World's first two parts aired on the 23rd and 30th of December 1967, and The Krotons kicked off on 28th December 1968. None were Christmas themed, but any new Doctor Who episode has got to be better than none at Christmas time. December 1969 fell during the longer than usual gap between Patrick Troughton's last story and Jon Pertwee's first. For a few years from Pertwee's debut, though, the twelve days of Christmas period coincided with the excitement of the launch of a new series of Doctor Who. This was the case for six seasons, all of Jon Pertwee's five runs and Tom Baker's first set of episodes. Usually the seasons would start early in the New Year (with part one of Day of the Daleks airing on the 1st January 1972), though later on the seasons slipped forward a little to a start in the last days of December.

Simply starting new seasons of Doctor Who just after Christmas was clearly not sufficiently feeding the audience's festive need for Who: from December 1971, a new innovation came along. Omnibus Doctor Who repeats were made and shown around Christmas, and proved popular. A cut down version of The Daemons aired on 28th December 1971, an omnibus of The Sea Devils on 27th December 1972, The Green Death got similar treatment on 27th December 1973 (airing in the middle of new story The Time Warrior's weekly screenings). On 27th December 1974, a Planet of Spiders omnibus including Jon Pertwee's regeneration aired the day before the new season started with Tom Baker's debut Robot's episode one on the 28th. For Tom Baker's second season the launch shifted forward to the autumn, but seasons ran every week for six months and would still cross the festive period. Usually, omnibus repeats would also nestle in the schedules in a short gap between the stories broadcast in one year and the next. The Android Invasion finished its weekly airings on the 13th December 1975, but on 27th December that year an omnibus of Genesis of the Daleks aired before the season resumed with The Brain of Morbius from 3rd January 1976. Towards the end of that year, the season - plus another couple of omnibus repeats - had paused by the 4th December, though the new stories resumed with The Face of Evil on New Year's Day 1977. Mid-season story The Sun Makers completed by 17th December 1977. After that, The Robots of Death - which had first aired near the start of that year - aired in two stitched-together 50 minute repeats on New Year's Eve 1977 and New Year's Day 1978. A week later, new Who broadcasts resumed with Underworld part one. The Robots of Death would be the last regular Doctor Who repeat shown for Christmas; after this, repeats aired during the summer instead.

The weekly airing of new Doctor Who episodes still happened around Christmas, though. The 23rd and 30th December 1978 were the days for broadcasts of the first two parts of The Power of Kroll; the 22nd and 29th December 1979 saw the first two episodes of The Horns of Nimon. Nothing aired in late December 1980 (the last episode of State of Decay aired on 13th December) but the current Doctor Who run resumed on the 3rd January 1981 with Warrior's Gate's first episode. At the other end of that year, Doctor Who's first ever spin-off K9 and Company aired on BBC1 on 28th December; it was set at Christmas and had K9 singing a carol and everything. From 1982, each new season of Doctor Who shifted to a start in the first week of January again, in the first few days of the year before Twelfth Night. Peter Davison's first season (including Kinda) started on the 4th January 1982. Things remained the same until Michael Grade put Doctor Who on hiatus in 1985. December 1985 to January 1986 became the first twelve days of Christmas period since Doctor Who started devoid of a new episode or a special repeat. It was a 22-year unbroken record. Don't anybody tell Michael Grade this; he loves the role of panto villain, and would no doubt revel in being the man who cancelled Doctor Who's Christmas. A quirk of scheduling delaying the start of Doctor Who's season in 1988 meant a couple of episodes aired in the Christmas / New Year period, and during the 'wilderness years' a few BBC2 repeat showings happened in late December or early January, but these were slim pickings. The party was over.

The party came back with a bang in 2005, though: Doctor Who was on the cover of the Christmas Radio Times, Doctor Who toys were big sellers for the kids that year, and the show had a special episode airing on the big day, 25th December. Doctor Who has proved very popular at yuletide since. From 2005 to 2017, 13 Christmas specials specials were aired, one a year, all of them on the big day. From 2019 to 2022, four more festive specials aired on New Year's Day. The specials returned to Christmas day again for 2023 and 2024. Even though there was an embarrassment of riches in this time, it didn't quite end there. In 2015, BBC4 showed The Face of Evil in two stitched-together 50 minute chunks on the 28th and 29th December, and the story was chosen deliberately because it had originally aired around the Christmas period. On 23rd December 2024, a colourised, edited version of The War Games aired, also on BBC4. Even a couple of years before, the idea that such a thing could happen would have been laughed off. This breathless rundown of Christmas past has been a real education: we fans have been so lucky, and the gifts continue. At the time of writing this is 2025, we have just reached the end of December airings of a spanking new Whoniverse spin-off, which is available as a box set on iplayer for the Christmas period (this century's version of K9 and Company?!), and we've been promised a Doctor Who special for Christmas 2026. After that, who knows, but I think it would be foolish to put any money against such goodies continuing in years to come.

In Summary:

Incidentally, a groovy Kinda Christmas to all of you at home! 

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. 

Time-Flight

Chapter The 221st, which is feeling supersonic, and you may well need a gin and tonic (or several) - but I like it!

Plot:

After mourning Adric's death for all of two whole minutes, the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa decide to cheer themselves up with a trip into history, but encounter some time turbulence, and have to make an emergency landing. By coincidence, they materialise in the exact place the Doctor's been trying to reach all year, Heathrow Airport in Tegan's time. A Concorde on its approach to the airport has dropped off Air Traffic Control's monitoring, seemingly vanished into thin air. The Doctor's UNIT credentials mean he's brought in to help investigate. The turbulence the TARDIS encountered is evidence that the Concorde travelled through time. The Doctor is provided with another Concorde and crew to recreate the exact circumstances of the previous flight; with the TARDIS and its crew onboard, the second Concorde follows the same flight path, goes through a time contour and arrives in prehistoric times.

At first it appears that they have landed back at Heathrow, but this is a collective delusion being created by the Master, who for some reason adopts a ridiculous disguise at first. He is based in the temple of the Xeraphin who crashed landed on Earth years before, and have merged into one gestalt entity. He aims to use their race bank as a power source for his knackered TARDIS, and is using the hypnotised passengers and crew of the first Concorde flight to break into the inner sanctum to reach it. Helped by the crew of the second Concorde, the TARDIS team battles against the Master for psychic control of the Xeraphin's power. The Master wins, but is missing a vital time component to allow him to escape. The Doctor trades him one of his spares in exchange for the release of the captured passengers and crew. The Master travels back to present day Heathrow, but the Doctor has set things up so the second Concorde arrives there first, and knocks the Master's TARDIS off to destination unknown. Tegan is having a look round the airport when the Doctor dematerialises to escape some approaching policemen (he must really want rid of her!).

Context:

Every one of the family was off work and school on the Friday in February that Storm Eustice blew through where we live in the South East of the UK. The red weather warning issued advised us not to leave the house. Stuck inside watching the slightly underwhelming forces of nature outside (the advance hype had made the kids expect trees and trampolines to be flying through the air), was not a particularly exciting end to the half term holiday; it did, though, give an opportunity to watch a Doctor Who story. I bribed the three children (two boys of 15 and 12 years old, girl of 9) with sweets to sit down and watch this one with me, from the disc in the season 19 Blu-ray box set. The eldest lasted until the end of the first episode, the middle child managed one more; the youngest watched with me to the end. She spent the entire first half of the story moaning about the acting and make-up of Leon Ny Taiy's Kalid. I watched her face during the episode 2 cliffhanger - which reveals that it is just make-up and a performance, as Leon Ny Taiy is really Tony Ainley, i.e. the Master in disguise - and a big beaming smile spread across it. 

First Time Round:

Peter Davison's opening series in 1982 was the first one I watched go out live on BBC1 in the UK, after becoming a fan watching a season of repeats on BBC2 the previous winter. As whinged about in blog posts passim however, the Monday night broadcasts that year (the odd numbered episodes of each story) clashed with my regular attendance at 2nd Durrington cub scouts. I can mostly remember exactly which episodes I missed, and which ones I pulled a sickie from cubs so I could see. I can remember hoping that the second showing in the first week of the season would be a repeat of Castrovalva episode 1, and being disappointed; I remember having to have "headaches" on two Monday nights'  running to watch the whole of Kinda; I remember having to follow the plot when only viewing the second 50% of Black Orchid (it's actually pretty easy to do), and I remember the big revelation that the Cybermen were back in Earthshock being relayed to me by another child in the playground at school the following day. I am not so certain, though, about Time-Flight. Perhaps by the end of the season the novelty had worn off, so these things didn't stick in my mind. I feel sure I must have missed at least one episode on a cubs night, probably the third. I'm sure I saw the discussion in the first episode between the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa about not being able to change history by going back in time to save Adric; I say this, because I was surprised not to see that discussion at the end of Earthshock when I watched it again years later, having misremembered it as happening in that preceding story.

I never saw a repeat or home-taped video copy of Time-Flight, so the first time I'd have seen all the episodes would have been many years later in July 2000 when they came out on VHS. I caught up with the full story not long after that first broadcast, though, in prose form. Time-Flight was the first Target paperback novelisation I ever owned. I'd read a few from the library before Time-Flight, but this was the start of my collection. I remember my Mum ordering it from a book club that was run through my primary school of the time. Did everyone of my vintage have these? The Better Half didn't have such a thing, but she's a bit younger than me. Every term or two, a pamphlet was distributed to every child with a few pages of thumbnails and descriptions of books to buy, and you could fill in and tear out a form requesting a book or books, then bring it back in and hand it over to the teacher with your pennies. After an interminable wait, which probably wasn't that long but seemed it when one had only existed for a decade, the book would be delivered to the school, and you'd be able to take it home at the end of the day. I can picture myself stumbling along the twitten outside Durrington Middle School while trying simultaneously to read the first few pages of Time-Flight, too eager to wait until I'd reached home. I can also remember later having to ask my Dad for an explanation of what "déjà vu" meant (Grimwade uses the term describing Tegan's recollection of changing her Aunt Vanessa's tyre - in her introductory story Logopolis - when she is helping do the same for Concorde).

Reaction:

The climax of any dramatic form doesn't have to be at the very end. In fact, the very best writing has multiple climaxes (yes, this is going to get a bit double entendre-esque before I'm done, sorry). A great script can achieve a climactic story reversal towards the start of the final act that will seem like the denouement, but instead it propels the narrative in a different direction that then builds to its own climax, even bigger than the last one - like a mountain climb, with peaks and drops before the final summit. Once that summit, that final climax (oo-er), is reached, it is common for there to be a bit of narrative afterwards to let things register and then subside in the audience's emotions, the best for it to have impact. It could also involve a little tying up of subplot loose ends, or just a light comic counterpoint moment (cf. Scooby Doo). It can't be too protracted, though, or else the audience's patience risks being tested. In Earthshock, for example, the climax is obviously Adric's death when the space freighter he's on hits the Earth. It's followed, though, by a short scene in the TARDIS control room as the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa react, stunned. The story wouldn't be as effective if it ended on the explosion, without that final scene. If anything, it's still too abrupt, but the clever trick of running the end credits in silence extends the moment of reflection before the real world of "next on BBC1" intrudes. Crucially, though, Earthshock's plot tidy-ups are held off until the beginning of the next story (the one this blog post is concerned with, Time Flight); to have limped on after Adric's death with scenes explaining what happened to the Cyber fleet and the other humans would not been neither effective nor appropriate

There's then the question of how durations of post-climax material should scale up when individual pieces form a series that needs to have its own dramatic arc. Adric's death is the climax of Earthshock, but it's also the climax of the 1982 season. As such, one could argue that Time-Flight shouldn't exist at all, tacked on to the end of the year like an afterthought. End the season with the big emotional cliffhanger instead, the argument goes, and you have a break before the next season starts for people to dwell on it; if you have to do your Concorde story, save it for next year, or pull it forward and do it before you kill off one of your main characters. So, why didn't they? Doctor Who is a series famed for its cliffhangers, after all. It is also, however, famed for resolving its cliffhangers a week later (or even sooner with the twice weekly broadcast pattern in 1982), it is a programme of peril, but also of reassurance. A similar situation arose in 1984, when climactic story The Caves of Androzani saw the Doctor regenerate, but then the next guy's first story The Twin Dilemma was tacked on to the end of that season, airing the following week. This, I think was a mistake. The regeneration is not a death but a rebirth, the reassurance is baked in; but, to leave an audience reeling from Adric's death for almost a year would not be fair. So, to my mind, Time Flight has to exist exactly where it is, and has to be a pretty fun adventure, not too doomy and gloomy - to let the viewers know that the story, and life, goes on.

This means there is one big flaw that's somewhat unavoidable in Time-Flight, the crunch of a gear change as our heroes have to go from grieving over Adric's death to planning a day trip to see the opening of the Great Exhibition. Humorously, there's a line for the Doctor in there that's very nearly 'It's what he would have wanted'! It's somewhat fixable too; as soon as the Doctor sets the coordinates, the TARDIS is hit by the plot device (sorry, time contour) anyway, so why not have this happen sooner, throwing the Doctor and friends into a new adventure and distracting them from their grief. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be better. That's it for the unavoidable flaws. The others - and Time-Flight has many, don't get me wrong - were probably avoidable, but that's not to say on balance that the story isn't overall quite good. The biggest avoidable flaw, so much so that my nine year old can see it, is Kalid. I'd think that this was a racially insensitive bit of costuming / make-up / performance if it was clear what they were trying to emulate, or if they were even trying to emulate anything. It's possible that Kalid is supposed to be an alien, for whom elements of Earth cultures were used as an inspiration. Maybe two wrongs make a right here, as the execution is so poor that it's not specific enough to be truly offensive.  All this is doubly annoying as there's no narrative need for the Master to adopt a disguise at all. If he's to be held back until the episode 2 cliffhanger, then just keep him out of shot until then. Other flaws often cited are the production design, including the prehistoric Earth sets and the globby Plasmatons, and the convoluted script, but I think both are not that bad, really, and comparable with similar efforts in other stories made around this time.

Balanced against this are the elements that work, and a lot of them work superbly. The involvement of British Airways means there is a lot of sumptuous footage of and access to Concorde, which at the time was a great coup and gives the serial a unique hook. The beginning sequence where Air Traffic Control (I can forgive them for this just being two blokes in a darkened room) lose the signal, and we see the plane fade away, is a gripping opening. There's a fringe benefit too in this external input; presumably, the BA crew depicted had to be shown in a positive light, so they couldn't be too thick or cowardly. What this leads to is three characters - played by Richard Easton, Keith Drinkel and Michael Cashman, all of whom are clearly enjoying themselves - that are open-minded about the fantastical situation in which they find themselves, and get stuck in with pluck and resourcefulness in an old school adventure story manner. Doctor Who guest character lists for the next few years after Time-Flight would increasingly be peopled by hard bitten mercenaries, and this trio - and the other couple of guest characters - are much more fun. The group hypnotic delusions are also a good (and inexpensive) threat - the scene when Cashman's character gradually comes under the influence by being pulled into the mundane litany of pre-flight checks is quite chilling. The TARDIS being on its side, but able to rectify its gravity and alignment at the touch of a button was fun for my kids watching, and I remember liking it when I was a youngster first experiencing this story too. It's also fitting to end the season with a rematch with Anthony Ainley's Master; when he's not pretending to be whatever the heck Kalid is supposed to be, Ainley gives another solid performance.

 

There are some more minor criticisms. This is the epitome of ungrateful companion syndrome, for example: the Doctor's finally got Tegan to where she wanted to be, but she moans even more. There's no way that Concorde could land or take off on the terrain as depicted. It's a shame no Concorde take-off footage could be found without a bird flapping into view - this must have been some lone pterosaur swooping over the barren landscape. The flight attendant from the first Concorde, Angela Clifford, is heavily featured until the final episode when she disappears without explanation (she isn't shown getting on the second Concorde to escape, so is presumably left back in prehistory). Of course, this is done so that Tegan can step up and finally be the stewardess she wanted to be in her introductory story. This then leads to the nice mini-cliffhanger for the season of the Doctor accidentally (or maybe not accidentally, given all the moaning) abandoning her in Heathrow to take up her old life at the end. It's a confident end to the season; at the end of his first two years in charge, producer John-Nathan Turner has transformed the show and delivered a great first run with his new leading man; Time-Flight, for all its flaws, was an integral part of that.

Connectivity: 

Both Time Flight and The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos are the last stories of debut seasons for new Doctors; in both, the TARDIS crew goes on a rescue mission, landing somewhere where creatures with great mental powers are being harnessed for an evil purpose by a villainous character, and these powers cause hallucinations for anyone around that can't protect themselves (though luckily our heroes can resist). In both instances, the villain is returning to the show after having appeared in the first story of the season.

Deeper Thoughts:

1982 and all that. I promise this isn't just going to be an exercise in Gen X nostalgia, but I thoroughly recommend anyone who enjoys watching Doctor Who of around the Time-Flight era to have a look at this post on the Curious British Telly site. It lists many children's TV shows of the 1980s that don't get as much championing by the cultists and enthusiasts (like my good self) online. I think it is interesting and useful to see Doctor Who in the context in which it was first shown; this is why my favourite extras on the Blu-ray box sets are the compilations of trailers and continuity announcements for stories; it's also why I derive pleasure from reading listings on Genome, and indeed blog posts about forgotten children's TV shows of the 1980s. It's not to show how superior Doctor Who's production values were compared to contemporary offerings like, say, Captain Zep - Space Detective (number 47 in the list), although it does display this admirably. I loved Captain Zep, by the way; I'm not criticising it, but it's worth noting that Doctor Who never looked cheap or amateur compared to other UK attempts at science fiction programmes, and this was maintained throughout the classic series. This isn't the usual narrative, which has it that Doctor Who was looking markedly tired and shabby by the end. If it had continued into the 1990s, it would have faced challenges and would have needed to change, but that's not the same thing. If you look at the later entries on the Curious British Telly post (they're in order of transmission through the decade), you won't find anything in the way of science fiction or fantasy there: it was too difficult to do by then, even for the perhaps lower expectations of a CBBC audience. The latest entry is Aliens in the Family (number 131 on the list) in 1987.

Aside from the context of UK broadcasting, though, there's personal context. Reading about (and being instantly reminded of) a programme like Puzzle Trail (number 2 on the list) - a Clive Doig produced serial quiz show where clues were given to the location of treasure etc. - brought back memories of, I think, autumn 1983. My parents had recently divorced; as a child looked after by a single parent, I was on free school meals. There was, though, a teacher's strike or working to rule at the time, which entailed a withdrawal of their support during break times. As such, I had to walk from Durrington Middle School to my grandparents' house every day to have lunch there. Before I went, I had to pick up my meal from the canteen, which was a packed lunch in a brown paper bag with my name pencilled on it. I remember that this was the most exciting thing that had happened for a good long while. I would have time to eat it and then rush back to school, but in the afternoon, when I went back to my grandparents' (Mum was out looking for / doing badly paid work at that time), I watched Puzzle Trail before I had my tea. This definitely happened, but I can't find anything online about any teachers' action in the 1980s earlier than 1985, by which time I was at secondary school. There's much more documentary evidence of kids' TV programmes on the web than there are detailed histories of industrial relations in the education sector (this somehow isn't that surprising to me).

Peter Davison's appearance on Captain Zep - Space Detective

Reading through this list, and doing the odd brief bit of googling elsewhere, tells me that I wasn't dreaming, and Peter Davison really did cameo in an episode of Captain Zep - Space Detective, in character and full costume as the Doctor. It tells me that the Channel 4 programme I liked presented by Michael Rosen was called Everybody Here (number 34 on the list), the ITV programme with Beryl Reid, Stephen Boxer and a green space-cat puppet was Get Up and Go! (number 39); plus, it lets me know that Eureka (number 20) ended in 1986 when one of its stars Sylvester McCoy got a better gig elsewhere. My detailed knowledge of Doctor Who and other telly, and the detailed knowledge of other people who've documented it and made it available, helps me to date certain events in my life. It almost doesn't matter that I was too lazy to ever keep a diary, as I can tell you that - as a random example - I was sat with a plate of boil-in-the-bag prawn curry and rice on my lap in the living room watching Doctor Who (The Two Doctors) on Saturday 16th February 1985, and a little later on watched The Laughter Show with Les Dennis and Dustin Gee. I wonder what it will be like in future years for my children, though, who can currently dial up whatever they want to watch on demand at any time on any device. They will no doubt remember that they had that weird year when they were schooled at home because of a pandemic, but when was it? They could have been watching anything at around the time, and none of it date-stamped. The poor sods will have to start keeping a diary. Won't someone think of the children?!

Post script: I never thought that a particular personal and global context from back in the early 80s would be relevant again today, but in the last few days as I wrote this post I've seen a few 'this is what would happen if Russia dropped a nuke on London' speculations. I do often touch on politics on the blog, but I'm probably going to refrain from discussing anything to do with the war in Ukraine - this is not the place. It will feel churlish to just concentrate on a silly TV programme with such things happening on the same continent, but life has to go on or the bullies win. 

In Summary:

The show must go on, even if that show is Time-Flight (which is actually pretty fun for all its flaws).