‘How pathetic and juvenile are your attempts at humour.’ – The Valeyard
‘Thanks for pointing that out’ – Me
So after ‘Mysterious Planet’, most opinion seems to have it that the next story ‘Mindwarp’ is the highlight of this season, at least from the reviews I’ve seen. The DWM polls count Trial as one story (it really isn’t, despite how it is titled), so don’t help in gauging opinion on this, but I think on here opinion is generally more positive? However, I have to say that I really don’t like it much. I’ll have a go at explaining why – I’m not sure I entirely know myself. The themes – body horror, possession, transformation are such that I should really like it, but for a series of reasons I really don’t, in fact it is one of my least favourite stories in the whole run to date. Which makes me think I really must be missing something – so please feel free to tell me where I am wrong.
So why is this the case? Firstly, the more superficial stuff – I think it looks awful, but not really for any of the usual reasons. Now a lot of old ‘Doctor Who’ doesn’t look that good, it comes with the territory – but this is shot through with lurid pink and greens – it is as if someone accidentally ate the sixth Doctor’s coat and vomited it across the screen. The shots of the planet surface are actually something new and could be really quite effective taken on their own, the twin planet looming large in the sky over the sea – but that bright pink (taken from the script to be fair) whilst alien, also makes everything look cheap and nasty. The interior scenes are at least lit more effectively than most 80’s stories, but again the darkness clashes horribly with the lurid pink costumes.
Secondly, there just seems to be an awful lot of random stuff going on – the usual rubbish rebels, the warlord running around shouting, some typically rubbish guards, Sil and the Mentors bickering, the Doctor back to being boorish and nasty to Peri (we are never told if this is fabricated evidence, the effects of the machine on the Doctor or if he is just a dick – I’m not sure anyone really knew). The trial scenes are also really intrusive here and don’t really help – OK we have the Doctor able to point out that what we are seeing might not be true, that the evidence might be fabricated and we have in the matrix as unreliable narrator – but this doesn’t properly pay off and isn’t returned to until the final episode of the season, when it is botched anyway. The only time these scenes work is in the aftermath of Peri’s death when things are quieter and it starts to feel like drama.
So, stuff happens, mostly in a noisy, garish, unpleasant, often poorly acted way and it manages somehow to be all too bright and dark at the same time (don’t ask me how), people shout and run around a lot and I want to turn the DVD off and go and do something else – that rarely happens to me while watching Who.
Which is a shame. I think because like all of the stories this season, there is a good, strong idea at the heart of this. That central idea of being able to transfer the minds of one individual into another, erasing the other person in the process is quite a scary concept – tapping into what is at the heart of an individual. It is a staple of a show like ‘The Prisoner’, where it is used to disorientating and unsettling effect. The Doctor also does something similar to this via regeneration – but in the process his personality does change – a new person from the old, but retaining the experiences and memories and wisdom – more the Budhhist idea of re-incarnation than the theft of someone’s body and self. The Master does this in taking over Tremas or Bruce to extend his life. It is the sort of idea that I’ve been discussing in my other thread quite a bit and it is something that the series has been good at exploring in the past. That aspect of the story works here – it is just the rest of it that doesn’t for me. Back when people at the BBC knew how to make this stuff (they really don’t have a clue while this is being made), this would have been a pretty good story. As it is, the script needs a good polishing and a director that actually knew what they were doing.
So, the main issue for me I think is that the tone of the piece is all over the place. We lurch from the sub-Flash Gordon antics of Brain Blessed to Sil, who appears to have become the first Edmund Blackadder, then onto the really unpleasant death of Peri. Now that is really nasty – head shaved (an echo of the treatment of collaborators or concentration camp victims – so an act with some pretty unpleasant overtones as well as surgical connotations), mind erased and thrown in the bin and replaced by that of Lord Kiv, who has gone from bumbling old comedy buffoon to complete all-out meglomaniac super-villain in the process.
Nicola Bryant plays it very well – showing she had more potential than she was allowed, constrained by a false accent and the treatment of her character. However, even this aspect is bungled slightly in this am-dram production – her bald cap completely visible in these scenes. JNT later throws all of this away, so it loses much of its power in retrospect anyway. Why wouldn’t she marry Ycranos? I mean he’s quite the prospect isn’t he? So, she gets to be the victim AND married off to someone even less likely than Andred.
So, these scenes are really powerful, I just don’t like them very much. Sara Kingdom dies horribly, but in a heroic act – helping the Doctor deal with the Time Destructor, Katerina’s death is assumed to be heroic, sacrificing herself for the Doctor and Steven, even Adric gets to be both heroic and typically inept at the same time – he is trying his best to save everyone and doesn’t quite get the opportunity to do that. In comparison, Peri is strapped to an operating table and her identity and self, life and memories are thrown away and replaced with someone else, nothing remains. No heroic act, just a really nasty, brutal end to a character who wasn’t really treated very well by the series.
And that last point is it for me, it might have worked well for another character, but after being perved and lusted over by an array of super villains (and it has to be said a fair few of us), tied up, strangled, betrayed by someone she cares about, finally she dies a victim in an act of violation. The Doctor isn’t around to save her, but she doesn’t know that. And then we have the alternative, life with BRIAN BLESSED, where to start with that? I’ll talk about it here, rather than in the review of the final story, but it isn’t the fault of Philip Martin or Eric Saward – her death might be nasty – but it is powerful and shocking, so what do we then do – rob it completely of that, it didn’t actually happen, so don’t fret. It is a horrible, botched effort, completely lacking in any conviction and falls into the morass between script editor and producer – typical of the show at this time.
So, central conceit aside, I’m struggling to recommend in this one. I would really love to like it more. The trial scenes, as ever don’t help at all, they just serve to take you out of the story and are really badly done. And we come to the question of why the Doctor acts like a complete dick in the middle of the story – nobody knows – Philip Martin thinks it because he absorbed some of Ycranos’s mind when in the machine, but it could also be the Valeyard doctoring the matrix evidence or some sort of plan on the Doctor’s part. Ultimately, I don’t care – the idea of the Doctor going bad is something that crops up from time to time, but it only works with a Doctor who is good in the first place, the sixth Doctor acting like a dick isn’t a surprise or particularly interesting at this point. All the good work softening the relationship between our two leads earlier in the season is lost, those moments where the relationship between Nicola and Colin in real life is finally allowed to show and we are back to the start where it all began for the pair, the Doctor abusing Peri. Real or not, I’m not sure it really matters.
And no, I didn’t enjoy writing that much either.
Some thoughts on Peri.
With her ‘death’ in the last story, I thought I should at least put down some quick thoughts on Peri and Nicola Bryant. Nicola is a decent enough actor, as good as most companions in the 80’s, but she suffers from a few factors. Firstly she is lumbered with a fake accent that often makes her sound whiny. She is also extremely attractive – probably the most overtly ‘sexy’ of the era and has to deal with the worst of excess of ‘something for the Dads’ (certainly since Leela) – both in terms of costume and storyline. Time after time she is lusted after and coveted by the villain of the week and let’s be honest here, quite a lot of straight, male fans. Mea culpa. Lastly she falls between two Doctors, without being able to establish herself with the fifth Doctor, she has the rug pulled from under her feet and she has to deal with the sixth Doctor, which doesn’t often make pleasant viewing, even after he calmed down a bit from the nadir of ‘Twin Dilemma‘.
For my money Peri works best with the Fifth Doctor. In particular with the Fifth Doctor and Erimem for Big Finish. She has a sympathetic Doctor to tease and also a strong-willed younger sister/female friend, they work well together and are different enough to be interesting but complimentary. There is absolutely no reason why she shouldn’t work well with the sixth Doctor – the strength of the personal friendship between Colin and Nicola is really obvious when you see then together – they seem to enjoy each other’s company – so why don’t we get to see that more often on screen? There are times when they do work, for example I reviewed ‘Point of Entry’ and they are great together. It’s just that more often than not they tend to bring out the worst in each other, which is almost exactly what you don’t want in a lead pairing isn’t it?
That isn’t down to Colin and Nicola though, both talk about trying to tone down and remove the bickering and arguing for season 23 – it is there in the writing. Peri is a character who loses out badly when the writing isn’t strong or clever enough or just treats her as a victim. There are also examples of this outside of the TV series – if I thought ‘Mindwarp’ was nasty and left a bad taste in the mouth – the Big Finish Fifth Doctor story ‘Nekromanteia’ is off the scale in its sheer unpleasantness.
Overall, the depiction and treatment of Peri isn’t the show’s finest hour. And whilst I’m all for just watching the show in its historical context and not being judgemental of the past (I am after all from there, with more past than future ahead!), watching some of it again doesn’t really look too good in these times. A shame really.
A Journal of Impossible Things 