(587) Snakedance - Part 4

I went into watching this episode quite upbeat thinking that after the improvement in the previous episode that this episode would be a fine end to an ultimately underwhelming adventure. Sadly this isn’t the case because the episode starts off in quite a slow fashion and its takes about ten minutes before the episode started to get going and lead up to the crowning of Lon and ultimately the Mara completing its plan.

There are some good moments which worked quite well and these included the whole ‘coronation’ scene where Lon is about to put the crystal in the gap and I thought this is where the madness really shows and its actually quite a good end to the story. The thing is that Tegan again doesn’t appear for quite a long time and when she does she instantly makes the whole thing come alive. Some credit for this does have to go to Martin Clunes who plays it perfectly. This is despite the fact that he has to change in one of the most ridiculous costumes that I have ever seen and its used on TV whenever people want to do one of those ‘Before They Were Famous’ type programmes. How Clunes managed to deliver his lines with that on is a mystery. Back to Janet Fielding and her best moment comes when her head is positioned in the Mara and its one final reminder of how good she has been in this story and how good she was in ‘Kinda’.

Ok so I haven’t been a big fan of this story but the second half was definelty the stronger with the better writing and the better directing and acting that came from this. I have perhaps been too harsh on this story because whilst it might not have worked it was the sort of story that Doctor Who should be a least trying. The effects worked really well and showed how far they had come in twelve months because the big snake effect in Kinda was only made better with the addition of CGI, no new CGI was needed for this adventure as they effects stand up and even the ones that don’t work quite as well are still watchable.

The ratings for this story averaged at 7.28 which is down from the 7.44 which is Arc of Infinity got. At the moment this is the second weakest story ahead of Four to Doomsday. I think that is perhaps the right position for it because at the end of the day this is a story that is far weaker than the first Mara story and I think that as we know what was going to happen it kind of too some of the magic off what Christopher Bailey came up with. Due to the second half of the story Christopher Bailey and Fiona Cumming managed to snatch victory (or at least a draw!) from the jaws of defeat.

(586) Snakedance - Part 3

I know that I haven’t been too keen on this story but there is a small part of me that hopes this will change. Before I started to watch todays episode I watched two episode of Doctor Who and the Silurians on the Horror Channel and I was reminded just how close to perfect the show was and I remember how I loved this debut season of Jon Pertwee and then though of just how much I have disliked Snakedance. I had completely forgotten about the previous episode’s cliffhanger (which shows how poor the episode worked for me) so I was reminded and thought that it was ok.

The episode starts off in such a way that I thought that this would be where the episode picks up a lot and to be fair this is by far the most interesting episode of the serial. It’s the one where the plot actually seems to be working towards something and certain scenes are superbly performed. Janet Fielding is again the best thing in the entire episode. She totally steals the episode despite popping up at the beginning of the episode and disappearing for a large chunk of it. When she does return then it comes with one of the best scenes in the entire story. It features Tegan, Lan and Dugdale and the drama that is created during this short few mintues is highly enjoyable. It is intercut with scenes between Nyssa and the Doctor. These two work very well together and after a short amount of time I was convinced that this story had picked up.

I had struggled to understand just what the Mara wanted in this story. It seemed that the Mara had just be bought back for the sake of it whereas in this episode its main perfectly clear that the Mara is after a crystal. Why its taken until now for me to be able to pick up on this shows the flaws with this story.

Ok so this story is starting to work on me but I still don’t think that its as good as Kinda and it’s a shame that Christopher Bailey didn’t write another story for Big Finish because I think that he would have done well with whatever he came up with. Fiona Cumming has done well with what is in effect a very pedestrian story. The cliffhanger is an issue for me because whilst it’s the best one of the serial it does feature Nyssa crying which makes two stories running and with that and the new costume means that the decontrsuction of the character is pretty much done. With just one more episode of this story remaining, I find myself not dreading the final episode as much as I did when I finished watching the previous episode.

(585) Snakedance - Part 2

Any goodwill that I may have had for this story quickly evaporated over the course of this episode. Again Janet Fielding is the best thing in it. There is a nice switch between good Tegan and bad Tegan which shows in one scene just how underused the character was over the years. This episode really is the Tegan and Lon show because despite coming across as a rather spoilt brat but then after a bizarre scene with Tegan and a group of mirrors, becomes joined with the Mara and they both form this rather odd but ultimately story saving double act. It’s clear that Janet Fielding is loving the character at the moment. The problem is that Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton are reduced to running around and not doing very much. Seriously, I struggled to actually think of anything constructive that they did which is a shame really.

Like yesterdays episode, when Tegan is on screen I am interested because she is so good but when she isn’t on screen then I find myself losing interest. The only saviour is John Carson who treats the role of Ambrill with the level of absurdity that it deserves. What happens in this episode is the introduction of a headpiece which is suppose to have six faces on and five are on the headpiece with the wearer’s head being the sixth and the shot of Ambrill wearing it is the one that is used regularly on the back page of Doctor Who Magazine.

I really have struggled to find something to write about in the previous two episodes so I am going to fill my 500 word count limit with some stats. This is Peter Davison’s 32^nd episode as the Doctor. It’s crazy to think that he’s already done that many. Janet Fielding has now clocked up 35 episodes and Sarah Sutton is on 37, she is just 3 behind Louise Jameson and Deborah Watling.  Eric Saward will be tied with Derrick Sherwin by the end of this story and John Nathan Turner will be just four episodes behind Philip Hinchcliffe in the producer ranks.

I cant believe that I still have two more episodes left to watch. I know that the idea was to bring back a familiar monster/villain during the 20^th anniversary but I think that more time was needed for this story to try and make something else. The only thing I have to decide between now and the final episode is whether this is as bad as Four to Doomsday or not.

(584) Snakedance - Part 1

After Kinda was a success it was inevitable that a sequel would happen but its surprising that it happened so quickly. I have never rated this story very highly but after having my opinion changed on Kinda, it might be possible for the same to happen here. This story features the first (and only) appearance of Nyssa’s new dress. I don’t quite know what they were thinking. Even by 1980’s standards this costume is terrible but the one thing that I remember after watching this episode is the performance of Janet Fielding. The one thing that was so good about Kinda was that Janet Fielding was so good when she was possessed by the Mara. This time the same thing happens because it allows Janet Fielding to do something different with the character. The best scene comes when she is under hypnosis and she shines during this moment.

Apart from Nyssa’s dress, there are some interesting things about this serial. The first is that it features a very young Martin Clunes. Before he would appear in the BBC sitcom Men Behaving Badly and more recently in the ITV show Doc Martin, he plays Lon who seems like a bratty figure. During this course of this serial he wears some truly bizarre costumes and its fair to say that Clunes doesn’t look at his time on the show very positively. Another thing is the build up to the cliffhanger. Some woman decides to take off Tegan’s hearing aid which is keeping the Mara at bay. This seems like a bit of a groan inducing moment.

The problem with this episode is that it just doesn’t seem to have anything new about it. It does have any of the freshness and energy about it that Kinda did. I wasn’t totally bored with the episode but I think that when Tegan wasn’t on screen then the episode was a bit weak and when she’s on then there is something interesting going on. After being trigger happy in the previous story, it seems that Nyssa has resorted back to normality because she seems to trying to be Tegan’s friend and shoots some stern looks at the Doctor.

I think that this story isn’t going to change in my opinion. It doesn’t seem like Christopher Bailey’s heart is really in the story and despite some good things that are going to appear over the course of the next four days, its not going to be two solid stories in a row. It’s a shame really but there is still a good chance that things might change.

(565) Kinda - Part 4

This episode is the one where there is some cracking CGI on offer. The beginning of the episode sees the departure of Panna but what’s quite clever is that the soul/essence goes into Karuna who really gets to get involved in the story and I think that Sarah Prince has been one of the underated people in this story. Due to the fact that there have been some stunning performances it was inevitable that she would fall down the pecking order but on a ‘normal’ story she would have stood out more. The standout performances from this story continue to be Hindle and Sanders. They have literally resorted to children because Hindle delivers a line to Adric and says “Outside is for grownups”. Both Hindle and Sanders are great from the very beginning where they are making people out of cardboard to the very end where they are back to normal and seem like friends. Both Simon Rouse and Richard Todd have been great and are probably my two favourite pieces of casting for this entire season.

The episode is building up to the big scene which actually starts in a rather nice scene with the Doctor and Hindle. Hindle tells the Doctor that the Kinda don’t like the mirror and it takes several minutes for the Doctor to twig what to do so when he does it leads the Aries being confronted in a circle of mirrors and this leads to one of the things that let the story down when it aired in 1982 and was released on VHS but is thankfully resolved on the DVD version. The big Mara snake is revealed and in the 1982 version it’s a bit disappointing, well completely disappointing however with the technology now much better what we get on the DVD version is a lovely snake which manages to make it look like it was apart of the original filming. It interesting that the Doctor doesn’t actually have to do anything to stop the Mara, its all done with the mirrors. One of the rare (ish) occasions where the Doctor’s actions don’t really save the day.

After being out of the story since the first couple of minutes, Nyssa finally makes an appearance in this episode but its not until the last two minutes of the episode where she says she’s fine and goes back into the TARDIS. It’s a shame that Nyssa got used in this manner, it would have been possible to find a way where Nyssa could have been used better and not be part of the story. It was done well enough in the previous story so this is the only thing that I think Christopher Bailey did wrong with the story. Apart from that I thought that this was a cracking story. Some of it I didn’t really understand but on the whole I enjoyed enough of it to think that this was the best story of the season but knowing what is coming up I cant say this will be the case by the end of the season. It’s definelty better than when I first watched it many years ago.  

(564) Kinda - Part 3

The third episode of this story is one that is a bit difficult to really but not because its boring or uninteresting but just because I found a lot of it on a level that I don’t understand. The episode starts off with us finding out the contents of what was in the box and some might be disappointed with it just being a puppet but I thought that in the context of the episoe that it was quite a fun resolvement. The thing about this episode is that it features very little of Tegan. In fact apart from a couple of quick shots of her on the floor asleep, she plays no involvement in the development of the plot which I thought was a rather bizarre thing to do for a character that has been so integral to the plot.

Adric spends his time trying to get out of playing games with Sanders and Hindle. Speaking of Hindle, he continues to be fantastic in this episode and what makes his performance so strong is that he gets to act against Todd who is just as barmy and I just think that this is the sort of double act that Big Finish could make a series out of these two. Adric is great in this episode and I thought that despite not actually doing anything he somehow manages to keep himself busy. The Doctor spends his time with Todd and they seem to steer the narrative of the episode and by the end they find themselves in sort of weird psycadelic world where they are watching over events. It’s another barmy moment but visually its an impressive sight and there isn’t a moment which I found myself bored with what was going on.

A big improvement came in the form of Aris who in the previous episode wasn’t convincing as the Mara but in this episode I thought that he was much better in this episode and was believeable as a baddie. This episode saw the introduction of the Trickster who I (and maybe you) have seen as the Landlord in the BBC sitcom ‘Bottom’ and as a teacher in ‘Grange Hill’ from 1990 to 2002. The Trickster is a character that fits in very well with this story.

I really liked the episode and though that it was building up to a thrilling conclusion. The performances were strong and the whole thing was directed very well and the thing about this story is that despite it being filmed entirely in a studio and there being things talked about that I either don’t understand or don’t care about, I still think that this is one of the strongest stories of the season so far after the wobble that was ‘Four to Doomsday’ its clear that the new series is going to survive not just a new Doctor but a new style in transmitting.

(563) Kinda - Part 2

The thing about this story is that whilst I may not understand all the bits and pieces about whats going on I can still say that I am enjoying it. This second episode is still just as bonkers as the first. The episode introduces two new characters who are quite integral to the story (well one of them anyway). The first is Panna who according to the information text on my DVD, appeared in the original version of ‘The Prisoner’. Anyway as Panna, she gives a rather dignified yet mesmorising performance and I liked her as a character. She was with Karuna who is a young girl and is basically Panna’s eyes. They are only really in the episode in order to give Sanders a box. The effect used when he looks inside the box is very good although I thought that Sanders’ contribution was a bit flat.

There are two performances which really stand out but before I mention them I have to talk about Nyssa because due to what is going on from start to finish, I didn’t think about Nyssa until I was writing this review. It shows just how unnecessary having three companions is. The two performances were Janet Fielding and Simon Rouse. Both give fantastic performances for different reasons. Fielding’s performance is great because it starts off as a rather scared Tegan where she is talking to herself (quite literally) and then by the end she has become the human form of the Mara. When she wakes up back on Deva Loka, she gives one of her best performances ever and she seems to be having the time of her life. The performance that Rouse gives is arguably one of the greatest in Doctor Who. His madness is unlike anything that has really been seen in Doctor Who before or since.

If I had to make one critiscm of the episode it would be that I didn’t find Aris convincing when he had the Mara on him. Considering he spent the previous episode and most of this episode as a mute then it would have been best to keep him that way because he just doesn’t really work as anything else. That is really as bad as it got because the cliffhanger wasn’t bad. The fact that Todd ended the episode screaming might be a bit bad but I thought that considering she hasn’t done it up until this point means that whatever is in the box really is terrifying (obviously I know different). But it works as a cliffhanger and ends the episode in a good manner and complimented the episode.

So two episodes in and my opinion of the story is that its working well and all the characters have something to contribute and others really stand out amongst a good group of performances.

(562) Kinda - Part 1

Ok so After not being bowled over with ‘Four to Doomsday’, it was time to get ready for this story which is one of those that I really disliked when I first watched when I bought it on VHS many years ago but in recent years I have started to appreciate the story. I have to say that on the basis of this episode I am going to like the story more than ever. This is a story that is Nyssa-lite and that’s because the problem with having a crowded TARDIS is evident and after a brief scene, she is hurried into the TARDIS and that is it until episode four. This story is a Tegan story because she features in it so much.

Tegan’s story is one that is very interesting because its all in the mind. She first comes across Anatta and Annica (Anatta played by Eastenders star Anna Wing). They are playing chequers which is mirroring what Nyssa and Adric were doing at the beginning of the episode and I think that was really clever and a nice thing by writer Christopher Bailey. The next interesting figure she encounters is Dukkha (played by Jeff Stewart). The three characters that Tegan meets are very striking and its hard to find something terrifying in their performances and how they look.

It’s not just Tegan that’s getting some good stuff to do in this story as Adric and the Doctor encounter the colonists. They are all brilliant with Simon Rouse being the best of the trio as Hindle. He starts off the episode as a bit of a whinger but by the end of the episode he is going to kill the Doctor and so has clearly gone barking mad. The next character that is fun to watch is Richard Todd who plays Sanders. He might as well be called Colonel Sanders because his views do seem somewhat outdated and really all that you can do is just laugh at his backward thinking.  Nerys Hughes plays Todd and is the only one out of the three that has any sense to her character. She is the one that actually treats the Doctor properly so is the one that will the fans will be liking.

The episode is a great opening one that tells two sides of the story well and sets things up nicely. I will be honest and say that I haven’t missed Nyssa despite being a big Nyssa fan but I think that just shows how well Christopher Bailey has written the story and how well Peter Grimwade has directed a story that moves along well and at no point was I bored during the course of this episode which wasn’t the case at all during the previous four episodes.