(596) Enlightenment - Part 1

So today is the first episode of 2015. I have about eight months left which doesn’t really sound like that long considering I have been doing this for nearly 20 months. Yet there are still seven more Doctors left to watch (admittedly two of those will only take two days to watch). Today starts with the first story without Sarah Sutton in as Nyssa and I didn’t think that I would say this but I didn’t really miss her. I think that the fact there are just three people in the TARDIS is a good move and it means that there is an equal share of screen time and action for the regulars. The DVD for this story features the usual four episode version and a special version which has new CGI effects and is edited to be one feature length story. Sadly I will be watching the four part version but I may watch the movie length one at the end. This is most importantly the first Doctor Who story to be written by a woman. Barbara Clegg gets this particular honour in the 127^th Doctor Who story. It is also directed by Fiona Cumming so its an all female show.

The episode starts off in quite a low beat way with a nice TARDIS scene with the Doctor trying to fix the console with Tegan and Turlough playing chess. I like the low lighting that is used, its one of the few instances where it isn’t brightly lit.

The White Guardian makes his first appearance in this trilogy and it’s a great scene because it creates some mystery and it’s made even better with the appearance of the Black Guardian. The White Guardian’s performance isn’t as good as the Blacks because the White Guardian just spends his time spluttering out the odd word which doesn’t make any sense. This works in the context in the story but he does come off second best.

The place that the TARDIS has landed on is a very strange place because everyone seems to be acting very strange. Especially Marriner who seems to have a fixation on Tegan. It’s a nice performance from Christopher Brown because there is something mesmerising about the way that he appears on screen and Janet Fielding’s reaction as Tegan helps make it seem even more bizarre.

There are two famous faces that pop up in this story. The first being Tony Caunter who returns to Doctor Who as Jackson and would go on to play Roy Evans in Eastenders from 1994 to 2003. He previously appeared in ‘Colony in Space’ and plays quite a fun character that seems to be a sort of jack the lad kind of guy. The second is Keith Baron who plays Striker, Striker is the captain and comes across as such. It’s important when you get someone like Baron that they need to be able to pull off the part and thankfully that is the case. There is a third famous face that appears but that will have to wait.

The revelation that they are on a sailing ship in space isn’t revealed until the cliffhanger which must be quite an impressive ending if your watching it for the first time but after countless views its hard to really see it for the ending that it is. I think that Clegg has done a good job in creating a nice mixture of mystery and claustrophobia because there aren’t that many sets where there is a lot of open space. There is plenty to like going forward in this story and I do hope that this story will do a good job of completing this trilogy of stories up. So far the signs are looking good.