(620) The Caves of Androzani - Part 2

I forgot to mention that yesterdays episode got an 8.00 rating which is the first time that a Peter Davison episode has got into the 8’s and also only the 8^th episode ever to get inside the 8’s. The previous episode ended with the Doctor and Peri being shot but things are not quite what they seem. They were in fact robots but it takes about three minutes for this fact to be revealed. It’s done when the Doctor and Peri encounter Sharaz Jek. Jek seems to have developed quite the crush on Peri although it turns a bit sour when she asks why he wears a mask and he reacts rather aggressively. The description of how he became disfigured is quite grim and its nice to get a bit of an understanding of his back story.

Once Chellak realises that he has shot androids, he thinks more about his reputation and this is where Salateen starts to make sense when he is whispering in Chellak’s ear. Salateen’s reaction when he discovers that Peri and the Doctor have spectrox poisoning is rather good. After not being one of the main characters in the previous episode, it seems like Salateen takes a step forward and becomes quite the chatterbox. He reveals that there is only one way to counteract the spectrox and its very difficult (what would you expect?) to get to. It’s nice that a small seemingly unimportant scene in the previous episode seems to be snowballing into something.

Despite being behind a mask it is quite impressive how Christopher Gable is able to comes across as well as he does. It’s very similar to Magnus Grel in The Talons of Weng-Chiang in that it’s a performance that is more audio than visual. It’s the sort of role that Big Finish could have done well with.

There is a bit where Stotz plans what appears to be a suicide pill in Krelper’s mouth that turns out to be a sweet. This is another grim moment in this serial. Grim is the most common word that will appear in the review for these four episodes but it’s the only word that I can use to describe some of the moments and compared to other stories in this series it is a just word.

Graeme Harper is doing a great job of directing there are a couple of fade overs from one face to another to another. There are other good shots and some nice hand held camera work. The lighting continues to work in the favour of this story and Robert Holmes’ script continues to be a reason why this story is one of the most loved stories in the shows history.

The cliffhanger isn’t perhaps as strong as the previous one but that is hardly a surprise. It is perhaps the only thing that was weak about this episode. It’s still been a cracking episode and its nice when I struggle to come up with things that are wrong with an episode. In recent episodes I have struggled to find positives about but its nice for it to be the other way around.