Hello!
This week is the Fifth Doctor's swan-song, followed by the Sixth Doctor's introduction. The Caves of Androzani is widely considered one of the best Classic serials - it's also one of my favourite Doctor Who stories ever. The Twin Dilemma is kind of like Doctor Who's version of The Last Airbender - a massive disappointment, rife with unfortunate implications, which serves only to tarnish the legacy of the greatness which came before. For instance, there's an onscreen depiction of the Doctor attempting to murder his companion in a fit of paranoia; The Last Airbender, meanwhile, completely botched the characterisation of practically every main character, among other things - explaining exactly how would take too long, which rather highlights my point, I think.
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| A spectacular regeneration sequence |
The Caves of Androzani features two main locations, not counting spaceships and such: Androzani Major and Androzani Minor. Major is a fully colonised planet, while Minor was never colonised. Androzani Minor is sandy, with molten mud for a core - hence why it was never colonised. There is life on Androzani Minor - a strange species of bat which produces a substance called spectrox. Raw spectrox is highly toxic; exposure to it results in rashes, cramps and high fevers, culminating in death. The only cure for spectrox toxaemia is milk of a queen bat - and they all live deep underground, in very oxygen-deprived areas. Refined spectrox extends life rather than shortening it; as a result, it's very valuable on Androzani Major. Six months before the start of the story, a rebel called Sharaz Jek seized the spectrox refinery on Androzani Minor; a war to reclaim the spectrox has been raging ever since. The army is led by a man called General Chellak and his right-hand man, Major Salateen; Salateen's been replaced with an android and taken captive by Jek. As Jek is under siege, he has gun-runners supplying him with weapons; the leader has the brilliant-sounding name of "Stotz". Jek also hates Morgus, the chairman of the company in charge of operations on Minor, because Morgus tricked him and got him caught in a mud-burst. Jek got horrifically burned after that, and he wants revenge. Indeed, his terms for ending the war and handing over the spectrox are simple: Morgus' decapitated head in front of him, "congealed in its own evil blood". And this mess is what the Doctor and Peri walk into.
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| Nice place for a holiday? Not so much. |
The Caves of Androzani starts with the Doctor and his companion, Peri, exploring Androzani Minor. They find their way into the caves...and Peri falls into a spectrox nest. The Doctor unwittingly seals his fate by wiping it off her legs with his bare hands. Soon after, they stumble across the recently-abandoned gun-runner camp, then get arrested by the army on suspicion of gun-running, because the universe loves irony. The actual gun-runners, meanwhile, hid when they heard the Doctor and Peri. Then Peri and the Doctor get sentenced to death; Jek sneaks two androids into the army base and replaces the Doctor and Peri with them. The Doctor and Peri learn from Major Salateen that they have spectrox toxaemia, which is fatal; they escape from Jek's base in order to get oxygenators from the TARDIS so they can retrieve the antidote. The Doctor gets captured by the gun-runners, while Peri goes back to the army. Then Sharaz Jek recaptures her, shortly before the army launches an all-out offensive on Jek's base. Got whiplash yet? The Doctor, meanwhile, gets interrogated (through a video-call) by Morgus, who decides to head to Minor to personally interrogate him, on the belief that there's a conspiracy to oust him. Which there is, incidentally. The Doctor crash-lands the ship on Minor and escapes into the caves; after checking up with Peri, who's now unconscious, he heads into the depths to retrieve the antidote. The army (now consisting of just General Chellak, the rest having been killed) reaches Jek's base, only for Chellak to lose the ensuing battle when he tears off Jek's mask; he catches sight of his face and panics, allowing Jek to kill him. Morgus and Stotz reaches the base minutes later; Stotz killed the other gun-runners. Jek kills Morgus, then gets shot by Stotz. The android replica of Salateen turns up and shoots Stotz in turn; the Doctor arrives two seconds later, picks up Peri and legs it. He carries her to the TARDIS, dropping one vial of antidote in the process. He feeds her the remaining antidote, lasting long enough to witness Peri come round, before he starts hallucinating his friends telling him to live. The Master also appears in the hallucination, urging him to die, but he listens to his companions instead and undergoes the regeneration. The Sixth Doctor sits up and promptly calls Peri egotistical for saying "I" repeatedly out of shock. Kind of sets the tone for their interactions in the next serial.
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| Bright primary colours are beloved by Hobbits. Does this mean the Doctor is a Hobbit? Maybe... |
The Twin Dilemma starts differently to the previous post-regeneration episodes - for the duration of the first part, it switches between Peri's reaction to the Doctor's regeneration and two twins getting kidnapped by yet another renegade Time Lord. The new Doctor proves himself every bit as egotistical as he accuses Peri of being, then collapses and has a fit of melodrama in the wardrobe room. Minutes later, he tries to throttle Peri in a fit of paranoia. After realising this, he decides to become a hermit in a self-pitying quest for redemption, dragging his victim with him. By coincidence, he lands on the same planet the twins have been taken to...it's not contrived, you just have to trust me! It's so absolutely contrived, though. The Doctor and Peri rescue a victim of a spaceship crash...who's the only survivor. This is not explained. His name is Hugo Lang. Leaving the injured man unsupervised in the TARDIS, they investigate a mysterious dome...which is coincidentally where the bad guys are. They catch up to them, but the bad guys teleport out - talk about pointless! The dome blows up, but not before the Doctor and Peri teleport back to the TARDIS. They follow the bad guys to their main base of operations. In time, it's revealed that the main antagonist, Mestor, plans to cause some planets to collide with the sun they orbit, which will create a massive explosion and scatter giant gastropod eggs across the universe. I...don't think that's how solar explosions work. The twins make an idiotically obvious statement about how their genius has been abused, before being sent back to the TARDIS with Peri and Lang. The two Time Lords, meanwhile, team up to confront Mestor. The Doctor antagonises Mestor into proving that he can so possess a Time Lord; counter-intuitively, Mestor then posssess the other Time Lord instead of the Doctor, who is literally begging him to. The Doctor takes this opportunity to destroy Mestor's body, while Mestor's new host body starts regenerating despite being out of regenerations, killing both Mestor and the Time Lord. The Doctor reunites with Peri, the twins, and Lang; Lang wants to stay behind to sort out the mess on the planet, while the twins get taken home.
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| From fashionable... |
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| ...to...well! |
Overall, The Caves of Androzani is very good - it is definitely one of my favourite Doctor Who episodes. It's got excellent plotting, compelling characters, even an immersive atmosphere. The music captures the threat and tension of the caves; between Jek's androids, the army, magma monsters and mud bursts, the caves are very dangerous, and the music reflects that. The tune that plays whenever Jek is on-screen, for instance, incorporates a rattle-snake sound, evoking an image of creeping, hidden danger. Sharaz Jek himself is dangerous - he's consumed by hatred and thirst for revenge. He's also incredibly clever, intelligent enough to create perfect android duplicates inside an hour. Oh, and given over to fits of rage; he frequently has outbursts of temper where he chucks things across the room. He's also the most sympathetic character to interact with the Doctor and Peri, and one of two (the other being Salateen) who actually helps the Doctor and Peri. His motive for revenge is also understandable; he got badly burned in boiling mud, courtesy Morgus, so is understandably angry over the betrayal. The Doctor and Peri's interactions are quite sweet as well; for instance, when the Doctor notices Jek's lustful attitude towards Peri, he spends the rest of that scene firmly placing himself between Peri and Jek. The Doctor is protective of Peri throughout the rest of the serial as well - when captured by gun-runners, he crashes their spaceship onto the surface of Androzani Minor in order to save her - he takes responsibility for the fact that she contracted spectrox toxaemia in the first place.
Another aspect of the music which I like is the sense of hopelessness, almost - the music is dark and gloomy. It evokes a sense of lack of light, which works on a literal level (the dark, lightless caves) and a metaphorical level; the Doctor and Peri are practically the only two characters in the serial to act on a moral compass. The army, the gun-runners and Jek, and Morgus are all concerned with preserving their own interests over the welfare of other people. Even Salateen, the only person other than Jek to help the Doctor and Peri, only helps them escape because it enables him to get back at Jek. He straight-up laughs when he learns that they've contracted Spectrox Toxaemia. From a moral perspective, there is no light in the caves - at best, the people there are dark grey morally. The Doctor, by comparison, consistently acts for Peri's greater good. Everything he does is for Peri, up to and including dying for her; when he drops one of the vials of antidote, he almost unthinkingly gives the remaining one to Peri, knowing that that means his own demise. And when he's about to regenerate, his head cradled in Peri's lap, he gives her a heart-breaking look of adoration, like she's his whole universe; he's giving his life for her, and he'd do it again in a heartbeat, if he had to. Indeed, this self-sacrifice renders the Sixth Doctor's behaviour even more tragic - just minutes before The Twin Dilemma, he willingly died to save her (and came back); now, he's being both physically and verbally abusive towards Peri. To make matters worse, the place where the Doctor tries to kill Peri is centimetres away from where she cradled his Fifth incarnation shortly before he regenerated. Morally, the Doctor is a lone spot of light...and it gets (temporarily) crushed by the forces within the caves.
I'd rate The Caves of Androzani 9.5/10 - atmospheric music, thrilling plot and enticing characters.
As for The Twin Dilemma, it's mediocre at best. I said earlier that The Twin Dilemma is equivalent to The Last Airbender; that's not entirely fair. The Last Airbender did not tarnish the legacy of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Since the show finished in 2008, there have been a duology of books centring around Avatar Kyoshi, the Avatar before Aang's predecessor; a sequel animated series about the Avatar following Aang, Avatar Korra (The Legend of Korra); a series of comics serving as sequels to both Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, and multiple video games - not to mention, fan-made and creator-made projects focused around exploring the lives of past and future Avatars. The movie actually had limited impact on the show's popularity, and it is now the butt of half the Avatar-related jokes on the Internet. By comparison, The Twin Dilemma marked the end for Doctor Who - viewer ratings plummeted, and from this point on, only hard-core fans of the show were still watching. And, given the impression The Twin Dilemma creates, it's not hard to see why most people lost interest. The plot isn't particularly interesting; it is, however, contrived. By coincidence, the Doctor lands on the exact planet where the twins have been taken, without even knowing about the kidnap. The dialogue isn't especially imaginative, especially when it comes to the twins; they speak almost in a monotone. At one point, they discuss how scared they are, without a trace of fear in their voices. The Doctor's behaviour towards Peri is not pleasant to watch - at one point, he calls her a stupid girl for letting Lang get stuck in gastropod slime, despite the fact that, as the Doctor himself lamented, it's his fault for not warning Lang in time. Given his behaviour towards her, it's not hard to wonder whether she stays with him because she wants to, or because she's got nowhere else to go.
I also feel compelled to note the way the story entirely revolves around the twins. They're the most important people in the world - their disappearance prompts an immediate manhunt. The Doctor and Peri coincidentally arrive at the very place where the twins are, shortly after the spaceship crash, having previously been entirely uninvolved in the main plot. They're completely, flawlessly intelligent; they are the only people capable of performing the calculations needed for Mestor's plan. Not even a Time Lord is intelligent enough. Because they have no flaws, and nothing to make the viewer care who they are, they are very boring to watch. As a result, because the whole plot revolves around them, the plot is rendered rather dull itself.
There are twin gems though - Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant (Peri). Also Kevin McNally, the actor who plays Hugo Lang, but I couldn't pass up the chance for a pun. Baker does an excellent job with the poor script he was given; once he stops verbally abusing Peri, Baker creates a Doctor who's egotistical and exceedingly verbose, but possessing of a firm sense of right and wrong and, despite some callousness, deeply compassionate. A good example is his horror when he finds a forest grove demolished by giant gastropods; he displays a very genuine horror with what's happened to the forest. Another example is his reaction to Mestor's plan; he's horrified and disgusted by the ruthlessness and selfishness of the scheme. Bryant, meanwhile, does a good job of depicting Peri as completely fed up with the Doctor's attitude; she's also responsible for one of the only funny moments in the serial. At the end, the twins suddenly behave like actual teenagers - they want to stay on bad-guy planet, where the excitement is, rather than go home. Peri, however, is having none of it and simply chivvies them into the TARDIS. McNally is also funny; he consistently acts confused and just goes along with the plot, strange as it is. It's almost meta. He also repeatedly threatens the Doctor - which I certainly found cathartic, given the Doctor's behaviour.
Another nice touch is that the Doctor is demonstrated to still care for Peri; at the end, he very sincerely remarks to himself that she's "Such a nice girl." He also panics at the end of the third episode, when she's taken captive and he realises her life is in danger.
Overall, I'd rate The Twin Dilemma at 4/10. Colin Baker is its saving grace.
Random observations:
-It is very amusing that Morgus was technically right about a conspiracy - the Praesidium and Morgus' assistant suspected him of being corrupt and instigated a coup the minute he left Androzani Major to personally interrogate the Doctor. Ironically, his suspicion of the Doctor, who was innocent, ended him.
-It's also funny how at the end, the Doctor just picks up Peri and scrams, ignoring the dying Jek - it's a good representation of how, the entire time, the Doctor could not care less for the petty squabbles and power-plays happening, he just wanted to get out.
-Salateen's actor, Robert Glenister, appeared in Doctor Who again, much, much later; he played Thomas Edison in Series 12. Unfortunately, Thirteen didn't take one look at Edison and say "Have we met before?". Wasted opportunity.
-Something else I liked about The Caves of Androzani is the fact that Sharaz Jek is a bad-boy type - dressed in leather, brooding and misunderstood, 'tragic backstory'; he's also incredibly creepy towards Peri, and concerningly obsessive over somebody he just met. Peri, unsurprisingly, is never attracted to any of this, and there's never any expectation that she'd be expected to 'change' or 'heal' him. This serial came out in 1980, and it's still more progressive than some books written in the 21st century.
-Between Castrovalva and The Twin Dilemma, the Doctor had a lot of difficulty entering and leaving his Fifth incarnation. Though maybe that's massive neurological damage in both instances.
-In fact, I have a theory that the Sixth Doctor's behaviour was caused by the same thing that caused the regeneration - spectrox toxaemia attacks the nervous system, so the combination of the toxaemia and the regeneration could have shaken him enough that he was unhinged.
-I also have to wonder whether the Doctor's attitude towards Peri stems from some subconscious resentment of her - it was her clumsiness which ended up endangering them both, after all. Not that that justifies the way he behaved in the slightest.
-The Doctor's attitude towards Peri was supposed to indicate a darker and edgier Doctor, like how the Ninth Doctor turned out. If the writers and costume designers had had more sense, even the Doctor's outfit would have been different - similar to what the Ninth Doctor would wear.
-Mind you, even the Ninth Doctor didn't turn out un-problematic - he calls humans stupid apes several times, which people have not liked.
-The Sixth Doctor's character does improve - I watched Mark of the Rani, from a later point in his era, and it's actually pretty good, in a cheesy way. It also, once again, features the Master. Three Time Lords in one serial - the Rani is another renegade Time Lord. For the perfect society, Time Lord society does have a lot of renegades, evidently.
-The other half of the Avatar jokes on the Internet involve comparing Avatar: The Last Airbender to the blue aliens Avatar.
-Regeneration count - exposure to a neurotoxin (Fifth to Sixth Doctor). 7 of 12 regenerations remaining.
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