Survival: The Inability to Survive

Hello!

Can I just say, there is something so ironic about the final serial of the Classic era being called "Survival". That being said, it's a very good serial. It features two very important characters - the first is the Master, naturally. The second is Ace - I mentioned her in a previous blog. She's one of my favourites of the Doctor's companions. Ace travelled with the Seventh Doctor for almost all of his televised run, meeting him in his fourth serial. The Master, meanwhile, still wearing Nyssa's father's body, got stuck on the Cheetah Planet, a sentient planet populated by Cheetah-people. The original natives of the planet tried to conquer the planet, genetically engineering creatures called Kitlings to be their eyes and ears; however, they were affected by the sentience of the planet, reverting to pure instinct and turning into bipedal cheetahs - the Cheetah-people. The Kitlings and the Cheetah-people could teleport between worlds; they hunted by teleporting to other worlds, capturing prey and returning home. The planet and the Cheetah-people are linked - it's this connection which enables them to return home with their prey. It also means that every time the Cheetah-people fight, the planet starts to decay.

The end of an era...

Survival
The serial starts with the Doctor and Ace turning up in the place where Ace grew up, Perivale. She's initially not enthusiastic about being home, but chooses to take the opportunity to reconnect with old school-friends; only problem is, all her friends have mysteriously disappeared...She soon finds out what happened - she gets taken to the Cheetah Planet by the Kitlings, discovering several of her friends hiding in some woods. The Doctor, upon learning of her disappearance, hitches a ride with another Kitling; once reaching the Cheetah Planet, he meets the Master again. The Master is behind the kidnappings - in order to get off the Cheetah Planet, he needs to teleport with a Cheetah-person who recognises another planet as home. For this, he needs residents of said planet who have regressed, so he's been using the Kitlings to kidnap humans. In time, one of Ace's friends, Midge, regresses the fastest; the Master swiftly uses him to teleport to Earth. Ace, meanwhile, runs off with a Cheetah-person, called Karra; Ace and Karra run and hunt, before Karra scares Ace back to the Doctor by admitting that, if it came to it, she'd hunt her. By this point, Ace has also regressed; she teleports back to Earth, along with the Doctor and her human friends. Using her newly-developed Cheetah-powers, Ace tracks the Master and Midge to the top of a nearby hill, where Midge has rounded up a group of 'friends'. Midge and the Doctor face each other in single combat, which ends with Midge dying and the Doctor getting thrown into the air by an explosion. Karra then teleports to Earth, scaring off Midge's friends, but she gets stabbed by the Master, who runs off and tries to break into the TARDIS. The Doctor catches up with him and they both travel back to the Cheetah Planet for one last confrontation. The Doctor barely resists the temptation to bludgeon the Master's head in, and teleports back to Earth just before the planet disintegrates. The Doctor and Ace have a conversation about the Cheetah Planet before walking away; the Doctor delivers one last speech about the wonders of the universe. And that is the last scene of the Classic Era of Doctor Who, not counting the movie.

The Master

Overall, I really like Survival. It's a fitting end to the Classic run of the show - it combines comedy, drama and enticing characters for one last hurrah before the end. Additionally, for me, it highlights one of the best parts of Doctor Who - the message it imparts to viewers. This can be seen in the parallel with the first serial. As in An Unearthly Child, the Doctor comes close to bludgeoning someone to death; however, he is able to hold himself back in this situation. Indeed, there's a parallel in the fact that outside influences prevented the First Doctor from committing murder, while the Seventh Doctor refrains through his own willpower. Additionally, the First Doctor nearly kills an innocent man out of convenience; the Seventh Doctor refrains from killing a very guilty man, because murder for the sake of convenience is wrong, no matter who you inflict it on. This ties in well with the underlying theme throughout the episode of survival of the fittest, and the fact that this maxim is the rule of the beasts. The Cheetah Planet causes people to regress to their base instincts - over time, people there either adapt, and become Cheetah-people, or they become food for the others. This even applies to Time Lords - the Master is regressing as well, indicated by his new yellow eyes, and he's looking for a cure. It's implied, similarly, that those who hold themselves to ideologies and certain ways of thinking are better able to keep hold of themselves; both the Doctor and Ace, believing that violence is not, and should not be, the automatic answer to problems, are able to resist the regression, despite it initially taking hold fairly easily. Midge, on the other hand, falls very easily; he is impressionable, so easily gives in to his impulses and the expectations of others. The Master is similar; while he does keep hold of himself to an extent, he shows a considerable degree of mutation - fangs as well as yellow eyes. Moreover, he finds it more difficult to resist his instincts than the Doctor does. It can be inferred that this is because the Master's method of retaining his non-Cheetah nature involves reciting how he's stronger than everybody else, because he's a Time Lord - proven demonstrably false by the Doctor also regressing. It's less benevolent than the Doctor's mantra of "no unnecessary violence", being far more arrogant and selfish, making for a weaker defence against the Cheetah-virus. Also, the instinct of "kill any threat" really isn't that different to the Master's usual M.O. in any case.

The Doctor's final speech also reflects his ethos of protection and compassion, contrasting with the Master's more self-serving beliefs. He describes the weird, wonderful universe he's spent centuries exploring and protecting - people made of smoke, cities of song, dreaming rivers. I particularly love the implications of that last one - sentient rivers! It hammers home how beautiful nature is; even though such things don't actually exist, there are so many amazing, miraculous things in existence in real life. Like bears, for instance, with such high quantities of Vitamin A in their livers that it's actually dangerous to eat them (polar bears), or creatures which are immune to terminal velocity (ants). Seas with such high salt content that you can float on them, or forests so deep and dense that practically no light reaches the bottom, places like the Sahara Desert where life can't easily exist...but it exists anyway. There's so much out there to see and experience; we live in a truly amazing world. I think that's something important to remember when everything seems bleak - this world may be flawed, but there's still so much that is breathtakingly amazing.

Another thing about that speech is where the Doctor underlines his duty to the universe - "somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, somewhere else, the tea's getting cold. Come on Ace, we've got work to do!" The Doctor doesn't just explore the universe, he protects it. That's his job - protecting those wonders from those who are only interested in destroying, such as the Master. At the same time, he includes Ace in that statement - protecting the universe is a duty shared by the Doctor's friends and companions, perhaps because, as fellow witnesses to the wondrousness of the universe, they understand better than anybody else the importance of protecting it. During that same section of the speech, he emphasises his own eccentricities - he also notes the fact that, somewhere out there, the tea's getting cold, suddenly changing the topic from the universe to the fact that tea's getting cold. This emphasises not just the Doctor's eccentricities, but the show's eccentricities as well; Survival aired during a time when "Survival of the fittest" was a common mantra. Doctor Who, however, disagreed - it emphasised the dangerous recklessness of living by such a creed, seen in the fact that the Cheetah-people's power struggles simply hastened the demise of their planet. However, at the same time, the show's failure to survive ironically emphasised the occasional accuracy of such a mantra. By the time Survival aired, Doctor Who was watched only by hard-core fans; over the last eight years, it had failed to adapt with other shows, and failed to maintain its status as the fittest. As a result, it was axed, departing from screens for sixteen years. It's a compelling demonstration that, just as the desire to run imparted to Ace is not malevolent, neither is the notion that, in nature, surviving often requires being the top dog.

Overall, I would give Survival 9/10.