21a – Twenty-First Season – Peter Davison

Warriors of the Deep

Earth in 2084 is divided between two power blocs who are in a cold war state for now. One of the blocs has established a sea base that has nuclear missiles, but two of their people are secretly agents for the other side. When the TARDIS materializes above the Earth, a satellite attempts to destroy them, which raises an interesting question: Is the TARDIS really vulnerable to Earth weapons? In other stories it has seemed too powerful to succumb, but the Doctor acts like he is afraid of this satellite. In any case, he dematerializes from orbit and instead lands inside the sea base. Meanwhile the Silurians, who are allied with the Sea Devils, organize joint attack on the sea base. their plan is to launch the nuclear missiles, starting World War III, and helping the humans to wipe themselves out. Then after a suitable period the two reptilian species can take ownership of Earth. And even while the Silurians and Sea Devils are taking over the base, the two enemy agents are trying to sabotage the base and take it out of action. The Doctor seems to be the only one who realizes that main enemy is not the other bloc but instead the invading Silurians and Sea Devils. It is interesting that the Silurians are the dominant partner in this arrangement. And by an odd coincidence the base has multiple canisters of a gas that is fatal to reptiles, but harmless to humans. In the end, all but one of the base inhabitants, all of the Silurians, and all of the Sea Devils are dead. Only Turlough, Tegan, and the Doctor remain. Turlough says ¨They’re all dead,” to which the Doctor replies “There should have been another way.”

Reviews

The Awakening

This is the two-part story for series 21. Tegan wants to visit her grandfather, so the Doctor sets the TARDIS controls for 1984 and the village of Little Hodcombe. But they land and see 17th century soldiers. Did the TARDIS go astray? Is the Doctor again losing control? No, these are re-enactors of the English Civil War and the are re-enacting a battle that took place in Little Hodcombe. Of course both the battle and the village are completely fictional, so don´t go looking for it in a Civil War history book. This could just be some harmless fun, but this is Doctor Who so it is duly noted that they are taking this whole thing very seriously to the point of being delusional. Then the Doctor meets a boy who is from 1643. They are in a church which soon becomes the focus of activity. It turns out that the a psychic alien called the Malus has taken control of the village magistrate, Sir George Hutchinson, who is the chief organizer and increasingly fanatic. The Malus is going to turn the re-enactment into the real thing to harvest all of the psychic energy. And Sir George decides that Tegan will be the Queen of the May for this, but what Tegan does not realize is that they plan to burn her alive. Of course, the Doctor and various others manage to stop everything, and the alien is destroyed as the Church collapses and then explodes. The Doctor wants to take off, but they found Tegan’s grandfather, and she would like to stay for bit and visit.

This is the last time they would do a two-parter where the episodes only added up to just under 50 minutes. Any future two-part stories would have two episodes of 45 minutes apiece. The reason for the two-parters was to fill a season of 26 episodes, and with all 4 part stories you can´t do it. You can do 6 4-part stories, but then you have 2 episodes left to account for, hence the two-part story. Expect some changes to the formula for Season 22.

Reviews

Frontios

The TARDIS is nearing a planet in the far future, and the records indicate it contains the remnants of the Human Race. These remnants seem to consist of large numbers of men and only a couple of women, which would seem to make survival of the human race somewhat problematic. In any case, they see a stream of meteors heading for the planet, and then the TARDIS is seized by a strong gravitational field and lands on the planet, which is called Frontios. There they find a wrecked spacecraft, and people who have been injured by the meteor shower. This induces the Doctor to live up to his name and tend to the injured, but the colony leaders are very suspicious and think the Doctor may represent the enemy they believe is attacking them. They even threaten to kill the Doctor. And for some reason people who have been injured seem to be sucked into the ground. Turlough figures out the colonists are hiding something, and looks like something underground, so and one of the colonists go down and find tunnels, and then giant insect-like creatures that Turlough recognizes called Tractators, They had apparently infested Turlough’s home world in the past, and the memory induces a temporary nervous breakdown in Turlough. The writer of the story, Christopher H. Bidmead, says they were based on wood lice.

These creatures have great power over gravity, and are responsible for many of the events witnessed here. They created the gravitational field that pulled down the TARDIS, they pulled the meteors out of the asteroid belt, and they even forced the colony ship to crash land in the first place. And they are somehow pulling people down from the surface of the ground. But they are not intelligent. They are being controlled by the Gravis, and that is who the Doctor must defeat.

Reviews

Resurrection of the Daleks

At the end of Frontios we saw the TARDIS being pulled somewhere outside of the Doctor’s control. And we pick it up here where it appears it is being pulled through a Time Corridor. Meanwhile a prison ship in space is being attacked by a battle cruiser. They are told that if they can’t hold off the attacker they must kill the prisoner. And in London, in and around a warehouse one group of men is attacking and killing another group. Of course, there must all be related somehow, and the first clue is that the attackers of the prison ship are revealed to be Daleks. This is the first we have seen of them since the war with the Movellans, and we learn that the Movellans won that war by developing a virus that kills Daleks. But why are they attacking a prison ship? Because the prisoner, which the prison guards are supposed to destroy, is none other than Davros, here portrayed for the first time by Terry Molloy, who would be the classic Davros for the rest of the 1980s. The Daleks want Davros so that he can develop a cure for the virus, but when he discovers that the Daleks owe allegiance to the Supreme Dalek, he decides to take them over. This is an interesting battle that would continue in future Doctor Who stories, at least as far as the Tenth Doctor stories The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End.

Tegan leaves at the end because too many people died and it wasn’t fun any more, though I’m not sure it ever was fun for her. But in any event, she is gone. But Turlough won’t last much longer either, and Peter Davison had already announced that this would be his last season, based on a discussion with Patrick Troughton during the filming of The Five Doctors. Troughton only did three seasons, and thought that was the optimal length for a Doctor.

Note that this story was originally planned as the usual 4 episodes of 24 minutes apiece, but before it was broadcast they made it into two 48 minute episodes shown on succeeding nights. Both versions can be found on different editions of DVDs.

Reviews

Planet of Fire

The penultimate story of the Fifth Doctor was filmed in Lanzarote, one of the Spanish Canary Islands, for all exterior shots. The story starts off with Kamelion behaving strangely. Turlough stops him, but we will discover that the Master is behind it all. The Master once had mental control of Kamelion (see The King’s Demons) and is able to re-establish that control even though Kamelion is inside the Doctor’s TARDIS. They land near a site of underwater archaeology, where they have brought up something unexpected, a metallic object with strange markings. And the sponsor of the archaeologists has a step-daughter of apparent college age named Peri. She wants to do some traveling, but step-dad is getting in the way. She tries to swim to shore and is not doing well, but Turlough spots her and jumps in to save her, and bring her into the TARDIS. Turlough spots the strange metallic object and clearly knows something about it. And when the Doctor gets back he knows it is this object that the TARDIS has been tracking. But the TARDIS takes off to to coordinates that Kamelion has set, to the planet Sarn.

There we discover that the Master has been experimenting and has managed to shrink himself. For the rest of the story there is the usual back-and-forth between the Doctor and the Master. In the course of this, Kamelion is destroyed. But in the end we learn that Sarn was a prison planet set up by the inhabitants of Trion, Turlough’s home planet. And Turlough was at one time a prisoner and bears a telltale mark as a result. In order to save people from an erupting volcano he calls Trion to get a rescue ship, fully expecting to be made a prisoner again, but he learns that the politics of Trion have changed and they no longer have imprisoned political prisoners, so elects to go home and leave the Doctor, telling Peri to take care of the Doctor. The Doctor then says he wil take Peri home, but she begs to stay and travel with him. So now all of the old companions are gone, a new one has arrived, and the robot that never worked right has been eliminated. Sounds like we are getting ready for a new Doctor.

BTW, there has been speculation that the Doctor and the Master are brothers, and in the Master’s final scene as he is apparently dying he says “Won´t you show mercy to your own…?” and then cries out in pain without finishing the sentence. Was he going to say “brother”?

Reviews

The Caves of Androzani

The TARDIS lands on the planet Androzani Minor, for reasons that were explained in a scene that was later cut, but which involved the Doctor having a hobby of glass blowing with glass from different planets, and missing an Androzani piece. But once there the Doctor and Peri find some caves, enter, and are soon captured by soldiers. The soldiers think they are involved with gun runners, and hold them prisoner. And when the commander (Chellak) reports in to the CEO of a major business enterprise (Morgus), he is told to kill both of them. But they are spirited away by the agents of Sharaz Jek, a masked man who is builds advanced androids, and they are replaced by android look-alikes before the execution. Sharaz Jek has a serious Phantom of the Opera vibe here. He is obsessed with the beauty of Peri, but he is always masked because his face sustained major burns in the hot mud eruptions that Androzani Minor is apparently subject to, and he is therefor extremely ugly to look at.

Androzani Minor is the source of the drug Spectrox, which is produced by a fungus in the cave system. But both the Doctor and Peri have touched the raw fungus, which is poisonous to humans (and apparently Time Lords), and the only antidote is the milk of the queen bat. While Chellak launches an attack on Sharaz Jek, Morgus is manipulating both sides as a slimy capitalist should, and bodies mount up everywhere. With all of the main characters dead or dying, the Doctor manages to find the queen bat, and collects a vial of her milk. But in carrying Peri back to the TARDIS, the vial falls and and half of the milk is spilled, so inside the TARDIS he gives Peri the one dose and gets ready to die. But of course he is a Time Lord so he regenerates into Colin Baker, who is the first example of an actor who previously played a character in Doctor Who and then returned later as the Doctor. He had played Maxil in Arc of Infinity. The second actor to do this was Peter Capaldi, who played Caecilius in The Fires of Pompeii before later taking on the role of the twelfth Doctor.

Reviews

Peter Davison Reviewed

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