A fairly grim serial (there were a lot of those in this era – the direction of the show in general at that time, or a particular desire to put Five through the ringer?), but it has some heart, too. Quite the rough one for Peri’s first intentional trip in the TARDIS, introducing her to the first of several creepy bad guys who will develop an unfortunate fascination with her (end-of-serial spoilers.)
Having said goodbye to Turlough, the Fifth Doctor and Peri’s maiden voyage as a duo takes them to Androzani Minor. It’s not long before they’re mistaken for gun runners, arrested, sentenced to death, and caught in the middle of a feud between the sellers of a valuable drug and the solitary man who hoards the vital ingredient they need. However, they were in danger even before all that – only minutes after arrival, both were exposed to highly poisonous spectrox, and in the midst of all the madness around them, they struggled to get their hands on the incredibly-rare antidote to the toxin.
The first time you watch any given regeneration story (provided you know that’s what it is,) you’re always a little on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Wondering how it’s going to happen. The new series has tended to make a Huge Thing of it, complete with prophecies, farewell tours, and unexpected new regeneration cycles, but classic Who, for the most part, does it differently. Often, if you’re not already aware that it’s a regeneration serial, you wouldn’t necessarily realize that it’s going down at all until late in the last episode. It usually feels like Just Another Adventure, where the Doctor’s going to win like he always does, but the blow inevitably comes at the end. (I’ve always known going in when a regeneration is coming, so this is my hypothetical observation, ie, “I know, but if I didn’t know, I bet I wouldn’t suspect…”)
This story, then, is fairly out-of-the-ordinary for a regeneration story. The Doctor’s cause of death is set within the first few minutes of episode 1, but while the toxaemia symptoms start coming on gradually, it isn’t until the middle of episode 2 that someone tells what’s what and he realizes he’s dying. It then, of course, takes even longer to accept that he’s not getting out of this one alive. For viewers in the know, this creates a strong dramatic irony, because the Doctor doesn’t know that this is it. For the first part of the serial he doesn’t know what’s happening to him, and even after he does, he still assumes he’s going to find a way to win. The real rub, of course, is that Peri is also dying of spectrox toxaemia, and when the Doctor is only able to obtain enough antidote for one person, we all know what he’s going to do. In a pretty dark serial with lots of killing, it warms my heart to see Five give his life for this young woman he’s basically just met; it feels like such a fitting end for him.
As for the rest… Sharaz Jek is an intriguing, creepy villain (aside from the Peri obsession – never a fan of that plotline,) and I like the added mystery of having humanoid robots running around. It’s technically Peri’s second rodeo, since she was carried off by the TARDIS in “Planet of Fire,” but this is her first trip where she actually knows she’s going to be travelling in time and space. Given the whole spectrox situation, it could be argued that she doesn’t make a very good showing of it, but it’s not like she or the Doctor know how dangerous the spectrox is when they arrive. The toxaemia also means she grows increasingly weak throughout the serial, another dampener on the usual companion, and yet, I still feel like she comes across okay. Like the Doctor, she believes they’ll be able to find the antidote and keeps on going the best she can, despite her worsening condition.
No comments:
Post a Comment