Doctor Who: Series 21, Episodes 13-16 – “Planet of Fire” (1984)

Series 21 is kind of hit-or-miss for me, but I think this is one of the better serials. It’s certainly packed—a companion’s backstory, a new companion introduction, the Master getting up to shenanigans, a rare Kamelion appearance, etc.—and while I don’t know that all of it necessarily works, I enjoy it.

Investigating an alien signal on Lanzarote, the Fifth Doctor and Turlough discover a piece of technology from Turlough’s home planet of Trion. As they trace the signal to the volcanic planet Sarn and both of them run into some unwelcome peers, they unwittingly bring along an American student named Peri.

Right from his introduction, Turlough’s situation was interesting to me: an alien already living on Earth at the time he meets the Doctor. From there, things quickly pivot to the Black Guardian arc and we don’t really follow up on where Turlough comes from, so it’s good to return to his story here. I appreciate filling in some of these gaps, as well as meeting other Trions and seeing how Turlough interacts with them.

I like a good ol’ classic Who companion stowaway/accidental absconding. And Peri is thrown even more into the deep end than someone like Zoe or Sarah Jane—she’s unconscious when Turlough brings her aboard after he rescues her from drowning, so when she wakes up in the TARDIS, she doesn’t know about the whole “bigger on the inside” thing. Not to mention, once they get to Sarn, she’s separated from both the Doctor and Turlough for much of the episode.

Instead, she’s dealing with Kamelion, the most unfortunate robot in the Whoniverse. Barely featured on the show because of how tricky he was to operate, Kamelion makes his second and final appearance on the show after a lengthy hiatus. Just like “The King’s Demons,” Kamelion’s incredibly prone to psychic tampering, and with the Master around, that spells trouble. So Peri’s introduction to TARDIS life involves being terrorized by a possessed robot who’s being controlled by a renegade Time Lord in quite the entertaining predicament. Not an ideal situation for her first adventure.

And look: I complain about overuse sometimes and there can be diminishing returns on occasion, but for the most part, I usually enjoy a good Doctor-Master standoff. This episode is no exception! Even if Three and the Delgado Master are my favorite classic Who combo, Five and the Ainley Master are pretty great together too, and this is a good story for them.

Doctor Who: Series 25, Episodes 8-10 – “Silver Nemesis” (1988)

I think of classic Who’s 10^th and 20^th anniversaries as big events because of their always-fun multi-Doctor specials. But even though we don’t get anything like that in series 25, the season actually does highlight the 25^th anniversary pretty well. The season kicks off with the Doctor and Ace back at Totters Lane in 1963, nudging up against the fourth wall by almost alluding to the show itself, and now part of “Silver Nemesis” is set on November 22, 1988—the eve of the 25^th anniversary. Of course, it also threatens worldwide destruction, but what’s a Doctor Who anniversary without a little murder and mayhem?

Every 25 years, the orbit of the comet Nemesis takes it past the Earth, always bringing devastation with it. This time, the comet falls to the planet’s surface, and a race begins to seize it and control its powerful living metal. The major players include a group of Nazis wanting to usher in the Fourth Reich, a 17^th century noblewoman who combines time travel with magic, and a fleet of Cybermen. It’s up to the Seventh Doctor and Ace to keep any of them from succeeding.

At times, this story leans too far into the “super mysterious Doctor and all his special secrets” thing, which is a well that the Seven era draws from too often. I’ve always preferred the Doctor as a madcap adventurer who barely scraped a passing grade from the Time Lord Academy, someone who’s important because of what they choose to do, not because of inflated significance bestowed on them by the narrative. I can find the latter too trite and wannabe-edgy.

That said, there’s still plenty to like about this serial. There are a lot of creative ideas at play here, and even though they pull the serial in a few different directions, it hangs together pretty well and doesn’t just feel like two or three separate stories got smashed together. The mix of antagonists is good, with Nazis fighting Cybermen fighting time travelers from the 1600s—only on Who, am I right? I also like the concept of validium, both how the living metal works when it’s constructed into a statue and the comet’s malevolent impact on the human race. Oh, and after seeing Ace take on Daleks with a baseball bat at the start of the season, we now get to see her take on Cybermen with a gold coin and a slingshot. Fun times all around!

Doctor Who: Series 19, Episodes 19-22 – “Earthshock” (1982)

*End-of-serial spoilers.*

This one is iconic, understandably so. I’ll be getting into all that, after I take a look at the story overall.

The Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa, and Tegan come to Earth in the future, where they come across an archeological team that’s suffered a devastating attack. Naturally, our heroes are blamed for this, as they always are when the TARDIS drops them off near a murder scene. But there are larger matters at play than the humans realize—out of the sight, the Doctor’s old nemeses the Cybermen are hatching a plot.

Because the Cybermen are so frontloaded in classic Who, I tend to think they’re more prominent throughout the series than they really are. After being introduced in One’s final serial, they’re all over the Two era. But then they skip the Three years entirely, and after that, each classic Doctor has just one Cyberman story. At the time that “Earthshock” aired, it had been like seven years since we’d seen the Cybermen as a major baddie, which is nice. With the big villains like this, I think it helps to take breaks from them. Much like the Daleks, there can be diminishing returns with the Cybermen, so spacing out their stories like that keeps them from feeling too repetitive.

I enjoy this story. We get a classic “must defuse the bomb!” crisis, an out-of-control spaceship barreling through time, and callbacks to Cyberman lore from earlier episodes. But while the sci-fi stuff is entertaining, this serial is more noteworthy for its character moments, so let’s get into it.

I’ve talked about many a companion exit in various episode/serial reviews, but Adric’s last story is justifiably renowned. In the new Who era, where RTD preferred heartbreaking “to the pain” endings for his companions and Moffat killed every single one of his (but also not-killed?), it can be hard to remember that tragic companion endings used to be rare.

In the classic series, the farewells are frequently sad, with the departing companion wistfully looking on at the dematerializing TARDIS even when it was their choice to leave. But a companion dying, getting killed over the course of an adventure? Before Adric, the only companion deaths we got were Katarina and Sara Kingdom way back in the One era, and both of them were only in a small handful of episodes. It’s wrenching for the Doctor, as well as Nyssa and Tegan. Just in general, they’re horrified at Adric’s death, and it’s made even worse by the fact that they’re not there when it happens—they can only watch helplessly on the TARDIS scanner screen.

I’m no Adric fan, as I’ve said on numerous occasions, but I do really like his final scenes. And no, not in a “good riddance, he’s gone” way! In a very genuine way. Adric has a good death, and while it has elements of a traditional heroic sacrifice, that’s not quite how it plays out. Trapped on the freighter as it falls through time on a collision course with Earth, Adric is determined to solve the logic puzzles the Cybermen placed on the controls, retaking control of the ship so he can save himself/the others on board and prevent the crash. Yes, he is trying to save himself and others, though he doesn’t recognize the significance of the ship slipping back 65 million years—the crash will be part of Earth’s prehistoric record, not its destruction.

But when Adric refuses the chance to get away on an escape pod, it’s about more than just stopping the collision and (he thinks) saving Earth. A significant motivation is tied back to his analytical mind and his relentless need to solve puzzles. As he’s being pulled into the escape pod, he’s hit with an epiphany, and he slips past the closing door almost casually. He’s not thinking about the danger or the possibility that he’ll be killed. “Of course! That’s it!” he exclaims. He’s only thinking about besting the logic puzzle that’s been thwarting him. Likewise, when he’s on the verge of solving it and a Cyberman shoots the controls at the last moment, condemning him to die in the crash, Adric’s final words are, “Now I’ll never know if I was right.”

It's just such an Adric way to die, and that’s what I really like about it. It’s so rooted in who he is and how his mind works, and even if I don’t like his character that much, it’s very effective from a storytelling standpoint. So well done!