5.1: Castrovalva

In which we are caught in a space time trap.

Broadcast: January 1982

Watched: November 2020

Castrovalva, Part One

“I’m the Doctor! Or will be, if this regeneration works out.”

Striking how this starts by recapping the regeneration for viewers that may have missed Tom going – odd to think that, if you’d missed a few episodes, you wouldn’t know who most of these people are. Presumably this is why Adric gets kidnapped – because he’s the one the audience have known longest, so a threat to him seems more serious, and because it offers a chance to get to know the new cast.

The security guards are bloody violent with Tegan. Her spur of the moment theft of an ambulance is the coolest thing she ever does. It’s sort of weird the extent to which she is consciously fucking up her life for some guy she’s just met.

Weird how the fake Adric seems to have Adric’s consciousness – like the Flesh Amy, I suppose. But then why does he steer the TARDIS to its doom on the Master’s orders? Come to that, when exactly did the Master come up with this trap and why?

I love the unravelling of Tom’s costume, and the Hartnell & Troughton impressions... It feels telling that for the first time a post-regeneration story is reaching into the show’s past. Presumably, like the Five Faces season, it’s to remind the audience that there are more doctors than Tom? [The Five Faces of Doctor Who was a season of BBC2 repeats screened in autumn 1981. Fans have sometimes interpreted this as a sign that, after seven years of Tom Baker in the lead role, the BBC worried the public needed reminding that this guy changed his face.]

It’s sort of nice how Logopolis ends with the threat of the end of the universe, then Castrovalva opens with the threat of the start of it.

Castrovalva, Part Two

“You mean... zap?” Funny how there are two stories running about the laws of thermodynamics.

Something quite Alice in Wonderland about the bit with “the solution” and so forth. Helpful how a wheelchair just appears.

It’s “funny” how often they play the “oooh, is Adric a traitor?” card, even if it only lasts about three minutes.

Are the smoke effects to show that the TARDIS is heating up new? The Master having a black TARDIS, like a teenaged goth, is a bit much.

Tegan has obviously managed to switch off the TARDIS’s “gravity always goes towards the floor” setting when she lands.

The zero cabinet looks like a coffin. The sequence of Tegan and Nyssa trying to push a wheelchair with a wardrobe on it through some woods like they’re on Taskmaster is dramatically necessary but strikingly boring to watch. 

Castrovalva, Part Three

The recap goes on forever. Also the part 2 cliffhanger feels weirdly weak compared to parts 1 and 3 – given that it’s the one with the long gap before the next episode, that feels a bit backwards. [This season, and the next two, saw two episodes a week broadcast on consecutive nights: this season was Mondays and Tuesdays, the next Tuesdays and Wednesdays and the last Thursdays and Fridays.]

Anyway. Lots of great design in Castrovalva itself. As with most [writer Christopher H.] Bidmead stories it feels like a real place the regulars have arrived in, not just a thing for them to react to… which is quite funny, given where the story goes.

Ainley is having loads of fun in disguise as the Portreeve, mocking the Doctor by laughing at his inability to remember Adric and so forth. I quite like the red herring that Shardovan is the bad guy (him in black, the Portreeve in white).

It’s quite a headf*ck when town starts imploding. I wonder if the cliffhanger (”Recursive occlusion. Someone’s manipulating Castrovalva. We’re caught in a space-time trap!”) was confusing to the casuals?

Castrovalva, Part Four

“Why are all these women here? Is this a holiday?” Can’t work out if the sexism is Bidmead’s or the Master’s. None of the women have any dialogue, unless you count the little girl in part three.

The business with the window is very unclear. The Master comes quite close to violence towards Nyssa, which is not something I’m sure you’d do now.

How does the Doctor find out the Portreeve is the Master? He isn’t there when he’s unmasked. Is that what he’s watching through the window?

The ending is a bit hmm. There’s a bit of a rubbish fight scene in a corridor and then the regulars walk off, entirely unconcerned that all those people are dead. Are we meant to feel for the Castrovalvans or not? They’re sentient… except suddenly it’s like switching off a holodeck programme.

Davison is great, obviously. But the big question is, why is Ainley so much better as everyone else he plays, except the Master?