5.3: Kinda

In which you can’t mend people.

Broadcast: February 1982

Watched: November 2020

Kinda, Part One

“You will agree to being me, sooner or later: this side of madness or the other.” 

Probably the most sinister performance in this show in years. Actually, this is maybe the best acted Who story to date? Certainly in years. But everyone in it is fantastic. Rouse’s “I have the power of life and death over all of you” is genuinely chilling.

The anti-colonialism theme rather screams at you in this one, doesn’t it? Even without the imagery, Richard Todd’s performance and moustache would be enough to communicate that we’re in the Space 1890s. Although in classic Who style, we get science posed as the opposition to military power, when actually the two often work together.

Tegan’s dream sequences are amazing, and must be one of the few bits of Who obviously influenced by a David Bowie video.

I like that the solution to too many companions/a late addition of a companion is “just write Nyssa out”. Love the Doctor playing Three Blind Mice on the windchimes, uncommented.

Erm – are the Kinda wearing fake tan? Hmm.

Considering how good it is, season 19 feels weirdly uninfluential… I wonder why. And with that I should stop watching Doctor Who and do some work.

Kinda, Part Two

“I don’t want to understand everything, I want to work it out for myself.” Feels obscurely like this might be the theme, but since this is one of those vaguely Beckett-like texts where you can project lots of different stuff onto it, maybe it isn’t. Also:

“It may surprise you to learn I’ve never been locked up before.” Watching Doctor Who, it’s easy to forget that this is not a common occurrence.

Rouse is so good as Hindle – it’s a more subtle portrayal of madness than you’d normally get in Who; his reason is strange and shifting, not completely absent – so it’s a bit sad to realise the highpoint of his career was a long stint on The Bill. Adrian Mills great at acting without words.

And sorry [name of friend bitching about the production values redacted], I really do think this looks quite good for studio work. You’re not going to mistake it for a real forest, but you’re probably also not going to think about it that much. Although:

“Rooting, thrusting, branching...” Filth.

I love that the idea the plants are hostile is played as self-evidently ridiculous, even though this is Doctor Who so the twist could genuinely be, “Hindle is right, the trees are eating people”.

The Total Survival Suit is basically a tank: more imperialist imagery. Adric’s pretending to be a traitor again... but after Four to Doomsday, the Doctor thinks he might mean it. 

On this viewing it’s clear that neither Tegan is fake, the Mara just splits her in two for a bit. I don’t understand why being the Mara gives you gum disease, though.

Haaaang on Tegan was only possessed for literally about five minutes of this.

The cliffhanger is “what if Pandora but more screaming”.

Kinda, Part Three

Tegan doesn’t get a single line in this one. Funny, since I’d remembered it as one of her big stories.

Love the seven fathers bit. Also, Panna repeatedly calling the Doctor an idiot and telling him to shut up.

It’s only when he goes mad and changes personality that you see how great Richard Todd is. Funny how he’s cast in a story where a character is called Todd, too.

The vision at the end, with the clocks and so forth... have they changed the effects? I don’t remember that at all. Time running out would be a better cliffhanger than “old woman dies of old age”.

Kinda, Part Four

“There is great danger in dreaming alone.”

Having watched the recap I am all in on “the alarm clock going off in the vision was meant to be the cliffhanger”.

After a couple of episodes in which he’s quite sympathetic, Adric tells Tegan it’s all her fault and goes back to being intensely punchable again.

Is the snake on Britbox the new CGI version? Only, it’s still awful. *googles*

No. No it isn’t. How odd. Also, there’s obviously a gap in the mirror wall bottom left, it’d be really easy to get out.

Anyway. It’s not entirely clear what the Mara is, what its aims are or how that plot relates to Hindley one. Or what the jester represents, come to that. Are the Kinda a species or a tribe? What’s with Panna’s reincarnation? Why does a scientist just breeze through the story without trying to explain anything? It’s brilliant but also kind of impenetrable. Like I said: Who as Beckett play.

Hundle is terrifying, mind. “I can blow up the world after, can’t I.” And the “you can’t mend people” bit is brilliant.