Thursday, May 2, 2013

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary: Castrovalva





Doctor Who: 
Castrovalva 
By Christopher H. Bidmead
  
“Ah. You've come to help me find the Zero Room. Welcome aboard. I'm the Doctor. Or will be if this regeneration works out.”


The Doctor’s regeneration is not going as well as they used too.  After escaping The Pharos Project security guards with the aid of electric bolts from The Masters TARDIS the three companions set the TARDIS in flight and proceed to help The Doctor recover.  It appears The Doctor is having trouble with his neural pathways and he needs to find the Zero Room as that room will block all the errant signals the TARDIS is transmitting and help him heal.
  
Unknown to The Doctor is that Adric has gone missing and is actually a prisoner of The Master.  The Master has him in his web and using Adric’s knowledge of mathematics and block transfer as a weapon against The Doctor.  It appears that an image of Adric has set the coordinates to take The TARDIS to event one The Big Bang.   The inrush of heat inside the TARDIS has gotten The Doctor to think straight and help Nyssa and Tegan escape the Big Bang by teaching them how to delete rooms or Zap as Tegan would say.  But the problem is what if they inadvertently zap the console room. 


What happens is just as bad as they zapped The Zero Room to help them get the thrust to escape the Big Bang.  So what they do now is find a place that has zero qualities.  The TARDIS information file tells them that Castrovalva is just the place for a Time Lord to go to help with regenerations that have gone wrong.   So it’s off to Castrovalva to get The Doctor back to being The Doctor.  But there is more traps there as The Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan find out that there is something wrong with Castrovalva and they still need to find Adric and rescue him from The Master.



Castrovalva was the first story I saw that did not feature Tom Baker as the Doctor even though he appears briefly in the pretitles sequence.  As most of us in the USA were first exposed to Tom Baker for many years most of us got the Fifth Doctor stories next.  This might not be true for everyone in the States but for my area Peter Davison was the next in line.  So for many Castrovalva was an opening into a new world of Doctor Who that we as fans have never been to before and it was exciting times sitting at home watching this story. 

  
Castrovalva was a pretty good story as it gave is something new to ponder.  What happens if the regeneration doesn’t go right and that there are complications?  With the Third and Fourth Doctors they are incapacitated for a little bit but were right into action pretty quickly during the first episode.  The Fifth takes practically the whole story to recover and it isn’t until the closing minutes that he proclaims himself ready to go and feeling great.  It is a concept that would be around until the Eighth and Tenth Doctor as the Eleventh did not have this problem.  Something that can happen to The Doctor and Castrovalva is the best story that focuses on this because after it just became boring and predictable situation for The Doctor to be in.


Castrovalva really gets the Fifth Doctor era going as The Master is there to be the protagonist as this is the final part of The Master Trilogy and also lets us know that he would be a staple of this era and Doctor Who in Eighties.  Peter Davison does a really good job in Castrovalva as it was good to see him impersonate the The Doctors that came before him.  This is the highlight of episode one and just seeing him doing it while walking down the corridors of the TARDIS was pretty cool in itself.  Anthony Ainely was pretty good playing The Portreeve as this was the best disguise and he would be in the classic series even though you could tell it was The Master. Castrovalva also started the trend of the pretitle sequence that would be used three more times in the classic series and what is the norm in the new series.


Castrovalva is the first story for my favorite Doctor and it holds a special place for me. It is also the first story we got that was new and we hadn’t seen before.  It also starts off my favorite era in Doctor Who and one that was the high point of the John Nathan – Turner era and the last time that Doctor Who would be safe from cancellation as after this era all the bad things start to happen. 
Grade A

No comments:

Post a Comment