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
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