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. 

Doctor Who Debuts: Castrovalva By @ThePlanetHarris

Castrovalva: 

Peter Davison’s Debut as The Doctor 

By Steven Harris

          Replacing Tom Baker as the Doctor was never going to be easy. Baker was (and remains) the longest-serving Doctor in the history of the show and by outlasting various script editors and series producers was  potentially bigger than the programme itself. In casting a 29 year old replacement head honcho John Nathan-Turner was taking a risk. Yet not that much of a risk. Peter Davison was already a household name, courtesy of his stint as the dashing if rash Tristran Farnon in the popular Sunday night series All Creature Great and Small.

          It was a clever idea, though, for former script editor Christopher Bidmead to show a regeneration in crisis and a Doctor uncertain of himself for much of the first story. Some argue that the Fifth Doctor’s composure was never quite recovered from this uncertainty. On the whole the naysayers were probably finding it difficult to adjust to a rather different Doctor; less arrogant, more of a team player.

          Castrovalva began on 4^th January 1982 with a break from previous traditions by showing a pre-credit sequence which was basically a rerun of the ‘death’ of the Fourth Doctor with, for some inexplicable reason, a line about the Watcher (Baker’s stalker throughout Logopolis who turns out to be his next incarnation) being shifted from Nyssa to Tegan (or is it vice versa?). Baker transmutes into a smiley but blond man and the credits roll at last.