Day 284 — October 11th 2021
Castrovalva Parts Three and Four
Castrovalva — Part Three
This story is well served by finally getting out of the TARDIS and exploring somewhere, rather than having the four regulars wandering around the same bland corridor sets over and over. I wish my Blu-ray player were working because the film sequences look lovely on BritBox and I bet they’d look even nicer in proper HD.
Peter Davison has been in fine form since the story began, but he’s really flying now he’s got something proper to interact with. I love the reveal that he’s listening to the retreating hunting party and keeping a track of them, and I’d love to have seen this become more of an aspect in his incarnation. I could be wrong, but I don’t think we ever see him do this sort of thing again.
There’s some other lovely character moments in here, too. I think a child teaching the new Doctor Who how to count is beautiful, and feels perfectly suited coming after a story which relied so heavily on mathematics. I think I’m right in saying that the little girl is related to Caroline John, which feels somewhat fitting considering all the references to the past we’re having in this story. Part One gave us Davison’s impressions of various earlier incarnations, we’ve had namechecks for Jo, Vicki, Jamie and the Brigadier, and there’s an implication in this episode that Doctor Who has been reading to The Portreeve from Doctor Who and the Space War, which he sums up as ‘Ogrons and the Daleks and that’.
I’m loving the ideas we’re building towards in this one, but I’m not entirely sure they’ve got the capability to pull it off in 1982. The idea of a city inspired by the artwork of Escher is great, and I think it’s the kind of thing they could pull off pretty well these days. As it is here, the cliffhanger ends up looking more confusing than scary.
It’s ages since we’ve talked about photography, so let’s take a quick detour here to mention something a bit unusual that was done with a few Doctor Who stories, Castrovalva included. This story was released as a series of Viewmaster slides, and a special photographer attended production to get the required images. In order to make the image appear as 3D, each image was taken with a special camera which took two images just a couple of images apart. When viewed through the Viewmaster this creates an optical illusion of a 3D image. There’s some great shots in there, including the gorgeous one above where Peter Davison looks suitably baffled by what’s going on…!
6/10
Castrovalva — Part Four
I’m going to sound like a hypocrite here, after all my whining during Logopolis, but I think what this story is missing is more maths. Okay, maybe I need to give a bit more context to that. The revelation in this episode — that the city of Castrovalva is all a fictitious construct by the Master utilising Adric’s skill with maths is quite brilliant. It builds on the idea that the people of Logopolis could create anything from numbers, but all of that feels like ages ago. It feels like ages for me now, let alone for the audience at the time — the gap between Logopolis and Castrovalva was the longest gap in the broadcast of new episodes that Doctor Who had ever experienced up to this point, so trying to keep up with what’s happening must have caused a fair bit of head scratching.
I think we also need to know a little more about just how all of this is putting Adric in danger. I get that he’s supposed to be in pain but I never really get a sense of what all of this means for him. We need a line in here somewhere — from Doctor Who, or the Master or even Adric himself — to the effect that Adric’s brain will explode from the force of maintaining this reality, or something.
I’m also a bit confused by which versions of Adric we’ve got at any given time in this one, too. The real Adric is kidnapped right at the start of Part One, and presumably remains in the Master’s trap for the rest of the story. It’s implied that the Adric who ran back into the TARDIS is a mathematical projection, like the people of Castrovalava. But there’s times when that Adric is played as though he’s the real person, and the matter is confused by having Adric — whether he’s real or not — seemingly give genuine warnings to his friends alongside false ones instructed by his captor.
And if the Adric we see aboard the TARDIS is a mental projection, why not keep him around for the whole time, rather than arousing Doctor Who’s suspicions when he realises he’s missing a companion?
Still, I’m quibbling. I think having decided that I’m not a fan of Christopher Bidmead’s writing, I’ve found myself looking for problems more than I might otherwise. Or perhaps the issues are simply there for me to find? It’s a tricky one to judge.
I maintain my comments from Part Three that the idea of this whole world collapsing in on itself is brilliant, but they really aren’t able to do it justice. There’s a shot in this one where they’ve tried to indicate the world all folding in on itself by creating a kind of kallidescope effect which looks quite cool but doesn’t sell the concept they’re trying to get across. They’re on firmer ground with the brief return to location for the final scenes — this TARDIS crew look so right in a ‘real’ place like this which makes me excited for later stories like The Visitation.
6/10
