OK for anyone who has taken a nosy at this blog will by now well know this is a movie/tv/games review blog which features a varirty of wonderful, witty, thoughtful, incisive and intelligent reviews from myself, or if you like (and more accurately) screeds of waffling pish. Whatever you want to look at it, as long as you enjoy reading it, that's the main thing (even if you don't that's fine!).
But anyway I'm digressing, so back to the reviews, and this time I have chosen another Doctor Who story, Peter Davison's classic swansong, The Caves of Androzani. This story saw the welcome return of the great Robert Holmes to the show, as he wrote one of his last true great stories for the show, so let's have a look at it! (Acutally I think I've already written a post on this story on my other blog, oh well sod it, done it now, so enjoy!).
Right well starting with my usual structure, its time fer a look at the plot, and the story starts on the planet Androzani Minor, where the Doctor and his new young companion, Peri (Nicola Bryant, very nice!) arrive and look around the barren desert they find themselves. The Doctor and Peri follow a series of tracks into a cave, where Peri falls into a sticky ball, resembling a nest, and they soon find themselves surrounded by soldiers when they stumble upon a weapons hold. The Doctor and Peri are then taken to General Chellak (Martin Cochrane) who believes them to be gunrunners. Chellak consults with Morgus (John Normington) who is the leader of a business conglomerate on the planet Androzani Major, who orders him to have the Doctor and Peri executed. However at the time of the execution, the soldiers open fire and the Doctor and Peri, and they are revealed instead to be androids, and the real Doc and Peri have been swapped and taken to Sharez Jek (Christopher Gable) a brilliant but twisted scientist, who wears a mask to conceal his features. Jek controls a souce of a substance called Spectrox, which is of great value to humans, as it has the ability to extend human life. At this point we also discover that Morgus is actually funding both the military expedition to eliminate the androids in the caves, but is also funding the gunrunners to sell guns to Jek to profit from the war. Morgus however is also after the spectrox that Jek as well, but due to Jek's androids, his men are unable to get near it.
Meanwhile the Doctor and Peri who are in Jek's custody, start to show signs of infection from the sticky nest they fell into earlier, and a young soldier, being held captive, Salateen (Robert Glenister) tells them that it was a spectrox nest, and that they don't have long to live, as they will soon die from spectrox toxaemia. Salateen tells them there is a cure as they can acquire bats milk, however the bats have retrieved deep into the caves due to the mining that has been done, so it would next to impossible to get to. It is also soon revealed that Jek has created a perfect replica android of Salateen and has used him to replace the real man, and is acting as Chellak's second in command, and in doing so Jek is able to anticipate Chellak's every move. To complicate matters further, Jek becomes infatuated with Peri and he wants her to stay with him indefinitely at his base. The doctor manages to escape Jek's base however but is soon recaptured by Morgus's gunrunners, lead by Stotz (Maurice Roeves) who take him onboard their ship. Stotz consults with Morgus oevr what to do with the Doctor, but Morgus recognising the Doctor from earlier on, advises him to stay put on the ship in geostationary orbit, while he tries to work out what to do. Morgus himself grows suspicious of the president of Androzani major, fearing that he might be planning to assassinate him, he kills the president and makes his way to Androzani minor to put things right himself. The Doctor however in the meantime manages to free himself onboard the ship and pilots it back to Androzani minor (or rather crashes it!) where he flees, and races back to try and save Peri and himself from Jek, the androids, and from their fate at the hands of spectrox toxiemia.
As a finale for Peter Davison's era in Doctor Who, you could not have hoped for a finer story that The Caves of Androzani. Robert Holmes script is terrific, and its a great story with some well written characters and an interesting and a gripping plot. It also sees Peter Davison's doctor in a really witty humorous light, which in a way it was a great shame that they hadn't written his character like this before. I do remember Peter Davison as the Doctor fondly of course though as he was the one I grew up watching on TV, and he has always been a good doctor in my view, but prior to Androzani his doctor was always a bit haughty toighty and lacking the humour that is on display here in Androzani and its interesting to think just how good it could have been if Holmes had been let into the series before this. Regardless of all that this really is a great story and one of the best of the 1980s era of the show. Holmes was brought back at the insistance of John Nathan Turner's unpaid assistant on the show at the time, Ian Levine, which was a great choice, and it was a pity that Holmes died only a couple of years after this story was made.
Performance wise things are mostly very good here, especially from Christiopher Gable, who delivers an excellent performance as the twisted Sharez Jek, a brilliant scientist, who is both villainous and pitiful, as he lives alone in the caves, and was betrayed by Morgus over a deal they made years previously, which left him physically scarred and deformed. Maurice Roeves is also really good as the gunrunner Stotz, and he get's some of the best moments in the story, especially in the scene where one of his men threatens to become insubordinate and he pushes a cyanide capsule in his mouth and nearly makes him bite down on it, and he finally relents and let him go, and says "next time, it will be for real!". Martin Cochrane also does a fine job as General Chellak, the honorable soldier who looks to hunt out Jek and his androids, who is unaware that his 2nd in command is in fact one of Jek's androids. Robert Glenister also is quite good as Salatine, although he does overdo his wide eyed expression at times, especially when he is being the android version of himself, and apparently he and Peter Davison had to avoid looking at each other in case they laughed (as they previously worked together). The weak link in the chain however is John Normington who is so ridiculously naff and wooden in his performance, that he is at times almost laughable, especially in the moments where he talks to Stotz over a video screen and turns away and talks to himself, as he decides what he has to do next. Normington however does provide one of the funniest lines in the story when he finishes talking to Chellak on the video screen and turns away and says "the spineless cretins!".
As for the regular cast, Peter Davison gives easily his best performance as the Doctor in this story, as I already mentioned, this is how he should have played the Doctor throughout his tenure in the part. In Androzani, here we have Davison's Doctor as a witty, amusing, yet alert and determined Time Lord, who does all he can to try and save himself and Peri from their own fate. Davison also get's some of the best lines in the story, one of them where he explains to Peri at the start of the story why he wears a stick of celery on his lapel, and he says he is allergic to certains gases in the "Praxis" system and the celery turns purple, and that he then eats the celery, "if nothing else its good for my teeth!". Nicola Bryant is not too bad as Peri, and its has to be said she does have a rather fine chest, especially as we see in the scene near the end of the story when she props up the Doctor in the TARDIS just prior to his regeneration, and we get a nice view of her cleavage! However Nicola's American accent for Peri has always been a bit on the shaky side, with traces of her English accent breaking through here and there. One of her other scenes in the story that's good is where Peri is stranded in Jek's base, and he rants and raves about how Morgus has destroyed his life, and he yells at her "do you think I'm mad???!", and she trembles and weakly says "no", he asks her "Do I frighten you????", and she replies, terrified "No".
The story has one or two detractors of course, one of them I've already mentioned, which was John Normington's cheesy performance as Morgus, with the scenes where he turns away and talks to himself, effectively breaking the fourth wall. Especially in the moment where he tells General Chellak to get rid of the Doctor and Peri, believing them to be gunrunners, and he turns away from the screen and saying "and we will all feel alot better!". Another one is of course the magma beast, which is in the caves on Androzani minor, and it turns out to be just another rubber monster, of which we have already seen too many in the show, and this one is just as unconvincing as the last one (whatever that might have been!).
Director wise, Graeme Harper does an excellent job here with Androzani as he previously worked as one of the production staff on several Doctor Who stories before this, and he provides plenty of good pace, action and some suspense as well. And there's no doubt, that Peter Davison's regeneration scene is one of the best in series, where the Doctor's face is shrouded by images of his former companions, Tegan, Nyssa, Adric and Kamelion who all tell him he must live, which is followed by the Master shouting "no Doctor, you must die. DIE DOCTOR, DIE! HA HA HA!", and finally a burst of bright light, after which he regenerates into Colin Baker, and things went downhill right from there. Actually that's an unfair comment as I personally think Colin Baker was not bad as the Doctor, he was just handed some really crap stories, and its a pity he wasn't given a better shot at the series than he had, but that's another story. And finally another noteworthy aspect of the show is also Roger Limb's excellent electronic music score, which is really atmospheric, eerie and effective and is very well suited to the tone of the story, and its a great one to finish off an era with.
Sooooo that's it for my critique on The Caves of Androzani, which is easily one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time, and it was a great end to an era.
And with that I shall say adieu.
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