Product: Doctor Who [VHS] (1975)
Rating: 4.0
"Welcome aboard! I'm the Doctor...or will be, if this regeneration works out."
I had utterly no idea what to expect with "Castrovalva" the first time I saw it all those years ago. For years the Doctor had been a wonderfully weird guy with curly hair, an interminable scarf, and a bizarre sense of humor. I was aware that there'd been three incarnations before him, but I'd never seen them and it was really hard to picture the Doctor as anyone else. So as "Castrovalva" began and with it the adventures of the fifth Doctor as played by Peter Davison, I was really wondering what would come next. Was he going to play the role much like Tom Baker did, or was he going to have an entirely different persona altogether, or somewhere in-between? What was a different Doctor going to be like? Was I still going to like the show? Well, by the end of "Castrovalva" I still didn't have an answer.That's of course because the Doctor's out of it for most of this storyline, slowly recovering from the physiological shock of regenerating. As a plot device this is realistic, certainly, and a bit innovative--in prior transitions the Doctor bounced back rather more quickly from what's essentially a total death and rebirth. It's also exceedingly risky, though--having the main character, the hero no less, laying about helpless, groggy, and generally incapacitated for such a long time gets dull all too easily. And, unlike before, there aren't really any subplots to divert you during the Doctor's recovery. To Davison's credit he carries this off rather well considering, bringing some subtle drama to the Doctor's struggle to get on his own two feet and rediscover his own identity. That said, I wish someone would pay me to lay around and pretend I'm asleep so much.Clearly the writer, Christopher Bidmead, is attempting here to keep the ball rolling from "Logopolis" with its esoteric mathematics and sophisticated astrophysics. The idea of a pocket universe folding back in on itself in complex ways is indeed a clever one if a bit of an overkill as a trap (by the Master, which would be a spoiler if he wasn't standing in front of the Doctor himself on this DVD cover). It's delightfully surreal of course, but a bit overly ambitious given the visual effects available--the end result is somewhat abstract and confusing, and really you would have to had seen M.C. Escher's classic "Castrovalva" print beforehand to even make sense of what both the visual effects and dialogue are straining to get across. Basically, this is biting off more than you can chew storywise. As part and parcel of an ongoing attempt at the time to make "Doctor Who" more scientific it kind of rings false too, especially when earlier in the same storyline the characters embarrassingly refer to event one, the big bang, as the birth of the "galaxy" (rather than the universe. Oops). Still, intriguing idea in theory.This storyline doesn't get much help from stellar acting, though, I'm afraid, except for maybe Davison's brilliant evocations of prior Doctors as his identity is in flux (this was of course totally lost on me the first time). The actresses playing Nyssa and Tegan seem to be competing as to can give the flattest performance, while the actors playing the Master and Adric seem to be placing bets as to who can ham it up the most. The Castrovalvans are much better on this score, and Shardovan is a fascinating character played with just the right touch--his parting line to the Master, "You made us, man of evil. But we are free!" is brilliantly moving in its simplicity and philosophic suggestiveness. As for the Doctor himself, well, now that he's recovered, we'll just have to wait and see...P.S. in a strange case of review recursion, it should be mentioned that "Castrovalva" brings to completion plot threads from the two storylines before it, thus loosely forming a trilogy of sorts. It'll be kind of hard to figure out what's going on without that background, too, so for that reason and also for reasons of convenience and economics the box set containing all three DVDs is probably more to the fervent fan's advantage:Doctor Who - New Beginnings (The Keeper of Traken / Logopolis / Castrovalva).