Doctor Who (Classic), Season 19 — ‘Castrovalva’ ★★☆☆☆
By: Dan Owen
Tags: Television, Doctor Who, Culture, Review, TV

Doctor Who (Classic), Season 19 — ‘Castrovalva’ ★★☆☆☆

The Doctor’s regenerated but he’s mentally unravelling and needs a place to rest, but the Master has laid a trap for the TARDIS that denies The Doctor his undisturbed recovery time. Dan Owen Follow Mar 25, 2020 · 6 min read

Peter Davison was “my Doctor”, although I was only three when he made his Doctor Who debut back in 1982. Nevertheless, his boyishly exuberant incarnation of The Doctor lodged in my young mind. I have a vivid childhood memory of crying when he regenerated into Colin Baker in 1984, which was the first time I remember being emotionally affected by something fictional. Doctor Who was my gateway drug into science fiction, leading onto Star Trek and so forth.

“Castrovalva” was Davison’s first serial for the long-running (even then) BBC drama — a four-parter written by Christopher H. Bidmead, who only joined Doctor Who in 1981 to write Tom Baker’s swansong “Logopolis”. It makes sense he’d continue into Davison’s debut story, which picks up where “Logopolis” ended with a freshly-regenerated Doctor (Peter Davison) being helped back to his TARDIS by stalwart companions Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Tegan (Janet Fielding), and Adric (Matthew Waterhouse).

It’s odd watching this episode 15 years into the “nu-Who” era because things have changed dramatically in terms of what most regeneration stories intend to do: draw in new audiences with the prospect of a fresh start and a new leading actor you may prefer over previous ones. You’d think Bidmead would craft a story that wouldn’t be unintelligible for non-Whovians who didn’t catch Baker’s last episode (especially in ‘82, when videotaping wasn’t too common), but beyond a reference to Tegan being an “air hostess”, newcomers aren’t informed about who’s who and what on earth’s going on!

There is still a certain expectation that any debut of a new Doctor involves some post-regeneration turmoil, and that’s certainly true here. The Doctor unravels his long scarf (Tom Baker’s long era being “undone” symbolically), phases in and out of past behaviour, shows signs of memory loss, and is fleetingly determined to reach a ‘Zero Room’ filled with Time Lord technology that can steady what becomes a difficult regeneration. It also allows him to levitate (very unconvincingly) and communicate telepathically(!), but it’s a welcome moment when Davison’s scatterbrained personality coheres into the Fifth Doctor we know and love after stepping inside the Zero Room.

This being a four-parter that takes a few hours to tell its story, it often feels as scrambled as The Doctor’s noggin. The Master (Anthony Ainley) is still lurking on the sidelines as a holdover threat from Baker’s final adventure, having kidnapped Adric and holding him prisoner inside his own TARDIS in order to set dual traps for The Doctor. This is a somewhat confusing scenario because Adric’s able to project himself to Nyssa and Tegan, both safe inside their TARDIS, but they don’t want to alarm The Doctor about this because of his mental state.

It’s not long before The Master’s tricked the dopey companions into flying the TARDIS into ‘Event One’ (presumably The Big Bang), forcing them to jettison the Zero Room and other areas of the TARDIS to create enough momentum to avoid certain heat death… and land near the ancient town of Castrovalva instead. But The Doctor still needs to recuperate from his regeneration, so they build a small ‘Zero Cabinet’ to carry him around inside, balanced precariously on the arms of a wheelchair the TARDIS itself seemed to push into the scene. No, really!