Castrovalva

Castrovalva

"And now twice weekly, on Mondays and Tuesdays... a new look for 'Doctor Who'...!"

Between the Augusts of 1980 and 1982, have a look at the complete list of 'Doctor Who' episodes broadcast and if you include all the repeats, it's an astonishing 100 or so, depending on how you count the version of 'Genesis Of The Daleks' shown as part of 'Doctor Who And The Monsters'. And 'K9 And Company', of course!

Of course, slap-bang in the middle of all this activity is the departure of Tom Baker and the arrival of Peter Davison, whose first appearance in 'Castrovalva' notches up an impressive 10 million viewers. And what's more, they generally seem to stick around for the rest of the season.

Initially I was unsure about Peter Davison, thinking him too young for the part (ironic considering that I was less than half his age at the time!), but the long period between his announcement and the actual start of Season 19 meant that by the time 'Castrovalva' kicked off, I was utterly on board with the new chap.

Watching it again last night, I can see how the various nods to the past would only have fuelled my fan genes, but I do wonder whether some less dedicated viewers might have started to feel slightly confused.

The opening scenes feel like they're very much 'Logopolis' Part Four and if you hadn't caught the BBC 2 repeat, those events were by then quite a while ago.

I was however surprised at the critical tone of the memo from Graeme McDonald to David Reid, written the day after the transmission of Part One. Although he thankfully refers to the series as a whole as "valuable" he's not impressed by the script, the direction or some of the acting, calling the whole thing a "halting start" for the new Doctor.

Sadly, this is not the last time that this sort of thing will come down from on high, but in this case it does seem more than a trifle unfair.

OK, there's no monster and the threat for the Event One cliffhanger is rather more conceptual than a Dalek bursting though a wall, but I was all for a bit of clever stuff every now and then. We'll gloss over how Tegan manages to enter the letters 'DS' on a keyboard that only goes up to 'I', though...

Unusually, BBC Scotland got to show it a few hours before us down south and I do wonder if anyone who was terribly enthusiastic (as the expression goes) bunked off school or work to take a trip to visit some relatives over the border they'd not seen for years?

Stranger things have happened, and with the rise of fandom in the next few years, even stranger things were to come...

Our video about 'Castrovalva' can be seen here.

(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)