"Will Hindle succeed?"

"Will Hindle succeed?"

For our first video taking a look at Season 19 I wanted to do something as odd as 'Kinda', so the obvious thing to do was to reach for a small folding hand mirror, some thread and a small Jelly Snake from Asda.

Yes, it sounds bonkers now I write it down, but they put 'Kinda' on before 'A Question Of Sport' & 'Terry And June' and somehow got away with it. Interestingly, the DVD of 'Kinda' reveals that not only did 'Terry And June' get at least two specially-made continuity slides, but 'Big Jim And The Figaro Club' was also running at the time, featuring one Sylveste McCoy...

I've said before that one of the things I like about Season 19 is the sheer variety of story styles being attempted, even if some of them are emergency jobs when other plans fall apart in the traditional manner.

'Kinda' is a prime example of this, with The Three Script Editors (Bidmead, Root and Saward) all being involved at some stage. One wonders how it might have gone if just one of them had worked on it from beginning to end... I get the feeling it might have been slightly less ambiguous, which I'm not sure would have been a Good Thing.

Christopher Bailey has described his encounter with 'Doctor Who' as being bruising. so the Easter Egg on the DVD for 'Snakedance' is well worth watching, as Rob Shearman makes it clear how much Bailey's work meant to him and many others besides.

I had fully accepted Peter Davison as the Doctor by the time 'Kinda' was on the air and the studio-based nature of the jungle set didn't worry me at the time. In fact, now I'd argue that this makes the story better, not worse.

This is obviously a play being made for television and director Peter Grimwade is taking advantage full of the available technology, making something that is not a million miles away from a pop video.
The audience is being treated as intelligent and it's fitting (even if it was simply an accident of timing) that this unusual tale should have ended up as the story studied in 'Doctor Who : The Unfolding Text'.

If asked to pick one of the Chris Bailey stories to take to a desert island, I'd personally go for 'Kinda', just for its sheer weirdness, following a path opened up by 'Warriors Gate'.

Hindle may not have succeeded, but Bailey and Grimwade certainly did.

If you are brave enough to want to see our video about 'Castrovalva', 'Four To Doomsday' and 'Kinda', it can be seen here.

(By Andrew Trowbridge)