Season 21- The Caves of Androzani

Is `The Caves of Androzani` the best Doctor Who story ever? It’s a bold claim that’s not quite as unanimously supported as people imagine. Looking at old zines recently I found a letter from someone who preferred `The Twin Dilemma`! What we can say is that it is the best of this season by a significant distance and probably the best story for eight years at least. Had Robert Holmes not been contracted (producer John Nathan Turner was initially opposed to any old writers returning) or had Graeme Harper not been given a chance despite relatively little overall directorial experience, then the fifth Doctor’s finale might have turned out rather differently. The old hand and the new recruit combined to create something that still seems fresh and which, unlike most old Doctor Who, could still be shown to modern audiences and appeal to their sensibility.

Watching several stories in a season as I’ve lately been doing with Season 21 makes you realise even more why `Caves’ stands out. It’s not that its wildly different in plot from other stories, its just the way that plot is more rigorously penned and more imaginatively brought to life. Holmes had not written for the show for about five years and his previous offering `Power of Kroll` suggested his creative powder was dry. That story did however include similar elements to this one such as arms traders, evil corporations and a hostile alien environment. Yet those ideas were not worked though with sufficient vigour.

`Caves` recalls his heyday, those dark fables he penned in the mid Seventies drawing from classic literature and horror. A return to form for sure. He presents a story full of selfish characters, each ruthlessly pursuing their aims with guns and violence. Maybe the story doesn’t make quite enough of the driving force behind all this ambition- Spectrox, a fungus that when refined can double life expectancy. The references to its properties are so slight you might even miss them on first watch. It keeps Morgus rich and influential, the President in his pocket courtesy of his “personal supply”. It drives the economy of Androzani Major and some of the most casual villainy we see is Morgus’ responses when one of the mines is blown up, no doubt by his hand. Played with arch relish by John Normington, he is the true bad guy in this story, manipulating events from his very calm pastel office. The contrast between the efficient horror there and the wild gunfire in the caves is stark. A misunderstanding led to Normington’s fourth wall breaks but they elevate his character further and it’s a good thing the idea was kept in and re-used several times.

It is sometimes stated that `Caves` was Graeme Harper’s first directing job, though he had helmed episodes of Angels but even so it was quite bold to allocate him to such a key story. Yet he is obviously ready for the challenge employing  unconventional quirks throughout. He often chooses to show both characters in a conversation at once, one in the foreground.  Initially necessitated by the set’s low ceiling in Chellak’s office, he uses this production shortcoming to his advantage. And he employs it elsewhere too; especially in dialogue between the Doctor and Sharaz Jek. On the Collection extras he isn’t best pleased with that choice but I think it adds to the story’s tension.

All the way though the story are examples of unusual camera angles- Harper turns a chase across a featureless quarry into something far more exciting. When we first meet Jek it is via shots of him creeping around his lair like a cat, one shot dissolving into another. The director even utilises the non speaking extras to some extent; one scene when Krelper challenged Stotz has e gang member who says nothing pop up into frame to point his gun at the others. Harper does a good job too in burying any of the more theatrical cave sets in swathes of smoke and low lighting to make them seem more like the real thing. Roger Limb’s incidental music is amongst the most individual of this era, imbuing the production with a baroque score utilising choral washes and sinister rattling percussion. His directorial style can best be summed up by the experience it gives the viewer with most Doctor Who directors we are just watching a story, with Harper if often feels like we are there in the room (or the quarry) where it happens.

A terrific cast helps enormously of course because almost with each of their first lines you get a clear sense of who they are. Martin Cochrane’s Chellak is not the brightest button, able to be fooled for months by his android second in command. He has a plodding response to events yet seems to realise – and maybe even admire- how clever his opponent is. Curiously he is not given any comment on his key part in Jek’s physical predicament. Robert Glensiter successfully differentiates between the real and fake Saleteen even if the latter’s wide eyed glances give us more of a clue. If only Chellak had turned around from that panel once and caught him out!

John Normington’s asides and crisp summations of  events work so well adding a theatrical ruthlessness. Even in a couple of brief appearances David Garth’s President widens the picture and you get a sense he’s nearly as canny an operator as Morgus. Maurice Roeves’ Stotz brings a more street level aggression to events, his character driven by the inequalities in the system yet also out for what he can get. In the hierarchy of control, Roy Holder’s Krelper is at the bottom of the food chain yet the actor makes  his presence felt throughout.

One of the story’s delightful twists is that after three episodes of male aggression and control the ultimate beneficiary of all this testosterone is Timmin, the only female character in the story apart from Peri. Even her name seems designed to suggest she is a loyal servant but she’s just been biding here time. Barbara Kinghorn doesn’t get much screen time but Timmin’s triumphant ascendancy suggests she won’t be a lot different to her old boss.

Sharaz Jek is certainly one of the more fascinating Doctor Who characters. Inspired presumably by the Phantom of the Opera (and Holme’s previous villain Magnus Greel) with his laboratory replacing cloisters, Holmes’ script has him evolve from a  typical melodramatic villain into someone rather more personally damaged and ultimately something of a tragic figure. Having made his name in ballet, Christopher Gable uses his limber frame to convey Jek’s confinement, pacing the concrete floor like a caged lion. If the moments when his interest in Peri seem decidedly sexual then towards the end he shows real care for her wellbeing. There’s such a contrast between him mopping her brow and then the next minute his fury at seeing Morgus. The moment when Peri sees Jek's actual face and her scream sends him scuttling under a table like an animal is a fantastic scene and a neat inversion on the usual response to a companion's screaming.

Perhaps those face prosthetics are not quite as horrific as other people’s reactions make them seem- an even cleverer gambit might have been never to show them to the audience. Yet what matters in the narrative is Jek’s revulsion of his own appearance. I don’t imagine he was ever that pleasant company; his references to his days before the accident suggest he was always somewhat narcissistic and now he is delusional if he really thinks Peri would willingly stay with him. Jek tests the viewer with each turn. Can we feel at least a little sympathy for his plight?

For both Peter Davison and Nicola Bryant, at opposite ends of their Doctor Who journey, `Caves` offers a lot of opportunities. Davison has already given some of his best performances in the role this season seemingly more comfortable in the part. If Jon Pertwee had sometimes seemed cordially human, whereas Tom Baker could be coldly alien it was Davison who found the balance and arguably his portrayal has influenced most of the modern incumbents. While his Doctor was resourceful it was always with a struggle and the actor’s undoubted screen presence made the Doctor someone viewers could cheer for. I do wish he’d done a fourth season though this is a glorious farewell. From the start Nicola Bryant’s Peri seems a more natural character than the somewhat vaguely conceptualised trio of Tegan, Nyssa and Adric and Turlough’s strange shiftiness. Here she excels looking genuinely terrified and worn down by the character’s woes. Her reactions to Jek’s creepy advances are especially well played.

Having seen `Caves` a number of times over the years and despite being wowed on its first broadcast it has lost little of its power. Generally, watching old Doctor Who these days means accepting that some of those stone cold classics are actually just Ok but `Caves has retained its potency. This time I watched with the new special effects, not that `Caves` is a story that needs much polishing up. Notably the Magma Beast, the one weak spot, has been enlivened in a similar way to the Myrka in `Warriors`.  Now it’s whole body moves when it roars and it can turn its head. The mud bursts look better and there are the standard improvements to planetary vistas which look great. `Caves` relies on weapons with realistic gunfire rather than lasers so needs no improvement in that area.

The regeneration is weaved into the story from that early moment when Peri stumbles into the spectrox nest but its not foreshadowed as loudly as events in `Logopolis`. Indeed there are stretches when you forget about that aspect of the story compared to the funeral tone of the fourth Doctor’s exit story. It is notable that the Doctor is at the mercy of events more than usual and if his interventions create a lot of changes, they are incidental. All he is trying to do is get away and help his friend. As the incarnation who saw one of his previous companions die and who was unable to stop the bloodbath in earlier stories, this seems even more urgent. It definitely fits Davison’s more caring interpretation of the Doctor.

Some reviews have speculated whether Colin Baker’s version of the Time Lord was a deliberate choice to find someone more equipped to deal with the more violent, dark direction the show was going in. I would say it is preferable to have someone whose behaviour contrasts with that darkness rather than replicates it. However I’m not sure that the production team thought like that in those days but his opening scene certainly suggests a wholly different persona to the more genial fifth Doctor and that would usher in some narrative problems, As for `Caves of Androzani` it remains essential Doctor Who; robust, intelligent, powerful, exciting and as good in 2026 as it was in 1984. In fact, it probably is the best Doctor Who story ever!

Reactions from 1984!

I scoured some old fanzines to collect a handful of reactions to this story just after it was first shown...