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Doctor Who: Kinda [1982] After an ambitious, shaky segue from Logopolis to Castrovalva and the frankly shabby Four to Doomsday, Peter Davison's Doctor hit his stride in this third full serial - which benefits from a Christopher Bailey script of unsual sophistication and complexity that also hits new, different notes for this Doctor. Sadly, too few of the following serials would match its ambition or success. The TARDIS lands on the studio jungle planet of Deva Loka, where an exploratory team from Earth is assessing the suitability of the place for colonisation - and the Doctor and companions [Nyssa is sidelined by a contract-enforced plot device] get mixed up in the ongoing situation, which - of course - is more complex than it seems. It takes elements from various Earth cultures, with colonial officers in pith helmets and quaky stiff-upper-lips [one is even played by Richard Todd] shouldering the white man's burden and attacked psychologically by the alien environment, which reduces them to dangerous or benign or pathetic childishness, plus natives [the Kinda] who have a South Sea island feel, sophisticated enough to build complex wind-chimes but completely untechnological and [it is deftly hinted] with shockingly open sexual practices [a girl has seven fathers and pities anyone who only has one]. There is a literal snake in Eden, a 'mara' who first appears as a red-lipped sneering jester in Tegan's dream, then manifests in reality by possessing her and skipping to native Arris [a bare-chested Adrian Mills], fomenting the others into attacking the Earthling dome, which the suddenly-paranoid junior officer [Simon Rouse] has booby-trapped with extensive explosives. The Doctor consults a wise woman [Mary Morris] who labels him an idiot ['I have been called that, many times'] and prompts him to take a humble, quizzical, involved, sensible but humorous approach that puts clear blue water between this Doctor and any of the others. Bailey even finds ways of making the least-congenial of support characters work: Janet Fielding's Tegan gets to talk through her insecurities in chats with the mara and her doppelganger, then is possessed by evil [which would return in a less strong sequel Snakedance]; Matthew Waterhouse's Adric is finally given a chance to be an irritating character rather than performance, petulantly childish with half-clever ideas that sometimes work but often foul up catastrophically - panicking inside a rank/robot-like exploration suit and calling out for help, then lying about it afterwards to cover up [okay, he's not likable, but he is believable and - again - he learns during the story]. Even the papier maché giant snake at the climax sort of works, since it's supposed to be a representation of the mara rather than the being itself. The guest cast give broad performances, but are written that way: the
point is that the situation forces these people to act like caricatures,
and we feel sympathy for them even as they are doing bad things. The
homoerotic strain of the John Nathan-Turner Who is
most obvious in the hunk-look Mills, but there's a rare moment of grown-up
near-sexual tension between Mills and Fielding as the mara is passed
between them; it gets so far and turns into a scene about demon possession,
suggesting limits the show never transgressed even when moved to a weekday
mid-evening slot. It has a great many clever little things: the twig
and vine parody of the exploring machine Arris wears to attack the original,
the use of jack-in-the-box and playroom imagery [a joke cliffhanger
has scientist Nerys Hughes scream in terror as a box is opened only
for the next episode to show it was a toy] and the character of the
Kinda jester who tumbles around as a sanctioned loon. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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