I've had a bit of an uncomfortable realization while watching "Planet of Fire". Remember how annoyed we were when all the Rose fangirls and fanboys hated all over Martha the moment she was introduced in Series Three?
Harry -
Do I!
Sarah -
I have to confess that was me when the Perpugilliam Brown era began. My heart was firmly set against her from the beginning -- mostly just because she wasn't Tegan. Not that the horrible American accent helped.
Harry -
The moment something new and different appears onscreen, it's one of the grandest traditions for a swath of Doctor Who fandom to shout at the top of one's lungs: "I DON'T LIKE IT! CHANGE IT BACK!"
Sarah -
I'm usually the kind of fan who accepts changes as inevitable -- it's just part of watching Doctor Who and complaining is useless. That said, Peri really rubbed me the wrong way for most of her run.
Harry -
Peri had a tough act to follow, but props to Nicola Bryant for giving it her all.
Sarah -
Having not been a fan of Peri pretty much since "Planet of Fire" first aired on WTTW on 30 December 1984, I have to admit I wasn't super excited about revisiting her stories. I was prepared to have all my anti-Peri bias confirmed, but that didn't happen. She really wasn't all that bad. I even found myself sympathizing with her. The accent, of course, is still rubbish.
Harry -
The story of Nicola's casting, and her accent, and how it all came together in the character of Peri have been told and retold countless times. While rewatching "Planet of Fire" for the first time in years, what I found myself listening for were the audible tics in Peri's speech that give away Nicola's true nationality. Once in a while, we hear a drawn out English vowel sound where a sharper American one was required (like when she says "all"). It's a little amusement to enjoy on the side while taking in the story.
Sarah -
I remember getting into a strong disagreement with my friend Marc when Peri made her debut. He insisted Nicola Bryant was American so I spent the next episode making a list of all the things she said that were just wrong. To be fair, even Bryant was bothered by some of the dialogue they gave her and fought to make changes.
Harry -
I have to admit, this time around I found myself taken in by the story despite being totally prepared to hate it. Multiple branches coming together on the planet Sarn, multiple outcomes for the many characters, and multiple revelations along the way. Were all your memories of the story reconfirmed, or were you pleasantly surprised this time around, Sarah?
Sarah -
I was quite pleasantly surprised. I didn't remember too many details going in. Lanzarote, the egregious bikini shots, and Turlough dropping his drawers to save drowning Peri were about all I remembered about this story.
Harry -
So much skin in this one! In Lanzarote anyway. After a mysterious object is hauled aboard a vessel by hunky Professor Howard Foster, his stepdaughter Peri announces that she's leaving the island to travel to Morocco with a couple of British lads. They argue about it and Howard eventually strands Peri aboard the vessel, causing her to miss her flight.
Sarah -
Howard is such a dick! He lures Peri out to the boat by pretending he's going to give her money for Morocco and then traps her there. Things get even creepier later in the story when she's in the TARDIS having nightmares about Howard mistreating her. There is one seriously disturbing backstory there.
Harry -
There is one disturbing Boston accent there too.
Sarah -
Is that what it's meant to be? There were moments when I thought he might be Australian.
Harry -
The TARDIS databanks are inconclusive.
Meanwhile, the TARDIS has honed in on a signal and landed nearby. The Doctor ditches his long coat and sweater and has a look around while Turlough and Kamelion remain aboard.
Sarah -
I imagine a bit of rummaging through the TARDIS wardrobe in search of the jaunty little waistcoat he wears for the rest of the story.
Harry -
He finally got to change his look, however slightly.
Remember Kamelion? I sure as hell didn't. He's not only been missing since "The King's Demons," but he hasn't been mentioned in all this time. When the shape shifting android has a sudden screaming seizure in another room of the TARDIS, even the Doctor seems startled to remember him.
Sarah -
What was Kamelion doing in the weeks (months?) since the TARDIS visited medieval England? Lost in the TARDIS? Trapped in a cabinet somewhere? Meditating in the cloisters?
Harry -
This is one of my beefs with the JN-T era. We'd see characters introduced by one writer, then sidelined or ignored altogether by subsequent writers who didn't fancy writing them into their stories. Throughout the three-companion Davison era, we've often seen one or two of them sent away to wait inside the TARDIS because there wasn't anything for them to do. In Kamelion's case he was banished right out of the console room and out of our consciousness. What's the point of introducing characters if you won't do anything with them? This lack of consistency (or maybe it's a lack of discipline on the part of JN-T and Eric Saward) is another strike against the era.
Sarah -
That list is getting fairly long.
Harry -
Back on the vessel, Peri packs her remaining money, passport, and the mysterious object with the intention of swimming to shore and selling it. Halfway there, she tires and starts going under. Turlough spots her on the TARDIS scanner, strips down and dives in to rescue her. After carrying her back to the TARDIS, he notices the object she had with her -- it's clearly something he recognizes.
Sarah -
Oh, look! The symbol on the mysterious item is also imprinted on Turlough's arm. A mystery! Could it be Turlough is finally going to have something to do in a story beside trying to kill the Doctor or save his own skin? To be fair, he did go out of his way to save Peri, which I guess counts as character growth in the Saward era.
While asleep in the TARDIS, Peri begins to have her aforementioned creepy dream about Howard when Kamelion picks up on her thoughts and transforms himself into Howard. Things are rapidly become more uncomfortable.
Harry -
The Peri-Howard relationship is (thankfully) left unexplored. For now, Peri has Kamelion-Howard to deal with while the Doctor and Turlough go outside to explore the new location where the TARDIS has landed. Or rather, she has Kamelion-Master to deal with. He's baaaack!
Sarah -
Like a bad penny!
Harry -
Meanwhile, things are heating up on the planet Sarn!
Sarah -
Quite literally. The local volcano is about to blow!
Harry -
On this desert planet, the people are split between the adherents of the monotheistic deity Logar -- a kind of fire god -- and the non-believers, who find themselves pitched alive into a fire if they cross Timanov, the local elder tyrant.
Sarah -
Who seems to be singularly obsessed with burning the non-believers.
Harry -
Timanov is played by Peter Wyngarde, who gives it his Royal Shakespeare Company best, infusing the character with quiet menace and the occasional flash of temper towards Malkon. The youth, who bears an arm branding identical to that of Turlough, is hailed as the chosen one even though he is really just a puppet for Timanov.
Sarah -
Wyngarde's performance is masterful -- it's hard to watch anyone else when he's on screen.
Harry -
He's clearly the Guest Star of this one. As for Timanov, I suspect he might not have as much sway over the locals as he believes. Others take the piss out of him throughout the story and he barely bats an eye, like when the Master calls him a gullible idiot, or when he speaks of his encounter with Logar:
DOCTOR: Timanov, have you actually ever seen Logar?
TIMANOV: Yes, once, when I was a boy.
DOCTOR: Where?
TIMANOV: It was the summit of the fire mountain. The fire god spoke to me, encouraged me to inhale the gases. I felt intoxicated, invigorated. I felt reborn.
AMYAND: You were drunk.
Sarah -
I have to admit that exchange made me laugh out loud.
Harry -
This tiny settlement is the place where all of the story's threads come together, for various reasons, and with a few surprise revelations.
Sarah -
It seems young Malkon may be Turlough's brother, their father's ship having crashed on Sarn when Malkon was just a wee lad.
Can you think of any other companion whose entire backstory is revealed in their final appearance? In a series that excels in neglecting companions, Turlough has to be high on the list of the most neglected.
Harry -
Another classic quote from this era:
DOCTOR: Why have you never mentioned your home planet before?
TURLOUGH: No particular reason.
Good grief! Either no writer over the past two seasons was arsed enough to give Turlough a backstory, or JN-T and Saward weren't arsed enough to assign it to someone. We'll see another example of "You're leaving? Here's all the detail we've been meaning to fill in," in the next story.
Sarah -
I imagine Barry Letts sitting in front of the television, just shaking his head at the lack of care being given to the series at this point. There was none of that in the Third Doctor era!
Harry -
Wasn't Barry supposed to be a guiding hand at the start of the JN-T era? Maybe he had already stepped away from it by this point. I don't want to give too strong an impression that I didn't like this story. I did enjoy watching everything come together on Sarn.
Sarah -
I don't think our problems with the story are due to Peter Grimwade's script. It's a good, well-paced story. (She said, casting her eyes in a Sawardly direction...)
Harry -
Despite Timanov's tyranny, the locals experience a crisis of faith when Logar is exposed as a myth. The Master arrives, meaning to harness the restorative powers of the numismaton gas inside the volcano to recover from an accident he suffered during a tissue compression experiment. Turlough soon realizes that some of the locals are survivors of his father's crashed ship and they are Trionians like himself. The Doctor of course sees the big picture: this volcano is going to blow. Amid all that, we still have time for the Master-influenced Kamelion to stalk Peri across the sweeping landscapes of Sarn.
Sarah -
Poor Peri. Imagine, you're on an island holiday one moment and the next thing you know you're being chased across an alien planet by and intergalactic sociopath! I have to admit she did a good job of holding her ground through it all.
While watching the Master-Peri chase, I was thinking about how fluidly Ainley moves in his performance. He may be over the top in many aspects, but he moves almost as if he's dancing. His run across the landscape was wonderfully graceful. You know, for a homicidal lunatic. I had the same thought when he skipped across the chessboard in The Five Doctors.
Harry -
Ainley's nimble athleticism came from years of playing rugby and cricket.
Sarah -
Ah yes, that would do it. He moves like a cat.
Turlough contacts the home planet to send a rescue ship to Sarn, despite fearing that he'll be sent back into exile. But wait, there's been a chance in the regime and all sentences have been rescinded! Hooray!
Harry -
The revelations come fast and furious in part four. Some of the locals are from Trion, others are genuinely local. Ultimately, the religion of Logar is rejected in favour of a departure on the rescue ship. Beaten but unbowed, Timanov's final act on camera is to turn toward the flames, seemingly to commit a final act of zealotry upon himself.
Sarah -
It was crazy, but at least true to his character.
Harry -
After an amusing cat and mouse chase with Peri in his TARDIS, the Master is restored to full size by the numismaton gas, but is comsumed by the flames despite his pleadings to the Doctor. Having just watched the Master get burned alive, the Doctor then grants Kamelion's wish and destroys it with the Tissue Compression Eliminator. Apparently it works just as well on non-biological matter, as the Master demonstrated with the fire suits earlier.
Sarah -
Ah, Kamelion, we hardly knew ye. No, seriously, we didn't know you at all.
Harry -
What a waste.
Sarah -
I kind of loved the Small Master in a Box. Pity about the burning and all -- do you think he'll be back?
Harry -
Well, if so then I'm sure we'll get a convincing explanation of how he survived the fires of Sarn.
And just when we find out who Vislor Turlough is, he splits. The Doctor never really warmed to him and rightfully so. I didn't either. Sadly, this will be the last male companion we will see for some time.
Sarah -
When we watched "Mawdryn Undead", I mentioned that Turlough is a companion that I often just forget about. After revisiting the character, it's easy to understand why -- he's rarely given anything to out outside of trying to kill the Doctor or save himself. I quite like Mark Strickson, but Turlough definitely goes down on the list of neglected Doctor Who companions. I imagine he and Dodo will hit it off at the next neglected companions reunion.
Harry -
With Tegan, Turlough and Kamelion all gone, the only person left to accompany the Doctor is Peri. She assures him she doesn't have to be back at school for a while, and he agrees to let her come travelling with him (which makes no sense since he's a TIME TRAVELLER and all, but I'm done with the nitpicking for now).
Sarah -
Right? What was that? Who care how long her school vacation is -- YOU'VE GOT A TIME MACHINE! Sheesh.
Overall, "Planet of Fire" is a decent story, which I enjoyed watching.
Harry -
I liked the story, but the viewing of it was a bit dull. Despite the exotic landscapes, desert-settings are always drab.
Sarah -
Best Line:
"I am the Master!"
"I'm Perpugilliam Brown, and I can shout just as loud as you can!"
Favorite Moment: Peri standing up to the Master.
Lasting Image: Small Master in a Box.
6/10
Harry -
Best Line:
"Have I seen everything today. A transgalactic payphone, a stepfather who turns into a robot, and a robot who turns into a gangster."
Favourite Moment: Whenever someone took the piss out of Timanov.
Lasting Image: The Kamelion-Master bounding after Peri.
7/10
Our marathon continues with Story #135: The Caves of Androzani...
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