Castrovalva | Sophisticated Idiots

Here at Sophisticated Idiots we’re strong believers in the idea that a Doctor’s legacy is set from their very first story.

Their initial scene, in fact. It’s akin to recruiters judging a job candidate within 10 seconds of meeting them.

Disagree? Let’s play a little game of matching the descriptors to the actors’ first few seconds in front of the camera:

Hartnell – Disagreeable

Troughton – Eccentric

Pertwee – Earnest

Baker, T - Intoxicating

Davison – Tired

Baker, C – Unpleasant

McCoy - Strange

*Yawns* And so begins the Peter Davison era.

We actually really like Castrovalva.

Yes, it’s a sedate story but we don’t mind a thoughtful, calmer serial every now and again. Not everything needs to be Inferno levels of NON-STOP NOISE, you know.

Being ginormous fans of Escher’s work undoubtedly helps too.

But there’s a decent little mystery throughout (the reveal that the Master has dreamt everything up – with the help of the ever-likeable Adric – is a little far-fetched but we’ll let it go) which plays as an intriguing backdrop to the main drama: of introducing the new guy.

In fact, this sense of newness stretches way beyond the fresh-faced Doctor and his unforgiveable destruction of Tom’s scarf: we’re still getting to know Nyssa (this is her third appearance), Tegan only turned up in the previous one, and Anthony Ainley is still perfecting his sneer three stories in.

As a consequence there’s a palpable first day of term feel to Castrovalva.

No real work is getting done: it’s all induction tours, get-to-know-you games and discussions about what everyone did during the summer.

In fact, we’ll follow the lead of Castrovalva’s writers by clumsily parking the plot in the undergrowth to instead focus almost exclusively on the new fella in the blue box.

It’s fair to say Pete gets off to a slow start as the Doctor.

The writing doesn’t help him – he’s given nothing to do except panic and be overwhelmed.

Oh, and have a lengthy nap. At some point over the next three years, someone probably should have told him he didn’t need to stick with these characterisation notes for the whole of his tenure.

Obviously, whoever followed Tom Baker had the toughest gig on telly (anyone else getting vibes of David Moyes succeeding Sir Alex Ferguson?) - so we applaud the producers for going in completely the opposite direction to Tom with their casting.

However, given the scale of the challenge that Peter faced, hiding him away in a box for half his first story is hardly giving him much of a leg-up. That said, the roundel coffin is an awesome design – we’ve already reserved one for our funeral.

As much as we’d like to lay all the blame at the writers’ door, they’re not at fault for Peter’s anxiety-ridden portrayal. It feels like he’s on the verge of a breakdown at any moment.

And while Colin Baker gets a ton of grief for his clownfit (© Octopussy), Davison’s isn’t much better. It's resplendent in its pastel lameness, topped off by the ice cream-seller trousers providing sad seaside town vibes.

Even more heinously, the cricket theme is never fully explained – and hastily ret-conning celery's Spectrox-detector powers into his final story is not enough to distract us from the distinct oddness of plonking a vegetable in his lapel.

We’re also left to wonder why Doc Five’s costume is simply hung out for him. We can only conclude that Tom left it there as a farewell prank.

A nervous chap at the best of times, over the coming seasons it’ll become as plain as Pete’s costume that this Doctor is more comfortable around people who aren’t his companions.

The seeds are sown here. He’s pally with some of the Castrovalvans and seems acutely irked when his TARDIS buddies pop up to interrupt his reading. Does anyone blame him, really?

Sidelining Adric (your stories are numbered, sonny) is always a wise step so credit to the writers for this move, which in theory gives Tegan and Nyssa some much-needed screen minutes.

Sadly, it’s difficult to argue that this time is particularly well used.

There’s some painful banter that exposes Nyssa’s complete absence of a personality before we’re given Tegan’s sensational realisation that the word ‘if’ is spelt I-F (conjuring memories of Sesame Street and its kicking K).

To rub salt in the wound, she’s fooled into thinking she successfully pilots the TARDIS (spoiler alert – she doesn’t. And her crestfallen face when told this is heart-breaking).

Still, kudos to Janet for lugging the Doctor’s revitabox through the woods in heels.

Castrovalva desperately wants to be a high-brow affair (Kinda will equally bask in the imposter syndrome in a couple of stories’ time), by slipping in Hamlet quotes and whacking us over the head with the theme of recursion.

But then it can’t help including a scene in which the Master flails around in the tapestry room and bellows “My web!” with all the subtlety of a CBBC panto star.

As for the bearded one, Ainley himself is surprisingly watchable here (on the whole).

Clearly, his electronic lift to get closer to the stricken Adric for goading purposes, is a joy to behold.

But we must admit that we didn’t see the reveal of him being the Portreeve coming (laugh all you want, fuzzballs – we weren’t paying enormous attention by this stage and our eyes were still recovering from the pixelated Escher sequences).

There’s not really a great deal more to say about Castrovalva. Which we guess speaks volumes.

In hindsight this is a relative high point of the Davison years - an era that will become regarded as a rather by-the-numbers rehash of previous glories.

One that’s sandwiched between a period of genuine brilliance and a few years of half-hearted aimlessness that represents the beginning of the end for something that was once a cultural phenomenon.

It’s Oasis’ Be Here Now album.

Which makes Castrovalva the Classic Who equivalent of D’You Know What I Mean?, the album opener which at its heart is a decent song but plods along so much it becomes dull, forcing the audience to skip to the next track.

Mind you, we could do with the advice of an old sage to guide us on which is worse – My Big Mouth or Four to Doomsday.