The Curse of Peladon | Sophisticated Idiots

The Curse of Peladon
1972

The Curse of Peladon review: The Third Doctor and Alpha Centauri

or Eenie Meeny Miney Jo

or Aggedor dor dor, Push Pineapple,
Shake the Tree

Full disclosure, we’re worried about hitting Publish on this one.

If our lack of love for the universally-adored Caves of Androzani irked the fandom, failing to shower The Curse of Peladon with flowers and chocolates risks us being hurled into a cargo-net pit for scuffles with an oiled mute giant Aryan.

We’d heard good things about this story.

But as we’re fast learning, this era doesn't quite hit our sweet spot. It serves up semolina pudding when we're gluttons for a Knickerbocker Glory (but more on the King's outfit later).

Still, even though it didn’t have us purring like an oversized Ewok mesmerised by Doc 3's hypno-skills, there’s plenty to enjoy about The Curse of Peladon.

Unusually, one of these is Jon Pertwee.

We’re not generally fans of his borderline bullying interpretation of the Time Lord but here he’s pretty chilled out. He’s left most of his pent-up rage back at UNIT HQ, making room in this performance for such emotions as ‘quite affectionate’ towards Jo.

And ‘mild concern’ when he thinks she might abandon him to cop off with King Wetboy.

He even lobs in a ‘near smile’ when chatting about hermaphrodite exopods with his long-suffering companion.

There’s a cheekiness to Jon’s performance in this one that’s quite endearing. Dear Producers, howzabout we keep UNIT and the Master out of it for a little while and see if some great things might come our way?

Anyway, those worried about Jonny P risking his hardman image have nothing to fear. He manages to find time to revert to type by barking at Jo when she scares off the Aggedor when he's busy making the poor creature look into the eyes, not around the eyes.

In a shock of tumultuous proportions, he also gets to earn the Action Man tag that’s so casually attached to him.

Here, Pertwee scales a sheer rock face during a hurricane while sporting his Sherlock Holmes costume and then engages in a fight to the death with the King’s Champion (yes, you read that right).

So we’ll give him his Actionista spurs, albeit reluctantly.

Call us purists but for us, a bare-knuckle brawl has no place in Doctor Who and there’s no need for the character to play at being a Tom Cruise stunt-junkie any more than it’s OK to threaten to spank his granddaughter. Or invite Turlough into the TARDIS.

That rather seismic problem aside, Pertwee is otherwise enjoyably playful here.

We guffaw aplenty as he scarpers pronto like a naughty schoolboy when the real Earth delegate turns up at the end.

Of course, the Venusian lullaby he sings is a moment of sheer beauty. It’s so wonderful we get it twice and it’s criminal the ditty missed out on Christmas Number 1 that year.

It's as close as we get to a musical since The Gunfighters.

Jon’s dulcet tones are almost as cute as the Aggedor itself (though it was distracting as hell that we couldn’t shake the fact it looks so much like Troughton Snr in his fur coat).

But for all Jon’s not-being-an-unwatchable-bully-ness in this one, The Curse of Peladon belongs to Jo Grant.

Oh, and the oddest collection of aliens we’ve seen in Who so far.

First things first: Jo has a field day here.

She shimmies up a cliff in a Goldilocks ballgown and, handily, the fact that Captain Yates was taking her to a Disney princesses dress-up party for their date means she’s perfectly attired for pretending to be Royalty.

Her crowning as Princess Josephine of TARDIS is a great moment for both her and the Doctor – made even more delightful by her revelling in the role to the extent that she publicly mocks the Doc, bossing him about like Roger Moore haranguing Patrick Macnee in A View To A Kill.

We’re getting wonderful echoes of Babs masquerading as the Aztec goddess.

So to the aliens.

It’s a Pick ‘N Mix of oddballs. All of whom are green. Identical green, naturally, because the art department were using up an old tin of Dulux fence paint.

We don’t have a problem with the shrill one-eyed trouser-snake one (we’re just relieved there wasn’t a last act reveal that it was the Master in disguise). And we enjoy the mania of the pipe cleaner-adorned Boglin in a fish bowl.

However, the Ice Warriors are an outlier here.

They particularly suffer from being seen in colour for the first time. In their Troughton appearances they carried a sinister threat; little did we know how much of that was conveyed by the monochrome.

The 70s BBC Colour treatment exposes the sad reality of them being hastily painted bright green to resemble the bucket of cheap Toy Story soldiers.

But their very appearance is a neat surprise and the ensuing moral conundrum as the Doctor tries to get his prejudiced head around the twist – the Ice Warriors are on the side of good! - is a smart piece of writing.

On the subject of writing…Another peace conference, really? Immediately after the peace conference in Day of the Daleks? Cripes, this era has market-researched the hell out of how much its audience is besotted with discussions about diplomacy.

Also, it seems incredibly lazy to name the King after his planet. But at least the costume department made up for it by putting him in f***-me boots and a mini-skirt.

TBH we’re not sure what Jo sees in him. Still, she swoons for dead-behind-the-eyes Yates so we’re disregarding her romantic choices.

She’d be better to cosy up to the trouser-snake eye thing.

In many ways this feels like a story from the Hartnell era, which perhaps would have done it some favours.

It’s not just the exposing factor of the Ice Warriors’ colourisation; the secret tunnels and sword-fighting nonsense in the King’s chamber would have benefited from the darker atmosphere of a 60s production.

But we’re nit-picking.

And it’s not that we dislike The Curse of Peladon - it’s a perfectly enjoyable story, but we just can't muster the adulation for it that we've seen elsewhere.

Sorry guys, we’re braced for a pasting in the comments. We’ll start oiling up for our pit fight punishment.