“You will agree to being me… This side of madness or the other.”

Few Doctor Who stories have raised such wild passions for and against them as Kinda. Yes, I was one of those ten-year-olds who helped vote it bottom of Peter Davison’s first season for DWM back in 1982, largely through a vivid last memory of ‘that snake’; at the other end of the spectrum, some fans have announced that anyone who disagrees with their assertion that this is the best Who story ever is an emotional Nazi. I shall leave it to your own judgement any irony involved in people who use ‘Nazi’ to decry those whose precise tastes do not absolutely accord to theirs…

I started a re-evaluation of Kinda through my wobbly audio copy, in those days before video. The old wise woman’s “Wheel turns” speech was quite hypnotic, and so I gradually found myself thinking Kinda was rather interesting – despite one of Uncle Tewwance’s least lively books trying to convince me otherwise. Nowadays, with repeated video viewings, I’ll admit that I can’t see how I ever thought the story worse than Four to Doomsday or Time-Flight, and I’ve got a lot closer to the adoring end of the spectrum than the embarrassed end I used to sit at. But will I go all the way? Well, I don’t think so, though I’ll waver between eight and nine out of ten. Let me explain.

On the whole, Kinda is interesting and refreshing, one of the Who stories with the most ideas, married to one of the Who stories that looks most like a pop video. The Dark Places of the Inside are fantastically imagined and realised, and the ‘time’ sequence is hardly less impressive. Resonantly, the subversive ‘menaces’ of the trees, the ‘primitives’, Hindle, Dukkha and The Dark Places of the Inside or wherever, all combine tantalisingly to disrupt expectations and are carried off brilliantly. 

In the story’s second half, however, and especially after the main hallucinatory effects sequences end, the action-based director and thoughtful script start to work against each other (notably from the blown cliffhanger to part 3 on), particularly as the author’s ideas become less successful. The fourth episode is definitely the weakest, despite quite a strong scene with Hindle’s toy madness and Panna’s consciousness passing on to demonstrate that no-one actually dies in the story (albeit the three ones who went missing…?). Studio floors, technobabble and ‘that snake’ summing up a glib and dull resolution – not to mention interminable Adric / Tegan bitching scenes - make it a curiously uninventive and unimpressive ending. This story is probably best watched as a whole, rather than an episodic let-down. 

I’ve recently taken to watching Who again on an episodic basis. Yes, that’s right – as god intended! As you might expect, with all stories written that way, most of them work much better that way. And it’s become clear that a key reason so many of us disliked Kinda on first watching – other than the shame of (all together now) “that snake” at school the next day – was that this story didn’t. For a few stories where not all the episodes work, the resolution is the killer. Watch a rather good story with a poor part 4 (Paradise Towers or The Creature From the Pit spring to mind to tease you with, or perhaps The Leisure Hive if you want one that fewer people hate so much), and it’s plain that only watching ‘the bad bit’ in one sitting leaves you with a nasty taste in your mouth that wouldn’t be so strong if you’d watched it as a ‘movie’. Watch Kinda episodically, rather than all of a bundle as video encourages you to, and it’s striking that it wasn’t just the increasing sophistication of the viewing fans that has led to Kinda’s shocking turnaround. It was the ‘poor part 4’ effect at work in a devastating way when we first watched it.

Oddly, watching Kinda episodically, I’m also struck that it isn’t a Tegan story at all – more of an Adric story. He has quite a lot to do throughout the whole story (though achieving little, at least he only pretends to side with the villain this time. Clearly Hindle responds to another boy to play with), while her strong role in the first two parts vanishes almost completely later. She is superb when oppressed and then possessed by Dukkha (though an effective ‘rape’ scene apparently unlocking her sensuality is an unpleasantly disturbing message), but her appearance in part 3 is just that. Aris merely steps over her unconscious body at one point, and she neither moves nor speaks in a ‘blink and you’ll miss her’ cameo. As all the companions are buried way down in the cast list to start with, it seems particularly unfair on Matthew Waterhouse that he still gets later (and shared) billing than Janet Fielding for part 3, and that Sarah Sutton gets no billing at all for the middle episodes.

My other reason for recently re-evaluating Kinda is that I’ve now read the book that’s said to be one of its main sources, Ursula Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest. Now, this isn’t a story that can simply be explained by reference to any one of the mountain of references it makes, whether Judaeo-Christian Garden of Eden symbolism, Buddhist analogies or Vietnam-era sci-fi. However, as the Buddhism’s been written about in great detail, I found comparisons with Le Guin’s book intriguing, and they helped crystallise why I don’t think Kinda is quite as clever as many take it to be – or quite as enjoyable.

Despite some clear similarities in the setup, including a sophisticated sexual division of labour in the ‘primitives’, idiot (‘insane’) colonial military leavened by a sympathetic anthropologist, and dreaming, sophisticated ‘primitives’ (as well as blatant nods like Planet S14 in Kinda for World 41 in the book, Aris’ captive brother for Selver’s enslaved and murdered wife, or ILF – ‘Intelligent Life Form’ – for ‘hilf’ – ‘High Intelligence Life Form’), the story itself has remarkably little in common with The Word For World is Forest. Quite funny that the villain of the book is Captain Davidson, though, as it’s of course the Doctor who enables the snake to enter Eden! Kinda is far less successful in getting across an idea of the local people as sophisticated – with the dubious exception of Panna and the double helix jewellery, it’s merely told, rather than shown. How do they have access to molecular biology? On the face of it, nicking the necklaces from an alien spaceship crashed in the jungle would be more logical an explanation. Shouldn’t we have had some shared dreaming, or something to put the Box of Jhana in context? Instead, *these* ‘primitives’ are really telepathic, which even the Mara correctly notes is a very boring way to communicate. 

Instead of evidence of intelligent thought, the Kinda (surely everyone in this story bar the Doctor, Todd and Panna are just that – ‘children’?) follow Aris like sheep, and flee after a ludicrous attack on the Dome using a TSS-style ‘wicker man’ (instead, Selver’s attacks on the Terrans use their own bombs against them, as well as showing the lethal effectiveness of ‘primitive’ weapons. The Kinda merely appear stupid). Of course, the whole effect is engineered by the Mara to bring about their misery, but instead of a powerful, co-dependent, co-defending (“the dreaming of an unshared mind”) group intelligence, they merely combine into a herd. This is especially obvious in contrast with Aris and Panna / Karuna, who are intelligent and resourceful because they are individuals. The extremely collectivist ideological slant of the story is objectionable both because it isn’t to my personal taste anyway, and because the author’s clear wish to impose it on us has not led him to consider whether it works – in the context of the story, it doesn’t, and it fails even to make an attractive case. It seems not only philosophically disagreeable, but artistically unsuccessful. 

The message that progress is horrid and only leads to destruction, and that people are much better off as happy sheep, is despairingly poor. Even the ‘dangers of progress and exploration’ message of The Green Death, for example (which I rather like), is leavened by the saving grace of individuality. Even that other anti-questioning Buddhist parable, Planet of the Spiders, notices the danger of not having a mind of your own as well as of unrestrained ego. Again unlike The Word For World is Forest, which shows the destructive effect of progress on the Athshean culture, Kinda is a zero-sum game – there has been no effect on the tribe by the end; again, intelligent life is changed by experience, while the Kinda appear like drones. 

Perhaps Christopher Bailey should have read the author’s Introductions to The Word for World is Forest. Le Guin talks of art as the pursuit of liberty, ‘escapist’ from reality into the freedom of imagination. She also warns of the power an artist has over their characters leaching into desire for the power to influence other people. “The desire for power, in the sense of power over others, is what pulls most people off the path of the pursuit of liberty,” she warns, and notes that when artists believe they can do good to other people, they forget about liberty and start to preach. Bailey has failed to heed her warning, and has been “inextricably confusing ideas with opinions”.

The opening sequence of 'Four to Doomsday' is remarkably effective: an ominous and enigmatic score accompanies a series of panning and tracking shots of a dark, mysterious, and (presumably) gigantic spaceship; a tone both mysterious and threatening is established. The viewer (this viewer, at least) is not disappointed by what follows, for whatever the flaws of 'Four to Doomsday' it manages to work as an intriguing, textured, and sinister piece of science fiction. 

Although on a plot-only level 'Four to Doomsday' is a bit long, and a bit of a drag at times, it does succeed in telling a story tinged with engaging ideas and concepts. The first two cliff-hangers rely not on a terrible fate for the Doctor, but on a revelation: the drama for much of 'Four to Doomsday' is the discovery of more and more of the details of the science fiction set up. One theme which emerges from this SF set up is that of 'difference' and 'alienness': the themes split. Perception, and the different ways different people view 'others', is everywhere. There is Adric, in his usual, petulant self-important tone, making notably bigoted comments about what he sees as being the difference between men and women and girls. The whole premise of the plot is the fact that the spaceship is full of different cultures and races, collected from Earth at various points in history by the Urbankans. And although they are not fully developed, 'Four to Doomsday' touches on questions of how we define 'cultures', and whether it is possible that cultures can be recorded, and stored, and preserved in stasis. What the Urbankans fail to see is the speed with which culture changes: their ability to alter their appearance to become 'like' other cultures is flawed, because it does not allow for natural evolution and change, and also because it is only skin deep. Culture is more than just accent and clothing and native dances. 

On other levels, 'Four to Doomsday' is classic Doctor Who hokum. Questions of race, culture, and class aside, there is no doubt that the Urbankans neatly fill the role of the classic, unambiguous, atypical, nasty Doctor Who aliens we see so frequently, and hopefully will see more of soon! Monarch's eloquent, mannered, and 'civilized' English diction, rather than making him sympathetic, simply makes him more sinister, and more alien. There is a superb line during episode two (when Adric and Nyssa are suffocating) where Enlightenment notes that Adric and Nyssa "have lungs", and Monarch replies with sadistic pleasure: "Let them remember that." Chilling. 

Overall, deficiencies of plot aside (well, not 'deficiencies', as such'... there just isn't a lot happening), 'Four to Doomsday' is an entertaining story. And it has a brain. Recommended.

I first acquired video technology in 1995, on a sunday morning. That afternoon I went to town and bought Resurrection of the Daleks, which I had long been wanting to do. This then was not only the first Dr Who video I ever bought, but the first video full stop. 

Watching it, I felt the same buzz of pleasure and excitement as I had back in 1984 when Resurrection was first aired. This is quite simply my favourite Dr Who story of all time. After the plain old silly Destiny of the Daleks some years previously, wherein the Daleks shouted a lot but were about as menacing as tins of corned beef, Resurrection was summat else again. These Daleks were vicious, menacing killers; behaving exactly as Daleks are supposed to but rarely do. They were also wonderfully irrational: dropping everything (one imagines) to go halfway across the galaxy to rescue Davros, simply to serve their own ends, and then deciding to exterminate him anyway. There is an extremely vague plan to invade Earth and an even vaguer one to depopulate Gallifrey's time lord population, but this is all good. If the Daleks here were seen as boringly logical and killing only one or two people (as portrayed many times in the past) then they would just be dull. 

The gradual massacre of the Space Station personnel, the use of chemical gas, the mutant Dalek scuttling around the warehouse, the Daleks having to rely (at first) on human Troopers, the shock revelation of the Dalek agent...I could go on and on but will instead confine myself to two extra points. 

First, Davros. This time I found the portrayal of him even better than in Genesis. Then, he was a cold, ruthless scientist who ranted occasionally. Now, a thousand and ninety years later (or whatever) he is utterly obsessed with revenge with his own Daleks, as willing to kill them as they are to kill him. His ability to defend himself now, and his shocked reaction to the Daleks' defeat and having to use human soldiers, are lasting memories for me. 

Then there is Lytton, a wonderfully compelling, ruthless character. Right from the off he is threatened with extermination by the Supreme Dalek, he clearly is less than willing to be working for them and yet he performs his duty with chilling efficiency. I think Lytton rates as the second best human baddie in the entire series ('second' best? Well, no one can beat the War Lord!). I think his becoming a good, or at least less bad, guy in Attack of the Cybermen to be rather inappropriate. A question though, if all this happened to the duplicate Lytton, is there a real one knocking about somewhere? 

So, a definite ten out of ten here. Resurrection is what Earthshock could have been like if all the supporting cast had been killed off. It increases the realism, the excitement. I'm glad this story went as far as it did, and if Sylvester McCoy and Pantomime were to threaten the show a few years down the line, then it came out just in time.

I was initially rather disappointed with this story when it first was on television, but with hindsight now regard it as one of the true classics of its time. The problem was that I was expecting another Logopolis type story, with a dramatic threat-to-the-universe type scenario as befitting a Doctor's regeneration tale. This rather sordid gun-running drama didn't, to me, seem really worthy to be the Fifth Doctor's final adventure; not for a Doctor who had been back to Event One, saved the universe on Terminus, faced Omega again, etc. Also, I was really, really wanting an old monster to appear for this final story - I love stories with old monsters so rather enjoyed Peter Davison's run - but there wasn't one. We saw tantalising glimpses of Sharaz Jek in part one - close ups of his mouth, eyes etc, and I was hoping that this would be some old foe from the Doctor's past, but alas.

However, what we are left with is still an action filled, tense and extremely exciting tale. I loved the fact that machine pistols were used by everyone and not some space laser guns; it made the thing more realistic and gritty. The characters were uniformly excellant - Jek, Chellack, Morgus, Stotz. Some of them were wonderfully evil throughout whilst others had evil more or less thrust upon them by being in a difficult situation at a difficult time. I particularly liked Salateen who, while being ruthless at least had a sense of fair play - he didn't do anything bad without a reason and also didn't hog all the credit for his and Peri's escape from Jek's headquarters. He was fair minded but ended up just as dead as everyone else.

All the episode endings were superb but the ending of episode one was a bit flat in comparison - we see a panel slide open in the back of the Doctor and Peri's cell moments before they are led to the firing squad, so this rather spoils things as we know that the doctor and peri do not face certain death. We don't yet know about Jek's ability to create replicas, but we now know that SOMETHING happened. If we hadn't seen that panel open beforehand the ending would have been much more spectacular, but as it is the suspense is spoiled somewhat.

Then, after a load of treachery, explosions, shootings and death, the Doctor regenerates after a typical act of noble sacrifice - beware of Trions carrying beautiful half-drowned American girls into one's Tardis the moment one's back is turned is I suppose the moral - but regenerates into what? Who is this new persona who is rather sharp with the bewildered Peri at the story's closing moments? That, as we all know, is another story.....