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Castrovalva Format Reviewed: DVD Review Castrovalva is the start of a new era in Doctor Who, witha new lead actor in the form of Peter Davison. Many people expected the show to wither and die without the iconic Tom Baker, but if truth be told he had become a little stale towards the end of his reign. The show badly needed new directions to go in, and Peter Davison provides these by firstly being a very different character to Tom Baker, but also because he was by far the youngest actor to play The Doctor so far. A new set of companions had already been prepared in Tegan, Nyssa and Adric, and the new era got underway against an old enemy in a new body, The Master. After his regenration, the companions help The Doctor back to the TARDIS but Adric is captured by The Master who uses Adrics mathematical skill and the Logopolitans block transfer computations to induce projections forcing the TARDIS firstly to the universal big bang, and then when they escape from that to Castrovalva to allegedly help The Doctors failing regeneration. Castrovalva is apparantly a backward society, but all is not well as the city has been created through Adric and the block transfer computation and is impossible in the same way as that of MC Escher drawings. The TARDIS crew eventually escape though with the help of militant locals, leaving The Master trapped in the disintegrating Castrovalva. Castrovalva is sometimes maligned as being slightly dull, with an over reliance on science and mathematics in the scripts. The over reliance on maths and science is a fair criticism, as recursive occlusion, hadron power, mental projections of substance and zero rooms really does give the feeling of being blinded by science. The action though does generally make up for this floor as the story does kind of reel you into it in a positive way. It is also worthy of note too that the change of direction was empasised here by Peter Davison unravelling the scarf of Tom Baker. This really did show that Davison was going to take the show onwards and in different directions. The early stories of Peter Davison are characterised by cast of thousands in the TARDIS. Davison makes a decent enough start as the Doctor, Matthew Waterhouse as Adric probably has one of his strongest stories, but this is largely because of his circumstances. Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton as Tegan and Nyssa repectively do come to the fore here and give a good account of themselves. A returning cast member, Anthony Ainley, as the Portreeve and The Master is really the star of the show though. To this day, his portrayal of the Portreeve is convincing and unless you know you would not realise who he really is. Of the rest, Derek Waring is quite wooden as Shardovan, but the rest of the cast are fairly strong. As with the previous two stories, Castrovalva benefits from a beautifully designed and realised set. The benefit of the recursive occlusion storyline is that you get a slight sense of claustrophobia with the set that really fits with the story where it wouldn't in others. To counteract that though we again see an adversary who is designing more and more elaborate and rediculous schemes to entrap and kill The Doctor that do become a bit tiresome. This is very reminiscent of many Bond movies, but doesn't really do the show too much credit when a very far fetched planalmost plays out only for our hero to win in the end. To a certain degree, the viewer isn't given any credit in these stories as it is assumed that they won't realise that something over elaborate is being used whereas for someone prepared to use a tissue compression eliminator would probably be slightly more direct in dispatching his victims. Overall, Castrovalva is bighted in a way with over elaborate plots and over playing the science and mathematical cards somewhat. This makes the actual plot of the story very hard to believe, but if the viewer can suspend their disbelief regarding this what they will be presented with is an enjoyable romp featuring a truly memorable performance from Anthony Ainley. Rating:  |