"Doctor Who"
Castrovalva: Part 1 (1982)

Director:

Fiona Cumming

Writer:

Christopher H. Bidmead (writer)

TV Series:

"Doctor Who" (1963)

Original Air Date:

4 January 1982 (Season 19, Episode 1)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Sci-Fi

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Master | Australian | Space Hero | Scientist Hero | Extraterrestrial

Cast

Peter Davison	...	The Doctor
Janet Fielding	...	Tegan Jovanka
Sarah Sutton	...	Nyssa
Matthew Waterhouse	...	Adric
Anthony Ainley	...	The Master
Dallas Cavell	...	Head of Security

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Quotes:

Tegan Jovanka: If... My dad used to say that "if" was the most powerful word in the English language

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Multi-Coloured Swap Shop: (#6.13)" (1982)

"That's the trouble with with regenerations, you never quite know what your going to get." Oh dear, dull first episode for Davison.

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Doctor Who: Castrovalva: Part 1 starts where the previous story from the previous season Logopolis (1981) finished as the Doctor (Tom Baker) lies at the bottom of the tower with his friends Tegan (Janet Fielding), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) & Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) looking on as he regenerates for a fifth time, unfortunately the regeneration doesn't go well & the new Doctor (Peter Davison) is very weak. Tegan & Nyssa help the Doctor into the TARDIS while Aric is captured by a security guard, however the Masters (Anthony Ainsley) TARDIS also appears & seems to help Adric escape the clutches of the security guard & to the safety of the Doctors TARDIS that then takes off. The new Doctor is in a bad way needs to get to the healing power of zero room in the TARDIS to recover, it's up to Adric, Nyssa & Tegan to take control of the TARDIS. However, it becomes apparent that Adric was a plant & sabotaged the co-ordinates of the TARDIS which has travelled back in time all the way to the beginning, the creation of the universe & the biggest explosion ever...

This Doctor Who adventure was episode 1 from season 19 that aired here in the UK during early 1982 & was the first story to feature Peter Davison as the Doctor, directed by Fiona Cumming I was less than impressed with Castrovalva. I will always consider Tom Baker as my favourite Doctor, he was simply brilliant & it's as simple & straight forward as that so Davison had an almost impossible task in trying to replace him as far as I'm concerned. Davison obviously went on to be a decent Doctor in his own right & bring a little something unique to the role to be sure but I don't rate him that highly myself. The script by Cristopher H. Bidmead didn't do anything for me, as a first story it was a poor choice in my opinion. Maybe Castrovalva will improve over the next three episodes but Part 1 had minimal storyline, it's set almost entirely within the monotonous confines of TARDIS, the new Doctor seems almost irrelevant to what's going on around him & the Master makes for a dull villain who has next to nothing to do. Another reason why I maybe subconsciously don't like this episode is because this was the point where we had to say goodbye to he fabulous Tom Baker which got the episode off to bad & somewhat sad start for me. The story hasn't really progressed over the episode & to be honest I will probably have to watch the remaining episodes out of duty rather than interest although I did like the idea of destroying the TARDIS by sending it back to the beginning of time to be obliterated by the creation of the universe, the so-called Big Bang. A disappointing start to the Davison era then, the only other Davison story I've seen is Warriors from the Deep (1984) which is decent so hopefully things will get better for Davison.

Even though not much actually happens during Castrovalva the few special effects that feature are poor, the shot of the Masters TARDIS floating in the air looks terrible. Ther are no monsters or aliens in this one either which doesn't help. I'm actually quite surprised that many Doctor Who fans seem to like Castrovalva, god knows why going by Part 1.

Castrovalva comes as a disappointment, it's nowhere near as good as Tom Bakers first story Robot (1974 - 1975) which managed to successfully introduce a new Doctor yet still involve him in a cracking adventure. Even though I consider myself a Doctor Who fan I simply cannot recommend Castrovalva to anyone other than fans like me, there is better out there.