The twentieth anniversary year of Doctor Who had been a great success, but with perhaps a slight pall over proceedings: after just two years in the role, Peter Davison announced he would be departing after his third season. Producer John Nathan-Turner had hoped he would last at least a year or two longer, but Davison had followed the advice from Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, that three seasons in the role was optimal.
For Season 21, the production team had to introduce a new Doctor, a new companion and shake up the show's atmosphere and tone. By this time the positive viewer reception to (very relatively) high-octane, high-action stories like Earthshock and The Five Doctors had led script editor Eric Saward that this approach could be explored in more stories, despite the production difficulties and costs incurred.
First up was Warriors of the Deep, a political-action thriller set on an underwater seabase in the year 2084. The Silurians and Sea Devils return for the first time since the early Jon Pertwee era, on a mission to capture the base and use its proton missiles to trigger a global holocaust, which the Silurians and Sea Devils stand to benefit from. It's a strong premise, especially with some nice political intrigue on the base between representatives from the two different power blocs on the verge of war.
Unfortunately the story was stymied by a formidable foe: Margaret Thatcher. The then-British Prime Minister called a surprise general election just as the show went into production, which meant that BBC News needed the extra studio space for its election coverage. Warriors had to wrap two weeks ahead of schedule, meaning that shooting and rehearsal time was slashed, not to mention set construction time, costume fittings and prosthetics.
Knowing that may make the resulting show more forgivable. If anything, the okay model work, excellent Silurian prosthetics, okay Sea Devil ones and funky futuristic makeup and sets might impress more knowing they were thrown together in five seconds flat. But even they can't help the Myrka, a terrible creature design effectively realised as a pantomime horse, nor the poorly-choreographed action sequences where nobody knows how use cover or flanking. The story is also decidedly gratuitous in a way the Holmes/Hinchcliffe era flirted with but never went all-in on, with several characters killed just for the sake of it rather than because it makes sense. The Fifth Doctor has some good moments, as does Turlough when he is drafted as a soldier, but in the face of production limitations, the story never really has a chance to come together. It also destroys credibility that the Doctor and his companions would be accepted into helping the seabase crew so easily given the political and military tension. There are some good moments - the Silurians are generally used effectively - but the story is less than the sum of its parts.
The Awakening starts well with a very intriguing mystery, with a contemporary English village where the people are stuck re-enacting battles from the past with unusual vigour. There are some very strong guest performances, and the realisation of the villainous Malus behind a wall is one of Doctor Who's more striking cliffhangers (and the vfx for realising the creature are impressive by 1984 standards). Unfortunately, the story is slight, the resolution slightly pat and the latter part of the story feels like a direct retread of The Dæmons. But it's enjoyable enough and quite short.
Frontios starts off with the TARDIS arriving on a planet in the remote future, where the colonists might be the last humans alive in the entire universe, a concept so good that Modern Doctor Who has used it twice (in Utopia and Ascension of the Cybermen). The setup, in which the TARDIS is apparently destroyed, has also fuelled more than one season of Moffat-era Doctor Who. As a Chris Bidmead story, there are some hard SF (or at least harder-SF-than-normal) ideas in play, and the Tractators are a fabulous creature design, and mostly executed well on-screen. The guest cast is very good, with an early role for future British comedy and drama stalwart Jeff Rawle, as well as a great guest role for Lesley Dunlop, whose character Norma strikes up a formidable team with Turlough. The story falters in its home stretch, though, and may have been stronger as a three-parter. The ease with which the TARDIS subplot is resolved is a bit credibility-straining, to say the least.
Resurrection of the Daleks is the big, crowd-pleasing return of the Daleks in force for the first time since Season 17's underwhelming Destiny of the Daleks. The story is pleasingly epic, with action unfolding simultaneously in the then-contemporary London Docklands and a space station in the distant future, where the Daleks are trying to liberate their creator Davros and gain his help in defeating a Movellan virus that has devastated the species. Davros, still sore over being betrayed by his creations, is willing to help, but is also playing his own game to ensure the Daleks are totally loyal to only him. The result is a complex web of competing aims, complicated by the intervention of British soldiers, the crew of the prison and a squad of mercenaries employed by the Daleks and led by the redoubtable Lytton, who quickly realises he is unlikely to survive to get his payment.
The story has a lot going on and a large cast, although given Saward's tendency to murder characters the second they cease to be of use, the size of the cast drops quickly. Maurice Colbourne arguably steals the show as the mercenary Lytton, though Saward seems a bit too enamoured of him and keeps him around longer than he should have. Leslie Grantham is effective as Davros' reluctant minion Kiston, and it's amusing to think it was his performance in this story led to his casting as "Dirty" Den on EastEnders a few months after this story aired. A cast-against-type Rodney Bewes does his best as Stien, and is excellent in some scenes and terrible in others, though generally only when the dialogue is not up to the task ("I can't stand the confusion in my mind!"). The real plaudits go to Terry Molloy as Davros. With Michael Wisher from Genesis of the Daleks not available and David Gooderson having impressed nobody in Destiny, Molloy does a bang-up job of properly succeeding Wisher with aplomb.
Again, Turlough gets some good stuff to do, but Tegan spends a large chunk of it out of commission with concussion before leaving at the end. They try to build up her departure by showing her revulsion at the growing number of fatalities, but it's a still a bit undersold. It's also annoying to learn that Janet Fielding would have stayed longer, but Nathan-Turner didn't want a companion to be around longer than her Doctor, which is a frankly bizarre rule. Resurrection is bleak, bordering on the nihilistic, but the plotting is clever, and the continuation of the very slowly-unfolded "Davros Saga" is satisfying (fortunately, we won't have to wait as long for the next two parts).
Also, a minor point of historical trivia, but Resurrection of the Daleks is the first Doctor Who story to air as 45-minute episodes, due to the need to condense the viewing schedule to make room for coverage of the 1984 Olympics. This format, of course, would be used again the following season before becoming standard in Modern Who.
Planet of Fire is a bit of an odd story. It writes out Turlough, but John Nathan-Turner and Eric Saward seemingly realised at the last minute that despite introducing Turlough in Season 20 in a blaze of mystery, they'd proceeded to do nothing much with him or his enigmatic backstory. As a result we get a full origin story and background download for Turlough, at the same time as also having to write out the robot companion Kamelion (introduced only in the previous season's The King's Demons and promptly never mentioned again) and write in new companion Peri, played by Nicola Bryant. Bryant, a solid actress, has little to work with here as Peri's only characterisation note is "American." There are hints of a strange relationship between her and her stepfather which are never explored further, and Bryant has little to do but walk around in a bikini in Doctor Who's most blatant nod towards audience-boosting eye candy yet.
The story does use a lot of location filming in Lanzarote, which is very effective as both the actual Lanzarote and the alien planet Sarn. The sweeping location vistas are more impressive than almost anything that we've seen before in the series. The story also makes surprisingly good use of Peter Wyngarde, a British actor normally noted for his flamboyance and screen-chewing tendencies in shows like Department S and Jason King. Wyngarde adopts a more subdued tone here, inspired by Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, and his performance is impressive, probably more than the story deserves.
As it stands the good worldbuilding, reasonable pacing and stunning location shooting is let down the Crushingly Inevitable Return of the Master, though it does gain a point for the legendary scene where Peri almost kills him with her shoe, which would have automatically qualified for the most ignoble death of a recurring villain in the whole show.
Not sure how to follow that up, Nathan-Turner and Saward decided to call in the big guns: Robert Holmes. The legendary Doctor Who writer had not written for the show since his last turn on The Power of Kroll in Season 16, which he'd felt had been underwhelming due to the demand of him to include a monster in the story. Lines of communication had reopened when he was courted to write the 20th Anniversary Special, although that job had eventually gone to Terrance Dicks. Holmes agreed to write a story for the following season instead, and after consulting with Nathan-Turner and Saward it was also decided this story would be the swansong of Peter Davison's Doctor.
The result is a masterpiece, absolute Peak Doctor Who. The Caves of Androzani comfortably goes toe-to-toe with the likes of Genesis of the Daleks, City of Death and The Ark in Space as a candidate for the greatest Doctor Who story of all time. It's the synergy between Holmes' relentless script and the absolute stellar direction of Graeme Harper (whom, many years later would return to work on the modern show) which catches fire and doesn't let up. The guest cast is outrageously good, from Christopher Gable's genuinely disturbing turn as Sharaz Jek to John Normington's charismatically evil Morgus to Martin Cochrane's turn as the slightly bumbling general Chellack. British drama stalwart Robert Glenister is also outstanding in two roles, and Barbara Kinghorn does a lot with a tiny part.
The story has excellent production values, almost rivalling Planet of Fire despite the much less glamorous location filming, a phenomenal musical score and some unique conceits, like Morgus breaking the fourth wall to directly address the audience with the reasoning for his actions. The story also arguably has two of the show's best cliffhangers, and easily Davison's best performance as the Doctor as the sheer magnitude of what he has to do to save Peri and himself fully hits him and then drives him off the edge of reason, culminating in him gleefully crashes a starship at high speed into a planet with only limited concern for the other passengers (who are, to be fair, all arseholes). The regeneration scene is also superb, with the Fifth Doctor going out in the diametric opposite way to the Fourth, who sacrificed himself to save the entire universe. The Fifth instead sacrifices himself in the dark, for just one life, someone he's only just met. We finally get to see the Fifth Doctor that could have been instead of the slightly more fuzzily-defined one we ended up with: Peter Davison was a superb actor but only occasionally had scripts that rose to the occasion.
Because John Nathan-Turner was a bit of a lunatic, he decided to give the Sixth Doctor a full story to bed in before ending the season, resulting in the notorious The Twin Dilemma. More than one Doctor Who Magazine, online or fanzine poll had rated The Caves of Androzani as the greatest Doctor Who story of all time (new and old) and The Twin Dilemma as the very worst (new and old), which lowers expectations so much that it's actually pretty impossible for the story to meet them.
The Twin Dilemma is indeed chronically underwhelming. The main plot, about twin genius teenage mathematicians (think of Wesley Crusher, but two of them, written to be even more annoying, and played by far worse non-actors) kidnapped by a giant slug to blow up a solar system, is bonkers enough, but kind of entertaining. The guest cast is okay, though the elderly Maurice Denham might be a bit too overstretched by the requirements of the role. Most of the other actors are fine, and Doctor Who trivia fans might note the casting here of a very young Kevin McNally as heroic space pilot Hugo Lang; McNally would return to the franchise thirty-seven years later as the fan-favourite Professor Jericho in Flux.
Where the story hits a stumbling block (made of razor blades) is its characterisation of the Sixth Doctor. The Doctor is shown to be completely unstable after his regeneration, almost throttles Peri, cowers behind her to avoid capture, and spends a large amount of the story uninterested in what's going on because he wants to become a hermit. Colin Baker does his best - with gusto! - to meet the demands of the script, but you can't help but feel this was all just a really bad idea. Making the audience hate the Doctor is the dumbest possible thing you can do in Doctor Who, and then leaving fans on the between-season break not sure if they want to see this Doctor continue could have been fatal to the programme (some might argue it almost was). The main beneficiary of these scenes is Nicola Bryant, who plays Peri's confusion, revulsion but ultimate strength as she angrily defies the crazed Doctor and then the alien enemies of the story in a rather impressive way. But although the story is weak, it's probably not as poor as The Horns of Nimon, or a fair bit of Seasons 23 and 24.
Season 21 of Doctor Who (***½) is all over the place. It has two of the weakest stories in the show's run for some years (Warriors of the Deep and The Twin Dilemma) and one of the all-time absolute classics (The Caves of Androzani) as well as a solid Dalek story (Resurrection of the Daleks) and possibly three of the most forgettable and least-discussed Doctor Who stories of the entire franchise (The Awakening, Frontios and Planet of Fire). But it's never fundamentally unwatchable (though the opening episode of The Twin Dilemma comes close), Davison has his best-ever moments as the Doctor, and it's quite remarkable that the season dedicates most of its length to sequentially writing out regular characters and/or writing them in, resulting in a systematic replacement of the entire show's cast from start to finish, something most other shows simply can't do. Ultimately, a watchable and fascinating - if not always for the right reasons - season.
The season is available on DVD as well as streaming on BBC iPlayer in the UK and various services overseas. The season is scheduled for release on Blu-Ray in 2026.
21.1 - 21.4: Warriors of the Deep (**½)
21.5 - 21.6: The Awakening (***)
21.7 - 21.10: Frontios (***½)
21.11 - 21.12: Resurrection of the Daleks (****) (2x 45-minute episodes)
21.13 - 21.16: Planet of Fire (***)
21.17 - 21.20: The Caves of Androzani (*****)
21.21 - 21.24: The Twin Dilemma (**½)
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