Today is another installment of my semi regular series of posts, Doctor Who Is CLASSIC! This is where I post about episodes from the classic run of the series.
Today's post takes us back to February 1982 and 4 part serial featuring Peter Davison as the 5th Doctor called "Kinda".
(Not "kyn dah" like it's "kind of a good episode" but "ken dah".)
The planet: Deva Loka, a lush green tropical planet which seems like a good place to rest.
And rest is what the Doctor orders for Nyssa who collapsed at the end of the previous story of a mysterious ailment. Using the sonic screwdriver, the Doctors rigs up a device that will keep Nyssa asleep for the next 48 hours or so until she is better.)
(Side note: this story was commissioned before Sarah Sutton was hired to play 3rd companion Nyssa, hence the need to write her out of the story.)
While Nyssa slumbers her way back to health in the TARDIS, the Doctor, Tegan and Adric go out to explore this planet. Seems like a nice quiet planet. What could possibly go wrong?
Our intrepid trio finds some funky wind chimes hanging in a peaceful glade. Adric messes with them and the Doctor admonishes Adric not to do that.
Then the Doctor messes with the wind chimes.
Their gentle ringing puts Tegan asleep on the jungle floor.
The Doctor and Adric continue to explore.
Adric: "But what about Tegan?"
The Doctor: "Oh, I'm sure she'll be all right."
Geez! She's asleep on the jungle floor! What the hell?
And they are not alone on this planet. We see glimpses of the natives, a quiet and presumably not aggressive jungle dwellers who we will learn are called the Kinda. They may be telepathic although the women can speak but the men do not.
Who knows what they're up to? And what about wildlife? There might be snakes.
(Spoiler: there will be a snake.)
This is when the Doctor and Adric encounter... the Dome!
The Dome houses an Earth colonization survey expedition which is not what it once was. Survey members have been disappearing leaving on 3 people left:
- Saunders, a rough and ready type leader with no time for nonsense.
- Hindle, an anxiety ridden immature would be martinet who tries to be tougher than he really is.
- And Todd.
She's wearing a white dress that looks like a lab coat. The dress has a zipper down the front. It's zipped down low enough to show off some cleavage. Not a lot, mind you, she is a scientist, you know! But there is... cleavage.
Pair that up with black nylons and matching black pumps and you have the makings of what Party City's costume section might call "sexy scientist".
Nerys Hughes was about 41 years old when she made "Kinda" (and older than Peter Davison) and she's not what you would call "fashion model pretty" but what the hell? Young Dave-El when he first saw this story thought Todd was hot. Old Dave-El does too but I feel rather icky about it.
Enough of the whole "sexy scientist" thing, Todd is also smart and witty and quite frankly a better companion than any of the the Doctor's regular crew.
Only Adric is awake and he is his usual whiny and completely useless self. (Which is not to throw shade at Matthew Waterhouse. This is all the writers gave the poor guy to work with.)
Meanwhile, Todd figures there is more going on with the quiet and simple Kinda than meets the eye and the Doctor agrees. They suss out that the Kinda are telepathic and are on the whole very docile except when they see their reflection in a mirror.
Saunders has an encounter with the Kinda that turns him into a sweet, mellow kind of dude. (Duuuude!) Hindle is getting more uptight and crazy. ("I have the power of life and death over all of you!")
Elsewhere Tegan is asleep but she is not resting.
Tegan is lost in some kind of mental plane, a pitch black void where is being taunted by mysterious people in black and white including a strange harlequin man called the Mara. He has a snake on his arm.
Tegan susses out quickly that the Mara is up to no good and is determined not to give in to whatever the Mara wants.
But the void is without shape or time. Has she been there for hours? Days? Years?
Forever?
Tegan finally relents and the Mara takes her hand and the snake on his arm crawls on to Tegan's.
Tegan wakes up with an evil grin on her face, a husky voice and prances off around the jungle. Until she meets a male Kinda named Aris, joins hands with him and the snake crawls off Tegan's arm to join with Aris.
Now Aris has voice and is ready to do some evil shit.
Meanwhile, the Doctor and Todd escape the dome to get away from the raving Hindle and explore what's going down with the Kinda. They encounter Panna, a blind wise elder Kinda who tells Todd that there is some evil shit about to go down. (Panna calls the Doctor "Idiot" because he's male and assumes he's not that smart.)
The chaos on Deva Loka is the work of the Mara, an evil being of the subconscious that desires to enter what we call reality.
Todd and the Doctor are shown an apocalyptic vision of everything going to hell. Todd asks if that is a vision of the past or of the future, the Doctor says both.
And when they find Tegan who is now awake and herself again, the Doctor knows how the Mara escaped into reality and where it has gone. And how to get it out of Aris.
It involves a trick the Doctor will do with mirrors.
Surrounded by mirrors and unable to bear looking at this own reflection, Aris is separated from the Mara who assumes it's true form: a giant snake.
Remember:
- This is a TV show.
- Made in 1982.
- By the BBC.
- With NO Disney+ money.
Yeah, the giant snake is goofy but hey, if you're a child watching this on the sofa, it was probably scary enough to send you behind that sofa.
Without a human host, the snake shrivels and shrinks and POOF! It is gone!
SPOILER: next season we will find out the Mara is still alive and lurking in Tegan.
Meanwhile, the Kinda have mind whammied Hindle and he's a decent human being now and Todd informs the Doctor that Earth will not be colonizing Deva Loka after all.
Meanwhile standing by the TARDIS is Nyssa, Tegan and Adric all whining that it's time to go.
I have a feeling that the Doctor wants to swap out companions and take Todd for a spin in the TARDIS. But the Doctor sighs, returns to his whiny children and take his leave of Deva Loka.
"Kinda" is significant in that the story explores some deep themes involving identity and the concept of the self, incorporating Buddhist and Christian symbols and themes.
The story does underscore some of the weaknesses of this era of Doctor Who. The Doctor spends way too much to time being a helpless bystander before he takes any action. His resolution to driving the Mara out of it's human host is classic Doctor but there is no way he should've spent so long being bullied by Hindle.
The effectiveness of Todd in the companion role underscores just how underdeveloped and misused the Doctor's regular companions were. Kudos to Janet Fielding's work when Tegan was trapped in the void with the Mara; she really gets to show off some serious acting chops in this sequence. But it's an exception that proves the rule.
And "sexy scientist" ensemble aside, Nerys Hughes is great as Todd and even if the Doctor wasn't thinking it, I was: leave those whiny brats behind and take her with you in the TARDIS.
My next Doctor Who Is CLASSIC! post will not be for several weeks, until after the upcoming run of new episodes are complete. But the next classics post will be a 3rd Doctor story that features a number of firsts for the Doctor Who mythology.
More Doctor Who in tomorrow's Your Friday Video Link.
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