Yes, this is still going. I've not missed a single day of viewing since I began on 1st January 2014. As I write this, I'm a mere handful of episodes from the finish line. Success is so close I can almost taste it. Sadly it's not been such a good story with the blog, but then the two were never meant to run in tandem - I just didn't expect to get quite so far behind.
So, I've abandoned any flailing attempts to catch up. Forget about covering seasons or eras - instead I'm going to tackle stories as and when the mood takes me in between all the other nonsense I like writing about. It might take me another 800 days to get there, but at least the time pressure is off, which was spoiling part of the fun of the whole thing. I'm also not going to repeat the work of countless others and do insightful critical reviews of a whole serial - just touch on a few points I liked and concentrate more on the memories and feelings I associate with the stories.
The last proper 800 Day Project post (here) was in August 2015 where I said farewell to "my" Doctor, Tom Baker. That means it's the turn of Peter Davison to go under the microscope. It's the beginning of a bold new era for the show, and Davison's tenure was concurrent with another significant moment in my personal history with Doctor Who. This was the first incarnation of the Time Lord where I had every single episode recorded onto videotape.
I wrote quite a while back (here) about the first episodes I ever recorded on the mighty Philips Video 2000, but by the time the Fifth Doctor debuted, my dad had succumbed to market forces and plumped for a shiny new (albeit rented) VHS machine. Now I can't remember exactly which make it was but it was definitely a top loading, noisy, clunky thing that you had to treat with respect or your precious tapes would be gobbled up by the hungry innards. The first story that had pride of place in my video library was of course:
It's probably far to say that this was the most important regeneration since Hartnell into Troughton. It was the first time in over seven years that the show had featured someone other than Tom Baker in the lead. So indelibly had Baker stamped his mark on the role that he *was* the Doctor (and for some he still is). Not only did the story have to introduce a new face for the Time Lord to an entire generation, but it had to complete the loose "Master" trilogy begun with "Keeper of Traken", flesh out the companions that had only been introduced a few sort episodes ago *and* tell a good story into the bargain.
It also has to deal with the now obligatory regeneration crisis. Ever since the first few minutes of Pertwee falling out of the TARDIS in "Spearhead From Space", it has been established that the Doctor never has an easy time of it when he regenerates. Other Time Lords seen to be able to change easily, sometimes even on a whim - but for the Doctor it's always a stressful and dangerous time. Here that theme of confusion and instability is taken to extremes when it looks like the Doctor might not survive the process at all.
Some might complain that this leads to interminably dull scenes set within the TARDIS as the Doctor's personality seems to unravel as fast as his multi-coloured scarf. Personally - I absolutely bloody loved it. Davison is immediately likeable in the role, meandering through the corridors, impersonating his predecessors and referencing previous companions and adventures. Plus - who doesn't want to see more of the rooms in the TARDIS ? It's interiors had been possibly some of the most unexplored areas of Doctor Who lore. I remember at the time being fascinated by every roundel and white corridor. Not to mention the wardrobe and the Zero Room.
Much of the story continues the Christopher H Bidmead preference for featuring strong science-based concepts - charged vacuum embodiments, the laws of thermodynamics, recursion, the "hydrogen inrush", etc. It also has its fair share of technobabble too - block transfer computation (although one could argue that maths is basically behind all of reality), a referential differencer, telebiogenesis - and ambient complexity allegedly being the cause of many regeneration failures. The thing is, hard science or made up nonsense, it didn't matter to me. I was a child who grew up in the twin worlds of science fiction and science fact - equally at home with the hyper-reality of E.E. 'Doc" Smith or the physical wonders of the universe around us, as so beautifully espoused by the genius that was Carl Sagan (although some of Bidmead's stuff is more computer science than cosmology). It was all fantastic.
I also loved the worlds conjured up by my favourite fantasy authors and when we eventually get through the lush fern-covered undergrowth to Castrovalva itself, there is definitely a touch of the fairytale about the city. The production design is uniformly excellent, blending distinctive 18th century Dutch costumes with interweaving corridors, multiple levels and and weird angles to build something truly unique looking. Pervading everything is a sense of peace and tranquillity, edged with a tinge of the unreal. There are also the little touches that paint the idea of a living breathing society - the gossipy women in the square, the put upon Mergreve, the ever questioning Shardovan - I was quite disappointed when it all turned out to be an illusory trap created by the Master. By the way, this is the one story where the Master's disguise genuinely works - I was actually shocked when the Portreeve revealed his true face, but then again the script had cleverly been trying to convince you that Shardovan was the bad guy.
Of course underpinning all this (and I guess the core of this post) is the work of graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher. I was 14 years old when this story was first transmitted and what little art appreciation faculties I had were primarily focussed on the SF work of Chris Foss and Jim Burns (although I'll leave you to figure out why his illustrations in Harry Harrison's huge format "Planet Story" had such an impact on my teenage years...there's an idea for a blog post in there somewhere...). But even at this young age, Escher fascinated me - the way he played with perspective and illusions of infinity and impossible locations - it was mesmerising. I'd seen an image of his "Ascending And Descending" lithograph somewhere (it may have been an SF magazine) and had investigated further by getting a book from my local library. It was like a window opened in my mind...
Escher was born in 1898 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. He spent most of his formative years at a school in Arnhem, but was a very sickly child and did poorly at most academic subjects. However he excelled at drawing and at age 21 attend the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts - also learning how to make woodcuts and studying decorative arts.
In his 20s and 30s he travelled extensively across Europe, living for several years in Rome with his wife Jetta and their first son. It was while visiting the Alhambra palace in Spain, and it's geometric decorative mosaics, that he became obsessively fascinated with mathematical tessellations and his work began to take on the form that he is so widely recognised for today - complex, interlocking, slowly mutating, designs that bleed off into infinity.
In the late 1950s this influence was melded with his interest in unusual perspectives and multiple points of view and he began to produce some of his most famous "geometries" - work featuring never ending staircases and unusual gravitational perspectives. He was also deeply interested in impossible objects like the "Penrose triangle" and the Mobius strip, which appeared frequently in things like his perpetual motion "Waterfall".
I poured over the book, absorbing every image - every twisting, distorting, mind-bending drawing. I loved how Escher played with levels of reality with his "Drawing Hands", and "Three Worlds" and I stared for what seemed like hours at the ever-changing tessellations of the "Metamorphosis" series of woodcuts. (Years later, a framed print of "Day And Night" would have pride of place on the living room wall of my first house). Even today I still get a thrill when I see any of his many works on display. I think Escher's special way of thinking combined all of the things that my young mind was grasping towards - mathematical repetitions, duality, endless sets of things, obsessiveness (is that the 'collector' gene in me?), the idea that what we see as "reality" is possibly an illusion, the sheer power of art to depict the worlds of the fantastic (that's definitely comic books). His art led me onto surrealism - Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte and Max Ernst - and back in time to Hieronymous Bosch. I have a lot to thank him for.
There's not a lot more I can say. Castrovalva is one of the best debuts for a Classic Doctor. Davison's "pleasant, open face" and more human-like attitude might be a significant change from the alien kookiness of Tom Baker, but he is still recognisable the Doctor, even at this early stage. I think a lot of my fondness for this story stems from the large number of times I watched it after transmission, the feeling I had of being old enough to truly appreciate the start of something new and exciting and of course the fact that one of my favourite artists was represented so vividly.
Right, I'm off to stare at some transforming reptiles...
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