{"id":158,"date":"2011-02-16T11:48:41","date_gmt":"2011-02-16T19:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=158"},"modified":"2011-03-03T10:18:57","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T18:18:57","slug":"mark-watches-doctor-who-the-caves-of-androzani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2011\/02\/mark-watches-doctor-who-the-caves-of-androzani\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDoctor Who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122: The Caves of Androzani"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the classic Doctor Who<\/em> serial “The Caves of Androzani,” the Fifth Doctor and Peri get stuck in the caves on Androzani Minor and become caught up in a drug war that ends terribly for one of them. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Doctor Who<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It’s great visiting these older episodes of Doctor Who<\/em> because each of the Doctors have such noticeable and distinct character differences from each other. (Plus, even though it’s short, I get a great chance to see the sixth Doctor as well.) Peter Davison has a wonderful streak of humor and sarcasm to his VERY VERY VERY SERIOUS FACE. And the sprig of celery! I never knew why he had that so THANK YOU EPISODE FOR ANSWERING THAT.<\/p>\n

I liked this episode a great deal, possibly more than the other two classic Who<\/em> I’d seen. But let me start off with saying this: holy god, this serial was SO COMPLICATED. It’s not that it wasn’t pulled off well (it really was), but for at least the first two parts of the serial, all I could think was WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE and WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. There must have been 15 characters aside from the Doctor and Peri and many of them had very similar outfits and then someone else<\/em> was introduced and my brain hurt but man, that beast thing was awesome, wasn’t it?<\/p>\n

The main focus of “The Caves of Androzani” is the drug spectrox, found in the caves on Androzani Minor and created by the bats that lived there. (Did they poop it out? Or was it from the milk? That didn’t seem clear to me.) What I really liked about the dynamic of this particular serial was that the Doctor and Peri literally walked into a war of sorts. There was still a lot of the Doctor trying to figure out what was going on, but they stepped into a story halfway through it.<\/p>\n

Peri’s role in this serial is probably not the best episode for me to get a handle on who she was as a companion, as she gets hit pretty hard with the spectrox toxemia fairly early into the story, so I felt that she was kind of out of it most of the time. From what I did see at the beginning of part one, Peri seemed to be one of the more playful companions we’ve seen yet; at this point, I don’t know how long her and the Doctor have been traveling together for. But they seem so comfortable with each other when I see them at the end of season 21. (21ST SEASON. HOLY FUCKING GOD THAT IS SO MANY SEASONS.)<\/p>\n

I can see a lot of reasons why this particular serial was voted so highly by Doctor Who<\/em> fans. First of all, all three of the cliffhangers that existed in the original format are goddamn fantastic. Actually executed? Crashing into Androzani Minor at a high speed? I think I would have peed myself if I watched these back when they originally aired. Wait\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6I probably was peeing myself, since I wasn’t even six months old at the time. Is that TMI? Whatever, I was a baby. Who cares.<\/p>\n

It’s list time because I have a lot of thoughts and no way to organize them right now.<\/p>\n

THOUGHTS<\/strong><\/p>\n