Cross the series's most blood-thirsty, murder-crazed story editor (Eric Saward) with his hero, the series' most BRILLIANT writer (Robert Holmes), and you get an incredibly dense, complex, intelligent, horrifying, and unbelievably violent MASTERPIECE.
I hated this story the 1st time I saw it. There, I've said it! It was just TOO dreary, TOO downbeat, TOO nasty to tolerate, and TOO hopeless for the main characters. But then I saw it again... and unlike, say, GENESIS OF THE DALEKS, which gets worse each time I see it, THE CAVES OF ANDROZANI gets better. The 3rd time out, I was floored. The story structure is positively amazing, the way so many elements are inter-woven and slowly revealed as the plot develops and progresses. This is no "mere" violence-spree where characters are killed just to satisfy a writer (or story editor) with nothing better to do or nothing to say. I'd say this story makes WARRIORS OF THE DEEP, Resurrection OF THE DALEKS and ATTACK OF THE CYBERMEN look like amateurish kiddie shows by comparison.
The "nice guy" Doctor and his unusually large-breasted sidekick stumble into a war where the motivations are far more complicated and devious than seemingly anyone involved understands. Except, perhaps, for the villain-- and it takes a bit of time to realize just WHICH kill-crazy character qualifies as the "real" baddie. There's the army general, who's just following orders, even when it's executing prisoners he suspects are innocent. There's the mercenary gun-runners, who kill anyone in their way on the path to earning their money. There's the twisted, deformed genius with the army of killer androids who holds virtually an entire civilization's future for ransom just so he can get his hands on the former business partner who ALMOST murdered him and left him burnt so badly even he can't stand to look at himself. And then there's his former business partner... a corporation CEO whose list of crimes against humanity keeps growing almost with every scene in the story. If ever The Doctor was mis-matched, this is it!
On top of that, the story is presented with such visual STYLE that one might almost mistake it for a feature film (if not for the videotape). Even before checking the IMDb listing, I just KNEW this had to be the work of the same director who did WARRIORS' GATE-- and I was right. Now I find Graeme Harper has also been working on the revival series and its spin-offs. (Is he the only one, I wonder?) It's no wonder this story is held in such high esteem by WHO fans.
Incidentally, I've come to feel Holmes' story was a sci-fi allegory for the Viet Nam war-- or any war that goes on and on only as long as it does because someone's making a HELL of a lot of money out of it.
Davison's Doctor, who never quite lived up to the idea of "an old man trapped in a young body", for most of this season at least did remind me in a lot of places of Patrick Troughton. This is pointed up in a great scene where Sharez Jek tells him, "You speak like a jackanapes-- but your EYES tell a DIFFERENT picture." No kidding! Davison really got better as he went.
Eric Saward once admitted he didn't respect the character of The Doctor, and Peter Davison's entire 3rd season seems his way of "proving" that the 5th Doctor was out of place and ineffective in a universe growing increasingly violent. Not only is ANDROZANI one of the most violent stories in WHO history, it also takes Davison's Doctor and Peri 4 whole episodes to DIE. Well, almost. She's saved at the very last moment... and he, well, he turns into Colin Baker. What a SHOCK that must have been (well, for any fans who hadn't heard about it in advance.)
The show's US distributor screwed up, big-time, when they "held back" the next story for an entire year. Don't be fooled-- this WASN'T the season finale! John Nathan Turner & Eric Saward structured season 21 the way it was for a reason... and I'm looking forward very much to sitting thru THE TWIN DILLEMMA next. It may not have been the greatest WHO story, but after everything else in season 21, it was a welcome relief!
I hated this story the 1st time I saw it. There, I've said it! It was just TOO dreary, TOO downbeat, TOO nasty to tolerate, and TOO hopeless for the main characters. But then I saw it again... and unlike, say, GENESIS OF THE DALEKS, which gets worse each time I see it, THE CAVES OF ANDROZANI gets better. The 3rd time out, I was floored. The story structure is positively amazing, the way so many elements are inter-woven and slowly revealed as the plot develops and progresses. This is no "mere" violence-spree where characters are killed just to satisfy a writer (or story editor) with nothing better to do or nothing to say. I'd say this story makes WARRIORS OF THE DEEP, Resurrection OF THE DALEKS and ATTACK OF THE CYBERMEN look like amateurish kiddie shows by comparison.
The "nice guy" Doctor and his unusually large-breasted sidekick stumble into a war where the motivations are far more complicated and devious than seemingly anyone involved understands. Except, perhaps, for the villain-- and it takes a bit of time to realize just WHICH kill-crazy character qualifies as the "real" baddie. There's the army general, who's just following orders, even when it's executing prisoners he suspects are innocent. There's the mercenary gun-runners, who kill anyone in their way on the path to earning their money. There's the twisted, deformed genius with the army of killer androids who holds virtually an entire civilization's future for ransom just so he can get his hands on the former business partner who ALMOST murdered him and left him burnt so badly even he can't stand to look at himself. And then there's his former business partner... a corporation CEO whose list of crimes against humanity keeps growing almost with every scene in the story. If ever The Doctor was mis-matched, this is it!
On top of that, the story is presented with such visual STYLE that one might almost mistake it for a feature film (if not for the videotape). Even before checking the IMDb listing, I just KNEW this had to be the work of the same director who did WARRIORS' GATE-- and I was right. Now I find Graeme Harper has also been working on the revival series and its spin-offs. (Is he the only one, I wonder?) It's no wonder this story is held in such high esteem by WHO fans.
Incidentally, I've come to feel Holmes' story was a sci-fi allegory for the Viet Nam war-- or any war that goes on and on only as long as it does because someone's making a HELL of a lot of money out of it.
Davison's Doctor, who never quite lived up to the idea of "an old man trapped in a young body", for most of this season at least did remind me in a lot of places of Patrick Troughton. This is pointed up in a great scene where Sharez Jek tells him, "You speak like a jackanapes-- but your EYES tell a DIFFERENT picture." No kidding! Davison really got better as he went.
Eric Saward once admitted he didn't respect the character of The Doctor, and Peter Davison's entire 3rd season seems his way of "proving" that the 5th Doctor was out of place and ineffective in a universe growing increasingly violent. Not only is ANDROZANI one of the most violent stories in WHO history, it also takes Davison's Doctor and Peri 4 whole episodes to DIE. Well, almost. She's saved at the very last moment... and he, well, he turns into Colin Baker. What a SHOCK that must have been (well, for any fans who hadn't heard about it in advance.)
The show's US distributor screwed up, big-time, when they "held back" the next story for an entire year. Don't be fooled-- this WASN'T the season finale! John Nathan Turner & Eric Saward structured season 21 the way it was for a reason... and I'm looking forward very much to sitting thru THE TWIN DILLEMMA next. It may not have been the greatest WHO story, but after everything else in season 21, it was a welcome relief!