As has been pointed out many times before, Doctor Who fans are a funny old beast. There are set opinions about every aspect of every era of the show, and form your own opinion at your peril. Usually, the opinion is that the Doctor Who currently airing is rubbish, so we’re in a rather uncommon position at the moment, what with Matt Smith being popular and all.
Anyway, basically, if you say something bad about a story universally accepted as good, then you’ve had it. This is mostly fine by me (especially since I don’t spend much of my time saying anything about Doctor Who, not wanting to be ridiculed), but one does have a bit of a problem when one can’t tell which the good ones are.
I know that Genesis of the Daleks is supposed to be the best of the classic series, and I’ll happily admit that it’s not half bad, but it does seem to feature a dreadful lot of sequences in which the Doctor and Sarah Jane are chased down corridors, captured, escape, recaptured, and various other pointless variations on the theme. So if Genesis is the best, should all other classic Who stories be measured up to this? I would contend that Caves of Androzani has better pacing and a more interesting story, for example; and frankly I’d sooner watch Androids of Tara again than Genesis.
A matter of personal taste, of course. But I don’t want to be hunted down by a horde of mentalist Who fans after I write this article, so I’d like to begin with this disclaimer: If it is commonly accepted wisdom that Black Orchid is a bloody brilliant story, I didn’t realise and I’m really sorry. Right, that should suffice. Here we go with my review of the Peter Davison classic or otherwise, Black Orchid!
I chose Black Orchid for my viewing pleasure tonight possibly not for the best reasons – fancying a slice of classic Who, but not feeling inclined to wade through one of those interminable 6 part stories that seem to form the vast majority of my DVD collection, I went for a nice 2 part story. I’d like to make it clear, I wasn’t expecting great things, but neither was I expecting the tripe I got.
So Black Orchid begins with a random mishmash of bizarre images: someone getting killed, a Red Indian doing something or another, a railway station guard, and quite possibly something else as well, which I can’t remember. This all coalesces shortly into the Tardis materialising on the station platform and the Doctor and his band of companions emerge. To my delight, it was the dream team of Nyssa, Adric and Tegan, all portrayed by persons who, to put it charitably, can’t act for toffee.
There’s some mindless chat – “Where are we?” “We’re at a railway station”, presumably inserted for the benefit of hopelessly moronic viewers – before a nice man tells the Doctor that Lord Cranleigh is expecting him. He specifically says, “You are the Doctor?” which rather heightens the mystery, as no one knows how Lord Cranleigh could possibly know the Doctor is coming. As it turns out, Lord Cranleigh doesn’t know the Doctor is coming, so the only conclusion we can draw is that the chauffeur is extremely lucky when it comes to guessing people’s names (or titles, in this case).
The chauffeur also spends some time staring at Nyssa, obviously thinking there’s something wrong. Conveniently, the camera lingers on Nyssa’s face just long enough at this point for me to start thinking there was something wrong with it as well. I don’t mean to be unkind, but her face is ... a bit weird, isn’t it? Anyway, the chauffeur doesn’t explain what his problem is, and they all get in the car and drive off to Lord Cranleigh’s estate.
Upon arrival, it becomes apparent that the Doctor is needed to partake in a friendly game of cricket. Rather unsportingly, he proves to be about seventeen hundred times better than everyone else in the game and thrashes them all. Following this, the Doctor is congratulated by Lord Cranleigh in lots of 1920s language – “Topping!” “Great show!” etc, which is rather entertaining – and discovers that Nyssa looks absolutely identical to Lord Cranleigh’s fiancée, Ann.
Now, Doctor Who has a bit of a thing about people who look like other people. Well, I say it does, although right now I can only think of one other incidence – the baddy in the Patrick Troughton episode The Enemy of the World happened to look exactly like the Doctor. In that case, it was ridiculously far-fetched but necessary for the plot. Here, however, Nyssa and Ann looking the same serves no purpose whatsoever, apart from the opportunity for a number of feeble jokes from Adric and Tegan which frankly I could have done without.
After the cricket is over, there’s some idle chitchat concerning Lord Cranleigh’s brother, George, who was killed on an expedition to Brazil some years previously, but had been engaged to Ann. Then the prospect of a fancy dress party is raised. In between times there’s some brief cuts back to the Red Indian, in case we’d forgotten him, and a few shots of someone tied up on a bed. The Doctor is given a bedroom containing an ensuite bathroom and a harlequin outfit. Meanwhile, Ann gives Nyssa an outfit which is identical to her own, and reveals that she has a mole on her shoulder, which is the only way anyone will be able to tell them apart. This never becomes relevant, but it’s nice to see they thought things through.
The Doctor trots off into his ensuite. While he’s in there, some nutcase (whose face we are not shown) comes in and nicks off with the harlequin costume. The Doctor emerges from his ensuite in a rather fetching red dressing gown which, happily, he continues to prance about in for some considerable time. He doesn’t appear to notice his costume has been stolen but exits his room anyway, having heard a noise. Once outside his room, he is in complete darkness and gives a very credible impression of not knowing where he is.
Part 1 now proceeds in a rather tiresome fashion of cutting between the Doctor wandering pointlessly up and down some corridors, and the party, where Adric, Nyssa and Tegan make repetitive conversation involving the following themes:
Where is the Doctor?
Doesn’t Nyssa look just like Ann?
Adric is eating a lot.
Nobody knows the answer to the first question, though no one makes any particular effort to find out either. Everyone agrees on the second question, making it a rather tedious discussion. And as for the third theme, Nyssa and Tegan think Adric’s greedy, but Adric doesn’t. With gripping dialogue like this, it comes as a surprise to me to learn that Doctor Who wasn’t particularly popular in the 1980s.
Anyway, towards the end of Part 1, the Doctor discovers a dead body in a cupboard, while Ann is assaulted by the nutter in the harlequin costume. She cries out for help, whereupon a butler appears, very tidily puts his tray down on a table a good few metres away from the struggling combatants, and only then enters the conflict, only to get immediately strangled. The episode ends with Ann fainting and the harlequin advancing on her making a noise like a lecherous Darth Vader.
Well, with that riveting scene behind me and the end credits rolling, how could I not immediately watch Part 2? I was only glad I wasn’t watching this on its first transmission, knowing I’d have to wait a whole week to find out what happened.
The nutjob in the harlequin suit captures Ann and carries her off upstairs, where he puts her in a bed and tucks her in. He then takes off the harlequin outfit and puts it back in the Doctor’s room. At this point, Ann gets out of the bed and goes back downstairs. Meanwhile, the Doctor bumps into Lady Cranleigh (Lord Cranleigh’s mother) and the Red Indian in the corridor. The Red Indian is introduced as an old family friend from Brazil, and I think it’s worth mentioning that he’s got something very much resembling a digestive biscuit sticking out of his mouth. The Doctor shows them both the body he found in the cupboard, then pops off to put his harlequin outfit on.
Surprise surprise, when he shows up at the party wearing the harlequin outfit, Ann goes mental and accuses him of killing the butler and putting her in the bed. The Doctor is baffled. He raises the possibility that maybe there’s another harlequin outfit, which is quashed, but he doesn’t seem to make the logical leap that someone else must have been wearing his outfit. He does repeatedly protest that he’s only just put the outfit on, but Ann just shrieks at him until he shuts up.
Pleasingly, the fuzz then show up and bundle the Doctor and his mates into the back of a police car, charging them with murder and being accessories to murder. The Doctor tries to explain that he’s a Time Lord and is travelling in time and space, but for inexplicable reasons, they don’t buy that one. He then convinces the police to pop to the station so he can show them the Tardis and prove he’s telling the truth. Unfortunately, at the station, it turns out that the Tardis has gone missing!
So with the viewers puzzling over this latest reversal in the Doctor’s fortunes, the story wastes no time in bursting this particular bubble of suspense by revealing in the very next scene that the Tardis has been taken to the police station. There is no plot reason whatsoever for this little diversion. The story proceeds from this point exactly as it would if the Tardis were still at the railway station. The Doctor shows the police that he really does have a time machine, and then takes them all back to Lord Cranleigh’s house in it.
In the meantime, the individual who nicked the harlequin costume has finally shown his face. He looks really badly burned, or rather he looks as if a really bad special effects department tried to make it look like he was really badly burned. He is tied to a bed, and the Red Indian is sitting there, not looking at him. Naturally, Mr Burns loosens his cords and hits the Red Indian. Finding he is locked into the room, he opts for the rather radical solution of burning the door down.
In the drawing room, Lord Cranleigh receives a phone call from his friend Smutty (really! Watch the episode if you don’t believe me!) apologising for the fact that the replacement cricketer that Smutty sent couldn’t make it. Lord Cranleigh is very puzzled and tells Smutty that the replacement did show up and won the game for them. What Smutty says to this is not shown. Lord Cranleigh concludes that the Doctor was an imposter.
Lady Cranleigh then explains to Lord Cranleigh that the Doctor couldn’t possibly be the butler’s killer, because there’s another body upstairs, killed in exactly the same way. This doesn’t, in my mind, exonerate the Doctor; it simply suggests that he killed two people. However, Lady Cranleigh then explains – offscreen – the whole story. Because the episode sees fit to keep the viewers in suspense, I’m going to keep you in suspense too, though I will reveal Ann’s reaction to the story: “How could you???????? OH!!!! HOW COULD YOU????????” Let’s just say she probably won’t be getting a call from the Oscars people anytime soon.
Mr Burns has by now set the entire upper floor of the house on fire, then he rampages downstairs, kidnaps Nyssa (believing her to be Ann) and takes her up on the roof. Everyone runs outside to look at him. Lord Cranleigh does a credible Spiderman impression by climbing up the walls to get to the roof, while the Doctor opts for the infinitely more sensible option of taking the stairs.
The whole story now comes out. Mr Burns is in fact George Cranleigh, Lord Cranleigh’s brother, who didn’t die in Brazil after all, but simply had his face burned and his tongue pulled out. He was brought back to England by the Red Indian, and he’s been tied up in a bedroom for some time, except for when he regularly escapes to nick fancy dress outfits and burn houses. He keeps on kidnapping Ann, or people who look like her, because he was going to marry her. The Doctor persuades George to let go of Nyssa, after which Lord Cranleigh goes to hug his brother and accidentally pushes him off the roof.
So you could argue that Nyssa looking exactly like Ann does have some relevance after all –naturally, George wouldn’t have kidnapped Nyssa if she didn’t look like Ann. Well, yes – but why couldn’t George just kidnap Ann? It’s not like the Doctor would have said, “Oh well, she’s not my companion, you can stand up there on the roof and burn for all I care.”
Anyway, we then cut to George’s funeral, where Tegan is proudly standing around with a massive box. The box contains the fancy dress outfits, which Lord and Lady Cranleigh have given to our heroes, and I’m sure they’re extremely grateful. The Doctor has also been given a book by George, which he claims he will treasure. I think he’s more likely to burn it, in memory of George.
So, mindful of what I said at the start about Doctor Who fans, I don’t think there can be any possible way this story could be regarded as a classic. There’s too much cricket, too much meandering around corridors (though that is, I admit, a commonplace feature of classic Who) and ... oh, I don’t know. Basically, it’s rubbish. Avoid it. But, just to show I don't have a heart of stone, here's a picture of our heroes spazzing about in their fancy dress costumes.
