Le Panda du Mal
Well-Known Member
I either just watched this serial for the first time or I completely forgot about it from when I would have seen it in the 90's. In any case it really is deserving of the high marks it gets from so many Whovians. Its unrelenting grimness is somewhat atypical of Doctor Who- it really feels like the Doctor got sucked into the Blake's 7 universe. Indeed scriptwriter Robert Holmes also contributed a few excellent scripts to Blake's 7. I love how desperate and dangerous everything feels. No gimmicks to help him, no name recognition, even his charms don't take him very far- he is immediately assumed by everyone to be a gun runner or spy, and his life feels just as cheap as everyone else's in this miserable world. So he has only his wits and dumb luck to help him, and he is truly fighting for his and Peri's survival, and little else- not even the Doctor can make any impact on the vicious society of Androzani. Barring a major overhaul of the series, I don't think it would be possible for a story like this to exist in NuWho, or even the Sylvester McCoy years.
