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The Randomiser: Mawdryn Undead
Aug. 22nd, 2019 08:34 pmI was a little disappointed that Mawdryn Undead was the final randomiser instalment. It's hardly one of the classics of Doctor Who - on the other hand it isn't Time and the Rani either.
I don't think I'd actually seen it since broadcast when I didn't like it much put off by a number of factors including the general unlikeability of any character who isn't the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan or the Brigadier; some of the narrative leaps and assumptions; and discomfort over the physical deformity of Mawdryn and later the infected Nyssa and Tegan.
Rewatching it, there is a lot of interesting stuff going on in Mawdryn Undead. It lacks a central villain: the Black Guardian is mostly off-stage and Mawdryn may be an antagonist but is hardly a villain. Its interest is in setting up mysteries and conundrums and then tying the solutions together. In this it is mostly successful in spite of the fact it is juggling the introduction of not only a new companion but an experimental one; the return of the Black Guardian; and an appearance of the Brigadier in a role intended for Ian Chesterton. Where it fails is in missing conversations: Turlough is quite clearly not a schoolboy from the 20th Century UK and its pretty clear the Doctor is aware of the fact, but its not clear if this has actually been discussed with Turlough or not and this leads to a strange ambiguity in their interactions that is mostly unsatisfying. Similarly a good chunk of the plot revolves around Nyssa and Tegan's assumption that Mawdryn's injured form is actually the Doctor and while this is plausible (they find Mawdryn where they were expecting the Doctor to be) it still seems a bit of a stretch.
The Black Guardian is clearly making stuff up as he goes along, claiming everything is going according to plan every time Turlough abjectly fails to kill the Doctor. I mean, possibly it is all his plan, but it seems more likely that he's just bluffing, but actually in this case it kind of works. It makes the Black Guardian seem rather petty but then, as Tame Layman observed, the idea that the Black Guardian would be remotely interested in the Doctor basically means he's rather petty (at least in the grand cosmic sweep of anthropomorphic personifications of universe spanning abstract concepts).
There's some nice work going on in the sets too. My teenage self was unaware of the conspicuous luxury of Mawdryn's spaceship but it was obvious on viewing despite also obviously being a set built on a BBC budget of tuppence. Less immediately obvious is the contrast between the 1977 Brigadier's pristine and neat cottage and the 1983 Brigadier's more lived in version - something that is highlighted in the novelisation but which I don't think I'd have spotted if I hadn't been primed to look for it.
Mawdryn Undead should be praised for taking a large number of disparate ideas and concepts and tying them together into a pretty satisfying and coherent story. The lack of a clear and present villain, however, makes it seem a little sedate however, and the while it does manage to pull everything together it can't quite manage to disguise the somewhat random and disparate nature of its core concepts. An interesting place to end the randomiser.
Of course, the question is what next? We're currently watching The Macra Terror which has been animated since we watched it on the randomiser. I've also recalled that we never watched The Faceless Ones for reasons that were not entirely clear to me, so I may watch that while B. is away. And of course there are all the Doctor Who stories that we didn't watch as part of the randomiser and which therefore were excluded on the basis of the "nothing watched in the last five years" rule (this is mostly, therefore, our favourite stories). After that B. has expressed an interest in rewatching NuWho from the start. I've already blogged about most of those stories twice so I'm not sure I'll have much to say on a third rewatch, but maybe I can think of a some kind of format that will shake it up a little. We shall see.
I don't think I'd actually seen it since broadcast when I didn't like it much put off by a number of factors including the general unlikeability of any character who isn't the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan or the Brigadier; some of the narrative leaps and assumptions; and discomfort over the physical deformity of Mawdryn and later the infected Nyssa and Tegan.
Rewatching it, there is a lot of interesting stuff going on in Mawdryn Undead. It lacks a central villain: the Black Guardian is mostly off-stage and Mawdryn may be an antagonist but is hardly a villain. Its interest is in setting up mysteries and conundrums and then tying the solutions together. In this it is mostly successful in spite of the fact it is juggling the introduction of not only a new companion but an experimental one; the return of the Black Guardian; and an appearance of the Brigadier in a role intended for Ian Chesterton. Where it fails is in missing conversations: Turlough is quite clearly not a schoolboy from the 20th Century UK and its pretty clear the Doctor is aware of the fact, but its not clear if this has actually been discussed with Turlough or not and this leads to a strange ambiguity in their interactions that is mostly unsatisfying. Similarly a good chunk of the plot revolves around Nyssa and Tegan's assumption that Mawdryn's injured form is actually the Doctor and while this is plausible (they find Mawdryn where they were expecting the Doctor to be) it still seems a bit of a stretch.
The Black Guardian is clearly making stuff up as he goes along, claiming everything is going according to plan every time Turlough abjectly fails to kill the Doctor. I mean, possibly it is all his plan, but it seems more likely that he's just bluffing, but actually in this case it kind of works. It makes the Black Guardian seem rather petty but then, as Tame Layman observed, the idea that the Black Guardian would be remotely interested in the Doctor basically means he's rather petty (at least in the grand cosmic sweep of anthropomorphic personifications of universe spanning abstract concepts).
There's some nice work going on in the sets too. My teenage self was unaware of the conspicuous luxury of Mawdryn's spaceship but it was obvious on viewing despite also obviously being a set built on a BBC budget of tuppence. Less immediately obvious is the contrast between the 1977 Brigadier's pristine and neat cottage and the 1983 Brigadier's more lived in version - something that is highlighted in the novelisation but which I don't think I'd have spotted if I hadn't been primed to look for it.
Mawdryn Undead should be praised for taking a large number of disparate ideas and concepts and tying them together into a pretty satisfying and coherent story. The lack of a clear and present villain, however, makes it seem a little sedate however, and the while it does manage to pull everything together it can't quite manage to disguise the somewhat random and disparate nature of its core concepts. An interesting place to end the randomiser.
Of course, the question is what next? We're currently watching The Macra Terror which has been animated since we watched it on the randomiser. I've also recalled that we never watched The Faceless Ones for reasons that were not entirely clear to me, so I may watch that while B. is away. And of course there are all the Doctor Who stories that we didn't watch as part of the randomiser and which therefore were excluded on the basis of the "nothing watched in the last five years" rule (this is mostly, therefore, our favourite stories). After that B. has expressed an interest in rewatching NuWho from the start. I've already blogged about most of those stories twice so I'm not sure I'll have much to say on a third rewatch, but maybe I can think of a some kind of format that will shake it up a little. We shall see.