So yesterday as part of me and 
firstofoct's continuing quest to watch every Classic Doctor with the express purpose of judging them all to be inferior to Ten, we watched The Caves of Adronzai or something I am not looking up how the last word is spelled. It had Five and Peri, okay.
Yeah, Hannah googled some kind of ~guide to Classic Who for New Who fans, or something, and anyway the description of this serial was like !!!!! NON STOP THRILLER!!!!! WILL HAVE YOU ON THE EDGE OF YOUR SEATS!!! "BULLET PACING!!" Um, having since seen the episode...
To be fair, compared to the other Classic Who I have watched, I guess this probably counts as "bullet pacing". A more accurate description, however, would have been "TOTALLY 80S!!!! HOMOEROTIC UNDERTONES!! A LOT OF UNEXPLAINED 4TH-WALL BREAKING!!!!"
I literally have absolutely no idea what happened in this episode, because for the most part as soon as the Doctor or Peri weren't on screen, I started checking lj and shit. I think there was some kind of war? And androids were involved? And some parts were weirdly homoerotic, possibly just because there was literally only one female character other than Peri, and she had about one minute of screentime. The rest of the OCs were a bunch of guys in 80s sci-fi jumpsuits and one guy who was in like a leather mask.
Possibly one of the weirdest things was that the one evil guy (Guy In Brown, as we called him) would literally turn to the camera in the middle of the screen and like, narrate his thought process. It was WEIRD. It was like he was aside-ing in a Shakespeare play. We have no idea who he was talking to, if anyone.
The other half of the plot, which I was more aware of because Five and/or Peri were usually on screen, involved the dude in the vaguely-BDSM get-up kidnapping Peri and Five to be fucking creepy as all hell. Basically, he was the Phantom of the Opera. He had some sob story about how he was burned and horribly disfigured and that is why he wore the leather outfit, and he had kidnapped Peri because she was ~so beautiful~. It was actually pretty disturbing, he spent like half the episodes waxing poetic about Peri's ~ethereal beauty~ while stroking her face as she huddled and cried in a corner. At one point he chloroforms her and strokes her face while she is unconscious. WHAT THE FUCK, DOCTOR WHO?
Equally weird was how unbothered by this Five was; I am pretty sure Nine, Ten and Eleven would be flipping out, not to mention Rose/Martha/Donna/Amy kicking the Phantom in the balls. Eeeuugh.
Anyway, by like part 3 I was ready to flounce, but then Hannah was all like "SURPRISE IT'S FIVE'S LAST EPISODE" so I stuck around to watch him die. Which -- within the first ten minutes of arriving on this useless space rock, Peri falls into some kind of Space Egg and Five helps her out of it, and they learn a little later from the Phantom's creepy manservant that the space egg is TOTALLY POISONOUS and they will be SLOWLY DYING. So Five is literally dying the entire serial, so haters to the left re: "omg Ten's death took too long".
Plus, despite the ~bullet pacing~, it is the longest death ever. Eventually Five learns that there is this magical antidote he can get to save Peri, but while all this is happening there is a lot of stuff going on with Guy In Brown and politics and whatever and like, did people really care? Weren't there little kids somewhere ~on the edge of their seats~ for Peter Davison's exit, and they spend like five of his last ten minutes on the show on android politics? lol, Classic Who. So anyway, Five perseveres and goes to get the antidote and in a shocking turn of events there is only enough for Peri.
Peri, by the way, was pretty damn annoying. When Hannah suggested this serial I asked who the companion was and she was like "Peri" and I was like "oh god isn't she the annoying one?" Her faux-American accent was hilarious, but after the first five minutes or so the lulz of her accent gave way to general irritation with her voice -- I dunno if it's because she was doing the accent, but it was very nasally, and then Peri spent almost the entire serial crying, and being Very Distressed, and generally being miserable as fuck (which, to be fair, she did spend most of her day being, like, molested by the Phantom of the Opera), so I couldn't really work out why she wanted to travel with him in the first place.
So anyway, Five gives the antidote to Peri and sacrifices himself. I didn't realize it was Peter Davison's last episode until part 4, but looking back lol @ all the fake-out deaths they set up for him throughout the serial. He has a few moments of angst and at one point collapses in a sand dune and is like "I AM SORRY PERI, I CANNOT MAKE IT" to thin air which was a nice touch, and then after he gives the antidote to Peri he is like "is this death?" and then collapses right as Peri makes her miraculously-instantaneous recovery. The best part was that right before he regenerated he hallucinated all of his companions (AND THE MASTER LOLOLOL), which is I guess the next best thing to stalking them all from the bushes. I imagine it was all very traumatic for some people at the time.
Especially when Colin Baker appeared. Because omg man I am sorry, but you are seriously creepy.
In conclusion, Five was alright I guess, but it was hard to say because half his lines were inaudible because (unsurprisingly) Doctor Who's soundmixing was even worse in the 80s. Peri was awful.
All in all, needed moar of this:
Lastly, all Hannah and I have left to conquer in Mission: Fully Justified Ten Stanning is an episode with Six (oh lord) and an episode with Seven, since we decided watching half of The Three Doctors totally takes care of One, Two and Three. So if you have particular suggestions for either of those, go for it.
firstofoct's continuing quest to watch every Classic Doctor with the express purpose of judging them all to be inferior to Ten, we watched The Caves of Adronzai or something I am not looking up how the last word is spelled. It had Five and Peri, okay.Yeah, Hannah googled some kind of ~guide to Classic Who for New Who fans, or something, and anyway the description of this serial was like !!!!! NON STOP THRILLER!!!!! WILL HAVE YOU ON THE EDGE OF YOUR SEATS!!! "BULLET PACING!!" Um, having since seen the episode...
To be fair, compared to the other Classic Who I have watched, I guess this probably counts as "bullet pacing". A more accurate description, however, would have been "TOTALLY 80S!!!! HOMOEROTIC UNDERTONES!! A LOT OF UNEXPLAINED 4TH-WALL BREAKING!!!!"
I literally have absolutely no idea what happened in this episode, because for the most part as soon as the Doctor or Peri weren't on screen, I started checking lj and shit. I think there was some kind of war? And androids were involved? And some parts were weirdly homoerotic, possibly just because there was literally only one female character other than Peri, and she had about one minute of screentime. The rest of the OCs were a bunch of guys in 80s sci-fi jumpsuits and one guy who was in like a leather mask.
Possibly one of the weirdest things was that the one evil guy (Guy In Brown, as we called him) would literally turn to the camera in the middle of the screen and like, narrate his thought process. It was WEIRD. It was like he was aside-ing in a Shakespeare play. We have no idea who he was talking to, if anyone.
The other half of the plot, which I was more aware of because Five and/or Peri were usually on screen, involved the dude in the vaguely-BDSM get-up kidnapping Peri and Five to be fucking creepy as all hell. Basically, he was the Phantom of the Opera. He had some sob story about how he was burned and horribly disfigured and that is why he wore the leather outfit, and he had kidnapped Peri because she was ~so beautiful~. It was actually pretty disturbing, he spent like half the episodes waxing poetic about Peri's ~ethereal beauty~ while stroking her face as she huddled and cried in a corner. At one point he chloroforms her and strokes her face while she is unconscious. WHAT THE FUCK, DOCTOR WHO?
Equally weird was how unbothered by this Five was; I am pretty sure Nine, Ten and Eleven would be flipping out, not to mention Rose/Martha/Donna/Amy kicking the Phantom in the balls. Eeeuugh.
Anyway, by like part 3 I was ready to flounce, but then Hannah was all like "SURPRISE IT'S FIVE'S LAST EPISODE" so I stuck around to watch him die. Which -- within the first ten minutes of arriving on this useless space rock, Peri falls into some kind of Space Egg and Five helps her out of it, and they learn a little later from the Phantom's creepy manservant that the space egg is TOTALLY POISONOUS and they will be SLOWLY DYING. So Five is literally dying the entire serial, so haters to the left re: "omg Ten's death took too long".
Plus, despite the ~bullet pacing~, it is the longest death ever. Eventually Five learns that there is this magical antidote he can get to save Peri, but while all this is happening there is a lot of stuff going on with Guy In Brown and politics and whatever and like, did people really care? Weren't there little kids somewhere ~on the edge of their seats~ for Peter Davison's exit, and they spend like five of his last ten minutes on the show on android politics? lol, Classic Who. So anyway, Five perseveres and goes to get the antidote and in a shocking turn of events there is only enough for Peri.
Peri, by the way, was pretty damn annoying. When Hannah suggested this serial I asked who the companion was and she was like "Peri" and I was like "oh god isn't she the annoying one?" Her faux-American accent was hilarious, but after the first five minutes or so the lulz of her accent gave way to general irritation with her voice -- I dunno if it's because she was doing the accent, but it was very nasally, and then Peri spent almost the entire serial crying, and being Very Distressed, and generally being miserable as fuck (which, to be fair, she did spend most of her day being, like, molested by the Phantom of the Opera), so I couldn't really work out why she wanted to travel with him in the first place.
So anyway, Five gives the antidote to Peri and sacrifices himself. I didn't realize it was Peter Davison's last episode until part 4, but looking back lol @ all the fake-out deaths they set up for him throughout the serial. He has a few moments of angst and at one point collapses in a sand dune and is like "I AM SORRY PERI, I CANNOT MAKE IT" to thin air which was a nice touch, and then after he gives the antidote to Peri he is like "is this death?" and then collapses right as Peri makes her miraculously-instantaneous recovery. The best part was that right before he regenerated he hallucinated all of his companions (AND THE MASTER LOLOLOL), which is I guess the next best thing to stalking them all from the bushes. I imagine it was all very traumatic for some people at the time.
Especially when Colin Baker appeared. Because omg man I am sorry, but you are seriously creepy.
In conclusion, Five was alright I guess, but it was hard to say because half his lines were inaudible because (unsurprisingly) Doctor Who's soundmixing was even worse in the 80s. Peri was awful.
All in all, needed moar of this:
Lastly, all Hannah and I have left to conquer in Mission: Fully Justified Ten Stanning is an episode with Six (oh lord) and an episode with Seven, since we decided watching half of The Three Doctors totally takes care of One, Two and Three. So if you have particular suggestions for either of those, go for it.
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