Review: Doctor Who - Black Orchid

[tree_and_leaf]

I didn't know very much about Black Orchid when I picked it up in the January sales - I vaguely remembered hearing that Peter Davison disliked it, but it was £3 and set in a country house in the 1930s, so I thought 'Why not?'



Black Orchid is unusual in that it is the last pure historical, and coming a long time after the others. The only aliens involved are the Doctor, Nyssa and Adric (and, to a lesser extent, Tegan, who is enthusiastic about the cricket, but who baffles the natives with her possibly rather stereotyped Australian slang). Oddly enough, the New Who episode it reminded me most of was not, despite the setting, "The Unicorn and the Wasp" but "Midnight", because one of the more interesting aspects of the story was its presentation of the Doctor who, when it comes to it, is an alien and object of suspicion who has great difficulty proving that he isn't a masked killer. It also reminded me of why I don't like the psychic paper; it makes things too easy.

The story is, in a way, about the dangers of trying to bring the alien home without openly acknowledging it. The alien - this being progressive Doctor Who - is not evil in itself (the eponymous black orchid; the Doctor may not be the cricket star he's mistaken for, but he's a county class player, and he sorts out the more serious problem concealed behind the superficial idyll), but the attempt to keep it under lock and key precipitates disaster. The apparently sinister-looking indigenous Brazilian is well-meaning (and while his costume was a bit of a chliche (perhaps they were trying to stop us noticing that the actor was actually Asian? *headdesk* he's portrayed as literate and thoughtful, if utterly crap at knots). The murderer, though in theory as far from alien to Cranleigh Hall as is possible, has been 'othered' by madness and disfigurement, but what is really disastrous is the family's decision to treat him like a dirty secret. This is why, despite everything, it's appropriate that the Doctor has to resolve the confusion and clear up the mystery by revealing himself as an alien, and offering demonstrable proof. The Doctor's choice of costume, a harlequin clown, is possibly also of significance - clowns turning the social order upside down, but paradoxically reinforcing it.

It's not, that said, a very serious episode: it centres around a fancy dress ball, and while that allows for a number of games with identity, some more serious than others, the air of frothy nonsense is never far away. The cricket scenes are fun, as long as you like cricket - incidentally, surely some of the Doctor's confusion at being complimented on an innings 'worthy of the Master' was that you might more obviously have referred to WG Grace as 'the (other) Doctor?' The murder mystery is patched together out of Gothic tropes - there's quite a lot of "Jane Eyre" in it, with a tiny bit of "The Phantom of the Opera" (or maybe "King Kong"?).

All in all: I enjoyed it; it's not one of the Best Episodes of Who Ever, but it's a solid, enjoyable bit of work. Some people might find the pacing slow in the first half, but I rather liked it, and it's nice to see the big Tardis crew teasing each other - and Tegan being cheerful and enjoying herself...

Also, watching this made me very sad that Peter Davison never played Peter Wimsey, particularly "Murder Must Advertise" - it would have been so nice to have someone playing Peter who looked convincing as a cricketer and not fat and middle aged in a harlequin costume...

Comments

[breathingbooks.livejournal.com]

Your icon has just done more than any explanation or novel to make sense of Peter Wimsey for me. O_o

[tree_and_leaf]

It's actually Peter Davison's Doctor, but he does look ridiculously Wimsey-ish (well, probably Wimsey's hair was less floppy, but still).

[owl]

And PBDW would never wear celery as a decorative vegetable. But I do wish that we could have seen what Davison would have made of Wimsey.

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, true. Probably not even when frightfully bored or detecting something, although he did go to some lengths in the latter cause....

[owl]

There are some things you cannot ask a man to do.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Black Orchid has always been a favourite of mine. I argue that it isn't a 'historical' in the usual sense - there is no attempt to present an unfamiliar society, or dramatise an angle on an historical event, in the way that the series managed in the 1960s, but instead offers a period pastiche using elements with which the audience might be familiar from other television series, or, arguably, prepping the younger end of the audience for the costume dramas they might be watching in future (or which the producer really wanted to be working on...) Neverthless, it and The Visitation emphasised that this was a series about travelling in time again, and Black Orchid is far much more about people than The Visitation is, which is welcome - most of the human beings in the seventeenth-century story don't even have names.

Black Orchid (and where did you get it for £3?!) might be slow, but it builds up suspense very well, partly because the audience is placed among those Gothic tropes and because in a 1980s Doctor Who context we expect them to lead to something unearthly. Instead we have a 1920s version of the 'Beast of Glamis', where the disabled elder son of the earl of Strathmore and Kinghorn was declared dead but otherwise hidden in the house. [I'm not sure whether falsely requesting a writ of summons to the Lords is a crime, though if Charles Cranleigh had taken his seat in the Lords during his brother's lifetime this in law at the time, would have created a new peerage anyway]. [ETA: Whatever, the Doctor is remarkably accommodating of the Cranleigh family's treatment of George - presumably he thinks that they have been punished enough.] As you say, the regulars are seen enjoying themselves - there's a case for its natural place being much earlier in the season, though it does set up Adric's frustration at the start of Earthshock fairly well too.

Further ETA: Some would argue that the Doctor showing various people the TARDIS was too easy; though I do hope stocks of psychic paper are running low too...

[tree_and_leaf]

HMV in Glasgow - I was surprised, but certainly not disposed to leave it on the shelf.

Whatever, the Doctor is remarkably accommodating of the Cranleigh family's treatment of George - presumably he thinks that they have been punished enough

Yes, true enough.

Some would argue that the Doctor showing various people the TARDIS was too easy; though I do hope stocks of psychic paper are running low too...

I hate the psychic paper - it feels like it was purely introduced for a cheap gag, and has stayed as a lazy storytelling device. As far as showing them the Tardis - well, yes, possibly; I sometimes felt that the story couldn't decide whether it was going to be a dark Gothic tragedy or a light period pastiche/ comedy of errors.

ETA: I'd forgotten about the Beast of Glamis, but you're right, that must be a source, too.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

it feels like it was purely introduced for a cheap gag, and has stayed as a lazy storytelling device.

A lot of what RTD has introduced into Doctor Who is the sort of thing he might have thought was really clever when he was eight. At the start, the psychic paper seemed like an affectionate tribute to a particular strand of Doctor Who beloved of a lot of the old fan elite, the late 1970s Doctor of endless resourcefulness and superhuman powers, explicitly described in the writers' guide as a 'superman'. This was changed in the 1980 writers' guide by Chris Bidmead to 'not a superman', and it's this version we see in Black Orchid, in some ways for the better.

Showing people the interior of the TARDIS as a way of gaining their trust, or just getting them out of a difficult situation in a manner which had once been against Doctor Who's rules of storytelling, became an over-used feature after Black Orchid - though it was prefigured by the capture of the TARDIS by the Outlers in Full Circle.

[shoebox2.livejournal.com]

He did - as you probably know, but just in case - play Albert Campion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campion_(TV_series)) for a couple of seasons, and the results (at least in the ep I saw) were splendid.

Not sure if he'd have the overall presence to play Lord Peter, but I wouldn't at all mind seeing him try.

[tree_and_leaf]

I think he could have pulled it off. (I know he's been Campion, but I've never actually seen any of them).

[sally_maria]

I still have fond memories of this one, from the first season when I was really taking notice of Doctor Who. Though it was ages before I saw the second episode - no video recorders in those days, just self-sacrificing parents who watched and recounted the Tuesday showings when I was out at Brownies. :-)

[tree_and_leaf]

Ah, far off days indeed. Though my parents still haven't got a VCR. Nor are they likely to, since their telly is still black and white and has to be tuned by hand (though they do watch DVDs and the iPlayer on the computer...)

[rivrea.livejournal.com]

it would have been so nice to have someone playing Peter who looked convincing as a cricketer and not fat and middle aged in a harlequin costume...

Good point. I have never seen any adaptation of Murder Must Advertise, but every time I read the novel, I wonder how on Earth the harlequin scenes could be translated on the screen. For some reason, this always reminds me of the "Rochester-crossdresses-as-a-fortune-telling-gypsywoman" chapter in Jane Eyre...

[tree_and_leaf]

I almost think PD could have pulled them off (particularly if it was made clear that Diane was strung out at the time, and therefore susceptible). Though the fountain scene is probably past praying for.

The harlequin works all right on the radio, but while Ian Carmichael has the right sort of voice, he's just far too old and creaky.