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...
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regna
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Date: 2009-01-17 01:53 pm (UTC)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...