The Caves of Androzani Part Two

The one where the Doctor and Peri discover they have two days to live...

For years I felt that the style of The Caves of Androzani reminded me of something else I'd seen, but I was never able to identify it until this latest viewing. The wonderful politicking that goes on at the top of this episode between Morgus and the President - the knowing comments, the snarky back-and-forth - is like the House of Cards political thrillers written by Michael Dobbs, and which were soonafter adapted into a trilogy of TV mini-series by screenwriter Andrew Davies, producer Ken Riddington and director Paul "Graff Vynda-K" Seed. The way in which House of Cards' Francis Urquhart conspiratorially turned to camera to confide in the viewer is exactly the same as what Morgus does here. Yet The Caves of Androzani made it to screen more than five years before House of Cards...

The majority of this second episode is spent in Sharaz Jek's lair, where the Doctor and Peri get to know their new captor better. Yes, our heroes are still very much alive, not riddled with bullets and bleeding out on the floor of the cave as we were led to believe. Their saviour was Jek, a brilliant android engineer, who somehow managed to create lifelike android duplicates of the Doctor and Peri in super-fast time, replacing the real couple with the copies so that the robots could be executed and the real ones saved.

But why, I hear you ask. Well, it seems Sharaz Jek has a bit of a crush on Perpugilliam Brown, her impish, bosomed, bob-headed allure managing to captivate the crazed scientist enough to spur him into an emergency rescue. You see, because Jek is disfigured (and we'll return to that fact) he sees the beautiful Peri as an antidote, a balm for his soul. He wants to spend the rest of his life with Peri, and intends to make her live forever using the restorative properties of spectrox. So far, so creepy.

Jek's fascination with Peri means he shows a distinct disinterest in the Doctor, and the Doctor is not used to being overlooked (particularly by scientists). Peri's beauty beats his intellect, and the Doctor continually struggles to be seen or taken seriously by Jek. The camera moves and character choreography in these extended scenes are wonderfully executed as Jek and the Doctor circle one another, the former constantly trying to get closer to Peri as the latter relentlessly tries to keep a distance between them. You can see how creeped out Peri is by Jek's attentions in a great performance from Nicola Bryant.

The details of these exchanges are a joy, such as the Doctor goading Jek with his flippant mention of picnics, nature walks and jolly evenings round the camp fire. "Don't mock me, Doctor. Beauty I must have, but you are dispensable," warns Jek. "Thank you," replies the Doctor, flatly. There's plenty of shots of the Doctor facing off against Jek, eye to eye, just one example of how director Graeme Harper continually looks for new and different ways to present otherwise quite routine scenes (boring old dialogue scene? I'll shoot it between a character's legs!).

"You have the mouth of a prattling jackanapes," sneers Jek, who proves a threatening presence throughout, as if he could explode with anger at any point. Gable gives good "seethe". Both Peter Davison and Christopher Gable riff off each other beautifully, and it's a privilege to see two fine actors creating magic on screen. It's sheer alchemy how good actors, when given the space and opportunity, can make an exchange of lines so magnetic. Gable's doing it all with body language and voice, but Davison gives one of his best turns as the Doctor, portraying his steel as well as his recognition of the danger they're in.

Peri wonders why Jek wears his mask. "You want to know why?" interjects Jek, emerging from the darkness. "You, with your fair skin and features, you want to see the face under here? DO YOU?" Gable roars these last two words so loudly that Peri jumps with fear into the Doctor's arms (and me with her!).

The scene where Jek explains how he came to be disfigured, the reason for his hatred of Morgus, is compellingly played and directed. Gable keeps an even tone, with an undercurrent of anguish, as he recalls being betrayed by Morgus, and having to cower from the mudbursts in a baking chamber. "Scalded near to death," he says. "The flesh boiled, hanging from the bone, but I survived." Robert Holmes paints a vividly graphic picture of the incident in so few words, it's horrifying. The DVD is rated PG by the BBFC, but that description alone rates it a 15 in my imagination!

The Doctor and Peri also discover that they're dying. When Peri pointlessly tumbled into that "large fuzzy, sticky ball", it was actually a spectrox nest, the product of the colony of bats that live in the cave system. Salateen - the real Salateen, not the starey-eyed android duplicate masquerading as him under Chellak's command - finds it very amusing that the Doctor and Peri are dying. He diagnoses spectrox toxaemia, a condition which starts as a rash and spasms, turns to cramps, then develops into a slow paralysis of the thoracic spinal nerve, then TDP - thermal death point. Our heroes have just two days to live, which is rather inconvenient seeing as Jek wants to spend the rest of his spectrox-enhanced life with Peri. Spectrox toxaemia is similar to mustard nitrogen, which as well as being used in chemical warfare was also an element in early chemotherapy techniques to treat cancer, which goes to show how deadly spectrox is.

Their only hope is the antidote, the milk of a queen bat, but Salateen reckons all the bats will have either been killed by the androids, or fled to the lower reaches of the caves to die. Faced with a ticking clock, the Doctor refuses to give up, ingeniously getting past the android guard by correctly assuming it wouldn't shoot at him as he isn't human. The plan is to get back to the TARDIS to get oxygen supplies before plunging into the depths of the caves in search of a queen bat's teat.

Unfortunately on the way the Doctor, Peri and Salateen are disturbed by another android, and as Salateen kidnaps Peri, the Doctor is menaced by a ferocious magma beast. The monster costume is a beautiful work of art, but it looks like something that Ray Harryhausen should be animating in stop-motion, not a convincing creature in itself.

First broadcast: March 9th, 1984

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Peter Davison and Christopher Gable bouncing off each other thanks to Robert Holmes's superb writing.
The Bad: That monster (it's not bad as such, it just lets the episode down).
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

NEXT TIME: Part Three...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Three; Part Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

The Caves of Androzani is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Caves-Androzani-DVD/dp/B00005B2T7