The A-Z of Classic Who | Enlightenment: The Sad Tale of Unforeseeably Bad Casting Choices

The problem with doing these in alphabetical rather than chronological order is that occasional we end up doing the last story of a trilogy first. It's already happened once with Castrovalva and here we are again. It's therefore lucky that in the Black Guardian Trilogy, both the titular guardian and his white counterpart are basically useless to the plots of all three stories. This doesn't exactly do wonders for their plots, but it means that they can be watched individually fairly easily. 

Happily, Enlightenment has more than enough to enjoy on its own. The plot is a unique and fascinating one with some great concepts and interesting twists along the way. It's not perfect, but the good does outweigh the small amount of bad to make it a thoroughly enjoyable outing.

I have to admit that I've found it quite difficult to write about this story, because its concepts are so complex its difficult to know where to start. It's piss easy to write a bunch of zingers about Black Orchid or Dragonfire or even talk about how great City of Death is, but Enlightenment? Yikes.

Turlough was finding it quite difficult to think of anything to write as well

So I suppose I'll break the story down into its components and see how they all stack up. Like how we were taught to do division in primary school. That I can't remember how to do division by that method shouldn't be an issue.

First of all, there's the plot. It revolves around the near-omnipotent Eternals, who are so advanced and godlike they look down on the Doctor and the Time Lords like I look down on NuWho fans. Because of the budget they want to experience human culture and customs, they have decided to take on the appearance of sailing crews throughout Earth's history, in order to race for the grand prize: Enlightenment itself.

On appearances, this is a fascinating idea and it almost entirely translates down to the screen. The Eternals are strange beings whose abilities are kept deliberately vague. Their behaviour shows glimpses of humanity, but never much - the sole exception being the Eternal who weirdly falls in love with Tegan. Maybe he enjoys being talked to death.

The vagueness surrounding the Eternals themselves is a strength of the story, and although the relationship between the Black and White Guardians, the custodians of Enlightenment as it turns out, and the Eternals is a little too vague, the mystery and oddness of it ends up giving the story a strong concept to work off.

The Black Guardian could be rather demanding of Turlough at times

The character work in this story is a little more of a mixed bag. The Doctor actually has a very strong story: in contrast with many of this Doctor's outings where he just sort of feebly gives up, there's always teh sense of he is resisting the Eternals and their machinations, and that he disapproves of it far more than he's letting on to Tegan, Turlough or the audience. His standing his ground gives him a solid base to work off and Peter Davison does wonders with it.

Tegan is, of course, Tegan, so you know what you're going to get before the story even begins, but the moments with the Eternal in love with her are actually rather good and give her character a bit of depth. Turlough is an annoying little shit, but as he's obviously meant to be, I'm not sure how much I can fault the story for that.

The Eternals themselves are played well - they seem to have glimpses of the humanity that should come with the form they take, but they are otherwise aloof and distant, particularly concerning the humans on their ships. This, of course, makes the single one who gets the hots for Tegan an all the more interesting character because of how different he is from his fellow Eternals who couldn't give a crap.

Then, of course, there's Captain Wrack, who is a ridiculously over-the-top villain in a story where it just isn't really needed, and unfortunately it does hurt the second half of the story. It's difficult to conflate the cold, distant Eternals on the ship the TARDIS lands on with this cackling meglomaniac who displays the emotions of, well, a human.

It also really doesn't help that she's played by Lynda Baron, who the astute ones among you might notice is the same actress who 15 years later played Auntie Mabel on the children's TV program Come Outside, which, for me at least, washes away any kind of credibility the character might have, and it's just impossible to take her seriously - yes, obviously they couldn't have known (hence the title of this post), but I can't just ignore it, given I'm half expecting her to jump into a spotty plane after finishing battling the Doctor. Baron does a good job, don't get me wrong - without her performance the character would be godawful rather than just misjudged and out of tone with the rest of the story, but it means the last two episodes become a little more formulaic than the first two, and in a story resting so heavily on it's unique concepts, I can't say it doesn't hurt it at bit.

*captain jack's theme from pirates of the caribbean plays softly in the background*

Finally, let's look at the actual making of the story, and this is where its at it's best. The atmopshere is wonderful, the set design is fantastic, the music is great and the special effects are incredible - it's a rare case where Classic Who effects can hold up today. I'd argue they look a hell of a lot better than the laughably dated CGI from the first few seasons of NuWho. It looks, sounds and feels great, which helps the story through its rough patches.

The Black and White Guardians were amazed to see their bong had started glowing

Eventually, of course, the story must catch up with the Black and White Guardians. They are as boring as it is humanly possible to be, and while the character stuff with Turlough is ok, it feels like a tacked on, kind of boring and pointless, ending to a story that was fine as it is. The overarching story plots of this era of Doctor Who were never well advised. Come to think of it, have any overarching story plots of Doctor Who been well advised?

So, that's Enlightenment. A high concept story with some fascinating ideas, that falters in a few places, but ends up being success. I hope I don't run into any more stories that I find as difficult to write about as this one, because this is going to be a rough alphabetical journey otherwise. Happily, this is a story that more than makes up for my inability to talk about it - I don't think it's a masterpiece or anything, but it's definitely in the top 5 Davison TV stories. Higher praise was never spoken.

Final Score: 8/10. Debated between a 7 and 8, but settled on the higher score because of how brilliant it looks, sounds and feels easily making up for whatever small blunders there are with the story. A strong, if imperfect, story.

Next Episode: Four To Doomsday