The A-Z of Classic Who | Kinda: Shithead Gone Mad

Oh look, another Fifth Doctor story. John Nathan Turner's seeming allergy to the word 'The' during this era means that we'll be looking at quite a lot of his era during the early stages of The A-Z of Classic Who and this time we land on his middling first season - on the one hand, Earthshock, but on the other hand, Black Orchid. It's not all that helpful to place this story in its season though, because it's so utterly out of place with everything that surrounds it it's almost kind of baffling. But in a good way because this story works despite everything about it very loudly screaming that it shouldn't work at all.

Before we begin I'd like to quickly point out the practically ancient urban myth that this story (and its sequel in the following season Snakedance) were written by singer Kate Bush under a pseudonym. It's not true - apart from the utter absurdity of the idea of Kate Bush writing for Doctor Who, Christopher Bailey is definitely a real person - but it says volumes about this story that parts of fandom even considered it a possibility. It really is that trippy.

"Doctor, what's going on?"
"we banged the spliff init u get me"

That Kinda feels like an acid trip gone wrong is the very thing that makes it work as a story is I suspect by design rather than accident, but there's also a great deal that works in the conventional sense, i.e story, character, atmosphere, directing, rather than seeing every character in the piece slowly lose their minds. And a great deal that doesn't as well. Let's have a look shall we.

First of all, I'd like to address a serious negative with the story. Faced with John Nathan-Turner's three companions, Bailey decides that the most convenient way of getting around that headache is to essentially sideline two (and for quite a lot of it three) of them for the entire story. For two of them works (as we'll see), the other doesn't... yes, Bailey's grand plan to avoid having to write Nyssa into the story is for her to get a bit of a headache and spend the entire story lying down in the TARDIS. Yes, really.

This does, unfortunately, reek somewhat of laziness, as if Bailey finished writing the story having completely forgot about Nyssa and then going 'oh shit, yeah!", and I certainly blame JNT's ridiculous three companion edict, but as I said, it does reek of laziness. 

Luckily, when concerning the other two things are quite a bit better.

Tegan, as I believe we've seen (having already covered two of her three stories before this one), spent most of her early stories complaining and being a general nuisance in every conceivable way. Kinda therefore, is actually a fairly important story in her character development, taking her from 'fucking insufferable' to 'mouthy but dependable'. In this story, she starts by complaining at the Doctor... standard stuff right? She then gets possessed by a snake monster, experiences terrifying (for a BBC budget in the early eighties anyway) dream sequences and eventually forced to submit to being completely controlled by said snake monster. It's an important humbling moment for her - putting her in a genuinely shocking experience and it's clear it shakes her considerably. She of course goes back to complaining later in the story, to show us that she is still Tegan, but she's clearly been exhausted and emotionally affected by the experience, and it goes a long way to making her more trusting of the Doctor. It should also be noted this is the first time Janet Fielding was really allowed to display her acting skills and she does a very good job with what she's given here. Overall, it's a positive story for Tegan.

And then, of course, there's Adric.

Why hello Shithead. It's been a while.

Adric, of course, is a shithead, but Bailey takes the rare step of trying to turn Adric's shitheadness into a story strength. There's of course a certain irony in the fact that behaviour that is implied to be caused by the influence of the Mara is essentially how he always behaves, but his weaselling and cowardice serve the story by showing the influence of the Mara on someone we know and loathe, rather than just the supporting characters we've never seen in their right mind at all. There's also the question of whether it is the Mara's influence or whether he's just playing along with Hindle to save his own neck, at least at first, which is a nice bit of vagueness from the writer. His shitheadness also comes in useful for the Doctor, allowing him to gain Hindle's trust and almost free the Doctor. Almost being the operative word, this is Adric we're talking about so he's not actually still useful for anything.

Still, I think Kinda is probably the best story for Adric until Earthshock, and I think it says a lot that he spends quite a lot of it being a paranoid madman.

So, with three companions, Bailey puts one of them in the TARDIS for the whole story, puts one of them through nightmarish dream sequences and turns one of them mad. Not the most conventional approach but one that mostly works.

The supporting characters are a mixed bag but erring on the side of positive. Todd is a great character - intelligent and proactive, and clearly by some distance the most capable of the colonists. You could argue that she is basically just an older Nyssa, in terms of being scientifically capable and working well with the Doctor, and the cynical among you could question why Todd was created when Nyssa would have filled most of her role in the story, and yes, that is a legitimate criticism, but what saves it is that Todd is written as a believably capable character and Nerys Hughes has excellent chemistry with Peter Davison. 

Hindle is a character that does mostly fulfil his job, but unfortunately I don't think the way his character is written as half as clever as Bailey thinks it is. Simon Rouse does an excellent job of portraying Hindle's descent into utter unhinged lunacy, but Hindle really only comes across as a raving madman and doesn't really represent a great deal else, which I really don't think is how Bailey intended it to be. He's a good raving madman, but I do think most of that is down to Rouse rather than how he's written. He also does come across as the villain of the piece in a story where that's not really the point - apart from the fact he's clearly being controlled, there's not a great deal to redeem him and making him an obvious antagonist downplays the threat of the Mara. It may be to show that the Mara can corrupt anyone, but well, that works with Adric because we know him. We've never seen Hindle not insane and thus seeing him ranting and raving doesn't produce any contrast.

"My moustache needs regular exercise, you see"

Sanders is unfortunately even weaker. The character's only particular strong point is Richard Todd's strong performance, but otherwise he just spends the first episode or so coming off as a standoffish arsehole before descending into a rather timid form of madness. Hindle is supposed to be jealous of him, but apart from the fact he's the leader, Sanders doesn't really look like someone he'd have any reason to be jealous of. He's just a bit of a wasted character, especially as aside from provide a weak motivation for Hindle. Apart from the whole being possessed by a nightmare snake monster of course.

The natives are mostly mute, background characters which is unfortunate given some things I'll discuss later, and the ones who do have prominence, including the Mara's main posessee, Aris, are almost all dull and useless. The exception is Panna/Karuna, the wonderfully bitchy old woman who serves as the shaman of the tribe. Panna (the old version) is just a delight and her dismissal of the Doctor as an idiot is a rare moment of eighties Who comedy that is successful. Bailey also provides a very interesting twist by having Karuna, who we assumed was just a girl Panna was training, actually be a sort of younger version of Panna that accepts her spirit when she dies. Or something like that, it's kept kind of vague which I think works well. You get the idea but it isn't overexplained and helps with the mysterious and mythical atmopshere of the piece. Which is something else we'll get to. Right now as a matter of fact.

Panna was wondering when The A-Z of Classic Who would get to the point

Kinda's biggest strength is its atmosphere and tone. Right up until the very end, the threat of the Mara is kept very vague, which therefore gives Tegan's nightmare sequences or the descent into madness of Adric, Hindle and Sanders a dark and mysterious tone, banking on the fact the audience is unaware of what the threat truly is. It also helps that Tegan's nightmare sequences are wonderfully surreal and trippy, to make them even more unnerving and reinforcing how terrifying it is for her. 

Peter Grimwade, the director who would of course give us Earthshock a few stories later, does an excellent job with this story. The story is filmed in a way that keeps the threat tense when it needs to be, becomes exceptionally weird and unnerving when the threat needs to be more obvious. This is also complimented by the script that reveals details about the Mara at a very leisurely pace - it isn't until Part Two that we learn anything at all about it, and even from there its not until the end that is true nature is revealed. The story's creepy, unnerving and strange atmosphere is not only what sets it apart from the other, usually fairly formulaic stories of this era, it is a major reason it succeeds as a story. The script deals with weird, trippy things, but without a director who knew how to translate that, this would have failed miserably.

For instance

Unfortunately, the story's biggest weakness is that apart from its strengths regarding its unnerving weirdness, the way its written just isn't very strong, and the best way to look at this is the half-hearted attempt to put a colonialism metaphor into the story. Now, the colonists coming along and exploiting the locals is a pretty obvious sign of this, as is the visual metaphor of the British Empire-era hats the colonists wear, but where it falls flat is that it doesn't do any more than that. They're exploiting the locals, that's it. Nothing more interesting to say about it, just show that it happened and that's that. Literal Communist Malcolm Hulke would have slapped Bailey for his laziness in that regard if not for the small matter that he had been dead for over two years when this story came out. The message is also strongly undermined by the fact that the exploitation is being done mostly because of the influence of the Mara... so all the colonialists who went in and exploited and occasionally massacred native populations did so because they had a nasty snake in their minds. I mean, that's just a bit sick when put like that. There's more to political analogy than just showing it happen - you have to have something to say about it and Bailey just doesn't, and unfortunately it drags the story down. The strengths of the story are in the abstract and the myth, not in lazy analogies that go nowhere. 

The rest of the problems with the story aren't as egregious, but as I mentioned back in the characters bit, some of the supporting characters are pretty weak and their motivations not entirely clear. Also, while much of the vagueness surrounding the Mara and its effect on the characters contributes to the atmosphere of the story, some of it just doesn't make any sense, and unfortunately the eventual resolution, with everyone pointing mirrors at a giant rubber snake is a bit of a letdown.

But maybe that's not really the point. Judging Kinda on the fact that it doesn't have the strongest story or characters isn't fair, it's not what the story tries to do. It, through a combination of creating a vague, mythical villain and creating nightmarish and/or strange sequences, is a Doctor Who story like no other. Perhaps it's not really fair to judge it based on normal things I'd judge a story on, because, well, it's not really a normal story.

Such as

Well, kind of. If it wasn't for how well the threat of the Mara is built up, and how strange and unnerving much of the story can be and all that jazz, this would be scored much lower. But in the end, if some of the characters had been stronger, and if the clumsy colonialism analogy had been developed or just abandoned rather than shoved in where it wasn't necessary, it would also be much higher. This is an enjoyable story because of its unique approach to Doctor Who - but I can't help that thinking that unique approach would be complimented by a few script changes that just never came. Kinda is a success... but it could have been so much more.

That wasn't a reference to The End of Time by the way. I only reference good Doctor Who.

Final Score: 7/10. A clumsy attempt at political analogy, some weak character work and the lack of a few necessary script polishes that never came drag down the story from the greatness it could have achieved, but the excellent directing, well created threat of the Mara, the ballsy weirdness of it and the fact its generally just an enjoyable ride combine to make it a good Doctor Who story, albeit one that could have been great.

Next Episode: Logopolis