N.B. there might (or might not) be spoilers in this article!

Courtesy of The Caves of Androzani, I know where I was at around seven o’clock on 16th March 1984 — on a trip back to the UK, visiting my grandparents, sitting in their dining room, whilst Doctor Who was on TV in the other room.

To this day, I don’t know why I wasn’t watching it. I remember a cousin or maybe an aunt saying it was on TV — that this was the episode in which the Doctor would regenerate — and yet I think I barely shrugged at this information. Why this was so, when only a year or so before I had still been an avid viewer, will always remain a mystery to me. I must have changed a lot between the ages of 9 and 10.

But then, my ambivalence towards The Caves of Androzani continued even when I did become a fan again in the early 90’s. This was the one of the first stories I watched on VHS — it may even have been the first. I don’t really remember being impressed. Again, I don’t know why.

When I revisited it — possibly in the winter of ’93 when it was repeated on BBC2 — I began to see just how good it was and by now (although it’s probably over fifteen years since I’d previously watched it) I’ve come to regard it as one of the very best Doctor Who stories.

The Caves of Androzani — let’s just say it’s a grower!

“Feels different this time.”

The Doctor, The Caves of Androzani: Part Four

We’ve since glimpses of this type of story before. Even limiting our comparison to Fifth Doctor tales, if not quite the same style of direction Earthshock had elements of the pacier approach to story-telling and two stories previously Resurrection of the Daleks had upped the level of violence seen on-screen, but neither of those stories had married those attributes to quite such an adult (for want of better word) storyline. The drug- and gun-running alone would be enough to life the story into that bracket.

“I am mad.”

Jek, The Caves of Androzani: Part Three

Sharaz Jek’s pursuit and keeping hostage of Peri is also genuinely disturbing. There’s been objectification of women in Doctor Who before — of course there has. Attractive female companions “for the Dads” seemed to be a casting criterion, particular once the show reached the 70’s. Sometimes it even made it to the screen, however innocent it might seem UNIT’s Sergeant Peters asking if they could keep Zoe on because ‘she’s much prettier than a computer’ or Mike Yates thinking Chin Lee was ‘quite a dolly’. But in The Caves of Androzani, it is, as Tony Stark might say, front and centre. Jek covets Peri for her beauty. Having lost his own looks, thanks to Morgus, it becomes an obsession for him

My son commented that in the stories he’s seen Peri often seems to be helpless. I’m not going to pre-empt my judgment of her journeys with the Sixth Doctor — mainly because I’ve not seem them recently — but I suspect he’s correct. Here at least, the obsession with Peri’s looks is essential to the plot. I’m not giving it a pass; it’s still disconcerting — but Robert Holmes at least made a fixation on beauty an essential part of Jek’s character.

But there’s no getting away from the idea that the abduction and imprisonment of a woman based on a man’s attraction and desire to keep her near is a strong theme for what was and is at heart a children’s programme.

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There’s not a weak performance here. Whether it’s in the mannered conferences between Chellak and Salateen (the android version at least), Morgus’s fourth-walling breaking, Stotz’s charismatic grit, Jek’s creepy obsession and Peri’s having to deal with it — they’re all played perfectly. And better than all of them is Peter Davison as the Doctor, genuinely saving the best for the last in an astonishing swansong performance.

“I’m not going to let you stop me now!”

The Doctor, The Caves of Androzani: Part Three

For me The Caves of Androzani has the best of the Doctor’s regenerations, not only because it seems the most noble, but also because the Doctor is doomed from the moment Peri falls into the Spectrox nest, despite telling her rather airily that ‘it’s probably quite harmless’. With the possible exception of the ailing First Doctor, there was always the possibility that the Doctor might survive his previous regeneration stories — that’s it only in the final episode that the catastrophic circumstances come together.

In The Caves of Androzani, the Doctor’s death is inevitable almost from the off. Curiosity indeed has always been his downfall.