The Caves of Androzani [TV/1984.3.8 ~ 3.16]

★★★★★

  It's almost too easy to give The Caves of Androzani full marks, isn't it? Nonetheless, I have to be honest with myself at all times and dish out the very original, very controversial opinion that this is practically a flawless serial bursting at the seams with relentless morbid fun, twisted humour and an unstoppable momentum towards the Fifth Doctor's time to regenerate. Even talking about it in length feels to me like a daunting task because... it's one of the most praised Dr. Who adventures of them all. There are thousands of essays online waxing lyrical about every choice the production team's made for it, many more call it both Peter Davison and Nicola Bryant's finest performances, and one or two annoying people decide to use it to rag on the Sixth Doctor's tenure for no real reason. It's with a heavy heart, then, that I report that I feel very much the same with general wisdom; Caves is a masterpiece, through and through.

  Graeme Harper's hands-on direction works wonders with such an intense script by the late great Robert Holmes. Holmes proves that he's shockingly adept at adapting to each distinct TV era's tone (or the tone the script editor asked for), which really shouldn't be a surprise given that he started writing for the Second Doctor all those years ago. Bringing this script -- with its Shakespearean soliloquies and grim, dark subject matter involving corporate sabotage, abuse of political power and mercenary violence -- to life is Harper, who's a fantastic director who employs a bunch of techniques you'd usually expect to see on a film to his handling of Dr. Who material. The result is truly next-level stuff, as every sequence is staged and blocked with care and precision, and the handheld segments bring a level of intimacy that synergises well with the relentless story. 

  Really, I could go on and on, but truth be told, there have been so many reviews before this one that tell you exactly why people have loved it for so long and why it manages to capture the hearts of new viewers every time. It's exciting, genuinely poignant as a journey undertaken by the Doctor to save his friend from death (therefore signing his own death warrant), and breathtakingly nasty. It feels like a shady video you're not supposed to watch, but one that you can't help but watching to the very end because it's that amazing, that indulgent in what you always wanted from a show like Dr. Who: a Phantom of the Opera pastiche of a villain, fourth wall breaks, and a Magma Beast who is very gorgeous to me. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff, really.