Classic Doctor Who went out not with a bang but with a cat. The Doctor takes Ace home to Perivale, where her old mates are being snatched off the street by a planet of Cheetah People, the Master is holding conversations with a cat, and the fate of two worlds comes down to a motorbike joust in a quarry. Survival is Rona Munro's three-part fable about primal violence versus self-control, and it might also be an off-Broadway production of Cats, in which Sylvester McCoy takes an undignified tumble, Anthony Ainley dons yellow contact lenses, and the Doctor delivers the "tea's getting cold" speech that closed 26 years of television. So is the last story of the original run a thoughtful send-off, a half-finished masterpiece, or an unintentional parody of itself?
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Plot Summary
The Doctor takes Ace home to Perivale and finds that the Master has turned the neighbourhood into cat food.
Notable for:
The fourth and final serial of Season 26 and the last story of the classic series' original run; Doctor Who would not return as a regular series until Rose in 2005
Sylvester McCoy's last full story as the Doctor, Sophie Aldred's last regular appearance as Ace, and Anthony Ainley's final televised story as the Master
Script editor Andrew Cartmel wrote the Doctor's closing "tea's getting cold" monologue once it looked likely this would be the last episode for some time; McCoy recorded it on 23 November 1989, by coincidence the show's 26th anniversary
Lisa Bowerman's Doctor Who debut, as Karra; she later became better known as Bernice Summerfield
One of only five stories filmed entirely on location and one of three recorded completely on BBC Outside Broadcast video; locations included Perivale, Ace's hometown, and Warmwell Quarry in Dorset for the Cheetah Planet
Part one features comedy duo Hale and Pace, who swapped roles shortly before recording, and an eight-year-old Adele Silva in her first television role
The Master was not in Rona Munro's initial draft; John Nathan-Turner wanted at least one story in the season to feature a "name" villain
Working titles included Cat-Flap, Blood Hunt and The Survival
Last story to show the current Doctor's face in the title sequence until The Snowmen in 2012, and the final Doctor Who serial made in 25-minute episodes
Last televised adventure to use the TARDIS prop introduced in The Leisure Hive, and the final story recorded on analogue tape and broadcast from a videotape master
Pete commentary:
This is it! The final story of Classic Who. In many ways, the show ends with a whimper, but Survival arguably punches above its weight, for a few reasons:
It's written by Rona Munro, one of the few female writers at the time and explores some deep themes about violence.
It brings back Anthony Ainley as the Master (last seen in The Trial of a Time Lord), which gives the theme more punch and makes the story feel a little bigger than it otherwise might.
Sophie Aldred as Ace is fully formed, and she's at her best as a performer.
It's set and shot in modern-day Perivale, grounding the story and completing the Ace arc of Season 26.
No studio work gives the story some reality, but as is the case with late McCoy, it also often looks like it was shot in your mom's backyard. At least in this case they can make the excuse that it's intentional, but still.
Music has aspects of Westerns, another choice that, in another production, might not have seemed so self-aware.
The script is obviously about violence and primal instincts, and it actually feels about the right size. That is to say there are three acts, and three episodes, and I don't think there's enough story for a fourth.
That said, they still try to stuff too much into the story, particularly episode 3. Several story elements go too fast or are glossed over: not enough there in Midge's journey (too fast, too confusing what's going on with the motorbike showroom and the new clothes); I take Ace having yellow eyes but not teeth yet; novel fleshes out many of the connecting bits: Derek is murdered by the Master and Midge; Cheetah person takes Karra, in the novel Ace lights a funeral pyre; not quite clear enough that the Master is hypnotizing them.
Sylvester channeling his inner Bond: "So much for the SAS survival course." Sophie really tumbles off the bike. The motorbike joust is 100% ridiculous. Unclear that the Master picks up the tooth. Doctor with his butt up in the rubbish pile.
Karra transforming into human at the end feels out of nowhere, but it is interesting. The implication is that all the Cheetah people are former humans. Cheetah people all disappear? But not in the same way as the teleports from earlier. The Doctor's eyes change. The end is superb.
Ace vs. horse in ep 1: just stay there!
Those kitlings. Damn.
Is the Cheetah world a forest or a quarry? The episode can't decide.
The Master talking to cat has to be one of Ainley's funniest moments. Hold on, no—it's the howling.
There's an impressive lack of dialogue in places.
Ace and Cheetah person running in episode 3 is laugh-out-loud funny. Change the music to Jimmy Buffet and it's the best beach vacation ever.
"IF WE FIGHT LIKE ANIMALS, WE DIE LIKE ANIMALS!" Uh… yeah?
What did Pete's family think?
Grace really liked it, enjoying that it had a different feel than most Doctor Whos, and that Ace was very much at the center of it.
Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete
Why did the Randomizer take us here? I think there's a parallel here with Masque: In that case, it was a fork in the road for all of humanity—choose science and rationality or superstition and cults. Here the choice is for the individual: primal violence vs. calm and controlled discipline. As always, Doctor Who points us toward the light side.
What if the evil plot had succeeded? The Doctor gives in on the planet, kills the Master, and becomes a Cheetah person. Maybe he can escape, since he still might think of the TARDIS as his home long enough, but quickly succumbs to his primal urges and ends up using the TARDIS to begin his neverending hunt through time and space. He abandons Ace, since she's a constant reminder of the other path he could have took.
Where's the Clara splinter? She's the Cheetah person at the end who takes Karra away.
Rating: As with so many McCoy episodes, the ambition and ideas here are great, but the realities of the production—limited episodes, dollar-store budget, and limited time—mean it's a distorted, half-finished version of what it could have been. Some of the choices, particularly in the last episode, render the story an unintentional parody of itself. Pure Zarbi.
Chris commentary:
I thought the TARDIS didn't do Sundays?
They didn't know it was going to be the last story, not for another 16 years. Chris read the Doctor Who Magazine issues from the end of 1989 to 1992, when the BBC kept denying the show had stopped and put it out to tender to independent producers; Verity Lambert was a contender. The first episode of Survival went out on his 16th birthday, and he tuned out when Hale and Pace appeared.
Survival had so much potential: the notion of what home is, Ace a year gone and nobody asking where she was, the myths of women turning into felines that Rona Munro was reaching for. The editing focuses on the wrong things and leaves in too much that so obviously belonged on the cutting room floor: the motorbikes, the boy band in the gym, the Master talking to himself in the mirror, the evil musical sting on a poster for Cats. It's an off-Broadway production of Cats that turns into Starlight Express.
The tea's getting cold line reads like an American's pastiche of Doctor Who; a regeneration might have got the TV movie to Paul McGann a lot quicker.
Say something nice: the Doctor raising a skull over the Master is a dramatic image, violence won't solve anything is a very 1989 way to save the world, the Cheetah costumes were good enough to lodge in RTD's brain, and the episode two cliffhanger, Ace turning round with her eyes gone, is a proper chill. The last cliffhanger in classic Who turned out to be a nicely chilling one.
Four Questions to Doomsday - Chris
Why did the Randomizer take us here? The theme lately is men holding hands: the Doctor and Jamie in Tomb of the Cybermen, Paterson and Derek here ("what's your game?"). And it took us to the end of the classic series at the exact moment New Who is in the same spot: paused, nobody knows for how long, the BBC making the right noises as it did in 1989, when it put the show out to tender and only wanted it back when it could be sure of a success. Settle in, folks.
What if the evil plot had succeeded? Then all of life becomes a production of Cats. The last moment the plot could succeed is the Doctor killing the Master, so: the Doctor smashes the skull, the Master regenerates, and (per Pete) the Doctor becomes a Cheetah person and begins a never-ending hunt through time and space. Which might even have improved the TV movie: Sylvester McCoy with glowing eyes, halfway to cat, regenerating into a very cat-like Paul McGann. "I'm half cat on my mother's side."
Where's the Clara splinter? She's a Perivale resident keeping the lid on an incredibly newsworthy missing-persons case that in any realistic Britain would be all over the papers. Maybe she's bribing reporters. Maybe she's half cat person herself. And for the final confrontation she's distracted everyone with a fair, or she's inside the TARDIS holding the door switch in case the Master gets in.
Rating: My eyes are turning green and I feel like I could run forever, but I have to run away from rating this one. It's too tied up in my feelings about the McCoy era, the unforced errors, the production values, the garrotting of the theme tune. It wasn't really supposed to be the end, just a long hiatus, and for everyone who wrote in to Doctor Who Magazine as a true believer, giving it a bottom-rung rating would be laughing in their faces. A victim of circumstance. Fixed Point in Time.