Doctor Who XXIV.12-14: Dragonfire

[sir_guinglain]

Between sessions of evidence-gathering for the conference paper I'm delivering later in the week, I've been catching up on the Doctor Who DVD backlog with small doses of Dragonfire. I voted this top in the season polls in 1987, and can still see why, as there is a better-defined sense of threat in this story than in its three season 24 siblings, and a credible villain in Edward Peel's Kane. Realisation is still very erratic, though; I'd not appreciated how far the characters are dependent upon sharing the knowledge of the author and viewer about where the others are until reading Paul Scoones's production notes, for example. The making of... documentary at least gives the director freedom to admit that he didn't really pay attention to the logic of the story, hence the nonsensical visuals including the Doctor's pointless climb over a rail so he can dangle over a sheer drop at the end of part one, there being no sign of the ledge he was apparently trying to reach... There is a lot of inconsistency in the line delivery, too, especially from Sylvester McCoy who sometimes seems to need to work too hard on his Doctor. Sophie Aldred is great when having to confront Kane or his followers but at other times she seems to be under instruction to ham things up more - the dreaded children's programme sensibility mentioned by writer Ian Briggs and Chris Clough in the documentary, which was antipathetic to the spirit of Doctor Who but seen as a necessary part of the placation of hostile head of drama Jonathan Powell. A word of praise though for the everyman mercenaries McLuhan and Bazin, played by Stephanie Fayerman and Stuart Organ; their naturalistic playing of the 'ANT hunt' in part three is welcome amidst the histrionics elsewhere. Their deaths acquire power consequential upon their dogged determination to get their job done, despite having no particular pride or interest in the task in hand.