Kinda
Written by Christopher Bailey
Directed by Peter Grimwade
Starring:
Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor
Janet Fielding as Tegan
Matther Waterhorse as Adric
There comes a time in everyone’s
life where they contemplate their own sanity. I most certainly stopped to think
if I was perhaps no longer countable among the sane, because I have fallen head
over heels for Kinda. Perhaps I’m a
bit crazy, but this adventure is one
of my favorite episodes in classic Doctor Who. Kinda, pronounced “kin-duh” rather than “kyne-duh,” is a fifth
Doctor story in the 19th season of Doctor Who, as well as Peter
Davison’s third story as the Doctor. Upon first hitting the airwaves on Febuary
9th, 1982, Kinda wasn’t received
well by Doctor Who fans; it was ranked in last place for the season by Who fans
in Doctor Who magazine #69. If you ask me, people at the time must have been
crazy themselves. Although maybe it was just ahead of its time, as it has risen
higher in ranking over the years (though if you ask me, not high enough).
The TARDIS is currently grounded on
the jungle planet Deva Loka, inhabited by the primitive Kinda. We join the crew
of Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric outside the TARDIS, where Adric is currently
destroying Nyssa at checkers. Nyssa, feeling ill, retires into the TARDIS to
rest; sadly, we don’t see her again until the end of story. What we’re left
with is a three person team of Adric, Tegan, and the Doctor. Shortly thereafter
they stumble upon an odd collection of glass wind chimes randomly hanging from
the jungle trees. After they fiddle around with them for a bit, Tegan decides
to plop herself down on the floor and take a small rest while Adric and the
Doctor go exploring a bit more. Suddenly, the Doctor and Adric stumble upon a
large blue box! Ah, wait a second; it’s not a box but some sort of robot that
looks like an easily destroyable box. Adric of course makes the mistake of
activating it, and lo and behold, the box is now “forcefully” escorting them
through the jungle to a large dome. The inhabitants of this dome are an
expedition team of three who purpose is to determine the planet’s suitability
for colonization. There used to be seven of them, but the others have gone
missing, which is always a bad sign in Who. If I were part of this team, I’d be
panicking and hiding under a desk somewhere. While the Doctor and Adric learn
what they can of their current predicament, Tegan lies by the wind chimes in
deep slumber while an evil force known as the Mara attempts to work itself
inside her mind. Shouldn’t the Doctor know better than to leave his female
companion sleeping in the jungle? Really, she could be mauled any second by a
random starving space leopard.
You know what’s great about Kinda? It doesn’t drag! A flaw I find in
a lot of classic Doctor Who is that the episodes drag on or have pointless scenes
in the middle that just bring down the experience. That doesn’t happen here,
though; something interesting is always going on, whether it’s Tegan being
harassed in her own mind or crazy members of an expedition team making a fake
city out of cardboard boxes with paper people. Yes, you read that right. At any
point in the story, something is always happening that not only keeps my
interest but sparks my need to not stop watching until it’s over.
On top of that, I feel this
particular adventure really helps focus on the fifth Doctor’s character,
separating him throughout the story constantly from his companions so we can
see him act on his own and take the lead. When he’s not on his own, he’s often interacting
with Adric one on one, taking on the different (for the Doctor) and
heartwarming persona of an older brother.
(On the note of Adric, I have a pet peeve that really isn’t related to
the overall story but to his outfit throughout nearly his entire run on Doctor
Who. In this adventure especially, the wonderful makeup and clothing job on
Tegan makes it glaringly obvious that Adric is still wearing his initial outfit
from his home planet Alzarius, even several episodes into his run. His outfit
looks to be a bunch of rags that was sewn together by a 1st year
fashion design major. I should know, because I was one! You’d think the Doctor would get some nicer
clothes for him after all this time traveling with the boy.)
By far my favorite parts in this
are the scenes where the Mara is trying to invade Tegan’s mind and force her to
give control of her body over to it. A dark void spreads throughout the
landscape of Tegan’s mind, giving off this faint, shadowy glow that gives her
mental invaders a haunting feel, as if I’ve stepped into the early days of a “Hellraiser”
film. It is as if she is dealing with apparitions straight from the bowels of
hell itself, with a faint, white, corpselike glow to their skin and red spittle
on their teeth that makes it seem as if they just bit down into a nice haunch
of bloody meat from a helpless victim. The scenes where these ghouls plague
Tegan’s minds with riddles and torture her with questions of her own existence are
genuinely creepy and fill you with a sense of helpless horror and disgust, as
though seeing a cat in a trash compactor about to be made into a kitty pancake.
The stark contrast between these scenes and the lush green planet they take
place on helps throw us off guard and presents us with the fact that something
dark and sinister is at work behind the scenes. The Mara is watching and
waiting in the shadows. It’s the creeping feeling in the back of your mind and
it’s about to make an incursion you won’t soon forget.
A large trend in Kinda is the theme of sanity, or rather,
the loss of sanity. The two males of the expedition party are a large focus of
this topic, as they both spiral down into crazy land as the story progresses. Second-in-Command
Officer Hindle is the first to begin his journey into insanity. At first he
simply seems to have held a coup of the dome at gunpoint. It is soon clear,
though, that his wits have left him as he becomes paranoid and his coup becomes
a full-scale plan to blow up the dome and incinerate a large portion of the
jungle, taking him and its native inhabitants with him. The commander of the
expedition, Sanders, is the other of these men to whom sanity soon finds itself
fleeting. (Sanders also sprouts a fetching mustachio that jockeys for your
attention, saying “I’m in charge! Don’t cross me or my human here!”) At first,
he appears to be physically and mentally strong, generally understanding, and
somewhat friendly, despite his gusto in being top cat in the dome. After a
short leave from the dome, though, he comes back to find Hindle has taken over.
Instead of fighting him for the position, he simply follows Hindle’s orders
like an obedient toddler. This sudden reversal in personality is only
believable with the brilliant acting of Richard Todd playing Sanders to such
great effect. Making matters worse for
everyone, Sanders is now compliant to Hindle's orders. In time during this
ordeal they have joined forces, not to blow things up or point guns around, but
to create a cardboard city along with paper people inhabitants as part of the
“colonization.” Quickly this story takes a drastic situation of dangerous
insanity and turns it into something to gawk at in amusement.
I viewed of Kinda using the 2011 released US DVD version, and because of this I
was able to see certain bits redone with new computer-generated graphics. I
also had the option of viewing it as it was originally broadcasted and took a
gander to see some of the major differences. The main difference was that the
Mara’s true form, a large snake, no longer looked like something you’d find in
a gift shop at a zoo run by a lesser version of the Muppets. The new, computer-generated
Mara was shockingly well done for a DVD release, looking better than some of
the monsters we see on Doctor Who today. It really adds to the last few scenes to
have the beautifully CGI-rendered snake, rather than the original thrashing
around like a limp smuppet. One thing I am glad they didn’t enhance with
computer graphics is the expedition party’s Total Survival Suit (TSS), or as I
called it earlier, the “boxlike robot”. The TSS is what was basically supposed
to pass for back then as a robotic suit with battle weapons attached for
defense purposes. It looks like a ridiculous, large, blue cardboard box,
complete with small nooks for weapons and a “battle” decal or two. In short it
looks ridiculous, and that’s what is so charming about it. A true testament to
80’s robot craftsmanship for sci-fi television shows. Not only is it quite delightful
to look at, but in a scene in the 4th act we are treated to it
trying to attack a few Kinda natives. This “attack” is rather amusing as the
box looks to be doing a party jig rather than causing them any harm. Perhaps
this TSS wasn’t made to kill with weapons but to dance hostiles to death in an
80’s-themed robot-human dance competition
In the end, Kinda is a remarkable Fifth Doctor story. I’d even go as far to say
I like it more than the critically praised Caves
of Androzani. Yes, you can gawk at me all you want, but I prefer it in
nearly every form to what is generally rated the #1 Doctor Who story currently.
Not only is this tale a fun adventure, but it’s gripping and sometimes
terrifying. I won’t ever forget Tegan’s dream scenes, which are just
beautifully portrayed and lead into perhaps the best introduction for a new
Doctor Who villain thus far in Who history. The Mara is no “flavor of the week”
Doctor Who villain; it shows up again in Snake
Dance and Cradle of the Snake, both
of which add even more development for the dark force and its victim, Tegan. Not
all of the Doctor’s companions are lucky enough to receive such attention to
their character development as they travel with the Doctor. If anything, I’d
love to see the Mara reintroduced into the current Doctor Who run and let
Steven Moffat have a go at it!
Rating: 5/5
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