Survival

 

Three Episodes

Aired between 22nd November 1989 and 6th December 1989

Written by Rona Munro

Produced by John Nathan-Turner

Directed by Alan Wareing

Synopsis

The TARDIS lands in Perivale, home of Ace. They've come here because she wanted to catch up with her friends, but it turns out the further the go into the village, the more they find that people have been going missing.

Originally fearing that he would be bored, the Doctor soon latches onto the behaviours of a peculiar black cat that follows them around. 

He believes it is hunting like a jungle cat and becomes preoccupied with it's motives, even going so far as to buy some cat food from the corner shop to try and entice it closer so he can have a look.

Unknown to him, the cat is somehow controlled by a shadowy figure. It does indeed stalk humans, and selects victims intelligently, then as it attacks them, they disappear. This is the source of the missing people in the area.

Ace meanwhile cannot find her friends around, not even at the youth club where self defence classes are being run on a Sunday by a Sgt Patterson. She finds one solitary friend who say's with few exceptions, they've all disappeared. Ace wanders up to Horsenden hill, expecting to find them mucking about up there, but they're gone. As she sits at the playground, the black cat approaches her and suddenly, after a big flash of light, there is a humanoid Cheetah warrior, mounted on a horse. The Cheetah person chases Ace and teleports her to another planet.

The Doctor continues to try ensnaring the cat, but is thought to be a public nuisance, and Sgt Patterson, part of the local neighbourhood watch is sent to deal with him. 

Patterson tackles the Doctor, just as he's about to catch the cat, and they teleport to the strange planet also. It's a desolate place, with a blood red sky and filled with human bones. 

The pair wander for a short while and find a village of the Cheetah people. 

Within one of it's tents resides the person behind the abductions - The Master. He has somehow adopted animal characteristics, having now got yellow eyes and fangs. He explains that it's the effect of the planet they've been transported to - it has a "bewitching" effect. 

He says that the people who once ruled this planet had a mighty empire, but degenerated into animals and lost it all. At the moment, once you are on the planet, you cannot leave. Only the Cheetah people can do that. He found a way to tame them to his bidding by allowing them to hunt on Earth via the cat creating a dimensional bridge. 

The Master asks the Doctor to help him find a way off the planet. 

Ace meanwhile finds out what's happened to her friends. She meets Sheela and Midge, who are hiding and surviving in these wilds with a guy from the town called Derek. 

They are apprehensive about attacking the Cheetah people to get the upper hand and their attempts to capture one fails. They do say the Cheetah's are not violent unless you run though or they're hungry. They love to hunt.

Ace convinces the group to move out and they soon find the Doctor and Patterson who grabbed a horse and ran away from the Master's village. The Doctor is in the midst of explaining everything when a Milkman is teleported to the local site. He is obviously panicked and runs, prompting the  Cheetah's to hunt him and kill him. The others run and / or fight despite the Doctor yelling at them to stop. 

The group are separated and Ace manages to wound one of them. Midge on the other hand, finds an injured one and kills it, awakening the hunting instinct within himself and turning more animal-like.

Ace finds the wounded Cheetah, but unlike Midge, does not kill it. She finds out it's name is Karra, and tends its wounds instead before going off to find the group.

Once back together, the Doctor explains that the only way off the planet is for one of them to turn into a Cheetah person, because it will give them the ability to teleport. They can then use this to get back before the victim is fully transformed. It's not a prospect the Doctor wants to see at all though. 

The group do witness this however, as the Master finds and subjugates Midge who is animalistic. 

He uses Midge to transport him back to Earth and expects the Doctor and the rest to rot on the planet.

They fear the worst, but when Karra returns, recovered from her wounds, Ace is seen to have developed an affinity with her, and now has yellow eyes herself. 

She abandons the group to go hunting with Kara, but the Doctor finds her and convinces her to come back. She agrees to use her newfound Cheetah powers to teleport them all back to Earth. Sheela and Derek are both elated to be back and run off to their families. Sgt Patterson however cannot accept what he's been through and dismisses it as a crazy dream before going off back to the youth club and his defence classes.

Ace wants to go home, but the Doctor says they still have to deal with Midge and the Master. They ultimately track them down to the defence classes, where the Master has used Midge to enslave all the students and kill Patterson as he retuned there. 

From the club, they go to Horsenden Hill, where the Master has set up a final showdown with the Doctor. 

The Doctor gets on a motorbike and goes head to head with Midge, playing chicken.

The bikes collide and explode, injuring Midge badly. The other students, now half-Cheetah, kill Midge as the weakest link. 

Things look bad for Ace, but Kara turn up and starts killing students. The Master fatally wounds her and she turns back into a human woman. Other Cheetah's turn up and take her back to her home planet.

The Doctor is alive, but the Master has fled. He runs back to the TARDIS, finding the Master trying to pick the lock. 

They fight and the Master, now losing control to his hunting instincts, teleports them back to the Cheetah planet. They fight on the ground as the planet rages around them, the endless violence causing it to self-destruct. The Doctor also begins to succumb to the hunting energy, but in a final moment of clarity, rejects the urge to bash the Master's head in with a skull, declaring that "if we fight like animals, we'll die like animals!". 

The Master however rejects the notion, gets the upper hand and is about to hit the Doctor. The Doctor teleports away back to Earth as the Cheetah planet destroys itself, leaving the Master behind.

Having returned to Earth, the Doctor goes back to Horsenden hill and finds Ace there, her Cheetah powers having left her thanks to the world blowing up. He comforts her saying Kara will be part of her forever, but she can move on. 

Ace asks about the Master, but the Doctor says "who knows". He asks her where she wants to go now, and she tells him she'd like to go home, hinting that the TARDIS is now her home.

The Doctor smiles and as they walk off into the sunset, he ponders that "there are worlds out there where the sky is burning, the seas sleep and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere, there's danger, somewhere, there's injustice, and somewhere, the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to do!" 

Together, they walk off into the sunset, back to the TARDIS for another adventure.

Trivia

• The author of this story was recruited from a BBC writers workshop. The original title she came up for this story was cat-flap. Whilst taken in an abstract concept, it makes logical sense (time portals for cats to go through) it was felt to be a bit crap so it was changed, first to "Survival of the Fittest", then just "Survival"

• The show had two guest stars - comedy duo Hale and pace as the shopkeepers

• This was one of the few stories in Doctor Who to be shot totally on location

• The famous stunt performer Eddie Kidd did the motorbike crash scene. Eventually, he would move on to jumping busses on a bike

• The location filming was so hot, it was unbearable for the cast wearing normal clothing. In between takes, they'd strip down to summer wear and sun bathe. Imagine how hot the Cheetah People actors were! Not surprising then, that one of the Cheetah extras stripped off to their underwear and walked off the set, never to be seen again

• The original script had the Doctor and the Master returning from the cat planet during their battle. As part of this, the Master was to say that the Doctor had evolved beyond being a Time Lord. John Nathan-Turner felt this was too explicit and at odds with what had been revealed before about him

• The yellow contact lenses back then were really painful to wear and made the cast's eyes run

• The closing remarks were hastily written by Script Editor Andrew Cartmel when they knew that show was cancelled

• We know that the BBC higher ups had despised the show for a long time. However, as the show had escaped before, the cancellation was supposed to be just a postponement for a year or two, but ended up going on longer. Either that, or that was the pill that was given to the production crew to make it easier to swallow. Regardless, this was the last full length Doctor Who story to be filmed in England and shown on British TV until 2004, ending it's original, continuous 26 year reign. We don't talk about "Dimensions in Time" as a serious episode, as it was spliced together with East Enders and is more a lame comedy than anything else.

The Review

So this is it. The last of the classic era episodes. Survival perhaps earns a sense of nostalgia because of that and many would see it as special and maybe give it more kudos than it deserves.  

On the positive, it is a pleasant return to some of my favourite tropes, such as setting a fantastical story in the suburban Britain of the day, a time we've not fully seen since Resurrection of the Daleks, or The Android Invasion. The concept of the sidekick almost being possessed and taken over by primal urges is pretty good too. Despite Rona's original thoughts of the Cheetah people being like us, just with yellow eyes and fangs, I personally think they did an okay job with the monsters this time. Yes, it's likely the faux fur that kids play with that forms the costumes, but if you're modelling a monster on a Cheetah, these look pretty spot on. 

The disappointment therefore comes in the sloppy execution of the concept once more. The fact that the Master is trapped on the planet is alright, but there's no real.. good reason why he's there, or why he's still messing around once he's escaped the Cheetah planet. He just hangs around, ready to be beaten. The crap with Midge is just awfully executed, and the ending is ... meh.  If you watch it in sequence too, yet another story about Ace so close together has me yawning. 

I guess when it comes down to it, the ideas the story plays with - survival of the fittest, and fighting the urge to be primal and savage are all good basis for stories about personal struggle, and whilst the show is in the Cheetah planet, it handles them well. It just all falls apart towards the end when it matters most, by half hearted efforts to spin it out for another 24 mins and to put a named villain in it for the sake of it.  Survival is worth a watch, but as I said at the start, probably more for nostalgia reasons than anything else.

Rating

5 out of 10

Re-Watchability Factor

5 out of 10 

Watch this if you liked...

• Inferno

• The Time Warrior

• New Earth (Doctor Who, Series 1)

• Gridlock (Doctor Who, Series 3)