| rdfs:comment | - Kinda was the third story of season 19 of Doctor Who. It featured mainly Tegan and Adric alongside the Fifth Doctor. Narratively, it was an especially important story for Tegan, as it established a villain, the Mara, particularly interested in her. The Mara would later return to plague Tegan in other performed Doctor Who stories. (TV: Snakedance and AUDIO: The Cradle of the Snake) Kinda, however, was remarkable for reasons other than its reception.
|
| abstract | - Kinda was the third story of season 19 of Doctor Who. It featured mainly Tegan and Adric alongside the Fifth Doctor. Narratively, it was an especially important story for Tegan, as it established a villain, the Mara, particularly interested in her. The Mara would later return to plague Tegan in other performed Doctor Who stories. (TV: Snakedance and AUDIO: The Cradle of the Snake) In 1982, it was a serial that wasn't well liked amongst the Doctor Who fans who participated in the Doctor Who Monthly (later known as Doctor Who Magazine) season poll. It ranked dead last amongst the season's stories, although the Mara, Dukkha, Hindle, and Todd were all well liked enough to be runners-up in their respective "favourite character" categories (DWM 69). It has gradually seen its status rise over the years, and has vocal champions like Steven Moffat and Robert Shearman amongst the BBC Wales production team, and 2010s writer of DWM, Big Finish and BBC Books Jonathan Morris (DWM 474). In a larger poll done in 2009, respondents to DWM placed it 69th out of the then-200 Doctor Who stories that had been made — almost a full 60 positions higher than its sequel, Snakedance (DWM 413). A similar DWM poll in 2014 ranked it 63rd out of the 241 Doctor Who stories from the show's first fifty years and the second most popular season 19 story barring Earthshock (DWM 474). Whatever the fan opinion, Kinda was something contemporary British critics appreciated. The National Film Archive purchased it soon after its broadcast as "an example of the programme at its best" (DWM 104). Kinda, however, was remarkable for reasons other than its reception. Kinda was the first occasion since the show had started filming in colour that a companion was absent from the narrative for an entire episode. Generally, this happened in the monochromatic era because an actor needed to take a holiday from the nearly year-long production schedule that was then the norm. In this instance, however, Nyssa's absence was more akin to Jamie's in The Moonbase: the scripts had simply been completed by the writer before the new companion had been cast. Thus, just as Jamie McCrimmon was "ill" for large parts of The Moonbase, Nyssa fainted in episode 1 of Kinda and re-emerged after a restorative TARDIS nap in episode 4. Kinda was also responsible for a bit of a revolution in the way that Doctor Who was made. On the positive side, it featured some of the then-latest Quantel effects for the trip through Tegan's eye. On the negative, it was plagued by studio problems with camera flare that eroded the five-day studio schedule to the point that there was no time left for some of director Peter Grimwade's more innovative shots. The chief casualty was the depiction of the Mara's snake form in episode four. This was originally to have been achieved in a completely different manner, but the time crunch meant that Grimwade had to resort to a less-than-convincing puppet. Still, this disaster would allow the programme to push for, and get, a six-day recording block in future (DWM #104).
|
