Survival

Dear Gary—

Ace: “Home.”

Doctor: “Home?”

Ace: “The TARDIS.”

Doctor: “Yes, the TARDIS.”

For me, Gary, Survival is all about home; more so than the titular concept.

“You bring me back to the boredom capitol of the universe,” Ace complains, even though it was her request to return to her hometown of Perivale. Her interest, however, only goes so far as to discover what her old mates are up to. She has no desire to relieve the desperate fears of her monster of a mother, despite having just left the baby Audrey in The Curse of Fenric with the words “I’ll always love you.” Guess she hasn’t done as much growing up as we were led to believe.

Ace doesn’t find what she’s after in Perivale. Her mates are gone; married, moved on, or vanished. The only one left behind is a lackluster Ange. “Either you were dead or you’d gone to Birmingham,” Ange tells Ace of her presumed fate. “We were the only life there ever was around here,” Ace says of her missing friends. The depressed and dingy town no longer has anything to offer her.

The planet of the Cheetahs, on the other hand, entices. Whisked off into that world by Karra, Ace finds herself feeling more at home. “I feel like I belong here,” she tells the Doctor. “I can smell things as clear as pictures,” she continues as the spell of the place begins to take hold.

Ace discovers her missing mates here; however they do not extend the same sense of belonging as they once did. Bickering and barely managing to survive, the small group hardly welcomes her with open arms. Karra, on the other hand, lures Ace to the thrill of the hunt. “Smell the blood on the wind,” she cries. “Hear the blood in your ears. Run; run beyond the horizon and catch your hunger.”

Possessed by the blood lust, Ace turns to the Doctor for guidance. “It’s all right, Ace,” the Doctor tells her, “we’re going home.” Infected as she is, Ace has the power to teleport home (and she doesn’t even have to click her heels three times). Ace returns the group to Earth, to Perivale, next to the TARDIS. Of the three, it is the TARDIS that has the greatest pull. “What are we hanging about for,” Ace asks; she is ready to leave Earth and Perivale behind.

However the Doctor can’t leave just yet. The Doctor has unfinished business with the Master.

Like Ace, the Master is being influenced by the Cheetah planet. However the Master no longer has a place he can call his home. He needs Midge to transport him to Earth.

The idea of the Cheetah people is a good one. Essentially they are fun loving, as the Master explains, but when hungry they turn to the hunt. “You kill people; you eat people,” Ace says to Karra. “When I’m hungry I hunt,” Karra concedes. “When I hunt, I eat.” It is simple; it is survival.

This theme of survival is best exemplified by the Cheetah people, although much is made of Sergeant Paterson and his macho posturing. But Paterson only talks in platitudes; he doesn’t teach anything and I don’t even think he understands what he says. As the Doctor points out: “Survival of the fittest; rather a glib generalization.” About the only lesson his self-defense class learns is to kick someone when they are down. When put to the test, Paterson falls apart; he obviously is not one of the fittest.

The Cheetah people, on the other hand, are more poetic in their interpretation of survival, even though it is a stripped down, basal animal instinct; and both Ace and the Master find it hard to resist. Interesting that Paterson, for all of his ‘survival of the fittest’ talk, never succumbs to this primal nature of the planet. In fact when Ace returns him to Perivale he blocks all memory of the place from his mind, chalking it up to a stress-induced blackout.

Midge, however, turns himself over completely. His confrontational character combined with a weak mind is ideal for the conversion. Midge doesn’t even remember his own name. “You are all animal now,” the Master gloats over him, boasting of his own stronger will that can hold out against the contaminating spirit. This animalistic Master is a much more menacing villain than he has ever been.

The Master and Ace both have the mental capacity to keep the planet’s influence under some control. It takes the Doctor, however, to overcome it. “If we fight like animals,” he yells, “we’ll die like animals.” It is ultimately a bit simplistic. While the Master has decided to give in to the brutal power and use it to advantage—“If I am to become an animal, then like an animal I will destroy you, Doctor; I will hunt you, trap you, and destroy you”—the Doctor merely gives up the fight and all is saved. “If we fight like animals, we’ll die like animals;” and conversely I suppose, If we don’t fight, we live. In any case, it works. The Doctor is transported off of the dying planet back to Earth and the TARDIS—home.

It is a neat little story, but lacking. I could state the obvious—the Cheetah people are too cute and cuddly to be a threat. Then there is the fact that Paterson is too one dimensional; a little depth would have made his ‘survival of the fittest’ mantra more meaningful. Midge and his boy gang are a bit of a laugh. And what is up with that big bang of dueling motorcycles? It’s not just the effect that falls short, but the intent. Why would the Doctor get on the bike to begin with; what happened to the Doctors cry of “if we fight like animals, we’ll die like animals?” No, he ignores this sage advice and risks his own life, not to mention he kills Midge in the process. Somehow the Doctor is miraculously saved from this mighty crash by a strategically placed sofa in the middle of the field.

The end, too, is abrupt and light on explanations. The planet is being destroyed around the Doctor and the Master as they wrestle. According to the Doctor: “This planet’s alive; the animals are part of the planet; when they fight each other, they trigger explosions; they hasten the planet’s destruction.” One has to wonder how or why the Cheetah people, a people who hunt and kill and fight, ended up on such a planet to begin with. But it is an interesting phenomenon that could have been explored more fully and to greater effect. As it is, it is just a matter of convenience for some dramatic alien-planet-being-destroyed shots as the Doctor and the Master tussle. Somehow the Cheetah people suddenly vanish, but the Doctor’s “They’ve been taken back to the wilderness” doesn’t quite satisfy.

Overall an interesting serial that could have been so much more.

More time, more budget—who knows? Alas, dear Gary, time ran out on the good Doctor, at least for quite some time. It is fitting that this last story of the era concerned home and that it establishes the TARDIS as exactly that. The TARDIS, after all, is what makes Doctor Who Doctor Who.

And so I close, Gary, with the Doctor’s parting words:

“There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea’s asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea’s getting cold. Come on, Ace, we’ve got work to do.”

Here’s hoping, Gary, that your tea is not getting cold.