Review of Planet of Fire (#134)
DVD Release Date: 07 Sep 10
Original Air Date: 23 Feb – 02 Mar 1984
Doctors/Companions: Five, Vislor Turlough, Perpugilliam Brown
Stars: Peter Davison, Mark Strickson, Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: Resurrection of the Daleks (Five, Tegan, Turlough)
Succeeding Story: The Caves of Androzani (Five, Peri)

For some reason, Planet of Fire has always sort of flown under my radar. In the back of my head, it had become “the story where both Mark Strickson and Nicola Bryant were scantily clad for their farewell/introduction, and there were volcanoes or something—oh yeah, and the Master.”

According to received fan wisdom (at least in the form of io9’s Best-to-Worst ranking, which puts PoF at #227 of 254), I can hardly be blamed. Even if I’d forgotten some of the key elements (the Master’s predicament, the final appearance of Kamelion, the revelation of Turlough’s secret past, and where all those intersect on a geologically active planet), there wasn’t much in any of it to endear it to viewers. (The exception, of course, is the aforementioned minimal costuming; I’ve heard at least one person say they learned something about themselves seeing Turlough in those shorts.)

Poor Kamelion stands out as one of the biggest problems. I’m sure the idea of a shape-changing robot sounded exciting to the writers (or JNT? I don’t know who’s responsible for Kamelion) when it was first proposed, but creating a plot that works well for such a character—and then realizing it satisfactorily on screen—appears to have been too difficult a task. (I did, however, once win a round of the Verity! Podcast “In Defense Of” game at Gallifrey One by successfully arguing for 60 seconds that “Kamelion is better than K-9,” using its role in helping to defeat the Master in PoF as one of my talking points.)

Meanwhile, there is a story about “benevolent colonizers” (Turlough’s people, the Trions) from another planet. There is so much about this thread that is cringeworthy when one stops to think about it at all that it’s almost hard to believe. The Sarns, the remains of the indigenous population on a planet being destroyed from within by volcanic activity, are depicted as primitive people. From the get-go, we see that those in power have maintained that power through an oppressive religious doctrine.

To make things worse, the Sarns’ religion is actually based on having mistaken a Trion vulcanologist in a protective suit for a god. Talk about a dumpster fire. It’s like every bad colonialist trope about “barbaric,” superstitious natives rolled into one depiction. Sadly, Doctor Who has often retread standard tropes unironically, without examining or challenging them at all; PoF is just one example.

However, not everything is terrible. The location filming is beautiful, and there are a couple of moments that made me perk up my neowhovian ears. For example, when Turlough makes his exit, he tells the Doctor, “I don’t want to go”—a sentiment the Doctor himself famously expressed some five regenerations later.

And of course there’s the well-known teaser line as the Master meets his apparent end. Bargaining for his life, haranguing the Doctor to the last, he exclaims, “You won’t show mercy to your own—” before being consumed by flames. Fans have argued ever since about how that sentence was meant to end.

My favorite exchange, though, actually comes courtesy of Peri. Granted, she has never been near the top of my personal list of favorites, but I found I liked her much better in PoF than I had remembered. In particular, I loved that when the Master trapped her at that lookout point, and intoned, “You will obey me,” her immediate response was simply, “No.”

“I am the Master,” he tries again.

“So what? I’m Perpugilliam Brown, and I can shout just as loud as you can.” I was so proud of her in that moment. And given that her declaration is reminiscent (prescient?) of “Donna, human, no“—one of my favorite lines from one of my all-time favorite Companions—it definitely raised Peri’s character in my estimation.

Thus I come out of this re-watch with mixed feelings. Parts are better than I remember, and parts are worse. Mostly, it’s simply forgettable. Regardless, I don’t anticipate sharing this with my girls any time very soon, and certainly not without talking about the implicit representation and the issues it raises; some tropes need to die in a fire.