Review of Survival (#155)
DVD Release Date: 14 Aug 07
Original Air Date: 22 Nov- 06 Dec 1989
Doctors/Companions: Seven, Dorothy “Ace” McShane
Stars: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred
Preceding Story: The Curse of Fenric (Seven, Ace)
Succeeding Story: The Movie (Eight, Grace)
Everyone I know is feeling the stress of the months-long (and not as useful as we’d like because people keep prioritizing their own convenience over others’ health and lives) pandemic restrictions. We’re fatigued. We’re traumatized. We’re So Done™.
No one will be surprised to hear that when I sat down to re-watch Survival for this month’s Hidden Gems entry, I was feeling less than enthused. So it speaks to the quality of this story that I was far less distracted than anticipated as the familiar events unfolded on screen.
The Doctor and Ace arrive in her hometown of Perivale so she can look up her old friends, but they’re nowhere to be found. As they search town together, Ace and the Doctor realize there’s something more sinister at play than just some angsty teens skipping out on a boring scene. Almost before they know it, they find themselves on another planet, where the Cheetah People hunt human prey and the Master (as usual) has his own nefarious agenda.
Like most of the Seven/Ace stories, Survival makes good use of Ace’s independence, allowing the story to follow two distinct threads of Doctor and Companion. The Doctor takes his more cerebral approach to solving a puzzle, while Ace jumps in feet first and takes charge of the little band of teens in which she finds herself.
Set among that scared and angry group, Ace plays the role, so common among modern Companions thanks to her trailblazing, of being “Doctor” to her own batch of companions. Later, she executes another of her signature moves, metaphorically adopting a stray in Karra, the Cheetah Person who calls her “sister” and entices her to give in to baser desires, and come hunting.
This relationship has often been called out as queer coding, implying that Ace and Karra are interested in each other in a romantic and/or sexual way. Since I most often hear about this reading from folks who themselves identify as queer, some of whom point to this story as a catalyst for understanding their own orientation, I am happy to read it that way myself. However, that text is sufficiently sub that it should keep the staunchly straight from noticing it enough to ruin their own enjoyment.
Speaking of text vs subtext, there is a blatant theme of “survival of the fittest” in this serial. It’s the value of interpreting the phrase in its most literal sense that is being examined in the subtext. What does survival mean? What does being “fit” mean? I’m not sure it ever gives us answers, but it does at least make us take a more careful look at what we’re told.
As with any Doctor Who story, of course, there are bits that are less palatable (the iconic moment of McCoy’s Doctor shouting “If we live like animals, we’ll die like animals!” being the obvious example). But the adventure is overall quite engaging, and moves quickly enough that as a viewer I never felt I was being fed unnecessary filler.
Instead, Survival leaves me with a bittersweet sense of possibility. All things come to an end, but there is still more to be done elsewhere. Even if our post-COVID lives are different than before, the world needs us to forge ahead. As the Doctor reminds Ace in the final moments (recorded and added later, after they knew the show was being canceled), “we’ve got work to do.”