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Tag: Black Guardian

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Review of Enlightenment (#127)

DVD Release Date: 08 Jun 21
Original Air Date: 01 – 09 Mar 1983
Doctors/Companions: Five, Tegan Jovanka, Vislor Turlough
Stars: Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson
Preceding Story: Terminus (Five, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough)
Succeeding Story: The King’s Demons (Five, Tegan, Turlough)

I’ve occasionally heard other fans talk about how much they enjoy Enlightenment, but it’s not one that’s made much of an impression on me before (thus its fate as a member of Everything Else). Maybe I just never consider it, as part of an era I usually find a little dull.

But despite starring the Beige Doctor, and including both a baddie with a bird on his head and one of the more irritating Companions, the plot and the other Companion being awesome—that’s Tegan, one of my personal faves—make it eminently watchable.

Going in, pretty much all I remembered about Enlightenment was the race. I also knew it involved the Black Guardian and the end of Turlough’s interactions with him, but that was as much due to having pulled it out of my Black Guardian boxed set as anything. And though I didn’t write it down in my pre-viewing notes, I had at least a vague impression of Captain Wrack in my mind.

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Memories Unlocked

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Review of Mawdryn Undead (#125)

DVD Release Date: 03 Nov 09
Original Air Date: 01 – 09 Feb 1983
Doctors/Companions: Five, Nyssa of Traken, Tegan Jovanka, Vislor Turlough, the Brigadier
Stars: Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson, Nicholas Courtney
Preceding Story: Snakedance (Five, Nyssa, Tegan)
Succeeding Story: Terminus (Five, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough)

I’ll be the first to admit that the Fifth Doctor’s era is not at the top of my list of personal favorites. Maybe that’s why so many of them are vague and nebulous in my memory, including Mawdryn Undead. Yet nearly the only thing I clearly remembered about it turned out to be pretty much the last plot detail in the whole story.

As the introductory story for clearly-not-from-Earth schoolboy Turlough, MU might seem like one that would be rather memorable. And while I rarely hear anyone loudly singing its praises, neither does it get regularly ripped on within fandom. Falling at #63 of 254 in the io9 ranking, it just squeaks under the wire into the top quartile. That all puts it solidly in Hidden Gem territory, a not-bad-but-rarely-a-favorite adventure that’s worth revisiting.

When we meet Turlough, he’s being generally mischievous, crashing the Brigadier’s one-of-a-kind car that’s been parked in front of the boarding school where Turlough is a student and the Brigadier has been teaching. He’s immediately unlikable to me, and I can’t even really feel sorry for him when the Black Guardian appears to manipulate him into doing the Guardian’s dirty work.

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