PS Creativity > Reviews > The Classic Series > Survival

Well here it is - the last Doctor Who story before the show was taken off the air in 1989.

The Doctor takes his teenage companion Ace back home to the uneventful London suburb of Perivale, but the Doctor and Ace are soon on the trail of sinister events when they find that many of Ace's old friends have gone missing. The mystery leads the Doctor and Ace to the savage Cheetah Planet where Ace comes across her abducted friends, fighting for survival against the bloodthirsty cheetah people, whilst the Doctor once more encounters his old thorn in his side- the Master, and his old foe is more desperate than ever.

Sometimes one of my biggest regrets about Doctor Who, the old series, is that it didn't end earlier on when it perhaps should have, either in 1980 with Season Seventeen or in 1982 with Season Nineteen, when the show was going good and could have ended on a note of closure. In my opinion Doctor Who, and incidentally its fanbase could have had more dignity if it had ended there and been remembered more fondly for its heyday years. Beyond that, the show drifted gradually into autopilot and underfooted the Doctor's character frequently -firstly he suffered to attacks of his conscience that made him incompetent and resultantly he got outdone by mercenaries, then he regenerated into a psychotic thug, then was subject to a tedious trial by his own people and finally regenerated into a man who stuffed ferrets down his trousers- it became too niche and continuity heavy and lumbered with shockingly bad plots and events and a diminishing budget and gradually became a general embarrassment of a viewing.

(Some fans might even have said that Horror of Fang Rock in 1977 was early enough for the old show to end on a high, so that K9 never came on board and Davros had remained a one-off villain, and ideally speaking Tom Baker wouldn't have 'outstayed his welcome' and we'd be spared The Invasion of Time and The Creature from the Pit, whilst the open ended nature of some of the Dalek and Timelord stories thus far would remain as nice imponderables to be wrapped up finally in the 2005 New Series, in a far less tedious and anticlimactic manner than they were in the continuation of the old series.... I suppose we can all dream)

But of course there are other times when I read behind the scenes about how Doctor Who was driven into the ground in the mid 80's by pompous, reactionary BBC figureheads like the anti-christ Michael Grade, who hated the series and clearly wanted it to fail (he was also very frank in his opinion of the show's fans as being psychotic social misfits, unfortunately this label seemed to be validated since amidst the fan's letter campaign to get it back on the air during its 1986 hiatus, there was the occasional letter written in human blood), and so the budget was cut down and the viewing times became sporatic and unworkable. And at this I get angry that it was ever cancelled at all.

But either way it had to be like this. A popular franchise like Doctor Who couldn't just end on a high any more than the James Bond films could. It had been good for so long that it had to keep going like a juggernaut, and it had to have a long and major decline in quality before it could be ended, even if it were to end most ungracefully as a result. I think in either case the declining mid 80's years of the show were worth the bargain for the occasional silver lining story such as The Caves of Androzani and Revelation of the Daleks. I would just about accept Vengeance on Varos as belonging under that umbrella of greats because despite being a plotless runaround with some ugly moments, its futuristic vision of Reality TV gone mad is so well handled and prophetic of our media today that it nicely resides as one of Doctor Who's most important stories. Actually as the show was coming to its end, it was producing a good set of impressive stories and the mystic heavy final season of the show ended the show on a truncated high that left us hungry for more (well virtually unanimously)

Which brings us nicely to this closing story. One of the most notable aspects of this story is the presence of the Master. For those not in the know, the Master is a renegade Timelord from the planet Gallifrey, just like the Doctor- except the Master is a twisted and evil megalomaniac who delights in chaos and destruction. Sometimes the Master made a strong villain indeed, and he enjoyed his finest moments in stories like The Daemons, the Deadly Assassin and Logopolis, but there were other times when he was far too pantomime. In a way, the reappearances of the Master throughout the series was one of the main reasons I disliked the prolonguing of the show for he became a tedious villain who often drained the stories of menace and made the Doctor look far too soft for letting him off easy each time so he could return. I really would have rather seen the Master meet his final demise in Planet of Fire (and that's being generous for me).

I'm not entirely against the prospect of recurring villains in Doctor Who. God knows I've wanted some one-off villains in Doctor Who to come back for a rematch. I would have loved to see a rematch with Salamander from The Enemy of the World or Harrison Chase from The Seeds of Doom, or on a more recent note, John Lumic from Rise of the Cybermen would have deserved his own spin-off series in my opinion. But how can I say this? With the Master they were taking the piss and had his character outliving most of the Doctors. I mean how soft and incompetent where they trying to make the Doctor look?

However I can excuse the reappearance of the Master here since there was a recurring theme of 'unfinished business' throughout the last two seasons whereby the Doctor was chasing up old foes like the Daleks and Cybermen and vanquishing them once and for all (the writers seemingly half-knew that Doctor Who was on the way out and therefore set about tying up loose threads and giving the series a sense of proper closure). The Master was intended to be vanquished here, though that wasn't the last we saw of him as he returned in the fox nineties telemovie, as played by Eric Roberts in most camp fashion. I think I should stress however that Eric Roberts was riding a bad, overblown and hollow script there and he has been a very good actor in other roles- his performance as a desperate escaped convict in the film "Runaway Train" (1985) was one that really made the film a great piece of human melodrama.

Okay I know I'll try and stay focused on Survival. There are various other reasons why the Master's return here is welcome. The Master, having been bewitched by the Cheetah people, spends the episode fighting down his savage nature because of the personal degradation it will bring him, in some of the best solo scenes the Master has ever enjoyed, where he shares a monologue with his reflection, and performed wonderfully by the late Anthony Ainley.

In the final confrontation between the Doctor and the Master, they have what could be their greatest moment together (in-fact there is a brief moment where the Master seems genuinely afraid of the Doctor, retreating from the Doctor's vengeful scowl). Although it is a moment that could have been made more of and seemed cut short to me, the Doctor has his non violent restraint tested to breaking point by an enemy he has been too merciful towards for too long, and then regains his integrity wonderfully, whilst the Master finally lets his hidden pathos and hopeless nihilism be known to his greatest enemy but still remains brutal and unreasoning and like with his supposed 'death' in Planet of Fire, we are led to believe that he dies as he has lived- like a savage animal.

The script is written by Rona Munro, who went on to write the excellent screenplay for the true story "Ladybird, Ladybird" directed by Ken Loach. Infact its quite interesting to see the prototype of her thematic content here. What she has written here is one of the rare old series examples of being set in an environment of modern urban realism that I could perhaps only apply to two other stories off the top of my head- Remembrance of the Daleks and An Unearthly Child (the pilot episode- fitting really that the show should end where it began- it even has the Doctor being treated as a public nuisance by neighbourhood watchdogs again). Of course ironically the modern urban realism has become the most distinctive feature of the New Series.

As with Ladybird, Ladybird, Survival is about urban alienation and takes place in a harsh and jaded modern world. Ace returns to her local youth club to catch up on old friends. She remembers when the club was once a pleasant place to meet and socialise with ease. Now it is centrally dominated by wrestling classes and a cut-throat competitiveness, with a martial arts teacher who believes in endowing the youth early on with physical prowess and to be merciless with it so that they can make it in an increasingly violent society.

Also like "Ladybird, Ladybird", Survival is essentially about the cost to a person's soul when they become consumed with rage. Ace had always been a feisty and often aggressive girl. Some of fans have started to label the current companion Rose a 'bunny-boiler' after she gave old timer companion Sarah Jane Smith a rather hostile and jealous reception recently, but by comparison Ace was something of a bunny-combuster! And here when Ace finds herself possessed by the Cheetah People, she begins transforming back and forth from her old self into an emerald eyed feisty feline. The Doctor has to keep her from performing any violent action- even in self-defence, because if she fights she will change forever into a Cheetah. That adds a compelling dimension to the Doctor's usual patronising way of telling human hotheads to keep their restraint. It also makes the drama more frightening since Ace is surrounded by savagery and must remain defenceless. She can't fight back because she will change and if she runs she will most likely encourage her predators.

It is also interesting how some of the themes of Survival have been echoed with a twist in "Ladybird, Ladybird", such as the theme of lost children. Whilst Survival is about those lost children having to fend for themselves in a cruel world, "Ladybird, Ladybird" is centrally about the bereaved parents, in the latter case it is interesting the animal imagery that features in "Ladybird, Ladybird" when the bereaved mother decides to blame her 'soft' husband for their loss, even going so far as to declare her previous brute of a husband as a better man with a similar shocking and degrading contempt for humanity as a form of weakness that is alluded to in Survival. She even declares "At least an animal stays with its litter!", much like how in Survival, the packs of cheetahs are an allegory for street gangs. Banding together for belonging, protection and safety in numbers, but more often than not becoming predatory and savage and victimising people.

The theme of 'survival of the fittest' which is directed as much at urban life as it is at the jungle environment, is one that is blatantly said out loud in repeated intervals. At first I thought this was a rather unsubtle approach, but one to put down to the fact that this is a family show which requires a bit of overstatement, and also the fact that this was one of Rona Munro's first scripts so maybe she was still a bit rusty at this stage. But I hoped that this wouldn't venture into the Jubilee kind of territory of heavy handed, didactic overstatement (For those not in the know, Jubilee is a Doctor Who audio adventure released in 2003 by Big Finish).

However I watched Survival on repeated occasions and found that if anything, the 'survival' theme works even better by being oft repeated throughout the story- most of the characters that the Doctor meets have something to say on the theme of survival -and its usually something cynical- be they martial arts instructors, youths, shopkeepers, cheetahs or the Master himself. It's a cynical mentality that virtually everyone subscribes to- and it's very close to the truth about the modern world view. In a way it makes the Doctor the moral centre of the story as the only figurehead of boundless compassion and the hope of co-operation.

As the old joke between the shopkeepers Hale and Pace goes, out of two campers out on safari, the faster runner out of the two will survive if a lion decides to chase them. The faster runner might not be faster than a lion, but if his friend trails behind and the lion is busy eating him, the surviving camper won't need to outrun it (well, that's Hale and Pace humour for you). But as the Doctor retorts, if there's more than one lion, isn't it better for the campers to stick together.

Overall it does seem that even at this early point in her writing career, Rona Munro is wise in the ways of knowing when to be subtle and when to be melodramatic. She's not yet the perfectionist she would be with "Ladybird, Ladybird" but she's close enough. I once was rather unflattering about Sophie Aldred's performance as Ace in The Curse of Fenric, and I'll say that this kind of material here seems well suited to Sophie and she actually gives perhaps her best performance as Ace here- playing Ace subdued, afraid, mourning, enlivened, casual, angry, insecure and resists a tendency to be too loud about it.

The story does seem to homage not only "Curse of the Cat People", but other Doctor Who stories of yore. The debates and tauntings about having to fight for survival are echoed from the first Dalek serial. The story Inferno is also an inspiration to this story's events of displacement, a world ending in flames, its population driven to rage and savagery, right down to the Doctor's words "Do you really want to end your lives fighting like animals?" Of course Inferno is a hard-core Doctor Who story, whereas Survival is more a light one with a hard-core centre that, blended with its realist backdrop is actually quite unnerving and subversive. The colourful and cuddly design of the Cheetah people makes quite a compelling and jarring cover for their viciousness that allows the tension to work perfectly when the Doctor and his allies are tip-toeing down a path littered with observing and hissing Cheetahs, trying not to make any sudden movements that would alert them into action. It also allows Ace to be able to communicate with a cheetah woman and for us to see them as slightly sympathetic. It is this serious centre which wins out over most of the story's more, shall I say 'Eighties' moments.

The most eighties moment is when Mitch- one of the teenagers turned feline and one of the Master's minions develops a chic for leather, shades and motorbike dare-deviling. Though this is a rather short lived side show and doesn't quite take away from the menace of the moment when Mitch makes his first kill (with some nicely suggestive editing) and whilst we could have done without the scene where the Doctor's slapstick gurning in the middle of an attack by cheetahs underfoots -quite literally so- the gravity of the situation, the tense moments following improve on it. In a way it seems appropriate that the Doctor's delivery of the final payoff line in the climactic fight on the Cheetah planet should be so grandly done, and then when repeated on his return to a London neighbourhood, it should be so unsupported and fall flat on its face as silly and badly delivered. It works in the return to normality.

Overall the story does feel somewhat cut short, and poor sound quality is a problem in some of the cheetah planet scenes- particularly when coupled with Anthony Ainley's mild delivery as the Master, though I imagine this will be nicely amended when the story comes out on DVD (if the Revelation of the Daleks DVD is anything to go by). Whilst it is more accessible than most Sylvester McCoy era stories, it is still very much one for the fans as it requires an emotional investment in the characters of the Doctor, Ace and the Master. Like the best examples of the Sylvester McCoy era, and like the Peter Davison story Kinda, it seems initially too off the wall, clownish and sporatic , and overall average, but then improves with repeated viewings very much. This story imparticular feels especially resonant and inspiringly real world once you get at its centre.


Well the Old Series ended there in 1989, and Survival was as good as any story to bring Doctor Who to its journey's end. After which we had a few Doctor Who-style children's shows at the beginning of the 90's, such as Dark Seasons and The Girl From Tomorrow (still one of my favourite shows). But at the same time the show and its fandom were being heavily belittled. Michael Grade imparticular seemed to relish the opportunities to describe Doctor Who fans as social misfits. Even TV hosts who talk flatteringly about the series seem to suggest that the 'charm' of the show's wobbly sets was as good as it got- in other words Doctor Who was supposedly good because it was crap. In the mid-90's, the flop of not only the American TV Movie revival of the show, but also of British science fiction shows like Crime Traveller and Invasion: Earth seemed to put the lid on not only Doctor Who, but British made science fiction in general. The days of Blakes 7 and Sapphire & Steel were over- even Red Dwarf has come to a standstill now.

But now, thanks largely to the success of independent fandom, like the Big Finish audios, Doctor Who is back. It's not quite our old show anymore- it's for a mainstream audience rather than the fandom niche, but thankfully it looks like it can carry on forever and I have definitely been caught by its bug again.

This story has a little bit of relevance to the New Series. It's got the urban setting and a few chavs (or were they called something else back then?) and there's even some graffiti on the walls (though I'm sure it doesn't read 'bad wolf' or 'torchwood') and there's vague suggestions of the parental anxiety caused by Ace's disappearance whilst she went travelling with the Doctor. The New Series has seen no sign of the Master- and a good thing too- but it has done an episode featuring some other race of unrelated cat peoplein the episode New Earth- a rather silly, throwaway episode but an amusing one all the same.

Well there you have it- bridging the old and the new.

Originally posted by transvamp on June 5th at 10:59am.

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