More spoilers for the third episode of The Flames of Cadiz below than in the previous two reviews. You have been warned.
Let me start by saying I am very glad that Susan's smoke bombs save the
day after last time, though everybody is too busy to acknowledge her
contribution. The visuals here are brilliant, from the Auto da Fe at the
beginning to the Doctor tilting at windmills at the end. I imagined all
of it in glorious monochrome, and with appropriate sets for the TV show
and stock footage for the ship at sea - although I suspect the budget
wouldn't have coped with the large number of extras required, and the
open road scenes would have been less persuasive than my version.
Speaking of tilting at windmills, I thought of Don Quixote as
soon as I heard Sancho's name, and this visual image at the end
confirmed that it was a deliberate reference. I've never read Cervantes'
epic; it's on our bookshelves but its length has always daunted me.
However, I have picked up a few of the more prominent details from other
sources, such as Asterix in Spain. There may well be further references in there, but if so my limited knowledge prevents me detecting them.
Like Mark Gatiss' third Doctor novel, Last of the Gaderene, the
story so far has been perfectly of its era. There are a number of ways
to tackle stories set in the past of the show. You can add a modern
sensibility, as Tara Samms did in Frayed; you can crash it with another genre, as Christopher Bulis did in The Sorceror's Apprentice; you can write a traditional story and then subvert it, as Gareth Roberts did in The Plotters.
Or you can simply write something that feels as if it belongs, as if it
could have been made at the time. Some people look down on this,
perhaps feeling that if you're not going to say something different you
shouldn't bother; but I'm in it for the entertainment, and it gives me a
kind of nostalgic thrill. I say "kind of" since I have come to this era
relatively recently, but it seems to make no real difference to the
feeling.
I have been trying to figure out what Marc Platt has been doing to make
this so resonant of its time. There are several classic plot elements,
of course; but it wasn't until Ian decided to go seek his hero despite
being a wanted man - an incredibly reckless act, but one that prolongs
the adventure (something that every member of the original crew did in
the first season in some way or other) - that I realised a key point.
This is written as a serial. The overall shape is given less
consideration than making each episode feel right. This is Saturday
night entertainment, 1964-style, albeit produced with 2013 production
values and on audio. And that realisation boosts my enjoyment despite
the episode having a slightly odd shape, like the tail end of one
adventure and the beginning of the next.
Rating:
6/10.
Next Time:
The Queen's Pirate.
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