Survival

I have to see a man about a cat.

Survival was the last story of the classic era. Although not the last filmed, it was selected to go last in the season and when word came down that the show was going to be shelved, the final coda of the Seventh Doctor was recorded and dubbed in as he and Ace walk away. I had been holding off on this one, even toying with the idea of making it the last classic era story I would watch. However, given that Rona Munro is coming back to write in Series 10, I thought it best to watch this prior to her return to the show to get a proper feel for her style.

Plot Summary

A young man is washing his mother's care in Ace's hometown of Perivale while being spied on by a black cat. Suddenly a large thing appears and the man tries to run away but is quickly overcome by the thing and he vanishes.

A few moments later, the Doctor and Ace arrive in the TARDIS. Ace had made an offhand comment about seeing some of her old friends and the Doctor indulged her. They head up to an old haunt of hers but find nothing, though the Doctor spies evidence of horses and a black cat observing them.

They then head to the local youth club, which also is missing several of things Ace remembered. Instead they find Sergeant Paterson teaching wrestling to a group of young men. After the lesson, Ace talks to him about some of her old friends. He doesn't know what happened to them but does recall Ace getting in trouble now and then. The Doctor is distracted once more by a presence of cats.

The Doctor and Ace head to the local food mart where the Doctor buys several tins of cat food. He also surprises a black cat that had been hiding among the cans. He warns the two shopkeepers to be on their toes. This is emphasized later as one of them heads to the back room to feed his own cat, Tiger, only to find the animal dead and having been chewed on.

Ace finally meets one of her old friends taking collections outside another store. She tells Ace that most of her old friends have gone. Some have gotten married or moved away but several have simply disappeared. Again, Ace attempts to engage the Doctor but he remains distracted. He finally sets up the cat food, hoping to attract the black cat that keeps crossing their path.

The black cat spies one of the young men who had been wrestling and marks him. A mysterious man in shadow can be seen looking through the cat's eyes and agrees. Again, a figure appears in front of the young man and when he tries to run, he is overtaken and vanishes.

Annoyed with the Doctor and depressed at the changes to her friends, Ace wanders up to the local park. There she finds the black cat and begins to stroke it. The cat leaps out of her grasp and in a flash a humanoid cheetah appears riding on horseback. The cheetah person chases Ace who ducks and hides in the various bits of playground equipment. She eventually breaks into the open but the cheetah person catches up to her and Ace suddenly finds herself in a wasteland on an alien planet.

Hearing Ace's cries, the Doctor comes running but finds Ace gone. He turns his attention back towards the black cat, whom he finally sees eating the cat food. Before he can grab him, Sargent Paterson grabs him and accuses him of being a nuisance. The cat runs off and the Doctor runs after it with Sargent Paterson following.

On the alien planet, Ace spies the body of the man who had been washing a car. She also sees the same cat person on a horse and tries to run. The cheetah person gives chase but is distracted by the young man who had been taken a few moments before Ace. He lunges out after the cheetah person but it knocks him cold. Satisfied with the hunt, it places the young man's body on the back of the horse and rides off. Ace runs in the opposite direction and spots an old friend of hers, Shreela. Shreela pulls her into the woods where she finds her hiding out with an old friend named Midge and another man named Derek.

The Doctor attempts to catch the cat again but again, Sargent Paterson thwarts him. This time they get aggressive towards each other and suddenly find themselves transported to the same alien world. Surrounded by cat people, they are herded towards a tent which the Doctor opens to find the Master welcoming him. The Master tries to spook the Doctor and Paterson into running. Paterson does but this just attracts the attention of the cheetah people who start toying with him. The Doctor grabs a control ball from the Master and distracts the cheetah people long enough to grab a horse, then Paterson and ride away.

Ace rallies her friends into setting up a trap to defend themselves from the cheetah people. One spots the trap and goes through but they find another trap triggered. However, it is the Doctor and Paterson who have sprung it. Banded together now, the Doctor opts to head towards a volcanic ridge nearby. He has observed that the planet is dying and the unstable area around the volcano will keep them from the cheetah people until they can figure how to get back to Earth.

They pass a group of cheetah people lounging in the sun. The Doctor warns them to move slowly and not engage as they will only attack if startled or very hungry. Unfortunately, one of the cheetah people returns from another expedition to Earth with a young man and this stirs up those that had been lounging. Adding to this, when confronted, Paterson and most of the men grab rocks and start flinging them at the cheetah people to drive them off. The Doctor implores them all to stand still and not move but no one listens to him.

The group gets separated with most of the group following Paterson around a ridge. Midge is saved when two cheetah people start fighting with each other over him and Ace runs near a lake after knocking one off a horse. Meanwhile, the Doctor is quietly approached by the Master. Observing the fight over Midge, the Master notes that there is a psychic connection between the cheetah people and the planet. As they fight, the destruction accelerates. He also reveals that the planet takes control the longer people are here. He reveals that he himself has begun to transform into a cat person and can see through the eyes of the regular cat which act as spotters.

The two cheetah people fight to exhaustion while Midge takes a fang from a skeleton and uses it to kill the exhausted cheetah people fighters. The Doctor finds Ace tending to one of the cheetah people who was felled by offering her water. The two make their way back to the others where they find Midge has become more aggressive and is attacking Derek. They stop his attack and the Doctor informs them that since the people here have the ability to jump to Earth to hunt and then bring prey back here, they must find a cheetah person to whom they can link to head back.

The Master overhears this and sets a trap for Midge. When he falls into it, his reaction to fight accelerates the transformation process. The Master ties a rope to him and they disappear as Midge jumps to Earth to hunt.

Paranoia spreads among the group as they fear who will be next. The Doctor tries to stop them from fighting which will advance the transformation when Ace points out an approaching cheetah person. As she turns back the Doctor notices that her eyes have gone yellow like the cheetah people. She runs off with the cheetah girl whose name is Karra. Karra tempts Ace to join in the hunt but the Doctor follows her and brings her back to herself.

With Ace in partial transformation, she is able to send them all back to Perivale. The other three disperse and Ace suggests they leave in the TARDIS but the Doctor is concerned about the Master and heads out after him, deciding to try Midge's house first.

The Master and Midge return to Midge's house where the Master partially suppresses his own transformation but encourages Midge's, furthering his control over Midge. They leave the apartment and first take a couple of motorcycles from a local dealership. They then head to the youth club where Midge and the Master exert control over the boys. They turn them on Paterson and kill him.

At Midge's house, they find a young girl crying over her cat that was killed by Midge. Anger builds in Ace, causing her to slip into cat mind briefly but it also allows her to see where the Master is. They see him assembling the boys on a ridge near the playground. Ace decides to fight but the Doctor warns her that if she does she will slip further into transformation. Instead, the Doctor hops on to a motorcycle left at their end and charges into Midge driving the other motorcycle.

The bikes crash and both are thrown clear. Midge dies of his injuries and the Master sets the other boys on Ace. Resisting the urge to fight back, she calls for help and Karra appears. She drives off the boys in fear but when she attacks the Master, he stabs her with the fang Midge had taken earlier. The Master runs off as the Doctor awakes from a pile of rubbish on which he landed.

Ace mourns for Karra as she turns back from cheetah form to her normal human visage. She then dies and the Doctor comforts Ace about her fate.

The Doctor catches up to the Master, attempting to enter the Doctor's TARDIS. They fight and are transported back to the cheetah person planet, which is now turning into a flaming ruin. The Doctor gets the upper hand on the Master and nearly kills him but he comes to his senses, refusing to fight. As he does, he is transported back to Earth alone.

The Doctor finds Ace again as one last cheetah person comes through. However this one disappears before a hunt can be initiated. The Doctor informs Ace that the planet has been consumed, though she will always carry a part of it in her. They head back to the TARDIS as the Doctor proclaims that there is more work to be done.

Analysis

I must confess that I was disappointed by Survival. I had heard that it was considered decent and not a bad story to go out on. But when watching it, I found it to be trying to hard to be meta while the same time being so shallow on story that the entire middle section felt like filler.

I thought the story began well with a lot of puns, mysterious events happening and a dark figure in the background, whom I already knew to be the Master. But once they got to the planet, the story stalled out. Aside from the exposition by the Master about the planet taking control of it's inhabitants, nothing really happens except a lot of run around. It almost felt like a middle episode of a six-part First Doctor story except that it constitutes one-third of the whole story. Things picked up a bit in Episode Three but even there, it was so unclear as to the purpose and why behind everything that it ultimately left more questions than answers.

The Doctor was pretty good in this as he had stepped back from his all-knowing persona a bit. I believe this story was the second one filmed and it is missing something from the Doctor and Ace interaction that you would expect from having gone through The Curse of Fenric and Ghost Light. Nevertheless, he is still entertaining, especially when he gets very focused on the cats in Episode One. There were two points that I didn't like though. The motorcycle jousting was just bizarre and the Doctor got a little melodramatic in his line delivery in his final fight with the Master. I thought those moments dragged his performance down a bit.

Ace wasn't bad but her delivery wasn't particularly well done overall. Having seen Ace do well in other stories, I'm going to chalk that one up to the thin script and a lack of direction. I get that Ace was supposed to be a bit mournful about the passage of time and the loss of old friends, but how that accelerated her transformation and caused her to bond with Karra was never properly fleshed out. I got the impression that it was unclear for Sophie Aldred as well as she seemed unsure of her style and delivery. It wasn't painfully bad, but for a story that should have centered so much on Ace, her lack of focus was very obvious and detrimental to the overall story.

I recall hearing some people say that they thought this was one of Anthony Ainley's best performances as the Master. I will say that it is probably his most restrained and I could see how that would benefit. But it's also one of the most useless. The Master directs the action in Episode One and gives the only exposition in Episode Two. But talk about control and attempting to force his will over the teenagers in Episode Three seemed jumbled and rather beneath him. In fact, the whole retreat to Earth seemed like a waste of the Master. Rather than confronting and thwarting the Doctor, he runs away and sets the laziest of traps for the Doctor, assuming his return. It just seemed like small potatoes for him. It also seems odd that if the Master wanted to fight and destroy the Doctor, why not engage him directly after the motorcycle crash when the Doctor was woozy? This outing of the Master just felt like a man who had no plan once he had escaped the planet and someone who should have fled the scene immediately once he was safe. I thought the performance by Ainley was fine, but overall an underwhelming performance by the Master.

Rather ironically, one of the things that gets derided the most about this story is something I actually liked: the cheetah people. I didn't really understand the planet turning humans into cheetahs but I thought the costumes were actually pretty good and they seemed like a genuine threat to the Doctor and the other humans. They managed to get a flavor of what a human transformed into a cat would be like but while still maintaining a level of humanity. Again, why cats, but of all the other issues with this story, that's one of the least bothersome.

I criticized the director earlier when it came to Ace but I should point out that the director did do a good job when it came to the environment. I thought there were some nice shots of the action and I thought they did a good job of making the quarry look like an alien planet, even though it is still a quarry. I suspect that the director was focused so much on get the look and action right that they didn't pay as much attention to the actors and the performances suffered. Most of the characters were a bit stiff. Outside of the Doctor and the Master, the only other one I thought that gave a pretty good performance was Paterson.

Paterson's performance overall was decent but I'm not quite sure what the point of his character was after the initial scene in the youth club. His set up lines about "survival of the fittest" played well with the overall theme but aside from causing a distraction to the Doctor when he tried to capture the Master's kitlin, he was a bit of a waste. He was subservient to the Doctor the whole time and did nothing except initiate the fighting when the milkman was brought back. That was something that could easily have been done by one of the others. I actually think the story would have played better if Paterson leaves the club in Episode One after talking all of his "survival of the fittest" bit and then comes in unphased only to be turned into a victim in Episode Three. As it stands, he is in shock and only a shell of his former self when attacked. That makes him easy prey in his scenario but it doesn't play up much for the strength of the Master's will. I think it would have worked better if he hadn't been in it so much, even though his performance was one of the better ones overall.

Overall, I can't say that I thought that this story was particularly good. The acting was ok but dipped into subpar on several occasions. The storyline was very thin and felt like it was trying to disguise it by being about more than it was. But it didn't explain the ideas it had and spent so much time with rather pointless running around instead of addressing the ideas. I have no problem with stories that want to be deep but if they do, they need to get into the them more and not just give lip service. Even doing something more direct like having the Master take on the Doctor in a more head-on fashion prior to the last two minutes of Episode Three would have been an improvement.

I would say that even if this story were great, it almost certainly couldn't be watched in isolation. There is too much build up and the story is aware of it's own weight and it's position. I don't think it needs to be saved as the true final story of a run, but it does need to be watched with awareness of the history of the show. It's definitely not a story to be watched by a new fan or in a casual manner. But given the quality of it, I probably wouldn't watch it again unless I was doing a marathon rewatch and needed that sense of closure.

Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5