History Recap / DoctorWhoS21E6TheCavesOfAndrozani

Peri and the Doctor compare their rashes and increasing dizziness; a more senior "guest" of Jek's sees this, and smugly tells them that they are now suffering a slow and painful death at the hands of "spectrox toxaemia". It's said to be incredibly lethal. Before a cure can be found, the Doctor and Peri are separated -- with the Doctor being shot at (and getting a head wound) and kidnapped by Stotz and his gang (for interrogation at Androzani Major). He's blindfolded and handcuffed to a wall, but manages to escape by burning his handcuffs off (and burning himself a bit, too), takes over the space ship and tries to manually crash land it while snarking at his captors. He's also still dying. The gang literally lasers a hole through the cockpit door, and the Doctor scrambles out of the ship, barely able to stand anymore but running with all his might.

Meanwhile, the story takes an unexpected nose dive into PsychologicalHorror and political intrigue. Jek falls madly in love with an increasingly unconscious Peri, but she's terrified when she sees his burned face underneath the mask, and he goes into a VillainousBSOD. The local president, who's 85 but looks 50 thanks to [[SpiceOfLife the local spice]], is caught up in an arms race conflict full of corruption. He's deposed by his lackey by creative use of an elevator shaft, and the lackey is quickly deposed by his smug secretary lady using the regular legal system. It all results in death. [[KillEmAll Lots and lots of death]].

The Doctor returns to Jek's place and (using his [[BizarreAlienBiology respiratory bypass system]]) goes off into deep, nearly airless caves to retrieve the cure for his and Peri's cobweb-related condition: space bat milk. [[OffscreenMomentOfAwesome Sadly]], we don't get to see Peter Davison milking a bat. Luckily, he manages to carry her out in time for redeemed-villain Jek to die a HeroicSacrifice. The Doctor carries an unconscious Peri along the alien landscape until he trips just before reaching the TARDIS -- dropping Peri and one of the two doses of antidote. He crawls in, locks the door, drags himself to the console and gets the TARDIS to vworp away half a second before the ground underneath her explodes.

* FinaleCredits: Peter Davison's face in the opening sequence is replaced with Colin Baker's from the last shot of the episode, and Baker also receives top billing over Davison, the first and (to date) only time this would happen for a regeneration episode (Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker were both uncredited, and Davison himself was credited second after T. Baker).

** The sound effect in the regeneration was inspired by "A Day in the Life" by Music/TheBeatles.

* SpiceOfLife: Spectrox

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: The Doctor ends up in a situation where he's hoplessly out of his depth. Turns out his general attitude does him no favours when he's caught in the middle of a warzone fought by awful people for selfish reasons.

This serial first aired March 8-16, 1984.

* HumanShield: Salateen uses Peri as one while shooting at an android; because she's wearing one of the belt buckles that send a signal cancelling the android's kill command.

* SecretUndergroundPassage: Jek has secret passages to the cells where Chellak is holding Peri and the Doctor. Justified as he used to own the place (it's a former spectrox refinery which the army took on their first assault; presumably Jek installed the hidden cameras and tunnels in advance so he'd know everything the army was up to).

* AsideGlance: Morgus occasionally addresses the camera.

* AllForNothing: Almost every action and event is rendered pointless by almost everyone dying. What's more, the only thing the Doctor was able to accomplish was saving Peri's life; meanwhile, he caused a gigantic power collapse on Androzani Major and managed to destroy one of the planet's most valuable resources.

* BeneathTheEarth

* BittersweetEnding: Almost every single person who appears in the serial dies for small, petty reasons, and the Doctor is forced to crawl across a burning landscape in order to save a companion he's only known for five minutes. He regenerates, but only just. This is made even worse if one realises that the Fifth Doctor has managed to lose every other companion up until then due to his own ineffectualness. However, the spectrox is still there, as it was only Jek's androids who were preventing access to it. And it's only Morgus who has collapsed, as the Presidium will presumably just elect a new President, while Morgus' [[BlackAndGreyMorality (only slightly less evil)]] secretary Timmin has control of his industrial empire ([[MeetTheNewBoss the more things change, etc]]). Nonetheless, a pointless war has ended and some villains received their comeuppance, so it's not a total loss.

** What he's getting up to involves shutting down factories on one side of Androzani Major, arresting the people made jobless and homeless by this and having them moved to labor camps on the other that he just happens to own.

* CowTools: Discussed in the DVD commentary when Morgus gets his head shoved in between two parts of a futuristic machine thing which immediately starts glowing. Graeme Harper notes that "we don't know what it does, but it's killing him".

* OohMeAccentsSlipping: In the first episode, Nicola Bryant accidentally lets slip her natural English accent, particularly when she says the word 'glass'.

* BastardlySpeech: CorruptCorporateExecutive Morgus uses PatrioticFervor slogans while [[WarForFunAndProfit plotting treason]] and preaches high-minded virtue while [[KickTheDog Kicking The Dog]].

** Played for HypocriticalHumor with Morgus (see BastardlySpeech). Not to mention bringing up the mass unemployment, which he's causing.

-->"Your sense of humor will be the death of you, Doctor. [[ImpliedDeathThreat Probably quite soon]]."

* HypocriticalHumor:

* KnightInSourArmor: From the moment he gets embroiled in the whole spectrox situation, the Doctor just seems so ''done'' with everything and he starts acting far more sarcastic, impatient and weary as soon as he realises that nobody on Androzani Minor is willing to act rationally or listen to his pleas of innocence. [[{{Foreshadowing}} It seems to act as an early indication of the Sixth Doctor's abrasive personality.]]

* RightForTheWrongReasons: Yes, Morgus is a diabolical bastard who must be brought down. Jek's only motivation for wanting to kill him is for the sake of his own selfish revenge. And Timmin, who does bring him down, does so to pursue her own ambitious.

** Morgus repeatedly turns to the camera and gives exposition soliloquies. WordOfGod says that this wasn't intended — the actor had misunderstood the stage directions in the script, but the director liked the effect it gave and told the actor to keep doing it, as it made the story similar to a classical theatre piece and played on the similarity of the plot to early-modern revenge tragedies.

* PeopleInRubberSuits: The ridiculously fake monster, which as usual is [[SpecialEffectsFailure overlit instead of being kept in shadow]].

* WarIsHell: Arguably, one of the best anti-war serials in the Whoniverse because it shows how wretchedly ''[[ShootTheShaggyDog pointless]]'' everything is. There are no [[DoNotDoThisCoolThing spectacular battles]], quite a few people die in [[RocksFallEveryoneDies random]], [[DroppedABridgeOnHim unsatisfying]] ways, [[BlackAndGreyMorality nobody is particularly righteous]], ''everyone'' gets killed except Peri, and in the end, [[AllForNothing nobody is any better off except one person.]]

* PinballProtagonist: Even by his typical standards, the Fifth Doctor hits the rock bottom with this trope (and the worst, precisely in his last story). He fails to convince a single person that he and Peri are not any kind of threat to them, even when he makes the typical jokes, threats or proposals that would have made the previous four Doctors get away with easily. [[http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/doctor-who-classic-the-caves-of-androzani-91898 That said, the serial appears to be]] a subversion of the typical Eric Saward-era formula: instead of the Doctor being effectively locked out of the story while [[SignatureStyle the villains and the "Saward 80s badass" character resolve the plot]], the Doctor is the catalyst that breaks the stalemate each time he escapes the frying pan into another fire. The only thing he actually does in the story is convince Salateen to act, but the focus is on the Doctor as a HurtingHero and SpannerInTheWorks rather than being sidelined.

[[caption-width-right:350:[[Film/TheBodyguard And I... will always love you...]]]]

Landing on the planet of Androzani Minor, the Doctor and new[[note]]New on TV, anyway; in the audios, Five has ''many'' adventures with Peri between the previous serial and this one and they're very close by this point.[[/note]] companion Peri go out of the TARDIS to wander around a very, very exotic alien planet. They quickly (and more or less in this order) find themselves under attack from random people, contract a nasty rash by stepping into a cobweb, get captured, jailed, and then shot. [[note]]In retrospect, the Doctor also seems to be taking the leaving of Turlough and the loss of Kamelion from the last episode rather well. Though again, if you consider all the audios [[{{Interquel}} added in between]] that was quite some time ago.[[/note]]

-->'''Tegan:''' What was it you always told me Doctor? "Brave heart?" You'll survive, Doctor.\\

* IWillProtectHer: This is essentially the Doctor's key motivation for the bulk of the story -- he's not interested in the civil war or the smuggling or whatever, he just wants to get Peri cured, [[IHaveYouNowMyPretty out of Sharaz Jek's hands]] and off the planet ASAP.

* SpannerInTheWorks: The Doctor's role in the story is limited to attempting to get him and Peri out alive. His mere presence, however, inadvertently causes the entire messed-up Androzani society to implode. The Doctor brings down a corrupt government and ends a bloody civil war ''by accident''.

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready, because you will see a show this time: Creator/PeterDavison's final story, ending his tenure at an even twenty. Creator/RobertHolmes returns for the first time since Season 16. And Creator/GraemeHarper directs his first, ambitiously opting to abandon generic stage direction that felt static and stilted, get direct with the actors and aim for a bolder, more dynamic filming style. The result? What to this day remains one of the best ''Doctor Who'' serials ever made. It's also ''a colossal bloodbath''[[note]]We're not kidding. Morgus’ secretary and Peri are the sole survivors.[[/note]]

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready, because you will see a show this time: Creator/PeterDavison's final story, ending his tenure at an even twenty. Creator/RobertHolmes returns for the first time since Season 16. And Creator/GraemeHarper directs his first, ambitiously opting to abandon generic stage direction that felt static and stilted, get direct with the actors and aim for a bolder, more dynamic filming style. The result? What to this day remains one of the best ''Doctor Who'' serials ever made.

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready, because you will see a show this time: Creator/PeterDavison's final episode, ending his tenure at an even twenty. Creator/RobertHolmes returns for the first time since Season 16. And Creator/GraemeHarper directs his first, ambitiously opting to abandon generic stage direction that felt static and stilted, get direct with the actors and aim for a bolder, more dynamic filming style. The result? What to this day remains one of the best ''Doctor Who'' serials ever made.

* InfraredXrayCamera:

* AndAnotherThing: Used for a KickTheDog moment; after pushing the President into an [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident empty elevator shaft]], Morgus announces that he's flying to Androzani Minor on a peace mission to end this horrible carnage. Oh, and [[TheScapegoat he wants the lift maintenance engineer shot]].

* KillEmAll: With the exception of Peri and Krau Timmin, ''every'' named character in the story dies, including the Doctor himself.

* RealityEnsues: The Doctor ends up in a situation where he's hoplessly out of his depth. Turns out his general attitude does him no favours when he's caught in the middle of a warzone fought by awful people for selfish reasons.

->''[[FamousLastWords "Adric?"]]''

* BondVillainStupidity: Justified -- Sharez desires the Doctor's intellectual stimulation as well as Peri's beauty, but makes it clear that he will kill the Doctor if he can't bend him to his will.

* DecapitationPresentation: Sharez Jek wants only one thing to call off his war, the head of Morgus brought to him.

* EvilLaugh: Sharez Jek and the Master naturally, but the imprisoned Salateen gives a disturbing laugh when informing the Doctor and Peri that they're dying of spetrox poisoning.

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready, because you will see a show this time: Creator/PeterDavison's final episode, ending his tenure at an even twenty. Creator/RobertHolmes returns for the first time since Season 16. And Creator/GraemeHarper directs his first, ambitiously opting to abandon generic stage direction that felt static and stilted, get direct with the actors and aim for a bolder, more dynamic filming style. The result? What to this day remains some of the best ''Doctor Who'' serials ever made.

* SelfPlagiarism: Creator/RobertHolmes reused the gun-running plot from "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E5ThePowerOfKroll The Power of Kroll]]" and the fightin over a valuable substance plot from "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E6TheSpacePirates The Space Pirates]]".