YMMV / Doctor Who S19 E3 "Kinda"

• Genius Bonus: Christopher Bailey based this story heavily on Buddhist philosophy and used many Buddhist words and ideas in writing Kinda; most of the Kinda and dream-sequence characters have names with Buddhist meanings, including Mara (temptation — also personified as a demon), Dukkha (pain), Panna (wisdom), Karuna (compassion), Anicca (impermanence) and Anatta (egolessness). Additionally, Jhana (also spelt Jana in the scripts) refers to meditation.
• Growing the Beard: This is generally regarded as the first really good story of Peter Davison's tenure, following the somewhat rocky writing and performances in "Castrovalva" and "Four to Doomsday" (the latter of which had the extra trouble of being Davison's first filmed serial as the Doctor, which resulted in a much rougher performance than he had hoped for).
• Harsher in Hindsight: A short film included with the release announcement of the Season 20 DVD box set hints that the Mara still lives in Tegan's head decades later, and finds ways to mentally torment her and attempt to take her over.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Adric asks the Doctor about leaving the sonic screwdriver in the TARDIS, to which the Doctor replies, "What would we need it for?" It gets destroyed in the next story.
• Retroactive Recognition: A young Jonny Lee Miller is one of the Kinda children.
  • For British viewers of a certain age, this most applies to Adrian Mills, who appears as Aris here and went on to be a recognisable TV presenter and sidekick to Esther Rantzen.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Infamously, the final showdown has the Mara, which has been possessing other characters throughout the story but not yet been seen in its true, allegedly terrifying form, manifest itself as... a giant, inflatable snake. The DVD release fixes this by providing an option to replace it with a better-looking CGI snake.
  • An additional Blooper that undermines the same scene is the way the Mara is supposed to be trapped in a complete circle of mirrors (the Doctor even shouts for the Kinda to close up the gaps) but there are painfully obvious openings in the ring visible in the wide angle shots.
• Vindicated by History: The serial initially wasn't well liked among the fans who participated in the Doctor Who Magazine season poll, coming dead last for the season. It is now considered one of the highlights of the Fifth Doctor's tenure and a huge Growing the Beard moment for the era, with Steven Moffat and Robert Shearman among its fans.

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