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“I’ve got a ripping idea!”

In the early days of Doctor Who, it was de rigeur for the TARDIS and those who traveled in her to visit famous periods in Earth’s history. The first Doctor, and briefly the second, visited the time of the Aztecs, Nero’s Rome, the journeys of Marco Polo, the battle of Culloden and the fall of Troy, amongst others. These days, the Doctor and his latest love-struck companion zip from meeting one celebrity to another, Charles Dickens to William Shakespeare to Agatha Christie. Sometimes, it’s a little bit easy to forget that for most of the ‘70s and ‘80s, the Doctor didn’t really do history.

Yeah, there were stories set in the past. Patrick Troughton’s Doctor ended his days saving a series of misplaced historical armies from being used as alien guinea pigs, while Tom Baker’s went back to attend a masque in 1500s Italy. But these were mere historical settings, fancy window-dressing for the latest alien invasion. There tended not to be a lot of significance to the times and places the Doctor wound up in, and even now, it’s mostly just an excuse to meet a famous celebrity. Following 1966’s “The Highlanders,” the pure historical tales - bereft of monsters or ghosts or strange beams of light - were over, and Doctor Who‘s original remit to entertain and educate was put out to pasture.

There’s one exception, of course. And this is it.

“Black Orchid” isn’t so much a story as a vignette, a two-part miniature set among bigger, grander tales of plague, Cybermen, the Master, and alien Buddhism. The idea here seems not to educate, as it isn’t set around a historical event, but just to have a bit of a lark in fancy dress. The fifth Doctor, Adric, Tegan and Nyssa land in the bright English countryside of the 1920s, get caught up in a cricket match, are invited to a fancy dress ball, and find themselves accused of a murder we know they didn’t commit. Oh, and Nyssa - the alien princess from a far-flung planet - has an Earthly twin. Surprise!

Terence Dudley’s script, called “lazy” by Peter Davison on the commentary, is - at very least - expecting you to play along. The whole thing is built on a rather jolly set of coincidences: the Doctor happens to be a great cricket player, Tegan happens to know the Charleston, Nyssa happens to be the exact twin of the fiance of a long-lost Amazonian explorer…erm, and Adric eats a lot. It’s terribly coincidental (not!) that the Doctor has the only costume at the fancy dress ball to cover the wearer head to toe, while most of the other party guests merely have hats or half-masks, and it’s terribly coincidental that he happens to find a dead body just as his double - or rather, someone wearing his costume - goes down to join the guests. Coincidental? Terribly.

But I would argue it’s also fun; just enough fun, in fact, to fill the 49 minutes listed on the back of the case, and not a minute more. This could not possibly be drawn out into a full, four-part story. It’s just too transparent, and even the murder mystery is…well, it’s a mystery to the characters on the screen, anyway. The dialogue is filled with those overcooked 1920s terms that, yes, people probably really said, but which novelist P.G. Wodehouse managed to effortlessly parody - so effectively, in fact, that we started to believe the entire 1920s were a Noel Coward play. “Ripping.” “Topping.” “Top hole.” And so on. It’s as artificial as the fancy dress ball, and that’s the point.

Viewed with all this in mind, “Black Orchid” is a light and fluffy confection that plays out like a cross between a Dorothy L. Sayers mystery and a Secret Seven adventure by Enid Blyton. (I’m not sure the American equivalent to Blyton’s books exists; consider something as inoffensive as the Bobbsey Twins books, but with many more children involved). Nothing here is meant to be at all tense, or really frightening, or even serious. It’s a party. Come on in, and help yourself to a cocktail.

Doctor Who: Black Orchid comes to DVD from 2entertain and BBC Video (through Warner). The transfer is extraordinarily clean and bright, compared even to the first-rate work done on earlier releases from the same season, like “The Visitation” and “Earthshock.” It’s wonderful that the original film sequences were available, with so many scenes set outside. In fact, there’s even an argument to be had that the picture is too bright and colorful; the reds of Peter Davison’s coat and hat pop right off the screen, and Nyssa’s jacket is a lovely shade of burgundy-mauve that it’s never quite appeared to be before! The flesh tones do look a touch orange, but not unnaturally so. I’m guessing that this story was graded a step or too brighter than some of the other DVDs, but it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other; I don’t think any of them are more or less “right.” Certainly, none of the DVDs, including this one, appear to present inauthentic colors…and I think “Black Orchid” looks absolutely ripping.

The audio provided is the original mono soundtrack, with optional English subtitles for both episodes and all of the video extras. Since this is a budget release for the Doctor Who range, neither a 5.1 track nor an isolated music score has been included, more’s the pity.

The information subtitle track for “Black Orchid” has been compiled by former Mastermind winner Karen Davies (that’s a game show, for those unaware, and Doctor Who was her special subject - although she actually fared better at the general questions rounds). I guess with the release rate increase, 2entertain has had to look beyond the usual work of Messrs. Molesworth and Wiggins. All I can say is that Richard Molesworth’s tracks are works of art - and certainly typographic accuracy - compared to these sparse but pointless bits of trivia. Aside from actor filmographies, she spends way too much time telling us the completely obvious, or sometimes, just plain ludicrous nonsense (yeah, that Matrix sequence in “The Deadly Assassin” really implies that Gallifrey “may have once had trains”). Right about the time she explained what a screwdriver (cocktail) is, and how Sarah Sutton can play two characters in the same scene, I started to get annoyed, and when she actually began responding to the characters (“You’ve looked in there before, Doctor!”), I found myself wondering if this particular track was geared toward child viewers, who (hypothetically) might want to try a nice, short classic series DVD with Peter Davison after his appearance opposite David Tennant in “Time Crash.” If that’s the case, I certainly hope this isn’t the start of a trend.

The audio commentary for “Black Orchid” features the original lead cast of Peter Davison, Matthew Waterhouse, Sarah Sutton, and Janet Fielding, and man, do they have fun tearing into this one. Only Sarah Sutton dissents, slightly, from calling it total rubbish, so what we get here is basically a belated 50-minute entry into the realm of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Well, excepting Peter Davison’s star turn on the cricket field, that is - praise and respect are called for in that situation! (You can just hear Janet Fielding’s eyes rolling.) Seriously, though, it’s a giddily vicious commentary, exactly the sort of thing that’s tremendous fun for an hour, complete with Peter Davison’s wonderful summation: “I wasn’t happy in my costume, and the girls froze to death. And Matthew ate.” An absolute scream of a track, even though I clearly enjoy the story far more than any of the regular cast. Well, Sarah Sutton does chastise the others for being so mean toward the end…and they try to be nice…and they fail… Ah, I could listen to this stuff for days.

Now and Then (9 mins.) is the latest in Richard Bignell’s recurring series of featurettes showcasing filming locations as they are now compared to how they were…er…then. This one’s actually pretty fun, centered around railways and 1920s period stuff.

Deleted Scenes (7 mins.) features a series of sequences cut from the finished program, apparently taken from the original location films (great quality) and time-coded studio footage (pretty ropey, but minimal). This has been charmingly displayed in a 1920s theme, with broadcast material denoted in sepia-tone, with deleted footage in full color, and silent movie-style title cards to introduce each major scene. The actual content ranges from brief moments at the party to longer exchanges of dialogue, and seems to have mostly been cut for good reason, not least of which because you can easily spot Sarah Sutton’s double. Yes, there’s probably a little too much extant surrounding footage here, but it helps put the little tiny moments into context.

Film Restoration (3 mins.) shows just how much the quality of the location sequences has been improved through restoration; the as-broadcast scene of the cricket match shown here is notably lacklustre compared to the DVD. The color grading is addressed, and there’s also a demonstration of how the A & B-roll negatives were utilized to present the newer, cleaner image.

Blue Peter (9 mins.) is an archive clip from the eponymous BBC children’s magazine program; you can find other such clips scattered throughout the DVD range, and Blue Peter continues to promote Doctor Who to this day. In this example, presenters Simon Groom and Sarah Greene visit a costumiers, where - amongst many other things, including fabrics used for The King and I - Sarah takes a brief look at the designs for period costumes used in “Black Orchid.” Really, aside from the clip from the party scene, the actual Doctor Who content is extremely brief; mostly it’s just fun watching Simon and Sarah lark about at the end.

Stripped for Action - The Fifth Doctor (16 mins.) continues the series of featurettes focusing on the Doctor Who comics, as begun on the Doctor Who: The Time Meddler DVD. Quite naturally, this segment revolves around the Peter Davison Doctor’s adventures in Doctor Who Monthly. For my money, these are the very best Doctor Who comics ever written; a fantastic, complex, (loosely) connected run of hard science fiction and cosmic fantasy stories written by Steve Parkhouse, who built up an alternative comics mythology for Doctor Who that continued on into the eighth Doctor strips of the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Unfortunately, Parkhouse isn’t interviewed here, but his first (and best) artist is there to praise him: the legendary Dave Gibbons, whom most viewers might know better from his work on Watchmen (yep, that Watchmen). Gibbons is joined by his former DWM editor, Alan McKenzie, with additional comments provided by 1990s DWM editors Gary Russell and Alan Barnes. Happily for me, it looks like everyone pretty much agrees on the quality of the comics from this period, though I personally feel Gibbons has always caught way too much flak for his likeness of Peter Davison. There is a lot of good discussion about what did and didn’t work, with special attention for the artistic teething troubles the strip faced when Dave Gibbons left halfway through the Davison run. This is a very good featurette; if you haven’t read the fifth Doctor strips before now, it will make you want to, right away. (Quick hint: seek out a copy of the recent The Tides of Time graphic novel, which collects the entire run of Peter Davison-era strips, and give yourself a treat.) 

Points of View (2 mins.) features a 1982 archive clip from the BBC’s viewer opinions show; my God, that opening theme is so ‘80s! Host Barry Took reveals a letter from a Welsh mother of two, frustrated that Doctor Who has been moved to a time slot beyond her children’s bedtime, as well as one from an irate Welsh sportsman (who seems to write like a Dalek), a lady from Birmingham, and a long-standing fan from Carlisle. Finally, a letter from Robert Moore, 12, of Hampshire asks for “more monsters and fewer girls.” Apparently, even “malignant vegetables” would be better. I say, I like the cut of his jib.

The Photo Gallery (5 mins.) is a selection of publicity and set photographs, cycling against period (or period-style) music from the story. Coming Soon (1 min.) features a trailer for October’s release, Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord, which actually makes it look pretty tense and exciting. (I fear some newer fans are going to be disappointed!) Finally, Radio Times Listings allows viewers with a DVD-Rom drive to access the original “Black Orchid” broadcast listings from Britain’s national TV/radio magazine.

An easter egg (1 min.) is also included, and if you’ve been paying attention to recent such inclusions on the Who DVDs, you might already guess what you’ll find here. Personally speaking, I wish they’d stop making this particular item an easter egg. It used to be included regularly on the menus. And speaking of menus - now, for the first time, the main menu actually displays the story’s title in a little oblong box: there it is, “Black Orchid,” just so we don’t forget.

Oh, and the disc opens with that blasted Doctor Who: The Complete Third Series trailer. Rotten luck.

Doctor Who: Black Orchid is an unusual example of the series, and of the DVD range, too. It’s a light, fun story, and there are a lot of light, fun extras, but few of them have any real impact or relation to the story. That said, I would still recommend the disc if there was only a commentary and a single featurette (the comics one, for choice!). At $14.98 in a brick-and-mortar store, under $10 online, this is a steal. Regardless of any tangents, most of the extras are highly enjoyable, the commentary’s hysterical, and in my opinion, the story - while silly - is at least a pleasant diversion. If you’re even a general fan of 1980s Doctor Who, I don’t hesitate in recommending this one. You could even skip the actual story, focus on the extras, and still have a fun time. Jolly good, what?

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