Episode #158 : Survival

"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep and the rivers dream, people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we've got work to do."

Episode 158:    Survival.
Companions:   7th Doctor and Ace.
Air Date:          22nd November to 6th December 1989.

The Doctor takes Ace to present day Perivale so that she can revisit old friends. Most of them however have been transported by cat-like Kitlings to the planet of the Cheetah People, a race with the power to teleport through space. Ace is transported and joins up with two of her friends, Midge and Shreela, and a boy named Derek. The Doctor follows and encounters the Master, who has drawn him into a trap to try to gain his help. This planet gradually transforms its inhabitants into Cheetah People - an influence to which the Master himself has fallen victim - while they in turn, through the savagery of their actions, cause the planet to move ever closer to total destruction.

The final ever episode of the classic series comes crashing down after the excellent couple of previous stories. Survival is just poor both in story and in production values. The kitling (above) and the cheetah people costumes are just plain bad. No one thought about spending much on this story and it spoils it so very much.

The Master makes his final classic era appearance here and it feels so much like that his inclusion was simply tacked on for the sake of it. At least in Survival he isn't up to some nefarious but ill-thought out scheme. He is out to escape the planet of the cheetah people and free himself from the transformation into a cat.

Survival is another adventure where Ace gets the centre stage with much of the events being plotted around her. The Doctor however seems to have lost something in this one. Gone is the intelligent and manipulative Time Lord from recent stories and in his place is a more incompetent investigator. Disappointing to be say the least.

It is a shame that the classic show died with this as the final episode. It deserved better. The problem is however that since the end of the Tom Baker era there had been a severe drop in the production values of the show. The look of the show has often been cited as one of the reasons that the show was cancelled by the BBC. Survival is a perfect example of that.