The Hunchback of Cranleigh Hall (Doctor Who - Black Orchid (DVD))

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Product:	Doctor Who - Black Orchid (DVD)
Date:	07.04.08 (98 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Effective period setting and unusual story

Disadvantages: Whilst heralded as a "whodunit" it's actually a very poor example

Arriving in 1920s England, The Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan find themselves on the Cranleigh estate where they enjoy the hospitality of an old-fashioned cricket match and the promise of a costume party. Introduced to the occupants, the travellers are intrigued to find that Lord Cranleigh's daughter, Ann, is the spitting image of Nyssa, but with food, drink and music to dance to, they quickly start to enjoy a rather more pleasant outing than their usual adventures. But in the depths of Cranleigh Hall lurks a secret. A murderer is on the loose, and when the Doctor is accused of the heinous crime, it soon becomes a tricky case of mistaken identities....

Originally screened in 1982, Black Orchid was Peter Davison's first two-part adventure and more unusually, pitched the Doctor and his friends into a historical setting free from any alien or scientific intervention. Seen by some as something of a season-filler, there is a certain fondness for the story, given only that many of the plot elements set it out as one of the more unusual stories of the classic era.

The idea that The Doctor and his companions may get to enjoy their travels often seems overlooked in both the new and classic series and the story's first episode, comprised almost entirely of the travellers enjoying the Edwardian setting, is something of a respite from the expected carnage and mayhem you would normally expect. The BBC's skill at costume drama is employed to great effect here. The sets and costumes are consistently authentic and unlike many other historical stories, the audience becomes absorbed in the atmosphere. The cast members seem more relaxed and actually seem to be enjoying themselves, with Adric, Nyssa and Tegan all getting much more into character than we had seen in earlier stories. Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) is notably different here and even (occasionally) quite likeable. Curiously, The Doctor is almost side-lined here, spending most of the story wandering around the mansion's secret passages and getting less screen time than his companions, enjoying themselves downstairs. The tale is most notable for showing him out of his usual costume for probably the only time in his tenure as the Time Lord.

The supporting cast members are a mixed bag, most of which work very well, with only one notable exception. There's a rather curious Indian fellow named Dittar, employed to secure the loopy guy incarcerated in the attic, who sports a bizarre (supposedly) Amazonian lip plate, and yet speaks with a very British-Asian dialect, completely free from any lip-plate induced lisp. Lady Cranleigh (Barbara Murray) is suitably secretive and her son, Charles, is effectively stiff upper-lipped. The mad man in the attic is played with typical Who gusto by Gareth Milne, who rushes around, breathes and gurgles heavily and does the whole deformed mad-man thing pretty well. When originally screened, the presence of the disfigured nut case prompted a handful of viewer complaints, but now seems very tame.

Although often pitched as a "whodunit" Black Orchid is not a particularly good example of a murder mystery, if that were the writer's intention. The script provides multiple opportunities to portray a real mystery, but instead opts to make it clear from the outset that there's a mad man on the loose. The only real "reveal" is the man's actual identity, which is accompanied by some reasonably gruesome make-up later on in the story. On reflection, the two-part format rather limits the writer's ability to craft the tale properly. The pace of the first episode more closely resembles the traditional four-parter, with a growing sense of trepidation that builds to a competent enough cliffhanger, but then leaves far too much to resolve in the second episode. Nyssa's identical Earth twin (Ann) provides a useful plot device for mischief and confusion but eventually feels rather contrived, given only that the audience expects an intriguing explanation for the phenomenon and never receives one.

There is something inherently appealing about Black Orchid, though. It's almost certainly the differences to the rest of the series that mark this story out as an individual. Interestingly, viewed now, some twenty-odd years after it was first broadcast, it dates far better than many of its peers, largely because of the absence of cheap effects and silly gadgets. Black Orchid actually feels like one of the new series adventures; it's very easy to imagine David Tennant turning up and Rose Tyler doing the Charleston instead of Tegan. Black Orchid is one of the stronger Davison stories and demonstrated a different story-telling approach that should have been used far more during the subsequent years of the classic series.

The region 2 UK DVD for Black Orchid is released on 14th April 2008 and costs around £9. Like most of the classic Doctor Who DVD releases, this is probably only one for the collectors but fans of the new series might be pleasantly surprised by this too.

Summary: The Doctor and his companions suffer a case of mistaken identity