'Doctor Who: Enlightenment' (1983)

Well, the plan was to tell you all what I thought of 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth' but it hasn't arrived yet so we're jumping forwards in time to the Peter Davison era and 'Enlightenment'. I was the tender age of seven when this was first broadcast, and I hadn't seen it since, so my memory of it was a little hazy. All I could remember was something about racing boats in space, which sounds really cool doesn't it? Well, when I saw the DVD for sale in Oxfam (for all of £1!) I had to give it a go. After all, you can't go too far wrong for a pound. Can you...?

Materialising on an Edwardian sailing yacht in space, the Fifth Doctor and his companions Tegan and Turlough find themselves caught up in a mysterious and deadly race. The prize is Enlightenment - the wisdom to find your heart's desire - and it quickly becomes clear that one of the crews will let nothing and no-one stop them claiming victory.

As the Black Guardian pressures Turlough to complete his side of their murderous pact, it seems that the Doctor may not survive to cross the finish line...

After all the gunfire and explosions of the last three or four Doctor Who posts, it was a little disconcerting to go into 'Enlightenment' and find it to be so quiet. Seriously, I don't think there was any background noise at all and there wasn't an awful lot of incidental music either; not that I heard anyway as I found myself getting more and more into the story itself.

The story itself is a fairly basic 'whodunnit' but also a 'howtheydunnit' at the same time. The concept of the Eternal's 'Race for Enlightenment' takes things to a different level though. 'Enlightenment' is heavy on the gloomy, yet slightly ethereal at the same time, atmosphere that you could only get through watching boats sail through the silence of space. You get a real sobering feeling out of just the atmosphere on it's own but the concept of the Eternals themselves is even more sobering. Just imagine what it would be like to live forever and just be really, really bored at the prospect... Like going to work but 9-5 is now 24/7. Not only does this add to the stakes behind the race (what would an Eternal be so desperate to learn...) but it opens up a little bit more of the Doctor Who universe (is 'Whoniverse' a thing?) and makes it a little grander in scope. All the while that the Doctor is fighting Daleks, Cybermen and so on, there's a race of bored Eternals who are just beyond all that now. All they want is enlightenment. Peter Davison's fresh faced Fifth Doctor is the perfect counterpoint to the somewhat staid Eternals and that freshness shows the Eternals for what they really are, hollow beings who must look down upon humans but are doomed to take all inspiration from them.

All the while this is going on, the 'Black Guardian' storyline is also concluding. Now this isn't something that I can say too much about as I haven't seen 'Terminus' or 'Mawdryn Undead' since the early eighties. What I would say is that this ending wraps things up nicely and ties in well with the 'Enlightenment' storyline. It was good to see Turlough be allowed to develop into someone capable of making the right decision (and able to do just that).

I suspect that I enjoyed 'Enlightenment' more, this time round, than I did watching it as an eight year old. What was very understated then has a lot more going on underneath the service than at first appears to be the case. It's probably not a DVD that I'd watch regularly but one that I will keep in my collection.