Written by Barbara Clegg
Directed by Fiona Cumming

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television series that has been around off and on since 1963. The main character is just known as “The Doctor” and is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. This means he travels through time to various places. One of his favorite places to visit is Earth. Typically, he has a companion traveling with him, usually female, sometimes male, sometimes one of each. He travels in a time machine known as a TARDIS, which is disguised as a British Police booth. 

A Time Lord can regenerate if fatally wounded, which has accounted for all the different actors who have played The Doctor throughout the years. In this story-arc, the Doctor is portrayed by Peter Davison. He is traveling with two companions.  Tegan (portrayed by Janet Fielding) is a flight attendant from Earth who sort of accidentally ended up in the TARDIS with him.  Turlough (portrayed by Mark Strickson) was picked up in the first installment of this trilogy of stories known collectively as The Black Guardian Trilogy.  Enlightenment is the final story.

In this final installment, the TARDIS is experiencing a power loss. The Doctor traces that loss to the White Guardian, whom only he seems to be able to see. They land in the TARDIS on what appears to be some sort of navy ship. It’s actually a spaceship of sorts involved in a race with a prize of enlightenment.  The ship is manned by humans, called Ephemerals by the other beings known as Eternals.  The Eternals have difficulty thinking for themselves and rely on the human crew to do their thinking for them.

Turlough ends up on one of the other ships in the competition, desperately trying to get away from the Black Guardian, with whom he threw his lot in early in the trilogy.  This puts him in the position of either helping or hurting the Doctor, if he can keep the beings on the other ship from figuring out what he is up to.

Enlightenment was interesting in that it had to be both a stand-alone story as well as the conclusion to a trilogy. It needed to wrap up the conflict Turlough was facing since the beginning in a convincing way that tied all three of the installments together.  With just four episodes of 25 minutes each, that was a lot to cram into a little bit of time.  At times, the story does suffer.  I had the feeling of going “Wait, what?” more than once and had to back up and go through what just happened to see if I missed something.  There are so many in the guest cast that I had a hard time keeping them all straight.

At the same time, the story is ambitious in what it wants to convey.  It manages to strike a decent balance in tying together the ongoing story of the trilogy with the story of the race here, as well as the appearance of both the Black and White Guardians.  The way the story is wrapped up really is no surprise, especially to science fiction fans.  We’ve seen this sort of storyline before, where higher beings test others, and the conclusion is also not that much of a surprise, although there is an opening for further exploration of the topic in the future.

The regular cast is good.  Peter Davison has a lot on his plate and does well, as does Mark Strickson.  He’s got a better feel for Turlough than he’s had up until this point, and it shows.  Janet Fielding is better than she’s been at other times, but she’ll just never be my favorite companion.  The guest cast is where this suffers.  There are at least two that suffer from melodramatic over-acting that really threaten the viewer’s ability to take the story seriously, and the story doesn’t need any help in that area.

However, Enlightenment is a story-arc that does have a plus in the special effects and sets, something that Doctor Who was known for cutting corners with.  The sets, in particular, are damn nice for what I’ve gotten used to expecting from the series.  The story makes good use of them, too, which does help with the credibility.

The two-disc DVD set contains so many extras that I spent more time on them than I did the actual story.  The first disc has a myriad of extras, including the usual commentary, which is pretty good (probably because Janet Fielding isn’t among the commentators), as well as a slew of featurettes.  The second disc is a special edition of this story-arc that was re-cut and updated by Director Fiona Cumming.  The idea was to see if the classic Doctor Who could fit into the new show’s format, telling a story in just 45 minutes.  This cut ends up being longer than that restriction, but the new CGI effects added to it make it quite an interesting experiment.

As the conclusion to The Black Guardian Trilogy, Enlightenment is pretty good, so I’d suggest it be watched as such.  As a stand-alone episode, it seems a bit lacking at times, with too much story and actors who seem to need to go back to acting school at times.  Still, I recommend it as part of the Trilogy.



Disc One DVD Features:

• Commentary with Peter Davison, Mark Strickson, Director Diana Cumming, Writer Barbara Clegg
• Isolated Music track
• Information Text
• Winner Takes All
• Casting Off!
• Single Write Female
• The Story of the Guardians
• Storyboards
• Photo Gallery

Disc Two DVD Features:

• Re-Enlightenment
• Original Edit Comparison
• Film Trims
• Finding Mark Strickson
• Finding Sarah Sutton
• Russell Harty Christmas Party
• Continuity