Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
It’s Day 18 of ‘Bradley’s Basement’s Advent Calendar 2022.
Will the Fifth Doctor save Nyssa from George Cranleigh in ‘Black Orchid’?
This is quite a dramatic climax to what has mostly been a quaint pure historical ‘Doctor Who’ adventure set in the 1920s. For most of ‘Part Two’, the Doctor has been accused of murder. Here, the murderer is revealed, as it turns out to be George Cranleigh, who appears as a pretty horrific sight.
It’s tense when Nyssa got captured and was taken to the rooftop, because George thinks she’s Ann. I would have thought Nyssa’s hairstyle compared to Ann’s would have given the game away, but as Lady Cranleigh explains to Sir Robert Muir, ‘his mind was affected’ when the Indians tortured him. 😐
I like how Peter Davison’s Doctor, in his Harlequin outfit, goes to the rooftop inside the house to get to Nyssa and George, whilst Charles Cranleigh crawls up the walls of Cranleigh Hall like Spider-Man to get to them. Even Sarah Sutton compared Charles Cranleigh to Spidey in the DVD and Blu-ray extras.
There is a moment in the Target novelization/audiobook where George slips the shoulder strap off Nyssa’s dress for a bit to see whether she has a mole or not to confirm that she’s not Ann. I think it would have been effective to have shown that moment, as I don’t think it was that clearly realised. 😐
As much as ‘Black Orchid’ is my absolute favourite ‘Doctor Who’ story, it does end rather tragically with George Cranleigh ending up losing his balance and plummeting to the ground to his death. I’m glad stuntman Gareth Milne, who played George Cranleigh, survived the fall, as he missed the boxes to ease it.
Thanks for watching and reading!
Check out what Day 18 of my ‘Bradley’s Basement’s Advent Calendars for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 were about!
Bye for now!
Tim 🙂
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