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The Black Archive #77
Castrovalva
‘I’m afraid one of us is deluded about geography.’
The second of Christopher H Bidmead’s scripts sweeping away the last of the 1970s and setting up the era of the fifth Doctor, Castrovalva (1982) encodes contemporary ideas in an antique setting. This Black Archive considers fictional and studio spaces, created worlds and people, the architecture of labyrinths and the influence of such figures as Jorge Luis Borges, Douglas Hofstadter and MC Escher, before asking, ‘What does the Master want?’.
The second of Christopher H Bidmead’s scripts sweeping away the last of the 1970s and setting up the era of the fifth Doctor, Castrovalva (1982) encodes contemporary ideas in an antique setting. This Black Archive considers fictional and studio spaces, created worlds and people, the architecture of labyrinths and the influence of such figures as Jorge Luis Borges, Douglas Hofstadter and MC Escher, before asking, ‘What does the Master want?’.
- GenresDoctor Who
172 pages
Published June 7, 2025
6 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 17, 2025
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/castrovalva-by-andrew-orton-and-christopher-h-bidmead-and-some-reflections-on-escher/
I came to Andrew Orton’s Black Archive with high expectations. His previous one on The Deadly Assassin is one of my favourites in the sequence, and I picked it as my top Doctor Who non-fiction book read in 2023. I’m glad to say that my expectations this time round were fulfilled.
Orton quotes an anecdote from John Nathan-Turner alleging that he personally was freaked out by the Escher prints in a senior BBC colleague’s office, and that Bidmead based Castrovalva on Escher to tease him. Orton also then quotes Bidmead’s flat denial of this story. I tend to believe Bidmead; he may be the more well-known fiction writer of the two, but Nathan-Turner was a fantasist with some paranoid tendencies.
The first chapter, ‘A New Beginning’, outlines the many ways in which Season 19 was a fresh start for Doctor Who, not least (but not only) because of the change of leading actor. It seems likely that the Doctor’s channeling of his previous selves in the first episode was scripted (or partly scripted) by Peter Davison himself. The chapter also looks at the mythology of Doctor Who, and at the interaction between producers and fandom.
The second chapter, ‘Architectural Configuration in Televisual Spaces’, looks at the use of videotape versus film, and also and in more detail at the way in which Castrovalva innovatively uses the studio space to tell the story, much more so than most Doctor Who (let alone most TV.) This is the kind of thing I really love in the Black Archives.
The third chapter, ‘Ontology and Worldbuilding’, goes much more into the ideas behind the story. Exploring the nature of the doubly fictional world of Catrovalva takes us on a journey through Thomas More, Jorge Luis Borges, Plato’s cave, The Truman Show, Dimensions in Time, cargo cults and the Doctor’s breaking the fourth wall in The Daleks’ Master Plan. This sort of examination of the intellectual underpinnings of a story is sometimes done rather badly in the Black Archives, but here it is done well.
A page between the third and fourth chapters bears the text, “THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.” As the fourth chapter, ‘Recursion and Strange Loops’, points out, this is not true; the page is not blank, it has six words of text on it. The chapter reflects on Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, which came out in 1979 and must surely have been in Bidmead’s thoughts; looks at Escher’s art, as outlined above; and takes a couple of pages to admire Fiona Cumming’s direction of the story.
The fifth chapter, ‘Maths as Myths’, looks at the mythology of Doctor Who, and Bidmead’s approach to the mythology of mathematics and computers, and mirrors and entropy. He also speculates on the relationship between Nyssa and Tegan, who appear to have only one bed in their shared bedrooms both on the Tardis and in Castrovalva.
An appendix, ‘What Does the Master Want?’, looks at one of the things that personally annoys me most about Castrovalva, the obscurity of the Master’s means and motivation, and tries to construct a credible time-line from the Master’s point of view for the three consecutive stories starting with The Keeper of Traken. It’s a side issue from Orton’s main arguments, but it’s an important one and he comes to a satisfying conclusion:
The Master isn’t really a rounded character, because he is not a person with consistent or continual motives: he’s a hole in the story into which are poured the elements of evil intent or adversariality which will correctly trigger the drama to unfold. He’s the concept of opposition, and little more.
It will be clear that I enjoyed this, one of the longer Black Archives at 176 pages.
I came to Andrew Orton’s Black Archive with high expectations. His previous one on The Deadly Assassin is one of my favourites in the sequence, and I picked it as my top Doctor Who non-fiction book read in 2023. I’m glad to say that my expectations this time round were fulfilled.
Orton quotes an anecdote from John Nathan-Turner alleging that he personally was freaked out by the Escher prints in a senior BBC colleague’s office, and that Bidmead based Castrovalva on Escher to tease him. Orton also then quotes Bidmead’s flat denial of this story. I tend to believe Bidmead; he may be the more well-known fiction writer of the two, but Nathan-Turner was a fantasist with some paranoid tendencies.
The first chapter, ‘A New Beginning’, outlines the many ways in which Season 19 was a fresh start for Doctor Who, not least (but not only) because of the change of leading actor. It seems likely that the Doctor’s channeling of his previous selves in the first episode was scripted (or partly scripted) by Peter Davison himself. The chapter also looks at the mythology of Doctor Who, and at the interaction between producers and fandom.
The second chapter, ‘Architectural Configuration in Televisual Spaces’, looks at the use of videotape versus film, and also and in more detail at the way in which Castrovalva innovatively uses the studio space to tell the story, much more so than most Doctor Who (let alone most TV.) This is the kind of thing I really love in the Black Archives.
The third chapter, ‘Ontology and Worldbuilding’, goes much more into the ideas behind the story. Exploring the nature of the doubly fictional world of Catrovalva takes us on a journey through Thomas More, Jorge Luis Borges, Plato’s cave, The Truman Show, Dimensions in Time, cargo cults and the Doctor’s breaking the fourth wall in The Daleks’ Master Plan. This sort of examination of the intellectual underpinnings of a story is sometimes done rather badly in the Black Archives, but here it is done well.
A page between the third and fourth chapters bears the text, “THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.” As the fourth chapter, ‘Recursion and Strange Loops’, points out, this is not true; the page is not blank, it has six words of text on it. The chapter reflects on Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, which came out in 1979 and must surely have been in Bidmead’s thoughts; looks at Escher’s art, as outlined above; and takes a couple of pages to admire Fiona Cumming’s direction of the story.
The fifth chapter, ‘Maths as Myths’, looks at the mythology of Doctor Who, and Bidmead’s approach to the mythology of mathematics and computers, and mirrors and entropy. He also speculates on the relationship between Nyssa and Tegan, who appear to have only one bed in their shared bedrooms both on the Tardis and in Castrovalva.
An appendix, ‘What Does the Master Want?’, looks at one of the things that personally annoys me most about Castrovalva, the obscurity of the Master’s means and motivation, and tries to construct a credible time-line from the Master’s point of view for the three consecutive stories starting with The Keeper of Traken. It’s a side issue from Orton’s main arguments, but it’s an important one and he comes to a satisfying conclusion:
The Master isn’t really a rounded character, because he is not a person with consistent or continual motives: he’s a hole in the story into which are poured the elements of evil intent or adversariality which will correctly trigger the drama to unfold. He’s the concept of opposition, and little more.
It will be clear that I enjoyed this, one of the longer Black Archives at 176 pages.
September 14, 2025
Some fascinating insight into the production of DOCTOR WHO CASTROVALVA. Really enjoyed the parts about Christopher Bidmead’s science and pseudo-science. Though, the chapter on Shakespeare felt like it drifted a bit off topic for me. Still, great read!!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews