Castrovalva (Doctor Who)

Castrovalva is the first serial of the 19th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts on BBC1 from 4 to 12 January 1982.

With Peter Davison taking over as the Doctor, the BBC chose to move the show from its usual Saturday night slot, where it had been since its launch in November 1963.

They attempt to pilot the TARDIS but find they are travelling rapidly to a preset time and destination, "Event One", the Big Bang, a trap set by the Master.

While he is still disorientated, the Doctor addresses Adric as "Brigadier" and "Jamie", Tegan as "Vicki" and "Jo", mentioning Romana, the Ice Warriors and K-9 as if they were in the vicinity, as well as adopting mannerisms or figures of speech characteristic of his four previous incarnations.

John Nathan-Turner took advantage of this to give Davison the chance to have a firm idea of how he wanted to play the role before recording the regeneration story.

Location filming for the forest outside the Castrovalva citadel took place in East Sussex at Buckhurst Park and Harrison's Rocks near Groombridge.

For this story, the series was shifted from its traditional Saturday early evening transmission to a twice-weekly (Monday and Tuesday) slot.

In order to keep the Master's disguise hidden, in part 3 the role of the Portreeve was credited to "Neil Toynay", an anagram of "Tony Ainley".

Escher's lithograph depicts a town in Italy atop a steep slope, a setting similar to that of The Curse of Peladon (1972), but there is nothing in the print itself to suggest the paradoxes of this story.

However, it is repeatedly described in this story as "the creation of the galaxy", which is believed to be a gradual coalescing of hydrogen predating the first stars rather than a dramatic cosmic event.

The serial was released on DVD in the New Beginnings boxset on 29 January 2007 as part of a "Return of the Master" trilogy alongside The Keeper of Traken and Logopolis.