In interviews, Peter Davison stated that among the stories he hated the most were the ones which he thought were obviously intended for something else and just taken out of a drawer, dusted off, and adapted to Doctor Who. He was clearly thinking of Black Orchid when he said this, and was critical of it in other ways.
Terence Dudley's two-parter is simply a country house whodunnit, in the style of Agatha Christie and many others, which then has the Doctor and companions grafted onto it. It could work equally well with a human protagonist - someone new to the environment arriving and being accused of a crime they didn't do, before helping identify the real culprit.
There are no science fiction trappings other than the regulars and the TARDIS, but we are presented with a monster - which leads to a major problem with the story.
George Cranleigh has been left damaged in both body and mind after being captured and tortured by a native South American tribe.
He's basically crippled and disfigured, and he's presented as a monster. Physical deformity as monstrous. Sometimes you can argue that things were different back then, and such things weren't seen as objectionable. But by the early 1980's people were taking notice about such things. Just a year later Terminus would draw flak over the perceived parallels between the Lazars and leprosy.
As far as plotting goes, there are a few obvious holes (or just a load of plain old nonsense).
We can just about buy no-one at the cricket match knowing what the expected doctor looked like, but surely serious questions would be asked about a stranger, who refuses to give his name, turning up for a weekend stay with three extra people in tow, two of whom are deemed children.
The railway clearly has only the one line, because they filmed at a disused station which is now part of a heritage line.
Bearing in mind what happened to George, how did the flower get back to England?
Not content with being fluent in ancient Aboriginal languages, Tegan knows all about an obscure botanist - despite never having shown any aptitude for the subject.
The Doctor is accused of murder, but for some reason showing the police a space / time machine which is dimensionally transcendental automatically makes everything he says truthful.
He says he didn't kill the servants, so that's alright then.
What made the Doctor think showing the TARDIS would help him in the first place?
There weren't any Police Public Call Boxes in rural areas in 1925. The model upon which the TARDIS is based wasn't designed until 1929, and took time to roll out from the metropolis. Real boxes were concrete, with only the doors made of wood - so the police could hardly have been expected to know how to shift one even if they did know what it was.
The Doctor warns everyone that George will kill Nyssa when he finds out he has the wrong girl - then tells George he has the wrong girl...
JNT's insistence on the uniform look for the Doctor and companions leads to the ludicrous sight of the them attending a funeral dressed like wholly inappropriate outfits.
They have access to the TARDIS. Couldn't they have changed into something black? The Doctor isn't even wearing a black armband. Really quite offensive to the family - even of they did try to frame him for murder.
Talking of which, we know Madge is best friends with the local police bigwig, but is there no criminal comeback on the Cranleighs for their efforts to protect a killer and frame an innocent man?
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