For several years the authorship of this story was questioned by some sections of fandom. In the pre-internet era, little was known about Christopher Bailey. Rumours abounded that the writer was a pseudonym for someone well known who did not wish to be associated with the series. This ranged from playwright Tom Stoppard to pop queen Kate Bush.
Bailey employs a lot of imagery and concepts from Christianity and Buddhism, some of which led to confusion with many viewers. VHS recorders were becoming cheaper and therefore more accessible by the time Season 19 arrived, but many households still did not have them - so there was no opportunity to wind back and review scenes.
It is doubtful any significant proportion of viewers had studied Buddhism - so the names of the characters in the black void, and what they represented, would have been totally meaningless to the audience.
Quite who these people are is still open to debate. Are they the missing crewmembers? If not, what did happen to them and why are they never mentioned again?
Or are they supposed to be representations of the Doctor, Adric and Nyssa, with the strange object beside them representing the TARDIS?
This is the most common assumption. Two of them are playing chess after all, as we saw Tegan's friends playing draughts earlier.
The painted studio floor is all too obvious for the forests of Deva Loka - and we actually see that some of the vegetation grows in plant pots.
The studio is over-lit - the curse of the programme for much of its classic era - so any chance of engendering mood and atmosphere is lost. We don't even have any sequences set at night.
The Kinda know that the dreaming of an unshared mind can allow the Mara to re-enter this world, so why do they allow the glade of the wind chimes to still exist? Shouldn't it have been dismantled - or at the very least guarded in some way? At one point we actually see some of the tribe come across the sleeping Tegan, but they just look at her for a bit then wander away. If this poses such a danger, why not wake her up?
By failing to take any action they allow this whole chain of events to take place. If it's all to do with fate and "the wheel of time" - so predestined to happen - this isn't made clear.
Was showing a lot of 1980's alarm clocks really the best way to represent the "wheel of time" concept on screen?
Deva Loka is known to the colonial force as S14 - i.e. the 14th planet explored by Commander Sanders. As with the various bosses of bases-under-siege in the Troughton era, we have to wonder how he managed to achieve his position or to retain it.
Adric mentions that the malfunctioning Total Survival Suit might be responsible for the missing crew members. Sanders agrees - and then sets off alone into the jungle in it. No thought of getting it checked out.
As with Sanders' suitability to hold a senior role in the party, so with Hindle. Apparently some background of how he came to have his mental health issues was included in the script, but dropped for the actual programme. A TV show can only be judged by what actually appears on screen.
As with Ghost Light yet to come, if it has to be explained in an interview after the event then there's been a pretty serious problem with the script-editing. (Christopher Bidmead's decision to quit after one season did lead to this being a bit chaotic, script-wise, behind the scenes, with the involvement of three different script editors on some stories of Season 19 - Bidmead, Anthony Root and Eric Saward).
The final episode underran, necessitating Eric Saward devising an additional scene which was recorded during the making of Earthshock. It's just Tegan and Adric arguing in the base airlock.
Keep an eye on Adrian Mills when Aris' wooden framework is attacked by the real TSS. He's clearly worried about the fact that the fire hasn't quite gone out.
The Mara would have worked a lot better as an unseen force for evil, manifesting only through its possession of others. The decision to have it materialise as a huge, pink, plastic-looking snake is an obvious error of judgement. Preferably it should never have been seen at all, but if it had to be included then something with the look and colouring of a real snake would have been (slightly) better.
The climax is all about evil being unable to face itself - but the snake is never seen to be at the same level of the mirrors. It's looking right over everyone's head, and if it had only shrunk itself it could have escaped through one of the many gaps in the mirrors.
As a psychic force, capable of possessing people, why did it take on this giant snake form in the first place?
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