I discovered a few months ago that I'd never actually seen Planet of Fire. And if you don't mind the (literally?) smouldering homo-eroticism it's actually surprisingly good.
Peri - who with the possible honest exception of Leela is the only bona fide sexiful TARDIS girl - does literally seem to have gone to Greece on an archaeological expedition composed entirely of gay guys. I mean, "Kurt" and "Howard"? Really? And then they find an "intriguing" underwater dildo. Clearly the poor lass is recovering from a breakup and wanted to take a break from the cheerleader squad with the "safe" boys. Did Yankee passports really look like that though? Bit weird if they didn't! It's hardly adding anything to Peri's character to show that she's "well-travelled". And what sort of person leafs through her passport like that anyway? There's also something mildly problematic about the script's requiring Nicola to flounder about like a wilting violet when in actual fact she clearly is absolutely fit as a fiddle.
Turlough meanwhile has never been camper. "Doctor, you're showing off!" But his indignant "Earthlings!" when he sees Peri pretending to drown does seem to suggest a lingering taste for heterosexuality - except that he does also wear budgie-smugglers under his hot short shorts. (You know - just in case!) Actually why is Strickson still playing Turlough as camp and weird and nerdy? (Does one have to ask?) Surely by this time Turlough should be one of the good guys? "If you're holding back anything that might help the Master, our friendship is at an end. I know we only became friends in the first place because you were trying to kill me, but I do have limits." (One is reminded though that back in the 1980s a macho hero's "brother" could just as easily be his boyfriend IRL.)
Peter Davison does at least keep the Doctor in character - a glass of water and absent-mindedly paying with alien currency is oddly true to form even for his most "normal" of Doctors. Later on we even get the half-moon specs back again. Yes, I know it was the youngest actor at the time to play the part over-compensating, but surely kooky uncool fogeydom - as with Matt Smith's tweeds and bow-ties - is part and parcel of what the Doctor and Doctor Who are all about? And surely only a Time Lord could get away with a waistcoat like that on holiday!
Peter Wyngarde meanwhile ought by rights to be an object lesson in why you shouldn't have "proper" actors in Doctor Who. (In the apocryphal but immortal words of Lord Olivier, "I'm too fucking grand.") But in fact he goes to show how a competent actor can make a sound concept work even in the most unpromising of productions. Yes, there's a real problem that unless you listen to the dialogue (duh!) there's no obvious distinction between Sarn and Earth. (They both look like Lanzarote.) But in truth most of the time the special effects are used sparingly enough for them to have held up over the years. (Admittedly the running around stuff with the miniature Master would work better with Kay Harker in The Box of Delights later that year.)
Then of course there's the plot! Logar = Loki, as in the Norse god of fire? Nice! ("What does he look like, this fire-lord? I mean, what does he look like naked?") And the first non-sexy female in the entire story is literally a sceptic Karen. (I wonder how this will work out...) Of course by this time Doctor Who was in its twenty-first year, so for any long-term viewer there would by now have been a teeny growing sense of been there, done that. Sarn? Sounds like Karn! Is that life-giving sacred flame not just a little bit too familiar? The whole "the Doctor comes from <insert deity's name here>" has been a thing in Doctor Who since literally the Stone Age in literally the series' first serial. And of course there's something fundamentally silly about science-fiction encouraging scepticism about "organised religion" - as if a genre that permits space wizards and time travel can really have a problem with a straightforward philosophical proposition like the existence of God.
Alas, by the time Turlough reveals that he's deposed ancien regime in exile (very cool - albeit second generation!) it feels a bit late in the day to do anything "interesting" with the character. And the very eccentric solicitor on Chancery Lane sounds like a genuine piece of Doctor Who whimsy. So why didn't we hear more about him ever? (Presumably he was the one who got young Master Turlough packed off to Brendon in the first place!) Mind you, the people of Trion do use Arabic numerals, and they send their exiled princelings to English public schools. Wouldn't you say that's quite eccentric?
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