A discourse on the unconscious, a rhetorical text with a multitude of figurative meanings, a work of startling and unparalleled originality: ‘Kinda’ is all of these things and more. Critical readings have concentrated on the dialogue that the story establishes with orthodox Buddhism and Christianity - and its very ‘literary’ allusiveness - but a psychoanalytical approach produces its own mine-field of aesthetic parallels and textual ambiguity.
As a story of repression, it is not surprising that many of the characters and events in ‘Kinda’ find analogous representation in Oliver Postgate’s condensed metaphorical homage to Freudian psychoanalysis, Bagpuss. Bagpuss concentrates on Emily, the instigator of all events but notably very much an absence from the heart of the narrative. Emily appears to be a typically prim Victorian girl, whose libidinous feelings are repressed or sublimated to such an extent that the only images we have of her come from sepia (i.e. colourless) photographs. Only the shop is seen in colour, this representing Emily’s unfettered psyche, populated by characters who are no more than imagos, internalized images that derive from past (and unhappy) experiences.
A full reading of the various imagos - which would underline the undoubted severity of the familial trauma that is at the heart of Emily’s psychological unease - is beyond the scope of this article, but already the links with Christopher Bailey’s ‘Kinda’ are clear. Tegan, like Emily, is sexually-repressed, but only realises the true, vibrant ‘colour’ of her subconscious in the Dark Places of Inside (which corresponds with Emily’s altruistic shop), although the use of colour is reversed to form a bleached-out, almost monochromatic inner world. Once Tegan’s sexuality is unleashed she can use this against Aris, and revels in the new unconformity: as Dukka promised, she is ‘suitably entertained by the experience’.
The Bagpuss character appears in the Dark Places of the Inside as Dukka. Both are the objects of Emily/Tegan’s emotions (love/fear), and are in complete control of their worlds: Bagpuss forces his friends into slumber when he sleeps, Dukka repels Annata and Annica with his very arrival. Medeline and Gabriel become Annata and Annica, subservient, symbiotic characters that do the bidding of Bagpuss/Dukka because ‘we’re the same [as] each other’. The absence of the mice and Yaffle from Tegan’s Id is important, for this means that she encounters three discrete forms of the Mara (the other Tegans are just a ‘trick’). In dream symbolism, the number three is associated with male genitalia, the sort sexual image Tegan usually represses - and thus we are back at the outwardly pure Emily figure.
The second sequence of Freudian derivations come from a particular Bagpuss text. In the episode in question the object under scrutiny is a porcupine pin cushion, minus its pins, and Bagpuss narrates the story of a Scotsman called Tavish McTavish, who appears in Bailey’s text as the Aris character (note how similar the names ‘Tavish’ and ‘Aris’ are, especially if you’re suffering from a cold). The tale concerns McTavish’s attempts to find his brother Hamish - but instead he finds a small furry creature which he nicknames ‘Hamish’. In ‘Kinda’ we see Aris trying to find/rescue his brother, but instead he finds the Mara.
Tavish’s hut has two possible parallels: either as a reflection of the turmoil in Aris’ mind or, more tangibly, as the TSS machine (and thus in this reading the Tavish and the Hamish together in the hut becomes Aris under the control of the Mara in the TSS). In the Bagpuss story, the Hamish prefers to sit in the cold by the door (equalling emotional coldness and therefore evil, thus the Mara), whereas McTavish prefers the warmth of the fire (and is, therefore, the good facet of Aris’ mind). At the end of ‘Kinda’, the Mara leaves Aris to return to the Dark Places of the Inside, while at the end of the narrative within the Bagpuss episode the Hamish leaves McTavish to return to its own race.
The return to the nursery and the archetypal familiarity of texts such as Bagpuss underline the intentionally-contrived nature of the snake seen in the climax of ‘Kinda’. This reading of Bagpuss and Doctor Who, therefore, moves us from sexual repression to sibling rivalry, and from simple animation to cheap and cheerful special effects.
(The original version of this article appeared in issue nine of the fanzine, Queen Bat.)