Cat's Cradle

Following the example set before with The Timewyrm, the second "series" of novels in the new range were all united under the collective title of Cat's Cradle, but the three novels under its umbrella were much less connected on a story-to-story basis. The linking theme was something that was alluded to in Timewyrm : Apocalypse with the basic functions of the TARDIS starting to break down; the scanner not responding and then the doors, and Ace mentioning having seen an animal on board the ship. Cat's Cradle goes into a new territory where something catastrophic happens to the ship, and the Doctor and Ace are forced to exist without it for a while.

Cat's Cradle : Time's Crucible

The TARDIS comes under attack by an unknown force that actually penetrates the ship's outer hull, the psychic shock of the invasion causing the Doctor great pain. His attempts to move the ship and expel the invader result in its destruction, and Ace comes to on her own in the wasteland of a ruined city where the laws of physics are up for grabs and a small silver cat turns up. Ace is without the Doctor, but she is not alone; a group of time travellers from Gallifrey's early days of experimentation are drawn into the World City as well, and all come under attack from the malevolant Process, the creature that attacked and destroyed the TARDIS. And, by all accounts, the creature that killed the Doctor.

This book is phenomenal in its scope, creating a hideous twisted nightmare world where time is running sideways across three distinct zones where everyone exists at a different point in their own history. The Process enslaves the travellers and attempts to destroy Ace, meanwhile back on ancient Gallifrey an upstart called Rassilon and his followers challenge the rule of the Pythia with their ambition to become Time Lords. It's not often we are afforded a glimpse into Gallifrey's past beyond the odd mention of "the Dark Times", but here we are shown the people of the planet unsure of the newcomers, the Time Lords, fresh from their failures on Minyos. And the Pythia will have none of it; it's her world and if she can't have it, she'll curse it and leave the Time Lords a barren race.

Absolutely great. I loved it.

Cat's Cradle : Warhead

With the TARDIS reclaimed, the Doctor and Ace come to earth in the near future where industry and capitralism have ruined the planet. The air stinks, natural resources are dwindling, social decay is spreading in the form of supersition born on the streets of the inner cities, and a powerful elite make a bid to preserve themselves and leave the planet to die. The TARDIS is out of commision after its ordeal, and the Doctor and Ace travel the world by conventional means, spearated at times by oceans, to combat their enemies and to assemble a weapon that the Doctor can use to stop the madness. And in the midst of it all are thrust two unsuspecting lynchpins to the Doctor's plan; a young boy named Vincent who has some terrifying powers, and an angry young woman named Justine who brims with unbridled anger.

This is the first of the really graphic and pretty much disturbing adventures Virgin would put out in the series. Written by the television series's scipt editor, Andrew Cartmel, we get to see the Doctor recede back into the shroud of mystery, pulling even more strings than before to manipulate events. Ace has become tougher, and sees herself as an agent of the Doctor's plans, trusting him implicitly. Awful things happen to Ace in this one; she is routinely beaten up and meanced but she carrys on with her mission to help the Doctor. If there was ever going to be a theatrical film of Doctor Who during this yawning gap of the years between television series, this should have been it.

Cat's Cradle : Witch Mark

The final and I found to be the weakest of the three novels. Exact details of course evade me, which is a bad way to write a review, but I remember unicorns, and some link between Welsh folktales and aliens. Maybe the unicorns were the aliens, and the horn was an extension of their brains. Something like that. Some real sloppy mention on UNIT in the final pages. The damaged TARDIS storyline is finally wound up as well, but again, sloppy.

Now that the series had been established in print the novels would not be as bound together by theme from this point. There would still be a "future history" arc, an "alternate universe" arc and a few others, but the novel series would proceed under the watchful eye of series editor Peter Darvill-Evans for the next while, even including his own contribution to the stories which would turn out to be... well, you'll see.

NEXT EPISODE : NIGHTSHADE

The Timewyrm

"Full length science fiction novels; stories too broad and too deep for the small screen. Produced with the approval of BBC Television, the New Adventures takes the TARDIS into previously unexplored realms of space and time,"

You have to really imagine what a thrill it was to hold a copy of the first New Adventures novel in my hands, knowing that although the series had been off the air for about a year, it was about to go entirely new places. And I was going along quite willingly. It's not as if the Doctor's adventures had never been on printed page before; without those old Target novelizations when I was growing up I daresay I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the series as much as I did, carrying the adventures beyond the TV screen and in some cases replacing the missing on-screen episodes entirely. But whereas the Target books only novelized adventures we had already seen (or as I say, not seen) on 144 pages or less, the Virgin books were not bound by any regular length and would all run over 200 pages each, some of them with very small text. The rules were simple: do not go against the spirit of the show, do not regenerate the Doctor, do not lose the fan base. And so it began, with a four-story cycle that would define the success of the novel range to come.

Timewyrm : Genesys

A pre-recorded message from the fourth Doctor sends the seventh Doctor and Ace to Earth on the trail of a creature from Gallifrey's myths and legends: the Timewyrm. A creature able to slide through the vortex unchallenged, she could wreak untold havoc throughout space and time. When they do track the creature down, she is masquerading as the goddess Ishtar in ancient Mesopotamia, and the Doctor and Ace meet the epic hero Gilgamesh in his quest to rid the land of her.

We star out very well with Genesys, even if it is penned by Terry Nation's chief ass-kisser John Peel. The Doctor and Ace come across well on the page even after an absence of a year from our screens, and the tone of the novel sets it apart from everything that came before: the Timewyrm is downright vicious, the city of Urak is dirty and Peel is no afraid to tell us how it looks and smells. And then there's the sex. It's not like there's humping going on all around but the slave girls in the palace are described as going topless and Ace catches the eye of Gilgamesh. Someone in the UK capitalized on this and wrote a big scary story in The Sun which managed to get over here to North America and precipitated one of the biggest farces in the history of organized fandom: the high and mighty self-righteous then-executive of the Doctor Who Information Network decided to take it upon themselves to put an insert into their fanzine, Enlightenment, warning the parents of members about the content of these books. I was 20 at the time, and can only imagine if I had been part of DWIN and that came through the letterbox. Idiots. And it wasn't even that bad. What it was, was good. A good start to the series, and even a good book in its own right.

Timewyrm : Exodus


Following the Timewrym's trail, the Doctor and Ace arrive in 1951 England, but in a version of time where the Nazi regime won World War II and had conquered Britain with ease. The Doctor and Ace travel further back in time to infiltrate the Nazi ranks themselves and see where things went wrong and find the sentience of the Timewyrm itself trapped inside the mind of Adolf Hitler, and the War Lords at work behind the scenes giving the Germans the edge to win the war.

Exodus does some good old fashioned storytelling, and who else better to do it than Terrance Dicks; script editor, writer, and novelist for years. I am one of the many who have been critical of Dicks' writing skills when it comes to a lack of description, and oft accused him of just photcopying the scripts from the televised series and throwing "he said" and "she said" after the lines, but here I find there's something good going on, something much better than any of those Target novelizations he put together. Exodus is amazing. Dicks should get it right easily, though, seeing as the War Lords are his own creation from the Patrick Troughton finale The War Games, and they're up to their old tricks in World War II. And it's the first time Dicks writes for the seventh Doctor and Ace, their televised episodes being novelized by the original script authors, and he gets them bang on.

Timewyrm : Apocalypse


The pursuit of the Timewyrm takes the TARDIS farther into the future than ever, right to the end of time and space to the planet Kirith. The Doctor can't detect the Timewyrm but he knows she is there, and in searching for her he'll discover the end of everything is about to come about, and it may be his fault.

Nigel Robinson, former editor for the Target line, steps up with the shortest novel in the Timewyrm series, which was supposedly a rejected script he had put together for the televised series. As Genesys featured a cameo of the fourth Doctor in hologram form, the seventh Doctor comes across his second self for a little chat, and even Polly is referenced for Ace's benefit. Apocalypse keeps it simple this time, with the Timewyrm hardly featuring in events until close to the end, which sets up for the big showdown.

Timewyrm : Revelation


The Timewyrm is ready for the Doctor and sets trap after trap for him, as well as for Ace, bringing a childhood bully into the play to kill her before she even met the Doctor. The stakes are high for both of them, and if the Timewyrm wins, she'll be free to destroy all of creation for her amusement.

New writer Paul Cornell closes the cycle with his book, and it's a brilliant read. Everything gets tied off nicely, but the road to the conclusion is a grim one with the Doctor and Ace separated, beaten, humiliated, almost destroyed. Yes, that Timewyrm is a bitch and a half.

So you'll have spotted that these are not as in-depth as they could be. I simply haven't got time to read them all over again. Some of these novels left better impressions than others, usually because they really pushed the envelope and went somewhere new and did something different with the characters that could never been done on television. As the books would go on, the elements of the supposed "Cartmel master plan" would start to emerge as they might have on television, but in this medium they wouldn't be bound by budget or censors, which was the first real admission that the fans of the series had grown up and needed something more to enjoy the Doctor with. Even at this early point with only four novels on the store shelves, it was obvious that Doctor Who was not going to be back for a long time, if ever, and certainly it would not be able to return in the usual format.

NEXT EPISODE : CAT'S CRADLE

Survival

The Doctor takes Ace back to Perivale after she idly wonders what her old friends are up to. Far from status quo for the sleepy suburb of London, it appears that Ace's friends are all missing, and the town is being overrun by stray cats. The Doctor realizes that the disappearances are actually abductions, and young people are being transported to the planet of the Cheetah People to be hunted and eaten. This, though, is the least of the Doctor's worries; the Master has turned up on the Cheetah Planet and contrary to his claims of being able to control the animals there, he himself is falling under the planet's thrall...

And that is the finaly story of a 26 year run on television. It's not the most original or complicated plot, but the real strength of Survival stems from first time writer Rona Munro's fantastic script and some really solid direction. It's shot entirely on location, with just the right amount of special effects to make the Planet of the Cheetah People appear a tad more exotic than the quarry it was shot in. The Cheetah People costumes are pretty much what one would expect; actors in fur suits but the faces and heads are worthy of Cats. (Remember Invasion of the Cat People? Those feline anatagonists were linked to these ones in that novel as being a different branch of evolution, and it would come up again in 2006 and 2007 in New Earth and Gridlock respectively).

Being set in Perivale, Survival gets another kick at the mythology that is Ace's backstory, this time bringing her back together with her old chums Ange, Shreela and Midge. The boorish self-defence instructor Sgt. Patterson recognizes Ace and refer to the police having ler her off with a warning for some bit of mischief or another; it's hard to believe that a warning is all she would have gotten for burning down Gabriel Chase as was revealed in Ghost Light, so she's obviously been in trouble outside of that incident. Her friends are surprised to see her, but she is not immediately keen to tell them where she's been. Survival is actually the first story to really devle into the effects travelling with the Doctor can have on the companions' lives; Patterson admonishes Ace for leaving and having her worried mother list her as a missing person. This would start the ball rolling for the return of the series in 2005 and how companions Rose Tyler, Martha Jones and Donna Noble would deal with worried families when they themselves went missing.

Anthony Ainley makes his final appearance as the Master. Trapped on the Cheetah planet he is in danger of becoming an animal himself, with his eyes mutating to cat-like irises and his teeth beginning to grow into fangs; all brought about by his midn link with the animals there. Being a Time Lord, though, he resists the change and fights it, maintaining his dignity and even a sense of style as always. But the desire for revenge against the Doctor does not help keep the powers at bay, and the process begins to speed up and make him more feral as the story progresses. Not having met this incarnation of the Doctor before, he is wary of him, perhaps sensing there is more to this incarnation than there has been in the others.

As for the Doctor, he manages to figure out what is going on relatively quick, as is the norm with him this season. He grasps the danger posed to Ace by her growing bond with one of the Cheetah People, Karra (played by Lisa Bowerman who would soon return as the voice of companion Bernice Summerfield in the Big Finish audio range). And as he walks off into the sunset with Ace at the end, he has a fantastic soliloqy that was dropped in to wrap up the series and leave it open for its return... one day.

Had the series carried on for another season plans had been made to write Ace out halfway through and send her off to Gallifrey to inject new life into the Time Lord society. The Doctor would have continued to walk on the darker side of his nature, with the production team aiming to re-establish some mystery around the character and make him less a victim of his own circumstances. Elements of this "master plan" eventually did begin to surface in the stories that followed; Virgin Publishing, under contract from the BBC, began to publish all-new Doctor Who fiction under the banner of "The New Adventures" in 1991, taking the Doctor and Ace to places they had never been before, and places we could only dream of seeing them go. Virgin's new steps would eventually give rise to Big Finish and their success, and eventually the show would return in 2005, but not until after a lot of changes...

NEXT EPISODE : TIMEWYRM

The Curse of Fenric

The Doctor and Ace arrive at a top secret naval base in 1943, but while they come in through the front foor and bluff their way into the confidence of the genius Dr Judson, a group of Russian commandos have arrived on the beach with a mission of their own. The area is steeped in mystery, all of it coming from old Viking rune stones in the cellar of the local church, St Jude's. But there is an evil rising from the sea, and a lethal poison has been seeping out of the ground. And before the day is over, the opposing military factions will be battling ancient monsters from the future, and the Doctor will be confronted by a nameless evil intent on destroying him and the world.

From the very first minute, The Curse of Fenric establishes a fantastic air of mysery and fear through a combination of atmospheric incidental music, rolling fog across the sea and an underwater shot of a sunken Viking ship. And from then on it's go go go. The production never stops throwing new elements at the viewers through a dialogue-heavy script with a good balance of action to words, and some of the best moments ever for the seventh Doctor and Ace as a team. The production is also packed with incredible characters aside from the regulars, starting with the Russians led by Captain Sorin, and moving to the British soldiers under the command of Millington (note a very young Christien Ainholt from Relic Hunter as private Perkins), the incredible Kathleen Dudman. and carrying right through to the civilian characters such as Dr Judson, the stuffy Miss Hardaker and her two charges Jean and Phyllis, and reverand Wainwright. And then come the Haemovores; hideous bloodsucking monsters that the Doctor says are what humans will evolve into towards the end of their time on Earth as the pollution of industry ruins the world.

Fenric adds another layer to the whole backstory of Ace, not by delving back into her past again but with her coming into direct conflict with the Doctor when she realizes that he is starting to play games on the side wherever they go and she's starting to feel like one of his pawns. And when the people around them start to die, she lashes out at him and makes him explain what he's doing, and why.

And what is he doing? Fighting evil, pure and simple. But not just something evil, an evil that has no name, although Commander Millington has created a bit of mythology around it and named it Fenric. But Fenric and the Doctor go back a long way to what one might assume is the Doctor's first incarnation where Fenric failed to solve a puzzle the Doctor had made for it and was thus imprisoned like a genie in a bottle. But over time Fenric has made plans and spread its influence, quietly playing its own game and using agents of its own as pawns to set it free. And now there's hell to pay.

Excellent. Brilliant. Fantastic. Not flawless, mind you; there are a few science fiction cliches in there that we could do without, and the Haemovore masks could have looked a bit better (yes I know, BBC budget and all that). Easily the high point of the season, almost tied with Ghost Light.

BBC Video released an extended version of the show on VHS back in the early 90's by dropping additional footage back into place and then re-scoring the whole adventure with a new soundtrack, resulting in some freakishly long episodes. On the DVD release, the original broadcast versions are presented on one of the discs in the set, and the second disc holds yet another remix of the material, this time in a feature length movie format. The material is edited again and the music is done again, but the end result is something that could be on par with the feature-length Christmas episodes we have been enjoying with the new series. I just hope they don't get it in their heads to start doing this with every episode; the old VHS titles at the very beginning were made into feature length shows and it wasn't as much fun to watch. This time it works quite well; Jay and I enjoyed it a few weeks ago. Actually, I think he requested we watch the movie version.

And that's the second last classic adventure done. One more to go.

NEXT EPISODE : SURVIVAL

Ghost Light

Ace doesn't like haunted houses. Imagine her reaction when the Doctor takes her to an old Victorian mansion in 1883, on a dark night when the Reverand Earnest Matthews has arrived to give Josiah Samuel Smith a good talking-to about his support of Darwin's theories of evolution. But there is more to it than that; in a house shrouded in darkness there is a stone spaceship in the cellar where a creature named Light is asleep, and on the floors above the halls are stalked by the explorer Redvers Fenn-Cooper, his mind snapped by something he has seen on his travels. The Doctor realizes that there is something evil and alien at work in the house, and Ace realizes that this is no ordinary house - it is the same house in her home town of Perivale that frightened her so much as child in 1983...

Ghost Light has the distinction of being the one story that gets almost the same reaction from anyone who watches it: nobody quite understands what's going on. I'll admit when I first saw it in 1990 I had no idea where the story was going or what was supposed to be happening. My friend Brian watched it with me back then and despite seeing it a few times afterwards he still has the same reaction, which is to look at me after episode 3 and go "Huh?". The big joke to this day is to say they will explian everything is episode 4, but there is no such thing. Writer Marc Platt could have done with an extra episode to get all his points across, although to me part of the magic of the script is that it does everything it wants to do in 3 episodes, even if we don't exactly get it.

Here's how Jay and I saw it when we watched it: Light came to to Earth in his spaceship, but for whatever reason ended up hibernating. His original mission was to study life on the planet and create a comprehensive catalogue, but as soon as he has got everything down, life on Earth began to evolve. The survey creature assisting him broke free of its bonds while Light was asleep and became Josiah Samuel Smith, invading the house known as Gabriel Chase in Perivale and taking over the people who lived there. The Control creature in the spaceship was imprisoned and kept in the basement while Josiah went about establishing himself, even going so far as to plot an assassination of Queen Victoria (timeline note here: this is 4 years after the events in the 2006 episode Tooth and Claw). Along come the Doctor and Ace, and after he realizes what's going on, the Doctor awakens Light to sort out the mess, but things get even tricker at that point.

Ghost Light has so much going for it. All the confusion aside it is a beautiful production set entirely inside the mansion, all done in studio as a sharp contrast to the extensive location work in ther est of the stories of season 26. The BBC do this sort of thing so well, right down to the period costumes on the creepy night time maids of the house. The set itself is huge, with the main hall dominated by the central staircase, and the hallways filled with all manner of creatures stuffed and put on display. All those critics of Doctor Who who go on about bad production values and wobbly sets need to take a look at this one and take back their comments.

Character wise, we are given even more insight into Ace's backstory as she is forced to confront the source of the evil that would terrify her as a child, and as she faces the consequences of her actions after the fact. The Doctor risks their friendship by taking her back to this place, but his interest is piqued, and there are more revelaing moments about him, most notably how he admits to hating unrequited love. Exactly what happened to make him say that is never revealed, but it's out there now.

The DVD release of Ghost Light comes with a fantastic supplemental piece where the cast and crew are all interviewed years later and all of them go through the same pains to say how they enjoyed themselves on the production, and how great it was to have some of the biggest names in British television in the same studio, and how, in the end, they had no idea what they were doing on set. There's no sense of that in the final production, though; everyone performs with such conviction that it feels like we the audience are not paying close enough attention. That is a risk as well; let your attention wander during this one and you'll be wondering what you missed.

NEXT EPISODE : THE CURSE OF FENRIC

Battlefield

The TARDIS is drawn to Earth in the mid 90's by a strange signal that is causing widespread radio interferance through the Carbury area. Upon arrival, the Doctor and Ace encounter a UNIT missile convoy that has run off the road, and opposing parties of warring knights in armour - armed with laser weapons and grenades. The Doctor's presence brings Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart out of retirement, but also draws the sorceress Morgaine in her quest to posess the mythical sword Excalibur and lead the war against King Arthur. The Doctor realizes that the knights and Morgaine have come through from another dimension where the Arthurian legend and its players are very much real people, and their presence here now jeopardizes the safety of the planet, for Morgaine has brought with her the Destroyer, the Eater of Worlds.

A good start to season 26, although compared to the rest of the scripts that would make up the final televised season of the classic era it is pretty simple and straightforward, and full of things blowing up. Oh yes, there are fights galore in this one, a reminder of the days when the UNIT action was performed by the stunt crew HAVOC, although here the action is not as limited by the size of the studios; the location work beside a lake and the surrounding forest is perfect for this scale of combat. Too bad the sword fighting isn't top notch - Jay and I were perplexed that for a production company where mideval action should be their forte, the BBC and its actors really lack the finesse to fight with swords.

It's good to see the Brigadier back with the Doctor, and for the first time he meets the seventh incarnation. The Brig is older now; as his own continuity goes this is set after the sixth Doctor audio The Spectre of Lanyon Moor, but that audio manages to blow the gaffe about the Brigadier's marriage to Doris, the girlfriend alluded to in 1973's Planet of the Spiders. Doris is a nice lady, and obviously wealthy as there was no way the Brigadier could have afforded the huge house they live in off his UNIT pension and whatever he made as a teacher at Brendan School. UNIT has moved on over the years as well and the new head honcho is Brigadier Winnifred Bambera (whose presence on the UNIT roster was retconned in the novelized version of Downtime), pulling UNIT out of the days past where women were either ditzy spy-wannabes like Jo Grant or they simply answered the phone and made coffee like Corporal Bell. Bambera's quick move from tough military woman to love interest of blond hunk knight general Ancelyn is a little hard to swallow though. Jay and I both thought she looked like a man. Maybe Ancelyn did too, he is kinda pretty.

The Doctor undergoes a bit of a character change here. In the previous season there were hints at his darker nature, but here he is really going new places. His costume has changed for starters; the jacket is now dark brown, the bandana around his hat and his scarf are darker colours as well. But there's this air about him now that wasn't there before. It doesn't exactly fly when Sylvester McCoy takes it too far and snarls through his teeth at times, but you forget about that when everyone starts to call the Doctor by another name: Merlin. Given that a lot of the cast have come from some parallel dimension, it is quite possible that the Doctor settled down for a time as Arthur's magic advisor, much like he did when exiled by the Time Lords and landed in the company of UNIT in the early 70's. The fact that Morgaine defeated him by sealing him in an ice cave, though, is a bit unsettling.

Battlefield has a lot of other interesting things going for it. Notice that in the beginning of episode 1 the TARDIS console room is deliberately shot in the dark to hide the fact that the walls are not there. The set was only going to be used once for the whole season - much as how it was only used for The Greatest Show in the Galaxy previously - and reportedly the walls were starting to wear a bit thin, so rather than rebuild it there were some hasty bits of wall thrown together (they actually look like curtains) and circles cut out, the then the lights dimmed to hide the fine details. Ace looks different too with her hair grown a bit longer and her clothes a bit more mature than before, and this time there is no mention of her backstory; there is just too much going on in the script to throw more of her into it, but this is the only time this season that it happens. The Destroyer is a pretty good monster although he salivates way too much. He's played by Marek Anton, who will appear later in the season as a Russian soldier. In interviews Anton says that they were sunning themselves on the beach between takes on that story and producer John Nathan-Turner noticed his physique and offered him the part of the Destroyer. Yeah. Casting couch. And they said it was all an ugly rumour.

So one down, three to go and we're done the longest stretch of the show. Not that I am excited about this - Jay and I are left wondering what we'll do in a few weeks when we're out of episodes, although the next season of the current show is about to start so we will talk about that. Not on here, though; not yet.

NEXT EPISODE : GHOST LIGHT

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

An advertising satellite tempts the Doctor into visiting the planet Segonax, where the Psychic Circus - the self-proclaimed Greatest Show in the Galaxy - if holding its talent festival. Ace doesn't want to go; she thinks clowns are creepy. They join other travellers making their way across the planet to see the revels, and at the same time some of the founding members of the circus are trying to escape from some unseen force and dying in the process. Far from a happy family atmosphere, the circus is now shrouded in menace with robot clowns doing the bidding of the crazed Chief Clown, and the Ringmaster sending act after act into the centre ring to meet their deaths when they fail to perform. The Doctor detects an ancient evil lurking in the shadows and knows me has to stop it before he and Ace are thrust into the spotlight, and towards their deaths.

Brilliant. Clowns have always been a source of fear and terror in fiction, made up faces lerring away and insane laughter punctuating unspeakable acts. Like, hello Joker? Hello any serial killer in a cheap slasher film. And now, hello nasty robot clowns. Of course they were never meant to be evil; they were built by the talented and gentle Bellboy, whose joy at performing for people has been eroded away. Bellboy is not the only one, though; Flowerchild dies trying to make her escape, and Deadbeat loses his mind. The rest of the circus alumni have fallen under the thrall of the dark power that has consumed the circus, and they are barely clinging to their own lives. They see the likes of vistors such as the grunting Nord, the irritating Whizzkid, and the pretentious windbag Captain Cook as fodder for the ring, to keep the powers that be at bay for just a bit longer, until the next act can be sent in. And the next. And the next.

Captain Cook is a fantastic character. He's very much the spirit of the old British Empire, looking down on everything in a jaded seen-it-all-before kind of way, and travelling with his own companion, the mysterious and beautiful Mags, who has her own secrets. The Captain is no fool, though; he's a survivor and a coward, shopping the Doctor to the killer robot driver of the hippie bus, and then ultimately betraying Mags in the ring just to save himself.

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy has some fantastic stylistic touches to it which are not entirely planned; just as the series was about to be recorded asbestos was found in the studios and had to be removed, which threw all of the BBC television centre into a tailspin. Talk shows were broadcast from the lobby and a lot of television programs were simply stopped in production. Doctor Who, however, was not stopped, for doing so would have meant the whole script for Show would have been scrapped, and instead its studio component was recorded entirely inside a circus tent set up in the television centre car park. This results in a different feel to the TARDIS interior with the lighting being more direct as opposed to overhead, and the camera movements somewaht differently handled as the Doctor and Ace investigate the intruding ad satellite. Shooting a show set in a tent actually inside a tent only adds to the effectiveness of the rest of the production, even if it's obvious that there is not a lot of floor space to deal with which results in some odd close-up shots here and there - shots which are actually handled quite well and give the show an almost artsy look. The location work is nothing to shout about at first, with Segonax presented as a quarry, but when the first long shot of the Psychic Circus is presented with a ringed planet hanging in the sky overhead it is actually quite striking. Topping the whole thing off is a rather brilliant score by Mark Ayres, including atmopsheric calliope music for the circus scenes and some fun little cues here and there such as the sample of the series theme when the Doctor and Ace arrive on the planet.

Could it have been improved? Well... who's to say if improved is the right way to look at it but the introduction rap done by Ricco Ross as the ringmaster dates the program somewhat, even if it does serve as a different way to start a show. Jay and I had a bit of a giggle at some of the interior scenes; it seems that even in tents there are corridors to run down, but they're done cleverly, the fabric of the walls billowing in the wake of all those clowns charging about hunting for Ace when she tries to escape. There's also this bit of continuity that you only know if you're looking for it; Ace finds one of Flowerchild's earrings in the sand near the bus and attaches it to her jacket with the other badges she has there, but as production for the season was done out of order, the earring was already there on her jacket in the previous episode, Silver Nemesis. Still, no-one is going to re-shoot the whole thing for the sake of one earring, and it actually does become a plot piece.

This is actually one of Sylvester McCoy's best performances, with the Doctor slowly realizing what's going on and going into his confrontation with the controlling powers behind the circus knowing that he might not survive. Still, as he goes through a long repertoire of magic acts to entertain the powers, he keeps looking at his watch, knowing that Ace is coming with something to help him win the fight. The Doctor has slowly changed in the two seasons so far, his character going from happy-go-lucky to more brooding, and in the next, and final, season he would become even darker still, with his own set of agendas that could rival those of his enemies.

After the schlock that was season twenty four, the series has started to revive itself and the writers have come together to build their vision of where the Doctor should go next. Unfortunately, though, the dice have already been thrown in the background and the series is on its way out; producer John Nathan-Turner wants out and he's been told that if he leaves the show will be cancelled. It's debatable if anyone else knew this at the time; interviews with writers and the script editor certainly don't seem to indicate that they knew their ship was sinking and they went ahead planning the twenty-sixth season, which would be one of the best of the classic series, garnering all sorts of critical praise from those who were still watching it.

And that's next.

NEXT EPISODE : BATTLEFIELD