Byzantium!
So here we are again with another novel adventure inserted into the existing series. As mentioned before, The Rescue ended with the TARDIS toppling off a hillside, setting the scene for the 4 episode story The Romans, a historical comedy by Donald Cotton. Keith Topping, however, decided that there was more story to be told in the year AD 64, and has set his novel, Byzantium!, between those televised moments.
The TARDIS does indeed fall down a slope, and after the crew have picked themselves up and reassured newcomer Vicki that this isn't always how the day begins, they emerge to explore. They are outside of the Imperial city, Byzantium, where Romans rule and everyone else resents them for it. The TARDIS crew get separated as is the call of these adventures, and the TARDIS gets picked up as a curio by some rich people and taken away. Political upheaval surrounds the crew, as does the usual variety of murder, intregue and kidnapping, and they all at one point believe themselves to be alone, that their companions are dead, and they will have to live the rest of their lives in this time period.
Byzantium! has an interesting opening in that the story actually begins in 1970's London in a museum where a young boy named John Alaydon Ganatus Chesterton and his mother, Barbara, meet a woman at the British Museum in front of an exhibit of Roman-era atrefacts. Yes, Barabara and Ian will one day leave the Doctor and get married and give their son the names of two of their Thal friends. And their adventures with the Doctor will always come back to them even long after they have parted company with him. And it's nice to know that this little bit of future history such as it were is going to surface again, but not for a while.
And as a concept, Byzantium! works very well, and at the end of the story it leads to where we will rejoin the televised adventures. The conclusion is not exactly seamless, and has been (I feel) deliberately left open for more adventures in the Roman era with the TARDIS just slightly out of reach of the travellers. But for now, they're on the road to recovering their time machine.
NEXT EPISODE : THE ROMANS
The TARDIS does indeed fall down a slope, and after the crew have picked themselves up and reassured newcomer Vicki that this isn't always how the day begins, they emerge to explore. They are outside of the Imperial city, Byzantium, where Romans rule and everyone else resents them for it. The TARDIS crew get separated as is the call of these adventures, and the TARDIS gets picked up as a curio by some rich people and taken away. Political upheaval surrounds the crew, as does the usual variety of murder, intregue and kidnapping, and they all at one point believe themselves to be alone, that their companions are dead, and they will have to live the rest of their lives in this time period.
Byzantium! has an interesting opening in that the story actually begins in 1970's London in a museum where a young boy named John Alaydon Ganatus Chesterton and his mother, Barbara, meet a woman at the British Museum in front of an exhibit of Roman-era atrefacts. Yes, Barabara and Ian will one day leave the Doctor and get married and give their son the names of two of their Thal friends. And their adventures with the Doctor will always come back to them even long after they have parted company with him. And it's nice to know that this little bit of future history such as it were is going to surface again, but not for a while.
And as a concept, Byzantium! works very well, and at the end of the story it leads to where we will rejoin the televised adventures. The conclusion is not exactly seamless, and has been (I feel) deliberately left open for more adventures in the Roman era with the TARDIS just slightly out of reach of the travellers. But for now, they're on the road to recovering their time machine.
NEXT EPISODE : THE ROMANS
Labels: Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton, The 1st Doctor, Vicki
posted by Sean Hoover @ 8:45 PM
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