The Smugglers

The TARDIS is in flight, and the Doctor turns from the controls to find that Polly and Ben have managed to get aboard. Shades of Ian and Barbara, the Doctor flips his lid, telling them that he has no control over where the ship takes them and they'll be lucky if they ever get back to 1966. Polly isn't too bothered, she's up for adventure, but Ben is going to be declared AWOL if he doesn't get back to his barracks.

The trio find themselves on the Cornish coast in the 17th century, where pirates and smuggling are all too common, the locag magistrates are corrupt, and strangers are treated with suspcion. The Doctor is entrusted with the secret of where to find a lost treasure that everyone is after, and he is abducted by the pirate Captain Pike who has come to claim it. Ben and Polly are arrested on suspicion of murdering the local church warden (Polly, like Vicki in The Crusades, is mistaken for a boy due to her attire) but become involved in the schemes of the local Squire, who is working with local smugglers as well.

There's not much of The Smugglers to actually watch, just some behind the scenes footage and a few clips that the Australian Censor removed from their copies prior to braodcast for being deemed too violent for the averange viewer. My CD copy made for good listening in the car driving back home from Toronto several times this week. In keeping with the tradition set with the audios so far, The Smugglers is narrated by one of the original cast, in this case Anneke Wills, who plays Polly. She does a good job in both capacities, as do the rest of the cast in this rather simple yet fun adventure. The script even succumbs to the cliche of having a pirate captain with a hook where his hand used to be, and everyone talks in those growly voices that more or less start every sentence with "arrrrr," ... I'll bet there were eyepatches as well. Maybe one day this will be one of those fluke discoveries, where all 4 episodes will magically reappear together. One can dream.

At the end of episode 4, the Doctor announces that the TARDIS has brought them to the coldest place on Earth, which is the setting for perhaps THE most historic adventure in the series, but before we go there, there is a side-trip of a novel which doesn't exactly fit in this continuity. When TV adventures all ran right into each other such as they did in the past there wasn't much room for additional adventures, save for ones in between seasons. So for argument's sake we'll slide this is somewhere in the few seconds between leaving Cornwall and materializing in the cold...

NEXT EPISODE : TEN LITTLE ALIENS

The War Machines

The TARDIS makes another trip to contemporary London, this time in 1966, landing at the base of the newly completed Post Office Tower. The Doctor and Dodo emerge and immediately the Doctor has an odd premonition about the tower and decides to investigate, but finds nothing more menacing than a supercomputer named WOTAN, which is about to be linked to computers across the world. WOTAN, however, is full of surprises, and can solve any problem; it even knows that the word TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, which tips the Doctor off and makes him suspicious of the machine and its creator, Professer Brett. Brett's secretary, Polly Wright (no relation to Barbara) becomes fast friends with Dodo, and they hit the local club where they befriend Ben Jackson of the Royal Navy. WOTAN, meanwhile, begins to exude some form of influence over everyone around it, taking over Brett, two of his associates, and then Dodo in its attempt to get at the Doctor. Polly eventually falls under WOTAN's influence as well and joins a work crew who are creating one of many massive War Machines, which will be WOTAN's soldiers in its coming war against humanity. The attack of one machine is triggered prematurely so the Doctor can get a look at it, and with Ben's help he is ready for the next one when it emerges on the streets of London. The Doctor manages to turn the machine back on WOTAN, which effectively ends the computer's bid for world domination. Having recovered from the machine's influence, Dodo decides to stay in London, but as the Doctor is attempting to leave Ben and Polly accidentally enter the TARDIS and are whisked away with him.

I watched The War Machines with my friend Jay, who is not very familiar with the early years of the show, but he had a lot to say about the production values. It has been pointed out before that at the time it was made, Doctor Who was state-of-the-art despite the flimsy sets and effects, but it was also affected by the timeline it was made under; the third season had 45 episodes and there was no luxury of time to re-shoot anything that went wrong (hence some of William Hartnell's flubbed dialogue carrying over to the final takes). Jay also noted a lot of close-ups gone wrong, which I had never thought much of, but it's almost as if the actors were not told about the close-ups and moved off their marks ever so slightly so rather than see their faces, we get a close up of an ear. The War Machines is also the first episode to experiment with a "customized" opening title, with the episode title and the writer's credit in some computer-ish text, with a dramatic drumroll in the background.

The army is involved in this episode a lot, the Doctor's first direct involvement with the local authorities to help combat an alien menace. In a few years the show will touch on this theme again, and it will become part of the programme's history. Although a lot will change between now and then.

So season three is over. There is no starscape this time as with the previous two seasons, just some confused pedestrians as the TARDIS dematerializes with a new crew...

NEXT EPISODE : THE SMUGGLERS

The Savages

As the Doctor promised, it is an era of peace ond prosperity on the planet the TARDIS has brought himself, Dodo and Steven to. There is an idyllic city governed by the Elders, where all the needs of the citizens are met and everyone is kept happy. Oh sure, there are some savages living in the wastelands, but they're nothing to worry about; they are easily controlled with light guns, and they do have their uses after all. The Elders, it seems are so advanced that they knew the Doctor would come to them one day and have offered him a position on their council. He accepts, and then is told the secrets of the civilization's propersity. The chief scientist of the city has discovered a way to distil the life force out of the savages and transfer it to the citizens of the city, which enhances their lives but leaves the savages weak and confused, and they are flung back into the wilderness to recover or die. The Doctor and his companions are outraged at what they see and immediately side with the savages, but the Doctor is subjected to the process and the leader of the city absorbs his life essence, only to absorb the scruples and morals of the Doctor as well. Steven shows the savages how to fight back and when the battle is eventually won by the good guys, they want Steven to stay and lead them. And he does.

Alas, there are no complete episodes of The Savages to enjoy, but the CD was entertaining with liking narration performed by Peter Purves. This was Purves' last adventure as a member of the TARDIS crew, with Steven taking the responsibility of leading the savages and the citizens of the city into their future. He immediately says he can't do it, but the Doctor almost pushes him into the role, telling him this is what he was born to do, and thus the TARDIS is down one companion. Do I buy this? Sort of. Steven was a strong character yes, a good foil for the Doctor, almost a grandson to him, but leader of a planet? Not sure. Still, he did a good job of showing them how to fight back, that's got to count for something, and everything he has seen and learned while with the Doctor has prepared him for just about anything. This leaves the Doctor on his own with Dodo, "the girl with the ridiculous name" as her calls her. What is an old man to do when he is travelling alone with a young girl? (Minds out of the gutter, people).

Maybe Dodo might want out too.

NEXT EPISODE : THE WAR MACHINES

The Gunfighters

Well yeee-haw it's an adventure in the rootin' tootin' wild west!

The TARDIS arrives in Tombstone, right across the street from the infamous OK Corral. Decked out in the tackiest of cowboy fashions, Steven and Dodo (who even got hair extensions for this one) accompany the Doctor as he searches for a dentist to deal with his aching tooth. Luckily for him, there is a newly-opened dental surgery right on Main Street. Unluckily, it is run by outlaw, gambler and boozer Doc Holliday, and just down the street at the Last Chance Saloon the notorious Clanton brothers are a-waitin for a chance to get even with Holliday for shooting one of their kin. The Doctor is mistaken for Holliday while Steven and Dodo are forced to sing and play the piano at gunpoint, and then are separately abduced and held at gunpoint a few more times over the adventure's four episodes. Sensing that Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson will protect their friend Holliday, Pa Clanton hires himself the meanest gun in the west, Johnny Ringo, who has his own score to settle with Holliday, and all paths converge at the OK Corral at sunup... and we all know how that story goes.

A lot of fans hate The Gunfighters and it's not hard to see why. Bad cowboy accents, a thin plot, and dreary sets. But I actually liked it. It's a comedy. I laughed my ass off in places. The Doctor gets in some fun moments while everyone thinks he is Doc Holliday. Steven warbles his way through the lyrics of The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon. The song itself is featured throughout all four episodes, serving as not only incidental music but a chorus commenting on the action so far. (Doctor Who would not use vocal incidental music again until 1987's Delta and the Bannermen). But the irony of all the hatred people have towards the adventure is it actually exists intact, all four episodes VIDfired and restored for viewing pleasure and sold in a boxed set in 2003. Okay it's not great, but it's fun, it's something different. After all the heavy tones of the season so far (Vicki leaving, Katarina and Sara dying, a foiled Dalek invasion, a religious cleansing of Paris, Earth being destroyed by the sun, and the twisted world of the Toymaker) it is good to have something a bit lighter to enjoy to take the edge off.

With The Gunfighters comes a significant style change to Doctor Who; from the very beginning each episode was individually titled (and with the new series that has been brought back) but this would be the last story to receive that treatment. Every adventure after in the classic series will have a collective title and the episodes numbered.

Once the dust settles and the TARDIS leaves Tombstone, the Doctor declares that they will next step out into a world of the future, an age of peace and prosperity. But, if that's the case, who's that mean dude with the spear on the TARDIS scanner screen as the credits roll..?

NEXT EPISODE : THE SAVAGES

The Celestial Toymaker

The Doctor finds himself suddenly fading from sight. Dodo and Steven believe that it has something to do with the invisible Refusians, but the Doctor senses a much greater threat at work. The TARDIS has landed in the world of the Celestial Toymaker, an immortal being outside time and space who delights in ensnaring travellers in his web and forcing them to play his games with their freedom as the prize. The Doctor is made to play the trilogic game which requires 1023 precise moves for him to win, and when he becomes too irritible the Toymaker makes him intangible save for one hand so he can play the game, and makes him mute as well (this continues through two full episodes, which allowed William Hartnell a break in the filming schedule). Dodo and Steven meanwhile are flung into the other regions of the Toymaker's world to play games against the Toymaker's dolls, including a pair of clowns, some playing cards, and a snide schoolboy named Cyril. The Doctor manages to play his game despite constant taunting from the Toymaker, and Steven and Dodo manage to outplay the cheating toys and win the TARDIS back as their prize.

As with so many other adventures of this era, The Celestial Toymaker is incomplete, with only episode 4, The Final Test, surviving on the Lost in Time DVD. The balance of the episodes are on the BBC Radio Collection CD, and I enjoyed them at the gym over the last couple days while doing my cardio bike sessions. Michael Gough makes a splendid appearance as the Toymaker, and it's a shame that he never got a chance to return in that role - a rematch between the Doctor and the Toymaker was planned for a 1986 story but it was not made. The story was made into a novel, though, and I will be looking at that, if for nothing more than a chance to see what might have been. There is already a history between the Doctor and the Toymaker; the Toymaker alludes to a previous visit the Doctor made to his realm, one that the Doctor escaped from without playing any games (these events are outlined in the novel Divided Loyalties which I will also look at later on). Having most of this story on CD lets one imagine it as a bit grander than it may have appeared on screen. By the time we get to episode 4 there is only the Toymaker's office and the hopscotch game room to go through, and both are pretty bland sets. Who knows what Mrs Wigg's kitchen looked like, or the Dancing Hall?

And out of this twisted domain, we go into what a lot of fans refer to as the worst episode ever - a romp through the rootin' tootin' old west...

NEXT EPISODE : THE GUNFIGHTERS

The Ark

The TARDIS materializes in a lush jungle and Dodo emerges with a cold. She think she is somewhere on Earth and shows Steven her proof: reptiles and trees surround her that could only come from her home planet. The Doctor cannot tell exactly where they have arrived but realizes that the wildlife around them is from many different areas of Earth, there is a faint regular trembling to the ground beneath them, and there is a steel roof overhead. No, this is not Earth, but a spaceship carrying the last refugees from the planet Earth as it is millions of years in the future and the planet is about to burn up in the sun. The majority of the human race has been miniaturized for the journey to their new home on the planet Refusis, which will take 700 years, and only a handful of humans staff the vast ship along with members of another race, the Monoids. The Monoids are speechless creatures with lizard-like skin, mops of hair, and one singulat eye, and after making a partnership with the humans to join them on their voyage they have become a servant class of species. The playing field is levelled, though, when Dodo's cold infects the humans and the Monoids indiscriminately; it appears that at this point in time the common cold has been cured for so long that no-one has any resistance to it - even Steven. The Doctor works under the suspicion of some of the humans and finally cures the cold, saving the inhabitants of the Ark, and the time travellers leave. The TARDIS performs something of a miracle, though, and returns in episode 3 some 700 years later when the Ark's voyage has been
completed and Refusis is in sight. This time, though, there has been a secondary outbreak of the common cold, and the Monoids have emerged stronger, and having made voice boxes for themselves and devised weapons, they are now in charge and the humans serve them. Not only that, but the Monoids intend to take Refusis for themselves and blow up the Ark with all the human race on board. Obviously the Doctor and copany cannot stand by and let this happen, and it is up to them to save the day.

I quite like The Ark. It's a simple story really but the production values are very high with no seams showing in the Monoid costumes, vast sets for the Ark control centres, and some great location work for the initial few moments of the show (unless you're going to tell me they got an Indian elephant into the BBC studios just for that scene). The costumes on the humans are a bit sily though; it seems in the far future we'll all be well-toned men and women wearing speedos and shredded tunics and flip-flops. There are also some good effects shots of the landing craft from the spaceship as they head for Refusis, even if the strings on the landers show a bit. A bit of a cop-out with the Refusians though; they're invisible like the Visians on the panet Mira in The Dalek Master Plan. All four episodes of the story exist in full and they're good quality copies, so when this story is considered for DVD release there will be great results with what I assume will be minimal effort.

Up next, the Doctor himself starts to fade from view for the next adventure, a twisted classic I enjoy despite only 1 episode existing to watch...

NEXT EPISODE : THE CELESTIAL TOYMAKER

Salvation

Steve Lyon's book Salvation was published by BBC Boks in 1999. Lyons has taken a bit of a liberty with the continuity of the series at this point; Dodo claimed in the final moments of The Massacre that a little boy had been hit by a car and she needed to get hold of the police, but here that is all thrown out the window in favour of the girl fleeing from an alien who had kept her locked up for the last day. She runs from him and sees the welcome form of a police box and decides to call for help. And we can all guess what really happens.

And then the scene switches to New York (and in my head I am hearing the Sex and the City theme). It's still 1965, the TARDIS having only made a hop across the Atlantic, and Steven is still fuming about his fight with the Doctor over his disregard for Anne Chaplet. What's more, the state of the world in 1965 with the Vietman War and homelessness and poverty has disgusted Steven further, despite the fact that he has seen worse things inflicted upon mankind by other races (note a clever mention of the Cybermen, who have not appeared in the series yet). Steven feels himself starting to want to leave the Doctor after all he has seen, and for Dodo, the adventure is just beginning. The people of New York are visitied by aliens who have come to save the world, aliens who simply claim to be the Gods. History makes no mention of this of course, and the Doctor is determined to get to the bottom of things; he suspects some kind of deception and, of course, he is right, and must foil another invasion of Earth.

I always like it when Doctor Who goes somewhere else besides a corner of England. I've got some hopes that the new series might have some far-out foreign filming location in its future, given that the BBC have already ordered a special episode for around Christmas this year; what more special than to go afar? The show doesn't make its first real location journey until 1979, but so far the TARDIS has been to China (Marco Polo, The Eleventh Tiger) Mexico (The Aztecs) France (The Reign of Terror, The Massacre) America (The Chase) Italy (The Romans) and somewhere in the mideast (The Crusades). I've never been to New York City but I get a proper sense of what it might be like in Salvation, as if Lyons spent enough time there to get a feel for the place rather than look at some pictures and try to describe it in text.

A good book. A fun story. The Doctor at his best, as always.

NEXT EPISODE : THE ARK

The Massacre

Still smarting from their losses against the Daleks, Steven and the Doctor find themselves in Paris, France, in 1572. The Doctor wants to visit the apothecary, Charles Preslin, and leaves Steven to his own devices for a while, unaware that they have landed during a time of political upheaval driven by religious rights. The ruling monarchy are all Catholic and are having difficulty with the Protestant community, and there is treachery afoot. Steven is caught up in the swell of events and befriends a young girl named Anne Chaplet who has overheard news of an assassination plot. It gets even more dangerous for Steven when he discovers that the Abbot of Amboise, one of the cheif persecutors of the Protestants, looks exactly like the Doctor. The Doctor is laragely missing for the story, leaving Steven to first believe the Abbot is the Doctor in disguise, and then to believe that the Doctor is dead and he has been stranded in this time. The Catholics conspire amongst themselves to cleanse the city of its Protestant population, and on the eve of St Bartholomew's, they begin a slaughter that will spread across France and claim thousands of lives. The Doctor realizes what the date is and hurries Steven to the TARDIS so they can escape and leave history to run its course.

Here's a story that Catholics probably overlook when they like to speak of religious oppression in history. Kind of like how Americans don't like to talk about the War of 1812. I don't mind bringing either up, but that's just me being smug.

The effects of losing Katarina and Sara are bad enough for Steven, but having grown fond of Anne Chaplet he is furious with the Doctor for sending her home to die in the massacre. The Doctor could really not have saved her as it would have gone against the laws of time and perhaps changed the future, but Steven sees it as cold scientific logic and wants off the ship as soon as it lands. The Doctor lets him go and reflects to himself that no-one has understood him or what it means to travel in time, and now they have all left him in the end. His solitiude is short-lived though as a young girl named Dorthea Chaplet (she prefers Dodo) pushes into the TARDIS; the ship has landed in England and she has mistaken it for a real police box and needs to use the phone. Steven also comes back in having seen policemen heading for the ship, and the Doctor takes off, with Dodo still on board.

The whole inclusion of Dodo like this is purely for the sake of getting a new girl in the TARDIS, and her casual acceptance of the TARDIS as a time machine and her dismissal of the possibility of never going home again feel a bit too rushed. The Doctor welcomes her openly (how times have changed - remember how he was furious at Ian and Barbara when they invaded his privacy?) and tells Steven that Dodo looks just like his granddaughter, Susan (oh god please no not her again).

So we have a full crew again. Not much of an introduction for the new girl, though.

Let's take a side trip into a novel so we can get to know Dodo better...

NEXT EPISODE : SALVATION

The Dalek Master Plan

This is the second longest adventure in the entire series of Doctor Who. At 12 episodes in length, The Dalek Master Plan is second only to 1986's Trial of a Time Lord at 14 episodes. And, of course, due to the brilliant handling of the early episodes of the series, only 3 episodes of this story exist to be enjoyed on television screens. Up until last year, though, only episodes 5 and 10 were held by the BBC archives until episode 2 turned up in the hands of a guy who used to work for the BBC. The existing episodes along with some surviving clips were released on last year's Lost in Time compilation DVD, but the audio soundtrack for the entire story exists on a BBC Radio Collection CD, which made for some fun listening on my way home from Windsor on Sunday.

After the sacking of Troy, the Doctor lands the TARDIS on an alien world in search of help for Steven, who has blood poisoning from his wounds. The TARDIS lands on the planet Kembel some months after Marc Corey has gone missing, exterminated by the Daleks, and agent Bret Vyon and his party have been sent to search. The Daleks have finally pulled together their entire council for the invasion of the Solar System, and it is completed by Mavic Chen, the Guardian of the Solar System, who sees more opportunity for himself by allying himself with the Daleks and betraying his own world. Chen has provided a rare mineral called taranium to be used in the Daleks' time destructor weapon, but the Doctor steals it and with Steven, Katarina and Bret, flees for Earth to warn the authorities. Katarina is killed during the voyage to Earth, and Bret himself dies upon his return having been branded a traitor by Chen. Security agent Sara Kingdom attempts to capture the Doctor and Steven but upon hearing the truth of Chen's treachery she switches sides and joins them. The Daleks continue to pursue the Doctor and his companions through time and space as they did once before, even enlisting the aid of the Meddling Monk at one point before recapturing the taranium core. Daleks, as we all know, cannot be trusted, and once they are set to invade the galaxy they turn on their allies, intent on invading their worlds as well. The Doctor manages to save the day in the end as always, but the price is high: Sara is added to the bodycount.

I can only imagine what it was like to be a child and see Daleks on TV every week for 3 months. And to have such a story! Daleks are at their best when exterminating, and they do that a lot. There are no hiccups with the voices this time (unlike Dalek Invasion of Earth where it sounds like the Dalek voice providers are just sitting around with their noses plugged) and their weapons actually sound like weapons, not the hissing we have heard in the previous adventures. Evolution, I suppose. Then comes the violence factor. Only 3 companions of the Doctor have ever died on screen (4 if you count a robot from 1984's Planet of Fire) and the bulk of that number die in this story alone. This would be the first time the Doctor loses any of his companions to violence, and the effect on his at the end of the adventure is obvious. Steven is stricken with grief as well despite not having known either Katarina or Sara for long before their deaths. I'm frankly surprised that it has taken this long for any of the companions to die given the dangers that they are faced with every day of their lives with the Doctor. Sometimes I wish more would die. I was at a gathering of fans late last year and Rob Shearman, a writer for the new series (episode 2 of the new series, The End of the World, is on tonight, actually...) and he related in a story to the assembled fans that one of the executive producers told him that to her, Doctor Who has always been about death, and she encouraged him to add more of it to his script (which I believe is simply called Dalek). This is the sort of adventure she must have enjoyed the most. Some one once did a count of how many violent on-screen deaths there were in the series but I never thought to do it myself, but in later years there would be a lot more of it, and it would cause the programme to change forever.

Meanwhile, the next story, promises nothing but death...

NEXT EPISODE : THE MASSACRE

The Myth Makers

The TARDIS arrives on a plain somewhere on Earth, and outside two men are fighting a pitched battle with swords and shields. The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS to find out where they are, and one man emerges victorious at the distraction he causes. The victor is Achilles, and he mistakes the Doctor for Zeus. Yes, back in history we go, to that era where myth and history blur and overlap: the TARDIS has landed the travellers just over the ridge from the city of Troy, where a massive army of Greeks has been assembled to conquer the city all over a woman. Steven ends up captured with the Doctor and kept in the Greek camp, whereas Vicki is taken into Troy when the TARDIS is captured, and she is renamed Cressida by king Priam, for he finds the name Vicki to be too hard to remember. Both the Doctor and Vicki are held as captives working under duress; the Doctor must help the Greeks breach the walls of Troy, and Vicki is to help the Trojans repel their enemies. And then there's a big wooden horse.

We all know this story. Like so many adventures, The Myth Makers exists only as an audio soundtrack which I listened to on the way to Windsor, Ontario on Thursday morning. I saw the Brad Pitt version of Troy earlier on DVD and try as I might I could not fully convince myself to mentally mesh the two and have William Hartnell speaking with Mr Pitt, and Maureen O'Brien (Vicki) hanging about a palace with Orlando Bloom skulking about with some other man's wife. Nope. Just didn't work. After a while when you get Doctor Who in your blood, you can see the wobbly sets of the classic era, and the painted backdrop walls, and envision a wooden horse made the size of a chair but shot from afar to look huge. But in this case that is not a bad thing; this is another of those comedy episodes. King Priam is bored with being under seige for 10 years and takes his frustrations out by mocking his idiot children (one who was stupid enough to steal a Greek noble's woman and have a whole fleet come looking for her). The Greeks are tired and want to go home; even Helen's husband says he doesn't miss her and she's pulled this kind of stunt before so he may as well just leave her to it. Add the usual conventions of the TARDIS and its crew being mistaken for things and people they are not, and it actually is pretty damn funny.

Anyone who knows their Shakespeare also knows the story Troilus and Cressida, which takes place within Troy during the Greek seige. Vicki falls in love with Troilus after some dubious flirting and decides that she wants to stay here with him in the distant past with the Greeks hunting them down after the fall of Troy. The Doctor is too rushed to fully comprehend her leaving; Steven is wounded in the sacking of Troy and he enlists the aid of a handmaiden named Katarina to help him get Steven on board the TARDIS. The TARDIS makes good its escape with a new companion, and Vicki is left to become part of history. Or mythology. Or maybe just to die eventually. Steven does not even get to say goodbye to her.

The TARDIS flies on. Vicki must have had some kind of ESP to know to get out now, because when next it lands, the ship will put its crew into the middle of a conspiracy and plans to ransack the galaxy...

NEXT EPISODE : THE DALEK MASTER PLAN

Mission to the Unknown

The planet is called Kembel. It's not pretty. It's overgrown with jungles, jungles which echo with the cries of strange animals, and somewhere out there are vicious Varga plants that turn anyone pricked by their thorns into killers. Space Security agent Marc Corey has come to Kembel to act on information heanded to him from his superiors. His mission : investigate possible Dalek presence on Kembel.

The Daleks are there alright, and they have built a vast city complex where they are hosting a meeting of hostile powers who are banding together to attack and destroy the Solar System, starting with Earth. It seems unlikely that the Daleks would feel the need to enlist other races for this effort seeing as they had already conquered Earth in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, the events of which are mentioned by Corey and his men and dismissed as having happened thousands of years ago. Corey manages to overhear the plans that the Daleks are making and records his information for transmission to Earth, but before he can do it, he and his party are systematically wiped out by the Daleks.

So, where's the Doctor in all this? He's not there. At all. Just the Daleks and the people trying to stop them (a formula that would be used by Big Finish years later for their Dalek Empire audio range). Apparantly the Daleks have been laying low for a while but have recently started pushing outwards from their empire and claiming many new worlds, gradually getting closer to the Earth and its Solar System. The human race has a lot more information on the Daleks now; Corey recognizes the Varga plant as a native form to the planet Skaro.

So Corey's dead. His message never got transmitted. The Daleks go back to their war council, and Earth has no idea what is coming. All over in one episode. But the REAL story is about to come...

NEXT EPISODE : THE MYTH MAKERS

Galaxy Four

Season three opens with the TARDIS taking the Doctor, Vicki and Steven to an unknown world in its dying days. They meet the survivors of a crashed spaceship, the all-female Drahvin race, who tell them that they were shot down by a race of monstrous creatures known as the Rills, but the Rills have also crashed on this planet in the exchange of fire, and now both parties are desperate to escape the planet before it blows up. The Rills are hideous tusked monsters who do not come outside their space craft as they can only breathe an atmosphere laced with ammoina, and they send parties of small worker robots that Vicki nicknames "Chumblies" to do the repair work for them. Of course all is not what it seems here, and someone is lying to the Doctor to try and gain his confidence and his help, and before the planet explodes he must figure out who he should help and who he should be wary of.

Science fiction has long had this obsession with the all-female alien regime. I suppose historically it has been all male on our own planet's space exploration missions, but here when we see the all-female Drahvins it is taken to an extreme. The Drahvin society has no use for men, and they keep enough alive to serve some purposes (I expect this has something to do with sperm) and the rest are done away with to conserve resources. Even within the female elite there is a division; Maaga, the leader of the stranded group, is a real person with autonomy, and her crew (Drahvins One, Two, and Three) are essentially clones grown to perform all the work Maaga gives them. The drone Drahvins are not the most stimulating company and do only what they are told, which probably makes life tedious for Maaga and her sort when they are sent on missions with only them for company. But into this feminist species there is an incredible spirit of agression, and a lot of hostility, which will probably irritate the feminists in fandom; it seems so far that if women are allowed into space they are either weak and easily frightened like Carol in The Sensorites or they are vicious and warlike as we see here. The same level of criticism has been levelled at the show's treatment of the female companions, keeping them strong-willed but only when there is no danger for them to face, and having that resolve collapse into screams when a Dalek comes down a corridor, or when a Rill peeks out through a window (that scream of Vicki's nearly deafened me - I had my headphones on when I listened to this one).

Yes, listened. Galaxy Four marks the beginning of the most severely depleted era of the show, when the BBC maniacs got rid of so much material to clear space. This adventure was put onto a CD with guest narration by Peter Purves, who played Steven Taylor in the program. A short clip a few minutes long does exist from episode 1, so enough can be seen of the Drahvins and their spaceship and the Chumbly robots to provide reference for the rest of the serial (the clip was attached to the Lost in Time DVD that was released in 2004). I had also read the Target paperback novel version of the show many years back, and as it was penned by the original scriptwriter, Williams Emms, all the attention to detail was included, and all the dialogue was presented so if there is any muttering on the CD version there is a way to go back and find out exactly what was said.

So in the end the planet explodes, and the people who deserve to escape make their exit. The Doctor says it would be nice to go somewhere and rest for a change rather than be surrounded by danger everywhere they go. Vicki looks at the scanner screen and sees a planet they are passing and wonders what is going on down there.

What's going on down there is going to set the stage for a mammoth adventure, but no-one is going to know about it for a while...

NEXT EPISODE : MISSION TO THE UNKNOWN

Offworld Vegas

Fan fiction. This is certainly not unique to Doctor Who, as fans of many series have often put pen to paper to create their own adventures just as readily as one would create new ones with action figures, or even shoot those action figures on film and make a small movie just to see how it felt to be in control of something they enjoy. Offworld Vegas is a piece of fan fiction I am going to mention here because, well, it's mine.

I wrote the story on paper back in 1988 when I was bored in chemistry class. It didn't amount to much really, just me playing around with the adventures of the first Doctor, Steven Taylor and Vicki, and for kicks I threw in a villan named Sil who was not actually in the televised series until 1985's Vengeance on Varos. I also borrowed the idea of a casino/resort in space from the original premise of Revenge of the Cybermen from 1975, and had Sil's people, the Mentors, running it and bilking tourists out of all their money until the Doctor and his companions came along and started getting in the way. I think it came out to maybe 26 pages handwritten, and that was that.

Later on in years I was working for Penguin Books and mentioned my writing to a lady I worked with, and she in turn said her son was an aspiring comic artist and we should collaborate. I spoke with her son, Robert Armstrong (who did some work with the ill-fated Dreamwave Productions on Transformers) and we decided to give it a go. I handed him my original Offworld Vegas draft plus a heap of Doctor Who Magazine backissues for reference and away he went. I was blown away with what he handed back to me, and sometime I am going to scan and post a few pages so more people can see this. Rob brought a "superhero" edge to the story with his visuals, one that I found a lot of fun to look at; we caught a lot of flack from some people who read the strip but in the end I stand by Rob's vision of the "alterna-Doctor". Offworld Vegas appeared in Chameleon Circuit, which was the bi-monthly 'zine of the Doctor Who fan club I was in, The Faceless Ones of Southern York Region (until we embraced early 20's alcoholism and became known as The Temporal Pubcrawlers). Back issues are probably out there somewhere and can be obtained by getting hold of Mike Doran through the DWIN Website listed at the side here. Mike and I were talking recently and he mentioned the possibility of republishing the strip in a new 'zine, which I am all for.

How do I feel about Offworld Vegas as a story? Well I love it, of course. It's a bit rough still as I did no revisions over the years it sat unattended in a binder between chemistry class and Rob's interpretation, but as far as I'm concerned it's fantastic. But I would say that, wouldn't I? And as for the collaboration, Rob and I did another story later on that I wrote specifically for him to turn into a strip, but it'll be a while before it gets mentioned here at this rate. But fear not, it's out there.

And now that this brief moment of sulf-indulgence is over, on with season three...

NEXT EPISODE : GALAXY FOUR

The Time Meddler

So. Now travelling without Barbara and Ian, Vicki and the Doctor discover that Steven Taylor did not perish in the war between the Daleks and the Mechanoids - he managed to find the TARDIS and pass out inside. Of course he doesn't believe that the TARDIS is a time machine, and remains skeptical until they arrive on the English coast in 1066. The travellers meet the local Saxons, who are living in fear of Viking raiders, but then they realize that they are not the only time travellers here: there is another present, in disguise as a holy man.

Enter the meddling Monk.

The Monk, however, is not any old time traveller, he is actually one of the Doctor's own people come to Earth on a mission of his own to change the course of history. Think back to The Aztecs when the Doctor continually stressed that history could not be changed - it now appears that it can be changed, and if the Monk gets his way it certainly will.

A lot of people erroneously go on about this being the Doctor's first encounter with another of his own race, but it's really the second, seeing as Susan was also from the same planet. Oh how fast we forget, but it her case why not. It is, however, our first glance inside a TARDIS that is not the Doctor's. As the years progress there will be others, but at the time when The Time Meddler was made there had been no real discussion of exactly where the Doctor came from, what his society was like, and why he left. This is not a wasted opportunity, either, for it's just not time to go into detail about it when the Doctor is still a stranger to us; all will be revealed in the fullness of time.

So how does Steven stack up as the new companion? Well, he's headstrong and demands proof when the Doctor and Vicki try to explain time travel to him, but once he is given that proof he requires no more convincing. He's not as cautious as Ian, and has a bit more of a sarcastic edge to him; but then again Steven is an astronaut and a trained explorer, not a school teacher ripped from his normal time and place. Steven seems a bit cowed at Vicki's familiarity with time travel and doesn't want to be told what to do by a young girl, but he eventually relents and acknowledges that she is the more experienced of the two. As for his relationship with the Doctor, he makes the huge mistake of referring to him as "Doc" and must be put back in his place, although it is played as an obvious gag.

And thus season two closes. As with The Reign of Terror the closing credits are scrolled against a vista of stars, but not before the faces of the TARDIS crew are superimposed over it, gazing at their future with wonder. Season three will be a trial for all of them, no matter how optimistic they are.

But before we go into season three, let's take advantage of the break between stories and look at a non-canon adventure in fan fiction...

NEXT EPISODE : OFFWORLD VEGAS