The Paradise of Death

A new space theme park opens outside London, which is nothing that should demand UNIT's attention, until a dead man is found at its gates, his body mauled by a massive animal. The Brigadier investigates with the Doctor, and Sarah Jane Smith accompanies them in her capacity as a journalist with her photographer Jeremy Fitzoliver in tow. Space World offers spectacles of monsters from other planets and a new form of virtual reality that actually records experiences from people and implants them into others; technology that does not exist on this planet yet. The Parakon Corporation who own Space World are actually from the planet Parakon, the son of the Emperor directly overseeing the operation on Earth along with his slimy henchman, Tragan. The Doctor, the Brigadier and Jeremy follow Sarah to Parakon after she stows away in a spaceship and discover the planet has been lain waste with the weed crop Rapine; under normal circumstances it can be harvested and refined into any substance but it makes immense demands of the soil and the entire planet is being sucked dry of its nutrients. The truth of how the crop is being sustained is a well hidden secret, and once the Doctor discovers it he must call upon the oppressed denizens of Parakon to overthrow the evil that is spearheading the operation.

This adventure was written by former producer Barry Letts and produced for broadcast in five parts on BBC radio in 1993 - four years after the original series had concluded its final broadcast. Reuniting the third Doctor with Sarah and the Brigadier seems an interesting choice; I have a feeling this was supposed to be a UNIT story with Katy Manning as Jo Grant, but it does not diminish the effect of hearing them all together one bit. Jon Pertwee does sound noticeably older than he does on the televised episodes, but that hardly takes away from the fun of the audio adventure.

Maybe there's a bit too much fun though. In episode 5, the Doctor is forced into another trial by combat scenario against a notorious butcher which he defeats with ease, but before combat begins the Doctor is dressed as a clown and the opponant told that he has done so in a gesture of insult towards his mother. Riiiight.

Things like this you either love or you hate, whether you are a Barry Letts fanboy, a purist, or you simply love the show regardless of who writes the script. I personally found it amusing and fun; it made for a leisurely Sunday morning listen with a cup of tea this time, although in past it has served as audio entertainment for a road trip and even for something to listen to at the gym on the exercise bike.

And now... back to TV.

NEXT EPISODE : INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS

The Time Warrior

In the past of mideval England, while the King is away at the Crusades, captain Irongron and his band of cutthroats rampage unchallenged across the land, stealing and pillaging as they will. Even as local nobility try to band together to stop him, he finds himself with an ally to his cause; a Sontaran warrior named Linx who has crash landed and needs to repair his space craft. The mideval age does not afford Linx the facilities he needs, and he reaches forward in time to kidnap twentieth century scientists to do his work for him. Alerted to the disappearance of the scientists bu the Brigaider, the Doctor tracks Linx back through history and attempts to stop him from providing Irongron and his men with modern weapons that will make them unstoppable and ruin the course of human history. Along for the ride is journalist Sarah Jane Smith, who has stowed away in the TARDIS after suspecting that the Doctor was involved in the kidnappings.

BRILLIANT. My friend Dan raves about this story, and he has yet to say exactly why, but I think there are two essential reasons. Maybe three. The first would be the script, penned by the late Robert Holmes. I have always envied the British their extensive history and the many periods that have passed over their land, but British writers for Doctor Who get the pleasure of taking viewers back into those days, and Robert Holmes did a job par excellence, capturing every of the period characters to perfection. Credit along those lines also go to the actors who portrayed them, and the costume department for their attention to accuracy when designing and dressing the characters. The other reason would be the introduction of the Sontarans, who never made it to as many televised stories as they should have (4 in the classic series and none so far in the new one). Linx is not an essentially evil or corrupt character, despite his species' love of war and their ongoing hostilities with the Rutans; he is trapped far from home and must return and he does whatever it takes to get there. Other aliens or villains like the Master have worked to change history for their own needs but Linx's plan to supply weapons to Irongron is merely his payment for the services he needs; he doesn't care what happens to Earth, it is beneath his concern. The last reason for this one being so good is the Doctor's new take on companions; after Jo's abrupt departure he has been without anyone to make him his coffee and pretty much pander to his ego. Sarah Jane Smith has always been referred to as a departure for the companions, being the first "modern" woman to come into the show; she has a career, she is agressive, and she's not going to make the Doctor coffee or tea at his whims (how many times did we see Jo toting about trays of beverages for everyone?). The Doctor does not take offence to her spunk any more than he enjoyed Jo performing as the true assistant in his lab; he sees her as an individual and comes to respect her for her resourcefulness by the time they are set to return to their own time.

The question comes up though, why is the Doctor lingering on Earth now? He's been free for a year and is still working for the Brigadier and UNIT. With Jo having left him he could have slung his hook and just gone; he was keen enough to try and leave when he thought the TARDIS was fully functional back in Inferno, but now he's not too eager, returning to Earth as his home base between adventures. I have never heard anyone question this before, but there has been a lot of moaning about why the ninth Doctor was always on Earth and especially why was he so keen to keep returning to his companion, Rose's, home. Same reasons maybe? The Doctor-companion relationship between the third Doctor and Jo is in many ways the same as it became with the ninth Doctor and Rose; but with the third Doctor and Sarah one gets the impression that he enjoys having her around, but just not the same as he did with Jo.

Sarah, for the uninitiated, is in it for the long haul and is fondly remembered as one of the most popular companions on the series; although her tenure with the third Doctor was short, it does get a bit of a beefing up with the addition of some extra material in the form of books and radio plays...

NEXT EPISODE : THE PARADISE OF DEATH

The Green Death

Global Chemicals promises to bring cheap new sources of synthetic oil to the world, and bring new jobs and money to the people of the Welsh village of Llanfairfach where the coal mine has been closed down. Local activitst and bioligist Cliff Jones and his people at the Wholeweal community see it as a threat to world ecology, and as they protest, a man emerges from the old mine with his skin glowing a ghastly green. Within minutes he is dead. The UNIT crew soon arrive (the Doctor after finally making his trip to Metebelis 3 only to find it's not the paradise he had hoped it would be) and discover that Global's refining process creates tonnes of toxic waste which has been poured into the old mine and given rise to a colony of giant maggots. But the biggest threat behind Global is not the deranged manager, Stevens, but the mad computer, the BOSS, which has set its sights on world domination no matter the cost to humankind.

Who knew the Doctor was an environmentalist? In these days of global warming a story like The Green Death will still be relevant despite being almost 22 years old. Granted the mutated giant maggots and the huge flies they would eventually change into are an extreme realization of the threats of pollution, but that doesn't make them any less frightening when hoardes of them are seen swimming about in a pool of toxic waste and then erupting from the very ground as they tunnel to the surface.

The poor Brigadier and his crew at UNIT find themselves on a political tightrope with the Prime Minister himself ordering the Brigadier to place UNIT at the disposal of Global Chemicals despite the suspicious circumstances surround their link to the dead green men coming out of the mines. Was this another of the production team's swipes at the government, having made civil servants into interfering buffoons they now portray the PM himself as firmly on the side of big business? Despite his smacking down the Brogaider does what he does best: he blows things up. The mine. The maggots. Almost blows up Jo and Cliff too.

Jo has changed in her time with the Doctor. In Nightdreamers Tom Arden hamfistedly makes some reference to Jo feeling that her time with the Doctor might be coming to an end, and in episode one of The Green Death she takes her first step towards that by refusing to accompany the Doctor to Metebelis 3 and go to pitch in with Professor Jones and his lot, regardless of what it may do to her UNIt career. The Doctor sadly remarks "the fledgling leaves the nest" and by the end of episode six, she indeed does; Jo falls in love with Professor Jones, a man she admits reminds her of the Doctor, only younger, and they are off to get married and take an expedition down the Amazon together. The Doctor is thrown by this - it is obvious that during his time on Earth he has grown attached to Jo like no previous companion, and he is visibly heart(s) broken, leaving the engagement party on his own and driving off into the sunset in Bessie. The devotion between the two characters has been very obvious during theit time together, one rescuing the other when it was necessary, and I found it most obvious when the Doctor goes down the mine looking for Jo in episode 2; he has not seen her since before he left for Metebelis 3 and when he does find her his relief at seeing her safe, and hers at seeing him coming to look for her, is what real friendship is all about. Jo always knew that if there was trouble the Doctor would be there to get her out of it, and the choice between a hero figure and a man she loved for similar qualities would be wrenching.

The season ends with the Doctor on his own, and who knows what he got up to next. Did he just hang around Earth with the Brigadier some more, or was he off on his own for a spell, just him and the TARDIS for the very first time? There is some interesting ground to be covered there and maybe one of the writers for the BBC novels will look into that, let us see how this Doctor functions without a companion to prop him up.

Alas there is no such interesting material to look into, so onward we go with the next season, the last set of adventures for the third Doctor...

NEXT EPISODE : THE TIME WARRIOR

Nightdreamers

The TARDIS is dragged down to a verdant moon with spotty gravity, where the Doctor and Jo encounter some bizarre courtiers prepping for a play in honour of a royal wedding. Trouble is, the bride wants the groom dead as their marriage is one that has been arranged against her wishes as a means to settle an ages old feud between their houses. She'd rather marry her cousin. And somewhere in all this is the rumour of the Nightdreamer King, and his annoying henchman Sly. And a giant worm in a chrysalis.

CRAP. This book is CRAP. How stuff like this can sneak into a range as inspired as the Telos novellas I will never understand; out of 14 books, this is the one clunker of the lot. Booo Tom Arden. Booo your obvious ripoffs of Midsummer Night's Dream. Boo your lack of proper narrative, your awkward obvious flashbacks to Jo and Latep on Spiridon. What is this, Taregt books?

Disappointing. Very disappointing. The Doctor and Jo in this novella are mere shadows of who they are on screen, and everyone else they meet are charicatures rather than characters. The threat of the Nightdreamer King doesn't stand up as much of a menace at all, but it's at least nice to see that Arden gave the third Doctor a speeder bike a la Return of the Jedi to run around on in between the trees.

Okay back to TV.

NEXT EPISODE : THE GREEN DEATH

The Wages of Sin

Now that the TARDIS is working properly at last, the Doctor looks up old companion Liz Shaw and offers her a trip seeing as she never got to experience the time machine in all its glory. Together with Jo Grant, they travel back in time to Russia in 1916 only to have the TARDIS go missing after their first night there. Liz's career as a scientist draws much skepticism as there was no such role for women in that age, and Jo finds herself under the spell of the infamous Rasputin.

Okay it's been a while since I read this book; it was published in February 1999 and I read it almost immediately. I know that being vague on the plot details is a bit of a cop-out but hey Tom Baker does the same thing on just about every DVD commentary he is part of. What I do remember, though, is that David A McIntee does another great job with his attention to historical detail, and even manages to make a reference to Boney M's "Rasputin", but subtley enough to not be cliche.

And that's all I know. I'd read it again but I can't find it.

NEXT EPISODE : NIGHTDREAMERS

Planet of the Daleks

Wounded in a shoot-out in the Master's base, the Doctor stumbles into the TARDIS and sets it in pursuit of the Daleks, then collapses into a coma to heal. Jo is unaware of the Doctor's powers to recover from such wounds and goes out into the night on the jungle world of Spiridon to look for help, and encounters a group of Thals. The Thals have also come to Spiridon in pursuit of the Daleks, to sabotage their research base which is working to learn the secrets of invisibility from the natives of the planet. The Doctor and the Thals infiltrate the Dalek base and find that there is an army of 10,000 Daleks on ice, cyrogenically suspended using the planet's molten ice core to keep their army fresh until the war with Earth and Draconia has lain waste to the galaxy. As the time draws near to reviving the army, the Doctor and Jo work with the Thals to thwart the Dalek plan and save the galaxy, but as the Dalek Supreme itself says, Daleks can never be defeated.

This was kinda crappy for a Dalek story. The sheer novelty of using the Daleks again is always something to make fans jump up and clap their hands, but after the initial excitement fades and you realize that it's not their best appearance, you just start giggling at it. Yes, Jay was there with me, and giggle we did. First at the jungle of Spiridon; it was so obviously rubber plants, and the lighting really needed to be attended to; Jo mentions that morning is breaking at one point and the whole sky lights up as if a switch is thrown. And in another incident in episode 2, the Doctor and one of the Thals struggle with a carnivorous plant and there is suddenly a spotlight on them. Episode 3 only exists in black and white, with no material available to colourize it as with previous adventures, so the whole atmosphere changes and it actually makes everything look better; the shadows become deeper, and there is an incredible shot of the Doctor and company running from Daleks who are briefly silhouetted against a corridor wall that looks like it was part of some gothic horror movie. The invisible Spiridons are conquered by the Daleks and forced to wear furs so they will be visible, which makes no sense at all; and when they are invisible on screen (it's a concept - work with me) they have to make their presence known by holding something - which is achieved by some sloppy CSO effects. The adventure has a little bit of location work to it, where two Daleks are tipped into pools of molten ice (scientifically impossible by the way but intreguing enough to me to not make it a big sticking point; after all we're talking about a show where a police box is bigger on the inside...), but the contrast between studio sessions and the location work is so jarring it shouldn't have been done at all. And Jo's hairstyle changes dramatically between those scenes.

Speaking of Jo, she attracts the affections of a Thal named Latep who wants her to come back to Skaro with him. Wisely she refuses; either she's not keen on him or she doesn't want to live on a bombed out radioactive world with the Daleks as neighbours. Or maybe the shopping isn't good there. In the end she chooses to stay with the Doctor, but there's a glimpse of a maturing Jo here, like maybe she's not going to stay much longer if the right offer comes along. But still.. wise choice on Skaro. In a few years it's going to get blown to smithereens.

Our Daleks look pretty good even if they're not at their best this time around. When they go on location to the ice pools they have an incredible mettalic black look that just doesn't make it to the studio sessions; the magic of grainy film vs sharp in-house viedo cameras. The Dalek Supreme makes its first appearance The Dalek Master Plan but with a shiny new golden paint job, and it is a bigger Dalek, one of the movie-style Daleks being pulled from storage and used to make it a bit more grand than its minions. Too bad whoever was operating it didn't know his lines; it flashes its lights in time with the lines for every Dalek but itself.

So back to Earth the Doctor and Jo go. And onto another adventure we go, back into the world of print...

NEXT EPISODE : THE WAGES OF SIN

Frontier in Space

Somewhere in the future, Earth's empire is expanding, and it has rubbed up against the empire of Draconia; noble reptillian bipeds who hold honour in high regard. After a war, a treaty is signed and both empires agree to stay out of each other's way in future. Suddenly out of nowhere each government begins to accuse the other of acts of piracy,a nd tensions begin to mount. The Doctor and Jo happen upon an Earth freighter as it comes under attack, but they see a raiding party of Ogrons, the ape-like minions previously employed by the Daleks. The Earth crew, however, see them as Draconians, and the Doctor and Jo are accused of collaborating to aid these raids. The Doctor realizes that there is a third party at work attempting to stir up a war for their own reasons; the Ogrons do not have the intelligence or resources to do this alone. And as the Doctor investigates, the Master appears on the scene, proving that there is evil at work. But as the Ogrons are working for the Master, the Master himself is in league with someone else who would see the two empires destroy each other and then move in to conquer what was left...

As the future history of Earth goes, this adventure would predate the colonial decline seen in The Mutants by several hundred years, yet be somewhere around the same time as the expansion days described in Colony in Space. The Pertwee years of Doctor Who seem to be set either on Earth in present day where the UNIT continuity is maintained or in the future, painting a picture of the future in bits and pieces. The future history stories are not necessarily linked by plots but are set far enough apart that one can allow for changes in the Earth's status as a galactic power due to the passage of time in between the portrayed events. To actually try and draw some kind of link between everything is sheer folly, but that doesn't stop it from being fun at all.

Jon Pertwee once said that the Draconians were his favourite monster to work with because their costumes were a half mask, allowing the actor's real eyes and mouth to be seen moving when speaking, as opposed to other monsters where the masks covered everything. I like the Draconians myself because some time was spent developing their culture in the story, and alluding to the Doctor's previous (and unseen) encounters with them when he was granted the title of a Noble of Draconia. The Draconians are what the Silurians would probably have become if they had evolved further and developed space travel, if that is any kind of indicator as to the complexity of their society, although the Draconians answer to an Emperor, a position that is granted through a bloodline, and the Silurians refer everything to their council.

Did I like Frontier in Space? Yes. Mind you I did feel a few sequences were getting a bit long, like the Doctor and Jo being hauled in and out of prison cells for interrogations, and the Doctor's sentencing to the penal colony on the moon (maybe the same base used for the Gravitron now that weather was no longer controlled from there - see The Moonbase) could have been easily done somewhere else on Earth. Introducing the Master back into the season in episode 3 made the whole problem of a 6 part story seem less obvious, and there is a proper movement of story from episode to episode rather than a whole new script at the end of episode 4. But this story isn't necessarily all on it's own as the revelation of the Master's allies leads directly into the next adventure, Planet of the Daleks. Ooops I blew that surprise. Yes, the same tired threesome of Daleks that we running Earth from a closet in Day of the Daleks make their appearance halfway through episode 6, and then take off for their base to rally the troops to sweep into the warring galaxy and exterminate Humans and Draconians alike.

And speaking of Day of the Daleks. Yes, Dan, I know you liked it. BUT. The conclusion of that story closes the time loop that was its premise, the whole reason why the adventure was, if you will, a conclusion which would negate the future where the Daleks were in control of Earth, and thus get rid of the reasons why the guerillas came back in time to change the future, and pretty much ensure that the whole thing never happened anyways. So if that's true, how did the Doctor and Jo recognize the Ogrons and make specific mention of their past association with the Daleks? If I ever meet Terrance Dicks, the script editor for those years, I am going to ask him.

NEXT EPISODE : PLANET OF THE DALEKS

Carnival of Monsters

Despite being back in service, the TARDIS is working along her usual lines and takes the Doctor and Jo not to the planet Metebelis 3 but to a ship in the Indian Ocean. A ship menaced out of nowhere by a pleisiosaur. A ship where the passengers and crew forget everything that has happened to them in a 10 minute period and go back into a loop. And a ship where a giant hand reaches out and plucks the TARDIS from its landing place. The ship is part of a mobile exhibiton inside a Miniscope, a banned device that has come into the posession of a pair of Lurman entertainers trying to bring joy to the people of Inter Minor. Also on display inside this machine are Ogrons, Cybermen, and a fierce breed of caterpillar monsters called Drashigs. The Doctor and Jo spend a lot of their time clambering through the circuits trying to escape, while on the outside of the machine, political intregue has the Miniscope and the Lurmans being used as devices to potentially unseat the planet's government. The Lurmans are the first aliens allowed to land on Inter Minor, and if the Miniscope containment systems fail, there will soon be many many more arriving...

All the elements are here to make for a classic Robert Holmes script, most notably the double acts aside from the Doctor and Jo; the Lurmans, Vorg and Shirna, and the scheming slightly moronic Inter Minor officials Orum and Kalik. The Drashigs are a good new monster for the universe of Doctor Who, right down to their alarming shriek/howl. There is also the start of a bit of mythology here with the establishment of Inter Minor as part of a star system that has never met humans before and refers to them as "Tellurians"; the same galaxy will be revisited in Holmes' 1985 script The Two Doctors.

After hitting the palatial Gerard Square to get moustraps and McFood, Jay and I dove into Carnival of Monsters to enjoy the Doctor's first trip away from Earth with his restored freedom. It is good to note that the Doctor does not show any signs of rust from his long period of exile, and Jo is quite adept to travel in the TARDIS even after only going to a handful of destinations during her time with the Doctor.

The effects of this episode left us giggling a bit; the inside of the Miniscope was made up with what the budget would allow it seems, and it's the same small area just shot from different angles every time. After a while it became very easy to predict the things that the Doctor and Jo were about to climb over, duck under, and slide down. And what they couldn't build, they used yellow CSO effects to simulate. The marsh location used for the Drashig planet is something never done in Doctor Who at this point in its history, and the pyrotechnics of the Doctor igniting pockets of marsh gas to drive the Drashigs off are realized very well. The big stumbling point, and point of much sniggering, was the makeup for the people of Inter Minor. The functionaries were all given masks that didn't quite fit, and the skin underneath was not coloured to blend in so the skin of the actors could be seen easily. As for Kalik and his contemporaries, they are all made up grey faced but somehow the make up artists kept forgetting to go right to the edges of their eyes and mouths. Also, their bald head pieces wrinkled in places, and if one of the actors moved his forehead too much they could come free.

There's also this fight scene, if one can call it, between the Doctor and one of the officers of the ship. There is some gentlemanly reference to Queensbury rules before the slugfest gets going, and the Doctor manages to best his opponant (who is played by Ian Marter, who will return in a more famous role in two seasons' time) with a gut shot that makes the man actually fall down. I can but quote Jay on this one to sum it up: "What was that?" I'll tell you what it was: the Doctor being violent again! No other Doctor in the show's history has been so keen to raise his fists and slug it out as the third Doctor; one day I am going to make a proper tally of how many people he knocks down or renders unconscious.

For now, though, the Doctor is free to roam once more. And very soon he will find himself embroiled in more intregue in Earth's future, and on the cusp of a war between two empires...

NEXT EPISODE : THE FRONTIER IN SPACE

The Three Doctors

A powerful force from the universe of anti-matter has touched down on Earth, bringing a glutinous mass into being that terrorizes UNIT headquarters. The Doctor realizes that he alone cannot fight it and calls the Time Lords for help, but they themselves are being affected by a power drain and are unable to send anyone... except for the Doctor himself. The second Doctor, and then the first, are yanked from their respective time streams and sent to Earth to aid their third incarnation, but all end up transported through a black hole and into the anti-matter universe along with Jo, Benton, the Brigadier, innocent bystanders, Bessie, the TARDIS and the whole of the UNIT building. The culprit behind the power drain is a mythical figure (and indeed one of the Doctor's greatest heros) from the Time Lords' past: Omega, the stellar engineer who created the power source that drives the TARDIS and otehrs like it. Omega was thought dead when his ship was caught in the stellar detonation, but he was flung into the black hole it created and became anti-matter, and now he is ready to revenge himself upon the universe he feels abandoned him.

COOL I say. Damn COOL! Imagine being a fan in December 1972 and seeing Patrick Troughton reappear in the TARDIS in colour! And then William Hartnell shortly after! And then throw in massive amounts of background material on the home of the Doctor, and some of the mysteries that surround the Time Lords themselves.... fangasmic. Omega is by far one of the deadliest foes the Doctor has ever faced; as the ruler of his own universe his will is law, and the Doctor must physically fight the dark side of his mind to survive. And he's practically been driven mad in his solitude, creating lumpy blob creatures to do his bidding in his jewelled palace in the middle of nowhere. The fact that Omega wears a mask that is forged into a permenant frown is just the icing on the cake.

The Brigadier gets his first look inside the TARDIS after having it under his roof for the last three years, and he gets the shock of a lifetime coming face to face with the Doctor he first met during the Yeti crisis of the London Event, and then when the Cybermen invaded. "I didn't know when I was well off," he says upon realizing that there is another one as well, although due to a time eddy (and the fact that William Hartnell's health was deteriorating and he couldn't handle the studio sessions) he can do little more than advise from the TARDIS monitor. The TARDIS itself gets another facelift this story; the console room has a new configuation and even the exterior seems to have been given a fresh lick of paint, which is something Jay picked up on right away when it appeared in its luminous splendour.

Yes, Jay joined me once more for this classic adventure, and together we discussed the merits of the Doctor's people, the fact that his exile was going on for so long, the advancement of women's roles in Doctor Who (Jo is once more the only female in the adventure, and when not being coveted by the soldiers she is making coffee and standing by to catch the Doctor's cloak when he makes his dramatic entrances), and then we found our true source of hysteria: the TARDIS monitor screen. As William Hartnell's segments were recorded separately and played back over the monitor, there are close ups of it from within the studio, and relfected in the screen can be sen not just the assembled cast, but most of the studio and crew. The edge of the TARDIS set is clearly seen as are the cameras moving back and forth getting set for the next shot. We could even predict the movement of the characters by looking at the cameras as they set up for their next shots. Our last bit of wisdom came from the script itself; if you are a married woman in England in Doctor Who, it appears that you no longer have a name and are addressed as "woman" by your husband.

As the adventure is on DVD now, the clarity is absolutely brilliant, which impressed Jay no end, prompting him to observe that it looked like it had been shot yesterday. Mind you sometimes that sharp video image stuff looks like something off OMNI or Rogers, but who am I to judge.

Oh yes, and Jay makes an excellent cup of coffee. Green bits not withstanding.

So by the end of this adventure, we have so much more light cast on the Doctor's origins that it leaves us with even more questions, some of which will be answered in the years to come. And the Doctor's exile is lifted at last for his services to the Time Lords, leaving him free to travel once more...

NEXT EPISODE : CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS

Deadly Reunion

Before his fateful meeting with the Doctor in what was called "The London Event" where the Yeti roamed the tunnels of the Underground, Alistair Lethbridge Stewart was a lowly second-lieutenant tasked with the mapping of roadways in and around Greece after the end of World War II. During his time with the regular army he witnessed many things on the battelfield, but also had his own encounter with an alien race who had been on Earth for so long they were reverred as gods. One of them was named Hades, the lord of the Underworld. And the other was Sephie, short for Persephone, and Alastair fell in love with her. Such was the power of his love that he mounted a rescue attempt and freed her from Hades' lair, but to protect him from those memories, Sephie blocked a portion of his mind and sent him back to normal life. Later in years, now running UNIT and with the Doctor as his scientific advisor, Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge Stewart is confounded with a series of unexplained events that seem to lead back to a small village where a wealthy family preside, and a massive outdoor pop concert is being staged. And, where Hades is making a new bid for world domination.

Fist note is I think I got the timing wrong for this book; several references are made to events somewhere between Terror of the Autons and The Mind of Evil, so that is probably where I should have put this one. But no biggie; the emphasis here is on the story of the Brigadier, not necessarily on the continuity of the Doctor's UNIT years. The Brig's military past is never really talked about in the series, and as the years go on it's more about his future and his post-UNIT days, so who better than to pen this story than the team of producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks; the men who made the Brigadier and directed the course of Doctor Who through the Jon Pertwee era. Such is the focus of their task that the Doctor doesn't even figure into the story until page 125 of the novel, at which point it becomes his story again, the Brigadier's Greek exploits sidelined for a while.

I'm about to tread on some holy ground for some when I say this: but I don't like Terrance Dicks' prose style. He's contributed some fantastic scripts to the show, and the odd novelization of the television episodes for the Target line do get it right from time to time, but overall I find he never gets the sense that writing a novel is going to require a bit more is the line of description than what he offers as narrative. Scenes are described vaguely, action comes across more as stage directions, and dialogue is presented in a very "said the Doctor" and "said Jo" sort of way. The first chunck of the book seems to have been written differently and I can only surmise that Letts wrote that part and left Dicks the rest, the two offering insight to each other from time to time where the story was concerned, but not commenting on each others actual writing. Just compare the more vivid descriptions of Lethbridge-Stewart's experiences in Greece, the adventures on board the HMML 951, and the officer camaraderie therein to the later bits with the faceless mob of briefly described drug addicts, and even the less intense characters of Sephie and her family and you will spot the difference.

Barry Letts should have written the whole thing. I can sense the cult of Terrance massing outside with their pitchforks and flaming torches already.

NEXT EPISODE : THE THREE DOCTORS