The Hand of Fear

The TARDIS lands the Doctor and Sarah in a rock quarry just as a demoltion team blows it up. Both travellers are buried under the rockslide and when Sarah is pulled out she is unconscious and clutching a giant stone hand. During her recovery in hospital the hand possesses her and one of the staff in a bid to regenerate itself, for it is the last surviving fragment of an alien named Eldrad. Under its influence Sarah takes it to a nuclear power station where it triggers panic and soaks up radiation to regenerate itself completely. The Doctor agrees to take Eldrad back to its home planet of Kastria to spare Earth any future nuclear meltdowns, for Eldrad claims to have been betrayed and wants only to return to kastria and liberate its people from alien agressors. The truth comes out though that Eldrad was executed for crimes against the Kastrians, and rather than suffer his rule should he return they all opted to die. After escaping from Eldrad, the Doctor and Sarah are forced to part ways, the Doctor having received a summons to return to his home planet of Gallifrey.

It's a bit slow, this one. My friend Dan and I often butt heads on what episodes are good, which ones are bad, but here we both agree that episode 2 just drags on and on. And to an extent so does episode 3. Episode 1 ends with Sarah and the hand of Eldrad in an antechamber to a reactor just as the hand starts to twitch in its tupperware carry case. Episode 2 ends in the very same room with someone else walking into the reactor furnace with the hand and triggering an explosion across the complex. And then there's elements of the script that don't exactly ring true, like the director of the nuclear plant accepting the Doctor's notion of the hand regenerating itself when we all know that in the universe of Doctor Who humans are not known to accept such things so easily. He could have needed persuading. It's not like they didn't have any time in the episode to do it.

The real moment in this adventure comes at the end of episode 4, when the Doctor has to put Sarah off the TARDIS. People refer to this as "Sarah deciding to leave" and maybe it seems so as she goes on a bit of a spat and threatens to do just that when she thinks the Doctor is ignoring her (which is not really out of character given how she has reacted to his indifference and his lack of attention in past), and it almost seems like something of a lover's spat. But it's all for nought; the Doctor can't take her to Gallifrey (although in future he drags almost everyone there with him eventually) so she has to leave. And she's good about it, but the distress is evident. The Doctor is not overly moved by the fact that she has to go; in fact he is very matter of fact about it, which brings a bit of a reminder about how alien he actually is despite their closeness. Witness the contrast here to this Doctor's reaction to having to dump Sarah and his previous self's wistfulness when Jo decided to leave him and marry Cliff; has he learned not to get attached to them any more? Is this him putting on a front? Sarah keeps it together, but that last hopeful glance she gives the shy as she walks away says that she's not ready to leave. Who knows how long she would have stayed if he hadn't had to let her go? Okay the real reason is that Elisabeth Sladen wanted off the show after 3 years, and it's happened before, but Sarah... she was into it. This was her travelling with her best friend. Who would ever want that to end?

Well, it doesn't end for her. You can't travel with the Doctor and live a normal life ever again. Sarah will be back in spinoffs and such and even in the 2006 season episode School Reunion, but for the meantime, it's the Doctor on his own...

NEXT EPISODE : THE DEADLY ASSASSIN

The Masque of Mandragora

The TARDIS is sucked through the Mandragora Helix, a region of space the Doctor belives to be almost alive, with an intelligence at the centre of it. The ship makes a quick escape and arrives in Renaissance Italy, but some of the Mandragora energy has hitched a ride and finds able minions in the local cult of Demnos. Local Duke, Guliano, has other troubles besides the cultists; his ambitious uncle is in cahoots with court astrologer Hieronymous and together they have already killed Guliano's father and have their sights set on the young Duke himself next. Heironymous, however, is really the head of the cult of Demnos, and once in collusion with that energy he becomes more powerful than the Doctor would like, threatening to flood Earth with Mandragora's influence and doom mankind to eternal servitude.

This is a fantastic period piece, perfect for opening the new season. The Doctor and Sarah are in fine form as always, with Sarah being captured by the cult and first being offered as a sacrfice, and then being hypnotized into attempting to kill the Doctor. Again, those eyes! And her hair. I said as much to Jay once, that I believe Sarah Jane Smith is the only female companion to not actually get a hair cut during her entire run on the show; it starts off short and modern in The Time Warrior and now here it's well past her shoulders. Amazing the things one notices.

A real treat or the eyes is the opening moments of episode 1 where the Doctor and Sarah are wandering through the corridors of the TARDIS, even if the floor is blue and you can see over the walls at one point. They discover a secondary console room which looks a lot like something from a Jules Verne novel, with dark wood walls, lots of brass rails, and even a short stairway leading to the exit, and this will be the console room for the rest of the season. It's a little less high tech than the white one we're all used to, but it does have certain echoes of the darker more gothic theme the series has started to delve into in the last few adventures.

And what can be said of the location filming other than it's magnificent. A casual viewer might think the BBC went abroad to shoot this but the reality is it's all done in some rich madman's backyard. Why anyone would want their backyard to look like Renaissance Italy is beyond me but hey it looks good and is very effective as a location. Cheaper than the real thing, too. The interiors that were built for the palace are incredible as well, with a lot of space and a lot of atmosphere to them. In part 4 a dance is held in Guliano's honour at a masque, and the attention to period details is just amazing, with the performance choreographed and even Elisabeth Sladen joining in.

Amazing. Incredible. There's even a new police box exterior now since the previous one fell to bits on location the season before. Oh yeah and there's even a subtle gay subplot, the unspoken romance between Guliano and Marco. Oh yeah I can hear you all now accusing me of reading into it but come on, they're both good looking young men hanging about in tights. Neither of them shows a flicker of interest in Sarah and they're very loyal to each other. And it was the Renaissance. All sorts went on back then.

Fine. Be that way. But I know Jay would agree.

NEXT EPISODE : THE HAND OF FEAR

System Shock

It's 1998 and the Doctor and Sarah have returned to Earth again. Sarah is blown away by the level of computer technology that has come about since her day, and everything seems to be made by the same company, their products are everywhere. Behind the scenes, though, things are not what they seem at all; there's a race of mechanically enhanced snake-people hiding out under human skins, and a nasty computer virus named Voractyll is about to be unleashed on the world through the information superhighway in a bid to take over the planet. The Doctor and Sarah have survived through all sorts of adventures before but they need help this time, and it comes in the form of Harry Sullivan himself, older, wiser, and still a doofus.

Okay that's a sketchy plotline but I read System Shock back when it was published in 1995, so now 11 years later I'm a bit vague on how it all went down. But I remember liking reading it on the TTC on my way to work for a few days that cold November, and it left an impression somewhere in my memory to say "this was a good one".

But my reason for including it here is not necessarily to review the plot but to show how it was designed to fit into the series. New novels are always best suited to the gap between seasons rather then jam them in between adventures as they happen; I find that sometimes writers put our regular cast through the wringer to such an extreme in novels between television episodes that it's hard to see them back to their cheerful selves like nothing had happened. Yes, continuity is always going to suffer in one way or another; the series itself has already destroyed Atlantis in three completely different ways, made a bit of a mess of Dalek continuity, and even redefined the Doctor's origins, so throwing an adventure as intense as System Shock in between televised episodes would be unwise. One reason would be the recovery time for the Doctor and Sarah (not physically but really they never seem to get exhausted or shell shocked; the rest of us would be insane by now) and also the impact of meeting Harry Sullivan again years after he had left them. Sarah observes how she had just seen him recently (this would be in The Android Invasion) and now maybe a month later here he was having aged 20 years, her first real sense of having travelled in time aside from the adventures in history.

Harry himself is the subject of some fun continuity. Sometime in the mid eighties, Target novels made their first attempt to create original fiction based on the televised series, and they started with the short-lived companions series. All in all only three novels were produced, and one of them featured Harry Sullivan, written by Ian Marter himself. The events Harry Sullivan's War are actually referenced very briefly here, alluding to him doing some work at Porton Down before moving on to work in MI-5, his UNIT days long over. And at the end of the novel, there is a brief glimpse of somthing along the lines of relief from Harry when he watches the TARDIS leave, perhaps more disturbed from his travels with the Doctor than he let on. And on a further note of continuity, he meets Sarah again but in her "present" self of 1998 to reflect on what has just gone on. A reference to Sarah's own days after leaving the Doctor is made; drawing together the strings of her own life after leaving the TARDIS crew. By now it is no secret that Sarah Jane Smith will be in an episode of the next new season of the series alongside David Tennant and Billie Piper, but between her eventual departure from the regular series and her return for the 2006 episode, Sarah does indeed go on with a spin-off adventure, a reuniting with the Doctor, then with the Brigadier, and evntually falling into her own world of peril in a series of audio adventures.

But that's all in the future.

The point of all this? It's testament to how Doctor Who as a series can go on outside its own life on television and maintain its own mythology, with the companions of the Doctor having their own lives, their own adventures and maybe faring just that much better in life for having known him. As real people we all want to know that those we are close to in our lives will go on to be successful after we have gone our separate ways, and there is nothing better than seeing an old friend again and knowing that they have done just that.

NEXT EPISODE : THE MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA

The Pescatons

The Doctor and Sarah arrive on the fog-shrouded coast of England and are attacked by a monster roaming the dunes. Several local expeditions in search of a meteorite that fell into the nearby Thames have gone missing, and when the Doctor investigates he discovers that earth is once more facing invasion, but this time from the nasty aquatic Pescatons from the planet Pesca. The Doctor visited Pesca long ago and knows that their leader, Zor, is the key to their power, but Zor himself holds some sort of mesmeric influence over even the Doctor, and the invasion commences.

This was actually the first Doctor Who adventure to be recorded on audio; done in 1976 by Argo records and starring Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen, The Pescatons is a two part adventure only recently re-released under the BBC Audio banner.

And it's kinda lame.

It's got all the elements there with the fourth Doctor and Sarah as a team, there's an invasion, there's monsters.... but it doesn't hold together very well with such a minimal cast (the only other character to have a voice is Zor, everything else is narrated by Tom Baker). Standards at the time were a bit different than today with Big Finish churning out adventure after adventure, so the sheer novelty of having Doctor Who on an LP was probably the big selling point.

The script was delivered by Victor Pemberton, and elements of his 1968 adventure, Fury From The Deep, can be found here, right down to the Doctor playing a piccolo when he finds himself getting edgy. There are always going to be niggling points with dialogue, but I have to ask why Pemberton had Sarah ask the Doctor how old he was when just a few stories ago in Pyramids of Mars he revealed his age at around 750 years. And why is Sarah called Sarah Jane all of a sudden? And what's up with the wierd materialization sound of the TARDIS? And when did the fourth Doctor visit Pesca without Sarah? Questions abound.

No good answers mind you.

Onwards.

NEXT EPISODE : SYSTEM SHOCK

The Seeds of Doom

Somewhere in Antarctica a scientific expedition finds a frozen pod deep under the permafrost. Knowing that the region was once a jungle, the scientists assume the pod is from that period of time and are keen to discover its secrets. The World Ecology Bureau calls upon the Doctor's experience to look at the pod and he recognizes it as a dangerous organism from outer space, and takes Sarah to Antarctica to deal with it. The Doctor and Sarah are followed by a pair of henchmen working for millionaire Harrison Chase, who wants the pod for his own collection of rare plants, but before either party arrives at the base, the pod releases a shoot and one of the men is infected and starts to metamorphose into a Krynoid, a hostile plant creature that when established on a world will attack and kill all animal life. The Doctor finds a second pod but it is stolen by Chase's henchmen, Scorby and Keeler, and the base is destroyed to cover their tracks, killing everyone but the Doctor and Sarah. Chase's fanatical ambition to have the pod flower and add a Krynoid to his collection results in Keeler's infection and eventual transformation, but this time the change accelerates and the Krynoid grows into a giant tendriled monster that the Doctor is not sure he can stop.

More brilliance. Sheer absolute brilliance, and six episodes of it, too. The story does take on a bit of the old formula of the Pertwee era six parters with the first two episodes taking place in Antarctica (the events therein very similar to John Carpenter's The Thing) and the remaining four taking place back in England in and around Chase's estate. But there is never a loss of momentum to the tale as it moves along, and as with The Sontaran Experiment all the location work is done on sharp Beta video, even the Anatarctica scenes which appear to have been shot on a hillside sprayed with foam, but it looks convincing. There is also a great deal of location work done at night, giving a proper sense of the passage of time while the Krynoid grows and takes over, eventually becoming large enough to envelop Chase's entire house. The house is the same location that was used in Pyramids of Mars but this time with more location work being done on the vast grounds than before, with Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen running about on the well manicured lawns and hiding behind trimmed hedges to escape uzi-toting guards.

The cast is first rate. Everyone in this show gives their all, aside from Major Beresford of UNIT who is doing a sad fill-in for the Brigadier. But take into account Sir Colin Thackary, the first civil servant ever in the show who actually did something aside from quote bits of procedure at people and throw his title about. And the amazing eccentric artist Amelia Ducat whose almost-senility made for incredible presence in her scenes. And Scorby, the thug. Wow. The confrontations between him and Sarah are pulled off perfectly, with her calling him out for his cowardice and him barely restraining the urge to kill her. The Doctor seems a bit different this time, yelling at the top of his lungs to make his point, showing how desperate the situation is with the Krynoid by losing his cool a lot in parts three to six. And he's also at his most violent in this episode, punching out Chase's chauffeur so bad he goes into hospitaly, nearly snapping Scorby's neck, then bashing Scorby over the head with a chair, flinging Chase into a heap of dustbins... magnificent. And Chase himself... so icy and alien it is fitting that he would side with the Krynoid and the plants as they begin their killing rampage. Hats off to Tony Beckley for being the coldest baddie in the series since the Master, or maybe even up there with Tobias Vaughan from The Invasion. Yeah, alien monsters are scary and horrible, but nothing is so alarming as a madman intent on getting his way.

This has got to come out on DVD sometime soon. Why it wasn't one of the first baffles me. This adventure is as close to flawless as it gets for this era, six episodes I would be proud to show to a first timer as an indicator of just what Doctor Who is at its best.

This is the end of the season for the show, and of course it would be back with another visually stunning adventure, but before we go on, a couple side trips into other media...

NEXT EPISODE : THE PESCATONS

The Brain of Morbius

When the TARDIS materializes on the planet Karn, the Doctor suspects that the Time Lords themselves have interfered and diverted the ship off its chosen route. The planet is home to the mysterious Sisterhood, a group of women who discovered immortality through the Elixir of Life which is formed by an eternal flame. In years past, the secret of the Elixir was known only to the Sisterhood and the Time Lords, but a rogue Time Lord named Morbius exposed the secret and promised it to the cult that rose up to follow him until he was defeated and executed. The Doctor and Sarah discover that the mad scientist Solon has Morbius' brain alive in a tank in his castle, and he is using the bodies of survivors from wrecked spaceships to create a new body so Morbius can rule again. All that he needs is a head, and he thinks the Doctor's will do perfectly.

Okay it's an obvious ripoff of Frankenstein but it's a damn scary tale, with Sarah suffering blindness from the power of the Sisters, the monster lurching across the planet, the eerie chants of the Sisters themselves and Solon's fanatical desire to resurrect his master. There's a cameo appearance by a Mutt from The Mutants as it crawls from it's wrecked spaceship, and there is loads of Time Lord mystery exposed and hinted at; apparantly rogue Time Lords are not just confined to the likes of the Doctor and the Monk and the Master, and in his time Morbius was a leader of an army of millions, "The scum of the galaxy," as Maren of the Sisterhood says.

The effects of the brain in the tank are done quite well and were ripped off themselves in Robocop 2 many years later. And there is a nasty fatal gunshot wound in part 3, with a lot of blood flying everywhere - the stuff of Mary Whitehouse campaigns indeed. And the Robocop 2 inspiration isn't the only place where this story's future effects will reach; in 1992 author Paul Cornell created an entire adventure called Love and War inspired by one line from the script of this adventure, where Maren and Ohica discuss the "silent gas dirigibles of the Hoothi".

Of course there is a bad link to the future as well. A Terrance Dicks novel called Warmonger was published a few years back, taking the fifth Doctor and his companion Peri back into the years before The Brain of Morbius when Solon was relatively good in his motives and when Morbius was only just rising to power..... but it sucks. Pure crap. Terrance Dicks may have been script editor and had a lot of input into this story but he should have left it alone. Makes watching Brain slightly painful knowing what was to come next.

But what comes next surely does not suck. At all. I promise.

NEXT EPISODE : THE SEEDS OF DOOM

The Android Invasion

The Doctor and Sarah arrive in a wooded patch of the English countryside in time to see a UNIT solider fall to his death from a cliff. Shortly after they are attacked by technicians in protective suits with guns built into their figertips. Sarah recognizes the nearby village as Devsham, a place she once visited on a story connected to the local space defence station, a village where everybody seems to be controlled by a mysterious force. The Doctor and Sarah encounter Benton and Harry Sullivan at the station but they are both acting as if their old friends are criminals and attempt to shoot them on site. Astronaut Guy Crayford is working with a race of creatures known as the Kraals in their attempt to invade Earth by landing a speahead force of android replicas on Earth, and the village is a testing ground on their home planet where radiation is on the rise. The Doctor and Sarah make their escape attempt to get back to Earth ahead of the Kraals and their android duplicates but find that their friends are already being replaced, opening the way for the Kraal leader, Styggron, and his race to claim the planet as their own.

More brilliance from this era of the show. Nasty porcine aliens in the form of the Kraals, all the UNIT folks except for the Brigadier, and a handy surprise separation from the TARDIS. A script provided by Dalek creator Terry Nation proves that his Doctor Who skills range beyond the Daleks and the Voord (for those who are not familiar with his work on Blakes 7). And again, the incredible dynamic between Tom Baker's fourth Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen's Sarah Jane Smith makes all of their scenes a delight to watch. The entire setup of the first half of the story evokes memories of the parallel universe of Inferno with the Doctor's friends all existing in darker states, turning against him and treating him like the enemy. Those feelings do, however, fall away when the plot is exposed.

Weak points? Maybe the bit where Colonel Faraday is thrown in as a last ditch replacement for the Brigadier. It's so obvious that the lines were written for Nicholas Courtney, but delivered by another actor they don't sound right. And the bit where Sarah and the Doctor are chased by tracker dogs... are those androids too?

It's nice to see Harry back, even for such a short time. And Mr Benton, for the last time ever. Crayford was a bit of a fool, totally taken in by the Kraals and used for their plans of conquest. As aliens the Kraals are nasty nasty things, even beyond what they look like. Styggron creates a virus to kill everyone on Earth to make room for his people, but it's an interesting dynaic between the Kraals themselves; they're actually friendly with each other as exchanges between Styggron and Chedaki are testament.

Ah the Doctor. A new coat. And on location it sounds as if Tom Baker had a sore throat. He gets the hell beaten out of him by his own android double, which is always a bit disturbing even if in this case it looks like self-abuse. Not THAT kind of self-abuse; this is a children's programme.

NEXT EPISODE : THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS

Pyramids of Mars

In the year 1911, archaeologist Marcus Scarman discovers and enters a blind pyramid in Egypt. Upon seeing the Eye of Horus on the door to the inner chamber, his work party run away in terror, and when he proceeds on his own he is killed instantly in a flash of light. A mental projection of a hideous beast invades the TARDIS and diverts the ship to Scarman's country home in England where a religious fanatic is waiting for the return of his god, Sutekh, with an army of oversized mummies at his command. Along with Scarman's brother, Laurence, the Doctor and Sarah discover that the ancient god Sutekh is indeed alive, but he is no god; he is a native of the planet Phaester Osiris and was known as Sutekh the Destroyer, shattering worlds and leaving death in his wake until he was cornered on Earth and held prisoner by a force field controlled from Mars. Sutekh reanimates the body of Marcus Scarman to acheive his ends, and with the Doctor's assertation that not even the Time Lords could stop him, it looks as if he might win.

BRILLIANT. Again. Atmosphere of a creepy old house with robot mummies wandering the grounds, a pallid dead man in control of them, and a bound god running the whole thing. What more could anyone ask for?

I figured it was time to show Jay an episode that has no major flaws worth mocking, and so for the first time in a long time we actually sat in near silence while the DVD played. And we enjoyed. Oh of course we made the odd joke here and there but not at the expense of the show... well not much anyways... Jay did snigger at the clever reversing of footage that was used to show the reanimated Scarman recovering from a bullet shot by the local poacher. And we did wonder why the Doctor and Sarah didn't gag when getting a whiff of the inside of the poacher's hut with all those dead rabbit hanging all over the place. But the shots of the TARDIS in flight were well done, and for once the wobbling about as if the box were on a string (and it actually was) worked to the advantage of the plot. Still, it was a far cry from the fantastic crash landing sequence used in The Christmas Invasion just a few weeks ago. There was a fun reference in part one where Sarah emerges from the wardrobe wearing a white dress which the Doctor recognizes as one of Victoria's, creating a moment which will be referenced in the future in a spinoff called Downtime.

So check it out. The Doctor is powerless against Sutekh. Just as the third Doctor was aaginst the Great One, here we see the Doctor forced to his knees by his enemy, while Sutekh laughs. And then Sutekh posesses his mind and hijacks the TARDIS for a ride to Mars, which is the first time the TARDIS is ever invaded by an enemy (aside from when the Master managed to force his way in in the past). It's not often we see the Doctor so helpless, aside from the odd bit of physical overpowering by a strong alien. It's also a new thing to see the Doctor so resentful of the Brigadier; in part one he is still pissed at having been recalled to help with the Zygon invasion.

I mentioned this to Jay while we were watching: Elisabeth Sladen has the most incredible eyes. I have said before about how her reaction to the Dalek at the end of part one of Genesis of the Daleks was one of the best ever, and it's all in the eyes. Jay went on to say she was actually a very good looking girl all around, and for a moment, two gay men watching Doctor Who sounded about as gay as Sunday afternoon football. Mind you, that's pretty gay, too.

Then we enjoyed a hearty laugh at the only real clunker moment of the show: in part four when Sutekth finally stands up after years of sitting helpless in a chair, there's a hand in plain view on the edge of the chair. And rather than just stay there and not draw attention to itself, it moves, and practically waves before vanishing. Oh my. The story isthat the actor playing Sutekh was sitting for so long that the pillow he was on actually stuck to his bum, so rather than get him a new pillow they had an extra crouch behind his throne and hold the edge down. Ah, another of those golden moments, and it was played upon in the short spoof documentary included on the DVD release, entitled Oh Mummy. "Do these people have nothing better to do?" Jay lamented. Oh come on, it was funny.

NEXT EPISODE : THE ANDROID INVASION

Planet of Evil

The Doctor and Sarah answer a distress call at the edge of the known universe and find what's left of a Morestran scientific expedition on the planet Zeta Minor. The Morestrans, lead by Professor Solon, are desperate for new sources of energy and have extracted mineral ores from the planet to refuel their sun, but the scientists have been attacked by unnatural forces which have left all but Solon for dead. A military ship arrives and the Doctor and Sarah are blamed for the murders until the real culprit is revealed: the planet exists on the edge of not just our universe, but that of antimatter as well, and Solon's experiments have disrupted the delicate balance between them, stirring up a creature made of antimatter. And as the Doctor predicts, the Morestrans will not be allowed to leave Zeta Minor with any antimatter on board no matter how hard they try.

Another fantastic tale from what many refer to as the golden age of the show, with the fourth Doctor and Sarah continuing to be a perfect combination. The atmosphere of fear is established very early in the serial with the nervous members of the expedition dreading the approach of night. And the setting - the only word that fits for the jungle of Zeta Minor is "diseased". It looks like everything is rotting yet still alive at the same time. Thick red vines and sweating tree bark, stagnant pools of water... it's all there, even if it was built in two different studios (as the occasional switch from TV studio video to film quality shows). And it's scary. The wind blows and the air is filled with the clanking of.... what? It's the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Other nightmarish things would be Salamar, the hysterical controller of the Morestran probe. At first he is cold as a matter of routine, but as the situation spirals out of his control and beyond his understanding he cracks and even attempts to eject the Doctor and Sarah into space from the ship. It's good that he gets it in the end. Sorenson is a bit of a problem as well; singleminded to an extreme he refuses to accept that his experiments might be wrong, that his hypothesis might be flawed, and even when the antimatter starts to infect him and turn him into a killer, he still refuses to do anything until it's far too late.

I remember as a child not liking this one for some reason or another. Now as a thirtysomething perhaps it can be seen a bit differently, because like I say, I find it brilliant and scary. And it's also the first time we see the "new" Doctor (it's his second season now and even though it's hard to think about it, Tom Baker was still the new guy at the time) in the TARDIS console room with Sarah. I think I said before that there's something about seeing the Doctor at the helm that validates him once and for all.

Maybe I didn't like the effects. That could be it. The Morestran weapons were just flash guns but they have a really cool sound to them. The creatures of Zeta Minor only appear as red outlines, their complete form a mystery. Oh. And a word on design: why is it that the science hut on Zeta Minor has power-operated sliding doors and the doors on the Morestran probe all have handles and need to be manually opened and closed? And this might be a niggling point but do they need an entire room (with a hanging sign no less) for four pieces of force field equipment? And (oh no I'm on a roll) what's up with those unflattering impractical military uniforms?

I'll stop now. And I'll get set for the next one.

NEXT EPISODE : PYRAMIDS OF MARS

Terror of the Zygons

The TARDIS finally brings the Doctor, Sarah and Harry back to Earth in time to help the Brigadier in his latest UNIT crisis: a rash of oil rig sinkings in the North Sea near Scotland. A survivor washes up on shore with a tale of something coming out of the water and attacking the rig, but as he manages to tell his story to Harry both are shot, one fatally. Sarah and the Doctor are attacked by a Zygon; a race of creatures who have come to Earth centuries ago in a damaged spaceship awaiting rescue, but now are planning to take the planet for themselves. The Zygons are few in number but they have two weapons: the ability to take on a human form - including Harry's - and a massive monster called the Skarasen, which is the Loch Ness Monster. After destroying the oil rigs, the next target is the city of London itself...

COOL. This episode bears special nostalgia for me as episode 3 was the very first Doctor Who I ever saw. As a child I was absolutely terrified of the Zygons for their totally organic look; they're bipeds but with no necks, scary whispery throaty voices and a lot of suckers. Their technology is more grown than it is built, making the inside of their spaceship look... well.. sticky. And they're mean. Really mean. Lock you in a cupboard, steal your body print and then chase your friends around with a pitchfork mean. Yes, I watched it, I was frightened, I was hooked.

It's nice to see the UNIT people again but the growing distance between the Brigadier and the Doctor is evident. Harry is returned to his military fold without much in the way of questions, and Mr Benton is there as always, although his role is somewhat diminished with so many "regulars" packed into the cast. But alas this is the second last story that will have a heavy UNIT presence as the Doctor is more of a wanderer this time, his Earthy roots totally yanked by his regeneration.

Style wise this episode has a couple problems, but hey there's not much one can do when it's 1976 and you need the Loch Ness Monster to surface in the Thames. Blue screen. Arrrgh, not pretty. Where's Jay when I need him? The Zygon to human metamorphasis effect could have used a little more work as well, but what can you do. The end result of Harry's transmutation is very good though; he / the Zygon goes after Sarah with a pitchfork in a barn. The sequence works really well, you can almost see that pitchfork going up her nose.

So Harry has had enough. End of story he's not going anywhere in that TARDIS again. He'll stick to the train. Sarah still has the drive to travel though, and off she goes, leaving Harry with the Brig. And it's the last time we'll see the Brig until 1983. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Sarah will be in London five minutes ago.

Yeah right.

NEXT EPISODE : PLANET OF EVIL

The Vortex Crystal

The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry arrive on the planet Gathwyr, another unremarkable planet with barren landscape, and a totally suppressed native population cowering from the wrath of "the Masters"; aliens who have conquered them and enslaved them for their own ends. The TARDIS crew are eventually captured, Sarah and Harry are held prisoner while the Doctor is taken to confront the Masters - the Daleks! The taskforce on Gathwyr are not out to exterminate the Doctor for a change, and instead enlist his help to deal with a crisis they have caused themselves in their attempts to probe the space/time vortex, and now the entire universe is threatened with destruction, a concept even the Daleks realize is not appealing. But what are they really up to?

This book was written in the mid-eighties by William H Keith, jr, and is not actually a book at all; it's a roleplaying game book published by FASA Corporation. The attempt to bring Doctor Who onto a different level of reading and gaming was short lived as only one other FASA book was published (The Rebel's Gamble with the sixth Doctor, his companion Peri, and, oddly, Harry Sullivan). There were also a few others published under the "Find Your Fate" banner which was more along the lines of "Choose Your Own Adventure" in that they were designed for a younger audience while The Vortex Crystal was aimed a more mature group used to the calibre of Dungeons and Dragons. (And as a side note I will add that in the day it was published there were tales of kids killing themselves to escape curses put on them while playing such games, so when my mother found out I was reading a D&D style Doctor Who she overreacted as usual, but I'm fine... really...).

So what does The Vortex Crystal actually add to Doctor Who lore? I didn't really "play" the adventure as was intended, just made the decisions I felt would get me the farthest along to discover the truth about the Dalek presence on Gathwyr. And it's actually a damn complicated plot, and a good Dalek story to boot. And it's told in the first person narrative by the fourth Doctor himself, which is something not often - if at all - attempted by writers. But Keith gets the Doctor's voice down pat, you can even hear Tom Baker's tones when you read it. Sarah and Harry are locked up as soon as possible to avoid cluttering up the narrative with more characters and they are alluded to every so often as being under threat of death from the Daleks should the Doctor not help them with the trouble they have unleashed in the time vortex.

Obviously this was written well before Wolfsbane so the careful set up Jacquline Rayner did to meld her story with the next televised adventure is not here, so as far as this continuity is concerened, Harry may have stayed with the TARDIS crew for a lot longer. There is no mention of having just escaped from Skaro at the dawn of the Dalek race, so some time has passed since then.

There are not a lot of copies of this laying about, and a quick check on eBay just now finds two up for grabs at an okay price; if you're new to the series and want to have a little fun it might be worth your while to try and pick one up.

Anyways. Back to the show.

NEXT EPISODE : TERROR OF THE ZYGONS

Wolfsbane

Responding to a summons by the Brigadier, the Doctor, Sarah and Harry are en route to Earth when the TARDIS materializes prematurely. Harry goes outside into the November air of 1938 England, and the TARDIS dematerializes almost right away, leaving him behind. When the Doctor and Sarah return for him, it is two weeks later and they find he has died. As they try to unravel the cause of Harry's death, it comes about that Harry fell into the company of the local upper class and meets another man called the Doctor, although this man does not know Harry, has never heard of the planet Skaro, and does not posess a TARDIS as such but does have a large blue box in a makeshift lab in his cottage. And this Doctor is involved in an investigation to discover what is happening to local livestock on nights when the moon in full and wolves are heard in the fields...

This story can almost stand on its own without the presence of the fourth Doctor and Sarah, but the paralell plotlines of their efforts to find out what happened to Harry and his own adventures with the other Doctor run together very well, coming together in time to resolve the storyline. And the end actually makes sense.

But before we go further, a bit of backstory. Other Doctor, you ask? Yes. The eighth Doctor. Owing to his own adventures in his series of novels, the eighth Doctor becomes an amnesiac and is separated from his companions, Fitz and Compassion, and lives on Earth for a period of roughly 170 years with no memory of his past, and without the TARDIS as it is healing from their adventures. As serving editor of the BBC Books range during that time, Wolfsbane author Jacqueline Rayner has crossed the time lines of the marooned eighth Doctor with his own selve's (although he would also be on earth during his third incarnation's forced exile by the Time Lords) and given Harry Sullivan a chance to be his own man for a change.

Poor Harry. I mean, really. Always the bumbler, always suffering from the fourth Doctor's gentle ribbing and always fighting his inner desires for Sarah (although we find out here that she is far too independant for him and he needs a lady who will let him rescue her). That's no way to live. Granted, being effectively abandoned in 1938 is no way to live either with a world war about to erupt and werewolves running amok and a German chick looking to get citizenship by marrying a Brit is not the life either, but being away from the Doctor and Sarah allows Harry a chance to go it on his own, be resourceful, be brave... and still be a bit of a goof. But a more endearing one. He knows about the Doctor's ability to regenerate but finds the reality of the eighth Doctor a bit hard to take, and after a while starts to realize that time travel is not really for him, effectively retro-planting the seeds of his eventual decision to leave the TARDIS crew. Clever woman, Ms Rayner. She does it without being obvious, letting Harry say it in his own words rather than spelling it out for us in narrative.

But Harry didn't die, as one can guess. I'm not telling how he didn't though, but it's clever. And on he goes with the Doctor and Sarah, heading for their rendez-vous with the Brig.

Well, eventually.

NEXT EPISODE : THE VORTEX CRYSTAL