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