Last Man Running

As their travels continue, the Doctor and Leela's relationship begins to show signs of strain when her warrior instincts to attack anything start to get on his nerves. Arriving on what looks like a peaceful planet, the Doctor decides to talk a walk and get his headspace back, locking Leela in the TARDIS, only to discover that the planet is not as peaceful as it seems and in fact is teeming with savage life forms. Leela's warrior skills come in very handy on the planet and she rescues not only the Doctor but the members of an investigation sqaud who are hunting a rogue weapons technologist. As every predator is killed by Leela, more arrive to challenge her skills, and the Doctor theorizes that they are being deliberately sent out to do this. The Doctor is right and finds an underground complex where clones are made left and right with the sole purpose to fight and kill in a society where public combat and duels to the death are the norm.

Chris Boucher knows his Leela. Having provided her first two scripts for televsion he now begins to delve a bit deeper into her psyche and how her involvement with the Doctor is affecting her development, and vice versa. The Doctor wasn't planning to have her with him as we all saw in the closing moments of The Face of Evil but he is not the kind of man to just dump her, and realizes that he is now responsible for her and must endure her presence in his life. The resolve to educate her starts to come out here, and a slightly different Pygmalion begins to happen over the next few books.

I know I'm not writing a lot about these ones; I read this almost 8 years ago and don't remember as much as I would like to, but as far as character continuity goes, it's right in stride, developing the Doctor-companion relationship a bit further than was seen on television. The teething pains fo getting used to each other was never fully explored in the televised adventures, and Boucher does a good job of illustrating them without rewriting any established mythology.

NEXT EPISODE : CORPSE MARKER