The King's Demons

The TARDIS is drawn to Earth again in 1215, dropping the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough right in the middle of a jousting contest in the presence of King John. The time travellers are welcomed by the King as his demons and are regarded with suspicion by the local nobility and the peasants. The Doctor knows that it can't be right; the King would not welcome them as such and should not even be there; he should be in London signing the Crusaders' oath. With the King clearly an imposter, the TARDIS crew must find out why someone is playing with history, and what it is they hope to gain.

Another two part story, and like Black Orchid it is a cost-conscious one, using a lot of location work and a score of costumes from the BBC vaults to recreate a historical period in fine detail. Tegan gets a new outfit and runs around with her legs on display, which should have created more of a fuss even if it was pre-Victorian times. Turlough gets locked in a dungeon for most of the adventure, conveniently reducing the dialogue load as the show actually has a large cast, and to let everyone do something within the confines of 46 minutes is a bit of a challenge (something that is easily done now on the show but in those days they were still experimenting with this format as a way to fill out the season).

Oh yes. It's the Master. He escaped from Xeriphas. And he brought something with him; a shape-shifting android named Kamelion, which he uses as the double for King John. Kamelion is an interesting concept in many way; as a robot it's actually not a bad piece of work, capable of standing and sitting to deliver its lines. The shape-shifting capablities are a bit of a cop-out, as are the special effects surrounding it, but hey it's a cool looking android. In the end the Doctor takes it on board the TARDIS with him and it more or less becomes a companion, with a mind of its own and everything, but due to technical failures it is not used again for quite some time.

Back in the day when Target used to publish the novelizations of the Doctor Who scripts it became customary for authors whose scripts had been edited for television to put all the missing material back in, and in this case The King's Demons got itself a second chance at life, resulting in Terence Dudly penning a 153 page novel out of his two part script. Such an achievements may not exactly seem massive by the standards of the 300 page novels of today but back then a four or six part script usually only amounted to 144 pages on average, so providing a double length book was a feat, and also a joy for thos reading it who felt that two part stories were a bit of a ripoff.

Speaking of perceived ripoffs, BBC Video's release of The Sontaran Experiment, also a two part tale, onto DVD earlier this year means that The King's Demons will most likely see release as a solo adventure as well. My friend Derek is adamant that he will not buy these releases, as when they were on VHS they were bundled into double packs with an adjacent four part story. Myself, I'll buy andything related to Doctor Who so I don't mind at all; in fact I am curious to see what the extras package will be like on this one. Let's see some more footage - perhaps the sequence where Hugh Fitzwilliam gets annoyed at losing his jousting contest and takes off his shirt and hits the castle gym for a while... wait... wrong show. Dang.

NEXT EPISODE : THE FIVE DOCTORS

Enlightenment

The White Guardian sends the TARDIS crew to a yacht race in space where a race known as Eternals are competing for the prize of Enlightenment. For the Eternals this is the key to ending their ongoing boredom as they are effectively immortal creatures who dwell outside of time, and their only source of entertainment and pleasure comes from the minds of lessler, more finite beings, those they call Ephemerals. Even the Time Lords are not resistant to the mind reading power of the Eternals and the Doctor must stay on his guard. Tegan also finds herself the centre of attention of one of the Eternals, and Turlough discovers that yet another is in collusion with the Black Guardian, much like himself.

Enlightenment is a pretty simple tale really and a tidy conclusion to this trilogy with the Black Guardian using Turlough as his puppet. I myself wasn't finding mich joy in the whole premise as it was very loosely held together, but at least they got the original actors who played the Guardians back in the Key to Time days to reprise their roles. Even with dead birds on their heads. In space, no-one can hear your stylist scream.

Check out Tegan's fancy dress in part three. And all that hair she suddenly had. Hooray for wigs! And hooray for boobies, as the saying goes; both Tegan and Captain Wrack get to show off a lot of cleaveage. Not that anyone notices. Where's Mr Mariner's cleavage shot? Show me a hot guy with his shirt off in Doctor Who please!

Effects wise... they did their best. It's not easy to build model boats at the best of times (inside or outside of a bottle) but to make them fly through space as well is a real challenge. Turlough falling overboard and being scooped by a net, not well done at all.

Black Guardian defeated. Turlough's one of the good guys after all, even if he is a greedy coward at heart. This ought to be interesting.

NEXT EPISODE : THE KING'S DEMONS

Terminus

Turlough's attempts to sabotage the TARDIS at the behest of the Black Guardian result in an emergency landing on a leper ship. The Doctor and Nyssa encounter a pair of pirates on board who have mistaken it for something else, and the ship docks at Terminus, a vast space station at the centre of the known universe. Nyssa contracts the Lazar disease and is sent for treatment by the sinsiter Vanir, the slave labourers who operate the station, and the Doctor realizes that Terminus is at the centre of the universe because in a way, it created it. And it could also destroy it too.

The first time I watched this one I actually had the flu, so the delerium of a high fever I was suffering at the time seemed to go quite well with the sickly atmosphere of Terminus itself. The moaning of the diseased lepers was more akin to a zombie film, as was their ragged shuffling through the corridors of their ships. And for the love of god why those awful skulls everywhere? When you go to a hospital you might hope to see more cheerful motifs, not a death's head grinning at you everywhere you look. Still, if anyone has ever been to the nuclear medicine wing of Sunnybrook hospital they would tell you that big signs that say THE JOY OF LIFE are not the most comforting either. The sets of Terminus are drab and a half, with the inner works of the station being nothing more than scaffold with plastic stretched across it, and not a lot of light. "I think they ran out of money," Jay opined from his end of the couch when we watched it together on Sunday night. Still, the show has some atmosphere to it, even though it is probably by accident. Or imagined by viewers with a fever.

We made some technical comments this time, noting how there were some interesting angles used in the shooting, but none of them for any real reason. There was a low angle shot that looked quite promising until someones boots walked right up to it and stood there. Nyssa sits amongst the dying Lazars in one scene and rather than cut to a different shot the sequences dissolve into each other, but the effect is might be trying for, to show Nyssa alone and afraid, is lost as the directing style is not sustained. The best has to be, though, a hasty attempt towards the end of part two when a Vanir walks under a stairway that Peter Davison is standing on; we can see his shoes but then a small square of stairway is superimposed over it to cover it up. It took me something like 18 years to notice this, and when I showed it to Jay we just has to laugh. Cause crying isn't allowed in Doctor Who.

Costumes have long been an issue on the show when it comes to practicality and design. In this case the fishbowl helmets worn by Kari and Olvir are neither practical or stylish. I suppose they needed big helmets to hold in their hairstyles. As pirates they are pretty sad; they are routinely overpowered, they wear bad clothes and one shot drains the powerpack of one of their guns. The Vanir are really no better with their fibreglass body armour which I suppose is designed to make them look more muscular, but it really draws more attention to the fact that it is just held on with elastics. And then there's the Garm, a massive St Bernard-ish creature wearing what looks like a leftover Kraag outfit from Shada (well, the original realization of Shada at any rate; I'll explain later). I am not going to comment on the Garm. Words fail me. They don't fail Jay, though. "Sean what is that?" he asked, gesturing with a Timbit.

Turlough's role as an agent of evil is not exactly played up much as he spends the bulk of the show crawling around inside air ducting with Tegan. Air ducting that is all shot on film, I might add. Jay figures they didn't have a small enough studio video camera to shoot it properly. I will assume he is right; I am not technical minded usually. But their forced confinement together softens Tegan a bit, although her distrust of Turlough is by no means unjustified - he's working for the BLACK GUARDIAN for goddess' sake. It also helps make a bit more of a bond between them because soon the TARDIS family is gonna be one short.

It's the end of the road for Nyssa. Some might have figured/hoped she was going to die of Lazar disease, but when she herself is cured of it and realizes there is a better way she decides to use her bioengineering skills (which we are reminded of in the first part of the adventure) to help the Lazars and the Vanir. The incidental music folks at the radiophonic workshop recreate her theme from Keeper of Traken for her departure scene (outdoing themselves this time since they evoked Adric's theme from Full Circle in part one when Turlough is given the dead boy's room) and it is here where we see Nyssa at her most emotional, hugging Tegan as she says goodbye. At least she got a new outfit this episode, even if it was a burlap sack to cover up the lingerie she was running around in the rest of the adventure. Nothing like going out with a bang.

NEXT EPISODE : ENLIGHTENMENT

Mawdryn Undead

The TARDIS narrowly avoids collision with a ship in a fixed temporal orbit and then becomes trapped on board. The Doctor's efforts to free his ship lead him to Earth in 1983 where he meets his old friend, Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, who is now teaching maths at an all-boys school. One of the Brigadier's students, a young man named Turlough, has been coerced by the Black Guardian to kill the Doctor in revenge for denying him the Key to Time, and although Turlough does not want to commit the act, he feels that to save his own life he must. Tegan and Nyssa end up in 1977 and encounter a younger Brigadier, as well as the mutilated alien Mawdyrn, whose misguided experiments in biology turned him and his associates on the ship into "undead" entities fated to circle the galaxy forever, unless they can use the Doctor's Time Lord powers to save themselves.

Okay so here's another one of those "chaos theory" time travel episodes where the actions of the Doctor and his companions in the past greatly influence the future. As with most scripts for the series the Doctor and his companions are split up, but in this instance the Doctor is in 1983 with Turlough and the Brigadier, and Nyssa and Tegan are in 1977 with Mawdryn... and the Brigadier as well. Both sets of characters work in their own timelines, contributing to the overall picture with the Doctor in 1983 piecing together what happened to his companions in the past.

Note that at this time the Brigadier hasn't been seen in the series since Terror of the Zygons, and what better way to bring him back into things than by using him twice as much. The flashback sequence in part two was a real treat for viewers at its original broadcast, offering younger viewers (such as myself at the time) the first glimpse of the Yeti and the Cybermen from The Invasion. And the Brigadier has not changed, even if the Doctor has, aside from leaving UNIT and taking up teaching maths. Out of character, you suggest? Maybe. After all this was hardly the kind of adventure one needed UNIT for, but the Brigadier is not the type of character to leave something he obviously loves doing; indeed, one would have thought that the Brigadier looked upon retirement - and even death - as nothing short of desertion of duty. Still, in the years that have followed this episode a lot of writers have had a bash at the Brigadier's personal continuity, and those adventures will be examined as well in this blog as they come along.

Turlough joins the TARDIS crew this adventure but he is a departure as a male companion. With Adric's death still relatively recent Turlough is a sharp contrast; devious, manipulative and untrustworthy, secretly being guided by the Black Guardian. Why the Black Guardian has waited this long to exact revenge on the Doctor and why he has chosen someone like Turlough to be his instrument are both very good questions; the Guardian says he must not be seen to act in his own revenge, which makes one wonder exactly who else is out there watching the Guardians and ensuring that they play fair. Turlough obviously isn't going to try and kill the Doctor. For starters Tegan does not trust him, and the Brigadier is always around in one way or another. The Doctor might even know what Turlough is up to, casting a suspicious glance at the control cube the Guardian uses to communiate with Turlough as if he knows what it is. And it's a plot thread that is not immediately resolved, carrying on into the next adventure.

And somewhere in all this there's Mawdryn and his undead friends, scientists who tried to turn themselves into Time Lords and give themselves a regeneration cycle with stolen Gallifreyan equipment. What they got, however, was a sentence to spend eternity as half-rotted mutants with their brains hanging out of their skulls like so much Big League Chew gum. And it's not their fault, they maintain; oh no, this is a Time Lord curse, even if no-one from Gallifrey made them hook themselves up to the machines. But they're keen enough to hook the Doctor up to it and suck away his remaining regenerations to cure themselves.

Oh and Nyssa wears a new outfit; her fourth in the entire series.

NEXT EPISODE : TERMINUS

Snakedance

Tegan is once more a member of the TARDIS crew, but she still carries the evil of the Mara inside her mind. The evil sentience diverts the TARDIS back to its homeworld of Manussa during the festivities that commemorate its banishment, leaving the Doctor and Nyssa to piece together the legend of its return and battle local aristocracy's indifference to the threat they face. While the Doctor and Nyssa try to make contact with the Snakedancers, the Mara uses Tegan to gain influence over the very people sworn to defend Manussa from the Mara's return.

It's sequel time! Anyone who watched Kinda will remember there was a point when the Mara was trapped in a circle of mirrors, but Tegan managed to peek through a gap and see it for what it really was. In that instant, the Mara retreated back into Tegan's mind and stayed there in hiding. Popular speculation amongst fans is that during her separation from the TARDIS, Tegan was still posessed by the Mara and was being manipulated by it to find a way to come back into contact with the Doctor once more and be free. I think that would make for an interesting audio series from Big Finish. But while we wait for that blessed day, here's the rematch that was.

The people of Manussa, from the street peddlers right up to the family of the Federator, do not take the Mara seriously anymore; it is viewed as supersition by some and a cash cow by others who sell merchandise around the festival. The only people who ever cared were ridiculed and more or less run out of town to live in the hills, so of course the Doctor is treated like just another crank. Only the fifth Doctor would allow himself to be treated like that, Jay and I surmised; we can't see Jon Pertwee's third Doctor scurrying out of a room because someone yelled at him. The Manussans themselves are a bit of an odd bunch, with the director, Ambril, all caught up in his history books while his androgynous assistant, Chela, (Jay and I called him Kelly - the guy's wearin a dress!) secretly believes in the Mara. We didn't think much of Lon, the son of the Federator. What the hell is he wearing in part four? How gay is that.

Tegan doesn't get much chance to be Tegan in this one; she spends a lot of her time either plugged into a dream machine or speaking for the Mara. Janet Fielding does get to pull some right evil faces though. "I hope she does the commentary for this DVD," Jay says. Yes, I'm sure she's just dying to share her thoughts on the production.

Nyssa finaly gets a wardrobe update, the velveteen trouser suit from Castrovalva having seen its last day in Arc of Infinity. Her new outfit sucks though. What were the stylists thinking? Okay it was 1982 but come on. There's this one bit where we hit pause, though, just at the end of part three, and Nyssa's hair froze in mid turn, and it looked like it was having more fun than she was. "She looks like Bjork," Jay said. Seriously, Sarah Sutton has to be one of the least expressive companions to date. Even K9 had a better range of emotion and he was a tin box. She lets a good scream go though, I'll give her that, and she takes out another armed guard. Careful around stairs, friends, Nyssa might just shove you down them.

This last bit is something I heard a lot of people say to me when I showed Snakedance to my grade 9 english class : the Doctor is hyperventilating. He is so eager to say what he has to say that it becomes this elevated squeak at times. Maybe the writers asked him to speak fast to avoid cutting lines. Either way it's like the man is all hopped up on crack, but Jay says they didn't have it back in 1982. Well, something funny was going on back then. If the funky porno music syntheizer score doesn't prove it then nothing will.

NEXT EPISODE : MAWDRYN UNDEAD

Arc of Infinity

Somewhere on Gallifrey a Time Lord traitor feeds the Doctor's biodata to an alien force, allowing it to invade the TARDIS and attempt to physically bond with him. When the attempt fails, the High Council of Time Lords recall the TARDIS to Gallifrey and prepare to execute the Doctor to prevent the antimatter creature from completing the bond. Meanwhile, the creature has gone into hiding on Earth in Amsterdam and has captured two backpackers and the cousin of one of them - who happens to be Tegan. The Doctor's efforts to uncover the conspiracy and prevent the bonding uncover a shocking truth - the creature is Omega, the fallen Time Lord he once thought he had destroyed.

What could be a better way to start season twenty than with some good old fashioned Time Lord hijinx, tall collars, stasars, red garbed guards and everything. Oh yes and Omega, last seen in The Three Doctors ten years ago. And gratiutious location shooting in Amsterdam and lots of clopping of shoes along cobblestones. Oh and Tegan, left behind last season, but with the extra material of Big Finish it does actually feel like longer now. Nifty, that. Dig her new haircut and her new outfit. Dig Omega's new makeover, his mask much more like an insect. And that creepy Ergon thing that clatters around like a pile of animated old bones is actually pretty scary. Where's the Ergon's backstory? Just something Omega cobbled up? Boo.

The Time Lords have not changed, although there is a new element to their society: two of the technicians monitoring the transmission of the Doctor's biodata actually refer to him as "one of the Time Lords", which implies that while these guys are Gallifreyan, they may not be Time Lords themselves. Gallifreyan fashion is at a standstill with the High Council (headed by a newly regenerated Borusa) still unable to turn their heads, and old complaints still running deep; Thalia mentions the Doctor's failure to return Romana when requested (the third time Romana is mentioned since her departure, which is interesting) and the Doctor bridles at the suggestion that Romana is a commodity to be returned upon request, and at the implication that he was her minder. That's all subtext of course. But even though we're on Gallifrey, no Leela and no K9, although her name is mentioned.

Welcome back Tegan! It's an interesting coincidence that she's snapped up in Omega's web of intregue, isn't it? The TARDIS has not been the same without her, really, even if the Big Finish audios made Nyssa a bit more interesting, but her insane lack of expression sometimes is enough to drive a man to drink. Or at least drive Jay and I to mock.

"Look. Nyssa surprised."

"Nyssa frightened,"

"Nyssa puzzled,"

"Nyssa sad,"

NYSSA WITH A GUN!!! Girlie goes all trigger happy on Gallifrey trying to rescue the Doctor from his execution. Jay and I could not help but snicker at the fact that the presidential guard (Led by Colin Baker as Maxil - pay attention, that name means something in a bit) are supposedly crack shots but Nyssa guns down a heap of them. Only on stun though.

And do we like Omega's return? He's not as insane as he was before, but his mellow attitude helps him hatch his plan. An interesting moment of emotion comes when he hears of the death of his agent/friend on Gallifrey, so maybe he's not such a monster, just misunderstood.

NEXT EPISODE : SNAKEDANCE

The Empire of Death

The Doctor and Nyssa attempt to travel back to 1851 once more but instead are drawn off course by a ghost that appears to be and claims to be Adric. The TARDIS arrives in 1863 in the presence of Queen Victoria herself during a seance in which she is attempting to contact the lost soul of Prince Albert, the seance being conducted by a young boy who can speak with the voices of the dead. The boy claims to have come into contact with the Other Side when he almost drowned as a child, and now he can comminicate back and forth through a submerged portal. The Doctor and Nysa know a dimensional rift when they see one and know how dangerous it can be, but to the Monarch it is a new land to be made part of the Empire.

For starters this novel should have been done a bit earlier in my review cycle instead of at the end of the Big Finish "season" as it deals with the lingering spectres of Adric's death and Tegan's departure, indicating that they were both very recent events. Nyssa's confusion and upset at them though is a bit forced, dimming by comparison to her confrontation of the Doctor in Spare Parts. Still, the issue I was always curious about, the deal with the Master running around in her father's body, that is actually addressed here for the first time. I'm just not a fan of how David Bishop writes on the whole.

The supporting cast of the novel are a bit on the disposable side, showing up for a bit, a huge chunk of background information thrown into the narrative, and then they're gone. After watching this year's Tooth and Claw I found myself thinking of the Queen Victoria from that script and loaning her attributes to Bishop's characterization; the Victoria in this novel suffers from her tale being used as narrative, rather than being told from her own perspective, which is something I feel can insult the intelligence of the reader from time to time.

And whats the story here anyways? I think I lost track of it somewhere. Is this a deliberate invasion or an accident? Why exactly did the Doctor get summonned to the Other Side? And this whole angle of duplicates from one side of the rift to the other - that was sprung on us rather suddenly. Maybe I was sleeping when I read it, or maybe the story spent too long getting somewhere and by the time it arrived I had lost interest. And then out of nowhere there were demons.

One big thing I take issue with where Bishop's writing is concerned here is his ready-made cannon fodder in the form of loosely defined soldiers. When it comes time for there to be a battle, there are suddent heaps and heaps of them, but up until that time I was never given the impression of a very large military unit present. The same thing happened in Bishop's previous novel, Amorality Tale with the third Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, and a ton of posessed policemen (I didn't review this one on purpose - I couldn't stand reading it again) called into action as soon as something close to a "final battle" scene was required.

So that's it for this set of adventures; back to the TV series.

NEXT EPISODE : ARC OF INFINITY

The Game

The game is called Naxy, and on the planet Cray it is not all done in good fun : the game is to the death. Two opposing teams are locked in a long standing grudge match where the only way to win is to kill your opponants, and when the Doctor arrives he is drafted by one team to play for them while Nyssa falls in with one of the opposing team's ranks. The Doctor's intention was not to play Naxy but to meet a man he considers to be his hero: the famous negotiator Lord Carlisle. Carlisle's mission is to negotiate a truce and put an end to Naxy, but his record is not all it seems, nor are the people surrounding him.

The Game is actually a 6 part adventure, the first one in the original Big Finish adventures range, but the whole thing is still under 2 hours in length, so it's actually six short episodes, and there's really no reason for that. For a story that only takes place over the span of a couple days there is little need for the epic length format. Writer Darien Henry says in the liner notes that he only did it because the traditional six part story was so difficult to do, but I maintain that making siz shorter episodes rather than four standard ones just to prove some strange point is really a waste. The flow of the plot suffers from the choppiness of being iterrupted on a shorter interval, and I found myself missing things when my attention started to wander.

The Doctor as a gladiator has never happened to this extent, yet here he is in a game where people are being killed around him with hockey sticks tipped with blades and the locals screaming for more blood. He does quite well, though, Peter Davison managing to grunt and yell at all the right times as if he really is in a fight for his life (although to be fair who knows what really goes on in those recording sessions).

And from the show's past comes William Russell, not reprising his role as Ian, mind you, but as Carlisle himself. At one point he muses that "The Doctor is my best friend," which has a certain irony to it considering Russell's past in the series. He's sounding a bit older though, sometimes as if he is speaking with something in his mouth. Maybe it's chicken.

So. No more six parters unless there is going to be 180 minutes of material to warrant it. I have spoken.

NEXT EPISODE : THE EMPIRE OF DEATH

Creatures of Beauty

The Doctor and Nyssa arrive on the planet Veln and are immediately entwined in the intregue surrounding one of the richest women on the planet. Secret operations are being conducted on Lady Forleon's estate where the genetically wounded are being rehabilitated and cured; the planet itself has been polluted with deadly toxic waste as a result of an accident in high orbit. The Veln have been contaminated and their bodies mutated and twisted; Lady Foleon's secret operations restore them to their original state, or make them "beauties". But how did it all happen? And does the presence of the Doctor and Nyssa actually influence anything?

Creatures of Beauty is structured a little differently than other adventures, starting with the Doctor and Nyssa already in the thick of things and then the storyline hopping back and forth between the start and finish of the adventure. This is the sort of structure I did not enjoy in print with The Eye of Heaven but this time it actually works; to tell this story in a linear way would really deny the listener of the tension of the script and give away the details of the story too soon. The transition between different scenes is handled well with extended segments of incidental music, and the odd chilling whisper of "beautiful".

So it's an environmental story, really, the risks of improper waste management held up for all to see. And over four generations of mutation the people of Veln react to any outsider with parinoia and suspicion, but they also resent those amongst them who partake of the surgical procedure and restore their bodies to normal.

Hm. It all seemed so much more detailed when I was listening to it, now I see it's a pretty simple adventure... probably why it was done this way. Clever clever.

NEXT EPISODE : THE GAME

Spare Parts

The Doctor and Nyssa arrive on a cold grey world on the edge of a nebula where no planet should be. The people of the planet are dying; an underground city with its technology stalled in the 1950s holds the last of the inhabitants as their rulers make a last desperate effort to save their race. The planet is Mondas. And the people are destined to become the Cybermen.

FANTASTIC. There are not enough words to describe Spare Parts, so fantastic is going to have to do. Every minute of the script is a delight to hear; Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton deliver one of their best performances as the Doctor and Nyssa in this format. The spectre of Adric's death in their last encounter with the Cybermen still hangs over them both; the Doctor knows that Mondas is heading back towards Earth eventually to arrive in 1986, he knows the patterns of history, but Nyssa sees a chance to stop the development of the Cybermen before they can begin their conquest.

Writer Marc Platt takes a look farther back into the past of the Cybermen than any other to date, illustrating the plight of the common people who are slowly dying and being replaced by artificial limbs and organs. The things being done to the people are truly chilling, the fate of Yvonne Hartly being particularly frightening, and the final rise of the CyberPlanner out of the group mind of the Planning Committee a delight to hear. And speaking of hearing, and sounds, the voices of the Cybermen are recreated to match the originals from The Tenth Planet.

More of the audios should be like this: simple plot, incredible performances, and real relevance to the series as a whole.

NEXT EPISODE : CREATURES OF BEAUTY

The Mutant Phase / Primeval

Somewhere in the future, swarms of alien monsters with metal hides impervious to blasters are ravaging the galaxy. They are a swarm. They are unstoppable. The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Nyssa to Kansas during the height of the Dalek occupation of the 22nd century, and then to an alternate Earth in the far future where the last survivors of the human race are being aided by Thals. By order of the Emperor Dalek, the Doctor is captured and taken back to Skaro where the same swarming aliens are destroying the planet. Even the Daleks cannot stop this menace, and they need the Doctor's help; but when the Doctor realizes the true nature of the Mutant Phase he realizes that the Daleks have brought this on themselves...



This is actually one of the original fan stories done by Audio Visuals back in the 1980's, rejigged for Big Finish audio and the acting presence of Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton. The story is another of those where time has been thrown out of joint and the Doctor becomes part of an alternative timeline which he must restore. Setting a lot of the Earth action in 2157 during the Dalek occupation is a lot of fun, considering that we have considerable backstory about what the Daleks are up to on the other side of the world from Kansas. Even the Roboman the Doctor and Nyssa encounter has a southern drawl.

We also get to hear the booming tones of the Emperor Dalek in this one, the same voice that will be used in the 2005 episode The Parting of the Ways. The Daleks are done well; they're nasty and cruel but panicky. The Mutant Phase is decimating their ranks and turning red blooded Daleks into monsters that they cannot kill, and the est of the universe is falling before them. Ironically, the Daleks are becoming the supreme beings just as Davros had wished, but maybe just not in the way he had envisioned.

Complaints are minor. There's this bit where time starts to go off track and the Doctor and Nyssa are the only ones affected, and to emphasize the turmoil they are meant to sound as if they are moving in slow motion. Slow motion on screen is one thing, but in audio.... not convincing.

Nyssa is dying. The Doctor does not know why and takes her back in time to Traken some 3000 years before Nyssa was born to search for a cure. Traken in its primeval times was a world governed by the Source, before the time of the Keepers, and all evil from outside the Traken Union was greeted with hostility, strangers to the Union watched with suspicion. The Doctor falls under the scrutiny of the Consuls of the time and falls even further in disfavour when he consults a living god steeped in evil; in his efforts to save Nyssa, he may well doom the Traken Union.

This is where Nyssa's fledgeling telepathic abilities are finally examined, building on her collapse in the TARDIS at the end of Four to Doomsday. Turns out she's being manipulated across time and space in an effort to bring the Doctor back to Traken as an unwitting agent of Kuwandaar. The living god thinks he has it all covered and can even see in the Doctor's mind that Traken will be destroyed in the far future, but he wants to conquer it anyways. And if clairvoyance across time and space isn't enough, he has a hoarde of dedicated thugs ready to die at his command without question.

I have one complaint about Primeval. Why is it that the Doctor has to turn out to be such an influence in the history of Traken? Sure he's credited with much of what is done on Earth but we're okay with that for the most part, but now here he is at pivotal points in history for other planets as well. Plusses though, and the biggest one being how Nyssa finally gets a chance to grow as a character. She is the only non-Earthling companion to get to experience her own world's history, a fact made more poignant by her witnessing its demise in Logopolis. And she gets some guts and defends her world from the invaders when push comes to shove.

The Doctor as always is cool, not flinching at the prospect of seeing the face of the living god himself, more curios about it than anything. And he takes the parinoia of the wishy washy Consuls in stride, finding an ally in the physician Shayla.

Of course the day is saved. Traken continues to thrive in the glow of the Source right up until the end. The Doctor any Nyssa, however...

NEXT EPISODE : SPARE PARTS

Winter for the Adept

Nyssa is accidentally teleported off the TARDIS and onto the snowy slopes of the Swiss Alps at Christmas in 1963. The Doctor soon follows, the accident having been from an experiment in time spillage detection, but by the time he arrives Nyssa has already fallen in with the isolated occupants of an all-girls school on the mountainside. The school is run by an eccentric Scottish mistress with an unyielding belief that frigid cold weather will keep the soul pure, but it is also haunted by what seems to be a poltergeist whose presence is given away by a sudden scent of flowers and then violent telekinetic episodes. The Doctor does not believe is ghosts, but he does believe in aliens, and he believes that the isolated school could be the first stepping stone for an invasion.

Big Finish make the most of their format by taking the series to another far-off place that the BBC's design team would have had a hard time duplicating; ironically choosing the beauty of the Swiss Alps as a background that must be translated through dialogue alone. The bulk of the adventure takes place within the girls' school, though, and we've all seen how well the BBC do corridors so there is no real challenge there.

With audio, getting the right sounds at the right time is crucial to the success of each story, and here we have creaking floorboards, doors slamming, glass breaking and a really gruesome sounding metamorphasis. Different voices come into play as well; a Scottish headmistress, a very French teacher, and a gallant British bloke on skis (voiced by Peter Jurasik on Bablyon 5 - you can hear Londo Mollari under there). Speaking of the skis, though, the ski poles are used in the absolute worst radio drama cliche ever when their levetation and use as a weapon by hands unseen is described in painful detail.

As with The Land of the Dead, Nyssa's latent telepathic talents are hinted at once more, picking up on her sensitivity to the Xeraphin back in Time Flight. Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into some horribly out of joint deal with Nyssa bending iron bars with her mind or anything, and the development of this arc will have an end of sorts.

NEXT EPISODE : PRIMEVAL

The Land of the Dead

The Doctor and Nyssa arrive in Alaska and are attacked by monsters on the ice fields. They take refuge in a building being renovated to become a living tribute to the the land around it, the rooms within all created from the raw elements of the surroundings. The project is being funded by millionare Shaun Brett, all of it in memory of his late father, but his insistence on using only elements from the land outside has put him at odds with the local natives. The native people, however, are the least of anyone's worries as the land outside is steeped in a primal evil, allowing an ancient and terrible force to be reborn.

This is obviously not part of the regular season of Doctor Who; this is one of the first of the Big Finish audio range of stories designed to fit in the gaps between seasons or other stories. Time Flight was the season finale for 1982, leaving a convenient break for the Doctor and Nyssa to travel together after Tegan's departure. Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton return in their original roles, and they do not sound very different; Davison's voice may be a bit lower now but otherwise it's almost seamless. So far there are seven adventures to fit in this gap between stories, almost an entire season. Perfect for listening to in the car in traffic. Or on the subway, as the case may be.

So why is it that anytime there are people of any kind of North American native status in a drama they must always speak without any kind of emotion and show a placid contempt for anything that defiles their gods? I speak of the character of Gaberick; truly uninspired and stereotypical and almost offensive. Shaun Brett is not as much a maniac as other millionaires like Harrison Chase but he has his moments. I think the shining star of the supporting cast is Monica Lewis the detail obsessed interior designer; she would make a good companion.

The joy of the Big Finish audios is they are actually done properly with full casts, not like books on tape being read in some droning monotone. The discs are all formatted into 4 episodes for the most part, with opening and closing title music and cliffhangers and all the classic special effect sounds. The one disjointing thing though is when the discs were starting up there was not enough money to use era-specific variations of the title music so they all had the Tom Baker era theme (Big Finish does discs for the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth Doctors). This did change eventually but the first few all have that flashback to the classic 70s days to start with, which isn't so bad. And in all there are over 80 of these discs to enjoy, and I'm gonna do em all...

NEXT EPISODE : WINTER FOR THE ADEPT

Time Flight

Still reeling from Adric's death, the TARDIS crew are flung right back into the thick of things when they arrive at Heathrow airport just after a concord goes missing. The Doctor suspects that the plane has not crashed so much as flown down a time contour into the past, and upon recreating the same flight with another plane discovers he is right. At the other end of the contour is the Arabian magician Kalid, using his sorcery to brainwash the passengers and crew of the first plane into doing his work for him and break into a sealed chamber in his citadel. The Doctor discovers that Kalid is in fact the Master in disguise and he has plans for harnessing the power of a psychic race known as the Xeraphin, power which will make him invincible.

Now imagine if you will what would happen *today* if a plane vanished off a radar. Heathrow airport would not be the relatively calm place it appears in the show, there would be guards everywhere and George Bush would be telling Tony Blair what to do to deal with the situation, and no amount of name dropping or UNIT credentials would convince anyone to fly another plane on the same route within hours of the first one going off the radar. And a concord of all planes. There can be no confusion about timelines for this one since the concords all got mothballed after they started crashing a few years ago.

The TARDIS's arrival at Heathrow creates just as much trouble as when it arrived at Gatwick in The Faceless Ones; police milling about and irate air traffic controllers going mad. Jay watched it with me and we both had a chuckle at some of the sets used for the internal scenes at Heathrow.... a conference room with a water heating radiator for one. "That's hot," Jay said. Actually, it can be.

I have a lot of "whys" attached to the viewing of this episode. Why did the Master hijack a plane from so far in the future? Why not just use the lumbering Plasmatons (they loked like walking poop with an eyeball) as a workforce? And if he wasn't expecting the Doctor, why bother with the Kalid charade aside from it being a handy plot device to keep his presence a secret until the end of episode two. The melting of his face was pretty interesting, green snot everywhere. The Master turning up every now and again after the Doctor thinks he has seen the last of him is getting tiring already; in the Pertwee years there was none of this "oh he's gone for good" and then "Oh you escaped from ________" a few episodes later. Already we have heard "So he did escape from Traken," and in this one it's "You escaped from Castrovalva,". Yawn. Roger Delgado's Master always got away, that was style. Except for that one time he didn't and got locked up. This one... he's becoming predictable.

Nyssa gets to be all latent-telepath on us this time, talking to the Xeraphin minds and being used by them as a conduit. Until the Master covers her with a special effect that looks like spit. "Hork on Nyssa!" I said. "Someone should," Jay replied. I still find her lack of reactions when she sees the Master to be lacking something. If someone killed my father and took over his body I would not be so calm. Unless she's heavily medicated, Adric's death being the only time we ever saw her really get emotional.

And Tegan. Dear Tegan. She finally gets to be an air hostess, although for British Airways, not Air Australia. And she's instrumental in this one, looking after Nyssa and helping the Doctor.... and she gets left behind at Heathrow in the end. Thanks for nothing, Doctor.

"The Doctor and Nyssa were off to new adventures," as the old Target novels used to say.

NEXT EPISODE : THE LAND OF THE DEAD