Planet of Fire

Kamelion goes into spasm in the TARDIS, having apparantly intercepted a Trion distress beacon wghile plugged into the navigational computers. The Doctor knows they must help, but to Turlough the planet Trion means something altogether different; it's his home, and he's a political exile who has escaped his sentence. The TARDIS follows the signal first to Lanzarote but then to the planet of Sarn where a small colony faces extinction from an impending volcanic eruption. Together with a young American girl named Peri, the Doctor and Turlough find themselves up against the Master once more, but whose side will Kamelion be on?

Right from the opening minutes of part one, Planet of Fire feels different. It's a combination of two major make-or-break deals where the series is concerned; a striking visual on location (in this case Lanzarote in the Canary Islands) and a different kind of music score that goes light on the usual synthesizers. At first Jay was going to be all ho-hum at me about the show being shot in a quarry, but then he noticed volcanic rock as opposed to sand. And then we both noticed that neither of the first two characters seen on screen were wearing any underwear.

Yes, it's going to be one of those kinds of reviews.

Kamelion makes his first on-screen appearance since the closing moments of The King's Demons, but the android is pretty stationary the whole time, either laying on the floor or parked in front of the console. And screaming. Why does Kamelion never make it to the top 10 screamers list? For an android in pain he can really let it rip. "Oh look," Jay said. "It can stand," And it's a hellishly tall thing when it stands beside Nicola Bryant, making her first appearance as Peri.

There's a lot of companion transition in this one. It's the end of the road for Turlough and Kamelion, and the start for Peri. The girl makes an auspicious start as the first companion to be seen in a bikini. But lo there's more exposed skin as Turlough throws off his shorts to expose a speedo, but interestingly enough keeps his shirt on. I think we can thank the hidden gay agenda of producer John Nathan-Turner for that one, as well as his casting of what appear to be really gay actors in every part. And cute ones too, as we see in Malkon, Turlough's brother. Turlough's departure is an interesting contrast to others before him; he's not really the galactic adventurer type after all, he only left with the Doctor in the first place to.... well, to kill him, but more to escape from his exile on Earth. With his sentence lifted, he can go home now, and he still has family to go home to.

And then there's the Master. Anthony Ainley gets to do a stint that evokes a southern United States evangelical preacher as he addresses the Sarns, playing on their supersitious fears about their fire god. "I'd be pissed if I were him," Jay says, pointing out how everyone is wearing cooler clothes for this shoot on a volcanic island - from Peri's step-father and his jean shorts and nice pecs, Turlough's shorts, Peri's own bikini, and even the Doctor drops the sweater and jacket and carries on in his shirtsleeves - but the Master is as always clad in black, this time a 3 piece suit. Yeah that's fair. Ah well, he's evil, perhaps being overheated was motivation that day.

This is one of the adventures I am really dying to see come to DVD and hopefully they'll remaster the score into Dolby 5:1 as they did with Resurrection of the Daleks. And to see all that incredible Lanzarote footage in sharp detail after years of VHS madness will be a treat. And I am sure there are some extras to be shown, including Kamelion breaking down here and there.

So off the Doctor goes with Peri on board the TARDIS now, headed for unknown futures. Of course they went right into the next episode of the season, but over at Big Finish they have taken advantage of this one to one relationship and created a stretch of audios to explore the time where the Doctor and Peri get to know each other better; there are no less than 12 full length audios, one special release, and even another Telos novella placed in this gap.

So I had better get started.

NEXT EPISODE : RED DAWN

Singularity

The TARDIS encounters temporal distortion which brings the Doctor and Turlough to Moscow in the mid-twenty first century. The Somnus institute - also known as The Sleepers - have erected a massive glass tower by Red Square and are promising a future where mankind evolves into a godlike being, although the Doctor knows that the future does not unfold this way at all. The temporal distortion grows more and more until the time line beings to split, threatening to tear the entire cosmos apart, with the Doctor and Turlough right at the centre of it.

It's not often that the Doctor meets people who are just pure malevolance, and here they are again. And it's not exactly an alien invasion per se this time, which makes things very interesting. And the choice of Moscow as the location is also an interesting one; the location doesn't really mean much to the story - it could happen anywhere - but then again it's not like London is so pivotal to the entire planet that every adventure has to happen there.

And here's how mean they are. They torture the TARDIS. There's a little Christopher H Bidmead in everyone it seems as the ship comes close to destruction at the hands of the Somnus people in their aim to fulfill their plans. Nasty.

This pisses the Doctor off. It's different when Davison's Doctor gets angry; he's "the nice one" as far as everyone is concerned.

And Turlough. His cowardice comes into play again, and he reluctantly gets involved at the beginning, and even he gets angry at people in part four. But so would you if you'd been bodysnatched. There's a twist to their relationship, though, when Turlough tells the Doctor that he's angry at being the Doctor's little tag along companion and he's never told anything, and he even makes a comment under his breath about how long he'll remain with the Doctor.

No mention of Kamelion, though.

NEXT EPISODE : PLANET OF FIRE

Loups~Garoux

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Turlough to Rio in the days before the carnival, but they are not the only strangers in town. An ancient and powerful grey werewolf has crossed the ocean in pursuit of his perfect mate - a woman who has tried to hide from him for years. Together with other members of her pack Ilyana attempts to hide from her pursuer and keep her half-human son safe, but if the Grey One gets his way, the world will fall under his thrall and no-one will be able to stop him.

Incredible. But that's what one should expect from a script by Marc Platt, especially when the regular cast is joined by the likes of Elanor Bron as Ilyana. I remember the first time I listened to this one I was on a train heading to Windsor, and as the bulk of part two takes place on a train it was a fun way to do it. Listening to it on the TTC isn't quite the same, but in this cold weather of February it's very easy to allow yourself to buy into the notion of sunny Rio de Janerio and escape for a few minutes. With Doctor Who we're always so ready to say how we don't think the show "looks" like it was shot where it is said to be, but the changes of scenes in this one work so well that it's easy to imagine the locations, from Ilyana's home, to the train station and space port, to the desert that used to be the Amazon basin, and the city of Rio itself.

Nitpicky bits? A couple. The howling the werewolves make; it's not very scary. I know a Yorkie named Chippy who is more intimidating. The Doctor has some interesting close calls with the female species, and backs off all stuttery and nervous almost as if it were Hugh Grant in the role instead of Peter Davison. And why he goes to talk to Turlough about it I have no idea. Maybe because Turlough scores this episode. He does, you know; with a native girl named Rosa who would actually have made an okay companion. And speaking of companions, so sign of Kamelion again, right when he could have been particularly helpful, what with there being all that shape-shifting to be done.

OwwwwwwOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOOOOooooo.

NEXT EPISODE : SINGULARITY

Imperial Moon

The TARDIS arrives in 1878, just as three spaceships set off from England to the moon. Knowing that no suche events ever took place, the Doctor is determined to find out what is going on, and together with Turlough and Kamelion journeys to the moon to find a sustained biosphere in one of the craters - and all of the plant and animal life is hostile. British explorers are no strangers to such environments, nor are the Doctor and his companions, but the presence of a race of brutal killers stacks the odds against them.

Okay I am including this BBC novel for the sheer sake of giving Kamelion some more material. I hate it when characters with potential get chucked away before they can be properly explored. It is remarked by Turlough that Kamelion just sits in his room for days on end not actually doing anything but listening to the TARDIS systems, which is more or less what is said of him in the televised series. What I find a bit odd though is Turlough once more feeling lonely without Tegan on board (this happens a bit too often now; Lords of the Storm was written in 1995, Imperial Moon in 2000, so you'd think that there would be some kind of acknowledgement of other stories, that Tegan's absence would not hang so heavily in the TARDIS. Still, here it serves as a clumsy plot device for Turlough to confide his lonliness and lack of purpose to Kamelion; not something anyone normally does in someone they do not exactly trust. Kamelion does his best to be companionable, but in the end he's no K9 and he only serves the Doctor because he will obey the strongest will present. But fair dues to him, he does get to do things and actually take part in the adventure, even if the energy field maintaining an atmosphere over the moon traps him inside the TARDIS for most of the story. The Doctor is kinder to Kamelion than one might expect; he's more or less left the android in the closet all this time but when Turlough comments that they should make use of him the Doctor stands up for Kamelion's rights as an individual not to be used. Look back at some of the stuff K9 had to do, though. Apparantly robot rights are one of those things that are only acknowledged in the best of times.

Onwards.

NEXT EPISODE : LOUPS~GAROUX

Phantasmagoria

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Turlough to London in 1702 just after the death of the king. The people are embracing the rule of Queen Ann, and in the Diabola Club, local gentlemen are trying their luck at cards. Sir Nicholas Valentine, however, is playing at more than just a game of patience, as those who play against him either vanish into the night or are found dead, or dying, screaming of being pursued by all the demons of hell. The Doctor has his suspicions, and they do not seem unfounded as it appears there are more aliens in town than just the Time Lord and his assistant.

Phantasmagoria was the first Big Finish adventure made with Peter Davison back in 2000, bringing Mark Strickon back as Turlough. Where Davison's voice hasn't changed much over the years (as has already been noted in previous blogs), Strickoson doesn't have the same squeak to him that made his angst moments on the show such a... well.... okay so it's something Jay and I laugh at. Whatever. Set some time after Tegan's departure from the crew, the story gets a chance to show us some normal interaction between the Doctor and Turlough, although Turlough still plays the coward role and the Doctor has to be as patient with him as he can.

The rest of the cast are the stuff of which historical Doctor Who adventures are made; gentlemen, ruffians, servant girls, roughnecks, and a famous highwayman namjed Billy Lovemore. And two alien voices chattering away at intervening moments.

Valentine's lair is one of those places where you really can't go on television, with someone remarking that the walls are "like liver" and blood being everywhere. I suppose we came close with The Claws of Axos but this is a far gristlier, the bodies of the abducted men melded with the chamber walls to revitalize Valentine's ship.

I listened to this one over the course of a day's transit to and from work on the subway, which made for a welcome diversion from the usual... well, nothing really, just staring at the walls or the poor fashion of those around me. The fact that Big Finish have extended the 21st season of Doctor Who by 17 full adventures (well okay 15; two of them are a bit on the short side being special releases) makes for better days in transit if you ask me, and of course makes for better expansion of the existing characters. I always felt that the Doctor and Turlough were cheated out of something as on television they are not together on their own very long. And Kamelion gets a total bum deal as I have said before; the mention of him in Lords of the Storm is one of the few times his presence in the series is acknowledged. But, lo, he's in the next one.

NEXT EPISODE : IMPERIAL MOON