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