The Kingmaker

A visit from a robot collections agent from a publishing house in the future prmopts the Doctor to make a trip back in time; he is in default for delivery of a book he was contracted to write during his time in exile with UNIT. In doing so, however, the Doctor is separated across several years from Peri and Erimem who end up embroiled in the mystery of Richard III and who killed the two princes in the Tower of London. But there is an extra player in this game: another time traveller from the Doctor's past is present, stirring the pot with his own ideas and pushing Peri and Erimem further into the web of deceit. And the closer their circumstances bring them to the Doctor, the less their chances of being reuinted begin to seem...

There has been talk of this sort of story in the past, where the action is spread over two time periods and the characters communicate back and forth but do not cross paths again until the climax, and it works quite well in The Kingmaker. The premise of the Doctor writing under the pen name of "Doctor Who", though is a bit of a sticking point, but the concept is amusing, especially when the Dead Ringers cast provides the recorded voice of the fourth Doctor in recorded notes on history. And watch (or listen) for the cameo appearance of the ninth Doctor ... sort of.

The Kingmaker is played for laughs, a comedy in the midst of a lot of more serious, heavy adventures where terrible things happen to the TARDIS crew. There are planety of laughs and a reassertion of Erimem's character, although having her going around breaking arms of people who touch her bum seems a bit... silly. Especially after everything that has happened to her recently. Peri gets to the the resourceful one during the separation, and the Doctor wonders how he will ever escape the robot collection agent.

And no I am not going to say who the other time traveller is.

NEXT EPISODE : THE VEILED LEOPARD

The Council of Nicaea

In AD 325 in the city of Nicaea, theology, philosophy and politics are brought together for the first time in a council with delegates from the civilzed world attending. The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Peri, and Erimem as visitors and observers only, until Erimem finds herself swept up in the struggle of one man to be heard - a man history says will die, but a man Erimem swears to help live. The Doctor has always said that history cannot be rewritten, but he has also said that the future can be shaped - whose perspective will win out?

This is something I have always wondered about. In fact, it's something a lot of other people have been wondering about as well. The Doctor is always very keen to preserve the web of time where Earth and its history are concerned, but on other planets where he is an outsider, he topples regimes left and right without any mention of that planet's history or future or if what he is doing is the right thing. Here we have the same dilemma at last; Erimem knows nothing of the future of Earth, only that it has one and the fine details are something the Doctor gets to worry about, so without historical perspective it seems theoretically possible that she can indeed change things. Unlike Barbara's intentions in The Aztecs, Erimem is not acting to preserve an entire culture but to ensure that in her eyes justice is done for one man, and she comes perilously close to stepping into history and becoming a part of it.

The Doctor has never been at such direct odds with a companion before, even during the worst of his arguments with Tegan, and as such he doesn't use any of his Time Lord guile to have Erimem dealt with, but instead continuously attempts to reason with her and convince her he is right and she is wrong. And poor Peri, stuck in the middle, feels the heat from both sides although she does ultimately believe that the the Doctor is right and risks alienating Erimem from them once more. And you know... three adventures in a row Erimem is put through the wringer, you've got to wonder how much more of this she can take, royalty or not...

NEXT EPISODE : THE KINGMAKER

Blood and Hope

It's the American Civil War. The TARDIS had brought the Doctor, Peri and Erimem to the most turbulent time in American history, and within moments of their arrival they are separated; the Doctor falls in with the Northern army but the girls find themselves attempting to survive amongst the racist attutides of the Deep South. With family loyalites split on either side of the border, three strangers immediately draw suspicion, especially if one of them appears to be a slave with more freedom than she should...

It's amazing how the small novella format of Telos packs just as much of a punch as an entire televised or Big Finish adventure. Writers labouring under a tight format have to be mindful of keeping the plot simple yet entertaining, the characters developed but not overwhelming, and here Iain McLachlin succeeds. And as the first writer to bring Erimem to the series, he is faced with the challenge of adapting his own creation to a reverse circumstance; Erimem came into the series as a Pharoah with slaves of her own, and now she has to stay hidden and pretend to be a slave herself, even enduring the physical abuse that came with the role.

Brilliant. And fun. Great book. Read it.

NEXT EPISODE : THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA

Three's A Crowd

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Peri and Erimem to a space station in the future, and on the planet it orbits a new Earth colony is ready to begin. The trouble is, though, the colony is not going according to plan, and the people living there seldom venture out of their quarters; living in isolation has made it almost impossible for them to socialize without attacks of nerves. All this goes on under the watchful eye of the colony's leader, Auntie, but is Auntie also watching as the colonists are murdered by forces unknown?

Erimem is still suffering from the effects of her encounter with the anceint evils in the Himalayas, and it has made her distant from the Doctor and Peri. Peri wants Erimem to feel liek she is part of the crew again but as soon as they arrive on the colony the inevitible happens and Erimem is lost in a transmat cubicle and dropped on the colony. The Doctor doesn't pay as much heed to Erimem's personal issues as Peri feels he should, but after so many companions the Doctor may be used to their adjustments to life on board the TARDIS. And anyways, he has bigger things to worry about: big lizard people hunting down the colonists for sport. Auntie promises the people in her charge a return to their home planet now that the colony is folding, but their departure from the planet only delivers them into the hands of the hunters.

Auntie isn't evil. She's a woman trying to cope with an impossible situation; to defy the invaders outright will only bring about mass slaughter, but letting them be picked off one by one buys her time to hope for help to arrive. And it's not as if her robot, Butler, is much help, armed though he is. I'm thinking C3P0 on a caterpillar track. And white, for some reason.

Did I like Three's a Crowd? Yes. I believe I did - more for the characterizations and interplay of the regular TARDIS crew than anything else. It's been a while since I actually listened to it - and I am trying to get caught up here - and the one thing that stands out the most is just that; the TARDIS crew manage to heal their wounds and carry on. The last major blow to the dynamic was the death of Adric, and since then Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough and Kamelion have all left as matters of routine, the most marked of them being Tegan following her posession by the Mara (and maybe Kamelion seeing as he's dead), but Erimem's suffering and confusion brings some of the most human moments in the series to life - at least, in the series to date if we are to look at the Big Finish audios in their linear progressions with the rest of the show. The new series on TV right now takes these things farther and throws all new light on them - but we're not quite there yet...

NEXT EPISODE : BLOOD AND HOPE

The Roof of the World

The Doctor, Peri and Erimem arrive in Tibet in 1917 and the Doctor is invited to a cricket game held by English explorers and military personnel. High up in the Himalayas, though, and ancient evil is sitting waiting to awaken and resume a spree of destruction and terror it commenced centuries before being banished to this place. And as the TARDIS arrives, it senses its opportunity at last.

No, it's not another Great Intelligence story. I myself thought it might be what with the setting not being too far down the road from the old Det-Sen Monastary of The Abominable Snowmen, but no. In fact there's no reference to it at all, although the Doctor does drop the name of Lord Cranleigh from Black Orchid to smooth the way a bit with the English army.

What this story is, though, is a big character peice about Erimem, who is feeling a bit distant and traumatized by recent events. Peri is at least somewhat braced for her adventures with the Doctor due to her contemporary (insofar as 1984 can be contemporary when writing from a 2007 viewpoint) background, but for Erimem things are not always as easy to absorb or understand. Her cultural isolation from her companions makes her ripe for an attack by the disembodied force in the mountains, and it plays upon her feelings of abandonment and insignificanc, even convincing her that the Doctor and Peri feel relieved at the idea of being without her, when the reality of it is they are desperate to find her and bring her back to the fold.

Now I'll admit that I found the whole Erimem as fish-out-of-water a bit irritating after a while, but that's what happens when one tries to pack away a whole adventure every day and not space them out to an extent. As you can see by the date it's been quite a while since I blogged any of this - and for a time I considered stopping altogether but there's just something about Doctor Who that makes you want to talk about, it to write about it, to think about the characters and dig into what motivates them. Erimem's motivation is unique; in the eyes of her people she has trancended life itself and lives amongst the gods, but she knows that she is a mere mortal, as are her companions, and they deal with the god-like. What her destiny would have been if she had stayed on Earth is anyone's guess, and what it will ultimately be with the Doctor is a greater puzzle still, but her perspective on the TARDIS and her companions is unique as the only period companion since Victoria Waterfield.

For now, though, she does have a future. Of course the Doctor saves her. Of course they go on.

NEXT EPISODE : THREE'S A CROWD