Cryptobiosis

En route from Madagascar to New Orleans, the Lankester is making good time as always. The Doctor and Peri are on board, the Doctor having promised Peri a soothing calm sea voyage as a treat, but he did not bank on a murder on board, and the weapon a knife made of something that looks like coral. First suspects, then recruited as allies, the Doctor and Peri investigate and discover that the Lankester is carrying a cargo of a different sort, if one can indeed refer to a lady locked up in a cabin as cargo, and if it's considered normal for her to have a second set of eyelids specially suited for seeing underwater...

Yup, there be mermaids! And kidnapped ones at that. But this isn't Disney's Litte Mermaid by any stretch, and when the other mer-people come looking for their kin it's not pretty. It's not much of a surprise by the time it's revealed that we're dealing with mermaids, but the possibilities that are raised before then are entertainting; are we dealing with Sea Devils? Or is this some of the fish people escaped from Zaroff's Atlantis? And whoever they are, is the Doctor going to allow them to be exploited by their kidnapper?

Cryptobiosis is another of those special CD releases that Big Finish gave away with their subscription services, and even though it's a freebie they put as much effort and enthusiasm into it as they would have a full priced play. Colin Baker and Nocila Bryant deliver another stellar performance as out time travelling duo, reminding us yet *again* of what a raw deal it was that their time together on the show - indeed, Colin Baker's time in total - was so brief when they had potential to do so much more. Ah well.. lament lament lament. The Doctor always said we can't change the past but with every good piece of material that comes along we can at least make it seem not so bad in hindsight.

NEXT EPISODE : I, DAVROS - CORRUPTION

I, Davros - Purity

Davros is turning 30 now, and he's desperate to get out of the Kaled military and into the scientific corps where he knows he will be able to do more for the war effort. Depiste his mother's connections he finds it harder and harder to break out of the ranks until he takes a mission into Thal territory to prove himself, and he makes discoveries that will lead him farther down the path to the creation of the Daleks.

Again, the story of Davros is told with fantastic detail, Terry Molloy taking over now from the younger version of Davros, Rory Jennings. The war with the Thals is progressing and driving the Kaleds into more desperate measures to win, with a vocal anti-war faction demanding the hostilities stop and armistace be declared before Skaro is rendered incapable of supporting life. Davros discovers, though, that life is still flourishing in the wastelands, although it is life drastically and horrifically altered by the effects of chemical weapons and radiation; the Mutos, genetically wounded from both sides, scavenge a living, and the agressive Varga plants seen stalking the jungles of Kembel in The Dalek Master Plan are also evolving despite the radiation around them. Spurred on with these discoveries, Davros also realizes that the Kaleds and Thals are genetically different, despite similar outward appearances, but there was a time when they lived in harmony as depicted by heiroglyphs on old ruins. And on those heiroglyphs are inscriptions describing the lives of the ancient Dals as men became gods... or became Dal-ek.

The Kaled nation is slowly collapsing under the strain of the war with the Thals; those who wish for an end to the war are labelled as pacifists and then traitors, and Davros' own sister becomes a political liability when her role in the military comes into conflict with her desires for peace. The futility of the war drives Davros to look beyond the weapons they will fight the war with and to consider the effects that the survivors will have to deal with once it is finished, although his views are not immediately appreciated.

Brilliant. A fantastic chronicle of the fall of the race that will give rise to the Daleks; the momentum is still running high on this series and there are still two episodes of it left to enjoy... but for now, back to the Doctor...

NEXT EPISODE : CRYPTOBIOSIS

Synthespians

In the 101st century, Reef Station exists to receive broadcasts from the 20th century and redistribute them to the audiences of the future. Such is the demand that 80's retro nostalgia is everything, and the society has become dependent on television for not just entertainment, but for its ways of life. The Doctor and Peri find it amusing and astounding at first, until the Doctor discovers that the business empire that controls virtually everything has been infiltrated by the Nestene Consciousness, and the plastic surgery of the rich and famous is taking on a whole new, and deadly, meaning.

Reef Station One comes off as more of a theme park than a broadcast centre; it's vast enough to encompass all sorts of environments such as Los Angeles of the 1980s as well as London of the 1960s to name just two, but the layout is never explained properly. Is this a round space station, almost a planet? Or is this a big sprawling disc? The zones are all sectioned off with massive concrete barriers as a means of keeping the people separated, and passage between zones is limited to a priveledged few - mostly soap stars. Mind you, everyone on Reef Station seems to have been a star at some point; Peri falls in with spoiled rich girl Claudia and her hunky soap star friend Marc and experiences the good life while the Doctor goes about things the usual way being pursued by police, shot at by Autons, confronted by megalomaniac businessmen... that stuff.

Do I buy the whole idea that society could start to function this way? That the 80s lifestyle could re-emerge? As someone who lived through that me-obsessed decade I really hope not. Author Craig Hinton must have enjoyed it, though; he's grabbed every bit of nostalgia he could remember right down to neon colours, big teased hair and reruns of Miami Vice. The parallels between what the people of the 101st century are watching and what the people of the 80s produced are unmistakeable, right down to a certain science fiction show called Professor X. And note there is an interesting comment about an actor who rightly refused to return to a series just so he could be killed off in the firet episode. Trust me, this will mean something soon.

The Autons of Hinton's novel are pretty much on par with the ones who menaced Earth during Jon Pertwee's days, expanding their influence farther and inhabiting all manner of plastic items so when the day comes to slaughter the human population they can attack from all sides. When that day does come, though, the sequences that describe the attacks are somewhat vague and fall a bit flat, almost as if Hinton got a bit too carried away throwing scene after scene after scene onto the page and meaning to come back and work on them, but never finding the time. The Autons do not just manifest as shop window dummies this time; in the TV studios sit the inactive forms of Sythespians - synthetic thespains - who are used in crowd scenes. And then there's the interesting take on plastic surgery; that bit's clever, even calling the process Skin Deep. You can guess the results.

I have maybe one big issue with this book. It comes at the very end. A Time Lord named Vansell (his name will matter more in the future) watches the Doctor's activities on Reef Station One and gives the order for the Doctor to be brought in and put on trial. Utter crap. Yes, there is an episode called Trial of a Time Lord coming - it would be a massive tale taking up all of season 23 - but Craig Hinton has decided that his story will be the last one before that episode by creating a continuity lead in. I really hate it when authors get above themselves and do this sort of thing.; it shows a total lack of respect for anyone else who might be coming along later with a story to tell. Of course it's easy to ignore what is written and plunge ahead and make all sorts of continuity arguments. It's even easier to just tear out pages or use White-Out.

NEXT EPISODE : I, DAVROS - PURITY

I, Davros - Innocence

Davros is on trial. Betrayed by Takis on Necros, Davros is dragged back to Skaro by the Daleks, but it is not a trial for his life; the Daleks admit that they need him, although their programming does not undertand why. Dalek campaigns are failing, their empire is in retreat. Davros realizes his own errors in the creation of the Daleks all those years ago and begins to tell his story, going back to being a child as the war with the Thals began to dramatically change the face of Skaro.

They say that as well as similarity in title, I, Davros has some parallels to I, Claudius - but not having read that I am not sure of the validity of the claim. But if that story encompassed a flashback to the protagonist's early days and chronicled his rise to fame and power, then similar they are. For those who would like to think that Davros started his life as an innocent, though, he did not. The first time we meet the young Davros he is swimming in what would become The Lake of Mutations (the same one Ian and Barbara would lead a band of Thals across centuries later) and he is already calmly, coldly, observing the small creatures that are now living there. Davros' family is of some prominence within Kaled society; his mother an ambitious politician, his father a decorated war hero, although the mother's ambition is eroding her marriage and the war hero is in some doubt as he was not granted an honourable death on the battlefield. Davros also has a sister, but the girl is undervalued and written off to being in the Kaled army while Davros is groomed for greatness in the scientific corps. The enemy is not necessarily the Thals without, but the people within, as family will turn on itself and lines will be drawn between brother and sister, between mother and child, and between husband and wife.

Fascinating, as Davros himself would say. All those elements of Skaro's past are here just as they were alluded to in previous Doctor Who episodes before the war with the Thals reduced Skaro to the radioactive wasteland visited time and again by the Doctor and company. The Kaleds are rich in resources and culture at this point; there is still a measure of comfort in the quality of living, and there is no dome overhead to protect from the attacks of the Thals. Davros is already a lost cause, his mind switched off to emotion and totally devoted to observation and knowledge, and it is just a matter of time before he embarks down the path that will lead him to create the Daleks. His own first blood is drawn in the name of science, and much to the approval of his mother, who sees it as a first step towards his greatness.

I have no beefs with this tale at all. None. I listened with sheer joy and not for the first time remarked at not only the ingenuity of the people at Big Finish but also to their love of Doctor Who; going back to examine the genesis of one of the series' most complicated villains and not straying from what has already been established. There is even a clever reference to the forefathers of the Kaleds being known as Dals - something which was mentioned once in 1964 and then never again; until now it has been a continuity blooper but it has been resolved - retconned, as the case may be. The four volume series also gives some insight into what happened to Davros after his capture in the final moments of Revelation of the Daleks and his reappearance in the series a few seasons later. It was actually an effort to not press on into the second volume and see what happened next before going back to reading Doctor Who, but I did it.

NEXT EPISODE : SYNTHESPIANS

Blue Box

An alien device has fallen to Earth and been split into several pieces, scattered across the planet and in the hands of collectors of the rare and unusual. To avoid a possible invasion, the Doctor has tracked down all but one piece, and it rests in the hands of an ambitious and clever woman known throughout the world of computer hackers as someone you just do not screw with; to cross her is to cut your own throat. A game of hide and seek through the phone lines and credit card history ensues as the Doctor, Peri and their friends try to outwit thier adversary and stop an invasion before it begins.

For anyone who was using the internet before it was even known as such, this book is going to be a heck of a flashback to dialling up and logging on, and old operating systems and protocols. I am not one of those people, but I saw Whiz Kids and War Games (the Matthew Broderick movie) and some people I knew in high school were using the Glitterboard BBS so I have a slight grasp of what this is all about. Kate Orman and Jon Blum, however, know all the ins and outs of this sort of deal (or they're HUGE geeks... and writing Doctor Who novels tends to support the latter) and they go to insane lengths to illustrate it. The big question I am left asking, though, is this: why? This is the Doctor we're talking about. He cheerfully disarms all the traps that Sarah Swan lays for him and anyone else attempting to attack her relam of cyberspace, and throws her into an enraged tailspin every time he does it. He's obviously better at this than she is, but for some reason he goes all covert ops this time around, dressing in a black suit and opreating independently from Peri for a while, leaving her to feel abandoned and start to question whether she wants to stay with him anymore.

Depiste not understanding all the technical side of the story I still found it to be remarkably tense, as if I were reading a murder mystery. I still kept wondering why the Doctor just didn't use the TARDIS more rather than have to cleverly circumvent internet security and cameras. The threat that the alien technology respresents is something that could ultimately harm the TARDIS systems, mind you, but it would be easier than the circus of renting cars and ditching them at airports and using a million credit cards along the way. I also found myself not liking Swan very much for her cold superiority. The other supporting characters all do well, and the bond between Bob Salmon (he apparantly met the Doctor in a previous incarnation - the fourth from what I can gather) gets a little under Peri's skin, especially given how she has been sidelined at the outset.

This is not the first book written by Orman and Blum, and like my thoughts on David A. McIntee I find their work either as a team or individually to be hit and miss with me; I feel at times that they don't always get the Doctor right, depending on the incarnation they are writing for. Orman started off writing for the seventh Doctor with The Left Handed Hummingbird and in subsequent novels I found some of his darker, shadier aspects materializing in the other Doctors; in this instance it's how the sixth Doctor turns Peri into an agent for his goals and sticks to the shadows for a bit. Not an entirely bad technique, but sometimes just not quite ... right.... for lack of a better word.

So before I plunge on with the next book, I'm going to go somewhere different; still in the Doctor Who universe but a part without the Doctor, but still a part where his presence can be felt.

NEXT EPISODE : I, DAVROS - INNOCENCE

...ish

Somewhere out there is a planet full of lexicographers, all brought together by their shared love of language to assemble the ultimate dictionary, an entity simply known as Book. When the Doctor and Peri arrive, they find the leading expert on language dead, apparantly having taken her own life. The Doctor investigates, and Peri falls in with a young man named Warren, whose own love of language goes beyond mere appreciation, but touches the search for the omniverbum, or one word that expresses everything. Such a word would be thousands of syllables long, enough to drive even the most sophistocated computer mad... ish.

The sheer magic of ...ish is the story only just takes itself seriously enough to not become a joke. Here we have an entire planet of academics all expounding their love of language, of words, of expression, so such an extent that it sounds as if Douglas Adams had a hand in the writing himself. Even the Doctor does go on a great deal, evoking Robin Williams from Dead Poets Society and the need to express and speak and to sculpt meaning out of speech. Peri doesn't get it; her field is botany, after all, but on a planet where language and words are valued above all else there's the odd botanical phrase that will come in handy for paying a bar tab. Pity she's having lunch with their own version of the unibomber. Yes, Warren is not all he seems to be and delights in introducing chaos - something that can be disasterous in a finely balanced system such as Book's. Book is pretty much a slave to the lexicographers as far as Warren can see, although Book was created specifically to be the lexicon and does not appear to be in any way abused or oppressed.

I found myself laughing a lot at this one. And it's not a comdey per se, but it's damn funny when it wants to be, especially in instances where the Doctor is pressed into guest speaking before an assembly and finishes his presentation with a joke, the final line of which means nothing to us, the listeners, but to the people in the crowd it is the funniest thing they have ever heard. Colin Baker's delivery is such that you can almost see this one happening as if it were on TV.

So, two audios done, how's about a book next.

NEXT EPISODE : BLUE BOX

Whispers of Terror

The Doctor and Peri arrive at a museum where all the exhibits are sound archives; speeches, songs, soundbytes - it is all housed here. But this particular museum has recently become haunted by a creature that can exist as a soundwave, hiding in any sound with the power to kill. The museum itself is soundproof, but an impending broadcast of a significant political endorsement speech will not only give a murderer undeserved publicity, but will give the sound creature the chance to escape and replicate itself across the world.

Very very clever, the creature made of pure sound becoming a new take on the evil disembodied intelligence type that the Doctor has encountered before. Clever too how the menace is almost immediately contained in episode one, only to be set loose once more by a maniac's bent political desires. There's nothing terribly complex about this story, and once the Doctor realizes the true nature of the sound creature it all moves along at a good pace, with the ultimate revelation of the identity of a killer not coming as a suprise, but at least coming along when expected.

As far as production sequence goes, Whispers of Terror was the first Big Finish audio to feature the sixth Doctor and Peri, and the difference between the squabbling duo of season 22 and these two friends is like night and day; the relationship has warmed considerably between the two characters and you can sense Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant really enjoying being back in the saddle. Bryant spent most of season 22 stuttering and whining Peri's lines, gaining a bit of confidence in Slipback, and now... she's a new woman. She actually sounds like her old self from the stretch of episode with Peter Davison as the Doctor; one might just say that it took her this long to get used to the Doctor and be sure of her relationship with him, if one was a revisionist.

The supporting cast do quite well, although as I indicated above it's not exactly rocket science to figure out what's going on and who did it. Then again, I have heard this particular story something like 3 times now over the years.

NEXT EPISODE : ...ISH

Slipback

After a particularly boozy evening, the Doctor wakes up in the TARDIS with a voice in his head calling to him. He and Peri follow the voice to a ship in deep space where crewmen go missing and all that is left of them are their boots, the ship's computer is developing a split personality, and the captain is turning his body into a breeding ground for a terrible disease which he will unleash on his crew for not obeying his will.

The whole thing sounds like a Douglas Adams story at first glance, doesn't it? Slipback was actually written by Eric Saward for broadcast on Radio4 in 1986, so even after the hiatus of the televised series was announced there was still new Doctor Who to be had. The show was broadcast in six episodes of ten minutes each, with Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant in their regular roles as the Doctor and Peri, and it was indeed good fun to listen to. Doctor Who is not often played for laughs, and this is not exactly a roaring comedy, but it is a humourous tale made a bit more palatable for a children's audience while still being entertaining for older listeners. One only need listen to the ditzy and obviously blonde voice of the ship's computer - well, one of the voices anyways - to get either a smirk on their face or an eye roll. And Valentine Dyall, the Black Guardian himself, is fantastic as Slarn, the vindictive ship's capatian bent on getting his way or infecting the crew with a deadly disease.

Nothing is perfect, though, and there's a plot issue that is a bit of a sticking point; there is reference made to the Big Bang in this one, and it's cause, which is yet another version from what has been theorized in Castrovalva and Terminus - and neither of those agree either. Is this just an author's refusal to work within established "history" of the show, or some deeper thread about a greater scale of uncertainty surrounding the event itself, with theory after theory being postulated and none being exactly right? I just wish it could be sorted out, like Atlantis.

The ability of the series to be easily adapted to a radio format would prove to be instrumental in the show's survival in the future; there had already been the LP version of The Pescatons with Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen but this was different, and its success would be remembered years later when Big Finish would begin their own licensed range of plays to bridge the gaps between seasons and expand on the tenure of the eighth Doctor between his appearance in 1996 and the arrival of the ninth Doctor when the series returned to TV in 2005.

NEXT EPISODE : WHISPERS OF TERROR

The Nightmare Fair / The Ultimate Evil / Mission to Magnus

I have decided to encapsulate all three of these stories together for this entry seeing as they respresent an entire season that was lost to the hiatus of the series in 1985. I have heard of three other adventures that were supposed to be produced in this lost series as well - Penacasta, Made in Singapore, and Attack of the Daleks - but nobody came forward to novelize the scripts when these three were put out by Target books back in 1989 and 1990. Back then Doctor Who novels popped out once a month, usually adapatations by Terrance Dicks based on the televised scripts, and these three were the first of the non-televised ones. The bigger bonus with some of these titles that came later in the line was that they were penned by the same authors who produced the scripts; sometimes this was a tremendous boon to the range to have some fresh voices, and in other cases it showed just how some writers can write incredible dialogue for screen but be absolutely abysmal at prose and narrative.

First up is The Nightmare Fair, seeing the Doctor and Peri enjoying a trip to Blackpool as promised and coming up against the Celestial Toymaker trying his hand at subverting Earth through videogames and amusement park attractions.

BRILLIANT. Graham Williams nails this one perfectly and it is a crying shame that this never made it to the screen. Not only would we have had some magnificent location filming at Blackpool but the confrontation between the Doctor and the Toymaker (who is oddly referred to as The Mandarin ) would have been a classic. It comes across perfectly on the page, you can almost hear Colin Baker bellowing and Michael Gough (yes, he was signed to reprise the role!) with his calm tones which would drive the Doctor even more nuts. And not only would this one have featured the return of the Toymaker, but the sonic screwdriver was to make a return as well.

Somewhere online there is an audio version of this one with different actors playing the Doctor and Peri but trying very hard to sound like them. It's no Big Finish, but they themselves have said that they will never adapt anything that was originally planned for the TV series, so if you can't get a hold of a copy of this book, downloading the play might be the next best thing.

Next up is The Ultimate Evil, penned by Wally K Daly. Here we find the TARDIS taking the Doctor and Peri to the planet Tranquela for a vacation and to visit some old friends of the Doctor's, but they find things not very peaceful at all. An arms dealer called the Dwarf Mordent has set up shop in orbit and has managed to project violent mood swings onto the planet below, causing the people to attack and kill each other and fostering an atmosphere of parinoia.

This one was a bit more cerebral, but by no means unenjoyable. The only thing I was edgy about was how so many elements of this script - a diminutative nasty selling weapons - would be lifted into a script for the 1986 season. The Dwarf Mordent just struck me as a bit of a coward, hiding up in his planetoid and stirring people up. I suppose that was the point, though, but these moral messages seem less effective when they are so obvious.

Last of this little trio is Mission to Magnus, which turned out to be the most disappointing of the bunch. And it shouldn't have been. Why? Because the Ice Warriors came back in it at bloody bloody last. We were cheated out of a fifth Ice Warrior story! That still bothers me to this day, moreso since we have yet to see them back in the new series. As far as the story goes, Sil (from the previous season's Vengeance on Varos) is on the planet Magnus doing deals with the predominantly female population (shades of the Drahvins) and their leader, Rana. But Sil is secretly selling the Magnusians out to the Ice Warriors, who have plans to freeze the planet to make it a new home for themselves. To add to this mix there is a Time Lord named Anzor on the scene, one who used to bully the Doctor during their days at the Academy and who still terrifys him to this day.

I wanted this one to be my favourite. I really did. But something about it didn't do it for me. I'm not keen on Philip Martin's prose style, and honestly I'm not keen on Sil either. So much more could have been said and done in this book, although at the time there were page maximums to observe - this was just 122 pages long. And I don't think Philip Martin was the man to bring back the Ice Warriors; these ones in Magnus are far from the noble Martians previously seen in the series; they could have been anyone. And as producer John Nathan-Turner was so keen to make things flashy and grand they probably would have been painted neon green.

Details are sketchy about what the other three adventures for this skipped season would have been, but Penacasta would see the Doctor dealing with another attack on the TARDIS which would possibly destroy it (after all this was written by Christopher H Bidmead). Made in Singapore was reportedly going to be another Auton invasion story but this time they would be in cahoots with the Rani and the Master (although as the Master turned on the Nestenes at the end of Terror of the Autons it seems a bit unlikely he'd team with them again). And Attack of the Daleks was supposedly going to be a season finale in which Peri was either killed or turned into a Dalek and then killed. Something like that.

The whole hiatus episode really did the show a lot more harm than good; an 18 month delay in episodes would these days just result in automatic cancellation because no-one would remember to be watching when it came back on. The same was partly true of when Doctor Who did return, but it did manage to hang on for three more seasons after. Not to worry, there is an abundance of material to fill the gap between the seasons, besides these stories here.

So let's see some more.

NEXT EPISODE : SLIPBACK

Revelation of the Daleks

Upon hearing of a friend's death, the Doctor takes Peri to the planet Necros to investigate. Necros is home to Tranquil Repose; a cryogenic suspension facility for the insanely rich who have been preserved at the moment of death, waiting for the day when their ailments can be cured, but Davros has arrived as well and has raided the vaults to use the sleepers as genetic material for a new race of Daleks. Davros is performing double duty though; not only is he duping the workers of Tranquil Repose, he is also extorting money from a businesswoman named Kara after providing her company with a new protein product to sell to the developing planets of the galaxy, and guess where the meat is coming from ...

Okay this is my favourite of the season, hands down. I remember at first when I saw it being marginally annoyed at how little the Daleks were actually in it, even if they were now dramatically restyled in white armour with gold accents, but the truth is this really isn't a Dalek story in the traditional sense. This is a Davros story, and an incredible one to boot. Script writer Eric Saward freely admits that he was not happy with the end product of his Resurrection of the Daleks the season before, and he sets out to do them justice, even if he hardly has them in it at all. After all, the armies of Daleks out there are decimated from the war with the Movellans, so Davros is starting from scratch again and he's not making the same mistake that saw the Daleks try to kill him the first time. And where better to find genetic material than in bodies that people have more or less given up for dead? The really clever thing here is how Davros took the themes shown here - corporations, stocks, finacial power - and developed them in such a way (hurrah for retcon!) that both that audio and this televised adventure flow together almost seamlessly. Hurrah for Davros, you may say, but without Revelation there wouldn't have been the foundation for that brilliant script. And, just in case you have not heard, this is a particularly violent one, complete with painful exterminations, a brutal interrogation and beating, legs shot off, a hand shot off ... it's all here. But none of it is ever gratuitous. Heavens no.

The cast is magic. The interplay between the vain Jobel and the pathetically doting Tasambeker is a joy to behold, right up until the bit where one rejects the other so badly that there is a graphic stabbing with a syringe full of embalming fluid. There's the DJ, who comes off as a bit goofy, but he's here in the role of the choregus, a little narration here and there as he plays requests for the cryogenically suspended, much to the displeasure of Davros. Kara and Vogel, the mogul and her assistant, are a riot in their office paradise - snobs to the core when it comes to hiring the noble Orcini and his dirty squire Bostock to bump Davros off and gain control of the food supplies for the whole agalxy, even if they're not really clued in to where it comes from. Then again, Kara is an agressive businesswomen, she would probably just shrug and keep on selling food made from the dead so long as she made a profit. In amongst all these gems are the Doctor and Peri, who feel more like they are guest starring in their own series than anything else, but their sometimes rocky friendship had changed over the season and we see the Doctor being a bit warmer towards her. Peri always ribbed the fifth Doctor and had him just shrug it off, so her teasing of the sixth just lands her in arguments as he is prone to sarcastic remarks of his own, but by now those instances are fewer and fewer, and Peri's voice has a lot more confidence to it. And her hairstyle has changed for the better too.

The DVD release of Revelation of the Daleks comes with extras like any other, but what stands out to me is the new CGI effects option; some of the effects in the original were just plain poor, with lasers hitting their target victims to no effect (blame the extras too if you will but there's only so much one can fix), and laser beams staying in one place when the muzzle of the issuing weapons wavers by a few centimeters. Those original effects can be enjoyed as always but the enhancements take them away, as well as give the Daleks different weapons fire that looks fluroescent, for lack of a better term. And thanks to the effects as well, we get to see a Dalek fly on screen in an episode made two years before the *real* first time it happened in Remembrance of the Daleks. Ah magic.

One thing that is not changed, though, is the final line of the adventure. The season would have ended with the Doctor saying to Peri: "I'll take you to Blackpool!" when she requested they go somewhere fun. This would lead to the planned season twenty three premiere The Nightmare Fair, but before it was broadcast it was announced that Doctor Who was going on hiatus for 18 months, and those scripts that were ready were shelved, and the word "Blackpool" was cut. It was a long 18 months full of uncertainty for the show's future, but the gap left makes it a good place for Big Finish to place some adventures with the sixth Doctor and Peri, as well as three of the novels from the "missing season" and the first Doctor Who play on Radio 4. Yes, that time was a bit dismal, but now, as always, the show has gone on.

NEXT EPISODES : THE NIGHTMARE FAIR / THE ULTIMATE EVIL / MISSION TO MAGNUS

Timelash

The Doctor and Peri are caught in a time corridor running out of the planet Karfel. The tunnel is part of a device called the Timelash, a unique device of execution that throws political enemies down the vortex into exile on other planets. When the TARDIS materializes on Karfel, Peri is taken prisoner to co-opt the Doctor into assisting the retrieval of an amulet that was lost down the Timelash along with a noblewoman of the governing council. The ruler of Karfel, the Borad, is having a hard time quelling a rebellion that is growing against him, but with the arrival of the Doctor, and more importantly of Peri, he sees the solution he has been waiting for, although for Peri it could be the start of a whole new set of problems.

Oh boy. Every season of Doctor Who has one story that is not as good as the rest, one that the majority of viewers will not feel as excited about. Timelash is not that story. For this season, that story was Attack of the Cybermen. Timelash isn't just "not as good" it's downright bad. Like horrible bad. Like CRAP bad.

How bad? It's visual effects are bad, starting with the Doctor and Peri strapping themselves to the TARDIS concole to navigate the Timelash. It's writing is bad, with dialogue that the actors seem to have trouble delivering, although to his credit, Colin Baker does a very good job apeing William Hartnell. The acting is bad, none of the characters are particularly memorable, Vena tends to look across the room from people when she speaks to them so you might think she is blind, Tekker (played by Paul Darrow) is just over the top as the Borad's bum-kissing Maylin, and the guy playing H.G. Wells (no joke, and no reason for it) just irritates.

The Borad doesn't really stack up very well as a baddie. He does all sorts of bad things like divert energy from hospitals for his own private projects, he kidnaps Peri and leaves her at the mercy of monsters living down cave tunnels, he shoots people with a device that accelerates their age until they collapse as a heap of old bones, and he deliverately provokes war with the snake-like Bandrils who share the star system with Karfel. His motivation? Look at the cover of the DVD. Half man, half monster. You'd be pissed too. To his credit, though, he has a fantastic voice - deep and mellow and menacing, and a booming laugh.

There's even a fun bit of continuity here; the third Doctor apparantly visited Karfel in the past, making such an impression that there was a mosaic of him painted on the wall (and then covered up) and the daughter of someone he met while there holds a locket with a picture of Jo Grant inside it. And Peri knows Jo to see her picture, suggesting she may have met her, or the Doctor's been showing the holiday snaps again.

There was too much to really not enjoy about Timelash. It reeks of a serial made towards the end of the season with the money running out, otherwise some more time and care would have been taken with the direction to at least salvage that much. I'm not sure why it's on DVD when so many better shows could be put out with fantastic extras, but my friend Mike suggested that it might be better to get some of the clunkers out of the way rather than saving them for last, which is what happened with the VHS range and they had to take 11 so-so titles and sell them in an unrelated box set. With Timelash on DVD, the last hold out for this season is the premiere itself, Attack of the Cybermen, the plan apparantly being to start selling complete seasons in boxes. I am going to get Timelash on DVD mind you - for the sake of completing my set. I'll give the extras package a chance, it could be redeeming, or maybe there will be a blunt and cutting commentary track to listen to. Or maybe Jay and I will just record our own.

NEXT EPISODE : REVELATION OF THE DALEKS

Davros

Mega-conglomerate company TAI is known as the most agressive corporation in the known galaxies, controlling virtually every avenue of commerce and producing all manner of consumer goods. With Peri away on a botany seminar, the Doctor takes the time to investigate claims that TAI is engaged in shady business dealings, and finds instead that they now employ Davros on their technical products division. As the galaxy expands TAI aims to stay ahead of the demand for new products and with Davros on board they feel that they have the edge over the competition. The Doctor does not for one moment believe that Davros has any intentions of helping and becomes an employee of TAI himself to keep an eye on him, buy are his suspicions warranted, or has Davros indeed turned over a new leaf?

This is an incredible story. Second in the villains series this story not only picks up where Resurrection of the Daleks left off but also flashes back into the past before Davros began his work at creating the Daleks, back to when he was a normal man, an ambitious scientist on a planet being ravaged by war. Davros does not immediately understand the circumstances he finds himself in; he is 90 years out of his time and light years away from Skaro where industry was always geared towards war, so the concepts of stock markets, commodities and volatile futures are new to him. But there is one constant he recognizes: the power that comes from controlling everything. Aided by the naive Lorraine Baynes (played by Wendy Padbury - our own Zoe!) Davros explores the new world around him and relalizes that he doesn't need a Dalek army to reign over this galaxy - he can get rich and buy it.

The interplay between the Doctor and Davros is fantastic, evoking the chemistry of Tom Baker's fourth Doctor and Michael Wisher's original Davros and expanding it further; you can feel that Colin Baker and Terry Molloy thoroughly enjoyed their roles as the Doctor and Davros, and the dialogue between them is superb. Nothing irritates Davros more than a clown, and he uses his leverage to convince his employers that the Doctor is a menace, and as nothing irks the Doctor more than abused authority, he strives to frustrate Davros even further. The pairing of the sixth Doctor and Davros is inspired here, and it is fitting that Colin Baker be given an incredible script like this to work with given how his Doctor was never given enough material to really develop and become a favourite while on television. If this sort of tale has been available back then, it's possible Colin Baker would have been allowed a much longer run as the Doctor.

The big question of Davros is this: can the most twisted scientist ever, the creator of the Daleks, change his ways and serve the greater good? The flashbacks to his time before being confined to his life support systems show him to be a man capable of emotion, a man like any other who wants the war on his world to end, so is it a stretch to believe he would regain that compassion and use his brilliance to ease the problem of famine on developing worlds, and create new tools to make the work of colonists and terraformers easier? Or is the Doctor right, and is Davros merely biding his time and waiting for the right opportunity to embark on a new reign of terror? We all know Davros just wouldn't be Davros without a death toll somewhere behind him. But hey he wouldn't have to work too hard to justify killing; if something gets in his way, he gets rid of it - lest we forget that he sold out the entire Kaled race to the Thals in the last days of the war to ensure that the Daleks would go on.

There has always been this big movement to go back to Daleks stories without Davros to do all the speaking for them; indeed with such a powerful central figure the Daleks fade away to mere set decorations. But rather than remove Davros, author Lance Parkin has taken away the Daleks and let the Davros character run away with itself. And the result is incredible. And the sheer length of the story is incredible as well: two 75 minute episodes, which makes the adventure longer than a six episode televised adventure. Brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant.

NEXT EPISODE : TIMELASH

The Two Doctors

At the behest of the High Council of Time Lords, the second Doctor and Jamie go to a space station in the Third Zone. The Doctor runs afoul of his old friend, Dastari, with the demands of the Time Lords, and the station is attacked by a shock force of Sontarans. The sixth Doctor feels a time slip and with Peri comes to the station to investigate, and they find Jamie left behind with the dead, and the Doctor abducted to be part of an obscene experiment that will grant the Sontarans and the bloodthirsty Androgums mastery over time.

Right from the opening moments where the Doctor and Jamie are shown in black and white with an older version of the TARDIS console, you can feel this is going to be a fun adventure. With Robert Holmes holding the pen there is no reason why it wouldn't; the dialogue is witty and quick, the plot makes sense, and it's a treat to have it encompass three 45-minute episodes. There hadn't been a story over the approximate 90 minute length since The Armageddon Factor (the cancelled Shada doesn't count), and this fits the bill perfectly as an epic.

The story moves from the devastated space station to an area of 1985 Spain just outside of Seville, with some beautiful location footage that looks hotter than hell in DVD quality. There's no real reason that the episode had to take place there aside from John Nathan-Turner's established routine of shooting in a foreign location once per season (although in the years to come, there would be no more of this), but Holme's script is easily adaptable so the setting isn't important; it's the characters you want to watch. Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines step right back into the roles they left behind as if they haven't been away, the obvious signs of ageing hard to conceal but we're used to overlooking wobbly set walls and boom mics, so why not ignore some wrinkles and grey hair? And the current TARDIS crew of Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant interact with them beautifully. Who else have we got... the scheming Chessene (played with style by Jacqueline Pearce) and her bloodthirsty Androgum buddy Shockeye bring both meance and comedy to the story. Then there's Dastari, a brilliant scientist reduced to the assistant of his own creation. I just wish he didn't look like he was wearing an Elton John cast-off costume. There are only two Sontarans in the story; their presence is almost incidental and they're hardly the best the Sontaran officer corps has to offer by comparison to previous characters such as Linx or Styre. And check out the brilliant Oscar and Anita - hapless humans who get caught up in the intregue as only Robert Holmes can create. Holmes also goes a step further and refers to humans as Tellurians, a term first used in Carnival of Monsters, giving us a clue as to where this adventure is starting from and also suggesting that Inter Minor from the 1973 story may be part of the Third Zone itself.

Jay and I had a good share of laughs over this one, enjoying it thoroughly. We lamented Jamie's loss of youth. We chortled at Peri's near-misses with her cleavage threatening to whack her in the face as she runs away from Shockeye. And we loved the innuendos of Shockeye's obsession with cooking Jamie; the chef's lust for him verges on the sexual.

The story was originally penned under the title The Androgum Inheritance, which I personally would have preferred; at this point it hadn't even been two full years since The Five Doctors was aired, and this whole numerical Doctor title thing starts to look a bit b-movie after a while (although this is the season for it; Attack of the Cybermen was done under the working title Cold War). This would also be Patrick Troughton's last on screen appearance as the Doctor before his death, but he proves himself to be right on his game as the Doctor, even spluttering "Oh my giddy aunt! Oh crumbs!" in the face of certain death while strapped down to an operating table.

Other notes of interest include the discussions about Time Lords posessing a symbiotic nuclei which would aid them in travelling through the time vortex in a TARDIS, and the fact that the Doctor is operating on behalf of the Time Lords before they put him on trial in The War Games. Yes, that's a bit of a tricky one; the script indicates that the Doctor and Jamie have left Victoria somewhere to learn graphology for a while, but the revisionists like to think that this could be another season 6b story with the Doctor in limbo and being allowed out to work on behalf of the Time Lords for a while. This would certainly explain how he came to be on his own in The Five Doctors, but not why Jamie is with him this time. Not easily, anyways.

So let's take a break from the TV episodes again and have an audio, one of the best in the range if you ask me...

NEXT EPISODE : DAVROS

The Mark of the Rani

Mysteriously drawn off course, the TARDIS lands the Doctor and Peri in England during the Industrial Revolution. In this troubled time when machinery is taking jobs away from miners and poverty looms, the Doctor finds himself pitted not only against the Master, but another renegade Time Lord, the Rani, who has her own agenda for experimentation on the people of Earth. The stakes are raised even higher when the Master's plans go beyond his quest for revenge and move to changing history itself and making Earth the centre of his own private empire.

Better. The season takes a promising upward turn with this episode, introducing the Rani as played by Kate O'Mara. Unlike the Master or the Meddling Monk she has no real axe to grind with the Doctor; she is on Earth to experiment on the humans and could do without either of her fellow renegades getting in her way. Her alliance with the Master only comes under duress as he holds the results of her experiments hostage, until he convinces her that Earth would make an ideal power base and the humans perfect slaves. The Rani already rules over a planet called Miasimia Goria, and figures she could use another. The Master's presence, however, is never really explained in full; last time we saw him in Planet of Fire he was burning to death in the flames of the numismiton furnace. But he's back. And he ain't happy. He's got a big time grudge against the Doctor as always but now it's personal with Peri as well. There's the difference between Anthony Ainley as the Master and Roger Delgado's original version; no matter how things went he always treated Jo Grant with a certain measure of respect, but then again, she never watched him burn to death either.

Plot wise we're looking at a pretty solid script, even if some of the dialogue sounds a bit flowery.

Writers Pip and Jane Baker are new to the series with this one, and they obviously have a love of language, although it materializes in some corny lines like the Master advising the Luddites to "Hold hard,". As this is a historical adventure there is a man of some significance in the script: George Stephenson, the man who would design and buil a steam locomotive named The Rocket. The Doctor is of course delighted to rub shoulders with an inventor, and the Master is delighted at the opportunity to enslave such a mind to his own cause. The Rani isn't interested in the humans to the same extent; her mission is to extract chemicals from the brain that allow rest and sleep, and operating during violent eras in history is perfect cover.

Jay sat in on this one with me once more, and we were delighted with the cast of extras, especially the nice triceps of one of the Rani's assistants. And young Luke, assistant to Stephenson, was pretty easy on the eyes as well. The episode has a lot of visual appeal what with the extensive location shooting at the UK's version of Black Creek Pioneer Village... complete with a sign advertising the tea shop which no-one got out of the shot in time. One would have thought the Restoration Team would have done something about that. The DVD release doesn't feature any enhancements to the program material itself - although that bit where the Doctor drops his tracking device down the mine could have been done better - but it is a great sharp image we get of the inside of the Rani's TARDIS, which is custom made to feel like a chamber one steps down into as opposed to the bright console room that the Doctor uses.

Now I have a question though. The Doctor chose to leave Gallifrey and got raked over the coals, forced to regenerate, and exiled for the sin of stopping bad things from happening to good people. The Rani, on the other hand, caused trouble on Gallifrey and was sent away, and has carried on more or less the same, and there's no trial for her, no rebuke. Much the same for the Master; if they're that bad why don't the Time Lords just sort them? They can do it. They even went so far themselves as to try and get the Doctor to attempt to wipe out the Daleks, so what's so hard about reining in two more renegades? Of course, there's no real answer to this one; it just wouldn't make for good story if everyone could be sorted out so easily.

But speaking of Time Lords and control, here comes the next story...

NEXT EPISODE : THE TWO DOCTORS

Vengeance on Varos

The TARDIS stalls in mid flight, a situation caused by the deterioration of the transitional elements of the time rotor. Only zeiton-7 ore can be used to repair them, and the Doctor and Peri go to the planet Varos to get some. Trouble is, Varos is a former prison colony now seeking independence and its every resource is being controlled by the Galatron Mining Corporation, headed by the vile Sil. To keep the empoverished colonists in line, the Punishment Dome has been set up, the images of torture and execution being broadcast into every home as a lesson to those who would rebel. And guess where the TARDIS chooses to land...

There's no glossing over the fact that this is the most deliberately violent Doctor Who adventure ever, but for some reason it never seems to be that bad. True there is the image of a shirtless Jason Connery as Jondar being lasered to death as torture, and there are cannibals, but a lot of the torture in the Punishment Dome is imaginary; illusions that trick the mind into thinking the body is dying such as the sun-bleached desert illusion that the Doctor faces (which even leaves the Varosians watching feeling parched). Violence and torture are things Varosians come to accept as routine, even getting the chance to vote for their Governor to be lashed by a cell disintigration ray when his policies are not to the liking of the people. (Imagine how fast we'd go through Prime Ministers if we had that here). The state of terror that exists on Varos is such that the citizens are encouraged to spy on each other, even driving a wedge between husbands and wives.

Lording over it all with the ruling class of the planet is Sil, a diminutative sadistic creature from the planet Thoros Beta. The DVD cover above shows him in his glory; he's a slug. Although he looks like dog poo. The legless actor Nabil Shaban brings him to insane life, though, throwing himself into the role and cackling insanely as he watches people suffer, and throwing tantrums when things do not go his way. Producer John Nathan-Turner wanted to cast the most malignant creature ever with this one, but once again all the hype didn't quite live up to it and Sil is more a comical character than he is a credible monster. I remember back in 1985 when I was in grade 8 and I was reading the synopsis of the story in a zine, and the description I saw made me imagine ravers partying in the streets watching executions on screens overhead, not the tired worn out depressed mining couple, Arak and Etta, slumped in front of their screen in their living room, forced to watch hours of the torture. Either vision would work for this, I suppose.

Jay and I watched this together, although I'll admit we talked through most of it, making light of Peri's impractical outfit for the adventure (low cut top and shorts... riiight, that's just what you want to wear for space exploration) for the most part. For the show's broadcast on North American TV, the 45 minute episodes were halved down to 23 minutes to fit into a 30 minute time slot, resulting in some not-so-cliffhangers, some of which I remembered and pointed out as they came along. Jay would just shake his had and say "Are you kidding? What's suspenseful about that?"

Is there any suspense in Vengeance on Varos? Its claustrophobic setting certainly loaned itself to enough shadows for things to hide in, but in the end it just turned into corridor after corridor and mericore effects here and there. If it was supposed to be a comment on how much violence was on TV at the time, I'm not sure if the argument was made properly. It came along at roughly the same time as The Running Man, so some parallels can be drawn between the two, with heroic characters being thrown into the meat grinders of the Punishment Dome to keep the rest in line.

Oh well.

NEXT EPISODE : THE MARK OF THE RANI

Attack of the Cybermen

A distress call brings the Doctor and Peri to London in 1985. The Doctor expects to find a stranded alien but instead encounters Commander Lytton, one of the surviving Dalek duplicates who escaped the year before. Lytton appears to be working for the Cybermen who have established a forward base in the city sewers, but their plans reach beyond just converting the odd hapless human; the Cybermen are preparing to leave Telos and use Halleys Comet to strike the Earth and avert the destruction of Mondas, altering history for all time.

So it's a prequel to The Tenth Planet and at the same time a sequel to Tomb of the Cybermen, complete with an updated version of the CyberController directing things from Telos. They say they even went back to the same quarry where they shot Tomb but who can say for sure; one heap of sand and rock looks pretty much the same as the next. Thing is, though, Mondas was the primary home of the Cybermen as we heard in Spare Parts, and when it was destroyed they Cybermen retreated to Telos to re-establish themselves; Attack is also the story of the Cryons, a race of humanoids (primarily females) who were there first, who built the refridgerated cities that the Cybermen invaded and used as their tombs. Virtually extinct, the Cryons still engage the Cybermen in guerilla warfare, doing what they can to stop them in their plans. The Doctor spends a great deal of time locked up with what appears to be their leader, a Cryon named Flast, who has accepted that they have lost the war against the Cybermen but they must do what they can to keep Earth safe.

These Cybermen just reek of desperation, and not without cause, seeing as they are dwindling in numbers and this is a final gamble to preserve their species. Being logical machines though they seem to have overlooked Blinovitch and the reasons why their plan wouldn't work anyways, but they're going to try with the aid of a stolen time ship and the captured TARDIS. The Cybercontroller is played again by Michael Kilgarrif, even if the years seem to have given him a bit of a full-figured look, unique amongst the Cyber ranks. And he has a different kind of helmet design, although the transparent dome where his brain should be visible is covered over with silver probably to keep the censors happy.

As the season premiere, Attack of the Cybermen sets the tone for everything to come, starting with the new 45 minute episode format, which effectively reduced the season length from 22 weeks to 16. What it also did was demonstrate the new levels of violence that the production crew decided to introduce, starting with Cybermen chopping people down, people being shot, Cybermen being blown apart or their heads knocked off, people being half-converted into Cybermen, a Cryon being thrown out into a warm corridor to boil and die, and the brutal crushing of Lytton's hands. Yeah, it's all here, I ain't kidding. Lytton even becomes a sympathetic character now; as the fifth Doctor predicted, the Dalek conditioning of the duplicates began to wear off and Lytton is free of it, but he's still in the end a mercenary for hire. Just one who knows that the Cybermen should be stopped.

Did I like it? I found that it came close to going too far. But in other respects it didn't go far enough. I would have liked to have seen different Cyberman models sharing the screen; it's not gone unnoticed how their appearance changes slightly with each appearance, which is something one can easily attribute to the constant upgrading of their forces, so why not have some more classic-looking Cybermen on Telos and keep the new Earthshock-model on Earth as they are obviously the newer breed trying to save the old? I mean hey if we can do it in a comic strip (which is still some time away at this point) why not on TV?

NEXT EPISODE : VENGEANCE ON VAROS

The Twin Dilemma

The Doctor has regenerated, and the man how at the helm of the TARDIS is by no means the same as the man Peri has called Doctor for so long. Prone to fits of rage and even violence he goes to another extreme of self imposed exile and stumbles across a plan to kidnap a pair of child geniuses and perpetuate a race of obscene monsters across space.

See what I did there? I made it sound better than it actually was. Because it's crap as far as a debut story for a new Doctor. For some reason the production team decided that the new Doctor, now played by Colin Baker, should be made to act totally opposite to Peter Davison's "nice guy" of the previous three seasons, and now we have a stranger who is moody, sarcastic, and so unsettled that he tries to kill Peri at one point. He can't even put together a proper fashion statement - the costume that is created for the sixth Doctor is just apalling to look at, especially under the harsh lights of the BBC studios.

As for the story... yeah. Jay and I sat there slack jawed at how horrible the two actors cast as the Sylvest twins performed. Casting must have just decided that oh well any twins will do. They could have hired the twins from Degrassi Junior High and made it work better. Unconvincing delivery of their lines coupled with Auton-like blank faces have made these two twits the worst characters ever in the series - and that's saying something because even the actors in The Gunfighters were trying. So these two twins are mathematical geniuses - shades of Adric just without the charisma - and they have been kidnapped by a rogue Time Lord the Doctor recognizes as Azmael (who we have never ever heard of before). But Azmael has troubles of his own; he is master of a world called Jaconda, which is a garden paradise, but it has been invaded by giant slugs that have lain dormant under the surface for milennia. The leader of the slugs, Mestor, has a plan that will supposedly create a new supply of food for the Jacondan people and for his own gastropod offspring, but the Doctor realizes it is not the benevolant scheme Azmael has been led to believe.

Or something like that.

I feel for Colin Baker, being instructed to trun one of the most beloved television characters of all time into... this. It's no wonder ratings started to flag when this gem concluded season 21, which up until this point was innovative and new, and you could still feel that someone cared about the show. I remember my dad and I watched it and he left the room saying "This is a very different Doctor Who,"

Ain't that the truth.

NEXT EPISODE : ATTACK OF THE CYBERMEN

The Caves of Androzani

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Peri to Androzani Minor. The planet is nothing special to look at but under the surface a war is raging between the military forces of Androzani Major and the android army of Sharaz Jek. Minor has the distinction of being the main source of an anti-ageing chemical called spectrox, and Jek is holding the supply ransom unless his demands are met. Caught in the middle once again, the Doctor and Peri face death on all sides, although this time they're not going to get away as easy as in the past.

Yes, we're back to the televised adventures once more. AT it's original broadcast Caves followed directly after Planet of Fire, with no suggestion of any time having passed by Peri's clothes still being the same. Now the gap has been split wide and a second companion has come and gone (but obviously there is not going to be any mention of her here), but it seems to work here; Peri emerges from the TARDIS engaged in some playful teasing with the Doctor as if they have been friends for a while, but Nicola Bryant's performance is a bit less than spectacular with Peri stuttering and whining here and there (something she never did in the audios). The Doctor, good natured fellow that he is, is either oblivious to her teasing or just lets it slide.

Caves of Androzani is one of those nearest-to-perfect adventures we ever saw in the classic series, the only real flaws being visual ones such as the roll and bounce Peri does when falling off a ledge (to be seen to be fully appreciated; Jay and I watched it three times before we moved on) and some unconvincing monster costume (I still say it looks like it's wearing a cape and its floppy fingertips are reminiscent of Admiral Ackbar). Everything else, though, shines. Robert Holmes penned one of the tightest most enertaining scripts of his career with the show complete with his usual set of double acts (The Doctor/Peri, Morgus/Timmin, Stotz/Krelper, Chellack/Salateen) and grim moments of meance underscored by the atmospheric music, the vast sets that were the caves, and directing unlike anything before including the slow dissolve between scenes. And at the centre of it all is the brooding meance of Sharaz Jek; a brilliant mind gone mad, disfigured and isolated from his peers, wanting justice with a big side of revenge.

This is also the end of the road for the fifth Doctor. As with Logopolis there is a flashback sequence of sorts as the Doctor "dies", with specially shot footage of the Doctor's companions urging him to survive and carry on (Adric, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, and Kamelion, but no Erimem of course), and then flash of light, *boom*... we have a new Doctor.

NEXT EPISODE : THE TWIN DILEMMA

Omega

Still travelling on his own, the Doctor comes to a sector of space in the future where the story of Omega is told to tourists who gather to see the region of space where the last of the Gallifreyan time travel experiments were conducted. Here the followers of Rassilon became Time Lords. And here Omega was destroyed. Celebrated as a hero by his people until his two attempts to return to the physical universe, Omega is still shrouded in mystery with so many questions of what went on that last day still unanswered. Unanswered, that is, until he shows up as well.

Omega is the first of the "Villain Series" that Big Finish produced for their range; four were produced in total and each one pitted the Doctor against a suitable nemesis from his past. Given that he encountered him relatively recently in Arc of Infinity it is fitting that the fifth Doctor come into conflict with Omega once again. At the climax of Arc, the Doctor said he could destroy or expel Omega, and the choice he made was never really known until now; the lingering effects of the attempted bond with the Doctor have allowed Omega a residual presence in the universe; enough to influence people into obeying his will.

It's a distinct pleasure to hear the rumbling tones of Ian Collier as Omega once more; as Omega's second "incarnation" he has a bit more style about him even if he has the head of a bug. There is no ranting, no craziness, just a man who wants to find a place in the universe. Omega might well be one of the few sympathetic villains in series history; not driven to kill from being misunderstood, not just plain evil, but a man who longs for a place either side of the black hole that claimed his life millenia ago. The supporting cast work well with him, even Caroline Morris (who was once rumoured to be the new companion in a big screen film version of the show) as Omega's devoted .. finacee?

Placing the episode in the correct chronology was until recently a challenge as it clearly is set after Arc of Infinity but at a point where the Doctor is alone. No attempt is made to gloss over the lack of companions as was the case in Excelis Dawns, but the events of The Veiled Leopard make it easier to grant the Doctor the opportunity to be flying solo. I know, continuity nerd. But in a series about time travel, it's important.

NEXT EPISODE : SON OF THE DRAGON

The Gathering

While Peri and Erimem are in Monte Carlo on their mission, the Doctor carries on with unfinished business of his own and ends up following a trail that leads him back to Earth in 2006, and more specifically to Brisbane, Australia, and the 46th birthday party of Tegan Jovanka. But it's not all fun and happiness; Tegan has moved on with her life and is not eager to revisit her danger days with the Doctor, but someone has brought something alien to Brisbane, and danger is not far behind.

Now I'm not going to throw too much plot detail around, as this adventure is in effect a sequel to The Reaping, an audio adventure with the sixth Doctor... which is in the future as far as the series is concerned but set in the past, in 1984. Just looking at the cover art (a new feature to my blog!) you might be able to guess what alien menace is involved, so I'm not going to say any more about that angle.

Let's talk about Tegan. Indeed, let's talk about the Doctor and Tegan. The fact that we have a Tegan audio is a fantastic thing as Janet Fielding for years insisted she would never return to the role she left behind, but was persuaded finally to do "just one". Not since Sarah Jane Smith has there been a companion who's dynamic with the Doctor was such a source of amusement and joy to the viewers, although the two could never be more different; where Sarah made the business of time travel with the Doctor her life, Tegan spent most of her days grumbling about where the TARDIS had landed them this time and looking for a way out until she finally left out of disgust at the violence that follows the Doctor. Hence his return to her life is not greeted with joy, exactly, and when people start to die Tegan feels like it's the good old days. Oh yeah, and seeing as she's 46 now she actually looks older than him, which would annoy anyone.

The Doctor is never fazed by this; indeed he has gotten used to popping up in his friends' futures and either not having aged a day or with a whole new body - look how often he does it to the Brigadier. The only thing that does rattle him though is the suggestion that Tegan is only grouchy because she loves him. This I blame on the new TV series, seeing as the Doctor has changed into not just a good friend to travel with but some unattainable sex object, and the notion is starting to creep into revisionist fan factions' work. Still, it's pretty much a given that it is not going to make its way any further back than Peter Davison's Doctor. Unless there's something we don't know about Vicki and some grandpa complex she might have had.

NEXT EPISODE : OMEGA

The Veiled Leopard

It's Monte Carlo in 1966 and the Doctor has left Peri and Erimem on their own to carry out a mission for him: they are to make sure that the famous Veiled Leopard diamond does not get stolen from a costume ball. An out of character move for the Doctor to assign them this sort of task, but it gets more complicated when two other guests, also sent by the Doctor - but his future self - arrive to steal it. Will it be Peri and Erimem vs Ace and Hex, or is it all part of the same agenda?

The Veiled Leopard is one of those fun freebie adventures made by Big Finish and given away with copies of Doctor Who Magazine, but for something that is free it's still given the proper production values as if it was something they were selling along with the rest of the line. The performances are very professional as always, although at times the sorority sister antics of Peri and Erimem start to get a bit ... silly. All that giggling. Bah.

What's interesting here is we have the fifth Doctor's companions on collision course with two of the seventh Doctor's friends; when listened to in a historical perspective it's all fine and dandy but from, say, the first time listener's point of view this could be a bit confusing. Ace will not actually join the show until the season finale for 1987, and Hex is a character created just for the Big Finish line, much like Erimem. But the play is done in such a way that the two sides never come into direct conflict; they pass each other in hallways or maybe overhear each other's conversations across rooms but never realize who the other pair are.

Because of the way I am doing this I have never heard a play with Philip Oliver as Hex before, so this actually serves as my own introduction to him. How do I like him? Well for starters I know what Olivier looks like, so I am not having and trouble imagining him side by side with Sophie Aldred as Ace. His accent takes a bit of getting used to; he's actually a nursing student from what we would consider "current" time and he comes from somewhere called Mersey, I believe. So you have Ace's sort-of Cockney up against his... whatever it is. But I got it. For the most part. I'll just call it a teaser for later.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is busy with some business of his own; business that will bring him into collision with his past once more, and a bit of his future as well...

NEXT EPISODE : THE GATHERING