The Timewyrm

"Full length science fiction novels; stories too broad and too deep for the small screen. Produced with the approval of BBC Television, the New Adventures takes the TARDIS into previously unexplored realms of space and time,"

You have to really imagine what a thrill it was to hold a copy of the first New Adventures novel in my hands, knowing that although the series had been off the air for about a year, it was about to go entirely new places. And I was going along quite willingly. It's not as if the Doctor's adventures had never been on printed page before; without those old Target novelizations when I was growing up I daresay I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the series as much as I did, carrying the adventures beyond the TV screen and in some cases replacing the missing on-screen episodes entirely. But whereas the Target books only novelized adventures we had already seen (or as I say, not seen) on 144 pages or less, the Virgin books were not bound by any regular length and would all run over 200 pages each, some of them with very small text. The rules were simple: do not go against the spirit of the show, do not regenerate the Doctor, do not lose the fan base. And so it began, with a four-story cycle that would define the success of the novel range to come.

Timewyrm : Genesys

A pre-recorded message from the fourth Doctor sends the seventh Doctor and Ace to Earth on the trail of a creature from Gallifrey's myths and legends: the Timewyrm. A creature able to slide through the vortex unchallenged, she could wreak untold havoc throughout space and time. When they do track the creature down, she is masquerading as the goddess Ishtar in ancient Mesopotamia, and the Doctor and Ace meet the epic hero Gilgamesh in his quest to rid the land of her.

We star out very well with Genesys, even if it is penned by Terry Nation's chief ass-kisser John Peel. The Doctor and Ace come across well on the page even after an absence of a year from our screens, and the tone of the novel sets it apart from everything that came before: the Timewyrm is downright vicious, the city of Urak is dirty and Peel is no afraid to tell us how it looks and smells. And then there's the sex. It's not like there's humping going on all around but the slave girls in the palace are described as going topless and Ace catches the eye of Gilgamesh. Someone in the UK capitalized on this and wrote a big scary story in The Sun which managed to get over here to North America and precipitated one of the biggest farces in the history of organized fandom: the high and mighty self-righteous then-executive of the Doctor Who Information Network decided to take it upon themselves to put an insert into their fanzine, Enlightenment, warning the parents of members about the content of these books. I was 20 at the time, and can only imagine if I had been part of DWIN and that came through the letterbox. Idiots. And it wasn't even that bad. What it was, was good. A good start to the series, and even a good book in its own right.

Timewyrm : Exodus


Following the Timewrym's trail, the Doctor and Ace arrive in 1951 England, but in a version of time where the Nazi regime won World War II and had conquered Britain with ease. The Doctor and Ace travel further back in time to infiltrate the Nazi ranks themselves and see where things went wrong and find the sentience of the Timewyrm itself trapped inside the mind of Adolf Hitler, and the War Lords at work behind the scenes giving the Germans the edge to win the war.

Exodus does some good old fashioned storytelling, and who else better to do it than Terrance Dicks; script editor, writer, and novelist for years. I am one of the many who have been critical of Dicks' writing skills when it comes to a lack of description, and oft accused him of just photcopying the scripts from the televised series and throwing "he said" and "she said" after the lines, but here I find there's something good going on, something much better than any of those Target novelizations he put together. Exodus is amazing. Dicks should get it right easily, though, seeing as the War Lords are his own creation from the Patrick Troughton finale The War Games, and they're up to their old tricks in World War II. And it's the first time Dicks writes for the seventh Doctor and Ace, their televised episodes being novelized by the original script authors, and he gets them bang on.

Timewyrm : Apocalypse


The pursuit of the Timewyrm takes the TARDIS farther into the future than ever, right to the end of time and space to the planet Kirith. The Doctor can't detect the Timewyrm but he knows she is there, and in searching for her he'll discover the end of everything is about to come about, and it may be his fault.

Nigel Robinson, former editor for the Target line, steps up with the shortest novel in the Timewyrm series, which was supposedly a rejected script he had put together for the televised series. As Genesys featured a cameo of the fourth Doctor in hologram form, the seventh Doctor comes across his second self for a little chat, and even Polly is referenced for Ace's benefit. Apocalypse keeps it simple this time, with the Timewyrm hardly featuring in events until close to the end, which sets up for the big showdown.

Timewyrm : Revelation


The Timewyrm is ready for the Doctor and sets trap after trap for him, as well as for Ace, bringing a childhood bully into the play to kill her before she even met the Doctor. The stakes are high for both of them, and if the Timewyrm wins, she'll be free to destroy all of creation for her amusement.

New writer Paul Cornell closes the cycle with his book, and it's a brilliant read. Everything gets tied off nicely, but the road to the conclusion is a grim one with the Doctor and Ace separated, beaten, humiliated, almost destroyed. Yes, that Timewyrm is a bitch and a half.

So you'll have spotted that these are not as in-depth as they could be. I simply haven't got time to read them all over again. Some of these novels left better impressions than others, usually because they really pushed the envelope and went somewhere new and did something different with the characters that could never been done on television. As the books would go on, the elements of the supposed "Cartmel master plan" would start to emerge as they might have on television, but in this medium they wouldn't be bound by budget or censors, which was the first real admission that the fans of the series had grown up and needed something more to enjoy the Doctor with. Even at this early point with only four novels on the store shelves, it was obvious that Doctor Who was not going to be back for a long time, if ever, and certainly it would not be able to return in the usual format.

NEXT EPISODE : CAT'S CRADLE

Survival

The Doctor takes Ace back to Perivale after she idly wonders what her old friends are up to. Far from status quo for the sleepy suburb of London, it appears that Ace's friends are all missing, and the town is being overrun by stray cats. The Doctor realizes that the disappearances are actually abductions, and young people are being transported to the planet of the Cheetah People to be hunted and eaten. This, though, is the least of the Doctor's worries; the Master has turned up on the Cheetah Planet and contrary to his claims of being able to control the animals there, he himself is falling under the planet's thrall...

And that is the finaly story of a 26 year run on television. It's not the most original or complicated plot, but the real strength of Survival stems from first time writer Rona Munro's fantastic script and some really solid direction. It's shot entirely on location, with just the right amount of special effects to make the Planet of the Cheetah People appear a tad more exotic than the quarry it was shot in. The Cheetah People costumes are pretty much what one would expect; actors in fur suits but the faces and heads are worthy of Cats. (Remember Invasion of the Cat People? Those feline anatagonists were linked to these ones in that novel as being a different branch of evolution, and it would come up again in 2006 and 2007 in New Earth and Gridlock respectively).

Being set in Perivale, Survival gets another kick at the mythology that is Ace's backstory, this time bringing her back together with her old chums Ange, Shreela and Midge. The boorish self-defence instructor Sgt. Patterson recognizes Ace and refer to the police having ler her off with a warning for some bit of mischief or another; it's hard to believe that a warning is all she would have gotten for burning down Gabriel Chase as was revealed in Ghost Light, so she's obviously been in trouble outside of that incident. Her friends are surprised to see her, but she is not immediately keen to tell them where she's been. Survival is actually the first story to really devle into the effects travelling with the Doctor can have on the companions' lives; Patterson admonishes Ace for leaving and having her worried mother list her as a missing person. This would start the ball rolling for the return of the series in 2005 and how companions Rose Tyler, Martha Jones and Donna Noble would deal with worried families when they themselves went missing.

Anthony Ainley makes his final appearance as the Master. Trapped on the Cheetah planet he is in danger of becoming an animal himself, with his eyes mutating to cat-like irises and his teeth beginning to grow into fangs; all brought about by his midn link with the animals there. Being a Time Lord, though, he resists the change and fights it, maintaining his dignity and even a sense of style as always. But the desire for revenge against the Doctor does not help keep the powers at bay, and the process begins to speed up and make him more feral as the story progresses. Not having met this incarnation of the Doctor before, he is wary of him, perhaps sensing there is more to this incarnation than there has been in the others.

As for the Doctor, he manages to figure out what is going on relatively quick, as is the norm with him this season. He grasps the danger posed to Ace by her growing bond with one of the Cheetah People, Karra (played by Lisa Bowerman who would soon return as the voice of companion Bernice Summerfield in the Big Finish audio range). And as he walks off into the sunset with Ace at the end, he has a fantastic soliloqy that was dropped in to wrap up the series and leave it open for its return... one day.

Had the series carried on for another season plans had been made to write Ace out halfway through and send her off to Gallifrey to inject new life into the Time Lord society. The Doctor would have continued to walk on the darker side of his nature, with the production team aiming to re-establish some mystery around the character and make him less a victim of his own circumstances. Elements of this "master plan" eventually did begin to surface in the stories that followed; Virgin Publishing, under contract from the BBC, began to publish all-new Doctor Who fiction under the banner of "The New Adventures" in 1991, taking the Doctor and Ace to places they had never been before, and places we could only dream of seeing them go. Virgin's new steps would eventually give rise to Big Finish and their success, and eventually the show would return in 2005, but not until after a lot of changes...

NEXT EPISODE : TIMEWYRM

The Curse of Fenric

The Doctor and Ace arrive at a top secret naval base in 1943, but while they come in through the front foor and bluff their way into the confidence of the genius Dr Judson, a group of Russian commandos have arrived on the beach with a mission of their own. The area is steeped in mystery, all of it coming from old Viking rune stones in the cellar of the local church, St Jude's. But there is an evil rising from the sea, and a lethal poison has been seeping out of the ground. And before the day is over, the opposing military factions will be battling ancient monsters from the future, and the Doctor will be confronted by a nameless evil intent on destroying him and the world.

From the very first minute, The Curse of Fenric establishes a fantastic air of mysery and fear through a combination of atmospheric incidental music, rolling fog across the sea and an underwater shot of a sunken Viking ship. And from then on it's go go go. The production never stops throwing new elements at the viewers through a dialogue-heavy script with a good balance of action to words, and some of the best moments ever for the seventh Doctor and Ace as a team. The production is also packed with incredible characters aside from the regulars, starting with the Russians led by Captain Sorin, and moving to the British soldiers under the command of Millington (note a very young Christien Ainholt from Relic Hunter as private Perkins), the incredible Kathleen Dudman. and carrying right through to the civilian characters such as Dr Judson, the stuffy Miss Hardaker and her two charges Jean and Phyllis, and reverand Wainwright. And then come the Haemovores; hideous bloodsucking monsters that the Doctor says are what humans will evolve into towards the end of their time on Earth as the pollution of industry ruins the world.

Fenric adds another layer to the whole backstory of Ace, not by delving back into her past again but with her coming into direct conflict with the Doctor when she realizes that he is starting to play games on the side wherever they go and she's starting to feel like one of his pawns. And when the people around them start to die, she lashes out at him and makes him explain what he's doing, and why.

And what is he doing? Fighting evil, pure and simple. But not just something evil, an evil that has no name, although Commander Millington has created a bit of mythology around it and named it Fenric. But Fenric and the Doctor go back a long way to what one might assume is the Doctor's first incarnation where Fenric failed to solve a puzzle the Doctor had made for it and was thus imprisoned like a genie in a bottle. But over time Fenric has made plans and spread its influence, quietly playing its own game and using agents of its own as pawns to set it free. And now there's hell to pay.

Excellent. Brilliant. Fantastic. Not flawless, mind you; there are a few science fiction cliches in there that we could do without, and the Haemovore masks could have looked a bit better (yes I know, BBC budget and all that). Easily the high point of the season, almost tied with Ghost Light.

BBC Video released an extended version of the show on VHS back in the early 90's by dropping additional footage back into place and then re-scoring the whole adventure with a new soundtrack, resulting in some freakishly long episodes. On the DVD release, the original broadcast versions are presented on one of the discs in the set, and the second disc holds yet another remix of the material, this time in a feature length movie format. The material is edited again and the music is done again, but the end result is something that could be on par with the feature-length Christmas episodes we have been enjoying with the new series. I just hope they don't get it in their heads to start doing this with every episode; the old VHS titles at the very beginning were made into feature length shows and it wasn't as much fun to watch. This time it works quite well; Jay and I enjoyed it a few weeks ago. Actually, I think he requested we watch the movie version.

And that's the second last classic adventure done. One more to go.

NEXT EPISODE : SURVIVAL