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 Five Doctors

An unknown force reaches out across time and space and kidnaps the Doctor from his previous time streams and dumps them on Gallifrey's darkest secret: the Death Zone. The fifth Doctor follows with Tegan and Turlough and joins with his first, second and third selves along with Susan, Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier to discover the identity of their kidnapper and stop him - if they can.

I wouldn't go so far as to call this Doctor Who at its finest, but certainly at its most nostalgic. The script is a delightful romp through the series' past, bringing not only previous Doctor and companions into the mix but also some old enemies like the Master, the Cybermen, the Daleks, and the Yeti. And there's that nice cameo of K9 with Sarah Jane before she is abducted, keeping their own little bit of continuity alive after the not-so-hot K9 and Company almost two years previous.

"Funny how they made the "beware of dog" sign in K9 font," Jay mused as we watched it.

The version of The Five Doctors that we watched was the special DVD release edit, which was not designed to replace the original (so the packaging says) but to offer an enhanced version of it, along with a remastered 5:1 soundtrack and all the extra bits of edited material chucked back in for good measure - most of the new footage being Peter Davison as the Doctor staggering about the new TARDIS console room and falling down a great deal. And some pretty sad moments with Turlough and Susan locked in the TARDIS waiting for the Cybermen to blow them up (although Turlough looks like he's going to ask Susan to make a man of him before he dies). The one bit of footage that is always welcome though is the rescued bit from Shada, the unfinished Tom Baker adventure with Lalla Ward, as neither could be part of the special episode. (Actually, Tom Baker reportedly declined as he did not want to play second fiddle to any of the other Doctors, and as he and Lalla Ward were divorced by then it's doubtful they would be working together).

So Jay and I watched the new footage. I pointed out what was new as I have seen two different edits of the show before this one, with really bad effects and a mono soundtrack to boot. In fact, I still have the original UK version on laserdisc, it's the second release on VHS that was double-packed for value with The King's Demons that I not longer have. Bad me, I replaced the original. In some ways I wish I had not, for while it's cool to have all this extra stuff put back in, it was obviously taken out for a reason as not much of it adds to the plot but tends to slow things down a bit. There's a longer shot of President Borusa (yes, we go back to Gallifrey again but while Borusa has regenerated *again* the Castellan is still the same ... Thalia has been replaced by Flavia and the rest of the High Council are dead from venturing into the Death Zone to contact the Doctors) but it does nothing for the show.... in fact, when I told Jay it was one of the bits that was put back in he just stared and then went "...why?"

The pairings of the Doctors and their respective companions are very good, though. The first Doctor is reunited with Susan after her departure in The Dalek Invasion of Earth although it is not clear where this takes place in his own continuity (and as William Hartnell is dead the role is passed to Richard Hurndall, who does an incredible job, really). Funny, though, Susan doesn't seem resentful at the way the Doctor left her on Earth, and even though she is no longer a young girl, he immediately talks to her as if she had not aged a day. She even manages to sprain her ankle for old times sake. The second Doctor is joined by the Brigadier sometime after the Brigadier's retirement, but during what some revisionists (including script writer Terrance Dicks) refer to as season 6B, where the second Doctor is employed as an agent of the Time Lords before his exile to Earth and thus is travelling alone and can remember that Jamie and Zoe were returned to their own places in space and time. The Third Doctor is paired with Sarah Jane, obviously sometime during his final season as he recognizes her, but she is expecting his successor. And for those who watched School Reunion last year, Sarah isn't harbouring any resntment at being left behind on Earth. Not yet anyways. As the story develops Tegan spends a lot of time with the first Doctor, which makes for some interesting dynamics between two strong characters. And additional to cameos by K9, Jamie and Zoe, Liz Shaw and Mike Yates appear together, even if they did not meet during the classic series (they missed each other by a season, although novels that have been written after have them sharing scenes).

So we have a fun celebration of the series which was broadcast just days after the show's 20th anniversary. It was not considered to be part of either the 20th or 21st seasons as it was shown a couple months before season 21 began (much like the Christmas specials of the new series) and it never gets mentioned by anyone again so who knows if the adventure itself in canon, really, but who cares. It's Doctor Who. Shut up and enjoy. Funny, though, Jay and I just talk through the whole thing...

NEXT EPISODE : WARRIORS OF THE DEEP

The War Games

The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe arrive on the dirty bloody battlefields of World War I in 1917 and are immediately embroiled in the hostilities. Captured first by Germans and then the British army, they are accused of spying and become fugitives. Things are not what they seem, though; the generals in charge of the different armies have high tech telecommunications equipments hidden in their private rooms, and somewhere else the events are monitored by technicians with freaky sunglasses. And practically next door to 1917, just over a hill and through a fog bank, are Roman soliders, and other soldiers fighting in the American Civil War. The Doctor discovers that they are not even on Earth, and someone has set this place up and kidnapped soldiers from various wars in Earth's history. And they have used travel machines that dematerialize with a familiar sound, and are bigger inside than outside. The Doctor is suspicious of these factors and then realizes that the entire operation is being run by the War Chief, one of his own people, who has allied himself with the War Lord and an entire race out to enslave the galaxy. To save the soliders from death on this planet and to defeat the War Lord, the Doctor must call upon his own people - the Time Lords - to assist him, even though he himself is on the run from them, and by calling for help he may well be signing his own death warrant.

10 episodes. My friend Dan grimaced at the prospect and said that aside from episodes 1, 9 and 10, watching The War Games is like having teeth pulled. I admit that at times I felt like I needed a nap, but hey it's over 4 hours in front of the TV, anyone would need a stretch. So I recruited Jay once more, and between episodes 5 and 6 we enjoyed the fine dining experience of the Gerard Square McDonald's and observed the plight of the area. Jay usually has a lot to say about the production values of the show but The War Games is actually done with some very high production values for its day, although the use of transparent plastic sheets as walls and the hideous photographic blow up walls of the TARDIS console room gave us both cause to groan. And we can't figure out why there was a need to have a bubbling maze of streams in episode 10 on the Time Lord planet when any old corridor would do. Running away is, after all, a time honoured tradition, and it is traditionally done in corrdiors. But it's a minor point. So is the sex fetish look of the War Lord's guards, even though their weapons are pretty cool for 1969.

This is the last regular performance of this ensemble TARDIS crew. After a year together, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe will be separated, and not by choice. Caught by the Time Lords and put on trial for his involvement in the affairs of other worlds, the Doctor is taken from his friends, and they are returned to their proper places in time; Zoe is returned to the Wheel, and Jamie finds himself back on the Scottish moors, neither of them remembering their time in the TARDIS with the Doctor. The Doctor is forced to defend himself against the accusations of the Time Lords by showing them the evils he has faced, and he is granted a slight bit of mercy; the Time Lords decide to exile him to Earth, and he will be regenerated. Amid a storm of protest, the Doctor is last seen spinning into infinity on a Time Lord monitor screen, his future hanging in the balance.

Another Doctor down. There was probably less hesitation about regenerating the Doctor again as it had proved to add to the show's popularity back when Patrick Troughton took over the role from William Hartnell, and when the series returned with the new Doctor in the form of Jon Pertwee, things would certainly be very different all over.

There has lately been a lot of development in the revisionist elements of the series, a lot of it centering around exactly what did happen to the Doctor at the end of The War Games. As we never see him regenerate into his new body, it is now being speculated that maybe the Time Lords didn't send him to earth right away and kept him in a form of stasis for a while, using him as an agent when it suited them. In future adventures, the second Doctor will be seen with his other incarnations but without his companions, and even in 1983's The Five Doctors the Doctor will reference Jamie and Zoe's departure, which would certainly seem to place him in a strange kind of limbo. One BBC novel called Players contained a segment involving the second Doctor, obviously in the employ of the Time Lords, and another, called World Game, takes this even further and sees the Doctor paired with a new companion to assist him in his mission. Unfortunately it's only early September now and I am not willing to put the whole blog on hold for the sake of one novel, so if you're reading this as a first time Doctor Who enthusiast, you can hop over to amazon.ca (or.com or whatever is local to you) and reserve your own copy and see for yourself. And if you want to have some fun on the "what if.." side of the coin, Big Finish's audio adventure CD Sympathy for the Devil sees David Warner as an alternative Doctor arriving on Earth in 1997 to serve his exile.

Oh that's what I'm going to do next...

NEXT EPISODE : SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

The Space Pirates

It's the future again. Somewhere out in the far reaches of Earth's empire lay navigational beacons made of a valuable mineral called argonite. Space pirates have long been attacking floater convoys of the mineral and have now turned their attention to the satellites themselves, and it is on board one of these that the TARDIS arrives. The beacon is blown apart into sections, and the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie are separated from the TARDIS and rescued by Milo Clancy, an independent miner feeling the squeeze from his bigger competitor, the Issigri Mining Corp. As Milo and the travellers attempt to trace the missing argonite, the local space authority are investigating the shipping routes as well with the co-operation of Madeline Issigri herself. None of this is missed by the space pirates, who have some sort of hold over Issigri, and plan to get rid of the patrolling V-ship to keep their own piracy venture safe. The Doctor's group follow the trail of the pirates to the planet Ta which is the home base of Issigri, and find that the pirates are using the Issigri base as their own, having kidnapped the senior Issigri (Dom), who was also Milo's partner in the old days.

And blah blah blah. This story is kinda lame. 6 episodes and the Doctor and company don't exactly do much except get captured or knocked out. I'm sure the space corps would have figured it out eventually even without the Doctor's help. Only episode 2 exists on the Lost in Time DVD with the balance on CD from the BBC Radio Collection. The incidental music provided is an extension of that made for The Ice Warriors with a high trilling operatic sound here and there, which is a bit painful when you're listening to it at the gym with your headset turned up loud to block out the gay-club-ish thumpa thumpa that they have on too load as it is. I will, however, give snaps for the spaceship design and the in flight effects, which are sharpened up by the VIDfire processing of the DVD. It would have been nice to see how the rest of the episodes effects went with several more minnow-ships in pursuit of the pirate vessels.

At the end of the story the pirates are locked up and good has triumphed, but the TARDIS is still missing, its section of space beacon orbiting the planet Lobos. Milo kindly offers the travellers a lift in his old clunker, the Liz, and off they go. Anything could happen on their way back to the TARDIS, which could make for some interested extended adventures with Milo as part of the crew. But fortunately no-one has tried to do a novel set in there yet.

So we move on.

NEXT EPISODE : THE WAR GAMES

The Indestructible Man

Okay at LAST a book I enjoyed. Leave it to author Simon Messingham to create a frightening vision of Earth's future where an unknown and virtually unseen alien menace terrorized Earth in a nasty war by posessing normal people and driving them mad. And the only way to stop them was to employ the services of the Indestructible Man; a normal human who was duplicated by the alien Myloki but remained human enough to stop them. But 30 years later, an intruder is fatally shot on a secret base, his companions escape, and six months later he makes a complete recovery. The man also appears indestructible, and he muses that he should have changed. The Doctor realizes that there is more going on than a simple invasion and once Jamie and Zoe have been recovered from where they have hidden on Earth he attempts to find the original Indestructible Man and save the world. Again.

I have long been an opponant of revisionist writers taking previous Doctors and companions into dramatic areas they never really touched on screen, and here we have just that, and aside from a few minor points it is actually done quite well. The second Doctor has often had this frown and darker mood that hinted at his murky past (which is in itself a revisionist concept that came from the final days of the seventh Doctor in 1989), and Messingham has capitalized on this. The Doctor broods a lot. He is direct and to the point when he has to be. And other times he exhibits childlike delight and wonder at what he finds. It's all there, and it all works. The failing in this scheme is usually in the companions, and I find the circumstances that Zoe and, particularly, Jamie, end up in after witnessing the "death" of the Doctor to be a bit of a stretch. Zoe's technical skills are realized and she becomes part of a slave class, working in an office and falling in love with her boss. Every now and again she gets flashes of her previous life on the Wheel and realizes that she is slipping back into her more "robotic" existence, and that her time with the Doctor has changed her. As for Jamie, he becomes a twisted nasty sort working for a local military elite, chanelling his rage at the Doctor's death against those he holds responsible. I suppose people do what they must to survive, but it's hard to picture them in these situations. Even when the eventual re-uniting happens it takes a while for them to come back together and become the TARDIS crew once more.

Earth in Messingham's future is a grim place. The entire social order is in ruins from the effects of the first war, and secret organizations hold the answers and the only hope for the future of the planet. One in particular, SILOET, has direct links back to the old UNIT that was created under Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart back in The Invasion. As UNIT figures very prominently in the future of Doctor Who there is a lot of material referenced here (the Earth year in the book is 2096) which would be confusing for a new viewer/reader who has started at the very start with no knowledge of the future direction of Doctor Who. The people running SILOET, though, are nowhere near the kind of solider the Brigadier was; they are desperate, afraid, and feel helpless in the face of what has happened. Especially good is the commander, Bishop, who doesn't go over the edge as a megalomaniac like some would in his position. Of course the central location to start the story off is London, but the Doctor takes a side-trip to Barbados and regions of South America in search of the Indestructible Man, while Zoe spends time on SKYHOME, a massive skybase within the stratosphere, and Jamie goes to an underwater prison. It's always good when a writer can make all these locations work on page, taking us away from the usual corridors and control rooms. In fact, Messingham doesn't even use the TARDIS as a location the whole novel.

Now, of course, comes the real jarring part: this is the last novel of the second Doctor that I am going to review, so I'm back to 1969, back to the televised episodes. And there are only two adventures left for the Doctor...

NEXT EPISODE : THE SPACE PIRATES

The Colony of Lies

I didn't like this one either. I liked it better than The Final Sanction but not by much.

The story opens with the future seventh Doctor and his companion, Ace, discussing events of the past. Questions from Ace lead the Doctor to remember his visit to the planet Axista Four, back when he was travelling with Jamie and Zoe...

Axista Four is home to a colony of settlers who left earth with a "back to basics" approach to life which was supposed to liberate them from the technology-dependent lives they once lived, but has instead marooned them up a cliche cul de sac where the colony is run like a town out of the wild west, and no technology is used at all. Interstellar luddites, in the end. The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe arrive as a conflict between the settlers clinging to the original vision, and a breakaway group are coming to a head, but also coming is a massive battle cruiser with its own plans for the planet in its efforts to relocate refugees from the Dalek wars. And if that's not enough, there's a mysterious race of dog-like creatures running about the planet; creatures who aren't impressed with the presence of humans on their world.

Colin Brake pretentiously says in his notes that he was intending to do Doctor Who - The Western, and apparantly this was something we have been waiting for. I seem to remember something called The Gunfighters, which was ill-received in its time, but nonetheless despite it's hokey accents and silly costumes, it was the original western. Now this. For starters, if the cover of the book did not have a small western town painted on it, one could almost get away with saying it was just a colony without technology, rather than have to cling to the wild west notions. Brake isn't very good at setting a scene; I never got a proper sense of where anything was happening outside of it being in some part of a ship, a cave, a control room, whatever; not enough work put into maintaining that wild west idea. And I get the feeling that he doesn't like Zoe, seeing as he has her rendered unconscious a few times and out of the way for quite a lot of the book.

Dipping into the future (or the past, depending on your point of view) and using the seventh Doctor as a catalyst to some of the events is an interesting gamble, though. In the years to come the show would have the odd adventure where the Doctor would cross paths with his past selves, and they would never get along. Here we get to see the second Doctor's outrage at his future selve's tendancy to tinker with the past and set things "right"; he sees it as not only wrong but something that will incur the wrath of his own people, still being referred to as "Them". As for the seventh Doctor, they meet very briefly and he is deliberately coy and vague with his past self; one is also reminded of a seventh Doctor novel where he ruins a crossword game for his third incarnation out of sheer mischief.

Nice try, Colin Brake, but I didn't enjoy this. Writing for the second Doctor is something that only a few have managed to pull off, due to the lack of material available to reference and get a feel for the character. Throwing him into a heap of cliche's and having him say "Oh, my word," a lot just doesn't cut it.

NEXT EPISODE : THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN

The Final Sanction

I'm not going to talk a lot about this one, because I don't like it.

Steve Lyons drags his lacklustre Selachians back up out of the literary mire for another round against the Doctor, but this time it's more complicated than before. With Jamie and Zoe in tow, the Doctor is caught in the last days of the war between Humans and Selachians. Jamie ends up fighting alongside the Humans, and Zoe is taken prisoner and held captive. The Doctor, however, is put in an interesting position, one that has never been examined before. Usually the Doctor and company meet important historical figures and go to great lengths to make sure that history is not changed by their presence. This time, the Doctor encounters a piece of "future history" wherein someone he meets will go on to be an important figure even farther on after the war - but the Doctor is faced with the dilemma of saving his companions by changing that future, or letting them die to preserve it. Interesting.

I still didn't like it though.

NEXT EPISODE : THE COLONY OF LIES

The Seeds of Death

Will Earth ever learn that the moon is not a secure place to operate from? Nope. First it was putting world weather control on the moon and leaving it wide open to the evil plans of the Cybermen back in The Moonbase, but now the moon is the central relay point for the world's newest form of travel - the T-Mat. When operating properly, T-Mat can function as a matter transmitter and "beam" anything across the planet instantaneously, thereby getting food to areas that need it, and transporting people as well. Which is the perfect way for the Ice Warriors to invade after taking over the moonbase. Landing on Earth just after T-Mat breaks down, the Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie become involved in the efforts to save the planet from destruction, even crewing a rocket to make a journey to the moon to investigate the system breakdown. But the goals of the Ice Warriors do not end with occupying the moon, they intend to use T-Mat to send seed pods to Earth that will release spores into the atmosphere and create a fungus that will render Earth's atmosphere more like that of Mars, and make it perfect for invasion.

For a 6 part story, The Seeds of Death is very simple and thus the pace feels a bit slower at times than it does on shorter stories. There are a lot of hysterical sequences with the Doctor literally running about either being chased by the Ice Warriors or trying to evade the encroaching foam fungus, which are in effect just visual filler, but somehow can be forgiven when one sees Patrick Troughton's performance. The outer space effects that mark the opening of each episode with dramatic music and pans across the lunar surface are good as well for the time, continuing the theme of good model work that was seen in The Dominators and The Invasion. The added bonus with this story is the extra work that was put in by the restoration team to clean it up for its DVD release. The first time I saw it, the story was split up into two smaller "movies" on Channel 17 many years ago, and I noticed how the picture would change in degrees of fuzziness from episode to episode, but that is no longer an issue with the amount of work that was done to it.

Ah the Ice Warriors. Good to have them back, even if they're not exactly of the same calibre of Varga and his marooned crew from their debut story. The Ice Warrior commander, Slaar, is a different design from the rest, his body being more flexible and not as armoured as his warriors. He still has the characteristic hissing speech of the Martians, and roughly the same helmet design too. The rest of the Martians are of the same design as Varga and Zondal from The Ice Warriors, without any of the oversized bobble-head helmets used this time around (thankfully). Where Slaar is different as a leader than Varga is his detachment from his fellow Martians, being even colder (no pun) and ordering them to do his bidding while he bullies and terrorizes the staff of the moonbase. Varga, on the other hand, was a warrior class himself and probably felt more of a responsibility to his crew to get them back to Mars, and thus addressed them as equals, or as comrades, not just as grunts. Slaar's only equal would be the Grand Marshal, leader of the doomed invasion fleet, who looks almost the same aside from some disco glitter on his helmet. Overall I wouldn't say these are inferior Ice Warriors, just different; the nobility that was hinted at in their previous encounter is left on the side this time, seeing as they are not fighting for survival this time, but out for conquest. We see instead an alien hoarde lacking feelings, stoically going about their plans to take the planet for themselves. The disappointing thing there is they didn't necessarily need to be Ice Warriors for that; any group of galactic thugs would have worked.

With only two more stories left for the season, time for another short break from the televised adventures to look at some more stories in print, starting with the return of another alien hoarde last seen terrorizing a space station full of mystery fans...

NEXT EPISODE : THE FINAL SANCTION

The Krotons

The TARDIS lands on a barren planet that stinks of sulphur. And on this nameless planet live the Gonds, a simple people content to go about their days in their grey jumpsuit uniforms and obey the will of the Krotons; which is to go to school every day until they are smart enough to become companions of the Krotons and enter their "home". And never be seen again. The Krotons never come out of their home, which is a machine called the Dynatrope, but the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe discover that they do indeed come out the other side but as midless zombies, and then get blown away by gas jets as soon as they stumble outside. The truth of the Krotons' ambitions is made public and the Gonds revolt, but the Doctor and Zoe infiltrate the machine by passing a series of tests that proves they are smart enough to be useful, and they inadvertantly reactive the two crystalline Krotons who have been hibernating on board. It seems that only mental energy can help the Krotons but the Gonds are not smart enough to toast bread, so they have been patiently letting their machines teach them and accelerate their brains to a level that will be useful. And to keep them from getting dangerous, they are not told much of science, particularly of the effect that sulfuric acid has on crystalline forms. But then Doctor knows.

Not exactly a gem of it's time, but still entertaining, The Krotons has survived intact - all 4 episodes - and can be enjoyed on VHS. The quality between episodes is vast though, with episode 1 being almost broadcast quality and episode 2 looking like it's being watched through a foggy window, but when DVD time comes it's a forgone conclusion that the Restoration Team wizards will even things out and make it sparkle like new.

Are the Krotons scary? Not really. Okay they're big crytal chunks with claw hands and weapons that can blow things up, but they are not very mobile and once outside their Dynatrope need to be fed contstant instructions to see where they are going. They do have cool voices though. What is scary is the Gonds' total lack of willpower to question the Krotons and their demands to have their two brightest pupils join them in their machine. No, they're not the brightest of people and are even ready to attack the Doctor and company as soon as they arrive, fearing stranger like they do. Jamie gets a chance to scrap with one of the Gonds, but spends a lot more time in the adventure as a prisoner of the Krotons or being left behind by the Doctor and Zoe as they carry on. Fair dues, though, Jamie got a lot more to do in The Invasion than Zoe did.

How's about one more adventure, this time on DVD, then a few more books to extend the season? Oh good I knew you wouldn't object.

NEXT EPISODE : THE SEEDS OF DEATH

The Invasion

The TARDIS comes back together in space after the Land of Fiction is detroyed; the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find themselves flung back into their own universe, orbiting Earth. Within seconds of their arrival the find a missile has been fired at the TARDIS from the dark side of the moon, and they make an emergency landing on Earth. In an attempt to get help to repair some damage to the TARDIS, the Doctor journeys to contact Professor Travers but finds instead that he has moved to America and left his home in the hands of Professor Watkins and his photographer neice Isobel. Watkins works for a company called International Electromatics, which is in turn run by Tobias Vaugham, a powerful businessman. IE are the Microsoft of their day, with their printed circuits in absolutely every piece of computer equipment in the world, and they are also being investigated by the newly formed United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT) and it's new commander, Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart. But there is more to IE than meets the eye, and Vaughan is revealed to be an ambitious traitor allied with the Cybermen in their newest attempt to invade Earth.

This is the fourth time the Doctor has confronted the Cybermen in this incarnation. And once more they have changed their appearance to look less like they were assembled in a hurry, and their voices are different as well. The CyberPlanner from the previous Cyberman story makes an appearance as well, as does the entire Cyberman invasion fleet. The Doctor does not have much in the way of direct confrontation with the Cybermen, just with Vaughan, who has been partially altered by the Cybermen and has a mechanised body like them, but his brain is still very much human, complete with greed and arrogance. Vaughan was played to incredible perfection by Kevin Stoney, who was last seen selling out the Solar System to the Daleks in the form of Mavic Chen in The Dalek Masterplan.

I can't say enough good things about this story. It was made as an 8 episode adventure but of course, some got lost, and we're missing episodes 1 and 4. The VHS release of the adventure has the missing episodes bridged by narration from Nicholas Courtney himself, the man who played the Brigadier and went on to be a fan favourite. The missing episode soundtracks are on CD as well, but as the bulk of the story is available to watch it's not like it suffers too much from their absence. The Cybermen do not actually appear until the end of episode 4, which makes for a lot of amospheric build-up in the meantime with creepy music and a lot of location work outside the imposing IE headquarters building in London. When the Cybermen finally do launch their invasion there are some amazing shots of the fleet in space, as well as the UNIT rocket attack to fend it off. And let's not forget the incredible location work, with the Cybermen throwing the covers off manholes and emerging from the sewers to march down the streets of London, and the steps of St Paul's cathedral. Fantastic stuff - oh to have been a child in 1969 to have seen this on televsion and be blown away by it.

The Invasion served extra purpose in establishing UNIT in the show's lore. After the Yeti invasion UNIT was put together with the specific aim to protect Earth from invasion from other worlds, and who better to run it than the Colonel who was on hand for the Yeti. Only promote him to Brigadier. So now the Doctor has an ally on Earth in modern times, and in a few more adventures he's going to need one.

But in the meantime...

NEXT EPISODE : THE KROTONS

The Mind Robber

To avoid the volcanic eruption on Dulkis, the Doctor makes a dangerous move and hops the TARDIS outside of time and space. It is just supposed to be a temporary measure until he can get the ship to work properly; he is edgy about the white void the TARDIS has materialized in as he knows well enough the powers of the beings who live outside time and space (remember the Toymaker?). But the powers outside the ship manage to lure Jamie and Zoe out, and eventually the ship itself is attacked and all three are stranded in the Land of Fiction. The Land is overseen by the Master of Fiction, and in their efforts to escape and not be turned into fictional characters themselves, the travellers encounter other characters from Earth literature and mythology. The Master of Fiction himself is from Earth and is to be replaced as the creative force behind the Land itself and the replacement he has in mind is none other than the Doctor himself.

In a break from tradition, Jay was on hand for this one and it wasn't the Cybermen for a change. I gave him the option for a Cyber story but no. *sigh* The joy of having a professional person watch this stuff is to see things from another end, while still suspending ones disbelief enough to talk about the story itself and other events that led to it. In episode 1, there is some odd mixing of the faces of Jamie and Zoe as they watch scenery roll by on the TARDIS scanner, which is something new for Doctor Who. "Where's the block of cheddar cheese to go with this?" Jay asked from his chair. Okay, not a techincal analysis, but still valid. Episode 1 itself is set in just the TARDIS and the white void outside; there are 5 episodes in all in The Mind Robber, all of which exist in their entirety on VHS (and in September they'll be on DVD) but episode 1 is merely 17 minutes long. The journey through the Land of Fiction takes up the remaining episodes, all of it studio bound except for Jamie escaping from a vicious wind up toy soldier up a rock face by using Rapunzel's hair. Perfect way for the camera to almost look up his kilt. "Ahhh come to Papa," Jay said again. Okay, he's right, Jamie is kinda hot. There are some other interesting effects in the show, most notably being the stop-motion animation of the snakes on the head of Medusa the Gorgon. After seeing the new series though with all its computer generated everything something like this looks like child's play, but for a television series in 1969, this would have been a lot more impressive than we would credit. And Medusa's attempts to make Zoe look at her and turn her to stone are actually quite chilling. Earlier in the story Jamie is attacked and turned into a statue, and a different actor, Hamish Wilson, plays him for an episode rather than Frazer Hines who reportedly had chicken pox. Or something. Clever way to work around it though; Jay and I had to give them credit for how it was engineered. I'm not going to tell you how, though.

Once the Doctor gets a handle on what is going on he sets about to battle against the Master of Fiction in a fight that will tear the Land apart, but when the Toymaker's realm was destroyed everyone was in danger of going down with it. How will everyone escape? (You know they do though).

NEXT EPISODE : THE INVASION

The Dominators

The TARDIS comes to the planet Dulkis, which as the name implies, is very dull. War and agression have been left by the wayside by the people of the planet, and a musuem on a radioactive test island serves as a warning to all of the dangers associated with weapons of mass destruction. These are all noble gains, but the planet is ripe for plundering by an advance party of Dominators and their small army of Quark robots; they intend to turn the entire world into a source of radioactive fuel for their war fleet, and the Dulcians are not willing to raise a hand against them to defend themselves. Luckily, though, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are, and their influence ignites a dissident named Cully and a group of prisoners to fend for themselves, even if their leaders will not.

This is the start of season 6, and lo all 5 episodes of the story exist and are on a VHS release, even if the efforts of the Restoration Team have made this look muddy by comparison to their DVDs. The production crew go on location to a remote sandy area, or maybe it's a quarry, and blow a lot of things up in a big way, including a travel capsule, a building, and several Quarks Jamie gets to run around a lot being shot at and trying to keep his kilt from flying up as he goes, and Zoe becomes a fashion victim, forced to wear the nasty tutu-like clothing that the Dulcians wear. The Doctor's tendancy to clown around are played on fully as he attempts to convince the Dominators that he is not very smart and not a threat to them, which allows him to escape their notice and work against them in secret. The Dominators themselves are mean men, their outfits made to give them high shoulders and no real neck. Ruthless though they may be they do not get along, and the navigator, Rago, is always reigning in his probationer, Toba, for needlessly destroying everything in sight. The irony of course is that had Toba killed everyone he wanted to outright, their plan would be secure, but with the Doctor running free because Rago thinks he's harmless, things do not go their way at all.

The 5 episode format for this adventure leaves it feeling a bit slow in the pacing area, but it's hard to say exactly what could have stood to be edited to tighten it up. This season will be rife with new episode formats as the next story will also be 5 episodes, there will be one that is 8 episodes long, and the season finale is 10. I hear this and that when I discuss the show with people, and there is some talk that Patrick Troughton did not want to stay for a third season but he was convinced to by the BBC brass, and that this season was the show's first close call with cancellation. As the majority of Troughton's work in the show has been lost this is also the season where one finally gets to know the second Doctor, right before he is about to leave (shades of what just happened in the 2005 season).

The Dominators also brings back the direct link to the next story, something we hadn't seen since the Hartnell days. As the island on Dulkis erupts, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe run for the TARDIS, where their problems are only just beginning...

NEXT EPISODE : THE MIND ROBBER

The Wheel in Space

After leaving Victoria, the Doctor and Jamie find themselves in trouble as the TARDIS breaks down in space. The Doctor averts disaster by removing the time vector generator from the ship while it repairs itself, and he and Jamie find themselves on a rocket in deep space. The rocket has drifted towards one of Earth's outer defence stations, where a crew of scientists are constantly on guard against meteor showers that threaten the solar system. Once on board, though, the Doctor and Jamie discover Cybermats have infested the Wheel, and the Cybermen are not too far behind in another attempt to invade the Earth.

Again, another 6 part adventure but with a very simple plot. And not that many Cybermen, really; an advance party of two is all it takes to get the Cybermats into action and begin the subversion of order on the Wheel by taking control of the minds of the technicians. The advance party are in contact with their new leader, the Cyber Planner, which is not even a Cyberman but a brain in the middle of a mechanical apparatus - another example of the evolution of the Cybermen. The Cybermen themselves have changed again since their last appearance in Tomb of the Cybermen, their heads are redesigned and their hands still have only three fingers but they are more mechanical looking. A new sort of Cyberman war cruiser is seen in episode 6 as well. This makes the third time the second Doctor encounters them, and the fourth in the series as a whole; their appearance rate is something like twice a season now, which is something even the Daleks never had. Perhaps with Terry Nation having taken away his creations the big push was on to create a new menace in their place, and they do quite well.

A new companion named Zoe Herriot joins the TARDIS crew at the end of the adventure after helping deal with the Cybermen. Zoe is a computer programmer and analyst but somewhere in her training a bit of her humanity has been repressed. She is not completely without emotions like the Cybermen themselves, but she does have a tendancy to spit out the facts regardless of how disturbing the people around her may find them. By her own admission she does want to feel things and experience emotions, and attempting to stow away on board the TARDIS seems like just the ticket. Jamie immediately forms a bond with her based on teasing her when her knowledge does not cover everything she encounters, and she in turn is condescending towards him when his own lack of smarts gets him in trouble. The Doctor is patient with Zoe when she rambles about logic, teling her that logic is just a way to be wrong with authority, but he takes her along willingly at the end, perhaps seeing the real person within trying to get out. And to brace her for what is to come, he re-tells the events of The Evil of the Daleks, which would be the first ever rerun on BBC 1 of Doctor Who.

The Wheel in Space is another of the incomplete stories, with episodes 3 and 6 restored on the Lost in Time DVD collection. The rest makes for entertaining audio on a BBC Radio Collection CD, but this time the narration is provided by Wendy Padbury, who played Zoe herself.

With the TARDIS crew back up to capacity, season five closes, and mere weeks away would be the start of season six, and a series of events that would drag a lot of the Doctor's past out into the open...

NEXT EPISODE : THE DOMINATORS

Fury from the Deep

The place is somewhere along the coast of England. The TARDIS makes an unusual arrival and materializes over the sea, then lands on top of it and stays afloat, and the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria row themselves ashore to find a natural gas processing station in some peril. Production suffering, there are unexplained pressure issues, and the Doctor detects a rhythmic sound within the pipelines. A malignant creature made of seaweed has started to infiltrate the base and take over the minds and bodies of the staff, with the apparant intention of spreading across the world eventually. Victoria finds herself questioning why she is always subjected to such terrors as she has been since she met the Doctor and Jamie, and finds herself faced with a wrenching decision to make: to continue on as she is, or to try and make herself a new home in a strange time.

There's not much to really say about the plot of the story even if it is a 6 part adventure (none of which exists intact, just a few clips including a REALLY scary bit) but the tension and horror keeps it going the whole way. The seaweed is identified as the bad guy relatively early, and it is next to impossible to stop as it floods through the base with creeping tendrils and masses of sea foam. There are the usual detractors in the cast who refuse to believe that seaweed is the cause of the trouble, even after it attacks them, but everyone is convinced soon enough. I enjoyed this adventure while travelling home on the VIA train from Windsor a few days ago, and caught a few bemused looks from the guy sitting next to me as Victoria's screams leaked out through the earphones.

Yes, Victoria screams. A lot. She screams in almost every episode of her career. I've not made a big deal of it before seeing as she's a sheltered Earth girl from the Victorian age and of course she is going to scream whern something monsterous makes a garb for her. It makes sense. It's not the same as having dear Susan with her "I'm an alien and I'm so much smarter than you" demeanour caving in and screaming her fool head off every few minutes. And shrill as they are, it's her screams that eventually save the day, as the weed creature cannot handle loud soundwaves.

Her departure is a huge choice for her as I said already. She can't go on being frightened every day; the strain is getting to her, proving that space and time travel are not for everyone the Doctor chooses to come along with him. Jamie is still content to enjoy the spirit of adventure, but he has alrady seen two other companions before him simply grow tired of the constant barrage of aliens and the exhaustion that comes with travelling in the TARDIS. Victoria's final choice to stay on Earth in a contemporary time (I'm going to just assume Fury from the Deep is actually set in 1968) is what's best for her for now, and it tears Jamie right up, perhaps showing that he had some kind of affection for her that went beyond simply teasing her like he would a kid sister. The Doctor has seen this sort of thing before and does give Victoria time to think it over properly and maybe reconsider, but when her stand is firm, he wishes her well and lets her go. Jamie sulks, and the Doctor almost indignantly shouts at him that he was fond of her too, perhaps a bit of the ache of seeing another friend leave him starting to show through.

Jamie and the Doctor leave in the TARDIS, their destiny somewhere in the stars. On Earth Victoria will live her life and grow as a person, but her time with the Doctor has changed her and shown her a darkness that will haunt her for years until she is faced with an old danger and no Doctor to help her this time. But that is in the future. For now, the Doctor and Jamie have their own problems to worry about...

NEXT EPISODE : THE WHEEL IN SPACE

Combat Rock

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria to a distant planet with a ghoulish past based on tribal warfare and cannibalism. Such days are long gone, though, and the planet has been conquered by the equivalent of Christian missionaries to raise the savages and make them better people. And then there are the tourists, come to take pictures of the indiginous tribes and partake of the local customs, and the local prostitutes. Rumour of a resurgance of the cannibal ways prompts the Doctor to investigate, dragging Jamie and Victoria and a couple of local whores along with him to an island steeped in evil. Somewhere else nearby, a group of elite troops (called the Dogs) are methodically moving through the jungles killing everyone they encounter, from tribesmen, lost tourists, and the occasional hooker, at the behest of the non-elected president of the planet.

Jamie cavorting with hookers. Victoria being scared and bullied again. The hookers fighting with each other like it's an episode of COPS. And the Dogs all characteriszed to be such individuals that they become mere charicatures of crazed mercenary killers, especially the nasty leader, Pan, and his misogynistic ways. Oh and what would it be without one of the killers being a haughty bisexual named Pretty Boy, who wears leather and lace and is consumed with his own appearance. The Doctor is portrayed at the extremes of his character, spending more time cowering and acting afraid than thinking and acting. And why oh why does author Mick Lewis figure he will be one of the special writers to tackles Jamie's Scottish accent and actually hook himself on phonetics for the novel? Granted it is not as overwhelming as the novelization for Trainspotting (parts of which I had to read three times before I got the gist of what was being said) but why bother? Jamie's accent in the series is not as gutteral as Lewis presents it on page, and there are few other authors who attempt to use it to distinguish Jamie from otehr characters.

The big problem with this book is excessiveness. Excessive gore. Excessive use of the minor shades of our regular characters, with Victoria throwing her dignity all over the place in a manner she rarely does on screen. And once we add the whole cannibal aspect and the brutal slayings... it's just too much. Even the parallels between the Indoni people and the British conquest of India back in the days of the Empire are just too blatant to miss, but no, we have to have Victoria herself, a product of that age, remind us again and again about it. Overkill, Mr Lewis, just like his first effort into the series, Rags. Which also suffered from the same problems.

Let's return to the televised series now. And pray Mick Lewis doesn't write another book, or, worse, write a script for the next season of the televised series.

NEXT EPISODE : FURY FROM THE DEEP

Twilight of the Gods

There's nothing like going back, is there?

The thing that I love about the print versions of Doctor Who is how authors are allowed to go back and revisit their favourite episodes, re-examine the past events, and get that chance to see how the Doctor's presence influenced the lives of the people he touched. It's not always pretty, when you consider how he says he hates goodbyes and likes to run out as soon as the evil has been vanquished and leaves the survivors to learn how to clean up the mess. But, there are other times when everything is going just fine, the Doctor has truly shown them the way... and something else comes along.

Take Vortis, the insect world of The Web Planet. Freed from the influence of the Animus, the world is alive again, the forests and flowers are back, and the Menoptera have made good on their promise to live in harmony with the Zarbi and be watchful for another Animus. They did not, however, account for an interplanetary war and a territory struggle that would see Vortis being fought over by two races. It seems that the Gods of Light are on their side when the Doctor returns with a new face and new companions, but there is more at stake with the rise of a second Animus, and the revelation that Vortis may just be a huge ant farm, the Gods themselves just observers who have forgotten how their experiment works and cannot handle how it has evolved.

I suspect that author Christopher Bulis was one of those fans who found the world of Vortis just alive with possibilities, and was annoyed with the banning of Web Planet writer Bill Strutton from working on the series again. It's evident in his writing that he likes the world of Vortis, and in some kind of homage to the original story has the Doctor and Jamie captures by the darker forces and Victoria befriended by the Menoptera as Barbara was years before. Victoria gets to recover some of her dignity and demands that the alien agressors laying waste to the planet address her as a lady, bringing her back from the edges of terror she has been subjected to in the previous adventures.

Twilight of the Gods was published in the Virgin Missing Adventures range years ago, and is out of print. Copies still pop up on eBay at an okay price; if you're a fan without, try getting yourself one of these. You won't be sorry.

How's about another?

NEXT EPISODE : COMBAT ROCK

The Web of Fear

After regaining control of the TARDIS, the Doctor discovers that he has been trapped by a web in space and drawn back to present-day Earth. The TARDIS materializes in an Underground station where soliders are attempting to halt the spread of a fungus substance through the tunnels, and a killer mist in the streets overhead. With central London evacuated, the Yeti are found roaming the streets and the tunnels. 30 years after his expedition to Tibet, Professor Travers has accidentally reactivated a control sphere and allowed the Great Intelligence to return to Earth, and its plans are more thorough than before; this time it is ready for the Doctor and plans to suck all the knowledge and experience out of his mind for its own use. As with The War Machines, the Doctor is co-opted into helping the local military repel the invasion attempt, liasing with Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart of the army.

Episode 1 is all that remains of this story, which is as always a crying shame, but it is good that there is something to go on as opposed to no material whatsoever. There is a prolonged street battle with the army fighting the redesigned Yeti in episode 5, but it translates very poorly on audio; thankfully there is a short clip of it that cencors cut out of the original broadcast and it made its way to the Lost in Time DVD along with the intact episode itself. Other surviving material includes the Yeti roaming the tunnels of the London Underground and the bodies of dead soldiers covered in the Intelligence's web.

Placing the Yeti in such a familiar site as the Underground would have a profound impact on the viewers of the time, seeing something they recognize on televsion being overrun with monsters just like the London scenes in The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Small children watching were suddenly afraid of taking the Tube for fear of running into them down there, resulting in more complaints against the show for being too frightening for small children. Indeed, the Yeti are much more fierce than they were in their debut story and this time have been given a roar to go with their new look. In an unusual move, perhaps out of concern over the level of fear in the show, the BBC aired a short trailer just before episode 1 of Patrick Troughton on the Underground set advising young viewers that the Yetia re making an appearance and they are much more frightening than before, so they might want to hold their parents' hands to keep them from getting scared. Ah if only they had found that trailer as well when they found the one for The Power of the Daleks.

Bringing back Travers after a few episodes but making the gulf many years was an interesting move. This time he has a daughter along with him, who is all grown up and has inherited her father's scientific curiosity. Travers makes an interesting observation that the Doctor and Jamie are all the family that Victoria has in the world, reminding us again of the grim circumstances surrounding her joining of the crew in the first place. After being menaced by Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti, Ice Warriors, human thugs and now the Yeti again, it's time to wonder how much more of this she is going to be able to take. The other character of note is Lethbridge-Stewart. A no-nonsense military man, he is keen to take charge of a situation and do what he feels he must to turn it around. He'll be back. So will the Yeti, but not for a very long time.

Time to take a break from the televised series and look a couple of novels; one from the Virgin Books range and a relatively new one from the BBC Books range. It's nice weather outisde right now, may as well go find a tree and do some reading.

NEXT EPISODE : THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

The Enemy of the World

Earth again. The future again. Only not as far flung as before. Once more though the Earth is threatened by natural disasters, but one man, a man named Salamander, is able to predict the disasters with amazing accuracy and had made great leaps in science to aid in the relief after the disasters strike. Through his benevolance, he has acquired great power and influence, and some suspect along with it he has become corrupt. When the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive on a beach in Australia, they are immediately enlisted by Salamander's enemies to help them bring him down and expose him. Jamie and Victoria are to infiltrate his headquarters and gather what information they can on his dealings, while the Doctor is asked to impersonate the man himself, for they are identical save for Salamander's Spanish accent. The ruse does not work as well as expected and Jamie and Victoria are exposed to the intregue of Salamander's inner court where assassination attempts and intregue are everyday events. But there is more going on than anyone can suspect, and it is revealed in time that Salamader is in effect behind the natural disasters with the help of a group of underground workers in a bunker duped into believing that the world has fallen under nuclear war and their efforts are to work against their enemies. When he is exposed, Salamander flees, but in a turnaround of events attempts to impersonate the Doctor and steal the TARDIS, which doesn't go so well for him.

The Enemy of the World tells a story of absolute power corrupting absolutely, bringing a harsh edge to the season. Here we have no obvious monsters towering over anyone and trying to exterminate people, but a man who is monsterous on the inside, working to perpetuate himself and add to his power over others. Salamander operates on many levels to get what he wants, either by blackmailing his political enemies, or by out and out having them killed. Despite the fact that the world loves him and is grateful to him for his aid, his own inner circle despise him for the most part, right down to his food taster, and those who are on his "side" merely seek to be there to bask in his power so they can indulge their own taste for bullying. Jamie and Victoria narrowly escape an interrogation from one of the worst, played oh so perfectly by Milton Johns at his snivelling scheming best (I actually want to hit this man every time he gets a role in Doctor Who).

In listening to the story (for only episode 3 exists, again on the brilliantly restored Lost in Time DVD collection, while the rest are on the BBC Radio Collection CD) one notices how minor the Doctor's role actually is this time. Patrick Troughton was playing both his regular role and that of Salamander, but the latter seems to see more screen time, with the emphasis on how the people around him are working to bring him down. The Doctor is cautious to get involved, wanting proper proof (how do you know a proof? a proof is something that is proven; it is a proof) before he interferes for a change, and sending Jamie and Victoria into the thick of it because they are the only ones he can trust to give him the proper information. His likeness to Salamander also means he cannot move very freely himself, or he will be mistaken for his doppleganger (and in episode 1 is almost shot in his place by extermists).

So with Salamander trying to operate the TARDIS, the ship is flung into the vortex with the doors open to the outside, and as we saw in Planet of Giants, that's a bad bad thing. Salamander is sucked out into the void, leaving the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria desperately hanging on for dear life as the ship reels out of control...

NEXT EPISODE : THE WEB OF FEAR

The Ice Warriors

Somewhere in the future of Earth, mankind has mastered control of the elements and perfected a means of synthetic food to feed Earth's increasing population. As a result of this, farmland and open space are all but gone, every centimeter taken up by housing, aside from a bare minimum of plant life. And then one year there is no spring, and massive glaciers begin to move across the world, triggering a new ice age. To combat the ice, scientists build emergency stations across the world equipped with ionizers, but in the Britannicus (aka England) base, the systems are falling apart due to unrest amongst the staff. The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria arrive just as one of the scientists free an apparantly dead creature from the ice face. The Doctor is all but drafted into service to assist with the ionizer problems, and the creature returns to life. The monster is known as Varga, a warrior from the planet Mars, who crashed on Earth millions of years before along with his crew. Varga revives the rest of his crew and the warriors go on the rampage, attempting to extort fuel elemts for their stranded ship from the ionizer base, regardless of the consequences to the Earth.

This is the first time we see what will be known as the Ice Warriors. As species go they should be called Martians, but their dependency on cold weather lends them the nickname which will become legendary in Doctor Who, even if they do only appear in four adventures. Physically they are very tall, once again adding to the theme of huge monsters for the season. With Patrick Troughton's Doctor being a bit on the shorter side, his confrontation scenes with them are made all the more tense, with him glaring upwards and them looming over him impassively. And they're green. Of course. They are armoured but visibly reptillian, speaking in a menacing hiss which is actually very effective. There appear to be different breeds of Ice Warrior as well; Varga and his lieutenant, Zondal, are the only two capable of speech, and both are of the classical design of the moster, while Turoc, Rintan, and Isbur are silent giants with the same body build but differently formed heads - a bit of cultural diversity that has not been seen with the likes of the Cybermen or the Daleks (the Cybercontroller and the Emperor Dalek aside).

Victoria spends most of the adventure as a prisoner of the Ice Warriors, being positively terrorized first by Varga, and then by the rest of his crew as they return to life. Her escape attempt from their ship and through the glacier's caverns is an incredible sequence, her fear and panic plain to see as she attempts to get away from the lumbering Turoc. The whole adventure is shot with incredible precision, with effective close-ups and a unique musical score. Even the opening credits after the normal title role are customized, with the title of the show and writer's credits superimposed over scenes of frozen desolation. Unlike the other adventures of the season, the episode numbering is done with a simple overlay of the the word, rather than the numeral, with "Episode 1" simply replaced by "ONE" and so on.

This is, alas, anotehr incomplete adventure, but it is not as decimated as others of its time. The Ice Warriors, like Tomb of the Cybermen before it, was completely missing from the BBC archive for years until episodes 1, 4, 5 and 6 were all found together. 2 and 3 still elude us to this day, but the BBC home video release comes with not only the CD audio version of the missing episodes (although with no linking narration, as with The Crusades) but a reconstructed presentation of the episodes in a 15 minute segment called "TWO and THREE" to bridge the gap. What images were available are used along with the audio clips to preserve the integrity of the adventure, and, of course, to make the tape more marketable. Don't expect this one on DVD for a while though; there are plenty of complete stories still waiting for release and hey, TWo and THREE might turn up one day. Still, it would be great to see these stylish classic episodes restored through the magic of VIDfire.

Every now and again, though, Doctor Who fails science. In this episode it is stated that the act of removing all the plants from Earth depleted the atmosphere of its supply of carbon dioxide, and thus there was no heat retention and the glaciers began to advance. Right. Last time I checked, plants actually produce oxygen and consume carbon dioxide, so realistically a world without plants would see the residents dying from asphyxiation rather than freezing under the ice. Indeed, with industry churning out all those new housing units and making synthetic food, there would be more CO2 than ever before, triggering a greenhouse effect and melting the polar ice caps. Of course there's also that science from The Day After Tomorrow where the melting ice caps redefine the ocean currents and weather patterns suffer as a result, and scientists snarked at that as well, so who's to say.

And who cares really. The story is not about the science of keep the Earth green and happy, but of a group of stranded aliens, desperate to get away from the humans, who they know will capture them and keep them prisoner as scientific curiosity. It's about how ruthless those aliens will become in order to survive, and, of course, how the Doctor will defeat them and save us all from another alien menace.

So the "monster season" rolls along. But the next monster is not an alien monster at all. He is human. He just looks like an alien, an alien we all know very well by now.

NEXT EPISODE : THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD

The Abominable Snowmen

A small camp on a high mountain is attacked by a massive furry creature, and one man is left for dead. The other stumbles blindly into the night, running for his life. In the morning, the TARDIS materializes nearby and the Doctor reveals that he, Jamie, and Victoria are in Tibet, and he knows the locals as he is in posession of one of their holy relics entrusted to him years before by the Monks of the Det-Sen Monastary. Returning the small bell to the monks, however, does not prove to be the celebration the Doctor hoped for, and he is accused by an explorer named Travers of attacking his camp and murdering his colleague. The monks of Det-Sen are suspicious of the Doctor as well, for with his arrival and Travers' accusation has come the recent attacks on them by the Yeti - the fabled abominable snowmen of the Himalayas. The truth is that the Yeti are in fact robots, being controlled by the Great Intelligence, a non-coroporeal entity from deep space that found its way to Earth through the meditation of one of the monks. The Doctor faces the perils of fighting a foe that is controlling an old friend, and fending off the attacks of the Yeti against all in the monastary. The Intelligence craves a physical form of its own and needs the Yeti robots to serve as its hands until such time as it can make its plans come to fruition, but it does not take into account the presence of the Doctor, and is defeated, leaving burned-out Yeti littering the Tibetan slopes.

More hints to the mysterious past of the Doctor here, in the form of his involvement with Det-Sen during its hour of need. The master monk, Padmasambahva, recognizes the Doctor when he sees him but makes no comment about his physical form having changed, so the Doctor appears to have been here before in this incarnation, perhaps an untold story with Ben and Polly at his side. Jamie is drafted into service with the monks to help defend the monastary, and Victoria screams a lot, which is something she is going to become famous for. The Doctor plays things cool even when he is locked up on the strength of Travers' accusations, sitting in a cell playing his recorder, but when the time comes to fight the Intelligence, he is there and ready. The Yeti are not as frightening as one would expect; they make no sound in this adventure, just lumber about in silence. Only episode 2 of the 6-part story exists, along with some colour location footage detailing the shooting of the serial in 1967, but there is enough to show the sheer size of the monsters, and how they could be terrifying to a small child as they rampage down a mountain in pursuit of Jamie and Victoria. Still, what kind of monsters are these that can be put out of action by removing a silver sphere control unti from their bodies? Okay, this is Doctor Who where the Daleks are foiled by a flight of stairs, but come on.... the sphere is easily knocked free when a Yeti is ambused and attacked by Jamie and the monks, and in episode 4 the Doctor casually opens a Yeti and pulls its sphere out. Some argue that the Great Intelligence did not consider the presence of someone smart enough to figure out that the Yeti were robots, but that doesn't make for intelligence as great as promised. Small point, though.

NEXT EPISODE : THE ICE WARRIORS