The Trial of a Time Lord - episodes 5 to 8 : Mindwarp

The Valeyard's evidence against the Doctor continues with a viewing of the adventure the Doctor was engaged in before being lifted out of time and to the space station's courtroom. The Doctor and Peri arrive on Thoros Beta to confront arms dealers supplying weapons to lesser races, and they find the beastly Sil and his people, the Mentors, in control. Other work is going on in the caves of the Mentors' home, though; the brilliant surgeon Crozier is working on a means to prolong the life of Sil's boss, Kiv, and dabbling in brain implants on the side. The Doctor is subjected to a mind altering device and sides with the Mentors, leaving Peri to fight for survival alongside the barbarian king, Yrcanos, and the slaves from Thoros Alpha, and providing the Valeyard with even more ammunition against the Doctor.

This is good fun Doctor Who, with plenty of running around in corridors to keep us all amused. The script is delivered by Philip Martin, the writer who created Sil for Vengeance on Varos and planned to bring him back with Mission to Magnus (no elements of which were cannibalized for this script, by the way, so it's not a reworking of shelved material), and although we have switched writers, the linking sequences in the courtroom are still maintained the same (I detect the work of script editor Eric Saward here). The Inquisitor shows a bit of stress at having to intervene in the sparring between the Doctor and the Valeyard; the Valeyard hammers home his evidence by playing up the danger that Peri, and all companions before her, faces, and sets out to crucify the Doctor for his sudden switch in allegiances. The Doctor, while suffering from memory loss due to his abrupt removal from time, denies that he would do such a thing, although the evidence being presented via the Matrix suggests otherwise. Peri is abandoned, captured, tortured, courted by the insanely over the top Yrcanos as played by acting legend Brian Blessed, and then, tragically, killed.

Yes. Peri dies on the Matrix screen, her life snuffed out with a callous disregard. The Doctor is devastated by this. Fans all knew it was coming back in 1986 when the show returned to the screens and the news of Nicola Bryant's departure was overshadowed by the name of the actress who would replace her. But we all knew she was going to die, and when it finally happened it still came as a numbing shock. Companions do not die on a regular basis, although the last few seasons were peppered with deaths such as Adric, Kamelion, and Nyssa's near death from lazar disease; prior to these events, the last time a companion died was Sara Kingdom in episode 12 of The Dalek Master Plan in 1966. Fan reaction to Peri's death was mixed, although I remember showing it to my friends Lori Newman and Samantha Allen back in high school and they were delighted to see her go. When Jay and I watched it recently ... well there were no tears or anything - let's not get crazy now - but it was an understood that the death of a companion was a severe blow to the Doctor. Like, imagine losing your best friend.

Other performances of note include Nabil Shaban reprising his role as Sil, although in a slightly modified costume, and Christopher Ryan as Kiv. What's really going on over on Thoros Beta though - what's the deal with all those bodyguards with the huge - and I mean HUGE muscles? More recruits from the JNT casting machine no doubt, right Jay? Everyone else on set is eclipsed by some of those biceps, although Colin Baker's gut manages to cast quite a shadow all on its own. And while we're going on about visuals, check out the early attempts at Paintbox in these episodes with the white cliffs of Dover painted a bright blue and the oceans done in neon pink; every now and again though the process fails and tints Colin Baker's hair pink and both lead actors' faces blue. But that could be the glare, right?

Reeling from Peri's death, the Doctor begins to realize that there is more to this supposed trial than appears on the surface, and fuelled by rage and pain, he is determined to find out what it is.

NEXT EPISODE : TERROR OF THE VERVOIDS

The Trial of a Time Lord - episodes 1 to 4 : The Mysterious Planet

The TARDIS is yanked out of time and space, and the Doctor emerges into a courtroom on a massive space station. With a jury of distinguished Time Lords as witness, and the Inquistitor overseeing, the Doctor is accused of meddling in the affairs of other planets but the court prosecutor, the Valeyard. The Doctor tries to dodge the trial by using his status as Lord President of Gallifrey but he is informed by the Inquisitor that in his absence from his post, he has been deposed. Still confused from being pulled through the vortex, and without Peri at his side, the Doctor watches as his journey to the planet Ravalox is presented as evidence; a robot master oversees a small human population of the planet - which is revealed to be Earth following a devastating solar flare - while a small band of humans live on the surface above. Enter the unscrupulous Sabalom Glitz and his associate Dibber; mercenaries here on a mission of their own, although their presence results in a crisis endangering not only Ravalox, but untold millions across the galaxy.

The parallel between the plight of the series at the time and the Doctor's own plight is not a secret; Doctor Who had been off the air since the conclusion of Revelation of the Daleks and its return some 18 months later was looked upon as the show's last chance to redeem itself and regain momentum. The entire umbrella theme of the Trial would run the entire twenty-third season, all 14 episodes (half the regular length of the series) and would feature a new villain (the Valeyard), a new, if somewhat weak, version of the main theme song, a new companion, and an overweight leading man now barely being contained by his multicoloured costume. There would also be no more use of film on location shoots, and the entire show was recorded on video, somewhat cheapening the overall look of the production.

The first four episodes are collectively known as The Mysterious Planet, penned by series veteran Robert Holmes, and it comes with everything one would expect from him: comedy double act, cracking dialogue between the characters, and a good rapport between the series regulars - which came as a relief to fans who tired of seeing the Doctor and Peri snipe at each other. The revelation that Ravalox is actually Earth and that it is in the wrong part of the galaxy comes as a huge blow to Peri; this is the first time she comes face to face with the mortality of her home planet. The death of the planet itself has been hinted at before; in The Ark Earth is seen being burned to a cinder by the sun, and more recently a solar flare drove mankind away from the planet as documented in The Ark in Space. How this latest destruction of Earth scenario fits into that continuity remains to be seen, although there are theories. Is Nerva Beacon in orbit over Ravalox right now? Is there a Sontaran lurking elsewhere on the planet? Actually, geographically the location is not far off from where the Doctor claimed to have arrived in The Sontaran Experiment ; he claimed the transmat circle was near Trafalgar Square, and in The Mysterious Planet the Doctor and Peri come to discover the abandoned ruin of Marble Arch station in the London Underground (realized a bit better than the stations in The Web of Fear).

How about that cast. Glitz and Dibber are not just there by chance; they've been sent for something specific and they already know about Ravalox's true identity. Katryca, the Queen of the Free, wants her people to live without fear of Drathro, the robot that runs the underworld and terrorizes his workforce. Merdeen, one of Drathro's henchmen, knows that there are free people on the surface and secretly allows Drathro's slaves to escape, and he sees the Doctor's arrival as just the help he needs to free everyone. Sitting in the courtroom, the Inquisitor is pretty impartial to the hearing although one can detect her Time Lord sensibilities being offended by the accusations against the Doctor; she keeps both the Doctor and the Valeyard in check though. As for the Valeyard, exactly who this oily dark character is remains to be seen; his contempt for the Doctor is onbious as he suggests that the Doctor face a capital punishment for his crimes if found guilty, contending that the Doctor's previous trial in The War Games dealt him far too lenient a sentence (the Valeyard is obviously not a revisionist, as the Doctor's supposed limbo and employ as an agent of the Time Lords prior to his exile would not be a lenient sentence at all).

The case against the Doctor seems flimsy, though, even to a casual observer, and it's obvious even without knowing that there are 10 more episodes of this to come that there is something else going on. Jay and I of course knew this so we chatted aimiably through the whole thing, remarking at how nice it was to see the Doctor and Peri actually talking for a change, even if Peri had made some sad fashion choices. We both agreed that Dibber is hotter than Glitz, and both look like they were hanging out in some gay bar when they were hired for the job. There has been much criticism that Drathro and his L1 robot cohort look like Capsela robots at worst and Transformers at best, but the sheer size of them against the BBC budget would make it hard to build them convincingly.

Anyways. There's more to come.

NEXT EPISODE : THE TRIAL OF A TIME LORD - MINDWARP

The Year of the Pig

The Doctor and Peri are on holiday, taking a well deserved rest for a change, but their rest is soon interrupted by the strange goings-on at the seaside hotel they have chosen. Peri receives a mystery thank you gift hours prior to her saving a man's life in the sea - a man who turns out to be a French inspector on the trail of an elusive quarry. Within the hotel sits Toby the Sapient Pig - a well-dressed porcine chap watching his old film reels and dreaming of the past, while ordering lunch and snacks on a rotating basis. And what would celebrity be without the enthusiastic fan Miss Baltitude stalking the corridors of the hotel hoping for a glimpse of her hero? Toby's life is in danger, and very soon the Doctor and Peri are also at risk, but before they can save Toby, they have to figure out who the real threat is.

The Year of the Pig is an interesting title, probably chosen seeing as it's release did coincide with the Chinese New Year becoming that of the pig. Toby himself is an interesting character, being an actual pig cpabale of speech and reason - based in part on the real theatrical character Toby the Sapient Pig who was an exhibit in the ninteenth century. Played by Paul Brooke he sounds like the original Winnie the Pooh, or even Kaa the snake from The Jungle Book ... or someone's kindly grandfather telling stories of when he was a boy. Maureen O'Brien - yes, Vicki herself from the 60s - plays the doting Miss Baltitute, a very creepy kind of obsessed groupie who ingratiates herself into Toby's inner circle when his nurse goes off to help the Doctor look for the threats to Toby's life.

Notes elsewhere online place this tale further back in continuity between Timelash and Revelation of the Daleks, perhaps owing to it's 2 part format as was the case with The Reaping, but the interplay between Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Doctor and Peri is more in keeping with later adventures where their relationship is less rocky (which is either the Doctor finally settling down after his regeneration or Peri easing up on the comments that set him off). There is also the question of the version of the opening theme used for the adventure - the version that debuted in the season 23 epic Trial of a Time Lord.

And that's next...

NEXT EPISODE : THE TRIAL OF A TIME LORD - THE MYSTERIOUS PLANET

The Reaping

While visiting a lunar history archive, Peri discovers that a childhood friend's father has passed away, and she begs the Doctor to take her to the funeral in Baltimore. Their arrival on Earth in 1984 is not the happy homecoming Peri had hoped for; her mother, Janine Foster, has split with Peri's stepfather Howard over Peri's disappearance on Lanzarote, and a lingering anger between mother and daughter remains. The Doctor undertakes an investigation into the dead man's past and discovers that he had come into contact with the Cybermen in another of their attempts to repopulate their species before they vanish from the universe, and the graves of the recently departed may contain a threat to the future of humanity...

I was a bit thrown by the decision to make The Reaping as a 2-part story instead of a 4-parter as was the arrangement for the previous discs following Revelation of the Daleks, but it made for good storytelling regardless, building to one big climax point as opposed to breaking the story up into smaller ones. The strength of the adventure lies not in the pace, though, but in the tension created from Peri's sudden return to her normal life after no explaination of her absence - indeed, her mother thought she was dead as did her friends. There's a fun flashback at the start of the adventure to Lanzarote the morning of Peri's fateful meeting with the Doctor and Turlough; Nicola Bryant manages to perk up her voice a bit and sound like the teenager she was back then. And speaking of voices, Peri's mother, Janine, is played by the incredible Claudia Christian who sci fi geeks will know best as Ivanova from Babylon 5.

This play is the prequel to the earlier-reviewed The Gathering, wherein the fifth Doctor meets Tegan again in Australia. The surviving members of The Reaping appear in it as well, bringing a Cyber-conversion unit with them as spoils of the adventure, as it promises to cure cancer if used properly. I'm not a huge fan of the intertwining storyline when it operates like this; a similar experiment was done with the novels Blood Harvest and Goth Opera in theVirgin Books range and it worked okay, there was always the problem, though, of keeping continuity straight. I'll say this much though; I don't like the ending.

NEXT EPISODE : I, DAVROS - GUILT

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

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

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

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

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