Bloodheat

The TARDIS is attacked by an unknown force and Benny is ejected from the craft into the vortex. The Doctor and Ace lose the TARDIS in a tar pit, finding themselves on a parallel Earth where the last remnants of humanity have survived a deadly plague and are pitted in a desperate battle for survival against the resurrected Silurian race. It's an alternative reality, and not only has the war against the reptilian race turned Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart into a hard and ruthless man, but it has claimed the Doctor as a casualty years ago.

Bloodheat begins a 5-novel cycle of alternate reality, and it starts it off with the extreme of actually going to a parallel Earth (which until the time it was published had only been done in Inferno but has since popped up as a theme in the 2006 season of the new series) and seeing the contrasts between what we consider as is and what could have been. Things all go wrong for humanity when the third Doctor is unable to escape the Silurian base and work on an antidote to their bacterial weapon, and in the days of the war that follows the Doctor is killed as a prisoner. UNIT is unable to stop the Silurians and Sea Devils as they emerge from hibernation and the Earth is overrun. When the seventh Doctor eventually crosses paths with the Brigadier and Liz Shaw, they are suspicious of him, never entirely trusting him to be who he says he is. And it's not just the Doctor who has to deal with the rejection of people he knows as friends; in this reality, Ace's friend Manisha has not been the victim of a racist attack on her home (as described in the novelization of Remembrance of the Daleks and more vividly in her soliloqy in Ghost Light) but the circumstances of their friendship are not the same this time.

Benny has the more interesting perspective when it comes to dealing with the Silurians, and when she is captured by them and used as an experimental subject they too notice it: she has no race fear of them. When pot-holing scientists from the Wenley Moor underground project first encountered the reptile species they were driven mad with fear and reduced to gibbering maniacs scribbling pictures on walls, but by Benny's day, the Silurians were an integrated species that shared the planet with humanity and contributed to its defence against the Daleks during one of their many wars. It doesn't exactly make her a sympathizer, but she does go out of her way to stop a nuke aimed at the Silurians' capital city in Africa.

And the Silurians despite everything that has happened are not portrayed as total monsters without an ethical code; they're doing what any of us would do if our homes were overrun by pests and exterminating the lot of them to make it liveable again. Granted, humans do rank a bit higher than cockroaches - or so one might hope - but the principle is the same. And there are those in the Silurian hierarchy who would once have seen humanity die out who tire of the war as well and realize that maybe there could have been another way.

Style-wise it's a good solid tale, it starts the alternate universe cycle off quite well. The Silurians had not been seen or heard from since Warriors of the Deep when this was published, and it was good to see them treated with a bit more respect. I don't have the time to go back and look at all of the stories of the alternate universe cycle, but if anyone reading wants to check them out they were, in this order: The Dimension Riders, The Left Handed Hummingbird, Conundrum and No Future.

But I am going to look at how the cycle ends, because it's kind of brilliant.

NEXT EPISODE : NO FUTURE

Bloodtide

Milions of years in the past, a Silurian scientist is exiled from his community for unethical experiments. As the Earth is ravaged by rapidly dropping temperatures, he and his creations are left to die. Millions of years later, the Doctor and Evelyn arrive on the Galapagos Islands and encounter none other than Charles Darwin and the crew of The Beagle on the expedition that will give Darwin his insights into his theories of evolution. The small colony also on the island have been experiencing some trouble, though; it seems that some of the residents have been driven mad, and claim to have sighted monsters in the caves nearby...

At LAST. After the sham that was Warriors of the Deep it is a great relief to see the Silurians treated with some respect. And to have them pitted against the sixth Doctor himself - wonderful. And dear Evelyn - she's getting a real treat as a companion, meeting all the classic monsters right away.

The pairing of a Silurian story with Charles Darwin is a fantastic idea given that the whole Silurian story from the start followed the entire evolutionary argument, even if humankind's ancestors were slightly differently portrayed. Artistic license, one supposes. And we get a proper explaination of what the Myrka is; even though we don't actually see it in this episode, it comes across as more credible in audio than it did staggering around the sets of SeaBase 1 back in 1984. I question the whole suspension of disbelief when it comes to Darwin not mentioning his encounter with the Silurians, though; he'd be reporting on giant tortoises and all manner of strange birds and plants, but how he'd leave giant reptile people out of the equation just because the Doctor says so is hard to swallow.

How do our Silurians stack up against their predecessors? They're more akin to the Silurians of 1970 with their voices and with their general disposition. There is dissent amongst their ranks about how to handle the humans that have now claimed the Earth as their own, but in an unoriginal moment they decide that maybe a plague is the best way to wipe them out. Ho hum. I seem to remember that not working once before, although they admittedly had modern antibiotics to work with at that time. An epidemic in the 1800's would have a much different outcome. And as always now that an old monster has been brought back for the audio, now comes the burning question of when they will return to the screen in the new series. Ice Warriors first, though!

NEXT EPISODE : PROJECT TWILIGHT

Warriors of the Deep

The TARDIS lands on an undersea base in 2084 at the height of international nuclear tensions. The travellers are imediately suspected of espionage when they are discovered but there are larger issues at play: the Silurians have re-emerged and together with an elite group of Sea Devils they plan to launch the missiles in the base's armoury and trigger a holocaust that will wipe out humanity and leave the planet free for its original inhabitants to take over.

Jay joined me for this one again, and I warned him from the outset that the Silurians here were not the same noble race that we first met in the Jon Pertwee era. The costumes were nothing like the originals, the voices were wrong, the entire manner of the reptiles was just not there; in the Pertwee days the Silurians moved a lot more fluidly and used their third eye to project their mental powers. The Sea Devils fare no better this time around, the actors being instructed to lumber around the sets when we all saw them running up the beach and storming a naval base in their debut years ago. The Sea Devil design stays the same, relatively; you can see that the costumes are made so the head is a hat just like in the old days, giving them some great height advantage. Their costume has gone from blue netting to a samauri-like armour. And the voices are pretty much the same although Sauvix, the leader of the group, whispers his lines and has traded the ability to open and close his mouth for blinking his eyes. I guess the props department could only work so much magic back then.

The design of the sea base itself was done quite well, the sterile white corridors shot from enough different angles that the base got a real feeling of size to it, larger rooms reconfigured on the set with what was probably relative ease, and one set in particular in the reactor coolant area with a raised gantry and water below - handy for beign knocked into for a cliffhanger. Jay noticed how when underwater Peter Davison looks as old as he does now, which is interesting; I suppose if we chucked him in the water at his present age he'd probably look older than Joan Rivers. Which really isn't hard considering how much work she's had done.

Warriors has a pretty large cast; as well as the three regulars - the Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough - there are the three Silurians, the attack group of Sea Devils, the pantomime horse monster the Myrka (oh man what a sight that thing was), and then the military personnel of the sea base itself. Of course, in this era the whole purpose of a large cast was to kill everyone over the course of a few weeks, so when the dust - or, in this case, the toxic gas - settled only the Doctor and his friends were left alive. And then people were shocked at criticism about the show being violent. I for one do not find death in Doctor Who to be handed out like candy at Hallowe'en; if a character is killed off it generally is to prove a point and not just for the shock value (or in the case of Ingrid Pitt as Doctor Solow for the comic relief).

"There should have been another way," the Doctor says at the end of part four. I heartily agree; a bit more care could have been taken to make the monsters a bit more credible, or at least make their costumes stay together so when they fell over their bums didnt split open. And poor Bulic could have used a costume a bit less tight across his crotch; they say it pays to advertise but all this really did was give Jay and I something else to laugh at. Did the man not have any underwear that day? Oh yeah and we saw Tegan's bra strap.

NEXT EPISODE : THE AWAKENING

Doctor Who and the Silurians

Settling into his exile and working with UNIT and Liz, the Doctor is more than a bit annoyed at being at the Brigadier's beck and call. UNIT are investigating a series of power losses at an underground nuclear research centre, and alongside this they have to contend with nervous breakdowns amongst the staff. The Doctor discovers that one of the base personnel has made contact with an underground colony of reptile-men called Silurians, and it is they who are causing the power losses in an attempt to revive their hibernating masses. The Silurians were the dominant life form on Earth millions of years before man evolved and they went into hibernation to avoid destruction from an approaching planet, but the planet became the moon and the Silurians slumbered on. Now awakened, the ambitious Young Silurian plans to infect mankind with a disease to wipe the planet clear of its human population, but the Doctor manages to find a cure and force the Silurians to take other measures. A plan to disperse the Van Allen radiation belt around the planet is foiled by a clever bluff, and the Brigadier takes his chance to blow up the caves used by the Silurians and seal them in forever. The Doctor is, of course, furious.

7 episodes for this one, and very good ones at that. This first season for Jon Pertwee looks a bit like the latter years of the show on paper with only a total of four adventures, but with three of them at the 7 episode length, they become small epics in their own rights. This story has the distinction of being the only one with the actual words "Doctor Who" in its title.

I love the Silurians. Script writer Malcolm Hulke does a great job establishing their history and culture, making them not mindless savage lizard creatures but a noble race with ideals and a society all their own. There is dissention in the ranks of the Silurians at the prospect of attempting to share the planet with humanity; some view the humans as equals now that they have evolved and formed their own civilization, but more agressive elements still see man as nothing more than an over-evolved ape that needs to be exterminated. It's good to be able to say that the Silurians will return over time in the series, and when the series left the air and became a novel range, the Silurians were also back, although as allies and not wary opponants. For the most part, anyways.

What's up with Liz Shaw's hair? It seems to have grown quite a bit since Spearhead from Space. Couldn't be a wig, could it? Hmm. And speaking of things cosmetic, note the second appearance of Jon Pertwee's naval tattoo on his forearm (the first time was during a shower scene in Spearhead from Space, which was a benchmark on it's own - the first time we ever saw the Doctor's nipples!) with no attempt to cover it up or anything. And now that the TARDIS is effectively grounded, the Doctor has a new vehicle: a bright yellow Edwardian puddlejumper named Bessie.

And just when you thought we were safe from the BBC archive purge that denied us the bulk of the Troughton years, here it comes again: all the colour episodes of this epic are lost, leaving overseas black and white film prints in the archive. All was not lost, however; the black and white prints were merged with off-air colour copies to form a colourized version of the story, the end result of this being somewhat muddy colours and grainy picture quality, but a colour version nonetheless. I like to think that maybe this is a better version to watch than the sharp clarity of the BBC studio sessions as it adds a different feel to the adventure, makes it look a bit less cheap. It looks old, but not like it was shot with a public broadcasting budget; the shadows are deeper, the brown skin of the Silurians is richer, but the faces of the human actors are a bit jaundiced, and the colours of the opening sequence just plain gaudy. The colourization efforts were made on a total of four of Jon Pertwee's stories where the material existed to make the attempt, but in some cases all we have left are black and white prints. It could be worse; we could be back in the mid 60's with nothing.

NEXT EPISODE : THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH