Planet of Fire

Kamelion goes into spasm in the TARDIS, having apparantly intercepted a Trion distress beacon wghile plugged into the navigational computers. The Doctor knows they must help, but to Turlough the planet Trion means something altogether different; it's his home, and he's a political exile who has escaped his sentence. The TARDIS follows the signal first to Lanzarote but then to the planet of Sarn where a small colony faces extinction from an impending volcanic eruption. Together with a young American girl named Peri, the Doctor and Turlough find themselves up against the Master once more, but whose side will Kamelion be on?

Right from the opening minutes of part one, Planet of Fire feels different. It's a combination of two major make-or-break deals where the series is concerned; a striking visual on location (in this case Lanzarote in the Canary Islands) and a different kind of music score that goes light on the usual synthesizers. At first Jay was going to be all ho-hum at me about the show being shot in a quarry, but then he noticed volcanic rock as opposed to sand. And then we both noticed that neither of the first two characters seen on screen were wearing any underwear.

Yes, it's going to be one of those kinds of reviews.

Kamelion makes his first on-screen appearance since the closing moments of The King's Demons, but the android is pretty stationary the whole time, either laying on the floor or parked in front of the console. And screaming. Why does Kamelion never make it to the top 10 screamers list? For an android in pain he can really let it rip. "Oh look," Jay said. "It can stand," And it's a hellishly tall thing when it stands beside Nicola Bryant, making her first appearance as Peri.

There's a lot of companion transition in this one. It's the end of the road for Turlough and Kamelion, and the start for Peri. The girl makes an auspicious start as the first companion to be seen in a bikini. But lo there's more exposed skin as Turlough throws off his shorts to expose a speedo, but interestingly enough keeps his shirt on. I think we can thank the hidden gay agenda of producer John Nathan-Turner for that one, as well as his casting of what appear to be really gay actors in every part. And cute ones too, as we see in Malkon, Turlough's brother. Turlough's departure is an interesting contrast to others before him; he's not really the galactic adventurer type after all, he only left with the Doctor in the first place to.... well, to kill him, but more to escape from his exile on Earth. With his sentence lifted, he can go home now, and he still has family to go home to.

And then there's the Master. Anthony Ainley gets to do a stint that evokes a southern United States evangelical preacher as he addresses the Sarns, playing on their supersitious fears about their fire god. "I'd be pissed if I were him," Jay says, pointing out how everyone is wearing cooler clothes for this shoot on a volcanic island - from Peri's step-father and his jean shorts and nice pecs, Turlough's shorts, Peri's own bikini, and even the Doctor drops the sweater and jacket and carries on in his shirtsleeves - but the Master is as always clad in black, this time a 3 piece suit. Yeah that's fair. Ah well, he's evil, perhaps being overheated was motivation that day.

This is one of the adventures I am really dying to see come to DVD and hopefully they'll remaster the score into Dolby 5:1 as they did with Resurrection of the Daleks. And to see all that incredible Lanzarote footage in sharp detail after years of VHS madness will be a treat. And I am sure there are some extras to be shown, including Kamelion breaking down here and there.

So off the Doctor goes with Peri on board the TARDIS now, headed for unknown futures. Of course they went right into the next episode of the season, but over at Big Finish they have taken advantage of this one to one relationship and created a stretch of audios to explore the time where the Doctor and Peri get to know each other better; there are no less than 12 full length audios, one special release, and even another Telos novella placed in this gap.

So I had better get started.

NEXT EPISODE : RED DAWN

Singularity

The TARDIS encounters temporal distortion which brings the Doctor and Turlough to Moscow in the mid-twenty first century. The Somnus institute - also known as The Sleepers - have erected a massive glass tower by Red Square and are promising a future where mankind evolves into a godlike being, although the Doctor knows that the future does not unfold this way at all. The temporal distortion grows more and more until the time line beings to split, threatening to tear the entire cosmos apart, with the Doctor and Turlough right at the centre of it.

It's not often that the Doctor meets people who are just pure malevolance, and here they are again. And it's not exactly an alien invasion per se this time, which makes things very interesting. And the choice of Moscow as the location is also an interesting one; the location doesn't really mean much to the story - it could happen anywhere - but then again it's not like London is so pivotal to the entire planet that every adventure has to happen there.

And here's how mean they are. They torture the TARDIS. There's a little Christopher H Bidmead in everyone it seems as the ship comes close to destruction at the hands of the Somnus people in their aim to fulfill their plans. Nasty.

This pisses the Doctor off. It's different when Davison's Doctor gets angry; he's "the nice one" as far as everyone is concerned.

And Turlough. His cowardice comes into play again, and he reluctantly gets involved at the beginning, and even he gets angry at people in part four. But so would you if you'd been bodysnatched. There's a twist to their relationship, though, when Turlough tells the Doctor that he's angry at being the Doctor's little tag along companion and he's never told anything, and he even makes a comment under his breath about how long he'll remain with the Doctor.

No mention of Kamelion, though.

NEXT EPISODE : PLANET OF FIRE

Loups~Garoux

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Turlough to Rio in the days before the carnival, but they are not the only strangers in town. An ancient and powerful grey werewolf has crossed the ocean in pursuit of his perfect mate - a woman who has tried to hide from him for years. Together with other members of her pack Ilyana attempts to hide from her pursuer and keep her half-human son safe, but if the Grey One gets his way, the world will fall under his thrall and no-one will be able to stop him.

Incredible. But that's what one should expect from a script by Marc Platt, especially when the regular cast is joined by the likes of Elanor Bron as Ilyana. I remember the first time I listened to this one I was on a train heading to Windsor, and as the bulk of part two takes place on a train it was a fun way to do it. Listening to it on the TTC isn't quite the same, but in this cold weather of February it's very easy to allow yourself to buy into the notion of sunny Rio de Janerio and escape for a few minutes. With Doctor Who we're always so ready to say how we don't think the show "looks" like it was shot where it is said to be, but the changes of scenes in this one work so well that it's easy to imagine the locations, from Ilyana's home, to the train station and space port, to the desert that used to be the Amazon basin, and the city of Rio itself.

Nitpicky bits? A couple. The howling the werewolves make; it's not very scary. I know a Yorkie named Chippy who is more intimidating. The Doctor has some interesting close calls with the female species, and backs off all stuttery and nervous almost as if it were Hugh Grant in the role instead of Peter Davison. And why he goes to talk to Turlough about it I have no idea. Maybe because Turlough scores this episode. He does, you know; with a native girl named Rosa who would actually have made an okay companion. And speaking of companions, so sign of Kamelion again, right when he could have been particularly helpful, what with there being all that shape-shifting to be done.

OwwwwwwOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOOOOooooo.

NEXT EPISODE : SINGULARITY

Imperial Moon

The TARDIS arrives in 1878, just as three spaceships set off from England to the moon. Knowing that no suche events ever took place, the Doctor is determined to find out what is going on, and together with Turlough and Kamelion journeys to the moon to find a sustained biosphere in one of the craters - and all of the plant and animal life is hostile. British explorers are no strangers to such environments, nor are the Doctor and his companions, but the presence of a race of brutal killers stacks the odds against them.

Okay I am including this BBC novel for the sheer sake of giving Kamelion some more material. I hate it when characters with potential get chucked away before they can be properly explored. It is remarked by Turlough that Kamelion just sits in his room for days on end not actually doing anything but listening to the TARDIS systems, which is more or less what is said of him in the televised series. What I find a bit odd though is Turlough once more feeling lonely without Tegan on board (this happens a bit too often now; Lords of the Storm was written in 1995, Imperial Moon in 2000, so you'd think that there would be some kind of acknowledgement of other stories, that Tegan's absence would not hang so heavily in the TARDIS. Still, here it serves as a clumsy plot device for Turlough to confide his lonliness and lack of purpose to Kamelion; not something anyone normally does in someone they do not exactly trust. Kamelion does his best to be companionable, but in the end he's no K9 and he only serves the Doctor because he will obey the strongest will present. But fair dues to him, he does get to do things and actually take part in the adventure, even if the energy field maintaining an atmosphere over the moon traps him inside the TARDIS for most of the story. The Doctor is kinder to Kamelion than one might expect; he's more or less left the android in the closet all this time but when Turlough comments that they should make use of him the Doctor stands up for Kamelion's rights as an individual not to be used. Look back at some of the stuff K9 had to do, though. Apparantly robot rights are one of those things that are only acknowledged in the best of times.

Onwards.

NEXT EPISODE : LOUPS~GAROUX

Phantasmagoria

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Turlough to London in 1702 just after the death of the king. The people are embracing the rule of Queen Ann, and in the Diabola Club, local gentlemen are trying their luck at cards. Sir Nicholas Valentine, however, is playing at more than just a game of patience, as those who play against him either vanish into the night or are found dead, or dying, screaming of being pursued by all the demons of hell. The Doctor has his suspicions, and they do not seem unfounded as it appears there are more aliens in town than just the Time Lord and his assistant.

Phantasmagoria was the first Big Finish adventure made with Peter Davison back in 2000, bringing Mark Strickon back as Turlough. Where Davison's voice hasn't changed much over the years (as has already been noted in previous blogs), Strickoson doesn't have the same squeak to him that made his angst moments on the show such a... well.... okay so it's something Jay and I laugh at. Whatever. Set some time after Tegan's departure from the crew, the story gets a chance to show us some normal interaction between the Doctor and Turlough, although Turlough still plays the coward role and the Doctor has to be as patient with him as he can.

The rest of the cast are the stuff of which historical Doctor Who adventures are made; gentlemen, ruffians, servant girls, roughnecks, and a famous highwayman namjed Billy Lovemore. And two alien voices chattering away at intervening moments.

Valentine's lair is one of those places where you really can't go on television, with someone remarking that the walls are "like liver" and blood being everywhere. I suppose we came close with The Claws of Axos but this is a far gristlier, the bodies of the abducted men melded with the chamber walls to revitalize Valentine's ship.

I listened to this one over the course of a day's transit to and from work on the subway, which made for a welcome diversion from the usual... well, nothing really, just staring at the walls or the poor fashion of those around me. The fact that Big Finish have extended the 21st season of Doctor Who by 17 full adventures (well okay 15; two of them are a bit on the short side being special releases) makes for better days in transit if you ask me, and of course makes for better expansion of the existing characters. I always felt that the Doctor and Turlough were cheated out of something as on television they are not together on their own very long. And Kamelion gets a total bum deal as I have said before; the mention of him in Lords of the Storm is one of the few times his presence in the series is acknowledged. But, lo, he's in the next one.

NEXT EPISODE : IMPERIAL MOON

Lords of the Storm

The Doctor and Turlough arrive on the planet Raghi where members of its lower social caste are falling ill, some dying, others vanishing mysteriously. Investigation of this points to the nearby moon orbiting the gas giant Indra - where a Sontaran force are preparing an elaborate and deadly trap in what will be pivotal victory over the Rutans.

Lords of the Storm was published in 1995, the first science fiction attempt by until-then historical writer David A McIntee, and I remembered enjoying it so much that I have just read it again, some 12 years later, and realized why I liked it so much. This book is fun. Pure unadulterated fun. It's got a solid plot, it's got the Doctor and Turlough working together as a proper team, which is something we never got to see in the televised series, and it's got an actual confrontation between the Rutan and the Sontarans.

The Sontarans only appear in Doctor Who a grand total of four times yet they are as often mentioned in favourite monster polls as the Daleks or the Cybermen. What they've got going for them is an established sense of culture; as a species totally devoted to war against one enemy for eternity, they would appear to be singleminded and hollow, but McIntee has taken the hints of Sontaran life offered on television and expanded upon them to create a full picture of why the Sontarans do what they do, even going as far as to explain why some of them look different than others, and why some have more fingers than others (because blaming it all on the BBC proper and costume people is kinda silly). There are too many of them to list, but there are references to previous Sontaran stories aplenty, and a few hints at others to come including a spin-off movie called Shakedown which could be a sort of sequel to this one.

McIntee does not stop at the Sontarans; he goes deeper into the psyche of the Rutans and their culture, but also takes time to touch on the mythology of the Tzun; an alien race he created for his seventh Doctor novel, First Frontier. It takes some sheer talent to pull all these threads togther to make a tapestry like this, but he does it. I remember after reading his first few attempts at Doctor Who - and I believe I said as much when reviewing The Face of the Enemy - that I did not enjoy the way he wrote, but when I read this... yowzers. The back cover blurb says he likes to play the Star Wars video game called X Wing as research, and he has captured not only the spirit of the game, but even bits of the movies themselves with his incredible space battle sequences.

I like the Doctor and Turlough as a team. Just the guys, travelling around together. Tegan's departure is still relatively recent at this point so the two of them have a bit of an awkwardness about them now they're without her, but it works. One can almost hear Davison and Strickson in their respective roles as the Doctor and Turlough, he's got them down so well. And there is even a mention of Kamelion, the Master's old shape-shifting robot, as a reminder that he's still somewhere in the TARDIS after The King's Demons.

Let's look at multiculturalism in Doctor Who for a moment. Raghi is not a colony like others before it; instead of being founded by corporations, the efforts to terraform and move to the planet were all privately funded by the colony's predominantly Hindi population - something else I can tell McIntee dove right into researching as he has nailed that as well. And this is not done by making the people of Raghi seem elitist or insular; it is just the way the colony came to be. After all, why should space only be developed by rich white men? Bravo, I say.

I'm glad I read this again. I really am. I would go so far as to say this book is pretty much perfect, and that's a huge heap of praise no matter where it comes from.

NEXT EPISODE : PHANTASMAGORIA

Resurrection of the Daleks

The TARDIS is snared in a time corridor and dragged to a derelict warehouse on Earth. The corridor is actually part of a Dalek trap, but while they are chasing the Doctor around they are also raiding a prison ship in space to free Davros, hoping he will help them recover from their humiliating loss to the Movellans in their latest war. The Daleks were so decimated by a virus that the Movellans used against them that they have bolstered their numbers with humanoid troops - duplicates of beings they have captured before. And with the Doctor in their power, they have a nasty mission for the duplicate they want to make from him.

Very atmospheric this one; from the opening shots of the rundown and abandoned docklands of 1984 London (area which now house trendy condos and businesses and are used as backdrops to fist fights in Bridget Jones movies) to the broken down neglected space station where Davros is serving his time, there is menace in every shadow and a creepy atmospheric score. The Dalek ship, by contrast, is brightly lit and very white, and looks a lot like some pagoda interior in Japan.

How do the Daleks fare? They're desperate after their loss, they're teetering on the edge of extinction, but after what happened to him before, Davros is no fool and knows they'll turn on him again so he plays for time, quietly gaining control over those around him and building a secret army. His is a bit of a ranter this time around, too, but I suppose 90 years of "mind numbing boredom" in a block of ice might do that to a guy. This time around he is played by Terry Molloy, his mask redesigned once again for a new actor, but it's just not the same. Molloy goes on to be the longest serving Davros (three times on television and in several Big Finish audios) and his performance does mellow over time, but nothing is going to come close to Michael Wisher's original grating nasty voiced Kaled scientist.

The cast of this one are apparantly well known actors in the UK, but neither Jay nor myself really regonized anyone. The truth is as the Daleks had not been in the series since Tom Baker's time, producer John Nathan-Turner wanted their return to be a star studded cast, and apparantly this was achieved. I guess. The return of the Daleks, though, is balanced against it being the final adventure for Tegan as played by Janet Fielding; her departure scene is handled quite well and her reasons for leaving are made very clear, and the Doctor even tries to stop her from going, eventually equating her choice with his own decision to leave Gallifrey. Oh yeah, speaking of Gallifrey there is this bit about using the Doctor's duplicate to go back there and assassinate the High Council of Time Lords; being a very insular society it's not as if they have drawn attention to themselves, so it's more likely that it's really the Doctor's fault for picking fights with the Daleks and having them track him back to his home eventually. It's a plot point that doesn't really go much farther - although the duplication process that the Doctor is put through allows for some nifty montage of past Doctors and companions, bringing up faces from years ago - it will be of great importance in the show's future, say in 2005; 21 years after this episode was broadcast.

At Jay's request we did something different this time: we watched the DVD with commentary running. Peter Davison and Janet Fielding are joined by director Matthew Robinson to pretty much talk through the show (something that Jay and I think we'd be good at, so we want to win a contest or something and be guest commentators) and make fun of not only themselves but pretty much everyone else in the cast, including poor Mark Strickon as Turlough who doesn't really do a lot except look over his shoulder and get his face all shiny. There's this bit where the comments are all disclaimed too, where everyone says that they are proud of the work they did and they do enjoy it; Jay has visions of whoever is producing the commentary running out of the booth and telling them to smarten up. Hm. I think I actually have had to go back and reaffirm my own enjoyment of the show once or twice here.

I like Doctor Who, I really do.

So Tegan is gone and it's just the Doctor and Turlough now. Theirs is a Doctor/companion friendship that was never really explained properly, given that Turlough originally came along to kill the Doctor at the Black Guardian's behest, and then out of nowhere changed his mind about going home. With his past never really alluded to at this point outside of encounters with Tractators, Turlough would be one of the most enigmatic companions to serve on board the TARDIS as the next televised episode would be his last as well. In the years since then, though, there have been several other adventures set after Tegan's departure with just the Doctor and Turlough together, so let's take a side step and look at those and see how the guys get along without a girl on board...

NEXT EPISODE : LORDS OF THE STORM

Frontios / Excelis Dawns

The TARDIS drifts into the far future where one of the last colonies of humans have taken shelter after Earth's final destruction. The planet is Frontios, the life is hard, and the dangers are everywhere. Meteorites constantly rain down on the colony as the humans struggle to stay alive, but when the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough arrive they discover that the conony's enemies are not in the sky above them, but are operating beneath the soil of the planet.

The first time I saw Fontios it was was November 1984 at a convention called WHO Fest in Buffalo. I was totally floored by the existence of such gatherings (it was a surprise trip my parents took me on) and I was still trying to take in the presence of Jon Pertwee at the autograph table let alone the viewing room where I came across brand new episodes I had never seen before, plus old classics I had heard of but not seen. Frontios will always have that little something extra to it in the nostalgia department.

The story is well written by former script editor Chrisopher H Bidmead, and once again he takes us into one of his favourite plot devices: the destruction of the TARDIS. He's already tried to drown it and then blow it up in his previous scripts, so having it actually explode (or in this case get ripped apart) is not exactly out of his league. And the Doctor is remarkably calm about it when it happens, or maybe he suspected all along seeing as it was a gravity beam that dragged the TARDIS down to the planet in the first place. Bidmead had another script out there once called Penacasta but it never made it to screen (note also that Bidmead always names his scripts after the name of the planet they take place on) so how the TARDIS would have been wrecked in that is anyone's guess. Also interesting to note : Bidmead is the writer who gave us the now infamous cloister bell, the tolling of which signals wild catastrophe.

All this trivia is not lost on Jay. Pity him having to sit there and listen to me yatter away, though. Maybe we need to drink while we watch the show.

So the peoples of Frontios fall into two distinct groups: the humans, led by the youthful Plantagenet ("He's kinda hot," Jay observed. He's right.) who only got the job as leader because his late father was leader before him - hurrah for patriarchy - and the subterran Tractators, who draw their gravity power from the Gravis. "Big bugs," Jay said. Again, he's right. The Tractators are kind of woodlouse things - not exactly slugs but certainly like nothing we have ever seen on Doctor Who until this point - the closest similarity would be to the Wirrn in The Ark in Space. The Tractators are by nature parasitic, plundering planets and infesting others, and somewhere in the past they invaded Turlough's as-yet-unnamed home, which triggers a race memory in him and allows Mark Strickson to go all sketchy and foam at the mouth. He's got some fantastic mad eyes and a very expressive face, but in the green glow of the phospher lamps and with dribble runing down his chin he's just plain scary crazy man. Tegan doesn't go mad on us, but we do get to see up her skirt in part 4 and her outfit is new. Again. I just realized, too, that the woman never wore pants through the whole show, aside from those bad overalls in Earthshock. And if that skort counts from Arc of Infinity onwards.

The reason I bring the Big Finish audio Excelis Dawns into the mix here is at one point in part 4 of Frontios the Doctor and Tegan leave the planet briefly and return again to pick up Turlough, and this audio is made to take place within that gap in the adventure. The TARDIS lands on the planet Arteris and the Doctor meets the warlord Greyvorn (played by Anthony Stewart Head). Greyvorn is on a quest to recover a lost relic from a tribe of flesh eating jungle dwelling zombies, and he is accompanied by a nun and a pain in the ass Time Lady called Iris Wildthyme. Iris is a character developed during the years when Doctor Who was off the air, spanning both the Big Finish audios and the BBC Books range and encountering the Doctor in various incarnations here and there. She's loud, her TARDIS is stuck in the form of a double decker bus, she drinks and she smokes, and she's got a hell of a crush on the Doctor, who would rather she just go away. And the real fun part is she is played by none other than Katy Manning, who was Jo Grant during the Jon Pertwee days.

Excelis Rising is actually the first in a four adventure cycle which sees the Doctor return to Arteris a few more times in future incarnations, the irony being as he makes his departure this time the Doctor states that he never wants to come back to this planet again. If they're all like this one, though, maybe it's a good idea if he doesn't; the plot gets silly, it doesn't really go anywhere; it's more a vehicle to get Iris onto audio and sell three more plays. Oh I did buy them, don't be mistaken.

So the Doctor has his adventure off to the side, goes and finds the TARDIS where he has left Tegan waiting for days now (Janet Fielding is not in this; until last year she refused to touch the audio projects) and probably gets an earful, then they go back to Frontios to get Turlough.

And then just as it seems it's over, the TARDIS encounters some turbulence which leads right into the next story.

NEXT EPISODE : RESURRECTION OF THE DALEKS

The King of Terror

The King of Terror is a novel I read quite some time ago and I just don't have the time to read it again for this. It's Jay's fault I'm sure. But when I did read it when first published back in 2000 I do remember enjoying it immensely due to several factors:

- the inclusion of the Brigaider and UNIT in Los Angeles, set in roughly the same year it was written, and the Brigadier's novel way of tracking down the Doctor through the newspapers

- the Brigadier's reaction of mild disappointment when he realizes that it's the fifth Doctor, and his revelation that he has at this point in time met nine incarnations

- Tegan's friction-induced romance including one of those classic "he slaps her, she slaps him, they kiss" moments, plus Tegan's barely passable computer skills from 1981 making the internet of 2000 a real challenge for her

- Turlough being tortured

- the Doctor's easy manner when talking to the Brigadier, referencing their time in Devil's End (The Daemons) as the events of The Awakening parallel it somewhat

- the suggestion that it has taken the Doctor a month to return Will Chandler to 1643, the implication being that he was an impromptu companion for a while

Of course The King of Terror was written long after the "classic" series was concluded in 1989 and sixteen years after the episodes it is set between, but it actually has that seamless join to the series as a whole. That, of course, is the fine art of retro continuity done properly, when you could actually accept the story as belonging there through its use of proper continuity to previous episodes and even a few sly hints about the future.

Oh the plot of this story? Alien invasion. The usual.

NEXT EPISODE(S): FRONTIOS / EXCELIS DAWNS

The Awakening

A trip to the village of Little Hodcombe to visit Tegan's grandfather lands the TARDIS crew in peril. Local nobleman Sir George Hutchinson has started a re-enactment of the British Civil War, but the mayhem it causes reactivates a dormant alien mind that came to the village in 1643 when the fighting was at its worst. The Doctor recognizes the alien presence as the Malus, a being that came from the planet Hakol to pave the way for invasion, an invasion that may no longer be on the cards in 1984, but the Malus is still alive and kicking.

For a two part story, The Awakening really gets a lot achieved, largely due to the last minute rewrites from all accounts. The story is still credited to Eric Pringle but by and large the script was reworked extensively by script editor Eric Saward when the delivered manuscript turned out to be far too long for the alloted budget. A lot of credit for this one also goes to the direction, the opening scene setting this story way beyond the limpness that was Warriors of the Deep. The period costumes are as always well done, and the small village setting evokes Devesham from The Android Invasion. There's also a bit of nifty continuity thrown in linking this story to Saward's own script, The Visitation, two seasons past, when the Doctor recognizes a chunk of tinclavic mined by Terileptils on Raaga. And there's something about the way the TARDIS console room is shot this time that makes it seem different, almost larger.

This is one of the few times in the classic series that we are introduced to the concept of family in the companions. So far we've only really met the Doctor's granddaughter, Sara Kingdom's brother (who she killed herself - feel the love!), heard of Jo's uncle who got her the job at UNIT, heard of Sarah's aunt Lavinia (who we met in... ughh I can't even name that spin off again), heard Leela's father die a terrible off-screen death, saw Adric's brother die, saw Nyssa's father murdered, and Tegan's own Aunt Vanessa hit the skids when she met the Master. "And don't forget Tegan's cousin," Jay reminded me as we went over this list of family. Tegan's got a lot of family in the show it seems. "Tegan Tegan Tegan!" Jay muttered in his best Jan Brady voice. Tegan's grandfather does a bit better and lives, although he is locked up with Turlough. Despite being locked up as was his fate in the previous two part story, Turlough gets to do quite a lot. There's even some interesting companion potential in schoolteacher Jane Hampden and the bewildered Will Chandler who managed to get brought into the future from 1643 through the Malus' power. The far reaching effects of Tegan's travels with the Doctor are never really discussed with her grandfather; in fact the poor man hardly gets to say much at all yet somehow he feels important to the goings on. Aside from being the reason why the Doctor brought them there in the first place.


The Awakening is one of the fortunate adevntures that is hard to fault. It doesn't have any sagging plot holes, although at the end it does seem to finish in a bit of a cop-out way. And okay the face of the Malus busting through the church wall does look a little unrealistic, but to the naysayers I ask them when was the last time they saw a huge face come through a church wall. Anyone?

I didn't think so.

There's interesting news about the possible content of the DVD release of The Awakening when they get around to doing it; in addition to bloopers involving horses demolishing archways, there's a full deleted scene involving Kamelion that was dropped from the original broadcast for time reasons, so depending on the quality of the scene, we may get to see it reinserted into the story or at the very least tacked on the extras section of the disc. Won't that be special and a half?

NEXT EPISODE : THE KING OF TERROR

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

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 King's Demons

The TARDIS is drawn to Earth again in 1215, dropping the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough right in the middle of a jousting contest in the presence of King John. The time travellers are welcomed by the King as his demons and are regarded with suspicion by the local nobility and the peasants. The Doctor knows that it can't be right; the King would not welcome them as such and should not even be there; he should be in London signing the Crusaders' oath. With the King clearly an imposter, the TARDIS crew must find out why someone is playing with history, and what it is they hope to gain.

Another two part story, and like Black Orchid it is a cost-conscious one, using a lot of location work and a score of costumes from the BBC vaults to recreate a historical period in fine detail. Tegan gets a new outfit and runs around with her legs on display, which should have created more of a fuss even if it was pre-Victorian times. Turlough gets locked in a dungeon for most of the adventure, conveniently reducing the dialogue load as the show actually has a large cast, and to let everyone do something within the confines of 46 minutes is a bit of a challenge (something that is easily done now on the show but in those days they were still experimenting with this format as a way to fill out the season).

Oh yes. It's the Master. He escaped from Xeriphas. And he brought something with him; a shape-shifting android named Kamelion, which he uses as the double for King John. Kamelion is an interesting concept in many way; as a robot it's actually not a bad piece of work, capable of standing and sitting to deliver its lines. The shape-shifting capablities are a bit of a cop-out, as are the special effects surrounding it, but hey it's a cool looking android. In the end the Doctor takes it on board the TARDIS with him and it more or less becomes a companion, with a mind of its own and everything, but due to technical failures it is not used again for quite some time.

Back in the day when Target used to publish the novelizations of the Doctor Who scripts it became customary for authors whose scripts had been edited for television to put all the missing material back in, and in this case The King's Demons got itself a second chance at life, resulting in Terence Dudly penning a 153 page novel out of his two part script. Such an achievements may not exactly seem massive by the standards of the 300 page novels of today but back then a four or six part script usually only amounted to 144 pages on average, so providing a double length book was a feat, and also a joy for thos reading it who felt that two part stories were a bit of a ripoff.

Speaking of perceived ripoffs, BBC Video's release of The Sontaran Experiment, also a two part tale, onto DVD earlier this year means that The King's Demons will most likely see release as a solo adventure as well. My friend Derek is adamant that he will not buy these releases, as when they were on VHS they were bundled into double packs with an adjacent four part story. Myself, I'll buy andything related to Doctor Who so I don't mind at all; in fact I am curious to see what the extras package will be like on this one. Let's see some more footage - perhaps the sequence where Hugh Fitzwilliam gets annoyed at losing his jousting contest and takes off his shirt and hits the castle gym for a while... wait... wrong show. Dang.

NEXT EPISODE : THE FIVE DOCTORS

Enlightenment

The White Guardian sends the TARDIS crew to a yacht race in space where a race known as Eternals are competing for the prize of Enlightenment. For the Eternals this is the key to ending their ongoing boredom as they are effectively immortal creatures who dwell outside of time, and their only source of entertainment and pleasure comes from the minds of lessler, more finite beings, those they call Ephemerals. Even the Time Lords are not resistant to the mind reading power of the Eternals and the Doctor must stay on his guard. Tegan also finds herself the centre of attention of one of the Eternals, and Turlough discovers that yet another is in collusion with the Black Guardian, much like himself.

Enlightenment is a pretty simple tale really and a tidy conclusion to this trilogy with the Black Guardian using Turlough as his puppet. I myself wasn't finding mich joy in the whole premise as it was very loosely held together, but at least they got the original actors who played the Guardians back in the Key to Time days to reprise their roles. Even with dead birds on their heads. In space, no-one can hear your stylist scream.

Check out Tegan's fancy dress in part three. And all that hair she suddenly had. Hooray for wigs! And hooray for boobies, as the saying goes; both Tegan and Captain Wrack get to show off a lot of cleaveage. Not that anyone notices. Where's Mr Mariner's cleavage shot? Show me a hot guy with his shirt off in Doctor Who please!

Effects wise... they did their best. It's not easy to build model boats at the best of times (inside or outside of a bottle) but to make them fly through space as well is a real challenge. Turlough falling overboard and being scooped by a net, not well done at all.

Black Guardian defeated. Turlough's one of the good guys after all, even if he is a greedy coward at heart. This ought to be interesting.

NEXT EPISODE : THE KING'S DEMONS

Terminus

Turlough's attempts to sabotage the TARDIS at the behest of the Black Guardian result in an emergency landing on a leper ship. The Doctor and Nyssa encounter a pair of pirates on board who have mistaken it for something else, and the ship docks at Terminus, a vast space station at the centre of the known universe. Nyssa contracts the Lazar disease and is sent for treatment by the sinsiter Vanir, the slave labourers who operate the station, and the Doctor realizes that Terminus is at the centre of the universe because in a way, it created it. And it could also destroy it too.

The first time I watched this one I actually had the flu, so the delerium of a high fever I was suffering at the time seemed to go quite well with the sickly atmosphere of Terminus itself. The moaning of the diseased lepers was more akin to a zombie film, as was their ragged shuffling through the corridors of their ships. And for the love of god why those awful skulls everywhere? When you go to a hospital you might hope to see more cheerful motifs, not a death's head grinning at you everywhere you look. Still, if anyone has ever been to the nuclear medicine wing of Sunnybrook hospital they would tell you that big signs that say THE JOY OF LIFE are not the most comforting either. The sets of Terminus are drab and a half, with the inner works of the station being nothing more than scaffold with plastic stretched across it, and not a lot of light. "I think they ran out of money," Jay opined from his end of the couch when we watched it together on Sunday night. Still, the show has some atmosphere to it, even though it is probably by accident. Or imagined by viewers with a fever.

We made some technical comments this time, noting how there were some interesting angles used in the shooting, but none of them for any real reason. There was a low angle shot that looked quite promising until someones boots walked right up to it and stood there. Nyssa sits amongst the dying Lazars in one scene and rather than cut to a different shot the sequences dissolve into each other, but the effect is might be trying for, to show Nyssa alone and afraid, is lost as the directing style is not sustained. The best has to be, though, a hasty attempt towards the end of part two when a Vanir walks under a stairway that Peter Davison is standing on; we can see his shoes but then a small square of stairway is superimposed over it to cover it up. It took me something like 18 years to notice this, and when I showed it to Jay we just has to laugh. Cause crying isn't allowed in Doctor Who.

Costumes have long been an issue on the show when it comes to practicality and design. In this case the fishbowl helmets worn by Kari and Olvir are neither practical or stylish. I suppose they needed big helmets to hold in their hairstyles. As pirates they are pretty sad; they are routinely overpowered, they wear bad clothes and one shot drains the powerpack of one of their guns. The Vanir are really no better with their fibreglass body armour which I suppose is designed to make them look more muscular, but it really draws more attention to the fact that it is just held on with elastics. And then there's the Garm, a massive St Bernard-ish creature wearing what looks like a leftover Kraag outfit from Shada (well, the original realization of Shada at any rate; I'll explain later). I am not going to comment on the Garm. Words fail me. They don't fail Jay, though. "Sean what is that?" he asked, gesturing with a Timbit.

Turlough's role as an agent of evil is not exactly played up much as he spends the bulk of the show crawling around inside air ducting with Tegan. Air ducting that is all shot on film, I might add. Jay figures they didn't have a small enough studio video camera to shoot it properly. I will assume he is right; I am not technical minded usually. But their forced confinement together softens Tegan a bit, although her distrust of Turlough is by no means unjustified - he's working for the BLACK GUARDIAN for goddess' sake. It also helps make a bit more of a bond between them because soon the TARDIS family is gonna be one short.

It's the end of the road for Nyssa. Some might have figured/hoped she was going to die of Lazar disease, but when she herself is cured of it and realizes there is a better way she decides to use her bioengineering skills (which we are reminded of in the first part of the adventure) to help the Lazars and the Vanir. The incidental music folks at the radiophonic workshop recreate her theme from Keeper of Traken for her departure scene (outdoing themselves this time since they evoked Adric's theme from Full Circle in part one when Turlough is given the dead boy's room) and it is here where we see Nyssa at her most emotional, hugging Tegan as she says goodbye. At least she got a new outfit this episode, even if it was a burlap sack to cover up the lingerie she was running around in the rest of the adventure. Nothing like going out with a bang.

NEXT EPISODE : ENLIGHTENMENT

Mawdryn Undead

The TARDIS narrowly avoids collision with a ship in a fixed temporal orbit and then becomes trapped on board. The Doctor's efforts to free his ship lead him to Earth in 1983 where he meets his old friend, Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, who is now teaching maths at an all-boys school. One of the Brigadier's students, a young man named Turlough, has been coerced by the Black Guardian to kill the Doctor in revenge for denying him the Key to Time, and although Turlough does not want to commit the act, he feels that to save his own life he must. Tegan and Nyssa end up in 1977 and encounter a younger Brigadier, as well as the mutilated alien Mawdyrn, whose misguided experiments in biology turned him and his associates on the ship into "undead" entities fated to circle the galaxy forever, unless they can use the Doctor's Time Lord powers to save themselves.

Okay so here's another one of those "chaos theory" time travel episodes where the actions of the Doctor and his companions in the past greatly influence the future. As with most scripts for the series the Doctor and his companions are split up, but in this instance the Doctor is in 1983 with Turlough and the Brigadier, and Nyssa and Tegan are in 1977 with Mawdryn... and the Brigadier as well. Both sets of characters work in their own timelines, contributing to the overall picture with the Doctor in 1983 piecing together what happened to his companions in the past.

Note that at this time the Brigadier hasn't been seen in the series since Terror of the Zygons, and what better way to bring him back into things than by using him twice as much. The flashback sequence in part two was a real treat for viewers at its original broadcast, offering younger viewers (such as myself at the time) the first glimpse of the Yeti and the Cybermen from The Invasion. And the Brigadier has not changed, even if the Doctor has, aside from leaving UNIT and taking up teaching maths. Out of character, you suggest? Maybe. After all this was hardly the kind of adventure one needed UNIT for, but the Brigadier is not the type of character to leave something he obviously loves doing; indeed, one would have thought that the Brigadier looked upon retirement - and even death - as nothing short of desertion of duty. Still, in the years that have followed this episode a lot of writers have had a bash at the Brigadier's personal continuity, and those adventures will be examined as well in this blog as they come along.

Turlough joins the TARDIS crew this adventure but he is a departure as a male companion. With Adric's death still relatively recent Turlough is a sharp contrast; devious, manipulative and untrustworthy, secretly being guided by the Black Guardian. Why the Black Guardian has waited this long to exact revenge on the Doctor and why he has chosen someone like Turlough to be his instrument are both very good questions; the Guardian says he must not be seen to act in his own revenge, which makes one wonder exactly who else is out there watching the Guardians and ensuring that they play fair. Turlough obviously isn't going to try and kill the Doctor. For starters Tegan does not trust him, and the Brigadier is always around in one way or another. The Doctor might even know what Turlough is up to, casting a suspicious glance at the control cube the Guardian uses to communiate with Turlough as if he knows what it is. And it's a plot thread that is not immediately resolved, carrying on into the next adventure.

And somewhere in all this there's Mawdryn and his undead friends, scientists who tried to turn themselves into Time Lords and give themselves a regeneration cycle with stolen Gallifreyan equipment. What they got, however, was a sentence to spend eternity as half-rotted mutants with their brains hanging out of their skulls like so much Big League Chew gum. And it's not their fault, they maintain; oh no, this is a Time Lord curse, even if no-one from Gallifrey made them hook themselves up to the machines. But they're keen enough to hook the Doctor up to it and suck away his remaining regenerations to cure themselves.

Oh and Nyssa wears a new outfit; her fourth in the entire series.

NEXT EPISODE : TERMINUS