Downtime

Years after leaving the Doctor, Victoria Waterfield is drawn back to the Det-Sen Monastary in Tibet where she encounters a dark presence from the past. In 1995 she becomes the vice-chancellor of New World Univeristy, set up using the money her father left behind. New World follows the Det-Sen principles of learning and meditation, but to achieve their goals they require a missing locus. Journalist Sarah Jane Smith is hired to investigate on behalf of New World but when her path of investigation points towards retired Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, she realizes that something more sinister is at work, something that could put the whole world at the mercy of the Great Intelligence. And without the Doctor, they are on their own.

Downtime has the interesting distinction of being the series' only "retcon" piece; retcon being short for retroactive continuity. Originally it was made as a video production by ReelTime pictures using characters that were not copyrighted to the BBC, but shortly after it was officially embraced as lore with a novelized and greatly expanded edition in the Virgin Missing Adventures range. The expanded version featured the second Doctor for a few pages, and the third towards the end, and K9 appeared with Sarah (he does not in the video but it is obvious that Sarah is communicating with him) as well as the inclusion of UNIT personnel Brigadier Chricton (who was a colonel in the opening minutes of The Five Doctors) and a colonel Bambera, who would feature in the seventh Doctor adventure Battlefield.

Having been posessed by the Intelligence twice already has made Victoria an easy target for its powers, so its hold over her is so firm that we're not really seeing "our" Victoria for the better part of the adventure. (I often wonder if Janet Fielding could be convinced to be Tegan again to look at her life after the Mara). Victoria and Sarah share a few scenes without actually realizing that they have the Doctor as a common link; that bond is reserved for Sarah's eventual reuniting with the Brigadier, who at this point is still teaching at Brendan school some years after the events depicted in Mawdryn Undead. There's also a new character to add to the mix: Kate Lehtbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier's daughter from his failed first marriage. Kate hasn't spoken to her father in years - so long that he doesn't know he has a grandson, but she becomes a target of harassment by the New World university student body - the Chillies (short for Children) - when they connect her to the Brigadier, and the Brigadier to the last locus that binds the Great Intelligence to Earth. Acting as the de-facto chorgeous of the piece is New World's resident DJ, played by John Leeson (original voice of K9), who broadcasts daily from the school until he realizes that his program is nothing more than propaganda. And in the last little bit of star casting is Jack Watling as Professor Travers once more, kept alive as a puppet of the Intelligence until it can escape its bonds.

And yes, there are Yeti again. Lots and lots of Yeti. Okay well in the video there are just three but in the book there are a lot more. They've been redesigned again, probably due to budgetary reasons, and are smaller than before, and for some reason their fur is auburn now, not grey. And that's not just because they're in colour at last.

As it was the first video in a while, of course Jay and I reconvened to watch it, with a supplemtary viewing of the surviving episodes of The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear to provide a refresher on the backstory. Our opinion? Not as scary as the 60's episodes, and slightly melodramatic. The parade of companions was fun, and the subtle references here and there to the Doctor were clever, even with the Brigadier believeing he was encountering a regenerated Doctor at one point. Some of the acting is pretty wooden and the production values although different from the actual BBC episodes in style were still a bit.... limp. Everything was done on location, and as a result the sound in some places is just awful.

To put it into a fan's perspective, by the time this came out we hadn't had any substantial new Doctor Who on television since 1989. True there was a Children In Need special in 1993, but it was far too quick to really mean anything (the review of that is coming, but we're still a ways off) and the FOX movie I have referenced before was still two years away. This was as close as we got to new Doctor Who on screen, and in its context it really is something quite special to see the companions left behind carrying on the Doctor's work for him and keeping Earth safe, and having that bond between them that only adventures in time and space can make. The Doctor touches lives and changes them, and also leaves something of himself behind when he goes; the sense of duty to protect and defend. Downtime may not be brilliant on its own, but as a part of something bigger, it's a brilliant piece of the tapestry that is Earth's future history (or at least at the time it was... years later anything 90s is very much the past). Even without the Doctor in the show it is firmly anchored to other adventures, including an upcoming novel called Millenial Rites.

So that's the break over. While Earth has been saved again, the Doctor and Evelyn have been busy doing the same thing, and running into an old enemy in the process...

NEXT EPISODE : JUBILEE

Fury from the Deep

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

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

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

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

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

NEXT EPISODE : THE WHEEL IN SPACE

Combat Rock

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

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

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

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

NEXT EPISODE : FURY FROM THE DEEP

Twilight of the Gods

There's nothing like going back, is there?

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

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

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

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

How's about another?

NEXT EPISODE : COMBAT ROCK

The Web of Fear

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

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

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

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

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

NEXT EPISODE : THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

The Enemy of the World

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

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

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

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

NEXT EPISODE : THE WEB OF FEAR

The Ice Warriors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NEXT EPISODE : THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD

The Abominable Snowmen

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

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

NEXT EPISODE : THE ICE WARRIORS

The Tomb of the Cybermen

Her father is dead, and Victoria is now being hosted by two men she barely knows: the Doctor was apparantly working with the Daleks to buy time, and then managed to destroy them, and Jamie risked his life to sneak through a Dalek-infested Victorian estate home to rescue her. And now she is alone, save for these two men who travel inside a police box. Victoria accepts the nature of the TARDIS eventually and seems to adjust fairly well to the events around her, if not to the notion of wearing a skirt that ends above her knee. She also will have to get used to the Doctor's habit of landing in danger, for the TARDIS lands on Telos, a planet taken over by the Cybermen after the destruction of Mondas. It is some time in the future, and there hasn't been a Cyberman sighting in 500 years, and a group of archaeologists financed by some shady logicians and their big burly muscle man servant are looking for their remains. The Doctor immediately joins the group, as he knows well enough the dangers of Cybermen. A traitor in the midst of the group has ambitions of reviving the Cybermen and gaining influence with them, but once the Cybermen are active again it becomes obvious that the Cyber City on Telos is not exactly a tomb but a trap to lure people in and convert them to Cybermen to prop up the numbers of their dying race. As with the previous Dalek story, the commander in chief of the menace is revealed, in this case it is the Cybercontroller, who is more imposing than his underlings and is styled slightly differently. Here we first hear the new mantra of the Cybermen : "We will survive," (cue Gloria Gaynor).

Jay joined me for this viewing once more, and he was quick to spot the updating of the Cybermen from the last time he saw the in The Tenth Planet. The design has not changed since The Moonbase, nor have the voices, but a few of the costumes end up a bit worse for wear by the time episode 4's cedits roll; witness one Cyberman's face almost fall off while trying to fight its way out of the tomb area, and then on its descent back down the ladder its suit it torn right out under the arm. The direction of Tomb is quite sharp by comparison to other episodes, with its freaky Outer Limits music and some fades between scenes to show the passage of time, even some crafty pans and sharp zooms that Jay found impressive. As for the development of the regular cast, Jamie keeps getting better and the Doctor makes some interesting comments about his family, implying that they are dead but he can remember them any time he wants. He also makes a rather moving speech to Victoria, telling her that their lives are different than anyone else's in the universe, and nobody else can do what they are doing. This perfectly sums up my own love of the show; no-one else does what the Doctor does, no-one else is the Doctor. I showed that clip to Parker, my wise cracking 7 year old nephew, and he nodded and said that's how he feels when we go places together, giving me my own little bit of Doctor euphoria.

Tomb of the Cybermen has some cool nostalgia attached to it. Okay I was not even born when it was broadcast, but until 1992 the whole serial, all four episodes, did not exist at the BBC archive, and there were always these fans going on about how good Tomb was, and Doctor Who Magazine did a whole special on it, and there was a script book published. And then one day I was at my friend Mike's place working on the fanzine our then-fanclub put out, and the call came from another friend, Luca, who had just gotten his Doctor Who Magazine with a stop-press insert announcing that Tomb of the Cybermen had been FOUND, all of it, in Hong Kong. There were many cries of delight, seeing as the classic series had been off the air for a few years at that point, and hey, old episodes that many of us had never seen were just as good as brand new ones. It's the sort of moment every Doctor Who fan dreams about, when their favourite missing episode finally comes home. My own is Marco Polo. There are some pessimists in the fandom community who consider themselves the authority on the odds of a missing episode turning up again, and they love to make statements about the slim odds of any more turning up. One in particular waved his well-fed jowls about it in a documentary attached to a "missing years" tape released a few years back, and shortly after that came the return of Dalek Master Plan episode 2, proving that when it comes to Doctor Who one never can tell for sure.

NEXT EPISODE : THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN

The Evil of the Daleks

With Polly and Ben rushing back to their normal lives, the Doctor and Jamie set about tracking down who has stolen the TARDIS. Their investigations lead them to an antique shop owned by one Edward Waterfield, who is in fact a scientist from the 1800's brought forward in time to trap the Doctor and Jamie and deliver them into the hands of the Daleks. To ensure the co-operation of Waterfield and his eager partner Theodore Maxtible, the Daleks have taken Waterfield's daughter, Victoria, as a prisoner in Maxtible's house. The Daleks want something called "the Human Factor" which they think will fill in the blanks in their knowledge and enable them to finally conquer Earth for good, and they force the Doctor to help them by subjecting Jamie to a series of tests to isolate the emotions that they are looking for. The result backfires, and the Doctor manages to create three friendly playful Daleks who begin to question orders from their commanders. Everyone is taken back to Skaro and the Doctor finally confronts the Emperor Dalek, and the truth of the Dalek ambition is revealed. The Human Factor spreads amongst the Daleks, though, and rival factions beging to fight amongst themselves, even taking out the Emperor in the end, a carnage the Doctor refers to as "the final end" of the Daleks.

Wow. Out of the whole 7 episodes, I found the last two to be the best of the bunch, when the action returned to Skaro and there was a futher revelation into the "culture" of the Daleks - which is to say the inclusion of the Emperor Dalek. The earlier episodes seem to take their time getting to where they are going; Jamie's trials in Maxtible's house as he tries to rescue Victoria seem to take a while, and the slow pursuit around London looking for the TARDIS seems a bit like padding. Episode 2 exists on the Lost in Time disc so while we don't get to see as much of the Daleks as we would like, we do get to see the Doctor react to their presence. The otehr episodes are all on CD, narrated by Fraser Hines, who finally gets a chance to let Jamie shine. Free from the shadow of Ben and Polly he emerges as quite the hero in his efforts to rescue Victoria. The Doctor has to play it very cool this episode, risking alienating Jamie in his efforts to deceive the Daleks by appearing to work with them willingly. The thing is, they threaten to destroy the TARDIS if the Doctor does not help them, but in The Chase they blasted the hell out of it and nothing happened, so why is he worried? And the Emperor. Huge booming Dalek voice. Huge Dalek! It obviously doesn't go anywhere. There does exist a montage of footage of the final Dalek battle in the Emperor's chamber, so we get to see it briefly, and in its original form, before it returns in Remembrance of the Daleks looking a bit like an egg. Victoria joins the crew after the battle is done; her father died in the Dalek revolution and the Doctor and Jamie adopt her as their new family member. The Doctor at one point ponders returning to his home planet and taking Jamie and Victoria with him should Earth fall to the Daleks, bringing up the question once again of exactly who the Doctor is and where he comes from.

The whole point to the Daleks seeming to wipe themselves out here is for Terry Nation to take them away from the series and try to sell them as a show in their own right. At the time it was decided there would be no more Dalek shows, but as it happened, the Daleks did return eventually in 1972's Day of the Daleks. The season closed, however, with the future of the Daleks in doubt, their return uncertain.

But someone else's return was just around the corner...

NEXT EPISODE : THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN