Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 646: Planet of Fire, Episode Four

Dear diary,

The Master stands surrounded by flame as the healing energies are replaced with fierce nature

THE MASTER
Help me! I'll give you anything in creation. Please! Won't you show mercy to your own… Argh!!!

Oh, of course I was going to have to bring this up today. Along with the introduction of Peri, the departure of Turlough, and the fact that it was filmed abroad, this is the thing everyone knows about Planet of Fire. They were finally going to reveal that the Master is the Doctor’s brother! Do you know, it’s been so long since I last saw this story that in my head it was far more… explicit. The way the line is spoken in my head makes it sound much more as though he’s been cut off, but Anthony Ainley’s delivery doesn’t quite have the same effect - it’s more stilted. For what it’s worth, I don’t think that the Doctor and the Master are siblings. It just seems too neat somehow, and I much prefer the idea that they’re friends and contemporaries. Indeed, I rather like the thought that one of them ran away from Gallifrey first, and the other followed suit because they were always trying to keep up with their cooler friend. I can’t quite decide who went first, but I love not knowing. It’s a little piece of mystery in my own head canon, and I enjoy that.

I’m not enjoying Planet of Fire as much, though, I’m sad to say. Right the way through, the story has simply failed to connect with me, and it’s hovered around a fairly average score. Today is no exemption. While there’s plenty in here that should be appealing to me… it simply isn’t. I’m not overly bothered by the plight of the people on this world, and I don’t really care about the struggles they have to go through to get to the end.

Where I am interested is when we get all of Turlough’s background. Because I’m coming to all of this some thirty years later, I know that Turlough is from Trion, and a prisoner following a bitter civil war. What surprises me is just how much all of that only gets invented here. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I’d convinced myself that little hints had been drip-fed to us right through Turlough’s time in the TARDIS, but really, this is the only mention we’ve had that he’s an alien since his arrival… and even there it’s not made all that explicit! In many ways, I should be complaining that all of this comes as an info dump in his final episode, but I really like everything we’re told, so I’m willing to completely overlook that fact. I’ll miss having Turlough (and Mark Strickson) in the programme, though, because he’s been a highlight in several stories lately!

Still, we’ve got the arrival of Peri well and truly started now. I’d forgotten (are you sensing a theme here? Lots of Planet of Fire simply failed to stick in the mind!) that she actively asks to come along with the Doctor, and I’m looking forward to seeing how that evolves over the next two stories. What a time to join the ship! It seems an odd decision to want to tag along, mind, considering she’s had relatively little time with the Doctor so far - though they get some great time together today - and she’s spent most of the episode being threatened and running around Lanzarote trying to keep alive! I can’t fault her enthusiasm, and after a fair old stretch with Tegan in the show (much as I loved her), this comes as a real breath of fresh air.

There’s change coming…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 645: Planet of Fire, Episode Three

Dear diary,

The Master’s… situation in Planet of Fire might just be the most ridiculous one he’s ever caught up in. I’ve already mocked it more than once during the course of The 50 Year Diary, and I’m sure I’ll end up mocking it again (probably tomorrow, if I’m honest). That said, the cliffhanger for today’s episode, in which Peri opens up Kameleon’s ‘Control Box’ to find a miniature Master inside, is so ridiculous and stupid… that I can’t help but love it! I think it’s almost one of those situations where something is so bad that it actually ends up twisting back round to ‘good’ again.

In fairness, I’ve rather enjoyed the Master in a lot of this story so far. He’s certainly coming across better than he did in The King’s Demons or Time-Flight. There’s something really wonderful about the fact that the Doctor is trying to convince these people to follow his advice and to help him, while making a point of telling them that he’s not the ‘Chosen One’ they’ve been waiting for. The Master (or the Kameleon-Master), on the other hand, strolls into the room and immediately starts playing the part of the man they’re expecting. I love the way he raises his arm and starts to give a sermon akin to an over-the-top preacher as he orders the Doctor to be put to the flame. It’s times like this that the Master is at his very best (it’s just a pity that it ends up undercut by the fact that he needs helping out of a box… What do you know, I didn’t even have to wait until tomorrow to mock it again!)

It feels quite monumental, too, that we’re seeing Anthony Ainley’s final confrontation with the Fifth Doctor. Back when Ainley first appeared in the programme, I commented that having him work against four different incarnations robbed him of the ‘mirror image’ effect that we had with Pertwee and Delgardo. Those two were perfectly matched - both a little pompous and arrogant, both entirely convinced that they’re right… there’s so many instances that I flagged up while watching where they’re simply made for each other as ‘Hero’ and ‘Villain’. Ainley has already fought the Fourth Doctor (and even caused his demise, indirectly), and yet I’ve grown to think of him as being very much the Peter Davison Master. I’m wondering how I’ll find him in the next few seasons, when forced to go up against Colin? Certainly, at the time, I believe this was planned to be the end of the character at least for a while, and it’s sort of a shame that they ended up bringing him back so swiftly.

Also worth mentioning - the Master’s outfit in this story. When I think of the 80’s Master, I think of the velvet outfit that he’s most famous for. He gets a few variations (most notably in this story and in Survival), but it’s usually confined to being that one standard ‘costume’. It’s amazing how much swapping him out into a suit for his appearance as Kameleon helps, though! It really looks good as an outfit for the Master, and it feels so much nicer than the one he usually has to wear. I’ve seen people complain that the action figure of this Master is technically a figure of Kameleon in a suit… but I’m somewhat glad it’s the one we’ve got!

It was only during today’s episode, too, that I’ve noticed the Doctor’s outfit! You’d think, after two-and-a-half season of seeing him so often with his jacket and jumper on, that his appearance here would make more of an impact. In fact, it genuinely washed over me until today. I think it’s because this is another one of those useless facts you build up as a Who fan - I know this is what he wears for the story, so my brain doesn’t bother to kick in when I see it! As a costume, I think it works for the Doctor, and I like how much more relaxed it makes him seem. Having Turlough out of the school uniform makes it really look like the pair are on holiday, and I think I rather like that!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 644: Planet of Fire, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I’m not sure what the general consensus is on Peri as a character, but I really do love the way she’s being introduced in this story. With the Doctor and Turlough off having their own adventure for much of today’s episode, and Peri stranded on her own with the Kameleon-Master, it feels almost as though she’s waiting in the wings for Turlough to up and leave, before she can take her place as one of the programme’s leads. I’ve never noticed how strange this period of the programme is, with three consecutive stories ending with the departure of a lead cast member… it’s really starting to hammer home to me now that things are all change once more! I’d also like to highlight some of my favourite dialogue for Peri ever, and a line that I often find myself quoting to people completely out of context for no real reason:

KAMELEON (IN THE FORM OF THE MASTER)
You will obey me…

PERI
No.

KAMELEON (IN THE FORM OF THE MASTER)
I am the Master!

PERI
So what? I'm Perpugilliam Brown and I can shout just as loud as you can.

I love that she’s not taking any of the Master’s grandiose rubbish - as far as she’s concerned, he’s just a slightly shonky robot who isn’t particularly friendly. I must admit, in the past, I’ve found it hard to wrap my head around Kameleon’s role in this story, because even the cast don’t always seem to be entirely sure when someone is playing their original character, or the Kameleon copy of them. There’s a moment in today’s episode, where a piece of rubble falls onto Kameleon-in-the-form-of-the-Master’s head, and when he gets up again, he gives the bump on his head a little rub as if he’d just knocked it against something a little light. In some ways, it seems to give the impression that it’s only a tiny bump to a robot like Kameleon, but Anthony Ainley plays it far more ‘organic’ than that!

On the whole, I’m really not sure what to make of Planet of Fire. I had memories of it being a story which isn’t really here-or-there, and it didn’t leave any real impact on me. I don’t know if it’s simply that I’m waiting for the new era to kick in (and the fact that the next story has been voted the all-time-number-one Doctor Who adventure before now probably doesn’t help!), but I’m just not all that bothered by anything that’s happening here. We’ve come all the way out to Lanzarote (a location which still isn’t really being used to it’s best potential), we’ve got the annual return of the Master, the introduction of a new companion, a volcano about to erupt… and I’m just a bit bored by it all. I’m hoping that things can pick up in the next episode, because with so little Peter Davison left in the series - and having enjoyed the rest of this season quite a lot - I want to really get the most out of the Fifth Doctor while I can!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 643: Planet of Fire, Episode One

Dear diary,

I’ve always thought that Nicola Bryant did quite well, joining the series here. Her very first story takes her out to Lanzarote for filming! It’s a far cry from Janet Fielding being introduced to the programme on the side of the Barnet Bypass! I’m going to have to mention Peri’s… arrival in the story, so I may as well get it out of the way quickly! It has to be said that the famous bikini shot is quite a departure for the programme! I often end up saying ‘we’ve never had anything quite like this in the programme before…’, but that’s very true in this instance! I’d somehow got myself to thinking that it was out first shot of Peri in the series, so I was quite surprised to see her given more clothes and character in several scenes before this one! I’d also forgotten how bratty Peri comes across in this episode, but I rather like that. By the time we reach Season Twenty-Three, we’ll have seen her grow up considerably, so I’m looking forward to watching the character grow over the next couple of seasons - we’ve got a great place to start from!

While I’m on the subject of companions… Kamelion is back! This is one of those times where I knew he was in the story (and played quite a major part), and I knew this as recently as yesterday… but completely forgot today until he started screaming out in agony! It’s a real shame that he’s been completely ignored since the end of The King’s Demons, because the Doctor’s cry of concern for the android here comes across almost as though he’s remembered that the thing exists. It would have been nicer to have a brief appearance from Kamelion in each of this year’s stories (there was one cut from The Awakening - I meant to watch the scene at the time, but got too caught up in the war games and forgot!), even if he was just plugged into the console and offered advice, or sarcastic K9-esque comments to the rest of the TARDIS crew. As it is, I don’t really care that he’s in any pain here, and I worry that it won’t make much of an impact on me as the story continues and we see him go through his final hours.

I’ve already mentioned the Lanzarote filming briefly today, but I can’t quite decide if it’s a good idea or not. On the one hand, it does provide some lovely locations - Peri out on the boat looks far more effective than it would have done being shot off the coast of England - but it’s not being treated as the focal point I’d expect. Our opening shot today, as two characters make their way across some rocky terrain, doesn’t try to give us a real cope of the vistas behind them; it lets them start to creep into shot as we follow their actions, but then cuts away before we can get a real decent look. For all it matters, this could have been shot in any old quarry!

I’m also struggling to keep on top of which location is meant to be where. The production team really got their money’s worth out of the trip abroad here, by having the island appear as itself and the planet of Sarn, but it’s causing me no end of problems. This is most noticeable when we cut from Peri out on the boat, to two of our Sarn… people, looking out over a body of water from atop a peak. There’s no indication that this is supposed to be a different body of water to the one we’ve just seen Peri in, and I can’t help but think that either Sarn would look better contrasted against something like a flat, grey, London locale, or Lanzerote would look better crossed with an alien planet filmed here in the UK. I’m hoping that the distinction might become more clear as the episodes roll by…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 642: Resurrection of the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Fanboy that I am, I can’t help but enjoy taking this episode, and retroactively inserting modern Time War continuity in to it. The Daleks’ plan here is to duplicate the Doctor (and his companions, because they wisely understand that the Doctor needs companions or he’ll look a bit… off), and then dispatch the clones to Gallifrey to assassinate the High Council of the Time Lords. Let’s be honest, it’s not exactly hard to try and view this as an early shot of the Time War, is it? In fact, this feels now like the first retaliation for the events in Genesis of the Daleks, where the Doctor was tasked specifically with wiping out the Daleks before they have a chance to become… well… the creatures we know and love to hate.

I also don’t think it’s hard to read the Doctor’s actions here as being aware that this could be the start of an almighty war. Once he knows what’s going on, and finds out where Davros is, he decided that he needs to go and put a stop to it all. There’s something almost brutal (and in keeping with this story) about the way he simply announces that he’s off to kill Davros, and then ruminates on the fact that he ‘held back’ once before when he could have put a stop to things. There’s a few more instances to come in the ‘classic’ series yet which can be seen as part of the Time War, but we’ve now got the aforementioned Genesis, The Invasion of Time (which I decided was the Sontarans ‘auditioning’ for a part in the battle), and this story. It’s fitting that the universe the Doctor’s in this season should be that little bit darker, and that little bit less safe.

Especially fitting, in fact, because it’s this kind of thing that prompts Tegan to make a decision and leave the Doctor behind. I must admit - I love Tegan’s departure. We’ve never had a companion exit quite like this before, in which they actively decide that they’ve had enough of the Doctor’s lifestyle and they want out. Usually, they’re off to better things, leaving for love, or a chance to get back home, or because they’ve found a new family. Tegan leaves because everything’s gotten a bit nastier of late. There’s certainly a feeling of this over the last few stories - In Warriors of the Deep, there should have been another way. The Awakening puts another one of her relatives in danger. Even Frontios takes its toll. I sort of with that they’d fed in a little bit more of this over the last few tales, knowing that she was on the way out.

For years and years, I’ve seen people complain that Tegan was a rubbish companion because she never wanted to be there in the TARDIS. It’s one of those things that you sort of subconsciously take in as part of your Doctor Who knowledge. I have to admit, though, that she’s been far less whiny than I was expecting. Yes, she spends some of Season Nineteen trying to get back to Heathrow, but when an adventure arose, she was able to jump in and be a vital part of the team. I have to say that I’ve really loved Tegan as a companion, and it’s surprising just how quickly her departure has come around. She’s moved a good few places up my list of favourite companions, and I’m going to be sorry to see her go. I’d like to take one final chance to heap some praise on Janet Fielding, too. She’s been fantastic in the part, and her final scene here is simply wonderful. Oh, Tegan, I shall miss you!

Today’s episode, while still a bloodbath, has been quite enjoyable. There’s some lovely direction on show (Tegan being chased by the fake policemen is home to probably the best shots of the story, especially as she tries to escape down a flight of steps towards the river), and I’m glad that Matthew Robinson will be back next series to helm the return of another popular monster. I can’t remember a great deal about Attack of the Cybermen, but I don’t think it’s quite as bleak as this one has been! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 641: Resurrection of the Daleks, Episode One

Dear diary,

Today feels extra special. It’s the start of a new story, the return of the Daleks after a five-year absence from the programme (brief cameo in The Five Doctors notwithstanding), Tegan’s final story, and it’s almost double-length! Yes, I’m going to be watching Resurrection of the Daleks in the 45-minute version that it was shown in on first broadcast (altered because of the BBC’s screening of the Winter Olympics, I think?). I’m not doing it this way because I’m trying to go for exact historical accuracy in this marathon, but more for nostalgic reasons. Having rented Invasion of the Dinosaurs from the local library in the autumn of 2003, my interest in Doctor Who had been sufficiently piqued. I’d rented out a few more tapes of the series (and for an idea of the effect that they had on me, I can’t remember which ones they were…), and had a read up online. I knew, therefore, that the Doctor’s greatest foes were the Cybermen… and the Daleks.

The first two DVDs of the programme that I purchased therefore were this story and The Tomb of the Cybermen, because I thought that they would give me a good idea about these two most famous of villains. I also wonder if this initial choice made an impact on the fact that I’ve always been more at home with 1960s and 1980s Doctor Who than the 1970s stuff that goes on in the middle? The original DVD release of this story came out with the as-broadcast two episodes, so that’s how I remember experiencing this tale the first time around. I’ve seen it maybe twice more since then, and I’ve been really looking forward to reaching it in the marathon.

There’s certainly a lot to like about this opening episode, isn’t there? We open with that gorgeous shot of the warehouses, the girders overhead, and then pan in to a man lighting up a cigarette. Already, thanks to the direction, there’s something somewhat eerie about all of this… and then a bunch of people dressed in ‘futuristic’ clothes come running in terror from one of the buildings, pursued by a group of policemen, who proceed to shoot them down… and take out the man with the cigarette too, just for good measure. I think I’m right in saying that Resurrection of the Daleks has the highest on-screen body count of any Doctor Who serial, and this opening scene certainly sets that stock out early on.

From there, the episode doesn’t let up, and I think the crowning moment is probably the crew of a space-prison setting up a barricade to fight from behind as the Daleks come blasting aboard the station. It’s the first time that we’ve ever seen the Daleks treated in such a manner - dropping them in to the kind of ‘gritty’ and ‘macho’ science fiction that was popular in the 1980s. The last time we saw them, in Destiny of the Daleks, they were trundling round a quarry and trying to save Davros from bombs. Here, they come gliding through the safety barrier and into the ambush, where they immediately manage to dispatch a couple of their opposition.

But then we get a couple of Dalek casualties, too! Seeing the two blown up in the entrance to the airlock is lovely, as is the way that reinforcements come along and just push these shells out of the way when recommencing the attack. And then you’ve got the destruction of the Dalek in the warehouse - which we get to see pushed out of a second-floor window and explode as it hits the street below. As if that weren’t enough, you then get the terror of the Dalek mutant, too, which prompts even the Doctor to take up arms. This certainly isn’t your standard Dalek tale.

Quite often, people talk about Eric Saward’s scripts for the programme being very bleak. This is, I think, the first time that we’ve really been able to see that in action - it’s certainly a lot bleaker than The Visitation was, and you can sort of track the through line from Earthshock to here. This is Saward taking the same starting point, and just really feeling free to go all out with it. I don’t think I’d want Doctor Who to be like this all the time, but having this type of tale peppered through the programme now and then is always nice, just to break things up a little. It’ll help make Tegan’s decision to go in tomorrow’s episode all the more relatable.

Today is also the first appearance of Terry Molloy as Davros. He’ll be seeing us through another two Dalek tales after this one, and I have to admit that I’m a fan of this ‘incarnation’ of the villain. I’d imagine it’s probably because I was first introduced to the character through Molloy’s portrayal (I’d seen all of his stories in the roll long before seeing either Wisher or Gooderson fill the part), and also because I’ve had the provalidge of seeing Terry give a performance first hand. When I was studying for my degree, we had to make a lot of short films, each one showing off a different technical aspect of film-making. For one of the pieces, we had to put together a trailer.

Of course, I decided to go ahead and create a Doctor Who trailer. We could only use footage that we’d created ourselves, though, so I set about getting shots in various locations that could be used. The crowning moment of the trailer was to be the TARDIS arriving, the door opening, and the light spilling out to illuminate Davros, sat alone in a dark space, ruminating on the mistakes he’s made in life. I wrote a short piece, and Terry was kind enough to come along and record it for me (in the back room of the shop I worked in at the time!). Just hearing him deliver the lines in a cold and calculating way (a performance honed by years of working with Big Finish, I’d guess, because it was incredibly subtle and nuanced, was a real joy, and when he finally broke out in to full on ‘rant’ mode… absolutely beautiful. For an hour afterwards, Terry crouched down behind the original Davros mask and operated the mouth, while I took shots of various angled and we synched it to the dialogue. It was something of an odd day, but a real highlight of the degree!

There’s a lot to like in Davros’ revival here, but it’s not quite as good as I remembered it. One of my favourite shots in this serial is the big ‘cryogenic chamber’ lifting up, and the smoke pouring out around Davros, revealing the scientist. I’d remembered it being the big introduction of Davros to the story, and thought that the chamber had appeared entirely filled with smoke up to then. Actually, though, he’s visible in the background of shots for ages before that happens, and it does lessen his arrival into the story. It reduces him to simply being a bit of the furniture that happens to be there, as opposed to exciting me about his return. I’m also somewhat baffled by his musing that he’d have loved to have seen the war between the Daleks and the Movellans… but he did! In his last story! Ninety years in suspension has obviously been playing a little with the grey matter! 

DWO’s Spoiler-free preview of episode 8.7: Kill the Moon:

This year’s season of Doctor Who has really showcased the way that the programme can change and adapt its style each week. We’ve had comedy with Robot of Sherwood, action with Into the Dalek and even a bank job in Time Heist. What do we get with *Kill the Moon, then? Well… a feeling of dread, mostly.

That’s not a negative comment - it’s not a feeling of dread that the episode isn’t good - it is - but large swathes of this episode are imbued with that ‘pit of your stomach’ feeling that makes you a little bit uncomfortable. It could be the spider-creatures lurking in the shadows, or a moon base filled with cobwebs, it could be the mystery of the moon’s real purpose, and it could even be the way that the Twelfth Doctor behaves.

Peter Capaldi’s Doctor has been quite unlike his immediate predecessors. He’s not the cuddly, human-loving Doctor we’ve come to know over the last ten years or so, and he’s stopped pretending to be our best friend. That’s perhaps never highlighted better than in this episode, in which he decides that it’s simply not his place to get involved. With each week, you can see Capaldi finding new facets of the character, and this week we get to swing between him being cold and uncaring, to excitement as he figures out what’s really going on.

If our Doctor is on fine form again in this episode, then the same is certainly true for Jenna Coleman in the role of the companion. Clara has been through a lot with the Doctor since his regeneration, and the cracks in their relationship are beginning to show. Coleman gives it full throttle in this episode, at times proving her best performance to date. Clara might struggle to get along with the Doctor after this adventure, and it’s not hard to see why…

It’s also time for our annual trip abroad, this time returning to Lanzerote (previously used for location sequences in 1984’s Planet of Fire), which is doubling up as the surface of the moon. It’s a very striking location, and it’s hard not to fall in love with it a little - perfectly representing our closest neighbour in the stars, while also transforming it in to something creepy and dangerous. Director Paul Wilmshurst has crafted a beautiful pallette for the episode, and his work here only serves to add to the tension, keeping you on the edge of your seat waiting for the next little bit of terror…

Five things to look out for:

1) There’s shades of 1968’s Seeds of Death in here… beyond it being set on the moon…
2) A description of how the Doctor senses ‘fixed points’ in time.
3) “What’s wrong with my yo-yo?”
4) Two rules: “No being Sick. No Hanky-Panky.”
5) “The future is no more malleable than the past.”

[Sources: DWO; Will Brooks]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 640: Frontios, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I really love the image of the TARDIS here, embedded in to the rock. It’s such a striking image, and it’s another one of those ones I can recall seeing long before I had a chance to watch this story, and it’s always stuck with me. Even the effect of the TARDIS being pulled back together looks fab - it’s a simple case of fading between two shots, but something about it just really works for me. As you can probably tell, I’m going to be raving about this episode a little bit more today!

Frontios is a tale which doesn’t really get a great deal of attention. It’s not often talked about, it just sort of exists as a part of this season. Even though I know I like it from a previous viewing, I tend to forget that it’s even here, so it’s lovely to watch it again now and find that it can really hit the right notes for me. It feels confident, it looks stunning, and there’s a great story at the heart of it. When we talk about showing stories to people as an attempt to interest them in Doctor Who, there’s a few candidates that always crop up - City of Death is normally in the number one spot. I think that Frontios might be a good addition to the list, though! There’s perhaps a little bit of continuity in the fact that the Gravis thinks the Doctor has been sent to spy on events here, but so long as someone sitting down to watch knows that the Doctor is a Time Lord, you’re good to go!

Certainly, I think this is the strongest ‘space’ tale that we’ve has for a long time. I gone on at length over the last few days about how good the sets look, but it does bear repeating one final time here, because they’re stunning. I don’t think there’s a single set which doesn’t work for me, from the tunnels to the surface, they all have a very strong identity, and they’ve managed to really get the hang of that ‘battered future’ look that’s been creeping into the series for a while. This is a far cry from the sterile white corridors of the Nerva beacon - and while that set was gorgeous in its own way, this is just as beautiful - if not more so - in a completely different direction.

Director Ron Jones will be helming stories in the next two seasons, and I’m suddenly very much looking forward to seeing them. Everything here feels like such a step up from his previous efforts on the series, and I really can’t deduce what’s happened between Arc of Infinity and this story to warrant such an upswing in quality. He was never a bad director, but he’s never before made the impact on me that he has here. I’m hoping he can keep it up!

Someone who won’t be returning, though, is Christopher H Bidmead. I’ve not really discussed him a great deal in this marathon - despite the fact that he script-edited Season Eighteen, which did rather well in my scores - but it’s nice to see him bowing out of the programme on such a high. I think it’s fair to say that this is a far better script than Castrovalva was, and my thoughts on Logopolis are probably best being left where they are. The script for this story is filled with so many lovely little lines that I’ve been noting down over the last few days, and I’ve barely brought any up because it’s been too tricky to try and pick favourites. I do want to single this one out from Turlough in Episode Three, however, before the story is over:

TURLOUGH
The earth is hungry. It waits to eat. … I can see them. They are the appetite beneath the ground.

The whole idea of the earth being ‘hungry’ really appeals to me (it’s likely why The Hungry Earth is one of my favourite story titles from the new series), and it’s painted beautifully in this story, as a mixture of myth and madness. It’s a shame that Bidmead won’t get the chance to provide another tale like this one to the programme, but I think Frontios has shot right up my list of favourite stories, and I’ll certainly be returning to it fairly quickly once the marathon is over!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 639: Frontios, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I think I played my ‘isn’t Mark Strickson good’ card a day too early. He was very good yesterday, but today’s episode has been a real tour-de-force for him! I think you can really see him sinking his teeth into having something different to do in today’s episode, and even though he’s required to mostly look troubled and spout half-complete sentences, he’s really giving it his all, and making the most of the part. I’m really, really impressed by him here, and I think this is likely to be his best performance in the programme, and the one that I’ll be remembering him for.

Yesterday, I tried to stay away from praising the direction too much, but I’m going to have to bring it up again now, because it really is fantastic. I still can’t quite get my head around the idea that this is the same man who directed Black Orchid or Time-Flight. Everything looks so polished, and it’s the use of lighting and colour that really works for me. The underground scenes have a unique feel all their own, and it does come across as a completely different alien environment to the world above the surface. I love the way that the green light is used in scenes with their own portable lighting tubes, and it helps to make this look even creepier than they could do. I’m also wondering if they’ve started using a different quality of video this season which could be helping to contribute to that slightly ‘glossier’ look that I was discussing yesterday - this story looks somewhat sharper than I’m used to, and I think the same was true of The Awakening, too, looking back…

I’d also like to give some praise over to the design team on this one. I’m so used to banging on about the way the BBC are so much better at creating historical or down-to-earth locations, and Season Twenty-One so far has been something of a case in point, with the poor quality sets in Warriors of the Deep being followed up by the church and the manor house in The Awakening. This story is the perfect example that they really can do space-age, and I think it’s probably my favourite futuristic design to date. The use of several glass shots (or, at least, I’m assuming they’re glass shots) in different locations really helps to give a sense of scale to the sets where needed, which helps to make the various tunnels all the more claustrophobic.

Of course, at some point, I have to mention the story’s resident monster - the Tractators. People dressed up like giant rubber woodlice. A concept which is frankly ridiculous, and the design department couldn’t be expected to do anything short of rubbish with it.

Which is why it’s all the more surprising just how well they work! Haha! There’s a moment early on in today’s episode, where Tegan throws one of the lights at a group of the Tractators, and they go shuffling off, waving their arms around… and it looks great! It shouldn’t - it should look absolutely awful. If you were to show the clip to a non-fan out of context, they’d probably think it looked stupid, and rubbish, and all those things that it quite possibly does… but I don’t care, because right there in that moment, I completely bought it. It was only after the episode ended that I remembered complaining about the Myrka waving its arms around the other day - it’s surprising just how differently everything combines together this time to create something that I’m really enjoying.

And while I’m on the subject of it, come on, Character Options! Where the hell is my Tractator action figure?

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Matt Fitton

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: September 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“The end of the world is nigh. That’s what everybody is seeing in their nightmares. That’s why they are congregating in Liverpool for the party to end all parties, hosted by Rufus Stone, a celebrity turned doomsday prophet. He claims he’s the only one who can save them when the day of judgement comes. Because he’s on the side of the angels.

The Doctor, Ace and Hector arrive to find the city in the grip of apocalypse fever. There are lights in the sky, earthquakes and power cuts. The Doctor is determined to investigate, while Ace is more concerned about finding a way of restoring Hector’s lost memories.

Meanwhile, in the river Mersey, hideous, slug-like creatures are stirring...”

***

So, here we have it, then: the absolutely-definitely final story for Hector/Hex we-promise-this-time-honest story.  I don’t think I need to put into words here the amount of scepticism I had going into this play, though I was comforted by the knowledge that the other two in this trilogy have been damn good.

I’ve been growing a bit… tired of the trilogy format for the monthly releases recently as it has perhaps grown a little stale, and you have to wait a long time between releases to encounter favourite Doctors or companions again, which can be a tad frustrating and stifles any real growth in affection towards said characters, but thus far this one had bucked the trend by giving us two strong releases back-to-back for the first time in a while.

I was also very, very wary of listening to yet another story in which they should get rid of Hex.  He should have gone in A Death in the Family, no doubt about it, but this was put on hold and, in fairness, there was some nice trickery going on with the Black and White TARDIS plot thread, and Protect and Survive was an incredible play.  And then Hex should absolutely definitely have gone in Gods and Monsters, and when he failed to then, I must admit that I just gave up.  It hasn’t diminished the quality of plays following, but was a really, really silly thing to do.  So then, exit point number three: does it make good on it?

I am pleased to say that Signs and Wonders does indeed, and also ends this strong trilogy on yet another strong release.  Set in Liverpool, a mysterious preacher man is foretelling the end of the world, people are having premonitions about their deaths, and Hector/Hex is fed up with not knowing who he is, and wants to return to his home, or the closest he has to one, to try and gain some perspective.  Throw in the return of Sally Morgan, some gods and slug monsters, and the scene is set for something final with a lot of explosions along the way for good measure.

At first, I feared that this story was simply going to replicate the big bangs and Elder God-related techno-guff of Gods and Monsters, but it quickly shows itself to have more heart and a plot two steps away from manipulation and ensuing confusion.  It’s also got Jessica Martin being wonderful in it as a Reverend who enjoys brass rubbing, which is nice.

As with the other plays in this trilogy, Matt Fitton gives us a good, strong story for Hex/Hector across four episodes, one which makes use of the plot developments for him without them getting in the way.  There is also plenty to do for the other characters, with the Seventh Doctor in particular having some fun with his brolly and Amy Pemberton excelling once more as Sally Morgan, one of my favourite additions to Big Finish in recent times.

I do not want to give much away here, but the play concludes with a very definite ending for Hex/Hector and a nice nod to the future for the Seventh Doctor and Ace, tying in to events we’ve already glimpsed in adventures such as UNIT: Dominion.  It’s a neat step forward.

The ending for Hex/Hector itself is absolutely perfect, and Fitton should be given full credit for pulling it off.  It’s a far, far more satisfying ending than Gods would have been in hindsight, though I still maintain it was where he should have gone if not in Death, which was every bit a natural conclusion to his character as this play is.  You couldn’t wish for a better ending to his story though, so colour me satisfied.

What is frustrating though is that it ever even got to this stage.  This is indeed the perfect ending (a Big Finish, if you will), so why didn’t we get this before? Why did we not get a trilogy as strong as this earlier? I’m glad that Big Finish got it very right ion the end, but disappointed that it took so very long to reach this destination.  It shows a lack of confidence in direction and an unwillingness to let go of actors and have the stories suffer accordingly.

The future is definitely looking brighter now, but please: have the courage of your convictions and know when to stop.

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Andrew Smith

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £10.99 (Download)

Release Date: September 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

“The Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara land on the planet Hydra, where Admiral Jonas Kaan leads a vast flotilla of ships trying to elude the vicious race that has invaded and occupied their world. But his ships are being picked off one by one, vessels and crews dragged underwater by an unseen foe.

The time travellers find themselves pitched into battle against the Voord, the ruthless enemy they last encountered on the planet Marinus. As they take the fight to the very heart of the territory now controlled by the Voord the stakes get higher. First they lose the TARDIS... then they lose that which they hold most dear. And that's only the start of their troubles.

In the capital, Predora City, they will learn the truth of what it means to be a Voord. And that truth is horrifying.”

***

The first of Big Finish’s new Early Adventures range, Domain of the Voord has a lot to do across its four episodes: kick the new range off, give the Voord an edge and background/serious identity which they so lacked on screen, and tell a good story in its own right.

The first category is perhaps the hardest to judge, as a lot of whether you enjoy it or not will depend, I suspect, upon what your expectations of the new range are.  I think, in some respects, that Big Finish have rather shot themselves in the foot this time around.

A lot of the advertising surrounding Doctor Who: The Early Adventures has been in monochrome and very clearly paints them out to be evoking the 1960s era: brand new audio stories, told in black and white, cheers the poster, and elsewhere David Richardson, the producer, has said how he wanted to recreate the feeling of listening to soundtrack recordings of missing episodes (still 97 missing, at the time of writing this) with these plays.

With all this in mind then, I think it is more than reasonable to assume that people are going to have specific expectations about the range in mind before pressing play and listening to the Voord do battle with our heroes once again.  With that in mind, I think it is more than reasonable to assume that said people may end up very disappointing when listening to Domain of the Voord and discovering that it is, in fact, nothing like listening to a TV soundtrack, being littered as it is with very audio-typical dialogue (“It’s been two weeks since we set sail on this large, metal boat on a sea of crystalline blue!”) and actors reading out characters’ lines with ‘he said’, ‘she said’ and other such quantifiers after each sentence.  What we actually have is a release somewhere between the Companion Chronicles, the TARGET Talking Books and Big Finish’s Lost Stories range when it covered adventures from the 1960s.  Indeed, it feels far more like the final range than any other, including lost episode soundtracks.  Perhaps some of this will depend on how authentic you found something like The Rosemariners when listening to it: did it feel like an enhanced audiobook, or a TV soundtrack? If the answer is the latter then... well, colour me impressed as I’ve no idea how you’ve happened upon this experience.  If the former, then that’s fine: an enhanced audiobook is a lovely thing to be listening to and in no way a bad thing.

That’s what we’ve got here, only with a brand new script this time as opposed to, erm, a brand new script based on a handful of scribbles, and in many cases flat-out contradicting said scribbles. (The Lost Stories range really was a curious beast at times.)

This is going to disappoint a hell of a lot of listeners, but what’s to be done? Well, maybe clearer advertising and statements, but what we have now is what we have, and that’s the end of that.  Perhaps with the news that roles such as Ben and Barbara have been recast, we have the possibility now of truly recreating that soundtrack nature in the future by having full-cast productions with additional narration, but right now, we’re not there.

Second point: does it feel like we’re back in the 1960s? Again, I would say no.  Not just because of the production values, which are obviously a step up from what could be achieved back then (though why do footsteps dubbed onto the track always feel so intrusive and fake?), but the story feels a mixture of being steeped in that era and true to it, and whole worlds away from it with some complex technical jargon and violence.  Carole Ann Ford herself remarks in the (very, very slim) CD extras that it would never have been done in the 1960s due to the imagery, so again, you wonder what is to come, and just hope it doesn’t disappoint too many people. (Seriously though: the CD extras are so slight, you wonder why they bothered. There’s no discussion at all of it being a new range and what they hoped to achieve, which for a series launch feels like a rather drastic oversight.)

This move away from rigidly trying to ape an era isn’t necessarily a bad thing: a hell of a lot of the first series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures suffered directly because they were hell-bent on emulating an era and forgot to tell necessarily exciting stories, so ignoring this could be a good thing.  It’s just not a thing it claims to be.

To return to the start though, let’s address the other two points I reeled off: does it move the Voord on, and does it tell a good story?

This time, the answer is a resounding yes, to both points.  I’ve mentioned it in these reviews before, but an Andrew Smith script is always an exciting prospect.  Do you remember those distant days way back when the only thing we had from Smith was Full Circle on screen and its rather beautifully written novelisation? (If you haven’t ever read it, please do: it’s the most wonderful love-letter to a show which the writer so clearly adores.) I’m terribly glad that those days are behind us now.  Big Finish should be praised for it.

Here with Domain of the Voord, Smith gives us a very exciting and fun script which intelligently scrutinizes the Voord based on their one on-screen appearance whilst also telling a decent tale in its own right.  The TARDIS crew land upon a ship in the midst of a planet-wide war with an alien aggressor.  Within minutes, Ian is fighting to save the day, the Doctor is in danger of losing the TARDIS, and the crew are aware that the Voord are back and mean business.

Along the way, we get duplicitous prisoners trying to engage in a bit of Stockholm Syndrome, an alien race that present as religious fanatics in many respects, a return to the fun days of TARDIS-loss and separation from the Doctor (I don’t think I’m going to be spoiling much here when I say I cheered when the first person declares the Doctor to be dead early on in the story: it’s always a fun staple of Who when you hear this, as you’re then waiting eagerly to see how he returns to save the day), and glimpses of birthright and blood ties, and what it is that makes someone who they are, or in this instance: what makes a Voord a Voord? Oh, and it also solves the age-old question of what the correct plural of the Alien Voord is: Voord or Voords? (Much like sheep and sheep, Smith favours simply ‘Voord’. So, there we have it.)

Despite my love and adoration of Yartek, Leader of the Alien Voord (to the extent where he ‘wrote’ on my blog weekly, dispensing advice and witticisms for nearly a year), I think it’s safe to say that he never really scared us much.  Smith manages across four episodes to make the Voord feel like a legitimate threat.  It’s no easy task, so credit where credit is due.  That said, the final episode is practically the length of two standard-sized ones, so it’s nearer a five-episode-span than you’d expect, another nail in the authenticity coffin.  In short though, this is a damn fun play, ably acted as ever by Ford and William Russell, and with a frankly terrific guest cast: take a well-earned bow, Daisy Ashford, Andrew Bone and Andrew Dickens.  They are all absolutely brilliant.

In the end though, Domain of the Voord is a difficult one to mark.  In terms of story alone, this is a nine out of ten affair, no questions asked.  However, in terms of what The Early Adventures purported to be and what they actually are, the score surely has to be docked some points.

I’m going to plump for 7 out of 10 in the end, which feels unfair to Smith but hopefully fair to other listeners.  But, please feel free to adjust the score accordingly.  And watch out for the Voord; they’re not as harmless as you’d imagine...

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 638: Frontios, Episode Two

Dear diary,

There’s something quite striking about having a cliffhanger in which the TARDIS - effectively - blows up. I used to comment about enemies getting in to the ship being something truly unsettling, because that white console room is our beacon of safety for the main characters, but this feels like going several steps beyond even that. Having just the hat-stand left as a signifier of where the ship once stood is also a brilliant visual image.. but I’m not sure if it would make as much of an impact on me if I didn’t know that the hat-stand was supposed to be such an obvious part of the ship, with the Doctor drawing attention to it at the start of yesterday’s episode. I think of it as being iconic… because I’ve always been told it is. I know it’s been around in the console room for ages now (and will continue to be so right through to the new series), but I’ve never really noticed it before!

This story is still scoring an awful lot of thumbs up from me, though. I mostly mentioned the direction yesterday, so take it as read that I’ve really enjoyed that aspect of the tale today (though I do need to make mention once again of the way different coloured light is being used to great effect - yesterday it was the red of the ‘missile attack’, while today it’s the green of the underground tunnels - and close ups again of various characters is making this look really rather beautiful), but I’m getting caught up in lots of the actual narrative this time around. Despite the fact that I’ve seen Frontios before, I can’t remember a great deal about the plot. I know that the Tractators are dragging people down through the soil to power their machines… but I can’t remember why they’re doing it, or what they hope to achieve. It means that I’m finding everything really gripping as I try to piece it all together!

The last time Christopher H Bidmead penned a script for the series, it was filled with lots of high-concept ideas that simply couldn’t be realised all that effectively in a BBC TV studio. Now, it feels like he’s come back to the programme with a better idea of what they might actually achieve with the time and budget they’re given. He’s created a world here that I feel really invested in - it’s populated with very rounded characters, and a sense of shared history that I can completely buy in to. It’s always nice when this happens, and it’s putting me rather in mind of Kinda, which can only help to strengthen this story’s position! We’re being drip fed information about this colony, their back story, and their various power struggles really carefully, and it’s bringing me right in to the story. There’s no doubting that this is Bidmead’s best script for the show.

I’d also like to take a moment today to give some prise for Mark Strickson. He’s been in the series for a while now, and he’s given a great performance in every episode so far. He’ll be off in only a few episode’s time, so I wanted to make sure that I single him out for praise at least once! I fear that he gets rather over-looked in the grand scheme of companions, overshadowed by the likes of Tegan and Peri around him, both of whom are Doctor-defining companions. Turlough is just there, not always given the most to do, but Strickson makes sure to really flesh out the part every week. His performance today is a real highlight, when forced to come running through the caverns absolutely petrified by the thought of the Tractators - I’m really unsettled by his acting here, and that’s supposed to be a compliment! He’s managing to convey the terror of the situation perfectly, and I think it’s a shame that he doesn’t get credited for his work on the programme as much as he deserves to!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 637: Frontios Episode One

Dear diary,

Frontios was one of the last Peter Davisons stories to be released on DVD, coming out towards the latter end of the range in 2012. Up until then, there wasn’t much I could have told you about it, other than it was broadcast as a part of this season. It was just one of those Doctor Who stories that existed, but whereas the tales around it in this season featured the return of creatures like the Silurians, or the Daleks, or were the location of major cast departures and arrivals, this one was just A. N. Other story. Because it was one of the later DVD releases, I was long since caught up on buying them, and I’d pick them up on day of release on the way to work. Even if it wasn’t a tale I was desperate to watch immediately, I’d still dutifully buy the DVD, because a) I’d want to see it one day, and b) there would be a gap in the collection and it would drive me mad knowing that it was still to be filled. That said, I’ve still not actually bought The Web of Fear on DVD, because I picked it up on iTunes…

With this being one of the stories I knew so little about, though, I couldn’t wait to get it home and watch it. At some point, I’d sort of made a conscious decision not to find much out about it, because I liked the idea that there could still be Doctor Who stories that were almost completely alien to me. Actually watching my way through the series for The 50 Year Diary has revealed that there’s loads of stories I know very little about - even if I didn’t realise it - but for a long while Frontios was an example of a story that I was aware of knowing very little information on. I still wonder, if I’m honest, if that’s why I enjoyed it so much on that first viewing, because I can remember being simply glued to it throughout.

It’s one of those times when I want to say ‘you can always tell that so-and-so is back in the director’s seat this week…’, but actually, it’s not as simple as all that. When I started out on today, I made a note that it must be Peter Grimwade directing, because it was looking so polished and he’s one of the best director’s we’ve got at this point… but then I remembered that he bowed out of the series with Earthshock. I had to wait for the closing credits to roll around to find out that this one was being directed by… Ron Jones!?!?! Surely that’s an error in the credits? Ron Jones was the director responsible for Time-Flight, which wasn’t particularly stand out direction, and for Arc of Infinity, which even in Amsterdam didn’t make any impact! This is the man who turned the corridors of Gallifrey into a tacky office block corridor, complete with sofas!

I’m being rude, yes, and unfair. I was just so surprised by the revelation, because I’m loving the direction in this story. The main courtyard set looks fantastic when it’s being struck by the ‘missile attack’, and there’s a lot of really nice close ups that make this story feel quite unlike anything… well, quite unlike anything from before Season Twenty-One. I’ve been musing over the last few days that this season has its own very unique style. The costumes worn by the ‘locals’ here are very similar to the ones we see in Warriors From the Deep, and we’ll be seeing similar things cropping up in at least a couple of other stories before the season is out. It’s not just the design that feels different this year - the whole ‘look’ of the season feels more polished and glossy than anything from the last few years has. It’s almost as though we’ve done that ‘Season Eighteen Upgrade’ thing again, where everything has suddenly started to look completely different from the Doctor Who that came before…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 636: The Awakening, Episode Two

Dear diary,

Oh dear. Yesterday, The Awakening had so much promise. Although the central mystery was botched a little bit - informing us that the people in this village are playing a war game before trying to drum up mystery about the fact that they're all dressed in period costume - there was enough going on to keep me really interested and I was enjoying things. Today's episode has been much more of a mixed bag.

For starters - we get the revelation that Sir George is under the influence of the evil Malus in the church. I'd wondered if there was some kind of influence being applied to the people in this village, or if they were just going too far by their own accord, and I really like the idea that it's a bit of both. Sir George is under the influence, and because people know and respect him, they all get caught up too. We also find out today that they plan to really recreate this battle in the village - complete with casualties. That's a great revelation, and I think it needs to have been seeded in to the story a little bit earlier on. You can get away with explaining the concept of the war games and then building mystery about the fact that they're all going too far to make it accurate, but that didn't come across on screen as well as it perhaps should have.

The other issue I have is in the form of Tegan's grandfather. He's the reason that they're here in Little Hodcombe, and much was made in the first episode about the fact that he was 'missing', and the locals were being more than a little bit shady about it. After all of that, though, he turns up today without any real fanfare - he simply happens to be locked up in the same barn Turlough gets taken to, and is introduced to the plot with a simple 'hello, I'm so-and-so'. This probably shouldn't bother me as much as it does, but then he doesn't actually make any difference to the story after that. We discover that he's the one who found the Malus, but for all the difference that makes, it could have been any character in the village. Thank goodness Tegan asks for time to spend with him at the end of the story, or he'd be completely redundant!

On the plus side, I really like the Malus creature in the church here. It's an image that I just know would have been burned in to my mind as a child, watching the bits of the wall crumble away to reveal the evil face behind. Indeed, I can claim that it's been burned into my adult brain, because it was one of the images I an most clearly recall from the Doctor Who: The Legend book, about a decade ago. I've said before during this marathon that that book was responsible for inspiring and growing my love of Doctor Who all the more in the early days of my interest in the programme, and this is just another example of it. I think I like that even though it's only a two-part story, and we only really get to see the creature in this second half, they've created what looks like a fairly expensive prop for it - complete with moving lips and glowing eyes, billowing smoke… yeah, definitely one of the greatest creations of the era, if not the entire 'classic' series.

I didn't bring him up yesterday, but I'm really loving the character of Will in this story (and not just because he's my name-sake. Is this the first time we've had a 'Will' in the programme? No others spring to mind immediately…). It's quite nice to see a return to that Season Nineteen format of pairing the Doctor off with a 'local', while the companions go off to play a different role in the story. Peter Davison works well with a 'child' companion, and Keith Jayne turns is a really lovely performance. I've also been enjoying Polly James in this one as the schoolteacher - she works very well with Davison's Doctor, too. I think I'm right in saying that both these characters travel with the Doctor for a while in the novels - presumably while taking Will home again at the end of the adventure, leaving Tegan and Turlough behind in the village for a little bit (there's a point - I can understand Tegan wanting to stay put for a day or three, but Turlough has been so desperate to never see the planet again - I'm surprised he doesn't want to hurry away again!).

It's a real pity that this has all fallen apart so much for me, because I so enjoyed various aspects of the first episode, and it seems like a real shame to see them go to waste like this.

While I'm here, I'd also like to draw attention to the 'making of' feature on this DVD - Return to Little Hodcombe. I don't watch special features for every story as I go through the marathon, but I tend to dip in and out here and there. This particular one is a real highlight, though, and probably one that I've enjoyed the most from the entire range. It takes this story's director - Michael Owen Morris - back to one of the locations used for the story, as well as bringing back Eric Sawad, Janet Fielding, and Keith Jayne to talk about their various involvement in the story. The feature is peppered with input from local residents who remember the filming, and it's lovely to hear them recall it, and to see their photographs from the time. It adds a really nice new angle to these kinds of features, and I've really enjoyed watching it!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 635: The Awakening, Episode One

Dear diary,

I watched this episode hours ago. I usually write up the day’s thoughts fairly quickly after viewing (if I don’t, I’ll get distracted by something shiny, or some Doctor Who action figures or something, and I’ll never get round to it), but I’ve been wrestling with myself on this one. You see, I really want to give it an ‘8/10’, but I don’t think the episode quite deserves it, because… oh. Right. Tell you what. Let’s start with all the (many) positives, shall we?

For starters, this episode looks gorgeous. It does! Once again, the BBC are most comfortable when filming something down to Earth with actors in period costume. They’re rather gorgeous costumes, too, because the period of the Civil War allows for a certain amount of flamboyancy to be introduced into the design of the story. That also extends to the various sets, which are also gorgeous (and represent Barry Newbury’s final work on the programme, capping a tenure that’s stretched back intermittently to the very first story, with stops via Marco Polo, Doctor Who and the Silurians, and The Brain of Morbius). Visually, you couldn’t ask for much better.

I also love the whole idea of the war game, and that the entire village is all a bit too caught up in things. I can’t tell if that’s going to turn out to be down to the Malus’ influence (Will here does say that the creature makes the fighting worse), or if it will simply end up being just the way humans behave, which could be a nice way to take things. I just know that I’d enjoy getting caught up in these games, and the rural life on display here isn’t a million miles from what I grew up around (indeed, it’s almost making me a bit homesick!), so I’m enjoying that aspect of things, too.

And then you’ve got Tegan’s grandfather going missing, and everyone getting a little bit cagey as to what’s really going on here. I can’t tell if any of the characters are directly under the control of the Malus, and thus are behaving oddly on its orders, but it’s certainly fun to watch the Doctor come up against these obstacles in a slightly different way to the norm. I’ve become so used to him coming up against people in power that it’s always fun to see him caught up in some slightly different dynamics.

My problem with the episode, then, is the way that information is seeded out to us. There’s a lovely moment, when the TARDIS crew arrive and Tegan declares that they’re in the wrong century. Turlough tells her that he checked the instruments himself, and it’s definitely 1984… so something strange is going on. As our trio continue to explore, lots gets made of the fact that they’re surprised by the events around here, and the story tries to build up a real mystery around it all. But… we’ve already been told that it’s a recreation of the Civil War! We know that it’s just the present-day villagers getting dressed up and having a bit of a laugh. Surely it would work better if we have to wait and find out that information along with the Doctor? This is where I’m not sure that the episode deserves a full-on 8/10 score, because it feels like such an oversight.

Today also sees the introduction of Peter Davison’s new costume as the Doctor. I’ve always known that he had a slightly different version for this final season (though I assumed it would have debuted with Warriors of the Deep - I assume his original costume is still in the wash after the events of that story…!), but I always thought it was just the little changes - the shirt switching from red lining to green, the bands on the jumper, and the stripes on the trousers. But unless my eyes deceive me, we’ve got a slightly different jacket, too? I’m not sure what it is about the piece, but it doesn’t looks quite right - almost like a budget cosplay version of his regular jacket. It’s not something I’ve ever noticed as a problem before now, so I’ll be keeping an eye on it during the rest of the season to see if it’s just having an ‘off day’ (or, rather, if I am!)

Something else I’ve found amusing in today’s entry - and it’s the kind of pathetic thing I think of when watching several episodes but then don’t bother to write about here - has been an odd string of coincidences. The episode opens with the local schoolteacher searching the barns for someone. As she appeared on the screen, I thought to myself ‘she looks bit like an older Polly Wright’ (no, no, I know she doesn’t as the story wen’t on, I couldn’t decide why I thought that). As if on cue, she then starts calling out for her missing person… and it’s a man called ‘Ben’! That raised a smile, but then when the credits began to roll, I realised that the schoolteacher was being played by an actress called Polly James! So there we have it - a Ben and Polly reunion, taking place entirely in my own head!

Anyway. Coming to the end of this entry, and having finally written everything out… no, I can’t give this one an 8/10. The slightly strange seeding of information feels too out of place for me. I’ll stick with a solid 7/10, and hope that tomorrow might be enough to tip it up slightly… 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 634: Warriors of the Deep, Episode Four

Dear diary,

When Turlough first arrived last season, I commented that he and Tegan together was always a TARDIS pairing that I enjoyed… but that I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why. They travel together for much of this season, but it’s lots of stories that I’m not as familiar with as the Fifth Doctor’s earlier adventures. I’ve been looking forward to reaching this stage, because I wanted to try and put my finger on it. If I’m totally honest, I still don’t really know what it is that’s working so well for me, I think I’m starting to get some ideas. The pair didn’t really make that much of an impact during The King’s Demons, and they only get a little bit of time together at the start and end of The Five Doctors, but in this story we get to see them interact once more.

Both of the characters feel very rounded - certainly more so than Adric or Nyssa felt towards the end of their respective stays in the TARDIS. Tegan has settles into being someone who travels with the Doctor simply because that’s what she’s done for a while - like someone taking on a temporary position at work, and finding themselves still there several years later because it’s just what you do. She doesn’t always enjoy her travels, but she’s absolutely loyal to the Doctor, and has grown to have absolute faith in him. There’s the lovely moment in yesterday’s episode when the Doctor has already told Tegan to ‘close her eyes and make a wish’ to shield her from his Myrka-destroying ray. Several scenes later, he’s able to use almost the same phrase to keep her safe while freeing her from kidnap. They spark off each other nicely, and I think there’s a genuine affection here. Considering the look we got when Tegan invited herself back into the TARDIS in Arc of Infinity, their relationship has come a long way!

Turlough, on the other hand, is slimy. Obviously, he was given his place aboard the ship in order to kill the Doctor, and even if he’s over that phase of his life now, he certainly still comes across as a bit self-serving, and somewhat cowardly. There’s plenty of chances to see it throughout this episode - from the Doctor being pushed over the gantry and into the water (in which Tegan is determined to help, while Turlough simply decides that the man is probably dead and is ready to abandon him to his fate), and in today’s episode, where he’d much rather escape captivity and return to the TARDIS, because going after the Doctor will mean heading further into danger. This sounds like I’m being incredibly harsh on the character, but I’m really not, because this story also gives us the flip side of all that. Turlough is happy enough to pick up a gun and defend the Sea Base when he needs to, and he goes out of his way to try and get the Doctor and Tegan freed from the grip of the Myrka when they’ve been shut in. It’s moments like this that make him seem so very real, and I like that.

The dynamic between the companions and the Doctor is also an interesting one, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it might develop over the next few stories. We had a team that didn’t exactly get along during Season Nineteen, but there it was just petty squabbling that could easily get tiresome (not that I didn’t enjoy it, but I wouldn’t want much more than we actually had). Tegan and Turlough bicker in a more ‘grown up’ way, whereby she doesn’t trust him, and he doesn’t particularly care for her. And yet, when they both end up in the same cell in today’s episode, they’re both so pleased to see that the other is alive. I’ve seen it suggested that these two are ripe for a romantic pairing, and I think I can see that. The Doctor’s not overly sure on Turlough either at this stage, which is nice, because I’d really worried that the Black Guardian would be defeated and they’d all forget about the attempts on their lives!

As for the episode today… Well, I’ve been discussing the TARDIS crew because it’s a fantastic story in terms of their characterisations. I can’t say that I’ve really noticed this in either of Johnny Byrne’s other scripts for the series, but it’s something that’s shone through Warriors of the Deep, even when everything around it has been going a bit… wrong. I think part of the problem is that the Myrka turns up so early, and as I said the other day, everything around the creature goes so wrong, that it shattered the illusion for me. The story was never going to claw its way back up in my estimations, because it has been too thoroughly damaged by that attack.

On the whole, it’s been a bit of a disappointment. I went in to this story knowing that it wasn’t going to be the best one I’d ever seen, but hoping that I’d be able to find it better than general opinion would have it. As it is, I’ve come away with a sad sense that this really is one of the low points in the programme’s production. Still, we’re back to a two-part story tomorrow, featuring period pieces, and it’s one I seem to remember enjoying before. As ever with Doctor Who, there’s something completely different just around the corner…

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 633: Warriors of the Deep, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I’ve never particularly gotten the ‘point’ of bringing back the Silurians and the Sea Devils for this story. Back in the days before I’d started doing this marathon, it was simply on of those useless Doctor Who facts that occupied space in my head. In which 20th century stories do these creatures appear? Doctor Who and the Silurians, The Sea Devils, Warriors of the Deep. Useful for an answer in a quiz, but just a fact. I’d not watched those earlier two stories, and I remembered so little about this one that I may as well have not seen it. Once those two Pertwee tales came and went, though, I found myself really enjoying them.

Doctor Who and the Silurians was the moment that I suddenly realised that I might enjoy the Third Doctor’s era after all (it’s still high on my list for a re-watch once the marathon is over), and The Sea Devils was a highlight among some stories that didn’t fare quite so well with me. But they were also stories that had been told. Completely. Finished with. They don’t feel as though they need to be drudged up again more than a decade later, and this is perhaps the closest that the series has ever come to being some kind of fan-pleasing, box-ticking exercise. We know that these two species are cousins… but we’ve never seen them on screen together…!

Now that I’m watching this story, I really can’t make up my mind as to whether it’s been a good idea to resurrect them. On the one hand, I’m really enjoying the Doctor’s reaction to these events - he urges the crew of the Sea Base not to fight with these creatures, partly because he knows how strong they are, but also because he seems to be spying a chance to try for a better outcome than we had the last time around. That’s a great idea, and I can see the sense in bringing them back to tell that kind of story… but it feels like a story that should either be told with Jon Pertwee’s Doctor… or not at all. He was the one who felt that he’d let the Silurians down, and ten years on it just doesn’t have the same emotional impact for me.

Having the creatures on screen isn’t exactly filling me with nostalgia and excitement, either. When the Silurians made their first appearance in the programme, I commented that I loved the idea of them, and that they were being given really intelligent and great dialogue… but that the costumes let them down. The joins were just too obvious, and it was a shame. The design was sound, I could really get on board with that, but the execution just didn’t do it for me. On top of that, having had several episodes where we only catch glimpses of the creatures as they stalk across the moor, or hide in barns, when they started to speak, the voices were awful. I described them at the time as being simply the voice of a ‘man in a rubber suit’.

They’re not being served much better here, if I’m honest. This time around, we’re not treated to any mystery about the creatures - they appear on the screen in full before we’ve even set eyes on the TARDIS crew in this adventure. The costumes have been given an overhaul, but they now seem to lack any of the charm they had in the 1970s - here they’re just another generic rubber suit. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s been made well enough, and it’s a clever update of the design (I’m not keen on the flashing third eye, mind), but it just looks a bit… well, again, I can see this story earning it’s rather unfortunate nickname of Warriors on the Cheap.

The voices have been given a bit of a makeover for this return, too, but I think it’s telling that one of the notes I’ve made for Episode One is to comment on how rubbish they sound! The Sea Devils at least retain their lovely, whispery voices, though I’m not entirely sure if I like their new Samuri style… it just feels slightly at odds with… everything!

(Yes, you’ve probably noticed that I’m trying to avoid discussing the episode itself. If I have to talk to you about that karate kick - another famous Doctor Who moment, for all the wrong reasons, and ten times worse here than I’d even thought - then I’ll scream.)

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 632: Warrior’s of the Deep, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I like to think that I’m generally pretty fair when I’m writing The 50 Year Diary. The lowest scores I’ve ever handed out are 3/10’s (which, by the criteria I set out in January of last year during An Unearthly Child, means that no episode of Doctor Who so far has been classified as either ‘Dreadful’, or ‘Why am I doing this again?’), and there’s only been a handful of episodes which have scored the covered 10/10. The reasons for this are quite simple - I hate it when things get marked too far as extremes. There’s a few Hartnell episodes that I look back on now and think I should have given a 10/10 to (including that very first episode), but then it wouldn’t have left room to breathe when even better episodes come along. The scores I give out most often are 6’s and 7’s, and I think they’re pretty strong figures - anything more than that means that an episode is really stand out, while anything less is a bit of a let down.

In addition to trying not to ‘overrate’ stories, I try to be fair when dealing with episodes that I’m not keen on. The Highlanders. The Dominators. The Curse of Peladon. The Pirate Planet. All of these stories have scored pretty low with me, but it’s still been a 3/10, because there’s always something I can enjoy in them, be it the Doctor, his companions, or a monster. I also find that my opinions don’t always fall in to step with the perceived wisdom of ‘fandom’. The Evil of the Daleks bored me, on the whole (and I note that it’s slipped again in the most recent Doctor Who Magazine poll, continuing its trend of becoming less revered as the years go by), and I just didn’t get on with The Dæmons either. At the other end of the spectrum, there are stories like The Invisible Enemy, which I’m not supposed to enjoy but I just can’t help myself! I try to be as open and fair to an episode as I possibly can be, and I’m willing to overlook the odd bad effect, or dodgy performance, if everything else is up to par.

Can you guess where I’m going with this? I bet you can. Ladies and gentlemen… The Myrka! Oh, the Myrka. It really is held up alongside the Taran Wood Beast as the time that Doctor Who just got it so spectacularly wrong. I’ve been all ready to defend the Myrka. It was going to become one of my ‘causes’. You’d have seen me stood outside WH Smiths with a collection bucket and a ‘save the Myrka’ t-shirt. Because, in a way, I quite like the creature. It appears on the cover to Mike Tucker’s The Silurian Gift book, and while it looks a bit cute and cuddly there, I think it actually fits in well with the new Silurians, and that’s always made me a bit more sympathetic towards the creature.

Oh, but then today happened. When the doors first started to buckle, I prepared myself to mount a defence. There’s a flash of fin behind the collapsing doors, and I’ve made a note to say that it’s not awful at that moment, but then… gah. It’s not necessarily the Myrka itself. I’ll admit that on screen the design doesn’t work, and it does come across as more ridiculous than scary (one of the final shots of the episode is looking up towards the creature, in a move that should make it imposing and give it stature, but watching the arms flail around simply makes it look ridiculous), but I’d be just about willing to overlook the creature. Possibly. No, it’s the fact that everything around it is so poorly done, that it all adds up to being one big mess.

You’ve got the actual ‘pantomime horse’ scripture for starters (complete with paint that hadn’t quite dried, I think I’m right in saying), coupled with one of the brightest parts of the Sea Base set (I thought that over-lighting was an issue of this entire story, but there’s several scenes where things are toned down a little and we get some really nice contrast), the doors really looking like they’re made of polystyrene, and a complete lack of tension to any of the proceedings. When the Doctor realises what’s about to burst through the doors, we get one of the most ridiculous moments we’ve ever seen in the programme, in which he declares that it’s a Myrka… and everyone carries on milling around. We even cut to a few other scenes before coming back to find them all still stood there, wondering when the action might start.

I’ve been wrong for all these years, because I thought this was an example of fans disliking a story because of a single bad costume. I’d never realised just how poorly done the entire sequence is, and I’m sorry to say that it has brought down the episode several points in my estimation. In the build up to the Myrka scene, I was expecting to give this episode maybe a 6/10 - not as good as yesterday, but still fairly decent, and better than expected. But then disaster after disaster strikes when the creature turns up, and there’s no way that even I can justify is all. I think this might be the first example in this marathon of one event going so wrong on screen that it effects the score in such a big way.

While I’m on the subject of being a bit let down by this episode, there’s something else that I want to draw attention to. We all know the age-old joke about ‘classic’ Doctor Who (well, there are several of them, and we all know the lot), which tends to get rolled out when someone - usually a relative - finds out that you watch it. They almost always mention the ‘wobbly sets’ as if it’s something the series was famed for back in the day. I’ve taken issue with this conception before in this marathon, pointing out that it actually doesn’t happen all that often, and certainly no more than in any other BBC programme made during the same period. Today, though, is the first time that I’ve really noticed a set wobble. It’s in the reprise to yesterday’s cliffhanger (and in fairness, I didn’t spot it last night), when the Doctor is having his fight. He’s slammed in to a wall, at which point the whole set does a wobble. A second hit makes it even more obvious. It’s a pity, because the rest of that particular set is fantastic, and it comes mere moments before he goes over a gantry and falls into a pool of water, in a shot that looks rather good!

Ho hum. On the plus side, I wasn’t expecting the Myrka to turn up until the final episode (or at least the Episode Three cliffhanger), so I can now at least hope that once it’s been disposed of, the story can get on with being somewhat good again. It’s a real shame to have thing ruined so spectacularly by just this one scene!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 631: Warriors of the Deep, Episode One

Dear diary,

I think it’s fair to say hat Warriors of the Deep has a bit of a reputation. It polled 226 out of 239 in the recent Doctor Who Magazine poll (though, in fairness, two other Davison stories - Time-Flight and The King’s Demons - polled lower than this one did), is frequently referred to on various Doctor Who forums as ‘Warriors on the Cheap’, and has even been held up by me in this very marathon as an example of things going a little bit wrong at times. I doubt this story is anyone’s absolute number one (oh, who am I kidding? Of course it’s someone’s number one!), and it’s certainly not a story that I’d be reaching for when I fancy seeing some Doctor Who… but I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve seen it before, and it was the only one of the ‘Beneath the Surface’ DVD set I watched when I picked them up, but I have no strong memories of it at all. I know the Myrka is a fairly poorly done effect, because it’s something that’s drummed into our collective fan subconscious, as is the fact that the story is over-lit, and, and, and… oh, what I’m really saying is that I know this story is supposed to be a bit naff, but I’ve been really looking forward to watching it and seeing what I think.

And you know what I’m finding to be the worst thing about it so far? Peter Davison’s haircut. Of all the Doctors, he’s the one who’s hair alters the most in my mind. Yeah, yeah, I know that Jon Pertwee allowed his to grow out more and more with every passing season, that Troughton went from wig to his own hair, and that Colin Baker returns in Season Twenty-Three with that thing on his head, but they all happen gradually, either as time goes on, or between seasons. Right from the start, owing to the way that Season Nineteen was produced, the Fifth Doctor’s hairstyles have been all over the place. This is the shortest that it’s ever looked… and I simply don’t like it. My favourite Fifth Doctor style is the long floppy hair he sports through most of Season Twenty, and to go from that straight in to this! Maybe it was less noticeable at the time, with a bit of a break between The Five Doctors and this story, but it sticks out like a sore thumb to me watching in order day after day!

I also have to admit that I rather like the design of the Sea Base that we’ve got here… though with a few caveats. It’s multi-level, which is something that always scores well with me, and the opening shot in which we follow a character from the upper platform down some stairs and to the main control area below is fantastic. It’s also got a real ‘kit’ feel to it - especially in the corridors - where you get the impression that it’s all been mass-produced and brought down to the sea bed to be installed. Where it gets let down, though, is the lighting. I’ve mentioned before that this story is an example of over-lighting in the 1980s, and it’s telling that the setting here looks much better once the yellow alert is sounded, and all the lights get turned down a few notches! It’s also rather nice when the Doctor and his companions are exploring initially, and they get to wander around in ares of low lighting. It makes things look that bit more sinister, and that bit more real. I’ve head it said that when writing the story, Johnny Byrne was envisioning a rusty old submarine sort of setting, and I think that would have looked lovely with some of the more crafted lighting we get here.

While I’m on the subject of sets, I’d like to just mention the ‘new’ TARDIS console room. It was actually installed during yesterday’s episode, but I was too busy enjoying the party atmosphere to mention it! I’ve often thought of the 1983 - 1988 TARDIS as being my favourite version of the classic console room (although it switches places with the original 1963 design on a fairly regular basis), and it does feel like a breath of fresh air when it’s added to the programme. Something about the console that Davison has been using for the last two seasons has felt somewhat out of place with the more glossy look the programme has had since John Nathan-Turner took over. This new console room feels very 1980s, and I can’t help but love it. A few years ago, I commissioned a replica of this set in scale with the 5” Character Options figures (though I’ve sadly since sold it on - a house move no longer allowing the space!), and there was no debate in choosing which version of the room I was going to have made. The only thing that’s been bothering me here is that I now know that almost all the buttons on this console are just stuck on and not useable (I’ve tried pressing them at the Doctor Who Experience enough times…), and I’m trying to figure out if that’s a more recent development, or if Peter Davison is actually able to use them on screen here! 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 630: The Five Doctors

Dear diary,

Confession time: I love The Five Doctors. It’s the episode of Doctor Who I’ve watched the most times, and I’d say that it’s the only episode that I’ve ever been able to watch over and over and over. When the Anniversary Edition of the DVD came out, I watched it several times in one day, just to do all of the commentary tracks (and once I’ve finished writing this entry, I’m going to curl up and watch it again with the David Tennant commentary turned on, because I’ve not heard it in years. I love it because it’s a party. It dispenses with the idea of trying to tell any particular story, and just gets on with bringing back all the old favourites, shoving them all in to an adventure together, and letting them do their greatest party tricks. As such, we get to watch Susan fall and twist her ankle (something I was surprised happened so few times on screen, but it feels like it happened a lot), Sarah gets to be a bit put out by being dragged into danger again, The Doctors get to turn up (mostly) and rattle off some of their more famous quirks… Someone once described The Five Doctors as ‘a Doctor Who convention on screen’, and I think that’s probably quite a fair description in many ways.

It’s because I’m so familiar with this episode (I spent most of it quoting the script as I watched - a habit that irritates me in other people, but I simply couldn’t help myself), I decided to watch today’s episode with Emma in tow. I didn’t tell her that we were watching the 20th anniversary episode (though she did get suspicious when I suggested getting a cake in), just that it was an important one. She sat down with me, ready to watch… and then bailed a little over halfway through. Frankly, she was bored by it, and that’s not something she’s encountered with any of Doctor Who before.

After this, I was watching the episode through slightly new eyes and realised that it actually is a little bit dull. I love it simply because we get to see all these party pieces - all the old Doctors turn up (even if two are in archive footage), there’s a selection of companions you know and love, there’s a Dalek, and a Yeti, and the Cybermen, and the Master, and a Time Lord Turned Bad… it really is just taking all those elements that you’d expect there to be in the story and throwing them at the screen. As a fan, I can find this great, because it’s all my old favourites (and watching it as part of the marathon, it is nice to see some of these elements again), but to a more casual viewer, it simply isn’t enough.

During the build up to the 50th anniversary last year, there were lots of calls for The Day of the Doctor to be a modern-day version of this tale, and I really don’t know if that would work for me. The closest that we’ve come to it is in The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End, in which we get all of the Doctor’s old companions back together for a jolly send off at the end of the Tenth Doctor’s final season. There’s just a bit too much going on here for any room to be given over to telling a story. I think that’s where the episode has failed the most for me. There’s something just wrong about the fact that the Fifth Doctor sees Susan - his grand-daughter - nineteen years after leaving her behind in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but that because of the constraints of the story (and the fact that they’re trying not to get too bogged-down in continuity, I’d suppose), he only really gets to say two lines to her in the entire piece. One is simply to confirm that he remembers who she is, and the other is to say goodbye to her! Even when she’s paired off with him to trek across the Death Zone, any comments he makes are directed at Susan and Tegan, as opposed to really connecting with his granddaughter. I suppose what I really want is a scene like the one we get in The Sarah Jane Adventures story The Death of the Doctor, where he gets the chance to sit down with Jo Grant and have a real catch up after so many years. Once again, it’s the kind of moment that you don’t get a lot of at this point in the programme’s history, but having a few less characters included would perhaps free up a little more space for such conversations.

That’s why I’m so keen on the ‘phantoms’ in the tower: I think they’re a great way of getting a few more cameos in, and despite complaining above about there being too many characters wedged in already… I wish we had a few more like this! I think it helps that some of the cameos are such obscure choices - Liz and Mike aren’t exactly the first companions you think of when going for the Third Doctor’s era, though at least Jamie and Zoe are a more sound proposition!

Oh, but I’m just being cynical. Of course I’m still going to be giving the episode a good score, because I’m not supposed to be watching it with quite the same eyes that I use for the other episodes of this marathon. This is a celebration of Doctor Who reaching 20 years, a chance to revisit some old friends in the days before home video releases and with very few repeats, and in that sense it’s a real success. For all my complaining about there being so many characters thrown at the screen… did we really want anything else? It’s really fantastic to have them all back again, and everyone is clearly having a fantastic time.

I’m not going to delve into commenting on everyone’s performances, because the party atmosphere of this episode really doesn’t need to be analysed in any great detail, but I will take a moment to talk about one particular individual - because this is the only chance I’ll get to do so. Over the years, Richard Hurndall’s portrayal of the First Doctor has been through various stages of popularity, and it’s a particularly hot topic at the moment, with Big Finish recasting some of the earlier companions for recent releases. I have to say that for me, he absolutely works. People talk about the fact that he’s not quite the First Doctor that William Hartnell played… but I’d argue that Partick Troughton in this story isn’t playing quite the Second Doctor that he played in the sixties, and William Hartnell isn’t playing quite the Doctor that he did in the early 1970s, either. They’re all playing versions of the Doctors we remember, and Hurndall is a good enough First Doctor for me. That we get the real William Hartnell showing up at the beginning of the tale is wonderful, too, and it means that no one is left out of this celebration.

And let’s be honest, Richard Hurndall’s casting is worth it for the appearance he made on Blue Peter alone, in which Peter Davison clearly wants the floor of Television Centre to open up and swallow him. 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 629: The King’s Demons, Episode Two

Dear diary,

In hindsight, this episode looks largely like an introduction for Kamelion as a shape-shifting robot companion, getting us all up to speed on the various abilities that the robot possesses, and getting him aboard the TARDIS ready for adventures to continue. Obviously, as it turned out, that plan fell by the wayside due to the robot’s shortcomings in the studio… and I think that’s a real shame. Kamelion is one of those elements of the programme that Doctor Who fans discuss in hushed tones. More than once, I’ve seen him hailed as an example of John Nathan-Turner getting it so spectacularly wrong… and yet I love the idea.

I mean, let’s be honest, if you’re given the opportunity to add a new companion to the TARDIS team, one which is an actual robot, able to move its lips in time to pre-recorded dialogue, and tilt its head, and (according to the plans for the machine outlined in a special feature on the DVD of this story) eventually walk around, then it seems too good a chance to pass up. Peter Davison sums up in that same documentary where it all fell apart: if the current Doctor Who production team were offered a robot that could do all of this effectively and on their budget… alarm bells would start ringing.

It’s a real shame, I think, because the design of Kamelion is really rather nice. It somehow manages to create a whole new style all its own - almost an idea of what a futuristic art deco might look like. What we see if him on screen here is rather impressive, even when it’s just little tilts of the head, and I have to admit that he’s quite near the top of companions I’d like to see Character Options produce for the classic figure line - I’d love to display a little Kamelion next to the Fifth Doctor on the shelf! Heck, if I’m honest, I’d quite like a model of him sat in the chair with a lute!

As for the story here itself… it does come as a bit of a let down after yesterday’s episode. There, I commented about how much I’d enjoyed the build up of the mystery - that something wasn’t right with the king, and that these events are somehow in contrast to what history tells us. All of that is great. The revel of the king as a shape-shifting robot is great, too (and it’s a fantastic reveal, as the Doctor hears the king’s song from Episode One coming from inside a room of the castle, and we follow the Doctor’s reaction as he enters the room, before cutting to the reveal of Kamelion), but I think my problem comes from the fact that the Master is in here at all.

The whole scheme just doesn’t feel like something the Master would do. In fairness, I’d forgotten that he planned to then take the robot to other worlds and pull similar tricks there, but frankly the man just doesn’t have the patience for a scheme like this in his current incarnation. Delgado I could just about imagine doing it, but even that’s a stretch - this just isn’t a Master plan… it’s a Meddling Monk plan! A shame, because it does detract from the overall impact of the story. Were it simply any old alien with a robot pulling this stunt the nI think I’d go along with it, but making it the Master simply for the sake of bringing him back… I’m afraid that slightly ruins it for me. 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 628: The King’s Demons, Episode One

Dear diary,

It’s that time again, for the annual two-part story that we get throughout the Davison years, and I think it’s fair to say that The King’s Demons isn’t a tale that people are overly fond of. I don’t think it’s a story that many people actively dislike, but it’s just one that they tend to forget about - fading into a sort of obscurity, with the likes of the anniversary celebrations in The Five Doctors around it. I think I’m also right in saying that this was the lowest-rated of all the Fifth Doctor stories on original transmission… so all in all, it’s not anything particularly special.

That said, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it! When I was a kid, I loved all this medieval stuff, with kings of old, a knights, and castles, a jousts, and crusades. I still do, if I’m honest, and since moving to Wales there’s never been a shortage of castles to visit. The opening of this story would have been something to really capture my imagination, and the way that the TARDIS arrives in the middle of the jousting match, throwing the game off its stride would have really worked for me (it still does, if I’m honest - it’s one of the best TARDIS arrivals we’ve had, in terms of the actual events surrounding the materialisation).

As for the story itself… I’m likely to ruffle a few feathers when I say that I’m enjoying it. In many ways, it’s a similar plot to the first episode of Enlightenment - the TARDIS arrives in what looks to be a standard historical location, but there’s something not right that the Doctor just can’t put his finger on, and the inconsistencies build up and up throughout the episode. For some reason, though, it’s working better for me here than it did in Enlightenment, even though today’s cliffhanger is nowhere near as good as the one we had there (it’s not even in the same league). I just love the Doctor getting caught up in history and enjoying himself, but starting to slowly realise that things aren’t right. I also love the way that his curiosity is leading him in to things again - while Tegan wants to leave, the Doctor just wants to find out if he’s right about things here, and wants to get to the bottom of them.

The setting is filled with atmosphere, too, from the locations to the sets and beyond. Once again, it’s the BBC being asked to do costume drama, and they can do that with their eyes shut. The opening shot of the great hall makes it look massive, and all the supporting artists getting on with enjoying a medieval feast… yeah, I’m liking it, and as I’ve said, it would have certainly worked for me as a kid watching.

But then you have that cliffhanger, and it’s just a bit… I know that the Master is in this story, so the make up was never going to fool me, but I can’t tell if I’d have seen though it anyway. It’s not as good as the Portrieve disguise from Castrovalva, but it’s not a bad mask. I’m somewhat disappointed that he returns to his normal style with a video effect, though, rather than peeling off the face, which was much more creepy back in Mind of Evil (I think it was Mind of Evil, anyway…!)

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 627: Enlightenment, Episode Four

Dear diary,

I think it’s probably fitting for Enlightenment to end like this - leaving me unsure quite how I’ve felt about it. The story is one of those that I went in to with no preconceptions - I’ve seen it before at some point, I know, but I couldn’t remember anything, and I had no idea quite how fandom-at-large felt about it - which really meant that things could swing either way. As it is, I’m sort of left stranded in the sea of ‘meh’, because for everything I liked about the story, there’s things that just didn’t really work for me.

Let’s start off with a load of positives, because there’s a lot of them. The design on this story is fantastic. It’s yet another example of the BBC being so good at capturing period detail, and you can see the effort that’s gone in to creating both the Edwardian sailing ship and the pirate ship. I think it’s probably telling that the set which doesn’t quite work for me is the chamber on Wrack’s ship which calls for being more ‘sci-fi’. The big flashing light declaring that the vacuum shield has been turned off just doesn’t look right to me. All these sets are nicely shown off by some rather lovely direction, too. I was discussing with a friend this week that while Fiona Cumming is a perfectly competent director, she’s not one that you’d normally include in the upper echelons of people who’ve worked on Doctor Who. It’s nice, then, to see that she’s done such a good job with this story. I’ve switched back to the original model effects for these last two episodes, and they’re all rather good, and suit the tone of the story perfectly.

Then you’ve got the guest cast, who are all brilliant without exception. Oh, sure, they’re all playing it in different ways - Keith Barron’s turn as Striker is a million miles away from what Lynda Baron is doing with Wrack - but they work perfectly for the characters that we’re being asked to believe in. I can’t imagine Wrack working with a more low-key performance, and by the same toke, Striker wouldn’t be anywhere near as unsettling if he was going over-the-top with it. Even the Guardian’s are quite good in their own somewhat unique way - Valentine Dyall stalking around the set laughing his head off like Batman’s Penguin is a nice contrast to Cyril Luckham’s rather more laid back White Guardian.

I think that they’re the biggest issue that I’ve had with the story, though, and if I’m honest it’s a problem with this whole trilogy of tales. As I said back in Mawdryn Undead, I really like the idea of the Doctor’s new companion being placed aboard the TARDIS with a mission to kill the Doctor. It’s something new and bold for the programme to do, and a great way to spice up the companion role as we make our way though the twentieth year. The problem is that it starts to lose credibility as it goes on. When Turlough’s attempt to bash the Doctor’s head in with a rock is disrupted by an explosion, I can go along with it, and I’ll accept that he then doesn’t get another chance for a while because he’s busy getting caught up in one of the Doctor’s adventures. Where things start to fall down is in the slightly wooly characterisation that companions are given at this point - meaning that Turlough is often forced to be simply a tool in the story, and only come back to his motives when they need to fill a bit of time.

Terminus is the worst for this, having the boy slink off into a corner every five minutes to stare at his crystal and be told that he still needs to kill the Doctor, almost as if they’re reminding us who he is and why he’s around. It’s a good example of the programme needing the kind of ‘all seeing’ head writer that we get with the modern series, because I just don’t think that Eric Sawad has done a great job at trying to keep this storyline important across the three stories. It suddenly comes right back into the fore here, with the final showdown of light and dark, but it doesn’t feel like the big, awaited climax to this little story arc - it just feels like any other story. I think it’s what’s caused Enlightenment to fall flat for me - I’m waiting for some big ending to this plot line, and it just doesn’t live up to what I’m wanting.

That said, I think it might just be me finding fault, and maybe I’m just not in the right mood to enjoy this story? It placed the highest of the three ‘Black Guardian Trilogy’ tales in the recent Doctor Who Magazine poll, coming in at position 75, with Mawdryn Undead (my personal favourite of the three) ranking lower at 117, and Terminus languishing way behind at number 209!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 626: Enlightenment, Episode Three

Dear diary,

I think a problem that I’m having with this ‘Black Guardian Trilogy’ is that it’s just not been handled all that well. It’s not all that bad during Mawdryn Undead - you’ve got a great introduction for Turlough, agreeing to murder in exchange for his own life, and not quite realising what he’s getting in to, but after that first episode or so, it all gets a bit silly. During Terminus and this story, we get occasional scenes of the boy turning to the crystal seemingly just to remind us that he’s got it (this practice is at its worst during Terminus’ middle episodes, when he often slinks away from Tegan to do some ‘crystal acting’ before being called for), and with the Black Guardian occasionally prompting him in the right direction. We seem to have hit a stage now where Turlough has been given so many ‘final chances’ that the threat just doesn’t stick any more, and what should be a pivotal scene in today’s episode falls a little bit flat.

I’ve been musing about this since yesterday. I love the idea that the Black Guardian has told Turlough that if he doesn’t kill the Doctor then he’ll never be able to leave the ship, and that this thought plays on the boy’s mind so much that he actually ends up throwing himself overboard. It’s a great idea, but it just doesn’t quite come across on screen. It all happens a bit too quickly for my liking. But it’s the scene in today’s episode, with Turlough trapped in the airlock (it’s not an airlock, but you know what I mean), that should really matter. He’s already declared, while jumping from the ship, that he will never work for the Guardian again. He’s tried to kill himself to escape the man’s power. When he’s back in a life-threatening situation, though, he’s right back to calling for help.

It’s then that something wonderful happens. The Black Guardian turns up to follow through on his threat - he’s given up on the boy and he’ll happily let him die. That’s the first wonderful moment. That Turlough continues to shout for him, with the situation getting more-and-more desperate is rather powerful… until the real crisis point at which point he’s stopped shouting for the Guardian and started calling out for the Doctor instead. His time in the TARDIS has taught him to have absolute faith that the Doctor will save him - and of course, moments later, he does. The way that linked story lines like this are handled in this period of the programme’s history, though, simply doesn’t allow for the kind of nice through-line from the car-crash at Brendan school to the scene we see here, and it’s a pity, because the journey has felt somewhat bumpy when it could be something really rather brilliant.

As for today’s episode itself… I’m really struggling with Enlightenment. Not in the way that I slogged through The Dominators, or The Pirate Planet, just in the sense that I really can’t make up my mind. This seems to be a running theme this season. There’s lots of individual moments about this story that I’m really enjoying - the guest cast, the sets, the ideas, the direction, which is really rather nice - but I’m feeling as though the sum is less than the whole of it’s parts. I’m coming away from each episode having liked lots and lots of little bits, but feeling a bit ambivalent. And then it didn’t help that today’s episode wen’t a bit Lord of the Rings and had about six different endings! There’s so many moments that felt like the cliffhanger that by the time one actually kicked in, I was just glad to hear the theme music sting!

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 625: Enlightenment, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I spent a few days in the build up to this story debating whether I was going to watch the original broadcast version, or go for the swanky new CGI edit on the DVD. For yesterday’s episode I decided to go for the original one, but I’m afraid that I’ve caved today and swapped over to the swish new version! I know, I know, but I never set out to do things strictly as they were on TV, and after the very abrupt ending to Episode One, I wanted to see if it was given more room to breathe in this new edit. I just… forgot to switch off afterwards! I knew where the cliffhanger fell for Episode Two, so simply covered my ears and eyes as Turlough made his jump from the ship.

The new CGI effects are lovely, on the whole. They give a good sense of scale to the ships in the race, and I’ve seen people comment that you get a better idea of exactly what’s going on with this new version. It doesn’t all work for me - I’m not all that keen on the shot of the windows on the bridge, for example - but it’s certainly a nice way to enjoy the story. I’m now debating the idea of switching back to the original version for Episode Three, then back to this one for Episode Four (or vice-versa), but I’ll play it by ear and see how I feel when getting the disc ready tomorrow!

The effects aren’t the only thing to this episode, though, and I’m glad to say that I’ve started getting more involved in the story. On reflection, I think I may have been a little harsh on yesterday’s episode because I’m remembering things about it more fondly now than when I wrote up my entry for the day. There’s so many things introduced here that I can’t help but love - chief among them being the Eternals. When we were first introduced to the concept of the Guardians in The Ribos Operation, I mused that I really liked the idea of there being these two beings who sit above even the Time Lords in the grand scheme of things - the Black and the White Guardians effectively representing ‘God’ and ‘the Devil’ within the Doctor Who universe. Here, we’re introduced to another species, the Eternals, who don’t bother with the cosmic games of the Guardians, and don’t care about imposing their design across history like the Time Lords. They’re just these powerful beings who see themselves as being above it all.

As an introduction to the species, the Doctor’s conversation with Striker is wonderful:

STRIKER
You are not an Ephemeral. You are a time dweller. You travel in time.

DOCTOR
You're reading my thoughts.

STRIKER
You are a Time Lord. A lord of time. Are there lords in such a small domain?

DOCTOR
And where do you function?

STRIKER
Eternity.

The way that this exchange is then immediately cut off with Striker being called back to the race is fantastic, because it gives us a moment to let the idea sink in. We’re still at a point in the programme where the Time Lords are treated somewhat with awe (though we’re starting to see that change. Their portrayal in Arc of Infinity was, after all, rubbish, and in a couple of seasons time everyone and their mother in the programme with know who the Time Lords are and not really bat an eyelid about it), so the idea that this person finds them to be so insignificant is really interesting, and certainly fires the imagination.

Can we also have a big cheer for Marriner’s line ‘You're not like any Ephemeral I've met before’? It’s the same chat-up-line I used to woo Emma. 

DWO’s spoiler-free preview of episode 8.5 - Time Heist:

One of the greatest strengths Doctor Who has, is its ability to tell wildly different stories from week to week. Right back to the very earliest episodes, it’s a programme that can show us the stone age, before whisking us off to a dead city in the far future, or trapping us in the time machine. Season Eight is showing this ability off wonderfully, and Time Heist is as different to last week’s Listen as that episode was to Robot of Sherwood the week before, or Into the Dalek before that.

This episode takes The Doctor and Clara, and drops them in to a bank heist movie. Everything you’d want from such a tale is present here, and it’s always good fun to see how our characters react in scenarios we all know from an entire genre of film and television. 

It also presents us with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor slightly out of his depth, having to put his trust in others, and work it out along with the rest of us pudding brains. There’s enough twists and turns in the plot to keep you guessing right up until the end. Why are they breaking in to the bank? Who sent them here? Where’s the TARDIS? And why do they have to go about the break-in like this?

Time Heist may come as a disappointment to people going in expecting something as deep and creepy as last week’s story, because it’s not in the same style at all. That’s not to say that this isn’t an entertaining episode, but it’s a story to be enjoyed more simply expecting an entertaining 45 minutes.

There’s plenty of visual spectacle on display, with director Douglas MacKinnon returning for his second story of the season, and a great monster design in the Teller - a creature able to detect your guilt and remove it from your mind. As prosthetics go, it’s one of the strongest that Doctor Who has seen in a while.

On the whole, Time Heist serves its purpose as a good episode for the middle of the season. It’s never going to grace the top of ‘best story’ polls, but it’s sure to win over fans and warrant a repeat, to watch everything unfold once you know what’s been going on behind the scenes of the adventure…

Five things to look out for:

1) “Are you ready for your close up?”

2) Soup

3) “Have you got to reach a high shelf?”

4) Characters from The Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood, and the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip!

5) “Time to run”

[Sources: DWO; Will Brooks]

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...

Day 624: Enlightenment, Episode One

Dear diary,

I love it when I get to say this: there’s something so brilliantly and unashamedly Doctor Who about today’s cliffhanger. In hindsight, it seems like such a simple and obvious idea - good old fashioned sailing ships, but sailing through space - but it fits absolutely perfectly into the world of Doctor Who. It’s rather wonderfully executed, too, with the story shifting from ‘strange place’, to ‘sailing ship’, to ‘something not quite right’, and then the big reveal at the end, as we get to look out over the view. I think my only complaint would be how oddly handled that final shot is - I can see what it is because I know what the surprise is (and the Doctor’s just told us that they’re spaceships), but it’s such a brief shot that it’s almost hard to process. I’m assuming that’s the whole point. Reveal the true nature of the ships, and then get out just while the imagination is fired.

Despite all the mystery in this episode, something simply hasn’t grabbed me yet. I think it’s because I know we’re flying through space with Eternals at the helm, so I’m just waiting for those elements of the story to kick in. It’s a pity, because I can imagine this episode being rather intriguing when seen without any prior knowledge. Did any of you at the time guess the reveal ahead of the cliffhanger, or was it a shock to you?

And then we’ve got the return of the White Guardian to the series. The first note I made today was that the TARDIS looked a bit ‘Ribos Operation’, completely forgetting that the Guardian put in an appearance at the very start of the story. The back-lit roundels with the main lights turned down really does look lovely, and I wish they’d light the set a bit more like this all the time. Perhaps not quite to the extreme that we see here, but still. I think my problem with the Guardian in this instance is that he’s sort of been undermined since his last appearance. When we meet him at the start of The Ribos Operation, he’s able to stop the TARDIS in its tracks, open the doors, and summon the Doctor. That he forces the Fourth Doctor - during one of the most arrogant stages of his life - into awe and obedience simply reinforced his position of power, and his threat to the Doctor that should he not take the quest then simply ‘nothing’ will happen to him was really rather wonderful.

Here, he’s reduced to a less imposing old man (the guardian was old in his first appearance, but he carried it with a sense of flair), who’s struggling to break through to give the Doctor a warning. The way that he repeats a few choice words from his message (and not the important ones, necessarily), has the effect of making him simply look a bit… doddery. I’m hoping that there’s a reason given for this before the story is out (in my head I’m sure there is, but it may be something I’ve artificially projected onto the tale after the fact on a previous viewing), because it seems a shame to take a character who is essentially God in this universe and make him so much less impressive.

What I am enjoying here, though, is the companion dynamic. I’ve always thought of Tegan and Turlough as one of the pairings I really like about the programme, even if I can’t remember a great deal about their stories. I’m sure it’ll get watered down as the episodes roll by, but I love here that the Doctor doesn’t trust the boy… and he makes it extremely obvious to him. There’s something about the way he tells Tegan that he needs someone he can trust in the TARDIS which I can only imagine Davison’s Doctor doing out of all the ones we’ve had to this point. He plays it calm and quiet, and it’s almost scary as a result. That he alternates between treating Turlough as a friend and with suspicion is fun, and I’m hoping that it’s a theme we continue to play on through this story.

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: James Goss

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: September 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 16th September 2014

“Athens, 421 BC. An ancient civilisation of philosophers and poets and the birthplace of theatre. The Doctor has decided to show Ace and Hector how it all began, with help from the great comedian Aristophanes.

But life in Athens is no laughing matter. There’s the ever-present threat of invasion from the Spartan horde. The plague that turns people into the walking dead. The slavery. The tyrannical rule of the paranoid, malicious Cleon and his network of informers. And the giant flying beetle with knives for wings that stalks the city streets at night.

What Athens needs is a hero. And who better to be a hero in ancient Greece than a man called Hector?”

***

Before I even get going, I’m just going to take a second to assert what I did in my review of Revenge of the Swarm: I’m not going to bang on in this review about whether or not they should have brought back Hex/Hector.  They shouldn’t, but that’s a discussion for... well, probably the release after this one.  Instead, I’m going to focus on the play as its own entity, away from these things, for now at least.

The second in this trilogy of Seventh Doctor/Ace/Hex-sort-of-ish plays, Mask of Tragedy takes us back to Ancient Greece, a time of political reform, war, new ideas, philosophy, and, it turns out, space tourism and a lot of fun.  Barely two minutes have passed before it’s revealed that in Greece around this time, everyone is well aware of time travel and aliens, because... well, because it’s Greece around this time, so every time traveller wants to visit it!

It’s a great idea: funny, silly, cheeky, a little bit Iris Wildthyme, and perfect for a play that honestly made me laugh aloud at least twice an episode.  I simply was not expecting this play to be as funny as it is.  I’ll confess that despite liking James Goss’s writing and the Seventh Doctor (heck, I like all the Doctors, even... no, no, especially Edmund Warrick), this play didn’t hold much expectation in my mind before listening to it.  Perhaps it’s due to my apathy towards the resurrection of Hex/Hector, but regardless, it is often the way when two plays in a run get released in the same month: you’re aware, especially so in this case, that a finale of sorts is in the pipeline, and so it’s easy to lose sight of what else is there.  I remember when this happened with Paper Cuts, which proved itself to be one of the best Sixth Doctor/Charley adventures out there, and this is certainly every bit as strong a release as Revenge of the Swarm was last month, so I dearly hope it doesn’t get overlooked.

The play kicks off with Ace acting as a Greek chorus and giving us hints of what’s to come, which is at once confusing and intriguing.  We’re then thrown into the action, with Hex still not the Hex we once knew and the Seventh Doctor in a toga, keen to take a trip into history, but one with an ulterior motive, as it soon transpires that he is sponsoring the comic playwright Aristophanes and, in his own words, wants to keep an eye on things due to the nature of all things time travel converging on this one place in time and space.

We soon get a playwright bemoaning his art being sullied by an audience’s taste for fart jokes, Ace as a proto-Feminist freedom fighter, a not-very-good space traveller who is only there for kicks and lessons, Spartans a world away from their depiction in 300, and Hex/Hector lost and adrift in a time he finds hard to cope with, with the titular mask proving that he is not the man he was.  Indeed, Ace and the Doctor find themselves treading on eggshells to not remind him that he’s not this guy they once travelled with, and this is shown up time and again here when Hex/Hector is thrown into the past and expected to cope in the way Hex used to be able to.  Indeed, this is a play which uses the Hex/Hector plot device to full effect, both with regards to story and drama, and it is also a play which doesn’t forget what has just come before, with Swarm proving itself to have an effect on his character here, too.  It’s an example of continuity being used in a smart and effective way, as opposed to a clunky one.  You don’t need the lines nodding towards Swarm in there, but it helps explain a few things.

Sylvester McCoy and Philip Olivier are in fine form throughout the play, though Sophie Aldred perhaps suffers a little by having an Ace who is used mainly for comedy and is given some... questionable lines.  I’m sure having her bellow “I’m gonna teach ya... how to gatecrash!” works well in a comic strip, but on audio it’s a little bit wince-inducing.  That said, Aldred does spar well with Emily Tucker, with whom she is paired with for a fair chunk of this play, and she plays some of the tender moments between her and Hex/Hector rather well.  Why do birds suddenly appear, etc.  I suspect we’re heading towards tears before bedtime with this budding romance, as hinted at in Swarm as well.

Mention has to go to Samuel West as Aristophanes in this play, who manages to be blackly funny and wonderfully dour in equal measure throughout.  He also steals the show in the CD extras by being so damn nice and loving towards Dimensions in Time, which is genuinely touching and pleasingly fan-ish to hear! It does make me sad though that he never once wishes upon someone that they are doomed to go on a journey... a very long journey.

Whatever my misgivings towards Hex/Hector, the same cannot be said for this play which, like Revenge of the Swarm, is good fun throughout.  We have an ending approaching though: a definite ending this time, apparently.  I am not sure that I really believe Big Finish on this one, but let’s play along with them and say it’s true.  I want it to be true, and if that play can be as good as the two preceding... well, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised once again.  Here’s hoping. 

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Justin Richards, Jonathan Morris, Nick Wallace

RRP: £8.99 (CD) / £6.99 (Download)

Release Date: September 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 12th September 2014

“An epic adventure uniting the Doctor's friends across time and space, featuring Jago & Litefoot, Counter-Measures, the Vault and Gallifrey!

1: Mind Games by Justin Richards
In Victorian England, Henry Gordon Jago and Professor Litefoot investigate worrying events on the streets of London – which seem to be linked to the New Regency Theatre’s resident act, the mesmerist Mr Rees…

2: The Reesinger Process by Justin Richards
London, 1964, and the repercussions of Jago and Litefoot’s adventure are dealt with by Sir Toby Kinsella and his crack team of specialists at Counter-Measures. What is the Reesinger Process – and who is behind it?

3: The Screaming Skull by Jonathan Morris
Disgraced soldiers Ruth Matheson and Charlie Sato are called back into action by Captain Mike Yates, when the UNIT Vault is mysteriously locked down by a deadly force. Together they must infiltrate the Vault and get those trapped out alive. But what enemy are they facing?

4: Second Sight by Nick Wallace and Justin Richards
The actions of Mr Rees have alerted the Time Lords of Gallifrey, and Romana has assigned her best warrior. Independently, the Sixth Doctor has arrived on Earth. A power from the dawn of the Universe is about to be unleashed once more…”

***

Fifteen years ago, I had my tickets booked to attend Battlefield 3, a Doctor Who convention in Coventry.  I had been lucky enough to grab a copy of Sirens of Time on CD beforehand, and spent the night before transferring it to audio cassette so that it could be listened to in the car on the way there.  I was familiar with the concept of the show on audio: I’d listened to Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space, and I had long since worn out a tape recording of The War Games which I had made.  This was something exciting and different though; this was new Who with three Doctors and the promise of more adventures to come! I listened to the Big Finish “Talking about my Regeneration” preview CD time and again in preparation, but nothing compared to hearing Sirens on the way to Coventry.  It was a truly magical experience.

Big Finish had a buzz about it and a big crowd at its stall that year, where I purchased Phantasmagoria and listened greedily to their panel, thrilled by the hints of what was to come.

Fifteen years on, it’s amazing to see how massive Big Finish have grown as an entity, and how large it looms in the annuls of Doctor Who as a whole, and so we now have The Worlds of Doctor Who, a celebratory trawl through spin-off series aplenty.  The first thing worth noting is how beautiful the packaging for this CD set is.  The photography inside is very nicely done, the brief essays by actors are sweet, and the individual covers done for the CDs themselves are lovely, with the Jago and Litefoot and Vault ones being of particular note.

As for the story itself, it concerns a mysterious hypnotist named Mr. Rees, whose influence extends far beyond his natural lifespan.  From the Palace Theatre in Victorian England to the 1960s and the present day, his story and threat carries on worming its way through life and history, and touches the lives of many connected to that mysterious traveller in Time and Space, the Doctor.

Across the four CDs, we dip into the worlds of Jago and Litefoot in Mind Games, Counter-Measures in The Reesinger Process, the Companion Chronicles via The Vault in The Screaming Skull, and finally a mixture of both Gallifrey and Doctor Who itself in the finale, Second Sight.  What impressed me the most about this release is how all the series retain their own identities throughout whilst carrying a story thread across them all.  For example, the Jago and Vault stories are a whole world away from one another and perfectly fit their respective story, whilst they also move things on with the overall story.  Ditto comparing the second and fourth CDs.  It shows how strong a hook Big Finish latched onto here with Mr. Rees.

The only tale which perhaps lacks any real clear identity is The Screaming Skull, the but that is perhaps expected.  The previous two outings for the Vault have involved them used as a framing device for other tales, and whilst that it mostly the case here as well, it does at times feel less of an established format than is shown elsewhere, though that doesn’t stop Jonathan Morris from writing a damn good script all the same.  Despite misgivings over its format though, it also feels very sneakily like a pilot episode for a new series: the UNIT old guard, the Vault and maybe the new outfit as glimpsed in both UNIT, the original spin-off series and its follow-up, UNIT: Dominion.  I guess we’ll see, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all.

All of the instalments here are strong though, with Justin Richards doing the majority of the writing (he’s responsible for CDs 1 and 2 and co-writes the fourth with Nick Wallace) and showing us once again why he’s so prominent a name in the world of Doctor Who fiction.  Second Sight may suffer sometimes from its brief length (we get a lot of scenes where characters say “This could be his plan... unless... of course! It could be *this*!” which, by staggering co-incidence and ease of plot, turns out to be the case– but of course) but it wraps up Mr. Rees’s tale well and gives Leela a lot to do, which is always nice to hear.  It also makes good use of the Sixth Doctor, played as ever with gusto by Colin Baker.  It’s the Eighth and Sixth Doctors who have benefited most from Big Finish over the years, so it’s only right to see one of them celebrated and featured here.

What’s a joy over the whole release is hearing everyone in the same place connected to the same story: Ellie Higson, Charlie Sato, President Romana.  Everyone is here, present and correct and this is as fun and enjoyable a celebration of the extended worlds of Who as Big Finish could have given us.  Another triumph for Big Finish.

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Philip Hinchcliffe, adapted by Marc Platt

RRP: £8.99 (CD) / £6.99 (Download)

Release Date: September 2014

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

Review Posted: 12th September 2014

“Philip Hinchcliffe, acclaimed producer of Doctor Who (1975-77) returns to tell new stories for the Fourth Doctor and Leela.

"The starting point was there were a few basic ideas that were kicking around for another series, had we made it," says Philip. "I thought this project would be fun to be involved with, and I've tried to and tell stories that are in the same spirit as the ones Robert Holmes and I were telling."

The Ghosts of Gralstead (Six episodes)

The Doctor and Leela return to Victorian London, in the year 1860.

At St Clarence’s Hospital, respected surgeon Sir Edward Scrivener requires the bodies of the dead… At Doctor McDivett’s Exhibition of Living Wonders and Curiosities, miracles are afoot… And in Gralstead House, the ghost will walk again. Mordrega has come to Earth…

The Devil's Armada (Four episodes)

The TARDIS lands in Sissenden Village in the sixteenth century. Catholic priests are hunted, so-called witches are drowned in the ducking stool, and in the shadows the Vituperon are watching… and waiting…”

***

Nostalgia.  It’s a funny old thing, one which can disappoint and satisfy in equal measure, and one which seems very much Big Finish’s buzz word right now.

“Come! Let us journey back to the sixties!” they cried when giving us their new Early Adventures range (and, as discussed in my review of Domain of the Voord, fail to deliver that which they claimed they were going to be delivering).  This cry was also echoed when the Fourth Doctor joined the Big Finish fold: finally, we were going to get some true-to-television Fourth Doctor action, was the implication, with some of the more straight-laced fans sighing in relief at this news and frowning upon the Nest Cottage trilogy for having a Fourth Doctor that felt older and not the incarnation he used to be. (Presumably they don’t mind the fact the Fourth Doctor changed wildly from story to story on screen anyway.) I rather loved the Nest Cottage releases, giving us what essentially felt like a Fourth Doctor set in a future beyond his tenure on television– an afterlife for past regenerations, perhaps? Where was the First Doctor’s garden as glimpsed in The Three- and Five Doctors? Do past incarnations just spend all day running around in mist in the time-stream as glimpsed in The Name of the Doctor? Or do they, as hinted in Nest Cottage and indeed on screen with the mysterious Curator, have a life of their own with their own adventures, continuing but perhaps discreet and sneaky this time around? I kind of like that idea; that once gone, there is a fragment out there that carries on.  In the world(s) of Doctor Who, why not?

I was apparently in a minority it would appear though, as people cheered for Big Finish’s intent to return to TV and were very kind towards The Fourth Doctor Adventures’s first series.  I think it is fair to say though that I was less impressed with what we got.  Whilst nothing was outright bad at all, it felt very conservative at times: this was a series that could go anywhere at all in time and space, and we had painstaking attempts to fit it in with events seen in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, a return to Nerva, and a series so keen on aping an era that it forgot a lot of the time to have a dash of colour and enjoyment along the way, too.

That has improved increasingly as the series has run on, but at times I still wish for something a bit... more.  We glimpsed it with The Foe from the Future, which managed to balance nostalgia and something new and exciting well, and stories such as The Crooked Man have been as strong as the strongest of other Big Finish releases, but they have definitely missed a certain something for me, and I think that’s the time-free quality that the main range sometimes has.  Though set in the past, it strides into the new, and more often than not, this is something The Fourth Doctor Adventures has avoided doing.

I think you can imagine then that I was not exactly cheering with joy when hearing about this box set.  I like Philip Hinchcliffe’s era on screen, and I think that Hinchcliffe himself is always an articulate, interesting and thoughtful interviewee, but this harkening back to nostalgia again, couple with a sense of underwhelmement (a new word I’ve coined) with The Lost Valley, Hinchcliffe’s own audio play as used in The Fourth Doctor Box Set, did not endear me to this idea, but what we have here in the Philip HInchcliffe Presents set is exactly what I have been yearning for: something new and enjoyable, whilst looking to the past as well.  If nothing else, it simply confirms to me that what the Fourth Doctor needs is to join the Main Range fold, as hour-long stories are simply not cutting it for him.  At six- and four episodes apiece, the stories in this box set have ample room to breathe, and give us two of the most enjoyable Big Finish outings for Doctor number Four to date.

We kick things off with The Ghosts of Gralstead, a Victorian adventure with bodysnatching, spooky goings on in the entertainment business, a god-like enemy from the future flung into the past, and a pleasing mixture of classes that tells its own story... no, no, come back! I swear I’m not just repeating the plot of Talons, this is its own thing... sort of.

Yes, much like Foe, this has its roots firmly in Weng-Chiang’s territory, to the extent where Jago and Litefoot are nodded to mere moments into the play and some of the lines are almost taken wholesale from Robert Holmes’s scripts: playful homage or blatant cribbing? You choose.  Ghosts is another little sibling to Talons, just as Foe was, but, just like Foe, it manages to push beyond these trappings by simply being a really good story in its own right.  You can see the fingerprints, but the overall story merits more attention than that.

In the CD Extras, Hinchcliffe freely says that him and Robert Holmes had few if any ideas for what they would have done together had they stayed on for one more season, but that an adventure yarn with explorers and the enjoyable mash-up of Victoriana and Doctor Who would have appealed, and the story he has given Marc Platt to adapt shows that perfect synthesis of old statesman and new writer.  It gels together amazingly well, and applause must go to Platt as well as the cast, which is incredible throughout.  Perhaps most impressive to me was Emerald O’Hanrahan as Clementine Scrivener, who gets comparably little to do, but manages to fill that role with a life and zest all of its own.  Louise Jameson is wonderful, finding new things to do with a role she’s been playing on-and-off for absolutely years now, and Tom Baker is also on fine form here, giving us a performance that at the end of Part Four has rarely, to my eyes (or, rather, ears) been bettered.

Truly, there’s not a duff note throughout the tale with regards to performance.  The story itself though sadly ends with a whimper rather than a bang after six episodes of adventure: a real pity, but perhaps the only real sour note for me in Ghosts.

What Ghosts is, though, is very much what fans often distill Hinchcliffe’s era as being: Leela! The Victorians! Spookiness! Fog! Colourful background characters! It’s safe to say that Talons looms large and has a lot to answer for in this regard.

Hinchcliffe’s era was much more than this though, and The Devil’s Armada goes some way to addressing this.  Taking a leaf out of the good book Mandragora, this story flings us into history and mixes alien goings on with real-life events.  Again, like Mandragora we have superstitious religious hyperbole on display here and what purports to be a god as a foe, so again, I think it is fair to say that the fingerprints are very much on display.

And again, it’s a damn good play in its own right, with cast and script both strong and solid, and this time consistent, with an ending that is every bit as good as the rest of it.  In may ways a sequel to Marc Platt’s First Doctor Companion Chronicle The Flames of Cadiz, Armada flips that tale on its head by telling events from the English viewpoint as the Spanish Armada amass, ready to take on Queen and Country as religious persecution and witch-hunting reaches fever pitch on shore.  The play never once shies away from the brutality of such persecution, and characters that try to redeem themselves are never quite saved due to the severity of their actions beforehand.  Even characters with shades of grey are more determinedly black or white due to circumstance, which makes for a refreshing change.

Things aren’t perfect in this play.  The central threat is essentially Azal or the creature down in the Satan Pit all over again, which rather dulls things, but it’s made up for with a guest cast that boasts Beth Chalmers (whom I adore, even if they did rather piss away poor Raine), Nigel Carrington and Jamie Newall all being... well, brilliant.  I struggle to find an accurate description other than that.

Across these two plays, we have some of the finest guest performances Big Finish have given us for a while.  The same goes for the plays.  Nostalgic? Yes, but not in a way that is cloying, which has been the real problem with the Fourth Doctor’s Big Finish adventures so far.  I see that the box this set comes in has the number one printed upon its spine, giving me home that there is more to come.  Certainly, I’d love to see more Fourth Doctor releases of this quality and consistency, and if that means a shift to box sets and longer plays rather than monthly releases, then sign me up.

You want to see Tom Baker in his element once again? Go for the box sets and skip the main range.  The best is here.