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

Day 473: The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Episode Five

Dear diary,

And so, five episodes in, I’ve finally reached the moment I’ve been waiting for since the TARDIS first touched down on the streets of Victorian London - Jago and Litefoot, Investigators of Infernal Incidents, are finally together and caught up in an adventure! I’d sort of been dreading this moment as much as I was looking forward to it, to be honest. I so love the characters on audio, and they work so well thirty years later when they’re given time to develop and the room of their own series to shine in, but I worried their appearance in Doctor Who proper may come as something of a disappointment. This fear had been somewhat curtailed by their brilliant moments in the four episodes that have led us here, but now they’re together… well, it’s clear to say that they way they’re written for Big Finish is clearly inspired by the way they’re written for here, in 1977.

There’s something about the pair meeting, and Jago mistaking Litefoot for the butler which is so perfect, I actually had to pause the episode and skip back a minute or so, because I was hooting too loud to hear the rest of the scene play out. I wondered if I’d have missed something in their own series by having not seen their first appearance, but knowing the adventures they’ll go on to share over the years really adds to this first meeting. It’s exactly how you’d want this pair to meet, and were you trying to retroactively create a ‘first meeting’ for them now, I think this would be the kind of thing you’d go for.

It’s telling that much of the episode is given over to the pair so that they can make their own investigations: at times, the Doctor and Leela here feel like they’re guest characters in their own programme. It really works, though, and it’s another testament to how well the guest cast is written here. It also helps to give the story a bit of a pick-me-up at this late stage, and it almost feels as though we’re off on a new adventure, suddenly freed from the trappings of the preceding four episodes.

Although we get appearances from the theatre and Litefoot’s house during this episode, we get to spend a lot of time in a grand new location, complete with a large ornamental dragon in the centre of the room, as if they hadn’t made the point clearly enough that there’s a Chinese influence to this tale. Greel seems to imply that the place is finally finished after quite a lot of work, but I can’t help but wonder… would he not have been more comfortable staying here? He’s spent the last few weeks (at the very least) hiding out in the sewers beneath the Palace Theatre, when across town he’s got a swanky crib of his own! I get that he’s had the builders in, but surely they could have sorted him a little room to stay in while the rest of his ‘palace’ (for want of a better term) was being finished off? It feels a bit odd to suddenly reveal this opulent new home for him, having spent so long hanging around in squalor!