Survival

"I thought you had died. Or gone to Birmingham."

It is often said that Survival laid the groundwork for the new series with it's setting in a London council estate. As I dislike the new series, this does not exactly fill me with enthusiasm. I'd rather watch this than Rose any day. Neither story gets real life quite right. Survival has the incongruity of the very middle-class seeming Ace, while Rose has the titular character dressed in casual clothes while working in a department store.

Survival is of course the last televised Doctor Who story of the 1963-1989 series. It is not a big dramatic ending to the series, but this is probably not a bad thing. The new series has been ravaged by a philosophy that says that every season finale has to be bigger than the last one, with more explosions, more incidents of the Doctor saving the universe, more tearful companions and more dramatic Murray-Gold music. In contrast, the TRVE Doctor Who series has a quiet, dignified end, with that beautiful voiceover. That hastily written piece of dialogue just sums up exactly what the show is about.

An Unearthly Child had two ordinary people being kidnapped and taken from the mundane world of London to a savage and primitive environment where they had to use their wits to survive. It is therefore highly appropriate that the last story of the series should share those elements. The last Doctor Who story takes us to where we began. Yet crucially the difference is that the Doctor's companion in this story has no desire to go back to London and instead embraces the life of travel in the TARDIS.

One of the things I love about the Seventh Doctor era is stories like this that have a strong element of magic or fantasy. There is not attempt to come up with a silly scientific explanation of how the Cheetahs can travel, how violence can destroy a planet, or how the people of the mysterious planet turned into Cheetahs. People talk about magic in the Moffat era, but this is not really magic at all but nonsense science that does anything the writers want it to do, along with a few visual references to Mary Poppins and Disney. What we get in Survival is real magic.

The metaphorical overtones of this story are fascinating to explore. The references to blood and the moon and female sisterhood all point towards themes of menstruation and female sexuality. There is a very subtle sexual subtext to Ace's transformation into a Cheetah girl. Survival is thus similar to Kinda in having a character permanently effected by a change. This is not like Star Trek, where everything is resolved in the end. It is perhaps a little disappointing that the New Adventures make so few references to Ace's transformation (it is mentioned in Witch Mark and Blood Heat). However, it is possible that the Ace's increasing aggression and combat prowess are a result of the change.

On the whole I would rather that this story did not include the Master. This is possibly Anthony Ainley's best performance and there is none of the sill plots that you get in other Master stories, but I still don't think he adds any value to the material. It seems almost as though JNT and Cartmel said "We've done a Dalek story, a Cyberman story, now let's do a Master story!" I don't think the Master fits into the world of the darker Seventh Doctor.

The Cheetah planet is beautifully realised. It is at once both scenic and terrifying. The Cheetah costumes bear a good deal of similarity to some of the creatures in the BBC Chronicles of Narnia that was being made at the same time. I can assure anybody who has not seen those programs that the Cheetah costumes really are the superior.

There are some nice surreal moments, such as the cameo from Hale and Pace and the morose girl collecting money. For such a small part, that girl leaves quite an unsettling impression.

Sergeant Patterson is a fun character. He is very well realised and there is a great irony in his being unable to live up to his own idealism. It's interesting to watch a character like him, because they have become in such short supply that they tend to be regarded as heroes. I suspect nowadays a volunteer like him would be in line for a medal. Helping out in the community is what the government likes, even though hardly anybody has the time to do it.

One thing that bothers me is all the deaths in this story, made more shocking by the fact that they are young people. This does not sit easily with its generally light tone. The story has other faults, most obviously the clumsiness of its climax. However, on the whole it is a worthy ending for the 1963-1989 series.

Battlefield

"I'm getting a little tired of hearing about your mother."

I really like Battlefield. It's definitely among my favorite Doctor Who stories. Yet at the same time I have to try hard to be really objective about it. There are an awful lot of things about Battlefield which really drag it down. Just like Ghost Light in the same season, it is a story badly weakened by a clear failure in both script editing and direction. Oddly, however, Ghost Light seems to have a better reputation among fans. I find this surprising because Battlefield seems to me a much more enjoyable and much less dense story than Ghost Light. Both stories suffer from the same problem of having too many characters, subplots and ideas, yet Battlefield is not confusing in the way that Ghost Light is and it has many far more memorable scenes. I suspect it comes down to an additional problem; that is the attempt to do a very epic story on the cheap. It is probably fair to say that Battlefield has the lowest production values of Season 26 and they are very noticeable.

This is certainly not the first story to deal with an Arthurian theme; that had been done rather less obviously in The Stones of Blood (Vivian Fay is very clearly Morgana Le Fay, despite also being a green-skinned alien and a former Brown Owl). We are given the fascinating concept of a world in which the Arthurian legends were true and in which powerful magic sat alongside incredibly advanced technology. Obviously, such a world could never be created on a BBC budget. The real genius of this serial is that it gives us a very vivid glimpse of this world simply through the dialogue. Thus, we cleverly learn something about their technology through the reference to ornithopters. We discover that Morgaine is the battle queen of 13 worlds, a truly titanic notion. Our imagination is fed by the discovery that Merlin, the future Doctor, is imprisoned by Morgaine in the ice caves. Morgaine gives us a beautifully vivid description of her happy childhood in the company of Arthur, her brother. This is a story for romantic, poetry reading Kate Bush fans.

The story begins with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart enjoying his clearly very comfortable retirement with his new wife Doris. Doris was o course mentioned in Planet of the Spiders. Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood point out the incongruity of Doris' portrayal in Battlefield. The reference to the Doris the Brigadier met in Brighton is clearly a girl of rather loose morals and probably from a working-class background. This is a very striking contrast to the very upper-middle class Doris we meet here. Doris is clearly one very expert social climber (and given the simplicity of the Brigadier's lifestyle in Mawdryn Undead and the very plush house and garden in Battlefield, it looks like Doris is the one with the money).

A major selling point of this story for many is the return of Nicholas Courtney's Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. This point saves this story from damnation for many fans. Personally, I would have liked to have seen this element left out. There are simply too many other characters and elements going on this story to do the return of the Brigadier any justice. Something has to go. Given that Battlefield offers us a newer model of Brigadier in Bambera, it would make sense to my mind to simplify things and leave Lethbridge-Stewart out of it. I doubt many fans would agree with me, however.

UNIT get a bit of an update in this story. Their international character is manifested in the presence of foreign troops. The presence of Czechslovakians should not be seen as a goof. In the Whoniverse, the Cold War ended in the Seventies and Britain was a neutral power (see Day of the Daleks), so there is no reason why we should expect Cxechslovakia to have broken up in the nineties. Sergaent Zbigniev is a bit puzzling; he claims to have served under Lethbridge-Stewart. Given that he does not look middle-aged, this supports my contention that the UNIT era is the 1980s, not the 1970s. Given that the Cold War ended before the UNIT era and Britain was not an ally of America in the Whoniverse it is possible that there were Eastern European troops on British soil in the UNIT era. What I find troubling is that we never saw this in the earlier UNIT stories. I suppose it is possible he was here as an individual on some sort of military exchange program, but it would be unlikely that a raw recruit (as Zbigniev must have been given his age) rather than an officer would be on such a program. It's nice to see UNIT wearing the UN blue berets (this was not possible before, because of the limitations of CSO). UNIT also have a lot of new military hardware, of which Lethbridge-Stewart has a remarkable awareness given that he is retired.




The new Brigadier, Bambera is both black and female. If this was a development in the BBC Wales series this would no doubt be read as an ironic joke about political correctness. However, this is the 80s when the politically correct agenda was taken seriously (we even get an Asian character thrown in for good measure as well). These politically correct values continue in the Virgin New Adventures. In Transit (by the same writer), we find out that Lethbridge-Stewart had an affair with an African woman and so starting an African branch of the Lethbridge-Stewart family. I quite like the 'right-on' NA values. It is tedious the way people trash political correctness these days. There is nothing funny about taking a stand against racism and prejudice. Angela Bruce gives a very butch performance as the new Brigadier. Some viewers are irritated by her bad language substitute, 'Shame!' I find this rather funny.

I am surprised that more reviewers do not pick up on the similarity between this Battlefield and Delta and the Bannermen. They both have a rural setting and a summery vibe that gives them something of a pastoral quality. They both feature a rather odd invasion of earth. They also both feature a very strange relationship; in Delta and the Bannermen, between Delta and Billy; in Battlefield, between Bambera and Ancelyn. It is so cute the way Bambera and Ancelyn fall asleep on top of each other after their beating each other up. As with Delta, there is a real sense of a classical celebration of love in a pastoral setting. Thus, the two stories can be seen as light-hearted and comedic, despite the violence (and you can find violence in Shakespeare's comedies too).




Morgaine is a strange lady. Ben Aaronovitch does an unusually brilliant job of portraying a completely alien mindset in her. She can't start fighting until her men have venerated the dead of our world wars; she kills a female soldier in cold blood, then heals a woman of blindness because her son has drunk without paying and she wants vengeance against Arthur, yet she gives the most beautiful lament when she learns he is dead. She is not a totally warped and evil being, because the Doctor persuades her in the end of the evil of unleashing nuclear warfare on earth. Jean Marsh definitely makes a cracking return performance to Doctor Who.

I tend to appreciate stories where the bad guys are not killed off Hincliffe style. In the end, both Morgaine and Mordred are taken prisoner by UNIT. The Doctor tells them to 'lock them up.' A lot have fans have suggested this is absurd; surely with her magic powers, Morgaine will have no trouble escaping? However, the Doctor must know what he is doing. Perhaps there are certain drugs that will prevent Morgaine from using the part of her mind that controls her magic. The Doctor also has a lot of occult knowlege. He knew that a chalk circle would keep Morgaine out. Perhaps there are runes or magic inscriptions that will have the similar effect of keeping Morgaine imprisoned. It would definitely make a great prison movie, with a title like 'Deathless Morgaine and other Bad Girls Behind Bars.'

Mordred is defintely a fun character. He is such a mummy's boy. Lethbridge-Stewart puts him in his place with the immortal line "Just between you and me, I'm getting a little tired of hearing about your mother." That Knight Commander is a bit awful, however.

LIn Tai gives a pretty unimpressive performance as Shou Yuing. She seems to be in the story simply to be one of the few Asian characters in Doctor Who outside of Marco Polo, Talons of Weng Chiang, and I almost forgot, Mavic Chen in Dalek Masterplan. Lin Tai did make an earlier appearance as an extra in Warriors of the Deep. The scene with her and Ace in the chalk circle is quite effective. Warmsley is a bit irritating. His part suffers from competition with the many other characters in this story. It is a bit odd that an archaeologist would suggest that it does not matter what period the scabbard is from (or that he would hang up a major find in a pub).




The idea of a future incarnation of the Doctor turning out to be a Merlin in another universe is awfully interesting. The Seventh Doctor is awfully mysterious through this serial, always appearing to know a good deal more than he is letting on. That said, this is clearly not McCoy's best performance. He comes across as quite bizarre, and rather unintentionally hilarious. He is incredibly manic and tries too hard to come across as scary. The moment when he tries to growl menacingly "If they are dead..." just cracks me up. Sorry, Sylvester, you just aren't that scary.

The moment when Ace says 'boom!' just as Ancelyn crashes into the building has been mocked by fans, but I think it makes an interesting point. It seems to challenge Ace's passion for destruction, pointing out the reality of violence and war.

The Destroyer is one of the most effective monsters ever. True, it is killed rather easily, but this is used to make a point about violence and death. As is typical of Cartmel-era Doctor Who, the Destroyer is used as metaphor. He represents the destruction and horror of nuclear weaponry.

With it's Arthurian theme, Battlefield reminds me of CS Lewis' offbeat novel, That Hideous Strength. Like Battlefield, That Hideous Strength threw in a mass of characters, ideas and subplots. It also had the pastoral vibe and the demonic element, though I doubt a Leftie like Aaronovitch would use such and influence. Speaking of CS Lewis, it would appear that as with Narnia, time in the Arthurian universe moves differently to ours, as both Mordred and Acelyn are contemporaries of Arthur, who has been dead in our world for over a thousand years.

There are a fair few places in this serial which are really cheap-looking. The costumes of Morgaine's knights for instance. And of course the interior of Arthur's spacecraft. When you compare that to the brilliance of that other biological spacecraft in Claws of Axos, it looks just pathetic.

This is a very flawed production, but it is definitely a very enjoyable one. It seems to have a paricular appeal to younger viewers. I remember this serial being on television when I was a child, before I started liking Doctor Who. Other boys at m school really loved it, with all those knights and soldiers, plus a big scary monster.

Ghost Light

The Seventh Doctor takes Ace to a place where she has been before, where mad aliens have a Victorian tea party.

Ghost Light is the story I ought to love, but I don't. There are so many elements in this story that I like, yet I don't particularly enjoy watching it.
I love Season 26. Check. I love Sylvester McCoy. Check. I love the Dark Doctor and his manipulative ways. Check. I love the weird relationship between Ace and the Seventh Doctor. Check. I love the thematic depth of the McCoy era. Check. I love the Virgin New Adventures which are very much influenced by this story. But I still don't like Ghost Light.

This story has so much going for it. You have a performance from McCoy that is pretty strong (I love McCoy, but I understand why people see him as a second-rate actor) and a marvellous performance from Sophie Aldred. You have a drama that put's the Doctor/ Companion relationship in a completely different light. You have an intelligent exploratin of a number of themes. The gothic interior of Gabriel Chase looks magnificent, with all it's stuffed animals. Ghost Light has some wonderful dialogue and a reasonable dose of humour. Yet these elements are let down by a failure in both editing and direction.

You must have seen the sitcom Fawlty Towers. In every Fawlty Towers episode there is a climax where the entire hotel descends into chaos. Basil is ranting like a lunatic, his wife is having a nervous breakdown, Manuel is doing something hilarious and the guests are shouting and demanding their money back. Even as a viewer, you feel overwhelmed by the frantic atmosphere and you just want to get 'out' of that hotel and into the fresh air. Ghost Light is like that all the way through. It is frantic and frenzied. When I watch Ghost Light, I feel like I need to get out of Gabriel Chase and have a space to breath.

Ghost Light suffocates under the weight of too many characters, too many subplots, too many themes, too many ideas and too much clever dialogue. There is just too much going on. Stories can be complex. They can be intelligent. However, they need to be carefully edited so that we can enjoy them without being completely baffled. Battlefield had too many characters and suffered as a result, but it was a fun story that made sense in a beautiful country setting. Curse of Fenric was a really complex story, but it had great action scenes and terrific drama. Survival had some really deep themes, but there was a subtlety to the way they were brought in that did not detract from the story. Ghost Light does not succeed in the way the other stories of Season 26 did, including the equally badly edited Battlefield.

I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing if a story does not immediately make sense. I think Warriors' Gate is a flawless story even though it requires deeper thought to make sense of. In my review of Warriors' Gate, I explained why I think Warriors' Gate works and this one does not. I argued that the main difference is the sense of space and pacing in that story. Ghost Light requires one to take in and make sense of masses of dialogue, while Warriors' Gate works brilliantly on a purely visual level. You can enjoy Warriors' Gate purely through looking at the visual elements and the slower pace gives you the chance to puzzle over what is going on. Ghost Light is like a three-course gourmet meal being served at a fast food restuarant. You don't have the space to take it in and enjoy it.

I agree with viewers who think this story is a lot like the Rocky Horror Show. It has the transvestism, the camp alien, the creepy house and the critique of conventional society. Most of all, it has the crazy frantic pace and incomprehensibility. When I watched Rocky Horror Show, I thought to myself 'What was all that about?' I am sure most of us asked that question the first time we watched Ghost Light.

One casting decision that I think was a mistake was John Hallam as Light. Hallam puts in a good performance, but he does not fit the way the character was meant to be perceived visually. Light's costume was clearly a visual reference to angels in Pre-Raphaelite art, in keeping with the neo-gothic Victorian theme. The problem is that such angels were generally portrayed as adolescent, or at least youthful. Hallam is too old to fit this look and his high-pitched vocal delivery ends up making him seem too camp.

My favorite moment in this story is the Doctor's conversation with Ace about fear. It is perhaps the best bit of dialogue McCoy was ever given:

Ace: "Don't you have things you hate?"
Doctor: "I can't stand burnt toast. I loathe bus stations - terrible places full of lost luggage and lost souls."
Ace: "I told you, I never wanted to come back here again!"
Doctor: "And then there's unrequited love. And tyranny, and cruelty."
Ace: "Too right."
Doctor: "We all have a universe of our own terrors to face."

The Curse Of Fenric

The Seventh Doctor plays chess against an ancient opponent and Ace meets her grandmother.

Despite being a massive Sylvester McCoy and Seventh Doctor fan (and a true believer in the Dark Doctor, the Ka Faraq Gatri, the Time's Champion and all that New Adventures stuff), this is only my third review of a McCoy serial. I think it is easier for me to be objective when reviewing the stories of other Doctors. I'll do my best here, but I can't promise not to praise this story all the way. Where do you even start with a story this brilliant?

The first thing that must be said is that there are two versions of this story. The original version was heavily edited for broadcasting and a lot of explanatory material was cut out. This is unfortunate, as the extra material does help to make sense of the plot. The original unbroadcast version is included on the current BBC DVD as a feature length movie with a remixed score. Remarkably, the script editor Andrew Cartmel claims that only the unedited version is worth watching. While I agree that the unedited version is better, I believe the televised version is still a classic story and one of the greatest moments of Doctor Who.

That score! Its totally unlike any other Doctor Who score, for its a thumping industrial music score that could easily have made by Skinny Puppy or Front Line Assembly. Giving this serial an industrial music score just shows that it is made for goths and rivetheads. The use of industrial music is particularly appropriate given the impact of this story on the New Adventure novels that would come later. The New Adventures would delve in the same sources as the industrial music scene, taking inspiration from cyberpunk, the Terminator movies and the Alien movies.

I think it would be correct to say that Curse of Fenric is only barely a science fiction story. We have the classic sci-fi theme of time travel through Ace meeting her mother as a child and reference to mutation caused by industrial pollution in the far future, but otherwise this is a story that has been stripped of science fiction elements and is very much a fantasy or magic realist story. Nicholas Briggs has taken us in this story into the realm of symbols, metaphors and mythology. Spaceships, robots and aliens are foreign to this kind of story. Fenric is not an alien monster, but a demonic spiritual being. His name is taken from Norse mythology (the apocalyptic wolf that would ravage the world at the end time of Ragnarok) and he is a symbol or metaphor for cosmic evil. The them of chess playing is also used as a metaphor for the cosmic struggle between good and evil. Traditional fans who view Doctor Who as primarily a science fiction show might find this rather spiritual angle hard to swallow. Nevertheless, it totally fits my view of the Doctor and his world. As a Christian I believe in spiritual beings and I believe in a cosmic war between good and evil. I appreciate very much the attempt to bring in a more spiritual cosmology. Let us face it, Doctor Who has always had a spiritual dimension, be that the Buddhism of Barry Letts, the cosmic dualism, resembling Taoism or Zoroastrianism introduced The Ribos Operation and the Neoplatonic mysticism of Logopolis.

If Fenric is a kind of devil, then it also makes the Doctor into a kind of godlike, or at least angelic being, operating on a spiritual and cosmic plane. We have a cryptic reference to a force of good that pre-existed before the universe and if the Doctor is not meant to be that force, he is at least in some way connected to it. Here the so-called 'Cartmel Masterplan' has reached its heights and the Doctor is not merely a Time Lord from Gallifrey, but an elemental force of spiritual power beyond our comprehension. His plans are unfathomable and his ways mysterious. He is a scary figure and we are disturbed by his manipulation of Ace, but we know that he is good and we can trust him. The fact that the Doctor's methods appear questionable is important. As Ace says:

"You always know... you just can't be bothered to tell anyone. It's like it's some kind of game and only you know the rules. You knew all about that inscripiton being a computer program, but you didn't tell me. You know all about that old bottle and you're not telling me! Am I so stupid?!?"

When the Doctor is involved in a clash between straight and narrow good and downright evil, it would be easy for the Doctor to become a dull, saintly figure without any ambiguity. This is what went wrong in the Pertwee era. The Doctor was given an evil archenemy, the Master, which meant the Doctor became a far more black and white character. In my opinion, the Third Doctor was a rather sanctimonious character who tended to irritate through his moralizing. Likewise, the heavy use of the Master in the Davison years reflected the fact that the Doctor was just a little too perfectly good. The Seventh Doctor is a character with a moral purpose, but whose strategy is rather Machiavellian.

The new perspective on the Doctor presented in Curse of Fenric might jar with what we have seen before of the Doctor. The mysterious Dark Doctor of Curse of Fenric is a total contrast to the Third Doctor, who was happy to tell people he was a Time Lord from Gallifrey and to talk about his childhood anxieties. However, we have always had conflicting impressions of the Doctor. The selfish First Doctor is a polar opposite of the kindly Fifth Doctor. It is just as hard to reconcile the pacifism of the Third Doctor with the Second Doctor who jumps for joy as he blows up the Dominators (Ace evidently reminds the Seventh Doctor of his more youthful self). Fans might also be irritated by the revelation that the Doctor has an archenemy of whom we have been told nothing. However, this provides an awful lot of fun for obsessive fans like me who can imagine how Fenric might be connected to earlier stories (arranging the events of Evil of the Daleks? Influencing the evolution of the Fendahl?). Fenric implies that this has been the case with the events of Season 25.

The Sylvester McCoy era made heavy use of Twentieth Century Britain as both a setting and a theme. Delta and the Bannermen used the Fifties, Remembrance of the Daleks used the Sixties and Survival took us to a contemporary council estate. Even the future settings made reference to Twentieth century Britain, with Paradise Towers taking inspiration from inner city housing and Happiness Patrol taking a swipe at Thatcher. Curse of Fenric takes us into wartime Britain and the moral amibiguity of that era. The theme of war is contrasted with love, both in Wainwright's reading 1 Corinthians 13 (in reality he would probaly be reading the King James Bible which uses 'charity' rather than love) and the irony for the self-destruct code-word being 'love.' The moral ambiguity is particularly brought out by the fact that Sorin is protected by his faith in Communism, an ideology that instigated mass murder on a horrendous scale.

The thematic depth goes beyond war and the good/ evil conflict. The talk about 'undercurrents' and 'coming into the water' seems to be a metaphorical explanation of sexuality. We also see hints of a repressed sexual relationship between Millington and Judson. The theme of Ace coming to terms with her anger towards her mother is beautifully handled. There is also a wonderful lyrical depth in Ace's seduction of the soldier (I know it would have been quicker and simpler to just take her top off, but its a nice scene). Her speech about moving faster than the second hand of a watch seems to be referring to the peculiarities of her temporal existence and perhaps her relationship to the time travelling Doctor.

Despite the lack of night scenes, this serial creates a very effective horror movie atmosphere. This is enhanced by the very murky weather during the filming. The underwater scene with the dead Russian soldier openning his eyes is particularly frightening. The Haemovore costumes are obviously rubber suits, but they are very well designed and look quite horrible. The Ancient One's costume is especially good. Questions have been raised by viewers about whether the Haemovores are from the past, present or future. As I understand it (and I have never read the novelisation), the Ancient One is from the far future, when earth is devastated by pollution. He is transported to the Viking-era by the imprisoned Fenric and then creates a colony of Haemovores across the centuries, hence the variety of historical costumes they wear.

Like many other stories, there are clear nods to H.P. Lovecraft in this story. On a purely visual level, there is something of Cthulhu about the Ancient One's costume. On a thematic level we have an extra-dimensional entity at work who has incredible power. This entity has misleading connections with mythology and twisted people seek to revive it. As with Lovecraft's entities, Fenric remains an unseen presence rather than something that actually appears. According to the New Adventure, All-Consuming Fire, Fenric is Hastur, the Unspeakable a great old one from the Cthulhu mythos. The fact that Fenric is an unseen power makes him far more effective than Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars. The problem with Sutekh was that despite the brilliance of Gabriel Woolf's performance it is difficult to regard a masked man in a suit as a godlike being. Fenric is a much more abstract, and in my opinion, much more haunting entity.

As has been said, Fenric is a kind of metaphor for evil itself. This is rather reminiscent of Image of the Fendahl where it was implied that the Fendahl was death itself. This was rather added to the creepy atmosphere of that story, nevertheless that element did not quite work within the narrative of Image of the Fendahl. The problem was that the story was too grounded in science fiction concepts for there to be room for the Fendahl to work as a symbol or metaphor of something more abstract. By stripping away the explanations and logic of science fiction this story is able to operate on that symbolic level.

Unusually for Dr. Who, nobody gives a bad performance. The two teenage girls are not brilliant, but they are not at all bad. This story features some of best acting in the history of the show, both from the regulars and the non-regulars. Sophie Aldred is absolutely stunning in this story. She was never a first-rate actress, but their is a real intensity to her performance here. She looks absolutely wonderful in her 1940s costumem even with her bomber jacket slung over the shoulder. I absolutely adore the red hairnet she wears, an excellent touch.



Although I am a passionate fan of Sylvester McCoy, I understand perfectly well the fans who are unimpressed by his performances and think he was a bit rubbish. He does deliver some of his lines in a very odd way and pull some strange faces, but for me that underlines the mysterious nature of his character. He is a dark and powerful figure, yet he adopts the bearing of a clown. I think Curse of Fenric is probably his best performance. He comes across much stronger here than in his other stories.

Millington is a superb villain. He comes across as nervous and unstable, but full of callous disregard for others. His implied homosexual relationship with Judson is a fascinating character element. His obsession with Norse mythology is a nod to the Wagner obsession of De Flores in Silver Nemesis. Millington is not a suave, mustache-twirler, but an unstable wreck with a lot of skeletons in his psychological closet. Judson is also a fascinating character, twisted by the bitterness of being confined to his wheelchair. In Nurse Crane we get a glimpse of how easily disable people can be abused by those who are trying to care for them.

Nicholas Parson is glorious as Reverand Wainwright. Best known for his involvement in comedy, he really shines in this serious role as a minister troubled by the moral confusion of war and the doubts that this brings.

The subplot about Ace's mother is very important. The reason being that it not only allows the resolution of some of Ace's many inner demons, but also adds a certain hope to the story. Despite the massive body count, a mother and her child are able to survive this story and we know they will live on. This contrasts enormously with the overwhelming darkness and hopelessness of Pyramids of Mars (the most overrated Dr. Who story ever in my opinion).

There are some confusions about the plot of this story. There are some glaring problems in its logic, for instance in Millington's expectation that the Russians will steal the Ultima machine and use it without taking it apart and examining how it works or the unlikeliness of Ace not recognising her mother's maiden name. Nevertheless these problems are no worse than those in many other stories and do not detract from the richness of the dialogue or the intensity of the atmosphere.

I love this story. I totally identify with the way it portrays the Doctor and I love the fact that it set the stage for the Time's Champion concept in the New Adventure novels. While staying at my parents' home in Hastings last summer, I got the chance to visit the church in Hawkhurst where the story was partially filmed. I have to say I was more than a little disappointed that there was no acknowlegement of Doctor Who being filmed there inside the church! I am sure I am not the only Whovian to have made a pilgrimage there!