The Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 has always been a significant event for me. When I was a Protestant, I celebrated it. Now that I have converted to Catholicism, I regard the Glorious Revolution as a disaster. I do find it distressing though, that so many people are unaware of this event. The writer admits that before researching for the story, he had not heard of it, having not been taught about it at school. The Stuart dynasty used to be a staple part of the British history curriculum, but it seems that modern schools avoid the Stuarts. Popular culture seems more interested in the Tudors, presenting a sanitized image of the Elizabethan 'Golden Age,' ignoring all of the achievements of the Stuart era. Thankfully, Big Finish have paid tribute to this most fascinating era with this Companion Chronicle.

Jamie's background as a Jacobite had not really been explored prior to this audio. It was nice to see Jamie in a situation where he understood what was going on and was less of a fish out of water. Yet he soon gets into trouble and has his own Aztecs moment, attempting to change history. This is brought to us via Frazer Hines who is on top form. He not only reprises Jamie brilliantly, but gives an uncanny impression of Troughton. Frazer is assisted by Andrew Fettes, who plays too roles extremely well; the tortured and embittered James II/VII and the cynical civil servant-like Celestial Intervention Agent.

On the whole, I enjoyed this story and thought it was well done. It was great hear the Second Doctor dragging up again and disguising himself and Jamie as washer women. However, it does suffer from a problem with pacing and feels rather rushed. The interesting idea of a change in timelines is not really developed. More importantly, I felt Jamie was far too quick to accept that history could not be changed. There was no sense of conflict or discomfort in his betrayal of James II/VII.

According to this audio, Jamie lived a very happy and contented life Post-War Games (+ Season 6B). This definitely conflicts with what we saw in the comic strip, The World Shapers, but I doubt anybody will complain about that.

The Web of Fear

As it is a Troughton base under siege, featuring a classic monster in England, with Lethbridge-Stewart making an appearance, The Web of Fear represents for some fans the very ideal of what a Doctor Who story should be. For those fans, the rediscovery of this story (with just one episode still missing) must have seemed like a dream come true. I remain unconvinced that this story is in any way a classic or a particularly great story, but it was good to be able to finally view it.

There is always an element of paranoia in base-under siege stories, but The Web of Fear seems to take it to another level. Nobody trusts anybody in this story, apart from the TARDIS crew who trust each other, Professor Travers who trusts the TARDIS crew and Travers and his daughter trust each other. Anybody else could be an agent of the Great Intelligence. For much of the story, it creates a sense of claustrophobia, particularly combined with the underground setting, but at some point, the tension starts to get tedious. This is not helped by the six-part length of the story. It is uncomfortably padded out.

This story is famous, of course, for having the first appearance of the Brigadier, then just a Colonel. It has been pointed out by many that he seems a quite different character to the one we meet in the UNIT stories; though there is a pretty big difference between the portrayal of the Brigadier in Season 7 and the rest of the Pertwee era. For me what was most striking and surprising about the Colonel was his readiness to believe that the Doctor really had a machine that could get his men out of the Underground. This contrasts remarkably with the absurdity of his scepticism in the UNIT stories, most especially in The Three Doctors.

The return of Professor Travers brings with it pseudo-companion Anne Travers. Anne is a likeable and intelligent female character, who is arguably in some ways perhaps a prototype of Liz Shaw. Her relationship with her ageing father is nicely portrayed. According to the novel, Millennial Rites, Anne Travers goes on to succeed Rache Jensen as scientific adviser to the Cabinet and helps to establish UNIT. With the presence in the serial of a pseudo-companion, Jamie and Victoria are left a little bit redundant at times, but in the case of Victoria, that is probably not a bad thing.

It is quite remarkable how similar this story is to Fury of the Deep. Both stories about a mysterious intelligence that takes control of humans and which manifests itself as foam. I very much prefer Fury from the Deep, as parisitic seaweed is more interesting than robotic Yeti.

The monsters in the London Underground are Yeti, they might as well be Cybermen or Ice Warriors. Shooting people with web guns is not a particularly Yeti-ish thing to do. Rather than strange mysterious monsters of the mountains, they are standard sci-fi robot monsters. What we get in this story is the arrival of the worst idea in Doctor Who, the 'Yeti in the loo' theory. This notion holds that a monster is inherently more interesting for being placed in a mundane setting. This is an idea that tends to lead to ludicrous plotting, as well as a lack of atmosphere. A Yeti on a misty mountain is scary; a Yeti in a loo is at risk of seeming rather comical. Unfortunately, the writers of the present series of Doctor Who have been rather too attached to this kind of story. For all it's good points, Web of Fear has to take the blame for this.

The Enemy of the World (the real thing this time)

I reviewed the audio version of this ages ago, but having watched the rediscovered episodes, I had to review it again.

If any story in Season 5 deserved to be rediscovered it was The Enemy of the World. Season 5 is popular with many fans, but I find the run of bases-under siege a bit tedious, even if Fury of the Deep has an interesting monster. Enemy of the World is different; a story with no monsters, that is driven by human drama, interesting characters and surprisingly effective James Bond visuals. It feels such a refreshing break within thsi most predictable season.

The Enemy of the World succeeds because it is a story driven by character. It is about a corrupt dangereous world of the near future and about the people that inhabit that world. We have such a fantastic cast of characters; the abused but dignified Fariah, the sincere but doomed Dennes, the cynical Australian chef Griff, the self-serving Kent and of course, the brash megalomaniac Salamander. Griff contributes absolutely nothing to the plot, yet in him we see how a person in a terrifying and brutal environment can survive through humour. Likewise, the moment when Dennes jokes about it being a long time since his food was cut up for him shows such basic human dignity in the face of certain death.

Troughton's Mexican accent is a bit odd, but his portrayal of two roles is simply amazing. Particularly delightful is the way he plays the Doctor impersonating Salamander and he manages to make the impersonation distinct from the real Salamander.

Before the rediscovery of these episodes, there was always an uncertainty as to whether the visual elements of this story really lived up to their grandiose aspirations. The answer turned out to be that they did. For a Doctor Who story, this is remarkably visually impressive with the helicopter and hovercraft scenes. This is a clear tribute to the strength of Barry Letts' direction. Even in the later episodes, where things get more obviously studio bound, we get a great shot of the lift shaft to Salamander's lair.

If the story has a significant flaw, I would say it is the way things shift once Salamander's game is revealed. Once we move away from the corrupt backstabbing of Salamder's court and into his underground den, we enter more generic Doctor Who territory. It feels uncomfortably like Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

Jack Graham over on Shabogan Graffiti offers some good comments on the complex racial politics of this story. While it is great to have a black actress playing a significant role in a Sixties Doctor Who story, the fact she plays a standard racial role as a slave is problematic. Even worse, it is implied that she did something wrong and it is her fault she is a slave. Any critique of racism is rather muted by the fact that she is enslaved by a Mexican, rather than by a European white man (Troughton bronzing-up is problematic in itself). Of course, it might be assumed, with Troughton's European features, that Salamander is a Mexican of primarily European descent. There are lighter-skinned Mexicans and no doubt some of them are racist toward black Mexicans of African descent. I am reminded of the X-Files episode El Mundo Gira, in which we meet an immigration police agent who assists Mulder and Scully. His accent and cultural outlook indicate he is of Mexican, or at least Latin American origin, though his fair skin indicates European descent. He posesses a status and privilege that contrasts massively with the darker-skinned Mexican illegals that we meet in the episode and he displays to them an attitude of racist contempt.


The recovery of this story was truly a delight for Doctor Who fans in the 50th anniversary year.

"I've never seen such an incredible bunch" - The War Games

It is appropriate that in the last Second Doctor story, ending the black and white period of Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton gives an absolutely stellar performance. Whether pretending to be an official, manipulating the gullible alien scientist, fleeing in terror or acting the clown before the Time Lords, Troughton displays complete brilliance.

The War Games is a story that fans will always celebrate, after all it is the story in which we first learn of Dr. Who's people the Time Lords and his reasons for abandoning his kind. The fine scripting, the clever blending of historical with science fiction and the impressive acting within this serial are rightly praised. Yet The War Games is let down by the excessive length that was inflicted on it for production reasons. While the extra episodes does allow an interesting exploration of the tense and fractious relationships among the aliens and create a sense of constant peril and chaos for the TARDIS crew, the overall result is a repetitive and seemingly never-ending run of capture and escape routines. It would have worked so much better in six episodes, though this was sadly not an option at the time.

I know it is not the most important detail, but I do wonder if Lady Jennifer Buckingham's hair is authentic for the period. Her hairstyle does look a little modern for 1917. Of course, I could be wrong about that.

The unnamed aliens in The War Games look human, but they definitely have an alien quality to them. David Bree, who plays the Security Chief, gives his character a distinctive slow protracted form of speech. It was also a great decision to cast the Time Lord War Chief as somebody who looks physically distinct to the other alien characters. While the War Chief is handsome, suave and charismatic, the other aliens are pudgy, bald and pasty-faced. They are stereotypical bureaucrats. The best of them is of course Philip Madoc as the War Lord. He is absolutely fantastic. Instead of playing the character with bluster, he is cool and quiet, exhibiting a constant menace. He even smiles when he threatens people. With his scruffy beard, his spectacles and palour, he looks every inch a psychotic. Echoing the Nuremburg Trials, he remains defiant before the Time Lords, refusing even to acknowledge their authority. His terrified cry of 'No! No! No!' as he fades out of existence is a nice end for him.

The other alien who really stands out, even more so than General Smyth, is the fake German officer, Von Weich. He seems to take great delight in putting on different accents, switching from being a German officer, to a Confederate and then to a 19th century British officer. Von Weich must have been so disappointed that there was no Second World War zone and therefore no opportunity to play a Waffen SS officer or a Soviet commissar! This makes a really interesting point about the theatricality of military authority. After all military authority is largely about dressing up and speaking in a certain tone of voice. Also highly effective is the scene where Von Weich and Smyth move about their model soldiers and talk about how they will kill off each others troops. War truly is a game to these people.

The War Chief, the first character ever to be identified as a Time Lord, is very nicely developed. He is a much more complex and interesting character than the Master ever was. It might have been nice if he was an earlier incarnation of the Master, though this is clearly contradicted by the novels, which identify him as Magnus, yet another one of Borusa's errant pupils.


The Time Lords are pretty impressive here, with their incredible power. They are aloof and mysterious. It is unfortunate that they are less effectively used in other stories, though many of the later developments with the Time Lords were not without interest. It is amusing to watch the Doctor clowning around in the court room, dismissing all the faces he is offered, though it is hard not to be bothered by his lack of concern about the Time Lords erasing his companions' memories. It's hard not to laugh at the fact that when attempting to show his people the terrible things in some corners of the universe, he shows them the Quarks. Though admittedly, the Quarks proved themselves in the comics to be resourceful opponents; taking control of domestic robots, making use of a giant wasp and stealing racing cars. Interestingly, he seems to expect the Time Lords to be relatively lenient with him. He predicts that as a punishment, the Time Lords will make him listen to a 'long boring speech.' There is no implication that he would face the same treatment as the War Lord. His terror at capture by his people must have been a terror of losing his freedom.

We know of course, that Dr. Who does not immediately change his appearance after this story. There is a gap between The War Games and Spearhead from Space, referred to by fans as Season 6B. This is shown by two stories, The Five Doctors, in which the Second Doctor is aware of Zoe's departure and The Two Doctors, in which he and Jamie are working for the Time Lords, despite his having no dealings with them during the Troughton era. It seems that after his trial, the Doctor was given limited freedom to travel in the TARDIS, in return for performing missions on the Time Lord's behalf. Season 6B was first revealed in the TV Comic, where the Second Doctor is exiled to Earth before the Time Lords can change his appearance. He takes up residence in the luxurious Carlton Grange Hotel, which remarkably makes it into the newspaper headlines. In a series of stories, the exiled time traveller tangles with criminals and alien invaders, as well as becoming a panelist on a television show. Finally, he is captured by the Time Lords' scarecrow servants, who force him to regenerate. It is logical to conclude that the other TV Comic Second Doctor stories take place in Season 6B, as they do not fit anywhere else in the Second Doctor era. It would seem that some time during this period, Dr. Who was reunited with his grandchildren, John and Gillian. It also seems that Jamie took a break from travelling with the Doctor and temporarily resided in a castle in modern day Scotland. It is possible that other adventures happened in this period, such as Dr. Who's first contest with Fenric and perhaps his first encounter with Lady Peinforte. We have no way of knowing how long Season 6B lasted. Given discrepancies in the Doctor's age, it may have lasted as long as a century.

The Ice Warriors

I really did not want to buy The Ice Warriors DVD. The Ice Warriors is a story that I find deathly dull. However, it occurred to me that if fans don't buy these DVD releases with animated reconstruction, we won't see any more of them. It would be nice to see The Crusade with animated reconstructions (though apparently Moonbase/ Underwater Menace is to be the last classic DVD release). So I bought the wretched DVD.

I did not find myself liking the story any more than last time I watched it. It was nice to see the missing episodes animated. The animation is simple, but highly effective and infinitely superior to the hasty linking sequences on the old VHS release. Yet the restoration of these episodes only served to show how slow and tedious this story is.

It is unfair to criticize some older Doctor Who stories for being too long, after all the original viewers didn't sit down to watch whole serials in one go. They watched the episodes week by week. The Web Planet and Dr Who and the Silurians have enough plot twists to keep one's interest despite their length. On the other hand, there is nothing in The Ice Warriors to justify its six episode length. It feels artificially drawn out.

This story is mostly loved for being the first appearance of the Ice Warriors themselves. Their costumes are very inspired, with the crocodile like armour, the make-up under the helmet and the curious tufts of hair sprouting from their joints. They are unfortunately quite slow and cumbersome, but there is some compensation in the skill with which the actors give them distinctive movements. The Ice Warriors are at their best here. They have more distinctive personalities, where in later stories they would be reduced to just heavies.

Victoria is incredibly annoying in this story. She spends much of it whimpering and crying. Jamie is a little bid underused for much of the proceedings. Dr. Who has some technical problems to solve, but I don't quite feel that he is as engaged in this story as he is in others. Of the guest characters, Leader Clent is perhaps the most interesting.

There has been much discussion about when this story is set. The Radio Times gave it a date of 3000 AD, but most fans seem to favour a date of 5000 AD, around the time of Magnus Greel. For me the decisive factor is that nobody recognizes the Ice Warriors. By 5000 AD, the Ice Warriors would become a major power within the Federation. While what we see here appears incompatible with the Doctor's description in The Mutants of the Earth as totally urbanized, this is not necessarily the case. We only see a small part of the Earth in this story. Perhaps more equatorial regions are totally covered in the huge urban hive that the Doctor described in that later story.

The Final Sanction, by Steve Lyons (BBC novel)

The Final Sanction is a really bleak, depressing war story. I did enjoy it though. Part of my enjoyment was down to the fact that the Selachians are such a great Doctor Who monster race and part of it was down to the really well constructed plot. This has a much cleanly and efficiently delivered story than Lyons' previous Past Doctor novel, The Murder Game. There was also a lot of NAstalgia involved in my enjoyment too. It is clear reading this that Steve Lyons is very much a writer in the mould of the Virgin New Adventures, with all their harshness. While there is a definite feeling that one has read this before, it still feels good. Like the best of the Virgin novels, it makes effective use of Doctor Who continuity, with a humanity scarred by the events of the Dalek invasion.

This is a novel all about war; about the complex morality of war, about terrible atrocities and about the war criminals who command unspeakable acts. In The Final Sanction, Jamie gets involved in the fighting directly, Zoe is captured and faces torture and deprivation in a Selachian prison camp, while the Second Doctor meets face to face with Wayne Redfern, who will be infamously remembered as the man who ordered the destruction of the Selachian's planet along with the thousands of innocent human prisoners held there. This TARDIS team feel a oddly suited to this role, being more generally suited to fun romps. However, they are written well and are not as badly served as they are in The Indestructible Man.

The Selachians are a great monster race; they're aquatic nature sets them apart from other aliens and their memorable visual image is impressive to imagine. They are fleshed out a little here and we see something of a different side to them. Their is a beautiful moment where a Selachian tells Jamie his name and it triggers images in his mind of another world, a beautiful and mysterious aquatic world. Yet they are as militaristic as ever, which does make them a little diffcult to sympathize with despite Lyons' efforts.

The war criminal, Wayne Redfern is perhaps a slightly cliched character, being a bellicose, gung-ho American with a Southern drawl. However, Lyons does give him enough complexity to make him interesting. I also loved the poignant ending the book leaves us with. The Doctor takes Jamie and Zoe back to the aftermath of the Dalek occupation, where we see a younger Redfern. The Doctor asks Zoe if she could kill the young Redfern and thus prevent so many future deaths. She replies that it would be logical, but she could never do it. In the next scene, we see Redfern saving the life of a young girl trapped under rubble. This is a beautiful way of showing the complexities of history and time travel.

One continuity complaint that I had was that the Doctor showed an awfully detailed knowledge of future human history. He had not previously shown such knowledge during the Second Doctor era. It is only in the Third Doctor era that the Doctor seems to show any detailed knowledge about future human history. I found it interesting that the Selachians regard the Doctor as a habitual enemy who has thwarted them many times. Do they mean only The Murder Game and the The Selachian Gambit (not published at the time of this novel!)? Did the Second Doctor have a further encounter with the Selachians with Victoria? Had the First Doctor tangled with them? Or did the Selachians recordss include defeats inflicted by a future Second Doctor from the Season 6B era? These questions really do fascinate me.

This book defintely reinforced my feeling that Steve Lyons is among my favorite Doctor Who authors. It is a shame that he is not better regarded for his output among fans.

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 2: Patrick Troughton, by Philip Sandifer

I hope you have enjoyed reading Dr. Phil Sandifer's fascinating Doctor Who blog, because I certainly have. When it comes to buying his second volume on the Troughton era, the question is, why buy the book when you can read the blog for free? As with the previous volume, there is plenty of extra material to justify the purchase. Sandifer offers essays on several spin-off products that are not covered on the blog, such as Baxter's Wheel of Ice. He also provides bonus essays on topics such as UNIT dating and the unfortunate presence of mute black strong men in some stories.

The Troughton era is not my favorite period in the history of the show. I like Season 4 and find some of Season 6 fun, but I find Season 5 monotonous. As ever with Sandifer, sometimes I agree with him and sometimes I disagree with him. Thankfully, this we haven't got to the Thatcher era in the books yet, so his left-wing politics come across as a little less obnoxious than they have been on the blog.

A key paradigm in Sandifer's discussion of the Second Doctor is the notion of his 'Mercuriality,' that is his connection with the mystical properties of metals within the alchemical tradition. This concept is vital in making sense of The Wheel in Space.

As regards the last true Doctor Who historical (leaving aside Black Orchid, which is barely an historical), Sandifer argues that the story is primarily about convincing viewers that the Hartnell era was over and the new regime was going to be a lot more fun. The Highlanders is thus a wicked send-up of the Spooner historicals. I was pleased to see that Sandifer has some positive things to say about the undeservedly despised Underwater Menace. On Moonbase, he argues that this story is about the Doctor facing up to the evil that destroyed his previous incarnation.

Sandifer seems unable to praise Evil of the Daleks highly enough. I'm not sure I agree with his assesment. This story feels somewhat overlong and tedious to me. Given the absence of so many episodes, I'd rather reserve judgment on it. He argues that this was the first Steampunk story. If so, it deserves a lot of blame for originating this tedious and overused genre.

Sandifer is negative in his assessment of Tomb of the Cybermen. I have praised that story myself, but I have largely come to agree with his view of it. His essay on that story is preceded by an interesting piece on race in Troughton era Doctor Who. A lot of readers may feel that he is a little too forgiving toward Evil of the Daleks and Web of Fear, despite their use of racial stereotypes. He is uncomfortable, however, with The Abominable Snowman on account of its Orientalism.

As with Evil of the Daleks, Sandifer cannot stop praising The Enemy of the World. He makes some strong points that incline me to be favorable to it, though it's hard to evaluate a lost story like this one. He looks at The Web of Fear primarily in terms of its role in shaping fan expectations of what Doctor Who should be about.

Sandifer is very harsh in his criticism of The Dominators, which he views as an 'attack on the ethical foundations of Doctor Who.' I was disappointed because I rather like that story. I don't know what that says about me. His next essay on The Mind Robber is quite fascinating. He offers the remarkable theory that the Doctor is from the Land of Fiction and its creators are his own people. I don't find this theory altogether convincing and it seems a distraction from the fact that The Mind Robber is poorly conceived and tedious story. His take on The War Games is particularly fascinating. He views it as a kind of narrative critique of the entire Troughton era, which makes it an appropriate conclusion to that period of the show.

On the Season 6B question, he is rather dismissive of the idea, viewing it as an example of ludicrous continuity obsession. May he be forgiven. He also unfortunately favours dating the UNIT stories to the period when they were broadcast.

I don't think one can argue with his assertion that Prison in Space was a piece of appalling sexism that should never have been revisited by Big Finish.

I would highly recommend TARDIS Eruditorum vol.2 to all Doctor Who fans. You won't agree with everything, but it's all insightful stuff.

The Selachian Gambit, by Steve Lyons (Big Finish Companion Chronicle)

Being written by Steve Lyons, one could be pretty confident that The Selachian Gambit would turn out to be good story. It is also about the Selachians, which is a treat. The Selachians are such a brilliant monster. They have a strong visual image, combined with distinctive voices that work very well on audio. They also have an interesting similarity to the Daleks; being fish, they are small pathetic creatures that dress up in armoured suits to make themselves intimidating.

Like so many Second Doctor stories, The Selachian Gambit is a base-under-siege. However, it is an interesting one because the base in question is a bank. This is a story about a bank robbery, with all the tension and drama that goes with that. It must be said that this is a brilliant re-creation of Season 4, with the fun and creativity that went with that season, a creativity that seemed to dry up in the more generic Season 5. This audio combines action and humour very well, as well as a little social critique.

The Selachian Gambit was performed by Frazer Hines, with additional voice acting and extra narration from Anneke Wills. Hines does a wonderful job of re-creating Troughton's voice. He also captures Michael Craze's vocal mannerisms quite well; though I actually enjoyed Anneke Will's impersonation of Ben rather more. I like the fact that Hines, rather than Wills provides the voice for Lady Sylvia. This is appropriate given that Season 4 was the one in which Troughton went in drag (as also seen in Lyons Second Doctor novel The Murder Game).

The Selachian Gambit is blessed with a lively score that captures both the sense of menace and the fun and nostalgia for the early Second Doctor era. I would highly recommend this audio.

The Mind Robber

On paper, The Mind Robber sounds like a really fascinating concept. The idea of being turned into fiction is a remarkably ingenious existential terror. Yet I find The Mind Robber incredibly tedious to watch. It is very much one of those Doctor Who stories that is dearly loved by fans, but which is actually a bit rubbish.

The first episode was hastily written and tacked on. This is very much in evidence, as the episode does not gel neatly with the tone and plot of the other episodes. This episode has a surreal nightmarish quality that earns a lot of praise, but which does not disguise the fact that the story is not going anywhere. It is like Edge of Destruction without Hartnell and Hill to carry the story. The problem with nightmare sequences like this is that we know they are not real; they can never really engage the viewer. A child watching the apparent destruction of the TARDIS might be upset, but an intelligent older viewer can be pretty sure that this is just an illusion.

Things get worse in the next episodes, as the TARDIS crew meet one bizarre peril after another- tin soldiers, being turned into a cardboard cut-out and mythical monsters. This rapidly becomes tedious, as there is no sense of narrative or plot development to it, but just a string of weird events, one after the other. I find it hard to understand how fans can enjoy repeat viewings of these episodes. Why care about a monster that does not exist and which disappears when you stop believing in it? These episodes go nowhere and the attempt at resolution proves unsatisfactory when it comes.

To be far to all involved, this was a production in which almost nothing went right and which was beset with problems. Despite these problems, all of the cast seem to be approaching the story with a sense of enthusiasm and fun. This is the spirit of Doctor Who, but it is still a rubbish story. It is also hard to overlook some of the shoddy design elements too, such as the naff Minotaur and the model shot of the forest that does not match the set.



It's a pleasure to watch Bernard Horsfall (I note sadly his recent passing away). As somebody who was born in Nottingham, I appreciated his attempt at the accent, even if he did not get it quite right. Rapunzel is really cute, but I get so annoyed when I hear her say she is a 'princess.' Rapunzel was not a princess! Did Peter Ling never read any fairy tales?

It is refreshing to have a Troughton story without an alien invasion, a returning monster or a base under siege. The Mind Robber was an attempt to do something genuinely different, but it's a story that fails badly in this and bores me to tears.

The Krotons

"The hoy brains hiv bin kiptured!"

I am sure I am not the only fan who watches The Krotons and finds himself wanting to say everything in a Kroton voice. The Krotons' mock South African accents have me in stiches for a good deal of this serial. In the unlikely event of their ever returning to the televised show, I do hope they don't change this detail!

There is a lot more to watching Doctor Who than simply enjoying silly-looking monsters, but sometimes this can be a big part of it. For me, The Krotons is a story where that basic enjoyment of silly monsters really kicks in. The Krotons are one of the silliest looking monster races ever to appear in Doctor Who. I love the way they prod and pinch Jamie with their little pincers! Nevertheless, the Krotons, despite their ridiculous appearance, are quite an imaginatively conceived alien race. They are grown from crystalline matter, which rather sets them apart. They are also very cruel and brutal, despite their silliness. This is why their return in Lawrence Miles' novel Alien Bodies worked so well. Miles was able to capture perfectly the tension between the silly appearance of the Krotons and their disturbingly violent nature. The scene in Alien Bodies where a Kroton is destroying a Dalek is a very memorable and haunting moment.


The Krotons might seem a forgettable story if not for two important facts. Firstly, it is the first Doctor Who story to be written by Robert Holmes and secondly, it features the first appearance of Philip Madoc. As a Robert Holmes script, The Krotons comes across as rather unremarkable. It certainly lacks the wit and exuberance of his later work. Some of the ideas in this story would later find their way into Mysterious Planet. Philip Madoc's appearance here has all the charm and quality of his later appearances. He injects layers of depth into his performance that are entirely lacking from the other members of the guest cast. In particular, its fascinating to watch how he reacts to the dawning realisation that it is safe to go into the wasteland.

The snake-like electronic probe is an impressive effect. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the visual designs are a good deal less impressive. The Kroton's ship is supposed to be grown from chrystalline matter, yet it looks like any old metal spaceship. It really ought to look like Omega's palace in The Three Doctors. The model shot of the Gond's village also fails to match up with the interior sets.

The regulars are on top form here and the script offers some great material for the Doctor and Zoe. We have some priceless moments between the two of them, such as their rivalry in the Hall of Learning and their pretend bickering in the Krotons' ship. Jamie is good, but he suffers for having been separated from the Doctor and Zoe.

My big problem with this serial is that the planet is too much like a typical poorly realised world. Like so many Star Trek episodes, this is a planet with a population of ten people all living within one square mile. Remarkably, the much hated Dominators actually does a much better job of realising an alien world. An easily missed piece of dialogue in The Dominators mentions fires, floods and earthquakes. For all its apparent dullness, there are natural disasters on Dulkis. It is a planet where things happen. The Krotons does not give any sense of what life is like for the Gonds beyond the story.

Prison in Space (Big Finish Lost Story)

Prison in Space is an unmade story by Dick Sharples that was considered for Season 6. It was adapted as an audio by Simon Guerrier and included in the Big Finish Second Doctor box set. It was narrated by Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury, with additional voice acting from Susan Brown as Chairman Babs.

In the second volume of TARDIS Eruditorium, Philip Sandifer includes a bonus essay on Prison in Space. He argues that this story is sexist garbage that was very sensibly rejected. He suggests that the decision by Big Finish to recreate it was unwise and in rather poor taste. As reactionary as I am, I think Dr Phil is absolutely right. This story is an appalling piece of sexist trash and I cannot think of any way in which it could be justified. Which goes to show that Doctor Who fans like me will buy anything.

This story is about a future in which feminists have taken over the world and made men into second class citizens. Rebellious men are locked up in the space prison. Call me politically correct if you like, but in a world where millions of women are the victims of domestic and sexual violence, the whole story just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. While I disagree with the ideology of Feminism and hold pretty conservative views about society, I think joking about crazy feminists is just a way to ignore the realities of real injustices against women.

I wondered if the plot would be adapted a little to make it more palatable, but there was no evidence of this. I don't even detect any hint of irony in this production. Having Jamie give Zoe a spanking to teach her a woman's place is not funny; it is completely tasteless and a slap in the face of everything which Doctor Who is about.


The tragedy is that Prison in Space is actually a really great production. The adaption is very well crafted and uses descriptions that work on the imagination beautifully. Wendy and Frazer give great vocal performances with a lovely immitation of Patrick Troughton. It's just a shame these strong production values are wasted on such a worthless story.

World Game, by Terrance Dicks (BBC Novel)

In some ways World Game is a Terrance Dicks' greatest hits. We have his trademark simple prose, references to his televised stories, notably including the appearance of a vampire and a Raston Warrior Robot, interaction with historical figures, skullduggery on Gallifrey and that famous line about the Mind-Probe. If you are a long-standing Doctor Who fan, you are pwobably familiar with all these tropes and love them too. We also get Terrance Dicks' worst literary tendency, with a female companion being threatened with rape.

Yet World Game also does something very interesting. This is the only novel set in Season 6B, that hypothetical period between The War Games and Spearhead from Space. This makes for something quite interesting and different. It also gets the Second Doctor away from Jamie, allowing us to see a different side to him. I am a believer in Season 6B. I think this makes the most sense out of anomalies in The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors. It also allows us a time period in which the events of the Second Doctor TV Comic strips can be squeezed.

Dicks' prose is as simple as ever, but it reads very easily and makes for a light and entertaining read. Yet at the same time, there is a massive amount of historical information squeezed in. Anybody reading this novel is going to learn a lot about the Napoleonic Wars. Dicks has always taken the educational aspect of Doctor Who seriously in his novels. I remember when I was eleven years old, how Timewyrm Exodus inspired me to read lots of books about the Third Reich.

I don't think Dicks quite succeeds in capturing the Second Doctor. As with other Doctors, he tends to make him seem a little too much like the Third Doctor. His companion, Lady Serena was very likeable, even if she was an awful lot like Romana I. I think it was rather a shame that she was killed off.

World Game lacks the drama and intensity of Timewyrm Exodus, but it is still one of Terrance Dicks' best novels and is very enjoyable. The cover with Troughton dressed up as Napoleon is delightful too.

The Underwater Menace

"Blimey! Look at him! He ain't normal!"

Animated recon courtesy of DrWhoAnimator.

I read the novelization of this when I was nine or ten years old. It was the hardback edition from WH Allen. The local library had a whole collection of these hardback Doctor Who novels with beautiful covers. It made a huge impression on me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Many years later I was to discover that The Underwater Menace is considered one of the worst Doctor Who serials ever, a reputation which I think is entirely undeserved.

Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood point out in About Time that this is the Doctor Who story that comes closest to what was going on in the 60s TV Comic strip, with lots of insane plots, a cranky Second Doctor and mad scientists. The resemblance is even stronger when we notice that the Doctor signs his name as Dr. W, providing yet more confirmation that he really is called Dr. Who. Perhaps my affection for the TV Comic helps to make me sympathetic to this story or just my fond memories of the Target novel.

In many ways The Underwater Menace is cartoonish and silly. It's plot is utterly ludicrous, it has many derivative elements and the most outrageous mad scientist ever. Yet so much science fiction really is like this. You can find elements of this story in Jules Vernes and H. Rider Haggard. There are plenty of B-Movies that are pretty similar to this serial, the sort they always show at 2:00 PM. I really do not see how The Underwater Menace is really all that sillier than Invasion of the Dinosaurs (possibly the most bonkers Doctor Who plot ever) or even The Green Death (toxic sludge that makes maggots become bullet proof).

The plot is full of holes and is a bit of a runaround, with lots of getting captured and escaping again (hardly unique in Doctor Who). It is full of action, however. It is not a story that will send one to sleep. It's difficult to judge the quality of the final scenes of Atlantis being flooded, but you can't fault the ambition displayed. The surviving episode reveals some really horrible direction and some appallingly sloppy fight scenes. On the other hand, the scene at the end of episode one, with Polly menaced by surgeons about to turn her into a Fish Person is quite chilling and effective.

It might be supposed that the Fish People have been thrown in just because somebody thought the story needed a monster. They are, however, quite interesting visually, especially with their balletic swimming. The concept behind them is very reminiscent of the Cybermen, as is their appearance. The notion of being surgically altered is quite a frightening one and is captured quite well here.

It is not just the Fish People that look good; most of the sets are very well designed, despite being pathetically small. There is a real sense of a distinct and alien world, a bit like what we got in Gerry Anderson's Stingray show. The costumes are also very creative and make a strong visual impact. Polly looks glorious after replacing her hospital gown with an Atlantean seashell dress! The musical score is also very atmospheric, with the spooky organ music giving it a really dark mood.

Professor Zaroff is certainly the most bonkers of bonkers Teutonic scientists. Can anyone believe that somebody would attempt to destroy the world just for the sake of doing it? You might have thought that turning people into fish was a big enough achievement in itself. It is as though a character from a children's' cartoon had suddenly been given an extra dimension. That said, he is awfully entertaining. You can't watch it without all joining in with the immortal line "Nothink in ze vurld can stop me now!" It's not like we haven't recently seen any motiveless camp villains on Doctor Who recently. Anybody who dismisses The Underwater Menace while praising episodes featuring the eyepatch-wearing Kovarian is an hypocrite. The servant girl Ara, played by Catherine Howe, was a pretty good non-regular character. She had the potential to become a companion (probably a better one than Victoria), though with three companions on the TARDIS at this point that was not going to happen.

Troughton is great as Dr. Who in this story. He is so wild and eccentric and he looks hilarious in his gypsy outfit. I really wish writers had continued to have Dr. Who dressing up in disguises as the Second Doctor was prone to do at this stage. There is something delightfully anarchic about the Second Doctor in Season 4 that was lost in the next two seasons.

Ben is fantastic in this story, along with The Macra Terror (where he becomes a Daily Mail reading fascist) he is at his best. Polly does not fare so well and does an awful lot of whimpering. It's remarkable how Polly alternates so frequently between being plucky and resourceful to being completely pathetic. Still, being threatened with monstrous surgery must be pretty traumatic. Jamie fails to make much impact in his first story as companion proper, but it's always tricky for writers to manage three companions.

Anybody who likes Indiana Jones or James Bond films ought to be able to recognise the entertainment value of The Underwater Menace. To my mind this is much more fun than The Moonbase or The Ice Warriors. Season 4 is definitely the most interesting phase of the Troughton era. It is such a shame that fun stuff like this was replaced by routine stories about returning monsters and bases under siege.

The Highlanders

I watched this animated recon of The Highlanders on YouTube. It's pretty poor animation, but it's better than staring at still photographs. The similarity to the Captain Pugwash cartoons is rather appropriate given that this is a pirate story.

I fondly remember reading the novelisation of The Highlanders when I was nine years old. Unlike Jamie, I liked Redcoats a lot, so it had natural appeal. A year later, I persuaded my parents to take me on holiday to Inverness, so I could see Culloden and Loch Ness (for Terror of the Zygons). I had a copy of Travel Without the TARDIS at the time (remember that book?).

It is unfortunate that so much Season 4 was lost because it is a much more interesting season than Seasons 5 and 6. At this point, the Troughton era had not yet turned into a routine of monsters and bases under siege. There is a diversity to this season that was entirely missing from the next, made up for only partially by the James Bond experiment of Enemy of the World. Making some more historicals in Seasons 5 and 6 would have injected some much needed variety into the Troughton era.

Rather than giving us a story about the battle of Culloden itself (which would have looked pretty awful with four Redcoats and four Highland rebels), The Highlanders serves up a good old-fashioned pirate story with swashbuckling and keelhauling. Everybody loves a jolly pirate story; it's perfect for light entertainment. The Highlanders delivers exactly the right mix of historical adventure and comedy. It is also a perfect story to showcase Troughton's broad range of acting ability by having him put on various disguises. It is rather a shame that the Doctor so rarely gets to operate like this, because it is quite hilarious. Of course, this is early Troughton, with him not quite settling on the persona that would see him through the next seasons, but he is a wild and anarchic figure who never fails to bewilder his opponents and entertain the viewer.

Both Ben and Polly are served well by this story. Ben is highly entertaining doing his cockney sailor routine amongst a bunch of Scots. This is perhaps Polly's strongest story, with her showing initiative and daring in capturing and blackmailing Ffinch. It is unfortunate that in other stories she is left to whimper at monsters or serve coffee. She has a great rapport with Kirsty. Kirsty is hilariously dumb and one actually sympathizes with Polly when she calls the girl a 'stupid peasant.' Polly's received pronunciation is quite delightful to listen to. Wouldn't it be nice if middle class girls spoke properly like her these days? According to a transcript, Polly has trouble running in her heeled shoes and kicks them off to go barefoot, like Romana 1 in Stones of Blood. You can't tell this from the audio or the photographs, so it might not be correct, though she did the same thing in the novel The Murder Game. Polly and Romana 1 are unusual companions in having footwear trouble. Tegan, Peri and Jo never had any trouble running or climbing in heels. The BBC Wales costume designers seem to be sensitive to this and always put female companions in sensible footwear (as well as some of the most boring and unimaginative costumes ever).

A lot of the guest cast slip into standard historical tropes and stereotypes, but that is what you expect in a light-hearted historical drama. With a pirate story, you need a wretched scurvy seadog captain like Trask and a gentlemanly officer figure like Ffinch. The production values for this story on the whole appear pretty high, with some enchanting location filming and studio sets that look pretty decent. It is tragic that this was the last proper historical, as it is a great example of the strengths of the genre.

The Indestructible Man, by Simon Messingham ( BBC novel)

The Indestructible Man is very much a novel that I am in two minds about. Simon Messingham does something very clever and innovative in this book, yet at the same time there are some things about it which I really do not like.

As with Sky Pirates! the cover picture is very misleading. Having read the blurb on the back and seen a smiling Zoe wearing a purple wig, we expect a light-hearted pastiche of Gerry Anderson's various shows. While there is an element of parody in the book, what we actually get is a complete deconstruction of the world in which those shows are set. Instead of being filled with fun and humour, we get one of the bleakest and most depressing novels ever. Messingham turns the world of Gerry Anderson into a dark, violence-filled nightmare. To an extent this is only a step from what we find in the Supermarionation shows. The war of nerves with an unknown enemy in Captain Scarlet is a terrifying premise and for all its goofiness, Stingray is a very militaristic show about a savage undersea war. There is enormous scope for writing dark, adult-orientated fan fiction about the Anderson shows.

Messingham creates a very convincing and detailed world in The Indestructible Man. This world is so brutal and bleak that it makes the future society of Transit seem like quite a nice place. Though I have to admit, with the recent economic problems, the world of Transit actually does not seem that much worse than the real world. For all its miseries it still had stable governments and a welfare state. The Indestructible Man presents a world that has descended into utter chaos.

Although Messingham references a lot of Troughton stories, when it comes to continuity, Messingham is a law unto himself. What we get in this novel simply cannot be harmonised with other Doctor Who novels set in this period. For instance, Messingham has Africa with a decimated population, while Aaronovitch in Transit has rising superpowers in several parts of Africa. The book is also difficult to tie with many televised stories, such as Warriors of the Deep. To cap it all, Messingham puts Wheel in Space in the 22nd century, after this novel. Not only does this ignore the strong arguments that Wheel is set in the 21st century, but it becomes absurd that Zoe has no awareness of any of the events mentioned in the story. This stuff really does bother me. I like to see Doctor Who as a consistent mythos and I don't like authors playing fast and loose with continuity.

It is somewhat frustrating that the book is filled with bitter, cynical characters. Practically every non-regular character is like this. It does remove a lot of colour from the novel. Grant Matthews, who is based on Captain Scarlet seems to be the only character who has any life or holds any interest. Though not a speaking character, Captain Taylor is brilliantly portrayed. A terrible zombie-like figure, he captures the grim demeanour of Captain Black in Anderson's show.

The Myloki are an intelligent creation. Like the Mysterons of Captain Scarlet, we learn little about them. This makes them much more interesting and terrifying than your average alien race. I must admit, throughout the book, I was looking for hints that they might be connected to some other alien race in Doctor Who. It seemed that the Doctor hinted this was the case. I was irritated by the last chapter with its dream sequence. The Virgin novels did dream-like realities to death. It felt rather cliched seeing one here, complete with deceased relatives.

Messingham has a habit of putting his characters through an awful lot of physical and emotional pain. Jamie and Zoe have a really horrible time in this book, undergoing serious psychological trauma. This contrasts massively with the happy-go-lucky child-like pair that we see in Season 6. It's something likely to bother traditionalist fans and possibly even me. I think it's pointless for past Doctor novels to simply recreate an era in print; it's good to do things that could not have been done on television with past TARDIS crews. On the other hand, I don't quite feel able to believe the level of trauma that Messingham inflicts upon Jamie and Zoe. It's a huge leap of credibility to believe that all this happened to the pair somewhere between The Invasion and The Krotons. These are experiences that make or break people. It's impossible to watch Seeds of Death and believe that Jamie and Zoe went through the trauma of The Indestructible Man. On the other hand, Zoe's thoughts about the friendship between herself, Jamie and the Doctor being indestructible is very touching.

I would definitely suggest that readers find a copy of this and have a go. It's a grim and depressing book, but it is quite innovative in its approach, though definitely not without problems.

The Murder Game, by Steve Lyons (BBC novel)

"In census records from 1942 on, I found references to a Ben Jackson and a Polly Wright, born in close proximity to each other. Both in London, England, in fact. Their descendants would currently be-"

Although I don't see myself as being 'in it for the monsters,' I wanted to read this book to encounter the Selachians again. I heard the Selachians in Lyons' Architects of History, the concluding part of the brilliant Klein trilogy of audios. You don't get many genuinely aquatic monsters. The Seas Devils are more amphibious than aquatic. The Selachians are one inspired monster race. They have a convincing backstory as well as an appearance that is easily visualized. Like the Daleks, they are small, pathetic creatures beneath their armour. What is particularly interesting is that they chop their fishtails off in order to fit into their armour better. Their spacecraft is also magnificently described.

Selachians aside, is The Murder Game a decent novel? As with The Space Age, it does seem to lack the brilliance that Lyons displayed in the Virgin New Adventures. The Murder Game has it's defenders in fandom, but plenty of detractors too.

The setting in a murder mystery party tells you instantly that people are soon going to start dropping dead. It's perhaps a little predictable. While there is plenty of action in this book, the pace still feels rather slow and dull. It does not help that the cast of characters is so surprisingly boring. One does not feel like caring about any of them, except the regulars.

Like Gary Russell's Invasion of the Cat-People, this novel is set in between Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders. To my mind this is a good choice, as Jamie got plenty of screen time. This novel gives us a chance to look a bit more deeply at Ben and Polly. It does so well. The two characters are very well portrayed. We also get a hint about their future together. I like the way the novel makes Polly hilariously anxious about seeming to be out of date.

The Second Doctor is brilliantly portrayed. He has all the fun, as well as the fearfulness and the quiet heroism. There is an hilarious moment when he appears in drag! We also get a brilliant physical description of the Second Doctor- "He made a face like he was chewing a marble."

One moment that is so ill-chosen that it almost threatens to overshadow the book, is when the Second Doctor manages to steer the TARDIS to materialize on board the Selachian spacecraft. It is simply inconceivable that this could happen in the Second Doctor era. That Lyons had to resort to that to resolve his plot is a serious failing in his writing.

I have read worse novels than The Murder Game and it does have some great elements, but it really does leave one disappointed.

The Moonbase (BBC audio)

I was completely bored out of my skull listening to this audio. This story was the second novelisation I read (after Revenge of the Cybermen) when I first took an interest in Doctor Who, so I knew the story pretty well. I did not get anything out of listening to this audio recon. I really don't know why I keep buying these CDs, it just seems utterly pointless.

The Moonbase is similar in plot to The Tenth Planet, but it adds a new dimension in giving the Cybermen stealth infiltration tactics. Thus, it became the standard template for the classic base-under siege story. I imagine it was probably quite exciting the first time round, but after watching so many other variations on this story, it really is quite uninteresting.

I love Troughton and I appreciate that his era is much celebrated by fans, but for me this is the period when Doctor Who went wrong. After the wild diversity of the Hartnell era, we ended up with Doctor Who becoming a show about monsters and Body-snatcher style alien infiltration. It's only when we get into the Graham Williams years (a period with its own faults, I know) that there was a real attempt to move away from monster themes.

The Second Doctor writers gave the Doctor a new sense of direction and purpose, but it is not a particularly interesting one. Troughton's Doctor basically summed it up in this story:

There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything we believe in. They must be fought.

This Doctor is all about fighting monsters. The word 'bred' suggests things that by their very nature are evil. The Doctor does not explain what the things are that we are supposed to believe in, he just assumes we are all in agreement. I don't mind the Doctor using lethal force to deal with threats and danger; I don't see him as a pacifist, I just don't care for the Troughton idea of the Doctor as a wandering monster-hunter.

The Two Doctors and Warriors of the Deep can be seen in different ways as satires of the whole Moonbase approach to Doctor Who. The Two Doctors subverts and deconstructs the values of the Second Doctor. The unreflective viewer is shocked to see the Second Doctor applying his 'terrible things' logic to the humanoid and rather amusing Androgums while forgetting that we don't mind him being beastly to the alien Sontarans. Warriors of the Deep, on the other hand, subverts the structure of the base-under-siege genre. In place of the needlessly complex and padded plots that we typically get, we have an extremely linear plot. The solution to the alien menace is revealed right at the beginning making the ending obvious. Instead of focusing on how the Doctor will save the day, the emphasis is placed on the pointless and terrible carnage involved. Both stories have been savaged by traditionally minded fans.

The Cyberman voices are cool in this story, though I prefer the more human sounding Cybermen in The Tenth Planet, where interestingly, Ben feels remorse about killing one.

The Evil of the Daleks

Daleks terrorize a bunch of Victorians.

The Evil of the Daleks has a reputation amongst some fans for being one of the greatest Doctor Who stories ever. As it has mostly been lost, one ought to suspend judgment on the matter. It is simply impossible to tell the original quality of this serial. One thing that annoys me is when people draw up lists of Top Ten Doctor Who Stories and then include incomplete stories like Evil of the Daleks. It is simply unfair to compare complete with incomplete stories.

The Evil of the Daleks is a massive sprawling story. I am tempted to suggest that it could have been a bit shorter. It is one of those epic stories like The Daleks' Masterplan (though it does have a much stronger plot than that story). Perhaps because of the length of the story, there are quite a few plot elements that do not make a huge amount of sense.

There is something of a tendency to rely on stock characters in this story. Kemal, the silent, strong Turk is a dreadfully cliched ethnic stereotype. New companion Victoria is also pretty awful in this story, though thankfully she does improve in Tomb of the Cyerbermen. I think the popularity of Victoria is mostly due to the awe in which Season 5 is held by fans. The Doctor, on the other hand, is wonderfully portrayed, coming across as dark and manipulative. The character of Jamie is also used well here.

There is something of a mystical tendency to this story. The idea of the 'Human Factor' and the 'Dalek Factor' is hardly a scientific notion and comes across as a little bonkers (largely because it is treated as something scientific, rather than something spiritual). The experiments with time travel seem to have more to do with the Occult than with science. The Daleks seem to be almost a demonic force in the way they are summoned up by Waterfield's experiments. This idea is rather ruined by the cute, comic Daleks that have been influenced by the 'Human Factor.'


The Emperor Dalek is a fantastic creation and its voice is quite menacing. Naturally, because it is incomplete, it is hard to evaluate the overall look of the production. The use of the Dalek toys that differ significantly from the t.v. props does not stand in the serial's favour.


The classical music score gives this serial a quite different flavour. This is a production that was clearly meant to make an impact and it does some interesting things. I have some doubts that it is really the classic that fans imagine it to be, however.

The Macra Terror

"It's just possible that you've been given a series of orders while you've been asleep. You know, "Do this", "Do that", "Do the other thing". My advice to you is: don't do anything of the sort. Don't just be obedient. Always make up your own mind."

This story shows Doctor Who at it's most liberal; challenging authority and encouraging questions about how society works. It is a quite thoughtful story. Being quite a conservative person, I struggle a little with the notion of "Don't just be obedient." As a Christian, I believe that it is in obedience to the Bible that human beings find their identity and purpose. If one rejects the authority of God's Word, one must follow some other authority, even if it is one's self and that authority will always be fallible.

I have watched this story with the telesnaps and also listened to it without. As the telesnaps are very poor quality, I think one is better off just listening to the audio. I think I very much prefer listening to Colin Baker's narration instead of Frazer Hines. Hines never quite sounded like he was taking it very seriously. One advantage of seeing the telesnaps, however is being able to see the rather surreal opening scene with the majorettes and the even more surreal music. It's nice that a similar scene with the majorettes and the same music concludes the serial. The idea of making a space colony look like an holiday camp is rather inspired. The show would again bring up these very British institutions in Leisure Hive and Delta and the Bannermen.

The Macra Terror has been criticised for attempting to do an intelligent, thoughtful story and then sticking in a bunch of giant crabs. Personally, I quite like the idea of doing a clever surrealistic story with a fun B-Movie monster thrown in for good measure. Doctor Who has always been good at working on different levels and pleasing different demographics within the audience. True to this, the script also has some nice humour, with the Doctor's jumping in the 'rough and tumble' machine in order to deliberately mess up his clothes, as well as Jamie's demonstration of the 'Highland Fling.' Patrick Troughton is delightfully manic in this story, yet shows a deep and wild cunning throughout.

The minor characters in The Macra Terror are as developed as they need to be for the story to work. The regulars stand out far more, however, with Jamie developing an ever stronger bond with the Doctor. Ben always had a tendency to get very worked up about things. Here it works quite well because of the mind control influence. I just love the moment where he turns into a Daily Mail reader and demands that the Doctor be placed in the mental hospital. Polly does a lot of whimpering in this story, but she also manages some subtle sarcasm. She tells Ola that his job title of Chief of Police 'sounds very important' and she reminds Ben that 'the voices are our friends!'

The Macra are very much a Quatermass alien. They are a force of nature that remains unknown to the end. Unlike other alien races, they do not boast about their plans of galactic conquest or their superiority and in fact do not communicate at all. We cannot be sure if they are sentient or just a form of advanced bateria, as the Doctor suggests. Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood raise the question, in About Time, of the morality of the Doctor's actions in wiping out the Macra. Of course, we have all seen Gridlock and know that the Macra were a race of conquerors, but this retcon ignores the fact that the Doctor knows nothing of them. There was no reason not to think that they were the native inhabitants of this planet. Whiling they are exploiting the humans, there is no indication that they have any plans to kill the colonists. It seems that the Doctor simply sides with the colonists just because they are less alien.

The Macra Terror is usually dated in the early phase of human colonisation. It is interesting to see the range of dysfunctional societies that are found amongst the early colonies. The colony in Power of the Daleks is full of scheming little Napoleons, the colony in The Happiness Patrol is a ruthless totalitarian state where even emotions are subject to state control, on Androzani Major, ruthless capitalism rules the day, Nightmare of Eden indicates that many early colonies were ravaged by drug addiction and in the society of this story, people are obsessed with pleasure. It seems that in the Doctor Who version of the future, mankind will take some time to adjust to living on other worlds.

The Five Doctors

What? No, not the comfy chair!

This is the first Doctor Who story I ever watched (barring about five minutes of The Curse of Fenric that terrified me). The BBC video was released not long after I had taken an interest in the show and my mother bought it for me. Not having become a fan while the show was still on television I can say that there is no one Doctor that I saw first (hence I feel that the New Adventures Seventh Doctor is "My Doctor"). It is interesting how many other fans watched this story before any others. For those who saw the original broadcast, this is a testimony to the publicity this story generated at the time.

Creating a story to include five Doctors plus six companions, the Master and a bunch of old monsters was a rather ludicrous idea. Unsurprisingly the plot suffers enormously and we are left with characters with little to do, a party-trick scenes and very little of the interaction between the Doctors that made The Three Doctors so enjoyable. It is a testimony to Terrance Dicks' writing skills that he makes it work as well as he does. Terrance Dicks is the disaster management guy of Doctor Who. Need a story writing with little budget and little time? He will always save the day.

There is a real celebratory feeling about The Five Doctors. It is fun and it is goofy. In fact it smacks you in the face with it's goofiness. I am certainly not one of those fans who enjoys watching bad Doctor Who. If a story is absolute garbage, I am not going to waste time watching it again. Yet with the The Five Doctors, I cannot but help enjoying the sillier scenes in this, such as the First Doctor and Tegan hiding from Cybermen who are right in front of them, or Sarah needing to be rescued after rolling down a gentle slope. The Five Doctors challenges you to dislike it and wins every time. One almost feels that the production team are aware of how naff it all is and are sharing the joke with the viewer.


Take the scene in the council chamber where the Master is brought in. It's a dull and heavy expository scene with lots of dialogue. The actors are trying to do Shakespeare, but are ending up with dull Doctor Who and even manage to muddle up that line about the clause in the constitution. Borusa looks a bit embarrassed, Flavia looks incredibly bored, the Castellan finds it rather funny and the Master is hilariously camp. It's hardly well done, but somehow there is a magic to it.

The unavailability of Tom Baker is perhaps not so unfortunate as it seems. It's hard to imagine Tom Baker being happy being slotted into a few scenes and not being given the chance to dominate the whole thing. Terrance Dicks in the commentary, points out a number of ways in which Tom's absence made the writing process simpler. The scene taken from Shada is really nice, in fact, I think it's the only decent scene of Shada that survives. The original broadcast edition of The Five Doctors raises continuity issues in relation to Shada that make it's canonical status problematic. I don't mind if Shada is left out of the canon at all. Fans imagine it would have been the redemption of Season 17, but what is left of it looks like garbage to me.

The absence of William Hartnell is a problem. I find it hard to forgive John Nathan-Turner for choosing to use an impersonation of Hartnell. Can you imagine it being done with an impersonation of Troughton or Pertwee? You can't. Fans would never forgive such an insult. Yet because of the low regard with which Hartnell and his era was held, it was felt that somebody could just pretend to be Hartnell. I get really annoyed when people say that Richard Hurndall is just like Hartnell. Hurndall tries hard and gives a good performance, but he does not capture the original Doctor. This is not just his fault. Terrance Dicks never wrote scripts for the First Doctor and you can tell because he fails to capture his character completely. The First Doctor was not just a bit grumpy and short-tempered. He was full of life, humour and curiosity. There is none of that richness in either the script or in Hurndall's performance. I simply cannot imagine the First Doctor wanting to wait in the TARDIS instead of going straight to the tower to solve the mystery. The Five Doctors also makes the mistake of thinking of the First Doctor as being older and wiser than the others. This is not the case. The First Doctor was actually the least mature and sensible of any of the Doctors, except the Sixth. He was like a teenager in an old man's body. Terrance Dicks simply did not get the First Doctor.
I do enjoy the First Doctor's chemistry with Tegan. The two of them really get on! Never mind Season 6B, I want to see Season 3B/20B where Tegan becomes a companion of the First Doctor! If you think the Sixth and Peri like to argue, you ain't seen nothing yet.


Susan is also handled dreadfully. I know Carole Ann Ford was not a great actress, but there was an ethereal beauty to her performances in season 1. She was never well used by writers then and on her return, Dicks cannot think of anything to do with her other than have her twist her ankle. This looks especially ridiculous because she is wearing flat boots, while Tegan is skipping across the moorland in high heels. As I suggested before, Tegan's ability to do almost anything in high heels was probably the result of cybernetic enhancement. I am not sure about Tegan's first aid skills though. I am a substance misuse worker not a nurse, but I am sure you don't put a bandage on to a stockinged foot. Do you? I am also rather bothered by the fact that none of the Doctors apart from the First acknowledges Susan as their granddaughter. In fact, apart from saying goodbye, they don't interact with her. The special edition includes some extra footage where the Fifth Doctor and Susan smile at each other before being separated by the First Doctor. This was cut, presumably because of the incestuous implications of somebody's grandfather becoming young and sexy. There does seem to be a tendency in post-Hartnell Doctor Who for the Doctor's relationship with Susan to be forgotten and for her to be treated as just another companion. According to Carole Ann Ford, in the original script Susan addresses the Doctor as 'Doctor' which seems pretty shocking in it's disregard for the Hartell material.

Patrick Troughton is sadly given little to do. He does have some wonderful moments. I suspect that this story, more than his original performances, have built up the notion of the Second Doctor as being mysterious and slightly sinister. His angry challenge to the ghosts is rather chilling. He is put with the Brigadier, who is rather less impressive in this story. He whinges and moans and only shows his old strength of character towards the end when he gets to slug the Master from behind.

The Third Doctor is even more arrogant, obnoxious and patronising than he used to be. Terrance Dicks got his 'writer's revenge' on Pertwee for his arrogance during the Letts years by making him obstinately refuse to believe the Master's story. Being an anti-Pertwee fan, I think that's cool. He is paired up with Sarah Jane Smith who, like the Brigadier, does an awful lot of moaning and moping. It must be the bad weather in the Death Zone.



While Troughton's performance is great, it is Peter Davison who is the real star of the show. His performance is full of energy and urgency. The moment I loved best was when he discovers that Borusa is the villain. He asks "What happened to you, Borusa?" While he is horrified at Borusa's corruption, he is full of compassion towards the man he once admired so much. He recognises the tragedy of the way Borusa has fallen into bad ways. That one moment of horror captures the tender heart of the Doctor's conscience. Mark Strickson gives a great performance as Turlough, but he is the character who suffers most from the lack of space in the narrative. In the end, he is just left in the TARDIS worrying.

Anthony Ainley is delightfully camp as the Master. I think this really is one of his best performances. The fruity way in which he greets Chancellor Flavia cracks me up and it's wonderful the way he smiles as Borusa describes the extent of his villainy. You have to feel rather sorry for the Master. He tried to do the right thing and help the Doctors, but ended up being scorned.

The Dalek scene was a singularly pointless and quite unimpressive. The Daleks only work when backed up with a decent story. Just having one Dalek appearing and then destroying itself does them a real disservice. The Cybermen end up looking a bit stupid, but they are dreadfully fun. The Raston robot is a remarkable achievement. It is amazing how the low budget trick of putting a dancer in a spandex suit creates one of the most memorable monster scenes ever. Just watch those Cybermen getting slaughtered!




There is something rather appropriate about Borusa turning out to be the villain behind it all. The Doctor's old schoolteacher turns out to be the Demon Headmaster. It's remarkable how so many of his former pupils turned out to be such renegades and drop-outs- the Doctor, the Master, the Rani, Drax. It would hardly be a surprise if that younger renegade, the Monk, turned out to have been Borusa's last student before he went into politics. I also would not be surprised if it turned out that it was Morbius who first suggested his change of career. In the New Adventure Blood Harvest, Terrance Dicks included a rather tongue in cheek chapter set in the Dark Tower, in which a repentant Borusa is freed from his perpetual imprisonment by Rassilon and goes to some sort of Time Lord heaven.

The Five Doctors was broadcast in between seasons 20 and 21, but it fits the themes of season 21 much better than the previous season. Season 21 is all about the compassionate and morally pure Fifth Doctor discovering just how dark and brutal the universe is, a darkness that overcame him and brought his death and regeneration into an unstable and more morally ambivalent persona. In The Five Doctors, he is placed in a microcosmos filled with terrors and dangers from his past and in the end he comes to find that his past (Borusa) has turned to evil. We knew the Time Lords were a shady bunch, but here it turns out that the Time Lord closest to the Doctor and seemingly the most incorruptible has succumbed to the grim darkness of the cosmos.



Being a New Adventures fan, I love all that stuff about the Dark Times. The history of the Time Lords is presented as dark and mysterious. Questions are raised about the accuracy of the official version. While Rassilon appears to be good when he acts as Deus Ex Machina in the end (in a literal sense), the Second Doctor alluded to rumours and legends about his cruelty. He certainly comes across as a dark and ambiguous figure. He operates the so-called Game of Rassilon. This is clearly distinct from the games in which creatures were forced to fight each other for the entertainment of the Time Lords, as this was banned by Rassilon. The Game of Rassilon is a sort of trap to ensnare dangerous individuals who seek immortality. This is exactly the sort of scheme that the chess-playing Seventh Doctor would set up. If Rassilon is an ancestor of the Doctor, clearly the family likeness came out most in his Seventh incarnation.



The sinister theme of the Gallifreyan past is captured by the design of the Dark Tower, both in it's interior and the model shots. The atmosphere of medieval grimness is enhanced by the hornblast theme in the musical score. The location filming is rather less effective. The fog looks atmospheric, but the Welsh moorland is simply too gentle and picturesque to look like any 'Death Zone.' It's got trees (aren't they scorched by the regular thunderbolts?) and a beautiful lake. It's even got very well paved roads for automobiles. This really does not look the hellish place that is demanded by the script. The Capitol sets are the best that we have seen in the classic series. We only get to see a hallway and two rooms, but they are very well designed. The hallway boasts a lovely ornamental garden feature and the council chamber has a real elegance, with it's harp and painting. There is the sense of a much greater and nobler past.



The 1995 anniversary edition made a number of changes, adding extra scenes, adding CGI effects and altering the score in places. A good deal of these are rather pointless and add little to the story. One very regrettable change is the removal of the Cyberman's expression 'ah!' when spotting the Doctor. It sounded silly, but it was rather funny. The Doctor is given a different tune to play on the harp. I preferred the old one. I was also annoyed by the alteration to Rassilon's voice. Those changes really weren't necessary.

The DVD includes a publicity appearance by Davison, Fielding and Strickson on Saturday Superstore. I found this hilarious because Janet Fielding uses such a wonderfully posh voice! She sounded so refined and precise in her pronunciation! Nothing at all like either Tegan or the much more Australian accent she uses today.

Oh, and before I forget, that line about the mindprobe cracks me up every time!


"Toulouse is to win; and he who wins shall lose."