Planet of the Rani

Planet of the Rani, by Marc Platt, had the function of telling two potentially quite interesting stories. As it's title suggests, it takes us to the Rani's little empire on the planet Miasimi Goria. Yet it also needs to tell us what happens to the Rani after she is caught and sent down to the clink at the end of The Rani Elite.

Marc Platt chooses to concentrate on the former and concludes the latter very quickly. He has the Rani being frogmarched to her cell at the beginning, then when the Doctor and his new companion, Constance Clarke arrive for her parole hearing, 47 years too late, she not only has the run of the prison, but has made herself the governor. Her final departure from Teccaurora Penitentiary is concluded at the end of the first quarter episode. I felt just a little cheated by this. The Rani being in prison is such an interesting idea that one feels one would like to see a bit more of it. The problem with The Rani Elite was that it had our favorite evil Time Lady basically doing what she had been trying to do in Time and the Rani. It was fun, but slightly stale. It was just another evil renegade Time Lord plot. A story about the Rani trying to break out of jail is exactly the kind of original and fresh story Big Finish needed to do to breath some life into their new incarnation of the Rani. Sadly, they blew the chance.

Has anybody forgotten that the late Kate O'Mara played an ex-con in Dynasty? It would have been a lovely tribute for Big Finish to have given us a Doctor Who prison drama. Over the years, Doctor Who has done James Bond, westerns, Star Trek parodies and Hammer horror. Why not Prisoner Cell-Block H or Bad Girls? It would have been so much more interesting to have seen the Rani interacting with cellmates and bitchy prison guards. With the invisibility of audio, they could do strip searches and shower scenes without any difficulties. Admittedly, the level of camp involved would have suited O'Mara's Rani rather better than the more restrained Redmond Rani, but Redmond shows the occasional camp flourish here and there.

Related to the brevity of the prison part of this story, is the problem of pace. The Rani's jailbreak occurs at a breathless pace. Once that part of the story is done and we go to Miasmi Goria, the pace of the story slows right down and we end up feeling like the story is an episode too long.

I'm not a fan of Marc Platt, yet he does have a strength which suits the story of Miasmi Goria. He is great at creating an interesting alien landscape to imagine when listening to an audio story, as he showed with Quinnis. The world of Miasmi Goria is a striking and interesting place; it has a real sense of location, with its dinner plate tree-statues and polluted air. Platt gives this something of the quality of an Hartnell story, with a peculiar and unknown world being explored. Interestingly, he says in the production interview that he tried to give it an exotic Indian vibe, going with the origin of Ushas' alias. This raises some interesting thoughts about the Rani, being a white woman with an Indian name. It makes her a sort of colonial memsahib. I think this takes away the potential racial awkwardness of the name.

There are some great things about this audio. Siobhan Redmond has really taken to the role and has made it her own. Colin Baker gives yet another fantastic performance as the Rani. I loved the moment when he imitated the Rani's Scottish accent. I do like the way that Dr. Who feels a sense of tragedy about the moral corruption of Ushas. I love the fact that the two characters have a history from their school days. We learn here about a crazy experiment that the two young Gallifreyans had attempted in their youth. Constance Clark, the Sixth Doctor's new companion is also fun. Oddly, she almost becomes a sort of companion to the Rani in this story.

I think this was a fairly enjoyable offering, but I can't get over my disappointment that more was not done with the prison aspect of the story. The Rani is a camp character. We need just a bit more fun in a story with her. Hence, it was a really bad choice to get Marc Platt to write this. Platt's stories are always serious and heavy going, which is entirely the wrong tone for a story about the Rani busting out of jail.

The Rani Elite

It is perhaps a little surprising that it took Big Finish this long to bring back the Rani, especially given her popularity among a significant segment of Doctor Who fandom. This story was originally written for Kate O'Mara. The great actress sadly passed away before she could make her glorious return and so the story was hastily re-written to allow a regenerated Rani. Big Finish wisely decided to be upfront with the Rani's return and to make it a selling point rather than a surprise.

The new Rani is a post-Kate O'Mara Rani meeting the Sixth Doctor out of sequence. While the script makes mention of the Rani's knowledge of the Sixth Doctor's regeneration, it does not deal with the oddity of an out of sequence Time Lord encounter. The history of the classic series seems quite consistent in always having Time Lord's meet in chronological sequence. It has been suggested that the very nature of TARDISes ensures this. I really wanted to know if there is a special reason why this should happen here. There are of course two ways that they could have avoided an out of sequence Rani story. They could have had Peter Davison meet a pre-Kate O'Mara Rani. I always imagine the pre-Kate Rani/ Ushas looking Indian, but I suppose it would be racially problematic to have an Indian actress playing the Rani. Or is it actually a form of blacking up to have a European actress calling herself the Rani? Which is worse? Alternatively, they could have had the Seventh Doctor encounter the newly regenerated Rani. Evidently, they felt that the Sixth Doctor would work best with the Rani. I think the results show they are right, as the Sixth Doctor and the new Rani spar quite nicely together. She is cool and cold, he is loud and bombastic.

Siobhan Redmond seems a little too in awe of Kate O'Mara to be quite comfortable in the role, but hopefully this will change should she return for future audios. What she brings to the role, other than her Scottish accent, is a cool detachment which probably fits better with the core of what the Rani represents than Kate O'Mara's campiness. Not that I don't love watching Kate being camp and dressing up as Mel, but I think Redmond brings a nice seriousness to the role. Of course, she loses her cool once she is defeated and starts ranting about getting revenge.



I think perhaps Redmond suffers a little from this story being very much meant for Kate O'Mara. The plot is not that far away from Time and the Rani. To introduce a new Rani, it would have made more sense to have her involved in a more radically different plot than what we have seen from her before. However, you can understand Big Finish working with what they had. Like so much of what Big Finish does, the big fault of this story is its unwillingness to do anything adventurous. This is yet another story where Peri gets threatened with somebody trying to possess her body, with lots of running around and getting captured. However, in spite of this, I still found it genuinely enjoyable.

To my delight this turned out to be a continuity feast that would have impressed even the late Craig Hinton. Along with Speelsnapes, we even get the Deca stuff from Divided Loyalties (so that stuff is canon now!). I punched the air when Dr. Who addressed the Rani as Ushas!

It looks like the Rani gets hauled off to prison at the end. I hope she enjoys having her mugshot taken and getting strip-searched. Hopefully, when she gets tired of being alpha bitch in Stormcage, she can escape and come back for some more misadventures with the Doctor. I genuinely hope we do see more of the Redmond Rani.

Timelash

There are fans who defend Timelash. I wish I could do that, but I just don't enjoy Timelash enough to defend it. It's fun in places and has a cheerful pantomime feel that part of me wants to admire. It's also interesting that in some ways it functions as a sort of parody of bad Doctor Who, sharing many of its faults with countless other Doctor Who stories, for instance a planent with about six inhabitants. I don't think that redeems it though.

The plot is just bonkers. How did the Borad ever take over Karfel? Why does he chuck people down a time tunnel instead of just shooting them or even feeding them to the Morlocks? How are people actually able to climb into the time vortex? The Borad is visually interesting and everybody agrees this is a redeeming feature, but he feels like an awful lot of other Doctor Who villains.

The presence of HG Wells feels like an embarrassment, primarily because the writer don't seem to have done any research into what kind of person HG Wells actually was. There seems little resemblance between our Herbert and the historical figure.

There is a place for Doctor Who stories that are silly in a tongue-in-cheek way. I absolutely love Delta and the Bannermen. However, Delta and the Bannermen actually feels like an intelligent story. Timelash just feels lazy.

Season 22

It was certainly a mistake to introduce the Sixth Doctor at the end of the previous season instead of opening with his first story. It is just one of the many ways in which he was set up to fail, not least among them the hideous costume he was given.

After the grey darkness of the previous season, Season 22 has something of a more colourful look. For the most part, this is not accompanied by a more light-hearted tone. Season 22 is unrelentingly violent and full of some quite vicious characters. To my mind, the crushing of Lytton's hands in Attack of the Cybermen represents the heights of excessive violence in Doctor Who. Production values in this season are a mixed bag, with some great location work and a few good sets, but also some uninspired acting in some stories. The quality of script writing is rather underwhelming in Season 22.

There does seem to have been a genuine desire to challenge viewers and offer a fresh approach to Doctor Who, but it was too half-hearted. For all the attempt to make the Doctor scary and less clean-cut, like he had been in the Hartnell years, he was still presented as a nice guy deep down. The McCoy years would later succeed in making the Doctor seem genuinely scary and dangerous. The over reliance on past continuity, inherited from the previous seasons would also serve as a barrier to offering a fresh approach.

As with the previous season, there is a strong thematic connection between the serials of this season. There is an emphasis on consumption, lust and the body. Attack of the Cybermen has the Cybermen consuming human bodies, Vengeance on Varos has colonists who consume images of torture, Mark of the Rani has the Rani using human bodies as a source of chemicals and, of course, turning people into trees. The Two Doctors is all about eating the flesh of humans and aliens. Timelash has the Borad wanting to posses and change Peri's body. Revelation of the Daleks is about bodies being turned into food and also into Daleks. With some better writers, these scripts could have considerably enhanced the depth and strength of the stories.

Through it all, Colin Baker gave some pretty decent performances. As both the Doctor and as a real person he is very likable, but he was simply not given material that enabled him to shine. Nicola Bryant was also disadvantaged by being paired with a character with whom her character would inevitably clash. It can be fun watching the Sixth Doctor and Peri bicker, but through the whole season it became just a bit too much.


Attack of the Cybermen 3/10

Too much obsession with continuity, too much violence and shockingly weak Cybermen.

Vengeance on Varos 7/10

The makings of a great story, let down by lazy and careless script writing.

The Mark of the Rani 4/10

Why did they have to bring back the Master?

The Two Doctors 9/10

A very postmodern story that deconstructs our idea of the way the Doctor operates.

Timelash 3/10

Very silly, but still fun.

Revelation of the Daleks 9/10

Brilliantly directed with a great set of characters, but the Doctor is completely irrelevant to the plot.

Jubilee, by Robert Shearman (Big Finish audio)

Jubilee is something of a fan favorite. Elements from this story were used to create the first Dalek appearance in the BBC Wales series, Dalek.

I have to say I was rather disappointed by this audio. It has some strong elements; the creation of a vivid alternate history, the conversation with the American president (if you don't mind a funny accent) and the way it makes one isolated Dalek into a sinister and disturbing figure. I also really love the hilarious teaser intro, which spoofs the Dalek Empire audios. Nevertheless, I was definitely pleased to get to the end of this one.

The biggest problem with this story is the failure of editing. Robert Shearman throws far too many elements into this audio. He gives us the isolated, defeated Dalek captive that worked so effectively in Dalek. He also gives us a complex story about alternate timelines, a satire of militarism and fascism, a biting critique of Dalekmania, an exploration of Dalek identity and some attempts at camp comedy. Attempting to bring in so many elements does not really work all that well.

Jubilee does not manage to integrate camp comedy and serious drama terribly well. While I like camp villains, the president and his wife Miriam comes across as a bit too cartoonish. Miriam's pretence at being stupid is really irritating and the moment when she asks the Dalek to marry her is so awful that it is embarrassing. Other excessively silly elements in the story include the ban on contractions in speech and the requirement of women to be in bed by midnight.

The story is rather excessive in violence. We get torture, decapitation and mutilation. I know its a hobby horse of mine, but Doctor Who writers are generally not going to win me over if they put in this kind of stuff. It's just too much.

The other big problem with this story is the way it overdoes the main message and starts to sound repetitive. The whole theme about 'people can be just like Daleks' comes up again and again. We get the message. Now can we have an exciting adventure with the Daleks?

If you want to see the original idea behind Dalek and want a very different kind of Dalek story, this is one to check out, but I did warn you about the gruesomeness.

Millennial Rites, by Craig Hintom (Virgin Missing Adventure)

"Anne placed the glass on the table. 'Yog-Sothoth? Now why does that sound familiar?'

'It's the Intelligence's real name and it crops up in certain arcane literature from time to time. Over the billennia, he mounted thousands- millions- of campaigns against inhabited planets, trying out the gambits and games that he had played on computers in his previous existence. On Hiskith, he chose to use the Hiskith version of Koala bears to invade; on Danos, domestic animals- like dogs- were the vanguard. And on earth, well the Intelligence seemed to have a fondness for Tibet and the Yeti.' The Doctor held up his hands. 'Don't ask me why. Perhaps some childhood teddy-bear fetish.'"

I quite like Millennial Rites. It is hardly the greatest Doctor Who novel, but it is enjoyable and is easily better than his later Sixth Doctor novel, The Quantum Archangel. Two factors made me want to read it; the influence of Lovecraft (this is thematic, rather than stylistic) and the fact that it dates UNIT to the 1980s, contrary to other Virgin novels.

Millennial Rites has been criticised for all the heavy continuity stuff with Anne Travers and the Great Intelligence. This misses the point. It actually plays a trick on the unknowing reader, letting them think that this is a sequel to Web of Fear, with the Great Intelligence behind it all, when in fact the alien menace is something else entirely. Anne Travers herself is portrayed in typically grim Virgin fashion as an angry and embittered woman. I don't have a problem with that; why should everyone always be grateful to the Doctor? I am a bit annoyed that Hinton kills her off at the end though (why do Virgin writers have to do that?).

Things get very weird when reality is reshaped and London turns into a place resembling an hybrid of a Michael Moorcock novel and Warhammer 40K. The main characters all take on important roles in this bizarre role-playing game style world. It is quite a clever idea.

Craig Hinton does a good job of portraying the Sixth Doctor. Of course, he brings up all that stuff about the Valeyard. It is good, but personally I am a bit sceptical of the claim that the Valeyard really is the Doctor. I suppose I shouldn't be, being a broad canonist (the novels and audios mostly seem to take the claim at face value), but I just feel it is too bonkers an idea to be assumed as truth.

Mel is brilliant in this book. She gets a much needed rehabilitation. She is presented as cheerful and moralistic, but also clever and resourceful. She is very much like the Mel we see in the audio, The Juggernauts. The minor characters have something of a soap opera quality, though they are well-rounded.

The reference to Rachel Jensen in Remembrance of the Daleks peaked my obsessive fannish side, not least because I consider her to be the most sexy character to have appeared in Doctor Who (including that Burberry-clad chav, Romana I). We are told that Anne Travers replaced Jensen as scientific advisor to the cabinet in the 1980s. This surprised me because Jensen was talking about retiring and growing Begonias in Remembrance and I assumed that she was in her late forties or early fifties in 1963. More recently I read John Peel's novel War of the Daleks that states that Rachel Jensen was in her mid-thirties in 1963. While that age description makes her talk of retiring in Remembrance of the Daleks odd (perhaps she was married and could live off her husband's income?) does fit better with the idea of her being scientific advisor to the cabinet in the early 80s. I can't believe it, this is the longest paragraph in this review- you can see where my priorities are. Anyway, Millennial Rites is a good novel.

The Wormery, by Stephen Cole and Paul Magrs (Big Finish Audio)

* Spoiler alert! *

‘You say you never wanted her in your hair, well as you know she’s famous for it! Her name induces sighs of despair, well as you know she’s famous for it! Aside from vats of liquor, your cupboard is bare! You damn her to the devil but she’s already there! No one else beside her you’re beside yourself with joy!’

I think I can safely say that The Wormery is the most entertaining Big Finish I have heard so far. It has such great sense of fun and frivolity that is thoroughly grounded in the imagery and themes of cabaret. For the most part, The Wormery also feels refreshingly original.

Iris Wildthyme was first introduced by Paul Magrs in the BBC novels. She is a marvellously entertaining character, particularly in the way she is a bizarre parody of the Doctor. This is particularly well exploited here in that the story mirrors the Trial of the Time Lord, a recent memory for the Doctor, with Bianca turning out to be an evil version of Iris who is intent on stealing her regenerations. Hilariously, the Doctor is outraged that his own adventures are being copycatted.

Katy Manning might have played the worst Dr. Who companion ever, but all his forgiven after her portrayal of Iris Wildthyme. Katy is simply glorious as Iris. Maria McErlane is also great as Bianca, coming across as delightfully camp.

The Wormery offers much exploration of the character of the Sixth Doctor. We see his inner turmoil after the events of the trial and his deep loneliness. We discover his secret affection for Iris; he is very cross when she reveals that she does not care for this incarnation (though she later changes her mind and concludes that he is very 'cuddly').

This story is certainly a lot better than The Ancestor Cell, a novel that Stephen Cole co-authored (review coming up eventually). Interestingly enough, the background of the worms is remarkably similar to the theory about who The Enemy are in The Ancestor Cell. The Wormery does have a few faults. Its plot is confusing. It is also not much of a surprise when Sylvester McCoy makes a cameo at the end. I also felt it ought to have been a little more obvious that many of the patrons of the bar were from other worlds.

The song that Iris, and later Bianca, sing is wonderfully catchy and is so true to Iris' character. It is a real shame that it was not included at the end as a music track, as Big Finish might have done had this been put out more recently.

The Wormery is one of the best of the Big Finish range and a great introduction to Iris Wildthyme for those who missed her in the BBC books.

The Quantum Archangel, by Craig Hinton (BBC novel)

"At the risk of sounding like a high-and-mighty Time Lord, I am a high-and-mighty Time Lord: And to quote one of my elementary texts in the matter: 'And in the aftermath of Event Zero, eleven dimensions did fight for existence. Five were triumphant- together they did become three dimensions of space, and the two dimensions of time through which we travel. But the remaining six dimensions did still exist: although beaten, although denied their dominance, they curled and curdled amongst themselves to become a six-fold universe, separate but conjoined.

'They formed a realm all their own- a universe in which the transcendent beings could thrive and prosper without interference from the lesser beings. A realm protected by the Great and Ancient Covenant.'"

The Quantum Archangel is a sequel to The Time Monster. A lot of fans question the wisdom of following up such a poorly regarded story, nevertheless despite its faults, The Time Monster had some very interesting ideas (as well as some camp fun).

I am the sort of fan who loves lots of continuity references everywhere, so I certainly enjoyed that aspect of the book. I also liked the emphasis on cosmology. Craig Hinton goes to incredible lengths to offer a coherent picture of how the Whoniverse fits together as a cosmos. I loved all the references to various kinds of astral and transcendent entities. On the other hand, not being a physicist, I found the technobabble rather hardgoing.

Quantum Archangel is an interesting book in the concepts it deals with, nevertheless I was not at all impressed by Hinton's writing style or plotting. He certainly did a better (but not brilliant) job with Millennial Rites in the Virgin Missing Adventures range.

I was irritated by Mel's condemnation of the Doctor's failure at the beginning of the book. It is quite clear that the devastation of Maradnias was not the Doctor's fault, but that of its more ruthless inhabitants. Does Mel expect the Doctor to prevent every evil event in the universe? She comes across as horribly sanctimonious. Steve Lyons managed to make Mel's impossibly high standards work in Head Games because he offered a contrast between her and the Seventh Doctor companions.

I am not a big fan of Master stories. He is simply too predictable a character. Hinton handles him reasonably well, though he comes across more like Delgado than Ainley.

Strangely, The Quantum Archangel comes across as remarkably similar to The Taking of Planet 5, a much more radical and innovative book. There are clear similarities between the two novels, both deal with the cosmology of the Whoniverse in hard science style and both are sequels to Seventies stories (Image of the Fendahl, in the case of Taking of Planet 5).

Project: Twilight, by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright (Big Finish audio)

The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn encounter vampire gangsters in the London.

I absolutely hated this audio. I find it hard to see myself listening to it again.

When it comes to violence in Doctor Who, I have fairly strong feelings. I am not too bothered by the violence of the New Adventure novels. Not because I don't object to graphic literary descriptions of violence, but because I acknowledge that they were of their time. There was a strong desire to push boundaries and to make Doctor Who more adult. I don't care for the sex, swearing and violence, but I understand why those authors did it. They were not writing for a family show, but for fans who were growing up. Eric Saward is the name that tends to get mentioned when it comes to violence in Doctor Who. He certainly went too far at time; the crushing of Lytton's hands in Attack of the Cybermen was horribly unnecessary and inappropriate. On the other hand, some of the violence in the Saward era had a thematic importance. Season 21 is the story of how the conscientious Fifth Doctor is overcome, overwhelmed and eventually destroyed by the violence and depravity of the cosmos and regenerates into a form that is more accepting of violence. On the other hand, fans seem to accept and celebrate the violence of Philip Hinchcliffe's producership. It is true that the violence of the Hinchcliffe era was not all that realistic and of a more fantasy nature than much of what we see on today's small screen. However, there was a real attempt to exceed the limits of what was acceptable and to arouse the morbid curiosity of the viewer. Hinchliffe seemed to have the remarkable ambition of turning a family show into a show about torture, mutilation and gruesome deaths. So many of the serials under his producership, such as Robots of Death and Talons of Weng Chiang strike me as tasteless. Mary Whitehouse will forever be an hate figure among fans, but I do think she had a point about the unpleasantness of mid-Seventies Doctor Who.

Cavan Scott and Mark Wright seem to want to beat all previous attempts to create Doctor Who gore-flicks on the unlikely medium of audio. You can't see the violence in Project: Twilight, but there is an awful lot of it, some of it fairly graphically described and I found it absolutely sickening. I was quite unprepared for the level of horror and gore in this drama. I really do hope that Big Finish have not done many more audio drams that are this violent. I don't think that Big Finish can be excused as easily for this violence as the Virgin New Adventures. Big Finish have consistently tried to keep things 'Trad' and put out endless conservative attempts to recreate the experience of watching a Doctor Who serial. If they are going to go down that line, they should stick to the limits of that medium when it comes to possibly objectionable material.

Coming to the actual story, gore aside, it's a fairly interesting one. It has a interesting set of characters, with the exception of the stupidly cliched Reggie. Did we really need to be told that he modelled his style on the Kray twins? "No s**t Sherlock," as Janet Fielding would say.

I think this story tries a little too hard to do a vampire story without bringing up any continuity (the Doctor makes just one reference to the Time Lord's conflict with the vampires). I found that disappointing as I find the whole mythos introduced in State of Decay, with it's ancient war between Time Lords and the Great Vampires fascinating. I love the way this was followed up in the Missing Adventure, Goth Opera and with the Yssgaroth in The Pit and Lawrence Miles' Book of the War. I would have liked another installment to that mythos. The vampires of Project:Twilight seem to be a different kind. Where the State of Decay vampires were very much supernatural beings (as befits enemies of the rational Time Lords), these vampires are the product of technology. The physical change of vampirism is brought on by nanobots. Perhaps the nanobots (in this story utilised by early Twentieth Century British scientists) were the product of some alien technology that sought to replicate the State of Decay-type vampires.

Colin Baker and Maggie Stables are great as the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn Smythe. Evelyn has the effect of bringing out the Sixth Doctor's kinder, gentler side. This is nice and a positive development from the t.v. series, though I do miss the crazy, dysfunctional relationship he had with Peri. I suppose there are only so many times you can watch the Doctor being mean and Peri moaning about it.

Listen to this if you can stomach some excessive gore, but if not, stay well away.

...ish, by Philip Pascoe (Big Finish Audio)

The Sixth Doctor and Peri do battle with a malevolent word.

Fantastic CD cover, don't you think?

The audio drama medium has some very obvious limitations. Philip Pascoe managed to produce a drama that is crafted to work with those limitations. It's hard to imagine how this story would work in another medium. It would not even a work as a novel, as you would not get the benefit of hearing the sound of the language used. This is a story all about language; a story that positively delights in the beauty of words in the English language.

...ish is also a story that is ideal for Colin Baker. His Doctor was always the most eloquent in engaging in witty wordplay. Here he gets to show off the Doctor's gargantuan vocabulary. For once, the Sixth Doctor is paired up with Peri; a duo that Big Finish has not used much. Perversely, I have come to really like this team, as it shows up the Doctor's nasty side. Here Peri is used really effectively and is allowed to actually come across as intelligent.

Season 18 saw writers mixing in an awful lot of Platonic philosophy. This Hellenist influence can be seen here, but ...ish looks just as much to Hebrew as Hellenist thought. The notion of words have mystical power is very strong in Judaism, especially in the magical ideas of the Kabbalah. In the Christian tradition, Christ is described as the logos or Word in the first chapter of John's gospel. I do love it when Doctor Who brings in these mystical and philosophical ideas.

At times some of the exposition is hard to follow in this story, making some of the plot details a little obscure on the first listen. Nevertheless, this does not stop one drinking in the superbly crafted dialogue. ...ish also creates a rich and esoteric atmosphere that is quite overwhelming.

...ish is a refreshing drama amidst all the rather overly traditionalist and unambitious stories that Big Finish put out. They really should have tried to do more stories like this that push the boundaries of what Doctor Who can do.

The Juggernauts, by Scott Alan Woodward (Big Finish Audio)

* Spoiler alert *

Davros is messing about with Mechanoids. The Sixth Doctor and Mel put a stop to it.

This is a bit of a shopping list story. It's got Davros, the Mechanoids and the Daleks all thrown together in that way that fans of returning monsters (in other words Doctor Who fans in general) love. The Juggernauts joins some of the continuity dots between Revelation of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks, though whether this is necessary is another question. Being a fan of the more experimental Virgin New Adventures, I can't help thinking that Doctor Who audio ought to be capable of a bit more than this kind of traditionalist fare, but it's still fun.

The plot is not the best, but it gets us along at a reasonable pace. Obviously, having Daleks and Mechanoids in, we are going to get a lot of fighting and this works surprisingly well in the audio format. Naturally, the Mechanoids are the main selling point of this audio. Nicholas Briggs does a fantastic job of recreating the sound of their voices. It's nice to encounter them again. On the other hand, the idea that these new Mechanoids contain human body parts just comes across as stupid. Surely if they were efficient enough before without human body parts they could be equally efficient as pure machines in their rebuilt state? It seems like the writer is trying to throw in too many new ideas. Likewise, it seems odd that the Davros is suddenly so anxious to destroy his Dalek creations. He has never shown this ambition before.

Terry Molloy puts in a good performance as Davros and we get some insights into his psychology. Colin Baker also shines and delights in being arrogant and bombastic again. However, the real star of this story is Bonnie Langford. She is amazing in this story, showing real depth and grabbing the role of heroine by the throat. This Mel is tough and indomitable. As the Doctor says "hell hath no fury like a Mel scorned." Of course, she does not seem at all like the character we saw in seasons 23 and 24. She is a little more like the Mel in Craig Hinton's novels.

The Juggernauts is a fun and well produced audio drama that is worth a listen. I enjoyed it, though a part of me feels like Big Finish could do some much more interesting stuff than this.

Revelation of the Daleks

D.J. : Is that your real accent?
Peri: I should hope so!

Despite the title, it's not really about the Daleks, is it? It is a story about Davros, how he worms his way into an human society, manipulates others and attempts to build a new power base.

Revelation of the Daleks is a very good story that suffers from one major flaw; the fact that the Doctor plays so little part in the plot. All of the major events in the story would have happened without his being there. He is effectively reduced to being a bystander, much like in an Hartnell historical. In Caves of Androzani, the Doctor essentially took a passive role in the plot, getting captured, having to rescue Peri and then dying and regenerating. Nevertheless, he acted as a catalyst for the story. His mere arrival set in motion planet-shaking events. I think it is this irrelevance of the Doctor in Revelation of the Daleks that keeps it from being a classic like Caves of Androzani.

Despite this flaw, Revelation of the Daleks is a very good production. It evokes a very surreal, dream-like atmosphere. This is helped enormously by the snowy weather. This dreaminess makes the revelation of the mutant in the glass Dalek seem like the stuff of nightmares.

Like Snakedance before it, Revelation of the Daleks really creates the sense of an actual world inhabited by real people. The sets are a jumble of different styles, but this is much more true to life than the uniformity we usually see in Doctor Who sets. There is a sense of scale in the exterior shots of Tranquil Repose. We also get a bizarre cast of characters from all walks of life. The irrelevance of most of these to the plot about Davros and the Daleks makes this seem as though we are seeing a snapshot of the turbulent life in this future epoch. There is no real point to Davros' manipulating of Tasembeka and her subsequent murder of Jobel, except to provide an incredible piece of drama and a vision of a violent, nasty world.

William Gaunt plays the part of Orcini with an incredible stiffness and self-importance; yet this is so true to the character. His character evokes such a sense of world-weariness, yet he is resolved to the discipline of an inflexible code of honour. With his affectionate relationship with his squire, Bostock, he seems so much like a Robert Holmes creation. Or a character from a Shakespeare play. He is also really bad-ass with his leather outfit and casual flick knife killing of Kara. The faulty mechanical leg is a nice touch too!

Alexei Sayle comes across as quite deliberately annoying in his D.J. voice. What is clever about the character is the way that he is revealed to be a very shy, nervous chap. It is rather tragic the way he is shut up alone in his studio with only his records for company and then to die a tragic death. I was quite surprised at the quality of Sayle's acting after his quasi-standup performances in The Young Ones.

Terry Molloy really shines in this story. He gives a chilling performance as Davros that could rival that of Michael Wisher in Genesis of the Daleks. His moments with Tasembeka are particularly impressive. It is nice to see Eleanour Bron in Doctor Who again after her cameo appearance in City of Death. She is awfully good in the role of Kara. Does anybody else think her costume is awfully similar to that of Lady Adrasta in The Creature from the Pit?

I am not sure I like the idea of the Daleks being created from humans. Daleks are not Cybermen. The whole point of Daleks is that they are totally removed from any connection with humanity. I think Daleks created from human beings compromises this.

As with other Eric Saward stories there is an awful lot of violence in Revelation of the Daleks. I think he sometimes went too far and his habit of killing off nearly every non-regular character can get very irritating. However, I find the excessive violence in the Saward era easier to handle than the violence of the Hinchcliffe era. The violence of Saward stories might be more realistic but it is an essential part of his vision of a brutal, amoral cosmos in the far future. Saward was attempting to adopt a moral posture towards the violence in the show. On the other hand, Hincliffe seemed to include cruelty and death simply to arouse a morbid curiosity in the viewer. Hincliffe might not have gone so far in the realism, but he had a clear desire to shock and push the boundaries of what was acceptable. I find a lot of what Hinchcliffe introduced in Seventies Doctor Who to be rather tasteless. Doctor Who fans are far too quick to criticise Saward for excessive violence, while celebrating the torture and death in Hinchfliffe stories while sneering at Mary Whitehouse's sometimes legitimate criticisms.

Along with Earthshock, Revelation of the Daleks represents the best of Saward's script writing. I don't think it can called a classic, but it is undoubtedly one of the stronger stories of the Colin Baker period.

The One Doctor, by Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman (Big Finish Audio)

The Sixth Doctor and Mel arrives on a planet in the far future to find that the wonderful time traveller known as 'the Doctor' and his pretty assistant Sally-Anne have saved the day.

Whatever people say, I think Colin Baker was a great Doctor. Despite his being sacked after two seasons, Big Finish thankfully granted us the chance to hear him again in audio and in this medium he really has the chance to shine. In this audio play, Colin Baker is given the opportunity to display his aptitude for comedy, something that he was not able to display so much during his television stint.

The One Doctor is a full-on comedy. This is something that the television series never did. Even the most comedic serials such as The Two Doctors and The Pirate Planet had plenty of serious elements. In fact, Delta and the Bannermen one of the stories that comes closest to comedy was probably envisioned as a much more serious story. One could even argue that the generally more po-faced Star Trek: Deep Space 9 came closer to full-on comedy than Doctor Who. I am all for experimentation with different styles of Doctor Who, so I think it was worth the effort. I can't help thinking though that an attempt to pastiche Doctor Who would work better in a more serious story, which I would argue is what The Two Doctors comes close to doing, though with an anarchic sense of satire. I would argue that the comedy in Bang-Bang-a-Boom! actually works better because it is aimed at Star Trek rather than Doctor Who, effectively neutralising the incongruity of it.

The One Doctor is funny, if not hiliariously funny. It is a lightweight story that you can enjoy and pick up all cool fan references in. The central concept of a conman impersonating the Doctor is a great one and this element works pretty well, even if the story get's a bit tired halfway through.

The plot structure closely follows The Keys of Marinus, with the characters splitting up on a quest to receive certain objects. Thus, we have three very lightweight mini-adventures. One of them has been rather upstaged by the BBC Wales series, though thankfully this story felt no need to make the Anne Robinson send-up so obvious (though Jane Goddard does a great impression). I am not a big fan of Matt Lucas' work, but it's nice to hear him in this drama. I would say pretty much all the cast of this story do a fantastic job.

It is lovely to hear Bonnie Langford alongside Colin Baker again. They worked so well together in season 23, so it was such a shame that they only had two televised stories. Big Finish have done their work well and enabled us to relive that era of the show. Bonnie is such a great actress. Admittedly, she does sound rather different to how she sounded on t.v. However, in this story she comes a lot closer to the television Mel than she does in some of her other Big Finish stories. Mel in The Juggernauts almost comes across as a different character to that of seasons 23 and 24. The One Doctor does not miss the chance to send-up the character:

Sally-Anne: Drop the goody-two shoes act!
Mel: What act?

Mel's 'Bush's never give' speech is delightful, even if you can see the punchline coming.

This story is set in what the Doctor describes as the 'vulgar end of time,' when everything has been explored, everything that can be known is known and there is no longer any mystery about anything. The Doctor hates this period and seldom travels this far into the future. This is probably the same period as that of Delta and the Bannermen, as in that story all the alien races seem to know about the Doctor and they all posess time travel.

The Ultimate Foe (Trial of a Time Lord parts 13-14)

"I'm as honest, truthful and about as boring as they come."

You could sum up this story simply as "Deadly Assasin goes pantomime." I don't mind the pantomime feel of the next season after this, but Trial of a Time Lord was a story arc that cried out for a dramatic conclusion. What we get is a rushed and half thought out mess.

Offscreen circumstances can largely be blamed for the failure of this story. Robert Holmes wrote the first episode of this, but his illness and subsequent death prevented it's completion. Eric Saward wrote a concluding episode in his absence, but then resigned and kept the copyright to it. Pip and Jane Baker were hastily called in to write a conclusion to a story that they had not written, without knowing how it was all supposed to end. Hence, what we are left with.

The idea that the Valeyard is the 'dark side of the Doctor' is a bit bonkers. Of course, he never really admits this himself and we find out this from the Master, who might just as well have made it all up for a laugh. Onscreen evidence actually suggests that the Valeyard may have been the Keeper of the Matrix all along.

We find out that the Time Lords have been up to some pretty shady stuff, though we pretty much knew this already. As I said before, the whole backstory about the earth being moved by the Time Lords is a bit of a continuity nightmare.

Despite the poor script, Colin Baker put's everything into it. He is stunning in his condemnation of the Time Lords and his apparent surrender to fate. The real tragedy is his becoming a scapegoat for the failings of his two seasons and his dismissal as a result. Bonnie Langford's Mel is less effective. I like her, but this story really does not suit her style. Anthony Ainley gives his worst ever performance as the Master. Michael Jayston is good as the Valeyard, but he does lose the chilling restraint of previous stories and become another gloating, cackling villain.

It is fun to see Sabalom Glitz again, though it is odd that he seems to be friends wiht the Doctor, despite being a cold-blooded killer. Perhaps Glitz met the Doctor a second time after The Mysterious Planet.

The pseudo-Victorian world of the Matrix and Mr. Popplewick are cool, though with the massive Steampunk obsession that has been goig since the 80s, perhaps too consciously cool. The problem with virtual reality stories is that they don't engage very well with the viewer. If the events depicted are not real, why get excited about them?

The Dallas-style reversal of Peri's horrifying fate is very disappointing. On the other hand, there is something delightfully surreal about Peri marrying Ycarnos and becoming a barbarian warrior queen. According to the novelisation, Ycarnos goes with Peri to California, where he comes a champion wrestler with Peri as his manager. This is amusing, but rather silly.

The really remarkable thing about The Trial of a Time Lord is that of it's segments, the two which are written, or in this case half-written, by Robert Holmes are the worst. Mysterious Planet was a derivative runaround, this conclusion was a confused piece of scripted chaos, while Mindwarp was very good and the nice-but-mediocre Pip and Jane Baker gave us a reasonably decent story in Terror of the Vervoids.

Terror of the Vervoids (Trial of a Time Lord parts 9-12)

"Your defence is that you improved? This I must see!"

Having witnessed in the Matrix the death of his companion, Peri, the Doctor has lost the arrogance and cockiness that he showed in the first story of the Trial series. He is now far more subdued and rather melancholy.

The Doctor is given the chance to make his defence. He does so by presenting an adventure that takes place in his future, involving a companion he has not met. His defence is that his conduct improved and that his intervention was requested by somebody in authority and that it was vital to the protection of countless human lives. I am not going to begin to discuss the complexities and anomalies involved in the Doctor knowing about a future adventure. Let us just say it is a bit of a mind-boggling notion. As I mentioned when reviewing The Mysterious Planet, if this was an American sci-fi show or made by an independent television company, this season would have included a story featuring stock footage of at least one older story. This would make sense as I can think of plenty of adventures that could have been forcefully used by the Doctor in his defence. He could have mentioned the many occasions in which his intervention was arranged or ordered by the Time Lords. He could have mentioned the stories of Season 16, when he was asked by the White Guardian to retrieve the Key to Time. He could have mentioned the Dominators and those dreaded Quarks- hang on, he already did that last time he was put on trial.

Judging from the DVD commentary, Pip and Jane Baker are absolutely lovely, kind people who one would just love to meet. Unfortunately, they seemed unable to write convincing dialogue. The script for this story is really bad in places. On the other hand, they have created a really effective Agatha Christie style murder mystery. I would argue that this story works much more effectively as a murder mystery than the dreadfully overhyped Robots of Death. In Robots of Death, you knew a robot did it (if the title did not give you the clue), so it is not difficult to work out which member of the crew is most likely to be the culprit. The detective element works better in this less well regarded serial.




With vicious monsters on board a spaceship, we know we are in Alien territory. Doctor Who knows this territory well, after all, it got there first with Ark in Space. The production team certainly don't let us down with the Vervoid costumes, bar the odd moment when you can see what the actors are wearing underneath. I am a bit puzzled by their intelligence, knowlege of human technology and their command of English (or whatever language the crew and passengers speak). Some fans have raised the question of how the Vervoids have come to be armed with stings when they are bred as servants. Probably, they are crossbreeds of various plants, one variation of which must have possessed a poison sting. On the other hand, it could be that they have really been bred for military purposes. The mutated woman is very well created, though she is rather superfluous to the plot.

I struggle a little with the notion that the arrival of the Vervoids spells the extinction of animal life on earth. There is hardly an army of them on board. I am sure they would not stand up to a sustained bombardment of weed killer. One also wonders why the Doctor does not mention, when charged with genocide, that the Time Lords ordered him to commit genocide against the Daleks and that the Time Lords committed genocide against both the Vampires and the Fendahl. For all people complain about the excessive continuity of mid-80s Dr Who, it all get's forgotten in the Trial of the Time Lord.




It really does seem in this story that the Sixth Doctor has changed and improved. Colin Baker plays him as a much more affectionate and likeable character than before. I also think his new waistcoat and tie are an improvement, though I am sure a lot of fans will hate both versions of his costume. Baker has a real chemistry with Bonnie Langford. Mel is a companion who is tailor made for the Sixth Doctor. Her cheerful disposition counterbalances his tendency to moodiness. I am not quite sure how she manages to get him to exercise against his will. It is impossible to imagine Peri forcing the Doctor to do anything against his will.

Mel is a rival to Adric for being the most hated companion, but I really like her. As much as I like Tegan and Peri, it is refreshing to have a companion who enjoys being with the Doctor. I have said before that I cannot stand Jo Grant. I find it hard to reconcile in my mind how I can like Mel, but hate Jo Grant when both characters share a number of qualities. I think perhaps it is because at this period of the show, it was all being taken less seriously. There was room for a larger than life character like Mel. Pertwee played his part absolutely straight and his stories were written to be taken seriously, hence the presence of the childish Jo Grant was an irritation. Bonnie Langford gives her best performance here in Terror of the Vervoids.

The guest cast in this story are decent enough, though none of them particularly stand out. It is nice to see Honor Blackman doing her turn in Doctor Who. The spacecraft set is very well designed, even though it wobbles once or twice. The black hole special effect really is awful.

This is truly an enjoyable story in the good old-fashioned Doctor Who style. Quite a switch from the rather 'Rad' second part of ths series.

Mindwarp (Trial of a Time Lord parts 5-8)

The Sixth Doctor's relationship with Peri becomes abusive (again).

The Mysterious Planet was full of running around and getting captured. Mindwarp is also full of running around and getting captured; the difference is that Mindwarp has real quality, while Mysterious Planet was a derivative mess.

Right from the start of the story in the trial scene, we learn that something has happened to Peri and we are left waiting to find out what this is. This adds an immense sense of tension and foreboding to this story. We start to see the Doctor lose his cockiness and become desperate to make sense of what he sees in the evidence.




Despite it's many camp elements and despite it looking in many place like a video for a multi-racial 80s pop band, Mindwarp is one very bleak story. Mindwarp is the ultimate elaboration of Eric Saward's vision of the cosmos. Throughout the Saward era, we were given a glimpse of a dark future filled with violence and carnage. Yet Mindwarp is the darkest of all these stories. Caves of Androzani was bleak. There were no nice people in that story; only a lunatic with a deformity and a massive grudge, brutal mercenaries and self-serving capitalists. Nevertheless, for all it's darkness, in the midst of Caves of Androzani, we had the faithful and compassionate Doctor, steady as a rock. Mindwarp takes away that last security. In Caves of Androzani, Peri could depend on the Doctor in an hostile universe, here he has finally succumbed to the sheer monstrosity of the cosmos and given in to it. The Doctor who gave his life for her has become a coward, a traitor and a perversion of what he was before. This makes this the darkest of Dr. Who stories. This is a story about how the Doctor who once saved Peri comes to betray and fail her.




The tragic nature of this story makes one feel that it would make a great opera. This is Peri's tragedy, a story of betrayal by the one man she could rely on. The story focuses on her, showing her growing realisation that she could die alone, away from everything she knows and loved. We see her finding solace and camaraderie in the only characters who come across as sympathetic, Ycarnos and Dorf. There is a sense of irony in this, in that they are bloodthirsty barbarians who delight in killing.

Practically everyone agrees that the best part of this story is the climax when we see Peri, her head shaved and her personality replaced with that of Lord Kiv. Nicola Bryant is quite chilling when she speaks in the deep voice of the new personality invading her body. Peri's shaved head may be an allusion to the holocaust, the ultimate scene of dehumanisation. Since the introduction of the Cybermen, Doctor Who has often dealt with the theme of dehumanisation. The destruction of the human personality seems to many people a fate worse than death. In the figure of the shaven-headed Peri speaking with Kiv's voice, we have a far more stark image of the destruction of the human personality than the Cybermen ever were. Many of us fans feel deeply disappointed that the decision was made to reverse Peri's fate and let her survive this story Dallas-style. It makes sense aesthetically that Peri whose life was saved by the Doctor should die in the end because of the Doctor's failure. It creates a much greater sense of tragic pathos.

A good deal of the unpopularity of this story is no doubt down to the agony for fans of watching the Doctor become so selfish and cowardly. When we see Peri chained up and alone with the Doctor, we are made to hope that the Doctor is going to explain his plan to her, but we become horrified when we find that he really has betrayed her. Of course, we are not helped by the fact that Colin Baker had absolutely no idea how to play this role; the scripts had not been clearly explained to him. There are in fact four possible explanations of why the Doctor is acts the way he does in this story. It may be that he is suffering the effects of Crozier's brain tampering. It may be that the Matrix has been altered to distort the record of the events (which we find out has occurred in some places, but not necessarily those relating to the Doctor's odd behaviour). It may be that this really is a trick and the Doctor is pretending to descend to evil; though this is difficult to believe when he could easily have proven his good faith when he was alone with Peri on the rocks by the sea. Most disturnbing of all, it could be that the Doctor realy has succombed to the cowardice and malice that he showed after his regeneration in The Twin Dilemma. To my mind, this is the most interesting possibility. The Doctor's fifth regeneration does seem to have been particularly traumatic and the unstable beahviour he showed in his first story can be seen throughout season 22. It seems to me that the Doctor was going through some sort of mental crisis throughout his sixth incarnation that reached it's climax in this story. No doubt this crisis intensified by Crozier, but it cannot be separated from the instability that he had shown prior to this. I understand that a lot of viewers find the uncertainty rather confusing, but I find it quite interesting. The fact that it is not explained leaves us room to think about it and puzzle out the Doctor's out of character behaviour.




Brian Blessed is hilariously over the top as Ycarnos. Some viewers might find his performance irritating, but he does inject some life into an otherwise rather bleak serial. Some people feel that Patrick Reycart (Crozier) is a bit wooden. I feel that this reflects the character. Crozier is a totally amoral figure. He has no politics, agenda or even cruelty. He simply wants to perfect the techniques he is researching. He is the cold face of science without ethical resraint. The moment when he sips tea from an old fashioned cup and saucer before carrying out his surgical procedure is beautiful. It just sums up the banality of the character.

It is fun to see Nabil Shaban again, as the slimy Sil. Some fans feel he is less effective here as a flunky and sycophant, rather than as the big villain. I think it is interesting to see him in a different position, and it allows us to see him in a double act with Kiv (who is ably played by Christopher Ryan and later Nicola Bryant). After all, we got to see Darth Vader twice as a flunky and only once as head honcho. The rest of the guest cast are pretty awful, the worst offender being Gordon Warnecke as Tuza. The monstrous Raak is unusually well filmed for a Dr Who monster. We only get brief glimpses of the creature, which is a lot better than the usual full frontal view.

This is a really brilliant story that is often too quickly dismissed by fans who have no love for this troubled period in the history of the show. I think for those of us who have grown up with the New Adventures, Mindwarp is probably not so shocking. The New Adventures followed up Eric Saward's bleak vision of the universe and also occasionally bring ambiguity and doubt about the Doctor's workings.

The Mysterious Planet (Trial of a Time Lord Parts 1-4)

The Doctor is charged with conduct unbecoming a Time Lord.

Although I tend to think of the Trial of the Time Lord as four individual serials, they are united by such a tight story arc across Season 23, that it is quite a challenge to review them as such. The reason I prefer to review them as separate stories is the huge variety in quality between them.

The trial makes use of evidence in the form of three of the Doctor's adventures, one in the recent past, one which has just taken place at the time of the trial and one which, bizarrely, has not yet occurred. You can be sure that if this was an American science fiction show, this season would have included an adventure from the show's past. American sci-fi shows, and those made by Independent t.v. companies in the UK so often throw in an episode where old footage is used just to save the budget at the end of the season. Generally, those sort of episodes are very disappointing and a bit cheap. However, given the lack of repeats of Doctor Who in the UK, fans would have welcomed a story in which footage from a classic story, such as The Seeds of Doom was used. It would have been quite interesting to watch the Doctor and the Time Lords commenting on such an adventure.

The model shot of the space station in which the trial is held looks great. The problem is that it does not look in any sense Gallifreyan. The space station looks just like something from Star Wars or the Alien movies. A Time Lord space station (we are never told why this trial is not held on Gallifrey) would surely have an ethereal magnificence to it.

The trial room with its rather miniscule gathering of Time Lords looks a little pathetic when compared with the model shot of the space station. Nevertheless, as with most court scenes in television, there is plenty of room for effective drama. Colin Baker get's the chance to be rude, rebellious and arrogant. Michael Jayston is brilliant as the sinister Valeyard. The contrast between his angry restraint and the Doctor's brashness is delightful. I just love watching the way the Valeyard glares at the Doctor.

A lot of people find the periodic switch from the action of the story to the trial scenes rather intrusive. I find them rather fun, though it must be said that in the case of this first serial, this is not difficult because the Ravolox story is so dull. The plot of The Mysterious Planet is completely uninteresting; a dull runaround that is largely derived from other stories. One just feels a sense of deja vu on watching Mysterious Planet.

Sabalom Glitz and his young accomplice, Dibber help to keep the story from being unwatchable. They are a glorious Holmesian double-act. What is most hilarious is the way that Glitz takes pride in the way he is an object of speculation by criminologists and prison psychologists. He offers some biting satire of the field of criminology. It is a little hard to be sure how thick Dibber really is. At times, it seems that his wit is a little sharper than that of his boss. The rest of the guest cast are not terribly impressive. Joan Sims is especially disappointing as Katryca.

Colin Baker was clearly playing the Doctor in the Ravolox scenes as a nicer character than we experienced in Season 22. While it is nice to see him actually appearing to like Peri, it does jar a little with what we see in the courtroom, where he is as obnoxious as in Season 22. It also does not fit with what we see in the next story, Mindwarp.

The location work is quite good and the village is well designed and created. On the other hand, the suggestion that the London Underground would still be recognisable on a ruined earth a million years into the future is ludicrous. The robot is pretty good.

One thing that baffles me is that Katryca wants to give Peri some fine husbands, yet she locks her up with two scoundrels who might easily molest her. A rather perplexing decision.

Being a fan who obsesses over continuity; I really struggle with the issue of how to fit this story in with the future history of earth in other Dr. Who stories. I am not quite convinced by Tat Wood's view that the removal of Earth by the Time Lords is the same apparent destruction of earth in The Ark.

What is most interesting about the Trial of the Time Lord is the way it deconstructs the narration of Doctor Who. We are forced to ponder how accurate the reporting of these stories are. If crucial bits have been missed out of this story about Ravolox, how do we know crucial bits have not been left out of say, The Brain of Morbius?

The Two Doctors

Flesh-eating Androgum Apocalypse.

This is a story that really divides fan opinion. Delta and the Bannermen also divides fan opinion, but not in the same way. Fans who don't like Delta and the Bannermen just dismiss it as rubbish, while fans who don't like The Two Doctors seemed to exhibit a real hatred towards this story. I think it's a shame because I think The Two Doctors is brilliant. It is the best story of the Colin Baker era and the best story between Caves of Androzani and Delta and the Bannermen. It is certainly better than the other multi-Doctor stories.

We might have expected The Two Doctors to be a self-congratulatory nostalgia trip like The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors, but instead, writer Robert Holmes serves us up a story that satirises key aspects of Doctor Who and completely defies the expectations of Doctor Who.




Given that Colin Baker was not a terribly popular Doctor, The Two Doctors could easily have made his position worse by bringing back the charming, delightful old Patrick Troughton. Instead, we are actually made to like the Sixth Doctor because the Second Doctor is presented as quite repulsive. Right from the beginning, we see the Second Doctor being obstinate, rude, bullying, arrogant and displaying an attitude that appears very much like racism. No doubt this is why a lot of traditionalist fans hate this story; instead of giving them the Doctor they love, the Second Doctor is shown up as an arrogant bully. Holmes completely sends up the rather lame idea of a multi-Doctor story and reminds us why it makes sense to have just one Doctor in a story. Amusingly, we are made to agree with the Colin Baker Doctor who says of his predeccessor "I liked you better as an Androgum."



Robert Holmes was never a writer of 'returning monster' stories; it was just not his style. He always worked best with human villains with plausible motives. In this story, Holmes got really clever and deconstructed the idea of the returning monster. Faced with writing a dull plodder about a fix with Sontarans, Holmes gives us another monster, the Androgums. As the Doctor is familiar with them, they are from his perspective a returning monster. The Sontarans in this story are deathly dull; yet the Androgums are a fascinating creation. The reason they are both fascinating and entertaining is that they are so human in manner and appearance; thus proving that actually the 'returning monster' idea is a bit naff.

Viewers of this story are often shocked by the violence of Colin Baker towards Shockeye the Androgum at the end of the story (violence which seems pretty justifiable in the circumstance). They are also shocked by the Doctor's hatred and apparent prejudice toward Androgums. Surely the Doctor would have a more 'progressive' attitude, as Dastari suggests he should? Again, Holmes is deconstructing the standard Dr. Who idea of the monster. Imagine a story in which a character suggests that Sontarans can be improved and taught to be 'nice.' We can well imagine the Doctor desperately trying to persuade this character that this is a hopeless venture and that the Sontarans are brutal and warlike to the core. We know that this is what the Doctor would do because we have such a similar story in Power of the Daleks. Because Sontarans are 'monsters' we are not shocked when the Doctor shows distrust towards them and we accept it perfectly when he deals out death and destruction towards them (as he does in this story). Our own racism is exposed when we find ourselves sympathizing with Androgums because they look like us.

Oscar's death is another satirical take on the Doctor Who format. Countless minor characters meet grisly deaths in this show. We do not bat an eyelid when five or six minor characters are killed off. Yet when Oscar's death is treated with real emotion (as well as an entertaining dose of black humour) fans are shocked and say that is is 'pointless and unnecessary.'

Doctor Who fans are often fascinated by the Time Lords and there has always been a hunger to see the Doctor's own people amongst fans. Thus, we are given stories like Deadly Assasin and Arc of Infinity where we get to see the Time Lords. There does seem to be a tendency of the Time Lords to disappoint when they appear. Holmes demonsrated this in The Two Doctors by giving the Time Lords an incredible presence in the story, without them ever actually appearing. We are very conscious that they are keeping a close eye on the proceedings, right from the first appearance of the Second Doctor as their errand boy. The unseen Time Lords of the The Two Doctors have a much greater impact as the guardians of time and space than the doddery old men of Deadly Assasin and Arc of Infinity.

The Two Doctors is the ultimate 'Rad' story; it is a serial in which the conventions of the show are turned on their head. The story also has a wonderful holiday feel, with it's Spanish location shooting, guitar music and bright mood. It shares a sense of the pastoral with the equally contentious Delta and the Bannermen. It has a delightfully witty script, together with superb performances from the regulars and guests. The only real fault with this story is the appallingly bad Sontaran costumes.

Robert Holmes intended this story to champion vegatarianism and show the evils of meat-eating. This agenda gives it a thematic depth that is very like the Sylvester McCoy era. I am afraid, as with the horizontally challenged Colin Baker himself, Holmes has not succeeded in winning me to his cause. Whenever I watch this story, all that talk of food always makes me ravenously hungry. I find it incredibly difficult to watch this story without tucking into some sort of snack, usually a massive bag of crisps or pork scratchings.

The Mark of the Rani

The Master, the Rani and the Sixth Doctor fall out with each other during the industrial revolution.

In its historical theme and more leisurely pace, this story is unusual for this era of Doctor Who. It also lacks the violence that characterised Colin Baker stories.

There are some historical inaccuracies, such as the fact Luddites never attacked pit machinery.

Colin Baker put in a splendid performance as the Sixth Doctor. Nicola Bryant puts in a depressingly moany performance as Peri.

Kate O'Mara really shines as the Rani and she has some of the best lines. The Rani is a much more interesting villain than the Master. It is a shame that we only got to see her again in the very underwhelming, Time and the Rani. Anthony Ainley also came across rather well.

Pip and Jane Baker's dialogue is a rather mixed bag, but it still allows the Doctor, the Master and the Rani to shine. The interplay between them is the best part of the story. The Rani mocks the Doctor and the Master's rivalry as though they were unruly schoolboys. I rather wished they had reminisced about their time at the academy; I can just imagine the Master pulling the Rani's pigtails!

Seeing the inside of the Rani's TARDIS is very cool. Shame about the dinosaur prop.

As much as the human trees looked really naff and rubbery, the idea of mines that turn the victim into trees is rather cool.

It has been suggested that the plot about the Rani would have come across better if the viewer was showed the planet that the Rani rules. However, Doctor Who has always relied on the imagination to carry such things. Had we seen the planet Miasimia Goria, it would inevitably have looked naff.

It is hard not to be disappointed by the fact that the one of the great inventors mentioned that we meet is George Stephenson. Wisely, Doctor Who tends to avoid showing historical characters, but Gawn Grainger does a good job of portraying the famous engineer.

All those Geordie accents are not very easy on the ear. The luddites in this story were a rather annoying lot.

Attack of the Cybermen

The Cybermen are messing about with time travel.

This story attempts to clear up some of the continuity and trace the history of the Cybermen, but it ends up causing even more confusion. Additionally,the writers have squeezed in as many gratuitous continuity references as possible, such as Totters Lane and the Chameleon Circuit. It is all a little too much.

The story is action-packed and fairly entertaining, but is absurdly complex. It is in severe need of a trimming.

Peri is dull and irritating in this story. Colin Baker puts in a good and typically pompous performance as the Sixth Doctor. He may irritate, but he is clearly our beloved Doctor.

The Cybermen in this story are pathetic. They are vulnerable to bullets and the Doctor's sonic lance. Their decaptitated heads also appear to be purely mechanical.

Why was it necessary for the original actor from Tomb of the Cybermen to play the Cybercontroller? His voice was not being used. With the advance of age, he simply too overweight for the role.

The Cryons are a well-conceived alien species, but it does seem odd that they got no mention in Tomb of the Cybermen, given that they were around all that time.

There is a lot of violence in this story. The crushing of Lytton's hands is particularly unpleasent and unnecessary.

With the emphasis on continuity, it is odd that the Doctor should know Lytton so well, as they never actually met in Resurrection of the Daleks. Perhpaps they met offscreen. It also seems strange that the Doctor believes he has misjudged Lytton when he finds out he is working for the Cryons. It is not like mercenaries only ever work for the bad guys!