Listen to yourself, Moffat!

"It's hard to create shock in Doctor Who when we've already blown up the universe a couple of times. What do you do next?"

Guardian: Doctor Who: it's back – promising to be the scariest and darkest yet

In this interview with the Guardian, Steven Moffat put his finger on exactly the problem with the show he is supposed to be producing. The drive in the BBC Wales series to make everything bigger and better, more headline grabbing and with ever bigger explosions reached the level of absurdity with the season finale The Big Bang. When the Doctor has witnessed the destruction of the universe and then created a second Big Bang and thus re-created the universe, what can he do next? He might as well just be a god and sit in some Time Lord heaven. Nothing can ever beat recreating the universe.

Not that Moffat is likely to learn from this. Instead the race to outdo ever other season for the spectacular will continue and bore all of us to tears eventually. The Doctor cannot simply go on defeating ever bigger cosmic threats. Past Doctor Who season finales did not always go for the big bangs:

The Reign of Terror- A plain old fashioned historical drama.

The Time Meddler- An historical with a light-hearted sci-fi twist.

The War Machines- A threat to life on earth, but the kind that would become standard in Doctor Who. WOTAN did not need to threaten the entire universe to make an interesting story.

Horns of Nimon- A light-hearted adventure on a distant planet.

Dragonfire- No cosmic threats, just a cold-hearted villain in a surreal far future setting.

Survival- A planet explodes, but it's not earth. A council estate setting and a subtext about menstruation.

Producers in the classic series did not feel the need to end every season with a cosmic calamity and the biggest television spectacle ever. Part of the reason why Davies and Moffat have fallen into this trap of diminishing returns is their over reliance on story arcs. Building each season around story arcs creates an expectation of something really amazing at the end that will invariably disappoint.

Christmas On A Rational Planet, by Lawrence Miles (Virgin New Adventure)

"I've done so much. Saved entire races whose names I can't even remember. And why? Because of reasons. Because of principles. Truth, love, and harmony. Peace and goodwill. The best of intentions. Whatever I've done, I've done for these reasons. And there's been a price to pay. Sacrifices. People close to me have died. Four of my companions, hundreds of the universe's supporting cast. I could fill whole volumes with their names. Bystanders who helped me, perhaps for just a moment or two, and suffered for it. I've died myself, six times over. I have a responsibility. To every one of them, the living as well as the dead. If I let you succeed, if I let you make a world without reasons, then every sacrifice they've ever made in my name would be for nothing. They would have suffered, and died, and triumphed... all for no purpose."

Christmas on a Rational Planet was Lawrence Miles' first novel. Unsurprisingly, it is not as polished as Alien Bodies, the novel that is generally considered his best. Miles has expressed unhappiness as to some aspects of this novel. The plot is very slow and rambling. However, this is not too much of a problem. The slow pace allows much elaboration on it's themes and the creation of a good deal of atmosphere and climate. In this first novel, we see Miles' real talent: he is not so much interested in creating stories as building cosmologies and fleshing out fictional worlds.

I love the way Seventh Doctor era and New Adventures era writers bring up loads of cultural and literary theory (is this related to the fact that the Seventh Doctor dresses like a modern academic?). I am pretty sure that Lawrence Miles has been read an awful lot of postmodern and feminist cultural theory as well as poststructuralist literary theory. You can see a lot of his ideas in some of the intellectual currents of the late twentieth century. Miles deconstructs the very idea of reason and presents it as a form of unreason, an expression of male anxiety about women and the need to control things. While witch burnings and persecuting religion are commonly thought of as irrational, Miles presents them as an actual result of the mania for rationality. As a rational Christian who sees God and logic as fundamentally the same thing, I disagree with this idea, but I find it fascinating to see stuff I have studied at university coming out in Doctor Who. The big inconsistency in the concept, of course, is that the Carnival Queen, the embodiment of unreason, actually does engage in logical argument and reasoning (thus proving reason is fundamental to both discourse and knowledge).

Miles portrays the Seventh Doctor well (which is a shame, because it's his only Seventh Doctor novel. Come on, Larry, make peace with Big Finish, then you can write lines for Sylvester McCoy!). Roz comes across a bit like Bernice at times, but still has something to surprise. Her attempt to 'summon' the Doctor by attempting to kill Abraham Lincoln's father is mind-boggling. Chris comes across as a very likable character (he comes up again in two of the Faction Paradox books).

If you think that Paul Cornell books are a bit too rich in continuity references, you would be shocked by this novel. Christmas on a Rational Planet references nearly every single Doctor Who story. I love the way the vision of the future is narrated:

The centuries passed and America fell, but its curse lingered on. There in the future, there were two power-blocs, just as there always had been, and if they weren't the USA and the USSR, then they might as well have been. Ion-jet rockets pushed the frontier out into space, men with cowboy moustaches and stupid accents spreading their gun-law across the cosmos.

Finally, the Earth died by fire, great arks carrying humanity's leftovers away to safety. There were black-skinned slaves on the ships, same as always. The slaves were rough-skinned, one-eyed, and extraterrestrial, but a slave was a slave was a slave.

This is such a beautifully poignant commentary on the Doctor Who history of the future and how it ties together.

The New Adventures often had an unfortunate tendency to kill off characters. Miles rightly rejected this and in an interview once boasted that despite the violence of the book, it has a body count of zero. Miles would never have fallen into the trap of killing off the Master then resurrecting him then killing him off and then resurrecting him and then killing him off ad infinitum.

The Carnival Queen is a great villain, or can we call her that? She is certainly an antagonist of the Doctor. It's quite nice to have the Doctor faced with an opponent who is not only female and non-ranting, but also has the kindest of intentions. As with other god-like beings in the Whoniverse, she can only be defeated by conceptual means, hence the test of trust that decides the ending.

The Gynoid is a bizarre, but intriguing concept. The idea of relating gender to androids and gynoids is masterfully clever and is futher proof that Miles had been reading lots of postmodern feminism. I love the mysterious description of Gynoids "Gynoids aren't 'built.' Only Androids are 'built.' Gynoids just are."

Christmas on a Rational Planet lacks the intensity, pace and plot of Alien Bodies, but it is a brilliant New Adventure and shows just how deep Doctor Who can get. This novel offers a completely new way of looking at the cosmology of the Doctor Who universe and the ideology behind it. This was Lawrence Miles' great contribution to Doctor Who.

Cat's Cradle: Warhead, by Andrew Cartmel (Virgin New Adventure)

Doctor Who goes cyberpunk!

This novel is regarded by some people as being one of the defining classics of the Virgin New Adventures. On the other hand, it is a book that is hated by many more traditional fans. Cat's Cradle: Warhead was the first punk rock Doctor Who novel; it stuck it's finger up at everything that fans would want and expect from a Doctor Who novel. The things which so many people love about Doctor Who are swept away and Andrew Cartmel served us up something much darker and more brutal. We get a cold and calculating Doctor who punishes people, a thuggish Ace, an horrible glimpse of the near future, no monsters and we don't even see the TARDIS in this book. This is almost Anti-Who. For that very reason, I think it is a great novel.

Andrew Cartmel was unusual amongst Doctor Who script editors in never actually writing a Doctor Who script itself. One naturally wonders whether this has anything to do with the most interesting stylistic feature of Cat's Cradle: Warhead; it's minimal use of dialogue. So many scenes in this book go by with only a few words being spoken. The Doctor and Ace don't seem to talk much, which makes it distinct from other NAs, which made the relationship between the Doctor and Ace central to their themes. This absence of speech helps to generate atmosphere. It does, however, make it somewhat difficult to follow the complex plot. Cat's Cradle: Warhead is a book that definitely requires a second reading to be really understood. Another interesting stylistic feature is the non-linear narration. We meet Bobby Prescott and find out that he has witnessed a terrifying event before that event is narrated in a later chapter.

Andrew Cartmel's aim during his tenure as script editor was to add mystery to the Doctor. Viewers had become too used to knowing about the Doctor; that he was a Time Lord from Gallifrey, that he travelled in the TARDIS, that he was a kindly cosmic hero, etc. Cartmel continued that pursuit of a mysterious Dr. Who in his debut NA. He presents the Doctor as a force of nature, an unstoppable, unknowable, mysterious figure that manipulates all manner of events.

What I found most striking about the Doctor is that he passes judgment on people. Maria, a cleaner who is dying of the plague affecting so many in this period, helps the Doctor and then asks him to take her with him. He refuses because she knew about terrible cruelties and kept quiet about them. She has failed the Doctor's moral test and he deems her unworthy to be among his chosen few. It's impossible to imagine any other incarnation of the Doctor doing this. Perhaps another Doctor might have made a speech to her about her moral failing, but not quietly and coldly reject her in the way the Seventh Doctor does here. Perhaps this is the right moral verdict, but there is something terrifying about the way this Doctor rejects the pleas of a dying woman and abandons her to her fate.

The Doctor again passes judgment on Bobby Prescott, a serial killer who has been preying on teenagers. The Doctor hires a gang of teenagers, Prescott's would-be victims and gets them to hunt him down. After the Doctor has obtained from Prescott the information he requires, he asks him why he kills young people. He offers him a chance to justify himself. Prescott instead talks about his childhood, proving himself to be an utterly self-centred character. The Doctor ignores his pleas for mercy and abandons him to be killed by his would-be victims. It is terrifying to see the Doctor acting as an avenging angel; dealing out death and judgment. It's an uncomfortable idea, but I think it is a more powerful one than that of the Third Doctor who would always end up having mercy on the Master. The chapter with Bobby Prescott is a great moment in this novel.

Ace is not well developed in this novel. We don't get much exploration of her personality for the most part. What we do get is a picture that revolts a lot of 'Trad' fans. Ace in Cat's Cradle: Warhead is pretty much an hired thug. She is a brutal and confident heavy who is there to do the Doctor's dirty work. This is not how Sophie Aldred played the role and it is totally contrary to how many fans like to think of the role of companion, but it fits totally with the darker vision of the New Adventures. Ace is somebody who the Doctor has picked up and fashioned into a weapon. When Davros talked about the Doctor turning ordinary people into weapons in Journey's End, he was certainly right regarding NA Ace. Ace is given a nice exchange of dialogue with Justine in which the two characters challenge each other's belief systems. This dialogue creates a fascinating sense of uncertainty about the real worldview of Doctor Who. During Cartmel's time on Doctor Who, the show veered away from science fiction and introduced a remarkable magic realism or fantasy element. In this story, the Doctor's solution to the technological menace is a boy with magic powers, call them psychic powers if you will. This is worlds apart from Seventies Doctor Who were everything could be explained by science and the Doctor solved every problem with a gadget. This is New Age Doctor Who.

Andrew Cartmel seems to celebrate alternative youth cultures. He identifies the Doctor with the youths who delight in paganism, magic beliefs, environmentalism gothic culture and geeky computer games. This reflects the way Doctor Who was changing at the time. Doctor Who had fallen from the public consciousness. It was no longer an institution, but was becoming the preserve of fans, many of whom were Goths and geeks. The Doctor is not a cosy institutional figure here, but is a symbol of rebellion and chaos.

Andrew Cartmel defined the Seventh Doctor era and with this novel he helped to establish the direction of the New Adventures. Cat's Cradle: Warhead is not as enjoyable to read as Paul Cornell or Steve Lyons' NAs but it outclasses most of the Virgin novels in style. It is one of the most important Doctor Who books of the 1990s.

Logopolis

"It's the end... but the moment has been prepared for."

I believe Logopolis is Lawrence Miles' favorite Doctor Who story. Given that Miles is one of the most brilliant minds to have contributed to Doctor Who, it must have something going for it. What Miles particularly likes about this story is it's attention to style. Logopolis gives attention to the overall aesthetic impression that is created. Tom Baker was leaving the show and so Logopolis was created as a kind of televisual funeral to the character of the Fourth Doctor. It's sombre mood entirely reflects the sadness of the lead's departure. On the other hand, no matter how polished and well produced this serial looks, it's very difficult to ignore the many faults in it's narrative and the incoherent elements in the plot.

The first episode drags a little. We spend far too long watching Vanessa and Tegan messing about with their car. Why the police should want to question the Doctor is also a little puzzling (why should the officer think the bodies of Vanessa and the policeman are anything other than dolls?). It is also strange that the Doctor should all of a sudden be wanting to fix the Chameleon circuit (first named as such here) and his procedure for getting it working again seems even stranger. This leads to the materialization inside the Master's TARDIS, which is very confusing when watched the first time. The sequence inside the TARDIS that follows this goes on for a long time, but is very nicely done. Likewise, the cloister room is quite beautiful. The idea of flooding the TARDIS and flushing out the Master is embarrassingly stupid.

Things start to move a lot faster once we go to Logopolis. Both the planet and it's monk-like inhabitants are marvellously well designed. The crumbling and collapsing effect is remarkably believable. The Monitor is very well played and there is something amusing about the way the Master overreaches himself and plunders his own existence into jeopardy. When we return to earth the location filming is also quite nicely done.

It's hard to believe the idea that the universe is really under threat of complete destruction (and even more absurd that the Master should try to hold it to ransom). The stupid finale of the Matt Smith season ought to have learnt from this that these kind of cosmic threats don't really work. The idea of the universe being destroyed and then re-created in The Big Bang actually makes Logopolis rather more credible. What I do like is the way this story, as do other Season 18 stories, blends mysticism and hard science. The notion of the universe being held together by numbers being chanted echoes the Jewish mysticism of the Kabbalah, Platonic philosophy and the medieval Christian idea of the music of the spheres. It would be nice to see more intellectual notions like this in the BBC Wales series, which seems far more keen to ground itself in the shallowest of pop culture.

The Watcher is a decent enough idea, though the fact his presence is not really explained and that he never turns up again for any future resurrections makes him seem a somewhat superfluous element. Tom Baker's performance as the Doctor is incredibly grim and sombre. I prefer his serious, but more relaxed performance in the previous story, The Keeper of Traken. Nevertheless, his demeanour does fit the funereal atmosphere of the serial.

Adric works well in this story, as he does in other Tom Baker stories. It is such a shame that he worked so badly in the next season. It's nice to see Tegan's first appearance. I really like her and her normality comes across as refreshing, given that the TARDIS has for the last three seasons been filled with overly clever people. I found it odd that having arrived at Logopolis, she concludes after being there for less than an hour that the place is run like a sweatshop. The Monitor might well have replied to her complaint "Ah, well they're are about to go for a tea and fag break in ten minutes time." I have no idea why they brought in Nyssa as a regular, however. She is such a boring character. She shows so little reaction to her father's body being possessed by the Master and to the destruction of her home planet. At least in this story, she is still wearing her skirt. In the next story they put her in some awful, unflattering trousers. Women generally don't look good in trousers and with a puffy sleeved velvet tunic, even less so.

I am generally not keen on stories featuring the Master. They always seem so contrived. Roger Delgado at least managed to be entertaining, but aside from a few exceptions, Anthony Ainley always came across as too silly. In Logopolis, he gives an horribly cartoonish performance, which is especially disappointing in that it follows his much more subtle portrayal of Tremas in The Keeper of Traken.

Logopolis is not the classic that some fans consider it to be, but you can't ignore it's beauty and elegance as a production.

Head Games, by Steve Lyons (Virgin New Adventure)

"Dr. Who's face blackened and his voice was a threatening growl.'You dare ask that? You wiped out the Seven Planets in the Althosian system, left Silurian Earth to a lingering death, and even now have friends plotting to destroy a civilized world'"

Head Games is a sequel to the author's masterpiece, Conundrum. It lacks the radical literary style of that book and is a good deal more serious, but it is still a very strong and impressive novel.

Like Conundrum, Head Games follows up the Land of Fiction first seen in The Mind Robber. The Land of Fiction is a great idea, but one that could get old rather quickly. Lyons puts a new twist on it by having elements from the Land of Fictional interacting with the real world. We are therefore given a much stronger contrast between fantasy and reality.

Head Games also follows Conundrum in suggesting that the TV Comics exist only in the fictional universe. I prefer to view those stories as genuinely part of the Doctor Who canon. I don't think this is too much of a problem. Jason, the master of the Land has based the appearance of his doppelganger Doctor on the real one, so it's quite possible that all the TV Comic references, such as John and Gillian going to Zebedee University are based on the Doctor's memories. Steve Lyons also seems to make the common assumption among fans that the Doctor is not really called 'Doctor Who.' I have challenged that assumption on this blog. The Doctor does not normally call himself Dr. Who, but that does not mean he has never used that name before.

As with NAs by Paul Cornell and Kate Orman, there is a huge amount of angst going on and Head Games brings into sharp focus the Doctor's morality. The Seventh Doctor is presented as a very morally questionable figure who uses people horrendously. The novel demonstrates this by bringing back not only Ace (who had left the Doctor in Set Piece) but also Mel. This helps to elaborate just how much the Doctor has changed since Season 24. Mel is appalled that the Doctor should associate with the gun-totting Roz and is horrified when she finds out that Dorothy is no longer that 'nice little girl.' Lyons does a bit of a retcon on her departure and the revelation only alienates her further from the Doctor and she departs from him on bad terms. The return of Ace is also effective. She has come to terms with the Doctor's meddling and manipulation, but she does not let him forget about it. She tries to help Mel comes to terms with the Doctor, but is scorned by her. It's great to see all the various companions of the Seventh Doctor interacting (just a shame it was written before Klein turned up in Big Finish- I'd love to see Mel's reaction to the Doctor hanging around with a Nazi!), though the downside is that Roz gets a bit neglected and she is not so well developed here.

Head Games follows Timewyrm:Revelation in using a past incarnation of the Doctor to challenge the Seventh. The Seventh Doctor finds himself under attack from his Sixth incarnation who accuses him of his various 'crimes' (as does the doppelganger Dr. Who and Jason). This is a little different from Timewyrm: Revelation in that the past incarnations of the Doctor were not so much real personalities as symbolic manifestations of the facets of his psyche. Some fans dislike the notion in this and other NAs, that the Seventh Doctor was somehow special and that he is the Time's Champion and the Ka Faraq Gatri. Personally, I have always liked this idea. While it is true that the other Doctors could be dark and manipulative, the Seventh Doctor does seem to be remarkably more proactive about it.

One small fault is that Jason does not really come across as a sixteen year old. Much of his dialogue and his worldview seems much more like that of a nine or ten year old boy. One thing that is definitely worth noticing is the very clever reference to the Dalek Attack computer game. Did you ever play that game? Head Games is not as magnificent as Conundrum, nevertheless it is still amongst the strongest of the Virgin New Adventures.

The Roof of the World, by Adrian Rigelsford (Big Finish Audio)

*Spoiler alert*

The Fifth Doctor, Peri and Erimem encounter an ancient evil in Tibet (which is not the Great Intelligence, fanboys and fangirls).

Big Finish have produced a number of audio plays set between Planet of Fire and Caves of Androzani. This is a rather controversial continuity gap. It has been argued by some fans that a lot of the impact of the Fifth Doctor's self sacrifice is down to the fact that he gave his life for somebody that he barely knew. This impact is muted if she had several unseen adventures before Caves of Androzani. I have a lot of sympathy with this argument, however it must be said that there is a good reason for creating these stories (aside from the unwillingness of Janet Fielding to work with Big Finish until recently). Peri and the Fifth Doctor make such a great team. She is a bit abrasive, he is gentle and calm. The Fifth Doctor takes some of the edge of Peri, while the Sixth Doctor just fired her up. It is natural that fans should want more stories with Peri and the Fifth Doctor.

Big Finish introduced a new companion to this TARDIS crew, Erimem (Caroline Morris), who is a princess from Ancient Egypt. I have not listened to any of her other stories so I am going to have to judge her on the basis of this appearance alone. It's great to have Peri interacting with another companion and she seems to take on a protective big sister role towards Erimem. It also seems a great idea to have a character from such a distant time in the past, especially as the potential of Katarina was so wasted. On the other hand, Erimem does not come across as particularly exotic and speaks like a typical middle-class English girl from the Home Counties. I suppose the Doctor's telepathic gift (it had nothing to do with the TARDIS until the New Adventures) might make her sound English, but one might expect an ancient Egyptian princess to speak in a quite different manner.

The story begins with the Fifth Doctor getting involved in a game of cricket with a bunch of English explorers in Tibet. There is always something heartwarming about the Fifth Doctor playing cricket; it's when he is in his element. The interaction between two groups of explorers is also quite effective.

A good deal of the story takes place in a kind of dream sequence, in which Erimem is lead to believe that she has died. The exploration of Erimem's background is useful and makes me want to listen to the The Eye of the Scorpion, her introductory story. These kind of dream sequences are a risky strategy (the NA writers seemed to go to town on them and got them right only some of the time) as you can be sure that the Fifth Doctor and Peri would not really be dead and blaming it all on Erimem. Knowing this is obviously not real makes one a little impatient with the sequence. On the other hand, with Erimem being a new and unfamiliar character, one had to face the possibility that the writer might have killed her off. I found myself checking the CD box to work out if she made further appearances just to make sure!

The big bad guys turn out to be an ancient evil, the Old Ones. It's been done before, but personally I can't get enough Lovecraftian influences in my Doctor Who. Clearly, these are not the Great Intelligence who also coincidentally inhabited Tibet. We never get a true description, but they seem to be twisted, hideous things with claws. They have apparently interbred with other lifeforms and so are clearly physical beings, unlike Fenric or the Nestene Consciousness. The Doctor mentions the Dark Times and so the Yssgaroth seem to be in view. The Old Ones here are evidently more corporeal and less powerful than the Yssgaroth seen in the The Pit. According to Lawrence Miles' Book of the War, the Yssgaroth tainted other species creating the hybrid Mal'akh, the source of the vampire legends and presumably the vampires of State of Decay. The Old Ones of this story seem to be some variation on the Mal'akh.

As ever, nobody can play creepy, sinister aristocrats with the same style as Edward De Souza. General Bruce (Sylvester Morand) is a bit cliched, but has a wonderful relationship with his companion, the frustrated journalist John Matthews (Alan Cox). The writer, surprisingly plays a minor role in the drama. The best performance comes from Nicola Bryant. Her acting has improved enormously since her television role. She plays Peri as a much more mature and intelligent character and when she appears to be angry and accusative in the dream sequence, she is very impressive. Peter Davison is good, but does not bring much that is new to the role and as with his other Big Finish appearances sounds regrettably older.

This is hardly the most original Doctor Who audio, but if you are keen to hear more of Peri with the Fifth Doctor or you need more Lovecraft in your Who, then this is worth a listen.

Infinite Requiem, by Daniel Blythe (Virgin New Adventure)

"The Doctor looked away shiftily. 'I don't have a darker side,' he attested, but without much conviction."

This novel is much better than Daniel Blythe's first NA, The Dimension Riders. That earlier work was rather disappointing. Infinite Requiem has a relatively fast pace and a strong set of characters. It has a thematic depth, with it's elaboration of two different stages of future history, it's brief exploration of British Asian society and domestic abuse and references to Hindu mythology.

I particularly appreciated the presentation of the classic NA Dark Doctor. Blythe does a fantastic job of capturing the sinister, manipulative and Machiavellian portrayal of the Doctor that had characterised the NAs. I also liked the somewhat dreamy atmosphere on the Pridka world in the far future. When Doctor Who deals with the very far future, it should have a somewhat ethereal atmosphere, a little like The Ark.

Infinite Requiem unfortunately makes the mistake of many other NA novels in killing off great characters. The deaths of Suzi and Cheynor at the end came across as pointless and unnecessary. Sometimes the New Adventure writers seemed determined to leave us all a bit depressed!

Infinite Requiem is not an earth-shattering novel that is vital to NA continuity, but it's well written and enjoyable.

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.

Season 13

Season 13, along with Season 14 is among the most popular years of Doctor Who. That puts me into a rather lonely position in not particularly liking it.

The popularity of Season 13 is unsurprising. It has Tom Baker at his strongest. He had a good relationship with Philip Hinchcliffe who was able to keep him from trying to dominate proceedings. The Graham Williams era would demonstrate what could happen when Tom Baker was not kept on a tight leash. Most of the stories in this season are reasonably good. The production values are strong when compared to some of the disasters of the Williams era.

The strong chemistry between Elisabeth Sladen's Sarah and Tom Baker's Doctor is often cited by fans as one of the strengths of the season. I am not so sure of this. What we fan reviewers call 'chemistry' is something that you don't really see in real people having real conversations. Very few people are able to come up with a quick reply to everything that a close friend says. The dialogue between the Fourth Doctor and Sarah is just too quick, too smart and a bit too knowing. This points to the big problem with Sarah Jane Smith. No matter how popular she may be with fans, she is simply not believable as an human being. She is a composite of all the characteristics that conservative fans and writers want to see in a companion. It is as though she has been genetically engineered to be the Doctor's Companion.

In Season 13 we start to see the writers become overly reliant on reproducing the plots of famous horror and science fiction movies. In fact, every single story of this season is to varying extents, a Doctor Who adaptation of another film or story. Most obviously, Brain of Mobius takes after Frankenstein and Pyramids of Mars takes after The Mummy. More subtly, The Seeds of Doom is influenced by John Carpenter's The Thing From Another World. I think it is a fair to describe the Hinchcliffe producership as a 'one-trick pony.' For all the faults of the Graham Williams era, his producership at least offered a wide variety of different kinds of stories instead of the one-note reliance on horror. In my judgment, the Season 18 attempt at the Hammer-style, State of Decay is far superior to these Hinchcliffe horror serials by virtue, not only of it's being a one-shot attempt, but also by a far more polished production.

Related to the horror aspect of this season is the increasing violence of the stories. I don't view the Doctor as a pacifist and resent the suggestion of later writers that the Doctor never kills (one of the few things I liked about The End of Time was the Tenth Doctor's admission that he had killed people in the past). He is not Batman or Superman. I don't have much of a problem with the Doctor killing Solon with cyanide gas. I just feel that there is a bit too much death and violence in these serials. While the violence is mostly fantasy and unrealistic, there is often a suggestion of gruesomeness. There seems a real desire to arouse the morbid curiosity of the viewer. I think Pyramids of Mars is particularly tasteless in having a character killed by his zombified brother and another character crushed between two robot mummies. You might not see any gore, but it is horrible and sadistic.

I think fans really need to reevaluate whether this season is really as glorious as it is generally considered.

Terror of the Zygons- 8/10

The textbook story of alien infiltration.

Planet of Evil- 4/10

What is the point of remaking Forbidden Planet without the big robot and that girl in the short dress skipping around?

Pyramids of Mars- 5/10

Even more overrated than Genesis of the Daleks. There are so many things that I hate about this story, so I'll save further comments until I write a proper review of it. In short, a clumsy attempt to combine Hammer horror and science fiction.

The Android Invasion- 2/10

A tedious remake of Terror of the Zygons with robots instead of shape-shifting aliens. The worst story of the whole Tom Baker era (at least The Sontaran Experiment was only two episodes long).

The Brain of Morbius- 9/10

An attempt at remaking an horror classic that is not only fun to watch, but also inserts some interesting ideas.

The Seeds of Doom- 8/10

A really entertaining story with a great script. The Krynoid is an impressive monster and Chase is a brilliant villain. On the other hand, it is excessively violent and does come a little too close to making the Doctor into a James Bond-style action hero.

Putting Doctor Who to shame: The Day of the Triffids (1981)

I think Remembrance of the Daleks clearly indicates that the Quatermass stories are part of the Doctor Who canon. There are also good reasons for thinking that Blake's 7 is also set in the Whoniverse (though at what period of future history, I have no idea). However, John Wyndham's apocalyptic tale clearly can't be slotted into our shared fictional universe of British science fiction. So can I justify departing from the format of this blog and reviewing something that is very clearly not Doctor Who?

The 1981 version of The Day of the Triffids has some very important connections to Doctor Who. Obviously, it is made by the BBC. Not only that it was produced by David Maloney who directed a number of Doctor Who serials, including The Talons of Weng Chiang and Genesis of the Daleks. Like Doctor Who, The Day of the Trffids series has important similarities with Quatermass. The Triffids are an utterly alien menace. Like the monsters of Quatermass, they are a force of nature that can be reasoned with or easily stopped.

John Wyndham's novel is like Doctor Who, one of the great British contributions to science fiction. It is a timeless classic that has been studied in schools. It is unlikely that there were any Doctor Who writers who had not read The Day of the Triffids. Doctor Who had at times attempted to create monstrous plants with varying results.

As a Doctor Who fan, what shocked me about The Day of the Triffids was it's incredible quality. The production values of this series were so strong that in comparison, most Doctor Who looks pathetically cheap and tacky. The direction was strong. The acting was full of conviction, free from the hamming up that was all too common in Doctor Who. The camera work was masterful and the location filming was glorious.




There is a ready excuse for Doctor Who in that The Day of the Triffids is an exclusively earthbound story with extensive location filming. David Maloney did not have to create alien worlds from quarries and cheap studio sets as he had done on Doctor Who in The Krotons and Genesis of the Daleks. This is true, but The Day of the Triffids outclasses almost all earthbound Doctor Who stories. It might also be pointed out that The Day of the Triffids does not attempt many special effects apart from the Triffid gun that is used only once. This is also true, but it might also be argued that Doctor Who was overambitious in it's use of special effects and might have benefited from the more sparing use in The Day of the Triffids. It seems that the BBC really could do a great job of science fiction; they were just only prepared to put in the money and the effort with a classic novel like this.

I cannot think of a Doctor Who monster that is as scary as the Triffids in the 1981 version. The props contained an operator, yet they do not come close to looking like a man in a rubber suit. They do not look like monsters at all; they look like big orchids, which is what makes them so effective. The way they are filmed also helps a lot; we are not given any long shots of them moving, thus avoiding the problem of lumbering that ruins so many well designed monsters in Doctor Who.

Even as a concept the Triffids are terrifying. They are plants. The idea of a big sunflower that stings people is nightmarish. There is also a sense of realism about the Triffids. They are blind like plants. They have no brain, yet somehow show some instinctive cunning. They also restricted to eating rotting flesh. If the Triffids had long tendrils to grab you and a big mouth to gobble you up, they would be just another fantasy monster. However, the idea of a Triffid killing you and then standing over you waiting for your body to decompose is a much more horrible thought. Very obviously, John Wyndham's novel was the origin of all those apocalyptic stories about flesh-eating zombies that are so popular these days. To my mind, flesh-eating Triffids are a scarier thought than flesh-eating zombies. I know that dead bodies don't walk around eating people, but there are carnivorous plants and so the idea of a walking, stinging plant seems very easy to imagine.




The Day of the Triffids is a very faithful adaptation of the novel. It has a much more modern setting of course and minor details have been altered. The scene at the house of the blind couple is a very helpful one in providing some exposition and the perspective of the newly blind. There is a danger with this story that we identify too closely with the minority who have their sight and become distant from the blind masses. The series engages very well with the moral dilemmas of the disaster and presents all of the different responses to it very effectively.

As I said, the location work in this series is glorious. It really captures the beauty of the landscape of southern England. I first read the novel as a child when I was on holiday in Cornwall in my parents' caravan. Thus, in my mind this story and the English countryside are quite closely connected. As they should be. It is a very British novel.

Some viewers have complained about the passage of six years in between episodes 5 and 6, but this makes perfect sense within the narrative. The point is that the protagonists are surviving peacefully during that time. There are only so many times you can watch somebody killing Triffids. In my judgement, The Day of the Triffids is a masterpiece of British television that should be watched by anyone who appreciates British science fiction.