A Town Called Mercy

As I said in my review of Curse of the Black Spot, the problem with pseudo-historicals is that there are essentially only two plots- a good alien is interfering with history or a bad alien is interfering with history. In A Town Called Mercy, we get two aliens who are both good, bad and ugly.

When we meet Kahler-Jex and find out he is a nice alien, it is a certain fact that he will turn out to be not as nice as he seems. We are also well aware that the cyborg alien will turn out to be more than just a brutal killer. I actually found myself reminded of the DWM story The Star Beast, in which the cute and cuddly alien, Beep the Meep turns out to be a wanted war criminal. That was actually a much more interesting story than this.

This story was just boring. It was flat and predictable, especially the very Star Trekl Next Generation debate about whether to hand over an unrepentant mass murderer to save a town full of innocent people. The whole thing was horribly sentimentalised with Issac's death and the horrible Murray-Gold music.

The resolution was terrible too. Kahler-Jex kills himself, thus removing any need for the Doctor to actually come up with a solution to the dilemma. Wouldn't life be so much easier if all the bad people just killed themselves? That is the worst kind of lazy writing.

Once again, we get racial issues swept under the carpet with the presence of a black preacher ministering to an otherwise white town. I am also irritated by Amy wearing a miniskirt. Does she not realize the hostility she is likely to attract when dressed like that in the 19th century? But then as JNT would do, Moffat has Amy wear a uniform in every episode no matter what the circumstances.

Give me The Gunfighters over this any day. The Gunfighters was actually about the historical events and circumstances, while still having fun with western cliches. This story just uses the western setting as a themepark backdrop to a banal science fiction story.

The Curse of Fenric, by Ian Briggs (Target novelisation)

The quality of Target novelisations varied enormously, but a distinct improvement in literary depth can be seen in some of the novelizations of Seventh Doctor stories. The novelization of the Curse of Fenric, by it's original writer, is a good example of a novelization that attempts to provide a much deeper penetration into its source text. I think that the original serial was brilliant and this novelisation does not improve on the original (or remove all confusion about the plot) but it does provide a fascinating perspective on the story and enlarges on the writer's original vision.

The stark prose of this work has a somewhat avant-garde feel, but occasionally it becomes banal enough for you to remember it is a kid's book. Unlike most of Target novels it brings up sexual themes, with Millington and Judson's homosexuality made explicit and the surprising revelation that Miss Hardaker had a child out of wedlock (and was subsequently socially ostracised).

Many details are added to the televised story. The Russian soldiers are given distinct personalities and Nurse Crane turns out to be a Soviet spy (which seems to me a pointless addition). The story of how Millington's homosexual jealousy of Judson led to the latter becoming crippled is an interesting touch.

Particularly interesting are the editorial notes between chapters, which take the story in different directions. These include a schoolboy essay by Millington on the subject of Norse mythology and a letter from Bram Stoker about vampirism. Most interesting of all is an Arabian Nights-style account of the Doctor's first contest with Fenric. We learn that after defeating Fenric, the Doctor travelled for two years with Zeleekah, a freed Ethiopian slave. This is generally thought to have taken place during the Doctor's first incarnation, though few fans have considered exactly where in the chronology of the Doctor's life it occurred. I am dying to write some fan fiction featuring Zeleekah, though I find it hard to think how exactly to go about her character.

The novelisation is more upfront than the book in identifying the Doctor as a power of Good from before the dawn of time. Personally, I like this idea, though I do think it was better left ambiguous as it was in the serial.

The story gets even more confused when it comes to the subplot about the Ancient One and the dead Earth of the future. The book repeats the line about the dead world being the result of 'industrial progress' but it also seems to suggest that it is Millington's poison that creates it. It is implied that this future is prevented. I am unhappy with this. For one thing, it implies a temporal paradox. As I interpret the televised version, the desolate Earth of the Ancient One is the result of pollution and it is not erased. This should not be thought to contradict other Doctor Who stories set in the future. There is room for a desolate Earth (which will get repopulated by space colonists).

The novel ends with the Doctor meeting up with an older version of Ace in 19th century Paris, who has a relationship with Sorin's ancestor. Kate Orman's New Adventure novel, Set Piece would come to set up this surprising scenario.

The Curse of Fenric novel is a great read. It lacks the self-confidence and maturity of the New Adventures, but it is definitely a step in that direction.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

I can't believe I am writing this, but Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was not nearly as awful as I had expected. It probably helped that this story did not have the high pretensions of the previous disaster, Asylum of the Daleks. This was a story that set out to be enjoyable rubbish and for maybe a few times in the episode, I actually came close to enjoying it.

The very premise of Dinosaurs on a starship naturally sets alarm bells ringing. We are set up to expect a bonkers story that serves only to realize the absurd premise and provide a lot of all-out Dinosaur action. Indeed, the plot was a mess, but it was actually a little better plotted than I imagined. The spaceship turning out to be an Eocene vessel was a good idea, though it is a questionable one given that the Eocenes are not from the Dinosaur era (the creature in Dr Who and the Silurians is not a recognisable species and they co-exist with apes).

This is basically a story of set pieces, some of them comic, but with a surprising number of darker elements thrown in. It was a little odd to see the Doctor turning up with a gang of assorted thrown-together historical persons. This was especially jarring given that Riddell the big-game hunter played no real part in the plot. I think both Riddell and Nefertiti were disappointingly bland and their being paired up served more to irritate than amuse. I found Nefertiti's decision to sacrifice herself both predictable and banal.

That Rory's dad turned up serves to show how desperate the writers are to do something new with Rory and Amy. The pair of them have grown desperately tired. The thought of watching them any more is an appalling thought.

The real stand out element in the story was the villain Solomon. He was quite masterfully portrayed and very chilling. One major fault of the New Series is its lack of human villains. The reason for this is that with a short 45 minute episode, you can't spend much time fleshing out motivation, which is an essential quality of villains. It's much easier for lazy writers to throw in an alien monster. It was also refreshing to see the Doctor coolly despatching Solomon. The Doctor has killed before. He's not a pacifist, so get over it.

I was a little surprised by the Eocenes not having a weapon system. This does not fit at all with the aggression we have seen from their kind. I don't much like the New Series approach in making the Eocenes into sympathetic good guys.

This episode really could have been a lot worse.

Canon and Conundrum

I absolutely love the New Adventure novel, Conundrum by Steve Lyons. I think it is among the best of the Virgin New Adventures. The sequel, Head Games is also a great book. Steve Lyons is a great Doctor Who writer. Yet I find it really hard to forgive him for a clever meta-textual trick he pulls in Conundrum and repeats in Head Games.

In Conundrum, we learn that a new Master of the Land of Fiction has created a fictional counterpart of the Doctor, who is called Dr. Who (and the real one is not?) and who has two grandchildren, John and Gillian. In the sequel, Head Games, we meet Dr. Who. Although he looks like the Sylvester McCoy Doctor, his personality is quite different, having a very superficial and naive view of good and evil. His answer to monsters is to wipe them out. Dr. Who references several TV Comic stories. The clear meta-textual implication is that the TV Comic stories did not feature our Doctor, but this Land of Fiction creation.

I realize very well that Steve Lyons meant all this in good humour, but I can't help seeing a certain literary snobbery in the idea of relegating all the TV Comic stories to the Land of Fiction. This is basically an attempt to create some sort of Doctor Who canon and to define the boundaries of what is Doctor Who and what is not.

Doctor Who has no canon. The BBC licences products, but it makes no attempt to define what material is part of the Doctor Who mythos. Doctor Who has no Gene Roddenberry or George Lucas who can make pronouncements about canon. I'm very glad it does not. I grew up with the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels. I actually have a much fonder place in my heart for them than I do for the original Star Wars trilogy. When George Lucas changes things in the Expanded Universe, it really annoys me. I totally agree with Paul Cornell's claim that canon is just another form of bullying. To exclude a story from the canon is to say "No matter how much you might love this story, it doesen't count. So there."

There is a certain incongruity about a spin-off novel trying to exclude another spin-off from an hypothetical canon. I am a New Adventures fanatic, but there are plenty of fans who hate them. There are fans who hate the manipulative Doctor in the NAs and the bitter and violent Ace. There are fans who like the idea planned for Season 27 of Ace going to Gallifrey to become a Time Lord. Steve Lyons seemed to think that the TV Comic did not count. Plenty of fans think the New Adventures don't count and only the televised stories are genuine Doctor Who.

It is often pointed out that the TV Comic stories give the Doctor a somewhat different personality to the televised Doctors. The TV Comic version of the First Doctor uses magic and its Second Doctor invents things to make money, appears on a television chat show and carries a ray gun. Yet it ought to be apparent to a fan that even the televised show does not always get the Doctor quite right or achieve a consistent tone. Take the Seeds of Doom. I'm sure that Seeds of Doom went through a much more rigorous editorial process than Martha the Mechanical Housemaid, but there are still some oddities about that story. Seeds of Doom is a very enjoyable story, but in some ways it does not feel like Doctor Who. The tone of it comes closer to a spy thriller at times and in the end, the monster is destroyed not by the Doctor, but by an airstrike. Furthermore, the fourth Doctor does not quite feel the same as in other Fourth Doctor stories. He seems more of an establishment figure and much more ready to deal out violence. Robert Banks Stewart had not spent hours studying past episodes to make sure he got every detail right (as a fan would do); he just wrote it to commission. That is why the tone of the story is different and that is exactly why the TV Comic strips feel different to most Doctor Who stories. We would not exclude Seeds of Doom from the 'canon' because it is a bit different and neither should we exclude the Sixties comic strips.



Steve Lyons makes a really interesting point in Head Games about the TV Comic version of the Doctor having a naive view of good and evil and being ready to destroy anything that looks like a monster. While this is true of the Doctor in the TV Comic, it is also true of much of the televised show, especially in the Second Doctor era. The Doctor wipes out the Macra without knowing anything about them, he cheerfully blows up the Dominators with a bomb and he destroys the entire Martian fleet, even though they are a dying race. This is the sort of gung-ho attitude that Robert Holmes so brilliantly satirized in The Two Doctors.

There is another irony in the idea of the TV Comic being relegated to the Land of Fiction, that is that the whole idea of the Land of Fiction is a bizarre concept in itself and might just as easily have been something from the TV Comic strips. The Mind Robber might be part of an hypothetical canon, but there is no way that story would have been made in any period other than the Sixties era of Doctor Who. There is just as much a stretch to say that The Mind Robber and Terminus occurred in the same universe as to say that The Challenge of the Piper occurred in the same universe as Pyramids of Mars.

Mission for Duh

From the Doctor Who 1967 Annual

As odd as that might seem, the 1967 Annual was my first experience of Doctor Who (barring ten minutes of being terrified by Curse of Fenric). Unlike many of my school friends, I had not watched the last two seasons of Doctor Who and had no interest or knowledge of the show.

During a Cub Scout holiday in 1990, I came across a dusty old copy of the 1967 Doctor Who Annual in the youth hostel in which we were staying. I was not particularly enjoying the holiday and this strange old book was the highlight of it for me. The annual seemed like the most amazing thing ever. Being very keen on carnivorous plants, I was particularly blown away by the comic strip, Mission for Duh. This relic of another era sold me on Doctor Who. It was 1990 and the show was cancelled, but I began reading Target novelization after Target novelization.

Mission for Duh might have really shoddy artwork, but it's such a lovely piece of Sixties kitsch. I love 'throwaway' stories like this and I resent anyone who tries to exclude them from the canon of Doctor Who. It's wonderful to think that Dr. Who had all kinds of adventures that never made it to the screen. The planet Birr and its Verdant inhabitants may never get mentioned outside of the 1967 Annual, but in my mind their part of the Doctor Who universe.

Stories like these raise interesting questions of continuity. In Mission for Duh and the rest of the stories in the annual, the First Doctor is travelling on his own. This is hard to fit into the apparently seamless narrative of the First Doctor televised stories. However, there are a number of places where it could fit. It could be set in between The Dalek Masterplan and The Massacre after the First Doctor has left the Death Zone in The Five Doctors. Alternatively, it could be set during The War Machines, before the Doctor returns to collect Dodo. The TV Comic stories featuring John and Gillian would also take place during this unseen gap.

Asylum of the Daleks

For about two minutes, I wondered if this might actually turn out to be a good story. It turned out to be typical sleep-inducing New Series waffle. Asylum of the Daleks has some pretty impressive visuals- lots of Daleks, flying saucers, impressive sets. Unfortunately it has no substance at all.

Despite the title, this story is not about the Daleks. These Daleks are not doing anything interesting like conquering the universe or enslaving humans. The paper thin premise of the Daleks enlisting Dr Who's aid is simply a cheap device to launch a big mawkish story about the power of LOVE. Once again, the companion's personal emotional drama is the biggest, most important thing in the universe. We get told lots of stuff about how the Daleks call Dr. Who 'the Pretador' and how he is the biggest enemy of the Daleks ever. However, there is no evidence of this onscreen. This is just verbiage. We can only believe that Dr Who is the enemy of the Daleks if we actually see him foiling their invasion plots, blowing up Dalek spaceships and the like. It's a shame we didn't see much of the yellow 'Eternal' Daleks either. I was looking forward to seeing them. Moffat evidently chickened out of using too many of the fun and cool New Paradigm Daleks.

It turns out that Skaro still exists, so presumably the premise of War of the Daleks, with the Daleks fooling Dr. Who into believing he had destroyed Skaro was all true.

Rory and Amy have very much outstayed their welcome. It's clear that the writers have run out of ideas for them because they have them getting divorced (what else do you do with a married couple?). Watching them argue and make up just fills one with a sense of crushing deja vu. Incidently, Amy was making some remarkably sexual poses for such an everyday style outfit. One would expect her to be wearing a slinkier sort of outfit for the poses she was striking. It's incredible how Amy seems to wear that leather jacket ensemble in nearly every story (even when she is supposed to be dressed for Brazil). It's like we are back in the days of JNT, when Tegan had to always wear her stewardess uniform and Nyssa always had to wear that hideous puffy sleeved velvet thing.

The big surprise of this story is the early revelation of new companion Oswin, played by Jenna-Louise Coleman. Only she's died. So it looks like we are going to get another stupid timey-wimey story about Dr. Who meeting a character backwards. What we see of Oswin is not encouraging. She is just another overconfident character who flirts and makes wisecracks all the time.

Not only is Oswin dead, but she has been turned into a Dalek (did anybody fail to see that coming?). I know Revelation of the Daleks had people being converted into Daleks, but that was Davros' idea. Turning people into Daleks is a denial of what Daleks are about. They are obsessed with their own racial superiority and purity. They would not want to turn people into Daleks.

The story ends with a chorus of Doctor Who? How many times have we heard that joke? Dr. Who really is just his name. He really is called that. Get over it.

Dr. Who has clearly never seen an episode of Star Trek Next Generation. Surely it must be obvious she got the milk from a replicator.

Counter-Measures Series One

Remembrance of the Daleks featured one of the finest guest performances of Doctor Who, that of Pamela Salem as Dr. Rachel Jensen. The portrayal was delightful; for once we got a mature and intelligent female character who was both sexy and elegant. Rachel Jensen was accompanied in that story by two other characters, Group Captain 'Chunky' Gilmore and a younger scientist, Allison Williams. While none of these characters had a fully fleshed out background in Remembrance of the Daleks, the strength of their performances along with their similarity to UNIT made them very memorable.

When I heard the news that these three cast members would be reprising their roles for the Big Finish audio series Counter-Measures, I was overjoyed. I have been waiting the release of this spin-off all year. On the whole, I have not been disappointed by Counter-Measures.

In creating the Counter-Measures team, Paul Finch and the writers made a deliberate attempt to avoid copying the set-up of UNIT. UNIT was a military organisation, with the Brigadier in charge. In contrast, the Counter-Measures group is under the leadership of Rachel the scientist. A fourth member of the regulars has been added, Sir Toby Kinsella, a slippery civil servant, played by Hugh Ross. Sir Toby is a delightful character, a Machiavellian whose true agenda is never really made clear.

Back in Remembrance of the Daleks, Jensen made a sly reference to Bernard Quatermass and British Rockets Group. Appropriately, Counter-Measures draws heavily om Quatermass as a source of inspiration. The plots concern dangerous experiments, terrifying artificial intelligences and unknowable entities from dimensions unknown. We are constantly left with the grand theme of Quatermass; that human civilization is only a step away from breakdown and madness. The writing on these stories is very strong, with an emphasis on sophisticated dialogue and character development rather than straightforward action.

All of the main cast members do a fantastic job. My only complaint is that Karen Gledhill's voice sounds just a little too Estuary to convincingly pull off a middle-class character from the Sixties. Just compare her vocal performance with that of Doctor Who regulars from the Sixties like Polly and Barbara. Karen Gledhill simply does not speak precisely enough. The guest cast are generally strong. A particular stand-out performance is that of Stephen Greif as Ken Temple, a megalomaniac industrialist from the East End.

The sound effects were a little too experimental at times, but very atmospheric and effective at creating an eerie atmosphere. The musical scores were appropriate to the period, and the flute-led theme tune is wonderful, evoking many Sixties spy dramas.

State of Emergency was by far the best story. This piece imagined a military coup against Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson. Interestingly, it also featured bat-like demons from another dimension. I could not help being reminded of the State of Decay vampires and the Yssgaroth. Given the title of this story, it seems likely that writer Justin Richards intended a connection.

There are a few things that disappointed me about the series, however. Gilmore is badly underused and is reduced to being just an action man. The writers have purposely tried to avoid making him another Brigadier. The problem with this is that Gilmore was conceived as a proto-Brigadier and bereft of this role, he is a little redundant.

I was a little troubled by the way the Counter-Measures group was introduced. The Counter-Measures team existed in Remembrance of the Daleks, yet two years on from that in this series, it is treated as a new organisation. There is not enough sense that this is three people who have worked together before. The only reason I can think of why the group is being treated as a new organisation is Rachel's throwaway comment about writing her memoirs (which Who Killed Kennedy established as what she actually did- though Millennial Rites suggests the opposite).

The logo and the resemblance of Sir Toby to Mr Waverly led me to expect Counter-Measures to have some resemblance to Man From Uncle. While the theme tune points in this direction, nothing else does. Counter-Measures first series has some great stuff, but what is missing is very apparent. I was surprised by the lack of humour, the lack of anything camp, or anything glamorous. It is so bleak and gritty. Is this not the Swinging Sixties? The next series definitely needs more light-hearted moments and some interaction with the rich popular culture of the early Sixties.

I was a little surprised by the lack of references to the wider Doctor Who universe. I got the impression that the writers saw themselves as a bit above that sort of thing. However, as it will only be Doctor Who fans who buy Counter-Measures, it makes sense to reward them with just a few more Doctor Who references. It would be nice to have a guest appearance from somebody familiar too. My suggestion would be Big Finish character Elizabeth Klein (the UNIT version). Why not? If UNIT Klein is the same age as Nazi Klein, she would be about 30 at the time of Counter-Measures. I hope Big Finish are reading this.

It was nice that Group Captain Gilmore making a comment about Rachel being unable to run in heels in Artificial Intelligence. This was a nice reference to the scene in Remembrance of the Daleks where Rachel was seen standing in her stocking feet having removed her heels to climb on board the Dalek spaceship.

Warlock, by Andrew Cartmel (Virgin New Adventure)

I really liked Andrew Cartmel's first New Adventure, Cat's Cradle: Warhead. There were a number of elements that made it great, the mysterious grim and foreboding Doctor, the non-linear plot, the peculiarly sparse dialogue and the surreal sense of a near future setting. Sadly, Warlock lacks all these elements that made Warhead so delightful.

Warlock has some great prose at times (and in a few places, some really bad prose) and some wonderful moments, such as the drug dealers using their drug to sound out who is an undercover cop and the way the gangster is destroyed by body language. However, it is seriously let down by a rambling and meandering plot that failed to engage with me. Cartmel also does an appalling job of trying to address the issue of vivisection, making out animal experimenters to be fiends who kidnap pets (animals for experimentation are specifically bred for that purpose) and enjoy torturing them for fun.

The Doctor does very little in this story. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Doctor-lite stories can be really effective. Birthright for instance has the Doctor only appearing a few times, yet the entire novel is filled with the sense of the Doctor's unseen presence. Warlock lacks that sense of the Doctor's presence or importance. He seems entirely incidental to the plot. The regular characters do very little as well. Cartmel puts the focus on his own characters, who are the most part, rather uninteresting and difficult to like. Perhaps it was down to the change in style, but even given several years maturity, Justine felt like an entirely different character to the person we saw in Warhead.

Being such a massive fan of the New Adventures and Warhead in particular, I expected a good deal more from this novel.

Arrived This Week!

My copy of the unlikely Big Finish audio spin-off , Counter-Measures arrived this week. I had been awaiting this with great anticipation all year. I pre-ordered it on Amazon, but they took a while to get hold of it after Big Finish released it.

In this Sixties science fiction adventure, Pamela Salem, Simon Williams and Karen Gledhill return to their roles as Rachel Jensen, Group Captain 'Chunky' Gilmore and Allison Williams from Remembrance of the Daleks.

Not only is Remembrance of the Daleks my favorite Doctor Who story, but Pamela Salem is my favorite guest actress in the show. Rachel Jensen was sexy in a really elegant and mature way, something unusual in modern television.

Judging by the artwork, I suspect that this series takes an awful lot of influence from the cranky Sixties spy show, The Man From UNCLE.

Expect a review in good time.

The Keys of Marinus

There are some Doctor Who stories which get less interesting or enjoyable with every viewing. The Ark in Space comes into this category for me. It's a rather dull story once you have seen it a couple of times. In contrast, The Keys of Marinus becomes more enjoyable with every viewing. Each time I watch it, I get something new out of it. I did not care much for The Keys of Marinus on first viewing, but since then I have come to love it. Yes, the production values are very low in this story, but it still has a simple charm that does not fail to entertain. The Keys of Marinus reveals Terry Nation's main skill as a writer; he is brilliant at filling a story with exciting events. There is no shortage of tension or excitement as he takes the characters on a roller-coaster ride from one danger to another.

At the time of The Keys of Marinus, the format of Doctor Who was still in a state of flux. The Doctor was still not that likable and Barbara and Ian were the main characters. The loose-structured nature of this story, with it's episodic narrative makes a strong contrast with later serials, but it reflected the experimental nature of Doctor Who at this time.

Remember the Chrystal Maze? That program had different zones, an Aztec Zone, an Industrial Revolution Zone, a Medieval Zone and a Futuristic Zone. This serial likewise puts people the main characters into similarly diverse settings. And like the participants in The Chrystal Maze, they have to hunt for keys.

The first episode has a few problems, most caused by the small size of the sets. The cast do their best, but they are clearly struggling to make it convincing. This is not helped by the remarkably large number of fluffs from William Hartnell.

The Velvet Web's sets are a little cheap-looking as well, but this episode uses them better. The premise of things not looking like what they are is very cleverly done, with different points of view shots. The brains in the jars are very well conceived and their voices are highly effective. It is just unfortunate that their final scene is ruined by Jacqueline Hill's inability to break the glass.

There is a nice eeriness to the Screaming Jungle and this is backed up by a real sense of urgency. Unfortunately, this is a really cheap looking episode, with the dreadful idol and the laboratory that appears to be in a garden shed.

The next episode is more effective, mainly because of the great acting from Vasor, the trapper. I must admit, I am a bit in two minds about the scene where he appears to threaten Barbara with rape; it is a children's show after all. There is something a little worrying about the way that Barbara is repeatedly threatened with rape in the Hartnell era, though I suppose it is sadly true to life.

The ice warriors (what else do you call them?) look as cheap as the rest of the story but they are hilarious. The moment when they are stuck on the wrong side of the chasm is hilarious. I recently watched the Eisenstein's Russian classic, Alexander Nevsky. Every time I saw the Teutonic Knights, I kept thinking of the ice warriors in The Keys of Marinus and it made me crack up.

From the snows of the mountains, we are brought into a murder mystery in the more modern environment of Millennius. There is plenty of suspense and tension in this. I love the way Hartnell conveys frustration as Ian's plight becomes more desperate. I also really enjoyed the performance of Fiona Walker as Kala, which is especially impressive, given that it was her first role.

The conclusion is rather clumsy. Having a villain who only appears in the final episode can sometimes work, but in this story it does not. The Voord also appear to have changed their nature. In the first episode, they appear to be humans or humanoids in wetsuits. Now they are described as 'creatures' and Yartek their leader seems unable to remove his mask while disguised as Arbitan. That said, Yartek's pretence at being Arbitan is hilarious and not a little camp. Coming across as Fu Manchu in a rubber suit, he is one of the sillier Doctor Who villains.

As with a lot of other serials, Susan does not come across well in this, as she goes into a screaming fit at the slightest provocation. She is slightly redeemed in the fourth episode when she summons the courage to crawl across the deep chasm on a fragile pole of ice. I love Susan. She was such a great character, but if only she had been given a better deal by the writers.

Sabetha and Altos are interesting in the pseudo-companion like role they take on. They might have worked a little better if their background had been fleshed out a bit more. Their romance is suddenly sprung on us at the end. Sabetha is rather bland, though I do like the way she is so prim and proper. Altos is just a little bit too camp and definitely needed a longer tunic.

One piece of Doctor Who lore that deserves to be discussed here is The World Shapers comic strip, by Grant Morrison and John Ridgway. This remarkable story revealed that Marinus is Mondas and that the Cybermen were originally the Voord! A lot of fans are unwilling to consider this story canon, as it has Jamie McCrimmon dying an horrible death. Yet there do seem to be some good reasons for thinking that Marinus really might well be Mondas. The only reason identified in The World Shapers is the physical similarity between the Voord and the Cybermen. Both have handlebar like appendages on their helmets. There are other reasons. Marinus is an earth-like planet inhabited by near humans. It could easily be Earth's twin planet. There is also the stuff about computers controlling people's behavior. The episode The Screaming Jungle gives hints that Marinus might be threatened with environmental problems. Perhaps the ice creatures are cybernetic proto-Cybermen. As one of them screams, they cannot be robots. Personally, I am very keen on this theory as it seems to enlarge the importance of an otherwise throwaway story.