The War Machines

"Doctor Who is required."

There you go. It's there in the script. In the canon. He really is called Dr. Who. You would think all those silly fans who insist he's called 'The Doctor' would just shut up. That line is one of a number of reasons for loving this story.

The War Machines feels very different from what has gone before. For the first time since Planet of the Giants, we have a story entirely set on contemporary Earth. We have some elements that would become a standard feature, Dr. Who working with an establishment figure, a military presence and a renegade computer seeking to control people. The War Machines is a template for much that would come later. Personally, this is not the kind of Doctor Who I like. I very much prefer the more fantastical Hartnell material, as well as the historical serials, but I do enjoy the freshness of this story and the sense of departure in it. Added to this, The War Machines gives us to new companions who are very different to previous companions, being trendy twenty-something adults (Barbara and Ian are probably in their twenties, but they don't feel trendy in any sense). The stories that follow show them taking to TARDIS travel with an enthusiasm that contrasts very strongly with Ian and Barbara. In this, they are a also templates for the later direction of the show.


I don't care much for stories with computers as villains. Part of this is down to the fact that they make boring bad guys, but also it seems inconceivable. Computers do not have a will or a consciousness. They are not persons. A computer simply processes the information it is given. A computer is no more likely to try to take over the world than your kettle. This makes me inclined to favour the fan theory that WOTAN is in fact a Dalek plot. Is it only a coincidence that the Daleks are active on Earth at this time? The whole WOTAN business does have a very Dalek feel to it.

The War Machines themselves are a little awkward, but they are visually interesting. The real problem with them lies in the fact that we only ever see one at a time, thus reducing their impact.

William Hartnell gives an energetic and engaging performance. His illness is not at all apparent here. He has perhaps lost something of the edge that characterised his earlier performances and has settled into being a kindly grandfather figure. Yet he is still delightful to watch.

Dodo's supporters are thin on the ground, but I still love her. Her characterization is paper thin, but she is so cheerful and pleasant. The sincerity in Jackie Lane's performance contrasts very strongly with the very knowing approach taken by Maureen O'Brien. Sadly, Dodo is not the last companion to be given a clumsy departure.

Ben and Polly are an instant hit. They are both well characterized and distinct. Ben quickly develops a great rapport with Dr. Who. Polly is also a strong personality. It is perhaps a little disappointing that she seems so meek and timid when a nightclub patron approaches her with immoral intentions. This highlights the way her character would frequently be inconsistently portrayed, with her being sassy, confident and sarcastic one minute and then whimpering with terror a few minutes later. Tragically, this is the only completely surviving story to feature this pair.

The War Machines is a light and enjoyable story at the tail end of the Hartnell era. While it is far from perfect, it deserves to be appreciated.

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.

World Game, by Terrance Dicks (BBC Novel)

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

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

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

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

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

The Time Meddler

Douglas Camfield is regarded as one of the greatest of Doctor Who's directors and rightly so. What strikes the viewer of The Time Meddler is that it appears to be largely filmed on location, unlike most other Hartnell stories. This is an illusion, however, for this story was filmed entirely in studio. The appearance of lush location filming is achieved through the realistic sets, the moving sky effect and the generous use of stock footage. The Time Meddler's strong visual impact is a testimony to Camfield's brilliance, a brilliance let down only by some clumsy fight scenes.

The Time Meddler is hugely important in setting the direction of later stories. For the first time, we see one of the Doctor's own people and discover that the TARDIS is not unique. In this serial, historical and science fiction elements are mixed for the first time, something that caused a lot of confusion for many viewers at the time. This was a significant innovation for Doctor Who. What is perhaps unfortunate is the fact that this innovation came to be seen as the essential way for Doctor Who to deal with historical themes. Thus, true historicals came to be rejected in the Troughton era. The Doctor Who pseudo-historical has become a predictable genre, with the only real variation being whether the interfering being is a good alien or a bad alien and a lack of any real interest in the historical elements themselves.

The Time Meddler also altered the way in which time worked in Doctor Who. Barring the wobbling of The Space Museum, the show's logic had assumed that the course of history could not be altered. It was not merely objectionable, but impossible. Here in this story, we see a being like the Doctor attempting to alter history and the Doctor appears to believe that he could succeed. In my opinion this was a mistake. While Big Finish have gone to town on stories about altered timelines and the new series has followed suit, such notions appear very infrequently in classic Doctor Who. It has been pointed out by fans that the Doctor appears inconsistent in viewing earth's history as sacred, but freely interfering in the destiny of alien worlds and future human societies. I would argue that the Doctor's willingness to interfere in alien worlds actually supports the idea that history cannot be altered. The reason that the Doctor has no fear of toppling Helen A's tyranny on Terra Alpha is because he knows he cannot change history and his success is already a part of history. If he is unaware of the future of Terra Alpha (and in general, the Doctor shows a limited awareness of future human history), then he can at least try, knowing that he cannot alter history. This flys in the face of the accepted understanding of Pyramids of Mars (I have my own theory to explain the desolate Earth in 1980), but it makes sense of a good deal of classic Doctor Who. The Time Meddler can be blamed for the unfortunate idea that history could be altered at any moment.

The Time Meddler is very much dominated by the two conflicting personalities of the Doctor and the Monk. The Monk is an highly unusual villain in being rather likable and it is hard not to feel a lot of sympathy for him. This is very much enhanced by how unlikable the Doctor comes across in this story. He shakes with rage at the Monk's activity and comes across as a bit of a bully. It is interesting to note just how violent the Doctor is here, brawling and hitting people with clubs. While we are used to liking the Doctor, I rather find the Doctor's meanness in this story very enjoyable.

It is rather striking how manipulative the Doctor and companions come across in this story. They appear to the Saxons as allies, helping them deal with the 'Viking spy.' Yet in reality they are trying to ensure that these people are invaded by Vikings, an event in which they might suffer. The story does not deal with this moral tension at all.

I don't care much for the companions in The Time Meddler. Steven's first appearance as companion proper has him coming across as very thick and obstinate. I have never liked Vicky, but here she comes across as especially bossy and irritating. While we get a good performance from Alethea Charlton's Edith, the Saxon characters are uninteresting and the Vikings very unimpressive. These historical elements of the story lack any real interest in themselves. Yet whatever its faults, The Time Meddler was an important landmark in the history of Doctor Who and is visually quite delightful.

The Talons of Tired Tropes

Another fan favorite, another beloved Hinchcliffe story that I am about to complain about? In my defence, I will point out my praise for The Brain of Morbius in the last post. However, once again I must express my disagreement with a fan consensus, in this case, that The Talons of Weng-Chiang is a classic story.

My low opinion of The Talons of Weng-Chiang is shared by many fans who have more love for the Hinchcliffe era than I do. There are plenty of fans who feel that Talons does not compare favourably with the more popular Genesis of the Daleks or Pyramids of Mars (as it happens, I think Talons is better than Pyramids of Mars). So the faults in this story are not simply my bias coming out as a Hinchcliffe critic.

It is easy to understand why The Talons of Weng-Chiang is so popular. There is some wonderful humour in this story, including that delightful moment when Leela has supper with Lightfoot. We have incredibly strong performances from Louise Jameson, John Bennett, Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter. The production values are very strong, though this being a period drama, it does have an unfair advantage over the more overtly science fiction stories. David Maloney's direction cannot be faulted and he would later go on to produce the BBC's astounding adaptation of The Day of the Triffids. Mr. Sin is wonderfully creepy.

Despite all its manifest strengths, Talons is let down by some very significant weaknesses. Perhaps the most obvious one is the appalling racism of this story. Talons is an unashamed throwback to Fu Manchu stereotypes of sinister orientals kidnapping young women. In defence of this it is sometimes pointed out that Lhsen Chang is a well developed and complex character. That may be true, but he is still a stereotypical superstitious and treacherous oriental, who cringes before a white man and who is played by a white actor to top it all.

The Eliza Doolittle subtext with Leela is also a bit suspect. The whole idea of the Doctor teaching Leela to be civilized has some rather unappealing connotations, however funny it might be for the Doctor to promising to reward Leela with an orange. Leela's sudden enthusiasm for dresses and going to the theatre seems completely out of character.

The plot is seriously padded, unsurprising given that it is a six-parter, but still not excusable. It takes Greel six episodes to recover the time cabinet and then to delay the action further, his men just happen to forget the key! We are treated to a parade of captures and escapes that delay the action as long as possible. This padding makes Talons one of the more tedious stories to watch.

Talons of Weng-Chiang betrays the somewhat sadistic delight of Hinchcliffe-era Doctor Who in painful deaths. There is an awful lot of disturbing material, from the life force being drained from young women (why women, we might ask?), the suicides of the Chinese gang-members and Chan dying slowly after his leg gets chewed up. None of this is portrayed very graphically, but there is clearly a very tasteless enthusiasm for pain and butchery on display. Stripping Leela to her underwear and splashing her with water was not a good move in my book either.

What I dislike most about this story, however, is that it is just a mass of Victorian cliches thrown together in the belief that this is rather clever. I have never quite understood the appeal of Scooby-Doo-Victoriana, but for some reason its incredibly popular, hence the rise of the absurd genre of Steampunk. Perhaps this was all rather original in 1977, but with the endless parade of cartoonish Victorian tropes in horror, fantasy and science fiction, Talons of Weng-Chiang feels a bit too much for me.

As for Leela's first outfit in the first episode, not a good choice if he wanted Leela to be inconspicuous. Wearing bloomers for riding a bicycle or doing sports was not unknown in Victorian times, but it would have been a shocking choice of outfit for walking around London and would have aroused disapproval.

The Brain of Morbius

Readers of this blog will know that I have a strong dislike of the Hinchcliffe era of Doctor Who, which is bizarrely considered by most fans to be the strongest period in the show's history. In my judgment, The Brain of Morbius is the stand-out story of the Hinchcliffe era, the one that truly exemplifies the strengths of this period. The other so-called 'classics' of Hinchcliffe Doctor Who such as Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars and Talons of Weng-Chiang are all marred by very significant flaws. The Brain of Morbius is not perfect, but its faults do not significantly detract from it.

The Brain of Morbius is an adaptation and re-telling of the story of Frankenstein and his monster, with all of the Hollywood trappings of that story. This is not in itself a bad thing. Doctor Who has often thrived on borrowing and adapting other stories. In particular, Brain of Morbius adds some very interesting elements to the story, with the renegade Time Lord Morbius and the Sisterhood of Karn. This delightful borrowing is perhaps overshadowed buy the fact that every other story in this period of Doctor Who was in some way an adaptation of a classic story or movie. For all the brilliance of this serial, it is a reminder of just how much a one-trick pony the Hinchliffe era was.

The title is one of the endless 'something of something' variations, but it is a very arresting one. It's a title that captures the tongue-in-cheek nature of the serial. The Brain of Morbius is a really fun story with some lovely moments of camp humour, such as Solon's delight in the Doctor's head and Condo's fascination with Sarah.

The exterior sets are not very realistic and have a theatrical feel, but I have no problem with that. The castle of Morbius is beautifully designed and creates a delightful Gothic feel. The Brain of Morbius is a story brimming with atmosphere. I particularly like the dance sequences and the oriental flavour of the Sisterhood of Karn. There is a strong sense of Goth Exoticism about them, just like a Dead Can Dance record. The Goth movement in the 80s was often more about the exotic than it was about the Victorian (and things Victorian can get very mundane).

I imagine this story must have been very terrifying for younger viewers, with the story openning with the hideous insect creature (borrowed from The Mutants) and the blind Sarah menaced by the Morbius monster. The serial generated a lot of controversy from Mary Whitehouse. I do think the violence in this story could have been toned down a bit, though I don't see why the brain on the floor was such a fuss- that was an obviously fantastical scene. People who say the Doctor is a pacifist clearly have not seen this story; it is quite striking the way the Doctor is prepared to kill Solon in cold blood, as he does here.

The performances are strong from all the cast here, especially Madoc who really brings the character of Solon to life and manages to make him alternate between ranting maniac to camp charmer. Elisabeth Sladen does some great blind acting. Some reviewers have complained about Ohica's wild-eyed stares, but with the character's lack of interesting lines, the actress had to do something to make an impact.

The story is a little let down by a rather linear plot. It is obvious from the first episode that Morbius will return with Solon's aid and the Doctor and the Sisterhood will need to join forces to stop him. The mind conbat scene feels a little like an afterthought to pad the story out a bit. It does seem a bit surprising that the machine to facilitate this duel just happens to be in Solon's lab.

The faces in the mind-duel have raised a good deal of controversy. It is clear that the production team wanted to drop the hint that the Doctor had several pre-Hartnell incarnations. This is a position I most vehemently reject for five reasons. Firstly, there are clear references to the First Doctor being the earliest Doctor in The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors. Secondly, the First Doctor is strikingly different to the other incarnations in that he has grown old. It is clear that the First Doctor has been around for a good deal longer than the other Doctors. The aging of the the Hartnell Doctor seems to point to his being the original form. Thirdly, despite his aged appearance, the Hartnell Doctor shows the most immature behaviour among the Doctors, leaving aside the instability of the Sixth Doctor. If the Davison Doctor was an old man in a young man's body, the Hartnell Doctor was a teenager in an old man's body. Fourthly, with his oval face, the unidentified Gallifreyan Doctor in the astounding novel The Infinity Doctors has an oval face that suggests Hartnell. There are canonical difficulties with The Infinity Doctors, but if it is accepted as canon, it fits best as a pre-Unearthly Child story. Fifthly, Hartnell being the original Doctor just feels right. We started the show with him. He is where it all began. I would much rather believe that Morbius had a fetish for silly hats than that there were incarnations of the Doctor before Hartnell.

A rather less discussed issue is how this story fits into the chronology of the Time Lords and the exact point of Gallifreyan Mean Time. If the Sisterhood of Karn is contemporaneous with the Time Lords (which the Virgin novels seem to indicate), that would strongly point towards the far future as the date for Gallifreyan Mean Time. Personally, I prefer to see the Time Lords as inhabiting the past (which is why the Doctor feels freer to meddle with future history than with the past) and therefore the connection between the Sisterhood adn the Time Lords must be a bit more muted (the Virgin novels themselves tend to view Gallifrey as located in the past). There is no indication in The Brain of Morbius that the Sisterhood are themselves Gallifreyan. Perhaps the Pythia of Gallifrey founded the Sisterhood, but the other Sisters are not Gallifreyan and inhabit a different time zone to the Time Lords.

The Leisure Hive

The Leisure Hive has always divided fan opinion, mainly because it featured the introduction of the aesthetics of Doctor Who demanded by new producer John Nathan-Turner. The prevailing view these days seems to be that there is nothing very special about this story. My own view is that The Leisure Hive is a very good story and that its strong production values are a breath of fresh air after the sloppiness of Season 17.

It's hard to imagine what it must have been like for a viewer in 1980, seeing the new title sequence and hearing the revamped music for the first time. This title sequence is followed by a disconcerting long shot of Brighton beach. People say its too long and pointless, but it creates such a wonderful sense of eeriness. There are few things as bleakly enchanting as a British seaside in bad weather. Then we get the temporary destruction of K9. That irritating entity who plagued the Graham Williams era is thus removed from the story. JNT had the right idea getting rid of the robot dog.

One of the most striking things about The Leisure Hive is the strong visual quality of it. It has great camerawork, strong and impressive sets and some well conceived video effects. While the Foamasi do look like walking beanbags, the other costumes are very well designed, especially those of the Argolins. The popping of the pods as they age is a great idea. The yellow of their robes adds to the strong sense of colour in the serial, contrasting with the bold burgundy of the Doctor's new costume. The Leisure Hive is a serial that is meant to look good and succeeds.



There is a striking change in tone too. While The Leisure Hive has its moments of humour, there is none of the silliness that dogged the previous season. It is played straight and every actor is taking it seriously. Tom Baker is no longer joking around and acting more like a stand-up comedian than a lead actor. There is a sobriety to his tone. The Doctor also now comes across as vulnerable. When he turns into an old man, he really does seem ancient. We are made to feel that he really could drop dead. However, my favorite moment in The Leisure Hive is when the Foamasi agent is trying to communicate to the Doctor in it's own language. The Doctor taps its arm affectionately and says "I wish I knew what you wanted, my friend." There is just such a sense of warmth and kindliness in that gesture and line that is a testament to the skill of Tom Baker as an actor.



As ever the Fourth Doctor and Romana II make a great team. Their disdain and lack of awe in what they see of the leisure hive make up for the heavy-handed technobabble and sciency stuff going on. Lalla Ward was never the greatest actress in Doctor Who and her screaming fit at the climax comes across as a bit weak, but she always makes an impression when she is on screen. The sailor suit is another of those great Romana outfits. She looks adorably cute in this.

As I said, everybody is taking this story seriously, unlike much of what we saw in Season 17. The guest cast do some great work. Meena is definitely the best and her subtle relationship with Hardin is a nice touch. There are plenty of authoritarian lunatics in Doctor Who, but the young Pangol is definitely one of the most compelling and believable. As for the lawyer Klout, not only does he have a fantastic, Dickensian-style name, but despite not saying a single word, he conveys such a sense of menace in every scene he appears.



Fans ought to look more kindly on The Leisure Hive, for it was an excellent opening for a new era of Doctor Who.

Dr. Elizabeth Klein

I asked Jokerxsiren to draw a picture of Elizabeth Klein from the Big Finish audios. Klein (voiced by Tracey Childs) is a Nazi scientist from an alternate timeline in which the Nazis won the war. She temporarily travels with the Doctor as his companion, a strained relationship if ever there was one! I have written a lot of fan fiction about her.

Drawing Klein was a challenge for Jokerxsiren as we have only ever seen the face and shoulders of the character. I like the figure that she has given her- a mature woman who has aged very well, but is not skinny. One of the things I love about Klein is that she is a mature woman who is elegant and sexy. Too many Doctor Who characters are 20-something girls in short skirts.

I asked the artist to draw Klein in a floral dress. In my fan fiction I have always described Klein as wearing feminine clothes and avoided putting her in uniforms or boots. This creates a contrast with her cold personality.

Rags, by Mick Lewis (BBC novel)

Rags appears to aspire to be the most violent Doctor Who novel ever. It certainly succeeds. We are treated to chapter after chapter of savage and graphically described violence. People are butchered, sometimes by people they know. Every character is affected by the primal urge to fight and kill, except the Doctor, of course. Generally, I dislike strong violence in Doctor Who, however, I accept that Rags is a book that could never have been written without the shocking graphic brutality it is given. I doubt that it had many young readers, fandom at this period in Doctor Who having become a more mature company.

This novel is about punk rock. That in itself is an interesting topic because until the McCoy era, there are no visual references to punk in Doctor Who. The show and its writers appear to have largely ignored the punk movement when it was at its most prominent. While the New Adventure novel No Future dealt with the DIY performance side of punk, this novel deals with the nastier, more disturbing side of the movement and how the music was associated with a savage urge to deal out physical violence.

The real pleasure of this story is seeing the world of the Third Doctor era turned upside down. The kind of realistic violence we see here just didn't happen in Third Doctor stories. Best of all is what the author does with Jo Grant. We see Jo get into punk rock, smoke a joint and share a lesbian kiss. This is Jo Grant as you have never seen her! Mike Yates is as daft as ever and wears an appalling disguise as an hippy. Yet strangely, he is show to be rather useful in hand-to-hand combat.

While I certainly enjoyed reading Rags, I was very conscious of its flaws. It feels very much like it is a little too derivative of other novels, particularly in the New Adventures range. It almost feels like an ironic tribute to the Virgin New Adventures. It's plot is also a little too stodgy and slow paced. I also felt that the incident with Princess Mary was oddly handled. This was a massively significant event and its implications were barely touched on this novel.

On the whole I was disappointed with the way the Doctor was handled. He is described accurately, but he lacks the colour he might have been given. I would have liked to have seen him vent some snooty disgust at punk rock music. Unfortunately, he is written out of a good deal of the action and spends time in a kind of dreamscape (New Adventure cliche!). The way he stays out of the action and he keeps his plans to himself actually adds to the Virgin New Adventure feel of the story, but unfortunately fails to make it engage as a Third Doctor story.

The subplot with Kane and his family secrets felt somewhat out of place; this was very much supernatural horror territory. While this subplot was written well, it very much felt like a distraction from the much more interesting socio-political exploration of the punk theme.

Rags is an interesting installment in the BBC Past Doctors range and does something quite different, but perhaps fails to be a great Doctor Who novel.

Survival

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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